AA222 - People Don't Quit Jobs, They Quit Bosses - Or Do They? - Arguing Agile

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Everybody knows thatpeople don't quit
jobs, they quit bosses.
Is that true?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think it's true.
Okay.
Well, look, quit bad bosses.
What if what I just saidwhat if it's not true?
It's, it's just so ingrainedin the psyche of everyone
that it's not true.
What if blaming bad bosses isjust a scapegoat that lets the
broken system off the hook?

(00:20):
Well, and the whole system'sbroke because everybody pretty
much blames their bosses.
When you say, whydo you wanna leave?
Oh, have we already reachedthat part of the podcast where
we say, burn it all down?
Okay.
We can go there.
All right.
Well, I came here readyto burn it all down.
And yes, I'm on the sideof defending bad managers.
That's where I am onthis podcast because

(00:40):
someone has to do it.
It's 'cause someone'sgotta do the dirty work.
That's right.
I Googled it before when wewere prepping for the podcast.
I did Google it, andit's a real stat.
It says that managermanagers account for at
least 70% of variants inemployee engagement scores.
That's a real Gallup poll.
I did Google it.
It's a real thing.
I can link that.
I can, I can pull up the articlehere in a second if we want
to actually read what it says.

(01:00):
'cause again, who knows what.
There's like a study of threedudes in the bathroom on a lunch
break or something says, I guess70% couldn't be three dudes.
So it must be 10 dudes.
I don't know why we'rehanging in bathrooms so much.
It's, it's, itwas a weird study.
That's what I'm saying.
I don't know anythingabout Gallup.
We'll go with that Gallup study.
This is all the stu, let'sgo with Gallop stuff.
All the best stuff getscut of in podcasts.
70%. 70% variance.

(01:22):
Okay so let that, let thatbe a data point, right.
What did the study say?
Oh, it says that the manageris as the main contributor to
employee engagement or not?
It's using this Gallup polland I'm sure there's a bunch
of other polls, but this one'sthe most specific to this.
There it is.
Look, I even have it inmy history right there.
Great managers createthe right environment.
Only 30% of US employees,30% worldwide are engaged,

(01:44):
whatever that means.
And here's your, so it saysnot, well, I guess I'm on
the study, so I might aswell put it on the screen.
So it says, not every teamis led by a great manager.
That's why managers accountfor at least 70% of the
variance in employee engagementscores across business units.
Gallup estimates in the state ofthe American manager analytics
and advice for leaders.
And I can find out if Icould work a mouse when

(02:07):
this study was done.
Oh, that's, that'sa, this is a fun one.
It says 35% of US managersare engaged in their job.
Whatever engage means.
So it says, oh, there, it'sis a study over four decades.
2.5 million manager ledteams in 195 countries.
27 million employees.
Now because I work at therole that I work in right

(02:28):
now, I'm very critical aboutthese kind of studies that
are the way I ask you these10 questions leads you in
the way I want to present thedata from these 10 questions.
The point being made in thestudy is the manager makes a
big impact on the employee'sengagement and I think the study
sites 30 odd percent in theUS so 30% are engaged, is what

(02:50):
it's saying and even like, Ithink when it considered just
globally, I think that numbereven went even further down.
It's half that.
Less than half that,which is funny.
and so I'm trying toreconcile that in my mind.
Why would that be?
Right?
And I, and I can only comeup with the fact that here
people have to get along,otherwise you, they're
showing the door, right?

(03:10):
We are, we are verymuch the leaders in this
higher and fire thing.
And I don't know if that playsa, a, a, a factor into that.
I was gonna say, I have atheory and it also advances
my arguing point on this one.
I have a theory.
The theory is everyone globallyis just looking to the US and
copying there terrible ways ofworking and then doing it poorly
because it doesn't work here.

(03:30):
I mean, it only works in 30%of the cases and they're even
struggling with implementingsomething they saw somewhere
else in their own culturethat really doesn't adapt
to other people's cultures.
Because it really doesn't evenwork for American culture.
So how's it gonna work forthe does this sound like any
other models being adopted?
That people being copied?
Yeah yeah.
Does it sound like anybody,any particular company's model

(03:50):
that may be named after thecompany and have a model?
Probably won't mention names.
You know, just like thetheory of it being copied
and someone actually putsit into practice and say,
this doesn't work at all.
In fact, none ofthis works yeah.
Except in that case, itnever was implemented in the
first place, but, okay, solet's, although you, that
would require you to readpast the first paragraph.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We don't have time for that.
So on your side, thereason, like the reasons

(04:13):
that support the managers.
Are the primary reason peoplequit and I think some of
that is borne out by evidencefrom exit interviews mm-hmm.
Where people are asked why,what are the main factors,
why you're quitting this job?
And more often than not,people cite their managers
as the main factors.
Now bear in mind, not everyone'sgonna say that, even if it

(04:36):
was true some people willsimply say, it's just not
for me, or, I've had a changeof heart, I wanna work in
a different direction now.
But that's because they don'tfeel safe saying that it's
because of their manager.
So if the ones that are sayingthat the exit interviews bear
out, that was the majority ofthem I a hundred percent am
am on board with what you'resaying right now, I don't have

(04:57):
any pushback , I've workedfor managers that are great.
They're great and we're allcool but when the pressure's on,
when they're getting pressured,when things blow up or there's
deadlines or whatever, they'recompletely different person.
All the good, like psychologicalsafety and we gotta have
planning and blah, blah, blah.
Like all that stuff goescompletely out the window
when the stress is on.

(05:18):
I was at a company onetime working with the CEO.
We had to talk to the investorsabout something that was
happening in the company.
We presented the roadmap to theinvestors and, and he brought
me along as the product manager.
I was trying to separateproduct from the C level.
They were trying to bringin a product manager
for the first time.
And we went in frontof the investors and

(05:40):
presented the roadmap.
Okay.
We brought in a productmanager, he helped us work
this out, this is what wethink the roadmap's gonna be.
This is the next three to sixmonths and this is where we
could go a year out from there.
Basically like short term,longer term, a two tier type
of thing something they'venever done before with the
investors and they broughtme in to present basically.
The investors basicallygrilled me and the CEO
together in that call.

