← The Ops Experts Club Podcast
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the Ops Experts Club. If you're at all interested in anything we talk about here in this episode, go ahead and check out the description down below and click any of the links there.
- [00:09]
B
Or if you just want to know
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A
more about us, click the links below. Now on to the episode
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B
Ops Experts Club. Yeah, not everybody knows this, but I know this is that a lot of times when you're in your thinking mode and you're like going from screen to screen, you actually humor your favorite show tune, you know what I mean? Which could be really one of a couple and like, it depends on how subconscious we are. If it's in your deep subconscious, I feel like it's either going to be Raiders of the Lost Ark number one, Jurassic park number two. Are there any other show tunes that sometimes you feel like you default to?
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C
I don't think so.
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B
No. Those are good ones. And then sometimes when you're feeling really wild, you just start humming a tune. None of us know and it's pretty cool. Yes. So quirky facts about Taran Turner that none of you wish you knew and now do know. So great to see you office experts. Taran Turner, amazing to see you this fine day. How's the day been for you thus far?
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C
It's been splendid, thank you. How has your day been?
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B
Dude, your matching game is strong today. I just want to say you got the gray hat on. Kind of works with the gray pop in your sweatshirt. I mean that, I mean awesome pleated, like button up sweater jacket. That's pretty awesome, dude. And you can pop it. Pop it like it's hot. Love it.
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C
Popped it.
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B
That's awesome. My day is good. You know, I have started at the beginning of the week doing what I call taking back Mondays, which is a throwback to the early 2000s pop wonder band called Taking Back Sundays. But I'm taking back Mondays because Mondays a lot of times start pretty stressful for me, you know. So we record the show on Mondays and I thought, you know what, I'm going to actually go out into the hills, like go up to the wild, get out into the pine and just take some time thinking and putting together my week and putting together things I want to be thinking towards about the business, working on the business rather than in the business. So it's taken my Mondays, which typically for years now have been super stressful and anxiety laden, dreading days, dreading Monday. It's actually changed my game, which I've really appreciated.
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C
Wow, that's so great. I'm so proud of you.
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B
Thank you dude, thank you. I figured. And we have this amazing business that serves all these clients. Like, we're like 31 clients right now. 19 different team members. And I'm going to still roll into monthly.
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C
Super.
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B
Why don't I take some time and, like, get my head on a little bit straighter? So. Only took me 11 years of owning a business. Taren. Crazy.
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C
It's never too late to learn.
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B
You can always teach an old dog new tricks. Taran, I don't care what they say. I'm going to be 51 this year, and I'm still learning new stuff. How about that? It's also going to be 12 years. The Colab team's been around this march, which is pretty crazy. This march that we're in right now, apparently. This March that we're in. 12 years crazy. So, Taryn, it is March. As I just said, you never supposed to talk about dates on podcast because you want them to be timeless. But I just mentioned Monday and March, so, like, we're just breaking the rules. Let's talk about something that I think is very important as we wind up March coming to April, when it comes to questions. Quarterly evals, quarterly evaluations. Taran, tell me what you think about quarterly evaluations. Good idea, Bad idea. Something we do? Something we don't do? Something you recommend others do.
- [03:16]
C
Yeah. Quarterly evals does not fit the theme of timeless because they are quarterly. You could do them anytime you want to. But we're just going to give you one example, and that's a quarterly eval.
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B
Also true.
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C
Are they good? When is it not a good idea to evaluate?
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B
Um, that's what I feel like.
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C
So they're very important. Obviously, you want to be hiring the right people. You want to make sure that we're doing the right job. And you might have thought one thing when you hired them, but you got to check back in with them over time to see how they're progressing. People change. We grow. Sometimes we do the opposite of grow, which is shrink, unfortunately. It happens. You can get comfortable.
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B
No.
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C
Yeah. Aaron knows about shrinking.
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B
I haven't experienced it yet, but I hear it's coming. I actually.
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C
Is it. I love it.
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B
I think I've gotten a little taller. I mean, that's just me. I mean, maybe not, but I think I have. So that's the thing.
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C
Well, the new glasses definitely increased your posture.
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B
Right. I've been noticing. I've been trying to stand up a little straighter, too.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Jaron, what are the evals? Eos has a great system. EOS is Entrepreneurs operating system by Gino Wickman. The book Traction EOS has a system they use for quarterly evals that I think are pretty. Is pretty awesome. The thing I like about it, it's called a 5. 5. 5. The thing I like about it is. And you can find, you know that online or I think it'd be a great thing for us to give to people too, Taryn. I think that would be a nice gift for us to give. So maybe I'll give you a little incentive towards the end of the show on evals. So we'll talk about that in a second. But the thing I like about eos's quarterly eval system is super simple, right? Like, it's not four pages long. I know when I worked at the credit union, when I ran project management, before I started the code lab team, we did evals every year. And it was like this super long form that I had to fill out and I had to self eval and then my boss had to eval me. And then it was like depending on what they came up with. It was very cryptic on, so did I get a good score? Did I not get a good score? What does that mean for my pay? And so I think that the great thing about a quarterly eval system is you're checking in with your people on a quarterly basis so that when you come to an annual evaluation, it makes it very straightforward on how they've been performing to know are they in fact going to get a raise this year? Are they not going to get a raise? And we've been having very honest conversations with them all the way through because the 555 is very conversational.
