AA227 - Tired of Repeating Yourself? Fixing Broken Communications! - Arguing Agile

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
welcome back to Arguing Agile.

(00:01):
So om I think leadershipis within the realm of
the scope of this podcast.
And every leader they havethis feeling like you, you
just explain the strategy, youjust explain the big picture.
You did it Friday at the, at thecall with everyone on the call,
and then come Monday afternoon,everyone's looking at you like,
what language you speaking?
What, what are we doing?

(00:27):
So I've been givensome coaching advice.
That's right.
I have another coachthat I talked to.
He says as the productmanager, you are the
chief repetition officer.
Your job is to keep repeatingthe message over and over
again until people get it.
Or until people, I, Iguess start ignoring me.
'cause that's, that'swhat I find as a takeaway.

(00:48):
I don't think, I don'tthink that's what he meant.
That's what I'm saying.
You can say that again.
That would repeating,wouldn't it?
I need some, I need somecoaching for the coach.
That's why I am herecoaching for the coach.
That's right.
I think you had me whenyou said on Friday the
strategy was discussed, andthen on Monday people are
lost as to what that was.
Like.
How many people are really evenparticipating actively Are you

(01:08):
saying that people don't listen?
They listen.
They just don't listen actively.
They multitask often ifthey're not on camera or even
if they are they hear, butthey may not listen fodder
for a different podcast.
Right.
Just because the sound wavesare hitting your eardrum
doesn't mean you're actuallycomprehending what the heck
being communicated you maybeyou're just being spoken to.

(01:29):
This whole topic came aboutbecause we're talking about.
Repeating and whetherthat should be, whether we
should look at eliminatingthat, like why is that
happening, et cetera.
One of the biggest thing isyou have to differentiate.
Is it the message that'snot being understood or
is it the messenger that'snot being understood?
We have both rightat work, right?

(01:50):
If you've worked at, if forany length of time we have
offshore teams, we have thetyranny of distance, the time
zone differences, et cetera.
So yes, there is a possibilitythat you could have a mix
of all of the above, right?
And so I think during thecourse of this podcast,
we will try to see wheresome of these things lie.
And, but we have tostart with a premise.

(02:11):
And that is, you reallydon't wanna repeat yourself
because you've already saidsomething once, maybe twice.
And when I say repeat,I don't mean having to
say it the second time.
Okay having to say it overand over and over again to the
point where it becomes annoying.
let's dig into the coreconcepts of the podcast.
Point number one is repetition,is actually it's part of
the core job of leadership.

(02:31):
Like if you have, whetheryou have leaders or managers
or whatever the titles areof your organization, it
doesn't really matter for whatwe're talking about today.
We'll just say like, the peoplethat are leading the business,
what, whatever job titles theymay have and whatever sort
of organizational structureyou have reputation is, it's
just built into their job.
Like, that that is the jobrather than, rather than looking

(02:53):
at it from the perspectiveof, boy, I'm already leaning
into the, like my arguingside of the podcast, rather
than saying like, well.
The product manager in me wantthat, like very much values
my time and doesn't want toget stuck in like meetings
that are not valuable to me.
And I try to defend my timeas much as possible so I
have some work time versustime to inform other people

(03:15):
the time to get ahead versustime to advance the message.
Because there could be somepeople in the business that
will say, well Brian, if youhave to repeat the same thing
over and over again, if youhave to keep pitching your
roadmap it's not a pitch deck.
So if you have to keep pitchingit, that is a failure on
you to be like, you're notcommunicating well enough.
If I had a nickel for every timeI've heard like, well Brian,

(03:36):
that just sounds like you'renot communicating well enough.
I'm like, I don't know.
Like, I think the other sideof that is, the product manager
part of your job is there'sthis sales element slash
alignment element where youare, you're a constant hype man.
Or woman for your,for your product.
You constantly, you'retrying to get buy-in, right?
Constantly yeah.

(03:56):
So, so things like roadmap,things like that, you're
trying to get buy-in fromeverybody and it's like
so critical that everyoneis quote unquote aligned.
So if you've ever been ina meeting that's titled an
alignment meeting or a sync,that just means that you are
already not aligned, right.
And, and it's needed.

(04:17):
Whether it's you, yourselfputting that on the calendar or
you're just subject to somebodyelse's meeting invite so I think
there's two things that cometo mind right away here one
is, why is it such a problem?
If you need to repeat themessage one more time just
to make sure that everyoneis on the same page, why
is that such a problem?
That's one thing.

(04:37):
I'll come back to that.
The second thing is,is there a limit?
You say, well, I've alreadydone this eight times.
So what is that?
Is it eight?
Is it three?
Is it four?
Right.
So the second point reallyis around the messenger,
explaining the message clearenough, and then getting
some kind of a signal backthat it was received, how it

(04:59):
was intended to be received.
So let me, you gonnaplay this back to me?
No, I, I'm gonna play it backto you because that is another
technique you use, right?
You gave, you gave me toostrong, you gave me two
strong points to actuallyyou kinda gave me a four.
And again, so like, onone hand why not do this?
On the hand of like,why not do this?
Like the, I'm thinking, I'mthinking of like, sorry, I'm

(05:21):
trying to take the side of like,the worst people I've worked
for in my career right now.
They'll be like, if you keeprepeating the same thing, that
means that you're like it'slike, the phrase you ever meet
someone that says a lot, evensometimes in the puck, I say a
lot the popular like thing willsay , if you say you know, after
everything, it means, , it'sa trigger to mean you are not
sure if the other person isbought into what you're saying.

(05:41):
Absolutely.
So it's like, it's like this,like nervous tick that you're
not confident the, I don'tknow if I really believe any of
this, I have heard this before.
So on one hand they'll say,well, people aren't really
bought into your message,but you keep repeating it.
If you have to continuallyrepeat what you're saying,
it actually signals.
, That your systemsfor distributing

(06:01):
information is broken.
Whether that system is likeslack messages or once a
week town halls or whatever,however you distribute the
information, like whateveryour communication conduits
are, they are not working.
So I would like, I'm gonnaascribe this as like a personal
failing to you of like,oh, Om the product manager.
He keeps telling people everyweek that he's working on

(06:23):
this thing and he's tryingto get buy-in and draw up
support that just, that's anindicator that maybe he doesn't
know what he's doing or maybehe's a poor communicator.
That, that was one sideof what you just said.
The other side of what youjust said I interpreted as my
current role is like this inproduct management, I talk to
a bunch of different audiencesthat basically represent a

(06:44):
bunch of different customers.
Like slightly, maybe notexactly the same ICP, like
the ideal customer profileor, or if you're doing like
customer personas, likepersona development, they're
not exactly the same persona.
They're slightlydifferent personas.
And I like to try my messageagainst those different
personas, like my pitchto see what works and what
doesn't, because I will thennext person I talk to, I'll

(07:07):
change my pitch slightly.
Yeah.
Because eventually I'm pitchingsomething that everyone's
like, that's Brian, that'syour, if we could do that,
we would change the industry.
And when I get that reaction,I know I have honed my pitch
to exactly the right thing...
I started about arguingagainst, and now I'm arguing
for to say like, look, I'mlike, the more I repeat it,

(07:28):
the better I get at my pitch.
And if we can start with aninternal audience and then
refine the pitch to be like,pretty sharp and then move that
to an external audience, andnow we're like, scalpel sharp.
That's the way todo it in product.
You're product management,sales, business leadership, all
rolled into one at that point.
That's what you, that'swhere you wanna get to
which was your for Yes.

