We're back today after 3 months of time off. We both took some time off over the summer and are getting back in the swing. We cover some of the experiences we've had over the past few months (client offsite, B-Corp progress, and road trips).

We also cover how the talent stack of an organization can enable or provide friction to employees trying to pursue their career goals.

We hope you found this enjoyable or interesting (or both!) and you can expect us to dive back into our Think Again series now that we are back from a short sabbatical.

Robert Greiner 0:05

It's been months.

Tiffany Lentz 0:08

Oh, yeah, it feels like more than three months because you were gone for three months. And then we met to talk and we're still getting in the groove. And then we had the client presentation, or the client offsite event come up. And yeah, it's been, I want to say, four and a half or five, to be perfectly honest. I don't remember when your sabbatical was right now.

Robert Greiner 0:30

That's a healthy break. Yeah, it was off. June, July, August.

Tiffany Lentz 0:34

Well, dude, there you go.

Robert Greiner 0:36

Yeah. And then I was back in September. And now it's December. Yes. Oh, my gosh.

Tiffany Lentz 0:43

Yes. Yeah, that's okay. A lots happened. lots happened. Since then.

Robert Greiner 0:49

Yeah. Yeah. So we have a lot to catch up on? Yes, we do. And also want to hear about your conference. Was it worth the time investment to go?

Tiffany Lentz 0:56

It actually was, and there are not many, not many conferences. I think that about all the time, including some of these really big ones. Like, I without insulting, I won't say any specifically, but one of them might have been this week in Vegas. And people get really jazzed about that stuff, Robert, and I find myself that I get lost in those. And I find it's there's a lot of hype, and a lot of activity and a lot of fun things to do. But then I walk away. And I think what did I really do to advance my agenda, my objectives, my business that I meet, even meet one person that I think is going to move forward, I mean, maybe a partner with a vendor that I needed to connect with or something but so I am much more of a mid sized to small ish conference person these days. So you're getting, you got a loaded, philosophical answer you didn't really ask for? I mean, do you understand what I'm saying with you?

Robert Greiner 1:55

Yeah.

Tiffany Lentz 1:56

I've been invited to some of those even just recently, and in my last life, I used to go to the big nonprofit healthcare ones with UNICEF and who and anybody who was anybody was there. And it wasn't just the sheer amount of money like truly philosophically, we're serving the poorest people in the world. And almost every one of these organizations are living off of donors, in one way or another. And we're at this ridiculously fancy hotel with all this waste, and all this food that like, I can't even though just like none of it made any sense to me. But it really it turned me off a little bit to big conferences. And then there's just a lot of a lot of hype, and only a handful of sessions that are meaningful, it's hard to meet people and when there's 10,000 of them. And so the conference I went to was called a champion retreat for B Lab. Because as we are pursuing B Corp certification, as a firm that will allow us, which is a big deal, that will allow us to basically validate the positive impact measures that we want to have on the planet. And they mean good for people, good for the planet good for and also balanced profit to the triple, it'll be our kind of instantiation of triple bottom line. What's very interesting is that, people I spoke to there, there are other very decent sized in some large companies that I think will be great clients for us, and also looking for the same thing they're looking for like minded individuals to work with. And they all need tech services, we will be the largest consulting, tech services company in the entire group, which is awesome. We're also one of the only Aesop's for the largest organization using holacracy. So as I'm just talking a little bit about us to people, they were very responsive to how are you doing that? How are you doing that? How do you How are you doing, but 750 people? So the branding will be very good. Yeah, some of the connections were excellent. Just meeting some executives from Amalgamated Bank and a large retailer in Canada, Mon data, had a great conversation with their CEO and CFO who happened to also be brothers and the founders and want to meet our colleagues in Canada. So it's so yeah, there was some I mean, even that alone would have been enough reason to go. I also learned a lot about the kinds of companies that are there. And

