How to Have Truly Productive Meetings

Cole Abbott (00:00:00 -> 00:00:08)

So today, yeah. We're talking about right. Keeping up with the nine core competencies. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> going into meetings.

Mark Abbott (00:00:08 -> 00:00:10)

All right. Meetings. Love this. Yeah. Yep.

Cole Abbott (00:00:11 -> 00:00:19)

So what makes meetings so significant that it is one of the nine core competencies? Because

Mark Abbott (00:00:20 -> 00:03:58)

Without meetings, we can't really align as humans and make sure that, uh, you know, we're talking about the things we need to talk about. Right? So if you've got the vision, that's one of the core competencies, and now then you can have goals and rocks and all these things that you need to get done, and you need to make sure that you know, they're getting done and you're doing the work that you need to do to get done. There's just always issues, right? Just the nature of running a company and, uh, you know, someone once said there are 136 issues and they're all, they're, they're all over the place and there are lots and lots of issues, but, so we just need to figure out how to have a system for coming together and solving issues and then breaking apart so that, uh, we're not dealing with a bunch of ad hoc meetings. 'cause that's what happens. If we don't have great structure around meetings, then we don't have a cadence that enables us to be efficient and effective with our time. So if we have no structured meetings, then everybody's running around and just having ad hoc meetings when they have ad hoc meetings. What happens all the time is that you get these people together and all of a sudden they're like two thirds of the way through this conversation around solving a problem. And the next thing you know, it's like, oh, we should have had Joe in here. Right? One of the things I've always taught is, like the weekly meeting is, is absolutely one of the most important meetings your team can have. And if you have a weekly meeting, you have it at the same day, and you have it the same time and you have the same agenda, and you start on time and end on time, those are five sort of, uh, elements of a great meeting. Then, um, if someone comes up to you and says, Hey, can we talk about this? You're like, Hey, is it urgent and is it important? And if not, can it wait for a weekly meeting? And you only have to say that two or three times and then people get it. Right. Just leave it for the weekly meeting. 'cause there's very few things, especially if the business is reasonably well run, that aren't urgent, that are urgent and important. So there's, uh, there are a bunch of different meetings that are core to like becoming really good at running a company. A weekly meeting for your team is a really good one. I believe weekly one-on-ones are really important. There's quarterly planning meetings, there's annual planning meetings, there's state of the company meetings to share everything that's going on. Um, you know, there are tiger team meetings. If you have a team pulled together to work on, you know, a rock or a goal, you know, 90 day goal. Um, and there's like 21 meet meeting types that we think most organizations eventually are gonna, um, are going to need to master. Uh, one of the ones we haven't talked about is, you know, quarterly conversations or quarterly one-on-ones to talk about how we're doing, right? How am I doing as a leader and, and a coach, and how are we doing in terms of our agreements? Um, and, you know, part of my agreement is to help you develop. And so how am I doing in helping you develop, and how are you doing in terms of, you know, things like, you know, ex exemplifying our core values, et cetera. So there are a bunch of different types of meetings and, and if you get really good at 'em, then, um, it's sort of like, you don't, you don't have to think about some stuff. Like, you know, we don't think about whether we're gonna put our left leg or a right leg into our pants when we get up in the morning. And so they just really great meetings just sort of give this, um, and, and a great meeting cadence, uh, just makes the trains run on time. Um, and, and it helps you all to figure out, you know, how to deal with, with challenge challenges and what's urgent and what's not urgent, et cetera. So, yeah,

Cole Abbott (00:03:58 -> 00:04:35)

Because you have, right, obviously there's the structure and the cadence, and then the types and the structure would fall under the different types of meetings. Yeah. Uh, as kind of the cadence would too, but that's a little bit separate, right? Right. But it's a big thing there is turning that into a habit, right? Right. Where it becomes second nature and it becomes sort of done through intuition. And this is just the language we speak Yeah. And the way that we go about doing things. So how, how do you go from a place of ad hoc meetings to building up towards that, becoming a habit, becoming something that is just understood within the organization.

