Sacred Cows Make Great Burgers: Hard Truths, Hard Resets, and Real Talk

Mindy

Corbett: All right, here we are. This is episode two of Now That I Know. it's Kale and Mindy again. this should be fun. We're gonna be talking more about Kale today. Last week it was was we talked up talked about what I do and how my business works, and today we're gonna focus on Kale. so first I'm just gonna kind of let Kale give us a little bit of information about his business, his website, what what he does, and and then Got some questions. So if you want to kick us off and give us a little bit of background, that would be great.

Cale: yeah, I'll do my best. So last week we talked about, you know, hey, Mindy's business origin and what c what inspired her to come up with her revenue optimization and intelligence and then the ROI that works dot com site that is the product, if you will. And this week we're gonna turn that same sort of again, turn that same sort of lens toward me and talk about. what I'm bringing to the market and why and and where it came from. And so I'll do my best to share with you something that is is in constant change. I'm shifting it. In fact this week I'm going to be tweaking a bit the offers themselves, but that's really not relevant. my product, if you will, to use Mindy's word, is Is is the idea here is I want to enable and empower people who are in let's say program management, operations, strategy. They're in that place where they are responsible for the outcome of of an op of a of a strategy. They're responsible for delivery, but they're not responsible for the decisions. They're not responsible for all the framework and all the stuff upstream, if you will, that gave them the the parameters and the and the constraints that they're operating under. And so they are constantly worried about falling behind. They're worried about not getting the right decisions from leadership to to get objectives met, so forth and so on. And so I've spent the last fifteen years, much like Mindy had mentioned for hers, I've spent the past fifteen years living as a program manager, as a director, as as a person responsible for either the people or the systems themselves, I had the same sort of kind of pain points that Mindy had, and I was collecting all this and all this experience and all these workarounds and all these tricks and tips and things that had come together in my own in my own practice, if you will. So I said, look, I we can talk about the origin more here in a minute, Mindy, because I think the story is inter is entertaining and relevant. The point is, is Mindy

Corbett: Think so.

Cale: I I got it down and I said to myself, hey, how do I want to get this out to other people? do I want to give it away? Do I want to sell it? Do I want to do some kind of combination in between? and I've been spending the last six months, much like you have, refining ROI and how it goes to the market. I've Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: been doing the same thing with control alt recover. And the last Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: thing I'll say about that before I turn it back over to you to sort of moderate this, is Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: that name control alt recover kind of came to me, as ought these things often do, out of the, you know, out of the universe, I like to say. you Mindy

Corbett: Ha.

Cale: know, it started started with the concept of, hey, I'm bringing in this concept of of recovery and and getting things back on track. And I'm like, well, hey, you it's like control alt delete, but I'm like, no. It's not like control alt delete because I'm not wanting to reboot. We aren't necessarily Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: starting over from scratch. We are looking at these programs, these initiatives, these strategies that are off the rails, and we say, let's get them back on the rail, let's recover them. And Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: so that sort of that metaphor of control alt-delete, you know, from our history using computers every day of our lives for the last many years, Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: that's stuck. And I'm like, well, let's do control alt recover. Mindy

Corbett: Mm. Mm-hmm.

Cale: just so happens as far as I know there's no recover key, but that's part of what makes it fun in my mind. So control alt recover came from that perspective. And I the last thing I'll say about it is in the documentation, in the offer, in some of the details, I play off that control, the alt, and the recover aspects as part of different steps, different framings, different looks. I really try to have people help them keep the concepts and the frameworks and things in those buckets to sort helps them know where they are and how they can navigate all of this complicated stuff. So anyway, if that made any sense at all, I'd be surprised. Mindy

Corbett: It made sense to me, I think. So if I'm looking at it from a high level bird's eye view, I I would be say I would be thinking that it it's it's something along the lines of what that means is you're gaining control of the chaos. You're putting a stop to whatever has gone off the rails now, and that and then you're bringing in a recovery process. So the control alt recover basically means, hey, we're stopping what we're doing now. We're not deleting it, we're stopping it. We're getting it under control and we're putting in a process of recovery. Is that fair?

Cale: That That's exactly right. Yep. Mindy

Corbett: Right. And so I think it sounds like what happens a lot of times is there's a series of inflection points that people are missing because to kind of speak to the whole universe concept, they're not listening to whatever is speaking to them where something could have been caught, maybe they didn't catch it. do you have some insight on that that you can share where maybe they could have caught those things?

