The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unmanaged: Master the Magic of Creating Empowered and Happy Organizations by Jack Skeels

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

Unmanaged: Master the Magic of Creating Empowered and Happy Organizations by Jack Skeels https://amzn.to/464UHo7 Agencyagile.com Former executive, two-time Inc 500 award-winning entrepreneur, and think-tank management scientist Jack Skeels, in his new book, Unmanaged: Master the Magic of Creating Empowered and Happy Organizations, lays out the blueprint for how to make agencies – and many other types of organizations run better, faster and happier. Drawing on more than a decade of applied research with over 200 agencies and other high-performance organizations, Skeels presents a compelling case that managing less can be the key to managing better. In its six-part structure, the book takes leaders and managers through the origins of why we manage the way we do today, and how a new style of managing—within which one can see the echoes of Agile methods—boosts everything from project success rates to organizational productivity, profitability and happiness. In its 300 pages, Unmanaged both provides not only the rationale, but also a large number of battle-tested methods for implementing better managing, proven both within his consultancy and in prior work. The book is laced with real-world vignettes that often make managers and leaders laugh (or cringe) in recognition of their own managerial faux pas. There are over ten practical new models of managing that the reader and their organization can make, ranging from better ways to kick-off and scope projects, boost team skills growth, align better with stakeholders and clients, and ensure worker and team productivity. Leaders will be drawn to several topics that explain the power of Unmanaged’s techniques to reduce the cost of meetings, enhance DEI initiatives, and implement better organization models and metrics. While Unmanaged has its origins in digital and marketing agencies, Skeels, who spent much of his career in technology and management consulting, makes a compelling argument that the project-driven workthat they perform (complex, unique, innovative or complex projects) represents the future of human work as AI and other forms of automation displace simpler factory and service style workers. The future of knowledge work is project work. The book is written from a manager-centric perspective, informing many managerial roles found in agencies and elsewhere, including a significant focus on the discipline of project management, its many challenges and failures. At its heart, the book preaches a gospel that hints of Buddhism, urging that managers and leaders can do better by being more aware and less reactive. Show Notes About The Guest(s): Jack Skeels is a former executive, two-time Inc 500 award-winning entrepreneur, and think tank management scientist. He is the founder of Agency Agile, a consultancy that helps organizations improve their management practices. Jack has over a decade of experience working with more than 200 agencies and high-performance organizations. Summary: In this episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss interviews Jack Skeels about his new book, "Unmanaged: Master the Magic of Creating Empowered and Happy Organizations." Jack shares his insights on why traditional management practices are often ineffective and how a new style of managing can lead to better productivity, profitability, and happiness in organizations. He emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, avoiding biases, and giving everyone a chance to grow and contribute. Key Takeaways: Traditional management practices often hinder productivity and can be counterproductive. Managers should focus on supporting their team and creating a culture of empowerment. Being aware of biases and implementing processes that avoid them is crucial for effective management. Giving everyone a chance to contribute and grow is essential for building a successful team. Cultivating a learning organization and setting a positive culture is key to long...

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And now, Chris Voss, Facebook.com. We have an amazing author on the show. I'm excited to have him. He's got a massive amount of experience, history, knowledge, and he's going to share with us in business. His newest book has just come out November 1st, 2023. It's called Unmanaged Master the Magic of Creating Empowered and Happy Organizations by Jack Skeels. And he'll be on the show telling us all about the great stuff he put into it and the research that went into it and all that amazing things. He is a former executive, two-time Inc. 500 award-winning entrepreneur and think tank management scientist. In his new book, he lays out the blueprint for how to make agencies and many other types of organizations run better,

faster, and happier. We can do it. Sounds like that line from Six Million Dollar Man. We can make them better, faster. He draws on more than a decade of applied research with over 200 agencies and other high performance organizations. He presents a compelling case that managing less can be the key to managing

better. Well, I found that out when I got rid of all my employees. In his six-part structure, the book takes leaders and managers through the origins of why we manage the way we do today and how a new style of managing within which one can see the echoes of agile methods, boost everything from project success rates to organizational productivity, profitability, and happiness. Welcome to the show. How are you, sir?

