September 23, 2024 • 19 mins
Wayne Turmel and Marisa Eikenberry dive into the hybrid work debate, comparing two very unlikely animals: mules and platypuses. Wayne introduces his humorous yet insightful analogy, explaining how a “mule” model of hybrid work is intentional and strategic, while a “platypus” model is a chaotic, unplanned combination of different parts.
They discuss the challenges many organizations face when trying to make hybrid work “work” and provide practical advice on moving from a disjointed model to one that serves both teams and the business. With the rapid evolution of remote and hybrid environments, the question becomes: is your team a well-planned mule or a hodgepodge platypus?
Key Takeaways
- What hybrid work really means and why most companies are just coping rather than strategizing.
- The difference between a mule and platypus approach in hybrid work.
- How strategic hybrid teams balance not only where but also when work happens.
- Practical steps to move from a platypus hybrid model to a mule-like, intentional approach.
- The importance of understanding both asynchronous and synchronous work in a hybrid setting.
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
01:05 Hybrid Work Explained
02:30 Mules vs. Platypuses
04:20 The Platypus Problem
06:10 What Makes a Good “Mule” Hybrid Model?
08:45 Hybrid Work Strategies
10:30 Asynchronous Work and Its Benefits
12:00 Building Intentional Hybrid Teams
14:00 Steps to Transition from Platypus to Mule
16:40 Closing
Related Episodes
Additional Resources
- Learn more about Wayne Turmel
- Email Wayne Turmel
- Connect with Wayne Turmel on LinkedIn
- Learn more about Marisa Eikenberry
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Welcome back to the.
Long distance work life.
We help you live, work and thrivein remote and hybrid teams.
I'm Marissa Eikenberry,a fellow remote worker,
and joining me is my co-hostand remote work expert, Winter Bell.
Hi, Lynn.
Hello, Marissa. How are you?
I'm great. How are you?
I am fine.
For the uninitiated,we are recording this on the Friday
(00:28):
before a long weekendand things may get silly.
Is. We're ready to go.
But anyway, we're also talkingabout something silly, so that that helps.
But lately, in articles and stuff,when you've been talking
about hybrid in the sense ofdo you want a mule or a platypus?
(00:51):
And which, first of all,I think it's hilarious.
But why don't we start off with
can you explain how that analogy appliesto remote models or hybrid?
Well, there arethere are grown people basically
saying, I don't want a mule or a platypus.
What are you talking about?
So here is what is
(01:14):
I have been spending a lot of time
thinking, writing,talk to customers about hybrid work,
and I realized that most of what we
call hybrid work isn't okay.
at best,
what most teams are doing,most organizations are doing
is a hostage negotiation.
(01:37):
Sounds about right.
How much can we make themcome into the office before they quit?
And how much can we whine and complain
about not going into the officebefore they fire us and we settle on?
Okay, come in three days a week.
And that's kind of it.
And that works kind of, sort of that
doesn't make anybody ecstatic,but it gets stuff done.
(02:01):
It's fine.
But the problem is thatit is not a strategy.
It is a coping mechanism.
And as a result,
you get some weird problems with it.
I go into the officeand I can't get anything done
because people are stopping by my deskand they want to have meetings
(02:22):
I hadn't planned for,and there's somebody's birthdays,
or there's cake in the break room,and I can't get anything done.
But when I work from home,where I used to be able to get stuff done,
now I'm on zoommeetings from morning till night,
and that's one of the problemswhen you've kind of negotiated
one problem but haven't really thoughtabout the others.
(02:45):
Right?
So the question
leaving aside mules and platypuses is
do you want to have a strategicallyplanned hybrid work system,
or do you just want to havethis kind of ad hoc thing?
Which got me thinking about animals?
I'm getting to the point. I swear.
(03:06):
I know
it got me thinking about animals.
What is a hybrid?
In biological terms,a hybrid is the offspring
of two different animals
or biological entities.
You can have hybrid axes,but in this case two different animals,
which creates a third animal
(03:28):
which is a unique beast.
So the classic example is a mule.
Yes, it's part horse and part donkey.
But if you've ever encountered mules,you know that they are their own
distinct thing and another mule
is going to be more like a mule than it isits parent.
