GA 490 | What’s Broken About Work with David Henkin and Thomas Bertels

This so called triple win, I mean, it's actually possible, but it takes people, leaders willing to wanting to improve. There's a magnetism to the status quo that you have to resist in a sense, you know, for their employees, the customers and the company itself. You know, I mean, the rewards are there. The evidence is overwhelming.

Today I'm excited to welcome David Hankin and Thomas Bertels to the show. Now, Thomas was just on a month or so ago and David joined us for the first time, but we had a really, really, really good conversation. This is a good episode today, folks. I think you're gonna really enjoy it. So they did write a book called Fixing Work, a tale about designing jobs. But don't worry, it's not a big sales pitch for the book. In fact, they just add a ton of value. And we just spent the majority of the time talking about, you know, sort of what's wrong with work and work design and what can we do and how does Lean play a role in helping to, you know, make people want to come to work and make them happy and have a fulfilling sort of career. And a lot of discussion on the importance of things like mastery, autonomy and purpose and lots of really, really good stuff. So again, I think you're going to enjoy this one. I know I did. Show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com this is episode 490. So listen here, here's some homework for all you regular listeners out there. So episode 500 is coming up. 10 episodes 500. This is kind of crazy. So I suppose we're supposed to do something special on episode 500 and I have no clue what to do. So if you guys have any ideas, I mean, do the best of and all that, and we've done that in the past and I suppose we can do something like that again. But if you have any ideas for what episode 500 could be like, please email me ronumba academy.com I would really appreciate that. Or even if you have just ideas about the show, how to make it better or what you like about it, what you hate about it, you know, I don't. If you hate something, don't tell me. It just makes me sad. No, I'm just kidding. You know, in all seriousness, we try to make this show better and I think it has gotten a lot better over the last 500 or so episodes. But. But yeah, shoot me a note and let me know. So the show notes for this episode, again, GembaPodcast.com, look for episode 490. Okay? Enough for me. Let's get to the show. David and Thomas, welcome to the show. How's it going, guys?

Great, Ron. Thanks so much for having us. Really appreciate being here.

Delighted to be here.

And Thomas, were you just on a couple weeks ago, something like that?

A couple of months ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I can't get enough of the.

Whatever, you know.

Yeah, I can't get enough of your podcast, Ron. I had to be back on.

I appreciate it, man, as. I appreciate it. All right, well, where are you guys calling in from?

Just outside of Philadelphia is where I'm based.

Okay.

And I'm a couple of clicks north. I'm outside of New York City in the northern New Jersey.

Okay. Awesome, awesome. All right, well, we like to get things going, as you guys know, right out of the gate with a quote. So do you guys have one or two or three? Doesn't matter.

I do have. I appreciate you asking. I do have one to offer. It's by John Ruskin. The quote is, the highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, it's who they become by it. And that's always spoken to me because, you know, as we know, obviously, people work for money, but people don't leave their jobs generally because of money. You know, and there's so many studies that say people leave because lack of career development, lack of meaningful work, you know, uncaring or uninspiring leaders. And it's just a subject that has been of interest. What really does drive and motivate people. And nowadays there's so much about engagement and so much about the employee employer dynamic. You know, that quote has always spoken to me.

I love it. I love it. All right, well, hey, guys, let's maybe each of you take a turn to just tell us quickly about your sort of your background and how you got into this line of work. And then obviously you got. Guys have written a book, fixing work, a tale about designing jobs employees love. So I'd be curious to hear how you guys met up for that and, you know, all that kind of good stuff. So, David, do you want to go first?

Sure. You know, I happy to do a brief intro. You know, I presently advise teams, organizations, individuals on innovation and increasing their capacity for achievement. My experience includes chief Innovation Officer at a publicly traded technology company, evp, leading startups from inception to strategic acquisition. You know, being an executive, an entrepreneur, a board member, an advisor for many years now. And after Thomas goes, delighted to share with you how we met and how that contributed to Our work here today.

Nice. Okay. Thomas.

