Latest / Roast the Post Podcast / Hi, I'm Paul: Getting to Know Paul Austin-Menear

Transcript

Hi, I'm Paul: Getting to Know Paul Austin-Menear · Roast the Post Podcast

0:08
SPEAKER_01: So, this is a very special episode of Roast the Post.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: this is an opportunity for myself and the listeners to get to know Paul
0:17
SPEAKER_01: a little bit better.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: When Paul and I started this podcast together,
0:21
SPEAKER_01: some of you might not realize that we barely knew each other.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: We barely knew each other.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: We met through Substack,
0:29
SPEAKER_01: collaborated on a couple of posts.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: I guested on Paul's other podcast.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: And
0:37
SPEAKER_01: yeah, and everything just kind of clicked,
0:39
SPEAKER_01: but at the same time, I don't know much about your background.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: So I have some questions that I'm gonna ask you interview- styles,
0:49
SPEAKER_01: and that'll give the opportunity for me and the audience to get to know
0:53
SPEAKER_01: you a little better.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: I will drop my man card.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: I will open up and be vulnerable and actually talk about
1:00
SPEAKER_00: my feelings and the things that I've done.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: I promise you this.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: Excellent.
1:05
SPEAKER_01: Let's get into it.
1:05
SPEAKER_01: So the first question I have for you,
1:06
SPEAKER_01: Excellent.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: Let's get into it.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: So the first question I have for you,
1:09
SPEAKER_01: Paul, is what's your origin story?
1:12
SPEAKER_01: Tell us about your early career and what led you to your current career,
1:17
SPEAKER_01: what led you to where you are right now.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm a small town boy.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, I grew up in rural Ontario here in Canada,
1:27
SPEAKER_00: near Algonquin Park.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: And it's funny because my friends tell
1:32
SPEAKER_00: me all the time that when I'm back visiting family or back visiting people there,
1:38
SPEAKER_00: I slip back into my rural country accent.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: which I learned as I was older as a form of code switching,
1:45
SPEAKER_00: right?
1:45
SPEAKER_00: Like you you kind of change how you present yourself,
1:48
SPEAKER_00: how you talk, how you act a little bit.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: based on your surroundings and I'd never really realized that I was doing that.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: so yeah, I'm a small town boy.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: I went to a liberal arts college,
1:59
SPEAKER_00: Trent University, and studied history,
2:03
SPEAKER_00: which has very little to do directly with the work that I do today,
2:07
SPEAKER_00: but it was a pretty interesting,
2:09
SPEAKER_00: pretty interesting kind of start to my educational kind of like being on
2:14
SPEAKER_00: my own and whatever else.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: And it taught me a lot of the soft skills
2:17
SPEAKER_00: and critical thinking that are
2:20
SPEAKER_00: Super, super useful today when hard skills are being replaced kind of
2:26
SPEAKER_00: en masse by technology and by shifts in labour markets,
2:29
SPEAKER_00: et cetera, et cetera.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: one thing that AI can't really keep up with super well
2:32
SPEAKER_00: is critical thinking and reasoning and all the things that humans kind of
2:36
SPEAKER_00: do well in the moment.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: so I'm grateful that I had that kind of an education.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: after I graduated, I was, believe it or not,
2:44
SPEAKER_00: recruiting to join our national intelligence service.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: I was in the CSIS recruiting pool.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: for about eighteen months and I got to the part where they sat me down,
2:55
SPEAKER_00: in the polygraph chair and strapped me up to all the things and I don't know what
2:59
SPEAKER_00: happened after that.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: I must have said something and they were like,
3:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this guy's a no.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: So that was the end of that.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: And I was kind of figuring out,
3:07
SPEAKER_00: all right, well, what do I do now?
3:09
SPEAKER_00: and I stumbled across entrepreneurship.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: I worked for myself while I was in that 18 month period not making any money.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: I worked as a a freelancer, a contractor in marketing communications,
3:19
SPEAKER_00: doing writing, doing strategy for small brands and doing consulting
3:24
SPEAKER_00: for executives on PR and perception and personal branding.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: So I kind of started my career there.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: From that, I caught the bug and I started a business.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: with some people that I'd met while I was at university and that didn't go so well.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: It kind of went sideways.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: but I started another business and that went
3:45
SPEAKER_00: a whole lot better and I sold that.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: After that, I moved to Ottawa.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: I worked for a marketing agency for a little bit.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: I started my kind of proper career as an employee out in professional services
3:57
SPEAKER_00: and decided that I didn't really like that too much.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: I moved to Toronto.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: after that and joined a tech company and thought to myself,
4:06
SPEAKER_00: hey, startups are great.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: Like let's do this thing for a while.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: It'll be fun and I'll be around people my own age and there won't be a
4:11
SPEAKER_00: lot of like corporate structure and legacy and all the things that bother
4:16
SPEAKER_00: me about the world of work.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: It'll just be,
4:18
SPEAKER_00: you know, great.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll get super,
4:20
SPEAKER_00: super rich.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: Did that for about a decade and left that to work with other
4:25
SPEAKER_00: companies, entrepreneurs, companies that were starting to grow their businesses,
4:30
SPEAKER_00: because I learned that that's where my passion lies.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: helping organizations scale and grow and do so in a way that doesn't make them blow
4:37
SPEAKER_00: apart at the seams.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: So today I'm a bit of a management consultant specializing
4:42
SPEAKER_00: in operations and supply chain and leadership structure for companies that
4:47
SPEAKER_00: are trying to figure out like how do we go from one to a hundred?
4:50
SPEAKER_00: We've already done the hard work of getting to one.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: What do we do from there?
4:55
SPEAKER_01: That's fantastic.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: And I guess my question for you,
4:57
SPEAKER_01: follow-up question, a couple of follow-up questions.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: what is it about the work that you're doing now that energizes
5:06
SPEAKER_01: you and what about it do you find most straining?
5:10
SPEAKER_00: Mm.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: So the the thing about being a consultant is
5:16
SPEAKER_00: the thing that's energizing.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: The thing that's really good about being a consultant is you kind of
5:20
SPEAKER_00: set your own schedule.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: you're really the one driving the show of most
5:25
SPEAKER_00: of your engagements when you you kind of work at the level and in the way that I do.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: you set the terms.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: So I can structure
5:33
SPEAKER_00: my engagements around things that I want to be a part of,
5:38
SPEAKER_00: you know, work.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: and I can kind of disincentivize things that I don't want to be a part
5:44
SPEAKER_00: of, that work.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: So you you have a lot more control as a consultant than you
5:49
SPEAKER_00: do as an employee in a lot of ways.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: So I find that energizing because I can just get rid of the things that drain me.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: And things that drain me are stupid repetitive work things,
6:01
SPEAKER_00: "bits of work" meetings that don't actually make a difference.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't like those.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: So I tend to kind of bat them away.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: and a lot of the work I end up doing actually tends to be how
6:14
SPEAKER_00: do we make structures like this,
6:15
SPEAKER_00: whether it's communications, whether it's company management,
6:18
SPEAKER_00: whether it's data review, whether it's like management of the business,
6:22
SPEAKER_00: how do we make that more effective and less let's have a little talky-talk?
