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space and time part 2: the employees · Humanity Working

• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: Which by the way, I'm really upset that we didn't um start from the very beginning last time because I was gonna go exactly by the book.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: Hey guys, how are things?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: I was just gonna read it verbatim.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: How are things?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Exclamation mark.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: We appear to be missing a host.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: Ladies and gentlemen, Matt has left the building.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: He just didn't like what we were saying.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's what they call us.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Two take billion minds.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: What was one take billion minds 15 minutes ago?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna call him the digital nomad.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: I cracked myself up.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so this is part two of a little series we're calling space and time.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: The last one was from the point of view of the employer, but even if you're not in leadership in an organization, I would really urge folks listening to go back and listen to that one because it's always good to know what your employees are thinking, your employers are thinking.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: But now let's transition over to the employee view.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: First off, Paul, can you give us a little recap of what we mean by space and time?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously I'm not going to get into the physics of that.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: We can uh leave that to other podcasts.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: But uh from our perspective, what we're thinking about is as a simple organizing construct to think about what flexible work styles are.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: So there's so many terms that are centered around this, right?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's flexible work styles itself, there is hybrid workplace, there is remote work, there is work from home, there is work from anywhere.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And whatever term you use, whatever term your employer uses, they have certain things in common, which is they all have something to say about where you do your work and when you do your work.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we found, which is really interesting, that both from the perspective of the employer and from the inspect uh perspective of the employee, sometimes it makes sense to think of that all together.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um I guess the physics term would be as a space-time continuum.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it makes sense to think about those separately.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so what are the special requirements around where you do your work?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what are the special requirements about when you do your work?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And once you start to get that clarity, um, then it can be really helpful in terms of from the employer perspective, how you would uh put your policies together, and from the perspective of the individual, looking at it in terms of what you need.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do you need from a space perspective in order to do your best work?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: What do you need from a time perspective in order to do your best work?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: So all right, we'll get into the specifics, but you know, obviously, why do you think employer employees care so much about this now?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and it's it's new for them to even have a choice, right?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you think, Ryan?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: I was half expecting you to ask me about general relativity, but I'll but I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll stick with space and time for now in in our own vernacular.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, well, it you know, it comes down to um to your daily experience.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I mean life is a collection of experiences, right?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, pre-pandemic, for a lot of people, their singular work experience was working in an office.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't know anything else.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then when the pandemic hit, um a lot of those same people were were really forced to try working in different ways.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and in many ways, they were they were forced to experiment with different work styles.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then as a result of that, they got a taste of um different work styles, they got a taste of a different lifestyle, as it were.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and I think they also got a taste for the pros and cons of that.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, so um I think most people that had not traditionally worked outside of the office and got that experience probably came away with some pros and cons, things that they felt were better and things that they had challenges with.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: All right, let's get into it.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: What what are they like and what are the challenges?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: What have what has your research revealed?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: Let's start with um what they like.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think there's kind of the obvious.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: There's the autonomy, uh, there's the the freedom that's associated with it, and and the flexibility, and and that is um giving people more opportunity to do things uh at a different time than they would have normally done it, do things at a different location than they perhaps would have normally done it.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that includes the personal stuff.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, a lot of times people would push almost everything they've done in their personal lives to off working hours or or weekends.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so this gives them the flexibility to also be a dad in the middle of the day, not just a dad at the end of the day, for example.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's it's great to not have to commute.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so there is a lot of time that was considered, quote unquote, wasted uh during the traditional workday, uh getting to and from a physical location, um, sitting in traffic, for example.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so that's when you pull out that waste, it it feels like you're being more productive, it feels like you're using your time uh a bit more effectively.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um but you know, on the other side of it, uh when you remove the structure uh that you've you've had your whole career, um, that physical structure of the office space, then a lot of people have started struggling with managing the competing demands of work and home.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: So what to do and when to do it.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody's there to tell you to anymore.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: That structure is basically gone.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um meeting commitments to others has become uh more challenging, and then really meeting commitments to yourself as well.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: So it's just a it's a lot more to juggle.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot more self-imposed structure discipline, if you like, that that's necessary.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and motivation is is challenging too.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um so connecting with why you're doing what you're doing, when you're doing it, um, it takes more work in many cases to uh to self-motivate um uh than it does to have somebody else motivate you, if you like.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then I'd say, I'd say lastly, and uh and top of this list is there's this real difficulty in switching off at the end of the day, because when you're working outside of an office, you can't anymore literally close the door to your office and see later, I'm off work, right?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh for many, there's this feeling of quote unquote always on.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so like your workday never really ends, so it never really starts, so it never really ends.