Episode 5 | Retention Is a Terrible Metric: From Engagement Theater to Real Results

[00:00:01] I'm not in my usual location. No figuring out about it all today.

[00:00:25] Yeah, yeah. So there's no figuring it out, but maybe there's something to learn. So tell us, tell us, what are we learning about where you are? Alright, I am at our place in the Monterey Peninsula, where it is currently a toasty 55 degrees, that's Fahrenheit. Your favorite. Yeah, which is cold for June, I have to say. Yeah, it's summer weather does not come to the Monterey Peninsula.

[00:00:52] Does it look like it'll get better in the afternoon? Or is it just now it's just gonna be a kind of cold day? So why are you in the Monterey Peninsula if it's cold? Well, that's not as fun of a topic. My mother-in-law, we needed to move her into assisted living. It's a stage of life that is not the most fun, but we're really happy that she's going to be well cared for.

[00:01:21] And she is really close to this location that we're in. So that's good. You wouldn't know anything about aging parents, though, would you? I would not. No. Yeah. So on our side, this does seem to be like a trend for people of our age group. So both of my parents are pretty young as things go. But my dad's girlfriend recently passed away.

[00:01:48] So we're still kind of adjusting to that. And then he managed to fall and break his leg. And so now can't stand on it for a few months. Of course, the nice sister is taking most of the supportive role in this and is not only helping him out, but also decluttering his life after having a big shift. So, yeah, lots happening in that.

[00:02:15] I have a nice sister. Everybody tells me that my sister is so nice and I have no evidence otherwise. Nicer? Did you think that? I think the nicer is implied and the curiosity of how there could be such niceness is very clear. Nobody quite understands how that happened.

[00:02:40] Now we have our big doozy of the day. But last week was such a doozy that you were thinking maybe we should do something lighter. And what did you say to me? Like, how about engagement? Like the Gallup surveys out, that's in the news. So that seemed like a lighter. Well, engagement is such a nice word, right? It just sounds so cheerful.

[00:03:08] But the problem is that the headlines are that engagement is on the brink and that we're in an engagement crisis. But there is quite a bit of backlash about these horrific headlines as well, because it turns out that really the numbers haven't aren't really all that different from the past. Right. With one major exception or minor exception, depending on how you look at it.

[00:03:35] And that is that the manager engagement numbers fell from 30 to 27. So that's that's a statistical anomaly, which is worth calling out. But the real like the real news is just that engagement is low and has been low and continues to be low. Yeah, we're not fixing it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, despite all of our focus on engagement, we're actually not not doing anything.

[00:04:03] So so, Meg, you know, back to kind of like the lighter side of things, like what's your optimistic view of this? Like how how do we make this? Yeah, I tend to think about this a little bit in general. It's kind of tied to my leadership maxim of like never waste a crisis. Right. Like, I really think this is both a bit of a wake up call, but also an opportunity.

[00:04:30] And I think what I mean by the wake up call is I think it's time for us to acknowledge what we think works for engagement. Probably doesn't. Right. The behaviors and the things we've done, whether that is bring people back to the office or let them work from home or, you know, have free lunches or bagels or whatever the things that we were doing that we told ourselves were going to help engagement.

[00:04:57] I think it's time to just take a breather and say, yeah, it's actually not working. And I think it's time to be much more curious and to also in that space, ask ourselves, maybe we're trying to solve the wrong thing. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, well, so first of all, does engagement even really matter anymore?

[00:05:23] I mean, there's, you know, we used to tie engagement to retention. Right. Like that, that was, that was why you wanted engagement to be high was so that people would stay and, you know, and so on. But do we actually want to retain people anymore? And, and is that, is that metric important? And, and you've even written about this. I think in March, you wrote a blog post that retention is a terrible metric.

[00:05:53] And so, you know, why is that? And what, like, so what should we be tying engagement to instead? Is it productivity and, and what does that look like? So I think there's a couple things to unpack here. And I do, I hope I made a more holistic case against a headline that was intentionally provocative about the fact that retention is not the goal.