(07:48):
In this category so startingwith that one first, I'm gonna
go back to the other one.
What you've just describedis iterating the message.
over and over again untilthere is a sharper focus.
It incrementally you're gettingthere and once you have some
comfort that everyone seems tobe aligned on the same page,
et cetera, you now feel safeto take that message external.

(08:11):
Right?
. Perfectly valid.
So what you're doing reallyis you are not just simply
making sure that all therecipients of the message
understand the message andascribe to it and agree with it.
you are also gettingconfirmation on your
side that you've got themessage detailed enough
lucid enough wherepeople can understand it.
Mm-hmm.
And that's important beforeyou go external, right?

(08:32):
Because when you go external,you have different perspectives.
Now all those personasyou mentioned, different
levels of consumers ofyour product, right?
Yeah.
Even if they're like tangentialbeneficiaries of the product.
So it's important totricky here, there's two
parts to this, right?
One is some people willrepeat the same message over
and over, so they're notmoving the goal it's the

(08:55):
same goal stated differently.
Tailored perhaps tothe audience, but the
goal doesn't change.
And that's great because nowyou're saying let's all align
to that one goal, right?
It's like in battle it'simportant to have a war plan.
Similar, the other side ofit, however, and this is
tricky, I have seen this donevery well, and I've seen it

(09:16):
done very, very poorly, whichis more commonly the case
where the message gets pitchedat a certain level, and
then with each incrementalrepetition, the message actually
gets twisted a little bit.
So a lot of people won't evenpay regard to that, where
I've seen it done reallywell is that was on purpose.

(09:36):
Okay.
Because that first pitch was,was never going to land, right?
Okay.
So it was on purpose thatthey pitched it such,
where the boomerang doesn'tcome back to you, it's.
Over there in yourneighbor's yard.
And then they change it.
And they change it.
I've seen it donereally, really well.
The person that, that I sawpull this off extremely well

(09:57):
in the public eye as well,was the chairman of British
Airways years and years ago.
But he had this knack ofhow to do that, right?
Where whenever he spokethere was everyone's
listening the press.
Everyone is a publiccompany at the time.
So he would say somethingand there'd be a little bit
of ums and ahs, and then hewould locate, locate that,

(10:18):
and the next time he wouldsay, as I told you before.
Yeah.
But then whatever happenedafter that was never exactly
what he had said before.
Mm-hmm.
But it was close.
Mm-hmm.
But it was, it was far enoughapart where he's kind of wedging
it towards the direction thathe wants to take it that's
the well done instance, right.
Where it's not so well doneis that the person thinks he's
saying the same thing as before,but they're actually not.

(10:40):
And that's terriblebecause it's confusing for
the recipients too yeah.
What do you think about myzinger where I say, well, repe
repetition builds culture?
I think repetition buildsa greater acceptance
of the message.
One thing that happens when yourepeat more than the second or
third time is the dissenterswill come out and start to

(11:01):
push against those messages.
Mm-hmm.
They may not initially forvarious reasons, they think they
understand what you're sayingand they agree with it, or.
They think they understand,they don't agree.
They're just gonna waittill they have solid enough
grounds to come back toyou with something so with
repetition, you've allowedthem that time and you've
allowed them to consume thesame message in different ways.

(11:24):
So now they can push backand say, but what about X?
What about y?
I think over time it does giveyou greater alignment, right?
It's sort of like usingan envelope that's lost
it's, or a stamp actuallyis a better example
that's lost it stickiness.
But there is a pointwhere you repeat yourself
too often, right?
We're gonna get to that ina separate arguing point.

(11:47):
So, I like your takeon both of these.
At some point when the descentcomes out and you've worked
your way through that, assumingyou've done your homework.
That's where I'mgoing with this.
It becomes reinforcement,not repetition.
Correct.
That's a big difference when youhone your message I'm not saying
that your message can't change,you need to hone your message
to the point where it becomesreinforcement, and that's how

(12:09):
this stuff can build culture.
So the takeaway in thiscategory, if you're saying
like, well what does,what does this even mean?
Is start tracking.
When you have like little quipsthrough the day where you say
a certain thing start trackinghow many times you say that.
First of all, like it's on asticky, it doesn't have to be
anything formal or whatever.
Like put a little tick ona sticky, I'm trying to

(12:29):
think of a quip that I wouldsay on a regular basis.
Oh, heroes don'tbuild great software.
Teams build great software.
You know what I mean?
Like, no one individual, it'sit's teams when it comes to
corporate, if you're likea solopreneur or like a
startup or whatever, like Ican totally get on board with
like, oh yeah, it's all onesingle person at the startup.
But when you get to a companylevel where you have like

(12:50):
multiple people or whatever,it's probably not one person.
It's probably a team.
Like teams buildgreat solutions.
There's a little bit of likehedging in there that I had
to do, but generally , bringyour problems to teams.
Don't bring yourproblems to like one hero
in the middle of thenight or whatever.
Like, that's like somethingthat I'll tell people and
it's, it's reinforcement whenthey see the team deliver

(13:12):
something that solves a problem.
When problems come inand everyone's like, oh,
I don't really know howwe're gonna solve this, I'm
like, bring it to the team.
You know why?
Because teams solve problemsthe heroes don't solve problems.
So those kinds of thingsyou can definitely track.
Yeah and it's a real simple,just simply put a sticky note
somewhere and just say howmany times a day or how many

(13:32):
times a week or whatever.
And the other thing isgoing, we had a podcast
about product managercommunication is your only job.
The other suggestion hereis to create a message map
showing who's who, who ishearing what and when, sort
of like your old school commsplan that kind of thing.
To discover like who is who.
Is the repetition,reaching, and who is the
repetition not reaching?
'cause some people they're gonnaget the message blasted out to

(13:54):
them on a regular basis and somepeople on the fringes of the
org or other teams or whatever,that they're not gonna get it.
So like, what's yourcomm plan look like?
Who should be the recipientof what type of information?
What's the mode, right?
Are we emailing?
Are we texting?
What are we doing?
And how often the frequency,so if you map that out, and
there's so many templatesout there to do this, if

(14:15):
you just Google stakeholdercommunication plan or just
simply, communication planproject management has created
all these templates over theyears pick one that suits you
or just come up with your own.
We have three podcasts onthis topic, by the way.
We have three podcasts on thetopic of communications ar
Agile two 11 communication isproducts only job, or is it,
that's is, that's fairly recent.

