Latest / Humanity Working / work from....where exactly?
Transcript
- 0:05SPEAKER_03: And designing their days for the them being most effective.
- 0:09SPEAKER_04: I want one of those.
- 0:12SPEAKER_03: That would be good, wouldn't it?
- 0:13SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
- 0:15SPEAKER_02: All right, let's let's do this thing.
- 0:20SPEAKER_04: So, guys, we're starting to get feedback from listeners on what they want covered in this podcast.
- 0:24SPEAKER_04: And one topic has really come through uh a bunch, and obviously that's the the return or the non-return to the office.
- 0:31SPEAKER_04: Uh some people are nervous about it, some people are excited.
- 0:34SPEAKER_04: Some companies don't seem to know what to do or they're they're changing, you know, their their path.
- 0:39SPEAKER_04: What are you guys hearing here?
- 0:42SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, it is a hot topic.
- 0:44SPEAKER_02: Uh oh, by the way, if you do want to get in touch with us, you can email us at uh podcast at billionminds.com or you can tweet us at rising billions um oh, sorry, at rising billion singular.
- 0:58SPEAKER_02: Um, it actually has been great to hear from some folks, but do leave us a review as well, uh, because uh we really need those reviews so other people will hear this podcast.
- 1:07SPEAKER_02: But back to the topic itself, yeah, it's it's complicated.
- 1:11SPEAKER_02: And it's complicated actually for a large number of reasons.
- 1:16SPEAKER_02: One of them is that this has been a long time out of the office.
- 1:20SPEAKER_02: Um, for many people, it's been over a year, and you can build new habits uh in a shorter period of time than just a year.
- 1:29SPEAKER_02: So many of us are fundamentally different people than we were a year ago.
- 1:34SPEAKER_02: And many of us who would never have dreamed of working outside of the office environment are now in a situation where this is the way in which we are accustomed to working.
- 1:46SPEAKER_02: And if we head back, then we're gonna build another new habit, the new habit of uh of working in the workplace, the different workplace um that we are going back to.
- 1:58SPEAKER_02: Um, so what we're hearing uh from leaders uh and from individuals that are talking to us about this is that for every person that is excited to go back, there's somebody else that's fearful of it.
- 2:12SPEAKER_02: Um for every person that thinks they're gonna go back to a normal environment or the same uh environment that they left, there are many other people that know that they're gonna go back to something that is fundamentally different.
- 2:25SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then of course, people's circumstances have changed dramatically.
- 2:28SPEAKER_02: Um, I live here in Washington State and I know personally of several people who have physically moved, who've physically moved to uh to another state, and so their life experience is entirely different as well.
- 2:40SPEAKER_02: So, from the perspective of both the people, uh the workers, if you like, inside these organizations, it is something that um is, you know, there are wildly different opinions as to whether this is good, bad, or indifferent.
- 2:55SPEAKER_02: Um, and from the organizations themselves, they see, you know, certain numbers that might want to uh push them in one direction or another, and then they have the reality of the people that work for them and the people that they would like to work for them.
- 3:10SPEAKER_02: And it is leading to something that is a complex decision that is being discussed by uh senior executives and boardrooms uh all around the country.
- 3:22SPEAKER_04: Yeah, be it it's so interesting, and people have to be flexible, people have to know that it's gonna adapt and change, and that you know, uh it's very, very interesting to see, especially the the physically moved one, I think is really interesting.
- 3:35SPEAKER_04: And then also the idea that you um you're a different person.
- 3:41SPEAKER_04: I think that's a really interesting concept.
- 3:43SPEAKER_04: A different person is coming back to work regardless, because we've all had a crazy experience, even if we've been productive or found our niche or figured out what we like, that's a different person too.
- 3:54SPEAKER_04: So uh yeah, there's been a bunch of articles about like um people that are planning to resign, you know, and and this wave of people that have just woken up, uh, very interesting, beyond just working from home.
- 4:07SPEAKER_04: And, you know, I know Ryan, you've been working from home for years.
- 4:10SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, what are your tips and tricks for staying productive for those for you know, for people that still haven't gotten the hang of it uh after this?
- 4:19SPEAKER_04: I mean, there is a groove you can get in uh when you do it for a while that that you probably can slide right into, but for some folks it's probably still tough.
- 4:27SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and it's and it's very personal.
- 4:30SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, so whatever tips and tricks I rattle off here are are mine, uh, you know, but I I do recommend experimentation.
- 4:38SPEAKER_03: I I think it's really important.
- 4:39SPEAKER_03: And it's uh the philosophy is to really find yourself and what works for you.
- 4:44SPEAKER_03: Um I think that the I think the better way to classify my work over the last decade is not necessarily work from home as much as it is work from anywhere, which I know we'll probably touch on a little bit later.
- 4:56SPEAKER_03: Um, because I had the um the flexibility, really the fortune of having the flexibility to work from home when I wasn't traveling, but I was traveling a lot.
- 5:06SPEAKER_03: So um I did have that escape, if you like.
- 5:09SPEAKER_03: Um so I really, the transition that I made, which is interesting, I didn't really even think about this, Paul, until this morning, um Paul and Matt, is is that very fact that I did go from work from anywhere to work from home.
- 5:23SPEAKER_03: And and a lot of other people um face that too.
- 5:26SPEAKER_03: So I think that's that's a a unique scenario that I think is getting overlooked a little bit.
- 5:32SPEAKER_03: You know, there's we're we're looking at the distinctions between the work from the office and the work from home, but I think that the people that traveled and worked from home is a unique scenario.
- 5:42SPEAKER_03: Anyways, um I think that the the thing that we tend to forget when we're working from home is that you still need that headspace um to think about things.
- 5:56SPEAKER_03: Um because you're not physically going from one place to the other, whether that's from one office to the other, or whether that's from one conference room to the other, uh, from your office to a customer's office, for example, you're missing that kind of commute time, if you like.
- 6:14SPEAKER_03: Um and that's the time that your brain tends to think, tends to prepare.
- 6:20SPEAKER_03: It helps in switching contexts.
- 6:23SPEAKER_03: Um, and you have to build that in.
