Economic Decision Cycles

In this episode of The Hidden Chasm, Mark Hill dives deep into one of the most critical factors for business success: the economic decision-making cycle. 

Too many companies focus on immediate gains, missing the opportunity to balance those short-term wins with a sustainable long-term vision. Without this balance, organizations find themselves chasing features, missing the big picture, and ultimately falling behind in a competitive landscape.

🛠️ Find out how your decision-making process could be holding you back and learn the key strategies to align your short-term actions with long-term growth.

#LeadershipDevelopment #BusinessStrategy #OrganizationalGrowth #CEO #TheHiddenChasm

Episode Transcript

Bo Motlagh (00:11):
You're listening to The Hidden Chasm, where we
explore unforeseen growthchallenges that surprise SaaS
Enterprise. The Hidden Chasm isbrought to you by United Effects
Inc in partnership with BlunillaLLC. For more information on
either visitunitedeffects.com or bluenilla.com
respectively.

Josh Smith (00:30):
The love boat. The hidden chasm. No. I'm not. Are
you recording?
Jerk.

Bo Motlagh (00:38):
Oh, yeah. We're we're live. So, as as you heard,
welcome back to to The HiddenChasm. We'll, we'll have to get
that No. On every episode there.
Thanks, Josh. Well, welcomeback, everybody who's listening.
You know, we're continuing ourconversation of, talk about the
consequences of legacy solutionsand tech debt and strategic gaps

(01:02):
and what happens when growingenterprises run into these
things unexpectedly. We'vegotten to talk about that from a
lot of different perspectivesfrom product and technology, m
and a, people and culture,sales. And today, we're gonna be
chatting about it from anorganizational transformational

(01:22):
design perspective, which I'mpretty excited about.
And to that end, welcome, MarkHill. We're excited to have you
here. Mark, I'm gonna read this.I always do. Is an accomplished
transformation andorganizational design leader who
specializes in guidingorganizations to adaptively
design their actions for missiondriven success and extraordinary

(01:42):
results.
Welcome, Mark.

Mark Hill (01:45):
Hey. Thank you. It's good to be here.

Bo Motlagh (01:47):
It's good to have you. I guess, you know, maybe a
good place to start is just tellus a little bit about yourself
and how you got intotransformational design and and
maybe what that means.

Mark Hill (02:00):
Yeah. Sure. So I think anytime you create
something from nothing, youknow, like a company or a new
team, you basically have todecide how is that thing going
to structure and function, youknow, both from an outside
perspective. If you're gonnakinda look and say, how's it
gonna structure in a largerbusiness economy? And then, you

(02:22):
know, on a micro level, yougotta say, how's it gonna
structure maybe it's like ateam, you know, within a within
a larger organization.
Because none of these companiesor teams, you know, rely on
themselves to feed themselves.Right? They all have to get
energy from somewhere, eitherfrom the economy or, you know,
from internal groups they haveto work with. Right? So those
are a lot of really complexdynamics at play, and that's

(02:42):
kind of essentially whatorganizational design is.
It's like, how can we design themost frictionless entity that
can basically, you know, both,you know, kind of enter the
market that are be high impact,and then internally, as it
functions within itself,essentially be high performing.
And so those are the 2, I guess,dynamics you could say that I
look at most of all, howcompanies are performing

(03:04):
externally in relation to theirgoals. Sometimes their peers, if
I have enough time to do thatkind of research, and then, you
know, also, like, you know,internally with how are they
really working with themselves.And, you know, a lot of times I
tell I tell I tell executivesthat I work with, I say, look.
They say, well, how do we knowif we're really doing well?

(03:24):
We're a version of thatquestion. Right? So they kinda
wanna know, like, what stick I'mgonna kinda help them with. You
know? Like, how are you gonna doyour discovery?
What are you gonna look at? Allthis sorts of, like, technical
stuff. And I said, hey. I'mgonna do pretty much one thing.
Mhmm.
And they're like, oh, yeah. Youknow, highly skeptical. One
thing. Right? You're gonna kindaget there.
And it it is a little bit of ait was a little bit of a shtick,
but it's a 100% true. I said,I'm gonna look at the inside of

(03:46):
your company outside in, and I'mgonna pretend like I'm a
customer, and I'm gonna see ifI'm satisfied. Right. Or what's
is what you're like on theinside what you're actually like
on the outside? And I saidcontinuity between those two
things counts for a lot.
You know, that's a that's africtionless organization that's
probably extremely highperforming. And, you know, we
can look at board design, KPIs,all the rest of the stuff that

(04:09):
goes into sort of making thatreal. But that's pretty much the
that's the big play on theboard.

Bo Motlagh (04:13):
And how did you, you know, get fall into this or fall
did you, you know, set out to dothis kind of consultative work?
And tell us a little bit aboutyour career progression.

Mark Hill (04:23):
Absolutely, Bo. So I guess the easiest way to explain
it without boring everybodywho's listening to tears,
including you 2, is to say Ichase problems. I started off
like a lot of people do as somesort of, you know, individual
contributor role, like rolling awheelbarrow back and forth up
and down the hallway. And mywheelbarrow was, like, was

(04:44):
project management, you know,hanging out with the
technologist. And often I tellpeople I'm a technology minded
business person because I knowenough to be dangerous and very
dangerous sometimes.
But, so I will roll that thingup and down the hallway and you
take enough passes inside oforganizations and you get enough
reps, kinda like going to thegym. Mhmm. You get stronger. And
so I just started looking at,you know, deeper and deeper

(05:06):
problems or bigger and biggergaps or to use y'all's
terminology, you know, largerand larger chasms because some
of these things are, like yousay, they are truly hidden. You
know, the amount of executivesthat can look and say, hey, you
know what?
The reason we can't function iswe've got a design flaw is maybe
like 1%, you know, really. Andthey had to come up through a

(05:27):
very specialized discipline, youknow, within the wheelbarrow
structure to be able to getthat. Right? They'll have a
consulting background orsomething like this where
they've had to go in and dooperating model transformation
or or design stuff. So that'sreally how I did it.
I started looking for, you know,what's the bigger and bigger
problem, or what's the 80 20 ofeverything that's kinda going on

(05:47):
here. And

Josh Smith (05:48):
I really appreciated our conversations, when we had
worked together. I was veryimpressed by a lot of your past
experience working with hugecompanies at an executive level
internationally and the patternsthat you were able to see. I
know I I recall some of ourconversations where we had

(06:09):
spoken about organizations thatscale to a certain point that
the fractures start

Mark Hill (06:16):
to

Josh Smith (06:17):
to appear by nature of that scaling and them them
not being prepared for itoperationally. It was very
insightful. I think in manyrespects, it led and built
towards where we are here withthe podcast, that kind of that
kind of insight that you had.

