Corporate Strategy
Corporate Strategy
99. Making Meetings Better Part 2 MOAR MEETINGS
Ever wondered how a weekend recap can turn into a stimulating discussion about trends in artificial intelligence, micromanagement in the workplace, and financial planning? Join your hosts, Bruce and Clark, as they take you on a journey from casual chitchats to thought-provoking discussions. A must-listen for all tech enthusiasts, we explore the potential of building custom GPT models for your data with OpenAI's Dev Day and how it can revolutionize the way we process information.
This episode isn't just about tech, we also get personal and discuss essential workplace dynamics. From the value of weekly team meetings where we share lightning talks to the delicate balance between micromanagement and recognition, we leave no stone unturned. We dive deep into the significance of individual priorities and key metrics, and how they can shape the productivity of a team. We highlight the importance of team shoutouts and recognition, and why it's crucial for managers to set clear expectations for their employees.
As we near the end, we navigate the complexities of budget allocation and the importance of cross-functional collaboration. We shine a light on the potential pitfalls of underspending and how to be a budget hero by completing projects under budget. We also emphasize the value of meeting engagement and how anonymous feedback can drastically improve future meetings. Lastly, we explore the merits of efficiency and collaboration in the workplace, and how to make the most of the tools at your disposal. Join us for this rollercoaster episode - an eclectic mix of tech, the workspace, and personal banter.
Click/Tap HERE for everything Corporate Strategy
Elevator Music by Julian Avila
Promoted by MrSnooze
Don't forget ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ it helps!
You're so ugly Craig, you dirty nasty little recording animal Is he a beaver or a bear.
Speaker 2:He's got to be. I'm looking at him. He doesn't have teeth. He's got to be a bear. Well, I don't know, is the mic just covering his teeth? He could just have a little lopsided.
Speaker 1:I mean, craig seems like he likes to. You know, just take a log of wood and damn up some river and make someone's life miserable because of it.
Speaker 2:How much wood could a woodchuck Craig? If a woodchuck could Craig, what would man?
Speaker 1:that's tough, Great great job, clark, starting strong like that pot energy. Welcome back to corporate strategy. The podcast. That could have been an email at Bruce and Clark, and we just heard Clark's wonderful rendition of an old timey classic, the woodchuck song, this time featuring Craig, our audio recording utility and discord. Thanks, clark.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hey, I'm always here for the entertainment. The pod energy is what we're all about.
Speaker 1:We are. We really want to bring the biggest pod energy we can to every pod we put together, and that's exactly what we've done for you today. So much prep work into today's pod. Let me tell you so much, so much. Oh my gosh, you would think I don't have a second job. You think it, but you'd be wrong.
Speaker 2:You do this as a job. Oh, this is live and light. This is a lifestyle for me.
Speaker 1:I want it. Hey, craig Clark, craig, whoever, whoever the heck you are speaking, speaking of lifestyle. How dare you? How you doing, buddy?
Speaker 2:I was almost choked on my water. How dare you?
Speaker 1:Man, if you choked on your water, we have no insurance, so you just have to die. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:I will just die. This is like the old days. Oh, that was a great way to start. I'm good. I'm good. Life is good. Life is good. I've gotten to know this weekend, Um.
Speaker 1:I lost and fantasy football.
Speaker 2:I know you don't know what that is, but what's a football? Yeah, football, you know you. You kicked, kick the ball through the posts.
Speaker 1:You, you score the goals, you get the touchdowns.
Speaker 2:You know what are the elves and orcs have to do with any of that.
Speaker 1:Not enough. I'll tell you that much. All right, I would to be quite honest with you. I would watch football if it was elves orcs and you know high fantasy characters battling it out. That would be really to me. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think that's why they make other games for you. You know like you can play. You know world of Warcraft you get into. You know dungeons, dragons. You know you got options you got.
Speaker 1:I like how you literally just picked like the two largest intellectual property in those in that you know domain. It's good Not sponsored. Yeah, yeah, it's good, maybe other than maybe the attention they need to love other than just losing, getting absolutely destroyed in fantasy this weekend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was good. It was good, I can't complain.
Speaker 1:How about you ask you a slightly personal question, please? Did you lose any money?
Speaker 2:No, because it's paid out on the season. So technically, you know, it's very low buy-in. It's like a hundred dollars for one and fifty for another, but I've literally mr Money bags over here. No right. Well, we don't make any money on this podcast, so I would make bigger bats, but I had zero dollars coming in from my side hustle, so can I just say I appreciate the fact that, rather than Clark, you know, spend his money on keeping the pot alive, he's throwing it into fantasy football, well, the chances of success there are actually much more realistic.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, just kidding, just kidding. Anybody new listening is like man. These guys have like two listeners, don't they? How are you? How are you? We talked last week about you being potentially sick. Yes, and it sounds like the flu devil came down on you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was we. It's the weirdest sick I've ever been, let me tell you. So we recorded a pot on Friday. You guys are listening to it Monday, which is the day that we're recording next week's pot. So this makes no sense chronologically for you. But it's Clark. Clark and I record this podcast. Four days ago I was like, yeah, I got a little bit of a little bit of a smokers cough here, but I think it's gonna go away, and it did. And over the weekend it went from being like just kind of coffee coldy To then just the worst Sinus headache of my life, and I'm not sure if it's actually the sickness or the weather, because Clark is you know, there's weather happening around us right now. It's pretty wild, it is a super weird. So you like, yesterday I was just like dead. Dead went to, went to a Japanese festival A couple towns over and it was so full of people that it wasn't fun. Like literally there was a. We waited in line for 20 minutes to get an onigiri, a little Rice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah 15 minutes in. Little lady comes by like the line is just forever long. There's like 200 people on this line. She's like sorry, we're sold out. I'm like okay, well, we're not getting food here. So just like yeah, it's just too many people. Cool festival, but just you know, too big and I at that time I was like on, my headache hurts so bad I think I'm gonna die. So we just went home and you know it was kind of a bust of a weekend. But you know what, I'm feeling slightly better today. So I'm taking that as a win, I'm taking it in stride.
Speaker 2:You know what I always love that your glass half full.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am drinking the glass, though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's definitely, it is absolutely. I'm taking every moment you know what?
Speaker 1:screw your glass. I'm gonna fill it back up again and it's gonna be a hundred percent full by the end of this day. So Get your own damn glass. That's my, that's my phone now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm happy you're starting to feel a little better.
Speaker 1:Thanks, you're on the uptake.
Speaker 2:Both of us went through it. So you know we got a set of reminder on our calendars to get that flu shot early. Yours might have not been the flu, mine definitely was.
