SPEAKER_04: 0:03

You said get him here. I did say get him in here, but there's there's something I was about I was about to say it, and I didn't say it, and I probably shouldn't say it. Now that he's in here.

SPEAKER_01: 0:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_05: 0:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_04: 0:16

But if people really want to know and they're really interested, just tell us in the Discord, and I'll tell you.

SPEAKER_02: 0:25

What wh why would we uh not share this content with Craig?

SPEAKER_05: 0:30

It has to do with animals. And it's about the circle of life. And he could be sensitive to that. Because he is a little beaver.

SPEAKER_04: 0:44

And I'm worried if we say it out loud. Yeah, I don't want to talk birds and the bees with Craig on a podcast, you know?

SPEAKER_02: 0:52

Oh you know, I saw two squirrels going to town in my tree a couple years ago.

SPEAKER_04: 0:59

Yeah, it's falling to town. You know, usually they say, you know, springtime babies come around, so fall, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 1:07

It was I was just like, dang, you're just like doing it out in the open. Like literally on the lowest branch for everyone to see, two little squirrels just having at it. It's like, I don't know, I gotta walk through here.

SPEAKER_04: 1:20

I I mean Craig could be a squirrel. We never considered that possibility.

SPEAKER_02: 1:25

He's got I mean, it's either a bear face or a uh a beaver face. If you're not in the Discord, which you can join by going to the church, the link tree in your show notes, you can you can join and you can message Craig and see uh what kind of animal is he? We only have his profile pick.

SPEAKER_04: 1:40

Yeah, he's kind of like cropped to a circle, so like the tips of his ears are cropped off and they could be pointed. They look like they should be wrapped, but you never know. They could be pointed.

SPEAKER_03: 1:52

Little Craig.

SPEAKER_04: 1:53

Little Craiggy.

SPEAKER_03: 1:55

Little Craig.

SPEAKER_04: 1:56

Well, I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:58

Hey, welcome back to Corporate Strategy Podcast. No, copy I talk now. Welcome back to Corpus Strategy. Podcast could have been an email. I'm broke. I'm broke. Now you can talk. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_04: 2:11

Well, I was just gonna say I appreciate you. Because you're you're playing injured. You're injured. Like your most important muscle that's necessary to yeah, that's necessary to be like productive on this podcast is injured, and you're playing through it. That's what kind of player you are.

SPEAKER_02: 2:32

I am. I actually uh literally 10 minutes ago in preparation for this, which is the best preparation I've ever done for an episode, I went downstairs and I gargled. I didn't gargle, I I swished salt water around my mouth wound. I have like a stress ulcer on my lip, and it's literally it's right next to my lower incisor. So every time I talk, I feel it and it hurts, and I think it's a little infected. I don't know how a mouth wound gets infected, but like let me, I've I've had these. I usually get them when I'm really stressed. Surprise. And uh I've had them ever since I was a child, but I've never had one that's as bad as this one. It is so freaking painful. Every bite I take of food makes me want to cry. Uh, talking makes me want to cry, um, breathing makes me want to cry. So I'm here for you. What's up?

SPEAKER_04: 3:25

I'm just so impressed. I mean, the the perseverance you have, the will to play through being injured, to bring this episode to the people. That's that's commendable. Gotta do it. It's very respectable. I gotta do it.

SPEAKER_02: 3:37

I I you know, there's there is no telling what the future holds for me. And this this could very well become my my new full-time job is being here. So I've got to be made again, you know.

SPEAKER_04: 3:49

So it's kind of funny. It's like those little things, like your nose being stuffed at night, or like your throat hurting a little bit, you forget how much you appreciate not having those things. Like you're like, wow, I miss being able to breathe through my nose and not be in pain. And like how much it affects the quality of life is is just crazy.

SPEAKER_05: 4:13

Yeah, I it really is.

SPEAKER_02: 4:16

Um it's it's kind of funny. I feel like face stuff in general is face stuff, feet stuff. Like you can get a cut on your hand and you'll be fine. Even if you like work with your hands, I feel like a good band-aid, some neosporin, spit on it, like you'll be good to go. But like if you have a stuffy nose, an earache, you know, eye, eye scratch, mouth wound, you're just like inoperable. I like everything is much harder than it was prior to that. You get a foot wound, toe wound, like we've talked about. We everyone loves talking about toe wounds on this podcast. We know you love it, that's why we talk about it. That's another one. It's just like it just makes everything in your life very difficult with this one small wound.

SPEAKER_04: 5:07

You take it for granted. You take it for granted having a normal mouth and no ulcer in it, and you just take it for granted because then everything, every word you say, every step you take, everything you eat, I'll be watching you. It'll be hurting you. I'll be it'll be hurting you. Yes. That's yes.

SPEAKER_02: 5:24

It'll be making me want to cry. So then I appreciate you playing through it. Yeah. I'm gonna play through it. But you're you've got the topic for the day, which is fortunate, because I think you're much smarter than me, so you can probably talk more than me on this.

SPEAKER_04: 5:39

Well, it's kind of funny because I can hear the little bit of a list because you're trying to like compensate for it. Yeah, you're trying to favor that side. So this is good. My topic, so I can talk through it. You know, it's funny, you mentioned like a hand, a hand thing, being able to like play through the hand thing, even if you have a physical job. Not that I have a physical job, I'm on a keyboard all the time. But I was slicing an onion for dinner the other night. And no, I actually onions never make me cry. I don't know what it is. Someone told me, someone told me this. Someone told me in the last couple years, like five or ten years ago, they started bioengineering onions so that way it doesn't make people cry. That's true. So if you order from like a farmer's market, you'll actually cry. If you buy from a store, you might not.

