October 13, 2025 • 52 mins
We weigh the trade-offs between startup speed and enterprise stability, and why separation of concerns across product, marketing, sales, security, and legal protects focus and trust. The throughline: reduce dependencies, design clear interfaces, and learn the reason behind every gate before you try to remove it.
• small pains revealing big structural truths
• big corp frameworks vs real-world dependencies
• startup ownership, bottlenecks and executive approvals
• redundancy vs single points of failure
• why vertical slices exist as checks and balances
• limits of embedded pods and cognitive load
• aligning structure to software and outcomes
• clean interfaces between product, marketing and sales
• career strategy by season: breadth vs depth
• diagnose before change, then tune approvals to risk
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_04 (00:03):
You said get him here.
I did say get him in here, butthere's there's something I was
about I was about to say it, andI didn't say it, and I probably
shouldn't say it.
Now that he's in here.
SPEAKER_01 (00:13):
Okay.
SPEAKER_05 (00:15):
Okay.
SPEAKER_04 (00:16):
But if people really want to know and they're really
interested, just tell us in theDiscord, and I'll tell you.
SPEAKER_02 (00:25):
What wh why would we uh not share this content with
Craig?
SPEAKER_05 (00:30):
It has to do with animals.
And it's about the circle oflife.
And he could be sensitive tothat.
Because he is a little beaver.
SPEAKER_04 (00:44):
And I'm worried if we say it out loud.
Yeah, I don't want to talk birdsand the bees with Craig on a
podcast, you know?
SPEAKER_02 (00:52):
Oh you know, I saw two squirrels going to town in
my tree a couple years ago.
SPEAKER_04 (00:59):
Yeah, it's falling to town.
You know, usually they say, youknow, springtime babies come
around, so fall, you know.
SPEAKER_02 (01:07):
It was I was just like, dang, you're just like
doing it out in the open.
Like literally on the lowestbranch for everyone to see, two
little squirrels just having atit.
It's like, I don't know, I gottawalk through here.
SPEAKER_04 (01:20):
I I mean Craig could be a squirrel.
We never considered thatpossibility.
SPEAKER_02 (01:25):
He's got I mean, it's either a bear face or a uh
a beaver face.
If you're not in the Discord,which you can join by going to
the church, the link tree inyour show notes, you can you can
join and you can message Craigand see uh what kind of animal
is he?
We only have his profile pick.
SPEAKER_04 (01:40):
Yeah, he's kind of like cropped to a circle, so
like the tips of his ears arecropped off and they could be
pointed.
They look like they should bewrapped, but you never know.
They could be pointed.
SPEAKER_03 (01:52):
Little Craig.
SPEAKER_04 (01:53):
Little Craiggy.
SPEAKER_03 (01:55):
Little Craig.
SPEAKER_04 (01:56):
Well, I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_03 (01:58):
Hey, welcome back to Corporate Strategy Podcast.
No, copy I talk now.
Welcome back to Corpus Strategy.
Podcast could have been anemail.
I'm broke.
I'm broke.
Now you can talk.
Go ahead.
SPEAKER_04 (02:11):
Well, I was just gonna say I appreciate you.
Because you're you're playinginjured.
You're injured.
Like your most important musclethat's necessary to yeah, that's
necessary to be like productiveon this podcast is injured, and
you're playing through it.
That's what kind of player youare.
SPEAKER_02 (02:32):
I am.
I actually uh literally 10minutes ago in preparation for
this, which is the bestpreparation I've ever done for
an episode, I went downstairsand I gargled.
I didn't gargle, I I swishedsalt water around my mouth
wound.
I have like a stress ulcer on mylip, and it's literally it's
right next to my lower incisor.
(02:53):
So every time I talk, I feel itand it hurts, and I think it's a
little infected.
I don't know how a mouth woundgets infected, but like let me,
I've I've had these.
I usually get them when I'mreally stressed.
Surprise.
And uh I've had them ever sinceI was a child, but I've never
had one that's as bad as thisone.
It is so freaking painful.
(03:14):
Every bite I take of food makesme want to cry.
Uh, talking makes me want tocry, um, breathing makes me want
to cry.
So I'm here for you.
What's up?
SPEAKER_04 (03:25):
I'm just so impressed.
I mean, the the perseverance youhave, the will to play through
being injured, to bring thisepisode to the people.
That's that's commendable.
Gotta do it.
It's very respectable.
I gotta do it.
SPEAKER_02 (03:37):
I I you know, there's there is no telling what
the future holds for me.
And this this could very wellbecome my my new full-time job
is being here.
So I've got to be made again,you know.
SPEAKER_04 (03:49):
So it's kind of funny.
It's like those little things,like your nose being stuffed at
night, or like your throathurting a little bit, you forget
how much you appreciate nothaving those things.
Like you're like, wow, I missbeing able to breathe through my
nose and not be in pain.
And like how much it affects thequality of life is is just
(04:10):
crazy.
SPEAKER_05 (04:13):
Yeah, I it really is.
SPEAKER_02 (04:16):
Um it's it's kind of funny.
I feel like face stuff ingeneral is face stuff, feet
stuff.
Like you can get a cut on yourhand and you'll be fine.
Even if you like work with yourhands, I feel like a good
band-aid, some neosporin, spiton it, like you'll be good to
go.
But like if you have a stuffynose, an earache, you know, eye,
(04:41):
eye scratch, mouth wound, you'rejust like inoperable.
I like everything is much harderthan it was prior to that.
You get a foot wound, toe wound,like we've talked about.
We everyone loves talking abouttoe wounds on this podcast.
We know you love it, that's whywe talk about it.
That's another one.
It's just like it just makeseverything in your life very
(05:04):
difficult with this one smallwound.
SPEAKER_04 (05:07):
You take it for granted.
You take it for granted having anormal mouth and no ulcer in it,
and you just take it for grantedbecause then everything, every
word you say, every step youtake, everything you eat, I'll
be watching you.
It'll be hurting you.
I'll be it'll be hurting you.
Yes.
That's yes.
SPEAKER_02 (05:24):
It'll be making me want to cry.
So then I appreciate you playingthrough it.
Yeah.
I'm gonna play through it.
But you're you've got the topicfor the day, which is fortunate,
because I think you're muchsmarter than me, so you can
probably talk more than me onthis.
SPEAKER_04 (05:39):
Well, it's kind of funny because I can hear the
little bit of a list becauseyou're trying to like compensate
for it.
Yeah, you're trying to favorthat side.
So this is good.
My topic, so I can talk throughit.
You know, it's funny, youmentioned like a hand, a hand
thing, being able to like playthrough the hand thing, even if
you have a physical job.
Not that I have a physical job,I'm on a keyboard all the time.
But I was slicing an onion fordinner the other night.
(06:03):
And no, I actually onions nevermake me cry.
I don't know what it is.
Someone told me, someone told methis.
Someone told me in the lastcouple years, like five or ten
years ago, they startedbioengineering onions so that
way it doesn't make people cry.
That's true.
So if you order from like afarmer's market, you'll actually
(06:23):
cry.
If you buy from a store, youmight not.
SPEAKER_02 (06:28):
This is nonsense.
This person told you.
SPEAKER_04 (06:30):
I want to compare them.
I'm gonna I'm gonna go to afarmer's market, I'm gonna buy
one, and then I'm gonna buy onefrom a store, and we're gonna
compare it side by side, and I'mgonna find out if I cry or not.
SPEAKER_05 (06:38):
We might have to live stream it.
SPEAKER_00 (06:43):
On genetically modified cry.
Let's see here.
Great googling.
SPEAKER_02 (06:52):
There is no commonly available genetically modified
tearless onion.
Interesting.
Researchers have explored theconcept to suppress the enzyme
that produces the tear-inducingcompound.
Uh, tearless onions like sunyansare the result of create
convenient con uh conventionalcrossbreeding over many years to
(07:13):
create milder varieties.
So the onion is milder itself,but it's not like an anti-fried
onion.
And how dare you how dare youmild an onion?
SPEAKER_04 (07:20):
Yeah, why would you make an onion more?
SPEAKER_02 (07:21):
You mild that, you're that's just like removing
the hot from hot sauce.
Oh, yeah, would you like some uhwe removed the hot from hot
sauce?
That's just sauce.
Would you like that?
Does that sound delicious toyou?
SPEAKER_04 (07:32):
Yeah, so okay, so maybe maybe a myth.
We don't know.
I'll have to I'll have to testit.
We'll find out.
But going back to my pinkystory, I was slicing into the
onion and I was stupid and notpaying attention, and I sliced
right, you can probably see it.
I sliced right in my pinky.
Oh wow, that's now it's now it'smuch better, but it's like right
on the tip where you like hitthe caps lock and the shift and
(07:54):
stuff like that.
So I'm a keyboard warrior, andwhen I'm hitting that, it hurt a
little bit.
But to your point, I put aband-aid on and I was totally
fine.
I could continue doing my job.
SPEAKER_02 (08:03):
Clark looks uh when he showed me his hand just now
on the camera, he looks uh togive you a paint you a picture,
just like those uh skeletonpirates from Pirates of the
Caribbean the movie.
It's crazy.
Like I don't know how you're notin the ER.
That that bone is just hangingoff.
The skin is there is no skin,it's just pure bone.
SPEAKER_04 (08:20):
It's actually more efficient.
You're it's more efficient.
You know, when you're typing,there's no cartilage in the way.
I mean you hear that click.
You no longer need a mechanicalkeyboard, you just get that nice
satisfying click from your bonegoing straight to button.
SPEAKER_02 (08:33):
You know, if I could be a skeleton man, I would.
SPEAKER_04 (08:37):
But why would you why would you do it?
SPEAKER_02 (08:41):
So much of my problems, I think, are caused by
skin and muscle.
Like, if if you're just like,hey, I'm gonna cast a magical
spell on you, and you can be askeleton man, you'll still be
able to do all the things youcan do today, but you're
skeleton man.
You have no skin, you have nomuscle, you're just bones.
Bones and eyes and a tongue.
I'd be like, you know what?
Let's go.
I am down to skill a clown.
SPEAKER_05 (09:04):
I don't know how I feel about that.
Because then you wouldn't haveany like totally sensitivity.
I'd wear a really cool hat.
Is that is that it?
You just would wear a reallycool hat?
Yeah, yeah, that was it.
SPEAKER_04 (09:21):
Then you have no touch sensitivity.
Granted, maybe then you don'tcare about hot or cold, but you
lose like the sensation offeeling and touch.
SPEAKER_02 (09:30):
But think about my hand.
I could punch someone and they'dbe getting hit by a bone.
SPEAKER_04 (09:36):
You could also take things like out of the oven
without ever having to worryabout like heat.
Just gravitude.
Straight on bone.
SPEAKER_02 (09:43):
Yeah.
And I mean if I'm a magic I'm amagical enchanted skeleton man,
you know, maybe maybe I canchoose when I want touch.
SPEAKER_00 (09:51):
So I can like I could be like, hi, yes, now it's
time for the touch sensation.
And then I I turn it on, andthen it's like, oh no I'm going
to go back to not being touch,I'll be able to do that.
SPEAKER_02 (10:04):
I think this I don't know why you turned a Dracula
during this, but well, I thinkit's part of being a skeleton
man.
I I do think that is a part ofthe voice.
Just the agreement.
Yeah.
I mean, there, you know, I've Ino longer have my vocal cords
are exposed.
Well, they're not, I mean, Idon't even how does that even
work?
Yeah, I don't know.
Because all that is like kind ofheld in by your skin and your
(10:26):
muscles and ligaments.
The skeleton really doesn't it'sjust it's just neck bone at that
point.
Spinal cord.
SPEAKER_00 (10:31):
Oh, spinal cord of my body.
I don't know why you turned likeRussian in this.
SPEAKER_05 (10:39):
I mean, you're a skeleton.
That's why.
SPEAKER_04 (10:43):
Well, you know, you you're actually leading really
well into the topic.
SPEAKER_05 (10:48):
I knew I would.
SPEAKER_04 (10:49):
Speaking about speaking about like parts of the
body and you your segment thingsbetween the skin and the bones
and you know the muscles, thespinal cord, the ligaments, they
all have a job, right?
And together they form yourbody, you they form you, and you
are the ultimate product of yourbody and your parts.
(11:12):
Would you say so?
Get out of town.
No, you wouldn't.
Okay.
Well, for everyone else, yes.
This is insane to me.
This is insane.
The topic today, we're talkingabout team structures, team
structures and trying to givesome people light, at least to
how we work and have worked inthe past in our different
capacities, which we thoughtmight be interesting to share
(11:34):
because every company I've beento, and probably the same for
you, have been slightlydifferent.
