Economic Decision Cycles
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Josh Smith:The love boat. The hidden chasm. No. I'm not. Are you recording?
Josh Smith:Jerk.
Bo Motlagh:Oh, yeah. We're we're live. So, as as you heard, welcome back to to The Hidden Chasm. We'll, we'll have to get that No. On every episode there.
Bo Motlagh:Thanks, Josh. Well, welcome back, everybody who's listening. You know, we're continuing our conversation of, talk about the consequences of legacy solutions and tech debt and strategic gaps and what happens when growing enterprises run into these things unexpectedly. We've gotten to talk about that from a lot of different perspectives from product and technology, m and a, people and culture, sales. And today, we're gonna be chatting about it from an organizational transformational design perspective, which I'm pretty excited about.
Bo Motlagh:And to that end, welcome, Mark Hill. We're excited to have you here. Mark, I'm gonna read this. I always do. Is an accomplished transformation and organizational design leader who specializes in guiding organizations to adaptively design their actions for mission driven success and extraordinary results.
Bo Motlagh:Welcome, Mark.
Mark Hill:Hey. Thank you. It's good to be here.
Bo Motlagh:It's good to have you. I guess, you know, maybe a good place to start is just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into transformational design and and maybe what that means.
Mark Hill:Yeah. Sure. So I think anytime you create something from nothing, you know, like a company or a new team, you basically have to decide how is that thing going to structure and function, you know, both from an outside perspective. If you're gonna kinda look and say, how's it gonna structure in a larger business economy? And then, you know, on a micro level, you gotta say, how's it gonna structure maybe it's like a team, you know, within a within a larger organization.
Mark Hill:Because none of these companies or teams, you know, rely on themselves to feed themselves. Right? They all have to get energy from somewhere, either from the economy or, you know, from internal groups they have to work with. Right? So those are a lot of really complex dynamics at play, and that's kind of essentially what organizational design is.
Mark Hill:It's like, how can we design the most frictionless entity that can basically, you know, both, you know, kind of enter the market that are be high impact, and then internally, as it functions within itself, essentially be high performing. And so those are the 2, I guess, dynamics you could say that I look at most of all, how companies are performing externally in relation to their goals. Sometimes their peers, if I have enough time to do that kind of research, and then, you know, also, like, you know, internally with how are they really working with themselves. And, you know, a lot of times I tell I tell I tell executives that I work with, I say, look. They say, well, how do we know if we're really doing well?
Mark Hill:We're a version of that question. Right? So they kinda wanna know, like, what stick I'm gonna kinda help them with. You know? Like, how are you gonna do your discovery?
Mark Hill:What are you gonna look at? All this sorts of, like, technical stuff. And I said, hey. I'm gonna do pretty much one thing. Mhmm.
Mark Hill:And they're like, oh, yeah. You know, highly skeptical. One thing. Right? You're gonna kinda get there.
Mark Hill:And it it is a little bit of a it was a little bit of a shtick, but it's a 100% true. I said, I'm gonna look at the inside of your company outside in, and I'm gonna pretend like I'm a customer, and I'm gonna see if I'm satisfied. Right. Or what's is what you're like on the inside what you're actually like on the outside? And I said continuity between those two things counts for a lot.
Mark Hill:You know, that's a that's a frictionless organization that's probably extremely high performing. And, you know, we can look at board design, KPIs, all the rest of the stuff that goes into sort of making that real. But that's pretty much the that's the big play on the board.
Bo Motlagh:And how did you, you know, get fall into this or fall did you, you know, set out to do this kind of consultative work? And tell us a little bit about your career progression.
Mark Hill:Absolutely, Bo. So I guess the easiest way to explain it without boring everybody who's listening to tears, including you 2, is to say I chase problems. I started off like a lot of people do as some sort of, you know, individual contributor role, like rolling a wheelbarrow back and forth up and down the hallway. And my wheelbarrow was, like, was project management, you know, hanging out with the technologist. And often I tell people I'm a technology minded business person because I know enough to be dangerous and very dangerous sometimes.
Mark Hill:But, so I will roll that thing up and down the hallway and you take enough passes inside of organizations and you get enough reps, kinda like going to the gym. Mhmm. You get stronger. And so I just started looking at, you know, deeper and deeper problems or bigger and bigger gaps or to use y'all's terminology, you know, larger and larger chasms because some of these things are, like you say, they are truly hidden. You know, the amount of executives that can look and say, hey, you know what?
Mark Hill:The reason we can't function is we've got a design flaw is maybe like 1%, you know, really. And they had to come up through a very specialized discipline, you know, within the wheelbarrow structure to be able to get that. Right? They'll have a consulting background or something like this where they've had to go in and do operating model transformation or or design stuff. So that's really how I did it.
Mark Hill:I started looking for, you know, what's the bigger and bigger problem, or what's the 80 20 of everything that's kinda going on here. And
Josh Smith:I really appreciated our conversations, when we had worked together. I was very impressed by a lot of your past experience working with huge companies at an executive level internationally and the patterns that you were able to see. I know I I recall some of our conversations where we had spoken about organizations that scale to a certain point that the fractures start
Mark Hill:to
Josh Smith:to appear by nature of that scaling and them them not being prepared for it operationally. It was very insightful. I think in many respects, it led and built towards where we are here with the podcast, that kind of that kind of insight that you had.
Mark Hill:Yeah, Josh. I appreciate that. I remember those conversations. I remember those conversations really well too. They were one of the brighter spots of that particular that particular stop on the, on the Cairo Railroad.
Mark Hill:But, yeah, I mean, it it is one of those things. It's sort of like you know, it's what y'all really talk about all the time, and you're right to do it and you're right to push it. And I'm gonna say this about you both is that, you know, I think what you're trying to do and what I'm trying to do aren't very different. Just maybe have slightly different approaches or angles on it, which I find fascinating because this is such a big problem. A lot of angles are definitely warranted.
Mark Hill:And I think the fact that you're going after and this is the thing we just called out, and I'm just gonna kinda take what Josh said and kinda reiterate a little bit, is that this is a truly unseen problem. Like, your structure is outmoded for your level of competition. Like, it could be true. You know, when we think about architecture, like, not to get too geeky and technical, too fast or whatever, but, like, when we think about architecture, there's several levels of architecture inside of a company. Right?
Mark Hill:And there's a lot of different ways to define this. But if we're really basic and really simple about it, you know, you've got a business architecture. You know, that's kind of how your business is ultimately designed to be able to function and kind of compete out in the market. Like, old school talk would have been like, that's your business model. Yeah.
