The Wicked Podcast

Matt Casey: The Management Delusion

• web@thewickedcompany.com • Episode 45

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We talk to Matt Casey, project manager, author and nomad about the complex role and shift for modern companies towards project management.

Author page: http://dothings.io/
Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08FPGJX8K

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Music: 'Inspired' by Kevin MacLeod Song: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3918-inspired License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Marcus Kirsch:

Welcome to the wicked podcast where we read the business books you don't have time for. I'm Marcus Kirsch. And I'm Troy Norcross. And we are your co hosts for the wicked podcast.

Troy Norcross:

So Marcus, are you normal? Are you average? Are you usual? Do you fit into a nice, neat, square well defined box?

Marcus Kirsch:

Probably not. And probably not many people do even though they might pretended to. Yeah.

Troy Norcross:

And you know, what? Neither do I. And, of course, neither does our podcast. But I have been dealing with people all week long, that only know how to deal with situations that are nice and neat and square and perfect. I am an American, Brit expat in Portugal who is self employed, and trying to get a mortgage. And I may as well have three heads and be from Mars. And that's what's going on with me. But enough about me, Marcus, are we talking to somebody else today?

Marcus Kirsch:

Yes, yes. And I'll pick up right there where you stopped Mr. farmboy? Who is now into blockchain? Yeah, so we're talking to Matt Casey today and his book, The management delusion. But interesting, and I, I think I tried to get in there somewhere and a bit harsh, or talk about the idea that we should get rid of tonnes of managers. And I didn't quite get into that. But we talked a bit about that. But what were your insights and takeaways from the interview?

Troy Norcross:

It was a very interesting conversation. I, I liked his idea that instead of having true collaboration, you pass decisions around. So in a group of five people, you let each one person make a decision. And then by default, when they have the authority, maybe they are more collaborative, but at the end of the day, the buck stops with them. That was an interesting approach. I'm not sure how it works out in the wild, but it was an interesting approach. And the other one was, and we hear it a lot. And are we talking about managers? Or are we talking about leaders, and his view was don't get hung up on the semantics, there's a little bit of management that all leaders have to do, and a lot of leading that all managers have to do. And they're, they're not black and white, you know, the world is not black and white, it's grey. And so those are my two takeaways from today. What about you?

Marcus Kirsch:

Yeah. So apart from the fact that you mentioned that, as one of the insights sort of, is the idea. Yeah, the collaborative conversation that never gets to a point. But the second year, actually, where he said, the second you apply responsibility to a decision, suddenly, everyone agrees and disagrees on a totally different level. And so I actually quite liked the idea that if we actually put responsibility quicker on people might get quicker decisions. And less people chipping in. But the main one for me was that, and he talked a little bit about a lot of leaders agreeing with him to say, okay, we can manage this differently, we can do it differently. That's all great, let's not hyper or micromanage this here. But then, in reality, they don't, they don't actually do it, right. So and what he furthermore said is that just hiring a manager of a team who can actually do that and let people do their work, doesn't work either if leadership doesn't support it. So leadership has to set the culture leadership has to be brave. And I liked it when he said, like, sometimes leader hire me to hire a little bit extra courage into the organisation. So you know, leaders need to be a bit more courageous to let people do what they're good at. And there's plenty of research and examples showing that productivity goes up, people can go home in time, people will manage the time better if they are able to do what they're actually trained to do, rather than being pushed in a certain direction, despite the expertise. So I quite like that, you know, bring bring out the leaders, leaders need to take on the same new responsibility that some people's in team need to take. And, you know, let's do that.

Troy Norcross:

And before, before we started recording, we were talking about how he has you know, he's currently homeless because he gave up his flat. He spent time in South Africa, he spent time in Egypt. I think there was at least two other countries that he'd been bouncing around. And so I think he was elected Anything within his own personal life is the way he embraces courage is, you know, not absence of fear, but taking action in spite of fear, even in the middle of a pandemic. But rather than talking about going to a nother country, where should we go, Marcus?

