July 3, 2024 • 53 mins
Sacha Connor took a risk. Working on the west coast, for a company she enjoyed in a job she loved, she put it on the line in the interest of wanting her soon to be first born child to grow up around her extended family in Philadelphia. So in 2010, she asked, can I keep my position, but move 3,000 miles and 3 time zones away, and go fully remote? They replied, yes, ‘but’ with significant career altering caveats. Sacha bet on herself, and took the offer.
Sacha made the move, and not only ran large distributed teams for the next 8 years, for Clorox, from Philadelphia, she overcame all the hurdles, and caveats, getting Clorox to de-couple location from potential and career track. Sacha started Virtual Work Insider in 2018 to help other organizations more effectively work as distributed teams and organizations, and she and team continue that work today, with a who’s who of progressive companies looking to embrace change, and learn the skills, mindsets, and behaviors to thrive in a more distributed world.
Please join me in welcoming Sacha Conner to this episode of Work 20XX
I was thrilled with Sacha accepted my invitation, as she started her distributed team member journey from zero, and has learned quite a bit over her time at Clorox, and with her current clients, on what works, what doesn’t work, and the practical steps to take to do distributed work better. From being Omni-modal, able to comfortably switch modes, to mapping out your network, and humanizing the members of the team, she’s chock full of tips and tricks to better navigate, and manage our increasingly distributed and dynamic world and workplace.
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(00:00):
Okay, great.
So I'll count us downand we will go in,
three, two, one.
Hey welcome backeverybody. Jeff Frick here.
Coming to you from the home studiofor another episode of Work 20XX.
And we've got a great industry veteran here
that I'm really excitedto have on.
You know,
there's a few peoplethat got introduced
to the idea of remote workwhen Covid hit,
(00:22):
and there'sa whole bunch of people
who've been doing it for yearsand years and years,
and she belongs to thatclub and cohort.
So excited to gether perspective.
And she's Sacha Connor, the founderand CEO of Virtual Work Insider.
Sacha, great to see you.
Coming to us from Philly today, I believe.
Yes. Hi. Hi Jeff, Hi, everybody.
Thanks forhaving me.
Absolutely.Thank you for coming on.
So let's jump into it.
(00:43):
So your story, which you're on a lot of podcasts.
So it's great for people tolisten and find out.
But it started with your desireto kind of get close to family
but not leave the job that you love.
So I wonderif you can take us back.
I think it was like 2009, 2010 of,you know, what motivated you
to try something so radical and different
to actually leave the headquarters,but keep your job?
(01:06):
Yeah.
So let's we can takeyou back to 2009,
when my husband and I had our first child, my daughter Nevin,
and we were livingin San Francisco, in the city,
and I was workingfor the Clorox Company.
So that's a $7 billionconsumer packaged goods company
that is headquarteredin Oakland, California.
And I was leading new productinnovation teams at the time,
(01:30):
and I had alreadybeen at Clorox for
seven years at that point,six years at that point.
And I loved my job.
I loved working with the marketing teams,
I loved working with the sales teams,new product innovation teams.
But my husband and I wantedto move back to Philadelphia
because that's wheremy family's from,
that's where his family's from.
(01:50):
And we wanted Nevins to grow upnear her extended family.
So I asked a bold question,which was,
Could I keep my job,
but do it from the opposite coast?
And so they agreed to that.
So in 2010, we picked upand we moved to the other coast,
and I had to startto figure out how to do my job.
But from 3,000 miles andthree time zones away.
(02:12):
So what I thought was interesting, you know.
One, it’s great that they gave you the trust and they said,
you know,
we'll use you as an experimentas a guinea pig
to see if thisis work, but
they gave you some really rough conditions,
which I thought were interesting
and I’ll just read them out, you know,
‘The Buts,’ I think you described them.
‘But’ you'll never get promoted,
you know, ‘but’ you'll never get to work in certain roles.
(02:34):
And ‘but’ you've now moved within,I guess, the HR system from
being tagged as a high potential employeeto a low potential employee.
So, one, I don't know if they're just trying to set your expectations
or you know what,
You took that I think as a personal challenge
because those are kind of rough conditions.
Clearly, you had made your priorities.
You initiated this process.
(02:54):
But what did you think aboutwhen they
you know, kind ofthrew out the buts?
So I would say
First, I was very happy thatthey were willing to experiment.
And that experiment came about
because I didn't come to themwith an ultimatum, which was,
unless you let me do this,I'm going to leave.
It was more of like planting seeds
over the course of even beforebeing pregnant
with Nevinstarting to plant the seeds of
(03:17):
wanting to movebut stay with the company.
So I was super excited for themto see me as an experiment,
to innovate in the ways ofworking, to allow me to do this.
But those caveats, I think camebecause of what you said Jeff
about setting expectations,
because Clorox is a really principled place.
which is whypart of why I loved working there.
And so they didn't want to seta faulty sense of expectations.
(03:40):
And they were a little nervous about it. Right?
This was new.
They didn't know howthis was going to go.
But as you said,I took that as a challenge.
I said, okay,
We’ll just get me back to Philadelphia.
And in my head I said, like,I'll show you.
I'll show you that I can getpromoted to director level.
I'll show you,I can do those roles that you said
had to be at headquarters,
(04:01):
but I didn't know how, you know.
So that's where the experimentation started.
Was like,
how was I going to make this work
to show them that they had
put down all these barriers that
that could actually be overcome.
And it did work.
So how long did you work forClorox from Philadelphia?
For eight years.
I spent eight years leading largedistributed teams from Philly.
(04:22):
Wow. So we're going to get intoa lot of the potential issues.
But I know then you leftto start your own thing,
Virtual Work Insider.https://virtualworkinsider.com/
What was kind ofthe motivation to do that.
Yeah, and just to even kind of close the loop on those,
barriers that they threw at me
from workingvirtually for eight years,
I was able to overcomethose barriers.
(04:42):
It took a while.It took a lot of influence and
And showing thatthe business
could actually stillmeet its goals
while I wasn't co-located in the headquarters.
But I did get themto promote me to director.
I did get to work on those businesses,they said that I couldn't.
And I did get them to de-link potential from location.
So while all that was happening,
(05:04):
the reason why I was able toinfluence was because
I was learning so much about
how to change the waythat I was working with my teams
from a distance.I was realizing
that, what I was learning to do fully remotely
was actually applicableto 95% of the company
because we were workingin distributed teams.
We didn't have that word backthen to describe it,
(05:27):
but we were working with teamsacross different office locations.
So sales offices, even our technical center for Clorox
was a 30 minutedrive from headquarters.
So that was aa virtual relationship.
So I was realizing that theskills I was learning
from really hands on experience
were applicableeven outside of Clorox,
(05:47):
that there was a business opportunity
to help teach other teams
how to work in a virtual environment.
Right.
That's great.
So as we've all learnedfrom Darren Murph,
his great line isand they were all remote
was that, you know,
it forces you to be good at things
that all companies should be good at
which is communication andand managing objectives, etc..
(06:08):
So we're going toget into all that.
But one of the thingsI wanted to start with
is when you were at Clorox,you were responsible for innovation
and a lot of people,that's one of the big buzzwords.
Oh, how can people do innovation?
How can they do brainstorming?
How can you, you know,
Come up with new and innovative products
if you're notin the room
in kind of the classiccase of the,
you know, standing thereand somebody got a
(06:29):
got a marker up at the whiteboard.
But I find it's funny
is that the people that really want to go back to the whiteboard
are people that generallywere holding the pen,
not necessarily the peoplesitting around the table.
So talk to us a little bitabout innovation, and
how do you do innovation,
as a remote personor as a distributed team?
Really great question.
(06:50):
Because when I went remote,
I was leading new product innovation teams for
a consumer products goods company.
So really tactical,tangible products
that needed to be usedor touched or smelled.
Right.
So, not a tech companywhere, you know,
things were being operatedin the cloud anyway.
(07:10):
And there is a certain irony to itnow that I think back on it,
that the low risk job was the job
that was working on the actualnew product development.
So what I love about it, though,is it gave me the opportunity
to rethink how we were working
in our innovation teamsbecause I was 3,000 miles away.
(07:33):
And so some daysI felt like I was, you know,
had one hand tied behind my backor was blindfolded
because I had to constantlythink about
how am I going to stay connectedto my innovation team
that was locatedin our tech center,
that was locatedin our headquarters.
We were working with productsupply people as well
that we're working from plantand manufacturing sites.
So thinking abouthow could we operate
(07:55):
within this distributed team differently
than what a normal innovationteam would have been doing
if they had been located atheadquarters in the tech sector?
So, for example,
what you're sayingabout the brainstorming piece,
you know, so as we think about innovation,
ideation is a really important part.
Even backing up fromthe ideation phase, you
(08:17):
At a company like Clorox, consumer insights are critical as well.
So one of the benefits of workingremotely in a different location where
than the location majority
when working on an innovation team,
is that westarted to tap into
a different market to get consumer research for.
(08:37):
So for example,when I was located in
in Oakland, California,in the headquarters,
we would do a lot of ourconsumer research in the Bay Area,
which is not always representativeof the rest of the United States.
Or the world for that matter.
That too.
but it's it was local.
It was, you know, less expensivethan having the teams travel.
(08:59):
But now I'm in Philadelphia,
so I actually can do some consumer research in my area here
and get some different insights,
even go up to New York City,for example.
