Gene Gendel

Transcript: 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  00:30

What do you think is one of the biggest, or maybe I misunderstood things about agile agility?

Speaker: Gene Gendel  00:40

I like analogies and some people say just cut to the point cut to the chase. I like you to run, just levered. I usually put this through for my own analogy, like tobacco and alcohol industries are tightly controlled in the United States and other places as well. You can’t just start making cigarettes, you cannot just make an alcohol and sell it. You have to have a license. If you break the law. There are some repercussions. Agile has become the mainstream, aftermarket, business making intrapreneurship for many. And then some people make this because they want to make a lot of quick money. Large consultancies reinvent the wheel, midsize consultancies trying to follow big ones and trying to stand the bandwagon. In fact, this is one of the biggest omissions and disservices to organizations, clients-organizations, but also our clients-organizations themselves, because it has become almost like a vicious cycle. People have lost the a lot. They lost the authenticity and the initial meaning of the word agile, its intentions. And I mean, today I’m shocked. I should be no longer be shocked. But I still get shocked when you talk to some people at some large organization, people that are in charge of Agile transformation adoption. Anything you asked him who wrote the scrum guide and they wouldn’t know and you ask them to name at least one agile manifesto co-signers and they wouldn’t know. And what they guided by are, like internal design playbooks, and prescriptive manuals and executable files, we talking about 1000s and 1000s of pages, Wiki pages, conference wiki, Box Notes, PowerPoints. So I think the biggest problem for me with Agile is that it has lost its initial authentic meaning. Like if you do a litmus test, and almost anyone’s meaning of the word agile with the word adaptive, or the synonymous word, it’s not going to match. So I think the biggest challenge for me is that it’s just so much stuff out there is no longer relevant.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  03:22

Yeah. How much do you think we as coaches and consultants, the community that we’re part of, how much have we contributed to that? Do we get the easy pass? Or are we a part of the problem as well?

Speaker: Gene Gendel  03:40

Well, I think we’re part of the problem as well, let me explain how, and I’m going to be totally agnostic. I mean, you and I, we are in a part of a probably much better, much more professional community than many others out there. But I’m just going to say I’m going to be very agnostic and generic. People that are in business of giving superficial one time fly by, one nightstand training with certification which has depreciated in value over the last few years dramatically. I don’t think they add much value with regards to educating masses, well, maybe so they add value because they hopefully and this is a big assumption, right? Those better ones, they deliver stuff and it’s authentic, original value. But there are so many second and third market delivery people that just snap certifications at deep discount, resell through less than appropriate and less than ethically appropriate second and third resellers. So, like I said, my initial statement was, it’s not a tobacco alcohol industry where you have to be very careful what you do. Everyone there either has a certification or accreditation or a license, or a badge. So for non-educated consumer. It’s so easy to get confused. I mean, there’s so many of them out there today, especially online, you know, 9.99, 39.99, you get a badge. Some companies sell badges, along with a false promise that because of this certification, someone’s going to get hired. We’ve seen this movie, right? Staffing firms and some less than reputable shops out there, they would essentially present a training or certification as the get your foot in the door green card to get hired. And then once you pay for the badge, they’re gone. I’ve heard these stories, these are unpleasant stories. And I feel sorry for the people that fell for this.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  06:10

Well, yeah, but like I recently wrote about this, I think I even shared with you about the desire, like I use this analogy between cooks and chefs and recipes. So there’s so much and I think you talked about it, and also in the context of Shu Hari, but like, there’s so many people that are looking for recipes, and not necessarily wanting to become a chef or not wanting to understand the patterns behind some of these frameworks. And what we get is that a lot of times people don’t have the ingredients that we promised in these frameworks, and they’re not able to put anything together. So it’s almost like a having recipe, without ingredients, or understanding how to put it together, so..

