Beyond the Excel Sheet: The Active Desk Philosophy and Hunting for HighPos

oops excuse me anywho which episode are you slotting for today

the how important it is to keep a project on your desk

welcome back to type a unhinged the podcast for the architects of order and the masters of chaos

welcome back everyone to this week's episode of type a unhinged i'm nate and i'm di and today

we're going to talk about what we will call the active desk philosophy so the importance of

keeping a project on your desk if you only know your team through status reports and middle

management you aren't leading a team you're managing a black box you can see what goes

in and what comes out but you have no idea how the magic actually happens

today we're talking about why you need to keep a project on your desk to identify your hypos

and keep your skills sharp all right guys so let's talk about the why which i think

is a pretty important piece to this but one thing we've talked about in the past

is as you move your way through positions or through an organization

um especially on your way up it does become inherently easier to see names on charts rather

yeah the further away you get from the actual work that's being done it's harder to see

the talent that's doing the work and the people that could be pipeline for managers or yourself

or others even within the organization they could even like shift teams i've had that happen at some

points where you're able to identify somebody who's a high performer that just gets it no matter

what you end up putting on their plate and they say yes to

so being able to actually be in the work allows you to discover those people if you aren't there

you see the project gets done but you don't understand everything that it took to make it

happen exactly and i think like the key piece here is is it's really not even about doing the work

right it's about being there to see how the other people around you are doing the work to really

identify wins and ops within your team structure so as you're hunting for hypos how do we spot that

like

unhinged drive you know you can see the energy coming off of them that you can't see in a monthly

status that you have maybe with a manager under you that talks about oh so-and-so worked on this

they did a really good job they executed well right there's something about actually seeing

them do that when you're collaborating on a project you know they're thinking three steps

ahead to the solution that everybody else is catching up to they're already there and you

can't really see that when you're not in it

yeah um i think my most recent example is within our team we've been talking about further ways we

can optimize some of our ppc ad structures and so i decided this is something where the team and

and the manager of that team especially are very capable of handling but this is one that i was

also pretty interested in so i have decided to be more involved right and we had one i would say

preliminary project that we were working on and we were working on a project that was going to be

a little bit more of a preliminary meeting on what's the end goal here and we have a couple of

specific examples from previous years where maybe a few issues arose or we got comments from other

teams around like i expected this product to show up in this ad not this other one how do we optimize

to that and and that in itself can be really hairy right because there could be really great reasons

why it's not showing up click-through rate engagement you know bounce rate etc so before

we just go overriding what we think should show up we're going to have to think about how do we

show up you know there is a little bit of investigation that happens there long story

short all we had was our preliminary meeting and one of the team members started using ai made a

script that can basically execute all of our goals but also before we even talked about it identified

that some of this is an investigation versus just an override like we just talked about right and so

phase one of the script ended up being a two-page report that spits out to validate whether or not

we should even be able to do this and so i'm going to go ahead and show you a little bit of that

meddling with this particular product before we go to phase two oh i love that also another way to

see i feel like is when you're like i guess so i should say first to frame that is he took the

initiative right and just kind of dug in and then came back and it's like holy cow right having a

project on your desk or working on a project within the business however you want to say it

i think also allows you to co-pilot

with some potential rising stars some hypos and i think for me anyway it's been a good way to like

vet who's ready for the next level there's been a few situations before where i've had someone on my

team and um they volunteer yeah i can try to i have a little bandwidth i can try to learn that

right and you give like real quick overview and then as you're talking they're like oh what if we

did this what if we did that and they just start opening up all of these like potential areas for

growth and it's like

yes thank you fresh eyes like somebody who's they're not just like okay i'll do the thing

that you're telling me they're looking for all those additional opportunities and ways to

ways to improve a process whatever it might be um that's really helped find people that have like

okay you're you're next on my list if there's a management position that opens um whether or not

like you understand all of the tasks fully i know that you're going to be curious enough

that you're going to learn all of it very quickly and catch up so that you not only can just lead

the team in their work, but help lead them and help them grow too. Hard time not like standing

up and screaming of joy when those same team members also start to realize that what we're

doing impacts other teams and how to combat that too. Like that is the ultimate icing on the cake.

