Meeting Title: Brainforge Leadership Roles Walkthrough Date: 2025-12-22 Meeting participants: Awaish Kumar, Clarence Stone, Uttam Kumaran, Elizah Joy, Samuel Roberts, Demilade Agboola, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:00:58.810 ⇒ 00:00:59.780 Uttam Kumaran: Hello.
2 00:01:02.340 ⇒ 00:01:03.690 Clarence Stone: What’s up, what’s up?
3 00:01:05.030 ⇒ 00:01:08.149 Uttam Kumaran: Finally had time to cook lunch. First time in a while.
4 00:01:11.670 ⇒ 00:01:12.300 Awaish Kumar: Nope.
5 00:01:13.510 ⇒ 00:01:14.330 Uttam Kumaran: I wish.
6 00:01:23.730 ⇒ 00:01:29.090 Clarence Stone: I hate Zoom, dude. I don’t know what happened. The calendar integration went away.
7 00:01:32.280 ⇒ 00:01:33.600 Clarence Stone: So frustrating.
8 00:01:38.550 ⇒ 00:01:47.739 Uttam Kumaran: I will tell you, I think it is just the best feature-rich platform that always works. Google Meets craps out and takes a lot of memory on device.
9 00:01:48.120 ⇒ 00:01:49.019 Uttam Kumaran: For me.
10 00:01:49.670 ⇒ 00:01:53.410 Clarence Stone: Oh, yeah, I mean, they’re all toxic in their own way.
11 00:02:35.540 ⇒ 00:02:37.259 Clarence Stone: Where am I supposed to go?
12 00:02:41.230 ⇒ 00:02:44.219 Clarence Stone: Oh, wow, that’s trippy. Why is it doing that?
13 00:02:45.010 ⇒ 00:02:47.430 Clarence Stone: Zoomed out.
14 00:02:48.450 ⇒ 00:02:49.700 Clarence Stone: Thank you.
15 00:02:52.530 ⇒ 00:02:57.120 Uttam Kumaran: I, I did review, like, the first
16 00:02:57.950 ⇒ 00:03:01.089 Uttam Kumaran: Well, actually, a good amount of the dock, by the way.
17 00:03:02.020 ⇒ 00:03:03.130 Clarence Stone: What do you think so far?
18 00:03:03.620 ⇒ 00:03:08.640 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think it’s great. I left just a bunch of comments. I think it’s, like, all… yeah, it’s basically, like, 90% there.
19 00:03:09.190 ⇒ 00:03:14.950 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I… I tried to tackle all the open questions that we had, so…
20 00:03:15.720 ⇒ 00:03:18.230 Clarence Stone: Once we form it, though, I’ll throw it in Notion.
21 00:03:24.660 ⇒ 00:03:31.179 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so, I guess… I would like to maybe take the time today, Clarence, to have you, like.
22 00:03:31.520 ⇒ 00:03:37.969 Uttam Kumaran: maybe give the walkthrough, and then we can let people have a look at it? Or what do you think is best?
23 00:03:38.490 ⇒ 00:03:39.870 Clarence Stone: Tell me. Yeah?
24 00:03:39.880 ⇒ 00:03:42.470 Uttam Kumaran: And that way, at least we… we can still…
25 00:03:42.760 ⇒ 00:03:47.180 Uttam Kumaran: I think me and you, or if we could have everybody come back tomorrow and chat about it, too.
26 00:03:47.610 ⇒ 00:03:49.590 Uttam Kumaran: And then give people, like, over the…
27 00:03:50.770 ⇒ 00:03:54.690 Uttam Kumaran: You know, the few days off to sort of think through it also, so…
28 00:04:53.240 ⇒ 00:04:54.990 Clarence Stone: We’re waiting for anyone else?
29 00:04:55.770 ⇒ 00:04:59.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah… I pinged them in the… in the channel.
30 00:04:59.580 ⇒ 00:05:00.500 Clarence Stone: Damn.
31 00:05:00.500 ⇒ 00:05:01.060 Uttam Kumaran: audio.
32 00:05:01.260 ⇒ 00:05:01.960 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
33 00:05:02.230 ⇒ 00:05:03.509 Uttam Kumaran: We have in, like, 2 minutes.
34 00:05:03.710 ⇒ 00:05:05.200 Clarence Stone: Lot of comments for me.
35 00:05:06.220 ⇒ 00:05:08.670 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll give them, like, 2 minutes, and then… okay, cool.
36 00:05:09.220 ⇒ 00:05:10.740 Uttam Kumaran: And then we can get started.
37 00:05:11.170 ⇒ 00:05:16.329 Samuel Roberts: Hey… sorry, I’m away from my keyboard right now, but I saw the message, so…
38 00:05:16.330 ⇒ 00:05:17.070 Uttam Kumaran: No problem.
39 00:05:32.940 ⇒ 00:05:39.749 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, maybe let’s get started, Clarence, and then I can… we can… I can use this meeting to send out to other people.
40 00:05:39.860 ⇒ 00:05:45.459 Uttam Kumaran: Like, we… I know we wanted to run this by a couple other people, so… yeah, let’s get started.
41 00:05:49.010 ⇒ 00:05:50.240 Clarence Stone: Alright, team.
42 00:05:50.910 ⇒ 00:05:55.430 Clarence Stone: So, over the weekend, I worked on this with you, Tom.
43 00:05:55.760 ⇒ 00:05:57.120 Clarence Stone: It’s a…
44 00:05:57.440 ⇒ 00:06:17.199 Clarence Stone: blueprint for all the conversations we’ve had so far about these new leadership roles. It answers a lot of questions on what your day-to-day life would look like in this role, and the first section of this document really outlines the strategic layer, or the view of why we’re creating these additional roles.
45 00:06:18.180 ⇒ 00:06:28.610 Clarence Stone: I think the ask here is for you to take a look at this, provide your feedback, just like UTong has. Let me know where the gaps are, and we can add in some better clarification.
46 00:06:28.760 ⇒ 00:06:43.260 Clarence Stone: If there’s anything you think we should add here, absolutely, I’m all ears. But let me just go through, you know, the overall features of what’s in here. So, message from your leaders, this is, actually details about, you know.
47 00:06:43.570 ⇒ 00:06:55.669 Clarence Stone: the conversations I’ve had with Robert and you, Tom. Things over chat are calls that kind of consolidate their vision for how they want the scalable leadership blueprint to work.
48 00:06:56.040 ⇒ 00:07:15.269 Clarence Stone: A lot of things will resonate, because it’s really built off of, you know, Brainforge’s principles and the leadership perspective on this invitation to lead. Forward, well, I just described, hey, what’s covered in this document. This is supposed to establish a clear trajectory for where you can grow at Brainforge.
49 00:07:15.900 ⇒ 00:07:32.000 Clarence Stone: It’s not going to cover exactly how to do each one of those things that you’re going to do on a tactical level. It’s not gonna cover, you know, operational addendums. So, this is very strategic. It’s only going to give you the strategic rationale, the role of each,
50 00:07:32.000 ⇒ 00:07:39.289 Clarence Stone: New leadership role, guidance on how to be your best in that role, and what that transition experience should look like.
51 00:07:40.300 ⇒ 00:07:54.510 Clarence Stone: So the foundations of this, you guys have heard me say this, it’s been a slide that I’ve presented on Fridays. Same thing with the strategic rationale. It’s the same story that, you know, I’ve been telling everybody, I’ve just written it out in a better format.
52 00:07:54.640 ⇒ 00:08:04.710 Clarence Stone: And then we have some leadership standards. These are behaviors that I would want to see out of everybody who’s going to assume these leadership roles. And then…
53 00:08:04.920 ⇒ 00:08:10.060 Clarence Stone: We go into kind of specifying out why each of these roles are distinct and different.
54 00:08:10.740 ⇒ 00:08:27.440 Clarence Stone: And then, if we just keep going down, I talk about each one of the roles, right? What would your purpose be? How do you win? What are the mannerisms or attitudes or behaviors that’ll make you successful? And then some examples of what the day-to-day could look like.
55 00:08:28.230 ⇒ 00:08:30.390 Clarence Stone: KPIs that are related to that role.
56 00:08:30.990 ⇒ 00:08:43.949 Clarence Stone: all of this is, you know, currently draft, so if, you know, there’s better metrics to track here, or you have feedback on whether or not we should track it at all, I’d love to know, you know, your, your take on why.
57 00:08:44.440 ⇒ 00:08:46.849 Clarence Stone: Same thing with Engagement Planner.
58 00:08:47.400 ⇒ 00:08:49.120 Clarence Stone: Same thing with Service Leader.
