Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / ποΈ Reality Bytes #62: Digital Overload β The Distraction Episode π§π±
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome it, change Makers to the deck show with Tim
- 0:05Speaker 1: Flower and Tom McGraw. Let's get into it.
- 0:08Speaker 2: Hello, change Makers, Welcome back to Reality Bites. It's the
- 0:12Speaker 2: panel show where we get to we bring the panelist
- 0:16Speaker 2: together to discuss a hot topic and engaging topic. And
- 0:20Speaker 2: Sean has come up with another great one. We're going
- 0:22Speaker 2: to get to it momentarily. But a few of us
- 0:24Speaker 2: just recently came back from SKO in Madrid. Tim, you
- 0:29Speaker 2: were certainly among the representatives from the RB team. How
- 0:34Speaker 2: was it for you? Tim? How was Madrid?
- 0:36Speaker 3: So? As a longtime enterprise it guy SKO was new
- 0:41Speaker 3: to me, but that was number ten and we've had
- 0:45Speaker 3: them all over the world and I think the one
- 0:48Speaker 3: that stands out the most is Malta. Everybody remembers Eskale
- 0:53Speaker 3: and Malta, but this one in Madrid, Tom, it didn't
- 0:56Speaker 3: disappoint a great mix of motivation and new product announcements
- 1:02Speaker 3: and networking with people across the world. So it was
- 1:06Speaker 3: a really cool time.
- 1:07Speaker 2: It was really cool, and I think I think we
- 1:09Speaker 2: were propping up the same bar and the last night
- 1:11Speaker 2: Tim drinking, both drinking old fashions. Maybe a little bit.
- 1:14Speaker 3: Yeah, there was a there was a little consumption going on,
- 1:18Speaker 3: a little.
- 1:18Speaker 2: Bit of that, a little bit of that, and everybody,
- 1:21Speaker 2: everybody came back with what I'm calling the Madrid plague.
- 1:24Speaker 3: So you know what I said, This was number ten
- 1:26Speaker 3: for me. And I always come home sick in mine
- 1:28Speaker 3: with asthma. Mind lasts for eight weeks. I can't shake it.
- 1:31Speaker 3: This time I had a little sniffle and it was
- 1:34Speaker 3: gone in a day.
- 1:35Speaker 2: I lucked out, lucked out too, but I mean about
- 1:38Speaker 2: fifteen twenty colleagues from lucked out on their backs, on
- 1:42Speaker 2: their backs. So shout out to shout out to them
- 1:45Speaker 2: all listening. We hope, we hope you're feeling better, And
- 1:47Speaker 2: shout out to Megan who is among their number. And
- 1:50Speaker 2: he isn't joining us today, but Sean and Oreana and
- 1:53Speaker 2: Dina are with us. Tim and Sean, you came up
- 1:56Speaker 2: with a fantastic, a fantastic theme for today's discussion, which
- 2:01Speaker 2: is that of that of distraction. I was going to
- 2:05Speaker 2: say destruction, which would be the wrong word distraction, right,
- 2:09Speaker 2: So let's delve into it momentarily and it's relevant specific
- 2:13Speaker 2: relevance to the digital workplace. But before we do, I
- 2:16Speaker 2: wonder if we could just do a quick round robin.
- 2:18Speaker 2: I'm fascinated to know what everyone's personal kryptonite is when
- 2:23Speaker 2: it comes to distraction, be honest, whatever it is, tell me, Suan,
- 2:28Speaker 2: since you brought a topic to the table, you have
- 2:30Speaker 2: to go first time afraid.
- 2:32Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, my phone. I think we're all addicted
- 2:35Speaker 4: to our phones and I have to actually physically put
- 2:39Speaker 4: it away from me. So and that's the only thing
- 2:42Speaker 4: that doesn't even work.
- 2:43Speaker 2: All the time. So yeah, that's that's my kryptonite. Where
- 2:47Speaker 2: do you? Where do you put it?
- 2:50Speaker 4: The other side of the apartment as far as I
- 2:52Speaker 4: can go.
- 2:53Speaker 2: Okay, okay, I understand that. I understand that phones are
- 2:56Speaker 2: fairly distracting inventions. There's no there's no question of it. Dina,
- 3:01Speaker 2: you're up next on my list to what do you?