Yep, for sure. I think another good thing too, when you're in there working with a team is

understanding who's handling friction well, and the different personalities within the team.

You know, are they able to lead through influence? And are they able to get people

on board with ideas? Are they able to listen to other people's ideas, not just be like,

this is what we're doing, get on board. And you know what I mean? Like people feel heard,

all of the the EQ pieces of it. It's a lot easier to see that

they didn't just make the project happen. They like brought everybody along with it.

And it felt like glue. Yes, yes. That's a great way to put it.

And there and there we could go on for hours, right? Because some people naturally fall into

like a PM side of things, which is also super valuable to have. And again, when you have this

project on your desk, and you're working with the team in this way, you do start to put the pieces

together of how you can further utilize people's talents elsewhere.

Mm hmm. Yep.

You talked about people seeing opportunities within other parts of the business. I think

part of that too, is us as leaders staying in the flow and really understanding how the processes

work and have changed because obviously, you want to give people trust and agency to change processes

as we need to scale things or new things come up, right? And so I think that's a really good point.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's easy to get out of touch of how something is happening within the business after even six

months sometimes. So having something on your desk that allows you to get into maybe especially

something that's cross departmental helps to understand how like a simple change could

actually break something in three different departments. So not only seeing hypos, but

helping to understand the business and how everything is functioning across teams so that

you can give better guidance.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that's a great point. And it's also a great way to get a sense of what's going on.

Maybe you can give more context to your own teams when they're coming up with ideas for something.

Like a manager may come to me and say, hey, I'd like to change this. And if I haven't worked in a project with

one of those teams for a while, I might be like, yeah, that sounds great. Let's do it or check with so and so type of thing, make sure that there isn't anything happening. But I can be more helpful if I've been working on it because I can say, oh, that triggers. That means that then this won't work over here or this person has to do this thing. So yeah, you can do that. But you'll need to coordinate with.

whoever to make sure that that's happening. And if you end up losing a manager, having a pulse

on what's going on and how all those pieces of the puzzle work together is super important when

you're trying to onboard somebody new. I 100% agree with what you're saying. But even if you

zoom out a little bit, thinking back to when I worked at Target, I spent a lot of my time there

in logistics. And my job definitely was was to run the team, make sure high level things were

happening and not not to do the day to day. But if I went three months without touching a pallet

jack, it wasn't just that my team, you know, maybe wasn't going to respect me, but I also wasn't

going to have their trust. And so I think there is that level of keeping your project on your desk

not only keeps you aware of what's happening, but it allows you and enables you to maintain

that trust with your peers to like you do know what's happening.

Yeah, for sure. And and let them know that you're in their in their corner,

right? Yeah. And when they need the extra hands. Yep. And I think that ties back to even like,

more recently, AI has, you know, basically hit workforces everywhere. But one thing I've

appreciated is, in our areas, you know, we didn't just start forcing our teams to adopt everything

AI, you went and vibe coded an AI app, like I was building solutions for AI to help us make

you know, new copy for our partner listings. And before this was pushed on our team, you like we

became experts to help make sure again, that the knowledge was there, you know?

Yeah, how quickly tech is moving right now, you almost have to otherwise, it's going to be hard

for you to continue to lead your teams, right? So keeping something on your desk and figuring out

how you can use new tech to, to get through it faster, or to evaluate something or even just

like to gut check you.

And your ideas and decision making process. Like, if you don't do that,

then it's really hard to help your team understand the best way to utilize it.

And honestly, full circle here, I feel like AI projects on my desk recently have been the easiest

ones to help identify hypos. Because it's so new, there's so much research needed. And, you know,

you get these projects, and it's those people that if they can fully understand AI, they're the ones

way up here about, oh, teams that are four times removed from my processes will benefit if we do it

this way. And that's when you're like, wow, hypo. Yep. Yeah, AI really allows, I think, for us to

get more to that strategic level, because you're taking out a lot more of those day to day tasks,

and people who are willing to utilize that understand that too, I think.

AI is the intern.

AI is the intern. Yes, it is the intern. Give it all those, those tasks.

I'm curious,

now that we've spent a little bit of time talking about this idea of keeping a project on your desk,

if some of our listeners aren't great at this, what would your advice be for picking their first

project? Or what kind of project should they get involved in? Because that isn't art.

