Meeting Title: SL Weekly Planning and Process Improvement Date: 2026-02-02 Meeting participants: Samuel Roberts, Awaish Kumar, Clarence Stone
WEBVTT
1 00:02:16.830 ⇒ 00:02:19.590 Samuel Roberts: Oh, hey Didn’t see you join, sorry.
2 00:02:22.820 ⇒ 00:02:23.510 Awaish Kumar: No.
3 00:02:25.170 ⇒ 00:02:26.529 Samuel Roberts: How are you doing today, Alicia?
4 00:02:27.570 ⇒ 00:02:28.719 Awaish Kumar: Good, how old you?
5 00:02:29.620 ⇒ 00:02:36.430 Samuel Roberts: Doing alright. It’s very, very much a Monday today. A lot of… Context switching between stuff, but…
6 00:02:36.840 ⇒ 00:02:37.950 Awaish Kumar: Yeah.
7 00:02:40.410 ⇒ 00:02:41.469 Samuel Roberts: How’s your day been?
8 00:02:42.940 ⇒ 00:02:48.909 Awaish Kumar: It’s… it’s okay, yeah… Work on some stuff.
9 00:02:50.900 ⇒ 00:02:53.919 Awaish Kumar: Everything is in control.
10 00:02:54.180 ⇒ 00:02:55.209 Samuel Roberts: Okay, good.
11 00:02:55.550 ⇒ 00:02:56.900 Samuel Roberts: That’s always a good thing.
12 00:03:28.820 ⇒ 00:03:31.640 Clarence Stone: What’s up? How’s it doing? How’s it going, guys?
13 00:03:33.170 ⇒ 00:03:34.290 Samuel Roberts: Bob’s coming.
14 00:03:35.870 ⇒ 00:03:41.489 Samuel Roberts: All right. Oh, man. Sorry, I just saw the message, and I was like, oh no, I’ll have to respond to that later. Okay, yeah.
15 00:03:44.560 ⇒ 00:03:45.940 Samuel Roberts: Throw my camera, too.
16 00:03:46.670 ⇒ 00:03:47.420 Samuel Roberts: Tenable.
17 00:03:47.420 ⇒ 00:03:48.110 Clarence Stone: There you go.
18 00:03:48.440 ⇒ 00:03:49.580 Awaish Kumar: Yeah.
19 00:03:50.540 ⇒ 00:03:57.980 Samuel Roberts: I know I got a haircut and everything this weekend, I gotta show off that I can actually look, like, reasonable, that my hair got crazy long, and I don’t know how I let it go that far.
20 00:04:01.060 ⇒ 00:04:19.650 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so I want… I mean, let’s keep using this space to, talk about how things are going, highlight some challenges, and see what we can do to improve processes. Utam said that he’s gonna probably step back from these calls and take his time back for now, so, like, we’re free to chat on our own.
21 00:04:19.880 ⇒ 00:04:23.300 Clarence Stone: So… How are things going, guys?
22 00:04:24.340 ⇒ 00:04:29.600 Awaish Kumar: Yeah… I just… Start with Sorry for my camera.
23 00:04:29.830 ⇒ 00:04:36.330 Awaish Kumar: It’s off today, I’m having some… Like, flu, so… For that reason.
24 00:04:37.380 ⇒ 00:04:46.309 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, and then everything is going good. We have this lotion doc linked in the meeting. I have wrote some notes there already.
25 00:04:46.540 ⇒ 00:04:47.980 Awaish Kumar: for today’s meeting.
26 00:04:49.800 ⇒ 00:04:58.279 Awaish Kumar: So, number one thing which I wanted… which I haven’t had in mind was considering planning the weeks.
27 00:04:58.380 ⇒ 00:05:02.109 Awaish Kumar: I already, like, kind of maybe discussed this thing, but…
28 00:05:02.390 ⇒ 00:05:08.390 Awaish Kumar: this is, like, where I mentioned, like, I want to do the stand-ups, but then stand-ups…
29 00:05:11.120 ⇒ 00:05:15.420 Awaish Kumar: can be, like… it can be, like, confusing for people, like, we can…
30 00:05:15.810 ⇒ 00:05:34.369 Awaish Kumar: So, stand up, should we just stand-up, we just go over what is happening each day. Then, for weeks, I want to know, I want to, like, I don’t know how to do that, maybe, Clarence, you can provide us more direction there, but what I actually want, like, for example, in case of Ashwini today.
31 00:05:34.570 ⇒ 00:05:39.750 Awaish Kumar: I hate… We need… he just needed to be clear on…
32 00:05:40.320 ⇒ 00:05:46.250 Awaish Kumar: what can be delivered this week? For example, he’s assigned on 3… trials.
33 00:05:46.770 ⇒ 00:05:49.329 Awaish Kumar: So he should be aware of what…
34 00:05:51.370 ⇒ 00:05:59.939 Awaish Kumar: can be done for each client this week, and so… and he should just communicate that with us, so we all know
35 00:06:01.500 ⇒ 00:06:03.790 Awaish Kumar: Like, what progress we’ve made.
36 00:06:03.790 ⇒ 00:06:21.859 Clarence Stone: Okay, okay, Awash, you always bring up good points, but there’s, like, 7 of them all at once, so it’s, like, hard for me to give you feedback. So if you, like, can chunk them for me, like, that’d be helpful, but let me, like, rewind and replay what I heard, and then we’ll tap on each one of those topics. Is that okay, Awash?
37 00:06:21.860 ⇒ 00:06:22.530 Awaish Kumar: Right, yeah.
38 00:06:22.920 ⇒ 00:06:33.679 Clarence Stone: Okay, so first off, you’re telling me that it would be helpful to get a weekly view of what each team is committing to do, right? Am I right in saying that?
39 00:06:34.920 ⇒ 00:06:43.070 Awaish Kumar: I mean… Step… try, like, figuring out some ways so that we have… Plan weeks.
40 00:06:43.300 ⇒ 00:06:48.510 Awaish Kumar: Like, we know early on in the week what we will be delivering this week.
41 00:06:49.840 ⇒ 00:06:55.589 Clarence Stone: Okay, so you want the EPs for your stand-up to be planning out things week by week.
42 00:06:55.970 ⇒ 00:06:57.669 Clarence Stone: Am I correct when you say that?
43 00:06:57.860 ⇒ 00:06:58.820 Awaish Kumar: Yes, yes.
44 00:06:58.820 ⇒ 00:07:08.579 Clarence Stone: Okay, and you want to be able to see it somewhere, right, obviously, and be told that it’s ready for you to check and review, right? So, where would that be? How would you want it done?
45 00:07:09.780 ⇒ 00:07:12.910 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I just want that to be linear.
46 00:07:13.340 ⇒ 00:07:17.269 Awaish Kumar: Right now, I’m seeing the progress daily.
47 00:07:17.470 ⇒ 00:07:21.739 Awaish Kumar: after I… Like, after these two weeks of,
48 00:07:21.970 ⇒ 00:07:29.420 Awaish Kumar: changes. I think people are adopting to linear. I’m seeing some updates daily, but, like…
49 00:07:29.420 ⇒ 00:07:42.319 Clarence Stone: So put all of those things aside. Like, you’re a leader, you can determine how things go. So, like, don’t worry about how things are happening, tell me how you need the team to work in order to manage them.
50 00:07:42.760 ⇒ 00:07:47.849 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I… I’m trying to say, on Mondays, I just want
51 00:07:49.480 ⇒ 00:07:56.160 Awaish Kumar: a plan ready for the week. What? It should be delivered… Okay. This week, that’s all.
52 00:07:56.290 ⇒ 00:08:01.070 Clarence Stone: Okay, and you want to see that plan locked in and into linear.
53 00:08:01.070 ⇒ 00:08:01.690 Awaish Kumar: Yep.
54 00:08:01.780 ⇒ 00:08:06.410 Clarence Stone: Okay, cool. So, Sam, is that something that’s gonna be helpful for you, too?
55 00:08:07.860 ⇒ 00:08:09.869 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I…
56 00:08:11.070 ⇒ 00:08:17.929 Samuel Roberts: I think today we had kind of… we have a standing meeting on Monday, and we kind of went through that as a… as a team.