Cale: Yeah, I think what you're I'm gonna build on what I think you were saying, which is we'd call that pattern recognition for one thing, right? If they've been if if you know, if my ideal customer is a person again who's been around the block a bit and they know they know their job, they know their business, they know how to run programs and operations and this kind of thing, but it's just a situation where the patterns have escaped them for whatever reason, or Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: the environment is what I call hostile. And so they just Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: never can quite get comfortable for one reason or the other. They can't sit down long enough to pick up those patterns and get them recognized. And so they Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: wind up, you know, two, three months down the line getting by by the skin of their teeth and they get to say a quarterly business review with a with a VP and the wheels begin to come off the bus because They cannot explain to him or her why the strategy is stuck where it is, how it went off track, what have you, right? So that's exactly right. and it even can go so far back as to environments where they don't have the ability or the the the permission in some cases to Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: start at the beginning when the initiative kicks off or when the program is is begins and just kind of watch. or what I call drift, right? Just Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: do spot checks. Just keep your finger on the pulse of the thing so that you can do everything in your power to be predictive about these derailings. Right. So Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cale: I look at it, I I try to have equal parts prevention and equal parts recovery for these folks. Right? Or at the very least we get them, they they when they reach out to me, they are in a state of panic. Things if the wheels have fallen off the bus. How do I get the wheels back on? And we get the wheels back on, and then I say, Let's prevent the wheels from falling off next time. Right? Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: Yeah. Mindy

Corbett: Right. So what are what are some situations that would cause that panic? Where where would a business have to be where they're calling you because they're in a panic, they can't recover on their own, they need Kale's help?

Cale: Hmm. the the one that the a couple of examples that strike me are and I'll I'll I'll go back and talk about I in in LinkedIn and other places I I refer to it as like the decision matrix, right? We've got a Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: situation where you've got a strategy that gets kicked off. And the Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: strategy, let's say, is we need to take two completely disparate product offerings and we need to merge them together at the enterprise level because we're confusing the heck out of our customers. with this Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: version of the offering and that version of the offering, right? And you've you've lived that experience with a particular vendor, you know? And so th that was Mindy

Corbett: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I've seen you do it, but I just want you to speak to it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Cale: You got it. And so I'm trying to I'm trying to protect the innocent or protect the guilty, as it were. And so that particular program that I'm alluding to is a very real thing that happened to me. And Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: so I had VP on one side who Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: said, This is the way we're going to do this merge. VP on the other said, Mindy

Corbett: Mm. Mm-hmm.

Cale: no, we're going to do it this way because they came from they said, look, we've got the customer Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: benefit we we know the customer better than you do, and vice versa, right? Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: And so At the very beginning of that particular program, we were somewhat star crossed because I had to fight those two, I had to fight them together. Right. And then that was Mindy

Corbett: Mm. Mm.

Cale: then that allowed us to get kicked off. Well, and that sounds like, Mindy

Corbett: Mm mm.

Cale: hey, we solved the problem ahead of time. No, we just really sort of band aided them together, come to find out. They got Mindy

Corbett: Mm, mm.

Cale: into steer co meetings with me, they nodded their heads, they said, Yeah, we'll we'll cooperate, we'll pret you know, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: We got kicked off, we began our program, and all of a sudden that that agreement went away. They were Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: not cooperating. They went back to their respective turfs, if you will, so forth and so on. and so Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: probably within about a month of kickoff, the wheels came off the bus in a very dramatic way in the middle of a steer code meeting, right? It was myself and a few of my peers from the different organizations. And we were just doing our normal steer co business, and someone from the other quote other VP came in and said, We're stopping, we're not doing this because VP so and so said they are pulling out their product, they're pulling out their people, they're pulling out their cash, you name it, right? So Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: that happened, that is a real thing, Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: and that that what I just alluded to there is what I'll call that decision matrix where Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cale: That particular VP had a decision to make and he made a decision that was was completely contrary to what we were trying to do. A flip side of that could be you need a decision to be made, and the decision is not made. Or Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm. Right.

Cale: what happened to me more recently is you have a situation where people don't know who owns the decision, Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: right? And people and and people who don't live in that in that corporate fishbowl like you and I do. I think always think that look, if they're a VP, they're an SVP, they're a C suite person, that they've always got all the answers. They know what to say, they know what to do, we know the truth, which is no. They know what they can prove with data, they know what their teams tell them, they know what they Mindy

Corbett: No, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Cale: can intuit from their own pattern recognition. But Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: if they don't know what they own for whatever reason, that Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: is another situation we face with. way too often in in Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: our in our worlds, as I I think you can attest. Yeah. Mindy

Corbett: Yeah, the true reality is most of the time they need someone like you or me to tell them what decision to make and and the reason why that's the right decision. And sometimes you have to get all in a room and say, This is where we're at. This is what you have to do. And y it's sometimes easier said than done in reality.

