Meeting Title: Ops Planning [EOY + Q1 2026] Date: 2025-12-23 Meeting participants: Elizah Joy, Clarence Stone, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:00:40.940 ⇒ 00:00:42.969 Clarence Stone: Hey, Eliza, how’s everything going?
2 00:00:42.970 ⇒ 00:00:46.340 Elizah Joy: How are you? I’m good. How are you?
3 00:00:47.010 ⇒ 00:00:54.109 Clarence Stone: Good! So busy, we’re just trying to wrap up so many things on my other clients for the end of the year.
4 00:00:56.250 ⇒ 00:01:00.009 Elizah Joy: Okay, let’s just wait for Utam.
5 00:01:01.100 ⇒ 00:01:01.970 Clarence Stone: Sure.
6 00:02:00.090 ⇒ 00:02:03.460 Elizah Joy: Alright, I’ve sent him a Slack message, my…
7 00:02:03.770 ⇒ 00:02:08.590 Elizah Joy: My video is just a bit shaky, I’m so sorry for this.
8 00:02:08.590 ⇒ 00:02:09.340 Clarence Stone: And we have…
9 00:02:09.340 ⇒ 00:02:14.250 Elizah Joy: moms, I have, because we’re here for the holidays, and I have no…
10 00:02:14.920 ⇒ 00:02:17.450 Clarence Stone: I like actual day world tour.
11 00:02:17.450 ⇒ 00:02:20.490 Elizah Joy: Here, and I don’t want to work in the living room.
12 00:02:22.440 ⇒ 00:02:26.919 Clarence Stone: I know what that’s like. I’ve visited home and have nowhere to work as well.
13 00:02:28.070 ⇒ 00:02:32.510 Elizah Joy: Yeah, my video quality is really bad, because I don’t have my…
14 00:02:32.830 ⇒ 00:02:35.319 Elizah Joy: Webcam with me, but yeah.
15 00:02:40.420 ⇒ 00:02:42.420 Elizah Joy: Let me just… grab.
16 00:02:47.990 ⇒ 00:02:51.950 Elizah Joy: Okay, let me… let’s start while…
17 00:02:52.300 ⇒ 00:03:03.359 Elizah Joy: So I don’t wanna make you wait for too long, but if, have you… were you able to see the, Notion event that we have? The one for…
18 00:03:03.650 ⇒ 00:03:05.899 Elizah Joy: For, the operations planning?
19 00:03:06.530 ⇒ 00:03:09.419 Clarence Stone: No, if you can share that with me, that’d be amazing.
20 00:03:09.700 ⇒ 00:03:12.350 Clarence Stone: Oh, okay, 20, 25, okay, got it.
21 00:03:12.350 ⇒ 00:03:19.850 Elizah Joy: Yep, I’ll share this to you on Slack as well. You can add things in here that maybe you wanna…
22 00:03:20.240 ⇒ 00:03:25.899 Elizah Joy: Add… For, let me… Let me just share it here.
23 00:03:28.050 ⇒ 00:03:33.889 Elizah Joy: If you want to add anything on our list for today, for the ops planning.
24 00:03:34.160 ⇒ 00:03:37.740 Clarence Stone: Oh, cool. Okay, yeah, I like that. I have things.
25 00:03:38.190 ⇒ 00:03:40.260 Clarence Stone: Got it.
26 00:03:42.350 ⇒ 00:03:44.980 Elizah Joy: Hey, Rico and I added in a few
27 00:03:45.120 ⇒ 00:03:50.520 Elizah Joy: like, one thing for each of us, but yeah, Udram has a lot of…
28 00:03:50.660 ⇒ 00:03:54.699 Elizah Joy: things he wants to do for quarter one, but I think you can also add
29 00:03:55.500 ⇒ 00:03:59.769 Elizah Joy: Things in there that we might want to plan for next year?
30 00:06:19.900 ⇒ 00:06:22.999 Clarence Stone: I might have made this meeting very long.
31 00:06:23.000 ⇒ 00:06:24.799 Elizah Joy: That’s fine.
32 00:06:25.100 ⇒ 00:06:26.159 Elizah Joy: That’s funny.
33 00:09:00.000 ⇒ 00:09:01.779 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, sorry, it’s late.
34 00:09:04.260 ⇒ 00:09:05.310 Clarence Stone: No worries.
35 00:09:05.930 ⇒ 00:09:06.450 Clarence Stone: the…
36 00:09:06.450 ⇒ 00:09:06.830 Elizah Joy: Okay.
37 00:09:06.880 ⇒ 00:09:07.679 Clarence Stone: My team of the day.
38 00:09:07.680 ⇒ 00:09:09.250 Uttam Kumaran: Hello!
39 00:09:11.870 ⇒ 00:09:19.220 Uttam Kumaran: This is my… The only… this’ll only meme today I’m looking forward to, by the way, and
40 00:09:20.080 ⇒ 00:09:25.779 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, this is what I wanted to talk… I’ve been wanting to talk about Operations Roadmap for months.
41 00:09:26.620 ⇒ 00:09:39.730 Uttam Kumaran: And I think we just did some… me and Clarence did some good work this week, thinking about broader operations, and I think, Eliza, you’re gonna have a full plate, for sure this quarter, so I’m excited to walk through this with you.
42 00:09:40.340 ⇒ 00:09:41.470 Elizah Joy: Yep.
43 00:09:41.470 ⇒ 00:09:46.030 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe, Clarence, also, it’s maybe a good place for us to just, like… I think… you know.
44 00:09:46.400 ⇒ 00:09:51.839 Uttam Kumaran: right now, again, like, maybe I’ll just set the stage, like, right now, operations to date has been…
45 00:09:52.380 ⇒ 00:10:02.079 Uttam Kumaran: like, 5 hours or 10 hours of my time, a lot of Rico’s time, and sort of band-aids on as much as possible, right? Especially in the last
46 00:10:02.370 ⇒ 00:10:03.900 Uttam Kumaran: Probably 4 months.
47 00:10:04.170 ⇒ 00:10:09.359 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve done very little on creating new processes. Everything you’re seeing in Notion is all stuff I actually
48 00:10:09.520 ⇒ 00:10:12.039 Uttam Kumaran: we put together, like, in January.
49 00:10:12.060 ⇒ 00:10:28.880 Uttam Kumaran: So, one is, like, yeah, I think we did a good job forecasting that we’re gonna need a lot of this stuff. We also, like, just, like, are growing fast, and we miss a lot. So, I think, like, what we’re thinking about is, like, how to actually build a great operations team, and how do we build an operations crew that rolls with the punches? You know? And I think…
50 00:10:28.880 ⇒ 00:10:35.240 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe, Clarence, a good place to start is maybe we just, like, can all read through your ops,
51 00:10:35.960 ⇒ 00:10:40.639 Uttam Kumaran: leadership role, because basically, as it’s through, we’re gonna be…
52 00:10:41.240 ⇒ 00:11:01.179 Uttam Kumaran: doing what that JD is saying, you know, all basically separately, but I think the goals and KPIs are the goals of this team. Even if we don’t have someone that’s, like, explicitly leading all of operations, that’s fine for now. But I would like to sort of align on that, and then we can sort of go through
53 00:11:01.380 ⇒ 00:11:02.669 Uttam Kumaran: Thanks for today.
54 00:11:02.820 ⇒ 00:11:04.150 Uttam Kumaran: I think that would be great.
55 00:11:05.360 ⇒ 00:11:08.959 Clarence Stone: Yeah, sure. So, let me share this.
56 00:11:12.290 ⇒ 00:11:35.650 Clarence Stone: So, just as an update for Eliza, this write-up was intentionally designed to, initially designed to be a more expanded framework for leadership for Lauren, who we were hoping to hire as the offslead. So, it might not all fully fit, but a lot of this has strategy and some powerful context around the why of why we’re doing a lot of these exercises.
57 00:11:35.840 ⇒ 00:11:54.220 Clarence Stone: And in short, I want the operations team to know that, you know, they don’t need to be heavily technical, but they also need to… but they do need to understand the why behind each of the pieces, right? And what I mean by that is.
58 00:11:54.410 ⇒ 00:12:09.550 Clarence Stone: If we ask, like, hey, how are we making money from this client? What projects are we doing? You should understand that life cycle, because what you’re impacting, what the ops team is impacting, is optimization of that end-to-end, right?
59 00:12:09.830 ⇒ 00:12:18.260 Clarence Stone: So I kind of split that into 3 big blocks. The business operations, the people operations, and then recruiting.
60 00:12:18.480 ⇒ 00:12:34.830 Clarence Stone: And for each of those buckets, we definitely need to have a workflow, right? What happens when this ops issue happens? Step one to the end, right? Same thing with recruiting. When we bring somebody, like, when we…
61 00:12:34.830 ⇒ 00:12:43.289 Clarence Stone: how do we even get people to sign up for an interview, right? And when does that, interview cycle end, right?
62 00:12:43.510 ⇒ 00:12:57.100 Clarence Stone: And every step in between. So it’s super important to really just lay out all the different workflows, and really what I see in this ops checklist that you, Tom, gave you, a lot of the things that he listed out is documentation of that end-to-end flow.
63 00:12:57.100 ⇒ 00:12:57.450 Elizah Joy: Hmm.
64 00:12:57.450 ⇒ 00:12:59.330 Clarence Stone: Right? Yeah.
65 00:12:59.390 ⇒ 00:13:21.569 Clarence Stone: Another thing that I was hoping to share, like, in terms of the people ops and recruiting is, hey, we get these people on board, now what? What does their journey look like throughout, you know, their career at Brainforge, right? We’re quickly, creating frameworks for them to develop themselves and get promoted, and so for the project teams, right.
66 00:13:21.570 ⇒ 00:13:23.259 Clarence Stone: We, we…
67 00:13:23.400 ⇒ 00:13:46.800 Clarence Stone: hire everyone on a conditional basis, and then they get onboarded, and within 3 months, as a minimum, at 6… between three to six months, right, Yitam? They’re able to take on a leadership role of CSO, EP, or SL, and each of those roles are going to have another growth period that I bet you, as soon as we implement this program, there’s, like, a lot of people are going to be ready for the next step.
