Definitely, Maybe Agile
Definitely, Maybe Agile
Stay Close to Your Customers (And Your Why) with Hussein Hallak
Hussein Hallak, serial entrepreneur and author of The Dark Art of Life Mastery, joins Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock to talk about what really keeps entrepreneurs in the game. It's not resilience or grit, it's clarity about why you're doing this in the first place.
The conversation covers the shift from pre-COVID to post-COVID startup communities, why watching customers do their work beats asking them what they want, and the critical difference between handing off your product and handing off your purpose. Hussein also challenges the wall-poster approach to company values and explains why living your principles matters more than declaring them.
Three Key Takeaways:
- Strategy is becoming - Choose who you want to become as a founder and company, then let your thoughts, words, and actions flow from there. It's about the experience you want to have, not just the exit you want to achieve.
- Hand off the product, never the why - Founders can delegate product development once the team understands the purpose behind it. But stay close to customers. That connection informs everything and keeps you from drifting.
- Live your values, don't announce them - Stop putting principles on posters. Instead, have honest conversations with your team about what matters to them, what's missing, and how you'll work together. Build culture through behavior, not declarations.
Topics Covered:
- Why entrepreneurship is really about your relationship with uncertainty
- The founder's role: stay with the customer, hand off the product
- How 80% of features go unused (and what to do about it)
- Why watching customers work reveals more than asking questions
- Building culture through honest conversations, not corporate values posters
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Peter: 0:04
Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Maddison and David Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hello, Dave. Good to see you again. And we're joined today by Hussein. So Hussein, would you like to introduce yourself?
Hussein Hallak: 0:19
Thank you for having me. So I'm Hussein Hallak, and I am, I would say an entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur. Which means my first venture was not that successful.
Dave: 0:31
But you had a good enough experience that you tried a second and a third after that.
Hussein Hallak: 0:36
Yeah, exactly. It sounds more illustrious than it is. And I'm an author as well. I wrote a book called The Dark Art of Life Mastery. And I see myself also as a mentor for entrepreneurs and people in general. Yeah, and I'm a lover of life and politics as well recently.
Dave: 0:53
This sounds like this conversation could go anywhere, as we just started. Absolutely, yeah. Diving into it. Maybe I'm just going to kick off with a quick conversation. So we're both based in the Vancouver area, right? And I've also been fortunate enough to bump into some of the entrepreneurs and the startup community here in Vancouver in particular. But what are you seeing maybe as the biggest difference between entrepreneurs and founders and the challenges they faced a few years ago and the entrepreneurs and founders that you're working with today, those challenges that they're facing today?
Hussein Hallak: 1:29
I mean, I would say there was pre-COVID and after COVID, and of course there are a lot of things that happened since COVID, but I think that's probably the biggest reset, if you want to call it that. Yeah. And the reason is before COVID, there was a very healthy community. I would imagine everywhere, but in Vancouver in particular, there was a growing community, and I mean entrepreneurs were always there, but there was a growing community of different events. I mean, we ourselves were running an event where we brought investors and entrepreneurs together. But then COVID kind of eliminated all of that for at least two, three years. And now there is a move to bring it back, but it's nowhere near where it was. We had, I would say, an event every couple of weeks, like an event that was significant for entrepreneurs, but then all of that's gone. And that took away that sense of community, which is extremely necessary for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship, by definition, especially if you're a starting entrepreneur, it's very lonely. And bumping into people, learning from them, having those serendipitous conversations that you didn't even prepare for that sends you down a direction, are extremely helpful for entrepreneurs and extremely needed. And without that, you're on your own, kind of trying things and learning, let's say, from YouTube videos, but it's never the same as being in the presence of someone. So that is, I would say, the biggest difference between that time and this time. And of course, introducing AI and nobody knows what the heck is going on. Which to build, how to head, do I vibe code, do I not vibe code?
Peter: 3:17
Yeah, I think there's so many questions with AI.
Hussein Hallak: 3:20
Oh, yeah. What do I do with my relationship with my AI? Do I tell my girlfriend or don't tell my girlfriend?
Dave: 3:27
I'm hearing a lot of, there are so many things we could dive into here. The obvious one is just the community and the access to the community. But can I just flip back to something that, I think you touched on just as we were getting started, this idea that entrepreneurs are willing to try again. They just keep trying and trying and the iterations and learning and sort of putting something up against it. It feels to me that is both a cultural piece of entrepreneurship, but also personality trait of somebody that maybe has that mindset. So those traits that people who are maybe taking that decision to come into an entrepreneurial space, is there something special with those people that they have that willingness to fail in an uncertain environment where most people maybe want to go and work in a large enterprise because it's stable?