New Jersey is close by.
I could bring some peopleout from the Oakland area
to my home area
and learn a little bit differently about the consumers here,
so that wasone benefit.
(09:20):
And then when it came tothat ideation phase, you know,
those post-it note partiesthat you're talking about,
Clorox, we loved our post-it note parties
We’re all in one room.
Post-it notes everywhereon the wall.
But we couldn'twait for me to fly out
to Oakland to have a brainstorming session.
So we had to very early on
(09:40):
start to experiment with some early technology tools that
to enable usto virtually brainstorm.
So my team,we used to use,
so Mural didn't exist back then.
For example,
we used to use different softwareto allow us to asynchronously
put in our ideasand then group them
(10:00):
and then have a brainstormingsession about them.
Or if we had a post-it note party,
I had to have a buddy
in the room with
for me so that I could message them
with my post-it notes, prompts,
and they’d put them up on the wall for me.
It's really interesting.
Kate Lister likes to talk about,you know,
most of our greatest ideas,you know, come in the shower,
(10:21):
they come on a walk,they come kind of outside
the context of the post-it party,because that's when, you know,
you kind of free your mindand it can roam a little bit
and you can find and discover different things.
So, you know had
did you see, you mentioned it kind of a parallel,
change within your ideation process,
you know, kind of being forced with you being remote to say you know,
(10:41):
let’s move some of theinitial stuff to asynchronous
because a lot of timeswhat happened
is it’s just the loudest person in the room
whose ideasget presented.
And then you get kind ofconfirmation bias
and nobody wants to go against the boss.
So it's actually, you know,
isn't necessarily the best way to do it
all at one time, all together,all in the same location.
Yes. But it took, a change in behavior
(11:04):
because when you learned
that ideation is all synchronousin a room together,
doing something differenttakes a behavior change.
And, you know, having to teacha new technology tool
in order to enable this differenttype of brainstorming process
took a couple steps.
But one of the benefits
we also saw from it
was the ability to captureall the ideas
(11:27):
electronicallyfrom the get go,
because what weused to have to do
was give an administrative assistant,executive assistant, like
all of the post-it notes,
to then have to retype into a format that we could digest,
and then use to to iterate further from.
Right.
So it actually caused usto be able to ideate
(11:47):
and get to next steps faster
by starting with the digital approach.
I love that,
So we’re going to jump all over the place.
But one of the things is vocabulary.
And so again, with Covid,
you know,when people had to leave,
a lot of people suddenlyhad this idea of remote or hybrid,
when in fact teamshave been distributed forever.
And Clorox is a big companyyou had sales offices, I'm sure,
(12:09):
all around the country.
So as both at Clorox
and now in your existing business,do you ever tell people listen.
It's distributed.
It's or it's digital first
for the benefitsthat you just talked about.
Because allthe notes
and all the all the rough stuffis all captured
in one of thesedigital work platforms.
So it's really not that different.
And don't get hung up on hybrid
(12:30):
and remoteand all this other stuff.
Think digital first
or think distributed first,and then it kind of makes sense
and it's not quiteso new and scary.
I would imagine.
Well, part of the reasonwe're called Virtual Work Insider
and not remote workinsider is because
first, I knew that that remote word,especially before the pandemic,
was a little scaryto companies because,
(12:50):
they were not yet on board with at
allowing that location flexibility.
And the programing that we were providing to enterprises
was not meant specificallyfor remote employees,
because a lot of timesI would get the question like,
oh, can you come inand can you teach our like
(13:11):
small group of remote employees
how to work better with the rest of the group?
And I have to say, well actually
it's the ecosystemthat all has to learn
the new skills and behaviors to work together.
It's not just the remote people
who need to learnhow to work differently together.
And when we come intoan organization,
you know,we are helping them
to work better togetheracross distance,
(13:33):
whatever distance means for them.
So they've already decidedwhat their policy is around flexibility,
whether they arehybrid structured
hybrid flexible,whether they allow,
you know, people to chooseto work fully remotely
or must come in to the office all that’s
mostly been decided by the timethat we come in and help
enable them to work within that atmosphere.
(13:55):
But you're right.
We do have to, remind them that
even if they are a hybrid structured organization, for example,
if they've saidto their employees,
you must come into an officeTuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
every week,
that even when they're coming intowhatever their local office is,
they're still working across distance,
more than likely withother people that are
(14:18):
within their cross-functionalor functional teams.
Right.
So another kind of classicpush back on distributed, digital,
whatever the phrasethe company uses
is the proverbial water cooler?
Right, this magic that supposedly happens all the time
around the proverbial water cooler.
How do you replicate thatin a distributed world?
because it doesn't happen,
(14:39):
and I don't know how many watercoolers are actually in companies.
If you ask some kidwho's under 30,
I don't know if they even know what a water cooler is,
but that's obviously a concern.
And there is a lot of benefits in, you know,
kind of random chance crashing in of people and ideas and sharing their ideas.
So how do you help peoplekind of replicate
what they think they're missingfrom the water collisions
(15:01):
when they go to a moredistributed, organization.
Yeah, I think
the water cooler conversationhas been interesting
because I always like to break it down into
what does that represent?
Like why isthat important?
Because it's so easyto just throw out that phrase.
And so a couple thingsto think about.
One is, have you ever read the book The Medici Effect (by Frans Johansson)?
I have not, but I've heard you talk about it.
(15:22):
Oh, you have, Okay.
So I love this book in terms of, you know,
it talks about the intersection of
of different ideascoming together.
They inspire more innovative ideas.
And it's called the Medici effect
because they're talking about like
a long time ago in Italy (14th - 17th Centuries)
where the Medici familywould bring together, you know
artists and bankers and financiers and poets, you know, all together
(15:47):
into, the same city in Italy.(Florence)
And these peoplewere literally bumping
into each otherin the coffee shops there.
And that's where,
the Renaissance actually came from
in terms of new ideas,innovative ideas,
because you had these people who were
intersecting together,sharing ideas and building new ideas
based on those intersections.
And so the modern dayway of talking about that
(16:09):
is the water cooler effect.
And what I love aboutwhat's happened
over the past couple years is
that there's been more and more research about
the importance of creating these intersections
between weak ties or our‘further out’ networks, because what
Microsoft did a great study during the pandemic that showed
that during pandemic remote work our
(16:31):
close in networks our close in teams
those times got stronger,
but our weak networksgot weaker.
So our, our connectionwith our close in team,
our direct reports, you know,we felt like we stayed connected.
But those weak ties,those are the ones that we need.
They're critical to intersectwith for innovation,
(16:52):
for problem solving,for our career progression.
So when it comes to helping teamsor individual people think about this,
it's really thinking about this network analysis.
Who are the people that I need to influence,
who I needexposure to,
up, down, inside, outside of my organization
to meet my business goals, to meet my career goals.
(17:12):
So you have to be super intentionalabout creating a plan
to enable you to grow that weak tie network.
The contrarian viewis going to be
you just told me this great thing,
if I go to Florence,I'm going to get all these
great creative ideas,which did happen.
again,
how do you replicatethat digitally?
And I think, you know, you're probably gonna say it,
but I'll give you the lead in,which is intentionality,
(17:34):
which is one of the most importantwords in this whole thing.
Right?
Don't leave it up to chance andtry to create it intentionally.
Yeah.
So, you can do it
both using technology toolsand also kind of offline.
So meaning like
meaning intentionality through,you know, building a plan.
So we have a workshopthat we lead that’s called, you know
(17:56):
Building our Influence and Exposure Plan Across Distance.
And part of that is
the first step is to map your sphere of influence
map all of the peoplethat you need exposure to
and need to influence up, down, inside, outside your organization.
But then that's onlyyour known network.
You need to now understandyour unknown network.
(18:17):
So starting to tap into
your manageror your peers to kind of fill in
who are the other peoplethat you need exposure to
that you aren't even aware existwithin your organization?
Because as as organizationsand enterprises
get larger and larger, the silosbecome really problematic.
And so needing toto reach out across those silos,
(18:39):
to intersect and to exchangeideas is important.
So there's the piece around,like intentionally understanding
what your network isand needs to be.
And then you can use tech toolsin order to create
some of those intersections.
So for example, there is a
a software that does likevirtual speed networking
(19:01):
where you can tag people from,
different functionswithin a company,
different levelswithin a company,
and tag themso that
when they're in thisvirtual speed networking event,
you are creating theseintentional intersections
between different groupswithin the same organization.
I'm curious, when peoplego through that exercise,
how many people are on their map
(19:22):
that they identify,
is it 10s? Is it dozens?Is it hundreds? or, you know,
What is it 200 is like the classic wedding number
of kind of a sphere?
What would come backfrom those exercises?
And I'm sure
must have been crazy enlighteningfor people to actually go through
and start to list them downand map them out.
Yes
So usually what I hear is, ‘Wow’,I knew that my network was big,
(19:45):
or the network that I need exposure to is big,
but I didn't realize how biguntil I started mapping it out.
Like they usually hear, like, oh, this is a big hairy map.
right
And so the point is,
there's no way that you're going to be able
to gain exposure to all of those people,
at least notright away.
But the next step in the processis then to prioritize.
Think about, you know,what are the first 2 to 3 people
(20:09):
that you want to start to buildthat exposure influence with
so that it's a it becomes a musclethat you start to, to build.
And then once you've figured out how to do this,
then you can start expanding thatto other people on your map.