Marcus Kirsch:

I don't know. You tell me, Troy.

Troy Norcross:

Let's go to the interview.

Marcus Kirsch:

Hello, everyone. Today we're here with Matt Casey. Hello, Matt, and thank you for joining us. Hi, thanks. It's great to be here. So as usual, we start from the top, please tell our listeners who you are and why you wrote the book.

Matt Casey:

Okay, so I mean, the questions do actually fit quite well together. So the book, I ended up writing, because I realised that probably most of my career, ended up disagreeing with the entire career I'd had, I'd worked in management, since I was like my mid 20s. Ended up being that kind of go to guy and every company for management theory, and this is how you're supposed to management manage people, and I got into management training, I'd had a bunch of terrible jobs. When I was younger, I left school when I was 14, which gives you a whole load of experience with terrible managers pretty pretty quickly. And for a long time, though, I built most of my career around this idea that work is terrible for a lot of people, because the managers aren't good enough. So we have to make the managers better, because otherwise work will be terrible for people. And then the reason I wrote the book was, I suddenly had this realisation that this is, we're never going to make enough people good at this, it's too difficult. So many people need to be managers, the innate needs that the innate sort of personality traits that you need in order to be good at so few people have, and this just isn't gonna work. Like the only way we can ever make work better for most people is to make it so managers really can't be in the way as much that we don't need to be as good. Do you don't need as many of them. And I ended up completely shifting my focus of the way I was doing my work to instead of saying, Okay, how can I be a great manager or make other people be great managers to just how can I make it so that we don't need to be here? How can we achieve the same things, but without really doing as much work so that people need better at it? And the book was, so the result of me trying that stuff out and seeing what works and what didn't?

Marcus Kirsch:

Lovely? So when you say that, it's interesting, because there's other books around there that pick up on similar themes. And you know, and system theory, or organisational theory and system x and system y in a one that says, you need managers, so people actually do the work and others actually, and the other system saying, actually, people want to work, they want to do their thing. And managers, as you said, might be in the way. But we were running with the other classic one with a very top down and manager are required kind of system. And then there's books that talk heavily about self organisation, and self organised teams. So when you look at that, is that sort of the area where you're sitting is when you say they're doing less and less? How far would you go with this, then? Is it sort of that you're saying, want to actually get rid of managers or redistribution or repurposing?

Matt Casey:

Yeah, I mean, it's strange, I think they still need to exist, I think the issue to me is that, when we pick a manager, especially in functional teams, the manager gets picked by another manager. And then so if you're, if you're putting it, you put a manager in charge of your design team, for example, every single designer now, that's their manager, regardless of how their personality fits with that person, regardless of whether this is the person they naturally, like have would have a relationship that with that they naturally look up to, that's just their manager. So from that point on in that company, designers now have to have that person. And that seems that just makes no sense to me. But I don't go as far as to say that they should have this like flat structure. There were no managers, everyone just self organises. But I think if you let people say self organise, the natural managers do kind of emerged. When I put this in place the first time, there were managers that were that emerged that wasn't necessarily their job title. There were definitely people who were in charge of stuff. We had someone who if if I was going to say what what her title was issue was something to do with company culture. It was if you put it into another, another job role, he said, this is who's in charge of our culture. And she's like a, like an HR person, maybe jazzy works in QA. But if you didn't behave the way you were supposed to behave, if you if you kind of broke if you were trying to take advantage of the way the company works, you can be damn sure she'd have called you out on it. She'd have been the person that did that. And she earned that right, just from being who she was. Other people looked at other people respected. She had an ability to talk to people and they would listen. So I think those roles emerge in teams naturally. And I think the only reason they don't mind Most of the time, is because we put someone there, and there's no vacuum. So far, if you say on the design team, this person is the design manager now, whether they if they're not the best suited for that role, there's no space for whoever is the best suited for that role to sit in, to move into it. So yeah, I think it's not so much that I'm saying there should be no structure, I think the structure can kind of form itself people will pick their managers and usually do.