(14:36):
Great.
Great title.
Arguing Agile 2 0 1.
Mastering StakeholderCommunication and Management.
That was the one thatyou were talking about.
And then arguing 1 98.

Better Communication (14:43):
mastering Crucial Conversations because
crucial conversations getyou into the, Hey, you
don't agree with this thingthat I keep repeating.
Let's vet that out and talkabout it in a way where it
doesn't like damage personalrelationships and actually
advances the organization.
Anyway, those arethree podcasts we did.
If you listen to those three,you're better positioned

(15:04):
than most executives withtheir like Forbes and HBR
subscriptions you're goodwith those three podcasts
right there that's, that.
Plus this is like almost fourhours of content for free that
sets you ahead to be like, Hey,this is a better way to do it.
So you got a message map,you got your repetition.
You, you, you got somethings to be aware of here.
So repetition might,might be your job.

(15:25):
You might be the, achief repetition officer.
I don't know.
Let's talk about whererepetition happens in meetings
and specifically meetingsaround the work versus
actually doing the work.
Which brings us into one that Ithink there will be a spirited
pushback in this category, whichis, in the crisis of repetition.
If we're on the side of like,well, I don't like repetition.

(15:45):
'cause that means that we'renot communicating well enough.
Right?
If that's my viewpoint.
So, what you will hear from somepeople at the leadership level
is to say like, oh, coordinatingthe work and the meetings as
a manager, that is the actualwork for me is to get everyone
aligned, to get everyone onthe same page, to draw out all

(16:06):
of the dissenting viewpoints.
Like the wholedisagreeing commit.
That's why I hate disagreeing,commit, disagreeing, commit
sounds to me like shut upand just do what I say.
That's, that's whatit sounds like to me.
Who does that?
Except for Amazon?
But that's what, the people thatare like, the people that would
push back against, that wouldbe the people saying like, well,
the meetings where we actuallydrive to alignment, like
where you hear my repetitionand you say like, Hey, you

(16:28):
keep repeating this thing.
What does that even mean?
And then we talk about it.
That is the work of leadership.
The meaning is the work.
That's also a validationif, say, if they're saying,
you're repeating this,but what does that mean?
You clearly didn't receivethe message the way I
intended so let's goabout it a different way.
You're doing thisbecause the next step,
the immediate next step.

(16:49):
That this is blockingis execution.
Execution meaning likeoperations like a chief
operating officer.
Do this with these peopleby this state, do this with
this money by this state.
The old PMI, youknow what I mean?
That kind of stuff is like,you can't even engage into
that kind of, mechanicaloperations if you don't agree
so again, on the side ofthe leadership folks in this

(17:12):
saying like, well the decisionsand the alignment happens in
meetings that's on one side.
So that I just generally threwout a lot of, there's more
things I could throw out tosay I mean the, the getting
all the stuff out on the tablebefore we start operating,
like that prevents a biggertrain wreck down the road when
we all have different ideas.
'cause Brian's repeatingthis high level thing,

(17:33):
maybe Brian's like a.
Chief technology officerand saying like, we gotta
have agents for everything.
And Om hears that and he'slike, alright, we're gonna
make agents for everything.
Like the literal interpretation.
Literal interpretation, yeah.
The velocity of decisionmaking often is more
important than the velocityof punching out features.

(17:55):
And usually the velocity ofdecision making is slower
than it, it's slower.
Has more impact, right.
Than punching outthe wrong features.
Big problem.
Which is a big problem.
Agreed.
That's a lot of forpoints that I threw out.
So I'm hoping that you'regonna have some, you're gonna
have some pushback in thiscategory so a lot of times
people complain saying,ah, more meetings, right.
And meetings become thistheatrical exercise where

(18:19):
people are just going in there.
If you've ever been to ameeting that you are invited
to, but you don't know why,who hasn't?
You just described mycalendar right there right.
So you are there, but you don'tknow why and you have other
things that you'd rather bedoing that you need to be doing.
You probably gonna startdoing some of those things
during the meeting even.

(18:39):
So my point is, you're nota hundred percent attentive.
If that's happening, what itleads to is this idea that the
message doesn't stick with youwhich forces , the deliverer.
The deliverer of the message,the messenger to have to repeat
themselves so, so there's,there's several things.
Your through, there's like a lotof flack I'm flying into that
you're throwing up right now.

(18:59):
And I'm, I'm very confusedand I don't know where
to navigate, the, the,so you threw out
a couple points.
One.
If you have poor role clarity,meaning like, oh, I don't know.
I'm just invitingyou to the meeting.
'cause like, you seem to be onthis you may not be the, your
organization is for, sorry,like half of it is poor role.

(19:20):
Sorry, I have to stepback for a second.
Like, part of it ispoor role clarity.
Like, I'm not quite surewho makes the decision,
who's the decision maker.
The other half of it is poororganizational management.
There's like whateverthe organizational
equivalent of tech debt is.
Like you've got that going onwhere it's not clear who is
the decision maker for a thing.

(19:40):
So I'm just gonna invitefive people to the meeting
and hopefully we can cometo a consensus and just
stay in the meeting untilthe consensus wafts out
of the ether or whatever.
You understand where I'm goinghere is like you, I understand.
Perfect.
Your org is messed upin the first place.
And you probably shouldhave solved that.
I know that the people runningthe organization probably
don't have the skill or thewherewithal or the Yeah, yeah.

(20:01):
The intent.
Even it's been a long timesince I said wherewithal.
Wherewithal.
That's usually that's your word.
Usually that's, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But they just, they just don'tthey don't know it's a problem.
And honestly, like it's,they're too busy to deal with
it too busy playing golf.
So he, here's the thing, right?
They could be sailing yachts.
My bad.
Anyway.
No, it's, it's all good.
Listen if you are inan organization where
there are racy matricesyou know exactly what

(20:22):
I'm about to say next.
I know what you'reabout to say next.
Are you responsiblefor something?
Are you accountablefor something?
The C in RACI is, are, are youto be consulted for something?
And the I is that big Bitbucket,are you supposed to be informed?
If you're not sure, I'mgonna invite you so I'm
gonna invite everybody.
Some people invite theirimmediate managers,

(20:44):
their supervisors toeverything because then
they could Yeah, exactly.
That's a good way to phrase it.
It's air cover.
So they don't have eitherpsychological safety or they
don't have the prowess to say,I'm gonna go to this and I'll
make decisions based on whatI know and I'll back those up.
No, they'd rather just be likeyou said, safe air covered safe.
So, yeah.
Safe.