Speaker: Gene Gendel  06:55

And you’re right, and to my point, many companies are, you know, when you look at what an average company wants to do, they don’t really want to become a learning organization. They wants to become an organization that has executed best practices, according to some, prescriptive guide, the playbook that most likely has been syndicated. And created internally. Or probably just as bad if it came from some large consulting firm that essentially was sold it to them, you know, for $8,000, $9,000 a day. That’s a [inaudible] [07:41] service, right? And you know, but it’s a playbook. Take it, take the deck. It’s because it’s in the deck.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  07:50

And we’ve seen that you and I have worked with large organizations, publicly trade [07:55] organizations where one of the big companies comes in, and we’re sitting at that same table with those big companies. And what the internal leadership is buying is the confidence, right? They’re buying those playbooks, they’re selling these big consulting companies saying, here’s the playbook, or this is what we’re going to do. And how much does it have to do with the lack of leadership understanding organization, what they buying, and just buying the conference assuming that somebody can come in and fix that problem rather than them trying to fix their own problems.

Speaker: Gene Gendel  08:29

You’re right, I agree with you. It’s one of the biggest emissions I’ve seen. And the right also, I fully agree that because people that are decision makers are not the same people that understand the impact, we get these bad decisions. I’m assuming there is nothing more grotesque about this, when a large company hires a large consultancy, because they have a large batch. Because guess what, if they flunk, if they fall flat on their face this whole effort, the hiring company will say, Well, that’s the large consultancy’s fault. I mean, they must have known better. So I’m getting out of jail with a free card. I’m not responsible, and that’s at the time of the when forgive my French, something has defense, but when you’re in the initial state, of course, everything is hunky dory, and how could they be wrong? A billion-dollar company. Did you actually know that majority of their consultants are young, ambitious, well spoken, eloquent graduates from best universities in the world, but with zero or very minimal industry experience. And when you take that, in combination with a very smooth, very well polished PowerPoint deck, and a Valentino suit, now becomes a very big impact. It makes a big impact, it makes a great impression on the hiring company. It can be wrong.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  10:06

Yeah. They also like a lot of times, one of the things that they do bring those large consulting companies in, is either to help them be more efficient, right? Or either to save money. And the way that they define agility or business agility is obviously different than probably what we would define it. I’m interested to know, like, how do you define business agility?

Speaker: Gene Gendel  10:38

Well, funny you said that they think it’s they maybe going to be saving money. God knows you and I cost 1/3. Large consultancies charge simply because we don’t have a gazillion of people in our digital perfection department to work on desk and fine prints. Just value with almost no overhead, right? I mean, whatever our….. anyway.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  11:07

I’m not talking, like saving in that instance. It’s about saving the company money in efficiencies in other areas by actually doing Agile or adopting the agile practices or, as you know like installing agile.

Speaker: Gene Gendel  11:27

I’m with you. So the business agility to me is, first of all, I think business agility is a huge part of organizational agility. One thing I don’t support, and I don’t subscribe to is that when business agility, or agility in sales, or agility in other management, or agility in XYZ, Organizational Domain is viewed as a standalone, independent endeavor that can be  literally treated by its own as a silo. And one of the reasons why I think this is happening is because, again, for the same reasons, for someone, hey, business agility is going to be a great momentum, let’s do stuff in there. I’ve met some great people in business agility, communities that really get it, they come from a standpoint of organizational ecosystemic agility, and perhaps they spend more time with business people, and users and customers, I get that. But for many people, it’s just a way to justify why they don’t want to focus on anything else. So I want to think of organizational systemic agility, with business being a part of it. So I think any organization, business could be marketing sales operation, right? Then there’s technology, there’s HR, there’s vendor management, there’s, side strategies, you name it. So I don’t consider these independent entities. I consider the as part of the much bigger ecosystem.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  13:24

Yeah, give an example. Like if you go back about a year ago, when the whole COVID crisis hit, and if you look at the food industry, especially the grocery store industry, right? I had couple of clients in that space, and they never saw themselves as IT companies, right. And then all of a sudden, when we had crisis, and people couldn’t go into the stores, they suffered, because they weren’t able to adjust, I had something told me mean somebody was, you would put in order, this is March 2020, you will put in an order, you wouldn’t get half of this stuff. When you go to the grocery store, they would come out and take your credit card, go back and run it at the cashier, come back, give you your card back. And then they will bring the groceries that they had for you. And I, first of all, don’t want to deal with that crap. So, I obviously went to a shop somewhere else where I usually don’t shop, but they had that infrastructure already in place. And from a business agility. There are companies that actually benefited from this whole crisis. And there are also companies that actually just expose themselves to how vulnerable they are. Just in how quickly they can respond.