Marcus Kirsch:

Yeah, I think it's, it reminds me of I remember, having worked with some people, and some people in some organisation that I won't name. But it was the usual thing where people were quite happy with their job. And the second, they had to move into a management position, they didn't quite enjoy it, because it wasn't quite there. So Exactly. It's a sad, isn't it doesn't come natural to everyone. It's a tricky job, at best, you'll end up getting picked by a manager, instead of, as you said, naturally evolving. So are you therefore saying that we're best at trying to create a context within which these characteristics can naturally come up? Or the right things like natural?

Matt Casey:

Yeah, I think so. And also, it's not always the right and the same person for everything. So I've noticed later in my career, as I grew up, and started to mature and accept that I wasn't just brilliant at everything, I realised that I'm a really good leader and manager for when stuffs going wrong. Or if I if I step into a team that is not great things aren't working well. The company is a bit of a mess. I'm great at fixing that to get it to a point where it's no longer a mess. I'm not a good manager for making it better than that. Like once it's good and fine. And working for that next step of Okay, how do we make how do we make good grades are not that person. And actually, there's different scenarios wrong cognitive, if people are panicking, I'm quite good. If people are calm and done not as good, I'm good at dealing with mess. The way I think if you don't have defined roles and defined, so if this is your leader in every circumstance, then actually you can have different leaders for different circumstances because people just naturally step forward. So I found that my attention, but normally go to the things that weren't working, I'd step in there, fix that fix the things that weren't working. And other people would step into, oh, we can make this better. And I could just move away. It wasn't that I was like this overload of everything at all times. But I think Yeah, what it comes down to is, if you don't have the role, or if you specifically say the role doesn't exist, you do leave this vacuum, which people can step into, which takes a huge amount of bravery. And I understand why people don't do it. But I think it will always happen because I think people who want leaders will will seek to find them. And people who want to lead will will try and lead. So it kind of does just emerge in a group.

Troy Norcross:

I got a couple of things, the feedback on that. I've said for a long time about myself. I fix things, and I start things. I don't run things. Yeah, there's a completely different set of skills for running things than for fixing things, or from going zero to one and starting things. Exactly. I definitely relate to that. You've used the word leader there a few times that I was going to pull you up on that a lot of people get wrapped up in the semantics of managers versus leaders. And there's a huge level of kind of cultural shift happening that we don't need managers, managers are 20th century managers are obsolete leaders are what we need. Where do you fall in all of that? And what is the role of a manager versus the role of a leader in the management delusion?

Matt Casey:

Sure. So I remember used to, I used to kind of obsess about that difference myself a bit. And then I think obviously, if you try and do management, or try and do leading either either one, the traditional way, I think it's all very well saying they're very different things. But the fact is they do impact each other. So you could be a great leader. But if we're asking you to do the management stuff, and you mess that up, the people who would have followed you don't follow you, because they're annoyed with you because you missed a performance review up, or you didn't deliver the feedback in the right way. Or you messed up their pay review. So you being bad at one role will impact your ability to do the other one. So so if you're a great manager, you don't have that sort of natural if you're sorry, if you're a great manager, it's not going to make people more like inspired by you in the leadership ways and they don't even help each other. So yeah, I don't think it was really ever possible to separate those roles, I think because they do get in the way even though they are different things. But I do think the management that you can get rid of so the leaders emerge. So I think if you automate or you decentralise the management stuff, the leaders can then lead without having to mess it up by being bad at stuff because I'm actually a terrible manager or you say that it's like I could do well at the job. Even though I know all the theory, I don't execute it very well, I would consistently get that wrong. But I think I can make up for that by being an outcome quite. So lucky, I can inspire people, I guess in certain situations, I think I makes up sometimes for being a bad manager. But I think just getting taking that bit off our plates and letting other letting people self manage letting people self organise, or giving us tools so that we don't have to spend all of our time and effort during this management stuff. I think leaders can just emerge, but probably a shorter answer to the question is, I think the leaders are critically important. I think the managers less so.

