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Transcript

Autonomy at Work with Ron Quartel · Humanity Working

• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, I come from a software background, um, software development, and in two thousand and two, my team um we we went from well we we essentially took on um agile development, um extreme programming.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that was that was a big change.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um I didn't like it, but um so I was a resistor anymore, but essentially I was a resistor, but I came around to it and and I got it, and it's fantastic.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: There was a big change for the way that I do work, and like one of the core um principles of agile software development is is uh self-organizing team.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that was one of the biggest um things that I liked about it was this sense of autonomy um within the team I was doing.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I think agile done right look should look like that, where you come to work and like ah, I I have a lot of freedom and a lot of autonomy.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Daniel Pink, um, his book came out you know years after Agile on Book Drive.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh a lot of people refer to it.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: So the the three intrinsic motivators are autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I think this is where companies need to go is to recognize intrinsic motivation as one of the core drivers.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: And and how do how do they um how do they bring that into into or how do they leverage that?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um interesting in the is it Gallup?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's Gallup poll has found that uh you know 85% of employees in the United States are not um what's the word I'm looking for?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: They're not connected at work, they're not engaged.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's a real problem.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what is the cost of that?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's a problem on multiple levels.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: One is the cost, just the the cost to companies, but what is the cost of that to people?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, how many people are going to work miserable?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's really that's what makes me really, really sad.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there is there's a drive now for how do we make work not suck?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we make work um you know meaningful for the people, and there's a double win in that, right?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because the uh an engaged employee will always outperform uh an unengaged employee.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: So but don't do it out of greed, because then you know there's that there's that gotcha, right?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're a company like, oh, we can make more money if we if we if we do these things, but so yeah, you can, but it means you need to change your behavior, you being the leaders and the executives.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And there's the gotcha, they're not willing to do it, right?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we want we want all of our employees to be super fit and healthy while we sit here and fat, right?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's sort of like a bad analogy, but essentially that's what you're gonna do.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that's that's the the the movement that I'm interested in and that I I want to accelerate and be a part of.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's one name for the movement is the Teal movement.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know if you're familiar with that expression.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: No, tell us more.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Frederick Lalou wrote a book, uh reinventing organizations.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: So there's several books that are uh in this arena, but that one seems to be the most popular, and and he came up with different um patterns or he uses colors to describe uh an evolutionary stage of a of a company, an organization, of where they're at and and what the pattern looks like inside this color versus the other color.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: And teal is is this it's kind of like saying um enlightenment, like, oh, this is an enlightened company.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what what's enlightenment, right?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a little bit of vagueness around it, but it's just a title, it's teal, and and uh it it kind of represents a lot of these ideas where uh people are actually self-managing, which doesn't necessarily mean you get up get rid of hierarchy too, because that's a that's a misunderstanding.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: But it it does mean getting rid of command and control and a lot of authority.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: So what does that what how does how does a company work if you if you don't work with command and control?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's a there's a great book called Turn the Ship Around by Um, are you familiar with that one?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, so that's a great example of how how you can lead without relying on uh authority and command alone, or you know, how to balance or when to use authority and command and when not to, and how to balance that.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's I think that's where companies need to go.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: They need to be uh how do we give people more autonomy?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um and how do we give them more ownership and and give them responsibility?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: So with with that, what I would love to see in in MayTool is is how to track commitments.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because once you give people autonomy, you know, if people are true to their word and true to keep their commitments, which doesn't mean that necessarily say, hey, I commit to do this by this day, but sometimes it is, but whatever your your commitment is, having a way of tracking that.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I I I would personally love for one of my tools to be able to say what commitments have I made?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah and and who do I make them to, and and who made commitments to me?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I can just see those instantly every day.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because that's a pressure I need to be aware of.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like if I promised Paul Slater I would do this thing for him, yeah.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: I I I want I don't want to let Paul Slater down.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the worst thing happens, and and you do this all the time when you say, Oh yeah, I'll do that, and you know you're not gonna do it.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: I I would that's really, really bad.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to only be I want to be true to my word.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: And if I say I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And to hold other people accountable too, say, hey, if you said you're gonna do this for me, um, I you know, then let's let's let's make that uh an agreement, sort of.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you I would I would love that.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've thought of that aspect.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: We have, and and you touch upon uh you you touch on two or three really, really interesting things there, um, which is number one, um, that there is this innate thing that Dan Pink describes in in Drive that is associated with motivation, the autonomy, the mastery, and the purpose thing.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so um organizations that allow people to exhibit those traits are organizations that obviously over time are likely to thrive more than organizations that that do not.