And how you could slice and dicework or structure teams
differently to be moreeffective, to go after that
intrinsic motivation,autonomous, fully cross-capable
team that's able to accomplishwhatever objectives in front of
(11:57):
them.
They can be self-independent andbe able to complete all their
work.
The dream, the dream teamstructure.
You ready to dive in?
I'm ready.
So maybe we should talk a littlebit about how do our teams work
today.
So, me in product management,we're kind of abstracted a
little bit from the team, buteverywhere I've worked has been
(12:18):
Agile.
We were waterfall at the companyyou and I worked together, and
then we switched over to Agile.
Yeah, Big Corp.
We were we were waterfall, thenWagile, as some people like to
call it.
And even now I'm still in likean agile kind of waterfall-ish
type organization.
Every company does somethingdifferent.
And we use Safe, so scaled agileframework for enterprise.
So we do like quarterly planningand go in program increments and
(12:42):
slice things into sprints, andthen we basically try to slot in
releases alongside those programincrements.
And so it is waterfall planning,but trying to be agile in the
mix.
So we have scrum teams that fitinto what we call value streams,
which ideally would be likebusiness-oriented functions, to
(13:02):
be like, we're supporting thesales department or something
like that.
And that's our value stream.
We operate all the technologythat supports sales or marketing
or whatever the groups, theoperations team, the support
team, whatever it is.
But really, we kind of just likefudge together value streams and
products together, and it's justa really weird value stream
(13:24):
structure.
The idea was that we couldoperate in a vertical towards a
business objective of some siteor of some sort.
And I think the reality of thatisn't necessarily true, but
within that value stream,everybody has scrum teams.
These scrum teams havedevelopers, so they have
software engineers, they have aproduct owner, which is where my
team comes in, they have a scrummaster that's like the project
(13:47):
manager of the group, and thenthey have quality assurance
people that sit as part of theteam.
There also are some sharedfunctions, which kind of are in
the team, but they're also likea shared service, and that's the
microservices teams and userexperience teams that kind of
come into the team and they helpfor a little while, and then
depending on the work, theymight bow out and do something
(14:08):
else and then come back.
Is it the most effectivestructure?
Definitely not in some cases.
And I'll I'll talk through allthe pros and the cons, but
that's a little bit of how myteams are structured is scrum
teams working on a value streamthat work in a broader
organization, and that'sessentially how everything's
broken down.
SPEAKER_02 (14:27):
I just want to stop before we move on and say if an
alien downloaded this podcastand just listened to the last
five minutes of what you said.
Waterfall, wagile, safe, valuestreams, scum masters, they
would think that you're somekind of aquatic explorer.
(14:51):
Uh you used every singlebusiness transformation word I
think imaginable in your in yourdescription just then, which is
interesting because I feel likeit's also an indicator in like
how teams are organized andplanned for by executive
(15:12):
leadership today.
Because like I I think Ifollowed you, but it got kind of
hairy and complicated at theend, right?
Like your structure is a littleinsane to me.
Um, by comparison, I work on themarketing team.
Uh, I am the director of oursolutions marketing, which means
that I just take care of thebroader storytelling and
(15:35):
marketing framework for anythingthat's not entirely product or
entirely technical.
It's kind of just larger, bigpicture storytelling.
And my team, my team is uh allvarious forms of solutions
marketers.
And it's it's kind of weirdbecause my team is almost a kind
of a catch-all in a way.
(15:55):
They they don't exactly, I wouldsay none of them are purely
marketing trained, and neitheram I for that regard.
None of them have like a degreein marketing, they all come from
different walks of life, eithertechnical or no, they're all
technical.
But uh four of them, they reportto me.
I report to the VP of productmarketing, and he reports to the
(16:15):
CMO.
It's a very understandablestructure.
The way our team sort of expandshorizontally out into the org is
basically we are on tap to helpanyone and everyone at any time
of the day with whatever theyneed that we can produce to help
them close the deal, do thedemo, you name it, we do it.
(16:37):
Um you guys work.
But it's funny because I workfor a startup and you work for a
big company, and it's it's veryinteresting, like just hearing
your description gives me alittle bit of like the shakes.
Just because I I'm like, how doyou how do you actually how do
(16:58):
you have accountability whenyour team is so frickin' deep?
Right?
Like it is it is deep, it iskind of mysterious in a lot of
ways.
Like it's not easilyunderstandable.
You'd have to look at I I feellike with your team you'd need a
sheet, you need a diagram of ofthe layout of the makeup of your
(17:19):
organization.
Where with mine it's very muchjust like kind of Christmas
tree, right?
It's just leader to leader toleader to team.
SPEAKER_04 (17:25):
How do you guys work?
Are you in like a do you doscrum for your team?
And is it just your team, or doyou have like other
cross-functional groups that sitwithin those teams, like in the
day-to-day?
SPEAKER_02 (17:38):
I would say we're kind of Kanban.
But uh, we're really just what'sthe priority?
What's the project?
Manage your own stuff your wayyou will the way you want to.
If there's a problem, we'll talkabout it.
SPEAKER_04 (17:51):
Got it.
So are you guys like, do youhave a daily stand-up?
Do you meet every day and liketalk about okay?
So you don't do any of that.
It's just all your team's workis on a board and they move it
through as individualcontributors piece by piece by
piece.
Yep, as they need to.
Is it aligned like strategicallywith broader objectives?
Like, do they work on thingsthat overlap, I guess, and
(18:12):
support or in support of eachother?
SPEAKER_05 (18:15):
I work for a startup.
So yes.
No.
SPEAKER_04 (18:22):
Oh, so they are too they're totally different, the
stuff they work on.
SPEAKER_02 (18:26):
Yeah, no, I mean, everyone, everyone on my team is
working on something different.
Uh, if they need something fromthe other.
And this is the other thing,too, is at a startup, you wear
many hats.
And as people say that andthey're like, oh yeah, you wear
like three hats.
No, it's like you wear like 20hats.
So anyone on my team can beworking on any number of
projects, and everyone justknows to go to them or who to go
(18:49):
to when they need something.
But we kind of just live and dieby the deadlines and due dates
for the project we're working onand getting it there.
SPEAKER_04 (18:58):
Yeah, it makes sense.
SPEAKER_02 (18:59):
But there is no like strategic, I wouldn't say
there's a strategic alignment oranything.
It's it's really like what'sproduct come up with recently.
Okay, we're gonna do a launch onthat.
Let's go build something on thatand just go do it.
Um, we very much are in chargeof our own fate in that regard.
SPEAKER_04 (19:16):
Yeah, it's interesting to what you said
earlier about likeaccountability.
I think the two majordifferences in the organizations
we work for.
Your team sells software,hardware.
Like you guys are directly inthe technology business.
My job is a supporting functionof a larger entertainment,
(19:36):
hospitality, um, that kind ofindustry.
So, like our software.
Yeah, some people might sayhospitamin.
But our teams, like, we don'tdirectly make money from the
things we build.
We make money through thebroader services and things that
(19:57):
our company provides, if thatmakes sense.
So I think that's like the majordifference, is to your point,
like you guys can directlycorrelate value to the thing
that goes out.
In my teams, it's like wesupport things that are
happening for a broader company,and some of those things are
like technology driven.
(20:19):
You know, of course, with likeAI, it's like that changes how
our consumers interact with us.
So we're kind of at theforefront of that, but we're not
responsible for like drivingrevenue or launching the product
itself, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02 (20:33):
Yeah, yeah, it does.
Well, and I think like that'sthat's a big thing about the the
larger the organization, theless immediate ownership any one
individual or team has.
Where in my org, I own what Iown, and my team doesn't
(20:53):
necessarily own what I own, theyown their own thing.
I have a video person, I have atechnical writer, I have a
community owner, I have a fieldCTO.
Each of them does their ownthing that I basically just kind
of HR manage and help unblockthem when they need it.
But like I couldn't do theirjob, they couldn't do my job,
they own their slice, I own myslice.
No one else does what we do.
(21:15):
If it's not getting done, it'sbecause we're not doing it and
all eyes are on us.
SPEAKER_04 (21:18):
Yeah, it's at the startup at your scale.
That I was gonna mention thattoo of like if you lose the
video person, video doesn'thappen.
He's gone.
We have no video.
Someone either has to like stepin and like try to pull
something together in time forwhatever you need, but more
likely than not, there's noredundancy.
There's no one who can back youup.
But at my scale in my company,the whole point is that there's
(21:40):
tons of redundancy.
So, like, if we lose a teamtomorrow, we'll figure it out
because we could have anotherteam, you know, step in and kind
of take over the work becausethere's such niche skill sets
that have developed to supportthe operating business.
So it's like, yeah, I do, youknow, Kubernetes, I manage our
Kubernetes, you know,connections and instances.
(22:01):
That's all I do every singleday.
Nothing else.
Whenever people have things withKubernetes, I support them.
That's it.
Or it's like, I develop in Mongoor a Mongo database or MongoDB
instance for like this oneproduct, and that's all I'll
ever do is a MongoDB instance.
I'm the MongoDB person, butthere's three of us.
So if I ever go down, we'refine.
SPEAKER_02 (22:22):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and it it's interestingbecause I feel like just
thinking back to our time atBigCorp, we were so replaceable
in that regard.
Like we were there was alwayssomeone who could do our job for
us if we couldn't do it.
Uh, there's someone who could dothe team's job if they couldn't
do it.
Um, that is not the case for meanymore, which is just it's a
different place to be.
I think it also helps me, justsaying that out loud, unpack
(22:45):
some of the challenges that I'vebeen having, is there is no one
who can replace us.
So it does make things harderwhen there is crunch and time to
get things done.
It's just there's no one's gonnado your job or help you do your
job except for you.
SPEAKER_04 (22:57):
Yeah, and it's it's so interesting to think about
like how that affects yourworking behavior because that
it's a lot of pressure on you.
You you are the guy.
If there's ever a need for thatthing in the product solutions
marketing, it's go to Bruce.
There's no one else, it's Bruce.
Yep.
And so like you're the you arethe bottleneck or the hinge
point to do those things.
(23:18):
When in a giant corp, to yourpoint, like the it's supposed to
be risk adverse to support theproducts, and you're supposed to
have redundancy so that way theteams can truly be successful.
But in your case, it's more oflike you just project management
work, and the people who do thethings are the only people who
can do the things.
So in reality, they can't reallywork together on things, they
just have to work independentlyon things.
(23:39):
And as you guys scale, you'llprobably be able to bring other
people in that also do thosethings, and then they can
collaborate and you start kindof getting the you know the
teams orchestrated that way, butright now you guys just aren't
in a state to do that where yourcompany is.
Yeah.
No, no, yeah, yeah, it's prettycrazy.
So it's it's like I think aboutpros and cons of that.
Pros if you're like a type Aperson and you love a lot of
(24:01):
responsibility and you want alot of visibility, like startups
are where you're gonna learn aton because you're just gonna
have to wear all those hats youtalked about earlier, and it's
gonna be non-stop.
You're always gonna be thatperson that they're depending
on.
But cons, it's like you can'treally just fade into the
background.
Because everyone will know.
Like, oh, the video's notgetting done, the video guy's
not doing it.
(24:23):
But in a team, you can kind oflike, and it was apparent to me
because I went to an internalteam conference that everybody
was at this week.
And when I was there, I waslike, oh my goodness, I forget
how big this company issometimes.
And like I was talking to peopleand like asking what they're
doing.
I'm like, that's right.
Like, you're part of theorganization.
You are this tiny little antthat makes up the organization.
You work on this super, superniche thing, and like you'll you
(24:45):
could be gone tomorrow and noone would have any idea.
SPEAKER_02 (24:49):
I kind of like there is a there is a comfort to be
had in that though.
You know, like there really isbecause you can take a week off
and you'll you'll be fine, youknow.
Like, yeah, you'll have yourwork when you come back, but
like chances are your team willbe able to help you and get you
back to a point of offunctionality.
But like on the on the smallbusiness side, you you take a
(25:11):
week off, you come back to anightmare.
It's just a guarantee.
And it's it's it's moredifficult.
And I I've I think we've talkedabout this before in regards to
me.
Just it is it's almost better Idon't take time off.
Or like I don't take long swathsof time off.
Like I take days or day, notweek.
Because anytime I do that, theamount of additional work it
(25:34):
creates and churn is the juiceain't worth the squeeze.
I come back more stressed uhthan I was when I left.
So it yeah, it's it's definitelysomething that I don't miss the
big corp culture, but dang, do Imiss the feeling of being an
ant.
I think being an ant is a nicething sometimes.
SPEAKER_04 (25:52):
It's well just knowing just knowing you have
your team to back you up, youhave redundancy, so it's like
you're not a critical point.
Not that your work isn'timportant, but like if you go
away, if your team goes away,the company's gonna figure it
out.
They're gonna be just fine.
Like because they're big enoughto absorb that risk.
