June 23, 2025 • 52 mins
We tackle the workplace dilemma of being asked to do work outside your job description and why saying "not my job" can damage your career.
• Three key reasons behind "not my job" situations: resource gaps, skill mismatches, and prioritization issues
• Why successful professionals avoid saying "not my job" even when tasks fall outside their responsibilities
• Strategies for addressing work overload without damaging professional relationships
• The importance of having honest conversations with your manager about skill gaps and time constraints
• How managers should sometimes protect their team by saying "that's not their job" on their behalf
• Tips for turning potential "not my job" moments into opportunities for growth and advancement
• Why company "all hands" meetings are inappropriately named based on the naval emergency origins of the term
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, all right, cool Cowabunga.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Radical.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Gnarly Phosphorus.
Wait, wait, wait.
You're just going periodictable on me.
Yeah, why not?
You start ripping those out ofnowhere.
Lithium Sodium, you got to say.
But if you do the periodictable, you got to do the actual
(00:31):
two-letter.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Beryllium.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Sodium N-A what?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
is beryllium B-I.
Absolutely, you cannot say theletters, it's got to just
hydrogen, all right.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Oxygen, I need it, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Potassium Okay.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
All right, we just turned into 3-6 Mafia for the
baritone.
We got a table Holiday season.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Unumptanium, thatobtainium.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
That's not it.
There are some crazy onesthough.
Yeah, there's some crazy.
You know some crazy elements.
I mean, I just pulled up theperiodic table because I was
like what are the ones that areridiculous?
I like that you couldn't evenstick with what you.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
You had to go look it up.
I wanted the weird ones.
Because, you said unobtainiumweird ones.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
You should know them.
You said unobtainment.
That's not a thing you want tobet.
I'm looking at it right now.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
There's some wild ones.
You see how it's right towardsthe bottom.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Oh, yeah, just bottom right.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, it's right next to Deezium.
That's false.
You gotta look for Deezium,that's false.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
You just see in the table for some Deezium.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
There you go search.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Okay, okay, here you go.
What if I name three, where twoare fake and one is real?
I'm ready.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Let's are fake, okay, and one is real.
I'm ready, let's do it.
Let's go, let's play this gameright now.
Come on, I know my elements.
Oh my gosh, hit me.
Come on, stop trying to hit meand hit me, all right.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I'm going to smack you across the face.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Smack me with these elements.
You ready, ready, I'm ready?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
18 times Galvium, uh-huh.
Zeronium, uh-huh, okay,flarovium.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Wait, say that last one again.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Flarovium.
It's Galvium.
You think that's the real one?
I think that's the real one.
False.
It's Flavorium Period tableFL114 Flavorium Flavorium Like.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
The Flavorium of my drink Is delicious.
I don't know what Flavorium is.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Synthetic element Fi, atomic number 114 extremely
radioactive get out of here itwas first.
It is named after a Florovlaboratory of nuclear reactions
in Dubna, russia, where it wasfirst synthesized.
It's always.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Dubna, it's always Dubna.
Hey, Galvium sounded good.
Good job.
Did you make that up or did youuse AI?
Probably AI.
How dare you Do you have not acreative ounce of blood in your
cells?
None Zero.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
But it was a fun game , it was a fun game.
Nerds would love this.
We should make this a boardgame.
Okay, sell millions.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, but any chemist is just like.
This is the dumbest game ever.
This is like Mario, but it's aflat plane.
There's no jumping.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
This is how you tell who your true chemist friends
and who your fake ones are.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I have that problem.
I'm sure your true chemistfriends work in a lab Usually
identifiable by the white coatswait, they just wear those
around with test tubes andbeakers in their hands, like, oh
yes, the reaction, catalyzing,stimulating.
I see what's the molecularcombination of this substance.
(04:26):
Swirl the beaker, swirl thetest tube, you know, flavodium.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Flavorium Founded in Dubno Russia.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Good, it's great.
No, every chemist I know talksthis way.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, same here.
I know a lot of them.
I mean, I passed my APenvironmental science exam in
high school, so I'm basically achemist.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
I failed every AP test.
I took Every single one.
No, every single one, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Dang.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, I'm pretty stupid on the whole.
I'm pretty stupid Like on achart, definitely falling in the
average.
You know what I'm saying.
Like I'm in that big bell curve.
That's me.
That's me in the middle, rightin the middle.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Representing the people.
Yeah, right in the middle, youknow it's not fair.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
There is no deviation in my standard.
Let me just tell you.
There is no deviation in mystandard.
Let me just tell you.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
What's not fair is that school smarts.
You know people are.
Are you, would you consideryourself?
Would you consider yourself agood test taker or no?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I'm a terrible test taker, great interviewer,
terrible test taker, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Interesting I was actually.
That was going to be a followup question Like is the
correlation between people whoare good test takers or good
interviewers?
I don't think there's any.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
No, not at all, because I'm not.
I'm really bad at recallinginformation when like demanded,
especially when presented withmultiple answers.
It's like something happens tome where it's like oh, I know
this, I know this.
But now that you've presentedme with these two answers that
sound kind of the same Flavonium, galvium, zirconium like I
(06:11):
don't know which one to pick.
Which one do I pick?
Speaker 1 (06:14):
It's always picked wrong, as evidenced by the game
we played earlier.
See, unless I'm completelyseparated from the information,
like I have no idea what theinformation is.
Oh, we have a special guest.
There's a four-legged guest.
Needs a little bit of a haircut, but the salt and pepper is
(06:35):
really working for it, so cute.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
So cute.
It's thundering and he has thefear he's going to hide under my
chair and I'm going to squishhis tail, tail.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
So it's better I just put him in a lap, pick him up.
I do the same, yeah.
But going back to what I was, Iwas thinking is tell me, yeah,
I learned a long time ago thatif I know even an ounce of the
information, or I generally havestudied, then I know to go to
my with my gut.
I used to be a really bad testtaker, like in middle school I'd
.
I'd always be like, oh, maybeit's this one, maybe it's this
one.
And then when I got into highschool, I started just saying
(07:07):
just let it rip.
And from there on I just gowith my gut.
Whatever, the first answer isno second guessing, you're
paying me.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I am Beyblades with your tests.
I like it, that's right.
That's right.
Yeah, I did way better Like Ipassed pretty much all of my AP
exams except for like one.
If it was a written test, crushit, I could crush it, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Written exam yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, you're creative .
If it is a multiple choice, I'mprobably going to get a C or
below Guarantee.
Yeah, no.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I just yeah, I'm the opposite, not good at that.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
But if it's trivia, like if you're like hey, do you
know the answer to this?
Like yeah, of course I know theanswer to that.
It's this assertive.
It's interesting don't give mechoices.
How dare you give me choices?
Yeah, I'm not.
Wow, I got a weird brain.
Uh, certifiably stupid, I think, is what they would call people
like that is that what theycall that curve like right in
the middle is the dude.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
That's's like the ninja or the Jedi.
He's on.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yes, that's me, I'm the Jedi.
And then you have like doofuson the one end and then you know
, brainiac on the other yeah bigbrain on the other and you're
just right in the middle.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I got the hood up?
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, that's me, what's up.
Hello, what's up, fellow stoops?
Speaker 1 (08:22):
You know, now that we've talked about your brain a
little bit, I want to hear aboutyour vibe track.
But on your physical ailments,I want to hear about your feet.
How are they doing?
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Welcome back to Foot Strategy.
The podcast is all about feet.
Time to talk about Bruce's feet.
Clark, your feet are golden.
Hopefully your pinky toe ishealing.
Well, it's all about feet today.
Yeah, my toes are doingsquexcellent, as some might say.
(08:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've stillgot a little bit of scabbing on
the left side because I had bothsides done on the left toe.
For those that didn't listen tothe previous couple of casts, I
had my toes chopped off to getrid of some ingrown toenails and
left one.
For those that didn't listen tothe previous couple of casts
had my toes chopped off, uh, toget rid of some ingrown toenails
and left one almost completelyhealed Right one.
That's.
That's the most beautifullooking toe I've ever seen in my
life.
So, yeah, yeah, there's noingrown.
(09:17):
There's no curvature to thenail.
Great, it worked.
That's what I like to hear.
Well, we'll see.
Time is really the true tellerof secrets when it comes to
ingrowns.
So we'll see if they come backor not, but I'm confident on the
right one.
How's your little baby toe?
You slammed that thing into awall at 100 miles an hour.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yo, that thing stepped right in my squat rack
and man, that metal squat rackdone, messed up my toe Like
black by the end of the nightcould barely.
I was lipping around.
It was rough.
You don't realize, like, howmuch you depend on a single toe
until you have.
You know this until you dosomething to your toes and then
you're like holy cow.
That impacts my whole life itreally does.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Mobility is tied so much to your big toes I mean all
your toes like your balance,your ability to actually move
with any kind of speed.
It's all toe.
It's all toe work.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, it's crazy because you think, like you try
to like walk where only, like,the top of your foot hits and
your toe doesn't really hit.
It doesn't work.
You walk real slow, real slow.
But yeah, I'm good.
No, no broken toe, no need foran x-ray.
I think it's fully healed atthis point, so I'm feeling good
after a couple of weeks.
I appreciate you asking.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Good, I'm glad to hear it.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Corporate strategy, podiatry, foot strategy, foot
strategy, podiatry lovers that'sit.
Keep going.
No, no, I love podiatry, that'sit that.
No, no, I love podiatry, that'sit.
That's our next.
Love feet, you love feet.
Huh, how does somebody get intothat craft?
Because I always go in like adiet.
Well, I went to my podiatrist.
(10:51):
I'm like she was just so happyto like be touching feet all day
yes, my brother-in-law is apodiatrist.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
What you want to have him on, you want to ask him.
He'll tell you yeah I actuallyI know the answer I know the I'm
not gonna say I'll bring'm notgoing to say it, we'll bring him
on Guess what.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah, we'll have him on, we'll leave a cliffhanger,
because I'm super curious.
She was talking to me andgrabbing my foot and stretching
things out at the same time.
It was something she enjoyeddoing and I was like this is
just weird.
How do people get into this?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
He likes it.
He's good at it.
Uh, yeah, uh, husband of keelan, who was on the pod before
telling us about unions, we'llbring him on.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
You'll get to talk to a podiatrist heck, yeah, man,
we're so connected in thispodcast.
Now, like we're so connected,we would have never had this
connection.
I know they're family, butlet's pretend like we're huge.
Wow, well, we'll edit that partout.
We would have never had thisconnection four years ago.
But now, cause we are so big,it's so easy to get podiatrists
on here.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Y'all you know we get like a thousand listens per
episode.
Now, did you know that?
Did you know corporate strategyis the biggest fricking thing
on Apple podcasts?
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Didn't?
Uh didn?
Rogan sent an invite the otherday for us to come on.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
He did and a couple of like serial.
Serial was like hey, we knowyou haven't murdered anybody,
but we'd still like to do aninvestigation into you.
I'm like, please investigate us, that's right, Find those
skeletons.