- 6:24SPEAKER_03: So you have to have the discipline when you're at home to build that in.
- 6:27SPEAKER_03: Um and I think what I've seen some challenges that people have had is because they're working from home, because they're stationary, that they tend to load their calendars up.
- 6:37SPEAKER_03: You know, it's like back-to-back meetings from eight to eight, you know, with no breaks.
- 6:42SPEAKER_03: Um, and and you're you're having to, in literally a second's notice, go from one context to the other context because that's how much you've stacked your calendar.
- 6:51SPEAKER_03: And you've stacked your calendar that way because you can.
- 6:54SPEAKER_03: You don't have to say it's gonna take me 20 minutes to get here, it's gonna take me five minutes to go get a cup of coffee before I go to this next meeting.
- 7:01SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, we we used to have that.
- 7:03SPEAKER_03: And so you have to plan that in.
- 7:05SPEAKER_03: Um, the other thing I would say is um if if you're working from home, you know, be at home, but you don't pretend like you're at an office.
- 7:13SPEAKER_03: Uh you, you know, it's like it's the reality.
- 7:16SPEAKER_03: You have to deal with the reality of things.
- 7:18SPEAKER_03: The reality is that you are at home, and that means that there might be other people there.
- 7:23SPEAKER_03: Um, maybe, maybe your husband or wife are there, maybe your kids are coming and going.
- 7:26SPEAKER_03: Those are realities that exist.
- 7:29SPEAKER_03: And so instead of pretending like they don't exist uh or walling yourself off, it's important to embrace those things and think about the positives, think about the positive byproducts.
- 7:39SPEAKER_03: Um, having lunch with your wife.
- 7:42SPEAKER_03: Uh how often do you have lunch with you know your wife or your kids or something like that when you're in an office setting?
- 7:49SPEAKER_03: It's pretty rare.
- 7:50SPEAKER_03: And you have the benefit of being able to do that.
- 7:52SPEAKER_03: So take your lunch, right?
- 7:54SPEAKER_03: Don't just go into the kitchen, grab something, and then come back and sit at your desk.
- 7:57SPEAKER_03: No, take your lunch, enjoy your lunch as you would if you were going out to lunch with some colleagues, right?
- 8:03SPEAKER_03: Um, so it's an interesting dynamic because there's behaviors that you don't want to bring home from the office, and then there's behaviors that you do, like taking a lunch break is a good one.
- 8:12SPEAKER_03: Um, uh, you know, scheduling you know, back-to-back to back-to-back meetings and walling off the rest of your life is not.
- 8:19SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
- 8:21SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
- 8:22SPEAKER_04: That's that's really good.
- 8:23SPEAKER_04: I I think uh getting up and walking around is huge.
- 8:27SPEAKER_04: Getting up, getting away, and almost if you're gonna build back to back in your meetings, build some getting up and walking around in there if you can.
- 8:35SPEAKER_04: Uh that's been that's been really huge uh from my perspective.
- 8:39SPEAKER_04: And I I like uh using a timer to time box activities, even though you're standing in front of it, like, okay, I'm gonna take a 15-minute block to concentrate on this one thing.
- 8:49SPEAKER_04: And then um for video calls, they're they can be more draining, you know, uh than than a regular meeting sometimes.
- 8:58SPEAKER_04: You know, it used to be a novelty, now it's just accepted.
- 9:01SPEAKER_04: Um, and and that's you know, they can increase engagement, but it also increase brain fatigue because you're staring at the TV, basically.
- 9:08SPEAKER_04: You're staring at a monitor and a 2D image, and it's uh just messes with your brain.
- 9:13SPEAKER_04: Uh Paul, I I know you've had a more hybrid model uh across your your career, right?
- 9:19SPEAKER_04: And uh any tips on how that's been and maybe describe your your situation?
- 9:24SPEAKER_02: Uh in my case, um my level of travel uh for the vast majority of my working career has been extremely extensive, probably 80-90% uh travel.
- 9:36SPEAKER_02: So um working from you know a bunch of different hotel rooms and things like that.
- 9:42SPEAKER_02: And then when I was back at uh at home base, as it were, well, I was right by the office.
- 9:48SPEAKER_02: So then that was the time when I was generally in the office.
- 9:51SPEAKER_02: So I was basically almost never working from home, um, but 80 to 90 percent of the time not working in the office either.
- 10:01SPEAKER_02: Um, and so that's interesting because what that typically means is that when you are back at the office, at the times at which you're back at the office, there are some very specific things that you need to do in order to be able to maximize that office time and make most the most out of that office time.
- 10:24SPEAKER_02: So that can be everything from you know making sure that you've checked in on the other people.
- 10:29SPEAKER_02: So you're maintaining the social relationships, as it were, that you have with others.
- 10:33SPEAKER_02: Um, and you're having those kind of meetings that only really uh, you know, are are best suited to the uh to the office scenario.
- 10:41SPEAKER_02: So you're getting really sort of strategic in terms of how you go about um handling the time at which you are in the office.
- 10:50SPEAKER_02: And then when you're outside of the office, um particularly when you're traveling, it's making sure that you have um the right um technology set up uh for me was very important.
- 11:02SPEAKER_02: Making sure I had the right technology set up in order to be really productive from, let's say, a hotel room.
- 11:10SPEAKER_02: Um and um and understand and uh embrace the fact that um I needed to have the the right setup with me to be at least as efficient and effective as I would be if I were sitting in my uh in my office.
- 11:29SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 11:30SPEAKER_02: So that was uh I think probably the thing that I had to uh that I had to get good at.
- 11:37SPEAKER_02: I had to get good at being productive on a plane, I had to get good at um like understanding the different uh circumstances that I was that I was in.
- 11:47SPEAKER_02: Uh so for example, if you don't have any Wi-Fi connectivity, what do you need to do ahead of time uh in order to be able to deal with that situation?
- 11:55SPEAKER_02: If uh which obviously on long flights you don't typically have uh have that kind of thing.
- 12:00SPEAKER_02: So what's the preparedness that you have uh for the scenario in which you're going to work?
- 12:07SPEAKER_02: And then of course you can take those things and and translate those things to the home environment as well.
