Speaker 1: 0:00

He's in the room with us.

Speaker 2: 0:02

Now he's in the room.

Speaker 1: 0:03

He's yeah.

Speaker 2: 0:04

Don't look up.

Speaker 1: 0:08

He's watching. What if I look up what happens?

Speaker 2: 0:13

I don't know. I mean, we haven't ever done it before. You look him right in the eyes.

Speaker 1: 0:19

I love to make eye contact with Craig. In fact, I will do it the entire episode. That little bear can't tell me how to do a podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:30

Maybe he'll eat me. Yeah, he's going to either eat me or he's going to pull your eyes out. It's going to be ugly and I'm not going to be here for it.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Could be the positive outcome we've all been looking for this whole time. You know, mauled by a bear. What better way to go? What better way to? What better way to go?

Speaker 2: 0:46

Maybe good insurance on that, you know.

Speaker 1: 0:49

I don't know. That's a good question. You know, mauled to death by an animal, I definitely think, still qualifies for life insurance, especially if you weren't like asking for it. You know, you didn't go to the zoo and like rattle the cage, it's like no, I was just, I existed and a bear came and killed me. Oh yes, you get life insurance for sure. The question is is like, if it's during the work day, do you get that 3x payout?

Speaker 2: 1:12

because it doesn't count as like on the job, like having a heart attack in the workplace. You know that's on the job for sure the job's on sure, for sure.

Speaker 1: 1:22

Yeah, you want to die at work.

Speaker 2: 1:24

Trust me, that's the best place to do it and we gotta, like we gotta, look into our policies here. I'm curious what my? Life insurance policy covers what my workplace insurance covers, you know, if something does go down, I just want to know the details, like how far is property? If I walk outside by a pond and I get mauled by an otter, if I meet my crocodile, does that?

Speaker 1: 1:45

count? Yeah, I think so. So for me we don't even have that anymore, because I work for a fully remote company, so there is no like death on campus clause or anything like that, which kind of sucks. You know, like definitely could have played that in my favor if we had an office, just like dump my carcass there and be like oh yeah he totally died here.

Speaker 2: 2:04

Ignore the alarm. To get even more morbid, I mean someone could kill you in the office any day. So fortunately part of working from home you take out that workplace risk of someone. Just you know.

Speaker 1: 2:16

Is that why they removed it Like? Well, you know, your chance of dying at work goes down statistically when you're in a remote office.

Speaker 2: 2:24

So why are you guys still remote Talking to the CEO? Well, yeah, we found that. You know, when people start shooting up buildings, if you don't have buildings, it's not a problem. It's not a problem anymore, turns out.

Speaker 1: 2:35

the whole remote from off work, remote strategy extends your life tremendously. There's so many benefits. Meanwhile Apple's like get your butt back in here. You're going to die tomorrow.

Speaker 2: 2:48

Less likely to murder co-workers is a perk of working from home.

Speaker 1: 2:54

Sure is. I mean, this is morbid. We're well past the Halloween episode, but you've got to think. There are people out there, maybe even listening to this podcast, who are like oh yeah, I've totally murdered a co-worker. I put some kind of arsenic in their coffee and they went home.

Speaker 2: 3:13

Please no.

Speaker 1: 3:15

Statistically it's happened.

Speaker 2: 3:18

You have the numbers on this.

Speaker 1: 3:21

Your CAC is at an all-time low.

Speaker 2: 3:26

Listen folks. Pack your own lunch, Bring your own water. Don't take anything from anyone. If Bruce comes by holding a cup of coffee, smack it on the ground immediately.

Speaker 1: 3:37

You know, screw the razor blades and the Halloween candy. This is what you really got to look out for Is someone who's like juicing apple seeds to get the little trace amounts of arsenic out and sprinkle it in your coffee as they. Oh hey, jeff, just wanted to check in see if you had a chance to check that email I sent you earlier Sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle. Ok, well, you have a good day off.

Speaker 2: 3:56

You see that bear outside the window Sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle.

Speaker 1: 3:59

Oh, it was nothing. I thought it was a bear, I thought it was a bear.

Speaker 2: 4:06

I thought it was a bear come to maul us. Now it turns out it was nothing. Man, wouldn't it be great if your life insurance policy?

Speaker 1: 4:09

covered that you checked out those numbers. I mean pretty good, you know, especially on office, not that you'd need them for any reason. Gotta go, gotta check my email.

Speaker 2: 4:24

This is awful Welcome corporate strategy podcast. It could have been an email. Yeah, who are you? He's bruce, and I'm clark. Oh cool, it just doesn't. I just can't do clark first you definitely feel right.

Speaker 1: 4:43

You did it better this time, like you had the whole like sliding down, going up voice thing working for you. I'm proud of you there. You know I didn't practice.

Speaker 2: 4:51

It was gross. Maybe just a chutzpah of me and you picking up.

Speaker 1: 4:55

You know that from you I, I think talking about murder is what really did it. I think, uh, I got you a little excited. You're like, oh, you know, we've we transitioned from a corporate podcast and now we're one of those murder mystery, true crime podcasts. Our number's gonna skyrocket. Well, you want to 10x our, our listenership? Well, let's just get close to the mic. And they were never seen again.

Speaker 2: 5:19

Done, done or have never been seen at all. So we were never heard of again.

Speaker 1: 5:25

Yes, yes.

Speaker 2: 5:27

Yes, correct, listen. Okay, I'm going to put a PSA out there. If you've murdered a coworker, you're welcome on this podcast anytime.