6:27
SPEAKER_00: so I tend to do a lot of work on that,
6:28
SPEAKER_00: and I find that energizing because interestingly enough,
6:32
SPEAKER_00: I'm like getting rid of the de-energizing or disenergizing things that I don't like.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've heard this from other consultants too,
6:40
SPEAKER_01: that it's kind of a gift that you give yourself of,
6:43
SPEAKER_01: I don't like, say for example,
6:45
SPEAKER_01: if you're an HR consultant, I don't like recruitment.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: I don't have to do that.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: That's not a service that I offer.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: So that can give you a bit of a relief as well.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes... just as with things like addictions,
6:59
SPEAKER_01: you replace that though with something else.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: So something that drained you that you're not doing anymore,
7:04
SPEAKER_01: something else is gonna take that place.
7:06
SPEAKER_01: So eventually it just all...
7:09
SPEAKER_00: For sure.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: And you know, when you're a consultant
7:11
SPEAKER_00: and especially when you're like a one-person consultant,
7:14
SPEAKER_00: a solopreneur... invoicing... sucks.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: Chasing the money is just awful.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: Highly, highly, highly recommend avoiding that.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: unless you're the kind of person who likes to send tons of emails all
7:31
SPEAKER_00: the time and be like, pay me please,
7:32
SPEAKER_00: pay me please, pay me please.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: and I'm very much a...
7:37
SPEAKER_00: I'm very much a carrot person.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: So I like to...
7:39
SPEAKER_00: I like to use incentives rather than penalties to kind
7:43
SPEAKER_00: of coax out the behaviours that I want.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: so I'll structure my invoices and a lot of consulting invoices,
7:48
SPEAKER_00: a lot of company invoices will
7:50
SPEAKER_00: say something to the effect of late payment.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: there's an interest penalty of five percent per month calculated,
7:57
SPEAKER_00: you know, whatever else.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: But then you just gotta go chase that late payment
8:01
SPEAKER_00: invoicing, right?
8:02
SPEAKER_00: So you're like compounding the stuff that you don't like to do,
8:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: chasing the money, by creating the wrong incentive.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: So what I do instead a lot of the time is, I say...
8:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is what I think my price is going to be for a certain engagement.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to mark it up between 10 and 12%.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: whatever I think like an interest penalty should be over a course
8:23
SPEAKER_00: of a ninety day period.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to make that my price.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: But then if you pay on time, net 14,
8:30
SPEAKER_00: guess what?
8:30
SPEAKER_00: You get a discount of ten or twelve percent.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: Same d*mn thing when it comes to the money,
8:34
SPEAKER_00: just a discount instead of a like a stick for chasing.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: And then the other thing I hear about consulting
8:41
SPEAKER_01: too is... that's challenging... is the hustle,
8:43
SPEAKER_01: right?
8:44
SPEAKER_01: Like you you gotta go out there and sell your services and that's
8:48
SPEAKER_01: not always comfortable.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: Not everyone who's good at one thing is also good
8:52
SPEAKER_01: at sales or, you know...
8:56
SPEAKER_00: Developing new business is probably
8:56
SPEAKER_00: one of the things that I am weakest at.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: it's just not natural to me to go out and sell myself... and it's also time consuming.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: If I look at what I wanna be spending my time on,
9:07
SPEAKER_00: it's either do I wanna be spending my time developing business or do
9:09
SPEAKER_00: I wanna be spending my time working for clients and really helping them?
9:14
SPEAKER_00: I wanna spend as much of my time as possible working for clients,
9:16
SPEAKER_00: putting my energy into helping them grow their business and make something better
9:21
SPEAKER_00: out of what they've started.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: For sure.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: But I gotta go find clients.
9:27
SPEAKER_01: And then my other question that goes into the first question that
9:32
SPEAKER_01: I asked is this is what you're doing now.
9:37
SPEAKER_01: What... if you could do anything,
9:39
SPEAKER_01: if you could have any career making a living off of doing something,
9:43
SPEAKER_01: what would it be?
9:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a great question.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: And there's a couple of different answers to that.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: I think like one answer is...
9:55
SPEAKER_00: I would make my money yapping.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: If somebody came along and told us like,
9:58
SPEAKER_00: hey, we'll give you a couple hundred thousand dollars a year to produce Roast
10:02
SPEAKER_00: the Post, you and Jen, I'd be like,
10:03
SPEAKER_00: Cool, let's just not do anything else and I'll take that money,
10:07
SPEAKER_00: my half of that money, and that'll be a fun life.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: Is that realistic?
10:12
SPEAKER_00: Maybe not.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: Deals like that in podcasting, I don't think, are everyday.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: But the other thing that if I could start over and I was like twenty.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: If I could start over at twenty.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: I think what I would do would be get into something
10:31
SPEAKER_00: related to alternative energy.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: Cause I'm super, super interested in sustainability.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: And I think about, you know, it's kind of society level systems.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: And one of the biggest challenges that we face as a civilization or we will face
10:45
SPEAKER_00: as a civilization over the next several decades is how do we generate enough energy
10:51
SPEAKER_00: for a population that is growing,
10:53
SPEAKER_00: that requires more food.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: that requires more electricity.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: in a way that isn't going to completely destroy the planet,
11:01
SPEAKER_00: you know?
11:02
SPEAKER_00: So there's that question about decarbonization.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: How do we cross the chasm?
11:05
SPEAKER_00: How do we decarbonize the electricity grid?
11:08
SPEAKER_00: I find the technologies that are being developed in that space to
11:12
SPEAKER_00: to combat that problem really,
11:14
SPEAKER_00: really fascinating.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: So if I was 20,
11:17
SPEAKER_00: I'd probably pursue some kind of STEM career,
11:20
SPEAKER_00: technology, engineering, manufacturing... that was kind of oriented towards that
11:25
SPEAKER_00: space.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm so interested in it.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: But starting over and getting a new education now, in my 40s, and then pursuing
11:32
SPEAKER_00: a new sector that way, it's not super realistic.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I've got to kind of carry on with what I'm doing and kind of do what
11:39
SPEAKER_00: I can to indulge those passions in...
11:42
SPEAKER_00: you know, the way that I can, professional or not.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: But if I was gonna start over and do something different,
11:47
SPEAKER_00: I think I'd do that.
11:48
SPEAKER_01: Very cool.
11:49
SPEAKER_01: So what I'm hearing is podcasting it is.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so the next question I have for you is was there a pivotal moment
12:01
SPEAKER_01: in your career that fundamentally changed how you think about leadership, growth,
12:05
SPEAKER_01: or building organizations?
12:07
SPEAKER_01: And what was it?
12:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, leadership?
12:11
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: So there's a couple of different answers to that.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Was there a pivotal point in my career that...
12:19
SPEAKER_00: set me on a different path in thinking about leadership.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: Yep, absolutely.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: And I would say it was one of my first...
12:25
SPEAKER_00: like grown-up jobs.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: I worked in this agency, small,
12:31
SPEAKER_00: but the the person who owned it and ran it was kind of an egomaniac.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: He did not treat people well.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: And he created a
12:40
SPEAKER_00: a very toxic environment with his behaviours.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: And when you're in a toxic environment and the office is you know,
12:49
SPEAKER_00: 1500 square feet or something,
12:50
SPEAKER_00: and there's like 10 people working in there,
12:54
SPEAKER_00: it sits like a fog.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: It was unpleasant.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: It was uncomfortable.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: And I learned a lot about leadership,
13:03
SPEAKER_00: simply through observing what it shouldn't be.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: So that was kind of one pivotal part in my career about leadership.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: The other thing that was a little bit pivotal in my career about
13:15
SPEAKER_00: how I think about organizations was starting to learn more about systems thinking.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: When I got into technology and when I was working for the technology company,
13:27
SPEAKER_00: it was a smart lighting company about 10 years ago.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: A lot of the work that I was doing was around systems.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: So I studied systems theory, design thinking,
13:35
SPEAKER_00: and really got into that whole
13:36
SPEAKER_00: whole
13:37
SPEAKER_00: world and where it intersected with product design
13:41
SPEAKER_00: and product experience.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: And it got me thinking like,
13:45
SPEAKER_00: this is no different from an organization.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, an organization is... there's a lot of different metaphors that
13:51
SPEAKER_00: you can apply to it.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: if you take kind of like the team one,
13:56
SPEAKER_00: if an organization is, you know,
13:57
SPEAKER_00: a football team, then you construct your football team with saying,
14:01
SPEAKER_00: All right, I need these players,
14:04
SPEAKER_00: and I think that these people have the right characteristics to be a player
14:08
SPEAKER_00: on the field in a certain position,
14:10
SPEAKER_00: how do I get that onto the field and juggle those roles in a way that makes
14:14
SPEAKER_00: the most sense so that we're going to win the match.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: You know, organizations are very much like constructing a team that's playing
14:23
SPEAKER_00: a game, even though the stakes are bigger and it's money and it's serious
14:27
SPEAKER_00: and it's corporate and all this other stuff.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, it's like you want to not only have the right people
14:33
SPEAKER_00: in the right place, but you want to figure out how to design the place
14:38
SPEAKER_00: for the people.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: And for the person that is in that specific place.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: If you only look at it from the one side of that,
14:47
SPEAKER_00: you're destined to fail because people in an organization change,
14:51
SPEAKER_00: right?
14:52
SPEAKER_00: Your needs evolve.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: Things are always changing.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: So if you don't do that well, you're kind of relegating yourself to
15:01
SPEAKER_00: a future where it's gonna go sideways.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: That interests me greatly, and that's a big part of the work that we do.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: I agree.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: Very passionate about systems thinking and
15:11
SPEAKER_01: the concept of organizations as living systems.
15:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to take a moment to plug another Substack account actually that
15:21
SPEAKER_01: if people are interested in
15:23
SPEAKER_01: The analogy that you just shared,
15:24
SPEAKER_01: which I think is a phenomenal one about like sports teams
15:27
SPEAKER_01: and organizations and systems thinking,
15:29
SPEAKER_01: there is a really great Substack account called Pattern of Play by
15:34
SPEAKER_01: a gentleman named Kwame, and he uses football.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: as in soccer to decode how systems really work.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: He's got some fascinating posts,
15:45
SPEAKER_01: really big fan.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: I've been following him from the get-go of when
15:49
SPEAKER_01: I first joined Substack.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: So it's called Pattern of Play.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: And again, it's about sports, football,
15:56
SPEAKER_01: soccer, and systems... systems thinking.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: Really, really... ... let's shout that in the show notes.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: and I'm going to start following Kwame because I didn't know that that
16:07
SPEAKER_00: was a thing until now.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: Yes, Kwame Kwame is great.
16:09
SPEAKER_01: Really lovely posts.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: Especially now with as we are recording this,
16:14
SPEAKER_01: it's a World Cup fever, and so it's all the more relevant.
16:19
SPEAKER_01: I get it.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: I love how you said that the toxicity kind of sits there like
16:24
SPEAKER_01: a fog.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: It's so true.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: It becomes another player in the organization.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: Like it's its own entity and it is horrifying.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: so yeah, I get it.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: It's unfortunate that most often when we recall pivotal moments in
16:40
SPEAKER_01: our careers or moments that have inspired us,
16:42
SPEAKER_01: they're usually anchored to something negative that happened.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: But such is life.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: so another question I have for you.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: You've worked across startups.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: You talked about that in the intro,
16:55
SPEAKER_01: operations, marketing, strategy.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: Looking back, what's one business mistake that taught you the most?
17:02
SPEAKER_01: And maybe it's from your own personal
17:06
SPEAKER_01: foray into entrepreneurship.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: I think that that would be really valuable for listeners.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think in...
17:13
SPEAKER_00: I think the most valuable lesson that I've learned
17:17
SPEAKER_00: and specifically from failure in my past is... perfect
17:23
SPEAKER_00: is the enemy of...
17:28
SPEAKER_00: I forget how the saying goes...
17:30
SPEAKER_00: But it's like perfect is the enemy of execution or perfect is the enemy
17:34
SPEAKER_00: of good enough or something like that.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: Progress.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: ...perfect is the enemy of progress!
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: 100% that has happened to me.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: I, at various points in my career,
17:43
SPEAKER_00: and even to some extent now, I've been what you'd call a perfectionist.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: So when I was writing technical scopes,
17:51
SPEAKER_00: when I was writing product development plans,
17:54
SPEAKER_00: project plans for building technical products,
17:57
SPEAKER_00: for building integrations.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: I would focus on... how do we make this better?
18:02
SPEAKER_00: How do we make this better?
18:04
SPEAKER_00: If we do this,
18:05
SPEAKER_00: will it be better?
18:06
SPEAKER_00: Better, better,
18:06
SPEAKER_00: better, better, better.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: And that's fine until better gets to a point where
18:13
SPEAKER_00: it stops you from doing... good enough.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: Right?
