Joe Justice

Transcript

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  00:37

Who is Joel Justice? And the making of the Joe justice?  I want to know where did you grow up? What got you in? Because like you know how I got introduced to Joe Justice watching a TED Talk. Or maybe just learning about wiki speed, but I don’t know anything else. And I think people want to know who is Joe Justice? 

Speaker: Joe Justice  01:01

What? Really, do you want to take the conversation to what we can do? But that might be a pretty niche audience. And that they’d like, they’d want to know, but I don’t think that’s going to…

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  01:14

Just tell us. Tell things that people might not know , what’s been your journey? And if you had to look from outside in ,how would you describe your justice? What’s important to you and what got you where you are today? 

Speaker: Joe Justice  01:36

I’m happy to, if you want to, I’m happy to. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  01:39

Let’s timebox it to maybe I don’t know, what do you think is fair?

Speaker: Joe Justice  01:46

We can do. I love Jim Benson’s Lean Coffee, so we can check in seconds and say this topic or a new one?

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  01:55

That’s awesome. By the way, I’m talking to him, I think next week too. So I have some question. But yeah, let’s timebox it. Let’s do that.

Speaker: Joe Justice  02:05

I think Jim Benson is really not as well known as his genius should suggest, I think he’s an undiscovered and not undiscovered. He’s got 1000s of people that know all about him and hundreds of companies that are all about him. But it should be billions and millions based on his contributions. And I think most people don’t know enough about how awesome Jim Benson is. So I think that conversation if you’re about to interview him,

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  02:41

And I’ll let him know what you said, because I feel like same thing about you and others, like more people should be aware of your work and stuff that you stand for. And though I think you’ll like to hear that. But let’s come back to Joe Justice, anti box and maybe a couple of minutes and see. So how did you get started? How did you get in? Introduce maybe to building stuff and eventually to Agile.

Speaker: Joe Justice  03:17

Yeah, well, people have asked that before. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to go one step before that question. Some new content in this podcast that I don’t think I’ve ever talked about in any recording.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  03:32

That would even better. 

Speaker: Joe Justice  03:34

Yeah, let’s make some stuff that only people can get here. So my ancestors on my mom’s side came to the United States, the boat after the Mayflower. They were the very first settlers, the second boat of settlers to what is now the United States. And we don’t know why do we do use his last name Kim, but it looked like political disagreement, wanting to, before that in England and most of Europe, if you had different religious beliefs from whoever the ruler was, you were legitimately tortured or killed, right? And it doesn’t even mean they were that passionate about whatever their religious belief was. 

It’s just that they didn’t want to switch belief based on whatever the ruler did. So it’s more of a political stance probably, is what it looked like. So imagine someone who leaves for the new world on a boat, these are hardy people. These are hardcore principles and goals driven people. And that’s my ancestor. There’s this book called The Book of Dewey. And it links Dewey’s line as parents directly back to Charlemagne. So whether Charlemagne is good or bad, Charlemagne was strong and that’s my ancestor. And then we go further down. And they were big people in small towns during the Gold Rush, they ran the furniture store and the coffin making store, you know what were people who make stuff do. 

So you have a carpenter come to a town, what can they do? They can make furniture, they can make coffins, they can make hardware. And so they sell that to the folks going out to the gold rush. Well, and then they’ve made the majority of the money in this pop up, this mini town that just happened, right? So they started the bank. And then they buy stock in the minds. And they became the biggest to do people in these tiny little towns. And that’s my family. It’s like successful start-ups. That’s what a start-up was in the gold rush. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  05:50

Back in the day, yeah.

Speaker: Joe Justice  07:39

Well, they went on into World War II and my grandfather became a one star general, Brigadier General. And what he was famous for was how humble he was, he always introduced himself as a farmer. And as soon as the war ended, he went back to a farm and he never in his small town said, I’m General Dan, I was told he died when I was really small. I didn’t meet him, but I was really small. But I was told he always introduced himself as farmer Dan. And his brother became a three-star general, they don’t make many of those, that is completely unusual. And he oversaw the construction of Houston Space Center, he was head of the Army Corps of Engineers. 

And he oversaw the construction of Fermi lab, and all types of massive infrastructure projects that then allowed all types of innovation to happen. So I like to think of this as the ultimate start-up incubator. Well, not the ultimate but the concept of a start-up incubator right after World War II is Fermilab, or NASA, right? That’s what they were. And that’s my family. Then my other great uncle is one of the heads of one of the Ivy League universities or was. And then my mom gets born. And she’s an army brat. And she’s beautiful. I have a beautiful mom. And she’s the general’s daughter. And think of this dynamic. The general who’s like, you report to the general, right? The general tells you when you can eat.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  07:34

Is this where the Croatian side comes in, the Croatian dad or?