Speaker 1: 5:36

We would love to reconfigure this podcast to become full true crime focused on your murder. So let's get you on here.

Speaker 2: 5:46

Give the listeners some tips. How did you do it?

Speaker 1: 5:51

I really like the direction this is going. This is good.

Speaker 2: 5:54

This is a really good day. I mean, you said before we even started you're like this is not a good day. So I said you know what? Why not start off on that note?

Speaker 1: 6:03

Yeah, let's do it. No, it's a good note to start on. I have been fighting an anxiety attack for the last 48 hours, just full-blown, doing the four-second circle, square, breathing techniques and all that. It's been a week for many compounding reasons. But yeah, I'm glad to be here with you, clark. That's the vibe. That's the vibe. That's the vibe I'm exhibiting right now is let's not go to the hospital.

Speaker 2: 6:31

So I need to know, because I don't have anxiety attacks. Yeah, how do you know you're fighting it? Does it just come on and you got that feeling and then you're like, okay, trigger the whatever breathing activities, whatever you need to do to kind of fight it off did I ever talk about this before?

Speaker 1: 6:47

on the pod I? It's me if I haven't been so long I don't remember, so I'd never had anxiety attacks before and then I electrocuted myself and that started it no wait, I have never heard this.

Speaker 2: 7:01

Are you serious?

Speaker 1: 7:02

dead serious. I was doing some lighting work in the house while my wife was in France and you know, perfect time to do this kind of stuff is when no one's around Electrocuting myself. I had like full blown panic, anxiety attacks. Afterwards not, and I don't even know if it was because of the electricity or just like the experience, like it unlocked something inside of me. But then I had to start doing like breathing activities and exercises and, and you know, all kinds of little techniques like acknowledging what is it like? Five things, I can hear, four things, I can see three things, I can smell, like there's all these little activities you can do. I used to do them.

Speaker 1: 7:44

I don't remember the, the counting one anymore, cause I don't do it too often, cause the breathing works just fine, but you need to do four square breathing, so you do like four seconds in four seconds, hold four seconds out, and you want to try and get like a full breath in, full breath out when you do that and that's a. It's a good way to deal with it so I'm able to mitigate the attack. You asked what it feels like. It feels like you're having a heart attack. That's what it feels like. It's great, it's fantastic Just the pressure builds up?

Speaker 2: 8:12

Yeah, because I've seen. I don't know if you probably haven't seen it because sports ball Ted Lasso. Yes, I saw the first season Okay, so he kind of has the same thing. Yes, really. Yeah, he kind of has like the same thing as he he like has those panic attacks come on, and I think actually I don't know if this is accurate the way they depict those like you kind of get stuck in your head and like you get a little like trembly. I imagine that's how it feels like.

Speaker 1: 8:39

Yes, like it. It, um, you know how have you ever had too much caffeine? Like, yeah, too too much? Yeah, it's like that. It's like that plus like there's a tightness. You're because your muscles get tight, so in your chest there's a tightness. Great, yeah, it's scary right. Highly recommend it. Everyone should try it. Everyone should go out right now. Uh, take the plate off your nearest electrical wall device. Make contact with flesh. Do the right hand, because the left hand can accidentally you know you can accidentally cross your heart, so you don't want to do that which I did. Uh, do the. Do the back of your right hand. Make contact, generate yourself some anxiety attacks. Change your life forever, forever. Trust me, it's a good time. You're going to love it, I guarantee it. Oh man.

Speaker 2: 9:27

I'm a bit of a DIYer. I've done quite a few renovations, quite a bit of electrical work. You got to make sure the breaker's off. You got to yes, and you got to have. You got to have what's the thing called the digital meter, the tester. Yeah, I forgot that. I have two of them. I can't remember the name of it, but you've got to use them because then you'll know is this live or not.

Speaker 1: 9:51

And I did, and I did. The problem was because I do all of this stuff and I've done it many a time. I flipped the breaker back on to test it, to make sure that I was doing a smoke test. Right, you flip it on, make sure there's no smoke. Uh, when I the problem was, I neglected to turn the breaker back off afterwards. So as soon as I put the plate back on, my hand made contact with the metal and that's what caused it. So, yeah, yeah, it's. You always want to double check the breaker. You know cause. You, you know you need to turn it off, but you get distracted, or you know something like that, and suddenly you've electrocuted yourself and who knows what fun symptoms can can follow after that experience. Maybe you turn into a superhero.

Speaker 2: 10:39

I mean that'd be kind of cool. I mean it unlocks something in you. Maybe if you do it again, you, I mean it unlocks something in you. Maybe if you do it again you'll either reverse it or you'll unlock something new. I'm just saying I'm looking to not do it again.

Speaker 1: 10:49

I'm really looking to not do it again.

Speaker 2: 10:52

So I've, like I've done quite a bit. I've shocked myself once or twice. I don't mess with anything. That's like like, don't mess with the electrical for your fridge, for your oven. Oh yeah, mess with the electrical for your fridge, for your oven. Oh yeah, that's like a wave, like anything over like what is it like?

Speaker 2: 11:08

120 volts or whatever. That is like your oven, I think, is like 240. That will kill you. Like just don't, don't touch it. You will straight up die if you don't understand what you're doing, or you'll light your house on fire. One of the two, yeah, yeah, use your breakers. If you're doing a light switch, use your breakers. Triple check them. It's not fun. If you're doing a light switch, use your breakers. Triple check them. It's not fun. You might unlock a new superpower.