You won't.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
I want them.
I want them to find them, causeI want to make sure that they
keep us in check, but we won'tuse their real names because I
don't want them to link anythingto me, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Clark was a normal, average male until one day he
wasn't when he snapped and tookout his co-worker while they
were making a dump in the middleof a crowded office hallway.
No one knows who the dumper was, except for Clark.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
So we brought him onto our show to interview and
get his side of the story.
You know, I liked all that,except for the verb you used,
making a dump.
Making a dump I don't I reallydon't like that.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I mean, don't they call it make, right, so that's
like.
You know, that's.
It's another word for excrement, the make.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
You know you gotta clean up your make Stool
excrement.
Yeah, Feces.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Fecal matter.
Feculants Make yeah, let's justthrow them all out there what
is this?
Good, this is a good one.
13 minutes in.
I feel like we're reallycovering some new ground here.
Uh, die.
Hey, it's been like two monthssince we podcast, but our last
(13:33):
episode ended on a cliffhanger.
Do you even remember what ourlast episode was about?
Speaker 1 (13:37):
clark I remember be honest.
No, I'm gonna be 100 honest.
I'm not touching anything.
It was about having hardconversations.
Having hard conversations.
Do I remember the cliffhanger?
No, I'll be completely honest,I don't remember.
Good, good.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
So I mean, I'm actually happy you got like most
of it.
The hard conversations was thetopic, but there was a specific
thing that I teased and I saidthis gets brought up a lot and
it's not as easy to solve as therest of the hard conversations
out there.
You ready for it?
I'm ready.
It's a phrase You've heard.
(14:18):
It might have even said it.
It's not my job.
Now you see why I wanted tosave an episode for this because
it's huge.
This is so much more difficultto deal with as a manager or an
ic than any of those otherthings, because there are two
(14:39):
very radical extremes to thisphrase.
That, like we got to unpack itright so.
So if you've spent any amountof time in the workplace, you
have heard someone utter thephrase not my job and it has
produced a reaction from you.
Or maybe you've said ityourself and it's produced a
reaction from others, but it's aloaded thing like you can't
(15:02):
just drop this on the fly, like.
That's like pulling out a gunin a crowded theater.
You say not my job, you areinviting angst, pain,
potentially a conversation withyour manager.
When was the last time youheard it, clark?
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Or when was the last time you said it?
Yeah, to your point, itdefinitely is is it's loaded?
And it's loaded if you thinkabout, like, when does it?
When does it occur?
Okay, that's what got methinking of like, what is the,
what is the typical reason orthe motivation behind saying it?
And I think the biggestmotivation and this is the one
(15:42):
that hurts the most it meanssomebody didn't do something
correctly or there's a need,there's a need out there that's
being unfulfilled, and that'stypically when you hear it.
You're all sitting there and,man, it would be great if
somebody did this, because itwould really help us progress
this.
And then everybody looks ateach other like, well, not my
(16:05):
job, or that's probably the lasttime.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I heard it, davey, can you, could you take this on
as part of your assignments forthis week?
Not my job, yep, or that's notwhat I was hired for.
The eloquent answer.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yes, that's the way, corporate way to say it is.
Hey, sorry, not in my jobdescription, not part of my
department.
Can't help you there Not my canit's interesting.
I actually think it can be usedinnocently too, absolutely,
which is why it's so heavy.
It's like it can be sarcastic.
(16:42):
It can be like a backhandedcompliment to somebody of, like
you know, someone just droppedthe ball and isn't doing well.
It could be a true gap that'sout there that nobody is
fulfilling, and I think that's Iprobably have heard it most in
the last two.
Like the innocent one is prettyrare, I think yeah, at least in
(17:03):
my experience, but the there'sa gap and no one's fulfilling it
, or it's backhanded to say well, sorry, not my job.
Like that is the sarcastic.
Somebody didn't do somethingright or they're failing again
to fulfill what we need them todo.
That's when I hear it the most.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
It.
It is almost all.
I love the way you set this up,because it is almost always a
failure on someone else that isnow being trickled down to
someone else to fix.
And that's when you break thisout.
Right, because, like in theback of your mind, when you whip
out the not my job, it'sbecause you're thinking, well,
(17:37):
that was Jeff's job, like thatwas his responsibility, and now
I'm being asked to do it, likeI'm gonna say these words.
But let me tell you as a, as amanager or as as a person who's
a leader, the second you hearnot my job.
All you can think is I want topunt this person into the sky
(17:58):
for uttering this and sayingthis, because how much of the
things do all of us do thatisn't our job.
And you know, fundamentally,the problem is they're right,
it's not their job.
I would assume 99% of the timepeople say not my job.
They're accurate, like veryrarely do they say it, and
(18:18):
they're like oh, actually, no,it wasn't my contract.
Lol, lmfao, sorry about, aboutit I'll do better next time
turns out it was my job 99 ofthe time.
It's not their job, but sayingit is bad yep 100.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
What's?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
that about.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
It doesn't look good to say that no but it's true,
yeah, yeah, it's like, and Ithink of it actually recently.
I have an example.
Um, you know, being in product,I have an expectation of my
team to understand data.
You know they should be lookingat the data for what they're
building, the features thatthey're building, see if they're
(18:58):
hitting their kpis, if it'sfulfilling our okrs.
I'm using these acronyms.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Gross.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
If you don't know them, just start Urban
Dictionary and you'll figure itout.
So, whenever they're doing that, I'm like I need you guys to
make sure you don't need to knowlike SQL to like query this
data.
That is not an expectation ofyour job, but you should know
how to pull up a dashboardthat's pointing to our data
source and be able to look atthe data of your feature.
(19:27):
Like you probably wrote therequirements for the data
gathering, and so you should beable to like see, are we doing
good, Are we not doing good?
That's my expectation and, forwhatever reason, instead of
doing that, they write therequirements but they never look
at the data.
And I'm like so can you show methe dashboard?
And they're like well, we'rewaiting on the analytics team to
(19:47):
put a dashboard together.
So I'm like well, can you tellme, like generally, are we doing
good, Are we doing bad?
And they can't.
And I'm like hold on, I don'tknow how to build a beautiful
dashboard that the analyticsteam would give me, but I know
enough to get in there the data.
Yeah, I know enough to like Iknow where the data is.
(20:08):
I have access to the tools.
I'm not going to build.
You know a funnel chart thatshows the dropout rate at each
step of whatever we're building.
But I'm going to be able to sayX, amount of people have used
this thing, X, Y amount ofpeople have converted.
Therefore, our conversion rateis whatever.
Like I should be able to knowthat.
And whenever I hear that and itjust kind of deflects it,
they're just like yeah, well,that team's doing it and they're
not saying it, but they'resaying it.
(20:28):
That's not my job to buildthese dashboards.
Yeah, they're like well, I'mblocked, I'm waiting on the
analytics team.
I'm like that's not an excuse,Okay, so.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
I'm going to, I'm all reverse this on you.
What happens if they've donethe work and you know that
they've?
They've gotten their data,they've, they've built their
charts, they've put togethertheir presentation, but the data
is bad, and you know it.
But they don't know it becausethey're pulling from the source
(20:57):
and you say, well, well, this,this data is bad.
You should have gone and done afurther investigation into the
data and saw that it wasn't goodand it wasn't usable.
Uh, not my job, like trulyright.
Like that's not the job youhired.
You didn't hire them to be datascientists, right, like when?
(21:18):
And then this is the problem.
This is the problem, this isthe fundamental problem is
there's this weird littlespectrum of yeah, you could do
this and you're just being, youknow, pedantic.
The time it's taking for you toworry about this and go off and
do it is less than the time itwould take just to go do it.
And also there is the well, ifyou go and do this, you're
(21:41):
basically letting someone elseget off the hook and they're
never going to do it and you'reprobably going to just continue
to do it again because they suckat their jobs.
So then the like, in eithercase, when you say not my job,
it still hurts, right.
Like I don't know how to solvefor this phrase, I don't know
how to do it for this phrase.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I don't know how to do it.
It's usually, you know, aresource gap, yes, a skill gap,
or a prior or a prioritizationissue.
Like it's usually one of thosethree things like if you think
about like okay, you've got ateam that's got the skill to do
it, but they're notprioritization issue you've got
the skill or you don't have theskill to do the job, so you're
like I don't even know how tolike write requirements for good
(22:29):
data skill issue.
You know you can train that.
You can find the gap there.
You're like, okay, this persondoesn't really know how to build
good metrics, to measure kpis.
You know we can work on thattogether.
That's a skill issue andsometimes there's just no one to
do it.
Probably in you know thestartup case where you have it's
like we don't have anybody.
That's a resource issue, or wedon't have the budget to pay for
(22:50):
this thing Resource issue andso like it usually comes down to
one of the three things.
In my opinion, like theexamples I've seen, it's like,
as a manager, those are what myhead goes through and like I
asked them, I'm like, okay,there's a team that does this.
Did you reach out to them?
You should have been able topull the normal numbers and just
like get a general sense, likethat's my expectation of you.
Skill issue so a combination ofthe two.
(23:11):
It's like prioritization forthat team and a skill issue on
my own team to understand how toget that data.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
So I think these are the three.
These are the three pillarsthat not my job falls into.
Nailed it.
What do you say instead?
So I think, for the first one,people and I'll talk about the
people issue, cause I deal withthis on a day-to-day basis right
, like starting as employeenumber four.
Now we've got over.
I don't even know.
We're like, we're approachinglike 200 or we're past.
I don't, I don't keep track.
(23:39):
There were many times when Icould say not my job, but truly,
who's going to do it if not me?
And it's one of the like yeah,I could ask this guy to do it
and they probably would, butwould they do it as well as me?
Like for the success of thecompany, for the success of
myself and my brand andeverything around me.
(24:00):
When you are small or you don'thave the people to fill in, you
should not say not my job.
Instead, if you can do it, youshould.
If you can't do it, have aconversation and find someone
who can be like I'm just I'mworried that my skillset might
not fit to solve for this peopleproblem.
But the real solve here is ifit becomes a repeatable offense
(24:23):
wow, I'm not doing my job a lot.
We need to hire for this role.
This is eating up a lot of mytime.
Come with data.
You know I spend 25% of my weekdoing these demo calls.
I'm not a sales engineer.
We should probably get some SEsat the company.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Yeah, I love that.
That's the people problem.
The first one, the resource,you know, people problem.
I think it's exactly what youjust said.
It's hey, I understand thisneeds to be done, so I'm
attempting to do it, but youknow, I feel like I'm slacking
on my current job.
So can you help me?
I'm thinking from the employee,not the manager perspective, but
(25:01):
your role as an employee is youhave to come to your boss and
say, hey, I'm struggling tobalance this in my working hours
because I have to do all thisextra work but also my current
job.
Am I doing too much?
Can you help me figure out howto balance these two things?
Because I feel like I'm noteffectively doing my day job and
you're asking me to do extra,and because it could be you set
(25:21):
the and I do this.