Robert Greiner 4:17

that's cool. I want to dig into B Corp. And what that really is in means just for the audience, but you brought up an interesting point, which is we've talked about talent stack before, and really as it relates to individuals, so I don't have to be the best storyteller or the best PowerPoint or the best at writing code. But if I'm pretty good at all of those things, you start to compile and stack on top of each other marketable, useful skills and then those combinations make you unique. And I think, actually, our company has a pretty robust and sophisticated talent stack, like our review process. Our I think our hiring like filling the pipeline with people's thought very good, like we're too slow. But once we get people in the pipeline, and we do the interviews, we have a very good hit rate for who we hire, holacracy, our equal pay structure, the B Corp piece, we're profitable, we have some like very good service offerings, we have a good brand identity. And so you start to stack all those things, and you become a very interesting, and I liked the I will actually, I love the idea of creating a positive impact as part of your mission, when you have to also balance that with profit, you have to be able to afford the good things that you want to do, and still meet your business objectives. But it's just like a first class objective. And that's, it's cool when you can figure out how to pay for it, I think that's a really interesting problem. To solve that a lot of times, you don't have to, you're just sort of, it's an afterthought, and it's not really a big piece of what you're trying to do. So it's so small, it's like a rounding error, or relying on donors or something like that. So to to be a for profit company. And to keep that as part of I mean, that's one of our core values is profit, Right? but still being able to impact the world in a positive way across multiple dimensions. It's not like we're just taking one cause and just beating it down as best we can. It's like we're kind of broadening out a little bit. So I think it's pretty cool to see how that's going to integrate into what we already have going on.

Tiffany Lentz 6:26

Yeah, they're most of the companies there. Who, yeah, this is not just a collection of nonprofits by any stretch, not isn't reasonable income or the right thing to do. Anyway, I know, that's not at all what you were saying just from the point about profit, this movement is pulling in companies with a conscience. And what it does, in essence, is share ideas for how to be better businesses, it offers as metric suggestions, but what it really does the certification is it helps you set your own standards for improvement as far as impact go. And then as an external entity just holds you accountable to what you say you're going to measure. So there isn't as much like forcing you to be something or forcing you to be someone else. Now, in our case, because we have all of this in our DNA, everything you just listed that stacks up so nicely. For us, it really is going to be just holding us accountable to who we say we are. For other companies who are coming in lower and striving for something there will be things they would have to change, there would be there's just so much probing into pay structure, review structure, how you what you deliver actually adds value to the people, you're delivering it to just layers of questions there in the assessment itself. So I can see someone coming in with a very low score, really needing improvement. That isn't the case for us all credit to our CEO and founder for living his values. And I think what an external service provides as well is as he starts to look to retirement, he wants to be able to keep the company going the way he set it up with honoring the values he set it up to adhere to. And there's always the risk, no matter who takes over, no matter how good the people are. We've heard story after story. I came from a story like that at my previous firm. And gosh, Ben and Jerry's has a similar story and Whole Foods has a similar story. And they the stories go on and on of the even the first generation being of good intent, but there are external pressures that can't be that can't be set aside for too long. And so things change. So,

Robert Greiner 8:41

yeah, Ben and Jerry's is B Corp too

Tiffany Lentz 8:44

Yeah. And then they had an easier time of living their values and then being acquired by Unilever was hard for them.

Robert Greiner 8:53

I don't know, I think that's a good thing.

Tiffany Lentz 8:54

I think it.

Robert Greiner 8:55

Yeah, I don't know. I like the idea of when we go and pursue work, we don't compete on price. We don't compete on these commodity things. We don't even compete on price for retaining talent, right? Because we invest a lot in career growth and things like that. So we're very open about those types of things. And but here's the here's our differentiating factors, which are a standard deviation more pronounced, which means when you have a fit, it's a very tight locking fit. That really resonates and when you don't, it's very awkward.

Tiffany Lentz 9:28

Yes, no, that's true. There, I got to sit in on some different marketing conversations as well where people were sharing the overall statistics, they're hearing of retention, it being more more solid with B Corp Companies or with B A B Corp certified companies. It builds a resiliency into their brand because the customer base they have is intentionally relational. Like you're again you share a common value system, so you're less likely to break a relationship as a opposed to just a transaction. There's some very interesting statistics that they've now been tracking over 10 years. So I'm looking forward to getting a hold of those presentations and sharing them out, too.