[00:06:21] It is my sort of firm belief that especially in times of economic contraction, you know, where there's a lot of people being riffed or let go from their jobs made redundant, when there's a lot of talk about productivity curves changing, when there's a lot of expectation about cost reduction,

[00:06:45] whether that's because of AI or because of economic pressures for cost of capital. I, I think that these broad brush things that we've tried to do, which is say, we want to retain people because it costs more to acquire people, or we want to develop skills because we, it costs more to acquire skills or the inverse, all of those things.

[00:07:10] To me, I think, again, we maybe get really fixated on the tactics and lose a little bit of the first principles plot about what problems are we trying to solve. And so I think, and again, this is, this is a place where I think I have as many questions as answers. And even my answers are probably wrong, but I think what we have done is we have unintentionally created a,

[00:07:40] an additional tension of complicity because what we have created, what is a HR profession that believes that retaining employees is the solution versus equipping employees to achieve the goals of the business and to equip them to do that in a way that's market competitive so that both their jobs and skills are valued and protected.

[00:08:09] And so that the company is growing and thriving so that there's more resources to apply to helping employees thrive. So again, it's like we, we created a spiral of scarcity that's caused us to invest energy in keeping things the same and trying to make people feel better about that.

[00:08:35] And the reality is things are not the same and therefore we're, we're at a fool's errand in that. I just have to pause here and just make sure that everybody understands that you were at like a wine event in Sonoma last night and you just spouted off all this like really smart shit. So I don't get it. It doesn't go away with a hangover. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:04] The brain, Meg's brain just keeps, keeps chugging along. Well, anyway, that, that is, that's really good. So, um, another thing, like another thing that you, you talk about a lot, Meg, and, and this is kind of back to, you know, why engagement actually does matter because it's not about a retention, right? It's, it is about that productivity and about making the business successful and, and, uh, reached market competitiveness as well.

[00:09:32] And the thing is if people are disengaged, they'll have low work output and have worse outcomes, but even worse than disengagement is the creation of negative work. Right. And so this, this is another one of your mantras. So what, what is negative work? Yeah. Yeah. I have to credit this with a colleague from, from decades ago who was making this comment about, uh, another colleague.

[00:10:02] I have no ideas. You don't really have any original. None. None. I just remember them well and reuse them. Um, but, but the, the construct of negative work is super, uh, important to me because I, I observe this all the time. The, the, and, and I, I truly believe that this is for the most part, not created because of malice or intentionally being, uh, creating negative work.

[00:10:32] It's, it's almost always a lack of clarity of what, what work needs to happen. There's, there's toxic behaviors and you know, all of that, but we'll set those aside and just say on average, it is possible for many of us to end up doing negative work. If we don't truly understand what the goal is in any one of our days and just like set aside the work environment and just put yourself at your home environment.

[00:10:58] There are things that you do that make a bigger difference in whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. And then there's things that you do that maybe have a net neutral. And then there's things that you do that work against your goals. And in an organizational context, and as organizations get bigger, this can become a very significant weight on the organization. And what I find is most people don't truly comprehend that.

[00:11:26] And when they observe that it's so far and deep into the culture that they try to bring blunt force instruments to solve it. Massive cuts, cut this department, cut this thing, cut this thing, you know, and you can think about, um, this kind of wake up call is a path to getting out of that cycle of negative work.

[00:11:48] But to me, I think it is, it is much more important and more useful to ask yourself, what is the conditions that create this kind of behavior? What are the systems problems underneath this negative work? And I believe the systems problem are lack of clarity of what is the differentiator of good work and lack of clarity of what are the most important things to be done.

[00:12:13] And this is where I think there is an opportunity to really change the equation. Because when you can stop the people from doing negative work, your velocity materially changes because that negative work becomes friction for the entire system.

[00:12:33] Yeah. And actually there's, there's a little bit of a danger too, because people that are doing negative work might actually be really engaged. They might actually be in that, you know, 18% or whatever that we engage. Um, they just are completely delusional about what it is that actually needs to get done and what matters.

[00:12:58] Right. So, so I guess we're a little bit back to the, like, is engagement really the right thing? Even that is that even the right thing to be measuring, right. Or to care about. I don't know. Yeah. Again, I, I don't think we need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. It's in the sense of people being motivated and engaged is great. It's, but it's not a sufficient condition. It's not enough. Yeah.