(03:51):
Right?
So I started thinking about other animalsthat are kind of a mash up,
and the one that struck me abecause it's hysterical, and B
because it's a really good exampleis the platypus, which, as you and I have
discussed, Marissa is essentiallyGod had spare parts lying around
(04:12):
and created this thing with a duckbilland a beaver tail
and poisonous toenails on its back feet,
and because why not?
And that's the whole point, is,from an evolutionary standpoint,
all of
those things developed for a good reason.
(04:33):
But evolution is slow.
And as the environment changes around it.
The corpus has a lot of stuffthat just doesn't make any sense anymore.
And if the environment is changingvery quickly so that it is rapidly
becoming endangered and there are fewerplaces on the planet, it's geographic,
(04:58):
where you find them geographically
is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking,
and it's just kind of like,I know there's a reason it evolved.
Poisonous toenails,
but probably every time
they introduce a new, predator
into the environment, they knowthat you have poisonous toenails.
(05:21):
And so they stay away from that. Right.
And so applied.
And plus, while it continues to exist,it's kind of an evolutionary dead end,
and it can't suddenly change directionand become something else.
Right.
That makes sense.
So a mule is carefully chosenfor very specific things.
(05:44):
It's replicable and it will continue
to be useful and existfor a very long time.
A platypus has been leftto its own devices.
And, you know,if you live in the right part of Tasmania
and and you don't bother them too much,they're fine.
But they're not expanding,
they're not growing,they're not becoming more plentiful.
(06:07):
Right.
Because they've just kind of beenallowed to evolve.
And the way that they've evolvedhas responded
slowly to changes in their environment.
But there's no plan to it.
Right?
So okay, so if mule is considered
the true hybrid, what are some elements
of successful hybrid work modelsthat you're highlighting in this?
(06:31):
Yeah, the big thing about
hybrid work is most people think work.
Hybrid work is what work gets done.
Where. Right.
And a hybrida truly hybrid work experience
is, yes, what work gets done where,but also when it introduces
(06:52):
the concept of time,the idea of there are times
when asynchronous work is preferableand is really good,
and there are timeswhen perhaps we need to be together. So,
a platypus team, for example,
might say, yeah,
(07:14):
we're in the office three days a week,and the days when you're not,
we want you logged in the same timeas the people in the office.
And when you logged out,
when they're gone.
Right.
So that essentially, yes,you are free to work wherever you want,
but by golly, you better be availablewhen Nancy in accounting wants you.
(07:36):
Right.
And it's differentif you're, you know, customer support
or something like that,where those hours are really important.
But, you know, if you're a web developer,does it really matter?
Well, well.
And if in my case, I live three timezones away from you and Kevin.
Right? Right now I'm an early bird.
So fortunately my body clock in my brainstarts very early in the morning.
(08:01):
So I kind of sortof keep East Coast hours,
but I don't have to.
Right.
There are certain number of hours in a day
where we want overlap.
Yeah.
When you and I talk about available.
Yeah.
When you like I talk about stuffwhen we have team meetings
(08:21):
there is time that we need to overlap.
But generally speaking
Kevin doesn't track my time.
I'm getting stuff done.
You're getting stuff done.
It's all cool.
you know, again on a platypus team.
Great.
I have to come into the officethree days a week, so I fight
(08:41):
traffic and I show up in a bad mood,and I throw my coat over
my chair, and I try to concentrate,and people are bugging me.
And then at the end of the day,I pick up my coat and I leave.
Right. Well, that kind of work
maybe doesn't need to
be done amongst all those other people.
And when other people are askingfor your time, right.
(09:04):
And hybrid teams that are really effective
maximize the what, where and when.
So when they are in the office together
that's when the collaboration, the team
building, the social niceties
occur and people aren't worriedabout checking stuff off their list.
(09:24):
Right. Yeah.
They plan the day aroundbeing in the office essentially.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And conversely, if I'm in the officethree days a week, I do not expect to
be on zoom calls from morning till nightwhen I'm working away from the office,
because a lot of that should have happenedwhen we were together.
(09:45):
Right?
The idea of meetings, right.
When do we hold meetings?