68 00:13:46.800 ⇒ 00:13:54.730 Clarence Stone: So, this is gonna be a living and breathing playbook as, you know, we’ve got higher and higher levels of leadership.
69 00:13:54.730 ⇒ 00:13:57.060 Clarence Stone: And…
70 00:13:57.200 ⇒ 00:14:21.779 Clarence Stone: Let’s talk a little bit about, like, the intangibles, though. Like, why are we doing all of this? Well, we’re building communities. We’re creating these environments for people to connect and work together, right? So, it’s not just a workflow, it needs to happen. And if it’s not happening, we need to kind of ask people why, look at analytics, or where people are doing their work, and try to figure out how we can build a better community.
71 00:14:21.780 ⇒ 00:14:22.860 Clarence Stone: for our team.
72 00:14:23.110 ⇒ 00:14:32.449 Clarence Stone: And that goes in line with being curious and empathetic about people’s problems. Maybe you’ve made a great workflow, Liza, people just aren’t adopting it.
73 00:14:32.450 ⇒ 00:14:43.490 Clarence Stone: it may just be a conversation you need to have, saying, like, hey, did I miss something, right? Or maybe it’s taking them longer to do it, and we can just build an automation to help that piece.
74 00:14:43.520 ⇒ 00:14:47.209 Clarence Stone: A, so, so…
75 00:14:47.780 ⇒ 00:14:58.050 Clarence Stone: at the end of it all, though, we want to remove friction, right? That example that I gave you about talking to someone and understanding where the workflow broke down.
76 00:14:58.210 ⇒ 00:15:13.639 Clarence Stone: So wherever we’re making these documents and creating these workflows, we need to continually update them, so maybe a concept of versioning in Notion to say, like, hey, this is version 1.2, we’ve added, CSO, EP, and SL as rules.
77 00:15:13.950 ⇒ 00:15:19.920 Clarence Stone: Right? So that we can continue to refine and continue to remove that friction.
78 00:15:20.030 ⇒ 00:15:34.600 Clarence Stone: And lastly, in all that we do, we need to measure the success of it, right? So, I see on the list that, there’s, things like making a, tool request, right? You know, just making a, a…
79 00:15:34.600 ⇒ 00:15:45.580 Clarence Stone: a form where people can fill in and request it. Well, that makes sense, but a holistic ops view of it is creating a framework for you, Tom and Robert, to actually evaluate if that tool’s gonna help.
80 00:15:45.580 ⇒ 00:15:59.250 Clarence Stone: Right? Say, like, hey, team has asked them for this tool, and it’s gonna cut down on slide production by 20%. Currently, they’re taking about, you know, 5 hours a week. We should see that go down to 4.
81 00:15:59.280 ⇒ 00:16:12.659 Clarence Stone: In a year, there should be a process that you check in to say, hey, are you even using this tool? Is this actually giving you that 20%? If it’s not, you know, we should re-evaluate, right? So a holistic tool, to me is end-to-end. It’s not just.
82 00:16:12.680 ⇒ 00:16:30.699 Clarence Stone: hey, we approve or disprove, we have a list of all the things that have been approved, the expected returns on that investment, and we create some sort of regular meeting, maybe every quarter, maybe every six months, your choice, right, on taking a look at this list and saying, should this still be here?
83 00:16:30.700 ⇒ 00:16:33.499 Clarence Stone: Right? Are people liking it? So,
84 00:16:33.600 ⇒ 00:16:57.190 Clarence Stone: it’s not just that one-time creation is, I guess, like, the big thing. And, I’ve also just highlighted some of the synergies, like where your role fits in with everyone else in the organization. And you can see that, you know, you’re deeply connected to each one of these leadership roles. For a client success owner, it’s about that sale to that final invoice process, right? Are you helping them facilitate?
85 00:16:57.190 ⇒ 00:17:09.409 Clarence Stone: creating those SOWs, or getting those invoices out and paid on the right time. For the engagement planner, think about how you can help them keep track of a project.
86 00:17:09.410 ⇒ 00:17:21.889 Clarence Stone: Right? Maybe you should actually, connect with some of them from time to time and say, what’s difficult about going through this engagement process? Is there a tracking tool? Is there a process or workflow that you can create to help them?
87 00:17:22.900 ⇒ 00:17:30.639 Clarence Stone: And with the founders, I think you guys have great connectivity already, but, you know, that’s just all written out for you.
88 00:17:30.640 ⇒ 00:17:36.330 Clarence Stone: Just an example of a day in life of different things that you might be doing, within the ops team.
89 00:17:36.330 ⇒ 00:17:52.800 Clarence Stone: And, I really like this piece. I really highly suggest you read it. It’s, the inspiration behind how I wrote this whole thing. There’s a lot of powerful leaders or books that I’ve used to kind of create this framework and why each of these things are important.
90 00:17:53.380 ⇒ 00:17:57.130 Clarence Stone: Yeah, and, you know, like, I think…
91 00:17:58.050 ⇒ 00:17:59.840 Uttam Kumaran: If you’re ever stuck.
92 00:17:59.880 ⇒ 00:18:15.790 Clarence Stone: you can always go back to this Phase 1, I think this is good habits, to always just zoom out a little bit and see where all the activities are happening within Brainforge, understand the end-to-end as you have written it, as it should be, and then go, is that happening, though?
93 00:18:16.600 ⇒ 00:18:33.050 Clarence Stone: Right? And be very honest, right? Like, if it’s not, it’s okay. We identified something that we need to work on, right? So, while in this meeting, you, Tom, and I, and Robert are suggesting things, I would like you and Rico to be throwing stuff in there for the next quarter as well.
94 00:18:33.140 ⇒ 00:18:49.860 Clarence Stone: Right? And that’s just by doing this Phase 1 exercise. So if you want to deep dive into that in the future, we can do that as well. But ultimately, you know, you are removing that friction, you’re creating this framework, you’re making everyone’s life easier, and this is my method to the ops team.
95 00:18:50.400 ⇒ 00:18:58.050 Clarence Stone: And I’ll be really succinct, like, the greatest asset that Brainforge has, the soul of this organization, is the talent and the people.
96 00:18:58.400 ⇒ 00:19:07.480 Clarence Stone: Right? And every automated workflow that you create, every documentation you do, you’re moving a friction point so that they’re gaining efficiency.
97 00:19:07.610 ⇒ 00:19:11.970 Clarence Stone: Right? And what you’re really doing is you’re giving people the gift of time.
98 00:19:12.190 ⇒ 00:19:21.199 Clarence Stone: Right? And mental clarity, and structure, so they’re not spinning in circles or wasting time. And that, you know, that’s really powerful. You’re giving time back to people.
99 00:19:21.620 ⇒ 00:19:27.889 Clarence Stone: So, yeah, that’s the strategy, that’s the vision. You, Tom, did you want me to cover anything else?
100 00:19:28.470 ⇒ 00:19:31.279 Uttam Kumaran: No, I think that’s it. I guess, Eliza, like, what do you think?
101 00:19:32.860 ⇒ 00:19:49.760 Elizah Joy: I think, this, at least on my end, it’s given me more clarity. The one that I’ve read yesterday was the Ops Lead Day in the Life. I’m not sure if it’s also, like, the same as this one that we’ve covered today.
102 00:19:49.760 ⇒ 00:20:03.749 Elizah Joy: But yeah, yesterday, because I was trying to, like, grasp how it would look like for the ops, because yesterday was more, like, the engineering side, right? But, knowing this now, I think it’s…
103 00:20:03.860 ⇒ 00:20:09.799 Elizah Joy: given me more clarity on how I could, do my role.
104 00:20:09.910 ⇒ 00:20:15.900 Elizah Joy: Better, and how it fits, overall in the, operations of the business.
105 00:20:16.030 ⇒ 00:20:25.109 Elizah Joy: And I guess, on my end, like, my… just one question that I do have is, like,
106 00:20:25.890 ⇒ 00:20:30.460 Elizah Joy: How would this look like, at least for… Like…
107 00:20:30.940 ⇒ 00:20:35.649 Elizah Joy: be working with Ricoh, and, like, where do I…
108 00:20:36.330 ⇒ 00:20:49.089 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so for this role in particular, like, I wouldn’t say, like, you’re necessarily fitting into this. This is, like, what we’re hoping… I mean, and again, Clarence, I think this is where we just need to decide
109 00:20:49.090 ⇒ 00:20:59.329 Uttam Kumaran: like, probably together, where Eliza fits, where Rico fits. For me, I would rather look at this doc as, like, this is the guiding dock for the ops team.
110 00:20:59.770 ⇒ 00:21:13.250 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think we’ve developed this, because right now, there’s a lot on your plate, and I don’t think a lot of this, like, can happen. And we’re also… basically, we put this in mind with, like, okay, we’re gonna think about bringing in
111 00:21:13.320 ⇒ 00:21:33.140 Uttam Kumaran: an ops leader to basically, like, replace me from the ops team, you know? So, like, have somebody that is just squarely leading. So instead, I would like us to think about this doc as, like, our team’s, like, manifesto, instead of necessarily, like, what everybody… what role we’re all doing right now. Like, I think if
112 00:21:33.260 ⇒ 00:21:40.139 Uttam Kumaran: if that sort of, like, adds some… adds some clarity. We do… we do hope… we do think that, like.
113 00:21:40.310 ⇒ 00:21:51.559 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’re gonna end up bringing in someone to fill in this role, probably, like, U.S.-based and senior. But so for now, I’d rather us just focus on, like, what
114 00:21:51.660 ⇒ 00:21:53.699 Uttam Kumaran: Ops team is here to do.
115 00:21:53.820 ⇒ 00:21:58.580 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and then we can, like, basically think about, like, the team structure overall.
116 00:21:58.980 ⇒ 00:22:01.879 Uttam Kumaran: You know, but there’s… there’s still, like, a lot of day-to-day…
117 00:22:02.060 ⇒ 00:22:05.000 Uttam Kumaran: Things that we just have to do as a team right now, you know?