Yeah. And the fact that it's a certification is interesting, you know, we have lots of certifications as a company, like AWS, Microsoft, different kinds of partnerships. And so to me, that does fit in nicely. With sort of a, we're holding ourselves to a higher level of accountability. It's not legal accountability, right. And I'm not even sure how that would work. But it's a higher level of accountability and codification of those values that we, like, if we're straying from it, it's a little there's more of a spotlight on how we're falling short, and things are measured a little bit more specifically. And so it's not just like we have a list of values on the wall. It's that's a thing that's being measured and acted upon. And can you lose a certification?

You can.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, I mean, et Cie last, there's not long ago, maybe late 2019 2020, after they IPO, they lost their certification, Whole Foods lost their certification. So you have to recertify every three years

before they got bought by Amazon, or

I think before, okay. So they it was, I think that was the example I read of their founders retiring, and transitioning to new leadership. And it was because they didn't get bought by Amazon. That happened that wasn't that long ago.

Was it? 2019?

I'd have to I'd have to

pre pandemic.

Yeah, yeah, it was pre pandemic, I can look it up and get back to you. It's like

post, graduating from college, post me having kids pre pandemic,

something in that sort of Wrinkle in Time. But yeah, so it is very interesting to be willing to be held accountable that way. And we do have a new generation of employees that ask questions about are we legitimately trying to use what we have to do good in the world. And that means treating your employees a certain way, et cetera, et cetera, it's not just affecting the environment in a positive, we have to approach it differently as an aside, because we don't produce any product, right? Just individuals. We don't own anything. We lease our laptops, we rent our office space. So we have to approach it from there are certainly things we can do for carbon carbon off sites, not saying that isn't something we will we certainly will. But we have to look at the other impact areas of our employees, our governance, the way we interact with our customers and our what we produce. But when employees are asking or potential employees are asking about the validity of our claims, having external certification is something we can look at as almost like a an A rating at a restaurant or good housekeeping seal of approval is something that will add to our claims.

Add to the client. Yes, yeah, I like that. And it helps with clients to some of this stuff has come up at the client I'm at right now. And in our next strategic business review, we've been told like, hey, we want to hear more about this.

Yeah, wonderful. I mean, we've alright, we actually did submit our first assess our assessment, right, the week before Thanksgiving, which was a big deal. I mean, it took almost a year to complete. It's certainly a labor of love. It's a large questionnaire, well over 200 questions, it starts at 200. But it's a little bit like a Choose Your Own Adventure book that you depending on a response, you unlock five or eight more questions and navigate down this circuitous path, but they're all very thoughtful. So excited for next steps.

Yeah, that's great. Awesome.

And I did. And I learned a lot of tools that are out there and ways that maybe people are solving some similar problems. But again, it being one of the largest companies in North America to join and certainly the largest tech company will be a very exciting for a for us.

Yeah, and we do these we call them stay interviews, but basically, so we did, we've done this in Dallas, and then at our client, as well, where we list everybody in the office, and then assign someone on the leadership team, basically round robin, sort of random, we would like if you're not their mentor, it should be like a new person. So not at your client, those kinds of things. And every quarter at least, have a one on one with them. And ask a bunch of questions that are standard, or you feel like you're providing value work life balance expectations around hybrid work, those kinds of things. And then we should have a bit of a wildcard question. So the first one I stole from our previous podcasts from customer satisfaction, which is like, Hey, what are we doing that makes it really hard to work here? And when you ask it in that way, you get different responses. I think the one we asked most recently was around adventure, like what kinds of what's what are some things we could think about that would be adventurous as an office or as a client, and there were maybe 25% of the people I talked to said anecdotal, had some kind of concern that I would loosely categorize in things that B Corp addresses, and they two that I can think of right now felt so strongly that they're taken I like, transferred to a different office. Because I, it would be helpful if I like wasn't in this state anymore. And I mean, there's some things you can control. There's some things you can't one I like. And certainly appreciate, I don't know, if I, when I was that young, that I would have been able to have the courage to, to talk about material concerns I had about my career, like that. So that that was nice to see. But also, but you don't, there's certainly like a demand, like, I don't even know what the expectation might be the right word for our company to do more than just try to like virtue signal on social media, which I think we do a pretty good job of avoiding. But as to what are you actually doing? And how does what I'm doing here? Even if my current project isn't directly related to a cause I'm passionate about? Am I part of an organization that, like, are the margin dollars that I'm generating, on client engagement, like going towards something that I agree with or whatever. And so I think there's probably more interest in this space than that is obvious.

