Steve  0:10  
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Sabrina Baker  0:54  
Hey everyone. Welcome back to the HR Connection. My name is Sabrina Baker. I'm the CEO and founder of Acacia HR solutions, and I am joined, as always, by my co host, Marie Rolston. Marie, how are you today?

Marie Rolston  1:07  
I'm great Sabrina, we're getting through it. This is the third shirt I put on today. I'm spilling coffee everywhere. So excited to talk to everybody, though.

Sabrina Baker  1:15  
Yeah, but hey, it's Friday, right? So if you have to change shirts because you spilled coffee, at least it happens on a Friday. So I wanted to start this episode by sharing a little bit more about what we do. We talked about it briefly, kind of in our intro episode on the HRHappyHour network. But I think as we go into ready mode guidelines and the things we're going to talk about today, that it's important that people understand what we do for a living. So let me set that up a little bit. As I said, the business is Acacia HR solutions, and we are an embedded fractional HR support firm. And I specifically use the word embedded because I think the way that we work is different than other fractional HR support people or agencies. We have an entire team, so we have about eight employees, and that team is mixed up between business partners, HR generalists and then payroll specialist. So we have an amazing payroll team inside the organization as well. a And clients who are coming to work with us, they are in the one to 500 space, so we we focus solely in that one to 500 head count. And I would say, Marie, that the bulk of our clients are in that one to 100 maybe not one, probably 10, right? 10 to 100 is really where the bulk of them, we have larger but, but definitely, most of them fall in that 10 to 100 and they're hiring their first HR person for the first time, or they've gone through maybe some HR generalists or HR coordinators, and then just want to figure out, how can they have a little bit more support and expertise. So they hire us on a weekly hour basis. So they determine how many hours a week we work, and then we provide them with an HR team. So they get an HR business partner, they get an HR generalist, and if we are managing their payroll, they also get a payroll specialist, and we work embedded into their business. It is just like an in house firm. It is not a short term contract. It is not carved out by tasks, meaning that we do not say we're not going to recruit, or we're only going to do this project. It is open scope within the hours, and so our team is handling everything that an in house HR team would for that client, but solely based on the hours per week that that client has contracted us for. So little bit different. And I wanted to make sure I explained that, because then it's going to make sense in what I'm about to tell you next, about why we had to implement something to help us triage all of the tasks that were coming in on a weekly basis. Okay, so let me tell you what has happened in the past couple of years. This is a few years ago, Marie, probably your first year, maybe here we were experiencing a growth mode. We had a lot of new business coming in. We that that, honestly, I probably hadn't planned for, or just didn't realize was all going to be coming in around the same time, we had new employees who were just learning the the transition from in house to fractional there is a learning curve there. There is a, you know, just a flip in your mind that you have to go through from being in house, even though the work is the same, the HR is the same, the soft skills are a little bit different, the way you navigate clients are a little bit different. And so we were experiencing these, this growth mode, and it was all very exciting and very fun, because we had new clients coming in, but I could see the team burning out. I could see them feeling like their workload was way more than they would ever be able to handle. And while we did have a lot of work and we did have a lot of clients coming in, I didn't really understand the full stress behind what was happening. I didn't understand. I thought, this is all very exciting, it's all very cool. We have new clients, they're doing really cool things. We're getting to do cool things with them. Why is this feeling like such a drag? And what I realized in talking to our team is that the reason it felt so hard and so busy was because we were treating every little thing as urgent. Every task felt like it had to be completed right now in this moment. And so I went on a search. I tried to think about, what could I do to help our team understand that not everything is urgent, not everything is drop what you're doing and do it right now. And I searched the web as you do. AI chat, GPT and Claude did not exist back then, so I had to just do a, you know, what is now, an archaic Google search. And I came across a TED Talk by Dr Daria Long, she is an emergency room doctor, and her TED Talk, talked about how they triage in the emergency room. So it talked about when you when you are feeling like everything is urgent, she calls that crazy mode, when you're this in this crazy mode of just reacting and feeling like you have to do everything at once, you're going to burn out, and you're not going to do things well, and it's going to feel really hard and heavy. And so she went through the model of how they triage, and she talked about Code Red, Code Green, Code Yellow and Code Black inside of an emergency room, and what each of those meant. And then, of course, shared how that could be applied to businesses, to workplaces, even to your everyday personal life, how you can really use that model to triage what's happening with you every single day. And so I thought, This is it. This is absolutely what I need. I took her model and I adapted it to our business, and I rolled it out Marie.