118 00:22:05.380 ⇒ 00:22:05.890 Elizah Joy: Yeah.
119 00:22:06.780 ⇒ 00:22:31.759 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I think the value here is that, you know, when UTOM says, I’d like a margin, revenue, or cost dashboard, you’re not just building that dashboard, but you’re understanding that there’s other roles in the organization that actually really value this, right? And, maybe, you know, this gives you context on the questions that you can ask your end users on what they want to see in margins, what they want to see in
120 00:22:31.760 ⇒ 00:22:40.100 Clarence Stone: revenue, because you’ll understand why they need it then, right? And it’ll make a lot of these tasks a little bit easier instead of, you know, just starting from zero.
121 00:22:42.800 ⇒ 00:22:44.300 Elizah Joy: Yep.
122 00:22:49.380 ⇒ 00:22:49.950 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
123 00:22:50.150 ⇒ 00:23:04.860 Uttam Kumaran: So, kind of with that in mind, I feel like, yeah, these are sort of some of the tasks that I really just wanted to cover as, like, things to get done this quarter. So we can go in any order, Eliza, or, like, what do you think is…
124 00:23:05.650 ⇒ 00:23:07.370 Uttam Kumaran: is… is helpful.
125 00:23:09.070 ⇒ 00:23:14.520 Uttam Kumaran: Should we just go through and put, like… should I go through and put descriptions? I didn’t really add much context in any of this.
126 00:23:15.100 ⇒ 00:23:18.469 Elizah Joy: Yeah, I think those descriptions would be…
127 00:23:18.660 ⇒ 00:23:25.800 Elizah Joy: Good, but I, initially when I saw this yesterday, like, I do… believe that
128 00:23:25.940 ⇒ 00:23:30.319 Elizah Joy: Dashboards, or what, the current ops…
129 00:23:30.590 ⇒ 00:23:37.749 Elizah Joy: team are missing. This is what I’ve looked for from Rika during my first week, I think.
130 00:23:37.810 ⇒ 00:23:44.870 Elizah Joy: A few dashboards that we have, not just with this, but, the other, like.
131 00:23:44.870 ⇒ 00:23:59.859 Elizah Joy: basically metrics that we do for the ops. Like, how will we know if something’s working and not working if we don’t have any metrics, even with the ops side of the business, right? But I think, on my end for this list,
132 00:24:00.210 ⇒ 00:24:05.929 Elizah Joy: recruitment process, Rico has gone, give me context on this.
133 00:24:06.090 ⇒ 00:24:13.320 Elizah Joy: And then the Notion UI. But yeah, on your list, Tom, I think, I do need…
134 00:24:13.940 ⇒ 00:24:16.680 Elizah Joy: Bit more context on those.
135 00:24:17.050 ⇒ 00:24:21.450 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so let’s talk about… so, can you… do you have the AOR doc on your side, Eliza?
136 00:24:21.860 ⇒ 00:24:25.280 Elizah Joy: Yep, so that’s the Google Sheet, right?
137 00:24:25.670 ⇒ 00:24:31.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, do you want to pull that up? I think it’s under… it should be under management operations, basically.
138 00:24:31.240 ⇒ 00:24:33.160 Elizah Joy: Management Operations.
139 00:24:37.580 ⇒ 00:24:41.330 Elizah Joy: Okay, I think this one, right? Management Operations.
140 00:24:47.060 ⇒ 00:24:49.930 Elizah Joy: Okay, can you see my screen?
141 00:24:51.230 ⇒ 00:24:59.490 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, so if you go into the, yeah, so this document is one thing that I want this team to basically own, and…
142 00:24:59.700 ⇒ 00:25:02.499 Uttam Kumaran: Finish up, and host a meeting to confirm.
143 00:25:03.650 ⇒ 00:25:09.649 Uttam Kumaran: So, this is, like, really the canonical doc of, like, what are all the responsibilities in the company.
144 00:25:09.720 ⇒ 00:25:25.680 Uttam Kumaran: I think it is important for operations to know all these. Whether operations can do all these is not… not fair, of course, right? So… but I do think that this is a document that I’d like this team to squarely own. So, but one is if you start to scroll down.
145 00:25:25.830 ⇒ 00:25:28.100 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of these are unfinished.
146 00:25:28.240 ⇒ 00:25:35.939 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So, like, we don’t… I don’t… I filled a lot of these out myself months ago. So, one is, like.
147 00:25:36.620 ⇒ 00:25:45.320 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, Clarence, who from each team is going… like, do we need a department lead or something, but either way, I don’t care how it happens.
148 00:25:45.490 ⇒ 00:25:54.110 Uttam Kumaran: I would like us to have a through-line to this doc being finished, and then having a meeting between Robert, me, Clarence, and, like, each…
149 00:25:54.460 ⇒ 00:25:57.730 Uttam Kumaran: Like, a couple of the leads, basically, on being, like.
150 00:25:57.860 ⇒ 00:26:04.709 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, everybody is happy with all of these things, and this encompasses everything, and we sort of stamp it.
151 00:26:04.950 ⇒ 00:26:09.210 Uttam Kumaran: And then also hosting, like, a quarterly review and update of this document.
152 00:26:11.470 ⇒ 00:26:18.710 Uttam Kumaran: Does this… does this doc make sense? I’m happy to provide more. If you search AORs,
153 00:26:18.910 ⇒ 00:26:23.199 Uttam Kumaran: You’ll get a lot of research on, like, this process, but…
154 00:26:24.100 ⇒ 00:26:36.550 Uttam Kumaran: this is just something that I think we haven’t updated in a long time, and there’s a lot of things happening that we’re either… nobody’s doing it, or it’s… a couple people are probably handling it, and there’s no clear ownership, so I just want to make it really clear who owns what responsibility.
155 00:26:38.130 ⇒ 00:26:54.920 Elizah Joy: Yep, yeah, Rika did share this to me during my first day, if I remember that correctly. Yeah, so I was able to go through this. Yeah, but yeah, I do, I think, yeah, still there’s, sections in here that are still unfinished, and…
156 00:26:55.220 ⇒ 00:26:58.449 Elizah Joy: One question I do have for here is.
157 00:26:59.340 ⇒ 00:27:04.400 Elizah Joy: How often, like, in the current process that we do, how often do we update this one?
158 00:27:05.020 ⇒ 00:27:06.910 Uttam Kumaran: We don’t. Update it at all.
159 00:27:07.200 ⇒ 00:27:08.989 Uttam Kumaran: There’s no process around this.
160 00:27:09.480 ⇒ 00:27:10.610 Elizah Joy: Okay.
161 00:27:11.600 ⇒ 00:27:14.619 Uttam Kumaran: I read a book 6 months ago, and then I… I built this.
162 00:27:14.930 ⇒ 00:27:18.150 Uttam Kumaran: And no one’s… no one’s… no one else in the company knows about this.
163 00:27:20.390 ⇒ 00:27:30.589 Clarence Stone: So, Eliza, there’s a lot of practical benefits to this, right? Because, when a new person comes in, and maybe they need some marketing slides made, they have no idea who to reach out to.
164 00:27:30.590 ⇒ 00:27:31.610 Elizah Joy: Yeah.
165 00:27:31.610 ⇒ 00:27:44.220 Clarence Stone: Right? And, you know, this could be an amazing tool that you can actually turn into, like, maybe a chatbot to say, just hit the chatbot in Slack, instead of asking you all the time, or looking at this sheet.
166 00:27:44.690 ⇒ 00:27:49.630 Clarence Stone: Yeah, a lot of this is gonna be unfilled, so I guess, like.
167 00:27:50.090 ⇒ 00:27:53.720 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t mind if things are… don’t have DRIs.
168 00:27:54.000 ⇒ 00:27:59.760 Uttam Kumaran: But that should be indicated, like, there are responsibilities here that nobody’s doing, or it’s unclear who we’re doing it.
169 00:28:00.260 ⇒ 00:28:05.219 Uttam Kumaran: But ideally, my barometer is all responsibilities in the company are listed here.
170 00:28:05.550 ⇒ 00:28:09.459 Uttam Kumaran: And we don’t need to… we don’t… Clarence necessarily need to do,
171 00:28:09.710 ⇒ 00:28:19.409 Uttam Kumaran: the delivery… like, the delivery… this is, again, I developed this a while ago, so if it does… if it makes sense to not put delivery-related responsibilities here, because
172 00:28:20.110 ⇒ 00:28:26.610 Uttam Kumaran: Like, they’re easily… they’re covered by the same… depending on the client and the role, a lot of people cover it, that’s fine.
173 00:28:26.840 ⇒ 00:28:32.729 Clarence Stone: Yeah. So you can do, you can do roll, for the delivery side.
174 00:28:33.190 ⇒ 00:28:33.740 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
175 00:28:33.940 ⇒ 00:28:37.969 Clarence Stone: Right, so the CSO on the project’s gonna do this, right?
176 00:28:37.970 ⇒ 00:28:40.389 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that’s probably what I would ask for, yeah.
177 00:28:47.240 ⇒ 00:28:48.449 Uttam Kumaran: What do you think, Eliza?
178 00:28:49.320 ⇒ 00:28:57.529 Elizah Joy: Yeah, I think, yeah, I’ll get this updated, and then… One question I…
179 00:28:57.530 ⇒ 00:29:01.060 Uttam Kumaran: Spend some time reading about the AORs.
180 00:29:01.180 ⇒ 00:29:05.869 Uttam Kumaran: And this is not something I’m expecting, like, next week, by the way, like, I think this is gonna take, like, probably…
181 00:29:06.140 ⇒ 00:29:25.300 Uttam Kumaran: like, 4 or 5 weeks. But this is gonna force you… and this is where I’m not… I’m gonna try not to give you the answers, it’s gonna force you to meet everybody, because you can’t… because ultimately, in that final meeting, you’re gonna… everybody’s gonna be like, yes, I spoke with Eliza, my responsibilities are listed, and I’m good to go.
182 00:29:25.430 ⇒ 00:29:34.699 Uttam Kumaran: you will have no… you will have everything that I know about the company at that point, and so will this document. So, the goal here is to remove me from the equation.
