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Ryan Deiss
Yeah, I thought it was, it was encouraging to read this because we've adopted a similar philosophy for years and years and years now. And what I've been told many times by people is, yeah, yeah, I guess that works for smaller mid sized companies, but it would never work for larger companies. And so it's nice to see that here you have a very, very large business that has implemented it and they've found what I think should be obvious, which is that if you can improve your cycle times, if you can have faster cycle times, that in general you're going to have more insight from that, you're going to, you're going to be more agile.
Roland Frazier
Hey everybody. Welcome to a We almost didn't make it episode of Business Lunch with your hosts, Ryan Deiss. Depending on where you are, whether you're watching or listening, he's coming through the microphone now.
Ryan Deiss
I'm just here, I'm effervescent.
Roland Frazier
Yes. And me, Roland Frazier, I am, if you're watching this, I am poorly lit, but maybe it's like, you know, romantically lit because it's dark, my lights isn't working. But that said, we wanted to talk about a couple of things that are kind of near and dear to our heart. And particularly as you're thinking about the first part of the year, there was an article in Business Insider where bears the people that make the aspirins and such CEO said that budgets represent the worst of corporate bureaucracy. And he decided to turn the process on its head. And so basically he went in and overhauled their whole corporate budgeting system. So when we're thinking about how are we going to spend our money, what do we think is going to come in, what's going to go out? And instead of spending time on one year to three year budgets that pretty much never happen because so many things happen in business now. There's so many tops, you know, twists and turns along the way that thinking about what your actual budget is going to be like three years from now is really just, you know, spitting in the wind. It's just not, it doesn't make any sense. So he turned it into these 90 day cycles and the goal there was to reduce bureaucracy. And, and I believe, and I'll, as we get into it, I'll give you the rest of it. But he basically said that this came out of a radical experiment at Genentech and I think he was at Genentech before and they reorganized their teams also, which is new. So I don't really think that quarterly budgeting is necessarily New. I think that a focus on quarterly budgeting and cutting out one to three year budgeting is fairly new. And the twist that to me is the, the big twist is that they reorganize their teams every 90 days. And in Bear, which is obviously a large company, they've cut 5,500 mostly mid level manager positions. So they flattened the organization. They have better communication, they've reduced their costs, they're more focused and present on what's going to actually happen over the next 90 days. It's, let's do these things in 90 days almost like a sprint, even though they don't describe it that way. And then let's put the teams together to make that happen. Then let's, you know, let's basically reorganize every 90 days. That's a lot of work. And so Ryan, I know that we've got a process and we kind of have a similar philosophy on the outlook of the time horizon, but in our scalable operating system we've got a process. You want to, number one, I'd love to hear your thoughts or reaction to that, to what I just said about what he's doing there. And then number two, I'd like to kind of talk about it in the context of how we do planning and you know, maybe, maybe we should change some things up. Maybe we should change our, you know, team reorganization every 90 days or something like that. So your thoughts?
