In this episode of Relationships at Work, I chat with facilitation expert Codie McQuay, on looking at work differently through gamifying it. Whether it's regular meetings, a strategy session, on-boarding, she shares how playing games at work can improve the employee experience.
Codie shares her experience with...
If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and share with others.
For more, go to relationshipsatwork.ca
And connect with me for more great content!
In this episode of Relationships at Work, I chat with facilitation expert Codie McQuay, on looking at work differently through gamifying it. Whether it's regular meetings, a strategy session, on-boarding, she shares how playing games at work can improve the employee experience.
Codie shares her experience with...
If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and share with others.
For more, go to relationshipsatwork.ca
And connect with me for more great content!
Russel Lolacher
On the show, we have coding quick. Here’s why she’s awesome. Yeah, there’s a dramatic pause. She is a consultant facilitator on learning experience design. I’m gonna have take a breath while I go through all these. She was strategic director of for Killman diagnostics. She’s a certified and Evi facilitation by game ATAR. What the hell’s that? Well, apparently they’re an edtech company focusing on gamifying learning and employee engagement. She has lots of facilitation, coaching, organizational change management scrum master. She was Oh man, I’m just I have a I have a list here. akti game based management training. She’s their North American facilitator, and she’s one of my fancy friends. Hi, Cody, welcome to show.
Codie McQuay
Hi, thanks for having me. We’re talking games today. So before we turned on the microphone, and I pushed record, we were getting into it because of course, I’m going to use all the wrong terminology, because I’m learning this as you throw your intelligence at me. So gamification gamifying. Lots of words for basically incorporating gameplay into the workplace. What is that? Yeah, that’s a great question. I think I mean, I think it can be seen a couple different ways. There’s, if you want to, you know, use gamification, you’re usually adding badges and, you know, confe tti, to tasks. You know, we know it works on things like Strava, where you’re like, oh, you know, your next badge, and you do a few more laps around the block?
Russel Lolacher
It encourages me. I know it does, I, I will go look. I ran around the park, look how far I got everybody.
Codie McQuay
It totally works. And then you might think of games at work as being something like icebreakers. You know, they don’t really have a lot to do with work, maybe build some of those like noodle towers to figure out how your teams work together. But the games I’m talking about are more like, we’re gamifying work. So we’re trying to create using that game dynamic. You know, there’s a goal, there’s an a way to win, there’s, you got to have a little player, you have a game board, and thinking about how can we use something that is in that suspended reality, and then work like that. So it’s really about how to change the way we work?
Russel Lolacher
So I guess the big question is why? Why would an organization look at the way they’re working and their processes? And their just interactions in a day? Why would they look for gamifying as something to look at,
Codie McQuay
When one of the…the pandemic. One of the most in-demand skills right now is facilitation. The reason why we need facilitation is we need somebody to shepherd a conversation. Shepherd decision making. Shepherd collaboration. Because when we all especially it’s exaggerated on something like Zoom, we all get an a call, everybody talks, nobody can hear us, we don’t get anything done. But if you think about that, like a game, it’s like everybody’s showing up. We’ve all got our cards, I think we’re playing crib, you think we’re playing poker, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. But if you tell people ahead of time, hey, we’re playing bridge on Friday. They know you know what to do. They know how they’re going to show up at the game, they have a sense of how this is going to go. They sit down at the bridge table, or maybe they sit down at a blackjack table. They know how to orientate themselves. So they’re, as they’re picking up their cards, they’re going to be able to pick, you know, how do I show up? How do these cards what do they mean to me based on what I’m trying to do? So in thinking about work, in terms of games, we’re making the goal explicit ahead of time. And the rules, yeah, and the roles that we’re creating, also a way like how you play. So that might mean, we want this to be a collaborative decision making process. So we’re going to go around the table, and everyone’s gonna throw some ideas in there. Maybe we want this to be an ideation process. So we want to make sure that we’re going through a process where we’re saying, what have we forgotten? How do we bring up something that seems counterintuitive? Maybe we’re wanting to think about strategy, but we’re wanting to bring in some futuristic, like, you know, some of the futurist perspectives. We’re saying not what are we? What do we know to be true, but what do we not know? And so now we’re looking at uncertainty. So by framing what we’re trying to do not just the goal by framing the rules around it, we create kind of a recreate the gameboard. So people know how to show up, which in bring, it kind of elevates the conversation. It elevates the kind of work that people bring, but it also levels the room. You know, if we strip it right back, it’s like, you’ve got a goal. You’ve got some rules. Everybody knows their part. You got to like when you pick up a new game to go to like a board game cafe. It says you can complete this this game in 30 to 60 minutes. So now you’ve also kept some time people know what to expect. So you’ve got a sense of scope.