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so as a result, you feel almost obliged to uh to always be sharp, you know, always be ready to roll, always be prepared to respond to something no matter when it comes through.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so kind of closing the door to to work virtually um is a skill and a skill that that's simply most people don't possess.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a one thing I'd add to that, which I think is is really interesting, was just how uh challenging it is to even understand, have people understand what they like and what they don't like about it.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: What they like actually part is pretty easy, which is like, hey, I get to do what I want to do, I get to have more autonomy along the lines of what Ryan was was describing.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that speaks really to basic human motivation, right?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Which is that given a choice, most human beings will choose something that gives them more freedom versus something that will give them less freedom.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the other side of it, the things that people struggle with, um, as we were doing our research, it was quite difficult initially to kind of really eke that out because people actually don't think very much about how they do their work.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: So what we would get initially before we started getting much more targeted in our questioning was things like, hey, I love this.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's great.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: I can I can work when I want, I can work how I want, etc.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then you'd ask a second set of questions, which would be like, okay, how are you feeling about your work in general?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then you'd start to get these sort of negative, negative things that were associated with the things that Ryan was talking about, but they couldn't really put into words as to why.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it took quite a lot of research on our part to be able to tease that out, to figure out how that applies to the things that people are challenging with, uh struggling with.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um when it comes down to it, what you've got to think about is that when you give people flexible work environments, um it's going to have a bunch of benefits associated with them.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's also going to transition a responsibility from employer to employee.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what do I mean specifically by the responsibility?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's the responsibility of how you go about doing your work.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: So previously you would go into a job that had some pretty specific, in most cases, pretty pretty specific guardrails that help determine how you do your work.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're expected to be at work from this time to this time, you're expected to accomplish these things in that uh in that fixed period.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: You're expected to be there alongside your colleagues.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: There are certain events that you're expected to attend during that period.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of that has gone away.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And as that has gone away, the responsibility for how you do your work has transitioned, as I say, from the employer to the employee.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that can feel good, but it can also be challenging, particularly if the employees don't have the skills necessary to do that effectively.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so that really requires a bunch of identification as to what those skills are, and then uh to help people work on plugging those gaps and getting really good at those things, so that not only does it feel good, but they also feel like they can do their best work and they can deal with some of the challenges that Ryan was discussing earlier.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: And and we're not talking about all employees, right?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, actually.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the other interesting thing that we found uh we found in our research and also in our day-to-day work um with people three billion minds.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um it varies uh from industry to industry, but in general, what we're seeing is um a fairly significant minority of employees.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um we mentioned this on previous podcasts, but around 20% that actually really want something along the lines of a traditional structure.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so even if you think about it just in those terms, right?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: That 80% of employees want this fully, you know, sort of fully, full freedom to be able to work when they want and where they want.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um you got 20% of people that actually want the traditional office structure.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Even that would be very damaging to an employer if you lost all of those 20% of people in one go because you weren't offering something for them.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: But even even more complicated than that, it's a dramatic oversimplification to think about it as drilling down to a specific person.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is that once you start to factor in um the people that work from home and want to work from home, but sometimes want to be in the office, but sometimes want to be in a shared space with their employees, then that 20% number starts to shoot up fairly dramatically.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Even the most ardent work-from-home zealots generally don't want to work from home 100% of the time.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: They want to have um periods where they're collaborating and meeting with and commuting with their colleagues.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And they want to uh they want a time and a place for that to happen.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's that's why this really does get uh complicated because we need to be able to use um our a combination of technology, of policy, of tweaks to the culture that enable and allow all of that to happen so that people can basically do their best work.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: The Way Too Busy podcast is brought to you by Billion Minds.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Working out of the office brings employees all kinds of freedoms, but it can be really difficult to do well and stay engaged every day.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Billion Minds has spent years studying the day-to-day habits of people who do great work in unstructured, ambiguous environments, and they've used it to develop a revolutionary platform that embeds key work from anywhere skills into employees in just 10 minutes a day.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to help your employees become remote work masters while generating better business results for your organization, visit billionminds.com today or contact us at info at billionminds.com.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Billionminds, helping everyone do great work from anywhere.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so let's get back to the specifics.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: What are the main space considerations?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, here we're really talking about where you do your best work.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that's really centered around the very type of work that you do.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: And you might remember um we looked at this in the last pod uh from the employer's perspective.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, I think I even said jokingly, uh, you know, employers were gonna start to speak this interesting language going forward.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like an employer is gonna say something to the tune of, hey, this is extremely important.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: I need this by five, and the employee is gonna say, okay, got it.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going for a run.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: But if you do your best thinking on a run and what you need to be doing at that point is think, then you know, ipso facto, go for a run.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so um I like to use that example because it's very personal for me.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: If I need to really think through a problem, I usually do that better when I'm on a run.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but if I really need to um do some you know, repetition, some some tasks, blast some things out, some tactical stuff, um, I really do that well from a coffee shop.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason why is because there's something soothing about that ambient sound, and there's some some additional energy, if you like, that I can pull from from that keeps me keeps me going.