Speaker: Joe Justice  07:39

Yeah, it’s all about to make perfect sense, it’s all about to make perfect sense. So you have this European long legged, Swedish, Finnish, German, English generals’ daughter, and as the general, she grew up in Turkey, and then occupied Japan, they had servants, they lived in a movie stars house, which is part of the awful thing that happens with war. I mean, you just take the nice house and whoever’s living there leaves or is jailed, right? I mean, and that my mom grew up in that, in this privilege. Interestingly, that wasn’t lost on her, the sense of justice and its stock, which is good, right? 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  08:27

Yeah, it tells you a lot about the person if you  aren’t aware of that. It’s easy to get used to the world that you live in and to be humbled and to actually understand it. And that tells you a lot about the character I guess of the person because, what I’ve learned is, it’s easy to get used to good and nice things, right?

Speaker: Joe Justice  08:55

Humans seem to legitimately get used to anything. But I love you resonating with what I was also wishing to communicate that some people choose to think is this just, what can I do to improve the justice of this situation? Not only just cope with the reality whether it’s awesome or not awesome. Eventually she was stationed in Hawaii. Well, her dad, the one star general, Ray Dan, General Ray Dan was stationed in Hawaii. That’s where she went to high school. 

And everybody wanted to date her as my understanding. I mean, I of course wasn’t born yet. But that’s told by my nanny. She’s beautiful, she’s the general’s daughter and they have the ideal arguably post in in Hawaii. And she then goes to St. Mary’s College, the sister school of Notre Dame College in South Bend, Indiana. And My dad is 100% Croatian. And as I think, you are too, right?

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  10:08

I’m from there. Yeah, I grew up in Sarajevo not necessarily but used to be all part of same country.

Speaker: Joe Justice  10:13

Well, and there’s some really..

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  10:16

Same people.

Speaker: Joe Justice  10:17

Yes. Same people, and extremely similar, not same but extremely similar culture. But I mean, really you go down the street in Croatia and Bosnia and Serbia and Montenegro, you go down the street, and the culture is a little different. So arbitrarily drawing national boundaries is pretty weird in a place like that, because it’s really similar and yet completely nuanced. And what a beautiful part of the world in terms of people and culture and architecture and rocks and lakes and..

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  10:53

Everything. Yeah, I was so happy to hear that when you said that you have the roots in the Balkans. I’m like, man, now I see why I gravitate towards this guy and why. And it was just nice to hear. Yeah, so sorry. Yeah. By the way, checking, I’m enjoying this. So I think we just keep going with this.

Speaker: Joe Justice  11:17

For now. And I’ve never talked about this in any kind of a podcast or anything. So if anyone was interested in this, this is the only place it’s been discussed today. So my dad, both his parents came over from the Balkans, Croatia, specifically, but in any case they all moved around inside ancestrally. So they’re in the Balkans in general, that part of the world happened to be Croatia. And they both came to the United States. Many people do ask about my name. And now I finally get to answer it. My grandfather on my dad’s side his name was Eustace. Eustace and in Pearl Harbor at that time, they would Americanise everyone’s name. If you were Paulo, if you were Powell, it became Paul. Right period. You became a simplification of all those things. And Eustace became Justice. Yeah.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  12:24

It’s Eustace. Yeah, Croatian. And just now like if somebody gave me whatever, I wouldn’t have guessed. But that didn’t just happen in Pearl Harbor, happened in New York, right? like when people….

Speaker: Joe Justice  12:41

Everywhere. Sorry [inaudible 12:42] in Ellis Island, or wherever.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  12:47

Ellis Island. Yeah.

Speaker: Joe Justice  12:48

And that’s what happened to my grandpa. Well, my grandpa met my grandma in Chicago, and she was also 100% Balkans, 100% Croatian in this case and they got married. Now interestingly, she like her mother, which was not that uncommon back then had been sold as a house servant when she was like eight years old. And so it was completely out of touch with her roots. And maybe the same with her mom before that. The world has become way more civilized in the last two years, a little bit and it’s already pretty hardcore, right? So they meet and they marry and they open a restaurant in Los Angeles when Los Angeles was not a big city, like basically a port town, a hard-working town.

And my grandpa laid bricks, totally uneducated, really hardworking, super muscular Balkan dude. And they had three kids. One went to be a pro football player. So that’s my uncle, uncle John. Uncle John Justice became a pro football player in America. And get out of being born from pretty much poverty, they ran a cheap diner and laid bricks. And the whole family grew up working in the diner in LA, but it wasn’t the LA we have now, right? This is 60 years ago. And then my dad was getting beat up all the time. His brother, John would take him to the park and say, who wants to fight my brother? And for uncle John, who’s already big and muscular to prove his chops, but also to try to toughen up his brother to do him a favor, right? 

He got a broken nose, he had a deviated septum. And from youth, right? He was just constant. And he wasn’t small but he wasn’t big like uncle John was, he was like a normal but kind of fit. Well, so he poured himself into academics. He’s like, how am I going to get out of this? And he got his PhD in Nuclear Physics from Notre Dame under scholarship. He had no money. So it was all scholarship, but not much money. The restaurant did okay, but they were lower middle class at best, and from nothing. So already a success story, I think. And he put himself through private college, one of the most prestigious colleges at the time. In the new nuclear engineering, nuclear physics department. He then taught nuclear physics at Notre Dame. And he invented a device that helps treat cancer with radiation therapy. Got the patent on that, I think, his PhD was on the beginnings of that device, and then I think patented it. And then he moved around setting up what’s now called radiation oncology departments, mostly in the US. 