- 3:03Speaker 2: What do you? What's your kryptonite?
- 3:05Speaker 5: Oh, it conshawns distraction. But it's the Apple Watch. For me,
- 3:13Speaker 5: it's the notifications on Apple Watch. So it's great. I
- 3:16Speaker 5: can keep the phone away, but I'm still wearing the watch.
- 3:19Speaker 5: So now I'm back to old fashioned watch wearing. And
- 3:23Speaker 5: I'm only wearing my Apple Watch when I need to
- 3:26Speaker 5: on activities and such. But to get the distractions off
- 3:31Speaker 5: of the way I put my phone on work mode
- 3:34Speaker 5: and take off the watch.
- 3:36Speaker 2: Got it, got it? Okay, I've never worn one of
- 3:38Speaker 2: those watches. I can only imagine. I can only imagine, Tim,
- 3:42Speaker 2: what's your krypto at me?
- 3:43Speaker 3: I can say the same thing. And you know what, Dina,
- 3:45Speaker 3: I just stopped charging my phone on my Apple Watch.
- 3:49Speaker 3: I got tired of it telling me when to stand
- 3:50Speaker 3: up and when to walk and enough already. So outside
- 3:55Speaker 3: of that, it's it's the phone. I used to look
- 3:57Speaker 3: at it as I'm a great multitask or I can
- 4:00Speaker 3: do email. I can text my son while I'm in
- 4:02Speaker 3: the middle of a meeting, and I can. And you
- 4:04Speaker 3: know what, our brains aren't built that way. Arianna Huffington
- 4:08Speaker 3: taught us that in one of our pods, right, put
- 4:11Speaker 3: the phone away, especially at night, put it to bed
- 4:13Speaker 3: in another room. But it definitely the distraction is the phone.
- 4:17Speaker 2: Yes, she made a little little her company made little
- 4:19Speaker 2: telephone sleeping bag, sleeping bags. It's a very cute idea. Okay,
- 4:26Speaker 2: you know it all reminds me a little bit of it.
- 4:28Speaker 2: I think there's an old, old sort of Jewish wisdom
- 4:31Speaker 2: about if if you're tempted by a weakness. You have
- 4:34Speaker 2: to build a fence around it. And if that fence
- 4:37Speaker 2: doesn't work, you've got to build another fence. I think
- 4:40Speaker 2: we're coming down to you, but personally, I'm going to add,
- 4:43Speaker 2: you know what it's become for me, And it might
- 4:45Speaker 2: be a symptom of having worked remotely now for so long.
- 4:48Speaker 2: It's other people. I find it so so hard to
- 4:52Speaker 2: work when there's actual real life people around nowadays. Like
- 4:55Speaker 2: I like communicating on teams and such like and staying
- 4:58Speaker 2: in touch with people throughout the day, but once I'm
- 5:01Speaker 2: actually in real proximity to another person, could be my wife,
- 5:04Speaker 2: could be in the office, the hardest thing in the world.
- 5:08Speaker 3: Yeah, you know you're right. When I'm in the office,
- 5:10Speaker 3: that happens to me too. I'm lucky there's nobody here
- 5:12Speaker 3: to distract me, but office is definitely less productive.
- 5:16Speaker 2: One last go Rihanna, since you're back with us.
- 5:18Speaker 6: Okay, I'm trying my third microphone.
- 5:20Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, all right, okay, so over to you then
- 5:25Speaker 2: on your cryptomte.
- 5:26Speaker 6: Yeah, so I actually definitely share all of your experiences.
- 5:31Speaker 6: I keep my phone on with all the notifications turned
- 5:34Speaker 6: off at all times, so my phone doesn't distract me
- 5:36Speaker 6: at all, which is really nice. I also have like
- 5:38Speaker 6: do not disturb mode, and I also get distracted really
- 5:42Speaker 6: easily by people around me. Unfortunately, the bit that I
- 5:46Speaker 6: can't unplug is teams. So when people message me on teams,
- 5:49Speaker 6: I just completely forget everything that I'm doing and zoom
- 5:53Speaker 6: in on whatever conversation is happening there, whatever people are
- 5:56Speaker 6: asking me. So I definitely know that I'm very easily
- 6:00Speaker 6: distracted by people, and I've tried to minimize that as
- 6:04Speaker 6: much as possible, but I find it really hard to
- 6:06Speaker 6: plug from teams.
