May 7, 2024 • 49 mins
Jack (John) M Nilles coined the term ‘Telecommuting’ when describing the trade-offs between using the phone and commuting. After the first 20 years of his career coordinating interdisciplinary technology teams in the development of top-secret optical systems for satellites and NASA, and spurred by a Santa Barbara urban planner's challenge, ‘If you can put a man on the moon, why don’t you do something about traffic?’
As the University of Southern California's first director for Interdisciplinary Research, he assembled various disciplines to study and validate Jack’s hypothesis that technology enabled tasks to be done in new ways, starting with trading telecommunications for commuting.
The development of the Policy on the Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff, 1974 Final Report (and book in 1976), was based on work with an insurance company, who wanted to reduce their ridiculously high turnover. This research is the basis for over 50 years of work invested in advancing distributed work in a world where ‘technology was never the issue; there were always more people who could do it than managers who would allow them to.’
Please join me in welcoming Jack Nilles to Work 20XX.
I was thrilled beyond belief when Jack accepted my invitation. Ninety-one years young, still actively blogging and posting on the topic, what a treat to hear the story of how all this got started.
Jack Nilles: Telecommuting, Tradeoffs, Resistance, Incentives | Work 20XX podcast with Jeff Frick, Ep25
#Telecommuting #Tradeoffs #Resistance #Incentives #Leadership #Management #RemoteWork #JackNilles #FoW #RtO #Bandwidth #Change #Behavior #TechnologyTradeoffs #Digital #Distributed #Hybrid #Remote #Workplace #Interview #Podcast #DistributedWork #Technology #WorkplaceInnovation #ManagementChallenges #JALA #LeadershipInsights University of Southern California #USC #FutureOfWork hashtag#Work20XX
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
When I was 15
I was the first
or youngest member of
the American Rocket Society.
So I used to make my own too.
sometimes with, interesting results.
Hey, welcome back everybody.
Jeff Frick here come to you foranother episode of Work 20XX.
(00:21):
And this is areally special edition.
I think we might have to puta little star on this one.
You know, we've been talking abouthow Covid changed the world
and the world moved to more hybrid working, distributed working.
Well, our next guest,he's been working on this for
long before Covid, all the wayback to the early 1970s.
And he discovered the benefits back then.
Why it's taken us 50 years to try to acknowledge it
(00:42):
is a wholedifferent question,
but we're really excited
to welcome in
through the magicof the internet
all the way fromSouthern California
He's Jack Nilleshe is the
he coined the term telecommuting.
He founded telecommuting,
and now he's got his own thing called JALA (International)
that he still continues to participate and publish and share his thoughts.
So Jack, really, reallyappreciate you taking the time.
(01:04):
Welcome to Work 20XX.
Well I'm glad to be here.
It's good to talk to you
You too.
So let's jump back
before we get intothe telecommuting
and get back to your early days,because I think
there's some interesting things therethat you participated in.
You were doing,
top-secret workfor the government,
for the space program,through the contractors.
(01:24):
and there's a couple of things about that
that I thinkis interesting.
One, you’ve talkedabout later
is your multipledisciplinary approach
when you're working ona top secret project like that,
I assume a lot of differentsubcontractors
all have lotsof different pieces.
Nobody gets to seethe whole thing together.
And that was probablya pretty good experience
(01:44):
in terms of workingwith a lot of different folks,
with a little bitdifferent objectives,
and not maybe quite aligned waysof looking at the world.
When you thinkback of that time,
what were some of the lessonsyou learned in working
with these multiple distributedorganizations back in the 60s
on the top secret spy stuffyou were working on?
Well, it was, as you say,
(02:07):
it was a problem of integrating
the work of lotsof different people
and basically putting the pieces together
so that they actually fit,you know,
when you put this in a missile and launch it,
it’s always nice if allthe pieces work together.
(02:28):
Yeah.
and so I spent,
from my time in the Air Force in the
starting 1954 and,
into the aerospace industryafter that.
I was working withlots of different companies
and trying to keep things together.
(02:50):
What is now called Systems Engineering.
but they didn't knowwhat to call it then
They just said‘Just keep the stuff working’
it’s called
‘Keep it from falling apart’Okay
I got used to
getting stuck in the middle of this stuff.
I knew nothing about.
(03:11):
but, I'm usually a fast learner,
so I had to do a lot offast learning over those years.
And, in fact,at one point it got
you know, most of my stuff,
in the later part of my aerospace career was,
(03:32):
doing advanced design of, optical reconnaissance satellites,
and, that's all
about all I can tell you about it, right.
Well, the one other piece of this chapter
that I want to explorea little bit is
is the trade offs.
I think what’s really interesting to me
about aviation engineering,
(03:53):
and I'm notan aviation engineer.
I know just a little bitto be dangerous.
But there's this constant trade offs,
you know, between power versusdrag and lift versus weight and
I would imagine in the space program,when you're dealing with ounces
and you know, the
the value of an ounce of payload is so extreme,
especially back then,it really must have helped you
(04:15):
to kind of distillwhat are the important things
and really, you know, get to a position
where you're comfortablemaking hard tradeoffs
for the ultimateobjective of the mission.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
You have to learn, you know,
what's the leastyou can get by with
and have it still work properly
because weight is everythingin the space business.
(04:39):
And, I, you know,
I expanded that later to think
Well, it's not just in the space business case that the case
there are things
Energy is everything
in the rest of the world.
right?
And,
in the early 1970s.
(05:01):
Well, around 1970 exactly
let me back up a little,
sure
Once in the midst of all this,
when I was living inLos Angeles as a civilian
working for the The Aerospace Corporation
I got one of these callsfrom the Pentagon.
(05:22):
Says, I want you to brief theUndersecretary of the Air Force.
tomorrow morning at 9:00 am
This is about 2:00 pm in the afternoon,the day before in Los Angeles.
And where's the secretary?
In the Pentagon
In the Pentagon
Okay.
So I had to catch the moonlight special
(05:45):
and I cannot sleep on airplanes.
no matter what I try to.
So I got on a midnight plane
end up in DC, at you know6:00 am in the morning
had breakfast at the airport,
called the Pentagonto make sure about the meetings.
‘Oh, well, that's one’s been postponed till 10:00 am’
(06:08):
so ok i guess, I went to thePentagon and had nothing to do.
Waited until 10:00 am,and gave them a call
ok, you ready?
‘No, it's been postponed to 2:00 pm’
So I had lunchin the Pentagon
Which is not a gourmet delight,
so I got to 1:30 pm.
The meeting has been canceled.
(06:31):
So I never did
get to brief the Undersecretary,
who later became the head
of National ReconnaissanceOffice in the Pentagon.
On what we were doing,
I got on the 5:30 pm plane,
flew back to Los Angeles.
Now, in the buildingI was working in
(06:52):
two floors up, there’s a general's office.
The general had a closed circuitcolor encrypted television system
connecting directly to the Pentagon.
You know, I could have done the briefing
that way and saved all this stuff,
but I wasn't a general,so I couldn't use it.
So I thought, this is really dumb,
(07:13):
right
You know, why are people spending all this time
traveling back and forthbasically for nothing?
And that struck,this is in the mid 1960s
and finally I said, you know,
It kept fermenting in my head.
In 1970 I startedlooking around
for ways to transfer all this
(07:33):
nifty space technologyto the real world.
And, I met a
an urban plannerin Santa Barbara
who said, if you guyscan put man on the moon.
And I said, yeah,because
I helped them pick the cameras to map the moon
so they could land (at a) place didn't have a lot of boulders in the way
(07:56):
He says ‘Why can't you do something about traffic?’
I thought, Whoa!
Why not?
So the idea took hold of me
How do I get rid of traffic?
How do I make it go?
And you start with basicprinciples again.
Why do we have traffic?
(08:16):
Well, because there's carsmoving around.
And they get in each other's way.
Yes, I realize that.
But why are they moving aroundin the first place?
Well, they're going to work
and they're working,and then they come back home.
And they take their cars.
And what are they doing
when they go to work?
Well,
most people, or at least,you know, half of the people
(08:39):
in the carsdriving alone
on the way to work and clogging the freeways get to their office
and they pick up their phone
and talk to somebodysomewhere else
I said,this is dumb.
I get
Why do you get?
We’re still having thatsame conversation Jack
Yeah, why do you have to get in your car and go
(09:00):
in the middleof all this traffic
emitting carbon monoxideand carbon dioxide, etc., etc.
to call somebody who’s somewhere?
No, why don't you do thatfrom home?
Okay, I tried to talk my company
into doing some research on it,
because I was secretary of the,corporate planning committee,
(09:23):
and, I told them here's what we wanted.
You know, here's whatthe thing we ought to do is
test this out with some people, and I said
and make sure it works properly.
And they said, well, what what would you need to
make sure this is good,valid work?
And I said, well,
we’d have to hire a psychologistor two, maybe a sociologist,
(09:45):
and probably a lawyer or two
And they said ‘Wait’
Forget about it
We're engineers,we're metal benders.
