The Hidden Cost of Too Many Ideas

Cole Abbott

[0:00:06]

So we've talked about this in the past, that we're entering sort of a new chapter in the way things are. Right. There was a Covid. Was a little inflection point.

Mark  Abbott

[0:00:13]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:00:14]

And then now it's. Things are kind of slowing down economically. We can all agree on that. And in moments like that, we tend to want to try new things. And I think a lot of people don't appreciate that. It's very easy to be different and to do different things, but it's very difficult to do better. And so when we start doing these and trying to be different, trying new things, seeing what works, seeing what doesn't work, and, you know, you could optimistically call that a culture of experimentation. Right. You start to create unknowingly a lot of complexity within the system.

Mark  Abbott

[0:00:55]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:00:55]

You know, I. I think it's in human nature to abhor complexity and overcomplicated things.

Mark  Abbott

[0:01:00]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:01:01]

But all of us tend to complicate to the. Right. It's just entropy.

Mark  Abbott

[0:01:09]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:01:11]

And when you have a large group that tends to just exacerbate that entropy. Right. And. And this isn't usually a problem of. Of culture. Most of the things to talk about is like, oh, you have a weak culture, whatever. In this case, even when you have a really strong culture where everyone trusts each other, well, then we start to turn a blind eye to all of those things and what the second, third, fourth order effects of seemingly innocent, simple decisions can be.

Mark  Abbott

[0:01:40]

Right. Complexifying things.

Cole Abbott

[0:01:42]

Yes. I don't know if that's a word, but we'll, well, trademark it, and I

Mark  Abbott

[0:01:48]

think it is, but I could be wrong, maybe.

Cole Abbott

[0:01:50]

I don't know.

Mark  Abbott

[0:01:50]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:01:51]

It complicates. I think that's the word.

Mark  Abbott

[0:01:54]

Yeah. Complicating things, obviously, but maybe complexify.

Cole Abbott

[0:01:57]

All right.

Mark  Abbott

[0:01:58]

Complexifying seems more. It sounds fancier, seems more on target.

Cole Abbott

[0:02:03]

And so I. I think that I. I know I'm particularly biased in. In trying to simplify, simplify, simplify.

Mark  Abbott

[0:02:11]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:02:12]

And just really focus on a few things that do the bulk of the work. And you could look at that from a Pareto distribution perspective or power law of, you know, the. The 20% of the work that does 80% of the lift. The lift y. Yeah. 20% of the effort that does 80% of the work. User physics, mechanical advantage terms. Right. Yeah. And I think that there's a natural tendency for people to see, well, I could do three things that are really hard or I could do 40 things that are pretty easy. And it's the. The appeal of checking off 40 boxes or 40 to do's.

Mark  Abbott

[0:02:48]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:02:48]

Is, you know, that feels pretty good. I feel productive. But if we're just all doing a bunch of low level tasks, we're probably not addressing the core issues there that are more complex. And also you're probably not setting yourself up for AI to help you with those things because if you could focus on the 20%.

Mark  Abbott

[0:03:08]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:03:08]

And let AI or something. Right. A lot of us have third party contractors that we bring in for these sorts of things. Handle that 80%.

Mark  Abbott

[0:03:16]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:03:17]

That's not a very efficient or it's a very effective use of your time because you're not going to get AI or, or someone that doesn't know your business as well as you do to come in and handle that 20% that does the 80%. So we would talk about the experiences that we've had at 90, but I'd like to start with the experiences that you've had in coaching and seeing where other companies fall victim to complexifying things.

Mark  Abbott

[0:03:46]

Yeah, I think it's, you know, I've seen it in a bunch of different areas. One of the areas that I think is analogous sort of supports the point you're making is where you have like a CEO as an example who is constantly pushing for a large set of KPIs to be improved upon. Right. And so you have. Let's just say we've all agreed that if we're above target here, we're not going to worry about this stuff.

Cole Abbott

[0:04:32]

Right.

Mark  Abbott

[0:04:33]

There's so many other bigger picture things that we should be dedicating our attention to. But it's very natural, I think, for a lot of leaders to sit here and go, but I know we could get 5% more out of this and 3% more out of this and 10% more out of this and 15% more out of this. Right. And it's like, but we're all okay with this level of performance and you're just trying to squeeze the last ounce out of this stuff. But the reality is that in order for that to happen, you are now inserting yourself across all these different activities in the company. And is that really the best use of your time?

