May 15, 2025 • 14 mins
Brian Elliott returns to Work 20XX with a fresh lens on scaling distributed work, investing in people, and navigating the J-curve of technology adoption inside teams. Because what works for supporting distributed teams, works for increasing team AI adoption. Align on real goals, only three to five, and check in with tweet sized updates, once a week, on those three goals.
Please join me in welcoming Brian Elliott back to the Work 20XX podcast from Running Remote.
As co-founder of Future Forum, co-author of How the Future Works, and now with his new Newsletter, Work Forward, Brian is a data-filled champion of distributed teams years and years, long before Covid, before it was in fashion.
He continues in that tradition with his latest, the Work Forward newsletter, chock-full-o case studies, research, and exercises to help you get more out of your team. He pulls from the best, including a heavy dose of Atlassian, PagerDuty, and Neiman Marcus.
Recorded April 30, Fair Market, Austin
Special thanks to Liam Martin, Egor Borushko, Ana Maria Bennett & Team Running Remote
Brian Elliott v2: Invest, J-Curve, Goals, Team | Work 20XX podcast with Jeff Frick Ep43 from Running Remote
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Okay, so the camera’s going?
Yep, alright
So we are speeding.
So we'll go in
3, 2, 1.
Hey welcome back everybodyJeff Frick here.
Coming to you for a veryspecial episode of Work 20XX
We're in Austin, Texas at theRunning Remote Conference
hundreds of the leading minds about remote work
but it’s important to always remember
(00:20):
everything that’s good for remote work
is also good for hybrid.
Also good for distributed teams.
Also even good if you're back in the office.
So there's a lot of great lessons.
And we're excitedto have our next guest
who's reallyliterally
wrote the book on this topic,
and now he's writinga new newsletter.
So let's check in with Brian Elliott.
Hey Jeff
Brian great to see you
Good to see you too.
Glad to be here with you
Your new company, CEO of Work Forward.
Yep.
(00:40):
And you’ve got a really cool and
deeply researchednewsletter
that's going out on your Substack.
Yeah.
So ‘Work Forward’ the[https://theworkforward.substack.com]
on Substack is my newsletter.[https://theworkforward.substack.com]
It's got a combinationof like all the data
in my data geekiness that people come to expect from me,
but also a lot of storytelling.
Like, I just wrote a story the other day
that combined some learnings
from Pagerduty and Atlassianaround workplaces,
(01:00):
doing the piece on likehow to manage outcomes,
especially indistributed teams,
but also the impactthat has on generative AI.
There's a lot ofcontent out there
that I learned fromlistening to people
that are actually doing the work,
that are actually leading the way,
and I try to bring those storiesto everybody else
Yeah, I love it because you are
you are outtalking to people.
So, in fact I notedthe Atlassian.
Three things you noted there was
Radical Transparency.
(01:22):
Yep
Enforced Focus andLightweight Updates.
[Jeff] I wonder if you can[Brian] Yeah!
expand on that a little bit.
[Brian] Yeah, sure.[Jeff] I was at Atlassian Summit
two weeks ago andI love their focus on goals.
Yeah, goals focus has really beena big thing for me
for a long time.
In my startup days
I learned the hard way really that
like if you don't have focus on
like what's the most important two, three things
for you to get done,
(01:42):
it's really hard to get the team aligned.
And by the way,being in a startup
forces that kind of discipline.
Companies get bigger,they get sloppy, to be honest,
and people don't havealignment anymore.
So Molly Sands, who leads the research team at
at Team Anywhere withalong with Annie Dean,
she and I talked about this in depth
in terms of what they do.
So three simple rulesthat I really loved.
Number one is 3 to 5 goals per team.
(02:05):
And that's it on a quarterly basis,
3 to 5 goals that are clearly articulated,
that are measurable,that you can talk about.
And at least once a month
go, hey, how are we doing against that?
Are we moving forwardor are we not?
Where are we struggling?
What can we doto get back on track
or is this not working?
So that'snumber one.
