OS Anarchy: Why Alignment Breaks as You Scale

Cole Abbott

[0:00:10]

Why do so many companies lose their way as they grow?

Mark Abbott

[0:00:16]

Oh, that's a great one. First of all, I think that we probably haven't done a good job, we being the coaches, the educators. Right. We probably haven't done as good enough job as we should, really, you know, being great at helping people understand the unavoidable stages of development. Right. And so I think part of the reason why companies lose their way is maybe not the word I would use, but they sort of grind and hit ceilings.

Cole Abbott

[0:01:01]

And the idea of a ceiling is a very, very limiting mindset of. Everyone talks about what's your growth ceiling. Right. It's just like, oh, that's just a ceiling. We're just. It makes it seem like, well, the mission is just to get to that and then that's it. And that's our life and that's fun, but it's not. Doesn't account for the stages of things and how you need to treat everything as its own part of a journey.

Mark Abbott

[0:01:24]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:01:24]

And how you need to break through those.

Mark Abbott

[0:01:26]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:01:27]

If you're using the same thing.

Mark Abbott

[0:01:28]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:01:28]

Break through the ceilings where you're going to hit a plateau, and then that sets you up to boost to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.

Mark Abbott

[0:01:33]

Right, Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:01:33]

It's more of a, I would say plateau versus a ceiling.

Mark Abbott

[0:01:36]

Interesting, right. All the words, choice word choices here. But if you understand sort of the end game in terms of turning a business into, you know, into a pretty damn good company. Right. You understand, you know, you get into that intuitively. Everybody understands that there's going to be stages of development. Right. That, like, first things first is product market fit as an example. Right. And so we, we all kind of intuitively understand that. I don't think we've done collectively, have done, you know, as good a job as we need to in terms of helping people understand that what that journey typically looks like. Right. They're all snowflakes. It's all unique. But relatively speaking, the journey is very predictable.

Cole Abbott

[0:02:27]

There's still an architecture, there's still ways that you engineer a building that are pretty standard.

Mark Abbott

[0:02:32]

Yes. Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:02:32]

Everything is going to be unique. If you don't know the principles around that sort of stuff, it's not going to go very well for you.

Mark Abbott

[0:02:39]

Right? Yeah. And it's like, you know, the, you know, I, I love the metaphor of building, you know, a house, Right. That to, to build a great house, you need a compelling vision, and then you need plans, and then you need tools and you need disciplines, and the disciplines are the Processes and understanding, you know, first things first. Like, you know, first thing is you need a plan and then you need to get it approved and then it needs to get, you know, it needs to get, you need to take it and get permits and then you need to figure out like who's going to be involved in what. And there's a lot that goes into it, but we've been doing this for a long, thousands of years, right? And there is a, there is a time tested way to go about building a building, right. And so when you understand that the same core principles apply to building a company, then you can say, hey, this is the phase or the stage that we're in in terms of building, right. The building that we're, we've, we've, we're.

Cole Abbott

[0:03:45]

Undertaking and setting up on a strong foundation. Because if you skip the foundational parts and you don't, you ignore the fundamentals, right. It's eventually going to collapse under its own weight.

Mark Abbott

[0:03:54]

Yes. And, and, and, and those, that when we say foundation, right. There's a foundation that there's a specific foundation that's laid in stage one. There's a there then, you know, I like to think of it as almost like steps. And that step needs to be very strong, right. And then you can step off of that, step up to the next step, right. And work on doing the things that you need to make that step, that stage, foundational that you can step off of. And then so forth and so forth and so forth. Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:04:24]

Like the plateaus, right?

Mark Abbott

[0:04:26]

Exact.

Cole Abbott

[0:04:26]

Stand on top of them. You don't, you're not trapped beneath them. Yes, I suppose a plateau versus ceiling.

Mark Abbott

[0:04:31]

Exactly, exactly. You know, back to your question. I think people get, find themselves grinding when they start to work on like stage four things that found the stage four, that foundation, that plateau, whatever we want to call it, right. When they're in stage two. Because that's not what's needed right now. Right. And if you're focusing on that, and you're probably not focusing on making that step, that stage four, that stage two, I should say foundation strong enough to step off of and on this, you know, and, and start to work on stage three, that foundation. And one way to do the metaphor is, you know, is you're, you're at zero and you build the first step, right? That foundation, you, you work on it and you can work on it from zero. And then you get to, you, you, you build that foundation of stage one and now it's solid and you can stand on stage one. Now you can get to work on that next step, that next plateau. Right. And make that strong. Cool. Now I can step up onto the next one. And you start to work on stage three. And yeah, you're also, you're. You're going back and. And you're, you know, maybe there's some stuff that you did in stage one that you're going to refine, Right. So you're going back down to the step and you're smoothing it out or you're making it a bit larger, whatever the heck it is. But you're. But you're making that. You're making sure that your stage work is really solid. And as you move to stage two, Right, you work on that and you. And you work a little bit on the stage one stuff, but then stage two is pretty darn good. And I can step up, go to stage three. And yes, you do a little work on stage two stuff and you do a little work on stage one stuff, but you're predominantly focusing on the stage three work. And it goes all the way to stage five in terms of ultimately building a company that you can exit, that you can transfer to the next. Next generation of leadership or that you can sell or that you can take public or that you can, you can, you know, raise a lot of money for. And so being cognizant of where you are and what's important, what the priorities are for that stage that you're in is super helpful. And I think people lose their way when they don't do the core work that needs to be done, and they're focusing on things that maybe not particularly necessary at this moment in time.

Cole Abbott

[0:06:58]

So if you have a wedding cake and you try to put the top part of the wedding cake is the second part, it's like, good luck making the rest of the cake.

Mark Abbott

[0:07:05]

Exactly. Well said. Mixing a lot of different metaphors here.

Cole Abbott

[0:07:10]

10 minutes of spitting analogies. Yeah. There's a lot more you could do, though. Yeah. Building a big building. You do the plumbing for the first part and then like, well, it's probably not going to work for when it's all the way up. Right. So we got to upgrade those things.

