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You can't make a withdrawal from a relationship account that you've never funded. I've read it in articles, I've heard it from people. That's something that's always stuck with me.
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You don't build the relationship when things are bad. You count on the relationship when things are bad. You build the relationship when it's good.
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Welcome to Relationship Capitalists, where super connectors share how they build trust, create value, and thrive when AI changes everything.
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In a world where expertise is being commoditized, your ability to build and sustain high-value human connections is what sets you apart. I'm your host, Jason Mashrolly. Let's dive in. Welcome to Relationship Capitalists.
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I'm your host, Jason Mashrolly. Today, I'm joined by Aaron Marchbanks, Head of Engineering at Delta Systems and co-host of SaaS That App.
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Aaron has spent more than twenty years leading engineering teams, translating business needs into technical execution, and bridging the gap between clients, leaders, and developers.
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So today, we'll explore why relationship capital may be the last truly durable competitive advantage in an AI-driven world. Let's dive in. Thanks for joining today. Absolutely, Jason. Thanks for having me. This is fun.
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Absolutely. Where, where are you connecting in from today? So I guess based is the right way to say it now that we're all remote. I am based in Central Missouri. [laughs] Nice.
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That's a world apart from where I am here in New H-- in New Hampshire, so. Yes, yeah.
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My daughter goes to school, though, in Boston, and so we are frequently up in that direction, but I have never made it to New Hampshire. It's on the list. I wanna go all the way up in there.
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Yeah, it's beautiful country, so definitely let me know when you're in the area. Yeah, we'll catch up. Absolutely. So let's jump in.
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Aaron, I guess a lot of times I think a lot of your content, you talk about technology and engineering, and often the failures are not about technology themselves, and a lot of times it's because a breakdown in trust, communication, and relationships.
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And so when did you kind of realize that in your career? And talk a bit about that. A lot of different times and a lot of different ways.
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I'm a relationship guy, have always kind of prided myself on being the person that you can talk to or come and work with on different things.
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But in terms of technology, the job that I'm in right now, I've been in for about twenty years, and I've had obviously a, a career before that as well, but this one has been specifically geared toward engineering projects, software development, and in its early days, more website-oriented.
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But through all of that, I've been through the entire spectrum of being a developer and engineer, being a project manager, uh, now head of engineering.
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But what I find more often than not or what I have always found is that it's not very often that the technology itself, whatever solution you might be presenting or whatever a particular client is looking for, is a problem per se.
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You know, nobody really walks in the door with like, "Not only do I want the solution, but I want it built in this particular technology stack, and I want it done this particular way with this particular type of a database behind it."
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And it's never really, uh, anything like a project as you're going into it fails because the technology wasn't sufficient. Never had a client say, "Well, this didn't go well because you chose PHP."
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But a lot of them that do fail, I see, are typically just because trust became an issue at some point along the way, whether that was our trust in the client, the client's trust in us, people within both organizations not trusting each other and really understanding what the goals of the, a project are, and there's lots of examples of those.
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But it's one of those things where just making sure that from the outset you get alignment and you get buy-in from whoever it is that you're working with, and in our case it's a client and provider type relationship, just making sure that you are aligned from the outset because everybody understands about technical debt.
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You know, things have updated and upgraded and patched and maintained. It's software. It's a living, breathing thing. But the thing that I find is that misalignment typically compounds a lot faster than technical debt.
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And so the aha moments, I guess, for me along the way have, have almost all kind of centered around that idea is this notion of trust and, and making sure that you are not only aligned from the start, but you stay aligned throughout.
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Because everything else after that you can take care of, you can address. But not having that trust at the outset and that alignment has probably caused more problems than any technical decision we've ever made.
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For sure. And it's interesting because I've always-- I love the theme of alignment and leadership, and it's so important, and I've never really consciously connected it to relationships.
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Listened to some of your stuff and read some of your things that you put out there, I was like, "It's a really interesting connection," because at the end of the day, you don't get alignment without relationship, and alignment is all about trust and influence, right?
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And so it sounds like you've kind of tapped into that around, you know, kind of this concept of being a relationship architect and technology strategist together.
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It really helped foster those relationships that drives alignment to drive success. Maybe just a little bit more about how you realize that and how that comes into practice for you.
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In a previous life, I was a, a corporate trainer, and so I did software training, network training, things along those lines.
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And so again, by nature, I like helping people, and I like being, quote-unquote, "people person." I'm not in love with that phrase, but I get what it means, and I know where the heart of that is.
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For me, I've always leaned toward being not so much the person who is implementing solutions, but rather the person who helped find alignment on a solution.
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Every one of us who are technology specialists who are kind of vacillating between do I want to be a developer and engineer and go down that road, or do I want to be more the, the traditional management type path, the people person, the, the relationship manager, and that sort of thing, and I took this route for a lot of reasons, but probably the biggest one was I've never really been the smartest engineer in a room, even when I was one.
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But the good news for me is that I didn't have to be.
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What I started noticing, even in the training days, but especially over the last twenty years in developing software, is that whenever things got stuck or started going off the rails or couldn't get resolved, those sorts of things, people kept calling me into the room.
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And it wasn't because I had the answer, but it's because they were at some sort of an impasse, and I could always help people find a shared answer and a path forward.
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That's kind of what really caught my attention, hammered home that I'm going in the right direction because I was finding a lot of success there.
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And so that's-- I even say it now, I, I don't do development because I'm not the best developer, but I surround myself with really good developers so that I don't have to. Yeah. [chuckles] Absolutely.
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I've seen myself that in product development organizations and go-to-market and leadership, in terms of executive leadership, alignment among them is so critical, and I think in the past you could have a bit of lack of alignment and a little bit of siloed relationships, and you could still figure it out because it was runway.
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But the speed at which things are moving today, that lack of alignment just erodes an ability for a company to actually take a product to market at the rate of speed that they need to.
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How are you seeing that kind of within your own business and what you're seeing in leadership as well?
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Obviously, the hot button issue of, of the year is AI, but in a general sense, we've always gotten faster at doing things.
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Some of that is just because we have people who are being schooled in it or being trained in it or are being brought up in it in some way, shape, or form, you know, whether they're teaching themselves or working in it.
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But the other part of that also is the tooling. We've always gotten better tools as we go along the way.
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There was always bare metal programming that you could get into, and then you stack on top of that some sort of a, a structured language and so on and so forth up to platforms.
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And now you're just layering on top of that this AI process whereby you can just throw things at it and see what it comes back with.
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And so all of these things have compounded, and we're seeing this kinda exponential curve now with AI and being able to get things done so much more quickly.
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And we see that where we are, not being a, a product-based shop ourselves and being more of a solutions provider or consultancy, we work in a lot of different industries. We work with a lot of different types of people.
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It's literally the difference between how hot dogs get manufactured and, like, who gets the next vial of insulin.
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It's that type of a spectrum, but across all of those, everything is getting faster because of the tooling, because of the education of the engineering staff, things along those lines.
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But the thing that isn't really changing is how the selection process happens between a solutions provider and a customer or a client, and then what maintains that once that has been established.
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It's all relationship, and it's all trust. I mean, people don't wake up in the morning on a mission to buy software. They wanna buy outcomes. Nobody says, "Hey, you know what we need?
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We need an API," or, "You know what I'm feeling today is a good database migration." You know, in business you want faster growth, you want happier customers, you want lower cost, you want less risk.
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And frankly, while technology can provide that, and most everything in business boils down to some version of those elements, what you are looking for is a trusted partner to be able to help you make those things happen.
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And so regardless of the speed which we are seeing, the key for customers and clients and people entering into these relationships are to ask the right question.
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You don't wanna ask how fast you can build something because frankly now everybody's got access to AI. The floor is the same for everyone. You wanna ask things like, "What is your approach to problems?
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What is your approach to solutions? Why do you build the way that you do? How do you make decisions? How do you communicate?"
