2026-03-09_brainforge_team_structure_and_role_chang_db52aa78

Meeting Title: Brainforge Team Structure and Role Changes Date: 2026-03-09 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Brylle Girang, Awaish Kumar, Demilade Agboola, Greg Stoutenburg, Clarence Stone, Kaela Gallagher, Pranav Narahari, Samuel Roberts, Zoran Selinger

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WEBVTT

1 00:00:20.850 ⇒ 00:00:22.060 Brylle Girang: Hello!

2 00:00:23.100 ⇒ 00:00:24.050 Uttam Kumaran: Hello.

3 00:00:38.890 ⇒ 00:00:42.900 Brylle Girang: So, I am updating Notion, just going to share my screen quick.

4 00:00:43.220 ⇒ 00:00:43.760 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

5 00:00:45.130 ⇒ 00:00:54.829 Brylle Girang: One of the problems that’s hindering me from creating the skills is that there’s no single place for the client health yet, right? Because we’re still working on the dashboard.

6 00:00:54.830 ⇒ 00:00:55.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

7 00:00:55.840 ⇒ 00:01:08.289 Brylle Girang: I just wanted to, like, build a temporary place where everything that the client held is there. So I’m just creating, like, a client hold database here, which will be linked to each client’s page.

8 00:01:09.010 ⇒ 00:01:15.019 Brylle Girang: And… I was hoping that… where is… Let’s say for default.

9 00:01:15.950 ⇒ 00:01:23.140 Brylle Girang: We just go to the client page, Should… database.

10 00:01:27.670 ⇒ 00:01:30.029 Brylle Girang: Mmm… Science Health.

11 00:01:33.220 ⇒ 00:01:36.220 Brylle Girang: And the view should be… a feat.

12 00:01:36.520 ⇒ 00:01:49.340 Brylle Girang: So, something like this. So, just simple, but everything’s in one place, and then hopefully this can open up the opportunities for us to actually link linear to Notion when it comes to

13 00:01:49.490 ⇒ 00:01:53.880 Brylle Girang: Like, getting a sense of what the health of a client is. What do you think?

14 00:01:54.500 ⇒ 00:01:56.489 Uttam Kumaran: That’s fine, I think,

15 00:01:56.700 ⇒ 00:02:05.540 Uttam Kumaran: Eventually, I think we’ll just put this in the platform. So if you can build a first version here, then that’ll be great, because then we can copy and build it. Once it’s done, it’ll speed that process up.

16 00:02:06.240 ⇒ 00:02:07.150 Brylle Girang: Yeah. Okay.

17 00:02:07.430 ⇒ 00:02:08.199 Brylle Girang: Perfect.

18 00:02:29.650 ⇒ 00:02:32.489 Brylle Girang: So what… Is your agenda.

19 00:02:34.270 ⇒ 00:02:35.529 Brylle Girang: for this meeting.

20 00:02:36.930 ⇒ 00:02:39.469 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I’m thinking about,

21 00:02:41.070 ⇒ 00:02:45.010 Uttam Kumaran: basically kind of walking through some of, like, what I thought about yesterday.

22 00:02:45.570 ⇒ 00:02:49.109 Uttam Kumaran: And then explaining, sort of, like, a little bit about how…

23 00:02:49.420 ⇒ 00:02:51.800 Uttam Kumaran: I think things are gonna change.

24 00:02:52.240 ⇒ 00:03:03.470 Uttam Kumaran: Some of the questions, and then some of the overall… Like, changes, which is, like… basically… Eliminating…

25 00:03:03.810 ⇒ 00:03:15.059 Uttam Kumaran: EP role… moving CSO to more… Business… Business Facing Outcome Owner.

26 00:03:15.600 ⇒ 00:03:16.280 Brylle Girang: Yeah.

27 00:03:18.160 ⇒ 00:03:26.000 Uttam Kumaran: basically… Working on new stand-up structure.

28 00:03:27.970 ⇒ 00:03:31.320 Uttam Kumaran: Splitting EP responsibilities.

29 00:03:31.510 ⇒ 00:03:37.419 Uttam Kumaran: between DSO SL, I’m discussing, like.

30 00:03:39.380 ⇒ 00:03:46.680 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, we need to understand, like, How to split everyone.

31 00:03:46.860 ⇒ 00:03:48.050 Uttam Kumaran: across…

32 00:03:48.430 ⇒ 00:03:57.239 Uttam Kumaran: ESO and SL, right? And if anyone or… who wants to stay, and then who wants to go, and, like, start talking about a little bit about, like, wow, I feel…

33 00:03:58.260 ⇒ 00:04:06.210 Uttam Kumaran: how I think about this… this new role, right, is sort of, like, what I’m kind of thinking, so… it’ll just be a discussion, I think, with everybody today.

34 00:04:06.840 ⇒ 00:04:07.360 Brylle Girang: Yeah.

35 00:04:08.770 ⇒ 00:04:09.510 Brylle Girang: Okay.

36 00:04:09.890 ⇒ 00:04:10.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

37 00:04:13.890 ⇒ 00:04:14.909 Uttam Kumaran: I wish.

38 00:04:18.599 ⇒ 00:04:19.309 Awaish Kumar: Bye.

39 00:04:51.970 ⇒ 00:04:53.010 Uttam Kumaran: Hey guys.

40 00:04:53.420 ⇒ 00:04:54.010 Greg Stoutenburg: 8.

41 00:05:06.180 ⇒ 00:05:09.190 Uttam Kumaran: B, do you want to ping, everybody else?

42 00:05:36.560 ⇒ 00:05:38.809 Uttam Kumaran: B, did this Slack MCP thing work?

43 00:05:41.130 ⇒ 00:05:42.099 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, it did?

44 00:05:43.420 ⇒ 00:05:45.599 Brylle Girang: Sorry, I was muted. Yeah, it works!

45 00:05:46.230 ⇒ 00:05:47.380 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, sick, okay, great.

46 00:05:47.380 ⇒ 00:05:50.989 Brylle Girang: It actually works a lot better than Sopa Base, so…

47 00:05:50.990 ⇒ 00:05:51.470 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, alright.

48 00:05:51.470 ⇒ 00:05:54.400 Brylle Girang: Have you seen my GitHub PR?

49 00:05:54.660 ⇒ 00:05:56.570 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I was reading it, yeah.

50 00:05:56.780 ⇒ 00:05:57.550 Uttam Kumaran: Nice.

51 00:06:02.020 ⇒ 00:06:07.620 Brylle Girang: I think the only problem with that is that it can access basically everything, regardless of.

52 00:06:07.990 ⇒ 00:06:11.200 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay. Yeah, that’s what we’ll have to fix.

53 00:06:13.430 ⇒ 00:06:15.779 Uttam Kumaran: You know if Zoran’s coming?

54 00:06:17.820 ⇒ 00:06:18.820 Brylle Girang: Zoran…

55 00:06:18.820 ⇒ 00:06:19.800 Uttam Kumaran: Our Sands?

56 00:06:19.800 ⇒ 00:06:20.480 Brylle Girang: Right?

57 00:06:20.710 ⇒ 00:06:28.600 Brylle Girang: But, he mentioned earlier that he’s picking up His son, I think?

58 00:06:28.600 ⇒ 00:06:30.480 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, let me see if Sam…

59 00:06:45.630 ⇒ 00:06:47.080 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, Sam’s coming.

60 00:06:47.760 ⇒ 00:06:50.600 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool, let me,

61 00:06:54.370 ⇒ 00:07:02.749 Uttam Kumaran: There’s gonna be an… so, I think, maybe broadly, and this is gonna be a little bit of a Zoom-out meeting, guys, so, bear with me, not as, like.

62 00:07:03.360 ⇒ 00:07:06.519 Uttam Kumaran: Tactical, but, like, kind of just, like, thinking through…

63 00:07:06.750 ⇒ 00:07:12.060 Uttam Kumaran: how last two months went with, like, CSO, EPSL. I feel like it’s actually… I’m happy that

64 00:07:12.190 ⇒ 00:07:22.900 Uttam Kumaran: like, we’re starting to identify where things are breaking, and, like, starting to see, okay, like, what do we do? I mean, the first thing, I think, like, it’s been… I think the new structure has been awesome.

65 00:07:23.100 ⇒ 00:07:37.610 Uttam Kumaran: I think we went from having just traditional structure to having this new structure, and so I’m thinking a lot about what worked, what didn’t. Like, I think I, you know, I could, of course, try to make these changes sort of end of quarter, but sort of, like, thinking through this new model and, like.

66 00:07:37.740 ⇒ 00:07:42.040 Uttam Kumaran: it’s actually a change that I don’t think anybody gets hurt. It’s actually just, like.

67 00:07:42.270 ⇒ 00:07:56.870 Uttam Kumaran: more redefining… continuing to redefine, like, what that original Forging the Future doc said, and, like, how far we are from it. And so I’m just gonna kind of, like, talk through two things, like, anecdotally. And I think a couple things last week

68 00:07:57.180 ⇒ 00:08:11.209 Uttam Kumaran: caused me to be like, okay, where in our mod… where… why didn’t our delivery model help catch these, issues? And so, like, I’m just gonna walk through, and feel free, please, this is not meant to be sort of lecture, so just ask me if any questions,

69 00:08:11.680 ⇒ 00:08:15.479 Uttam Kumaran: But, let me just share, my whole desktop.

70 00:08:16.280 ⇒ 00:08:21.240 Uttam Kumaran: So… Last week, one of the things that happened was,

71 00:08:21.430 ⇒ 00:08:37.580 Uttam Kumaran: we sort of two kind of issues on Eden and default, and maybe I’ll take both of those examples and try to identify, like, if I was to do a retro, like, where things broke. And I think one piece on default that happened is I sort of got coffee with a client, and I heard that she wasn’t happy with the way one

72 00:08:37.690 ⇒ 00:08:39.120 Uttam Kumaran: Workstream was going.

73 00:08:39.570 ⇒ 00:08:56.450 Uttam Kumaran: So, in the old world, what do I do? It’s like, oh, I’m probably on the workstream, so I probably knew that already, and I would have fixed it. Now that I’m not, sort of, across all the clients and every single thing that’s happening, I’m relying on our delivery leads to, sort of, just either

74 00:08:56.490 ⇒ 00:09:14.670 Uttam Kumaran: elevate up when there’s a risk, or to actually just mitigate risk. And so it was… it was interesting, because on default, all I’ve been hearing, sort of all week, the week before, is that default’s in a good spot. I know that there are some delays on data bonding, but I assume that that was kind of being discussed with the client. When I met them, it was clear that, like.

75 00:09:14.710 ⇒ 00:09:24.239 Uttam Kumaran: They felt they weren’t being heard, and they felt that, the delays, actually, like, we… they didn’t have a reasoning for the delays, and they felt that it was going south.

76 00:09:24.500 ⇒ 00:09:36.189 Uttam Kumaran: And so really, my first thing in that point was, okay, we’ve been saying that this is going super well in stand-ups. Okay, there must be something wrong with stand-ups. And I think I’m… I was fairly right.

77 00:09:36.190 ⇒ 00:09:47.460 Uttam Kumaran: In that… there’s two… actually, two issues. One is, like, it was not properly flagged in stand-up. And this is where, like, I’m… we’re a small crew, so I’m really… I don’t like blaming people,

78 00:09:47.510 ⇒ 00:10:03.220 Uttam Kumaran: so I won’t, but of course, like, the default team is small, so it’s just Demi and Greg on here. So, what is… what is this, though? It’s like, I don’t necessarily blame Demi in that, like, I think from his… from what we outlined in the CSO doc, he was doing all the things.

79 00:10:03.400 ⇒ 00:10:10.169 Uttam Kumaran: I think some things could have been improved, but you were executing all the things. I think, ultimately, what also happened here is…

80 00:10:10.210 ⇒ 00:10:24.119 Uttam Kumaran: default was dealing with two people. They were dealing with Greg on one workstream, Demi on one workstream, which means they couldn’t… they couldn’t pick up the phone and call one person to talk on this client, except me, right? And so I’m still back in this fray, and that’s sort of the model that we’re looking at.

81 00:10:24.220 ⇒ 00:10:30.459 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Where I’m still here, when in fact, the goal of this was to,

82 00:10:31.220 ⇒ 00:10:36.359 Uttam Kumaran: take me out of this. And so we were actually had a model that was more like this, right?

83 00:10:36.780 ⇒ 00:10:53.230 Uttam Kumaran: And I was supposed to be somewhere here, just, like, checking in here and there, right? And so, that’s one thing. So I felt that, one, our stand-ups were not… were not effectively finding these risks early on. And I think that happened… it’s happening across a couple of…

84 00:10:53.910 ⇒ 00:11:00.189 Uttam Kumaran: Other clients, too, wherein the stand-ups have now morphed much closer towards typical project

85 00:11:00.270 ⇒ 00:11:14.690 Uttam Kumaran: you know, typical project management stand-up, in that it’s just like, what’s a linear… what is a linear update? What are we working on, right? And less of what was outlined in the Forging the Future doc, which was, like, find the risk, right? Like, find out how this thing is going off the rails.

86 00:11:14.880 ⇒ 00:11:18.680 Uttam Kumaran: So I just wanna… set the scene there. This is, like.

87 00:11:18.970 ⇒ 00:11:25.129 Uttam Kumaran: one thing that happened last week. Anyone have any questions or thoughts where I just talked about the second example?

88 00:11:28.300 ⇒ 00:11:30.890 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so the second example was sort of Eden.

89 00:11:30.890 ⇒ 00:11:31.500 Clarence Stone: Real quick.

90 00:11:31.500 ⇒ 00:11:31.920 Uttam Kumaran: There you go.

91 00:11:31.920 ⇒ 00:11:43.090 Clarence Stone: I just want to make the observation that your client teams are just like you guys. When you ask questions, and they don’t answer, and then you’re like, oh, wow, things aren’t going right.

92 00:11:43.090 ⇒ 00:11:55.320 Clarence Stone: Right, let’s not make that happen here. If things aren’t making sense, let’s communicate with each other, harness and build that communication skill, because I can’t teach that, I can’t put it into a guideline for y’all.

93 00:11:55.390 ⇒ 00:11:58.600 Clarence Stone: Like, this is… this is a practice that gets better over time.

94 00:11:58.880 ⇒ 00:12:01.250 Clarence Stone: So, any feedback, any thoughts?

95 00:12:03.700 ⇒ 00:12:09.310 Samuel Roberts: There’s multiple CSOs, because there’s different work streams, is that what we’re looking at right now?

96 00:12:09.920 ⇒ 00:12:15.750 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, so in the… so the… the… the… basically what I… what we had previously is CSO,

97 00:12:16.370 ⇒ 00:12:22.490 Uttam Kumaran: depending on the client size, owns a work stream, or owns an SOW, right? You can think about that matching.

98 00:12:23.460 ⇒ 00:12:30.640 Uttam Kumaran: Which is… which is what we all decided on, and agreed on, going into this quarter. So, like, that’s basically it. So no one should be unfamiliar with this. I think…

99 00:12:30.990 ⇒ 00:12:35.379 Uttam Kumaran: maybe the fact that I put… I found the, sort of, the bottlenecks, I think, is…

100 00:12:35.480 ⇒ 00:12:39.469 Clarence Stone: Probably what’s, like, new information is, like, my take on, like, what the bottlenecks are.

101 00:12:44.860 ⇒ 00:12:50.289 Uttam Kumaran: And again, I think we’ll have, like… I’ll start to… let me just demonstrate the second thing. So the second example is Eden.

102 00:12:50.420 ⇒ 00:12:51.820 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And so…

103 00:12:51.930 ⇒ 00:13:04.990 Uttam Kumaran: One way to think about our business is we have small and large companies, right? We have small, like Magic Spoon is a small, Amble is a small. We then have Eden, Element, right? These guys are big clients. This is the Eden structure right now.

104 00:13:05.520 ⇒ 00:13:10.680 Uttam Kumaran: Right? We have 3 CSOs, We have several work streams.

105 00:13:10.890 ⇒ 00:13:20.889 Uttam Kumaran: I’m probably missing stuff, but we have… we have Workstream owners and workstreams, right? And then we have people that are actually working under these that aren’t even… their name isn’t in here.

106 00:13:21.110 ⇒ 00:13:27.680 Uttam Kumaran: Tons of people, tons of work we’re delivering for them, and still, we end up with the same problem, which is…

107 00:13:28.300 ⇒ 00:13:35.010 Uttam Kumaran: there… this… there… there are CSOs, but there’s still not one person that is, like, I run this client.

108 00:13:35.140 ⇒ 00:13:39.140 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And so what do you end up with? You end up with Robert and I having to do that.

109 00:13:39.330 ⇒ 00:13:54.490 Uttam Kumaran: Or you end up with nobody having to do that. And so that’s the sort of linchpin that I found with Eden, especially. And really, this came out of me talking to Greg, and him coming in and owning the Eden OmniWork stream. And actually, it eliminated an assumption I had, which is the way

110 00:13:54.530 ⇒ 00:14:12.330 Uttam Kumaran: when I… when I originally got this document from Clarence and worked with him on it, and I built out the structure, my assumption was CSOs had to have had… have to have subject matter expertise in all of the work streams for the account or the thing that they’re doing. And I think Greg proved that that wasn’t the case.

111 00:14:12.420 ⇒ 00:14:24.050 Uttam Kumaran: And so then that caused me to think, okay, actually, if that’s not the case, then why did I decide to have multiple CSOs per client, right? In fact, what both these examples pushed me to think about is, like.

112 00:14:24.520 ⇒ 00:14:27.099 Uttam Kumaran: Why did we run with that assertion? Like.

113 00:14:27.210 ⇒ 00:14:30.579 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And if you read the doc, there’s nothing in the doc that prescribes

114 00:14:30.840 ⇒ 00:14:40.050 Uttam Kumaran: Who, like, how many CSOs per account, right? Those are all logistics that I decided. But actually, what the doc does say is it’s similar to an account manager.

115 00:14:40.050 ⇒ 00:14:52.670 Uttam Kumaran: And so the one thing that it got me thinking about were, what roles did this… this new structure of CSO, EP, and SL effectively eliminate? Well, I effectively eliminated two roles, the account manager and the project manager.