Mark Abbott

[0:07:22]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:07:22]

Those internals, like, the framing's still the same. Yeah. But there's going to be parts of that that we need to upgrade and maintain over time. Yeah. And we're going to find out like, hey, we bought a really big less than ideal system to start it off because we didn't know what we were doing.

Mark Abbott

[0:07:35]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:07:35]

And I gotta upgrade that. Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:07:36]

And. And so let's just say for the sake of this conversation, this is fun, right? You've got a hundred story building, but you got the boiler for a one story building. Wow, that's gonna work really, really well.

Cole Abbott

[0:07:48]

You save money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's. And there's a lot of things where you, you're not gonna want to upgrade the thing without absolutely having to.

Mark Abbott

[0:07:57]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:07:57]

And you're gonna feel those pain points and ah, shoot. And if you're not aware of everything that's going on throughout this, the things you built throughout the stages, it's going to be in the shadow. You're not going to know what it is and it's going to be very difficult for you to figure out what it is.

Mark Abbott

[0:08:12]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:08:13]

And address it. Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:08:14]

I mean, here's another, another, you know, simple one. Right. So you haven't built the product, you have no customers, and you're spending all your time designing this amazing website that talks about who you are when you're not that thing. It's just a, it's a, it's, it's just, it's a fantasy website. Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:08:37]

Well, there's a. So I'm forgetting who the designer was, but they wanted to set up a shop in New York City to sell clothes. Right. And, and someone's like, well, you need to just, it doesn't matter, run out of space, throw it in there, sell it because it's hot right now. Get it out, let's just push. And the designer's like, no, no, I want to set up, I want to make it really nice. I want to make it, you know, the store nice and whatever and waited eight months. And in the eight months, well, you lose eight months of revenue, obviously. And you're just sitting on your stock and then also the hype starts to die out. So you're making half of what you could have made also just blowing out eight months of that in the first place.

Mark Abbott

[0:09:17]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:09:17]

It's like, no, what's you need to do right now? Just do that, do that, do that.

Mark Abbott

[0:09:20]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:09:20]

And then once that works, once that takes root, people liking stuff, the product market fit well, then we can worry about the next steps.

Mark Abbott

[0:09:27]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:09:28]

And you got to earn your way to the next thing. A lot of people want to put it in and it's admirable to be meticulous and think about that sort of stuff.

Mark Abbott

[0:09:35]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:09:35]

But you have to understand where you are in your journey, what stage you're in and what you need to focus on.

Mark Abbott

[0:09:39]

Yeah. And I think, you know, why does this happen? Right. And so knowing humans the way I know humans now, you know, we all have our strengths and weaknesses and our interests, right? And so, you know, maybe you're a, you know, you're a coder and you're like really into like you just get sucked into just like it's fun, it's interesting and I can get in flow all day long and you're just bang, bang, banging all the, all the time on, on, on your, on your, on your code, but no one knows about it, right? So you have, you've got nothing going on in terms of sales and, or marketing. And so, you know, so all of a sudden into your point, right, maybe you're doing this for a year, right? And you're getting no feedback from anybody on this and someone else is out there playing the game a little more intell than you are. And you know, that idea that you had was a great idea a year and a half ago, but the world's moved forward and others have been moving forward and they've been getting lots of feedback from the marketplace and you're still down in your basement, right, banging away.

Cole Abbott

[0:10:46]

It all depends on the industry, what you're doing. Right. There's a lot of things where somebody can come in with a great investor and a hundred people, right, and just do everything that took you two years in like a quarter.

Mark Abbott

[0:11:00]

Yeah, right. That can happen to you or maybe even 10 people.

Cole Abbott

[0:11:03]

Yeah, these days, right? 10 people. There's a lot of people that, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of people working on smaller technological stuff. And then Apple's just like, oh, that's cool. And then they just do it, right? Like tile was a great idea and the little tracker things like, oh, you'll find your wallet because there's a tile on it. And then Apple's like airtag, like two years later and I haven't seen a tile since. I'm sure doing fine. But that's one of those things where it's like, ha, you thought you had an advantage there and Apple's just from capability and network effects to be able.

Mark Abbott

[0:11:31]

To blow you right out of the.

Cole Abbott

[0:11:32]

Water off the bat.

Mark Abbott

[0:11:33]

Yeah. And so just getting back to, you know, why people tend to lose their way. I think sometimes it's, you know, you just, you know, it's just the things that you're good at and you like doing and you're focusing on that stuff as opposed to some of the other stuff. It's really super important for the stage that you're in or you just get.

Cole Abbott

[0:11:51]

Comfortable at the stage you're in, right. Whether you view it as a ceiling or a plateau, sometimes it's nice to just not be climbing and sit at the top of the plateau.

Mark Abbott

[0:11:59]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, this, like a stage two business could be generating decent revenue, right? Could be generating decent revenue, decent margins. And you got a couple people and you're happy, right? And they're happy and that's it.

Cole Abbott

[0:12:17]

Or you go to stage three and it starts getting a lot. Or you're trying to put into stage three gets a lot more complicated, different reporting structure, and you just spend the rest of the time with the business kind of fighting that battle and you're just like, well, it's just, just harder than it used to be. And it's like, well, probably wants to go back also. You're here sitting like, ah, and now where it just sucks.

Mark Abbott

[0:12:36]

Well, and, and you're sitting there, you know, wearing, let's just say five or six hats, right, As a founder, right, you're wearing the head of marketing hat, you're wearing the head of sales hat, you're wearing the head of, you know, engineering hat, you're wearing the head of product hat. Just wearing all these hats. And, and you never sort of do the hard work to start getting rid of, you know, the hats one by one. And you know, and then, you know, let's just say you're married with kids and, you know, it's just a grind and, and, and your spouse is unhappy and you're working 60, 80, 100 hours a week and you know, you just like, this sucks and I need to go do something else. Everything's gone.

