Episode 6 - Taylorism (part 2)
June 7, 2023
Let's wrap up Taylorism (for now) with some practical examples and ways you can identify it in the workplace. Then it's on to Accountability.
Let's wrap up Taylorism (for now) with some practical examples and ways you can identify it in the workplace. Then it's on to Accountability.
(Transcript Start)
[00:00:00] spk_0: This is Andy and this is Matt and you're listening to
[00:00:03] spk_1: the Hop podcast with no name.
[00:00:06] spk_0: What a dumb name. So stupid.
[00:00:20] spk_1: We're back here. We are, we're back. Um Well, this has been, this has been new, this has been fun. Which part of it, um learning how to release a podcast into the wild. Or go ahead, you can say your favorite word,
[00:00:38] spk_0: flinging it, flinging it out there into the world. Yeah, I don't know why I've become obsessed with the word,
[00:00:45] spk_1: but it's a weird one. Um So we, yeah, we've learned, we've learned a ton about, about this stuff and, uh I think we'll start with just a huge thank you to everyone that's listened to it and giving us feedback. We've gotten a lot of
[00:01:00] spk_0: feedback we have, which is great because that's what we ask for in this hop space a lot. So I'm excited that people who listen to this are willing to give us feedback. We are practicing what we preach everyone. That's fantastic. You
[00:01:13] spk_1: know, a strangely high amount of feedback on the music so heard. Um
[00:01:20] spk_0: which episodes, music are we going to hold on to it? I mean, I think people just,
[00:01:26] spk_1: they probably know. But if you, if you want just the straight answer, it's going to be episode five which will carry on until we get bored with it, which at least this episode, people liked
[00:01:36] spk_0: it. They felt it was like upbeat, you know.
[00:01:40] spk_1: Um And so yeah, a huge thank you and also an apology for lying.
[00:01:46] spk_0: Wait, because what are we lying about when we
[00:01:49] spk_1: were recording? Um And we didn't know we were going to release all five at once.
[00:01:53] spk_0: No, because we didn't know anything about anything. We didn't know what
[00:01:55] spk_1: the schedule of releasing them would be. And
[00:01:57] spk_0: we were taught that you should record a bunch of podcasts in a row. And so we did a few of them in a row, not all at once. But,
[00:02:04] spk_1: and so we'd say things like and on next week's episode, like it was like an old timey radio show and I was realizing just a, just
[00:02:11] spk_0: a bald face
[00:02:12] spk_1: lie that all five would be released at once and that, um we'll be doing this biweekly. So every two weeks on Wednesday, they'll come out. Um So yeah, we learned a ton and uh we're, we're super excited. We, we really enjoy it and thank you for listening. So enough of enough about us and let's just talk about what we're here to talk about.
[00:02:35] spk_0: Let's get to the deep topic of, we ended with Taylor last episode and uh, we had some homework to think about whether or not we had systemic places where we had adopted parent, child relationships and if that was affecting how we did business. Um And so I did my homework. Right. So I thought about relationships in several of the places that I have worked and I'd say the places where we saw this parent child relationship the most um was if we had front line workers, right? And the management, the leadership of like a site or of a group of folks that were out in the fields, we often had parent, child relationships between the higher levels of the management and the folks that were in the field or on the floor, depending upon the leader. We did have like direct supervisors that were taught to adopt sort of a parent role. Um We absolutely had parent child relationships between the representatives of our organization and our contract workers that, that I would say is like the most obvious place where it was. I mean, it was just displayed almost in every single interaction, good or bad with, with most of our contract teams. Um Yes. So we had it in a lot of places. Um So hopefully other folks. Yeah. Did you, did you do your homework? I mean, sometimes you skip it. So
[00:04:02] spk_1: um I, I did and um it was very interesting. So when I became an executive, they, we did some, some training with an outside organization. It was no one in the organization I was a part of and they taught us that as executives, our, uh our first loyalty was no longer to our team that reported to us. It was now to other executives. So essentially, uh it was like the
[00:04:34] spk_0: parents group that got together. It was
[00:04:36] spk_1: like, hey, officially, officially, you're a parent and these are your Children and you're at an amusement park. And so you're gonna have to as a group of parents band together to keep this on the rails. Like that's really what it felt
[00:04:52] spk_0: like the adults need to link arms to keep the
[00:04:55] spk_1: man. My first question was so, where's the beer? That was my next question.
[00:05:01] spk_0: OK. And so we can actually, we can hear comments that can like teach us whether or not we even have this, this type of relationship apart from the banding together and, you know, no longer have allegiance to your team. Like sometimes they, they are very explicit comments that you can hear and we encourage you to just listen for them and see if they exist in your organization. Like I, I hate to admit it but we used to say things like um you can't fix stupid.
[00:05:30] spk_1: Um Ours was if they're going to act like Children, we're going to treat them like Children.
[00:05:36] spk_0: Yeah. We used to do, have a lot of conversation about like you need to, you need to fix these problems for them. Like they're not, they're not going to know how to fix it. So you need to tell them what to do and fix the problem for
[00:05:47] spk_1: them. My favorite was we had a training recently where someone said, uh, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to let the prisoners run the prison?
[00:05:55] spk_0: And then we said, hold on back up. What, what type of organization are you in? I don't, I don't, I mean, I don't think we're dealing with a person right now. You should have probably
[00:06:07] spk_1: spoke with someone who was on the front line there.