Speaker 1:So this is gonna sound super conspiratorial. You ready scared, I'm scared, you said. You said the magic words. I don't get the flu shot and it's not because I don't believe in vaccines, but I'm legit. There was, there was like a four-year span where every year I got the flu shot and then a week later I had like a week and a half of the worst flu of my life, like literally about to go to the hospital flu. I stopped getting the flu shot, I stopped getting the flu. So I just don't get it. Wow, I'm sure it works great for everyone, but you know how they say like know your body, kind of thing, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're the opposite, on the opposite of that, yeah. So every year I would get like deathly ill and and like I would just be done for like five days straight, like a no, no bearings, no, you'll do anything. And the flu shot helped me get through it where I was okay Half a day feeling kind of crummy, but then I didn't get the flu, which was awesome, yeah. And then this year, I had to do that some last-minute travel. I missed my flu shot and then I end up getting the flu.
Speaker 1:Man, so you work for some doesn't work for all and 99.99% of the world needs to get the flu shot, so I don't need to. That's that's kind of the takeaway here is like, save me, so I don't have to deal with that, because it is just the worst. Holy crap. Yeah, that's absolutely brutal.
Speaker 1:And it's around this time of year too, like yeah every year I get it like the week before Thanksgiving and then bam, it's like you're not going to Thanksgiving, you don't get to spend time with your family, you're dying, you want to enjoy the food that happens on this holiday. No no no, so instead I sell tasteful realism alone by myself, sad and sick, fantastic.
Speaker 2:Well, that might be better than with people. Yeah, that's true. That's true, depends on your family.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's true, we actually get to sit at the kids table and my family yeah, it's the fun table. Everyone who's like under. 40 and my family is delegated to their own table because we don't align politically with the rest of the Olds. It's a whole thing.
Speaker 2:Wait, is it by choice?
Speaker 1:or do they put you there? No, we have nameplates at the table we have to go sit at. Yours is very official. Oh yeah, you don't mess around in the Bruce Banger's household of Thanksgiving. Wow, there is generational history happening there. Oh my goodness yeah ours is totally separate.
Speaker 2:Ours is just a free for all. You just hang out eating food. If you don't get food fast enough, one of your good things is going to be gone. Oh no, the green bean casserole would just be gone. And you're just disappointed for a whole year until Thanksgiving comes around again and then you eat it again. It's not like you can't make it other times of year, but you never do, yeah.
Speaker 1:So if you miss it, you mess it. You can make casserole anytime, that's not Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, chroma yeah.
Speaker 2:If it's not Chroma, no need for the cornucopia, that's right.
Speaker 1:Stop that crap from the dumpster.
Speaker 2:I don't think I've ever really seen a cornucopia like a real one. No, neither have I. I'll be honest, I'm troubling to even picture what it looks like.
Speaker 1:I think I've seen more actual proof that Bigfoot exists than a real cornucopia has ever been placed on a table somewhere.
Speaker 2:Fair enough. Fair enough, oh man. Well, you know what that's what we're feeling. We'll see how this week goes.
Speaker 1:I think if it's Monday, we're recording this.
Speaker 2:We're already a bit delirious, so this week's going to be very entertaining, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at least next week we've got the holiday to help us out, but it's going to be a journey to get there If we talked about our stances on the holidays.
Speaker 2:do you take the whole week off? Do you take an extra day? What do you typically do?
Speaker 1:This is the first time Clark cheddar movements that I'm taking the full week off.
Speaker 2:Good for you, yeah, boy.
Speaker 1:This Friday. This Friday is like the Friday before of AK. I am so thrilled. That's awesome. Yeah, that's the way to do it.
Speaker 2:I'll be honest, if you have limited time off, just doing with the holidays just fits in so well, you can just lounge out on the couch, hang out with your family, your friends. Take the time off. Work. So worth it. I'm taking one extra day so I've got Wednesday to Friday off and I'm only working Monday and Tuesday. The good thing, though, about going to the office like pros and cons is usually no one's really around. It's pretty quiet, so if you have a lot of work to do, you can get a lot done because no one's bugging you. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to be doing an ounce of work, Clark, just so you know. I refuse respectfully, but I am going to be playing a lot of Spider-Man 2. I've actually set it aside. I've said, hey, Thanksgiving week, that's the week of Spider-Man, so I'm going to do it.
Speaker 2:I can't wait. Do you look at it every day? Set the box up so you can look them in the eyes and say I'm coming. I would, but I'm all digital now, so it's like, yeah, people don't buy video games anymore at a store.
Speaker 1:They just download them into their brain. The answer to that what a future.
Speaker 2:Wow yeah.
Speaker 1:Speaking of the internet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got news, yeah, and I'm doing the transition.
Speaker 1:I'm getting better at transitions. I was waiting. I was going to go as long as you'd let me until you transitioned, so I'm proud of you.
Speaker 2:I'll be honest, I thought you were going to transition and then it just kept going and it was useful. So I was like hey, you know what, let's just let it ride. But I do have news. Hey, do you? Remember what color you are Blue. Heck, yeah, go for it. I got this.
Speaker 2:Man colors are hard and you align them with our pseudonym names. Wow, okay, I'm going to go out the internet Open AI. Have you heard the buzz? Chat GPT folks. Chat GPT folks. They did a dev day. Okay, it was super interesting. Basically, what they did is make it so that everybody everywhere in the world could create your own GPT with your own knowledge. Super interesting Wait hold on. Super cool.
Speaker 1:My own knowledge.
Speaker 2:You can either utilize their knowledge or upload your own.
Speaker 1:So I could like feed it the user guide for the product I sell. Yeah, and it would build a GPT on that.
Speaker 2:You got it Custom modeling, so you literally just upload all your data like your intranet at work. Yeah, if you have a confluence or a wiki of some kind a product you know white papers, whatever it is you could upload all that and the models would essentially create the large language model you need, gpt specific to your company that is hosted and maintained by yourself.
Speaker 1:That's very cool.
Speaker 2:It is really cool.
Speaker 1:I knew that there was word of another vendor that was going to do that, or you could basically sick the LLM on your confluence or whatever you know support repository you had and it would go off and become just your best sales support rep on the face of the earth. But it's super exciting to know that OpenAI is doing it because out of all the firms I like them the most. They seem the most grounded and the most focused on not destroying the status quo and helping us be better, so that's super exciting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it was super cool the stuff they put together. They had a bunch of other updates. They were pricing, because obviously people were seeing enormous bills because the utilization of some of the large language models that were in place and the computation required to power them. So they basically did a bunch of other small updates. They fixed some developer stuff, which was pretty cool.
Speaker 2:But I think this was probably the biggest announcement was just that they are unleashing basically the open source software to create your own GPT and it's going to be interesting For us. We could create a corporate strategy GPT, yeah, and what's interesting is you actually can put it somewhere and anyone can utilize it. So anybody can just jump in and start using the corporate strategy GPT. So they had a couple of just screenshots of things like marathon runners or crypto miners or whatever creating their own GPTs with instructions, with knowledge and with props or something like that. So basically kind of making GPT open source where you can kind of create these communities for the GPT. So it's just really interesting. I never thought of it that way, but that's how I was looking at it.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting, because that was always my. I even talked to this about with my CEO, like last year. Really, back when GPT started to come to the scene, I was like how do we get our product documentation and all of our support database into something like this? So the chat bot on the website is just talking to GPT and I'm not trying to say like, oh, we need to replace humans with this kind of job. But the challenge is the knowledge base for tech is just so wide and I'm thinking you make the corporate strategy example.