116 00:14:52.670 ⇒ 00:14:59.389 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And so those are the two things that sort of got absorbed by one of these three. I think we found that this…

117 00:14:59.390 ⇒ 00:15:17.080 Uttam Kumaran: engagement planner became closer to the project manager, but I wasn’t super forward on the fact that the CSO actually has to be that account manager. And what is an account… what is an account manager versus what we’re doing now? Well, this is where I, like, I’m sort of thinking about how do we define this, but part of this is, like, you’re the first call for the client.

118 00:15:17.160 ⇒ 00:15:26.259 Uttam Kumaran: You’re the person that is… you’re actually doing the small talk, you’re texting the client, you’re doing all the things that gives them a warm bear hug. It… this isn’t…

119 00:15:26.350 ⇒ 00:15:43.169 Uttam Kumaran: this isn’t necessarily checking the box on deck, on updates, things like that. This is actually everything else, which is a lot of intangibles, which is actually something that I don’t think I defined super well when we first put the CSO thing together, and how much account management is actually needed.

120 00:15:43.170 ⇒ 00:15:46.509 Uttam Kumaran: Right? We focused a lot of the quarter on, like, these three roles.

121 00:15:46.510 ⇒ 00:15:56.389 Uttam Kumaran: I think we focused a lot on EP, we missed the mark there, I think, a bunch. I think CSO, too. What I relinquished is, yes, like, the fact that you’re leading a workstream.

122 00:15:56.390 ⇒ 00:16:05.840 Uttam Kumaran: But what we never set the CSOs up to do is do this account management piece. And again, what I saw was Greg, I think, was doing this well.

123 00:16:05.840 ⇒ 00:16:21.390 Uttam Kumaran: on the clients that… that you were on. I think we saw feedback… I saw feedback come back from Robert that you walked into Eden, and you were able to really nail this Omni migration. And again, I’m only getting feedback on the things I know, but some of this caused me to break down the ways I organize this.

124 00:16:21.440 ⇒ 00:16:33.269 Uttam Kumaran: The second piece is I actually found another person that came in and sort of broke this frame for me, is B, right? B joined maybe 4 or 5 weeks ago. Within 2 weeks, he was running EP for my clients.

125 00:16:33.400 ⇒ 00:16:45.289 Uttam Kumaran: Within 4 weeks, as you guys can see, he’s running EP for a lot of clients. And so one thing we’ve… what I found we’ve effectively done is sort of automated away all of the tasks of the engagement planner.

126 00:16:45.290 ⇒ 00:16:56.520 Uttam Kumaran: you can now go into Cursor and do every single task that the engagement planner was previously tasked to do. In addition, I don’t think any client project has done engagement planning well.

127 00:16:57.280 ⇒ 00:17:14.530 Uttam Kumaran: if someone on this call thinks that their client did well, I’m not gonna raise my hand, I think I did a pretty shit job. I don’t think any… I think we… you could see we constantly were fighting around every week, the Gantt charts are up to… not up to date, tickets are not up to date, blah blah blah. Like, I don’t know, if everyone else… if someone feels differently, let me know, but…

128 00:17:14.640 ⇒ 00:17:18.540 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like we bungled that. And it’s just… there was a lot to do.

129 00:17:18.640 ⇒ 00:17:19.400 Uttam Kumaran: Right?

130 00:17:20.060 ⇒ 00:17:21.970 Uttam Kumaran: Does everyone, like, kind of feel…

131 00:17:22.130 ⇒ 00:17:24.690 Uttam Kumaran: like that as well, about, like, sort of the EP role.

132 00:17:28.690 ⇒ 00:17:29.320 Uttam Kumaran: Ish?

133 00:17:29.320 ⇒ 00:17:30.570 Zoran Selinger: I mean, you can say…

134 00:17:30.570 ⇒ 00:17:30.900 Uttam Kumaran: No.

135 00:17:30.900 ⇒ 00:17:33.240 Zoran Selinger: without an EP, effectively.

136 00:17:33.370 ⇒ 00:17:36.160 Zoran Selinger: Since Casey, Casey was initially… Yes.

137 00:17:36.460 ⇒ 00:17:44.400 Zoran Selinger: on it, right? And I’ll be… be joined. We’re still kind of catching up a little bit, there. So I feel like I’ve been without it.

138 00:17:45.910 ⇒ 00:17:48.839 Zoran Selinger: I’m managing Gaunt, myself, and.

139 00:17:48.840 ⇒ 00:17:49.290 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

140 00:17:49.530 ⇒ 00:17:57.189 Zoran Selinger: Right now, it’s been… it’s least, up-to-date it’s been in a…

141 00:17:57.190 ⇒ 00:18:05.879 Uttam Kumaran: But you are doing it yourself, and you know what? You’re not using any of the shit that we just built for you. So, what that shows to me is that

142 00:18:06.020 ⇒ 00:18:24.210 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve solved the problem. I just need Zoran, you just need to start using… I’m not blaming you, but, like, we as a delivery team need to show you how to use all the things, but I’m telling you, we’ve automated it all, because right now, B is running it for, like, 5 or 6 clients simultaneously, and we’re doing other stuff. So…

143 00:18:24.340 ⇒ 00:18:43.179 Uttam Kumaran: another thing that came up was, like, okay, I think I’ve eliminated… I think we’ve eliminated the need for this carve-out role. And I’ll show you more about how we actually dissected this role and built the automations, but, like, just for this, like, trust me, I think we have everything there. So then I’m like, okay, what happens? Well, like, on this kind of client, right.

144 00:18:43.410 ⇒ 00:18:58.809 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s so hard, because still, Robert gets a phone call, because he’s owning the outcomes. And I think, Zoran, you’re doing a great job here, I think Greg, but nobody has a purview across this. Well, what’s the problem? I can’t go to you, Zoran, and say, own Eden.

145 00:18:59.000 ⇒ 00:18:59.890 Uttam Kumaran: one…

146 00:19:00.210 ⇒ 00:19:17.739 Uttam Kumaran: Because there’s a lot going on here, so then I need to know where does your time come from? Also, is this something you’re capable of? And so, because of that, I think the CSO definition is actually changing a little bit to be more heavier on the account management than it is on the subject matter expert

147 00:19:17.740 ⇒ 00:19:27.829 Uttam Kumaran: on a certain technical piece. And I think there’s now going to be sort of two paths. So let’s assume for this conversation that the engagement planner is no longer a role here.

148 00:19:28.190 ⇒ 00:19:46.629 Uttam Kumaran: you have two paths towards leadership. You have client success, which is going to look more and more like account management, is like the things that I do, which is, like, you go call a client, and you, like, you go get coffee with a client, you learn everything about them. Your job is to help them get promoted, right? You’re doing a lot of that.

149 00:19:46.640 ⇒ 00:20:03.829 Uttam Kumaran: And then there’s also gonna be, like, service lead, which is more about, like, anything that’s coming out of the data modeling service is A1. Anything that’s coming out of data engineering is A1. It’s, like, finding the risks and making sure that, like, the work that comes out of that service is great. I think, effectively.

150 00:20:03.920 ⇒ 00:20:12.049 Uttam Kumaran: we’ve now released enough automations for either of those parties to keep things organized, which I think is roughly the engagement planner role.

151 00:20:12.240 ⇒ 00:20:15.440 Uttam Kumaran: And so, roughly, what does this look like?

152 00:20:16.100 ⇒ 00:20:19.450 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Then you have a… then you have a company like Eden.

153 00:20:19.910 ⇒ 00:20:27.780 Uttam Kumaran: Where then we’re like, okay, we have a… for some of our larger clients, and let’s basically say any client that’s paying us more than $30K a month, and I think that

154 00:20:28.120 ⇒ 00:20:29.400 Uttam Kumaran: will go up.

155 00:20:29.860 ⇒ 00:20:36.969 Uttam Kumaran: We need to then think about both having a primary, having one CSO, and everybody is workstream owners.

156 00:20:37.040 ⇒ 00:20:48.570 Uttam Kumaran: And so the reason why I think this is helpful is, one, it creates someone whose sole job is the client success owner, meaning one person owns a client. There isn’t, I own one workstream per client.

157 00:20:48.570 ⇒ 00:21:03.249 Uttam Kumaran: there isn’t I own another. Additionally, large clients still will want access to Robert and I. It’s not something we’ve been able to figure out, but what I have done, and Demi, you saw this from Magic Spoon, I explicitly told them that they don’t get any of my time.

158 00:21:03.400 ⇒ 00:21:17.459 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And this is just part of running a services company, is the most senior people are always in demand, and so we gate that. We try to gate that by saying, only our large clients get access to that. And so we’re thinking about a model that looks more like this.

159 00:21:17.690 ⇒ 00:21:21.689 Uttam Kumaran: But ultimately, as I said, Workstream Owner is not a title.

160 00:21:21.840 ⇒ 00:21:26.970 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And work streams, this is all up to the CSO to determine how this runs.

161 00:21:27.120 ⇒ 00:21:30.829 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And so, this gets us closer to how the document

162 00:21:31.710 ⇒ 00:21:39.310 Uttam Kumaran: explains that the CSO is actually the person that just architects, sort of, like, how their client runs.

163 00:21:40.060 ⇒ 00:21:43.970 Uttam Kumaran: And then, actually, they own the fact that they out… they own the outcomes.

164 00:21:44.230 ⇒ 00:21:53.030 Uttam Kumaran: And so I’m… we’re thinking about switching to a model that’s closer to this, which, for existing CSOs, everybody I know is already CSOing on multiple clients.

165 00:21:53.170 ⇒ 00:22:06.240 Uttam Kumaran: So we’re gonna think about, okay, small versus large client, how many smalls versus how many larges can you take at a time? And we’ll budget, basically, how much time it takes to CSO a client. But I’m hopeful that this actually makes the…

166 00:22:06.920 ⇒ 00:22:10.369 Uttam Kumaran: The ladder of responsibilities, you know, a lot clearer.

167 00:22:10.740 ⇒ 00:22:15.169 Uttam Kumaran: And so, those are, like, kind of two changes that I’m proposing.

168 00:22:15.280 ⇒ 00:22:18.329 Uttam Kumaran: is that we remove the need for EP,

169 00:22:18.530 ⇒ 00:22:25.469 Uttam Kumaran: And we will talk about the EP tasks, how does that get split between the SL and CSO.

170 00:22:25.590 ⇒ 00:22:28.229 Uttam Kumaran: And then I want this CSO role to shift.

171 00:22:28.470 ⇒ 00:22:32.600 Uttam Kumaran: towards being closer to an account manager versus just a workstream owner.

172 00:22:33.120 ⇒ 00:22:35.370 Uttam Kumaran: And so I want to pause there, and like…

173 00:22:35.820 ⇒ 00:22:41.150 Uttam Kumaran: I want to hear some questions, or concerns, or, like, feedback. Yeah, Greg, go ahead.

174 00:22:41.960 ⇒ 00:22:45.670 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool. Yeah, so one thought I have is…

175 00:22:45.670 ⇒ 00:22:57.860 Greg Stoutenburg: about… about the EP role. So first, I mean, major kudos to, to Brill, to half an hour before the, Global VetLink meeting to get this message that’s like.

176 00:22:57.860 ⇒ 00:23:06.840 Greg Stoutenburg: hey, I made everything you need, and it’s in the vault. That was pretty sweet. So, shout out there. Now…

177 00:23:06.900 ⇒ 00:23:24.519 Greg Stoutenburg: something that, here’s where… here’s where I still feel like there’s something that would be called EP work that I don’t know how fits in… how it fits in, so maybe we, so, like, after I did the call then with the client, I thought, alright, well, there’s already a gap in the Gantt.

178 00:23:24.550 ⇒ 00:23:39.880 Greg Stoutenburg: And, and actually, it’ll probably apply to any future product analytics workstream, and so, something needs to be built, right? The automation needs to be tweaked, because there’s, you know, there’s, like, some missing steps, or there’s some detail here that should be fleshed out.

179 00:23:39.960 ⇒ 00:23:45.439 Greg Stoutenburg: I guess my question is, how does that fit into a team structure where there’s no EP?

180 00:23:46.140 ⇒ 00:23:48.709 Greg Stoutenburg: Or maybe Brill’s just everybody’s EP.

181 00:23:48.710 ⇒ 00:24:00.759 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so part of this is, one, there will be, like, one, if there doesn’t exist an automation for you to just use cursor to say, I just got out of this meeting, there’s an update to the Gantt that’s needed.

182 00:24:01.010 ⇒ 00:24:03.450 Uttam Kumaran: Propose the changes and go make the update.

183 00:24:04.200 ⇒ 00:24:07.479 Uttam Kumaran: then that’s what… that’s what you need, right? So…

184 00:24:07.700 ⇒ 00:24:20.540 Uttam Kumaran: In many other scenarios, we’ve already done that. For example, I get out of a meeting, and I want to update linear. Okay, there is a skill for that already. I wake up on Monday morning, I need to write my weekly update. There’s a skill for that right now.

185 00:24:20.590 ⇒ 00:24:30.070 Uttam Kumaran: And so, I’m pattern matching to all the other ways that we’ve automated EP, and so if that’s not easy, or if it doesn’t exist today, we will build that. Like, we’re…

186 00:24:30.130 ⇒ 00:24:43.189 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and so that’ll be the first on the list to build. So what I’m looking for is, like, the… an example of something that cannot be done currently, or we’re not at least 24 hours from enabling in Kirscher that the EP role did.

187 00:24:43.440 ⇒ 00:24:49.169 Uttam Kumaran: Because ultimately, that role wasn’t client-facing, it was maintaining linear, maintaining Gantt.

188 00:24:49.540 ⇒ 00:24:56.310 Uttam Kumaran: Coming up with the weekly, end-of-week summaries, coming up with the slide decks, and it wasn’t getting done anyways.

189 00:24:56.520 ⇒ 00:25:09.179 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So, in this essence, I’m actually trying to give you more control over your own destiny. Like, you can now do these things, and so you don’t have to rely on the fact that someone else didn’t do them.

190 00:25:09.370 ⇒ 00:25:14.759 Uttam Kumaran: like, you have all the skills, and eventually, I think we’ll… these… some of these will run automatically.

191 00:25:15.610 ⇒ 00:25:23.290 Uttam Kumaran: But it actually just gives you more control over running your team the way you want to, and I think all of those tasks you can now do within an hour.

192 00:25:23.610 ⇒ 00:25:26.049 Uttam Kumaran: Once a day, or every few days.

193 00:25:26.310 ⇒ 00:25:27.030 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

194 00:25:27.450 ⇒ 00:25:28.540 Greg Stoutenburg: Cool, thanks.

195 00:25:30.100 ⇒ 00:25:37.189 Uttam Kumaran: And so there will be a minimum bandwidth to run CSO on a client, and again, I think we’re divvying up our business into small clients and large.

196 00:25:37.440 ⇒ 00:25:45.060 Uttam Kumaran: So there is gonna be, like, okay, can you run 3 smalls? Can you run 2 larges at a time? Like, that’s for us to debate.

197 00:25:45.420 ⇒ 00:25:49.150 Uttam Kumaran: But, I want to give one person the ownership of the client.

198 00:25:49.390 ⇒ 00:25:57.260 Uttam Kumaran: And then also, again, the benefits accrue to you if you run that client, right? So it is giving you more control over being, like.

199 00:25:57.840 ⇒ 00:26:00.830 Uttam Kumaran: I have all the automations necessary to run this.

200 00:26:01.160 ⇒ 00:26:04.849 Uttam Kumaran: And again, this is all the automations we just built in, like, 3-4 weeks, so, like.

201 00:26:04.960 ⇒ 00:26:18.230 Uttam Kumaran: Give us another 3-4 weeks, you’ll have even more. So, what we’re trying to do is make it easier for you to run a client engagement, because ultimately, our bet is that the account management is the alpha here.

202 00:26:18.360 ⇒ 00:26:28.169 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Like, that is truly… being able to go to a customer, build trust, show them that we’re gonna build things for them, guide your team to build it and deliver it, is…

203 00:26:28.280 ⇒ 00:26:38.810 Uttam Kumaran: what is, like, important to our company, not the decoration, not keeping linear thickets up to date. I want to hand… I want to give you the automations to do that in less than an hour.

204 00:26:39.070 ⇒ 00:26:42.699 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and I want you to spend more time understanding what your client wants.

205 00:26:42.890 ⇒ 00:26:48.659 Uttam Kumaran: And then more time wrangling your team and driving your team to accomplish those outcomes.

206 00:26:49.410 ⇒ 00:27:05.650 Uttam Kumaran: and I’m gonna level… the delivery team’s gonna level everyone up. People on your team are also gonna be on Cursor, all of their tasks, they’re gonna have playbooks for, like, we’re coming for that, right? But as a CSO and as the delivery leads, like, I wanna give you as much ammo to go

207 00:27:06.170 ⇒ 00:27:08.610 Uttam Kumaran: Really, really deliver for these folks.

208 00:27:08.740 ⇒ 00:27:19.599 Uttam Kumaran: and not always be on the back foot about a Gantt, about tickets, or whatever. Like, I want to solve… we have… we have solved that. We are just probably, like, a few handoff meetings and training meetings from solving that.

209 00:27:21.650 ⇒ 00:27:22.889 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, go ahead, Demi.

210 00:27:24.500 ⇒ 00:27:32.510 Demilade Agboola: I think my question is more along the lines of, the balance between CSOing and being the…

211 00:27:33.300 ⇒ 00:27:35.949 Demilade Agboola: And also being responsible for delivering.

212 00:27:35.950 ⇒ 00:27:36.300 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

213 00:27:36.300 ⇒ 00:27:40.169 Demilade Agboola: Because if you start a CSO, like, multiple clients.

214 00:27:40.300 ⇒ 00:27:44.949 Demilade Agboola: And you have to… you play a huge role in delivering. What does that balance look like?

215 00:27:44.950 ⇒ 00:27:45.530 Uttam Kumaran: Great question.

216 00:27:45.530 ⇒ 00:27:47.710 Demilade Agboola: And…

217 00:27:48.070 ⇒ 00:27:53.840 Demilade Agboola: At what point, what has to give? Like, what will the priority be if there’s a log… if they come at loggerheads?

218 00:27:54.870 ⇒ 00:27:57.670 Uttam Kumaran: Sure. So, I think two things,

219 00:27:58.730 ⇒ 00:28:13.779 Uttam Kumaran: we… we’re… I think, first thing, Kayla’s on this call, we are hiring. So, I know everybody here is also… all the CSOs and delivery leads, everyone here is working on clients. I’m still working on clients. So, nobody is, like, officially, like.