I think mostly in the US. So every three or four years, he’d go to a new city, because he’d been hired in to found their radiation oncology department, he would install his machine or a derivative of it, and he would use it and also the business of the hospital to run it. Well, when he was teaching at Notre Dame, the sister school is St. Mary’s, and there was this beautiful lady walking around, taught himself to play the guitar. And he would play in the park and so you have this like, not as huge as my uncle John, the pro football player, but this pretty muscular, fit, really smart, tan skin, and he’s playing the guitar he wooed her, and…

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  16:59

Things we’ll do for a woman.

Speaker: Joe Justice  17:02

Oh, man, the things people do for what they really like.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  17:06

Like, it’s crazy. Yeah.

Speaker: Joe Justice  17:08

And he decided he really liked this lady and she decided she really liked him and they had six kids, they got married and had six kids. They did it in the right order at that time. Not everyone did, right? But they did, got married and had six kids. And I’m the last one. I’m number six. And everyone in my family has gone on to do nutty interesting stuff. And it’s a bizarre parallel life. Yeah, and me being the last one, like, everyone except me, went to what’s called classical education, most people call it that, whether you spoke Latin, studied Greek, learn to play the recorder, all your school plays where Shakespeare similar classical education, I didn’t. 

Those schools where folks went were really changing by the time I was coming around, and the finances were quite different. And a lot of stuff was happening. So I didn’t. But I grew up with four sisters and a brother speaking Latin, writing in Greek, pinning bugs to cork boards for biology class, actually studying vivisection and stuff. And that, by the way, is one of my earlier memories is being so freaked out at the injustice that we would kill, it was a cricket, is what it was, grasshopper to study it, like, why? How unfair if we’re thinking from the grasshopper’s perspective? 

This hand comes over it from somewhere huge, and then puts it in a jar with a mothballed nail polish remover, and so it fades out and its life’s over. Like, why is that fair? And I was screaming let the grasshopper go or otherwise I was screaming. I was crying let the grasshopper go. I was like 6, 5 6. Yeah, that’s one of my most early memories. And I was born legally blind. And no one noticed because there was five other kids. And they’re like, just really clumsy. And I was riding a bike, they’re like, why didn’t you stop for the stop sign? I was like, what stop signs? I could not see. And people did not know and I was really smart. So I kept up in school even though I couldn’t see. They’re like his handwriting is really bad. They didn’t know until I was seven.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  19:52

And people probably wouldn’t especially like it probably for your parents too. It’s like that’s the especially with the sixth child. I guess that’s the last thing to think about because…

Speaker: Joe Justice  20:01

Totally, they’re like, is everyone alive? Did anyone lose a finger, right? And it’s just different when you’ve got that many. And so as an adult, I completely forgive everybody. But at the same time, it’s frustrating, that shows how much attention I got, right? That’s just real. That’s just what it was. He was blind and no one noticed for seven years, that’s legit. That’s what happened. Three eye surgeries later, now I see really well. Although now I’m 41 and almost 42. My eyes are starting to get bad again. So I’m sure I’ll get glasses again soon or maybe another eye surgery. 

But something. Yeah. So that brings me up to seven years old. Because everything was blurry, and like, severely blurry. I saw light and color, but it was just I didn’t know who was who. I didn’t know who was my family, who wasn’t. So I’d really clean clothes. And when you’re three, that’s okay but when you’re seven, they’re like something’s wrong with that boy? Like, if I lose your hand, I don’t know who you are, I can’t find you again. And no one understood that. So they’re like, why is Joe clinging? But what I would do is draw and that’s one of the reasons why people didn’t think I was blind. And it was impressionistic, colors and I would spend a lot of my time doing that, because I could just sit there and draw and then I knew my family would come find me again.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  21:45

That’s crazy. Because I can personally relate to it, because I always had good eye sight, but my son has, he’s four years old.

Speaker: Joe Justice  21:54

Congratulations. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  21:55

Thank you. And he has some sight issues and you can’t really I mean, I can try to empathize, I can try to put myself into but I can only imagine, like you said, you clinging to something because you don’t know, there’s a lot of unknown, right? And that probably shapes you as a person, right?

Speaker: Joe Justice  22:21

For sure. Yeah, for sure. It’s awesome to try to understand the continuation of the emotional connections, the stimuli that helped make companies, that helped make products, that help make services, that help make people. And we have no bigger data set than ourselves. So trying to understand other companies, other people, other systems by looking back at our chain of connections is super fascinating. Because it works, right? You can see the connections. And parents have such an edge, because they get to study something with an adult mind from when it was born up until wherever it is now. 