59 00:08:50.810 ⇒ 00:09:01.910 Clarence Stone: And then, just a short description on how I foresee you guys leading together. So it’s a racy table that says, you know, who owns what, who’s leading what, who’s supporting what.
60 00:09:03.260 ⇒ 00:09:10.850 Clarence Stone: Art of escalation. You know, a lot of times today, we just go to Robert, Utah for everything, right?
61 00:09:11.850 ⇒ 00:09:26.600 Clarence Stone: that… and we can still do that, but as leaders, you need to go with a couple options, right? And create a decision-making framework for your leaders. So, this is just a framework, some suggestions on how you should think about it, right?
62 00:09:26.920 ⇒ 00:09:42.750 Clarence Stone: And then, I’ve taken a look at stand-up. I have an interesting proposal on how we might be able to accomplish it in a faster way that involves all the leadership roles within the engagement. Just give it a look. There’s deeper details on that in this stand-up cheat sheet here as well.
63 00:09:43.830 ⇒ 00:09:46.390 Clarence Stone: And then,
64 00:09:46.720 ⇒ 00:10:03.760 Clarence Stone: there’s been a bajillion questions about, like, is this the only role? Are there other roles? What happens when I’m really good at this already? So, I gave you almost a whole page of, you know, vertical progression, horizontal progression, and other types of roles that are available beyond these leadership roles.
65 00:10:04.310 ⇒ 00:10:20.900 Clarence Stone: And then what to expect next, right? So that’s the first document. It kind of encompasses all the conversations we’ve had around these roles, how you can tactically get involved, what that day-to-day would look like, and if you wanted a closer look at what the exact day-to-day looks like.
66 00:10:21.640 ⇒ 00:10:27.849 Clarence Stone: Here we go. Oh, somebody’s already added Seth. Nice. Look at Sam here. So this is an example…
67 00:10:27.850 ⇒ 00:10:33.179 Uttam Kumaran: I put that in, but it was an example of, like, Sam doing a version of this today, yeah.
68 00:10:33.530 ⇒ 00:10:48.970 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so I think, you know, that’s the outline of this, but you, Tom, you just reminded me that the number one thing I want to share with you all is this is me cataloging all the things that you guys are doing in some way or another, right?
69 00:10:48.970 ⇒ 00:11:07.960 Clarence Stone: The attempt here is to be able to formalize these roles, recognize the people who are already doing it, and then grow them, give them a better experience, create a framework so that you can be incentivized and rewarded for the things that you’re already doing. So you’ll notice this shouldn’t be a big departure from what you’re already doing today.
70 00:11:08.340 ⇒ 00:11:20.000 Clarence Stone: Any questions or any thoughts? I’ve kind of just ran down this entire document, it’s super long, it’s already 18 pages. I’d love for everyone to take a look at it, but any initial questions?
71 00:11:25.730 ⇒ 00:11:26.620 Clarence Stone: No?
72 00:11:30.900 ⇒ 00:11:37.990 Clarence Stone: Is there anything that you specifically want to see in this document? I can kind of point you towards where it might be, or let you know it’s not quite ready yet?
73 00:11:46.000 ⇒ 00:11:46.550 Awaish Kumar: I mean.
74 00:11:46.550 ⇒ 00:11:50.910 Clarence Stone: I mean, I’ll wait. I’m gonna wait until I get some feedback. We should… go ahead.
75 00:11:50.910 ⇒ 00:11:57.670 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, what I… I think we could be… Good to see is, like.
76 00:11:59.150 ⇒ 00:12:02.690 Awaish Kumar: How, like, to manage time, basically.
77 00:12:03.190 ⇒ 00:12:10.679 Awaish Kumar: Like, I… like, sometimes you… I do feel I have some time to look
78 00:12:10.860 ⇒ 00:12:14.729 Awaish Kumar: Look broadly on the things, but most of the time, it’s like.
79 00:12:15.290 ⇒ 00:12:23.780 Awaish Kumar: I’m on an execution mode, trying to finish all the things, and I don’t have… Like, uploading a…
80 00:12:23.920 ⇒ 00:12:29.700 Awaish Kumar: Position to actually oversee or look broadly what’s happening, or things like that.
81 00:12:30.810 ⇒ 00:12:47.490 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so, Awash, if I understand your question, like, our day-to-days are really super tactical and trying to get work done, right? But every once in a while, you’re saying that you do have time and opening to think broader and be more strategic, right? And you’re looking at… you’re asking me, hey.
82 00:12:47.490 ⇒ 00:12:52.090 Clarence Stone: what would I do in those moments, or, like, how can I make the most of them? Is that right?
83 00:12:52.400 ⇒ 00:12:58.989 Awaish Kumar: I’m trying to say that sometimes, like, some weeks are relaxed, where you get some time to think about these things.
84 00:12:59.300 ⇒ 00:13:09.170 Awaish Kumar: You write some messages, you can send to client, or you can send internally, but some weeks are really tough to actually do all these things, and just.
85 00:13:09.170 ⇒ 00:13:09.760 Clarence Stone: Yeah.
86 00:13:09.760 ⇒ 00:13:11.140 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, execution mode.
87 00:13:11.480 ⇒ 00:13:16.740 Clarence Stone: So you’ll notice that the things I describe in the daily and weeklies are almost must-haves.
88 00:13:16.870 ⇒ 00:13:35.519 Clarence Stone: But in the monthly, quarterly, or other aspects of this write-up, those are things that you can do in those openings. For example, maybe you have a Friday afternoon open. You can kind of go on an asset hunt and say, like, what code have I written? What modules have I made that can actually scale into the Brainforge platform?
89 00:13:35.610 ⇒ 00:13:54.910 Clarence Stone: Right? And start working on that. You could, you know, take a look at how your junior developers are doing and mentor them. You can take a look at, hey, what am I doing every day, and is there anything that I can build to use AI to improve that day-to-day process?
90 00:13:54.910 ⇒ 00:13:58.360 Clarence Stone: Right? Those are things that I would do if I had a Friday afternoon.
91 00:13:59.440 ⇒ 00:14:07.989 Clarence Stone: Right, and that’s for the SL. Like, for every role, I’ve created those exact suggestions that are slightly different, right? Like, for…
92 00:14:07.990 ⇒ 00:14:30.329 Clarence Stone: The engagement planner, you’re about making sure everything is on the rails. So, like, a radical alignment check. Deeply look into every single project, see how they’re going, right? Think about whether or not somebody’s keeping records somewhere else, and bring all of that documentation and make sure it’s landing in Notion somewhere, right? So every role has a different set of things that they can do.
93 00:14:30.340 ⇒ 00:14:34.420 Clarence Stone: During that monthly or quarterly opening, you know, time.
94 00:14:34.450 ⇒ 00:14:35.640 Clarence Stone: Does that make sense?
95 00:14:36.580 ⇒ 00:14:37.380 Awaish Kumar: Yes.
96 00:14:38.270 ⇒ 00:14:41.450 Awaish Kumar: What I… I’m trying to say is that…
97 00:14:41.590 ⇒ 00:14:46.310 Awaish Kumar: Like, sometimes you lose the momentum, to actually…
98 00:14:48.660 ⇒ 00:14:52.410 Awaish Kumar: Like, we have planning meetings, we want to scope out things.
99 00:14:52.680 ⇒ 00:14:56.760 Awaish Kumar: And you… you lose that sight if you are…
100 00:14:57.640 ⇒ 00:15:02.480 Awaish Kumar: You haven’t been actually looking what everybody’s doing, instead of…
101 00:15:03.110 ⇒ 00:15:06.200 Awaish Kumar: Like, mostly I was pushing for the tasks.
102 00:15:08.410 ⇒ 00:15:20.529 Awaish Kumar: So, like, I have missed that in the past. Recently, while doing the stand-ups, I’m getting more involved in what everybody’s doing on a day-to-day basis. I have more context.
103 00:15:20.810 ⇒ 00:15:27.289 Awaish Kumar: But, like, historically, I, like, I had this problem that you… when you lose sight.
104 00:15:27.390 ⇒ 00:15:31.479 Awaish Kumar: Of what’s happening on this client for two weeks, that…
105 00:15:31.680 ⇒ 00:15:33.900 Awaish Kumar: You’re out of sync, and then…
106 00:15:34.130 ⇒ 00:15:41.900 Awaish Kumar: It becomes, hard to, like, that come again, and, like, then, like, ball drops, like, somewhere.