18:19
SPEAKER_00: Or like you can think of it as... if I try to be the best
18:23
SPEAKER_00: or I try to build the best of something,
18:26
SPEAKER_00: will it prevent me from being
18:28
SPEAKER_00: better than all of the competition.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: And once you get there, incredibly damaging.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: Because inertia is as much of a thing,
18:39
SPEAKER_00: a competitive advantage, as having the best quality is.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: So I've I've learned that lesson painfully a couple of times.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: And I would say that, you know,
18:48
SPEAKER_00: you have to find... you have to come to this place where you
18:51
SPEAKER_00: can recognize that sometimes you don't
18:55
SPEAKER_00: push for absolutely everything you want because you recognize that it's going
19:00
SPEAKER_00: to be counterproductive.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: You're actually creating a weight or an anchor
19:04
SPEAKER_00: on an organization or a team if you do that.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: and that'll ultimately sink your ship.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's funny that you say that because I remember long
19:13
SPEAKER_01: ago I was interviewed for a role,
19:15
SPEAKER_01: and one of the questions that they asked me was,
19:18
SPEAKER_01: would you rather submit something good enough and on time?
19:22
SPEAKER_01: Or late... but perfect?
19:24
SPEAKER_01: And I think that I probably spent like 20 minutes kind of dissecting that question
19:30
SPEAKER_01: with them as part of my response because it... when you are a perfectionist.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: That's a really hard question to answer because part of being perfect
19:39
SPEAKER_01: for me also means submitting something on time.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: Right?
19:42
SPEAKER_01: Like, well, if it's you know,
19:44
SPEAKER_01: if it's late, then it's not perfect.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: And so I got into really... like the semantics and all the meaning
19:51
SPEAKER_01: of this... really, what I felt to be a very heavy question.
19:55
SPEAKER_01: I got the job.
19:55
SPEAKER_01: I'm surprised I did,
19:57
SPEAKER_01: because that was kind of like my focus.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: but it is very fascinating... lessons to learn when you when you
20:04
SPEAKER_01: are really like hyper fixated on perfection.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: It's to the detriment of
20:09
SPEAKER_00: My answer to that question would be:
20:12
SPEAKER_00: it depends.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about why.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: I think that's that's a good answer to it because it depends,
20:20
SPEAKER_01: it depends on the scenario, depends on the project,
20:22
SPEAKER_01: depends on so many different factors.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's where we went down that path of like,
20:28
SPEAKER_01: you know, here is how I view it.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, but it's interesting for sure.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: What I've noticed from you, an observation,
20:36
SPEAKER_01: is that you are very good at spotting problems hiding in plain sight.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: What's something most companies believe they're good at,
20:45
SPEAKER_01: but usually are not?
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Woo!
20:49
SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: ...
20:51
SPEAKER_00: I know.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: All companies and... you know,
20:55
SPEAKER_00: companies... we have this funny thing in Western civilization where
20:59
SPEAKER_00: we tend to think of... or we tend to anthropomorphize companies like they're living
21:05
SPEAKER_00: beings, you know, and there's... there are legal structures that kind
21:10
SPEAKER_00: of, sort of, make corporations "people"
21:13
SPEAKER_00: In some certain scenarios, under some conditions,
21:17
SPEAKER_00: they're treated with rights as people are.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: But... we have to remember that companies,
21:23
SPEAKER_00: that corporations, are... artificial structures that we created and they reflect
21:29
SPEAKER_00: the people within them.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: Typically they reflect the people at the management layer,
21:34
SPEAKER_00: the leadership layer, who have formed the organization or who
21:40
SPEAKER_00: are in charge of of leading it,
21:42
SPEAKER_00: corporations will, companies will reflect those people.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: so each company is a little bit different.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: I do find though, and this is also something that I wish more CFOs
21:56
SPEAKER_00: and controllers would keep in mind and take and take to heart,
22:01
SPEAKER_00: is that most most companies view people as interchangeable parts in the machine.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: you can have layoffs.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: You can kind of get rid of people and then hire new people.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: And it's absolutely the same.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: It's no problem.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: You just go to the job market,
22:18
SPEAKER_00: go to the labour market with a job ad.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: You know, have a specification of what you want,
22:23
SPEAKER_00: and you can just plug that person into your organization.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: Everything's going to be like great.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: it'll be as good as before or better.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: What that viewpoint though universally misses
22:36
SPEAKER_00: is the institutional knowledge and the value of the institutional knowledge that
22:41
SPEAKER_00: people who are laid off, who are long tenured,
22:45
SPEAKER_00: had for that organization.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: And I kind of relate this to kind of
22:49
SPEAKER_00: a failure in accounting, interestingly enough.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: When you are doing your... when you're creating your balance sheet
22:58
SPEAKER_00: as an accountant or as like a you know a CFO or like an auditor or whatever,
23:03
SPEAKER_00: whoever is creating the
23:04
SPEAKER_00: balance sheet as a part of your financial statements.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: There's a way to value your machinery,
23:10
SPEAKER_00: your capital assets.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: There's a way to value your accounts receivable.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: There's a way to value your accounts payable,
23:17
SPEAKER_00: your inventory, your stock.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: All of those have a monetary value and they're
23:22
SPEAKER_00: on the balance sheet.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, balance sheet or income statement,
23:26
SPEAKER_00: depending on what it is, but they're in your financial statements.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: What's not in your financial statements is the value of people.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: So there is no generally accepted way to value in financial terms
23:40
SPEAKER_00: the institutional knowledge of a workforce inside an organization.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: Because of that, leadership teams don't think that there is value to it,
23:49
SPEAKER_00: but there very much is.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: You know,
23:50
SPEAKER_00: give me an organization with engaged people who have been working there
23:54
SPEAKER_00: for 20 years directly competing against a organization that is slightly larger,
24:00
SPEAKER_00: that has a much shorter tenured
24:03
SPEAKER_00: workforce and I can tell you which one is going to outperform financially
24:08
SPEAKER_00: and with their customers.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: It's the one with the longer tenured workforce.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: As long as the culture is, you know,
24:12
SPEAKER_00: positive and as long as everybody is engaged and they're trying their best
24:16
SPEAKER_00: and they're paid well and all that stuff.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: That organization with institutional knowledge is going to outperform
24:21
SPEAKER_00: and outcompete the one that doesn't have the institutional knowledge,
24:24
SPEAKER_00: hands down, 99.9% of the time.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: So I wish that companies understood that.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: This is a fascinating answer.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: I agree.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: Again, long time ago,
24:37
SPEAKER_01: I worked for an organization that was investing in a clothing company,
24:43
SPEAKER_01: like sustainable, natural, locally made clothing.
24:47
SPEAKER_01: And when we did a site visit to the warehouse,
24:51
SPEAKER_01: they were talking about their people who are like some... the seamstresses.
24:56
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, I don't know what the like
24:58
SPEAKER_01: what the term is for this, but the people actually making the clothing,
25:02
SPEAKER_01: sewing the clothing and everything.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: And they're all kind of sitting there at their sewing machines and they're older.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: The majority of them are much older.
25:10
SPEAKER_01: And I noticed that and I was asking the CEO during the tour,
25:12
SPEAKER_01: like, what is what is your plan for transferring this knowledge
25:16
SPEAKER_01: to the next generation?
25:17
SPEAKER_01: Like, do you have training programs?
25:21
SPEAKER_01: Are you going to schools and trying to bring people in?
