Corporate Strategy
Corporate Strategy
146. New Year, New Habits
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Post-Christmas Reflections and Futuristic Banter
Speaker 2Merry Christmas , craig , you're back .
Speaker 1How long does one have to wait till after Christmas , when they can stop saying Merry Christmas ?
Speaker 2It's a good question I was debating yesterday . I was like it's the day after Christmas . Is it still appropriate to say Merry Christmas ? I have a friend's mess tonight , so I think for me the holiday keeps going . Wow , that's awesome .
Speaker 1I , I want it to be over . Like the second midnight strikes on the 26th . I'm done . I'm like okay and like I'll be honest . Like this year Christmas was like I worked the eve of Christmas basically up till like 4 30 . I just have so much work to do there's , there's too many things to do and I'm the only one who can do them . So , like it's not really a choice , it's just kind of a I've got to do it . I had to get it done before I I left .
Speaker 1So christmas really snuck up on me like I literally woke up and I was like it's not Christmas , it's like Christmas is in two weeks from now . But it was Christmas and I was already kind of over it . I was just like I just want to relax , I want to take it easy , I want to think , I want to check my brain to the door . So by midnight Christmas day , I was like I'm just going to celebrate Christmas next year . Christmas Day , I was like I'm just going to celebrate Christmas next year . That's what I'm going to do . That's the plan .
Speaker 1We didn't decorate this year . We did have a little family get together at my house in the morning . It was nice because I got to hang out with our little niece and she's an angel . And then we did a family get together at my uncle's house in the evening and it was nice because it was family and my niece was there and she's an angel . But I was just like let's get this , let's get this show on the road . You know what I'm saying . Let's get this day over with .
Speaker 2Didn't watch any holiday movies .
Speaker 1I didn't hear . All I Want for Christmas Is you this year Once , not one time . I've been in it , man . I've been working my fucking soul off . Yeah , two weeks . Two weeks . I have back-to-back trips for major things that I've been working on . I am ready . I'm ready for it to be February . That's what I'm ready for . You're ready just to skip January again ? We already talked about this .
Speaker 2This happened last year . January didn't happen . Do you really want to avoid that again ? You want to have another 11 month year , because that's what's going to happen if you keep on saying it .
Speaker 1Let's be real . I'm working like eight month years now , like the years are not nearly as long as they used to . Again , I thought Christmas was two weeks from now . So I am ready . I am ready just to give up half of my life . Just give it up .
Speaker 2It . Just give it up . That's fine . I'll live half as long if I don't ever get to work half as much , so you'd sacrifice half your life . We've got to stop on this for a second . You'd sacrifice half your life if you had to work half as much to survive .
Speaker 1Oh yeah , just die at 60, . But I could enjoy the rest of life right now , yeah .
Speaker 2I mean , I guess that's fair . Let's play this out so yeah , let's say you start working at like 18 . Yeah , you retire at 60 , 65 , whatever the age is Now . If you were to sacrifice half of that , you'd probably be retiring at like well , you'd be done with work at like 40 . So I guess you have options . It's either you work like a half , a part-time job till you're 60 . That's kind of working halftime or you retire at like 40 and then you get 20 something years of not having to work but then you die at 60 . I'm down , let's do it . Which one ?
Speaker 1Which one ? The second one . I had 60 .
Speaker 2Die at 60 and just not have to work .
Speaker 1Yeah , let's go , let's go .
Speaker 2I think I'd do the opposite . I think I would take the pain of having to work just part-time and just living forever , because you know I'm going to live forever .
Speaker 1You don't know that With the advancement of technology , I may live forever .
Speaker 2You going to live forever ? Well , no , you never . You don't know that , with the advancement of technology , I may live forever you will not live forever .
Speaker 1I'm sorry , you don't know that . I do , you don't I do . Unfortunately , clark , I do , I know these things .
Speaker 2I mean , what if ? What if my soul goes into my neural link body ?
Speaker 1unfortunately , that will not be you . That'll be a copy of you . I mean , what if my soul goes into my Neuralink body ? Unfortunately , that will not be you . That'll be a copy of you , but the you on this podcast right now technically dead . I'm sorry , yeah , it's true , and then it will just be someone who you think is you wearing your memories , wearing your face , doing your isms , being on this podcast with me , who is actually still alive . And I will be miserable because I'll be talking to a cheap copy , it's true , and he will deviate from you eventually , like it will . It will start to make decisions that you would not make , cause he is not you . At the end of the day , you are dead , unfortunately , like I said , will it .
Speaker 2Will it be better than me , though ?
Speaker 1I mean , I will kick them off the podcast if they're not .
Speaker 2Cause I think this is only going to be a better version of me . This is almost like reincarnation my soul just leaves my body and goes into the AI robot of myself with neural link and the Tesla robot body . That's who you're going to be podcasting with in like 10 years , when I die .
Speaker 1But with the idea of reincarnation , you should still know it's you Like . Your soul moves into the next thing . In this case , your soul is gone , it's evaporated into dust or it's moved on to the next thing , whichever you prefer to believe in . But you , the you that is still around , is just a perfect copy , until it's not .
Speaker 2How did we get from Christmas to this ? How did this happen ? You did this . You did this .
Speaker 1We were supposed to be at McDonald's this morning doing our corporate strategy raw .
Speaker 2If you haven't noticed by now , we are not in .
Speaker 1McDonald's . That'll be next week . I promise You'll get a bonus pod corporate strategy raw for New Year's , I promise you . Next week . I promise Clark promised them .
Speaker 2Promise them , I promise you , I promise you , this is for real . We're not going to edit this out when we fail to deliver next week .
Speaker 1I've already edited it out . It's already gone . There's just a nice little quiet segment right there . They're like what did they talk about ? What ?
Speaker 2did they say ? You know , imagine if we were actually talking about that and they thought we were in a Mickey D's . It'd be a really depressing topic to be talking about on a sunny morning at the Golden .
Speaker 1Arches . Well , I've chosen our topic for the corporate strategy Ra have you , yeah , death Transhumanism .
Speaker 2It sounds like a perfect topic for mcdonald's .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think so .
Speaker 2I think the employees really get a kick out of it as they as they fry the french's oh , I want to go back to christmas for a second . We gotta talk about this . Let's go back .
Speaker 1This actually makes a lot of sense , but let's go back yeah , no , I want , I want to to go back .
Speaker 2This is important . We have a history , you and me , yeah , of burning Christmas trees we do Of burning Christmas trees .
Speaker 1That was a better time .
Speaker 2Yeah , so this year at 12.01 am on the 26th , did you burn your Christmas tree because you were just done .
Speaker 1I don't have a Christmas tree .
Speaker 2Wow , you are Scrooge , mcduck .
Speaker 1We have zero . I say zero Christmas ornaments up , because usually I'll put up lights , but I have three 500 pound boxes that are at least five by five foot square . That's right In my garage , blocking access to the Christmas lights , and I think until we either build a new house or figure out how to store the boxes better , there will be no Christmas lights on our house anymore .
Speaker 2Everything behind those boxes is gone , forever Gone . You're never getting back there , ever in your life .
Speaker 1Correct , it is like playing J in your life , correct ? It is like playing jenga . No , it's like playing tetris with 500 pound boxes .
Speaker 2That's what it's like yeah , when you sell your house , you need to leave those and just say , listen , it's part of the deal .
Speaker 1It's part of the deal you get these when you buy the house and I'm not taking them the reason we have them is because we need them for when we , when we one day move to our forever home and need to move the 10-foot statue . Fair enough , fair enough , I guess it doesn't even go .