[00:06:11] spk_0: Um Yeah, so and, and sometimes it's softer, right? It's not as loud, but it's still part of the fabric and the culture like um if, if we find ourselves um not asking for feedback or kind of asking for feedback from folks is like a like a check in the box activity. But we kind of think we should like, solve problems for people. Like if our workers or anyone who's in that sort of child ego position or pushed into that child ego position if they come into work and they're surprised by a change that's happened. That's because we're operating with this parent, child dynamic of like, well, I'll just let them know after I've made the change, like I'm fully in charge here, they don't really need to understand what's happening until it affects them directly.
[00:06:53] spk_1: And we used to think like, oh maybe this is too complicated for them. We need to solve it. We need to be the one that makes the decision for them because they're not gonna, they're not gonna take the time to understand it or they're
[00:07:03] spk_0: not, they can't, they wouldn't be able to understand those financials. You need to make it simpler for them.
[00:07:07] spk_1: And then I would just go and put the most basic formula in Excel and be like there, I've done it,
[00:07:13] spk_0: I fixed it. So those are all sort of indications that we have these types of dynamics. But then you can, you can also see how it can affect things kind of on a grand scale. And we talked a bit about it the last episode, but even just breaking things down to um to how, how an interaction plays out if you're an adult adult dynamic versus if you're in a, like a, a parent, child relationship. So let's just picture, uh let's picture a plant manager, right? Or regional manager or something. And if somebody um brings a piece of information, a frustration, a difficulty to a regional leader or a plant manager and they are in an adult adult relationship. Um Then I mean, let me just play it out here. Let's, let's pick, um let's pick a thing we're frustrated with. What could we, let's pick a, let's pick a thing. Let's do an outside of work. Silly example. Uh What are we frustrated about in rules do you think of something? Yeah, like a rule that frustrates me.
[00:08:16] spk_1: I have such a low tolerance for most things.
[00:08:20] spk_0: Let's use your putting the dishes in the dishwasher. Ok. Alright. So if we're an adult, adult relationship and I'm frustrated with this rule that in this house, we're supposed to put the dishes in the dishwasher ahead of time. Um I might come up to you and just be like, hey, I got to tell you, I kind of think, I kind of think it's dumb that we have to put the dishes in the dishwasher right away. And if we're in an adult, adult relationship, how do you respond to that? I
[00:08:48] spk_1: mean, just calling something dumb is going to make me a little annoyed but, but you have to have some reason as to why it's dumb. So I would ask you at least to just, ok, what's dumb about it? Tell me, tell me what you think is dumb about this rule.
[00:09:03] spk_0: Well, I, I, I mean, I understand the reason for the world, but I'm telling you like, in my world of trying to manage two Children at the same time and the idea that every single time that we're have a dirty dish that we could like conceivably take it from the sink to the dishwasher. I'm now taking time away that I could be spending with my kids and trying to manage something that even with the dishwasher open, my youngest tries to crawl into it. So I'm, I'm creating, I'm creating a process. That's a bit of a hazard. It, I'm not seeing the benefit of doing it because I could take, I could compress the amount of times that I'm interacting with that dishwasher and creating this issue for my youngest into like 15 minutes at the end of the day. And I, I don't see a reason why that's, that's a bad option. Right. Then we could have a dialogue on it. You might not agree with me. Right? You might have counter points. That's why you might have counter points to it. Right. But you might not agree. Um But if we're in a parent, child relationship, right? And I am bringing this issue, even if I like, I'm going to use the same language of like, hey, I, I think that having to load the dishwasher as soon as you have a dirty dish, I think that's stupid.
[00:10:10] spk_1: I would say, ok, um, even if I'm gonna be polite about it, I'd say, oh, well, hey, thanks for sharing. But I'm sure you know this uh the dishes, they just pile up in the sink and then we have all these issues that sort of come from that. So I just need you to just, I know it's tough, but just go ahead and put the dish in the dishwasher every time. Ok?
[00:10:33] spk_0: And I don't have a lot of places to go from there. Right. Like that, that puts you in that and that, that type of dynamic can happen at work all the time where somebody who might be like a lean leader or a quality leader who's in an adult, adult relationship with a plant manager says, hey, I just want you to know like this part of this process, it's inefficient, it's stupid, it's not making sense. And even if they use that language, the plant manager is probably going to think to ask like a follow up question
[00:10:58] spk_1: because they think that they're talking to another rational adult who has opinions or, or who has knowledge that they don't have and they recognize that they need to ask a follow
[00:11:08] spk_0: up. I was like, ok, I don't know why you think it's dumb. So tell me more about why you think it's dumb. But if for the reasons of Taylor or any other dynamic that's pushed people into a parent, child role, if somebody in that child ego position brings up that rule of like, hey, I, I think that this rule or this part of this process, I think it's dumb. Then the very natural response from that plant manager, that person of authority and that, that parent ego position is just to say, I'm sorry, you don't like the rules, but the rules are good for you. There's a, there's a benefit to them. Um They might even explain what the benefit is, but it has not opened the door to a larger conversation. And without that larger conversation, it's really hard to understand the, the context, like the equivalent of the child's climbing into the, you know, dishwasher. That's
[00:12:00] spk_1: probably risky that we don't want to happen often. Probably,
[00:12:05] spk_0: probably not something that, you know, that the person who wrote the rule to begin with was imagining when they suggested you should put the dishes in the dishwasher right after
[00:12:15] spk_1: and then imagine you've been loading the dishwasher for 15 years and you've been dealing with these problems and you've tried to raise them and no one ever listens.