Russel Lolacher
What is the benefit? I mean, I certainly see the why being we’ve always done it likeThis Oh, don’t we always love that fucking statement? Well, we’ve always done it like this before. So looking at gamifying as a way to shake things up, but at the same time get intentional, which is what you’re talking about? What is the benefit to say, the workplace, or employees or leadership when it comes to bringing in these principles?
Codie McQuay
So all of those pieces help people to engage differently, but they also prevent…Have you heard of the “hippo problem“?
Russel Lolacher
No, but please do, please do.
Codie McQuay
So the “hippo problem” happens often in meetings, we all know it. Well. It’s the highest paid person in the room. And so they usually, you know, they present a problem. And quite quickly, you know, or maybe there’s a group of hippos, they somebody presents their perspective. And then everyone goes, That sounds great. And they start nodding, and they start kind of going, Yeah, that’s perfect. Instead of what you want to tease out is, how does the person on the floor, feel about the way that you’ve changed the shelving? How does the person you know, running the cash register feel about the way that the price is now scan, because they’re going to tell you things about your customer, they’re going to tell you things about the everyday kind of nitty gritty of the way people are working, that you’re not going to get from that lens of the highest, highest paid person in the room. So you start to really, in terms of leveling the room, you’re starting to get a more user centered perspective, which I know is is very popular is very buzzy, user centered design. But how do we do that? How do we actually make the design like accessible and inclusive, and from a hierarchal perspective in an organization, but also from, you know, the customer to profit perspective?
Russel Lolacher
Looking at the “hippo problem”, you’re saying that if you make the rules of the game to be more inclusive, then yeah, more inclusive, because it’s in the rules, and you got to play by the rules.
Codie McQuay
Yeah. And then there’s ways where you can even like, that’s where you can game it. We’ll call it that. So that these, these easy tricks that you can kind of pull into play. So if you know, you know, I’m saying let’s pretend I’m a manager, I’m creating a meeting. And I’m really hoping to get the feedback from my teams, they’ve got several teams on a strategy rolling out. Now if I want to tease out, you know, what, what they really think, and not what they think, I think and want them to say, the gap between those two, I changed the rules. So maybe you give everybody time to, you know, come up with a few thoughts in the round the write them down on a piece of paper, another game is you have to share them, everybody shares them. Maybe we start with the most inexperienced person in the room. So they’re not going to be afraid to share what’s happening. So you’ve kind of created this game dynamic, where yeah, you’re you’re teasing out the type of feedback that you’re wanting, but in a way that feels safe. And people understand this is what’s being asked of them. So they’re kind of free of feeling like, oh, you know, I am scared to contribute in this way. Or I’m scared to participate like this.
Russel Lolacher
There’s an opportunity here, especially and I’m really digging the rules idea. Because there’s how many meetings do you go to when you don’t have an agenda? So you’re like, why are we having this meeting? Why do I do I have a role? Am I just the person in the back of the room listening? Or am I presenting? I have no concept of what’s going on here? Am I in trouble? So at least by having rules, it’s establishing expectations. So people have the confidence in what their role is? Yeah, whether they’re the top hat, whether they’re the racecar, they have a much better see, I’m digging into the gamifying thing. So they have a better idea of what this monopoly or game of life that they’re they’re contributing to.