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C
Yeah, it's great. And I've been on the giving end and the receiving end. Aaron, I don't know if you've received one a long time, have you?
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B
I have not received one in a heck of a long time. I should let you just. But I will say this. There is a part of the 555 where everybody evals me, right? Because whoever's getting the 555 gets to vote me off the island. They can tell me how I'm lining up with the ethos, you know, which I think is.
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C
That's true. And that's. That's another great point about it, is if you've got some confident people and you're confident in yourself and you guys are open and honest, you can receive feedback from people you're evaluating too, in a constructive way or just in a really jerky way, as some people like to do. But either way, it's. It's a good back and forth.
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B
I love it. So typically the, the whole idea of a 5, 5, 5, what that means is EOS would say there should be three to five ethos, or we call them ethos, but essentially whatever it is that makes up the core of your business by way of core values. Right? So three to five core values. Three to five key roles that every role should have in the organization, and then three to five rocks that should be assigned to every person within the org. So what that means is it's a five. Five, five. We're going to come to these quarterly evals and we're going to say, hey, how does each individual line up with the three to five core virtues? Right. The. We call it the ethos at the collab team. And then we're going to go. And that's where we just talked about. They can rate me and I rate them, right? They rate me. I rate them on how are we stacking up. For me personally, I'll actually read through the ethos every single 5, 5, 5 with every single 5 with every single person I do it with. So that they. The ethos doesn't just become a static document, something that we just talk about. It's on the wall. Maybe it's on a plaque, maybe it's. It's on our website, but nobody knows what it is. This way somewhere. We're reviewing every quarter with every person. The. These are the things that are important to us. And then how does that person that's being evaluated line up with the core ethos? And then how does the evaluator line up? Taryn, let's maybe break down each part of the five, five, five a little bit. So what do you think about ethams? Taran, what do you think about having three to five, like core virtues, core things that your business should be built on?
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C
Oh, I think it's absolute necessary.
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B
Yeah.
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C
You know, it's one of those things where you don't really know what you're getting into if there's no core values or ethos or, you know, guiding values or whatever you want to call them.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Before you know it, you could be. You can be in the middle of something you didn't even expect.
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B
I think a lot of businesses are like that, right. They. They started doing something. It started with an entrepreneur, right. The entrepreneur had an idea. He was probably a solopreneur just doing it for himself. What the heck does he need an ethos for? Like, he just, he just came up with a new shtick. He just came up with a new product. He just came up with a new service. Whatever it was she came up with, like to get it out there and then it really starts taking off, right. So then as it takes off you're like, oh my gosh, I need help. So then you pull in your whatever it takes, right? Like all your folks that, like your, your mother, son, brother, whatever it is that, your best friends, your nephew, whatever it takes to get this thing under control. But before you know it, you have three or four or five or 10 people working for you. And then that's when it's like, man, we better determine what is it that we're all about here. Is it just about the product? Is it just about the services? Or is there something bigger that is a key differentiator that makes us different? And I think it's really important and it's something that a lot of companies surprisingly have not fleshed out.
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C
Yeah. And the other reason why you, you can get really confused there is everybody you've hired up to that certain point has been filling a specific need. You hired an accountant because of money. You've hired a marketing person because you need to sell products, hired a customer support person. So each of these people thinks that's the most important part of the business. None of them are thinking in tune together. They're all thinking, oh, it's all about the money. Oh, it's all about the marketing, it's all about the customer. Nobody's together. So you want to get your values out there. And we're going to rate our people on how well we think they are showcasing or living up, filtering the, everything through those values.
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B
I think too it makes a great thing. You brought up a great point with hiring. Like it's, it draws people to you. Right. Like I always suggest when you put out a job description that you're going to hire based on. We do a ton of recruiting here at the co lab team. Right. I think that we help people build out job descriptions all the time that we can post to LinkedIn to indeed put out there on their social media to try and find their ideal next fifth, whatever that role is. And I think if you start with your ethos, if you start with your three to five core virtues, whatever it is, however you're gonna phrase those, frame that up, it aligns the people with you. Cause there may be some things that people are like, ah, that doesn't really resonate with me. So even though they may be great for the role, maybe they're not gonna line up with something that's really core and important about your business. You don't want that person. And so it helps you kind of filter em out. So I'd say that's the first part. The second part is three to five key roles with the position. Taryn, let's talk about that one a little bit. KPI's key performance indicators. We do a lot of that here at the code lab team as well.