[00:12:24] spk_0: I'm just picturing an environment where for some reason somebody has toddlers around them for 15 years trying to grow them and they never get older. There's just,
[00:12:31] spk_1: I think like cheaper Brother doesn't move where they have a bunch of kids. I don't know,
[00:12:35] spk_0: there's got to be some center, it's a daycare, right? I don't know some situation like that.
[00:12:40] spk_1: But yeah, you're not going to be super polite. If you've been dealing with it for that long, you might say something like, yeah, this is a really
[00:12:45] spk_0: stupid rule. It doesn't make sense. And so our, our mission is just to, to kind of seek where we have used tailors to, to design something to um navigate our how our interactions and try to try to wear, try to wear away at it, try to rethink those areas. So something we could do in our work world. To pay attention to Taylor. We mentioned one thing already, like pay attention to the language that we're using. It helps identify where it is. But then another thing that you can go do to try to integrate these thoughts into what you physically do um is look for areas where we have tried to create a lot of oversight and control, meaning that the way that we're trying to manage a situation feels like we're trying to control people's behavior. Like we are like doing lots of observations, we're doing lots of timing of things. We've got cameras on people. Um We are uh doing lots of audits around what people are doing. Um We're timing people like all, all those pieces. That's usually an indication that we, we had some sort of system problem there, there was like brittleness in what was happening, but the approach that we used to try to fix it was a belief that we had uh a person problem. And in this case, people that were in a child ego position that needed to be controlled, right? So people not doing what they're supposed to do. And so we have created a lot of layers of oversight in a specific area. Our mission would be identify where some of those places are and then go do operational learning about what's actually happening in that space. So simple kind of real life example that I know uh Bob Edwards lived through is that they used to have lots of tracking devices on forklifts and the tracking devices were just designed to catch when people hit things. Right. So the belief was, hey, we don't want to hit things. Right. So that's the brule message. I mean, there's reasons why we're hitting things. We don't want to hit things and the way that they thought to approach it at the time was let's track the drivers and then when, when we find out that somebody's hit something, now, we know where our people problems are right now. We know where to recoach and retrain and tell people to be more careful. Um, didn't it shut down the shut down the forklift? Right? And made the forklift stop and then there was like a three strikes and you out rule
[00:15:14] spk_1: base all the time just can't get away from it
[00:15:18] spk_0: because the American pastime has creeped up and now we, so three strikes, three strikes and you're out. So if you hit three things on the forklift, you were removed from the forklift. And the thought process behind that was, I mean that you were probably bad at driving a forklift if you hit
[00:15:32] spk_1: three things and there are infinite drivers out there, there are operators out there that can operate forklift. So just keep getting rid of them. So there's
[00:15:39] spk_0: gotta be, there's gotta be like this endless pool of people that you could
[00:15:43] spk_1: get anyone to do it right. That's got to be the logic
[00:15:46] spk_0: they had. So that's, that's a tailor mindset. Top down parent child thought of like the problem is our drivers, we have to track our drivers. We've got to pay attention to what they're doing and when we catch them doing something or having events, then we need to have conversation. And usually that conversation is once again in a parent child dynamic of like, hey, I need to be more careful, I need to understand what happened here. You need to tell me what's going on in terms of like, why you're not paying enough attention in terms of why you're hitting things, you need to understand it's really important not to hit things, et cetera, et cetera. That's before hop mindset. Now, if we think about sort of removing that Taylor is from that scope of thought. Well, now we're like, oh, well, we have fully functioning human adult drivers, operators who operate forklifts something by the way that I don't know how to do personally and, and it's difficult enough that we're hitting things. And so instead of tracking the drivers that are hitting things, what they switch to is that the drivers actually asked if they could track what they're hitting. Now, we're looking into a piece of the system, not just at the people and the solution sets to what you do. Like when you, when you have like, you end up with almost a of all of the places that are really difficult to maneuver a forklift in the solution sets are going to change by area by issue. It's not one size fits all. Um But we have an opportunity to make some real change and not have this belief right? That we've got just bad drivers that because drivers, I think Bob says this all the time, right? Like forklift operators, they come to work to move stuff, not hit stuff, right? So if we're hitting things, we got, we got other pieces going on. Can you summarize that in a better way than I did? Ma what is, what, what are they, what are we asking people to go kind of try out to operate in their work world? What are they looking for?
[00:17:39] spk_1: Yeah. So what we're looking for is we don't want to just try to track the behavior that we think is wrong and catch people doing the wrong behavior. We want to go out and try to learn from those that do that work about. What is the challenge they're facing that makes it difficult to accomplish the task versus just thinking. We have a bunch of bad people who are trying to make bad decisions, which is a wild thing to think about. And, and yeah, that's exaggeration, right? We, we don't typically assume everyone's bad, but we think of it as like, well, why are people speeding? Let's go out and track them and then catch them speeding versus just simply working with them directly and saying, tell me when you feel like you are in a position where you need to go faster. What is that like? When does that happen? Teach me. So that's what we're trying to accomplish here. Yeah.
[00:18:30] spk_0: OK. So find a place where we got a lot of crazy oversight, doing a lot of crazy trying to control people. And then instead of focusing on the people go learn from the people and ask them the operational struggles that they're facing. What's difficult, what's dumb, what's dangerous, what's different? The four D si think um several folks out there, the Brent Bren have also. And uh and Jeff, I believe we often talk about the four Ds. So cool. Now
[00:19:02] spk_1: we're gonna move on. We're gonna have a hard segway just, we're gonna make a sharp trip. Not really. Um But we've, we've talked about Taylor a lot and I think in every conversation that we have, um it, it very, very, very obviously segues into another big topic,
[00:19:20] spk_0: which is people's favorite topic, I believe in this space, which is the topic of accountability. Yeah, we really needed a sound effect right there. Thank you for supplying it with your, with your voice.