Marcus Kirsch:

And when we when we look at that, so we have leadership now added, and as you said, or as you say, in particular, in the beginning of the book, there's so many roles and responsibilities that managers are stuffed into today's manager roles, for one reason or another. One of the other aspects you mentioned is decision making, decision making is there will be another follow up questions around data on that. But decision makers as a single position has also become sort of a challenged idea in terms of you know, cross disciplinary teams, listen to Everyone gather all the data have a balanced view on what the problem is, look at Google's research on the best teams are not the ones with the strongest decision makers and the highest skills, they're actually the ones who communicate best, and so on, and so on. So there's a lot of shift towards colour collaboration, which seems to potentially contradict a sole decision maker in a team. You talk a bit about decision making. Can you elaborate sort of how that works for you and what you use on that, please?

Matt Casey:

Yeah, I mean, I think I might disagree with the idea that sole decision makers. My problem of collaboration is that when we hear talked about, so we should bring in collaboration, and you know, the best decisions are made in this great collaborative ways. I agree. But it's don't always mess that mess in half. Because what I see actually actually happening is loads of people just getting a room shout at each other and can't agree on everything and take ages about making a decision. And then there's no one who can just make the call, like, so every decision takes an age. And I don't actually see them being right, more often than someone's going, Oh, they will just do this. But it doesn't seems to me like we waste more time trying to get it right. And then don't get it right, more of the time. And it's not to say that I don't believe theoretically, it's better. I just think when it comes to the execution, we don't see most companies don't seem to get that collaboration, right? A lot of a lot of the book came down to this idea of like, I understand what we're trying to do, but given the fact we keep failing, shouldn't we try and do something just a bit easier? So I think right, where I came down to is the idea that every decision should have a decision maker. So you just you make this decision. Now you should be listening to other people. But this one's yours. Like just make it when you're ready to make it. But we need to be genuinely way more open to the fact that it's fine to mess stuff up. Because I think, obviously, that's not a new idea. Like, yeah, we should be fine making mistakes. You know, I've been hearing that for decades, just competition, just embrace that. But I think we say it a lot. But I haven't seen any real evidence of that being true. What actually happens is, we say we're fine with it. And then the moment a mistake happens, there's a big Inquisition as to how did that mistake happen? And what can we do differently next time? How do we stop this mistake happening again, instead of just recognising and say, Oh, yeah, the mistakes are part of it. Like, yeah, we made the mistake that went wrong, that was fine. The reason it went wrong is because it was just quicker to go wrong sometimes. So yeah, I, I think in a perfect world, collaboration would work really well. We'd be able to pull in the ideas or everyone else, we'd be able to compute that in a way that everyone was able to communicate brilliantly and in not lead to conflict, but I just never ever see it. And I think aiming at something a bit more realistic is probably to say, Tell you what, give everyone decisions to make make sure they like give them some at least a framework for making sure they can't cause too much hassle. If they if they make the wrong one. check in on where it's going. So that to me, you have to come to a point I think where people are okay with being wrong afterwards, instead of okay with being wrong with electronics stop themselves being wrong in the first place.

Troy Norcross:

I used to call it khumba your management circle and hold hands and sing Kumbaya before they came to any kind of a conclusion or any kind of an answer. Yeah, and it's a it is a cultural thing to a certain degree. I think there are more consensus driven cultures and more kind of a hierarchy. Your authority driven culture is not every culture, Steve Jobs, you know, kind of lead and then we kind of have to accept that those are different. You can't escape that by There's a new generation of people coming into the workforce, millennials and Gen Zed, and they have a completely different view about how things should be done. They seem to show up, you know, roughly the day after they graduate from either high school or graduate from from uni, and they assume to become Vice President, Senior Vice President, or put on the most important powerful projects there ever are in the world. How do you, how do you communicate to those people that are, are entering the workforce with Miss set expectations?