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C
Yes. This is a great chance to make sure they're in alignment with what they thought they were supposed to be doing. And you're in alignment with what you thought they were supposed to be doing. And everybody's in alignment with what the job description thought they were supposed to be doing.
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B
Right.
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C
So if it's your first one with them, it could be simple. It could be, yes, the job description. Okay, that's what you're doing. Perfect. That's it. But if you're doing it two quarters later, they might be like, well, I actually don't do any of those things anymore. Then I, this isn't even my job. What's my title now? So it's good for both of you because the person who's experiencing the change in what they're doing, it's a great way for them to also have a platform and a place and a person to experience this and tell them and understand that they might be in a different position now without even realizing it. And then the person giving the evaluation might not have realized that either because it just happened in little increments over time.
- [11:21]
B
I definitely think that's so key. I can't tell you how many people we come in to help them kind of align their org chart because a lot of times what it leads to, what comes out of it is a visionary will come to me because almost everything we do is by word of mouth. A different visionary has referred one of their pals to come talk to me. And we come to the table and they're like, I'm really frustrated with my people. And one of the first things I'll ask is, do you have job descriptions? And they'll say, yeah, we've got job descriptions, but they might need to be updated a little bit. Right. That's like almost like pat every single one that I talk to. And that's, that's also known as AKA people aren't living to their job descriptions. Which means that's probably why you're most frustrated because there's been a ton of scope creep for everybody and we're not even really clear on who's doing what. And so that's what I'll always refer people. Hey, why don't you try out the gap analyzer? Why don't we start there and we just. We'll take an inventory of what everybody's doing, and that'll tell us where there's overlaps on your team or where there's gaps on the team. And it also helps us to get really clear on what is this person doing with their time. Does that match up to their job description? And then from there, once we've gotten clarity on that, what are the three to five key roles this person should be doing? And let's create some key performance indicators out of those three to five key roles because the person wants to know they're doing a good job at their job. Right? And you want to know they're freaking doing a good job at their job. You don't want that to be a gut check where it's like, Susie always drops the ball on this thing. But, like, let's say she always drops the ball on the thing. Maybe you're completely right, Mr. Visionary. Ms. Visionary. Is that thing even part of her core responsibilities? Like, was that ever part of her job description? Or did we just put that assumption on Susie? She's still rowing madly over here, trying to do her three to five that we gave to her. Plus, you've been stacking another three to five on or so. Of course she's having failure. Of course we're experiencing breakdown, and she's probably a really good employee. We just need to really slim down. What are the expectations? And that's the great place to talk about. Right? Quarterly about. Hey, Suzy, how are we lining up your job description? These are the three to five key performance indicators, the core roles to your position. Are these still the same three to five? And she can say, yep, those are the same three to five. Or she can say, no, there's actually another three to five I'd like to add in there. And then we have to go back to visionary and say, hey, what is it that we want Susie doing? Because she's got too many things. And this probably is. Think about hiring. So that's delegate and elevate. You know, another tool that we talk about a lot here on the store.
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C
Wow. On the store.
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B
On the store. Taryn, the final thing of the 5. 5. 5. That is indicating a 5. 5, 5 is 3 to 5. Rocks. Talk to him about rocks.
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C
Oh, we have talked about rocks. Probably at least 40 minutes this year. And it's great. I love rocks.
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B
It's been a consistent, like landslide of rocks.
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C
Yeah. Perfect rock time. So rocks are obviously. Well, maybe not obviously because when you think of rocks, you might think of the things on the ground or in a field or.
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B
Or man. Bon Jovi.
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C
Rock Bon Jovi.
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B
Yep, yep.
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C
He's a great rock. Rocks, though, are the projects that are moving everything forward, keeping. Keeping everything going in the right direction towards your goals.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Your yearly goals, 3 year goals, 5 year goals, 10 year goals, all that. So the rocks are your specific job or part or play or milestone or project in this endeavor. And if you're not having L10 meetings to pull them from, then you're going to have to pull them from somewhere. You know, usually in your project management tool somewhere else you got going on. If you got an L10 meeting for your team already, you just pull it right from there and say, susie's working on three. Three rocks. Let's paste them in. How'd you do? Were you on track? Were you on time? Was it completed?