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Those sorts of things, that's the opportunity where you can establish trust and win the business as it were, but that's also how you keep the business is you keep asking those same questions of each other, and that's how you keep that alignment.
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So while the tooling and the skill set is making us faster, the real bang for your buck is in that relationship.
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I would imagine as you get into some of your clients that you're doing work with, there's a lack of alignment within the organizations that you're coming into, and they're stuck with old patterns, a certain speed of execution that they're used to that is no longer acceptable in the market.
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And so do you have an example of, like, a project where you've had some really meaty challenges around the people side of things? You were able to successfully navigate them to good alignment and kind of an outcome.
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Oh my goodness, yes. We call them horror stories. We've all got truckloads of horror stories.
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I'm a process guy, and so I have a tendency to, when I find something that is successful, some sort of an approach or, or a tool or something like that, I like to processize it. So those get better over the years.
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And in my early days as I'm learning about client relationships and I'm seeing what's making a successful relationship and a successful project and things like that, I'm making notes, and you build your process around that sort of thing.
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And I remember vividly [chuckles] a particular point in time.
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I was talking with our owner at the time, and I said, "Dude, we are banging our head against the wall with the same type of client, and I could use your input on how to deal with this.
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We need to figure out a way to get around it 'cause this type of business is not going away." And it was when we were having to deal with clients who were committees. It was the most painful type of relationship.
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They were the typically slowest projects. Uh, they very rarely did what a client would consider hit the mark, but it's because every interaction was with a committee.
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And I'm not saying that committees are bad, but in the context of someone who's trying to help your organization and build a process, it is so counterproductive to have four, five, six voices in a room that are not aligned to themselves, for one thing, and then for another, trying to walk away from a meeting that should've been five minutes at half an hour with still no clear direction on what you're supposed to be doing.
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And so one of the processes that we built around that is regardless of who is on the other side of that phone call, we need one person that we will rely on as the final word and also who we will communicate back to to distribute information to you all.
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Whatever happens on the other side of that person, that's on you guys. [chuckles] But what this person says to us is the law and vice versa.
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That fixed that particular type of relationship, but it was just project after project, and it, it was just same type of issue every single time.
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That helped a lot with the problem, and then also educating the client on why that actually is important. So, so it's not just like walking in the door going, "Oh, there's too many people.
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This is already gonna be a problem." You don't wanna go in shields up.
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[chuckles]But you do wanna go in, go in with, "Here has been our experience, and why it is that we do business the way that we do, and why you should trust us." [laughs] So it's that type of thing.
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So I could tell you a bunch of stories about that, but that's kind of a good category of problem that I recall from early on in my career. No, that's a great approach.
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Organizations oftenly, they struggle with even agreeing on who has the decision. Exactly. There was a great, uh, Harvard Business Review article, like 25 years ago, I think it was called Who Has the D?
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The whole article was a framework about how you make-- get to clarity on who has the actual decision-making power, and I've tried it within certain organizations, and sometimes people, they try to avoid it.
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Politically, they're afraid to identify somebody. It's good that you guys have really made that part of your process. That's pretty cool. Awesome.
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So in terms of this show, obviously, you've got background and our theme is around relationship capital, and a lot of that is about trust and trust relationships and creating opportunity and, and value.
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How do you see this concept of relationship capital functioning inside within an engineering organization?
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And I guess to frame it up a little bit more, individuals, an engineer or a QA person or people that are in the ranks, I think often engineers may not think of them as people who need to have really good relationship skills.
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And so what are your thoughts on how that can really help somebody in their career that's within an engineering team really thrive and be more effective?
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It's, it's an interesting question because, again, it depends a little bit on the side of the solutions providing that you are on.
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Being a consultancy and wanting to make sure that we are providing the type of outcomes and solutions that our clients are looking for, for us, we're-- we have a bit of a luxury because we have project managers that kind of act as go-betweens between, you know, the development engineering staff and the client, and we found that type of thing to be successful.
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But at the same time, we also try not to get in the habit of hiring engineers that we wouldn't trust putting in front of a client, even if they might not be very good at types of interactions that they would need.
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I don't wanna put somebody on this side of the desk that couldn't actually have a meaningful conversation with another human being, right? But at the same time, they're not going to be the PM for the project.
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I'm a big fan of-- There's a book that talks about EOS, is Enterprise Operating System, Traction, Gino Wickman, and he talks a lot about, you know, right person, right seat.
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And so within an organization, it's important that you understand what those seats are to start with and that you get the right people in those seats.
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But internally, having the right person that's communicating with your clients, making sure that engineering staff and your engineering team understand why the structure is the way that it is, and building trust from the bottom up in that way.
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You know, engineers need to be able to trust each other, right? 'Cause you're gonna have multiple people working on a piece of software.
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They need to trust that project manager that what their concerns are are going to get addressed with the client.
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The client has to trust that project manager, that theirs are gonna get translated back in a meaningful way to the development team. And so you got this two-way track.
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So inside of an engineering shop, you do have to have that right person that's in the right seat. The person that's ideally suited to be a project manager is probably not gonna be your best developer and vice versa.
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But everything internally, just as much as between the client and you as the solutions provider, everything internally also relies on that trust, that, that old notion of you need to be able to trust the person that you're working with, right?
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You can't look across the table and be like, "Well, I've got this other person that's working on this team, but I already know I'm gonna have to, like, triple-check their work because they're typically wrong or they're off on this sort of a thing."
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That's kinda toxic internally. You gotta be able to trust the people, and if you can't, that's a problem that you've got to address.
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But those are the sorts of things internally that you wanna make sure that your engineering team understands.
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From, you know, their perspective, they're trusting you that the deadlines that have been set are realistic, that requirements that have been gleaned are accurate, that problems can be brought up without blame, that you're all solving the same problem.
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'Cause the, the issue here that no matter where you are in the layering process, whether it's that committee or your contact or your project manager or your development staff or whatever, that relationship layer in between every single one of those is critical, and communication is a big part of that because if you don't have it and it starts falling down at any one of those layers, everybody all of a sudden, it's like retreat to your own corners, and you start optimizing for your own success instead of the shared success.
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You know, their vision falls backward onto their own self-interests instead of forward in the interest of the outcomes. You know, sales starts blaming engineering 'cause they didn't deliver on promises.
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Engineering blames sales because they gathered poor requirements and overpromised. Clients blame communication 'cause nobody's listening to them or they don't understand.
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Leaders are blaming execution 'cause there's no process, you know. So when that trust disappears, every problem looks like somebody else's fault. You've gotta establish trust within the team on your side.
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You've gotta develop trust with that manager. They gotta develop trust then with the client, and you, you just kind of layer on each one of those.
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And at each step, you're always looking for that breakdown, and that's where it starts to show up. The blame game, that's where you start seeing the cracks show up.
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Soon as somebody starts getting blamed for something, we got a relationship problem more than we do some other kind of problem. For sure.
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And you've led teams and managers and so on, and so I often see this as a powerful capability to manage people, and some of the things that I've seen that you've put out talks about kind of a leadership style that's around uniquely managing relationships with direct reports and how you kind of approach each of those relationships in a unique way to bring the best out of them.
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And so talk a bit about that 'cause I think that's something that a lot of people, a lot of leaders miss, is how important it is to have a deep connection with each of your directs in a unique way so that they're motivated and driven to bring their best every day.
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That's a great question.
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I'm happy to report that's a position that I've been in for a long time because I think I'm uniquely suited to be the person who could be at the hub of a lot of that stuff, and that's why I'm not a developer, but that's also why I don't own a business.
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Our owners, our CEO, amazing people. They are entrepreneurs. They have that vision. That's what they wanna do, and they're so good at it. That's not my ballpark, right?
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I like being the person that kinda rubber meets the road and making sure that everybody's rowing in the same direction and that sort of thing.