107 00:15:42.410 ⇒ 00:15:45.220 Clarence Stone: Yeah, absolutely. So, Wish,
108 00:15:45.540 ⇒ 00:16:04.930 Clarence Stone: I’ll say that you’re not the only one to give me that feedback. Like, having a view of the strategic layer, what everyone is doing, and keeping track of that is super difficult, right? And part of this new, structure is supposed to increase your ability to have visibility over those things.
109 00:16:05.390 ⇒ 00:16:19.440 Clarence Stone: Right? So, for example, you will now have someone who’s assigned as the engagement planner, so if you’re not sure where you are in milestones, you know, what’s going on with the entire client project health, you can reach out to the EP.
110 00:16:19.440 ⇒ 00:16:27.480 Clarence Stone: If you’re not sure if the client’s happy with the last deliverable, or if, you know, what we’re going to present this week to the client, you can reach out to the CSO.
111 00:16:27.760 ⇒ 00:16:40.049 Clarence Stone: Right? And even better, I’ve actually tried to tackle directly that problem that you’re talking about by restructuring stand-ups to go client by client and role by role.
112 00:16:40.490 ⇒ 00:16:51.470 Clarence Stone: Right? And if you think about what this structure is, and you, Tom, I don’t think I mentioned this to you, this was just a note in this description, but what we’re doing is actually building AI context.
113 00:16:51.740 ⇒ 00:16:56.299 Clarence Stone: Right, so if you start a stand-up saying, okay, we’re gonna start with ABC,
114 00:16:56.600 ⇒ 00:17:08.159 Clarence Stone: Right, and then the service leader says, hey, we closed 4 tickets for ABC, right? We’re 60% through the current milestone, I’m a little stuck with this API auth thing, can I get some help from someone after this call?
115 00:17:08.170 ⇒ 00:17:27.440 Clarence Stone: Right? And then, the client success owner talks about how the client is feeling about the deliverables. And then the engagement planner gives one line, a quick update on, you know, how we are in that journey, right? And then, at the end, you, as a service leader on that account, might say, okay, here’s the plan of attack for the next day.
116 00:17:27.440 ⇒ 00:17:35.869 Clarence Stone: Right? Here’s the ticket assignments, right? And if you package all of that together, that’s a nice context package for AI and also you.
117 00:17:36.830 ⇒ 00:17:45.300 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, that sounds good, like, that’s what I was looking for. Like, right now, we don’t have these roles, and you try to fill it out.
118 00:17:45.300 ⇒ 00:17:52.110 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s… basically, it’s… you’re like, okay, damn, this is a lot, but what we’re basically gonna do, Awash, is you’re doing…
119 00:17:52.210 ⇒ 00:17:54.159 Uttam Kumaran: Probably 3 of these.
120 00:17:54.460 ⇒ 00:17:57.370 Uttam Kumaran: It’s gonna split up to you’re only doing one of these.
121 00:17:57.530 ⇒ 00:18:00.090 Awaish Kumar: And it’s gonna split up all the…
122 00:18:00.100 ⇒ 00:18:03.589 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, My… my hope is that…
123 00:18:03.730 ⇒ 00:18:11.249 Uttam Kumaran: you look at the scope of one of these, and you’re like, okay, if all I had was my tasks and this scope.
124 00:18:11.380 ⇒ 00:18:15.029 Uttam Kumaran: And given the percentages we’re allocating to, like.
125 00:18:15.270 ⇒ 00:18:30.210 Uttam Kumaran: hey, one of these roles is gonna take probably, like, anywhere from 5 to 10 hours a week. You’re like, okay, that seems fair. Versus right now, I’m… we’re aware that you’re doing, like, probably some part of all 3 of these, I’m doing some part of all 3 of these, Sam is doing some part of all 3 of these.
126 00:18:30.210 ⇒ 00:18:36.689 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So several people are doing a lot of these. Several people are doing nothing. Like, they’re just the engineering work, right? So…
127 00:18:36.780 ⇒ 00:18:45.540 Uttam Kumaran: What we’re gonna… what this hopes you do… what we hope this does is, one, it brings you guys into one clear bucket. It brings some people up.
128 00:18:45.610 ⇒ 00:19:05.180 Uttam Kumaran: into that, and it’s not, like, a second job. Like, there’s actually gonna be financial incentives regarding doing those things, and we’re carving it out as, like, a percentage of your time. Meaning, and when we look at allocations, we’re gonna look at that as a… the responsibilities here as a percentage of your time.
129 00:19:07.600 ⇒ 00:19:08.230 Awaish Kumar: Yeah.
130 00:19:08.680 ⇒ 00:19:26.689 Clarence Stone: Awash, I guess right now, it feels a lot like everyone is going directly to you, so check out this decision-making matrix, right? So, if something’s, you know, over the timelines that we committed to, that’s owned by the engagement planner. They need to call that out, right? They need to create a meeting, they need to come up with a plan.
131 00:19:26.750 ⇒ 00:19:36.840 Clarence Stone: Right? I’m sure you’re handling some of this, you know, initially, when client sentiment turns red, and the client’s not happy with the work that we’re delivering. Well, that’s owned by the client success owner.
132 00:19:36.840 ⇒ 00:19:52.589 Clarence Stone: Right? But you do support them by saying, hey, why is the client unhappy? Let’s get on a call and discuss this, and create a roadmap forward, right? So, while a lot of this all put together seems like a lot for one person to do, this is split amongst three roles.
133 00:19:52.650 ⇒ 00:19:58.350 Clarence Stone: So, I’m essentially taking Robert or you, Tom, from one project and splitting that into three.
134 00:20:00.030 ⇒ 00:20:01.269 Clarence Stone: Does that make sense?
135 00:20:01.270 ⇒ 00:20:02.980 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, that does make sense.
136 00:20:02.980 ⇒ 00:20:18.719 Clarence Stone: Yeah, and I brought up, like, my blueprint for stand-up, because one of the things I observed is stand-ups are absurdly quiet, except for the person who’s leading, right? And rarely do I get an update on
137 00:20:18.720 ⇒ 00:20:29.590 Clarence Stone: where are we in the project lifecycle? How is the client feeling about our deliverables? What is the next thing we have to bring to the client? Right? And I think everybody needs to be refreshed on this.
138 00:20:29.590 ⇒ 00:20:44.859 Clarence Stone: every day, so that everyone knows what’s happening. There’s way too many comments of, like, I don’t know, you know, what the status of the progress of this is, I don’t know enough about the client to do my ticket, etc, etc. If we just do one tweet length worth of updates.
139 00:20:44.860 ⇒ 00:20:46.639 Clarence Stone: For each one of these roles.
140 00:20:46.640 ⇒ 00:21:05.979 Clarence Stone: we will be back to, you know, maintaining good context. And the beauty of it is, if it’s built this way, you can make that context portable, and we can inject it into Notion, or the ops platform, wherever you guys think is the best, right? Like, I’m gonna work with the ops team to figure out a better place to put all of this information.
141 00:21:09.200 ⇒ 00:21:27.720 Clarence Stone: Right, so essentially, the only thing that’s added to how you might run stand-up is that you just have to give a quick technical summary, hey, we closed 4 tickets related to the data pipeline, you know, we’re 60% through, and by the way, I need some help with APIs. That’s all you gotta say in addition to what you’re already doing, because you’re providing the plan of attack every day.
142 00:21:28.610 ⇒ 00:21:29.620 Clarence Stone: Right?
143 00:21:29.620 ⇒ 00:21:30.150 Awaish Kumar: Yep.
144 00:21:30.150 ⇒ 00:21:45.029 Clarence Stone: And now, you know, stand-up doesn’t have to be quiet, because everyone is involved here. CSO’s gonna give a quick client vibe check, saying, client’s happy, you know, we’re working on X, Y, and Z with them. Engagement Planner says, hey, we’re on time, we’re on…
145 00:21:45.030 ⇒ 00:21:50.780 Clarence Stone: we’re on track for the milestones, we have the right resourcing, cool. Okay, then let’s go straight to plan of attack.
146 00:21:50.780 ⇒ 00:21:53.540 Clarence Stone: It really shouldn’t take more than 4 minutes.
147 00:21:57.360 ⇒ 00:22:14.079 Clarence Stone: Right? And now, everyone has to speak at stand-up. And if you look at my suggestions here, like, please prep before you hit the mic, right? And, you know, anybody in this meeting can say parking lot, as, hey, let’s take this to a separate meeting and discuss.
148 00:22:14.080 ⇒ 00:22:26.380 Clarence Stone: Right? Because this is not about updates anymore. And I want everyone to think about being, like, a news broadcaster. You ever see, like, somebody read the news every day? Like, it’s… it’s like, Awash, you’re gonna read your part of what happened yesterday.