183 00:29:34.860 ⇒ 00:29:44.860 Uttam Kumaran: So, ideally, this document, at any moment in the company, if we’re like, what are the responsibilities of the company, and who has the responsibility, who’s the backup, how do you do the thing, should be in here.
184 00:29:46.140 ⇒ 00:29:53.579 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and, like, it’s a big undertaking. Not many companies ever do anything like this, so this is gonna take, like, this is gonna take, like, some time.
185 00:29:55.230 ⇒ 00:29:58.240 Elizah Joy: Yeah, yeah, it will. And then…
186 00:30:00.230 ⇒ 00:30:09.260 Elizah Joy: This just needs to be updated for year 2026, or we… or should we use this same doc and just add 2026 for this?
187 00:30:09.620 ⇒ 00:30:13.320 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I would say the Q425
188 00:30:13.680 ⇒ 00:30:19.850 Uttam Kumaran: I would just merge this all into one, start fresh, and just say, just say Q1.
189 00:30:20.290 ⇒ 00:30:21.530 Uttam Kumaran: 2026.
190 00:30:21.720 ⇒ 00:30:22.450 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
191 00:30:23.260 ⇒ 00:30:23.610 Elizah Joy: Okay.
192 00:30:23.610 ⇒ 00:30:25.919 Uttam Kumaran: And it says duplicates, or you need help with, like.
193 00:30:26.150 ⇒ 00:30:29.960 Uttam Kumaran: Again, like, you should be able to go… to each,
194 00:30:30.670 ⇒ 00:30:35.080 Uttam Kumaran: Service area, and then they’ll tell you all their responsibilities, right?
195 00:30:35.580 ⇒ 00:30:46.299 Uttam Kumaran: And so I don’t care if this is a thousand lines long. I needed to… I… what I care about is that there is not a responsibility that someone’s doing that isn’t that here.
196 00:30:46.570 ⇒ 00:30:49.149 Uttam Kumaran: So, I do expect this to be pretty big.
197 00:30:49.680 ⇒ 00:30:50.450 Elizah Joy: Okay.
198 00:30:51.360 ⇒ 00:30:53.990 Elizah Joy: Okay, I’ll get this started.
199 00:30:56.340 ⇒ 00:31:04.100 Uttam Kumaran: And again, you can also have other people come in and type theirs, you know, but I want you to just own, sort of, how this gets done, so…
200 00:31:04.530 ⇒ 00:31:10.330 Clarence Stone: Yeah, if you’re having some challenges with breaking this down to a plan of action, I’m here for you.
201 00:31:10.470 ⇒ 00:31:15.959 Clarence Stone: And I think now you’re realizing why I was taking so many one-on-one phone calls when I first got here.
202 00:31:17.560 ⇒ 00:31:18.220 Elizah Joy: And…
203 00:31:18.220 ⇒ 00:31:22.680 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but, like, you… Eliza, it’s like, you’re… you succeeding in this role is knowing
204 00:31:23.170 ⇒ 00:31:28.539 Uttam Kumaran: Quite frankly, everything that’s happening, at least what it is that’s happening, you don’t need to know how to do it.
205 00:31:28.690 ⇒ 00:31:37.840 Uttam Kumaran: But someone needs to know how to do it, and there’s a bit of backup. You know, so that’s, like, what I think is very, very important.
206 00:31:37.840 ⇒ 00:31:49.449 Elizah Joy: Yeah, I do agree, and, just today, right, so, for example, Rika is out of office. I think during my first few weeks, it was, like, Rika… everyone’s asking things from Rika, right? So I think…
207 00:31:49.450 ⇒ 00:32:04.080 Uttam Kumaran: No, because I… Rico’s the new me, by the way, but, like, that’s why I start… but he’s also, like, again, when he goes out of office, you can start to see, like, I’m not… it’s not like I’m not gonna… now I’m not like I’m not gonna tag him, I’m gonna tag you, I’m gonna tag offs broadly, right?
208 00:32:04.400 ⇒ 00:32:04.970 Elizah Joy: Yeah.
209 00:32:05.160 ⇒ 00:32:16.870 Elizah Joy: Yeah, just today, I think I’ve… from all the, documentations that we have in Notion, and me having to read through that for, the initial few weeks that I was in here.
210 00:32:16.870 ⇒ 00:32:35.370 Elizah Joy: It’s like, today, people are asking things from me, and then I was like, oh my gosh, where is Rika? I don’t… I agree, I do have a lot of things to learn more, and of course, I do, agree that I need to learn the processes and how we do things in the business, because that’s…
211 00:32:35.580 ⇒ 00:32:36.590 Elizah Joy: Ow.
212 00:32:36.810 ⇒ 00:32:43.839 Elizah Joy: how… essentially, it’s how, we say that, you know,
213 00:32:44.090 ⇒ 00:32:51.589 Elizah Joy: basically, I need to learn how the business runs for me to be able to do all these things, right? So yeah, I do agree on that. Yeah.
214 00:32:53.730 ⇒ 00:33:03.750 Elizah Joy: Okay… AR… And then software expense review, this is just a dashboard.
215 00:33:04.320 ⇒ 00:33:07.599 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so do you have access to, here, let me…
216 00:33:11.310 ⇒ 00:33:13.100 Uttam Kumaran: Let me send you this, also.
217 00:33:15.600 ⇒ 00:33:16.600 Uttam Kumaran: One second.
218 00:33:27.120 ⇒ 00:33:29.260 Uttam Kumaran: I have a…
219 00:33:34.820 ⇒ 00:33:38.289 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so I also worked on this probably 6 months ago.
220 00:33:38.910 ⇒ 00:33:43.650 Uttam Kumaran: And… It’s just been…
221 00:33:45.000 ⇒ 00:33:47.050 Uttam Kumaran: Here, so I’ll send this in a Zoom shot.
222 00:33:54.370 ⇒ 00:33:55.239 Elizah Joy: Help, can you…
223 00:33:55.240 ⇒ 00:33:58.230 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and then let me give you access.
224 00:34:04.100 ⇒ 00:34:05.130 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
225 00:34:06.130 ⇒ 00:34:09.139 Uttam Kumaran: So this spreadsheet is basically, like, all of our…
226 00:34:09.880 ⇒ 00:34:14.919 Uttam Kumaran: financial model, so I’ll let you go through this, but this is, like, where a lot of our contracts process happens.
227 00:34:15.100 ⇒ 00:34:17.930 Uttam Kumaran: But let’s talk about this spreadsheet in particular.
228 00:34:18.429 ⇒ 00:34:19.239 Uttam Kumaran: like.
229 00:34:20.020 ⇒ 00:34:27.960 Uttam Kumaran: We’re… we’re just spending on a lot of software now, and our company, if you scroll down to the bottom of this, our company…
230 00:34:28.130 ⇒ 00:34:31.899 Uttam Kumaran: Probably runs on, like, 40 or 50 pieces of software.
231 00:34:32.020 ⇒ 00:34:34.739 Uttam Kumaran: Do you mind scrolling to the bottom here?
232 00:34:36.150 ⇒ 00:34:38.160 Uttam Kumaran: I’m actually more, maybe 100.
233 00:34:38.520 ⇒ 00:34:47.249 Uttam Kumaran: And there’s probably new software that’s not listed here. There’s probably software, here that’s listed that’s no longer in use.
234 00:34:48.590 ⇒ 00:35:03.159 Uttam Kumaran: this is a category of expenses that, unless we talk about, will just continue to grow. And so we just need to talk about it on a monthly cadence, I think, to start, until you can get a dashboard going that we can do that async.
235 00:35:03.420 ⇒ 00:35:11.960 Uttam Kumaran: So I would like to just look at all of our software expenses, and then I can tell you which ones to cut, or which ones are, like, unruly, basically.
236 00:35:12.150 ⇒ 00:35:19.830 Uttam Kumaran: Essentially, I would just want to make sure that I know what are all the pieces of software that our company is using at any moment.
237 00:35:20.160 ⇒ 00:35:22.709 Uttam Kumaran: There’s no bass, basically.
238 00:35:23.170 ⇒ 00:35:23.840 Elizah Joy: Okay.
239 00:35:24.530 ⇒ 00:35:30.140 Clarence Stone: Eliza, can you, scroll to the right? I just want to see what other fields are in this.
240 00:35:30.840 ⇒ 00:35:36.910 Clarence Stone: You, Tom, can I ask if we could, identify who’s, got a.
241 00:35:36.910 ⇒ 00:35:37.550 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
242 00:35:37.550 ⇒ 00:35:47.969 Clarence Stone: one of these, because I think, like, part of that monthly should be scrubbing this by asking the end user, like, are you still using this?
243 00:35:48.100 ⇒ 00:35:51.970 Clarence Stone: Right? Go to the most expensive, the least expensive, right?
244 00:35:51.970 ⇒ 00:35:56.979 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I think there’s probably two things. One, like, each tool should probably have, like, a…
245 00:35:57.830 ⇒ 00:36:04.219 Uttam Kumaran: I would consider ops the owner of all these tools. I think you probably need a sub… you probably need, like, a subject matter expert.
246 00:36:06.000 ⇒ 00:36:17.300 Uttam Kumaran: But yes, Ricoh ideally has admin access to everything, and if you don’t, then the 1Password login to my is also probably in 1Pass… like.
247 00:36:17.480 ⇒ 00:36:25.269 Uttam Kumaran: all my logins to all of these are in 1Password. Of course, like, Google is something that we all use, so you should… basically, one thing to make sure, Eliza, is that
248 00:36:25.780 ⇒ 00:36:36.960 Uttam Kumaran: you, or we need to create, like, an ops team email, has admin access to everything, so at any moment, if I’m like, who are our Figma users, it’s easy for you to go find that.
249 00:36:37.480 ⇒ 00:36:44.309 Uttam Kumaran: This… this’ll… this may be manual to start with, but then we’ll have to just figure out some way to… to make this…
250 00:36:44.470 ⇒ 00:37:00.830 Uttam Kumaran: more automated. The one thing I will say is finance team can produce you this report. They get all the bills, and all the things they credit card, and they’re bookkeeping. But they’re not gonna be able to tell you who is in the platform or how many members, they’re gonna tell you how much the cost is.
