Episode 85: Why Your Team Workflow Feels Off (and What to Do About It)

When your business feels off—like things just aren’t flowing the way they should—it’s tempting to think it’s a people problem. But as Babies and Business hosts Avram and Rachel found out, it’s often a structure issue instead. In this episode, they share a real-life story about a day spent driving around Albuquerque to take photos—a day that led to missed turns, motion sickness, and growing frustration. After hours of miscommunication and tension, they decided to switch places. Instantly, things clicked.

That one small swap didn’t just solve the problem, it revealed something deeper about how they function as business owners and as a team. Whether you’re leading a growing business or trying to improve how your team works together, this episode offers honest insight into team workflow and how a few intentional changes can lead to breakthroughs.

Show Notes

Key Highlights from this Episode:

• Avram and Rachel share a personal story about a major turning point in their relationship and business
• Why being the right person doesn’t matter if you’re in the wrong role
• The power of speaking up when something isn’t working
• Tools they’ve used to strengthen communication as a couple and with their team
• The importance of aligning roles with natural strengths—at home and at work
• How the Clifton StrengthsFinder test transformed how they see each other and their team
• Why you need to evaluate systems instead of blaming people
• How the S-Curve tool helps keep team members challenged, fulfilled, and engaged
• Simple ways to check in with your partner or your team and invite real feedback
• Why hiring for strategy vs. implementation requires clarity—and how to spot the difference
• The benefits of switching responsibilities to find what works

Mentions & Resources

• Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz — A book Avram and Rachel reference about designing businesses that run themselves, including insights on evaluating systems before blaming people.
• CliftonStrengths (StrengthsFinder) — The assessment that helped Avram and Rachel better understand each other’s strengths—and build a stronger business and marriage.
• S-Curve Tool — A leadership concept from Clockwork that helps keep your team engaged, growing, and in the right roles over time.

Mentioned Episodes

• Babies and Business Episode 72 – How to Find Your First Hire for Your Business

Episode Transcription

Below you will find a transcript of this entire podcast episode. Enjoy!

Avram: You can love somebody dearly and still be incredibly frustrated with them.

Rachel: Oh, that’s a fact. Take my three year old, for example. Oh my God. Anyway, back on topic.

Avram: any sort of relationship, especially long term. You, you, you’re talking your marriages. Yep. You’re talking your children.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: You know the the rest of your family

Rachel: siblings. Yep.

Avram: And then in a lot of cases there’s your business relationships. You know, hopefully you are building a team and those team members stick with you for years.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: That’s the ideal. You know? And then, and then you help elevate them to move up in your organization or move on into something greater.

Rachel: Right. But everybody wants to be moving. Nobody wants to be somewhere and feel like that they have arrived. Unless it’s really stellar.

Avram: Yeah. And so. We decided to share this story from our past. It might have come up in other podcast episodes. I, I think it has.

Rachel: Oh yes. Absolutely. I’m pretty sure we’ve told the story.

Avram: Mm-hmm. But we have been thinking recently just about how important it is to have the right person in the right. Seat.

Rachel: Yes.

Avram: And ironically, we have a story related to driving and people being in the wrong seat that we wanna share today because we had a day that we were doing something that we ended up, loving.

Rachel: It was so much fun.

Avram: We look back on this experience with so much fondness because it was even be, it was before our children were born.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: And we’re getting to do this thing.

Rachel: was just a lot of time together.

Avram: Mm-hmm.

Rachel: And connection, even though we were focused on doing something. And we weren’t really talking, we were not having conversations.

Not like we were doing anything specific like that, but it was just a lot of time together.

Avram: Mm-hmm.

So. It did involve a high level of frustration and stress, a breaking point, if you will.

Rachel: Oh yeah.

Avram: And that’s what the story centers around and the breakthroughs that we had on the other side. There’s some really great tools that we have to share with you when it comes to hiring, when it comes to getting along with your spouse, long term

Rachel: communication,

Avram: all this stuff,

Rachel: and being willing to stand up and say something when it’s not working for you.

Avram: Mm-hmm.

So, what were we doing five years ago.

Rachel: About five. Yeah.

Yeah. So we were taking photos of different places around town here in Albuquerque. And we were in my Jeep, you fondly call him Mr. Toad’s Wild ride because the suspension is not like a Lexus.

Avram: You feel

Rachel: you feel every bump. So both you and I are prone to car sickness.

So, okay, so keeping that in mind, I’m gonna tell you this story and you can see how feelings and things could have gotten heightened. Okay, so we were out and we had this list of places that we needed to go to and take a photo of.