- 6:08Speaker 3: That's a really good point, Arianna, because I do the
- 6:10Speaker 3: same thing with teams. But what also gets me is
- 6:13Speaker 3: my email will ding when I get something in the inbox,
- 6:16Speaker 3: and it's like Pavlov's dog. As soon as I hear
- 6:18Speaker 3: the ding, I go over to email and see what
- 6:20Speaker 3: they have to say, and it completely breaks the rhythm.
- 6:23Speaker 3: I gotta I have to change that.
- 6:26Speaker 6: Yeah, so I turned that off for email, but I
- 6:27Speaker 6: can't turn it off for teams because I do feel
- 6:29Speaker 6: like it's useful to be able to have that kind
- 6:31Speaker 6: of more samplenous of communication. But there are times where
- 6:35Speaker 6: I do turn it off, Like if I do need
- 6:37Speaker 6: to block off a few hours for focus work, I
- 6:39Speaker 6: sometimes do close teams because otherwise I don't focus.
- 6:45Speaker 2: Okay, this is a This is all a very real
- 6:48Speaker 2: portrait of what Sean in his proposal refers to his
- 6:52Speaker 2: digital overload everybody apart from in my case, which is
- 6:55Speaker 2: like an IRL overload. Okay, but other than that, sure you,
- 7:00Speaker 2: how would you further define digital overload and the dynamic
- 7:03Speaker 2: as you see it? With another nice phrase in your proposal,
- 7:07Speaker 2: which was that a deep focus?
- 7:10Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's definitely. There's almost like a hierarchy
- 7:14Speaker 4: of different apps that we respond to. So like I
- 7:19Speaker 4: feel the same way tim if I get something through email,
- 7:21Speaker 4: I want to go to that channel because it seems
- 7:23Speaker 4: more official. But then at the same time, a team's
- 7:26Speaker 4: message or whatever, if you have Slack or one of
- 7:29Speaker 4: those other tools, Yep, it seems very personal, like it's
- 7:33Speaker 4: something that can be done quicker, I suppose. So I
- 7:37Speaker 4: don't know how to balance that. But when I meant
- 7:39Speaker 4: by deep focus work, it's usually when anybody's creating something
- 7:43Speaker 4: a presentation or written document. It's kind of pulling things together.
- 7:48Speaker 4: That is to me, the most sensitive time where you
- 7:51Speaker 4: cannot be distracted or interrupted because I get completely thrown off,
- 7:54Speaker 4: and I'm sorry it happens to a lot of people.
- 7:56Speaker 4: At least, you know, twenty thirty minutes to get back
- 7:59Speaker 4: to where I was. So I don't know exactly how
- 8:02Speaker 4: if it is a silver bullet to fixing that, they
- 8:06Speaker 4: can certainly assist was certain features, but it is a
- 8:11Speaker 4: constant struggle.
- 8:12Speaker 6: I want to build off of what Sean said because
- 8:14Speaker 6: I think for a lot of the people who are
- 8:17Speaker 6: listening to our podcast, and I know for myself, it's
- 8:19Speaker 6: not just creating things, but also data analysis. One of
- 8:22Speaker 6: the big challenges there is we're often comparing information from
- 8:25Speaker 6: a bunch of different sources. Right we have a problem,
- 8:28Speaker 6: we're trying to maybe find the source of that problem,
- 8:31Speaker 6: and that already requires holding a bunch of different stuff
- 8:33Speaker 6: in your head. And that's where an interruption can be
- 8:38Speaker 6: really bad, because you can't just go back to what's
- 8:41Speaker 6: on the screen is you also have to remember, you know, oh,
- 8:44Speaker 6: I have to look at the second tab, or oh,
- 8:46Speaker 6: I'm comparing this to something else that I know about.
- 8:48Speaker 6: I think that's one of the places where distractions are
- 8:51Speaker 6: particularly pernicious.