Marie Rolston  7:00  
Yeah, you did. And I think that it was probably like that second year, or halfway through that second year, because I do remember being in that meeting and watching that video and being like, what the heck. I just got my groove going with the client work because, like you said, there is that there is that learning curve when you go from in house to consulting, and so I watched this video, I felt very overwhelmed at the idea of now having to pause and be thoughtful and think about how I'm actually working. And I'd say it probably took me, like, three to six months to really, like, lean into it. And let me tell you, it was a total game changer once I started to actually sit and think about what I was doing, as opposed to just reacting to everything that came my way.

Sabrina Baker  7:48  
So Marie, we said in the last episode that the largest problem facing Small Business HR practitioners is not capacity, like they often think. It's not workload, it's not time management, it is influence. And we gave some tips on how you influence from the middle. How do you build that influence that you need with your leaders to be able to actually do the things that you want to do, and how that builds capacity. And I still stand by that, but I know that our listeners are probably like, that's great, but in the meantime, I have all of this work to do, and I have all of these things and all of these tasks that are hitting me. And we said in that episode that influence takes time. We gave examples of of you know, it could take years. It took us years with some clients to really get them to a place where they were listening to us in the way that we wanted them to. And so we know that takes time. And in the meantime, you have all of this work that still happens. And inside of a small org, especially if you are an HR department of one, you do have a huge workload. And I certainly don't want to diminish or act like it's not a workload issue. It is a workload issue, but not in the volume. The point of the ready mode is that it's not the volume of work, it's the prioritization of work and the triage of work. And your leaders kind of help perpetuate this for you, because you are sitting there and you have your CEO coming at you with a request, and you have payroll due, and you have an employee who needs a leave of absence, and you have the Slack message and this email message and this meeting you have to get to. And every one of those requests feels like to the person asking of you, they feel like it's the most important thing, right an employee who comes in and they have a paycheck question, they want an answer right now. The person who has a leave of absence, well, maybe their leave of absence isn't for six months, but to them, it's urgent, and they need to know what they need to do right now. And so this, this crazy mode, gets perpetuated because you are sitting in a place where all of these people are coming at you, and all of them think their request is the absolute most urgent thing that you then have to react to.

Marie Rolston  9:56  
Yes, and I can definitely relate to that. Because, you know, when you think about the work that we do here, our HR teams, we have about eight or nine clients that we're servicing every single day. And so that means we have eight or nine inboxes that we're trying to manage. We have eight or nine different, you know, chats that could be Teams, Slack, Google me, it's all across the board. And so it's so easy to get caught up in that noise and want to serve the clients how they you know, you know, they think it's important, so we want to make it important as well. But it really does just becomes this chaos that you're just constantly spinning around every single day.

Sabrina Baker  10:35  
Yeah, and I think you make such a great point there about wanting to do it. So the part of the problem kind of gets even bigger, because as the HR practitioner, you we want to give them what they need. You want to respond to them in a timely manner. And so we almost kind of become our own devil in that a little bit, because it we are always available. We always make ourselves available. I know we have listeners who are probably answering texts in the evening, answering chats, and on the weekends, they're taking phone calls on the weekends. And those things may not be necessarily something that has to be answered right then, but they we've kind of almost been groomed, to some extent, as a profession, I think, to just be available, right and to make sure that, you know, we are in service of everybody who comes at us every single day. So everything we've been describing is what we call crazy mode. It's what Dr Long calls crazy mode. It's what we've adapted to crazy mode. It's very reactive, it's very urgent, and it feels chaotic. And again, the workload is there. We're certainly not diminishing the fact that there is a massive amount of work to do. And the goal of all of this triaging and all of this prioritizing is to move from crazy mode to ready mode. So crazy mode feels very reactive. It feels very, you know, it's not planned out. It's just whatever hits me in the moment, that's what I'm going to work on, and because everything keeps hitting, then you feel like you never get ahead. Ready mode is a triage system that allows you to really decide what tasks are priority in this moment and what tasks can I plan for at a later date. And I think Marie that planning was a huge shift we had to make in our business, and it's something that we have to revisit over and over and be really deliberate about. And doing so, doing the planning is what keeps us in ready mode.