25:24
SPEAKER_01: Like what are you trying to do to make sure that you have succession for this?
25:29
SPEAKER_01: and that you're not losing this skill set.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: And he just kind of looked at me like,
25:33
SPEAKER_01: what you talking about?
25:35
SPEAKER_01: And so when you talk about that being on the balance sheet,
25:40
SPEAKER_01: it's exactly that.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: Like, if you lose these workers who... a lot of them appear
25:44
SPEAKER_01: to be close to retirement age,
25:47
SPEAKER_01: you're done.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: What are you going to do?
25:49
SPEAKER_01: Because if your whole thing is sustainable clothing
25:51
SPEAKER_01: and locally made, but you don't have anyone local to be able to do that,
25:54
SPEAKER_01: then you're going and getting it,
25:56
SPEAKER_01: you know, you're offshoring all of this stuff and your mission and your product
26:00
SPEAKER_01: is no longer the same thing that it was.
26:03
SPEAKER_01: So it is a very interesting thing when you start to look at it.
26:06
SPEAKER_01: And I think you can see that, like you mentioned,
26:08
SPEAKER_01: across different industries, different companies.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: So, really interesting.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: And if you if you realize too late that that problem exists... and will bite
26:17
SPEAKER_00: you in the butt and you start to make moves to correct it.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: it's gonna be very painful because especially in that industry,
26:30
SPEAKER_00: complex clothing, like not simple stuff.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: especially in that industry,
26:34
SPEAKER_00: the learning curve is quite high.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: tailoring... back before everything was kind of, outsourced overseas,
26:42
SPEAKER_00: and you know, we didn't care... or we cared more about our clothing,
26:46
SPEAKER_00: and we cared more about quality of our clothing and you know,
26:51
SPEAKER_00: men wore like
26:52
SPEAKER_00: suits and women wore pretty dresses that were very ornate and whatnot.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: Back in those days, you apprenticed before becoming
27:01
SPEAKER_00: a seamstress and then a master seamstress or a tailor and then a master tailor.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: There was a journeyman program.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: associated with that.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: And it was like twelve to fifteen years before
27:10
SPEAKER_00: you could become like a master seamstress or a master tailor.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: one of... Canada's oldest menswear manufacturing
27:19
SPEAKER_00: organizations that still made stuff in Canada and I don't know if they still
27:23
SPEAKER_00: do or not.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: it's called Samuelson in Montreal.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: And they they manufactured fantastic clothing.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: And all of the people, the master tailors who worked in their organization,
27:36
SPEAKER_00: and these guys did a fairly good job at their learning
27:41
SPEAKER_00: and development and kind of like bringing in people and doing
27:43
SPEAKER_00: the apprentice and whatever.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: because the industry itself didn't really have
27:47
SPEAKER_00: a lot of support for that, they just did their own and it worked really well
27:50
SPEAKER_00: for them.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: but I think cost pressures ultimately would be something you'd
27:54
SPEAKER_00: be worried about in a business like that.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: But like replacing people like that,
27:58
SPEAKER_00: it's a skilled trade.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: We just don't think it is because we buy cheap
28:01
SPEAKER_00: and cheerful stuff from overseas.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: Yep, absolutely.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, you make you make a really good point.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: It's that legacy knowledge or skill set that is irreplaceable that I think
28:10
SPEAKER_01: a lot of companies overlook.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: Let's pivot a little bit into Roast
28:16
SPEAKER_01: the Post itself.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: How has your background,
28:21
SPEAKER_01: your career, shaped the way you read job postings and explore
28:26
SPEAKER_01: or examine hiring processes?
28:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because I and on the show I tend to take I tend to kind of
28:34
SPEAKER_00: go off on tangents a little bit and talk about what I think... we both do,
28:38
SPEAKER_00: right?
28:40
SPEAKER_00: I tend to talk a lot about organizations and what
28:44
SPEAKER_00: I think the structure of an organization is and what they're trying to accomplish,
28:48
SPEAKER_00: and whether or not the job ad that we're roasting on that given episode,
28:54
SPEAKER_00: whether or not I think that that's going to further their goal or if it's just
28:57
SPEAKER_00: a little bit out to lunch.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: that directly relates to my experience and passion
29:05
SPEAKER_00: for organizational design.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: You know,
29:07
SPEAKER_00: like ever since I became interested in the intersection of how
29:11
SPEAKER_00: you structure a company with organizational design,
29:14
SPEAKER_00: systems thinking, systems theory,
29:16
SPEAKER_00: that type of stuff... it's not something that I can just turn off.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know what?
29:22
SPEAKER_00: This is the part to the machine that they're trying
29:24
SPEAKER_00: to put in place.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's the right part.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: That'll work really well.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: Or...
29:29
SPEAKER_00: No, that's totally the wrong part.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: This is gonna end horribly.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: Here's why.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: so that part of my career has really like kind of fueled my style,
29:37
SPEAKER_00: if you will, on the show.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: And if people at home,
29:40
SPEAKER_00: like if you hate it, sorry, I can't turn it off.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: It's like telling me not to drink water after it's been forty one degrees outside,
29:48
SPEAKER_00: and I've been steam cleaning my carpet like I did yesterday.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: Little tangent... never, ever, ever steam clean your carpet when it is humid.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: It'll take two days to dry.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: I still
30:00
SPEAKER_00: have furniture outside of my living room from like two days ago.
30:05
SPEAKER_01: Roast the Post, it really is about more than just
30:11
SPEAKER_01: job ads, the good, the bad, and the ugly of what comes with that.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: So in your mind, what primary organizational problem are
30:21
SPEAKER_01: we actually talking about?
30:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that what we're really trying to do is
30:29
SPEAKER_00: put the right...
30:32
SPEAKER_00: I think that what we're trying to do is draw
30:33
SPEAKER_00: the line between how something can fail inside
30:40
SPEAKER_00: an organization and where it all began.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: Because what's very clear to me and and you know we talk about
30:47
SPEAKER_00: this here and there on the show.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: What's very clear to me is that if you if you structurally set people
30:55
SPEAKER_00: up to fail through setting the wrong expectations or through
31:00
SPEAKER_00: marketing your opportunity to just someone who's not going to be a good
31:05
SPEAKER_00: fit or the wrong like crowd or whatever else.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: it is inevitable, nearly always,
31:12
SPEAKER_00: that it's going to fail.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: And anytime I think about a company that has high turnover,
31:17
SPEAKER_00: the natural question is why?
31:19
SPEAKER_00: Where did that begin?
31:21
SPEAKER_00: And almost always you can trace that line back to hiring practices,
31:26
SPEAKER_00: hiring processes, job ads, employer branding,
31:29
SPEAKER_00: you know, get
31:30
SPEAKER_00: getting
31:31
SPEAKER_00: the right people in the right role just didn't work in an organization that
31:34
SPEAKER_00: has high turnover.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: So I think that we're trying to connect the dots between that
31:39
SPEAKER_00: and prevent that.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: And I think that in an age where technology is...