Avram: Yes.

Rachel: And there were probably hundr
eds really on the list.

Avram: Yes.

Rachel: There were a lot.

Avram: We would hit like eight to 10 different areas

Rachel: Yes.

Avram: In, um, four five hours.

Rachel: Yep.

Avram: And we would do

Rachel: and it would be

Avram: 10, about 10 photos in each of those areas.

Rachel: Yes.

Avram: So it was a pretty grueling thing.

Rachel: It was. It was pretty much a whole Saturday that we would

take and dedicate the whole time to. So we start off with me driving. And you are giving me directions to our next location and you are hopping out and taking photos of that place.

Avram: Mm-hmm.

Rachel: So we’re driving, driving, driving, and you fail to tell me where to turn. So I have to make a U-turn and then go back and not sure where we’re going. You’re getting frustrated. I’m getting frustrated.

And we do this a couple of times, so over.

Avram: Couple hours.

Rachel: Quite a long time.

Avram: Yeah.

Rachel: We’re going and it’s just, I mean, I’m feeling more frustrated. You’re feeling more frustrated. I’m pretty sure you’re carsick.

Avram: Yeah.

Rachel: I’m not necessarily carsick ’cause I’m driving, so we’ve got all this stuff going on. I remember we stopped at this one location.

And I was like, Avram, this is not working. You need to be driving. I’m going to direct and you’re gonna go out and take the pictures.

Avram: And I’m like, I’m the boy scout. I have an incredible sense of direction. I’m great with a map. Get outta here, lady. This this is my job.

Rachel: Okay. Let’s be real. You do not give any anticipatory directions when directing me to go somewhere. You’re not like Google. Google will say in about, you’re gonna make a right hand turn, and it’s prior to needing to make that turn. And you’re like, oh, that was our turn.

Avram: No, no, See, I would dispute that on another podcast.

Continue your story.

Rachel: Okay. I had a lot to say about how he was giving me directions. I was getting frustrated by that. So I told you, you needed to sit in the driver seat and you needed take pictures. You are not happy about that. But I’m like, dude, just try it. You’re gonna love it. If you don’t love it. After a couple of stops, maybe we can switch back. Maybe I said that maybe I didn’t. We’ll just say I did.

Avram: Well, and it was like, how am I gonna drive and jump out and photos? This makes

Rachel: You’re like, this is too much.

Avram: I’m like, whatever fine, fine. So we switch, right?

Rachel: We switch.

Avram: We switch.

Rachel: We switch and tell me the result. I think you need to tell It

Avram: It was magic. We, we got faster. Right away. We got faster. Um, we were not carsick anymore. We found a couple different ways to be even more efficient about what we were doing. So like that day we had a huge win, but then we took everything back to the office. We modified process a bit, more.

Rachel: We simplified it, Yep.

Avram: To make it even easier and faster. And I’ll tell you what, we’d be flying up into parking lots. I would hop out of the car, boom, boom, I’m taking the photos, jumping back in, and you’ve got the next spot pulled up on your phone, and are on to the next one.

Rachel: Yep. And so it was really, really seamless and I just did not let whatever it was that we were doing get the better of us.

Avram: Sure.

Rachel: It mattered that we were both, I mean, we were both pretty cranky at the point where we switched. And then it just got really a lot better. So for me, that thing is being willing to say something if it’s not working for you. And if you witness your partner and it’s not working for them as well, just have the courage to say something.

Whatever you’re going through, have the courage to sat something.

Avram: Yeah. So we, we discovered that we had the right people. So you and me were the right team.

 

Rachel: Absolutely.

Avram: But we were literally in the wrong seat because we ended up having so much fun after that

Rachel: It was so much fun.

Avram: And we looked forward to these Saturdays and we probably had a dozen of them over course of a whole summer or something like that. And it was just this thing that we looked forward to doing on a Saturday. Like you know, we’re quote working, but it didn’t feel like it and we got to explore our city in a, new way.

Rachel: It was so fun. It was so fun. So many good things came of it. And I am absolutely a hundred percent certain. Had we not changed seats, it could have meant. That we would actually,

Avram: we wouldn’t have finished that project.

Rachel: It wouldn’t have finished that project. But I think that had we not been willing to actually investigate that, that it could have damaged our relationship.

To be dramatic. I think it could have, ’cause there could have built resentment and judgments, but really looking at the system, blaming the system and not the person is a really great way that we learned from clockwork. When things aren’t going right, look at the systems that aren’t working and serving for you. And then adjust those and then it’s not like it’s a personal thing.