Hussein Hallak: 4:26
That's an interesting question because I always thought why we see people are generally falling into entrepreneurs or like kind of building companies versus others. And the only explanation for me and it's the only, the most compelling one I've found, is that there's a relationship with certainty. Like your relationship with certainty and uncertainty. Because one, you mentioned working in large organizations, you know, yes, it's more certain, but the only, that certainty lasts a period of time until you're let go, for example, right? As opposed to being an entrepreneur. Of course, you don't know what's coming, but the longer you last in the game, the better you get. And one thing, and I love that piece, and by the way, I've researched this, and if you go to YouTube, I've recorded a video like 15 years ago. I wrote articles in Entrepreneur magazine and you can find them on my LinkedIn. It's about resilience. And literally, one of the things I've researched is there's no such thing as resilience. That's you keep hearing the word resilience. There is no such thing as resilience. What's really happening is there is a relationship with a goal. Yeah, okay? And it is that relationship with a goal that makes you continue. So the best example I had, I have a friend of mine who is who has an eight-year-old daughter, and I asked him, if your eight-year-old daughter is crossing the road, and there's a car coming, do you stop? He said, of course not. I'm going to continue and grab her. So you haven't really stopped. You haven't thought about the cost. You haven't thought about what could happen. You just did it. And your relationship with that goal or that purpose is so clear that you you act and you do and you move. Whereas in business, we're told, kind of like, oh, be resilient, show up. And we like, what the heck is resilience? What does that mean? And it's just it's the language we ended up using, it became so abused. So yeah, there is resilience, but it's really a product of your relationship with your goal and with your sense of purpose. And I think entrepreneurs who are clear about their vision, their sense of purpose, and that that is absolutely crucial and critical for them to not just it's, you know, I'll make money. It's like, that's a byproduct. Yeah. It is absolutely essential, a byproduct, but it is essential that you are clear on why you showed up. Like what you, and I hate using the word passion because it's also overused. But what what what when you close your eyes, what do you see? And who did you become? And if you imagine yourself 90 years old, you're sitting on a porch and you think about your life, how do you want to be remembered? And then if you don't know the answer to that, you're going to fall at the first hurdle. At the first problem, you're like, no, forget about it. I'm going to go back and get that office job. Versus somebody who's absolutely clear. It's like, this is the hill I'm dying on. So those people, I think that's the, I would say, the most essential thing that explains whether somebody is gonna stay in or gonna not stay in. Because it's not because they're, oh, they're superhuman. They're not superhuman. They are, they absolutely are convinced that I got this. I can do it no matter what. And then they are willing to pay any price to do so. So you have to establish that early on. Otherwise, I think it's really difficult. And as you said, like it's it's a personality trait that is developed through cultural. And when I say culture, it's not the culture of just your country, it's the culture of who you hung around with. Like, you know, when I started my first ventures is because I was hanging around venture folks who were starting things. When I was working in a corporate, I didn't even think of starting anything because the people around me were extremely comfortable with going for eight years in a job. But because some of them were like, hey, it was so good last week, I left my job and I'm gonna start this, and every week the conversation was like that, that that was contagious. That environment is contagious. Yeah. So it's culture, definitely. And it's a culture that you can build and you can develop. It's a culture that I'm building in the startup community by having a podcast and talking to entrepreneurs. It's like a podcast is a great way to build that culture. Our event that we were organizing before COVID was like bringing all the entrepreneurs in one room, and people would hear from entrepreneurs, and that was so helpful and enlightening. And so it's but I think culture is also built one relationship at a time. I talk to I talk to people, you talk to me, Peter talks to us, and we're having this conversation. And all of that is like a, let's say, it's like an infectious disease. Like, yeah, you know, that was it's like a good disease, and I wish it's infectious, you know, it's like, okay, I think culture could be created. And it starts by believing as opposed to thinking it's a trade that either you have or you don't.