Number two is transparency
and that's a huge deal
I can see inside of Atlassian
anybody else's goals,any team's goals.
(02:27):
I can subscribe to.
So if there's something going on in marketing
that impactsmy team,
I can see how they're doing.
That takes all themystery out of it
and also means we can actually,
you know, go forward and do better.
The third one is a little mechanical,
but I've heard so manypeople complain
Oh my God
I have to do 25 updates a week
in three different systems.
There's is really simple
(02:47):
Tweet size updates
once a week
on those top goals.
So if you think about itthat way, it's like,
I really just want to make it clear
what we're working on.
I want to know where we are,
be transparent
and make it simplefor people to do.
You can go a long way ingetting people aligned
and marching in a common direction,
Right, I love it
just the forced prioritization.
Yeah.
So the radical transparency though
(03:07):
can be hard for some companies.
[Jeff] But one thing [Brian] It is
I just attended your sessiona little while ago that
that everybody should be able to do.
You know, and you're talking about
middle managersbeing just burned out.
Stuck in the middle.
But at the same time they're not getting any training
about thisnew world so
What is going on there?
Why aren’t people investing in these people?
Yeah. So it's really sad like
I think it was Gallup that put out a survey
(03:28):
just a couple of weeks agosaying that something like
44% of managers globallyhave no training whatsoever.
That's just really sadwhen you think about it.
It's not surprising, right?
People get promoted into the job
because they’re the mostsenior person on the team,
but then they're expected allof a sudden to be a manager
and you've got no support in doing it.
So that's bad.
Kate Lister put out aresearch piece last year
saying that something like25% of managers
(03:50):
have any management background training support
in leading distributed teams,
75% of those managersare leading distributed teams.
So we're kind of leaving them outto dry in a lot of different ways.
There's simple things you can do
to address those sorts of things,
but man, you can't expect that you're going to get better
as a company and as an organization
if you don't invest in leadership,
Right
(04:11):
And especially given how fastthe world around us is changing
to ignore that is like pretending
that we can actually just keepon limping our way
through all the dramaticchanges facing us
from you know, the economy to generative AI to flexibility.
Right.
Well, you went throughkind of a Maslow's triangle
of the different attributes.
And the one on the top was a learning culture so
I mean you would think if
(04:32):
maybe people don't have a learning culture,
they think we've beendoing it this way forever,
and maybe we can stay at the top of the Fortune 500 for another 60 years.
But that's notthe case at all.
No, no, some of the datathat’s wild for me is like
1940s, 65 years was the average tenure of the S&P 500.
2014 is like17 years. Right.
So just like longevity of firmsisn't there in the same way.
I think a lot of people saylearning culture,
(04:54):
but they're not puttingthe resources behind it
because you've got to make a short term investment
for long term gains, right.
You gotta be willingto say, hey, look,
we're going to loosen up
this quarter's goals enoughto give people actual room
to get their hands on
these new generative AI tools, for example,
because they’re not going to be more productive
coming out ofthe gates. Right?
Any time you have to learn new skills
(05:14):
and adapt to new ways of working,
it's going to taketime and effort.
If you're not willing to put alittle bit of slack in the system,
you're not going to get overthe hump of that learning curve
that's going to give you the long term gains.
But if you're gonna havea learning culture,
you've got to put time, energyand resources behind it
to make it happen.
And you really focused on that last talk
about the J Curve, that
that by rule
(05:35):
There's a downward dip in the slope.
Because you gotta learn the new thing.
Yeah, you gotta thinkabout this is like
it's happened in every single technology
that’s been massive and major.
The initial downward slope is
it takes investmentto get that good enough.
And so think about thiswith generative AI.
For the past couple of years,
a lot of what we've been doingis swivel chair, right.
It’s like okay, I've got my regular process
(05:57):
and I'm coming over hereinto this other tool to figure it out.
It's also people are figuring out like
What's it good at?What can I use it for?
What can I do with it?
Right
Those investments are goingto take productivity down
for a period of time.
But if you believe and I do,that this can actually make you
more efficient, more effectiveand better longer term.