And like to your point, that islike really it's almost I I
(26:14):
think in like decades of yourcareer, it's like in your 20s,
you probably want to be doinglike the startup thing where
it's like you're learning a ton,you're figuring out what you
really want to do, you'rebecoming the person that does
that thing.
So like your skill set is likereally, really deep in that
thing.
Versus at Big Corp, it's likeyour skill set is gonna be so
niche and so specific.
(26:35):
And hopefully you pick the rightin software engineering
programming language.
Otherwise, if you try to getanother job, everyone's gonna be
like, You're a Rust developer.
Oh, you don't know garbledexactly.
Like, you don't you don't knowhow to work in like JavaScript?
And like, no, I only use C sharpfor my whole career, and it's
like, well, yeah, now your yourworth in the world is like 60k a
(26:57):
year, maybe because nobody'susing that anymore.
Yeah, it's so messed up.
It's so messed up.
I think pros of doing that laterin life is like you kind of got
it figured out.
Like you're a chief softwareengineer, and your scope is like
just managing the MongoDBinstance for your company.
And it's like that's all I do.
I have redundancy, I can go taketime off.
(27:17):
I've been here for 20 years,like I can just hang out, I
don't need to do anything, I canjust fade to the background.
SPEAKER_01 (27:23):
That database ain't going nowhere.
Yeah, I'm going fishing, butthat database ain't going
nowhere.
SPEAKER_04 (27:29):
The team's got it.
And so, like, I think back toMid Corp when we were there and
the people that were there forlike 30 years that we felt like
didn't do anything.
SPEAKER_05 (27:35):
Maybe they just had it figured out.
SPEAKER_02 (27:45):
You're telling me the people I hated are actually
the people I should have rolemodeled after.
That's an interesting take,Clark.
That really is.
I didn't expect you to blow mymind so bigly today.
SPEAKER_04 (27:57):
Uh no, granted, they've put decades in versus
you just starting, but they'remaking a lot of money just to do
very little and be responsiblefor very little and do go out
and do whatever they want to do,you know, because they chose the
right technology and the thingand they're just hanging out,
having a good time.
They're not worried about theirjob.
They're not responsible for allthis stuff.
(28:19):
If they disappear tomorrow, it'sfine.
SPEAKER_05 (28:24):
I'm gonna quit.
I feel like I broke you.
I'm looking at your face.
SPEAKER_02 (28:29):
I'm gonna quit my job.
I'm gonna go be a SQL databaseengineer.
Big Corp.
I'm gonna go find the biggest,baddest corp, and I'm just gonna
go be a SQL engineer and justwrite queries that Chat GPT and
then the system is slow.
The system is so slow.
SPEAKER_04 (28:49):
But you know, kind of going back to the topic,
because maybe that's not true.
I think if you have highaspirations, that's not the way
to do it.
But going back to like the teamstructure, and I'm curious
because this will go to what youwere what you were talking
about.
How much autonomy do you have?
Like when you complete, if I'mthe video guy, I complete a
video, can my team just reviewthat and we say, yeah, video's
(29:11):
good, like publish it on thesite?
Or is there a lot of bottlenecksand like process you have to go
through to get things approved?
unknown (29:18):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (29:19):
Bottlenecks processes approved.
SPEAKER_04 (29:21):
It's the same for mine.
It's like we have so many checksand balances.
I don't think that's regardlessof size of the company, right?
Like that is always going to bethere.
SPEAKER_02 (29:30):
Well, you gotta think from a from a small
company's perspective, becausewe're small, there that means
that uh there's the opportunityfor more people to get eyes on a
thing.
Right?
Like, there is no process thatdictates this.
So like you could have the CEO,CMO, CPO all looking at a video
you made, because one, they havetime to do it.
(29:51):
Uh, two, they have aninvestment.
They want the company to besuccessful, so everything that
goes out needs to look good.
So, yeah, no, there there aredefinitely As many bottlenecks,
if not more, than at Big Corp.
Uh, I would say the previousmarketing team I was on had
about 50% less bottlenecks thanI deal with today.
Oh, interesting.
SPEAKER_04 (30:11):
Yeah.
Because yeah, to your point,like just trusted.
SPEAKER_02 (30:15):
At Big Corp, you're trusted.
Yeah.
Right.
Like, I trust you to do a video.
Your boss is going to reviewthat, and they've been trusted
to be the approver.
Uh, you know, if there's aproblem, we'll fix it down the
road.
But like, I think there's just athere's an inherent trust that
comes from big corp.
And I think a lot of it isbecause they are so big, it's
kind of hard for them to mess upand fail.
(30:38):
But when you're a smallbusiness, every single thing you
do is an opportunity to turnaway a valuable customer, which
I think is less less of a riskout of Big Corp.
Yeah, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_04 (30:48):
And the the struggle with your with the startup way,
like your bottlenecks are thechief, the people with C's, the
C level.
And their availability is verylimited.
And so, you know, they also area huge bottleneck for you
because they can't just be like,oh yeah, stamp approved, like a
manager could on a team in BigCorp, right?
(31:09):
Like a manager on a team, bigcorp, and say, Yeah, yeah, looks
good, approved.
Like you publish it.
All set.
It's interesting.
Yeah, I feel like for mycompany, where we've really done
ourselves in is we've madecross-dependencies on teams to
launch things that are notwithin the immediate team.
So we're a big corp, but likewe're dependent on other teams
(31:32):
to do anything.
And so like we do our piece andwe're like, well, we gotta wait
for the database team to finishtheir thing, I guess.
And we have no priority say overwhat they're doing.
So we have to go to theirmeetings and try to influence
them to do our thing, butthey're overwhelmed, so they
can't catch up on their things,and now we're just waiting.
And then we go by and you'relike, all right, we're still
waiting.
(31:53):
All right, let's escalate it tothe to the big bosses, and
hopefully they can do somethingabout it.
And like we're kind of powerlessin that sense.
And I've been reading, Imentioned this book because of
the intrinsic motivation commenton the last episode, but I've
been reading like teamtopologies about how the way you
structure organizations shouldbe around the way that the
software is structured, which isa really interesting concept.
(32:15):
But it's around like, yeah, ifyou're a software company and
you build software, don'torganize around your business
functions, organize around thesoftware and the architecture
that needs to be deployed tomake your teams actually
independent so they can fullywork on something and launch it,
which is a really interestingconcept because it's like you
kind of lose the sight of thebigger value potentially.
(32:39):
Yeah.
But at least you're autonomousand you can react to things and
be solely independent toactually do those things rather
than oh, I'm waiting on Bruce'steam, wait on this team, just
sitting on my hands.
Hopefully one day they'll get toit.
SPEAKER_02 (32:53):
It's it's super weird to me because my company,
I think this is pretty normalfor a startup, you know, we'll
we'll talk to the CPO andthey'll tell us, hey, uh Bruce,
we're gonna release these threefeatures roughly in Q4 time
frame, uh probably early Q4.
(33:14):
So if you wanted to do a bigmarketing launch, like that's
what you could do it on, youknow, and then the the plan is
kind of, well, we have a fuzzydate.
I can at least start working onthe material, you know.
What are we gonna say, what arewe gonna show, what are we gonna
do, what do we need to release,like papers and things along,
videos, demos, etc.
Like I can start to build outthat plan while checking in with
(33:37):
the product and say, hey, do wehave an actual date on these
things now?
Like, is it still fuzzy?
And if it is, like I can say,okay, well, we'll just do a
general launch and it'll it'llsay, you know, coming soon kind
of thing.
Or if there's an actual date Icould say, hey, coming on this
day, we can tie it up with that.
But like it's all done inparallel.
It's it's very much a, hey,they're doing their thing, and
I'm gonna trust them to get itout within a certain, you know,
(34:00):
margin of error on theirestimate, and we're doing our
thing, and we're gonna try ourbest to get everything ready by
that date within a certainmargin of error.
And you know, if not everythingmakes it, it just gets cut out.
But like we're always movingtowards this sort of combined
deadline, and we'll make it workthat way.
But it it's frustrating whenthings change, right?
(34:23):
And like, you know, you know,software, you know hardware.
Things do change sometimesoutside of our control.
So uh in in the last case, youknow, of something I was working
on, something actually came off.
And it was nice because I'mlike, hey, this is one less
thing for me to worry about forthis.
Like, this is a good problem tohave, right?
I mean, you know, obviously itmakes things less interesting,
but at the same time, like itit's nice in that regard.
(34:45):
But in other times, it could beyou you spend all this time
building something, and thenit's like, hey, we're not ready
for this.
This has to wait.
So then you take it and you putit on the back burn, you're
like, well, we gotta refocus anddo this.
Now it's a little bit of acrunch run to get there, but
we'll figure it out.
But that's that's just startup.
That's the way to go.
SPEAKER_04 (35:01):
Do you think if you flip that model and you said
whoever it is, the productmarketing team you're gonna
have?
I don't know who you would havefor product markets.
I don't know anything aboutproduct marketing.
But you would put who knows whatthat is, it's gonna fade away
and be replaced by AI anyway, soit's just a matter of time.
(35:22):
What if fire me, please?
SPEAKER_05 (35:24):
What if you were part of that embedded team?
So I'm on the product team.
SPEAKER_04 (35:32):
What if you were like daily stand-uping with the
development team?
So you're always in the loop onwhat updates are coming and
what's changing.
And small tweaks are making hereor there.
And that way you're just inreducing feedback loops and
handovers, right?
Because you're just like, I'mI'm always in the root loop, I
don't have to check in.
I'm part of the team.
SPEAKER_02 (35:53):
So how do I work with like the larger marketing
org, like demand generation,campaigns, web, creative?
Like there's a lot of peoplethat I work with day to day that
are part of marketing.
If I'm embedded with the productteam, like how do I work with
them?
SPEAKER_04 (36:10):
Maybe that's part of the role.
Maybe part of your role is toactually go do those things.
Oh, hell no.
Hell no.
How does that work today?
SPEAKER_02 (36:19):
You want to give me a second ulcer?
It's making me think about it.
How does that work today?
SPEAKER_04 (36:22):
How do you guys interact with them?
SPEAKER_02 (36:26):
With uh with the rest of the market.
It's just a handoff.
Yeah, like it there's there'shandoffs, like okay, here's all
of the here's all of the Legobricks you need to go make
yourself a campaign.
We've agreed upon this.
Go make your campaign, go doyour emails, go do your
nurtures, go do your firsttouches and all that.
(36:47):
That's a that's a wholedifferent ball game that like
one, you wouldn't want me to dobecause I'm not trained for it,
and I don't have that kind ofmentality or expertise to
execute it.
But like, it really is its ownthing, separate and apart from
the product marketing work.
SPEAKER_04 (37:02):
So you don't think you could take like a slice of
each one of those things and putit on one combined team to do
the development, the marketing,the quality assurance, the
everything around it, and befully autonomous to launch
parts.
Well, I guess in your state,like you guys only have a couple
product offerings, so itprobably doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_02 (37:23):
It would be ginormously ugly and not very
good because I'm not a creativeperson.
Like I couldn't make the imagesand the colors and all that that
are needed for like supplementalmaterial.
I'm not a I'm not a demandperson, so like creating the
emails, creating all of that,like yeah, I could do it, but it
wouldn't be good.
It wouldn't be nearly aseffective as having dedicated
(37:43):
resources for those things.
SPEAKER_04 (37:44):
What if you did have those on the team itself?
Would the team just become toobig?
SPEAKER_02 (37:50):
Yeah, because thinking about like how putting
myself in the product side,right?
So let's say I'm a developer.
Why is there a freaking emailmarketer in our daily stand up?
Like, do we need them here?
Do we need to hear about thestatus of the emails they're
creating for this productlaunch?
Like, that seems unhelpful tothe bigger thing.
SPEAKER_04 (38:13):
But do you think it actually aligns you to the
bigger thing better?
Like you actually know the wholepicture.
SPEAKER_02 (38:19):
It would.
It would, but I think it'd beincredibly intrusive for all of
the actual products.
SPEAKER_04 (38:24):
Yeah, it'd be it's almost like you have, I know
we're just spitbowing here, soyou know, it's just like
thinking about the differentteam structures.
I think that's the core issuethat you're mentioning.
It's there's too many differentskill sets that you run into
like the mythical man monthissue where it's like, you know,
you can't make a baby in onemonth with nine people.
You know, that's that's just nothow it works.
(38:46):
And so there is even in softwareengineering like a limit, I
forget what the law is called,but there's like a theoretical
limit of how many people canactually work on things on a
team productively before it'sjust like you're just wasting
time.
And then your stand-ups turninto like two hour-long sessions
every single day becauseeverybody's looking at
everything.
And the I think the the corepiece of it is you have to you
(39:08):
have more cognitive load.