57 00:08:18.100 ⇒ 00:08:26.689 Samuel Roberts: after the stand-up. So I think it might have been a little bit backwards, but the stand-up’s in the morning, and so we kind of just had that check-in, and then we had our kind of go over the Gantt.
58 00:08:27.020 ⇒ 00:08:29.289 Samuel Roberts: Go over linear, make sure we’re on track for the week.
59 00:08:29.690 ⇒ 00:08:34.040 Samuel Roberts: meetings earlier today, but later after the stand-up. Okay.
60 00:08:34.840 ⇒ 00:08:38.080 Samuel Roberts: Sorry, I… Yeah, I don’t know if I necessarily…
61 00:08:38.080 ⇒ 00:08:39.399 Clarence Stone: It would be helpful for you to have.
62 00:08:39.409 ⇒ 00:08:39.789 Samuel Roberts: management.
63 00:08:39.789 ⇒ 00:08:40.239 Clarence Stone: Right?
64 00:08:40.240 ⇒ 00:08:42.510 Samuel Roberts: It definitely would be, yeah. I mean, whether or not it’s…
65 00:08:42.720 ⇒ 00:08:48.869 Samuel Roberts: collaborative on Monday, or, you know, Friday night, or Friday evening into Monday, whatever, yeah, I think it would work for me.
66 00:08:48.870 ⇒ 00:09:13.709 Clarence Stone: Cool. So, wait, this is why in these sessions, we’ve got to chunk things out and do one problem at a time, because what I’m going to bring back to you guys is, like, the original strategy and goal was that each project team would have their own weekly session and plan out their week, right? The CSO, the EP, and you would be sitting in there and saying, okay, we lock in, we approve this week. So, one, what I’m hearing based on outcomes, though, is that that meeting
67 00:09:13.710 ⇒ 00:09:15.620 Clarence Stone: Isn’t happening at the project level.
68 00:09:15.630 ⇒ 00:09:16.940 Clarence Stone: Is that correct?
69 00:09:17.820 ⇒ 00:09:18.370 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
70 00:09:19.260 ⇒ 00:09:22.689 Awaish Kumar: So, yeah, so I can tell for the… my clients.
71 00:09:23.550 ⇒ 00:09:25.600 Awaish Kumar: like… It’s not happening.
72 00:09:27.430 ⇒ 00:09:38.230 Clarence Stone: Okay, so, so here’s what I’ll bring up. I need to get an understanding of why it’s not happening, right? Is it because EPs are not planning a weekly meeting to plan the week?
73 00:09:38.230 ⇒ 00:09:52.479 Clarence Stone: Or is it because, you know, there’s no time for people to do it? Is it because, you know, people already know what they’re doing, and they’re just kind of plowing through? What is the conditions in which, like, this meeting just doesn’t exist anymore when it used to?
74 00:09:54.580 ⇒ 00:09:57.129 Awaish Kumar: Sorry, like… the meeting?
75 00:09:58.190 ⇒ 00:10:02.680 Awaish Kumar: like, this… I didn’t see this meeting happening, like…
76 00:10:02.990 ⇒ 00:10:05.060 Awaish Kumar: Like, it really started, like, there’s no…
77 00:10:05.060 ⇒ 00:10:12.520 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so prior to doing this rollover, in December, I do recall that there was actually a weekly planning meeting that happened.
78 00:10:12.820 ⇒ 00:10:14.280 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
79 00:10:14.280 ⇒ 00:10:19.139 Clarence Stone: Now it’s not there anymore, because the expectation is that it gets handled at the project level.
80 00:10:19.140 ⇒ 00:10:19.710 Awaish Kumar: Yep.
81 00:10:19.900 ⇒ 00:10:31.900 Clarence Stone: Right? And nobody is picking up and doing that, right? And if you look at the descriptions of everybody’s role, the job of the EP is to make sure that that’s happening, right? Because if they don’t have a plan for the week.
82 00:10:31.900 ⇒ 00:10:43.920 Clarence Stone: right, then they didn’t make the meeting, or they didn’t actually ping everybody and say, hey, I updated the linear for this week, I want everybody’s feedback, and give you a message if there should be a phone call.
83 00:10:44.870 ⇒ 00:10:52.759 Awaish Kumar: Do you feel like everything that you face as a challenge in stand-up actually trickles down to a baseline operational deficiency that’s happening.
84 00:10:53.120 ⇒ 00:11:01.499 Clarence Stone: Right. It is… it is not… like, when you guys struggle, it’s because somebody on each of the project teams aren’t doing their jobs.
85 00:11:04.390 ⇒ 00:11:14.750 Awaish Kumar: Okay Yeah, I can think, for example, on Element, it might be happening because we don’t have an EP.
86 00:11:16.670 ⇒ 00:11:19.270 Awaish Kumar: So, Utam is the CSO, I am.
87 00:11:19.980 ⇒ 00:11:22.499 Clarence Stone: Yeah, SL, and we both are…
88 00:11:22.500 ⇒ 00:11:24.889 Awaish Kumar: doing EP work, sometimes.
89 00:11:25.120 ⇒ 00:11:38.960 Clarence Stone: Yeah, okay, so… so… Element is a special situation, right? Because Ashwini just put up his arms and said, I wasn’t gonna… he’s not gonna do EP work at all for Element, and, like, he was assigned to do it. So, like…
90 00:11:38.960 ⇒ 00:11:46.960 Clarence Stone: Like, that is not how things should work, right? It is just a failure of somebody in the leadership role not doing what they needed to do.
91 00:11:48.170 ⇒ 00:11:58.309 Clarence Stone: See, like, this is why we have these meetings. We get to talk about, like, the actual source problems, instead of just saying, like, okay, well, Loish, if you want weekly, you know, status updates, make them do it, right? Like, well.
92 00:11:58.310 ⇒ 00:12:09.009 Clarence Stone: you know, we can write all these SOPs and processes as much as we want, but if people don’t comply, and we don’t make, you know, operational conditions so that they can comply, nothing’s gonna change.
93 00:12:09.350 ⇒ 00:12:24.659 Clarence Stone: Right. So, like, awaits, I understand what you want, I see the value in it, right? But, like, it is on leaders to make sure that does happen. So, I think a productive conversation for this call is to ask, okay, well, you know.
94 00:12:24.660 ⇒ 00:12:31.010 Clarence Stone: The original theory, or my original hypothesis, is that this gets handled at the project level.
95 00:12:31.030 ⇒ 00:12:32.110 Clarence Stone: Right?
96 00:12:32.180 ⇒ 00:12:47.070 Clarence Stone: And if it’s not being handled at the project level anymore, because EPs aren’t doing it, right, Logic Tree says there’s one of two options. One is we enforce that EPs actually, you know, create a group chat, lock in the weekly.
97 00:12:47.070 ⇒ 00:12:59.739 Clarence Stone: plan every week, right? And you, on Mondays, would say, okay, I’ve got plans locked in for this project, this project, this project, these two haven’t done it, you guys need to do it by the end of the day.
98 00:12:59.800 ⇒ 00:13:07.440 Clarence Stone: And when they don’t do it, you send a message to UTAM saying, hey, I didn’t get a weekly plan for these two projects.
99 00:13:08.590 ⇒ 00:13:16.100 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, that’s… that’s… that’s all I wanted to hear, like, like, what should be the process for…
100 00:13:16.100 ⇒ 00:13:29.949 Clarence Stone: Right, so that should be the pro… that should be the process, but, you know, we are also beholden to getting people to work, right? And if that process doesn’t work, then this meeting is for us to talk about how do we change this process so it works for everybody?
101 00:13:31.970 ⇒ 00:13:33.510 Awaish Kumar: I think that’s great.
102 00:13:33.510 ⇒ 00:13:46.789 Clarence Stone: Are you guys thinking that this process doesn’t work because EPs are not setting up that meeting, we need to come up with a different process, or do you want to try this process? Like, that’s what I want to arrive at, right, with this discussion.
103 00:13:47.640 ⇒ 00:13:54.569 Awaish Kumar: I think this… I… I don’t think anybody actually did this.
104 00:13:55.580 ⇒ 00:14:04.409 Awaish Kumar: I don’t think so. I have never heard from anyone that there was some planning meeting. So, I think we should just first try to enforce it.