Cole Abbott

[0:05:17]

Right. When you're trying to get that number today versus trying to set yourself up to sustainably achieve that number for quarters. Right. You know, successive quarters.

Mark  Abbott

[0:05:27]

But the, the point, point I'm making is that, you know, this is an example of where like a CEO or a founder is getting involved in a lot of what I minutiae, right. These people don't need that founder, CEO getting into Their activities. Right. They got a day job and they're doing the best they can and they're hitting the performance levels that we all thought made sense. But it's, you know, it's easy to see how, you know, someone can sit here and say, I know we could be much better at like these 20 things. Right. But is that really the best use of your time? Are there other things that are much more important for you to be focusing on? And I think the reality is, is it's easy for them to worry about those little things. It's easy for them to say, we could do all these 20 things a little bit better. And the answer is they're absolutely right. But is that a really good use of your time? Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:06:24]

And if you're going in and solving the day to day surface level issues of your employees or your team.

Mark  Abbott

[0:06:29]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:06:29]

Are you helping them be able to do that in the future? Are you taking that experience or, or learning experience away from them or, and, and you're just doing the things like, oh, I could do that way easier and, and faster than you could. It's like, okay, well also maybe you should see if there's a big bottleneck that that team is facing and go solve that issue that they are not able to face.

Mark  Abbott

[0:06:46]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:06:46]

It's like a. Elon's thing of every week. What's the biggest problem in the company? And you know, whatever that may be, he's going to go figure that out. And it's usually not. He needs to go sit on the assembly line and put things together. Right.

Mark  Abbott

[0:06:59]

Figure out how to increase the percent, increase the throughput by 0.01%. I mean it's just a horrible use of his time.

Cole Abbott

[0:07:06]

Yeah. But I, I think that those sorts of things of the, of someone leading from the front like that can be misinterpreted of like, oh, well, he goes out and he goes wherever the company needs him. And it's like, yeah, but that's not like he needs to write a blog. Right. For example. Right. It's not. That's not where that would be.

Mark  Abbott

[0:07:21]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:07:22]

And, and there is a value to going around the, the company sort of undercover boss kind of thing. Not literally.

Mark  Abbott

[0:07:28]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:07:29]

But just, you know, as we talked about with the archetype of, of the king and what that means, it's like going around the rest of the company understanding the different parts deeply and also showing others that you are there. Right. Providing that fertility is, is very helpful. And if you're doing. But if you're doing that is you're just replacing someone's job temporarily versus you're trying to fix the real deep fundamental problems.

Mark  Abbott

[0:07:52]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:07:53]

That no one else is going to be able to do.

Mark  Abbott

[0:07:54]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:07:55]

In all those different areas. Right. Then you can, you are doing that. But that's really difficult. Requires a deep understanding of all the things that are going on in your organization. You can't just start doing that on a Wednesday because you feel like it.

Mark  Abbott

[0:08:07]

Right, Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:08:08]

And you know, I think a big theme for all this is just staying disciplined and understanding what the, what the main thing is and keeping the main thing, the main thing. And there's going to be times where, you know, internal or external factors make it sort of just a really hard week, a hard month, a hard quarter, a hard year. And you can't, that can't let that take your eye off the ball and make you desperate.

Mark  Abbott

[0:08:32]

And for your meddling is not the right term. But for your getting involved in all these micro activities, you know, number one, you're obviously reducing some of the learning opportunities that are available for the people.

Cole Abbott

[0:08:46]

You're undermining their ownership of whatever that domain is.

Mark  Abbott

[0:08:49]

Exactly right. And while you may view it as being in the company's best interest, it's very short sighted. Number one. And once again, if you do something like that as a founder and or CEO as an example, you're setting an example now for all your leadership. So now all of a sudden we got everybody running around focusing on micro activities that fundamentally don't really change anything.

Cole Abbott

[0:09:23]

Well, and if you just do that very literally and you go one level down and, and take their day to day thing and then they're gonna be like, well, I gotta go do something else. And obviously, well, they want to follow the leader and B, they want to use that time and they're probably gonna use that time to do something even more stupid and superficial than otherwise would have been done. And that's just going to keep going all the way down.