- 8:54Speaker 3: And I'll build on that too are on it, because
- 8:56Speaker 3: it just happened to me thirty minutes ago at my
- 8:59Speaker 3: advanced age, which when I get distracted, I forget what
- 9:02Speaker 3: I was doing. So I just happened to me. I
- 9:04Speaker 3: was posting something on social, I got the email ding,
- 9:07Speaker 3: I read the email, and then I sat here for
- 9:08Speaker 3: five minutes saying what was I doing? So it could
- 9:12Speaker 3: be tough switching back and forth.
- 9:14Speaker 2: I was just worried you were going to say you
- 9:15Speaker 2: have a post office tim you know, well for old time,
- 9:21Speaker 2: say for old time sake, image check Dina. With regards
- 9:25Speaker 2: to all of these factors, and when we think about
- 9:29Speaker 2: it's place in this context, first of all, do you
- 9:33Speaker 2: think it's it's part of it's REMIT or expanding REMIT
- 9:36Speaker 2: to minimize distraction for the digital work workforce, or is
- 9:40Speaker 2: it just about enabling productivity tools and you leave the
- 9:43Speaker 2: rest of the employees themselves.
- 9:45Speaker 5: How about a little bit of everything right so it
- 9:48Speaker 5: can provide some alternatives or setting blocks enabling do not
- 9:54Speaker 5: disturb globally, whether it's it's having it would have a
- 9:58Speaker 5: little bit of settings as an switch off team messages
- 10:01Speaker 5: or put them on snooze when you get the alerts
- 10:03Speaker 5: of the emails, and like Tim, whenever I see a message,
- 10:06Speaker 5: I have to go and read it on my mail
- 10:08Speaker 5: or a message on teams, So that distracts me a lot.
- 10:11Speaker 5: But we can just put in like a snooze, like
- 10:14Speaker 5: do not alert me in my focused time that you
- 10:16Speaker 5: are getting dedicated, et cetera, because you want to be
- 10:20Speaker 5: in flow. You want to be in a flow state
- 10:22Speaker 5: of mind where you want to be focused on, like
- 10:25Speaker 5: Sean was mentioning earlier, a little bit of slides that
- 10:28Speaker 5: you're building or a content that you're working on, and
- 10:31Speaker 5: we can have some different aspects to do so it
- 10:34Speaker 5: can help assign days or hours of different work blocks
- 10:39Speaker 5: or patches of work where you can focus on something
- 10:43Speaker 5: in specific, or even a themed kind of thing, which
- 10:46Speaker 5: actually looks very nice. If you try and sketch out
- 10:48Speaker 5: your whole week in a theme kind of thing, it
- 10:51Speaker 5: would maybe allow you to have less amounts of distractions
- 10:54Speaker 5: and maybe have distraction time in between of the times
- 10:58Speaker 5: where you're going to check your mail, checker, slack checker, teams,
- 11:01Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera. So having this educated aspect, I
- 11:06Speaker 5: think we can provide it from a technology perspective, but
- 11:09Speaker 5: we need to empower people and employees at the end
- 11:13Speaker 5: of the day to actually have this balance out. You
- 11:15Speaker 5: have the technology, you have the tools to do it,
- 11:17Speaker 5: but you need to learn how to better focus on
- 11:21Speaker 5: how to better. Well, let's distract yourself and rely on
- 11:24Speaker 5: the fact that we are like humans at the end
- 11:27Speaker 5: of the day, we are not made to multitask. We
- 11:29Speaker 5: need to be focusing on what we need. And I
- 11:31Speaker 5: think I read that somewhere at some point that we
- 11:33Speaker 5: take around forty minutes to get back to the flow
- 11:36Speaker 5: state that you get to do. So how many forty
- 11:39Speaker 5: minutes would you have in a day to get back
- 11:41Speaker 5: to the actual tasks. So minimizing the distractions really is helpful,
- 11:45Speaker 5: which is going to be a good productivity metric if
- 11:49Speaker 5: you want to measure people's productivity eventually rights.