Right?
So that's a great segue
into anotherone of your favorite topics,
which is when you askthose same people,
(20:29):
Who do you go toif you got a problem right now?
these other two nasty biasesseem to come up
both in terms ofproximity bias.
You know who did I,who's close?
Who do I liketo talk to a lot.
And recency bias, right?
We love the pathof least resistance.
If I've gotyou know
if you're my favorite contactand I just know that
you're going to answer the phoneand I love the feedback you get me,
(20:51):
you know, it's hard to expand
beyond the easy and the simple.
So how do you help people get pastsome of these biases,
which are just
it's not really lazy,but it's just
human behavior to look for easierpaths to accomplish stuff.
So we free up timefor other things.
First is having awareness of it
it’s just the fact that nowpart of a lot of our vocabulary
(21:12):
is this proximity bias or distance bias.
You know, when I first wentremote back in 2010,
I didn't know that this was a bias that existed.
It was like several years later
that Clorox had hiredin the Neuro Leadership Institute
to do training on their SEEDS unconscious bias model,
and the D in the SEEDSmodel is distance bias.
(21:32):
And when I heard about it,I was like,
Oh my goodness,
this is what I've been feelingall of these years.
It's not that peopleare intentionally leaving me out,
it's that our brains, natural processes
is to put more value on the peopleand things that are closer to us.
So I just felta lot lighter.
(21:53):
First of all,knowing that this existed
and that we now atClorox had a word
that we could use to describe itwhen it was happening.
And then the second part,the recency bias
that you're bringing up,
you know, when the pandemic hitand most teams had moved to fully remote
distance bias was less applicable.
Right.
Because we were all calling in
(22:14):
to these meetingsand working fully remotely.
So the recency bias piece waswas starting to spike in terms of
thinking about the people
that you've heard fromor seen on a video call most recently
So first of all, is awarenessof those unconscious biases
and then thinking aboutwhat are the things that I can do
to overcome them or mitigate them.
(22:35):
And so one of the really easy tips I talk about
is just post a pictureof your entire team
by your computeror your workspace,
because next time you are thinkingabout assigning a project,
or you need to go to somebodyfor a question,
you want to thinkabout your entire ecosystem
and figure out who the right person to go to is
(22:55):
not just the most recent person
that you've heard from,
or the personthat is sitting closest to you.
If you happen to be in the office.
Right?
So one of my hypothesesis a lot of the pushback,
that we saw after Covid
and return to officewas basically lazy management,
where, you know,no one had really had to be,
so specific with objectives thatthey were managing to objectives
(23:18):
versus managing to who showed up at the office
and got me coffee every morning.
And I think it and,
and I think that often rolled up
You know, I don't want to blamethe middle managers, but,
you know, maybe thatstuff wasn't clear.
You’ve said thatpart of your success was
because Clorox had a very robust, management,
or, you know, review system,not just once a year,
(23:39):
but you had a very robust system in terms
of keeping track of peopleand keeping track of objectives.
I wonder if you could sharea little bit about their system and
do you see that consistentlyin some of your clients?
What do you see out in the field?
Yeah.
So as we talked about before,Clorox is over a 100 year old company
So lots of systemslots of principles in place.
(23:59):
So from a performancemanagement process,
it was something that was
kind of very ingrainedin the work that we did.
And so we definitely had
every fiscal year coming up,we would create our new
performance objectives.
They would usually flow downward
from your functional lead,you know, down through the teams.
And then we would be requiredas people managers
(24:21):
to be checking in with our directreports on progress
against their performanceobjectives, at least quarterly.
I used to do this almost on a monthly basis,
where we talk about, performance against our objectives,
talk about developmentalopportunities as well.
So one of the thingsthat I learned
from being a studioleader at Clorox,
which while I was in the brand management function,
(24:42):
I was operating as a general,mini general manager,
where I had many cross-functional team members
who laddered upinto my studio.
One of the things that we startedto do was get really clear
about sharing our cross-functionalgoals with each other,
because, asI said before,
usually the goals were flowingdown from the functions.
But once we started sharing, you know,
(25:04):
what were the sales team members goals versus
the marketing team members goalsversus the R&D members goals?
We started to see some inconsistencies
and some tensions,and tension is always
it can be good.
But what we found at times
was they were in oppositionto each other, the objectives.
And so what that exercise allowed us to do
(25:25):
was then throw up a flag and say,
hey, we need to actually get these things aligned
so that we can move,
progress against our businessobjectives faster.
And to your question aboutwhat do I see when I get into,
our client engagements is I often see that
the performance management processes are nowhere near as mature as Clorox’s are.
(25:48):
And oftentimesat that team level,
they have not done the workto actually share their objectives
across the groupcross-functionally,
nor have they aligned to what thea project objective is even
for a cross-functional team.
And do you think they
that just because they could before?
I mean, you had a great storythat you shared
in terms of, you know,
(26:08):
what you just explainedsounds kind of complicated,
but you made it really drop dead dumb simple
and just put the objectives on a placard
and brought it into the meetingand leaned it up against the wall
just to remind everybodythat these are objectives. So,
do they see thatas part of their growth
into being more successfulin this world,
is better communicationof objectives
(26:30):
and communicating objectives,
making sure everybody knowswhat they're focused on?
I think that there
there has been a lot of assumption of
‘Oh, everybody knows’what the objectives are here.
And so what you're referencing is,you know,
when I used to beback in person with my teams,
through our leadershipdevelopment at Clorox,
we always focus on what are the goalsand the roles of the team members.
And so I used to walk into meetings with a big foam core that
(26:54):
output that said, you know,
here’s the goal of this project team.
And so as we're working with these cross-functional teams, with our
within our clientswe'll do some assessments.
So for example,
I've done some surveys wherewe've asked the team members,
‘Do you know what the objectivesare of this project team?’
and usually we get a super high response,like 90% saying, yes, I know.
(27:16):
And then we'll ask,
‘Do you agree with the objectives of this project team?’
And usually we'll get prettyhigh response on that as well.
And then we'll say
please list thethree objectives,
the top three objectives of this project team.
And then you'll seea wildly different,
interpretation of whatthe project goals are.
And that is just some great insight to have to say
(27:38):
Okay, well let's get aligned towhat the goals are
so that we can actuallymake progress against them.
Yeah. It's crazy.
So shifting gears a little biton communication protocol
because I think, you know,I think that's a big part of,
the friction that comes out because,
you know, there's so many communication paths now
you know, we have email,we have voice mail
(27:58):
phones, which we've had for a long time,
but now there's allthe digital workplace tools,
there's all the apps withinthe digital workplace tools.
and so it gets to be,unfortunately,
a lot of interruptions.
And I think a lot of people have,have not managed the expectations
well so that, you know,what used to be,
you know, get back to mewithin some period of time
(28:19):
now has kind of morphed into,I need you to get back to me
a whole lot faster,which creates interruptions.
And no one actually has timeto get work done.
So I wonder if you can sharesome best practices around,
you know, making sure everyone is codified
and communicated as to what are the
communication, expectations and most importantly, so that everyone knows
when they send something out,you know,
(28:40):
What is it? Is it important or not important?
And what's the expected return?
Yes.
So we have beenreally specializing in this area
of helping teamsto create their
team working agreements or team charters
to codify these norms.
And one of the things that I foundthrough testing
and learning this with teams
is that if you start with the communication norms piece
(29:00):
and the ways of working,
you end up in this bad cycle because
you actually haven't first determinedwhat are the norms in service of.
And so to connect thisto what we were just talking about
is at first you have to startwith understanding your purpose
and the people on the team.
So first, when you're creating ateam charter, you need to do that work
on team goals and roles,team values.
(29:23):
What are the behaviors
that we're trying to see from our team members?
so for example,you know,
what you're talking about is responsiveness.
And we'll get into thatin a minute.
But is there a behaviorat that higher level
that we expect a certain levelof responsiveness to each other?
And also, is there a behavioraround location inclusivity,
(29:43):
meaning we know thatwe're across multiple time zones.
We also need to be awarethat we may not get a response
within a certain amount of time
because people are workingfrom different time zones.
So you have to startwith your purpose, your people
building some connection,understanding goals and roles.
And then you can getinto the ways of working.
You can get into codifyingthose communication norms,
(30:06):
for example,that you're talking about.
So again, we do some surveyswith the teams that we work with.
And what we see isthat teams are really drowning
in so many technology tools,
so much pinging and digging,
you know, getting interruptedleft and right.
they can't find the informationthat they're looking for because they're
(30:26):
the information is being storedin so many different places.
And so it is really freeingwhen a team can come together
and they can say,
Okay, well, we're going to use Microsoft Teams for this kind of communication,
and we're going to design Microsoft Teams into these different channels
for these different typesof communication.
We're going to only use email forthis other type of communication.
(30:49):
So instead of the teamhaving to find the information
both on emailor in Microsoft Teams,
now they knowwhere to look.
Or you mighthave a team that
because they'rein a large enterprise
and large enterprise,has lots of technology tools.
They have some of theirinformation
stored in a SharePoint site,
some of it's stored in Box,
(31:10):
some of it stored in a Microsoft Teams site.
So again, getting clarityto this team, we are going to post
all of our collaborative documentsin this one area.
So Box for example,
again what we see when we do the survey
then after the teamnorms have been set
is that then people are saying,
I can find the informationI'm looking for
(31:33):
and I'm getting the responsivenessthat I need from my team
because people know
where to respond to me andhow fast a response is expected.