(21:04):
Exactly.
This happens all the time.
This is why you have meetingmania where you have a
hundred people on a call.
What do you do about this stuff?
If you create your own meetingson other people's calendar,
make sure you lock 'em down.
Don't just let them forwardthem to any Tom, Dick, and Mary.
That's the new phrasethat I'm sure using now.
I like it.
Yeah, to be equitable,Tom, Dick, and Mary.

(21:26):
So don't just forwardthat onto anyone.
So lock it down so thatthey, whoever they think it
should go to, they have tocome to you for, and then
you decide, how's that?
You're gonna limit the audience.
The other thing is, in yourmeeting, have an agenda,
but also have expectedoutcomes and who they're
supposed to be coming from.
Any major decisions.

(21:47):
This is what we'regonna talk about.
Here are expected outcomes.
Here are the things that peopleare going to opine on these
are the decision makers, Fred,Julie, whoever it might be.
These are the people that Iwant people to like, understand.
They're in this meeting,they're gonna provide direction.
Yeah.
I almost want people tostart tracking like this

(22:08):
meeting that I'm going to.
I almost want them tostart tracking it just from
their perspective, but it'sprobably better to do like
a organizational kind ofmap to say if this person
is not in the meeting, thenthe meeting cannot reach a
proper consensus decision, or a decision of any kind.
So, if you're talking about ifBrian's in charge of widget A

(22:29):
and they're trying to make adecision, like widget A should
have this new functionality.
Obviously if Brian is not inthe meeting, they can't decide
this is gonna go on widget a'sroadmap as the top priority.
But they can call a meetingand invite me to it, and they
can show me good evidencethat widget a should be my top
priority and try to get me tochange my roadmap, basically.

(22:52):
That's what I'm saying this is,I'm just trying to make it very,
a very personal and direct yeah.
That kind of thing for theorganization in any kinda
meeting you're in, like tojust like think about like,
if this person's not inthe meeting, the meeting is
not gonna have an outcomethat is like substantial.
Worthwhile worthwhile exactly.
Exactly.
If you start thinking about yourmeanings that way, it's like.

(23:13):
Who needs to be in hereto make the decision.
I don't like the racy matrix,just like outright, like I
think there's the podcast Imentioned earlier, we gave
better examples than a racy.
Yeah, we did.
But that's just my, my opinionsare weird and only my opinions
and not the opinions of Omor the Arguing Agile podcast
in any way, shape, or form.
Maybe, maybe now you've beendisclaimed maybe anyway.

(23:35):
Sorry, I'm, I'm, I'm tryingto read the takeaway In this
category, it says track whatactually breaks versus what
people just worry might break.
Most teams discovered 80%of the repetitive meetings
were actually just securityblankets, not necessity.
I'm not quite sure aboutthe 80% there that, I think
that's kind of a nonsensenumber, but I do get what
they're saying, I do get whatthe notes here are saying

(23:56):
the security of a, like aconsensus decision rather than
like trying to convince thedecision maker with evidence
or whatever so I don't know.
Well, it's alsothe other way too.
It's the decision makersaying, look I've already, I've
already relayed this messageon six different occasions,
and if the audience doesn'tunderstand it, it's not on me.
Right some cultureswill actually reward

(24:18):
that kind of thing.
It's like, no, youdid a great job.
You've done this.
Six meetings.
Come on.
so we've reached the interestingpart of the podcast where
the problem isn't meetingsor repetition, but that
we've fundamentally lost theability to communicate with
people at their own attentionspan and reach them and, and
meet them where they are.
That's what I'm trying to say.

(24:38):
Meet them where they're, meetthem where they are because
another thing, working againstthe topic today of like, well,
I've gotta keep repeatingmyself, and this is crazy,
I don't understand why Igotta keep repeating myself.
Is that like the, the worldis in, in attention crisis
today, the whole world.
Yes, I agree.
And, in the old school,you were just competing
with like, forgetfulness.

(24:59):
Like, I forgot we madethis decision in this
meeting 'cause nobodywrote it down or whatever.
And we didn't have any autoautomated note takers Right.
Or special tools that's not evenwhat you're competing with now.
Like you're competing with,you go to a meeting and you
have your laptop open or yourphone with you or whatever.
Like you're under a barrage,a constant attack of things,
trying to steal your attentionaway from the meeting you're in.

(25:21):
And even that aside, yougo back to your desk and
like all bets are off.
Like you go back to yourdesk and you go, you got
emails waiting, you gotSlack messages waiting.
You got all kinds of, somepopups, notifications,
banners, like app badges,all kinds of stuff.
Too much too many stimuli.
See too much pressure.
Is that what you'reabout to say?
Too much pressure TWEAK!.
No.
So we're talking aboutthe attention crisis here.

(25:42):
Like the attention crisisfor me can be manifest
by three, three things.
Nobody reads what I write.
Nobody listens to what I say inthe meetings and nobody watches
like if I record a demo orwhatever, like nobody watches,
which is again, one of my mainreasons why I like, I, I am
super stubborn about like, well,Brian, just record your sprint

(26:05):
demos and we'll watch 'em later.
I'm like, will youwatch 'em later?
You watch 'em at two timesthe speed and never understand
the word I said, and you won'tsay anything to me at all.
Everyone does that.
You don't gimme any feedbackwhy am I gonna do that?
People request like, oh, Brian,record your demos and throw
'em out there in the networkwhen you're done with 'em.
And I'll watch 'em later.
I'm like, really?
Or am I just contributingto just more content that's
out there than you caneven consume in a workday?

(26:26):
Number one, even if youwanted to, you couldn't.
And number two, I'mjust throwing more
noise into the ether.
Mm-hmm.
So let's say you're at acompany and we have like
five product managers andwe're all recording demos and
throwing 'em into the ether,and we all demo every week.
Like, how much content isthat you're gonna absorb
five hours a week every week?
The reality is you're notgonna absorb any of it, right?

(26:49):
So sadly, that isthe reality of it.
Now, here's the thing, just topiggyback off what you said.
People are asking you torecord the demos, right?
As if the purpose wasjust for them to watch.
This is not a circuspeople, right?
You have to get feedbackthat's, an activity that happens
in real time where they askquestions, you respond, you can
ask more questions, et cetera.