149 00:22:26.380 ⇒ 00:22:34.660 Clarence Stone: Right? CSO’s gonna read, like, a news update, what the sentiment of the client is, etc, etc, right? Now everyone is involved.
150 00:22:35.540 ⇒ 00:22:36.140 Awaish Kumar: Hmm.
151 00:22:41.460 ⇒ 00:22:45.990 Awaish Kumar: Okay, so in that structure, like, Is that a stand-up? Is…
152 00:22:46.410 ⇒ 00:22:53.329 Awaish Kumar: do we need a stand-up before stand-up? Like, if a technical lead has to give updates on all the…
153 00:22:53.630 ⇒ 00:22:58.020 Awaish Kumar: team members, then he has to, like, meet the team, right? What happened yesterday?
154 00:22:58.580 ⇒ 00:23:02.530 Clarence Stone: Well, if you signed out the tickets yesterday, you should know if they were completed today.
155 00:23:02.770 ⇒ 00:23:08.880 Clarence Stone: Right? I don’t… I don’t think that should take too long. Plus, you have your stand-up tool here, by the way, so if there’s, like…
156 00:23:08.880 ⇒ 00:23:09.620 Awaish Kumar: No, I mean, like…
157 00:23:09.620 ⇒ 00:23:12.790 Clarence Stone: Updates or upgrades we need to make the stand-up tool, we should do it.
158 00:23:13.600 ⇒ 00:23:19.009 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I mean… I mean that, like, we came in a stand-up, we assigned the tickets, but…
159 00:23:19.340 ⇒ 00:23:21.830 Awaish Kumar: before the next stand-up, I don’t know…
160 00:23:22.230 ⇒ 00:23:27.059 Awaish Kumar: I might know if somebody already updated the ticket, otherwise I might not know, like…
161 00:23:27.060 ⇒ 00:23:32.709 Clarence Stone: Yeah, call them out. Call them out. Hey, this ticket’s still open, where are we with that?
162 00:23:32.930 ⇒ 00:23:34.210 Awaish Kumar: That’s fine.
163 00:23:34.630 ⇒ 00:23:42.779 Clarence Stone: Don’t wait for them to say anything, just say, hey, tickets 1 and 2 are done, 3 and 4 are still open, what’s the updates on that?
164 00:23:43.870 ⇒ 00:23:46.060 Clarence Stone: Okay, next, client sentiment, right?
165 00:23:46.720 ⇒ 00:23:59.280 Clarence Stone: And then you have, if you kind of play through this with me in your head, right? And this is a little bit hard to imagine, but if you did that here in this first block, you have 2 minutes to restructure your plan of attack down here.
166 00:24:00.250 ⇒ 00:24:09.330 Clarence Stone: Right, because let’s say, like, two tickets weren’t completed, 2 were completed, you get an update, like, hey, I’m still working on it, sorry, delayed. You can restructure your plan down here.
167 00:24:09.470 ⇒ 00:24:14.830 Clarence Stone: And you can also let the engagement planner know, hey, you know, that pushed our timeline a little bit.
168 00:24:15.080 ⇒ 00:24:15.970 Clarence Stone: Right?
169 00:24:16.530 ⇒ 00:24:19.680 Clarence Stone: And decide if you need to restructure that engagement plan.
170 00:24:26.410 ⇒ 00:24:27.250 Awaish Kumar: Okay, good.
171 00:24:33.330 ⇒ 00:24:34.560 Clarence Stone: Any other thoughts?
172 00:24:34.900 ⇒ 00:24:39.040 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I think this might speak to a little bit of what Elise said, but, the…
173 00:24:39.820 ⇒ 00:24:47.859 Samuel Roberts: the people on these stand-ups, is it everyone? Even, like, people that don’t have one of these roles? Like, I think that’s why he was thinking he might need a pre…
174 00:24:47.990 ⇒ 00:24:56.210 Samuel Roberts: you know, just to get everyone up to date, but I… when you were saying, you know, you might call someone out and see what happened, like, they’re… everyone’s on… everyone’s on the stand-up, but just not necessarily giving an update?
175 00:24:56.500 ⇒ 00:25:06.150 Clarence Stone: That’s correct, Sam. But, like, just by how I know your team sizing is currently, it’s kind of rare that you have more than, like, 3 to 4 people, so…
176 00:25:06.150 ⇒ 00:25:09.599 Samuel Roberts: Right, and I didn’t know they wouldn’t have these roles specifically, necessarily.
177 00:25:09.600 ⇒ 00:25:14.540 Clarence Stone: If you don’t have those goals, they’re still there, yeah. Okay. To get your… Yep.
178 00:25:17.590 ⇒ 00:25:22.109 Samuel Roberts: And then the other thing I was thinking, so this is all on a per-client basis, right?
179 00:25:22.510 ⇒ 00:25:23.130 Clarence Stone: Yep.
180 00:25:23.690 ⇒ 00:25:28.790 Samuel Roberts: So then, given the size of our, like, teams in general, like, does that mean you have multi… you might be…
181 00:25:29.320 ⇒ 00:25:35.939 Samuel Roberts: doing two different roles for two different clients, or… we kind of talked about this a little bit.
182 00:25:35.940 ⇒ 00:25:39.489 Clarence Stone: For everybody locked into one role across all clients, or else…
183 00:25:39.490 ⇒ 00:25:41.479 Samuel Roberts: Okay, that’s kind of what I wanted, I wanted to make sure that we… yeah.
184 00:25:41.800 ⇒ 00:25:45.849 Clarence Stone: In this mode, our incentive modeling is gonna be messed up, and then, like…
185 00:25:45.850 ⇒ 00:25:47.050 Samuel Roberts: Okay, okay, that’s what… that’s what I…
186 00:25:47.050 ⇒ 00:26:02.750 Clarence Stone: Yeah, it’s just, yeah, if you go for CSO, you just become a CSO, at least for this, like, half-year cycle, and then, you know, we can have a conversation. I don’t want to block anybody from growth or, like, changing different things, but, like, right now, we just have to bin you into one of these leadership roles.
187 00:26:04.240 ⇒ 00:26:05.139 Samuel Roberts: That makes sense.
188 00:26:09.680 ⇒ 00:26:12.350 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so, I mean, to recap there.
189 00:26:12.410 ⇒ 00:26:17.490 Clarence Stone: Stand-up is for everyone, but the talking roles are for these three critical leadership roles.
190 00:26:17.490 ⇒ 00:26:28.619 Clarence Stone: Right? And that doesn’t mean everyone, you know, just sits there, right? If you have questions about the tickets that Awash assigns me in step 4 here, right? Like, I’ll say, hey, Awash, like, I don’t quite understand this.
191 00:26:28.620 ⇒ 00:26:37.919 Clarence Stone: Like, can you, like, tell me more about what the client is looking for? And CSO should say, hey, let’s just catch up 15 minutes after this call. I’ll tell you where we’re at.
192 00:26:39.270 ⇒ 00:26:41.109 Clarence Stone: Right? And then we move forward.
193 00:26:43.760 ⇒ 00:26:48.949 Clarence Stone: Right? I just want to see more people interacting and talking in this, like, time block.
194 00:26:52.840 ⇒ 00:27:01.740 Clarence Stone: you shouldn’t be driving everything away. It’s like, you should pass the ball to people, right? You, Tom, uses the athletic metaphor there.
195 00:27:03.010 ⇒ 00:27:04.000 Awaish Kumar: Yep, okay.
196 00:27:07.360 ⇒ 00:27:27.110 Clarence Stone: Cool, any other thoughts? I know I didn’t really give you all a chance to read this, so, you know, the whole point of this is to just introduce that, hey, I’ve consolidated all our conversations, I’ve created a product that answers a lot of the questions you may have, so I think once you digest all of this, we can have some more deeper, meaningful conversations as well.
197 00:27:28.180 ⇒ 00:27:34.269 Clarence Stone: And at any point, you know, if any of this doesn’t make sense, or you want to leave a comment, feel free to use the comment tool.
198 00:27:35.050 ⇒ 00:27:36.310 Clarence Stone: I’m all ears.
199 00:27:36.920 ⇒ 00:27:52.360 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I really would love to see, like, any questions, like the one Sam or Waish has, like, this… we all need to be really, really on the same path, and this crew here, you know, are the leaders in the company, and so I’m,
200 00:27:52.680 ⇒ 00:28:05.529 Uttam Kumaran: I’m really, really expecting y’all to have questions and not just say, cool, I’m happy with everything. I’ve left some comments in there, and you’ll see sort of where I still think we need to push this further. But…
201 00:28:05.940 ⇒ 00:28:15.920 Uttam Kumaran: overall, our hope is twofold. One is, a lot of people are doing silent jobs in addition to just being engineering on a project, and so we want to really
202 00:28:16.100 ⇒ 00:28:17.200 Uttam Kumaran: define that.