And parents and grandparents really get this stuff. They’re like, why see how that company did X? Because they can see how kids in general do this, especially if they all grew up in the same neighborhood, where kids played together. So they see a sample size of like 20 kids, and know something about their upbringing. And then they look at a company and they’re like, oh, yeah, I see why they have a culture of sit-down meetings and slow innovation. Just get it, is funny how solvable the problem is. It also makes sense why companies repeat, and so often have the same failure modes.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  23:49

Failure modes, yeah. So maybe to shift gears a little bit that just reminded me and what I want to talk to you about is you’ve recently worked at Tesla, and that whole experience working at Tesla, could you maybe talk about it? What did your day look like? And when it comes to agility and innovation, what are they doing that most people wouldn’t know? Because, some of it, based on what I’ve heard you say, it’s out there. There are that many companies at least, it’s not well known that they’re doing that, or maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. But what did you learn at Tesla? What do you think people will find interesting?

Speaker: Joe Justice  24:28

Just this morning, I was in a meeting that I’m really grateful for, put on by Steve Denning. And Steve Denning was a manager at the World Bank, which is still a force globally, but during its heyday is when Steve Denning was even more involved. And the other attendees are all movers and shakers that care about agile, so it’s really accomplished people many of whom have billions of dollars that they influence how it’s spent whether euro or yen [inaudible 25:05] and they all care about agility and they meet on a regular cadence to discuss mostly management issues is what it comes down to. 

And despite how cool these people are, and how awesome Steve Denning is, that agile mindset Leadership Summit, kind of that’s not what it’s called but that’s sort of what it comes down to, conversations about leadership from people who care about agility in positions of power. Is so flipping boring. It’s so irrelevant. They’re talking about do we use fast goals or do we use smart goals? What kind of meetings do we have? What kind of leadership attributes do you hire? And I just stay on mute most of the time, when I do unmute people look at me like I’ve got three heads, because it’s such a different conversation. Wow. So to segue into what you actually asked, the musk companies are so different, that even the successful agile companies look like irrelevant.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  26:26

Because maybe they’re not agile, I think, if you look at it, like, mass is all about agility and having options and a lot of us call ourselves, including myself agile, but we have no idea what these companies are doing. So what are some of the insights? Give us examples because I’ve heard you talk about it, how does it work at Tesla? And the people will go like, yep, that’s how…

Speaker: Joe Justice  26:56

I will say it. There’s some stuff that I really wish I could say that I don’t get to say. It’s still under non disclosure. But interestingly, there’s really powerful, I think, effective stuff, I do get to talk about. And so I’ll talk about that. There aren’t meetings, there aren’t leaders. And I’ve said, I’ve tried to say that before. And I think people then don’t know well, then what is there, right? I’d like to try an analogy that maybe years ago, I thought and said but today, I think it really matches. So I haven’t said this at least recently. Elon Musk wants there to be people living on Mars self sustainable, right? 

He’s got this goal that if a meteorite hits the earth, or whatever happens, there’s a backup of the human species in as many places as possible, starting with Mars because it’s the next likely most achievable, sustainable place. So that’s the goal, right? Elon Musk isn’t trying to make a company to sell. Elon Musk isn’t trying to make a product that he wants to sell. Elon Musk isn’t trying to make a service that he wants to sell. He’s got this goal. And it’s how do you fund that? And so now you bring in the idea of business. Okay, so first, there’s this goal. And then how do you fund that? Okay, well, there’s two circles, Elon says, there’s how many people can afford to go to Mars?

And how many people want to go to Mars? And he says, you got to grow both of those to make them overlap. So you have to make it cheaper to go to Mars and you have to increase global wealth, which is already interesting, most people are like, how do I make a service that people want to buy? That’s not the mind at all. And then the other side, it’s how do you make more people want to go to Mars, have people that are interested in growing their wealth so that they’ll overlap. And so now you’ve introduced business, and that business already has a social good angle. One is, get people to Mars, which is arguably the biggest social good, a backup of the human species. 

And the other one is, how do you grow people’s wealth so that they can afford, right? So he’s like, how do I make other people have more money, right? Like an anti business model? Well, that drives all the decision making, then the company is, it’s a it’s a printer. SpaceX is a printer, Tesla is a printer, like an inkjet or laser jet printer. If Musk could buy a laser jet, or an inkjet on Amazon that would print out starship rockets, that’s all he would do, and it’d be done. But he can’t write that, that’s not a product yet. So he’s like, how do I make that printer? And that’s it. Well, how many leaders do you need inside your inkjet printer?

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  30:09

Depends how much you want to print.

Speaker: Joe Justice  30:11

Zero. You want some pieces of metal that move around an ink and it’s about materials. If you look at SpaceX hiring list, there is not one executive position. They don’t have them and they don’t hire them. Gwynne Shotwell is CEO. Well, what she actually does is everything, right? But functionally, the primary responsibility is sales. And not a traditional sales organization. I mean, actually booking deals, being a little bit facetious here, but how she does that is even different than most sales organizations think they’re run. So calling it a sales organization is a bit of a misnomer. But what she does is she books launches; she gets satellites booked. She’s basically the Buy It Now button. 

You have questions about the Buy It Now button, talk to Gwynne Shotwell. And there’s no leadership positions. They don’t exist. What they have is welders. I mean, think about it like a printer. If the printer was making spaceships, what would happen in the printer, there’d be welders, there’d be a lot of robots. Do you need some people? Yeah, you need maybe now with the current state of technology, some people, you need people that program robots. Look at SpaceX hiring the robots, you need people who buy metal. Now largely that’s automated, right? Because you write software to do what people do. So people do creative work. And this is something that I am becoming famous for saying.