Cole Abbott

[0:13:22]

Yep. Lose the spark. But there's a few ways that you can lose the way there. And I don't think people sort of see it as like a little bit more of a predetermined destiny kind of thing. Well, this is just where we're gonna stop. Like this is. We've hit this point. That's it, right? You saturated the market. Insert, I wouldn't say excuse, but insert reasoning for belief there. What do you think is the fundamental misunderstanding within that sort of creates that mindset? What, what is the core thing within a founder that makes, that makes. Shifts them from, from passion to apathy regarding the business and, and sort of a lack of belief in being able to move forward.

Mark Abbott

[0:14:17]

One of the things we've been doing a lot of is, you know, working on presenting stages of development and, and, and meeting with a bunch of different people and groups and seeing where all they, where they all are developmentally. And you know, the thing that our research shows, and I think there's a lot of other research that shows a similar thing, which is that there's a really interesting, I, I know we don't want to use the term ceiling, but it's really interesting. What percentage of businesses just do not break through that 10 million in revenue. They do not break through stage three. They get, they just, they just sort of, it just grinds and slows down at stage three. And, and, and I think I have theories on, on, on why based upon all the work we've done. But I think the founders get to a place where there's tension between putting hiring leaders in the departments and the leaders wanting to come and do their own thing their own way, and the founder wanting to like, no, we gotta all be aligned and together. And so that's the, that I think that's kind of, you know, Brian Chesky's founder mode thing was all of a sudden, you know, he looks around him and all these people are, there's like, it's a mess. People are doing their own things and the company's not working well across and people aren't working well together and departments are doing different things and they all have their own tech stacks and, and it's just, it's not a unified organization. And you know, if you're a founder and this is, you know, especially a first time founder and you know, you, you read, you hear all this stuff, you read these different books and you're sitting there going, you know, this is just, you know, why am I involved in everything? Why am I babysitting? Why am I, you know, trying to get people to work together? Why, why am I struggling so much? And, and, and I think, I think that's where a lot, I think, I think that they're torn between, I want to do this, I want to go there, I want us to all be this. And the reality, which is they've got a bunch of different people who are, they're paying reasonably good money, who have reasonably good experience and they're like, well, I trust these people, but we're struggling. And it gets back to my opinion. They haven't really all committed to being, you know, to doing this together, this work together, to having the same tools, to having the same methodologies, to having the same words. And they're just, they're, they don't have, they have a collection of operating systems. Each, each, each of the, each of the department heads brought their own operating system to the game.

Cole Abbott

[0:17:37]

That tool works in the. Be that as a tool works in the beginning when. When things are led from intuition and instinct on the founder's part.

Mark Abbott

[0:17:44]

Right, Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:17:44]

Where it's like, oh, we're meeting every day, you know, that interaction is. Is keeping things in line. And then once you have that degree between the leaders, you know, founder and the stratum ones, and with leaders in between.

Mark Abbott

[0:17:55]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:17:56]

If you're having a bunch of different operating systems, bunch of different sets of tools. Right. Well, the founder needs to learn that the operating system is essential because that's another tool. You're gonna be worried, freaked out, misunderstanding the issue. If you're trying to use the same tools from stage one to stage two.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:14]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:18:15]

The same way. Right. That's not going to work. You're trying to solve the same thing. Like, oh, I just need to babysit everybody, or, you know, I need to make sure all this stuff's going on. Like, well, that worked when you had five direct reports and that was the whole company. But now that there's 20 of you and you don't talk to everybody. Well, if I'm speaking to you using this operating system or these tools, and then that leader is communicating with their team using a different operating system, different tools.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:37]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:18:37]

Well, it's basically like things are literally getting lost in translation because I'm speaking one language, you're speaking another language, and then. So one line of communication, top to bottom, to back up to top.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:48]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:18:48]

That goes through two different translations.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:50]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:18:50]

That don't speak the same thing. It's like. And so you're going to get double the issues there, and everything's going to compound. The more you have that, the more complexity. Right. It's the. What's the square thing?

Mark Abbott

[0:19:02]

Right, Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:02]

All those things squared.

Mark Abbott

[0:19:03]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:04]

You're just gonna be drowning in that.

Mark Abbott

[0:19:07]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:07]

And so if you can get everybody to just speak the same language, run through the same things, and the founder can see throughout the whole thing.

Mark Abbott

[0:19:13]

Yes.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:13]

Right. They can see that whole line of communication because it's basically a series of texts in the same language.

Mark Abbott

[0:19:19]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:19]

Well, then that's. That eliminates that compounding effect of complexities.

Mark Abbott

[0:19:25]

Yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, and we've experienced it here, right. Where you bring in smart people and they want to do it their own way, and you're like, you know, I trust you. And then all of a sudden, you know, you're sitting over and you're looking at these different departments, and every single department has its own tools, its own. It's its own language. We're not all on the same page. I'm sitting here one meeting, I'm looking at Jiro, another meeting, I'm looking at ClickUp. Another meeting, I'm looking at lasting another meeting. I'm looking at Monday, another, you know, and they're all speaking different languages and, and, and, and then of course, we've got, you know, the 90 platform and they're not using it for things that I feel like we should all be using it for. And, and then you're like, okay, now you're starting to fight with these people and you're like, well, why can't we all get on the same page, right?

Cole Abbott

[0:20:15]

This. Creating silos between everyone because they can't communicate across, right?

Mark Abbott

[0:20:19]

Because, because like in our company, how many different groups work together on, on, you know, on, on projects, right? We got, you know, you know, product and, and product marketing and obviously brand. And then you got the website and you got boom, boom, boom. All these people are working across departments all the time, right? And I think in most organizations, as you move up developmentally, right, you want, you don't want to be sitting here controlling everything. You want your organization to be able to work effectively, you know, up and down and across people to be able to effectively work up and down and across. And there's, there's friction every single time you're using different tools or words or methodologies or worse, you know, culture, right? If we don't have the same culture, if we don't have the same, you know, or principles, right? Guiding principles and things like that, all of a sudden it just becomes. And you go, you know, and, and, and so I, I can. I appreciate.