[00:19:33] spk_1: We literally have a tool that could have done that and I was like, I got it. This is I'm way better at
[00:19:37] spk_0: this. Um Because if we think of how we have managed things, especially places where we thought we had to have like lots of oversight because there was brittleness in the system. The three strikes you're out was this form of what we would historically call accountability. Well, that people need, they, there's expectations you need to follow. We need to have accountability. And one of the largest struggles that we have in this hop space is helping people see how accountability fits in with these hop concepts. And part of it has to do with how we're defining accountability. And a large portion of our definition of accountability within the work world comes from tailor, right? It comes from the belief that the way to hold somebody accountable is very similar to the parent child relationship. Can you give the example of the stove, please?
[00:20:27] spk_1: Yes. Um So we in describing what that looks like. Uh we use a child reaching for a stove. So if you have a young child at home and they're not aware what the stove is and they reach for it and they can get burned. Well, the first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna stop, you're going to teach them they might not know what's hot and then you're gonna teach them, they can get hurt and you're gonna explain that you don't want them to get hurt and teach them about fire. Maybe, I don't know, I don't have any kids, but that's what you would do. Um And so if they, if they do it again, well, now they need to learn that there are consequences for their action and there's going to be some discipline and they're going to go into time out. Yeah, because we would rather them be in time out than to be burned. I mean, that's a very easy tradeoff, but that has crept over into how we work with some of our, uh, our, our people, but also some contractors, which is the idea of, and I don't like saying this, but it's what we hear. You know, I'd rather you be fired than you'd be dead. And so I have to quote, unquote, hold you accountable,
[00:21:30] spk_0: you have to this idea that there's certain expectations, right? That are so important to follow. And often times people will call them like critical rules, life saving rules, um, critical to safety. There's lots of different names for them that they are places where we say there's zero tolerance for them, right? And in these zero tolerance spaces, it is very similar to this mindset of like, hey, if you, if you don't follow this expectation, we're going to have to remove you. And a lot of the justification that we used to use that. I've heard many places that we've heard. I mean, just this past week, right? Is this idea that I don't want to have to go tell your family that you're not here. I, I honestly, I'd rather you be out of a job than for me to have to do that. And you not go home to your family. That notion of what accountability looks like. That notion of how we're supposed to hold people to an expectation is based on a parent, child relationship. And we want to take some time next episode to sort of redefine what accountability looks like and be able to assess if we are in an area or an environment that has high accountability or an area environment that lends itself to low accountability. And so a bit of homework, what do we call it? Completely optional? Do it, do whatever you
[00:22:50] spk_1: want, maybe no grade pass fail, whatever you want to call it just if you choose to do
[00:22:55] spk_0: it. Great. Yeah. So there's some, we want you to listen for some things in your organization because there are um there's some, some or some terms that would actually indicate that we have a low accountability environment if people are throwing them around and there's phrases or terms that would indicate we have a higher accountability environment or an environment that lends itself to people being able to feel accountable, low accountability environment. You will hear people say things like that's not my job.
[00:23:22] spk_1: Don't ask me, ask my boss.
[00:23:24] spk_0: Hey, yeah. No, I was just following the procedure. I Yeah,
[00:23:27] spk_1: but yeah, I mean, that doesn't really affect me. I sent you an email already. You can, you can figure it out.
[00:23:32] spk_0: Yeah, you wouldn't care. I mean, if I told you anyway, you wouldn't care about it.
[00:23:37] spk_1: That's not under my purview. So ask somebody else.
[00:23:41] spk_0: Yeah, that's not my team's responsibility. So those are all indications if we're hearing things like that, that we have inadvertently, most of the time inadvertently created an environment that is lending itself to low accountability, which we will talk more about what that
[00:23:55] spk_1: means because what we're not saying is that you shouldn't have boundaries in the workplace that you absolutely sure. We're not saying that that's what this is. But we're saying if that's something you hear often, yeah, and, and, and off the cuff all the time, right? If that,
[00:24:06] spk_0: if that sounds like a normal narrative in your work world, um then we probably have a low accountability environment. But then you can also look at the inverse, right? So the inverse of that is when you're hearing people um being able to take a lot of ownership for things like, yeah. No, I, I, I mean, I, I'm pretty sure I could, I could take care of that.
[00:24:22] spk_1: Yeah, they say things like actually, I already tried to solve it a couple times and I'm a little stuck here. But let me show you what I've done and what I think we can do. But I want to get your input on
[00:24:30] spk_0: it or hey, you know, that change that we made, it's not, it's not really working out how we thought. Let me, let me show it to you. Yeah. So that's the homework is to listen for those types of comments and see if you can start to think about areas in your organization, wherever you're working that have high accountability and areas that have lower accountability. And then we'll talk about how those things are formed.
[00:24:55] spk_1: Yeah. All right. Well, that's it. Thank you all for listening and, and we'll, we'll chat with you in two weeks. I can say that correctly now. Uh thank you all.
[00:25:16] spk_0: Well, that's it. Yeah, another
[00:25:19] spk_1: one in the books we did it.
[00:25:22] spk_0: If you, uh, want to send us any of your thoughts, actually fling us any of your thoughts you can do so at the website W W W dot hop podcast dot com.