Well, maybe we hold meetings when peopleare there as opposed to not right.
so hybrid teams take this into accountand even meetings are different.
Let me give you anexample. On a good mule team.
And Idon't mean mule team like calling the.
(10:08):
Dope mules.
On a mule type team.
You are going to have a meetingto brainstorm something.
Well, there's an asynchronous component upfront.
Let's put all the ideas in teamsbefore we get there,
and we, as good teammates,will have read it and thought about it
and actually be prepared to discuss itwhen the meeting starts
(10:31):
so that the meeting is actually spentdoing valuable stuff,
sorting through ideas,defending, studying, figuring it out.
At the end of the meeting,we're pretty sure we have a choice,
and we've all left meetings
and been halfway down the hall and go,oh man, you know what I should have said?
(10:52):
Or you know what, I didn't ask.
Oh my God,we didn't think about that. Right?
Well, on an asynchronous team,
you go back and say,hey, I know we thought about this.
Here's what we need to think aboutfor our next meeting.
Has anybody got an answer for this?
You can talk me off the ledgebecause I think this is kind of important.
and they maximize what work gets donewhen.
(11:15):
Right. That makes sense.
And it's conscious.
It's intentional. Now, let's be fair.
It's a lot easier to do thiswith a startup or a team
or a projectthat is just coming to fruition
than it is to fix the boatwhen it's in the water, right?
And it doesn't mean it can't be done,
(11:37):
of course.
But the big thing,the whole point of metaphor of the mules
and the platypusesis, are you intentional?
Do you know what you wantthat team to accomplish?
I'm doing research for a new novel rightnow, so I'm fascinated with mules.
That's how this whole thing started. Okay.
(11:59):
And what I found is that
mules can carryfar more weight than horses.
they consume less
water than camels on long rides.
Okay.
And their feet are designedfor rough terrain, right?
Because their feetare much more like donkey feet than,
(12:23):
which means for certain jobs, i.e.
anything involving the desertmules are way more helpful than horses.
Horses are prettier and more expensive,and all of that
and donkeys are smaller, and there's onlyso much you can do with them.
But mulesare bred for very specific things,
(12:44):
and every mule is going to have
those particular things in them. Right.
That makes sense.
It's intentional.
It's intentional.
And so that's
a that's where the metaphor came from.
Lest you think I do nothing all day but
think of weird things.
(13:05):
but when I started thinkingabout applying that to work
and being intentionalabout how you form your team,
so many teams are formedbecause, well, okay, here's what we got.
So how do we make this work?
And we got to make sure everybody's happy.
And you know, yes,the work has to get done.
But we'll just do this.
(13:25):
And then they find outthat it's not working.
And now what do we do.
And so it's little tweaks and adjustments
rather than taking a long term view.
So if a user and or
user listener is on right nowand maybe they realize that, you know,
their organization has this platypus typehybrid model, what are some steps
(13:49):
that they can take to kind of transitioninto a more mule like model?
Yeah, there are questions
and there are plenty of questionsin the long distance leader.
Some of the
resources and things that you can get.
If you sign upfor the book on our website, you can get,
(14:10):
resources and checklists for things.
But the biggest thing iswhat is the work that needs to be done?
Who needs to do the work, and
what's the best optimum wayfor that work to get done?
And if you can answer those,
it starts to become fairly clear.
(14:30):
Oh, this is something that doesneed to be, you know, the widgets need
to be taken from the warehouse to a truckthat's not going to happen any other way.
Right?
Right.
Yeah. Some stuff becomes very obvious.
Yeah, some stuff is very obvious.
Other stuff is like,
do we really need to be in the office,or do
(14:51):
we need to be doing that job from 9 to 5,whatever it is?
And if the pandemic has taught usnothing, it's
there are lots of jobs that can be doneremotely that nobody thought about.
Yeah. Or thought couldn't be doneremotely.
Or thought couldn't be done.
And man, maybe we need to do this.
(15:12):
So the big thing
that I want people to take away
is what work needs to be done whenand to be very intentional about that.
And you might be wrong the first time.
Yeah.
You may not get it right the first time.
(15:33):
but you're in this for the long haul.
One would hope.
Hopefully.
And so that's
the thing about the hybrid work.
