Meeting Title: Brainforge Operations and Planning Discussion Date: 2025-12-18 Meeting participants: Clarence Stone, Rico Rejoso
WEBVTT
1 00:01:49.590 ⇒ 00:01:51.609 Rico Rejoso: Hey, Clarence, I’m sorry.
2 00:01:51.910 ⇒ 00:01:53.200 Clarence Stone: Hey, no worries!
3 00:01:53.760 ⇒ 00:01:56.200 Rico Rejoso: I’m sorry I was late, I was doing some stuff.
4 00:01:56.540 ⇒ 00:02:00.960 Clarence Stone: It’s okay. You were not late at all. It’s only a minute.
5 00:02:02.180 ⇒ 00:02:04.139 Clarence Stone: How’s everything going, Rico?
6 00:02:04.510 ⇒ 00:02:09.359 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, we’ve been busy since we’re closing the year.
7 00:02:11.270 ⇒ 00:02:20.390 Clarence Stone: So, Rico, I wanted to set aside this time to introduce myself, and also learn a little bit more about you, and…
8 00:02:20.490 ⇒ 00:02:35.320 Clarence Stone: I noticed that you are, like, the connector of everything in terms of, like, operations and planning around here, so I wanted to pick your brain on, you know, where I can find the best resources, in Notion, and
9 00:02:35.580 ⇒ 00:02:39.929 Clarence Stone: Get a little bit of insight on how you’ve been managing the workflows.
10 00:02:41.300 ⇒ 00:02:54.779 Clarence Stone: But, you know, just to get started, I’m Clarence. I met you, Tom, like, earlier this year through a founder’s gathering in Austin, and we’ve been just chatting all along.
11 00:02:55.150 ⇒ 00:02:56.880 Clarence Stone: I have my own,
12 00:02:57.030 ⇒ 00:03:12.380 Clarence Stone: startup that does, private AI implementations that got recently acquired, so I ended up with a bunch of extra free time, and I found this opportunity to, kind of join Brainforge and help them work on scaling and,
13 00:03:12.610 ⇒ 00:03:20.420 Clarence Stone: improving the overall, you know, team’s delivery and creating new leaders within Brainforge.
14 00:03:20.420 ⇒ 00:03:39.539 Clarence Stone: So that’s really, you know, what my goal here at Brainforge is to do, and a lot of that, you know, involves me asking you a ton of questions on where to find things and, you know, what some of the details are. So, that’s why I’ve been pinging you with questions, but yeah, like, to you, I’d love to learn more about you.
15 00:03:40.110 ⇒ 00:03:55.779 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, yeah, again, my name is Rico. I was onboarded as the operations lead in Brainforce, basically, as what you mentioned, connecting, everyone, and across departments in finance, delivery, legal.
16 00:03:55.930 ⇒ 00:04:08.819 Rico Rejoso: operations as well, and making sure that, you know, I work on the back end of stuff, and making sure that everything’s set up for everybody, so they can just execute everything accordingly and properly as what the plan is.
17 00:04:09.140 ⇒ 00:04:10.469 Rico Rejoso: So yeah,
18 00:04:11.150 ⇒ 00:04:25.520 Rico Rejoso: workflow and stuff, I don’t know how to further explain that one, but I just have everything in my mind, and basically just with them telling me what needs, what must be done, and I just work on it and have it, making sure that it’s implemented ASAP.
19 00:04:26.530 ⇒ 00:04:49.129 Clarence Stone: Yeah, absolutely. So, Rico, I guess, like, I’ll ask a more precise question. It looks like there’s a lot of great documentation and standardized processes that are going into, like, like what you just described as the stand-up of each of the projects for each of the clients, right? There’s, you know, SOWs, the plan, the Gantt charts, it looks like there’s some…
20 00:04:49.240 ⇒ 00:05:01.520 Clarence Stone: standardized, ops diagrams. Like, if you look in Brainforge Teams, UTOM is saying, hey, we need… we need one of these things for each one of these clients, right? Yeah.
21 00:05:01.520 ⇒ 00:05:25.100 Clarence Stone: what I would like to do, and, you know, by the way, I’m asking you this because I probably think it exists already, right? What I would… like, the visual that I’d like, and I think would be helpful for everyone, is if there was, like, a tracker for each project’s health that checked off, like, did we get the SOW out? Is that approved? Do we have
22 00:05:25.280 ⇒ 00:05:41.569 Clarence Stone: you know, the strategy and plan, right, put together and approved by you, Tom. You know, what are the milestones, what’s the Gantt chart? You know, maybe that’s a link to, operate or linear, right? It’s kind of like…
23 00:05:41.990 ⇒ 00:05:52.910 Clarence Stone: my challenge right now is that the information about a project is sort of, like, all over the place, and I’m wondering how you keep it all together in your head, right? And if there is a reference for me.
24 00:05:53.440 ⇒ 00:05:54.350 Rico Rejoso: Yeah,
25 00:05:54.480 ⇒ 00:06:03.690 Rico Rejoso: A great point on that, and I absolutely want to set up a standard process for it as well. It is one challenge that we had, as…
26 00:06:03.720 ⇒ 00:06:15.080 Rico Rejoso: we start… I mean, as I start off with Brainforge, because, upon knowing that the way they form or create the SOW, it’s just basically Robert and Utam themselves.
27 00:06:15.150 ⇒ 00:06:33.399 Rico Rejoso: creating that on their own, and they just set up a meeting and just draft everything, during that meeting, and they send it off to the clients without any individual or any department, other department involved. So what happened is that after they sent off the SOW, is they just forward it to me, so I could create the contract.
28 00:06:33.400 ⇒ 00:06:41.150 Rico Rejoso: Before, there was a process where they would loop in the marketing or the design team to create a one-pager for the SOW, but
29 00:06:41.470 ⇒ 00:06:45.709 Rico Rejoso: I don’t know, recently, since everything was, you know.
30 00:06:45.810 ⇒ 00:06:49.029 Rico Rejoso: Fast, and we were, like, onboarding clients.