105 00:14:06.290 ⇒ 00:14:13.579 Clarence Stone: Okay, and as we talk about what we’re enforcing, right, when I wrote the documentation, I told
106 00:14:13.580 ⇒ 00:14:26.549 Clarence Stone: you know, EPs that they are… they are free to manage their projects however they want, right? If they don’t need to call everybody in for a meeting and waste everybody’s time, they don’t have to. It could be done over chat. So.
107 00:14:26.550 ⇒ 00:14:34.050 Clarence Stone: Like, how do you want us to communicate that, or do you want to force everyone to have that meeting to make sure that you do have a plan, a wish?
108 00:14:36.810 ⇒ 00:14:40.190 Awaish Kumar: I just want… like, if… for me, if I open Leaders.
109 00:14:40.190 ⇒ 00:14:47.640 Clarence Stone: I understand you just want it to happen, right? Like, we all just want it to happen, but, like, as leaders, we need to talk about how we’re going to encourage it to happen.
110 00:14:48.780 ⇒ 00:14:55.080 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I think… Okay, and for that meeting, like.
111 00:14:55.940 ⇒ 00:15:03.059 Awaish Kumar: we want to, like, enforce EPs to have a meeting with their, team members, right?
112 00:15:04.180 ⇒ 00:15:18.369 Clarence Stone: Okay, like, I kind of, like, I find this a little bit of, like, a contentious way of wording things, like, the project has 3 leaders that are all equal in their roles. The project will fail if the EP does not make a plan for it weekly.
113 00:15:18.480 ⇒ 00:15:31.959 Clarence Stone: Because you won’t know what they’re building, right? So, it is not saying, like, oh, this EP needs to do this. No, the project leadership needs to do it, and the project leadership needs to keep each other enforced and doing it.
114 00:15:33.090 ⇒ 00:15:37.650 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, but, like… I, I understand that, like, here, what…
115 00:15:38.810 ⇒ 00:15:41.679 Awaish Kumar: Like, you… like, here we are saying, like.
116 00:15:43.570 ⇒ 00:15:48.329 Awaish Kumar: Is the responsibility? Like, when we are fixing the responsibility of someone.
117 00:15:48.840 ⇒ 00:15:53.699 Awaish Kumar: to start, like, maybe start a meeting. Is it, like…
118 00:15:54.010 ⇒ 00:16:01.590 Awaish Kumar: EP’s responsibility, or, like, where we are actually putting it to… To start this conversation.
119 00:16:02.430 ⇒ 00:16:04.270 Clarence Stone: To initiate the conversation.
120 00:16:04.270 ⇒ 00:16:04.930 Awaish Kumar: God.
121 00:16:05.200 ⇒ 00:16:10.759 Clarence Stone: Well, okay, well, successful project delivery is on every single leader that’s assigned to that project.
122 00:16:10.950 ⇒ 00:16:15.850 Clarence Stone: Right, and if you need to plan what you’re going to do every week to deliver a good project.
123 00:16:15.960 ⇒ 00:16:21.980 Clarence Stone: well then, it’s everybody’s job, if they’re a CSO, EP, or SL, to make sure that that meeting happens.
124 00:16:27.690 ⇒ 00:16:48.810 Clarence Stone: Right? So, let me pretend like I’m the SL, and there’s an EP that’s not doing this. I would just ping them and say, hey, like, part of what we need to run a good project is a weekly plan of what’s being developed. So I need you to work on a linear view of, you know, what you’re gonna work on each week, and send that to me.
125 00:16:49.030 ⇒ 00:16:54.799 Clarence Stone: You know, if you need to have a meeting with me and the CSO to do that, like.
126 00:16:55.010 ⇒ 00:17:07.529 Clarence Stone: go for it, like, schedule that meeting, but what I need to see Monday morning, is that project linear, right? That’s what I would tell the EP. I’d be like, does that make sense? Because, like, we’re gonna fail if that doesn’t happen.
127 00:17:08.349 ⇒ 00:17:16.639 Clarence Stone: It’s not a, like, hey, you do this, right, kind of thing. It’s, hey, we’re all going to struggle if this doesn’t happen, and, you know, your role is to do the planning.
128 00:17:17.099 ⇒ 00:17:21.919 Awaish Kumar: I think… I… I… I understand you are wording it better than me, but…
129 00:17:21.920 ⇒ 00:17:41.279 Clarence Stone: You know, it’s not the wording, it’s, like, the intent of what it is, right? Like, one is, like, like, you’re using a Git blame on somebody. It’s like, I have no weekly linear board. This EP sucks. Well, not really. Like, did we at any point say, like, hey, dude, like, do you need some help with that? Like, are you working on that? We need this thing.
130 00:17:41.370 ⇒ 00:17:41.980 Clarence Stone: Right?
131 00:17:43.700 ⇒ 00:17:45.479 Awaish Kumar: I understand that. Okay.
132 00:17:48.950 ⇒ 00:17:56.919 Awaish Kumar: Okay, yeah, so… Okay, yeah, on Mondays, if I don’t see that, I can actually…
133 00:17:56.920 ⇒ 00:18:10.149 Clarence Stone: Well, no, I mean, I think you should say it before that, too, right? Like, hey, the new thing that we’re implementing now, and you can say this in the stand-up, is that we need to have our linear boards locked in with the weekly view, and sent to me every Monday morning.
134 00:18:10.510 ⇒ 00:18:11.540 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, okay.
135 00:18:11.540 ⇒ 00:18:12.250 Clarence Stone: Right?
136 00:18:12.360 ⇒ 00:18:19.260 Clarence Stone: And, you know, I have a locked-in view of these three projects, and I don’t have it for these two. Can I expect that tomorrow?
137 00:18:19.990 ⇒ 00:18:23.589 Awaish Kumar: Okay, yeah. You know, can you see the EP, yes or no?
138 00:18:24.930 ⇒ 00:18:27.590 Clarence Stone: Right? And then the next day, like, hey.
139 00:18:27.730 ⇒ 00:18:49.660 Clarence Stone: I still don’t have it, what’s going on? We’re gonna fail as a project if this doesn’t happen, right? You have the floor. In fact, I caught you doing this today. You did great on Stand Up OH this morning. You actually said, hey, Ashwini, we’re actually going through the format, you need to tell me where you are in your plans and your progress, and he actually paused and went back and gave you the answer you’re looking for, right?
140 00:18:49.660 ⇒ 00:18:54.249 Clarence Stone: So you’re taking command of that room, you’re getting used to it, you’re gonna be better at it as you go along.
141 00:18:55.600 ⇒ 00:18:56.530 Awaish Kumar: Okay, yep.
142 00:18:56.530 ⇒ 00:19:12.159 Clarence Stone: Right? We just want this stuff to happen, certainly we do. But I think we’re all learning that this isn’t like, you know, having an AI agent. Like, people are gonna need some reminding, you know, that, like, you have to be personable and friendly to them, and work together as a team to make things work.
143 00:19:13.390 ⇒ 00:19:15.090 Awaish Kumar: Okay, yeah.
144 00:19:17.870 ⇒ 00:19:24.630 Clarence Stone: So, what’s your approach gonna be? I’m gonna ask both of you, like, how do you guys want to handle this weekly, board?
145 00:19:27.530 ⇒ 00:19:28.469 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I think.
146 00:19:28.850 ⇒ 00:19:30.970 Awaish Kumar: For me, I’m not… yeah, now…
147 00:19:31.170 ⇒ 00:19:43.959 Awaish Kumar: I think it’s… like, I tried this, but I think… I think we… I can be more disciplined, as you said earlier, in… in saying that, for…
148 00:19:44.450 ⇒ 00:19:53.830 Awaish Kumar: like, announce it once, and then for each Monday, just see what projects are logged in, and then remind everyone
149 00:19:54.020 ⇒ 00:20:01.190 Awaish Kumar: when it’s not locked. I think after maybe a few weeks, we all get used to the habit of planning it.
150 00:20:01.900 ⇒ 00:20:15.699 Clarence Stone: Yeah, exactly. So if you start, you know, making it a thing, like, every week, right, every day on your stand-up, it will eventually happen. But, like, this is the lesson I wanted to give you, is, like, there’s so many things we just want to happen.
151 00:20:15.700 ⇒ 00:20:27.280 Clarence Stone: Right, but we need to, as leaders, actually figure out how we can make it happen. And part of that is reminding people that, you know, it’s not for, you know, like, them just to do as busy work.