Speaker 2I mean , it might raise your property value by quite a bit .
Speaker 1I'm just saying oh yeah , At least raise it by $1,500 . That's how much they're worth .
Speaker 2See , okay , going back to Christmas One more time . You want to go back again ? Yeah , I want to double back .
Speaker 1I don't want to double back .
Speaker 2No , no , no , we're moving off of you . We're moving to my vibe check . I have met the polar opposite of you . This Christmas season I have taken off .
Speaker 2More time than I ever have Around the holiday season . Friday , last Friday what day was that Time ? Check 20th , 20th . Last Friday , 20th . I unfortunately did have a call until 530 . But then , after that I was done , I checked off . I haven't looked back since . Today marks a whole week since I've been off . And guess what ? Next week I'm going to be rolling the new year . I'm not going to touch a single work thing and I'm going to come back . I am going to come back before the end of that week . I'm going to come back on Thursday . The second is when I'm going to start work again . And I've been deep in season . The amount of eggnog I have drunken is disgusting , it's disgusting .
Speaker 2I'm sweating . I do like eggnog . I love eggnog . If you were around me , if I saw you today , you'd be like man . You smell like eggnog and I'd be like it's just my natural body odor now is eggnog .
Speaker 1That's nice .
Speaker 2That's what I've turned into Lots and lots of eggnog Christmas movies .
Speaker 1I'm very glad for you . I say that with all sincerity
New Year, New Us
Speaker 1. I I do love the season . It's my second favorite season , halloween is still the first and , like I didn't really celebrate Halloween this year either because again work but the the I just need . I need to get to a point where it is not chaos all the time at work and then I will be able to save brain space for doing festive things . So eventually , one day One day Hopefully .
Speaker 2I like that we said one day that's the same exact time , very hopefully .
Speaker 1Yeah , that's when we'll get festive and we'll really enjoy the things that matter .
Speaker 2Fair enough . Well , I hope everybody who's listening got to enjoy the holiday that I did and not that you did , because yours sounds awful , god awful . So I hope everyone else out there had a great holiday season and we appreciate you tuning in for the after Christmas episode .
Speaker 1Welcome . Welcome to Corporate Strategy , the podcast . That could have been an email . I'm Bruce and I'm Clark and you're on mute . We'll see you next week .
Speaker 2I think our whole entire order of our podcast has shifted over time . Yeah , now we don't do the intro until the second segment of the podcast . Yes , we always have our intro . We just had our vibe check , our ridiculous banter . We got a vibe check and then we do the intro to the podcast . People don't even know what they're listening to until they're at least 15 minutes in .
Speaker 1I like it because it's cinematic , right , Like it's the opening scene of a movie . He's dragging a body behind him . Why is he dragging a body ? Who is the body ? What is it ? He's in a gas station . What gas station ? Why ? How can one drag a body into a gas station ? What is this ? 20 minutes go by , you forget that you haven't seen the title card . Then , like bam , he gets shot in the head and the blood goes on the wall behind him and it's like El Diablo . Oh yeah , that's the movie I'm watching .
Speaker 2Is that exactly what just happened here ? Yeah , el Diablo . Okay , fair enough , I can get with the cinematic vibe . I don't know if that works with podcasting , but I'm here for it . Who cares man ?
Speaker 1There's no rules . We're the podcast . That could have been an email . We make our own rules here . We don't even follow our own segment order . We don't have consistency . No , we have vibes , even follow our own segment order . We don't have consistency . No , we have vibes and emotions and flow as humans should .
Speaker 2Outside of the corporate world . We don't stick by your stupid program management plan for your water-wagile product that you're building SaaS implementation . We don't follow any of that crap .
Speaker 1We go by the wind , we go by the river .
Speaker 2This is non-corporate . This is corporate rebels .
Speaker 1Corporate strategy we don't fire people , we hire them again . We hire them twice . Double your salary for bad performance . Welcome back , it's a corporate strategy .
Speaker 2The podcast is on email .
Speaker 1I'm Bruce I'm clark , I'm not doing that intro song twice .
Speaker 2I refuse , I will not . That would be way too much work for us to edit this podcast now I'm gonna do it twice .
Speaker 1I will , I'll figure it out .
Speaker 2Yeah , I think it'll be worth it now . Now that you said it , I think I like that vibe .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think it really needs to become a recurring bit on this episode , only this episode .
Speaker 2Never again . Maybe 2025 is our rebel era . We just go mean . You know we get mean , we get evil . We start calling people out . Yeah , maybe that's our year , it'd be bad the year of mean .
Speaker 1Oh , bad strategy .
Speaker 2Bad strategy .
Speaker 1Bad strategy . Bad strategy BS the year of BS .
Speaker 2The year of BS and everything we do . We just talk about the worst thing you could possibly do in a corporate setting . No more positive vibes . Only negative vibes for 2025 .
Speaker 1You know what you should do . You should put arsenic in your water cooler . Have a lot of fun this year with your coworkers .
Speaker 2You know , when someone disrespects you in a meeting , just go up , keep your backhand strong and slap them across the face , Right across the straight .
Speaker 1Make sure you're wearing some rings with jewels in them . So when you get that backhand across , you cut the lip , the cheek , the nose .
Speaker 2Cut as much skin as you possibly can . As you're walking down that cubicle aisle , just start unplugging people's stuff . Doesn't matter if they're there or not , just unplug stuff , just start pulling things out of their sockets . Also , turn everybody's little desk warmers up to high . Burn that building down immediately . Yeah .
Speaker 1Yeah , and you tell them , you say hey , corporate strategy sent me , this is some .
Speaker 2BS . Hey , buy some stickers and slap them on everything you can and just let them know we were there . That's our tell .
Speaker 1That's our tell , that's our sign Right in the center of their monitor . So even when they take it off there's like that sticky residue and the monitor's ruined .
Speaker 2It's the most evil thing I've ever heard Slap a sticker in the middle of someone's monitor .
Speaker 1I like how we started with killing people and you know , the monitor is somehow the worst one .
Speaker 2Can you imagine trying to peel that off ? That would just be terrible . Speaking of , yeah , speak of what we're talking about right now New year , new us , yeah .
Speaker 2That's what our topic's about today new year , new us yeah , that's what our topic's about today . Oh , is it ? How do we prepare for the new year , for 2025 ? It is just your natural tipping point into I'm going to pivot to something different . This is that time of year . It doesn't have to be on new year's we talked about this last year . It doesn't have to be on new year's that you make these changes . But new year's is a good time to say I'm going to reflect . I had some time off . I'm going to reflect . I had some time off . I'm going to change something for the next year . I'm going to come up with some dare I say it , resolutions , and I figured that's what we should talk about today . What do we do to get prepared for the new year ?
Speaker 1Does it have to be work-related ?
Speaker 2No , why not ? Why not ? It can be personal why , why ? Not we don't have any words . We already established this .
Speaker 1We're baddies this year . We're bad strategy . You're not going to learn any corporate tips in this podcast anymore . I don't have any corporate resolutions and I like I mean , if anything , my corporate resolution is to like get through the nightmare and work less . Really , figure out a way to delegate more work less . Spread the wealth , not carry the burden . I don't want to carry the burden I'm going to help you out with this .
Speaker 2I'm going to get your brain moving .
Speaker 1I feel like you need this I'm going to get your brain moving . Let's start with the easy .