(06:01):
The investors hadideas of how we could.
Expand the business thatthe CEO, he, he had other
ideas, I'm not gonna sayit was contentious, but I
didn't know those people,so I don't feel completely
open to push back also I waspretty new on that contract.
Right.
You know, I'd only been therelike a couple weeks, Oh wow.
Before going in frontof the investors.
Not, not that I wasout of outta my depth.
'cause like I, I knowproduct management.

(06:22):
Sure.
So, okay.
That reason.
But I remember we, we, theinvestors wanted us to go
back, weigh what they said,get some evidence, look at the
software, look at the market,and think about it, and then
come back and do whatever.
And I remember tho those twoweeks before we went back to the
investors because he was underthat pressure, like pressure
from his board, pressurefrom the other founders.

(06:43):
'cause they had ideasthat like, we should go
in different directions.
Pressure from the industry aboutoh, why aren't you doing what?
And then like, technicalpressures of like technical
debt and things like that.
in that two week period, hewas just super stressed and
just became a different person.
When we were on the other sideof it, he went back to being
we were cool and very laidback and that kind of stuff.
That was like a littlewindow, a little switch
in my head, in my career.

(07:04):
I was like, oh yeah, peoplego and revert to these
bad habits when they'reunder all these pressure.
The team members I wanna beon the team with they don't
change when the pressure's on.
I just want them to stay.
I want even team members,I want even handed.
Even this tempered team members.
I don't want someone tomelt down when pressure's
gonna gonna be applied.
Yeah.
I think on a team level, youhave more chance of encountering

(07:26):
those kinds of people andthose behaviors than you
do at the leadership level.
Only because the pressuresare different at the team
level versus higher up.
You would hope so.
You would hope.
But, but also I, I think atthat level, the leadership
level, it's the, it's theculture that will put up
with whatever whateverbehaviors are being exhibited.

(07:47):
I like where you're goingbecause you're making my
case for me right now.
It wasn't that CEO in thiscase, it was directly to
the top of the company.
There was no chain.
In that case thisCEO was undertrained.
He came from an industryof doing the thing.
Like he was thesubject matter expert.
Like product people get intothe field he was definitely
the product person that gotinto the field because he was

(08:08):
a great subject matter expert.
A master of his domain.
But that's notproduct management.
That's solving aparticular problem.
It transitions toproduct management.
Sure.
But he didn't have the skillof product management and then
he was overworked 'cause he wasasked to do all his normal jobs.
'cause the CEO does a ton anda small company does a ton.
This is like a small companyunder 30 employees yeah.
He was working at the strategylevel and the team level.

(08:29):
That's really all I have tosay, like at tactical level
and strategy level and hasto deal with his founders
and has to deal with hisboard slash investors.
And he is got no trainingthat helps him with this.
And the board is like,we, we don't like what
you presented to us.
So take two weeks and thenpresent us a new vision.
Basically a strategy pivot.
We don't like any of this.

(08:49):
Come back with what you coulddo differently or evidence
to support why this is theright thing to do and we
are wrong which they were.
To their credit, I did.
So I was there the whole time.
I was there to see you wereto present the evidence.
Yeah, we did alittle bit of both.
We did a little bit of like,no, these are the right things
to do and we do need to dothem, but when it comes time
to do what you want done,we'll be positioned to do that.
And we ended up working outsomething that, we all came

(09:11):
away amicably from the divorce.
Like each of us got oneof the children held
hands and sang kumbaya.
I mean something.
We all had a Coke.
Is that what it is?
Yeah.
This is the longest diatribeto get to it's not the
manager, it was the systemthat he was involved in.
Managers are an inextricablepart of the system, right?
They propagate thesystem quite often.

(09:33):
And you made a point earlierthat this person didn't
have the background todeal with this situation.
Typically, this happens whenit's a solo entrepreneur
that comes up with a shinynew thing and now they're
trying to scale up, right?
So they may be technicallyin nature, they can
invent something, butit's one thing to do that.
It's completely another thingto take it to the market,

(09:53):
get seed corn funding, getvarious rounds of funding, and
actually commercialize the idea.
If you haven't hadtraining in that, which is
really, I guess it's just.
Like training inbusiness aspects mm-hmm.
Of running, growing,and running a company.
Right?
I mean, you just listedseveral, like the, the sales,
the marketing aspect of it,the actual product and product

(10:14):
development aspect of it.
And the operations of likedriving it to market, actually
keeping things on deadline,keeping things moving.
Like those are way differentskillset you just listed out.
So I'm like, yeah, we couldblame one person for that.
But again just like theinvestors, the incentives
that those investors weremoving forward with I don't,
I had no idea, even now Ihave no idea how often they

(10:35):
were taking cash outta thebusiness, how often they were
demanding to get paid or not.
Maybe they were never takinganything outta the business I
don't know about any of that.
With the demands of thesystem, those guys could very
easily have shaped, I mean,they could have fired the
CEO every quarter and broughtanother CEO in, and they still
would've the same problems.
They would've just crushedthe new CEO and been like,
oh, you're not deliveringwidgets fast enough, and it

(10:58):
didn't matter who you sat inthat seat, the system would've
crushed the same person and anyemployee that worked for them
would've equally been crushed.
No doubt.
And we've seen thatrevolving door at several
organizations and notnecessarily even small ones.
I would argue that atsmaller ones, that tends to
happen much less frequentlythe entrepreneur who invented
this thing, whatever itis, they're vested in that

(11:18):
they're a hundred percentbehind their product, so
am mid to large companies.
Now you have several layers andmaybe even a matrix environment.
And the whole culture becomes,more of a blame culture, right?
Yeah.
So you're more likely tohave CEOs that are going
round and round with thatrevolving door, bring in a

(11:40):
new one, give them enoughtime, and boom, they're gone.
In among all of the stuffI listed earlier when I
missed financial jobs mm-hmm.
They don't necessarily havethat, perhaps because they
haven't had the training.
Yeah so we do see this quiteoften, but people that come
with them, let's say you have aperson who's invented something
and they have people that.

