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Work as a Product with Chris Metcalfe · Disengaged

• Chris: So the thing that's missing when you productize HR services, you're kind of missing the product. perhaps more controversial way of explaining this is like I am yet to meet someone who wakes up in the morning and says, the main thing I am absolutely pumped to to do today is to engage with HR. products and services. Like they are they are instrumental in the experience of work, but they are not the experience of work in its totality. They James: Hello and welcome to Disengaged. My guest today, Chris Metcalfe. spent nearly a decade building software products at Workday in Dublin. then went on to lead product at Docebo When he moved on to head up product for people and culture at Primark, He began to see that companies spend far more in terms of time and resources into understanding their customers' product than they did to understand the work that people do every day. It is impossible for us to build an engaged workforce if we assume that work is a negative good, if we assume that it's static and cannot be shaped to the needs and interests of the people that do it. Chris is the founder of Red Oak and is the co-founder of PX as a product, people experience as a product. where he helps people teams think and work like product teams. and he writes the operating model on Substack. we talk about what it means to treat work as a product. What an engagement score can and can't tell us. We discussed the concept of the multi-sided business. and we talk about where a people team can start on this journey. As always, if you enjoy this episode, please give it a rating, please subscribe so you catch future episodes, and above all, please tell a friend. It seems like such a small thing, but it really is tremendously helpful to help spread the reach of this show. So, without further ado, I give you Chris Metcalfe. founder of Red Oak and co-founder of People Experience as a product. Chris Metcalfe, welcome to Disengaged. Chris: Nice to be with you. James: so glad to finally speak because as I mentioned before, I first learned your name when I spoke to your friend and colleague Luke O'Mahoney, and that was Chris: Yeah. James: back in March or April of this year, I think. and also Megan Bernard Hill as well mentioned you as someone central to this movement, this people experience, this work as a product movement. Chris: hello Meg. Hello Luke. Nice to thanks for the recommendation. Central to the movement feels like perhaps I don't know, maybe something too something that I may struggle to live up to, but let's let's see. I'm I'm I'm scooting along on a bunch of other people's coattails, so let's see. James: Well, I'm very interested to hear more about what you've done because I I only first learned about this concept earlier in the year and also spoke with Dart Lindsley as well. So if anyone's listening, Chris: Mm-hmm. James: there's podcasts with Luke O'Mahoney, with Megan Bernard May and also Dart Lindsley as well works in this space who I who I know has attended some of your workshops in London Chris: Yeah, got a amazing opportunity to hang out with Dart earlier this year and spend some time. I did his podcast too and he's like he's like the spiritual guru, around which the rest of us are all kinda I don't know. When the Beatles went to India, that was like when I you know, did this yeah, that he's the he's the he's the guru. So I had an amazing opportunity to spend some time with him and get coffee and hang out and chat and Very inspirational and I mean it's entirely fair to say that a lot of a lot of the coherence that Dart's kind of developed, I think, has been s like massively inspirational for me and and is super helpful to kind of articulate what it is that we're trying to do. James: I think Luke sent me his article on HBR for work as a product, which I recommend to anyone as an introduction to it. If you're looking to sit down and read something, search Dart Lindsley, Work as a Product HBR. And it's a wonderful introduction to the concept. And what I like is that all of you are talking in this space, mostly agreeing, sometimes differing on the right approach and the right way to take it forward. But that's all good. That this is an exploration to a new era, so I really like the the number of voices now. Chris: Yeah, and I I guess it's so early still, you know, there isn't a a singular way. You know, there are ways of ways, I suppose. And each of us are kind of coming from different disciplines and practices. That might be a good jumping off point, actually. You know, I I'm not a I I don't work in the in the people space. I, you know, I have kind of ended up here kind of by accident really. I'm more from a technology background and a and a product management background, product leadership background. So it's I kind of fumbled my way into into this little corner of the in the corner of the internet, I guess. James: you spent some years at Workday and Docebo. and you were working in software products there as well. So you're on the product Chris: Mm-hmm. That's right. James: side of things. And then you moved to Primark and you were heading up people in culture, if I'm not mistaken. Chris: No, not not head of people and culture, but I was ahead of product for people and culture at Primark. James: product Chris: So first of all, if you're trying to place the weird accent, I was born in New Zealand, left there a long time ago, living in in Dublin and Ireland now, and spent a lot of my my life also in London. So I'm kinda half my life now in Europe. Did a whole bunch of different things early in my career. first kind of exposure to what I now understand to be a product role was actually straight out of university, went to work for my family business. Family business imported like bathroom stuff, toilets, taps, showers, all of this kind of thing. And very, very, very long story short. ended up in China, like went to China as like a 23-year-old trying to source product and bring that back and try to meet a a a a need that that I kind of I guess through intuition more than anything kind of started to sense. So the the business was predominantly like low volume, high margin. So you sell expensive things infrequently and I was like maybe we could also sell Cheaper things more frequently. So we went off and sourced a whole bunch of things. So I, you know, I was kind of doing that very early. met an Irish girl and found my way to this part of the world. And then after a little while, we ended up in in London and along the way basically did some like temp jobs and got exposed to like SAP and HR, SAP and an engineering company that was doing that. And then in London, first job was basically. helping a CEO of a big multinational engineering company get his make his slides pretty for what transpired to be the next seven or so years of my life, which was the kickoff for a massive business transformation project. So they're moving from a holding company model where it was a very tiny little corporate function with a bunch of like independently operated businesses into a more integrated operating business model with shared service back office stuff. And again, right place, right time was trusted by someone very kind of pivotal in my career who who kind of confided in me that we he didn't really know a huge amount what what what was going on. And I was like, I don't know either. And we kind of made some stuff up. So ended up doing seven years of like pretty much everything that touches what it takes to operator business and the back office and all of the transformational stuff that goes along with that and getting technology in building tech, buying tech, deploying tech, all of that kind of stuff. So pretty cool experience. That led me to meet the workday team in London, who was very ear I guess in the first few years of that business. And we started our family, wanted to move back to Ireland. Workday had just acquired a business in Ireland. so kind of took a took a gamble. I was in the first maybe 100 people here. And this maybe somewhere between fifteen hundred and two thousand people now in the in the Irish operation. And so I was really at the ground floor of what was an amazing scale story f for them. Started out, was kind of the first product manager outside of the HQ in the U in the US, working on the application itself. And when I you know had 10 years there, sorry, nine years, a decade. More or less. when I left, I was leading a a product function for the core HCM product, which is basically the cash cow. I think it was you know, a few years ago when I left, it was like 40% of the total company revenue. So kind of the unsexy part of the product, but the one that every customer had to have. And we had a big team here in in in Dublin and some some folks in in Germany and and and around the world. So that was a phenomenal experience. So I guess that whole 15 to 17 years was more or less serving customers who were buying technology for the people space or working inside the a company who needed to buy technology to transform and and optimize and you know change change the kind of core nature of the of the way that the company operated. I I kind of felt like the season had kind of ended where at work day. I wanted to kind of do something, you know, ten years is a long time to stay anywhere. So took an opportunity to lead product and design at an Italian company called Docebo. So I did a year there. That was phenomenal adventure on the road a lot. commuting from Dublin to Milan is is no joke. just by the way, I maybe maybe might make a different decision if I if I was aware of that. Very, very different kind of market. Learning is very competitive market. much smaller business in turn in terms of comparison to to