Dave: 9:22
That's a beautiful answer, and I think it touches so much on a lot of the reasons why people think maybe they'll step out and do consulting or they'll become a coach or they'll take their own path and create their own lane. Because it's been always in the back of their mind, but it's brought to the forefront as a result of working with somebody else, seeing them do it and realizing, oh, okay, I could do that. So really, really nice answer. But let me bring it to, there's a really interesting one which is taking that individual or maybe that entrepreneur that they are a founder and they start doing something, all of a sudden there's a team around them. Not always, maybe they stay with their individual, one-person, show forever. But at some point, if you're an entrepreneur that's building a company, you need a team around you. And what I'm curious about, Hussein, is what that sort of means for the founder or for anybody sort of creating this into, what's the challenge? Because we were chatting just before we started here and you mentioned, you know, sometimes the founder continues to be involved with the product even though it's maybe time to hand that off to someone else. And I'm kind of curious what you've seen, what you experience, maybe some of the antipatterns that we need to avoid when we're growing and scaling from a small entrepreneurship thing into a product and a company.
Hussein Hallak: 10:40
Yes, I mean, sometimes you have to, like, and let me tell you why. Because if you launch a product and immediately hired people and, you know, you don't have that feedback loop early with your customer, you're gonna be lost in interpretation. And the further you are away from the customer, the more that you're either assuming or you're misinterpreting what they say. So especially in the early stages, it's extremely, extremely important that the founder is closest to the customer. Yeah, right? And spending, I mean, in the early days, and when I say early, I'm talking about maybe the first five years of a startup. Most of your time should be spent talking to customers. And not just talking to them and receiving feedback and learning what they do, but watching them do it. I can't emphasize enough that watching people do their work is so enlightening. There is an insurance company, I'm not gonna name who they are, and we're working with them to build a solution. And the solution came from watching them do their work. Like the founder spent time going to their office and watching them how do they do. And then you realize, wow, they spend, let's say, 20 minutes on this task, and then they spend 30 minutes on that task, and they have a problem with this. So that enlightenment of being present, not just hearing somebody report a problem, but being present and watching them perform. And I think that is absolutely essential because remember, when you're when you're creating a product, your competition is not just your competition. Like your your competitors in the space. Your competition is the status quo. Your competition is not changing. So you have to learn why people are doing the work they're doing and how they're doing it. So that I think is one of the key things. Now as you said, okay, how do you and I love to talk about that distinction. You mentioned the product and customer. Customer is absolutely the founder. That never hands off. The product can be handed off once you establish, and I love this definition, once you establish the why. Yeah, yeah. Once the organization is clear about why you're doing this. Because if you hand off the what and not the why, what ends up happening, and I've seen this, and companies, if you watch a product over five or 10 years, you see how there's fragmentation, mission and vision creep, like you have this product you're building, and by year five, you're like, wait a second, why are we doing this? We didn't even intend to do that. Like the perfect example is Microsoft. In 2014, Microsoft had a phone. Did you know Microsoft had a phone? Most people didn't even know they had a phone. And they had so many different things. And Steve Ballmer was like, you know, basically spreading the company so thin that when Satya Nadella came in, what he did, he went back to the essence of Microsoft. What is the why of Microsoft? What made it the big company? And he brought it back, brought back the focus, got rid of all these other things that were just complete fragmentation, complete dilution, and narrowed the focus back. That's about refocusing on the why. So I think if the founder always remembers the why and always makes sure that even the features that are being developed within that are aligned with the why, that's when things scale. But the moment you confuse the product and what it does with the why, immediately you start going in different directions. And everybody now also wants to influence the product. Uh, employees wants to have a say because we're customer-centric. The problem is you could get lost by being customer-centric and listening to everybody. And I love I think it was Jobs. Jobs said it like perfectly. It's like customers don't know what they want. So it's not about building what the customer want. It's about reminding them with the why, like what's the why we're doing this, and here's what we're building in that pursuit. Yeah? And if at any given time, you know, the customer started jumping ship and going somewhere else, it's probably because they thought you were solving a problem of why and you're not. And I think focus is probably one of the key elements of success in organizations. Because if you have a small team and you try to do ten things, you're gonna nail none of them. If you do three things, you know, you may nail one or two, and you iterate, and you listen, you evolve, and you improve. And then five, ten years, you have something solid and profound. Whereas if you were trying to do everything, five years, every two years, you have a new iteration, and two years later, you have a new iteration. And this is why you see fragmentation, and I think the founder's role is maintaining the why, always working with the customers. Hand off the product, but don't hand off the customer. Absolutely don't hand off the customer. Because I think working with the customer will inform the why. Also working with the customer will inform the product, even though you hand off the product.