(12:01):
We're number 2, 3, 4,5, 10 in the company.
Mm-hmm this is justformation, right?
Early formation those peoplewill be more trusted going
forward by that person thansome of the new people that
these investors bring in, right?
Because typically investors willbring in their own posse, right?
Yeah.
They'll, and so when theydo that, it's like, well,

(12:21):
I invented this thing.
I know what it takes to makethis work, but you're coming
in and telling me about allthese things about leveraging
finance and this and that.
None of that matters.
Yeah.
Sad reality is it.
All of that matters, right?
So either learn it orlet them do their thing.
You do your thing.
And that requires theentrepreneur to step
back and say, I'm goodat inventing things.

(12:43):
I'm not necessarily goodat running and building
and running companies.
So let those people do thatand let me just sit in the lab
and start inventing things.
Looking at you.
My pillow guy.
I mean, oh my God.
Are we pointingout people like I,
I think I remember Beamentioned about the bankruptcy
of Joann, or she didanother, another company.
I looked into the companyand, and I, I love it

(13:04):
was Joanne's fabrics.
I love going straightto like, what people are
saying about it online.
'cause people are like, well,they, they got bought by private
equity and I don't rememberwhat it was like, 2011 or like
a decade ago, basically andthey're like, oh, nobody was
crying about Joann when theywere profitable a decade ago.
But I looked into, I lookedinto, and I was like, they've
had like nine different CEOsin that period of time so

(13:26):
I was like, I don't know, Idon't know if you really want
to hang your hat on that one,there may have been editing here
because Om and I had a wholesidetrack where I was like, I
don't know if, I don't know ifI really want to throw Joanne
fabrics Joanne's fabric underthe bus because I can't remember
if they're the ones that gotbought by private equity.
And then pretty much,changed CEOs every year
for like, the last decade.

(13:47):
But I googled how many CEOshas Joanne's fabric had, and
it get the AI response gave mea list of 11 CEOs since 2006.
And I don't like, Idon't know if anyone's
counting, but that's a lot.
That is a lot.
Obviously no, no, CEO no matterhow successful they are, can
survive in this ecosystem.
Right?

(14:08):
And, and which brings meback to my point, which is
the systemic issues, like alot, I've been on a lot of
development teams that havehad these bad systemic issues
of like unrealistic deadlinesjust keep getting set no matter
how unrealistic and how manytimes the team misses it, that
they, we just cannot ever.
Set a realistic deadline,insufficient resources,

(14:28):
people get pulled from teamscontradictory KPIs competing
KPIs, stuff like that.
You know what I mean?
or OKRs or whatever fakesystem you want to use.
That's another podcast.
These games are the system.
They're systemic.
, The only thing you cando in this situation like
yeah, that manager was bad.
That might be true, but alsoyou keep that resume updated.

(14:50):
'cause there's,that's stage advice.
There's no success thatyou're ever gonna find yeah.
I've seen organizationslike this that are
super dysfunctionalwhat are the organizational
types, the threeorganizational types?
This is the.
Not psychotic.
There's a term Ican't remember that.
It starts with a p. Generative,bureaucratic and psychotic.
We did a pathological Western.
Western.
That's pathological.
Pathological.

(15:10):
It's pathological.
It was a p Oh,psychotic pathological.
Listen, it's all the same thing.
It's all the same thing.
So than I. That'sright, that's right.
That's right.
So, so what I'm saying isgoing back to the Western
model, theorem, I don'tconstruct, construct, I don't
know, robot mega villain likethese are the pathological.
These are the, the,the, the, the system.

(15:30):
The type of organization, thesystem is pathological, and
this stuff's just gonna happenyou're gonna have OKRs and goals
and all kinds of stuff thatlike compete and competition's
gonna be a thing, cooperation'snot gonna be a thing.
It's all like, it's theanti Deming organization.
Very much so.
You might have good managersin that system, but those
good managers are likethe, the, the clock is

(15:51):
ticking because the systemwill destroy those people.
And then, here's my centralthesis to the whole podcast.
You as the employee will sitthere and say, wow, I was great
when I was working for this onemanager and they were great.
They were lovely,they were awesome.
We're on the same page.
And then I got transitionedover to this other manager
and they were terrible.
So people, fully bad managers.

(16:12):
But I will posit theorganization that is
pathological the regression tothe mean there is to always have
you ending up as an employeeback working for one of these
type of people that are badmanagers and then from your
perspective, you're like, ohno Brian, no, you're wrong.
No, there's just badmanagers and that's
why most people leave.
They leave bad managers.
So then the moniker sticksof like, people don't

(16:33):
leave whatever they leave.
They leave bad badmanagers and I'm like,
no, they flea bad systems.
Or they get pushedout by bad systems.
One or the other at the endof the day you know you're
reporting to a person atthe end of the day, right?
That your manager is a person.
So the organization is nothingmore than the sum of its
people and it's these people.
There's a lot ofthings that play into.

(16:55):
Managers being quote unquotebad managers you know, the wrong
hires no training people beingput into jobs that they're not
qualified for some, and thoseare just three off the top of my
head there are plenty like that.
And you could be a victim ofthe circumstance in that case.
And you're, you are fleeingthe system, but it looks
like you're fleeing yourboss at the end of the day.

(17:17):
But having said that, maybeanother person that you work for
isn't like that other person.
So they actually take thetrouble to understand what
you need to be successful.
They set you up for successby giving you what you need.
Which could be.
Maybe you need training on thejob, maybe you need specific
types of teams that they cansay, okay go ahead and form

(17:39):
those teams, well, maybe youcan come in with new ideas and
say, well this team is workingin a certain way and it's not
proven well for us, so how aboutwe changed the way they work.
So I came across this not toolong ago where the team was
failing because they couldn'testimate the work properly.
And the manager camein and said, your
estimation makes no sense.

(18:01):
you talk about thesepoints and things right.
isn't it just hoursat the end of the day?
Can you estimate in hours?
So they start doing that, butalso ask the question, who are
you asking to estimate the work?
Is it an expert?
Is it a lead?
Is it an architect?
Is it a novice?
Anyone off the street, whoeverwill give the shortest answer.
The shortest answerthat, so that's what
they were seeking, right.