Cale: Yeah. Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: D very true. The w and the one thing and and I'll and I'll I'll leave I'm gonna leave it with this 'cause I'm sure we're gonna unpack more and talk more, but I I Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: call this I call this the the strategic alignment playbook, and I say playbook as as something of a nod to my old friend the Pinbok, where I'm really talking about just a just a book of Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: plays. What can you do when you find yourself in a situation this is not This is not from A to Z, do step one, step two, step three. This is telling another group of professionals, hey, you know your business, you know your work, you are as competent as I am, if not more. These are just Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: some things that I've these are tricks I've learned over the years with nice fancy labels that help you know Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: how to get through this thing and be able to move on with your life or prevent it from happening or whatever. So I call them frameworks for lack of a better term, but these are by no means this isn't ad this isn't agile, this isn't scrum, this isn't anything, this isn't Kanban, this isn't Mindy

Corbett: mhm, mhm

Cale: any kind of a a set of proscriptions, right? This is just a like a like a pinbok, but only, you know, with a different set of lenses. Mindy

Corbett: Well, I think frameworks are good. I think we should actually talk about that a little bit because I think for both of us, there's a lot of we see a lot of information out there that's not necessarily wrong, but it's misleading or it's it's so nuanced that that the information that's being put out there doesn't cover everything. And and and people are trying to treat it like something that you can. you can fix with a cheat sheet or a checklist or or something that's very simplistic. And I think the real answer is people need to learn to work from things like frameworks and outlines and basic structures. So I think looking at frameworks is actually really smart because it gives you the basic idea with that nuanced approach so that if there's if there's a situation that doesn't directly fit into it, you have the opportunity to build on it instead of just saying, okay, it's always this, because it's almost never always this. s yeah, right? It's never always this. But you know what I'm saying? And I see that

Cale: Almost never always yeah, right. Yeah, no I know but you're right. You're right, you're right. I do. Mindy

Corbett: a lot. I see people putting out these cheat sheets and these these these checklists that are or like, you know, Sure, they're 80% correct, but but they they require a lot of iteration. They require a lot of thought when you know, because sometimes that situation is not correct. You know, 10% of the time that might not be right and your cheat sheet doesn't account for that, but a framework does, right? So

Cale: It and that catastrophic that ten percent could be catastrophic, right? That ten Mindy

Corbett: Right.

Cale: percent wherever it lands. I think I'm gonna it Mindy

Corbett: Right. So I'm wondering if you can walk us through how your framework works and what what what that would do for somebody who was in a situation like that.

Cale: Yeah, I w I I will, but I'm I'm gonna resist deep diving too much. Let me kind of give it a I'll give a Mindy

Corbett: That's fine.

Cale: I'll give a little kind of a little peek and walk down like one path. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Mindy

Corbett: Give a taste like I did.

Cale: And so w the way I the way I put this all together is I say, look, you've got a situation where in that control vein, I start with those frameworks that apply everywhere, when I say in every environment, every environment, every type of situation I've been in across the spectrum for the last many years doing what we do, these are consistent. This is this is what happens in how you do things, whether you're in healthcare, you're in technology, or you're in SaaS, you're in construction. It doesn't matter. The the same business problems persist, the same I like to f use the phrase five year olds playing soccer. I you it's not we're not herding cats, we're we're the coach for five year olds playing soccer. This is what we are, right? and so these these things Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm. Maybe you do. I heard cats.

Cale: these hur yeah. These things yeah, these things happen everywhere. So the whole idea is I start people off and I say, look, if you if you're trying to get your hand around your environment, let's start with what you know and let's start with your experience, right? And again, we're just going to come at it from the level of me giving them, for lack of better term, guidance. guardrails, a tactical or practical approach for them to go and remember to do the things they know how to do. Right? I'm not giving them a checklist, you check off all ten, you win. It's not that kind of thing. It's just reminding people, hey, you come into this with a with a a a set of experience and and and time under your belt and scars from being, you know, Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: where I've been, right? This is just to remind you and give you something to trigger to trigger that. we do have situations where I'm gonna have to provide them frameworks and provide them some things that, hey, the system fights back. You and I are familiar. Anybody who's listening Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: to this podcast is going to be familiar with times when the environment fights back, whether it's the culture, Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: it's the leadership, it's your peers, it's your customer, it's the board, it's the Mindy

Corbett: Budget.

Cale: budget. Right. It's whatever it is. the system Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cale: will resist change. And when the system Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm. Uh-huh.

Cale: resists change, what do you do? And then lastly, let's be honest, I can give you and I and I and I put in this recover aspect, I put in that field application bar part at the end by acknowledging, Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: hey, I can call them frameworks all day, I can tell you what works for me, I can tell you how to navigate in that hostile situation. But There are times when you just simply cannot overcome the environment. And you have to make Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cale: a decision at that point. How do I how do I continue to drive that program, that initiative when I know that this particular problem is insurmountable? What do I do? This is politically sensitive. This could wind up being a career-limiting move. It could be this, it could be that. that's where we often find ourselves. It's like, well, man. It's neat that Kale told me all these really cool things, but they don't mean crap now because I'm about to get fired for telling the truth. Well, you may very well get Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. That's a real concern.