- 12:14SPEAKER_02: Um for me, um like even if it's uh inside a hotel room um or it is inside my home office, I try to make sure that I've got certain things that are consistent with my setup.
- 12:34SPEAKER_02: The way my desk is arranged is very similar in uh in a hotel room than it is in my home setup in the way that it was in my uh in my office setup as well.
- 12:46SPEAKER_02: So kind of like arranging things in a certain way that are familiar to me and seem the same, no matter what the location is that I'm actually uh that I'm actually working from.
- 12:57SPEAKER_02: Um those types of things get to a point where you're priming your brain to say, okay, different setup, but similar surroundings, as similar as I can get those surroundings so that my brain goes, okay, it's time to work.
- 13:14SPEAKER_02: And then completely agree with your statement on uh, you know, scheduling focused work time, even if it's only for 15, 20 minutes.
- 13:23SPEAKER_02: Um, and then having a purpose for each uh block of work that you're doing.
- 13:27SPEAKER_02: So that's another thing that people struggle with to a certain extent.
- 13:30SPEAKER_02: They might actually get to the point where they're saying, okay, I'm gonna work, I'm gonna focus now for 15 minutes, but they they don't do the next step, which is really important, which is what am I actually focusing on?
- 13:40SPEAKER_02: What am I getting accomplished in this in this 15 minutes?
- 13:42SPEAKER_02: So even in that 15 minutes, they wind up uh straying because they haven't just done the one simple next step to say, in the next 15 minutes, I'm gonna accomplish this specific thing.
- 13:51SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
- 13:52SPEAKER_04: I that that uh that touchdown set up your area no matter where it is thing reminds me of, you know, from an airport perspective, you know, if you go into the to the lounge, you have your your setup and all the things you need are there or whatever.
- 14:05SPEAKER_04: Uh it strikes me that the the hybrid offices and the offices of the future that these companies have created is like we'll just turn the whole thing into a giant airport lounge and you have no personal space anymore.
- 14:18SPEAKER_04: So, but people are creatures of habit.
- 14:19SPEAKER_04: So if you're going in there every other day, you kind of have the spot you like to get to, and you kind of have like the things you bring in your backpack or whatever to set up on the table to make yourself feel better.
- 14:30SPEAKER_04: Uh, but yeah, it's that's really interesting.
- 14:32SPEAKER_04: We're so we're so habit-based.
- 14:34SPEAKER_04: Um, it's gonna be interesting.
- 14:36SPEAKER_04: I mean, uh, that's a couple of good things on how to make these things work if if you have to.
- 14:41SPEAKER_04: But if you have a choice, you know, of working from home, a hybrid, or going to the office, you know, what what do people need to think about to go about choosing?
- 14:50SPEAKER_04: Because I think we're gonna be in a in a choice situation here if uh as we ease back into the world.
- 14:56SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's gonna depend on the company, but I think for many of us working in many companies, there probably will be a choice.
- 15:02SPEAKER_02: And you may need to make that choice as an individual.
- 15:05SPEAKER_02: You may be asked by your manager or somebody else to say, okay, these are the choices available to you, but what are you gonna pick?
- 15:13SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 15:13SPEAKER_02: And a couple of things about this.
- 15:16SPEAKER_02: I think in terms of the relationships between managers and those that work for them, they should be sensitive to the fact that people may not know.
- 15:24SPEAKER_02: They may not know right away, and they might want, they might want to check and test a couple of things.
- 15:28SPEAKER_02: And that should be that should be okay.
- 15:31SPEAKER_02: There should be a period of flexibility as people try to settle into whichever the work style uh is that benefits them.
- 15:38SPEAKER_02: But the options are likely to be um the sort of work from anywhere or work from home type scenario, uh, the based predominantly in the office scenario or the hybrid scenario.
- 15:50SPEAKER_02: And I think which one people will pick is going to be very individual, but it's gonna come back to this concept of what we like to call self-curiosity.
- 16:01SPEAKER_02: So um you should not assume that just because you used to prefer a certain way of working, you still do.
- 16:09SPEAKER_02: Um, this comes back to the point we made at the start, right?
- 16:12SPEAKER_02: We're different people um than we were a year ago or a year and a half ago.
- 16:16SPEAKER_02: We built different habits.
- 16:18SPEAKER_02: Um, and then of course, there is no doubt that the office that you're gonna be returning to will be a different one to the one you left, right?
- 16:25SPEAKER_02: Um, so it's probably gonna have fewer people in it.
- 16:29SPEAKER_02: Um, and so therefore may be less uh maybe less attractive to return to.
- 16:34SPEAKER_02: Um the physical setup of the office um may be quite different.
- 16:38SPEAKER_02: I know a lot of organizations have used this period to say, okay, we're gonna redesign the office environment.
- 16:45SPEAKER_02: Um we're gonna change the the spaces in the office um to make uh you know to to kind of act on some of the things that they were looking to before, and there's probably gonna be less capacity and the assumption that there are gonna be fewer people in the uh in the office.
- 17:01SPEAKER_02: So all of those things are are changes that are happening to the thing that you would go back to.
- 17:08SPEAKER_02: Um and so that itself is gonna uh you know potentially change uh the way in which you would you would think about this.
- 17:15SPEAKER_02: But um as I say, there's not gonna be any one uh specific right answer for any individual.
- 17:23SPEAKER_02: Um one thing I would say is that um get curious not just in terms of what you think you might like, but get curious in terms of the of the nature of the work you do and the way in which you do it.
- 17:38SPEAKER_02: So as we've been doing our work at Billion Minds, we've researched, if you like, the different modalities of work, the different types of work that people do on a day-to-day basis and switch between.
- 17:50SPEAKER_02: Um and there's basically about 10 different types of work um that most people do um as they as they go through their day.
- 18:00SPEAKER_02: And what's intriguing about that, um, and it's something that many of us kind of know intrinsically, but there's some there's some good science behind this, what's intriguing about it is that each of those different work modalities may support a different type of um of background, if you like, or a different type of environment uh which makes them better, right?
- 18:25SPEAKER_02: So for example, um if you're if you're basically in a mode where you are studying or learning or something along those lines, then that may be a different part of your house.