(18:21):
Is it's the smallest number.
That's right.
Like 10 hours insteadof a hundred hours.
That's right and that's what,that's the behavior that
they were encouraging andthat's the behavior they got.
They were very happy.
Oh, look at this.
All this work will be doneexcept it won't be done
and it wasn't done right.
That's right.
So anyway, another manageron the other hand, couldn't
care less how you estimatefast forward just a few more

(18:43):
weeks until this person wassidelined to another project
and we had a different manager.
Yeah.
This manager came inand said, I don't.
Wanna be involved in howyou are estimating your,
that's you, that's theteam and I'm, I'm with 'em.
Neither do I, because likeI got a lot of work to
do I can't meet Exactly.
In the end, the team decidedthey didn't even wanna go back
to the old way of estimation.
Using points.

(19:03):
They decided to do Romanestimation which this
manager didn't know anythingabout the new one but when
it was explained to them,all we're doing is simply
saying, what's the confidencelevel to get something
done in a two week span?
The point scale is onethrough five because that's
all you have in your hand.
Well, I guess youhave zero, right?
Zero through five.
'cause that's whatyou have in your hand.
Most people can play thisgame and you can put it

(19:24):
in all your a LM tools.
Sure.
The way it is, it likesuper easy, very easy.
And the fivesaren't frowned upon.
It's simply just, okay,this is a five, can we
finish it in 10 days?
And the answer is no.
And what do we do?
We break it down.
Does it need to be brokendown into a two and a
three or two twos and aone or whatever it is?
I love the fact that I havesome senior devs on my team now.

(19:45):
it hasn't always been thesame, right now my team is a
lot of senior devs and we justhave a working agreement that
says if the story is a three.
Then we don't point it, we'lljust put a three on it and
be done, or three or below.
Three or below.
Then, then we'll just put athree on it and we'll call it
done and if the story's abovea three, we all agree that we,
like if anybody on the team,anybody on the team thinks it's

(20:07):
not a three, then we, we keepbreaking it and breaking it and
breaking it until everybody onthe team, unanimous agreement.
Unanimous.
Not one person on the team.
I have a small team, , thiswouldn't work on a team of 30
my team is like five people.
30 is also not a team that'sOh, yeah, I understand.
But this works for us and whenlike we always agree that like,
yes, it's a three good ship.

(20:29):
It like we, we'll send italong, put it in the backlog,
we'll bring it into the sprint.
And it's a, it's a veryfresh process at this
point when we've beentogether for a couple years.
It, it's wonderful to thinkthat people aren't gonna.
spend or waste their timedebating the difference
between one and a twoor two and a three.
Listen, the differenceis only one.
We don't do any of that.
Hey, just move on it's thedifferences that are bigger

(20:52):
at higher ends five, threeand a five, et cetera.
I often wonder, had I notcome from the background
of working on developmentteams would I not have this
attitude as a product manager?
You know, I mean, wouldI, would I look at it
completely differently?
I wonder if I didn't havea technical background like
would I be fighting the teamon these things like that?
I see other product managersfighting their development teams

(21:12):
being like, I don't understandwhy you're not going faster.
but also without the skillto conceptualize software as
it's being produced and thenjust start slicing things
and be like, Hey, I don'tneed the whole front end.
You can fake this data.
Hey, I don't need a whole API,you can fake that response , I
just need the screen to show up.
And it's a working background,but then it always brings

(21:34):
back this like the shortcutsative mindset, right?
Yeah.
Of working in iterative manner.
Look, if you don't have adevelopment background, I mean,
we can only reflect on ourown past experiences, right?
My experiences have beenwhen there's been a manager,
product manager, et cetera.
anybody who is.
Not from a technical background.
They tend to dotwo things, right.

(21:55):
One is they tend to treatsoftware development as stamping
out widgets like manufacturing.
So the rate of productionis constant in their mind so
they'll say, well, last printyou did X. If we just buckle
up, pull up our socks, we cando x plus plus and they always
encourage a team to go faster,so that's one thing they do.

(22:15):
The other thing they do isthey will say things like,
how long will it take?
It's like, when will we be done?
you often see this fromsalespeople, salespeople are
wonderful, we need them, butthey've gotta understand, I
mean, the, how long will ittake thing is I wish that I
could remold that questioncan this be done today?
because like a lot, dude,what I'll do is I'll get on

(22:36):
a call with my team and I'llsay like, Hey, we need to
create a new database table,or Hey, we need to create
new we're, we're on elastic.
, We need to createa new elastic index
And work out the fields and workout the template and everything
behind the scenes, right.
and spin it up and throwit up there and have it
functional into the developmentenvironment so we can like
start contributing data andhave the front end start
feeding it and stuff like that.
Like I know from experience,I can get my team on the phone

(23:00):
and just start screen sharingand we will work through and
contribute and we can havethat form and everything up
and running in like an hour.
A working session.
A working session yeah, yeahwe have a working session.
I think they're verypowerful but that's like
me trusting them to figureout how things are done.
Yeah.
But when you start cuttinginto like my specific expertise
of like sql, I'm like, Hey, Ican do this and have this up

(23:24):
and running faster very fast.
Like 15 minutes, I can getyou all the sequel same as you
want, because I'm a absolutewizard with regard to sql.
And I try to, I try to keepit under my hat so I don't
get stuck as like, oh, the,the product manager who's
writing all the sql deepsequel savings or whatever.
You don't be that, that'snot, I don't need, like the
businesses me doing, theyneed me doing business.
They don't need me doingthat kind of stuff.

(23:44):
It's just the understandingof the issues and how people
treat them as managers.
I think we gotsidetracked there.
Where we got into the sidetrackwas like we were talking
about systemic reasons andI, and I wanted to talk about
the organizational structurebeing the real culprit,
but the the managers andtypical modern organizations
oversee a lot of employees.