Yeah. You're 100%. Right. People may not even have the words exactly. But it's the concept. And they're looking for some validation, or some proof points.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting to me, too, because I'm like a passenger, on this ride, where there's this activities happening. And then I'm just thinking in the background, like, how can I support it? How will I be affected by it? What are some things I can do in my current role? Or how's my how's it going to change my day to day, if at all, over the next few years? And so it's kind of interesting to see this play out and know when our founders retire at some point, which is probably less than definitely less than five years, I'd say. So it's interesting time for sure.

Yeah, it's exciting. I think we'll see next steps.

Yeah. Awesome.

So that's been, that's a, that was a good use of time this week. And I spend a fair amount of time thinking about that, to be honest, throughout the year, and researching and working on how to get this done for us. 2023 is certainly going to look like architectural structure and governance structure communication, so that when we get certified, which I think will be a little later in the year, there's quite a backlog of companies at this point, a lot of companies decided to do this during COVID. So I've kind of hit a backlog right now. I think it will be a little later in 2023. But at least we'll be ready to flip the switch when we get there. So

yeah, awesome. And yeah, that is good point to where this watch should be baked into governance in our firm. So there will be roles and accountabilities and measures and you know that

so that's a requirement is something B Corp requires is okay, is that the governance structure goes from it goes through top to bottom, including, I don't remember exactly what the what the cadence is, but it's multiple times per year, a review of the of our progress by the board. And we also have to send out regular communications, they're called impact reports, have to send them out internally, externally. So there's a public kind of a public force of communicating, but also a forced accountability.

Yeah, which holacracy helps with?

Yeah, there was another topic that came up. But some people had heart heard of holacracy. But again, not at scale, like we're doing it. And then there was another topic that came up around treatment of employees during COVID. And then it was more often than not sort of a sort of a head nodding response, when someone would mention cutting salaries to reduce or eliminate layoffs during COVID. What people was, as we were doing some round robin sharing of what did your firm do, there were additional elements that we did that were unheard of, not just the reinstating of salaries, but paying back and then the order in which we did it, the percentages being higher at the top, lower at the bottom. And then the order of reinstatement, the order of payback being from the most junior employees to the senior employees later that

yeah, we cut harder I showed more senior levels. And we paid back quickly and completely at the more junior levels. Our most Junior was like very fast like they that was a really that we did that and then up to Yeah, some of the more senior levels never got fully, quote unquote, paid back. And that was very transparent and I think the way The way we did it made a lot of sense. And I think in hindsight it this is the tough thing. Talk about good decision making bad outcome, where nobody could have predicted the speed at which the market rebounded. And all the demand just came back. And actually, like most places ability just to operate Okay, remotely. Although I think that was driven on the back of a lot of adrenaline. And at the expense of human wellbeing, like the productivity that decay, that didn't quite happen. And so in hindsight, we may have looked like we cut too quickly, too deeply, and for too long. But we were very clear about these things last 18 months plus or minus six historically, which is this has gone on a little bit longer even. And if the economy did not, like macro events, did not play out the way that they did, if they went the other direction, we could, we would have survived, it would have been very rough. But the way that we stored up cash and reduced our expenses, proactively would have allowed us to survive for at least an 18 month period with a massive cut in revenue. And the fact that we took so much risk off the table did come at a cost, but so does insurance. Right? That was basically a self funded insurance policy. And so I'm looking back, I'm like, Yeah, we could have not been so dramatic about it. But at the time, it was like, we don't know how long this is gonna last. Nobody predicted this, like, severe bounce back. So yeah, it was kind of interesting to see, to look back on historically, now.