Cole Abbott

[0:21:22]

It gets.

Mark Abbott

[0:21:22]

All of a sudden, you know, you're like, okay, so, you know, we'll just do the best we can. And now all of a sudden, right, you're. You're just stuck in stage three because it does not. That you do not have. There's too much friction in the system and it just starts to slow down, right? It's just like performance management. You know, there's. I mean, I can go across all these different tools and disciplines and talk about these things. You know, if someone moves from one department to another department and all of a sudden there's a completely different operating system, how's that supposed to work?

Cole Abbott

[0:21:58]

Well, it's like a. In a different culture, right? The conductor needs to. Obviously needs to know that everyone's playing the same song.

Mark Abbott

[0:22:05]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:22:05]

And everyone needs to be able to see the conductor, and the conductor needs to see everybody, right? And so we have people in different rooms doing different things, playing different whatever they want to play in a different time signature and just ignoring everything, right? It's like, well, that doesn't work. And you can't have the conductor going and playing the instruments and trying to just focus on one section at a time.

Mark Abbott

[0:22:21]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:22:21]

While we're playing. Yeah, that doesn't work.

Mark Abbott

[0:22:23]

Yeah. And, you know, I, I really like sports metaphors when it comes to people, you know, working really, really well together. Right? And I, and I, and I tend to go to soccer because it's fluid. You got 11 players, etc, right? But obviously, you know, if you got, you know, let's just say that. That this, this team has, you know, four. There's 11 players, but the players really belong to three different. Four different departments, right? You got one department that's in, you know, man, they're so disciplined. You know, they all end. They. They play really, really well together. They're in great shape. They're in great condition, right? In another department, runs out on the field, right? And they're. They don't play well together, right? They're not in great shape, right. They're not well trained, right. It's just. And now you're just like, this game sucks, right? This is no fun. Especially the team that's really. The group on the field that's great. They're like, you know, I, I, you know, just trade me. I don't want to play with these knuckleheads. They don't care. They're not competent. They're out of shape, right? It's, it's, you know, the best teams, they're unified.

Cole Abbott

[0:23:41]

They're not all playing the same model, right? If you're like, oh, you guys play this type of football, right? Let's do total football right here. Let's do all these things.

Mark Abbott

[0:23:47]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:23:47]

It's like, huh, no, that doesn't work, right? And that doesn't work for the team. It doesn't work for the, the coach being like, well, I have to talk to these people differently than I talk to these people and make sure that these guys are running this thing and these guys are running this thing, and there's clashing there. Then I. It takes me twice as much effort to. Or more than, what, four times much effort to communicate things effectively. But if we're all running the same system, it's like, yes. You guys all know, we all agree on what your specialty is, where you are on the field. Cool. Other than that, let's have an easy conversation. Let's be Clear and direct in our communication.

Mark Abbott

[0:24:18]

Well, let's talk about that one. Right? So once again, back to this metaphor, because I like this metaphor. They're all types of coaching styles, right? And, and there was a bit written about the Houston in the NCAA basketball tournament, right? That coach is a, like, really, like, he's hard on his people, right? And he's, you know, he's not someone who's going to be deemed a poster child for psychological safety, right? He's, he's a hard guy and, and he drives his team and he doesn't mince words. And you know, I haven't done tremendous amount of research on him, but he is one of those like, you know, sort of in your face coaches, right? And now imagine that you, you know, that's one of the coaches and then you got another coach over here who is really, you know, everything's great. Nice. Oh, if you're, you know, you know, if you got a little whatever, right, Just go home and, and all of a sudden.

Cole Abbott

[0:25:21]

You ever hear Michael Jordan talk about anything? It's, I don't care if you're like, ankle's broken. It's like you're not spending two weeks on the bench. That's stupid. You're not doing that. You throw out. You get back in the game or get out so somebody else can get back in, right?

Mark Abbott

[0:25:32]

So imagine now on this, we have this team, right? And you've got three different squads, right? Three different groups. And one of them, one of the teams has this, this coach who's really super soft and car and, and, and not direct. And then you got the other one who's yelling and you guys can do better and blah, blah, blah. And now, you know, and, and, and, and now the head coach, right, comes on and let's say the head coach is more of a, you know, hard ass. And all these other folks wait, you know, they start to get, you know, it's like, no, no, no, you can't talk that way to me. And it's just, you know, back to culture, right? You, you just, the culture's got to be one culture and there's all sorts of different types of cultures out there. But, you know, if you have one group that, you know, basically, you know, is hard charging and focus and all that good stuff, and another group who's, you know, who's, you know, basically doesn't really care about the company and doesn't work hard and isn't focused and frankly isn't that competent, that's just not going to work.

Cole Abbott

[0:26:43]

It's like taking a fish from a tank with cold water and putting it in hot water and then just doing that every day. Because the culture is different between teams. Drastically different.

Mark Abbott

[0:26:53]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:26:54]

Obviously nuances and all those things. But when you're building from principles.

Mark Abbott

[0:26:58]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:26:59]

And doing off that, it's like, well, yeah, engineering or whatever to be a little more introverted and social than, than sales for every company out there. Right. But that's just going to be a thing. But as long as you hold the same values and everything is like, how that expresses can change and that's good.

Mark Abbott

[0:27:14]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:27:14]

We want that variety, we want that diversity, but we don't, we don't want to diverge in the things that matter most and then that gets back to our forever agreements and yes, maybe do a whole thing on that. But I think you see a lot of companies see someone that did something really well and like, let's do that. And then they just basically treat it as a bolt on rather than building up to that from principles, like figuring out their way there.

Mark Abbott

[0:27:38]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:27:39]

And so I feel like a lot of those companies, when something breaks with that and when something doesn't work, they don't understand why.