And it’s totally true in the most companies, people do creative problem solving,  automation, robot software is for everything else. So if something’s a standard operating procedure in the Musk companies, it’s a software script or a robot, and it’s a printer, there’s no leaders, there’s managers in that, there’s like group leads not to answer questions, but to model good work to keep people upskilled. It’s almost like an apprenticeship model and fast forward. And there’s that. There’s no hierarchy, it’s flat, there are no meetings, there’s no chairs, there’s almost no chairs, there’s no desks, there are not thought leader positions.

I mean, search like agile leader in the Musk companies, it doesn’t exist. Search leader anything, if you search project manager, you’re going to get almost no hits. And there’s 1000s of open positions across the Musk companies. So this is not a, it’s a meaningful search, the sample size is large. But what you will get is new product introduction technical project manager. And that means you’re programming robots, you’re pulling sleds of parts, you’re buying parts, you’re configuring machines, you’re anchoring machines to the floor with bolts. It’s a printer, and the only positions are what you would have inside a printer. 

Elon Musk says the factory is the product. That’s what he means, he’s making a printer that makes spaceships, he’s made printers that make cars, he’s making a printer that makes neural link systems, you look at neural link, there’s not like Chief Architect, it doesn’t exist. Instead there’s like, if we’re going to make a million of these neural link implantable devices a year, what do you need in the machine that makes these positions? And it has physicians.  

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  33:39

But that seems like it’s the future right? If you can do that as a business, that’s your competitive advantage. That’s seems at least when I think about like, look at the car manufacturer not even car, they don’t even call them cars anymore, right? Technology that moves or whatever slogans are. But it’s is who’s going to do exactly what you just said.

Speaker: Joe Justice  34:12

What’s interesting is the Musk companies continued to ramp in value, and their products continue to ramp in terms of quality. Already Tesla has had the highest quality marks of any car company ever made. They didn’t before but they do now. And they had the best financials. They didn’t before but they do now. And Hyperloop looks like it might do the same thing. Starlink looks like it might do the same thing. etc, etc, etc. And then that question, who else is going to do this? 

It’s Agilists. It really is and I will introduce a divider in Agilists. Agile started from a few people who were doing work and helping other people do it. They were charismatic lead developer types. And they were really good at making stuff, mostly software, they’re really good at making stuff. And they would like to help other people make stuff. And they discovered what’s a really lightweight way to coordinate with groups of people to make stuff in really effective ways. And then some consultants came in, and tool vendors came in and said, how do we make..

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  35:32

[inaudible 35:32] everything up?

Speaker: Joe Justice  35:36

How do we make consulting and tool vendors and training out of this stuff? And they had nothing to do with these charismatic people doing work. Well, if you look at Musk, Musk doesn’t do any agile training, except what I brought in, that’s the only agile training the most companies is the ones I did, my setup are conducted. And they don’t do any consulting. And if you look at all the big established consulting companies, they’re too slow for the Musk companies, they’re irrelevant, they have no value to add the musket companies, so they don’t get in. None of those other agilists, tool vendors, consultants get in.

Who gets in? The people who make products in groups, who are some of the original agilists. And some of the people I still tremendously respect, though they’re super welcome in Musk companies, because that’s what you’d want inside a printer. How many training classes need to happen inside your inkjet? None, it doesn’t matter. How much training do you need to be a really good nozzle to spray ink? All you need is a good definition of done and definition of ready, which is part of agile, right? You don’t need any waterfall plan to do that either. So it’s not like waterfall versus agile. It’s like doers versus not doers, and agile doers will be able to thrive in a Musk company.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  37:11  

And why do you think that is? Is that the mindset is that just that people have [inaudible 37:15] like, what distinguishes the Agilists from others?

Speaker: Joe Justice  37:22

Well, I actually think you could answer that question better than anybody. So I’d actually like to ask you that. And then if any of its really didn’t match what I thought I learned in the Musks companies I will say no, but maybe not that part. But would you try? 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  37:36

Sure. So if I would look at it, I would say that it’s experience. It’s a holistic view, right? If you just focused on your own way of doing things or specialization that you’re doing, that kind of limits you. But if you understand the bigger picture, of we’re creating, like, what’s the goal? And what are we trying to do here? And you can say, Yes, I can help here and I can jump on this. That’s what people want. They don’t want people sitting around. They want like you said doors like, hey this is what I’m… here’s a problem. I can jump in and help on this. Here I am, right? So that would be my kind of answer to that.

Speaker: Joe Justice  38:20

May I add to that, because I only agree. I have to put a fine point on that. I will say what I’m trying to say here by agilists is people who have a functional user facing definition of done in mind all the time. And folks who think in phases, but it’s a phase that doesn’t yet get to the customer, like I do design or I do field validation, they don’t fit. They don’t fit in these companies. And they’re frustrated in these companies, because they’re being asked to think end to end all the time. But people who are comfortable working wherever they are, maybe the product doesn’t exist yet. Or maybe it’s a Legacy product or a collection of legacy and new, that doesn’t matter.