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: That leads you into the self-organizing uh aspect of it.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: But what is also intriguing is that as an individual, as we are given more autonomy, as we are in a position whereby we can sort of determine how we manage the work that we're accustomed to doing and we're not being micromanaged as much and we're not being controlled as much.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: That means that more of the responsibility for being effective falls upon ourselves, right?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: It is something that we actually have to be, we have to be able to execute against being effective.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: We don't believe that people want to run around not being effective.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: They want to run around being uh being inefficient or lazy or any of those things.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: But even if you want to, you have to you have to be able to, you have to be able to execute.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that's when personal responsibility for things like how you organize your work and what method you have for doing it and being well enough to do it falls upon the individual as part of that uh part of that bargain.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: So it and you need the sort of tools that we've been discussing um in order to allow you to do it.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think your point about commitments is actually really interesting too, because when many people in the workplace have a real problem with saying no in the workplace, but what takes its place in most cases is a whole bunch of saying yes and then not actually following through.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: So it's actually worse, right?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: It would be way better to just say no up front and say yes to you know three or four or five things and actually do them versus what generally happens is you say yes, you don't do it, and then you're like, oh, I dropped the ball.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: So again, that becomes, I think your point is very true, right?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: What we really need from tooling is something that A allows us to figure out what we can say yes and we can say no to, and then having said yes to things, make sure that we actually do the things that we have said yes to.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: And tracking your your promises in progress, right?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because I said yes to this thing.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And and if you're doing that, which I I don't do it, right?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: I want to do it to your point.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: If someone asks me something, um I can say um no, because my I've I'm I'm currently carrying 20 promises in progress.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I I I I can't help you.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Or like if I take that on, I'm not confident that I can give you what you need.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: So let's just say, let's call it a no, you know.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm pretty sure that, yeah, I'm pretty sure if for most of us, if if you said, okay, I know two people, there's one person, he doesn't always say yes to me, but when he does say yes, he does it.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's another person which is like, he says yes to everything that I ask him for, but he only does about 10% of it.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: I know which person I'd rather work with.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: It would be the former, not the latter.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I know which person most of us would rather be.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: We'd rather be the person who um takes their promises seriously and wants to ful uh to not renege on them to fulfill them.
• 12:00
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• 12:07
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• 12:14
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• 12:23
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• 12:33
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• 12:38
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• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: If we're going to you know give give colleagues um autonomy, then you know give them the tooling as well to to help them determine what they should uh should be doing.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because some people I was kind of surprised when I've had one experiment with giving people a lot of autonomy, and it was a kind of a shock and a surprise to see that some people aren't ready for that.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a lot of fear that comes with it.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of security of going to work for some people.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like I wouldn't personally don't like this, but some people want to go to work, be told what to do, be given their checklist, know that they can do that checklist, right?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: And they get through their day and they go check, check, check.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I did what I did, get my pat on the head, and I go home and I was a good boy that day.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And and they feel that's a sense of security in that, uh, because there's no fear, like if the company fails, that wasn't because of them.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: They did their job, you know.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and that's that's okay.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's but I think there's more.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: So if we're gonna if we're gonna give them autonomy, if they're if that's their safety, safe space, I want to, I want them to experience autonomy, but how do I do that in a safe way?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and having a tool where we can sit down and say, hey, what what what you know, here's how I would create my task for you, me being your boss, right?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now you understand how it's doing, let's do this together.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: What would the curve, you know, and we can start I can start coaching someone through what it looks like creating tasks for them for their day, and then say, hey, you do it tomorrow because uh I don't have time to do it.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that's their first job, probably their own.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it'd be really cool to have have you know that tooling to help them through, you know, make this transition to be self-organizing.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's actually a very interesting point as well.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: I remember um, gosh, it could have been a dozen years ago or something.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: I saw an interview with the guy that hosts that show or used to host that show, Dirty Jobs.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: Did you ever see that show?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: I did, yeah, yeah.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: It was like the one that followed like sewage workers or you know, people that did jobs that theoretically nobody else wanted to do.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: The interview that I I'd never seen the show at this point.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: And the interview was uh with him was about you know what it what he'd learned effectively from working with all of these people that did these did these types of jobs.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: And the main thing that he learned is the high degree of job satisfaction that a lot of these people had.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: And it was very surprising for him initially until one day somebody explained to him what that was about.