Peter: 15:23
Yeah, there's there's a few really key elements there that you touched on. One of which is the idea of you got to stay connected, you got to stay to your customers, and you're the only person or it's that senior person in the organization who can actually take that why, that vision that you have, the understanding of where you're trying to go, and bring that to the customer. And they're your connection to them. There's also I noticed one of the things you touched on was watching the customer do their job and understanding what do they actually do. Where are they spending their time? There's a there's an example that comes up with me a lot, which is have you ever actually watched what they do? Because if you watch what they do and time how long it actually takes to do some of the activities they're doing day-to-day, you would be surprised at what's actually happening on a day-to-day basis and where you should be spending time. And if you just ask them, hey, how long does it take you to do this? They'll say, well, it takes me about 10 minutes. And then you actually watch them do it, and it takes them an hour because there's all this other stuff they do in between and getting ready for that activity. And then it's like, well, you don't necessarily want to make that activity that takes 10 minutes go down to five minutes if the other 50 minutes on either side of it is where the real time is.
Hussein Hallak: 16:37
Well, when they, you know, Peter, when they when they tell you it takes 10 minutes, it's because they also don't see the other stuff because it became natural to them. Yes, you know, so that was the other thing. It's not like they're lying. It's like because they don't even account for like I have to walk over and grab the document from that person, or I have to now log into the the client management and whatever, because they became so natural for them, but they don't, it's like your commute to work. If you commute to work, let's say 45 minutes a day, and somebody asks you how long is your work time, you're like, oh, it's from 9 to 5. And somebody says, well, yeah, but you have to leave by eight. Like, oh, yeah, yeah, okay, my workday is eight, yeah, you know, like it's it's like we don't realize, and that's why you have to look because we don't realize, uh, because we are in the doing of it. Yeah. If that makes sense.
Peter: 17:25
Absolutely makes sense. And and so there's there's also a lot around what you're describing, which is if you're not staying connected to that customer and that customer's problems and making sure you're solving for them continuously, then what happens is the product does start to drift and create all this all these other things you weren't intending on. And you talk to customers, it's like, why did you add this feature? I never even use that. And this other thing that I desperately need, you haven't done anything about.
Hussein Hallak: 17:52
Oh, yeah, that's a good good thing as well, Peter. You mentioned that because we always thought that the customer wanted everything. And now, and this is now it's common knowledge, but you realize that about 80 percent of features developed are never used. So our assumption that let's build more features, because if we build 100 features, we know that we got the that that the, you know, the customer will be more engaged. Wrong. So you have to look at two things. What are they actually using? And where are they spending most of their time? And why don't you just make that a lot easier? And if they're not using a bunch of features, stop working on them. It's funny how the market informed us. It's just like people started, like it's like if you look at Slack versus email. Sorry, Slack, emails, they continued adding features and features and features and features. And Slack came and they did one thing. They sent messages back and forth with like people organizing themselves in channels. And they kept it simple. And immediately everybody ran to them. So now we know. So I think it's it's you're 100 percent right. You have to look at where are people spending most of their time and then improve on that. And stop developing features that people don't use and don't want. If you're not using it, they're not using it, get rid of it. The way you get feedback loops that are quick is you have something that's always fresh, like it's always like, yeah, that's up to date. It's great. As opposed to having a bunch of features that you're still maintaining, still supporting, still causing like configuration issues and technology issues and bugs and all of those. And people don't even use them, which is like, why are we?
Peter: 19:28
Yeah, there's no point in building, you know, I mean, there is there's so much truth to that that we are making maintaining keeping those, you know, the 80 percent of the features that aren't being used is costing you money to keep and maintain.
Hussein Hallak: 19:41
Of course. More than that, it's costing you the opportunity to fix what you should have been working on. Yeah. So it's it's not just the money, it's it's also you're distracting your team with the wrong work. Yeah. So you're actually, yes, you're spending, let's say let's say you have a team of 10, and three of them are working on features that are not being used or the maintaining of those features, you just took away 30 percent of their capacity to actually do something that moves the business forward. Yes. And you just spent money on them as well. So you you you you've done, you've basically caused two issues. You've taken them away, you've distracted them, and then like or, sorry, you've, you're spending money on them, and you've reduced the capacity of the company from being nimble and being quick and and addressing the feedback from your customers. So you're causing two issues just because you made those mistakes early on. So when I say early on, I mean you you lost the why and you started diluting and spreading thin, and then two years later, you realize you are like, you know, the the cost is so high. It's like, why are we maintaining all this? Yep.
Peter: 20:47
And and I think a last point I would point out on that, which is you then end up taking so much longer to get stuff out the door, then you should be able to. And then the other things that you should be working on are getting further and further away.