work day, but phenomenal experience leading big team and and trying to scale and grow a business. And then moved into Primark. So that role was then going again from being building something to sell it to moving into an internal role. And the Primark role was super interesting. So head of product for people in culture. ultimately being responsible for the people products that the people and culture team were were looking to develop. ostensibly a technology role and brought into a big organization that was trying very intentionally to transform into a product operating model. Very much technology led, meaning that the center of gravity for the transformation was very much led out of the technology function. And I think looking back it I think there's like the the glass half full and maybe the glass half empty way to tell the story. And I very much kind of choose the glass half full one, which was I learned a lot about what needs to be true inside a large complex organization in order to successfully transform. and what that what those conditions are. really does require a significant amount of alignment and understanding around what it is that we're actually trying to do and why and what it looks like to go through that process. And when those conditions aren't in place, you know, you run up against, you know, naturally you run up against impediments. So we had a we had a a technology function that was that was pushing and maybe the rest of the business was not in the same place and and was perhaps trying to slow things down or protect certain things. the attitude to towards technology was was one of like we decide you do rather than a kind of co-creation kind of thing. So there's a huge amount of kind of cultural stuff to transform. And and honestly, and I think it's okay to say it kind of got to a point where I was like, I've been brought in here to transform and to help. And the speed at which I want to do that, I don't think those things are kind of necessarily kind of aligned. And so really I I kind of got to a point in my career where I was like, I actually don't think I want to have a job anymore. I want to work for myself. It's something my wife had been encouraging me to do for a long time. And so kind of took a took a a gamble, I guess, a couple of years ago that I could figure out a way to run a little business of one, helping big come companies learn, you know, like benefit from the lessons that I'd learned, you know, building building products. And I think you've mentioned Luke and and and Dart. I didn't even know these folks existed. At the time it was just this total accident. I was like, I've d I've been a product leader, I'm a good product manager, I love coaching, I love teaching, I love system stuff, I love transformation, and I'm exposed a lot to the people space. So maybe maybe there's some kind of like serendipitous intersection of all of these things and I and I thought at first I that I was like the cleverest boy on the internet and I was like gonna gonna offer this service and then I discovered very quickly that Jessica Zwaan had or you I think you've also had on your your pod yeah yeah exactly James: actually I forgot that that's terrible of me. I forgot to mention Jessie as well. Yeah, she's also in this space, yeah. Chris: so I I I encountered her book first and and and a like a learning offering that she was offering at the time and then I'm Dart's article kind came out around that time and and I initially I was a bit like, man, I thought I was I thought I was this unique you know, unicorn. but very quickly realized that, you know, it's such a such an early idea early idea and that we've all got different angles and perspectives and and these folks kind of have become very close friends, you know. So Meg Meg's been someone we've done some work with, she's been a contributor to to just learning stuff I I do. I work very closely with Luke now. We we both have independent businesses, but we kinda do a lot of transformation stuff together. So that's the kind of like the potted history. James: there's so many things in there that make it such an interesting journey. And I should mention as well, if you again if you are interested in the concept of work as a product, Jessie Zwaan that. But her first book I think was Built for People. And and that was Chris: People, yeah. James: the kind of I would say if you're looking for a book as and which is just about the best way of learning, I believe, on a topic, I think that's a really good introduction to the concepts of work as a product. And then she did Purpose and Work, which was a more philosophical book, Chris: That's right. love it. I I think maybe as this conversation has developed, I think the the I the word purpose may come up a little bit. you know, what what is a company for is is directly linked into a lot of the kind of methods, you know, like what is our product actually trying to create in the world? I think these two things are very inextricably kind of connected. So You know, there it's a it's a really obvious natural place for for for her to go. I I I I like that. James: Yeah. Chris: I'm following that journey with with with interest. James: what's so interesting about your story is how serendipitous many parts of it are, for many people as well. And now having done some episodes of this podcast, you notice a very similar couple of things. One of which is that a lot of the time where people are is through a large chain of unpredictable events. And the second thing is that the people that got there are the ones that took that unpredictability and embraced it and looked at those Chris: Yeah, yeah. James: opportunities and those changes and those disruptions as opportunities rather than shying away. You could have stayed on work day, for example, and you could have still been doing that work and you'd have probably been perfectly safe and financially sound and everything, but there was an opportunity to do something, you took it. So it's interesting to hear your story from that perspective. And I'm hearing you make those junction points, that you saw Chris: Yeah. Yeah. James: those chances and took them. Chris: No, I I like that. you're right. life's for living, I think. and we only get one go at it, so we may as well try some stuff and see what happens. And I think you know, maybe not to take this conversation in in this particular direction, but I've had, you know, along the way I've had to do a lot of the self work as well to figure out like what's actually important to me, what are the things that I want from my life and from my work and try to design something that kind of can fulfill that. So yeah, no, I agree. I I I I think that's a a nice reflection. James: Which brings us nicely on to the concept of work as a product, something you can design, as you just said. So Chris: Mm-hmm. James: for the uninitiated, what does work as a product mean to you? Chris: Yeah. I am very much aligned to Dart's way of thinking. And recently I've been trying to develop what I think is a kind of a response to this feeling that I have, which which is a lot of people have, which is they they kind of can instantly get their head around the concept and and kind of lean into the idea like what a cool metaphor, what a what an interesting heuristic, right? And underneath that, there's this unspoken part, which is like, yeah, but it's not actually a product, right? Like, I mean, obviously it's not actually. And I've been struggling with that a lot because in my line of work, helping companies try to implement these ideas, you f one finds oneself constantly trying to sell this idea, right? And so I've developed this essentially this kind of like logical progression. And It feels a bit weird to kind of say it, but I don't think it is a metaphor or a or a useful or interesting heuristic. I think quite literally work is a product. And the the idea kind of goes that you know, companies need stuff done in in their in their business, right? They they need to produce things to for their own what what we might call like external or paying customers, right? And so they enter the labor market. And the transaction really in the labor market is we want to buy your labor. And we I think you you talked about it a lot in your episode with with Dart about this idea of a negative good. And so the baseline assumption there is you don't want to give us your labor. And so we're gonna have to like compensate you for that. So we'll pay you some money, and in return, we'll get this thing that we kind of understand as your labor. So what is labor? Well, labour is, I guess, productive capacity over time, shall we say? And so what we are doing ultimately is buying access to someone's time and and the and the things that they produce during that time. Now, we do this all the time. Like companies also like buy machinery or, you know, you know, whatever. And it's really interesting the kind of accounting treatment that we give to a machinery, put that on the asset side of the ledger and we can like amortize that and depreciate it or whatever. But For some reason, people on the other side are on the on the cost side. I don't understand that, but whatever. I digress. The thing about buying someone's time or or buying their labor is it is imp at let's just say that what you know we agree I will give you eight hours of my time, five days a week. It is it is impossible to separate the access to my time from my experience of just living my life for eight hours during this day. Right. Now a machine doesn't have an experience of being a machine. It's just this this this thing. So we can kind of treat that thing as this like one sided thing. But in reality, there is a literally a two-sided thing going on. There is a a transaction where we're like trying to buy this capacity