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: And what effectively it was about was that it was very easy for them in most of these jobs to define what success was.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: So, for example, if your job is to clean the streets, yeah, and you might think, well, that's a really depressing job because the streets are always dirty.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: But if your job is to clean the streets, when you start your day, the streets are dirty, and when you finish your day, the streets are clean.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a very, very clear um uh measure of success that you have in terms of the in terms of the work that you do.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of the problem which we have with these um where jobs are more autonomous in nature is that it's also rather difficult to define what success looks like.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes if people can't define, can't create their own definition of what success looks like, then as leaders, we need to create that for them.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: So we have to understand what success means to us as a leader and communicate it effectively to them.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: And then they need to find a way in their own life, maybe helped by others, to define that in terms of personal success as well, so that they can end each day like that street cleaner who effectively can say, yeah, I start the streets were dirty and then I did my work and now the streets are clean.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: So do you find that it's a challenge in these sort of more autonomous uh worlds to be able to define and create success for some people?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: And is that related in any way?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um yes and no.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yes, it's very much related.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I say no, because it is somewhat addressed, but so the no, I I will say it is an issue.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because the I if you're gonna give people autonomy, then then um, and it's it's an interesting thing that they give people autonomy, they already have autonomy.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you're gonna like you're gonna say, hey, autonomy is is now the king.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um so so I I uh your point, like everyone wants to feel successful, right?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm gonna if I'm gonna put my my effort into an endeavor, everyone wants to win, right?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: So let's define what what winning is, and that's really core to it, and and another part of a tool that I that I think is would be really important, and kind of like why I read my goals at uh I like to do it at the beginning of the day, but at least I have to do it once a day.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: I read my my life's goals because it's to remember the day, hey, I'm booking a flight.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Why is that flight important?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, because my family is important, that means I get to see my daughter.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it kind of puts things into context.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, what is the context of our work?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, one there is you know Daniel Pink's purpose, the purpose is huge, yeah, and purpose needs to always be there, but there needs to be something more um um actionable, and and I think that's that is is part of moving into this autonomous space is to say what what are the um APIs or or metrics or performance indicators that would make sense?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like let's define what success looks like, and so then I've got something to measure myself against because uh I want to feel successful.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: So um, well, success in my job is you know, is are we writing clean code?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um what does clean code mean?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh well, hey, let's let's install this plugin here, which tells me the cyclomatic complexity.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so I've got some sort of metrics to look at.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and hey, how how often are we deploying code?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how often am I committing?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's knowing what what good looks like and striving towards that.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I think this is part of mastery, right?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're gonna be a master, what determines mastery, right?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so there's let's let's agree on on what we're striving towards and and work out um what that looks like.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: So to to now if I have this um colleague, I'm trying not to use employee, right, who's who's who's uncomfortable with autonomy, and I'm giving them the baby steps towards it.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that those those performance indicators, I'm gonna dial them way, way down to make them simple.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then get them more and more comfortable with getting broader ones so that when I so I can make my own goals towards those those um indicators, performance indicators.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: So just give me a handful of them, like five of them.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to overwhelm someone.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and like at the top end of autonomy, is to say, all right, you know, what what would that look like for you or me?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I can work with my peers and saying, hey, here's what here's what we should do.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or you know, if I'm collaborating, you know, as a collaboration group, hey, what what would success look like for us?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we measure ourselves against that?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um what promises or like what commitments do we need to make for that?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we this you know, how do we measure ourselves towards those commitments and make sure that that we're on track?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's yeah, so I think having having some definition of what what uh genus success looks like.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that story about the street sweeper.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I used the mow lawns as a job, and it's it was uh there's two rewarding aspects to it.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: One was I could do it, you really got a sense of completion.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like to your point, like you really lack that in um in a lot of like creative, you know, knowledge work.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas, you know, I finished the lawn, it was a finite set of time, and I could I'm like, that's a beautiful one.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you did that.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I did it.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I got paid for it.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that was part of it.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: The other one was while I was doing it.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have to think.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd actually put audiobooks on.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'd listen to audiobooks all day.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, well, I get paid to do audiobooks and create beauty.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm getting the sunset.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pretty good job.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: It got boring because, you know, like, yeah, I needed some more creativity after a while.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I understand that of that feeling of needing to feel accomplishment and progress.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, having to have uh some sort of context within defining progress and feeling a sense of accomplishment.