Codie McQuay
Yeah, exactly. And I think more than that, when we think about engagement, people want to show up, they want to come prepared, they want to participate. I don’t have the sense that everyone is looking at work for ways to not engaged at work, I think, is that the opportunity isn’t there. So if you let people know ahead of time, hey, on Thursday, we’re playing bridge, here’s what you need to bring, they’re going to come prepared. Or they’re going to say hey, sorry, I can’t make it. So if you let people know ahead of time, like this is what is expected of the meeting. Here’s the pre work, here’s the rules to the game. Here’s how it’s going to go. And here’s the goal. I mean, how many meetings have we gone into where you don’t even know like, what are we trying to do? What are we what is the end goal of this meeting? No clue, and nobody seems to own it. So creating that game, you can also bring some ownership, whether it’s to the person who called the meeting, or everybody collectively to say, You know what we said we were aiming for this kind of decision. We seem to be kind of off course here. You know, if we were playing cards, and all of a sudden, I lay down a flush in the middle of crib, someone’s going to tell me like, hey, that’s, you’re playing the wrong game. We’re playing a different game over here. So it kind of allows everybody to participate in creating that alignment, which keeps the work focused, it keeps it really streamlined, that keeps it nice and tight to the to the goal. And I think it creates a sense of of ownership and responsibility that everybody gets engaged with. So it’s kind of like a byproduct, the engagement,
Russel Lolacher
I want to get into sort of the tried and true, horribly conducted meetings. I want to get to that in a minute. But first, from a coding perspective, why the hell do you love this stuff so much? You’ve been doing gaming and facilitation for years now. And I know it’s still very fresh for a lot of organizations to even consider this stuff. So why the hell are you so interested? Cody?
Codie McQuay
Um, you’re right. I mean, I’ve been down many of the rabbit holes, like, you know, I went down the gamification rabbit hole and down the Game Storming rabbit hole and down the gamified, rabbit hole, lots, lots of rabbit holes. But I think the thing that keeps me like chewing on this, the thing that I think is so exciting is that, and we know it from our non work lives, people who like games, you get into a good good game, and it could be a sports game, it could be you know, you watch a good football game. People are like, Ah, what a great game, they were into it, everyone was in sync, like, we can appreciate how that feels, even just watching it. The same thing. If we’re playing a board game, everyone has a lot of fun. And so it’s that capacity for that suspended reality that comes with games. That I think why Why does work have to be drudgery? Why can’t it be engaging? Why can’t it be something that people enjoy? What can we open up new ways of thinking about how we’re working, that allow us to feel more autonomy, more agency, more control, more creativity, like, and then I think, from that, it’s like, we do better work, which is what everyone’s trying to do. You know, we’re trying to get there. But it’s like, I feel like we go about it in ways that don’t necessarily involve the person doing the work.
Russel Lolacher
Not wrong, not wrong. So if I’m a decision maker, I have the money or resources in the organization, and I’m thinking, Damn, I’ve got to bring gamifying into my organization, what problems are they trying to fix? Like, what is a flag for them to go? X is a problem. gamifying might be something to look at for this.