and in return you have some kind of experience. Even though we're not necessarily saying that we are offering this It is happening. It is just like completely logically the other side of that of that transaction. And companies also have to then s organize and configure what it is that you're gonna do while you spend your time. So we have to kind of basically say, Okay, so like this is who you're gonna work with. These are the people who are here, and this is your manager or your boss, or whatever words you want to put about that. And what we want you to do is like. We're gonna you're gonna do this work, these tasks. And we need you to be like here in this place, or you can do this work wherever you want, whatever. You know, like there's a there's a like where location element and when. So maybe you'd like do a shift pattern, or maybe it's like nine to five, eight hours, whatever, it doesn't matter. The other side of that as well is like, and you don't have to be here on a Saturday and you get these this time off and blah blah blah. And also Like how you do that work is also something that's kind of designed. So here's some you know, like in a professional job, here's a laptop, or like here is some basic like health and safety guidance. So you don't chop your arm off while you're using this machinery or or whatever. And even inside of the how work happens, you've got like how decisions get made, or how money moves around an organization, who gets money, who gets status, who gets power, or how how all these things all work. And maybe if your company's like super. thoughtful about the stuff, you might even have a sense of like why. So why is why is this a great place to work? Or why do why are we doing this work? Like if you talk to my my wife, she's never worked a day for profit in her life. She's always worked in the NGO sector, the charity sector. And if you ask her about what she does, she'll lead with what the organ you know what her traction and her alignment to that to that level of organization. So we have these things, this like thing which is configured and ultimately it's an offering. Right. So we're, you know, you might even have like if we it would be an interesting, like if there was a way to like troll the internet and find out how many web pages there are out there in the world which say, like, why work for us? Right. So what do we have? We have an offering. We have a recipient of that offering or a customer by by another by any other language. We have a value proposition, right? So we will give you this. Money is the basic kind of elemental component of that value proposition, but there's other things too. There's an exchange of value. So and in exchange for this value, we we get access to your productive capacity. And I guess because you're alive and a functioning human, you also are having an experience. So all of those things are essentially like elemental properties of what a product is. That it it is it's not that it's just this like fun little Cool way of thinking about the world. It is quite literally the case, and I think Dart is 100% correct on this, that every single company on Earth is multi-sided. And there's a way, I think I can't remember who it was. It doesn't matter, but some tech leader somewhere once said, every company in the world is a tech company. It's only a question of whether you've figured that out yet. Right? And the whole idea being is that as technology becomes more sophisticated over time, every company's core offering will have an element of t a technological, you know, way of adding value in the world. And so it's only a question of time as to when you actually embrace technology as a core value component of your of of how you how your business runs. And I think the exact same line of thinking applies, which is work is a product, your company is multi-sided. It's only a question of whether you've internalized that yet or not. So that's kind of the like logical expression. And then from there, almost everything changes in your brain. And once you start to see it, you can't unsee it. And I've yet to find a single I'm I've yet to encounter a single experience, situation, scenario that I haven't been able to immediately be like, okay, cool. So well, in this situation, we have this particular set of conditions. So what would the proxy be? What is the what is the literal exact you know pro equivalent situation setup team, task, job inside what we might consider a commercial organization and how do they do that? What what are the what are the ways in which th those that situation is managed, handled inside that world? And then I'm like, okay, well, why don't we just think about it like this and try that? And generally that seems to work. So that's kind of where where we're coming from. James: and you're right, as you're talking, it's it's you mentioned you you began to see it as literal because when I when you first hear it, you can't perceive that as a literal thing. Work isn't a product, literally, in the way we've come to understand work. So it starts off being as something of a metaphor. And even when I was with I was with Dart over over in the East Bay, just to across the Bay from San Francisco, at an event, and somebody asked a question about it. Sa said, I'm sorry, I'm just not getting my head around this work as a product. And I could all tell from the tone and the response that it's really the language that was they they couldn't say was literally not a product, so I don't understand what it is. But you're you're right. You do start when you start to see it, something shifts. And I think it's it's a question of breaking away from those very deeply held beliefs that work is something bad. And it's almost we're almost Chris: Yes. James: brought up to believe it. My parents would joke about, you know, not wanting to do it, thank God it's Friday, the Sunday evening blues. Chris: Yeah, yeah. James: Everything culturally is built around the idea that we shouldn't like work. So to then think of us actually product that we're choosing requires a mindset shift that does take a second. Chris: Yes, and but even inside of that, right? Like it is entirely possible for a product to be, forgive me, a bit shit. Like there are a million bad products out there in the world that like we could I'm sure if we had two seconds now, we could like what's a product that's in your life that you can't get rid of that you absolutely hate, but you kinda need there you there you go. Yeah, production. Yeah. James: The Apple Mouse. I got rid of it, but the Apple Mouse, I can't b I can't believe that made it through production. From Apple of all people. Yeah. Chris: Yeah, I mean I guess there are kind of things which are more systemic too, which like you have limited choice in the market or you're you're like switching costs are too high. Like there are maybe some places have limited access for like utilities or or I don't know. The the point here is that like just because someone isn't having a great experience doesn't invalidate the th the product thing. Like people have bad experiences of products all the time. Like like if anything, that reinforces the the point. And so like the kind of like what I was saying before, once you start seeing these things, you can't unsee them. And and you are correct to say so much of the kind of way in which we perceive and understand work is based on the idea that it is it is this negative good. That doesn't invalidate the fact that it, you know, there is a different way to understand and perceive the world, which is that it that it is a a a a market offering. And There are probably just many, many, many bad market offerings out there that cause, you know, that result in in poor customer satisfaction, I guess is maybe the point. James: And customer satisfaction, the real proxy for customer satisfaction with people is the engagement score for me, which is the name of this podcast, disengage, because over two thirds of people in the US, even higher around the world, basically don't like this product. If it were a product, Chris: Mm-hmm. James: it would be a terrible product right now for most people. That's really the problem. Chris: Correct. Yeah. Do you want to talk about engagement surveys? Because I have I I have opinions. James: before we go on to that, I just want to clarify one term that you use, multi-sided business, because not everyone will have heard that concept. So what exactly is a multi-sided business? Chris: Sure, let's talk about ride sharing apps or like home delivery businesses, right? So they're really good examples because they're kind of like consumer products that are equivalent. so there are ultimately platforms that connect more than one contributor into the value stream to create value for people on on more than one side of that marketplace. So like Uber or Uber Eats. What's the big one in California? Is it like DoorDash or or something like that, right? So you have on one side you've got, let's let's use Uber Eats because this is a really good one because you kind of got like three three participants in this value exchange. On one side we have like James. James is hungry, James wants food, James would like to have food come to him because I don't know, whatever's going on. thank god it's Friday or or whatever. Then we have producer of food. I have food. I need access to James. I don't have a huge marketing budget, but I would really like my my brand to be out in front of James. I'd like James, I would love to be connected to James somehow via this intermediary. Like if there was a way for me to be connected, that would be amazing. I'd be willing to give up a portion of my revenue for every transaction that comes in via this thing because I don't have to do anything necessarily to attract James. And then we have a third