SPEAKER_02: 6:28

This is nonsense. This person told you.

SPEAKER_04: 6:30

I want to compare them. I'm gonna I'm gonna go to a farmer's market, I'm gonna buy one, and then I'm gonna buy one from a store, and we're gonna compare it side by side, and I'm gonna find out if I cry or not.

SPEAKER_05: 6:38

We might have to live stream it.

SPEAKER_00: 6:43

On genetically modified cry. Let's see here. Great googling.

SPEAKER_02: 6:52

There is no commonly available genetically modified tearless onion. Interesting. Researchers have explored the concept to suppress the enzyme that produces the tear-inducing compound. Uh, tearless onions like sunyans are the result of create convenient con uh conventional crossbreeding over many years to create milder varieties. So the onion is milder itself, but it's not like an anti-fried onion. And how dare you how dare you mild an onion?

SPEAKER_04: 7:20

Yeah, why would you make an onion more?

SPEAKER_02: 7:21

You mild that, you're that's just like removing the hot from hot sauce. Oh, yeah, would you like some uh we removed the hot from hot sauce? That's just sauce. Would you like that? Does that sound delicious to you?

SPEAKER_04: 7:32

Yeah, so okay, so maybe maybe a myth. We don't know. I'll have to I'll have to test it. We'll find out. But going back to my pinky story, I was slicing into the onion and I was stupid and not paying attention, and I sliced right, you can probably see it. I sliced right in my pinky. Oh wow, that's now it's now it's much better, but it's like right on the tip where you like hit the caps lock and the shift and stuff like that. So I'm a keyboard warrior, and when I'm hitting that, it hurt a little bit. But to your point, I put a band-aid on and I was totally fine. I could continue doing my job.

SPEAKER_02: 8:03

Clark looks uh when he showed me his hand just now on the camera, he looks uh to give you a paint you a picture, just like those uh skeleton pirates from Pirates of the Caribbean the movie. It's crazy. Like I don't know how you're not in the ER. That that bone is just hanging off. The skin is there is no skin, it's just pure bone.

SPEAKER_04: 8:20

It's actually more efficient. You're it's more efficient. You know, when you're typing, there's no cartilage in the way. I mean you hear that click. You no longer need a mechanical keyboard, you just get that nice satisfying click from your bone going straight to button.

SPEAKER_02: 8:33

You know, if I could be a skeleton man, I would.

SPEAKER_04: 8:37

But why would you why would you do it?

SPEAKER_02: 8:41

So much of my problems, I think, are caused by skin and muscle. Like, if if you're just like, hey, I'm gonna cast a magical spell on you, and you can be a skeleton man, you'll still be able to do all the things you can do today, but you're skeleton man. You have no skin, you have no muscle, you're just bones. Bones and eyes and a tongue. I'd be like, you know what? Let's go. I am down to skill a clown.

SPEAKER_05: 9:04

I don't know how I feel about that. Because then you wouldn't have any like totally sensitivity. I'd wear a really cool hat. Is that is that it? You just would wear a really cool hat? Yeah, yeah, that was it.

SPEAKER_04: 9:21

Then you have no touch sensitivity. Granted, maybe then you don't care about hot or cold, but you lose like the sensation of feeling and touch.

SPEAKER_02: 9:30

But think about my hand. I could punch someone and they'd be getting hit by a bone.

SPEAKER_04: 9:36

You could also take things like out of the oven without ever having to worry about like heat. Just gravitude. Straight on bone.

SPEAKER_02: 9:43

Yeah. And I mean if I'm a magic I'm a magical enchanted skeleton man, you know, maybe maybe I can choose when I want touch.

SPEAKER_00: 9:51

So I can like I could be like, hi, yes, now it's time for the touch sensation. And then I I turn it on, and then it's like, oh no I'm going to go back to not being touch, I'll be able to do that.

SPEAKER_02: 10:04

I think this I don't know why you turned a Dracula during this, but well, I think it's part of being a skeleton man. I I do think that is a part of the voice. Just the agreement. Yeah. I mean, there, you know, I've I no longer have my vocal cords are exposed. Well, they're not, I mean, I don't even how does that even work? Yeah, I don't know. Because all that is like kind of held in by your skin and your muscles and ligaments. The skeleton really doesn't it's just it's just neck bone at that point. Spinal cord.

SPEAKER_00: 10:31

Oh, spinal cord of my body. I don't know why you turned like Russian in this.

SPEAKER_05: 10:39

I mean, you're a skeleton. That's why.

SPEAKER_04: 10:43

Well, you know, you you're actually leading really well into the topic.

SPEAKER_05: 10:48

I knew I would.