152 00:20:27.280 ⇒ 00:20:37.869 Clarence Stone: there’s an impact to this on a project, right? And it’s actually supporting an entire team, right? The value that they’re adding is what’s going to influence people to put in the work.
153 00:20:38.590 ⇒ 00:20:54.480 Clarence Stone: So… so, okay, like, I have a good idea now. How about every week on Mondays on this call, we start deciding together, as an SL squad, what you’re gonna, like, what kind of change you want to see in your people and your projects, right? You’re just gonna focus on one thing.
154 00:20:54.510 ⇒ 00:21:01.930 Clarence Stone: Right? And then we’ll come back next week, talk about how that went, and then propose the next thing that we want to do to enhance our team.
155 00:21:04.380 ⇒ 00:21:14.090 Clarence Stone: Cool? Because, wait, if you do this for an entire week, people are gonna get the fact that you want to see this darn thing. Like, you’re gonna keep asking for it, and you’re gonna highlight the people who didn’t give it to you.
156 00:21:16.080 ⇒ 00:21:17.690 Awaish Kumar: Yep, yeah, sure.
157 00:21:17.690 ⇒ 00:21:22.229 Clarence Stone: Right? So, so let’s say we make a commitment this week, the two, like, all of us.
158 00:21:22.470 ⇒ 00:21:29.070 Clarence Stone: On stand-up, we will call out any team that still hasn’t finished their week planning in linear.
159 00:21:29.320 ⇒ 00:21:33.180 Clarence Stone: So you’ll say, like, hey, Lilo, you’re up.
160 00:21:33.270 ⇒ 00:21:50.929 Clarence Stone: Lilo, I don’t know what your week’s linear plan is. Is it locked in? Is it accurate? If they say yes, then it’s good, right? If they say no, they still need to update it, you kindly remind them, hey, this impacts the way I evaluate ticketing and workflow distribution, I need you to make sure it’s up-to-date on Monday, every Monday.
161 00:21:51.190 ⇒ 00:22:11.170 Clarence Stone: Right. And then we get into Thursday, and people still don’t have it, you still remind them the same exact way. Right? And by the end of that week, if there’s still EPs that are not doing it, that’s when you tell me a new Tom, saying, like, hey, I asked every single day, there’s a freaking recording, right, and we still don’t have project plans from these teams.
162 00:22:13.800 ⇒ 00:22:14.430 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
163 00:22:15.110 ⇒ 00:22:16.969 Clarence Stone: That makes sense as an approach.
164 00:22:17.580 ⇒ 00:22:18.400 Awaish Kumar: Yes.
165 00:22:18.870 ⇒ 00:22:19.560 Clarence Stone: Okay.
166 00:22:21.800 ⇒ 00:22:44.009 Clarence Stone: Yeah, let’s start experimenting. I mean, like, I genuinely think you guys are doing pretty well on stand-up. Quite speedy, both of you. I mean, the one clear thing I want to say to you guys is, like, be very clear of when stand-up is done, and you’re going into your chat mode. Like, really dismiss people, just in case they have work going on.
167 00:22:44.360 ⇒ 00:22:58.620 Clarence Stone: Yeah. Right? So, Awash, like, when you finish your stand-up protocols, you can say, okay, now I’m going to have follow-up conversations with this person, this person, and this person, right? We’ve finished our stand-up, you can go back to work, unless you want to listen in on this conversation.
168 00:23:00.510 ⇒ 00:23:01.640 Awaish Kumar: Yep, yep.
169 00:23:01.980 ⇒ 00:23:13.109 Clarence Stone: Because, like, I went back to Utam and I asked him, like, yo, what’s your holdup with, like, this feedback on stand-ups? And he’s, like, that’s all he wanted. He just wanted to know when he could leave so he can get his time back.
170 00:23:13.590 ⇒ 00:23:15.140 Samuel Roberts: That sounds right, yeah.
171 00:23:15.140 ⇒ 00:23:19.350 Clarence Stone: He gets annoyed when you guys hit the full 30 without saying, hey, we are done now.
172 00:23:20.690 ⇒ 00:23:38.780 Clarence Stone: Right? So just be clear with that, like, hey, we’ve finished all our marks that we need to do, I’ve made all my announcements, I’ve reminded you 6 times you don’t have your freaking linear done, right? And, you know, now I’m gonna answer, you know, questions that other team members have, or follow up on these people, right?
173 00:23:38.920 ⇒ 00:24:00.079 Clarence Stone: So, I guess, like, one pro tip is, like, just have a little notepad up, right? That says, oh, look, at the end of this conversation, I need to talk to this person about this thing, this person about this thing, because, like, when you wrap up, you can say, okay, stand-up is done, but person 1, we just talked about this, person two, we talk about this, everybody else can leave. Goodbye.
174 00:24:03.250 ⇒ 00:24:04.150 Awaish Kumar: Okay, yep.
175 00:24:04.580 ⇒ 00:24:15.889 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I mean, honestly, otherwise, like, I’ve clocked you guys. You’re all landing at, like, 15-16 minutes. It… literally, you guys are doing it. It’s just, it wasn’t very clear when, like, he can leave.
176 00:24:16.310 ⇒ 00:24:19.690 Clarence Stone: Because he was telling me, like, these things are going well. I’m like, they’re not, though!
177 00:24:19.840 ⇒ 00:24:22.309 Clarence Stone: You don’t have to be here anymore, like…
178 00:24:22.310 ⇒ 00:24:22.890 Samuel Roberts: Right.
179 00:24:23.260 ⇒ 00:24:31.570 Clarence Stone: So… so make sure you make that line delineation pretty clear, right? And get those announcements in. This week’s focus, everybody’s gonna finish their linear board.
180 00:24:31.570 ⇒ 00:24:48.770 Clarence Stone: So, maybe that’s the first thing that you guys do. Say, like, hey, our focus for stand-up this week is that everybody has a weekly, you know, linear board that’s complete for our, for my review, right? I’m gonna announce this again in our stand-up, but I want to give you an opportunity today
181 00:24:48.830 ⇒ 00:24:59.449 Clarence Stone: to make sure that your linear boards are up to date, right? And if you need to make a phone call for us to discuss what your plan is for this week, please, you know, go ahead and do that as the EP.
182 00:25:00.240 ⇒ 00:25:07.850 Clarence Stone: Right? So I would put this in your project chats right now, and say, this is now the new expectation, and I’m going to keep bothering you about it until it happens.
183 00:25:09.010 ⇒ 00:25:09.830 Awaish Kumar: Yep.
184 00:25:10.540 ⇒ 00:25:23.460 Clarence Stone: Right? This is what I mean, Awash. Like, it’s really hard, like, to get, you know, teams to be motivated and working. It’s much easier to see the strategy and say, this is what should happen, but how do we make it happen?
185 00:25:27.510 ⇒ 00:25:37.340 Clarence Stone: And, you know, there’s no, like, clear instructions on that in life. Like, you just have to use your EQ and figure out how, you know, these,
186 00:25:37.610 ⇒ 00:25:49.590 Clarence Stone: methods would work with certain people and don’t work with other people, so it’s a learning process on how to be a leader. Like, this is a… an amazing skill that you guys are gonna have that makes you different from any developer.
187 00:26:00.490 ⇒ 00:26:03.910 Clarence Stone: Okay, what else? We still have some time, we’ve got 5 minutes.
188 00:26:04.400 ⇒ 00:26:06.520 Clarence Stone: Oh, we got, like, 20 minutes. What do you got?
189 00:26:06.520 ⇒ 00:26:07.179 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, exactly.
190 00:26:07.180 ⇒ 00:26:08.290 Clarence Stone: What do you guys want to talk about?
191 00:26:08.920 ⇒ 00:26:12.449 Awaish Kumar: I think I took a lot of time, I will leave some time for Sam.
192 00:26:12.830 ⇒ 00:26:15.219 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I’m trying to think what…
193 00:26:16.380 ⇒ 00:26:21.340 Samuel Roberts: I mean, Mondays just feel different a little bit. I think that’s just part of the start of the week thing. Like, today was a little bit…
194 00:26:21.690 ⇒ 00:26:22.440 Samuel Roberts: You know.