Mark Hill:Sort of. Like, it kind of is that thing. You know, then underneath that, you have how you actually produce value, and that's really your operating model. You know? And that's where most companies transform and try to do something.
Mark Hill:But the problem is is that the business architecture, sort of how that competition or what your future state of how you're going to be grow to sort of compete and all the other pieces that go to the big box of hydro products and lines and all that stuff. And everything in the operating model goes underneath it, you know, and then, you know, your technical designs kinda go underneath that because they've ultimately gotta support that. So when your top layer is off, like truly off, all the other pieces underneath that make your company function, you know, your operating model, your technical your your operating architecture, your technical architecture. Right, and your workforce architecture, which nobody ever includes in the diagrams because I think they've had a stroke or something. But because, you know, it would be one of the most important pieces underneath that.
Mark Hill:That's the one that sort of activates all of these different models, but they're just sort of like, you know, layers in a cake, and they have to be really well balanced and plugged in. Otherwise, you've got the world's ugliest, most lopsided birthday cake, you know, that sort of slides off the platter and becomes food for the dogs. And that's what happens sometimes when companies don't figure out how to, you know, how to kind of grow their structure in terms of what their sort of competitive desires. It's a balancing act.
Bo Motlagh:I yeah. I and I really like, I was gonna ask for you to define the hidden chasm in your own words, and I think you just did. You're describing what we've been talking about, but you're describing it in a way that I don't think Josh and I really have yet, which is interesting. And I think what you said was when your operating structure is not at the right level for is not correct for the level of competition that you're at. And that is so apt.
Bo Motlagh:I mean, one of the things, one of the triggers, one of the catalysts that Josh and I've tracked in terms of when does this basically punch you in the face is exactly that. New competition coming into the market and, eating up your users because they can do it cheaper and better. And it's not really commoditizing, but it's it's on its way to that in some ways. And it's because you're just not set up for that. So I really like that you've consulted in a lot of different companies over the years, I'm sure.
Bo Motlagh:And how often do you see, you know, run into the chasm? I feel like especially in your line of work, it's probably all the time, but how often are you seeing it or seeing it coming, like, down the road and realize that they don't they haven't seen it? You know? So for example, maybe they've brought you into one thing, and you're sort of looking around and going, hey. There there's some problems here that you maybe aren't aware of.
Mark Hill:Yeah. That's a good that's a good question. So you're right. I feel like my I feel like the ends of my fingers are trembling because they're they're worn out from holding on to the ends of the ends of clips. Because I feel like, you know, you're not really doing a good job if you're a consultant, and you're really not scaling the outside where things get really airy because, you know, that's where all the things hide in the dark that are actually causing all the things to happen in the light.
Mark Hill:So, you know, a lot of that is pretty much, you know, pretty much all the time. But I think, you know, that's one of the more interesting I mean, that's a really interesting question. And I've thought about this for years, I would say largely unsuccessfully, in fits and spurts. And I even tried to do this once with a with a large, Fortune 100 company that's in the retail, but it's more of a more of a, they're in the retail space, but they're more of a marketing company. You might guess who that might be.
Mark Hill:But, like, you know, some of the stuff like that because, you know, it's sort of like early detection for when you're outgrowing your when you're outgrowing your clothes. Right? So, you know, it's like I'm kinda outgrowing what I'm already doing. How do I really know? And I think that's one of the really interesting pieces because as you like, you all do and I do, you sit around and you start to see markers.
Mark Hill:Right? You can go in and you can read a company very specifically. Just ask for a couple of measures. I don't wanna see all your dashboards because you're probably looking at too much stuff and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It doesn't really tell a story.
Mark Hill:So you kinda go in and you look for the stories inside of the company. You know, you pull together a series of KPIs on different things that they may or may not be tracking, and those gaps tell you a lot. That's that's one piece. Right? It's like, you know, how's your revenue margin and customer retention working out for you?
Mark Hill:You know, it's like, you know, you go and you you poke, like, very obvious sort of areas and you see where there are where there are kind of, like, you know, giant holes. And then you look and you go look at a different layer, and that's why I talked about the layers inside of the the different architecture. Then you go back and you start poking around and you say, oh, that's really interesting. So you're having a customer attention problem. You know?
Mark Hill:Is that related to pricing? Is that related to customer service? Is that related to is it feature is it feature parity issue or feature superiority issue? And you go back down, and then eventually, you can look at that operational layer of, you know, how are all these things actually functioning, you know, against the market and and internally themselves. And then the 3rd layer that you go down and you kind of look at sorry if I'm kind of geeking out on this again too.
Mark Hill:Is that the 3rd layer is really you go back and you look at the performance of the workforce your workforce model because you find out, hey. You know what? We're, you know, we're not doing great at customer service, but, you know, we've got way too many calls too high call handle volume for the amount of people that we have. And then we go back, we find the retention rate is, like, worse than industry average. So, like, what do you think is gonna happen if it's not easy for your customers to actually use your product or the way they're trying to use it doesn't really work?
Mark Hill:Like, these layers all connect. Right? So kinda getting that that part of it is really, really important because if you can get that established and this is one of the most important things you can kinda transform once you get some of that big structure stuff right. If you can get the right telltale signs in the right form to be able to tell really obvious stories into the hands of executives, that gap that I said, that 99% gap where people don't understand the design portion of it, you've basically sort of handed them a playbook to then be able to go back and say, oh, I see. There's a direct relationship between these things.
Mark Hill:I never looked at that on my dashboard before. Right? So Yep. It's really finding ways when you get in and you look and companies say, hey. Go solve this problem for me.
Mark Hill:Go fix my operating model. We can't get value out the door fast enough. And you come back in and you say, well, you can't retain it fast enough either. Right? There's other pieces to this.
Mark Hill:You know? And until you you got gray hair, you know, kinda like you and and me and and Josh, I think he dyes his. But, you know, you know, I don't really know people, so don't take that as don't take that as gospel. So but, anyway, until you actually have that experience or that system, which I think is what we're both trying to develop, you know, you really can't tell hard for tails. Right?
Mark Hill:You just kind of go in and you follow stovepipes around and bang around and hopefully fix a few things. But if you really want to as a mission, you really want to teach people how to look at their design and where it's faulty and where they really need to scale it up. You know, you need to struct teach that structure and you need to teach a lot of those metrics. And I think that's kind of the essence of what might be an early detection system, you know, that we can kinda leave behind with Merx.