Mark Hill (06:31):
Yeah, Josh. I appreciate that. I remember
those conversations. I rememberthose conversations really well
too. They were one of thebrighter spots of that
particular that particular stopon the, on the Cairo Railroad.
But, yeah, I mean, it it is oneof those things. It's sort of
like you know, it's what y'allreally talk about all the time,
and you're right to do it andyou're right to push it. And I'm

(06:53):
gonna say this about you both isthat, you know, I think what
you're trying to do and what I'mtrying to do aren't very
different. Just maybe haveslightly different approaches or
angles on it, which I findfascinating because this is such
a big problem. A lot of anglesare definitely warranted.
And I think the fact that you'regoing after and this is the

(07:14):
thing we just called out, andI'm just gonna kinda take what
Josh said and kinda reiterate alittle bit, is that this is a
truly unseen problem. Like, yourstructure is outmoded for your
level of competition. Like, itcould be true. You know, when we
think about architecture, like,not to get too geeky and
technical, too fast or whatever,but, like, when we think about
architecture, there's severallevels of architecture inside of

(07:37):
a company. Right?
And there's a lot of differentways to define this. But if
we're really basic and reallysimple about it, you know,
you've got a businessarchitecture. You know, that's
kind of how your business isultimately designed to be able
to function and kind of competeout in the market. Like, old
school talk would have beenlike, that's your business
model. Yeah.
Sort of. Like, it kind of isthat thing. You know, then
underneath that, you have howyou actually produce value, and

(07:58):
that's really your operatingmodel. You know? And that's
where most companies transformand try to do something.
But the problem is is that thebusiness architecture, sort of
how that competition or whatyour future state of how you're
going to be grow to sort ofcompete and all the other pieces
that go to the big box of hydroproducts and lines and all that
stuff. And everything in theoperating model goes underneath

(08:20):
it, you know, and then, youknow, your technical designs
kinda go underneath that becausethey've ultimately gotta support
that. So when your top layer isoff, like truly off, all the
other pieces underneath thatmake your company function, you
know, your operating model, yourtechnical your your operating
architecture, your technicalarchitecture. Right, and your
workforce architecture, whichnobody ever includes in the

(08:41):
diagrams because I think they'vehad a stroke or something. But
because, you know, it would beone of the most important pieces
underneath that.
That's the one that sort ofactivates all of these different
models, but they're just sort oflike, you know, layers in a
cake, and they have to be reallywell balanced and plugged in.
Otherwise, you've got theworld's ugliest, most lopsided
birthday cake, you know, thatsort of slides off the platter
and becomes food for the dogs.And that's what happens

(09:04):
sometimes when companies don'tfigure out how to, you know, how
to kind of grow their structurein terms of what their sort of
competitive desires. It's abalancing act.

Bo Motlagh (09:14):
I yeah. I and I really like, I was gonna ask for
you to define the hidden chasmin your own words, and I think
you just did. You're describingwhat we've been talking about,
but you're describing it in away that I don't think Josh and
I really have yet, which isinteresting. And I think what
you said was when your operatingstructure is not at the right
level for is not correct for thelevel of competition that you're

(09:35):
at. And that is so apt.
I mean, one of the things, oneof the triggers, one of the
catalysts that Josh and I'vetracked in terms of when does
this basically punch you in theface is exactly that. New
competition coming into themarket and, eating up your users
because they can do it cheaperand better. And it's not really
commoditizing, but it's it's onits way to that in some ways.

(09:58):
And it's because you're just notset up for that. So I really
like that you've consulted in alot of different companies over
the years, I'm sure.
And how often do you see, youknow, run into the chasm? I feel
like especially in your line ofwork, it's probably all the
time, but how often are youseeing it or seeing it coming,
like, down the road and realizethat they don't they haven't

(10:19):
seen it? You know? So forexample, maybe they've brought
you into one thing, and you'resort of looking around and
going, hey. There there's someproblems here that you maybe
aren't aware of.

Mark Hill (10:28):
Yeah. That's a good that's a good question. So
you're right. I feel like my Ifeel like the ends of my fingers
are trembling because they'rethey're worn out from holding on
to the ends of the ends ofclips. Because I feel like, you
know, you're not really doing agood job if you're a consultant,
and you're really not scalingthe outside where things get
really airy because, you know,that's where all the things hide

(10:49):
in the dark that are actuallycausing all the things to happen
in the light.
So, you know, a lot of that ispretty much, you know, pretty
much all the time. But I think,you know, that's one of the more
interesting I mean, that's areally interesting question. And
I've thought about this foryears, I would say largely
unsuccessfully, in fits andspurts. And I even tried to do
this once with a with a large,Fortune 100 company that's in

(11:12):
the retail, but it's more of amore of a, they're in the retail
space, but they're more of amarketing company. You might
guess who that might be.
But, like, you know, some of thestuff like that because, you
know, it's sort of like earlydetection for when you're
outgrowing your when you'reoutgrowing your clothes. Right?
So, you know, it's like I'mkinda outgrowing what I'm
already doing. How do I reallyknow? And I think that's one of

(11:35):
the really interesting piecesbecause as you like, you all do
and I do, you sit around and youstart to see markers.
Right? You can go in and you canread a company very
specifically. Just ask for acouple of measures. I don't
wanna see all your dashboardsbecause you're probably looking
at too much stuff and it doesn'tmake a whole lot of sense. It
doesn't really tell a story.
So you kinda go in and you lookfor the stories inside of the
company. You know, you pulltogether a series of KPIs on

(11:58):
different things that they mayor may not be tracking, and
those gaps tell you a lot.That's that's one piece. Right?
It's like, you know, how's yourrevenue margin and customer
retention working out for you?
You know, it's like, you know,you go and you you poke, like,
very obvious sort of areas andyou see where there are where
there are kind of, like, youknow, giant holes. And then you
look and you go look at adifferent layer, and that's why
I talked about the layers insideof the the different

(12:19):
architecture. Then you go backand you start poking around and
you say, oh, that's reallyinteresting. So you're having a
customer attention problem. Youknow?
Is that related to pricing? Isthat related to customer
service? Is that related to isit feature is it feature parity
issue or feature superiorityissue? And you go back down, and
then eventually, you can look atthat operational layer of, you

(12:39):
know, how are all these thingsactually functioning, you know,
against the market and andinternally themselves. And then
the 3rd layer that you go downand you kind of look at sorry if
I'm kind of geeking out on thisagain too.
Is that the 3rd layer is reallyyou go back and you look at the
performance of the workforceyour workforce model because you
find out, hey. You know what?We're, you know, we're not doing

(12:59):
great at customer service, but,you know, we've got way too many
calls too high call handlevolume for the amount of people
that we have. And then we goback, we find the retention rate
is, like, worse than industryaverage. So, like, what do you
think is gonna happen if it'snot easy for your customers to
actually use your product or theway they're trying to use it
doesn't really work?
Like, these layers all connect.Right? So kinda getting that

(13:20):
that part of it is really,really important because if you
can get that established andthis is one of the most
important things you can kindatransform once you get some of
that big structure stuff right.If you can get the right
telltale signs in the right formto be able to tell really
obvious stories into the handsof executives, that gap that I
said, that 99% gap where peopledon't understand the design

(13:41):
portion of it, you've basicallysort of handed them a playbook
to then be able to go back andsay, oh, I see. There's a direct
relationship between thesethings.
I never looked at that on mydashboard before. Right? So Yep.
It's really finding ways whenyou get in and you look and
companies say, hey. Go solvethis problem for me.
Go fix my operating model. Wecan't get value out the door
fast enough. And you come backin and you say, well, you can't

(14:02):
retain it fast enough either.Right? There's other pieces to
this.
You know? And until you you gotgray hair, you know, kinda like
you and and me and and Josh, Ithink he dyes his. But, you
know, you know, I don't reallyknow people, so don't take that
as don't take that as gospel. Sobut, anyway, until you actually
have that experience or thatsystem, which I think is what
we're both trying to develop,you know, you really can't tell

(14:26):
hard for tails. Right?
You just kind of go in and youfollow stovepipes around and
bang around and hopefully fix afew things. But if you really
want to as a mission, you reallywant to teach people how to look
at their design and where it'sfaulty and where they really
need to scale it up. You know,you need to struct teach that
structure and you need to teacha lot of those metrics. And I
think that's kind of the essenceof what might be an early

(14:47):
detection system, you know, thatwe can kinda leave behind with
Merx.