31:44
SPEAKER_00: I can't believe I'm saying this,
31:45
SPEAKER_00: but accelerating even more things,
31:48
SPEAKER_00: even faster than it had been five years ago,
31:52
SPEAKER_00: we're starting to lose sight inside organizations of
31:57
SPEAKER_00: all of these facets that can't be identified by clicking buttons inside a dashboard,
32:03
SPEAKER_00: inside an ATS or an AI-driven like pipeline management system for hiring.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: I think that we're losing sight of the importance of the things that
32:11
SPEAKER_00: sit in the middle.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that we're properly applying critical thinking
32:16
SPEAKER_00: skills and situational awareness skills to the hiring process
32:21
SPEAKER_00: and to the organizational design process.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: So what I hope we're doing is correcting for some of that.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Because if like organizations that are just an absolute nightmare become the norm,
32:31
SPEAKER_00: it's not going to be great for society,
32:33
SPEAKER_00: right?
32:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: And I think sometimes one might think,
32:38
SPEAKER_01: well, the job posting doesn't really have much to do with anything.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: Like that's that's so far back in the process.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: and I would argue it has everything to do with everything.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: The most important part.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: I think so too.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: I think so too.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: If every founder or CEO could understand one thing about hiring before making their
33:00
SPEAKER_01: next hire.
33:01
SPEAKER_01: What would it be?
33:01
SPEAKER_01: I think you touched on that in the previous question,
33:05
SPEAKER_00: Hire for skills and capability,
33:08
SPEAKER_00: not for resume, I think would be my answer.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: one thing that drives me a little bit nuts about hiring processes,
33:19
SPEAKER_00: how we do things, and about the labour market and about how we advertise jobs,
33:25
SPEAKER_00: is the whole,
33:28
SPEAKER_00: you must have this many years of experience in X.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: Or and my favourite is... it is required that you have proficiency
33:37
SPEAKER_00: in Microsoft Office Suite.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: That stuff drives me a little bit nuts.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: you know, and that kind of ties back to this thinking about organizational
33:48
SPEAKER_00: design, where the organization is a machine or an engine and people
33:52
SPEAKER_00: are just immovable parts that don't change,
33:54
SPEAKER_00: that have specifications that you plug into that machine or that engine.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: It's not true.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: People are malleable,
34:00
SPEAKER_00: people have the capacity to learn.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: there's very little, outside of highly specialized fields, that a person can't learn
34:09
SPEAKER_00: if they have the right soft skills and if they have the intelligence
34:13
SPEAKER_00: and ambition and drive to do so.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: So...
34:15
SPEAKER_00: I would want CEOs and hiring teams and leadership teams to think more about
34:21
SPEAKER_00: how they can look for balls of clay instead of finished parts.
34:28
SPEAKER_00: And how they can have the systems in place to help those balls of clay adopt
34:33
SPEAKER_00: the shape that is needed for a given position at a given time.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: And then also how to re-form them when those requirements change or when there's
34:43
SPEAKER_00: an internal opportunity that a person wants to transition into.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: Because again, the longer tenured you're
34:51
SPEAKER_00: workforce is inside your organization,
34:54
SPEAKER_00: the more capable you're going to be when it comes to competing
34:58
SPEAKER_00: in the market versus other companies that have similar characteristics.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: So you want to hang on to those people.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: You want to develop them.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: Not because it's the right thing to do,
35:07
SPEAKER_00: it is, but because it will make you more profitable.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: And that's the name of the game,
35:12
SPEAKER_00: at least as far as it goes right now.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: Like capitalism's maybe a little bit late stage,
35:17
SPEAKER_00: so in twenty years we could be talking about something completely different.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: But the point of a company right now is to generate profit.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: Hold on to your people, you'll generate more profit.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: Not rocket science.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of it is companies... it's just
35:31
SPEAKER_01: go, go, go, go, go.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: And they always want someone who can hit the ground running.
35:37
SPEAKER_01: Right.
35:37
SPEAKER_01: We need someone who can hit the ground running.
35:39
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to like train them.
35:40
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to anything.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: They can just go in and start doing it and
35:44
SPEAKER_00: And they better
35:44
SPEAKER_00: be scrappy.
35:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you better be scrappy about it.
35:48
SPEAKER_01: and there is some value to that,
35:50
SPEAKER_01: sure, short-term.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: Like all of these things that we're seeing when people,
35:55
SPEAKER_01: when they require certain things,
35:56
SPEAKER_01: it's just such a short-term focus.
35:59
SPEAKER_01: And CEOs like to talk about being so strategic and having vision and everything.
36:03
SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to bringing people into their organization,
36:06
SPEAKER_01: their vision is so myopic.
36:08
SPEAKER_01: It is
36:09
SPEAKER_01: unbelievable.
36:10
SPEAKER_01: So I absolutely agree.
36:12
SPEAKER_01: I would love to see a job posting that doesn't even say what the job is,
36:16
SPEAKER_01: right?
36:17
SPEAKER_01: It's like we are hiring a role for this company.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: Here's what we do, here's our mission,
36:21
SPEAKER_01: here's our values.
36:22
SPEAKER_01: The type of people who will succeed are people who are,
36:26
SPEAKER_01: you know, emotionally intelligent and practice critical thinking and blah blah blah.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: Don't care what you did before.
36:32
SPEAKER_01: Let's have a conversation and see what you can do at our company.
36:37
SPEAKER_01: Like that would be amazing.
36:38
SPEAKER_01: Again,
36:39
SPEAKER_01: who has the bandwidth and the resources to do all of that?
36:42
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
36:43
SPEAKER_01: But if I were starting a company from scratch,
36:46
SPEAKER_01: that would be interesting.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: it's really interesting because I have a client right now that's
36:52
SPEAKER_00: in the heavy construction industry.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: And there is a... there's a wicked,
36:59
SPEAKER_00: wicked labour shortage in that industry in North America,
37:03
SPEAKER_00: really, like Canada and Mexico.
37:05
SPEAKER_00: Like there's a wicked labour shortage.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: and construction firms are actually being held back.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: because of a shortage of labour,
37:15
SPEAKER_00: both specialized but also general.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: General labour, like low barrier to entry stuff other than you must
37:22
SPEAKER_00: be able-bodied and able to you know,
37:25
SPEAKER_00: kind of lift a certain amount of weight or whatever.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: there's a labour shortage in that part of the labour market,
37:30
SPEAKER_00: which is absolutely wild.
37:32
SPEAKER_00: So you're seeing construction companies start
37:35
SPEAKER_00: to think like this and be like,
37:37
SPEAKER_00: okay, if we bring people into our organization,
37:42
SPEAKER_00: How do we retain them?
37:43
SPEAKER_00: How do we train them?
37:44
SPEAKER_00: How do we re-train them for different things?