SPEAKER_04: 10:49

Speaking about speaking about like parts of the body and you your segment things between the skin and the bones and you know the muscles, the spinal cord, the ligaments, they all have a job, right? And together they form your body, you they form you, and you are the ultimate product of your body and your parts. Would you say so? Get out of town. No, you wouldn't. Okay. Well, for everyone else, yes. This is insane to me. This is insane. The topic today, we're talking about team structures, team structures and trying to give some people light, at least to how we work and have worked in the past in our different capacities, which we thought might be interesting to share because every company I've been to, and probably the same for you, have been slightly different. And how you could slice and dice work or structure teams differently to be more effective, to go after that intrinsic motivation, autonomous, fully cross-capable team that's able to accomplish whatever objectives in front of them. They can be self-independent and be able to complete all their work. The dream, the dream team structure. You ready to dive in? I'm ready. So maybe we should talk a little bit about how do our teams work today. So, me in product management, we're kind of abstracted a little bit from the team, but everywhere I've worked has been Agile. We were waterfall at the company you and I worked together, and then we switched over to Agile. Yeah, Big Corp. We were we were waterfall, then Wagile, as some people like to call it. And even now I'm still in like an agile kind of waterfall-ish type organization. Every company does something different. And we use Safe, so scaled agile framework for enterprise. So we do like quarterly planning and go in program increments and slice things into sprints, and then we basically try to slot in releases alongside those program increments. And so it is waterfall planning, but trying to be agile in the mix. So we have scrum teams that fit into what we call value streams, which ideally would be like business-oriented functions, to be like, we're supporting the sales department or something like that. And that's our value stream. We operate all the technology that supports sales or marketing or whatever the groups, the operations team, the support team, whatever it is. But really, we kind of just like fudge together value streams and products together, and it's just a really weird value stream structure. The idea was that we could operate in a vertical towards a business objective of some site or of some sort. And I think the reality of that isn't necessarily true, but within that value stream, everybody has scrum teams. These scrum teams have developers, so they have software engineers, they have a product owner, which is where my team comes in, they have a scrum master that's like the project manager of the group, and then they have quality assurance people that sit as part of the team. There also are some shared functions, which kind of are in the team, but they're also like a shared service, and that's the microservices teams and user experience teams that kind of come into the team and they help for a little while, and then depending on the work, they might bow out and do something else and then come back. Is it the most effective structure? Definitely not in some cases. And I'll I'll talk through all the pros and the cons, but that's a little bit of how my teams are structured is scrum teams working on a value stream that work in a broader organization, and that's essentially how everything's broken down.

SPEAKER_02: 14:27

I just want to stop before we move on and say if an alien downloaded this podcast and just listened to the last five minutes of what you said. Waterfall, wagile, safe, value streams, scum masters, they would think that you're some kind of aquatic explorer. Uh you used every single business transformation word I think imaginable in your in your description just then, which is interesting because I feel like it's also an indicator in like how teams are organized and planned for by executive leadership today. Because like I I think I followed you, but it got kind of hairy and complicated at the end, right? Like your structure is a little insane to me. Um, by comparison, I work on the marketing team. Uh, I am the director of our solutions marketing, which means that I just take care of the broader storytelling and marketing framework for anything that's not entirely product or entirely technical. It's kind of just larger, big picture storytelling. And my team, my team is uh all various forms of solutions marketers. And it's it's kind of weird because my team is almost a kind of a catch-all in a way. They they don't exactly, I would say none of them are purely marketing trained, and neither am I for that regard. None of them have like a degree in marketing, they all come from different walks of life, either technical or no, they're all technical. But uh four of them, they report to me. I report to the VP of product marketing, and he reports to the CMO. It's a very understandable structure. The way our team sort of expands horizontally out into the org is basically we are on tap to help anyone and everyone at any time of the day with whatever they need that we can produce to help them close the deal, do the demo, you name it, we do it. Um you guys work. But it's funny because I work for a startup and you work for a big company, and it's it's very interesting, like just hearing your description gives me a little bit of like the shakes. Just because I I'm like, how do you how do you actually how do you have accountability when your team is so frickin' deep? Right? Like it is it is deep, it is kind of mysterious in a lot of ways. Like it's not easily understandable. You'd have to look at I I feel like with your team you'd need a sheet, you need a diagram of of the layout of the makeup of your organization. Where with mine it's very much just like kind of Christmas tree, right? It's just leader to leader to leader to team.

SPEAKER_04: 17:25

How do you guys work? Are you in like a do you do scrum for your team? And is it just your team, or do you have like other cross-functional groups that sit within those teams, like in the day-to-day?

SPEAKER_02: 17:38

I would say we're kind of Kanban. But uh, we're really just what's the priority? What's the project? Manage your own stuff your way you will the way you want to. If there's a problem, we'll talk about it.

SPEAKER_04: 17:51

Got it. So are you guys like, do you have a daily stand-up? Do you meet every day and like talk about okay? So you don't do any of that. It's just all your team's work is on a board and they move it through as individual contributors piece by piece by piece. Yep, as they need to. Is it aligned like strategically with broader objectives? Like, do they work on things that overlap, I guess, and support or in support of each other?

SPEAKER_05: 18:15

I work for a startup. So yes. No.

SPEAKER_04: 18:22

Oh, so they are too they're totally different, the stuff they work on.

SPEAKER_02: 18:26

Yeah, no, I mean, everyone, everyone on my team is working on something different. Uh, if they need something from the other. And this is the other thing, too, is at a startup, you wear many hats. And as people say that and they're like, oh yeah, you wear like three hats. No, it's like you wear like 20 hats. So anyone on my team can be working on any number of projects, and everyone just knows to go to them or who to go to when they need something. But we kind of just live and die by the deadlines and due dates for the project we're working on and getting it there.

SPEAKER_04: 18:58

Yeah, it makes sense.

SPEAKER_02: 18:59

But there is no like strategic, I wouldn't say there's a strategic alignment or anything. It's it's really like what's product come up with recently. Okay, we're gonna do a launch on that. Let's go build something on that and just go do it. Um, we very much are in charge of our own fate in that regard.