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And everybody, every stakeholder that's involved, has different skin in the game, and so you've gotta make sure that not only do you understand what everybody's role is but understand what everybody's skin in the game is.
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Because everybody needs to be able to win, everybody needs to be able to trust that each other are all, like I say, rowing in the same direction.
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Leadership obviously is going to be laser-focused on down the road, the projections, the outcomes, the overarching, the thirty-thousand-foot-view stuff. Are we progressing the way that we need to be progressing?
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Are we building the relationships that we need to be building? Those are the things that are important to them, not, "Oh, we built this brand-new project in Ruby on Rails."
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Generally speaking, they could care less that that's actually what happened down here. They just wanna make sure that whatever is happening down here works its way up and is reaching these goals.
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But then you switch to the other end of the spectrum, and you've got the developer and the engineer. They care greatly about what's going on down here.
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They also want to be heard, you know, because if you're bringing a new project to them, one of the first things that they're gonna ask about is, does this client already have a particular stack that we need to be building in?
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Do they have integrations that we need to be concerned with? "Hey, I just read this really great article, and I've done some study on my own and a little bit of play with this particular utility or library or whatever.
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I think that this would be a really great place to incorporate that." And with leadership, you don't wanna shut down the notion of where we're going, and it's a long way to get there.
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You don't wanna shut down the little short-term stuff either on the other end of the spectrum because what seems maybe small to leadership is very big to someone else.
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And so just making sure that everybody in the room is heard, that everybody feels seen, and that you genuinely are taking that into account when you're building this.
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And that's, again, part of the test of trust is, you know, if I have a developer that feels strongly about a particular approach to a solution, even if it may be wildly different than what we've done before, I have built enough trust with that individual that I can say, "You feel this passionately about it.
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Let's take a swing at that. That sounds great. What do you need to make that happen?"
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And then when we talk through it and it's like, okay, let's put some guardrails up or some boundaries around that to make sure that this is going to work this way, and then that gets communicated to the project manager who may need to say, for their own skin in the game, "I've got to keep a client happy."
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And things that they need to know, are we on schedule? Are we on budget? Have there been changes that are gonna affect either one of those two things? Stuff like that.
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And so that person also needs to be able to have a little pushback too and say, "Well, this is great, but what you just told me we're going to do is about to double our budget, and there's no way that the client is gonna go for this."
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However, what he can also say is, "I will take it to the client, though, and give them that option because it does have a lot more positives than what we were talking about originally," and not shutting it down.
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And so, again, it's just all these little things that you can do to, to build trust and make sure that everybody is seen, everybody is heard, and then they begin to trust you as well.
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And then that's where the client gains trust because you are giving them the ability to make some decision and not feel like they've just lobbed something over the fence.
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And so they're involved in the decision-making process, and they feel like even though maybe they're non-technical or maybe they feel like they've not explained something the right way, they get a call in how something is being built or put together or solved from their perspective as well.
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They have some control. So you've given everybody in that process some amount of control.
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You've given everybody in that process a voice, and you've made sure that everybody is at the very least heard and understands what's going on even down here behind the scenes.
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Those are the sorts of things that we build our culture around and always have. We're very proud of the team that we've built, and we got a lot of tenure because of that.
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Like I said earlier, you gotta like what you're doing, you gotta like who you're doing it with at the end of the day, and a big part of that is the relationships that you build and that notion of trust and how do you build it and just having those open communication.
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Do they feel valued? Absolutely, because they are. You hired them for a reason. You've kept them on for a reason, and they need to know, even if it's something small, they need to know why that is.
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Everybody wants validation, and it's not about always fluffing somebody's feathers. It's about just being honest with them.
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And that's what's gonna drive higher performance for you folks at the end of the day because now you've got an inherently motivated team because they feel like they've been heard, they're trusted, and that they're a valued member playing a valuable position.
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Yeah. That's awesome. Do you see that, any threat to that with AI in terms of how fast things are going and...
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'Cause I do find that technical teams really want time where they can experiment with the newest stuff, but always the stuff that they're experimenting with may not be aligned with what you have to deliver for a client.
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So how are you kinda threading that needle? That one is a little more personal for the individual.
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We've got guys on our team, and I know that this is kind of a universal thing with engineers that are good at what they do. All of them have side projects.
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[laughs] Everybody is working on something in their off hours because they're either trying to solve their own problems or something is cool and new and, and I wanna find where the limits of this thing is and just start playing with it, right?
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So a lot of them will just come in the door on a workday having done something, and they're bringing that knowledge or they're bringing that information or, like in the example that I use, you know, I, I just found this new, this new library or whatever, and I think that this would be a good reason for it.
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But you also want to afford during the day or in the makeup of your week or part of your processes some time for everybody to stay up on stuff.
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It's really hard because things do move obviously immeasurably fast, especially these days. That curve, the exponential curve is just insane.
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But nobody can keep up with everything all the time, but you still need to afford the opportunity for people to continue their education and continue to grow and build.
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So for us internally, I mean, things that we've done, obviously we don't poo-poo anybody's outside of work stuff as long as you're directly competing.
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You don't have another company on the side doing what you're doing the rest of the time. Please go, go and play with stuff.
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But also during the day, making sure that they have some time that they can set aside for testing an idea or a theory, and we've done this off and on throughout the years, and we're on an on cycle right now.
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We, we do kind of these lunch and learns once a week. Sometimes it's once a month, just kind of depending on what it looks like. But right now we're in a cycle of lunch and learns on AI.
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And so every week, someone comes into the whole team. We have-- It's a all-hands meeting, and they are demoing something that they've done personally or for a client.
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They are talking about something new or different that they have found or read or are interested in playing with, and they may already be the subject matter expert on, and they're sharing that with a team of twenty to thirty people.
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And then you open that up to questions.
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And that, again, just continues to build the trust because you're hearing from other team members who are doing really interesting things, but you're not necessarily having to invest a lot of your time to try to go and grab that.
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You're kind of building your skill set as someone else is too. Those types of things are, are very important. And for engineers, they wanna feed that knowledge base.
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They, they wanna do more, better, faster, cooler, and there's gotta be an outlet for that.
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Getting to work on a variety of projects is the obvious outlet, but also getting to learn what's new out there and implement it in- In different and interesting ways is also a good way to go about that.
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So we've found a lot of success with that type of approach. 'Cause it makes them a more valuable asset for you as well.
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So if a founder, operator, or technical leader's listening on a Monday morning, and they wanna build better relationship capital for themselves, what's a 15-minute daily habit that they could do to start improving that?
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Oh, gosh, so many things. [laughs] Well, I mean, the, the easiest thing is just start doing something to recognize another person. At the, at the bottom of everything else, that's really how you establish relationships.
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Do something to notice somebody else. You wanna do that not just in business, but that's also a good personal thing.
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But, you know, in business it could be something like sending a note or congratulating someone or making an introduction, sharing an interesting article, something that you know that they're probably interested in.
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Making them feel seen and heard in a project setting. Someone who hasn't spoken up for a while, ask them what their take is on this particular thing. Genuinely try to find out what their concerns or their issues are.
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One of the things that I like to do, and a lot of organizations do, are have one-on-ones.
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So I've got, like, you know, 15 minutes of dedicated time on alternating weeks because I just can't hit everybody within a week, and I wouldn't have any time for myself.
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[laughs] But alternating weeks, just having one-on-one time with an individual, and it's usually very conversational. There are a couple of bullet points that we always have to hit.
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Are you on track for your goals and that sort of thing, a little metric stuff. But it's almost always the bulk of the conversation is, you know, "How are you doing? How are you feeling?
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Are you enjoying what it is that you're working on? How's this project going? Is there anything that I can do to make your day or work life better?"
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And a lot of times there's, there's not, or people say that there's not, and they're just kind of fibbing to me 'cause they're maybe having a, a good day or something like that.