Mark Abbott (00:04:35 -> 00:09:16)

Everything always starts at the top, right? And so, um, and I, and as you know, we can have an interesting conversation around disciplines versus habits. Um, but to me, a meeting is a discipline, right? Um, and it's a very important discipline. And so, you know, it starts with a, with it starts with the founder, the CEO whomever's, the Grand Puba saying, no, it's really important that we have these meetings. And then the question is, you know, how do we do this so that they're really good meetings, right? So, so, um, and there are a number of different systems meeting sort of systems out there, uh, meeting frameworks. Let's put it that way. That's even better. Um, and, uh, it's like, you know, EOS and we do a very similar version. You know, they have the level 10 meeting, and we have our weekly team meeting, but the structure is pretty much identical, pretty much identical, right? And the big idea is there is, there's a structure that makes that, that focuses on the things that we should be doing, right? So, um, you know, we come together, we segue, right? We connect as human beings, we do personal and professional, um, best from the last week. And then we start looking at the data. And there's a very structured way to look at our scorecards, right? Which is you're focusing on where there are issues, and if there are issues, you know, put it down in the issues list, but don't have a conversation that early in the meeting, because the chances are you could be going off on some tangents and wasting time that otherwise would've been more, um, better spent work working on more urgent and important, um, issues. Ultimately, as I said earlier, there's just some disciplines around a great meeting. We talked about five of them, right? They, they, same day, same time, same agenda, start on time, in done time. So let's just talk about same agenda, right? So ultimately, like lots of competencies that we have, we wanna become really, really good at our weekly meeting, and then we want to take that competency and then right, start using it with our departments and then our department leaders, right? They become really good at that, running their meetings, and then their team leaders become really good at that as well. And so everybody in the company is at a weekly meeting. They all have the same structure, right? Um, we're compounding that competency, right? But 'cause we're all doing the same thing, we're all following the same structure. We, we all know that we start on time, we end on time, we all follow the same agenda. We all know that we don't have any conversations during the segue. We don't have any conversations during the scorecard. We don't have any conversations during the review of the rocks, right? It's either on track or off track. And if it's off track, should, should we make it an issue? We don't have any conversation during the headlines and cascading messages. We don't have any conversations during the to-dos. And those are all disciplines. And ultimately we become really good at them. And then we teach our, the people who work for us how to become really good at them. And then our people that work for us teach the other people how to become really good for them. And so it just becomes this discipline that we're all really, really good at. And even more importantly, because of the structure of this discipline, you know, the vast majority of the time is spent solving problems. And, and, and then even there, the discipline we have, right, which is not a, which is our own system, right? Is we priorit prioritize our issues. And so fives are, we must talk about them today, fours, or we'd love to talk about them if we have three time. Threes are if we, if we, you know, we'd like to talk about 'em, but it's not a big deal. Um, twos are, we don't need to talk about this today. And ones are like, well, you know, someday we should probably talk about this, or it'll disappear, or we're gonna move it to our longer term issues. Uh, a lot of times they just get, they get deleted, right? Um, but the beauty of that discipline is that we always, at the senior, at the c-suite level, and at the senior leadership team level, we always get through all of our fives, right? So we're attacking all those things that we absolutely have to attack that week. And we almost always get through all of our fours and then, you know, the three, sometimes we get through. Um, but we're pretty darn efficient at, um, going into the meetings, at getting all the issues resolved, people come outta the meetings. Um, I haven't looked at it. Um, it'd be interesting to look at, but I would say that, you know, our c-suite meetings, probably the average rating is 9.75. The SLT rating is probably similar, right? I would suspect that across the company, most of our meetings are rating, you know, nine and a half or higher. And if they're below nine, we all talk about what it is. And so everybody's constantly working on, on just getting better and better, um, at that competency, at that discipline.

