This episode of ZacCast is all about Rework, a book by the founders of Basecamp. We talk about some of the bigger principles in the book, like embracing constraints, thinking small, productivity killers, and the myth of culture creation, and we'll offer some ways to apply them to your city. This is ZacCast, episode three. Here we go. Hey, Pap.

Hey, Chad. How are you?

Good. Hey, I thought today we could talk about one of the books that we read quite a few years ago, that had a pretty big impact on how we, uh, how we operated in Hudson Oaks.

Yeah, absolutely. You're talking Rework.

Rework.

There you go.

So this is a book by the founders of a project management software called Basecamp. It's Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. Uh, these guys were... Uh, they ran a, a consultancy, a software consultancy called 37signals, and, uh, had developed this internal project or project management software for themselves.

Mm-hmm.

And when they started opening it up to their clients, they- their clients loved it. Uh, so they eventually sort of morphed it into an actual software as a service. Uh, it's been through three different iterations now, I think 15 years. Um, these guys are, uh, very well known in the software industry in particular.

Mm-hmm.

Um, David Heinemeier Hansson is the founder of a web development framework called Ruby on Rails, which is extremely popular. Um, but both of them are very active just in the, I hate to say it, but, like, the thought leadership sort of realm, in terms of-

Yeah, it's an interesting way to put it, yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh, they're very vocal, very active in, in speaking and, and just pushing forward the, the ideas of how to run a business.

Yep.

So this book was one of their first ones. I think it's the second book that they, they published. Um, but it's, it's sort of a manifesto of sorts in-

It's really the book that hit. The first, first book, I don't, I don't know if really everybody knew about the first book as much until Rework came out.

The first book, which is called Getting Real-

Yeah

... which was a lot more about software development specifically.

Mm-hmm.

This book is a lot more about just running a business in a different way.

Getting Real was very nerdy.

It was very nerdy.

Yes.

We'll have a link to, uh, to the book in the show notes. It's a 270-page book, but it's a really quick read.

Very fast.

When I was going back through it, I think it took, like, a couple hours, just-

It-

It's... There's basically, like, two, three-page chapters, very readable.

Large type, lots of space.

Yeah, large type.

Yes.

Uh, but lots of really good ideas. So, uh, we thought we'd take three of them, uh, and just kind of talk about them, see how, uh, how they've applied these concepts to the business world, and then how you can also apply them to running a city. Uh, and then if we have some time, we'll do some quick hitters at the end, but-

Yeah, and giving the book some credit, we probably could do, like, four podcasts on this.

At least.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's a lot to process, a lot to go through, so we're just trying to hit some of the, some of the things that have influenced, influenced us the most.

Yeah, absolutely.

So the first one is this concept of both embracing constraints and using them as a tool for innovation, and, uh, keeping in mind this concept of thinking small. In city government, we have this tendency to always look for ways to grow. We're always trying to grow, whether it's, uh, whether it's employee counts-

Of course

... FTEs, or budget size, or new revenue sources, or annexing and, you know, growing outward. Um, the- one of the central arguments that they make is that you will never be as small as you are today, and, uh, that that's not a bad thing. Like, a lot of companies grow, and they wanna be as- they wanna be billion-dollar companies, but there aren't that many of them, and there's nothing wrong with being a small, profitable company. The same is true in cities. There's nothing wrong with being a small city that is solvent-

Correct, yes

... and provides good services and, you know, takes care of the things it needs to take care of.

And doesn't overextend itself. It's kind of the anti-Wilsonian view from that standpoint. Let's get, let's get, like, super technical there, right? If I wasn't correct on that, we're gonna get this part cut out of the podcast. But the, the reality is, is that, uh, you know, they really focus on it's okay to be small, and it's, it's okay to focus on, um, on things that are really within your realm, right? It- you don't have to reach at all times to be successful.

So we talked about Hudson Oaks in the first podcast-

Yep

... and how it's sort of been viewed as a, I think it was the first pod- either way.

Mm-hmm.

This idea of being a speedboat versus an aircraft carrier.

Correct.

Right?

Yeah.

The agility that comes with being a small organization, um, is, in many ways, a blessing. Even though it means you don't necessarily have the resources of a large city, uh, the ability to pivot and to make changes and course correct-

Mm-hmm

... is, is something that I think we don't take enough, uh, advantage of-

Mm-hmm

... 'cause we're always just looking to get, to get bigger.

