Arguing Agile

AA215 - Why One-on-Ones Still Matter and Why You Should Have Them

• Brian Orlando • Season 1 • Episode 215

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Jensen Huang has 60 direct reports and does no 1:1s, so neither should you - right?!? 

Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Coach Om Patel examine NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's claim that he champions "radical transparency" and his policy of no one-on-ones. 

Join us as we explore what this means for the rest and listen or watch as we agree that one-on-ones should be employee-driven, focused on growth over status updates, and designed to build the trust that actually gets work done, as well as other topics such as:

  • Jensen Huang's leadership philosophy analyzed
  • Employee-driven vs manager-driven agendas 
  • Building trust through private conversations
  • Remote work and relationship building
  • Practical frameworks for better 1:1s

Whether you're a product manager, team lead, or individual contributor; whether you own a snappy leather jacket or not, owning your 1:1 agenda is crucial for career development.

Now accepting all takes (hot or not) in the comments - do you vote for mass transparency or intimate coaching conversations?

#Leadership #OneOnOnes #ArguingAgile

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Hey, Om! Do you wanna have a podcast about one-on-ones? Or maybe a second podcast on one-on-ones? yeah. Let's do this. This is a good one. I wanted to talk about one-on-ones, especially since Jenen Huang, who is the CEO of Nvidia, has worked at Nvidia basically his entire career, other than when he was. Delivering breakfast Dagwood as a Denny server and cleaning bathrooms as a 9-year-old. I mean, cleaning bathrooms appears to be all the, all the rage, I didn't check into his life story at all. So zero fact checking has been done in this podcast. And I feel, for you first time listeners, you're aligned with the barrier to entry in the podcast. Yeah, it's us and every c-level in the world who who doesn't do any fact checking. Anyway, I caught this story about Jensen Huang saying that he doesn't do one-on-ones.'Cause it got picked up by the corporate propaganda and kind of sent around to be like, look, this very successful company has a CEO who doesn't understand what one-on-ones are so that you shouldn't do them either. That's the way it was broadcast. Sure. So I'm like, Hmm, this seems like a topic with nuance. We should talk about this because that's what we do. I also saw, since this went up, I also saw Mark Zuckerberg come out and say that he doesn't do one-on-ones either. So maybe we'll talk about that. I don't have the video reference, but the Jensen Huang one, I'm gonna put it on the screen. Where he actually made the statement. And then we'll kind of kick into the podcast just so that the listeners and the viewers are, they're in line with my, the idea that brought the kernel of a good strategy that is the podcast that we're about to do. Excellent. Let's do it. All right. So if we fast forward just a little bit to the Nvidia of today, how large is, your leadership team? NVIDIA's leadership team is 60 plus 60 people. Yeah. And they all report to you? They, yeah, they all report to me 60 direct reports. 60 direct reports, yeah. Which is not conventionally considered the best practice. I agree that the best practice kind of, I'm certain that's the best practice. It's not conventional, but I am certain it's the best practice. Whenever we did this last time and we lost a recording.'cause reasons. I know I stopped here. You gonna do that again? Yeah. I'm gonna do it again because Ooh, boy good thing to know about Jensen Huang. It's super easy to get under his skin. Like that's good. It's good to know. Bookmark that. And if this is you out there in leadership land, don't, don't be that easy. That'll be Yeah, exactly. Don't be that easy, you know. I don't know if it's conventional. Well listen to a certain degree. He has a point who cares if it's conventional or not so, so to a certain degree. Yeah. You know, it's like he doesn't wear a suit , anymore. He doesn't wear a suit anymore. S Nvidia day. He, he wears a cool leather jacket now'cause he's a cool CEO Now, actually if I, I'm pretty sure if I say when I, I knew I was not the You're not, I was not even the first one to serve. I wasn't even the, the 20 years starting wearing them around 2004. Yeah. So yeah, 20 years. Yeah. So it's a brand. Okay. It's a brand. What? Which leather jacket. Oh, I like it. Oh, a Tom Ford leather jacket at $10,000. Just in case you thought it was, he was just a cool hip. CEO. Nope. Nope. He's a boy. So that you have to clean a lot of bathrooms to be able to afford that. No, none of this is, yeah, all you have to clean all the bathrooms, I think. Well, I don't know if any of this is staying on the podcast, but i'm thanks for coming to the livestream, and by the end of this, I'm gonna convince all of you to have 60 people on your direct reports. The floor is yours. the reason is because the layer of hierarchy in your company really matters. Information really matters. I believe that your contribution to the work should not be based on the privilege to access to information. I don't do one-on-ones, and my staff is quite large and almost everything that I say I say to everybody all at the same time. And the reason for that is because I don't really believe there's any information that I operate on that somehow only one or two people should hear about, and this is the problem I'm trying to solve, or this is the direction we're trying to go into. These are the new endeavors. This isn't working. That's working well. You know, and so all of this type of information, everybody should be able to hear. I love that everybody's working off of the same song sheet. I love that there is no privileged access to information. I love that we're able to all contribute to solving a problem. And when you have 60 people