It is not completely out of the woods, but very interesting to, to think about.

I know, actually, I'm really concerned about next year, like just the way things are playing out. I'm curious.

But you the so much of the the architecture that you're giving credit to for is our founder, CEO, right, and the COO looking carefully and they are also concerned about next year, gives you any comfort people who have been historically right, and when when the sky is gonna fall, are also concerned about next year.

Yeah, yeah, we're gonna see I think we've, I mean, just say like personal savings has went really high in 2020. And then you had the supply chain stuff going on. And now like, all those, if you look at the macro, like how many there was like over there's in the trillions measured in savings, and now it's like 400 billion, and like personal personal savings. And so I'm, I'm kind of concerned what's going to happen when everybody runs out of money at the same time, because stuffs more expensive, and, like wages have increased But now like layoffs are happening. So I don't know. It just seems to me like when in 2017 2018, you could look around, and you could see issues, right? There's always problems. But you could look around and basically say, Yeah, we're in this nice state of expansion. Jobs are still hot, salaries are increasing, unemployment is low, stock markets rising like all these macro factors, everything was maybe overpriced, at like the security level, but you could still say that were things are growing. And now you look around the slab, inflation's up job. Big companies are slowing, hiring laying off people. Expenses are higher supply chain issues. So I'm kind of wondering how it's gonna play out next year, I think a cautious approach those seems prudent.

I mean, I'm sure knowing what I know of you. I think you are personally going to be cautious next year. I think the firm I think our firm will be cautious. Next year. That's my opinion, anyway. I mean, yeah, I certainly am planning to be cautious.

I don't know what I'm talking about either. Like I have no formal training here. So this is just, I could probably be easily swayed by headlines with stuff like this. Yeah, who knows?

I don't, I don't know that. I always believe the headlines anymore, to be honest. So yeah, I tend to add a few things together and listen to a handful of people that I trust.

Try to triangulate. Yeah, yep. Well, we're so bad at predicting the future. Humans are in the horrible track record, like worse than coin flips, I think. Yeah. Which is kind of crazy. Yeah. Well, good. So we hopefully can start doing this. I'm glad we got another one in December. So we got another 2020 to cast in. And then now that we're back and settled back in, hopefully this will come out a little bit more regularly, because I do still really enjoy this. I look forward to it always.

Yeah.

Oh, me too. I enjoy the conversation. And I like the topics all we always seem to come up with something and eventually get back getting back to the book. I think we'll finish that out and then pick up another one. But I would still like to hear you do some reflection on that your sabbatical, the overall restfulness and stuff that you learned and Any sort of epiphanies you had or things you changed when you came back? Whether thought processes, leadership, time allocation and all?