You walk up to a system and think with the functional value creating end in mind, what do we do next? And that’s what a sprint was supposed to be. But now you have planning sprints and PSI and all kinds of stuff that wouldn’t fit in a Musk company. So you have these doers, and they’re comfortable working alone or with groups or with huge groups and it’s faster when they work in groups. There’s awesome data around mob now and almost everything I did in the Musk companies is basically mob. But they’re comfortable walking up to a system at any state and helping the end state and they’re not thinking in terms of segments. 

Most people will say phases, but you could also call a version of phase, a v1 faces the customer v2, that’s fine, right? But what we don’t want is a plan phase. So people say, I’m a planner, they have no place in these companies. People who say I’m a test and field automation engineer, they have no place in these companies, people who say I work on products, that’s this agilist. And they fit really naturally and really well. And Silicon Valley is so full of these people, that they just can’t even talk to traditional consultancies anymore. Because they’re like, you don’t understand me, you don’t understand my companies. What do you mean, you’re trying to improve my financial validation phase? I don’t know. No, I’m not going to hire you. And in fact, I don’t even want you talking to my people, you’re going to slow them down and pollute them.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  40:53

But look at the agile, like, you refer to it. Like the whole, the weird part, at least partially, I guess, the consulting training, it’s we all know, it’s bunch of BS, in a sense, right?

Speaker: Joe Justice  41:11

For a broken, slow company, it’s a stepping stone. And I love that. So scaled agile framework, many people will accuse as being the most complicated and slowest of all agile frameworks. It has a really valuable place in the world, because some companies are on 12-month, new product introduction cycles, or slower, and everyone’s arranged by non customer facing phase, yes, introduce Scaled Agile Framework, it’ll be so much better than the horrible world you’re in. By comparison, that’s also a slow horrible world. So at some point that will need to be transcended. But yeah, those are stepping stones, if you want to go into GE Power and Light, or anyway, some massive company, all these frameworks, all these trainings have a place. But then someone like me is frustrated, because you’re at these slow, toxic companies all the time, way more to actually go into one of these fast companies that doesn’t need any of this training. They don’t need any of these stepping stones. You just do, you just work.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  42:26

Yeah, it’s like, at some point things are going to catch up with you, right? I joke around, but look a year ago when COVID hit and look at the grocery stores, like they never thought themselves as, like, my grocery experience should be a lot better than what it is today. And it’s like, when everybody sucks, it’s okay to suck, right in an industry? But eventually somebody like either Amazon or, like with Amazon, somebody is going to come in disrupting us. In that point, it’s screwed, because you can’t fast track or you can’t, it’s going to be very difficult,

Speaker: Joe Justice  43:00

like Musk manufacturer, having these really distributed slow global supply chains. So it gets disrupted, and it’s four months or more till new Musk come. And really, maybe that was actually a bad idea. This is lack of agility, right?

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  43:20

What was the biggest thing that you learned at Tesla? Well, maybe thing that stood out to you, maybe someday you were surprised by that you didn’t expect.

Speaker: Joe Justice  43:33

I’d been working as a consultant and trainer in so many slow, wealthy but slow companies for the last six years before that. That’s what stood out to me so much is that this agile stuff actually works. I’d wiki speed before, which is what enabled me to know this well enough to do all the consulting and training I did after that. And then I spent six years making money, and I think helping companies, but helping wealthy slow companies almost exclusively, and that is disillusioning, right? Because all you see is silo-based skills, separated slow companies, getting into the Musk companies. And I dabbled before during that time, but actually fully dedicating myself as a full-time employee. What that did for me is it was validating. Oh, yeah, okay. You don’t need any hierarchy. You don’t need any leadership. 

Every time I internally felt frustrated being in a planning meeting. I remembered. Yes, you don’t need any planning meetings. You don’t need any meetings and it’s okay to not tolerate that slowness and waste. It’s okay to have this allergic reaction to slowness and waste. Because if you don’t in a Musk company, you won’t fit, right? You need to just not tolerate not action. It’s not only a bias towards action, it’s also a comfort and confidence. Okay, here this stood out. How do you make this sustainable pace, and the Musk companies are famous for 12-hour shifts, for people in their 20s without kids working there? What stood out to me is in the area where I worked most of my time, I worked across the entire company. But I had a home base, essentially  where I worked most of my time. In that area, more than half the employees were women.

And most people were not in their 20s. There were some 20-year-olds men and women, super strong. They can just really work because of your genetics at that age. But there were some people in their 70s. And it was more than half ladies, which some people think the culture might be too macho for that. Not at all, not at all, it was more than half. And what stood out to me is what made it sustainable for those people because it’s you’re doing all day, right? Well imagine someone who works in a department store. Like maybe they work in the shoes department yet pre COVID, I don’t know if we’ll ever have this again. But I think some of us still remember, someone who worked in a shoe store. And they’re always cleaning and arranging the shoes, they are checking backstock because there aren’t many people working in the shoe area.