Ryan Deiss
Yeah, I thought it was, it was encouraging to read this because we've adopted a similar philosophy for years and years and years now. And what I've been told many times by people is yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess that works for smaller mid sized companies, but it would never work for larger companies. And so it's nice to see that here you have a very, very large business that has implemented it and they've found what I think should be obvious, which is that if you can improve your cycle times, if you can have faster cycle times, that in general you're going to have more insight from that. You're going to, you're going to be more agile and that, that overall should be a good thing. Now, can it lead to more chaos if it's poorly managed? You know, of course it can. The, the idea of, of doing a comprehensive company reorganization every 90 days, I saw that and that even gave me a little bit of, you know, of pause. But yeah, this idea of, of treating the budgeting process as being a 90 day process as opposed to an annual process is something we've been on the record on for Again, for years and years and years, I believe that the annual plan is the worst unit of measurement that there is. I think the anum is a spork. It is too much time to be predictable. It's not enough time to do anything meaningful. So our planning process really starts with, let's begin with what is our three year target? And the three year target is pretty broad. I mean the three year target is just in general where we want to be in terms of revenue, profitability three years from today. Revenue, profitability and total enterprise value. Right. We're not speaking to necessarily how we're going to get there, but just what do we believe is, is possible based on everything that we know today, what we feel good about, clink champagne glasses about in three years. And the reason that we pick three years is because you really can do some pretty meaningful stuff in three years. And kind of the gold standard for that for our companies is to, for a business to go top line to bottom line in three years, meaning taking what is your current top line revenue and having that be your bottom line bankable distributable profit three years from then. But at a minimum, just about any business should expect to double in three years. Because if you can just increase 24% compounded year over year, three years in a row, that's going to double. So that's where our planning begins. And then we break that into 1290 day chunks, 1290 day sprints, where that's when we get strategic and say, okay, what needs to be true in this 90 day period to stay on track with that three year target? But similarly, each of those 90 days we have an opportunity to evaluate and say, how do we feel about that three year target? It's not like we chisel this thing in stone because we acknowledge that every 90 days we have new information. Every 90 days we've got the information on the work that we did and how the market responded to that. There's also macroeconomic changes that we can factor in. And so I, I liken it to, if you're flying a plane across the United States, you're taking off in New York City, you want to land in Los Angeles, you wouldn't simply take off and say, okay, fly west. And like we'll check in in six hours and see if we're there. Yeah, no, I mean they're constantly checking in and vectoring. And so I love the idea that here's a big company doing something pretty disruptive, saying that no, no, we're going to do these check ins every 90 days. We're not going to just set a budget for 12 months, but we are going to force this company to look at its budget every 90 days. Because now what we have, and I love one of the quotes in here, every 90 days, people can flow between teams, money can flow between teams and you're working on the most important thing for the next 90 days. Execution in 90 day cycles, we found, works the best planning out, you know, broadly in three year cycles. If you're doing that, you really don't need to do anything in a year. So that's my general thought, my general take. Now I will say the, the idea of doing a comprehensive company reorganization every 90 days, that freaks me out a little bit. But I don't get into the details on how they do that. So my guess is it's not that extreme.
Roland Frazier
It's interesting on that because he didn't really say they do a comprehensive company reorganization as much as that they reorganize the teams. And so if, if we, in like in our operating system, we basically say here's our big initiative for the quarter and here are, or excuse me, here's our, our big, like our big three for the quarter. And then we're going to have our initiatives that support each of those things. Right? And, and so I guess it's, it's in a big company because they have a hundred thousand people. So in terms of like what's the workforce reduction that they achieved from this? Because this context wise, this all came out of bureaucracy is bad. Bureaucracy, you know, causes things to go slow. A lot of bureaucracy is a result of the, you know, as a symptom of having a bloated budgeting process because lots of people get together five months before a budget is to be released and work on it for that time. They're not doing, not focusing on the things they should be focusing on. They're focused on the budget. And the budget isn't going to even be relevant after 90 days. So let's, let's kill that process, which should eliminate a lot of the bureaucrats that are in the middle of that, which would be middle management, which is what did happen. 5,500 people would only be 5.5% of their workforce that they left. So if you have a team of say 50 people, you know, you might eliminate two and a half people, but you know, if, if they're eighty thousand, a hundred thousand dollars salaries, that money's going straight to profit, you know, and so it's not insignificant. And as far as people who are saying, oh, but then you're going to fire a bunch of people, you know, well, if you can repurpose them, obviously, you know, you prefer to do that. But if you can't, then, you know, if you're bloated, you're bloated. So, so it comes in that context. In his company it might be more applicable. Like if, you know, at some point, maybe if you're 50 to 100 people in your company, it would make sense that you would be reorganizing these teams as effectively like committees. I mean, really, if you think about it, it's not any different than, you know, the popular bureaucratic thing is a committee. He wouldn't want to use the word committee because committee sounds bureaucratic. But the team that's doing this is, you know, a sprint team, you know, a focus team committee. However, you know, you want to name