(24:06):
I think that all that stuffshould go in another podcast.
The, the, the Dunbarnumber and all that.
I think, I think right sizingis a podcast or right sizing
as an org and like yeah, that'sa whole different podcast.
Yeah.
Where we're going with theorg design and org size
is again, assuming the orgmodern organization is not
willing to like, break downinto Dunbar's number from all

(24:26):
the, like the rest of thesenumbers, like we have the Jay
Richard Hackman and HarvardHaved found that small teams,
46 people were most effective.
Jeffrey Jeffrey Bezos hasthe five to eight people,
two pizza team rule and IvanSteiner seventies research
about the formula of n nminus one for communication

(24:48):
links between people.
You've got the ringman early,early 19 hundreds work on this.
So this is like a lot ofstudies rediscovering the
same thing over and over againabout like five to seven teams
five to seven people on ateam ideal team size, right?
if we're gonna forget aboutthat for a second and ignore
the team structure, the teamsize, the organizational size,

(25:09):
stuff like that, you're gonnacome into two categories, which
is the structure of the teamsand organizations and all that
kind of stuff doesn't excusebad management, which I feel
that's a category that you'rerepresenting is like, Hey,
listen, there's bad managers.
Doesn't matter whatstructure it is.
There are, they'rejust bad managers.
Yes.
And what I'm saying isthe structure itself is.
Makes the bad manager, itdetermines the outcome, it makes

(25:33):
the managers bad, and it formsthe experiences that you're
about to give as evidence.
Yeah.
Yes.
the structure doesn't help whenit comes to turning bad managers
into not so bad managers.
it doesn't have the processesin place to do that meaning
the way we get people inthe way we train them or not
train them the way we promotethem, et cetera, there's
flaws every step of the way.

(25:54):
Mm-hmm because we'realways chasing the cheapest
possible way to obtain thetalent we think we need.
Mm-hmm.
So you don't home grow itbecause that takes longer and
it's not the cheapest, right?
So you buy in the talentand then what happens?
Right?
So one of two things.
Either you buy in talentthat's real and they
will make a difference.

(26:14):
You hope that's the case,but the other side of it
is much more prevalent andthat is they don't, you've
made a mistake, you don'trealize you've made a mistake.
They're simply padding theirresume 'cause they've now
been hired into a role thatthey've never had before
that they can put on theirresume and they're gonna last
maybe six months and move on.
Right.
I would argue even JenenHuwang's company, even our

(26:36):
friendly neighborhood, CEO,who's just a normal guy
with a wonderful jacket.
Even he probably has onhis, values of his company.
He probably even has like,we're people first with his 60
to one ratio for management.
Like his revolving door ofleadership is like even if
that's a little flippant,just to put the point across
how many to one do you needto be to not be able to have

(26:57):
time for anyone like 2001?
You know what I mean?
Realistically, and inpractical terms, there is
a limit, obviously, right?
'cause they're only24 hours in a day.
But, but again,that's a structure.
If the structure is like, wellthe CEO to his direct reports
is 60 to one, so I mean, you omshould be able to at least do
60, come on I saw that guy inthe news and he does 60 to one.
So, I mean, you couldat least do 101, right?

(27:19):
'cause you're, you're betterthan cool leather jacket guy.
Get me a cool leather jacket.
I can do it, I can do 60.
Yeah, no, listen, organizationslike that perpetuate
that behavior, right?
And there's no way out.
But that's the system.
Again, you can'tblame one person.
You could say like, well that'sa terrible manager to work for.
It is the system.
But when somebody leaves,they don't leave the

(27:41):
system necessarily.
That, not necessarily,most times it's
definitely the system.
They can't stand.
My manager.
Sure and whether they actuallyget an interview or not even
depends on the manager, right?
I feel now is the time of thepodcast to take the views aside
and say, during your extra,during your exit interview,
you say, everything was great.

(28:02):
I'm just leaving.
Thank you.
Goodbye.
You're leaving a companythat won't listen to you.
Why would you say anythingon your exit interview?
I don't understand why anyonesays anything like, but also
like, count your managersdirect reports and calculate
their mathematical capacityfor meaningful interaction.
Meaning 60 direct reports?
Yeah, exactly.
I, I don't even knowhow to start with that.

(28:23):
Sorry.
Okay, so 60.
How do you have timefor your direct reports?
When do you meetwith them one-on-one?
Never.
I'm gonna save you time only.
You're the CEO, right?
If you're doing that, let'ssay you do half hours, that's
30 hours of your week, right?
Just doing one-on-ones.
When are you doing your CEO bit?
Meeting with the press,doing all of that stuff.
Listen, I, you're not, Iwatched a interview with

(28:45):
Zuckerberg where he says hedoesn't do one-on-ones because
he is constantly talking topeople and like, so I don't
need to do one-on-ones.
That's what I, that'sthe thought leadership.
Not, not THOTleadership ToT okay.
Taught leader, taught,taught leadership.
Doesn't make any sense.
So perfect structure.
Let me read their quotes to seeif I want to use any of this.
I like the humorousscoring on this one.
Oh, the organizational Jengascale, or one is stable

(29:07):
as a pyramid and 10 isa sneeze from collapse.
Well, that was me.
I was sneezing.
This score is an eight.
We remove so many middlemanagers, it blocks the hole
that the whole tower swing yeah.
I have another episode inmind for this, which is like
where does your leadershipget their new ideas from?
Because the diet of the mediadiet of the typical American,

(29:29):
like I worry about and, butI really worry about the
media diet of the typicalAmerican CEO because I'm
really worried about that.
I, I read a lot of those mediaecosystem like outlets and oh
boy, do they put out garbage.
A lot of garbage.
It, unfortunately,it has gotten worse.
It's bad.
Especially with ai now youget all these things that

(29:51):
are spun out, like volumeis huge, but the quality has
gone down disproportionately.
Let's pivot into a categorythat I really enjoy, and
I think you enjoy it too,which is most organizations
measure individual performancewhile preaching teamwork.
And that creates inherentconflict that, that

(30:11):
creates this cognitivedissonance and conflict.
And then the managers have tonavigate this contradictory
corporate messaging and thereward system and how it
doesn't really like how it'sdisconnected from reality
and this causes a problem.
So there, on one side, I seethat like the, the good managers
can figure out ways to game thisand like that can rise above

(30:33):
these metrics and they can pushthem off and deflect as best
they can for them and theiremployees and their department
There's only so muchyou can deflect Yeah.
What was that game where,the old ATARI game where
you're the little thing atthe bottom of the screen.
Space, space invaders.
Remember Space Invaders?
Oh, I remember those.
You're a little guy at thebottom of the screen and
you gotta keep shooting and,and then like the aliens and
everything just keep comingand they get faster and
faster, faster until you die.