Speaker: Gene Gendel  14:50

Yeah, look, so I was just talking someone else earlier today, as much as COVID has caused so much damage and devastation. And I mean, I got a very short end of the stick last year, and I’ll be pretty open about that. But for some people, and for some companies, it has been a rather more successful period maybe because the we’re in business of producing something that people need the most, somebody saved a ton because of not traveling and not commuting. Spearing on food. I mean, it’s almost they have to take the good with the bad. I mean, I speak from my own experience, and unfortunately, I didn’t get that luxury. I know some people that did I’m not jealous, I’m just stating what I know.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  15:48

Was it late last year, I think it was in December, you wrote agile lyrics home. And I’m just going to read here one part of it. 

Speaker: Gene Gendel  16:04

Go ahead. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  16:05

So Agile is the way to advance for promotion don’t miss opportunities thrive with devotion. Scrum master is a merely a junior role. An enterprise coach is your ultimate goal. And by the

Speaker: Gene Gendel  16:23

And by the way, first of all, thank you for quoting this. People that will be, if they watch it. Hopefully they will understand there’s an irony in this right? people hopefully will [inaudible] [16:34], that very page with the lyrics. It’s got the actual guitar play from a good friend of colleague of mine, Aaron Perry, and I think she’s amazing singer and guitar player, so she put it in music. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  16:51

We’ll include the video down at the bottom in the description, and people can check it out. I watched it and it’s pretty good. But coming back to this topic, I mean, obviously the whole song resonated with me, but especially this part here, and coming back to our earlier discussion about just agile and certification business, a lot of people are just seeing this as an opportunity to switch careers or make more money. You know, Scrum Masters make anywhere from, you know, 100 plus K to 170. I’ve heard people make 170. So it’s a pretty good pay at least in the United States. So a lot of people want to become Scrum Masters not even knowing what it takes to be a good or really good scrum master. What are your thoughts on this and kind of as you were writing this poem, what was going through your head?

Speaker: Gene Gendel  17:57

Mixed feelings, sadness. So, some irony, I always like to turn everything I don’t like into a sarcastic joke. Just helps cope with it. And of course, and you probably have, since all my ridiculous graphics. You know, unlike other professional cartoonists, I try to pretend I am a cartoonist, but I try to put irony and dysfunction into graphics. So what went through my head at that time, so both you and I have and this is where you’re going to keep me honest and tell me if your journey was light. We went through a very long journey of gaining an accreditation by the organization that has been in business for many years, and maybe you know, agree or disagree about some of its history, but on the coaching front, it has been the most reputable organization out there. The coaching offshoot, the coaching leg of it, and both of us, you and I went through a very challenging, a very long journey of becoming certified enterprise coaches, literally was a journey. I mean, I kicked off my journey in 2010, I think and I fled mind back in a couple of months after that, pressure because of my own ignorance. I didn’t do it right, partially because of the process, which wasn’t ideal. And I said, no, screw it. I won’t come back to it until I have time because it was never the main goal for me. I wasn’t in pursuit of the batch. I did my work; I think I was adding lots of value I was learning. But long story short when I went through the process the second time around, it was a long journey, tons of learning along the way. And I bet you’ve done the same, it wasn’t an easy gift to you, right? And I also have mentored many people since then, people that were on the same journey. So I know people that really want to get this kind of accreditation, or this kind of credential. They invest a ton load of time and effort into it.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  20:22

And money, too. I mean, I remember like going to, and traveling to just meet some of these people to understand from their perspective, observe. So it was like a commitment, not just from that, but it was financial commitment too because they require you to put a lot of this into practice before what you’ve done and also to build relationships.