We can dig into it now if you want, we got got 20 minutes. 20 minutes. Yeah, up to Yeah. Again, split this up into two or just putting it all together. Yeah, so sabbatical was great. It's one of our most interesting benefits, I would say. So I get eight weeks off every five years. And well so do you. And then I added four to it. And I don't know, like ever since I started 11 years ago, almost 11. The whole play was you get eight weeks, your fifth year, so every five years, and then you just get like a bucket of time. And you have to spend it all at once. And then everyone I knew just added four. And so it's just like a 12 week. And so this go round. I wasn't sure if this is my second sabbatical. But based on the level I was at last time, I got three weeks. And so I added four to that. But it would look more like seven than 12. Right. And the year before I had a Noah was born. And so I had already taken some time off anyway. And so I wasn't sure this go round, if sort of what the vibe was because a lot of people had been deferring theirs. And so I had this backlog of people wanting to take sabbaticals. And I was taking off in the summer, and a lot of people went to the summer. And then at some point, I was like, I'm just gonna say 12 weeks and see what happens. And so I talked to Brian, and he was cool with it. And so I timed it out what the summer so it was directly when the kids right when the kids were off school. And then I went back pretty much two weeks after they went back to school. And so a lot of road trips, a lot of family time. We went to Galveston a couple times, Austin, and Fredericksburg, so it's like Texas wine country. Just really nice. Yeah, I was really skeptical, to be honest. But it's kind of a cool small, like, rural town that a lot of German immigrants sort of settled in. And so there's a there's a kind of a heavy German influence. And I guess it's easy, are the conditions for growing grapes are fine, which is crazy, because it gets so hot. But apparently, it's just like the shade is all that matters. So they just make sure that the little leaves on the grape vines are covering the actual grapes, it's kind of interesting. But then they have a lot of recently, there's been like a lot of craftsmanship coming into the, into the city. So like breweries and wineries and stuff. And so they get like, pretty serious about it. So it's pretty good. But yeah, mostly just at the time avoided. Air travel, the kids are old enough now. But like, a lot of flights and stuff are getting canceled, due to I think lack of like people, mechanics and stuff. So we just drove which was, and then in Texas as you can drive for 10 hours in one direction, still be in the state. So they're like five, six hour drives kind of thing, which are really good. I used to be sort of more of a staycation person where just give me a week off and I'll stay home. But I like going away now like you kind of leave a lot of responsibility. It's more of an adventure, those kind of things. So from a, I guess my main goal was to spend more time with the family and have a good, like summer together. Because I don't know what next summer is going to be like, I'll probably be in the office most days and things like that. And then when I'm eligible for my next sabbatical, I think the kids will be 14 and 10/11. So that'll be probably a really good one. So that that was important. And then I spent some time thinking about career planning, I was fairly frustrated, I would say before going on sabbatical kind of burnt out maybe. And then. So it was good to sort of step away and get some perspective. And then now start I'm thinking about maybe just doing my career planning and five year chunks, essentially between sabbaticals until I'm ready to retire, seems kind of optimal. And so I had a few ideas around, maybe how I wanted to show up, I guess is the right so I've been really myopically focused in, let's call them concentric circles out started like the center as my client, which I think is fine, because just given my role, and being mostly client focus tends to make sense, but it's like client Dallas, national, that kind of view. And upon reflection, I was I'm too focused on client, like maybe 99.5%, when it should be 75%. And those, I don't know how much extra gain you get from that extra 24 and a half percentage points of focus, but it's not that much. And when I got back, everything, everything went super smooth while I was out, like the team we have out there is so good. And so I had a similar feeling although I knew what to expect because the first sabbatical I was on. I got back and looked around and it's like no, no they'd missed me. Like everything just kind of the world kept spinning. Everybody's fine. So it kind of puts things in perspective. It's yeah, you're not, maybe not so important. And then this time, the team did such a good job covering that there's some stuff I just haven't taken back, like entire areas of responsibility that I'm like, okay, the person who was kind of running that is ready for the next level. So that's been really cool to see. And then has allowed me to focus on picking my head up a little bit more and seeing, looking around the organization, seeing what kind of seeds I could be planting. And then instead of getting myopically focused on one thing, like attrition, let's say like, I just get really worked up about it, one, because I see it as a, there's part of it, you can't control. But we had one person on my client, he went to go work for the Dallas Mavericks. It's like his dream job, he loves basketball, there's no, yes, you should absolutely go, that's awesome. And I'm proud that I played some small part in creating an environment where he could grow enough to go and get that job. So everything about that felt good. And then people just like worried about random stuff that they have built up higher in their head, like worse in their head than it's actually than it actually is. And we did a bad job of communicating it, and they leave because they're frustrated or scared. And that's a lot of people that left, like plenty. And so it annoyed me that people that we kind of that left or because of us because we didn't do a good enough job. I would say up to half, I don't know I don't that's just a feeling. But we probably could have improved retention quite a bit by more actively managing that group. But this problem is it's not scalable, it's like highly individual. But you can see pockets like clients that have, I mean, we have a good culture, just in general, but have that piece dialed in. And the attrition on those accounts, even in the same geography are lower. Right. And so I think we're doing really good things, just we could do them better at scale. But anyway, so um, I would get really frustrated about that. And it's the equivalent of I plant a seed, and I'm just like, focused on this one sprout. And I'm like watching this one thing, day after day. And now I'm like, oh, no, what I should be doing is when I lift my head up, and I do that best to conversation, surprise, surprise. So I get like a lot of divergence, Bruce pointing this out, actually. So I want to basically have lots of conversations with people get an empathy and context and perspective around what's going on around me a little bit better. And then spend some time thinking on my own. And then I've sent signals all over the place that I'm interested in helping with building more technical architects with delivery, with retention, with all these things. And then at the end of the day, some there'll be a good timing, like a serendipitous timing of a need, my availability, someone asked for my help, and then those all come together. And then I can really lean in and apply some energy when the timing is right, not just getting spun up about something that I have no control over or the timings wrong. And I'm just like playing I'm myopically focused on this one, little sprouting. So I'll just kind of attached to things that are worth my attention and need my attention at the time, and then I don't have to feel bad. Because like with attrition, too, like I feel complicit, right, which is not a good feeling. Yeah, no, but if it's just like, what's consulting, a lot of times, you know what the right answer is, you go see what the right answer is, and nothing happens. It's okay, well, my job was to inform and to persuade, and to get the case out, but my job is to not go and bulrush the decision maker and try to force something like, that's not my role. And so this allows me to feel a little bit more spread out, be a little bit more diversified in the kinds of things I'm interested in pushing on. And over time, I can, if I'm attaching to, again, to extend the seed analogy, attaching the things that that grow, and then cultivate those. And then you can turn into a tree that lasts for decades, and has some staying impact. So that's really maybe the main getting stepping away and just like letting the frustration dissipate, and coming in fresh, I think helped. So there's something in there about, like, when you find yourself burnt out or frustrated, like physically detaching, for as long as you can probably make sense, if the goal is to stay where you're at, that kind of buys you more time on the back end, and then really trying to get a better context and empathy for what's going on more broadly. And then how can I my position or the client I'm in or the people I have in my sort of sphere of influence to positively impact stuff moving forward. Sounds obvious when I'm talking about it, but it was felt good to like maybe take a step back and and come to those realizations?