Avram: Mm-hmm.

Rachel: So, yeah.

Avram: I think that there’s some great takeaways here. We’re gonna give you some tools and some things that you can put into practice right away when you’re managing a team. One of the tools that we learned from our experience with Clockwork. If you see the show notes, by the way, we’re gonna mention all these different things we’re talking about today, some past episodes. If you go to babiesandbiz.com/85, that’s this episode, eight five, you’ll see the show notes, all the mentions, all the resources. You can click, click, click your way to your heart’s content and find all this good stuff.

One of the tools that we learned from Clockwork was this tool called the S-Curve. And the S-Curve is basically a process that you take a team member through over the course of years. And the idea is that in the beginning of their S-curve, that might be when a team member first comes on with you, they’re at their least comfortable and least confident, both in their role with you as their quote manager. They’re just getting used to the rest of the team and the way things work.

Rachel: Probably your systems, your processes.

Avram: All that stuff. You know, that might last six to 12 months. They find their groove, they find themselves in the middle of that S which is where they’re challenged.

They’re excited about the things that are going on. That’s the sweet spot. You want people to feel challenged and excited with their work, and that might last a couple of years
, and if their role doesn’t change or evolve, you find them in the end of the S-curve, which we call mastery. Where they start to get bored.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: And that’s when you lose a good team member. So what we do is we have S-Curves, an S-curve meeting, just a 20, 30 minute get together on Zoom with me and the team member, or Rachel and the team member. And we are just connecting with them both about personal, ’cause their personal life is important. Right. You gotta attach your business goals to their personal goals. Make both important. Right, and the point of it though is to have a pulse on your team member and how engaged and excited they’re about their work.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: And so, you know, recently I had an S-curve with one of our team members who has gone above and beyond and stepped into some new roles and taking on new things that are outside of their original job description.

Rachel: Yeah. ’cause he’s just so curious and helpful, but also just he loves to do new things and he loves to find answers to questions and puzzle things.

Avram: Yep. Shout out to Glen. Glen, you’re a boss buddy. And in that s-curve, you know, I’m like, Glen, you’re taking on a lot of these new things that are outside your role.

Rachel: Right. Outside of the thing you were hired for.

Avram: That you were hired for.

Rachel: That you are really excited about.

Avram: I mean, how’s that going? He’s like, well, I really like it. It’s exciting. And I said, well, let me ask you a different question. If you had to do this every day moving forward, how would you feel about it in six months to a year?

He’s like, that’s not what I wanna be doing. But I’m excited about it now because it helps form my greater role. I said, okay, let’s make you a plan to build you into the role that you really like.

Rachel: Yeah. We’re also keeping him with the writing that he loves to do and helping him. So all the things that he was doing that were outside of his role

Avram: mm-hmm.

Rachel: Are adjacent roles and helpful to his role.

Avram: Yep.

Rachel: But he really didn’t want to transfer over into that.

Avram: Correct. And so that’s just one example of the S-curve and how you can make sure that the right people, you know, if you got a good person, you have to do everything you can to make it a great place for them to work.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: You know, and so this is one tool that we do to achieve that. And so we want to make sure that he doesn’t stay in the wrong seat for too long because he could get car sick.

Rachel: Yeah, sure. Well, and I, I also think about it, it’s for your team members. It can be something as simple, like, for me and you, how do we keep a pulse on how we are feeling throughout the day, or whatever that is.

I sometimes I’ll ask for the, your one word for the day. Sure. Or I’ll ask, how are you feeling? Are you stressed about something? ’cause maybe you’re quiet or whatever those tells are that maybe are letting me know that it’s not the best day. Then I ask you, I invite you to bring me into your world and, and help me understand how things are going, and then I could know maybe how to support you.

I see that being the same for S-Curves is that we are inviting people to give feedback and say, no, I don’t like this, or, yes, I do like this. And we’re making it an environment where the answers don’t have to be what you think we would like.

Avram: Yeah.

Rachel: We actually invite honesty.

Avram: Yeah.

Rachel: And that’s really important.

Avram: Well, and I think that’s what’s cool about it is it’s formalized.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: So it’s happening on a consistent basis.

Rachel: Absolutely.

Avram: People know what it is. They know that’s an opportunity to share something or bring something up.

Rachel: Yes.

Avram: Versus like, imagine going months and months

Rachel: It’s  stewing over something,

Avram: stewing over something, but not feeling comfortable to bring it forward or having an environment to do that.