Bo Motlagh:And I think one of the things I try to try to reinforce, you know, when I'm speaking to executives like this, it's, this isn't something I can come in and fix for you in 6 months. Maybe you disagree, but I I feel like it's more about recognizing that this is gonna be a journey, but let's at least help you see the big picture and being realistic about that. I mean, from your perspective, do you think, like, how do you set up align expectations around this? Because they're going to want, you know, like, hey, can you just fix this for me? And fix it can mean a couple different things in this context, I think.
Mark Hill:I always try to be really honest when I first start working with a with a group or especially with executives because they're used to kind of often being sort of lone wolves. Right?
Bo Motlagh:Right.
Mark Hill:Because power accumulation is one of the point of most modern enterprises, right, at least from an individual basis. So you have to kinda figure out how to counter that all too human impulse and, or at least put it at ease, you know, with you so you can actually, you know, land on something that's worthwhile, not only with them, but, you know, also with their peers. But, you know, one of the first things I always try to do is establish establish a baseline. And I think this baseline is really always a couple of promises I usually like to make on my side. You know, the first one is I will never do anything that's not within your own best interest long term.
Mark Hill:You know? And if you disagree, you know, push back. You know? Kinda giving them permission to be able to push back on that and also know that maybe I've got a longer view. And if you truly trust me, you'll probably listen to what I have to say.
Mark Hill:It kind of sort of outside ends it a little bit to kinda create a little bit of different perspective than me being Because some executives really don't know how to work with a true consultant like you guys because they're just so used to just working with direct reports and fighting their neighbor. You know? So that kind of the baseline's important. One of the other things I often promise them as well or I ask them here's the usually, the second question I ask. And I said, you know, I've done this a lot.
Mark Hill:You know, I've been to the gym, you know, a 100 times doing the same type of transformation or whatever. I'm exaggerating, of course. But, you know, how many times have you been to the gym? Mhmm. And they're like, maybe I've done this, like, once or twice or, you know, a buddy of mine in x y z enterprise has done, you know, this, and we've talked about it over cigars and fire pit or, you know, whatever else that is.
Mark Hill:Right? Type of deal. And so you find out that sort of rep number. Hopefully, they'll come clean with you. You know?
Mark Hill:And then you come back and you say, well, look. I've done it a 100 times. So do you wanna learn to think about this like I think about it, or do you just wanna cover up or take care of the existing potholes without understanding why the potholes happen. And that's the so, anyway, sorry. It took me a while to get your to your point.
Mark Hill:I was kinda running my talk track in my head. But, like, that's really it. It's like, hey. Do you really trust me to have your long term interest in mind? And b, you know, what do you want?
Mark Hill:Do you wanna think, you know, like your personal trainer? You know? Or do you wanna think like yourself lifting weights?
Josh Smith:Mhmm.
Mark Hill:It's 2 different perspectives. And if you can get a yes to both questions, you've probably got somebody who's going to be, you know, enthusiastic and honest and straightforward. You're gonna you're gonna get good results because then they'll be able to actually stick beyond just patching the turnpike, you know, which we know doesn't work at all. Is it just it's like a monster that eats itself.
Josh Smith:Reminds me of a there's a documentary called Escape Fire where it's about the health care industry, and there's a scene where a doctor goes to the patient, and the doctor pretty much explains, hey. You've got high blood pressure. Your arteries are getting clogged. You're gonna have a heart attack soon, or if you need to stop eating, what are you eating? And the guy goes, I eat Vienna Weiners every day.
Josh Smith:Every day, you eat Vienna Weiners every day. And the doctor is, maybe you think you should probably stop eating those Vienna Weiners. And he goes, could you just give me the medicine and so I can be on my way? And it's like, okay. There's, like, underlying root cause, and then there's just, you know, as you mentioned, just cover the potholes.
Josh Smith:And you have an experience to tackle an area that I don't think we've we've addressed yet. I mean, you were right earlier on when you mentioned, you know, different looking at it from different perspectives. Of course, Bo and I predominantly although the Hidden Chasm podcast is to try and see it from as many perspective as perspectives as possible. We are we are kind of from our own experience understanding it from an angle of how does this How is the legacy, technology systems, affected and affecting this moment where people hit this wall, this chasm. You come from a perspective though based on your experience that we've always we're we're always talking about, which is how do you communicate or connect this at an executive level and help executives understand what's going on, which is, it's way more difficult than I had initially assumed.
Bo Motlagh:I think, well, it sounded like yeah. I was just gonna say, Mark, it sounded like you know, you kind of spoke to that a little bit because you it correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you basically just put it out there and say, like, look, this is reality. Take it or leave it and let them let them decide because that's what they ultimately want. Right? They want the ability to decide whether it's the medicine or to stop eating the wieners.
Mark Hill:Maybe that'll be my third question, and I'll start asking.
Bo Motlagh:Yeah.
Mark Hill:Like, you know, 2 is not a great not a great number. 3, people usually expect things in threes. Yeah. You do discoveries. You give 3 problems.
Mark Hill:You know? It's always 3. If it's always 2, people feel you get ripped off. That's the third question. Do you want the medicine, or do you want the little handful of wieners?
Bo Motlagh:Yeah. They're delicious. Well, and what's funny about that though, I mean, I think something I've come to realize is that it's a viable business strategy just to want the medicine. And that's something that you have to be cognizant of that they may not want to fix it all. There may be a re a good business reason not to worry about that.
Mark Hill:And that's the thing too. You know, you bring up a really good point. Sometimes people don't really understand the problem, so they don't think the juice is worth the squeeze. I mean, they can always usually tell that there's a lot of lift to be done. Right?
Mark Hill:Right. But they're not really sure it's it's really fixable, which I think you see in kinda like platform products all the time. You know, you take your project management or product management software and stuff like this and, you know, and you look and you're like, well, be really nice if it did this. And then you realize that 80% of users aren't even using, like, the most basic functionality
Bo Motlagh:Right.
Mark Hill:To, like, link work items. So people know what's actually going to be delivered. And it's like, if you can't even get there, what good is it make like, having the ability to say, based on my pace, how much planning do I need to have ahead of where I am today? You know, like, really basic stuff. And you think, well, that would be, like, one of the most basic things in the world to develop or do, you know, as part of that platform or that software, but, you know, they never get there because the paying users don't even get past Google, you know, almost.
Josh Smith:Yeah. The catalyst that you talked to about the competition coming in fast from behind, the the carpets that get that suddenly have to get lifted up in the organization, and people are finding out, wait, we've been investing in this whole section. We hadn't instrumented until now, and now we're finding out that it's the value we assumed it had. It wasn't there. It didn't match our expectations.
Josh Smith:And I guess you see that often.