- 18:40SPEAKER_02: If you're working from home, that you that you do that best, it may be a different time of day that you do that type of work best.
- 18:47SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 18:47SPEAKER_02: Um, and then if you flip to another mode of work, then there may be a better time and place to do that other type of work.
- 18:57SPEAKER_02: So my hope is is that as organizations are looking to redesign the spaces that we're gonna be going back into, that they're actually gonna redesign the space in a pretty creative way to give people different types of environment, physical environment in which we work, to support these different types of work modality.
- 19:19SPEAKER_02: And that the worker going back into the office, even over the course of the day, might flip from one setting to another setting as their work modality shifts.
- 19:29SPEAKER_02: That's a very useful way to structure a physical office in order to be able to make it really uh helpful as people shift from uh from one mode of work to the other.
- 19:40SPEAKER_02: But bottom line is get curious about yourself, figure out the nature of the work you do, figure out the backdrop that is most suited to it.
- 19:49SPEAKER_02: And if you find that you're doing the majority of the work that you're doing is it's it's beneficial for you to do that in an office setting, that's probably gonna push you back more towards something that is more centered in the office.
- 20:03SPEAKER_02: If you find the majority of the work that you're doing, you can do it better and more effectively in the home setting, it's probably gonna lead you towards uh a version where you're more when you're more at home.
- 20:14SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 20:15SPEAKER_03: And I might just add to that um as people are exploring or evaluating um these different work scenarios as they get back.
- 20:27SPEAKER_03: Go through the five whys.
- 20:30SPEAKER_03: We've talked about that in previous podcasts.
- 20:32SPEAKER_03: Um, to make sure that you're making your selection, you know, for the right reasons.
- 20:38SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, it's it's it's incredibly powerful technique.
- 20:42SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, you start with, you know, why do you want to go back to the office?
- 20:46SPEAKER_03: You know, because I want to see, you know, people.
- 20:49SPEAKER_03: And like, okay, why do you want to go see people?
- 20:52SPEAKER_03: Because it's it's fulfilling a social need that I have.
- 20:56SPEAKER_03: You know, so when you get that's only three levels deep.
- 20:59SPEAKER_03: And when you get to that point, it's like, all right, well, can you create that social engagement outside of the office?
- 21:07SPEAKER_03: Or uh is it just that those people are specifically in that location?
- 21:12SPEAKER_03: And so that's a requirement that you're there because that's where they congregate.
- 21:16SPEAKER_03: But then it goes back to the point that that Paul mentioned.
- 21:19SPEAKER_03: If you had the knowledge in advance that those people weren't going to be all co-located there, um, then what do you need to do to define an outcome for yourself to engage more with those people in a different setting, right?
- 21:31SPEAKER_03: And so your objective changes.
- 21:32SPEAKER_03: So at the beginning of that analysis, you're the the outcome that you're trying to achieve is be at this physical location from nine to five, right?
- 21:40SPEAKER_03: By the time you've gotten done with that analysis, it's I need to start a tennis club.
- 21:46SPEAKER_03: You know, it's a it's wildly different because it's it's you're getting to the root of what you're trying to fulfill.
- 21:53SPEAKER_03: And you may find, I think many people will, that you're actually not fulfilling a work objective at all in the classic sense.
- 22:00SPEAKER_03: It's something it's it's more deeply personal.
- 22:02SPEAKER_04: Billion Minds has taken over a dozen years of research into the habits of the most effective among us in this new world where work and life are merging.
- 22:10SPEAKER_04: They've distilled it down into a 90-day program targeted at employees that do unstructured, ambiguous work.
- 22:17SPEAKER_04: Employees from five different countries around the world are using Billion Minds to help them start each day with a purpose and end it with accomplishment.
- 22:25SPEAKER_04: If you or your team wants to discover how Billion Minds can help employees optimize their work in the context of their broader life, go to BillionMinds.com slash learnmore today.
- 22:35SPEAKER_04: That's billionminds.com slash L E A R N M O R E.
- 22:41SPEAKER_04: Billion Minds, providing practical tools for our way too busy lives.
- 22:47SPEAKER_02: It's actually very complicated.
- 22:51SPEAKER_02: And it's sort of almost more complicated the more you think about it, which isn't necessarily very helpful.
- 22:58SPEAKER_02: One of the things that I found in speaking to a bunch of people about this is that what this gets to the heart of what does work mean for you as an individual.
- 23:10SPEAKER_02: We touched on this actually in one of the previous podcasts.
- 23:14SPEAKER_02: But for some, work is represents something really uh personally and emotionally positive.
- 23:25SPEAKER_02: It fulfills a specific um set of requirements that we have as individuals.
- 23:32SPEAKER_02: And for some, um the the bonding that happens in the workplace, if you like, um the working with a bunch of other people uh to fulfill a common goal um is is really, really important.
- 23:51SPEAKER_02: And um the elements of work that include, for example, spontaneous collaboration, um and uh just like ad hoc getting together with others, um, you know, a group of people congregating together, totally unexpected, but starting to work together and solve something new, the creativity that can happen from an uh from an ad hoc spontaneous collaboration uh in a corridor or something along those lines can be immensely, immensely rewarding.
- 24:25SPEAKER_02: And for some people, um the the social aspect of work is extremely important and represents the social network that those individuals um need and require.
- 24:44SPEAKER_02: So um we shouldn't we shouldn't forget that, right, as we're as we're thinking about this.
- 24:50SPEAKER_02: If you are an individual for whom most of your social connections happen in the context of your work, and maybe you're just wired in such a way that you need that, or you need some kind of like work-defined common goal in order to be able to um to get your your network of people around you, then you're probably gonna need that in the workplace.
- 25:15SPEAKER_02: And you probably can't wait to get back to the workplace in order to, in order to fulfill those goals.
- 25:21SPEAKER_02: But on the other hand, as Ryan mentions, right, for some, you don't need that at all.
- 25:27SPEAKER_02: It's just an easy way of getting it.
- 25:29SPEAKER_02: And you could uh and you could get it from another uh from another source if you if you wished to.
- 25:36SPEAKER_02: So this is this transition is very, very complicated and and personal.