[00:13:24] That they're doing good work. And again, I think this is where it gets really sticky because as we look at the forward momentum, good work is going to be a shifting definition, right? Good work today and good work tomorrow are not going to be the same thing. And this is, I think a place where I don't think there's enough, uh, self reflection and enough curiosity about why is it good work?

[00:13:54] We know who our great talent is and we know who our high potential talent is in our, in our sphere, right? There's probably people we don't know, but we do know of the people that we spend time with and work with. We know who is, um, creating a lot of results and, and great to work with and all of that.

[00:14:14] We, we can, we can feel what that looks like and we understand it, but we don't necessarily have that, that macro view of even people that are doing great work.

[00:14:28] Are they doing great work on the most important things? It's really when you can understand what are the most important things and how to put the great work towards the most important things that you have a hope of taking that engagement and maximizing it to achieving something very big. Otherwise you can just have a lot of really happy people that are not creating value.

[00:14:56] Yeah. Being clear on the work outcomes is really key. I mean, that's something that, that, you know, I've been working on in my advisory role, um, with, uh, with rejig in particular. So knowing what those work outcomes are that, that do matter, um, is the first step to really understand, you know, what workers should be working on that work and what skills are needed to, um, to make them successful. Right. Or AI.

[00:15:24] And, and I think this gets back to your initial thesis and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but this is, I think one of the reasons that managers are feeling so squeezed because we have not equipped managers with the agency and the curiosity to understand what is the most important work.

[00:15:47] Right. You know, that's a really good point. I mean, that, that, you know, middle managers are kind of the, and this, this is a bit of a controversial area right now because there's a lot of firms that are cutting middle management in, in the hopes of eliminating bureaucracy.

[00:16:06] But on the other hand, middle managers are the recipe for communication success, right. To, to make sure that the strategy gets, um, gets moved into an execution mode. Of course, that there's lots of issues with that because it doesn't always go very well.

[00:16:28] But if you have a, if you have an organization where the middle managers do completely understand the strategy and they are, um, really able to put that, those terms into an execution focus for their teams, then, then they are absolutely critical. And without that, you kind of have this huge gap between strategy and execution, right?

[00:16:52] Exactly. And again, you could accidentally be taking great people and doing negative work to the most important things or more likely the case doing decent work against maybe the C priorities as opposed to bike shedding. Exactly. Exactly. This is a, this is a very, like the execution side of bike shedding. What is bike shedding Meg?

[00:17:17] If you don't know bike shedding, you really do need to know bike shedding and it's worth doing some reading, but it's called the law of triviality. And what it basically gets to is that the very simple decisions, everybody feels really comfortable making, which is which coffee should we have in the break room that that's feels very accessible to everyone. And the very big ones, the ones that require a lot of knowledge, should we go to Mars?

[00:17:44] I don't know, whatever the big things are. Most of us don't quite feel equipped enough to weigh in and have a conversation. But then there's the middle layer of things, which why the law of triviality, they're kind of trivial, which is how should we make a bike shed? Where should we put a bike shed? And here everybody has an opinion and you will find you'll spend all your time discussing and having an opinion about something that's just not that important.

[00:18:12] But everybody feels qualified to weigh in and have a point of view about. And the really important thing that you're trying to figure out for your business, like, are we going to be in business next year because AI is changing how our customers are engaging with us? Nobody feels fully equipped for it. And so that becomes something that that doesn't ever get really addressed because everybody's a little bit of afraid of it.

[00:18:35] So, yes, bike shedding is the intellectual part of the execution of doing the wrong things. All right. So let's let's dig into managers a little bit. So so we did see the drop in engagement. There was another article that you had found by from Lenny's newsletter, I believe. That's just this week, too. Yeah.

[00:19:02] That really showed that managers matter, though. So we like it's so important, whether whether it's dropped or not, it's too low because it matters so much. And so what we saw is that there's in Lenny's newsletter is that there's this huge correlation between direct manager effectiveness and worker sentiment.

[00:19:28] So, you know, if you have a great manager, your career outlook is great. Your belonging is great. Your commitment is pretty good. But if you have an ineffective manager. Right. So those managers do matter so much. I think we so first off, this was Lenny's research was around tech industry specifically.