Speaker 1:If we uploaded every transcript, every podcast we ever had, someone could say, hey, bruce, what was the one episode where you guys talked about unions? And I mean, that's obviously an easy one because we just recorded that and had a special guest. But if someone asked a question about like an episode where we talked about like oh, the top tips for your resume or something like that, I would not have an answer. And if we were able to search our transcripts and say, hey, which episode was the one where we gave the top tips on building resumes? And it could surface that for us that's a super cool thing that no human being is going to want to do, and what a great utilization of AI.
Speaker 2:You're literally reading my mind. I was like we might have to do a little corporate strategy hackathon where we kind of mess around with this and see if we can create our own type of chatbot GPT. That way you guys can try it on the site. It's a super interesting utilization of this technology and making it where you can make it unique and custom in its own little safe space is just awesome. I think it really is going to revolutionize a lot of things, and I even thought of it from like a community perspective.
Speaker 2:If you guys are Ironman runners or whatever it might be, it's like if you can be the main leader of this GPT for a community it kind of just becomes like its own, you know community marketplace, where everyone's just interacting with GPT for whatever they're interested in and it's giving you maybe not the community part right, when it's like person to person talking about things like a forum, but it kind of gives you the answers you're looking for based on the historical knowledge that it has, and it can point you, like you were saying, to the references that it's getting the information from. So anyways, I think it's super cool what they're doing and I agree with what you said it's like this. Company is probably the most honest company to do this, rather than another company Boy. Everybody enforced them into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's exciting and we should do that little hackathon. And you know what, if we feed it enough information, maybe we can tie it to a voice AI model and then make it a third host for corporate strategy. I think we need a martial manhunter on our show and they're just an. Ai and we just talked to them. You know it made Craig come alive. I'm just saying Give Craig sentience after all the things we said about him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe not a good idea. We'd have to stop saying stuff immediately.
Speaker 1:But why do we do this when he's made our life so much easier?
Speaker 2:You know, sometimes there's just that guy or gal in the office that's just like this person, just gets underneath your skin. That's Craig does.
Speaker 1:Did you learn for no reason. It's like tangent. Did you see Guardians of the Galaxy 3? Now, oh, there's a scene where they literally have that guy and I think it's the best representation of ever seen of just that guy that no one likes, everyone likes to dump on Perfect, perfect construction of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's like no good reason either. It's for no reason, just nobody likes him. And every single time you see him like from a third-party perspective, you're like that guy's actually kind of nice, he's not trying to do any harm. But everyone's like, just like, screw that guy, I don't want to be around him.
Speaker 1:That's what the other part of that movie is like. Man, this scene just gets it. It gets the understanding of that guy.
Speaker 2:That's incredible I feel bad for those guys and gals out there.
Speaker 1:Sorry if you want to. Yeah, we know what we'll do an episode on how to pull yourself out of the mire of being that way, and I think we can do better, right, like we could do better as people to help those guys. Be better, too, agreed.
Speaker 2:No, I agree.
Speaker 1:That'd be a great future topic. Good thing that's a topic for a different day because, clark, we have a topic. In fact I could feel it it's a part two.
Speaker 2:It's a part two yeah it's part two.
Speaker 1:It's part two because we couldn't get through 20 line items on how to make team meeting topics more better for your team meetings. Just a quick hit in case you didn't listen to the last few episodes. This is the first episode you're listening to. Squid Boy, frequent topic submitter, one of our fair people in the Discord, send us this link 20 team meeting topics for better collaboration and engagement from fellow app. We're not sponsored by them, we're just stealing their content, and the first 10 were 50-50, as far as how we felt about them, but the second 10, I think there might be some winners in here, so I agree, let's dig back. Clark, did we finish on 10? We finished on 10.
Speaker 2:We finished on 10. Yes, right, so now we're on 11. I think we did a quick scan. I agree what you're saying. I think it could get good.
Speaker 1:We'll see, I think so too. They saved all the good stuff for the back half, which you never do.
Speaker 2:You always got to have a hook. You know, it's just like any type of fishing representation, any type of just hook line and sinker. You got to hook them at the start.
Speaker 1:If anything, this next one in their list, lightning Talks, should be the first one, because I actually think this is good. So the meeting topics number 11, lightning Talks. And they describe a Lightning Talk as a short presentation lasting a few minutes, joined by one or two slides, where the talks are great for team meetings and they give more than one person the floor. Speaking can cover more than one topic at a high level, but it's they give the examples of like give a Lightning Talk on the future of your industry, weather phenomena in the region of your world, a product pitch during a design sprint.
Speaker 1:I love this because this is something you can run right in the front of your meeting. It gives someone on your team the opportunity to step up, showcase their skills and share a little something. And I think it's even better if it's not related to, or directly related to, your team, your project or what you're working on, just like a fun thing that says, hey, we've got a cool culture here and I want to learn more about what Jackson is doing in his little corner of the earth and what's going on with the canyons that are eroding in his country, like you know. Tell me about that, I like it?
Speaker 2:No, you literally hit on all the points that I was thinking as well. So, like this, one's really interesting and it's not because it's a Lightning Talk, maybe five.
Speaker 2:It takes the pressure off a little bit of having to prepare for like days for this thing, this hour long meeting and long presentation and you feel like you just need to fill time, pick something you're passionate on and come and talk about it. You know, at the front of this meeting and I think it is a really interesting way we talk about that a lot when it's flow, keeping people engaged, you know, rather than just you know run of the mill meeting Something interesting. It made it, you know much more focused.
Speaker 1:Clark, I think your mic might be cutting out just a little bit. Oh no, Can you move it closer to your face?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm about as close as I can get. Oh, that's not good. I'm practically eating it at this point.
Speaker 1:Well, it seems to have corrected itself, so maybe it was network related, but we lost a little bit of what you said on the Lightning Talk. Just a little bit of waste, I think you covered all of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's a really interesting one, so I like it. Sweet deal.
Speaker 1:All right, give us number 12.
Speaker 2:Weekly key metrics. A little bit of a repeat, you know. I think we had like an industry which one was it? Progress on current? I guess it's not technically a repeat, but it's kind of but down to the weekly key metrics. So if you're having one of the meetings with your manager, it's always good to have a week. Doing so provides clear feedback and expectations on what should be done. We're also going over what to and to we're losing you again, Clark. What is?
Speaker 1:going on. We're losing you. It's just cutting out. It's cutting out like the last thing of what you say, so strange.
Speaker 2:I literally can't get any closer.
Speaker 1:Well, can you speak with more authority? Maybe that's what it is is you're not being authority. Can you speak with more?
Speaker 2:Listen up.
Speaker 1:Craig, it's weird because when you get louder it doesn't. It doesn't clip, so it's time for dinner. Okay, yeah, so clearly you being loud is the secret here.