Yeah. No, and I, and I think, you know, obviously, o- one of the things about being a city manager, when you're hanging out with all your city manager buddies, right, is, is that you kind of have this badge of honor based on the number of FTEs you manage.

Or the things that you've done.

The things that you've done, yeah.

The new, the new programs that you've added and-

You look at a resume of a city manager, the size of projects that you've done. How many millions was that project? Was it a billion-dollar project? Was it 100 million? You know, what that... Whatever that is. And, and I think we, we really don't refocus ourselves on... I- if you really think about it, if you're a city that has 20 FTEs, if you have 20 employees, and you wanna implement a new program, it's a lot easier to implement that program when you're small. It may take just one employee or one single adjustment to have a huge impact and to be highly successful. Uh, and, and when you're in those larger cities, it, it becomes a lot more difficult to be successful at a program, when it takes a substantial investment and, and just a, a large number of people in order to do that, right? And so being that speedboat, being able to turn on a dime and make adjustments-... and reallocate resources faster, um, there's a huge advantage to that. I, I think that's what they get to in this portion of the book, is that by being really focused and really small, you can make quicker decisions and react much faster than being stuck in a direction that may take you to the wrong spot.

And it doesn't necessarily have to be a physical limitation, it could just be a mindset.

Yes, mindset.

I mean, you may be a city manager of a city that has 120,000 people, and you have a large organization. Um, but maybe you can treat your individual units as speedboats.

A- absolutely. I mean, think of, think of the number of city managers that we know that are city managers in those lar- larger organizations and how many conversations we've had. Um, and y- you know, some- sometimes in those big organizations, you miss those small things. Prime example, we went into a city once, and we were looking at, uh, how they dealt with trash service. And, you know, sometimes logic gets thrown out the window. You know, it's, uh... You ask a question like, "How old are your trash dumpsters?" And, and they tell you, "Well, we don't know how old our trash dumpsters are." "Well, do you put serial numbers on them?" "Yeah, but when we exchange it, we just put the same serial number on it." Like, those things, that- that's like a... In a small city, y- you know, those little details don't get missed on how many trash dumpsters you may or may not have. Uh, that- I mean, that's, that's just a, an interesting example, but, um, if you can be in a big city, and you can think small in a big city, you, you can have a, you can have a pretty big impact on that program. And, you know, it's... I, I, I think we just need to do a better job of that.

So one thing that comes with being small-

Mm-hmm

... or, and/or thinking small-

Correct

... is that you do have constraints. And we touched on it a little bit-

Mm-hmm

... but, um, in our particular experience, those constraints are limiting for sure.

Mm-hmm.

Um, but they also allow you to be really, really creative in how you accomplish the things that you set out to accomplish. Um, being in a city with no property tax, but a high-growth city-

Mm-hmm

... in a, an area that is developing, that needs infrastructure improvements, that needs, you know, the, the, the groundwork for future growth and stability, um, we were very limited in how we could fund those things. So-

Yeah

... um, we had to be really creative in partnering with developers, partnering with the pr- private sector, with other regional entities, to try to leverage what we did have-

Mm-hmm

... in order to make some of that stuff happen.

Well, and I think what I learned in Hudson Oaks is, from a larger city standpoint, really, how, how much money is left on the table in a larger city because you don't have to be creative? How, how much money could you ask for out of the development community if you actually didn't have that money?

Yeah.

Right?

When you don't have that money, and you can't afford to give a 10-year tax abatement, and-

Correct

... 80% sales tax abatement-

Mm-hmm

... uh, h- how do you land that deal?

How do you land that deal, right? Or how do you do that major downtown road redevelopment project when, you know, you don't necessarily have all the money in the world to do it?

Well, the other, the other component to that is that in most cases, those deals are not worth making-

Mm

... even if you think that you can afford it.

Well, then you're getting in a strong town site, right?

Yeah. So we'll, we'll hit that in a future episode.

We'll hit that in a future podcast, but, uh-

But when you, when you don't even have the means to support it in the short term-

Correct

... it really forces you to, uh, to think about different ways that you can make those things happen. So it's certainly an opportunity, even for bigger cities, that may have those means in the short term.

Mm-hmm.