And there are advantages, right?
if we need to be in the officeall the time
and we need to hire new people,
(15:55):
people will say, oh,
we need to hire the absolute best,most talented people out there.
And what they really mean is
we need the best, most talented,smartest people out there
who live within a 20 minutedrive of the office right?
If the best talent is
what is most important to your business.
They might be three.
(16:15):
How much does location matter?
Yeah, exactly.So these are the types of questions.
So the whole thing about mules versusplatypuses is a very long,
convoluted, slightlyamusing way of framing your thinking
as you think about whatyour team should look like going forward.
Real quick before we wrap up,you know, as hybrid work continues
(16:38):
to evolve and continuesto get more prevalent, do you think that
organizations are going to be strategicand develop these mule like models,
or do you think that platypus style modelsare going to remain prevalent?
I think there's always some of it.
Human beings are not great at strategicthinking, the ones who are very good
(17:00):
at it.
But human beings in generaldo not think very strategically.
we're oftenreacting to the crisis de jure.
I think again,
new companies, startups,
projects that are just getting under wayhave an advantage
(17:20):
because you have a short period of timewhere you can actually stop
and think about what you're doingbefore the work starts.
Right?
So I'm trying to.
Not be too judgmental
about people that aren'tbecause we're all doing our darndest here.
(17:41):
Yeah,
yeah, we're trying our best. Right.
But Wayne, thank you so muchfor these insights and why.
You know, you have the that,hybrid versus platypus model or.
You walk around with this brainand see what kind of stuff you come
up with is all I'm saying.
I'll choosenot to, but that's another day.
(18:03):
All right?
Not a bad choice, by the way.
Okay.
But anyway, thank you so much.
And before we go, I want to let all of youlisteners know that the second edition
of The Long Distance Leader,which if you're watching on video,
I have right in front of me,it is now available.
And this updated guide is perfectfor navigating today's remote
and hybrid work environmentswith new principles and proven strategies.
(18:26):
Kevin, like Mary and Wayne Trammell,
show you how to lead effectivelyno matter where your team is located.
Don't miss out
on the latest insights and exercisesdesigned to boost productivity and morale.
Order your copy now!
At Long Distance Work life.com/l
d l and strengthenyour remote leadership skills today.
And thank you for listening to the longDistance work life for Shownotes
(18:48):
transcripts and other resources,
make sure to visit Long Distanceworklife.com if you haven't yet,
subscribe to the podcastso you won't miss any future episodes.
And if you're on Apple or Spotify,please give us a rating or review.
Your feedback helps us improve and reacheven more listeners.
Just like you.
Feel free to contact us via email orLinkedIn with the links in our show notes,
(19:09):
and let us knowthat you listen to this episode,
or even suggest a topic for Wayneand I to tackle in a future episode.
We would love to hear from you.Thank you for joining us.
And as Wayne like to say,don't let the whistles get you down.
Welcome back to the.
Long distance work life.
We help you live, work and thrivein remote and hybrid teams.
I'm Marissa Eikenberry,a fellow remote worker,
and joining me is my co-hostand remote work expert, Winter Bell.
Hi, Lynn.
Hello, Marissa. How are you?
I'm great. How are you?
I am fine.
For the uninitiated,we are recording this on the Friday
(00:28):
before a long weekendand things may get silly.
Is. We're ready to go.
But anyway, we're also talkingabout something silly, so that that helps.
But lately, in articles and stuff,when you've been talking
about hybrid in the sense ofdo you want a mule or a platypus?
(00:51):
And which, first of all,I think it's hilarious.
But why don't we start off with
can you explain how that analogy appliesto remote models or hybrid?
Well, there arethere are grown people basically
saying, I don't want a mule or a platypus.
What are you talking about?
So here is what is
(01:14):
I have been spending a lot of time
thinking, writing,talk to customers about hybrid work,
and I realized that most of what we
call hybrid work isn't okay.
at best,
what most teams are doing,most organizations are doing
is a hostage negotiation.
(01:37):
Sounds about right.
How much can we make themcome into the office before they quit?
And how much can we whine and complain
about not going into the officebefore they fire us and we settle on?
Okay, come in three days a week.
And that's kind of it.