in a room, and oftentimes, my staff, transparency once every other week everyone working on issues on same song sheet issues, whatever issues we have everybody's there working on it at the same time. everybody heard the reasoning of the problem. Everybody heard the reasoning of the solution. Same song and concurrency of information. Yeah. So that empowers people. So those are the two main points. I believe that when you give everybody equal access to information and empowers people, and so that's number one empowering. That's interesting. Number two if the CEO's direct staff is 60 people, the number of layers you've removed in a company is probably something like seven. depending on how it's, is it 60 at every layer or only six? As in if I'm a direct rep, if I'm one of the Fortune 60, and do I also have 60 direct reports? Six. Fortune 60. Okay. I also don't think, said, I don't think that that's scalable downward. And the reason for that is because , you need more and more supervision depending on certain levels. Okay. And at the c-staff level, if you're so unfortunate to be serving on NVIDIA's c-staff it's very unlikely you need a lot of managerial and so I rarely find myself having to stand up for conventional wisdom. But if I were to kind of steal my other side, I'd say, well, one-on-ones are where you provide coaching, where you maybe talk through goals together, personal goals, career advancement what have you. Where maybe you give feedback on something that you see somebody systematically not doing so well and so forth. So, and there's all these things that kind of one is again, conventionally supposed to do in the one-on-one. Do you not do those things or do you do them in a different way? Really good question. I do it right there. I do it right there. I give you feedback right there in front of everybody. First of all, feedback is learning. Feedback is learning. For what reason are you the only person who should learn this now? You created the conditions. I think we've heard enough to because of some, yeah. Yeah, we can dive. Feedback is pain is gain. Pain is game. Pain is gain. Wow. Alright, so he claims, so Jensen, Huang, CEO, Nvidia, obviously he's doing something right. He has a bajillion dollar company, right? Sure. They produce a pretty valuable commodity, right so I don't do one-on-ones. He says that it's gonna reverberate through the community. People like Mark Zuckerberg and other like alleged sociopaths are gonna come outta the woodwork and be like, oh, I also don't do one-on-ones. I don't see the value in it. I wanna start right away with the first thing he pointed out. The identity of a manager versus like, I, I'm an expert and or a coach mm-hmm. In whatever situation. And, I want to try to defend his side because I. There's a modern leadership theory that we covered when we covered Marty Cagan's transformed. So arguing Agile 1 72 was our review of Transformed by Marty Kagan and in transformed, Marty Kagan has this thing that says the modern manager your main role is coaching and developing the skills of your people rather than like typical management, meaning like, I have a checklist and I'm giving you your work breakdown structure and I'm telling you what to do and I'm yelling at you and you're falling behind, or what? Yeah like that, that's the approach here. So from Jensen Huang's points that he just said I didn't hear a lot of coaching other than like, oh, I do spot coaching in front of 60 people. Yeah, yeah. So you're just basically shaming people in front of their peers. I like to call it spot coaching by its original terminology, which is berating people. That's, Exactly what that is. So that's gonna encourage people to put their hand up and ask questions, if you're playing this role of like, you're a coach or you're an expert, okay. Obviously he's playing the role of the expert. Yes. He's got 60 people in the room. They all hang on his every word with his cool 10,000 leather jacket. He's playing the role of the expert. He's not playing the role of a coach. No, he absolutely cannot. With 60 people in the room that simul coaching is not a thing. Right. I mean, I would like to see someone try to do that as being a coach with 60 people and bringing them to a deliverable or some kind of actionable resolution I mean, I've seen coaches do that. You'd be generalizing an awful lot across the board. I think so, yeah. Let's talk about like, is it possible for him to do this, for him to do coaching in this kind of setup? 60 people is his direct report. First of all, 60 people is his direct reports and also his direct reports don't have 60 people that they coach. That that's not allowed. It's only allowed at his level. Well, if he is doing what he is doing on mass at his level, it's gonna encourage the behavior at the level below that mimics what he is doing I mean, people that report to him aren't gonna say, Hey, I spent time one-on-one with my teammates or my, subordinates or whatever. So that's the behavior you're gonna get. And having 60 people in the room forget about berating or anything like that, but you guiding them in some way. You're not coaching, you're probably just mentoring right. And mentoring essentially is like, well I've come across this before. Yeah. In my past, here's what I found works or doesn't work. Has it really come across all of those things for the 60 people mentor? It's still like, I'm a fan of mentoring. I think it's actually like, again, from my personality type, I think it's easier than coaching. I think coaching requires even if you were the expert, right? It still requires you to take yourself out of it a little bit to divorce yourself from potentially letting someone fail, right? Mm-hmm. I think that mentoring versus coaching in front of a crowd. I'm trying to think which one of those would be harder in front of a crowd , I wouldn't want someone to be doing either in front of a crowd with me. if I'm the one receiving the coaching or the mentoring, I'd be like, dude, listen. Call a break. Pull me off to the side. Be like, Brian, when you did that thing, you are outta line and you really like, this is a better way to present it where you don't lose your audience. 