Speaker 1: 11:27

I remember Rubber gloves is another banger of a tip. Just wear gloves, good choice.

Speaker 2: 11:33

I'm way riskier with renovations I do now. I'll change something and not really turn off the breaker. If I know it's low amperage, it's the amps that get you. When I was a kid, I was probably 13. I plugged in this radio outside. I think my finger was on the bolt. I straight up knocked myself out. Wow I plugged it in and had my hand on it when it was going in, I literally like woke up, like blocked, blacked out. I was like oh my gosh, what just happened? It's crazy.

Speaker 1: 12:00

You're like I was just outside.

Speaker 2: 12:02

Yeah, it's why I was literally just outside like I was plugging something in.

Speaker 1: 12:05

That's how dangerous it is I didn't unlock any superpowers like that, though unfortunately, no, nor nor did you get the anxiety attack. So you're lucky, you're one of the lucky ones. It is funny like I electrocuted myself a ton as a kid same kind of thing like you. You know how they had. Um, well, if, if you're a little bit older, back in the day not everything was wireless, so a lot of devices you had to plug into the wall just to use them. So you're constantly unplugging and plugging and there was limited wall space, especially if you poor. So these plugs would get worn down, like the plastic would wear thin, you know the wires would wear. So like I had electrocuted myself a ton as a kid just because of, like you know, plugging it in, you make contact with the pins or whatever, and like whatever, it's a little jolt. Never bothered me until my adult years.

Speaker 2: 12:57

Yeah, interesting, yeah, interesting. Well, that's your vibe check.

Speaker 1: 13:00

I hope you're doing all right now. Maybe this podcast will help. I'm hoping the podcast will pull me through.

Speaker 2: 13:07

I noticed that when I'm feeling anxious or stressed, this podcast does help me. It does.

Speaker 1: 13:14

If this was a meeting, I would have. If this was a meeting, I would have canceled this meeting, but it's a podcast, so I was like you know what this? I will feel better by the end of this. I hope clark better.

Speaker 2: 13:22

Save me today well, I do have something to talk about. Well, what's your vibe? I'm vibing good that's about it.

Speaker 2: 13:32

I don't know that there's anything too interesting. I've been um recently. I've been trying to do more how do I be more productive things? Because I noticed I was I don't like do social media, so that's not a problem for me. Reddit is the only thing I do. Not a problem for me. Linkedin I do that. Not a problem for me. Youtube is where I sometimes get stuck and for a while I had this thought like oh, I can have basically it inhibits my focus and I thought I could just like listen in the background.

Speaker 1: 14:09

Oh, I, know some people do that.

Speaker 2: 14:10

Like you have the video, you have the little pop-out player like oh yeah, I can't do it I can watch this in the background, I'll be fine.

Speaker 2: 14:16

I can focus. You are infinitely single track, yeah, infinitely worse. It's like you, your brain can't do it and I'm convinced I can't, like I used to think I could. I'm like it's just a small you know thing on the side. You need to have something that is going to not distract you with words, like soft music, something with like a low, low BPM, using those right tones that will, like, not pull you off track, keep you in that focused flow state. I've been doing it and like forcing myself to do it with, like, my early morning work, I get so much more done. It's what, absolutely what.

Speaker 1: 14:53

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with you, and I think people lie to themselves and say like, oh yeah, I'm a great multitasker and it's like I'm listening to a podcast while I've got my sock ticker up on the screen as I bang out a 300 page report on the death of the american buffalo, but at the end of the day, you you're doing all three of those things, or like four, or however many things you have going on. You're doing none of them as good as you could. If you single task focused on one thing and like, I do agree, there is like, there is like a healing power of focus, music, which I think that is the exception, not the rule, is the exception, not the rule. But yeah, I have tried, like listening to podcasts as I work or, you know, do a YouTube and it is, I can do it.

Speaker 1: 15:43

Something I've done recently is if I'm watching TV or playing a game or doing anything and I find that I'm actually checking my phone while I'm doing it, either one the thing I'm doing isn't interesting and I need to stop doing it because I'm wasting my time. Because if my phone's more interesting, then clearly this thing is not. I need to just stop or like why is my phone demanding my attention? Like what can I do to stop this? And I have these little conversations with myself and make a decision Do I stop doing the thing and do my phone, or do I put the phone down and like say enough is enough, enjoy your thing? Or the third option, which is neither of these things are actually good for me. What can I do instead that I can single? Focus on it's harder at work, though, because work just demands constant context switching, so you can't have that luxury yeah and even if you like that.

Speaker 2: 16:33

I've been looking at things around like how your brain like waves basically flow, or your brain activity flows when you're just like task switching over and over.

Speaker 2: 16:41

And then when you take like a five minute break and go for a walk, take walks in the morning, whatever it is, just helps bring that clarity. It's just so hard when you hit the later parts of the week and you're like mentally exhausted and you know you got to get into the zone and like do work where you're like, yeah, but and you know you've got to get into the zone and do work, but you're like, yeah, but there's this funny YouTube video I want to watch. You start watching that and that just ruins the whole thing. If you just take 10 minutes and just start Set a timer 10 minutes, start doing it, Force yourself to do it you will get into a flow state that enables you to actually be productive and you'll forget about the video for a little bit so you can time box it, take a little break in between, go for a five minute walk or whatever. Come back, force yourself to do it, even if you're mentally fatigued, and I promise you'll be much more productive.