Speaker: Gene Gendel  20:49

Yeah, I’m totally with you on this. And so the sad part is this. It is me and you and a bunch of other people, a small fraction of people that really took it seriously. Today, and this is because of the supply and demand thing. And I wrote about this many times as well. Everyone, their mother, even enterprise coach. So you can always look them up graphics and even funny SQL I call it as when their HR database is being updated overnight with a SQL statement where you update values, senior project managers, senior Agile coach, junior project managers, Scrum Master, for crying out loud. If that’s what you do, then why would you expect your organization to change? So for many people, it’s a fast track. Just because there was a bandwagon moving at high speed. Agile, agile let’s jump in on the bandwagon. So it looks like my PMR responsibilities are winding down. Where is that next train that I need to jump on? Next agile release train to jump on right.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  21:59

What would you tell somebody that is serious. But their goal is not enterprise agile as you said here, it’s not the ultimate goal. But it’s the journey, they really do want to become a really good organizational and Agile Coach, what would you recommend somebody just starting out right now? Before what would you do? If you were starting, what would you do? Given what you know now.

Speaker: Gene Gendel  22:33

Look, today, there are more opportunities today to pursue the same journey you and I went through than there was 10 years ago, or even five years ago. So you know, we got mentoring programs, we got people like you and I that are out there to probably give some guidance and help. There is a will, there is a way. The challenged today. And by the way, tell me if you think otherwise, if you disagree, but even today, majority of companies do not have recognition for certified enterprise coach by scrum Alliance or certified team coach by Scrum as much as they should, because these are the best people out there. But because the word Agile has been grossly grotesquely diluted, it just rubs up the wrong way. You walk in the organization, anyone who has been at certain pay grade. So it’s like an if statement. If you’re on a certain pay grade, and if you want to do Agile, then you will be some sort of an enterprise person. If you want to do Agile, and if you are at the junior pay grade, then your options are a scrum master or some sort of ill-defined team level BA like product owner. Just because the pay grade isn’t there it doesn’t give you enough opportunity. So I would recommend people that are really genuine about this still pursue the right way. I mean, their ways to invest themselves. Education. Look, what we have today is so much more. There’s so much more richness now than we had back when we were doing this. So I think there’s a will, there’s a way the challenge with this is that the market has been grossly diluted. So just like I would recommend to individuals not to shy away from pursuing this as an opportunity. I would also recommend companies that hire be much more discriminative and more scrutinized. When it comes to picking their talent, their bringing on talent.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  25:04

So it’s both ends, organizations being able to kind of screen and hire better, but also for people that are interested pursuing that. Yeah, I agree. And one of the things that I say in knowledge value, which goes back to what you said about, there’s a lot more opportunities today, because there are more companies that are interested in pursuing these agile ways of working. The way I explain and I use another analogy, which is like, you know, I grew up in Sarajevo and 1984 Olympics were held in Sarajevo, so skiing is big there, and skiing in Sarajevo is different than in Maine, or New Hampshire, or Vermont, where my family or when we came to United States, we came to Maine and I continued skiing up there, but it’s totally different. You know, we joke around, it’s more like skating down the bunny hills. Because I see, there’s no really mountain, these are just large hills compared to what we see in Europe. And then when I move out here, West, it’s different type of terrain. So a lot of times SCRUM masters are like comfortable on their own mountain, in their own organization in their own team, they’re not willing to say, hey, I’m going to take a risk and go somewhere else and get some more experience, and then I want to go somewhere else, and get more experience. So it’s like, analogous to like having, skied in many different conditions in areas. So you can become a well-rounded skier. And I don’t see many people willing to take that risk, I used to take that risk. And I would, you know, obviously, it was easier when you’re younger, but I think that’s what shaped my journey and made it easier, not easier. But as far as learning faster, I was able, and willing to do that.

Speaker: Gene Gendel  26:58

So it’s funny, you say this, you see for people that are really into the role. So people that are into intrapreneurship, and discovery and learning, they welcome these challenges, and they welcome these opportunities to change organizations, maybe if it’s a large enough organization, as the first step would be to change different divisions or different organizational verticals, going from one to another, although someone could rightfully argue that, as long as you under the same logo, you’re pretty much in the same structure and culture, which is true, you still can improvise, but people that just want to get by and therefore ride, they really don’t see much value in learning. I call it fast trackers, because there’s fast, fast, fast, off the chain of command, those people will not be so much interested in pursuing opportunities elsewhere. So there will be just very “Suddenciary” [28:03] very localized. And, of course, they might say it will be very limited, very narrow. So I think this is a good indicator. I call these domesticated people institutionalized. Maybe it’s not a good way to.. I mean, I treat others the same exact way I want people to treat me. So if you’ve been with the same organization for 15-20 years and haven’t seen a daylight, then you can’t expect anything from that person, especially if that person didn’t get as much.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  28:50

Yeah, I mean, similar to both you and I immigrated to this country. And I think it’s similar like that, when you’re exposed to the completely different environment, the different culture, you kind of start seeing things from a different perspective, things that you saw, in your own bubble, now start looking a little bit differently than what they did when you were in that bubble.