You probably are the same, beinga type A person If I'm going to
do something and I love to saythis line I don't half-ass it, I
whole-ass it, and so, even if Idon't know it, I'm going to try
to do it because I want to besuccessful, and then my
manager's got to run me back tobe like okay, I need you to do
like 10% of what you did,because this report was super
awesome.
(25:41):
Not everything we need, and ifyou need to make back time,
don't do nine pages out of those10, do the one page.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
I love that.
I think that's the way, and Ithink you never say not my job
in that scenario.
Instead, you have a very frankconversation about your skill,
if that's the issue, or youbring it up as a hey, this is
eating into my ability toperform my current role, like we
should probably fill this gap,otherwise it's going to impact
our deliverables.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yeah, and on the skill one because you said the
people one, but I think theskill one you know that
conversation could be phraseddifferently If it's part of your
day job and you feel like youjust aren't being successful.
You know you're moving slowerthan everybody else, or there's
a new expectation that, like youjust don't feel like is getting
the results that you need.
(26:30):
Like, let's say, you switch toa different programming language
or something and you feel likeyou're just really struggling to
keep up with the team that'sworking on that.
Or you know you're working 60hours and you're only doing like
half the story points.
If you work in like agilesoftware development as somebody
else, you should probably go toyour manager and be like, hey,
I'm really trying to learn this.
You know, inside my workinghours complete my tasks, but, to
(26:52):
be honest with you, I feel likeI'm not keeping up with the
rest of the group.
What if I went to a training,you know, in order to learn more
about whatever this is?
Because I feel like that couldreally help that knowledge gap
and I could be more productive.
And so, like what you said isperfect, bruce, it's like go
with a tangible output to say Iwent to my manager.
(27:12):
I didn't say it was a skillissue.
I said I acknowledge I'm notmoving as quickly.
I want to be more productive.
So the positive angle of it.
And then you gave an option.
You said I think this trainingwould help.
So you gave the specificresource that you need that you
think will help you do better.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
And I think by doing that, you did everything you
could do.
Here's the thing about thatspecific approach which I love
is, if it's truly not your job,your manager is going to be like
, why the heck would we send youto training for something
that's not your responsibility?
We need to fix this problem.
If this is like, if this isdoing this much time and effort
away from like your, your focus,like I got to go have a
(27:50):
conversation with my directorbecause this isn't right.
Like we shouldn't be sendingyou off for training for not
your job, Get them to say notyour job, right.
Like now you've won.
If someone else says not yourjob to you, you've won the game.
But I think that's such a goodone because it requires budget.
It showcases your ability tokind of want to go and do better
and do more even though this isnot your job.
Like really good mental jujitsuto reverse, take down that
(28:17):
situation.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Rear naked.
Chokehold your manager.
That's what you got to do.
Yes, thanks, they love the wordexactly HR loves when you say
that I'm gonna.
I love going to hr and tellingthem hey, my conversation with
my employee put them right intoa rear naked chokehold they hr
loves that.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
They do love it.
They do love it, actual jujitsumove yeah, and on that note
it's.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
You know, I think I actually recently had somebody
do this where they wanted to getlike a project management
certificate, not a productmanagement certificate, and I
know what the certificate is andI know people that have gotten
it in a different department,and so it makes it interesting
for me as the manager.
Like they reached out and said,hey, I think I want to go for
this certification or whatever,and obviously I want to be
(29:02):
supportive, but everythingthey're going to learn in that
is not necessarily their role.
So that got my brain thinking.
I'm like I need to reach out tothis person and we need to have
a conversation around.
Why do you feel like this wouldbe helpful in your day-to-day?
And then I can understand as amanager are they spending a lot
of time doing more of projectmanagement than product
management?
Because, frankly, projectmanagement is not their job.
(29:25):
I need them to be talking tocustomers, I need them to be
writing requirements.
I don't need them to be projectmanagement or product managing
their projects.
That is a whole otherdepartment that needs to do that
role.
So that'll help me, as amanager, understand.
Are they spending a lot of timedoing something that they
shouldn't be doing.
And now I need to reach out tothe manager of that group so
that way they can actually gettheir team to work and do what
(29:47):
they need to be doing.
Or is it just a generalinterest, which in that case,
great.
But I'll probably point them,I'll deflect them a little bit
to the side and say why don'tyou go for the product owner,
product manager certificate?
Because I feel like you get alot of learnings that are
directly towards this role and Ihave budget to support those
things.
Love it love it.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
What was the third pillar?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
you either have a people or budget, people or
budgets?
A resource issue resource right, is there a team or not a team?
Is their budget is or notbudget?
You have skill, right?
That's the second one and thenthe third one um, oh shoot, are
we both blanking on it?
Play this back, craig.
Craig, roll back the tape.
Roll back the tape.
(30:30):
If only this could happen.
This is why we need ai, craig.
We need an ai version of youtape.
Roll it.
He's not doing, it's gonna comeyeah, nothing's happening.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Nothing's happening.
Craig is drinking pepsi, givingme the.
I got it yeah, I got.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
It came back.
I can use my brain.
Sometimes I'm not fully good todo this.
It's a prioritization issueprioritization.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
That's the third pillar.
Yeah, it's my favorite elementprioritization is it?
Speaker 1 (31:00):
yeah, I think it's a pr on the periodic table.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Maybe number 336 sounds right yeah, right next to
pepsi, yeah my favorite one.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Um, yeah, that one is interesting.
It's like is it a?
Hey, you're not getting yourstuff done?
And then they're like, well,you know, that part's not my job
, or is it?
You know, I reached out, or I Ihave a bad expectation of my
employee as a manager andthey're coming to me saying,
sorry, that thing didn't getdone, you know not my job.
(31:30):
And then is it?
I guess I'm trying to thinkthrough the different scenarios,
yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
So I mean I'm thinking like from a, from a
marketing perspective.
You know we're looking tocreate some new assets, some new
video assets, and it's like,well, my team does written, we
do written assets here, but likevideo is the highest priority
right now.
Like we need a lot of video andwe only have got one guy who's
(31:56):
working on it.
Can your team help?
It's the highest priority.
Like, yeah, it does fall alittle bit under skill and
resource, but like it's, it'swhen you might have those things
, but not enough, because thepriority shifts.
I think your your example oflearning a different language in
coding is also really good,because chances are someone was
(32:18):
hired because oh, oh, yeah, I'mproficient in Java, but this new
project using Python, I mean,I'm still, I was hired to write
Java and we still have things towork on in Java.
But like, yeah, it would helpif I learned Python for our
overall you know, efficiency andspeed.
So, like you can, kind ofprioritization is almost like
(32:38):
the offset for the other two,where it might not be a
permanent problem, but you coulddefinitely see someone being
like, well, it's not my job towrite, yeah, python I, I wasn't
hired for that.
I don't know how to do that.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
So yeah, go find someone who can write like yeah,
going back to the analyticsexample I was getting, and the
perfect example was, yeah, theyreached out to this team.
We have a whole team, so thereis no resource issue here, like
there's a team who does thesethings.
And, you know, my employee cameto me like, well, I don't have
a dashboard, I'm blocked by thisteam and it's a prioritization
(33:11):
issue of the other team andmaybe, to your point, that is
the offset, because maybe theyneed more resources to support
all the work.
I don't know their deal that tosupport all the work.
I don't know their deal.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
That's their thing to figure out, but for me I'm like
, well, it's a priority for us.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, yeah, they're really awful.
The worst, they should getfired.
Lay them off, you know, pipthem, pip them all.
But it's like it's a priorityfor us and I don't know
everything else going on overthere.
So it does feel like, hey, isthis more important than the
stuff they're currently workingon?
Maybe not, and that's kind ofmy role as a manager to go talk
(33:43):
to them and be like hey, youknow, we really rely on your
team to create these dashboardsso that we ensure, as we're
building things and launchingthem, we know if they're
successful or not, and we needyour team support.
And so it's kind of both.
It's like well, I'm going totrain my team to know enough to
get the high level numbers so wecan know if we're going in the
right direction or if something,detrimentally, is wrong.
And then I'm also going to reachout to that manager to be like
hey, let's talk about like howyou can better support my team,
(34:06):
and maybe it is a budgetresource issue.
And they're like well, we justcan't balance everything and we
talk about the prioritization ofeverything.
And they're like yeah, you'reright, like you've got a lot of
high priorities you need to putin a staffing request and my
project is happy to help pay fora contractor in the meantime to
do the work and that'll helpwith the prioritization issue on
that team, because I can'tcontrol resources for that team.
(34:27):
I can only help try toprioritize my work and help
support them to get their ownresources.
So it is really interesting tothink about it from that angle
because I think it does kind ofwork as an offset but at the
same time it's almost like inbigger organizations how you
figure out what the true issueis.
Yep.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
I think it's interesting because
prioritizations are probably thereason why not my jobs happen
as often as they do.
It's usually like the peopleproblem.
That's a startup issue.
That's a growing pain, theskill issue, probably caused by
prioritization.
Right Like you were hiredbecause you were skillful and
(35:07):
now you're struggling becausepriorities have changed and what
you were hired for is no longerthe job you're expected to do,
or there has been additionalthings added to your job that
you were not hired for and notmy job.
No, that's reprioritization.
It is your job actually.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
I agree.
There's one more angle that'sinteresting.
I actually think and maybe thisis controversial, I'm curious on
your perspective From a managerperspective, telling your team
that's not your job is actuallya positive thing yes, agree I,
maybe that's all it goes yeah,yeah, because, like I, I work
(35:50):
for an organization that you canvery easily start doing
everyone else's job, working waymore hours, you know, not
really doing what you'resupposed to be doing,
prioritization, and I knowthere's an organization that
does that.
So when I know if my team'sdoing something like you, have
somebody on your team who is aproject manager, like this is
(36:10):
their job and there's a balance,it's like in crunch time in
companies or big launches orsomething like the lines get
blurred between the jobs andit's like I don't want to hear,
if this is our number onepriority for our company, that
it's not someone's job.
Someone take a bias for actionand do it, regardless of who it
is.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Someone's got to get it done.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Bias for action.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
My goodness.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
You've got to have a bias for action.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Do you have a master's?
Speaker 1 (36:36):
I didn't know about, got to get my MBA Harvard
Business School.
Okay, wow, wow, impressive.
Like crunch time, you got tolike blur those lines.
It's like that's not the rightcontextual time to be like sorry
, not my job, it's like thatdoesn't matter.
Like we got to launch in twodays.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
All hands on deck.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yeah, all hands on deck, it doesn't matter, I'll do
it myself.
And sometimes it's like I tellmy team this it's like we'll
happily jump in there and codewith the engineering team.
You probably don't want that asthe engineering team.
So how else can we help?
You know, can we test stuff.
You know if you do a build, canwe play around with it.
Try to see if we can breakanything to help the QE team.
And I think like that's thecontextually wrong time to use
(37:17):
sorry, not my job.
It's like you're jeopardizingsomething that's important to
the company.
You can't do that.