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even need to necessarily have a direct collaboration with another human, but it's almost like the spirit of the collaboration that I can hear that's going on.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it just does something.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it it kind of I feed off that energy.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so and then there's other scenarios too.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's a it's a it's a point of discovery.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so when you're doing work alone, when you're doing solo work, um, these things are gonna be very individual.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, so what I just said could be the opposite for you know my nearest colleague.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: It is something that's that's very personal to each individual, and that's um why we really um are in favor of experimentation and discovery when it comes to space.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: What about the time part?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it really is the same concept.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think the time part breaks down into uh a couple of elements.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, there's the there's the when, uh, but then there's also the what types of of work that you're actually doing.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um and actually I I usually use Paul's example here because we're we're very different in in terms of uh how how we do the time part.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um he tends to do his best writing late at night.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm sound asleep at that point.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I get up super early and I tend to do my best writing then, right?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so um that's again one of those elements that's very personal.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: But so that's there's two things that were involved in that.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: One is the time of day.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so for Paul in the evenings, for Ryan in the morning, and then there was the type of work, um, which was writing, you know.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: So again, going back to the point about experimentation, it's incumbent upon us as individuals to first and foremost recognize that the space and time elements are very personal, and then to prioritize trying different things.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, so you might try writing at three different times a day and see you know which one uh you were the most, you know, you liked your stuff the best.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: You had the greatest output, if you like, of that.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and then do the same thing from different locations.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um try writing from a coffee shop at noon or try, you know, writing from your home office in the evening.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's there is there a combination that seems to work better for you.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and of course, the person then would have to go on, you know, we're assuming the person's gone on a self-discovery to figure out themselves what works for them too, right?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think actually that was one of the things that was uh sort of one of the biggest surprises for us, and then one of the biggest surprises for the for the people that we work with.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we didn't mention this up at the up the front, but for folks that have listened to the podcast for a while, they'll probably know this.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, Ryan and I have been have been an exception, as it were, in the sense that we've been doing this kind of work.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we've been working outside of a formal office setting collectively for probably about a quarter of a century, Ryan.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty shocking looking at us.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: But let's choose a different let's choose a different unit.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: I that just yeah, it's just a oh, so you want to maybe it's sort of like 2.5% of a millennium?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very scientific podcast.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, we've been to but we have.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: We've been we've been doing it for uh for a long period of time, and and you kind of build up these things without realizing.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: You kind of like learn things about yourself and what's gonna work and all that kind of stuff.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: But it takes a long time, it takes a long time to be able to kind of figure it out.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we have been working on billion minds and really trying to help people get the skills that they need to do it well, obviously they don't have time to keep making all the all the mistakes that we made.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so we realize that it number one, it is personal, but number number two, finding out what it is right for you does take a commitment, frankly, to self-discovery.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: That in itself can be challenging for many people.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's part of our overall curriculum, we talk about the challenges associated with self-discovery.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Certain people are just wired in such a way that they're just not that into themselves.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want to delve, they don't want to um to find out a lot about themselves.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: It almost feels like selfish or self-indulgent.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And what we coach people on is that that actually what it is is learning enough about yourself so that you can bring your best self to everything you do, including the things that you do for uh the things you do for other people.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so in this case, it's sort of fairly simple questions that people need answers to that they often don't have.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: You can typically start with shortcuts.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, um, when you naturally go to bed and when you naturally wake up will give you a good indication, not just of when you're likely to do your best work, but then also the types of work that you're likely to do uh well at certain times of day.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: There are certain um patterns associated with the circadian rhythms that can indicate, for example, when you're likely to do analytical work well and when you're likely to make decisions well and things like that.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And they're about 80% accurate um in terms of how they work.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: So they can be a great starting point.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like the um the sort of work version of that heart rate being a target heart rate being 200 minus your age is sort of that that sort of thing that gives you a good starting point.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then the way you really dial it in, the way you really get to it is kind of just like tracking, basically.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: So tracking what you do, tracking when you do it, tracking where you do it, tracking the results that you've achieved, doing it in the in these different ways, and then using that as a means of building a routine that works for you and works for the people around you.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because obviously you have to take you have to take that into consideration as well.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but certainly can be done, and the people that we've worked with who've who've made the effort to do it, and it's not that much of an effort, uh, but once they've done it, they can they use it as a basis for forming a routine that works for them.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it really fulfills two needs, right?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, it actually provokes you into having a routine, and just the presence of a routine, even if it's a suboptimal routine, is actually helpful in terms of getting things done.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: But then secondly, you're actually building a routine that is not constrained by your workplace, you're building a routine that is going to work for you in your broader life.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but then and then now you have to balance it and figure out how to balance it against the needs of a a team too.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Once you complete your own journey, now you have to fit in with the rest of the team.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that a lot of people have not had to actually think about for uh for a long period of time.