220 00:28:13.940 ⇒ 00:28:18.099 Uttam Kumaran: Just poking their head in, like, we’re all still grinding a lot, so…

221 00:28:18.310 ⇒ 00:28:25.380 Uttam Kumaran: like, we are hiring to give you guys that ammunition, right? To give everybody on this call more people on their teams.

222 00:28:25.700 ⇒ 00:28:27.779 Uttam Kumaran: In order for you to elevate.

223 00:28:27.840 ⇒ 00:28:45.850 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So, yes, I think it continues to be a challenge to do this type of account management work, or for Sam and Awash, for you guys to see broadly across everything that’s being delivered, and still take on tickets. We’re hiring, you guys, most of the people on this call are in the interviewing process.

224 00:28:46.480 ⇒ 00:28:55.529 Uttam Kumaran: we’re gonna bring on people to solve that, so… and we’re gonna continue to do that. But what I… what I would rather do is then have this crew move up.

225 00:28:55.790 ⇒ 00:29:01.899 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So that’s what I want to try to create the lanes of what moving up looks like really, really clearly.

226 00:29:01.990 ⇒ 00:29:21.900 Uttam Kumaran: And be like, okay, there’s now two paths, and the paths are slightly different than the way we articulated it in January. The CSO path is actually going to be closer to, like, truly account management of a client, as well as having subject matter expertise in one or many work streams.

227 00:29:21.950 ⇒ 00:29:23.140 Uttam Kumaran: Right? But…

228 00:29:23.240 ⇒ 00:29:31.110 Uttam Kumaran: like, this is where I think I identified with you, Greg, is that that’s actually what you’re going for. I think that’s what gives you energy, and you like delivering

229 00:29:31.460 ⇒ 00:29:40.850 Uttam Kumaran: like, on a broad set of outcomes for a client, even if you don’t have the depth of subject matter expertise in one of the things you’re doing, I think you’ve done a good job to pick that up.

230 00:29:41.600 ⇒ 00:29:46.510 Uttam Kumaran: Does that seem like… Accurate, or are you like, okay, you made that up, or what do you think?

231 00:29:46.510 ⇒ 00:29:48.880 Greg Stoutenburg: Asking me?

232 00:29:48.880 ⇒ 00:29:49.470 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

233 00:29:49.820 ⇒ 00:29:52.370 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, no, that seems accurate, yeah, that seems accurate.

234 00:29:52.370 ⇒ 00:29:54.469 Uttam Kumaran: You just didn’t say… you just didn’t say anything, so I’m like.

235 00:29:54.470 ⇒ 00:30:04.700 Greg Stoutenburg: Oh, no, no, no, no, I was, I was deciding whether or not I was gonna make a joke about the fact that, I helped… I had… your epiphany was because I don’t know how to do something. Yeah.

236 00:30:04.700 ⇒ 00:30:06.509 Uttam Kumaran: Amazingly, but this is why, like, I’m not…

237 00:30:06.510 ⇒ 00:30:07.900 Greg Stoutenburg: It’s because that’s a little.

238 00:30:08.150 ⇒ 00:30:13.060 Uttam Kumaran: I’m… I am, I’m constantly amazed…

239 00:30:13.260 ⇒ 00:30:23.129 Uttam Kumaran: like, I learned how to… I always say the dance, right? Learn how to figure it out, improv. I’m constantly amazed at everybody else is here’s ability to do that. I need to believe in that more.

240 00:30:23.290 ⇒ 00:30:26.740 Uttam Kumaran: And I can see how fast we’re automating things.

241 00:30:26.920 ⇒ 00:30:45.160 Uttam Kumaran: And so, I’m trying to get both of these roles into the place where they’re actually so critical. There’s something that AI cannot do and will not do in our business. Like, being able to have a relationship with a client and be able to spidey sense and think about what they need, like, is so important, is like.

242 00:30:45.440 ⇒ 00:30:49.010 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want to give you all the tools to be able to get to that outcome.

243 00:30:49.270 ⇒ 00:31:06.709 Uttam Kumaran: the way Service Line… service leader, though, is also changing, is that I think the folks who are in CSO, and this is, I think, more of a question for you guys, for Demi, for Zoran, for Pranav, is, like, I want the service line actually to think… to be more of, like.

244 00:31:08.060 ⇒ 00:31:15.519 Uttam Kumaran: any… for example, Demi, I could see you be like, anything data modeling comes out of Brainforge runs through my workflow.

245 00:31:15.650 ⇒ 00:31:18.410 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And you set the standard for that.

246 00:31:18.850 ⇒ 00:31:25.120 Uttam Kumaran: And so I want to make it clear that that is probably going to be 70% engineering and a lot less

247 00:31:25.270 ⇒ 00:31:27.220 Uttam Kumaran: Like, of the business side.

248 00:31:27.290 ⇒ 00:31:46.279 Uttam Kumaran: Right now, everybody on this call, we’ve dragged you into the SOW writing process, or meeting with clients, and so I want to make those distinctions very clear, and they’re actually, like, not… one is not worse than the other, I think they’re just different, where the service leader is actually the most opinionated person about how work in a service gets done, and how it gets automated.

249 00:31:46.290 ⇒ 00:31:50.270 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And so right now, we have a lack, right? I think it’s just Awash and Sam.

250 00:31:50.520 ⇒ 00:32:04.799 Uttam Kumaran: Sam’s work stream is, like, full stack plus. Awash is, like, also managing everything on data, so there is availability there, too. But that work is going to be much more around, does anybody that delivers data modeling work

251 00:32:04.860 ⇒ 00:32:20.410 Uttam Kumaran: have the proper CI steps? Are they using agents to do so? Are dbt models, like, are the way you write dbt at Brainforge codified in the platform, right? So, true ownership over anything that comes out.

252 00:32:20.500 ⇒ 00:32:40.110 Uttam Kumaran: So you can think about it, like, in a restaurant, right? You have people that are working on apps, you have people that are working on entrees, you have people that are working on desserts. No, the customer does not care that there are 3 different people, but dessert station is a dessert station. Anything that comes out of that goes through whoever leads dessert, even if there’s other people on that team.

253 00:32:40.160 ⇒ 00:32:48.740 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And so they’re setting the standards for how dessert gets made at Brainforge. And so similarly, I think we’re gonna line up people towards each part of the actual

254 00:32:49.230 ⇒ 00:33:00.750 Uttam Kumaran: like, services that get delivered, everything from data engineering, ETL, warehousing, modeling, BI, product analytics, and then AI, and then full stack back in.

255 00:33:01.390 ⇒ 00:33:02.390 Uttam Kumaran: DevOps.

256 00:33:02.620 ⇒ 00:33:12.300 Uttam Kumaran: Each of those is gonna end up with something who they care so much about anything that comes out of that service, or anyone that does anything within that service, gets enabled.

257 00:33:12.740 ⇒ 00:33:18.979 Uttam Kumaran: You can think about us on the… me and Bea on the delivery team, right? We are… we are thinking about everybody.

258 00:33:19.170 ⇒ 00:33:25.370 Uttam Kumaran: So you can see some of the automation we’re building is we focused on EP as a role first, we’re gonna now focus on CSO.

259 00:33:25.860 ⇒ 00:33:31.290 Uttam Kumaran: But there’s… you could think about building these skills and automations for your literal service.

260 00:33:31.400 ⇒ 00:33:48.770 Uttam Kumaran: for account management, right? So I want to give you guys some… we need… what we need is actually less people building skills, but actually more people that are opinionated about what those skills are, what they do, because ultimately, you can’t ask AI for the guidelines. And so what I’m interested within, for example, within…

261 00:33:48.930 ⇒ 00:33:55.300 Uttam Kumaran: like, Sam’s world, Sam said, we always use this framework, we always push code this way, there’s always this type of testing.

262 00:33:55.330 ⇒ 00:34:09.080 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I can’t ask AI to do that, and someone needs to own the fact that that service always goes through that rigor. Same thing, Zoran, like, you’re doing everything on the edge layer stuff. Okay, if you become the SL for everything edge layer.

263 00:34:09.080 ⇒ 00:34:16.939 Uttam Kumaran: anything that Brainforge does that comes out of Edgelayer, or that’s adjacent, or uses that, comes out of, like, your vision for that service.

264 00:34:16.940 ⇒ 00:34:18.030 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, yeah.

265 00:34:18.030 ⇒ 00:34:33.790 Uttam Kumaran: Does that explain a little bit how I’m, like, thinking about how… I think these three roles were sort of closer together, and now I think, without the middle one, I’m pushing these farther apart a little bit. And they’re both super important, and we… and we are lacking on both.

266 00:34:34.150 ⇒ 00:34:42.649 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s the reason why I’m… I don’t want to just say EP is gone, and everything stays the same. Our CSOs need to become more account-manage-y.

267 00:34:42.760 ⇒ 00:34:46.539 Uttam Kumaran: And we need to have more service leads that care a lot about the quality.

268 00:34:47.420 ⇒ 00:34:58.980 Uttam Kumaran: the middle part of, like, making linear Gantt, I’m telling you, we’re, like, we’ve solved that. And we will deploy these tools and processes to everybody to be able to manage your own stuff and your own teams. But, like.

269 00:34:59.420 ⇒ 00:35:02.729 Uttam Kumaran: That’s sort of the core change that we’re thinking about making.

270 00:35:07.950 ⇒ 00:35:13.390 Greg Stoutenburg: I have another question, for these larger clients like Eden, where

271 00:35:13.390 ⇒ 00:35:32.340 Greg Stoutenburg: you know, they’re… they’re big customers, so they’ve got some direct relationship with you or with Robert. It seems like that’s gonna require some changes, like, running CSO on that’s gonna be a little different than it’s gonna be on someone much smaller, you know, like a default, or like this Global VetLink, you know, if they take off.

272 00:35:32.820 ⇒ 00:35:36.309 Greg Stoutenburg: So… Well, I don’t know. I don’t know where I’m going with this.

273 00:35:36.310 ⇒ 00:35:37.129 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so you’re right.

274 00:35:37.130 ⇒ 00:35:42.479 Greg Stoutenburg: something I expect, I don’t know what those changes might be. So, crudely, crudely, I’m just gonna say it takes more time.

275 00:35:42.710 ⇒ 00:35:55.320 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. And we are gonna… we are gonna mark… this is why we have this distinction of small versus large, we’re just gonna say it’s revenue-based. Because ideally, yes, Robert and I should be spending our time on the clients that drive the most money. I think that’s just a fair…

276 00:35:55.590 ⇒ 00:35:57.360 Uttam Kumaran: Easy way to prioritize.

277 00:35:57.360 ⇒ 00:35:58.260 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Right?

278 00:35:58.260 ⇒ 00:36:09.959 Uttam Kumaran: default, yes, although there’s only two work streams, we’re making money from them. Okay, so I should just go spend my time there. Previously, we were thinking so, so much about just remove us from everything.

279 00:36:10.180 ⇒ 00:36:12.730 Uttam Kumaran: now I think we’re like, remove us.

280 00:36:13.020 ⇒ 00:36:27.340 Uttam Kumaran: like, keep us on the places that really matter. Like, in Eden, they’re so big, they want… they need someone to talk to me or Robert. Additionally, one thing I told Robert is we’re not gonna sell another deal without having a CSO involved in the process, if possible.

281 00:36:27.710 ⇒ 00:36:47.690 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want to sell deals as me anymore. Like, someone is going to come alongside us. That way, from the beginning, there’s a showing that we’re not… they’re not gonna work with me, like, this is a team. We didn’t do this well in Element, so now I’m jammed up there. Eden is an old client, so we’re jammed up there. We’re really trying to avoid that.

282 00:36:47.720 ⇒ 00:36:54.500 Uttam Kumaran: So there will be someone senior. Right now, this is just the crew, so someone on this call will be with us on every single…

283 00:36:54.540 ⇒ 00:37:06.700 Uttam Kumaran: sales deal, no matter what. Like, they’re no longer gonna see this business as, like, Robert or I, and that’s just a new change, like, we’re trying to make as fast as possible. We still have to deal with these old clients.

284 00:37:06.810 ⇒ 00:37:10.369 Uttam Kumaran: Default, I felt like, I’m like, okay, let me see if I can get out of it.

285 00:37:10.480 ⇒ 00:37:24.279 Uttam Kumaran: But I actually think it’s helpful for me to be there in a very pointed way. Like, I should be at those weekly calls and just do what I do best, which is ask good questions, like, whatever, right? And I should still have the coffee chats with Caitlin.

286 00:37:24.590 ⇒ 00:37:33.639 Uttam Kumaran: What I’m saying, though, is at some point, we’re gonna have too… there’s gonna be too many of these, to where either we need to raise the bar, or people are gonna have to become primaries.

287 00:37:33.700 ⇒ 00:37:46.210 Uttam Kumaran: And so, then, I think that’s a natural next step for the CSOs, where you want to move into this, like, spot where, like, this is like managing director, right? Now, maybe you manage a group of CSOs.

288 00:37:46.450 ⇒ 00:37:49.670 Uttam Kumaran: that’s sort of how we’re thinking about the laddering. So the laddering…

289 00:37:49.890 ⇒ 00:37:53.250 Uttam Kumaran: I think starts to, like, show itself on, like, what’s next.

290 00:37:53.450 ⇒ 00:38:01.980 Uttam Kumaran: Right? If, let’s say, we sign another 10 clients at $40K,I^{\prime }mgonnagotoRobertandIsay,youeitherneedtoraisethelimitto$80K,

291 00:38:02.140 ⇒ 00:38:05.579 Uttam Kumaran: Or we need to promote or hire more primaries, because I’m out of time.

292 00:38:05.880 ⇒ 00:38:07.679 Uttam Kumaran: So then we find the next bottleneck.

293 00:38:07.840 ⇒ 00:38:08.590 Uttam Kumaran: You know?

294 00:38:11.030 ⇒ 00:38:14.609 Uttam Kumaran: But for me to run effectively as a primary on any account.

295 00:38:14.940 ⇒ 00:38:20.379 Uttam Kumaran: This has to go well for me to come in and really do our job here, which is just juice it.

296 00:38:20.590 ⇒ 00:38:34.870 Uttam Kumaran: which is go buy a coffee, go fly to this person, be like, how’s everything going? Everything’s going super well, hey, like, we’d love your help over here too, cool. And then I immediately bring that back. If my conversations here are, like, about things not going well, it’s a… it’s like…

297 00:38:35.210 ⇒ 00:38:45.380 Uttam Kumaran: we’re not using this role well. My job is to get coffee with Caitlin and be like, are you guys using any AI stuff? Well, let me… let’s show you guys how we’re building, like, an AI firm internally.

298 00:38:45.680 ⇒ 00:38:53.530 Uttam Kumaran: But if that call is… if that meeting, or, like, I go meet someone in New York for something, is all about how we’re not doing well, lose that slot.

299 00:38:53.760 ⇒ 00:38:55.319 Uttam Kumaran: Right? We lose that shot.

300 00:38:55.730 ⇒ 00:39:03.619 Uttam Kumaran: And we’ve tag-teamed, like, everybody is doing their best, this whole value chain, to sell these people on more work, and to deliver more for them.

301 00:39:03.760 ⇒ 00:39:07.720 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So it matters that, like, this is going well, this is going well.

302 00:39:08.370 ⇒ 00:39:12.250 Uttam Kumaran: then Robert and I come in for the RKO, you know?

303 00:39:13.250 ⇒ 00:39:15.279 Uttam Kumaran: So, that’s how we’re thinking about it.

304 00:39:17.750 ⇒ 00:39:20.170 Pranav Narahari: We run through… Sorry.

305 00:39:20.170 ⇒ 00:39:20.800 Uttam Kumaran: Oh my god.

306 00:39:21.000 ⇒ 00:39:26.190 Pranav Narahari: Could we run through, like, a quick example? I have, like, an example, like, for Eden, so…

307 00:39:26.620 ⇒ 00:39:31.699 Pranav Narahari: with, what Robert kind of brought up, and I don’t know if this will actually turn into, like, work, but…

308 00:39:32.180 ⇒ 00:39:40.560 Pranav Narahari: Like, say there’s an AI project, like the… what is it called? The project, like, command center? Yes.

309 00:39:41.070 ⇒ 00:39:44.620 Pranav Narahari: Say that gets signed off, we start on that.

310 00:39:44.620 ⇒ 00:39:45.280 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

311 00:39:45.280 ⇒ 00:39:53.690 Pranav Narahari: how would that get integrated? So, assuming, like, this is, like, the structure, so, like, I would… so Greg would then get pulled into that…

312 00:39:53.690 ⇒ 00:39:59.350 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so this, yeah, so this, I haven’t asked anybody about where to put people, but, like, let’s say Greg becomes the sole CSO here.

313 00:39:59.350 ⇒ 00:39:59.900 Pranav Narahari: Yeah.

314 00:39:59.900 ⇒ 00:40:04.030 Uttam Kumaran: like… There is now another workstream for them.

315 00:40:04.190 ⇒ 00:40:04.790 Pranav Narahari: Yep.

316 00:40:05.930 ⇒ 00:40:14.889 Uttam Kumaran: that you’re involved in, but this is where I’m gonna do two things. One is, like, I’m just gonna say this is, like, AI, right?

317 00:40:15.210 ⇒ 00:40:19.900 Uttam Kumaran: So there’s two ways, and I wanna… this is where, like, I’m sort of, like…

318 00:40:20.530 ⇒ 00:40:24.650 Uttam Kumaran: and I think this is where me and Clarence always go back and forth, is I’m always so nervous.

319 00:40:24.800 ⇒ 00:40:30.660 Uttam Kumaran: To just be like, go run your client however you want to run it, and then not give any support.

320 00:40:30.810 ⇒ 00:40:39.679 Uttam Kumaran: I think Clarence has always challenged me to be like, well, let’s see if people can form the thing they want to form it. And so this is where, what we would do is, I would say, Greg.

321 00:40:39.900 ⇒ 00:40:43.449 Uttam Kumaran: You have another 30K, 20K scope under you.

322 00:40:44.100 ⇒ 00:40:47.809 Uttam Kumaran: you now work with Pranav and manage this however you want.

323 00:40:48.250 ⇒ 00:40:50.959 Uttam Kumaran: If you want Pranav to do daily updates.

324 00:40:51.610 ⇒ 00:40:57.109 Uttam Kumaran: meet with you daily, so be it. If you’re like, Pranav runs his shit, just get the slide in.