Speaker 2I'm going to get the easy stuff , so then your brain starts chugging and then I know you're going to get the energy . You need to come up with something , anything for the people . All right , small stuff . The first thing I'm going to do I need to reset up my emails folder structure of how I archive and put everything away , and I need to set up new inbox rules , because I've been looking at my inbox and a lot of that crap I don't need to care about at all and I just need to set up auto archiving into whatever folder it needs to go , so I never have to look at it unless I need it . You don't keep inbox zero . I do , for the most part , listen our friend , our friend of the podcast . He's on the book , he's crossing his arms . He's taught me how to be inbox zero because getting things done , yes , the viewers cannot .
Speaker 1listeners cannot see because they're not viewers . Obviously , the eyes roll to the back of my head . So why do you need to do this if you already have inbox ?
Speaker 2zero . So I try to get to inbox here . The problem is I still have to process those emails every single time . It has to go through my brain of like , oh yeah , this is like one of those stupid auto generated workplace . This is what's happened in the workplace emails that I get every single week . Do I get any value out of those ? No , but every single week I have to go and I have to throw that thing in the folder of things I don't care about . I need to set up an inbox rule , take 10 seconds and just auto-forward that thing so it never has to process in my brain again .
Speaker 1You're lucky or you're unlucky . See , this is a startup benefit . I don't have this problem . All I get is real email . Every email I get is an email that is meant for me to respond to . That is the joy of startup .
Speaker 2It is beautiful Because I can tell you probably 60 , no , maybe not that high . 40% of my emails are just crap that I don't even need to care , I don't even need to care .
Speaker 1Oh , that's terrible . Yeah , I forgot 40% . I , yeah , I forgot I forgot corporate does that ? That sucks .
Speaker 2Like I've been off for like 10 days . No , yeah , like seven days at this point . You know how many emails I probably have , how many Hundreds , hundreds of emails probably .
Speaker 1I don't even want to know . You know how many emails I have right now . I mean , it's only since Christmas , yesterday and today .
Speaker 2How many ? I don't want to know . You , I don't want to know . You did not just say single digit , for I hate you . I hate you so much I legit probably have hundreds of email . I'm pulling it up . I'm pulling it up as we're talking about this so I can cry . But no , no , no , this is a small thing . I think it's important . The second small thing I'll give you clear out your desktop . Get rid of all those stupid screenshots you took that you haven't looked at in months . Dump your downloads folder and , for God's sake , restart your computer . You know how many people just don't ever restart their computer . There's like thousands of tabs open . That is crazy . Talk , clean up people . You don't do this like every week . No , I do . I don't clean my desktop , though , do you ? In your downloads folder , my ?
Speaker 1desktop is clean what ?
Speaker 2are you talking about ? I have zero icons on my desk your time for that ?
Speaker 1what do you think I do during meetings ? My trash bin is empty . My downloads I only keep like the most recent month and I delete everything before that . What is wrong with you ? Why do you have no organization in ?
Speaker 2your life , clark . Listen , my personal desktop is so clean my work desktop there ain't no time to clean that up . I snap a picture , I send it .
Speaker 1I don't know where it goes . After that , I have that beautiful forest full of sequoias . That's all I see on my desktop . That's my personal desktop .
Speaker 2I'm seeing it right now my work desktop absolute dumpster fire . You should also anything on your email account 657 .
Speaker 1What is wrong with you ? What is wrong with everything about you ? You disgust me . You're a disgusting individual listen .
Speaker 2I know this is not just me . I know there are thousands of people listening to this that feel the exact same way I do , and I'm giving them tips . I just got shivers .
Speaker 1I got shivers . I got shivers down my spine . The prospect of , like all the extra crap that I would have to do if I didn't just take care of this stuff myself on the weekly .
Speaker 2You would Well . The fact that you don't have to go through 657 emails right now and you've got four . That saves you a lot of time .
Speaker 1On average , I get about , I'd say , 70 emails a day . So I do have to respond to about 70 emails created by people , not by weird machines that you seem to have an issue with , but I do . Yeah , I just get it done . I get to quote that idiot on the cover of that book . I get things done because I I am freaking bruce .
Speaker 2That's why that's why , god bruce , god bruce , please iuce your tips . All right , what else you got ? Do you do anything but ?
Speaker 1you did not just help me with your resolutions , because now I'm just like no resolutions we're not to resolutions yet .
Speaker 2These are just tasks that need to be done to kick off the new year . Now what's the resolution ?
Speaker 1give me a pro tip of how you make the time to do this stuff do it during meetings , like do it , do it during the wasted time of your day . As soon as , as soon as , like my eyes glaze over , I'm like , oh well , I'm just going to clean out my inbox right now . I'm going to , I'm going to clear up my trash bin . I'm going to get rid of the downloads folder . I'm going to organize my one drive . I'm gonna make sure all of my documents are in the document folder . All folder , all my presentations are in a presentation folder . That's what you do . That's what you do during a meeting . You don't actually pay attention .
Speaker 2Do you change your folder structure every year for your emails or your documents ?
Speaker 1No , I've already got that worked out , yeah .
Effective File Organization Strategies
Speaker 1I think the important thing is you've got to create an archive folder because there are some things that don't belong in your working folders but you might need in the future for historic reasons , like I keep copies of old messaging , old presentations , that if I'm , if I know like we're gonna do a totally new revision on this thing , I'm gonna throw it in the archive . And the great thing about mac is because the search is so good . If I ever need it again , I can find it just by searching archive . But because it's flat file structure , I don't really , I just chuck it in there , it's gone , no problem , it's nice . Yeah , I agree . Yeah , video , I keep around . Any video I make I only keep around for a month because I figure after a month it's useless . So I just delete it and just take my space that's really good .
Speaker 2so I , um , I structure all my files by project and then I try to archive those projects every year . I name my files on projects , do you ? You have everything like ? The first part of that is the name of the project .
Speaker 1Yeah , that way I can search for it , cause I know it'll be in the documents folder and if I search , launch white paper . Well , there it is Fantastic .
Speaker 2Launch white paper . How do you do it ? Do you underscore and then the name of the document ?
Speaker 1Nah , I don't need to . Yeah , I can just use spaces . It's Mac . Mac is best and , in all honesty , even better than that is everything is stored in OneDrive , which I then also store in a Jira ticket , which is we have basically a link to the OneDrive file in the Jira ticket , so even if I can't find it on my desktop , I can go to Jira find the ticket , because that's all organized by project Smart . I like that Organization Key . Yeah .
Speaker 2You lose everything if you're not organized .
Speaker 2See , I've got a pretty good structure but projects just get out of hand . Like every year projects change . I mean every year I'm managing like 20-something odd projects , exchange I mean every year I'm managing like 20 , 20 something odd projects , so like it grows pretty drastically . And then there's presentations around that project . There's , you know , documentation we're putting together . There's product requirement documents , there's all this kind of stuff , uh data that we've kind of collected and reports that we've done for reporting out to partners or customers , whatever it might be . And yeah , it just gets out of hand . So like I got to go through and I just got to reorganize and be like , okay , things are changing . Next year , projects are changing , team is changing slightly and bringing someone new onto my team . So I need to restructure my file organization , like my email , to a way that better supports that structure and now's the perfect time to do it going into the new year .
Speaker 1I mean , the good thing is , if you use my archive strategy , you can literally just grab everything , throw it in an archive , start fresh and just work forward from there and then move things from the archive if you need them it's kind of like that's the two ways , and I'm curious which one you are .
Speaker 2I think you just said it . It's like you can either create things as you need them , like when it comes up , you're like , okay , now I'm going to create this and like that's that , this is when I need it , or you can try to have the wherewithal to like , plan it and say like , okay , I generally know this is what I'll need . I'll throw things in there when it comes up . I think I'm the . I'm the latter . I like to say I'm going to try to set up that structure of the general domains of things . We things will fit into this structure .