- 25:42SPEAKER_02: Now, the one thing, of course, that we should mention is that when you think about this from a sort of lengthy, you know, full career perspective, um, if you do rely upon the workplace for all of your social connections, um, then that becomes very difficult when people leave your uh people leave your company, it can be very difficult emotionally when that happens.
- 26:13SPEAKER_02: And of course, it can be very difficult when you retire.
- 26:16SPEAKER_02: Um, because at that point, that that social structure that you relied on from work has now gone and you don't have anything adequate to replace it.
- 26:26SPEAKER_02: So actually, even if it is coming from work, being quite thoughtful about that and saying, okay, well, as I move towards the end of my career, um, where am I going to get those social connections that I rely on from the workplace and making sure that they exist for you is actually gonna be something that's very important as you transition from that environment into another one.
- 26:46SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you might not uh that's a great point.
- 26:48SPEAKER_04: You might not have even realized that's that was happening.
- 26:52SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, and maybe you're, you know, that's that's a great point.
- 26:55SPEAKER_04: I was also thinking, you said there's 10 types of, you know, you could kind of put work into, you could stratify work into 10 different types.
- 27:02SPEAKER_04: And then as you were talking, it kind of made me think that if you knew uh sort of a uh a criteria of how the rest of your team is the most effective, too.
- 27:14SPEAKER_04: And you could put that into a few categories, broad categories, and then plan your group work around those two levers as well.
- 27:23SPEAKER_04: You start to get really powerful, which is you know, we need a brainstorming meeting.
- 27:29SPEAKER_04: And six of my team members work best on brainstorming when they're not here or or only when they're in a room together.
- 27:36SPEAKER_04: So let's schedule that type of meeting.
- 27:38SPEAKER_04: So you have these other levers to kind of create effectiveness in an organization.
- 27:42SPEAKER_04: Um I think that's that's really interesting.
- 27:44SPEAKER_04: And then another piece that I think folks might also think about the changes that are happening is that, and and I just ran into this recently, is when we do go back, depending on how much physical changes happen to your office space.
- 27:59SPEAKER_04: I never thought of this limitation either, but like even a conference room that would have normally allowed 10 people is not going to allow 10 people anymore for the foreseeable future.
- 28:07SPEAKER_04: So you could be in the office with people that you could physically be with, except you can't be with them in that office space.
- 28:14SPEAKER_04: So you're in the office, but you can't go in the conference room.
- 28:17SPEAKER_04: You know, there it's it's a very complex web of uh of things.
- 28:21SPEAKER_04: And and that's like the next idea is like, well, what do you think this means for those employers?
- 28:26SPEAKER_04: They're gonna have to support all these different types of scenarios we never had to plan for.
- 28:31SPEAKER_04: And uh, you know, how are they gonna support all these different work styles?
- 28:34SPEAKER_04: That's that's uh you know, a complicated thing to to solve.
- 28:37SPEAKER_04: What do you guys think about that?
- 28:39SPEAKER_03: Well, they certainly need to.
- 28:41SPEAKER_03: Um you know, I think that it this I think at the beginning of this, it's just the the understanding this is happening, you know, the the awareness of it.
- 28:51SPEAKER_03: Um if any organization is planning, if they're if any organization has their back-to-work plan being back to the way it used to be, um, I think they're in for a rough road or a rough ride, whatever the right expression is.
- 29:06SPEAKER_03: Um and uh and and then I think there's some that are extremely forward-thinking that are at the other end of the spectrum.
- 29:13SPEAKER_03: Um I know it's a bit black and white, but I tend to think that um organizations are gonna kind of come back and come two distinct flavors, if you like.
- 29:24SPEAKER_03: And I think the first is going to the the first is is with a recognition and acknowledgement that they need to have a more um deep understanding of their employees.
- 29:38SPEAKER_03: Um, I think there's gonna be more depth in the relationship that occurs uh between employer and employee.
- 29:44SPEAKER_03: Um more to the point of there's a a recognition that that human, or I should say that that employee is a human, right?
- 29:54SPEAKER_03: And and an acknowledgement that there's a lot more going on in that human's life than just what they do for you to achieve the organization's objectives.
- 30:03SPEAKER_03: And that with that acknowledgement means that it's not necessarily you need to have a more you know trenchant, you know, analysis of all the detailed stuff that they're doing, but that a recognition that they are um they do have balance in their life, and that's making them healthy and their improved well-being is actually helping them perform better at work.
- 30:23SPEAKER_03: And the only way that you can do that is by understanding more about um about the employee and what makes them more effective.
- 30:30SPEAKER_03: So that's that's that's a kind of a richer, deeper relationship.
- 30:33SPEAKER_03: And for those companies that really rely on company culture very, very exclusively for their brand, you know, for the development of their products, et cetera, I think that's gonna be extremely important.
- 30:45SPEAKER_03: Um, on the other end, and let's call these the exponential organization.
- 30:49SPEAKER_03: You've heard us talk about those types before.
- 30:51SPEAKER_03: Those organizations stay very lean and rely primarily on staff on demand resources.
- 30:57SPEAKER_03: I think there's gonna be some organizations that um transition to being more of an exponential organization in terms of how they uh deal with talent, how they how they source talent, uh, where their employees um instead of going the extreme other scenario that I described before, where the relationship deepens, the relationship actually goes the opposite direction.
- 31:21SPEAKER_03: Um and the only thing that really matters is the outcome.
- 31:24SPEAKER_03: And so for those organizations, they mature to being an exponential organization when they get much better at breaking down objectives that they're trying to achieve as an organization into smaller achievable outcomes that then they can outsource to talent globally.
- 31:41SPEAKER_03: Um and then what they're really measuring is the effectiveness of each of those things.
- 31:46SPEAKER_03: In either scenario, it means much more clear representation of work that's being done.
- 31:52SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, not just a bunch of tasks or not just a really you know lofty objective, um, but rather, you know, a series of discrete outcomes that are in fact measurable.
- 32:04SPEAKER_03: Um, and and then also for on the individual side, it's understanding how they can achieve those outcomes in the most effective way possible.
- 32:14SPEAKER_03: So again, it's it's kind of a more self-curiosity, you know, so that deep understanding of oneself.