203 00:28:18.480 ⇒ 00:28:29.719 Uttam Kumaran: Second is, like, the path towards growing in this company is going to be into stepping into one of these roles, as well as on a product, as well as on every project, and you’ll start to see…
204 00:28:29.840 ⇒ 00:28:37.820 Uttam Kumaran: the narrative around why… why we’re doing that. I think for folks that have been here a while, you know that we’ve tried different things with bringing on project managers.
205 00:28:38.240 ⇒ 00:28:47.040 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, kind of, like, the pros and cons of that. I think what we identified is actually a lot of us are doing parts of project management.
206 00:28:47.250 ⇒ 00:28:52.430 Uttam Kumaran: And account management, and, like, technical architect.
207 00:28:52.470 ⇒ 00:29:03.240 Uttam Kumaran: And so, one of the comments I left there is, like, in the old world, like, what are these roles sort of, like, similar to? But I actually feel like, given how fast we move and how good everybody is here.
208 00:29:03.240 ⇒ 00:29:15.389 Uttam Kumaran: we could just do… we could… we could cover the exact same responsibilities with a percentage of our time. And so, additionally, like, for every percentage of the time, we’re gonna start to be able to attribute bonuses and things towards that, so this isn’t…
209 00:29:15.570 ⇒ 00:29:23.979 Uttam Kumaran: And this isn’t as much as, please consider doing these, it’s we want to pay people more to take these on. So, like.
210 00:29:24.090 ⇒ 00:29:37.859 Uttam Kumaran: please take… have a read at this. It’s a lot to digest, so leave comments, come back, think about it, leave more comments next week. But this is what we’ll start… we’re gonna start to circulate, and then for this team to approve it is… is really gonna be the gate.
211 00:29:38.000 ⇒ 00:29:42.220 Uttam Kumaran: For us to… Kind of put this into motion next month.
212 00:29:43.950 ⇒ 00:29:47.580 Samuel Roberts: Okay, that was gonna be my next question. Actually, it was, like, adoption and rollout and…
213 00:29:47.900 ⇒ 00:29:50.400 Uttam Kumaran: There’s some points there about that, yeah.
214 00:29:50.660 ⇒ 00:29:54.039 Clarence Stone: I gotcha, Sam. If you go to the last one, all the way down.
215 00:29:54.470 ⇒ 00:29:55.190 Samuel Roberts: Perfect.
216 00:29:55.810 ⇒ 00:29:57.580 Clarence Stone: What to expect next?
217 00:29:59.090 ⇒ 00:29:59.700 Samuel Roberts: Awesome.
218 00:29:59.970 ⇒ 00:30:00.970 Clarence Stone: Yeah. Okay.
219 00:30:02.360 ⇒ 00:30:08.879 Clarence Stone: And yeah, absolutely, like, like you, Tom said, I also want you guys to understand and set the structure that I’ve proposed here.
220 00:30:08.880 ⇒ 00:30:30.059 Clarence Stone: none of this is set in stone, we can definitely pilot it. You know, I want your feedback on whether or not, like, the metrics that I’ve picked are worth it, right, for KPIs. If there’s better ones that you think are a better measure of this role, please let me know. I’ve just used a lot of my gut instincts on what I’ve seen so far, and some industry standards on picking these.
221 00:30:30.240 ⇒ 00:30:36.330 Clarence Stone: If some of this doesn’t align, let me, we can come up with better measures. Got it?
222 00:30:37.990 ⇒ 00:30:38.370 Awaish Kumar: Yep.
223 00:30:46.340 ⇒ 00:30:46.890 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
224 00:30:48.360 ⇒ 00:30:49.770 Clarence Stone: Isn’t this document, I love it.
225 00:30:50.970 ⇒ 00:30:53.760 Uttam Kumaran: Anything else? I think,
226 00:30:54.290 ⇒ 00:31:01.870 Uttam Kumaran: we… I think… we’re gonna kinda… I want… this is the real… gonna be the priority for delivery this next two weeks, is confirming this.
227 00:31:02.120 ⇒ 00:31:05.910 Uttam Kumaran: In terms of clients, I think,
228 00:31:06.760 ⇒ 00:31:22.300 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’re gonna start basically on the… in terms of added, you know, hours, we’re gonna see that Magic Spoon started, and so I think Awash will work on probably trying to see if we can get more resources on the, AE side.
229 00:31:22.560 ⇒ 00:31:31.710 Uttam Kumaran: And then Sam, I think Pranav will come in to fill, you know, another, 30, 40 hours on the AI side, but I feel okay.
230 00:31:31.770 ⇒ 00:31:44.629 Uttam Kumaran: in terms of understanding that, I’ll probably let Robert… we’re also, you know, considering bringing in, Greg, for more time, and so on the strategy side, we’re gonna alleviate some pressure there as well.
231 00:31:44.870 ⇒ 00:31:53.590 Uttam Kumaran: But I’ll handle that and look at operating and sort of get all that stuff cleaned up, and I’ll work with Eliza on that, but I would say if you guys can…
232 00:31:55.300 ⇒ 00:32:04.729 Uttam Kumaran: really give the stock a look and confirm it. That’s our… this is our biggest blocker. I think it’ll… it’s really just gonna… what’s gonna help us scale, you know, as…
233 00:32:05.050 ⇒ 00:32:10.070 Uttam Kumaran: As we go, try to, you know, bring on another 5-10 clients, next quarter, so…
234 00:32:16.670 ⇒ 00:32:18.339 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I’ll take a look.
235 00:32:18.930 ⇒ 00:32:20.240 Samuel Roberts: After this, yeah.
236 00:32:21.370 ⇒ 00:32:27.240 Awaish Kumar: And I’m just curious on how that… We’ll go in the…
237 00:32:27.500 ⇒ 00:32:31.170 Awaish Kumar: Like, we used to have, for each client, we used to set, like.
238 00:32:31.560 ⇒ 00:32:37.280 Awaish Kumar: How… but we want to get, like, per hour basis, and then we want to assign…
239 00:32:38.150 ⇒ 00:32:43.620 Awaish Kumar: hours for individual roles. Now that we have some extra roles.
240 00:32:44.530 ⇒ 00:32:48.479 Awaish Kumar: Correct. And those hours will also, like, go into the…
241 00:32:48.800 ⇒ 00:32:52.060 Awaish Kumar: For the… for those clients as well.
242 00:32:52.730 ⇒ 00:32:53.619 Awaish Kumar: And then we might…
243 00:32:53.620 ⇒ 00:32:55.790 Uttam Kumaran: Say that? Yeah, say that one more time.
244 00:32:56.350 ⇒ 00:33:03.649 Awaish Kumar: So, like, we used to define, like, some… like, the client rates, and based on that, how much hours you should spend on that client.
245 00:33:03.800 ⇒ 00:33:08.360 Awaish Kumar: And then, based on that, we divide those hours into multiple roles, like D, E,
246 00:33:08.990 ⇒ 00:33:13.790 Awaish Kumar: project management stuff. Now that we have some extra roles, which are…
247 00:33:13.920 ⇒ 00:33:27.569 Awaish Kumar: which also needs some hours for that client. Then we’ll end up with, like, even less hours for doing actual work. How that would align with, like, if we have very, like, 5K kind of clients.
248 00:33:27.980 ⇒ 00:33:30.220 Uttam Kumaran: We won’t take 5K clients anymore.
249 00:33:30.820 ⇒ 00:33:37.069 Uttam Kumaran: So we’re… we’re going to be taking clients that have… that are able to sustain at least a pod.
250 00:33:37.380 ⇒ 00:33:38.240 Uttam Kumaran: So…
251 00:33:38.330 ⇒ 00:33:53.109 Uttam Kumaran: the clients that are 5K right now, we are… we are either pushing them up or out. And so we won’t take… like, we will… our minimums will start to go up, because for Brainforge to… to guarantee a successful client, there is a minimum.
252 00:33:53.170 ⇒ 00:34:06.440 Uttam Kumaran: Because of our structure, right? And so… so without that, like, I can’t ask you guys to do some of these roles with, like, 2 hours of time. Like, it takes… takes time, and all of us are still working, right? We’re also still…
253 00:34:06.860 ⇒ 00:34:09.949 Uttam Kumaran: doing engineering work. And so we… we…
254 00:34:10.020 ⇒ 00:34:13.679 Uttam Kumaran: We won’t take on clients unless this model is possible on them.