It is. It is. I think they should find something that is probably cross department, if you can,

because that'll give you more insight into,

how the work is being done between the teams, gaps in communication, opportunities for

efficiency gains, things like that. And you'll be able to not just see folks on your team,

but folks on other teams that could potentially be high performers.

Oh, Nate, the snipe. Had so many people snipe people for me.

But that's what happens. That's what happens when you're, when people are growing on your team,

and you're doing these things.

Right. But it also means that you probably have a pipeline that,

that you've created that allows you to backfill as you go.

One thing that I would recommend too, is like, you want to be involved,

but you don't want it to be one where you could potentially be a roadblock or barrier.

So it needs to be one that you can, like, let's face it, like the higher you get,

the more pop up important projects can happen. So something where you can

still provide your recommendations and guidance,

but can,

can pop in and out as needed, hopefully.

Yeah. There isn't something hinging on you necessarily, or if it is, it's nothing that's

going to take too long. It's not going to end up like sitting on your backlog for one reason or

another. Yep. That's excellent. So let's say that we've got this project and we're moving through

it, right? You found that perfect, that perfect project, but it's something that's ongoing. It's

not just a single like one and done, right? There's no end date.

And what advice would you have Nate to hand off a project to somebody you've identified as a hypo?

Yeah. Um, first of all, congrats for getting to that point where you can hand off the project

to a hypo. I think that's the dream, right? Um, I think it depends on the person and kind of where

they're at because I've definitely, you know, I think that's a spectrum. And if you have someone

that's at the very high end of a hypo, there's a lot less handoff needed. But my advice would just

be, uh, you know, making sure that the project is a hypo. And if you have someone that's at the

that you're trying to hand the project off to is bought in first of all, because if, if they're

not like you could be a hypo and not be super interested in this project and that might not

go the way you're hoping. But you know, if you kind of share your overall plan, you, you explain

that, you know, by this time I'm hoping that you can be the POC of this project. Um, then I think

you can just set up a few meetings in between to make sure that that handoff is clean. And so for

me, it always starts off as, okay, now I really want you to pay attention to how I'm doing these

couple of things because I feel like they're core to keeping the project, you know, on, on track.

Maybe it's a tracker or a high level, where are we at document or following up with certain tasks,

like really kind of where you're providing a ton of value. And then maybe by the second,

third or fourth status, it's you QCing them doing it. And, and so I like a real clean handoff where

we say, okay, let's just meet once a week for the next four weeks. And this is kind of how we'll

plan to get to the end. And then after that, it's touch and go as needed.

Um, but yeah, I, I'm just a big believer, I think in inspect what you expect. So if you're

very clear upfront, what the handoff should look like and what that means they're taking on by the

end, you should be able to inspect that those expectations are being met. I love that. Do you

have an example of when that went horribly wrong? Oh, I'm sure. Somebody maybe just wasn't ready

and you thought they were, and you're like, oh, I missed this Q lesson learned.

Yes. I will have to think about that, but I know there's plenty.

I don't know that I had, I definitely have projects or things that I've tried to hand

off to people before that. Um, I don't know that I would have said that they were a hypo,

but they were, it, it needed to happen and they had the bandwidth. Maybe in some situations,

they were like a temp that was even hired to help do just this one thing. Um, I can't remember

specifically one where.

It was a very simple workflow process. It was like the ticket will get assigned to you.

If it's in the state, this is what you do. If, and then once this happens, then you change it

to this state and email this to this person or whatever, you know, kind of thing. And there's

even like folder structures from the past that you could follow. And it was just, but every single

time I did the check-in, it was like, what's going on? These have been sitting here for four days.

You're like, oh, I wasn't sure what to do with it. Can you show me again?

Like, oh my goodness. It's so hard because sometimes this particular one, I remember they

were very well-meaning, um, but it just was not clicking. It was not their strong suit

at all. Maybe they're more an idea person than an execution tactical person. Um, just wrong seat

kind of thing, um, as a temp. So they ended up moving on to a different temporal within the

company after a week or so, but it was, yeah, it was very clear. It wasn't working out, gave them

a week or two. And then it was like, Hey, how are you feeling about this? You know, are, are you

enjoying what you're doing? Is it making sense to you? And very, luckily they were very upfront too.