60 people. I mean, that's a, that's a like, stop what I'm doing and go look for work somewhere else type of moment. Like in the last podcast that went up, oh no two podcasts ago that went up we were listening to Theo talk about his boss was like, oh, you didn't invite me to a meeting or whatever.'cause I was snooping around in your meetings. He is like, I immediately made all my meetings private and then I immediately started looking for a job after that. This is one of those things you get called out in front of 60 people like Brian, that was a terrible decision and you're a stupid person. Like I understand his advice is probably maybe not worded like that, but in front of 60 people, even the most benign advice is perceived with that level of harshness in front of a crowd. I agree. I mean, you don't mean to admonish people. Yeah. You know, if you're one of the 60, you're not likely, like I said before put your hand up and ask a question because you're afraid. Yeah. You know, and it's peer pressure all around you. The other 59 people are judging you basically. I, I don't think even mentoring works at a scale like that. Yeah, right. Because mentoring requires you to understand the true needs of your mentees. I, I don't think that you get into a mentoring space until you've established this like, intimate personal relationship with someone. I don't think you get into I think you might, if, if you can afford a 10,000 leather jacket, I think you, you can assume that everyone. Thinks that you're their best friend, but in actuality what you're doing is you're giving unsolicited advice. You're the actually guy at that point giving people like unsolicited advice. So do you really wanna be the unsolicited advice guy? I would hope if I was ever the unsolicited advice guy, I would hope that someone would just smack me and just get the pain, the pain would happen, like quickly in one quick flash, and then I could say like, okay, well I'm gonna go and I'm gonna go now. Listen this. So I don't think his 60 people would necessarily be in the room with him physically, possibly. They're almost always remote. Kind of a town hall type of situation. He doesn't strike me as a remote kind of guy, I'm just saying, oh, I don't know. 60 people in the same room though. I don't know if that's really happening. I mean, I, I understand what you're saying. But also like he, he strikes me as a return to office kind of guy. I'm assuming for a global company that 60 people are distributed across. So some of those, maybe a lot of those are remote on the calls. I'm assuming that, I don't know, like I, if, if there's a takeaway outta this category, like an actual thing that people can do when you start your work week, right? You sit behind your computer. If you work in office, do a desk, you have a pad on your desk, right? If you work remote have like some stickies on like the corner of your laptop or whatever, right? just start making notes of how many times oh, I'm, I am, I am moved to act as a coach. Or like, somebody asked me a question and I answered as a mentor slash expert and just start like putting tick marks down every time that you just, just, you personally, not you, what you observe. This, you personally are moving into those things and then write those tick marks down and observe how many of those tick marks are in a public setting versus a private setting.'Cause it's like a meeting with like four people, most of which you work like your team, like most of which you work with every day. Like I would argue that's a private setting. That is a private setting. So four is a different number vastly right. Than 60. Yeah. Also there's this element of you've built up trust with the four people.'cause you've worked with them closely for a while 60 people as, as direct reports. Unless you're doing one-on-ones. How do you build up that trust there? That might be a different point that we will get to some., It's hard to have that trust relationship established at that scale. Well, I think like, we're already talking about his second point that he detailed, which was I don't want there to be a, oh, I can't remember. he worded it very well. I want everyone to have equality with regard to their information access. He said, yeah. Equal access to information. and that basically means like, nothing's going to be private. Everything's going to be broadcasted in some form of public channel. Open source and extrem it. Like this is like the nineties extreme sports version of transparency, basically oh, I'm gonna give every piece of one-on-one advice. I'm gonna give it in a form with 60 people , i'm trying to work myself into it sometimes on the podcast. I work myself into the opposition side by just reading so many good Points.. Yeah. And I'm like, well, there's gotta be some good against points. Come on, man. It can't, like this one. I don't know about this one. I mean, he's claiming that he's eliminated the need for private conversations. Basically that's what he's claiming. We don't need privacy, we don't need private conversations. Everything can be out in the open. I guess I would have less of a problem with this if he didn't turn around in the same breath and say but also my direct reports, like the magic 60. Like they don't have this privilege it's only me, you know?, It kind of falls apart in practice. It's like you need to when do you make a human connection with these people? When do you find out, like during the interview and that's it, that it's over after the interview. now you're in the franking pan with everyone else , I think from a CEO's perspective his thinking might be why have information silos, right? why not have everybody consume the same information? But if you're running a large company, I don't know how many people his company has, it's thousands, I'm sure. Thousands. If you're running a large company, there has to be some. Stratification of the types of information. 