However, there is a right timeto do it where, if you have
organizations and departmentsand people that are dedicated to
roles, if you are going to makeyour team work really well in
their craft and going tocontribute the skill set that
(37:39):
the organization desperatelyneeds to the highest ability,
you can't have them doing otherpeople's jobs.
And I didn't believe this whenI first became a manager.
I was like, no, just dowhatever needs to be done, it
doesn't matter.
Blur the lines always.
And over time, like I'verealized, it's more about
telling your team like how doyou leverage your partners to
get work done if they're notdoing their role, and you should
(38:01):
talk to me about it if you feellike you're doing someone
else's role, so we can figureout the appropriate time to
break the cog in the machine ifwe need to.
So much as to, I've had teammembers come to me and say, hey,
clark, if I don't do this thingright now, it's going to fail.
And sometimes the answer is,hey, this is not that important.
(38:24):
I know you think everything'simportant.
It's okay.
Like I really appreciate howmuch you care about this.
This right now, is a good timeto basically let the cog in the
machine break so that way thepressure gets put on the right
team, so they fix their issue,because we can't fix it for them
and we've had conversations.
They aren't addressing theissue.
So now's the time to let thingsfail and hopefully it'll bring
(38:47):
awareness to the gaps that wehave that have been escalated
and haven't been solved.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
And so I think that's the balance of the manager I
love this because I agreewholeheartedly.
As a manager, I find myselfwhenever I notice my team is
doing something or being askedto do something that is not
their job, especially if it's bysomeone whose job it is to do
the thing, that's like, oh, Iget to go have a conversation,
this is going to be fun.
(39:11):
Why aren't you doing this andasking my team to do it?
That is your job, not theirs,and it's so good for a manager
to do that for you?
Like and I think that is thealternative to this is you never
say not my job, but absolutelyget your manager to say it on
your behalf?
Right, like that's the secretto this fight, because it's
(39:35):
going to put the other person onif it is a resource issue.
And there's like, why isn't youknow janine over there doing her
job?
Like why is she asking you todo it?
Like it's it's never going towork with peer going after peer.
It's got to be manager.
Either needs to go talk tojanine or janine's manager and
be like what the heck is goingon and why is she not able to do
(39:57):
this thing?
She's being asked to do, um,and that's that's the power of
it.
Right, like there is some powerto not my job, but it's only
when you don't say it, it's whensomeone else says it on your
behalf.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Yeah, absolutely yeah .
It's really interesting to likethink about you know both
perspectives from the individualside, like how you approach
your management team to do it onyour behalf.
And then for the manager sideof like how you the right and
wrong times to allow for it ornot allow for it.
How do you coach your team todo it at the right times?
Because, yeah, if it's likesuper critical and everyone's
(40:27):
just saying, well, sorry, we gotto let the cog in the machine
break, it's like no, no no.
We got to launch this productbecause we promised customers
it'd be out by this day.
It's like I will help and Ithink that's like the good
example to set.
It's like I'm not, as a manager, berating you for saying not my
job.
It's hey, I understand.
Like pressures are high rightnow.
Everybody's working long hours.
How can I help you?
Like what can I do to assist,because it's that important.
(40:50):
And so I think that's like ifyou're a manager, you've got to
understand that if it's crunchtime, you can't just say do the
extra work, stop complainingabout it.
It's if your team's coming toyou and they're expressing that
they're doing other people'sjobs, but you know it's crunch
time You've got to lean in alittle bit and say how do I help
, take on things to help getthis priority done for the
(41:11):
organization?
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Agreed and I think that's that's it right, like
that's the.
That's the way to round thisout is approach the situation
not from a point of notignorance.
What is it?
Stubbornness or insolence?
Approach it from problemsolving and get your manager to
(41:33):
not your job on your behalf.
This is how you grow.
This is how you do it.
Um, you got any?
Speaker 1 (41:39):
other thoughts.
Clark, no, no, that was, Iagree.
I think we pretty much coveredit.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Okay, I need to make a really quick pivot.
Okay, because you said you saidall hands on deck and then I
thought all hands.
Those are those meetings.
You know, everyone has allhands meetings.
All hands, all hands, two words.
We couldn't say all hands ondeck, we call them the all hands
meetings.
Now, clark, all hands, allhands.
(42:07):
Hold your hands up, Start withfeet and with hands.
Listen, I got a question foryou, clark.
How often would you say an allhands meeting is a crisis that
needs everyone to help with?
Never.
How often would your all-handsmeetings fulfill that
description?
Never, never.
(42:27):
You say Never.
You say Well, would you beshocked to know that in you know
pirate terms, aka naval terms,all-hands-on-deck is a crier
signal used on board ship,typically in an emergency, to
indicate that all members are togo to deck.
All members of a team arerequired.
(42:49):
It is a crisis that needseveryone's help.
Typically, a Navy vessel's crewis divided into watches, so the
crew rotation between being onduty and sleeping and eating
does not require an all-handssituation.
So my question to you is howdid we F this up so badly that
we just call our monthly,quarterly, whateverly, the
(43:10):
entire company's meeting?
Why doesn't it just call thecompany meeting, company
check-in, quarterly check-in Allhands, can we?
do nothing right.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
It's an unnecessary escalation.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
It's so unnecessary I refuse to participate in All
Hands ever again, unless it's anactual crisis or emergency.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Let me ask you this.
Ask me Should you ever attend apre-planned months ahead?
All Hands.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Excuse me, the heck you say.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Never.
I'm about to get aggressiveClark.
I'm about to get realaggressive.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
We just read you, bless you.
Did you just say a pre-plannedmonth before all hands, meeting,
meeting it?
Speaker 1 (44:03):
hits your calendar how do you?
Speaker 2 (44:05):
react I would burn this company's headquarters to
the ground.
There would be nothing left butarmrests.
Fire retardant armrests is allthat would remain of this
building.
The rest would be gone.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
If that ever happens, I think you reply all
immediately and you copy andpaste the definition from the
naval terms.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Is this a naval crisis for emergency?
Is this truly worthy of allhands on deck?
Speaker 1 (44:36):
How do you know that you're going to need all hands
on that specific day threemonths from now?
That you're going to need allhands on that specific day three
months from now?
The answer is you don't.
Here's the definition of an allhands.
I suggest you cancel thismeeting and change the name.
That's how you respond.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
Retitle it Company quarterly check-in.
All hands, get out of here.
All hands, I'm done, I'm tired.
Feet next, only feet, greatthat is ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
I mean I agree, my company does a town hall.
I like that.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
I like a town hall.
Town hall is great.
Town hall makes sense becausethe town comes together in a
central location to talk throughissues.
Town hall is great.
Town hall is such abetter-fitting description than
All Hands Agreed, the All Handsmeeting.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
All Hands should be emergencies.
Only, like you, should get aninvite hours before the day
before to be like, dropeverything.
You need to be at this meetingtomorrow.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
That is an appropriate use of the term.
I would accept this meeting.
I would say, okay, all Hands ondeck.
That is an appropriate use ofthe term.
I would accept this meeting.
I would say, okay, all hands ondeck, let's go.
Everyone get there.
It's do or die.
The ship is sinking.
There are pirates on thehorizon.
Starboard side, starboard.
Hit the poop deck.
Aft Bow.
Damn the torpedoes.
(45:57):
We're going down.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Why do I just have a lingering feeling that this is
somehow going to end up in theperiodic table again, just from
you using this vernaculum?
Vernaculum, that's the element.
It's like vernacular, but it'sthe element.
On the table.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
It's the element for words.
You know what words are madeout of Vernaculum Vernacular.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Vernacular came from the periodic table Vernaculum
V-E, if you will when we'refinished recording.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
you know what I have on my desktop Podcastium.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Everything deserves to be a no.
In it, it's true, all handsium.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
All handsium, not my jobium.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
Oh well, I think.
In short, to summarize thiswhole entire podcast, it's don't
say not my job, would you agree?
Like this whole podcast couldhave been like 10 seconds, just
say hey, just don't say, not myjob.
Just don't say not my job, justdon't.
And in general and maybe maybethis goes against human nature
(47:17):
I'm all about it, I don't think,I don't even think to me.
It's a waste of time, eventhough you're blowing off some
steam.
It's a waste of time to bejoking around with everyone else
and being like, oh yeah, not myjob, like there's an underlying
issue and by you not doingsomething about it, you're
wasting everyone's time Likeyou're sitting.
This is the reason for unneededmeetings.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
It has become a saying to me and this could be
my own bias for inaction at play, but when I hear someone say it
, I think less of them and I'llnever forget it.
It goes forever in my littlebrain box.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
I think oh yeah, they said not my job.
Yikes, I agree.
I'm going to give you a pro tip.
If you're listening, are youready?
Pro tip it.
The people who climb andsuccessfully climb the corporate
ladder don't say not my job.
No, they figure out, theyidentify the need and if it's
that critical, they do it andthat's typically how they get
(48:21):
promoted.
You know what I say to that.
You want to go back to podiatryor I think that does it.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
I think we're good.
I think we're great.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
I think we've gone head to feet to toes.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
Head to toes, head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees
and toes, eyes and ears andmouth and nose.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Head, shoulders, knees and toes.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
Knees and toes.
If you want to play along withus, join the Discord Discordium.
Inside of there we have protonsand electrons, but specifically
we have a channel called whatDo you Meme where you can make a
meme of our previous episode.
Please use meme format for ourown mouth parts.
(49:12):
We're going to describe thememe with our words.
We don't have any.
We need some.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
We need you to go on the what.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
You Meme channel and create a meme for the Not my Job
episode.
Do it Best, meme wins Go.
We also have is it me or is itcorporate?
A channel where you can forward, slash, confess and tell us
your anonymous confession and wewill tell you whether or not it
is a you problem or a corporateproblem.
The discord general is great.
You can join it by clicking onthe link tree in the show.
Notes get in there, getdiscording it notes get in there
(49:40):
, get discording.
It's a good place.
We've got good people.
We also have the ability foryou to go off and buy baby
onesies.
You want to buy cool swag fromus?
You can check out our website.
You can share this podcast withyour friends.
You can do so much.
You can do so much of corporatestrategy beyond just listen to
this in your podcast feed.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
But most importantly is review and share, if you can,
yeah we need a, we need mebeyond just listen to this in
your podcast feed.
But most importantly is reviewand share if you can.
Yeah, we need a, we needmeme-ium, we need review-ium, we
need share-ium it's.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
I mean, half of those are real.
I'm I'm convinced.
Two of the three.
This is a trick.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
There's not one right one in there.
This is a trick.
There's not only one, they'reactually all three real.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Yeah, I knew it, okay .
Hey, if someone asks you to dochemistry, what do you tell them
?
Speaker 1 (50:28):
I don't know, I didn't even my brain just shut
down when you said that.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Hey Clark, I know it's Thursday, but can you just
go and whip us up some hydrogenchloride please?
Speaker 1 (50:41):
We need it desperately right now If someone
asks me for chemistry, I'mimmediately grabbing a roll of
Mentos in a Coke bottle.