255 00:34:13.730 ⇒ 00:34:22.219 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s what I’m looking for when you guys look at the roles and responsibilities, is to say, okay, this is pretty reasonable for me to do.
256 00:34:22.230 ⇒ 00:34:34.560 Uttam Kumaran: You know, across a few clients. And then also, like, the biggest thing is the AI platform team’s job is going to be to continue to build support for doing those roles and things faster.
257 00:34:34.650 ⇒ 00:34:37.539 Uttam Kumaran: So, over time, you should… you should see that
258 00:34:37.630 ⇒ 00:34:57.069 Uttam Kumaran: The amount of time it takes to do that list of responsibilities should… we should… we’ll drive to some logical minimum, you know? And so whatever the amount of effort it takes today to do that will start to get whittled down, because that team will be tasked to build AI solutions for each of those types of roles, you know?
259 00:34:58.040 ⇒ 00:35:06.659 Clarence Stone: I’ll also add that I’ve been watching you guys go through the project life cycles, and a lot of you guys are already doing
260 00:35:06.660 ⇒ 00:35:22.960 Clarence Stone: the planning process, the resourcing aspect of things, you’re creating the slide decks for the weekly client presentations, and all of those things are already built into this model, too. I don’t think I’ve added anything except for, you know, document management and, like, tracking the health of a client.
261 00:35:22.960 ⇒ 00:35:42.699 Clarence Stone: So, like, it… I guess my feedback, Awish, is like, please tell me exactly, like, which one of these items would be a huge, you know, time commitment that would, actually change the way you allocate your time currently. Because I already observed the team doing this already. Like, I just want to give credit and give a definite role to people who have been doing it.
262 00:35:45.770 ⇒ 00:35:51.489 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, and I… Okay, I… I will, like… Need time to…
263 00:35:51.590 ⇒ 00:35:54.740 Awaish Kumar: come up with some concrete examples?
264 00:35:54.740 ⇒ 00:36:01.870 Clarence Stone: look at it first, and let me know, because I didn’t add anything to the cycles, except for, like, tracking client health.
265 00:36:02.380 ⇒ 00:36:08.249 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like, to be honest, like, sometimes it gets above 40 as well.
266 00:36:08.460 ⇒ 00:36:13.909 Awaish Kumar: But, like, That’s okay. But that’s what I’m saying, that…
267 00:36:14.320 ⇒ 00:36:27.130 Awaish Kumar: And it does not… like, I don’t know if the same people are going to be assigned on all these roles, right? I thought we might have some outsiders coming in, taking on CSO role, for example.
268 00:36:27.850 ⇒ 00:36:31.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so, like, there’s two things I think a way should… when you guys look at this doc, think about…
269 00:36:31.960 ⇒ 00:36:34.250 Uttam Kumaran: That this doc is gonna direct
270 00:36:34.520 ⇒ 00:36:38.739 Uttam Kumaran: the roles and responsibilities for everybody that comes to Brainforge from here on out.
271 00:36:39.210 ⇒ 00:36:48.630 Uttam Kumaran: So… like, it needs to be very clear, and it needs… success needs to be very clear. Additionally,
272 00:36:48.830 ⇒ 00:36:51.939 Uttam Kumaran: Not doing the job well needs to be very, very clear.
273 00:36:52.030 ⇒ 00:37:10.459 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m comfortable talking to you guys about that, because you guys do your job, you crush it. So it needs to be very obvious to us when someone is not able to succeed at these things, right? It can’t be ambiguous. And one thing you guys know is we try this process of bringing people on in, like, a trial or a short-term capacity to test.
274 00:37:10.520 ⇒ 00:37:27.119 Uttam Kumaran: These are going to be the metrics by which we say and understand whether someone can do these things. And so, I want the expectations to be super clear, because if there’s ambiguous expectations, you have opportunities for miscommunication and conflict that’s not necessary and not intended.
275 00:37:27.360 ⇒ 00:37:33.750 Uttam Kumaran: And so, I think that’s… that’s really, like, what I wanna… what I want us to think about.
276 00:37:34.310 ⇒ 00:37:40.779 Awaish Kumar: And, yeah, also, like, as, like, Clarence mentioned, that we are doing some of
277 00:37:41.440 ⇒ 00:37:51.670 Awaish Kumar: like, almost all the things which were mentioned, but, like, like, I’ve seen weeks where we dropped the ball because we committed that we can do that.
278 00:37:52.390 ⇒ 00:37:54.069 Awaish Kumar: But we couldn’t.
279 00:37:55.250 ⇒ 00:38:09.389 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so I have a proposal for you, Wish. We now have an engagement planner role, right? And they should look at these commitments and say, do we have the right amount of people with the right amount of hours to accomplish this this week, next week, for the rest of this project?
280 00:38:09.390 ⇒ 00:38:18.579 Clarence Stone: Right? And that’s always a moving target, right? As you guys get busier and less busy, that engagement planner should raise the flag and say, hey, we actually need more people.
281 00:38:19.000 ⇒ 00:38:43.619 Clarence Stone: Right? And here’s why, right? Like, I would like a breakdown of, okay, you know, we need some more engagement planning help, because I’m across 5 clients, and I’m really just running out of time, and also running analytics on, like, right? So I’m on a time crunch, this is what I’m working on, this is what Awashi’s working on, this is what the CSO is working on, right? And what we need is, you know, 8 hours from someone who could
282 00:38:43.620 ⇒ 00:38:44.930 Clarence Stone: do X, Y, and Z.
283 00:38:45.260 ⇒ 00:38:48.799 Clarence Stone: Right, if you can give me that view, I can help you directly.
284 00:38:48.800 ⇒ 00:39:05.949 Clarence Stone: If you just say, hey, we’re not going to be able to make the deadline, I don’t know how to support you other than saying, okay, then just figure out how to do more, right? I need to know exactly what help I can bring to the table for you. So, part of this document is also how to structure that analysis.
285 00:39:05.950 ⇒ 00:39:16.649 Clarence Stone: Right? So you bring these three leadership roles together and say, okay, we’re kind of getting tight on these deliveries, this has been a pattern for two weeks, what do we need to do to get aligned? What kind of help do we need?
286 00:39:16.650 ⇒ 00:39:36.090 Clarence Stone: Right? Because here’s the thing, Utah will give you the world. I’ve seen it. He’ll buy you products, he’ll… like, we’re repeatedly spending, you know, most of this week, you know, trying to hire new people, so if we got some feedback or analytics on what is it that you need in that engagement, we can shift resourcing. That’s okay.
287 00:39:39.470 ⇒ 00:39:42.150 Demilade Agboola: I have a couple questions.
288 00:39:42.690 ⇒ 00:39:54.799 Demilade Agboola: Sure. I think the first one is… it does sound like, for every project, we would have multiple people, so we would have the three, like, roles,
289 00:39:54.950 ⇒ 00:40:04.989 Demilade Agboola: leadership roles that we talked about here. But then would also still have, like, other people who will be executing, maybe one or two, might not be too many people.
290 00:40:05.120 ⇒ 00:40:10.290 Demilade Agboola: So, effectively, a project would have, like, 4 to maybe 6 people, right?
291 00:40:10.590 ⇒ 00:40:17.340 Demilade Agboola: And I’m wondering about… Like, how that works in terms of, like.
292 00:40:17.660 ⇒ 00:40:34.299 Demilade Agboola: the different projects and distribution of people across those projects, and two, also, what happens with reshuffling. So if, for instance, you have a CSO on a project, and the CSO might be needed on another project from maybe an engineering capacity.
293 00:40:34.620 ⇒ 00:40:41.569 Demilade Agboola: in, you know, heavier… in a heavier form, will they also CSO that project?
294 00:40:41.740 ⇒ 00:40:52.840 Demilade Agboola: about engineering the new… like, basically, how do reshuffles happen? Because we do reshuffle quite a bit across projects, and I’m wondering how we will start to look at that in the future.
295 00:40:53.240 ⇒ 00:41:09.940 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so… so understanding when the reshuffles happen is making… really starts with everybody having a good understanding of what the plan is from the get-go, right? So you might be architecturally heavy, data, you know, services heavy in the beginning as you set up these analysis environments, for example, right?
296 00:41:09.940 ⇒ 00:41:16.120 Clarence Stone: And then you can say in Phase 2, we need less of that and more analysts. So this is where we shift the resourcing.
297 00:41:16.160 ⇒ 00:41:26.990 Clarence Stone: Right? So, Demi, at that point, the EP is going to help with that transition or handover for new people that you might get on your team for, you know, the next milestone phase.