[00:19:51] So it feels more intuitive to us. But I think that this would probably be similar in most industries because we all have known for a long time. They the adage you you don't leave the company, you leave the manager. And I think anybody that's worked for any amount of time recognizes the the personal benefit you get when you work for an amazing manager. And the drain it is when you work for a less than amazing manager.

[00:20:18] So so in some sense, this is very instinctual and intuitive. What I think the two of them together create is a real clarity of why this manager engagement is so important. And it is at the end of the day, I don't think we fully appreciate just how much managers impact well-being at work.

[00:20:42] And I really think that is the core that's going on in here is when we say and, you know, think about how employees are thriving and how they're able to bring their best self and best skill to the workplace. Managers are critical to that.

[00:21:04] And in this moment of change in this ambiguity age, the need for that is more. But we're not necessarily equipping or enabling managers to understand what that scope shift is. And we're creating this narrative. And to your point, like, oh, middle managers, it's overhead. We have too many layers. All of this.

[00:21:28] We're creating this narrative that managers are the problem for what is structural challenges within an organization, as opposed to figuring out why are managers struggling and how do we better equip them? That's a good point. Yeah. I mean, you know, a really great manager is going to be a great communicator from, you know, what we were talking about before with the strategy to execution. And then also a compassionate coach, right?

[00:21:56] You know, coaching the workers to be their best selves in a compassionate and forward-looking way, right? And so when we're seeing in the headlines, you know, like all of these headlines about flattening and getting rid of managers.

[00:22:18] And that's in big tech, but it's also in places like e-commerce where Match Group, which is not just match.com, but Tinder and some other ones, they're removing one in five managers. Now, they seem to be doing this, again, kind of with that idea of removing bureaucracy, but it's also really a bit around, like, well, maybe AI can do it better, right?

[00:22:47] AI can step in and do that communication. AI can be your compassionate coach. Like, what do you think? Is that bullshit or is there some truth to that? So I do believe that there are tools that AI can bring to help a manager and that can help individuals. So again, like anything, I think there's nuance here.

[00:23:13] But I don't think that, you know, at the end of the day, I believe that there are roles that are force multipliers in your organization. So, you know, in tech, architects, force multipliers. You have great architects. You are able to break through on things you're not otherwise. Designers, great force multipliers. You have great designers.

[00:23:39] You end up thinking about things in a different way that really matter to your customer. And I think managers, you know, helping people feel seen and understood, appreciated, and identifying potential. These are things that managers are uniquely bringing to the organization.

[00:24:01] And so I think this idea that this is all overhead is an idea that comes from people who haven't really been in the trenches and seen the impact of leadership. And are probably also people that are not well prepared to equip managers to be good at what they're good at. In other words, aren't great at communicating strategy to managers so that they understand how to mobilize and how to direct that execution.

[00:24:31] So I think that this is like blaming someone else for what is actually a failing organization wide. And I worry that the end of the day, it's not just going to result in an engagement problem, but it is going to create even more of this sort of ready fire aim kind of behaviors with AI.

[00:24:59] And so what I think we will see in addition to, oh, we're going to flatten bureaucracy and we're going to bring a bunch of AI. I think we're also going to see a whole lot of unintended consequences like the Klarna thing where it's like, oh, we don't need customer service people. Oh, wait, maybe we do. And I think it's okay to get things wrong and to try new things.

[00:25:21] I don't think we want to vilify people that are willing to learn the right way to experiment from Laszlo. Exactly, exactly. I think the key is to really think about these as experiments as opposed to absolutes. And I really do think that that mindset, that experimentation mindset will unlock a lot for everyone.

[00:25:44] Because right now we keep, and I think it'll actually unlock a lot for managers, because right now I think one of the real challenges for managers is the belief that they're supposed to know things that are unknowable. Right? That they're supposed to be experts, but no one is an expert right now of what's going to happen next.

[00:26:01] And so I really do believe that we have an opportunity to change how we talk about and how we think about these sorts of things to instead of saying it's all this or it's all that, instead of spending all our time bike shedding, let's spend our time on experiments with real measures to try to ask ourselves deeper questions.

[00:26:24] Not is everybody happy and not even are they engaged, although I'm fine if you want to ask those questions, but those questions should be on a path to are people able to do good work and is that good work moving your business forward? And if any of those things are proving to not be true, then I think it requires more curiosity. Mm-hmm.