Think about it as if you're a small city, and you couldn't afford to rebate all that revenue.

Yeah, and, and, and I think sometimes i- it would be, it would be beneficial for us to look at it from that standpoint, for sure. Because how, how much money, um, are cities giving back in the development world when it's not necessarily performa'd that way? Uh, how many cities have actually asked to look at a pro forma in a development agreement? I mean, that's the, that's the big question, right? But in a, in a larger municipality, I think if, um, if you told a developer Fort Worth actually had 2,000 people, they'd probably treat you quite a bit differently than they would if you're Fort Worth. You know, they- they're gonna have a bigger ask, and, and they're gonna come in and look for more money. I mean, we s- we see it with our competitors just here locally. Uh, typically, somebody will walk in our door and say, "Hey, I need a, uh, a five or six-year sales tax abatement," and, and we may say no to that, and they'll walk next door and ask for a 12-year tax abatement. Um, and is that development any different or cost any more? No, it's just a... It's the constraints-

Yeah

... that are there, right?

And is it gonna perform any better two miles down the road?

No, absolutely not.

Another one that they- another item they talk about, which I know that you have some particular thoughts on-

Mm-hmm

... is, uh, is this concept of, of taking a strong stand and what they call picking a fight. Um, this has to do with sort of differentiating yourself, building an audience as a product that needs to be sold.

Mm-hmm.

You know, having an audience that's there. They may not be interested in buying your product right now, uh, but the same is true with maybe a development community. Maybe they're not interested in developing in your town now, um, but if you have been vocal about, uh, the right way to do things and, and the principles that you have as a, as a community and what you're trying to accomplish, you can build fans that way, even if it's not a situation where they're gonna be moving to your town right now.

Correct. I mean, I, I think the biggest thing is, is that brands are not agnostic. Uh, you know, people want to believe in something, and they, they wanna find something to believe in. And whether you're a city or you're a product, at the end of the day, taking a strong stand really generates a, a fan of, of that product. And one of the things, uh, specifically in, in Hudson Oaks, and I've seen some other cities do this really well as well, I, I think that we do, is, is we tell people exactly who we are. Somebody walks in our office and asks us a question, even if they're not gonna like the answer, um, we, we say things in our office like, "puke honesty." We tell them exactly what our brand is. We tell them who we are. Um, we tell them strategically who our council wants us to be. We don't hide behind it politically so that we don't get somebody upset about us. They're either gonna be on board, or they're gonna try to change it from within.... right? But it gives us very clear direction as a community, uh, and, and as a, as a business. Uh, taking that back to Zach, you know, obviously, we, we wear two hats, right? I've got my city manager hat, and then I've got my, you know, partner at Zach hat. And when I take that back to Zach, it's looking at it from a standpoint of we wrote this analytical software, and we added audit later, and we decided fairly early on that we did not think the contingency fee model of audit was right. I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that we were in city management, and if a sales taxpayer, let's just, let's just say, for example, a, a McDonald's decided that they paid the wrong city, and they happened to be another McDonald's in the city next door, and they just accidentally paid that city, we felt like we could just pick up the phone and call the other city manager and say, "Hey, your McDonald's is paying the wrong person. We need to get it reallocated," right? We didn't lose 30% of that money when we w- got it reallocated, and we just- we took this mentality of, it's not right. Now, we got blessed with numerous other consultants and other folks who also took that stance, and it's changed the whole dynamic of what we do in sales tax, uh, audit and, and analysis. But, you know, really, we felt like we had to take a strong stand, and that strong stand grew us as a company, there's no doubt.

Well, it also clarifies what our incentives are.

Correct.

Right? We're here to provide you with a service.

Yep.

Um, we're not providing you a service as a secondary by-product of what we're really trying to do, which is maximize the amount of, uh, audit collections we can find.

Because you're on a contingency fee.

Exactly.

Yeah, correct.

So-

100%.

It certainly behooves everyone, every city and taxing district, to have their taxpayers paying the proper place.

Yes.

But when there's that hidden incentive, or sometimes even not hidden, but there's an extra incentive on our part, uh, it's- it just opens up the door for questioning-

Yes

... and an adversarial relationship. Like, "Oh, you sat- did you sit on this audit adjustment so that you could maximize that four, three or four-year window?"

Mm-hmm.