Cole Abbott (00:09:16 -> 00:09:57)

Yeah. Because Right. You're iterating on the meeting thing as, as a discipline Yeah. And really working on that. And then that adds another basically beneficial effect to the compounding nature of the meetings and how it helps the organization. Yeah. And so, right, when you really start seeing those benefits, how, how do you see that both, uh, internally and also with the companies you coach? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, how do you see that affect, like performance and health and, and providing more time and everyone, right? In addition to more time, everyone's feeling better about not wasting right. Hours in unnecessary meetings? Well,

Mark Abbott (00:09:57 -> 00:11:35)

The, I I think the, um, you know, when you first take on and, and, you know, I just, this week I took on my first client in several years. Um, I mean, you know, when you, when you, when you take on a client, one of the things you always say is, look, you know, you're gonna fight the discipline for the first two or three weeks, but within three to five to six weeks, you're gonna, you know, you're, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna fight for it as opposed to fight against it. You're gonna like, you know, you don't want to lose this. Um, because all of a sudden you realize how powerful it is. Um, but the, the litmus test for me, there's several ones, right? Um, I actually look forward to all my meetings now, do I look forward to a day full of meetings? I don't, right? And as you know, I have almost all my days are smashed with meetings, right? So that I don't look forward to. But literally every single meeting, um, I have, I enjoy them. Right? I look forward to like, especially like our quarterlies and our annuals. I, I, I genuinely look forward to them. Um, I look forward to my weekly meeting with my, with the senior leadership team. I look forward to the C-suite meeting. I look forward to my one-on-ones. I genuinely enjoy the meetings. So, you know, how much more effective are you if you enjoy something versus if you go into it and you're dreading it, I mean, you just, if you go into something dreading it, your brain's gonna be right. You know, there's just, that's not a good thing. So, um, so I think, you know, one of the beauties of, of the discipline is that ultimately meetings are just, they're not just productive. They're enjoyable.

Cole Abbott (00:11:36 -> 00:11:43)

And I'm sure that's a foreign concept to a lot of people out there that you can look forward to these things, right?

Mark Abbott (00:11:43 -> 00:12:19)

Well, if you, you, you know, if you go online and you search, you know, meetings, you, you'll see all these people complaining about meetings and, you know, they're a waste of time. They're, you know, there's just, there's just a lot of negativity out there around meetings. And I think it's just indicative of, um, it's sad, right? Because they're essential. Right Now, the meetings that I don't like are the ad hoc meetings. Um, we don't have, you know, many at all. I I bet you we're less than 2% of our meetings are ad hoc meetings. I, I could be wrong, but it's, it's, it's below 5% for for

Cole Abbott (00:12:19 -> 00:13:07)

Sure. I, i, I think that's accurate, right? Yeah. And, and you see the, everything about meetings from a negative perspective on LinkedIn, on social media, and some of it's, you know, more philosophical the issues with them. And then some of it's more satirical. Yeah, yeah, yeah. On social media and saying how it's a waste of time. You don't need to be there. And I think that that's only gotten worse or more exaggerated with the remote work and hybrid work things being on Zoom. Yeah. And Right. It's, it's just a lower barrier to entry to just put on someone's calendar and expect them to show up and, and everything. And versus having people get up and go to a room and, and sort it out there. 'cause it's, it's also a lot easier just sit in silence on Zoom Yeah. And do other work <laugh>.

Mark Abbott (00:13:07 -> 00:14:09)

Yeah. If, if, if that's kind of the culture that you're willing to Right. Sort of allow to, to exist. But, you know, I think, um, you know, I think, I mean, we have optional all hands every week, every two weeks, and we have 170 people in the company. And I'll bet you our average attendance is between one 40 and one 50. The only reason I have actually that number's in my head is we, you know, we have the whole, we wait for five minutes and we do core value shout outs, or I do stupid dad jokes or other people participate in the stupid dad jokes. But, um, but we, you know, I'm always watching to see what the number gets up to. And if it's five minutes and we're one 40, you know, we're off to the races. And, um, but I think that's a testament right. To the, to, to, to, um, people genuinely wanna, you know, I mean, it's optional, right? And, and everybody joins, so it's cool.

