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the great reevaluation · Humanity Working

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and now you're Toby into mute, right?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderful.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be awesome.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: It is, it's like the best one ever.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get off with a bang, baby.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: So uh we've been away for a while.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: What's going on, Paul?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, a lot actually.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: So um gosh, I think we last recorded a lot the the last episode of season one of our podcast, probably close to six months ago now, something like that.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And things move pretty fast, actually, in that uh in that period of time, especially if you're in startup world like we are.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: So um over the course of the last few months, we've actually finally launched the Billy Minds product.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: We've been in market with uh with our first uh customer, and actually we're now scaling from our first customer to up to 25 additional customers right now.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that part of growing a company can actually be one of the hardest things.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're trying to get all of your processes in place, you're starting to hire people, you're starting to figure out whether the thing that worked for one customer can work with multiple customers and what changes you need to make in order to be able to make it happen.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: So um, we've been doing all of that.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've relaunched our website.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we have done so many things.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess you could argue that we've been uh unfortunately way too busy to do this podcast for a few months.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we're now coming up for air.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and really excited to be getting uh back into this for season two.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, while you built all this, threw in a cross-country move.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there was that too.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh for both for both of us, by the way.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we we we both did.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: We uh we we made the decision to co-locate for a period of time.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's gonna be uh has been, in fact, and incredible uh for us um to to be together.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it's still only been, I guess, a month.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, I moved from Raleigh, North Carolina.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Paul moved from Seattle.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I will say that for I will say two things.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: I would say for anybody who's you know thinking about the cross-country move, um, the first thing is what a grand adventure, you know, uh very, very cool.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's been rejuvenating in many ways.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a result of kind of coming out of the pandemic.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, everybody was just kind of up for some adventure.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was actually a bit surprised by how up everybody was for adventure, Paul's family, my family.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that was great.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and then now the other thing I would say is that um, you know, it's it's very doable, it's very manageable, it is also very stressful.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, when you think about it in terms of personal effectiveness, um, you certainly can't discount the amount of stress, the amount of activity um that uh that is required to do that.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um you have to certainly factor all that in and make sure that you are setting realistic expectations for yourself.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something that Paul and I had to get um uh pretty good at is um setting reasonable expectations with ourselves in terms of running and growing a business um when you're factoring in cross-country moves.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we we moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, um, which was very interesting because until the uh early to midpart of this year, neither Ryan nor I had ever even visited Tulsa, Oklahoma.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it was a um it was a very interesting decision that took a while for us to uh a while for us to get to.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: So this all began actually with um uh with the latest round of our venture capital funding.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so we did uh receive some venture capital funding from a uh venture capital organization called Atento Capital here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and as part of that, the discussion turned uh fairly rationally towards the idea of was there benefit to being uh physically located for one of one or both of us being physically located in the Tulsa area.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um this came at a really, really interesting time as we are in the process of building our company.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we're this stage, this very early stage in our company moving from that first business customer up to our first uh 25 customers or so.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um we started to to kind of revisit and reevaluate the benefits of being physically physically located, uh co-located at certain times.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and of course, we're doing it at a time where everybody around us is kind of reevaluating where do you live?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you live in relation to where you work, how much time do you spend in a physical office, how much time do you spend, you know, away from the physical office?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the decision for us at this point was that while absolutely we didn't need to be physically in the same office all the time, uh living in uh under each other's noses all the time or working physically together all the time, we did need it on a fairly regular basis.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and I think the reason for that is that um we started to more deeply understand the different natures of different types of work you do and which parts of those work are most suited to being physically co-located versus which types of work actually it's more or less irrelevant as to whether you're physically co-located or not.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: So now we kind of get the best of both worlds, right?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: We have the ability to be able to work separately when we want to, and we have the ability to be able to work closely together when we want to, when we need to.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we can do so because we are physically located at um uh you know in the same area.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then of course, uh there was the factor of Tulsa itself.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think that was really interesting for us as well.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you think about um the nature of what Billion Minds is looking to accomplish, and particularly to help uh people uh create or manage their work in the context of their broader life, we asked ourselves a um a question, a kind of like theoretical question, which was if you had an organization, if you had a company that is looking to help people uh maintain that appropriate context between work and your broader life, what cities would reflect that dynamic the most?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Would it be, let's say, a Seattle, where I'm from?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh would it be a New York City?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Would it be a San Francisco?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: The cities that I'm mentioning there, Austin, um, are cities that are typically associated with um, you know, with startups and have a very thriving startup community.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the sort of ethos of those cities is very, very different to what we're looking to accomplish uh with Billion Mines.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so that started us thinking about okay, how can we build what we're doing in, if you like, a city that is not traditionally associated with the uh, if you like, the work ethic of New York or San Francisco or some of those other places.