[00:25:34] spk_1: That's H O P P O DC A S T dot com. That's still
[00:25:41] spk_0: such a stupid name.
[00:25:43] spk_1: We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for listening.
(Transcript Start)
[00:00:00] spk_0: This is Andy and this is Matt and you're listening to
[00:00:03] spk_1: the Hop podcast with no name.
[00:00:06] spk_0: What a dumb name. So stupid.
[00:00:20] spk_1: We're back here. We are, we're back. Um Well, this has been, this has been new, this has been fun. Which part of it, um learning how to release a podcast into the wild. Or go ahead, you can say your favorite word,
[00:00:38] spk_0: flinging it, flinging it out there into the world. Yeah, I don't know why I've become obsessed with the word,
[00:00:45] spk_1: but it's a weird one. Um So we, yeah, we've learned, we've learned a ton about, about this stuff and, uh I think we'll start with just a huge thank you to everyone that's listened to it and giving us feedback. We've gotten a lot of
[00:01:00] spk_0: feedback we have, which is great because that's what we ask for in this hop space a lot. So I'm excited that people who listen to this are willing to give us feedback. We are practicing what we preach everyone. That's fantastic. You
[00:01:13] spk_1: know, a strangely high amount of feedback on the music so heard. Um
[00:01:20] spk_0: which episodes, music are we going to hold on to it? I mean, I think people just,
[00:01:26] spk_1: they probably know. But if you, if you want just the straight answer, it's going to be episode five which will carry on until we get bored with it, which at least this episode, people liked
[00:01:36] spk_0: it. They felt it was like upbeat, you know.
[00:01:40] spk_1: Um And so yeah, a huge thank you and also an apology for lying.
[00:01:46] spk_0: Wait, because what are we lying about when we
[00:01:49] spk_1: were recording? Um And we didn't know we were going to release all five at once.
[00:01:53] spk_0: No, because we didn't know anything about anything. We didn't know what
[00:01:55] spk_1: the schedule of releasing them would be. And
[00:01:57] spk_0: we were taught that you should record a bunch of podcasts in a row. And so we did a few of them in a row, not all at once. But,
[00:02:04] spk_1: and so we'd say things like and on next week's episode, like it was like an old timey radio show and I was realizing just a, just
[00:02:11] spk_0: a bald face
[00:02:12] spk_1: lie that all five would be released at once and that, um we'll be doing this biweekly. So every two weeks on Wednesday, they'll come out. Um So yeah, we learned a ton and uh we're, we're super excited. We, we really enjoy it and thank you for listening. So enough of enough about us and let's just talk about what we're here to talk about.
[00:02:35] spk_0: Let's get to the deep topic of, we ended with Taylor last episode and uh, we had some homework to think about whether or not we had systemic places where we had adopted parent, child relationships and if that was affecting how we did business. Um And so I did my homework. Right. So I thought about relationships in several of the places that I have worked and I'd say the places where we saw this parent child relationship the most um was if we had front line workers, right? And the management, the leadership of like a site or of a group of folks that were out in the fields, we often had parent, child relationships between the higher levels of the management and the folks that were in the field or on the floor, depending upon the leader. We did have like direct supervisors that were taught to adopt sort of a parent role. Um We absolutely had parent child relationships between the representatives of our organization and our contract workers that, that I would say is like the most obvious place where it was. I mean, it was just displayed almost in every single interaction, good or bad with, with most of our contract teams. Um Yes. So we had it in a lot of places. Um So hopefully other folks. Yeah. Did you, did you do your homework? I mean, sometimes you skip it. So
[00:04:02] spk_1: um I, I did and um it was very interesting. So when I became an executive, they, we did some, some training with an outside organization. It was no one in the organization I was a part of and they taught us that as executives, our, uh our first loyalty was no longer to our team that reported to us. It was now to other executives. So essentially, uh it was like the
[00:04:34] spk_0: parents group that got together. It was
[00:04:36] spk_1: like, hey, officially, officially, you're a parent and these are your Children and you're at an amusement park. And so you're gonna have to as a group of parents band together to keep this on the rails. Like that's really what it felt
[00:04:52] spk_0: like the adults need to link arms to keep the
[00:04:55] spk_1: man. My first question was so, where's the beer? That was my next question.
[00:05:01] spk_0: OK. And so we can actually, we can hear comments that can like teach us whether or not we even have this, this type of relationship apart from the banding together and, you know, no longer have allegiance to your team. Like sometimes they, they are very explicit comments that you can hear and we encourage you to just listen for them and see if they exist in your organization. Like I, I hate to admit it but we used to say things like um you can't fix stupid.
[00:05:30] spk_1: Um Ours was if they're going to act like Children, we're going to treat them like Children.
[00:05:36] spk_0: Yeah. We used to do, have a lot of conversation about like you need to, you need to fix these problems for them. Like they're not, they're not going to know how to fix it. So you need to tell them what to do and fix the problem for
[00:05:47] spk_1: them. My favorite was we had a training recently where someone said, uh, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to let the prisoners run the prison?
[00:05:55] spk_0: And then we said, hold on back up. What, what type of organization are you in? I don't, I don't, I mean, I don't think we're dealing with a person right now. You should have probably
[00:06:07] spk_1: spoke with someone who was on the front line there.