Or, you know, "Did you know that this was from some other city and then use that?" And I'm not-

Or, "Did you go try to pick up a client so that you could get that contingency fee, 'cause the client you had, you knew the money was not supposed to be there?"

Yeah.

I mean, that's the type of things... You ask that question, and you- we just never want our clients or our fans to ask that question.

And to be clear, it is entirely possible, with the public data that's available, to find taxpayers that are paying the wrong jurisdiction without even having the confidential information.

Yeah, without ever hiring us.

Yeah.

Let's be clear.

So, so you could, you could make some reasonable assumptions about a taxpayer that is paying the wrong jurisdiction, approximately how much should be owed to that city, and then take that to the city and say, "Hey, if you'll hire us, we'll tell you who this is."

Yes.

And then, boom, you've got a 30% fee on that.

That's correct.

That's not the relationship that we wanted to have with our clients.

Now, let's be clear, that's... We're, we're not talking a couple thousand dollars here. You know, we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars for s- for, for taxpayers, right? So, um, you know, and we felt like that was a really early on... And we, we even had clients of ours who, who questioned it. "Well, why don't you do this?", right?

It's a lot of money that's left on the table.

A ton of money that's left on the table.

You can, you can verify this by looking at check registers that are open data.

That is correct, yes.

A ton of money we have left-

Yeah

... on the table because we don't believe in that sort of business model.

Yeah, I mean, you know, the great thing about open data is you can go to a city's website, and you can look at what they're spending with other vendors, and you can see those contingency fees leaving, uh, those cities. So there's no doubt. And, and I think it's just important, you know, if, if you know who you are, uh, whether you're a city or you're a company, if you know who you are, it is important to express who that may be. And if you don't know who you are, especially if you're a city, it's extremely important to get your residents together and figure out who you are. Um, you know, whether that is a two-year strategic planning process, or that's a long-term comprehensive planning process, um, you know, if we are just hanging out in the middle as an agnostic, y- you c- you can't do it. You just... You can't. Y- you, you need to be- you take a stand, move forward. I think Rework does a great job of talking about this, and that's how you get your fandom.

So let's take one, one quick example from our experience before we move on. Permit fees. In Hudson Oaks, and we keep talking about Hudson Oaks, not that it's necessarily a, you know, a, a lodestar or a bellwether that y- everyone should follow. It's- has its own very specific circumstances.

Correct.

But because there's no property tax, there's no ability to, uh, allow permit fees and development fees to be subsidized by existing property owners.

Yes, and don't deny yourself out there, other city managers. Y'all subsidize your fees.

Yes. So in Hudson Oaks, the permit fees are significantly higher than pretty much every other city around Hudson Oaks.

What's amazing is the communities around us have all raised their fees to our fees.

Yes. But yeah. That's fine-

Yeah

... because one of the big things that, uh, was a, a limiting principle for us was no subsidization.

That's correct.

So it was important to us-

Which was council-driven, by the way, not staff-driven.

It was important to the city that the services that we provide pay for themselves as much as possible.

That's correct.

There's no admin services charged from our enterprise funds going back to general fund. We're not pillaging the water department.

No pilots.

No pilots.

Yeah.

Nothing like that.

Yeah.

But that meant that in order to be able to provide the development services that are required from new development and construction, our permit fees had to be higher. And it raises questions, why is this so expensive? But the answer is very easy to explain if you're willing to take the time to explain it.

Correct. Yeah, I mean, y- you basically... You have a, you have a builder who walks in the door, and you say, "Hey, why is my permit fee so high?" We, we tell them, "Well, the resident who's buying that house from you is- doesn't have a tax, and it only takes about, you know, four or five months or usually less than a year to pay that back." Uh, whereas other cities are taking into account the fact that that's gonna be on the ground for maybe three or four years, or using that subsidy, and they're lowering those fees.

Yeah.

Right.

So just figure out what-... your city is about.

Correct.

What are you trying to accomplish? What are the principles and, and the core principles that sort of drive the decisions that you make? And then be open about it, be proud of it.

Yeah, and, and just you know, express it and let people know who you are. I, I have found that here in w- in this county that we work in, it, it becomes refreshing for people to know we at least know what we're getting at the end of the day.

Yeah. And it really im- enhances the sense of trust, both with your residents, with your development community, with your business community, that they know you're, you're giving them a straight answer.