We don't dealwith this kind of thing.
And so hell, I got, you know,I got mad about that.
So I'm complaining to it.
About it to a friend of mine
at the Universityof Southern California.
(10:06):
I said, you know,you have all the specialties
I would need to findout of this works properly.
But in my experience,
universities aren't that well organized
on getting them together,you know,
they're undereach in their own little silo.
So I suddenly becameUSC's first
(10:29):
And as far as I know, only
Director of InterdisciplinaryProgram Development,
because my job
was to get different schools of the university
to work together on important programs that
needed help from each one of them.
But you had to have the whole works
together in order to make it happen,
Right, right.
(10:50):
right?
Let me stop youfor one minute Jack
because there's a coupleother things that
people might not remember
that were happening at that same time in the 70s.
First of all, the pollution in the LA basin was horrific.
Yes.
This is beforeunleaded gas
is before a lot of the clean legislation, so
(11:10):
you know, not only was itthe traffic jams, but you
but the pollutionwas visible and horrible.
And then theother thing
that a lot of people todaymight not remember,
is we had the oil crisis.
I was not driving,
but I was old enoughto remember
that mom had to planto go get the gas
on an even day, or an odd day
based on what your license plate number was.
And there were there was lines, so
(11:32):
you kind of had some ofthese external shocks,
right around that same time.
Did those have an influence on it or, you know,
kind of accelerate thenecessity or, you know
you talked about energy
and you still talk about energy and sustainability and,
oil and carsand stuff.
It's a lot more than commute,
Absolutely, absolutely.
When I was still in the Air Force,
I’d fly into LAand go into Burbank.
(11:54):
And once I went into a store there
And the smog was, you know,
it was choking.
And I talked to a salesperson there and said
‘Do you actually live in this stuff?’
Cause I live in Ohio.
You know, it was cool air there.
And she said, ‘Yes’
and so you know,but
(12:16):
You know asthat was part of
the impetus to getsomething done about this.
We clearly had air pollution.
It was clearly doingbad things to the world.
And as I finally got into USC (University of Southern California)
into this, we it was just simultaneously
the oil crisis.
It was purely I,you know,
(12:36):
I didn't arrange the oil crisis
it was completely coincidental.
but we got a grant from theNational Science Foundation
to, do this research
on what I called,
‘Development of Policy on theTelecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff’
(12:58):
You do it in such an engineering way, right.
Again, it's goes, it’s back to trade offs.
And you saw a pretty clear opportunity
just to swap phone callsfor commute time
I want to back up again forpeople that are watching this.
You know, this is beforemobile phones
this is beforeemail
this is beforethe internet.
And, in the defenseof the companies,
you know,
there used to be likeone corporate number
(13:20):
and it would gothrough the switchboard
and they would route itto whomever needed to get it.
And all the mail was in envelopes
that came through the mail room every day.
But what I found interestinggetting ready for this is you.
You’ve said a number of times that
technology was neverthe barrier. Never.
It was always people'swillingness to actually try
where there was an opportunity.
(13:42):
And even in 1973,there was plenty of technology
to enable, you know,an increasing amount of people
to do more work,not from that central office.
That's right.
The first projectwe set up,
I wanted to make sure itwas a real world situation,
not just an academic exercisewith students.
(14:03):
So we set it up with anational insurance company.
Who had divisional headquarters in L.A.
And I asked what they wereworried about,
and they said, well, we have a big turnover problem.
We have to hire basically
a third of our workforceevery year.
And we'd really liketo cut that down.
(14:23):
And if you can help us,
fine, you know
Their problem was notsomething called telecommuter
Their problem wasturnover rate.
We, I said we can helpyou severely reduce it.
And by setting upsome test projects
and the test beds,there were
(14:44):
what we called satelliteoffices scattered in
at that point in theSan Fernando Valley.
The employees who worked for the company
then did not have toget in their cars
and clog up the freewayto get to downtown L.A.
they could walk ride their bicycle,
(15:06):
take the bus, get to this local,
satellite center,
do their work then, do typing,you know, data entry data
into a mini computerin that same building
which collectedall the information
and transmitted it overnightover a wideband.
What you know, T1 line they used to call it, it was about a
(15:29):
It's what we all havein our homes now, you know.
Right. Right.
into the company mainframe. Okay.
So the technologythat technology was okay, you
It was not good enoughto have people work at home
because the bandwidth required
in the telephone systemthat gets into households
were just not enoughto get information across, so
(15:55):
We always had,as this example shows
enough technologyfor people to do their work.
Lots, lots of people.
Basically, there were always more peopleavailable who could do it
than were allowed to do itby their management.
(16:15):
And that's always been the case.
Right.
So you do this seminal report in 1973.(Development of Policy on the Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff)
You write a book about it in 1976.(The Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff: Options for tomorrow)
I think it's really the basis of
of a lot of the stuffthat's come since.
And you go
and you talk to the head of theinsurance company and you say,
you know, we're saving you money
everybody's happy.
Turnover is down, engagement’s up,
(16:37):
commuting is down.
Nothing but happiness and roses.
And they tell you
No
Why not.
Well, we're a nonunion company.
And we figuredif we have people,
you know, scattered aroundin these different places,
(17:02):
the unions can come in andpick off the places one by one
and the NationalLabor Relations Board
says, you know, it's okay to do that.
So before we know it, we'd be unionized.
So we're not going to do it.
You know, forget about it.
A couple months later,I was talking with the strategic planner
(17:22):
of the AFL-CIO(American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations)
and he said,
He says, telecommutingis a terrible idea.
And I said, Why?
Why? It's great.you know
The people will love ityour union members
will be enthusiastic about itand everything
No, no, no.
You don’t understand
if they're scatteredall over the country side,
(17:45):
how will we ever get them organized?
Okay.
Insurance company.
Well, because (they’ll)to organize too easily.
The unions.
It's too hard to organize them.
So based on this
look into the future,I said, well,
I'm going to have to find some other way to get this going.
(18:07):
much of the 1970sto get other
departments of the federal government
to put some money intobroader experiments
And the usual answer was,
Hey, I'd like you to dotelecommuting
because it,you know,
reduces the need for transportation.
They said, ‘No, no, no, no, no’
(18:30):
that's not our mission.
Our missionis to make automobiles
more efficientand traffic signals
more interconnected. So,
it's certainly not having to do
with anything to cut downthe use of automobiles.
Jack - I mean what?Jeff - right.
Talk to the Department of Energy.
I can find ways to cut down energy use.
(18:52):
No, no, no, from, you know,automobiles in particular.
No, no, no, our mission
is to make themmore efficient,
not to get rid of them.
So in everything I presented for several years here
the answer was,
No, no, that's that’s not what we do.
We do something else.
(19:14):
Right? Right.
It's just so rarethat you have an opportunity
to change behaviorand have so many benefits.
it's like the ultimatetriple bottom line.
You get all these benefitsfor the company
in terms of saving money.
And this, that and the other.
You get allthese benefits
for the employeesin terms of flexibility
and better mental healthand physical health.
(19:36):
And then you have all these
benefits to society in terms of,
you know, to have all these carson the roads and,
and it,you know
unclogs the roads for the people that have to be
there like trucks and stuff,delivering things.
It's so odd to have something
that hits on so many factors,
but then
so difficult for peopleto accept in terms of
really rethinking and changing,
(19:57):
changing theirbehavior.
It's like, there's notrade offs
it's like you win on both sides of the scale.
Pretty rare.
You know, the
the culture of the industrialrevolution sticks.
In 1800,
nobody worked in big cities,in downtown
(20:21):
big cities were a lot smaller,
and there were shopkeepersand so forth and so on
but most of the people livedin the countryside
right.
And it was not until we had big factories
with really expensive equipment
that we hadto somehow
attract the farm workers to come
(20:41):
work and live in the city,to run the machines.
Okay.
And that has apparently drilledinto everybody's heads
since the mid-19th century.
Right.
And certainlyin the 20th
And here I am trying to tear it apart again.
You know, I’m a danger to the system
(21:03):
Well, it's funny too.
I know you know, Kate (Lister) well
I think you wrote the forward to her book,(Undress for Success: The Naked Truth about Making Money at Home)
and I had her on,
and she said, you know,the smart companies can use
remote and distributed workto basically handle
all kinds of problems.
You got an employee engagement problem?
go, increaseyour remote work.
You have, a TAM (problem, total available talent market)
You know, you're not getting enough employees
you need to get themfrom more geography than
(21:26):
are available to drive to the office,
go with remote work.
I mean, you have sustainability,
commitments that you'vemade to the board.
Go with remote work.So it's
And then the bizarre one is even like
Nick Bloom from Stanford, you know
his seminal pieceof research,
on remote workfor the travel company (Ctrip)
was not
(21:46):
they wanted to save moneyon real estate
and they figuredpeople were goofing off.
They just weren't sureif the goofing off,
the loss of productivitymore than exceeded
the benefit of the cost savingson the real estate.