Mark Hill:Yeah. I I think you really do. In fact, though, I think this kinda goes back to part of the conversation we had yesterday when we had a little when we had chitchat on phone. Mhmm. Is, you know, I find a lot of different customers.
Mark Hill:I mean, look, none of this is new. Right? I think the way of doing business has been around since, I don't know, like, Cro Magnon man became whatever the next form of man is. What whatever that is. Right?
Mark Hill:You know, some somewhere along there, everybody's kinda done business the same way. And people have built systems and they haven't, you know in the fundamentals, they haven't really changed that much. But what kind of is really interesting about that is we build these we build these systems to be able to do business, and we are unable to kind of fully articulate all the required pieces. We follow these we follow these models and we sort of follow these norms, but we're, you know, we have large swaths of people that are largely untrained on how to actually read them. You can't, like, read the model backwards.
Mark Hill:One of the things I often do, I go in and I talk to it depends on how good my report is, but I'll talk to somebody like a a chief product officer or somebody else who's kinda has a decent overview of exactly what's happening inside of the organization. And I go back and I basically ask them. I said, okay. Draw me how you operate concept to cash. Mhmm.
Mark Hill:And the amount of people that can sit down and actually draw any kind of reasonable picture of how they operate concept to cash and then add the supporting pieces in or whatever else to draw that diagram is almost, like, 0. So, like so, of course, like, if you are not enough of a master of your terrain to be able to draw what you are and who you are when you're trying to produce value, you're gonna struggle to then do kinda what you're saying, Beau, which is go back and say, hey. How do I know if there is value in an idea? Right? So if I don't really understand how I produce value very well, I'm gonna probably be ultimately kind of a little bit lackadaisical or a little imaginary about how I actually produce it.
Mark Hill:Because, you know, you go back and you talk about one of those basic business skills. You would assume that people in a product role would know how to go out and create some kind of business case or some kind of canvas, and then go back out and actually test ideas with actual potential paying customers and replicate that at several different layers in a sort of journey format and be able to come back and give you a relatively solid answer that you're saying, yes. This is investable. No. It's not investable.
Mark Hill:And that, yeah, we can set a baseline and track against this and, like, kill this thing as fast as we can or pivot as fast as we can if this stuff doesn't really work. But because the operating model there not to support that Yeah. The idea of doing that in the business case, you see, they're, like, all connected. Right? It's like having parts of your brain sort of disconnected.
Mark Hill:It just it doesn't flow. And so all the skills lack. Yeah. It's either kind of all of it coheres or all of it lacks in a strange way.
Bo Motlagh:What's super fascinating about that example is, I mean, it brings me back. I mean, something that's very real for Josh and I is startups. And this podcast isn't really about startups, but I do think it's like what you're describing is being real and honest about product market fit, potential value, costs, and understanding that dynamic. These are also principles for for agile, for a concept of cash flow. I guess I would refer to that as, like, your product evaluation or feature evaluation flow.
Bo Motlagh:Right? Like why are you building the thing you're building? And it's funny because I think so I'll speak for myself. I think Josh you probably feel this way but I'll let you represent yourself. But like I know that from my perspective I spent most of my career in enterprise functions speaking about those things and advocating for those things.
Bo Motlagh:But it wasn't until, I was in a startup doing the same thing that I realized how much buffer and how much ability to skew reality an enterprise provides in that context. In a startup, it's stripped away. You're naked in front of people and you have to determine if with nothing behind you, it's okay to move forward because there's value here or not. And you screw it up more often than not. And so there's a lot on the line to figure out processes and ways to make that more efficient so that you don't burn everything down while you're trying to figure it out.
Bo Motlagh:In an enterprise, you don't have that risk. At least not you directly as as an employee.
Josh Smith:You would hope you did, but we've been through so many companies where I would ask, like, product leaders or folks like, hey. Why are you doing what you're doing? And they're just making decisions based on ideas and not measuring after it gets to launch. And the launch's success in of itself whether or not it actually correlates to value to customers of the business. And it's like, okay.
Josh Smith:That's what we're doing here. But it's so common. So it's just like, okay.
Bo Motlagh:Well, even like me, I didn't realize how much I would lean on that because you're the benchmark of success is allowed to be a lot lower in that environment. Because if you if it does doesn't work, there's still some value you can probably mine. But it's nothing great it's nothing crazy.
Josh Smith:This is where, like I want your opinion on this, Mark. I'm sorry. My video is slowing. It's the preventative versus reactive. It's Right.
Josh Smith:How is the allowing of those things to persist? Because, you know, as you mentioned, Mark, those models aren't in place that it leads to the point where people are calling you on the phone, Mark, to get you in there to clean up the mess.
Mark Hill:It's a really good point. I mean, you can't do what you don't know, and there's always a lot that people don't know. And to both point, sometimes we think we know because we kind of are able to go in and provide the transformative, I won't say academic, but, you know, the sort of transformative superstructure of these things. But when we feel the weight of them ourselves, we're like, okay, maybe I need to kick the ball a little faster, you know? And, you know, there's a tension there, and there's not as much margin.
Mark Hill:Right? You're burning cash. Obviously, you're like, I gotta get this right the first time. You sort of you can rush things. All those very human aspects kind of come out as well.
Mark Hill:But, like, in terms of the preventative, you know, again, I've been thinking about this a while too. And this this term may make sense. It may not make sense. I don't know if it exists out there. I think I Googled it once and found nothing.
Mark Hill:So maybe I came up with it, maybe I didn't. Don't hold me to any of it. You know, I'm not legally liable. You get my drift.
Bo Motlagh:We'll put a copyright on this. Yeah.
Mark Hill:It's I think, you know, 80% of a company's success is their economic decision making cycle. Period. You know, I say this to people and their eyes glaze over. You know? And I think it's just because it's not an industry standard term and nobody knows how to correlate it.
Mark Hill:But when you go back and you talk about, you know, early detection, all the rest of these things, if you were making economic decisions, that means I'm aiming I mean, I'm targeting something. I'm aiming. And then when I actually hit it, I expect to return. I expect to hit the target. Target, aim, hit.
Mark Hill:Mhmm. You know, that's what I sort of expect to be able to happen. And that's what a good economic decision making cycle will help you do. It'll help you do that kind of across the enterprise, you know, across your divisions, lines, products, whatever. It's not that complicated.
Mark Hill:People are complicated. These systems are not. You know, but it's really having that right process, the right roles, and then ultimately the right KPIs to be able to come back and say, you know, and whether you turn them into key results or whatever. Who cares? Right?