Mark  Abbott

[0:09:43]

I think we're, I thought where you were going with the conversation to some extent is, you know, that we talk a lot lately about fewer and finer.

Cole Abbott

[0:09:54]

Right.

Mark  Abbott

[0:09:55]

And you know, the big, I think part of the big conversation we're having right now is there, there are a lot of people who naturally. Right. Enjoy getting things done. You talk about a list of 40 easy versus a list of one or two hard. Right. And really helping the organization understand that, you know, every single one of these, for the most part. Right. All of those 40 things or a significant percentage of those 40 things you do probably have A knock on effect on someone else, right? Which is why this is complexifying, right? Because you go out and do a bunch of things, you got another idea or another. And we know this really, really well, right? We see it internally where, yeah, those are all great ideas, right? But in order for those ideas, ideas to be executed upon, right? It's not just you, there's, you know, it could be marketing, it could be customer success, it could be engineering, it could be product. There's a whole bunch of other people that are being impacted by, you know, you having a bunch of ideas. And, and as you were also noting a lot of those, every single idea ends up creating entropy, right? So every single one of those ideas

Cole Abbott

[0:11:11]

basically creating a new door for entropy to come in.

Mark  Abbott

[0:11:13]

Yeah, right. Or you've created a new thing that's as soon as you create it, like software, it's beginning to fall apart, right? Everything you build is going to fall apart. All the work you do is going to at some point, right, become less and less valuable. So really appreciating the nature of complexity, the nature of entropy, the nature of are we really doing the things that are going to move the needle? And when we think about moving the needle, we don't think about just ourselves, but we think about all of the resources that need to be allocated or dedicated to taking that little idea and turning it into reality. And I think a lot of times just speak for 90, right? A lot of times there are a lot of good ideas that actually require a lot more resources than the idea creator, the idea birther, the ideator, the ideator, even things through, right? Because they're like, a lot of them are in love with ideas, they're in love with variety, they're in love with, you know, doing a bunch of different things. And I get it, but you know, I've had number of conversations with people where it's like, hey, I get this, right? But is this really a great use of our collective energy right now? And, and you know, and have you thought through actually what this is really going to cost, right? And the benefits that we're really going to get from them and not just, you know, the benefits today, but are these benefits, you know, are we confident these benefits are going to be here a year from now or two years from now? So back to fewer and finer and really helping, you know, from a cultural perspective, helping people appreciate that, you know, there's a lot of things that, that on their face sound like a good idea, but when you really peel it back, you know, the cost Benefit over the long run, you know, doesn't make sense. And so I've had people say, well, you know, why can't we just try this? I'm like, because you have a hypothesis and we don't really even know how to test it right now. We certainly don't know how to value it and we don't know even what it's going to cost. So unless we're super clear on why we're going to do something and we have a darn good sense, even if it's a back of the envelope for the cost benefit and ultimately, you know, sort of the return on all the required activities, then, you know, especially any ideas that come up mid quarter.

Cole Abbott

[0:14:01]

Right.

Mark  Abbott

[0:14:01]

My perspective is throw them on the long term issues list. Let's just see if they stand the test of the next three or four or five or six weeks, whatever it is, during the middle of the quarter. And then when we get there, right. We gotta have a real. I like to use the term, I don't know why lately, but I like to use the term sober minded analysis of. Does this really even make sense?

Cole Abbott

[0:14:21]

Well, I think if you go to one of our quarterlies, then that word makes sense.

Mark  Abbott

[0:14:25]

Yeah. Well, you know, the reason I started using the word was I think there's. And this actually I think it applies super well here. Right. Generating lots of ideas is intoxicating for.

Cole Abbott

[0:14:39]

Well, it feels good.

Mark  Abbott

[0:14:39]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:14:41]

It's the same thing. It's. It's like, right. The. If you're an idea person or an execution person. Right. There's both. The. A lot of people optimize for the perception of productivity.

Mark  Abbott

[0:14:49]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:14:50]

Because if you do a bunch of things like I came up with all these ideas and it's like, cool, what, what did that actually do?