And in fact, to your researchthere were all kinds of benefits,
you know, productivitygoes up, not down.
time workinggoes up, usually not down.
(22:07):
You know, people don't knowhow to stop work.
It's a completely,
orthogonal to whatyou think is going to happen.
Yeah, our biggest problemwas about, was just that
To get peopleto stop
You know, stop, relax, enjoy the family,
go out and do something else.
You know, get rid of the computer
(22:27):
close it in the closet,lock it up.
right
until tomorrow,
All the management was always worried about
productivity.
goofing off.
people will just
find their time doing something else instead
and go down the tubes.
None of that happened.
None of it.
In every timewe tried it
(22:49):
In 1984,
we did have another project going with
several fortune100 companies.
Maybe I said, now maybe we’ll get
some big companies to do it.
And they said,‘Yeah, that was great’,
and they had a good time,
but you can't tell anybody about it.
(23:11):
I says
But why is this good?
Yeah, it works It’s good. Yeah.
Yeah we know, but
If we've got a way
to get something done
with very littleupfront cost,
you know, a little technology,some training of people,
(23:31):
and productivity goes up
and, retail costs
or, our space costsgo down
and,
and inventiveness goes up.
So why should we tell ourcompetitors?
Right.
So I, here I was back in the top secret business again.
(23:51):
So then we fast forwarda little bit more to 9/11.
And then in the early 2000s,
there's a rashof actually federal legislation
that goes downfor federal employers
really aroundcontinuity,
right, in case there's a natural disaster.
You know, the Pentagongot shut down for a while
to move more work.
(24:12):
as much as you can, you know,away from these central offices.
And yet, you know, we still hear the cries of RTO (Return to Office)
even withinthe federal government,
even though they have their ownregulations in place.
And I have them alllisted on the web page,
of trying to maximize people'stime, not at the office.
So it’s just this constant fight,fighting the tide.
(24:33):
Wendell Joyce in the,
the Commerce Department
had a hell of a timejust getting them started.
Just the same way I did only all he’s
he was dealing withthe federal government.
Same resistance from managers.
They didn't want to do this.They couldn't.
They didn't trusttheir employees, basically.
(24:54):
so they weren't surethey were going to do it
until they were surprised
when it actually happened?
They did even betterwhen the manager wasn't there.
Wait a minute.
Maybe this is getting rid of my job
right
So they've always had
all this resistanceis, and
(25:17):
you know, (Nick) Bloom had a
program going on in ChinaI think (Ctrip)
same thing there.
You know, I've in
In the 1990s, my wifeand I spent a lot of time
commuting to Europe to explain
to both industry
(25:37):
and the governments therearound how telework works
and same, same thing.
People tried it,the same problems.
It was
this is a human condition problem
it is not
company X’s and government Y’s job.
It works for everybody.
(25:58):
It is a culture changethat takes a while to get going.
And then, you know, all this,all this time
from the mid 70s on, I’d figure
What is the magic trick
I can use to getpeople's minds off the
(26:19):
narrow route they've been traveling down
for the last 100 years,
and think about different waysof getting the same stuff done
with lessenergy use
with lessair pollution,
with lessglobal warming.
I wasn't talking about itas global warming in the ‘70s,
but that's what it evolved into, what with the
(26:41):
with the air pollution
and it was.
It was basically
I found it was arounda two year cycle I had of
going in and talking to the CEO orsomebody in upper management.
I knew that the workers on the ground
(27:01):
wouldn't have a problem with it
it’s the uppermanagement,
and then the middle managementthat you’ve got to convince to do it
to go through explaining things to them.
Here's how it's done.
Here's what you have to do to make it work.
You have to look atthe legal situation.
You're policiesand procedures, etc.
You have to havethe right technology.
(27:22):
You have to have the bandwidthavailable at da da da da da
and takes about two years
from my first visit, to the time they said‘Oh, okay, let's try it’
two years.
Wow. Just to try it.
that was a cost ongoingtwo non income years
right.
(27:42):
Right.
Well I'm curiousyou know as a scientist
you've talked aboutwhen you did
your multidisciplinary approachyou had Annenberg
was one ofyour participants.
Right on the communication.
I mean, just I wonder if youcould share your thoughts.
As you know,
humans don't make,logical decisions.
You know, we makeemotional decisions
and the communicationand the packaging
(28:03):
and the selling of the messageis almost, if not more expensive
or more importantthan the actual math
or the logic or the rationalebehind these things.
And I wonder, as you've kind ofbeen banging your head against
banging your headagainst the door
for a long time,you know,
how do you think about,
the role of communications
and the importanceof communications
(28:24):
when you're trying to helppeople get through,
you know change, to get peopleto change their behavior?
A major part
of the trainingwe gave people
You know when they get into this
Both managers,
I mean particularly managers,but also the tele-workers
is specifically on communicationis that we want you
(28:47):
we have them
write down and diagramor do something about
who they talk to and what the subject was,
you know, for a couple of weeksbefore any of this happens,
write it down,draw a chart of it,
and show all your
all your communication methods,
(29:07):
you know, and their connectionsand media are there
And now what we're going to do
is make all the samecommunications happen.
But using electronic media
instead of your walking around and talking to them
or driving someplace to do it.
And we’re trying
That's the substitution.
(29:29):
You know, we got to
get you to keep thinkingabout the communication.
Is it getting done?
Is it getting done ontime to the right people?
And once they change their focus,
it's all of a suddenwhoa,
oh yeah.
This is you know,
I see the lightsgoing off again.
(29:49):
So,
So then Covid hits and suddenly
within a few days time,
like March 13th to March 16th, right around there,
people are sent home.
So suddenly companies are forcedinto this way of working.
They haven't hadany planning.
(30:10):
They haven't hadany preparation.
They haven't hadany training.
and lo and behold,
it actually works.
So I mean,
Covid did a lot of horribleand terrible things,
and we don't wantto discount that.
But from what it did in terms of finally
forcing people to acknowledge
that this could work becausethey didn't have an option.
(30:33):
Oh my goodness,
what a light switch momentfor you and the entire industry.
Kate likes to sayshe was chasing the rock
then suddenly it turned and started chasing her down the hill.
in April 2020.
That was my magic wand was Covid.
You know, the way to fixthis around is
just have a good pandemicevery now and then
(30:55):
This is not a way to do things,but it sure worked.
we had, you know, several
in the interim between1970 and 2020
there are several disaster situations
earthquakes, fires, etc., etc.,
(31:15):
in which we once againdemonstrated,
‘Hey, you can get your companyback working together’
get your peopleworking from home.
The phone lines get repaired
a lot faster than the freeways do in LA
when there's a big earthquake,
and they, they adapt it
(31:36):
all right away, you know, for 2 or 3 months, but
as my that experience gained,I said, you know, you gotta have
2 or 3 years of thisworking well
before it really takes root.
And that's what's happenednow after Covid.
(31:57):
It's 2 or 3 years,
but the CEOs are still saying,
I want everybody backin the office.
You know, they're not gonna come back.
No, no
It was long enough to take hold.
Yeah. For behaviorsto change.
You know, the whole thingkind of reminds me of biking
and biking as a substitution for cars and,
(32:20):
you know, you've gotAmsterdam
that's been doing itfor 40 years.
And, and then
actually, Paris has donequite a bit in the last ten.
But you know,all these,
all these externalities,all these side benefits
that come from, you know, quieter streets and,
and less pedestrian deathsand, you know, kind of
people getting backto their neighborhoods.
And, you know, we all experienced
(32:40):
kind of the quiet streetsearly Covid days.
It's, but it's justso hard to change,
people's behavior and their
perceptions ofthis is the way we do it.
Even though to your point,we didn't do it this way,
really not that long ago.
That's right,that's right.
So we used to you know, do
continuous cost benefit analysis on this stuff.
(33:01):
And even with the stuffyou could quantify
like cost of telecommunications
costs of space,etc., etc.
that benefit
in almost any corporatesituation we looked at.
We could notpossibly quantify
all these otherbenefits like
Well, we could quantifypeople are more relaxed,
(33:24):
feel more creative.
Their family life is better,
except with teenagers.
They dealt with itin the community,
you know, all this stuffthat has pervasive effects
ultimately on the way peoplelive and work together
but, you know,I don't know.
I don't know how to write down that
(33:45):
so an accountant willappreciate it.
Right, right.
Well, I think you captured a lot of it
in that one case studyin terms of turnover. Right.
Because if those things aren'tworking well, you know,
that's one wayto measure it.
I want to shiftgears a little bit, Jack,
again back to your sciencehat and your tech hat
and just get your thoughts onhow the tech has changed.
Because even though technologywas not necessarily the barrier,
(34:08):
like you said, it was the graymass between the boss's ears.
Technology has changedso dramatically.
And you know,
in the offices defenselike I said, you used to have
There was alot of stuff
that was work that was there
that you had to goget out of the file cabinet or,
get your notesthat the
that somebody left for youon a piece of paper
in a little round plastic thing
that sat on your desk topbefore voice mail
(34:30):
But as you look at technologyand the advances
of communication technology,
we're still, kind of fighting this battle.