Bo Motlagh (14:51):
And I think one of the things I try to try to
reinforce, you know, when I'mspeaking to executives like
this, it's, this isn't somethingI can come in and fix for you in
6 months. Maybe you disagree,but I I feel like it's more
about recognizing that this isgonna be a journey, but let's at
least help you see the bigpicture and being realistic
about that. I mean, from yourperspective, do you think, like,

(15:13):
how do you set up alignexpectations around this?
Because they're going to want,you know, like, hey, can you
just fix this for me? And fix itcan mean a couple different
things in this context, I think.

Mark Hill (15:24):
I always try to be really honest when I first start
working with a with a group orespecially with executives
because they're used to kind ofoften being sort of lone wolves.
Right?

Bo Motlagh (15:34):
Right.

Mark Hill (15:35):
Because power accumulation is one of the point
of most modern enterprises,right, at least from an
individual basis. So you have tokinda figure out how to counter
that all too human impulse and,or at least put it at ease, you
know, with you so you canactually, you know, land on
something that's worthwhile, notonly with them, but, you know,
also with their peers. But, youknow, one of the first things I
always try to do is establishestablish a baseline. And I

(15:58):
think this baseline is reallyalways a couple of promises I
usually like to make on my side.You know, the first one is I
will never do anything that'snot within your own best
interest long term.
You know? And if you disagree,you know, push back. You know?
Kinda giving them permission tobe able to push back on that and
also know that maybe I've got alonger view. And if you truly

(16:20):
trust me, you'll probably listento what I have to say.
It kind of sort of outside endsit a little bit to kinda create
a little bit of differentperspective than me being
Because some executives reallydon't know how to work with a
true consultant like you guysbecause they're just so used to
just working with direct reportsand fighting their neighbor. You
know? So that kind of thebaseline's important. One of the
other things I often promisethem as well or I ask them

(16:43):
here's the usually, the secondquestion I ask. And I said, you
know, I've done this a lot.
You know, I've been to the gym,you know, a 100 times doing the
same type of transformation orwhatever. I'm exaggerating, of
course. But, you know, how manytimes have you been to the gym?
Mhmm. And they're like, maybeI've done this, like, once or
twice or, you know, a buddy ofmine in x y z enterprise has

(17:03):
done, you know, this, and we'vetalked about it over cigars and
fire pit or, you know, whateverelse that is.
Right? Type of deal. And so youfind out that sort of rep
number. Hopefully, they'll comeclean with you. You know?
And then you come back and yousay, well, look. I've done it a
100 times. So do you wanna learnto think about this like I think
about it, or do you just wannacover up or take care of the

(17:27):
existing potholes withoutunderstanding why the potholes
happen. And that's the so,anyway, sorry. It took me a
while to get your to your point.
I was kinda running my talktrack in my head. But, like,
that's really it. It's like,hey. Do you really trust me to
have your long term interest inmind? And b, you know, what do
you want?
Do you wanna think, you know,like your personal trainer? You
know? Or do you wanna think likeyourself lifting weights?

Josh Smith (17:48):
Mhmm.

Mark Hill (17:49):
It's 2 different perspectives. And if you can get
a yes to both questions, you'veprobably got somebody who's
going to be, you know,enthusiastic and honest and
straightforward. You're gonnayou're gonna get good results
because then they'll be able toactually stick beyond just
patching the turnpike, you know,which we know doesn't work at
all. Is it just it's like amonster that eats itself.

Josh Smith (18:10):
Reminds me of a there's a documentary called
Escape Fire where it's about thehealth care industry, and
there's a scene where a doctorgoes to the patient, and the
doctor pretty much explains,hey. You've got high blood
pressure. Your arteries aregetting clogged. You're gonna
have a heart attack soon, or ifyou need to stop eating, what
are you eating? And the guygoes, I eat Vienna Weiners every

(18:33):
day.
Every day, you eat ViennaWeiners every day. And the
doctor is, maybe you think youshould probably stop eating
those Vienna Weiners. And hegoes, could you just give me the
medicine and so I can be on myway? And it's like, okay.
There's, like, underlying rootcause, and then there's just,
you know, as you mentioned, justcover the potholes.
And you have an experience totackle an area that I don't

(18:55):
think we've we've addressed yet.I mean, you were right earlier
on when you mentioned, you know,different looking at it from
different perspectives. Ofcourse, Bo and I predominantly
although the Hidden Chasmpodcast is to try and see it
from as many perspective asperspectives as possible. We are
we are kind of from our ownexperience understanding it from
an angle of how does this How isthe legacy, technology systems,

(19:22):
affected and affecting thismoment where people hit this
wall, this chasm. You come froma perspective though based on
your experience that we'vealways we're we're always
talking about, which is how doyou communicate or connect this

(19:44):
at an executive level and helpexecutives understand what's
going on, which is, it's waymore difficult than I had
initially assumed.

Bo Motlagh (19:58):
I think, well, it sounded like yeah. I was just
gonna say, Mark, it sounded likeyou know, you kind of spoke to
that a little bit because you itcorrect me if I'm wrong, but it
sounds like you basically justput it out there and say, like,
look, this is reality. Take itor leave it and let them let
them decide because that's whatthey ultimately want. Right?
They want the ability to decidewhether it's the medicine or to

(20:19):
stop eating the wieners.

Mark Hill (20:23):
Maybe that'll be my third question, and I'll start
asking.

Bo Motlagh (20:25):
Yeah.

Mark Hill (20:26):
Like, you know, 2 is not a great not a great number.
3, people usually expect thingsin threes. Yeah. You do
discoveries. You give 3problems.
You know? It's always 3. If it'salways 2, people feel you get
ripped off. That's the thirdquestion. Do you want the
medicine, or do you want thelittle handful of wieners?

Bo Motlagh (20:40):
Yeah. They're delicious. Well, and what's
funny about that though, I mean,I think something I've come to
realize is that it's a viablebusiness strategy just to want
the medicine. And that'ssomething that you have to be
cognizant of that they may notwant to fix it all. There may be
a re a good business reason notto worry about that.

Mark Hill (20:58):
And that's the thing too. You know, you bring up a
really good point. Sometimespeople don't really understand
the problem, so they don't thinkthe juice is worth the squeeze.
I mean, they can always usuallytell that there's a lot of lift
to be done. Right?
Right. But they're not reallysure it's it's really fixable,
which I think you see in kindalike platform products all the
time. You know, you take yourproject management or product

(21:19):
management software and stufflike this and, you know, and you
look and you're like, well, bereally nice if it did this. And
then you realize that 80% ofusers aren't even using, like,
the most basic functionality

Bo Motlagh (21:29):
Right.