325 00:40:57.290 ⇒ 00:40:58.590 Uttam Kumaran: Thursday morning?

326 00:40:58.790 ⇒ 00:41:01.070 Uttam Kumaran: you do it. Ultimately.

327 00:41:01.400 ⇒ 00:41:07.409 Uttam Kumaran: and this… a crude way, Greg is the throat to choke, and Greg is the ultimate winner, right?

328 00:41:08.090 ⇒ 00:41:12.140 Uttam Kumaran: This is where we want people to move, and Workstream Owner is not a title.

329 00:41:12.320 ⇒ 00:41:18.459 Uttam Kumaran: this is just the way I… so one thing I will provide Greg is we can provide you with a bunch of ways to do this.

330 00:41:18.590 ⇒ 00:41:33.879 Uttam Kumaran: like, I will give you a menu of options. If, like, one workstream is not going well, okay, here’s a couple things you can try, versus if another work stream, they’re totally chillin’, they get their updates in, they give you, Greg, like, the perfect blurb before the Thursday meeting to knock it out, great.

331 00:41:33.900 ⇒ 00:41:40.829 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll tell… we’ll give you all the different ways to self-organize, but ultimately, I want to put this… give this… all this responsibility to the CSO.

332 00:41:47.090 ⇒ 00:41:48.630 Pranav Narahari: So, like, in this example.

333 00:41:48.630 ⇒ 00:41:53.650 Uttam Kumaran: So, maybe one more piece, is that you… Danny is here.

334 00:41:54.460 ⇒ 00:41:55.090 Pranav Narahari: Yeah.

335 00:41:55.690 ⇒ 00:41:59.810 Uttam Kumaran: So Greg is able to talk to people that are at the exec level.

336 00:41:59.940 ⇒ 00:42:02.460 Uttam Kumaran: Like, the exec… they’re at both of these levels.

337 00:42:03.670 ⇒ 00:42:16.039 Uttam Kumaran: But you guys may work with Nitesh, Danny, whoever, Joe Schmo, they’re here. And so this isn’t, like… nobody’s not client-facing, but what it basically does is allows you to execute here.

338 00:42:16.480 ⇒ 00:42:20.509 Uttam Kumaran: and throw your updates up to Greg to ultimately deliver for the client.

339 00:42:20.900 ⇒ 00:42:23.089 Uttam Kumaran: So that you’re not worried about, like.

340 00:42:23.650 ⇒ 00:42:29.479 Uttam Kumaran: You’re just… you can actually just focus on getting… building a solid relationship with your counterpart in the firm.

341 00:42:29.620 ⇒ 00:42:31.550 Pranav Narahari: Yeah. And delivering work for them.

342 00:42:31.620 ⇒ 00:42:35.220 Uttam Kumaran: And then everything rolls to the CSO to present.

343 00:42:35.370 ⇒ 00:42:38.360 Uttam Kumaran: And work… if there is a primary, if the client is big enough.

344 00:42:38.830 ⇒ 00:42:43.290 Uttam Kumaran: Then this crew basically tries to run circles around the exec team.

345 00:42:44.780 ⇒ 00:42:50.179 Pranav Narahari: Gotcha. So for, like, some work streams, there will be, like, a… Client contact?

346 00:42:51.750 ⇒ 00:42:56.019 Uttam Kumaran: Ultimately, all these people have… they’re talking to someone, right, in the client, for sure.

347 00:42:56.020 ⇒ 00:42:57.189 Pranav Narahari: Oh, okay, gotcha.

348 00:42:57.190 ⇒ 00:43:00.300 Uttam Kumaran: So, Greg may or may not be in any of the, like.

349 00:43:00.560 ⇒ 00:43:08.519 Uttam Kumaran: Zoran is meeting directly with Mitesh, and I know, Greg, you’re in that. Robert and Amber do some stuff. Awish meets with some people.

350 00:43:08.860 ⇒ 00:43:13.409 Uttam Kumaran: That’s just how it’s gonna be. We’re gonna be all in the… but there’s someone who it all ladders to.

351 00:43:15.690 ⇒ 00:43:25.429 Uttam Kumaran: So, my biggest hesitation, and then I also want to hear from Awaesh, Demi, Sam, my biggest hesitation here is if this is too much.

352 00:43:26.930 ⇒ 00:43:40.399 Uttam Kumaran: And how is the… like, what is the logical limiting… what is the limiting factor for this person, and do we have a path towards automating with AI? Like, if Greg’s like, look, the toughest part here is getting updates from everybody.

353 00:43:40.650 ⇒ 00:43:50.339 Uttam Kumaran: and getting into a slide deck, and, like, it’s the limiting factor. Or if Greg’s like, look, I literally can… I can only work on… if I… this… in this model, I can only do Eden.

354 00:43:50.820 ⇒ 00:43:56.050 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I don’t have human bandwidth, like, a brain bandwidth. Okay, so I’m interested in that.

355 00:43:56.390 ⇒ 00:44:04.600 Uttam Kumaran: Right? I feel like some of the things we’re gonna release with EP and CSO are gonna allow you, Greg, to run two of these, is my thought.

356 00:44:05.650 ⇒ 00:44:06.530 Uttam Kumaran: And…

357 00:44:06.750 ⇒ 00:44:12.960 Uttam Kumaran: like, I feel pretty confident about that, given the pace at which we’ve been automating, and the quality of the output.

358 00:44:13.070 ⇒ 00:44:16.310 Uttam Kumaran: I think you’re gonna… you’re gonna be able to run two larges.

359 00:44:16.590 ⇒ 00:44:19.840 Uttam Kumaran: If you leverage everything we’re building.

360 00:44:20.510 ⇒ 00:44:34.090 Uttam Kumaran: I think I’m gonna… and ultimately, I think you may say, okay, but, like, there’s a lot still. Well, you get the benefits. Like, all the CSO benefits are gonna go to the people that own these accounts and sell additional work.

361 00:44:34.800 ⇒ 00:44:42.639 Uttam Kumaran: And then we’re gonna think about, okay, if you’re in a client and you propose work as there’s anybody in the client, how do we bonus that? But ultimately.

362 00:44:42.920 ⇒ 00:44:48.380 Uttam Kumaran: the CSO on the client, that bonus is gonna accrue, so hopefully we’re paying for that, like.

363 00:44:48.820 ⇒ 00:44:51.229 Uttam Kumaran: That risk, you know, that added amount of work.

364 00:44:56.610 ⇒ 00:45:00.149 Uttam Kumaran: Away, Stemmy… Sam, tell me what you’re thinking.

365 00:45:00.150 ⇒ 00:45:04.189 Samuel Roberts: So, when you say, like, I could be running two big clients, like, how would…

366 00:45:04.540 ⇒ 00:45:07.539 Samuel Roberts: percent of the time are we trying to get to? Like, is it…

367 00:45:07.870 ⇒ 00:45:11.230 Samuel Roberts: You know, because before it was kind of… these were extra roles.

368 00:45:11.230 ⇒ 00:45:13.869 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so we’ll… I think we’re gonna assume that…

369 00:45:14.190 ⇒ 00:45:17.319 Uttam Kumaran: Running a CSO is gonna take 10 to 15 hours a week.

370 00:45:17.320 ⇒ 00:45:17.860 Samuel Roberts: Okay.

371 00:45:18.090 ⇒ 00:45:18.650 Samuel Roberts: Per…

372 00:45:18.650 ⇒ 00:45:24.240 Uttam Kumaran: And so… Ultimately, I don’t want to limit anyone in being, like, you can only run two.

373 00:45:24.240 ⇒ 00:45:24.680 Samuel Roberts: Sure.

374 00:45:24.680 ⇒ 00:45:27.250 Uttam Kumaran: You can run 10 if it works, I don’t care.

375 00:45:27.480 ⇒ 00:45:40.100 Uttam Kumaran: And I would prefer that we pay people to try to run more, and you actively know that the automation team is… is gonna… I want you to run as many as you can, and make as much money here as possible.

376 00:45:40.230 ⇒ 00:45:42.829 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m gonna help automate as much of that for you.

377 00:45:43.240 ⇒ 00:45:46.470 Uttam Kumaran: Because ultimately, if you could only run two.

378 00:45:46.610 ⇒ 00:45:49.469 Uttam Kumaran: Then the spreadsheet’s gonna show a gap, and then we have to go higher.

379 00:45:50.230 ⇒ 00:45:55.679 Uttam Kumaran: But, there’s a logical thing, like, I’m running, like, 5, it’s, like, too much.

380 00:45:55.830 ⇒ 00:45:58.069 Uttam Kumaran: So there is, there’s, like, certainly, like, a limit.

381 00:45:58.520 ⇒ 00:46:04.669 Uttam Kumaran: Right? But I want you to find what that limit is for you, and I want to make it easy for you guys, for us to hit that limit.

382 00:46:06.000 ⇒ 00:46:14.540 Uttam Kumaran: But building relationships take time, doing the presentation, preparing, there is… there’s, like, a natural floor here. I got… I don’t want to say, like, I want to be really conscious of that.

383 00:46:14.700 ⇒ 00:46:19.750 Uttam Kumaran: But I see a… I see a path towards you being able to run two of these, for sure.

384 00:46:19.890 ⇒ 00:46:29.439 Uttam Kumaran: Any more on top of that, I think, is for us to determine. This also doesn’t limit your ability to go work on other clients, right? But I’m just saying, in terms of owning the leadership

385 00:46:29.620 ⇒ 00:46:31.109 Uttam Kumaran: Scope on a client.

386 00:46:32.050 ⇒ 00:46:34.069 Uttam Kumaran: is really what I’m thinking about.

387 00:46:34.780 ⇒ 00:46:42.559 Awaish Kumar: And, yeah, how the collaboration… for the, like, deciding on Gantt charts, the deadlines, and…

388 00:46:43.310 ⇒ 00:46:49.619 Awaish Kumar: and things like that will happen between CSOs and the Workstream owners, like…

389 00:46:49.910 ⇒ 00:46:53.280 Awaish Kumar: If CSO just decides on the dates.

390 00:46:53.990 ⇒ 00:46:57.420 Awaish Kumar: And if… what if they’re not… realistic, and…

391 00:46:59.840 ⇒ 00:47:02.140 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s up to… that’s up to your team.

392 00:47:02.780 ⇒ 00:47:07.480 Uttam Kumaran: I… I guess my… the… the crude thing, I would say, is

393 00:47:07.640 ⇒ 00:47:13.760 Uttam Kumaran: That’s up to you guys. I don’t… my job is to make sure that you’re hitting all of your client benchmarks.

394 00:47:14.630 ⇒ 00:47:18.139 Uttam Kumaran: And so, the CSO’s job is to hit that.

395 00:47:18.430 ⇒ 00:47:23.010 Uttam Kumaran: And so, naturally, you would expect them to work with their people to set realistic timelines, but…

396 00:47:24.470 ⇒ 00:47:27.950 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, I don’t have any govern… I don’t have any governance over that, right?

397 00:47:31.950 ⇒ 00:47:37.090 Uttam Kumaran: Meaning, if you set… if they set timelines and they don’t hit it, The CSO gets… gets dinged.

398 00:47:37.820 ⇒ 00:47:41.409 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, why wouldn’t they try to set accurate timelines, is what I’m saying.

399 00:47:46.100 ⇒ 00:47:49.420 Uttam Kumaran: Does that make sense? Sorry if I, like, misread what you were trying to say.

400 00:47:49.670 ⇒ 00:48:03.870 Clarence Stone: I think… I’m gonna go back to what I was trying to highlight here, that communication is the key, right? And that’s why this healthy tension wasn’t happening as it’s intended. If somebody told you at Wish, like, hey, we’ve got to…

401 00:48:04.120 ⇒ 00:48:15.529 Clarence Stone: move the entire database by tomorrow. Like, you’re not gonna just say, be like, yes, that’s okay, right? You’re gonna raise your hand and say, whoa, that’s not possible. What is the client’s goal?

402 00:48:15.530 ⇒ 00:48:28.339 Clarence Stone: let’s have a conversation of how we make it work. So, like, just asking Utam straight up, like, what is acceptable, what is not, like, we can’t answer those questions. It’s for you guys within the projects to have that discussion.

403 00:48:28.670 ⇒ 00:48:47.309 Clarence Stone: I, like, I’m happy to just repeat this or, like, say it in different ways until we understand this concept, because there are things about our profession that cannot be written down in logical rules. But there are things that can be made logical, like the EP rule, and we’re gonna push until we can do all of that.

404 00:48:52.140 ⇒ 00:48:53.120 Awaish Kumar: Yep, okay.

405 00:48:53.670 ⇒ 00:49:06.220 Greg Stoutenburg: I mean, Awash, for my part, like, to look at the Omni project, in the last couple weeks, you know, if you or Demi told me, dbt work to fix this chart is going to take

406 00:49:06.410 ⇒ 00:49:18.689 Greg Stoutenburg: 20 hours, I’d be like, okay. Or if you told me it’s going to take 1 hour, I’d be like, okay, I don’t know how long it takes, I don’t have a clue. Yeah. So, I don’t know, I guess for something like this…

407 00:49:18.690 ⇒ 00:49:26.999 Uttam Kumaran: But then what the miss was there, that’s a good example, the miss was the communication. There are too many people on our delivery teams saying yes.

408 00:49:27.180 ⇒ 00:49:29.409 Uttam Kumaran: And not saying, why?

409 00:49:29.740 ⇒ 00:49:37.689 Uttam Kumaran: Or, like, what’s the… what’s the urgency? Right? It’s very similar, Sam, to what I told to Pranav on ABC. My feeling…

410 00:49:38.010 ⇒ 00:49:39.510 Uttam Kumaran: After just doing this.

411 00:49:39.830 ⇒ 00:49:54.929 Uttam Kumaran: consulting thing for a while now. I know that if I walked into ABC, I’m sure Casey, Mustafa, and perpetually you are working on… there’s probably 30% of your bandwidth that is probably going to something that could be deprioritized, or should be moved end.

412 00:49:55.210 ⇒ 00:49:58.840 Uttam Kumaran: You know that, I think everybody knows that, but who are we waiting for to say that?

413 00:49:59.090 ⇒ 00:50:10.039 Uttam Kumaran: Like, if you’re waiting for me, I’m not the right person. So who ultimately cares? And put another way, who is accountable for it? I think it has to be CSO. So when I’m talking to Pranav, I said everything’s on the table.

414 00:50:10.180 ⇒ 00:50:11.819 Uttam Kumaran: Right? But ultimately, like.

415 00:50:12.010 ⇒ 00:50:29.080 Uttam Kumaran: you’re the one that owns that this client is happy, and that the deliverables you’re putting forth are on accurate timelines. But I also told them, I said, if you look through that game, there’s probably things that we decided to do 3 months ago that probably aren’t as relevant anymore, and maybe need to get swapped. And so it’s up to you guys, right?

416 00:50:30.160 ⇒ 00:50:34.840 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, I… again, I think, like, what I want to do is give peop… give…

417 00:50:35.180 ⇒ 00:50:40.849 Uttam Kumaran: Give their… let there be one person who ultimately is in charge, and who is accountable.

418 00:50:41.110 ⇒ 00:50:47.110 Uttam Kumaran: And that person is held, like, accountable for the fact that this client is happy. Not, like.

419 00:50:47.430 ⇒ 00:50:48.590 Uttam Kumaran: sort of rem…

420 00:50:49.040 ⇒ 00:50:57.230 Uttam Kumaran: I think there was just a lot of, like, can we get this done? Or, like, everything is urgent, and everybody’s like, sure, I’ll just do whatever comes my way.

421 00:50:57.500 ⇒ 00:51:04.590 Uttam Kumaran: And I want there to be more of discussion, and ultimately the CSO is the one that deals with the business facing repercussions. If they miss it.

422 00:51:04.780 ⇒ 00:51:12.360 Uttam Kumaran: But if they hit it, then they get the benefit, right? So… Demi, yeah, go ahead.

423 00:51:12.970 ⇒ 00:51:23.269 Demilade Agboola: I think a slight pushback on Eden as an example. Like, again, I don’t know about ABC, so I can’t really say anything about that, but, like, Eden specifically.

424 00:51:23.440 ⇒ 00:51:34.679 Demilade Agboola: I think, to a certain extent, we do push back, because I know, for instance, like, even when we’re doing all the Omni migration, I think Prajwal on the Aiden team reached out to me.

425 00:51:35.140 ⇒ 00:51:38.230 Demilade Agboola: he had issues with Tableau, And…

426 00:51:38.470 ⇒ 00:51:52.979 Demilade Agboola: I think I spent, like, 30 minutes trying to debug it. I hadn’t gotten it fixed, and I just went, like, you know, we’re migrating to Omni, this is… this would be low priority, because I didn’t want to spend more time than necessary trying to fix something that we were going to sunset very soon. Made no sense.

427 00:51:53.090 ⇒ 00:51:54.030 Demilade Agboola: So…

428 00:51:54.490 ⇒ 00:51:59.190 Uttam Kumaran: But I guess in that example, let’s say he was like, no, you have to do it, who do you escalate to?

429 00:52:00.300 ⇒ 00:52:05.230 Demilade Agboola: Oh, I mean, to be fair, in that, if that happened, I would probably just, like.

430 00:52:05.560 ⇒ 00:52:08.400 Demilade Agboola: probably tagged Robert, and just been like, yo, this is what’s going on.

431 00:52:08.400 ⇒ 00:52:10.109 Uttam Kumaran: That’s a jam. That’s the jam.

432 00:52:10.890 ⇒ 00:52:19.589 Uttam Kumaran: It can’t be Robert. It can’t be Rob, it just cannot be anymore, because he’s gonna take 2 days to get back to you, and then he’s gonna be like, why didn’t you remind me?

433 00:52:19.590 ⇒ 00:52:30.630 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, the reason why I’ll tag Robert is just so that… because I know, like, in an ELT call, or something might happen, and it might just come up, like, there’s this thing that’s pending, I want Robert to be fully aware.

434 00:52:30.630 ⇒ 00:52:32.589 Uttam Kumaran: But what you’re hitting at is that that…

435 00:52:32.720 ⇒ 00:52:36.460 Uttam Kumaran: You’re right, in that it should be someone who is the throat to choke.

436 00:52:36.950 ⇒ 00:52:39.380 Uttam Kumaran: And that should be this line.

437 00:52:40.030 ⇒ 00:52:40.830 Uttam Kumaran: Right.