- 11:53Speaker 2: And it is also occasionally or generally a bit guilty
- 11:57Speaker 2: of also creating more distractions. Right, We've been hearing not
- 12:01Speaker 2: just on a matter of introducing more and more technology
- 12:04Speaker 2: into our lives, which is not really it is doing
- 12:07Speaker 2: right as so much as it's being a sort of
- 12:09Speaker 2: local conduit of it, But in terms of perhaps you know,
- 12:12Speaker 2: introducing excessive number of applications over complicating tools and necessary
- 12:18Speaker 2: or alert software SPRAAD, etc.
- 12:21Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the mix of both. Technology is going to
- 12:24Speaker 5: keep on evolving. We will start well, we'll keep on
- 12:27Speaker 5: having new applications and new ways of working every single day,
- 12:31Speaker 5: every single minute actually now. But we need to have
- 12:34Speaker 5: the control not within only it. It could be a
- 12:38Speaker 5: service provider at the end of the day, but then
- 12:40Speaker 5: also could be an enabler where we can recommend to
- 12:44Speaker 5: the users or the customers what to use at what
- 12:46Speaker 5: time or direct them like we do in next THNK
- 12:50Speaker 5: with some engage campaigns at some certain hours, et cetera.
- 12:53Speaker 5: So we can try and see that and do it,
- 12:55Speaker 5: but again it will go back to the employee at
- 12:58Speaker 5: the end of the day to choose not to go
- 13:00Speaker 5: through and chase the distractions and have the optimization and
- 13:04Speaker 5: focus on the flow aspect. Whether you can do that
- 13:07Speaker 5: by reducing repetitive or manual tasks through AI or automation
- 13:11Speaker 5: and such things in the background, you can.
- 13:16Speaker 2: I see and tim when we think about applications specifically,
- 13:22Speaker 2: how much time do you think we're losing to sort
- 13:23Speaker 2: of context switching between apps and whatever. The effective kind
- 13:27Speaker 2: of strategies for cutting that down in the digital workplace
- 13:31Speaker 2: from it.
- 13:32Speaker 3: A lot of that is almost outside of at least
- 13:36Speaker 3: it operations control, because the application suite that an employee
- 13:41Speaker 3: needs to use is defined by the business, not by it.
- 13:44Speaker 3: So in my experience, I'd seen people contact switching just
- 13:49Speaker 3: to make the applications work in between two applications. Their
- 13:52Speaker 3: primary need was to have notepad so that they could
- 13:55Speaker 3: copy and paste information between the two applications. It's so inefficient.
- 13:59Speaker 3: But I kind of put together a bit of a
- 14:01Speaker 3: it's not a top ten list, it's nine. I'll hit
- 14:04Speaker 3: you with a couple of things other than decks, allowing
- 14:07Speaker 3: you to get rid of the shoot yourself in the
- 14:10Speaker 3: foot distractions, right, the technology disruptions that we induce on
- 14:14Speaker 3: our employees all the time. There are the logical things
- 14:18Speaker 3: that we can do. One is and I've done it
- 14:20Speaker 3: on mine, but it can do it across the enterprise.
- 14:23Speaker 3: Change the outlook default for meetings to twenty five minutes
- 14:26Speaker 3: instead of thirty, or fifty minutes instead of sixty, and
- 14:30Speaker 3: give yourself some time between meetings so that you can
- 14:33Speaker 3: regain your thoughts. That way, you don't have to contact
- 14:36Speaker 3: switch in the middle of a meeting. You know you've
- 14:38Speaker 3: got a little bit of a break in between. That
- 14:40Speaker 3: was a big change for me. And on email, we
- 14:44Speaker 3: used to say this at Hartford all the time. It
- 14:46Speaker 3: just came back to me, what's the SLA on an
- 14:48Speaker 3: email reply? There is no SLA. Right check email once
- 14:52Speaker 3: a day, shut off the ding, shut off the little
- 14:55Speaker 3: vibration on your phone, and say I'm checking email at
- 14:58Speaker 3: the end of the day between four and five. And
- 15:00Speaker 3: other than that, don't look at it. Set up maintenance windows.
- 15:04Speaker 3: It can make sure they don't impact employees when they
- 15:08Speaker 3: only maintain devices in a certain window. There's other benefit.