Marie Rolston  12:34  
Yeah, it does. And you know, before we were talking about how you introduced this, and it really did take me a long time, and it wasn't just because I was changing the way I work, but for me personally, and I'm sure other folks can relate, but the actual planning piece just completely went against my nature. Like it's not in my personality. I love to thrive in the chaos and get things done like that feels so good to me. You know, that's probably toxic. But anyways, when we sat down and we actually took the time to plan, and I'll say this too, there is additional time that goes into actually implementing something like this. And so at first it is going to feel like you're just adding to your list. But once you sit down and you actually start to plan that out, you are able to start to see the bigger picture, and you are able to see how you can actually make a difference or an impact within the HR space because of the steps that you're putting into motion.

Sabrina Baker  13:33  
All right, so let's get into the system. So we have ready mode guidelines. This is what we call them, and we have four colors, there is red, yellow, green and black. So think of it think of it like a stoplight with the color black added in there. Red is your absolutely urgent. It is truly urgent. You have to drop what you're doing and take care of this right now. So think about it is payday Friday, and no one got paid, right? Or it's payroll week and your payroll deadline is 30 minutes away and you forgot about it, that's you have to drop everything and do what you're doing right now. Sexual harassment claim comes in that's pretty aggressive, right? Or a workplace violence situation, a massive bullying like those are, I need to drop what I'm doing and I need to take care of these things right now. They are absolutely urgent. They are hugely business impacting and mostly legally compliant impacting, right? There's a huge legal implication if you do not drop what you're doing and actually take care of those things. So those are Code Reds, right? Think about this in a hospital system, if somebody calls that people are running, and people are running to all the doctors and nurses are going to help that patient. The next one is yellow. Yellow are the things that are important and they're urgent, but they're not right now urgent. They're not in this moment, urgent. They're things that need to be on your list, maybe for the week. Maybe for the month even, but they're not, I have to drop everything and get to them. So this is, you know, it's open enrollment month, and you need to have a meeting with the employees to roll out the changes. It's not a you drop everything right this second, but you need to be able to plan for that happening in a certain time frame. Or there's a conversation with an employee that you need to have. It's not a urgent, it's not a, you know, a performance plan or something. It's not something that's super urgent, but it's a question that they may be asked about their paycheck or about their benefits, and you need to get back to them in a timely manner. Those are Code Yellows. So it's kind of like your your week, things that need to happen within the week or the next couple of weeks. Code Green are things that are important, but they're not something that you necessarily have to get to right now or even in the next couple of weeks. These are more of your strategic initiatives. Your more of your things that you're building. Maybe they are things that you can plot in your calendar when you have the time to work on them when you have the ability to work on them. So Code Reds, obviously would be first. Your Code Yellows are next, and then your Code Green is like, these are nice to haves. I want to be able to do this, but it's not going to hurt anything if I don't get to them, or if I have to push them off. And then finally, Code Black is the things that are in hospital terms dead. They are things that maybe they're not going anywhere, they're not moving, they're initiatives that you started, but maybe your your leaders don't really support anymore, and you're still trying to work on them a little bit, but they're not going anywhere, they're not they're not moving, or they are initiatives that you felt like were important at one time, but as time has gone on, they're really not anymore.