Yeah. Thomas Bertels. I'm a management consultant. I've been doing this work for 25 years. And I had the privilege really to work with companies from really, really large, like Fortune 5 companies to startups, midsize companies. And my practice has really been around really fixing work or transforming how work gets done. I've done a lot of work in the lean Six Sigma space, which I know you're very familiar with. And over the years, really, my work is more towards really helping companies really rethink work in a more fundamental manner. It's like how it's organized from an org structure perspective, how the processes work, how the jobs are designed, the measures that they use to run the business. And so that's the work that I've been doing for the last 25 years.

Got it. So then how did you guys sort of connect to come together, write a book?

So, you know, as I, as I, I've joked a little bit before with Thomas, it was like love. At first readout. I was, I was leading a transformation program at Vanguard that actually involved Six Sigma. And gosh, it was over 20 years ago now. Thomas was part of a consulting firm, and he was just amazing. Fortunately, you know, we became fast friends and collaborators on many projects since then. He really is one of the smartest, most capable people you'll ever meet.

And the story of the book is I met Dave. I think it might be like a year and a half, maybe two years ago. I think it was around Christmas time. And we shared a meal and I talked to him about what I'm doing around work design. And he says, well, you should write a book about this. And I'm like, I don't know, David. I've written two books. Writing a book is a lot of work. And he's like, no, it's like, I'll write it with you. And I'm like, okay, I better take him up on this offer before he regrets it. And so, so we started working on the book and, you know, six months later we. We had a manuscript.

So I'm curious, like, how does that work? When two people work together, write a books, like, I got chapter one, you got chapter two, or what? Like, what do you do?

Well, you know, it's a, it's a great question because in addition to the, the tactics of how to write it, something that I think about in this collaboration is, you know, we have different experiences. You know, I've spent, you know, decades as an operator, largely inside businesses. You know, Thomas is A consultant, you know, and, you know, across many, many businesses has brought different perspectives. So I think that combination has really interwoven in a very effective way. From a practical perspective. You're 100% right. I mean, we would push, you know, document back and forth, and, you know, when someone's got energy, it's fantastic when. When the energy wanes and you, you know, you've got a partner to tag. To tag off with, to pick up the energy. And so it was a really delightful collaboration in that regard.

Yeah. And one of the things that actually helped a lot is the specific format of the book. Right. So it's a narrative, it's a story, it's a tale. And so it follows the journey of our hero, right, throughout all the trials and tribulations. And so that kind of made it, in a way, I think, maybe a little bit more challenging, Right. Because you had to align around the storyline, the character development and so forth. But also, I think, more fun because at different times, David would bring something that really pushed the story into a whole new, interesting direction, and vice versa. So it was a really interesting back and forth. It went surprisingly smooth.

Yeah. And part of the topic is highlighting the human in the work design. So the parable format really seemed to fit with characters you care about, circumstances you can relate to in ways that make it easier to emulate, easier to learn from. And as we heard from some of the really tremendous early endorsements, you know, so many people and others are easy to fix work, if you will, you know, and the book can help them do that.

Yeah, yeah. In fact, I was mentioning before we started recording, guys, that last week's episode here on the podcast, a gentleman named Gerald, he actually wrote a book, and he also followed sort of the. The. The business novel approach. So it's really popular. I mean, maybe Eli Goldratt, right, is the. The. Not the og but, boy, he put it on the map with the goal. Right? So was that. Is that book influential to you guys?

Yes.

Yeah. It's like I got. I read the Goal, I think, the first time in 1998, as part of my MBA program. Well, I think I reread it as part of my MBA program. And. And a friend of mine keeps reminding me, he's like, yeah, back then you told me I want to write something like that, Right? So it just took 25 years. But, yeah, he sees the OG and I think, again, we all, I think, have seen these business books, and they got these case studies, and Johnson Johnson did this and GE did this, and then Just counted the money. And we all know that getting anything going in an organization, it's never as pretty as the case study suggests.

Right.