the rows. It is what it is. But so let's talk about that though. In, is it possible? Would it make sense in, you know, what's scalable? Have 20, 20 employees issue? Yeah. So a lot of folks that are listening to this probably don't have 100. You know, most businesses don't have 100 or more employees, certainly not 100,000. So would it be applicable to us? Because I think it definitely works for a big company because we're going to work on lowering the cost of distributing distribution in Dubai, you know, of which we have distribution teams in 57 countries. And, and, and you know, okay, well that, yeah, the people that are working on that, you might pull in an expert from, you know, global distribution, one from logistics, one from, you know, product, and then get those people on a team. But most of us in smaller companies don't really have to worry about that. So let's, let's talk about it. We got 20 people and we want to focus on, let's say retention. We want to keep the people that buy from us buying from us longer and have them not go away. So the team that we would have for that with only 20 people, would that be different, do you think, than the team that we would have if, let's say we, we solve that problem in the 90 day period and now we're like, we want to focus on acquisition. Would it make sense to. I also, I'm going to stop talking in a second but trying to get all this out. I also think that it does make sense in terms of focus because if you focus on retention and acquisition, if you focus on two goals at the same time, you're likely to Achieve neither of them well, whereas devoting all of your resources to one makes sense. So in that context, you got 20 people, you've just solved retention. Do you just put that same team on acquisition, or does this just fall apart here and only works for bigger companies?
Ryan Deiss
Yeah, I think it's a. As you describe this, what I'm realizing is this is something that we have actually done before where we've moved people around. And so let's take that specific example there. So let's decide that as a company, perhaps in the previous quarter we focused on new client, new customer acquisition. We succeeded. We checked that box. And now this created the new challenge, the new constraint of we've got all these people, but we're not keeping them as much as we would like to. Right. So now we need to solve for the new issue of retention. Right. So that's. And so that's going to be our focus, you know, for the next 90 days. So the question that you would then need to ask as a leader is, is, well, what are the resources that we need to have in place first? What are the key initiatives that need to be completed that we believe would improve those retention metrics? So you're going to make certain guesses, certain hypotheses on. We believe that if we do these things, that these things will result in an improvement in these metrics. Okay, great. Do we have the people, resources needed to complete these? Either you do or you don't. But. But then the question to ask is, even if you have the people, are they organized in such a way that they can complete these projects efficiently? And I love this as an example because it could very well make sense to say, let's take somebody from the product team, let's take somebody from the services team, and let's actually move them over for this for the next 90 days into the marketing organization. Because maybe what we decide that we need is a really significant, comprehensive, you know, indoctrination campaign, you know, in series that's going to go out. And what we know is that the marketing team has a lot more writers and copywriters and things like that. They understand persuasion. And so we're going to need to leverage a lot of those resources there that frankly, the program team, the services team doesn't have, and yet the marketing team doesn't necessarily have the product expertise to do all that stuff. Now what you could say is, well, let's just make sure that these two teams collaborate. Yeah, well, that's an adorable assumption. They're just not right. They're not. And so what it may make sense to do is say, hey, for the next 90 days, this particular person on the marketing, on the program scene, you're going to be shifting over to the marketing team. So you're going to be sitting in the marketing team meeting. You're going to be reporting to the head of marketing. Your role is on the org is going to fundamentally change after the 90 days, we could very easily see you moving back. But for the next 90 days, for the purpose of this, it makes sense for you to sit with this team. For the purpose of that. We've done those kind of things before where we've had sales, you know, marketing sit under sales, sales sit under marketing, you know, for a season. And I think it's really a good thing to do because it also eliminates silos within organizations, it eliminates turf wars within organizations. It makes it clear that the outcome is the outcome. The outcome is not to create the perfect organizational structure because if there's one thing that we know to be true, there is no such thing. The organizational structure is just whatever that structure needs to be to support the goals of the company today. To the extent that those goals are changing, it makes all the sense in the world for the organizational structure to change as well. So long winded way of saying, yeah, I think that absolutely could be appropriate in a company of one. And I think if you're setting those expectations with your team of hey, one of the questions that we're going to ask is does it make sense to shift people around in the organization and you just begin to bake this into the culture now people expect it. It doesn't come as this like shock to the system. Similar. And I'll say this and I'll kick it back over to you in a similar way. When you're looking at compensation like one of the things that we say to anybody who's on variable compensation, take sales teams for example. We say to everybody in the sales team, just so you know, every single variable compensation plan is going to get evaluated quarterly to make sure that it aligns with the company's goals. It doesn't mean that it will get updated or amended every single quarter, but expect that it might. If we determine that it that the comp needs to change to better align with the goals and you can definitely expect that it's going to get changed every two or three quarters, just know that that's going to happen. So if you set that expectation, nobody gets shocked and they all understand that it's in pursuit of the Greater goal and mission of the company. I think if it's good, if it makes sense to do that for compensation, why. Why not do that for organizational structure as well?