Marie Rolston  16:45  
And I'll say this, once you get into the habit of attaching label, these labels to your tasks, you really find that the majority of your day, and I'm saying this from experience, is really just like yellows and greens, those, those code reds, they maybe pop up a couple of times a month, definitely not once a week. And so you do find yourself being able to breathe. Now I will say this, this is interesting, and I just thought about this as you were describing all of the labels. The black was the hardest for me. There would be projects, or there would be initiatives that I would put so much time and energy in, and I couldn't read the room because I felt so emotionally attached to these things, and so I was wasting a lot of time on things that just weren't going to move by any means. And so that is the one that took me a little bit of time to really understand and get used to. And, you know, over time, I figured it out, and then you just kind of move on, and you're able to stamp it. This is black, time, time to move on to something else.

Sabrina Baker  17:49  
So let's talk about operationalizing this. There's, there's two couple different things that we have done. When I first rolled this out four years ago, or five years, whatever, however long it was, I kind of delivered it. I did a training with the team zoom training, because we're all remote, and then I just thought they would just do it. I thought, Okay, this is great. I could see. I thought it was a relief for them. And I thought, okay, they're going to use this, and now everything's not going to feel urgent, and all that stress that I talked about in the beginning of the call was just going to go away magically, right So, naivety of a founder sometimes. So what we found is that people did use it, and I think that it was helpful. You know, when we first roll it out, just like with any training, it's fresh of mind. You just come out of it, you're eager to use what you've learned. And I think for a little while, people did, and they they found that not everything was urgent. It didn't have to be urgent. And so they were feeling a little bit of relief in that. But then as the company continued to grow, and certainly, as we got new employees coming in, we realized that it's this is one of those things that it's really easy to fall back into old habits. And again, we want to be available. We want to make our clients feel like they have our attention, all of our clients, Marie, I'm sure you'll agree with this, even though we have, you know, many clients, all of them feel like they're the only one, and they want to feel like they're the only one, and we, we want them to feel that way with the reality that they are not the only one. Same thing with our listeners, inside of a small business, that leader that's coming to you wants to feel like they're your only priority, that they're the only ones that you have to deal with, and they're not, and you want to give that but, but it's easy then, because of that, to fall back into this kind of reactive crazy mode and rather than staying in ready mode. So over the years, we've refined this even more. So as we rolled it out initially, we have just, we have figured out that we needed to do even more. So the first thing that we did was put it into a training that new hires get upon hire. So we have inside of Acacia a program called SEED, because I Acacia is a tree and I love a tree theme. So we have a program called SEED, which is skill enhancement and employee development, and that is an online training portal that has many different trainings in it, but one of them is this ready mode guidelines. And so it is me training, and I think Marie, you've recorded an updated one that is training exactly what ready mode is, exactly what we call a Code Red, a Code Yellow, a Code Green, a Code Black. It's talks about how, in our business, you are constantly going to be prioritizing and reprioritizing that you can come in on Monday and have a great plan for the week, but you have to also know that something could happen that changes that plan. And so the training is they get that in their first two days of work with us. It's something that they watch right away, to let them know and kind of start to sink into their brain that everything is not urgent and that we really have to operate inside of these ready mode guidelines. Since that time, Marie, though, I think we've refined it even more, and as I've kind of stepped out of client work, and you and the other business partners have taken over, you all have done even more to help operationalize this internally.

Marie Rolston  20:59  
Yeah, absolutely. So I'll tell you, I'll tell you, and I'll talk to our listeners about, you know, how we help our employees, but then how we help ourselves as solo leaders. So for our employees, for instance, you know, we have a project management tool where we're tracking everything that needs to be done for a client. And so, you know, we have weekly check ins, but we also kind of check on these things daily. But as a leader, we meet with their with our employees, and they kind of go over there to do tasks, and we look at how they have labeled their priority. And so together, we kind of walk through and we prioritize together. And so when you know they have something that's like a yellow but needs to be a green, we change that together, and we talk through it. If I'm checking that throughout the week and I see something that needs to be bumped up or bumped down, I change it, and then I tag the team member and kind of talk them through that in that moment. Now, when the team members are planning their own weeks and they are finding that they don't have enough hours, or they're kind of having to take on something else, they just kind of chat us on the side and say, Hey, I've got this thing going on. Can you help me reprioritize? And then we triage together and work through that for them. Now, I realize our listeners, they might not have teams, or they may be just a department of one themselves. So from my perspective, when I am operating solo or I have to report into Sabrina, for instance, you know, I make my list, and then I just go to her and I say, hey, you know, I have X, Y and Z that needs to be be completed by this time. But I also have this coming in. Can you help me understand what's really the priority here? So it's really just that collaboration, right?