Mark Hill:But, like, at the end of the day, to say, are we performative? You know, because you would expect, to Josh's point, somebody comes back and says, alright. Way to way to fire the gun, Mark. That's like, well, the point wasn't firing the gun. Right?
Mark Hill:Congratulations for firing the gun. What was hit the target? Did you hit the target? They hit the neighbor's cat. Like, okay.
Mark Hill:Not good. You know? So, like, maybe something else should, like, happen. We should do we should do something else, But that doesn't happen. So it's ultimately, like, if you kinda go after the 80 20 of some of the problem we're talking about, and I think this is as true for the scaling, the technical architecture part of it, which is the backbone technical backbone of, you know, of your business or same thing inside of your operating model.
Mark Hill:It's really being able to go back and say, is your economic decision making cycle paying attention to these things? Yep. Can it identify the problems that are occurring inside of these things based on KPIs and also some of its word-of-mouth and whatever else? You know, and are we getting an honest view of what those developing problems actually look like? Right?
Mark Hill:Can I see the development of them? Because I think that too is going back to an earlier point about executives, is they're so used to having something kind of thrown in front of their face, make a quick decision, run. Right? It's kind of like the fast food of decision making. And they kinda get lulled into a sense of security with it as if all they have to do is keep looking at whatever's put in front of the face, ask a couple of point of questions, point a direction, and go.
Mark Hill:But what they often are missing, especially inside of modern enterprises, and y'all working on this from a couple different angles, I work on it too, is can you see the chasm open? Like, can you like, at some point, it was like this. Right? It was you kinda like hop over that thing. You know?
Mark Hill:As long as you got, you know, 2 legs and willpower, you you can make it. Right? But eventually, you know, it kinda does this. Right. And as it does that, there's a pattern to it.
Mark Hill:And you may have not been paying attention to it long, but you can always start it. You can start paying attention to it. You can start actually tracking it. You can start actually measuring it. You can start actually compiling, you know, qualitative and qualitative data on this stuff.
Mark Hill:And you can start to see these things actually happen. And if you do them well, you can actually avert things. You know? If you continue to ignore them, you just kinda get constantly surprised. Or you decide to live with whatever kind of weird limp you've caused yourself and still pretend you're a long distance runner.
Mark Hill:I I don't know. Those are kind of the 2 options. But it happens, so you can see it. We're just not built to see these things happen over time. It's part of the problem.
Bo Motlagh:I like the phrase economic decision cycle. And also, I I haven't heard that, so you may be on to something. I do think we've we've seen, there are KPIs and processes that seek to do something similar, which is good. Right? And you've I know you've advocated in, like, weighted shortest job first is coming up is coming to mind as as like, you know, something that's attempting to weigh the economics of work, to create prioritization and in a very abstract sort of way, things like that.
Bo Motlagh:So I think those concepts are there. But what's funny about them and maybe this is your point is, they are so abstracted and specialized to specific sectors that from an executive perspective, it's not always easy to understand. That no, something like that is what your problem is and you need to be paying attention to that because you're really thinking in terms of very specific sort of dollar KPIs and things like that as opposed to the abstractions. So no, I think that's that I agree with you. I think it's that's probably one of the more important things.
Bo Motlagh:Coming back to maybe sort of the impact of these things. I'm you know, if we kind of go back to the analogy of your arteries are clogging up because you eat those wieners every day. The the you know there are there are parts of your body that are working harder and feeling that pain more than others. And I think that's probably true in organizations that are dealing with this. And I'm curious from your perspective which roles would you say hurt the most or suffered the most?
Bo Motlagh:Because knowing that can help an executive kind of look for symptoms, right? And to start thinking about, well, how is how is this person doing because if these roles are struggling, maybe there's a broader issue I need to be paying attention to.
Mark Hill:I look at it this way. You know, there's a couple of different things you can do to start looking at kinda who hurts the most. The answer is always, if good economic decisions, good informed economic decisions are not being made upstream, everybody downstream suffers. That's the easiest dynamic. Right?
Mark Hill:So you can you can pick any any entry level single contributor role, and they're contorted in some way trying to trying to trying to avoid the reality that nobody can name out loud or even figure out, you know, what's actually happening to them. Right? Except the symptoms. Right? I'll give you a symptomology.
Mark Hill:But, you know, usually, it's from a higher level, like, you know, business decision making standpoint. There's kind of there's largely sort of 2 options. Right? Often, what you'll find is inside of organizations you know, organizations either have a balanced long term vision and short term view long term view and short term view, or they're often out of whack. And at Topolive, I find that all the time.
Mark Hill:It's like, oh, well, we're just, like, short term or we're just racing after these features. Okay. Are these features competitive? You know, are you trying to gain new customers? Are you trying to retain existing customers?
Mark Hill:Are you trying to open a new market with a different industry segment? Look, what are you what are you trying to do with all this stuff? And they're like, you know, we're just we're just chasing these things. Right? So that's kind of an example of something that's extremely, extremely short term.
Mark Hill:And or we're trying to develop a product, and we're not sure if our customer actually has this problem, but we'd imagine it would be really interesting if they did, you know, one of these types of deals. And, and then the long term view on the other side is, you know, it's kinda like the who are you gonna be when you grow up type of question. Like, when you really are at the next level of mature company, whatever you've chosen that to be, you know, what does that really look like? What's it sort of take to get there? Obviously, the long term and the short term play off each other.
Mark Hill:So when there's an overemphasis on one versus the other, and it can be in pockets in companies too. Right? You get some, like, super long termers in one area, you know, and they're at a weird place in their product life cycle. And it's like, well, you shouldn't be kind of thinking that long yet. You barely have any traction, you know, or they're thinking super short term, you know, and they're at their most their sort of competitive peak.
Mark Hill:And it's like, you see these imbalances. But the thing that usually has to happen at that level once you kind of I always look for these imbalances kind of first, is that you go in and you say, what roles are missing? Because that's often sometimes too, you know, especially as companies scale and grow. It's like, hey. We started out.
Mark Hill:You know, you guys know. It's like, you know, you're you're you're you're 2 cool founders taking on the world. Right? And it's like, well, how many hats can I wear? It's like, all of them, right?
Mark Hill:And so you're like, okay, what do I do with all of them? And at some point, it's like when you actually grow and you scale, it's like you sort of pass some hats around when you kind of bring in people with certain skills or whatever else. But a lot of times people are left in skills or areas, and it's like, I'm the, there's a missing role. Like, a lot of missing roles are chief product officers. Totally missing.