It's really, really hard to drive change. And so I think we felt we owed it to people to really paint a realistic picture of kind of like how this might happen in their organization.

Okay. So it's got a. I know we. We sort of touched on this, Thomas, when we chatted previously, but so it's a really cool title, Fixing Work. So that assumes work is broken. So I want to open up with that. Like, what's broken about work from your perspectives?

Yeah, I think there's a couple of things, right? I mean, what everybody talks about these days, I think, is the employee side of the question. Right. So engagement levels have been stuck at 30% for the last, I think, as long as Gallup measures it. Turnover rate have been increasing for the last 15 years, steadily took a small dip at the beginning of the pandemic, and now keep rising. So there's definitely something wrong in the world of work. People just want more from work. I think the pandemic has all of us show in the life can be really, really short. And so people, I think, want to maximize, I think, what they get out of it. But I think beyond that, and we all also understand the process space, and we know really how cumbersome and clunky and bureaucratic processes in organizations can be and how much of a drain that can be on productivity. And tools like Lean and Six Sigma obviously, are wonderful vehicles to fix that and make the process more productive. And I think then there's the third layer, which is, I think, the customer experience. And, you know, that also is like, you know, you also see this long decline, right, in terms of how people really experience dealing with businesses, right. Buying things, getting services, both on the, you know, consumer side, on the B2B side. And so I think work is broken in all of these dimensions, right. And so really, I think the antidote is to kind of like, rethink, right? How do we structure work? Right. How do we design work that it works for everybody? Right. It works for the employees who do it. It works for the businesses, and we've got to make money. And it can also work for the customers who ultimately, you know, might keep. Keep businesses alive.

Yeah, it's well said, Thomas. You know, maybe we're sharing that. You know, the management science behind the parable is motivational work design. You know, can we think of employees as customers of the work? So many job descriptions are copies, copy pastes and so many jobs today don't attend to those key, key factors that drive engagement, purpose, autonomy, feedback. We hear about the great resignation, quiet, quitting, you know, leaders are pining for approaches. The world seemed to be missing an accessible, easy to read narrative on this topic.

Yeah, gosh, you know, something that's been on my mind a lot, you know, I have, my oldest daughter is almost 21 and I have a 19 year old and they're both college age and, and you know, it's just interesting watching this next generation come up, you know, for right or wrong, you know, you know, they're all on the social media and the, this whole world now that I didn't have, you guys didn't have, you know, when we were coming up and you know, my daughter even made the comment yesterday, she's more probably like me, sort of entrepreneur minded kind of thing. She's like, oh dad, I just don't see myself being able to work 9 to 5 somewhere suddenly desk, you know, I gotta, I gotta, you know, and so, but I'm wondering if like now there's an entrepreneurial side of some people that are just, it's inside of them, but there's also that this generation, they just, and I'm not trying to be critical of them because this is my, my own kids, but their attention span is so short and if they don't get sort of like not immediate gratification, but they gotta have some movement, man, or they're bored, like they're used to like 30 second videos or whatever. And so I'm wondering like, how is this world gonna look 10, 20, 30 years from now when this generation is the CEO of the company and you know, that sort of thing. What do you guys think about that?