Codie McQuay
So I think, you know, there’s a I mean, it’s a great question. And there’s a couple of kind of more superficial answers. And then there’s a couple of more, just deeper answers. So like, on a superficial level, you know, you’re going to create more fun, everybody loves fun. Everybody loves creativity, people like you know, to feel and they like to collaborate. Oftentimes, people don’t feel like they have the opportunity to collaborate. So when you give them novel problems, even problems about like things at work, and they have the opportunity to work together, they’re getting some of those social needs met. And they feel like they’ve gotten to work with a team, and they have a team. And this is a, you know, it definitely is something that really feeds people. But on a deeper level, I think what you get is you get more ownership over the type of work people are doing. They might own strategy, you can construct a game that’s going to have embedded learning in it. So if you want to share, you know, a new strategic position, or a new way of approaching work, you build it into a game, you make it something fun that people can engage with. It’s kind of like it’s a spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down. So you can you have this opportunity to engage in organizational change in a way that’s contextualized. It’s in work. It’s not separate over there with noodles and marshmallows. But it’s still fun. It’s still fun. It’s still engaging, it’s easy. It’s low stress, it doesn’t have the higher stakes of like, Yeah, well, I need to get this done next week for deadlines. It’s it’s a little bit more playful. But you’re also opening up things like creativity and engagement, different levels are starting to create behavioral change within the organization. Because people are getting to explore in low stakes ways. How do we work together? Maybe as part of the game, you add a reflection? How did that go? Did everyone talk? Did we build on ideas? Or did we shut them down? So now you can look at how do we play the game? Not what was the game? You know what was in the game? But how do we play it? How did we work together? So I think it creates it creates a lot more opportunities for growth, both at an individual but also at a team level while doing work.
Russel Lolacher
Which is the important part. And I’m not gonna just not mention that you made a Mary Poppins reference and I’m just going to just mention that that did happen. Just acknowledging it and moving on. Okay. So all well and good. All these gamifying and playing games at work and you know, more fun, let’s take something shitty, like meetings and sort of work through a meeting and I don’t know, maybe whatever works best for your example. What kind of meeting It could be any but let’s, let’s pick one. So say we’re doing a monthly staff meeting.
Codie McQuay
It’s something like a monthly staff meeting generally is probably going to have an agenda. Because we know it’s a bit higher stakes where, you know, we may not be paying for the meeting, but we’re paying for everyone’s time. So it’s higher stakes in the sense that everybody, all the staff is there. So there’s going to be some kind of agenda. But it’s often quite one way. So rather than it being an engaging, immersive experience for everyone participating, it’s more like watching a show on TV, you watch the meeting go by, you know, the things happen, some things happen to the characters, if you’re like most of us, you know, yuzu zone out, or you open another window, and you do your real work. While you’re on the meeting. It’s never happened to me, you know.
Russel Lolacher
I don’t have. No idea what you’re talking about.
Codie McQuay
No, no. However, if we create more of an experience, so now we’re going to invite people in, we’re going to maybe create some kind of a framework, or a process where we’re going to say, Hey, everyone, dump your ideas here about, you know, how this process went for us, or how we’re worth doing on this KPI, you know, put your thermometer rating in. Now we’re having a conversation that everyone is engaged in. And I’m just talking about, like, you know, there’s a lot, especially with virtual facilitation, there’s a lot of things where we use things like maybe Mentimeter, or some of these kind of like polling things, which are great, they’re a good step. But there’s nothing like, I know, in a way, it doesn’t matter if my poll gets in there. But if instead of saying an hour long meeting where we all watch something, maybe you create five questions, and you say, Take five minutes answer to these questions. Now go into a breakout room with five other people talk about those questions and how they impact your work. Now, come back out, share it with the group. And now we’re going to get a highlight view of how these what you just shared relates to the projects happening, or the big focus for us for the next month. Now everyone sees how they were involved with what’s coming next. So it’s become more experiential, and a little less, one way.
Russel Lolacher
We talked about rules earlier. So say there for an example, we’ll keep using the staff meeting. What kind of rules? Have you seen that you find really useful that people would know ahead of time?