Speaker 1I'm a little bit of both . So I'll start with a plan , because I know , you know , given my years of marketing , now it's like I'm going to have a documents folder , I'm going to have a video folder , I'm going to have a slide deck folder , I'm gonna have a PDF folder . So , like these are the things I know , uh , what I you know what , have a blogs folder now where I keep all of my blogs , because I just created enough of those that it was not worth keeping them with the documents . So you have an initial plan and then , ad hoc , add things in as things grow beyond my level of comfort and control . But yeah , I think both work better than choosing one or the other .
Speaker 2I like it Makes sense . You kind of got to try things like I did not use it all when I first started in corporate , so if you're a fresher , you probably just throw everything in that downloads folder and then you're like , oh shoot , like trying to find anything takes a lot of time . That's typically when you , when you need to look for something , if you're struggling to find something , like when you hit a pain point , is when you should be like OK , maybe I should do something about this . So the next time I need to do this it's not as painful . And so I think that's where these tips come in . It's like , if you're looking for that project , document , that presentation , whatever , if you were to name it with the actual project , be much easier to find everything in relation to that project .
Speaker 1So that could be a really good tip of saying now it's not going to take me 25 minutes to find the presentation that I built around this six months ago . I can give you even one more pro strat tip from Bruce , the organization's banger . The real MVP way to do this is not to do it yourself but to get your organization to buy into it and have a shared repository for files and documents , and that's something we're working on right now is we have one , but it wasn't logically organized . So now we're going back through and we're logically organizing it and that's where all the masters are kept . Like , yeah , I have my personal repository , which is just like if I need something quick on the fly , but if I know I need the latest , best master version of something , I go to this repository and just pull it from there .
Speaker 2That's smart . How do you get other people to buy into that ?
Speaker 1Uh , just well , in marketing . Marketing , because there's so much content that needs to be managed all the time , it quickly becomes a problem if you don't have one , and we had one , it just wasn't very good . So now we're basically saying , okay , like what have we learned ? How do we either pivot using what we have or just start fresh ? And I think in some regards we just like , okay , whatever , blow it away , we'll start over . And others like , oh , we can like okay , whatever , blow it away , we'll start over . And others are like , oh , we can just move some things around and make it fit , but it's organization buy-in , yeah it's smart .
Speaker 2Yeah , I think about it . We use the Atlassian suite of tools and the one thing that we have is we have a wiki .
Speaker 1So with our .
Speaker 2Confluence tool . I'm getting a coffee refill right here . I see it . You can't see it , but I'm getting coffee refill live . This is service . This is service . My wife just stepped in for a little coffee refill and she waved to Bruce live .
Speaker 1I got a live wave . It was awesome .
Speaker 2I don't think I've ever gotten a live coffee refill in the middle of a podcast . This is amazing . I'm a little bit jealous .
Speaker 1You know what this is a New Year's resolution .
Speaker 2I need to tell my wife to come in here every time we're podcasting . Give me a little coffee up , a little coffee up .
Speaker 1I love that . I have nothing to have brought to me is the problem . Maybe some water , some agua , some agua , yeah , fair enough . A hint of orange . Oh , with your water . Yeah , yes , I love the mio squirts . You know I'm talking about squirts .
Speaker 2Yeah , they're great . They're great .
Speaker 2Well , I don't love the squirts , but I know what you're talking about with the mio flavor yeah you know I'm talking about getting those squirts boy , as I'm saying confluence , we've got a confluence , we do not use it well , we do not use it well at all and our conf conference is a freaking nightmare
Document Organization Strategies and Version Control
Speaker 2. So I go on there and I'm just like it is so hard to find anything . So I debated , like as a leader , do I set up our product team and our domains into a wiki and like just get my team to like buy in and to be like hey , when you write your products , requirements , documents , your briefs , your documents , like put it all on the wiki in this general format . It's a lot harder in a big organization because there's just so many different steps and processing teams involved . Like it's really hard to set that up broadly . So everyone just kind of goes rogue .
Speaker 2But I think we're doing an okay job . You know , about two weeks ago I started doing this with my team of like okay , let's set up the basics . You know we know for every single project that you're a product owner for . You know you're going to have a at least a parent level page for that . Underneath that you should put in the initial kind of requirements and business , stakeholder sign off , customer sign off , whatever it is to like give the backing as to why we're doing it , what your KPIs were , all that good stuff , and just use this as kind of like your working folder rather than your desktop , your downloads folder , whatever . Store it all here , just in case you win the lottery you leave . We need to have some reference to all the work that you're doing , because we'd be happy for you , but if we don't have access to any of that stuff , it's going to be a nightmare for us .
Speaker 1So that's part of what we're doing . I met with a confluent or an atlassian sales engineer because I've got a connection at atlassian . He's a . He's my mentor , one of my besties , love the dude and I was like , look , we're having a lot of trouble with confluence , we're rocking it with jira , but like I can't figure out how to make confluence organized and get people to interact with it . So he hooked me up with a conversation with uh of their best sales engineers , talked to him for an hour . I walked away with so much knowledge that's like helped us in this process . So like one of the things that really surprised me was , like he suggested actually include everything in a single space .
Speaker 1The trick is use restrictions wisely , like create groups , so like your team would be a group and maybe you get a carve out of that space . That's , you know Clark's team's projects that only your restricted group can see and have access to . And then you have a public version Clark's team's projects that everyone can see but only your team can edit , and you create a promotional model . So in your sandbox that only your team can see , you can it . Can be the wild freaking West in there , but then box that only your team can see , you can , it can be the wild fricking West in there , but then the things you're like this should be shared broadly . You promote it up into the visible place where anyone can see it , but they can't edit it and like just making these little changes to like view , edit , not see , not not see but like not view . You shouldn't say not see , cause on on audio people , just , you know , assume it the Third Reich and we don't want that . So not view permissions . It's good , it's great . It's great Not viewability . That's smart actually .
Speaker 2Yeah , I like that . Yeah , to unsee , to restrict viewing access .
Speaker 1See . Not as easy to say as not see . I'm just saying it's way easier .
Speaker 2It's a way easier connotation , so we should just stay away from using that version .
Speaker 1Yeah , that version's easy , but it doesn't work in radio .
Speaker 2Don't always do what's easiest in life . Team people , group . I like it . Okay , that's a really good tip . I think that's what we should start doing is be like hey , you've got your draft area , us as a team can see this , we can peer review this , we can take a look together , kind of have little workshops , collaborative area to work in , and then anything that we're like , hey , this is it , or we submitted something because it's good enough to go through the process with our engineering teams , whatever that should be published , to be like hey , this is where you can always find it Something , it Something now that everything's live , something we struggle with a little bit is like version control around it , like document .
Speaker 2Of course , you know , with any product that evolves , whatever we're working on for our customers , for our business partners , whatever it's going to evolve over time . And I think what you struggle with with like things like PowerPoint or whatever it's like , how do you , how do you kind of maintain those different versions ? So give the people a tip , bruce , how do you do it ? Because I'm sure marketing is you're updating documents much more frequent than we would be in the product engineering world .
Speaker 1So part of the strategy here is to not do it yourself , and I'll explain what I mean by that . Right Like , I have my personal OneDrive . We talked about how that's organized . We have our Confluence and on the confluence that's where the final versions that sales or anyone can get access to and use . But in the middle is the creative team . So when I create a Word document that I say this is ready to go , I pass it on to the creative team . They manage the versions because they have the final version of the document created . So every white paper I make , they have in their little creative library 27 PDFs of all the different versions that we've got .