31 00:06:49.480 ⇒ 00:06:57.419 Rico Rejoso: now and then, it just, you know, that kind of process was kind of, you know, sidelined, and we just… and they just,
32 00:06:57.590 ⇒ 00:07:08.010 Rico Rejoso: create a process of them creating the SOW in Google Doc and forwarding it to clients. Once approved, once they get a verbal agreement or signal from them, they just forward it to me for contract creation.
33 00:07:08.060 ⇒ 00:07:25.049 Rico Rejoso: So, the process we ideal was, like, a sales coordinator will be finalizing the SOW, upon creation and upon request from our executives or, sales representative. Basically, Utham and Robert are filling in that role.
34 00:07:25.200 ⇒ 00:07:26.779 Rico Rejoso: They should…
35 00:07:27.140 ⇒ 00:07:41.109 Rico Rejoso: be, discussing that with the operations and the legal team so we can create or finalize the contract. But since it’s Robert and Utam taking or filling in that role, there’s no involvement from other team members, and it was not, you know.
36 00:07:41.740 ⇒ 00:07:46.009 Rico Rejoso: We… they were not able to hand it off to… to me.
37 00:07:46.390 ⇒ 00:07:49.190 Rico Rejoso: Beforehand, before getting that verbal agreement.
38 00:07:49.190 ⇒ 00:07:50.100 Clarence Stone: So…
39 00:07:50.190 ⇒ 00:07:54.719 Rico Rejoso: So, that kind of process is, for me, is kind of, you know, unorganized for now, but…
40 00:07:54.720 ⇒ 00:07:55.500 Clarence Stone: Yeah.
41 00:07:55.500 ⇒ 00:08:06.559 Rico Rejoso: It’s been working, so we kind of just stick to it for the meantime, but we kind of like to have, like, a process for it. And maybe because the sales coordinator role, you know, it’s…
42 00:08:06.860 ⇒ 00:08:10.619 Rico Rejoso: It’s a road that was not filled in accordingly, and we just had Jed.
43 00:08:10.940 ⇒ 00:08:15.299 Rico Rejoso: Onboarded for that role, so hopefully we can, you know, create a process, and because…
44 00:08:15.770 ⇒ 00:08:18.160 Rico Rejoso: And just have that, you know…
45 00:08:18.320 ⇒ 00:08:20.600 Rico Rejoso: Make that organized as well, in a sense.
46 00:08:20.980 ⇒ 00:08:45.400 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so let me kind of explain to you how I see, like, if we do want to work towards improvements, I think, you know, the first step is just being able to catalog all the steps that are happening, and then plug all the gaps that exist so that we can actually see the current process as it is, right? Like, I don’t want to change how things work until, like, we can actually observe it and track it and measure it.
47 00:08:45.400 ⇒ 00:08:57.060 Clarence Stone: So, like, a few quick follow-up questions on that. Like, so if you, Tom, and Robert are having those initial conversations, they’re creating the SOW, and they’re coming to you for that legal document, right?
48 00:08:57.060 ⇒ 00:08:57.730 Rico Rejoso: Hmm.
49 00:08:57.860 ⇒ 00:09:11.610 Clarence Stone: Like, that’s totally fine, right? Let’s just let that process happen, but where do you store it, Rico? Like, once you get that SOW from them, and you create the legal documents, where do they sit?
50 00:09:14.680 ⇒ 00:09:17.419 Rico Rejoso: They have two,
51 00:09:19.000 ⇒ 00:09:27.579 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, we have one in Notion, in the sales notion, and another one is just Google Document under Robert and Utom’s account.
52 00:09:27.820 ⇒ 00:09:34.939 Rico Rejoso: So it’s not living in any shared drive that we have right now, so I think it’s just them sharing it through us afterwards.
53 00:09:35.500 ⇒ 00:09:38.470 Rico Rejoso: I think it’s my fault not asking for… not ask…
54 00:09:38.470 ⇒ 00:10:01.229 Clarence Stone: No, no, no. Rico, this is nobody’s fault. There’s so much happening, right, and there’s so much growth. Like, what you guys really need is somebody who doesn’t have any projects at Brainforge that can sit down and ask these questions and think about this for you. So, like, this is not a, you know, anybody’s fault thing. It’s like, hey, now we need to sit down and actually write it down and, you know.
55 00:10:01.230 ⇒ 00:10:02.819 Clarence Stone: Improve things, right?
56 00:10:03.020 ⇒ 00:10:03.605 Rico Rejoso: Yeah…
57 00:10:04.960 ⇒ 00:10:17.640 Clarence Stone: So, yeah, like, I’m going from that perspective. There is absolutely, in my mind, not a blame at all. It’s like, if we didn’t create a process, then we can’t say, like, you know, it’s anybody’s fault for not enforcing it, right?
58 00:10:18.890 ⇒ 00:10:19.740 Rico Rejoso: Thank you.
59 00:10:21.090 ⇒ 00:10:40.040 Clarence Stone: So, so yeah, like, I just want to make that very clear, but yeah, so let’s… let’s talk about this a little more. So it sits there, and then, like, let’s just say, you know, the SOW gets signed, everything gets approved, and the project kicks off, like, do you create a notion for that? I know, so I see that there’s a Slack channel for each client.
60 00:10:40.080 ⇒ 00:10:48.990 Clarence Stone: a notion for each client, and on that Slack channel, you’ve been so organized, like, you wrote down, like, here’s the links to all the things, like.
61 00:10:49.890 ⇒ 00:10:54.319 Clarence Stone: Is there, like, one landing page that holds all of those things together?
62 00:10:54.870 ⇒ 00:11:02.170 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, it’s supposed to be under all the client… under a client hub in Notion, so if you go to a client Notion page…
63 00:11:02.370 ⇒ 00:11:05.170 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, there’s one created individual group.
64 00:11:05.330 ⇒ 00:11:06.060 Rico Rejoso: Hey, homie!
65 00:11:06.060 ⇒ 00:11:15.249 Clarence Stone: navigate through this. I still haven’t learned how to work here yet, so this is what I have on my Notion view. Where would I find.