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and whereby there is a slightly different outlook uh on life in Tulsa than there is in some of those other cities.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: This evaluation, this re-evaluation that we're talking about is something that everybody in their own lives is probably going through in a similar way right now, right?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the great re-evaluation is where do I live?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what do I do?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: How do I spend my time?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's thinking about those things in a certain way, and everybody's gonna have their own individual answers.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: For us right now, it was, yeah, actually, let's have the capacity to physically re- uh relocate.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do so in a in a city that is a different uh that is a different type of city to those other cities that we're looking at.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um and let's see where that takes us.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's quite uh quite a different conclusion that others will come to.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: For us, it's working out great.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's so interesting.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're to physically reflect the ethos of your your idea a little bit, you know, relaxed, balancing, you know, uh that's very uh it it's going to color, it's going to have to color how the how this company evolves to choose.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, this type of work is really good to be heads down, you don't need to be together to do this, as opposed to the blanket, everybody's coming back type of conversation, or we're never coming back conversation.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's yeah, it's not black and white, it's so nuanced.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly the right word.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: It is nuance.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And um so for us, what we're finding is that the mode of work determines whether it is whether you're best associated to be in a particular room, in a room together, for example, or whether you're sitting separate from each other.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so flexible work styles, as it were, um, are enabled more effectively if you have the ability for people to come together when they need to come together, but then also to work apart when they uh when it would be better for them to work apart.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're dead right.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: I this kind of like blanket statement that everybody's coming back or nobody's coming back, or we're always together, or we're never together, or none of that actually makes that much sense, right?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh particularly for people that are doing unstructured, ambiguous work, that are switching between different work modalities.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: There are going to be times where it is much more effective to be physically together and times where they're not.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the discussion will move in that way once everything settles and once we've kind of uh you know figured out what this new normal looks like.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: I strongly suspect that we're gonna start looking at those different work modalities and saying, how do we optimize each one versus this black and white uh type of work from home or work away from home, i.e., work in the office.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: We want to make sure that we um uh avoid this notion that um, so going to your point about black and white, um, if you think about that through a different lens, it's you know asynchronous versus synchronous work.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: The the conditions, whether it's COVID or what have you, whatever the conditions may be, should not dictate how much asynchronous or synchronous work you do.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: You need to do certain things with people, you need to do certain things alone, and and and some certain things parallel and certain things serial.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's just a fact of life.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: You shouldn't let the conditions force you to doing one more or less than the other.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we think that um there is uh a chance that some individuals, some organizations um will kind of associate incorrectly, you know, working from home or working from the office as a substitute for working asynchronous or working synchronously.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: And the problem is that could you know inadvertently influence the type of work you do at the at the right moment or the wrong moment.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so what we want to make sure that we evangelize is that start with what you need to get a body of work done, and then determine what, as Paul mentioned, what the right work modality is for that body of work.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there's we don't think there's ever going to be a case where the pendulum swings all the way to asynchronous work.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's not right.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's you always you need to brainstorm, you need the energy of people.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so location is always gonna play uh a role.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how much of a role is dependent on the type of work that you do.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: 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.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: They've distilled it down into a 90-day program targeted at employees that do unstructured, ambiguous work.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: 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.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: 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.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's billionminds.com slash L-E-A-R-N-M-O-R-E.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: Billion Minds, providing practical tools for our way too busy lives.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting too, because it this seems like as you guys are talking, like this is a potential real accelerator for knowledge work because it's a privilege to have the type of work where you can make that choice, right?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: You're not in a place where you're, you know, have to be in, you know, let's just say, like, I don't know, some sort of uh you know, assembly area where you're building something, you have to be physically located where the machines are to help you build it or something like that.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a beauty in that work too.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: But like for the type of work we're talking about, and probably the main uh knowledge worker boom that's going on in this type of weird nebulous all over the world work, thinking about it the way you guys are thinking about it is a huge accelerator because there's almost no end to the nuance of personality characteristics you can start to dial in to uh tune in the best type of work.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I was thinking about the travel part about you guys being co-located.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: How different is it if you and I don't know, I'm I'm I'm making the broad statement that Tulsa is rather small as a city.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, how cool is it that you could in 15 minutes walk together or whatever, ride a bike or whatever, and be at the coffee shop to bounce these ideas out because you're like, no, we should be together to have this idea.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: Your experience of getting there together is very different than both getting on planes.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's exactly landing in a hotel.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: So it it's pretty amazing, actually.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's exactly right, actually, Matt.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that um you can look at this through the the simple lens of um I either go to the office or I don't go to the office.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do look at it through that simplistic um lens, then you get kind of simplistic simplistic answers, as it were.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: But if you if you look at it instead from from what we've done effectively is we've said that we're gonna put ourselves in a situation so that when we need to work together, and if that comes up spontaneously and we need to work together, then within 20 minutes we can.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the 20 minutes to your point could be in a coffee shop, the 20 minutes to your point could be anywhere all over the city.