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But usually, and because of the trust that we've built, if there is something, I feel very confident that somebody's gonna tell me, and they're not gonna hold onto it for six months and then all of a sudden blaze out and quit.
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I, I used to say, "If the first time that you're hearing something from me is in an annual review, I have failed you [laughs] as your manager." This should be something that before it's an issue we are talking about.
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It, it goes the other way as well, right?
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Is, is if you, you as a manager haven't done the work to build that trust and create an open space for people to be able to really be open about whatever challenges personally that they're running into that gets in the way of their work,
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and you're hearing about that much later, and, and they're resigning because of it, that's a failure on leadership as well.
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And sounds like you're designed that way to build that into your one-on-one so that people feel comfortable, which is great.
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It builds a community, and it's a good team-building thing, uh, if nothing else, because it gives you an opportunity to be able to share.
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Like you say, if you as a manager also have some concerns or you're trying to address a particular issue and, and you wanna catch it early, those are the best places to do it before it becomes a really big deal.
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It's a, it's a minor course correction. If you can do this along the way, it's way easier than taking a long time and you're way over here, and now we gotta correct you and get you back in this direction.
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Or same goes for projects. It's the small adjustments along the way. It's like driving on the road, you know. It's, it's little adjustments. Yeah, for sure.
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So what's a mistake that causes projects to slow down, break down, or lose momentum from a relationship perspective?
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It's heavily project and client dependent to be sure, but I guess just kind of sticking with the theme of the day, I, I would say probably waiting until there is a problem before you, as the overseeing body, invests in the relationship.
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It, it's one of those things where you always wanna nip the problem in the bud as early as you possibly can, but if you wait until there is a problem before you become interested in the person or project or relationship, you're gonna have so much less clout in the conversation.
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You haven't developed that trust. You haven't developed that relationship.
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And now you're trying to do it in the middle of a problem, and this person who may be having the problem is likely going to be hot about it, and they're gonna be like, "Why are you, a new person, stepping into this?
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You don't even know what's going on here." The thing that I heard, I wish I could remember who it was that said it to me, but basically, you can't make a withdrawal from a relationship account that you've never funded.
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[laughs] That's awesome. That's fantastic. That has stuck with me, and I've read it in, in articles. I've heard it from people. But, but that's something that's always stuck with me.
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You don't build the relationship when things are bad. You count on the relationship when things are bad. You build the relationship when it's good. The best time to build a bridge is before you need to cross the river.
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That's the mentality that you have to go into it with.
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And when things slow down or break down or lose momentum and you have not built that relationship and the problem now exists that you've gotta solve, you're already behind the eight ball.
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That's something that I see a lot in, in organizations, and I myself have faced it in other parts of my career as well. Just one of those things that sometimes you, you learn the hard way.
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But if you can invest in that relationship up front, continue to feed the relationship to build the trust, then when stuff gets really bad, it's not that bad. It's solvable because you all understand each other.
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You have already established trust, and they will trust you that you can solve this problem for them or help them get past that hurdle, just like you can trust them to hear what it is that you're saying and know that you know what you're talking about.
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Yeah, because you've built that foundation. Yeah, or the bridge. Absolutely. No, that's, uh, well articulated. That's, that's brilliant.
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So just in wrapping up, is there a relationship that's been most impactful for you that you've formed in your career that ended up becoming a strategic advantage in your career? A strategic advantage.
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For yourself or, or changed your trajectory because of a, a key person. So many times.
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Everybody's got mentors in their lives, and I've been blessed to have a lot in mine, and they are people that I don't know almost as much as they are people that I do know. I'm an avid reader, and so always in books.
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I'm always watching TED Talks and, and at conferences and things like that, but I've also been very blessed to have had a really great career with good leadership and mentorship above me.
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So picking one of those, it's kinda like asking a reader to pick their favorite book. I, I couldn't do it.
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I can talk about the one that actually got me here, and, and I've told this story before, but it's one of my favorites. My prior job before this one, like I said, I was a corporate trainer.
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My wife and I were just about to have our child. We were in the process of moving to a new place, and so I was looking for different opportunity closer to where that was all going to happen, and I was ready for a change.
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The gentleman who was at the time the single owner of this particular company that I'm in now, Delta Systems, was in need of a project manager, so that person who could talk technically to technical people, but also non-technically to clients and non-technical people.
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And because of my training background, I felt like I was pretty well-suited for that. But to that point in my career, I'd also worked in several organizations that were very structured, very hierarchical.
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You could actually just lay the org chart out, and you could see exactly which box you were in and what that line of things was. And that's what I really knew about business at the time.
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This is how small, medium, even large sized businesses are organized, and they're all set up this way. And I understand the process.
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You know, it's not militarily strict, but it's something that I could put in front of me and know who I'm supposed to talk to if I have a particular problem, right? So I sat down and I interviewed with him.
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His name is Steve. And we got to a point in the interview where I was interested in the size of the organization and, and again, the structure and, and that thing.
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And so I basically just asked, "You know, what's the structure of this organization?
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Like, if you, if you were to put an org chart in front of me, I'm assuming you're at the top of it, but what does it look like to work here?"
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And he flips my resume over, and he draws a big circle, and in the middle of it writes the word workers and says, "That's our org chart." I can get behind that. He was illustrating to me that we are all peers here.
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Everybody's got a job, but everybody's on equal footing. Everybody listens to everybody else. This is about relationships, and he is a relationship guy more so even than I am.
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And he just expressed that in the way that he had already structured the business, though it was small at that time.
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And that was something that actually excited me because I could get in and know that no matter what, I was going to be treated like a peer from the outset, and I was going to be a part of something that was more akin to a family than large structured organization.
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And that was very appealing to me. And that's something that has hung with me, and, and I approach our hiring process very similar to that to this day.
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I take that approach with clients and, and projects when people are coming in and clients are coming in and they're asking us similar types of questions.
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It's like, well, I can point out kind of what everybody does, but understand that every resource that that project manager of yours is going to harness, they're on equal footing because they inform each other and they talk to each other, and we have trust internally.
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You're not gonna get a, uh, senior developer and a junior UI/UX person.
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You know, we don't talk in those terms because everybody is on equal footing in this way, and that's how we, that's how we pitch ourselves when we're, we're talking to folks as well is, you know, we're, we're a big circle with the word workers in the middle of it.
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You have an outcome, and it's our job to provide it. It really doesn't matter to you what's inside that circle, as long as we can do that. What a great perspective to have. That's fantastic. Love it.
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Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you, Aaron. Yeah, absolutely. This is fun. I haven't got to be on this side of the table before. It's one thing I always say, I, I could talk about what I do and, and our team.
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I am so proud and protective of our team, but I'll talk about that all day long. Yeah, no, this was fantastic and, uh, some great insights, so thank you so much. Appreciate it. You're very welcome. Thanks so much, Jason.
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Wow, what a great discussion with Aaron Marchbanks. Today's episode reminded us that in a world where AI can speed up technical execution, the real advantage moves to trust, communication, and alignment.
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Aaron's work shows that relationship capital is not just a personal asset. It is a career infrastructure, a business infrastructure, and organizational resilience.
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To help us grow this community, please take thirty seconds to follow, subscribe, and especially leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It's the best way to support the show and get it out to more people.
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You can listen to us on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to Relationship Capitalists.
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If today's conversation sparked something for you, the best way to invest in your own relationship capital is simple. Share this episode with one person in your network who needs to hear it.
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To learn more about how to build and scale your relationship capital through proven frameworks and simple daily actions, visit relationshipcapital.com.
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And if you haven't already, search for Relationship Capitalists on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. And hit subscribe so you never miss an episode.
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Relationship Capitalists is produced by Fame, the B2B podcast agency that grows your business. I'm Jason Mashrellly. Thanks for being here. [upbeat music]
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You can't make a withdrawal from a relationship account that you've never funded. I've read it in articles, I've heard it from people. That's something that's always stuck with me.