66 00:11:15.840 ⇒ 00:11:16.470 Rico Rejoso: Hmm.
67 00:11:16.470 ⇒ 00:11:16.880 Clarence Stone: that.
68 00:11:16.880 ⇒ 00:11:20.399 Rico Rejoso: You need to go to the homepage of Brain Forge.
69 00:11:20.400 ⇒ 00:11:21.110 Clarence Stone: swoosh.
70 00:11:22.450 ⇒ 00:11:23.060 Rico Rejoso: Yep.
71 00:11:24.900 ⇒ 00:11:27.360 Rico Rejoso: That certainly is not what I’m looking at.
72 00:11:27.360 ⇒ 00:11:38.890 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I know. See, this is why, like, I was like, I know this stuff exists, and I’m, like, wasting Rico’s time by just asking for one thing at a time. I’d like to see where everything is.
73 00:11:39.240 ⇒ 00:11:40.899 Rico Rejoso: I just have everything, you know.
74 00:11:41.380 ⇒ 00:11:44.799 Rico Rejoso: So, I don’t have to navigate anymore.
75 00:11:44.800 ⇒ 00:11:57.139 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so you kind of get why I was asking, right? I was like, hey, like, I don’t want to just keep asking you one question at a time, it’s not effective. Oh, perfect, okay, cool. So here, from here, I go to clients.
76 00:11:57.250 ⇒ 00:11:57.930 Rico Rejoso: Yep.
77 00:11:57.980 ⇒ 00:11:58.880 Clarence Stone: Okay
78 00:11:59.690 ⇒ 00:12:09.620 Clarence Stone: And then, like, I guess you stood one up for, Magic Spoon, so, like, all the links that you put in the chat channel should also be on Magic Spoon, right?
79 00:12:09.640 ⇒ 00:12:12.960 Rico Rejoso: Yep, so that should be filtered out, let me save it for everyone.
80 00:12:15.670 ⇒ 00:12:16.170 Clarence Stone: No clue.
81 00:12:16.170 ⇒ 00:12:17.369 Rico Rejoso: Yep, so, yeah.
82 00:12:20.110 ⇒ 00:12:25.870 Clarence Stone: Where’s… oh, down here. Cool. Upcoming start. Cool. So I hope… oh, this is beautiful!
83 00:12:29.410 ⇒ 00:12:33.629 Rico Rejoso: Okay, so like that, I, make sure that I put in on the necessary docu…
84 00:12:34.100 ⇒ 00:12:40.899 Rico Rejoso: details from the SOW there, but any other also should be filled in by the engineering team.
85 00:12:41.250 ⇒ 00:12:44.800 Rico Rejoso: And update all the navigation and quick links on the sidebar of it.
86 00:12:44.800 ⇒ 00:12:49.219 Clarence Stone: Love it. Okay, perfect. I mean, like, this is…
87 00:12:49.700 ⇒ 00:12:57.569 Clarence Stone: It’s beautiful. Okay, so from your perspective, though, are people actually using this great structure that you’ve created
88 00:12:57.900 ⇒ 00:13:09.929 Clarence Stone: Or, you know, are they working on these processes differently in other places? One, I’m asking this, Rico, because, like, I think this looks great.
89 00:13:10.060 ⇒ 00:13:20.120 Clarence Stone: But if people aren’t using it, it might be because we’re not collecting the right information, it’s not convenient enough, there might be some things that we can improve on this so that everyone is using it, right?
90 00:13:20.660 ⇒ 00:13:21.220 Rico Rejoso: Yeah.
91 00:13:21.350 ⇒ 00:13:36.540 Rico Rejoso: Honestly, I think not. They’re just going in there to put in the document Notion file, but, other than that, they’re just referring, because everyone’s using Slack heavily, and they’re not really going to Notion unless they’re doing any documentation part of the process.
92 00:13:41.690 ⇒ 00:13:48.249 Rico Rejoso: That’s why I opt to, like, send the links and snacks, so they can have, like, a view of where to put things in that.
93 00:13:48.480 ⇒ 00:13:49.990 Rico Rejoso: And hoping that
94 00:13:50.180 ⇒ 00:13:56.059 Rico Rejoso: They will efficiently use it, rather than them just going anywhere just to get those files, or asking me.
95 00:13:56.330 ⇒ 00:13:59.130 Rico Rejoso: Going directly to me to get those links.
96 00:13:59.570 ⇒ 00:14:02.049 Clarence Stone: Yep. Cool.
97 00:14:03.200 ⇒ 00:14:14.780 Clarence Stone: That’s very important to know. So, so, Rico, I want to support you. I want to get to a place where everybody on each project is using this layout that you have.
98 00:14:16.230 ⇒ 00:14:16.820 Rico Rejoso: Good evening.
99 00:14:17.540 ⇒ 00:14:37.180 Clarence Stone: Because this is exactly what things should look like, with some additional enhancements of, like, maybe being able to track the health of this project, right? Like, are we on time, in terms of the deliverables that we, you know, set aside on, you know, on this timeline here? Are we…
100 00:14:37.180 ⇒ 00:14:44.119 Clarence Stone: you know, what is the next milestone for their client? What is the next touchpoint with the client, right?
101 00:14:44.120 ⇒ 00:14:44.490 Rico Rejoso: Yeah.
102 00:14:44.490 ⇒ 00:14:49.289 Clarence Stone: So maybe, like, a visualization that’s on the top that’s just giving you a bubble of all the…
103 00:14:49.330 ⇒ 00:15:06.840 Clarence Stone: different pieces of health. And for example, like, I don’t want us to be manually updating that stuff, like, I want to talk to you, Tom, so that we can get linear directly connected here, right? And linear just tells us, hey, you know, milestone 1 is 50%, just right at the top.
104 00:15:08.000 ⇒ 00:15:16.600 Clarence Stone: Right. And maybe, like, Black Conversations can have a summary saying, this is what the team is currently talking about related to Magic Spoon, right?