SPEAKER_04: 19:16

Yeah, it's interesting to what you said earlier about like accountability. I think the two major differences in the organizations we work for. Your team sells software, hardware. Like you guys are directly in the technology business. My job is a supporting function of a larger entertainment, hospitality, um, that kind of industry. So, like our software. Yeah, some people might say hospitamin. But our teams, like, we don't directly make money from the things we build. We make money through the broader services and things that our company provides, if that makes sense. So I think that's like the major difference, is to your point, like you guys can directly correlate value to the thing that goes out. In my teams, it's like we support things that are happening for a broader company, and some of those things are like technology driven. You know, of course, with like AI, it's like that changes how our consumers interact with us. So we're kind of at the forefront of that, but we're not responsible for like driving revenue or launching the product itself, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02: 20:33

Yeah, yeah, it does. Well, and I think like that's that's a big thing about the the larger the organization, the less immediate ownership any one individual or team has. Where in my org, I own what I own, and my team doesn't necessarily own what I own, they own their own thing. I have a video person, I have a technical writer, I have a community owner, I have a field CTO. Each of them does their own thing that I basically just kind of HR manage and help unblock them when they need it. But like I couldn't do their job, they couldn't do my job, they own their slice, I own my slice. No one else does what we do. If it's not getting done, it's because we're not doing it and all eyes are on us.

SPEAKER_04: 21:18

Yeah, it's at the startup at your scale. That I was gonna mention that too of like if you lose the video person, video doesn't happen. He's gone. We have no video. Someone either has to like step in and like try to pull something together in time for whatever you need, but more likely than not, there's no redundancy. There's no one who can back you up. But at my scale in my company, the whole point is that there's tons of redundancy. So, like, if we lose a team tomorrow, we'll figure it out because we could have another team, you know, step in and kind of take over the work because there's such niche skill sets that have developed to support the operating business. So it's like, yeah, I do, you know, Kubernetes, I manage our Kubernetes, you know, connections and instances. That's all I do every single day. Nothing else. Whenever people have things with Kubernetes, I support them. That's it. Or it's like, I develop in Mongo or a Mongo database or MongoDB instance for like this one product, and that's all I'll ever do is a MongoDB instance. I'm the MongoDB person, but there's three of us. So if I ever go down, we're fine.

SPEAKER_02: 22:22

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it it's interesting because I feel like just thinking back to our time at BigCorp, we were so replaceable in that regard. Like we were there was always someone who could do our job for us if we couldn't do it. Uh, there's someone who could do the team's job if they couldn't do it. Um, that is not the case for me anymore, which is just it's a different place to be. I think it also helps me, just saying that out loud, unpack some of the challenges that I've been having, is there is no one who can replace us. So it does make things harder when there is crunch and time to get things done. It's just there's no one's gonna do your job or help you do your job except for you.

SPEAKER_04: 22:57

Yeah, and it's it's so interesting to think about like how that affects your working behavior because that it's a lot of pressure on you. You you are the guy. If there's ever a need for that thing in the product solutions marketing, it's go to Bruce. There's no one else, it's Bruce. Yep. And so like you're the you are the bottleneck or the hinge point to do those things. When in a giant corp, to your point, like the it's supposed to be risk adverse to support the products, and you're supposed to have redundancy so that way the teams can truly be successful. But in your case, it's more of like you just project management work, and the people who do the things are the only people who can do the things. So in reality, they can't really work together on things, they just have to work independently on things. And as you guys scale, you'll probably be able to bring other people in that also do those things, and then they can collaborate and you start kind of getting the you know the teams orchestrated that way, but right now you guys just aren't in a state to do that where your company is. Yeah. No, no, yeah, yeah, it's pretty crazy. So it's it's like I think about pros and cons of that. Pros if you're like a type A person and you love a lot of responsibility and you want a lot of visibility, like startups are where you're gonna learn a ton because you're just gonna have to wear all those hats you talked about earlier, and it's gonna be non-stop. You're always gonna be that person that they're depending on. But cons, it's like you can't really just fade into the background. Because everyone will know. Like, oh, the video's not getting done, the video guy's not doing it. But in a team, you can kind of like, and it was apparent to me because I went to an internal team conference that everybody was at this week. And when I was there, I was like, oh my goodness, I forget how big this company is sometimes. And like I was talking to people and like asking what they're doing. I'm like, that's right. Like, you're part of the organization. You are this tiny little ant that makes up the organization. You work on this super, super niche thing, and like you'll you could be gone tomorrow and no one would have any idea.

SPEAKER_02: 24:49

I kind of like there is a there is a comfort to be had in that though. You know, like there really is because you can take a week off and you'll you'll be fine, you know. Like, yeah, you'll have your work when you come back, but like chances are your team will be able to help you and get you back to a point of of functionality. But like on the on the small business side, you you take a week off, you come back to a nightmare. It's just a guarantee. And it's it's it's more difficult. And I I've I think we've talked about this before in regards to me. Just it is it's almost better I don't take time off. Or like I don't take long swaths of time off. Like I take days or day, not week. Because anytime I do that, the amount of additional work it creates and churn is the juice ain't worth the squeeze. I come back more stressed uh than I was when I left. So it yeah, it's it's definitely something that I don't miss the big corp culture, but dang, do I miss the feeling of being an ant. I think being an ant is a nice thing sometimes.