251 00:37:01.060 ⇒ 00:37:11.070 Uttam Kumaran: So, these are all things that I did… I did manually one… one day. And so, yeah, so something that I want to at least
252 00:37:11.310 ⇒ 00:37:17.009 Uttam Kumaran: try to do once this quarter is look at all these. I… and I’m sure I can save us, like.
253 00:37:17.150 ⇒ 00:37:22.150 Uttam Kumaran: I’m sure we’re wasting, like, probably, like, one to two grand.
254 00:37:23.510 ⇒ 00:37:27.350 Uttam Kumaran: I’m sure. Just on, like, software that we’re not using.
255 00:37:29.200 ⇒ 00:37:32.430 Uttam Kumaran: Those are so sad, but like… This is what happens.
256 00:37:33.860 ⇒ 00:37:38.579 Uttam Kumaran: So as you can tell, I was doing this at some point, and I stopped doing this, and…
257 00:37:38.700 ⇒ 00:37:44.229 Uttam Kumaran: Occasionally now, I’ll get a bill from a software, and then I’m like, that’s way too much, I’ll go in and delete a bunch of people.
258 00:37:45.010 ⇒ 00:37:50.860 Uttam Kumaran: That we need to… This needs to be a much more, like, professional process.
259 00:37:52.000 ⇒ 00:38:09.719 Elizah Joy: Alright, yeah, because, yeah, actually, this is helpful for me, too, because the only tools that I currently have… I don’t know what tools that we’re currently using, so I don’t know what tools I should be asking Rika for. One tool that I only have access is Notion, Slack, Zapier.
260 00:38:09.740 ⇒ 00:38:15.130 Elizah Joy: yesterday document, so… so yeah, I’ll do this one…
261 00:38:15.660 ⇒ 00:38:19.150 Elizah Joy: And then, I think, margins Dashboard.
262 00:38:19.530 ⇒ 00:38:23.109 Elizah Joy: What would, the…
263 00:38:24.990 ⇒ 00:38:34.379 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe let’s actually… Maybe in turn of that, let’s actually talk about, Well, recruitment… okay, actually…
264 00:38:38.550 ⇒ 00:38:44.600 Uttam Kumaran: Trying to think… okay, so maybe let’s talk about, what’s a fun… fun one is Notion UI, maybe let’s talk about that.
265 00:38:46.130 ⇒ 00:38:50.040 Uttam Kumaran: What is your… Sort of thought process here.
266 00:38:50.500 ⇒ 00:38:56.420 Elizah Joy: Oh, I think, yeah, the one that… the document that we have in Notion, the end goal that we want to do for that.
267 00:38:56.620 ⇒ 00:39:01.930 Elizah Joy: So, basically, like, organizing Notion in a more…
268 00:39:02.070 ⇒ 00:39:06.520 Elizah Joy: UI-friendly way, because right now, I think there’s…
269 00:39:07.210 ⇒ 00:39:09.829 Elizah Joy: For example, this one, right? .
270 00:39:11.370 ⇒ 00:39:14.060 Uttam Kumaran: No, it’s horrible. It’s horrible.
271 00:39:14.060 ⇒ 00:39:14.950 Elizah Joy: Yeah, I think…
272 00:39:15.060 ⇒ 00:39:32.110 Elizah Joy: Because there are… at the moment, there’s, there are pages in there that are just empty, and I think it’s gotten to a point where it’s cluttered, and it’s very disorganized. So I think, especially if you want to bring on more team on board, is that
273 00:39:32.540 ⇒ 00:39:38.210 Elizah Joy: how… Do we make this more… Like…
274 00:39:38.660 ⇒ 00:39:41.649 Uttam Kumaran: efficient and effective for the users. Yeah.
275 00:39:41.650 ⇒ 00:39:45.140 Elizah Joy: here. I think, Rico has already
276 00:39:45.350 ⇒ 00:39:49.969 Elizah Joy: He told me he’s already worked on the client’s dashboard, so this one, we…
277 00:39:50.140 ⇒ 00:40:09.310 Elizah Joy: keep it as it is, improve if there’s anything that we have to improve on that. But I think for these other, databases or pages that we have, I think we have to have a standard on… especially people, like, this is, like, on our teams, they do use Notion for,
278 00:40:10.010 ⇒ 00:40:13.080 Elizah Joy: If they’re working on documents or something for…
279 00:40:13.270 ⇒ 00:40:19.010 Elizah Joy: anything, so I think having that standard on how we Add in to that.
280 00:40:19.930 ⇒ 00:40:27.860 Elizah Joy: Or a system on how they add things in here so that we don’t have to keep repeating this process again in the future.
281 00:40:29.050 ⇒ 00:40:34.390 Elizah Joy: Especially if it comes to a point wherein it comes to disorganize again and stuff like that.
282 00:40:35.430 ⇒ 00:40:41.779 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, I agree. Yeah, so, do we have a, like, a doc around Notion,
283 00:40:42.010 ⇒ 00:40:46.400 Uttam Kumaran: like, what the next version of Notion could look like for us. I mean, that’s something that…
284 00:40:47.650 ⇒ 00:40:53.359 Uttam Kumaran: I’m trying to think, like, at least, like, I’m very opinionated about it, refill will be,
285 00:40:57.020 ⇒ 00:40:58.989 Uttam Kumaran: Awash may be opinionated.
286 00:41:00.390 ⇒ 00:41:03.030 Uttam Kumaran: Stan.
287 00:41:03.960 ⇒ 00:41:07.320 Uttam Kumaran: Like, couple people, we can get a group together to, like.
288 00:41:07.950 ⇒ 00:41:12.100 Uttam Kumaran: get comments on that dog, and then I would like to just get a plan approved.
289 00:41:12.550 ⇒ 00:41:20.020 Elizah Joy: Okay. I’ll set that up on how we… it could… it would look like. I don’t have that one yet.
290 00:41:20.310 ⇒ 00:41:21.200 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
291 00:41:21.270 ⇒ 00:41:22.470 Elizah Joy: Yeah, I think…
292 00:41:22.470 ⇒ 00:41:31.890 Uttam Kumaran: I think the important thing there to consider, though, is the clearance has two items that I think fit squarely into that plan, which is the new,
293 00:41:32.880 ⇒ 00:41:36.229 Uttam Kumaran: new team member… And, like, new client.
294 00:41:36.340 ⇒ 00:41:39.209 Uttam Kumaran: I think for all the time information.
295 00:41:39.940 ⇒ 00:41:44.210 Uttam Kumaran: Can we go back? Can we go back to the office, agenda?
296 00:41:44.670 ⇒ 00:41:57.560 Clarence Stone: So I can talk to the ones that I’ve made real quick, Tom. So, Eliza, here’s the great news. I genuinely think that a lot of the things that I’m hoping for in these features already exist.
297 00:41:57.740 ⇒ 00:42:14.769 Clarence Stone: they are somewhere. They could be in Notion, they could be in files, they could be somewhere. But really, the core objective goal with consolidating everything is that so you can tell a story, right? That you understand this journey end-to-end. So, for the employee dashboard, you know.
298 00:42:14.770 ⇒ 00:42:28.879 Clarence Stone: We recruit people, we hire them, they get promoted, right? They get promoted again, and they get, maybe, reviews from you, Tom, and Robert. We want to be able to go to one place where you can click in and say, tell me about Clarence.
299 00:42:29.110 ⇒ 00:42:29.970 Clarence Stone: Right.
300 00:42:30.070 ⇒ 00:42:44.519 Clarence Stone: And you see when I was recruited, when I was hired, you know, my first review from you, Tom and Robert, etc, etc, right? So, while a lot of these things you’re already building out somewhere, my ask is just to consolidate it in one place.
301 00:42:44.700 ⇒ 00:42:45.570 Clarence Stone: Mmm.
302 00:42:46.250 ⇒ 00:42:47.370 Elizah Joy: Yeah, yeah.
303 00:42:47.780 ⇒ 00:43:02.440 Clarence Stone: And that same thing goes to the client health, right? I think the line items that I put in here are exactly the same things that, UTOM was asking for at the top. It’s just, hey, I’d like it all together so that I can get a story, right?
304 00:43:05.970 ⇒ 00:43:20.019 Elizah Joy: Yeah, because, yeah, for the employee, employee profile dashboard, we have that one from starting from the recruitment up until we hire them, but nothing goes beyond that, I believe.
305 00:43:20.020 ⇒ 00:43:27.699 Elizah Joy: Because, yeah, we have that already, on that, so it’s me upgrading that. Client health tracker…
306 00:43:28.600 ⇒ 00:43:32.159 Elizah Joy: I don’t think I’ve seen this in our Notion yet.
307 00:43:32.400 ⇒ 00:43:33.429 Elizah Joy: So this will be…
308 00:43:33.910 ⇒ 00:43:34.530 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
309 00:43:34.650 ⇒ 00:43:46.670 Clarence Stone: Some definition on this, though. You know that Notion page that gets spun up by Ricoh for every single client? There’s a Notion page. I’m just asking for more data in there.
310 00:43:46.670 ⇒ 00:43:51.180 Elizah Joy: So I don’t have to go to 3 different places to see what’s happening with one flight.
311 00:43:51.180 ⇒ 00:44:07.740 Clarence Stone: Now, if Notion is not the place, that’s okay too. I mean, we can decide wherever it is. It’s just nice, you know, if somebody’s, doing a role swap, and, you know, we’ve hired somebody to fill in gaps on a project that’s running, where can they go to just see everything?
312 00:44:09.060 ⇒ 00:44:10.240 Clarence Stone: fun, right?
313 00:44:11.400 ⇒ 00:44:17.169 Elizah Joy: Is this similar to the, like, the one that you’ve shown me when we first had our.
314 00:44:17.170 ⇒ 00:44:18.100 Clarence Stone: Oh, yeah.
315 00:44:18.100 ⇒ 00:44:19.269 Elizah Joy: Similar to that.