But what gets you excited about the future
and what,you know, this massive,
kind of change in scale of compute that we now have
for so, so less moneythan back in the day.
And really whatthat's going to enable?
(34:50):
Well, I mean, the basic
dimension there is bandwidth,
the wider bandwidthyou have,
the more varied the work you can do.
At the beginningwe had telephone bandwidth
and you could do, you know,data entry kinds of things,
but you certainly couldn't do,
(35:11):
artwork or complexcommunications and so forth.
So that required,you know
some kind of face-to-faceinteraction or some
You had to go someplace else to do it
because it took big expensive machinery.
So as the bandwidthavailable increased,
(35:33):
as, for example, when personal computers appeared in
on March 18th, 1981,
the IBM PC was announced.
You know,
now the P.C.
your office couldbe taken home
because all the stuff
you use in the officeor a good part of it
(35:54):
was in this boxthat you had in your house.
Now it can bein your telephone.
right.
So the cost of the technologykeeps going down.
The bandwidth, it’s available in terms of
who you can communicate with effectively
and how you cantransfer data,
how you can transmit feelings, even,
(36:18):
continually expands.
And as it expands,it increases the ability
of people to work remotely.
it all sorts of situationsthat were completely impossible.
from an expense point of view,
then, it was, you know 5, 10,
(36:38):
ten decades ago, jeesh
It's it's amazing.
There's a lot of,
little memes out therethat show, you know,
like all the things that are on your desk,
and they all slowly just get sucked up by your phone.
From the kids picturesto your contact database to
calling people and mailingpeople and everything else.
I want to shiftgears and talk a little bit
(36:59):
about the role of government
and what, you know, kind of
how you think about where the rolethe government is in this,
both from kind of
a carrot perspectiveas well as a stick perspective.
And we saw,you know, in your early career,
you know, huge investment in,in small electronics,
you know, chasing Sputnik.
And that drovea lot of development,
(37:19):
which then created a lot ofinteresting technology that got,
you know, put all over theplace, like microprocessors.
there’s incentivesfor, you know, buying EVs.
So the government can really,you know, change things
pretty significantly with eitherincentives or with penalties.
What do you thinkthe role of regulation is
to kind of helpmove this thing along?
(37:39):
Well, there are various rolesand, you know, the
the initial role
in government for mewas simply a grant
from the National ScienceFoundation to do the research.
but they wouldn't go
further than thatin applied research
because NSF only didfundamental research on things.
(38:02):
So I ran up against a roadblock in getting
the more applied things,you know, because the
departments that wereinvolved in applied stuff
didn't believe in thisto begin with.
So the, you know,the governments had to
have to get turnedaround as well so they can,
(38:23):
you know, FCC can
change the ruleson who has access to what
source of information,how it's protected.
Certainly the protectionproblem is a continuing issue.
Security,
you want to be ableto communicate with anybody,
but not accidentallywith somebody else
you don't want toget involved in this thing.
(38:45):
So the legal background for this,
the technological backgroundthat still needs to keep going
so that we can
we can interact with people
safely and securely,
and the secure part is stilla major issue to be going on.
(39:06):
And even now.
well, that's just that's worldwide that’s a problem
you know,or you go to China,
there is noleakage outside.
Well, except for the peoplewho know how to do it
right
so
government can
(39:28):
at all levels gets involved.
Many,
many local governments,
have ordinances
that prohibit peoplefrom working at home.
One of the thingsI did with a
project we had with thecity of Los Angeles
is get them tochange their
their work codesso that people could, in fact,
(39:51):
be working at homeas long as they
didn't have crowds of peoplecoming to their door,
that sort of thing, but
you know restrictions like this.
impede peoplefrom living the way
that they should be able to.
In this new kindof a situation,
it's one of these things where
(40:12):
there's no big single
pervasive rulethat says if we
make the following law.
Everything's fixed
No, it's bits and pieces here.
You have to nibble awayat the restrictions
on free and easy communications.
(40:33):
You have to
also nibble away at the
issues of providing incentives
for people to do this,
which can mean,you know,
zoning laws,
income tax for the things you can deduct
and things you cannot,
that goes for the employer
(40:55):
as well as the employeeand so forth and so on.
You know, I don't really have a whole
big list of such things,but I do.
There's all kinds of waysyou can tweak the edges
to make it more effectively,
feasible for all sorts of people.
Right.
And then what.
(41:16):
What are your kind of,your thoughts now where,
you know, a year ago,
it seemed like we'd kind of gotten through the Crucible.
You know, everyonekind of adjusted and proved
that this is okay,and we're moving forward.
And then,like every August,
like back to school,we have back to the office.
You know, we have the RTO(Return to Office)
Brian Elliot likes to call it RTO season
return to office every August and
(41:38):
and it neverit never works.
So when you look forward
50 years crazy.
You know, what gets you excited
and then what gets you less excited and concerned
specifically around this topic?
And then more generally,
(41:59):
Yeah, the.
This is gets off the subject a little bit
but the education system
still needs a lot of work. We,
after we did the,
the telecommuting research,
I did a technology assessmentof the personal computer in 1978,
(42:19):
one of the topics we focused on was education.
and we basically came
to the conclusion that,
education is so
fragmented,
that it is hard to make
(42:41):
a learning tool
that is easily adaptable
to each and everyeducational district
because they have their own wants and needs.
It's just that
the economicsdon't work out for this
Yeah.
And the attitudes are still the same.
(43:04):
although as you're saying that,I'm thinking to myself,
you know, this is theubiquitous thing
that every single kidhas in their pocket.
You know, maybeit's time that we,
readjust theeducation system
to work through the phonefor a significant piece.
Yeah.
And, you know,
we should make use of the technology,but don't get addicted to it.
(43:24):
Is the other endof this thing,
right
Getting the workersto stop working.
You know, it's works
with whatever
nifty electronic instrument
you have to say, hey,this is really cool, but
Stop.Do something else.
(43:45):
And then whatare you working on?
Give us kind of the latest,
which we're working on withwith JALA and what's,
you know,
keeping you up and keeping youwriting and keeping you engaged.
I’m working mostly at a,you know,
sort of the nextmacro level
up from jobs to
how do we get this method
(44:07):
of examining the world,
more broadly spread than it is right now
you know, how is itpossible that we have
factions in the United States of people
basically at each other's throats?
For what?
Yeah. You know, why is this?
(44:28):
How do we stop thissort of thing?
I'm trying to get my hands around it
It's much,
much more complicated than justtrying to get a company
to think about different waysto let it’s people work.
So I said, you know,I'm used to getting in trouble.
so
now I’m doing it, only on my own hook
(44:48):
I don't have to need grants from anybody
I have enough incomeso I can just I can just
I can harp at anybody about doing this properly regardless?
Yeah.
JALA is intentionally nonprofit now
You just wonder if, you know, the,
(45:09):
the younger companies
who kind of grew up this wayin terms of
both their management structureas well as the they're just
they're younger kids,they're more, digitally native.
They're just more used to that,you know,
as they begin to displace incumbentsin particular industries,
when they go to Wall Street and say,
let's get out the balance sheetand the income statement,
(45:30):
one’s going to have hugereal estate expense.
And one’s not and at some point, you know,
do the financial analystson Wall Street start saying
you can't justifythis expense anymore.
Is that what's going to finally move it?
One of my colleagues at USC
was investing in and trying todevelop the executive boardroom.
(45:52):
Basically, the corporate headquarters
would be this one place,you know,
with 500 square feetwhere there would be
executives would come in connected to every body else
everybody else around so hey, they know what's going on
minute by minute.
And that's clearly
(46:12):
within the availabletechnology now
particularly as,
artificial intelligence accompaniedby artificial stupidity
keeps growing.
we're good at that.
Just as well.
But,
(46:32):
the kids, you know,
just don't have anyproblem with this.
I'm still talking
to a diminishingcadre of people
as they age andfall off the cliff
Hey, I'm 91.What can I tell you?
Yeah.
Still going strong, I love it.
(46:53):
It's just sad that we're stillhaving the same conversation
that you validated50 years ago
with hard factsand science.
And it just goes to showthat people don't make
they don't make decisionsbased on logic.
They make it based on emotion,
which was always my hard time with economics.
Like, these are beautiful curves,
(47:14):
but that's not the waypeople work.
You know?
No,
it's,
the technology moves a lot faster than our brains do.
So culture is basically the deciding speed of things here
The kids will adopt
(47:38):
new things much faster.
and the problem for us older folks is
should we keep arguing with them
or just get out of the way?
Yeah, I think it's time to get out of the way
well, Jack, I really appreciate all the work that you've put in this,
over the last 50 years.
(47:59):
You know, foundationfor so many other people's,
great work and exploring it.
And it's so bizarreand weird to find something
that has so many benefitson so many axes.
across the board.
It's like the ultimatenon engineering thing.