30,000 people. So you're not gonna have all 30,000 people have access to the same information. I just can't believe that that's happening in real life, no matter what he says. And that's because for example, is your finance people are getting ready to do an announcement, right, of what the next quarter is gonna look like. Mm-hmm. So typically employees don't really know that they find that out once it's in the open. Yeah. Once it's actually announced. Are you really gonna say that everyone should have access to the same thing? I mean, this applies to a number of different things for example, your companies look into. Purchase another company or merge, or acquire or whatever it might be. You're not gonna let everyone know this, that actually works against you. Yeah. So it's, it's not true to say everyone has access to all of the information all of the time. I think there's some selectivity going on there , so it kind of bubbles down in the organization. I never caught from the video if six was the number of levels that they actually had. Oh, I don't, I don't know. But, but let's say for the sake of argument, it's six or five. That's still a lot of information that's cascading down from one level layer to another, and it's changing shape as it's doing that. Right? Mm-hmm. So just the fact that you have, you're, you are removed from the information you're consuming. Firsthand, right? It gets distorted. That's my point. And if you're going to say everyone gets the same, it's really not the same. And it should be understood. It's not. It can't be people. People find that room for interpretation, right? In the messaging, and they will interpret the way it suits them best. But doesn't that look what you just said though? Doesn't that support what he just said? It is. He has 60 direct reports, and then like they're not allowed to turn around and do the same thing he just did. Like, they have to have tighter lines of communication , he's cutting a few levels between him and the direct people so that, there's four levels or whatever. doesn't that support what he, because from his perspective, he's saying this is radical transparency and , if we go up with some sort of system of radical transparency, we can accelerate the organizational learnings because in the best, in the best case world, the conversations go up and down equally, right? So like I get on a call with 60 people, everyone's willing and able and feeling free to speak their minds. then the theory there is anybody can question anything. Anybody can call nonsense on a ask for evidence basically on anything the CEO says. And vice versa, right?, The group can hold each other accountable. This sounds fine in theory when you get over like a dozen people. I, I just from my own personal experience, I know this whole system breaks down I would say honestly, when you get to like nine people, this system has already started to fray at the edges pretty severely. It's nice that the idea of like, okay, my CEO my, my C-level team theoretically should be like a team of, team of teams or whatever, but they're the direct representatives of these other teams. And what his claim is is that I have radical transparency when I just cut all the bureaucracy could get everybody on one call. Actually the McChrystal team of teams book. Did this too.. He got, he got like, oh, it was well over a hundred people. I don't remember how many people it was, but it was like, well over a hundred people from multiple agencies. He got 'em on a call and just not every day it was his standup with a hundred plus people, or it might have been like 300 people. I don't remember how much it was. I have to go back and read that book. Ed, ed can check me in the comments. I think to your point about doesn't this make a point for him? He's only talking about himself and his direct 60. Mm-hmm so those 60 then have others, right. The reporting to them as well. They do. So that, so my point was, yeah. I mean, look, he might get that radical candor between himself and the 60. They hear the same thing, hopefully. Yeah. But then when they, each of those 60 turn around and relay that message down mm-hmm. To their subordinates, now you've got 60 people saying something slightly different. Theoretically, those each of the 60 subordinates has, oh my goodness. I know. So , each of those 60 reports has 500 employees under them. So there's gotta be at least like, like just figure that kind of structure that he has, but let's pretend they did you, so you would have two or three levels under where he's at. So That's right. You'd have at minimum four levels so he said that absolutely not allowed. So there's definitely more levels than that oh boy. So how do you deal with that now? Sometimes I want to go out on LinkedIn and just put out like a poll or like a request and be like, Hey, arguing Agile podcast. Like we now want to hear from like, now paging Dr. Beat. Like I want to hear like about people who have been founders who've grown their company. And I want to talk to you on the podcast about the train wreck you went through before you realize that there's a, a, a step level structure that needs to be put into place here. So , let's wrap this category up before we move on or talk about things that are not related to this topic in any way for this category hey, radical transparency versus intimacy, if you don't have a certain level of familiarity with me, you're never even gonna get into the lobby, let alone the back office. To actually talk about these things. So when you are, when you're getting coaching or mentorship or whatever, sponsorship or whatever like for the next week that you are at work, like again on that sticky where you're like taking notes, right? Yeah. We talked about before like record, like these one, you're having one-on-ones when you're talking one-on-one with a person, first of all, like