Mark  Abbott

[0:14:55]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:14:55]

Versus if you come up with a few, most people aren't going to give those the same weight because we tend to value quantity and quality. A lot of people just view those as equal. Right. Versus prioritizing those and putting those into a hierarchy of quantity being a scalar of quality. But if you view those as equals, like well, yeah, five versus five and one works, one doesn't work and one's 20 things and you have two of those 20 things that work out and you had two out of the three other things that work out, but two big ones were right. When you get into the trap of falling for the perception, then you're trying to optimize for, okay, well how can it look like I'm doing a lot of work then that can come from people that just really have that. That motor inside. And that's cool. I still think you have to be very aware of that and learn how to make that best serve you and others for the long term.

Mark  Abbott

[0:15:43]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:15:44]

But then you have a lot of people that feel insecure. And in this job market, that's going to be a thing. People feeling defensive, insecure about their position. And some of that's rational, some of that's not. Most of that's not right. And they're going to be pushing for those things, and it's going to almost always steer them in the wrong direction towards complexifying things.

Mark  Abbott

[0:16:06]

Statistically speaking, most employees, I do not, and I love, love them. All right. But I think a material percentage of employees, frankly, do not really think through what kind of complexity their ideas are actually creating. And that's why most of our boys

Cole Abbott

[0:16:28]

are much, you know, have much more experience, are much more wise than the average person out there. Right. It's just that's. That's human nature and that's fine and. Right. You gotta understand it's a journey of. We're all figuring that out.

Mark  Abbott

[0:16:38]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:16:39]

And that's cool because all of us did that at some point. Right. For us, for our personalities. Like, oh, yeah. Or the idea is like, oh, let's do all these things. And that's really cool. And I think that a useful heuristic for that is you're talking about, oh, let's just sleep on it a little bit and then have a sober conversation. But if you want to do all these things and you don't own the thing.

Mark  Abbott

[0:17:01]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:17:01]

That you want to have done, and it's like, oh, this would be really cool for them to do.

Mark  Abbott

[0:17:04]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:17:05]

It's probably not going to be a great, like a great value idea.

Mark  Abbott

[0:17:09]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:17:10]

It's probably not.

Mark  Abbott

[0:17:11]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:17:12]

And if. And there are times where it's like, I would love to do it. It's just not my thing. And that, sure, 100% we can. Great ideas can come from anywhere. Yes. You're not going to hear great ideas from everyone, but it can come from anywhere.

Mark  Abbott

[0:17:24]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:17:25]

So you should always be listening for those things and curating your taste and judgment.

Mark  Abbott

[0:17:31]

Yeah. And especially it's the great ideas that someone else needs to execute and own. It's likely that you don't actually understand what it's going to take for that person to execute and own that great idea. Right. And so then, you know, especially in organizations where, like, that great idea, and this is classic founder stuff.

Cole Abbott

[0:17:55]

Right.

Mark  Abbott

[0:17:55]

Where, you know, you have this idea and you share it and people like, well, Mark said that we're going to go. And I'm like, I'm just thinking out loud guys, this, you know, and I think that's not just a me thing. There are, you know, other people within the organization who have, you know, ideas and they think out loud and all of a sudden, you know, a bunch of people have hopped to it and they're working on something and you know, you think that the system, especially, you know, a system like ours where anything of material effort is going to be thrown into the category of a rock and we don't do non rock rocks in the middle of the quarter. So that idea is interesting. Right. Once again, put it on the long term issues list or put it on a key topic list and then let's talk about it, you know, at our, for us, you know, at the off site. But you know, it's those great ideas that get thrown into the middle of a quarter that actually take resources. Those are the things where, you know, I, I really, really, really don't like that happening. And I think we're pretty good at it, but I don't think we're where we should be.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:08]

We're getting better with it.

Mark  Abbott

[0:19:09]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:09]

Which is all you can really ask for. Yeah, yeah.

Mark  Abbott

[0:19:12]

Progress.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:13]

Progress.

Mark  Abbott

[0:19:14]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:16]

And I think that another issue and something we've been pushing, I guess starting really this quarter is shifting away from just a bunch of projects that are one off things just because it's like, oh, we have the time to do this. Okay, well you might have the time to do this, but also is that the best use of your time? Because a lot of people just seek novelty because that's fun. Right. So you just do a new project every quarter.