You have to paythat price sometime.
(06:17):
And by the way, if you're notpaying that price now
one of your competitors might be.
And eventually what'sgoing to happen is
you're going to be sitting there saying,
why are my people not adoptingthis stuff and going faster?
And the answeris going to be
because you've given themno time to do it.
Right, right.
[Brian] So it's wild[Jeff] It's crazy.
So another really
just crazy dichotomy you pointed out
was with the difference
on the investment in customer side.
(06:38):
Customer segmentation customer journey, buying journey
sophisticated micro segmentation.
And yet one's treating the office like it's 1955 Mad Men
[Jeff] It’s crazy [Brian] Yeah yeah
So the employeeexperience
does not get the level of investment
that customer experiencedoes unfortunately.
We've seen the impact of technology
on customers and digital transformations
and all therest of it.
(06:59):
We’ve not done the same thing with employees.
And I’ll give you like even workplaceis a great example of that.
Workplace teams have undergone more pressure
and need to transform in the lastfive years than anybody else.
More than I.T., more than HR, morethan even leaders in some ways.
And I can see the differencebetween firms that are actually
putting supportinto those teams
to help them rethinkthe role of offices, right
(07:21):
which are really are essential
for a lot of teams in terms of team building and collaboration.
They're redesigning spaces.
They may beshrinking it.
They're giving people that aredistributed access to more tools,
but also those leaders are puttingin place small teams to help.
A lot of other managerswho we've just noted
aren't really trained
to make them capable of doing like
a lot better team buildingwith their organizations.
(07:44):
The leaders are doing thatare getting further ahead.
There's about half thatworkforce crowd though
that wants to do those things,
but their leadership is like
it's not worth the investment or
maybe they're all going to come back.
And so they're frozen in placeand it's just like generative AI.
The longer you wait to startexperimenting, innovating,
piloting out new ways of working,
the further behind you're going to be.
(08:05):
The further behind you go
So, it’s interesting, I don't know,
I think you're the first one to really tie together
the management skills that
that enable people to be successful at distributed work
Yeah
are the same set of skills and behaviors
that will enablethe managers
to drive successful adoptionof AI in their team.
Which as you said, right now,
one of the biggest challenges everybody has.
(08:26):
I thought that was so insightful.
So what are the key attributes that cross that line?
Yes. We already talked aboutlike a learning culture
which sort of sits at the top of that Maslow's structure of needs
The second layer belowthat is ‘Team Oriented’
because there's not a one sizefits all in organizations
when it comes to flexibility, right?
The needs of,
teams that are in Europe
is different from the USis different from China.
(08:47):
The needs of my engineering organization
are probably differentfrom sales.
So figuring out at the team level,
how are we going to adopt flexible work
is also going be the same thing as
how does generative AI fit in our flow and rhythms of work?
So you have to invest at the team level
below that, maybe the biggest oneat the end of the day,
that ‘Outcomes Orientation’we talked about
in terms of like Molly was explaining
at Atlassianwhat they do.
(09:08):
If you can focus on what are our most important goals
how are we goingto grow our business?
Then people can sit there and say, okay,
how can I use those toolsto achieve growth,
as opposed to hearing the word efficiency
and thinkinglayoffs,
or from aflexibility perspective,
instead of having goals
you're focused on are they sitting in their butts in seats
and being monitored?
(09:29):
And the base level really at the end of the day is
What's my talent strategy?
Am I after the best and brightestcapable people?
Am I going to invest in themin terms of training and skills?
Because I know that the agilitywe needed as an organization
is going to require
really great people that aresupported and feel engaged.
Or am I back in command and controland telling people what to do
(09:50):
and hopingthat somehow
the CEO is smart enough to see every curveball
that's coming at them
and get past it?
So that's the four levels of this.
The learning culture, team orientation,
outcomes, orientation and what's your talent strategy.
I confused you there
I made you go top to bottominstead of bottom to top.
[Brian] Yeah I can take it either direction [Jeff] Very good, good knowledge
I've done this enough
(10:10):
[Brian] times in enough conversations[Jeff] you’ve done that one a few times
with people I know wherethe problems are.