Cale: fired for you may very well get fired for telling the truth, and and no, no Kales in the world can stop that. you know, been there, done that. but it's one of those things where I w I want to acknowledge in this in this part of the the framework, it's like I've been there. This is what I did. Not to help you, this is no, this is no get out of jail free card, but here's how you can work it. And you might be able to salvage the program. You might even have a situation like I've had in the past where you did everything you could to overcome that problem. You could not. You let your leaders know, and you can wind up getting promoted or doing everything you could to solve a problem that they realized you had no ability to solve. but you demonstrated Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: some other behaviors, Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: capabilities, whatever that gave you the opportunity to take the next step. And I found myself in situations like that once or twice. So anyway, the the little sort of I'll I'll pick I'll pick what I call my my favorites and and over here in these universal frameworks, if you were, where the bulk of the where the bulk of the content is for the most part, You know, I talked to you a minute ago about pattern recognition and things like that. I wanna I want to talk about like the first two, what I call the courage and clarity framework. And the courage and clarity framework is look, you at the very beginning of a program, there are already things or an issue, there are already things you know you have to get your hand around that could be wrong, could be undecided, Mindy

Corbett: Right.

Cale: could be broken, even at the very beginning. you could have a situation where there are, let's say My favorite scenario is there are ten priorities in this organization. And we don't Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: have enough men, women, budget, time, anything else, permission to do ten priorities all at once. Right? Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: So one of the things that I I say to folks is the reality is that we've been there. Go into that situation, getting your stakeholders to limit it to three. What are Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: the top three? And it's not saying you can't do the seven at some point. Focus on those top three. Get them launched, get them kicked off, get them rolling. And then if you could get your headway Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: around them, let's go ahead and bring in the fourth one as that first one is rolling out, right? But people cannot concentrate and cannot be expected to deliver ten priority items at once. It's just I've never been in an organization where we could pull that off. We've tried. but you never have enough never. Mindy

Corbett: No, there's no way you can. Mm mm. Mm

Cale: Right. And three Mindy

Corbett: mm.

Cale: is for whatever reason, three seems to be the magic number regardless of organization size. You know, I'm not making that number up. I didn't pull it from an MBA book. This is just from practical, you know, practical lived experience. one of the other things I say to to peers, and they've said to me, and I've said to people that I've managed, and in you know, again, these are truisms, and this goes for you as well, regardless of the the kind of organization you're in. There are people that influence. outcomes. There are people that influence those outcomes. You can see them influencing them. Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: And there are people who are sitting in s what we call those shadow organizations who are influencing the outcome in ways you don't know. They're having hallway conversations. They're having conversations on the golf course with their their buddy from way back. You know, you name it. You have to get your hand around knowing who these people are. in the influence they're going to have on your success. Okay. Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: And the the other flip side of that is start building relationships and networking and influence with people way before you need it. Right? If you're dealing with a shadow organization, get to the bottom of it and find out what the impact is. At the same time, I say this with tongue in cheek, make your own shadow organization. And by that I mean Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: in reality, have your own network of people Who are Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: invested in the success of this particular initiative, right? Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: Have that have that team. You've got to do this way, way in advance. You're not gonna get a group of stakeholders signed off and and holding hands and singing kumbaya the day this thing kicks off. It would have had Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: to have happened a long time ago, building relationships, building credibility, again, telling you things you know. So Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm. You you're right, because if you don't, you're gonna have that shadow that shadow group come in and say, by the way, we're not doing this anymore, and you're blindsided by it.

Cale: And I and I you know as well as I do, they already have that network built. They already have those relationships. And and I don't mean to sound like there's this, you know, it's not Darth Vader sitting over there, but they they've Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: got they've got what they need to be effective, or they wouldn't be that shadow organization in the first place. So on down the on Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Cale: down the line, it's just one of those things where you know I just say, look, these are things we all run into, and these are things you can do. quickly and easily or not quickly, pardon me. Quickly, not easily. Building relationships is not quick, but it how do I say this? It's it's easier than a lot of things if you just do it. I talked or talked to you earlier at the beginning of this thing about knowing where knowing if you're drifting. Right? So Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: start your as soon as the the day the program kicks off, start looking for signs of drift. Start looking Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: to see if the scope changes. see if you are not getting things done at the right time. See if there is let's say it's a VP. I love I love picking on VPs in situations because they're just at that high enough at that level to have some power and to have some visibility, but they don't have all the answers. But they have just Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Cale: enough power to really put things into chur churn and chaos if they are not Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: if they're not governed, right, if you will. And so yeah. And so one of my one of the phrases yeah. Mindy

Corbett: Right. Right. From both ends.

Cale: One of the phrases I use in in the check in in the framework here is I call it sacred cow. So like you've got that VP, let's say she feels Mindy

Corbett: Uh-huh. Mm-hmm.

Cale: very strongly about that priority number four. You know, we we get we said, look, Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: we can only do three. She's like, Well, I'm holding on to my number four with grim death. You're not killing Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: my number four. Well, you f you figure out some way, before the thing finally kicks off, you figure out some way to bargain with her, And she's willing to put her her fourth priority aside for six months. That's the agreement. It's in the charter, right? And she's Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm. huh. Right.

Cale: gonna get something out of that deal. You know, you're you're horse trading, let's be honest, right? You're Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm. Right, right.