Yeah, it's not I mean, it may sound obvious but it isn't an obvious to you in the moment or anyone in that situation and we are all we all do it we kind of fixate on the things that we feel passionate about complicit in know, we can believe we can improve. And then I think we tend to see all of the problems through that one lens, which is something that stepping back the way you're talking about and sort of, again, planting multiple seeds, even the conversational ones, and then allowing, but just allowing some of the conversations to happen. Gives a perspective gives a little bit, it allows you to see the problem through a truer light, then through a tainted lens, maybe.

Yeah, exactly. That's kind of a challenge. I don't know if that's the right word is the example I use is like restaurants and chefs and stuff, because I'm pretty terrible at cooking. And like, I could go into a restaurant, and that's rated two and a half stars and have a bad experience. And I could pretty much outline what it was that made it bad. The food wasn't that good. The service was clumsy, my drink was empty all the time. I waited for 20 minutes before someone came to my table and did some ask for my order or whatever. And but I couldn't do better. Like if someone said, Okay, well, you're complaining about this restaurant. Congratulations, you now run it. I would do like worse in a lot of cases. And so I think that's also an interesting thing to think about, which is yeah, this it's not a straightforward problem to solve, even though you can sort of come in and nitpick things that are wrong. And then if you go try to fix one, what do you what are your second and third order effects that are in the system that are now breaking, and stuff like that. And so it's not so simple, even though you very quickly and efficiently outlined symptoms of what's wrong.