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You don't build the relationship when things are bad. You count on the relationship when things are bad. You build the relationship when it's good.
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Welcome to Relationship Capitalists, where super connectors share how they build trust, create value, and thrive when AI changes everything.
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In a world where expertise is being commoditized, your ability to build and sustain high-value human connections is what sets you apart. I'm your host, Jason Mashrolly. Let's dive in. Welcome to Relationship Capitalists.
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I'm your host, Jason Mashrolly. Today, I'm joined by Aaron Marchbanks, Head of Engineering at Delta Systems and co-host of SaaS That App.
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Aaron has spent more than twenty years leading engineering teams, translating business needs into technical execution, and bridging the gap between clients, leaders, and developers.
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So today, we'll explore why relationship capital may be the last truly durable competitive advantage in an AI-driven world. Let's dive in. Thanks for joining today. Absolutely, Jason. Thanks for having me. This is fun.
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Absolutely. Where, where are you connecting in from today? So I guess based is the right way to say it now that we're all remote. I am based in Central Missouri. [laughs] Nice.
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That's a world apart from where I am here in New H-- in New Hampshire, so. Yes, yeah.
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My daughter goes to school, though, in Boston, and so we are frequently up in that direction, but I have never made it to New Hampshire. It's on the list. I wanna go all the way up in there.
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Yeah, it's beautiful country, so definitely let me know when you're in the area. Yeah, we'll catch up. Absolutely. So let's jump in.
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Aaron, I guess a lot of times I think a lot of your content, you talk about technology and engineering, and often the failures are not about technology themselves, and a lot of times it's because a breakdown in trust, communication, and relationships.
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And so when did you kind of realize that in your career? And talk a bit about that. A lot of different times and a lot of different ways.
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I'm a relationship guy, have always kind of prided myself on being the person that you can talk to or come and work with on different things.
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But in terms of technology, the job that I'm in right now, I've been in for about twenty years, and I've had obviously a, a career before that as well, but this one has been specifically geared toward engineering projects, software development, and in its early days, more website-oriented.
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But through all of that, I've been through the entire spectrum of being a developer and engineer, being a project manager, uh, now head of engineering.
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But what I find more often than not or what I have always found is that it's not very often that the technology itself, whatever solution you might be presenting or whatever a particular client is looking for, is a problem per se.
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You know, nobody really walks in the door with like, "Not only do I want the solution, but I want it built in this particular technology stack, and I want it done this particular way with this particular type of a database behind it."
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And it's never really, uh, anything like a project as you're going into it fails because the technology wasn't sufficient. Never had a client say, "Well, this didn't go well because you chose PHP."
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But a lot of them that do fail, I see, are typically just because trust became an issue at some point along the way, whether that was our trust in the client, the client's trust in us, people within both organizations not trusting each other and really understanding what the goals of the, a project are, and there's lots of examples of those.
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But it's one of those things where just making sure that from the outset you get alignment and you get buy-in from whoever it is that you're working with, and in our case it's a client and provider type relationship, just making sure that you are aligned from the outset because everybody understands about technical debt.
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You know, things have updated and upgraded and patched and maintained. It's software. It's a living, breathing thing. But the thing that I find is that misalignment typically compounds a lot faster than technical debt.
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And so the aha moments, I guess, for me along the way have, have almost all kind of centered around that idea is this notion of trust and, and making sure that you are not only aligned from the start, but you stay aligned throughout.
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Because everything else after that you can take care of, you can address. But not having that trust at the outset and that alignment has probably caused more problems than any technical decision we've ever made.
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For sure. And it's interesting because I've always-- I love the theme of alignment and leadership, and it's so important, and I've never really consciously connected it to relationships.
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Listened to some of your stuff and read some of your things that you put out there, I was like, "It's a really interesting connection," because at the end of the day, you don't get alignment without relationship, and alignment is all about trust and influence, right?
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And so it sounds like you've kind of tapped into that around, you know, kind of this concept of being a relationship architect and technology strategist together.
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It really helped foster those relationships that drives alignment to drive success. Maybe just a little bit more about how you realize that and how that comes into practice for you.
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In a previous life, I was a, a corporate trainer, and so I did software training, network training, things along those lines.
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And so again, by nature, I like helping people, and I like being, quote-unquote, "people person." I'm not in love with that phrase, but I get what it means, and I know where the heart of that is.
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For me, I've always leaned toward being not so much the person who is implementing solutions, but rather the person who helped find alignment on a solution.
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Every one of us who are technology specialists who are kind of vacillating between do I want to be a developer and engineer and go down that road, or do I want to be more the, the traditional management type path, the people person, the, the relationship manager, and that sort of thing, and I took this route for a lot of reasons, but probably the biggest one was I've never really been the smartest engineer in a room, even when I was one.
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But the good news for me is that I didn't have to be.
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What I started noticing, even in the training days, but especially over the last twenty years in developing software, is that whenever things got stuck or started going off the rails or couldn't get resolved, those sorts of things, people kept calling me into the room.
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And it wasn't because I had the answer, but it's because they were at some sort of an impasse, and I could always help people find a shared answer and a path forward.
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That's kind of what really caught my attention, hammered home that I'm going in the right direction because I was finding a lot of success there.
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And so that's-- I even say it now, I, I don't do development because I'm not the best developer, but I surround myself with really good developers so that I don't have to. Yeah. [chuckles] Absolutely.
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I've seen myself that in product development organizations and go-to-market and leadership, in terms of executive leadership, alignment among them is so critical, and I think in the past you could have a bit of lack of alignment and a little bit of siloed relationships, and you could still figure it out because it was runway.
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But the speed at which things are moving today, that lack of alignment just erodes an ability for a company to actually take a product to market at the rate of speed that they need to.
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How are you seeing that kind of within your own business and what you're seeing in leadership as well?
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Obviously, the hot button issue of, of the year is AI, but in a general sense, we've always gotten faster at doing things.
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Some of that is just because we have people who are being schooled in it or being trained in it or are being brought up in it in some way, shape, or form, you know, whether they're teaching themselves or working in it.
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But the other part of that also is the tooling. We've always gotten better tools as we go along the way.
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There was always bare metal programming that you could get into, and then you stack on top of that some sort of a, a structured language and so on and so forth up to platforms.
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And now you're just layering on top of that this AI process whereby you can just throw things at it and see what it comes back with.
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And so all of these things have compounded, and we're seeing this kinda exponential curve now with AI and being able to get things done so much more quickly.
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And we see that where we are, not being a, a product-based shop ourselves and being more of a solutions provider or consultancy, we work in a lot of different industries. We work with a lot of different types of people.
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It's literally the difference between how hot dogs get manufactured and, like, who gets the next vial of insulin.
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It's that type of a spectrum, but across all of those, everything is getting faster because of the tooling, because of the education of the engineering staff, things along those lines.
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But the thing that isn't really changing is how the selection process happens between a solutions provider and a customer or a client, and then what maintains that once that has been established.
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It's all relationship, and it's all trust. I mean, people don't wake up in the morning on a mission to buy software. They wanna buy outcomes. Nobody says, "Hey, you know what we need?
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We need an API," or, "You know what I'm feeling today is a good database migration." You know, in business you want faster growth, you want happier customers, you want lower cost, you want less risk.
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And frankly, while technology can provide that, and most everything in business boils down to some version of those elements, what you are looking for is a trusted partner to be able to help you make those things happen.
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And so regardless of the speed which we are seeing, the key for customers and clients and people entering into these relationships are to ask the right question.
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You don't wanna ask how fast you can build something because frankly now everybody's got access to AI. The floor is the same for everyone. You wanna ask things like, "What is your approach to problems?
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What is your approach to solutions? Why do you build the way that you do? How do you make decisions? How do you communicate?"