Rachel: Well, oftentimes with bosses, you don’t feel invited to give feedback. You know, I had a job where I was the forklift operator and you know, my bosses would say, Hey, if you have any ideas or if you have suggestions or whatever, that was, that they would say, bring them to me.

And I did one time. One time. I say one time, because they didn’t actually want feedback. I gave feedback one time and it was really balked at and just like ignored and nothing came of it. So you can teach people that their opinion doesn’t matter, or you can teach them that they do matter. And in our organization, we wanna teach them that they matter.

Avram: Yeah. And the S-Curves is one way that we do that. And, uh, so far so good.

Rachel: We want to help them continue to feel like they can progress to who they want to be and what they want to achieve.

Avram: Mm-hmm.

Rachel: With us, they don’t need to go elsewhere to find that opportunity.

Avram: Mm-hmm. You wanna share one of the, the tools? It’s surprising we haven’t actually mentioned the tool yet ’cause it’s been on several podcasts.

What’s the tool that helped us understand in our relationship, people’s strengths and weaknesses. And how did that cultivate understanding for you of some of Mike works?

Rachel: Before I mention the tool, I just wanna kind of lay the ground groundwork is there were times where you and I would be working together and carving out our roles, understanding what our responsibilities were. It was pretty clear that you had strategy and I had the financial stuff.

Avram: Yep.

Rachel: But there were some other finer points of things that we did on a daily basis that really weren’t defined and would be on your plate to do, but you’d never get them done.

Avram: Yeah

Rachel: And I would be very frustrated with you about that. And then there were things on my list possibly, I’m pretty sure there were things on my list that I never got done and you got frustrated with. So vice versa. We were frustrated with things that weren’t getting done by the other person. So the Clifton StrengthsFinder is the test that we took.

Really cool test. It’s a dynamic one. You know, you go in, you’re gonna answer questions, you’re gonna be given. Uh, grades, like a, a grade of how you could answer is, are you, do you agree strongly with this, or do you Totally disagree. You know, and you’re given this range to answer your questions.

Avram: It’s like no other test because you can’t game it and can’t tell what the questions are trying to get at so you can’t overthink it.

Rachel: If you take too long, the question will actually be replaced with a different one.

Avram: Yeah.

Rachel: So it is about time. It’s your first instinct, you answer it instinctively and then you move on.

So what we found out from this test was that you are really strategic. But have zero follow through and like get it done kind of thing in you, me, I have zero strategy and I am all about the lists and get it done, bring it to a close. Marry us together, and we have a really awesome tool belt to pick from. Now when I looked at this, it was like, whoa, okay.

This whole test is geared towards what are our strengths, so it, it clumps our top 10 strengths. Together at the t
op, and then all of the others kind of smatter throughout. And there’s like 30,

Avram: Yeah. 34.

Rachel: Would you say?

Avram: Mm-hmm.

Rachel: It was really telling, because we knew exactly from that test where our strengths were. And there’s more for me to say about what it did for me personally.

Avram: And we got other podcasts in the show notes.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: So check it out.

Rachel: But what it did for us in our relationship on that level was I recognized. Oh my gosh. You have had things on your list that literally drain the life out of you because you have no proclivities to do it.

You’re not good at it. You don’t like it, but I do. So we saw the types of tasks that were good for you and the type of tasks that were good for me. The things that you love drain me. The things I love drain you. So perfect pairing and we just move forward celebrating what we’re good at, and then instead of judging that you were not good at something or I was not good at something, we just simply said, wrong person for that task, and we just give it to the other person. And then again, there are things that neither you or I are good at, and we hire for those things. But when it comes to how we work together, it made a huge difference for us find out. Whoa.

Avram: Yeah. A lot of times you have the right person with the right intentions and they’re willing.

Rachel: Yes.

Avram: But they are not equipped well.

Rachel: They’re just not built that way.

Avram: They are not built that way

Rachel: Yeah.

They don’t think that way. Like strategy, you put me in a strategy seat and I’m gonna melt into a puddle.

You put me next to you, you tell me, you build, you, um, paint the picture of strategy for me and I can break that down into step-by-step tasks.

Avram: Mm-hmm.

Rachel: And a list that we could actually move forward and get to completion.

Avram: And,

Rachel: and that’s why we’re so good together

Avram: Yeah you helped me refine the big ideas into the finer points that make up a well-rounded strategy.

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: Right.

Rachel: That we can actually bring to fruition because if it were just you, it would stay in the imagination form. And if it were just me, I’d just have steps, but attached to no vision.

So pretty cool. But that test, Clifton StrengthsFinder.