(27:10):
It goes back and forththat's the point of a demo.
Not, oh look, webuilt something.
It's like, well then what's thepoint if you're gonna record
that just to check a box?
So I, I'll tell you where Iget in trouble with this, and
this is, this is where, thisis where I need you to step in
my office, close the door, likesit, sit down on the couch.
Like, don't, don't,don't ask, don't ask.
It's, it's getting,things are getting weird.
Okay.
Because I, my arguingpoint in this one is

(27:35):
to solve this problem.
Again, going earlier in thepodcast, we already noted,
we already agreed we got someorganizational deficiencies.
Okay.
Obviously we're not gonnasolve that because those
are hard problems to solve.
So we're gonna like what's thelack of executive function where
you can't do the most importantthing because it's hard and
requires a lot of focus.

(27:55):
So you do a lot oflittle easy things.
But they're not important.
So then you get in troublefor not doing the important
things that's a real thing.
I can't rememberwhat it's called.
They just sidetracked thatby saying we got that.
It's on a future roadmapwhat I would say is this is a
failure in prioritization orthe hierarchy of information.
I don't know exactly howto say what I'm trying
to say, which is there isa here's the information

(28:17):
, you should consume.
'cause it's really importantto you in the organization.
And here is it presentedin the order that you
need to consume it.
And because there's so manychannels of communication
and so many different feedsof communication between
teams, inside of teams,everything is not equally
important all the time.
This is sort of like theproduct equivalent of solving

(28:37):
the wrong problem is like,well just record all your
meetings and throw 'em inthere so anyone can listen.
I would say instead ofmore communication and then
throwing it on the individualto be like, well, you just
didn't listen to the rightcommunications and whatever.
I would say, instead ofrepeating more stuff, we should
communicate less with lesslike interlocking circles.

(28:58):
But the communication we dohave is better communication
where like you're notwatching after the fact,
you're making time to be inthat meeting so that you can
contribute to asking questionswhen we're doing a demo.
And then if you, listen toa demo, because that was
recorded, like you're listeningto a bunch of people that are
really interested and engagedabout the subject matter.

(29:20):
And the reason that you'relistening to it is because
you are in no way, shape,or form as engaged or
interested in the subject.
As the people that werein that room and basically
what I'm saying is Iknow what I'm saying.
I'm trying to figure outwhat to say on the podcast
you're your eye on theracing matrix on the podcast.
I'm trying to say all thesmart people were talking
about the thing and you, theeye on the racing matrix.

(29:41):
You're the eye on the matrix.
You're, you aresupposed to be informed.
So, which is my way if I'morganizing this recording,
et cetera, is my way ofsaying, you don't matter.
That's what it is.
Bluntly.
You don't matter.
You, you're, you sayyou want to be informed
because you have a title.
Okay, fine.
Go watch this.
I know you're not goingto but I wanna go back to
something you said, whichwas very interesting.

(30:02):
It's not just the informationthat's out there coming
at you, et cetera.
It should be presentedin the order sadly,
that doesn't happen.
I don't, I've neverseen that happen.
That's because ofinformation proliferation.
Absolutely.
We have so many sources.
Synchronicity wasn't justan album by the police.
It's real synchronicity.
You're supposed to get allof this stuff coming at you.

(30:23):
You deal with it rightaway because it's the
most important thing.
Every one of those things is themost important thing right now.
It could be work, but it's alsolike your significant other.
Your kid just says,Hey dad, watch this.
This is the video Ijust saw on TikTok.
They want you to see it rightnow because they're looking for
feedback ? They've got theirbeak open as the mother bird.
They want you to dropsomething in their mouth.

(30:45):
This is the problem.
We have too much throwingbeing thrown at us, and
we have no basis for.
Discerning what we shouldbe listening to, what we
should be deferring, yikes.
Or avoiding altogether.
Honestly, this couldhave been the, Hey, no
one listens anymore.
It could have been a podcastlike multitasking, like all
kinds of notifications turnedon, like phone notifications,

(31:07):
like noise notifications aswell as like popups and like app
badge icons and stuff like that.
Going and searchingfor documentation.
Like your Indiana Jonesover here because you
can't find what you need.
'cause you're, you haveno real like, knowledge
management system set.
Like no one everthought about it.
The way, JIRA is not aknowledge management system.
I just wanna point that out.
Like not at all.

(31:28):
No matter how muchthey're charging you.
And then like all thesecompeting priorities.
Because you have so manyalternate competing priorities,
that's the reason thisrepetition is needed., If
you only were working on onepriority and you stayed on it,
you stayed on that problem untilit was done when you listen
to, like Marty Kagan's, likeSilicon Valley people, they'll
be like, oh, like Google justlike peels off a team and

(31:50):
dedicates 'em to work on thehighest priority for 18 months,
two years, and they just knockit down and now suddenly they're
a business leader, right?
And I'm like, oh,it's a, it's magic.
How does Google get their money?
Oh, it is because they'rewilling to pay for a team
to be focused on something.
And anybody could do that.
It's, that's not magic, rightI think at the end of the day,
the question is highest priorityaccording to whom, right?

(32:13):
So when you have a stakeholderor a person driving the
priorities and relayingthose onto the team saying,
these are the things that weshould be working on, and by
the way, there's only everone priority one, right?
So oftentimes a team willsay, okay, we, we understand.
I wanna work onthat top priority.
Great.
Let's go yeah.
Everyone starts working and thensome other stakeholder comes

(32:35):
along and says, work on this.
This is also high priority wealready have a high priority
item we're working on butthis is also high priority
so you can work on that otherthing, but also work on mine.
Now they're saying you havepriority one A, one B, one
C. That's a fallacy, right?
There is no one a, one B, oneC there's only ever a one, two,
and a three, which is why mostALM tools worth their salt.

(32:59):
They have an ordered backlog.
There's a reason why there'san order in the backlog but
most teams don't really abideby that because it's the
loudest person or the highestperson, whoever that tells
you to work on it, you jump.
Right?
That's what you do.
And I'm not gonna talk aboutthis today too much, but
just mention it, that thereis such a thing as switching
costs when you're switchingbetween these things, right?

(33:20):
So it's not like, we'll getback to this in two days
or, or a week when you getback to it, you're actually
paying a switching cost.
And research has provedthat cost will be 20%
of the size of the task.
We should talk aboutthat in another podcast.
Hey, we did a onceover of the research.
This is kind of what thefindings are, and this
is kind of our takeaway.
There's a lot of researchout there on this topic.
I think that would be worth itfor people should be easily able
to do that for this category.

(33:41):
I would say organizationallysome of the hangups that we
pointed out earlier you needto solve some of those to say
like, well, like for this thing,whatever the thing is, like
product is easy because you justpointed a product manager like
this product manager for thisproduct makes all decisions.
That's straightforward.
It's a single source of truth.