And that works kind of, sort of that
doesn't make anybody ecstatic,but it gets stuff done.
(02:01):
It's fine.
But the problem is thatit is not a strategy.
It is a coping mechanism.
And as a result,
you get some weird problems with it.
I go into the officeand I can't get anything done
because people are stopping by my deskand they want to have meetings
(02:22):
I hadn't planned for,and there's somebody's birthdays,
or there's cake in the break room,and I can't get anything done.
But when I work from home,where I used to be able to get stuff done,
now I'm on zoommeetings from morning till night,
and that's one of the problemswhen you've kind of negotiated
one problem but haven't really thoughtabout the others.
(02:45):
Right?
So the question
leaving aside mules and platypuses is
do you want to have a strategicallyplanned hybrid work system,
or do you just want to havethis kind of ad hoc thing?
Which got me thinking about animals?
I'm getting to the point. I swear.
(03:06):
I know
it got me thinking about animals.
What is a hybrid?
In biological terms,a hybrid is the offspring
of two different animals
or biological entities.
You can have hybrid axes,but in this case two different animals,
which creates a third animal
(03:28):
which is a unique beast.
So the classic example is a mule.
Yes, it's part horse and part donkey.
But if you've ever encountered mules,you know that they are their own
distinct thing and another mule
is going to be more like a mule than it isits parent.
(03:51):
Right?
So I started thinking about other animalsthat are kind of a mash up,
and the one that struck me abecause it's hysterical, and B
because it's a really good exampleis the platypus, which, as you and I have
discussed, Marissa is essentiallyGod had spare parts lying around
(04:12):
and created this thing with a duckbilland a beaver tail
and poisonous toenails on its back feet,
and because why not?
And that's the whole point, is,from an evolutionary standpoint,
all of
those things developed for a good reason.
(04:33):
But evolution is slow.
And as the environment changes around it.
The corpus has a lot of stuffthat just doesn't make any sense anymore.
And if the environment is changingvery quickly so that it is rapidly
becoming endangered and there are fewerplaces on the planet, it's geographic,
(04:58):
where you find them geographically
is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking,
and it's just kind of like,I know there's a reason it evolved.
Poisonous toenails,
but probably every time
they introduce a new, predator
into the environment, they knowthat you have poisonous toenails.
(05:21):
And so they stay away from that. Right.
And so applied.
And plus, while it continues to exist,it's kind of an evolutionary dead end,
and it can't suddenly change directionand become something else.
Right.
That makes sense.
So a mule is carefully chosenfor very specific things.
(05:44):
It's replicable and it will continue
to be useful and existfor a very long time.
A platypus has been leftto its own devices.
And, you know,if you live in the right part of Tasmania
and and you don't bother them too much,they're fine.
But they're not expanding,
they're not growing,they're not becoming more plentiful.
(06:07):
Right.
Because they've just kind of beenallowed to evolve.
And the way that they've evolvedhas responded
slowly to changes in their environment.
But there's no plan to it.
Right?
So okay, so if mule is considered
the true hybrid, what are some elements
of successful hybrid work modelsthat you're highlighting in this?
(06:31):
Yeah, the big thing about
hybrid work is most people think work.
Hybrid work is what work gets done.
Where. Right.
And a hybrida truly hybrid work experience
is, yes, what work gets done where,but also when it introduces
(06:52):
the concept of time,the idea of there are times
when asynchronous work is preferableand is really good,
and there are timeswhen perhaps we need to be together. So,
a platypus team, for example,
might say, yeah,
(07:14):
we're in the office three days a week,and the days when you're not,
we want you logged in the same timeas the people in the office.
And when you logged out,
when they're gone.
Right.
So that essentially, yes,you are free to work wherever you want,
but by golly, you better be availablewhen Nancy in accounting wants you.
(07:36):
Right.
And it's differentif you're, you know, customer support
or something like that,where those hours are really important.
But, you know, if you're a web developer,does it really matter?
Well, well.
And if in my case, I live three timezones away from you and Kevin.
Right? Right now I'm an early bird.
So fortunately my body clock in my brainstarts very early in the morning.
(08:01):
So I kind of sortof keep East Coast hours,
but I don't have to.