Avram: Yeah.

Rachel: If you to strengthen your marriage, it’s good for that. If you want to help make sure that your team members are in the proper seats, it’s good for that.

So many things that you can learn from it.

Avram: Yeah, I would, I would recommend even doing the test before you hire somebody. And that’s one of

Rachel: Didn’t we do that with our brand new people?

Avram: We didn’t this time.

Rachel: Okay.

Avram: We decided after we went through it, that it would’ve been even more impactful just knowing what that was before. I think we got lucky. Right. We got really lucky that the two people that we picked to bring on our team, that we did the test after they were on, and that it worked well with what we had. But if I were to do it again in the next round of hiring that we do, we will include this $50 test as part of it.

Rachel: Because it’s so, it’s so, valuable. You know, you can have people tell you who they are, and then you can actually see who they are with a test like this that helps you with the I’ll put it strengths.

Avram: I’ll put it like this. One of the roles that we’re gonna hire for this year is the, the official SEO search engine optimization role, where I’ve been feeling the whole strategic part of that seat since the beginning of the business.

And in the beginning of the business, I was also doing the implementation.

And today we have people that are doing the implementation of the strategy.

I’m still doing the strategy, but when we hire for the next person, we’re gonna have to decide are we hiring for a strategic person?

Rachel: Right?

Avram: Or are we hiring for the I’m gonna get it done

Rachel: right

Avram: person.

Rachel: Because those are not the same people.

Avram: They are not the same people.

If we hire a strategist, we’re gonna have the chief that has no Indians to order around and nothing getting done.

And if we do it on the flip side, I’m still involved in all the strategy and they’re getting it done probably much better than we have now ’cause they’re gonna be a specialist but the StrengthsFinder will help you understand who you were hiring for that role because the person that can speak really well to the role oftentimes and has the vision for it

Rachel: is strategist.

Avram: They’re the strategist, they’re not, the implementer.

Rachel: Well, and then for the implementer, it might just be some knowledge of SEO and some, but having the strengths to actually go and implement and then you can train them on what to do. So in, in your organization when you’re hiring people, make sure you’re hiring for something that you can train and decide what you’re looking for. So if you’re looking for the strategist, you will still need to train them because you need them to think about the strategy the way that you do, so that it can be served to your specific client. What you have sold them. Um, but then also the implementer is could you train them on how to do the thing?

Can you also do that?

Avram: Mm-hmm.

Rachel: You can’t hire and train somebody and have them feel successful if you yourself don’t know the role.

Avram: Yeah. We have a really incredible podcast that’s on this particular subject. It’s episode 72, Your First Hire.

We talk about Clifton StrengthsFinder.

We talk about the step-by-step process that we went through to hire two wonderful team members right out of the gate in a way that we’ve never done before. It was so simple, it got the right people in front of us, and they’ve been incredible team members for like eight months now.

Rachel: Yeah. Well, and if you have that. If you have that thought going in your head, well, there’s nobody out there to hire. There are no good people to hire. Think again. Listen to that episode 72, it’ll help you. There really are people out there that can support you.

Avram: Because your mindset and your process for hiring both need significant work. Both of those things are in that, in that episode. So you go to babiesandbiz.com/85,

Rachel: Mm-hmm.

Avram: Is that this one’s episode?

Rachel: Yeah.

Avram: You can find those resources, other podcasts so we talked about anything else we have on this subject?

Rachel: Don’t be afraid, like we said, don’t be
afraid to, bring up those hard questions to your team members. You know, do you like what you’re doing here? Maybe you don’t wanna hear the answer, but if you really wanna keep ’em around, you do want to know the answer. So,

Avram: Well, we appreciate you for listening to this episode. We’d love it if you reached out to us. We have an email. Always had it, hello@babiesandbiz.com. We are looking for episode topic suggestions. So if you email those to us, say, Hey, I got a episode. You know, topic I want you to consider. We’d love to see that, you know, we’re closing in about a hundred episodes here and while I know we have a lot of ideas and stuff still in the tank, we could sure use some new ones and be able to create some content that you really, really want to hear about versus what we think you want to hear about because it’s prevalent in our life. We’re like, yeah, other people have gotta relate to this, and we know that you do.

Rachel: And we’re having the conversations anyway.

Avram: Yeah. Why not record them.

We also would love to create episodes that are exactly what you want to hear, so reach out to us. hello@babiesandbiz.com. You can also visit the website for all the show notes like we talked about. And with that, we’ll catch you on the next one.

Rachel: Bye for now.