Cole Abbott (00:14:09 -> 00:14:21)

Maybe it'd be interesting to see the data on, you have all these companies that do similar optional company meeting where it's nothing really super important right. Is

Mark Abbott (00:14:21 -> 00:14:22)

Discussed. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:14:22 -> 00:14:26)

Sorry, to those who think it's very important Sure.

Mark Abbott (00:14:27 -> 00:14:27)

<laugh>.

Cole Abbott (00:14:27 -> 00:14:28)

But,

Mark Abbott (00:14:28 -> 00:14:29)

But it's how we stay

Cole Abbott (00:14:29 -> 00:14:40)

Connected is on, right? Right. And I, I feel at most places it'd probably be something that you do for a quarter. Yeah. And then you just say, nobody cares at the end of it. And you're done with that. Right.

Mark Abbott (00:14:40 -> 00:14:42)

And we've been doing it for years. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:14:42 -> 00:14:58)

Yeah. And, and it obviously there's a, an effective social proof where people are doing it Right. And you see a bunch of people go into the thing and you feel compelled to do it. Right. But I still think most people actually enjoy it and don't view it as a waste of 30 minutes Yeah. Every other week.

Mark Abbott (00:14:58 -> 00:15:00)

Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Right.

Cole Abbott (00:15:00 -> 00:15:16)

If we have what you said, like 21 types of meetings Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and you are an organization, it doesn't, or is not conscious and intentional about their meetings, right? Or structure or cat. Right. It's all ad hoc.

Mark Abbott (00:15:16 -> 00:15:16)

Right?

Cole Abbott (00:15:18 -> 00:15:24)

What would be the super short version of a, of a hierarchy of meetings that are necessary to have?

Mark Abbott (00:15:25 -> 00:15:25)

Yeah,

Cole Abbott (00:15:27 -> 00:15:27)

So

Mark Abbott (00:15:28 -> 00:15:39)

That's a great question. Are we talking recurring or are we talking just, these are the kinds of meetings that you, you're, you know, you really should, um, have. So as an example, let's do some non-recurring. Yeah. Right.

Cole Abbott (00:15:40 -> 00:15:44)

How do you adopt these? Right? Right. Like, right. You, you're not gonna do all 21 at once. No,

Mark Abbott (00:15:44 -> 00:19:50)

No. So where do you start? You know, I, I, I'm smiling because, uh, you know, we have a lot of customers who just, you know, hear about 90 and they kind of, you know, people say it works really well and it helps you get everybody together. And then where do you start? Right? And so we have a lot of those conversations that take place and, and, um, and we have a, something called a baseline assessment survey that helps people take a look at how strong they are across the nine core competencies. And based upon where they're weak is, right? We have recommendation as to where they should, what would, how they should start, you know, getting up and running on 90. So as an example, if they're just weak across the board, I mean everything, you know, they're like 30%, you know, in terms of vision and structure and people and meetings and all that kind of stuff. The first thing, you know, we recommend is, you know, the, the, the founder go away and, and get really super clear in his, in his or her head on, on the vision, right? What are we doing? Where are we going? Why are we doing this stuff? Who are we as a people, right? Some of these things like I, that I refer to as forever agreements. Um, and then come back and have a, a foundation setting session with their, with their senior leadership team and make sure that, you know, they're all on the same page in terms of structure and, and getting this thing going, getting up and running and upgrading their business operating system. Now, you know, if, if, if they're strong across a bunch of different things, but there's just an issue on vision, then go have a vision setting session. If they're strong across vision and structure, then go have a, you know, have, have a, have, have a goal setting session. If they're strong across everything, then just get to work and start having, take advantage of the platform and start having your weekly meetings and, and set the schedule up for having your quarterlys and your annuals. Um, and, uh, and then, you know, start drilling into, um, thinking about having quarterly conversations or, you know, sort of, you know, our version of annual reviews, which as those of you know, me know, I hate. So quarterly, you know, sort of having quarterly how we doing? Um, and then, um, and then, you know, so every company's different. Uh, they all, you know, they're all snowflakes, but, um, but eventually, right? You wanna master the weekly meeting. You want to master the weekly one-on-one. I know not everybody agrees with me on weekly one-on-ones, but I deeply believe it's a great way for us to have really efficient weekly team meetings. Because if stuff belongs in a weekly one-on-one, just have it there. It's also an opportunity for us to just connect as human beings and talk about how things are going. And, um, and so, you know, I believe in weekly one-on-ones, I believe in weekly team meetings. I deeply believe in quarterly conversations. I deeply believe in quarterly me planning meetings. I deeply believe in annual planning meetings. I deeply believe in state of the company meetings, right? And then, you know, we can talk about, you know, we love the, you know, every other week, all hands. Um, and then, um, you know, helping people think about how they wanna run their meetings if they have, you know, cross-functional groups, people involved in Iraq, right? So we call 'em Tiger team meetings, right? But, you know, those are the ones right off the top of my head. Um, you know, obviously, you know, we have investors, so we have board meetings, and then, you know, we have a, a, a financial review meeting every month, and every single one of our departments has a financial review meeting with the, with the CFO and his team every single month. So, uh, like I said, you know, there are about 21 of these types of meetings and you can't master 'em all. So I do think that, you know, you want to move as swiftly as you can to having great weekly team meetings and but to have the great weekly team meeting, it has to have substance. And so the substance is, well, you know, it should be on what are we, what are our priorities? So what are our rocks? So let's get those things done, you know, what's our data look like? So let's start working on the scorecard. And those are things you work on in the sort of setting up sessions, which we call foundation setting and vision setting and, and, and goal setting. So I don't know, that's a perfect answer, but, um, um, but those are the meetings that, that I think are pretty important,