[00:06:11] spk_0: Um Yeah, so and, and sometimes it's softer, right? It's not as loud, but it's still part of the fabric and the culture like um if, if we find ourselves um not asking for feedback or kind of asking for feedback from folks is like a like a check in the box activity. But we kind of think we should like, solve problems for people. Like if our workers or anyone who's in that sort of child ego position or pushed into that child ego position if they come into work and they're surprised by a change that's happened. That's because we're operating with this parent, child dynamic of like, well, I'll just let them know after I've made the change, like I'm fully in charge here, they don't really need to understand what's happening until it affects them directly.
[00:06:53] spk_1: And we used to think like, oh maybe this is too complicated for them. We need to solve it. We need to be the one that makes the decision for them because they're not gonna, they're not gonna take the time to understand it or they're
[00:07:03] spk_0: not, they can't, they wouldn't be able to understand those financials. You need to make it simpler for them.
[00:07:07] spk_1: And then I would just go and put the most basic formula in Excel and be like there, I've done it,
[00:07:13] spk_0: I fixed it. So those are all sort of indications that we have these types of dynamics. But then you can, you can also see how it can affect things kind of on a grand scale. And we talked a bit about it the last episode, but even just breaking things down to um to how, how an interaction plays out if you're an adult adult dynamic versus if you're in a, like a, a parent, child relationship. So let's just picture, uh let's picture a plant manager, right? Or regional manager or something. And if somebody um brings a piece of information, a frustration, a difficulty to a regional leader or a plant manager and they are in an adult adult relationship. Um Then I mean, let me just play it out here. Let's, let's pick, um let's pick a thing we're frustrated with. What could we, let's pick a, let's pick a thing. Let's do an outside of work. Silly example. Uh What are we frustrated about in rules do you think of something? Yeah, like a rule that frustrates me.
[00:08:16] spk_1: I have such a low tolerance for most things.
[00:08:20] spk_0: Let's use your putting the dishes in the dishwasher. Ok. Alright. So if we're an adult, adult relationship and I'm frustrated with this rule that in this house, we're supposed to put the dishes in the dishwasher ahead of time. Um I might come up to you and just be like, hey, I got to tell you, I kind of think, I kind of think it's dumb that we have to put the dishes in the dishwasher right away. And if we're in an adult, adult relationship, how do you respond to that? I
[00:08:48] spk_1: mean, just calling something dumb is going to make me a little annoyed but, but you have to have some reason as to why it's dumb. So I would ask you at least to just, ok, what's dumb about it? Tell me, tell me what you think is dumb about this rule.
[00:09:03] spk_0: Well, I, I, I mean, I understand the reason for the world, but I'm telling you like, in my world of trying to manage two Children at the same time and the idea that every single time that we're have a dirty dish that we could like conceivably take it from the sink to the dishwasher. I'm now taking time away that I could be spending with my kids and trying to manage something that even with the dishwasher open, my youngest tries to crawl into it. So I'm, I'm creating, I'm creating a process. That's a bit of a hazard. It, I'm not seeing the benefit of doing it because I could take, I could compress the amount of times that I'm interacting with that dishwasher and creating this issue for my youngest into like 15 minutes at the end of the day. And I, I don't see a reason why that's, that's a bad option. Right. Then we could have a dialogue on it. You might not agree with me. Right? You might have counter points. That's why you might have counter points to it. Right. But you might not agree. Um But if we're in a parent, child relationship, right? And I am bringing this issue, even if I like, I'm going to use the same language of like, hey, I, I think that having to load the dishwasher as soon as you have a dirty dish, I think that's stupid.
[00:10:10] spk_1: I would say, ok, um, even if I'm gonna be polite about it, I'd say, oh, well, hey, thanks for sharing. But I'm sure you know this uh the dishes, they just pile up in the sink and then we have all these issues that sort of come from that. So I just need you to just, I know it's tough, but just go ahead and put the dish in the dishwasher every time. Ok?
[00:10:33] spk_0: And I don't have a lot of places to go from there. Right. Like that, that puts you in that and that, that type of dynamic can happen at work all the time where somebody who might be like a lean leader or a quality leader who's in an adult, adult relationship with a plant manager says, hey, I just want you to know like this part of this process, it's inefficient, it's stupid, it's not making sense. And even if they use that language, the plant manager is probably going to think to ask like a follow up question
[00:10:58] spk_1: because they think that they're talking to another rational adult who has opinions or, or who has knowledge that they don't have and they recognize that they need to ask a follow
[00:11:08] spk_0: up. I was like, ok, I don't know why you think it's dumb. So tell me more about why you think it's dumb. But if for the reasons of Taylor or any other dynamic that's pushed people into a parent, child role, if somebody in that child ego position brings up that rule of like, hey, I, I think that this rule or this part of this process, I think it's dumb. Then the very natural response from that plant manager, that person of authority and that, that parent ego position is just to say, I'm sorry, you don't like the rules, but the rules are good for you. There's a, there's a benefit to them. Um They might even explain what the benefit is, but it has not opened the door to a larger conversation. And without that larger conversation, it's really hard to understand the, the context, like the equivalent of the child's climbing into the, you know, dishwasher. That's
[00:12:00] spk_1: probably risky that we don't want to happen often. Probably,
[00:12:05] spk_0: probably not something that, you know, that the person who wrote the rule to begin with was imagining when they suggested you should put the dishes in the dishwasher right after
[00:12:15] spk_1: and then imagine you've been loading the dishwasher for 15 years and you've been dealing with these problems and you've tried to raise them and no one ever listens.
[00:12:24] spk_0: I'm just picturing an environment where for some reason somebody has toddlers around them for 15 years trying to grow them and they never get older. There's just,
[00:12:31] spk_1: I think like cheaper Brother doesn't move where they have a bunch of kids. I don't know,
[00:12:35] spk_0: there's got to be some center, it's a daycare, right? I don't know some situation like that.