SPEAKER_04: 25:52

It's well just knowing just knowing you have your team to back you up, you have redundancy, so it's like you're not a critical point. Not that your work isn't important, but like if you go away, if your team goes away, the company's gonna figure it out. They're gonna be just fine. Like because they're big enough to absorb that risk. And like to your point, that is like really it's almost I I think in like decades of your career, it's like in your 20s, you probably want to be doing like the startup thing where it's like you're learning a ton, you're figuring out what you really want to do, you're becoming the person that does that thing. So like your skill set is like really, really deep in that thing. Versus at Big Corp, it's like your skill set is gonna be so niche and so specific. And hopefully you pick the right in software engineering programming language. Otherwise, if you try to get another job, everyone's gonna be like, You're a Rust developer. Oh, you don't know garbled exactly. Like, you don't you don't know how to work in like JavaScript? And like, no, I only use C sharp for my whole career, and it's like, well, yeah, now your your worth in the world is like 60k a year, maybe because nobody's using that anymore. Yeah, it's so messed up. It's so messed up. I think pros of doing that later in life is like you kind of got it figured out. Like you're a chief software engineer, and your scope is like just managing the MongoDB instance for your company. And it's like that's all I do. I have redundancy, I can go take time off. I've been here for 20 years, like I can just hang out, I don't need to do anything, I can just fade to the background.

SPEAKER_01: 27:23

That database ain't going nowhere. Yeah, I'm going fishing, but that database ain't going nowhere.

SPEAKER_04: 27:29

The team's got it. And so, like, I think back to Mid Corp when we were there and the people that were there for like 30 years that we felt like didn't do anything.

SPEAKER_05: 27:35

Maybe they just had it figured out.

SPEAKER_02: 27:45

You're telling me the people I hated are actually the people I should have role modeled after. That's an interesting take, Clark. That really is. I didn't expect you to blow my mind so bigly today.

SPEAKER_04: 27:57

Uh no, granted, they've put decades in versus you just starting, but they're making a lot of money just to do very little and be responsible for very little and do go out and do whatever they want to do, you know, because they chose the right technology and the thing and they're just hanging out, having a good time. They're not worried about their job. They're not responsible for all this stuff. If they disappear tomorrow, it's fine.

SPEAKER_05: 28:24

I'm gonna quit. I feel like I broke you. I'm looking at your face.

SPEAKER_02: 28:29

I'm gonna quit my job. I'm gonna go be a SQL database engineer. Big Corp. I'm gonna go find the biggest, baddest corp, and I'm just gonna go be a SQL engineer and just write queries that Chat GPT and then the system is slow. The system is so slow.

SPEAKER_04: 28:49

But you know, kind of going back to the topic, because maybe that's not true. I think if you have high aspirations, that's not the way to do it. But going back to like the team structure, and I'm curious because this will go to what you were what you were talking about. How much autonomy do you have? Like when you complete, if I'm the video guy, I complete a video, can my team just review that and we say, yeah, video's good, like publish it on the site? Or is there a lot of bottlenecks and like process you have to go through to get things approved?

unknown: 29:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 29:19

Bottlenecks processes approved.

SPEAKER_04: 29:21

It's the same for mine. It's like we have so many checks and balances. I don't think that's regardless of size of the company, right? Like that is always going to be there.

SPEAKER_02: 29:30

Well, you gotta think from a from a small company's perspective, because we're small, there that means that uh there's the opportunity for more people to get eyes on a thing. Right? Like, there is no process that dictates this. So like you could have the CEO, CMO, CPO all looking at a video you made, because one, they have time to do it. Uh, two, they have an investment. They want the company to be successful, so everything that goes out needs to look good. So, yeah, no, there there are definitely As many bottlenecks, if not more, than at Big Corp. Uh, I would say the previous marketing team I was on had about 50% less bottlenecks than I deal with today. Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_04: 30:11

Yeah. Because yeah, to your point, like just trusted.

SPEAKER_02: 30:15

At Big Corp, you're trusted. Yeah. Right. Like, I trust you to do a video. Your boss is going to review that, and they've been trusted to be the approver. Uh, you know, if there's a problem, we'll fix it down the road. But like, I think there's just a there's an inherent trust that comes from big corp. And I think a lot of it is because they are so big, it's kind of hard for them to mess up and fail. But when you're a small business, every single thing you do is an opportunity to turn away a valuable customer, which I think is less less of a risk out of Big Corp. Yeah, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_04: 30:48

And the the struggle with your with the startup way, like your bottlenecks are the chief, the people with C's, the C level. And their availability is very limited. And so, you know, they also are a huge bottleneck for you because they can't just be like, oh yeah, stamp approved, like a manager could on a team in Big Corp, right? Like a manager on a team, big corp, and say, Yeah, yeah, looks good, approved. Like you publish it. All set. It's interesting. Yeah, I feel like for my company, where we've really done ourselves in is we've made cross-dependencies on teams to launch things that are not within the immediate team. So we're a big corp, but like we're dependent on other teams to do anything. And so like we do our piece and we're like, well, we gotta wait for the database team to finish their thing, I guess. And we have no priority say over what they're doing. So we have to go to their meetings and try to influence them to do our thing, but they're overwhelmed, so they can't catch up on their things, and now we're just waiting. And then we go by and you're like, all right, we're still waiting. All right, let's escalate it to the to the big bosses, and hopefully they can do something about it. And like we're kind of powerless in that sense. And I've been reading, I mentioned this book because of the intrinsic motivation comment on the last episode, but I've been reading like team topologies about how the way you structure organizations should be around the way that the software is structured, which is a really interesting concept. But it's around like, yeah, if you're a software company and you build software, don't organize around your business functions, organize around the software and the architecture that needs to be deployed to make your teams actually independent so they can fully work on something and launch it, which is a really interesting concept because it's like you kind of lose the sight of the bigger value potentially. Yeah. But at least you're autonomous and you can react to things and be solely independent to actually do those things rather than oh, I'm waiting on Bruce's team, wait on this team, just sitting on my hands. Hopefully one day they'll get to it.