195 00:26:22.570 ⇒ 00:26:26.409 Samuel Roberts: maybe I could start putting that a little bit towards the end of the week, but I don’t necessarily want to…
196 00:26:27.570 ⇒ 00:26:29.840 Samuel Roberts: Shift all of that to, like.
197 00:26:29.940 ⇒ 00:26:36.329 Samuel Roberts: planning mode while things are still getting executed on, but stand-ups early on Monday is a little…
198 00:26:36.790 ⇒ 00:26:43.059 Samuel Roberts: less helpful than it would be after, maybe, the planning sessions that we had on Monday. Yeah.
199 00:26:43.470 ⇒ 00:26:48.029 Samuel Roberts: But that’s kind of, like, I feel like that’s… that’s fine, like, Monday stand-ups can be a little different. I’m not…
200 00:26:48.280 ⇒ 00:26:48.900 Samuel Roberts: too concerned?
201 00:26:48.900 ⇒ 00:26:49.299 Clarence Stone: Oh, man.
202 00:26:49.300 ⇒ 00:26:49.760 Samuel Roberts: I…
203 00:26:49.760 ⇒ 00:26:57.799 Clarence Stone: So, so, you know, I think about leadership in a couple different ways. Like, step one is, like, people always need to understand the strategy.
204 00:26:57.800 ⇒ 00:27:17.800 Clarence Stone: Like, I always just go back to saying, hey, we do this because of this, right? I go all the way back to the source of, like, hey, the original structure was this way, and this is why you’re experiencing this, right? Like, I explain the cascading effects of everything that happened, right? So, one, your people need to understand why you’re operating this way, right? And why they need to do it.
205 00:27:17.800 ⇒ 00:27:24.079 Clarence Stone: Right, and so… so right now, we’re in that phase with getting those linear… weekly linear,
206 00:27:24.080 ⇒ 00:27:37.690 Clarence Stone: views, right? Like, your people need to understand why it’s important, and actually start doing it. But once they start doing it, Sam, you can start realizing, hey, this is actually not a great time to be getting the whole week’s worth of GANs, or linear.
207 00:27:37.930 ⇒ 00:27:38.540 Samuel Roberts: Right?
208 00:27:38.540 ⇒ 00:27:45.959 Clarence Stone: Like, we have a stand-up, and I need to see it before, so you can then shift that timeline and say, I need it Friday night.
209 00:27:46.330 ⇒ 00:27:46.920 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
210 00:27:46.920 ⇒ 00:28:00.630 Clarence Stone: Right, so level 2 is saying, hey, let’s actually improve on this process, right? And then level three is like, hey, these are things that are missing in this linear ticket, and ways, you’ve made a lot of comments on, like, the quality of these tickets, right? So, like.
211 00:28:00.630 ⇒ 00:28:12.000 Clarence Stone: we can start, you know, enforcing better, higher quality tickets and descriptions after that, right? But, like, telling people to, hey, write better tickets when they’re not even stacking up the linear tickets for the week.
212 00:28:12.150 ⇒ 00:28:14.770 Clarence Stone: Well… How’s that gonna be helpful?
213 00:28:14.950 ⇒ 00:28:15.560 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
214 00:28:15.810 ⇒ 00:28:27.010 Clarence Stone: Right? So, strategy, proof of execution, continuous improvement, and then from continuous improvement, you have, like, clear refinements and advancements beyond that, so, like, transformations.
215 00:28:29.100 ⇒ 00:28:35.470 Samuel Roberts: That makes sense. I like that, because that was the other thing I was going to say, was during some of the planning meetings, I realized sometimes the Gantts are a little…
216 00:28:36.270 ⇒ 00:28:48.190 Samuel Roberts: high level, but those are just getting translated right to linear tickets, and I communicated that a little bit today during some of the planning meetings. I was like, this is good, the Gantt is right, like, I’m not… I don’t think that’s a problem, but, like, this is not one
217 00:28:48.550 ⇒ 00:28:55.120 Samuel Roberts: issue. You know, this is… and so I think there’s some of that happening, and that we will get better, but,
218 00:28:55.990 ⇒ 00:29:09.759 Samuel Roberts: That’s good insight that, like, I can be okay a little bit, like, you know, as long as they’re getting done, it’s good, and we’ll improve on what’s getting done as it’s happening, I guess. It has to be happening in order to be improved, so I get that, yeah.
219 00:29:09.760 ⇒ 00:29:26.309 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so you’ll notice, Sam, like, my reins were pretty loose when we started doing this changeover, because I wanted people to just be able to adapt, right? So… because, like, you can’t go for these optimizations or refinements unless, like, people are adhering your protocol and understand the strategy.
220 00:29:26.530 ⇒ 00:29:27.620 Samuel Roberts: Right. Right?
221 00:29:27.940 ⇒ 00:29:32.530 Clarence Stone: Like, it always goes back to, like.
222 00:29:33.180 ⇒ 00:29:39.349 Clarence Stone: that crawl, walk, run kind of mentality, right? We’re still crawling, we’re almost getting there.
223 00:29:39.760 ⇒ 00:29:44.100 Clarence Stone: We’ll get there as things go, right?
224 00:29:44.860 ⇒ 00:29:50.049 Clarence Stone: Yeah, like, I was gonna tell you something, but it totally slipped my mind.
225 00:29:54.340 ⇒ 00:30:13.719 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I mean, the focus of stand-up is that you’re able to get that information download. So, one, like, I personally think you guys have all crossed the gateway of having these stand-ups being efficient. Now, you have to go into the optimization of it, and it seems like what I’m hearing is
226 00:30:13.720 ⇒ 00:30:15.710 Clarence Stone: Like, getting a weekly view is…
227 00:30:15.710 ⇒ 00:30:16.090 Samuel Roberts: year.
228 00:30:16.090 ⇒ 00:30:17.919 Clarence Stone: Weakest optimization point right now.
229 00:30:18.390 ⇒ 00:30:30.660 Clarence Stone: Right? Oh, I understand now. So, so for your EPs, when you’re explaining why the level of detail is good enough in a Gantt chart, but not good enough in a ticket, right? Think about Google Maps.
230 00:30:30.660 ⇒ 00:30:50.370 Clarence Stone: Right? You see the world, you see the continents, and then you zoom in again, you’re seeing the street, and then you’re seeing the street, right? As, you know, you go from the SOW, which is fuzzy, right, to a timeline, which is more constricted, to actual tickets, to actual stories, like, things should be more and more and more.
231 00:30:50.370 ⇒ 00:30:50.750 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
232 00:30:50.750 ⇒ 00:30:51.199 Clarence Stone: each day.
233 00:30:51.200 ⇒ 00:30:51.830 Samuel Roberts: Go back on it.
234 00:30:51.830 ⇒ 00:30:52.489 Clarence Stone: go down.
235 00:30:52.630 ⇒ 00:30:53.550 Clarence Stone: Right.
236 00:30:54.670 ⇒ 00:31:01.829 Samuel Roberts: No, I like that. Yeah, I think… I think that got across today when I was explaining it, because there was, like, one really clear example where it was, like.
237 00:31:02.040 ⇒ 00:31:06.450 Samuel Roberts: this is clearly two things. You see, like, multiple things went into this, right? And I think that… that came through.
238 00:31:08.250 ⇒ 00:31:08.699 Clarence Stone: Next slide.
239 00:31:08.700 ⇒ 00:31:16.189 Samuel Roberts: I’d be curious to see as we move into, like, the… because we have a few weeks of Gantt already done, and so some of those were already in linear, but I’m hoping that the next things as they roll in will…
240 00:31:16.350 ⇒ 00:31:18.179 Samuel Roberts: I can lean on that a little bit more now.
241 00:31:20.140 ⇒ 00:31:22.920 Samuel Roberts: I thought I’m weird. I’m trying to think what else…
242 00:31:29.060 ⇒ 00:31:34.929 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I don’t know, I’ve… I’m still feeling, like, pretty good about the way things are rolling project-wise.
243 00:31:38.500 ⇒ 00:31:42.290 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I think the, like, flip… with,
244 00:31:43.170 ⇒ 00:31:46.330 Samuel Roberts: a novice CSO in case EP.
245 00:31:46.450 ⇒ 00:31:50.119 Samuel Roberts: is… going well. I think…
246 00:31:50.570 ⇒ 00:32:00.250 Samuel Roberts: I wasn’t sure when that download was gonna happen between them. I’d asked them to do it, and it took a few days, but, like, Casey was on top of it today when we had our planning meeting.