component to this marketplace, which is like folks who maybe want more casual work, who are perhaps early, maybe they're a little bit more shall we say, they're in unsecure you know, market conditions. So there's there's like a moral component to this that you that you could take a moral position on. But there is certainly a cohort of of folks who are like, James needs food, restaurant has food, I have bike. I can I could go to the restaurant and if you give me five dollars or ten dollars or whatever it is and tips, I'm totally willing to spend my evenings and weekends like doing this, doing this work. So Uber Eats or DoorDash or whatever is simultaneously solving for three different groups. And so the same idea applies perfectly. That is quite literally work as a product, by the way, you know, where you have people who are gonna like deliver stuff to to someone else. That the the commercial component of that platform and the the the doing of the work are almost like simultaneously kind of like integrated. But the point here is that we have multiple participants and every single one of those participants needs to get something valuable out of that exchange or the entire thing falls to pieces. If it becomes economically unfeasible or unsafe or whatever for the drivers There's no way for the restaurants to get their food to the people. If the prices become too high for you, the consumer, or the choice goes down, or whatever it is, like you're just not going to go to this marketplace, or that you know the delivery time takes too long. And if for the for the the producer, the restaurant, if like their access to a market diminishes or or like the platform fees become too extractive or whatever, they're gonna be like, you know what, I can I can make just as much money not participating in this whole thing. The point here is that no one is really being exploited. All right. Now you could you could maybe take a position on on one side of that market about one of those participants. but the point here is that and in they're not being exploited in the sense that they can all extract value from the from the transaction. And so that's what a multi-sided business or business model is. And Dart's idea is that work is a product. That sits on the other side of a multi-sided business where we have everyone is external to the company. This this core idea that employees are inside. And when we really pull that apart, it's it's just not the case. They are outside in the exact same way that customers are outside. The company is a platform that is connecting two contributors to an exchange, a value exchange. James: And that last thing you said, you could argue that that's all any company is doing in a way. It's can it's connecting your employees to the people Chris: Correct, a hundred percent, one hundred percent of companies. James: that are buying. It's just too complex for them to do it directly. So you as a company are there to facilitate that transaction. Chris: Exactly. So my inputs as a worker into this this exchange of value is my productive capacity. My returns, the thing, the value that comes back to me is some money and other things. Right. On the other side of that, I as a customer I'm buying something. So I give you money and in return I get the product and the product hopefully does a job for me. It helps me make progress in my life. You've also got a third component, I think, Jessica was really early in in appreciating and understanding this, which is also there are residuals, which are like profit to essentially shareholders, owners, whatever. So you've kind of got like three players around this thing called the company. The company isn't people. It's not a family. It's not a it it it is an organization in the sense of it is literally a whole bunch of people trying to like coordinate their actions in order to produce this value, but it is At at the end of the day, it's a bunch of letters on a piece of paper that gets filed at the company registration office. It's a it is a platform. The people are all around it. You know, they're not they're not inside it. James: I actually did a bit of Uber driving a few years ago when I was doing almost nothing but writing. I couldn't write all day, so I had a car and I thought I'm just very curious as to what it's like to be an Uber driver and I might as well make a bit of money in my free time. So I started doing it and it's Chris: Yeah. Did you have bottles of water and bags of sweets? James: I didn't have bags of sweeps. Did I have all I didn't have either actually, you know? I didn't I just didn't bother. I just kept the car clean and that was my my USB. Chris: Yeah, four four stars. Four stars. James: Well I did ask people what music they wanted to listen to and what the temperature was and things like that, so that probably did enough. But it was interesting how Chris: All right. Mm-hmm. James: gamified it was to be a Chris: Mm-hmm. James: an employee. Well, not an employee but a contractor. The entire Chris: Mm-hmm. James: the the gamification of that product to me and you know encouraging me to log on, encouraging me to go out and encourage Chris: Mm-hmm. James: me to climb the tiers, you know, and unlock the Chris: Mm-hmm. James: perks that come with different tiers of Uber driving. And I didn't do much of that, I didn't do enough of it to make it worthwhile. But it was interesting to be on the true other side of that multi-sided business, to recognise just Chris: Mm-hmm. James: how much effort gets put into treating those workers as customers. Chris: Right. Yeah, very cool. I mean a proph illustration. We might we we may get into connecting the experience of work to business value too, because everything that you just said there I think is a is a is a little thread that we could pull to try and explore that a little bit if you wanted. James: let's do that now. pursue Chris: Mm. James: that thought as a top of mind. Chris: Right. So a question you often get is, but not everyone contributes to customer value. Or, you know, not everyone is like, you can't necessarily connect contribution to revenue, for example. So how do we measure whether this product is performing? I think it's actually kind of connected to the engagement question too, right? So inside of that is is Some interesting interesting ideas to explore. So I'm gonna let's let's imagine something here now. You and I are founders, co-founders of a little business. We we've got this we've got this market niche in our in our corner of the world that we've identified. We've done a whole bunch of stuff. There's definitely a product, an opportunity, a problem to solve for people in our in our neighborhood, in our in our city, which is gonna be solved by a grocery delivery app, like a grocery delivery service. we're going to provide, right? So we're gonna build this app and ostensibly the value proposition is you go on the app and you can like see different grocery stores near nearby and you can like assemble your your your cart and your order and someone will bring it to you and and you you you may or may not choose to continue to kind of use that product. So we've got this idea. How might we keep an eye on kinds of things that would tell us that customers are getting good value from that product. Number one. And then number two is, and how might we tie that to more lagging indicators like revenue or retention or or those kind of things? I wonder if you have a any thoughts. I have a I have a preformed idea, so I can bail you out if you if you if you get stuck. But like what goes through your mind when you hear that question? James: that actually reminds me of my conversation with Gerry Murphy a few weeks back. And the principle is if you have happy customers then the revenue will follow. So to me it's about the quality of that experience. If it's a good experience, you will keep buying it. Chris: Yeah, perfect. So we might, for example, come up with this like metric that we could call, for example, happy deliveries. You just literally nailed it, right? So I use the app and the groceries come to me and they and they meet the the criteria of what I consider to be a really, really good experience. Whatever that is, we could probably define that. But like it c it comes at the time it was gonna come. There's no substitutions. The person who brought them to me was like super cool and super nice. They left them where I needed them to be left. And it all it all fitted in perfectly to my life. And guess what? I actually I'm gonna tell my mother-in-law now about this cool experience that I had. Or I'm definitely gonna go back and use that again. Now, if we get the economics of that business right on the on the product side, we've actually got a pretty cool leading indicator of customer behavior, customer value. That is probably going to be a medium to longer term predictor of sustainable and differentiated business results. So what we what we then need to try and do is like optimize for this metric. So the proportion of deliveries, total deliveries, which qualify as happy. And our our objective really is to make sure that that is that number go up or at a minimum is doesn't go below a particular threshold. And what that does is when we start to see that. movement in that number, we can very quickly trace a couple of steps early. What's happening? What's going on? Is is the delivery being late? Is there substitutions happening? And all of these things start to play out exactly the same way when we start to think about the product of work. And in a fact we could even take the same kind of hypothetical grocery delivery app and think about what are the things that are leading to a reduction in Happy deliveries. And maybe we're seeing a whole bunch of substitutions go up. People are like, I ordered, I ordered my