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: But for us, the idea of being physically co-located is much less about a physical office and much more about the ability to physically connect in a space.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that that's another aspect of this that we'll definitely look into in one of the future episodes of the podcast, which is what role does space play in the new world of work?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I can tell you that you know, we've gotten as much done in a conference room with a whiteboard, um, or I should I should invert the statement.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we've gotten as much done in a car on the way to taking Paul's dog to the dog park as we have in a conference room with a whiteboard.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: So an incredible segue to starting season two of the podcast.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh this is a good window into what maybe people can expect from it, but maybe you want to elaborate a little more on uh on what we can expect in season two, Paul.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we're gonna have quite a few similarities in terms of how we approach this.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: So for those of you that listen to season one, you'll know that we kind of flip between these types of discussions and then uh some in-depth interviews with um with thought leaders.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um we're probably we're gonna continue with that.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there will be a little bit of a difference in terms of what we cover.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think of the first season in terms of our general thoughts on how people can be effective, I would say think of season two as more focused on the point that we're at in the workplace.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um and for what for many people are is being considered to be or thought of as a crisis in the workplace.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um you have probably heard of the Great Resignation.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: You could think of this series if you were to give it a uh a tagline as being, if you like, the great resignation series, but that really is centered around some of the factors that are leading to this change that we're that we're seeing in the workplace, um, and then some of the adjustments and adapt uh adaptations that as individuals we need to make, and then also uh the adaptations and changes that organizations need to make as this change is going on.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that doesn't mean that it's going to be, you know, doom and gloom type of series by any means.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the great resignation obviously has uh a kind of a um negative connotation, if you like.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but but really the importance of focusing on a problem is not to focus on on something negative.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the importance of focusing on the problem is that we're continuing to draw attention to root cause as opposed to getting in a habit of just throwing solutions at things um and and seeing if it sticks.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh that's why we spend an inordinate amount of time uh focusing on the problem.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: But that doesn't mean doom and gloom.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: What that means is that we will identify particular areas that we think are potentially root causes, but then our goal is always in practicality, offering practical guidance or mapping it to the practical set of skills that we talked about in season one, um, so that we can make some practical daily adjustments to what we do and how we think.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so there will be effectively a mapping between the things we talk about in season two and what we did in season one.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: Just in the first part of this conversation, it even if there was negative connotation or or doom and gloom, I I kind of started to really come out of that and think, what an opportunity.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: If we actually look at work and people differently and consider ways to really hone in and make it better, I mean, this is a huge opportunity, a huge opportunity to get the best of people also.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's they might be resigning from a job they didn't enjoy, they might be realizing they wanted to change the way they work.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that a good thing?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's bad for the companies who are losing people that they, you know, had for a long time or whatever.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, but I think I don't know, it's it's gonna be really interesting.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it's gonna be interesting to get the perspective of instead of focusing on the loss companies suffer when people do resign to the benefit of where they eventually land, because they're gonna have to do something, even if they're doing it, you know, as an individual contributor or starting their own business or things like that.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: Those things they start with that passion of going for it in a human, this is what I want way, all those things will be better, right?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: All of those things they interact with will be better than the the place where they decided to leave or change, I would I would imagine.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the stats are interesting, actually.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's called the Great Resignation, and it's called the Great Resignation for an obvious reason, right?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Namely that a bunch of people are are quitting their jobs.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, a bunch of the people that are quitting their jobs um are of peak, uh what would be considered to be peak work age, as it were, in the in the sense that they're typically in their late 20s, early 30s, early 40s.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the people that are doing it, and a lot of people that are quitting are quitting before they have their next job lined up, right?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: So um this is obviously something that is new, and there are a bunch of reasons behind it um that are both um sort of global and macro in nature, and ones that are very uh personal and and micro in nature.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but what is intriguing is that um it's those people, to your point, are not in general just leaving the workforce.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at the macro numbers on the size of the workforce, um it's not actually changed very much.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: The size of the of the civilian workforce, in other words, outside of the of the military.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is around about the same as it was this time last year, despite the fact that four million people are leaving the uh or are leaving their jobs every single month.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: The actual overall number of people that are employed in the workforce is around about the same than it was.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: So it is, in a sense, a great resignation that people are resigning, but it's also really just an indication that what we're really going through underneath it is uh you can almost call it a great re-evaluation and a great reshuffle.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: As in a whole bunch of people are making a whole bunch of uh of decisions about their lives, and they're looking for something that gives them a new way to uh to meet their broader goals.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Probably because of COVID, right?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh it was such a major impactful event, and it gave people a real opportunity and in some cases the space as well, uh, to be able to say, am I am I really doing what I really want to do?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so you had that first aspect of the, am I really doing what I really want to do that comes as a as a thought process and then and then give you potentially, with the world you know, going crazy around us, why not make another change?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: People often make changes at times when there's big uh big substantial societal change.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then uh also because of the fact that many of the organizations that we work for became much more flexible about how you could work for them, you now had not just the opportunity to re-evaluate, the opportunity to make your own decisions, but you actually had a lot of opportunities of places to go, right?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because previously, if you were gonna work for a company that was across the country, to come back to where we start, where we started this discussion, if you were gonna move to a space that was across the country, maybe you could do it, maybe you couldn't do it, right?