Mark Hill:Like, the unifying vision of the organization, often missing. And then whatever, like, weird product structure you have underneath is completely useless. You know, just basically like project managers. Right? So, you know, then sales usually takes over.
Mark Hill:Right? They're the ones driving the agenda because I ain't gotta, like, flip those cards. Right? Flip the cards to make the revenue. Right?
Mark Hill:And they take over, and they're super short term view, for example.
Bo Motlagh:Right.
Mark Hill:You know? And they have no largely long term view of of markets or anything else. They just ignore marketing because marketing has no long term allies, so they just sort of get shoved into a corner. You know, and this happens a lot, you know, in scaling companies. And they end up in this short term view where they're trying to accelerate sales too fast, and they've lose the plot in terms of kinda like what's happening in the marketing they're developing or they're competing in.
Mark Hill:You know? And so I think this short term, long term, you know, view balance, you know, is really, really important. I think everything is largely set up upon that. Because you can have a pretty average org structure. You can have a pretty average operating model where you have concept to cash or have economic decision making cycle.
Mark Hill:You could be okay. But, like, if you have if you don't have that long, short balance, even those average things are going to be insanely under they're gonna be insanely underperforming. So and anybody has to live under that. God bless them.
Bo Motlagh:So one of the things I heard you say there was the consequences of a key role missing. So, like, in this case, you you described, an org structure where the CPO, the chief product officer may be missing. And we see that actually a lot. There's especially in smaller companies, you see the, the hybrid CTO, CPO role come up quite often, which sometimes works, but more often than not means that there's there's a bend in one direction or the other. And I I like the way you describe that because there's like a chain reaction to that structure.
Bo Motlagh:I'm curious what structures, you know, what what what other sort of concrete structures you've seen that being one of them that would lend themselves to these issues. But maybe a met a better question. You can answer either question. You don't have to answer both. It would be what's the ideal sort of structure?
Bo Motlagh:You know, like the key roles that really do need to be there, the competencies to at least allow this building to go up as opposed to sort of the becoming a 3 legged stool or table?
Mark Hill:That's a good question. So, I mean, I think it's really that it's that long term, short term balance at the end of the day. It's do you really have a vision of really where you are, what your current struggles are, and what you're trying to become when you grow up?
Bo Motlagh:Mhmm.
Mark Hill:If you don't have that and the hardest part of not having that sometimes is that the CEO and an early stage founder isn't equipped to actually come up with that idea anymore because their initial idea was the baby. You know? And they made the baby grow, and then they don't really recognize it anymore. It sort of outstrips where they were thinking or their vision is. And I bumped into a bunch of founders over time that can explain how they had to take themselves out of the equation.
Mark Hill:Sure. Sometimes, especially when, you know, VCs involved and things like that, you know, because they can kinda see outside in. So, you know, sometimes they're really helpful partners. But, I mean, I think it's really having that balance. So I think if you really don't have an equal way to be able to have your and I'm talking really kind of the the front end piece of this because I this may be a very unpopular thing to say.
Mark Hill:But I think that a lot of technologists are not good business thinkers.
Bo Motlagh:Yep.
Mark Hill:They think they're good business thinkers, but they're actually not, because they've been around business thinking. But it's mostly been budgets, you know, and stuff like that. So, I mean, there's a lot of gap to make up there. So when I say this, I'm not out there saying because I love I love technologists. They're some of the smartest people in the organization, period, and wildly under leveraged.
Mark Hill:Okay. That said, you know, when you wanna get your market balance right, you really need that CPO structure, and I mean through the whole company. Right? So then you gotta make sure your design matches. So you've got your CPO.
Mark Hill:You've got your if you're of scale to be able to handle this. Right? Your GM, your product managers, your POs kind of, you know, down sort of at your T Mobile's if you're gonna adopt the whole Agile thing. But you need that structure. And the most important thing is balance.
Mark Hill:At the end of the day, balance wins. You know, you can't catch the football. You can't you can't kick a goal. You know, you can't hit the ball as evidenced by the Phillies' current tear, to the basement, you know, from the National Leagues. Like, you you can't they're doing a great job at it too.
Mark Hill:What is it with Philly sports teams and being able to collapse
Josh Smith:in the second half of
Mark Hill:the season? It's it's becoming harder or something. And I'm glad I don't live in the Philadelphia area anymore, even though I'm a huge Philly sports fan because some people would track me down Only Philly. In a panic car or something. But, anyway,
Bo Motlagh:Take it easy. We gotta we gotta pair this.
Josh Smith:Only Philly only folks from Philly are allowed to are allowed to, talk, talk back about their team. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You gotta call it off. You're right.
Mark Hill:Yeah. That's all my birth certificate guys.
Josh Smith:Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Hill:That's when I go to Eagles games at, like, in in competing team stadiums. You know, you're always, like, the best track record.
Josh Smith:We're allowed to boo.
Mark Hill:No one else is
Josh Smith:allowed to boo.
Mark Hill:Yeah. They can they can try, but, you know, you've got you've got better comebacks. But, anyway, because you've been you've been born in fire. But, anyway, so the disappointment breeds perseverance. But anyway, back on back on track, it's the balance thing that really matters.
Mark Hill:So at the end of the day, if you can't stay balanced, you can't stay upright, you can't compete. Right? And so when your balance shifts too far to the other and that's why rarely when you talk about structure, it's like CPO, your head or chief of marketing, and your marketing and your and sales. Right? That's really your true business balancers.
Mark Hill:And then those roles have to run down throughout the company to support the actual operating model itself or the economic decision making cycle. Right? More importantly, that part of your operating model, really how you ultimately kinda go concept the cash and make the type of decisions you really make. Because of those long term, short term because they're different. Right?
Mark Hill:Marketing's long. Sales is short, typically. And CPO is both long and short. Like, they're synthesizing. So if you don't have that structure kind of running down inside of your inside of your company, at least at the front end of your economic decision making cycle, you're gonna chase a lot of shadows.
Mark Hill:You're gonna get really, really, really unbalanced. And I think that's the trick. It's finding the right people with the right skills at that level to be able to play those 2 types of roles. And I think that's why 2 start ups struggle too because it's like it's hard to for 1 person or 2 people to necessarily think long and short at the same time.
Bo Motlagh:A 100%.
Josh Smith:Reminds me of something Bo and I talk about often, at least within a product development context, which is the calling it triad. But to say that there has to be a that kind of balance, I usually call it healthy tension. Let's say that
Mark Hill:Mhmm.