298 00:41:28.140 ⇒ 00:41:31.120 Clarence Stone: Right, so… so does that help on… on how…
299 00:41:31.360 ⇒ 00:41:35.880 Clarence Stone: The decision for, you know, shuffling resources gets driven.
300 00:41:36.790 ⇒ 00:41:48.669 Demilade Agboola: sort of, but let me… let me just… let me give you… let me give an example, a hypothetical example, so that we can maybe crystallize it. If I was on a project, and I was, say, the CSO, right, and I am…
301 00:41:49.770 ⇒ 00:41:58.840 Demilade Agboola: Doing analytics engineering, and we reach a stage where we’re stable, and we’re like, we need more analytics, like, more data analysts rather than analytics engineers, right?
302 00:41:58.870 ⇒ 00:42:12.810 Demilade Agboola: So, the engineering… the engagement manager says… Engagement partner says we need more of them. And so now, I don’t necessarily have a role on that project anymore, in terms of engineering capacity. Would I still function, say, as the CSO on that project?
303 00:42:13.020 ⇒ 00:42:22.620 Demilade Agboola: Or will I, like, in my shift to a new project, would I move to a new project that might already have a CSO and just function only in the analytics engineering capacity?
304 00:42:22.850 ⇒ 00:42:33.819 Clarence Stone: Gotcha. I… I think that if you own the client relationship, you own that client relationship from start to end. Same thing with engagement planning, you own that plan start to end.
305 00:42:33.820 ⇒ 00:42:47.130 Clarence Stone: So, you will still spend maybe a few hours a week making sure that you connect with the client, right? You’re the face of that relationship at this point. So, swapping that out wouldn’t make sense, even if you weren’t pulling tickets. Does that make sense?
306 00:42:47.940 ⇒ 00:42:49.340 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, okay.
307 00:42:49.860 ⇒ 00:42:55.190 Demilade Agboola: Alright, so the only leadership role that could be swapped is maybe service leader?
308 00:42:55.830 ⇒ 00:43:11.060 Clarence Stone: Yeah, but more because that service leader is growing in, you know, capabilities, and, you know, we just need to shift, like, deliveries, but, like, that shouldn’t happen very often. Like, I want to be able to lock in these three roles for every project.
309 00:43:11.300 ⇒ 00:43:22.770 Demilade Agboola: Gotcha. Alright, just… just wanted to confirm and clarify. Yeah. Also, Utam, like, based off this, does it sound… it sounds like for every project, we’re gonna have, like, 4 to 6 people? Would that be a good estimate?
310 00:43:23.800 ⇒ 00:43:25.310 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, at least have 3.
311 00:43:25.960 ⇒ 00:43:27.810 Demilade Agboola: At least halfway. I’ll say that.
312 00:43:28.280 ⇒ 00:43:33.820 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know the… the ceiling is gonna be however I can sell bigger projects.
313 00:43:33.990 ⇒ 00:43:44.200 Uttam Kumaran: But just know that at least there’ll be three, and at least there’ll be these 3 roles. But after these 3 roles, we’re gonna bring it… people will exist as just engineers.
314 00:43:44.360 ⇒ 00:43:54.519 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So, basically, the goal of this is, like, if you’re just an engineer at Brainforge, you… the only way up is to… is to move into these three.
315 00:43:54.520 ⇒ 00:44:04.409 Uttam Kumaran: And you’ll see that the only way up past that is to be able to take one or two of these, and then we have these, like, higher-level roles that we’re starting to flesh out.
316 00:44:04.490 ⇒ 00:44:11.650 Uttam Kumaran: But you would assume at least these three, and then after these three, there’ll just be more engineers on the project.
317 00:44:12.610 ⇒ 00:44:16.339 Demilade Agboola: Okay, that’s fine. And also, if it’s just 3 people on the project.
318 00:44:16.940 ⇒ 00:44:22.219 Demilade Agboola: And each of them have, like, you know, roles, so, like, service leader, Engagement Planner.
319 00:44:22.400 ⇒ 00:44:28.890 Demilade Agboola: And, CSO, are they all, like, I’m trying to see, like…
320 00:44:29.870 ⇒ 00:44:44.169 Demilade Agboola: The service… the engagement planner will plan, obviously. The service leader might need to talk to the other two. Like, my point is, are they all… they’re all functioning both as, like, leaders in their capacity, as well as the regular, analytical engineer.
321 00:44:44.170 ⇒ 00:44:44.550 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
322 00:44:44.550 ⇒ 00:44:44.990 Demilade Agboola: Gotcha.
323 00:44:44.990 ⇒ 00:44:45.479 Uttam Kumaran: That’s right.
324 00:44:45.480 ⇒ 00:44:46.080 Demilade Agboola: Gotcha.
325 00:44:46.080 ⇒ 00:44:54.649 Uttam Kumaran: And so what I want you to think about is whether our assumptions on the time it’s gonna take to do that are correct, and those assumptions are in the document.
326 00:44:54.990 ⇒ 00:45:12.990 Uttam Kumaran: what I don’t… this isn’t an ask for, like, okay, now do two jobs, but this is an ask for a percentage of your time should go to this set of activities if you’re in this role, and we’re also gonna compensate that, you know, appropriately, and the incentive model is there, right? And so…
327 00:45:13.390 ⇒ 00:45:27.430 Uttam Kumaran: as… and this is also the thing, as an engineer right now, especially the three of y’all, y’all are doing some of these. And if I was in your spot, I’d be like, we’re doing some of these, and we’re not getting paid additional amounts for it, right? So what… ask Clarence, what I fought for is that
328 00:45:27.430 ⇒ 00:45:36.719 Uttam Kumaran: people in these roles should get paid appropriately based on taking that up, because guess what? You’re allowing me to get away with not having a dedicated PM.
329 00:45:36.770 ⇒ 00:45:46.089 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And that’s also my goal here, is I don’t want… you guys all know I don’t want dedicated project managers. I think we can handle it, but I wanted to be explicit with the fact that
330 00:45:46.210 ⇒ 00:45:52.629 Uttam Kumaran: You can handle it in 20 or 30% of your time, you know, versus, oh damn, it’s like…
331 00:45:53.200 ⇒ 00:46:02.390 Uttam Kumaran: now I have, like, 150% of my time is going to this. So, that’s, like, that’s the goal here. And so we think that the 3 is the minimum, and I’m not gonna.
332 00:46:02.390 ⇒ 00:46:03.399 Clarence Stone: I’m not gonna…
333 00:46:03.990 ⇒ 00:46:04.850 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
334 00:46:04.990 ⇒ 00:46:19.600 Clarence Stone: Sorry, I was saying, if it goes to, like, 150% of your time, I’d like to know exactly what it is, because there’s definitely some gap between, you know, the things that you’re already doing, because I didn’t add any new functions here.
335 00:46:21.370 ⇒ 00:46:21.910 Clarence Stone: Right.
336 00:46:21.910 ⇒ 00:46:22.460 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
337 00:46:24.630 ⇒ 00:46:31.009 Clarence Stone: Like, the key thing I want to resolve is, like, these silent calls where everyone kind of just looks at each other and goes, like, who’s doing what?
338 00:46:31.010 ⇒ 00:46:50.559 Clarence Stone: Like, no, from, like, the start of this project, everyone should know exactly what they need to do and their responsibilities, right? And if… so if I want to know about the timeline, I can go to the engagement planner. By, you know, I’m going to talk to the client for the first time, I don’t know who they are, right? I might reach out to the CSO and say, hey, tell me about EVC.
339 00:46:50.570 ⇒ 00:46:54.379 Clarence Stone: Right? Who are the leaders? What kind of projects have we done with them? What do they care about?
340 00:46:54.520 ⇒ 00:47:08.019 Clarence Stone: Right? Like, it just makes life easier for everyone in the organization when we know exactly who to go to for each of these things, instead of, like, this more matrix where people are picking up and putting things down as, you know, these deliverables are required to be done.
341 00:47:09.270 ⇒ 00:47:23.980 Uttam Kumaran: No, and you guys know, we’ve just rolled with the punches, right? So, like, I pick up as much as I can, sometimes I can’t pick it up, so then I ask y’all to cover, but when I ask y’all to cover, it’s sort of out of the blue, and then it’s like, damn, okay, let me go learn everything, and so we’re trying to, like.
342 00:47:24.360 ⇒ 00:47:30.120 Uttam Kumaran: remove that from happening, you know? So… Yeah.
343 00:47:44.310 ⇒ 00:47:45.340 Uttam Kumaran: What else?
344 00:47:57.250 ⇒ 00:47:58.010 Awaish Kumar: All good.