Speaker 1I have the hard copy of the white paper . It's a version in word or in one drive . So I can go back as many revisions as I want on that thing . But like I said before a lot of times , I will say this is going to be a totally new version of the document , so I'm going to throw the old one in the archive . I call it , you know , like 2024 white paper for event I was doing and like , as long as it has a good name on it and it's in the archive , if I ever need it again , I can quickly search and find for it . But I let creative deal with the versions of the final or the the old final versions , and then confluence always just has the latest version and it's my job to make sure that it has the latest version . But it's a little bit of a split responsibility . It works really well . No one's ever not finding the thing they're looking for .
Speaker 2That's really smart . Yeah , I struggle , you know , being an engineer and you probably think about this too . The versioning with like a source control tool like GitHub , gitlab , whatever you use it just makes so much logical sense . It's like , oh , I haven't been here since I committed my change , you know , three weeks ago and then basically you can see the lineage of every single commit that's happened on top of your live code base and so everybody else who's contributing . You're like , oh , there's been like 36 commits since the last time I worked in this file .
Speaker 2Let's like quickly review those changes and it's really easy because you can kind of see like the comment history , but it's all the same source code . So you kind of pull that source code down , you work on it , you make your changes in a branch , you merge that back into the master branch and like everybody can see the lineage . I feel like it's not that easy with documents . It's still hard and it feels like such an easy problem to solve . It's like you have a working model that works with code . Why can't you just pull that same thing ? It's like document revisions and maybe I just suck at using the office tools , but I feel like there's already approved pattern for how you solve this .
Speaker 1The interesting thing we're going to try next year I've got one of my team members looking into this right now is using Bitbucket for documents . Oh yeah , apparently you can do it . I don't know how good it is , so I cannot give this tip . You know assuredly , but there are people who use Bitbucket in conjunction with Confluence for document versioning , because it's all Atlassian at the end of the day , so you know , atlassian .
Speaker 1The one great thing about them is it doesn't matter what thing you're in , the Jira ticket works and Confluence works in Bitbucket and vice versa , so you can basically link sideways all of these things together and they'll always communicate and work inside or integrate with each other . So we're thinking like what if we put our documents in Bitbucket , have it , manage the version of the PDF and then have a Bitbucket link , be what's shared in Confluence that way , like if we wanted to go back to a previous version of a white paper or whatever . Be what's shared in Confluence that way , if we wanted to go back to a previous version of a white paper or whatever you could , you could do it , but we haven't tested it yet .
Personal Growth and Productivity Initiatives
Speaker 1This is still a work in progress . We need access and permissions .
Speaker 2I do like that though . Yeah , maybe that's something that we've got to explore . More is seeing if you can actually use your tools , because everything's in the cloud . There is revision history . Because everything's in the cloud , like there is revision history , you can see the changes that are made . Maybe we just need to figure out how to use that better so it works more like a source control system for code , and then you'll have that logical reference of being like I don't need to name version 22 of the document by putting at the end of the document Now there's 22 versions floating out there somewhere in the ether and then there's a V , final or whatever at the end , whatever at the end . It's like instead , just use your actual tools and you can look at the revisions and the change log that's happened . It's really smart . I don't know if it's in the tool itself or it's with something like Bitbucket , but I like that tip there's got to be a better way .
Speaker 1We'll try it out , we'll report it . I'll report back once he's given it a real thorough rundown .
Speaker 2I like it , something that let's go to a personal one we'll do . We probably only have time for one more because we got . We got what do you mean ? We got as a mirror , as a corporate , that we desperately need to tackle . So , given we've already been talking for a while , let's do one personal one .
Speaker 2Each one thing for me is I want to reduce my decision fatigue , like all the things that I you know you have to make small , micro decisions on every single day . It's like how do you take some of the thinking out of those things ? So that way you can just focus on the important stuff and spend your energy focusing on that . So two things I'm going to try to do more of is when I'm doing email . I want to be doing something active . I just gave you the thumbs up . Thanks , apple . I want to be doing something active , like being on the treadmill or something like that , so I can just take care of not thinking emails but all that stupid fluff up there are things that can take less than two minutes to reply to . It's like I should just be able to walk on a treadmill and do that at the same time , so that way I can be healthy . And the second thing I think I'm going to do on a personal note is I have fitness goals , so obviously I try to exercise every single day . I've done that for the last year pretty consistently much more consistent than in 2023 . And the way that I made it consistent for myself . I said every single time when I wake up , that's the first thing I'm going to do , I'm not going to hop to the computer , I'm not going to go do anything else . I'm going to focus on working out consistently every single day , and that's been awesome for my health .
Speaker 2I think the decision fatigue . Part of that , though , is I have I try to follow like a routine for different body parts , so I spread the load and the soreness , you know , basically gives me time to recover between days , and I make it too complicated , because if I skip a day or do something different now , I have to think about that next day , like , well , how do I adjust my whole entire schedule so that I can do these different exercises next time ? And so I think what I need to do this year is just say , on day I do this body part , like short back and shoulders or something , is this day Always . If it's Thursday , that's the day I go and do that , no matter what sequence I'm in , no matter what what it is Cause . That way I don't mess up the sequence and I have to think about like , oh , what did I work out two days ago ? And I can just keep that you lose muscle gain .
Speaker 1doesn't it take like 14 days ? I don't know , there's something where , yeah , like 14 days Maybe that's what you need to keep in the back of your mind is like , oh , I missed leg day , but I only really missed leg day if I miss it two weeks in a row , right ? So then it's just like , yeah , you just keep on the consistent schedule and you just acknowledge the fact . No-transcript .
Speaker 2Because you kind of like worry about oh yeah , to your point , I missed that day and now my whole week I have to like readjust because I got to do it today and then everything else gets shifts back . But it just requires like a lot of thinking and not that it's hard thinking , but all those micro thinking moments add up and then your whole entire schedule is different every single week because you now have shifted it a day or two days or whatever . So if you're just consistent , you're like this is the day I do legs , you'll always do legs that day , no matter what you missed before . You always know it's consistent and your body will just be in that habit .
Speaker 1That's my personal , I would like to say that I would be able to row more this year because during the summer man I was on it .
Speaker 2I was rowing four times a week .
Speaker 1Yeah , like I did so many I would say I probably did , like I don't know at least a hundred kilometers during the summer months this year .
Speaker 1Like it was good , it was a really good run . And then , once I got to October and things really started to ramp up , I had morning meetings and I couldn't , I couldn't row anymore , cause it's like either I wake up earlier and if I wake up early then I'm just going to feel like crap , cause now I'm off my sleep schedule or I just don't row and unfortunately , like not row was the choice that I made a lot towards the end of the year and it's it's out of my control . I'd like to say that I would like to do it . Unfortunately , like this is a personal problem , I can't exercise for like six hours after I eat , so once I've eaten , it's it , it's done . I will get sick if I try to do anything physical and it sucks . But I've just acknowledged it and I hope that , like I said in the beginning , through delegation and by giving people projects and ownership that I don't have to deal with anymore , I can free up some of that time back for me .