I think that's a really interesting question. On the one side, I think, you know, we're, we're all kind of like wired the same way. And I think that doesn't change over generations. Right. So I think again, I think as David said, that people want to do something meaningful. We want to have autonomy. We're biologically wired to have autonomy. If we don't get it, we get depressed. People want to know how they're doing. People want to know whether they're winning and losing. So I think those things are universal. And I think you find that also in the younger generation. I think the willingness to put up, I think with things. Right. And to your point, getting bored if there's no growth and no learning there. Yeah, I think that definitely, I think we all have much Shorter attention spans. Right? Back in the days you sent a letter, you'd expect a response in a week. Now people send a text and they expect a ping back in five seconds. So I think we all have these shortened attention spans. I think it all speaks, though, to I think the need to have to do something that allows you to grow as a person and develop. And I think a lot of corporate jobs just don't deliver against that. There is no decision making. All right? People got these like the sell you on a job, and then the reality of the job is very different. Right. And it's at all levels in the organization, by the way. It's not just the younger generation. I spoke last week, was a client of mine and I asked him, is like, so that's a pretty senior guy, right? It's like VP level. And I said, you know, what percentage of your time would you say, you know, you're adding value, right? You're delivering impact. Right? And he said at best, 50%. And the other 50. Yeah, yeah. And he probably. Right. He probably meant to say 30%. But nobody wants to admit to themselves that half their time is completely wasted. Right. Or even more than that. But I think that's just the reality of it, right? I think we're all. And I think the younger generation, I think they just don't have the fear, right? They come into a job market, right? There's plenty of job openings, and I think they're more confident. And I think that they see more of the world than we have seen. And so I think it just makes it harder for businesses, I think, to attract these people into a career for the long run.

Yeah, Maybe to pick up that point, if it's okay, just on the sort of the corporation thing. Startups are fascinating in so many ways. More often in a startup, you know, everybody knows what the purpose is. You know, there isn't a cash cow to protect. Feedback from the work itself versus a manager is more common. When firms get large enough to start splitting into departments, you know, moving part of the work upstairs or downstairs or across the globe, we start. We start replicating job descriptions, engagement drops. And that's a lot of what I think your daughter sees is, you know, people in those types of roles that are not engaged and think to themselves perhaps quite rightly, why do I want to do that?

Right.

You know, so. So the outcomes suffer as well for the business, you know, for the business and for the customers in those environments. And that's why, you know, that's work that needs to be fixed. Yeah.

What is your take? And I've mentioned, we've addressed this a number of times in recent episodes here with different guests, the whole remote work thing. David, I'm particularly curious on you as an operator inside of big companies and whatnot. Like, what is your thought on that? Like, you know, obviously during COVID we learned that many people can work from home, but there are some jobs that can't be done well from home. So, like, how do we balance that? Are you ready to take the next step in your lean journey now? You can. During one of our premier in person Gemba Academy workshops held at our training center in Keller, Texas, our certified instructors guide you through the process of taking your lean knowledge and applying directly to your industry with real actionable steps that will benefit you and your organization. Whether you're a seasoned lean practitioner looking for inspiration or just starting out, we have the perfect workshop for you. Sign up@gemba events.com that's gemba events.com but there are some jobs that can't be done well from home. So like, how do we balance that?

It's a great question and in particular because recent studies or recent news releases from big companies are saying, you know, nine out of 10 big companies want people back in the office. Right. And 79% of employees want flexibility. Yeah. So we have a mismatch. And I think, you know, to your point about certain kinds of roles, you know, if you're, if you're a surgeon or if you're an H vac repair person, you know, you got to be on site.

Right.

And it's not going to happen from your house. However, a lot of knowledge working roles really can be done remotely. Yeah. And you know, Thomas said quite eloquently a little while ago in a different conversation, hey, companies that want employees to be at the office have to earn their commute and they've got to do this by having an engagement posture that is going to actually motivate them to want to be in the office. I've been fortunate to be, you know, at larger firms and smaller firms where, you know, having the domain to design has been part of sort of the mandate that I've gotten that I, that I've been able to exercise, you know, in largely service firms, technology firms, autonomy, feedback, meaning skill, variety, like there are ways to solve for this.

So another really hot topic these days is, is AI, artificial intelligence and chat. GPT is coming from my job and this and that. What is your, what is your guys take on, on the role of AI? And as we Think about designing work in the future. What role does it play and how do you. How do we cooperate with it or not?