if you have this sticky and you're like, I never talked with anyone on one-on-one this whole week. Well that's a vibe in and of itself. Mm-hmm. Write that down. What's going on in my work where I never talk to anyone one-on-one? Yep. Okay. Well, whether it's up or down, right? I can subscribe if you're starved for human attention oh my goodness. Hopefully that'll stay in the podcast. When you separate I talked to this person one-on-one, I talked to this person one-on-one, like make note of those conversations and put a check mark or something next to it to say like, Hey, this really was better off being one on one.'cause I have those conversations all the time that like, Hey, if we had this out in the open, it would freak a lot of people out'cause as a product manager, sometimes I'm vetting language for a broader audience, i'm focusing my pitch. my business pitch. And I'm doing it in a low six environment where people can push back or say like, Hey, that wording is clunky or Don't say that word, say this word, or whatever. And I'll do that a a half a dozen times before I repeat something in front of a large crowd. I need those at bats to hone the language of business so that when I'm in front of a customer, like I'm ready, I am ready. I've been beaten up a bunch of times, so when the customer says something like, Hey, I don't think that works. I've got a bunch of can, like this side streets is all, all kinds of stuff that I can. this one, like does the conversation really need privacy? Was it really better one-on-one? Could it have been done out in the open? A lot of my one ons cannot be done out in the open because I feel like they'll, they will do damage out in the open when the wording or ideas or, or whatever opinion I'm expressing is unrefined. And you could push back to say, well, you should just refine it better. I'm like, well, when am I gonna do that? You know, I need to refine it with people. That's the whole job of the product manager that is the refinement process. So, other than refinement, if there's this idea that whatever you say might actually even be unpopular with a certain segment of the audience and when that happens, I've seen it go down two different ways. One is people just sheepishly put their hand up. And start to raise objections, right? One person will say something really like, very benign, and then somebody else will jump on it and somebody else, and before you know it, it's a rolling bandwagon. And at that point, the quote unquote, leader will shut it down. Right? Right. They have techniques. Oh, we, we gotta stay on with the agenda time. Don't have time. Let's take it offline. All Yeah. Take it offline. So I've seen it go down that path, but, but interestingly, I've seen it go the other way where, where they just basically shoot down the main thesis of what was being said and the whole thing winds up being a so experience for the leader. Right so they won't do that again. Let, let alone they won't let alone the people. Let alone the Yeah. Let people, so you've wasted 60 people's time, basically. Right, right. And these are high paid high-paid executives. So let's, let's get to like, the, the main thing I wanna talk about Yeah. Halfway through the podcast, let's get to the main thing I wanna talk about, which is the purpose of the 1 0 1. It's for the leader. To be an information radiator down and through the employees and to cut several layers of bureaucracy. I mean, or the way I feel is like the one-on-one. I mean, it really should be an employee driven agenda. Like I will tell you right now, and this even includes my current work, which I don't bring in the podcast a lot of times, I despise when I have to go to a one-on-one, and I know we're gonna talk about a lot of operational nonsense Hey Brian, where's this thing at? When's this gonna be done? What's the timeframe or window or whatever with this thing? When are you gonna have a decision on that? I would rather talk about like, Hey, what's going on with your kids today? Exactly. What renovations are going on in your house? I don't, , first of all, as if there aren't enough venues to talk about status updates. There's so many updates. Every I will tell people all the time when I'm at community events and stuff like that, like there is elements of project management inside of product management. But that is the most mundane nonsense I will deal with. And if I ever was at a work center where I could have a product operations person or , someone that could really accelerate product management , these would be the first things that I unload. It's like, I don't wanna talk about when things are gonna be done, how long things are like, because this is why I have systems that I enter work items into and then they get tracked. That's the whole purpose of us paying. Buy a headcount, by the way. Mm-hmm. For every single person. And we pay a licensing fee and you're not gonna even use it like, then why am I using those systems? It should just be a dashboard or seven dashboards. It could be, it could be a Google doc, could be at that point, it could be just something real light. So I agree with that first of all the, these end up being status updates you mentioned agenda forming, and I've been part of many meetups where the agenda was driven by my boss. Other than status updates, it's always about, here are five things I'm gonna set for you to do until the next time we meet. So it's basically a tasking exercise and at no point ever has anybody asked. Have you got enough on your plate? Can I add one or two things? They don't ask that. They just say, here are five things next time we meet. How'd you do on those five things? It's terrible. Yeah, it is terrible. It's far better to have the agenda set by the employee, right? Who can bring up things without fear of repercussion, right?. Because now you're not simply just offering updates and worried about what is it that you're gonna, that they'll thrust upon you. It's, here's a idea that I had. I