Great to be here, Chris, and good to meet you. Thank you very much for having me on. Pleasure to meet you as well. Congratulations on the new book. These are always fun to launch. Give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the internet and track you down? You can find me on LinkedIn, of course, Jack Skeels, and also agencyagile.com is my

consultancy that we've been going for more than a dozen years now with, as you mentioned, a whole bunch of successful clients. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside this book? You know, the book, I'll actually go back to the beginnings. The book came from the fact that, and I don't know if you've, it sounds like you're a very smart guy, actually, as much as you self-sell that, right? Don't push it. When I was a programmer way back when, I always thought my managers were idiots and just got in the way. And there's a way that that idea stuck with me. And as I became a manager and a leader and eventually worked at a think tank and the like, the idea germinated even more. And in the last 15 years or so, sort of pulled together this idea that today we overmanage.

That managers tend to get in the way of productivity probably more than they enhance productivity. And I got the, I got the book opens with a really interesting, true real world vignette where we took a team that was dying from over-managing and, and basically kicked all the managers out and the team succeeded tremendously. An amazing project, big project, project on fire when i took it over and um so since then we've done it with a lot of organizations but the the book really will tell you sort of the why behind all that why why is it that we manage so poorly and over manage and the like and then what can you do about it is it because people are stupid i just had to put that in there because they are some are some are well i i i'll be jumping i i want to go because you know you can take what i'm saying is being very anti-managerial

and and lord knows part of my brain goes there all the time how dare you sir i i think that every manager i've ever met is just trying to do a good job, right? Okay. And that's the, you know, I always go back to the, the, the show, the office, right? And, and Michael, but it's exactly that thing is that so many managers don't know what to do, but they want to be a manager. And that's the, that's the plot line for the office, right? As Michael comes in and, and feels the need to be managerial to validate himself, he does something stupid. And then eventually the organization spits him out.

And the cliche ending is he's out in the parking lot trying to figure out what happened that day, right? Yeah. And so I love that as a metaphor. I think you make a good point. Most people aren't trying to always be evil. I think some people are. But most people are just trying to always be evil i think some people are but you know most people are just trying to uh you know do the thing and they don't have your book clearly

and they need to read your book so they can find out to be better managers does that sound about right yeah yeah i mean that was the summary you were hoping for and i didn't give you so okay cool thank you there you go there you. I set you up on that. So tell us a little bit about your background and history. What's your hero's journey? What's your journey through life? You know, I feel like I've always been sort of a pinball bouncing from thing to thing. I've always been a fairly, you only have smart people on here.

So I can go ahead and own that here. And I succeeded at a lot of things, but I got fired from a lot of things. I tried to be a plumber one time, got fired from that. I mean, I had a history of getting kicked out of jobs that I was overqualified for. And eventually I ended up with my MBA and I was teaching at a university, working at a think tank and all that kind of thing. And that wasn't enough reality for me and then i got back into the world of work and i saw it all differently at that point and that was that was the moment when i started saying there's something wrong with the way we're managing

this is probably 2005 or so just something wrong about this whole idea of managing it feels like a a stupid game that we it's sort of like a red pill blue pill thing right you know the matrix where all of a sudden i felt like everything every manager said was extremely contrived even me right and and then uh and then just started detangling it and that's that's sort of you know i got to the point where i said we got to stop doing this. Yeah. Yeah. You had your aha moment, maybe. Is that a good description of it? Yeah, exactly. There you go.

And so in this book, is this your first book? It is my first book. I have about 35 published articles and a bunch of other stuff, but nothing like writing a book at all. It is a real journey. So why did you feel this was an important book to write? I know it kind of seems obvious from what we talked about what what was like you mean your motivation was like people need to get learn how to manage or unmanage as you call it yeah i think really at the core of it

there are two things that are that i realized that only a book would help accomplish this thing one is i i couldn't work as many organizations as we've worked with and we continue to get great clients and help them change the way they manage. The impact was too small. And the real problem looks like people don't understand what managing is. And we have this thing is I become a manager and I just sort of mimic what all the other managers are doing. It's this sort of pack behavior. Like, you know, you're a dog now, do what all the other dogs do. And all the dogs follow this pattern that started like 100 years ago with factories and immigrants and lousy working conditions and all that kind of thing.

And that's not what the world looks like anymore. And managing just hasn't evolved and managers haven't evolved. So that was a real idea that people could understand, step back and see themselves and see what was happening. And we've got lots of vignettes in there because that helps people do that. But that's really the idea is that if we can enlighten people into just maybe making that little red pill, blue pill choice or something like that, right? Yeah.