SPEAKER_02: 32:53

It's it's super weird to me because my company, I think this is pretty normal for a startup, you know, we'll we'll talk to the CPO and they'll tell us, hey, uh Bruce, we're gonna release these three features roughly in Q4 time frame, uh probably early Q4. So if you wanted to do a big marketing launch, like that's what you could do it on, you know, and then the the plan is kind of, well, we have a fuzzy date. I can at least start working on the material, you know. What are we gonna say, what are we gonna show, what are we gonna do, what do we need to release, like papers and things along, videos, demos, etc. Like I can start to build out that plan while checking in with the product and say, hey, do we have an actual date on these things now? Like, is it still fuzzy? And if it is, like I can say, okay, well, we'll just do a general launch and it'll it'll say, you know, coming soon kind of thing. Or if there's an actual date I could say, hey, coming on this day, we can tie it up with that. But like it's all done in parallel. It's it's very much a, hey, they're doing their thing, and I'm gonna trust them to get it out within a certain, you know, margin of error on their estimate, and we're doing our thing, and we're gonna try our best to get everything ready by that date within a certain margin of error. And you know, if not everything makes it, it just gets cut out. But like we're always moving towards this sort of combined deadline, and we'll make it work that way. But it it's frustrating when things change, right? And like, you know, you know, software, you know hardware. Things do change sometimes outside of our control. So uh in in the last case, you know, of something I was working on, something actually came off. And it was nice because I'm like, hey, this is one less thing for me to worry about for this. Like, this is a good problem to have, right? I mean, you know, obviously it makes things less interesting, but at the same time, like it it's nice in that regard. But in other times, it could be you you spend all this time building something, and then it's like, hey, we're not ready for this. This has to wait. So then you take it and you put it on the back burn, you're like, well, we gotta refocus and do this. Now it's a little bit of a crunch run to get there, but we'll figure it out. But that's that's just startup. That's the way to go.

SPEAKER_04: 35:01

Do you think if you flip that model and you said whoever it is, the product marketing team you're gonna have? I don't know who you would have for product markets. I don't know anything about product marketing. But you would put who knows what that is, it's gonna fade away and be replaced by AI anyway, so it's just a matter of time. What if fire me, please?

SPEAKER_05: 35:24

What if you were part of that embedded team? So I'm on the product team.

SPEAKER_04: 35:32

What if you were like daily stand-uping with the development team? So you're always in the loop on what updates are coming and what's changing. And small tweaks are making here or there. And that way you're just in reducing feedback loops and handovers, right? Because you're just like, I'm I'm always in the root loop, I don't have to check in. I'm part of the team.

SPEAKER_02: 35:53

So how do I work with like the larger marketing org, like demand generation, campaigns, web, creative? Like there's a lot of people that I work with day to day that are part of marketing. If I'm embedded with the product team, like how do I work with them?

SPEAKER_04: 36:10

Maybe that's part of the role. Maybe part of your role is to actually go do those things. Oh, hell no. Hell no. How does that work today?

SPEAKER_02: 36:19

You want to give me a second ulcer? It's making me think about it. How does that work today?

SPEAKER_04: 36:22

How do you guys interact with them?

SPEAKER_02: 36:26

With uh with the rest of the market. It's just a handoff. Yeah, like it there's there's handoffs, like okay, here's all of the here's all of the Lego bricks you need to go make yourself a campaign. We've agreed upon this. Go make your campaign, go do your emails, go do your nurtures, go do your first touches and all that. That's a that's a whole different ball game that like one, you wouldn't want me to do because I'm not trained for it, and I don't have that kind of mentality or expertise to execute it. But like, it really is its own thing, separate and apart from the product marketing work.

SPEAKER_04: 37:02

So you don't think you could take like a slice of each one of those things and put it on one combined team to do the development, the marketing, the quality assurance, the everything around it, and be fully autonomous to launch parts. Well, I guess in your state, like you guys only have a couple product offerings, so it probably doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_02: 37:23

It would be ginormously ugly and not very good because I'm not a creative person. Like I couldn't make the images and the colors and all that that are needed for like supplemental material. I'm not a I'm not a demand person, so like creating the emails, creating all of that, like yeah, I could do it, but it wouldn't be good. It wouldn't be nearly as effective as having dedicated resources for those things.

SPEAKER_04: 37:44

What if you did have those on the team itself? Would the team just become too big?

SPEAKER_02: 37:50

Yeah, because thinking about like how putting myself in the product side, right? So let's say I'm a developer. Why is there a freaking email marketer in our daily stand up? Like, do we need them here? Do we need to hear about the status of the emails they're creating for this product launch? Like, that seems unhelpful to the bigger thing.

SPEAKER_04: 38:13

But do you think it actually aligns you to the bigger thing better? Like you actually know the whole picture.

SPEAKER_02: 38:19

It would. It would, but I think it'd be incredibly intrusive for all of the actual products.

SPEAKER_04: 38:24

Yeah, it'd be it's almost like you have, I know we're just spitbowing here, so you know, it's just like thinking about the different team structures. I think that's the core issue that you're mentioning. It's there's too many different skill sets that you run into like the mythical man month issue where it's like, you know, you can't make a baby in one month with nine people. You know, that's that's just not how it works. And so there is even in software engineering like a limit, I forget what the law is called, but there's like a theoretical limit of how many people can actually work on things on a team productively before it's just like you're just wasting time. And then your stand-ups turn into like two hour-long sessions every single day because everybody's looking at everything. And the I think the the core piece of it is you have to you have more cognitive load. It's like now I'm trying to comprehend what Bruce is talking about in this email strategy, and like I don't need to care about that. I need to go write SQL queries. Developers shouldn't have to worry about that, yeah. Right. So it's like, even though it'd be awesome because you guys could be fully autonomous, make all the decisions within your team, have every single piece to like go to market with a new product, it's just it's almost impossible for you to handle all that and keep all that in your mind and not check out every single time the marketing team goes in for their stand-up that day. Because it's like I don't even need to care. Like, let me sign off.