- 32:20SPEAKER_03: Um and then on the organization side, it's a uh a deeper exploration into the tangible outcomes that ladder up to strategic objectives and then the alignment of those two things.
- 32:32SPEAKER_04: Are you looking to hone the skills you need to thrive as work and the rest of our lives merge?
- 32:37SPEAKER_04: If so, we can help.
- 32:39SPEAKER_04: For the first time, Billion Minds has taken the program it offers to businesses and customize it for individuals in a program they call the Elements.
- 32:47SPEAKER_04: Whether you work for yourself, a small business, or a big company, you can sign up today.
- 32:51SPEAKER_04: Just visit effectiveness.me and join up now.
- 32:55SPEAKER_04: Use the code WAYTOBISY to get a savings of$74.
- 32:59SPEAKER_04: Billion Minds, providing practical tools for our way too busy lives.
- 33:09SPEAKER_02: I've been a little bit concerned actually, in terms of uh some of the discussion that I've that I've seen about this.
- 33:16SPEAKER_02: Um there it appears to be as though um the the tech, the big tech organizations are representing this almost as like a very black and white decision.
- 33:29SPEAKER_02: As in it's gonna be everybody's gonna be working from home far more, and we're gonna offer you know work from home for everybody that we possibly can.
- 33:40SPEAKER_02: Um and uh there are opportunities to save money, and everybody's been really effective during this, uh, during this period, way more productive than we than uh uh than we thought they would be.
- 33:51SPEAKER_02: Um there's no downsides, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
- 33:55SPEAKER_02: And um you see if you look, if you follow this on social media as well, a ton of um advocacy, predominantly from people that have been working from home for years, um who are uh who are basically saying, see everybody, it's awesome.
- 34:13SPEAKER_02: Welcome into our circle, right?
- 34:15SPEAKER_02: And I worry about that for some of the reasons that we've already spoken about, right?
- 34:20SPEAKER_02: I worry about that from a mental health perspective.
- 34:23SPEAKER_02: I worry about it in terms of it's one of these classic situations where there are definitely um multiple ways in which this can be approached, but not all of those ways are being heard equally as part of the uh as part of the overall conversation.
- 34:38SPEAKER_02: We should not forget that many of the tech companies that are strongly advocating for more of this uh work from anywhere are companies that are actually making software that helps enable it, right?
- 34:49SPEAKER_02: So that's that's something that is uh um is unique to them.
- 34:53SPEAKER_02: The other thing as well, I saw a study the other day whereby um they were asking a question of workers, did a survey of workers across a bunch of different organizations and asked them um if they would rather get a significant pay rise or rather be able to continue to work from home.
- 35:14SPEAKER_02: And this group of workers said they would uh forego the additional pay rise and they want the ability to work from home.
- 35:21SPEAKER_02: And this was taken, uh at least in the coverage that I saw of it, as strong evidence that this is what workers want in aggregate.
- 35:28SPEAKER_02: But there were problems with that.
- 35:30SPEAKER_02: It was a 30% too, right?
- 35:32SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was something like that, you're right.
- 35:33SPEAKER_02: It was crazy.
- 35:34SPEAKER_02: There were problems with that survey.
- 35:35SPEAKER_02: Number one, like the group of people that were surveyed, almost all of them work for big tech companies.
- 35:43SPEAKER_02: So you're talking about a group of people who probably have a high disposable income in the first place.
- 35:48SPEAKER_02: So therefore the additional uh the additional money is not as much of an incentive.
- 35:53SPEAKER_02: Secondly, are people um that are very, very accustomed to and happy to use the tech.
- 36:00SPEAKER_02: So they're at a high end of the uh you know of the technical literacy spectrum, as it were.
- 36:05SPEAKER_02: Um, and thirdly, work for, as I say, those very companies that have been pushing this concept for uh for a long period of time.
- 36:13SPEAKER_02: So um I have a lot of doubt as to whether that would apply to uh to the overall uh workforce in the way that it did for this uh you know, for this specific subset of companies.
- 36:25SPEAKER_02: So it is going to be uh something that is related to the culture of the organization, the nature of the work done, and it's gonna be different for different types of workers.
- 36:39SPEAKER_02: But yeah, one of the other things that I think is um is really interesting is that almost all employers, I think ultimately are gonna wind up settling on some kind of flexibility and choice for the workers that work for them.
- 36:57SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 36:58SPEAKER_02: Because if you think about it, um there if you are an organization that only allows people to work in the office and doesn't allow them to work from anywhere, then you're now going to become unattractive to that whole group of workers that want to work from anywhere and now know that they can.
- 37:21SPEAKER_02: And remember, now you're not your competitor is not just the company down the street.
- 37:26SPEAKER_02: Your competitor is any company in the world.
- 37:28SPEAKER_02: Because by definition, if you can work from anywhere, you can work from anywhere.
- 37:32SPEAKER_02: So uh so you're not now thinking about whether your employees are gonna go work for the company down, you know, a mile away.
- 37:40SPEAKER_02: You're now thinking about your employees potentially working for anyone.
- 37:44SPEAKER_02: But then similarly, if you go down the other end of the spectrum and you say, you know what, everybody's gonna work from home, then you now are vulnerable to the company down the street that actually does have the office environment.
- 37:59SPEAKER_02: And somebody's gonna uh that wants that office environment is now gonna go work for those organizations.
- 38:04SPEAKER_02: So if you want to meet the needs of your people, then recognize the fact that the people that are gonna work for you are going to have different requirements.
- 38:15SPEAKER_02: The other thing I think which is really interesting, and this actually just comes from a few conversations that I've been having about this over the over the course of the last couple of weeks.
- 38:24SPEAKER_02: Um, we talked about these work modalities and work styles and things being more, you know, certain things being more suited to one environment.
- 38:32SPEAKER_02: Um we've only been we've only been measuring the impact of this uh new model for about a year.
- 38:41SPEAKER_02: Uh because that's the environment in which in which we've sat.
- 38:45SPEAKER_02: Um and I think any conclusions that we draw as to how effective this work style is of people work from working from home, I think any lasting observations we drive from that may be premature.