No, very much so. Yeah.

Which directly ties into the next point, which is that everything you do is marketing. The bigger the city you get, uh, you'll probably have maybe, uh, a PR team or, uh, s- you know, someone in the city manager's office who's handling your Facebook and Twitter, or maybe they're writing some press releases, and that's sort of what you think of as your marketing. You know, you're trying to push the city. Maybe you're- you consider your economic development team also to be part of your marketing efforts.

Mm-hmm.

Um, you know, maybe you've got a hotel tax, and you're, uh, spending some money to, to promote tourism, but that really misses a huge element of the day-to-day interactions that leave an impression in people's minds.

A- absolutely. Any contact that you have with a resident, it doesn't matter which way you have that contact, is a marketing opportunity.

Including the guy driving the branded truck down the street too fast yeah.

Too fast. Yeah, absolutely. No doubt. Or the officer who pulls somebody over, right? Um, there, there is no doubt in, uh, anybody else's mind that any interaction that they have with your organization is going to be a moment for branding. We don't treat it that way historically in cities, though. In cities, our brand is controlled by usually a PI- PIO office or the city manager's office or economic development or whatever that may be, but we don't go down into the trenches of our community. And this goes back to the concept of dogfooding. We don't go through our own processes, so we don't know what they look like, right? But we don't go into the trenches and have a conversation with that municipal permit clerk or that water utility billing specialist and, and teach them that the way that they treat a customer matters, right?

And then we wonder why we get lit up on Facebook or Nextdoor.

That's correct. Yeah, and, and look, I'm, I'm the first one to say I don't love Nextdoor, right? Facebook's a little bit more interactive. It's got a little bit more personal interaction. Friends can see what other people say. It helps out a lot. But on the Nextdoor side, um, you know, everything you do is, is branding. It, it... From both a standpoint of if, if you are going to allow somebody to go out there and say something about your community, you have to be interactive about it. We can no longer sit back and just allow it to be said. Uh, I saw a city manager the other day of a city of almost 200,000, who was responding with his personal Facebook onto a city page in an element that was there, and, and I called and I applauded him, because that's the world we live in today, right? It's not, I get to go in, go home, and I've got people who do this job for me. It's that we have to set an example for the rest of our employees, so they know we have to show people who we are at the end of the day, with whatever touch that may be. And the, the little things, somebody calls in and they have, um... You know, I, I, I love this. I, I was looking at different policies the other day on, um, on leak adjustments, water leak adjustments, right? In, in Hudson Oaks, we have a policy that, uh, every 12 months, if you have a water leak, and you have somebody come out and fix it, or even if you fix it personally and you provide us documentation, we will adjust your water bill, right? Um, at the end of the day, if you look at the cost of that, it's minimal, right?

A couple thousand dollars.

A couple thousand dollars a year.

Less than a percent of the revenue.

Yeah, yeah, it's less than a percent of the revenue. If you look at the marketing benefit we get out of that, it's tremendous. People believe that we actually care about them, because you know what? We do. We care about the fact that they had a water leak, and we're not trying to stick them with a $1,000 water bill, and that matters at the end of the day. And there are other communities out there that have it once every three years and once every two years, and sometimes we have somebody who had a leak once in nine months, and somebody's got to walk to my desk and get a waiver of the policy because of it. But you know what? If it's a legit leak, and they hired a plumber, and they spent six, 700 bucks to fix it, and they need to get rid of a $600 water bill, we're probably gonna waive it. And the reason we're gonna do it is because it's- they're just trying to do something to fix it and, and get it right, and we're not trying to pick their pocket at the end of the day. And that shows we go the extra mile. We care about them. It's a marketing side. But that starts at the first person who answers the phone at City Hall, not at the city manager desk.

Yeah.

Right.

And it really ties into the last point, because if you don't know what you stand for-

Correct

... and you don't push that through your organization, they're not gonna know how to respond or react effectively in those situations.

And, and, and to that point as well, and to also be clear, I don't tell our staff to just get railroaded at every, every turn, right? There are some residents who will try to take advantage, there's no doubt, uh, but you know, what I tell them to do is, is be compassionate. Is that, is if they were in their shoes, what would it look like? You know, those type of things. And, and, um, yeah, there's, there's no doubt, y- if you as a manager are not willing to, to get in the mud a little bit and get a little dirty, um, the rest of the employees in your organization are gonna have a really hard time seeing what needs to be done. You know, we, we call it servant leadership. It gets thrown out there all the time. Uh, but the reality of it is, is that you, you've got to be willing to show people what your organization is and who you're- you know, what you're about.