316 00:44:19.270 ⇒ 00:44:27.669 Clarence Stone: Yes. It is very similar to that. Utah, I showed her, Casper Company’s, bike company OS.
317 00:44:27.810 ⇒ 00:44:29.400 Clarence Stone: And, yeah, absolutely.
318 00:44:29.400 ⇒ 00:44:49.880 Clarence Stone: So, Liza, it could be a website, doesn’t have to be, it could be Notion, right? We can try to figure out how to get, like, connections into Notion so that you can get it. But, at the very least, I ask that you kind of think about how you would do it, and think about all the items that would go into it, and then we can kind of brainstorm together if you want to meet on how, like, where the best place is.
319 00:44:50.760 ⇒ 00:44:51.979 Elizah Joy: Okay.
320 00:44:53.300 ⇒ 00:44:56.019 Clarence Stone: And the same thing goes for the employee journey, right? Like.
321 00:44:56.540 ⇒ 00:45:05.080 Clarence Stone: If you can collect what should be in there, what exists already today, what doesn’t exist, and then give me some suggestions on where it should go, we can kind of refine it together, too.
322 00:45:05.610 ⇒ 00:45:06.930 Elizah Joy: Okay.
323 00:45:07.950 ⇒ 00:45:10.900 Elizah Joy: Okay, I think that sounds good.
324 00:45:11.340 ⇒ 00:45:20.660 Elizah Joy: Last one, not so important, but one of the things that we want to grow within our team is for client success owners to have.
325 00:45:20.660 ⇒ 00:45:25.630 Clarence Stone: The power to identify if there’s something that we can help the client with.
326 00:45:25.930 ⇒ 00:45:50.859 Clarence Stone: Right? So, for example, maybe we’re in a meeting and we hear off to the side, hey, you know, like, these, you know, operations dashboards that we have, they’re just not great. You know, I wish somebody would come along and help us, right? If Robert and you, Tom, aren’t there, they wouldn’t follow up on that and turn it into an opportunity for Brainforge to provide additional services, right? So, what I imagine this lead generation tool is, is for client success owners to say, I heard
327 00:45:50.860 ⇒ 00:45:54.780 Clarence Stone: our clients say this, or, like, they mentioned this in an email.
328 00:45:54.780 ⇒ 00:46:08.140 Clarence Stone: If they could put in some details on what they heard, right, what we could possibly provide them, and maybe what the ROI is, I can actually literally follow up with them and say, let’s create a customized plan to capture that.
329 00:46:08.140 ⇒ 00:46:16.510 Clarence Stone: Right? And for CSOs, this is part of their KPIs, like, expanding the opportunities within a client.
330 00:46:25.780 ⇒ 00:46:31.100 Uttam Kumaran: So, yeah, I mean, I think this is gonna be… I think one thing, Eliza, we can put into here is, like, the list.
331 00:46:31.560 ⇒ 00:46:37.199 Uttam Kumaran: But I do think that this is something that we want to drive towards this quarter, for sure. I would say that
332 00:46:38.200 ⇒ 00:46:50.550 Uttam Kumaran: in terms of everything here, I think the client health tracker is in the lead generation, probably on the lowest end. Like, we do need, like, a toy profile and a consolidated client health before anything.
333 00:46:51.120 ⇒ 00:46:56.090 Uttam Kumaran: So, those are both high priorities.
334 00:46:57.100 ⇒ 00:47:01.709 Uttam Kumaran: The dashboards, these are all… these should all end up in Omni.
335 00:47:01.830 ⇒ 00:47:05.210 Uttam Kumaran: So Omni is our business intelligence tool that we use.
336 00:47:05.350 ⇒ 00:47:20.290 Uttam Kumaran: This is certainly, like, again, this is not what I’m expecting you guys to build on the ops team, but you will be the customers. So your job is to define, like, what you need from that dashboard, and then go to the data team and say, I need this built.
337 00:47:20.540 ⇒ 00:47:31.370 Uttam Kumaran: And so, what, what, what, like… and… and Amber and Mustafa and all, and all the folks on the data team can help you get into Omni and understand what data is there.
338 00:47:31.440 ⇒ 00:47:42.300 Uttam Kumaran: But what I need you to do is to put the requirements and to own the fact that this dashboard gets created, and we can work together on, like, what the requirements are for these three.
339 00:47:42.490 ⇒ 00:47:52.199 Uttam Kumaran: But in particular, margins, all three of these are gonna be important. And there’s already a lot of stuff we wrote on requirements for all three of these.
340 00:47:52.880 ⇒ 00:47:54.320 Elizah Joy: Okay.
341 00:47:55.270 ⇒ 00:47:59.119 Elizah Joy: Okay, and then for these, would I just…
342 00:47:59.400 ⇒ 00:48:04.730 Elizah Joy: this will be for the whole ops team, right? Also, Rika, or…
343 00:48:08.880 ⇒ 00:48:09.429 Elizah Joy: on this.
344 00:48:09.430 ⇒ 00:48:14.860 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so right now, I’m considering… I’m considering this for you and Rico, like, yeah.
345 00:48:15.790 ⇒ 00:48:19.779 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So, so this is where, like, I need…
346 00:48:20.310 ⇒ 00:48:28.590 Uttam Kumaran: what I’m gonna… what I hope from you is that you look through all these, you’re like, okay, I think Q1, we can… we can get to these, these are not gonna be possible.
347 00:48:28.750 ⇒ 00:48:31.799 Uttam Kumaran: The first thing is to basically…
348 00:48:32.180 ⇒ 00:48:36.119 Uttam Kumaran: That’s… so I… again, I just want to be able to define all of these.
349 00:48:36.260 ⇒ 00:48:40.439 Uttam Kumaran: And then you can come and say, okay, like, this is possible, in theory, this is gonna be possible.
350 00:48:40.900 ⇒ 00:48:42.410 Elizah Joy: Okay.
351 00:48:45.160 ⇒ 00:48:55.010 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, leveling guide, this is basically, and I think Lauren started on this, but this is actually just, like, setting levels for each of our…
352 00:48:55.290 ⇒ 00:48:58.750 Uttam Kumaran: the different roles in the company?
353 00:48:59.050 ⇒ 00:49:02.839 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, what is a junior versus mid-level versus senior?
354 00:49:03.070 ⇒ 00:49:06.050 Uttam Kumaran: Analyst, data engineer, things like that.
355 00:49:06.950 ⇒ 00:49:11.460 Uttam Kumaran: I think… I think Lauren may have started on this, so it’s worth pinging her.
356 00:49:13.110 ⇒ 00:49:14.120 Uttam Kumaran: Fast.
357 00:49:17.140 ⇒ 00:49:20.720 Elizah Joy: I think I, yeah, I think I saw this in Notion.
358 00:49:22.510 ⇒ 00:49:29.750 Elizah Joy: Yeah, and I was asking for access to it, and then Rika said, Lauren created it. But yeah, I think, I do…
359 00:49:30.070 ⇒ 00:49:32.579 Elizah Joy: Was able to see this one.
360 00:49:33.920 ⇒ 00:49:42.880 Elizah Joy: And then, new client onboarding… What do we mean by setup for this? Is it the Notion setup?
361 00:49:43.400 ⇒ 00:49:46.310 Elizah Joy: Or having them set up for the projects.
362 00:49:46.310 ⇒ 00:49:55.239 Uttam Kumaran: No, this is, like, this is, like, everything. So, we set up, like, we set up our, like, client at Brainforge email, Slack channels.
363 00:49:55.340 ⇒ 00:50:04.060 Uttam Kumaran: contracts… Everything from finance, HubSpot, so this is, like, everything around new client onboarding.
364 00:50:05.550 ⇒ 00:50:06.760 Elizah Joy: Okay.
365 00:50:07.770 ⇒ 00:50:14.079 Uttam Kumaran: So, this is something that we just… I just want there to be a super clear SOP on, like, all the steps
366 00:50:14.210 ⇒ 00:50:15.659 Uttam Kumaran: For new clients.
367 00:50:15.940 ⇒ 00:50:17.070 Uttam Kumaran: That way.
368 00:50:17.500 ⇒ 00:50:22.760 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… it’s like, anybody can… should be able to come in and execute a new… a new client onboarding.
369 00:50:28.070 ⇒ 00:50:35.730 Elizah Joy: I think for, all the… I think I’ve gotten, an overview of these, the things that we have in here.
370 00:50:36.190 ⇒ 00:50:44.429 Elizah Joy: And then… I think Notion UI would be the last. I’ll have to push that out.
371 00:50:44.630 ⇒ 00:50:48.450 Elizah Joy: Up until maybe the end of the quarter of Q1?
372 00:50:48.570 ⇒ 00:50:49.510 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
373 00:50:49.510 ⇒ 00:50:53.899 Elizah Joy: maybe… I don’t know, maybe the lead generation tool?
374 00:50:54.550 ⇒ 00:50:55.850 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
375 00:50:56.060 ⇒ 00:50:56.630 Elizah Joy: But…
376 00:50:56.630 ⇒ 00:51:01.030 Clarence Stone: You can probably put that to the next quarter, even. That’s not as important as everything else here.
377 00:51:01.790 ⇒ 00:51:03.870 Elizah Joy: Yeah, I think these…
378 00:51:03.980 ⇒ 00:51:23.670 Elizah Joy: can be done in… for the next quarter recruitment process, so this is, currently in progress, so definitely it can be done for Q1. I’ll still set this up in a Gantt chart so that we can see the timeline. I’ve already created that one in…
379 00:51:23.800 ⇒ 00:51:24.860 Elizah Joy: on Google Sheets.
380 00:51:24.860 ⇒ 00:51:29.889 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I… I guess, like, overall, I’m not… I’m not ex… there’s kind of two points. One is, like.
381 00:51:30.020 ⇒ 00:51:36.260 Uttam Kumaran: my… I assume that we weren’t going to be able to do all these, I just need to know, like, what our goal is. Second.
382 00:51:36.480 ⇒ 00:51:46.149 Uttam Kumaran: ops is always gonna be having to take on more stuff, so we’re gonna… I would… I would roughly maybe think of, like, 70-30 plan versus ad hoc work.