Mark Abbott

[0:27:45]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:27:46]

Because they didn't. They don't understand what lies beneath the thing.

Mark Abbott

[0:27:48]

Yeah. Right. And I, I think this is the, you know, The Classic Stage 3 founder who is a visionary. Right. And they read lots of stuff and they're like, it's book of the week or idea of the month. Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:28:12]

Idea of the day.

Mark Abbott

[0:28:13]

Idea of the day. Right. And, and, and everybody, it's just like, it's just chaos. Right. And everybody's like, you know, so what, what's up for this week? Right. And what's going on is in my opinion, and once again, this would be good stuff to research. Right. But what's going on is they don't really understand where they are developmentally and they don't understand what's like not working well right now. And. But they just know things aren't working well.

Cole Abbott

[0:28:46]

Well, they're trying to skip stages.

Mark Abbott

[0:28:47]

Yeah. And, and so they're, they're grasping for straws. Bad metaphor. Right. We're, God, we're over. We're killing all the metaphors. But they're grass.

Cole Abbott

[0:28:55]

We just run through them, just list them all right here.

Mark Abbott

[0:28:58]

They're grasping for straws. They're trying to fix stuff, but they don't fundamentally understand where they are. And what's really fundamentally needs to be built out so that they have the foundation that they need to step up from the Stage. They're in to the next stage.

Cole Abbott

[0:29:15]

When you're just trying to solve a lot of surface level problems without going back to the foundation, like, oh, well, here's the issue. This is something, we need to address it. Going back to the founder of like, well, I just have to micromanage everything. I have to talk to all these different people, have to babysit. And it's like, yes, you. If you just want to, like, do the next week's really important. We just gotta get through. It's like, yeah, do that. But that's not the long term solve. You have to identify what the core issue is.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:42]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:29:42]

And then work from there. And if you keep trying to put a lot of stage five pretty things on it, Right. And those start breaking, it's like, well, each. You're gonna have to address each of those individually and it's gonna be a pain in the ass because you don't even understand what went wrong with the thing to begin with.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:56]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:29:56]

So you don't even know how to fix the surface level thing at that point. You don't. There's a hole in the boat and you don't know where the hole is.

Mark Abbott

[0:30:01]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:30:01]

It's like, huh, well, maybe there's just a crack in the hole. It's like, that's probably. That's a big issue right there. But water's coming in. You're like, well, there's probably. You probably just didn't put the plug in. It's like, oh, no, you don't know how boats work. Yeah, right. Yeah. You wanted a little paddle boat once when you were young and you're like, oh, yeah, I get boats. That's cool.

Mark Abbott

[0:30:19]

Yeah, no, yeah, yeah. I think the, you know, one we're talking about how all this happens and, you know, there's so many different reasons for it happening, but I think, you know, a classic one is, you know, going back to principles. One of the principles that you need to understand, you know, almost from, from. You need to be aware of from day one, but you don't need to sort of be great at this competency until I'd say, you know, you really need to be starting to think about it in stage three is structure first, people second. Right. So, you know, all of a sudden you have this organization where you've built it around people and their interests and their competencies. Right. But it's not scalable. Right? They're not scalable. There's not replaceable. There's, you know, they're, they're doing all this stuff and if they, and, and, and, and if you. It thought about structure, you'd be like, whoa. Right. You know, we don't. Right now we almost. We're in a really sick, you know, bad situation because we've got this person who we can't replace. And as a result, we're. We're mediocre in terms of marketing. Let's just say they're overseeing sales, marketing, customer service. We're mediocre across. All right. And you know, you go, say, well, I'm gonna just go higher, you know, like, well, I can't replace Joe because. Right. Because you know, when I look at anybody in the marketplace, they're, you know, at my stage, I need someone who's pretty good at this. And, and I need some, you know, I can't find someone who's really good at these three things because they don't exist. Right. Because the reality is, is that we got to the stage where. No, you need someone who actually understands sales well.

Cole Abbott

[0:32:12]

You optimize around Joe, not around what you need.

Mark Abbott

[0:32:15]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:32:15]

As the outputs and everything with no regard to what's coming down the road either.

Mark Abbott

[0:32:19]

Yeah. So. So that's part. That's your mess. Right. That's part of your, That's a big part of your mess right now is, is. Is you were overly dependent upon a person who you cannot scale then that.

Cole Abbott

[0:32:32]

Even those with robust operating systems and, you know, those who are very wise are going to run into this issue where, oh, you just saw this thing happen and they turned the thing into their thing and it's like, okay, well, now we have to rethink the whole role because we know this doesn't work. Right. And it's like, okay, well, we did that. Hold that plug. And so, well, now we have to redo the whole thing. And then that's going to be a huge issue of train change management for the team as well.

Mark Abbott

[0:32:58]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:32:58]

Not only their team, but everyone else as they interact with that team.

Mark Abbott

[0:33:02]

Yeah. And you can, and you can run into situations where you will. Because of someone who's not the right person in the right seed sitting there. Right. You're all sudden, you know, because especially as you move from one stage to another. Yeah, they, they were fine in stage two, but now all of a sudden at stage three, they're struggling. And, you know, you try your best to help them, and so. But that's not your. That's not what you're great at. And so it takes you, like, maybe it takes you three, maybe it takes you six, maybe it takes you Nine months to figure out, right? And then, and then, and then you, then you're like, oh, I got to replace this person. Do I, do I go and hire someone behind their back? Do I go and start this process and then say, hey, Joe, you're gone. Right? And then obviously it takes time for that person to get on board and get up to speed and then blah, blah, blah. And then, by the way, because Joe is struggling, all the people below Joe were pretty weak or not trained or something. It could be two years. Two years in this, in this environment, in this world where let's just say it's product. Two years, you know, of your product just going backwards and backwards and backwards before you can start moving it forward again. That's a long time. So once again, there are lots of reasons why people, in my opinion, you know, find themselves grinding, they find themselves losing their way, they find themselves being overwhelmed. Right? And it's because fundamentally, right, they didn't do the work that was important, you know, at the stage they were in or are in.