favorite, like whatever, you know, source, and I got like, I got something else, and it's just like completely not what I wanted or whatever. And we might even be able to trace that into the people at work and what they are experiencing. Right? We might even be able to kind of see that. Well, actually we d we have no clue what an acceptable substitution is. We just know that that person's preferred, you know, source wasn't on this on the stock. So we can even see that operationally there's a like a direct connection between the experience of work, how might we solve the per the problem that that person is having? So what we need to do then is a as we understand our company, we need to try and understand why do we exist, first of all. And if we do that really deeply and honestly, that can actually lead to some Potentially deeply uncomfortable realizations. Hopefully you're still okay with why your company exists if you actually get to a really, really deep level of understanding. Next thing is, what is it that we actually want to do here in this company? What is it that we're trying to achieve? Maybe we're trying to grow into a new market, maybe we're trying to fend off a competitor. I don't even know, whatever it is. Right. But once we know that, we can then say, what is getting in the way? So in the exact same way that we might say, what is getting in the way of Happy deliveries for our customer, we can say what is getting in the way of how we work that is potentially also connected to things like customer revenue. And once we understand what's getting in the way, we now have problems to solve, which is the core component of what a product person does. And if we've done that piece right, ultimately decided on our product strategy, generally those problems are durable, meaning. It's not like whack-a-mole problem A, problem B, problem C, problem D. You're generally looking for kind of durable problem spaces. And so a way to kind of think about that might be for like like Nike, right? They haven't solved shoes. That is a durable problem. The ability to walk around, be comfortable, express who I am, perform when I run. Those are those are things that will continue to be an elemental component of the human experience. And they are durable problems. So we organize How we work around these problems, not what we do in our jobs. And this is maybe the bridge into where a lot of people teams with whom I work start from. They start from, I'm a people team, I have I do compensation. Now I will go ahead and proceed to do compensation. And it's completely backwards. Totally, totally backwards. We don't care about forgive me, I know you're a comp guy, but like the the the the The the center of expertise is the least important thing. What is most important is what is the customer value? What is the leading indicator of customer value and customer behavior that will predict medium to longer term business results? And how do we organize around solving that problem? Maybe at some point we will discover that this particular compensation tool, framework method thing is a useful and necessary element of the eventual solution that we deploy, but it isn't the thing around which we're organizing our James: you don't apologize as well. Like compensation gets completely over engineered a lot of the time. And one of the points you made w once you were talking about the product mindset is you started off with a subtractive mindset. You started off what are the problems getting in the way of our purpose? A subtractive Chris: Mm-hmm. James: mindset. Let's get rid of the things that are stopping people do what they need to do to deliver on that, which has a number of interesting aspects to it. First of all, the assumption is that people want to do what they need to do, and I think that's true. And I think at the very beginning of the conversation, you pointed out that you wanted to do a bunch of things in your career, but weren't allowed to. And so many people Chris: Mm-hmm. James: in life are in that situation. They want to do good work, they just can't. And eventually you try and fail enough times that you just give up and you become disengaged. So that was it. Chris: Right. Correct. James: So the product mindset is very subtractive in that respect, I believe. It's about removing obstacles. But the HR mindset, Chris: Correct. James: I find so often is an additive mindset. It's something's wrong. What can we add to fix that? Chris: Mm-hmm. James: Someone's not working, what incentive can we design to make them? Something someone's not distinct someone's not engaged. What program can we add on to increase our engagement? Or people are unhappy at work, what mindfulness app can we start giving them as part of their benefits package to fix it? Chris: Right. James: when you talk, you don't really have that kind of inclination. Chris: No, you're right. I I'd never really thought about it with that language. And there's one other thing, which is like a a product manager ultimately, or product team more broadly, is ultimately about managing risk. So it is it is kind of an inherent attractive thing. We're trying to take away risk, which is just a different way of saying optimizing and maximizing our chances of being successful. Right. So they're again glass of full, glass of empty framing. But the the the risks are For a for any given product, or ultimately there's kind of like four. So the first is value risk. And another way of saying that is desirability risk. Like, does anyone actually want this thing, whatever this thing is? If it is not valuable to a buyer or desirable to a buyer, sorry, you're not like it's just not gonna work. Right. I'm gonna use your Apple Mouse thing in a second. The next risk is usability. So I think it was valuable or at least desirable because you decided to buy it, right? But usability is once I have purchased it, can I like figure it out? Does it literally actually work? Is it can I discover my way through this if it's a piece of software or whatever that is? Like imagine an experience product, like going to a ski field. Right? So like I want to go skiing. I've never actually skied in my life, by the way. I'm just using this as an example. I want to go skiing, cool. When I get there, can I like figure my way through you know the the all of the stuff that has to be assembled into a configuration that allows me to get to the top of the mountain and make my way back down again? Right. Next part is feasibility. So that risk is can we get this done with the available like money, skills, time, whatever, people? And the last risk is viability, meaning. Can we make money from this? Does it work for the company? Are we going to break any laws? You know, are we compliant with whatever obligations we have in whichever market? So four risks: value, usability, feasibility, and viability. And product management is ultimately about systematically identifying assumptions which are going to increase that risk, testing those assumptions and whittling things down to such a place that we have a core essential understanding of what it is that people need. pains, needs and desires and how our our product, our our offering, our response to that is uniquely able to help them through that in such a way that it is both valuable, both usable, both feasible, and both as four, you know, across all of those four dimensions. James: engagement is HR's answer to do people like our product? I I think it's kind of the closest thing they've got to an answer on that. But you have thoughts on the engagement survey, so what are your impressions? Chris: Yeah. Well, generally a total waste of time would be the the the simplest answer to that. I think if I was to be a little bit more charitable, I might say it's useful as one kind of s signal in but what can I do? Right? And let me t let me tell you a couple stories to make this to make this more real. I think that there are may way more high fidelity methods that can give us much, much more actionable results that would actually turn what is high level sentiment useful on a maybe annualized basis, but ultimately not really actionable. Right. So like imagine you're a customer experience leader and you learn that your NPS score has reduced. Like what do you okay, cool, my number went number went down. Now what? Right? Like you you're still forced to go and figure out what the actual source of that problem is, right? So these things are kind of interesting inputs in in in a in a suite of in a suite of other pieces of data. I much prefer things like service design as a method of diag both of diagnosis and of design. So a client brought me in. basically they had this hypothesis. So you know, they they deployed workday in in a very compressed window on the back of making an acquisition. The company that they were acquiring was already a workday house, a particular contract was up for renewal. They needed to get rid of SAP. And it was just this moment. And it was like, all right, okay, we're gonna do we're gonna do a global deployment for forty thousand people in nine months. And like that's kind of bonkers. Just generally that's a bonkers idea. But they did it anyway. And a lot of the natural constraints that that that type of situation puts on people is you're like, I don't know, man, like just take the thing that we used to have and then like set that up over in the new system. And so they kind of created just a new version in new tech of the old thing. And guess what? A year later, people are like, man, I hate this thing. It's not working. And they had this feeling that like the tech was the problem. So they brought me in and they're Can you do like look at it and like tell us all of the things that we could do differently in the tech. And so I took a look at it and I was like, you guys, you guys don't