Right.
There are certain number of hours in a day
where we want overlap.
Yeah.
When you and I talk about available.
Yeah.
When you like I talk about stuffwhen we have team meetings
(08:21):
there is time that we need to overlap.
But generally speaking
Kevin doesn't track my time.
I'm getting stuff done.
You're getting stuff done.
It's all cool.
you know, again on a platypus team.
Great.
I have to come into the officethree days a week, so I fight
(08:41):
traffic and I show up in a bad mood,and I throw my coat over
my chair, and I try to concentrate,and people are bugging me.
And then at the end of the day,I pick up my coat and I leave.
Right. Well, that kind of work
maybe doesn't need to
be done amongst all those other people.
And when other people are askingfor your time, right.
(09:04):
And hybrid teams that are really effective
maximize the what, where and when.
So when they are in the office together
that's when the collaboration, the team
building, the social niceties
occur and people aren't worriedabout checking stuff off their list.
(09:24):
Right. Yeah.
They plan the day aroundbeing in the office essentially.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And conversely, if I'm in the officethree days a week, I do not expect to
be on zoom calls from morning till nightwhen I'm working away from the office,
because a lot of that should have happenedwhen we were together.
(09:45):
Right?
The idea of meetings, right.
When do we hold meetings?
Well, maybe we hold meetings when peopleare there as opposed to not right.
so hybrid teams take this into accountand even meetings are different.
Let me give you anexample. On a good mule team.
And Idon't mean mule team like calling the.
(10:08):
Dope mules.
On a mule type team.
You are going to have a meetingto brainstorm something.
Well, there's an asynchronous component upfront.
Let's put all the ideas in teamsbefore we get there,
and we, as good teammates,will have read it and thought about it
and actually be prepared to discuss itwhen the meeting starts
(10:31):
so that the meeting is actually spentdoing valuable stuff,
sorting through ideas,defending, studying, figuring it out.
At the end of the meeting,we're pretty sure we have a choice,
and we've all left meetings
and been halfway down the hall and go,oh man, you know what I should have said?
(10:52):
Or you know what, I didn't ask.
Oh my God,we didn't think about that. Right?
Well, on an asynchronous team,
you go back and say,hey, I know we thought about this.
Here's what we need to think aboutfor our next meeting.
Has anybody got an answer for this?
You can talk me off the ledgebecause I think this is kind of important.
and they maximize what work gets donewhen.
(11:15):
Right. That makes sense.
And it's conscious.
It's intentional. Now, let's be fair.
It's a lot easier to do thiswith a startup or a team
or a projectthat is just coming to fruition
than it is to fix the boatwhen it's in the water, right?
And it doesn't mean it can't be done,
(11:37):
of course.
But the big thing,the whole point of metaphor of the mules
and the platypusesis, are you intentional?
Do you know what you wantthat team to accomplish?
I'm doing research for a new novel rightnow, so I'm fascinated with mules.
That's how this whole thing started. Okay.
(11:59):
And what I found is that
mules can carryfar more weight than horses.
they consume less
water than camels on long rides.
Okay.
And their feet are designedfor rough terrain, right?
Because their feetare much more like donkey feet than,
(12:23):
which means for certain jobs, i.e.
anything involving the desertmules are way more helpful than horses.
Horses are prettier and more expensive,and all of that
and donkeys are smaller, and there's onlyso much you can do with them.
But mulesare bred for very specific things,
(12:44):
and every mule is going to have
those particular things in them. Right.
That makes sense.
It's intentional.
It's intentional.
And so that's
a that's where the metaphor came from.
Lest you think I do nothing all day but
think of weird things.
(13:05):
but when I started thinkingabout applying that to work
and being intentionalabout how you form your team,
so many teams are formedbecause, well, okay, here's what we got.
So how do we make this work?
And we got to make sure everybody's happy.
And you know, yes,the work has to get done.
But we'll just do this.
(13:25):
And then they find outthat it's not working.
And now what do we do.
And so it's little tweaks and adjustments
rather than taking a long term view.
So if a user and or
user listener is on right nowand maybe they realize that, you know,
their organization has this platypus typehybrid model, what are some steps
(13:49):
that they can take to kind of transitioninto a more mule like model?