- [14:53]
B
Yeah, gotta go. And that really, I mean, it's the ultimate of. We just finished a quarter. Suzie. I love whoever Susie is, man, she's getting the shaft today. So we just finished the quarter. Susie, how'd you line up with your rocks? She had milestones to keep her on course to make sure those big projects were done. Eos would say everyone should have three to five rocks that they' responsible for that they have to answer for at the end of a quarter. How did you do on those? And as you go through those three areas, right, we talked about the ethos, we talked about their KPIs, we're now talking about big projects that they had to have done by end of a quarter. It starts to paint a very clear picture for you of how is Susie lining up in her role. And if every four, every quarter we're doing, we have four of those before we come to the end of the year. Like, what should the end of the year look like for Susie if she's been sucking it up? Like if she hasn't, if she hasn't finished her rocks, all four quarters, if she isn't lining up with the ethos. Like, Eos is pretty particular on either you're living to the ethos, you're not living to the ethos, or you're somewhere in between and somewhere in between and not living to the ethos. You can only get two of those two quarters of those before EOS would say you're probably not the right fit. For this role. Right. You're not a right fit for this place. So it gets really, really clear. And then the thing that I love most about the 555 model ot is the part right after that. And it's conversational. Right. We start having conversations about done well and things that are working and things that are not working. Right. And so both people get an opportunity to talk. You want to talk about that just for a minute?
- [16:15]
C
Yeah. I mean, it's as you, as you said, what's done well, what's working, what's not working, what can be improved. And yeah, so you can rate each other too. Like you're saying you can say what's going well with me. I can include you in my going well. I don't have to. What's not going well? It could be specific roles in your job. I always use that as an opportunity to talk about how I learned about something I do not like doing. And it's fine if you don't like doing something. And nobody's going to know that unless you ever say it. And you might not ever know you don't like doing it until you try at some point. And at some point, somebody puts something on your plate and you try and you're like, oh, turns out I don't like doing this. Yeah, that's cool. Or you can say what you do like doing. But yeah, it's a great spot.
- [17:01]
B
I love it because it is very conversational. The 5, 5, 5 format is all very. Is all very conversational. It takes about a half hour, 20 minutes to a half hour, I would say, to go through the whole thing. And the thing I love about this part of it where you're like, hey, what's working? Not working. You let the person you're evaluating talk first. Right. Hey, you tell me what's working. Awesome. Now I'll tell you what I think is working. Okay. Now you tell me what you don't think is working. And then that's where I get to lean in. If I do want to offer some critique, you know, I do wanna offer some even discipline, where I'm like, hey, so I have concerns about this, this, and this. But you've had this whole, whole conversational piece all the way up to the point where you're able to come to that at the end and hopefully you've been able to affirm them, tell them the value you see in them, so that when you deliver some of the harder news, it's not just like the whole reason we're getting on this eval is for me to cut you down. And I think some people come to evals, like, with that in mind as leaders. Like, yeah, man, it's not going to be a fun eval for this person. No, no. An eval should be something where we're like, the word discipline. Like, I was thinking about today, like, disciple and discipline is all in the same word. You know, I mean, like, I want to build into people. I want them to discipled, if you would, in whatever this thing is that I'm leading them in as a company, but also disciplines in there too. And discipline doesn't have to be a bad word, doesn't have to be a harsh word. You have to get on there and yell and scream at people and make them feel small. It's like, no, no, no. I want personal discipline in my life to be a healthier human, to lift weights, to be stronger. I need that pressure, I need that resistance to make me a better person. It builds character. And I think that coming to a 5:5.5 with that in mind of, hey, this person's valuable to me. There's a high ROI on this person because I've invested a lot of money into this person to pay bring them into the team. Let's therefore culture this. Let's make sure the ground is fertile enough for them to grow, which means that there is going to be some times they get pruned back a little bit and sometimes that they're going to flourish. So I think that 5.5fives are a great thing, Taran. I think it'd be a great thing for us to offer to our listeners, to maybe just give them our 5.5Five template. So if you go to evals with a plural evals, E v, a l s.opsexperts Academy, you can go ahead and download the template that we use for every one of our five 5 5s. Hopefully I've been an asset to you. We'll give you a little tutorial video on how to use it. So if you're thinking, man, that sounds like a really good idea, Erin, could just give me something. Plug and play, dude. Shazam. Your wish is my command.
- [19:13]
C
Plug and play that over. Yep, yep.
- [19:15]
B
Awesome. Well, Taryn Turner, this has been an amazing episode. Talking about quarterly evals coming up here at the end of March. We'll do ours that month of April.
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C
Right.
- [19:23]
B
I'll always do them the next month after the quarter concludes. So you're not behind the. Get ready for it. Listen to the show. Check out the free tool evals Ops Experts Academy. Dot com. And we'll see you guys next week here on Ops Experts Club.
- [19:37]
C
Awesome. Bye.
- [19:38]
B
See ya.