There's very little trade offs
and a whole lot of benefits on both sides
Well, I also went to a liberal arts college,
(48:20):
which I blame everything on.
That's right.
But that'sbut you know it's funny
now they're sayingthat's the way to go
because ChatGPT is goingto write all the code tomorrow.
So, it's good to have thatcritical thinking and,
and a little bit more, liberal arts background
to think about these thingsand have that filter.
Well, Jack, thank you very muchfor your time.
(48:41):
I really appreciate it.
91 years young,you're kicking tail
and appreciate that you’re still blogging all the time.
So thanks a lot.
And again, really a treat toto catch up with you today.
It was a pleasure.
All right.
He’s Jack, I'm Jeff, you're watching Work 20XX.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening on the podcast.
We'll catch you next time.
Take care.
(49:02):
Great.
Jack, that was terrific.
Thank you,thank you, thank you.
All right,let's do this again sometime.
When I was 15
I was the first
or youngest member of
the American Rocket Society.
So I used to make my own too.
sometimes with, interesting results.
Hey, welcome back everybody.
Jeff Frick here come to you foranother episode of Work 20XX.
(00:21):
And this is areally special edition.
I think we might have to puta little star on this one.
You know, we've been talking abouthow Covid changed the world
and the world moved to more hybrid working, distributed working.
Well, our next guest,he's been working on this for
long before Covid, all the wayback to the early 1970s.
And he discovered the benefits back then.
Why it's taken us 50 years to try to acknowledge it
(00:42):
is a wholedifferent question,
but we're really excited
to welcome in
through the magicof the internet
all the way fromSouthern California
He's Jack Nilleshe is the
he coined the term telecommuting.
He founded telecommuting,
and now he's got his own thing called JALA (International)
that he still continues to participate and publish and share his thoughts.
So Jack, really, reallyappreciate you taking the time.
(01:04):
Welcome to Work 20XX.
Well I'm glad to be here.
It's good to talk to you
You too.
So let's jump back
before we get intothe telecommuting
and get back to your early days,because I think
there's some interesting things therethat you participated in.
You were doing,
top-secret workfor the government,
for the space program,through the contractors.
(01:24):
and there's a couple of things about that
that I thinkis interesting.
One, you’ve talkedabout later
is your multipledisciplinary approach
when you're working ona top secret project like that,
I assume a lot of differentsubcontractors
all have lotsof different pieces.
Nobody gets to seethe whole thing together.
And that was probablya pretty good experience
(01:44):
in terms of workingwith a lot of different folks,
with a little bitdifferent objectives,
and not maybe quite aligned waysof looking at the world.
When you thinkback of that time,
what were some of the lessonsyou learned in working
with these multiple distributedorganizations back in the 60s
on the top secret spy stuffyou were working on?
Well, it was, as you say,
(02:07):
it was a problem of integrating
the work of lotsof different people
and basically putting the pieces together
so that they actually fit,you know,
when you put this in a missile and launch it,
it’s always nice if allthe pieces work together.
(02:28):
Yeah.
and so I spent,
from my time in the Air Force in the
starting 1954 and,
into the aerospace industryafter that.
I was working withlots of different companies
and trying to keep things together.
(02:50):
What is now called Systems Engineering.
but they didn't knowwhat to call it then
They just said‘Just keep the stuff working’
it’s called
‘Keep it from falling apart’Okay
I got used to
getting stuck in the middle of this stuff.
I knew nothing about.
(03:11):
but, I'm usually a fast learner,
so I had to do a lot offast learning over those years.
And, in fact,at one point it got
you know, most of my stuff,
in the later part of my aerospace career was,
(03:32):
doing advanced design of, optical reconnaissance satellites,
and, that's all
about all I can tell you about it, right.
Well, the one other piece of this chapter
that I want to explorea little bit is
is the trade offs.
I think what’s really interesting to me
about aviation engineering,
(03:53):
and I'm notan aviation engineer.
I know just a little bitto be dangerous.
But there's this constant trade offs,
you know, between power versusdrag and lift versus weight and
I would imagine in the space program,when you're dealing with ounces
and you know, the
the value of an ounce of payload is so extreme,
especially back then,it really must have helped you
(04:15):
to kind of distillwhat are the important things
and really, you know, get to a position
where you're comfortablemaking hard tradeoffs
for the ultimateobjective of the mission.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
You have to learn, you know,
what's the leastyou can get by with
and have it still work properly
because weight is everythingin the space business.
(04:39):
And, I, you know,
I expanded that later to think
Well, it's not just in the space business case that the case
there are things
Energy is everything
in the rest of the world.
right?
And,
in the early 1970s.
(05:01):
Well, around 1970 exactly
let me back up a little,
sure
Once in the midst of all this,
when I was living inLos Angeles as a civilian
working for the The Aerospace Corporation
I got one of these callsfrom the Pentagon.
(05:22):
Says, I want you to brief theUndersecretary of the Air Force.
tomorrow morning at 9:00 am
This is about 2:00 pm in the afternoon,the day before in Los Angeles.
And where's the secretary?
In the Pentagon
In the Pentagon
Okay.
So I had to catch the moonlight special
(05:45):
and I cannot sleep on airplanes.
no matter what I try to.
So I got on a midnight plane
end up in DC, at you know6:00 am in the morning
had breakfast at the airport,
called the Pentagonto make sure about the meetings.
‘Oh, well, that's one’s been postponed till 10:00 am’
(06:08):
so ok i guess, I went to thePentagon and had nothing to do.
Waited until 10:00 am,and gave them a call
ok, you ready?
‘No, it's been postponed to 2:00 pm’
So I had lunchin the Pentagon
Which is not a gourmet delight,
so I got to 1:30 pm.
The meeting has been canceled.
(06:31):
So I never did
get to brief the Undersecretary,
who later became the head
of National ReconnaissanceOffice in the Pentagon.
On what we were doing,
I got on the 5:30 pm plane,
flew back to Los Angeles.
Now, in the buildingI was working in
(06:52):
two floors up, there’s a general's office.
The general had a closed circuitcolor encrypted television system
connecting directly to the Pentagon.
You know, I could have done the briefing
that way and saved all this stuff,
but I wasn't a general,so I couldn't use it.
So I thought, this is really dumb,
(07:13):
right
You know, why are people spending all this time
traveling back and forthbasically for nothing?
And that struck,this is in the mid 1960s
and finally I said, you know,
It kept fermenting in my head.
In 1970 I startedlooking around
for ways to transfer all this
(07:33):
nifty space technologyto the real world.
And, I met a
an urban plannerin Santa Barbara
who said, if you guyscan put man on the moon.
And I said, yeah,because
I helped them pick the cameras to map the moon
so they could land (at a) place didn't have a lot of boulders in the way
(07:56):
He says ‘Why can't you do something about traffic?’
I thought, Whoa!
Why not?
So the idea took hold of me
How do I get rid of traffic?
How do I make it go?
And you start with basicprinciples again.
Why do we have traffic?
(08:16):
Well, because there's carsmoving around.
And they get in each other's way.
Yes, I realize that.
But why are they moving aroundin the first place?
Well, they're going to work
and they're working,and then they come back home.
And they take their cars.
And what are they doing
when they go to work?
Well,
most people, or at least,you know, half of the people
(08:39):
in the carsdriving alone
on the way to work and clogging the freeways get to their office
and they pick up their phone
and talk to somebodysomewhere else
I said,this is dumb.
I get
Why do you get?
We’re still having thatsame conversation Jack
Yeah, why do you have to get in your car and go
(09:00):
in the middleof all this traffic
emitting carbon monoxideand carbon dioxide, etc., etc.
to call somebody who’s somewhere?
No, why don't you do thatfrom home?
Okay, I tried to talk my company
into doing some research on it,
because I was secretary of the,corporate planning committee,
(09:23):
and, I told them here's what we wanted.
You know, here's whatthe thing we ought to do is
test this out with some people, and I said
and make sure it works properly.
And they said, well, what what would you need to
make sure this is good,valid work?
And I said, well,
we’d have to hire a psychologistor two, maybe a sociologist,
(09:45):
and probably a lawyer or two
And they said ‘Wait’
Forget about it
We're engineers,we're metal benders.
We don't dealwith this kind of thing.
And so hell, I got, you know,I got mad about that.
So I'm complaining to it.
About it to a friend of mine
at the Universityof Southern California.
(10:06):
I said, you know,you have all the specialties
I would need to findout of this works properly.
But in my experience,
universities aren't that well organized
on getting them together,you know,
they're undereach in their own little silo.
So I suddenly becameUSC's first
(10:29):
And as far as I know, only
Director of InterdisciplinaryProgram Development,
because my job
was to get different schools of the university
to work together on important programs that
needed help from each one of them.
But you had to have the whole works
together in order to make it happen,
Right, right.
(10:50):
right?
Let me stop youfor one minute Jack
because there's a coupleother things that
people might not remember
that were happening at that same time in the 70s.
First of all, the pollution in the LA basin was horrific.
Yes.