247 00:32:00.390 ⇒ 00:32:03.400 Clarence Stone: Oh, perfect! That’s great news.
248 00:32:03.890 ⇒ 00:32:05.710 Samuel Roberts: Okay,
249 00:32:05.930 ⇒ 00:32:19.669 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, so yeah, he was… he was in the… he’s the one that I was talking to about the Gantt and the linear tickets, because I don’t necessarily think he was the one that created those tickets, but I was just, like, he was trying to close things out. Like, I don’t know if that one’s done, because they’re still, you know, that kind of thing. But he seemed to be, you know, in there, I think, with some more…
250 00:32:20.240 ⇒ 00:32:24.030 Samuel Roberts: Some more nudging, we’ll get to a good, good system with that.
251 00:32:24.250 ⇒ 00:32:25.050 Samuel Roberts: Boom.
252 00:32:25.540 ⇒ 00:32:29.480 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I mean, I felt, you know, today was a… a little bit of a…
253 00:32:29.640 ⇒ 00:32:33.360 Samuel Roberts: Like, context-switching day because of those meetings and stuff, but…
254 00:32:34.940 ⇒ 00:32:40.969 Samuel Roberts: things moved. So, it’s not like, you know… for me, it’s like, oh, okay, I’m bouncing around between things, but, you know, stuff got out.
255 00:32:41.180 ⇒ 00:32:44.040 Samuel Roberts: Things got decided, things got changed, there’s more… yeah.
256 00:32:44.870 ⇒ 00:32:55.449 Clarence Stone: So, another pro tip that I’ll give you guys is, like, at the end of your day or at the start of your day, make a list of everything that you need from each project, so that you can make that call out during stand-up.
257 00:32:56.270 ⇒ 00:33:00.630 Clarence Stone: Right? Remember that you have the floor first when you shift to a project.
258 00:33:00.800 ⇒ 00:33:09.769 Clarence Stone: Right? So, like, Sam, you can say, hey, Lilo, like, last time we were working, this is what happened, this is what you said you were gonna do, where were you with that?
259 00:33:09.800 ⇒ 00:33:10.970 Samuel Roberts: Okay…
260 00:33:11.130 ⇒ 00:33:17.949 Clarence Stone: then CSOs give us a vibe check, right? EPs give us the plan, all right, this is what’s going to happen next, right?
261 00:33:18.380 ⇒ 00:33:18.960 Samuel Roberts: Right.
262 00:33:20.150 ⇒ 00:33:36.660 Clarence Stone: That will help. Like, I mean, if you want to use agents to help you do that, you can do that too. You can say, like, hey, here’s the transcript, what do I need to be tracking for each team, right? Like, when I tell you to do these things, like, just don’t add more work to your workload, create the automation.
263 00:33:36.660 ⇒ 00:33:38.270 Samuel Roberts: That’s true, yeah, you’re absolutely right.
264 00:33:40.100 ⇒ 00:33:48.530 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I mean, those are my pro tips, like, and anything else the two of you guys want to talk about? If not, I want to talk about frickin’ open claws. Like, holy shit, I spent all.
265 00:33:48.530 ⇒ 00:33:50.420 Samuel Roberts: Yeah. Yeah.
266 00:33:50.420 ⇒ 00:33:51.529 Clarence Stone: Yeah, dude.
267 00:33:51.810 ⇒ 00:33:53.730 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I wanna hear what you were doing with it.
268 00:33:53.730 ⇒ 00:33:55.139 Clarence Stone: Thing is so cool.
269 00:33:55.410 ⇒ 00:33:56.200 Samuel Roberts: Yeah?
270 00:33:56.200 ⇒ 00:33:59.389 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so, I…
271 00:33:59.560 ⇒ 00:34:05.520 Clarence Stone: Actually, like, this was a double whammy for me, because I’d never worked with a model that does agent swarms.
272 00:34:05.950 ⇒ 00:34:06.840 Samuel Roberts: Mmm.
273 00:34:06.950 ⇒ 00:34:16.250 Clarence Stone: So, GimmeK2, on top of, like, the heavily permissible environment that, like, OpenClaw has, was really difficult to manage. Like.
274 00:34:16.389 ⇒ 00:34:30.199 Clarence Stone: There… there is… now, you probably saw it, right? There’s a heartbeat function that is… is running way too frequently, and when I spin up sub-agents, they become really assertive about asking for more work.
275 00:34:30.550 ⇒ 00:34:31.979 Clarence Stone: So then they come really noisy.
276 00:34:33.060 ⇒ 00:34:34.070 Clarence Stone: Right, so…
277 00:34:34.070 ⇒ 00:34:34.620 Samuel Roberts: Yay.
278 00:34:34.620 ⇒ 00:34:50.180 Clarence Stone: like, I created a process, or, like, a development pipeline. Like, you search OpenMalt, you search Mult Hub, you come up with plans on how to enhance yourself, then I approve it, then you… you instruct, Quad Code to code it, right?
279 00:34:50.550 ⇒ 00:34:59.509 Clarence Stone: when I did that, the Cloud Code subagent listener was like, I don’t have any approved plans. 30 minutes later, I don’t have any approved plans.
280 00:34:59.510 ⇒ 00:35:00.450 Samuel Roberts: Oh, wow.
281 00:35:00.450 ⇒ 00:35:11.010 Clarence Stone: Yeah, and like, if you let it sit, these sub-agents, then start coding. Like, because you didn’t give me any plans, I think this is what we should have done. I’m like, oh my gosh.
282 00:35:12.080 ⇒ 00:35:12.809 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so…
283 00:35:12.810 ⇒ 00:35:13.370 Samuel Roberts: Man.
284 00:35:13.370 ⇒ 00:35:21.010 Clarence Stone: Yeah, the swarms are really powerful, because by default, all the tools are enabled for them, and it just cluster so quickly.
285 00:35:21.520 ⇒ 00:35:26.550 Samuel Roberts: It’s crazy. Yeah, I didn’t do anything that crazy yet. I’m excited now, though, that I got it running.
286 00:35:26.550 ⇒ 00:35:37.159 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so it has its own iMessage phone number, and it started looking through my contacts and started saying, like, this is a person I should talk to about this plan, and just did it on its own.
287 00:35:37.470 ⇒ 00:35:41.700 Samuel Roberts: That’s crazy. Was that someone you knew, like, well enough to explain it, or was it, like, a…
288 00:35:42.410 ⇒ 00:35:44.480 Clarence Stone: It’s like, who did it reach out to? And was it…
289 00:35:44.690 ⇒ 00:35:55.170 Clarence Stone: So, yeah, it does make sense, like, so I was, like, creating an agent to do marketing analysis, and it said, like, I want to talk to your friend Riley Smith, who owns an e-com company.
290 00:35:57.500 ⇒ 00:36:06.090 Clarence Stone: Crazy. And Awash, the message that it sent was, hey, this is open claw, can you please put in this approval code so I have permission to talk to you?
291 00:36:09.140 ⇒ 00:36:10.970 Clarence Stone: It is getting scary.
292 00:36:11.380 ⇒ 00:36:12.200 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
293 00:36:12.380 ⇒ 00:36:13.250 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
294 00:36:15.180 ⇒ 00:36:17.819 Awaish Kumar: So, like, where are you trying, trying this?
295 00:36:18.440 ⇒ 00:36:26.140 Clarence Stone: So, Waish, the platform is called OpenClaw. It used to be called, Molt… something?
296 00:36:26.140 ⇒ 00:36:31.380 Samuel Roberts: it was ClaudeBot, then it was MoltBot, and now it’s OpenClaw, in the span of, like, 2 days.
297 00:36:31.380 ⇒ 00:36:31.790 Clarence Stone: Yeah.
298 00:36:32.120 ⇒ 00:36:36.240 Samuel Roberts: But there’s so much… it’s been viral, so, like, it’s gone everywhere in 3 different names.
299 00:36:37.110 ⇒ 00:36:43.469 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, it’s crazy. Yeah, I was trying to get it… I wanted to play with it. I don’t necessarily have, like, an immediate use case for it, so I wasn’t, like…
300 00:36:43.570 ⇒ 00:36:50.370 Samuel Roberts: But I was so scared about how much it could do that I was trying to get it running on, like, a VM, and then I was, like.