So some of the topics you talk about in the book are kind of has origins in digital and marketing agencies, but this could be something you'd be applied anywhere um you know one of the problems that i had with uh with a lot of management people and and i think i fell into the same thing maybe when i was appointed manager when i was really really young and one of the things i i put on my desk was that i have it was basically some sort of one of those uh it was one of those memes sort of motivational things that they had the 90s remember those yeah yeah it's like you know some eagle and he's going um but it was basically you have to earn your title your title isn't given you have to earn your title every day and i remember having that on my desk as ceo it's still in storage somewhere um and it was to remind me that just because you got your title doesn't mean you're a manager.

Just doesn't because you're named a CEO doesn't mean you are a CEO. Doesn't mean you're a CEO. Doesn't mean you're a leader either. And you've got to earn that every day. You've got to, you can't, you know, people just don't, you know, you can't just lord around going, I'm a manager now. And people are like, you're a fucktard. And you always were. And you never have changed.

You have to earn that and you have to build it and servant leadership etc etc uh you know basically you can get the title but that doesn't mean you you're doing it well well yeah and i i think you bring up a couple great points one is people usually don't get the title of manager because they're a good manager right they get the title of manager because they're a good manager right they get the title of manager because they were good at something else right and so all of a sudden now you're a manager and you don't know shit about being a manager in fact most of the things that got you to that moment you know the reason you got the manager job is because they didn't want to lose you because you're gonna leave you're gonna leave if you didn't get some sort of promotion yeah exactly give them a title and and so now you've got this job and you know nothing about doing it and everything you did to

get that spot is the exact opposite of what you want from a manager right yeah all that sort of you know you fought your way to the top of the fucking hill you you proved that you were like way better than everybody else and that's like exactly not what you want to do as a manager. And you made yourself prominent and the like, and that comes to the second problem, which is that at the end of the day, people get into the spot and feel like they've got to prove themselves. And I love what you're saying that what you're saying about the ego is a little bit more like I need to earn it, but earning is different than proving, right is like i'm i'm gonna go call meetings i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do all these managerial things and by the way most of them

decrease productivity yeah yeah i'm managing now we're all gonna have zoom meetings and meetings 24 7 because i must manage and you're like how the hell are we gonna get anything done all right manage boy but man there go at it manage boy have fun with that and uh you know and really um i think really you know a great manager is to support your team and a lot of people don't realize that they just think that i'm king for today or however long they leave me here and i'm just gonna lord about well and and a lot a lot of things there are all these weird you know when you study this and and work with different and we coach managers as well and you know one of the things you'll see is that this this attitude of like i'm better than everyone else which was what happened before you got the manager job right that's how you got to be the person right that that essentially if you listen to these managers a lot of times they'll say oh half my people are

horrible and they don't they don't realize that one is that's just a legacy from them having to say half the people are horrible yeah second is the job of the manager that's the only thing they're put there for is to elevate their people and if they blame their people for their people not being elevated they're just pointing at themselves right yeah i mean your your people are a reflection of you so if they suck you suck as a leader and a manager preferably leader um so what are some tips that you give people in the book on how to unmanage and get, get to something that's more, more productive? You know, I think there,

there are a whole bunch of areas that I go into like dozens of different examples of ways to do this in the wake. I think one of the big things though, we were just talking about the, the getting in the way of productivity is a big thing. In other words, a great manager knows when to not try to be a manager, right? In a sense, we do this exercise. It may be easier to explain this way. So when we kick off with a new client, we take their whole

leadership team. And usually these organizations, 50 or 100 people, something like that. So we've got 20 people in this workshop for two days. And at the end of the first day, we go through this exercise and we say, if we send away parts of your organization for a day, we could send the leadership and managers away for a day. What happens to productivity? Because if you send the team away, by the way, then there's no productivity, right? So we send them and everyone does this nervous laughter kind of thing. Well, the fun thing is one of our clients in Brooklyn recently, they actually had a happy hour right after the end of the first day session when we talked about that.

And they had everyone come in from their company, and they started asking all the team members, said, how was your day? And they're like, it was an amazingly productive day. So literally just removing the managers and leaders from the room, so to speak, boosted productivity in that organization. We didn't have them bothering us and getting in the way asking for TPS reports. Damn it. Exactly. Exactly.