383 00:51:46.520 ⇒ 00:51:47.460 Uttam Kumaran: You know?
384 00:51:47.750 ⇒ 00:51:52.459 Uttam Kumaran: Or 50-50, like, I want you to sort of think about what that is.
385 00:51:52.750 ⇒ 00:51:56.020 Uttam Kumaran: Because I’m… we’re gonna set out to do these.
386 00:51:56.220 ⇒ 00:51:58.399 Uttam Kumaran: And we’re probably not gonna get all of it done.
387 00:51:58.620 ⇒ 00:52:08.599 Uttam Kumaran: But I… but I still want to know how much time we’re gonna put to just, like, random things are coming up, the day-to-day stuff, and then how much of these bigger Roths we’re gonna move.
388 00:52:09.020 ⇒ 00:52:18.289 Uttam Kumaran: And so that would be good. And that way also, Eliza, like, as we’re going to quarter, and you’re like, hey, this, like, we’re not gonna be able to get to leveling guide, and I’m like.
389 00:52:18.840 ⇒ 00:52:26.049 Uttam Kumaran: okay, what do you need in order to get that done? You’re like, I need 20 hours of support from another junior office person? Okay.
390 00:52:26.170 ⇒ 00:52:33.389 Uttam Kumaran: Then I’m able to do the math. Okay, what’s it gonna cost me? What’s the leveling guide worth? Okay. That’s the negotiation between us.
391 00:52:33.530 ⇒ 00:52:45.359 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s really why, like, the Gantt chart and this plan matters, is for us to have a realistic expectation for each other on, like, what’s… what the ops team is going to be able to deliver. But do consider that, like.
392 00:52:45.480 ⇒ 00:52:47.989 Uttam Kumaran: It’s gonna be at least 30% ad hoc.
393 00:52:48.920 ⇒ 00:52:49.590 Elizah Joy: Hmm.
394 00:52:49.960 ⇒ 00:52:56.379 Uttam Kumaran: or I would say ad hoc and, like, day-to-day stuff, right? Because, for example, let’s say you’re… you’re working,
395 00:52:56.520 ⇒ 00:52:58.739 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, take an average 8-hour day.
396 00:52:58.860 ⇒ 00:53:06.429 Uttam Kumaran: how much time is, like, actually doing the new client onboarding, new recruiting, interviewing, everything, versus working on the SOPs?
397 00:53:06.990 ⇒ 00:53:07.520 Elizah Joy: Hmm.
398 00:53:07.520 ⇒ 00:53:11.900 Uttam Kumaran: And so consider that between you and Rico, You have 80 hours.
399 00:53:13.240 ⇒ 00:53:26.739 Uttam Kumaran: like, think about your time as that, okay, we have… we have 40 hours to work on, like, these bigger projects, and then 40 hours for just the day-to-day? Is it… is it, like, 60-20, right? So that’s how I want you to think. What I don’t want to happen here is, like.
400 00:53:28.480 ⇒ 00:53:34.549 Uttam Kumaran: There’s, like, 80 hours are going to just, like, running every day, and then there’s 0 hours for these things.
401 00:53:34.560 ⇒ 00:53:51.029 Uttam Kumaran: And that may… that may be happening, and you just have to tell me that. And then I’m like, okay, cool, we need to bring on more support, or I need to somehow lower the amount of day-to-day stuff, you know? So that’s how I think we want to think as a team here. This is the first time we’ve done, sort of, a larger operations planning, maybe the first time.
402 00:53:51.240 ⇒ 00:53:57.619 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, we just, like, sort of survived, so… we’re gonna calibrate, you know, this quarter a lot more, but…
403 00:53:58.400 ⇒ 00:53:59.839 Uttam Kumaran: Some of these would be amazing to have.
404 00:54:02.270 ⇒ 00:54:14.929 Elizah Joy: Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, I’ll do set this up. It’ll be a… I think it’ll be a good conversation between, when it comes… between me and Rico when he comes back. I think he’s gonna be back on January 5th?
405 00:54:15.410 ⇒ 00:54:25.950 Elizah Joy: when we, based on his message, I’m just not sure if he’ll be popping in and out of, Slack, but, when it comes to the…
406 00:54:29.140 ⇒ 00:54:38.930 Elizah Joy: like, not the vision of labor, but, working together and how do we get these things done? Because most of these, especially the recruitment process, client onboarding.
407 00:54:39.610 ⇒ 00:54:43.739 Elizah Joy: I would need help, Rika’s help on that, because he’s…
408 00:54:43.930 ⇒ 00:54:47.870 Elizah Joy: He knows it better than I do, especially for these two.
409 00:54:48.480 ⇒ 00:54:51.860 Elizah Joy: But I think maybe when we get back.
410 00:54:52.230 ⇒ 00:55:00.160 Elizah Joy: Once Rico, I’ve had a conversation with Rico, we can take a look on… like…
411 00:55:00.370 ⇒ 00:55:05.029 Elizah Joy: Like, an actual… Planning for the quarter, if that makes sense.
412 00:55:05.220 ⇒ 00:55:14.229 Elizah Joy: With the timeline and stuff, so that we know, how much time it’s really gonna take, as I think,
413 00:55:16.220 ⇒ 00:55:21.639 Elizah Joy: yeah, just that on my end.
414 00:55:21.940 ⇒ 00:55:23.830 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, think about it. Take your time.
415 00:55:25.000 ⇒ 00:55:40.869 Clarence Stone: So, so if I can give you a suggestion on how to approach this, Eliza, since Rico’s out, what I would recommend you do is take a look at these topics and descriptions, and find out what already exists. If you know, if you don’t find it, it’s fine. But I also want you to use AI.
416 00:55:41.050 ⇒ 00:55:47.389 Clarence Stone: Use AI, speak with AI and say, hey, we’re creating a recruitment process, you know.
417 00:55:47.440 ⇒ 00:56:04.999 Clarence Stone: what should go in there? What are major considerations? What should be, you know, the must-have features, right? And scope that out, and say, hey, like, that way, when you speak with Rico, he can look at those features and say, yeah, we can do that in 3 days, or that’s gonna take 2 weeks, right?
418 00:56:05.200 ⇒ 00:56:10.990 Clarence Stone: So, it’ll make your meeting go a lot faster if you do some additional research on each of these items.
419 00:56:22.250 ⇒ 00:56:23.229 Uttam Kumaran: What else?
420 00:56:24.820 ⇒ 00:56:27.290 Elizah Joy: No, no.
421 00:56:27.290 ⇒ 00:56:33.929 Uttam Kumaran: This is… the other thing is, like, we haven’t talked a little bit about, like, Friday meetings, or
422 00:56:38.260 ⇒ 00:56:45.009 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess also, like, this is something I think a lot of the next Friday meeting could be good to present to everybody, like, what is our ops team?
423 00:56:45.170 ⇒ 00:56:46.499 Uttam Kumaran: plan this quarter.
424 00:56:48.790 ⇒ 00:56:54.489 Uttam Kumaran: But, yeah, maybe another… Maybe another item we can just put on this list is, like.
425 00:56:54.880 ⇒ 00:56:58.950 Uttam Kumaran: What, like, how do we run a great all-hands meeting?
426 00:56:59.130 ⇒ 00:57:04.730 Uttam Kumaran: like, what’s working, what’s not working about our current Friday, like, that bi-weekly Friday meeting.
427 00:57:04.880 ⇒ 00:57:07.010 Uttam Kumaran: What should we change to make it better?
428 00:57:07.540 ⇒ 00:57:09.550 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a very expensive meeting.
429 00:57:09.680 ⇒ 00:57:10.950 Uttam Kumaran: For us to have.
430 00:57:11.230 ⇒ 00:57:15.239 Uttam Kumaran: It’s, like, 20 people who are all paid hourly, and so I… when I’m a…
431 00:57:15.380 ⇒ 00:57:17.300 Uttam Kumaran: I… I’m an engineer, so I…
432 00:57:17.570 ⇒ 00:57:20.490 Uttam Kumaran: happen to be able to do quick math, so I want to make sure that
433 00:57:20.630 ⇒ 00:57:29.939 Uttam Kumaran: it’s worthwhile, and we’re getting… we’re getting a positive ROI out of that meeting, you know? And so I think that’s another thing for us to think about.
434 00:57:31.940 ⇒ 00:57:35.400 Uttam Kumaran: It’s… I think it’s great for culture, for people to share, people to learn.
435 00:57:35.710 ⇒ 00:57:40.379 Uttam Kumaran: I just want to make sure that it’s… we do it with a lot of,
436 00:57:41.130 ⇒ 00:57:43.500 Uttam Kumaran: We actually spend the time to think about it a little bit more.
437 00:57:44.160 ⇒ 00:57:45.300 Elizah Joy: Yeah.
438 00:57:46.080 ⇒ 00:57:50.760 Elizah Joy: Yeah, I think… That’s… it.
439 00:57:51.420 ⇒ 00:57:59.919 Elizah Joy: Friday meeting, I haven’t, spoken with Lauren about that one yet. The one that I did was, I think, with the Donut app.
440 00:58:02.680 ⇒ 00:58:09.020 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah, that one also made to think a little bit more about… I like the Donut app, I think we should lean into it more.
441 00:58:09.130 ⇒ 00:58:15.960 Uttam Kumaran: maybe this is something we should… I think, can we add two items here? I think we want to talk about the Buddy program, maybe?
442 00:58:16.150 ⇒ 00:58:19.990 Uttam Kumaran: this quarter, and I want to scale Donut out.
443 00:58:20.710 ⇒ 00:58:21.640 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
444 00:58:23.490 ⇒ 00:58:25.769 Uttam Kumaran: So, yeah, there’s a lot to do.
445 00:58:26.370 ⇒ 00:58:33.869 Uttam Kumaran: But, I mean, I think… I think, I think the Donut app, I would put as a high priority, and then…
446 00:58:34.050 ⇒ 00:58:37.040 Uttam Kumaran: I can be convinced about the buddy program, but I think…
447 00:58:37.150 ⇒ 00:58:39.429 Uttam Kumaran: what would be helpful, Elijah? You’re like, look.