[00:26:47] So just like a sort of a specific thing, would it be better to have fewer managers but better managers? I mean, so is there a little bit of truth to this? Like, and could the span of control be a little too small? Would it be, like, would it make sense to have really good managers that have 30 people reporting to them, for example?

[00:27:13] Like, is that scalable or is that just complete overload? You know, I'm nervous of my own bias here because I would say a couple things. I think it is always better to have fewer better, right? And I think that's just a personal bias. So I'm very much, you know, 10X employee kind of mindset. And I think 10X manager, absolutely.

[00:27:40] Killer managers are fantastic and, you know, should be celebrated and valued at a much higher level. So that part I think I'm on board with. What I worry about with the span of control argument, I'm always just a little bit suspicious when there's a metric without clarity of what you're trying to drive.

[00:28:04] Because a metric sounds to me like you're reverse engineering a financial result as opposed to a human result. And I prefer to think about it together as opposed to separately. Like a former manager, the idea of having 30 direct reports or even 20 terrifies me. Exactly. Like, I don't see myself, and this is, again, where I might have my own limitations. I don't think I'm a great manager anymore when I have that many direct reports. So that could be my own limitation.

[00:28:34] Maybe there is somebody that's a great manager of 20 people. But I have not observed that because, you know, there's only so many hours in a day. And I'm also not a fan of the kind of Spotify model where some people are just people managers and then some people are managing work. I believe that, like, to be a good manager, you need to appreciate the work people are doing and understand it. And I understand some business models don't work that way. Consulting didn't work that way.

[00:29:01] You know, the person that was responsible for my career progression was not the person that was responsible for my client engagements. And I always found that a little irritating. So, yeah, so there's a ton of personal bias in there. Like, maybe I'm running up against my own limitations, but I fail to see and have always pushed back on this idea of, oh, just have so many direct reports. Yeah. That will solve the problem, you know. All right.

[00:29:30] Well, we'll need to come up with our ideal span of control, our ideal manager setup, everything. We'll do that in a future episode, maybe. Yeah. Let's figure out a scorecard. Like, what is the real scorecard that would indicate to you someone's a great manager? Yeah. But so what could AI do to make managers better or to help managers?

[00:29:54] So I think AI can help equip managers to better understand their business context. I think it can simplify and break that down for you better. I think it could do a better job that managers tend to be able to do on their own of iterating on line of sight between the work my team does and the strategy of the business. Yes.

[00:30:17] And I think that AI could be very helpful in helping managers role play and get better at communication because historically and in general, communication is a gap and it is really hard to do. It's exhausting. It takes a lot to get good at it.

[00:30:43] And I think AI is actually good at written communication and it can really help managers better articulate, even if they don't share it, to like get themselves organized because it does a really good job of organizing tasks. Yeah, I think that's amazing.

[00:31:43] And I think that's a great thing. I think that's a great thing. I think that's a great thing.

[00:32:05] Meg is referencing Patty Azzarello and her book Rise and that was from Rise and then she also has a book Move, which is very good too. It has other. Yeah, we're huge fans of Patty over here. Yeah, huge. All right. Well, anything else on engagement, you think, or are we ready to move to leadership corner?

[00:32:26] I guess I would just say that I feel that there is like this is a scary time, but this is also truly a time for optimism because it gives you a chance to redefine what success is in a moment where everybody's sort of scrambling and unclear. And so I guess my recommendation to managers who are feeling squeezed or that are struggling is number one. And I believe it's true. You are being squeezed.

[00:32:55] So you don't have to feel like you're being gaslit about that part of the conversation. But I think that in that squeezing, you have an opportunity to take a step back and ask yourself, do I need to shift my skills and my approach to leadership and management? And I think there's never been a better time to give yourself that permission.

[00:33:17] So I think this is a chance for people who are ready to do something different because what they're doing is not working. I think this is a chance to step up and redefine what you're doing. And shift from what to what?