Mark Hill (21:29):
To, like, link work items. So people know what's
actually going to be delivered.And it's like, if you can't even
get there, what good is it makelike, having the ability to say,
based on my pace, how muchplanning do I need to have ahead
of where I am today? You know,like, really basic stuff. And
you think, well, that would be,like, one of the most basic
things in the world to developor do, you know, as part of that
platform or that software, but,you know, they never get there

(21:51):
because the paying users don'teven get past Google, you know,
almost.

Josh Smith (21:56):
Yeah. The catalyst that you talked to about the
competition coming in fast frombehind, the the carpets that get
that suddenly have to get liftedup in the organization, and
people are finding out, wait,we've been investing in this
whole section. We hadn'tinstrumented until now, and now
we're finding out that it's thevalue we assumed it had. It

(22:20):
wasn't there. It didn't matchour expectations.
And I guess you see that often.

Mark Hill (22:25):
Yeah. I I think you really do. In fact, though, I
think this kinda goes back topart of the conversation we had
yesterday when we had a littlewhen we had chitchat on phone.
Mhmm. Is, you know, I find a lotof different customers.
I mean, look, none of this isnew. Right? I think the way of
doing business has been aroundsince, I don't know, like, Cro
Magnon man became whatever thenext form of man is. What

(22:47):
whatever that is. Right?
You know, some somewhere alongthere, everybody's kinda done
business the same way. Andpeople have built systems and
they haven't, you know in thefundamentals, they haven't
really changed that much. Butwhat kind of is really
interesting about that is webuild these we build these
systems to be able to dobusiness, and we are unable to

(23:08):
kind of fully articulate all therequired pieces. We follow these
we follow these models and wesort of follow these norms, but
we're, you know, we have largeswaths of people that are
largely untrained on how toactually read them. You can't,
like, read the model backwards.
One of the things I often do, Igo in and I talk to it depends

(23:28):
on how good my report is, butI'll talk to somebody like a a
chief product officer orsomebody else who's kinda has a
decent overview of exactlywhat's happening inside of the
organization. And I go back andI basically ask them. I said,
okay. Draw me how you operateconcept to cash. Mhmm.
And the amount of people thatcan sit down and actually draw
any kind of reasonable pictureof how they operate concept to

(23:50):
cash and then add the supportingpieces in or whatever else to
draw that diagram is almost,like, 0. So, like so, of course,
like, if you are not enough of amaster of your terrain to be
able to draw what you are andwho you are when you're trying
to produce value, you're gonnastruggle to then do kinda what
you're saying, Beau, which is goback and say, hey. How do I know

(24:12):
if there is value in an idea?Right? So if I don't really
understand how I produce valuevery well, I'm gonna probably be
ultimately kind of a little bitlackadaisical or a little
imaginary about how I actuallyproduce it.
Because, you know, you go backand you talk about one of those
basic business skills. You wouldassume that people in a product
role would know how to go outand create some kind of business

(24:36):
case or some kind of canvas, andthen go back out and actually
test ideas with actual potentialpaying customers and replicate
that at several different layersin a sort of journey format and
be able to come back and giveyou a relatively solid answer
that you're saying, yes. This isinvestable. No. It's not
investable.
And that, yeah, we can set abaseline and track against this
and, like, kill this thing asfast as we can or pivot as fast

(24:59):
as we can if this stuff doesn'treally work. But because the
operating model there not tosupport that Yeah. The idea of
doing that in the business case,you see, they're, like, all
connected. Right? It's likehaving parts of your brain sort
of disconnected.
It just it doesn't flow. And soall the skills lack. Yeah. It's
either kind of all of it coheresor all of it lacks in a strange
way.

Bo Motlagh (25:19):
What's super fascinating about that example
is, I mean, it brings me back. Imean, something that's very real
for Josh and I is startups. Andthis podcast isn't really about
startups, but I do think it'slike what you're describing is
being real and honest aboutproduct market fit, potential

(25:42):
value, costs, and understandingthat dynamic. These are also
principles for for agile, for aconcept of cash flow. I guess I
would refer to that as, like,your product evaluation or
feature evaluation flow.
Right? Like why are you buildingthe thing you're building? And
it's funny because I think soI'll speak for myself. I think
Josh you probably feel this waybut I'll let you represent

(26:05):
yourself. But like I know thatfrom my perspective I spent most
of my career in enterprisefunctions speaking about those
things and advocating for thosethings.
But it wasn't until, I was in astartup doing the same thing
that I realized how much bufferand how much ability to skew

(26:28):
reality an enterprise providesin that context. In a startup,
it's stripped away. You're nakedin front of people and you have
to determine if with nothingbehind you, it's okay to move
forward because there's valuehere or not. And you screw it up
more often than not. And sothere's a lot on the line to
figure out processes and ways tomake that more efficient so that

(26:51):
you don't burn everything downwhile you're trying to figure it
out.
In an enterprise, you don't havethat risk. At least not you
directly as as an employee.

Josh Smith (27:00):
You would hope you did, but we've been through so
many companies where I wouldask, like, product leaders or
folks like, hey. Why are youdoing what you're doing? And
they're just making decisionsbased on ideas and not measuring
after it gets to launch. And thelaunch's success in of itself

(27:22):
whether or not it actuallycorrelates to value to customers
of the business. And it's like,okay.
That's what we're doing here.But it's so common. So it's just
like, okay.

Bo Motlagh (27:35):
Well, even like me, I didn't realize how much I
would lean on that becauseyou're the benchmark of success
is allowed to be a lot lower inthat environment. Because if you
if it does doesn't work, there'sstill some value you can
probably mine. But it's nothinggreat it's nothing crazy.

Josh Smith (27:52):
This is where, like I want your opinion on this,
Mark. I'm sorry. My video isslowing. It's the preventative
versus reactive. It's Right.
How is the allowing of thosethings to persist? Because, you
know, as you mentioned, Mark,those models aren't in place
that it leads to the point wherepeople are calling you on the

(28:13):
phone, Mark, to get you in thereto clean up the mess.

Mark Hill (28:18):
It's a really good point. I mean, you can't do what
you don't know, and there'salways a lot that people don't
know. And to both point,sometimes we think we know
because we kind of are able togo in and provide the
transformative, I won't sayacademic, but, you know, the
sort of transformativesuperstructure of these things.
But when we feel the weight ofthem ourselves, we're like,

(28:40):
okay, maybe I need to kick theball a little faster, you know?
And, you know, there's a tensionthere, and there's not as much
margin.
Right? You're burning cash.Obviously, you're like, I gotta
get this right the first time.You sort of you can rush things.
All those very human aspectskind of come out as well.
But, like, in terms of thepreventative, you know, again,

(29:00):
I've been thinking about this awhile too. And this this term
may make sense. It may not makesense. I don't know if it exists
out there. I think I Googled itonce and found nothing.
So maybe I came up with it,maybe I didn't. Don't hold me to
any of it. You know, I'm notlegally liable. You get my
drift.

Bo Motlagh (29:13):
We'll put a copyright on this. Yeah.