Speaker 2I think you know it's interesting though , I did that all in 2023 , kind of going back , maybe giving it to you . I did that all in 2023 . I was like , well , I got to get this thing done . So did that all in 2023 . I was like , well , I got to get this thing done . So , like I'm going to sacrifice my exercise time to do this thing instead , so then I can have a jumpstart of the day . I am way more productive now that I'm consistently working out more in the morning , other than like waiting or sacrificing that Because I noticed at the end of the week I was just like my brain just fried and getting that , you know , adrenaline going in your body , sweating a little bit . It gives you more energy , and so that's the sacrifice I made in 2023 . And my health was sacrificed because of it . And then in 2024 , I've been much more consistent . I am just as productive , if not even more productive , because I've said mandatory 45 minutes a day . I'm exercising , no matter what .
Speaker 1Yeah , I don't think I have that option , but I'm glad it worked for you . It worked for me beautifully . I was worried about it . I was like that's my .
Speaker 2I'm so productive in that 45 minutes Like , why would I give that up ? But that consistency is maybe much more productive overall .
Speaker 1In 2024 , I set out to learn Japanese and I mean I've done Duolingo for 270 something days , so it's been . It's been good . I'm going to continue to do that . I think what I'd like to do is actually when I was a lad . When I was a young boy , I did a lot of Ableton , live music production and made songs and music .
Speaker 1I would like to get back into that , but I would actually like to do it the right way , and to do that , I think I need to learn piano and keyboard . So I'm not committing to it , it's just something I've been kicking around in the back of my mind . It's like I could learn piano , I could play , I'm very musically gifted and like I don't just say that . It's like , oh , look at me , I'm like I am very musically gifted and I waste my talent and I don't do anything with it . So I kind of want to just commit by a really expensive keyboards and it's like , oh , now I'm locked in , now I have to learn the scales , the arpeggios , all the things , and maybe that'll be my thing , maybe that'll be my personal thing this year . I need to actually find maybe request to the listeners Do you have a recommended course to go and learn
Musical Theory, Corporate Strategy, and Confessions
Speaker 1.
Speaker 1I don't want to learn songs , I want to learn theory so that I can then create my own songs , cause I hate playing other people's music . I want to play my own music , so I need to learn like chords , scales , all of the things , how it lays out in a piano and like anything tied to theory , strategy and , like you know , dexterity . That's what I need to learn , and if I can learn that , then I can get back to actually producing my own music again . But yeah , tips , give me tips . I need tips for those of you that are musically inclined .
Speaker 2You made me think of . Like Jojo's episode kind of inspired me . It's like and maybe you it's you gotta do the stuff you're passionate about , like she does so much and like I can't even imagine doing all these super cool things . But I would love to pick one of those up and it probably gives you more energy after you do it . It gives you more satisfaction , makes you happier overall . I think that's a great personal goal 2025 .
Speaker 1We'll see . We'll see if I choose to do it or not . It's a soft commit , soft commit . Yeah , I have nothing but soft commits because all my life is hard commits . Fair enough .
Speaker 2All right , so we did those . We need to do our yearly retrospective in an upcoming episode . So we've got a corporate strategy raw . We've got to do our yearly retrospective like we do , and we'll see what comes in 2025 . It's going to be a fun year for corporate strategy . We're producing an album apparently speaking of music , so you committed us to .
Speaker 1Yeah , you committed ambient sounds . Yeah , if you don't remember that , I , I was thinking , I was actually thinking about that , like literally a couple days ago . I was like I should get us a nice , um , portable microphone , like so I don't have to drag the laptop , whatever I can like , carry the mic with us and just let's get 10 minutes ambient . All right , let's do a corporate strategy raw and then we'll just we'll take the ambient , we'll loop it . This is like I can do audio production , like I know what I'm doing . I could do it . I can make a pretty cool , I can make a pretty cool thing , but , uh , yeah , I love it , just need time and money , which , yeah I have time and money have .
Speaker 1I have one thing I just don't have the other Yet .
Speaker 2Yeah , there's still time .
Speaker 1Yeah , I need to quit my job . I need to get to the point where I have enough money that I can just quit my job , and then I'll have time and money .
Speaker 2Exactly . Yeah , I'll do both . Yeah , hopefully not far off . Corporate strategy to the moon .
Speaker 1Yes , let's make it happen . I mean , mean , that would be , that would be the dream is getting corporate strategy to the point that we could self suffice us , and then , well , it wouldn't be useful then , because then we wouldn't be working in corporate anymore and we wouldn't have any good tips anymore .
Speaker 2so that's the problem , isn't it shoot ? We didn't think about the long game here did we ?
Speaker 1we'll pivot , we'll pivot , we'll turn corporate strategy into a lifestyle pod and we'll get really good at lifestyle things you know , like how to make your kitchen look lit lit , how to do blueberry pie I like that corporate strategy flips into cooking podcast .
Speaker 2Yeah , somehow retains all listeners get ready .
Speaker 12027 , it's gonna happen . It's to be a fun year . Kitchen strategies with Bruce and Clark . Hey , you ready for you ready for ? Is it me or ?
Speaker 2is it corporate ?
Speaker 1I'm ready , we've been sitting on this for so long .
Speaker 1If you're a newer listener or you're just a listener that forgets what we do on the show , which I don't blame you .
Speaker 1We have this channel on our discord called is it me or is it corporate , and you can do a forward slash confession in that channel and it will anonymize what you say and our job is to read your anonymous post and to decide is it a you problem or is it a corporate problem ?
Speaker 1And anonymous confession number eight says I work for a larger tech company as a product manager . I know it's not realistic to be quote the CEO of your product end quote , but I did understand that it's my role to create the strategy around my product , build business cases , work with customers and stakeholders and ultimately , work with the teams to build it . Lately , over the last two years , there has been an influx of hiring which basically seems to be taking all those responsibilities away from my role . I feel like I'm just stuck doing the delivery of the product . We have a new team that does product strategy , looking three to five years out , a new team that works with stakeholders to build business cases around the efforts and even a team that wants to engage with customers , stakeholders , to understand their needs . Is it me or is it Corporate ?
Speaker 2I'm crying , this sucks .
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 2This sucks . Does it suck ? Yeah , it depends . It depends . It depends on your CAC , so people that don't know , just in case we've had a lot of new people . Actually , we probably should talk about this in an upcoming revitalized episode .
Speaker 2It's your workplace happiness score , culture , autonomy , challenge , compensation those are kind of the four different vectors that you can rate and everybody basically thrives off a certain conjunction of those to say are they happy where they're working ? And if you use that scale you can say one to 10 , one to five . Whatever you can say , I actually value certain parts of that more than others . So for me personally and I think I said this after Jojo commented on this one for me personally it's challenge and it's autonomy , and those are the two things I value most in a job , because that's what keeps me engaged , that's what makes me feel like I'm still learning and that's what ultimately kind of gives me the value that I think I provide . And even if I was getting paid a lot of money , if I wasn't challenged , I probably wouldn't stick around because it would be kind of boring for me . And I'm not not that I hate culture , but culture for me is just not as important as autonomy and challenge Like those are my top two . Yeah , screw who needs culture . Let the world burn baddies 2025 .
Speaker 2But this one , for me , sucks because it feels like you stepped in with an understanding of your job and whether you know you guys are scaling or whatever . The core aspects of being a product manager are kind of being taken away and diversified to other groups to like focus on that sole thing . You're responsible for strategy . It looks like you're responsible for business cases and then somebody still has to work with development teams to build this stuff . So you kind of just have to turn into that person , just an order taker . You take in what comes in , you work with teams to get it done , you ship it out the door , you move to the next thing rather than truly owning it from soup to nuts , as the corporate world would say .
Speaker 1Dang it , clark , so gross . I hate it when you say that .