Matt Casey:

Yeah, that's a tough one, isn't it? So I'd like to believe I knew how to do that, to be honest. I suspect I probably quite jarring to those people in the way, the way I like work to be done. Yeah, really, to be honest, I think the honest approach would sort of work, I need to say to those people that here's the deal. Like it's just outright saying that's your expectations are over kind of makes sense. But yeah, I think there's a kind of disconnect, actually, in terms of what their expectations are, because all of the data says that they want more autonomy, right. And they know they want autonomy at work. But also, I don't think they really want risk, in the same ways seems like actually making those decisions, and then dealing with the fallout from them isn't something that we'd like, either. So that's probably confusing in that sense. But to me, I think giving people the thing they asked for when explaining that there's consequences generally works. And I think there was an interesting thing I found when I first moved to this idea of just you know, what you can do whatever you want to do, which was I had a bunch of people that work for me, not like closer to my age and fairness, so possibly different with that generation, who pretty much challenged every decision I ever made. So I was I think we were only something that like I was making them, I think we should do this lead to 100 different reasons why it would go wrong, and why we shouldn't do it, and why we should do something else. So I thought I was worried about when I first put this in place. So they're just gonna run off and do crazy stuff. The the stuff they were asking to do before, maybe they didn't make a great deal of sense. But actually, the moment I said I was actually on you, and it's your responsibility, all of a sudden, my opinion mattered. All of a sudden, as you wanted me to tell them because they're like, Oh, wait, hang on, if this goes wrong is going to be my fault. Okay. What do you think I should have called now I can tell you before and as I think you should do this, so I can't believe you are going to do this. This is ridiculous. I think the actual responsibility would probably shifts, a shift a lot of people's mindset. And when people feel like they don't have the responsibility, they yell that they want it. But if you actually give it to them, they're a bit more open. It's much easier sounds

Marcus Kirsch:

sorry. Yeah, that sounds quite. And yeah, you talk about that. And again, it goes a bit into the self organising. But, you know, just letting people do the way they want to do it is, again, sounds like, I think that's what everyone wants. Everyone would like to do that. And we have just classic old Hiroki thing where more likely people will tell you what to do. So you're quite pushing back on everything. The second you actually gain the responsibility, as you said, Do you think that, then that really fixes exactly that? So but then it leads to kind of a distributed responsibility, in a way, which might be a good thing? Um, and I think because you're moving that from the managerial centralization, maybe? Sorry, you

Matt Casey:

Yeah. So what I found with that was this idea of, let's say, the way if you take taking a decision being made with the two different approaches, one was like a collaborative decision making with five different people, and you're you have five different students to make. And you get this same committee to make the decisions and they're all equally responsible for the outcome. I think if you put those five individual decisions into that, they're going to talk forever, argue forever, battle forever and move really, really slowly. I think if we're totally just even at random, if you said, okay, it's five decisions to make each one of you is going to make one of them. Like, you're responsible for what happens but talk to everyone else don't make a stupid decision. I think what you'd love being you get final say, so you can talk to everyone here. Don't make a dumb one. But at the end of the day, we're gonna do what you want to do, you're in charge. I, I think that all the same conversations happen. I think they're far more open. But I think is better because the person making it is going to put an effort in but they also know when to shut it down. I also think that there's this kind of mutually assured destruction that comes in now I'm not going to be not going to give you too much hassle on your decision. Because actually, I've got another one. I've got to make my one so I'm hoping you're going to leave me alone a bit as well. Like I there's a bit more give and take. We're not in the same thing. But I think at the moment these decisions by committee, what happens is everyone dies on every hill. But the number of meetings I was in, when I would just look at it's like do we do we care about this? Do I know Arguing because it seems like the best but aren't we arguing for when we're doing nothing, because we're all worried about this edge 1% that we're arguing about of potential results. And I'm, I think that's what the decision by committee does. And you can actually bypass it by just saying, This Is Us the committee, but the decision is one person, but not always the same person, you have to share it around, share each decision around. I found that that, that works for me far, far better. And when I say it's not, obviously, you're handing out the different decisions, it's just a really simple example, the way I shared goals and give anyone individual goals. So here are the company goals, do stuff that helps us achieve those that you think helps achieve those, bring people in if they agree, and the moment someone's got that. So I said I was going to do this, this is the thing we're trying to do. This is my thing, and I make decisions about it. And then they talk to the people involved a day, they're open to it, and then they go, and if it helps great than if it doesn't, what I messed up, then we we do something differently next time maybe like that same process, but But yeah, probably not the same thing.