Kind of interesting. The things that space and time to think allow you allow to be revealed and allow you to learn. It is something I really value here that sabbaticals are insisted upon. And where I came from, we earned sabbaticals, but people tried not to take them. And it was like or were pressured not to take them. It was even subtle pressure. But it was like bragging rights. If you didn't take your sabbatical, I don't need that. I don't need that. I can keep working harder. I don't need it. Or if you shortened your sabbatical, it was definitely bragging rights versus, which is an illusion. And one would say maybe even delusion, but the versus the acknowledgement. That's just not how that's not how knowledge workers function. They do need time away to develop more perspective, to let their bodies rest so that their mind can refocus. And then they're more effective. And you're coming back, describing an experience that is even based on Bruce's feedback as well, like a leveled up leadership perspective, right. He's teaching you how to take all of your systems thinking and and kick it up a notch. And but that requires stepping back and reflecting and rest and mindfulness.

Yeah. And it forces me to be clear about what I can control and what I can't, which is for based on how I'm wired is not a comfortable, like space to be in. But yeah, so I think they're definitely helpful. Yeah, that's so weird. I don't got an uneasy feeling when you were talking about that. Because that seems that seems like a really silly, like hearing that you're doing more harm than good at that point.

Yeah, like, it's like, how bragging about how many all nighters you pulled? Or how many 100 hour weeks you worked, how much? How much how much you can push yourself, but it was a part of that culture driven from the top down.

Yeah, that's funny, because everyone, I mean, going back since I started here, ever since I had teams like anyone that was working, sustained, like the way software works, you have releases, everybody sort of swarms. And there's a bit there's a big push, there's a sprint to the finish line. And I'm comfortable with those kind of bursts, as long as heavy lifts as long as they're okay, we're going live January 20. We have this critical two week period after that, and then end of February, like I want everyone taking vacation, like make up for that on the other end, or you know what, burn not so hot during the whole project so that you have some space to push at the end, because that's just sort of the nature of software. But anytime someone's sustained, because there's people who just like kind of get in the middle of the critical path, it seems all the time. And everyone around them is working a very manageable schedule, and they're 20% Higher all the time. And I remember pretty like aggressively, like that would show up in the review around managing yourself or like giving feedback on it. stuff like that really try to temper that because it's different when people say, Hey, I'm at a time in my life where I really like I have energy, I have capacity. I don't have a lot going on outside of work. My objective in my life right now is to advance my career. And if I can work, you know, as long as I mean, assuming that you can keep the level of performance up, if I can work 50%, more than everyone that I move in, in two years, when everyone else can move in three or four, then sure, like if that's an intentional thing, but also that should be like revisited, and you're like intentionally stepping into it, you're not just by default, sort of always overworking. And so I've been real, probably too aggressive about okay, so chill out here. It's not, we're not saving lives over here.

Yeah. Yeah, certainly. I appreciate the the movement, the cultural movements we have here that acknowledge what it takes to be more self actualized. And a better leader than just embracing them.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's pretty much it really good. I would say like mission accomplished as far as I wanted to not do any think about tactical work stuff. And I wanted to hang out with family as much as possible. And that all went really well. And then yeah, I got did some reading got some did some thinking.

Good. And let's dig into that in part two of this, by the way. Yeah, it was like to hear what you're reading and compare. Because we we read a lot of the same stuff. And then sometimes not.

Yeah, for sure. We'll cover that again. I think we're up on time, though. So it was really good catching up with you. And then I guess, do you want to continue the book next week?

Yeah, we can pick up on the book next week. I would like to hear about some of your readings and learnings. I don't know if you want to somehow work that in or that mini segment or Yeah, most organic?

Okay. Yeah, let me I'll kind of go back and make a list because we're on chapter eight, I think on think again, which is part three collective rethinking, creating communities of lifelong learners.

How about that as a lunch topic, basically? Yeah,

there was talked about.

So yeah. And I do want to dig into like our we're both presenting at a client conference next week, content that we presented before. And so it'd be it might be nice to cover some of the key themes from those as well.

Yeah, oddly enough, both talking about leadership. So

yeah, go figure. So yeah, we have some things teed up. But I'll go ahead and read chapter eight, just to be ready for you. And then I'm behind on a couple of episodes still. So I'll get all those posted. And then we should be good to go.

Yay. Thank you. Nice to be back in the saddle.

Yeah, same. I'll see you next week.

Awesome.

Bye.