438 00:52:41.620 ⇒ 00:52:47.609 Uttam Kumaran: Like, it needs to be someone that owns it. I’m not saying you’re wrong in saying it’s Robert now.

439 00:52:47.920 ⇒ 00:52:50.879 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s previously, like.

440 00:52:51.280 ⇒ 00:53:03.849 Uttam Kumaran: who do you pick? It’s sort of round robin, right? Or you have to, like, discern who cares, or who’s on the hook. I don’t want there to be that discernment anymore. I want it to be super, super crystal clear.

441 00:53:04.640 ⇒ 00:53:12.560 Uttam Kumaran: But again, this person has to be okay with being like, there’s an escalation, they can quickly tie it to a workstream, and they can make that call.

442 00:53:13.300 ⇒ 00:53:20.079 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So that Robert can go sell this AI deal, right? Like, Robert can only sell the AI deal because he’s at this level.

443 00:53:21.140 ⇒ 00:53:29.370 Uttam Kumaran: And is able to sell, and then, again, like, there’s gonna be more, more of our clients, like, are gonna want more stuff for us. We have to have this level of elevation.

444 00:53:29.980 ⇒ 00:53:33.089 Uttam Kumaran: So, someone needs to get pushed up, people need to get pushed down.

445 00:53:33.500 ⇒ 00:53:41.179 Uttam Kumaran: But again, it’s like, I want to make sure to really highlight that there are several clients right now where we need this level of leadership.

446 00:53:41.470 ⇒ 00:53:45.770 Uttam Kumaran: Both on the service line side and on the CSO side.

447 00:53:48.750 ⇒ 00:54:00.039 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, but what I was trying to get at with, like, Eden is, like, with the Omni work, for instance, like, the Omni migration and dbt work, like, ultimately, the entire project was

448 00:54:00.150 ⇒ 00:54:03.670 Demilade Agboola: high priority. We had to get it out before a certain date.

449 00:54:04.050 ⇒ 00:54:04.770 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

450 00:54:04.770 ⇒ 00:54:16.059 Demilade Agboola: There isn’t much, like, wiggle room for what’s the importance of this, or how high priority, like, how high should we, you know, tackle this, especially given the fact that they’re one of our highest paying clients.

451 00:54:16.060 ⇒ 00:54:21.860 Uttam Kumaran: But the problem with that was that we didn’t get… I didn’t get told on Wednesday that we were gonna get jammed on Friday.

452 00:54:22.190 ⇒ 00:54:28.659 Uttam Kumaran: So it wasn’t a… I knew, like, I assumed that there was some stuff that was delayed, but it was the fact that

453 00:54:28.830 ⇒ 00:54:33.010 Uttam Kumaran: we, I, like, there was a fact that I didn’t get a heads up until Friday.

454 00:54:34.590 ⇒ 00:54:36.809 Uttam Kumaran: Cause then we’re just… we’re running out of time.

455 00:54:37.030 ⇒ 00:54:38.629 Uttam Kumaran: You know, like, what could we do?

456 00:54:39.660 ⇒ 00:54:45.420 Demilade Agboola: Yeah, I think, to be fair, I think for some of those things, it was more of a…

457 00:54:45.860 ⇒ 00:55:00.229 Demilade Agboola: the QA, like, in terms of, like, I know the things that Josh brought up weren’t things that I believe were cutting QA before it went out. Ultimately, there were also some tasks that were pending based off of, like.

458 00:55:00.230 ⇒ 00:55:09.190 Uttam Kumaran: But then… but this is where I told Mustafa, I asked several times in the stand-ups leading to Wednesday whether we are on track, and people said yes.

459 00:55:09.580 ⇒ 00:55:12.249 Uttam Kumaran: And that was not right. That was totally false.

460 00:55:13.810 ⇒ 00:55:17.050 Uttam Kumaran: I… but that’s what I’m saying, is that, like, ultimately.

461 00:55:17.240 ⇒ 00:55:20.430 Uttam Kumaran: I think, had there… if there was a CSO,

462 00:55:20.860 ⇒ 00:55:28.459 Uttam Kumaran: Or if, like, again, something fell through in stand-ups where we weren’t alerted, and ultimately Mustafo’s like, yeah, I should have alerted this earlier.

463 00:55:29.430 ⇒ 00:55:33.499 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m like, okay, what, like, where… where did we… where was the miss, you know?

464 00:55:35.010 ⇒ 00:55:41.800 Uttam Kumaran: And the one miss was that, like, I don’t think currently in stand-ups we are flagging risk.

465 00:55:42.220 ⇒ 00:55:45.930 Uttam Kumaran: I think we are back to running the stand-ups sort of like…

466 00:55:46.160 ⇒ 00:55:51.700 Uttam Kumaran: typical project management. And so another change that I’m… proposing

467 00:55:51.810 ⇒ 00:55:56.699 Uttam Kumaran: Is that we basically collapsed the stand-ups into just… Like, this crew.

468 00:55:57.780 ⇒ 00:55:59.620 Uttam Kumaran: We do… we talk in the morning.

469 00:56:00.130 ⇒ 00:56:06.830 Uttam Kumaran: it’s a real… it’s like a meeting where you’re like, yo, this thing is about to get jammed, or I need this person there on your client.

470 00:56:07.210 ⇒ 00:56:11.269 Uttam Kumaran: And then y’all are free to organize your clients however you want to.

471 00:56:12.160 ⇒ 00:56:19.260 Uttam Kumaran: And I’m… I think that… because one thing I found, and you guys can tell me if I’m wrong, I know, sorry, we’re going a little bit over, is that…

472 00:56:19.650 ⇒ 00:56:25.039 Uttam Kumaran: that… the times we meet as CSOs or SLs, I think, is really, really high alpha.

473 00:56:25.360 ⇒ 00:56:27.349 Uttam Kumaran: And so I want to do more of that.

474 00:56:27.560 ⇒ 00:56:38.730 Uttam Kumaran: But what I want to do… what I want to personally do less of is talk about tickets. Like, that’s not a good way to leverage me for y’all, and it’s not a good way for me to actually give you guys guidance on some of these decisions.

475 00:56:38.920 ⇒ 00:56:46.300 Uttam Kumaran: And so, one thing I’m thinking about is basically scrapping the existing stand-ups, Running, just… This crew talks.

476 00:56:46.420 ⇒ 00:56:48.209 Uttam Kumaran: Just 30 minutes in the morning.

477 00:56:48.510 ⇒ 00:56:51.539 Uttam Kumaran: I come prepared with, hey, I’m worried about these.

478 00:56:51.730 ⇒ 00:56:56.130 Uttam Kumaran: y’all come prepared with, I’m also worried about these, or these are other things I’m worried about.

479 00:56:56.360 ⇒ 00:56:57.890 Uttam Kumaran: And then we just hash?

480 00:56:58.340 ⇒ 00:57:00.729 Uttam Kumaran: And then you’re free to run your clients

481 00:57:01.120 ⇒ 00:57:10.819 Uttam Kumaran: or your work streams, however you want to. If you’re like, I want to do daily stand-ups, if you’re like, my team is async enough, we can run on linear. If you’re like, we do every other day.

482 00:57:11.740 ⇒ 00:57:15.430 Uttam Kumaran: it’s sort of… Yeah, I guess, like.

483 00:57:16.070 ⇒ 00:57:19.589 Uttam Kumaran: I want to push that ownership onto the people that run the client.

484 00:57:22.150 ⇒ 00:57:28.630 Pranav Narahari: Will we have time to have all of this crew, like, talk about their work streams 30 minutes?

485 00:57:28.850 ⇒ 00:57:33.309 Uttam Kumaran: We can do longer, I just want to… it’s like, but this… I’m not gonna do a roundtable.

486 00:57:34.900 ⇒ 00:57:39.430 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna come with some gut instincts on, like, where I think things are not going well.

487 00:57:39.650 ⇒ 00:57:40.300 Pranav Narahari: Yep.

488 00:57:40.300 ⇒ 00:57:45.739 Uttam Kumaran: Ideally, y’all are senior enough to come with some of those, too, and be like, I need help on this, I’m jammed.

489 00:57:46.220 ⇒ 00:57:46.740 Pranav Narahari: Yeah.

490 00:57:46.740 ⇒ 00:57:50.510 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not gonna… if things are going well, I really don’t want to talk about it, don’t worry. We’ll…

491 00:57:50.650 ⇒ 00:57:52.370 Uttam Kumaran: Everybody gets pat on the back.

492 00:57:52.970 ⇒ 00:57:57.529 Uttam Kumaran: Right. Perfect. But that’s not… I want to get… like, we should just end the meeting.

493 00:57:57.720 ⇒ 00:58:03.719 Uttam Kumaran: at least with this squad, like, this isn’t a pat on the back squad. I want… you guys, there’s struggles, and I want to help you.

494 00:58:04.170 ⇒ 00:58:09.220 Uttam Kumaran: And so, that’s… I’m not gonna go… it’s not gonna get run like it normally runs. It’s gonna be, like.

495 00:58:09.340 ⇒ 00:58:13.270 Uttam Kumaran: I think these two things are going wrong. Here’s why I think so.

496 00:58:13.390 ⇒ 00:58:19.060 Uttam Kumaran: you tell me whether I’m right or I’m totally just, like, having dreams. What else do we have?

497 00:58:20.010 ⇒ 00:58:28.199 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And then eventually, we’re gonna start having, like, some type of client health thing, so we can quantify, hey, we’re running way over on hours, what’s going on?

498 00:58:28.420 ⇒ 00:58:32.040 Uttam Kumaran: oh, I met with this client, they’re not happy, like… and don’t worry, there’s enough

499 00:58:32.230 ⇒ 00:58:36.149 Uttam Kumaran: in this news cycle in the company, for us to fill that time, I promise you, so…

500 00:58:37.010 ⇒ 00:58:38.639 Uttam Kumaran: That’s how I’m thinking about using it.

501 00:58:41.210 ⇒ 00:58:44.150 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s just gonna push… more…

502 00:58:44.530 ⇒ 00:58:46.900 Uttam Kumaran: Responsibility on the folks that are running a client.

503 00:58:47.320 ⇒ 00:59:01.870 Uttam Kumaran: if you need to meet with Awash, for example, Demi today did a great job. He was like, he texted… I think probably the only thing I would have suggested, and this, again, maybe we didn’t make it clear, is that you have freedom to go to aish directly. He said, hey, the spins thing on my client for matches when it’s taking too long.

504 00:59:02.390 ⇒ 00:59:05.140 Uttam Kumaran: I feel like there’s… it’s taking way too long.

505 00:59:05.290 ⇒ 00:59:08.989 Uttam Kumaran: Can I message Awasht to find out if he can help? I said, yeah, 100%.

506 00:59:09.210 ⇒ 00:59:15.470 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s a great way to utilize a service leader, to be like, this thing’s taking way too long, or like, I need a Navy SEAL.

507 00:59:15.840 ⇒ 00:59:16.610 Uttam Kumaran: Right.

508 00:59:17.410 ⇒ 00:59:24.050 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s… that’s… that’s the reason we kind of, like, want to… I think the service lead is just gonna be more of a resource.

509 00:59:24.180 ⇒ 00:59:35.209 Uttam Kumaran: And as we get more clients and hire more people, more of a waste and Sam’s time is gonna be towards, like, floating and finding the next bottleneck, or finding the thing that’s actually going out that’s not up to quality.

510 00:59:43.990 ⇒ 00:59:57.240 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah, as far as the syncs, I think that, like, the notes doc that you or Clarence made for this meeting, where there’s, like, a, you know, I’m worried about this, maybe just for, like, the sake of time, because…

511 00:59:57.240 ⇒ 01:00:05.989 Greg Stoutenburg: You know, we’re all busy, and there’s probably already too many meetings, in my opinion, is we just got, alright, 30 minutes, and we’re gonna talk about blockers, or potential blockers.

512 01:00:05.990 ⇒ 01:00:08.919 Uttam Kumaran: Is that this one, or I don’t know what we did, but yeah, I’m happy to do that.

513 01:00:08.920 ⇒ 01:00:13.100 Greg Stoutenburg: It’s on… it’s on this event.

514 01:00:13.970 ⇒ 01:00:16.250 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, cool, yeah.

515 01:00:16.250 ⇒ 01:00:23.440 Greg Stoutenburg: So that, I mean, Seth’s one thought, is maybe we just, you know, make sure to apply that. And then, I guess my only other thought was, like.

516 01:00:23.710 ⇒ 01:00:34.670 Greg Stoutenburg: something… and by the way, just going back a little bit, I wasn’t trying to, like, criticis… criticize anyone when I was saying how long, like, I don’t know how long database work takes. Someone had asked a question about, like.

517 01:00:34.670 ⇒ 01:00:44.610 Greg Stoutenburg: you know, what if you do if… what do you do if someone says, yeah, here’s our Gantt chart, here’s all this will take, and they’re wrong? I think… I was just gonna say, I know, me personally, I need to be told I’m wrong, because…

518 01:00:45.110 ⇒ 01:00:46.350 Greg Stoutenburg: I don’t know.

519 01:00:46.350 ⇒ 01:00:50.999 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s the thing, there’s not enough of that right now, and so what do I do?

520 01:00:51.130 ⇒ 01:00:57.750 Uttam Kumaran: this is where you guys will find that, like, I try to run… A really, really democratic process.

521 01:00:57.940 ⇒ 01:01:03.859 Uttam Kumaran: Sometimes, though, someone needs to be on the hook, so what I’m gonna do is put somebody on the hook.

522 01:01:04.100 ⇒ 01:01:08.329 Uttam Kumaran: Because then you’ll know that, yo, my ass is tied to this Gantt chart.

523 01:01:08.620 ⇒ 01:01:11.570 Uttam Kumaran: there’s no longer 4 people on a Gantt chart, and you can…

524 01:01:11.730 ⇒ 01:01:18.170 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And it’s not… I’m not here to say that people were, like, taking it less seriously, but it consolidates the risk.

525 01:01:18.430 ⇒ 01:01:26.259 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s like, okay, I really need to make sure this is right. If I’m in a meeting and someone’s like, yeah, I think it could be done this week.

526 01:01:27.140 ⇒ 01:01:30.980 Uttam Kumaran: you know what I’m gonna say, I’m gonna be like, that’s a complete non-answer.

527 01:01:31.310 ⇒ 01:01:46.520 Uttam Kumaran: I need an answer. If it’s not this week, then is it next week? If it’s not next week, is it 3 weeks? Right? You’re gonna start to feel how I feel, which is like, oh, shit, like, I need to know when these things are going out. I need to know every line on the Gantt chart for my client, right?

528 01:01:46.920 ⇒ 01:01:51.100 Uttam Kumaran: So, by consolidating the risk, it sort of ups the temperature.

529 01:01:52.010 ⇒ 01:01:56.319 Uttam Kumaran: And I think that’s… that’s just… that’s the way I’m gonna do it, and I think what you guys are gonna find…

530 01:01:56.450 ⇒ 01:02:04.499 Uttam Kumaran: Is that the leaders in your team are the people that you should pick up, so that when you guys go and, like, own engagements, you bring that person with you.

531 01:02:04.780 ⇒ 01:02:09.929 Uttam Kumaran: But there’s gonna be people at the company who just wanna clock in and clock out, and…

532 01:02:10.150 ⇒ 01:02:16.479 Uttam Kumaran: you may just have to make a decision, right? And this is where Pranav was like, should we go through it? I’m like, dude, at some point.

533 01:02:16.700 ⇒ 01:02:19.270 Uttam Kumaran: Just go through and cut the things that you don’t know.

534 01:02:19.580 ⇒ 01:02:28.090 Uttam Kumaran: about, because maybe they’re not relevant. Set some timelines, and drive your team to the finish line. You’re the… you know how long AI things work.

535 01:02:28.690 ⇒ 01:02:32.420 Uttam Kumaran: Whether it’s 2 days or 4 days, you know you’re not gonna be off by a month.

536 01:02:32.910 ⇒ 01:02:36.300 Uttam Kumaran: So just, like, figure it out and drive it home, right? Like…

537 01:02:36.410 ⇒ 01:02:39.969 Uttam Kumaran: Versus waiting and waiting and asking and asking and asking.

538 01:02:40.660 ⇒ 01:02:45.760 Uttam Kumaran: This is another thing where, again, I want to try to, like, give you guys more power to just be like.

539 01:02:45.930 ⇒ 01:02:47.779 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna call the shop for the client.

540 01:02:48.520 ⇒ 01:02:58.949 Uttam Kumaran: And even with 40-50% understanding, with a lot of our AI stuff, I’m telling you, you can ask it, how long does this typically take? It’s gonna be right most of the time.

541 01:02:59.350 ⇒ 01:03:06.059 Uttam Kumaran: So this is where I’m, like, sort of projecting forward that a lot of these issues with getting accurate estimates, I’m gonna solve for you guys.

542 01:03:06.480 ⇒ 01:03:20.980 Uttam Kumaran: Right? I’m gonna solve how long does it take to do something on average? When is the last time we did it? Who was the best person to do it? Like, the platform will work for you to answer those questions. So when that world, what actually matters is the account management.

543 01:03:21.180 ⇒ 01:03:24.339 Uttam Kumaran: And the fire management is, like, done super, super well.

544 01:03:24.840 ⇒ 01:03:35.360 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and that’s what… and actually, the fact that we’re opinionated about the style of the work that goes out, and that it’s resilient, it’s reproducible, tickets pass through CI,

545 01:03:35.500 ⇒ 01:03:41.380 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Like, if people use AI to work on tickets, it’s done through standards. That’s a lot of what the service line

546 01:03:41.770 ⇒ 01:03:43.720 Uttam Kumaran: Leaders are gonna have to do more of.

547 01:03:45.600 ⇒ 01:03:46.360 Uttam Kumaran: So…

548 01:03:56.980 ⇒ 01:04:00.820 Uttam Kumaran: So I think if… if, like, no questions, I mean, kind of what I’m…

549 01:04:01.470 ⇒ 01:04:04.190 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, what I’m thinking about doing…

550 01:04:04.430 ⇒ 01:04:11.849 Uttam Kumaran: And I think maybe I can work on this and sort of present to y’all Present to y’all tomorrow.

551 01:04:12.090 ⇒ 01:04:14.229 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know where this…

552 01:04:16.110 ⇒ 01:04:26.180 Uttam Kumaran: is sort of, again, like, this is sort of how we’re sort of managing it, and we’ll have operating this week, it’s actually on my desk to figure out, is basically…

553 01:04:26.430 ⇒ 01:04:33.979 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, should we move… I sort of have a couple decisions. One, like, who runs Eden? Who runs Default?