Sabrina Baker  22:38  
It really is, and I think that couple, couple points that I want to make sure I point out is that we do have a project management software. And so if you are solo or small HR team, I do think it's really important that you have something, it could just be a list on a spreadsheet. It doesn't have to be software, but that you have something where you really are listing out all of the things that you have to do. And I, you know, again, you talked about how this kind of goes against your nature. It goes against mine too to kind of list all of those things out. But I know that when I do that, I get I feel so much more controlled and less chaotic, because I can see it all on a screen. And I think when you lay it all out, all of the things that you really have to do in some kind of project management software, spreadsheet, whatever. It kind of helps your brain wrap your mind around what, what actually does have to happen here? Because I know I can wake up on a Monday and feel like, oh my gosh, this is going to be a crazy week. I have so much to do. I'm never going to get it all done. And I'll sit down and I'll start mapping out all of the things, and then I'll look at my list and think, Well, that's not as much as I can do that, I can totally do that. So I think that having some system, some way of you listing out all of your to do's, and then going in and really marking them, and you could literally mark them. Code Red, Code Yellow. Code Green, Code Black. If you use that, you could use numbers, you know, priority numbers, whatever it feels good to you, but having some planning time, either a Friday afternoon for the next week, or first thing Monday morning for that week, where you just list it all out and prioritize it, I think, is going to give you such a relief in Okay, there I have no Code Reds right now. There is nothing that is a Code Red, which means I can relax a little bit. I can get to these things in an appropriate amount of time, but I don't, I shouldn't have to feel rushed or chaotic about it. And then the other piece is, you're absolutely right that we do triage together, and our generalists and you business partners, you all benefit from being able to have a team around you to say, Okay, here's what I think these priorities are, but let's move this here, and let's who can take this on, because I'm feeling overwhelmed by this. And so we do have that benefit, and I know our listeners don't often. In fact, one of the business partners yesterday came to me and was like, I've got six projects. I need your help here on I don't know which one is important, and so it's nice to have a team around you that you can do that with. If you don't have that, absolutely, that's where you have to rely on your leaders, on your CEO, your CFO, whoever you report into to say, you know, I need to, I need help with prioritizing. Here's the things that I think are most important, but, but am I on the right track here? Because nothing will derail this faster than you working on priorities that you think are important, and then your leader coming in and saying, Where is this thing? Because that was urgent. That was something that I thought was really important. And so having those conversations around here's what my whole week looks like, and here are the things I'm prioritizing. Do you agree with this? I think that's a great thing to do in your one on ones, if you have them with your leader, or just, you know, popping in and being like this feels very overwhelming. Can you help me figure out what what the priorities really are?

Marie Rolston  25:46  
Yeah, I just want to make one other point really fast too. I used to think that going to you specifically, and having that brain dump was a sign of weakness, but actually it really helped you understand how I was thinking and operating, and it really does open up the relationship more. So all of that is to say to our listeners, don't be afraid to go to your leaders and open up and have those conversations, because it just helps both parties understand what's going on in your organization and what actually needs to get done.