Cole Abbott

[0:34:50]

Do you have a, a guess as to. The longer we divide, we wait to address these issues, the further we are from reaching the solution because, like, instinctively it feels like, well, if we wait, I'm another month, then that's going to be another two months of delay, right? Like, like a two to one thing there. Do you have a sense for what that looks like based off coaches coaching like, oh, we went over this this quarter. It's still an issue this quarter. All right. Now we've waited 2/4 or 3/4 or 1/4 to reach the point where, okay, well, we've moved on beyond this. So let's say we identify. Well, there's an issue, right? Like you said, Joe is not doing well and we were just like, oh, we'll give him another quarter, see what, what happens. Right? And then we have another case where Kathy is in the same position.

Mark Abbott

[0:35:40]

Right?

Cole Abbott

[0:35:40]

And we're like, all right, we, we address that one quarter in.

Mark Abbott

[0:35:42]

Right, right.

Cole Abbott

[0:35:43]

So Kathy's 1/4, Joe's 2/4. Would it take 2/4 to reach the solution to the Kathy problem? Or in four quarters to each end of the Joe problem or.

Mark Abbott

[0:35:54]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:35:54]

Because the more that they, that sits in, the more callous or calcified the team gets around those issues.

Mark Abbott

[0:36:02]

It's very rare where you think Joe is struggling and Joe doesn't know Joe's struggling. Yes, it's very rare. Right. In my, is my experience. Right. And so when Joe starts to struggle, Joe starts to become insecure. Right. Just something's going wrong, anxious, etc. Right. And then it manifests, can manifest itself in a number of different ways. It can manage. Manifests itself in Joe becoming political. It could manifest itself in, in, in, in. In Joe saying things to, you know, his teammate, his team. Oh, it's all because of, you know, the founder or it's all because of, you know, these other people in this other department. And so it's not just Joe. Right. There's rot that's starting to take place within, within part of your organization. And it depends how, you know, it depends how long you let it go and how rotten it became. But you know, if you ask me to have a pure instinctual perspective, my pure instinctual perspective is if that's been going on for two quarters, let's say, let's say two quarters, right. It's probably going to take you if you add that in. So we got 2/4 of rot going on twice as long to get past that because you got, okay, I got that, I got that 2/4, then I got 2/4 to deal with it. You know, go out and find someone, bring someone in. Then they got two quarters for them. They really get their act together. Right. So that 2/4 turns into 6/4 of just like no progress or worse. Right. Because now in almost every organization, I know this is a weak link in the chain, right. So you've had it's, it's that week link is impacted things way beyond just that group's core, core competency.

Cole Abbott

[0:38:00]

Right. People say weak leak in the chain. I feel like it's like pull a car analogy. I mean, apply to anything.

Mark Abbott

[0:38:06]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:38:06]

It's like frame rust, Right. It's going to have multiple things that are weakened because of it, right?

Mark Abbott

[0:38:13]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:38:13]

It's going to start at one point, it's going to expand, expand, expand, and it's going to go on to other parts of the frame. Right. It's not just going to break the whole thing because of one thing, but it's like, well, the integrity of the structure is going to be weakened because of that issue.

Mark Abbott

[0:38:24]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:38:24]

That you have not addressed.

Mark Abbott

[0:38:26]

Yeah. And so what, you know, so, so, so you know what, how that manifests itself once again, every company, every situation is different. But you know, maybe it's. This was taking place in product as an example. Right. And so now your customer success team is actually doing stuff that it shouldn't be doing and it's not really good at. But it has no, but it has no choice because. Right. The product is, has these issues. The product organization's not doing stuff. And you know, and they're like, well, screw it, I'm going to go do take this on myself. We've seen that, right.

Cole Abbott

[0:39:03]

You pull the product example and say, well, products saying that, oh, we're going to hit this deadline, right. We're going to do this thing at this point and then that doesn't happen. Well, then, okay, how does that impact sales? Right? Sales is like, well, you guys aren't living up to your promises and I will. Sales like, ah, well, we got to make our numbers, right. So what can we do to meet our numbers? And well, you push harder, we could be a little bit less truthful in what we're saying, right. A little less authentic and, and real CS is going to be burdened by all people asking questions and why things are breaking, why they're bugs. Product marketing is, well, how do we communicate things? How do we market a product that's stalled out, right? That's going to be an issue that burns the rest of the marketing organization.

Mark Abbott

[0:39:39]

Product marketing, as an example, let's just say it spent, you know, you were going to, you were going to do some, put something into the world next quarter and they spent this quarter working on all the, you know, product marketing materials, all the rollout, et cetera, et cetera. And then nothing happens.

Cole Abbott

[0:39:53]

You just get there like, oh, cool, we spent this whole team spent a quarter working on this stuff and for, for basically nothing. And they're not gonna, you're not gonna, you can't expect your marketing, product marketing team to sit there like, well, we'll learn a lot from this because we learned how to do the process stuff because that's not really how that works.

Mark Abbott

[0:40:09]

No.

Cole Abbott

[0:40:09]

And an engineering is just like, well, we don't even know what we're doing anymore because. Right. We, the communication here isn't clear, direct, and we keep getting mixed messages and then, then we get blamed because the thing isn't what they want.

Mark Abbott

[0:40:19]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:40:19]

It's like, ha, this is, yeah, this is awesome. And then, I'm sure, you know, people, the people team is having great fun with all the complaints and things here. Yeah, yeah. But it's like that's a just small little issue and you just ignore it.