554 01:04:34.530 ⇒ 01:04:37.649 Uttam Kumaran: for the moment, I’m running… I’m running Element.

555 01:04:37.890 ⇒ 01:04:44.259 Uttam Kumaran: I think Demi, you stay on Magic Spoon. I think Zoran, you’re on Amble. Hernob’s on ABC.

556 01:04:44.590 ⇒ 01:04:47.389 Uttam Kumaran: And then, the next clients that come up.

557 01:04:47.510 ⇒ 01:04:49.359 Uttam Kumaran: They go to the people with bandwidth.

558 01:04:49.530 ⇒ 01:04:54.110 Uttam Kumaran: So it doesn’t necessarily, like… Remove everyone.

559 01:04:54.300 ⇒ 01:04:59.840 Uttam Kumaran: But I think what you’ll see is that there is a lack of SLs, right? So Wish…

560 01:05:00.490 ⇒ 01:05:04.649 Uttam Kumaran: There’s no… we’re no longer gonna try to tie service leads to a client.

561 01:05:04.760 ⇒ 01:05:07.080 Uttam Kumaran: It’s gonna be service lead to a service.

562 01:05:07.190 ⇒ 01:05:09.900 Uttam Kumaran: Meaning, for Zoron, for your work.

563 01:05:10.180 ⇒ 01:05:20.090 Uttam Kumaran: it’s either gonna be you, or it’s gonna be someone that comes in and owns, sort of, like, MarTech-related stuff. I think Demi, for anything AE, someone’s gonna come and try to fit into that role of, like.

564 01:05:20.240 ⇒ 01:05:23.910 Uttam Kumaran: Anything analytics engineering, they become the service lead for.

565 01:05:24.090 ⇒ 01:05:35.290 Uttam Kumaran: So, a lot… we may change this to match service leads with service, and you can go work on clients or get pulled in, depending on the service you own. So I think, really, my question

566 01:05:35.540 ⇒ 01:05:37.159 Uttam Kumaran: It’s gonna be for…

567 01:05:38.060 ⇒ 01:05:43.910 Uttam Kumaran: I kind of already know the answer for Greg. I think Pranav, me and you spoke this morning. I think it’s really going to be for Zoran and Demi.

568 01:05:44.070 ⇒ 01:05:48.670 Uttam Kumaran: Do you think this new definition of CSO still matches what you want to do?

569 01:05:49.060 ⇒ 01:05:53.239 Uttam Kumaran: And… Does the business think you can get there, and how far are we?

570 01:05:53.460 ⇒ 01:05:57.270 Uttam Kumaran: Right? I think the EPs, at the moment.

571 01:05:57.760 ⇒ 01:06:17.619 Uttam Kumaran: there’s gonna be no… there’s no path apart from CSO or SLs. So either some of these folks decide to go towards one of these, or they don’t. And so that’s gonna be the path. You either have deep technical leadership, where you’re opinionated about the type of work that goes out related to, like, a specific part of the stack, or you’re like, I want to run this client, I love…

572 01:06:17.750 ⇒ 01:06:20.679 Uttam Kumaran: You know, working with these folks and trying to find more wins for them.

573 01:06:21.460 ⇒ 01:06:23.029 Uttam Kumaran: And orchestrating the team.

574 01:06:23.900 ⇒ 01:06:38.350 Uttam Kumaran: And so this is what we kind of need to decide on this week, is how this is going to change. Again, I don’t think this is necessarily, like, putting more or less on people’s plate, but I actually think this should clarify things and create clear lines of authority on clients.

575 01:06:40.800 ⇒ 01:06:58.479 Zoran Selinger: Yeah, so my initial thought, and I’m gonna think about this a little bit more, is I think it absolutely makes sense for me to be a service lead, like, to own a group of services, particularly, so…

576 01:06:58.740 ⇒ 01:07:01.129 Zoran Selinger: many things MarTech, right?

577 01:07:01.130 ⇒ 01:07:01.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

578 01:07:01.940 ⇒ 01:07:06.580 Zoran Selinger: have anything… It was… that was my, like, that was, like, my prediction.

579 01:07:06.780 ⇒ 01:07:15.220 Zoran Selinger: And then I can also be a CSO on clients that have those services still being a major part.

580 01:07:15.220 ⇒ 01:07:16.210 Uttam Kumaran: Exclusively, yeah.

581 01:07:16.210 ⇒ 01:07:24.710 Zoran Selinger: offering, so that’s mostly gonna be smaller ones, for example. Amble is a good example right now. But maybe…

582 01:07:24.710 ⇒ 01:07:41.410 Uttam Kumaran: But you could see a future, Zoron, where Amble is run by another CSO, and they’re just picking your services, right? Because think about service lead, I want you to think about, hey, make a… make a reusable linear project with every single ticket end-to-end to run this deliverable.

583 01:07:41.550 ⇒ 01:07:59.030 Uttam Kumaran: Because you can just pass it to Greg. Hey, Greg, go sell… go sell Edge into default, and here’s the… here’s the way to do it. If you have any questions, you can… anybody on your team should be able to do it, or if you have this type of skill set, and I… I run any… any part of that ticket, I can help you triage, or whatever.

584 01:07:59.110 ⇒ 01:08:03.069 Uttam Kumaran: So you’re owning the fact that that unit of work can get done by any CSO.

585 01:08:03.250 ⇒ 01:08:06.580 Uttam Kumaran: The CSO’s job is to sell that, and then pick it off the menu.

586 01:08:07.080 ⇒ 01:08:07.870 Uttam Kumaran: Right?

587 01:08:08.060 ⇒ 01:08:13.619 Uttam Kumaran: And so I feel like I tend to agree, but that’s why I don’t want this to feel like…

588 01:08:14.160 ⇒ 01:08:26.680 Uttam Kumaran: there’s not… the right answer is to be on this board, one way or another, right? Like, the right way… the right answer is to be, like, I want to go one of these directions, because now my job is to think about what’s after this.

589 01:08:26.930 ⇒ 01:08:27.710 Uttam Kumaran: Right?

590 01:08:28.120 ⇒ 01:08:33.840 Uttam Kumaran: But the service lead is going to be more about reproducible work, high-quality work, in a specific service.

591 01:08:34.140 ⇒ 01:08:40.090 Uttam Kumaran: And so, that makes sense. So maybe think about it, but I also feel like that’s probably… Fair.

592 01:08:40.590 ⇒ 01:08:42.590 Uttam Kumaran: And this is not a change that’s gonna, like.

593 01:08:42.939 ⇒ 01:08:50.699 Uttam Kumaran: the way things working now, we’ll figure it out, but, like, we’re gonna… I’m hiring people with these, like, gaps in mind. So, yeah, Clarence, go ahead.

594 01:08:51.260 ⇒ 01:09:01.760 Clarence Stone: So, I feel this meeting coming close to an end, so I have to say, Utam, I don’t want to interrupt you, you should finish your thought, but I want to hear from everybody

595 01:09:01.760 ⇒ 01:09:15.779 Clarence Stone: if it were you, how would you run it? Because aside from Seruman, I haven’t heard any feedback, and I, like, I’m just gonna be honest with you guys, I don’t think there’s ever been a moment where I’ve taken a leadership role in any company where I’ve sat down and been like.

596 01:09:16.260 ⇒ 01:09:18.329 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I could totally do that better.

597 01:09:18.479 ⇒ 01:09:32.930 Clarence Stone: Right, and I want to hear from you guys how we can do it better, right? And, like, there’s just too much one-way communication happening, and this Pinotawi needs to talk. So, Utam, whenever you’re done, I’d like to hear that.

598 01:09:32.930 ⇒ 01:09:34.099 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, please, go ahead.

599 01:09:38.720 ⇒ 01:09:42.669 Clarence Stone: So, Oprah now, how would you run it?

600 01:09:47.389 ⇒ 01:10:06.819 Pranav Narahari: The one concern that I have, but I… it’s hard for me, and Greg kind of already brought it up, is just, like, how is that CSO role going to be different when there is a primary? It’s going to be extra work, like Utam said, and that makes sense. The details of that sounds like they’re still…

601 01:10:07.679 ⇒ 01:10:14.639 Pranav Narahari: just not defined yet, but it sounds like that’s kind of… everyone understands that, and it’s just going to…

602 01:10:14.999 ⇒ 01:10:20.599 Pranav Narahari: for, like, a client, like, even once that restructuring takes place, that’s when we will… Kind of just…

603 01:10:20.869 ⇒ 01:10:31.489 Pranav Narahari: figure it out, I guess. That is kind of the one thing where I am interested to see how that plays out, because it seems like there’s an extra node now for communication.

604 01:10:31.599 ⇒ 01:10:40.639 Pranav Narahari: With that primary, with that CSO, like, okay, so now there’s a little bit of telephone happening between primary and CSO, and, like, the client.

605 01:10:40.969 ⇒ 01:10:47.749 Pranav Narahari: But… you know, like Utam said, like, for, like, a large client, like, It… you’re… it’s priced in.

606 01:10:47.869 ⇒ 01:10:48.369 Pranav Narahari: Yeah.

607 01:10:48.370 ⇒ 01:10:57.010 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so let me help you deconflict that and say the primary’s role is to keep the relationship healthy.

608 01:10:57.010 ⇒ 01:11:09.329 Clarence Stone: And, take the client out for lunch, identify new opportunities, and sell new things. It’s not their role to be in your day-to-day unless something blew up, and you absolutely need help.

609 01:11:09.540 ⇒ 01:11:12.989 Clarence Stone: Right, so it… as a good example, like.

610 01:11:13.550 ⇒ 01:11:30.090 Clarence Stone: let’s just say Vicinity was a Brainford client, like, I want Utam to be taking me out for lunch, but Greg, you would be running my engagement, right? And if there was a problem, I’d come to you first and say, hey, you know, these data structures don’t look good, the reporting looks off.

611 01:11:30.120 ⇒ 01:11:38.060 Clarence Stone: Right. And, you know, by a month in, if it’s still not fixed, I’d probably be like, hey, Tom, like, I’ve told this team multiple times, and it’s not working out.

612 01:11:38.860 ⇒ 01:11:51.899 Clarence Stone: Right, so between those two timeframes, like, you have plenty of space to fix it and adjust and align expectations. And one thing I’ll say is, like, from this organization, this group, like.

613 01:11:52.060 ⇒ 01:12:07.339 Clarence Stone: we should be thinking about ways to automate our, like, busy parts of our job. So, as soon as, like, every time I hear, like, hey, that’s a lot more work, I just start making skills, I just start making my own stacks, and I just start building my AI to remove the things that suck.

614 01:12:07.340 ⇒ 01:12:16.150 Clarence Stone: Right, I spent this whole day making a design library that’s not just for design guidelines, but for an entire website that also transfers to marketing.

615 01:12:16.150 ⇒ 01:12:20.589 Clarence Stone: Right? That one day of effort that I put in is gonna pay off for the, like.

616 01:12:20.590 ⇒ 01:12:25.740 Clarence Stone: months. So, think about how, like, you can scale those annoying things

617 01:12:25.740 ⇒ 01:12:41.799 Clarence Stone: Right? And if you don’t know how to do it, that’s totally cool, like, I’m a frickin’ nerd at these things, like, I want to sit down with you and show you stuff that I built, or, like, we’re gonna build something together. Like, this is literally what Utam and I do on nights and weekends, because tomorrow is always better if we build something repeatable today.

618 01:12:41.820 ⇒ 01:12:42.720 Clarence Stone: Right.

619 01:12:43.540 ⇒ 01:12:44.829 Clarence Stone: Does that make sense, Pranav?

620 01:12:45.840 ⇒ 01:12:47.450 Pranav Narahari: Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

621 01:12:47.860 ⇒ 01:12:51.289 Clarence Stone: Sorry, Demi, I think you’re volunteering, you go next.

622 01:12:52.080 ⇒ 01:13:06.980 Demilade Agboola: Sort of, yeah. I think I have a couple… I have a potential bottleneck that I’m seeing. Well, not bottleneck, per se. We’re doing one SL per client, but ultimately, if SLs are supposed to be, like, knowledge

623 01:13:07.150 ⇒ 01:13:20.570 Demilade Agboola: houses, potentially there will be multiple SLs on the client. So take Eden, for example. Zoran can be the SL for Martech, Awashi’s the SL for, DE stuff.

624 01:13:20.780 ⇒ 01:13:35.639 Demilade Agboola: And, you know, maybe Jasmine is the analytics, SL, right? So, potentially, you already have 3 SLs on that project, and I don’t necessarily see that reflected here. Also, like, in terms of SLs and them being, like, floating around different projects.

625 01:13:36.010 ⇒ 01:13:41.480 Demilade Agboola: How does that also then… Become a theme of…

626 01:13:41.990 ⇒ 01:13:47.390 Demilade Agboola: Like, how many products can they float across, basically? Because if… you know…

627 01:13:47.570 ⇒ 01:13:51.179 Demilade Agboola: One person is an SL on 5 clients, for instance.

628 01:13:51.290 ⇒ 01:13:56.489 Demilade Agboola: at what point is that, like, hard to… to SL? Like, that’s basically how I’m just thinking about it.

629 01:13:56.490 ⇒ 01:14:13.560 Clarence Stone: So let me explain this to you in, like, a traditional front-end, like a traditional development team. Like, there’s UX designers, front-end developers, back-end developers, analytics people, right? And let’s say that same pod of 4 people and a product manager are working across, like, 6 different projects.

630 01:14:13.560 ⇒ 01:14:18.149 Clarence Stone: That UX designer isn’t always busy on that same project.

631 01:14:18.210 ⇒ 01:14:42.260 Clarence Stone: Right? Like, if I designed everything, and the front-end developer’s working on things, like, all I should be doing is keeping a pulse of, like, that front-end implementation, and going back to it if it’s time to, you know, actually do, like, design reviews, or do A-B testing and things like that. Like, my first push is probably creating the foundations of the design library, working with the front-end developer to make the front-end code, and then, like, my

632 01:14:42.280 ⇒ 01:14:47.299 Clarence Stone: You know, effort diminishes significantly as backend integrations and hooks come in.

633 01:14:47.300 ⇒ 01:15:04.029 Clarence Stone: So, when we say, like, hey, this is an SL tied to this, like, we need to either have, like, this secondary factor consideration of, like, where is the project in the life cycle, and how much demand are you going to have of that service leader?

634 01:15:04.780 ⇒ 01:15:12.789 Demilade Agboola: Yes, my pushback to that is that there are multiple, like, products are not… products spike really quickly.

635 01:15:13.050 ⇒ 01:15:16.970 Demilade Agboola: So, you might be, oh, this is a chill project right now.

636 01:15:17.650 ⇒ 01:15:35.430 Demilade Agboola: the very next week, we have, like, an emergency code red. Things break, because it can be very dynamic like that. And so now, you’re stretched across one greenfield product that you’re developing, one code red, and potentially, like, it does spike really quickly. Things change, and things are very dynamic.

637 01:15:35.510 ⇒ 01:15:38.630 Demilade Agboola: So just being able to…

638 01:15:39.920 ⇒ 01:15:45.140 Demilade Agboola: Have an idea of what that breakage looks like, and how much,

639 01:15:45.900 ⇒ 01:15:50.810 Demilade Agboola: room we’re going to create for people to be able to handle that, because we.

640 01:15:50.810 ⇒ 01:16:04.459 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so let’s have that conversation. Like, this is exactly what I wanted everyone to start off talking about, because Utam said exactly the same thing, right? Like, hey, all of a sudden, everything… everybody says everything is going well, all of a sudden, it’s not.

641 01:16:04.620 ⇒ 01:16:29.320 Clarence Stone: Right? Like, the question is… should not be, oh, we’re just gonna put our hands up and say that’s the reality of things, right? What we fight against every day is to flatten the curve. So, like, what you’re describing is a byproduct of not how the nature of our work is, but rather, like, bad planning, not understanding the client’s needs, falling short of understanding where each project is in the milestones and the life cycle.

642 01:16:29.320 ⇒ 01:16:47.350 Clarence Stone: Like, these surprises aren’t supposed to happen, right? And if we, like, figure out ways to help each other through that and find signals before they do happen, this shouldn’t be a problem. We shouldn’t make a plan for the worst-case outcomes, but plan to prevent them from happening in the first place.

643 01:16:48.090 ⇒ 01:16:55.729 Demilade Agboola: Again, I agree with that, and that’s an ideal situation. My counter to that would be, I have been on products well enough to know that data breaks.

644 01:16:55.900 ⇒ 01:16:58.919 Uttam Kumaran: For instance, like, I’m talking from, like, a… Yeah.

645 01:16:58.950 ⇒ 01:17:11.829 Demilade Agboola: Awash can also speak to that. Data breaks, like, all it takes is one day Josh comes and he says, like, data looks off, and it was maybe one PR that went bad, or a data type that came in that we have to investigate, like.

646 01:17:11.960 ⇒ 01:17:18.759 Demilade Agboola: these things happen, and so, like, being able to go, like, oh, this SL is working on this new project.

647 01:17:18.990 ⇒ 01:17:29.060 Demilade Agboola: They’re building out a lot of stuff there. But now, one of our biggest clients has an issue, and then they need to put in, like, what, 10 hours just to be sure that it goes back?

648 01:17:29.270 ⇒ 01:17:33.710 Demilade Agboola: Out of nowhere. Just put 10 hours back to make sure that it goes back to normal.

649 01:17:34.190 ⇒ 01:17:45.280 Demilade Agboola: how do… like, that’s what I’m… that’s the kind of decision I’m talking about. I’m not saying, like, we should plan to run into those errors. Obviously, we don’t… no one wants to run into those errors, but these things do happen, unfortunately.

650 01:17:45.660 ⇒ 01:17:51.189 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so what Utam is explaining is that it’s the CSO’s job to start figuring out how.

651 01:17:51.190 ⇒ 01:17:51.780 Uttam Kumaran: Bake it in.

652 01:17:51.780 ⇒ 01:17:53.220 Clarence Stone: these outcomes.

653 01:17:53.960 ⇒ 01:17:54.839 Clarence Stone: What’s up? Sorry.

654 01:17:54.900 ⇒ 01:17:56.530 Uttam Kumaran: It’s also bake it in.