And they were like, no, this isn't really working for me. And I feel like I don't, I don't know what

I'm doing. It's like, let's find you something else to do. I've definitely had a few of those.

I had one where we were onboarding a new partner. So we were syndicating out our listings to this,

this new website. And this one handled it very differently.

So it was a pretty simple task of like, instead of all of our products automatically being

eligible to be on that partner, it was the inverse. We had to manually approve products

to be eligible for that partner. And we did so by putting in the product ID into the system

that created an enabled rule. Okay. Pretty basic person wasn't super interested though.

So they just went into that brainless state and they copied the wrong,

but it wasn't a product ID. It was a manufacturer ID.

And our system was broke for two weeks until Doug could get in there and fix it.

Oh my goodness. So then fast forward four months, I'm like, okay, remember,

this is what happened last time. So let's not let that happen. Happened again.

Okay. Yeah. But I would say these are the types of moments though, that kind of perfect your

handoff plan, right? Like 10 years ago, Nate would not have had a very structured,

here are the expectations. We're going to meet three more times by the end. This is how I want

it to be. You know what I mean? It's, it's all of those oopsies along the way that kind of.

Yep. Yep. Uh, I definitely learned when you're, when it's somebody who's attempt that may not be,

you know, all that engaged. Yes. Uh, okay. Either do screenshots with a walkthrough and

like do the in-person walkthrough, but then hand it off to them with some screenshots to,

to follow or create a video. Right. Um, back then I think that was maybe even pre COVID. So

you didn't really do too many of those just like quick video recordings as you're walking through

something on the screen like you do now. Yes. A loom. So, um, the screenshot one would have

worked better though. But on the flip side, I've definitely had other handoffs that have gone

much smoother when you get a hypo who really, really is engaged and wanting to learn and

wanting to grow.

It's amazing how quickly the handoff can go. You know, you show them something once and they have

three questions and you check in and it's already further than you thought it would be. And,

and, uh, they're already like, Oh, and I did this too.

Yep. I love that.

That's your sign that you, that you found it. You did. You got, you got the right one.

All right. I have some questions for you, Nate, related to this.

Okay.

Have you ever, have you ever, have you ever, have you ever, have you ever, have you ever,

have you ever discovered a high potential employee specifically because you're working

on a random project together that wasn't part of your official director duties?

Yes. So there's been plenty of examples of this, but this one was super fun. So

this is years ago. We had done this opportunity by, I was a part of the buying team and we bought

like gay lords of last year's Halloween costumes from a company that was liquidating.

And there was like,

a lot of good stuff in there, but along with the good stuff was a bunch of onesie twosies.

And so we basically, and, and no organization, like this stuff didn't come in a master carton

with 50 of the costume in it, right? This was like gay lords of dumped costumes in brand new,

like new quality. Yeah. And perfect quality, but not, yeah, not organized. Horrible.

So me and someone on my team ended up getting super thrifty and we made, um,

um,

a Microsoft access database program where we could scan the barcodes of each one one by one coming out

of the gay lords. And it would recognize if we've, if we've scanned that before, it would just add a

plus one quantity. If we hadn't, it would ask for the product details where we would then type in

the name and manufacturer. So by the end we had like a UPC spit out of everything that we needed

to like check in. And that whole process was like, we had never, like we are buyers.

We are not logistics. You know what I mean? But like had to kind of figure it out. And there was,

uh, specifically one other person on the team that was just like really, really great at thinking of

the scenarios and okay, but you know, we need to figure this out and let's incorporate that.

And by the end of, you know, maybe it wasn't a hundred percent perfect, but we saved a bunch

of time and checking all that random stuff in and we were able to, you know, proceed and sell it

before, before like the holiday was over. So I think that's another big piece too,

is somebody who's okay with it, not being perfect and not letting that hold them up

going like, it's good enough that we can, that it's making an impact. So let's keep moving.

Absolutely. Okay. I have one for you now, if that's okay.

Yeah.

So when you're in the weeds on a project with a junior staffer, what's that unhinged spark you're

looking for? Like, is it a specific behavior or way of thinking that like immediately flags to you

as yep, hypo.

Yeah. One thing. It's funny because I don't know that there's one thing I'm looking for.