- 39:03SPEAKER_02: So number one, we don't know the long-lasting impact on the mental health of our employees uh from you know continuously using uh, you know, the Zoom or Zoom competitor type uh products.
- 39:17SPEAKER_02: We don't know that.
- 39:19SPEAKER_02: And number two, something that would be very difficult to measure in the short term is what has been the impact on, if you like, the spontaneous creativity aspect of work.
- 39:32unknown: Right?
- 39:33SPEAKER_02: It's not so long ago that we were having, you know, meaningful discussions about what was the workplace, the physical workplace of the future, and how would we borrow from insights of organizations like Pixar, for example, who design the workspace in a very specific way to encourage congregation of people, random interactions between uh different workers that could spark creativity.
- 40:04SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 40:04SPEAKER_02: I don't think we know yet.
- 40:06SPEAKER_02: I think it's it's too soon to know how much innovation is hampered, how much innovation is lost um when you don't have these kind of you know physical spontaneous discussions.
- 40:20SPEAKER_02: And I think people are starting to get a sense of that.
- 40:23SPEAKER_02: Um, in fact, some of the uh I held a small focus group on this over the weekend, and and I will tell you that um that was the thing that um particularly more creative knowledge workers were talking about a lot was like, I don't do that anymore.
- 40:39SPEAKER_02: And no virtual happy hour over Zoom is gonna create that for me.
- 40:45SPEAKER_02: I need that unexpected, spontaneous collection of people suddenly going, oh, that's interesting.
- 40:52SPEAKER_02: Let's let's work on that.
- 40:54SPEAKER_02: So you're not gonna see that right away.
- 40:56SPEAKER_02: You're only gonna see that in maybe a year or two when you start to see potentially the rate of innovation inside larger organizations decrease, potentially, if that's you know, if that's if that's the impact of all of this.
- 41:12SPEAKER_02: So what that all boils down to probably is really, really smart designs as to what the physical workspace looks like, and then real flexibility as people will sort of drift in and drift out of that.
- 41:29SPEAKER_02: And then ideally, we get to a point where organizations have a good understanding as to for certain types of work, come back to your point, Matt.
- 41:38SPEAKER_02: Um, organizations have a really good understanding of what is the uh environment that needs to be set up to allow people to do their best work, and then individuals to understand what options they have and how they can avail themselves of that thing.
- 41:54SPEAKER_02: So I'd love, for example, to think about it in terms of, you know, when I picture my work life, there are going to be types of work that I do whereby, you know, on a Monday, on a Monday afternoon, I'm doing this type of work.
- 42:10SPEAKER_02: And so that means I need to be sat in my home office because that's the best way to do that type of work.
- 42:15SPEAKER_02: And on a Tuesday morning, I'm doing a different kind of work, and the best place to do it is in floor four, section B of the building.
- 42:26SPEAKER_02: And then later in that day, I should be in floor six, section C, because that's set up to help that type of work happen more effectively.
- 42:34SPEAKER_02: And so creating that type of thing where the company knows what types of spaces it needs to create, and then the individual knows what spaces they have available to them and how to avail themselves of those spaces in order to be able to do the best work.
- 42:49SPEAKER_02: If we can get to that, then I think we have something that's really, really interesting and way more effective than what we had before we were going into the pandemic in the first place.
- 43:00SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
- 43:01SPEAKER_04: That's yeah, that's aspirational for companies.
- 43:04SPEAKER_04: That's aspir a really good uh, you know, like you said, we've had about a year to figure it out.
- 43:10SPEAKER_04: We'll see the long-term effects of, you know, possibly a dip in innovation that sits there, you know, a year out of this non-interaction period.
- 43:20SPEAKER_04: It's gonna be really interesting to watch.
- 43:21SPEAKER_04: And I think companies do have to pay attention, and the best ones are gonna learn the most and uh uh use that information the most effectively.
- 43:32SPEAKER_04: Organizations need to be personally effective based on all of this information that they have now at their disposal about their about their humans and about their uh their their work.
- 43:42SPEAKER_02: Yeah, at least they need to foster that personal effectiveness, as it were, in the in the people that work for them.
- 43:48SPEAKER_02: Had a really interesting conversation um a uh a few days ago with a CEO who was talking about how much this discussion is entering the boardroom, and they want to understand.
- 44:00SPEAKER_02: What um you know, what's the strategic response to all of this?
- 44:04SPEAKER_02: And there's one other aspect that I thought was really interesting and wanted to, and that this CEO, particular CEO brought up.
- 44:11SPEAKER_02: He was saying that uh, as far as he's concerned, there's going to be different needs uh for work from home or um work from the office, probably for different age groups and demographics.
- 44:28SPEAKER_02: Um, and one of the things that he pointed out, which I thought was really interesting, is that um there is a certain emotional intelligence, if you like, um, that people build up in the workplace that's different from college, um, it's different from school, it's different from your home life.
- 44:48SPEAKER_02: And it really is centered around how do you interact um with your colleagues um in a way that is most effective.
- 45:00SPEAKER_02: Because if you think about it, right, when you're at college, for example, you are with groups of people that are almost all of the same age as you are and have a lot of similar interests in many cases and so on.
- 45:13SPEAKER_02: Um but when you transition into the workplace, you've generally got a much, much wider demographic of people that you're dealing with, that you're working with, and then you have a set of goals, some of which are personal and some of which are shared with others, that is quite different.
- 45:30SPEAKER_02: So you learn in the course of uh of the workplace a whole bunch of people by basically being thrown into that same space with a bunch of other people and having to make it work.
- 45:44SPEAKER_02: So his concern is that um if we do shift to a fully remote model, then you will lose the that period of time, that period of intense emotional intelligence learning that people do when they first go into the workplace and they're surrounded by all of those, uh surrounded by all of those other people.
- 46:05SPEAKER_02: And so we have to be very careful that we, as you know, people that are later in our career and have got that grounding, have got that grounding that we got when we first started in the workplace, that we don't forget that we most likely built up all of those skills, all of those soft skills by virtue of being in the same physical space as a bunch of other people that we had to make, uh that we had to work with effectively.