It's like now I'm trying tocomprehend what Bruce is talking
about in this email strategy,and like I don't need to care
about that.
I need to go write SQL queries.
Developers shouldn't have toworry about that, yeah.
Right.
So it's like, even though it'dbe awesome because you guys
could be fully autonomous, makeall the decisions within your
team, have every single piece tolike go to market with a new
product, it's just it's almostimpossible for you to handle all
(39:30):
that and keep all that in yourmind and not check out every
single time the marketing teamgoes in for their stand-up that
day.
Because it's like I don't evenneed to care.
Like, let me sign off.
SPEAKER_02 (39:40):
I think it yeah, and I think it also it introduces
another problem too, which is ifif the marketing team knows
every dirty little secret aboutthe product team, that is going
to color the way they write,think, and feel about like
they're like, oh, I know thatfeature isn't very good, so I'm
not gonna have that in my myemail because I know oh, it's
(40:00):
finicky.
All I've heard about is how thismight not work.
But if you only hear from theproduct owner, hey, Bruce, these
are the features, they're great,they're gonna deliver this
value, go get them.
I'm taking that to the emailteam.
I've got my messaging allcreated.
It's like, here you go, gocreate some emails, here's your
message, go have fun.
They're not gonna, they're notgonna say, Oh, well, remember
that that one feature thatdidn't work?
(40:21):
Should we write that in anemail?
No, they're gonna write itbecause they don't know that
knowledge, right?
Like, I think there is somethingabout that uh obfuscation of
information, and vice versa,right?
You don't want your developersbeing like, hey, why aren't you
creating emails about this dinkylittle security feature we made?
It's like because no one cares.
Like, literally, this doesnothing for anybody.
(40:43):
It's a checkbox.
I spent my whole life on this.
You're telling me that my workis a checkbox, like, and you're
not gonna create an email aroundit.
Like it it definitely you wantto create lines where there is
communication happening amongstthe individuals that need to
receive and give information,but you don't want to have that
(41:03):
trickle down to the folks thatactually go off and create right
the thing.
SPEAKER_04 (41:07):
It's almost like the separation that's a decision
maker's the separation ofconcerns is important because
they think differently, they actdifferently, and to your point,
like that's why you have roleslike the product owner to keep
people away from the dirtybehind the scenes, this is how
the sausage is madeconversations, because it will
just make them trust it less.
(41:27):
They'll be like, ooh, rememberthat thing had 75 bugs in the
backlog.
That's gonna be a nasty launch.
SPEAKER_02 (41:34):
Yeah, yeah.
And like you don't want yourmarketing people knowing.
SPEAKER_04 (41:38):
Yeah, or your state, your end users, your customers,
like you would never want toexpose that to them, even though
you theoretically could.
So it's yeah, it's reallyinteresting.
Like it's almost like betweenthe domains of like technology,
marketing, ops, customerservice, whatever support.
Like there almost need to bethose, if those are the
verticals, you know, those arethe things that need to have
(41:59):
those clean lines.
SPEAKER_02 (42:02):
Could you imagine if you had a sales rep in your
daily stand-ups?
Hey, where's this feat?
You know, uh CorpEx really wantsthis feature.
Why aren't you guys working onit?
We are working on it.
No, you need everyone, everyoneneeds to be working on this
feature, or else Corpx is notgonna buy.
Right.
That's my status.
Is I can't I can't close mydeal.
I'm not gonna be able to hit myquota unless you guys go make
(42:24):
this feature.
Like, what a nightmare.
What an absolute nightmare thatwould be.
Like, I think there's a reasonwhy teams need to be separate
and sheltered as much as theyare.
I would not change that.
And I I wouldn't, I wouldn'teven want to try the experiment.
SPEAKER_04 (42:41):
Because I think that's dangerous terrifying.
And like to your point, like thetwo different jobs require not
to say it's always that clean oflines, but they require
different personalities.
And typically the engineers areintroverts and they work well
together because they act thesame way and they understand
(43:01):
each other and like they needfocus time and not always be
interrupted.
But like the sales team, it'slike highly collaborative.
It's like, did you hear aboutthis on the corporate side?
Like, do you hear about thiscompany?
Like, what's going on with them?
This person changed, like, oh,did you hear this nasty little
secret that can help us get thisdeal?
Like the dynamic is just sodifferent between the groups.
SPEAKER_02 (43:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you know, I do think this issomething that we I I rarely say
this, but I think this issomething that corporations
actually get really right.
The verticals of HR, sales,marketing, product, like I think
those are good to uh financelegal what else.
(43:42):
Security now has its own kind ofslice, like security legal.
When we make these slices, it'susually because something has
happened that requires the sliceto exist.
Like the whole idea, I thinksecurity is a perfect example,
like the GSO, the globalsecurity officer, and all that.
That used to just be part of IT.
(44:02):
Like, I think even when westarted, we didn't have a GSO at
our company.
But now, good luck having acompany that is like a big corp
without a security office.
Like it is mandatory you havethat, and they need to be
separate from your IT team.
They communicate, they cross,they knowledge share, but they
are not on the same team.
You don't want the people whoare monitoring and managing your
(44:24):
your networks, your storage,your infrastructure to share the
same workload as the ones whoare ensuring about securing it
all.
And that's because there is alogical reason to separate those
two.
Uh I think when vertical slicesexist, they're there for a
reason, and we shouldn't weshouldn't break that.
But I do think it gets tricky onthe team front because it gets
(44:48):
really interesting when you havemultiple teams who do the same
thing, right?
Like, how does that crosscorrelation work?
SPEAKER_04 (44:55):
Yeah.
Yeah, to your point, likecompanies now have the the CISO,
it's like the chief informationsecurity officer.
Like to your point, like theGSO, the CISO, whatever you call
it.
But yeah, the reason that wasborn is because like the
engineering organization or theproduct organization, their
objective is to release theproducts to support the broader
business.
SPEAKER_06 (45:12):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_04 (45:12):
And like that is in direct contradiction with
sometimes creating secure andsafe products because they are
incentivized to say, okay, wedidn't encrypt the data in
transit, but it's encrypted atrest.
So like that's fine.
Like, whatever, we'll go livewith that.
And then, yeah, there's nobodyto hold them accountable because
they're like, well, sales teamsaid they need this, like it's
(45:34):
make or break for our company.
So companies created that CISOposition and that organizational
security, information securitydifferent, uh, so they can do
the right audits and have theright checks and balances in
place to say, you can't go livebecause that will put our
company at risk due to the cyberattacks we might face or you
know, the fraud we might see,whatever it is.
(45:55):
So to your point, it's likethat's the reason those things
get separated, not only just fora people dynamics perspective,
but a the objectives need tokeep each other checks and
balance, like the government.
It's like you need your checksand balances in place to make
sure you don't put your companyat risk.
SPEAKER_02 (46:13):
Yeah.
I mean, there's a reason to whyyou know the US government and
many governments are segmentedthe way they are, is you don't
want one individual having morepower or one group having one
more power than the others.
Uh, I think it's a bargainingchip too, right?
Like, hey, if you want, I knowmarketing team really wants us
to do something you know bigwith security.
If you want this feature, thenlike what we need for marketing
(46:36):
is for you to create X number ofsales so we can fund this thing,
right?
Like, and then it you create atriangle of communication.
We need marketing sales andproduct, like, how are we gonna
achieve this goal so we can godo this thing?
Yeah.
That's the macro level.
I think at the micro level,which is where we started, you
know, it really comes down, inmy opinion, to staffing both for
(46:58):
culture and capability.
Because if you have too much ofone and not the other, you're
gonna be miserable.
And it goes either way.
Like, like you have to have ahealthy dose of both when
building.
SPEAKER_04 (47:11):
Yeah, I think that's that's why we wanted to talk
about this a little bit today,is because I think, especially
earlier on in your career, youyou think through these things.
You're like, this doesn't makeany sense.
Like, why would we do this?
And then as you go through yourcareer, you kind of realize the
reasons those things are inplace, and you gain the
experience to see when thosethings aren't in place, and you
realize before you just gochange something, understand why
(47:34):
it was put there in the firstplace.
Like, I think that's like themoral of the story.
It's like if you're like, well,that function, like they don't
do anything.
It's like, okay, well, start tobe curious.
Try to understand why they werecreated.
When did it start?
Why did it start?
What was the reason?
What is their objective?
And then you'll understand alittle bit more at the macro
level, like bigger than justyour small little niche thing at
(47:56):
the company you're at.
You'll start to understand thebigger dynamics of the
corporation.
And I think that's reallyimportant, especially as you're
growing your career, tounderstand those things.
Because if you just get promotedand then you go into a room and
saying, like, we should justdisband this part, it's like
everyone's gonna look at youlike you're an idiot.
Like, do you not understand howorganizations work and why this
is here?
The answer is no.
SPEAKER_02 (48:18):
The answer is no, and I think you and I both went
through this journey on our own.
Uh, it's it's it's somethingthat every young professional
goes through is kind of learningwhy the company is organized the
way that it is.
And once you figure it out, oneit's it's unfortunate because
you don't really see it whenyou're at the bottom.
(48:38):
When you're an IC at the verybottom, you don't get that
overarching view of the the waythe business works.
But once you start to move upand you start to see how the
company makes money, how revenueis generated, how people are
managed, how HR works, howfinance works, like all these
different pieces.
(48:59):
And this is why I think it's sogood working at a startup is you
get a jump start on this, thenyou will start to understand why
the things are the way they are,and you will no longer be
frustrated or idealizing aperfect world where marketing
and sales and everyone's all onone team.
But uh 100%.
SPEAKER_04 (49:18):
It is funny just to think back like we used to be
like, why are they here thisworld doesn't make any sense?
Like, I would just go and changethat whole thing, and then like,
yeah, as you get later in yourcareer, you're like, Yeah, we
they were actually right, likethat was smart that we did it
that way, even though we wereslower, we built the right
things.
Yeah.
Makes all the difference.
So yeah, I think that's like themoral of the story.
(49:40):
You know, I think there arebetter ways, of course.
You know, you could get reallymicro and granular and have the
right context to evaluate, like,how can you structure teams
differently to work better, youknow, with each other?
But that requires knowing theorganization, knowing the
context, knowing the, you know,the to your point, like all the
ins and outs of the company.
But I think the moral of thisstory is, yeah, before you think
(50:00):
something's stupid, it's morethat you probably just don't
understand why it is the way itis.
And if you really want tounderstand how you can maybe
propose something that couldhelp, don't just go in and think
you can change it.
Try to ask questions, understandwhere it came from in the first
place, and that's gonna not onlymake you more knowledgeable, but
then when you get to the tablewith an opportunity, you at
(50:21):
least have the context behindit, and you're not gonna look
like an idiot in front ofeverybody.
Be curious, be curious, do it.
Well, that's it.
Fun times good, awesome.
I'm gonna let you close it out.
Well, thank you again for uhplaying through your your
injured capability, but you didgreat.
You actually sounded evenbetter.
(50:41):
I think you put it behind you.
The adrenaline was Russian, yougot passionate about the topic,
and you didn't even know it wasthere.
You know?
I need a hospital.
His mouth, his lip has gottentwo times as big since we
started.
It's actually pretty impressive.
You can see the bone.
All of it.
My pinky, your jaw.
All right.
(51:01):
Skeleton.
The magical skeleton end.
Alright, well, that's anotherepisode of corporate
strategy.biz.
How can you get with us?
You can uh the podcast.
No, no, I'm not gonna get there.
I gotta save that for the end.
Yeah, this is my outro.
You you shut your mouth.
You shut your mouth when I'mtalking.
So so you can come and see us inour Discord.
(51:23):
We always talk about uh supercool things in there.
Great community, jobs have beenposted, things have been
released, memes have beenshared.
There are many games you canplay in the Discord.
Like, what do you meme?
You can share just anonymousthings if you want to get
everybody's feedback withoutthem knowing who you are.
And you can also submit topicsthat we'll talk about on the
show.
And there's also a whole bunchof things.
(51:45):
We actually do since it'sOctober, we're due for an AI.
Is it AI?
So I'm gonna be posting anotherimage to determine if it's
actually AI or not.
So that's a fun little game thatwe introduced.
Uh, but yeah, like, subscribe,share, go into the podcast, rate
it.
It takes you literally twoseconds.
Scroll down, there's a linktree, you can see everything you
need to see, and we would loveto see you in there.
And we actually recently, thisis new, we haven't announced
(52:06):
this before.
We are starting to releaseepisodes only to the Discord
community.
We've only done one, but wetalked about like every month or
so, maybe we'll do like asurprise episode just for the
Discord.
And they're they're kind ofspicy, kind of depressing, kind
of spicy at the same time.