SPEAKER_02: 39:40

I think it yeah, and I think it also it introduces another problem too, which is if if the marketing team knows every dirty little secret about the product team, that is going to color the way they write, think, and feel about like they're like, oh, I know that feature isn't very good, so I'm not gonna have that in my my email because I know oh, it's finicky. All I've heard about is how this might not work. But if you only hear from the product owner, hey, Bruce, these are the features, they're great, they're gonna deliver this value, go get them. I'm taking that to the email team. I've got my messaging all created. It's like, here you go, go create some emails, here's your message, go have fun. They're not gonna, they're not gonna say, Oh, well, remember that that one feature that didn't work? Should we write that in an email? No, they're gonna write it because they don't know that knowledge, right? Like, I think there is something about that uh obfuscation of information, and vice versa, right? You don't want your developers being like, hey, why aren't you creating emails about this dinky little security feature we made? It's like because no one cares. Like, literally, this does nothing for anybody. It's a checkbox. I spent my whole life on this. You're telling me that my work is a checkbox, like, and you're not gonna create an email around it. Like it it definitely you want to create lines where there is communication happening amongst the individuals that need to receive and give information, but you don't want to have that trickle down to the folks that actually go off and create right the thing.

SPEAKER_04: 41:07

It's almost like the separation that's a decision maker's the separation of concerns is important because they think differently, they act differently, and to your point, like that's why you have roles like the product owner to keep people away from the dirty behind the scenes, this is how the sausage is made conversations, because it will just make them trust it less. They'll be like, ooh, remember that thing had 75 bugs in the backlog. That's gonna be a nasty launch.

SPEAKER_02: 41:34

Yeah, yeah. And like you don't want your marketing people knowing.

SPEAKER_04: 41:38

Yeah, or your state, your end users, your customers, like you would never want to expose that to them, even though you theoretically could. So it's yeah, it's really interesting. Like it's almost like between the domains of like technology, marketing, ops, customer service, whatever support. Like there almost need to be those, if those are the verticals, you know, those are the things that need to have those clean lines.

SPEAKER_02: 42:02

Could you imagine if you had a sales rep in your daily stand-ups? Hey, where's this feat? You know, uh CorpEx really wants this feature. Why aren't you guys working on it? We are working on it. No, you need everyone, everyone needs to be working on this feature, or else Corpx is not gonna buy. Right. That's my status. Is I can't I can't close my deal. I'm not gonna be able to hit my quota unless you guys go make this feature. Like, what a nightmare. What an absolute nightmare that would be. Like, I think there's a reason why teams need to be separate and sheltered as much as they are. I would not change that. And I I wouldn't, I wouldn't even want to try the experiment.

SPEAKER_04: 42:41

Because I think that's dangerous terrifying. And like to your point, like the two different jobs require not to say it's always that clean of lines, but they require different personalities. And typically the engineers are introverts and they work well together because they act the same way and they understand each other and like they need focus time and not always be interrupted. But like the sales team, it's like highly collaborative. It's like, did you hear about this on the corporate side? Like, do you hear about this company? Like, what's going on with them? This person changed, like, oh, did you hear this nasty little secret that can help us get this deal? Like the dynamic is just so different between the groups.

SPEAKER_02: 43:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, I do think this is something that we I I rarely say this, but I think this is something that corporations actually get really right. The verticals of HR, sales, marketing, product, like I think those are good to uh finance legal what else. Security now has its own kind of slice, like security legal. When we make these slices, it's usually because something has happened that requires the slice to exist. Like the whole idea, I think security is a perfect example, like the GSO, the global security officer, and all that. That used to just be part of IT. Like, I think even when we started, we didn't have a GSO at our company. But now, good luck having a company that is like a big corp without a security office. Like it is mandatory you have that, and they need to be separate from your IT team. They communicate, they cross, they knowledge share, but they are not on the same team. You don't want the people who are monitoring and managing your your networks, your storage, your infrastructure to share the same workload as the ones who are ensuring about securing it all. And that's because there is a logical reason to separate those two. Uh I think when vertical slices exist, they're there for a reason, and we shouldn't we shouldn't break that. But I do think it gets tricky on the team front because it gets really interesting when you have multiple teams who do the same thing, right? Like, how does that cross correlation work?

SPEAKER_04: 44:55

Yeah. Yeah, to your point, like companies now have the the CISO, it's like the chief information security officer. Like to your point, like the GSO, the CISO, whatever you call it. But yeah, the reason that was born is because like the engineering organization or the product organization, their objective is to release the products to support the broader business.

SPEAKER_06: 45:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 45:12

And like that is in direct contradiction with sometimes creating secure and safe products because they are incentivized to say, okay, we didn't encrypt the data in transit, but it's encrypted at rest. So like that's fine. Like, whatever, we'll go live with that. And then, yeah, there's nobody to hold them accountable because they're like, well, sales team said they need this, like it's make or break for our company. So companies created that CISO position and that organizational security, information security different, uh, so they can do the right audits and have the right checks and balances in place to say, you can't go live because that will put our company at risk due to the cyber attacks we might face or you know, the fraud we might see, whatever it is. So to your point, it's like that's the reason those things get separated, not only just for a people dynamics perspective, but a the objectives need to keep each other checks and balance, like the government. It's like you need your checks and balances in place to make sure you don't put your company at risk.