Cale: trading, you're trading favors, you're trading resources, you're doing all sorts of things to get the priorities met. Well, Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: two months later, let's say, all of a sudden that fourth priority shows up again in a conversation. And you're like, we killed that, right? Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: Charter says the agreement says, hey, that got killed. Well, what you're seeing is her sacred cow pop back up, right? Mindy

Corbett: Yep. Yep.

Cale: Okay. And you have to you have to know that's going to happen, and you have to be able to deal with that sacred cow situation. Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: And we talk about that in that courage and clarity framework. You've got to Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: be able to have that conversation with that stakeholder, with that key decision maker, and say, VP so and so we had an agreement. This sacred cow was dead. Please Mindy

Corbett: Mm mm.

Cale: help me understand why it's back and what you're willing to trade off out of these top three to keep it. You Mindy

Corbett: Right.

Cale: have to you have to take them back to that agreement and say, hey, if you're changing the terms on me, fine, but we're going to have to trade something else out. Which of Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: these three that you agreed to comes off the list so that Sacred Cow four can come back on? Right? It's a Mindy

Corbett: Right. Right.

Cale: Horrible conversation to have. It's never fun. She will push hard for keeping all four. Thank you very much. She's look, Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: I'm gonna go call your boss and tell your boss that you're being uncooperative. Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: You know, things like that happen. But that's where the courage part comes in. That's where the courage, you know. Yeah. So Mindy

Corbett: Go for it. Yeah. Yeah.

Cale: anyway, I you'll you'll hear if the folks who are listening haven't fallen asleep yet, they're gonna hear scar tissue, I like to call it. You know, these scenarios. Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. We have wounds.

Cale: Yeah, these scenarios I described to you, I'm not making these up. These are lived experience. So I'll stop there and see these are real. Yeah. And I say Mindy

Corbett: No. These are real. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Cale: that to say because they're real, that's why I got them out and onto paper, if you will, because they're real and Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cale: they have to be discussed and maybe someone can benefit. Yeah. Yeah. Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. Yeah. I I think the I think talking about the sacred cow in general when it comes to working as a professional is important anyway. Not just when it comes to this, because there are a lot of sacred cows. there's you know, when it comes to this is how we've always done it. That's a sacred cow. A lot of people

Cale: Absolutely. Mindy

Corbett: won't give that up. This person's been here forever. We can't replace them with automation. We can't train them to do anything else. They have to keep doing this manual thing, even if there's a better thing to do and they could be doing something else. That's a sacred cow. you know, there's there's so many things that that that businesses hold sacred that they will not give up, that you can't you cannot get them to get rid of. And I think it's important to be able to find a way to address those. and overcome them because sometimes they are the only thing or the biggest thing preventing you from getting over that hump or getting to the place where you are back on track. and so I think it's important

Cale: Right. And I wanna I Mindy

Corbett: to to really make sure that those are addressed.

Cale: Yeah. Now keep in mind here too, and I and I I feel like I need to say this explicitly, and I think you would agree, there is no framework, there is no piece of paper, there is nothing that says as a program manager, as an operations director or anything else that you are going to be successful every time. It's it's not it's it's not even a one person responsibility. But if Mindy

Corbett: No.

Cale: you're in a situation where we are most of the time in those roles we were just discussing, you are responsible for delivery. You're not responsible Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: for a lot of the other things that brought that delivery to your door, but you're responsible for delivery. And you have Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cale: to be able to have those courageous conversations bring clarity. Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: It doesn't mean you're going to get your way. It doesn't mean you're going to win all the time. It doesn't even mean that it's going to necessarily wind up going the direction it needs to. But you've done your Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: job. Because you've done everything you can do to to Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Cale: keep the thing going, to call out deltas, to be Mindy

Corbett: Right. Mm-hmm.

Cale: courageous and speak truth to power. I Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: I'm not here to say it's a you know it's a it's a utopia. It's not. But how many people do you and I know who won't even do that much? They will sit and let the they'll sit and let the fate happen to them and to their program Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cale: because they won't have that managerial courage, or they won't Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: seek the clarity, or they won't Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: know that they've got to look for patterns, so forth and so on, right? Yeah. Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. Yeah, because it's it's easier than than dealing with the potential fallout. And and by fallout I mean making VP you know who mad or you know or having to do more work. Right. They like they like coasting.

Cale: Mm. Yeah. Go along to get along. Yeah. Mindy

Corbett: Right. They like coasting and they like everybody getting along. So rather than make waves, they just keep their mouth shut and they just keep on going. And it that's not always the best way to go, but there are a lot of people that it's just easier. And so that's what they do. And you and I don't

Cale: Right. Right. So hmm. Mindy

Corbett: generally do things just to make life easier. Just not the way we operate.

Cale: No, no, and we we kind of also we don't even do it on purpose all the time, but it it winds Mindy

Corbett: No.