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Those sorts of things, that's the opportunity where you can establish trust and win the business as it were, but that's also how you keep the business is you keep asking those same questions of each other, and that's how you keep that alignment.
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So while the tooling and the skill set is making us faster, the real bang for your buck is in that relationship.
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I would imagine as you get into some of your clients that you're doing work with, there's a lack of alignment within the organizations that you're coming into, and they're stuck with old patterns, a certain speed of execution that they're used to that is no longer acceptable in the market.
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And so do you have an example of, like, a project where you've had some really meaty challenges around the people side of things? You were able to successfully navigate them to good alignment and kind of an outcome.
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Oh my goodness, yes. We call them horror stories. We've all got truckloads of horror stories.
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I'm a process guy, and so I have a tendency to, when I find something that is successful, some sort of an approach or, or a tool or something like that, I like to processize it. So those get better over the years.
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And in my early days as I'm learning about client relationships and I'm seeing what's making a successful relationship and a successful project and things like that, I'm making notes, and you build your process around that sort of thing.
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And I remember vividly [chuckles] a particular point in time.
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I was talking with our owner at the time, and I said, "Dude, we are banging our head against the wall with the same type of client, and I could use your input on how to deal with this.
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We need to figure out a way to get around it 'cause this type of business is not going away." And it was when we were having to deal with clients who were committees. It was the most painful type of relationship.
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They were the typically slowest projects. Uh, they very rarely did what a client would consider hit the mark, but it's because every interaction was with a committee.
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And I'm not saying that committees are bad, but in the context of someone who's trying to help your organization and build a process, it is so counterproductive to have four, five, six voices in a room that are not aligned to themselves, for one thing, and then for another, trying to walk away from a meeting that should've been five minutes at half an hour with still no clear direction on what you're supposed to be doing.
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And so one of the processes that we built around that is regardless of who is on the other side of that phone call, we need one person that we will rely on as the final word and also who we will communicate back to to distribute information to you all.
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Whatever happens on the other side of that person, that's on you guys. [chuckles] But what this person says to us is the law and vice versa.
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That fixed that particular type of relationship, but it was just project after project, and it, it was just same type of issue every single time.
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That helped a lot with the problem, and then also educating the client on why that actually is important. So, so it's not just like walking in the door going, "Oh, there's too many people.
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This is already gonna be a problem." You don't wanna go in shields up.
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[chuckles]But you do wanna go in, go in with, "Here has been our experience, and why it is that we do business the way that we do, and why you should trust us." [laughs] So it's that type of thing.
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So I could tell you a bunch of stories about that, but that's kind of a good category of problem that I recall from early on in my career. No, that's a great approach.
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Organizations oftenly, they struggle with even agreeing on who has the decision. Exactly. There was a great, uh, Harvard Business Review article, like 25 years ago, I think it was called Who Has the D?
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The whole article was a framework about how you make-- get to clarity on who has the actual decision-making power, and I've tried it within certain organizations, and sometimes people, they try to avoid it.
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Politically, they're afraid to identify somebody. It's good that you guys have really made that part of your process. That's pretty cool. Awesome.
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So in terms of this show, obviously, you've got background and our theme is around relationship capital, and a lot of that is about trust and trust relationships and creating opportunity and, and value.
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How do you see this concept of relationship capital functioning inside within an engineering organization?
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And I guess to frame it up a little bit more, individuals, an engineer or a QA person or people that are in the ranks, I think often engineers may not think of them as people who need to have really good relationship skills.
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And so what are your thoughts on how that can really help somebody in their career that's within an engineering team really thrive and be more effective?
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It's, it's an interesting question because, again, it depends a little bit on the side of the solutions providing that you are on.
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Being a consultancy and wanting to make sure that we are providing the type of outcomes and solutions that our clients are looking for, for us, we're-- we have a bit of a luxury because we have project managers that kind of act as go-betweens between, you know, the development engineering staff and the client, and we found that type of thing to be successful.
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But at the same time, we also try not to get in the habit of hiring engineers that we wouldn't trust putting in front of a client, even if they might not be very good at types of interactions that they would need.
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I don't wanna put somebody on this side of the desk that couldn't actually have a meaningful conversation with another human being, right? But at the same time, they're not going to be the PM for the project.
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I'm a big fan of-- There's a book that talks about EOS, is Enterprise Operating System, Traction, Gino Wickman, and he talks a lot about, you know, right person, right seat.
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And so within an organization, it's important that you understand what those seats are to start with and that you get the right people in those seats.
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But internally, having the right person that's communicating with your clients, making sure that engineering staff and your engineering team understand why the structure is the way that it is, and building trust from the bottom up in that way.
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You know, engineers need to be able to trust each other, right? 'Cause you're gonna have multiple people working on a piece of software.
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They need to trust that project manager that what their concerns are are going to get addressed with the client.
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The client has to trust that project manager, that theirs are gonna get translated back in a meaningful way to the development team. And so you got this two-way track.
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So inside of an engineering shop, you do have to have that right person that's in the right seat. The person that's ideally suited to be a project manager is probably not gonna be your best developer and vice versa.
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But everything internally, just as much as between the client and you as the solutions provider, everything internally also relies on that trust, that, that old notion of you need to be able to trust the person that you're working with, right?
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You can't look across the table and be like, "Well, I've got this other person that's working on this team, but I already know I'm gonna have to, like, triple-check their work because they're typically wrong or they're off on this sort of a thing."
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That's kinda toxic internally. You gotta be able to trust the people, and if you can't, that's a problem that you've got to address.
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But those are the sorts of things internally that you wanna make sure that your engineering team understands.
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From, you know, their perspective, they're trusting you that the deadlines that have been set are realistic, that requirements that have been gleaned are accurate, that problems can be brought up without blame, that you're all solving the same problem.
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'Cause the, the issue here that no matter where you are in the layering process, whether it's that committee or your contact or your project manager or your development staff or whatever, that relationship layer in between every single one of those is critical, and communication is a big part of that because if you don't have it and it starts falling down at any one of those layers, everybody all of a sudden, it's like retreat to your own corners, and you start optimizing for your own success instead of the shared success.
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You know, their vision falls backward onto their own self-interests instead of forward in the interest of the outcomes. You know, sales starts blaming engineering 'cause they didn't deliver on promises.
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Engineering blames sales because they gathered poor requirements and overpromised. Clients blame communication 'cause nobody's listening to them or they don't understand.
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Leaders are blaming execution 'cause there's no process, you know. So when that trust disappears, every problem looks like somebody else's fault. You've gotta establish trust within the team on your side.
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You've gotta develop trust with that manager. They gotta develop trust then with the client, and you, you just kind of layer on each one of those.
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And at each step, you're always looking for that breakdown, and that's where it starts to show up. The blame game, that's where you start seeing the cracks show up.
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Soon as somebody starts getting blamed for something, we got a relationship problem more than we do some other kind of problem. For sure.
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And you've led teams and managers and so on, and so I often see this as a powerful capability to manage people, and some of the things that I've seen that you've put out talks about kind of a leadership style that's around uniquely managing relationships with direct reports and how you kind of approach each of those relationships in a unique way to bring the best out of them.
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And so talk a bit about that 'cause I think that's something that a lot of people, a lot of leaders miss, is how important it is to have a deep connection with each of your directs in a unique way so that they're motivated and driven to bring their best every day.
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That's a great question.
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I'm happy to report that's a position that I've been in for a long time because I think I'm uniquely suited to be the person who could be at the hub of a lot of that stuff, and that's why I'm not a developer, but that's also why I don't own a business.
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Our owners, our CEO, amazing people. They are entrepreneurs. They have that vision. That's what they wanna do, and they're so good at it. That's not my ballpark, right?
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I like being the person that kinda rubber meets the road and making sure that everybody's rowing in the same direction and that sort of thing.