(34:01):
Remember back in the day whenyou used to take a database
and the contents would getsplit to different places or
maybe copied somewhere else.
Maybe you have backups.
I worked at a place onetime where like they didn't
want to give access to readfrom production database.
So they would replicatethe production database.
A reporting database, yeah.
And to a reporting database.
And then they wonder whythere's discrepancies and
then there's discrepancies.
Yeah.
, But then there's alwaysthat one developer who goes
straight to production 'causethey want the single source

(34:23):
of truth in your decisionmaking, you want to go back
to the single source of truth.
So it's , like one document oflike, , what does the future
of your product look like?
Well, you probably havea document that describes
that or something.
Or maybe you don't have adocument and I just gotta
come to you and be like,what's in the future?
You tell me, one owner foran initiative, one document

(34:44):
for a roadmap one PRD.
If you're doing PRD one,update channel, if you use
Slack or something like that,like our updates go out into
one channel if you wanna knowabout product A and the new
releases or whatever they'reputting out, go to like Slack
channel for product A and that'sthe one channel it goes to.
Stuff might filter out intoother channels, everyone
knows, they can just go tothat Slack channel, say, Hey,
what's going on with this x,y, Z feature that I heard of?

(35:07):
They can go to one place.
So like, that would be myactionable takeaway in this
category is everybody's underattack in, in every way, shape,
or form for their attention.
And the way to cut that down is.
Like the old Mike Miller, oneby one by one, make one slack
channel where one person isaccountable to responding and

(35:28):
that's the end of the story.
And then if you haveother problems that other
organizations I've been in,that the problem is like a
lot of different people canmake the decision and they
don't necessarily all talkto each other then that also
solves, this is like you know,one channel, one person's
gonna respond, and all thosepeople who can make decisions
agree to say ticket to thechannel, that one person's

(35:50):
gonna respond maybe sometimesthat one person responds, gets
it wrong, and then everyonejumps on them, which is fine.
That's how it should be, right?
That's how it should be.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think what you're sayingis when you have a system
in place in your org wheredecisions are made by committee.
Right then having something likea single channel, even though
it's multiple people for variousaspects of it, perhaps you're

(36:13):
centralizing the channel, right?
So the consumers arein that same channel.
It's the product, right?
Which all of these otherthings are components of.
That's a good way to reallyminimize all the noise, and
the potential to get it wrong,which in turn comes back to
full circle on this topic, whichis you'd have fewer reasons

(36:33):
to repeat the message, right?
Because it's everyone'sconsuming the same
message most of the time.
So we're drowning in noise.
Nobody's paying attention.
But what if the realissue is that we've
stopped holding peopleaccountable for listening?
I, I don't necessarily agreewith this one, om, but I'm gonna
throw it out like I do, whichis, I'm gonna say it that the
psychological safety focusedculture that you agileists.

(36:57):
That's right.
I'm pointing fingers.
That's how you know.
It's a great point.
I'm not gonna say we'regonna stay on this point
long in the podcast, but.
It's gonna come up as anarguing point is you guys have
strayed from command and controlwhere we pointed at a person
and said they're in command.
They you do what theysay, I don't need this.
Testing things against themarketer MVPs or whatever.

(37:18):
They know whatthe best thing is.
That's why I hired them.
And that, that's, that's,that's easier than this
like, consensus drivenbuilding, decision making,
discovery type of activities.
You know, the people, the peoplethat are out there that are not
convinced that like Marty Cagancan work in a normal corporate.
That's, that's what I'mtalking about right here.
They'll, they'll sayaccountability, accountability.

(37:40):
Is the missing piece here.
They'll say, they'llsay repetition.
The repetition that youwere talking about in the
podcast that we're bothtalking about like, that
just enables laziness.
That enables people to like,nod their head in the meeting
and not really understandand get back to their
day and not carry forwardour decisions as leaders.
We're important managersin this organization home.

(38:00):
Okay.
We can't have people gettingaway with the, I'm using
the language sarcastically.
But this is likewhat people say.
They look at this conflictavoidant, like repeating
things often because peopledidn't get them the first time.
They'll say this is likea softness of culture.
That's what they'llsay so you're right.
Command and control.

(38:21):
We did get things done.
We didn't get the rightthings done quite often,
but we got them done.
We didn't get them done.
In the way we thought wewould get them done, which
is the result of all that bigplanning upfront type of thing.
Right.
So here we are.
Fast forward.
You know, the differenceis product cycles have now
diminished considerably.

(38:41):
Competition has grown veryglobal for most organizations.
Customer needs are changingfaster than ever before whereas
in the past it wasn't the case.
You kind of get a signaland say, yeah, that's what
they need and we'll comeup with a solution a few
months from now and it'sstill largely gonna land.
That's not a given now soyour competitors will swoop

(39:02):
down and eat your breakfast,nevermind your lunch.
You really do haveto build consensus so
that you're building.
The right things, despiteall the focus on building
the things right.
Which is all the processoriented stuff the agileists
are spending their time on.
That's great.
That's all needed.
You can't climb a staircasein the dark if you, if
you've never climbed itbefore with your eyes closed.

(39:24):
'cause you don't knowhow big the steps are.
So it sounds like you'resaying that the problem
is quality, not quantity.
That's what it sounds like.
There's pretty much, there'sa couple arguments that you're
making here that are like,I'm gonna try to pull apart
quality, not quantity, whichis like you actually need
to care about the problem.
Okay.
Accountability is not a dirtyword when accountability
is like, I care aboutthis, so I'm going to be
accountable for it becauseI want to solve this thing.

(39:45):
That's what I do in productmanagement day to day.
Don't use accountabilityas a dirty word because the
quickest way to get me toturn against you is to try.
To use accountabilityas a dirty word.
It's being weaponized way moreoften than it should, out there.
Web right?
Accountability.
You said you would do this,you said you are, but it's you.
It's you, you Right.
That's the wrong culture.

(40:06):
It's, there's some fingerpointing happening in there
when I Absolutely, when I'mlike, listen, my, my, again, I,
I said before on the podcast,heroes don't solve things.
Like teams solve things and theteam is taking accountability
for solving this thing.
That means the team isstepping in to deal with it.
And when a person, I like teamsdon't normally finger point,

(40:26):
it's usually a person, right?
So like a person is fingerpointing and there's a whole
team on the other side thatusually is a counterbalance
to like cut that stuffout real, real quick.
But, the other thing I wannapoint out before we move
on is psychological safetybeing used as a weapon
surveillance culture, commandcontrol, surveillance culture
being used as a weapon.
The organizations that have thesafety enable innovation to a

(40:48):
point where the organizationsthat don't like it, it's night
and day it's second natureto those orgs that actually
have that in place they don'tthink about this as innovation
because that's how we workit just becomes ingrained
in the psyche of the peoplethat work there whereas the
other side of the equation,is stifling innovation because
no one wants to take a risk.
Right.
You know, all of that fingerpointing so everyone plays

(41:10):
safe they could play safe.
I don't know.
Like they, they mighteven be able to be
certifiable or certified.
What, what is, I dunno,certifi, I, I've always better.
I like, like that one.
I messed that one up.
The against really is not thatgood here but, but there is
a takeaway that I wanted tohighlight that we put in the
notes for this section, whichis a communication contract
and not really a contract.