Speaker 1: 17:23

You did that. Right before this call, I banged out four video scripts that I just I needed to do. I didn't have time to do it, so I did it poorly. Well, that's one way to do it. Yeah was like I'm I am not going to actually be able to spend enough time to get this done. Well, it's due today. I'm not going to work on it after this podcast, like hell. No, so I'm going to do it poorly and, uh, I'll send it off for review. If they think it's okay, then it's okay. You know what?

Speaker 2: 17:53

they're not listening, oh, I hope nobody's listening into this and just found that you, uh you, half-assed whatever project you were working on.

Speaker 1: 18:04

Yeah you know well, sometimes it is. Sometimes you got to do it though, like I have no time, because tomorrow I wouldn't have time to do it because I have 18 other things that I have to get through, either review or creation of. So, like it was now or it's never, and I had to basically pull the ripcord and say this is not going to be Bruce's best work, so we're going to just, you know, get through it quickly rather than doing it quality.

Speaker 2: 18:31

It makes me think of a good lesson or rule for the listeners. Makes me think of a good lesson or rule for the listeners. You have to come up with what is the right decision or output for this. Like for you. It feels like you had to do it. You didn't have a choice. No, you don't have time because of competing priorities and everything else going on. That is just demanding your attention, but whatever you did is probably good enough. It is.

Speaker 1: 19:01

We talked about that, we did an entire episode on what is good enough. Yeah, we did an entire episode on that.

Speaker 2: 19:04

Exactly so. I think you've got to make that a sit in your mind. It's like is good enough? Is the effort that I'm going to put into this good enough? And if the answer is yes, sometimes you just got to do the thing, sometimes you just got to do the thing the other answer is, of course, you know you could do the thing right, take the time to do it. But it's amazing all that good stuff that that's, given you have the time and the planning and the resources to do so. I did something on a project this this week that actually was the third option, which is just don't do it.

Speaker 1: 19:32

Nice, nice, I like that but I had to get that alignment.

Speaker 2: 19:36

You know, I basically was like, hey, I don't have time to focus on this, I don't think it's a priority. If I tried to do it, I'd probably get like 20 of it done and it's not going to be 80. I'm like I'm just not going to do it. And I sent a note and I basically laid out all those things. I'm like I'm not going to do it. Maybe something we pick up in the new year, but right now we're not doing it.

Speaker 1: 19:55

Yep, that's smart yeah, that's smart, everyone's okay, I can I can pull that in certain cases, but this was not one of them yeah, yeah, because like oh, no, you can't just, you just do it.

Speaker 1: 20:07

You do it monday, you do it tuesday like it's. It's just, it's never, it's not the high priority of anything, you know. So and quick aside because I know this is not the topic, but since we talked about the good enough thing, since we've had that episode, I have noticed and this is this is an episode in itself my definition of good is other people's definition of not good, my definition of like good enough to eh, people seem to love. So I'm just gonna throw that out there that sometimes quality can be misleading yeah, you know what it might be too is just quicker feedback loops.

Speaker 2: 20:54

Like if you go build out the whole entire strategy around something, you put a ton of effort into it and then you review it with people who have thoughts or feedback or need to be the ones to review it, they don't get a chance to have any input into that. So like oh well it's, I guess it's baked and like I hate this part, and you're like well, I spent 16 hours on that part. Like that sucks for everybody. Sucks for you because you spent the time, sucks for them because they're like do I tell Bruce his 16 hours was wasted or not? Having those quick feedback cycles might be the answer. It's like if you do something that you think is good enough, you push that through. Then you can always improve it, as long as you know you're on the right track.

Speaker 1: 21:31

I think there's also something you've said about the refinement process. So when you first do, when you do a first pass on any creation of a thing, usually it's rough, it's a rough draft right, and you're just getting thoughts on paper. You're trying to get it as as logical and coherent as it can be, but you're not taking the time to say like what, what does this read? How do the words come off the page? Or whatever your project is, you're not looking at the finer details, you're not taking 1,000 grit sandpaper to it, you're just scraping off bits at this point with a chisel. And what's interesting to me is I have found in my own refinement phase where I make something good to the level that I like. That doesn't always resonate with the people I need it to resonate with and it's a waste of my time to put my level of quality and polish on something. So just a realization I've been going through recently with the Good Enough episode.

Speaker 2: 22:36

Yeah, I like that and it brings me to think about the project that I said no to. It's funny that you're saying all this, because I worked with some people. We prepared kind of a few slides of like why we weren't going to do it. You know the impacts of doing it, the impacts of not doing it Essentially just kind of laying out the reasons why we only got to the first slide of that five slide deck.

Speaker 1: 22:57

Nice, what a waste of time. Even in that process, the process was a waste. Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 2: 23:06

It's like all we needed was that one slide.

Speaker 1: 23:08

That's the most corporate thing I've ever heard. I know you should have submitted that anonymously to. Is it Me or Is it Corporate?

Speaker 2: 23:16

I've submitted enough crazy ideas that channel already, mainly just saying you don't do anything on this podcast I knew it was you.

Speaker 1: 23:25

I knew it was you all along. What are we talking about today?

Speaker 2: 23:28

clark what. Okay, yeah, I guess we have a topic we should talk. What is it? What is it?

Speaker 1: 23:34

I want to put you through a thought exercise. Oh no, I'm not prepared. It's going to be okay.

Speaker 2: 23:39

I promise I can't think it's a light one. We had an important event happen here in the US over the last few days.

Speaker 1: 23:50

The anxiety is kicking in again. I'm starting to have that twinge in the heart.