Well I wrote down some of these things
as you said just to call it out,
you know, outcomesversus attendance.
Yeah.
Objectives versus efficiency.
And you didn't call it out.
But Nick [Bloom] called it out.
And he did today here again Nick Bloom
on profit versus productivity.
Yeah.
He’s like people are going to continue on this route
because it's profitable
That's right.
It makes a lot of sense for people.
(10:31):
That's right.
And the piece of it
that he highlighted and you did to is the
is retention.
[Brian] That's right.
Because the people that are most likely to leave
unfortunately for you
are the ones that are the most qualified
because they're the ones that have the other options.
That's right.
And by the way,
one of the things that I love about this
is we keep talking aboutflexibility in office workers.
The same thing can apply to frontline workers.
(10:52):
I did a great case study on NeimanMarcus Group with Eric Severson
who was the Chief People Officer there.
They actually allowed people whowere store associates and operators
to do some of their work from home.
So, for example,if I'm a store associate,
I actually also managing customer list
and I'm doing training
and I'm doing some merchandizing.
Some of those can be done from home.
I also importantly wantsome schedule flexibility.
(11:14):
They found that those investmentsin flexibility for frontline workers
gave them literally industry leading retention numbers,
that kind of retention number,by the way,
also shows up in the bottomline of organizations.
So you can makethose investments.
And this is not just an office centric thing.
You can do it on the frontline too,
and it pays off on the bottom line results
Yeah.
So just to kind of wrap it up,I just want to
(11:36):
something you acknowledged again in the talk you just had
that this is not easy
and that, you know,
a lot of the tooling and the Gen AI and all these things
will takecare of the,
the mundane and the roteand the stupid stuff.
But it's not going totake care of the hard stuff.
[Bryan] That's right.[Jeff] So it
really it’s freeing up time for you to invest
in this stuff that's going to be hard
and a little bit more difficult
That's right.
And I'll tell you,
(11:56):
one of the thingsthat I've observed though
is I think a lot of CEOsare under pressure, right.
CEO turnover hit an all time high last year.
The board pressure,
the market pressureis through the roof.
Some of them and I've been in this spot before
are falling back into
what can kind offeel comfortable,
which is you're trained to have all the answers.
Right, right
So you start giving out commandsand having all the answers.
It’s hard but part of this is
(12:16):
how do I think about this as
I can still set those big aspirational goals,
but I can say,
I need all of you to figure outhow we're going to get there.
I'm going to enlist youin doing this.
And by the way,the reward is
you'll learn to your career is going to grow
and go additional places by doing that.
But as the leader, you got to think about this as not just
do I have allthe answers,
but how does my team have to have the answers
(12:38):
to drive thethe objectives that we've got?
Right. I just love it.
It just keeps coming backto team, team, team.
Because that's
Yeah
that's the unit where stuffgets accomplished, right?
That's right.
Individualscontribute but
it’s really the teams thatmove everything along.
That's right.I mean
what gets automated is thingsthat are rote, individual tasks.
Right
What remains is complex.
It's hard.
It's creative, it'sinterdisciplinary in nature.
(12:58):
That's why more than ever, actually,
human centeredleadership
is going to be a much betteranswer than falling back into
I've got all the answersand I'm the boss.
You keep sharing the answersBrian on Work Forward
And we’ll keep subscribing
cause you've got so much great content in those things
And I love all the use cases.
Thanks Jeff
And it’s not just1 or 2 companies,
as you showed on that slide.
There were dozens and dozens of companies
(13:19):
that are adopting this.
That's right.
If you're not,there may be a slot
a logo on that slide
[Brian] I gotta get a spot on there[Jeff] of one of your competitors
Exactly, exactly.
Somebody in your industrymost certainly is.
[Jeff] Yeah[Brian] So
All right Brian well it was greatto catch up again as always.
And thanksfor time.
Thanks, Jeff.Appreciate it.
All right. He's Brian I’m Jeff.