Yeah, there are questions
and there are plenty of questionsin the long distance leader.
Some of the
resources and things that you can get.
If you sign upfor the book on our website, you can get,
(14:10):
resources and checklists for things.
But the biggest thing iswhat is the work that needs to be done?
Who needs to do the work, and
what's the best optimum wayfor that work to get done?
And if you can answer those,
it starts to become fairly clear.
(14:30):
Oh, this is something that doesneed to be, you know, the widgets need
to be taken from the warehouse to a truckthat's not going to happen any other way.
Right?
Right.
Yeah. Some stuff becomes very obvious.
Yeah, some stuff is very obvious.
Other stuff is like,
do we really need to be in the office,or do
(14:51):
we need to be doing that job from 9 to 5,whatever it is?
And if the pandemic has taught usnothing, it's
there are lots of jobs that can be doneremotely that nobody thought about.
Yeah. Or thought couldn't be doneremotely.
Or thought couldn't be done.
And man, maybe we need to do this.
(15:12):
So the big thing
that I want people to take away
is what work needs to be done whenand to be very intentional about that.
And you might be wrong the first time.
Yeah.
You may not get it right the first time.
(15:33):
but you're in this for the long haul.
One would hope.
Hopefully.
And so that's
the thing about the hybrid work.
And there are advantages, right?
if we need to be in the officeall the time
and we need to hire new people,
(15:55):
people will say, oh,
we need to hire the absolute best,most talented people out there.
And what they really mean is
we need the best, most talented,smartest people out there
who live within a 20 minutedrive of the office right?
If the best talent is
what is most important to your business.
They might be three.
(16:15):
How much does location matter?
Yeah, exactly.So these are the types of questions.
So the whole thing about mules versusplatypuses is a very long,
convoluted, slightlyamusing way of framing your thinking
as you think about whatyour team should look like going forward.
Real quick before we wrap up,you know, as hybrid work continues
(16:38):
to evolve and continuesto get more prevalent, do you think that
organizations are going to be strategicand develop these mule like models,
or do you think that platypus style modelsare going to remain prevalent?
I think there's always some of it.
Human beings are not great at strategicthinking, the ones who are very good
(17:00):
at it.
But human beings in generaldo not think very strategically.
we're oftenreacting to the crisis de jure.
I think again,
new companies, startups,
projects that are just getting under wayhave an advantage
(17:20):
because you have a short period of timewhere you can actually stop
and think about what you're doingbefore the work starts.
Right?
So I'm trying to.
Not be too judgmental
about people that aren'tbecause we're all doing our darndest here.
(17:41):
Yeah,
yeah, we're trying our best. Right.
But Wayne, thank you so muchfor these insights and why.
You know, you have the that,hybrid versus platypus model or.
You walk around with this brainand see what kind of stuff you come
up with is all I'm saying.
I'll choosenot to, but that's another day.
(18:03):
All right?
Not a bad choice, by the way.
Okay.
But anyway, thank you so much.
And before we go, I want to let all of youlisteners know that the second edition
of The Long Distance Leader,which if you're watching on video,
I have right in front of me,it is now available.
And this updated guide is perfectfor navigating today's remote
and hybrid work environmentswith new principles and proven strategies.
(18:26):
Kevin, like Mary and Wayne Trammell,
show you how to lead effectivelyno matter where your team is located.
Don't miss out
on the latest insights and exercisesdesigned to boost productivity and morale.
Order your copy now!
At Long Distance Work life.com/l
d l and strengthenyour remote leadership skills today.
And thank you for listening to the longDistance work life for Shownotes
(18:48):
transcripts and other resources,
make sure to visit Long Distanceworklife.com if you haven't yet,
subscribe to the podcastso you won't miss any future episodes.
And if you're on Apple or Spotify,please give us a rating or review.
Your feedback helps us improve and reacheven more listeners.
Just like you.
Feel free to contact us via email orLinkedIn with the links in our show notes,
(19:09):
and let us knowthat you listen to this episode,
or even suggest a topic for Wayneand I to tackle in a future episode.
We would love to hear from you.Thank you for joining us.
And as Wayne like to say,don't let the whistles get you down.
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