wanna try something out, right? Mm-hmm. What do you think trying to get buy in or, Hey, I've seen this. Practice that we are all adopted, , we've all adopted. Yeah. What if we tweak it a little bit this way or that way? Do I have your backing on this, right? Yeah. It can be, it can range from a multitude of things like that. Or it can be simple like, Hey, I'm team building. Can I get a hundred bucks to buy lunch from my team? Could be anything. But you referenced just asking what's happening in your private life? Believe it or not, there are several times where I have nothing on my agenda for my boss, and that's what we talk about. But it depends on who that person is. For the most part. when we were prepping for this podcast, I found this video Roxy posted to LinkedIn and I wanna play it here for you to listen to. Because I think this is in line with what we're talking about now, which is like, who sets the agenda? I think the employee, the person in the subordinate position. Should be the one that sets the agenda. Okay. And she gives a small framework that I want to talk about. I wanna show it here, and let me get your opinion on this. All right. let's listen to this. One thing I wish I knew earlier in my career is that your one-on-one with your boss is more for you than for them. So you should use that time to get what you need. Let me show you what I mean. Using my five star one-on-one method. This is how I was structured, my one-on-one with my boss. the first thing is recap. Highlight what has happened since the last time you spoke. Your boss might not be in the day to day, so they may not have any idea the wins that you've racked up, the progress that you've made. The second is alignment and prioritization. Are you working on the things that are most important for the business? Your boss is there to help with prioritization, and you wanna make sure that you're working on the most critical things that are moving the business forward. Support, ask for help. Your boss is there to remove barriers that are preventing you from doing your job. So, recap, prioritize, ask for help with things. Okay, that the three so far. Ask for help. Ask for feedback. How am I doing? Do you have any feedback from me? That last call that we were on ask for feedback. Was there anything that I could have done better? This is a great opportunity to ask for feedback. We should not shy away from feedback or only ask for feedback at review time and then the follow up In our next one-on-one, I would like to discuss, it might be a project, it might be a salary increase, but it is always important to set up what that next conversation is and what your expectations are. There's a great opportunity to ask for where you're looking for. A lot of times we sit on these things when we should be having these open discussions about them. There we go. Roxy C so like that's Roxy on LinkedIn. I thought it was really cool. I thought it was a good video and it fit really well in this category, so I wanted to include it. So I thought that was a good one. Yeah, because I can't stand going to a one-on-one knowing it's just gonna be a status update. I think. I'm like, what a waste. Of this session. Again, I would rather not talk about work for, for 30 minutes. Sure. Completely. Well, this, we talked about building trust earlier, right? This is part and parcel is a vehicle of building trust when you're talking about things at work not necessarily happening at work.. Like in people's private lives to the extent you can, I mean, just share that, Hey, I, I'm gonna re renovate my garage. Or, or garden, she, or whatever. People can talk about that and they can find commonalities they have with one another. This is a good way to do that. But also I think it's on the organization to kind of support this. it's on the employee to drive it but it's on the organization if you're a boss, and if you're not supportive of this, then it breaks down right. Yeah. So you should play your part too. So pivoting to another thing that comes up a lot when you're talking about one-on-ones. Is it better to do them on demand, like when you need to talk about things or to just put 'em on the calendar and just always have that time. do you have an opinion on that? I certainly do. I prefer to have a cadence that way. One of the things you can do is things like this, you can say, well, we have a, let's say 30 minute, 15 minute, whatever it is touch point every week and this week you need to call some time back. You could either reschedule in the same week or you could say, let's just quickly touch base with five minutes on the clock only. Right. And get that one burning thing off your chest, and you're done. Or. You could say, well right now, today I don't really have anything much. We can just postpone and that's okay. but doing it on a fixed cadence, you know that slot is booked on your calendar. You can see it in the morning when you're looking at your daily agenda, you can see it's coming. And inevitably you may be able to think of something that you wanna discuss, but if it's not there and if it's just on demand, your demand is not your boss's demand. Like you, you have to find common time during which you can meet and it could go weeks before you meet if it's on demand. There's some like arguing agile counterpoint to this that I would make, but it would just be performative. Because the pushback you would hear is like, well, I have an open door policy and like anybody, but it's the same thing as like Jen Huang's, like I got 60 people on a call. Or like, maybe he's got 60 people in a room. I mean, but that room's gonna be an auditorium and he's gonna be on stage, I dare you to raise your hand and ask something at that point. This is the same thing as like I have an open door policy. I dare you to walk into the snake pit! When I was in basic training and all the instructors would sit at the table and watch everyone eat in the chow hall. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's not a line you cross. Like this is the same thing. Like someone listening to this might be like, well, who cares? The majority of people are just not gonna, it's like a human nature thing , it's very difficult to challenge the status quo, especially when the status quo is embodied. Like physically embodied. Yeah. Yeah. You're not gonna do that. I mean, we, I'm pretty sure that we've all come across people that have been a little let's just say gungho about these things and raise their hand and challenge and we've talked about 'em once they've yeah. Been encouraged to depart the company. Yeah. So if you're gonna do this you know, hey, oh boy. Don't, don't do that that's, if you're looking for Brian's bad life suggestions, I should save this for the wrap up of the podcast., When, when it's time for your exit interview, like That's too late. It's too late don't say anything. Yeah. Be like, my exit interview is, this company's great. Give me my money and goodbye. Just walk away. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So yeah, those of you that are a little more dashing about these things keep that resume updated too, guys. Yeah. What would you say about me likening this? Like, Hey, we're gonna have a, a scheduled one-on-one on a, any regular basis. And like if we don't need them, or we're all busy or whatever cool. Can't cancel, whatever, right? Yeah. But we're basically carving out the time. We're saying, this time's valuable, this time's your time you bring the agenda, combine this with the last category we talked about, like it's sort of like this is a vitamin you take every day versus like, oh, now I gotta go to the hospital. And the hospital gives me like the, the high dose antibiotics at a high price. At a high price. The last one I want to talk about is where I feel like Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg and those guys yeah. They can embody this one and they can argue this one with a full throat endorsement, which is there's a unquantifiable value in the one-on-one. And I can't justify the ROI of sitting down one-on-one with an individual person. So I'm gonna sit down with 60 people and spread that value over 60 people's time for an hour. Yeah or whatever. I don't know how long. Two hours. It doesn't matter. Yeah whereas like the ROI in sitting down with a person. That's, it's just, there's just no ROI there that I, I especially in like PE backed firms, right? We like a, a private equity buys your company is like, well, they measure things differently to begin with. Well, I can't, I can't have you sit down with another person and just get coaching, like That's right. The value of that coaching is, oh my goodness. It's like so much. But, but I also feel like we've done podcasts before where we point out where people are like co-opting agile structures. And using it in bad faith, right? Like this would be the same thing as like, oh, like having one-on-ones on the books, that's another ritual that's just bloat. If you're looking for ROI, everything like that I'm pretty sure you can find a multitude of different places where the ROI is not immediately obvious. Right. So , how do you replace the opportunity to build trust over time With people that you're working with? And how do you measure the ROI of that? Well, let's, which is even longer term. let's take a step back for a second and like how the, to get things done in professional work. Okay. it all leverages. Interpersonal relationships and like, how are you gonna build those relationships? Like I feel like that there's two parts of this. There's one part of it is the side that says like, how are you you gotta put in the work to build those relationships. So get in there, kid, put in the work. If you like in product management, I'm often in places where leadership, meaning like C level right, is holding me accountable to be like, Brian, I don't care what you gotta do to, to get your team across the finish line. Do it and get the team across the finish line., You don't get to do that. And then micromanage of like., How much money I had to spend or whatever , to basically like have one-on-one time to learn about, what weeks you have your kids versus what weeks you don't have your kids.'cause you went through a messy divorce a couple years ago, whatever look, I'm trying to land a plane in the dark with no instruments , on an island that isn't charted so you, you're either going to help fly the plane, okay.'cause you've done it before, or you gonna watch me crash and or you, or you're gonna give me tools and then get outta my way. Well that doesn't happen often either.'cause they don't get outta your way. I understand. But also you can't be like jibber jabber in, the navigator seat. Behind the pilots, right. Hooking in the race. You can't, you can't do both of those. Like you have to decide like, okay, well do are we saying all these quote rituals are a waste of time? And then like, we just need to be efficient. Or are you saying like, the human connection is the only thing that matters and then all this business process and everything on top of that it's a framework that helps us, and when the framework doesn't help us at all, we just disregard it and burn the whole system down and figure out a new system. It can't be both of those. It can't be like, Hey, you have to have these things, but also I need this. It's like the agile thing is like, I have to have this quality, but also I have to have this, I have to have this deadline and also I have to have these features like dude. You gotta pick one right. I think those two things you outlined are diametrically opposed. But in real life, it's not like you are in at one extreme or the other. You're kind of in between somewhere and you're trying to figure out which way to go. if you're on the other side where you say, efficiency is everything and all of these one-on-ones and other meetings are just a waste of time. The only thing that matters is finished work, . You are going to suffer because