have a tech problem. Like almost within a couple of hours, I was like, they don't have a tech problem. And one of the journeys that they that we we decided and we agreed on to look at was this what we called the job rec to paycheck, meaning the process of getting I identifying I need to hire someone, approval to hire someone, process it we we parked the actual recruitment bit itself but then from the from the post-hiring decision through to getting someone's first paycheck lodged in their bank account. And we had recruiting team, we had an in-market HR team, we had I don't know, five, six other teams. And none of them had really ever spoken to each other and they all did different bits of this puzzle. And I was like, cool, so let's try and get everyone together in a room and we mapped out this thing and we did this thing called service design. Forgive me if you're already familiar with service design, but service design is ultimately like a journey map, which is the front stage. Imagine you're in a cafe and you see someone come in the front door, so we can draw that as the first moment, and then they like approach the counter and they look at the menu. So we write that down and we see what they do, and then they give their order and they pay, and so we write that down, and then the barista makes the coffee. Well, that doesn't normally show up on a journey map because that's the backstage. So we also map in. I see. So the server greets them. And we also describe the environment in which this is happening. So we have evidence. So we're in this like room which has high ceilings and it's there's music playing and the menus on the wall and there's windows and there's places to sit. And some of those places are accessible for folks and some of them are less accessible for folks if you have mobility challenges or if you're pushing a child in a in a push air, you know, whatever. Right. So we can see all these different things. And then they also ordered some food. So we can see that they did that on the front stage. But then what happens to the order? It goes into the backstage and that's actually behind a door. So we have this other thing called a line of visibility in the door. So this is actually stuff which is t entirely invisible to the customer. And then there's a whole bunch of processes happening in the kitchen. And the the the team in the kitchen, they had to like, I don't know, maybe it was soup, they had to like order in butternut squash. Or whatever it was, in order to like, you know, and so there's a whole set of processes. And basically we just draw this big diagram. So I just got everyone together and just like asked them what they do. And we discovered dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of like interface challenges and handoff points. And none of them had anything to do with the technology. They were all controllable by humans. And ultimately the story became that they were, because the way in which their old system, SAP, was set up. They were essentially trying to do workforce planning inside the job requisition process. Meaning, James, your CEO, your or SVP, whatever, you're your CFO. Every single hiring decision in your function was coming up for you to make a decision on whether that was something that we were going to do or not. And that was in the absence of any type of this quarter, we're going to have this envelope of capacity to unlock into the company. So this had everything to do with work design and literally nothing to do with the technology and what the hell has this got to do with an engagement survey where on earth would I put that into my engagement survey response which is like I have all the tools that I need to do my job well. I mean I don't know do I I kinda do but like workday doesn't work for me. James: And you don't know what you don't know as well. might you might not Chris: this James: be aware that there's a better way of doing things that you then you can't put Chris: Correct. James: it on a form. Chris: So so when I say it's a complete waste of time, I'm I'm I I see I've seen all sorts of different invoices with very large numbers on them for from software providers who honestly make amazing products. and they offer this promise of insight, which you literally cannot get to the level of fidelity that requires to actually do anything with or you know, and and so if we treat work as a product, we actually need to use the tools methods of design, research, product management, engineering to get in under the hood and figure out what does this product do? How does it work? How do people get caught in various journeys and flows? And then how do we remove those obstacles and those barriers, that friction, so that they can get back to doing things that create value for them and create value for the company. James: Engagement surveys, when I see engagement survey scores, low scores, I just think no shit. Like we've known for a century what we done there's been so much research over the last century what creates a meaningful connection between a human and their work. And we know that they need things like autonomy. We know they need to be challenged, that we know they need to work with people they trust and and who trust them in return. We know all these basics. So if you don't give those people pull those things, then of course the engagement survey's gonna come back low. But to your point, it just doesn't tell you and it also kind of I don't know, I feel like it almost it's almost a checkbox of so many companies. We've done the engagement survey, we've heard what you have to say and we're gonna do one, two, three things over the next year and now let's get on with that work. Everyone, please stop causing a problem for me. Chris: it I think yes, checkbox, it goes to well, you know, the the human resources function is is set up in such a way it's been set up since I don't know the nineties, since Ulrich wrote his book. And w every single business on earth has these basic capabilities. And so we should also have these basic capabilities. And I suppose we should ask people like You know, like we you know, in in different economic situations when it's very much like in a a talent that we're where like the center of gravity or or bargaining power lives more outside of the outside of the company in the labor market. We should probably figure out like what people feel like here because we kinda need to run our business and we need to get more people and you know, like it's there the whole thing is traced back to a to a A category error in the whole foundational design of how we think about what these things are for. And it is very easily solved by removing that category error and seeing the company as a multi-sided platform on which we have on either side we have working customers and paying customers. As soon as you see like that, you're like, engagement survey. I mean, yeah, I guess we could do it, but like, what is it gonna tell us? How what new information would that give me to understand whether my product is creating value for it? my customers and also for for the business. And if it isn't going to do that, why the hell would I spend significant amounts of money on this thing? And what else could we do differently? James: let's say someone's listening, let's say it's a pe chief people officer or an HR manager or someone and they're they're saying, Yes, this makes sense. Yes, this this this breaks down a number of the Preconceived misconceptions that I've I've seen. Where should they start? and it's a bit of a loaded question, because I know that you actively do this work and I know that you've done a lot of this work over the last year. But yeah, exactly. Yeah. So aside from calling Chris: Yeah, yeah. Give me a call, I guess is my answer. James: you up and engaging your services, how could someone use that new understanding, practically speaking, like if they wanted to go back to their desks and say, okay, for the next hour, I'm gonna map out some new things that we can do to start thinking of work as a product, Chris: I have a slightly controversial answer to this question. And then I have like, yeah, but okay, here's some stuff you can do. So go with me for the first part. I promise you I will I will answer the question with good faith. second of all. But I kinda I get this question, I don't know, it feels like daily. And part of me bristles a bit at it because it is, I think, A non-trivial exercise to completely fundamentally transform the the organizing core organizing principles of a of a company and certainly of a big company, which is where I generally tend to operate. And so if I were to be a little bit more cynical and answer this, I might change the l words in the question, which is like, I've I've I've realized I need to transform my life. And I've decided I wanna have I want to completely re reorganize the core organizing principles of how I structure my life. And I really wanna I don't know, lose weight, get healthy, be wealthy. Right? Or like so if we take the last one, like I want to become this new thing, this new wealthy thing. I might say, Well, the easiest thing, have you considered like being born into generational wealth? Like that could be that could be a really easy, fast, fast way for you to get to the the end point. And for all of those kind of like substitutes, there isn't a single simple thing that you can do. Yeah, you can like, I don't know, like eat less white bread, cut cut alcohol out of your life. I don't even know, like eat more salads, whatever, work out more. There are kind of heuristics, but on at the end of the day, this is a fundamental reorganization of the core organizing principles of your company. And That is not something that you can kind of just like, right, I'm gonna go back to my desk and I'm gonna