37:45
SPEAKER_00: Like it's very common now to see pathways where smaller construction firms that
37:49
SPEAKER_00: are specialized will be like, all right,
37:51
SPEAKER_00: we're going to establish a pathway to grow you from being a general labour
37:56
SPEAKER_00: to being a specialized equipment operator to being a specialized something else that
38:01
SPEAKER_00: is licensed and will like have those internal training pathways.
38:05
SPEAKER_00: A lot of the time it's in partnership with associations,
38:07
SPEAKER_00: which I think is good, but that's a thing.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the few industries I would say in Canada.
38:12
SPEAKER_00: that actively does this and it's because of necessity.
38:16
SPEAKER_01: Still going on this topic, because
38:17
SPEAKER_01: I was just thinking about, I mean,
38:19
SPEAKER_01: we did an episode about this specifically,
38:22
SPEAKER_01: but a role that we're hiring for at the company that I work at currently.
38:28
SPEAKER_01: And truly the person we've hired is outstanding.
38:34
SPEAKER_01: She's outstanding because she has the capacity to, and the capability
38:39
SPEAKER_01: to, learn quickly, to have good judgment,
38:45
SPEAKER_01: critical thinking, emotional intelligence and all of these things.
38:49
SPEAKER_01: But like none of them really had anything to do with her resume.
38:53
SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of the resumes for the people applying for the role were very,
38:57
SPEAKER_01: very similar.
38:58
SPEAKER_01: And so again, it goes back to that kind of like clay thing
39:02
SPEAKER_01: of well, this this was about this.
39:04
SPEAKER_01: person's disposition and really not much... because a lot of the work that she's doing
39:08
SPEAKER_01: now if you think about it has nothing much to do with her previous job, right?
39:15
SPEAKER_01: it was a different industry different whatever it was the characteristics
39:19
SPEAKER_01: of that individual that made her outstanding
39:25
SPEAKER_01: Really.
39:26
SPEAKER_01: So I'm just really kind of...
39:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of going down a path right
39:30
SPEAKER_01: now and you're sparking some thoughts for me of what could be
39:32
SPEAKER_01: a really cool experiment or article.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: yeah, I once long time ago I interviewed for a job that was
39:43
SPEAKER_00: it was like a... marketing and lead generation.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, marketing it was kind of a demand generation job really in marketing
39:50
SPEAKER_00: for a B2B company that built software products
39:58
SPEAKER_00: meant to help aerospace and heavy industry companies manage
40:05
SPEAKER_00: safety inspections and manage compliance around like maintenance logging
40:09
SPEAKER_00: and stuff like that.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: Like think all the all the stuff that goes into like
40:12
SPEAKER_00: keeping an airplane running.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: They had a software platform that was kind
40:15
SPEAKER_00: of meant for that.
40:17
SPEAKER_00: They were looking for a demand generation person to work
40:20
SPEAKER_00: on their marketing group, kind of a small organization,
40:23
SPEAKER_00: to kind of like take that on and and lead it and build it and figure it out.
40:27
SPEAKER_00: It was like,
40:28
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely perfect for me.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: But ultimately,
40:30
SPEAKER_00: they hired someone else who had a less impressive resume,
40:37
SPEAKER_00: but had experience in software.
40:40
SPEAKER_00: Whereas I didn't at the time.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: That was the only thing that was different about
40:44
SPEAKER_00: the two of us.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: And that that drives me a little nuts when companies are like,
40:48
SPEAKER_00: if you don't have experience in our industry,
40:50
SPEAKER_00: then there's absolutely no way that you could possibly do this
40:53
SPEAKER_00: job because we're special.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: It's not the case at all,
40:57
SPEAKER_00: right?
40:57
SPEAKER_00: But
40:58
SPEAKER_00: the the critical thing, the missing gap in the labour market and in how we hire,
41:03
SPEAKER_00: is that there isn't a great way to evaluate people based on their soft skills.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: There are no really good measures to say this person is like a five out
41:14
SPEAKER_00: of seven on critical thinking,
41:16
SPEAKER_00: or a one out of two on situational awareness.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: There's really no measurement system that's objective and standardized that does
41:24
SPEAKER_00: that.
41:25
SPEAKER_00: If I could wave a magic wand and reshape
41:27
SPEAKER_00: the labour market, how everything works,
41:30
SPEAKER_00: I would change that.
41:31
SPEAKER_00: It'd be like,
41:33
SPEAKER_00: have the measurement systems in place so any company can objectively measure what
41:37
SPEAKER_00: a person is good at against what they need and say,
41:40
SPEAKER_00: yeah, come on, come work for us.
41:42
SPEAKER_00: We don't care that you haven't got like the experience that we would otherwise would
41:46
SPEAKER_00: have wanted.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that there needs to be any kind of like specific platform
41:50
SPEAKER_01: or product that does that.
41:52
SPEAKER_01: I think that that's something that a really good talent
41:55
SPEAKER_01: team in a company could create on their own.
41:58
SPEAKER_01: especially using AI,
42:02
SPEAKER_01: you know, and always always of course understanding that they're
42:07
SPEAKER_01: the AI has baked-in biases and all of those types of things.
42:11
SPEAKER_01: my argument is so do we as humans and so that's your opportunity
42:15
SPEAKER_01: to to create something that, you know,
42:18
SPEAKER_01: can at least
42:20
SPEAKER_01: do better.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I think that that's something that they could
42:23
SPEAKER_01: a company could do on their own is what is it that's required to be successful here?
42:27
SPEAKER_01: Because there are all of these like behavioural and personality tests
42:31
SPEAKER_01: and all like I've applied for jobs where you have to submit,
42:34
SPEAKER_01: you know, those questionnaires and everything.
42:36
SPEAKER_01: But I also don't like them.
42:38
SPEAKER_01: I don't believe in them.
42:39
SPEAKER_01: I think that they're a million times more biased than anything that
42:44
SPEAKER_01: you could create on your own.
42:45
SPEAKER_01: I really believe that.
42:47
SPEAKER_01: and so I don't think it quite does what
42:50
SPEAKER_01: it is that you you were saying would work.
42:53
SPEAKER_01: But I think that the opportunity is there for companies to create their
42:55
SPEAKER_01: own... their own in-house one.
43:00
SPEAKER_01: So off track.
43:00
SPEAKER_01: I have another question for you.
43:02
SPEAKER_01: but I think you just I think you just answered it.
43:05
SPEAKER_01: So I will ask it anyway and see if maybe we want to go into it a little bit.
43:10
SPEAKER_01: What's a piece or part of the hiring process that you think is outdated
43:14
SPEAKER_01: or just plain wrong?
43:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this I think that this ties back to my dislike
43:23
SPEAKER_00: of technology-driven hiring processes.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: So, I fundamentally believe that hiring processes should always be human-driven,
43:32
SPEAKER_00: but they should be aided by technology.