Mark Hill (29:17):
It's I think, you know, 80% of a company's success
is their economic decisionmaking cycle. Period. You know,
I say this to people and theireyes glaze over. You know? And I
think it's just because it's notan industry standard term and
nobody knows how to correlateit.
But when you go back and youtalk about, you know, early
detection, all the rest of thesethings, if you were making
economic decisions, that meansI'm aiming I mean, I'm targeting

(29:39):
something. I'm aiming. And thenwhen I actually hit it, I expect
to return. I expect to hit thetarget. Target, aim, hit.
Mhmm. You know, that's what Isort of expect to be able to
happen. And that's what a goodeconomic decision making cycle
will help you do. It'll help youdo that kind of across the
enterprise, you know, acrossyour divisions, lines, products,

(29:59):
whatever. It's not thatcomplicated.
People are complicated. Thesesystems are not. You know, but
it's really having that rightprocess, the right roles, and
then ultimately the right KPIsto be able to come back and say,
you know, and whether you turnthem into key results or
whatever. Who cares? Right?
But, like, at the end of theday, to say, are we
performative? You know, becauseyou would expect, to Josh's
point, somebody comes back andsays, alright. Way to way to

(30:22):
fire the gun, Mark. That's like,well, the point wasn't firing
the gun. Right?
Congratulations for firing thegun. What was hit the target?
Did you hit the target? They hitthe neighbor's cat. Like, okay.
Not good. You know? So, like,maybe something else should,
like, happen. We should do weshould do something else, But
that doesn't happen. So it'sultimately, like, if you kinda
go after the 80 20 of some ofthe problem we're talking about,

(30:43):
and I think this is as true forthe scaling, the technical
architecture part of it, whichis the backbone technical
backbone of, you know, of yourbusiness or same thing inside of
your operating model.
It's really being able to goback and say, is your economic
decision making cycle payingattention to these things? Yep.
Can it identify the problemsthat are occurring inside of

(31:05):
these things based on KPIs andalso some of its word-of-mouth
and whatever else? You know, andare we getting an honest view of
what those developing problemsactually look like? Right?
Can I see the development ofthem? Because I think that too
is going back to an earlierpoint about executives, is
they're so used to havingsomething kind of thrown in

(31:25):
front of their face, make aquick decision, run. Right? It's
kind of like the fast food ofdecision making. And they kinda
get lulled into a sense ofsecurity with it as if all they
have to do is keep looking atwhatever's put in front of the
face, ask a couple of point ofquestions, point a direction,
and go.
But what they often are missing,especially inside of modern
enterprises, and y'all workingon this from a couple different
angles, I work on it too, is canyou see the chasm open? Like,

(31:50):
can you like, at some point, itwas like this. Right? It was you
kinda like hop over that thing.You know?
As long as you got, you know, 2legs and willpower, you you can
make it. Right? But eventually,you know, it kinda does this.
Right. And as it does that,there's a pattern to it.
And you may have not been payingattention to it long, but you
can always start it. You canstart paying attention to it.

(32:12):
You can start actually trackingit. You can start actually
measuring it. You can startactually compiling, you know,
qualitative and qualitative dataon this stuff.
And you can start to see thesethings actually happen. And if
you do them well, you canactually avert things. You know?
If you continue to ignore them,you just kinda get constantly
surprised. Or you decide to livewith whatever kind of weird limp

(32:34):
you've caused yourself and stillpretend you're a long distance
runner.
I I don't know. Those are kindof the 2 options. But it
happens, so you can see it.We're just not built to see
these things happen over time.It's part of the problem.

Bo Motlagh (32:45):
I like the phrase economic decision cycle. And
also, I I haven't heard that, soyou may be on to something. I do
think we've we've seen, thereare KPIs and processes that seek
to do something similar, whichis good. Right? And you've I
know you've advocated in, like,weighted shortest job first is
coming up is coming to mind asas like, you know, something

(33:07):
that's attempting to weigh theeconomics of work, to create
prioritization and in a veryabstract sort of way, things
like that.
So I think those concepts arethere. But what's funny about
them and maybe this is yourpoint is, they are so abstracted
and specialized to specificsectors that from an executive
perspective, it's not alwayseasy to understand. That no,

(33:29):
something like that is what yourproblem is and you need to be
paying attention to that becauseyou're really thinking in terms
of very specific sort of dollarKPIs and things like that as
opposed to the abstractions. Sono, I think that's that I agree
with you. I think it's that'sprobably one of the more
important things.
Coming back to maybe sort of theimpact of these things. I'm you
know, if we kind of go back tothe analogy of your arteries are

(33:53):
clogging up because you eatthose wieners every day. The the
you know there are there areparts of your body that are
working harder and feeling thatpain more than others. And I
think that's probably true inorganizations that are dealing
with this. And I'm curious fromyour perspective which roles
would you say hurt the most orsuffered the most?

(34:16):
Because knowing that can help anexecutive kind of look for
symptoms, right? And to startthinking about, well, how is how
is this person doing because ifthese roles are struggling,
maybe there's a broader issue Ineed to be paying attention to.

Mark Hill (34:29):
I look at it this way. You know, there's a couple
of different things you can doto start looking at kinda who
hurts the most. The answer isalways, if good economic
decisions, good informedeconomic decisions are not being
made upstream, everybodydownstream suffers. That's the
easiest dynamic. Right?
So you can you can pick any anyentry level single contributor

(34:50):
role, and they're contorted insome way trying to trying to
trying to avoid the reality thatnobody can name out loud or even
figure out, you know, what'sactually happening to them.
Right? Except the symptoms.Right? I'll give you a
symptomology.
But, you know, usually, it'sfrom a higher level, like, you
know, business decision makingstandpoint. There's kind of

(35:11):
there's largely sort of 2options. Right? Often, what
you'll find is inside oforganizations you know,
organizations either have abalanced long term vision and
short term view long term viewand short term view, or they're
often out of whack. And atTopolive, I find that all the
time.
It's like, oh, well, we're just,like, short term or we're just
racing after these features.Okay. Are these features

(35:32):
competitive? You know, are youtrying to gain new customers?
Are you trying to retainexisting customers?
Are you trying to open a newmarket with a different industry
segment? Look, what are you whatare you trying to do with all
this stuff? And they're like,you know, we're just we're just
chasing these things. Right? Sothat's kind of an example of
something that's extremely,extremely short term.
And or we're trying to develop aproduct, and we're not sure if
our customer actually has thisproblem, but we'd imagine it

(35:53):
would be really interesting ifthey did, you know, one of these
types of deals. And, and thenthe long term view on the other
side is, you know, it's kindalike the who are you gonna be
when you grow up type ofquestion. Like, when you really
are at the next level of maturecompany, whatever you've chosen
that to be, you know, what doesthat really look like? What's it
sort of take to get there?Obviously, the long term and the
short term play off each other.

(36:14):
So when there's an overemphasison one versus the other, and it
can be in pockets in companiestoo. Right? You get some, like,
super long termers in one area,you know, and they're at a weird
place in their product lifecycle. And it's like, well, you
shouldn't be kind of thinkingthat long yet. You barely have
any traction, you know, orthey're thinking super short
term, you know, and they're attheir most their sort of
competitive peak.
And it's like, you see theseimbalances. But the thing that

(36:37):
usually has to happen at thatlevel once you kind of I always
look for these imbalances kindof first, is that you go in and
you say, what roles are missing?Because that's often sometimes
too, you know, especially ascompanies scale and grow. It's
like, hey. We started out.
You know, you guys know. It'slike, you know, you're you're
you're you're 2 cool founderstaking on the world. Right? And
it's like, well, how many hatscan I wear? It's like, all of

(36:58):
them, right?
And so you're like, okay, whatdo I do with all of them? And at
some point, it's like when youactually grow and you scale,
it's like you sort of pass somehats around when you kind of
bring in people with certainskills or whatever else. But a
lot of times people are left inskills or areas, and it's like,
I'm the, there's a missing role.Like, a lot of missing roles are
chief product officers. Totallymissing.
Like, the unifying vision of theorganization, often missing. And

(37:19):
then whatever, like, weirdproduct structure you have
underneath is completelyuseless. You know, just
basically like project managers.Right? So, you know, then sales
usually takes over.
Right? They're the ones drivingthe agenda because I ain't
gotta, like, flip those cards.Right? Flip the cards to make
the revenue. Right?
And they take over, and they'resuper short term view, for
example.