Speaker 2:I just have to scream that's fine, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Just scream this one, it's all good.
Speaker 2:Weekly key metrics. Feels kind of micromete-.
Speaker 1:Okay, screaming didn't work. Well hold on Idea, idea. Why don't you? Hmm, hmm, I'm going to stop recording. We're going to cut this into two.
Speaker 2:Okay, round two, round two. Let's try this Connectivity. See what happens. Fingers crossed, it holds strong, it sounds better. I'm just going to repeat yeah, okay, good. Yeah, stupid updates on software. Why can't we just keep it how it is? What do we have to change? Because if we change, it's like the most anti-technology thing ever.
Speaker 1:Then we'll only stay the same. Fair enough, what Anyway?
Speaker 2:Fair enough. Part 12. Weekly key metrics. Weekly key metrics. Okay, so if you're having a one-on-one meeting with your manager or direct report, it's always a good idea to go over key metrics for the week. Doing so provides clear feedback and expectations of what should be done by the end of the week, while also going over what to anticipate in the weeks to come. This one to me and I said it, maybe we'll cut it out of the before when I was blipping yeah, I feel like this is micromanaging. Yeah, like autonomy for me is high. I love to have a lot of autonomy in my role and if I had to, I don't even know what I would do for weekly key metrics. It's so rare when something is measurable within just a week.
Speaker 1:What do you think? So on my team we do have MBOs Marketing, Business Objectives, Okay, and once a week we do have a meeting where we will go through everyone's MBOs to make sure everyone is making progress and not blocked and I will stay. What will those be?
Speaker 2:Is that daily, monthly, like quarterly? What is that Quarterly MBOs?
Speaker 1:It's quarterly goals though, okay, but every week we'll meet and talk about them. And I'm not the biggest fan of MBOs, period Right Like. I just don't like tracking things that way, and that's me. But I will say, having a weekly meeting where we see everyone and everyone talks about it, it kind of does remove the excuse of, well, I forgot or I wasn't tracking, or you know, oh, such and such couldn't do this thing, because if you're talking about it once a week, every week, for the entire quarter, it removes all excuse when you don't hit it. So I do think weekly key metric meetings can be of value when you are being tracked like a child.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's fair. I think if you are, if your role or expectations are set to your point, where it is that quantifiable or that level of accountability, then, yeah, maybe you don't have a choice.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I do find it valuable.
Speaker 1:I like to hit all my metrics and those meetings help me If I don't think to go look at them myself. It's like, oh yeah, this is a good reminder, like here's what I need to do there and it removes all of the excuses for why I didn't get something done. Yeah, hey, fair enough you know what?
Speaker 2:It's a symptom of a bigger problem.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I get why you don't like it. I don't like it either.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean for me. I force my team, from a product management perspective, to have KPIs for things we build right, because if we're in building and we're not measuring, then how do we know we're building the right things? And you really don't know those in software anyways. If you're building the right things until you truly get it in your user's hands, you know you can have really strong hypotheses, you can do a ton of testing, you can feel really confident about it. But if it's not hitting your business objectives, that's when you have to have those pivotal discussions of pivot or persevere. And I think in this case I couldn't do that on a weekly basis and I'd rely on other project management tools to visualize the work and understand where the work is, rather than having a weekly meeting to talk about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the ideal way to do it, and I think if you have the kind of organization where that is the approach, you don't need this at all. And I think that's true for the next one as well. Number 13. Individual priorities. So they say for this one, for this meeting topic, it's one topic you could choose to do as a go around the meeting room and discuss everyone's individual priorities. This is a great way to find out what's on the to-do list, and then they give the examples of what are your highest priorities this week? What are your highest priorities this month? What are you focusing on this quarter, at least with the previous one?
Speaker 1:When you're tying it to a metric, it's a hard thing, right, like it's set in stone. I have to do this or else I'm not going to get part of the bonus that I was promised when I started working here. This one is more to your point, really micromanagy. Like there is sharing your work, so the rest of the group knows what you're doing, which is important. And then there is hey, what are you doing? How are you doing it? When's it going to be done? Like it very quickly spirals into like the uncomfortable questions of why are you asking me this? Do you not trust me?
Speaker 2:You're saying. Exactly what I was thinking is like I hate to say it, but I'm going to say it. I would only do this if I put someone on a performance improvement plan. Yeah, and I needed to monitor them really closely. I'd have to have them write this out for HR reasons what their priorities are for this week and what they're going to commit to and making sure they're actually doing it, because it's my job as a manager to make sure they're performing and if they're not, I have to put in this level of micromanagement to make sure that they are getting their work done.
Speaker 2:And it's a really crappy use of time, frankly, from the manager perspective, and it just frankly means someone's not doing their job or they don't have the right expectation set for them, which is an unfortunate situation. I could see this being helpful in a way that, let's say, bruce, you joined my organization and you, ultimately, you want to make sure that you're doing the right things and your role is a little gray If you don't have clarity from me. Let's say, if I'm your manager, like what you should be focusing on yeah, even in this world, I'm your manager, but if you don't have clarity from me as your manager, I'm like what you should be doing. I think this puts you in a good spot to say I just want to make sure I'm focusing on the most important things to ensure that I'm meeting your expectations, especially if it's not clear to you, and so I think this could be a good thing to bring up if you feel like you're not doing the right things or if you aren't getting the right recognition for your role.
Speaker 1:It can also be good with the contract too, If you have contract workers and you have a tight deadline. It's one of those things where hey, the ambiguity goes both ways. They need to talk to you about. Hey, what's the priority here? Then I can see it working better. But, yeah, yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2:Agreed, all right. Well, I'd shout at you if you're on a pip. So I guess team shoutouts is the only natural next place to go when someone on your team.
Speaker 1:You're supposed to shout out people on a pip.
Speaker 2:You're not supposed to shout at them.
Speaker 1:Don't tell HR, at least just to make them feel as miserable as humanly possible, so they could put on their own.
Speaker 2:Exactly. That's usually what happens. They end up leaving on their own anyway. So that's, the cycle continues. 14, team shoutouts when someone on your team went above and beyond, help a coworker hit a deadline or assist a customer, give them a shoutout. Agreed, I talked to this on an earlier point. I think around like team meetings, but starting with team shoutouts is so important just to make sure people that are doing a good job have an outlet for people to recognize them. Because I think a lot of it and it's unfortunate, but when you're at big organizations, a lot of people who do really good work never get the recognition or a shoutout in kind of a public forum. So if you can have a big forum where it's just like hey, type in the chat of someone you want to call out this week and give them a high five, and then everyone kind of gets a chance to see them, see the appreciation for the work they've gotten done. There's so many good reasons to do this because it brings visibility and makes people feel valued.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, couldn't agree more. Out of all the tips given so far, this is the one I believe the most in, and it's recognizing good work. I mean sometimes it's just recognizing work, right, right. And work is not easy. Work is not something we want to do. We do it because we need to, because we need to make money. And they list the example Shout out to Xander for helping me with my presentation. Gosh, darn it. That might be Xander's job, but you know what, if he did a good job, let's call it out. Let's make Xander feel, of course, seen and good about doing that. And I'm a big, big believer in shouting out anything that is worth giving the shoutout to, agreed.