you're not building those relationships. If you're on the opposite side of that, you're not getting a whole lot of work done ' I think there's a medium somewhere. I don't wanna say happy because you, I don't think you realize when you get there that that's a happy medium. You're always striving. Yeah. So most companies are looking to find a spot, like it's probably a range, right? Somewhere in there and in, in most companies that are medium to large. It's not gonna be a spot on a single spectrum, it's gonna be dependent on little microcosms that exist within the company. Mm-hmm. So you may have certain areas of the company where you see a lot of comradery. People are always laughing, joking, getting work done mind right. But when a crisis emerges, that's the team that's gonna come through quicker because they trust one another. Yeah. Seen that happen before. this is the one that like people get tied in knots about working onsite. You know, like physically not remote is there's collaboration tools and the need for face-to-face like relationship building. It's difficult to do this remotely. Okay. It's easier to do when everyone's in person, but I don't think it's impossible to do remotely. But I don't think that's a barrier. the artificial barrier is not like, oh, how much is this remote and how much is in person? I think the real artificial barrier is, how much of this is like, the company just doesn't care that you're spending why, why would you ever spend time on work time talking to another employee about non-work activities just so you can like advance that human relationship and understanding that that's the real barrier. Yeah. Between that like, it doesn't matter where physically you are. You could be in different parts of the world talking remote over Zoom or Google meets or whatever. Yeah. And establishing a much stronger human relationship than even if you guys were in like, oh , uh, Om is on floor five and Brian is on floor three occasionally show up to a standup or we talk, but then we go back to our floors and we never talk to each other the people that work remote full time have a better connection than Om and Brian, who work in the same building they have immediacy, right? There's that water cooler channel they can drop in and, put a picture of their dog or whatever. So when we were in person before, it wasn't as if people were just being super efficient all the time and grinding it out at their desk. You did see water cooler conversations going on. You did see people meeting at the coffee machine, right. And getting their coffee and standing around talking. But you know, that. Wasn't really clamped down upon because it was out of sight. Leadership wasn't there on every floor in your example, right? Right. To see that O'Brien are standing there with a cup of coffee talking for 10 minutes, right? They didn't see that, so they couldn't police it. Now in these water cooler channels, they can see that. Which is why I say to people, if these channels are for teams, then let them wait. Be for teams, right? Keep those prying eyes out of it and also keep their resume up there. We did this podcast before the audio got messed up. Hey, one audio mess up in 200 episodes. That's not bad. Okay, that's not too bad. But we re-shot the whole thing , I feel the vibe of this one, the fervor of this podcast is much more intense Than the last one we used. So I like this one. The takeaway that I'm taking from this podcast is like, if you are the employee and you have this opportunity for a one-on-one, like you need to own it, you need to take ownership of the whole thing. Like, don't let this time be wasted on whatever nonsense,. Don't let this time be wasted on like nonsense status, update stuff, like take ownership of the agenda. and also like document when one-on-one advice is given in the form of mentorship or coaching or both, right. And in what forum? And like start taking some notes for yourself 'cause you have to drive the value yourself. Yeah, I agree. I think the call to action for those people listening and watching that if that are not doing one-on-ones, is just simply get a piece of paper and write down what if, what if you had your boss's ear regularly? Yeah. What could you achieve, right? And hopefully you'll find on that paper when you're done reasons why you should start to put something on their calendar. Don't wait for them to do it. You do it right. And go ahead and start doing, as you says put down things that you wanna talk about and stick to those. And if it, it derails into a status update. Get ahead of it. Meaning like the day before your one-on-ones send out a quick bullet list, a summary saying, here's a status update for you unsolicited, albeit Right. Send it out. And that way during the one-on-ones, you could say, I sent you that yesterday, but we really, really should be focused on is X and then you can get onto what you really want, talk about, you know? Right. Hey, where's the future of my career? How can I get there? Yeah. Who can you position me with? Like all of the things that you really want to ask that you really should. Should ask to get help with. Yeah. That's the way you need to reposition this. I know we lost this whole podcast. I'm very happy with the reup though. Yeah, it's a good one. I like it. Probably 'cause I was super sassy in the reup, although we would've tried not to lose feature ones. I think I was super like contrarian in the original version of this. And in the re-up I just didn't, I was like, this is nonsense. Why don't we do this anyway if you like this podcast like and subscribe. Definitely like, and subscribe. Arguing Agile podcasts on, on all the platforms. YouTube, Spotify apple Podcast. Every single like, and subscribe helps a podcast and it helps om somehow it's, yeah, it helps me put agendas together for my one-on-one. Oh, you gonna say buy yachts? I was gonna say. Yeah, but I was paper yachts. Om still doesn't have any yachts. I don't have any yachts. Paper yachts.