Speaker 2It's the worst , so gross . I hate it when you say that it's the worst . That that's my take on it . This one , this one sucks , feels like corporate . I guess it depends how you look at it though .
Speaker 1So so I'll give you my take , because I I'm the opposite . It is corporate , it's very corporate
Corporate Responsibility and Accountability
Speaker 1. This is great . I wish this would happen to me . I wish someone would come in and say hey , bruce , that thing you spent the last 20 of your week working on we've hired someone to do that for you . I'd be like thank fricking all the gods , let's go . You want to hire some more people to take work off my plate ? And people would be like but , bruce , they're going to fire your ass . No , they're not . No , they're not . I'm still the one who holds all the knowledge . They're still going to come to me and ask me for all the things . Now , maybe eventually I will push myself into obsolescence , but that's a next year problem . Like , currently , these new people , they still have to work through me to get their success .
Speaker 1I would say this is an opportunity for you to become a manager of managers . If you can play this right , because you've got all these new teams taking work off your plate , doing things that you used to do , become their roadblock , become in their way , be the corporate cycle that you must fulfill , be the baddie right . Like say , hey , you can't , you can't go , move on ahead without my approval . On this , like , I still get the final say create your own structure and you know . Then you become the problem but also the solution . And most corporate I mean they're so stupid they won't know any better . They won't know that you're literally just a , you know , a block in the machine that stops work from progressing . You could be that most important key piece . Without this uh , anonymous confessor in the chain , nothing gets done . It's mostly just because you're a roadblock , but like , no one's going to say that they're not going to figure that out . That's my take .
Speaker 2That's a hot take . That's a hot take . I mean , I agree with what you're saying . It's like there are certain aspects of this like maybe the business case where it's like do you really need to like , put together the ROI on a project down to the granulars ? Do you just let another team just tackle that for you ? But at the end of the day , in product management , it's like you've got to own the strategy . Maybe it's a role-specific issue . I don't know what you think about this . For you , if someone just said hey , bruce , this is what you're writing about , don't think about it , just deliver , just go write about this , even if you have nothing to do with it , you can't decide . They just tell you hey , we built the business case , it's there . We talked to stakeholders , it's there . We talked to customers , it's what they want .
Speaker 1And then what if you massively like , wow , that doesn't make any sense , you're just gonna do it . And it's like , yeah , whatever they told me to do it , I've been , I've been there and you do ? You kind of do , just have to do it unless you have some way with the organization . You just you , just do it . I've gotten to the point now where when people tell me , hey , can you go do thing , I don't even really think about it . Like , unless , unless the project is of my own creation , I don't really think about it because I have too much to think about already . Like I don't need to think is this going to land ? Is this going to play ? Well , how are people going to receive this ? Because one I assume the person who's telling me to do the thing has already gone through that process . Like there's a trust there . Like , okay , you want me to do this . You know I'm good at doing this . Give me what you want outline , and I will go create the final content .
Speaker 1Now , that outline is not good , not my job , not my problem , right ? Like it is my job to take what you've given me and make it look good . That's marketing . If I , I might be reading through this , but this is the stupidest crap I've ever read in my life . But not my job , not my problem . Truly , I am not the one who talks to the end user about like the thing that I might be writing about .
Speaker 1So , like , I do think that there is , and people just a quick aside people get really mad when you say not my job , not my problem , because there's this mentality that , well , you work here , you're an employee , you're responsible . Yes , absolutely , and I'm going to do my damned bestest to make this thing shine , even if I completely disagree with the content inside or I think it's stupid or bad . What is not my job is someone else's job . Like I'm not going to cross corporate lines because my product manager is an idiot and doesn't know , like , how to actually go do customer research and do that for him . That is truly their job , not mine .
Speaker 1Like I think that people use that phrase improperly where a lot of times it is technically their job and they just don't want to do it . But like you have to trust people , you have to let people make their own mistakes and let them fail . If they're the wrong fit for the role , then it needs to be pointed back to them . It's like yeah , no , I did the best I could with this . I mean , if you want to know where the content went wrong , it came from this , this originator over here . Like that's the way you play that game , because it is not your job , it is your problem to make it nice , or however , you do your your part to it . But like I don't know , I'm a big believer in letting things break and letting them fail .
Speaker 2Yeah I was gonna ? I was gonna say is what you're saying is what could happen if you're the final let's say you're the last mile of this . I mean , I'm using corporate terms left and right today . If you're the final mile of this project , you deliver it , and then your CEO comes to you like Bruce , this thing was a turd . Why in the world did you think this was a good idea ? How do you kind of battle that to be like , hey , I didn't come up with the idea . I was told this was what customers wanted and I just put a marketing plan around it and I think we did a pretty good job with what we were given . Is that what you say ? Yeah , here's the thing .
Speaker 1If the product is the problem . I mean , you have to know what you deliver , right ? So , like , let's say , I did market a ginormous turd . Well , did the marketing work ? Yeah , so everyone clicked on it , everyone looked at it , everyone downloaded it , all our customers bought it . I did a great job . I would say , like , I mean , if that's what happened then , I would say the marketing was fantastic . Now they all hate the product . That's not my responsibility .
Speaker 1I did exactly what I was supposed to do , which is hype the crap out of this thing , get everyone interested . Like if someone came to me and said , hey , bruce , we have a real problem on our hands . Everyone hates this thing that you marketed , I'd be like well , I mean , what my responsibility is at the end of the day is to get everyone to adopt this thing . What is outside of my control , that I don't have any awareness on how can I , is what actually goes on inside of the product . And if it is truly a turd , I think you know who you need to have a conversation with . Like , I kind of hate that society has come up with the phrase snitches , get stitches , because it's stupid . You should not take the brunt of responsibility for someone else's problem right . Like you should be able to say I did 120% on this to make it as good as I possibly could .
Speaker 1I didn't know it was a turd . How can I ? I'm not a customer . At the end of the day , I'm not a person who uses the product , I'm a person who markets the product . Like you should absolutely be able to throw someone under the bus with data and point and like say , hey , they told me it was good . I trust them to do their job . They own the product . After all , the person you need to be having a conversation with is them and I think if it comes back to you , it's like well , we're going to , we're going to blame you or , sadly , with this , you work for a terrible company and you should leave . Like they're just protecting a crappy individual at that point and they're just looking to pin the blame on someone and unfortunately , marketing does get the blame pinned on them quite a lot . But you have to be able to have a real and rational conversation and say look , here's what I did . It was tremendous success . Here's what they did Clearly a tremendous failure . Why is the problem stopping with me ? Defend yourself .
Speaker 2Yeah , those are great tips and I think everything you just said makes a ton of sense . It's like you should clarify and understand what is my role and how am I measured for success or failure and how can I do the best with this thing to meet those objectives or my KPIs or whatever it is . So , yeah , if it's in your case like clicks or engagement or adoption of the product , like you can do that . But then if they adopt the product and everyone hates it and dumps on it , it's like , hey , I got people in , I did my job , that was my role in this , in this puzzle piece that is the corporate world or our product , and so I think in that case , like it's , that's .
Speaker 2A really good tip is , if you thought , like for this confession , if you thought that your role was to create strategy , build business cases , work with customers , stakeholders , and now you see other people doing those things without you , you should probably go talk to your boss and be like , hey , I thought it was my responsibility to do this thing . Do I not need to be doing this Because these people are doing it instead ? And then you can clarify your role and responsibility so that way you can set yourself up for success and then you can be like okay , to be very clear , my role is to take that in from the teams and just execute with engineering teams on what the product is based on what ?