105 00:15:16.600 ⇒ 00:15:17.819 Rico Rejoso: That’s good, yeah.
106 00:15:18.950 ⇒ 00:15:34.870 Clarence Stone: So, like, I want to integrate where everyone else is working and not using this, let’s just find out if there’s plugins to bring that in, so that you can actually see, you know, the lifecycle that’s happening outside of Notion, and also, like, encourage people to update this, right? So,
107 00:15:34.930 ⇒ 00:15:50.969 Clarence Stone: We go… I don’t know if you were able to catch the Friday meeting last week, but I presented a new method where there would be a planner and a client success owner, right? Like, I believe those two people should be owning this page and working in this.
108 00:15:53.440 ⇒ 00:16:04.949 Clarence Stone: Right? Because you created a structure for them, right? Like, they should come in and say, this is what I know about the client, here’s, you know, what their goals are, and this is what our project is related to that goal.
109 00:16:05.090 ⇒ 00:16:14.909 Clarence Stone: And the planner should come in and say, hey, this is, you know, right here, like, fill out this, the engagement timeline and the accomplishments and the milestones, right?
110 00:16:15.950 ⇒ 00:16:18.769 Clarence Stone: So, I want that adoption to happen.
111 00:16:19.640 ⇒ 00:16:21.580 Clarence Stone: What are your thoughts?
112 00:16:23.570 ⇒ 00:16:34.860 Rico Rejoso: I wanted that as well, because right now, I guess what’s happening is that, there were, like, 3 roles of a project manager, right, that you have discussed last Friday.
113 00:16:34.950 ⇒ 00:16:46.090 Rico Rejoso: what’s happening is that Thomas, like, leading the delivery side and execution side of it, and when it comes to the planning and, you know, updating all files, providing a deck.
114 00:16:46.550 ⇒ 00:16:52.289 Rico Rejoso: I think… dumb, and… Amber and I were, like, just doing it.
115 00:16:52.770 ⇒ 00:17:02.609 Rico Rejoso: Depending on who has bandwidth to do it. So there’s no one really looking into it unless, you know, IRM could look into it, since your thumb’s busy with a lot of things.
116 00:17:03.120 ⇒ 00:17:27.599 Clarence Stone: Yeah, yeah, so, so I… yeah, I want that to continue to be your responsibility, but also I want to tell everyone in the organization that this is what you’re doing, so they need to listen to you, right? If Rico says, come in and put in your milestones, you better do it, right? And that comes with saying, like, hey, on this, you know, project, your job is to manage the plan and strategy, so when
117 00:17:27.599 ⇒ 00:17:31.870 Clarence Stone: Rico says it goes here, like, it needs to be here, or else you haven’t done the plans.
118 00:17:32.140 ⇒ 00:17:32.990 Clarence Stone: Right.
119 00:17:33.230 ⇒ 00:17:57.570 Clarence Stone: So, in order… like, I might make some tweaks to this as we go along, but this is perfect. Is there anywhere else things are being stored, or where, you know, Brainforge is having, like, different communications related to a project? I think what I know right now is a lot of conversations are happening in Slack, work assignments are going to linear. I even see PRDs happening in,
120 00:17:57.570 ⇒ 00:17:59.150 Clarence Stone: cursor, right?
121 00:18:01.970 ⇒ 00:18:03.300 Rico Rejoso: Currently a cursor.
122 00:18:05.190 ⇒ 00:18:17.170 Clarence Stone: Yeah, like, I want to collect all of these, you know, other places and also centralize it in Notion, right? Because we’ve got to pick one place where everything that’s happening in a project is going to roll up to.
123 00:18:18.940 ⇒ 00:18:19.540 Rico Rejoso: Okay.
124 00:18:19.820 ⇒ 00:18:21.040 Clarence Stone: Right?
125 00:18:22.630 ⇒ 00:18:39.030 Clarence Stone: So, so, let me make it easier for us to ideate together. I’d like to know from you, like, and I already got a good understanding of how things start, if you could just make me very general boxes like this. Explain to me, like, how a project works from start to end, right? Like.
126 00:18:39.150 ⇒ 00:18:43.579 Clarence Stone: You know, based on the story that you gave me, you know.
127 00:18:43.880 ⇒ 00:18:50.570 Clarence Stone: Robert and you, Tom, have conversations with the client. They send out an SOW, and then it goes to you, right?
128 00:18:50.670 ⇒ 00:19:04.669 Clarence Stone: Yes. Where you create the legal document, you update the sales notion, you go to the Google Doc, and you store all those files, right? What I like to do next is, like, I probably would ask you, okay, let’s say SOW is signed.
129 00:19:05.720 ⇒ 00:19:11.729 Clarence Stone: what do you do down here, right? And I’d like to see this, like, kind of happen
130 00:19:11.870 ⇒ 00:19:14.380 Clarence Stone: What does Rigo do?
131 00:19:14.900 ⇒ 00:19:22.900 Clarence Stone: All the way until, like, you get to the end state box, which is, project complete.
132 00:19:23.910 ⇒ 00:19:26.010 Rico Rejoso: Right? .
133 00:19:26.130 ⇒ 00:19:40.099 Clarence Stone: because if I understand how things work now, I can, you know, kind of, like, have deeper conversations with you on how we can make this notion better, and get people involved, and actually updating it. Does that make sense?
134 00:19:40.550 ⇒ 00:19:41.750 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, definitely.
135 00:19:42.970 ⇒ 00:19:56.710 Rico Rejoso: Okay, maybe to start off, after reviewing and after signing the contracts, I proceed to onboarding, not really onboarding, but let’s say, preparing everything on the, for before or prior kickoff.
136 00:19:56.920 ⇒ 00:19:59.510 Rico Rejoso: like, the notion, and…
137 00:20:00.180 ⇒ 00:20:08.820 Rico Rejoso: that comes across in operations, legal, and financing. So, operations will be preparing all the notion doc, making sure that we have
138 00:20:09.090 ⇒ 00:20:10.709 Rico Rejoso: All the tools.
