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Distributed Teams · Humanity Working

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Paul.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Distributed teams are the new normal.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: What's the biggest misunderstanding about them?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Hey Matt.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, uh distributed work, such a fascinating area.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Way back on this podcast, we had um Phil Levin, who was the former CEO of Evernote and is now this um the CEO of a company called and yes, I did pronounce that right.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the and Phil loves the concept of distributed work.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: He actually talks when he talks about hybrid or remote or something like that, he said we shouldn't really call it that.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: We should call we should call it distributed work.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a there's a real truth to that.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, I spoke to Phil a few months later and I asked him about that, and I said it really stuck with me.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Phil said to me, Yeah, I've given up that battle.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because because everybody, you know, he's like, at some point you've just got to accept the fact that the term that people are using is hybrid or remote.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: But the point is, regardless of whether of what people out there in the world are calling it, distributed work is not just an an accurate description, but it really helps you understand how widespread it is.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because if let's take JP Morgan Chase, right?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: So JP Morgan Chase famously has been pulling people back into the office.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you might say, well, okay, well, then that means they are not remote and they're not hybrid.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And by those pure definitions of remote and hybrid, they're not.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: People have to go to work every day.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: But do the people at JP Morgan Chase uh do they work with other people that are co-located with them all of the time?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And when I mean co-located, I mean like in the same office, the same physical space, the same six are you working with people six feet away from you?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the vast majority of the case, the answer to that is no.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: So even as we bring people back into the office, we think of people as as working in a way that was a sort of old traditional way.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: But they're not.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're just communicating with people that are thousands of miles away.
• 2:26
  unknown: Yeah.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Just as you and I are communicating with each other, and we're, well, are we 1500, 2000 miles away from each other?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the that's what everybody else is doing.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're just going to the office to do it.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is uh it's it's so important because it means that some of the skills that you need to develop to work well in hybrid and remote situations apply even when you bring people back into the office.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: So the return to office debate sort of misses the point.
• 2:54
  unknown: Yeah.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: It absolutely does.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's a real estate question more than anything.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I've and I can't remember if I've mentioned this before on the pod, right?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: We should, like, particularly when we think of JP JP Morgan Chase, is it really that surprising that a company that has a very large portfolio of commercial real estate is sending a message that bringing people back into the office is a is a is a really good idea?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: People shouldn't forget that as they think about as they think about that part of the debate.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the distributed thing's really interesting because uh I I noticed this a little bit in in my workplaces sometimes is that we would, you know, after COVID kind of let it let go and we were trying to figure out what to do, and you could go into the office sometimes for meetings, or hey, the leader's coming, let's all get together and and have a meeting, you would still be having a hybrid meeting because not everybody came to the office.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: So now I'm in the office and half the people are on the screen, a few of us are in the room.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh aside from the feeling of like being around people, it wasn't better or worse, yes, or more productive or less.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was the same.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that adjustment, that that sort of tech adjustment that everybody made through COVID has rendered this to not be as much of a factor anymore.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, like in that way, right?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's take an element of that and let's but let's imagine just for a second that everybody is back, right?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's back.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: The only companies, even in a situation where everybody is back, that the only companies that are not distributed in some way, shape, or form are companies that do all of the following.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, all of the people in the company are working the same or all of the people in the company that are working with each other are following the same hours.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, nobody is working outside of the nine to five.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, because if they are and you're communicating with them, then you're distributed from them.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, um the office in which they sit is so centralized that people don't take virtual meetings, they perform all meetings physically.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no, it's not a campus setup.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably not even a multi-floor setup.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's a small, it's a small office and everybody's within a couple of minutes walking distance of each other.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, number four, all of the work that they do is with each other and not with vendors and not with uh other parties that are outside the world.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that was four or five.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, it was but the point is all of those things have to be true in order for the company to not be distributed, which means that the vast majority of companies are distributed and they need those uh those skills.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: No matter what Jamie Diamond says, no matter what Elon Musk says, no matter what any of these people say, yeah, those skills that we built up we need.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we need to use those because we are distributed from the people with which we work.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we were distributed before it was even a thing to call it a thing.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Heck yes.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because like I'm thinking of like you and I both worked on like campuses of companies, right?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it was big enough that it was probably easier to join a meeting that was happening in a part of the campus that would have taken you 15 minutes to walk to to just join from your office, and the people are literally in another building 15 minutes away.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we're already distributed.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: And we didn't even know it or or think about it, or think it was a thing we had to do or undo.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's fascinating, man.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Crazy.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, what's a practical way to kind of think about this then?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, once you really, really internalize that everything is distributed, what that really means is that um it's not just the skills, but it is honing the skills to work super well asynchronously.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's honing the skills of that are used in distributed settings, getting better at written communication, getting better at having a combination of real-time collaboration and asynchronous collaboration and knowing when to use what, getting really, really efficient at how you're conducting meetings, um, and then getting really strategic about when you do gather so that you get that social connection that uh that you get from the uh from the benefit of gathering.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, like not overdoing it, what you were just talking about with the campus, right?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Take the 15 minutes, go over there and meet the human so that you can make that personal connection and have a coffee with them, right?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do, but do that consciously um and do it well so that you know when you're gonna work uh on this stuff and when you're not.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And pick up a book on on how to do great remote work or uh or hybrid work or things like that, um, and use those skills even though you're not working remote or hybrid.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's so interesting.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've been trying to think and and crack the code on when you have large distributed teams, right?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Which we are realizing is all of the teams, if you're in that type of environment, there you that's the case.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um figuring out communication is so tough.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we we should probably do a whole pod on this, but like, you know, the idea of Slack might drive half of your team crazy because it's just this constant feed and they can't keep up and they're trying to do it.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Other people, you know, and it could be generational, it could be the way your brain works, you know, and it's it's really hard to figure out a good way to get it all done.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like you uh we've talked about this a bunch.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: You need multimodal communication to reach everybody.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: You have to know what kind of communication works for them.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: You can survey them to death, you can ask them questions, but still if you're trying to get messages out from a single location out to your team and have them understood, it's very hard to figure out how I am gonna do that.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: And does that mean that I have to?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like trying to figure out a social media landscape.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like, am I gonna make a blog or make a video?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Am I gonna make a TikTok?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Am I gonna put this on Instagram?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Am I gonna, you know, send it in the mail?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And am I gonna make a video?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's the answer is yes.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Try to figure out how to do all of those things because it'll work for somebody.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: Different than the others, but man.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's do that's a that's a couple of episodes for us.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: One on communication styles, and and then also one, I think, on on clashing work styles and how to uh and and how to uh how to be able to manage that in a world where everybody's got to collaborate.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do this.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds good.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: All right, see you next time, Paul.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: All right, thanks.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Bye.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Neal.
• 10:01
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• 10:05
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• 10:07
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