Josh Smith:We need to find what are the most important perspectives that can fall within the business context, but that those perspectives are there. They're working together, and they're always trying they're always conveying the importance of their perspective and the impact on their perspective, whether it's here's the technical impact or here's the cost. Here's the user impact. Here's the cost. Here's the business impact.
Josh Smith:Here's the cost. But to know when you say, like, at the head, some sort of CPO, some sort of, no matter where, as long as each perspective is pulling on their side within a business context, that at the end of the day, the decision that wins is the one who is receiving all of that information and able to make the choice where the incentive is on what is best for the business. That seems healthy because when it gets out of balance, it's, oh, well, you know, we always have to do everything in in the purest, most best delightful way for the user. And then the technology goes, okay, well, that's gonna take us like 2 years. But but no.
Josh Smith:No. No. But, you know, since since our tension wins, you know, let's do that. And so, okay, what's gonna cost the business this much? Like, anytime there's an out of balance, it goes from 1 it gravitates too much in one area or the other.
Josh Smith:It starts to have a long term negative impact on the trajectory of
Bo Motlagh:the organization where it needs
Mark Hill:to go. I a 100% agree.
Bo Motlagh:And I noticed you didn't say CTO in that. And I think I I don't know if you meant to do that or not, but if you did, I would understand that because I think technology is fundamentally in service to the business. It's not the business itself. Nobody unless you're doing something very deep, you know, deep tech and something brand new, typically, your business isn't the tech itself. That's a vehicle to deliver the value that you've decided the business can deliver.
Bo Motlagh:And so that's an important notion. There's so many conversation I will have with enterprise architects and you know senior technology folks who aren't necessarily in business leadership roles is balancing the need for a purist view of tech versus what's best for the business. You know, we wanna maximize performance. No. No.
Bo Motlagh:You don't. You you wanna optimize needed performance to achieve the result of the business. That is not the same thing. And and it's very important that we know that, you know, because one of those architectures will cost 10,000,000 and the other one. And so those those distinctions are important.
Bo Motlagh:And I also think but even even within, like, the the three groupings you mentioned, sales, marketing, and product, there's an inherent notion there that we take for granted, which is those 3 combined or even just the product person on their own are doing the one thing you're calling out over and over here, which is the economic decision making. But if they're not, if they're just visionaries, that creates a whole new set of problems. Because what that means is now you actually don't have the business context at all. You know, you have the same problem that a purest technical person might have. But from a product perspective, which may as well be technical now as well because you're just describing different things that could happen without any notion of why it should happen.
Bo Motlagh:And so it's yeah. I I love this notion that fundamentally what you're describing is like all the whether you're talking about the roles themselves or these roles within within context, it's about balance. And if you don't have that, things are gonna start flying off the rail. So I think that makes a lot of sense.
Josh Smith:You said something earlier about people being the people being harder than the systems. The systems are easy, but the people are more complicated. I'd love to hear more about that because I'm certain you've been brought into organizations where you realize that you're finding that the the folks are struggling because they're at an inflection point where they need to learn a whole new set of skills that they don't have, and they may not know it. You may be the one to have to share that with them. I'd love to learn more about your journey and your experience in that space.
Mark Hill:Yeah. No. It's definitely true. You know, part of part of the hidden chasm or chasm what's what's the preferred saying on this podcast? Is it chasm or chasm?
Mark Hill:Is there a joy? Is there
Bo Motlagh:We we've been saying chasm. Is chasm I didn't know that that could be pronounced that way. So either is fine, but we've we've been saying chasm.
Mark Hill:Maybe I just made that up. Or maybe I watch too much, like BBC programming. I don't know. I spoke color wrong too. Alright.
Mark Hill:So anyway, so okay. So, you know, part of, you know, part of the hidden chasm, right, is isn't just I think some of your other guests have mentioned this as well watching some of the other episodes, which have been great, is I think, you know, you get to a certain point and people just don't have the skills to make the leap. They don't have the skills or they potentially don't have the experience. And, you know, the Hollywood ending would be like, little Johnny does learn hit and suddenly he makes it to the World Series and he's playing for the Yankees. Right?
Mark Hill:But that doesn't that's not always like the reality. Like, it it does the story doesn't write itself that way. You know, some people are kind of at their maximum level for their experience. And I think a lot of times, we over we overemphasize skills and we underemphasize experience.
Josh Smith:Mhmm.
Mark Hill:You know, because people with a wide range of experiences can usually learn skills more rapidly than people that just have skills but don't actually have a lot of varied experience. And I've always looked for science to back this idea up. So, like, if it sounds scientific, it's only because I imagine it to be, and I could be the mild mildly convincing. But, like, I've never seen any any I've looked for it to sort of back that up, and I don't know I don't know if it exists. But in my experience, that's actually the case.
Mark Hill:So what happens then when you kind of go in and you find well, you know, somebody, you know, has been in the role for 20 some years and has kind of, like, made their way up within 2 companies. And they've been in this one for for 20 years or whatever else, something like that. And you look and you say, do you really have the experience to be able to actually take a rapidly learn this skill set? Mhmm. Because you're like, oh, it's your natural intelligence, so they're smart enough to be able to do it.
Mark Hill:It's like, well, there's a lot of smart people that could do academic things relatively well. But, like, can you learn this and actually process all the angles as you're learning this? Because it's almost like I'm learning to be a 5 tool baseball pitcher at the same time when I have, like, one pitch, and I'm pitching every 4 days. And I've got to keep my contract. You know, it's like last year of my contract where they only gave me a 1 year tryout.
Mark Hill:It's like it's a lot of pressure, and it's hard. Yep. So some people can't do that, and that's the difficult part when nobody likes to talk about, you know, when people talk about things like displacement. Maybe they're better in a lower role, and you have to kinda put somebody else in place. This is when it kind of comes back, and it's very important to have, like, a really strong or develop one if they're not there.
Mark Hill:And sometimes clients won't do it. They're just like they know where it's gonna go, and they just sort of, like, avoid the whole thing. But that's where you have to come back and actually have a real, actual, pointable workforce strategy that points back to your actual future state. You know, that long term road map you're supposed to have, like, who you wanna be when you kinda grow up, and it's not all features on a Gantt chart. There's ideas there too.
Mark Hill:When you look at that, you know, that's when that sort of when those two things match up and you've got that workforce strategy in that, then you've likely already got a semblance of growth that's sort of occurring. If you don't have that magic matchup, then you probably have people that have been in and running around the same parking lot most of their lives, and they're just they're just not gonna have they're just they're not gonna have any outside the neighborhood type of type of experience, and that's the tough part. That's when you kinda have to come in and say, what does this really look like? So, you know, part of it is, like, getting people to realize this anyway really quickly is that kind of going in and saying, do you and this sounds so it's so boring and so basic, but it is. It's like the place to start.