Cole Abbott (00:19:51 -> 00:20:30)

Right? It's a little bit of a stretch, but Right. I think that there could be a, some people could see, right? There's the team meetings Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> like the whatever team meetings and your one-on-one meetings, and then you could put your quarterly for the team underneath the team meeting, and then your quarterly conversation underneath the one-on-ones, right? And Right. And so those are the ones that would tend to be ad hoc that you could bucket. And then you also have the externally required meetings, right? Such as a board meeting. Yep. Right? Like that's probably not in your control as much as the rest of the things. Right. Um, and so would you say that there's a little bit of, of bucketing there

Mark Abbott (00:20:32 -> 00:20:34)

In terms in terms of like,

Cole Abbott (00:20:34 -> 00:20:58)

Like, so you Right. A team quarterly with the team Right. Meeting and then a one-on-one, and a quarterly conversation outta that. Right? Right. Because it is like, if you're viewing it like that, you could almost say mastering the weekly meeting and having those repetitions and then having that group dynamic really function well is essential to having a good quarterly, just like a healthy one-on-one weekly is essential to having a good quarterly conversation. A

Mark Abbott (00:20:58 -> 00:20:59)

Hundred percent. Right?

Cole Abbott (00:20:59 -> 00:21:19)

Yeah. And so if we're trying to figure out how do you implement these, it's small steps with the little ones with the weekly, getting those things in and making sure that all of that runs smoothly. Yeah. Right? And then new people will come into the team and Right. They assimilate into that. Right. And that they become part of that culture, right, right. Part of that habit. And they adopt it more easily. Yeah. Because it's at this point just so resonant. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:21:19 -> 00:22:05)

And don't forget that, you know, what we do is a part of our onboarding, our 90 day onboarding is we actually incorporate the quarterly conversation into our onboarding. So instead of it being quarterly, the first, after the first month, there's the equivalent of a quarterly conversation, same agenda, right? So core values and roles and responsibilities and, and, um, and to-dos and, and, and then how am I doing as a leader and how am I doing as a coach? Um, and you know, and various, you know, sort of questions for us to sort of align on. Yeah. So we're, we're putting, you know, we're putting people into the weekly meeting, we're putting 'em into the quarterly conversation within the first 30 days of, and of course we're putting 'em into team meetings within the first 30 days of them joining the company. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:22:05 -> 00:22:54)