Chemistry First thing that cameto mind.
You know what?
Speaker 2 (50:56):
I do.
What's that?
I look them square in the eyesand say not my job.
I'm Bruce and I'm Clark andyou're on mute.
We will see you next week, it'sthe wrong button.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
That was incredible.
You just leave and it's just meand Craig.
Okay, all right, cool Cowabunga.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Radical.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Gnarly Phosphorus.
Wait, wait, wait.
You're just going periodictable on me.
Yeah, why not?
You start ripping those out ofnowhere.
Lithium Sodium, you got to say.
But if you do the periodictable, you got to do the actual
(00:31):
two-letter.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Beryllium.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Sodium N-A what?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
is beryllium B-I.
Absolutely, you cannot say theletters, it's got to just
hydrogen, all right.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Oxygen, I need it, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Potassium Okay.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
All right, we just turned into 3-6 Mafia for the
baritone.
We got a table Holiday season.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Unumptanium, thatobtainium.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
That's not it.
There are some crazy onesthough.
Yeah, there's some crazy.
You know some crazy elements.
I mean, I just pulled up theperiodic table because I was
like what are the ones that areridiculous?
I like that you couldn't evenstick with what you.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
You had to go look it up.
I wanted the weird ones.
Because, you said unobtainiumweird ones.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
You should know them.
You said unobtainment.
That's not a thing you want tobet.
I'm looking at it right now.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
There's some wild ones.
You see how it's right towardsthe bottom.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Oh, yeah, just bottom right.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, it's right next to Deezium.
That's false.
You gotta look for Deezium,that's false.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
You just see in the table for some Deezium.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
There you go search.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Okay, okay, here you go.
What if I name three, where twoare fake and one is real?
I'm ready.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Let's are fake, okay, and one is real.
I'm ready, let's do it.
Let's go, let's play this gameright now.
Come on, I know my elements.
Oh my gosh, hit me.
Come on, stop trying to hit meand hit me, all right.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I'm going to smack you across the face.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Smack me with these elements.
You ready, ready, I'm ready?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
18 times Galvium, uh-huh.
Zeronium, uh-huh, okay,flarovium.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Wait, say that last one again.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Flarovium.
It's Galvium.
You think that's the real one?
I think that's the real one.
False.
It's Flavorium Period tableFL114 Flavorium Flavorium Like.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
The Flavorium of my drink Is delicious.
I don't know what Flavorium is.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Synthetic element Fi, atomic number 114 extremely
radioactive get out of here itwas first.
It is named after a Florovlaboratory of nuclear reactions
in Dubna, russia, where it wasfirst synthesized.
It's always.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Dubna, it's always Dubna.
Hey, Galvium sounded good.
Good job.
Did you make that up or did youuse AI?
Probably AI.
How dare you Do you have not acreative ounce of blood in your
cells?
None Zero.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
But it was a fun game , it was a fun game.
Nerds would love this.
We should make this a boardgame.
Okay, sell millions.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, but any chemist is just like.
This is the dumbest game ever.
This is like Mario, but it's aflat plane.
There's no jumping.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
This is how you tell who your true chemist friends
and who your fake ones are.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I have that problem.
I'm sure your true chemistfriends work in a lab Usually
identifiable by the white coatswait, they just wear those
around with test tubes andbeakers in their hands, like, oh
yes, the reaction, catalyzing,stimulating.
I see what's the molecularcombination of this substance.
(04:26):
Swirl the beaker, swirl thetest tube, you know, flavodium.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Flavorium Founded in Dubno Russia.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Good, it's great.
No, every chemist I know talksthis way.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, same here.
I know a lot of them.
I mean, I passed my APenvironmental science exam in
high school, so I'm basically achemist.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
I failed every AP test.
I took Every single one.
No, every single one, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Dang.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, I'm pretty stupid on the whole.
I'm pretty stupid Like on achart, definitely falling in the
average.
You know what I'm saying.
Like I'm in that big bell curve.
That's me.
That's me in the middle, rightin the middle.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Representing the people.
Yeah, right in the middle, youknow it's not fair.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
There is no deviation in my standard.
Let me just tell you.
There is no deviation in mystandard.
Let me just tell you.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
What's not fair is that school smarts.
You know people are.
Are you, would you consideryourself?
Would you consider yourself agood test taker or no?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I'm a terrible test taker, great interviewer,
terrible test taker, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Interesting I was actually.
That was going to be a followup question Like is the
correlation between people whoare good test takers or good
interviewers?
I don't think there's any.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
No, not at all, because I'm not.
I'm really bad at recallinginformation when like demanded,
especially when presented withmultiple answers.
It's like something happens tome where it's like oh, I know
this, I know this.
But now that you've presentedme with these two answers that
sound kind of the same Flavonium, galvium, zirconium like I
(06:11):
don't know which one to pick.
Which one do I pick?
Speaker 1 (06:14):
It's always picked wrong, as evidenced by the game
we played earlier.
See, unless I'm completelyseparated from the information,
like I have no idea what theinformation is.
Oh, we have a special guest.
There's a four-legged guest.
Needs a little bit of a haircut, but the salt and pepper is
(06:35):
really working for it, so cute.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
So cute.
It's thundering and he has thefear he's going to hide under my
chair and I'm going to squishhis tail, tail.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
So it's better I just put him in a lap, pick him up.
I do the same, yeah.
But going back to what I was, Iwas thinking is tell me, yeah,
I learned a long time ago thatif I know even an ounce of the
information, or I generally havestudied, then I know to go to
my with my gut.
I used to be a really bad testtaker, like in middle school I'd
.
I'd always be like, oh, maybeit's this one, maybe it's this
one.
And then when I got into highschool, I started just saying
(07:07):
just let it rip.
And from there on I just gowith my gut.
Whatever, the first answer isno second guessing, you're
paying me.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I am Beyblades with your tests.
I like it, that's right.
That's right.
Yeah, I did way better Like Ipassed pretty much all of my AP
exams except for like one.
If it was a written test, crushit, I could crush it, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Written exam yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, you're creative .
If it is a multiple choice, I'mprobably going to get a C or
below Guarantee.
Yeah, no.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I just yeah, I'm the opposite, not good at that.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
But if it's trivia, like if you're like hey, do you
know the answer to this?
Like yeah, of course I know theanswer to that.
It's this assertive.
It's interesting don't give mechoices.
How dare you give me choices?
Yeah, I'm not.
Wow, I got a weird brain.
Uh, certifiably stupid, I think, is what they would call people
like that is that what theycall that curve like right in
the middle is the dude.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
That's's like the ninja or the Jedi.
He's on.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yes, that's me, I'm the Jedi.
And then you have like doofuson the one end and then you know
, brainiac on the other yeah bigbrain on the other and you're
just right in the middle.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I got the hood up?
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, that's me, what's up.
Hello, what's up, fellow stoops?
Speaker 1 (08:22):
You know, now that we've talked about your brain a
little bit, I want to hear aboutyour vibe track.
But on your physical ailments,I want to hear about your feet.
How are they doing?
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Welcome back to Foot Strategy.
The podcast is all about feet.
Time to talk about Bruce's feet.
Clark, your feet are golden.
Hopefully your pinky toe ishealing.
Well, it's all about feet today.
Yeah, my toes are doingsquexcellent, as some might say.
(08:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've stillgot a little bit of scabbing on
the left side because I had bothsides done on the left toe.
For those that didn't listen tothe previous couple of casts, I
had my toes chopped off to getrid of some ingrown toenails and
left one.
For those that didn't listen tothe previous couple of casts
had my toes chopped off, uh, toget rid of some ingrown toenails
and left one almost completelyhealed Right one.
That's.
That's the most beautifullooking toe I've ever seen in my
life.
So, yeah, yeah, there's noingrown.
(09:17):
There's no curvature to thenail.
Great, it worked.
That's what I like to hear.
Well, we'll see.
Time is really the true tellerof secrets when it comes to
ingrowns.
So we'll see if they come backor not, but I'm confident on the
right one.
How's your little baby toe?
You slammed that thing into awall at 100 miles an hour.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yo, that thing stepped right in my squat rack
and man, that metal squat rackdone, messed up my toe Like
black by the end of the nightcould barely.
I was lipping around.
It was rough.
You don't realize, like, howmuch you depend on a single toe
until you have.
You know this until you dosomething to your toes and then
you're like holy cow.
That impacts my whole life itreally does.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Mobility is tied so much to your big toes I mean all
your toes like your balance,your ability to actually move
with any kind of speed.
It's all toe.
It's all toe work.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, it's crazy because you think, like you try
to like walk where only, like,the top of your foot hits and
your toe doesn't really hit.
It doesn't work.
You walk real slow, real slow.
But yeah, I'm good.
No, no broken toe, no need foran x-ray.
I think it's fully healed atthis point, so I'm feeling good
after a couple of weeks.
I appreciate you asking.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Good, I'm glad to hear it.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Corporate strategy, podiatry, foot strategy, foot
strategy, podiatry lovers that'sit.
Keep going.
No, no, I love podiatry, that'sit that.
No, no, I love podiatry, that'sit.
That's our next.
Love feet, you love feet.
Huh, how does somebody get intothat craft?
Because I always go in like adiet.
Well, I went to my podiatrist.
(10:51):
I'm like she was just so happyto like be touching feet all day
yes, my brother-in-law is apodiatrist.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
What you want to have him on, you want to ask him.
He'll tell you yeah I actuallyI know the answer I know the I'm
not gonna say I'll bring'm notgoing to say it, we'll bring him
on Guess what.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah, we'll have him on, we'll leave a cliffhanger,
because I'm super curious.
She was talking to me andgrabbing my foot and stretching
things out at the same time.
It was something she enjoyeddoing and I was like this is
just weird.
How do people get into this?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
He likes it.
He's good at it.
Uh, yeah, uh, husband of keelan, who was on the pod before
telling us about unions, we'llbring him on.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
You'll get to talk to a podiatrist heck, yeah, man,
we're so connected in thispodcast.
Now, like we're so connected,we would have never had this
connection.
I know they're family, butlet's pretend like we're huge.
Wow, well, we'll edit that partout.
We would have never had thisconnection four years ago.
But now, cause we are so big,it's so easy to get podiatrists
on here.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Y'all you know we get like a thousand listens per
episode.
Now, did you know that?
Did you know corporate strategyis the biggest fricking thing
on Apple podcasts?
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Didn't?
Uh didn?
Rogan sent an invite the otherday for us to come on.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
He did and a couple of like serial.
Serial was like hey, we knowyou haven't murdered anybody,
but we'd still like to do aninvestigation into you.
I'm like, please investigate us, that's right, Find those
skeletons.
You won't.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
I want them.
I want them to find them, causeI want to make sure that they
keep us in check, but we won'tuse their real names because I
don't want them to link anythingto me, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Clark was a normal, average male until one day he
wasn't when he snapped and tookout his co-worker while they
were making a dump in the middleof a crowded office hallway.