like, you know, maybe you can't. Maybe I'm maybe I'm being uncharitable to your listenership. It is certainly the case. The smaller the company, the easier it is for these things to happen. The fewer the fewer centers of power and like retained status and control. to to disassemble, because that is that's a thing that you're gonna have to do. but it is it is non-trivial and it is hard. And very often one of the first and more challenging conversations we have to have with clients is like, if you if your expectation is that we want this to be done quickly and we don't want it to be hard, you're talking to the wrong people because just fundamentally that is like incompatible with the journey that you're about to undertake. So first things first is get your head around the fact that this is Kind of a big deal. And if I actually turn this into real, tangible, practical things that people can do, there is ultimately kind of a pattern that you can kind of play out. So the first thing is get really, really, really deep into why your company exists. Like I said before, that can prompt some uncomfortable realizations. It is not uncommon for in the work that we do for people to perhaps make a different career decision, you know, a few months. And when we get to the core elemental truth, my company exists to exploit people and maximize profit for shareholders and executives. That is quite often the actual core truth. And when we uncover that, like it's okay, we can still work with it, but like just we kind of need to all be on the same page because everything else flows from that. James: And no one wants to admit that as well, because that's not fun, is it? that's that's not a fun purpose, no. So you don't want to admit it, even if it is true. Chris: s You end up with all sorts of existential career kind of moments as a result. On the other side of that, once you know why this thing exists, what it exists in the world in order to achieve. and by the way, there are many, many, many, many, many hundreds and hundreds of thousands of companies that are kind of formed with a good purpose. They genuinely want to try and do something, right? The next thing is, and what is it that we're actually trying to do over the next whatever three to five years? Right? What is it that we're this company needs to do to become more competitive, to become more profitable, to become more customer oriented? I don't even know what it whatever is whatever is most appropriate for you. Next step is, and what are the things that are inhibiting that progress right now? And then the next step is the art. This is where I find customers need a lot of help, which is Organizing that, finding coherence in the story inside of that, such that we can organize people, cross-functional people, to systematically go about solving problems for people inside those things that we call problem spaces. Ultimately, products are the emergent property of a deep knowledge and understanding of the problem that's happening inside of that space and solutions that respond to that problem. The most successful problems are successful products. are ones which solve that problem beautifully, wonderfully, in a way that the customer loves and also drives value for the business. We cannot have one without the other. We are looking to, you know, solve for both sides of the exchange of value. And once we have that in place, we're looking to iterate, measure, learn, and we just keep kind of cycling around. And there's a whole big operating model around that that we that we can help you with. Working with a a Europe's number one kind of online fashion retailer at the moment to kind of do this from the from the bottom up. and they've been phenomenal, but it's taken us a year to go from where they first brought us in to basically say we need some training to help people understand what it what it means to be a product manager to, gosh, this is a this is a two to three year journey to get into a place where we even understand what it is that we're trying to achieve, how we're going to get there and what it is that we're going to do and what even are, you know, what products are we even going to offer. So I kind of feel like it it's a difficult, it's a difficult sales job, which is like I think someone went on an Antarctic journey and they put an ad in the it was it was Scott or Amundsen or one of those one of those guys, and the ad in the paper was like, brave people needed death almost certain, you know, like it's kinda we're like we're talking about one of those kind of things, which is like you know, this is probably gonna be hard and take a long time. James: I I love that one. I think it's I I think it's apocryphal. I'm not sure if it's like historically verified. But but what I love is such Chris: like a real thing? James: a great example of being tr honest about your purpose, which is such a hard thing to do. And again, like Chris: Mm. Mm. James: you talk about profits and shareholder returns. To me, those will only ever be in service of a purpose. If that's the only reason a company exists, there's just no point at that at that point. There's much easier ways to build wealth. And so Chris: Hmm. Hmm. James: to me, like you need a purpose that goes above that, and your revenue and your profit needs to be very, very important but in service. But as you were talking, it was reminding me of a quote, which I think sums up what you're trying to do, which is by Machiavelli and The Prince. And he said, There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Chris: Totally, mate. I love it. I've never heard that before. Yeah, totally. I agree. Yeah. We're we the Dart had told me one time, and I words are still ringing in my ears to this day, which is the old paradigm will resist the new one because ultimately we're trying to disassemble organizational spheres of control and influence and power and status. And people don't really like to give that kind of stuff up. And so And forgive me for for for kind of going at the core of the question, but like just going back to your desk and like jotting out a plan to get there, you kind of have to s there's there's all sorts of stuff that you have to do, which goes to the core elemental components of the company, the CEO, everybody at the exec level. They gotta be all be on the same page because this kind of like the next best version of that, which I kind of dislike, is like, okay, what we'll do then is I can control what happens in my people function. So I will start to take my people services and I'll like productize them. it James: I do think there's value in that and the reason I think there's value in it is it because it stretches it it grows that muscle in your mind of a new way of thinking about things. So if I can apply this Chris: Right. We're James: thinking to the people I know, then I can test this logic and see where it takes me. Chris: Correct. Yeah. I mean it's we find that just with the realities of organizational dynamics, if a if a chief people officer doesn't have the capacity to kind of re architect the company from the inside out, often starting with the people function is a is a is a dipping the toe in the water and and running these things at scale. There is there though a kind of I I mentioned before, like a run up against proxies to try and like play that out. And so like recruiting. What are we trying to do with recruiting? I guess we're trying to like get I'll you know, that some people say it's like sales, other people say it's like procurement. I guess it's kind of a mixture of both. We wouldn't productize the procurement function, we wouldn't productize the sales function. Like onboarding, here's a really great example, right? So, like you were an Uber driver. I love that story. I was gonna maybe use an example of becoming an Uber customer. Did you go through onboarding? Right? Like, was there this like, hey, we need you to. James: like it was Chris: go. James: a great experience, honestly. And also I want to caveat, I was doing it mostly for fun for a bit of cash and it wasn't my livelihood. And that might shift the you know the power dynamic a little bit. But for me, like you go Chris: Yeah, yeah, no, no, I know. I understand totally, totally, totally. James: through an onboarding, they train you, you get the there's some various l legally required health and safety, security type things, but they also talk Chris: Yeah. James: about how to be a good Uber driver and how to do your best in that and what customers expect of you and what you expect of them. So there was Chris: Right. James: a a and also it wasn't just at the beginning, they kind of drip fed it. So a few weeks into it they said, now you need to do these ones as well. Let watch this video. So there was definitely Chris: Yeah. James: a deliberate effort to improve your side of the experience and the experience that you gave to your customers. Chris: Cool. this is super interesting for me, and I've never actually spoken to someone who's who's had that experience. What I was maybe reaching for originally was like the experience of being someone who is going to use Uber to get a ride somewhere. Right. So that's like a customer experience. And so the whole idea of being onboarded is like you don't you don't like download Uber and then Then interact with the onboarding product, if you know what I mean. You you become onboarded into the experience of the product in its totality. So the thing that's missing when you productize HR services, you're kind of missing the product. Like and and and again, perhaps more controversial way of explaining this is like I am yet to meet someone who wakes up in the morning and says, Do you know what I the main thing I am absolutely pumped to to do today is to engage with HR. products and services. Like they are they are