Yeah, it's really interesting.
You talk about,
you know, people justthrowing tools at the problem,
without necessarilythe training on the tool
or the expectations on the toolor how the tool fits in there,
you just said, you know, kindof the whole tooling ecosystem.
(31:54):
So it's just not another tool
because we have too many tools and too many notifications.
So have you seeing a better uptickin communicating,
you know, howthese pieces fit together
and what again, we expect it'sall about expectations, right.
what we expectyou to do, where and how.
Yes. And back to like whatwe talked about with innovation.
You know, one of the thingswhen you're taught
(32:15):
as an innovator is like,
what problem are we trying to solve here?
And so making sure that the solution fits the problem
instead of startingwith the solutions first.
And so in the example of thethe teams that we work with,
we are first trying to understand what are
What are the communicationnorms in service of right.
What are the goals here?
(32:36):
And then which toolswould that best fit the goals.
And as we're talkingabout the communication norms,
what should be donesynchronously
versus what needs to be doneasynchronously, right.
And even with these teamsI'm working with, like
starting with defining even whatsynchronous and asynchronous
means is important.
So asynchronous meaningnot live, not real time.
(32:58):
You know, people responding
when they can bestget to the information.
And so then we start talking about the tools
for the asynchronouscommunication.
And what I find Jeff as you saidis that, for example, Microsoft Teams
a lot of the enterprise clients
we work with,they use Microsoft Teams.
And when I come in, I say, oh,
you know, how comfortableare you using Microsoft Teams?
Oh, we knowhow to use it.
(33:19):
We use it for our video meetings all the time and
and other communication.
And then I say,
Do you know how to use the channelsor are you just using chats?
And then they say,what do you mean channels?
What do you mean?
And then I say, oh, okay,
well, there's a way that you can actually structure it
so that you, you clarify, you know,
(33:39):
which channel is forwhich topic area
and make surethat the right people
are included in each channel.
Well, what they've been doingis all these different group chats
that are super disorganized
and they're having troublefinding the information.
And so we have to kind of back up and say,
Okay, who needs to collaborateon which topics
and how can we structurethat for you?
(34:00):
So even starting with
showing them how to evenset their notifications
right,
they don't even know how to set notifications
to make sure thatthey're not missing a message.
So some of them are using the chats
because they think that they'remissing messages elsewhere.
Right.
It's funny. It's funny.
You used Microsoft as an examplebecause, you know, it's like Word
how many features are in Word
that none of us
don't, and have never,never known.
(34:22):
You know, they’re so farunder the covers
or we just never had a reason to go there.
So I want to shiftgears a little bit.
It's in the headlines
over the last couple of days,
‘Dell's return to office or else’ and like, I don't know, 40%, 50%
I don’t have the headlinein front of me
chose ‘or else’ which.
And I don't even think‘or else’ is defined,
but it really drives tothe fact that flexibility
(34:43):
and trust and agency are the work benefits that trump
everything else and thatpeople are willing to,
you know, suffer the potential consequences of ‘or else’
as you did for the higherpriority thing around flexibility,
not necessarily flexibilityin days of the week.
We're not going to talk about thatat all in this interview,
but really flexibilityin managing their own schedule,
(35:04):
which then reallybegs for, a level of trust.
How are you seeingyou know,
people kind of get it because what then
what it drives to is team level agreements, right?
And where, you know,somewhere down from Michael Dell,
where are you finding
the kind of the mosteffective area or size of team
to really start to putin those team level agreements,
(35:24):
because they can get hardand teams have cross,
you know, they interactwith other teams as well.
So how are youfinding kind of,
team level agreements,best practices?
There's great researchfrom the Future Forum
that Brian Elliott and his team did that showed that
employees want flexibility with their time
even more than flexibilityfrom where they're working from,
(35:47):
which was interesting to me,because for me,
when I went remote, it was all about location for me at first
But that really resonated for me.
Later, when I was reflecting on the work that I did at Clorox,
I was East Coast based,
and the majority of the peoplethat I was working with
were on the West Coast.
And so what that meant to mewas that every night
until almost 8 p.m.,I had to be accessible.
(36:09):
I was on video callsor was
needed to be accessibleto respond to emails.
And so my time flexibilityfelt very limited.
And it got frustrating at timesbecause of, you know,
being a parent andand needing that flexibility to,
to do extracurricularswith the family.
So, you know, as we thinkabout, that return to office
(36:33):
and what you're saying about Delland people saying
or you know, I'm choosing ’else’
I'm choosing
It's back tothat freedom
it’s a piece of freedom,right?
To be able to havethat flexibility of for my time
and my location.
But when it comes tothen operating within that,
there's an incredibleamount of complexity
(36:53):
that comes with everybodyhaving the freedom
to work where and whenthey want to work from.
So it's positivein terms of giving,
employees that freedomso that they feel engaged
so that they feel like they want to stay at the company.
But that complexity
it requires a lot of coordination.
And so that's where the teamlevel agreements can really help.
(37:15):
And what I've seen from the team level agreement is
there are some thingsthat you can consider trying to do
at that more corporate level.
But usually they start to fall apart
because there are so many unique situations,
within a functionor cross-functional team.
So you want to
start to look at that team leveland then have the different teams
(37:35):
that then create
that intersectwith each other.
So if you think about thatteams of teams type concept,
those team leaders
to start to share with each other
what kindsof norms
they've set within their team to see then
where could there besome overlap and consistency.
So for example, one of the clientsthat we've worked with now
for over two years,where we're working with
(37:56):
their marketing and techcross-functional teams,
whenever we create a teamworking agreement,
we also deem somebody as the team effectiveness lead.
So that person is responsiblefor that team's health moving forward
that and adjusting the team norms accordingly.
But now we get to create some cohortsof these team effectiveness leads
(38:17):
so that they can actually startsharing across the teams
what's working and what's notworking and evolve together.
Interesting that’s aI had never heard that.
That's cool.
One of the conceptswithin that realm is
I think you called it ‘Spark’ in one of your other interviews, or
I always call it,you know, kind of
mutually agreed to collaboration windowswhere there is some point of time
(38:39):
where you say, hey,
you know, I will be available for calls,
I will be available for quick chats,
I will be available, you know,for kind of quick, responses.
So is that somethingthat you see,
pretty frequently where, you know, you do have times
where you want you set aside for work,
but then you do have times
that you are set aside as if you were sitting next to one another
in terms of somebodyreaching out for, you know.
(38:59):
via an IM or direct message or text or whatever.
Yeah.
So that gets to the coordinationagain across time zones.
It starts with first understandingwho's in what time zone on your team.
And that might sound really simple and basic.
And it's quite amazingwhen I get in with a team
and I realize thatthey don't even know
that some of their team membersare in a different time zone.
(39:20):
So we'll just start there.
First you have to
to do what I call is like mapping thegeographic anatomy of your team
so that you understandwhere you're starting from,
and then from there
discussing some norms aroundyour synchronous time together.
So you have some companies,like for example, Dropbox,
they are a leaderin virtual first,
they have core collaboration hours where they’ve set aside to the whole company.
(39:44):
You know, these are the hoursthat we need to be available
to each other for live synchronous meetings.
And what you were referring toabout Spark Time?
Well, this is something that I did
with my team at Cloroxmany years ago
where we were working acrossdifferent time zones,
and so what we had onour calendar was twice a week.
We had two hours blocked oneverybody's calendar, and that was
(40:06):
so that we were availableto each other for in the moment,
impromptu problem solving,brainstorming, discussion, debate.
Because otherwise
it becomes really difficultto try to find time with each other
on an ad hoc basisbecause we're
in way too many meetings.
Overbooked back to back.
Right? Right.
(40:26):
All right, so
You brought it up.
You know, we have to go there unfortunately
which is themeetings thing.
you know, I thinkif people spent,
I don't know, 25% of the time they spend
worrying about days of the weekon better meeting processes
better meeting etiquette,you know,
canceling a lot of meetingsthat they don't really need,
(40:46):
share some best practicesaround meetings,
and really trying to get bettermeeting culture
because I think a lot of peopleequate work to meetings
and even some of the surveillance,software that we hear about.
It's like, you know,are you booked in meetings
so many hoursa day, it's ridiculous.
Like, are you payingpeople to go to meetings?
Are you paying peopleto actually do their job?
So I wonder if you couldshare some of your,
some of yourobservations on meetings.
(41:09):
I would say thatmany enterprises
have a highlysynchronous culture,
meaning that they'reusing meetings to get work done,
they're using meetings
to get updates on workand to talk about workflow.
And it's a big behavior change
to start to reduce that type of culture.
And when I get brought into work with a team,
(41:29):
sometimes the vice president or theteam leader will come to me and say,
can you help ushave better meetings?
And I say, okay, so I come inand I observe some meetings
and I start to understand what the goals of the team are,
what I've seen over and over again
is that the meeting situation
is just a symptomof a broader problem.
You can't justfix the meetings.
(41:49):
You actually have toagain, go back to
what are our communication norms?
How are we goingto design our time to
get things done synchronouslyand asynchronously?
So you have to start putting
into place some of theasynchronous communication norms
in order to solve the meeting problem.
Because whathappens is
the meetings are being used as a crutch.
(42:11):
A lot of time to get updateson progress on projects.