Cale: up being winds up being harder. Now, let me give it let me give the ball back to you, you know, to take the conversation where you'd like. I think the last thing I'll say about the about the frameworks here specifically is again these are ways to help people have something to to bounce their own brains against and have something to refer to that all that always speaks to lived experience and speaks to something that if they look at it, they're familiar with it. Or they're like, wow, I really could use that right now and I'll I'll Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: try that and I know I'll know I know what's yeah, I know it's there for me. we can talk in a moment about you know ideal customers and how I intend Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: to get this to them and things of that nature. But that is the the core of of what I'm trying to do, you know, Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: similar to what you're doing with ROI that works. You know, that Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cale: same you're you saw some pain. You live that pain, you're done being you're done being scarred, Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: and you'd like to prevent other people from having the the experience you've had. Yeah. Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of where I was gonna go. So let's talk about, you know, your customers. Who who who's your ideal customer? What who are you trying to help? And who could benefit from this?

Cale: Great question. I'm trying to help and I may not get myself to I may not get myself to the the right place on my page that keeps changing. But I but I my I've what I'll call my ideal customers or my target customers, you know, the folks that I want to help are really going to be in two camps. They're going to be the first camp is those folks that again, they've they've got a certain amount of responsibility. They're in that hot seat for delivery. But for whatever reason they're not they don't have all the things they need, they don't have the tools, the techniques, the experience, whatever. and they or they just need somebody to come in and provide them that clarity to get unstuck. And you know, whether it's handing them that playbook and offering them situations, you know, offering them time where I can meet with them an hour a week for six weeks and we can go through it together. And I can teach teach it to them and help them understand how to implement it. That's you know, that's one that's one type of customer, where I literally bring them through and and and remind them how to do this. there's a corollary to that same person who they find themselves in a situation today where, hey, they they'll benefit from that strategic alignment playbook, but they also find themselves, let's say, they want to make that next step from middle management to director. Right, that that lower rung of the executive status, if you almost said branch, the you know, director level, right? Mindy

Corbett: Still on the air force kale.

Cale: I know, I'm sorry. I've got a three, I've got a pathway, if you will, that helps them understand how to navigate from that middle manager, senior manager level to the next step to director. What do they need to do? How do they need to get there? you know what are the secrets and tricks. There are no secrets, there are no tricks. It's just get it's it's just work is the answer. But a lot of folks don't know what that work is. And having navigated that journey two or three times myself up and down up and down the chain, I've I've got the I've got the the pattern captured. Right. And I can help people help people make that make that leap. The other thing that I the other thing that I like to to do Is as you know from living with me for so many years, I like to teach, I like to bring knowledge to as many people as possible. And so the other ideal customer for me is going to be that VP, is going to be that SVP or that senior director or even the COO who says, Look, I saw you on LinkedIn, I saw these, I saw this thought leadership, I saw the the practical nature, I saw the proof, the scars. I would love for you to come in and do like say three days of training for a hundred of my people. And I would love for you to take us through the strategy alignment playbook, for example. Let's get us from here to there. Let's do a hundred people. Let's do it all you know all at once. on site, virtual, remote, whatever. I can I can bring that knowledge and that that star tissue benefit to more people. And so it's that it's that leader, you know, it's that senior leader, that executive leader that says, man, we really want to try to get some of this into our DNA. Right? So it's it's that it's that same vein. and so those are my customers. It's the people who they need the knowledge and they would either like to do it themselves and just learn it, like some of us are autodidactic. Others they want to have someone like me kind of coach them through it, or they want to get to the next level or or what have you. And then finally again, they want to have mass impact on their organization so that that COO says, look, six Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: months from now, we're not going to go through this set of pain again. The next time we when we start planning the second half of the year or we start planning the first half of FY27 or whatever it is we're doing, we're Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: not going to make these same mistakes again because we are taking these learned lessons and we're applying them to our to our organization. Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: And We'll just make new whole whole different mistakes later. But not these, right? there's that's there's that there's that incentive, you know as well as I do, having, you know, being a leader with a large organization or being the person who who is asked to go and take that training. There is a lot of power and a lot of information that you can take away from that and use there and carry it with you on into the future as well. I want to fill that need. And I want to do it in a way that's not like the the big four where you come in with five guys and they come in wearing their power suits and they just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, right? I bring it in, it's Mindy

Corbett: Right. And they tear you down.

Cale: and they tear you down. This isn't basic training. I I want Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Cale: to come in and share these things with you tactically. I call it tactical and practical, right? I just we're just having a conversation, and I just happen to be the one sharing the information. And then we talk about how to apply it, you know, that that practical aspect. It's Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: almost like they were sitting in a c in one of my college courses, but it's just many more students at once. You know? Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. Well, I guess so speaking of your college courses, so that actually kind of leads me down the path of so talk about teaching. So I know you you teach and you mentor and that's part of this piece.

Cale: Mm-hmm. Mindy

Corbett: And and you sort of alluded to and talked a little bit about what that looks like. If somebody's doing this, what are they getting from you? Let's just say they need one-on-one. How does that work?