Roland Frazier
So for as far as the roles, like when we talk about moving people around, I think that they would occupy the same job title position that they have. It's just that there would be a formalized process for that team or, you know, committee or whatever you want to call it, to get together and meet to talk about how are we going to solve the, you know, how are we focusing on this challenge? Like, I, I don't think it's, you're now reassigned from marketing to product or program or program to marketing. It's, you guys need to talk and we know you're not going to do it. If we just hope that you're going to talk or if we say that you're going to talk, we know that from all of our company experience, it just doesn't happen. So what do you think the process would be to encourage that? Is it okay, you guys? We're doing this team allocation model thing on a quarterly basis now. We're solving for customer acquisition this quarter. The players that we believe will be, I guess that that's the first question. How do we identify the team members? Is that something that would make sense to go to. If you're a small entrepreneur, you may be, you know everything, so you just decide it's, these people are working together. But if you have a slightly more tiered organization, would you then say, hey, head of marketing, who's the appropriate person that you're going to nominate to be on this team? Like, like, how do we pick the people first? And then we can talk about meetings. My thinking is that, that if you're, if you're running the whole show, you're going to pick them. That's easy. You're just going to say, you guys are on this team, we're going to solve this problem. Or maybe it would be better than dictating that from on high to say who would like to be on that team and thinks they could make a contribution and pitch me on why you should be on that team. Because I can tell you that as we're looking at reviews and compensation and things at the end of the year, we're going to be looking at contribution, team participation, etc. So sell me on why you should be on the. I kind of like that better. What do you, what do you think? For, for the picking?
Ryan Deiss
Yes. The way that we typically do it is any time a Significant project or key initiative has been identified. Right? This is a project. This is a key initiative that we're going to greenlight to say that this must be completed to, for the company to achieve its goals for the quarter. So it's not just whirlwind, it's not just people doing their job. It's this is a special project. Every single one of these projects is going to have a project lead. So that's kind of the first big role that needs to be established. Who is the project lead? And this project lead is the driver. Right. They're the person who's ultimately responsible for the timely completion of the project. That project lead essentially gets to kind of pick their team, right. They get to say, if you're going to tell me that I got to get this thing done, then this is who I need to get this done. And it is a bit of a negotiation because, you know, maybe they're saying, I need to pull this person from this other team. And maybe the other manager is then saying, hey, you can't have that person because if you take that person. And so now it's up to the CEO to say, well, either to make a judgment call and say, well, we're going to give them that person and so we're going to let you backfill somewhere else or in that case, what projects won't get done. But this happens in small businesses all the time.
Roland Frazier
I like, pitch me. I like, okay, even in that situation, okay, team lead and team lead, you know, pitch me, pitch me on.
Ryan Deiss
Yeah, it's make the business case, make the customer case. That's the pitch. What's the business case for doing this and then what's the customer case for, you know, for doing this? But kind of the roles are there's the project lead, there's their core team, and so the core team. To your point, that core team is probably going to have some set project meetings that they're going to need to do.