Sabrina Baker  26:18  
Okay, so we have talked a lot about how we internally operationalized it, but let's talk about externally, because I bet you our listeners are listening and saying, that'll be great, but my leaders are going to trample all over that. They're going to tramp all over my boundaries. They're going to trample all over my codes. They're going to think everything is Code Red still, I hear you, I know. And so it does take a shift, and it does take you you pushing out some boundaries and some operational intention around what you're doing. And so let me tell you how we did that and how I think you'll be able to adapt it. And then we'll have Marie jump in and tell you what happens when clients still push those boundaries, because it's going to happen, they're not, there's always going to be somebody who pushes right. So we did two things specifically to operationalize this internally. The first one was, I created a training for clients and so when we rolled this out a couple years ago for all of our current clients, I recorded a video. I explained ready mode guidelines, I explained our colors and what they meant. I even had a list of things in there that this qualifies as red, this qualifies as yellow, this qualifies as green to be as plain as I possibly could, and I rolled all of that out then and now that becomes part of our New Client Onboarding. So when we have a brand new client that's starting with us on our fractional support, I meet with them in their first day with their business partner, and I go over that, it's a whole booklet they get, and I talk specifically about how we triage tasks and then our SLAs. So we also created SLAs, so the first part of that is just the training. It's just really having a conversation with leaders around how you're going to triage these tasks. I will tell you that it was a little bit more difficult with the current clients at the time when I rolled it out to get them on board, because they had been used to us just being available and not having this, but new clients now, because we're doing that on day one, they're on board. You know, they're they understand that this is the way we have to triage tasks. I tell them they're not our only client, even though we're going to try and treat them like they are. But they understand that, and it's so much easier. I think they're less boundary pushing, because they get that information on day one from me, the CEO, and they know this is what we're doing. The second thing that we did is create service level agreements, or SLAs. And these SLAs, it sounds kind of weird for maybe to think about an HR department having an SLA, but I can tell you that we did. We've done this with groups. We've done with finance groups. We've done it with HR groups. And it's so helpful for individuals to have these agreements on when they're going to respond to things, when they're going to complete certain tasks. And so our SLAs cover things like, how fast do we respond in email, how fast do we respond in chat. How long can you expect full resolution on your issue? So an employee comes and they have a paycheck question or they have a benefits question, you're in the middle of something, you don't have to drop and answer it right then they can expect resolution in whatever timeframe is appropriate for you. And those SLAs, I think, have been the biggest game changer internally for our team to know that they don't have to respond right away. They have four hours. Our SLA for email is four hours. We normally respond faster, but they have up to four hours. And so it takes a little pressure off of like, oh my gosh, I don't have to drop everything and respond to this. I can do this within four hours and still be within our guidelines. So we train on that on day one, our clients all get ready mode guidelines, and SLAs on day one. And then Marie, I know that even though they get that training and they're better, the newer clients are way better, because they do get it, there's still some that are going to push some boundaries sometimes, because there's always got to be one. So talk to us a little bit about what you do when clients are pushing those, either those triage boundaries or those SLA boundaries.

Marie Rolston  30:09  
Yeah, absolutely. I will say this. The SLA is our key, and they really were a game changer. The SLA is, you know, they give you a language to speak to the leaders. They, you know, they give you a language to speak to it, but they also help you set up your your calendar, and they give you a structure around how to do your work, right? So anyways, yes, you're right. Clients all the time, they push our boundaries. They forget or intentionally or not, but here's what we do. So I would say the most boundary pushing we experience is around onboarding, right? People get hired last minute, whether it's a high turnover place or they have just like an open job post for whenever they need someone, they can pull it and then plug them in. Now, someone will come to me and they'll say, Marie, oh my gosh, we have this last minute onboarding. We need them to start tomorrow, right? And so I will I actually check how much time we have for them and what we have going on, but I always respond with, Hey, thanks for letting me know. I just want to remind you, this is definitely outside of our SLA, but let me see what we can do. So I check it, I come back to them, and if we are able to make it happen. Sure we will make it happen, but more often than not, because of the process, the planning processes that we have in place, that's not really what's happening. And so there's this negotiation kind of conversation that starts to happen. And so it's really like, Hey, we're not able to do this. We can get it done by this time, we'll just have to push their start date back, and that's kind of it. There's really not a lot of wiggle room outside of that, because we have these things put in place. And I'll tell you this, it really only takes one or two times having that conversation before the client starts to adjust on their own. It feels uncomfortable and it feels awful, but it's setting standards and expectations for both parties. And that really does, it really does go a lot further and builds that relationship even stronger.