And if you have no asynchronousdashboards, tools, communication options
you're going to keephaving these meetings
where they feel like
they're inefficientand ineffective
because they're just being used to get updates.
So that's number one
is that you need to lookat the whole kind of ecosystem
(42:31):
of how is this team communicatingand what can be done
synchronously versusasynchronously.
And then with the remainingsynchronous meetings,
what I like to talk
a lot about is that
meetings are notjust meetings,
but meetings are actually where your culture is being
built or it's being torn down.
Because when we thinkabout culture, which is, you know
(42:53):
our values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors,how we operate as a team,
how we work together,how we treat each other.
Well if you're allin different locations,
the only peaks that you get into that culture
are in yourlive meetings
or maybe in your asynchronous communications.
And so those meetings need to takeon a whole new level of importance,
(43:15):
because it's notjust this thing
that we're showing up toand we're getting assigned tasks.
It's actually where we're buildingor destroying our team culture.
Yeah, well, I would say they're building it,
but not necessarily building itwhere they want it to go.
I mean, the culture is the way they behave.
So they might not be acting
in the way
that they wanttheir culture to go,
(43:35):
but unfortunatelythey're just reinforcing
some of the bad behaviors.
It’s funny, Shani Harmon, I had on from‘Stop Meeting Like This’
and they asked her the same thing,you know, can you help us?
And she says, yeah,I can help you, but you know, you
you're not going to get it.
It's like dieting.
We all know we're not
What we're supposed to eatand not eat and exercise more
and keep an agendaand keep the notes and
so it's not for lack of knowledge.
(43:56):
It's just kind offor lack of discipline.
And as you say,I think
it's kind of a lazy way out of
when you don't have those other kinds of communication, methods.
So we'll just have a meeting,you know,
it's like this default thing.
We'll just we'll have a meeting,have a meeting and,
you know, there's so manyother options today
besides meetings to actually geta piece of communication across or,
you know, kind of whatis the objective of this meeting?
(44:16):
Because when you have a great meeting with
engaged people who are care about the topic
and educated about the topic,and you need to come to some
decision around something,you know, that's not
a status meeting where everybody’s
checking out, and doing email on the side.
And, you know, falling asleep.
So I thinkit's pretty interesting.
I want to shift gears a little bitand talk about trust,
(44:37):
and really asking for help,
which is a super important thing
for managers to have this culturewhere people feel comfortable
asking for helpso that they can get help
on the things that are,blocking their progress.
That really takes a lot of trustand a lot of people,
I think, sometimesmight be afraid.
If I ask for help, it'sa sign of weakness
and maybe I'm goingto get whacked
(44:58):
when they take outthe bottom 10% of the company.
So when you talk about trustand helping people establish,
you know, psychological safety.
So they want to ask that question,
what are some best practices to help people
create an environmentwhere the front line people,
who are the ones that seemost of the problems
are usually closerto the customers.
And you need that information to percolate,
(45:19):
especially negative information,because a lot of people
don't like to tell the bossbad information, right?
I'd rather not.
And so what happens isthey don't hear it
until it's too late
or too late to do somethingor something really bad happens.
How do you build more trustso that people are
are willing to ask for help?
Well, first we need to humanize each other.
So if you think aboutwhen we were working
(45:40):
in an office situation with each other,
we had this continuous
kind of informal connectionwith each other,
whether it was like bumpinginto each other at the watercooler
in the elevator.
We had, different piecesof information
about our personal life,maybe on our desk.
That would cause somebody to ask a questionabout your family or a hobby
or something like that.
(46:01):
Now that we're allin these different locations,
and even people coming inand out of a hybrid office
are often working with people who are in
a different hybrid officeor working remotely.
We have to intentionallyhumanize each other.
We have to pushpast the transactional
to get to that trustand that relationship being built.
And when I come into work with teams,
(46:21):
oftentimes, especially thesecross-functional teams,
I'm just seeing transactions happening.
I'm actually not seeing trustand relationships being built.
And again, this might seem super simple,
but one of the thingsthat we teach is to
create an About Meone pager.
So some information that you're sharing on a one pager
(46:42):
about your family, your lovedones, your hobbies, your.
And then it can even get into things like your communication preferences,
your hot buttons,your personal values, your,
your educational background,
your professional background,things like that.
And it's not good enoughto just fill this thing out
and put it somewhere, but
it's actively using it.
(47:03):
So there are many waysto use this.
So for example,
when we were talking earlierabout building your network,
so if you are about to
ask somebody to do a one on one virtual coffee chat
to get exposure to somebodyyou don't know yet,
you can send your one pagerahead of time.
So it's almost like this like an introduction
before the introduction, so thatthey get to know you a little bit.
(47:24):
These become great piecesof information for somebody new,
joining a teamwho can read through the files
of the one pagers of the otherpeople on the team,
we often use them also to create funpop quizzes within our meeting.
So as we were talking aboutmeetings where we build culture
so we would create momentsthroughout a virtual training
(47:44):
that we dofor example
where we're leveraging the fun facts
from the one pagerto create these moments of trivia,
or using photosfrom the one pagers to build
that feeling of connectionand warmth with the group.
Because if you do that again over and over across time
you're going to start to build that trust
so that we get to
what Jeff you were talking aboutaround that psychological safety,
(48:07):
to be able to speak upabout something
that may be an unpopulardiscussion point.
Right, right.
So we're getting towardsthe end of our time
and we could go for hours
I have pages and pagesand pages of notes.
But one of the thingsI think that comes out
even in this discussion is that
it is not easy.
you know, it takesintentional effort.
And you talked about something
in one of your podcastsabout just change fatigue
(48:29):
that said, you know,we're in an era where, you know,
there aren'tnecessarily the answers.
and it's really an era of experimentation
and trial and see what works,see what doesn't work.
And don't be afraid to necessarilynot have the right answer
out of the gate, but to basicallyget your hands dirty
and start to try some of thesedifferent techniques.
I mean, the world isnot slowing down.
(48:51):
And, you know, we have constant,you know, kind of changes
and disruptions and,
and what's happening,
you know, the most latest being,you know, ChatGPT,
which everyone isall up in arms about.
So I wonder if you can share,
you know, kind of helping people understand
that, you know, we're notgoing back to any state.
There's no stasis anymore.
It's a constantlyevolving world that we live in.
And you really have to be opento listen and try new things
(49:14):
and explore best practices
and kind of get out of your comfort zone,
and get kind of comfortablebeing uncomfortable
because we live inan uncomfortable world.
Or as Pierre Nanterme
the former CEO of Accentureused to say the, you know, VUCA
it's volatile, and it's a crazy, crazy world.(VUCA - Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity)
So don't be afraid to try things.
Absolutely.
We know moving forward is that we're notgoing to become more co-located.
(49:38):
We are going to be continuouslyworking across distance
with nationally,internationally, globally.
And so we need to get moreand more comfortable
with working acrossmultiple modes.
So I like talkingabout a framework
that we developed calledbeing an omni modal leader.
So being able to movethroughout the modes
of being fully in person,in a hybrid environment,
(50:00):
and then in afully virtual environment
and be able to move between those modeseven within a given day.
And so we want to be ableto communicate
and collaborate
and build relationshipsacross all those different modes.
And that is areally hard skill.
And anybody who's listening now,I want you to think about
(50:22):
what it takes
to build that skill for yourself,for your team members.
Because what I findat the more senior levels
of an organization
they take for granted that they know how to be omni modal,
they know how to move across those modes.
But the more junior employeeswithin your organization,
they need the enablement,the skills development
to help them be comfortable acrossall of those different modes.
(50:44):
So we can'ttake for granted.
what the other levels ofthe organization need in order
to enable theminto this
forward looking area.
Right? Right.
Yeah.
So as we close, I mean,I think most people that get async.
The whole beauty of async isyou move all the, the busy work,
off your plate so thatthe time that you do
spend together,
you know, you can spend
(51:05):
on these types of things,you move kind of the,
the garbagemeetings off your plate
so you can spend the time togetheron these other things
that are much more importantbuilding culture,
building relationships, building trust,getting to know one another
so that when the proverbialyou know what hits the fan,
you know, people know each other
and you can call outand reach and get support
because weknow each other
So I'll give you the last wordbefore we sign off.
(51:26):
You know, you werea pioneer in 2009.
You must have beenbanging your head
and when did youstarted this, 2018,
still trying to get people to figure out it's not supporting the remote people.
It's let's changeour communication.
And now suddenly, Covid hits.
And as Kate (Lister) likes to say,the rock turned and started
chasing her down the hillinstead of the other way around.
So as you look backwith a little bit of perspective,
(51:47):
what your kind of final thoughtsas we sign off in terms
of what you seegoing forward over the next,
I would never say morethan two or 3 or 4 years.
Well, I love that thepositive of the pandemic
was that it did accelerate a lot ofthe trends that we were seeing,
that Kate was seeing from many, many years ago
that I was seeing from 2010 onward.
(52:08):
So it accelerateda lot of those trends.
So I think thatthat was a positive in that
it got us to think differentlyabout flexibility and allowing
freedom in locationfreedom in, in our time as well.
But I think that those skills,mindsets and behaviors to enable
this kind of complexityare going to be really important.
So thinking about how can youbest enable yourselves
(52:30):
and your teams to work withinthat kind of work environment?
Awesome.
And if you need help, reach out toVirtual Work Insider.
Sacha’s got all the classes
and the programs, and lots of experience in the space.