Speaker 2: 23:56

If Bruce drops from this podcast and it's just me for the next 30 minutes, I'm sorry, but that could happen realistically. I'm looking at him.

Speaker 1: 24:02

Okay, so we had an important event. I think I know which one you're talking about.

Speaker 2: 24:07

There was an election for our new president.

Speaker 1: 24:10

Yeah, in case you didn't hear, he's not technically a new president. True, he's an old president. It's returning, yes.

Speaker 2: 24:18

It's true. So I thought it might be interesting to talk about what if you had to elect your CEO Like the employees, as president, well, as CEO Like everybody in your company. It's not the board of directors, obviously. The board of directors votes on CEOs. They bring people in. What if it was a true democracy in your company? No matter how big you have 10 people, you got 50,000 people, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1: 24:44

I would get paid so much more money than I make right now.

Speaker 2: 24:48

You have to campaign, You've got to build that audience. You're going to have like a two part. I just thought it was so interesting. I was like what if corporate worked this way?

Speaker 1: 24:57

Knowing that I am like the secret squirrel for like 50% of my company and the influence I wield, I'm a kingmaker. In this scenario, like literally, I would choose the CEO.

Speaker 2: 25:10

Right, you would literally be the one pulling the strings behind the scenes.

Speaker 1: 25:12

Yeah, that's an interesting question and I really like it, I think the challenge. I mean. So let's get the obvious problem out of the room is this would never happen because there's always someone above the CEO with money. That's like.

Speaker 2: 25:33

I'm going to choose. It's not a people's company.

Speaker 1: 25:36

So we're going to remove that. We're going to remove that from this fictitious scenario and say like, let's pretend corporate doesn't suck and this is actually like an HR activity that you get to go through and elect your CEO. I truly believe, just in the 30 seconds I've been thinking about this this could drastically improve the CAC score of everyone at a company.

Speaker 2: 26:02

A hundred percent Like, yeah, think about like I, and the more I think about this just talking with you, I'm just like I actually really liked this.

Speaker 1: 26:10

You know.

Speaker 2: 26:10

Imagine it's like each CEO has a term. Yeah, four years till they reelect the election, you don't get funds.

Speaker 1: 26:18

You get one year.

Speaker 2: 26:19

Maybe it's one.

Speaker 1: 26:20

Yeah, maybe it's even. Can you plan for?

Speaker 2: 26:26

three years ahead. No, you get one year and then you get re-elected or not, and you know, maybe there is no term limit, like you can just keep on getting re-elected it's like it's interesting because it's every.

Speaker 2: 26:34

You have to campaign for the people. You have to care about what your people care about, while also balancing like the business. It's the same thing as the presidency. It's like you gotta campaign for the people but you also have to let them know like the good of the nation is going to be good underneath you and so inherently, you're gonna cater to try to cover the majority and it's going to create different parties and it's going to be really interesting because you're going to have different like groups of people that rally around certain people for whatever the beliefs that like. Maybe it's, you know, diversity, inclusion, like that's super important. Maybe it's all about like just ship stuff faster and, you know, be quick and dirty and get it out there. It's going to be really interesting, like does it actually divide your people more or does it actually bring your people closer together and make you guys overall more successful? Because you had a say in who's leading your company and what decisions they're making.

Speaker 1: 27:25

I mean, it's just such an interesting thought experiment because, like I'm just thinking about our previous time at the big corp we worked at and some of the people who weren't CEO but you know, they were like influential leaders of the company that if this activity existed would definitely run, and like the campaigns they would run would be tremendously different.

Speaker 1: 27:45

Like one individual would be like this old product we've been selling for 30 years needs to go. We need to build something new because we got to modernize. And look at you know, what does our 10x output look like when we go to the cloud, kind of thing. And then there'd be another candidate who's like no tried and true, we're the best there is, we've always been the best. Why change now?

Speaker 1: 28:08

And I think the interesting thing about this is actually, you would get so much more feedback from your employees just based on who they'd vote for, from your employees just based on who they'd vote for, especially if you had like four or five candidates. Yeah, you kind of see like, oh, no one voted for the jeff party because jeff just doesn't have it together and we maybe need to think about, like why that strategy doesn't work. Meanwhile, these two individuals you know, jane and jorge. They had like really close race but they're doing two very different things Like why is that so close? What is it about each of these? You know potential CEOs and what they said they were going to do that appealed to this group. And then let's look at those groups of people and kind of see where they lie. You'd glean so much information about your company, for sure, for sure.

Speaker 2: 29:00

You'd glean so much information about your company for sure, for sure. And I you know what's so interesting about everything you just said you get to, you have to appeal to your people, know your people. Uh-huh, you have to know your who you're voting for. It's like correct, it's so interesting to me.

Speaker 2: 29:11

It's like you and I, working at big corp even the corp I work at now it's like the top guy has no idea who I am. He doesn't give give a shit you know what I mean Like he doesn't care and like that kind of sucks. It's like this dude doesn't even know who I am, doesn't even know what I do, doesn't know anything about this. Like I've had maybe one or two meetings with that person and, like you know, I'm just another individual on this giant team. But in this case it'd be like you have to go build that presence with the people. Build that presence with the people. Build that you know crowd that's going to vote for you and advocate for you to be that CEO. I think just makes it a much more people focused company rather than you know.

Speaker 2: 29:51

Just throw someone in there that no one knows. Okay, I don't care about this dude. At 30 years, whatever, and he's, like you know, got all this terrible history about him. It's hey, they got to rally around and get the people to vote.