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the act of doing it implied that you would A, have to figure out how to move across the country and did you have the financial resources to do it and the capability to do it?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you were in a relationship with somebody else, that might cause the person that you're with to be to have to quit their job.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: There were so many barriers to, if you like, mobility in the workforce.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this movement to work from anywhere has stripped away many of those barriers.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's much less of a um of a challenge of moving from one uh from one workplace to another.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: So what I think is going to happen is that um it employees will continue to, if you like, vote with their feet and take advantage of the opportunities that are out there for them as they try to seek a role that more accurately reflects what their goals and aspirations are as people.
• 25:14
  unknown: Yeah.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: And if if the if you know the the resignation happens, but the numbers stay the same, as you stated, they're going from one place to another.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: And what's getting them to that new place is how are they, what's the experience going to be like?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: What's the employee experience going to be like?
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: That's who's gonna win.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: Are companies not necessarily win, but that's who's gonna start pulling those people from one side to the other across this spectrum, is like, what's the differentiator now?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's not that you know, we have a ping-pong table in free food, it's that we treat you respectfully and and and recognize that human humanization that's occurred in the workplace.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's really uh really strong correlation, right?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're dead right.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've got that that situation that I just described, you know, where effectively employees have now got way more choice in terms of who they can work for, and and that is great.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um and at the same time, it's down to the employer to figure out how to create um a compelling employee experience in this new world.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the challenge associated with this is that the employer is trying to figure out what that compelling employee experience is while the world is changing underneath them, right?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: So to your point about ping pong tables and soda and so on, all of that, and I love a ping pong table, I'm in a ping pong club, but all of that is uh all of that is um associated with the idea of physically being at that workplace that we just described.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: So employers in some cases have made great um locations for people to go to go to work.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um and they've they've created a set of of benefits that are associated with that idea of physically being at work.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're not there, it's all irrelevant, right?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so now the uh the employer has to figure out what the equivalent is of creating that compelling employee experience when two things are happening.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: One, the environment in which the work is changing underneath them and continues to change, and two, the employee uh it becomes more important because the employee is more likely to leave if they if they don't sort it out.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a time of really great um uh of reimagining what it means to have a really compelling, interesting employee experience in a world where the employee has far more choice than they would do otherwise.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I've seen a lot of commentary on social media recently talking about the idea that um, you know, that employees need to stop whining, if you like, that they need a better employee experience and they need to buck up and get more tough and all of this kind of stuff.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I've seen I've I've seen a bunch of that from a from a bunch of different uh different quarters.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: In some cases, it's directed at millennials.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, well, back in my day, we didn't have X or Y or Z.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so why are millennials asking for you know for everything?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, it's it's such a meaning that that point of view is such a meaningless point of view.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because what we're talking because what we're talking about here is the idea that um employees will leave if they don't have an employee experience that that works for them.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't really matter what your opinion is as to whether they should or should not want more or less from the employee experience than you're giving them today, or I should say more accurately, um, it's not particularly relevant what your opinion is as to as to whether employees should ask for more.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is that employees, if they don't get what you're, if they're not picking up what you're putting down, as I like to say, if they're if they're not doing that, if they're if they're dissatisfied with the employee experience, it is easier than ever for them to work uh for them to vote with their feet and leave.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you can you can have whatever opinion you like about whether they should or whether they shouldn't.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: But if you want to run a business, then this is something that you have to address.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's a non-optional thing that you need to address when the competition for you as an employer has changed so dramatically over the course of the last year or so.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I'll take it back uh to what Paul said before about the great reevaluation.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, every employer needs to be at least in a state of recognition that each of their employees is a human that's going through some what does it all mean analysis right now, right?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and in that recognition, uh you need to rethink employee experience even in terms of the nomenclature.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's really the human experience.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: And an employer needs to be more accountable for the whole human experience.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the the the challenge is kind of in the original nomenclature.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you just think about your employees as employees, the the benefits that you provide um and the experience that you provide is only germane to them as an employee of that workplace, right?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, of that organization.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a lot more to a human than just work, right?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot more to a human than a job.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I think where the evolution is going to be going is in helping people develop not just a set of skills that helps them be a better employee to bet your bottom line, but to help them develop a set of skills that helps them be a better human.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's the recognition of that uh and getting just more, you know, persiquity about um what it takes to be for a human to be wholly personally effective and providing a set of incentives, a set of benefits, um, helping them develop a set of skills uh that that gets them to be maximally effective.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: Are you looking to hone the skills you need to thrive as work and the rest of our lives merge?