Yeah, I think, I think it's super interesting, right? I mean, everybody's excited about it, everybody plays with it, right. I think one is. I think it offers enormous potential, right. If you think about, like, if you were to give people their digital twin and empower them, right. I think that, I think could actually help a lot with work, design topics, right? We could actually give one person a bigger job to do or more of the job to do because you can pull in specialist knowledge through an AI solution. So I think there's definitely some potential there. I think there's obviously the way I think most companies are going to go about it. I think it's also deeply fraught, right? They're going to try to automate customer service and apply AI to it. And that suck on the. I think on the surface makes sense, right? Because you can take all the answers to all the questions anybody ever had and kind of like, you know, deliver that electronically. But I think that's kind of just improving a little bit what already exists, right? So we're going to make customer service a little bit cheaper. I think where companies, I think are at risk of really missing an opportunity, I think is on the innovation side, which is where David spends a lot of his time, right? And that is like, how do you combine human imagination and machine capabilities and create something new? And I just don't think a lot of organizations are set up to kind of facilitate those kinds of innovations to provide employees with the knowledge to kind of make AI work for them in their work context. And I think they're rather going to try to drive this top down with some really big automation projects that, as we all know, I mean, yes, AI can learn and so forth, but these things, once they're in, right, once they've been implemented, they're really hard to pull out, right? And we oftentimes overdo the automation and then we got like nobody left, right? That deals with the things that fall to the cracks, right? The defects. Right. The stuff that we couldn't anticipate, right? So I think, I think there's definitely, I think the risk, I think, to quite frankly make things worse. But again, I think people should look at the opportunities. I think they should look at where this technology fits. And then I think they got to engage their workforce to design those solutions. I think a lot of the pilots that I see are kind of driven out of some IT function, right? Where they're trying to bring that to the business and say, hey, you know, look, yeah, we can automate this versus I think putting it in service of the business and in service of employees.

Yeah. If you think about this triple win that we've talked about a number of times, I think it applies to AI. The, the science behind this is, is 50 plus years old. Right. So there's been a lot of technology advances, you know, in the, in, you know, when the personal computer came out.

Yeah.

You know, many of these similar kinds of concerns were there. But if you think about narrowly, you know, can use AI to, to improve productivity. Sure. Can use it to try to improve customer outcomes, you know. Yeah. Can you also say, how can we do this while we're also improving employee engagement? Can you do all three? Is that a lens through which we can look at. Because if you look at just improving productivity, you're going to leave the others off and you're going to potentially maybe improve some things and actually make some other things worse, as you said.

Yeah, I think, and I just had a wonderful example actually of a, of a client as a digital media agency and one of the process improvements that they wanted to do was really, you know, applying some intelligent automation to the work process, which was very manual. And then, you know, you look at the department of 40, 50 people and you ask yourself, what are those folks going to do? Right. And the solution that they found, which I think was quite creative, is to say, no, no, we're going to transform ourselves into the automation department. Right. Because we're going to actually internalize this technology and then work with other functions to help them. Right. Get, get similar advantages. Right. So I think again, I think it boils down to kind of how you do it. Right. Do you, do you do it with the people or do you do it to the people?

Yeah, well, same with lean or anything. You can either do lean to people or with people. Right. So yeah, it, you know, my, my whole take on it is, you know, when the tractor was invented, the farmers were like, what? You know, you're taking my job well, no, we're not. We're going to allow, you know, farm more efficiently, easier, better, you know, that sort of thing. So yeah, so yeah, it's just, it's interesting. You know, we humans are fickle with change.

Right.

So yeah. Hey, I wonder, just kind of circling back to really the topic of, of your book, but I want to. You touched on this a little bit already, but I want to, you know, we got a lot of people listening right now who who are involved in designing work, if you will, or improving work. So like what some practical things that we can be thinking about as we're trying to make our workplaces better and always better for the employee and ultimately the customer. Is there any advice you have?