This is beforeunleaded gas
is before a lot of the clean legislation, so
(11:10):
you know, not only was itthe traffic jams, but you
but the pollutionwas visible and horrible.
And then theother thing
that a lot of people todaymight not remember,
is we had the oil crisis.
I was not driving,
but I was old enoughto remember
that mom had to planto go get the gas
on an even day, or an odd day
based on what your license plate number was.
And there were there was lines, so
(11:32):
you kind of had some ofthese external shocks,
right around that same time.
Did those have an influence on it or, you know,
kind of accelerate thenecessity or, you know
you talked about energy
and you still talk about energy and sustainability and,
oil and carsand stuff.
It's a lot more than commute,
Absolutely, absolutely.
When I was still in the Air Force,
I’d fly into LAand go into Burbank.
(11:54):
And once I went into a store there
And the smog was, you know,
it was choking.
And I talked to a salesperson there and said
‘Do you actually live in this stuff?’
Cause I live in Ohio.
You know, it was cool air there.
And she said, ‘Yes’
and so you know,but
(12:16):
You know asthat was part of
the impetus to getsomething done about this.
We clearly had air pollution.
It was clearly doingbad things to the world.
And as I finally got into USC (University of Southern California)
into this, we it was just simultaneously
the oil crisis.
It was purely I,you know,
(12:36):
I didn't arrange the oil crisis
it was completely coincidental.
but we got a grant from theNational Science Foundation
to, do this research
on what I called,
‘Development of Policy on theTelecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff’
(12:58):
You do it in such an engineering way, right.
Again, it's goes, it’s back to trade offs.
And you saw a pretty clear opportunity
just to swap phone callsfor commute time
I want to back up again forpeople that are watching this.
You know, this is beforemobile phones
this is beforeemail
this is beforethe internet.
And, in the defenseof the companies,
you know,
there used to be likeone corporate number
(13:20):
and it would gothrough the switchboard
and they would route itto whomever needed to get it.
And all the mail was in envelopes
that came through the mail room every day.
But what I found interestinggetting ready for this is you.
You’ve said a number of times that
technology was neverthe barrier. Never.
It was always people'swillingness to actually try
where there was an opportunity.
(13:42):
And even in 1973,there was plenty of technology
to enable, you know,an increasing amount of people
to do more work,not from that central office.
That's right.
The first projectwe set up,
I wanted to make sure itwas a real world situation,
not just an academic exercisewith students.
(14:03):
So we set it up with anational insurance company.
Who had divisional headquarters in L.A.
And I asked what they wereworried about,
and they said, well, we have a big turnover problem.
We have to hire basically
a third of our workforceevery year.
And we'd really liketo cut that down.
(14:23):
And if you can help us,
fine, you know
Their problem was notsomething called telecommuter
Their problem wasturnover rate.
We, I said we can helpyou severely reduce it.
And by setting upsome test projects
and the test beds,there were
(14:44):
what we called satelliteoffices scattered in
at that point in theSan Fernando Valley.
The employees who worked for the company
then did not have toget in their cars
and clog up the freewayto get to downtown L.A.
they could walk ride their bicycle,
(15:06):
take the bus, get to this local,
satellite center,
do their work then, do typing,you know, data entry data
into a mini computerin that same building
which collectedall the information
and transmitted it overnightover a wideband.
What you know, T1 line they used to call it, it was about a
(15:29):
It's what we all havein our homes now, you know.
Right. Right.
into the company mainframe. Okay.
So the technologythat technology was okay, you
It was not good enoughto have people work at home
because the bandwidth required
in the telephone systemthat gets into households
were just not enoughto get information across, so
(15:55):
We always had,as this example shows
enough technologyfor people to do their work.
Lots, lots of people.
Basically, there were always more peopleavailable who could do it
than were allowed to do itby their management.
(16:15):
And that's always been the case.
Right.
So you do this seminal report in 1973.(Development of Policy on the Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff)
You write a book about it in 1976.(The Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff: Options for tomorrow)
I think it's really the basis of
of a lot of the stuffthat's come since.
And you go
and you talk to the head of theinsurance company and you say,
you know, we're saving you money
everybody's happy.
Turnover is down, engagement’s up,
(16:37):
commuting is down.
Nothing but happiness and roses.
And they tell you
No
Why not.
Well, we're a nonunion company.
And we figuredif we have people,
you know, scattered aroundin these different places,
(17:02):
the unions can come in andpick off the places one by one
and the NationalLabor Relations Board
says, you know, it's okay to do that.
So before we know it, we'd be unionized.
So we're not going to do it.
You know, forget about it.
A couple months later,I was talking with the strategic planner
(17:22):
of the AFL-CIO(American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations)
and he said,
He says, telecommutingis a terrible idea.
And I said, Why?
Why? It's great.you know
The people will love ityour union members
will be enthusiastic about itand everything
No, no, no.
You don’t understand
if they're scatteredall over the country side,
(17:45):
how will we ever get them organized?
Okay.
Insurance company.
Well, because (they’ll)to organize too easily.
The unions.
It's too hard to organize them.
So based on this
look into the future,I said, well,
I'm going to have to find some other way to get this going.
(18:07):
much of the 1970sto get other
departments of the federal government
to put some money intobroader experiments
And the usual answer was,
Hey, I'd like you to dotelecommuting
because it,you know,
reduces the need for transportation.
They said, ‘No, no, no, no, no’
(18:30):
that's not our mission.
Our missionis to make automobiles
more efficientand traffic signals
more interconnected. So,
it's certainly not having to do
with anything to cut downthe use of automobiles.
Jack - I mean what?Jeff - right.
Talk to the Department of Energy.
I can find ways to cut down energy use.
(18:52):
No, no, no, from, you know,automobiles in particular.
No, no, no, our mission
is to make themmore efficient,
not to get rid of them.
So in everything I presented for several years here
the answer was,
No, no, that's that’s not what we do.
We do something else.
(19:14):
Right? Right.
It's just so rarethat you have an opportunity
to change behaviorand have so many benefits.
it's like the ultimatetriple bottom line.
You get all these benefitsfor the company
in terms of saving money.
And this, that and the other.
You get allthese benefits
for the employeesin terms of flexibility
and better mental healthand physical health.
(19:36):
And then you have all these
benefits to society in terms of,
you know, to have all these carson the roads and,
and it,you know
unclogs the roads for the people that have to be
there like trucks and stuff,delivering things.
It's so odd to have something
that hits on so many factors,
but then
so difficult for peopleto accept in terms of
really rethinking and changing,
(19:57):
changing theirbehavior.
It's like, there's notrade offs
it's like you win on both sides of the scale.
Pretty rare.
You know, the
the culture of the industrialrevolution sticks.
In 1800,
nobody worked in big cities,in downtown
(20:21):
big cities were a lot smaller,
and there were shopkeepersand so forth and so on
but most of the people livedin the countryside
right.
And it was not until we had big factories
with really expensive equipment
that we hadto somehow
attract the farm workers to come
(20:41):
work and live in the city,to run the machines.
Okay.
And that has apparently drilledinto everybody's heads
since the mid-19th century.
Right.
And certainlyin the 20th
And here I am trying to tear it apart again.
You know, I’m a danger to the system
(21:03):
Well, it's funny too.
I know you know, Kate (Lister) well
I think you wrote the forward to her book,(Undress for Success: The Naked Truth about Making Money at Home)
and I had her on,
and she said, you know,the smart companies can use
remote and distributed workto basically handle
all kinds of problems.
You got an employee engagement problem?
go, increaseyour remote work.
You have, a TAM (problem, total available talent market)
You know, you're not getting enough employees
you need to get themfrom more geography than
(21:26):
are available to drive to the office,
go with remote work.
I mean, you have sustainability,
commitments that you'vemade to the board.
Go with remote work.So it's
And then the bizarre one is even like
Nick Bloom from Stanford, you know
his seminal pieceof research,
on remote workfor the travel company (Ctrip)
was not
(21:46):
they wanted to save moneyon real estate
and they figuredpeople were goofing off.
They just weren't sureif the goofing off,
the loss of productivitymore than exceeded
the benefit of the cost savingson the real estate.
And in fact, to your researchthere were all kinds of benefits,
you know, productivitygoes up, not down.
time workinggoes up, usually not down.
(22:07):
You know, people don't knowhow to stop work.
It's a completely,
orthogonal to whatyou think is going to happen.
Yeah, our biggest problemwas about, was just that
To get peopleto stop
You know, stop, relax, enjoy the family,
go out and do something else.
You know, get rid of the computer
(22:27):
close it in the closet,lock it up.
right
until tomorrow,
All the management was always worried about
productivity.
goofing off.
people will just
find their time doing something else instead
and go down the tubes.
None of that happened.
None of it.
In every timewe tried it
(22:49):
In 1984,
we did have another project going with
several fortune100 companies.
Maybe I said, now maybe we’ll get
some big companies to do it.
And they said,‘Yeah, that was great’,
and they had a good time,
but you can't tell anybody about it.