Mark  Abbott

[0:19:37]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:19:37]

And then be done with it at the end of the quarter. Like that's for a lot of people that's pretty appealing. But I think that going back to discipline, we really need want to invest in programs of things that are going to live on. Because those are going to be compounding. Yes, right. And those are going to be defined areas where when entropy starts to accumulate there starts to build there we know how to go in and sort it out. Because it's a domain that we understand, it's a domain we know how to order and it's daunting to invest in those sorts of things where you have to think a year plus out of, okay, well how do we want to do this?

Mark  Abbott

[0:20:15]

Right?

Cole Abbott

[0:20:15]

How does this wanna look in a year? How do we wanna start that? This Quarter. How do we wanna scope that and then how do we build towards it versus like let's just hit the ground running and do this thing. And there are teams and areas where like no, you are basically just doing a bunch of projects. Right?

Mark  Abbott

[0:20:28]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:20:28]

And, and that's cool, but you have to understand it. You wanna build a system program that helps to facilitate those projects.

Mark  Abbott

[0:20:34]

It's interesting though. I, I, you know, the whole projects versus program thing, as you said, it's something we're more focused on this quarter. But I don't, you know, and maybe I'm wrong here, but I think in our company there are very few projects that don't impact another seat.

Cole Abbott

[0:20:57]

Even projects, I mean they almost, I can't think of any that don't.

Mark  Abbott

[0:21:00]

I know, they all do.

Cole Abbott

[0:21:01]

Right?

Mark  Abbott

[0:21:01]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:21:03]

And so we know that almost all of our work is going to be cross functional or cross departmental in some way.

Mark  Abbott

[0:21:09]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:21:10]

So how do we make that work? And if we're doing a program where we're investing these things and we're building these processes and these relationships with the teams and understanding how to work better with each other and we're working on those little things versus just starting that from zero every time.

Mark  Abbott

[0:21:24]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:21:24]

And if you're doing it within a team, like a skunk works, skunk works kind of thing. Awesome. That's great. That's the point of it.

Mark  Abbott

[0:21:29]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:21:31]

99.99% of the time we're not doing that or no one's really doing that. Right?

Mark  Abbott

[0:21:36]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:21:36]

In, in itself, that is a program that does projects.

Mark  Abbott

[0:21:39]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:21:39]

There is a way that they do that. Whether it's explicit or implicit, there is a way, cohesive, resonant that they do that every single time.

Mark  Abbott

[0:21:47]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:21:49]

And like, Right. Going back like SpaceX, the five step system that they use for improving and refining things like that is a program.

Mark  Abbott

[0:21:57]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:21:57]

That they use as a way to function mostly programs, but also projects. Right?

Mark  Abbott

[0:22:02]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:22:03]

That's a way that you do that and really owning those things. And that's where you're going to get some sort of competitive, sustained competitive advantage because you are investing in that. If it's just a bunch of projects, well, what's stopping us from just going, getting a new team every single time.

Mark  Abbott

[0:22:18]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:22:18]

I don't think that that's, that's productive and that's helpful for your team, for your clients, for your, any of your ideal stakeholders.

Mark  Abbott

[0:22:26]

What's interesting, looking at this conversation through the lens of the stages of development. Right. I think, you know, you, you, you likely have more projects in the early stages and as you start to write, your company moves into stage three or stage four, obviously stage five. Right. Almost everything you're working on needs to be thought through programmatically as opposed to as a project. Because you've now built the system where, you know, it's relatively sophisticated. And if you want to go do something, even whether it's in marketing, rev ops, project product, product marketing, product management, you know, engineering, et cetera, it's going to impact someone else or it's going to impact, you know, another, for lack of a better term, cog in the machine. And so I think that, you know, moving from a project oriented world to a program oriented world is actually part of the stages of development.

Cole Abbott

[0:23:32]

In terms of the stages thing, I'd view those early on projects as more exploratory efforts.

Mark  Abbott

[0:23:36]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:23:37]

And it's, it's still something that you want to invest in and a domain that you want to define. Because if you're saying that I think that any domain of understanding is easier to approach once it's defined. And so once you can define it and know what to invest in and how you want to go about doing that, well, great. There's gonna be a lot of things that you can learn both about yourself and how you work, how you work with the team, how the team works and the nature of that thing that you are doing. But if you just view it as, all right, let's just try to put these words on a landing page and see what happens. Or stand up this homepage right before we're early on.