139 00:20:10.840 ⇒ 00:20:21.950 Rico Rejoso: general tools, for a client prepared. Slap, Notion, Linear, Then, afterwards, informal finance.
140 00:20:22.180 ⇒ 00:20:24.230 Rico Rejoso: To send out the invoice.
141 00:20:24.400 ⇒ 00:20:28.240 Rico Rejoso: And organizing the legal, or let’s say the contract.
142 00:20:28.620 ⇒ 00:20:31.189 Rico Rejoso: For that client.
143 00:20:31.400 ⇒ 00:20:36.430 Rico Rejoso: Afterwards, we start off with a kickoff on the date specified on the contract.
144 00:20:36.570 ⇒ 00:20:40.750 Rico Rejoso: And we list out, based on the SLW,
145 00:20:40.860 ⇒ 00:20:52.129 Rico Rejoso: We should be having, like, a Gantt chart, or, you know, to specify the project milestones and tasks initially, and confirming it with client on kickoff and discussion.
146 00:20:55.070 ⇒ 00:21:04.659 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so… so I think you get… you get the gist. Like, I don’t want to make you sit with me while I do this, but, like, if you can just give me this very high-level view, right?
147 00:21:04.660 ⇒ 00:21:05.100 Rico Rejoso: Okay.
148 00:21:05.100 ⇒ 00:21:12.530 Clarence Stone: Like, like, what would you do right now, you know, after each event, all the way until project completion, right?
149 00:21:14.210 ⇒ 00:21:15.100 Clarence Stone: And…
150 00:21:17.320 ⇒ 00:21:36.329 Clarence Stone: what does Rico do? It’s gonna be a lot. Okay, so, like, and then, I would love to sit with you and get all of your thoughts on how it could be better, right? Just like here, you’re like, hey, yeah, like, this is how it happens right now, I don’t like it because, you know, it’s not really centralized anywhere, there’s a better way to do it, right?
151 00:21:36.330 ⇒ 00:21:42.689 Clarence Stone: Let’s actually look at the full picture and go through all the better ways that we can do it, and then implement that.
152 00:21:42.690 ⇒ 00:21:43.500 Clarence Stone: Right?
153 00:21:44.910 ⇒ 00:21:45.480 Rico Rejoso: Okay.
154 00:21:46.500 ⇒ 00:21:48.080 Clarence Stone: Does that make sense?
155 00:21:48.080 ⇒ 00:21:48.640 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, yeah.
156 00:21:48.640 ⇒ 00:21:53.109 Clarence Stone: Yeah, if you want to sit and do this with me, like, we’ve got another 9 minutes we can.
157 00:21:53.400 ⇒ 00:21:56.889 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, that’s fine, that’s fine. I have a… I have time right now, Boris.
158 00:21:56.890 ⇒ 00:22:04.930 Clarence Stone: Okay, so let me just finish this part, then. Project kickoff happens, and we create, the PRDs.
159 00:22:05.080 ⇒ 00:22:06.650 Clarence Stone: the timelines.
160 00:22:07.330 ⇒ 00:22:08.829 Clarence Stone: Which is a Gantt chart.
161 00:22:11.290 ⇒ 00:22:19.870 Clarence Stone: What else? At what point do you guys update the operate to, lock in people’s availability?
162 00:22:20.410 ⇒ 00:22:22.410 Rico Rejoso: We do it, like,
163 00:22:24.650 ⇒ 00:22:41.229 Rico Rejoso: before, it was once a month, but we have, like, a mid-month check-in to allocate. So I think that’s one thing that we have to create a process for, because what happened right now is that, currently, Awash would, some would be going to Awash, our engineering deed.
164 00:22:41.430 ⇒ 00:22:48.600 Rico Rejoso: To, you know, take a look at allocations and to see who has bandwidth that we can assign for that client.
165 00:22:50.940 ⇒ 00:23:00.679 Clarence Stone: So… so that’s probably happening right as SOW is signed, right? Because, like, you can’t really kick out the project, so, like, someone’s here.
166 00:23:01.110 ⇒ 00:23:02.000 Clarence Stone: Right.
167 00:23:03.210 ⇒ 00:23:10.250 Clarence Stone: So, operate… Locating, staffing… Right?
168 00:23:11.110 ⇒ 00:23:17.510 Clarence Stone: And then PRDs, and, like, these PRDs and timelines, where do they get stored? I think…
169 00:23:18.150 ⇒ 00:23:24.789 Clarence Stone: They’re definitely not in the Notion, right? Are they in the Notion? Let me check. I’ll pick a more mature client and see.
170 00:23:25.520 ⇒ 00:23:26.950 Clarence Stone: Right.
171 00:23:27.170 ⇒ 00:23:30.960 Clarence Stone: active, like, we talk about eating a lot, let’s take a look.
172 00:23:32.020 ⇒ 00:23:38.459 Rico Rejoso: Alright, to be honest, it really depends on who’s handling the project. If it’s Robert, I know Robert is putting it in a Google Doc.
173 00:23:39.240 ⇒ 00:23:42.939 Rico Rejoso: Aside from Notion, but UTOM likes to put everything in Notion.
174 00:23:43.650 ⇒ 00:23:45.689 Rico Rejoso: or a cursor for the PRT.
175 00:23:46.100 ⇒ 00:23:46.860 Clarence Stone: Okay.
176 00:23:48.230 ⇒ 00:23:54.130 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I’m expanding out a lot of facts. Yeah, I mean, this is quite comprehensive, everything is rolling into here.
177 00:23:54.320 ⇒ 00:24:01.929 Clarence Stone: It just seems like at some point, we stopped updating this, and I want to figure out why, you know, why it was, you know.
178 00:24:02.160 ⇒ 00:24:09.500 Clarence Stone: such a lift, right? We don’t want to make it additional work, we want to make it, you know, really smooth, so,
179 00:24:10.480 ⇒ 00:24:12.760 Clarence Stone: Okay, cool. So, so, so this…
180 00:24:14.030 ⇒ 00:24:20.039 Clarence Stone: like, if it… if it’s various, we can just say various. It could be Google Doc.