(23:11):
I says
But why is this good?
Yeah, it works It’s good. Yeah.
Yeah we know, but
If we've got a way
to get something done
with very littleupfront cost,
you know, a little technology,some training of people,
(23:31):
and productivity goes up
and, retail costs
or, our space costsgo down
and,
and inventiveness goes up.
So why should we tell ourcompetitors?
Right.
So I, here I was back in the top secret business again.
(23:51):
So then we fast forwarda little bit more to 9/11.
And then in the early 2000s,
there's a rashof actually federal legislation
that goes downfor federal employers
really aroundcontinuity,
right, in case there's a natural disaster.
You know, the Pentagongot shut down for a while
to move more work.
(24:12):
as much as you can, you know,away from these central offices.
And yet, you know, we still hear the cries of RTO (Return to Office)
even withinthe federal government,
even though they have their ownregulations in place.
And I have them alllisted on the web page,
of trying to maximize people'stime, not at the office.
So it’s just this constant fight,fighting the tide.
(24:33):
Wendell Joyce in the,
the Commerce Department
had a hell of a timejust getting them started.
Just the same way I did only all he’s
he was dealing withthe federal government.
Same resistance from managers.
They didn't want to do this.They couldn't.
They didn't trusttheir employees, basically.
(24:54):
so they weren't surethey were going to do it
until they were surprised
when it actually happened?
They did even betterwhen the manager wasn't there.
Wait a minute.
Maybe this is getting rid of my job
right
So they've always had
all this resistanceis, and
(25:17):
you know, (Nick) Bloom had a
program going on in ChinaI think (Ctrip)
same thing there.
You know, I've in
In the 1990s, my wifeand I spent a lot of time
commuting to Europe to explain
to both industry
(25:37):
and the governments therearound how telework works
and same, same thing.
People tried it,the same problems.
It was
this is a human condition problem
it is not
company X’s and government Y’s job.
It works for everybody.
(25:58):
It is a culture changethat takes a while to get going.
And then, you know, all this,all this time
from the mid 70s on, I’d figure
What is the magic trick
I can use to getpeople's minds off the
(26:19):
narrow route they've been traveling down
for the last 100 years,
and think about different waysof getting the same stuff done
with lessenergy use
with lessair pollution,
with lessglobal warming.
I wasn't talking about itas global warming in the ‘70s,
but that's what it evolved into, what with the
(26:41):
with the air pollution
and it was.
It was basically
I found it was arounda two year cycle I had of
going in and talking to the CEO orsomebody in upper management.
I knew that the workers on the ground
(27:01):
wouldn't have a problem with it
it’s the uppermanagement,
and then the middle managementthat you’ve got to convince to do it
to go through explaining things to them.
Here's how it's done.
Here's what you have to do to make it work.
You have to look atthe legal situation.
You're policiesand procedures, etc.
You have to havethe right technology.
(27:22):
You have to have the bandwidthavailable at da da da da da
and takes about two years
from my first visit, to the time they said‘Oh, okay, let's try it’
two years.
Wow. Just to try it.
that was a cost ongoingtwo non income years
right.
(27:42):
Right.
Well I'm curiousyou know as a scientist
you've talked aboutwhen you did
your multidisciplinary approachyou had Annenberg
was one ofyour participants.
Right on the communication.
I mean, just I wonder if youcould share your thoughts.
As you know,
humans don't make,logical decisions.
You know, we makeemotional decisions
and the communicationand the packaging
(28:03):
and the selling of the messageis almost, if not more expensive
or more importantthan the actual math
or the logic or the rationalebehind these things.
And I wonder, as you've kind ofbeen banging your head against
banging your headagainst the door
for a long time,you know,
how do you think about,
the role of communications
and the importanceof communications
(28:24):
when you're trying to helppeople get through,
you know change, to get peopleto change their behavior?
A major part
of the trainingwe gave people
You know when they get into this
Both managers,
I mean particularly managers,but also the tele-workers
is specifically on communicationis that we want you
(28:47):
we have them
write down and diagramor do something about
who they talk to and what the subject was,
you know, for a couple of weeksbefore any of this happens,
write it down,draw a chart of it,
and show all your
all your communication methods,
(29:07):
you know, and their connectionsand media are there
And now what we're going to do
is make all the samecommunications happen.
But using electronic media
instead of your walking around and talking to them
or driving someplace to do it.
And we’re trying
That's the substitution.
(29:29):
You know, we got to
get you to keep thinkingabout the communication.
Is it getting done?
Is it getting done ontime to the right people?
And once they change their focus,
it's all of a suddenwhoa,
oh yeah.
This is you know,
I see the lightsgoing off again.
(29:49):
So,
So then Covid hits and suddenly
within a few days time,
like March 13th to March 16th, right around there,
people are sent home.
So suddenly companies are forcedinto this way of working.
They haven't hadany planning.
(30:10):
They haven't hadany preparation.
They haven't hadany training.
and lo and behold,
it actually works.
So I mean,
Covid did a lot of horribleand terrible things,
and we don't wantto discount that.
But from what it did in terms of finally
forcing people to acknowledge
that this could work becausethey didn't have an option.
(30:33):
Oh my goodness,
what a light switch momentfor you and the entire industry.
Kate likes to sayshe was chasing the rock
then suddenly it turned and started chasing her down the hill.
in April 2020.
That was my magic wand was Covid.
You know, the way to fixthis around is
just have a good pandemicevery now and then
(30:55):
This is not a way to do things,but it sure worked.
we had, you know, several
in the interim between1970 and 2020
there are several disaster situations
earthquakes, fires, etc., etc.,
(31:15):
in which we once againdemonstrated,
‘Hey, you can get your companyback working together’
get your peopleworking from home.
The phone lines get repaired
a lot faster than the freeways do in LA
when there's a big earthquake,
and they, they adapt it
(31:36):
all right away, you know, for 2 or 3 months, but
as my that experience gained,I said, you know, you gotta have
2 or 3 years of thisworking well
before it really takes root.
And that's what's happenednow after Covid.
(31:57):
It's 2 or 3 years,
but the CEOs are still saying,
I want everybody backin the office.
You know, they're not gonna come back.
No, no
It was long enough to take hold.
Yeah. For behaviorsto change.
You know, the whole thingkind of reminds me of biking
and biking as a substitution for cars and,
(32:20):
you know, you've gotAmsterdam
that's been doing itfor 40 years.
And, and then
actually, Paris has donequite a bit in the last ten.
But you know,all these,
all these externalities,all these side benefits
that come from, you know, quieter streets and,
and less pedestrian deathsand, you know, kind of
people getting backto their neighborhoods.
And, you know, we all experienced
(32:40):
kind of the quiet streetsearly Covid days.
It's, but it's justso hard to change,
people's behavior and their
perceptions ofthis is the way we do it.
Even though to your point,we didn't do it this way,
really not that long ago.
That's right,that's right.
So we used to you know, do
continuous cost benefit analysis on this stuff.
(33:01):
And even with the stuffyou could quantify
like cost of telecommunications
costs of space,etc., etc.
that benefit
in almost any corporatesituation we looked at.
We could notpossibly quantify
all these otherbenefits like
Well, we could quantifypeople are more relaxed,
(33:24):
feel more creative.
Their family life is better,
except with teenagers.
They dealt with itin the community,
you know, all this stuffthat has pervasive effects
ultimately on the way peoplelive and work together
but, you know,I don't know.
I don't know how to write down that
(33:45):
so an accountant willappreciate it.
Right, right.
Well, I think you captured a lot of it
in that one case studyin terms of turnover. Right.
Because if those things aren'tworking well, you know,
that's one wayto measure it.
I want to shiftgears a little bit, Jack,
again back to your sciencehat and your tech hat
and just get your thoughts onhow the tech has changed.
Because even though technologywas not necessarily the barrier,
(34:08):
like you said, it was the graymass between the boss's ears.
Technology has changedso dramatically.
And you know,
in the offices defenselike I said, you used to have
There was alot of stuff
that was work that was there
that you had to goget out of the file cabinet or,
get your notesthat the
that somebody left for youon a piece of paper
in a little round plastic thing
that sat on your desk topbefore voice mail
(34:30):
But as you look at technologyand the advances
of communication technology,
we're still, kind of fighting this battle.
But what gets you excited about the future
and what,you know, this massive,
kind of change in scale of compute that we now have
for so, so less moneythan back in the day.
And really whatthat's going to enable?
(34:50):
Well, I mean, the basic
dimension there is bandwidth,
the wider bandwidthyou have,
the more varied the work you can do.
At the beginningwe had telephone bandwidth
and you could do, you know,data entry kinds of things,
but you certainly couldn't do,
(35:11):
artwork or complexcommunications and so forth.
So that required,you know
some kind of face-to-faceinteraction or some
You had to go someplace else to do it
because it took big expensive machinery.
So as the bandwidthavailable increased,
(35:33):
as, for example, when personal computers appeared in
on March 18th, 1981,
the IBM PC was announced.