So we got a few more minutes here. Um, let's just hit a, uh, a couple of other items in a s- little bit more of a rapid-fire fashion.

Yep.

Um, I'm gonna jump to the last one because it really ties into this too, which is that this argument that you can't build a culture-

Mm-hmm

... a culture just builds itself based on the, the hundreds and thousands of decisions that are made from the top down to the bottom. Um, you can preach all you want that this is what our culture is, but if you don't actually do that, if you don't actually show and, and act in a way that then mimics what you're saying, then that's not what your culture is gonna be.

... yeah, I, I mean, absolutely, and, and building culture has a lot to do with people at the end of the day, and it's one of the toughest part of the jobs, there's, there's no doubt. Um, but you, you have to... You know, when we talk about this, we, we don't have any doors in our offices, so everybody can hear every phone call I have, right? Which probably scares a lot of people out there in their career, where typically you close the door, and it's an important meeting. Uh, but the reason we do that is because we want every employee to know in administration, um, and from admin on down, what's being said and how we say it, how we treat a customer, uh, what the culture of, of how we deal with certain issues is. Um, and, and we really want everybody to know that, um, this is how we expect it to be dealt with.

Yeah.

Right?

Culture is not just telling, it's teaching.

It's teaching, right.

You have to, you have to empower your employees to be able to make decisions and, and act as independent agents-

Mm-hmm

... of your organization. But when they do something that you may not agree with, you have to explain the thought process behind why you would've d- done it differently.

And you can't get mad. You, you can't immediately get angry, right? Sometimes, uh, somebody's been in an environment where that may not been the way that they've done it, and y- you, you have to understand that. I get criticized a lot in the workforce, uh, specifically for, um, throwing people out there into the fire and not really giving them much direction, and I, I'm not trying to not give them direction in their job. What I'm specifically trying to do is get them to learn from the environment that they're in, right? Uh, it's hard for me to go in and try to explain to somebody in, you know, 10, 15 minutes what they should be doing or how our culture would do it. It's a lot easier for me to say, "Hey, just sit here for the next couple months and get a better understanding of who we are," right? And, and that's, that's the way that we, we work culture within our organization specifically.

We hit on this a little bit when, with some of the development talk and the, the constraints, uh, questions. Ignoring competitors can be very difficult to do, particularly in the development world.

Economic development, yeah.

You see what other people are doing, the projects they're landing, and you start to kind of panic, and you just do whatever it takes to get that next one.

Love city councils, they do that the worst. Yeah.

You can't let that happen.

You can't let that happen.

Every city-

No

... has its own unique circumstances, its history, its development patterns, its demographics, uh, you know, its economics situation.

Absolutely.

You can't go chasing those things. You just, you have to just keep on with the goals that you have set, irrespective of how other people are trying to achieve them. If someone's throwing the farm at a company, let them.

Our, our sales tax is growing at 32% this year because we didn't do that, right? We, uh, we were getting torched by our adjoining neighbor.

There was a period of about 12 months where it was just one after the next. Questions were being asked, "Well, why is this going somewhere else? Why is this not coming here?"

Absolutely.

And it just wasn't an economically feasible option for us to, uh, to make that happen.

That's correct. And sometimes, uh, sometimes we forget there actually is a free market economy, and, uh, you know, businesses are gonna make choices, uh, sometimes, and especially in today's world of retail. Uh, retailers all jump off a cliff together, so if somebody's already jumped off the cliff, they're gonna continue-

Yeah

... to jump off that cliff, so.

But you can't make a bad business decision better by subsidizing it.

No, not at all.

Eventually, the market's going to correct.

Correct, yeah. Uh, at the end of the day, the market is going to correct itself, and you may not have that development when it's all said and done anyways.

So the last thing, 'cause we've gotta wrap up here pretty quickly-

Mm-hmm

... how do you actually deal with productivity problems? I can tell you this, since I have left city employment-

Mm-hmm

... and am now working from home, my productivity has skyrocketed. Um, I don't have the distractions that you just can't get away from. You can't... If a resident comes in to talk about a pothole, you have to stop what you're doing to go talk to them.