instrumental in the experience of work, but they are not the experience of work in its totality. They are the essentially a part of the overall fabric. And so again, I wouldn't fight someone to say you shouldn't do it, but I feel like the bigger opportunity is actually the experience of work and its totality. James: one time I had a manager, his name is Oc Octavio Cardenas and he's now a VP of HR and I apologize, I can't remember the the company. I'll add it to the show notes. But he did one thing for me, which looking back was essentially treating my work as a product. But he gave me, I think, six or seven questions and he said, Essentially, what do you want from your work? Do you want more autonomy or less autonomy? Do wanna w learn more? Do you wanna do you wanna just do the same thing? Like what and basically what do you want your experience with this job to be? And I answered it and I was at the time a little bit disengaged. I was like, okay, we'll answer it, I'll see happens. And years later I spoke to him and he said and he did a good job of that. He said, Yeah, I went through your list and I Well, I can give you some of this, I can give you more of that, I can't really fix that, I can give you this and I can give you that. But essentially he then crafted the the things that I did around that. So he gave me more lead flow and just left me to do it. He gave me access to some analysts that could help me get the work done. He kind of gave me the time and the space to do that. Time and space was the thing I wanted the most. And and essentially, that was treating work as a product. He didn't see work as a static thing that I either had to do or didn't do. He was just Chris: Mm. Yeah. James: reshaping it. So when when you think about what you can do, and I I do think there are small things that thinking of it in that way can lead to positive outcomes. Chris: Yeah, sure. I I I I think what what you're describing here is very close to and this is maybe one place where Dart and I actually do have c slightly different views. So Dart is very much all in as the the manager or the people leader. I kinda like I actually reject the idea of the word of management anyway, I feel like people James: Isn't it? Chris: yeah, people leadership, the role of the people leadership in Dart's construct is very much like what you describe is like a curator, a experience designer. I I take a slightly different perspective. I tend to think of work like an experience that you kind of buy into. I mentioned skiing before. So let's kind of go with that or Disneyland or some of those kind of things, right? So It t ski? James: I've tried, not very good at it. I haven't got the knees for it. I I I I dislocated my knee Chris: Okay. So James: the last time and haven't tried again since. Chris: all right, okay. Well, I'm sorry to hear that. But I've never skied. So I'm I'm working off what I think happens at at these types of places, right? But like it's still a a thing that you decide, I want to have some of that. And you go to a place. The product that you're buying requires your participation. You can't go to the ski resort to have skiing happen and for you not to participate in that. Right. Maybe you buy extra coaching. Maybe you buy something or or you go through a process where you're like getting extra support, extra, extra development to help you have a different or better experience. But what I'm talking about is we would design, we would think of the experience of attending a ski resort as a product that can be designed. And it has all sorts of different components, right? It might have some accommodation, it certainly has a check-in area, you might have. Like equipment rental, you're gonna have to kind of get up the mountain. So you have like toe lifts and ski lifts and all these kind of things. And maybe there's all sorts of different ways that you monetize some of that stuff while you're on the mountain. And you're really desperate for people who come to your ski resort to have a really good time. you're gonna have people who are like super advanced, crazy good skiers who can go up and do the challenging bit and can really like have demonstrate their prowess. And then you've got like, I don't know, eleven year olds who are like Like little lambs and foals trying to figure it out. And James who's got his dodgy knee. James: The eleven year olds were the best by some way. Like that was the painful part. Chris: Right, but d do you see what I'm trying to say there is what which is like everybody's experience is by definition participatory and unique. But we are not designing a one-to-one experience for you. We are curating an environment in which those experiences can naturally emerge and can opt we we are targeting particular f like a ski resort is in Switzerland, right? So we naturally have some constraints and some Some boundaries around who's likely to be able to come here and what is it that they're gonna get access to. So I tend to think more in that type of way, where it's a participatory environment within which certain infrastructure is created and curated in such a way that everyone's unique experience is a function of how they engage with that environment. James: Wonderfully put. and on that note, Chris, we better wrap up, otherwise we're just gonna keep going all day. But hopefully we'll get a chance to speak again soon and maybe we can revisit Chris: Yeah, man. James: s and and learn more. Because because it is such an a new way of thinking, you're constantly doing more and more work and learning more and more about how to get this done. So I'd love to example f hear from you again in another year how that work is going at that Chris: Definitely meant. James: fashion retailer in Europe to see how things play out in the long run. Chris: Yeah. I'd love to do that. We're yeah, we're definitely gonna be doing a bit more with them. And yeah, you're you're right. I mean the again, the cheeky kind of way of saying is like we're basically making it up as we go along a little bit, but that's kinda like frontier stuff, you know. So yeah, I'd love to. Thank you for having me. James: last question though, where can people find you? Where should they find more about work as a product, but also people experience, which you haven't mentioned very much as well, which is the sort of related area. Chris: Yeah, I I I kind of I think people experience is ultimately just a a new way of of describing what the what the people function can do related to this to the there's a whole new language which we're gonna have to develop. so to answer your question, you can get me on LinkedIn if you like. I am I don't post as much as I used to. I'm there I'll responsive. My website, my my business is Red Oak Agency. So that's red -oak.agency. I run a product management group coaching journey, which is pxasaproduct.com. So px is for people experience. we've actually got one coming up and two kicking off in just under two weeks if you're if you're interested. So there's still still spaces available. and I do a huge amount of work with Luke O'Mahoney. So check Luke out as well. He's on LinkedIn and he's at sapienx.co.uk. James: Okay. And this episode will go out next week from the time we're recording it, which means that listeners, you have a week to sign up. Yeah. So hopefully there are still spaces. Chris: a one week. Yeah. We're kicking off on the whatever the Tuesday of the first week of November is the third, I think. James: And that's in in London? Chris: No, it's virtual experience. So you get James: it's virtual again. Chris: yeah, so it's about 30 hours of learning content. it's four modules over five weeks. there's two two-hour teaching blocks a week. So we you you watch some content, you come and hang out with me. I basically talk you through a whole bunch of different stuff. We have mirror boards and canvases, and we have a case study, and we kind of walk you through product mindset and then you Discovery, user discovery, delivery, agile, that kind of stuff, and then transformation. And then we have practitioners from some of my clients and some of my ex-colleagues who come in as guest speakers every Friday for an hour, basically an AMA type session. where you can like instead of like taking my word from it, you can actually talk to someone who's leading a product transformation inside a people function for one of my clients, or talk to a designer, or talk to someone who maybe wrote a book on on work as a product or has a podcast or a newsletter or or whatever, that kind of stuff. So we bring those folks in and like I say, yeah, get in touch if you're if you're curious. James: And don't forget those L and D budgets as well. if you're looking for somewhere to spend it, then that's this this kind of thing is like a great way to do that. Yeah. Chris: Yeah. TikTok. That's right. Yeah. If you've got some if you're sitting on a little budget, I'd love to take it off your hands. James: Well, excellent. Thanks so much for joining me. It's fascinating to hear you describe things. I love the vocabulary you use. I love the examples that you've used to to explain, you know, a foreign concept. Clearly you've had to do it before, so I appreciate that. I hope we people found it interesting. I know I did. So Chris Metcalfe, thanks very much. Thanks for your time and we'll speak again soon. Chris: Awesome, mate. Lovely to be here. Thanks for having me. James: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Disengaged. If you enjoyed it, please remember to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes and if possible, please give the show a rating. Finally, if you have friends or colleagues that you think might find this interesting, please let them know. This is tremendously helpful and I do appreciate it. see you next time on Disengaged.