- 15:13Speaker 3: There's other things you can do, like single sign on
- 15:16Speaker 3: password synchronization, standard password managers. I like it taking a
- 15:24Speaker 3: step back and just looking at the logical things that
- 15:29Speaker 3: they can do. And I found there's one other point.
- 15:32Speaker 3: I think to make time, we focus on distractions, We
- 15:36Speaker 3: focus on things that impact productivity. I think in the
- 15:40Speaker 3: same breath, we should be looking at people that don't
- 15:45Speaker 3: take breaks intentionally. We look for the productivity gaps, look
- 15:49Speaker 3: for people that are on their device all the time,
- 15:52Speaker 3: find the machines that or find the employees that work
- 15:55Speaker 3: through lunch, that go from meeting to meeting to meeting
- 15:58Speaker 3: and get them some advice and some help because they're
- 16:01Speaker 3: going to burn out. I think there's some logical things
- 16:03Speaker 3: that we can do to use that data for employee
- 16:05Speaker 3: benefits versus just looking for productivity hits.
- 16:09Speaker 2: Do you think that might feel a little You know,
- 16:11Speaker 2: we were discussing the other week about how IT doesn't
- 16:15Speaker 2: want to become corporate secret police, you know, right?
- 16:18Speaker 4: You know?
- 16:19Speaker 2: Like is conversely, there could there be something kind of
- 16:22Speaker 2: intrusive about even making those kind of recommendations we see
- 16:26Speaker 2: you've been working too hard is almost as could almost
- 16:28Speaker 2: feel as intrusive as we see you've not been working
- 16:30Speaker 2: hard enough.
- 16:31Speaker 3: It could be. I think it depends on the company culture, right.
- 16:33Speaker 3: You've got to you've got to do it in the
- 16:35Speaker 3: right way with the right messaging. It can't be hey,
- 16:38Speaker 3: we've been watching you and we notice this. It's got
- 16:40Speaker 3: to be done through a message of help and benefit
- 16:44Speaker 3: versus oversight. But I think there's a way. I'm just
- 16:48Speaker 3: looking for creative ways for it, partnering with HR, partnering
- 16:52Speaker 3: with the business to do things that it doesn't or
- 16:56Speaker 3: wouldn't normally do. Now that they've got some data. The
- 16:59Speaker 3: last thing I would say is we can be as
- 17:02Speaker 3: creative and brainstorm as many ideas as we want. It
- 17:07Speaker 3: doesn't compare at all to just asking them ask employees
- 17:13Speaker 3: what are the distractions? Like we just did the roundtable
- 17:15Speaker 3: that we just did, it should be asking employees what
- 17:18Speaker 3: are the distractions that we can help with and start
- 17:20Speaker 3: to crowdsource ideas to help them get through their day.
- 17:27Speaker 2: All right, Ana, it seems like we're discussing this dynamic
- 17:31Speaker 2: between the pressure over reality of being all of us
- 17:34Speaker 2: always available, always on, with that need to do and
- 17:39Speaker 2: deliver deep work and really enter our respective flow states.
- 17:44Speaker 2: Interested in you your broader reflections on this dynamic or
- 17:47Speaker 2: anything we haven't touched upon so far.
- 17:49Speaker 6: Yeah, I think we've touched on a lot of the
- 17:50Speaker 6: different elements, and I just kind of want to name
- 17:53Speaker 6: and summarize the fact that there are these three specific components, right.
- 17:57Speaker 6: One is the tech stack. How do the tools that
- 18:00Speaker 6: we have facilitate a particular way of working, like when
- 18:03Speaker 6: we have a million different pieces of software, and we've
- 18:05Speaker 6: talked about how challenging this is, especially now right, especially
- 18:09Speaker 6: in the last few years, how that's gotten worse. The
- 18:12Speaker 6: second part is the sort of individual responsibility component right,
- 18:19Speaker 6: And obviously in the US we're big fans of that.