Bo Motlagh (37:36):
Right.

Mark Hill (37:36):
You know? And they have no largely long term view
of of markets or anything else.They just ignore marketing
because marketing has no longterm allies, so they just sort
of get shoved into a corner. Youknow, and this happens a lot,
you know, in scaling companies.And they end up in this short
term view where they're tryingto accelerate sales too fast,
and they've lose the plot interms of kinda like what's
happening in the marketingthey're developing or they're
competing in.

(37:56):
You know? And so I think thisshort term, long term, you know,
view balance, you know, isreally, really important. I
think everything is largely setup upon that. Because you can
have a pretty average orgstructure. You can have a pretty
average operating model whereyou have concept to cash or have
economic decision making cycle.
You could be okay. But, like, ifyou have if you don't have that

(38:18):
long, short balance, even thoseaverage things are going to be
insanely under they're gonna beinsanely underperforming. So and
anybody has to live under that.God bless them.

Bo Motlagh (38:31):
So one of the things I heard you say there was the
consequences of a key rolemissing. So, like, in this case,
you you described, an orgstructure where the CPO, the
chief product officer may bemissing. And we see that
actually a lot. There'sespecially in smaller companies,
you see the, the hybrid CTO, CPOrole come up quite often, which

(38:57):
sometimes works, but more oftenthan not means that there's
there's a bend in one directionor the other. And I I like the
way you describe that becausethere's like a chain reaction to
that structure.
I'm curious what structures, youknow, what what what other sort
of concrete structures you'veseen that being one of them that
would lend themselves to theseissues. But maybe a met a better
question. You can answer eitherquestion. You don't have to

(39:18):
answer both. It would be what'sthe ideal sort of structure?
You know, like the key rolesthat really do need to be there,
the competencies to at leastallow this building to go up as
opposed to sort of the becominga 3 legged stool or table?

Mark Hill (39:36):
That's a good question. So, I mean, I think
it's really that it's that longterm, short term balance at the
end of the day. It's do youreally have a vision of really
where you are, what your currentstruggles are, and what you're
trying to become when you growup?

Bo Motlagh (39:48):
Mhmm.

Mark Hill (39:48):
If you don't have that and the hardest part of not
having that sometimes is thatthe CEO and an early stage
founder isn't equipped toactually come up with that idea
anymore because their initialidea was the baby. You know? And
they made the baby grow, andthen they don't really recognize
it anymore. It sort of outstripswhere they were thinking or
their vision is. And I bumpedinto a bunch of founders over
time that can explain how theyhad to take themselves out of

(40:11):
the equation.
Sure. Sometimes, especiallywhen, you know, VCs involved and
things like that, you know,because they can kinda see
outside in. So, you know,sometimes they're really helpful
partners. But, I mean, I thinkit's really having that balance.
So I think if you really don'thave an equal way to be able to
have your and I'm talking reallykind of the the front end piece
of this because I this may be avery unpopular thing to say.

(40:33):
But I think that a lot oftechnologists are not good
business thinkers.

Bo Motlagh (40:38):
Yep.

Mark Hill (40:38):
They think they're good business thinkers, but
they're actually not, becausethey've been around business
thinking. But it's mostly beenbudgets, you know, and stuff
like that. So, I mean, there's alot of gap to make up there. So
when I say this, I'm not outthere saying because I love I
love technologists. They're someof the smartest people in the
organization, period, and wildlyunder leveraged.
Okay. That said, you know, whenyou wanna get your market

(40:58):
balance right, you really needthat CPO structure, and I mean
through the whole company.Right? So then you gotta make
sure your design matches. Soyou've got your CPO.
You've got your if you're ofscale to be able to handle this.
Right? Your GM, your productmanagers, your POs kind of, you
know, down sort of at your TMobile's if you're gonna adopt
the whole Agile thing. But youneed that structure. And the

(41:19):
most important thing is balance.
At the end of the day, balancewins. You know, you can't catch
the football. You can't youcan't kick a goal. You know, you
can't hit the ball as evidencedby the Phillies' current tear,
to the basement, you know, fromthe National Leagues. Like, you
you can't they're doing a greatjob at it too.
What is it with Philly sportsteams and being able to collapse

Josh Smith (41:40):
in the second half of

Mark Hill (41:41):
the season? It's it's becoming harder or something.
And I'm glad I don't live in thePhiladelphia area anymore, even
though I'm a huge Philly sportsfan because some people would
track me down Only Philly. In apanic car or something. But,
anyway,

Bo Motlagh (41:51):
Take it easy. We gotta we gotta pair this.

Josh Smith (41:53):
Only Philly only folks from Philly are allowed to
are allowed to, talk, talk backabout their team. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. You gotta call it off.You're right.

Mark Hill (42:01):
Yeah. That's all my birth certificate guys.

Josh Smith (42:03):
Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Hill (42:06):
That's when I go to Eagles games at, like, in in
competing team stadiums. Youknow, you're always, like, the
best track record.

Josh Smith (42:10):
We're allowed to boo.

Mark Hill (42:11):
No one else is

Josh Smith (42:12):
allowed to boo.

Mark Hill (42:14):
Yeah. They can they can try, but, you know, you've
got you've got better comebacks.But, anyway, because you've been
you've been born in fire. But,anyway, so the disappointment
breeds perseverance. But anyway,back on back on track, it's the
balance thing that reallymatters.
So at the end of the day, if youcan't stay balanced, you can't
stay upright, you can't compete.Right? And so when your balance
shifts too far to the other andthat's why rarely when you talk

(42:34):
about structure, it's like CPO,your head or chief of marketing,
and your marketing and your andsales. Right? That's really your
true business balancers.
And then those roles have to rundown throughout the company to
support the actual operatingmodel itself or the economic
decision making cycle. Right?More importantly, that part of

(42:54):
your operating model, really howyou ultimately kinda go concept
the cash and make the type ofdecisions you really make.
Because of those long term,short term because they're
different. Right?
Marketing's long. Sales isshort, typically. And CPO is
both long and short. Like,they're synthesizing. So if you
don't have that structure kindof running down inside of your
inside of your company, at leastat the front end of your

(43:15):
economic decision making cycle,you're gonna chase a lot of
shadows.
You're gonna get really, really,really unbalanced. And I think
that's the trick. It's findingthe right people with the right
skills at that level to be ableto play those 2 types of roles.
And I think that's why 2 startups struggle too because it's
like it's hard to for 1 personor 2 people to necessarily think
long and short at the same time.

Bo Motlagh (43:36):
A 100%.