So if you're into that kind ofstuff, depressing and spicy,
that specific niche, you wouldlove, love our Discord in these
(52:29):
secret episodes.
So get in there, share with yourfriends, share with your
coworkers.
And that's it.
SPEAKER_05 (52:37):
This has been another episode.
The podcast that could have beenan email.
I'm Clark.
We'll see you next week.
Oh, you're not.
And you're on mute.
We'll see you next week.
You said get him here.
I did say get him in here, butthere's there's something I was
about I was about to say it, andI didn't say it, and I probably
shouldn't say it.
Now that he's in here.
SPEAKER_01 (00:13):
Okay.
SPEAKER_05 (00:15):
Okay.
SPEAKER_04 (00:16):
But if people really want to know and they're really
interested, just tell us in theDiscord, and I'll tell you.
SPEAKER_02 (00:25):
What wh why would we uh not share this content with
Craig?
SPEAKER_05 (00:30):
It has to do with animals.
And it's about the circle oflife.
And he could be sensitive tothat.
Because he is a little beaver.
SPEAKER_04 (00:44):
And I'm worried if we say it out loud.
Yeah, I don't want to talk birdsand the bees with Craig on a
podcast, you know?
SPEAKER_02 (00:52):
Oh you know, I saw two squirrels going to town in
my tree a couple years ago.
SPEAKER_04 (00:59):
Yeah, it's falling to town.
You know, usually they say, youknow, springtime babies come
around, so fall, you know.
SPEAKER_02 (01:07):
It was I was just like, dang, you're just like
doing it out in the open.
Like literally on the lowestbranch for everyone to see, two
little squirrels just having atit.
It's like, I don't know, I gottawalk through here.
SPEAKER_04 (01:20):
I I mean Craig could be a squirrel.
We never considered thatpossibility.
SPEAKER_02 (01:25):
He's got I mean, it's either a bear face or a uh
a beaver face.
If you're not in the Discord,which you can join by going to
the church, the link tree inyour show notes, you can you can
join and you can message Craigand see uh what kind of animal
is he?
We only have his profile pick.
SPEAKER_04 (01:40):
Yeah, he's kind of like cropped to a circle, so
like the tips of his ears arecropped off and they could be
pointed.
They look like they should bewrapped, but you never know.
They could be pointed.
SPEAKER_03 (01:52):
Little Craig.
SPEAKER_04 (01:53):
Little Craiggy.
SPEAKER_03 (01:55):
Little Craig.
SPEAKER_04 (01:56):
Well, I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_03 (01:58):
Hey, welcome back to Corporate Strategy Podcast.
No, copy I talk now.
Welcome back to Corpus Strategy.
Podcast could have been anemail.
I'm broke.
I'm broke.
Now you can talk.
Go ahead.
SPEAKER_04 (02:11):
Well, I was just gonna say I appreciate you.
Because you're you're playinginjured.
You're injured.
Like your most important musclethat's necessary to yeah, that's
necessary to be like productiveon this podcast is injured, and
you're playing through it.
That's what kind of player youare.
SPEAKER_02 (02:32):
I am.
I actually uh literally 10minutes ago in preparation for
this, which is the bestpreparation I've ever done for
an episode, I went downstairsand I gargled.
I didn't gargle, I I swishedsalt water around my mouth
wound.
I have like a stress ulcer on mylip, and it's literally it's
right next to my lower incisor.
(02:53):
So every time I talk, I feel itand it hurts, and I think it's a
little infected.
I don't know how a mouth woundgets infected, but like let me,
I've I've had these.
I usually get them when I'mreally stressed.
Surprise.
And uh I've had them ever sinceI was a child, but I've never
had one that's as bad as thisone.
It is so freaking painful.
(03:14):
Every bite I take of food makesme want to cry.
Uh, talking makes me want tocry, um, breathing makes me want
to cry.
So I'm here for you.
What's up?
SPEAKER_04 (03:25):
I'm just so impressed.
I mean, the the perseverance youhave, the will to play through
being injured, to bring thisepisode to the people.
That's that's commendable.
Gotta do it.
It's very respectable.
I gotta do it.
SPEAKER_02 (03:37):
I I you know, there's there is no telling what
the future holds for me.
And this this could very wellbecome my my new full-time job
is being here.
So I've got to be made again,you know.
SPEAKER_04 (03:49):
So it's kind of funny.
It's like those little things,like your nose being stuffed at
night, or like your throathurting a little bit, you forget
how much you appreciate nothaving those things.
Like you're like, wow, I missbeing able to breathe through my
nose and not be in pain.
And like how much it affects thequality of life is is just
(04:10):
crazy.
SPEAKER_05 (04:13):
Yeah, I it really is.
SPEAKER_02 (04:16):
Um it's it's kind of funny.
I feel like face stuff ingeneral is face stuff, feet
stuff.
Like you can get a cut on yourhand and you'll be fine.
Even if you like work with yourhands, I feel like a good
band-aid, some neosporin, spiton it, like you'll be good to
go.
But like if you have a stuffynose, an earache, you know, eye,
(04:41):
eye scratch, mouth wound, you'rejust like inoperable.
I like everything is much harderthan it was prior to that.
You get a foot wound, toe wound,like we've talked about.
We everyone loves talking abouttoe wounds on this podcast.
We know you love it, that's whywe talk about it.
That's another one.
It's just like it just makeseverything in your life very
(05:04):
difficult with this one smallwound.
SPEAKER_04 (05:07):
You take it for granted.
You take it for granted having anormal mouth and no ulcer in it,
and you just take it for grantedbecause then everything, every
word you say, every step youtake, everything you eat, I'll
be watching you.
It'll be hurting you.
I'll be it'll be hurting you.
Yes.
That's yes.
SPEAKER_02 (05:24):
It'll be making me want to cry.
So then I appreciate you playingthrough it.
Yeah.
I'm gonna play through it.
But you're you've got the topicfor the day, which is fortunate,
because I think you're muchsmarter than me, so you can
probably talk more than me onthis.
SPEAKER_04 (05:39):
Well, it's kind of funny because I can hear the
little bit of a list becauseyou're trying to like compensate
for it.
Yeah, you're trying to favorthat side.
So this is good.
My topic, so I can talk throughit.
You know, it's funny, youmentioned like a hand, a hand
thing, being able to like playthrough the hand thing, even if
you have a physical job.
Not that I have a physical job,I'm on a keyboard all the time.
But I was slicing an onion fordinner the other night.
(06:03):
And no, I actually onions nevermake me cry.
I don't know what it is.
Someone told me, someone told methis.
Someone told me in the lastcouple years, like five or ten
years ago, they startedbioengineering onions so that
way it doesn't make people cry.
That's true.
So if you order from like afarmer's market, you'll actually
(06:23):
cry.
If you buy from a store, youmight not.
SPEAKER_02 (06:28):
This is nonsense.
This person told you.
SPEAKER_04 (06:30):
I want to compare them.
I'm gonna I'm gonna go to afarmer's market, I'm gonna buy
one, and then I'm gonna buy onefrom a store, and we're gonna
compare it side by side, and I'mgonna find out if I cry or not.
SPEAKER_05 (06:38):
We might have to live stream it.
SPEAKER_00 (06:43):
On genetically modified cry.
Let's see here.
Great googling.
SPEAKER_02 (06:52):
There is no commonly available genetically modified
tearless onion.
Interesting.
Researchers have explored theconcept to suppress the enzyme
that produces the tear-inducingcompound.
Uh, tearless onions like sunyansare the result of create
convenient con uh conventionalcrossbreeding over many years to
(07:13):
create milder varieties.
So the onion is milder itself,but it's not like an anti-fried
onion.
And how dare you how dare youmild an onion?
SPEAKER_04 (07:20):
Yeah, why would you make an onion more?
SPEAKER_02 (07:21):
You mild that, you're that's just like removing
the hot from hot sauce.
Oh, yeah, would you like some uhwe removed the hot from hot
sauce?
That's just sauce.
Would you like that?
Does that sound delicious toyou?
SPEAKER_04 (07:32):
Yeah, so okay, so maybe maybe a myth.
We don't know.
I'll have to I'll have to testit.
We'll find out.
But going back to my pinkystory, I was slicing into the
onion and I was stupid and notpaying attention, and I sliced
right, you can probably see it.
I sliced right in my pinky.
Oh wow, that's now it's now it'smuch better, but it's like right
on the tip where you like hitthe caps lock and the shift and
(07:54):
stuff like that.
So I'm a keyboard warrior, andwhen I'm hitting that, it hurt a
little bit.
But to your point, I put aband-aid on and I was totally
fine.
I could continue doing my job.
SPEAKER_02 (08:03):
Clark looks uh when he showed me his hand just now
on the camera, he looks uh togive you a paint you a picture,
just like those uh skeletonpirates from Pirates of the
Caribbean the movie.
It's crazy.
Like I don't know how you're notin the ER.
That that bone is just hangingoff.
The skin is there is no skin,it's just pure bone.
SPEAKER_04 (08:20):
It's actually more efficient.
You're it's more efficient.
You know, when you're typing,there's no cartilage in the way.
I mean you hear that click.
You no longer need a mechanicalkeyboard, you just get that nice
satisfying click from your bonegoing straight to button.
SPEAKER_02 (08:33):
You know, if I could be a skeleton man, I would.
SPEAKER_04 (08:37):
But why would you why would you do it?
SPEAKER_02 (08:41):
So much of my problems, I think, are caused by
skin and muscle.
Like, if if you're just like,hey, I'm gonna cast a magical
spell on you, and you can be askeleton man, you'll still be
able to do all the things youcan do today, but you're
skeleton man.
You have no skin, you have nomuscle, you're just bones.
Bones and eyes and a tongue.
I'd be like, you know what?
Let's go.
I am down to skill a clown.
SPEAKER_05 (09:04):
I don't know how I feel about that.
Because then you wouldn't haveany like totally sensitivity.
I'd wear a really cool hat.
Is that is that it?
You just would wear a reallycool hat?
Yeah, yeah, that was it.
SPEAKER_04 (09:21):
Then you have no touch sensitivity.
Granted, maybe then you don'tcare about hot or cold, but you
lose like the sensation offeeling and touch.
SPEAKER_02 (09:30):
But think about my hand.
I could punch someone and they'dbe getting hit by a bone.
SPEAKER_04 (09:36):
You could also take things like out of the oven
without ever having to worryabout like heat.
Just gravitude.
Straight on bone.
SPEAKER_02 (09:43):
Yeah.
And I mean if I'm a magic I'm amagical enchanted skeleton man,
you know, maybe maybe I canchoose when I want touch.
SPEAKER_00 (09:51):
So I can like I could be like, hi, yes, now it's
time for the touch sensation.
And then I I turn it on, andthen it's like, oh no I'm going
to go back to not being touch,I'll be able to do that.
SPEAKER_02 (10:04):
I think this I don't know why you turned a Dracula
during this, but well, I thinkit's part of being a skeleton
man.
I I do think that is a part ofthe voice.
Just the agreement.
Yeah.
I mean, there, you know, I've Ino longer have my vocal cords
are exposed.
Well, they're not, I mean, Idon't even how does that even
work?
Yeah, I don't know.
Because all that is like kind ofheld in by your skin and your
(10:26):
muscles and ligaments.
The skeleton really doesn't it'sjust it's just neck bone at that
point.
Spinal cord.
SPEAKER_00 (10:31):
Oh, spinal cord of my body.
I don't know why you turned likeRussian in this.
SPEAKER_05 (10:39):
I mean, you're a skeleton.
That's why.
SPEAKER_04 (10:43):
Well, you know, you you're actually leading really
well into the topic.
SPEAKER_05 (10:48):
I knew I would.
SPEAKER_04 (10:49):
Speaking about speaking about like parts of the
body and you your segment thingsbetween the skin and the bones
and you know the muscles, thespinal cord, the ligaments, they
all have a job, right?
And together they form yourbody, you they form you, and you
are the ultimate product of yourbody and your parts.
(11:12):
Would you say so?
Get out of town.
No, you wouldn't.
Okay.
Well, for everyone else, yes.
This is insane to me.
This is insane.
The topic today, we're talkingabout team structures, team
structures and trying to givesome people light, at least to
how we work and have worked inthe past in our different
capacities, which we thoughtmight be interesting to share
(11:34):
because every company I've beento, and probably the same for
you, have been slightlydifferent.
And how you could slice and dicework or structure teams
differently to be moreeffective, to go after that
intrinsic motivation,autonomous, fully cross-capable
team that's able to accomplishwhatever objectives in front of
(11:57):
them.
They can be self-independent andbe able to complete all their
work.
The dream, the dream teamstructure.
You ready to dive in?
I'm ready.
So maybe we should talk a littlebit about how do our teams work
today.
So, me in product management,we're kind of abstracted a
little bit from the team, buteverywhere I've worked has been
(12:18):
Agile.