[00:33:31] I think you would shift from a understanding of management being that you have more expertise than the people that work for you to a understanding of management that your role is to mobilize collective intelligence of your team. Leadership corner. You ready? Leadership corner. Yeah, it's a good one today, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[00:34:00] This one was sent in by one of our avid fans. Friend of the show. Friend of the show. Friend of the show. Yes. Okay. And it's very relevant to what we just talked about. All right. It's a long one. Here we go. With the current trend of layoffs affecting our industry, I'm curious about how leaders handle the difficult decisions of whom to let go.

[00:34:27] While it's straightforward to address low performers, the reality is that cuts often extend to potentially high performers as well. This becomes even more complex when the directive comes from higher up, such as a board or CEO, rather than being a decision initiated by the leader themselves. You've never had to execute on a layoff. Have you met? How many times do you think? Oh, good Lord.

[00:34:57] I don't know. Far too many. Far too many. I think if I were to net it out, I would say it's probably been like every other year of my leadership life. So a couple things. I do think it's important in this moment that there's probably two sets of listeners that are tackling this, right?

[00:35:19] There's the listeners who maybe have recently either been let go themselves or, you know, have somebody really close to them that's been let go. And there's a ton of emotion and stuff to work on there. And then there's the people that had got handed a, like, make a decision, which is what this question is asking. I would like to speak to both just a little bit because I feel like this is a big topic.

[00:35:45] So, number one, the reality is that probably at some point in your career, potentially multiple times, this will happen to you. And I think it is very, very important to recognize that this is not a failing of your skills or abilities. And this is not an indictment on your ability to be a great worker.

[00:36:10] This is a indication of market complexity and bad luck or bad timing or wherever you happen to be in that moment. And so I want to remind all of us, and this is people making these choices and people impacted by these choices,

[00:36:29] that I have yet to see this experience happen where eventually, as the entire story plays out and the person ends up doing whatever they end up doing next, that they did not find some benefit for having had these kinds of changes. Yeah. It does work out.

[00:36:50] And I say this not to diminish the choice of having to choose who goes, but, like, it is helpful to remind yourself that, you know, there is opportunity and it does work out for people. And so while it's awful and it's difficult and it's emotional, it is also something that you really can benefit from saying, what will this look like a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now?

[00:37:19] Because I think that gives you some grounding and context. So I just want to start there and then I'll go more. I don't know, Amy, if you want to reflect on that part of it. Yeah, I think that's really, really well stated, Meg. I'm obviously always a fan of whatever you say most of the time. I mean, other than, you know, when you're bugging me, but generally speaking, really good. Yeah, I like that very optimistic attitude.

[00:37:46] Just, you know, in terms of, like, how we make decisions, right? I mean, so, you know, you've probably heard of the, like, who would you keep in the boat, you know, in a life-saving situation. And that's kind of the ideal scenario.

[00:38:03] But it's, it's really difficult because, you know, in my experience as a manager, as a leader, like, everyone in the boat has a different set of talents and a different set of strengths. And it's not, you know, sure, there might be, like, the one 10x person, but whatever. That's one person out of a 10-person boat. And you need to reduce by two people.

[00:38:30] Well, obviously that 10x person isn't going to go, but, like, who of the other nine? All of the other nine have incredible strengths. They have incredible talents. They're making your team better, etc. It's possible there might be one that is struggling, and that's obvious. But if you need two more, who are those going to be? And that's really hard.

[00:38:53] So, so what I have done in the past is to look at, I guess, to some degree, what Meg was saying is, who is potentially going to benefit from this? Because I, as a leader, I am a leader of that person for life, not for just this job, right?

[00:39:17] I mean, obviously I want my boat to have great outcomes, but I don't necessarily, you know, losing one strength versus another is, you know, it's going to affect the boat one way or another. So, you know, I look at, okay, well, who might actually benefit from leaving, right? Whether it's because they've, you know, they've been there a long time. They've outgrown their role, yeah.

[00:39:45] They need a new experience, or maybe there's just kind of, like, not the best fit, or they're, you know, maybe they're a little burnt out, or, you know, like, just something. Like, those kinds of intangibles, I would say, are a bit of how I'm looking at it. So, so that would be kind of like my compassionate coach approach to, to selecting those individuals. And, and even so, it's super hard.

[00:40:14] It's, it's super hard. And I would say a couple other things. It's never like, no matter what seat you sit in, it's, you're never in the, oh, yes, I want to get rid of three people mindset. In fact, you're always, there is a forcing function that's outside of your own comfort zone. So first off, like, I think just acknowledging that is important. It will always be really hard, number one.