So Sacha, really greatto have you on.
I appreciate you sharingyour insights and perspective
because you certainly havea lot of experience in the area.
So thank you very much.
Thanks for having me.
(52:51):
My pleasure.
All right, she’s Sacha, I'm Jeff,you're watching Work 20XX.
Thanks for watching.We'll see you next time.
Thanks for listeningon the podcast. Take care.
Great.
Thank you.
That flew by. Thank you.
Okay, great.
So I'll count us downand we will go in,
three, two, one.
Hey welcome backeverybody. Jeff Frick here.
Coming to you from the home studiofor another episode of Work 20XX.
And we've got a great industry veteran here
that I'm really excitedto have on.
You know,
there's a few peoplethat got introduced
to the idea of remote workwhen Covid hit,
(00:22):
and there'sa whole bunch of people
who've been doing it for yearsand years and years,
and she belongs to thatclub and cohort.
So excited to gether perspective.
And she's Sacha Connor, the founderand CEO of Virtual Work Insider.
Sacha, great to see you.
Coming to us from Philly today, I believe.
Yes. Hi. Hi Jeff, Hi, everybody.
Thanks forhaving me.
Absolutely.Thank you for coming on.
So let's jump into it.
(00:43):
So your story, which you're on a lot of podcasts.
So it's great for people tolisten and find out.
But it started with your desireto kind of get close to family
but not leave the job that you love.
So I wonderif you can take us back.
I think it was like 2009, 2010 of,you know, what motivated you
to try something so radical and different
to actually leave the headquarters,but keep your job?
(01:06):
Yeah.
So let's we can takeyou back to 2009,
when my husband and I had our first child, my daughter Nevin,
and we were livingin San Francisco, in the city,
and I was workingfor the Clorox Company.
So that's a $7 billionconsumer packaged goods company
that is headquarteredin Oakland, California.
And I was leading new productinnovation teams at the time,
(01:30):
and I had alreadybeen at Clorox for
seven years at that point,six years at that point.
And I loved my job.
I loved working with the marketing teams,
I loved working with the sales teams,new product innovation teams.
But my husband and I wantedto move back to Philadelphia
because that's wheremy family's from,
that's where his family's from.
(01:50):
And we wanted Nevins to grow upnear her extended family.
So I asked a bold question,which was,
Could I keep my job,
but do it from the opposite coast?
And so they agreed to that.
So in 2010, we picked upand we moved to the other coast,
and I had to startto figure out how to do my job.
But from 3,000 miles andthree time zones away.
(02:12):
So what I thought was interesting, you know.
One, it’s great that they gave you the trust and they said,
you know,
we'll use you as an experimentas a guinea pig
to see if thisis work, but
they gave you some really rough conditions,
which I thought were interesting
and I’ll just read them out, you know,
‘The Buts,’ I think you described them.
‘But’ you'll never get promoted,
you know, ‘but’ you'll never get to work in certain roles.
(02:34):
And ‘but’ you've now moved within,I guess, the HR system from
being tagged as a high potential employeeto a low potential employee.
So, one, I don't know if they're just trying to set your expectations
or you know what,
You took that I think as a personal challenge
because those are kind of rough conditions.
Clearly, you had made your priorities.
You initiated this process.
(02:54):
But what did you think aboutwhen they
you know, kind ofthrew out the buts?
So I would say
First, I was very happy thatthey were willing to experiment.
And that experiment came about
because I didn't come to themwith an ultimatum, which was,
unless you let me do this,I'm going to leave.
It was more of like planting seeds
over the course of even beforebeing pregnant
with Nevinstarting to plant the seeds of
(03:17):
wanting to movebut stay with the company.
So I was super excited for themto see me as an experiment,
to innovate in the ways ofworking, to allow me to do this.
But those caveats, I think camebecause of what you said Jeff
about setting expectations,
because Clorox is a really principled place.
which is whypart of why I loved working there.
And so they didn't want to seta faulty sense of expectations.
(03:40):
And they were a little nervous about it. Right?
This was new.
They didn't know howthis was going to go.
But as you said,I took that as a challenge.
I said, okay,
We’ll just get me back to Philadelphia.
And in my head I said, like,I'll show you.
I'll show you that I can getpromoted to director level.
I'll show you,I can do those roles that you said
had to be at headquarters,
(04:01):
but I didn't know how, you know.
So that's where the experimentation started.
Was like,
how was I going to make this work
to show them that they had
put down all these barriers that
that could actually be overcome.
And it did work.
So how long did you work forClorox from Philadelphia?
For eight years.
I spent eight years leading largedistributed teams from Philly.
(04:22):
Wow. So we're going to get intoa lot of the potential issues.
But I know then you leftto start your own thing,
Virtual Work Insider.https://virtualworkinsider.com/
What was kind ofthe motivation to do that.
Yeah, and just to even kind of close the loop on those,
barriers that they threw at me
from workingvirtually for eight years,
I was able to overcomethose barriers.
(04:42):
It took a while.It took a lot of influence and
And showing thatthe business
could actually stillmeet its goals
while I wasn't co-located in the headquarters.
But I did get themto promote me to director.
I did get to work on those businesses,they said that I couldn't.
And I did get them to de-link potential from location.
So while all that was happening,
(05:04):
the reason why I was able toinfluence was because
I was learning so much about
how to change the waythat I was working with my teams
from a distance.I was realizing
that, what I was learning to do fully remotely
was actually applicableto 95% of the company
because we were workingin distributed teams.
We didn't have that word backthen to describe it,
(05:27):
but we were working with teamsacross different office locations.
So sales offices, even our technical center for Clorox
was a 30 minutedrive from headquarters.
So that was aa virtual relationship.
So I was realizing that theskills I was learning
from really hands on experience
were applicableeven outside of Clorox,
(05:47):
that there was a business opportunity
to help teach other teams
how to work in a virtual environment.
Right.
That's great.
So as we've all learnedfrom Darren Murph,
his great line isand they were all remote
was that, you know,
it forces you to be good at things
that all companies should be good at
which is communication andand managing objectives, etc..
(06:08):
So we're going toget into all that.
But one of the thingsI wanted to start with
is when you were at Clorox,you were responsible for innovation
and a lot of people,that's one of the big buzzwords.
Oh, how can people do innovation?
How can they do brainstorming?
How can you, you know,
Come up with new and innovative products
if you're notin the room
in kind of the classiccase of the,
you know, standing thereand somebody got a
(06:29):
got a marker up at the whiteboard.
But I find it's funny
is that the people that really want to go back to the whiteboard
are people that generallywere holding the pen,
not necessarily the peoplesitting around the table.
So talk to us a little bitabout innovation, and
how do you do innovation,
as a remote personor as a distributed team?
Really great question.
(06:50):
Because when I went remote,
I was leading new product innovation teams for
a consumer products goods company.
So really tactical,tangible products
that needed to be usedor touched or smelled.
Right.
So, not a tech companywhere, you know,
things were being operatedin the cloud anyway.
(07:10):
And there is a certain irony to itnow that I think back on it,
that the low risk job was the job
that was working on the actualnew product development.
So what I love about it, though,is it gave me the opportunity
to rethink how we were working
in our innovation teamsbecause I was 3,000 miles away.
(07:33):
And so some daysI felt like I was, you know,
had one hand tied behind my backor was blindfolded
because I had to constantlythink about
how am I going to stay connectedto my innovation team
that was locatedin our tech center,
that was locatedin our headquarters.
We were working with productsupply people as well
that we're working from plantand manufacturing sites.
So thinking abouthow could we operate
(07:55):
within this distributed team differently
than what a normal innovationteam would have been doing
if they had been located atheadquarters in the tech sector?
So, for example,
what you're sayingabout the brainstorming piece,
you know, so as we think about innovation,
ideation is a really important part.
Even backing up fromthe ideation phase, you
(08:17):
At a company like Clorox, consumer insights are critical as well.
So one of the benefits of workingremotely in a different location where
than the location majority
when working on an innovation team,
is that westarted to tap into
a different market to get consumer research for.
(08:37):
So for example,when I was located in
in Oakland, California,in the headquarters,
we would do a lot of ourconsumer research in the Bay Area,
which is not always representativeof the rest of the United States.
Or the world for that matter.
That too.
but it's it was local.
It was, you know, less expensivethan having the teams travel.
(08:59):
But now I'm in Philadelphia,
so I actually can do some consumer research in my area here
and get some different insights,
even go up to New York City,for example.
New Jersey is close by.
I could bring some peopleout from the Oakland area
to my home area
and learn a little bit differently about the consumers here,
so that wasone benefit.
(09:20):
And then when it came tothat ideation phase, you know,
those post-it note partiesthat you're talking about,
Clorox, we loved our post-it note parties
We’re all in one room.
Post-it notes everywhereon the wall.
But we couldn'twait for me to fly out
to Oakland to have a brainstorming session.
So we had to very early on
(09:40):
start to experiment with some early technology tools that
to enable usto virtually brainstorm.
So my team,we used to use,
so Mural didn't exist back then.
For example,
we used to use different softwareto allow us to asynchronously
put in our ideasand then group them
(10:00):
and then have a brainstormingsession about them.
Or if we had a post-it note party,
I had to have a buddy
in the room with
for me so that I could message them
with my post-it notes, prompts,
and they’d put them up on the wall for me.
It's really interesting.