I think there's a bunch of things. Let's maybe start with, I think the general challenge of, you know, all these initiatives that come at people, right? Whether it's an organizational redesign, it's a process improvement project, it's a new technology that we're implementing, right? We just talked about AI. I think all of these things change how work gets done, what people get to do. And I think it's really helpful to kind of like look at all these changes that happen, right anyway and say, how will that impact the work experience of people? Will that make the job better? Right. More intrinsically motivating or will it actually make it worse? And if it makes it worth, maybe we can do something about it. And again, it's like work design. I think there's a playbook that we can apply. I think step one, get rid of the non value added work. Step two, put these fragmented jobs back together. Somebody does the whole job from start to finish or a team does it. Connect these people, give them ownership for a part of the mission, whether it's a product or a customer segment or whatever it is, and then open up the feedback channel so that people know how they're doing, right? So I think that's like the general logic there, but there are even small things that people can do. We talked a little bit about technology, right? I think one of the challenges, I think with most knowledge workers is that we don't really have a system for managing knowledge work, right? There's like emails come in and phone calls and text messages from 5,000 Slack messages and so forth. And so even from a simple perspective of preserving people's attention span, right. And allowing for some deep work, again, right? Just design simple Kanban systems that allow everybody to focus on, you know, in Agile we do this, right? We create a backlog and we say now we're going to work on this card, right? And so I think, I think there's, I think so many opportunities and it really starts with, I think from the experience of the employee, right? How do people experience this? And yes, people are different, right? Some people, right, they don't want a real challenging job, right? But I think a lot of us want, they want grows in the job. So again, right, let's look at the opportunities, let look at these Changes that we're doing anyway and say, is there any way we can. Right. We can bring that perspective to bear too.

Yeah, it's a great point. And look, it also, it also quite frankly takes a leader willing to see beyond the status quo. This so called triple wind. I mean it's actually possible, but it takes people, leaders willing to wanting to improve. There's a magnetism to the status quo that you have to resist in a sense, you know, for their employees, the customers and the company itself. You know, I mean the, the rewards are there. The evidence is overwhelming.

Yeah, you guys have mentioned autonomy quite a bit. And I, I, I'm drawn to Dan Pink's work many years ago when he wrote that book Drive. You know, mastery, autonomy, purpose for this intrinsic motivation. I really do think that, you know, this intrinsic motivation is, it is the answer, right? If, if an employee is intrinsically motivated Sunday afternoon, you know, thinking about the next day that they don't have that sinking feeling in their stomach, right? You're good. But man, if they're like, oh, or thank God it's Friday, you know, it's like really, is it that bad? You know? And so, so what do you guys think about, about the role of mastery? Like being able to get better at your work. How?

I think that's huge, right? I mean one is, I think, right again, knowledge work, right? People need to, knowledge becomes stale, right. People need to develop, people need to have opportunities to develop. So I think, and you know, a lot of jobs we're paying for that mastery, right? It's like you want like an okay software programmer or do you want to have a great software programmer? Right? You want to have an okay surgeon or a great surgeon, right? So I think we want people, I think, to perform at the top of their game. I think oftentimes we just, I think, don't, don't provide sector nourishment, right. To allow people to develop this mastery. And I think a lot of it has to do with like the chopping things into such small pieces that people just, right. It's like the, it's a story of, I guess like the three bricklayers, right? You pass. The first thing you say, right? What do you do? I put brick on brick. Second guy says, I build a wall. The third person says, I built a cathedral. Right? And if you think you're building a cathedral, you're probably going to have a very different level of motivation. But I think the topic of mastery, I think it's huge. Especially I think for this we all, I think identify with our jobs. Right. And I think by and large people want to go to work and contribute at the top of their game. So I think we got to tap into that.

And people like winning.

Right.

I mean, improvement speaks for itself. You know, there's a bit of a culture, I think piece to your question as well. And culture is, is so important. You know, the, the business leaders value results and employees value results and quick wins and improved productivity. So experiencing that becomes part of a, you know, a, a positive forward going snowball where, you know, the, the successful outcomes become, become part of the culture itself and part of the motivation and the risk to do this begins to abate, especially with early wins and getting everybody on board.