Speaker: Gene Gendel  29:13

I agree. Very true. And I’ll go even as far as to say, you know, we don’t want to digress outside of the conversation into, you know, history or politics. Well, many people that I’ve met in my life during at least the last 20-30 years, some of them are very successful in their own ways. Just because they have become very successful in their own little, I’m sorry, in their own huge bubble. Yeah, their bubble is pretty big, but it’s still a bubble. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  29:50

What you’re saying it’s like it’s not necessarily the indicator of but usually might be helpful to change perspectives, I guess and look at things in a different [cross talk] [30:00]

Speaker: Gene Gendel  30:01

Exactly whether it’s history or politics or anything else, I think there’s a wisdom. Right? Depending where you sit, you send in your views, depending on where you sit. Right. So…

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  30:20

So you’ve been involved with the community so many different ways. And one of the things that I really enjoy is, especially in last year, what you’ve done with the New York, the less community in New York, and as far as I know, like, it’s the biggest less community out there and sports active, I think, you know, one of the nice things that I see is the caliber of speakers that you bring, and I was watching your interview with Dave Snowden. And yeah, and I invited Dave, he actually came to Agile Maine, I don’t know if it was the year that you came. But what kind of grabbed my attention? I think you asked, there was a question around, how’s a large-scale Scrum in relation to complex adaptive systems? And he said something along the lines is, less is not how you scale complex adaptive systems. And I understand it from and kind of agree with him in a way that depends what type of complex adaptive systems if you truly going from a complex adaptive system, I agree with him. And I don’t know what were your thoughts when he answered that question? What was going through your head and maybe reflectively looking at is, what are your thoughts on?

Speaker: Gene Gendel  31:47

So first of all, I respect Dave, Dave’s view, and he’s a pretty well-known and very eloquent speaker, and he doesn’t sanitize. And that’s nothing else, even if I would disagree with him, I would still respect him for his candid blunt and sanitize views, and sanitize in the way that he doesn’t sugarcoat it. He doesn’t sugarcoat what he wants to say. I think he did make, if I recall correctly, he didn’t make some statements about less, I need to actually go back to that video on the replay what he said exactly. And I kind of knew that I wasn’t looking for him to give any blessing or pave the road for Less. In fact, I wasn’t even aware of his, you know, degree of understanding of what Less is, you know, that he probably have read plenty about Less. Given that there are free books and a very comprehensive website. So I wasn’t so much concerned about what he will or will not say about less. In fact, I wanted to complete, I know the “card blog, Sheila” [32:58] together. What really outweighed it, and that’s why I really wanted his perspective was his candid and an uncensored view on some of the challenges and dysfunctions that exist in the industry because of large consultancy business, and partnerships between large, very expensive consultancies on one hand, and very large, expensive, but makes you feel good, agile frameworks. And I’m not referring to Les and I will not even mentioned that other XYZE framework, because people will figure out what that is, I think those come as a horse and carriage. And he alluded to something so that was worth having him there, just that one few sentences, he had referred as essentially with you what he called an industrial model. When a consultancy gets overly big, a certain degree size wise, in order to feed itself. It needs to generate business. So if I’m a large consultancy, and you’re my client, I will not engage with you in a way that will produce short, incremental, meaningful, sustainable results. Because this sort of engagement does not justify the effort for me, because I need to feed my cohorts of workers that sit; the back office people, right. But if I were to engaging with you, I would dig in for a long time. I would pack and install something that is big, heavy, complex and of course not cheap, right. I would always considered that plus the tooling solutions. I actually referred to it as the triple taxation. If you’ve seen some of my other cartoon, [cross talk] [35:11] triple taxation, large consultancy, big scaling framework and monumental tool and solution. So it’s a triple tax donor organization and paid three times to live in a really big city, city state. [inaudible] [35:29]