Speaker 1: 30:03

So here's the question Is this better?

Speaker 2: 30:08

Yeah, what are the? What are the cons to this? I think you could probably would divide the company.

Speaker 1: 30:14

You could?

Speaker 2: 30:15

Yes, and I think also the candidates that run that don't win probably lose stature or feel like their upward mobility is, you know, at risk after losing I also think another huge common is, frankly, sometimes the people don't know what's best, depending on market trends, whatever, like they might be really stuck in that legacy product and and you're like, hey, ai is happening or whatever. It's changing the whole entire game and from that you know your whole entire company could be wrong. You can put someone in that's going to have the wrong strategy, but they've got to be backed by the board of directors, you know, so it could kill your company.

Speaker 1: 30:56

Yes, and I think that's the biggest risk is, you know, a false prophet comes out, sounds super appealing, actually has no plan, no way to actually execute. The strategy wins over everybody.

Speaker 2: 31:11

Turns out they can't and they don't, so yeah, it's like we have enough as a nation not to like go down and we can impeach a president. If it's well, there's all the checks and balances, right like there's, you know, the legislative grant, there's the executive.

Speaker 1: 31:25

The president is the executive branch. So there's, there's all these different systems in place to kind of prevent one individual from having all the power. And maybe that's the other part of this thought experiment is should ceos have all the power or should there be, you know, a legislative branch, a house of representatives, and your company that kind of acts almost in opposition to your CEO? Yeah, another interesting idea. You know like maybe they're not board elected, maybe they're. It's almost like a union type thing where you know bruce and clark run the the.

Speaker 1: 32:04

You know representatives of big corp and, yeah, we don't think the ceo is making the right moves with this, this and this, and this is where we think about it and we're gonna veto what he's doing, or we all voted to halt this, this plan, plan because it lacks, you know, strategy. I don't know Like. There's some interesting thoughts here that I think could be applied. It could totally break everything or it could actually make things much better than I. More, more thought needs to be applied to this Right.

Speaker 2: 32:36

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 32:36

It's go write the book.

Speaker 2: 32:38

Right, this would be so interesting to do it like a a large, to you know, enterprise level company Experiment on, because I don't think it works. If you're under, like you know, the midsize level, I think it'd be really hard to make that work. People would be able to game that. We got to have you to have the right size for majority, and all that.

Speaker 1: 33:03

I think one of the reasons why you're thinking about this specifically with larger companies is the same reason why it exists in our country is we're 50 states and those states have independent governments that make up state rules and laws and those are all sort of managed and balanced by the upper echelons of the government. When you're in a small business or when you're in a startup, there might only be 20 people, you're not even a tribe, yet you know you're not even a state, so of course it's not going to work. But when you get to the large enterprise, you maybe have 20 different products. There's, you know, uh, 40 buildings across all of the planet with different geographical divisions, and you know departments.

Speaker 2: 33:48

Then it kind of makes sense like why you would need to actually split up and manage your executive branch a little more judiciously and if you do have those things, those checks and balances in place House of Representatives, senate, all that the executive branch, like those people also have to advocate to be in those positions. And what's also interesting about this is it gives people more opportunity. Like, if you have the opportunity to vote, a big pro is like I could try to run one year, even if I'm little individual contributor clerk over here, you know what I mean. Like I could be, like I want to run and I could try to rally around. It helps me, forces me to understand. Like, what are other people being challenged with?

Speaker 1: 34:29

What's the best?

Speaker 2: 34:30

thing for the company Like. It helps you become a more well-rounded employee if you're going to go run for this thing, and it gives everybody a fair share. It's not just okay yeah, I like this person the best. Or cousin Jimmy's got to come in and run this department, you know, because he's you know the legacy got to bring them in. It's like it's a fair chance for anybody. It's got to rotate the people, vote the people in. I like this for a lot of reasons.

Speaker 1: 34:53

I think I do. I think there. If there's one thing I've learned, it's there is nothing worse in the workplace than nepotism. It just brings out the worst in people. And I think giving more people a say in a choice, and especially like the upper executive positions, if you can remove that nepotism angle and say no, you don't get to come in just because you're, you know besties with the CEO or you know you're, you're, you are the you know son of the founder type thing. Like no, you gotta, you gotta prove yourself. You would avoid a lot of like the bad business policies and trends that come along with people who just get the job because it was handed to them versus earning it and that is also, you know, the reason a lot of companies fail is because of things like that.

Speaker 2: 35:43

They're being ineptism, they pull in people who don't actually know what they're doing, um, people without experience doing crazy. You know, jobs like ceo of or coo of, like tens of thousands of employees.

Speaker 1: 35:54

When they just worked at retail for the last like three years, they were great donut factory, why aren't they doing the same work on our new ai engine? You know like. Clearly the same problem, donuts in the eye, I two closer things there could not be yeah, there's so many overlaps with those so many.

Speaker 2: 36:14

Yeah, both are frosted and covered in sprinkles it's true, that's what I look forward to every day when AI intrudes in my life. I like this, though. I think this is so interesting. I mean, it probably will never happen, but it'd be interesting if we did some research of like. If any company's ever tried something like this, it would have to be likely a privately owned company. It couldn't be a publicly traded company because of the boards of regulations and all that, so it'd have to be a big privately owned company to do something along these lines. But I think it'd be so interesting to see how that played out.