Codie McQuay
Yeah, I think part of it is that like, if you want to contextualize the games, you’re playing at work to work, meaning, it’s not a fluffy exercise, it’s something meaningful, it’s about work. You need to give people time to know to prepare, there’s different types of personalities, some people need time to reflect, maybe you need to ask a team to spend 20 minutes together to synthesize one piece of feedback, and you have a representative. And now every team is sharing out one piece of feedback. But now this meeting has become more of a tapestry, rather than a one way discussion. So you know, those are things is sending a pre work, telling people what the goal is, you know, what is the goal of the meeting? What are we trying to do here, we’re having this meeting so that we can all align our work so that we can achieve X goal by the end of March. Oh, okay. We want to know what’s standing in the way for you, then you have to have a follow up, you have to let people know you hurt them. You have to tell them how their feedback in the game is moving into real life. So you kind of got to, you know, take it from real life, move it into some suspended reality, and then take it back out.
Russel Lolacher
You’re looking at this as a game board, sort of as moving from the beginning to you know, do your game of life. Have your two kids, I can’t remember the game of life. I just remember the little pink and blue dots. It was 57 my job to go to university like that isn’t even a choice to go to make any money whatsoever. Yeah, very old school. So as a facilitator, how would you prepare for playing games at a meeting?
Codie McQuay
I mean, I think the big thing is, knowing who your stakeholders are taking the time, you know, if you’re designing the game board, I mean, if we think about back to that, you know, The Game of Life, somebody thought out that game, they came up with the rules, they drew up the game board, they put all the pieces in there, they thought about like the cards again, and how much money you get to start with. So that was all clear before everyone came. So the person who I mean, I think one of the quickest things you can do as an organization, have somebody own the meeting. If you own the meeting, you run the game. And the game is happening, whether anyone owns it or not. If nobody owns it, you’re playing poker. I’m playing crib. You know somebody else’s playing bridge, and we got somebody else over there playing IATSE. We’re all playing a game anyways, we just aren’t playing the same game. And so if you have somebody own it, they’re gonna say, Hey, we’re all coming together. We’re playing blackjack. Tuesday from 11 to 12. Here’s the goal, here are your cards. And so now you come prepared, you’re like I know what’s happening. So I think that’s that’s one piece, talking to the stakeholders and knowing what goal will make it successful for the people involved, being able to hold those multiple perspectives. Because your executive leadership might have a very different goal as to what makes this meaningful, then you know, your cashier, they have totally different goals. And so sometimes I think we get that the game of the meeting was designed with only one goal in mind, which is where they often fall short. And people say a lot of things, and then we go, Well, that was nice.
Russel Lolacher
What is the resistance to playing games at work? What have you seen being the common thread of resistance to it?
Codie McQuay
I mean, I think one of the first kind of miss that needs to be thought about with this kind of approach is that it’s fluffy. Because I think the only games we are used to playing at work are fluffy. You know, there’s some like really awkward icebreakers that people are like, Oh, God, this is so strange. And I don’t know what I’m doing. And or that feeling we’re like, but what does this have to do with work. And there is this middle ground where we can incorporate all of those tools that make something fun and engaging and creative and innovative and safe and inclusive, but we can align it with work. You know, it takes a lot of thought, someone has to think about ahead times way more effort to prepare a game, or to create a game board, for example, whether it be you know, using frameworks on a whiteboard, or preparing, you know, a mural or a mural board, takes a lot more work to do that than it does to send out an agenda invite.
Russel Lolacher
Without an agenda.
Codie McQuay
Just to say, to make the decision, but we’re not talking about how to make the decision. So kind of accepting the fact that either we’re doing it well, or it’s happening, but either way, it’s something’s going on, it’s it can’t be avoided, and creating the rules and creating a framework and kind of a progression, the arc of the game, the arc of the meeting, the Ark of the decision, allows us to make sure that we’re not leaving things out that we’re making deliberate and intentional decisions, which saves us rework, it saves us frustration, it saves us having to clarify.
Russel Lolacher
I know you’ve been doing this and facilitating this for a few years in different experiences, no need to name drop, but do you have any experiences that were your favorites, that you were in there, and you’re like, This is why I do this.