And they’re like, how many of these do we have and what size and what color? A guest comes in, a customer comes in? What would you like? And they’re on their feet all day, they have no desk, right? They don’t have one. And they’re getting up and getting down. They’re sitting down and sitting up; they’re putting shoes on guests. They’re being polite and cordial. Well, some of us have met people that have done that their whole career. And maybe now they’re a grandparent, and they’re still working in the shoe department. They have no desk, they’re on their feet all day.

And maybe they’ve been doing it 12 hours a day. Maybe they own the shoe store, right? Well, people have been doing that for generations. That’s who succeeds in the Musk companies. And if you think of some elderly lady who runs a bakery shop or something, they’ve got their own boutique or a cosmetics store or whatever. And they’re just on their feet all day, they don’t have a desk, maybe there’s a stool, they sit on behind the cash register sometimes, but they’re doing their store and they maintain the sign, their full cross functional, they understand the business, they keep their own books. That’s not a new concept, that’s agile. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  48:10

Yeah and that just reminded me to just bring the whole circle back. So when my family immigrated here in 95, my dad was engineer electric power station and like coming to United States without no English, they work two jobs in like minimum wage. And it’s that you have some kind of purpose, they never felt like they were tired, they worked two jobs, they were excited to be out of that mess, right? I don’t know, obviously to work at that capacity and that you have to have some type of higher purpose or alignment to the higher purpose or maybe I don’t know what do you think?

Speaker: Joe Justice  49:01

Yeah, well that’s interesting.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  49:05

Why would you like, if you don’t like what you do and you don’t believe in what you’re doing, why would you want to… is it just because of the money? Maybe it’s not a mix? It’s a not a single.

Speaker: Joe Justice  49:23

Yeah. Oh, man. It’s definitely not because of the money I believe. A lot of the people in the Musk companies are either there because they’re mission driven. It looks like or because they don’t think they have a choice. And the second category might sound super loaded, but I think it’s true. Quite a few of the people I worked with were career factory workers and in the Musk companies, they might be in a knowledge work. Well, everyone does knowledge work like everyone programs robots, and everyone hauls equipment I mean, it’s labor and knowledge, labor and knowledge. But a significant percentage of the people there are career factory employees. 

Maybe they have a criminal record, a lot of the people I talked to were ex convicts. And they’re like, it’s just hard for me to get other types of work. They maybe were just to be frank, really ugly. And they’re like, people don’t want me working front of house in a restaurant. Maybe I can be a porter in the kitchen or a factory but I’m born the way I’m born. I had this accident so I came to the factory. And truly, in a Musk company, I’ve never worked anywhere, where it didn’t matter even more what you look like, it did not matter. Most companies, there’s this cast of handsome people that are managers and up and which is weird. I mean really, it’s actually corrupt. And that does not happen in the Musk companies at all. 

It’s just not a thing. LGBTQ, lesbian, bi-transgender, gay, more than that, has ranked them Tesla, specifically, the best place in the world to work more than five years, some big number of years running. And I think that’s because you are only your output. I mean, truly, so if you want to just go and work somewhere and not be evaluated on how you did your hair, or what norm you fit in. This is a really good place to do that. You just go and you’re a printer, you’re a printer. And are you making this thing or not? And that’s it. Like truly that is it, more than anywhere I’ve ever been. And that’s good and bad. Because say you’re handsome, and you’re like, people should give me preferential treatment, and I should have an office with a window. I’m handsome, and this is what I’m used to. You’re not going to like it then because…

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  52:29

That’s not going to work for you. Yeah.

Speaker: Joe Justice  52:31

No, that is not an advantage.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  52:36

That is it. Like you said, there’s good and there’s bad and it’s really interesting. Do just get a peek inside that and understand I’m trying to also think like what’s coming? In a sense, what are the next five to 10 years going to look like for the rest? Because I’m assuming that some of this will be in some ways, right one be understood and applied in other industries in and what’s coming after the big A, Agile?

Speaker: Joe Justice  53:18

Well, the Musk model, and I want to give it a better name. But it’s a specific type of agile, because there’s a lot of agile now, or things that I mean, anyone can call anything agile. So there is a lot of non helpful garbage that people call agile and even spend a lot of money-making pretty pictures and advertising is agile. So it’s hard for a lot of folks to know. So the Musk model, which I will say is a part of Agile is going to be impossible to compete against, is already impossible to compete against. But it takes a very specific type of leader to implement. And I think very few people are going to implement it. The recipe is very simple. 

To be Elon Musk is actually a very simple recipe. And I actually even did it for a little while and had huge success. And I think I might do it again. I’m relatively entrepreneurial, and I think many people will but it takes a very specific personality to do it. And it’s a decade longer, longer plan and a lot of people think in two-year, one-year increments, so there’ll be a lot of failures. There’ll be a tremendous amount of failures, but anyone who’s not trying it won’t be able to compete. So we are experiencing now see change across all industry and that’s just going to keep going. There’s a real opportunity, I believe, for you. And it’s to take some of the best people practices, delight in your work practices, sustainable pace practices that don’t slow down companies and bring those to the people who are going to be attracted to the Musk model. 