You’re watching Work 20XXSpecial Edition
coming from Running Remotein Austin, Texas.
(13:39):
Thanks for watching.
Thank you listening on the podcast
Catch you next timetake care.
Out
Awesome dude
You're a rock star.
The music was like,
Hey, Jeff Frick Here
big shout out to the podcast audience.
Thanks for listening in.
You can get show notes and transcripts at Work20XX.com
And that also has links to the videos as well.
(14:01):
Appreciate you listeningin on the podcast
Do reach out
say hello, like subscribeand smash that notification bell.
Thanks for listening.Take care. Bye bye.
Okay, so the camera’s going?
Yep, alright
So we are speeding.
So we'll go in
3, 2, 1.
Hey welcome back everybodyJeff Frick here.
Coming to you for a veryspecial episode of Work 20XX
We're in Austin, Texas at theRunning Remote Conference
hundreds of the leading minds about remote work
but it’s important to always remember
(00:20):
everything that’s good for remote work
is also good for hybrid.
Also good for distributed teams.
Also even good if you're back in the office.
So there's a lot of great lessons.
And we're excitedto have our next guest
who's reallyliterally
wrote the book on this topic,
and now he's writinga new newsletter.
So let's check in with Brian Elliott.
Hey Jeff
Brian great to see you
Good to see you too.
Glad to be here with you
Your new company, CEO of Work Forward.
Yep.
(00:40):
And you’ve got a really cool and
deeply researchednewsletter
that's going out on your Substack.
Yeah.
So ‘Work Forward’ the[https://theworkforward.substack.com]
on Substack is my newsletter.[https://theworkforward.substack.com]
It's got a combinationof like all the data
in my data geekiness that people come to expect from me,
but also a lot of storytelling.
Like, I just wrote a story the other day
that combined some learnings
from Pagerduty and Atlassianaround workplaces,
(01:00):
doing the piece on likehow to manage outcomes,
especially indistributed teams,
but also the impactthat has on generative AI.
There's a lot ofcontent out there
that I learned fromlistening to people
that are actually doing the work,
that are actually leading the way,
and I try to bring those storiesto everybody else
Yeah, I love it because you are
you are outtalking to people.
So, in fact I notedthe Atlassian.
Three things you noted there was
Radical Transparency.
(01:22):
Yep
Enforced Focus andLightweight Updates.
[Jeff] I wonder if you can[Brian] Yeah!
expand on that a little bit.
[Brian] Yeah, sure.[Jeff] I was at Atlassian Summit
two weeks ago andI love their focus on goals.
Yeah, goals focus has really beena big thing for me
for a long time.
In my startup days
I learned the hard way really that
like if you don't have focus on
like what's the most important two, three things
for you to get done,
(01:42):
it's really hard to get the team aligned.
And by the way,being in a startup
forces that kind of discipline.
Companies get bigger,they get sloppy, to be honest,
and people don't havealignment anymore.
So Molly Sands, who leads the research team at
at Team Anywhere withalong with Annie Dean,
she and I talked about this in depth
in terms of what they do.
So three simple rulesthat I really loved.
Number one is 3 to 5 goals per team.
(02:05):
And that's it on a quarterly basis,
3 to 5 goals that are clearly articulated,
that are measurable,that you can talk about.
And at least once a month
go, hey, how are we doing against that?
Are we moving forwardor are we not?
Where are we struggling?
What can we doto get back on track
or is this not working?
So that'snumber one.
Number two is transparency
and that's a huge deal
I can see inside of Atlassian
anybody else's goals,any team's goals.
(02:27):
I can subscribe to.
So if there's something going on in marketing
that impactsmy team,
I can see how they're doing.
That takes all themystery out of it
and also means we can actually,
you know, go forward and do better.
The third one is a little mechanical,
but I've heard so manypeople complain
Oh my God
I have to do 25 updates a week
in three different systems.
There's is really simple
(02:47):
Tweet size updates
once a week
on those top goals.
So if you think about itthat way, it's like,
I really just want to make it clear
what we're working on.