No one knows who the dumper was, except for Clark.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
So we brought him onto our show to interview and
get his side of the story.
You know, I liked all that,except for the verb you used,
making a dump.
Making a dump I don't I reallydon't like that.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I mean, don't they call it make, right, so that's
like.
You know, that's.
It's another word for excrement, the make.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
You know you gotta clean up your make Stool
excrement.
Yeah, Feces.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Fecal matter.
Feculants Make yeah, let's justthrow them all out there what
is this?
Good, this is a good one.
13 minutes in.
I feel like we're reallycovering some new ground here.
Uh, die.
Hey, it's been like two monthssince we podcast, but our last
(13:33):
episode ended on a cliffhanger.
Do you even remember what ourlast episode was about?
Speaker 1 (13:37):
clark I remember be honest.
No, I'm gonna be 100 honest.
I'm not touching anything.
It was about having hardconversations.
Having hard conversations.
Do I remember the cliffhanger?
No, I'll be completely honest,I don't remember.
Good, good.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
So I mean, I'm actually happy you got like most
of it.
The hard conversations was thetopic, but there was a specific
thing that I teased and I saidthis gets brought up a lot and
it's not as easy to solve as therest of the hard conversations
out there.
You ready for it?
I'm ready.
It's a phrase You've heard.
(14:18):
It might have even said it.
It's not my job.
Now you see why I wanted tosave an episode for this because
it's huge.
This is so much more difficultto deal with as a manager or an
ic than any of those otherthings, because there are two
(14:39):
very radical extremes to thisphrase.
That, like we got to unpack itright so.
So if you've spent any amountof time in the workplace, you
have heard someone utter thephrase not my job and it has
produced a reaction from you.
Or maybe you've said ityourself and it's produced a
reaction from others, but it's aloaded thing like you can't
(15:02):
just drop this on the fly, like.
That's like pulling out a gunin a crowded theater.
You say not my job, you areinviting angst, pain,
potentially a conversation withyour manager.
When was the last time youheard it, clark?
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Or when was the last time you said it?
Yeah, to your point, itdefinitely is is it's loaded?
And it's loaded if you thinkabout, like, when does it?
When does it occur?
Okay, that's what got methinking of like, what is the,
what is the typical reason orthe motivation behind saying it?
And I think the biggestmotivation and this is the one
(15:42):
that hurts the most it meanssomebody didn't do something
correctly or there's a need,there's a need out there that's
being unfulfilled, and that'stypically when you hear it.
You're all sitting there and,man, it would be great if
somebody did this, because itwould really help us progress
this.
And then everybody looks ateach other like, well, not my
(16:05):
job, or that's probably the lasttime.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I heard it, davey, can you, could you take this on
as part of your assignments forthis week?
Not my job, yep, or that's notwhat I was hired for.
The eloquent answer.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yes, that's the way, corporate way to say it is.
Hey, sorry, not in my jobdescription, not part of my
department.
Can't help you there Not my canit's interesting.
I actually think it can be usedinnocently too, absolutely,
which is why it's so heavy.
It's like it can be sarcastic.
(16:42):
It can be like a backhandedcompliment to somebody of, like
you know, someone just droppedthe ball and isn't doing well.
It could be a true gap that'sout there that nobody is
fulfilling, and I think that's Iprobably have heard it most in
the last two.
Like the innocent one is prettyrare, I think yeah, at least in
(17:03):
my experience, but the there'sa gap and no one's fulfilling it
, or it's backhanded to say well, sorry, not my job.
Like that is the sarcastic.
Somebody didn't do somethingright or they're failing again
to fulfill what we need them todo.
That's when I hear it the most.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
It.
It is almost all.
I love the way you set this up,because it is almost always a
failure on someone else that isnow being trickled down to
someone else to fix.
And that's when you break thisout.
Right, because, like in theback of your mind, when you whip
out the not my job, it'sbecause you're thinking, well,
(17:37):
that was Jeff's job, like thatwas his responsibility, and now
I'm being asked to do it, likeI'm gonna say these words.
But let me tell you as a, as amanager or as as a person who's
a leader, the second you hearnot my job.
All you can think is I want topunt this person into the sky
(17:58):
for uttering this and sayingthis, because how much of the
things do all of us do thatisn't our job.
And you know, fundamentally,the problem is they're right,
it's not their job.
I would assume 99% of the timepeople say not my job.
They're accurate, like veryrarely do they say it, and
(18:18):
they're like oh, actually, no,it wasn't my contract.
Lol, lmfao, sorry about, aboutit I'll do better next time
turns out it was my job 99 ofthe time.
It's not their job, but sayingit is bad yep 100.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
What's?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
that about.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
It doesn't look good to say that no but it's true,
yeah, yeah, it's like, and Ithink of it actually recently.
I have an example.
Um, you know, being in product,I have an expectation of my
team to understand data.
You know they should be lookingat the data for what they're
building, the features thatthey're building, see if they're
(18:58):
hitting their kpis, if it'sfulfilling our okrs.
I'm using these acronyms.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Gross.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
If you don't know them, just start Urban
Dictionary and you'll figure itout.
So, whenever they're doing that, I'm like I need you guys to
make sure you don't need to knowlike SQL to like query this
data.
That is not an expectation ofyour job, but you should know
how to pull up a dashboardthat's pointing to our data
source and be able to look atthe data of your feature.
(19:27):
Like you probably wrote therequirements for the data
gathering, and so you should beable to like see, are we doing
good, Are we not doing good?
That's my expectation and, forwhatever reason, instead of
doing that, they write therequirements but they never look
at the data.
And I'm like so can you show methe dashboard?
And they're like well, we'rewaiting on the analytics team to
(19:47):
put a dashboard together.
So I'm like well, can you tellme, like generally, are we doing
good, Are we doing bad?
And they can't.
And I'm like hold on, I don'tknow how to build a beautiful
dashboard that the analyticsteam would give me, but I know
enough to get in there the data.
Yeah, I know enough to like Iknow where the data is.
(20:08):
I have access to the tools.
I'm not going to build.
You know a funnel chart thatshows the dropout rate at each
step of whatever we're building.
But I'm going to be able to sayX, amount of people have used
this thing, X, Y amount ofpeople have converted.
Therefore, our conversion rateis whatever.
Like I should be able to knowthat.
And whenever I hear that and itjust kind of deflects it,
they're just like yeah, well,that team's doing it and they're
not saying it, but they'resaying it.
(20:28):
That's not my job to buildthese dashboards.
Yeah, they're like well, I'mblocked, I'm waiting on the
analytics team.
I'm like that's not an excuse,Okay, so.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
I'm going to, I'm all reverse this on you.
What happens if they've donethe work and you know that
they've?
They've gotten their data,they've, they've built their
charts, they've put togethertheir presentation, but the data
is bad, and you know it.
But they don't know it becausethey're pulling from the source
(20:57):
and you say, well, well, this,this data is bad.
You should have gone and done afurther investigation into the
data and saw that it wasn't goodand it wasn't usable.
Uh, not my job, like trulyright.
Like that's not the job youhired.
You didn't hire them to be datascientists, right, like when?
(21:18):
And then this is the problem.
This is the problem, this isthe fundamental problem is
there's this weird littlespectrum of yeah, you could do
this and you're just being, youknow, pedantic.
The time it's taking for you toworry about this and go off and
do it is less than the time itwould take just to go do it.
And also there is the well, ifyou go and do this, you're
(21:41):
basically letting someone elseget off the hook and they're
never going to do it and you'reprobably going to just continue
to do it again because they suckat their jobs.
So then the like, in eithercase, when you say not my job,
it still hurts, right.
Like I don't know how to solvefor this phrase, I don't know
how to do it for this phrase.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I don't know how to do it.
It's usually, you know, aresource gap, yes, a skill gap,
or a prior or a prioritizationissue.
Like it's usually one of thosethree things like if you think
about like okay, you've got ateam that's got the skill to do
it, but they're notprioritization issue you've got
the skill or you don't have theskill to do the job, so you're
like I don't even know how tolike write requirements for good
(22:29):
data skill issue.
You know you can train that.
You can find the gap there.
You're like, okay, this persondoesn't really know how to build
good metrics, to measure kpis.
You know we can work on thattogether.
That's a skill issue andsometimes there's just no one to
do it.
Probably in you know thestartup case where you have it's
like we don't have anybody.
That's a resource issue, or wedon't have the budget to pay for
(22:50):
this thing Resource issue andso like it usually comes down to
one of the three things.
In my opinion, like theexamples I've seen, it's like,
as a manager, those are what myhead goes through and like I
asked them, I'm like, okay,there's a team that does this.
Did you reach out to them?
You should have been able topull the normal numbers and just
like get a general sense, likethat's my expectation of you.
Skill issue so a combination ofthe two.
(23:11):
It's like prioritization forthat team and a skill issue on
my own team to understand how toget that data.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
So I think these are the three.
These are the three pillarsthat not my job falls into.
Nailed it.
What do you say instead?
So I think, for the first one,people and I'll talk about the
people issue, cause I deal withthis on a day-to-day basis right
, like starting as employeenumber four.
Now we've got over.
I don't even know.
We're like, we're approachinglike 200 or we're past.
I don't, I don't keep track.
(23:39):
There were many times when Icould say not my job, but truly,
who's going to do it if not me?
And it's one of the like yeah,I could ask this guy to do it
and they probably would, butwould they do it as well as me?
Like for the success of thecompany, for the success of
myself and my brand andeverything around me.
(24:00):
When you are small or you don'thave the people to fill in, you
should not say not my job.
Instead, if you can do it, youshould.
If you can't do it, have aconversation and find someone
who can be like I'm just I'mworried that my skillset might
not fit to solve for this peopleproblem.
But the real solve here is ifit becomes a repeatable offense
(24:23):
wow, I'm not doing my job a lot.
We need to hire for this role.
This is eating up a lot of mytime.
Come with data.
You know I spend 25% of my weekdoing these demo calls.
I'm not a sales engineer.
We should probably get some SEsat the company.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Yeah, I love that.
That's the people problem.
The first one, the resource,you know, people problem.
I think it's exactly what youjust said.
It's hey, I understand thisneeds to be done, so I'm
attempting to do it, but youknow, I feel like I'm slacking
on my current job.
So can you help me?
I'm thinking from the employee,not the manager perspective, but
(25:01):
your role as an employee is youhave to come to your boss and
say, hey, I'm struggling tobalance this in my working hours
because I have to do all thisextra work but also my current
job.
Am I doing too much?
Can you help me figure out howto balance these two things?
Because I feel like I'm noteffectively doing my day job and
you're asking me to do extra,and because it could be you set
(25:21):
the and I do this.
You probably are the same, beinga type A person If I'm going to
do something and I love to saythis line I don't half-ass it, I
whole-ass it, and so, even if Idon't know it, I'm going to try
to do it because I want to besuccessful, and then my
manager's got to run me back tobe like okay, I need you to do
like 10% of what you did,because this report was super
awesome.