Elon gets it, Elon leads with make it fun. Elon has awesome coffee service across all the Musk companies, I mean world class, you would be challenged to get a better cup of coffee anywhere in the world. And is there for everyone. It’s totally janitorial. It’s not like the manager level gets this copy. No, there is no manager level. Everyone, the janitorial staff, everyone gets awesome coffee service all the time. And the coffee people get awesome coffee all the time, right? And the food service, they really tried to make it Michelin three star right? So you Elon gets it, make it beautiful, make it fun, make it fashionable. And he’s always lead with that. If you are a supermodel, you should feel comfortable working any of the jobs in any of the Musk company. That’s the aspiration right? Well, a lot of people won’t have that mindset and they’ll just see the execution. And that’s going to make really bad working conditions. So what we, as an Agile community can do is reproduce this model, the part that works, but also the human centered design, the developer centered design, a low cognitive load, walk up simple, self organizing, all of which amplify the execution. But as someone who’s only thinking in terms of execution could easily miss.

Having really excellent working conditions that are cheap, is an art that is not well understood. And I think is going to be missed by a lot of companies, it’s going to make some really awful working conditions, they’ll probably be not in the Musk companies because they get it but they’ll probably be companies with series of awful accidents, and burnout and employee theft really unhappy people. And I want to minimize that or dampen the negative impact and help companies do the better thing, how without slowing down, how without big cash output, can you make super fashionable, desirable comfortable places to work that are performing at this level? 

And that’s really Elon’s genius. Like his first office for ZIP two, I was not in there. But he says they rented the office, they didn’t have, he and his brother, he and his cousin. They didn’t have money to rent somewhere else. They slept in the office, they showered in the way and they didn’t have enough to pay for two computers. So they had one that was and at night they would shut the server down and code. Because they have one computer and they would stop coding and turn the server on. So the service ran, zip two and I sold it for 20 million or something. So it worked. And how do you do that? Well, you make it the office, as far as I understood, was like a super fun place to work. It’s where you wanted to crash at night. He had dates. And the office was cool enough that you could bring your date there. It wasn’t [inaudible 58:38] It was cool a cool office.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  58:41

Oh please. Yeah, that’s

Speaker: Joe Justice  58:43

No good, even though they slept there, they made it nice. And so it was charismatic and it was fashionable. That’s important.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  58:53

And I wanted to spend time there and like, it’s like yeah, that’s amazing.

Speaker: Joe Justice  59:02

So let’s make a lot more start-ups and make it really easy for people to take those as a package. This is where agilists word Cunningham really are phenomenal. That thing, the Agile Manifesto, it’s four sentences. Yeah, with a header and a footer, but four values. It’s super simple. And there’s 12 principles behind it. And they’re all good, but you don’t have to know all 12 to get started. Well, that’s the game. How do you make this so simple, it can play in the back of your mind, like a poem you like, like four sentences long? That helps you totally kick ass. And that’s what the Musk companies do with no management, almost no management with I mean, it’s the real agile, none of this training [inaudible 59:55]

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  59:57

 Simple, right? It’s don’t complicate it, keep it somewhat simple, right?

Speaker: Joe Justice  1:00:03

But there’s a lot of uncomplicated stuff that wouldn’t make what the Musk companies make. Oh, it’s this very specific implementation that’s not complicated.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  1:00:16

I’m excited about the future, I think when I look at things, I think, like we talked about, and again, maybe just to wrap it up, if we look at just the history lot has happened. And we’re in a sense, yes, a lot of things have changed. But I’m excited about the future, because he used to be, if we just look 200 years ago, 50 years ago, it was, in my opinion, a lot worse, but…

Speaker: Joe Justice  1:00:45

Right after World War II, there was, well, actually, during World War II, there was an innovation boom globally, everywhere that could, people were willing to throw themselves at work, and make it their life. And you’re going to have victory gardens at home to grow some of your own food, so you’re more self reliant. It’s okay to work the factory jobs swing shift, it’s okay to work double shifts, riveting airplanes together and designing while you rivet. And there’s no new product introduction, making the Mustang to prop fighter plane, its parts are changing on the line all the time, like this was normal. This was normal. And that generation kept that going in business. 

And so you had the containerization movement of shipping, which completely changed global supply chain. You had many, many, many innovations rippling out. And then what happened is their kids were all entitled. And as they got jobs, they’re like, well, I want to sit in an office and have meetings because meetings are fun. Well, then what happens? People in meetings that don’t do with their hands, got all frustrated and bored. Like imagine if you had a Lego set where you didn’t get to touch it. You only could tell someone else what piece to put together, play that way, and they get angry and fight. Well, that’s a company’s now. That’s companies now. 

And it’s the kids of the kids or the kids from this highly productive generation that made the lego sets, right? Well, what we’re seeing now is people who are going to be making themselves. Elon works the line in Tesla, he glues parts together. He rivets, he sleeps in a sleeping bag in the factory. When the executive team at Renault is willing to do that, then I’ll buy Renault stock. But until then, his kids telling other kids how to put lego sets together and those are all going to fail.