181 00:24:20.300 ⇒ 00:24:33.430 Clarence Stone: It could be cursor, it could be in Ocean, right? Yeah, and that’s okay. Like, admitting this allows us to look at ourselves honestly and say, we can do that, right?
182 00:24:35.270 ⇒ 00:24:36.969 Rico Rejoso: It’s great, to be honest.
183 00:24:41.000 ⇒ 00:24:48.239 Clarence Stone: So, you kind of understand where my head is at, and how I want to prove things, right? What are your thoughts?
184 00:24:50.460 ⇒ 00:25:08.849 Rico Rejoso: this is great that someone’s, you know, getting an overview of this and making sure, or let’s say, you know, creating a plan on how we can keep this organized, because at one point, we were also, like, looking into this and how we can create, maybe prior to quarter four, or else September, we were, like, discussing this with the AI team, and we were like, you know, how can we…
185 00:25:09.720 ⇒ 00:25:16.819 Rico Rejoso: Create a process for this, then there comes the fourth quarter, where we onboard a lot of clients, and it just got in…
186 00:25:17.350 ⇒ 00:25:40.309 Clarence Stone: Yeah, you guys got very swamped, right? And yeah, so let’s, you know, let’s bring this topic back, and the cool part is, you know, UTom’s got my time. There’s plenty of time for me to think things through. My only disadvantage, Rico, is that I haven’t been working here, so I don’t know all the cool things that you guys all know, right? So that’s why I thought reaching out to you would be super helpful.
187 00:25:40.310 ⇒ 00:25:57.019 Clarence Stone: But I think a great starting point would be to create a diagram like this, Rico. I don’t have any requirements on where you do this, so if you like PowerPoint, or you like Notion, or you like Miro, whatever you want to use to create something like this would be great. And I’ll send this to you so that you have an example of what we talked about.
188 00:25:57.410 ⇒ 00:26:01.889 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, definitely. We can store it in Ocean, probably because we have everything there.
189 00:26:01.900 ⇒ 00:26:19.629 Clarence Stone: Okay, and I also think it’s always valuable to show people, like, a strategic vision of where we want to head towards. Like, as we talk about, like, the client success role, the strategy and planning role, and the service leader role, I want to be able to set up,
190 00:26:19.630 ⇒ 00:26:23.460 Clarence Stone: Things that that person, that leader, should be doing daily.
191 00:26:23.460 ⇒ 00:26:28.129 Clarence Stone: Right? Like, hey, you should Slack or email your clients at least once a day.
192 00:26:28.550 ⇒ 00:26:38.590 Clarence Stone: Right? You should, you know, be the voice of your client at stand-up, but, like, and then compile weekly client touchpoints. I want to create
193 00:26:38.870 ⇒ 00:26:46.070 Clarence Stone: Notion documents that show what a good client touchpoint looks like, what goes in there.
194 00:26:46.390 ⇒ 00:26:47.600 Rico Rejoso: Yeah. Right?
195 00:26:47.600 ⇒ 00:26:57.110 Clarence Stone: And then, you know, maybe link some really great decks from other clients to say, if you’re creating client touchpoint deck this week, these are the, you know, things that make it very good.
196 00:26:57.280 ⇒ 00:26:58.770 Clarence Stone: Here’s some examples.
197 00:26:59.470 ⇒ 00:27:10.280 Clarence Stone: Right, so the end state here is for every single bubble of activities that I, like, we’re gonna expect these leaders to do, we have to be very precise about exactly how we want them to do it.
198 00:27:11.590 ⇒ 00:27:12.509 Rico Rejoso: That’s great, yeah.
199 00:27:12.770 ⇒ 00:27:25.790 Clarence Stone: So, so, like, after, you know, we get through this, what I’d love to sit with you, and Eliza, about is, you know, creating more documentation for each one of these bubbles.
200 00:27:26.350 ⇒ 00:27:27.259 Rico Rejoso: Okay, yeah.
201 00:27:27.420 ⇒ 00:27:28.100 Clarence Stone: Right.
202 00:27:28.410 ⇒ 00:27:40.040 Clarence Stone: So, yeah, just a vision of what’s coming ahead, right? Because what I want to do is create this. So, I’ll share this with you, Rico. By the way, I created my own linear.
203 00:27:40.690 ⇒ 00:27:57.469 Clarence Stone: It’s called the Future of Brain Forge, and I’ll add you to this, but it talks about, you know, what my goals and tasks are. I need to complete role definitions, I want to create compensation structure, areas of responsibility, goals and compensation, I want to create this day in the life vignette, I want to talk with everybody here.
204 00:27:57.500 ⇒ 00:28:17.209 Clarence Stone: Right? I want to create a Bring Forge Buddy program, I want to create a 30, 60, 90, you know, program for leaders, so that we can actually train them, we can actually show them where the notions are, set up processes and standardization, so that’s where this comes in, you know, when I say, hey, we’re gonna write up, you know, descriptions on each one, right?
205 00:28:17.840 ⇒ 00:28:19.150 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, it’s a sweet.
206 00:28:19.380 ⇒ 00:28:42.400 Clarence Stone: And then here is, like, I want everybody at Brainforge to know what their day could be. So if, you know, I just made up this cowboy, he’s a data analyst and a client success owner, so he’s the leader in the organization, but his skill set is data analysis. So, as a client success owner, he’s gonna go to stand up and give a quick update on how happy the client is with our work.
207 00:28:42.480 ⇒ 00:29:01.379 Clarence Stone: Right? Client was able to, you know, increase, you know, their orders by 10X, like, they’re so happy with the dashboard, and they love the UI. That means that they care about how things look, so remember that team. Right? And then for the rest of the stand-up, he’s the data analyst, so he provides updates and shares what he’s been working on.
208 00:29:01.730 ⇒ 00:29:13.639 Clarence Stone: Right. So, like, I’ve created both leadership aspects of what your day would look like versus, you know, what your contribution is as, you know, as a skill set itself.