[00:40:43] Number two, I think, to Amy's point, understanding what's the best future for the people that work for you matters. I think the other thing is, is what is the challenge ahead of you, not the challenge you've had up until now. And so oftentimes, if it's significantly a big problem, what I will do is I will spend a lot of time getting grounded on what am I going to do differently with a smaller team?

[00:41:11] Because it's going to be less, and it's probably going to be different. And what, who do I need to help achieve that new remit? And so I start also with that. What is the, what is the future place this boat has to go? And what skills and strengths and capabilities and energy do I need to help us get there?

[00:41:35] And then I'm making a decision about placing people into those new slots versus suggesting something about their work is deficient or not needed anymore. This is a bit of a Patty, Patty Azzarello reference too, which is like, figure out your future org, figure out your future setup. How, you know, how are you, and, and, and that starts with like, what are the work outcomes again? What, what is it that you need to accomplish?

[00:42:05] What are the strategies, et cetera, and then figure out, okay, well, what's your org structure? And that, that may be just, you're a new leader, you're, you know, there's been a big change, or it could be that there's a layoff, you know, something, some sort of triggering event to, to have you figure out that, that future org setup and, and who is, who, and what skills you really need for that future.

[00:42:30] The other thing to remember is most of the time you have very little time to make these decisions. I've seen them come through where you had to figure it out in 24 hours. And so the one thing I would also encourage is that the pre-work happens well before you get handed any sort of remit, whether it's to the positive of, of expanding and growing a team or to the negative of reducing a team.

[00:42:54] So it is your job as a leader to get very clear on who works for you. What are they great at? Where do they want to grow? Where are their sort of aspirations for opportunity? And how can you best map that against this problem? So that when you're forced with this, okay, you've got 24 hours to make a decision.

[00:43:19] You're bringing more to the table than just, this is where they work and this is their salary. And, you know, this is how long they've been here. Well, that was a juicy one. Thank you, kind, kind listener for submitting that one. That was a, that was a great one. Yes. Look at us. We have fans. All right. So let's wrap up. What did we learn today? Okay. Um, let's see.

[00:43:46] We learned, well, I learned, I guess, a lot. I don't know. What did I learn? What did I learn from Meg? I learned that her brain, uh, doesn't care about wine. It's just, which is, which is interesting because I'm headed to a, um, party with Meg tomorrow night. So we'll see. I think that one's tequila though. I think it's. Yeah, that one's going to be tequila.

[00:44:09] So we'll see Friday morning if she's going to ambush me with any big, big ideas. Having, having the tequila myself will not be helpful. To be fair, you would be ambushing me with, uh, some sort of let's, uh, let's do a whole bunch of things first thing in the morning. So that's true. Come on. Let's move our bodies. Exactly. No, let's move our brains. No, let's move our bodies.

[00:44:37] I learned, let's get to serious things. What I learned is that we need to be having more conversations about the value, the benefit and the, um, the growth and change of management. Because I believe that this is going to be a really important topic that keeps coming back because there's just too much change happening. Yeah. It's been pendulum swings, I think right now. Right.

[00:45:05] And if managers are the differentiator between loving your job and being thriving in your job and not, I think it would be really remiss of us to not take seriously. How do we equip managers to do that better without it killing them? Because right now it's burning them out like crazy. It sure is. Love it. Okay. Well, so next week we'll be welcoming our guest, Dave Liu, uh, who's the founder and managing partner of Hyphen Capital and co-founder of the Asian Leadership Center.

[00:45:33] Amy and I are both fangirls and we're really looking forward to that. Yeah. You, you, you can check them out on LinkedIn and he's got a great blog on Substack as well. If you want to, if you want to, uh, bone up before the episode, uh, drops. And I do want to just ask everyone to please submit questions. It was super fun to get that question in and please do subscribe to the Meg and Amy show and spread the word.

[00:46:03] Yeah. We're really grateful. This has been a lot of fun for us, but, uh, we really do appreciate the feedback and the ideas because we're, uh, we're all about ideas here. So let's invent the future together. People. I believe in us. Make every day count.