You know,
now the P.C.
your office couldbe taken home
because all the stuff
you use in the officeor a good part of it
(35:54):
was in this boxthat you had in your house.
Now it can bein your telephone.
right.
So the cost of the technologykeeps going down.
The bandwidth, it’s available in terms of
who you can communicate with effectively
and how you cantransfer data,
how you can transmit feelings, even,
(36:18):
continually expands.
And as it expands,it increases the ability
of people to work remotely.
it all sorts of situationsthat were completely impossible.
from an expense point of view,
then, it was, you know 5, 10,
(36:38):
ten decades ago, jeesh
It's it's amazing.
There's a lot of,
little memes out therethat show, you know,
like all the things that are on your desk,
and they all slowly just get sucked up by your phone.
From the kids picturesto your contact database to
calling people and mailingpeople and everything else.
I want to shiftgears and talk a little bit
(36:59):
about the role of government
and what, you know, kind of
how you think about where the rolethe government is in this,
both from kind of
a carrot perspectiveas well as a stick perspective.
And we saw,you know, in your early career,
you know, huge investment in,in small electronics,
you know, chasing Sputnik.
And that drovea lot of development,
(37:19):
which then created a lot ofinteresting technology that got,
you know, put all over theplace, like microprocessors.
there’s incentivesfor, you know, buying EVs.
So the government can really,you know, change things
pretty significantly with eitherincentives or with penalties.
What do you thinkthe role of regulation is
to kind of helpmove this thing along?
(37:39):
Well, there are various rolesand, you know, the
the initial role
in government for mewas simply a grant
from the National ScienceFoundation to do the research.
but they wouldn't go
further than thatin applied research
because NSF only didfundamental research on things.
(38:02):
So I ran up against a roadblock in getting
the more applied things,you know, because the
departments that wereinvolved in applied stuff
didn't believe in thisto begin with.
So the, you know,the governments had to
have to get turnedaround as well so they can,
(38:23):
you know, FCC can
change the ruleson who has access to what
source of information,how it's protected.
Certainly the protectionproblem is a continuing issue.
Security,
you want to be ableto communicate with anybody,
but not accidentallywith somebody else
you don't want toget involved in this thing.
(38:45):
So the legal background for this,
the technological backgroundthat still needs to keep going
so that we can
we can interact with people
safely and securely,
and the secure part is stilla major issue to be going on.
(39:06):
And even now.
well, that's just that's worldwide that’s a problem
you know,or you go to China,
there is noleakage outside.
Well, except for the peoplewho know how to do it
right
so
government can
(39:28):
at all levels gets involved.
Many,
many local governments,
have ordinances
that prohibit peoplefrom working at home.
One of the thingsI did with a
project we had with thecity of Los Angeles
is get them tochange their
their work codesso that people could, in fact,
(39:51):
be working at homeas long as they
didn't have crowds of peoplecoming to their door,
that sort of thing, but
you know restrictions like this.
impede peoplefrom living the way
that they should be able to.
In this new kindof a situation,
it's one of these things where
(40:12):
there's no big single
pervasive rulethat says if we
make the following law.
Everything's fixed
No, it's bits and pieces here.
You have to nibble awayat the restrictions
on free and easy communications.
(40:33):
You have to
also nibble away at the
issues of providing incentives
for people to do this,
which can mean,you know,
zoning laws,
income tax for the things you can deduct
and things you cannot,
that goes for the employer
(40:55):
as well as the employeeand so forth and so on.
You know, I don't really have a whole
big list of such things,but I do.
There's all kinds of waysyou can tweak the edges
to make it more effectively,
feasible for all sorts of people.
Right.
And then what.
(41:16):
What are your kind of,your thoughts now where,
you know, a year ago,
it seemed like we'd kind of gotten through the Crucible.
You know, everyonekind of adjusted and proved
that this is okay,and we're moving forward.
And then,like every August,
like back to school,we have back to the office.
You know, we have the RTO(Return to Office)
Brian Elliot likes to call it RTO season
return to office every August and
(41:38):
and it neverit never works.
So when you look forward
50 years crazy.
You know, what gets you excited
and then what gets you less excited and concerned
specifically around this topic?
And then more generally,
(41:59):
Yeah, the.
This is gets off the subject a little bit
but the education system
still needs a lot of work. We,
after we did the,
the telecommuting research,
I did a technology assessmentof the personal computer in 1978,
(42:19):
one of the topics we focused on was education.
and we basically came
to the conclusion that,
education is so
fragmented,
that it is hard to make
(42:41):
a learning tool
that is easily adaptable
to each and everyeducational district
because they have their own wants and needs.
It's just that
the economicsdon't work out for this
Yeah.
And the attitudes are still the same.
(43:04):
although as you're saying that,I'm thinking to myself,
you know, this is theubiquitous thing
that every single kidhas in their pocket.
You know, maybeit's time that we,
readjust theeducation system
to work through the phonefor a significant piece.
Yeah.
And, you know,
we should make use of the technology,but don't get addicted to it.
(43:24):
Is the other endof this thing,
right
Getting the workersto stop working.
You know, it's works
with whatever
nifty electronic instrument
you have to say, hey,this is really cool, but
Stop.Do something else.
(43:45):
And then whatare you working on?
Give us kind of the latest,
which we're working on withwith JALA and what's,
you know,
keeping you up and keeping youwriting and keeping you engaged.
I’m working mostly at a,you know,
sort of the nextmacro level
up from jobs to
how do we get this method
(44:07):
of examining the world,
more broadly spread than it is right now
you know, how is itpossible that we have
factions in the United States of people
basically at each other's throats?
For what?
Yeah. You know, why is this?
(44:28):
How do we stop thissort of thing?
I'm trying to get my hands around it
It's much,
much more complicated than justtrying to get a company
to think about different waysto let it’s people work.
So I said, you know,I'm used to getting in trouble.
so
now I’m doing it, only on my own hook
(44:48):
I don't have to need grants from anybody
I have enough incomeso I can just I can just
I can harp at anybody about doing this properly regardless?
Yeah.
JALA is intentionally nonprofit now
You just wonder if, you know, the,
(45:09):
the younger companies
who kind of grew up this wayin terms of
both their management structureas well as the they're just
they're younger kids,they're more, digitally native.
They're just more used to that,you know,
as they begin to displace incumbentsin particular industries,
when they go to Wall Street and say,
let's get out the balance sheetand the income statement,
(45:30):
one’s going to have hugereal estate expense.
And one’s not and at some point, you know,
do the financial analystson Wall Street start saying
you can't justifythis expense anymore.
Is that what's going to finally move it?
One of my colleagues at USC
was investing in and trying todevelop the executive boardroom.
(45:52):
Basically, the corporate headquarters
would be this one place,you know,
with 500 square feetwhere there would be
executives would come in connected to every body else
everybody else around so hey, they know what's going on
minute by minute.
And that's clearly
(46:12):
within the availabletechnology now
particularly as,
artificial intelligence accompaniedby artificial stupidity
keeps growing.
we're good at that.
Just as well.
But,
(46:32):
the kids, you know,
just don't have anyproblem with this.
I'm still talking
to a diminishingcadre of people
as they age andfall off the cliff
Hey, I'm 91.What can I tell you?
Yeah.
Still going strong, I love it.
(46:53):
It's just sad that we're stillhaving the same conversation
that you validated50 years ago
with hard factsand science.
And it just goes to showthat people don't make
they don't make decisionsbased on logic.
They make it based on emotion,
which was always my hard time with economics.
Like, these are beautiful curves,
(47:14):
but that's not the waypeople work.
You know?
No,
it's,
the technology moves a lot faster than our brains do.
So culture is basically the deciding speed of things here
The kids will adopt
(47:38):
new things much faster.
and the problem for us older folks is
should we keep arguing with them
or just get out of the way?
Yeah, I think it's time to get out of the way
well, Jack, I really appreciate all the work that you've put in this,
over the last 50 years.
(47:59):
You know, foundationfor so many other people's,
great work and exploring it.
And it's so bizarreand weird to find something
that has so many benefitson so many axes.
across the board.
It's like the ultimatenon engineering thing.
There's very little trade offs
and a whole lot of benefits on both sides
Well, I also went to a liberal arts college,
(48:20):
which I blame everything on.
That's right.
But that'sbut you know it's funny
now they're sayingthat's the way to go
because ChatGPT is goingto write all the code tomorrow.
So, it's good to have thatcritical thinking and,
and a little bit more, liberal arts background
to think about these thingsand have that filter.
Well, Jack, thank you very muchfor your time.
(48:41):
I really appreciate it.
91 years young,you're kicking tail
and appreciate that you’re still blogging all the time.
So thanks a lot.
And again, really a treat toto catch up with you today.
It was a pleasure.
All right.
He’s Jack, I'm Jeff, you're watching Work 20XX.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening on the podcast.
We'll catch you next time.
Take care.
(49:02):
Great.
Jack, that was terrific.
Thank you,thank you, thank you.
All right,let's do this again sometime.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com