Kate Lister likes to talk about,you know,
most of our greatest ideas,you know, come in the shower,
(10:21):
they come on a walk,they come kind of outside
the context of the post-it party,because that's when, you know,
you kind of free your mindand it can roam a little bit
and you can find and discover different things.
So, you know had
did you see, you mentioned it kind of a parallel,
change within your ideation process,
you know, kind of being forced with you being remote to say you know,
(10:41):
let’s move some of theinitial stuff to asynchronous
because a lot of timeswhat happened
is it’s just the loudest person in the room
whose ideasget presented.
And then you get kind ofconfirmation bias
and nobody wants to go against the boss.
So it's actually, you know,
isn't necessarily the best way to do it
all at one time, all together,all in the same location.
Yes. But it took, a change in behavior
(11:04):
because when you learned
that ideation is all synchronousin a room together,
doing something differenttakes a behavior change.
And, you know, having to teacha new technology tool
in order to enable this differenttype of brainstorming process
took a couple steps.
But one of the benefits
we also saw from it
was the ability to captureall the ideas
(11:27):
electronicallyfrom the get go,
because what weused to have to do
was give an administrative assistant,executive assistant, like
all of the post-it notes,
to then have to retype into a format that we could digest,
and then use to to iterate further from.
Right.
So it actually caused usto be able to ideate
(11:47):
and get to next steps faster
by starting with the digital approach.
I love that,
So we’re going to jump all over the place.
But one of the things is vocabulary.
And so again, with Covid,
you know,when people had to leave,
a lot of people suddenlyhad this idea of remote or hybrid,
when in fact teamshave been distributed forever.
And Clorox is a big companyyou had sales offices, I'm sure,
(12:09):
all around the country.
So as both at Clorox
and now in your existing business,do you ever tell people listen.
It's distributed.
It's or it's digital first
for the benefitsthat you just talked about.
Because allthe notes
and all the all the rough stuffis all captured
in one of thesedigital work platforms.
So it's really not that different.
And don't get hung up on hybrid
(12:30):
and remoteand all this other stuff.
Think digital first
or think distributed first,and then it kind of makes sense
and it's not quiteso new and scary.
I would imagine.
Well, part of the reasonwe're called Virtual Work Insider
and not remote workinsider is because
first, I knew that that remote word,especially before the pandemic,
was a little scaryto companies because,
(12:50):
they were not yet on board with at
allowing that location flexibility.
And the programing that we were providing to enterprises
was not meant specificallyfor remote employees,
because a lot of timesI would get the question like,
oh, can you come inand can you teach our like
(13:11):
small group of remote employees
how to work better with the rest of the group?
And I have to say, well actually
it's the ecosystemthat all has to learn
the new skills and behaviors to work together.
It's not just the remote people
who need to learnhow to work differently together.
And when we come intoan organization,
you know,we are helping them
to work better togetheracross distance,
(13:33):
whatever distance means for them.
So they've already decidedwhat their policy is around flexibility,
whether they arehybrid structured
hybrid flexible,whether they allow,
you know, people to chooseto work fully remotely
or must come in to the office all that’s
mostly been decided by the timethat we come in and help
enable them to work within that atmosphere.
(13:55):
But you're right.
We do have to, remind them that
even if they are a hybrid structured organization, for example,
if they've saidto their employees,
you must come into an officeTuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
every week,
that even when they're coming intowhatever their local office is,
they're still working across distance,
more than likely withother people that are
(14:18):
within their cross-functionalor functional teams.
Right.
So another kind of classicpush back on distributed, digital,
whatever the phrasethe company uses
is the proverbial water cooler?
Right, this magic that supposedly happens all the time
around the proverbial water cooler.
How do you replicate thatin a distributed world?
because it doesn't happen,
(14:39):
and I don't know how many watercoolers are actually in companies.
If you ask some kidwho's under 30,
I don't know if they even know what a water cooler is,
but that's obviously a concern.
And there is a lot of benefits in, you know,
kind of random chance crashing in of people and ideas and sharing their ideas.
So how do you help peoplekind of replicate
what they think they're missingfrom the water collisions
(15:01):
when they go to a moredistributed, organization.
Yeah, I think
the water cooler conversationhas been interesting
because I always like to break it down into
what does that represent?
Like why isthat important?
Because it's so easyto just throw out that phrase.
And so a couple thingsto think about.
One is, have you ever read the book The Medici Effect (by Frans Johansson)?
I have not, but I've heard you talk about it.
(15:22):
Oh, you have, Okay.
So I love this book in terms of, you know,
it talks about the intersection of
of different ideascoming together.
They inspire more innovative ideas.
And it's called the Medici effect
because they're talking about like
a long time ago in Italy (14th - 17th Centuries)
where the Medici familywould bring together, you know
artists and bankers and financiers and poets, you know, all together
(15:47):
into, the same city in Italy.(Florence)
And these peoplewere literally bumping
into each otherin the coffee shops there.
And that's where,
the Renaissance actually came from
in terms of new ideas,innovative ideas,
because you had these people who were
intersecting together,sharing ideas and building new ideas
based on those intersections.
And so the modern dayway of talking about that
(16:09):
is the water cooler effect.
And what I love aboutwhat's happened
over the past couple years is
that there's been more and more research about
the importance of creating these intersections
between weak ties or our‘further out’ networks, because what
Microsoft did a great study during the pandemic that showed
that during pandemic remote work our
(16:31):
close in networks our close in teams
those times got stronger,
but our weak networksgot weaker.
So our, our connectionwith our close in team,
our direct reports, you know,we felt like we stayed connected.
But those weak ties,those are the ones that we need.
They're critical to intersectwith for innovation,
(16:52):
for problem solving,for our career progression.
So when it comes to helping teamsor individual people think about this,
it's really thinking about this network analysis.
Who are the people that I need to influence,
who I needexposure to,
up, down, inside, outside of my organization
to meet my business goals, to meet my career goals.
(17:12):
So you have to be super intentionalabout creating a plan
to enable you to grow that weak tie network.
The contrarian viewis going to be
you just told me this great thing,
if I go to Florence,I'm going to get all these
great creative ideas,which did happen.
again,
how do you replicatethat digitally?
And I think, you know, you're probably gonna say it,
but I'll give you the lead in,which is intentionality,
(17:34):
which is one of the most importantwords in this whole thing.
Right?
Don't leave it up to chance andtry to create it intentionally.
Yeah.
So, you can do it
both using technology toolsand also kind of offline.
So meaning like
meaning intentionality through,you know, building a plan.
So we have a workshopthat we lead that’s called, you know
(17:56):
Building our Influence and Exposure Plan Across Distance.
And part of that is
the first step is to map your sphere of influence
map all of the peoplethat you need exposure to
and need to influence up, down, inside, outside your organization.
But then that's onlyyour known network.
You need to now understandyour unknown network.
(18:17):
So starting to tap into
your manageror your peers to kind of fill in
who are the other peoplethat you need exposure to
that you aren't even aware existwithin your organization?
Because as as organizationsand enterprises
get larger and larger, the silosbecome really problematic.
And so needing toto reach out across those silos,
(18:39):
to intersect and to exchangeideas is important.
So there's the piece around,like intentionally understanding
what your network isand needs to be.
And then you can use tech toolsin order to create
some of those intersections.
So for example, there is a
a software that does likevirtual speed networking
(19:01):
where you can tag people from,
different functionswithin a company,
different levelswithin a company,
and tag themso that
when they're in thisvirtual speed networking event,
you are creating theseintentional intersections
between different groupswithin the same organization.
I'm curious, when peoplego through that exercise,
how many people are on their map
(19:22):
that they identify,
is it 10s? Is it dozens?Is it hundreds? or, you know,
What is it 200 is like the classic wedding number
of kind of a sphere?
What would come backfrom those exercises?
And I'm sure
must have been crazy enlighteningfor people to actually go through
and start to list them downand map them out.
Yes
So usually what I hear is, ‘Wow’,I knew that my network was big,
(19:45):
or the network that I need exposure to is big,
but I didn't realize how biguntil I started mapping it out.
Like they usually hear, like, oh, this is a big hairy map.
right
And so the point is,
there's no way that you're going to be able
to gain exposure to all of those people,
at least notright away.
But the next step in the processis then to prioritize.
Think about, you know,what are the first 2 to 3 people
(20:09):
that you want to start to buildthat exposure influence with
so that it's a it becomes a musclethat you start to, to build.
And then once you've figured out how to do this,
then you can start expanding thatto other people on your map.
Right?
So that's a great segue
into anotherone of your favorite topics,
which is when you askthose same people,
(20:29):
Who do you go toif you got a problem right now?
these other two nasty biasesseem to come up
both in terms ofproximity bias.
You know who did I,who's close?
Who do I liketo talk to a lot.
And recency bias, right?
We love the pathof least resistance.
If I've gotyou know
if you're my favorite contactand I just know that
you're going to answer the phoneand I love the feedback you get me,
(20:51):
you know, it's hard to expand
beyond the easy and the simple.
So how do you help people get pastsome of these biases,
which are just
it's not really lazy,but it's just
human behavior to look for easierpaths to accomplish stuff.
So we free up timefor other things.
First is having awareness of it
it’s just the fact that nowpart of a lot of our vocabulary
(21:12):
is this proximity bias or distance bias.
You know, when I first wentremote back in 2010,
I didn't know that this was a bias that existed.
