Hello, once again, this is the Doctor of Digital from the Doctor of Digital podcast.
Purpose of the show is to transform your business with life and education, inspiration.
I introduce busy business leaders to trends in business, technology and marketing to highlight
people you should know. Do you know what it feels like when your company is a sinking
ship and you're just laughing while it's going down? If so, you're not alone. My next
guest has spent decades observing and experiencing the dysfunctional chaos that plagues many
organizations from calculating the A-hole density ratio to navigating the treacherous
waters of poor customer service and excessive bureaucracy, he has seen it all. And now
he's here to share his insights and hilarious stories about the seven habits of highly
dysfunctional companies, so buckle up and get ready to laugh or cry as we dive into the
absurdities of the corporate world. My guest is a retired cybersecurity consultant and
self-proclaimed adult survivor of the corporate world. After decades of witnessing firsthand
the dysfunction that plagues many organizations, he decided to channel his experiences into
a humorous yet insightful book, the seven habits of highly dysfunctional companies. From
convoluted language and excessive acronyms to poor communication and treating employees
poorly, the book explores the anti-many on how not to run a business. With a wealth of knowledge
in a sharp wit, the book delivers to keep readers entertained while providing a satirical
yet eye-opening look at the pitfalls that can derail even the most well-intentioned companies,
whether you're a seasoned executive or just starting your corporate journey. The episode
of Paramount promises to be a hilarious and relatable ride. During this episode, we'll do a deep
dive into the changes and hot topics of successfully transforming a dysfunctional company. We will
leverage the expertise of my guests and how to navigate the unique dynamics of the field.
By the end of this episode, you would better equip to know what to do and encourage you
to contact my guest, Joel Dubin, who's a retired cybersecurity consultant. And with that,
we want to welcome Joel. Thanks for taking some time out. How are you doing today?
Great. Thanks for having me, Mick. I'm glad to be here.
Well, it's very interesting that how you came up with this phenomenal idea. So I'm really
curious of how and tell us a little bit about your background. How did you start in this?
So a couple of decades ago, about 25 years ago, I started out in cybersecurity. And what
I do is I call on clients and I review their security and I review their security procedures.
So not only was the book about the maybe hundred companies that I reviewed, but it's also
about companies I worked for as well. So a range from small companies to large companies,
a family owned, Fortune 500 type companies, and so on. And over the years, I just developed
your seeing all kinds of nonsense that I would see going on in companies. In some cases,
damaging to their security is kind of like shooting themselves in the foot. And I developed
these kind of seven habits that I saw were the most common things that happened in a lot
of companies. The first one, of course, is if it makes sense, don't do it. I saw companies
trying to make things complicated or just stupid things. Like, for instance, customers that
like to store in a particular location, so then the company would close the store and move
it somewhere else where people weren't going. What are they thinking? Or moving offices away
from employees so that they could commute long distances and be fresh and crisp when
they came to work every morning. And then I noticed turf battles were common. There were just
people in these particularly larger companies where they weren't even thinking about the
business. They were thinking about their little kingdoms and fiefdoms. They probably should
have been wearing, as I make jokes about in the book, wearing, you know, night uniforms and
mace and so forth because, or actually in the world today, you'd see two executives beating
each other up with laptops in the hall, I guess. That's kind of the modern equivalent.
People were interested in turf building and building political centers that could badly
each other. Sometimes there were days I wanted to say, "Do you know what business we're
in anymore?" That kind of a thing. Or in the middle of a meeting where there was some crazy,
crazy security standard that made no sense and people were just going, "Aggily in circles,
I just want to meet..." And I'm known for being outspoken. I said, "Whoever wrote this,
whatever they were smoking, they should share it with the rest of us because it's some pretty
good stuff." Then I run the gamut of meeting a corporate communication. I say a lot of employees
at these companies, they have whiplash from their head going back and forth. They said,
"This yesterday, they said something else today, what are we talking about?" That kind of
a thing. Then meetings, which kind of rolls off of poor communication, right? People
that were in endless meetings. Meetings are like the bane of the existence of these functional
companies. I have a long chapter about meetings, about employees should have laser pointers
so that they can participate. You should never use a whiteboard in a meeting because that involves
creativity. That allows people to think freely. Powerpoint should be required in every meeting.
Meeting should be run by people that don't know what they're doing so that meetings kind of go
aimless. You should have defibrillators and oxygen tanks in meetings because you never know
when someone might pass out. Of course, employees should have water bottles to be hydrated during
long hours in meetings. I talk about meeting police who were in the halls of the office with
little arm bands. They look for people that are not in a meeting and they approach them and
they'll put you in a meeting even if it has nothing to do with what your job function is.