Cale: Yeah. so the the way it works is and and I'm I appreciate you asking, I would start them with what I call that signal check, and I'm I'm playing with how that's gonna be charged or how I'm gonna, you know, frame that all out. But that signal check is me getting on the phone or that person getting on the phone with me for 30 minutes, and I've got a guided conversation I have with them that says basically, let's talk about. what you're dealing with right now, whether it's that that in you know that strategic alignment playbook scope type thing, or you are looking for that next step in your career in management levels of this thing, let's find out what you need, where you're stuck, right? and then we talk about over like a six-week period, and six weeks seems to be the sweet spot of where we go through this much information. I can keep their attention, we can give we can get information to a person, have them taught and have them be able to apply it without losing them seven, eight, ten, twelve weeks, or trying to cram, you know, fifteen years of knowledge into their brain in in two weeks, right? Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: Six weeks, you know, an hour a week, if you will, is is the magic formula I've seen for doing that. And so they're going to meet with me an hour a week for six weeks. We're going to go through that what I call that bespoke or that tailored training opportunity for them where they are getting pieces of the if they only need parts of the playbook, that's what we'll cover. And then we'll cover other parts of leadership. I want to bring those elements to them and let them in some ways choose from pieces if that's how they need to do it, if that's what they want Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: to learn. Or we can go through the entire SAP, whatever the case may be. It all starts with that I call that signal check. Everything has have a name. So I just basically say, Where are you? where do you feel like I can help you get unstuck? Right? And we call that the signal check. That's exactly right. Right. Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. Similar to my audit, so yeah. Yeah.

Cale: and say it's like instead of walking them through a thing where we're checking And we're counting up the number of of credits or debits that they've got in that checklist. It's it's having a human conversation and saying, Okay, I get ya. Let me tell you how I can help you. And here's how I've done this before, right? Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. Yeah.

Cale: And they, you know, they s they sign up with me, if you will, and we we start marching together toward them overcoming this situation. Yeah. Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. Yeah. So y you can kinda hear between the two of us how we approach things just a little bit differently. We have very similar thoughts and very similar ideas, but we approach things very differently. Kale goes in very much with the let's let's get a feel for this, let's see where they're at, let's let's let's pick this person's brain and see what they're feeling, what they're thinking, and I'm very much data, data, data. But

Cale: Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. Mindy

Corbett: In reality, I need the data to make an informed decision. It's not that the conversation won't be there, it will, but it's it's really funny how you're going after your you're making your decision on what they need based on what you're getting and feedback from a phone call. That's how you're checking to see what they're gonna need and building your plan around that. And my plan is built around what is what are your days in AR? What's your denial rate? What's your revenue? Where where are you at? From a financial perspective, because I need that data to decide where your gaps are. And I'm making my decisions almost entirely on data.

Cale: Well it's funny you mentioned that. I and I know exactly what you're saying, and I I'm true in Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: truth and not disagreeing with you. I would just sort of flippantly say that Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. It's funny.

Cale: that signal check that I refer to, I am gathering data. I'm I'm Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: not gathering it on a spreadsheet. We're not doing trend analysis, we're not doing days in AR, we're not doing you know, black Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. Yeah.

Cale: line, red line, or it you know. But it's data, it's a signal, you Mindy

Corbett: Yeah, yes.

Cale: know. But you're right, it's a it's a different dynamic and a different way, Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: I think, ultimately, of working towards solving the same kinds of problems. Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Cale: I'll give a shout out to our our friend and colleague Coran, who Mindy

Corbett: Yes. Hi Karan.

Cale: hi, who is telling us and we'll put maybe in in our show notes, we'll put a link to her to the things that she does well, the things she's putting out in the universe, her her business and her s problems that she's trying to solve with data, by the way. Mindy

Corbett: Definitely check out her her her website. It's awesome. Yep.

Cale: Yep. And rather than rather than try to spell it out and and we'll we'll say it's data brain and again we'll we'll provide the link. You know, she said she said to you and me independently and together, you two are doing a lot of the same work and you're doing it independently, and why? Right? Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: And and she didn't put it quite so she's a little bit more stark, you know, than that, but you know, Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: she's right. And so it goes back down to again, you and I together, we're we we're this is by way of trying to bring this podcast home for the day. We Mindy

Corbett: Yes. Yeah.

Cale: we we've got this podcast out here because we realized through feedback from Coran, through feedback from our friend Chris and many others, that there is something to discuss here, right? Whether it's good naturedly how we approach data gathering to s to define and solve a problem, to build a plan. if it's the problems we're trying to solve in our particular verticals or horizontals, right? at the end of the day, we found out again, like we like to say, we sit twenty feet apart and we were doing the same jobs for Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: different domains, different enterprises. And so many times if we had been smart, we could have talked about it. We could have bounced Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: ideas off one another. We could have shared, you know, who knows, right? But we didn't do that. So now here we are saying, Hey, we're going to boost each other, we're going to support one another, in this podcast thing. and who knows in the future our two our two problem solving businesses may wind up morphing together in some way you and I can't yet determine. Excuse me. So who knows, yeah. Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. Yeah. I'm absolutely certain there's somebody out there who could use both of us. Certain of it.