That's correct, yeah.

Um, if, if you get a call from a developer or from TxDOT or whoever, whomever... Is it whom or-

I think it's who.

I've seen that Office episode, like, a dozen times where they explain it, but I can't never remember.

If Sherry's listening to this podcast, she'll text me and let me know.

Yeah. But the problem is that those interruptions are killers. Um, you have to think of productivity like sleep. You know, you, you start off, and you're in those early stages, and then when you finally get to REM, that's when you're doing your restorative sleep, and that's when you build back your energy, and you, you repair all the damage that you did throughout the day. If you get interrupted in REM, you don't just go right back to REM, you have to start over, and the same is true with your productivity. If you were deep in thought, in, in a, in a flow state, working on something, and you get a phone call, it's gonna take you time to get back into that, that mode. Or if you're in a situation where you have three or four meetings s- scheduled throughout the day, but there are, you know, an hour in between them, like, you may not have time to get back after a meeting, answer emails, respond to some people, and then get actual work done before the next meeting starts.

Well, I think, uh, I don't disagree with you. You and I will have a disagreement on, on-

We will

... the benefit of, of meetings and things like that, right? You believe that meetings are an absolute waste of time. Uh-

So, uh, we have a standing staff meeting on Monday mornings-

Correct

... and, uh, when Patrick would be out on Mondays, that was the staff's favorite day, 'cause we would typically not have those meetings.

Yes, that's correct. But the staff meeting was important for me because it allowed everybody to, to talk about what needed to be talked about, right? It wasn't necessarily a productivity meeting. It was a, if there's something I needed to, to hear, it was heard in that meeting, right? Um, and, and by the way, now that you're gone, we still have that Monday staff meeting. I'm, I'm not sure they have it when I'm out. Uh, w- we'll see. But, uh, you know, I agree with you. I think productivity gets interrupted. The problem becomes when you, when you get into the C-suite of cities, uh, I, I actually used this analogy this week, you, you almost become a point guard. You're constantly going to meetings, but then you're passing the ball, right? And so you have to build a good team around you to be able to handle that.... at the end of the day.

But what that means is that as the manager, that may be your workflow.

That is my workflow.

And that's perfectly fine.

That's correct.

Um, because y- at that level, you're not in the day-to-day grind of the work that needs time to complete properly, but that means that your role then becomes creating an environment where the people who are in those roles-

Mm-hmm

... have the time to, the, the extended time periods to be productive-

That-

Without, without... With, with minimal distractions, if possible.

That's a solid point, but if Chad had his, his preferred work environment, it would be what you have now, technically, right? It'd be a dark room with no lights on and computer screens, and nobody talking to you all day, right?

I can't disagree, yeah.

Yeah, so.

So I... At one point, I pitched that, uh... So there's five people that work in Hudson Oaks, well, I guess there's six now-

Six now

... including the admin. Uh, and I pitched that each of us could pick a half day a week and have, like, a no interruption block.

Uh-huh.

That did not go over very well.

It didn't go over very well, but somehow Chad still bought himself some noise-canceling headphones.

Yeah, and it was glorious.

Yes.

It was 45 minutes at a time that I could get. But yeah, it's something to think about, though, because-

It is, very much so

... i- in the world that we live in, or that we work in, um, you are not gonna be able to dis- escape distractions. Uh, but there's certainly an opportunity for you to provide an environment as a manager, where your employees can have time to do work that's uninterrupted and be productive, and then-

They need a full work cycle.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's no doubt they need a full work cycle, and, and just, you know, just like different people, different people have different REM sleeps, and, and certain people have a work cycle. And it, it is something we need to be cognizant of, and we need to work towards. Um, and, and I'll be honest, I just am not very good at that. I'm just not, so... And probably should get better.

Well, on that note, I think we should stop because -

There you go, right? Yeah.

Getting Patrick to admit that he's not good at something is a, is a rarity. Um, there is so much more good stuff in this book. Uh, you can find a link to it in the show notes. That's ZacCast.com/3. Uh, we will link up that book, uh, and a couple of other resources, uh, about b- the, the Basecamp team. Uh, so thanks a lot, Pat.

Yep, thanks, man. Appreciate it.

All right, we'll see y'all.