Speaker 2:It brings on a good culture and we talk about in our CAAC, which is a Culture Autonomy Challenge, and Compensation. We talk a lot about, yeah, that culture, and you can do that even when you just start. If I'm like man Bruce was awesome in onboarding this week, I just want to say thank you for him taking the time to get me familiarized with the tools that we use or whatever it is Like. If you have a forum to shout that out, you, as a new person, can even influence the culture, and so I think this one is an awesome tip. I like it.
Speaker 1:You know somewhere out there is a person who might be a little bit older than us shaking their cane at the sky, basically saying Darn, those millennials with their participation trophies. And you know what Screw you? Everyone gets trophy, that's what I said.
Speaker 2:Ok, thank you. Thank you yeah we all got to. We all just are here to work. There's no ego in front of like just do your job, do it well, make your lives a little less miserable so we could take home that paycheck and live.
Speaker 1:Sometimes they can deserve a trophy for just waking up in the morning.
Speaker 2:You, know, yeah, it's, it's a hard. It's a hard life out there. You know, sometimes some days are harder than others.
Speaker 1:They are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially when you're running this podcast that is just growing phenomenally. You know a lot of weight on our shoulders.
Speaker 1:The scope, blow right past it, geez. Speaking of blowing past things, let's talk about point 15. So if you're having a meeting topic about past or incomplete action items, the participation trophy. So they even say in a perfect world, all action items are completed on time or before the deadline. Unfortunately, a perfect world is in reality. No matter what action item has gone past its deadline or has been left incomplete, talk about it with your team, find out if you can pinpoint what went wrong and what can be done differently next time, and see this one. This is one of the ones like I like the intent, but there's a better way to do this, and we've done it on the podcast before. It's called a retrospective. This does not need to be a meeting topic or part of your weekly team meeting. Instead, set aside the time to do a proper retrospective what went good, what should we keep doing, what do we need to stop doing? And that's the perfect venue for this kind of discussion, right?
Speaker 2:And I think the thing I love about Agile you know if you work in Agile software development or you really just agile anything.
Speaker 2:If you do marketing and Agile, you know you have those really quick cycles you know, two to three weeks, you're able to have retrospectives at the end of it and you're able to openly talk as a team about what's going well, it's not going well. And it kind of feel like it's a fine line between calling someone out and making sure that you're advocating for the team. So if you see someone struggling, it's okay to bring up. To be like hey, bruce, I noticed on the last two sprints you've had this item carry over, you know you've. You can't get this one item done. How can we help you, you know, accomplish this piece of work or what are you stuck on? And it's not calling them out.
Speaker 2:So I don't feel like that. It's like Okay, as a broader team, to be successful, we all have to be able to get our work done. If you're stuck on this, let's figure out how we can help. I think, unfortunately, what typically happens is, you know, organizations create silos where in even inside of a team, you're like Well, I can't do that because it's not my responsibility and Agile is supposed to break down those walls. To be like I don't care if you're a developer, a tester, a product person. Like if you can help and that work is on your team's commitments, like you have to help each other get it done somehow. So you should talk about these items and figure out how to do them better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think this is something that's also symptomatic of not having good standups, where you talk about, hey, what's blocking you? How do you feel about? You know the current sprint, are we on track? What needs help? You can help avert this or at least know why, before the deadline has passed. And I think that's more important too. It's funny you brought up the fantasy football thing because, like just people in general whether it's work, sports, the stock market, what AI is going to do in the next 10 years we love to like predict and, you know, kind of set our future vision in stone. But, like, predicting the deadline of a piece of work is just as accurate as you predicting you know what football man is going to do next week with his kicker foot. You know, like it's just, it's, it's not possible, it's all guesswork.
Speaker 2:Exactly yeah, and it's all you know.
Speaker 2:Agile is all about relative sizing and the point like it's not about how much time, it is about the complexity of the work, and I think when you look at it like that is really hard.
Speaker 2:I'll be honest, I've been a lot of organizations that just struggle with it. It'd be like, well, it's three points. You know an hour is a two, hours is a day, and it's like that's not the point of this. The point is to say at three, is this complexity? And as we look at our velocity over time, we can know what we can commit to in two weeks. And it kind of allows you to, you know, plan iteratively, like that, in a way that you're doing it by complexity, no matter how many people need to work on it or whatever it is. So I think that's the beauty of it and the short cycles helps everyone get better. So to your point if someone's struggling or if you know things keep on rolling over, you have an opportunity to fix it really quickly because you can measure that work in progress and ask each other like, hey, how can I help? You know, how do we move this thing across the finish line Catch it at a time.
Speaker 2:Yep, quick and easy. I think the next one is actually really interesting budgets. So let's talk about money, or at least the budget, whether it's monthly, quarterly, annually a popular topic conversation and the conference room is a budget and if there are talks of going over, you also want to know if the company is on track to be within budget or if something needs to be adjusted in the future. So you know, going over monthly, quarterly, annual budgets, current numbers, any of these references between the budget and the actual I don't know about you, bruce. Yeah, so if you go to tries to shield you from the budget, mm, hmm.
Speaker 1:Do you feel that I have had budget before? Like I have been given budget? Yeah, and when I asked what it was, they wouldn't give me a number. I'm not even joking, what do you mean? Like they're like, oh, you have budget this quarter, so go figure out what marketing actions you want to go do. And I'm like, well, how much is it? Like, well, we can't tell you. Well, how am I going to go talk to a vendor on, you know, scoping an ad or building a PowerPoint, or you know doing a demo, if I don't know how much? And like, well, we, just you can't know that. Oh, this one is so annoying, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:You're saying the same things. I feel it's like why, like every company I've been to, shields the budget? They love shielding and in reality, we should all be ambassadors of the budget, know what we have, know what we don't have and how we're tracking to it, because otherwise you know to your point. You waste all this time going after something, putting together a plan, just to realize, oh, I've got a tenth of the funds I thought.
Speaker 1:I had Now.
Speaker 2:I've got to go write this all back and figure out how I can do it with a tenth of the money that's available.
Speaker 1:So in. I don't know if this is true in your world, clark, but in in marketing, there is no greater sin you can commit than underspending your budget. If you overspend the budget, that's great, that's fine, as long as it's not like two X over. You know. As long as you're under 50% over the budget, you're totally fine. Whatever you went over, it's all good. But if you didn't spend it, it was like the world was collapsing, like how dare you not spend all of the budget we gave you that you didn't know the number of? How dare you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's the way, because the the companies typically allocate funds and this is the most corporate thing of corporate things.