Josh Smith (43:37):
Reminds me of something Bo and I talk about
often, at least within a productdevelopment context, which is
the calling it triad. But to saythat there has to be a that kind
of balance, I usually call ithealthy tension. Let's say that

Mark Hill (43:54):
Mhmm.

Josh Smith (43:55):
We need to find what are the most important
perspectives that can fallwithin the business context, but
that those perspectives arethere. They're working together,
and they're always tryingthey're always conveying the
importance of their perspectiveand the impact on their
perspective, whether it's here'sthe technical impact or here's

(44:15):
the cost. Here's the userimpact. Here's the cost. Here's
the business impact.
Here's the cost. But to knowwhen you say, like, at the head,
some sort of CPO, some sort of,no matter where, as long as each
perspective is pulling on theirside within a business context,

(44:37):
that at the end of the day, thedecision that wins is the one
who is receiving all of thatinformation and able to make the
choice where the incentive is onwhat is best for the business.
That seems healthy because whenit gets out of balance, it's,
oh, well, you know, we alwayshave to do everything in in the

(44:59):
purest, most best delightful wayfor the user. And then the
technology goes, okay, well,that's gonna take us like 2
years. But but no.
No. No. But, you know, sincesince our tension wins, you
know, let's do that. And so,okay, what's gonna cost the
business this much? Like,anytime there's an out of
balance, it goes from 1 itgravitates too much in one area
or the other.
It starts to have a long termnegative impact on the

(45:22):
trajectory of

Bo Motlagh (45:23):
the organization where it needs

Mark Hill (45:24):
to go. I a 100% agree.

Bo Motlagh (45:26):
And I noticed you didn't say CTO in that. And I
think I I don't know if youmeant to do that or not, but if
you did, I would understand thatbecause I think technology is
fundamentally in service to thebusiness. It's not the business
itself. Nobody unless you'redoing something very deep, you
know, deep tech and somethingbrand new, typically, your

(45:47):
business isn't the tech itself.That's a vehicle to deliver the
value that you've decided thebusiness can deliver.
And so that's an importantnotion. There's so many
conversation I will have withenterprise architects and you
know senior technology folks whoaren't necessarily in business
leadership roles is balancingthe need for a purist view of

(46:11):
tech versus what's best for thebusiness. You know, we wanna
maximize performance. No. No.
You don't. You you wannaoptimize needed performance to
achieve the result of thebusiness. That is not the same
thing. And and it's veryimportant that we know that, you
know, because one of thosearchitectures will cost
10,000,000 and the other one.And so those those distinctions

(46:31):
are important.
And I also think but even evenwithin, like, the the three
groupings you mentioned, sales,marketing, and product, there's
an inherent notion there that wetake for granted, which is those
3 combined or even just theproduct person on their own are
doing the one thing you'recalling out over and over here,
which is the economic decisionmaking. But if they're not, if

(46:56):
they're just visionaries, thatcreates a whole new set of
problems. Because what thatmeans is now you actually don't
have the business context atall. You know, you have the same
problem that a purest technicalperson might have. But from a
product perspective, which mayas well be technical now as well
because you're just describingdifferent things that could
happen without any notion of whyit should happen.

(47:19):
And so it's yeah. I I love thisnotion that fundamentally what
you're describing is like allthe whether you're talking about
the roles themselves or theseroles within within context,
it's about balance. And if youdon't have that, things are
gonna start flying off the rail.So I think that makes a lot of
sense.

Josh Smith (47:33):
You said something earlier about people being the
people being harder than thesystems. The systems are easy,
but the people are morecomplicated. I'd love to hear
more about that because I'mcertain you've been brought into
organizations where you realizethat you're finding that the the
folks are struggling becausethey're at an inflection point

(47:58):
where they need to learn a wholenew set of skills that they
don't have, and they may notknow it. You may be the one to
have to share that with them.I'd love to learn more about
your journey and your experiencein that space.

Mark Hill (48:15):
Yeah. No. It's definitely true. You know, part
of part of the hidden chasm orchasm what's what's the
preferred saying on thispodcast? Is it chasm or chasm?
Is there a joy? Is there

Bo Motlagh (48:26):
We we've been saying chasm. Is chasm I didn't know
that that could be pronouncedthat way. So either is fine, but
we've we've been saying chasm.

Mark Hill (48:33):
Maybe I just made that up. Or maybe I watch too
much, like BBC programming. Idon't know. I spoke color wrong
too. Alright.
So anyway, so okay. So, youknow, part of, you know, part of
the hidden chasm, right, isisn't just I think some of your
other guests have mentioned thisas well watching some of the
other episodes, which have beengreat, is I think, you know, you

(48:55):
get to a certain point andpeople just don't have the
skills to make the leap. Theydon't have the skills or they
potentially don't have theexperience. And, you know, the
Hollywood ending would be like,little Johnny does learn hit and
suddenly he makes it to theWorld Series and he's playing
for the Yankees. Right?
But that doesn't that's notalways like the reality. Like,
it it does the story doesn'twrite itself that way. You know,
some people are kind of at theirmaximum level for their

(49:15):
experience. And I think a lot oftimes, we over we overemphasize
skills and we underemphasizeexperience.

Josh Smith (49:23):
Mhmm.

Mark Hill (49:23):
You know, because people with a wide range of
experiences can usually learnskills more rapidly than people
that just have skills but don'tactually have a lot of varied
experience. And I've alwayslooked for science to back this
idea up. So, like, if it soundsscientific, it's only because I
imagine it to be, and I could bethe mild mildly convincing. But,
like, I've never seen any anyI've looked for it to sort of

(49:43):
back that up, and I don't know Idon't know if it exists. But in
my experience, that's actuallythe case.
So what happens then when youkind of go in and you find well,
you know, somebody, you know,has been in the role for 20 some
years and has kind of, like,made their way up within 2
companies. And they've been inthis one for for 20 years or
whatever else, something likethat. And you look and you say,

(50:06):
do you really have theexperience to be able to
actually take a rapidly learnthis skill set? Mhmm. Because
you're like, oh, it's yournatural intelligence, so they're
smart enough to be able to doit.
It's like, well, there's a lotof smart people that could do
academic things relatively well.But, like, can you learn this
and actually process all theangles as you're learning this?
Because it's almost like I'mlearning to be a 5 tool baseball
pitcher at the same time when Ihave, like, one pitch, and I'm

(50:29):
pitching every 4 days. And I'vegot to keep my contract. You
know, it's like last year of mycontract where they only gave me
a 1 year tryout.
It's like it's a lot ofpressure, and it's hard. Yep. So
some people can't do that, andthat's the difficult part when
nobody likes to talk about, youknow, when people talk about
things like displacement. Maybethey're better in a lower role,
and you have to kinda putsomebody else in place. This is

(50:50):
when it kind of comes back, andit's very important to have,
like, a really strong or developone if they're not there.
And sometimes clients won't doit. They're just like they know
where it's gonna go, and theyjust sort of, like, avoid the
whole thing. But that's whereyou have to come back and
actually have a real, actual,pointable workforce strategy
that points back to your actualfuture state. You know, that
long term road map you'resupposed to have, like, who you

(51:10):
wanna be when you kinda grow up,and it's not all features on a
Gantt chart. There's ideas theretoo.
When you look at that, you know,that's when that sort of when
those two things match up andyou've got that workforce
strategy in that, then you'velikely already got a semblance
of growth that's sort ofoccurring. If you don't have
that magic matchup, then youprobably have people that have
been in and running around thesame parking lot most of their

(51:32):
lives, and they're just they'rejust not gonna have they're just
they're not gonna have anyoutside the neighborhood type of
type of experience, and that'sthe tough part. That's when you
kinda have to come in and say,what does this really look like?
So, you know, part of it is,like, getting people to realize
this anyway really quickly isthat kind of going in and
saying, do you and this soundsso it's so boring and so basic,
but it is. It's like the placeto start.