301 00:36:50.890 ⇒ 00:37:07.460 Samuel Roberts: I was SSH’d into it, and things weren’t working, and I was just trying to debug, and my… I was also, like, holding my son half the time, because I was, like, here alone, because my wife was out, and so I was, like, half the time I’m, like, trying to chat with this thing over… so it took, like, way longer than it should have to get it set up.
302 00:37:07.840 ⇒ 00:37:11.850 Samuel Roberts: And I had, like, some weird problems with models and things, and I wasn’t sure what was the right thing, and…
303 00:37:12.000 ⇒ 00:37:15.759 Samuel Roberts: They seem really token-hungry, too, which I was a little bit like, I didn’t know how much was gonna…
304 00:37:15.910 ⇒ 00:37:16.440 Clarence Stone: I’ve…
305 00:37:16.440 ⇒ 00:37:17.060 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
306 00:37:17.060 ⇒ 00:37:25.530 Clarence Stone: like, 60 bucks worth of KimiK1 2.5 from Open Rider, and then I found out that there’s a bunch of free models, like Quin80B.
307 00:37:25.810 ⇒ 00:37:27.750 Samuel Roberts: Is… is free.
308 00:37:28.220 ⇒ 00:37:33.230 Samuel Roberts: Oh, no, that’s what… alright, so I immediately went to open router because I was trying to figure that out. Yeah.
309 00:37:33.760 ⇒ 00:37:35.309 Samuel Roberts: Like, because… That’s good to know.
310 00:37:35.310 ⇒ 00:37:37.439 Clarence Stone: The agent swarms that, like.
311 00:37:38.310 ⇒ 00:37:48.069 Clarence Stone: Kimmy makes is so hard to manage, like, so, yeah, the FreeQuencoder helped a lot, but yeah, you’re gonna convert a lot of tokens, like…
312 00:37:48.670 ⇒ 00:37:50.539 Samuel Roberts: That’s what happened, yeah.
313 00:37:50.690 ⇒ 00:38:03.799 Samuel Roberts: I threw, like, just, like, 10 bucks on OpenRouter, I think I had an issue with that, so I threw 10 bucks on OpenAI, and by the end of the day, it was just, like, giving me more errors, and once I realized the errors were APIs running out, I was like, oh, okay, we’re done for the day. I can’t do this anymore.
314 00:38:05.120 ⇒ 00:38:05.690 Clarence Stone: By the way.
315 00:38:05.690 ⇒ 00:38:06.409 Samuel Roberts: And it was…
316 00:38:06.410 ⇒ 00:38:10.190 Clarence Stone: to a messenger, and actually send it commands, too. So, like, what I’m.
317 00:38:10.190 ⇒ 00:38:10.700 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
318 00:38:10.700 ⇒ 00:38:22.570 Clarence Stone: now is cleaning up the noise that’s in my main sessions, offloading all the conversations for sub-agents into the sub-agents section, and then just using that… the stream from the main session to go to my.
319 00:38:22.570 ⇒ 00:38:23.240 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
320 00:38:23.570 ⇒ 00:38:27.360 Clarence Stone: So that when it’s done, I can, you know, give it new instructions or follow-ons.
321 00:38:27.360 ⇒ 00:38:28.020 Samuel Roberts: Nice.
322 00:38:28.830 ⇒ 00:38:42.090 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I saw people setting things up on, like, Telegram, and I was like, I don’t really use Telegram, so I was trying to figure out the best way to do it, and eventually I was just using the TUI and the web interface for a while, because I… again, I was nervous about giving you access to anything for this guy, you know.
323 00:38:42.590 ⇒ 00:38:45.969 Samuel Roberts: Wow, that’s crazy, yeah. I’m excited to play with it a little bit more.
324 00:38:46.320 ⇒ 00:38:47.570 Samuel Roberts: Oh, sick!
325 00:38:47.570 ⇒ 00:38:51.249 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so, I can talk to OpenClaw when it’s done with work.
326 00:38:52.580 ⇒ 00:38:54.900 Clarence Stone: Because it’s now embedded into Rabbit.
327 00:38:55.850 ⇒ 00:38:56.969 Samuel Roberts: Of course it is.
328 00:38:56.970 ⇒ 00:39:09.580 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so, like, I will sit and say, hey, spin up a sub-agent for planning, here’s what I have in mind. I’ll just, like, riff back and forth, and then say, like, okay, complete the plan for approval, and sub-agent’s gonna run it.
329 00:39:10.490 ⇒ 00:39:15.500 Clarence Stone: And then give me a ping later on saying, hey, my plan is done, or I have open questions, please respond.
330 00:39:16.020 ⇒ 00:39:20.899 Samuel Roberts: It was nuts. Like, something about this just clicked in a way, like, all, like…
331 00:39:21.430 ⇒ 00:39:26.519 Samuel Roberts: It’s exciting. I’m excited more than anything, I think. I’m a little scared, but I’m excited.
332 00:39:27.040 ⇒ 00:39:33.139 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I mean, the way these models are kind of running rampant with so much permission is the biggest issue, but…
333 00:39:33.140 ⇒ 00:39:33.610 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
334 00:39:33.610 ⇒ 00:39:35.339 Clarence Stone: go, like, open vault.
335 00:39:35.340 ⇒ 00:39:36.840 Samuel Roberts: Oh, nice!
336 00:39:37.930 ⇒ 00:39:47.799 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, at least it’s got, like, a lobster theme, the claw and everything, so… that’s the idea. Yeah, I liked… I saw that article, I think I sent you, the 1Password one, where it was, like.
337 00:39:47.970 ⇒ 00:39:50.079 Samuel Roberts: We need a different way to think about this.
338 00:39:52.200 ⇒ 00:39:56.949 Samuel Roberts: And… it’s just, we’re not moving fast enough to keep up, and people are gonna leak things, but…
339 00:39:57.450 ⇒ 00:40:01.250 Clarence Stone: Yeah, oh, and then it turns into a cyberdeck, so I can just prompt it.
340 00:40:02.070 ⇒ 00:40:02.960 Samuel Roberts: Oh, sick.
341 00:40:03.380 ⇒ 00:40:09.159 Clarence Stone: Yeah. Dude, I don’t know where this is all going, but it’s quite powerful, and I’m trying to harness.
342 00:40:09.160 ⇒ 00:40:10.660 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, that’s exactly it, like, I’m…
343 00:40:10.660 ⇒ 00:40:11.399 Clarence Stone: figure out.
344 00:40:11.790 ⇒ 00:40:15.069 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, trying to keep up is… is already, like.
345 00:40:15.530 ⇒ 00:40:18.739 Samuel Roberts: Nuts, and this just, like, took it to a whole other level.
346 00:40:18.980 ⇒ 00:40:27.509 Samuel Roberts: Once I saw Mult Book, and I was like, oh, okay, I gotta… I gotta try this out. Something’s happening here, and I need to be a part of it in some way so I know what’s going on.
347 00:40:27.640 ⇒ 00:40:28.749 Samuel Roberts: Oh, it’s nuts.
348 00:40:29.170 ⇒ 00:40:35.050 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I’ve been experimenting with, like, a similar version of this called Denoki.
349 00:40:35.710 ⇒ 00:40:37.079 Clarence Stone: And it works.
350 00:40:37.230 ⇒ 00:40:53.559 Clarence Stone: very similarly with, like, a host server, and then, like, a client side that’s, like, doing all your personal work. And that’s been around since, like, last year, September, and I helped actually commit a lot of code to it because it was similar to how Vicinity manages memories.
351 00:40:53.620 ⇒ 00:41:09.759 Clarence Stone: But my theory was always right, like, you don’t need a large model, you need really great tool connections, great MCPs, great memory handling, and a good management system for all of it, and you can run a lot on a lightweight amount of inference. But setting all that up, like.
352 00:41:09.760 ⇒ 00:41:15.099 Clarence Stone: I locked a lot of things down in vicinity, but in this, like, everything’s free. It’s super noisy.
353 00:41:15.720 ⇒ 00:41:16.320 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
354 00:41:18.690 ⇒ 00:41:25.820 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I haven’t… I don’t… I don’t know what to do with it. Like, I… it was one of those things, like I said, I didn’t have a use case for it right now, like, I just…
355 00:41:26.860 ⇒ 00:41:29.679 Samuel Roberts: wanted to play with it, but now I gotta come up with something good to give it.