(41:31):
It's more of aworking agreement.
Like it's a fact.
It's more, more than anything.
It's is this is howwe agree to work.
Yeah, yeah.
Communication, like workingagreement that basically says
like, who needs to know whatby when that could be across
teams, that could be acrossa team and an individual.
It could be a lotof different things.
It's a communicationplan to say like.
When these things happen, andif you think about it with your
team, it's not that much stuff.

(41:51):
Say like when, when wefind a bug that blows up
production, we notify thisSlack channel, we, email this
person with an after actionreport or something like that.
Or when we release a newfeature, we invite these people
to the demo to give them anopportunity to see it or I
would say if you really thoughtabout all of your touch points,
I don't think it would bethat much for a team to just

(42:14):
build a, just a quick plan tobe like, what is, what is our
plan to drive out into thebusiness so that we don't have
to keep repeating ourselves?
Hey, we did, we, we releasedfeature a two months ago and.
You know?
Right.
Oh, you, you didn't knowthat's I, I agree with that.
It's really notthat hard of a lift.
Now the thing to rememberis any kind of communication
plan or whatever you wannacall this matrix, right.

(42:34):
That needs to beco-created by the team.
Yeah.
Not thrust upon the teamby somebody with some other
purpose in mind, right?
No, you don't take that asan order from someone else.
You co-create it.
And the second thing is,it is not a one and done.
So it's a living, breathingthing as you learn more,
change it, it's yours.
So change it, right?

(42:54):
Mm-hmm.
So it doesn't look thesame months out than it did
when at inception right.
Because need drives innovationat that point, and the team
owns the innovation okay.
to transition to the nextcategory, there is a thing
called Parkinson's Law andit says that work expands
to fill the time available.
So with that as a given, in theworld where entire roles exist

(43:19):
to facilitate communicationbetween teams, and I'm
specifically talking about thescrum master right now, right.
But also like in a world whereyou don't have scrum masters,
it could be team leads, I'veknown many a development
team leads where they don'tactually do any development
anymore 'cause they're sobusy driving alignment.
Between teams, they're theglue because the organization

(43:42):
doesn't have product managersor scrum masters, they just
get yelled at to do something.
And the team leads haveto basically take on both
these roles and drive quoterequirements between teams.
So in that world I couldeasily see someone looking
at a person like that, likea scrum master, not a team
lead developer who's beentaken off of doing development

(44:04):
to do this kinda stuff.
I could see it and, andmany times people talk about
Scrum masters like this,where like, well, that's just
like organizational bloat.
We're talking about repetition.
So wrapped in the guiseof repetition that is the
organizational middle managerequivalent of like creating
a job for yourself where yourjob is just to like, repeat

(44:26):
things that other people say.
Ooh, that's interesting becauseoften people will say the
opposite, which is, especiallypeople that have played
the role of a scrum master,they'll say the role is to
work themselves out of a job.
Right.
So this is interesting thatI'm seeing the two things.
I'm trying to juxtaposeboth of those together.
I will say this, going backto what you started with,

(44:47):
there are teams that havea scrum master, right?
And yet the team leads thetech leads, team leads.
It could be testers,QA leads, right?
Yeah.
These leads are working withother teams that they need
to collaborate with for thesolution and it could be as
simple as, yeah, your individualteam products are actually

(45:07):
discreet enough, but launchingthem into an environment
production, for example, itrequires coordination, right?
They have to go first beforeyou do, or vice versa.
So communication is really jobone for these people, right they
may not do testing or coding,or they may just do some of
it for example, tech leads.
They may be limitingthemselves to doing PR

(45:27):
reviews or approving prs.
That's still value addbecause they're not
just blindly doing that.
But what's important is theyhave a forum i'm thinking about
Scrum Masters have, a scaleddaily scrum and things like
that, the tech folks can havetheir own where the tech leads
meet together and they'll saywhatever's on their radar.
So a tech lead who'sbecome aware of some tool

(45:48):
that everyone's using isbecoming deprecated, right?
Is as an example.
They can say, has everyone,anyone heard about this?
We're using this.
What's our plan toget off of this?
Or what, what's next?
Right?
No one else hasthought about it.
Perhaps there's valueadd in those regular,
small, short touch points.
Yeah.
Doesn't matter whatyou call 'em, right?

(46:09):
It's, but the audience shouldbe that like-minded audience.
So you're saying coordinationis legitimate work you
you're, you're specificallypointing to like, scale.
I should have posted this, thisis stuff that I should post.
The podcast that justwent up was August 20th.
So as we're filming this,the August 20th arguing Agile
2 25, the team that got youhere, navigating Growth and

(46:30):
Team Evolution, that was apodcast that just went up.
And in the description of that,I was very careful not to say
the word scaling because whatI was really talking about, I
might have put it in there once.
I don't know.
I'm looking at the, yeah, asyou scale, it says your founding
team delivered your firstmillion dollar quarter, but can
they scale you to 10 million?
I took scale out of most ofthis because, I realized that

(46:52):
on the market, the word forscale has morphed with the
people that are trying to sellstuff and pitch themselves
that the word scale has becomethe word growth on the market.
I didn't realize thatuntil I was in the edit.
I really didn't internalizeit and be like, oh.
I should change theway I write this stuff.
'cause the way I thinkabout scaling is like okay,

(47:15):
well you have a team, youproduce some software, it's
great, everyone likes it.
You're bringing a profit for thebusiness and you do whatever.
But then you need to go backand change your software to
be like, you're shipping it to10, 20, 30 concurrent users.
Now you wanna make 2 millionthousands concurrent users.
Something like that right.
Like that's a different,like you need to like

(47:36):
completely change yoursoftware and the team, this
is, this is what arguingmanage 2 25 was all about
the team that got you there.
They might, they may not even beinterested in doing that work.
That work might be boring tothem to rewrite every function
with the understanding oflike, well, what happens
if there's database locksand what happens if there's

(47:57):
whatever, you know what I mean?
Like, it might be boringand they might not, not be
interested in that, growth.
And by growth I mean scalinglike by a thousand times
of your current volume.
Yeah.
That requires coordination.
And how much money are youwilling to spend in coordination

(48:17):
costs to get, like if wespend this much money, we
can get 10 times growth.
If we spend this much money,we get a thousand times growth.
You're already assuminglinearity here.
I know growth is not linear.
Linear, so it's kindof a crappy example.
But the example does hold, saylike, well if you step back and
you look at your scaling afterthe fact on a matter of like