Yeah. You know, one of the big passions in our lean movement is we're constantly preaching the importance of experimenting and learning, experimenting and learning. And I think part of the secret reason that it's so powerful is that every time you run this little experiment and you learn, you do get a little achievement. Whether it, the hypothesis was confirmed or rejected, doesn't matter. Right. You've achieved something and you won. Right. So to speak. And so I feel like the faster that we can learn how to have those little micro learning moments throughout every day and every week and every month and year, my gosh, you know, that's when, that's when improvement just unlocks really.

And this really is a co creation opportunity. Right. This isn't something that sort of comes from, you know, executive on down in a, in a, in a, in a message. This is really a co creation opportunity where the change management to your point is baked into the exercise of actually getting, getting it done.

Yeah.

So every, you know, the team gets brought along the way and they get to invest in and help direct those pivots because it's based on their assessment. Right. And you know, it's, it's a wonderful example of being able to, you know, it's so much, it's so much nicer to see the work itself and self correct. It's than someone tapping you in the shoulder and said, oh, by the way, you need to do this again. Yeah, yeah.

Also I think ties to the theme of continuous improvement. Right. Quick problem solving cycles which actually has to be at the bottom of the organization because by the time it gets kicked up to the CEO and comes down again with funding and resources and so forth. Right. It's two years later. Right. So I think it needs to be, I think, driven by the front line. Right. So I think a lot of the ideas, quite frankly in the Book, Right. It's like a merger of. Right. What we know about motivation, what we know about efficient, effective processes. Right.

Yeah.

It's really just putting those two pieces together.

Yeah, fantastic. So maybe as some parting thoughts, I'm wondering if there's anything else that you guys wanted to sort of share about maybe some of the insights from the book or, you know, anything else or some, maybe just again, some practical advice for, for folks to listen and to go out and experiment with.

So one thing I would challenge people, maybe this is like a little thought experiment, is to look at their organization and try to articulate kind of like a little bit the philosophy behind how the work is designed. What's the mindset that we bring to bear here? What's our worldview of how much responsibility people can carry in these jobs? And I think it's a really fascinating exercise. I did that with a client because look at the high level people all nod their heads. But when you actually then start to break it down and apply it and say, well, let me take the lowest job in the organization. Let me look at the job description. Right. Assuming it tells the truth and you kind of picture yourself in these dimensions of, it's like, well, gee, how meaningful would that seem to somebody? How much decision making can they actually have? How would they know that they're doing a good job? Right. I think they will find it shocking. Right. And so again, I think just like going to what you already have and taking a critical look at it, I think sometimes I think is sobering and I think hopefully the starting point for, for something better.

Yeah, I think that's well said. I would just add that, you know, no one wants to lead with their chin, you know, and that doesn't have to happen in this situation. You know, many firms go away from the entrepreneurial spirit, the innovation that birthed them to begin with. You know, that's, that status quo can be, can be dragging, you know, pulling you away from improving. You know, with, with this approach, folks, folks will see progress quickly. You can iterate, you can pivot, you can experiment in, in, in small teams and small areas. This isn't sort of a student body, right, student body left. And so, you know, being so outcome oriented, you know, the results based on management theory going back, you know, many, many years. You know, I think, I think folks that, that, that consider taking a stab at this. We'll be very, very glad they did.

Nice, good stuff. So David Thomas, thanks for taking time to come on. And if folks want to connect with you guys, what's the best way.

It's probably to go to the book website. That's www.fixing-work.com and that has some information on the book. It has links right, to, to David and myself, so people can connect to us through that website. There's also links to the podcast and the newsletter and you know, they can even try the work design diagnostic that we pull together to see how well designed their own job is. So, yeah, it's www.fixing-work.com.

Probably need to dash. I'm guessing fixing work.com was already taken. Maybe.

Yeah, it's a domain dealer offered to help me secure the rights.

Oh, sure. Yeah. For your second mortgage, right?

Probably.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right.

Fixing dash Work people Dash. All right. Good stuff, man. Well, hey, and we'll link everything up into the show notes, everybody scroll down. We'll have your LinkedIn and all that kind of stuff in there as well. But hey, thanks you guys for, for coming on. This has been a lot of fun.

Thanks for having us.

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