655 01:17:56.530 ⇒ 01:18:01.819 Clarence Stone: Like, if you know that 20% of the time there’s issues, then you should extend the timeline.

656 01:18:02.160 ⇒ 01:18:05.530 Uttam Kumaran: You know, they should talk to Awash and be like, he’s like.

657 01:18:05.820 ⇒ 01:18:20.000 Uttam Kumaran: I think we can hit it, like, if there’s actually no issues, but if there are issues, it’s gonna take 20% more time, right? So I guess we’re not saying that there will never be issues, but ultimately, if you’re running a great client experience, then you can go

658 01:18:20.650 ⇒ 01:18:22.010 Uttam Kumaran: Like, smooth that over.

659 01:18:22.830 ⇒ 01:18:27.029 Uttam Kumaran: like, your client will be like, okay, yeah, no, I understand that we didn’t see this coming.

660 01:18:27.420 ⇒ 01:18:43.969 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So, I guess in that way, like, yeah, we are expecting it, but that’s why it pays to, like, have a great relationship with your client and nail stuff for them, so that when you decide to pull from that trust, like, you have enough bandwidth. If you’re… it’s always what I say about, like, if we’re on the back foot.

661 01:18:44.280 ⇒ 01:18:52.449 Uttam Kumaran: the next thing that goes wrong can really be hurtful, right? So all these clients, we’re trying to get weeks and weeks and weeks of things going right.

662 01:18:52.670 ⇒ 01:19:02.120 Uttam Kumaran: in… when we… and we know that something will go wrong at some point. Not… not if, but when we can draw back on it. But, if we have clients where we’ve not done that.

663 01:19:02.280 ⇒ 01:19:08.790 Uttam Kumaran: And then we suck back on it, it’s like, it’s rough, right? So, that’s sort of, like, what we’re… what we’re talking about a little bit.

664 01:19:13.080 ⇒ 01:19:23.960 Pranav Narahari: Another question, just, like, on that Eden example, Uten, like, that you… where you added that additional, like, work stream. Yeah. I mean, it doesn’t even need to be on an additional one. Let’s say…

665 01:19:24.310 ⇒ 01:19:28.810 Pranav Narahari: how I’m kind of thinking about them, since you said, like, they’re also meeting with, like.

666 01:19:29.070 ⇒ 01:19:45.109 Pranav Narahari: some stakeholder at the client as well, like, let’s say for that project command center, like, I’d be meeting with Danny. Is that kind of, like, operating a little bit like a mini CSO, where, like, every Friday you’re probably having a client call with… I would be having a client.

667 01:19:45.110 ⇒ 01:19:49.229 Uttam Kumaran: Well, yeah, I mean, Zoran and Greg call Mitesh, like, once a week.

668 01:19:51.120 ⇒ 01:19:54.130 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and it’s sort of, like, depends.

669 01:19:56.700 ⇒ 01:20:09.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, again, it’s like, this is up to the CSO to be like, hey, Sally is a VP, like, can you just call Sally every two weeks until we finish this work stream out? Okay.

670 01:20:09.620 ⇒ 01:20:10.370 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

671 01:20:11.030 ⇒ 01:20:13.690 Pranav Narahari: That’d be on the CSO to tell the Workstream owner? Yeah.

672 01:20:13.690 ⇒ 01:20:17.969 Uttam Kumaran: It’s sort of for you guys to determine, yeah, like, whatever needed to get the client. This is why, like.

673 01:20:18.250 ⇒ 01:20:24.139 Uttam Kumaran: What I’m hopeful for is I will be giving the CSOs and the workstream owners different options.

674 01:20:24.810 ⇒ 01:20:32.699 Uttam Kumaran: Like, that is an option, but, like, running a daily stand-up is an option, running completely async is an option, like, you have options.

675 01:20:32.950 ⇒ 01:20:38.489 Uttam Kumaran: You know, but, like, I’m not gonna be too formal with How you do it.

676 01:20:38.780 ⇒ 01:20:52.100 Uttam Kumaran: Right. So in that way, it removes a lot of the need for standardization, which I feel like has been hurting us. It’s like, someone asked me a couple meetings ago, like, well, my client doesn’t look at the Gantt every week, so why do I have to update it every week?

677 01:20:52.470 ⇒ 01:20:54.110 Uttam Kumaran: I was like, yeah, that’s fair.

678 01:20:54.400 ⇒ 01:21:04.890 Uttam Kumaran: Why? You know? But then I’m like, I’m saying one thing out of one side of my mouth. Another side of my mouth, we have these. So then what I’m doing, what basically I’m trying to do is, like.

679 01:21:05.590 ⇒ 01:21:20.840 Uttam Kumaran: you can now update a Gantt chart, update tickets with one command. So I’m gonna remove that safety net a little bit, meaning you’re free to run the client, because ultimately, I know that in a bind, I can… we can do… you can run EP on your client in 30 minutes.

680 01:21:21.120 ⇒ 01:21:23.180 Uttam Kumaran: I know that. So, anybody…

681 01:21:23.350 ⇒ 01:21:35.889 Uttam Kumaran: And anybody at Brain Forge, regardless if they’re on your client or not, can run through those. Which means it’s now fair expectation that, like, y’all should just be running it. Someone on your team could be like, yo, just, can you update the tickets after this meeting? Like.

682 01:21:35.920 ⇒ 01:21:44.310 Uttam Kumaran: use platform. Anybody can do that, right? Blindfolded. And so, I want to remove the floor, which means, like, I’m not going to have as much harness on you.

683 01:21:44.460 ⇒ 01:21:50.010 Uttam Kumaran: Like, you can run your clients how you want. My expectation is in that morning meeting, and you come and you’re like, hey.

684 01:21:50.300 ⇒ 01:22:07.810 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve tried these XY things, I need some ideas on, like, what I could try. That’s a perfect way for me to be like, okay, I’m pattern matching to an old client of ours, where this is what we tried, you should plan on this. It’s like when Zoran, when I told you, try Looms, right? Send the looms, maybe they’ll watch it, because the Slack updates, you’re a busy person.

685 01:22:08.070 ⇒ 01:22:11.989 Uttam Kumaran: whatever, and it worked, right? So I’m here for more, like, that type of…

686 01:22:12.380 ⇒ 01:22:24.939 Uttam Kumaran: here, try this play, did you try this play? Did you try this play? Versus, like, I… I’m not gonna tell you how to run the thing. I am gonna look for the client is verbally happy, they’re paying their invoices, and they’re expanding work.

687 01:22:25.160 ⇒ 01:22:28.589 Uttam Kumaran: Those high-level KPIs is what I ultimately care about.

688 01:22:28.850 ⇒ 01:22:34.269 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think partially this is helpful if you’re a CSO, because now you have less of, like.

689 01:22:34.390 ⇒ 01:22:40.750 Uttam Kumaran: people annoying you every day for making these things up-to-date, but it’s kind of, like, much more free-for-all, like…

690 01:22:41.040 ⇒ 01:22:45.849 Uttam Kumaran: You kind of, like, just have an objective that you need to drive towards and you need to wrangle.

691 01:22:45.960 ⇒ 01:22:50.419 Uttam Kumaran: But, what you should assume at Brainforge is that it’s gonna be easier and easier to do these roles.

692 01:22:50.670 ⇒ 01:22:54.749 Uttam Kumaran: As the weeks go by, like, not, like, months. Like, in the next few weeks.

693 01:22:54.890 ⇒ 01:23:02.729 Uttam Kumaran: Everything that you do that’s outside of working with a client will get… that’s being face-to-face with a client will get easier.

694 01:23:02.950 ⇒ 01:23:05.320 Uttam Kumaran: And we will be building automations for. So…

695 01:23:06.240 ⇒ 01:23:19.690 Uttam Kumaran: I think the art is in, like, the relationship, and in, like, having them build trust with you, that you’re gonna take on a piece of work, and you’re gonna deliver it with… with expertise, with a level of rigor, and that’s gonna continue to be the main thing that we do, you know? That’s what people pay us for.

696 01:23:20.240 ⇒ 01:23:21.720 Uttam Kumaran: And they’re not paying us…

697 01:23:22.290 ⇒ 01:23:27.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s what they’re ultimately paying us for, is our expertise and the trust, you know, and so I want to guide towards that.

698 01:23:29.050 ⇒ 01:23:35.229 Uttam Kumaran: And then the level of rigor and the complexity of the technical piece is what the SL is going to own. So you’re right, Demi, is that

699 01:23:35.750 ⇒ 01:23:40.130 Uttam Kumaran: There technically will be multiple SLs for a client, depending on what we’re selling them.

700 01:23:40.570 ⇒ 01:23:47.800 Uttam Kumaran: But again, the SL… the SL role is going to be not assigned. Meaning, if you’re a service lead, you still may be assigned on a client to work.

701 01:23:48.050 ⇒ 01:23:50.819 Uttam Kumaran: But the service lead role is gonna transform

702 01:23:51.050 ⇒ 01:23:57.440 Uttam Kumaran: As the business grows, into being more of this, like, plot… like, you’re gonna run this stack, this part of the stack.

703 01:23:57.530 ⇒ 01:24:15.909 Uttam Kumaran: Right now, again, we’re talking about the same group of, like, 15 people, so it’s hard, but you’ll see, we’re gonna add another 5 people, and then we’ll add another 5 people, and this crew needs to elevate. Like, your hour needs to be higher leverage, which means the CSOs need to run their work streams and be less in the engineering.

704 01:24:16.120 ⇒ 01:24:23.540 Uttam Kumaran: the service leads need to really be, like, anything that touches Edge goes through my way of doing things, so I can guarantee that it doesn’t break.

705 01:24:23.740 ⇒ 01:24:28.669 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Like, any data model that gets out runs through PR review, and this is how we do it.

706 01:24:29.360 ⇒ 01:24:31.580 Uttam Kumaran: That’s how the SLs are gonna elevate.

707 01:24:31.950 ⇒ 01:24:42.240 Uttam Kumaran: And you guys will see that, like, I’m telling you, you’ll see that we’re gonna fill out all the… I’m gonna bring on people to do the work on clients that you guys are doing, but then you have to move up.

708 01:24:43.110 ⇒ 01:24:45.810 Uttam Kumaran: Right? You have to start to increase your leverage.

709 01:24:47.500 ⇒ 01:24:55.179 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s gonna be through standardization, through automation, that’s gonna be through selling more work to clients, and being, like, the relationship owner.

710 01:24:56.120 ⇒ 01:25:01.099 Uttam Kumaran: And then being able to come back to your team, be like, I know exactly what we need to do, and let’s break it down, you know?

711 01:25:11.670 ⇒ 01:25:12.460 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

712 01:25:14.070 ⇒ 01:25:15.350 Uttam Kumaran: Anything else?

713 01:25:17.670 ⇒ 01:25:20.350 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, I mean…

714 01:25:20.350 ⇒ 01:25:22.699 Greg Stoutenburg: This one’s gonna take us 40 minutes, but I have a question.

715 01:25:23.100 ⇒ 01:25:24.120 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah.

716 01:25:24.120 ⇒ 01:25:24.649 Clarence Stone: Go for it.

717 01:25:24.650 ⇒ 01:25:44.550 Greg Stoutenburg: No, so, do we have a… something that, you know, that we discussed a little bit ago is making sure that people feel like they can advocate for their, their capacity, their workloads, and that way give estimates that are accurate for when things will be done, rather than, you know, sort of, like, just having a tendency to say yes to too many things.

718 01:25:44.550 ⇒ 01:25:46.450 Greg Stoutenburg: Is there,

719 01:25:46.640 ⇒ 01:26:04.919 Greg Stoutenburg: what do we do if we run into a situation where we’re like, alright, there’s something that’s due by this period, but the sort of thing Demi was talking about happens, right? Where there’s a surprise. And I don’t mean just, like, build it into the Gantt, but I mean where we end up in a situation where it’s like, okay, the expert that I would need on this particular piece,

720 01:26:04.920 ⇒ 01:26:17.120 Greg Stoutenburg: they’ve been called over to do something else. So it isn’t even that my client got a surprise, it’s that, like, there’s some database work that needs to be done, but Demi’s putting out somebody else’s fire. So, you know, actually things were running

721 01:26:17.300 ⇒ 01:26:20.150 Greg Stoutenburg: running fine for my client.

722 01:26:21.050 ⇒ 01:26:27.949 Greg Stoutenburg: The question is less, what do we do, and more like, do we have something in place that allows us to make sure that folks can give

723 01:26:28.220 ⇒ 01:26:32.560 Greg Stoutenburg: Good, accurate estimates of their capacity, even in a given week.

724 01:26:35.890 ⇒ 01:26:37.180 Uttam Kumaran: Clarence, what are you gonna say?

725 01:26:37.180 ⇒ 01:26:40.360 Greg Stoutenburg: Byron’s has this look.

726 01:26:40.360 ⇒ 01:26:42.920 Clarence Stone: It’s more of a frustration team, like…

727 01:26:42.920 ⇒ 01:26:50.839 Greg Stoutenburg: I think the root cause of all this frustration that we keep expressing is just poor documentation.

728 01:26:50.840 ⇒ 01:26:56.559 Clarence Stone: And then, like, lack of communication on top of that, like… We’ve got to just…

729 01:26:56.700 ⇒ 01:27:00.140 Clarence Stone: Find ways to automate that documentation if necessary.

730 01:27:00.560 ⇒ 01:27:02.600 Clarence Stone: Right? And…

731 01:27:03.010 ⇒ 01:27:10.470 Clarence Stone: Like, we either pay that price sooner, or, you know, we wait till later, and then we keep running into these stumbles.

732 01:27:10.730 ⇒ 01:27:12.570 Clarence Stone: So, I mean…

733 01:27:13.350 ⇒ 01:27:22.460 Clarence Stone: we’ve tried to find automations to do it, but I don’t know what your day-to-day is like, so I can’t really build those, you know, user-level customizations for you.

734 01:27:22.980 ⇒ 01:27:25.190 Clarence Stone: But…

735 01:27:25.310 ⇒ 01:27:34.299 Clarence Stone: Greg, that’s… that’s really the goal, right? Like, I can’t tell you what people’s availabilities are if people aren’t updating their availability.

736 01:27:35.140 ⇒ 01:27:36.259 Clarence Stone: That’s… that’s sort of.

737 01:27:36.260 ⇒ 01:27:36.780 Greg Stoutenburg: I mean, that’s fair.

738 01:27:36.780 ⇒ 01:27:39.740 Clarence Stone: Like, speak to me here, guys, like…

739 01:27:39.740 ⇒ 01:27:52.179 Uttam Kumaran: No, but that’s also clear, it’s like, Greg, if you’re like, look, we don’t have a system to show me how many hours the people on… how many hours I’m supposed to send on a client, and how many hours the people on this client have for this client, that’s on… that’s on me.

740 01:27:52.250 ⇒ 01:27:59.759 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s on me and B to figure out, and we’re gonna make sure you have a solution where you can go into Cursor and be like.

741 01:28:00.000 ⇒ 01:28:04.259 Uttam Kumaran: what else is this person doing? Where else are they split between?

742 01:28:04.470 ⇒ 01:28:06.309 Uttam Kumaran: So, I can take that, but…

743 01:28:06.720 ⇒ 01:28:11.759 Uttam Kumaran: Ultimately, I think you’re one question away from that person you’re concerned about to just ask them.

744 01:28:11.770 ⇒ 01:28:13.360 Greg Stoutenburg: Yeah. Right. Sure.

745 01:28:13.360 ⇒ 01:28:19.629 Uttam Kumaran: And then you have… you have tons of escalation paths, you know, that’s what I want to make clear, is like, there’s escalation paths, but you have to use them.

746 01:28:20.240 ⇒ 01:28:25.070 Uttam Kumaran: You know, you… like, that’s why you have to use them, you have to use them fast.

747 01:28:25.480 ⇒ 01:28:34.439 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s why I want to remove myself, because then I can be made available for, like, Navy… truly Navy sealing on the thing that’s, like, about to fall off a cliff.

748 01:28:34.710 ⇒ 01:28:39.540 Uttam Kumaran: Versus now, I’m still on so many client things that, like, if I have to go in.

749 01:28:39.910 ⇒ 01:28:56.410 Uttam Kumaran: it’s really… it’s really, really tough. And I think one thing that Bea will share, the more time I’m spending on automation, the faster we’re able to enable you guys, right? And again, I want to iterate, like, it’s… our goal isn’t to, like.

750 01:28:56.600 ⇒ 01:29:14.640 Uttam Kumaran: I want, actually, just to put people in the highest leverage spots, and allow you guys to actually deliver more with clients’ ownership on more clients, and, like, pay more. I think that’s the way this is gonna work, you know? And we’re still filling out. I think, again, we have room for, like, 4 more engineers, I know that, so we’re gonna hire those people.

751 01:29:14.690 ⇒ 01:29:21.010 Uttam Kumaran: But I think that’s where Zoran, it’s like, okay, if your role is quickly, like, let’s say we go do edge for 4 other people.

752 01:29:21.370 ⇒ 01:29:31.369 Uttam Kumaran: and those 4 people don’t know exactly the level of depth that you know about Edge, what do you do? How do you still maintain the quality of that service? Okay, you need to create reusable templates.

753 01:29:31.480 ⇒ 01:29:36.549 Uttam Kumaran: reusable linears, right? You need to… You need to… Start to build those standards.

754 01:29:37.740 ⇒ 01:29:57.109 Clarence Stone: Yeah, and I got one for all of you, kind of to think about, because these difficult situations just don’t go away, no matter how many sets of systems that we build are. And Demi, I think you might be able to relate to this one. Like, I have a client, right? And, you know, this is for real, what happened last week.

755 01:29:57.300 ⇒ 01:30:01.169 Clarence Stone: I… I’ve committed to 16 hours for this client.

756 01:30:01.170 ⇒ 01:30:25.639 Clarence Stone: Right? And it’s been increasing over and over and over again to, like, 20 to 27. Last week was 31. You know, each week, I say, hey, I’m bleeding over our time commitment. Is this okay with you? Because I’m billing you, right? And they say that’s great. And in fact, they’re so happy with my work that I’ve gone from running the two committed work streams from the original SOW to half of the program.

757 01:30:26.450 ⇒ 01:30:32.760 Clarence Stone: Right? And in the live workshops, what ended up happening is we found out a few things.

758 01:30:33.400 ⇒ 01:30:41.420 Clarence Stone: the client is going to have an innovation workshop in the middle of April, sometime on the 19th or 20th, and

759 01:30:41.690 ⇒ 01:30:46.160 Clarence Stone: I need to run all of it. My name is every single line item on it.