[00:12:40] spk_1: But yeah, you're not going to be super polite. If you've been dealing with it for that long, you might say something like, yeah, this is a really
[00:12:45] spk_0: stupid rule. It doesn't make sense. And so our, our mission is just to, to kind of seek where we have used tailors to, to design something to um navigate our how our interactions and try to try to wear, try to wear away at it, try to rethink those areas. So something we could do in our work world. To pay attention to Taylor. We mentioned one thing already, like pay attention to the language that we're using. It helps identify where it is. But then another thing that you can go do to try to integrate these thoughts into what you physically do um is look for areas where we have tried to create a lot of oversight and control, meaning that the way that we're trying to manage a situation feels like we're trying to control people's behavior. Like we are like doing lots of observations, we're doing lots of timing of things. We've got cameras on people. Um We are uh doing lots of audits around what people are doing. Um We're timing people like all, all those pieces. That's usually an indication that we, we had some sort of system problem there, there was like brittleness in what was happening, but the approach that we used to try to fix it was a belief that we had uh a person problem. And in this case, people that were in a child ego position that needed to be controlled, right? So people not doing what they're supposed to do. And so we have created a lot of layers of oversight in a specific area. Our mission would be identify where some of those places are and then go do operational learning about what's actually happening in that space. So simple kind of real life example that I know uh Bob Edwards lived through is that they used to have lots of tracking devices on forklifts and the tracking devices were just designed to catch when people hit things. Right. So the belief was, hey, we don't want to hit things. Right. So that's the brule message. I mean, there's reasons why we're hitting things. We don't want to hit things and the way that they thought to approach it at the time was let's track the drivers and then when, when we find out that somebody's hit something, now, we know where our people problems are right now. We know where to recoach and retrain and tell people to be more careful. Um, didn't it shut down the shut down the forklift? Right? And made the forklift stop and then there was like a three strikes and you out rule
[00:15:14] spk_1: base all the time just can't get away from it
[00:15:18] spk_0: because the American pastime has creeped up and now we, so three strikes, three strikes and you're out. So if you hit three things on the forklift, you were removed from the forklift. And the thought process behind that was, I mean that you were probably bad at driving a forklift if you hit
[00:15:32] spk_1: three things and there are infinite drivers out there, there are operators out there that can operate forklift. So just keep getting rid of them. So there's
[00:15:39] spk_0: gotta be, there's gotta be like this endless pool of people that you could
[00:15:43] spk_1: get anyone to do it right. That's got to be the logic
[00:15:46] spk_0: they had. So that's, that's a tailor mindset. Top down parent child thought of like the problem is our drivers, we have to track our drivers. We've got to pay attention to what they're doing and when we catch them doing something or having events, then we need to have conversation. And usually that conversation is once again in a parent child dynamic of like, hey, I need to be more careful, I need to understand what happened here. You need to tell me what's going on in terms of like, why you're not paying enough attention in terms of why you're hitting things, you need to understand it's really important not to hit things, et cetera, et cetera. That's before hop mindset. Now, if we think about sort of removing that Taylor is from that scope of thought. Well, now we're like, oh, well, we have fully functioning human adult drivers, operators who operate forklifts something by the way that I don't know how to do personally and, and it's difficult enough that we're hitting things. And so instead of tracking the drivers that are hitting things, what they switch to is that the drivers actually asked if they could track what they're hitting. Now, we're looking into a piece of the system, not just at the people and the solution sets to what you do. Like when you, when you have like, you end up with almost a of all of the places that are really difficult to maneuver a forklift in the solution sets are going to change by area by issue. It's not one size fits all. Um But we have an opportunity to make some real change and not have this belief right? That we've got just bad drivers that because drivers, I think Bob says this all the time, right? Like forklift operators, they come to work to move stuff, not hit stuff, right? So if we're hitting things, we got, we got other pieces going on. Can you summarize that in a better way than I did? Ma what is, what, what are they, what are we asking people to go kind of try out to operate in their work world? What are they looking for?
[00:17:39] spk_1: Yeah. So what we're looking for is we don't want to just try to track the behavior that we think is wrong and catch people doing the wrong behavior. We want to go out and try to learn from those that do that work about. What is the challenge they're facing that makes it difficult to accomplish the task versus just thinking. We have a bunch of bad people who are trying to make bad decisions, which is a wild thing to think about. And, and yeah, that's exaggeration, right? We, we don't typically assume everyone's bad, but we think of it as like, well, why are people speeding? Let's go out and track them and then catch them speeding versus just simply working with them directly and saying, tell me when you feel like you are in a position where you need to go faster. What is that like? When does that happen? Teach me. So that's what we're trying to accomplish here. Yeah.
[00:18:30] spk_0: OK. So find a place where we got a lot of crazy oversight, doing a lot of crazy trying to control people. And then instead of focusing on the people go learn from the people and ask them the operational struggles that they're facing. What's difficult, what's dumb, what's dangerous, what's different? The four D si think um several folks out there, the Brent Bren have also. And uh and Jeff, I believe we often talk about the four Ds. So cool. Now
[00:19:02] spk_1: we're gonna move on. We're gonna have a hard segway just, we're gonna make a sharp trip. Not really. Um But we've, we've talked about Taylor a lot and I think in every conversation that we have, um it, it very, very, very obviously segues into another big topic,
[00:19:20] spk_0: which is people's favorite topic, I believe in this space, which is the topic of accountability. Yeah, we really needed a sound effect right there. Thank you for supplying it with your, with your voice.