- 46:29SPEAKER_02: And if we lose that, then what we risk is a bunch of people coming into the workplace who don't have that opportunity to build up those, uh to build up those skills.
- 46:41SPEAKER_02: Um and that that actually could hinder the growth of the next generation of workers.
- 46:49SPEAKER_02: Um and it's something that obviously we all need to be very, very aware of.
- 46:52SPEAKER_02: So I think it just draws us back to this idea that you know, having something that is very, very flexible and and then even working with individuals and potentially, for example, taking those younger workers and saying, you know, for you in particular, it would be really good to spend more time in the office early on.
- 47:11SPEAKER_02: Um, I think that those sorts of things will really uh kind of help people navigate their way through what is going to be this very, very different environment as we ease back into what hopefully is more like normal life.
- 47:24SPEAKER_03: You know, what's gonna be interesting to see is how much of what we uh classify as a workforce challenge um trickles down into higher education.
- 47:34SPEAKER_03: Uh something Paul, you and I were chatting about, I think a couple of weeks ago, is uh when you think about the various topics in, let's say, college programs, you've got your you know, traditional math and science and business and economics, and these these things have stood the test of time in terms of their importance in the students' overall education.
- 47:54SPEAKER_03: Um it's gonna be interesting to see how some of what you just described um uh you know trickles down into education in terms of getting yourself prepared for a particular work style or understanding more about your own behaviors and what motivates you and your different modalities of work before you enter the workforce, right?
- 48:19SPEAKER_03: And so that you already have, in many ways, a relationship with your future work self uh before you enter the workforce.
- 48:28SPEAKER_03: Um and maybe they spend more time, more focus giving you some real experiences along the way so that you can hone in on that.
- 48:37SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's yeah, I think that's really interesting.
- 48:39SPEAKER_02: You know, I was thinking back to you know, earlier on what you were mentioning, Matt, when you were talking about meetings, um that we talk about these 10 different, you know, modalities of work, as it were, that people go through.
- 48:52SPEAKER_02: I mean, how many of us when we have a meeting give any real thought as to what is the type of work we're going to be doing?
- 49:03SPEAKER_02: Not what's the topic of the meeting.
- 49:04SPEAKER_02: That's something that's entirely different.
- 49:06SPEAKER_02: But um, and maybe not even what is the agenda of the meeting, but what is the nature of the work that we're looking to do in that period?
- 49:14SPEAKER_02: And then what's the right location for holding that meeting because of the nature and the type of the work we're doing?
- 49:24SPEAKER_02: So I think you're dead right, Ryan.
- 49:26SPEAKER_02: It'd be really cool if people, you know, were coming out of college with not just an understanding of the particular topic area, but really a deeper understanding of the nature of the work that they do by themselves with others, um, what they like, what they don't like to do, what they're good at, what they're not good at, you know, things like that, these sort of fundamental uh questions that we need to ask ourselves about.
- 49:52SPEAKER_02: We keep talking repeatedly about this concept of self-curiosity.
- 49:56SPEAKER_02: If you could be in a situation where, you know, you come out of college having built that self-curiosity muscle to a point where you understand yourself well enough to know what is the work environment in which you will are most likely to thrive, that would be super cool.
- 50:14SPEAKER_02: Because right now, people generally think about, well, I should work at this company because it has good glass door rating, or I should work at this company because I want to be in, let's say, tech, and they're one of the big names in tech, and it would look good on my resume.
- 50:30SPEAKER_02: Probably what they should really be doing is saying, look, this is the type of work I like to do.
- 50:36SPEAKER_02: This company is well set up to help me do that kind of work, to borrow from a phrase that we used in a previous podcast, that you know, they've created the environment to allow me to thrive at the type of work that I will do.
- 50:50SPEAKER_02: If they do that, then I will do, I will do good work.
- 50:54SPEAKER_02: And I know, speaking in my personal experience, I've worked for you know big name organizations in my past, and I've worked for other companies that have that have certainly not necessarily looked as got as good on a resume.
- 51:08SPEAKER_02: But some of my the best work that I've ever done has been for some of these in quotes lesser organizations, but organizations that set themselves up in a way that worked really well with my personal work style, where there was a good match between uh the way I liked to work and the culture of the organization in which I sat.
- 51:30SPEAKER_02: So, but I never did that, and I never did that consciously, right?
- 51:35SPEAKER_02: I it I just got lucky in a couple of different organizations that there was a good fit.
- 51:40SPEAKER_02: And that was probably the most significant thing, and yet it was something that I wasn't skilled to do or had any understanding uh of, and just uh just basically luck intervened and I ended up doing really good work as a result.
- 51:56SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 51:57unknown: Yeah.
- 51:58SPEAKER_03: It'd be cool if a you get to the point where it's you're majoring in a modality.
- 52:02SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
- 52:03SPEAKER_03: Right.
- 52:04SPEAKER_03: So instead of majoring in chemical engineering, you're majoring in learning, you know, and networking.
- 52:10SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, so you're breaking down those 10, and and you know, maybe the freshman curriculum is that you get a taste of all of them, and then you you go deeper dive, and then which case it it breaks down the the need to identify careers based on industry, right?
- 52:25SPEAKER_03: So you could be just as happy working for you know an automotive manufacturer as you could an accounting firm.
- 52:32SPEAKER_03: You know, you you know, so it's like uh because you're focused exclusively on the nature of work as opposed to the the product category.
- 52:40SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's interesting.
- 52:41SPEAKER_04: It it'd be a much better use of the gen ed years in uh in in undergrad, right?
- 52:46SPEAKER_04: Is if you could figure out a lot of things, not just take classes you know you're definitely not interested in, but you are forced to take.
- 52:54SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 52:54SPEAKER_02: Um what a great idea for a college class, like learn about yourself.
- 53:00SPEAKER_04: Right.
- 53:02SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 53:03SPEAKER_04: The way too busy podcast was presented and produced by me, Matt Neal, and was brought to you by Billion Minds.
- 53:09SPEAKER_04: If you want to get in touch with us, tweet us at Rising Billion or email us at Way Too Busy at Billion Minds.com.
- 53:17SPEAKER_04: Billion Minds, creating practical tools for our way too busy lives.