I talk about meetings, I talk about poor customer service, I think even beyond working for a company
just as ordinary consumers, it's almost impossible to reach a human being. One of my habits was
human contact with customers is totally prohibited because now when you call up, you can't even
get a phone number sometimes. You can't find it on a website. You have to Google. It's like a research
project. Then when you get a number, you get this menu and then the menu has nothing to do with
what you're looking for. You're screaming in the phone, you know, screaming in the
representative, "Mayday, healthy, I'm sinking," you know, and all these things that are going on.
And eventually, maybe if you hit the right combination of, you know, of keep that number as you
get through to someone, I call that menu bingo. You know, and menu should be designed so that
they're not easy to use. And then in the rare case, you do get to someone. They're reading a script.
They don't know what they're talking about. Or customer service is kind of like a
conveyor belt. That's not my job. Let me move you to the next important department. So, you know,
it's kind of like a, it's like a hat potato, you know, no one should take credit and no one should
should assist. It just should just keep moving on and feel kind of drops off the face of the earth.
You know, and then I talk about, of course, employees. I talk about, you know, the twin enemies of
any dysfunctional company are its employees and its customers. Well, customers are easy to deal with.
You can drive them away. They're out there outside the company. They're out of sight out of mind.
But employees, it's like a nagging toothache. They're in the company. You have to do something about them.
They're expecting to be paid. What kind of crap is that? You know, I mean, you know, and then they
talk about empowerment in these companies and they do everything to blockade, not listen, give lip service,
you know, shake their head. Yeah, sounds like a great idea. And then walk away. You know, and then,
you know, I talk about it also how not serving the common good and I talk there about how companies say
one thing and do another like employees, they're our most important asset. Well, they say that the day
before a mass layoff doesn't that make sense? You know, that kind of thing. And then I have what I call the
the S-Home Management Development Training Program, which in the spirit of poor communication where
you use acronyms, it's called MD-TAP, I call it. And I talk about all the various swamp creatures that are
in these companies because the poor environment, the toxic relationships and so on, it breeds a
situation where really only assholes can get ahead in these companies, you know, and then after they're
done at these companies, they can go out and maybe they can work for government where they can do all kinds
of damage, right? From everything that they learn in these companies, you know, so that's kind of the,
in a nutshell, after years and years of seeing this and seeing this stuff and banging my own head
against the wall, you know, I just kind of developed these traits as I noticed for a comment to all of these
companies and it doesn't have to be that way, you know. True. So when you talk about, are there things that
you've seen or are changes that have taken place? Or yeah, that's a little bit... I think companies have
become much more bureaucratic and stodgy, there's much more regulation now. I'm not one that's like the
libertarian, there's no regulation at all, but I think what's happened, and I see this in security,
that rather than looking at security, and I don't want to go off into two technical
attract here is that companies are just kind of following these rigid rules and checklists,
it's called compliance, and they're meeting standards, but they're not really looking seriously
at security, and while they're looking at rules and regulation, you know, the hackers are kind of
laughing and laughing all the way to the bank, getting in with all kinds of creative ways of breaking
in into systems. So that was one thing I see a lot more of a careless attitude toward employees
in the sense that they're disposable, there's no loyalty. That's another thing that I would recommend
is that, you know, you should always be prepared. I call it the corporate angel of death, could strike
at any time at any moment, doesn't matter how good you are, how competent you are, someone could come
over to happy on the shoulder, hand you pink slip, and you're done, it could be there a year, it could
be there 20 years or that's pretty rare now. So those are some of the changes that I've seen.
Yeah, mostly in that, more automation in terms of customer service, in terms of HR,
you want a job at a company, you go to their website, you sense a resume electronically,
God knows if you'll ever see it, if anyone will ever see it or it's even seen, and I have a recommendation
there where I say just put the word asshole in the middle of the resume in the resume, and probably
their detectors will grab and say, that one, that's a hot candidate. Let's call him in for an interview, you know,
that kind of a thing. And I make all kinds of jokes about HR, I think that it's just gotten two,
yeah, two regulated, two bureaucratic, two difficult to get anything done, and we see the results,
you know, in business, we see more nimblers, smaller competitors, just kind of, you know, eating
their lunch, and I think AI, and I'm just like everybody else, we're all learning about it now. I
can't say that I'm an expert or more of an expert than anybody else. This is going to automate
things and people are going to have to be prepared to kind of shift gears, you know, how our
company is going to deal with that. So those are the main changes that I've seen over the years.
Is there an area, or you say hot topics? I mean, because you mentioned AI, that might be one,
so are there some hot topics you would address currently?