(30:54):
That's this with the system.
The system is the Space Invadergame, and you're down here like
doing the best you can untilyou just get crushed and die.
Wow.
When you started talking aboutmetrics and people that come in
and they measure things, right?
Yeah.
So oftentimes I find that whenpeople come in as managers,
they don't bring with them asense of what to measure why.

(31:18):
Yeah and obviously when etcetera comes in later but
it starts with like, whyyou measuring anything?
And then what are youmeasuring to what end?
Yeah.
I don't think that managersget enough training in this.
And here I'm just gonna say, ifyou are a typical manager, did
you come up through the ranks?
Because if you came upthrough the ranks, you

(31:40):
know what to measure.
Even if the organizationisn't pricing that you
know what to measure.
If you, on the other handjust came in from a B school
and you're just appointeda manager over all these
people, you're gonna havecertain preconceptions of
what needs to be measured.
It does.
So that work does notinclude certain things.
Okay.
It includes all ofthese financial ratios.

(32:01):
What it doesn't includeis things like safety
in teams team health.
Get cohesion in your team.
Mm-hmm you know, getteam members to bond
with one another.
A lot of those thingscome reciprocal.
Meaning instead of spendingtime and effort and energy
on team building, you'refocused on output why spend

(32:22):
time on an outing somewhere?
'cause the team could getto know one another where
they could be doing work.
I know where you're going,, there are some organizations
that require stack rankingpeople hey, give me your people
in stack rank order regardlessof how much you believe it
or not that's just a listen.
At the end of the day, we justneed like the, your seven people

(32:42):
that work for you in orders onethrough seven, and then we're
gonna dole out bonuses based onthe they're just forcing you.
Yeah.
Everything you're saying islike, I a hundred percent
agree with like, that's thedistance of this episode.
I agree with you.
But again, like the system islike, well, this is the way
our incentive structure is Om.
And just fill out the form.
Be because I like, my, mypushback against this is like,

(33:03):
you can only fight city Hall somuch until we're like, you know
om he's just not a team player.
on our management team.
And I think there's justnot a future here for him.
He doesn't share our values.
You're gonna find your wayout because they're gonna push
you out because you just fightcity hall one too many times
you gotta pick your battles.
These are the kinds of thingsthat are gonna get Sling, sling

(33:25):
slung, slung, slung at you.
Slung Sling on slung sling.
S sl No, that's not a word.
Slung.
Slung at you.
You're not wrong.
That is absolutely right.
It's about.
What to measure and alsomeasuring it so if you're
thinking about teams and you'rejust simply paying lip service,
team members will know thatbecause they're gonna see
individuals being rewarded.
Typically it's yourarchitects or your team

(33:46):
leads or your test leads.
It's the leads that get rewardedoften and not the worker bees.
They're gonna see that, andthat's gonna have a detrimental
impact on their psyche.
For sure.
But part of this is also, thosemanagers don't really have
a good way to assess how thewhole team is performing and
also reward the team and sothey're probably overthinking

(34:08):
this at this stage rewards areoften thought about as monetary.
They don't have to be monetary.
They can be other things.
The best thing I can thinkof to do with a team when
you want to pat them onthe back is say the right
words, but then follow it up.
Send everybody food.
Food works great, right?
It really helps the gel with oneanother when you're doing that.

(34:31):
That's only second bestbecause ideally you should
be around the same physicaltable, but that's not possible
in this case so you can dothings like that, but managers
don't see value in that.
First of all, they will stymieyour attempts to get like
even a few bucks for pizza.
Approved as expense you gottafind ways around that, right?
So we used to do that.

(34:51):
We'd find ways around thatincidentals, things like that,
and push it through, so my pointabout this is they need to know
A, what to measure and then B,measure those things, Right.
So measure the right things.
Measure those things, right?
They're not taughtthis, managers are not
taught this in B School.
I don't recall going to asingle class where you taught
this, it all finance and HRand marketing and all of that.

(35:13):
But you know, it'sinsular, right?
If I'm gonna undermine whatyou're saying, I will throw out,
well, ohm, your bonus is tiedto you following these metrics
or guidelines or whatever.
I understand everything you'resaying, , you've gotta get
these things across the finishline no matter what, by these
dates, by these arbitrate thingshave been picked outta the air.

(35:35):
I'm not saying that yourincentives are unfair
or bad incentives, butthose are your incentives.
So what are you gonna do?
not hit any ofyour incentives no.
You're gonna hit 'em all.
So it's like saying, whichhorse are you gonna feed?
you're gonna chariot with.
S not five, four, or six horses.
It's usually aneven number, right?
So you win the chariotrace, which horse are

(35:56):
you going to feed?
Right?
It's the whole thing.
So you're gonna feedall of 'em, right?
Hopefully.
I guess a better analogymight be the Huskies
whatever it is the race.
I forget the name of it.
But anyway, you get the idea.
Sorry, I don't, I don't,I don't go many huskies.
Sorry.
I live in Florida.
I don't go to the snow.
I don't like snow doesn't exist.
I don't think wehave such a thing in.
You can't, you can't, youcan't, you can't convince

(36:17):
me that snow's real.
That's, that'swhat we're getting.
That's a quote of this podcast.
Snow's not real.
I've never seen it.
I don't believe in it.
Coming back to the team okay ifyour team succeeds as a team.
'cause they should, right?
You don't have heroes on a team.
Why not reward the whole team?
So why can't the whole teambe bonused the same way?
It's doable.
It's not hard, right.

(36:38):
But it requires the manager'smindset to move away from
playing favorites don'treward just the leads or
the smartest people or themost vocal people, because
it may be the quiet peoplethat are pulling some weight.
most companies promote theirbest individual contributors
into management and then givethem no training or support
or consideration of leadershipaptitude or anything like that.

(37:00):
This is a systemic and constantfailure that leads to a
predictable outcome every time.
If there's one argument I'mgonna make on this podcast
that supports me, thatthere's no way you can argue
against, oh, I will try.
It's the, but you will tryit is this one, which is the
leadership development pipeline.
Look, it's, it's rigged againstyou , we're gonna take you

(37:21):
outta your job role and be like,congratulations, you're a great
programmer, or you're a greatwhatever individual contributor,
subject matter expert, right thebest the best pig iron carrier.
The best pig iron carrier in theworld now you supervise all the
pig iron carrying in the world.
None of those say that you'regonna be great at management
or leadership or both.