Mark Hill:Like, do you really have your roles defined? Yeah. Like, the accountabilities and the ownerships and things like that. And it's, like, not just the roles. And then across for teaming.
Mark Hill:Do you have the complementary aspects of your roles defined? Because that's the balancer, right, that we were kinda talking about, like, in across the workforce. It's like you have these things. And if you don't, getting them to be able to do that for certain roles in certain places can then often unlock their willingness to start looking at it on a larger scale. Because, like, oh, I get why nobody's accountable.
Mark Hill:It's because the roles aren't designed to be cross accountable. It's like, yeah. Maybe that's the thing. You know? So I think getting in there and and doing those types of activities from a consulting point is point of view can really open up the right perspective to kinda do it at large.
Mark Hill:Because almost no organization I've ever run into has that from the start. And you can attribute a lot of problems to to just missing that one.
Bo Motlagh:I I think that makes a lot of sense. You're right. And and we run into this too. The executive or the team, really, that's been with the company for 20 years. They're amazing at what they do.
Bo Motlagh:Mhmm. But then injecting a new idea can be challenged. And what's what's even what's interesting is sometimes they'll know they'll they'll intellectually absorb it. But executing on it is a whole other thing. They know all the words and in a conversation, you're like, oh, yeah.
Bo Motlagh:Yeah. You're good. And then you're like, you didn't do any of those things. But yeah. True.
Bo Motlagh:So I guess, you know, one last question here is, what would you say to a CEO who suspects they're running blind into this kind of stuff? Like, what what are some practical what's some practical advice you might give somebody like that?
Mark Hill:So I think CEOs are generally really smart, highly motivated individuals, and they can't do it all, and they don't know it all. Even though they have to kind of pretend they can and think they do, like, a lot of the times. Right? It's it's a it's an extremely challenging role to be in. A lot of people sort of take it for granted and sort of, like, think it's, like, a really cushy place, but, like, you just haven't been around enough to know.
Mark Hill:It's probably the most uncomfortable seat in the entire building. Right? Which is why they get paid what they do. But so when you usually, in my experience, when they think that something's wrong, they're usually able to put their finger on it. But what they usually can't do is they can't diagnose it.
Mark Hill:You know? They've been either they've been too close to it for too long. They've been formative in making it actually happen. Right? So the first thing that I think is really important is if you you've kind of gotten this far because you're not smart.
Mark Hill:Most CEOs I know are are analytical, but they're also highly intuitive. You know, it's usually a a a match. And so if you think it's happening, it probably is. If you're not sure that you don't understand what it is, call somebody to come take a look. Because that's when you wanna go in.
Mark Hill:Because going down and trying to get the honest answer from your position is gonna be almost impossible. Right? People are gonna kinda tell you what you wanna hear. Gonna be all these silos, all these stovepipes of conversation. You're gonna be very used to hearing what you hear back.
Mark Hill:A lot of it's probably not going to be super truthful because nobody knows how to kinda tell the truth about the things they already don't know how to do. It's not their fault. They just don't know how to do it. Right? So they don't have that perspective.
Mark Hill:So, I mean, that's really kinda when you have to call somebody to come in and analyze it for you and sort of break down the problem from a from a third party perspective. Some people call it, whether that's, you know, looking at your strategy and adopting, like, kind of red teaming concepts or that's coming in and saying, I don't think my organizational you know, I don't think we're we're certainly not hitting stuff on time, on budget, things like that. Or when things land, I'm never sure what we actually get at the end. Do we hit the target? Do we not hit the target?
Mark Hill:You'll see these things. They're gonna be completely obvious for the most part. Just trust your intuition and then call somebody and they can basically sort of diagnose it. Basically, front end to back end and then set you up with some options. It's also easier for you that way too, not basically, you know, water carrying for our for our industry here.
Mark Hill:Yeah. But what that helps you do too is it sort of separates the the action and your relationships from what you actually do next too. Right? It gives you that sort of the 4th leg of the problem. Right?
Mark Hill:So your table actually stands up. It's like, well, is an industry expected opinion? So on and so forth. Right? So, you know, you can kinda kinda get that too.
Mark Hill:But to be able to do that, that's what I would really say.
Bo Motlagh:Well, that's a good segue. How would a CEO or anybody who's joined us here and is listening, get a hold of you? And what would you like everybody to know about?
Mark Hill:Yeah. I mean, if I was maybe a little bit more diligent, I'd have a website or something. But, you know, unfortunately, I don't. Anyway, I call myself out on that. Can't be honest with yourself.
Mark Hill:Who can you be honest with? So but you can always find me on LinkedIn. You can go find, Mark Hill on LinkedIn, and you can certainly you can certainly message me. And I think that's probably the best way to reach out if you wanna if you wanna talk, chat about what's going on.
Bo Motlagh:Any cool projects coming up?
Mark Hill:Yeah. A couple of different things. I have challenged myself a lot of what we talked about today, economic decision making cycle, which is, like, the 80 20 of your operating model, either the most important part, the different layers of the org design. I see consultants fumbling through this stuff all the time. And that's like they'll know, like, 30%, 20%, 15%, and then throw a Hail Mary and hope that that connects.
Mark Hill:Right? And so there's a lot of people out there doing really honest work that, like, really can't sort of connect all the pieces. So I've challenged myself over the next maybe 2 years is too long. Maybe I'm, again, a weak call center. But over the next 2 years to to write a book, to basically go back and take all of this and say, how does all this really function?
Mark Hill:Like, how do you really think about the design of your organization end to end and cover a lot of the topics that we sort of talked about today? Because I think it's a missing piece. I can't find any literature on it. I don't know what it is. You know?
Mark Hill:So I think it's a I think it's a gap.
Bo Motlagh:Well, you've been listening to you being all of you who have joined us to the Hidden Chasm podcast. Thank you, Mark, so much. You should reach out to Mark if you're facing some of these issues. We're just interested in chatting with him. You can find him on LinkedIn as he said or you can reach out through us.
Bo Motlagh:You can reach us at thehiddenchasm.com and get online for Mark's book. I know I'll be online. Sounds good. Thank you so much, Mark. We'll catch you next time.
Mark Hill:Thank you all.
Bo Motlagh:Thank you for listening to this episode of The Hidden Chasm. If you'd like to share your story or if you have any questions you can reach us via email at podcast@unitedeffects.com or by visiting thehiddenchasm.com.