209 00:29:16.550 ⇒ 00:29:17.450 Rico Rejoso: Got it.
210 00:29:17.450 ⇒ 00:29:23.919 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so we want to be able to create, you know, a couple visualizations like this, so people can kind of imagine what their day will look like.
211 00:29:24.270 ⇒ 00:29:25.240 Clarence Stone: Right?
212 00:29:25.620 ⇒ 00:29:26.650 Rico Rejoso: That’s great, yeah.
213 00:29:26.930 ⇒ 00:29:27.980 Clarence Stone: And,
214 00:29:28.090 ⇒ 00:29:44.860 Clarence Stone: And then I kind of want to revamp stand-ups, because stand-ups already work in the way of, like, going client by client. But then, after that, it has no structure. Like, it’s, like, almost free-for-all, and then, like, at the end, the tickets get assigned, right?
215 00:29:45.110 ⇒ 00:29:54.039 Clarence Stone: I want there to be a little bit of more structure, where, okay, we’re gonna go client by client, and the client success owner gives an update on how the client is doing.
216 00:29:55.010 ⇒ 00:30:13.649 Clarence Stone: Right? Hey, we have a demo with a client on Wednesday, we’re demoing this feature, you know, we’re implementing… you know, a client expressed that they were very interested in AI, so I sent them some articles. So keep an eye out for AI features that we can build for them, because Client Success Owner wants to sell them more work, right?
217 00:30:13.890 ⇒ 00:30:27.289 Clarence Stone: Then he goes to the planner on that project, saying, hey, this is where we are in our plans, we’re on track, right? And, we’re working on this, and these are the tickets for this week. And then service leader can then assign those tickets out.
218 00:30:27.520 ⇒ 00:30:30.600 Clarence Stone: Right. So it’s, it’s, it’s sort of nested.
219 00:30:31.660 ⇒ 00:30:42.619 Clarence Stone: So, yeah, like, I want to share with you all these artifacts, and my one ask is, could you create… yeah, help me create a visualization like this, so I understand end-to-end what’s happening.
220 00:30:43.160 ⇒ 00:31:01.749 Rico Rejoso: Okay, just one thing for that, because after everything’s created, you know, pre… before we start working on the client, I think I got sidelined after that, because it’s more of the delivery side folks who take it over after everything’s said. The project has been, you know, cleared up with all team members.
221 00:31:01.900 ⇒ 00:31:07.169 Rico Rejoso: Everyone was given an assignment, and how… or what will they work on for that specific client.
222 00:31:07.210 ⇒ 00:31:22.909 Rico Rejoso: I think from that point on, I would just be joining the stand-up to list on the action items and make sure that it’s in linear, so they can work on it. So I think that’s pretty much the job that I’ve been doing until the project is completed.
223 00:31:23.240 ⇒ 00:31:24.760 Rico Rejoso: For the new ones.
224 00:31:25.200 ⇒ 00:31:35.179 Clarence Stone: So, so let me actually give you a twist on this, then. Here, during project, it seems like you have less visibility on what’s happening outside of stand-up, right? So… Yeah.
225 00:31:35.300 ⇒ 00:31:39.679 Clarence Stone: Rico can see and access
226 00:31:39.990 ⇒ 00:31:50.169 Clarence Stone: X, Y, and Z, right? Like, I want to know what you hear and can track right now, today. Rico should be seeing
227 00:31:50.340 ⇒ 00:31:52.090 Clarence Stone: A, B, and Z.
228 00:31:52.330 ⇒ 00:32:09.390 Clarence Stone: Right? Like, what are you not seeing that you should have Sightline into as an operations leader? And what can you see right now, and how are you going for it, right? Because I want to say, hey, you, Tom, like, the way, this is working, Rico doesn’t have insights into this, but he… and he should.
229 00:32:09.390 ⇒ 00:32:13.010 Clarence Stone: So let’s create this new structure so you can have that access.
230 00:32:13.600 ⇒ 00:32:26.700 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, I think one would be the thing, just… one thing is I wanted to be, like, to be informed, at least, on where we’re at the client, and make sure that we’re checking off the list that we will be delivering to the.
231 00:32:27.090 ⇒ 00:32:39.409 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so tell me what that looks like, right? What is it that you want to be informed on? Because I think that’s what I’m going to ask every single planner on a project to update the notion on.
232 00:32:39.990 ⇒ 00:32:51.389 Rico Rejoso: what will be their deliverables? Because I have the SLW, so I know what the deliverables are, but I just want an update on where we’re at on those deliverables. Like, if we’re on this, if we’re supposedly…
233 00:32:51.690 ⇒ 00:32:58.169 Rico Rejoso: migrating this part of the project, are we at least 80-90% of that, or not yet? Because
234 00:32:58.390 ⇒ 00:33:03.340 Rico Rejoso: for me, it’s just… everyone’s really technical, to be honest, on the delivery side. I’m not…
235 00:33:03.790 ⇒ 00:33:06.080 Rico Rejoso: Getting a sense of where we’re at.
236 00:33:07.320 ⇒ 00:33:17.990 Rico Rejoso: Even after joining Stand Up. So, I wanted to discuss it with them, but fortunately, everyone’s so busy, so I wasn’t able to get into it. And Utam, would you be just providing the updates?
237 00:33:18.260 ⇒ 00:33:27.589 Rico Rejoso: on where we’re at and how we are with the project. I think it’s just basically me just not understanding how everyone’s working with the project, with the technicalities of it.
238 00:33:28.240 ⇒ 00:33:38.170 Clarence Stone: Yeah, yeah, and I don’t think you need to know exactly what lines of code or what stack they’re using. What you are asking for really is, you know.
239 00:33:38.170 ⇒ 00:33:51.650 Clarence Stone: like, you wrote the SOW, you know what the SOW looks like, you’re asking, how far along are you on this item in the SOW, right? You don’t need to know what the stack is, you don’t need to know, you know, what data flows they’re using, it’s just
240 00:33:51.740 ⇒ 00:33:55.560 Clarence Stone: we made an agreement to give this to the client. Where are we with it?