448 00:58:40.020 ⇒ 00:58:51.380 Uttam Kumaran: out of V, we can only do 6. You have to do size, and then, okay, I can think about it. But looking at this list, everything is so important, it’s very hard for me to think about what’s less important right now, but…
449 00:58:51.870 ⇒ 00:58:52.610 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
450 00:58:54.100 ⇒ 00:58:58.000 Elizah Joy: Okay, I’ve put this still for this quarter.
451 00:58:58.000 ⇒ 00:59:02.190 Uttam Kumaran: People do like the donut app, by the way. I just think, like, I’m not…
452 00:59:02.440 ⇒ 00:59:04.559 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not good at it, but I just…
453 00:59:04.950 ⇒ 00:59:07.469 Uttam Kumaran: Don’t have time, but, like, someone should be yelling at me.
454 00:59:09.320 ⇒ 00:59:14.059 Uttam Kumaran: You know, nobody yelled at me yet, so… there’s no consequence to not doing it.
455 00:59:20.700 ⇒ 00:59:32.850 Elizah Joy: Okay, alright, I think, for me, for this, I’ve got everything I need for now, for me to be able to think this through, and then set it up.
456 00:59:33.560 ⇒ 00:59:37.789 Elizah Joy: on… the Gantt chart for Q1?
457 00:59:38.860 ⇒ 00:59:45.540 Elizah Joy: And then figure out how to prioritize this and set these up.
458 00:59:45.980 ⇒ 00:59:49.659 Elizah Joy: And then, just a question on my end for…
459 00:59:50.110 ⇒ 00:59:59.470 Elizah Joy: I think the Friday meeting, that’s, we’re… that’s gonna be happening on Friday, right? Or even… or are our team members out of office on…
460 01:00:00.470 ⇒ 01:00:03.940 Uttam Kumaran: From 2015. People are gonna be off.
461 01:00:04.700 ⇒ 01:00:08.890 Uttam Kumaran: We probably won’t do… we probably won’t do the next team meeting until the first week back.
462 01:00:10.000 ⇒ 01:00:10.670 Elizah Joy: Okay.
463 01:00:10.920 ⇒ 01:00:15.089 Uttam Kumaran: So maybe I’ll… Maybe we should just go ahead and move it, honestly.
464 01:00:15.380 ⇒ 01:00:21.590 Elizah Joy: Yeah, yeah, because on that, I think, yeah, we have a, few open…
465 01:00:21.710 ⇒ 01:00:27.099 Elizah Joy: Meetings that weren’t, deleted in the calendar invites?
466 01:00:27.830 ⇒ 01:00:32.070 Elizah Joy: And… yeah, but yeah, I’ll get that sorted.
467 01:00:32.670 ⇒ 01:00:35.439 Elizah Joy: Anything else we want to add?
468 01:00:35.680 ⇒ 01:00:39.370 Elizah Joy: Here, or… Something?
469 01:00:40.320 ⇒ 01:00:48.890 Uttam Kumaran: No, I guess, like, what’s your… what is your setup? Do you need, like… I mean, for ops work, I feel like it’s really need, like, another… do you need, like, another monitor or anything?
470 01:00:48.890 ⇒ 01:00:51.600 Elizah Joy: Oh, I do have a monitor. Actually, I’m just at.
471 01:00:51.600 ⇒ 01:00:52.440 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, really?
472 01:00:52.440 ⇒ 01:00:54.340 Elizah Joy: Today, I don’t have an app. Okay.
473 01:00:54.480 ⇒ 01:00:55.960 Elizah Joy: Table, I thought.
474 01:00:55.960 ⇒ 01:01:02.289 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, well, if you want… if you need two monitors, you let me know. This… you, me, and Rico.
475 01:01:02.540 ⇒ 01:01:07.300 Uttam Kumaran: Are do- we’re gonna continue to be doing a lot around here, and so…
476 01:01:07.410 ⇒ 01:01:17.909 Uttam Kumaran: out of everybody, I would like you guys to just feel really, really set up, because a lot is riding on you guys being productive, so tell me if you need another monitor. I’ll also ask Rico.
477 01:01:18.030 ⇒ 01:01:20.820 Uttam Kumaran: And we can go through our new request process, but.
478 01:01:21.240 ⇒ 01:01:24.010 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, tell me, tell me if you need anything, equipment-wise.
479 01:01:24.650 ⇒ 01:01:28.449 Elizah Joy: Yeah, I will let you know if I do need anything for that.
480 01:01:31.790 ⇒ 01:01:33.649 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, yeah, that’s it from my side.
481 01:01:34.510 ⇒ 01:01:38.420 Elizah Joy: Yep. Anything else from you, Clarence?
482 01:01:39.470 ⇒ 01:01:40.290 Clarence Stone: Nope.
483 01:01:42.490 ⇒ 01:01:52.090 Clarence Stone: I, if you want to talk more about the Buddy program later on, I can expand on that, but it’s very connected to the employee profile dashboard, right?
484 01:01:52.250 ⇒ 01:02:07.870 Clarence Stone: Eliza, you’ve experienced what it’s like to join a really dynamic environment like this. What I hope to build with you is for us all to take that experience and say, how do we make that better by creating a process where, you know, we think about
485 01:02:08.360 ⇒ 01:02:12.300 Clarence Stone: A new hire’s first day, first week,
486 01:02:12.410 ⇒ 01:02:18.130 Clarence Stone: maybe what their 30 days looks like, right? And who can we pair them up with to be…
487 01:02:18.130 ⇒ 01:02:32.799 Clarence Stone: Somebody’s that’s on their team, and answering questions, right? Like, you know, I need to make a marketing deck, where do I find it, right? The buddy should be that person. So, if you want to talk more about that, I’m around, and we can chat about it.
488 01:02:32.950 ⇒ 01:02:34.590 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I think that’s all for me.
489 01:02:34.940 ⇒ 01:02:39.220 Elizah Joy: It’s the similar… like…
490 01:02:39.370 ⇒ 01:02:45.590 Elizah Joy: Roadmap, right, to the one that we have in the document, the foraging…
491 01:02:46.270 ⇒ 01:02:48.379 Elizah Joy: I forgot the document name, but the…
492 01:02:48.460 ⇒ 01:02:50.510 Clarence Stone: Yeah, yeah.
493 01:02:50.770 ⇒ 01:03:11.730 Clarence Stone: So, so not so much, that’s, like, leadership growth. This is more for, like, a new hire. Let’s say, you know, we get a new ops hire, Eliza, right? We might pair them with you and say, Eliza’s your buddy. She’s done a lot of the ops things you’re gonna do, so if you have any questions, like, you can reach out to her. If you have
494 01:03:11.730 ⇒ 01:03:15.230 Clarence Stone: If you just need somebody to review something that you’re gonna send out.
495 01:03:15.230 ⇒ 01:03:25.149 Clarence Stone: Right? Because you’re not sure if this is how you should do it. You would be the person. So, like, writing that program out, and then lining up what you would do as somebody’s Brainforge buddy.
496 01:03:25.150 ⇒ 01:03:37.849 Clarence Stone: Right? Would be super helpful. And we can weave in a lot of the other concepts of the social aspects that you’re already building out. Like, I think Donut App has a lot of things built into it that allows you to enable these one-on-ones as well.
497 01:03:38.260 ⇒ 01:03:39.960 Elizah Joy: Okay.
498 01:03:43.180 ⇒ 01:03:47.570 Clarence Stone: And, just to give you, since you’re ops, like, my vision for this, like.
499 01:03:47.960 ⇒ 01:03:57.500 Clarence Stone: maybe 6 months to a year from now, is that this person also becomes the person that gives you your, you know, every 6-month feedback.
500 01:03:58.070 ⇒ 01:03:58.650 Elizah Joy: Right.
501 01:03:58.650 ⇒ 01:04:15.970 Clarence Stone: But they would have seen your progression and your growth, and say, like, hey, these are the things that I love about what you’ve been doing, these are some opportunities that I think we should work together on, stuff like that. So, as a company becomes more structured, this buddy program’s gonna really mature into more like a mentor or counseling kind of relationship.
502 01:04:16.290 ⇒ 01:04:23.649 Clarence Stone: For a line of sight, we don’t have to think about that right now. We just need to plug the holes in the hiring and growth process right now.
503 01:04:27.240 ⇒ 01:04:30.649 Elizah Joy: Okay, I think I’ll tie this… I’ll tie that one with…
504 01:04:30.920 ⇒ 01:04:33.619 Elizah Joy: This one, when I think about this…
505 01:04:35.090 ⇒ 01:04:47.179 Clarence Stone: Yeah, and you know what, like, maybe, like, this is yours to make, do, and create, right? Like, if it makes sense for you to group some of these together, because they’re all one topic, and just tackle one topic at a time.
506 01:04:47.340 ⇒ 01:04:48.380 Clarence Stone: That’s fine.
507 01:04:53.200 ⇒ 01:04:53.910 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
508 01:04:55.510 ⇒ 01:04:56.680 Elizah Joy: Oh.
509 01:04:58.530 ⇒ 01:05:01.100 Elizah Joy: I think that sounds good.
510 01:05:04.820 ⇒ 01:05:05.380 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
511 01:05:07.770 ⇒ 01:05:10.320 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, I’m done for the… I’m done for the week.
512 01:05:13.920 ⇒ 01:05:16.030 Uttam Kumaran: I guess, Clarence, I’ll see you on Saturday.
513 01:05:16.670 ⇒ 01:05:18.210 Clarence Stone: Yep, see you Saturday.
514 01:05:18.380 ⇒ 01:05:21.880 Uttam Kumaran: Try not to… we’ll try not to work too much, but I think it’ll be helpful.
515 01:05:22.550 ⇒ 01:05:24.019 Clarence Stone: Yeah, awesome.
516 01:05:24.390 ⇒ 01:05:26.329 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Alright, thank you both.
517 01:05:26.560 ⇒ 01:05:28.899 Elizah Joy: Alright, thank you so much. Bye!
518 01:05:28.900 ⇒ 01:05:30.610 Clarence Stone: That’s all. Bye.