We were waterfall at the companyyou and I worked together, and
then we switched over to Agile.
Yeah, Big Corp.
We were we were waterfall, thenWagile, as some people like to
call it.
And even now I'm still in likean agile kind of waterfall-ish
type organization.
Every company does somethingdifferent.
And we use Safe, so scaled agileframework for enterprise.
So we do like quarterly planningand go in program increments and
(12:42):
slice things into sprints, andthen we basically try to slot in
releases alongside those programincrements.
And so it is waterfall planning,but trying to be agile in the
mix.
So we have scrum teams that fitinto what we call value streams,
which ideally would be likebusiness-oriented functions, to
(13:02):
be like, we're supporting thesales department or something
like that.
And that's our value stream.
We operate all the technologythat supports sales or marketing
or whatever the groups, theoperations team, the support
team, whatever it is.
But really, we kind of just likefudge together value streams and
products together, and it's justa really weird value stream
(13:24):
structure.
The idea was that we couldoperate in a vertical towards a
business objective of some siteor of some sort.
And I think the reality of thatisn't necessarily true, but
within that value stream,everybody has scrum teams.
These scrum teams havedevelopers, so they have
software engineers, they have aproduct owner, which is where my
team comes in, they have a scrummaster that's like the project
(13:47):
manager of the group, and thenthey have quality assurance
people that sit as part of theteam.
There also are some sharedfunctions, which kind of are in
the team, but they're also likea shared service, and that's the
microservices teams and userexperience teams that kind of
come into the team and they helpfor a little while, and then
depending on the work, theymight bow out and do something
(14:08):
else and then come back.
Is it the most effectivestructure?
Definitely not in some cases.
And I'll I'll talk through allthe pros and the cons, but
that's a little bit of how myteams are structured is scrum
teams working on a value streamthat work in a broader
organization, and that'sessentially how everything's
broken down.
SPEAKER_02 (14:27):
I just want to stop before we move on and say if an
alien downloaded this podcastand just listened to the last
five minutes of what you said.
Waterfall, wagile, safe, valuestreams, scum masters, they
would think that you're somekind of aquatic explorer.
(14:51):
Uh you used every singlebusiness transformation word I
think imaginable in your in yourdescription just then, which is
interesting because I feel likeit's also an indicator in like
how teams are organized andplanned for by executive
(15:12):
leadership today.
Because like I I think Ifollowed you, but it got kind of
hairy and complicated at theend, right?
Like your structure is a littleinsane to me.
Um, by comparison, I work on themarketing team.
Uh, I am the director of oursolutions marketing, which means
that I just take care of thebroader storytelling and
(15:35):
marketing framework for anythingthat's not entirely product or
entirely technical.
It's kind of just larger, bigpicture storytelling.
And my team, my team is uh allvarious forms of solutions
marketers.
And it's it's kind of weirdbecause my team is almost a kind
of a catch-all in a way.
(15:55):
They they don't exactly, I wouldsay none of them are purely
marketing trained, and neitheram I for that regard.
None of them have like a degreein marketing, they all come from
different walks of life, eithertechnical or no, they're all
technical.
But uh four of them, they reportto me.
I report to the VP of productmarketing, and he reports to the
(16:15):
CMO.
It's a very understandablestructure.
The way our team sort of expandshorizontally out into the org is
basically we are on tap to helpanyone and everyone at any time
of the day with whatever theyneed that we can produce to help
them close the deal, do thedemo, you name it, we do it.
(16:37):
Um you guys work.
But it's funny because I workfor a startup and you work for a
big company, and it's it's veryinteresting, like just hearing
your description gives me alittle bit of like the shakes.
Just because I I'm like, how doyou how do you actually how do
(16:58):
you have accountability whenyour team is so frickin' deep?
Right?
Like it is it is deep, it iskind of mysterious in a lot of
ways.
Like it's not easilyunderstandable.
You'd have to look at I I feellike with your team you'd need a
sheet, you need a diagram of ofthe layout of the makeup of your
(17:19):
organization.
Where with mine it's very muchjust like kind of Christmas
tree, right?
It's just leader to leader toleader to team.
SPEAKER_04 (17:25):
How do you guys work?
Are you in like a do you doscrum for your team?
And is it just your team, or doyou have like other
cross-functional groups that sitwithin those teams, like in the
day-to-day?
SPEAKER_02 (17:38):
I would say we're kind of Kanban.
But uh, we're really just what'sthe priority?
What's the project?
Manage your own stuff your wayyou will the way you want to.
If there's a problem, we'll talkabout it.
SPEAKER_04 (17:51):
Got it.
So are you guys like, do youhave a daily stand-up?
Do you meet every day and liketalk about okay?
So you don't do any of that.
It's just all your team's workis on a board and they move it
through as individualcontributors piece by piece by
piece.
Yep, as they need to.
Is it aligned like strategicallywith broader objectives?
Like, do they work on thingsthat overlap, I guess, and
(18:12):
support or in support of eachother?
SPEAKER_05 (18:15):
I work for a startup.
So yes.
No.
SPEAKER_04 (18:22):
Oh, so they are too they're totally different, the
stuff they work on.
SPEAKER_02 (18:26):
Yeah, no, I mean, everyone, everyone on my team is
working on something different.
Uh, if they need something fromthe other.
And this is the other thing,too, is at a startup, you wear
many hats.
And as people say that andthey're like, oh yeah, you wear
like three hats.
No, it's like you wear like 20hats.
So anyone on my team can beworking on any number of
projects, and everyone justknows to go to them or who to go
(18:49):
to when they need something.
But we kind of just live and dieby the deadlines and due dates
for the project we're working onand getting it there.
SPEAKER_04 (18:58):
Yeah, it makes sense.
SPEAKER_02 (18:59):
But there is no like strategic, I wouldn't say
there's a strategic alignment oranything.
It's it's really like what'sproduct come up with recently.
Okay, we're gonna do a launch onthat.
Let's go build something on thatand just go do it.
Um, we very much are in chargeof our own fate in that regard.
SPEAKER_04 (19:16):
Yeah, it's interesting to what you said
earlier about likeaccountability.
I think the two majordifferences in the organizations
we work for.
Your team sells software,hardware.
Like you guys are directly inthe technology business.
My job is a supporting functionof a larger entertainment,
(19:36):
hospitality, um, that kind ofindustry.
So, like our software.
Yeah, some people might sayhospitamin.
But our teams, like, we don'tdirectly make money from the
things we build.
We make money through thebroader services and things that
(19:57):
our company provides, if thatmakes sense.
So I think that's like the majordifference, is to your point,
like you guys can directlycorrelate value to the thing
that goes out.
In my teams, it's like wesupport things that are
happening for a broader company,and some of those things are
like technology driven.
(20:19):
You know, of course, with likeAI, it's like that changes how
our consumers interact with us.
So we're kind of at theforefront of that, but we're not
responsible for like drivingrevenue or launching the product
itself, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02 (20:33):
Yeah, yeah, it does.
Well, and I think like that'sthat's a big thing about the the
larger the organization, theless immediate ownership any one
individual or team has.
Where in my org, I own what Iown, and my team doesn't
(20:53):
necessarily own what I own, theyown their own thing.
I have a video person, I have atechnical writer, I have a
community owner, I have a fieldCTO.
Each of them does their ownthing that I basically just kind
of HR manage and help unblockthem when they need it.
But like I couldn't do theirjob, they couldn't do my job,
they own their slice, I own myslice.
No one else does what we do.
(21:15):
If it's not getting done, it'sbecause we're not doing it and
all eyes are on us.
SPEAKER_04 (21:18):
Yeah, it's at the startup at your scale.
That I was gonna mention thattoo of like if you lose the
video person, video doesn'thappen.
He's gone.
We have no video.
Someone either has to like stepin and like try to pull
something together in time forwhatever you need, but more
likely than not, there's noredundancy.
There's no one who can back youup.
But at my scale in my company,the whole point is that there's
(21:40):
tons of redundancy.
So, like, if we lose a teamtomorrow, we'll figure it out
because we could have anotherteam, you know, step in and kind
of take over the work becausethere's such niche skill sets
that have developed to supportthe operating business.
So it's like, yeah, I do, youknow, Kubernetes, I manage our
Kubernetes, you know,connections and instances.
(22:01):
That's all I do every singleday.
Nothing else.
Whenever people have things withKubernetes, I support them.
That's it.
Or it's like, I develop in Mongoor a Mongo database or MongoDB
instance for like this oneproduct, and that's all I'll
ever do is a MongoDB instance.
I'm the MongoDB person, butthere's three of us.
So if I ever go down, we'refine.
SPEAKER_02 (22:22):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and it it's interestingbecause I feel like just
thinking back to our time atBigCorp, we were so replaceable
in that regard.
Like we were there was alwayssomeone who could do our job for
us if we couldn't do it.
Uh, there's someone who could dothe team's job if they couldn't
do it.
Um, that is not the case for meanymore, which is just it's a
different place to be.
I think it also helps me, justsaying that out loud, unpack
(22:45):
some of the challenges that I'vebeen having, is there is no one
who can replace us.
So it does make things harderwhen there is crunch and time to
get things done.
It's just there's no one's gonnado your job or help you do your
job except for you.
SPEAKER_04 (22:57):
Yeah, and it's it's so interesting to think about
like how that affects yourworking behavior because that
it's a lot of pressure on you.
You you are the guy.
If there's ever a need for thatthing in the product solutions
marketing, it's go to Bruce.
There's no one else, it's Bruce.
Yep.
And so like you're the you arethe bottleneck or the hinge
point to do those things.
(23:18):
When in a giant corp, to yourpoint, like the it's supposed to
be risk adverse to support theproducts, and you're supposed to
have redundancy so that way theteams can truly be successful.
But in your case, it's more oflike you just project management
work, and the people who do thethings are the only people who
can do the things.
So in reality, they can't reallywork together on things, they
just have to work independentlyon things.
(23:39):
And as you guys scale, you'llprobably be able to bring other
people in that also do thosethings, and then they can
collaborate and you start kindof getting the you know the
teams orchestrated that way, butright now you guys just aren't
in a state to do that where yourcompany is.
Yeah.
No, no, yeah, yeah, it's prettycrazy.
So it's it's like I think aboutpros and cons of that.
Pros if you're like a type Aperson and you love a lot of
(24:01):
responsibility and you want alot of visibility, like startups
are where you're gonna learn aton because you're just gonna
have to wear all those hats youtalked about earlier, and it's
gonna be non-stop.
You're always gonna be thatperson that they're depending
on.
But cons, it's like you can'treally just fade into the
background.
Because everyone will know.
Like, oh, the video's notgetting done, the video guy's
not doing it.
(24:23):
But in a team, you can kind oflike, and it was apparent to me
because I went to an internalteam conference that everybody
was at this week.
And when I was there, I waslike, oh my goodness, I forget
how big this company issometimes.
And like I was talking to peopleand like asking what they're
doing.
I'm like, that's right.
Like, you're part of theorganization.
You are this tiny little antthat makes up the organization.
You work on this super, superniche thing, and like you'll you
(24:45):
could be gone tomorrow and noone would have any idea.
SPEAKER_02 (24:49):
I kind of like there is a there is a comfort to be
had in that though.
You know, like there really isbecause you can take a week off
and you'll you'll be fine, youknow.
Like, yeah, you'll have yourwork when you come back, but
like chances are your team willbe able to help you and get you
back to a point of offunctionality.
But like on the on the smallbusiness side, you you take a
(25:11):
week off, you come back to anightmare.
It's just a guarantee.
And it's it's it's moredifficult.
And I I've I think we've talkedabout this before in regards to
me.
Just it is it's almost better Idon't take time off.
Or like I don't take long swathsof time off.
Like I take days or day, notweek.
Because anytime I do that, theamount of additional work it
(25:34):
creates and churn is the juiceain't worth the squeeze.
I come back more stressed uhthan I was when I left.
So it yeah, it's it's definitelysomething that I don't miss the
big corp culture, but dang, do Imiss the feeling of being an
ant.
I think being an ant is a nicething sometimes.
SPEAKER_04 (25:52):
It's well just knowing just knowing you have
your team to back you up, youhave redundancy, so it's like
you're not a critical point.
Not that your work isn'timportant, but like if you go
away, if your team goes away,the company's gonna figure it
out.
They're gonna be just fine.
Like because they're big enoughto absorb that risk.
And like to your point, that islike really it's almost I I
(26:14):
think in like decades of yourcareer, it's like in your 20s,
you probably want to be doinglike the startup thing where
it's like you're learning a ton,you're figuring out what you
really want to do, you'rebecoming the person that does
that thing.
So like your skill set is likereally, really deep in that
thing.