241 00:33:55.750 ⇒ 00:34:10.010 Clarence Stone: Right? And for off-track, it creates a signal that we should sit down and have a meeting and figure that out, right? Other things that I think you should be, you know, up to date on is when are we…
242 00:34:10.080 ⇒ 00:34:23.879 Clarence Stone: touching base with the client, right? So UTOM says we should be sending a client a message every day, and, touching base with them every week, right? If that doesn’t happen, like, you should…
243 00:34:23.880 ⇒ 00:34:41.259 Clarence Stone: you know, be able to know that, identify that, ping, you know, whoever’s on that team and say, hey, even go into, you know, like, Client Magic Spoon channel, and say, hey, what’s going on with this? Right? And then, create a meeting with you, Tom, in it, to say… to, like, just bring everybody together and fix that right away.
244 00:34:43.050 ⇒ 00:34:44.329 Rico Rejoso: Agree, I agree, yeah.
245 00:34:44.830 ⇒ 00:34:54.670 Rico Rejoso: We should have that. I mean, we, we, I mean, Utan usually, makes sure that we have a weekly, meeting with any… with our client, but…
246 00:34:54.790 ⇒ 00:35:01.309 Rico Rejoso: Ideally, we won’t… We want to take that over and take it off the thumbsplate, to be honest.
247 00:35:01.310 ⇒ 00:35:02.050 Clarence Stone: Yeah.
248 00:35:02.200 ⇒ 00:35:18.730 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so if we want to be able to take those things off his plate, we’ve got to create some sort of way for you to get visibility and tracking into it, or else we’ll never know if it’s happening or not, right? So, so yeah, this is super helpful. Like, how about you just take this slide, think about this for a little bit more, add anything else.
249 00:35:18.830 ⇒ 00:35:23.520 Clarence Stone: And then we’ll, we’ll kind of chat about this again, maybe early next week.
250 00:35:24.490 ⇒ 00:35:29.709 Rico Rejoso: Sure, sure. I think Monday would be great. I’ll be off the rest of the week.
251 00:35:29.850 ⇒ 00:35:53.589 Clarence Stone: Okay, perfect. Yeah, Monday’s perfect. I will send you these slides so you can think about it, right? And, you know, you can even give me a more granular view, like we’re doing here, because, like, it really does show, like, hey, there’s a huge gap, right? Like, the engagement starts, you create the SOW, they get all set up in Notion, and then they’re starting to work in all different places that just make it impossible to track.
252 00:35:53.910 ⇒ 00:36:04.969 Clarence Stone: Right? This visualization is super helpful, too. So, whatever’s in your mind, please share it with me, because I want to help with improving that process and getting you the visibility that you need.
253 00:36:06.000 ⇒ 00:36:09.310 Rico Rejoso: Gotcha. Would that be just the delivery side of it?
254 00:36:09.430 ⇒ 00:36:12.679 Rico Rejoso: Because I think this is all around the delivery side.
255 00:36:12.680 ⇒ 00:36:34.529 Clarence Stone: I’d like you to think holistically as an operation. You probably are looking for more information on resourcing, right? Like, do they have the right people on this project to hit each of those milestones? Are they, you know, running through hours faster than they should be, right? Which is going to cost us a lose margin on this.
256 00:36:34.930 ⇒ 00:36:42.320 Clarence Stone: Yeah, like… Anything and everything that you think as ops you should be involved in, right?
257 00:36:44.300 ⇒ 00:37:02.410 Clarence Stone: And, you know, for additional clarity, as ops, I think you should be invested in, like, the whole life cycle from start to end, from when the first meeting happens with the client until that project is complete, and a new, you know, a new deal is made with the client, right?
258 00:37:02.410 ⇒ 00:37:03.579 Rico Rejoso: I agree, yeah.
259 00:37:04.550 ⇒ 00:37:11.769 Clarence Stone: So, yeah, I’m gonna share this with you, and let’s see if we can just continue to have these great discussions. Does that work?
260 00:37:12.450 ⇒ 00:37:16.070 Rico Rejoso: And maybe I’ll list some suggestions on what should I be doing, which…
261 00:37:16.280 ⇒ 00:37:18.419 Rico Rejoso: It’s not happening at the moment, yeah.
262 00:37:18.640 ⇒ 00:37:30.539 Clarence Stone: Exactly, yeah. So, so down here, I think the gold, the, you know, the truly valuable things are… are the comments that you can leave me down here, saying, like.
263 00:37:30.810 ⇒ 00:37:31.780 Clarence Stone: you know.
264 00:37:33.440 ⇒ 00:37:34.759 Clarence Stone: Here you go, honey.
265 00:37:35.570 ⇒ 00:37:45.860 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, there should be something that… there’ll be, like, things that I should be doing that I haven’t implemented yet. But since I have Eliza, I think there’ll be more, like, you know, bandwidth for me to take on those… or some of those stuff.
266 00:37:46.260 ⇒ 00:37:52.900 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so for each, each of these, you can do what Rico thinks, and give me your thoughts. I’m all ears.
267 00:37:52.900 ⇒ 00:37:53.640 Rico Rejoso: helpful.
268 00:37:53.900 ⇒ 00:37:54.600 Clarence Stone: Yep.
269 00:37:54.710 ⇒ 00:38:07.540 Clarence Stone: Cool. Alright, so this is, you know, a little bit of a structure on how we can, you know, tackle this operational challenge, and we’ll continue to work on it. So I’ll share this with you and let you go, because we’re already done with our time.
270 00:38:07.870 ⇒ 00:38:10.090 Clarence Stone: Okay, gotcha. Thank you so much. You’re so funny.
271 00:38:10.490 ⇒ 00:38:12.049 Clarence Stone: Awesome, thank you!
272 00:38:12.190 ⇒ 00:38:14.449 Rico Rejoso: Alright, thank you, Clarence. Have a good one.
273 00:38:14.650 ⇒ 00:38:15.360 Clarence Stone: Bye.