It's when something happens, I'm like, Oh, Hey, that was definitely a hypo move. Right.

Um, I think one though, that we've talked about a couple of times already though,

is thinking ahead a few steps, right. And even better than that, sometimes it's thinking how

it will affect other teams because then, you know, they're not just,

they're not just in it for them and moving forward, they're in it for like the overarching

goal and the company, and they're going to be a good leader because they're putting others

first too, not just themselves. So I think that would probably be the key one.

This just popped into my head, but I think for me, one of the earliest indicators

are the people that go, Hey, I saw you put a meeting on my calendar without a description.

Oh,

what are we going to meet on? I want to make sure I'm prepared and I'm not going to be like,

I'm not going to be like, I'm not going to be like, I'm not going to be like, I'm not going to be like,

yes. Where's the agenda? Cause you know, then when they are setting meetings,

it's going to be for a purpose and they're going to make whatever needs to get done,

done and move on. And they don't want to waste time. Like they want to come to that meeting

prepared and leave with to do's. They don't want to spend half of it. You know, they understand

the value of their time and yours. I think one other for me is those like EQ signals is there's,

um, definitely when there's somebody who's a very strong personality and you have somebody coming

into, Oh, not like you, Nate, you know what I mean? Not like you, um, you have a strong,

like they think that their way is the way it should be done. And they try to take charge,

even though they may not be the leader. That's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for the

person who can influence them and get them to do what they want. And I think that's a really good

to see somebody else's perspective other than their own. When I see that happen, it's like

they can handle difficult situations, maybe people, difficult conversations with peers or

employees when they have them, that kind of thing. Having someone you're considering for a leadership

role. Yes. I definitely look for, do you have the ability to indirectly lead? Like you're not their

boss. You don't have the authority to define what their next actions are, but can you get their buy

in and can you influence?

Their priorities in an appropriate way? Because in reality, you're doing that all the time. I mean,

even we're indirectly leading external vendors, right? Like,

absolutely. And not doing it just, just out of like sheer force is the key. Like some people

hear that and they think, okay, got it. Uh, and they start bossing people around and that's not

the same. All right. I got another one for you. Okay.

How do you keep people in line?

People from acting formal or stiff when you as the boss have a project on your desk. So you're

working with folks. How do you make sure to get the real like inner workings of the team that

they aren't putting on a front? So I think some of this comes with the territory. Like the longer

you have a project on your desk, the easier that becomes because people realize kind of how to work

with you. So for one, I think that does improve over time, but for two, I think it's, you know,

one of my tactics is literally trying to directly cut through that friction, right? Like,

oh, relax, like take a seat. This is what we're going through. How do you think? You know what I

mean? And, and I definitely took more of a, well, I mean, sometimes I think it's important just to

And if you're blunt in the right way about it, you know, just, uh, yeah, let's set that aside.

Let's just brainstorm some ideas here and just really try to, um, you know, make it,

make it feel informal. I think that is important because yeah, if people do come in with their guard

up and they are, you know, stiff, you don't end up getting to like the important parts of the

conversation, right? There's a lot there you have to peel away. And I think at the end of the day,

like if we're going to change a process or invent something new for the org to use,

we really need to think about the nitty gritty of like every layer and how people are going to be

impacted. And you're just not going to get there if you don't remove those barriers first.

Yeah. I've definitely been in, in brainstorming sessions where it's quiet. Like you could drop a

pen in here.

It's like, what is going on guys? Like I've had drinks with you. I've had lunch with like,

you know me, right? Um, but I can understand too, that they don't, they don't want to put

out an idea that might be considered stupid. That isn't fully fleshed out, that kind of thing.

So what I love doing is saying something really dumb, like really like, okay guys,

let's just get it rolling. This is, this needs a lot of work, but here's a ridiculous idea.

I'm not, I'm not saying we do this, but I'm using it so that,

we can take it in a direction and, you know, shape it and mold it or come up with another

idea because it sparks something, you know, like no idea is a dumb idea when you're brainstorming.

That's the whole point of it. Like you, you don't judge any of it either. You, number one rule,

you just say it all, put it all out there and you don't judge it. It doesn't matter what it is.

You still write it down because it could lead to something.