Mark Abbott

[0:40:35]

Right. And, and, and so maybe you lose people. Right? Certainly you got a bunch of people that are probably not happy. Right. And so once again, you know, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, you know, one of the, one of the, I just published it a couple weeks ago. The succeed or escalate Blog, right. Which is if there's an issue, right. You got, you know, if you can fix it, fix it. If you can't fix it, raise the issue and let us know about this. Right. And you know the metaphor I used in that was back to the, to the, to, to the, to the ship, right. If there's a hole in the side of the ship and water's coming in and you know how to fix it, go fix it asap, right. If you do not know how to fix it, you need to escalate it to someone, right. Who does know how to fix it. And if they're not capable of fixing it, right. You need to escalate it again and you need to get escalated again until someone comes and fixes this thing. Because otherwise we're going to sink. And on a ship, this is obvious, but for some strange reason in companies, right, People that's not my responsibility and they just walk by the hole, right. The water flowing through it.

Cole Abbott

[0:41:39]

It depends on the organization. I, as we talk about structure, having a unifying operating system.

Mark Abbott

[0:41:44]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:41:44]

All the things that we're working on together, well that gives a sense of trust that well, when I do put this thing out there.

Mark Abbott

[0:41:49]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:41:49]

Or when I do all this work, it's going to pay off and there's going to be times where well, this wasn't mission critical. We're going to collapse this thing and we're going to move this over here and, and that's fine, right. That's for the, you understand that that's for the great, the, the benefit of the greater company. But if you have a more chaotic system where I, you know, we talk about tech stack tyranny, I think of it as tech stack anarchy because it's bottom up, right. Tyranny is top down imposed. So I think it is.

Mark Abbott

[0:42:15]

Well, well said. That's better.

Cole Abbott

[0:42:17]

So we all chaos. And what does what is a chaotic environment incentivize? It incentivizes short term thinking incentive. I want to survive, I want to do this thing, right. So it's like if we have a really chaotic environment on a ship, would I be better off escalating this thing to a point where it's like, oh, the wall. If I tell someone about it, well, they're just going to think I made the hole and that's my responsibility. Well, that's not good, right? And then you make it. So then you ignore it to make it even worse. If you're really in a survivor mentality, it's like, no, John made the hole and you Just throw someone under the bus because that lifts you up as you pull someone else down.

Mark Abbott

[0:42:54]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:42:55]

And so the, and it can get more and more extreme where you're making holes, right. You're putting a hole in the ship to get rid of John.

Mark Abbott

[0:43:02]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:43:02]

For your own benefit. Yeah, right. And so the more chaos, the more chaotic you get, the more tyrannical you get from top down. Right. Because you have a weak. Into the bipolar dysfunction of the leader.

Mark Abbott

[0:43:14]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:43:14]

The weak tyrant.

Mark Abbott

[0:43:16]

Right, right.

Cole Abbott

[0:43:17]

Where they just want to impose, impose, impose. Because, well, you could see a situation where a founder is, is dealing with this chaos and they're just, they become very cold, very short. It's just like, I just need to get stuff done. Decisiveness is great because you can have, that's going to be the kind of personality you're going to have in that role. So if you let things get chaotic, you don't have everyone on the same system where you incentivize long term thinking.

Mark Abbott

[0:43:39]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:43:40]

And this goes back to the culture stuff, right. Where it's gonna be something that incentivize short term, somebody incentivize long term. Right. If we live in a great place where everything's. Weather's great, whatever. But we also have, you know, a hurricane come through four times a year and it just wipes everything else. Like, well, I'm pill, I'm playing a six month game. Cool. That's all I got to worry about.

Mark Abbott

[0:44:00]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:44:00]

And so how can I exploit those six months versus well, if I, you know, if I'm doing this and someone else is doing this, and we have basically infinite time and a stable system where everyone's playing the same game, has the same values. And I know that, well, I'm doing this. Someone else in this team's doing this and I can talk to them.

Mark Abbott

[0:44:17]

Yeah, right.

Cole Abbott

[0:44:18]

That promotes the kind of people that you would want in the organization. And someone who's playing a short game say, well, John did this. And it's like, john, did you do that? No. Right. Kevin, did you see John do? I was like, no, he didn't do that. And it's like, okay, you have three of those things in a row. I was like, all right, I see who the problem is now. And you can address it, Right? But you need to have that visibility, right? It's like the chaos also makes the waters murky and you don't want that, Right? I want to hide unwanted things in the fog. You want to be able to see those things because those matter more than the things you're Doing well.

Mark Abbott

[0:44:47]

Yeah. Right. And as an example, just to fit. Just, I think play this one out. I mean, culture is the perfect example. Right. You have one culture in one team, you got another culture in another team, another cult. And. Right. And they're. They're playing by different rules.

Cole Abbott

[0:45:03]

It wouldn't.

Mark Abbott

[0:45:04]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:45:05]

For our audience, that's the Ken Wilber fans. Right. You want all your. Your quadrants to be working cohesively. You don't want, like, oh, I'm trying to make this thing work. I'm trying to have the external perspective of the self be maximized by. Create a Persona that's inauthentic. And then. Right. That's going to lead to it. Right. You go bottom left, discordant culture around things. And like. Well, that's probably going to be also involved with the system or the greater system of the company. And so if we have a unified system, everyone's acting authentically and we understand the culture well enough to be able to make it explicit within the organization.

Mark Abbott

[0:45:37]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:45:38]

And all those perspectives are aligned well, we can trust each other. Right. We don't have to worry about the baggage that lies beneath because, well, you do what you do. And I. Right. For the founder says, like, you can simplify how you see everything.

Mark Abbott

[0:45:50]

Yes.

Cole Abbott

[0:45:50]

And that's much less clutter in your brain. That eliminates the sense of anxiety. Yeah. And all these things. Right. And so that's that transparency, cohesion, and everything that stems from a unifying operating system.

Mark Abbott

[0:46:02]

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, we should talk about the word unifying. Right. Because it's not unified. Right. Because things either grow or die. And so the reality is, is. Is as you make your way through the stages and once even you get to stage five. Right. The business is evolving and things will evolve, the markets evolve. Right. The. Your processes evolve. There's just. There's evolution. Right. Is everywhere. Because things are either growing or dying. And so there's no, like, unified operating system that's done. We're done.