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  35:31

Yeah, so that’s a really good point. And if you look back at, you know, transformations, and if you look at the data, like, you know, if you look at from your own personal experience, if you look at the data, at least when I do that, like 90 plus of these transformations doesn’t matter if it’s agile, whatever, fail. And nobody talks about that Agile is popular. And any of these, you know, Lean was popular. Any management that becomes mainstream is obviously popular. But why do you think, besides what you’ve said so far, that it’s such a high rate, and do you agree with it, do you think it’s that the in that 90s range? And

Speaker: Gene Gendel  36:16

What do you mean, failures?

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  36:18

Failures. Yeah, like, [cross talk] [36:19]

Speaker: Gene Gendel  36:20

Yeah, I totally agree that majority of these transformations are complete failure, I don’t have the numbers, I haven’t run the stats, but I can tell you majority of them are failing. But also, we have to understand is that very few companies will openly admit to the fact that they have failed, because it’s the status quo. Especially if this is a watch consultancy driven effort and multiple credibility are at stake, who’s going to have to say, we have screwed up. Companies that are smaller, I shouldn’t say smaller, because this is really not size specific. This is really based on the internal culture, which is secondary color to or structure. And very much, depends on the mindset of senior management. If they were in the experimental mode, if they really wanted to do deep and narrow, to try and see if it works, what fails, what succeed, what success, then they wouldn’t mind reporting back to the world that they have made some mistakes, and then they have learned from them. Of course, if they have engaged, not large consultancies that, send armies of people to them at a very high buck. But maybe smaller people like you and I, or some smaller boutique more focused organizations that help with agility. That would be much more comfortable to share back with the world that a some of the stuff we tried, fail, and some of it materialized. Look, it’s all about keeping your face, right, above water, your head above water, if you invested $85 million in the transformation. And three, four years down the road, you did the books, you realize, okay, that’s how much money we spent on this huge consulting firm. But what did we gain from it? And their answers, almost nothing or nothing? Then who’s ever want to go on the record and say, Oh, guys, you know, what, we lost 85 million dollars. Haven’t really gained anything back. And, we’re so brave, we’re going to share, share this with you.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  38:53

Yeah, I mean, but what I’ve seen is like, this is when the management or leadership changes, right? Everybody gets couple years shot. You’re out. New guy comes in brings his own team. This is what I’ve seen in many instances where a senior leader is hired to drive the transformation. They have their own team, they have the previous consultants where they work with, they have a shot at it, if they don’t meet or the board or the senior leadership at that company is not happy with it, they bring somebody else and there is now a lot of that transparency. Sometimes you take two steps back one step forward, sometimes it’s the other way around. But as far as transparency, it’s not very clear to the employees and I think that’s why one of the things where people are so disengaged at work.

Speaker: Gene Gendel  39:48

If you lose, I always say there is only one thing like dating, right? I’m sure you and I have been there, right? There’s only one time we can make a first impression. Screw up once it’s going to be very hard for you to get back on track and prove otherwise. So when an organization makes a bad impression on its individuals, and therefore discourages the incentivizes its own people, then it’s going to be very difficult to gain back credibility and trust. And so people will just shy away, oh that’s another change management fad. And that’s another management, so or reorg, 101. And we know, once people hear reorg, people go oh shit. For you, my friend got it [40:48]. Someone’s going to be let go. The funny thing is in large scale Scrum, and I chose to stay away from one of the things that I tried to demote more than less, we actually stress very strongly the difference between job security and role security. We want people to be safe in their jobs, and be able to provide for themselves and their families. But it’s not the same as a role security. Because their role security problem is that with that, we have lots of local optimization around individual roles. So if we’re in business, you and I where there are no longer guess, operated lightbulbs out there in the street, then why do we need a role of someone who’s going to be lighting them up at night? We have electricity, so we can rely on automatic switches. So if we optimize for that role, we’re not going to be optimizing for the whole system, we’ll be paying 1000s of people for the role that is no longer needed. But these people, maybe they have some other skills, we can repurpose these good people. That’s the job security. So organizations need to understand that and if they treat Agile transformation, as a way to get rid of people. Well, I think it’s sad.