Cale: Yeah, yeah. And I think it's a situation where not not to not to to pro prognosticate too much, but that person could be someone, let's say, in that revenue cycle management leadership position where she's Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: got a staff of people whose job it is is to get that revenue recognized, get it in the system, get it Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: get their physicians paid or their providers paid, right? So Mindy

Corbett: Right.

Cale: she's Sitting there at that operations level, that delivery level, that director level, and she's got she's got OKR, she's got numbers to hit. And these men Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: and women down at that at that pointy end of the sphere level are blocked. And Mindy

Corbett: Right.

Cale: so she comes to you and you Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: give her the keys to the kingdom on how to get these folks unblocked. Right? She says, Mindy

Corbett: Yeah. See the yep.

Cale: Well, she says, Man, that MindyU just saved my life. Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: I wish I knew how to prevent this kind of thing from happening again in the future, or I wish I knew how to take the next step and really get my leadership to listen to me. You're like, Well Yeah. Mindy

Corbett: Hm. Well, bring it I'll bring it back around to your sacred cow

Cale: Right. Mindy

Corbett: and say most of the time the reason why they're blocked is because of a sacred cow.

Cale: Sacred cow. Yeah. Well yeah. Mindy

Corbett: So absolutely we could come right back to, hey, let's get one of your frameworks in place and

Cale: Mm-hmm. Mindy

Corbett: align it with some of my workflow and they they would be in a in a much better position than they were than when they started.

Cale: That's right. And not only would that be the case, they would be able to then say, look, they've overcome that barrier, and if it's you know getting past denials, they now what you teach them and give the tools for them how to do, they are not going to be blocked by that particular denial barrier again. They've got they've Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm. Right.

Cale: got the the path that works, quote, every time. Until the data changes or the rules change, and you do keep up with that, by the way. yeah, Mindy

Corbett: Mm. Right. Sure. Right. Yes, policy changes. Hello.

Cale: policy changes. And I think the last thing I'll say about the framework and this kind thing here, I'm on version 3.6 since January. I started capturing this out of my head and onto paper, if you will, sitting in Maine, you may recall, sitting there Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: during Christmas break Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: in a little in a little cabin in Maine. Sounds sexier than it is. It's a nice space, but it's you know, it's a bit on the blue-collar side. And we're sitting there having Christmas and you know, relaxing. and this stuff just starts all coming out. Mindy

Corbett: You might have been relaxing. I was sick.

Cale: But you know what I mean. Yeah, I was I was sitting at Mindy

Corbett: Yeah.

Cale: that at that dining room table thinking about thinking about, you know, loss and thinking about job and Christmas and all that heavy stuff that hits you at that time of year. And this kind Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: of stuff just started pouring out of my head. And it's like, man, I better get this down. You know. Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: It wasn't that it wasn't the next great American novel because I can't seem to write that, Mindy

Corbett: Mm-hmm.

Cale: but I This just came out. and my friend Claude helped me get it into something that was human readable Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: and made some sense from you know from A to B, A to Z. Mindy

Corbett: Mm, mm-hmm.

Cale: and I've spent the last six, eight months refining this, talking with customers, talking with would-be customers, you know, peers, you, Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: really refining this thing. And again, I'm up to version three point six. And I say that to say Whether it's your ROI that works, you know, it's it's your it's your denial codes and all the libraries and all the things that you've got, those are constantly being kept up to date and tied to the latest data, to the latest Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: rules, the latest Mindy

Corbett: Mm.

Cale: right, governance, if you will. Mindy

Corbett: Right.

Cale: Same thing here. The the framework is gonna continue to evolve. Right, as as I run into news situations or or my customers tell me about situations where you know what, that doesn't work very well. You like you might think it does, but we're gonna go in and tweak that. And so whether I'm training you on it or you come to some kind of a quote school situation, S K O O L, you know, me setting up a school for it, you're going to get you're going to get up to date information too. Right. because things never stand still. Yep. Mindy

Corbett: They don't. No.

Cale: All right. So maybe you want to make a stop talking. You wanna All right. Yeah. Yeah. Mindy

Corbett: Yep. Okay. Yep, let's wrap, let's wrap there. I think I think we've covered we've covered a lot of ground today. So we will put links and everything in the show notes for anybody who wants to reach out to contact us. Both of us are available for for consultations. If anybody wants to just you know get some time on our calendars to chat, talk about anything that you need help with, I'll post our website links and links to all of our socials. So reach out if you have any questions. Feel free to just let us know anything that you need help with. We're here. and watch us on YouTube. we'll be on YouTube, we'll be on Amazon. I'm sorry, not Amazon, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Music.

Cale: TikTok. Mindy

Corbett: and TikTok. And we will talk to you on the next episode, episode three. All right.

Cale: Okay. Yes. Thank you all very much. Mindy

Corbett: Thanks, everybody. you have to turn it off.

Cale: That's what I'm trying to do. and stop.