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that is one of these areas where um the the shift from the old world into the new world um is really kind of uh Taken a or presented us, if you like, with a new set of challenges.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so let's talk about that old world for a while, right?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you were in the old office world, you probably worked around the same time as uh and in the same space as people that were sitting around you.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: It made it a lot easier to do kind of spontaneous collaboration.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: But also, if you were spending, I don't know, 20% of your time or 30% of your time collaborating with your colleagues, then naturally and normally there were established a set of, if you like, working norms that were um that were embedded in, you know, and just became part of the part of the team.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you'd work in a certain way on your own, and then you work in a certain way uh with your colleagues when you gathered with your colleagues.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, um, many people are in a position where the default state for them, as it were, is working on their own in front of a computer in the way that they want to, and the way that it's been set up to work to work for them.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And is probably optimized.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably optimized for the way that they work as an individual.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, often, they then need to use those sort of same technology, pieces of technology and systems to help them work effectively with other people.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they have to make a compromise.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: They have to make a compromise in terms of how their work is arranged, they have to make a compromise in terms of how it's um available to uh to other people.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this gets particularly challenging in situations where you have hybrid team environments where you've got some people that are working in the working in the office and some people that are uh that are working out of the office.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll give you one simple example.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um we've seen, particularly when we talk to uh people that are in team environments where there are team members that are in the office and team members that are out of the office, over time, and it can happen in the course of weeks, but it definitely happens over the course of months, you have team members that are in the office that develop a negative assessment of their own teammates that are working out of the office.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's based really on one thing it's based on the fact that the team members in the office think that the team members out of the office are not pulling their weight.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Why do they think that?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because they can't see their colleagues working in many traditional systems, right?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so you now have to start thinking about okay, how do you create an environment where people can see their colleagues working in a digital sense?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Previously they saw them typing away at a computer, and that made them feel that their colleagues are working.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: You now need to kind of recreate that in a digital sense so that people do trust that they're that their colleagues are working.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: You don't create awkward and difficult in uh inter-team, intra-team, I should say, dynamics um that are centered around that.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so we solve that, by the way, through a concept that we use in Billy Minds called shared spaces, um, whereby uh teammates can see each other's work and it becomes much, much more visible.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: But really, when you do that, you've now that, though, got a situation where that thing that happened naturally when you were just in the office with a with your colleagues, um, whereby you you you collaborated, you figured out a way to work together and you all compromised in order to work together effectively.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now that compromising bit is harder.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because now you have to agree on how are we going to actually represent the work that we do in a way that works for all of us.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And how's that shared system gonna interact with the or integrate with the individual system that I've optimized to do to do my own work?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a decision that has to happen really at the team level.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also a decision for the individual as to how much they want to do that.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in some cases, what you'll find is that individuals, that compromise they need to make at the team level is kind of too much for them.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: So they then will either deviate to a different team that works in a that works in a way that does work for them, or they'll pick roles that are much more centered around their own work as an individual.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there's some research that just came out over the last couple of uh weeks, uh, for example, that was actually looking at the tax associated with collaborating with others and trying to evaluate whether that tax was worth the benefit of collaboration.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: And what it concluded was that in some cases people under-collaborate, but in many cases, people over-collaborate.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: So they actually wind up in a situation where they do try to do too much work in a collaborative setting and it impacts overall productivity.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: But it it's very dependent, it's very individual, and it depends upon specific types of work, the nature of the work you're in, and stuff like that.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, if you're looking for evidence of where we're getting this wrong, is where you see organizations that post-pandemic their meetings are up 50 to 100%.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason why is because it's kind of like this uh this default state.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, okay, well, you know, since we don't know or we don't know what to do, or we don't know who's doing what, let's get on a call.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so you'll see people's calendars now back to back to back to back to back to back Zoom calls, which is preventing any of that solo work from happening, which is not the right formula.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: But it's this default behavior of, all right, well, I need to uh I need to schedule a meeting to decide this, and you schedule a meeting to see what somebody else is doing.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of that is not very collaborative at all.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's just people on a call.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: We could, given that this episode is called Space and Time Part 2, we should uh we could probably think of a of a lore of a lore of Zoom that we could uh that we could make up associated with this.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: But it's almost like the lore of Zoom would be something like um the amount of conversation will expand to fill the length of the Zoom call.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and and the defining factor has gone from um the length of meetings to the length of Zoom calls, and neither of them really have anything to do with what is happening inside them.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we try as a best practice to make sure that almost all of our Zoom calls end early.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's if it's not done, if it's not like insistent on as a practice, if you don't default to, let's say, 15-minute Zoom meetings instead of half-hour Zoom meetings, you will fill that time.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: You will fill that, uh, you will fill that time in some magical way without actually getting any more done.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: The Way Too Busy podcast is brought to you by Billion Minds.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Are you one of over a billion people who works out of the office at least one day every week?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: If so, you probably want the freedom that working from anywhere affords, but you also want the same opportunities your in-office colleagues get.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: It turns out that to do really great work out of the office that your colleagues and leaders will truly value, you need a specific set of skills.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Billion Minds can help you develop those in just ten minutes a day using our revolutionary platform that combines experiential learning with behavioral science.