And there's a truth in that, right? There's a, there's a, there's a truth that for all the good that managers try to do, they can be very clumsy at it, right? Yeah. Get the hell out of your people's way, man. You're there to support them. Servant leadership. One thing that's in your book is you preach the gospel that hints of Buddhism, urging managers and leaders that can be, by being more aware and less reactive. Tell us a little bit about what

that is do i have to get a big fat half naked guy buddha like sitting in my lobby or something people can worship i actually sense if there's a book by herman hessa uh named called siddhartha which is the story of young buddha and i was struck by something in there so i put it in the book and at one moment um uh siddhartha the young buddha is trying to get a job from someone right and he he hasn't been trained in college or anything like that he's just been experiencing life and and the um the business person says well what can you do this is like a an ind Indian trader guy and all that kind of thing. And Siddhartha says, well, I can wait, I can fast, and I can think. And the guy's like, what in the hell is that? What are you going to do for my business? And, of course, they proceed to show how those things work.

But the idea that I can wait, I can pause. I don't need to act. I can wait, okay, I can pause. I don't need to act, right? Okay. I can fast. I don't need to be fed by my need for managerial satisfaction or proof of my ego or something like that. And then I can think. And that's really those three things as a manager being contemplative and saying it isn't about me being a manager. It's about them being the productive core of my organization. And what is it? What is the thing that needs to happen here? Okay. And it's maybe me doing nothing. Maybe it's me asking a question,

but the last thing is probably me intervening, right? Or having, like you said, having a meeting or, you know, asking people to do a new report or an extra status report or something like that. It's that act of actually treating them as this powerful engine. And what is it, if you think of like tuning up your car, right, back when people did that, and you're listening to the engine and trying to see what is the engine telling you about what it needs, right? You know, you mentioned a word ego in what you were saying. Do you think that that's a big thing that a lot of people, you know, they get that headspace of, you know, their ego is like, I'm a manager now.

I have the title and I'm going to lord it around. Or other aspects of ego. Do you find that that maybe is something that gets in people's way or manager's way when they're trying to lead? Yeah, you're on a really good track here. I've seen a few companies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I will say something just as a frame. If you're in the manager-leader business because of the power thrill, you're not going to like my book. Damn it.

You really won't. I think that you've struck on a reality, and it'd be stupid to deny it, And that is that a lot of the people who climb to the top of organizations are not all that humble or humanistic or whatever we want to say, certainly not servant leaders. And the organization then looks like them, right? In other words, they set the culture for it and everything like that so that i think i think there's a there's a big challenge inside of organizations is that the people who are drawn to that situation being the ceo of a 500 or 5 000 or 50 000 person company are driven by some of that stuff that you're talking about sometimes you know what's the percentage i don't know 50 something like that um there i'm the book is for the other the other group okay the other group where it's a leader who feels like i cherish our people i cherish the opportunity to have them here

you know that that sort of posture um and that and that creates a culture like that inside the organization as well right the one of my favorite ceos um we were on a big i hosted a panel at a big conference and and he ended the session beautifully. He said, we were talking about talent. We ended with talking about the people you hire. And he said, nobody's good enough to be an asshole. I like that. I need to, I actually, I think I have a few girlfriends that would send me that for a coffee mug. That's not my problem. I think that's true. I like that.

It keeps people grounded. You mentioned a good thing about culture. A lot of people don't think about culture. When I started my companies, I had prepared pretty well. I'd read a lot of Forbes and Harvard Business Review things on running companies, and I had planned to run very large companies. And so I prepared. And so I knew that day one,

I had to start laying a framework for culture. And also what I wanted was a learning organization. I forget the name of the book. I should have it because i always reference it around here uh but um we're talking about theory v by um yeah that's the fifth element the fifth element yeah it says theory v on the cover and it's uh peter uh oh god i forget the same sorry no yeah uh i'll pull it up here um the uh i don't think it's the fifth element i think that's the movie i was it's great movie i used to call it theory five that's why i know i'm on the same same brain wave as you on that yeah yeah it's got the big v on the front um but i i wanted to um build a learning organization and have a culture of learning and open-mindedness. One of the motivators was my friend who I started one of our first successful companies with

that really went multi-million dollar. He was working at this company where all they did was worry about getting blamed for stuff all day long. And so everyone would document like every little thing. And it was like a high school documenting every little thing like i didn't go to the bathroom for more than five minutes today everyone's like trying to cover their ass so they didn't get blamed for whatever shit went wrong um they actually did have i'm not even kidding you they did have swipe cards for the bathrooms and they would measure the time you were in the bathroom um you

know i mean you're putting swipe cards in your bathroom maybe there's something wrong with your hiring process or your manager's style or whatever but it was insane these people were literally most of their productivity every day was documenting how something wasn't their fault or trying to cover their ass so they didn't get blamed like it was like 80 of the productivity was that that's in a i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt you go ahead if you're gonna no no that was it so that that is so interesting and there's there's a thing i touch on the book it's and there's a great book out there called is it called 8 000 weeks it's the yeah it's yeah, I think it's something like that.