(37:42):
'cause let's be honest, it'sboth and that's terrible.
The corporate America,the pipeline for
developing leadership.
Is first of all, nonexistent.
So you're describing thePeter principle, right?
People get promoted to theirhighest level of incompetence
and that's very true, Peter.
It's very true.
But I would say thisyou say it's the system,

(38:03):
but what is it really?
It's the people in the systemthat are doing this so if you're
hiring person who has authorityover hiring or promoting, right?
Are you promoting only thosepeople that are the most
vocal, they're your favorites,or are you looking across
the team and saying, weneed somebody in this role,
step up.
Who are, whoever wantsto step up, rotate the

(38:24):
role, if you will, right?
Maybe everybody takes turns amonth at a time, a sprint, at
a time, whatever it might be.
Let people have anopportunity to shine.
If you're not doingthat and you're simply
picking somebody, then.
You are part ofthe system, right?
You're basically anotherbrick in the wall.
I would, so there's a couplethings you just said that that

(38:46):
I will push back against in themost polite manner possible,
which is saying, are you crazy?
Like, I'm like the, likegood, like natural leaders
will emerge regardlessof we train them or not.
Like they'll just step upa sink or swim approach
to leadership will like itwon't mostly create sinkers.
It'll mostly create swimmersI don't believe that at all.

(39:09):
Why?
I'm gonna ask the five.
Why, why not?
Why not?
Like, why, why, but why?
Because I'm like a 2-year-old.
Because, natural leaders willnot emerge without any kind of
like formal development program.
Meaning like, if you don'tinvest in them, you will never
pull out natural leader aspectsthat you are looking for.
If we go along thatline of reasoning Right.

(39:30):
And agree that mostorganizations don't invest
enough in this, okay.
That means we are reallydoing a terrible job at
leadership development.
The only thing I would add towhat you just said is I would
add systemically to the end ofthat and then close my case,
your honor, close and take yourdossier and walk out the room.
I would take my put allmy stuff under my arms and

(39:51):
be like, we both lawyers,and then I'd go home.
Technical experts are forcedinto management usually.
and the only way that they haveto like grow their salaries
or their careers or whatever,if they quote step up into
management, and that's likejust technical, technical
people and be like, I'm goodat building x, y, z system.

(40:12):
I'm really good at orchestratingAWS or maybe I really understand
Kubernetes or whatever.
But I can't do thatin the podcast.
So how the heck does thatgive you any skill to
move up into leadership?
well, like your peopleat the top of the
organization should know.
Well, it doesn't.
It absolutely doesn't.
So there should be somekind of track to say.
These are our best performers,and if they are going to be

(40:33):
the cornerstone of bringingperformers up under them, we
need some kind of track tohelp them and get the skill
they need to realize they'rehere, but they could be here.
What does what doesthat gap look like?
What does that, what doesthat staircase, what does
every single stair onthat staircase look like?
Yeah.
And and I would say beforeyou even get into the
next one, like corporateAmerica does none of that.

(40:54):
And not only do they notdo any of that, there's
no ROI, any of that.
There's no money, any of that.
They're not gonnaspend a single dime.
The model that you'redescribing here, that
is the ideal one, right?
Corporate America should doX, Y, ZI personally, and I
think I've said this severaltimes, I'm many podcasts.
I'm a big fan of thejourneyman model.
You're right.
That will lend itselfto this, right.

(41:15):
Because you are not just simply.
Coming in and being ordained.
The new manager or the newboss, you've worked your
way up and you've learnedthrough the school of hard
knocks by making mistakes.
But you know, in a safeenvironment, hopefully
you have a mentor.
That you're learning fromover a course of time.
So you can look back and say,here are all the mistakes
that I've made, but I'velearned from them and I

(41:35):
can train somebody else.
That is the only way to do this.
There are cultures wherethis happens, and those
cultures, their managersare those managers that
recognize where they came from.
Right?
Which is, they were a teammember not too long ago, right.
They were on the shop flooras a machine operator, right?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And now they're a supervisor.
They don't forget whatit's, what pains a machine

(41:58):
operator has, right?
And, and so on.
It goes all the way up.
Yeah, we don't have that incorporate America, period.
Yeah, that's a big problem.
The leadership Hunger Games,where like one is I carefully
developed and shaped athletesthat are meant to win
the Hunger Games, Nevada.
and like 10 is I havevolunteer ratio, like a
random, like I volunteer astribute like, I don't know,

(42:18):
like this, this is a solid,eights, like congrats kid.
Like you got, you gotsolid coding skills
you've always done well.
Like it worked in themiddle of the night for us.
Like you're the new supervisor.
It's so haphazardin this category.
We're well into thispodcast now, like we're
deep into the podcast.
We're gonna, we're gonna starttransitioning to the end of
the podcast now, but justlet everyone listening know I

(42:38):
skipped one of the categoriesand also on the other side
of the ones that we're aboutto talk about, the one that
we're about to talk about, I'vegot like six more categories.
I think we might end upsplitting this podcast
into a two-parter.
Yes.
a lot of people listeningto this podcast will be
in tune with the ideaof psychological safety.
I have a challenge here,which is like, skilled
managers create safety.

(43:01):
Like that's, that's like a,a skilled manager can like,
create safety I had a managerthat really propelled my career
and help me get to the pointwhere I can learn, I can do
other things and they reallyhelp me accelerate my career.
And yeah, that, that's a great,that you have that one manager
and that might be shapingyour view that like, oh no,
Brian, you're, you're wrong.
People flee bad managers.
They don't fleebad organizations.

(43:22):
The power structureof the system is what?
Prevents that psychologicalsafety from even being
able to take root.
You might be able to haveone at a point in time.
A manager that you workfor that's really great and
they create psychologicalsafety and they keep
that bubble or whatever.
But eventually the regressionto the mean is gonna push that
manager out and that safety'sgonna get pushed away with them.

(43:44):
And you're gonnago back to that.
It, it's any, any, any agiletransformation where like the
agile transformation goes awaywhen the person sponsoring
the transformation goes away.
That is this exact category.
What I'm sayingis it's systemic.
It has nothing todo with one manager.
So I'm arguing theopposite side here, right?
Yes, please.