Well, with team meetings. And one-on-ones is That's right away. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So you're getting thrown into there, into that. And there's been several people recently that we've brought into, like, for example, the newsletter meeting. Yeah. And it's like, oh, you haven't even been, we haven't even had your welcome to the team meeting yet, <laugh>, it was like, hi. Yeah. So we're, we're, you know, bringing you someone in, on a, on a whole new right. Program Yeah. As well as a whole new meeting structure. Yeah. And if we're worried about the structure, and that's a whole front of mind thing, right? That's not gonna be a productive 30 minutes where we also have all these other things that we need to accomplish, right? Um, yeah. And so I guess all that to say that it makes me think of like sort of a web of the type of meetings and how they interact with each other and Yeah. Right. You gotta master some things before moving on to other things and

Mark Abbott (00:22:54 -> 00:22:56)

Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. Right.

Cole Abbott (00:22:56 -> 00:22:59)

That sort of hierarchy of, uh, and prioritization. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:22:59 -> 00:24:38)

And then, and then, and then there's an onboarding meeting, right? Um, and then in the onboarding process, they learn about the meetings, right? We have briefs and guides on, on, on this stuff that we think is important for people to, to read. So early on, they've got some sense for the craziness of all this. You hear from dozens of people, I've, we've heard from dozens of people over the years that, you know, this is a breath of fresh air when they come in here. And these meetings are like, they're, they're, they're, they're healthy. There's, there's, they're not, like, there's no tension. Like, uh, there's, you're doing real issues and real problem solving, but they're like, wow, that was like, you know, I, I remember last quarterly, a couple of the new people was like, wow. I was like, I was worried that moment would like make the whole rest of the meeting, um, kind of weird. And it was like, man, you guys, like, you, you, you went there, you had a hard conversation. You're like, this is the decision. And everybody's like, oh, n next. And it's like, there's no, there's no dust, there's no like, negative energy. It's just like we, we move on and, and you know, we're, by having people like two or three levels in, in meetings together, they, they're like, wow, okay, cool. Right? I can do that. I'm allowed to, you know, push back. I'm allowed to, you know, we can have some of these, you know, disagreements. And it's like, it's like, wow. It's kind of healthy. So, um, and then, then, then the other thing we, we didn't mention is what we do is, is within, I, I think within a month, every month or so, I'm pretty sure it's plus or minus every month I have a new employee. So like every single person who's been hired in the last 30 days, they get a full hour. It's like, whatever you want to talk about, any questions you have as you've got. And some of the times, like, this is my first day

Cole Abbott (00:24:39 -> 00:24:40)

<laugh>. It's like, cool, welcome

Mark Abbott (00:24:41 -> 00:24:47)

<laugh>. Yeah. So that's another one of our meetings that we, you know, we deeply believe in,

Cole Abbott (00:24:47 -> 00:25:21)

Right? Yeah. And, and sort of the, I think one of the fun things about our system and being flexible, right? Is, okay, try this thing out. Does this meeting style work? And then Right. Then we incorporate it into the, into our teaching materials, right? Right. So we're not putting anything out there that we're not testing ourselves and, and really understanding and mastering Yeah. And, and truly integrating and, and Right. If it's not beneficial, if we don't see the use in it, we don't have time <laugh> to Right. To deal with something that's, uh, sort of vestigial Yeah. In that way. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:25:21 -> 00:25:40)

There no, there's no, there's no leg. I don't, I don't think it, you know, I don't think we have any legacy. We don't, we're not doing things that we shouldn't be doing. I mean, knock on wood, right. You know, obviously I'm sometimes up here and Yeah. Don't see everything, but I don't, I I don't think we've got a lot of that. I mean,

Cole Abbott (00:25:41 -> 00:26:00)

Even if it is right, and there's probably a small negligible percent of those types of things, right. As there will be in any Yeah. Group, right. But it's obviously, it's so negligible that it doesn't, it's, uh, it basically for all practical purposes, does not exist. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:26:00 -> 00:26:50)