Mark  Abbott

[0:24:12]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:24:12]

And just see what happens. Like that's it. And there's no direction for progression there. Right. It's like it move fast and break things only works if you have direction. Otherwise you're just running around a room breaking.

Mark  Abbott

[0:24:26]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:24:29]

It's like fail fast, fail forward. Yeah, right. I think that applies to all of these things, especially early on. Right. It's like move fast but with, with direction.

Mark  Abbott

[0:24:39]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:24:39]

Not just go crazy because that's, that's just chaos and, and that's gonna, that's gonna really take its toll on you. So going back to sort of

Mark  Abbott

[0:24:53]

where

Cole Abbott

[0:24:53]

we started or not started 20 minutes ago, talking about the coaching stuff. Do you see this a lot in your clients in terms of maybe in the leadership teams, someone's like, oh, we need to go try a bunch of things and then somebody like, no, you don't understand what this is doing. And in those moments, do you start to see trust sort of break down and it become More of a emotional dialogue, huh?

Mark  Abbott

[0:25:19]

Yep. And, you know, you know, as an example, you know, I've got a client. I won't get into too much detail here because it'll, it'll sort of. They'll know I'm talking about them. But where, you know, they've expanded their sales organization pretty significantly over the last year and the salespeople are running around bringing in potential clients. But those clients want, you know, a product that they don't currently produce. And they all think it's easy, Right, to produce this product. Well, it's, you know, it's just a little bit different than this last product. Right. But the answer is, you know, the founder really understands everything in a extraordinarily micro level. And he's like, yeah, but, you know, this is going to happen, this is going to happen, this is going to happen, and this is going to happen. And I don't even know how to handle this right now. And I can tell you for a fact that we can't do this and this and this. And they're all like, you know, but we brought in all this new business. And he's like, yeah, but we can't produce it. And we all need to get on the same page in terms of what we can and can't do. And so that when you guys are out there qualifying new business, you're not promising things that we cannot deliver because part of this company set us a phenomenal reputation in the industry.

Cole Abbott

[0:26:42]

Right.

Mark  Abbott

[0:26:44]

When they say they're going to do something, they do it and they do it extraordinarily well.

Cole Abbott

[0:26:47]

Right.

Mark  Abbott

[0:26:49]

So there's this tension right now between the new sales organization. Right. And production. And so, yeah, this is a. I mean, I, I literally was in a meeting a couple weeks ago where this issue was coming up several different times. And the guy who's, who's overseeing all the sales stuff, you know, he, you know, he just feels like he's doing all this great work, he's producing all these great opportunities, but the reality is, is that he doesn't really want to understand what's required to produce the things that he's trying to sell. And so that creates fiction because the operations organization's like. And he's like, I'm producing all this back to all this quantity. It's not quantity that can actually convert, be converted into sustainable, you know, revenue without major league chaos for a while.

Cole Abbott

[0:27:59]

And even if you successfully do it, you're still going the backwards way around, like, how do we make this thing work for the sake of Making it work versus like, well, did we make sure this was actually going to be a great thing? And then, well, how do we do it and how do we do it at scale? How do we do this? Well, how do we do this repeatedly?

Mark  Abbott

[0:28:11]

And is this, is this even, is this product category, even a product category that makes sense for us? Is it bigger enough to warrant. Right. Spending a bunch of resources to figure out how we address these issues that we can, we can't resolve immediately at all. It's going to take engineers, it's going to take production team, it's going to take new tooling.

Cole Abbott

[0:28:34]

Right.

Mark  Abbott

[0:28:34]

There's a bunch of stuff that it's going to take.

Cole Abbott

[0:28:37]

If you're UVP in whatever category you're in is like, we're high reputation, great quality, you have to move slower.

Mark  Abbott

[0:28:45]

Yeah, right.

Cole Abbott

[0:28:45]

If you're, you know, say if you're Apple versus Amazon, Amazon's like, we just go do much stuff and if it sucks, it sucks. And that's fine. And we learn.