(44:04):
So I'm gonna say this.
Yeah, of course it's systemic,but the system is nothing more
than the sum of all its peoplepolicies and procedures yeah.
And then who, who develops,who develops the processes?
Who develops the policies?
The system, right?
Doesn't people develop policies?
Right.
Policies start somewhere.
They start with an individual.

(44:25):
Usually they start with somebodywho's in charge of a domain.
Sometimes they startwith, people are mostly
familiar with HR policies.
They start with hr. so whatI'm saying is at the end of the
day, it is still people thatcreate all of these factors
that we're lumping together andcalling it the system, right?
You can't fight thesystem because you

(44:46):
can't see the system.
You can see policies, you cansee who formed the policies.
You can talk to those peopleif they're still around or
challenge those policies,you can't fight the system
you have no chance onmaking any impact anymore.
Because the system meaninglike the larger collection
of people and like segmentsof people in this, 150 broken

(45:09):
down pieces of organization,yeah.
All together.
If you have no shot at impactingor changing that, you're at the
point where you're like, yougotta keep your resume updated.
'cause if you have noopportunity you might as well,
like even the most staunch ofcareer coach, you'll be like,
you need to look for a way out.
Absolutely.
You have no voice anymoreand why are you still there?
I feel like that's allarguing on my side of this

(45:33):
is like the hierarchicalpower structure here.
You just can't make an impact.
You're at the point nowwhere the employees.
Will self-censor where they,they don't misalign with what
leadership is saying becausethey're afraid like we're,
we're in a real dangerous place.
Now, I agree.
First of all, what you justsaid, not only self-censor,

(45:54):
but even cancel othersthat can happen too, right?
Yeah in, in a fairlytoxic environment.
Sure.
So hierarchical power structuresdo prevent psychological safety
from being implemented, right?
It's still people that arecreating these fiefdoms
and power dynamics, etcetera, starts with the
individual, I think atthe end of the day mm-hmm.
It does start with, if youare not a manager, think

(46:16):
about how you would be if youwere in your manager's shoes
if you are a manager,look in the mirror and
say, what didn't I do?
That that could have doneto yield a better outcome.
The reason I think thisis a great podcast is
because obviously we'veartificially segmented
the foreign against here.
We're fighting, as we often do,we're fighting forward against.

(46:36):
I think as the podcast went on,I don't think we got closer
I think we got further apart.
Yeah, further apart andI think this and the MVP
podcasts, those are thetwo podcasts that are like.
When I suggest people listento arguing Agile I'm like,
you should listen to the MVPpodcast because that's the one
that we've done where we reallylook, we never came together
and we never came together.

(46:57):
This is another one.
We're like, we just, we are notcoming together on the agreement
here of like, it's a system.
No, it's a person.
No, it's a system.
And the test of psychologicalsafety here is can you
respectfully disagreewith your manager on
something that's like.
Maybe not something major'cause like that, that might
be like a big red flag andget you in big trouble.

(47:18):
Pick something small and belike, Hey, like I just don't see
eye to eye with you on this one.
Like, I just don'tagree with you.
And then see what theirreaction is and see if they
try to reach common ground orbring you in or see if they're
just like, well, okay, wellI'm the manager and you're
have, have to figure it out.
Pick something small and justsee if this is like, if your
organization is on Om's sidewhere it's like you can disagree

(47:41):
and we can work together'cause it's about the people.
Or you're on my side wherelike the managers just a
representative of the systemand they're saying like, well,
if you don't disagree, thenyou better figure out a way to
disagree and then commit to myside because I'm the manager.
We definitely we talk aboutso many different things in
this podcast, and I feel we'vejust like, barely scratched

(48:02):
the surface of all thethings we could talk about.
We haven't talked about hr,we haven't talked about.
And you started talking aboutthere's a couple of things that
you started talking about that Itook notes on in the podcast to
take offline for another agenda.
Yep.
So we might have apart two of this one.
Two things that I wanna pointout, and if we go to another
podcast, these will be on theagenda for the second podcast,

(48:23):
which is your terrible boss.
They're villain to you.
But.
With regards to the system,they're another victim because
okay, you get fired, youget laid off, whatever, or
you decide to quit 'causeyou can't take it anymore.
But eventually that bosswill also be on the chopping
block because the systemthat burned you is gonna
eventually burn them.

(48:43):
They just don't see it comingyet the real villain is the
system, the system that promotedthat person that stood them
up, you know what I mean?
And let them set them up tofail, set them up to burn a
bunch of people and then fail.
And then now it's justlike the system keeps going
despite everyone's misery.
That's the mainpoint number one.
Main point number twois . People love saying

(49:05):
like the bad boss.
Like that was my main reasonfor wanting to do this podcast
was we had the bad boss.
Oh, I just had areally bad boss.
Okay.
It's cool and that narrativeis great, it's, it's cheaper.
Where it it doesn't lay blameon the organization to say
like, oh, you have one badindividual in your organization.
It makes it sound like, well,maybe if the company just
got rid of that one person,they'd be all better and

(49:27):
they'd be a great company.
That's not true.
The system around thatperson, the system that,
that lifted that personup into the role, they're
in that system is broken.
Do people quit bad bosses orare like our systems, like
is that just air cover forbad systems that are just
gonna keep being bad forever?
I mean maybe, but also like,again, these my favorite

(49:49):
podcasts are the ones wedon't come to a strong Sure.
Agreements between the twoof us talk we leave behind
and you know, so if you areone of those managers in that
situation where you feel likeyou've been set up to fail,
or if you're an individualwhere you feel like you are
experiencing a bad boss, we havethe same advice for both of you.
Keep that resume updated.

(50:09):
Yes, absolutely.
Well, if we canagree on one thing.
That's the thing that, that's itso, hey, and also if we can
agree on one thing, which isyou should like us subscribe.
Yes.
Let us know in the,comments below.
What, you want usto talk about next?

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AA222 - People Don't Quit Jobs, They Quit Bosses - Or Do They?

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}AA222 - People Don't Quit Jobs, They Quit Bosses - Or Do They?