[00:19:33] spk_1: We literally have a tool that could have done that and I was like, I got it. This is I'm way better at
[00:19:37] spk_0: this. Um Because if we think of how we have managed things, especially places where we thought we had to have like lots of oversight because there was brittleness in the system. The three strikes you're out was this form of what we would historically call accountability. Well, that people need, they, there's expectations you need to follow. We need to have accountability. And one of the largest struggles that we have in this hop space is helping people see how accountability fits in with these hop concepts. And part of it has to do with how we're defining accountability. And a large portion of our definition of accountability within the work world comes from tailor, right? It comes from the belief that the way to hold somebody accountable is very similar to the parent child relationship. Can you give the example of the stove, please?
[00:20:27] spk_1: Yes. Um So we in describing what that looks like. Uh we use a child reaching for a stove. So if you have a young child at home and they're not aware what the stove is and they reach for it and they can get burned. Well, the first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna stop, you're going to teach them they might not know what's hot and then you're gonna teach them, they can get hurt and you're gonna explain that you don't want them to get hurt and teach them about fire. Maybe, I don't know, I don't have any kids, but that's what you would do. Um And so if they, if they do it again, well, now they need to learn that there are consequences for their action and there's going to be some discipline and they're going to go into time out. Yeah, because we would rather them be in time out than to be burned. I mean, that's a very easy tradeoff, but that has crept over into how we work with some of our, uh, our, our people, but also some contractors, which is the idea of, and I don't like saying this, but it's what we hear. You know, I'd rather you be fired than you'd be dead. And so I have to quote, unquote, hold you accountable,
[00:21:30] spk_0: you have to this idea that there's certain expectations, right? That are so important to follow. And often times people will call them like critical rules, life saving rules, um, critical to safety. There's lots of different names for them that they are places where we say there's zero tolerance for them, right? And in these zero tolerance spaces, it is very similar to this mindset of like, hey, if you, if you don't follow this expectation, we're going to have to remove you. And a lot of the justification that we used to use that. I've heard many places that we've heard. I mean, just this past week, right? Is this idea that I don't want to have to go tell your family that you're not here. I, I honestly, I'd rather you be out of a job than for me to have to do that. And you not go home to your family. That notion of what accountability looks like. That notion of how we're supposed to hold people to an expectation is based on a parent, child relationship. And we want to take some time next episode to sort of redefine what accountability looks like and be able to assess if we are in an area or an environment that has high accountability or an area environment that lends itself to low accountability. And so a bit of homework, what do we call it? Completely optional? Do it, do whatever you
[00:22:50] spk_1: want, maybe no grade pass fail, whatever you want to call it just if you choose to do
[00:22:55] spk_0: it. Great. Yeah. So there's some, we want you to listen for some things in your organization because there are um there's some, some or some terms that would actually indicate that we have a low accountability environment if people are throwing them around and there's phrases or terms that would indicate we have a higher accountability environment or an environment that lends itself to people being able to feel accountable, low accountability environment. You will hear people say things like that's not my job.
[00:23:22] spk_1: Don't ask me, ask my boss.
[00:23:24] spk_0: Hey, yeah. No, I was just following the procedure. I Yeah,
[00:23:27] spk_1: but yeah, I mean, that doesn't really affect me. I sent you an email already. You can, you can figure it out.
[00:23:32] spk_0: Yeah, you wouldn't care. I mean, if I told you anyway, you wouldn't care about it.
[00:23:37] spk_1: That's not under my purview. So ask somebody else.
[00:23:41] spk_0: Yeah, that's not my team's responsibility. So those are all indications if we're hearing things like that, that we have inadvertently, most of the time inadvertently created an environment that is lending itself to low accountability, which we will talk more about what that
[00:23:55] spk_1: means because what we're not saying is that you shouldn't have boundaries in the workplace that you absolutely sure. We're not saying that that's what this is. But we're saying if that's something you hear often, yeah, and, and, and off the cuff all the time, right? If that,
[00:24:06] spk_0: if that sounds like a normal narrative in your work world, um then we probably have a low accountability environment. But then you can also look at the inverse, right? So the inverse of that is when you're hearing people um being able to take a lot of ownership for things like, yeah. No, I, I, I mean, I, I'm pretty sure I could, I could take care of that.
[00:24:22] spk_1: Yeah, they say things like actually, I already tried to solve it a couple times and I'm a little stuck here. But let me show you what I've done and what I think we can do. But I want to get your input on
[00:24:30] spk_0: it or hey, you know, that change that we made, it's not, it's not really working out how we thought. Let me, let me show it to you. Yeah. So that's the homework is to listen for those types of comments and see if you can start to think about areas in your organization, wherever you're working that have high accountability and areas that have lower accountability. And then we'll talk about how those things are formed.
[00:24:55] spk_1: Yeah. All right. Well, that's it. Thank you all for listening and, and we'll, we'll chat with you in two weeks. I can say that correctly now. Uh thank you all.
[00:25:16] spk_0: Well, that's it. Yeah, another
[00:25:19] spk_1: one in the books we did it.
[00:25:22] spk_0: If you, uh, want to send us any of your thoughts, actually fling us any of your thoughts you can do so at the website W W W dot hop podcast dot com.
[00:25:34] spk_1: That's H O P P O DC A S T dot com. That's still
[00:25:41] spk_0: such a stupid name.
[00:25:43] spk_1: We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for listening.