Roland Frazier
I don't want to talk about the meetings yet, though. I just still, I want to, still want to go. Okay, here are options for picking. So everybody that's, that's, you know, in consuming what we're talking about here, right? So the first thing is who is going to make the decision who is going to be on the team? That's the first thing. Then who is going to be on the team and then how is the team going to interact and then how are we going to measure the team's success or non success? So on the. Who is going to Decide. I think it's small organization, flat management. Most of the companies reporting to you as the head person, that's going to be easy. I think you're gonna, you're going to pick the team. Right.
Ryan Deiss
You're the ultimate decision there because you're.
Roland Frazier
All you got right now. Then the next step is you've got say 20 to 50 people that are in the company and you've got some hierarchization of the management and you know some people that have direct reports, you don't have all of them yourself. Now one option would be you say you still make the decision for them and say this is what we're doing. This is probably not as good because you don't necessarily have buy in and it doesn't teach your managers to grow and be better managers.
Ryan Deiss
You also don't know what everybody's good at. You know, you don't have trenches like knowledge that they will about the individual team members.
Roland Frazier
So then the second way to do that would be that you're still making the decision but you're seeking input from the department heads that would be sending the people that you need to the team. Right. And then the third way would be that you have the department heads make the choice and kind of pitch you on why these are the best people. And I guess then another level would be that the department heads have their people apply to be on the team and argue for why they should get to be that. Did it miss any?
Ryan Deiss
It's specifically the project lead. So the person who's been charged with the successful, you know, timely and successful completion of a project, that project lead, they get to say and this, and it's important to say these discussions are had at the leadership level. Okay. You don't fight in front of the kids.
Roland Frazier
Right.
Ryan Deiss
That's super important. So this discussion is had at the leadership level, period. So CEO, top level executive team. That project lead is likely somebody who's on the executive team as well. And they're saying, okay, I'm going to own this project. It makes sense because it's going to be in my team. The bulk of the people who are responsible for this project are on my team. And obviously if a project can be completed by and the entire project team, that core team is already reporting to that person, then it's kind of a non issue.
Roland Frazier
But that's rarely.
Ryan Deiss
Yeah, that's rarely the case with these special projects. It's almost always cross functional and you.
Roland Frazier
Would actually be missing out if you did that. Like even if it was a marketing thing. And you're like, we want to. It's acquisition. So you know, we have in marketing the, we're the guys that pick all, you know, that do all the lead gen. But it would make sense that that would be. You would get a better lead gen product if you had somebody from product or program and somebody from. Yeah, like from the, from customer service because they would come over and tell you how to have better messaging and you know, and, and they would feed on each other. So you're kind of cheating yourself if you're not going cross function. Right?
Ryan Deiss
Yeah. We found the best way to do that is the project lead essentially gets to pick their team and they say, these are the people that I want. And usually these projects, again, they're going to have a. I know we're not getting into the meeting cadence because that can vary. But there is a general expectation that for the purposes of this project, anybody on this team is effectively direct reporting into that project lead. The project lead has the ability to reprioritize people on that team. That's a really important distinction. Right. So they can say to somebody, stop working on that and start working on this instead.
Roland Frazier
It's a distinction and it's important that you understand that may stop another thing that's going on. But what you've decided is that for this quarter you've prioritized solving this problem. So we're going to defer and you know, we're not going to have an expectation that whoever was responsible for finishing that other thing still finishes it because we've superseded, you know, their ability to do that. So that I think that's important to think about. Right?
Ryan Deiss
Yeah, exactly. So ideally, the project lead picks their team. In a perfect world, everybody agrees that that's fine. And the, the other manager says, yep, you know what I can do without that person this, this quarter. You're right, we've got some duplication that role. It's going to be tough, but we're going to buckle down and get it done, have at it. It only never works out that way. Especially in small organizations, they freak out, they're like, but I can't do this. And then, you know, welcome to business. This is why if you're the CEO, if you're the owner, you know, you get to live in the big house and drive the fast car. If you get this stuff right, figuring out appropriate resource allocation is your job. And exactly what you said. You want these two parties, the leaders to plead the case and they plead the case by making the business case. And the Customer case, you got to find alignment between those two and ultimately the CEO makes the call.