I would say, and, and I'd say that's part of the culture is because generally speaking, you know, um, everybody here deeply cares, and we've talked about it, right? They deeply care about all of our ideal stakeholders. It's not, you know, we don't put customers over employees or employees or customers or, you know, any of that nonsense. Um, and, and they know that like, you know, part of being here, or part of the culture is if you see something, you know, you gotta let us know. If you're gonna talk to about someone behind their back, you gotta say, Hey, you know, Joe and Joe, you know, suing n we're talking about you Cole, and you know, this is what we're talking about. And so that's, you know, we just don't do that stuff. So I think there's a lot of, you know, and, and those are meetings, right? That's a, that's kind of like a, you know, part of our culture, our cultural norms around even how to behave in a meeting, right. What's, what's cool, what's uncool.

Cole Abbott (00:26:50 -> 00:27:01)

Yeah. And right, it comes back to core values and being inquisitive of like, is this working? Is this not working? Why? And then best in terms of let's be better and better at this. Yeah. And

Mark Abbott (00:27:01 -> 00:27:40)

It's, this is all and progress and, and, and respect that everybody wants to be better and better at this. And, and yeah, sometimes it doesn't feel particularly good, but that's why we have resiliency as Right. As a, as a core value. So, you know, don't, um, and I don't think I've ever said this before, um, you know, in this, not on the podcast, but just generally speaking, right. But, um, it's uncool if you assume that someone can't handle Right. Just the truth. Right? If you, if you got, you know, lettuce in your teeth, right? You got, you know, it's uncool to not let 'em know they've got lettuce in their teeth. So, right. That's part of who we are.

Cole Abbott (00:27:40 -> 00:27:48)

It's all back to agreements. Yeah. We enter this thing with an agreement that we're gonna be truthful, specific and positive about everything. Yep. And, uh,

Mark Abbott (00:27:49 -> 00:27:50)

And we're gonna live up, up

Cole Abbott (00:27:50 -> 00:27:50)

To

Mark Abbott (00:27:50 -> 00:28:52)

Agreements. We're gonna live up to our agreements. Weekly meetings are agreements, right. The agenda, literally the agenda itself is an agreement. Right. Um, have, you know, and the cadence of the meetings, those, that's an agreement, right? Boom, boom, boom. And, um, one of our agreements is onboarding. You have basically the asen, the, the, the quarterly conversation. It's every 30 days until such time as you've gone 90 days. And if after the 90 days, we feel like you still haven't gotten to the point where we can sort of let you run. 'cause you understand, you know, you're, you, you know, you understand the seat, you're competent enough to be able to do the things. Then we keep running that 30 days. And if that keeps going too much longer, then guess what? Right? This probably, you know, we probably messed up and that's shame on us, but, you know, we're gonna have to, maybe there's another place in the organization if you're a great core value fit, but if you're not, then be, but if there's not a seat available that makes sense for you, then you know, we're gonna do our best to help you move on. And 'cause that's the right thing for everyone. Including, including you.

Cole Abbott (00:28:52 -> 00:28:55)

Yeah. Right. You don't want to let that negatively compound. Yeah.

Mark Abbott (00:28:55 -> 00:29:01)

No one, no, it's un it's just uncool for people to just be unhappy. Right? Yeah. What do we say? Work shouldn't suck.

Cole Abbott (00:29:01 -> 00:29:04)

Sounds a good time to let you know that you have lettuce us in your teeth. <laugh>,

Mark Abbott (00:29:04 -> 00:29:09)

Do I? No. <laugh>, I was like, well, yeah,

Cole Abbott (00:29:09 -> 00:29:12)

We should've Totally. Before this started. No, it was a good, that's, yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:29:12 -> 00:29:15)

Alright, so that's on that note. On that note. Yeah.

Cole Abbott (00:29:17 -> 00:29:18)

Cool. That's it. That's it.

Mark Abbott (00:29:18 -> 00:29:20)

Awesome. Thanks man.