• 29:12
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• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: Just visit www.billionminds.com/slash way too busy to start your journey.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Billion Minds, helping everyone do great work from anywhere.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, all right, so let's switch gears a little bit.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, last time we touched on self-organizing teams.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about how that sort of self-organization dynamic plays in.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: How does that play in in the space and time?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I actually think that this is probably one of the more fascinating areas because to me it really points to the future of organizational dynamics and it uh points to the future of work, period.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, based on what we've seen, we think that there are a few things that are likely to happen that are very different to the way in which work has happened before.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously, what I'm about to say are organizations have to get to a certain size, that could be, you know, 50 or above or something along those lines.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: But once they get larger than that, um, what we believe is likely is that using all of the tools that we have to do flexible work, that you're gonna start getting small groups of teams form around outcomes that need to be driven.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And each of those teams will have a set of working norms.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, you could advertise your team as being a team that works as an agile team with everybody's work visible.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Our team members tend to collaborate synchronously in these hours.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: We do X percentage of that collaboration in a shared physical space.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you would have a period of time in your team that, as a norm, everybody has their camera switched on and everybody's working in their different areas, but they're just working alongside each other virtually, but with the camera, you know, basically with the camera always on to create that visibility.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Just using those an example.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so once you've defined that set of characteristics for your team, if you think about it, the outcomes define what you work on, and then the working norms define how you go about working on those outcomes.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can imagine a future whereby that is basically posted, right?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's posted on a uh on some kind of like site or something along those lines, and then people opt in to that team.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: So they're saying, okay, I like the way that this team works, I like the outcomes that this team is looking to drive.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be part of that.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like matchmaking in a sense, right?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so then you now know as an individual going in, this doesn't just map my interests, this maps the how I want to work.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you might work on that for a period of days, you might work on it for a period of weeks, but you're working together with the team in a way that works for you and works for the team.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that obviously all requires us to become excellent generalists, but for those of us that are excellent generalists, it potentially becomes a much more rewarding way to work.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine an organization of, say, I don't know, 200 people that has 30 or 40 of these of these teams, and then team members are kind of floating between one and the other.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's another set of outcomes that look really cool to you and the working norms are similar, or maybe you've discovered something new about yourself, about how you work, and you realize that this team that has a different set of working norms might be more effective to you.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: You kind of like ease yourself out of that team and ease yourself into the other team.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, there's a lot of complications that have to be figured out associated with that.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you get, for example, a team that is working on really important outcomes, but because of the way they work, they're losing uh they're losing team members.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, those sorts of things have to be figured out.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: But in a sense, that's no really no different to the idea of we got a bad boss and so people leave that bad boss.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a different uh it's just a different problem to have.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: And they figure it out on their own.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know you allow teams to form organically um around a set of outcomes as opposed to presupposing the humans that need to be on that team.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, definitely another podcast.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this has been great, guys.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Good one.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, man.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: Have a good one.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: See you guys.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Bye.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: The Way Too Busy podcast was presented and produced by me, Matt Neal, and was brought to you by Billion Minds.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to get in touch with us, tweet us at Rising Billion or email us at WayTooBusy at BillionMinds.com.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Billion Minds, creating practical tools for our way too busy lives.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: If you're enjoying the Way Too Busy podcast, please consider leaving us a rating and review on iTunes so that others can find us as well.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.