Roland Frazier
Okay, so now let's talk about how does the team get together and interact? How does the team become an actual team now that we have the members? And now what, what do you think?
Ryan Deiss
Yeah, just to kind of round out the team. So you've got, you've got the product lead, I'm sorry, the project lead. And then you've got the core team. So the project lead and that core team. That core team. Again, the project lead has the ability to task people out on that team and reprioritize people on that team. Really important distinction. Even if they're on somebody else's team, even if they're direct reporting to somebody else, the project lead can reprioritize them. Hopefully there's good communication and all that other stuff, but this is a priority that's with the core team. Now, in addition to the core team, it's also important to identify who are the support team. So the support team are just additional contributors. So additional contributors. These are folks who would just be working in and around.
Roland Frazier
Let's do it with an example so people can. So it's not so removed. So acquisition.
Ryan Deiss
Yeah, well, let's, let's go to the, to the, to the example that we were working with before, which was the helping with retention. So you've got. This is going to be led by. In this case, we decided that it's going to be the head of growth that is going to lead this particular initiative because it's going to be heavy, like marketing focus. A lot of marketing assets are going to be created. They're going to have a copywriter that they're going to have some other marketing coordinators on there and they're going to need to pull somebody from a program manager or something like that, an account manager over as well, a senior account manager who really has a lot of insight, and that's going to be your core team. Now, in addition to that, the support team might be somebody like a graphic designer. The support team might also be just another person on the, on the program side who we want to ask them some questions. The distinction between the support team and the core team is it's understood that we may go to you to ask you questions, but the project lead can't task you out and they can't reprioritize you. And so very often going back to the negotiation, sometimes like, look, I can't give you this person to be on the core team, but they could be a support team member. So you can have access to them but you can't reprioritize them. And so that's sometimes where the negotiation comes in. The last category is the stakeholders. And this is an important distinction. The stakeholders are the approvers. Very often they're not the ones that are necessarily doing the work. But it's important to determine at what stages in the project do different people get to chime in and say, do I agree with this or not? So let's say going back to the previous example, we're going to fix retention. The head of growth is going to be the project driver. Well, maybe the head of programs is like, yeah, I get that they're driving that, that makes sense. But I should kind of have some say on what ultimately gets pushed out to the people that I'm going to be communicating with. Because yeah, I mean this is going to go to retain them, but ultimately what they're experiencing through this like retention campaign that we're creating, I got to make sure that aligns with what we're doing. And so it's like, yep, totally agree. You're going to be listed as a stakeholder and so at these different milestones in the project, you're going to be invited in to approve and make sure that you agree with it. And then maybe the CEO also wants to be able to chime in at some point as well. So those are kind of the four categories. The driver, core team, supporting team, stakeholders.
Roland Frazier
Right now, do we schedule time for them to meet regularly? Do we let them do that? I guess that's the, what, what, what is the optimal way to ensure that this team is now focusing on what they're doing, but also able to do any other things they're supposed to do. Because let's say, you know, we picked retention. They're not going to work on retention 24, 7 or you know, or 8, 5, you know, if, if we're looking at the work week. Right. So, so what, how do we do that? How do we get them what they need time wise to focus on that and ensure that they are collaborating.