I want to know where we are,
be transparent
and make it simplefor people to do.
You can go a long way ingetting people aligned
and marching in a common direction,
Right, I love it
just the forced prioritization.
Yeah.
So the radical transparency though
(03:07):
can be hard for some companies.
[Jeff] But one thing [Brian] It is
I just attended your sessiona little while ago that
that everybody should be able to do.
You know, and you're talking about
middle managersbeing just burned out.
Stuck in the middle.
But at the same time they're not getting any training
about thisnew world so
What is going on there?
Why aren’t people investing in these people?
Yeah. So it's really sad like
I think it was Gallup that put out a survey
(03:28):
just a couple of weeks agosaying that something like
44% of managers globallyhave no training whatsoever.
That's just really sadwhen you think about it.
It's not surprising, right?
People get promoted into the job
because they’re the mostsenior person on the team,
but then they're expected allof a sudden to be a manager
and you've got no support in doing it.
So that's bad.
Kate Lister put out aresearch piece last year
saying that something like25% of managers
(03:50):
have any management background training support
in leading distributed teams,
75% of those managersare leading distributed teams.
So we're kind of leaving them outto dry in a lot of different ways.
There's simple things you can do
to address those sorts of things,
but man, you can't expect that you're going to get better
as a company and as an organization
if you don't invest in leadership,
Right
(04:11):
And especially given how fastthe world around us is changing
to ignore that is like pretending
that we can actually just keepon limping our way
through all the dramaticchanges facing us
from you know, the economy to generative AI to flexibility.
Right.
Well, you went throughkind of a Maslow's triangle
of the different attributes.
And the one on the top was a learning culture so
I mean you would think if
(04:32):
maybe people don't have a learning culture,
they think we've beendoing it this way forever,
and maybe we can stay at the top of the Fortune 500 for another 60 years.
But that's notthe case at all.
No, no, some of the datathat’s wild for me is like
1940s, 65 years was the average tenure of the S&P 500.
2014 is like17 years. Right.
So just like longevity of firmsisn't there in the same way.
I think a lot of people saylearning culture,
(04:54):
but they're not puttingthe resources behind it
because you've got to make a short term investment
for long term gains, right.
You gotta be willingto say, hey, look,
we're going to loosen up
this quarter's goals enoughto give people actual room
to get their hands on
these new generative AI tools, for example,
because they’re not going to be more productive
coming out ofthe gates. Right?
Any time you have to learn new skills
(05:14):
and adapt to new ways of working,
it's going to taketime and effort.
If you're not willing to put alittle bit of slack in the system,
you're not going to get overthe hump of that learning curve
that's going to give you the long term gains.
But if you're gonna havea learning culture,
you've got to put time, energyand resources behind it
to make it happen.
And you really focused on that last talk
about the J Curve, that
that by rule
(05:35):
There's a downward dip in the slope.
Because you gotta learn the new thing.
Yeah, you gotta thinkabout this is like
it's happened in every single technology
that’s been massive and major.
The initial downward slope is
it takes investmentto get that good enough.
And so think about thiswith generative AI.
For the past couple of years,
a lot of what we've been doingis swivel chair, right.
It’s like okay, I've got my regular process
(05:57):
and I'm coming over hereinto this other tool to figure it out.
It's also people are figuring out like
What's it good at?What can I use it for?
What can I do with it?
Right
Those investments are goingto take productivity down
for a period of time.
But if you believe and I do,that this can actually make you
more efficient, more effectiveand better longer term.
You have to paythat price sometime.
(06:17):
And by the way, if you're notpaying that price now
one of your competitors might be.
And eventually what'sgoing to happen is
you're going to be sitting there saying,
why are my people not adoptingthis stuff and going faster?
And the answeris going to be
because you've given themno time to do it.
Right, right.
[Brian] So it's wild[Jeff] It's crazy.
So another really
just crazy dichotomy you pointed out
was with the difference
on the investment in customer side.
(06:38):
Customer segmentation customer journey, buying journey
sophisticated micro segmentation.