Speaker 2was done before me and they're like , yes , you need to be on time and on budget . And then it's like , okay , cool , I understand that we're going to do it .
Speaker 1And then you kind of clarified with your boss of what , what your responsibility is and generally , you will get a sense of the turdiness of the situation long before the customers do . And again , snitches do not get stitches . Snitches protect themselves . If you feel that someone is doing wrong and poorly and it might affect your performance , get ahead of it Now . Raise the flag , raise the awareness . Do it in writing . So , whether it's a Slack message or an email to say , hey , I'm just have some concerns about X , y and Z to your manager , can you , can we look into this and make sure that I'm just you know I'm being overly paranoid about the quality of the situation . I want to make sure that everything works out just the way it should Like . Raise the flag that way . So if there is that moment where oh , this is a giant dumpster fire , hey . Well , in writing . Multiple times I brought up the fact that I had concerns about this and raised it to my leadership and what , like you know , like , cover your ass any chance you get C-Y-A .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think that's great that way , if you do get fired , you can lawyer up .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah , yeah , keep those documents . I agree , because if you raise those concerns like , hey , I know , this was the strategy that was handed to me . Our customers can't even do X right now . Do you really think they want this feature Y ? That's super advanced . On top of things , they don't even
Navigating Workplace Communication and Feedback
Speaker 2know how to do .
Speaker 2Now I would probably go in a different direction , but if you think this is important , then I'll make sure I get this delivered on time and on budget . And you kind of just state that . You stated your concern . You gave a recommendation of saying I think we should focus on this instead . So you did your part by saying not just throwing a complaint out there . You said this is more important . So obviously you put some thought into what your perspective would be and then you said listen , it's your call . If you tell me we should go do this , I'll go do it , and so in that case you've covered all your bases . Like you voiced your concerns , bruce said you made a recommendation , you didn't just complain to the wind without any solutions . And then you said I am part of the team , I'm a team player , I'll do it and I'll disagree and commit if that's what we think is best for the company . In those cases , you've covered all your bounds . This .
Speaker 1You've covered all your bounds . This is the way . This is the way you not only get fired , but like , maybe even sway this into a promotion for yourself in the future , because you're the one who was ringing the bell long before the problem arised . You know the one iceberg ahead . Be that person .
Speaker 2Yeah , keep it positive . Though , when you give the recommendation , keep it positive and being like , well , I think we should do this instead . Or I'm seeing some you know opportunity here . I think this would be a better place to go . Don't be like , yeah , this thing's crap and it's never going to work and you know there's actually no better ideas , because the product just sucks in general . Don't do that because that's not going to look good . But if you frame it in a positive way , saying like I think this might be more important , then you're kind of making yourself look humble and you're also being positive about it , which will reflect good on you and , to Bruce's point , could parlay you into a nice little promotion .
Speaker 1Ooh , parlay , nice word . Yeah , I would always say offer alternatives or data . That's how you complain Offer an alternative or bring data . You have one of two options . There's no other way to complain . Or raise the flag . Love it , crushed it . We have a what do you mean ? Another game we play on the podcast . So again , you're going to want to get in our discord to play these games you can go to . Is it me as a corporate channel ? You can go to what do you mean channel ? You can get to our discord by going to the link tree in the show notes .
Speaker 1This meme came from dan r , one of our favorite people , and we , when we play what do you mean ? We describe the meme that gets posted with our excuse me , with our mouth parts , which mine are not functioning at the moment . So allow me to tell you a story , a tale of two gentlemen at a desk . One comes up happy-faced , hey , johnson , working hard or hardly working , and Johnson says actually and I'm going to self-censor here because I don't want this episode to get flagged as explicit because actually I'm looking at explicit adult material and they both stand and pause and look .
Speaker 1And then johnson turns to the boss and he says so the first one , and what he means to say , is they work for a company that produces explicit adult material and johnson's job every day is to go through , perform the edits , make sure that everything is in place , make sure that the website is able to surface and show this material with efficacy , not have bandwidth issues . Johnson works very hard , day in , day out and you know his boss coming in giving him this rub . Even though they work at this place that produces this kind of material , like there's still work that needs to get done , so Johnson's boss really needs to lay off . That's what I'm taking away from this Good old Johnson .
Speaker 2Nicely done , nicely done . I don't know , on the bottom , if this is the name of the thing , but it is . Is it just this particular clip of the comic ?
Speaker 1No , it comes from a cyanide and happiness web comic which , if you know , you know , uh , they all kind of run this line of of humor . So you , that's just a . It's a , it's a webcom . It's been around for ages . It's been around since you were in diapers , clark I'm still in diapers well , I was , good , I was I . I really I held back . I was gonna say something and then I didn't restrain yourself for 2025 . I appreciate 25 year of bad strategy and restraint oh , that is a balance .
Speaker 2You're gonna have to work , work hard to keep .
Speaker 1It sure is . It sure is . So again , if you want to have restraints put on you , the way to do that is to go into our show notes , click the link tree , check out our swag store . You can get a baby onesie with a corporate strategy logo on it . You can join our discord where all the cool peeps hang . All of our guests who have been on the show hang out in the discord . So just you join our discord where all the cool peeps hang . All of our guests who have been on the show hang out in the discord . So just you know . Fyi , if you want to talk to people smarter than us , that's where you go . Hey , you know what else you can do . Clark in that little link tree full of links . Yeah , you can support the show . Oh , good idea . Yeah , and why would anyone want to do that clark ? Why would they want to support the show ?
Speaker 2well , one we have been ad free , like all year , is that right ?
Speaker 1Almost free for like about six months now .
Speaker 2So yeah , pretty long time , so you guys haven't listened to a single really crummy ad enter into your eardrums . We love you sponsors , but yeah , if you don't support us , those ads will come back . We have one awesome donor who contributed about six months ago and gave us a nice little donation which has made this show ad free . So if you like that , you don't want ads to return in 2025 , buy us a coffee please .
Speaker 1We are like NPR and you know maybe that's a heavy lift of a sentence for me to say but uh , you know , cause we don't actually do research and we don't actually , you know , put time and effort and care into anything we do and we're not a reputable journalist to get output . But we are like NPR in that we are not funded in any way , shape or form beyond our listeners . So be a good listener and help support the show , and if you can't support financially , then we ask that you support us with your favor . Share it with your friends or leave a nice review on your podcast platform of choice , and we would be ever so grateful to you for doing that Please do Happy .
Speaker 1Hanukkah , that's true . Well , technically , I think today or yesterday is the last day of Hanukkah , so lucky them . They get eight days . We get one day that you had to suffer through . I had to , you know just wake up . Let's go , let's go , you know , let's end this thing . It's been an hour . It's been an hour Are we still here .
Speaker 1We will see y'all next week at the Mickey D's for a corporate strategy , raw New Year's raw strategy . Maybe we'll do like . Maybe maybe we'll do the retrospective into mickey d's . You know live and in person we can look each other in the eye and retrospect over some mcgriddles . On what ?
Speaker 2we're gonna do next year . Can we bring champagne ? Is that legal ?
Speaker 1I don't think you can bring outside drinks , but I think we could hit up the sprite . It's we could try yeah , we could just you know maybe do a little Sprite lemonade mix , or maybe some Sprite Hi-C . Ooh , I like that .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1I'm going to dunk my McGriddle in the Sprite Hi-C combo . Please don't , that is blasphemous . I'm going to do it , but until then , until the Duncanage happens , I'm Bruce and I'm Clark and you're on mute . We will see you next week at Corporate Strategy Raw dot biz .