Mark  Abbott

[0:28:52]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:28:53]

Apple cannot do that. Right. And it sounds like that company is very much in the. We would do things, we do them well. Yeah, right. We own that thing. We move slowly, but we move surely.

Mark  Abbott

[0:29:02]

Yes.

Cole Abbott

[0:29:03]

And in those scenarios you have to exercise even more discipline and understanding of where you're going, why you're doing what you're doing.

Mark  Abbott

[0:29:12]

There are some people who intellectually appreciate it, but emotionally they're like, you know, frustrated because they just feel like we should be able to do it. Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:29:27]

And it's when it feels like a judgment on them. What, you think my idea sucks?

Mark  Abbott

[0:29:30]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:29:31]

And I think this kind of gets back to something we talk about a lot too anti fragility if you aren't told, hey, that doesn't make sense. And we can't have an honest and open and, you know, truthful, well meaning discussion around it.

Mark  Abbott

[0:29:48]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:29:49]

That's going to get worse. Yeah, all these things are going to get worse because we're just putting band aids on things. It's like a Walmart, right. In terms of Walmart had this thing where they started pricing things wrong. So like, oh, that's a problem. So they'd go in, all the stores would just go in and have someone go in with a price gun and go check all the prices and they started doing that. And then Sam Walton came and he's like, this is stupid. Just make sure the price is right from the beginning.

Mark  Abbott

[0:30:13]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:30:14]

And it's like, oh, that's hard. Well, you just, just do it. This is like, this isn't even a discussion. Right. But somebody in that situation was like, oh, well, we could do this and we'll just add the extra step because it's not worth worrying about the other stuff. It's like, no, all those details matter.

Mark  Abbott

[0:30:27]

Right. Well, and once again, back to. You just complexified things, right? Because now you're like, okay, because we didn't do this. Right. We're inserting a whole new process, a whole new system, a whole new people category of work. Right. To address a more fundamental issue that if we just address the fundamental issue, we don't need all this extra activity because once again, all that extra activity is subject to entropy.

Cole Abbott

[0:30:54]

Yeah.

Mark  Abbott

[0:30:55]

Back to fewer and finer. Right. And it's. And maybe people won't realize this, but I think this is a real issue that, you know, like we talked about earlier.

Cole Abbott

[0:31:07]

Right.

Mark  Abbott

[0:31:07]

I can think of all my clients dealing with this.

Cole Abbott

[0:31:09]

It's just human nature. Yeah. And I feel like it's an issue in all of our teams. It's an issue in society. We just want more, more, more, more, more. Right. It's like, well, how about we. Because we're chasing novelty, right?

Mark  Abbott

[0:31:19]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:31:19]

What's the new thing? With the new thing? We want to manage perceptions and appearances and. Which is the kind of the keeping up with the Joneses thing. Sometimes you work with the Joneses and it's. It's hard, but, you know, it's probably more of an American issue than a European thing. We're just more novelty seeking.

Mark  Abbott

[0:31:37]

Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:31:38]

We value. Put as much of an emphasis on the heritage and keeping things going for longer time horizons. Yeah. And I can come with, you know, how you buy clothes, how you run your thing. Your sensitivity is to what you eat, what you eat. Right. All. All of these little things. And I'm sure most people listening to this are in the US Or Canada or something like that. Yeah, same thing, right?

Mark  Abbott

[0:32:04]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:32:04]

In this case. And you know, I think viewer and finer is just a. For me, is a great heuristic and a great thing to just keep in mind whenever you're wanting to pursue a new project, when you want to buy something stupid. Right.

Mark  Abbott

[0:32:22]

We've even been given shit by clients about this, I think, over the last year and a half. Right. Which is, guys, you know, we appreciate all the new stuff you've done. Right. But there's some fundamental things we just like to see. Work better be simpler, be cleaner. Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:32:38]

That's a lot of. It's. That's harder work, though.

Mark  Abbott

[0:32:40]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:32:41]

We just come up with new stuff, just do that playbook do it again. Right. Or just go put something else out there and.

Mark  Abbott

[0:32:46]

Yeah. And then, you know, I have a pet peeve on this. Right. And then we go off and do something and no one's even gone back and said, you know, done a review of. Okay, so this new thing, how's it doing?