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And everybody, every stakeholder that's involved, has different skin in the game, and so you've gotta make sure that not only do you understand what everybody's role is but understand what everybody's skin in the game is.
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Because everybody needs to be able to win, everybody needs to be able to trust that each other are all, like I say, rowing in the same direction.
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Leadership obviously is going to be laser-focused on down the road, the projections, the outcomes, the overarching, the thirty-thousand-foot-view stuff. Are we progressing the way that we need to be progressing?
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Are we building the relationships that we need to be building? Those are the things that are important to them, not, "Oh, we built this brand-new project in Ruby on Rails."
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Generally speaking, they could care less that that's actually what happened down here. They just wanna make sure that whatever is happening down here works its way up and is reaching these goals.
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But then you switch to the other end of the spectrum, and you've got the developer and the engineer. They care greatly about what's going on down here.
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They also want to be heard, you know, because if you're bringing a new project to them, one of the first things that they're gonna ask about is, does this client already have a particular stack that we need to be building in?
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Do they have integrations that we need to be concerned with? "Hey, I just read this really great article, and I've done some study on my own and a little bit of play with this particular utility or library or whatever.
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I think that this would be a really great place to incorporate that." And with leadership, you don't wanna shut down the notion of where we're going, and it's a long way to get there.
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You don't wanna shut down the little short-term stuff either on the other end of the spectrum because what seems maybe small to leadership is very big to someone else.
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And so just making sure that everybody in the room is heard, that everybody feels seen, and that you genuinely are taking that into account when you're building this.
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And that's, again, part of the test of trust is, you know, if I have a developer that feels strongly about a particular approach to a solution, even if it may be wildly different than what we've done before, I have built enough trust with that individual that I can say, "You feel this passionately about it.
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Let's take a swing at that. That sounds great. What do you need to make that happen?"
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And then when we talk through it and it's like, okay, let's put some guardrails up or some boundaries around that to make sure that this is going to work this way, and then that gets communicated to the project manager who may need to say, for their own skin in the game, "I've got to keep a client happy."
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And things that they need to know, are we on schedule? Are we on budget? Have there been changes that are gonna affect either one of those two things? Stuff like that.
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And so that person also needs to be able to have a little pushback too and say, "Well, this is great, but what you just told me we're going to do is about to double our budget, and there's no way that the client is gonna go for this."
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However, what he can also say is, "I will take it to the client, though, and give them that option because it does have a lot more positives than what we were talking about originally," and not shutting it down.
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And so, again, it's just all these little things that you can do to, to build trust and make sure that everybody is seen, everybody is heard, and then they begin to trust you as well.
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And then that's where the client gains trust because you are giving them the ability to make some decision and not feel like they've just lobbed something over the fence.
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And so they're involved in the decision-making process, and they feel like even though maybe they're non-technical or maybe they feel like they've not explained something the right way, they get a call in how something is being built or put together or solved from their perspective as well.
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They have some control. So you've given everybody in that process some amount of control.
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You've given everybody in that process a voice, and you've made sure that everybody is at the very least heard and understands what's going on even down here behind the scenes.
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Those are the sorts of things that we build our culture around and always have. We're very proud of the team that we've built, and we got a lot of tenure because of that.
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Like I said earlier, you gotta like what you're doing, you gotta like who you're doing it with at the end of the day, and a big part of that is the relationships that you build and that notion of trust and how do you build it and just having those open communication.
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Do they feel valued? Absolutely, because they are. You hired them for a reason. You've kept them on for a reason, and they need to know, even if it's something small, they need to know why that is.
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Everybody wants validation, and it's not about always fluffing somebody's feathers. It's about just being honest with them.
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And that's what's gonna drive higher performance for you folks at the end of the day because now you've got an inherently motivated team because they feel like they've been heard, they're trusted, and that they're a valued member playing a valuable position.
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Yeah. That's awesome. Do you see that, any threat to that with AI in terms of how fast things are going and...
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'Cause I do find that technical teams really want time where they can experiment with the newest stuff, but always the stuff that they're experimenting with may not be aligned with what you have to deliver for a client.
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So how are you kinda threading that needle? That one is a little more personal for the individual.
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We've got guys on our team, and I know that this is kind of a universal thing with engineers that are good at what they do. All of them have side projects.
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[laughs] Everybody is working on something in their off hours because they're either trying to solve their own problems or something is cool and new and, and I wanna find where the limits of this thing is and just start playing with it, right?
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So a lot of them will just come in the door on a workday having done something, and they're bringing that knowledge or they're bringing that information or, like in the example that I use, you know, I, I just found this new, this new library or whatever, and I think that this would be a good reason for it.
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But you also want to afford during the day or in the makeup of your week or part of your processes some time for everybody to stay up on stuff.
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It's really hard because things do move obviously immeasurably fast, especially these days. That curve, the exponential curve is just insane.
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But nobody can keep up with everything all the time, but you still need to afford the opportunity for people to continue their education and continue to grow and build.
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So for us internally, I mean, things that we've done, obviously we don't poo-poo anybody's outside of work stuff as long as you're directly competing.
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You don't have another company on the side doing what you're doing the rest of the time. Please go, go and play with stuff.
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But also during the day, making sure that they have some time that they can set aside for testing an idea or a theory, and we've done this off and on throughout the years, and we're on an on cycle right now.
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We, we do kind of these lunch and learns once a week. Sometimes it's once a month, just kind of depending on what it looks like. But right now we're in a cycle of lunch and learns on AI.
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And so every week, someone comes into the whole team. We have-- It's a all-hands meeting, and they are demoing something that they've done personally or for a client.
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They are talking about something new or different that they have found or read or are interested in playing with, and they may already be the subject matter expert on, and they're sharing that with a team of twenty to thirty people.
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And then you open that up to questions.
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And that, again, just continues to build the trust because you're hearing from other team members who are doing really interesting things, but you're not necessarily having to invest a lot of your time to try to go and grab that.
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You're kind of building your skill set as someone else is too. Those types of things are, are very important. And for engineers, they wanna feed that knowledge base.
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They, they wanna do more, better, faster, cooler, and there's gotta be an outlet for that.
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Getting to work on a variety of projects is the obvious outlet, but also getting to learn what's new out there and implement it in- In different and interesting ways is also a good way to go about that.
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So we've found a lot of success with that type of approach. 'Cause it makes them a more valuable asset for you as well.
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So if a founder, operator, or technical leader's listening on a Monday morning, and they wanna build better relationship capital for themselves, what's a 15-minute daily habit that they could do to start improving that?
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Oh, gosh, so many things. [laughs] Well, I mean, the, the easiest thing is just start doing something to recognize another person. At the, at the bottom of everything else, that's really how you establish relationships.
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Do something to notice somebody else. You wanna do that not just in business, but that's also a good personal thing.
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But, you know, in business it could be something like sending a note or congratulating someone or making an introduction, sharing an interesting article, something that you know that they're probably interested in.
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Making them feel seen and heard in a project setting. Someone who hasn't spoken up for a while, ask them what their take is on this particular thing. Genuinely try to find out what their concerns or their issues are.
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One of the things that I like to do, and a lot of organizations do, are have one-on-ones.
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So I've got, like, you know, 15 minutes of dedicated time on alternating weeks because I just can't hit everybody within a week, and I wouldn't have any time for myself.
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[laughs] But alternating weeks, just having one-on-one time with an individual, and it's usually very conversational. There are a couple of bullet points that we always have to hit.
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Are you on track for your goals and that sort of thing, a little metric stuff. But it's almost always the bulk of the conversation is, you know, "How are you doing? How are you feeling?
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Are you enjoying what it is that you're working on? How's this project going? Is there anything that I can do to make your day or work life better?"
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And a lot of times there's, there's not, or people say that there's not, and they're just kind of fibbing to me 'cause they're maybe having a, a good day or something like that.