(25:41):
Not everything we need, and ifyou need to make back time,
don't do nine pages out of those10, do the one page.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
I love that.
I think that's the way, and Ithink you never say not my job
in that scenario.
Instead, you have a very frankconversation about your skill,
if that's the issue, or youbring it up as a hey, this is
eating into my ability toperform my current role, like we
should probably fill this gap,otherwise it's going to impact
our deliverables.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yeah, and on the skill one because you said the
people one, but I think theskill one you know that
conversation could be phraseddifferently If it's part of your
day job and you feel like youjust aren't being successful.
You know you're moving slowerthan everybody else, or there's
a new expectation that, like youjust don't feel like is getting
the results that you need.
(26:30):
Like, let's say, you switch toa different programming language
or something and you feel likeyou're just really struggling to
keep up with the team that'sworking on that.
Or you know you're working 60hours and you're only doing like
half the story points.
If you work in like agilesoftware development as somebody
else, you should probably go toyour manager and be like, hey,
I'm really trying to learn this.
You know, inside my workinghours complete my tasks, but, to
(26:52):
be honest with you, I feel likeI'm not keeping up with the
rest of the group.
What if I went to a training,you know, in order to learn more
about whatever this is?
Because I feel like that couldreally help that knowledge gap
and I could be more productive.
And so, like what you said isperfect, bruce, it's like go
with a tangible output to say Iwent to my manager.
(27:12):
I didn't say it was a skillissue.
I said I acknowledge I'm notmoving as quickly.
I want to be more productive.
So the positive angle of it.
And then you gave an option.
You said I think this trainingwould help.
So you gave the specificresource that you need that you
think will help you do better.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
And I think by doing that, you did everything you
could do.
Here's the thing about thatspecific approach which I love
is, if it's truly not your job,your manager is going to be like
, why the heck would we send youto training for something
that's not your responsibility?
We need to fix this problem.
If this is like, if this isdoing this much time and effort
away from like your, your focus,like I got to go have a
(27:50):
conversation with my directorbecause this isn't right.
Like we shouldn't be sendingyou off for training for not
your job, Get them to say notyour job, right.
Like now you've won.
If someone else says not yourjob to you, you've won the game.
But I think that's such a goodone because it requires budget.
It showcases your ability tokind of want to go and do better
and do more even though this isnot your job.
Like really good mental jujitsuto reverse, take down that
(28:17):
situation.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Rear naked.
Chokehold your manager.
That's what you got to do.
Yes, thanks, they love the wordexactly HR loves when you say
that I'm gonna.
I love going to hr and tellingthem hey, my conversation with
my employee put them right intoa rear naked chokehold they hr
loves that.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
They do love it.
They do love it, actual jujitsumove yeah, and on that note
it's.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
You know, I think I actually recently had somebody
do this where they wanted to getlike a project management
certificate, not a productmanagement certificate, and I
know what the certificate is andI know people that have gotten
it in a different department,and so it makes it interesting
for me as the manager.
Like they reached out and said,hey, I think I want to go for
this certification or whatever,and obviously I want to be
(29:02):
supportive, but everythingthey're going to learn in that
is not necessarily their role.
So that got my brain thinking.
I'm like I need to reach out tothis person and we need to have
a conversation around.
Why do you feel like this wouldbe helpful in your day-to-day?
And then I can understand as amanager are they spending a lot
of time doing more of projectmanagement than product
management?
Because, frankly, projectmanagement is not their job.
(29:25):
I need them to be talking tocustomers, I need them to be
writing requirements.
I don't need them to be projectmanagement or product managing
their projects.
That is a whole otherdepartment that needs to do that
role.
So that'll help me, as amanager, understand.
Are they spending a lot of timedoing something that they
shouldn't be doing.
And now I need to reach out tothe manager of that group so
that way they can actually gettheir team to work and do what
(29:47):
they need to be doing.
Or is it just a generalinterest, which in that case,
great.
But I'll probably point them,I'll deflect them a little bit
to the side and say why don'tyou go for the product owner,
product manager certificate?
Because I feel like you get alot of learnings that are
directly towards this role and Ihave budget to support those
things.
Love it love it.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
What was the third pillar?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
you either have a people or budget, people or
budgets?
A resource issue resource right, is there a team or not a team?
Is their budget is or notbudget?
You have skill, right?
That's the second one and thenthe third one um, oh shoot, are
we both blanking on it?
Play this back, craig.
Craig, roll back the tape.
Roll back the tape.
(30:30):
If only this could happen.
This is why we need ai, craig.
We need an ai version of youtape.
Roll it.
He's not doing, it's gonna comeyeah, nothing's happening.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Nothing's happening.
Craig is drinking pepsi, givingme the.
I got it yeah, I got.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
It came back.
I can use my brain.
Sometimes I'm not fully good todo this.
It's a prioritization issueprioritization.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
That's the third pillar.
Yeah, it's my favorite elementprioritization is it?
Speaker 1 (31:00):
yeah, I think it's a pr on the periodic table.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Maybe number 336 sounds right yeah, right next to
pepsi, yeah my favorite one.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Um, yeah, that one is interesting.
It's like is it a?
Hey, you're not getting yourstuff done?
And then they're like, well,you know, that part's not my job
, or is it?
You know, I reached out, or I Ihave a bad expectation of my
employee as a manager andthey're coming to me saying,
sorry, that thing didn't getdone, you know not my job.
(31:30):
And then is it?
I guess I'm trying to thinkthrough the different scenarios,
yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
So I mean I'm thinking like from a, from a
marketing perspective.
You know we're looking tocreate some new assets, some new
video assets, and it's like,well, my team does written, we
do written assets here, but likevideo is the highest priority
right now.
Like we need a lot of video andwe only have got one guy who's
(31:56):
working on it.
Can your team help?
It's the highest priority.
Like, yeah, it does fall alittle bit under skill and
resource, but like it's, it'swhen you might have those things
, but not enough, because thepriority shifts.
I think your your example oflearning a different language in
coding is also really good,because chances are someone was
(32:18):
hired because oh, oh, yeah, I'mproficient in Java, but this new
project using Python, I mean,I'm still, I was hired to write
Java and we still have things towork on in Java.
But like, yeah, it would helpif I learned Python for our
overall you know, efficiency andspeed.
So, like you can, kind ofprioritization is almost like
(32:38):
the offset for the other two,where it might not be a
permanent problem, but you coulddefinitely see someone being
like, well, it's not my job towrite, yeah, python I, I wasn't
hired for that.
I don't know how to do that.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
So yeah, go find someone who can write like yeah,
going back to the analyticsexample I was getting, and the
perfect example was, yeah, theyreached out to this team.
We have a whole team, so thereis no resource issue here, like
there's a team who does thesethings.
And, you know, my employee cameto me like, well, I don't have
a dashboard, I'm blocked by thisteam and it's a prioritization
(33:11):
issue of the other team andmaybe, to your point, that is
the offset, because maybe theyneed more resources to support
all the work.
I don't know their deal that tosupport all the work.
I don't know their deal.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
That's their thing to figure out, but for me I'm like
, well, it's a priority for us.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, yeah, they're really awful.
The worst, they should getfired.
Lay them off, you know, pipthem, pip them all.
But it's like it's a priorityfor us and I don't know
everything else going on overthere.
So it does feel like, hey, isthis more important than the
stuff they're currently workingon?
Maybe not, and that's kind ofmy role as a manager to go talk
(33:43):
to them and be like hey, youknow, we really rely on your
team to create these dashboardsso that we ensure, as we're
building things and launchingthem, we know if they're
successful or not, and we needyour team support.
And so it's kind of both.
It's like well, I'm going totrain my team to know enough to
get the high level numbers so wecan know if we're going in the
right direction or if something,detrimentally, is wrong.
And then I'm also going to reachout to that manager to be like
hey, let's talk about like howyou can better support my team,
(34:06):
and maybe it is a budgetresource issue.
And they're like well, we justcan't balance everything and we
talk about the prioritization ofeverything.
And they're like yeah, you'reright, like you've got a lot of
high priorities you need to putin a staffing request and my
project is happy to help pay fora contractor in the meantime to
do the work and that'll helpwith the prioritization issue on
that team, because I can'tcontrol resources for that team.
(34:27):
I can only help try toprioritize my work and help
support them to get their ownresources.
So it is really interesting tothink about it from that angle
because I think it does kind ofwork as an offset but at the
same time it's almost like inbigger organizations how you
figure out what the true issueis.
Yep.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
I think it's interesting because
prioritizations are probably thereason why not my jobs happen
as often as they do.
It's usually like the peopleproblem.
That's a startup issue.
That's a growing pain, theskill issue, probably caused by
prioritization.
Right Like you were hiredbecause you were skillful and
(35:07):
now you're struggling becausepriorities have changed and what
you were hired for is no longerthe job you're expected to do,
or there has been additionalthings added to your job that
you were not hired for and notmy job.
No, that's reprioritization.
It is your job actually.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
I agree.
There's one more angle that'sinteresting.
I actually think and maybe thisis controversial, I'm curious on
your perspective From a managerperspective, telling your team
that's not your job is actuallya positive thing yes, agree I,
maybe that's all it goes yeah,yeah, because, like I, I work
(35:50):
for an organization that you canvery easily start doing
everyone else's job, working waymore hours, you know, not
really doing what you'resupposed to be doing,
prioritization, and I knowthere's an organization that
does that.
So when I know if my team'sdoing something like you, have
somebody on your team who is aproject manager, like this is
(36:10):
their job and there's a balance,it's like in crunch time in
companies or big launches orsomething like the lines get
blurred between the jobs andit's like I don't want to hear,
if this is our number onepriority for our company, that
it's not someone's job.
Someone take a bias for actionand do it, regardless of who it
is.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Someone's got to get it done.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Bias for action.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
My goodness.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
You've got to have a bias for action.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Do you have a master's?
Speaker 1 (36:36):
I didn't know about, got to get my MBA Harvard
Business School.
Okay, wow, wow, impressive.
Like crunch time, you got tolike blur those lines.
It's like that's not the rightcontextual time to be like sorry
, not my job, it's like thatdoesn't matter.
Like we got to launch in twodays.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
All hands on deck.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yeah, all hands on deck, it doesn't matter, I'll do
it myself.
And sometimes it's like I tellmy team this it's like we'll
happily jump in there and codewith the engineering team.
You probably don't want that asthe engineering team.
So how else can we help?
You know, can we test stuff.
You know if you do a build, canwe play around with it.
Try to see if we can breakanything to help the QE team.
And I think like that's thecontextually wrong time to use
(37:17):
sorry, not my job.
It's like you're jeopardizingsomething that's important to
the company.
You can't do that.
However, there is a right timeto do it where, if you have
organizations and departmentsand people that are dedicated to
roles, if you are going to makeyour team work really well in
their craft and going tocontribute the skill set that
(37:39):
the organization desperatelyneeds to the highest ability,
you can't have them doing otherpeople's jobs.
And I didn't believe this whenI first became a manager.
I was like, no, just dowhatever needs to be done, it
doesn't matter.