Troy Norcross:

So what about managing the other direction? What about managing up? Yeah, how do you? How do you manage your bosses? And this comes to the other half of the other question that we started to ask you about decision making, and everything being data driven. Everything's driven by something on a spreadsheet from somebody in there, the CFOs office, and you can't put morale into a spreadsheet, you can't put your employee happiness into a spreadsheet, when you move the office out to White City. Yeah, that actually works, you know, in the middle of an organisation managing down, you've given us some good insights, how do you manage up? So I think managing data?

Matt Casey:

Yeah, so I think that bits passivity is a bit just has to go like i i think that the times, I've beaten myself up most as a manager at things where I'm aware and know that I'm the one trying to make sure I'm doing right by my staff. So I'm in charge of their pay rise. And you've got this budget that I'm allocating around, sharing out around people, and I just thought this is insane, like, you shouldn't manage up, they shouldn't be need to manage up because I think we need to take all of that away. And so here's the deal. Everyone is you're in charge of your own happiness at work you really are. So I don't think anyone should ever give you a pay rise, there should be someone who asked for you, it's your turn is your job. So whether you should be paid more, and you should be able to go to directly to HR. So here's the deal, this is what I'm worth, this is why. Same with your working hours, you should be making those choices yourself. If you're not producing, if you're not producing stuff, live you not in the office, other people should notice, I don't think you need a manager to do that. I don't usually ask you permission, pretty much for anything at work. So I don't think a manager I think having the manager as a blocker for those things just doesn't work like the best we the best we can be is not in the way. So yeah, I think taking them out of that process is what you need to really do. Like, I think I mentioned in the book that whenever you talk to somebody says that they love their manager, you always hear they let me let me do this. And let me do this. They let me do this. It's like what you so they don't actually do anything. They don't stop you doing something else. Like that's what a good manager normally does. So yeah, I think that upward management at the moment that's necessary. I think that's, that's a mistake in that relationship. I have quite the verbiage. hippyish is the word I don't think it's healthy for anyone to have someone they have to ask permission for don't think it's good for us. I mean, it's good for the way we think, think it's too easy for us to end up being stupid when someone else can give us permission to do things. And I think taking that away, makes people happier, better at their job, and more likely to do well more responsible. So I think the moment there is any need for upward management, I think whatever that is, just needs to be taken out and people should be responsible for themselves.

Marcus Kirsch:

And that den reminds me of because again, there's just so many nice echoes with what other people have seen in self managed teams where managers were really taken away or just became an enabling facility. And, you know, productivity numbers went up in those cases by basically people suddenly feeling very differently towards their job, and being able to do what to do in their own pace in their own way, but with the same results, where companies scrapped overtime, and they had no no loss in productivity, do the opposite, right? Yeah. Because people knew they could go home earlier which which, especially these days, I think after more than a year of COVID when you're at home and there's family and kids and whatnot. There's a lot of people who would love to do it and know it from friends who work in a cultural environment where it's it's looked down upon it If you leave early, even if you've done your job, which makes no sense whatsoever, and people get stressed out about like, I want to get home to my kids earlier, because I'm actually done with my work today. And why shouldn't I be doing them? people kill time do absolutely nothing for another hour, and then go home. Yeah. And a lot of that. Yeah, please.