Cole Abbott

[0:46:39]

It's all good.

Mark Abbott

[0:46:40]

We never have to focus on it anymore. And we just, you know, just. It's. It's all set.

Cole Abbott

[0:46:47]

No, you're not done with that. It's not a destination. Like, oh, we're unified. It's like, awesome. I think you're looking throughout history, anyone that's ever said that.

Mark Abbott

[0:46:55]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:46:55]

Was like, ha, no, that didn't happen.

Mark Abbott

[0:46:57]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:46:58]

But if you view it as a journey and you see success as. Right. Unification, but you see that as not the destination, but a symptom of the journey, of being on the right path. That's unifying. We're in the process of unifying. We're never going to be 100% there.

Mark Abbott

[0:47:15]

No, that's cool.

Cole Abbott

[0:47:16]

You want to strive and progress towards that ideal state.

Mark Abbott

[0:47:18]

Yeah. And, but, but you're bringing on people, right. You're upgrading your, you're upgrading the tools and the disciplines. Right. You know, as an example, you know, you could be a stage five company and you know, like on an infinite journey, but you're, you're fine being at stage five. Right. But that, the leadership and development work that you do is going to evolve. Right. And, and so, you know, seats are going to come and go. It's, it's forever evolving. It's forever changing. And, and so the literal operating system, right. The core elements of your operating system are going to be evolving. So that's why it's, it's, it's not unified. You know, if you, you, you do not understand what's happening with your business. If you think it's all done, it's all good. Right. We don't have to worry about this stuff. And so, you know, I love checking in every single quarter. We do this, I do it with my clients, we do it internally. Right. How are we doing? Right. How are we doing in terms of. Right. People. Right. Seed as an example, how are we doing structure. How are we doing across our processes? Right. How are we doing in terms of, you know, of, of, of our brand and our positioning and, and, and all those different things. Right. There's, they're constantly evolving and so you.

Cole Abbott

[0:48:41]

Need to have that feedback that goes both ways.

Mark Abbott

[0:48:43]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:48:43]

On that check in.

Mark Abbott

[0:48:44]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:48:45]

It's like you as a leader, well, you want to see, you know, make sure everyone's doing the right things, but then you also need that feedback as a leader. Right. And, and, and use that intuitively. And that's where like quarterly conversations are so important.

Mark Abbott

[0:48:56]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:48:57]

Because you're so, a lot of people are like, well, yeah, you know, I, like, I talked to my boss about that kind of stuff like once a year. It's like, oh, that's. And it's a huge pain point from, from a lot of people across industries right here in everything from SAS to landscaping.

Mark Abbott

[0:49:13]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:49:13]

And it's like, well, just, just check in every quarter, make sure that goes both ways. And your leader understands that. Yeah, it's, it's a two way street there.

Mark Abbott

[0:49:20]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:49:20]

You're giving me feedback as a, as an employee and I'm giving you feedback is, well, how am I feeling with this relationship. Am I being heard? Are we doing this thing? Yeah. Do I feel comfortable and confident in this? Comfortable sounds right. Why you feel conf. In this world and what I'm doing. And as a leader, you should be very open to that. Right. You shouldn't be like, well, you don't know what you're doing. That doesn't work.

Mark Abbott

[0:49:40]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:49:41]

You need to develop the people and those systems have to evolve. And there's a lot of things out there, operating systems, where it's like, yeah, this is the thing. And you just do this and it's like, no, because what you need from that's going to change depending on what stage you're in. And so that needs to evolve as well. And then how that looks at every moment in time for each of those stages, well, that's going to evolve too, as we learn more and we further refine and evolve those systems.

Mark Abbott

[0:50:06]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:50:06]

And as the landscape changes, what technologies we have.

Mark Abbott

[0:50:09]

Right, yeah. So that's why it's unifying, not unified. And ultimately, you know, the more, the cleaner and the simpler, relatively speaking, things are, the easier it is to see what's working, what's not working. And if too many things are not working, then this is where founders, you know, sort of run into that moment where I doing this. Right. I'm stuck. And that sucks.

Cole Abbott

[0:50:52]

You're just flailing, spending way more energy than you need to be in all the wrong places.

Mark Abbott

[0:50:56]

Yeah. And you're probably. And, and, and it, and, and it manifests itself in one way or another in your relationships with your people.

Cole Abbott

[0:51:07]

You can't not.

Mark Abbott

[0:51:08]

Right. You're either going to be, you know, up and down every single day in terms of, you know, there's good day, there's bad day, there's good day, there's bad day. Like, like, you know, you're ranting about stuff on occasion and no one, no one's enjoying the journey.

Cole Abbott

[0:51:25]

Even if you're like, oh yeah, I'll just bottle it up and keep it all within me. It's like, well, that's not gonna work because you're gonna snap at some point. And whether that's literally right. Happens to you health wise, or you take it on a team, like, whoa, where did that come from? That's crazy. And then right then you have a lot of issues there because now you created instability because you didn't have a smooth transition. You weren't open and honest with them. You didn't clearly communicate.

Mark Abbott

[0:51:49]

Yeah, right.

Cole Abbott

[0:51:50]

You put up a facade.

Mark Abbott

[0:51:51]

And part of the thing of a, of a great unifying operating system is, you know, it should have. It should include an assessment that lets you understand where you are developmentally, so that you can sit here and say, hey, guys, this is where we are. It's all good. We're exactly. We're supposed to be learning lessons. We need to learn now. Let's learn now. Let's go work on those. Take those lessons in and decide what it is we're going to prioritize next.

Cole Abbott

[0:52:16]

A really great operating system would let you know where you are and where the company is developmentally.

Mark Abbott

[0:52:21]

Both. Yep.

Cole Abbott

[0:52:22]

Stay tuned.

Mark Abbott

[0:52:23]

Stay tuned.

Cole Abbott

[0:52:24]

Thank you.

Mark Abbott

[0:52:25]

Thank you.