Blur the lines always.
And over time, like I'verealized, it's more about
telling your team like how doyou leverage your partners to
get work done if they're notdoing their role, and you should
(38:01):
talk to me about it if you feellike you're doing someone
else's role, so we can figureout the appropriate time to
break the cog in the machine ifwe need to.
So much as to, I've had teammembers come to me and say, hey,
clark, if I don't do this thingright now, it's going to fail.
And sometimes the answer is,hey, this is not that important.
(38:24):
I know you think everything'simportant.
It's okay.
Like I really appreciate howmuch you care about this.
This right now, is a good timeto basically let the cog in the
machine break so that way thepressure gets put on the right
team, so they fix their issue,because we can't fix it for them
and we've had conversations.
They aren't addressing theissue.
So now's the time to let thingsfail and hopefully it'll bring
(38:47):
awareness to the gaps that wehave that have been escalated
and haven't been solved.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
And so I think that's the balance of the manager I
love this because I agreewholeheartedly.
As a manager, I find myselfwhenever I notice my team is
doing something or being askedto do something that is not
their job, especially if it's bysomeone whose job it is to do
the thing, that's like, oh, Iget to go have a conversation,
this is going to be fun.
(39:11):
Why aren't you doing this andasking my team to do it?
That is your job, not theirs,and it's so good for a manager
to do that for you?
Like and I think that is thealternative to this is you never
say not my job, but absolutelyget your manager to say it on
your behalf?
Right, like that's the secretto this fight, because it's
(39:35):
going to put the other person onif it is a resource issue.
And there's like, why isn't youknow janine over there doing her
job?
Like why is she asking you todo it?
Like it's it's never going towork with peer going after peer.
It's got to be manager.
Either needs to go talk tojanine or janine's manager and
be like what the heck is goingon and why is she not able to do
(39:57):
this thing?
She's being asked to do, um,and that's that's the power of
it.
Right, like there is some powerto not my job, but it's only
when you don't say it, it's whensomeone else says it on your
behalf.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Yeah, absolutely yeah .
It's really interesting to likethink about you know both
perspectives from the individualside, like how you approach
your management team to do it onyour behalf.
And then for the manager sideof like how you the right and
wrong times to allow for it ornot allow for it.
How do you coach your team todo it at the right times?
Because, yeah, if it's likesuper critical and everyone's
(40:27):
just saying, well, sorry, we gotto let the cog in the machine
break, it's like no, no no.
We got to launch this productbecause we promised customers
it'd be out by this day.
It's like I will help and Ithink that's like the good
example to set.
It's like I'm not, as a manager, berating you for saying not my
job.
It's hey, I understand.
Like pressures are high rightnow.
Everybody's working long hours.
How can I help you?
Like what can I do to assist,because it's that important.
(40:50):
And so I think that's like ifyou're a manager, you've got to
understand that if it's crunchtime, you can't just say do the
extra work, stop complainingabout it.
It's if your team's coming toyou and they're expressing that
they're doing other people'sjobs, but you know it's crunch
time You've got to lean in alittle bit and say how do I help
, take on things to help getthis priority done for the
(41:11):
organization?
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Agreed and I think that's that's it right, like
that's the.
That's the way to round thisout is approach the situation
not from a point of notignorance.
What is it?
Stubbornness or insolence?
Approach it from problemsolving and get your manager to
(41:33):
not your job on your behalf.
This is how you grow.
This is how you do it.
Um, you got any?
Speaker 1 (41:39):
other thoughts.
Clark, no, no, that was, Iagree.
I think we pretty much coveredit.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Okay, I need to make a really quick pivot.
Okay, because you said you saidall hands on deck and then I
thought all hands.
Those are those meetings.
You know, everyone has allhands meetings.
All hands, all hands, two words.
We couldn't say all hands ondeck, we call them the all hands
meetings.
Now, clark, all hands, allhands.
(42:07):
Hold your hands up, Start withfeet and with hands.
Listen, I got a question foryou, clark.
How often would you say an allhands meeting is a crisis that
needs everyone to help with?
Never.
How often would your all-handsmeetings fulfill that
description?
Never, never.
(42:27):
You say Never.
You say Well, would you beshocked to know that in you know
pirate terms, aka naval terms,all-hands-on-deck is a crier
signal used on board ship,typically in an emergency, to
indicate that all members are togo to deck.
All members of a team arerequired.
(42:49):
It is a crisis that needseveryone's help.
Typically, a Navy vessel's crewis divided into watches, so the
crew rotation between being onduty and sleeping and eating
does not require an all-handssituation.
So my question to you is howdid we F this up so badly that
we just call our monthly,quarterly, whateverly, the
(43:10):
entire company's meeting?
Why doesn't it just call thecompany meeting, company
check-in, quarterly check-in Allhands, can we?
do nothing right.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
It's an unnecessary escalation.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
It's so unnecessary I refuse to participate in All
Hands ever again, unless it's anactual crisis or emergency.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Let me ask you this.
Ask me Should you ever attend apre-planned months ahead?
All Hands.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Excuse me, the heck you say.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Never.
I'm about to get aggressiveClark.
I'm about to get realaggressive.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
We just read you, bless you.
Did you just say a pre-plannedmonth before all hands, meeting,
meeting it?
Speaker 1 (44:03):
hits your calendar how do you?
Speaker 2 (44:05):
react I would burn this company's headquarters to
the ground.
There would be nothing left butarmrests.
Fire retardant armrests is allthat would remain of this
building.
The rest would be gone.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
If that ever happens, I think you reply all
immediately and you copy andpaste the definition from the
naval terms.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Is this a naval crisis for emergency?
Is this truly worthy of allhands on deck?
Speaker 1 (44:36):
How do you know that you're going to need all hands
on that specific day threemonths from now?
That you're going to need allhands on that specific day three
months from now?
The answer is you don't.
Here's the definition of an allhands.
I suggest you cancel thismeeting and change the name.
That's how you respond.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
Retitle it Company quarterly check-in.
All hands, get out of here.
All hands, I'm done, I'm tired.
Feet next, only feet, greatthat is ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
I mean I agree, my company does a town hall.
I like that.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
I like a town hall.
Town hall is great.
Town hall makes sense becausethe town comes together in a
central location to talk throughissues.
Town hall is great.
Town hall is such abetter-fitting description than
All Hands Agreed, the All Handsmeeting.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
All Hands should be emergencies.
Only, like you, should get aninvite hours before the day
before to be like, dropeverything.
You need to be at this meetingtomorrow.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
That is an appropriate use of the term.
I would accept this meeting.
I would say, okay, all Hands ondeck.
That is an appropriate use ofthe term.
I would accept this meeting.
I would say, okay, all hands ondeck, let's go.
Everyone get there.
It's do or die.
The ship is sinking.
There are pirates on thehorizon.
Starboard side, starboard.
Hit the poop deck.
Aft Bow.
Damn the torpedoes.
(45:57):
We're going down.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Why do I just have a lingering feeling that this is
somehow going to end up in theperiodic table again, just from
you using this vernaculum?
Vernaculum, that's the element.
It's like vernacular, but it'sthe element.
On the table.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
It's the element for words.
You know what words are madeout of Vernaculum Vernacular.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Vernacular came from the periodic table Vernaculum
V-E, if you will when we'refinished recording.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
you know what I have on my desktop Podcastium.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Everything deserves to be a no.
In it, it's true, all handsium.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
All handsium, not my jobium.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
Oh well, I think.
In short, to summarize thiswhole entire podcast, it's don't
say not my job, would you agree?
Like this whole podcast couldhave been like 10 seconds, just
say hey, just don't say, not myjob.
Just don't say not my job, justdon't.
And in general and maybe maybethis goes against human nature
(47:17):
I'm all about it, I don't think,I don't even think to me.
It's a waste of time, eventhough you're blowing off some
steam.
It's a waste of time to bejoking around with everyone else
and being like, oh yeah, not myjob, like there's an underlying
issue and by you not doingsomething about it, you're
wasting everyone's time Likeyou're sitting.
This is the reason for unneededmeetings.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
It has become a saying to me and this could be
my own bias for inaction at play, but when I hear someone say it
, I think less of them and I'llnever forget it.
It goes forever in my littlebrain box.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
I think oh yeah, they said not my job.
Yikes, I agree.
I'm going to give you a pro tip.
If you're listening, are youready?
Pro tip it.
The people who climb andsuccessfully climb the corporate
ladder don't say not my job.
No, they figure out, theyidentify the need and if it's
that critical, they do it andthat's typically how they get
(48:21):
promoted.
You know what I say to that.
You want to go back to podiatryor I think that does it.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
I think we're good.
I think we're great.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
I think we've gone head to feet to toes.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
Head to toes, head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees
and toes, eyes and ears andmouth and nose.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Head, shoulders, knees and toes.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
Knees and toes.
If you want to play along withus, join the Discord Discordium.
Inside of there we have protonsand electrons, but specifically
we have a channel called whatDo you Meme where you can make a
meme of our previous episode.
Please use meme format for ourown mouth parts.
(49:12):
We're going to describe thememe with our words.
We don't have any.
We need some.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
We need you to go on the what.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
You Meme channel and create a meme for the Not my Job
episode.
Do it Best, meme wins Go.
We also have is it me or is itcorporate?
A channel where you can forward, slash, confess and tell us
your anonymous confession and wewill tell you whether or not it
is a you problem or a corporateproblem.
The discord general is great.
You can join it by clicking onthe link tree in the show.
Notes get in there, getdiscording it notes get in there
(49:40):
, get discording.
It's a good place.
We've got good people.
We also have the ability foryou to go off and buy baby
onesies.
You want to buy cool swag fromus?
You can check out our website.
You can share this podcast withyour friends.
You can do so much.
You can do so much of corporatestrategy beyond just listen to
this in your podcast feed.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
But most importantly is review and share, if you can,
yeah we need a, we need mebeyond just listen to this in
your podcast feed.
But most importantly is reviewand share if you can.
Yeah, we need a, we needmeme-ium, we need review-ium, we
need share-ium it's.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
I mean, half of those are real.
I'm I'm convinced.
Two of the three.
This is a trick.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
There's not one right one in there.
This is a trick.
There's not only one, they'reactually all three real.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Yeah, I knew it, okay .
Hey, if someone asks you to dochemistry, what do you tell them
?
Speaker 1 (50:28):
I don't know, I didn't even my brain just shut
down when you said that.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Hey Clark, I know it's Thursday, but can you just
go and whip us up some hydrogenchloride please?
Speaker 1 (50:41):
We need it desperately right now If someone
asks me for chemistry, I'mimmediately grabbing a roll of
Mentos in a Coke bottle.
Chemistry First thing that cameto mind.
You know what?
Speaker 2 (50:56):
I do.
What's that?
I look them square in the eyesand say not my job.
I'm Bruce and I'm Clark andyou're on mute.
We will see you next week, it'sthe wrong button.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
That was incredible.
You just leave and it's just meand Craig.
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