• 31:39
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• 31:41
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• 31:49
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• 31:54
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• 31:58
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• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: Billion Minds, providing practical tools for our way too busy lives.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, another thing that um relates to that, which is rather interesting to think of, is that even if you work an 80-hour week, um that still implies, by the way, that you're spending less than half of your time on this earth at work, right?
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's 168 hours in a week.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: So even if you're working an 80-hour week, you're spending 88 hours a week um where you're not at work, right?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: So in this world where work and the rest of our lives have sort of merged for many of us, and in this world where technology has enabled that that merging of those of those two elements, the ability of your employees to create the right uh separation between those two environments actually becomes very important.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because frankly, if they're showing up for work and have been completely unable to disassociate themselves from work the previous day, now they're showing up for work in what is basically a monotonous continuous grind that they're pushing through on a day-to-day basis due to the fact that they're unable to create the right blending when it's appropriate and separation when it's appropriate between those two environments.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the employer, in many cases, with the assistance of tech companies and so on, has created this world in which these two things are effectively merged.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so for the employer to then completely absolve themselves of the idea of um helping the whole human versus helping just this fictional thing, the isolated employee that has nothing to do with the rest of the human being, that's kind of ignoring reality at this point.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: That means they have a responsibility uh to be able to help that whole human navigate that environment.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this will only be exacerbated as we as these trends of work from anywhere and work at any time in any place uh continue and continue to grow.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: This this issue will only be exacerbated.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we think that the employers that do get that, that number one, get that it's kind of irrelevant whether they think it should it should happen or should not happen, it is happening.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that are actively taking steps to reflect the fact that this new world of work does exist, right?
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: We sometimes call ourselves a future of work startup.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I one thing I don't like about the fact that we call ourselves a future of work startup is it indicates that the future is like out there.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's here, right?
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: This new way in which we're we're working, which many of us are working right now.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: A billion people today do unstructured, ambiguous work.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: In the next five to seven years, another billion people will be doing unstructured, ambiguous work.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they'll be making all of these choices.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, they'll have to make a lot of those choices themselves as to how to be able to do it effectively.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: But the employers that are going to win are gonna be the employers that help them do that, so that they get more out of their employees when they're at work, so that when the employees do come to work, they feel uh basically enthusiastic about their full life, not just their uh just their work life.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so that the employees associate well-being in the workplace, as it were, with their employer and therefore want to stick with that employer.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: The employers that don't do that, well, you know, they can complain all they like, but they're not going to be relevant in five years' time and 10 years' time.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: So the future of work is now.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the future of work involves this unstructured, ambiguous work that many of us are going through.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, this is a good start.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: Good start to the to the new season.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, guys, this sounds awesome.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: I can't wait to talk more and get more in depth on all these topics because I think they're uh extremely important.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um just the most important thing we can do is get better as humans uh and and contribute and make stuff.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so looking forward to uh more conversations like this.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: Strong finish, Matt.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to be good to be back, as they say.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: What we got to do is you know, make stuff and save humanity.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Make stuff and save humanity.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: Peace out.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: The way too busy podcast was presented and produced by me, Matt Neal, and was brought to you by Billion Minds.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to get in touch with us, tweet us at Rising Billion or email us at WayTooBusy at Billion Minds.com.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: Billion Minds, creating practical tools for our way too busy lives.