Hussein Hallak: 21:00
Yeah, 100 percent. Yeah.
Dave: 21:03
That's a great conversation that we're having around product and features and where we invest our time. But I want to sort of shift it just a little bit because as you were mentioning the why around keeping that front and center and making sure that everybody in a team is aligned to that why, and then the product is following, the features and what we're developing is following that. I I can't help but feel that we're also talking about values and principles that underlie the why or underpin the why. And I don't want to make this whole thing about values and principles, but I'm kind of interested in your take on whether or not they're useful, we need them. We've got all these posters up on walls in organizations everywhere talking about our values, our principles, guiding principles or whatever it might be. What's what's your take? Do we need them? Are they useful? What are we doing wrong?
Hussein Hallak: 21:56
I I mean, it's yes and no, because I think as an idea of having something you're striving for, they're useful. Yeah? But when you throw them on the wall and you say, here you go, that's the ten commandments now follow them, it becomes dogma. And and the issue is we ended up as well, making them so generic, and we made them up like they became so abused, like it's like, one of our, you know, it's like transparency and honesty and blah blah. It's like, okay, thank you, Google. Right? And everybody now has the same thing. And you never believe anyone. So here's what I think is the the right approach. Here's, let me, I've been doing this recently in the past few years, I would say, where you live your principles and values and you don't declare them. Yeah?
Dave: 22:48
Say that again? You you live, sorry, I just want to make sure I'm hearing you properly.
Hussein Hallak: 22:52
You live them, don't announce them. Like basically live them, don't announce them. Yeah, you know, like act transparently instead of telling people one of our values is transparent. Like the good example is Google, don't do evil. And then like they removed it. The problem is big corporations destroyed all of this, yeah, right? And it's like these are the foundational principles of life. Like you don't go around and say to somebody, you know what's great about me is I'm honest. Like imagine somebody raising it up in a conversation. Yeah, I was like, hang on a second, why? You're of course like that is the de facto mode of operations. Otherwise, if you're not honest, why am I here? So it's like why you're raising this as opposed to just act like it and show me your track record and make a promise, like for example, that we will always tell you when there is a change, for example. We will, like instead of telling me you're transparent and you're changing your privacy and like terms and conditions without telling me and taking my work, like that's I think what ended up happening. I definitely believe that these are crucial and important. But what ends up happening in the past, I would say, 10, 15 years, almost every corporation destroyed what that means. Because nobody ever believes anyone when they say, you know what, we're gonna, it's like so why bother? Just do it and live by it. Because what ends up happening is that when people discover it, people are gonna flock away from you. And they always discover. So I think live by it. Now, inside the company, it's about behavior. Imagine also another way, like you're sitting in a meeting, it's like, let's share our, you know, talk about our values as opposed to what's important to you, like what's missing. I would rather, instead of a meeting that says, here's our values and here's where we're going, to sit with the employees and immediately do what we do with customers. What matters to you guys? What is missing? And then we address that. And then the next meeting we look at what else is missing? How can we continuously make this place the best place to work? And what that means, it shouldn't come from the again, it shouldn't come from the founder. Like if I'm a founder and I bring you along and I say, hey, here's what's the most important to me is honesty, and we're gonna have an honest organization, let's say. And people are like, but that's not what I want. I want like to be well paid. Who cares about you know an honest, let's say I'm saying, yeah, you know, and you don't pay me enough, for example. Or you make me work extra hours, and you let's say you cut yourself some slack, or you pay yourself far more. So these are the kind of things. Whereas what we do is we have an honest conversation and we say, what is it that's important for you guys? So we treat if we treat the team, I would say, instead of just the word employees, the team as an extended kind of group that we're collectively working to build this together. And how do we want to do it? So just like we treat our customers. And I think that's far more honest approach, far more realistic, because immediately the team will feel included and they will feel that, yeah, when we find an issue, because we always do, it's no longer we're pointing at a problem with what the founder gave us, we're pointing at a problem that we're all watching, and we know that we can come together and solve it as a group. So I would rather more of a let's say a more realistic, pragmatic culture, because at the end of the day, if let's say the business is not doing well, you're gonna have to let go some people. So if you say we're a family and whatever, and you let people go, you're immediately in breach of that. Yeah. Whereas if you say, Listen, guys, we're a business. Here's, I love one of the CEOs I worked with. He was brutally honest. We once, let's say, didn't have enough money and we might not close a contract, and that meant everybody would have to be let go. And he didn't wait till after Christmas to tell people. He told them immediately when he found out. Now it was harsh, but you could always appreciate that he was always honest, transparent. You knew what to expect, so you could prepare. And I took that and was like, wow, that's so right. So now, whatever I'm working with, anyone, subcontractors, I say, hey guys, you know, next month we may not have work. So I'm telling you ahead so that you can prepare. Now I'll confirm, but I'm telling you ahead so that you can prepare yourself. That is, I think, a more pragmatic approach and more, I would say, empathetic and compassionate with people that you don't lie to them and try to hide things. Just be honest. People are capable of dealing with things and people will raise issues and they will say what they have problems with, and then you work together with openness with them.