(51:53):
Like, do you really have yourroles defined? Yeah. Like, the
accountabilities and theownerships and things like that.
And it's, like, not just theroles. And then across for
teaming.
Do you have the complementaryaspects of your roles defined?
Because that's the balancer,right, that we were kinda
talking about, like, in acrossthe workforce. It's like you
have these things. And if youdon't, getting them to be able

(52:15):
to do that for certain roles incertain places can then often
unlock their willingness tostart looking at it on a larger
scale. Because, like, oh, I getwhy nobody's accountable.
It's because the roles aren'tdesigned to be cross
accountable. It's like, yeah.Maybe that's the thing. You
know? So I think getting inthere and and doing those types
of activities from a consultingpoint is point of view can
really open up the rightperspective to kinda do it at

(52:37):
large.
Because almost no organizationI've ever run into has that from
the start. And you can attributea lot of problems to to just
missing that one.

Bo Motlagh (52:45):
I I think that makes a lot of sense. You're right.
And and we run into this too.The executive or the team,
really, that's been with thecompany for 20 years. They're
amazing at what they do.
Mhmm. But then injecting a newidea can be challenged. And
what's what's even what'sinteresting is sometimes they'll
know they'll they'llintellectually absorb it. But

(53:07):
executing on it is a whole otherthing. They know all the words
and in a conversation, you'relike, oh, yeah.
Yeah. You're good. And thenyou're like, you didn't do any
of those things. But yeah. True.
So I guess, you know, one lastquestion here is, what would you
say to a CEO who suspectsthey're running blind into this

(53:28):
kind of stuff? Like, what whatare some practical what's some
practical advice you might givesomebody like that?

Mark Hill (53:34):
So I think CEOs are generally really smart, highly
motivated individuals, and theycan't do it all, and they don't
know it all. Even though theyhave to kind of pretend they can
and think they do, like, a lotof the times. Right? It's it's a
it's an extremely challengingrole to be in. A lot of people
sort of take it for granted andsort of, like, think it's, like,
a really cushy place, but, like,you just haven't been around

(53:55):
enough to know.
It's probably the mostuncomfortable seat in the entire
building. Right? Which is whythey get paid what they do. But
so when you usually, in myexperience, when they think that
something's wrong, they'reusually able to put their finger
on it. But what they usuallycan't do is they can't diagnose
it.
You know? They've been eitherthey've been too close to it for
too long. They've been formativein making it actually happen.

(54:16):
Right? So the first thing that Ithink is really important is if
you you've kind of gotten thisfar because you're not smart.
Most CEOs I know are areanalytical, but they're also
highly intuitive. You know, it'susually a a a match. And so if
you think it's happening, itprobably is. If you're not sure
that you don't understand whatit is, call somebody to come
take a look. Because that's whenyou wanna go in.

(54:38):
Because going down and trying toget the honest answer from your
position is gonna be almostimpossible. Right? People are
gonna kinda tell you what youwanna hear. Gonna be all these
silos, all these stovepipes ofconversation. You're gonna be
very used to hearing what youhear back.
A lot of it's probably not goingto be super truthful because
nobody knows how to kinda tellthe truth about the things they
already don't know how to do.It's not their fault. They just
don't know how to do it. Right?So they don't have that

(54:59):
perspective.
So, I mean, that's really kindawhen you have to call somebody
to come in and analyze it foryou and sort of break down the
problem from a from a thirdparty perspective. Some people
call it, whether that's, youknow, looking at your strategy
and adopting, like, kind of redteaming concepts or that's
coming in and saying, I don'tthink my organizational you
know, I don't think we're we'recertainly not hitting stuff on
time, on budget, things likethat. Or when things land, I'm

(55:21):
never sure what we actually getat the end. Do we hit the
target? Do we not hit thetarget?
You'll see these things. They'regonna be completely obvious for
the most part. Just trust yourintuition and then call somebody
and they can basically sort ofdiagnose it. Basically, front
end to back end and then set youup with some options. It's also
easier for you that way too, notbasically, you know, water

(55:43):
carrying for our for ourindustry here.
Yeah. But what that helps you dotoo is it sort of separates the
the action and yourrelationships from what you
actually do next too. Right? Itgives you that sort of the 4th
leg of the problem. Right?
So your table actually standsup. It's like, well, is an
industry expected opinion? So onand so forth. Right? So, you
know, you can kinda kinda getthat too.

(56:03):
But to be able to do that,that's what I would really say.

Bo Motlagh (56:08):
Well, that's a good segue. How would a CEO or
anybody who's joined us here andis listening, get a hold of you?
And what would you likeeverybody to know about?

Mark Hill (56:19):
Yeah. I mean, if I was maybe a little bit more
diligent, I'd have a website orsomething. But, you know,
unfortunately, I don't. Anyway,I call myself out on that. Can't
be honest with yourself.
Who can you be honest with? Sobut you can always find me on
LinkedIn. You can go find, MarkHill on LinkedIn, and you can
certainly you can certainlymessage me. And I think that's
probably the best way to reachout if you wanna if you wanna

(56:39):
talk, chat about what's goingon.

Bo Motlagh (56:41):
Any cool projects coming up?

Mark Hill (56:43):
Yeah. A couple of different things. I have
challenged myself a lot of whatwe talked about today, economic
decision making cycle, which is,like, the 80 20 of your
operating model, either the mostimportant part, the different
layers of the org design. I seeconsultants fumbling through
this stuff all the time. Andthat's like they'll know, like,
30%, 20%, 15%, and then throw aHail Mary and hope that that

(57:04):
connects.
Right? And so there's a lot ofpeople out there doing really
honest work that, like, reallycan't sort of connect all the
pieces. So I've challengedmyself over the next maybe 2
years is too long. Maybe I'm,again, a weak call center. But
over the next 2 years to towrite a book, to basically go
back and take all of this andsay, how does all this really
function?
Like, how do you really thinkabout the design of your

(57:25):
organization end to end andcover a lot of the topics that
we sort of talked about today?Because I think it's a missing
piece. I can't find anyliterature on it. I don't know
what it is. You know?
So I think it's a I think it's agap.

Bo Motlagh (57:36):
Well, you've been listening to you being all of
you who have joined us to theHidden Chasm podcast. Thank you,
Mark, so much. You should reachout to Mark if you're facing
some of these issues. We're justinterested in chatting with him.
You can find him on LinkedIn ashe said or you can reach out
through us.
You can reach us atthehiddenchasm.com and get
online for Mark's book. I knowI'll be online. Sounds good.

(57:58):
Thank you so much, Mark. We'llcatch you next time.

Mark Hill (58:00):
Thank you all.

Bo Motlagh (58:02):
Thank you for listening to this episode of The
Hidden Chasm. If you'd like toshare your story or if you have
any questions you can reach usvia email at
[e-mail] or byvisiting thehiddenchasm.com.