Absolutely. I think like, especially in a quiet room as the leader showing that little bit of

humility goes a long way. Like, all right, this is the,

the first idea that popped into my head. Like I'll be first.

Yep. And making sure it's not completely brilliant.

Right. It should not be the end one. Yes.

Yes. Okay. Another one for you. You mentioned that staying in the work helps with good

communications. So can you give me an example of a time when being in the work allowed you

to translate the technical mess into a clear strategic direction?

Hmm. Being in the work, uh, I took on a team at one point where I did not know anything about it.

It was email CRM, right? This was eight some years ago or something like that. Uh, I knew,

I knew basics, but I definitely didn't understand how the juice was made. Right. Um, so I asked a

lot of questions. I asked a lot of questions. I asked a lot of questions. I asked a lot of questions.

I asked a lot of questions. I asked a lot of questions. I asked a lot of questions. I asked a lot of questions.

I asked a lot of questions. I asked a lot of questions. And then I actually went in and did

some of the work myself, even if it didn't need to be done technically double working. Right. But

it allowed me to understand how the process worked and it allowed to free up an entire person to work

on dev projects instead of project managing, uh, our like homepage ads and CRM emails. Uh, because

at the time we needed a front end developer to code everything. We needed an email person to,

to actually merchandise and pick everything. Um, we needed to do inventory checks, like all this

stuff needed to happen. And we had a PM who was making sure everybody did their pieces and it

just lived in like a SharePoint list somewhere. And I ended up taking this ticketing system

and building out a workflow for it. So we were able to take, instead of the SharePoint system

and somebody checking in with people all the time and sending out these recap emails of what was

happening.

It could just get assigned from one person to the next person and be in the state with whatever

needed to happen. And it went through the whole process from like, here, we're going to send an

email, um, or here we're going to do a homepage ad all the way through getting it on the site,

beta testing it and pushing it live into production.

So Nate, what would be the first desk project someone should pick up to find hypos and also

key, make sure that you're not looking like a micromanager.

I think the secret's not looking like a micromanager.

Micromanager is to not, is when you're picking a project to find one that doesn't already have

like a clear owner. And I think like if there's one that already does, you're going to inherently

be seen as a micromanager potentially. Yeah. And so like maybe a less glamorous, you know,

loosely defined project that doesn't have a clear owner yet where you can step in,

help get some of the plumbing in and then hopefully duck out.

I love that.

Okay. So I think in closing, the bottom line is this, like, as you move up, as you move through

your career, it becomes easier and easier to just lose touch of the actual friction that your team

faces every day. I think if, if the only way that you know what's happening in your company is

through an Excel spreadsheet or a slide deck, the reality is that you're leading a version of the

business that no longer exists. Today's environment moves quickly and that's stagnant, right? So you're

making decisions based on how things used to work versus how they actually work today.

Yeah. And more importantly, too, I think you're missing out on the people. I keep saying hypo,

a high potential hypo rock star from a distance. You have to spot them when you're both staring

at the same broken process or the same tight timeline. And they're the ones that are like

finding the way out and looking those multiple steps ahead.

Exactly. So I think like, here's our challenge for you this week,

pick one project that's technically below your pay grade, you know, but above your current visibility.

and don't go in there just to take over but really go in there to listen and observe

i think a great way to start that too is even just a quick little brainstorm session with your team

where where are some sticky points and let's just dig in right and find a team member who's thinking

those three steps ahead let them know that you see them that's so important too because that can

really help fuel them to continue to do that and grow and stay in the weeds just enough to keep

your edge and your leadership will stay grounded in reality take the challenge guys let us know

what you did we'd love to have someone on to speak about it even if they have something really meaty

they want to talk on hit us up and until next time stay type a and a little unhinged

so

you

thanks for listening to type a unhinged now it's time to get to work make sure to hit subscribe so

you never miss a system update well a couple parts editing the episode were fun because i forgot for

example that you talked about getting your son in firebase and then you're for your next project

you were maybe going to help him get the bare bones in there and i was like i completely forgot

about that i did too i have not done that we've been in a whirlwind because he got his son in

his driver's permit so we've we've we shift focusing that's right yeah yeah

shifting gears to shifting gears but

that was bad

i'm putting all four of these at the beginning you are not please don't please don't

so let's start with the why

why

you