Ryan Deiss
It's going to differ based on teams and projects. At a minimum, these project teams are going to meet to do a project review once a week. Yeah, they're going to gather once a week. And it really is just to review. It's there for review, it's there for accountability. Some of them might even do like a daily huddle or a stand up type thing. I don't necessarily love those. I think a lot of that can be done Asynchronously, frankly, at this point where everybody, if you use Slack or something like that, they can just chime in. Here's what I got done yesterday, here's what I'm working on today. Here's where I'm stuck. I don't think you actually need to meet synchronously to do that. Just for the love of God, set up a slack group. Everybody post to it at around the same time. You check all the same boxes, but different teams are going to have their different flow. Yeah, typically it's going to be an additional weekly meeting that should be no more than 45 minutes. You know, ideally, because you're not necessarily doing the work in that meeting, but you do need this. This regular cadence and this regular check in to make sure that it's. That the project's staying on track.
Roland Frazier
I like it. Well, I think that's. I think it's worth trying this. I think we should try it. I think we should. We should just say let's look at. Because we do the budgeting already, but let's. Let's take a experimental and run this. And if you guys that are, you know, are here with us want to do the same thing, I think it's worth it to say, let's give it a try and let's see if we prioritize a thing that we want to accomplish here in the first quarter of 2025 as we record this. What is it, and who are the people that would be necessary to make it happen? Let's get that team picked and let's get them communicating four times over the next 30 days or 12 times, I guess, over the next 90 days and see how that works. I think it would be an interesting experiment, and then we can report back on it in April.
Ryan Deiss
You know, it's amazing. We've done this in the past, and it's worked pretty effectively. More recently, we have tried to silo projects into individual teams. And as we're talking through this, I realize how often projects have been stalled because an individual team couldn't get things done. And people who should have been on the core team were actually on a supporting team just because they were in it, you know, in a different department. And we should have just said, no, no, for the purpose of this, we're creating this strike team. We're creating this project team, whatever you want to call it, the sprint team. You're going to get together, you're going to get this thing done. And. And for the purpose of the next 90 days or however long it takes to get this project done. This person, you're not necessarily moving teams, but for the purpose of this period, you're effectively reporting into, you know, this, this project lead because they have the ability to task you out and reprioritize you. And everybody agrees that that's okay for this season. We've, we've done it in the past, and it's worked well. And it's one of those things that I guess it works so well.
Roland Frazier
We stopped doing it as we do from time to time with many.
Ryan Deiss
I'm sure somebody got their feelings hurt, you know, and, and, you know, somebody got their feelings hurt and, and we were like, oh, we don't want to hurt their feelings. So we stopped doing it.
Roland Frazier
Yeah. So I like it. Let's. We'll. We'll connect off, offline after lunch. This is the business launch. Right. And. And let's talk about what, what we want to do with the three main companies that we're playing with on that. I think it'd be a really good experiment. Then we can kind of report back and say, for us, it was good. You know, here's the good, here's the bad. And overall, do we think we want to continue to do that? So hopefully that was helpful, everybody. I think it's a fun thing to consider trying. It seems like it's working so far for the folks at Bear. Can it work for us in the SME space? Probably. And if you like this, please share it. Let's get lots of people doing this. And if you didn't, then, you know, hey, why didn't you like it? It was pretty good. So we'll see you next time on Business Lunch.
Hey, Roland Frazier here.
Ryan Deiss
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Roland Frazier
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Business Lunch Podcast Summary
Episode: Rethinking Corporate Budgeting: Lessons from a CEO's Radical Experiment
Release Date: January 10, 2025
Host: Roland Frasier
Guests: Ryan Deiss
In this episode of Business Lunch, host Roland Frasier and guest Ryan Deiss delve into a transformative approach to corporate budgeting, inspired by a radical experiment conducted by the CEO of Bear, a major enterprise. The discussion centers on moving away from traditional long-term budgeting towards dynamic 90-day cycles, aiming to enhance agility, reduce bureaucracy, and foster a more responsive organizational structure.
Roland Frasier introduces the topic by referencing an article from Business Insider, highlighting Bear's CEO critique of conventional budgeting as the "worst of corporate bureaucracy." Instead of committing to rigid one-year to three-year budgets, Bear adopted a system of 90-day cycles to better adapt to the fast-paced business environment.