And yet one's treating the office like it's 1955 Mad Men
[Jeff] It’s crazy [Brian] Yeah yeah
So the employeeexperience
does not get the level of investment
that customer experiencedoes unfortunately.
We've seen the impact of technology
on customers and digital transformations
and all therest of it.
(06:59):
We’ve not done the same thing with employees.
And I’ll give you like even workplaceis a great example of that.
Workplace teams have undergone more pressure
and need to transform in the lastfive years than anybody else.
More than I.T., more than HR, morethan even leaders in some ways.
And I can see the differencebetween firms that are actually
putting supportinto those teams
to help them rethinkthe role of offices, right
(07:21):
which are really are essential
for a lot of teams in terms of team building and collaboration.
They're redesigning spaces.
They may beshrinking it.
They're giving people that aredistributed access to more tools,
but also those leaders are puttingin place small teams to help.
A lot of other managerswho we've just noted
aren't really trained
to make them capable of doing like
a lot better team buildingwith their organizations.
(07:44):
The leaders are doing thatare getting further ahead.
There's about half thatworkforce crowd though
that wants to do those things,
but their leadership is like
it's not worth the investment or
maybe they're all going to come back.
And so they're frozen in placeand it's just like generative AI.
The longer you wait to startexperimenting, innovating,
piloting out new ways of working,
the further behind you're going to be.
(08:05):
The further behind you go
So, it’s interesting, I don't know,
I think you're the first one to really tie together
the management skills that
that enable people to be successful at distributed work
Yeah
are the same set of skills and behaviors
that will enablethe managers
to drive successful adoptionof AI in their team.
Which as you said, right now,
one of the biggest challenges everybody has.
(08:26):
I thought that was so insightful.
So what are the key attributes that cross that line?
Yes. We already talked aboutlike a learning culture
which sort of sits at the top of that Maslow's structure of needs
The second layer belowthat is ‘Team Oriented’
because there's not a one sizefits all in organizations
when it comes to flexibility, right?
The needs of,
teams that are in Europe
is different from the USis different from China.
(08:47):
The needs of my engineering organization
are probably differentfrom sales.
So figuring out at the team level,
how are we going to adopt flexible work
is also going be the same thing as
how does generative AI fit in our flow and rhythms of work?
So you have to invest at the team level
below that, maybe the biggest oneat the end of the day,
that ‘Outcomes Orientation’we talked about
in terms of like Molly was explaining
at Atlassianwhat they do.
(09:08):
If you can focus on what are our most important goals
how are we goingto grow our business?
Then people can sit there and say, okay,
how can I use those toolsto achieve growth,
as opposed to hearing the word efficiency
and thinkinglayoffs,
or from aflexibility perspective,
instead of having goals
you're focused on are they sitting in their butts in seats
and being monitored?
(09:29):
And the base level really at the end of the day is
What's my talent strategy?
Am I after the best and brightestcapable people?
Am I going to invest in themin terms of training and skills?
Because I know that the agilitywe needed as an organization
is going to require
really great people that aresupported and feel engaged.
Or am I back in command and controland telling people what to do
(09:50):
and hopingthat somehow
the CEO is smart enough to see every curveball
that's coming at them
and get past it?
So that's the four levels of this.
The learning culture, team orientation,
outcomes, orientation and what's your talent strategy.
I confused you there
I made you go top to bottominstead of bottom to top.
[Brian] Yeah I can take it either direction [Jeff] Very good, good knowledge
I've done this enough
(10:10):
[Brian] times in enough conversations[Jeff] you’ve done that one a few times
with people I know wherethe problems are.
Well I wrote down some of these things
as you said just to call it out,
you know, outcomesversus attendance.
Yeah.
Objectives versus efficiency.
And you didn't call it out.
But Nick [Bloom] called it out.
And he did today here again Nick Bloom
on profit versus productivity.
Yeah.
He’s like people are going to continue on this route
because it's profitable
That's right.
It makes a lot of sense for people.
(10:31):
That's right.
And the piece of it
that he highlighted and you did to is the
is retention.
[Brian] That's right.