It's the idea that we only have 8,000 weeks in our life, right? Which is kind of a scary way to think of it. But one of the things they talk about, the idea of time and work and all that kind of thing. And in the history of management, there's a moment when people used to get paid long ago, 100 years ago. Used to get paid piece rates. In other words, you produce 200 widgets, you get whatever, 20 cents or something like that. Who knows what it was back then. And at some point, the manufacturers went to paying people for the full day, right?

And so if you're paying piece rate and people don't produce a lot, you're not paying them a lot. So that's cool. Okay. But giving people a salary, a daily wage, all of a sudden changed the management, the owner perspective, which is I'm paying for their whole day. They better be working their whole day. And this was essentially the origin of the idea of greedy capitalists. How dare you take a break during my day? And this is a, it was a huge thing that happened in about 1925 or 1930.

And it's so it's, it's terrifying to me to hear that story that you just said, because that's that same thing. How much of my day are you spending peeing? Okay. That's, that's like insanely stupid management practice. Yeah.

Well, 55, there's a lot of that going on, even during sleep. And, you know, so the book was called, so that I have this right for people, it's called The Fifth Discipline, The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter Senge. So, yeah, it's got the big V on the front. That's kind of what's her name.

Yeah, it messed me up for years, too. Yeah. Yeah. I can never remember what it's got the big v on the front that's kind of what's right yeah it messed me up for years too yeah yeah yeah i i can never remember what it's called and then i always know the fifth element or whatever people like that's the movie you idiot but it's a great movie so there's that um but you know a lot of people don't think about laying that foundation or when managers come in i want to jump in real quick and tell you something about peter senge's book because it's a great book by the way i believe he made a mistake because i there's one of the books that inspired me in the 90s as well i believe he made a mistake because in the book he talks about it's a learning organization but the learning is the manager's learning and it's just it's a really subtle flaw in there, but the idea, he talks about systems

modeling and a bunch of other cool stuff, right? And, but his whole focus is we want to work with the managers, right? And, and if you look, if you step back and look at this idea of learning organization, it's really that the whole organization is learning. If we look at things like Toyota production system and these, these real management revolutions that happened, it was about engaging everyone in the organization, not just the managers. And I think that's just the tiny little flaw in his stuff. He had a lot of things right, though. But it was an interesting thing because you got to wonder, why didn't this take off when he did it? And it didn't, right?

Instead of reengineengineering the corporation, came out and cleared out all the middle managers in the world. Yeah. A lot of people don't realize too, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you have to take a look too when you come into a management or leadership position, whether you're in mid-level or any place, you've got to reassess where the culture is or maybe the culture was on the guy who was leaving

and decide on where you're taking your new culture. You have to be conscious and mental and present about it. You have to say, okay, so what culture do I want to cultivate under me? Is it need to be different? Does it need to improve or change? Or how does this fit my personality? And what is the culture that I want to have? Because as we mentioned before,

that culture is going to become reflective of you, whether you like it or not, whether you intend to or not, it's going to become reflective of you. And if you're a dummy, then there you go. You just set your tone. One of my favorite topics, by the way, culture. So one of my clients, we just did the book kickoff and one of my clients did a video testimonial. He said, Jack taught me that the culture is not

what you say it is. It's actually how you behave when the shit hits the fan. That was great. I never even said that, but he actually came up with that from, and so here's, here's, here's the real challenge, right? A lot of leaders go put the idea of culture in and we had one client, a really big client. They had these posters all over the walls. And one of the posters, I actually made a shepherd fairy propaganda poster to make fun of it. It said, we are empowered. Okay. I did the one, you know, with the guy and a woman, you know, the 1950s industrial propaganda poster to make fun of it. The problem is, is that a lot of those sort of cultural value things are platitudes, right? I'll give you an example, right? So I take a room of people, 20 people at that company,