Versus at Big Corp, it's likeyour skill set is gonna be so
niche and so specific.
(26:35):
And hopefully you pick the rightin software engineering
programming language.
Otherwise, if you try to getanother job, everyone's gonna be
like, You're a Rust developer.
Oh, you don't know garbledexactly.
Like, you don't you don't knowhow to work in like JavaScript?
And like, no, I only use C sharpfor my whole career, and it's
like, well, yeah, now your yourworth in the world is like 60k a
(26:57):
year, maybe because nobody'susing that anymore.
Yeah, it's so messed up.
It's so messed up.
I think pros of doing that laterin life is like you kind of got
it figured out.
Like you're a chief softwareengineer, and your scope is like
just managing the MongoDBinstance for your company.
And it's like that's all I do.
I have redundancy, I can go taketime off.
(27:17):
I've been here for 20 years,like I can just hang out, I
don't need to do anything, I canjust fade to the background.
SPEAKER_01 (27:23):
That database ain't going nowhere.
Yeah, I'm going fishing, butthat database ain't going
nowhere.
SPEAKER_04 (27:29):
The team's got it.
And so, like, I think back toMid Corp when we were there and
the people that were there forlike 30 years that we felt like
didn't do anything.
SPEAKER_05 (27:35):
Maybe they just had it figured out.
SPEAKER_02 (27:45):
You're telling me the people I hated are actually
the people I should have rolemodeled after.
That's an interesting take,Clark.
That really is.
I didn't expect you to blow mymind so bigly today.
SPEAKER_04 (27:57):
Uh no, granted, they've put decades in versus
you just starting, but they'remaking a lot of money just to do
very little and be responsiblefor very little and do go out
and do whatever they want to do,you know, because they chose the
right technology and the thingand they're just hanging out,
having a good time.
They're not worried about theirjob.
They're not responsible for allthis stuff.
(28:19):
If they disappear tomorrow, it'sfine.
SPEAKER_05 (28:24):
I'm gonna quit.
I feel like I broke you.
I'm looking at your face.
SPEAKER_02 (28:29):
I'm gonna quit my job.
I'm gonna go be a SQL databaseengineer.
Big Corp.
I'm gonna go find the biggest,baddest corp, and I'm just gonna
go be a SQL engineer and justwrite queries that Chat GPT and
then the system is slow.
The system is so slow.
SPEAKER_04 (28:49):
But you know, kind of going back to the topic,
because maybe that's not true.
I think if you have highaspirations, that's not the way
to do it.
But going back to like the teamstructure, and I'm curious
because this will go to what youwere what you were talking
about.
How much autonomy do you have?
Like when you complete, if I'mthe video guy, I complete a
video, can my team just reviewthat and we say, yeah, video's
(29:11):
good, like publish it on thesite?
Or is there a lot of bottlenecksand like process you have to go
through to get things approved?
unknown (29:18):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (29:19):
Bottlenecks processes approved.
SPEAKER_04 (29:21):
It's the same for mine.
It's like we have so many checksand balances.
I don't think that's regardlessof size of the company, right?
Like that is always going to bethere.
SPEAKER_02 (29:30):
Well, you gotta think from a from a small
company's perspective, becausewe're small, there that means
that uh there's the opportunityfor more people to get eyes on a
thing.
Right?
Like, there is no process thatdictates this.
So like you could have the CEO,CMO, CPO all looking at a video
you made, because one, they havetime to do it.
(29:51):
Uh, two, they have aninvestment.
They want the company to besuccessful, so everything that
goes out needs to look good.
So, yeah, no, there there aredefinitely As many bottlenecks,
if not more, than at Big Corp.
Uh, I would say the previousmarketing team I was on had
about 50% less bottlenecks thanI deal with today.
Oh, interesting.
SPEAKER_04 (30:11):
Yeah.
Because yeah, to your point,like just trusted.
SPEAKER_02 (30:15):
At Big Corp, you're trusted.
Yeah.
Right.
Like, I trust you to do a video.
Your boss is going to reviewthat, and they've been trusted
to be the approver.
Uh, you know, if there's aproblem, we'll fix it down the
road.
But like, I think there's just athere's an inherent trust that
comes from big corp.
And I think a lot of it isbecause they are so big, it's
kind of hard for them to mess upand fail.
(30:38):
But when you're a smallbusiness, every single thing you
do is an opportunity to turnaway a valuable customer, which
I think is less less of a riskout of Big Corp.
Yeah, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_04 (30:48):
And the the struggle with your with the startup way,
like your bottlenecks are thechief, the people with C's, the
C level.
And their availability is verylimited.
And so, you know, they also area huge bottleneck for you
because they can't just be like,oh yeah, stamp approved, like a
manager could on a team in BigCorp, right?
(31:09):
Like a manager on a team, bigcorp, and say, Yeah, yeah, looks
good, approved.
Like you publish it.
All set.
It's interesting.
Yeah, I feel like for mycompany, where we've really done
ourselves in is we've madecross-dependencies on teams to
launch things that are notwithin the immediate team.
So we're a big corp, but likewe're dependent on other teams
(31:32):
to do anything.
And so like we do our piece andwe're like, well, we gotta wait
for the database team to finishtheir thing, I guess.
And we have no priority say overwhat they're doing.
So we have to go to theirmeetings and try to influence
them to do our thing, butthey're overwhelmed, so they
can't catch up on their things,and now we're just waiting.
And then we go by and you'relike, all right, we're still
waiting.
(31:53):
All right, let's escalate it tothe to the big bosses, and
hopefully they can do somethingabout it.
And like we're kind of powerlessin that sense.
And I've been reading, Imentioned this book because of
the intrinsic motivation commenton the last episode, but I've
been reading like teamtopologies about how the way you
structure organizations shouldbe around the way that the
software is structured, which isa really interesting concept.
(32:15):
But it's around like, yeah, ifyou're a software company and
you build software, don'torganize around your business
functions, organize around thesoftware and the architecture
that needs to be deployed tomake your teams actually
independent so they can fullywork on something and launch it,
which is a really interestingconcept because it's like you
kind of lose the sight of thebigger value potentially.
(32:39):
Yeah.
But at least you're autonomousand you can react to things and
be solely independent toactually do those things rather
than oh, I'm waiting on Bruce'steam, wait on this team, just
sitting on my hands.
Hopefully one day they'll get toit.
SPEAKER_02 (32:53):
It's it's super weird to me because my company,
I think this is pretty normalfor a startup, you know, we'll
we'll talk to the CPO andthey'll tell us, hey, uh Bruce,
we're gonna release these threefeatures roughly in Q4 time
frame, uh probably early Q4.
(33:14):
So if you wanted to do a bigmarketing launch, like that's
what you could do it on, youknow, and then the the plan is
kind of, well, we have a fuzzydate.
I can at least start working onthe material, you know.
What are we gonna say, what arewe gonna show, what are we gonna
do, what do we need to release,like papers and things along,
videos, demos, etc.
Like I can start to build outthat plan while checking in with
(33:37):
the product and say, hey, do wehave an actual date on these
things now?
Like, is it still fuzzy?
And if it is, like I can say,okay, well, we'll just do a
general launch and it'll it'llsay, you know, coming soon kind
of thing.
Or if there's an actual date Icould say, hey, coming on this
day, we can tie it up with that.
But like it's all done inparallel.
It's it's very much a, hey,they're doing their thing, and
I'm gonna trust them to get itout within a certain, you know,
(34:00):
margin of error on theirestimate, and we're doing our
thing, and we're gonna try ourbest to get everything ready by
that date within a certainmargin of error.
And you know, if not everythingmakes it, it just gets cut out.
But like we're always movingtowards this sort of combined
deadline, and we'll make it workthat way.
But it it's frustrating whenthings change, right?
(34:23):
And like, you know, you know,software, you know hardware.
Things do change sometimesoutside of our control.
So uh in in the last case, youknow, of something I was working
on, something actually came off.
And it was nice because I'mlike, hey, this is one less
thing for me to worry about forthis.
Like, this is a good problem tohave, right?
I mean, you know, obviously itmakes things less interesting,
but at the same time, like itit's nice in that regard.
(34:45):
But in other times, it could beyou you spend all this time
building something, and thenit's like, hey, we're not ready
for this.
This has to wait.
So then you take it and you putit on the back burn, you're
like, well, we gotta refocus anddo this.
Now it's a little bit of acrunch run to get there, but
we'll figure it out.
But that's that's just startup.
That's the way to go.
SPEAKER_04 (35:01):
Do you think if you flip that model and you said
whoever it is, the productmarketing team you're gonna
have?
I don't know who you would havefor product markets.
I don't know anything aboutproduct marketing.
But you would put who knows whatthat is, it's gonna fade away
and be replaced by AI anyway, soit's just a matter of time.
(35:22):
What if fire me, please?
SPEAKER_05 (35:24):
What if you were part of that embedded team?
So I'm on the product team.
SPEAKER_04 (35:32):
What if you were like daily stand-uping with the
development team?
So you're always in the loop onwhat updates are coming and
what's changing.
And small tweaks are making hereor there.
And that way you're just inreducing feedback loops and
handovers, right?
Because you're just like, I'mI'm always in the root loop, I
don't have to check in.
I'm part of the team.
SPEAKER_02 (35:53):
So how do I work with like the larger marketing
org, like demand generation,campaigns, web, creative?
Like there's a lot of peoplethat I work with day to day that
are part of marketing.
If I'm embedded with the productteam, like how do I work with
them?
SPEAKER_04 (36:10):
Maybe that's part of the role.
Maybe part of your role is toactually go do those things.
Oh, hell no.
Hell no.
How does that work today?
SPEAKER_02 (36:19):
You want to give me a second ulcer?
It's making me think about it.
How does that work today?
SPEAKER_04 (36:22):
How do you guys interact with them?
SPEAKER_02 (36:26):
With uh with the rest of the market.
It's just a handoff.
Yeah, like it there's there'shandoffs, like okay, here's all
of the here's all of the Legobricks you need to go make
yourself a campaign.
We've agreed upon this.
Go make your campaign, go doyour emails, go do your
nurtures, go do your firsttouches and all that.
(36:47):
That's a that's a wholedifferent ball game that like
one, you wouldn't want me to dobecause I'm not trained for it,
and I don't have that kind ofmentality or expertise to
execute it.
But like, it really is its ownthing, separate and apart from
the product marketing work.
SPEAKER_04 (37:02):
So you don't think you could take like a slice of
each one of those things and putit on one combined team to do
the development, the marketing,the quality assurance, the
everything around it, and befully autonomous to launch
parts.
Well, I guess in your state,like you guys only have a couple
product offerings, so itprobably doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_02 (37:23):
It would be ginormously ugly and not very
good because I'm not a creativeperson.
Like I couldn't make the imagesand the colors and all that that
are needed for like supplementalmaterial.
I'm not a I'm not a demandperson, so like creating the
emails, creating all of that,like yeah, I could do it, but it
wouldn't be good.
It wouldn't be nearly aseffective as having dedicated
(37:43):
resources for those things.
SPEAKER_04 (37:44):
What if you did have those on the team itself?
Would the team just become toobig?
SPEAKER_02 (37:50):
Yeah, because thinking about like how putting
myself in the product side,right?
So let's say I'm a developer.
Why is there a freaking emailmarketer in our daily stand up?
Like, do we need them here?
Do we need to hear about thestatus of the emails they're
creating for this productlaunch?
Like, that seems unhelpful tothe bigger thing.
SPEAKER_04 (38:13):
But do you think it actually aligns you to the
bigger thing better?
Like you actually know the wholepicture.
SPEAKER_02 (38:19):
It would.
It would, but I think it'd beincredibly intrusive for all of
the actual products.
SPEAKER_04 (38:24):
Yeah, it'd be it's almost like you have, I know
we're just spitbowing here, soyou know, it's just like
thinking about the differentteam structures.
I think that's the core issuethat you're mentioning.
It's there's too many differentskill sets that you run into
like the mythical man monthissue where it's like, you know,
you can't make a baby in onemonth with nine people.
You know, that's that's just nothow it works.
(38:46):
And so there is even in softwareengineering like a limit, I
forget what the law is called,but there's like a theoretical
limit of how many people canactually work on things on a
team productively before it'sjust like you're just wasting
time.
And then your stand-ups turninto like two hour-long sessions
every single day becauseeverybody's looking at
everything.
And the I think the the corepiece of it is you have to you
(39:08):
have more cognitive load.
It's like now I'm trying tocomprehend what Bruce is talking
about in this email strategy,and like I don't need to care
about that.
I need to go write SQL queries.
Developers shouldn't have toworry about that, yeah.
Right.