Codie McQuay
I was working with a new team, they were a really big bank, two big banks in the States. And they had been they’d merged. And it was a securities team, like a data security team. And so we started playing some of these games, primarily, our goal was how to build trust, and how to hopefully accelerate organizational trust. And so the team had been working together. We’d been meeting regularly and playing different kinds of games around communication. And when I say games, it’s just like, small exercises that can be you’re trying them, and then you’re saying, how did we do? Did we like it? Did we not like it? What did we learn? And so they were around communication around conflict around prioritization. Basically, how do we tackle work? And how do we do it? Well, and the sort of final event was that we were coming together and a play a group of games around building a team charter. And the team charter was how are they going to engage around their work? How are they going to engage around this merger? Because it was a huge murder? And how are they going to accelerate their team. And, you know, this was a team that had been working together, but had never met in person. So we met, we all came together, this was pre COVID. And in one, I think it was in a seven hour session, we got done, they were like, they stood back. And all of a sudden, it’s like, they knew how to play bridge. They knew how to play poker, they knew how to play crip. And they just went through it. But every all of those behavioral changes were embedded in the way the team was, instead of something they were trying to do. So they were effective. They were listening, they were solving problems, people were creative. They were sharing things. I remember at one point, the two managers stood back and they’re like, this is it, look at them go. And the team was just it was doing it by itself. But we all of those other games we played built that confidence. They’ve modeled the safety that, you know, people felt comfortable to take risks, they felt comfortable to push back. And so I think I was like, oh, yeah, this is this is why I do this. And in you know, in seven hours, they created something that they used as, you know, kind of a North Star for the next two years of how the team work to navigate through a merger. And they were like that would have taken us weeks before and we did it in such a short period of time because everyone was you. You know, we we’ve done it in small ways, but they were used to working like that together.
Russel Lolacher
Somebody is listening They’re going, Damn, that’s a good idea, oh, my goodness, I got to start playing games at work. This is for me. They’re a little timid, they’re little capacity issues, money issues, blah, blah, issues, what are three things they could do just to dip their toe in this world.
Codie McQuay
I mean, there’s lots of resources, but I think find like, find a very simple game. I mean, there there is one called post up. And so rather than having open discussion, you say, take two minutes, take three minutes, however long you want, write all your thoughts as individuals on a sticky note or on a, you know, virtual sticky note, and put them on the board. So now, rather than having this kind of group, think of an open conversation, in the same amount of time, you get people to take a few minutes and write it down. And then you ask them to share with the group, depending on how big the group is, you might split people into smaller groups. But now every person has spoken. So you’ve right from the get go of that meeting, you’ve set a new tone. This is a meeting where everyone talks, this is a meeting where everyone has a voice. And so they put the post up. Now, you might say, you know, there’s another game where you get something called an affinity map. So you break people into larger groups, but they’re not the whole group. And they go and work on different parts of the say this, this board of sticky notes, and you ask them to come up with some themes. So it’s partially that they are going to come up with some meaningful themes. And they’re going to feed that back to the collective. But it’s also has some more of this Mary Poppins, some of the medicine in the sugar is that each person is going to know that people are looking at what they’ve put there. So now their voice matters. You’re also putting in them to small cross functional groups. So you’re teaching them that not only does their voice matter on the board, but they’re a part of the end decision. So now they’re engaged there have been woven into the process, rather than just being talked at or talked over. So you’re creating a new dynamic while you’re still getting the same kind of outcome. So at the end of it, maybe you have a couple of small groups they share out, and you say, okay, great, wow. Now he has some overarching themes, you might not create anything different than you would have had, you know, the leadership of that team spoken and sort of said, here’s what we’re thinking or the hippo, everyone will feel a part of it. Yeah. And sometimes you do you get some things way to left field. And people are like, whoa, we never thought about that. So glad this came up, or you see things differently. But I mean, that’s a really easy one post up sort, you know, share out, done. That’s a game.
Russel Lolacher
Fair, fair. Yeah. So I want to know more Cody, where the hell would I go for resources for this? Where’s my Google journey?