Speaker 1: 36:48

I could actually see this happening at like Valve. If Gabe Newell, the leader of Valve, ever retired like I could see him putting this in place because they're just such a uniquely weird independent company We've talked about it before like if you, if you have a spare 15 minutes, go download their their employee handbook and just look at how weird this company is. Like you move your desk and that's the project you're on. Like I could see them doing something like this in the future to keep them independent and keep them as strange and as successful as they are. But yeah, you have to be independent. You cannot be equity-based or founded.

Speaker 2: 37:28

You have to provide a board and shareholders and all that stuff. It just would never happen.

Speaker 1: 37:32

Because the people.

Speaker 2: 37:33

I mean technically, because the board doesn't trust people.

Speaker 1: 37:37

And I think this is what kind of boils down to the problem with all of this. There's one thing that big money doesn't trust is it's the little people who do all the work, so yeah, Very true, yeah, very true.

Speaker 2: 37:53

So, yeah, that was tough for today. I like that. That was interesting to talk about.

Speaker 1: 37:56

Yeah, We'll do a poll in the Corporate Strategy of the the discord after this episode goes up. Do you think the government, a government system, an electoral system could work in the workplace? And you can uh, you can respond to the poll and then chime in with your own thoughts in that channel.

Speaker 2: 38:18

I'm super curious I feel like I want to bring like two people that may be strongly opinionated, like on this podcast, just to debate it.

Speaker 1: 38:26

I'm raising the gun.

Speaker 2: 38:28

Yeah, Bring like Alex and Tony on and be like all right, are you guys on opposite sides? Let's hash this out.

Speaker 1: 38:35

Go get them and we just basically leave and come back in 45 minutes.

Speaker 2: 38:39

And then hopefully they just keep running the podcast forever, so we don't have to do it anymore.

Speaker 1: 38:43

I'm I'm ready to pass the torch. You know like I think it's time.

Speaker 2: 38:48

I think it's time. But thank you. Thank you for entertaining my thought exercise. I thought it'd be fun. I was thinking about it, I was like doing commutes and that was the thing about it. One morning on one of my walks, I was like this would be fun to talk about. I want to get bruce's opinion, but yes, we'll put up the poll. I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks pro or against, I guess. Are you, are you pro? Are you are you against? I want to hear your thoughts and if you feel really opinionated, we'll follow up on this in a future episode discussing some of the hot top did you vote yes or no?

Speaker 1: 39:17

uh, so you know we don't. Uh, I think what we're going to do, moving forward, is we're going to alternate, if we have it, between what do you mean, and is it me or is it corporate? Two games we like to play on the show now. So we don't have any. What do you memes? But we have two is it me or is it corporates?

Speaker 1: 39:33

And the way you can interface with both of these is by going to our discord. Easy way to do that open your show notes, click on the link tree, join the discord. It's a great place, if you haven't heard us talk about it before, like it is the place to go after listening to this pod to have discussions, meet really cool people, network, uh, get opinions, advice, everything you could ever want and play what do you mean? A game where we describe memes with our mouth parts based on things we've said in the previous episode or Is it Me or Is it Corporate? And Is it Me or Is it Corporate is actually a recent thing we just started doing. It was an idea created by Individual Contributor, one of our constant Discord participants and topic submitters, where you get to confess anonymously into the channel a question that is either is it you or is it corporate and we've got two this week that we get to digest are you ready, clark, you want to do two.

Speaker 2: 40:28

You want to do one today, one in the next episode. Did you just mute yourself?

Speaker 1: 40:36

am I muted. You were for one hot second you did. You said, do you want to do two? And then you just went silent and I saw your mouth move. Do you want to do two or do you want to do one? Well, we could do. Yeah, let's do one, and we'll save one for next week. Yeah, we'll save one, that's what I like. Okay, let's do it. Okay, so this is anonymous. Confession number seven which Confession number six Having a case of Mondays today resubmitting this. To be more clear, I guess I didn't need to read that part. I already made that clear.

Speaker 1: 41:09

When I was doing technical sales back in the day, an executive had a habit of describing policies that we had that I had suspiciously never heard of before. These policies typically involve verification of data entry for customers and level of scrutiny on billables. The company sold a product for auditing customer business expense. I don't think we'd ever had a written set of data management and audit policies. I had to do after sales support with the customers and I felt a bit lucky that these representations about our policies that were not yet in existence never came back to bite us. Was this my problem or corporate?

Speaker 2: 41:42

This is. You know. You know those people, you know those people at work that say well, you know, remember we got this one rule. Or like remember this one customer that this happened to, this is why we don't do this thing again, like that person who always seems to have like a historical knowledge but it's like nothing's real. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2: 42:03

Like they just always bring those things up to like flex, that they've been here longer and they know a bunch of tribal knowledge, you know the way you just said that, into the, into the world, is exactly how that person says it.

Speaker 1: 42:14

they're like yeah, well, you know, uh, we do have this policy that was put in. It was before your time, but we had this incident and ever since then we don't do this anymore. No one is going to tell you about it until you actively do the thing, but it is kind of a rule. That's exactly how it is. It's so corporate. This one's 100%, 100% corporate and screw these rules, screw them. If it's not in the onboarding training, you go through. If you have such a thing, if it's not in the onboarding training you go through. If you have such a thing, if it's not in the company policies and mission statements and visions that you get access to your internal documents, it ain't a real rule. And this is some mid-manager nonsense that they're just saying because they're trying to CYA. Yep.