43:35
SPEAKER_00: You should use technology appropriately
43:38
SPEAKER_00: to improve your productivity, to make your processes better,
43:42
SPEAKER_00: to make things more manageable.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, you should do that.
43:45
SPEAKER_00: But a lot of organizations allow the technology of a vendor company
43:50
SPEAKER_00: to drive their process.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: That's wrong.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: That is backwards.
43:53
SPEAKER_00: That is a certain way to fail.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: so I think that companies need to recognize that it's people that drive
44:01
SPEAKER_00: the process and they're aided by technology.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: And once you start thinking about your hiring processes,
44:07
SPEAKER_00: And about your approach and about your organizational design as a person,
44:11
SPEAKER_00: humans think, and you start to allow technology to assist only to make your thinking
44:16
SPEAKER_00: better and more productive and you know more efficient and faster,
44:19
SPEAKER_00: whatever else, then companies will start to be in a better place when
44:23
SPEAKER_00: it comes to their workforce.
44:25
SPEAKER_00: I think that like a lot of places just have
44:26
SPEAKER_00: it backwards.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: My company recently was doing an AI training,
44:30
SPEAKER_01: and somebody brought up the fact that they were really concerned about what
44:34
SPEAKER_01: AI means for recruitment.
44:35
SPEAKER_01: And like I mentioned previously,
44:37
SPEAKER_01: the biases that come with it.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: But it...
44:39
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, who do you think trained the AI to have those biases,
44:44
SPEAKER_01: right?
44:44
SPEAKER_01: Like it is about bringing that process back to a more human,
44:48
SPEAKER_01: human place.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: So I absolutely agree with you.
44:51
SPEAKER_01: Has hosting Roast the Post changed the way you think about organizations,
44:57
SPEAKER_01: leadership, or building teams?
45:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
45:01
SPEAKER_00: I think that what I've realized through hosting
45:04
SPEAKER_00: the show with you and analyzing all of these job ads and talking to folks when
45:07
SPEAKER_00: we bring guests on the show, I think that what I've realized is that
45:11
SPEAKER_00: the really ass backwards, screwed up,
45:14
SPEAKER_00: el f*cko sh*t that I've run into in my career is not the exception.
45:19
SPEAKER_00: It's the norm.
45:20
SPEAKER_00: Like there's a lot of weird, screwed up stuff out there.
45:25
SPEAKER_00: It's normal.
45:26
SPEAKER_00: And that, oddly,
45:27
SPEAKER_00: I found kind of comforting.
45:31
SPEAKER_01: Tell me more about that.
45:32
SPEAKER_00: Well it's like, you know, you...
45:34
SPEAKER_00: if you... if you keep on running into these into these things that
45:38
SPEAKER_00: are just like backwards and wrong and bad,
45:41
SPEAKER_00: stuff that you don't like, that turns your hair grey and makes
45:44
SPEAKER_00: you like pull your ears off your head or whatever.
45:48
SPEAKER_00: You at some point start to wonder if it's you.
45:52
SPEAKER_00: You're like, what am I doing that magnets all of this weird stuff
45:58
SPEAKER_00: towards me?
45:59
SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
46:01
SPEAKER_00: Knowing that it's not just you means that you're
46:04
SPEAKER_00: not... you're not really a magnet.
46:06
SPEAKER_00: You're just swimming in it.
46:07
SPEAKER_00: So you can start to think,
46:08
SPEAKER_00: alright right, well, now that I know that I'm swimming in it,
46:11
SPEAKER_00: how do I adapt to keep myself sane and to maybe swim into like a place
46:16
SPEAKER_00: in this lake of... poop...?
46:18
SPEAKER_00: That has less poop or, you know,
46:21
SPEAKER_00: more... palatable poop.
46:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
46:24
SPEAKER_00: So that's kinda how I found it comforting.
46:27
SPEAKER_01: More palatable poop.
46:31
SPEAKER_01: Never heard that sentence uttered before.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: ... talk to a farmer...
46:38
SPEAKER_01: I yeah, I totally get it.
46:41
SPEAKER_01: so what has been your favourite Roast the Post episode
46:44
SPEAKER_01: so far and what made it memorable for you?
46:48
SPEAKER_00: I think that
46:48
SPEAKER_00: my favourite episode so
46:51
SPEAKER_00: far is the one that we recorded,
46:58
SPEAKER_00: where they were looking for... small startup was looking for like a
47:02
SPEAKER_00: a VIP gaming host for their platform,
47:05
SPEAKER_00: The Whale Who Loved Me.
47:06
SPEAKER_00: It's like episode episode nineteen or episode twenty
47:09
SPEAKER_00: or something like that.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely my favourite.
47:11
SPEAKER_00: Because as we were recording that episode,
47:14
SPEAKER_00: in my mind the entire time, I was just playing like a James Bond movie.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: Cause I imagined this person like coming out of a casino in Macau
47:21
SPEAKER_00: and getting hired by this company.
47:23
SPEAKER_00: And they were very mysterious and well put together and knew all
47:26
SPEAKER_00: of like the big influential
47:28
SPEAKER_00: people with tons of money.
47:29
SPEAKER_00: I was basically writing a movie script
47:31
SPEAKER_00: in my brain when we were filming that episode.
47:34
SPEAKER_00: I loved it.
47:35
SPEAKER_01: That's so funny.
47:36
SPEAKER_01: I love the name of that episode.
47:38
SPEAKER_01: That's probably my favourite name of any episode that we have.
47:43
SPEAKER_01: It's so hilarious.
47:45
SPEAKER_01: Well, I also feel very happy that that's a job ad that I found.
47:49
SPEAKER_01: So that makes me smile.
47:51
SPEAKER_00: And so the last question
47:55
SPEAKER_01: I have for you is ten years from now,
47:59
SPEAKER_01: because we will definitely still have this podcast ten years from now,
48:04
SPEAKER_01: What do you hope people say Roast the Post changed?
48:09
SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
48:11
SPEAKER_00: if in 10 years someone walked up to me on
48:14
SPEAKER_00: the street and said, "Hey, I listened to your podcast,
48:19
SPEAKER_00: and you guys got me to realize that
48:25
SPEAKER_00: I need to work to preserve the humanity in the things that are in front of me.
48:31
SPEAKER_00: And not to build processes that restrict people's ability to be human.
48:37
SPEAKER_00: If someone said that to me, I'd be super happy.
48:40
SPEAKER_00: Like I could just be hit by a bus at that point.
48:43
SPEAKER_00: I'd be good.
48:43
SPEAKER_00: Be like, yep, I have done what I needed to do on this earth.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's great.
48:50
SPEAKER_01: Love it.
48:51
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Paul,
48:53
SPEAKER_01: for letting myself and the listeners get to know you a little bit better.
48:58
SPEAKER_01: I really enjoyed it.
48:59
SPEAKER_01: I loved this conversation.
49:01
SPEAKER_00: Me too.
49:02
SPEAKER_00: We will I guess see everybody for a fresh episode next week.