(48:38):
financial return, you probablyhave some sort of factor of
we put this much money intoit that we really didn't have
a good measure at the time weput it in like nobody knows how
to like ROIs of scrum masters.
Nobody knows how to dothat forget a scrum master.
Like take out of thisconversation a second.
Go hire a PhD in organizationalpsychology that has 10

(49:01):
years of work experience.
What is the ROI of what they'redoing inside of your business?
Well, they're not directlywriting software and they're
not directly creating businessstrategy and doing sales.
So like I feel that they're notdoing either of those things.
Like they're added to overheadand now I don't know and I
like, you know what I mean?
Like I just lost allthe sad reality is in

(49:23):
that scenario, right?
Often how their ROI is measured.
Short term what's theROI short term, right?
This quarter I'm paying fora scrum master for a whole
quarter or a year, whatever,by people that don't understand
the details around how workgets done and what, where
the value is delivered.
So that org design PhD thatyou're hiring, they may not

(49:46):
have a tangible, perceptible,measurable ROI in the quarter.
Right?
But fast forward two years now,your org is better structured,
better aligned, and the ROIgoes up through the roof.
But is that how you'remeasuring that, right?
That that's partof the difficulty?
Also the point of this categoryis you don't know what kind
of disasters you're going toprevent by being proactive

(50:10):
about managing this stuff.
That's this, that's thiscategory of being like, oh,
well the scrum master can'tjustify ROI or whatever.
Like, okay, well how many,how many disasters are
you prepping your businessfor in the coming year?
And I, I feel like mostpeople will hear that.
And it's, it's so heady.
They won't be ableto conceptualize it.

(50:30):
Oh, you know what, they'regonna go right away if you
ask that they're gonna say.
Disaster planning.
We have that.
Yeah, I know.
We're gonna plan for hurricanes.
I know we're gonnaplan for tornados.
That's the disaster planningthat they think about.
But the scrum master equivalentis if we hire somebody whose
only job is coordination andthey can help us avoid these
outages, downtimes, so ifyou're not budgeting for any,

(50:54):
oh, our system is gonna beup a hundred percent of the
time, a hundred percent uptime,I live in Tampa, Florida.
I'm budgeting to have exactlyzero hurricanes in the next
year and have zero internetoutage, zero power outage, now
you can have lower productivity.
I get it.
Yes.
So I, I would say yes.

(51:16):
And on that one, see Julie,I learned something from you.
So you don't just takethe average number
of hurricanes, right?
So, sorry.
Yeah, definitely toast toasterso coming back to the other
side of the, well why we usethe analogy to begin with
product or scrum master.
You don't know the ROI, butwhat you do know is not having

(51:38):
that person is gonna cost you.
Right.
And one way to measure thatI don't recommend this, is
to not have a scrum masterproduct owner for a year and
then see where you miss themark this is not long jump
where you can keep tryingseveral times and get closer
and closer to the end, right?
You only have one shotbasically with your customers.
You miss it with a product.
The product failed.

(51:59):
You lost the customer, butyou lost more than that.
You have reputation damage now.
On that, you cannot put a price.
Well, a lie business is thatwe're all aligned, okay?
We talk about in thispodcast, we're not aligned.
But we're all super tiredof pretending to agree.
And also we're all tiredof Brian saying the same
thing over and over again.

(52:19):
Like, I they're not reinforcingconsensus because they're
not driving to consensusbecause of many reasons that
we talk about this podcast.
You need to driveto the consensus.
You need to drive to the vision.
You need to writeit down somewhere.
There's a lot of stuff wetalk about in this podcast.
It's hard for me to summarize,but I'm gonna try to, I'm
gonna say the repetition.
Like, it's not a communicationproblem that you've uncovered

(52:42):
because your product peopleor your leaders or whatever
keep repeating the same thing.
It's not a quote problem.
The reason they're doingthat is because they're
reflecting some dysfunctionsin the organization.
So yes, in ideal world,I would say things once,
maybe documented, and thatwould be the end of it.
Everyone would be aligned.
That's not the real worldaccountability we talked
about fake alignment.

(53:03):
Well, we didn't really gotoo deep into like, people
thinking, like saying theyagree, but don't really agree.
I feel that should be anotherpodcast out of this one.
Definitely.
And then the challenge, likethe few things that we throw
out throughout in the podcastis like, call to actions.
Things you can do is likeevery time you repeat
yourself, like maybe markit down to like, maybe write
an indicator of like, why,like are you, are you saying

(53:24):
something for the first time?
Are you refining the waythat you said something?
So you're changingthe message slightly?
, Or are you just reinforcing.
To try to build thatconsensus organization wide.
We covered a lot ofground on this podcast.
We didn't talk about otherthings that you said we should
defer to a different podcast,which I agree with a lot know

(53:44):
if you, if if ever been in atown hall meeting where you're
all muted, all 400 of you andsome leader gets up on their
podium and they say, watchthis, this is what we're doing.
Rah, rah, rah.
Any questions?
And anytime anybody asks aquestion, by the way, the
first few questions are usuallyplanted i'm sure that's not

(54:05):
news to people that have beenaround the block, but you
know, so I need the music.
Dun, dun dun so, so whenyou, when you say something
and everyone on the callsays, sees who it is, yeah.
That's not psychologicallysafe, so most people are
just gonna say, you don'treally know what this guy's
talking about, but whatever.
Yeah that's a wasteof time times 400.

(54:25):
Yes so an hour long, oneof those, that's a lot
of money folks, right?
So if you're in that, feelfree to do one of two things.
Either if you are one of theorganizers of such a, construct,
feel free to provide forumswhere people can ask questions
without being identified sothat you can answer them.
You're soliciting theseactively, not trying to

(54:46):
suppress them, right?
Mm-hmm.
But if you're also one ofthe participants, right?
Then I would say grow uphere and say, look, I'm
asking this question andthis is the reason why.
And here's my question.
Don't lead with the questionbecause immediately you
are pigeonholed into Yeah.
You're a troublemaker, right?
We'll say that one more timeon this podcast, I guess.
Keep that resume updated, folks.

(55:08):
Oh, sorry.
Well if you like this podcastlike, and subscribe share the
podcast with someone who can,I know there are people out
there that can use this podcast.
Share it with a leader oror maybe even a director
of your choice, share itwith people that are sick
of repeating themselves.
It doesn't matterwho it's Right.
And let's know in the commentsbelow what other topics
you want us to delve into.
And we will be happy to oblige.

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AA227 - Tired of Repeating Yourself? Fixing Broken Communications!

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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;}AA227 - Tired of Repeating Yourself? Fixing Broken Communications!