• 22:41
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• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious, you mentioned obviously you come from a software development field and um and that you've used extreme programming and agile techniques fairly extensively for a long period of time now.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: So for those people that aren't um in software development and aren't familiar with Agile, one of the interesting aspects of Agile is, as you mentioned, self um self-organizing teams.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: But also another aspect of it as well is that the work that you are doing is centered around customer stories.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: So there is effectively a um, even if it's relatively a short time in the future, there is some indication all the time for all the work you're doing, that all the work you're doing is connected in some way to something that a customer needs, right?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: So there's this sort of inherent um element of connectedness in Agile as a way of working that that can help people create some sense of meaning to the work that they're doing on a day-to-day basis.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious as to whether you think that some of the lessons from Agile can apply to people's everyday lives, even if uh they're not a software developer and have never written a line of code in their life and never even heard of Agile or heard of Kanban or heard of any of those other uh tools that uh that software developers use to help them get stuff accomplished these days.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the the definition of agile that I like is the ability to change direction quickly.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, if you think of dog agility, like you're watching this dog, it can, you know, it's not that much speed, it's the the speed of changing direction.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's a you know, misnomer of people go, oh, it means I'm gonna go faster.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no, it means you can change direction fast.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: And why is changing direction fast important?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's the ability to pivot.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: And and being able to pivot, change direction quickly is is important um to uh situations in your life where you know there is um flux, where there is a need to change direction.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: And the the user story is interesting because it's that came from extreme programming.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: They they're the they're the people that that um came up with that concept.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: And and how they came up with it, the the background was they said, well, picture that the how that the product was finished, like we're creating a piece of software.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: The people that are using this software, imagine the stories that they told you about that software when it was done.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you could capture those stories, and that's what the user story was.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: The user is telling you stories that say, I love this feature where I can book my car to come when I call it, that's a user story.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the that's what it used, that's what it used to mean.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh unfortunately, I think it's kind of veered away from that uh a lot now.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: But to what we were talking about before about defining what done looks like.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: So hey, let's go to this done state.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I know, I know um uh Amazon that they do something similar before they release a new new feature or a new product, they actually write the the press release for it.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how they they portray this picture of doneess to to the people that are gonna work on it.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: So they feel this sense of excitement, they're looking at the end state, and they're like, all right, so if that's the end state, how do we get to there?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, um, yeah.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like looking at my goals at every day.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, hey, what does the done picture look like?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it just helps you to go, what is the feeling of this and the excitement behind that that thing and linking back into that feeling of it?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I'm changing a lot a format of a log file, that's not very exciting.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I know that's part of this, you know, if I get this done, yeah, then that press release is going to be true one day, you know.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: We um I've actually previously in my work used that press release technique.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's very, very powerful, particularly when you're trying to rally a disparate group of people towards a common goal.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: So um what we would often actually do in a in a previous role that I held is if we had three or four people that working on the same goal struggling to try to articulate what that would look like.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_02: We'd do exactly that.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_02: We'd write the press release, we'd almost go through it in terms of like everybody's got to sign off on this press release.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: That press release would like go on the wall in your cube at work or wherever it happened you would be, and you would see it there every day.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that would be the means of understanding and knowing what you're working for.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: So it is, it's a it's almost like a non it applied, it can apply to software development too, but it can apply almost to any environment where you're collaborating with people or even having a little argument with yourself about what it is that you're working towards.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's almost like the more sophisticated, fleshed out version of the of the goals that you were talking about as we started this.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, totally love that idea.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: All right, Ron, thank you so much.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: Really, really appreciate it.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: And uh hope everybody enjoyed the uh the insights you shared.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: I I know I did.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: That was fun.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: The Way Too Busy podcast was presented and produced by me, Matt Neal, and was brought to you by Billion Minds.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to get in touch with us, tweet us at Rising Billion or email us at WayTooBusy at BillionMinds.com.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Billion Minds, creating practical tools for our way too busy lives.