Well, you know, I have a bias towards security because that's one of the things that, you know,
that I'm in, I think that companies need to be, and AI obviously is a big thing, but I think also
in terms of people management, you know, I have an MBA from a top business school, amazingly, you know,
I call it a Masters of bureaucratic administration. Seriously, I learned a lot at schools at great
school, Northwesterns and Kellogg was a fantastic school and learned an incredible amount of things,
but I call it that because it's really geared toward, you know, organizations and large organizations.
So, you know, what I see in terms of, you know, kind of the, the hot areas, they don't teach
your business school, for example, psychology, right? And I think they should teach psychology. We
had like an organizational behavior class. We learned about organizations and organizational structures
and how people relate. And I'm not talking about like the psychology would take in an undergrad
program where they teach you about child development, you know, in all these different areas, talking about
something based on like issues of power and ego, right? I think that you have too much ego is in these
companies and you need to kind of check your ego at the door. And there also has to be a, you know,
barriers have to be broken down between executives and the rest of the staff too often I saw companies
where executives are hiding in ivory towers and then they come out and I call them like in town halls,
right? They come out of the dark, they come out from the underground bunker and they'll come out
and they'll be flanked with all these assistance. It's just like the president and the secret service
there. And then they talk all this nonsense and bullshit and you wonder, did they work for the same
company? And then, you know, someone asks a question and it's a difficulty, then they'll ask with some
plastic thing that they read off of a, you know, off of a brochure. But if someone asks a difficult
question, I say, you know, two armed security people will come and lift the employee out and take
them out in the parking lot, you know? So, you two often I saw like executives, they have like a big show,
right? They come and they make a big deal and it will be announced. Why not just show up unannounced
without your assistance? Just walk around and talk to people. See what they're thinking. They could
give you ideas about how to improve the business, how to improve the process. You know, they,
they may bitch and mow on about this and that and the other that like everybody does, but you might
get some elements of things there that can help you run this business. Too often a lot of, I call it
executive blindness. So, those are those are the key hot areas, improvement of executive employee
relationships. You know, I mentioned AI, I mentioned security and I mentioned ego and that kind of thing,
learning psychology. So, we've seen the negative, which you've explained humorously and well. So,
I'm curious, could you offer some ideas like what would be some recommendations or what could a
business owner or CEO do? Like, what would you recommend? So, as I said, I recommend getting out there,
pressing the flesh, talking to your people. Sure, it's important that executives meet, you know,
on their own, in their own atmosphere, they're often dealing with sensitive things and big strategic
projects and so on. So, that's the one one thing that I would recommend. The other thing for employees,
you know, I'm not saying to be this loyal and not to do a good job, do the best job that you can.
We'll take it all personally, you know, you may work on a project and a company may scrap it after
you've done all this work for six months. It's not about you, there might be some change in strategic
focus, right? So, don't take it personally and always, always, always be prepared today could be
your last. You never, never know. Always have a resume ready, you know, try to update it.
Regularly, take advantage of any training. Now, I make a lot of fun in the book about training,
but I'm talking about kind of useless training where, you know, in the middle of the day,
I get an email saying, you know, you've got to take this training, you know, about, you know,
labor procedures. There's nothing to do with my job, but it's part of some regulation. I have to
drop everything, take the CBT, it screws up my day. But there were technical trainings that
companies that I worked at, they paid for that. So, right, so I learned some of the technical skills,
something I could put on a resume, something I could sell to a future employer, that type of thing.
I had some great, great training in what's called ethical hacking, for example. You know, I wasn't
penetration tester, right, did ethical hacking, I did that type of testing. I did do a lot of security
testing, but I didn't try to break into systems, which is one of the skills. Why one of my
certifications required that we go through a boot camp in this. And I, you know, really wasn't
necessary, but you know what, I got this skill and I got this certificate and I can go to someone
and say, hey, I have some expertise in ethical hacking, right, take advantage of training, network,
network network, use any network. If you're a member of a professional association, go to trade shows.
I know some people say trade shows are a waste of time or they're drinking and powering opportunities.
They're also great opportunities to meet people. Sure.
In person, go to events, go to classes, and then use like alumni networks, use any type of,
as I say, professional networks if you're a member of some society or something like that.
And just always, always kind of be out there because you know, once they throw you out the door,
you got to have a parachute. And that can be your parachute. I mean, I had
once where I was actually let go from a company in the morning and in the afternoon, I was already
having interviews because I was always, I was prepared, you know, I had talked to people.
So it should always be prepared. Those are the, those are the big things.
So really good advice. Somebody said, don't wait till you get fired to look for a job. You should
be always looking for your next opportunity. And the day you get a job, start looking for your next one.
Just that's brilliant. That's exactly it. Don't have that tunnel vision.
Too many people it's like they just get too involved in a job to their heads down so low that they
can't see what's above them. You got to be proactive. That's just the reality of today's job market.