345 00:48:00.780 ⇒ 00:48:06.119 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I don’t have anything off the top of my mind that I already… that I didn’t already asked, before I look at that document more in depth, but…
346 00:48:06.120 ⇒ 00:48:07.020 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
347 00:48:07.260 ⇒ 00:48:14.120 Clarence Stone: I really try to cover a lot of your questions in a lot of detail, almost an exorbitant amount of detail.
348 00:48:15.210 ⇒ 00:48:15.830 Awaish Kumar: Yeah.
349 00:48:16.370 ⇒ 00:48:22.280 Awaish Kumar: I think it was good that you didn’t share, that’s why we asked so many questions.
350 00:48:22.280 ⇒ 00:48:22.920 Clarence Stone: Excuse me.
351 00:48:22.920 ⇒ 00:48:27.210 Awaish Kumar: If we already know, like, we wouldn’t have… How strange.
352 00:48:27.710 ⇒ 00:48:43.089 Clarence Stone: Yeah, yeah, so if I can impart to you guys, like, the end state that I’m looking for between these three, you know, leadership roles, is that you guys know each other’s roles, and you know each other so well that you can just look at each other.
353 00:48:43.150 ⇒ 00:48:52.230 Clarence Stone: with, like, a nod, and just know exactly what needs to happen, right? And that’s what I mean by, you know, like, shared understanding within a project.
354 00:48:52.620 ⇒ 00:49:05.219 Clarence Stone: Right, so when I, you know, if UTom says, hey, we need to do X, Y, and Z for this client, he doesn’t have to say, Awash, you’re doing it, Sam, you’re doing it, Demi, you’re doing this part. Like, you guys already know what it is because of the structure that’s set in place here.
355 00:49:14.250 ⇒ 00:49:15.909 Demilade Agboola: Okay, I think that’s a fair point.
356 00:49:20.290 ⇒ 00:49:27.000 Clarence Stone: So, like, if I’m not defining what each of these roles are to, like, that level, Demi, let me know, right? Like,
357 00:49:27.360 ⇒ 00:49:31.939 Clarence Stone: I’m happy to make any sort of artifact that would help explain that.
358 00:49:39.240 ⇒ 00:49:41.399 Demilade Agboola: Okay, sounds good.
359 00:49:43.730 ⇒ 00:49:49.890 Demilade Agboola: I think I’ll… I mean, we’ll definitely have to go through the entire thing, the excited document, and obviously any questions.
360 00:49:50.530 ⇒ 00:49:52.879 Demilade Agboola: We’ll send it back to you.
361 00:49:53.600 ⇒ 00:49:54.160 Clarence Stone: Cool.
362 00:49:55.210 ⇒ 00:49:55.770 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
363 00:49:56.330 ⇒ 00:50:03.240 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, guys, that’s kind of all I wanted to just cover. I think there’s a lot in there, so we tried really hard last few weeks to kind of codify everything, so…
364 00:50:03.480 ⇒ 00:50:10.860 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, no problem, Sam. So, yeah, if you guys want to read this, and then… I don’t know, Clarence, like, what should we do? Like, do we wanna…
365 00:50:11.130 ⇒ 00:50:14.630 Uttam Kumaran: do another sort of, like, Q&A session tomorrow.
366 00:50:15.060 ⇒ 00:50:18.050 Uttam Kumaran: And then maybe come back again next week?
367 00:50:18.220 ⇒ 00:50:20.939 Uttam Kumaran: Or, you know, like, so maybe let’s plan on that.
368 00:50:21.230 ⇒ 00:50:39.589 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I mean, we can do a Q&A tomorrow, and after you guys read this, I’d like to go through what I call, like, a sand table exercise, where I say, hey, UTom just signed a new engagement, the CSO was in that meeting where the project was approved and signed off on, what are you guys doing?
369 00:50:40.090 ⇒ 00:50:44.990 Clarence Stone: Right, and OASU as the SL say, hey, I need to know this, right? You know.
370 00:50:45.220 ⇒ 00:51:05.749 Clarence Stone: Sam or Demi, as the CSO says, okay, like, the first thing I want to do is get the team together and create a project plan, right? We’re just gonna white-table exactly what needs to happen, like, as military movements, so that you guys understand that cycle from start to end, and what your roles might be. And I’ll throw in some injects, like, hey, client asked for a scope expansion, what do you guys do?
371 00:51:06.940 ⇒ 00:51:14.240 Clarence Stone: Right? And after reading this, hopefully you’ll be able to tackle that, and like, I want to see you three give me an answer on how you would handle it.
372 00:51:14.790 ⇒ 00:51:33.400 Clarence Stone: Right? Like, what I really want is this autonomy and to give you the power to take control of these situations, come up with meaningful plans, because you will always like your plan better. Trust me, if you ask me to make you a plan, you might not like it, right? And I don’t know the client as well as you do.
373 00:51:33.750 ⇒ 00:51:34.690 Clarence Stone: Right?
374 00:51:35.370 ⇒ 00:51:40.360 Clarence Stone: So, we can go through, like, a sand table exercise if that’ll help, tomorrow.
375 00:51:40.910 ⇒ 00:51:42.459 Clarence Stone: What do you guys think about that?
376 00:51:46.460 ⇒ 00:51:48.180 Demilade Agboola: Sure, I’m not sure, that sounds good.
377 00:51:48.370 ⇒ 00:51:56.820 Clarence Stone: Yeah, and if there’s, like, scenarios, you guys gave me some really excellent scenarios. Throw them in a list, we’ll cover that during our sand table exercise.
378 00:52:05.150 ⇒ 00:52:06.760 Demilade Agboola: Okay, that sounds good. Okay.
379 00:52:06.760 ⇒ 00:52:07.310 Awaish Kumar: What?
380 00:52:10.230 ⇒ 00:52:10.790 Uttam Kumaran: But…
381 00:52:11.790 ⇒ 00:52:14.709 Awaish Kumar: I was asking, was that for the exercise?
382 00:52:15.210 ⇒ 00:52:29.219 Clarence Stone: For you guys tomorrow, I’ll make up scenarios, and each of you guys will play one of these leadership roles, and we’ll discuss, like, what should happen, right? That way, you’ll have some ideas or understanding of, like, how to handle each of these situations in your brand new roles.
383 00:52:30.580 ⇒ 00:52:35.079 Awaish Kumar: So, are you expecting us to, like, go through the documentation by tomorrow?
384 00:52:36.160 ⇒ 00:52:38.260 Clarence Stone: Yeah.
385 00:52:39.280 ⇒ 00:52:43.149 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I mean, I wrote this in a day, I’ll tell you that.
386 00:52:46.310 ⇒ 00:52:46.870 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
387 00:52:49.050 ⇒ 00:52:57.600 Clarence Stone: I am… trust me, the 18 pages will go really quick. I formatted it so that it’s, like, really good on your eyes to read. It was really part of the design here.
388 00:53:01.670 ⇒ 00:53:02.759 Awaish Kumar: I agree, yep.
389 00:53:06.040 ⇒ 00:53:15.660 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, perfect. So maybe, Clarence, I’ll also clip… I’ll, I’ll take this recording, I’ll clip it, I’ll put it on Loom, and then we can also send it to, like, a couple other folks across the org.
390 00:53:15.900 ⇒ 00:53:21.979 Uttam Kumaran: And then maybe I could have a couple other people join that call as well. Like, it would be nice maybe to have Holly there.
391 00:53:24.000 ⇒ 00:53:28.670 Uttam Kumaran: Probably missing, like, one or two other people that would be nice to sort of get their thoughts on it, so…
392 00:53:30.280 ⇒ 00:53:31.900 Uttam Kumaran: And I’ll send it to Amber, too.
393 00:53:33.490 ⇒ 00:53:41.670 Clarence Stone: Cool, sounds good. And I will get better at explaining all of this to you all as we go as well. I’m learning and growing as well, this is all a process for all of us.
394 00:53:41.850 ⇒ 00:53:45.610 Clarence Stone: So, if I’m missing things, like, feel free to tell me.
395 00:53:50.480 ⇒ 00:53:51.920 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, alright.
396 00:53:52.390 ⇒ 00:53:53.330 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you all.
397 00:53:54.150 ⇒ 00:53:54.540 Awaish Kumar: Thank you.
398 00:53:54.540 ⇒ 00:53:54.990 Clarence Stone: Awesome.
399 00:53:54.990 ⇒ 00:53:55.620 Demilade Agboola: Thank you.
400 00:53:55.620 ⇒ 00:53:56.180 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
401 00:53:56.340 ⇒ 00:53:57.529 Uttam Kumaran: Thanks, talk soon.