and they're in a meeting and they walk out and I ask them, were you all empowered? And everyone looks at me like I'm stupid or something, right? Okay. Instead, let me give you a cultural value that is a lot easier to measure and people to follow, which is don't be a jerk. Or actually, don't be a jerk or actually don't be a dick don't be an asshole right exactly like that early reference yeah so i

i surveyed those same 20 people coming out of the meeting and say was anybody a dick in this meeting it's really easy to answer right but that's culture needs cultural values need to be measurable and they need to flow through, right? In other words, if I say one of our values is don't be a dick, and the shit hits the fan, and someone starts becoming a dick, now everyone can go, you're being a dick, and that's not what we do, right? If you have that, we are all empowered. No one can, even when the shit hits the no one we're all empowered but we're still all screwed right yeah yeah well how do you define being a dick is there like uh is there a is there a definition there i'm kind of i think i think it's one of those things you know what you know

when you see it a little bit or you know when you experience it i see mine in the mirror every morning when i walk in i'm not talking about my dick i'm just talking about me being a dick so clean up your thoughts i almost jumped on that one okay yeah thanks man i thanks man i don't want to turn it into an only fan show so i have enough weird shit going on with this show uh so you know people are sending me their snapchat photos if you're gonna get some snapchat photos that would have that was the prompt right there it's never the people you want sending you the snapchat photos is the problem but that's another story so yeah setting the culture straight um uh coming into management uh what is what are some other things that you know if i'm out there listening and i'm a manager

who says you know maybe i need to prove things or maybe that, you know, you're coming up on that first day of management, what's, what's some good ways to lay a foundation and hit the ground running the right way before you muck it all up? Look, I think that the, one of the biggest problems I go into this in some detail in the book is we are incredibly biased human beings. Okay. We are just, we're just wired that way. It works. That seems so wrong. No, I'm just kidding. I'm trying to be biased.

You're going to bait me on that one. And by the way, all the stuff around, I'm not going to rip on DEI, but all the stuff around DEI, and there's a great article in the Wall Street Journal by a couple of the top DEI researchers who said, you're getting this wrong. You can't shame people for being biased because people are biased. It's not a solvable problem. It's a biological thing.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. We're attracted to people we're attracted to. We're unattracted to the unattracted, et cetera. The thing you need to do as a manager is realize that you have those biases and build processes that avoid them. And basically anytime you are assessing or choosing, okay, you're getting it wrong. Cool study by Deloitte and a university where they found that the most significant factor in performance

appraisals from managers of workers, if you will, most significant factor was how much they were alike each other. Okay. And that was, oh, we both play paddle tennis or something like that, right? That would tend to create a more positive performance review than whether they had actually done a good job or not. And the quality of the person's work was the third factor, by the way. I forget what the second one was. So manager's ability to appraise and assess is ridiculously biased. And, in fact, it creates this spiral.

You've got to realize as a manager you're going to create a spiral because you're going to choose the people that you think will do well. And then because they get opportunities to try, they learn how to do better. And so it's a self-reinforcing loop. And of course, those you don't choose will always seem like they could never succeed because they were never given a chance to succeed, right? So one of the keys here is, can I put a mechanism in place where I just give everyone a chance? And this comes to one of the key ideas of a great manager, which is we all need to take turns. It can't be, I'm only going to let people do it who I'm certain of. It's the people I'm uncertain of who have the most opportunity to grow, and I need to give them a shot at it. And we had this guy that's running a big software development team

and everyone was slammed. And there was this one guy, young guy there, almost an intern. He'd won a yo-yo championship the year before. I mean, that was like his claim to fame in life. And we had this thing that needed to get done. And I said, why don't we have him do it and everyone laughed i mean they literally laughed like you're kidding right i said no let's i mean you guys were in you guys weren't skilled at one point so and and at the end of the day they

supported him of course you know like helping him like there is their little little brother kind of thing um but he killed it and got it done and no one thought he could have so opportunity is probably more important than your judgment giving people opportunity there's my there's my punchline sorry it took so long to get to it that no it was great uh you know this is important too because you've got to develop your people you've got to you know this is part of delegation and and you've got to be able to delegate and, and, and get your people's skills developed. And, uh, you know, you can't just, you know, think of yourself as like a, say you're like

a platoon sergeant or something. You can't run around and like, if your team can't shoot their guns, you can't run around and do all the gunning for them. Exactly. You know, you got to teach them to shoot their guns and you're going to have people that are always going to be on a curve. You know, I remember one time I had this conversation with somebody's bureau fucking idiot as a manager. I put that subtly and they literally thought you could build a team of 100% of rock stars.