And when you mention about changes, that's becoming even more common because the 10-year-old companies
now people are often at companies only two, three years now and then they're on to the next one.
And even for executives, you know, executives, you know, it's rare for an executive to start at the
bottom kind of climb that ladder up the top. Some of them they kind of zigzag they'll make their next
management move at the next company. They'll make their next rung up at another company, you know,
and then if they if they reach like the CEO level, it might have been maybe the second and
commanded another company where it didn't look like the CEO was moving and the second and command
was a person that was ambitious. And they saw an opening and they had the skills and they jump
at it. So sometimes even with the executive level, there's zigzagging up. Got it. You know, could you
say something about like what's your expertise or what do you offer like? What would a person get if
they were working to or just reading the book too? So could you tell us a little bit about that?
As I say, I like to call it an anti-manual of how not to run a business. So take everything in
the book and do the opposite. You know, I even say in the introduction, you know, at some,
you know, early on, I says, you know, you can actually take the book and rip it up and throw it in the
air and stop right here and you'll be fine with your company or because, you know, many of these people
with these companies have big egos, they're going to keep playing, you know, keep playing the game. So
my expertise, I still have some expertise in cybersecurity, although I've been out about a year,
but so I still have expertise in that area. Other areas, I wouldn't, don't come to me to
restructure your company, but I can give you personal advice, you know, maybe about your situation. Tell
me what's going on. I heard a lot of these corporate horror stories. What's also not mentioned, I did a
lot of business internationally. I'm also a polyglot. I speak multiple languages, so I'm very adept
at the multicultural and international teams. You know, I've managed teams where there was people in
Brazil and India, you know, and in the US and how do you kind of get all these these cats that are
hurting, you know, hurt all these cats together. So I'm good at that. I'm good at dealing with those
cultural sensitivities in business, which now we're in a global world, you know, you kind of have to
be prepared for. And even in countries where I didn't speak the language, I did a lot of business
in the Far East where I didn't maybe a little bit here and there, but not enough to do business,
I understood the culture enough to be able to work with them and integrate them into, you know,
into a team, you know, you'll have a team of people from, as I say, from Hong Kong, from India,
from the UK, from the US. And a lot of these people have very different business cultures or different
ways that they want to see things done. So I'm kind of good at that kind of multicultural, international
focus in that regard. So international business is also an area that's a specialty of mine. And then
the language area. So I'm familiar with learning languages and speaking a lot of languages in
well. So I'm active in the global polygloid community as well.
You know, I'd love to give you some contact of her, give us some contact,
or how do you get a whole of you? And please, how do you get hold of this book? Is it hilarious?
Okay, the book is on Amazon. So, but you can reach me at dysfunctional company@yahoo.com. That's my
and it does work. It works. Right. It's something that does work is it's not dysfunctional.
Just not dysfunctional. But yeah, just keep the faith people. You know, there is hope.
You know, another thing just I like to add kind of make is a footnote. A lot of people kind of have
this entrepreneurial itch, you know, nothing wrong with that at all, believe me, not, but I just
want to say it's not for everybody. You know, not everybody can be an entrepreneur. Not everybody kind
of has the stomach for it because if there's ups and downs and you know, you have to make sacrifices
and so on. So the reality, your personal reality might be that you just may have to work for someone
else, or also you're better at that or you know, you don't have to chase people that aren't paying bills
or look for customers. You just kind of do your particular specialty. So, you know, if that's the
case, kind of know yourself, you know, Emma is it really a good idea from it? You'd be an entrepreneur
because so many people are selling that message now everywhere. You're saying, well, you know,
get on TikTok and you know, you can get on YouTube and you can make thousands, tens of thousands
of dollars a month just doing this doesn't always happen. Your place might be working for, you know,
another company. So just kind of know yourself and know what, what, what works for you. Entrepreneurs
and Madagascar's that don't want to be misquoted. It's not for everybody. You just have to decide
what works best for you. Joel, phenomenal. Thank you so much for taking some time out and being
kind of only informative, but also humorous too because in the corporate world, you better keep your
sense of humor. You're going to laugh or you're going to cry. I'll tell you, I mean, this is what I
look like every day at the office. Thanks so much, Joel. I appreciate all the good advice and all
the wisdom that you share today. Thanks for being a guest. Great. Thank you very much. You bet. So,
if you would like to have something along the lines of an entertaining look at what Joel is talking
about, please make sure you get a copy of his book, It's hilarious. Laffer Cry. And keep the contact
coming. So like, subscribe, positively review and share the Dr. Digital podcast. If you want more
guests like Joel is entertaining, keep that support coming. I really appreciate it. And once again,
thanks for the sponsors, both Burning America and on track, Ian, on her for their support. Until next time,
day is small.