Dave: 28:32
I was gonna say over to you, Peter. You're gonna wrap this up. There's a lot of information coming in, there's some great ideas there. So there is.
Peter: 28:41
And I would almost summarize it as, and this is something that I know that Dave will have run through, especially with teams, having that conversation around what does each of us want out of this? What are you looking to get from it? What do you value from this? How are we gonna work together? But that is a key part of forming teams and bringing people together. The conceptual ideas as you're describing is very much around, yeah, you gotta walk the walk and not just talk the talk and not just put stuff up on a board somewhere or create a cat poster. But these are our values, but then nobody actually does any of those things. Nobody is penalized if they don't either. Like if they go and do and they clearly exhibit behaviors that are not in line with any of these things. There's no penalty for doing that, there's no conversation around it, it just happens and it gets swept under the rug. So I think those are some very key points. And I think we see that very much, especially as organizations grow, as it becomes harder to keep that alignment and keep that culture. So we're, I think we're getting around about time now. So I mean at this point in the conversation, it's been a great conversation. We covered lots of different topics. This is where I would ask for each of us to bring forward like what's our favorite point that we would like our audience to take away with us. So this is your three points to take. So we each get one.
Hussein Hallak: 30:11
You want me to start or sorry? Yeah, I can. Let's go. Sure. I think it's about, one of the favorite things that I've heard recently is Seth Godin talking about strategy. And strategy, he said it's becoming. And I really love that. It's like the who you're becoming. So, and I love that I use it, I use it always in choice is that you choose who you want to become, and then your thoughts, words, and actions flow from there. So I think the kind of company you want to become, the kind of startup, the kind of entrepreneur you want to become, you choose that, and then everything flows from there. And it shouldn't be something like you can't choose to become the successful exited, you know, billion dollar. It's not measured in that, it's measured in experience, the kind of experience you want to have. So I think that is something I'm now kind of grounded in, and I'm working with other founders to help them. Is like, who do you choose to become? And what does that mean for your thoughts, words, and actions that flow from there? And it's an interesting approach. So that's something I would want to end that on.
Dave: 31:15
Dave? There are so many little touch points as we've gone through some interesting things for us to take away and think about. I wanted to draw something back to that sort of product customer piece that we talked about. And you mentioned around when should the founder hand off to their team the product and taking care of the product and the customer. And I thought you mentioned something really powerful, which is you're not handing off the product, you're handing off the why. It's the why you came up with the product in the first place, why the customers are working with your organization and so on. That why instead of the what you're handing over. You're not handing over a complete service or product that needs maintaining and developing, but the why. And I feel that just really acted as a foundation to pull things together. There's a really good moment when you're ready to be able to hand something off and knowing what you're handing off. I thought that was just a great takeaway. Now I dare Peter to try and bring the principles and values conversation to a close, or are you gonna find something else here?
Peter: 32:13
I was gonna pick something else, but good. Okay. I mean there's a lot in the principles and values conversation. I think there's some pieces there around, values and principles are not designed just to live on a wall somewhere. We've talked about that a lot. You have to live them as part of the organization. The concepts around how do we know that we have the right people? And you can potentially see it by observing what values am I looking for, and am I seeing those values in the people that work for me? So if I, it can be a gauge from that perspective, at least saying, are these people I want to work with? Am I getting the learning and experience from the people I have around me? Is this the culture that I'm looking to build? So there's some interesting pieces there, I think. But it's been a great conversation. I really appreciate both of you joining us for this. And I look forward to next time. And with that, we'll say thank you and until next time.
Dave: 33:14
Till next time. Again, Hussein, thank you very much for joining us. Peter, always a pleasure.
Peter: 33:19
You've been listening to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where your hosts, Peter Maddison and David Sharrock, focus on the art and science of digital, agile, and DevOps at scale.
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