Speaker 2:It's like from the very top, the dollar amount given to each division. Your finance department is watching and if your department does not spend the money that was given to you, they look at it from a pure dollars and cents and they say next time we're not going to give you that money because you only spent 70% of it and we're just going to give you 70%. So what you always want to do is spend the money you know in any way possible or overspend to your point and ask for more. Otherwise, your division is going to get less. But at the end of this, this is why it's so broken, because at the end of the day, you should look to save the company money so that you can make and maximize the most. So you should be a hero if you do that, to be like, hey, I'm going to complete my stuff at a 30% less cost than we thought it was going to be, but we're going to get the same results or more.
Speaker 1:I. Budgets are truly a mystery to me. I understand how it works, I understand what it is, but if you were to say, hey, bruce, why? I would not be able to give you an answer, because it's never made a lick of sense from well, we only give this team $100,000. We give this team $200,000. And it's like well, you have to figure out what project you want to go do, but the project you want to do is $200,000. You can't do that, so you go figure out how you do it for $100,000, even though that team doesn't need $200,000. It is such a mystery as far as how they get allocated, why who determines it? In my mind, it should always be I ask for budget. Right, I have this really cool idea. Vendor says they can do it for $50,000. Can I have $50,000 to go to this project? Do you like it? Yes or no? Thanks, hmm, it's not like it should be in my mind, but yeah, the hardest thing is you get shut down financial.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, it's true it's good, as financial planning, especially for public companies, usually happens on the yearly basis, mm-hmm, and there's adjustments quarterly. But to have the flexibility, like, you have to basically project what your spend is going to be Without really knowing what your spend is going to be. This is like a typical case of, like the rest of the organization might be agile, but the finance department still works very like waterfall. Yeah, so you've got to have to mold how you're going to ask for money, to make sure you know without even knowing, like maybe having a 50% confidence, that's what we need. Just toss it out there and try to get more, because otherwise you're going to get less.
Speaker 1:It like my heart rate is going up just thinking about this. We have to, I know it gives me.
Speaker 2:It gives me blood pressure. We gotta move to the next one. I can't.
Speaker 1:It's number 17 pressure meeting. Topic number 17 cross-functional needs and progress projects. When working on a cross-functionally as a team or with another department within an organization Be sure that everyone is caught up on the needs of everyone involved. You can specify the projects being worked on, their statuses and anything that may derail the initiative. Love this. This is something I wholeheartedly advocate for, and it's a great opportunity to bring in representatives cross-functionally as well. First five minutes of the meeting, we have Shannon from finance and she's going to walk us through all the things that are going on In her world and what she needs from us like this is something that benefits them and you worth doing any chance you can get.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I 100% agree with you. You know we just talked about agile in terms of, like, software development and all that, but the whole point is to create teams who are Able to complete all their work, you know, within the team itself. Yep, and a quick way to realize you don't have a cross-functional team is when you hit that point in the work where you're like, all right, now we've got to go reach out to kevin and his team to get this piece of work done. That means your team is not set up for success to own the work from end to end of what you do and by building cross-functional knee or like a cross-functional team to fulfill those needs, your team is going to be more successful. So a really good opportunity, like we're talking about.
Speaker 2:You know, if the end of the two weeks or three weeks period comes to an end, you have your retrospective. It's like, hey, this piece of work, all we always hit the spot where we have to reach out to kevin and his team because they got to do this. You know cicd thing for us. Why don't we just add kevin to our team so that we can actually get this work done a little faster? Like, that's a great suggestion you should be looking for. You know if we need other departments for a project or other teams for a project. How do we set our team up for success? By having them ingrained in it.
Speaker 1:If companies operated more like and I'm not gonna, it's not the movies, but like comic books, like superhero comics, right. Like there are times when spider-man can't do the job all by himself, so dear devil would show up and help lend a hand clean up the crime in new york city. Like comics have always done a really good job of being cross-functional With the characters in their roster. You have your big teams, like the avengers, and then your little little street guys who might go alone but then have the fantastic forward jump in and help. I always thought that was so cool because it was believable, right, like they're not always going to do it alone and someone's got to come in and help.
Speaker 1:And I think if we acted kind of like that in the workplace or we treat people like hey, yeah, you know Shannon from finance, she's the hero we need for this, this project like let's, let's treat her as part of the team for the next sprint. She's not part of the HR structure, but we're gonna treat her like she is one of us, gonna communicate with her, bring her into the meetings, you'd be surprised how much better things can get done because now you're Over communicating, you're sharing all the things that need to be shared, as opposed to Lobbying it over the fence with an email and not enough information. It's just gonna create more change in churn.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. You know, the Unfortunate part about why it doesn't work like that Is because everyone usually has different priorities. Yeah, like. It's like, if you call the fantastic forward, be like hey, I need you to help with this. And you're like yeah, well, we're over dealing with this huge crisis over here, so you're kind of on your own on that one.
Speaker 1:I think that's a difference by truck and he's dead and then he, then he dies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's true, it's like they're not just sitting on their butts doing nothing, like they they're everyone's got their own priorities, the things that working on and frankly it does come down to priorities of, like, what's the most important thing for Shannon or Kevin to be working on? And if it truly is your project and not anything else and they're Critical, you know gatekeep in front of it, then I think you have to put them on your team. But I also think you should look at opportunities. To say One challenge it Do we really need that step in the process, like, what value is it providing?
Speaker 2:And find an opportunity to you know, remove it or how do you make it more efficient? You know, can we use a tool for this instead? That could at least give us the feedback that Shannon always gives us, because we Always forget to use semi colons in our pull requests, like something like that right? So you should challenge you know that need first, and then you should look at it as like okay, this is critical, it is valuable, so we do always need this. Let's bring this person in for for this project or for the next couple sprints, and let's see how that goes.
Speaker 1:You know that.
Speaker 2:I think it's up to them, to talk to their management, to set proper expectations.
Speaker 1:There, there is another way. You can do this too, oh.
Speaker 2:Okay, fair enough. Backlog breakdown. Yes, the backlog I live in dying Uh-huh. You see where I'm going, yeah, yeah, I see.
Speaker 2:The challenge still is most teams have different backlogs. You know you're not operating off one, which is another big issue, but your team should always know it's waiting for them around the corner. Take the time, discuss as a meeting topic with the backlog of projects or assignments. Look like during the conversation, pin points, priority level of each item, perfect prioritization. Make sure your team knows what priority they should go through the work. Um.
Speaker 2:And then obviously, yeah, when you're meeting with other departments, it can help bring transparency about what to expect from your department next. Or it also gives them an opportunity to say, well, actually this thing is more important and it should be above this, so you can kind of get feedback on prioritization. I agree, I think this is a great way to bring transparency in your work and, like I said, the challenge is always Not everybody tracks their work in the same place. I think if you had a company culture where all work is done in one task management system, like JIRA, and you guys are able to have a prioritized backlog that all the teams work off of, it is so much easier to work as a unit because everyone knows what the priorities are and it's like Kevin, yes, you're on other things, but that's like priority 36 and we're on priority five.
Speaker 2:So we need you to come in and help work on this so we can get it done. It's the most important thing for the company. So this has a prioritized backlog helps, yeah.