SPEAKER_02: 46:13

Yeah. I mean, there's a reason to why you know the US government and many governments are segmented the way they are, is you don't want one individual having more power or one group having one more power than the others. Uh, I think it's a bargaining chip too, right? Like, hey, if you want, I know marketing team really wants us to do something you know big with security. If you want this feature, then like what we need for marketing is for you to create X number of sales so we can fund this thing, right? Like, and then it you create a triangle of communication. We need marketing sales and product, like, how are we gonna achieve this goal so we can go do this thing? Yeah. That's the macro level. I think at the micro level, which is where we started, you know, it really comes down, in my opinion, to staffing both for culture and capability. Because if you have too much of one and not the other, you're gonna be miserable. And it goes either way. Like, like you have to have a healthy dose of both when building.

SPEAKER_04: 47:11

Yeah, I think that's that's why we wanted to talk about this a little bit today, is because I think, especially earlier on in your career, you you think through these things. You're like, this doesn't make any sense. Like, why would we do this? And then as you go through your career, you kind of realize the reasons those things are in place, and you gain the experience to see when those things aren't in place, and you realize before you just go change something, understand why it was put there in the first place. Like, I think that's like the moral of the story. It's like if you're like, well, that function, like they don't do anything. It's like, okay, well, start to be curious. Try to understand why they were created. When did it start? Why did it start? What was the reason? What is their objective? And then you'll understand a little bit more at the macro level, like bigger than just your small little niche thing at the company you're at. You'll start to understand the bigger dynamics of the corporation. And I think that's really important, especially as you're growing your career, to understand those things. Because if you just get promoted and then you go into a room and saying, like, we should just disband this part, it's like everyone's gonna look at you like you're an idiot. Like, do you not understand how organizations work and why this is here? The answer is no.

SPEAKER_02: 48:18

The answer is no, and I think you and I both went through this journey on our own. Uh, it's it's it's something that every young professional goes through is kind of learning why the company is organized the way that it is. And once you figure it out, one it's it's unfortunate because you don't really see it when you're at the bottom. When you're an IC at the very bottom, you don't get that overarching view of the the way the business works. But once you start to move up and you start to see how the company makes money, how revenue is generated, how people are managed, how HR works, how finance works, like all these different pieces. And this is why I think it's so good working at a startup is you get a jump start on this, then you will start to understand why the things are the way they are, and you will no longer be frustrated or idealizing a perfect world where marketing and sales and everyone's all on one team. But uh 100%.

SPEAKER_04: 49:18

It is funny just to think back like we used to be like, why are they here this world doesn't make any sense? Like, I would just go and change that whole thing, and then like, yeah, as you get later in your career, you're like, Yeah, we they were actually right, like that was smart that we did it that way, even though we were slower, we built the right things. Yeah. Makes all the difference. So yeah, I think that's like the moral of the story. You know, I think there are better ways, of course. You know, you could get really micro and granular and have the right context to evaluate, like, how can you structure teams differently to work better, you know, with each other? But that requires knowing the organization, knowing the context, knowing the, you know, the to your point, like all the ins and outs of the company. But I think the moral of this story is, yeah, before you think something's stupid, it's more that you probably just don't understand why it is the way it is. And if you really want to understand how you can maybe propose something that could help, don't just go in and think you can change it. Try to ask questions, understand where it came from in the first place, and that's gonna not only make you more knowledgeable, but then when you get to the table with an opportunity, you at least have the context behind it, and you're not gonna look like an idiot in front of everybody. Be curious, be curious, do it. Well, that's it. Fun times good, awesome. I'm gonna let you close it out. Well, thank you again for uh playing through your your injured capability, but you did great. You actually sounded even better. I think you put it behind you. The adrenaline was Russian, you got passionate about the topic, and you didn't even know it was there. You know? I need a hospital. His mouth, his lip has gotten two times as big since we started. It's actually pretty impressive. You can see the bone. All of it. My pinky, your jaw. All right. Skeleton. The magical skeleton end. Alright, well, that's another episode of corporate strategy.biz. How can you get with us? You can uh the podcast. No, no, I'm not gonna get there. I gotta save that for the end. Yeah, this is my outro. You you shut your mouth. You shut your mouth when I'm talking. So so you can come and see us in our Discord. We always talk about uh super cool things in there. Great community, jobs have been posted, things have been released, memes have been shared. There are many games you can play in the Discord. Like, what do you meme? You can share just anonymous things if you want to get everybody's feedback without them knowing who you are. And you can also submit topics that we'll talk about on the show. And there's also a whole bunch of things. We actually do since it's October, we're due for an AI. Is it AI? So I'm gonna be posting another image to determine if it's actually AI or not. So that's a fun little game that we introduced. Uh, but yeah, like, subscribe, share, go into the podcast, rate it. It takes you literally two seconds. Scroll down, there's a link tree, you can see everything you need to see, and we would love to see you in there. And we actually recently, this is new, we haven't announced this before. We are starting to release episodes only to the Discord community. We've only done one, but we talked about like every month or so, maybe we'll do like a surprise episode just for the Discord. And they're they're kind of spicy, kind of depressing, kind of spicy at the same time. So if you're into that kind of stuff, depressing and spicy, that specific niche, you would love, love our Discord in these secret episodes. So get in there, share with your friends, share with your coworkers. And that's it.

SPEAKER_05: 52:37

This has been another episode. The podcast that could have been an email. I'm Clark. We'll see you next week. Oh, you're not. And you're on mute. We'll see you next week.