Cole Abbott

[0:33:00]

Right.

Mark  Abbott

[0:33:01]

What's the perception of it? How effective is it as opposed to launched it. Wonderful. And now we're moving on to the next thing. And so I think that there's a lot.

Cole Abbott

[0:33:16]

Right back to accountability and hard conversations. There's going, there's going to be negatives in there. We want to learn more from the negatives than we do from the positives. Right. And some of us would be too harsh on that and whatever. But if we just don't talk about those because we've had points, you know, not super recently, but we have had points in the past. We're like, well, we don't talk about what went wrong. It's like that doesn't work.

Mark  Abbott

[0:33:40]

No. And I think that that's a, that's a cultural thing. Right.

Cole Abbott

[0:33:44]

Like I said, it's getting better. Right. We're working through it.

Mark  Abbott

[0:33:47]

But I, but it's, it's, it's, it's interesting. I think that, you know, I, I've said this to you privately, right. That you know, my own evolution is that, you know, I look back at the last year and a half. Ish. And you know, I think there are moments where I over indexed on worrying about people's feelings as opposed to having very straightforward hard conversation. And because, you know, it's for certain people, it's easier to do. And I know you, you know, yeah,

Cole Abbott

[0:34:29]

some of us enjoy that weirdly.

Mark  Abbott

[0:34:32]

And, and I'm, you know, and, and there are people in the company who I have, you know, no issues with just being very direct with because I trust them and I believe that they understand where I'm coming from. And I think that you are more

Cole Abbott

[0:34:46]

similar to them and it's easier for you to.

Mark  Abbott

[0:34:47]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:34:48]

Get their perspective on things or understand their perspective.

Mark  Abbott

[0:34:51]

And, and every now and then I'm a bit too harsh and on something. And, and, but, you know, but it's because I've, you know, sort of don't. I'm not worrying about choosing every bloody word with them. Right. And, and then, you know, there's a part of me that, you know, I enjoy a good rumble around an idea. Right. I literally do. And not everybody enjoys a good rumble around an idea. And I think it's natural for founders to go through a pendulum swinging moment in terms of this care versus performance over indexing on one versus the other a little bit too much. I watch a lot of, you know, podcasts on founders and you know, VCs talking about like Horowitz was recently interviewed by Halligan on Long Strange Trip. And you know, they were, they were talking about how, you know, a lot of founders get to the place where they become more comfortable having hard conversations. And you know, and the story on Chesky is, you know, he went through that phase and came out of it with Founder Mode. Coming out of that, obviously it wasn't his. He didn't name founder Mode. It was Paul Graham who named Founder Mode. But you know, he came out of COVID where it was like, right, we gotta have some hard conversations, guys around things right now. And he over indexed on care and then, you know, swung it back a little bit. And you know, when you swing those things back, not everybody enjoys that transition.

Cole Abbott

[0:36:37]

Yeah. Say what you mean with care. And I think you have, you have to, you have to say the truth and you have to be able to speak those things.

Mark  Abbott

[0:36:43]

Yeah.

Cole Abbott

[0:36:44]

While you're doing that, you should be trying to say that as best you in the most constructive way possible. Right. Because we all want to help ourselves better understand things and also help other people on their respective journeys as well.

Mark  Abbott

[0:36:57]

And then, and then, you know, obviously you want to model so that others can learn how to model.

Cole Abbott

[0:37:02]

All of this has a social impact.

Mark  Abbott

[0:37:04]

Yeah. Which kind of, you know, I mean, that's another. It's a tangent, but not, not very far away.

Cole Abbott

[0:37:10]

Right.

Mark  Abbott

[0:37:11]

Which is that, you know, I think we've talked about this before, but for me personally, the appreciation for the social side of the game of work is, you know, I feel like I've always appreciated, I think I appreciate it even more now. Right. I mean, just genuinely enjoying working with people. And then, you know, then, then also, you know, getting clearer. If you're, if you don't enjoy working for someone or with someone especially, you know, very much of a. If you're a senior leader, then the question is, you know, why? And see if you can't figure that out. Because all of us would, you know, prefer to really enjoy not just the work we're doing, but, but the people with whom we work.

Cole Abbott

[0:38:01]

It's a good note to end it on. Thank you. You're welcome.