- 18:22Speaker 6: That's a big part of our culture. Like we really
- 18:24Speaker 6: want to figure out how do we each individually take
- 18:27Speaker 6: ownership of how we're doing this right. Like I was saying,
- 18:30Speaker 6: I have very specific settings on my phone that I
- 18:32Speaker 6: have customized to not be disruptive. I have my work profile,
- 18:38Speaker 6: I have my nighttime profile, Like everything's set up the
- 18:41Speaker 6: way I know I need it in order to facilitate
- 18:45Speaker 6: my ability to be present both at work and in
- 18:48Speaker 6: my life. And then the third part I think is
- 18:51Speaker 6: company culture. And Tim mentioned this, but I do think
- 18:54Speaker 6: that it's so so critical and it can be hard
- 18:57Speaker 6: for organizations to really be very honest about this, I think,
- 19:02Speaker 6: because there's the company culture that we want to have,
- 19:04Speaker 6: and then there's the company culture that we actually build
- 19:07Speaker 6: in practice. So, for example, we can promote good behaviors
- 19:11Speaker 6: by encouraging people to take breaks, but in a culture
- 19:15Speaker 6: that rewards hustle, people still use that as a perverse incentive. Right,
- 19:20Speaker 6: it's going to incentivize people to not take breaks. It's
- 19:22Speaker 6: going to be used as a badge of honor and
- 19:25Speaker 6: merit and proof that you're the hardest worker. If your
- 19:28Speaker 6: company actually rewards people for not taking breaks, even if
- 19:32Speaker 6: they are nominally saying, oh, yes, we want.
- 19:35Speaker 2: You to take breaks.
- 19:36Speaker 6: So I think that's really important, right, And I think
- 19:41Speaker 6: it can be really hard to talk about that, frankly,
- 19:44Speaker 6: because it does require a certain amount of bluntness that
- 19:51Speaker 6: is not necessarily what people are willing to bring up. Right, Like,
- 19:56Speaker 6: the people who, for example, are managing these community don't
- 20:00Speaker 6: necessarily have authority to ensure that the wrong thing isn't
- 20:05Speaker 6: being incentivized, right, Those problems are owned in different places.
- 20:11Speaker 6: So I think that's something that makes it a particularly
- 20:15Speaker 6: challenging problem, and that can't be fixed just from one angle.
- 20:19Speaker 2: Right.
- 20:19Speaker 6: So, if you're the person who is, for example, setting
- 20:23Speaker 6: the IT campaigns, you may have very good intentions, but
- 20:27Speaker 6: you're working in a context that you don't necessarily control.
- 20:30Speaker 6: In the same way, you might not be able to
- 20:32Speaker 6: reduce the tech stack, but you can potentially start to
- 20:35Speaker 6: implement policies or look for tools that might ease that burden, like,
- 20:41Speaker 6: for example, figuring out are there ways that we can
- 20:44Speaker 6: build better integrations or create automations that will make it
- 20:49Speaker 6: easier to work between different software Right. That was one
- 20:52Speaker 6: of the big motivations for us behind Amplify is bringing
- 20:56Speaker 6: the technology to where people are already working, rather than
- 21:01Speaker 6: asking them to.
- 21:01Speaker 2: Meet us where we are one hundred percent wonderful. Last words,
- 21:04Speaker 2: and thank you so much for listening. We hope you
- 21:07Speaker 2: haven't been listening as a distraction as a way of
- 21:10Speaker 2: avoiding much needed work. And if you are, well, it's
- 21:13Speaker 2: over now and you have to get back to it
- 21:15Speaker 2: or you have to find something else to listen to
- 21:17Speaker 2: or do, and just remain to me to thank Tim Shure,
- 21:22Speaker 2: Dina Oriana and of course our producers earlier and Catherine
- 21:25Speaker 2: there as well, and look forward to seeing you all
- 21:29Speaker 2: very soon.
- 21:29Speaker 5: Goodbye.
- 21:32Speaker 1: To make sure that you never miss an episode, subscribe
- 21:34Speaker 1: to the show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite
- 21:37Speaker 1: podcast player, and if you're listening on Apple podcasts, make
- 21:41Speaker 1: sure to leave a rating of the show. Just have
- 21:43Speaker 1: the number of stars you think the podcast deserves. If
- 21:46Speaker 1: you'd like to learn more about how Next Thing can
- 21:48Speaker 1: help me improve your digital employee experience, head over to
- 21:51Speaker 1: next Think dot com. Thank you so much for listening.
- 21:54Speaker 1: Until next time,