Speaker 1:This is exactly what I was thinking with the previous one is yeah, you can't bank on Shannon just showing up at the job of a hat, or Kevin or whoever. But if you are able to prioritize your work and you know what's coming down the pipe, you can make them aware months in advance and say, hey, we might need you to sit in on. You know our team meeting, uh, twice a week. For you know two weeks in this sprint coming up and then it becomes something that they can prep for, plan for, maybe talk with their own managers, say, hey, they need my help and I can really do something here. Now you're collaborating, now you're communicating. This is how you make a meeting into something way more than that it's. It's saving the company time, money and being way more productive.
Speaker 2:Agreed it helps you visualize the work and it helps you prioritize the work against each other, and that is, honestly, the best way to run the organization, rather than everybody have different priorities and doing different things.
Speaker 1:Yep, awareness, transparency planning. None of these are part of cac and for those that don't know, cac is uh, our, our construct and how we grade work environments, which consists of culture, autonomy, challenge and compensation. But I think all of these things feed into the various pipes of cac the awareness, the transparency planning. You take these three and suddenly Everything just becomes a little more autonomous, it becomes a little easier, the challenge goes down because we're looking three steps ahead, like we are. We are planned, we are prioritized and we know what everyone's up to and everyone's doing. And I think implementing some of these meeting tips Like I'm going to take some of these and implement them in mind this can really help. So, yes, my quick thought there. I agree. Two more, two more number 19 Questions for the team members just before the meeting ends. Leave time for q&a with the team, whether it's questions for peers or ones or ones directed to a manager there's a weird way to phrase that allow it for a space where all questions are welcome or encouraged as important and can lead to Transparency.
Speaker 1:Hey, there's that word again.
Speaker 2:Don't have all the answers.
Speaker 1:Don't panic, just tell me your team member who asked the question. You'd be following up the answer soon. Love this. This is actually good beyond just team meetings Like this is good for sales. This is like Sales engineering 101. Save at least half of your call for Q&A, if possible, and run the clock on Q&A. Let them ask every question they can make them feel heard and you'd be surprised you will get more done and sold doing a Q&A than pitching your product, and the same for team meetings.
Speaker 2:I agree. You know one quick way to know if your meeting sucked.
Speaker 1:No one asked a question.
Speaker 2:Exactly Like this one is so key. If no one asked a single question, everyone just crickets you probably didn't knock it out of the park. It's like the contradictory thing of like okay, if no one's quiet, then I guess I did an awesome job. It's usually the opposite of that. It's usually either A everyone wasn't paying attention, or, b people don't even know how to give you feedback and don't think it's important. Like most of the time, you're going to get a diverse perspective on meetings and if it's not a waste of time, you're going to get questions and you're going to get people to engage.
Speaker 1:Yep, I get personally offended when people don't ask questions Like did I do such a bad job that you don't feel like you can engage with me? Am I so unhuman? The answer is probably yeah, but you know, it still hurts. Hurts my feefies. I mean, you're better than.
Speaker 2:Craig. So that helps. But no, I agree with what you're saying. I think if you have a meeting and you don't get any engagement, at the end you get no questions. You should really look back and be like ooh, like is that worth it? Like was that a worthy meeting? Like I do that. If I have a meeting like that and it's just crickets or it feels forced, I'm like, okay, maybe we shouldn't have that meeting again. And I think it's worth reaching out to someone you know you can trust, who give you honest feedback, to be like hey, what do you think about that meeting? I thought it would be helpful, but it doesn't. Doesn't feel like anyone was engaging. You know, is there another way or any feedback you can give in order to improve this going forward?
Speaker 1:Hey, Clark, hey quit spooling the next topic.
Speaker 2:Oh, sorry, I actually wasn't reading it, just was natural Meeting feedback or score yes, 100% agree I actually. I would love this, me too, if it was anonymous. I mean, I wish it was anonymous, I wouldn't care either way.
Speaker 1:But yes, I see why you need to make it anonymous.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't care either because, like I mean, both of us are okay with confrontation and it's fine, like we're okay with constructive criticism. But I think a lot of people don't feel that way. So I think you know, if you were to ask for a score on your meeting, a anonymous way to send feedback, to be like, yeah, that was it too, that would be awesome, because then everyone gets a chance without feeling like they're going to hurt anyone else's feelings, without anyone knowing anything. To be like yeah, that meeting freaking sucked to bruise. Don't you ever put me through that, those 30 minutes again.
Speaker 2:And I think that should go all the way up the company. Like every meeting you do. If you could score it anonymously, that would be super interesting. To be like all right, obviously that meeting wasn't worth it. And you kind of create this community where it's like we're actually going this is a super interesting idea Corporate strategybiz, future consulting opportunity. Every single meeting. Score it and then decide what meetings work with meetings don't, and just cut all the fat off the program. Oh, I love it. Like you imagine, every single meeting. It's like, if you're four or lower, cancel the future meetings.
Speaker 1:Never do that again.
Speaker 2:It's gone. If it's a eight or higher, keep it, and if it's in the middle, we're going to have some discussions on whether it's useful or not.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love that idea. That'd be so much. Oh, man Put that in charge at least $50,000 for a company, to hear that come out of our mouths At least.
Speaker 2:I could look at today and tell you I had like four, threes. I probably had one eight.
Speaker 1:One, eight, that's it.
Speaker 2:That's it. Well, we did our cat like hour by hour rating in way previous episodes, and I think that still holds true, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:Man.
Speaker 1:Clark, it's a lot of wasted time. Yeah, I love this. I love feedback. As the listeners know, there's a listener that messages me every week and tells me our podcast is a two and we should really stop. So I love receiving that message. It really motivates me to keep going. But no, it's not what I live for, honestly. I live for feedback. It's how I thrive and do better, and I don't care if it's positive or negative, I just need it to do my job. So this is something I would love to implement, anonymous or otherwise. I need to know Agreed.
Speaker 2:And I think if you're always like that person, you're coming around and you're like, yeah, you did awesome, like you're probably around the wrong people, I think you should always be challenged, always be learning, and if you're always doing everything perfectly, you're probably not challenging yourself. We've talked about that on previous episodes too.
Speaker 2:It's like if you're the smartest person in the room, you're probably in the wrong room, and I think that goes for these types of things too. If everyone is just always like, yeah, it was great, it's, either they're not being honest with you or you're just not surrounding yourself with the right peers.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more and I think that rounds out. I mean, that's the end of the article. It is posted in our pod topics channel. If you want to visit and see the full fellow app article for yourself, do take the time to peruse it. It's been fun. It's a great topic. I actually learned some things from this, which is, you know, not often from some of these articles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, I think the last one we did was atrocious, but this one was actually. I mean, the second half was way better than the first way To reorganize this, maybe use AI to figure out what the most important ones are. But the first ones were kind of crap. The second half were pretty good.
Speaker 1:I agree. I feel bad for everyone who listened to that previous episode. Sorry, Sorry, man Clark. Do you know our next episode? Do you know what it is?