So it's like, even though it'dbe awesome because you guys
could be fully autonomous, makeall the decisions within your
team, have every single piece tolike go to market with a new
product, it's just it's almostimpossible for you to handle all
(39:30):
that and keep all that in yourmind and not check out every
single time the marketing teamgoes in for their stand-up that
day.
Because it's like I don't evenneed to care.
Like, let me sign off.
SPEAKER_02 (39:40):
I think it yeah, and I think it also it introduces
another problem too, which is ifif the marketing team knows
every dirty little secret aboutthe product team, that is going
to color the way they write,think, and feel about like
they're like, oh, I know thatfeature isn't very good, so I'm
not gonna have that in my myemail because I know oh, it's
(40:00):
finicky.
All I've heard about is how thismight not work.
But if you only hear from theproduct owner, hey, Bruce, these
are the features, they're great,they're gonna deliver this
value, go get them.
I'm taking that to the emailteam.
I've got my messaging allcreated.
It's like, here you go, gocreate some emails, here's your
message, go have fun.
They're not gonna, they're notgonna say, Oh, well, remember
that that one feature thatdidn't work?
(40:21):
Should we write that in anemail?
No, they're gonna write itbecause they don't know that
knowledge, right?
Like, I think there is somethingabout that uh obfuscation of
information, and vice versa,right?
You don't want your developersbeing like, hey, why aren't you
creating emails about this dinkylittle security feature we made?
It's like because no one cares.
Like, literally, this doesnothing for anybody.
(40:43):
It's a checkbox.
I spent my whole life on this.
You're telling me that my workis a checkbox, like, and you're
not gonna create an email aroundit.
Like it it definitely you wantto create lines where there is
communication happening amongstthe individuals that need to
receive and give information,but you don't want to have that
(41:03):
trickle down to the folks thatactually go off and create right
the thing.
SPEAKER_04 (41:07):
It's almost like the separation that's a decision
maker's the separation ofconcerns is important because
they think differently, they actdifferently, and to your point,
like that's why you have roleslike the product owner to keep
people away from the dirtybehind the scenes, this is how
the sausage is madeconversations, because it will
just make them trust it less.
(41:27):
They'll be like, ooh, rememberthat thing had 75 bugs in the
backlog.
That's gonna be a nasty launch.
SPEAKER_02 (41:34):
Yeah, yeah.
And like you don't want yourmarketing people knowing.
SPEAKER_04 (41:38):
Yeah, or your state, your end users, your customers,
like you would never want toexpose that to them, even though
you theoretically could.
So it's yeah, it's reallyinteresting.
Like it's almost like betweenthe domains of like technology,
marketing, ops, customerservice, whatever support.
Like there almost need to bethose, if those are the
verticals, you know, those arethe things that need to have
(41:59):
those clean lines.
SPEAKER_02 (42:02):
Could you imagine if you had a sales rep in your
daily stand-ups?
Hey, where's this feat?
You know, uh CorpEx really wantsthis feature.
Why aren't you guys working onit?
We are working on it.
No, you need everyone, everyoneneeds to be working on this
feature, or else Corpx is notgonna buy.
Right.
That's my status.
Is I can't I can't close mydeal.
I'm not gonna be able to hit myquota unless you guys go make
(42:24):
this feature.
Like, what a nightmare.
What an absolute nightmare thatwould be.
Like, I think there's a reasonwhy teams need to be separate
and sheltered as much as theyare.
I would not change that.
And I I wouldn't, I wouldn'teven want to try the experiment.
SPEAKER_04 (42:41):
Because I think that's dangerous terrifying.
And like to your point, like thetwo different jobs require not
to say it's always that clean oflines, but they require
different personalities.
And typically the engineers areintroverts and they work well
together because they act thesame way and they understand
(43:01):
each other and like they needfocus time and not always be
interrupted.
But like the sales team, it'slike highly collaborative.
It's like, did you hear aboutthis on the corporate side?
Like, do you hear about thiscompany?
Like, what's going on with them?
This person changed, like, oh,did you hear this nasty little
secret that can help us get thisdeal?
Like the dynamic is just sodifferent between the groups.
SPEAKER_02 (43:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you know, I do think this issomething that we I I rarely say
this, but I think this issomething that corporations
actually get really right.
The verticals of HR, sales,marketing, product, like I think
those are good to uh financelegal what else.
(43:42):
Security now has its own kind ofslice, like security legal.
When we make these slices, it'susually because something has
happened that requires the sliceto exist.
Like the whole idea, I thinksecurity is a perfect example,
like the GSO, the globalsecurity officer, and all that.
That used to just be part of IT.
(44:02):
Like, I think even when westarted, we didn't have a GSO at
our company.
But now, good luck having acompany that is like a big corp
without a security office.
Like it is mandatory you havethat, and they need to be
separate from your IT team.
They communicate, they cross,they knowledge share, but they
are not on the same team.
You don't want the people whoare monitoring and managing your
(44:24):
your networks, your storage,your infrastructure to share the
same workload as the ones whoare ensuring about securing it
all.
And that's because there is alogical reason to separate those
two.
Uh I think when vertical slicesexist, they're there for a
reason, and we shouldn't weshouldn't break that.
But I do think it gets tricky onthe team front because it gets
(44:48):
really interesting when you havemultiple teams who do the same
thing, right?
Like, how does that crosscorrelation work?
SPEAKER_04 (44:55):
Yeah.
Yeah, to your point, likecompanies now have the the CISO,
it's like the chief informationsecurity officer.
Like to your point, like theGSO, the CISO, whatever you call
it.
But yeah, the reason that wasborn is because like the
engineering organization or theproduct organization, their
objective is to release theproducts to support the broader
business.
SPEAKER_06 (45:12):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_04 (45:12):
And like that is in direct contradiction with
sometimes creating secure andsafe products because they are
incentivized to say, okay, wedidn't encrypt the data in
transit, but it's encrypted atrest.
So like that's fine.
Like, whatever, we'll go livewith that.
And then, yeah, there's nobodyto hold them accountable because
they're like, well, sales teamsaid they need this, like it's
(45:34):
make or break for our company.
So companies created that CISOposition and that organizational
security, information securitydifferent, uh, so they can do
the right audits and have theright checks and balances in
place to say, you can't go livebecause that will put our
company at risk due to the cyberattacks we might face or you
know, the fraud we might see,whatever it is.
(45:55):
So to your point, it's likethat's the reason those things
get separated, not only just fora people dynamics perspective,
but a the objectives need tokeep each other checks and
balance, like the government.
It's like you need your checksand balances in place to make
sure you don't put your companyat risk.
SPEAKER_02 (46:13):
Yeah.
I mean, there's a reason to whyyou know the US government and
many governments are segmentedthe way they are, is you don't
want one individual having morepower or one group having one
more power than the others.
Uh, I think it's a bargainingchip too, right?
Like, hey, if you want, I knowmarketing team really wants us
to do something you know bigwith security.
If you want this feature, thenlike what we need for marketing
(46:36):
is for you to create X number ofsales so we can fund this thing,
right?
Like, and then it you create atriangle of communication.
We need marketing sales andproduct, like, how are we gonna
achieve this goal so we can godo this thing?
Yeah.
That's the macro level.
I think at the micro level,which is where we started, you
know, it really comes down, inmy opinion, to staffing both for
(46:58):
culture and capability.
Because if you have too much ofone and not the other, you're
gonna be miserable.
And it goes either way.
Like, like you have to have ahealthy dose of both when
building.
SPEAKER_04 (47:11):
Yeah, I think that's that's why we wanted to talk
about this a little bit today,is because I think, especially
earlier on in your career, youyou think through these things.
You're like, this doesn't makeany sense.
Like, why would we do this?
And then as you go through yourcareer, you kind of realize the
reasons those things are inplace, and you gain the
experience to see when thosethings aren't in place, and you
realize before you just gochange something, understand why
(47:34):
it was put there in the firstplace.
Like, I think that's like themoral of the story.
It's like if you're like, well,that function, like they don't
do anything.
It's like, okay, well, start tobe curious.
Try to understand why they werecreated.
When did it start?
Why did it start?
What was the reason?
What is their objective?
And then you'll understand alittle bit more at the macro
level, like bigger than justyour small little niche thing at
(47:56):
the company you're at.
You'll start to understand thebigger dynamics of the
corporation.
And I think that's reallyimportant, especially as you're
growing your career, tounderstand those things.
Because if you just get promotedand then you go into a room and
saying, like, we should justdisband this part, it's like
everyone's gonna look at youlike you're an idiot.
Like, do you not understand howorganizations work and why this
is here?
The answer is no.
SPEAKER_02 (48:18):
The answer is no, and I think you and I both went
through this journey on our own.
Uh, it's it's it's somethingthat every young professional
goes through is kind of learningwhy the company is organized the
way that it is.
And once you figure it out, oneit's it's unfortunate because
you don't really see it whenyou're at the bottom.
(48:38):
When you're an IC at the verybottom, you don't get that
overarching view of the the waythe business works.
But once you start to move upand you start to see how the
company makes money, how revenueis generated, how people are
managed, how HR works, howfinance works, like all these
different pieces.
(48:59):
And this is why I think it's sogood working at a startup is you
get a jump start on this, thenyou will start to understand why
the things are the way they are,and you will no longer be
frustrated or idealizing aperfect world where marketing
and sales and everyone's all onone team.
But uh 100%.
SPEAKER_04 (49:18):
It is funny just to think back like we used to be
like, why are they here thisworld doesn't make any sense?
Like, I would just go and changethat whole thing, and then like,
yeah, as you get later in yourcareer, you're like, Yeah, we
they were actually right, likethat was smart that we did it
that way, even though we wereslower, we built the right
things.
Yeah.
Makes all the difference.
So yeah, I think that's like themoral of the story.
(49:40):
You know, I think there arebetter ways, of course.
You know, you could get reallymicro and granular and have the
right context to evaluate, like,how can you structure teams
differently to work better, youknow, with each other?
But that requires knowing theorganization, knowing the
context, knowing the, you know,the to your point, like all the
ins and outs of the company.
But I think the moral of thisstory is, yeah, before you think
(50:00):
something's stupid, it's morethat you probably just don't
understand why it is the way itis.
And if you really want tounderstand how you can maybe
propose something that couldhelp, don't just go in and think
you can change it.
Try to ask questions, understandwhere it came from in the first
place, and that's gonna not onlymake you more knowledgeable, but
then when you get to the tablewith an opportunity, you at
(50:21):
least have the context behindit, and you're not gonna look
like an idiot in front ofeverybody.
Be curious, be curious, do it.
Well, that's it.
Fun times good, awesome.
I'm gonna let you close it out.
Well, thank you again for uhplaying through your your
injured capability, but you didgreat.
You actually sounded evenbetter.
(50:41):
I think you put it behind you.
The adrenaline was Russian, yougot passionate about the topic,
and you didn't even know it wasthere.
You know?
I need a hospital.
His mouth, his lip has gottentwo times as big since we
started.
It's actually pretty impressive.
You can see the bone.
All of it.
My pinky, your jaw.
All right.
(51:01):
Skeleton.
The magical skeleton end.
Alright, well, that's anotherepisode of corporate
strategy.biz.
How can you get with us?
You can uh the podcast.
No, no, I'm not gonna get there.
I gotta save that for the end.
Yeah, this is my outro.
You you shut your mouth.
You shut your mouth when I'mtalking.
So so you can come and see us inour Discord.
(51:23):
We always talk about uh supercool things in there.
Great community, jobs have beenposted, things have been
released, memes have beenshared.
There are many games you canplay in the Discord.
Like, what do you meme?
You can share just anonymousthings if you want to get
everybody's feedback withoutthem knowing who you are.
And you can also submit topicsthat we'll talk about on the
show.
And there's also a whole bunchof things.
(51:45):
We actually do since it'sOctober, we're due for an AI.
Is it AI?
So I'm gonna be posting anotherimage to determine if it's
actually AI or not.
So that's a fun little game thatwe introduced.
Uh, but yeah, like, subscribe,share, go into the podcast, rate
it.
It takes you literally twoseconds.
Scroll down, there's a linktree, you can see everything you
need to see, and we would loveto see you in there.
And we actually recently, thisis new, we haven't announced
(52:06):
this before.
We are starting to releaseepisodes only to the Discord
community.
We've only done one, but wetalked about like every month or
so, maybe we'll do like asurprise episode just for the
Discord.
And they're they're kind ofspicy, kind of depressing, kind
of spicy at the same time.
So if you're into that kind ofstuff, depressing and spicy,
that specific niche, you wouldlove, love our Discord in these
(52:29):
secret episodes.
So get in there, share with yourfriends, share with your
coworkers.
And that's it.
SPEAKER_05 (52:37):
This has been another episode.
The podcast that could have beenan email.
I'm Clark.
We'll see you next week.
Oh, you're not.
And you're on mute.
We'll see you next week.
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