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But usually, and because of the trust that we've built, if there is something, I feel very confident that somebody's gonna tell me, and they're not gonna hold onto it for six months and then all of a sudden blaze out and quit.
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I, I used to say, "If the first time that you're hearing something from me is in an annual review, I have failed you [laughs] as your manager." This should be something that before it's an issue we are talking about.
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It, it goes the other way as well, right?
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Is, is if you, you as a manager haven't done the work to build that trust and create an open space for people to be able to really be open about whatever challenges personally that they're running into that gets in the way of their work,
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and you're hearing about that much later, and, and they're resigning because of it, that's a failure on leadership as well.
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And sounds like you're designed that way to build that into your one-on-one so that people feel comfortable, which is great.
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It builds a community, and it's a good team-building thing, uh, if nothing else, because it gives you an opportunity to be able to share.
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Like you say, if you as a manager also have some concerns or you're trying to address a particular issue and, and you wanna catch it early, those are the best places to do it before it becomes a really big deal.
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It's a, it's a minor course correction. If you can do this along the way, it's way easier than taking a long time and you're way over here, and now we gotta correct you and get you back in this direction.
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Or same goes for projects. It's the small adjustments along the way. It's like driving on the road, you know. It's, it's little adjustments. Yeah, for sure.
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So what's a mistake that causes projects to slow down, break down, or lose momentum from a relationship perspective?
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It's heavily project and client dependent to be sure, but I guess just kind of sticking with the theme of the day, I, I would say probably waiting until there is a problem before you, as the overseeing body, invests in the relationship.
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It, it's one of those things where you always wanna nip the problem in the bud as early as you possibly can, but if you wait until there is a problem before you become interested in the person or project or relationship, you're gonna have so much less clout in the conversation.
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You haven't developed that trust. You haven't developed that relationship.
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And now you're trying to do it in the middle of a problem, and this person who may be having the problem is likely going to be hot about it, and they're gonna be like, "Why are you, a new person, stepping into this?
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You don't even know what's going on here." The thing that I heard, I wish I could remember who it was that said it to me, but basically, you can't make a withdrawal from a relationship account that you've never funded.
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[laughs] That's awesome. That's fantastic. That has stuck with me, and I've read it in, in articles. I've heard it from people. But, but that's something that's always stuck with me.
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You don't build the relationship when things are bad. You count on the relationship when things are bad. You build the relationship when it's good. The best time to build a bridge is before you need to cross the river.
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That's the mentality that you have to go into it with.
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And when things slow down or break down or lose momentum and you have not built that relationship and the problem now exists that you've gotta solve, you're already behind the eight ball.
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That's something that I see a lot in, in organizations, and I myself have faced it in other parts of my career as well. Just one of those things that sometimes you, you learn the hard way.
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But if you can invest in that relationship up front, continue to feed the relationship to build the trust, then when stuff gets really bad, it's not that bad. It's solvable because you all understand each other.
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You have already established trust, and they will trust you that you can solve this problem for them or help them get past that hurdle, just like you can trust them to hear what it is that you're saying and know that you know what you're talking about.
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Yeah, because you've built that foundation. Yeah, or the bridge. Absolutely. No, that's, uh, well articulated. That's, that's brilliant.
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So just in wrapping up, is there a relationship that's been most impactful for you that you've formed in your career that ended up becoming a strategic advantage in your career? A strategic advantage.
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For yourself or, or changed your trajectory because of a, a key person. So many times.
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Everybody's got mentors in their lives, and I've been blessed to have a lot in mine, and they are people that I don't know almost as much as they are people that I do know. I'm an avid reader, and so always in books.
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I'm always watching TED Talks and, and at conferences and things like that, but I've also been very blessed to have had a really great career with good leadership and mentorship above me.
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So picking one of those, it's kinda like asking a reader to pick their favorite book. I, I couldn't do it.
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I can talk about the one that actually got me here, and, and I've told this story before, but it's one of my favorites. My prior job before this one, like I said, I was a corporate trainer.
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My wife and I were just about to have our child. We were in the process of moving to a new place, and so I was looking for different opportunity closer to where that was all going to happen, and I was ready for a change.
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The gentleman who was at the time the single owner of this particular company that I'm in now, Delta Systems, was in need of a project manager, so that person who could talk technically to technical people, but also non-technically to clients and non-technical people.
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And because of my training background, I felt like I was pretty well-suited for that. But to that point in my career, I'd also worked in several organizations that were very structured, very hierarchical.
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You could actually just lay the org chart out, and you could see exactly which box you were in and what that line of things was. And that's what I really knew about business at the time.
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This is how small, medium, even large sized businesses are organized, and they're all set up this way. And I understand the process.
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You know, it's not militarily strict, but it's something that I could put in front of me and know who I'm supposed to talk to if I have a particular problem, right? So I sat down and I interviewed with him.
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His name is Steve. And we got to a point in the interview where I was interested in the size of the organization and, and again, the structure and, and that thing.
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And so I basically just asked, "You know, what's the structure of this organization?
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Like, if you, if you were to put an org chart in front of me, I'm assuming you're at the top of it, but what does it look like to work here?"
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And he flips my resume over, and he draws a big circle, and in the middle of it writes the word workers and says, "That's our org chart." I can get behind that. He was illustrating to me that we are all peers here.
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Everybody's got a job, but everybody's on equal footing. Everybody listens to everybody else. This is about relationships, and he is a relationship guy more so even than I am.
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And he just expressed that in the way that he had already structured the business, though it was small at that time.
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And that was something that actually excited me because I could get in and know that no matter what, I was going to be treated like a peer from the outset, and I was going to be a part of something that was more akin to a family than large structured organization.
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And that was very appealing to me. And that's something that has hung with me, and, and I approach our hiring process very similar to that to this day.
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I take that approach with clients and, and projects when people are coming in and clients are coming in and they're asking us similar types of questions.
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It's like, well, I can point out kind of what everybody does, but understand that every resource that that project manager of yours is going to harness, they're on equal footing because they inform each other and they talk to each other, and we have trust internally.
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You're not gonna get a, uh, senior developer and a junior UI/UX person.
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You know, we don't talk in those terms because everybody is on equal footing in this way, and that's how we, that's how we pitch ourselves when we're, we're talking to folks as well is, you know, we're, we're a big circle with the word workers in the middle of it.
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You have an outcome, and it's our job to provide it. It really doesn't matter to you what's inside that circle, as long as we can do that. What a great perspective to have. That's fantastic. Love it.
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Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you, Aaron. Yeah, absolutely. This is fun. I haven't got to be on this side of the table before. It's one thing I always say, I, I could talk about what I do and, and our team.
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I am so proud and protective of our team, but I'll talk about that all day long. Yeah, no, this was fantastic and, uh, some great insights, so thank you so much. Appreciate it. You're very welcome. Thanks so much, Jason.
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Wow, what a great discussion with Aaron Marchbanks. Today's episode reminded us that in a world where AI can speed up technical execution, the real advantage moves to trust, communication, and alignment.
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Aaron's work shows that relationship capital is not just a personal asset. It is a career infrastructure, a business infrastructure, and organizational resilience.
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To help us grow this community, please take thirty seconds to follow, subscribe, and especially leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It's the best way to support the show and get it out to more people.
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You can listen to us on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to Relationship Capitalists.
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If today's conversation sparked something for you, the best way to invest in your own relationship capital is simple. Share this episode with one person in your network who needs to hear it.
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To learn more about how to build and scale your relationship capital through proven frameworks and simple daily actions, visit relationshipcapital.com.
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And if you haven't already, search for Relationship Capitalists on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. And hit subscribe so you never miss an episode.
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Relationship Capitalists is produced by Fame, the B2B podcast agency that grows your business. I'm Jason Mashrellly. Thanks for being here. [upbeat music]