760 01:30:46.750 ⇒ 01:30:53.920 Clarence Stone: Right? And, the person who’s running the other half of the work streams, well, they’re going on paternity leave.

761 01:30:55.890 ⇒ 01:30:58.449 Clarence Stone: Right? So all of a sudden, I own all of it.

762 01:30:58.890 ⇒ 01:31:06.339 Clarence Stone: And by the way, this situation is even more uncomfortable because these are partners that I worked with before when I was a full-time employee.

763 01:31:06.970 ⇒ 01:31:23.679 Clarence Stone: Right? So, like, you’re gonna find yourself in these tough corners managing your time over and over again, but, like, the only way out of it is to have clear and constant communication, right? So I say to client, hey, we’ve gotta talk.

764 01:31:24.120 ⇒ 01:31:28.079 Clarence Stone: This is the reality of the situation. A, B, and C, right?

765 01:31:28.470 ⇒ 01:31:32.970 Clarence Stone: I originally gave you this commitment, and I’ve gone well over it.

766 01:31:33.170 ⇒ 01:31:35.689 Clarence Stone: And this is… this can’t be the usual thing.

767 01:31:36.480 ⇒ 01:31:45.709 Clarence Stone: Right? So magically, we’re getting more resources and help. But that would not have happened if I just said, yeah, sure, I’ll do it. Yeah, sure, I’ll do it.

768 01:31:45.860 ⇒ 01:32:03.790 Clarence Stone: Right? Because the awareness of, like, how much pressure others are putting on you, or, you know, how realistic timelines are, are not going to be, you know, in their minds. They’re like, hey, this whole crew are freaking awesome. They’re killers. Like, they can make such sick shit.

769 01:32:03.820 ⇒ 01:32:06.150 Clarence Stone: I’m just gonna keep throwing more and more at them.

770 01:32:06.620 ⇒ 01:32:18.540 Clarence Stone: Right? But there is a point and a limit to how, you know, we can work, and instead of saying, no, I’m not going to do any of that, I say, hey, I can make your dreams happen if A, B, and C happen.

771 01:32:18.870 ⇒ 01:32:30.359 Clarence Stone: Right? I need this from you. I need your thoughts on A, B, and C. Right? If I don’t communicate that, I will fail, because I would have too much on my plate, and I couldn’t deliver.

772 01:32:30.510 ⇒ 01:32:31.969 Clarence Stone: Does that make sense?

773 01:32:36.380 ⇒ 01:32:43.260 Demilade Agboola: Yes, also, this, again, not to sort of draw us back, But, like…

774 01:32:44.120 ⇒ 01:32:48.449 Demilade Agboola: How do we, like, bake in… So it’s in, like.

775 01:32:49.010 ⇒ 01:33:03.519 Demilade Agboola: I’m trying to think of how to phrase it. How do we break in things that are not necessarily planned for, but are sort of spontaneous problems? So, what I mean by that is, there are certain times people will call me up because they need XYZ to be triaged.

776 01:33:03.810 ⇒ 01:33:09.750 Demilade Agboola: And that is not necessarily baked into what I… like, what I have for the week.

777 01:33:10.080 ⇒ 01:33:23.400 Demilade Agboola: But that does take time, right? And these are not, like, necessarily foreseen problems, these are, like, sometimes custom problems, and it’s like, you need to help the person, like, figure out how to go from point A to point B,

778 01:33:23.670 ⇒ 01:33:27.310 Demilade Agboola: through that problem. But that takes…

779 01:33:27.530 ⇒ 01:33:31.330 Demilade Agboola: time. I’ve literally had hours go that way.

780 01:33:31.870 ⇒ 01:33:32.730 Demilade Agboola: Sure.

781 01:33:32.890 ⇒ 01:33:33.750 Demilade Agboola: How do I…

782 01:33:33.750 ⇒ 01:33:53.040 Clarence Stone: Demi, my recommendation to you is, like, block off an hour, maybe an hour and a half every day, where you do one of two things. One is create repeated improvements so that your work goes faster, like making AI skills, or, like, getting your stuff organized and things like that. You know, your personal operational improvements.

783 01:33:53.040 ⇒ 01:34:17.910 Clarence Stone: And, you know, anything that you have left over as work that you need to do, so if it’s a slide deck, or communications, or something that you have to do, that’s Demi’s time to finish everything, right? And then, like, that time, you know, I’ve… I set aside for myself, ends up being exactly what you’re describing. The random things that you get pulled into, right? And realistically, like, not a single minute is left after that.

784 01:34:17.910 ⇒ 01:34:20.799 Clarence Stone: So, like, I would block off that time.

785 01:34:20.940 ⇒ 01:34:28.799 Clarence Stone: Because if this is a consistent thing that you’re experiencing, then, you know, I have no doubts that you’re probably going to get called in more for your expertise, right?

786 01:34:29.220 ⇒ 01:34:40.610 Clarence Stone: And if it’s… if it’s going and bleeding beyond that availability, then you’ve got a reason flag, and then provide some solutions on, hey, this team could have done X, Y, and Z to prevent this from happening.

787 01:34:40.800 ⇒ 01:34:47.209 Clarence Stone: Right? That means that we need to build that into our processes when the data is set up so that it doesn’t happen again.

788 01:34:47.400 ⇒ 01:35:06.720 Clarence Stone: Right? Like, we haven’t matured to the point where we’re exploring things that are retrospective to prevent, you know, these issues from happening. So, like, after we kill each fire, we need to think about how do we improve the entire cycle, or the system itself, to prevent, you know, this pressure from happening over and over again.

789 01:35:08.730 ⇒ 01:35:22.249 Clarence Stone: So, like, here’s my commitment to you, Demi. If this happens again, and you’re having a problem with prioritization, raise the flag, and you best bet I will be dropping into a call and bothering somebody about why

790 01:35:22.250 ⇒ 01:35:29.509 Clarence Stone: you know, something wasn’t set up properly, or they’re having data issues, and I’ll dig into it and resolve the issue and create new SOPs.

791 01:35:30.330 ⇒ 01:35:32.489 Clarence Stone: And you can watch me, we’ll build this together.

792 01:35:37.890 ⇒ 01:35:52.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so one of the… one of the things that came out of my… me and Pranav’s call this morning, and you kind of saw it, I think, when Kayla sent the note about sort of recruiting timelines, is like, you guys are gonna start to run parts of the business yourself.

793 01:35:52.230 ⇒ 01:36:09.089 Uttam Kumaran: And so you need to have a real good eye on where your 8 hours of time is going every day, and start to say no, and, like, later. And this is where, like, the business, as you guys become leaders in the business, the business will find things where it needs your help.

794 01:36:09.200 ⇒ 01:36:11.159 Uttam Kumaran: It’s just, wait, is this gonna work?

795 01:36:11.190 ⇒ 01:36:24.839 Uttam Kumaran: Like, look at my schedule. This is what happens when you start to become highly leveraged in this business. So what you have to do is be mindful of, like, truly, what is it gonna take for you to do the things that you committed to.

796 01:36:24.840 ⇒ 01:36:32.599 Uttam Kumaran: And if there are interviews, then you just say, I can only do two a day, or, like, I can’t do a random meeting, or, like, my… the meetings I go to need to have agendas.

797 01:36:32.600 ⇒ 01:36:49.550 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I’m looking for you guys to start to raise the bar on, like, time management. And so, this is, again, another thing for if you come in the morning, you’re like, hey, I’m running out of time, or like, I don’t know, I sat in, like, 8, 4 hours of meetings today, I’m gonna be like, why? Would any of those meetings could have been Slack messages.

798 01:36:49.720 ⇒ 01:36:50.470 Uttam Kumaran: Like.

799 01:36:50.590 ⇒ 01:37:05.830 Uttam Kumaran: could any of those meetings have been pushed to Friday or Monday, right? Like, and you’re gonna probably find, yes, I’m telling you. Even in my schedule, I’m looking at my day, and that happens. So, like, that’s the things that I want you guys to come up with, like, even with that level of challenge, which is like, yo, I’m running out of time.

800 01:37:06.050 ⇒ 01:37:20.699 Uttam Kumaran: Right? I will… I will say this meeting is really important, because it’s, like, sort of an alignment meeting, but every day, there’s gonna be things like that. I think, Greg, you do a good job some days of being like, yo, I sent my updates, we’re Gucci. Like, I think other people probably are not in enough meetings, or you’re like.

801 01:37:20.830 ⇒ 01:37:26.280 Uttam Kumaran: They’re not… the meetings they’re in, you’re not really being in it and thinking about, like, driving an outcome.

802 01:37:26.470 ⇒ 01:37:33.159 Uttam Kumaran: If you’re in a call, and you feel like this was a waste of time, guys, you need to leave that call, or you need to make it a worthwhile time.

803 01:37:33.410 ⇒ 01:37:37.159 Uttam Kumaran: Like, and I think a really good example is what I do when I come on a call.

804 01:37:37.350 ⇒ 01:37:41.730 Uttam Kumaran: I’m really there to find out what the heck’s going on, and, like, we’re like.

805 01:37:42.250 ⇒ 01:37:53.639 Uttam Kumaran: sometimes there’s some small talk, and then we’re like, next, next, next, next, next, right? And so if you need help with that, or thinking about that, I’m happy to be helpful, but you have to manage your time like… like you’re a business.

806 01:37:55.190 ⇒ 01:38:09.730 Uttam Kumaran: And so that’s the one thing I’ll also share, is that you’re totally free to do that. Like, I’m expecting you guys to now… someone one day has got to come to be like, hey, every meeting at Brainforge should have an agenda. I’ll be like, perfect, let’s do it. I’d love to institute that rule.

807 01:38:10.220 ⇒ 01:38:14.610 Uttam Kumaran: You know? And it’s gonna be really hard for me to do, yes, but, like, fine.

808 01:38:15.910 ⇒ 01:38:25.329 Uttam Kumaran: like, that’s the stuff, is like, I’m expecting you guys to raise the bar, not just ask, like, what is the floor here? By being like, hey, this thing sucks the way we do it, like, can we change it, you know?

809 01:38:27.230 ⇒ 01:38:30.880 Greg Stoutenburg: rule where we called that rule, no agenda, no attenda, and I thought.

810 01:38:30.880 ⇒ 01:38:32.620 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

811 01:38:33.310 ⇒ 01:38:52.789 Uttam Kumaran: I’m down to play… I mean, I’m down to play ball, because I don’t get… I don’t have time to do a lot of the things that even I institute, and it’s helpful to slow down and do those, because you get more efficient. But it takes time, right? So… The other piece I think I wanted to talk about, Demi and Zoran, you both kind of asked this, is like, Zoran, you’re on AMBL right now, and you’re like, hey, can I be SL for…

812 01:38:52.940 ⇒ 01:39:03.790 Uttam Kumaran: Edge. Demi is, like, can… Demi is currently on Magic Spoon and default, but I know, you know, my guess was sort of clearly wants to own how we do analytics engineering. So what happens?

813 01:39:05.710 ⇒ 01:39:13.750 Uttam Kumaran: I think that I will be trying to find people that can take your spot as CSO on some timeline, but I do feel like

814 01:39:14.130 ⇒ 01:39:31.840 Uttam Kumaran: you’re actually fine to keep running those clients. I don’t think that’s actually, like, anything short-term that I’m worried about. What I’m just gonna keep in mind when we’re hiring, and it’s what I told Kayla, is I’m gonna find… we’re gonna be recruiting for those CSOs, but again, we don’t… we’re not gonna recruit CSOs anymore attached to a, like.

815 01:39:32.580 ⇒ 01:39:37.289 Uttam Kumaran: attached to, like, one type of work. I’m expecting everybody to be good at at least one thing.

816 01:39:37.400 ⇒ 01:39:38.160 Uttam Kumaran: Right.

817 01:39:38.420 ⇒ 01:39:44.900 Uttam Kumaran: I think everybody on this call is good at multiple things. But again, the CSO role is going towards more being account manager.

818 01:39:45.060 ⇒ 01:40:01.239 Uttam Kumaran: having depth, maybe in one or two areas, but having just surface level, or deeper than surface level, and a whole… and all… everything data, right? And so we’re going to be recruiting for people that show that aptitude, to be able to come in and run a client, even if they don’t have a 100% understanding of

819 01:40:01.440 ⇒ 01:40:09.209 Uttam Kumaran: of every single service that we’re deploying to a client, and we’re recruiting with that in mind. I’m also going to recruit with SLs in mind, right?

820 01:40:09.290 ⇒ 01:40:23.929 Uttam Kumaran: So now we’re no longer recruiting for, like, can you do Gantt chart and project management? I’m recruiting for people that can go onto this account management path, technical account management, and then I’m recruiting for folks that, like, are super, super, like, specific about

821 01:40:24.150 ⇒ 01:40:27.899 Uttam Kumaran: A clear piece of the technical architecture, like, a clear part of our stack.

822 01:40:28.140 ⇒ 01:40:28.870 Uttam Kumaran: Right?

823 01:40:29.570 ⇒ 01:40:33.100 Uttam Kumaran: And so, I think short-term, nothing changes until I’m able to

824 01:40:33.470 ⇒ 01:40:36.129 Uttam Kumaran: either bring on someone that can take over CSO,

825 01:40:36.680 ⇒ 01:40:42.810 Uttam Kumaran: Or, like, you guys just handle it until you’re like, hey, my SL stuff is becoming too loud, I want to hand this off, so…

826 01:40:46.380 ⇒ 01:40:47.610 Uttam Kumaran: Does that make sense?

827 01:40:49.970 ⇒ 01:40:51.360 Zoran Selinger: Yep, absolutely.

828 01:40:51.510 ⇒ 01:41:07.739 Uttam Kumaran: But I’m both surprised and not surprised that it sort of went the way I thought. Like, I have a feeling, and I know all of you guys individually, like, I have a feeling that one thing that this new structure challenged us to do is to elevate, in one way or another. So you tell me if you’re wrong that, like.

829 01:41:07.870 ⇒ 01:41:17.960 Uttam Kumaran: some folks have been with us before December. I think, Pranav and Greg, you were… you were just recently kind of saw things, but one thing I at least tried to do was bring this group up.

830 01:41:18.320 ⇒ 01:41:33.660 Uttam Kumaran: Where up here is, like, sort of now what we’re deciding. So I have no qualm… I have no problem with, like, this is the crew of leaders in the company. Like, that’s not up for debate here. It’s more about, like, now, like, fine-tuning this… this process, right? Deciding that, like, okay, actually, like.

831 01:41:33.770 ⇒ 01:41:52.040 Uttam Kumaran: the EP thing, we ended up automating. I think we’re… I think I’m gonna now hand off that through automation. Now I’m like, okay, I’m finding people are good at certain things. I’m actually finding that, like, maybe we… we mischaracterized, sort of, the SL role a little bit, like, and so we’re… we’re tuning that. But that’s… that’s sort of all this is, like.

832 01:41:52.340 ⇒ 01:41:53.539 Uttam Kumaran: I think,

833 01:41:54.000 ⇒ 01:42:12.089 Uttam Kumaran: I’m… I just want to put you guys in the best spot and, like, change… make sure the expectations are super, super clear, which is, I think, what everybody has, in one way, in our one-on-ones, asked me to do, and so I think the fact that things… the things last week happened, again, I’m… I’m happy because it caused us to sort of question these and align better, so…

834 01:42:12.400 ⇒ 01:42:24.700 Uttam Kumaran: But everybody’s been helping with sales, with the recruiting, so it’s… it’s been amazing. I just want to give you guys more path towards doing the thing that you want… that you… that you love to do, and then try to make as much money doing that here as possible.

835 01:42:26.820 ⇒ 01:42:27.610 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

836 01:42:27.790 ⇒ 01:42:31.080 Uttam Kumaran: This has been a long meeting, so I appreciate everybody’s time.

837 01:42:31.220 ⇒ 01:42:34.529 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’ll go ahead and try to institute as many changes

838 01:42:34.930 ⇒ 01:42:38.399 Uttam Kumaran: you know, this week as possible, but I may go ahead and start to run

839 01:42:38.790 ⇒ 01:42:42.579 Uttam Kumaran: The morning meetings, kind of, like, with this expectation.

840 01:42:42.890 ⇒ 01:43:00.439 Uttam Kumaran: again, I love all the time I spend with you guys, and I want to spend more… as you guys can see, I’m spending one-on-one time weekly with a lot of you. I want to spend more time with this crew. Ultimately, my time with you then permeates to the rest of the organization, and that’s the way it should be. And so, like, I’m more than happy to do that.

841 01:43:00.440 ⇒ 01:43:15.660 Uttam Kumaran: And then let me go… I’m gonna also try to sort of codify some of the conversation we’ve had here into, like, a new version of the doc, and then some of our plans, but, like, let me take that on this week and get back to you. And so we’ll be talking every day, which I’m looking forward to, so…

842 01:43:17.280 ⇒ 01:43:31.620 Uttam Kumaran: I think on my… on my list, too, is the redefined, sort of, SLs, and I think that’s the one piece that is still, even through what I’ve explained today, I still feel like it’s ambiguous how that role goes into every client and delivers. So, like, that’s on me.

843 01:43:32.110 ⇒ 01:43:35.369 Uttam Kumaran: To make a lot more clear, what the growth is there, so…

844 01:43:38.910 ⇒ 01:43:39.690 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

845 01:43:40.450 ⇒ 01:43:44.940 Uttam Kumaran: I love this meeting, this is great. I feel like we got a lot done, so… I,

846 01:43:45.050 ⇒ 01:44:01.739 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, some of these are painful, I know, guys, so I appreciate you, like, working… working through it, and like, again, this is how decisions get made, so if you guys want to make your mark, and you see a part of the… the solu… you want to be part of the solution here, and you want to see… you see that part of the way we’re doing things can be tweaked, like.

847 01:44:02.350 ⇒ 01:44:06.259 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t have to be the one proposing these changes, you know, is ultimately what I want to say, so…

848 01:44:08.740 ⇒ 01:44:09.540 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

849 01:44:09.730 ⇒ 01:44:14.760 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, thank you. Sorry for taking up so much of your time. So, appreciate everything.

850 01:44:14.760 ⇒ 01:44:16.109 Greg Stoutenburg: See ya.

851 01:44:16.110 ⇒ 01:44:17.620 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, thank you, bye.