"Budgets represent the worst of corporate bureaucracy."
— Roland Frasier [00:56]
Ryan Deiss echoes this sentiment, emphasizing the limitations of annual plans and advocating for shorter cycle times to gain greater insight and agility.
"I think that the annual plan is the worst unit of measurement that there is. I think the anual is a spork. It is too much time to be predictable. It's not enough time to do anything meaningful."
— Ryan Deiss [03:57]
Bear's approach involved not just altering the budgeting cycle but also reorganizing teams every 90 days, resulting in the elimination of 5,500 mid-level management positions. This restructuring aimed to:
"They have better communication, they've reduced their costs, they're more focused and present on what's going to actually happen over the next 90 days."
— Roland Frasier [02:00]
Ryan Deiss shares that his company has been practicing a comparable strategy, planning around 90-day sprints aligned with a three-year target. This long-term vision serves as a broad framework, while the 90-day cycles allow for tactical adjustments based on real-time data and market shifts.
"We're not speaking to necessarily how we're going to get there, but just what do we believe is possible based on everything that we know today."
— Ryan Deiss [03:57]
He further illustrates the flexibility of this approach:
"Every 90 days we have new information... it's like flying a plane and constantly checking in to adjust your course."
— Ryan Deiss [04:30]
The conversation shifts to whether this 90-day reorganization model is scalable and effective for smaller businesses. Roland Frasier contemplates the feasibility of implementing team reorganizations in companies with significantly fewer employees, questioning how to maintain efficiency without the extensive resources of a large corporation.
"So let's talk about that though. In, is it possible? Would it make sense in, you know, what's scalable? Have 20, 20 employees issue?"
— Roland Frasier [18:00]
Ryan Deiss responds affirmatively, sharing experiences from his own company where projects required cross-functional teams that periodically reassigned members based on project needs. He emphasizes the importance of project leads who can dynamically allocate resources and prioritize tasks to meet quarterly goals.
"The project lead essentially gets to pick their team and they say, these are the people that I want."
— Ryan Deiss [25:11]
The hosts outline a structured approach to forming and managing these dynamic teams:
"Again, there is no such thing. The organizational structure is just whatever that structure needs to be to support the goals of the company today."
— Ryan Deiss [21:12]
Roland Frasier underscores the importance of adaptability and clear communication in this model, suggesting that even SMEs can benefit from periodic team focus adjustments to tackle specific challenges effectively.
While the 90-day cycle model offers numerous advantages, both hosts acknowledge potential challenges:
"This discussion is had at the leadership level, period. So this is at the leadership level."
— Ryan Deiss [24:01]
Roland Frasier and Ryan Deiss conclude the episode by encouraging listeners to experiment with the 90-day budgeting and team restructuring model within their own organizations. They propose initiating a trial run for the first quarter of 2025, assessing its impact on focus, efficiency, and overall business success.
"If you like this, please share it. Let's get lots of people doing this."
— Roland Frasier [34:18]
Ryan Deiss reflects on past experiences where siloed teams hindered project progress, advocating for a more integrated approach through dedicated project teams that can pivot as needed to meet quarterly objectives.
"I think that the annual plan is the worst unit of measurement that there is. I think the anual is a spork. It is too much time to be predictable. It's not enough time to do anything meaningful."
— Ryan Deiss [03:57]
"We're going to do these things in 90 days almost like a sprint."
— Roland Frasier [02:50]
"Execution in 90 day cycles, we found, works the best planning out, you know, broadly in three year cycles."
— Ryan Deiss [04:10]
The episode offers a compelling argument for rethinking traditional budgeting and organizational structures. By adopting shorter budgeting cycles and flexible team dynamics, businesses can enhance their responsiveness, reduce unnecessary bureaucracy, and align more closely with their long-term objectives. Listeners are encouraged to consider how these strategies might be tailored to fit the unique needs of their organizations, regardless of size.
Visit businesslunchpodcast.com/epic for more insights and to access additional resources on transformative business strategies.