356 00:41:30.520 ⇒ 00:41:31.999 Samuel Roberts: But I’m scared, too.
357 00:41:33.860 ⇒ 00:41:37.650 Samuel Roberts: We’ll see, we’ll see. Play around with it, maybe. Throw some more money at it.
358 00:41:38.440 ⇒ 00:41:41.949 Samuel Roberts: Or use that free, you said the Gwen, what was it? Gwen 3 Coder?
359 00:41:44.390 ⇒ 00:41:48.309 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I gotta figure out the free ones, too. Which models were the free ones? I gotta figure that out.
360 00:41:48.310 ⇒ 00:41:49.490 Clarence Stone: Oh, that, yeah.
361 00:41:49.490 ⇒ 00:41:52.140 Samuel Roberts: I spent a while trying to just, like, do that. Like I said, I was…
362 00:41:52.140 ⇒ 00:41:52.620 Clarence Stone: something.
363 00:41:52.620 ⇒ 00:41:54.890 Samuel Roberts: Half on one laptop and holding a baby.
364 00:41:54.890 ⇒ 00:41:59.950 Clarence Stone: By the way, Windsurf has free KimmyK2 tokens for the rest of the week.
365 00:42:00.100 ⇒ 00:42:13.859 Clarence Stone: So, I’ve actually just set up OpenClaw to talk to Windsurf instead, to use all the free tokens. So that’s why, like, a lot of this is free right now. The only thing that’s, like, burning tokens is how I set up my, main sessions.
366 00:42:14.530 ⇒ 00:42:15.210 Samuel Roberts: Okay.
367 00:42:15.700 ⇒ 00:42:17.819 Samuel Roberts: Are you writing this on your machine? Just, like…
368 00:42:18.720 ⇒ 00:42:32.779 Clarence Stone: So, I have a Mac Mini that’s on its own network with its own pie hole. So, we’re monitoring all the transmissions in and out, from the piehole side, and it’s not done anything weird.
369 00:42:32.780 ⇒ 00:42:33.810 Samuel Roberts: Okay, cool, cool.
370 00:42:33.810 ⇒ 00:42:51.710 Clarence Stone: it is containerized, but not as strict as, you know, putting it into a sandbox on its own. Like, it has, like, its own accounts, its own, you know, messaging systems, and it has a lot of governance. Well, you know, at the very least, when it decided to reach out, right, like, it…
371 00:42:51.760 ⇒ 00:43:08.700 Clarence Stone: ask for approval, right? So I know that my system works, it was just too aggressive with doing its planning, right? Because I did a lot of meta-prompting saying, like, hey, your job is to put together a really sound plan, you know, use authoritative resources like experts in the field. Well, yeah, I mean…
372 00:43:09.080 ⇒ 00:43:09.660 Samuel Roberts: Right, right.
373 00:43:09.660 ⇒ 00:43:11.770 Clarence Stone: Yes, this could have happened.
374 00:43:11.770 ⇒ 00:43:15.499 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, yeah, it’s… Oh, that’s nuts.
375 00:43:15.710 ⇒ 00:43:17.179 Samuel Roberts: The interpretation is…
376 00:43:17.180 ⇒ 00:43:31.269 Clarence Stone: Yeah. You know what? Like, I recommend every developer go through this exercise and get OpenClaw to build things in a workable system, because what you’ll… you’ll learn is actually leadership principles. Like, when you say things, what actually happens?
377 00:43:31.600 ⇒ 00:43:32.490 Samuel Roberts: Right, right.
378 00:43:32.490 ⇒ 00:43:47.900 Clarence Stone: It’s a great plan, then you’ll be like, this bitch isn’t listening to me at all. Is it the way I said it? Is it the system? Is it, like, you know, the way things are working, that I need to code? Figuring all of those things out, like, that’s the next layer of what we need to be really good at in this new AI world.
379 00:43:47.900 ⇒ 00:43:50.580 Samuel Roberts: That’s… that’s a really good point.
380 00:43:52.240 ⇒ 00:43:53.240 Samuel Roberts: I like that.
381 00:43:55.850 ⇒ 00:44:13.250 Clarence Stone: Yeah, like, because these models, like, they drift. I was using Opus 4.5 to help me with the actual construction of the mission command system, and it just, like, kept going to, like, would you like me to start writing out the Persona MD file? I’m like, no, no, no, you’re not a developer. You are a strategist.
382 00:44:13.260 ⇒ 00:44:17.759 Samuel Roberts: You are making sure that, you know, this plan makes sense operationally, right?
383 00:44:17.760 ⇒ 00:44:28.049 Clarence Stone: And, you know, if you need technical help, you’re gonna give me exactly what you want from Cascade. It will look at the code, give you recommendations and answers, right? Like.
384 00:44:28.570 ⇒ 00:44:32.599 Clarence Stone: that’s to the level of, like, specificity you have to go toward, so…
385 00:44:32.600 ⇒ 00:44:33.070 Samuel Roberts: Right, right.
386 00:44:33.070 ⇒ 00:44:38.320 Clarence Stone: Making a system like this, it’s very much like making a leadership system like I made for you guys.
387 00:44:38.560 ⇒ 00:44:40.080 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right.
388 00:44:41.800 ⇒ 00:44:46.800 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I mean, yeah, you’re man… yeah, you’re managing… autonomous…
389 00:44:47.200 ⇒ 00:44:52.769 Samuel Roberts: whatever word I want to use here, I don’t know, beings? I don’t even know what to say here, but yeah, it’s so analogous.
390 00:44:52.960 ⇒ 00:44:54.860 Samuel Roberts: At least in the… yeah, in… in…
391 00:44:55.260 ⇒ 00:44:58.290 Samuel Roberts: More of a way than, like, Cursor has been, certainly. Yeah.
392 00:44:58.530 ⇒ 00:45:07.440 Clarence Stone: And when, like, if you brute force instructions, like, hey, just give me a linear, you know, of, like, all the tickets you want to do, it’ll just poop some crap out, and you just.
393 00:45:07.440 ⇒ 00:45:08.260 Samuel Roberts: Right, right.
394 00:45:08.260 ⇒ 00:45:11.719 Clarence Stone: Well, like, I wasn’t specific enough, was I?
395 00:45:11.720 ⇒ 00:45:12.250 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
396 00:45:13.680 ⇒ 00:45:16.689 Samuel Roberts: That’s good. Good. Full circle right there, I like it.
397 00:45:16.690 ⇒ 00:45:17.380 Clarence Stone: Yeah.
398 00:45:17.560 ⇒ 00:45:19.660 Clarence Stone: Okay, well, we’re at time.
399 00:45:19.660 ⇒ 00:45:20.040 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
400 00:45:20.040 ⇒ 00:45:30.629 Clarence Stone: Just a quick recap, like, we’re gonna focus this week on making sure that you guys are getting up-to-date linear tickets in linear, right? You’re gonna shoot a blast out to all your group,
401 00:45:30.630 ⇒ 00:45:40.159 Clarence Stone: project groups, saying this is, you know, the new standards that we’re enforcing. You’re gonna announce that in your, stand-ups every day, saying, like, hey, I have this
402 00:45:40.340 ⇒ 00:45:53.160 Clarence Stone: this and this, but I’m still missing these plans. What’s happening, right? Put people on the spot, and then, we’ll wrap back next week to see how it works out. If you run into issues or resistance, like, you know what to do. Ping us.
403 00:45:54.740 ⇒ 00:45:55.320 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
404 00:45:55.970 ⇒ 00:45:58.890 Clarence Stone: Yep, sounds good. Alright, I bet you good, man?
405 00:45:59.180 ⇒ 00:46:00.080 Awaish Kumar: Yes, yes.
406 00:46:00.080 ⇒ 00:46:02.260 Clarence Stone: Alright, awesome. Goodbye, guys!
407 00:46:02.550 ⇒ 00:46:03.110 Samuel Roberts: Right.
408 00:46:03.280 ⇒ 00:46:03.930 Samuel Roberts: Thanks, Joe.
409 00:46:03.930 ⇒ 00:46:04.790 Clarence Stone: Adios!