Codie McQuay
So I mean, I think a great resource is a place called Liberating Structures, they’re gonna have these, think of them like game boards, they’re gonna have some preset, find games that you can play that will achieve certain things. The same with Game Storming. That’s a wonderful resource. There’s hundreds of crowdsource games in there. Really, really great. There’s a place called Kota, they offer frameworks that are more in documents, any of the design thinking you can pull a lot of those kinds of games. You know, if you look up things like meeting canvas, you’re going to get game boards. So really, it’s about thinking about it differently. And starting to think about it like how can we make this more of an experience, rather than like a one way radio program?
Russel Lolacher
I loved your example of going to a meeting and you’re basically just watching TV, you’re not participating. You’re just at the show. I wish I could turn it off. But at least I know what it ends.
Codie McQuay
Yeah, yeah. Versus like when we, when we create that dynamic where it’s everyone’s got their hands in the clay. Now we’re saying, Hey, we do something different here on this team in this department at this organization, everybody’s involved. I mean, that pays dividends, they may not pay dividends today. But down the road, when somebody sees something, they’re a little bit more inclined to raise their hand or pull somebody aside and say, you know, have something want to tell you? Yeah, versus thinking like, well, you know, my voice doesn’t matter here. So I’ll sit back and watch the show.
THE FINAL TWO
Russel Lolacher
I will add all the resources you mentioned into the show notes, so anybody wants to find them go to relationshipsatwork.ca. Now we come to the end, Cody with the final two. The last two questions I ask all of my guests. So let’s start there with the first question being what’s the best or worst employee experience you’ve had?
Codie McQuay
That’s a great question. There’s so many options to share. I’m I’m sorry recently part of a new organization. You know, my first day they brought in everybody that I might have, especially during COVID times this this was a this felt like a such a big gesture they brought and everyone that I would have sort of, maybe interaction with to so we could have, you know, a half an hour introduction. And then, you know, there’s two things that happened in that meeting that really stood out for me. One, one of the more senior members in the meeting, made it no, he said, you’re coming from an external place to our, to our organization. And I really want to encourage you that if you see things that you think could be different, or could be better between now and you know, a year from now, the doors open, and I’m really hope that you’ll tell me, that created, you know, right away a different sense of ownership, but also a sense that I might have experiences to offer. The second thing that happened in that meeting, is as we were going around, and they were, they were all very, very kind, which is so nice. Somebody was saying, Oh, we’re so excited to have you as a new member to this organization. You know, we, we, we don’t always get people kind of, we get people internally, but not necessarily, from an external place. And one of our goals is to hire smart people. And rather than telling them what to do have them tell us, you know, what they want to do what they need to do what’s new. And so I just felt that those two things, I felt really empowered to really show up at the organization and own it in a way that I might have felt a little bit more timid, had I not been given such a great invitation. Love that.
Russel Lolacher
So very, very, very, very much love that. Last question. You ready for this? Sure. Sound ready? Sound ready, Cody? We’re ready. What’s one simple action people can do right now to improve their relationships at work?
Codie McQuay
Have an agenda for every meeting? And when I say the agenda, not just like, here’s the 20 million things that we’re hoping to fly through but like, it’s like, what is the one thing if the fire alarm goes off and the building burns down? What is the one thing this meeting needs to accomplish? If everybody comes into a meeting, knowing that it improves the quality of every person at the meeting, but it also improves the meeting itself?
Russel Lolacher
Boom! Boom! Let’s end with the truth bomb. Thank you so much, Cody for your time. I always love talking to you on a podcast or not. So thank you so much for being here. You’re welcome. Did you just put food in your mouth to finish this off?
Codie McQuay
From over I didn’t realize it was gonna be like a thing.
Russel Lolacher
Oh, I’m keeping this in now. Okay, dude, again, dude again. No, that’s it. We’re good. Peace out. We’re done. I’m totally giving it. Fuck, yeah I am.