Because the people that are most likely to leave
unfortunately for you
are the ones that are the most qualified
because they're the ones that have the other options.
That's right.
And by the way,
one of the things that I love about this
is we keep talking aboutflexibility in office workers.
The same thing can apply to frontline workers.
(10:52):
I did a great case study on NeimanMarcus Group with Eric Severson
who was the Chief People Officer there.
They actually allowed people whowere store associates and operators
to do some of their work from home.
So, for example,if I'm a store associate,
I actually also managing customer list
and I'm doing training
and I'm doing some merchandizing.
Some of those can be done from home.
I also importantly wantsome schedule flexibility.
(11:14):
They found that those investmentsin flexibility for frontline workers
gave them literally industry leading retention numbers,
that kind of retention number,by the way,
also shows up in the bottomline of organizations.
So you can makethose investments.
And this is not just an office centric thing.
You can do it on the frontline too,
and it pays off on the bottom line results
Yeah.
So just to kind of wrap it up,I just want to
(11:36):
something you acknowledged again in the talk you just had
that this is not easy
and that, you know,
a lot of the tooling and the Gen AI and all these things
will takecare of the,
the mundane and the roteand the stupid stuff.
But it's not going totake care of the hard stuff.
[Bryan] That's right.[Jeff] So it
really it’s freeing up time for you to invest
in this stuff that's going to be hard
and a little bit more difficult
That's right.
And I'll tell you,
(11:56):
one of the thingsthat I've observed though
is I think a lot of CEOsare under pressure, right.
CEO turnover hit an all time high last year.
The board pressure,
the market pressureis through the roof.
Some of them and I've been in this spot before
are falling back into
what can kind offeel comfortable,
which is you're trained to have all the answers.
Right, right
So you start giving out commandsand having all the answers.
It’s hard but part of this is
(12:16):
how do I think about this as
I can still set those big aspirational goals,
but I can say,
I need all of you to figure outhow we're going to get there.
I'm going to enlist youin doing this.
And by the way,the reward is
you'll learn to your career is going to grow
and go additional places by doing that.
But as the leader, you got to think about this as not just
do I have allthe answers,
but how does my team have to have the answers
(12:38):
to drive thethe objectives that we've got?
Right. I just love it.
It just keeps coming backto team, team, team.
Because that's
Yeah
that's the unit where stuffgets accomplished, right?
That's right.
Individualscontribute but
it’s really the teams thatmove everything along.
That's right.I mean
what gets automated is thingsthat are rote, individual tasks.
Right
What remains is complex.
It's hard.
It's creative, it'sinterdisciplinary in nature.
(12:58):
That's why more than ever, actually,
human centeredleadership
is going to be a much betteranswer than falling back into
I've got all the answersand I'm the boss.
You keep sharing the answersBrian on Work Forward
And we’ll keep subscribing
cause you've got so much great content in those things
And I love all the use cases.
Thanks Jeff
And it’s not just1 or 2 companies,
as you showed on that slide.
There were dozens and dozens of companies
(13:19):
that are adopting this.
That's right.
If you're not,there may be a slot
a logo on that slide
[Brian] I gotta get a spot on there[Jeff] of one of your competitors
Exactly, exactly.
Somebody in your industrymost certainly is.
[Jeff] Yeah[Brian] So
All right Brian well it was greatto catch up again as always.
And thanksfor time.
Thanks, Jeff.Appreciate it.
All right. He's Brian I’m Jeff.
You’re watching Work 20XXSpecial Edition
coming from Running Remotein Austin, Texas.
(13:39):
Thanks for watching.
Thank you listening on the podcast
Catch you next timetake care.
Out
Awesome dude
You're a rock star.
The music was like,
Hey, Jeff Frick Here
big shout out to the podcast audience.
Thanks for listening in.
You can get show notes and transcripts at Work20XX.com
And that also has links to the videos as well.
(14:01):
Appreciate you listeningin on the podcast
Do reach out
say hello, like subscribeand smash that notification bell.
Thanks for listening.Take care. Bye bye.
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