Oh, God. And I'm like, no, you can't, because they were persecuting one or two people at the bottom of the curve that just couldn't be the rock stars. And I'm like, you can't do it. I tried breaking the rule for most of my early business years, breaking the 80-20 rule or 95-5 rule, I think is sometimes why I see it in sales. But the 80-20 rule, know 20 of your earners are gonna earn 80 of your business they're gonna be the kick-ass people they're just they're just you know there's something special about those folks and then you know you're gonna kind of have a fall-off curve and yeah i mean i kind of like the idea that i adopted back in the 90s uh i think 10 i think it was microsoft that gave me the idea to weed out the lowest 10%,

which is... General Electric, actually. Was it General Electric? Yeah, it was Jack Welch. Jack Welch, there you go. And I like that idea. I mean, you don't have to necessarily weed out and fire the lowest 10%. Maybe you should look at them and say, are we failing in some way where we can improve

these folks or help them or you know maybe there's some you know i i you always ask yourself is it us first sure because it usually is um and but you know there's there's there's some people they just maybe they're just not a right fit for this job they need to go back to mcdonald's or you know woodworking or steel mills or something you know whatever the thing is man maybe this just isn't their thing and um but yeah you can't build a team of of of the things but you do have to give people a chance to develop you do have to train you do have to do whatever but yeah this idiot was like trying to somehow get rid of all the weak players and somehow think that he could assemble a team of, of top people.

And I'm just like, there's no way to do that because the top people always enjoy being the top people. And if they have to fight over everything, they're going to leave and go someplace where they can be the top people. I don't know. Yeah, no,

I think there's a lot to that. And I, you know, I do want to acknowledge that sometimes you've got someone who's not a fit. Okay. And that's, that, that's usually more of've got someone who's not a fit. That's usually more of the situation that they're not a fit than they're actually not competent. They're just not fit for your style, your organization style, that kind of thing.

If you have half of your people, as we've seen with some of our clients, half of our people are no good, then I'm like, no, I think there's a person I want to start with and their first name is the same as yours, that kind of thing, right? You really need to look at, and I agree with you on that, team of superstars. If you want to build a team of superstars,

go ahead and grow them. Grow them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, very important word there. So lots of great thoughts and insights that we have in the book. Give us the final pitch out on the book to people and where they can find you on the Internet, maybe onboard with your agency and consulting, et cetera, et cetera.

Hey, well, so look, I want to make people better managers, and part of that is making organizations work a lot better, and we see some great results. The book talks about all that kind of stuff, and that's what we do every day at Agency Agile and the like. We'd love for you to take a read of the book. You can find it on Amazon.com. It's Unmanaged, Mastering the Magic of Creating Empowered

and Happy Organizations, and we're at agencyagile.com. You can find me on LinkedIn as well, and happy to uh if you want to chat on any of these topics please reach out to me as well i appreciate it there you go uh this has been a wonderful conversation i really appreciate it thanks for coming the show jack thanks chris great chatting with you there you go order up the folks wherever fine books are sold unmanmanaged. Master the magic. The magic. Master the magic of creating. Magic.

I was thinking that meme. Unmanaged. Master the magic of creating empowered and happy organizations available November 1st, 2023. Maybe give it to Christmas is coming up. Great holiday gift for your favorite manager. Just don't mark the sender on it. There you go. There you go.

Just leave it on a desk. Exactly. See if somebody gets the hint. Wink, wink. So, hey, someone just handed me the book. Anyway, thanks for tuning in to my audience. We certainly appreciate you. Check out our new link where you can interact with the book. Anyway, thanks for tuning in to my audience. We certainly appreciate you. Check out our new link where you can interact with the show on Facebook,

if that's your kind of place to be. There's a chat over there as well. Go to chrisfossfacebook.com. You can also go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfosslinkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss, the big 130,000 LinkedIn group, the big LinkedIn newsletter. chrisfoss1 at the tickety-tockety, youtube.com. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we, if you want us, one of the tickety-tockety youtube.com. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other.

Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. And I should have a...