Speaker 2: 43:09

Or just trying to CYA, yep, or just trying to flex that they know all this stuff and they have so much history and that some executive will be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, bruce is right, yeah, we don't do that because of this. I remember that thing that happened 10 years ago and like it just makes them feel like they're more important to me. On this one, if you have a legal team, go talk to your legal team. Like if you have somebody who signs the contracts between you and these clients or helps you like close sales, go and ask them about like the contracts you're signing. Be like hey, is this like a, is this a policy that's real? Do I have to worry about this when I'm talking to my customers? Or go talk to hr and ask them they should be able to give you these clear answers and I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what, bruce.

Speaker 2: 43:52

Nothing feels better than when you find out the truth and you go into another meeting and they bring it up again Ah, hold on a second, hold on. Well, actually, yeah, well, actually. I went and talked to legal and I have this email that says the exact opposite and that's not a thing. It's never been a thing. And then that person just looks like an idiot.

Speaker 1: 44:10

That is the dream scenario, the dream scenario, and I love that tip. Clark, I have nothing more to say other than to say I love your tip. Go to legal, go to HR, because you're absolutely correct. They will be able to help you find this thing. If it does exist and if it doesn't't take it to them, make them feel, make them sweat.

Speaker 2: 44:32

Yeah and if, if you, if you like that person, you just want to like be helpful because they're good, just send them an email and be like, hey, I just wanted to check. They might not like this, but I wanted to check legal if that was a real thing because I'm worried about my job. They said it's not, so, just letting you know, know, not a problem anymore. And they might be like, yeah, cool, thanks, appreciate that. But if they're the worst and they're always doing this.

Speaker 2: 44:54

do it publicly. It would feel so good to be able to close that loop at the next status update meeting or whatever. Yeah, that's not a thing, buddy. I have a new note from legal right here that says I don't have to worry about that.

Speaker 1: 45:06

Make sure to do it in a meeting where their manager is present. Just, you know, that's the Bruce tip. Just to circle back, we're going to roll back the tape real quick to the beginning. This is how you get murdered in the workplace.

Speaker 2: 45:24

Immediately never interface with that person with an open lid. You know, make sure all your lids are closed, make sure your bottles are empty, don't go around them. You know, just stay far away.

Speaker 1: 45:33

Get your seat for hidden needles. You know just like, be careful after you pull this move, because you've murdered them in spirit, so now they're going to come after your life force.

Speaker 2: 45:43

You know what's the worst about these type of people too? They never take responsibility to follow up on those things. Like they bring it up and then it's like mic drop, see you guys later and like that's literally all they do. But they never say like, let me go figure out. If that's still a rule, I'll go talk to the legal team just to make sure I'm not misunderstanding, so I can give you proper guidance.

Speaker 1: 46:04

They never had it. That's why they love to be able to enforce nonsensical rules. This is exactly what it is.

Speaker 2: 46:12

It's a power thing for them. Yeah, it's a power flex, and they'll likely delegate it to you to be like oh well, bruce, just remember this when you're going down this path or talking to this customer. You can't do that, okay, no verification or anything. They'll just put it all on you to have to worry about. So I think it's totally in your right, with people like that, to just hopefully prove them wrong or at least understand a little bit better, for the sake of their job.

Speaker 1: 46:35

Couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more. If you want to submit your own confession, all you have to do is go to the Is it Me or Is it? Corporate channel in the Discord. You already know how to get there. Do a forward slash confess, and that will allow you to submit a completely anonymized message to us that we will approve. We don't know who submits it, we just approve it and it'll show up in the channel and we will address it on the next episode of the pod. But thank you for your submissions. We have one more. We'll get to next episode, so keep them coming. Love doing these. I think that wraps it up for the day, don't you? I think that that wraps it up for the day, don't you? I think that's it Well, yeah, well, since you started this off, you get to close this up. Oh no, this is not good, I don't like.

Speaker 2: 47:14

I don't like this pressure Like share, subscribe, share with your friends, share with your enemies, more importantly, because our tips about murdering people that could become a reality if you really want to share with them. So go ahead, share this episode. We'd appreciate it. Get in the Discord, it's one click away. Ratings help. Do we look at our ratings? Are people rating us?

Speaker 1: 47:34

They do. Yeah, we do. I think we have currently just five straight stars on Apple.

Speaker 2: 47:40

That is awesome.

Speaker 1: 47:41

Yeah, keep it up. Give us a rating. It's impressive given the number of downloads we get.

Speaker 2: 47:49

You get you'd think we'd have at least like one or two people that absolutely hate us. We are still waiting for the one that comes in saying yeah, this podcast told me to murder my boss and I did it.

Speaker 1: 47:54

Now I'm going to jail for life I'm gonna get dragged into court like this is a joke y'all. I didn't even know. I said look out for it. I just said make sure you have a life insurance.

Speaker 2: 48:05

That's all I said I love it, but yes, thank you guys for listening. We really appreciate it and we'd love your collaboration. The discord, so please join, as always. What do we do? We come out Monday mornings new episodes, monday mornings, bright and early mornings bright and early. I'll hit your email inbox If you signed up for notifications. If not, just keep on listening to us, I'm sure we'll have some good stuff on the way. On that note, I gotta think of some weird saying. What would Bruce say right now?

Speaker 1: 48:33

Don't forget to lick a toad.

Speaker 2: 48:39

And we'll see you next week.

Speaker 1: 48:41

What? He didn't even say who you are. Why do you keep?

Speaker 2: 48:45

forgetting your name. This podcast could be an email. See you next week. Goodbye.

Speaker 1: 48:53

No, I'm Bruce.