Sabrina Baker  32:10  
Yeah, yeah. And I, I totally agree with you that it takes one or two times because the thought on the client's end of needing to push a start date, start, start date back when they really need somebody to start, or something along those lines, right? Like, we're gonna have to push something that they don't want to push is frightening. They don't want to do that. They don't want to have to do that. And they'll fight I, you know, I don't want to, I don't want us to make it sound like it's so easy, like we say, Oh, we're just going to push the start date back. And the client's like, Okay, well, you know, whatever you say, of course there's, there's more that goes into that. And sometimes, I'll admit, just like you're going to have to, as you know listeners, you do have to just drop and do it, because, right? You're it's easier than dealing with a fight long term, but having that conversation around, okay, but these are outside of our SLAs, right? That's the key. Even if you you don't want to always allow yourself to go outside of the SLAs. But if you do, if you decide to your judgment says, Okay, I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to drop what I'm doing and do this thing, still having that conversation with them around, hey, this is really outside of what we've agreed to, as far as agreement, as far as our SLAs. And you know, maybe we can do it this one time, but I can't do it again, and in the future, I want to remind you we need 48 hours notice or whatever that that timeframe is for you, but it just it gives you a way to push back without feeling like you're just complaining or feeling like you're just not wanting to do something. It's now this common language that you have around this is how I triage tasks. These are the SLAs that I have for my department and how I run it, and I need you to honor those and when you don't, then things may not happen in the timeframe that you think they should. Okay Marie, so to wrap this up, you know, one of the things that Dr Long said in her TED Talk, which I think really stuck out with me, and I talk about that in our crazy mode, or, I'm sorry, in our ready mode, guidelines, is that you have to plan for chaotic. The ER, just like our workplace and many of our listeners, workplaces, is always going to be chaotic. You're not going to change that, right? You are not going to change the dynamic that's happening inside of your organization, but you can absolutely change how you react to it, and you can absolutely change the design of your planning that goes into managing that chaos to where it doesn't feel so chaotic. And so I think a big point that I want to make sure I make with all of our listeners is we get small business life, and we understand that you're not going to change it. It is what it is. And we working us working across all of these clients hundreds over the years, we know that it's common. There are very common behaviors that happen inside of small businesses that make them feel a little chaotic and make them feel a little crazy and and the intention is never to try to change that, because you're not going to and you're gonna drive yourself crazy trying to, but the intention is to design for it. You have to plan for chaotic a little bit. And these ready mode guidelines, these SLAs have really helped us figure out how to do that, how to triage that, how to have agreements around what is the service level that we're going to provide to you? I think, as a small business, and I know I've pitched this to clients before, but I think as small businesses, they should have combined SLAs. There should be rules inside the organization, around all of us. How fast do we respond to email? What is that timeframe? What's fair for us? And I don't want to give you our numbers, because I think that it's you have to figure out what works for you. Not one amount of time works for everybody else. So, you know, I think as organizations, it would be really smart if the entire small business had SLAs for how they respond to things, externally, internally, whatever fits their organization. I think that if everybody was doing that, it could be such a game changer in kind of reducing the chaos, definitely not taking it away, but reducing it. So, yeah, overall, I think great conversation. Marie, so glad that we were able to have it while you're trying to work on that, influencing from the middle, from the last episode, this is how you can triage and work through all of that work that is coming to you. You know, before we leave, I always just like to say we definitely see you and hear you and we know what you are going through in a small business. Small business is not just smaller HR. It's absolute own discipline. And it's stuff like this, the fact that we need to have ready mode guidelines that makes it its absolute own discipline. So great conversation, Marie, and we'll see everybody next time.

Marie Rolston  36:32  
See you, next time.

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