Matt Casey:

Yeah, I think it's exactly that the problem. The problem when you have, it kind of taps into this data thing is where I think the moment you have a manager, it's so even if the manager doesn't care, I actually learned I remember being early in that role. And when I first moved into that role, I'm always quite relaxed. I used to feel like maybe I would be judged by people senior to me, because my team were leaving early. So I'm not wanting to I need to keep you here. So that I don't look like I'm not doing my job. And you think these things just, it's just this sort of self fulfilling man is when no one really, no one really agrees with it, you're just doing it because you feel like you're supposed to do it. And it does come down to this idea of, I don't know, the moment you're responsible for someone else. And their behaviours, I think you're naturally going to create a problem that everyone should be responsible for that how they behave at work, and what they produce a work. And the moment you get to a state, I think where someone else is going to be responsible for what someone else does. That's just a recipe for problems. I think you see it relentlessly. Well, why? Why actually, why does mean managing a team that does well, reflect well on me, really, if I don't do the work, and you can end up in situation, I've been at it having had lots of bad managers, I have actively done a bad job before. So I didn't like my manager, and I hated the idea of him getting credit for me doing well. So I thought if I do my job, well, this guy is going to get credit for that. I hate that. So I'm gonna do it badly. Well, that's just, that shouldn't even be possible. If I do a bad job, the only person who's really suffering for that is me. But it wasn't it would have been him. And the company overall suffered. Because I was petty, but lots of people are.

Troy Norcross:

So can I kind of bring us back to where you started? Show you started by saying, you know, I'm good when things are a mess. I'm good when things are unclear? How do you deal with kind of teams, and make them more comfortable with ambiguity and more comfortable with uncertainty? And I hate to say it, but we always have more questions than we have time, this is probably going to be the last question. So I can throw in whatever additional thoughts you'd like to have at the end

Matt Casey:

show. Okay. So yeah, to be honest, I would say the answer that questions is probably the biggest failure to date in my career in terms of being able to get people comfortable with it. And I've had, I must have had the same conversation with founders so many times, and it's infuriating. I tell them all this stuff, they say they don't like hierarchy, I say, here's a way you can be this company, do you think you want they agree with everything? And then don't do it. Stick to these rigid hierarchies, because you're so comfortable with it. Getting people comfortable with it. Strange, the logic doesn't seem to be enough. And I think where I've come to is I think that's actually the role of the leaders. And I think that's actually probably the thing where I've historically, most said, like, I'm good at some things. I think that's probably the one skill I have when I'm there, that has allowed me to have a good career, which is that when people are going to do something, there's someone who can say, Yeah, that's a good idea. Let's do it. I'm going to do it. Yep. It's just I always say that people, like can outsource a bit of courage from me. And it's just because I'm optimistic and right. Yeah, if you do that, I'll probably work. Let's go. So yeah, my honest answer to it is I'm not really sure how to get people confident about without them having someone who is. So maybe what teams need is the scattering of people who are like, yeah, that's fine. We can do that. But it's, there's a, there's a problem there. Because if you're responsible for it, but someone else gave you permission, are you really just moving the blame over? But yeah, the truth is, I think that's probably the thing that gets in the way of us, moving away from these structures that we all know don't work is that we're all a bit scared of it actually being our responsibility. And it's nicer when it's nicer when you can share the blame out it's a bunch of other people. What's the one other person? So yeah, I don't know. All right.

Troy Norcross:

Well, thank you so much for your time today. Marcus, any last comments?

Marcus Kirsch:

Yeah, I think just to say that just pick up on what you literally just said. So I think there's a lot of fear out there. And the idea of hiring a little bit of more courage into the organisation. I think that is what probably a lot of organisations should really rather do. So thanks, Matt. Thanks for your insights. And thank you for being with us. Great, thanks a lot. It's great chatting to you.

Troy Norcross:

You've been listening to the wicked podcast with co host, Marcus Kirsch and me, Troy Norcross,

Marcus Kirsch:

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