Speaker 2:Is it number numero one hundo? It's numero one hundo, no, wow, 100 episodes, wowie, wowsa, holy cow. Well, we got some ideas for the people. We got some exciting stuff coming up. Maybe a little surprise episode.
Speaker 1:Maybe, maybe. Keep your eyes on the Discord. Youtube would have you and we'll tell you how to get into the Discord and all that later. But before we do that, there's something very important.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, we have to take care of first you know, as part of every meeting, there comes a segment when your host says it's time to play. What Do you Mean? Everyone's favorite podcast game show. What Do you Mean? That's M-E-M-E. For those who can't understand my enunciation, it comes from user, individual contributor. We got two great gifts in the chat of what you mean, and it's Clark's turn to describe him Clark.
Speaker 2:See, I miscalculated. I just wanted the transparent when I don't do something well, I asked everybody in the Discord to dig up the nastiest bottom of the barrel memes because I was hoping it was Bruce's turn and I just totally forgot that I was up next.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you did.
Speaker 2:So this is unfortunate.
Speaker 1:I do think Ristrette will drop something on me that is completely impassable.
Speaker 2:I would not have asked him. He's going to hit you hard. He is going to hit me hard, but unfortunately you got this one buddy. You got it, yeah. Individual contributor. Thanks for this one, and I'm trying to figure out how to even explain what's going on. Describe the meme with your words Clark.
Speaker 1:Use your word.
Speaker 2:So you know you go over to the horse race you know, you bet on some horses. You pick your number, you pick your name, you let them go. This is your typical horse race. This is some magical fantasy land where there is just a dance and horse on two legs. I think he's flossing.
Speaker 1:He is flossing. You know what that dance is called? Yeah, See.
Speaker 2:I don't know what flossing means, but I think he's flossing it's that. So he's literally just flossing on two hooves and just speeding past everybody, like just going absolute past them. There's so many things going on inside this meme that it's hard to give it the right justice. There's like there's two riders on an extended horse. In the back there's a zebra. There's a guy just standing on top of a horse, Like I think he's dabbing. There's one that's just yanking his head around what extending like a slinky dog. Oh my goodness, there's just so much going on in this meme and I don't understand the underlying.
Speaker 1:A tiny horse race, oh, and dabbing's coming across the line. We have a slinky dog coming across the corner, oh, no, he's leading by a nose. It's extended.
Speaker 2:I think extended horse ended up winning the whole thing, like even flossing horse didn't win.
Speaker 1:Let's see, hold on, let's, let's finish the Giffy I'm watching. I'm watching the whole time.
Speaker 2:No, there's head being in a horse and I think no no, flossing horse won, Okay good. I think you know but the underlying meaning, yeah, what's the meaning behind this? Always floss.
Speaker 1:Now I think. I think the meaning is in life, and especially in companies, you're surrounded by so much nonsense, just impassable, non understandable, almost eldritch levels of cosmic horror, nonsense 24, 7, 365,. You open your laptop, you are confused. You're in a state of constant confusion. What better way could you describe this than forces flossing and extending themselves on a track? Because isn't that what we all are? It's just lost horses flossing on a track, Flossing on a track to an eventual win.
Speaker 2:Is that what that means?
Speaker 1:Well, we didn't see the finish line. I assume it's there, but there could be. It could be death. That's what. Sometimes it's a race.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love it. Well, thank you. Individual contributor. That pained me on the inside, but it was a great one. Sure, was All right. Well, thanks for playing. And by thanks for playing I mean thanks to me for having to bear with that. I hope Streppo hits you with a hard one on the next episode. So how do you participate in this nonsense of? What do you mean?
Speaker 1:To participate in the what do you mean? Nonsense and to just participate with topics us, the rest of the group, who are probably far more intelligent and cool than we are, and not probably they just are. You got to go to our website. It's corporate strategybiz. That's dot B I. Z stands for business. If you want to stay in touch, submit topics, get in the discord, all you got to do is go to the contact us page, click the link and you can hang out with the coolest Beeps on the planet.
Speaker 2:I like it. We're not very active on social media, but eventually we'll get on tick tock. That's what everyone's doing these days. But you can follow us on LinkedIn, instagram, youtube. I think we're on. Are we on X Twitter? We are.
Speaker 1:I posted like once a week.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's all in.
Speaker 2:Obviously. So why should you? I like it. Reviews help a lot. Definitely, give us a review on the podcast of your choice. And also we have a newsletter. So, and by the newsletter, it really just lets you know whenever an episode drops. So just sign up, enter your email and every single time we drop an episode, you'll be the first to know about it and you will be the first to hear it, which means you're ahead of everyone else in corporate strategy.
Speaker 1:Speaking of this episode I know there is on this one. Well, if you're in the future, there might not be, but if you're in the past or the present, if you're lit, what is time?
Speaker 2:What is time? But I construct. I think my mind just melted a little bit. You broke, I heard the fizzle.
Speaker 1:I like I don't even know how to describe this. It's written in front of me. I should read it, but no, if you're listening to this and there might be an ad. I'm sorry, but this is the world we live in. We currently are completely sponsored by ourselves and by that I mean me so we use ads to lessen the blow of the expense of running a podcast just a little bit. So there are ads, there might be ads. Will there be ads? Question mark. If you want to help us out and get rid of those things, you can. In the show notes there is a support us link. You can support us and we're not asking for anything other than if you want to and if you do, you'll help. And if we hit the number where we no longer need to have ads to support the show, they will disappear and the people in the future won't have to hear this weird rambling segment ever again.
Speaker 2:Thank God and you know what, in order to do that, if you share this, more people might support. We did the math. So if you support like 30 cents a month with our current least listenership, ads are gone, so get in there, support with 30 cents and these awful ads will go away. They're really not that bad actually.
Speaker 1:I do think there's a challenge with support in 30 cents because of the way that the Buzzsprout sponsorship thing works. It's like dollars instead of oh, is that it? I think it should be. Maybe we should look at a different platform for support. If you have tips, please tell us in the discord. We'll figure that out. But yes, to Clark's point. I wholeheartedly agree, and that's it. Yeah, that's it. That's it, you know.
Speaker 2:I heard what we should do is shift left and evaluate our tools before we start using them, and maybe we'll have better outputs.
Speaker 1:That's true, Right now we're kind of just putting all legs in one basket. But you know, to quote the world of corporate, we should really double click and do a deep dive, evaluate and maybe synergize on something better. Yeah, no need to reinvent the wheel. No, we're throwing your manager on the bus.
Speaker 2:You know you can just make sure you're still bringing the product from soup to nuts along the way.
Speaker 1:There it is every time.
Speaker 2:I'm done.
Speaker 1:That's it. He says that I'm done, we shut off, we stopped the podcast. So, as always, thank you for listening and just remember, make it a brain dump.
Speaker 2:I'm Bruce and I'm disgusted and you're on mute.
Speaker 1:We'll touch base with you next week. Let's get out of here.
Speaker 2:Get out of here, you wheeze out here.