It was like several years later
that Clorox had hiredin the Neuro Leadership Institute
to do training on their SEEDS unconscious bias model,
and the D in the SEEDSmodel is distance bias.
(21:32):
And when I heard about it,I was like,
Oh my goodness,
this is what I've been feelingall of these years.
It's not that peopleare intentionally leaving me out,
it's that our brains, natural processes
is to put more value on the peopleand things that are closer to us.
So I just felta lot lighter.
(21:53):
First of all,knowing that this existed
and that we now atClorox had a word
that we could use to describe itwhen it was happening.
And then the second part,the recency bias
that you're bringing up,
you know, when the pandemic hitand most teams had moved to fully remote
distance bias was less applicable.
Right.
Because we were all calling in
(22:14):
to these meetingsand working fully remotely.
So the recency bias piece waswas starting to spike in terms of
thinking about the people
that you've heard fromor seen on a video call most recently
So first of all, is awarenessof those unconscious biases
and then thinking aboutwhat are the things that I can do
to overcome them or mitigate them.
(22:35):
And so one of the really easy tips I talk about
is just post a pictureof your entire team
by your computeror your workspace,
because next time you are thinkingabout assigning a project,
or you need to go to somebodyfor a question,
you want to thinkabout your entire ecosystem
and figure out who the right person to go to is
(22:55):
not just the most recent person
that you've heard from,
or the personthat is sitting closest to you.
If you happen to be in the office.
Right?
So one of my hypothesesis a lot of the pushback,
that we saw after Covid
and return to officewas basically lazy management,
where, you know,no one had really had to be,
so specific with objectives thatthey were managing to objectives
(23:18):
versus managing to who showed up at the office
and got me coffee every morning.
And I think it and,
and I think that often rolled up
You know, I don't want to blamethe middle managers, but,
you know, maybe thatstuff wasn't clear.
You’ve said thatpart of your success was
because Clorox had a very robust, management,
or, you know, review system,not just once a year,
(23:39):
but you had a very robust system in terms
of keeping track of peopleand keeping track of objectives.
I wonder if you could sharea little bit about their system and
do you see that consistentlyin some of your clients?
What do you see out in the field?
Yeah.
So as we talked about before,Clorox is over a 100 year old company
So lots of systemslots of principles in place.
(23:59):
So from a performancemanagement process,
it was something that was
kind of very ingrainedin the work that we did.
And so we definitely had
every fiscal year coming up,we would create our new
performance objectives.
They would usually flow downward
from your functional lead,you know, down through the teams.
And then we would be requiredas people managers
(24:21):
to be checking in with our directreports on progress
against their performanceobjectives, at least quarterly.
I used to do this almost on a monthly basis,
where we talk about, performance against our objectives,
talk about developmentalopportunities as well.
So one of the thingsthat I learned
from being a studioleader at Clorox,
which while I was in the brand management function,
(24:42):
I was operating as a general,mini general manager,
where I had many cross-functional team members
who laddered upinto my studio.
One of the things that we startedto do was get really clear
about sharing our cross-functionalgoals with each other,
because, asI said before,
usually the goals were flowingdown from the functions.
But once we started sharing, you know,
(25:04):
what were the sales team members goals versus
the marketing team members goalsversus the R&D members goals?
We started to see some inconsistencies
and some tensions,and tension is always
it can be good.
But what we found at times
was they were in oppositionto each other, the objectives.
And so what that exercise allowed us to do
(25:25):
was then throw up a flag and say,
hey, we need to actually get these things aligned
so that we can move,
progress against our businessobjectives faster.
And to your question aboutwhat do I see when I get into,
our client engagements is I often see that
the performance management processes are nowhere near as mature as Clorox’s are.
(25:48):
And oftentimesat that team level,
they have not done the workto actually share their objectives
across the groupcross-functionally,
nor have they aligned to what thea project objective is even
for a cross-functional team.
And do you think they
that just because they could before?
I mean, you had a great storythat you shared
in terms of, you know,
(26:08):
what you just explainedsounds kind of complicated,
but you made it really drop dead dumb simple
and just put the objectives on a placard
and brought it into the meetingand leaned it up against the wall
just to remind everybodythat these are objectives. So,
do they see thatas part of their growth
into being more successfulin this world,
is better communicationof objectives
(26:30):
and communicating objectives,
making sure everybody knowswhat they're focused on?
I think that there
there has been a lot of assumption of
‘Oh, everybody knows’what the objectives are here.
And so what you're referencing is,you know,
when I used to beback in person with my teams,
through our leadershipdevelopment at Clorox,
we always focus on what are the goalsand the roles of the team members.
And so I used to walk into meetings with a big foam core that
(26:54):
output that said, you know,
here’s the goal of this project team.
And so as we're working with these cross-functional teams, with our
within our clientswe'll do some assessments.
So for example,
I've done some surveys wherewe've asked the team members,
‘Do you know what the objectivesare of this project team?’
and usually we get a super high response,like 90% saying, yes, I know.
(27:16):
And then we'll ask,
‘Do you agree with the objectives of this project team?’
And usually we'll get prettyhigh response on that as well.
And then we'll say
please list thethree objectives,
the top three objectives of this project team.
And then you'll seea wildly different,
interpretation of whatthe project goals are.
And that is just some great insight to have to say
(27:38):
Okay, well let's get aligned towhat the goals are
so that we can actuallymake progress against them.
Yeah. It's crazy.
So shifting gears a little biton communication protocol
because I think, you know,I think that's a big part of,
the friction that comes out because,
you know, there's so many communication paths now
you know, we have email,we have voice mail
(27:58):
phones, which we've had for a long time,
but now there's allthe digital workplace tools,
there's all the apps withinthe digital workplace tools.
and so it gets to be,unfortunately,
a lot of interruptions.
And I think a lot of people have,have not managed the expectations
well so that, you know,what used to be,
you know, get back to mewithin some period of time
(28:19):
now has kind of morphed into,I need you to get back to me
a whole lot faster,which creates interruptions.
And no one actually has timeto get work done.
So I wonder if you can sharesome best practices around,
you know, making sure everyone is codified
and communicated as to what are the
communication, expectations and most importantly, so that everyone knows
when they send something out,you know,
(28:40):
What is it? Is it important or not important?
And what's the expected return?
Yes.
So we have beenreally specializing in this area
of helping teamsto create their
team working agreements or team charters
to codify these norms.
And one of the things that I foundthrough testing
and learning this with teams
is that if you start with the communication norms piece
(29:00):
and the ways of working,
you end up in this bad cycle because
you actually haven't first determinedwhat are the norms in service of.
And so to connect thisto what we were just talking about
is at first you have to startwith understanding your purpose
and the people on the team.
So first, when you're creating ateam charter, you need to do that work
on team goals and roles,team values.
(29:23):
What are the behaviors
that we're trying to see from our team members?
so for example,you know,
what you're talking about is responsiveness.
And we'll get into thatin a minute.
But is there a behaviorat that higher level
that we expect a certain levelof responsiveness to each other?
And also, is there a behavioraround location inclusivity,
(29:43):
meaning we know thatwe're across multiple time zones.
We also need to be awarethat we may not get a response
within a certain amount of time
because people are workingfrom different time zones.
So you have to startwith your purpose, your people
building some connection,understanding goals and roles.
And then you can getinto the ways of working.
You can get into codifyingthose communication norms,
(30:06):
for example,that you're talking about.
So again, we do some surveyswith the teams that we work with.
And what we see isthat teams are really drowning
in so many technology tools,
so much pinging and digging,
you know, getting interruptedleft and right.
they can't find the informationthat they're looking for because they're
(30:26):
the information is being storedin so many different places.
And so it is really freeingwhen a team can come together
and they can say,
Okay, well, we're going to use Microsoft Teams for this kind of communication,
and we're going to design Microsoft Teams into these different channels
for these different typesof communication.
We're going to only use email forthis other type of communication.
(30:49):
So instead of the teamhaving to find the information
both on emailor in Microsoft Teams,
now they knowwhere to look.
Or you mighthave a team that
because they'rein a large enterprise
and large enterprise,has lots of technology tools.
They have some of theirinformation
stored in a SharePoint site,
some of it's stored in Box,
(31:10):
some of it stored in a Microsoft Teams site.
So again, getting clarityto this team, we are going to post
all of our collaborative documentsin this one area.
So Box for example,
again what we see when we do the survey
then after the teamnorms have been set
is that then people are saying,
I can find the informationI'm looking for
(31:33):
and I'm getting the responsivenessthat I need from my team
because people know
where to respond to me andhow fast a response is expected.
Yeah, it's really interesting.
You talk about,
you know, people justthrowing tools at the problem,
without necessarilythe training on the tool
or the expectations on the toolor how the tool fits in there,
you just said, you know, kindof the whole tooling ecosystem.
(31:54):
So it's just not another tool
because we have too many tools and too many notifications.
So have you seeing a better uptickin communicating,
you know, howthese pieces fit together
and what again, we expect it'sall about expectations, right.
what we expectyou to do, where and how.
Yes. And back to like whatwe talked about with innovation.
You know, one of the thingswhen you're taught
(32:15):
as an innovator is like,
what problem are we trying to solve here?
And so making sure that the solution fits the problem
instead of startingwith the solutions first.
And so in the example of thethe teams that we work with,
we are first trying to understand what are
What are the communicationnorms in service of right.
What are the goals here?
(32:36):
And then which toolswould that best fit the goals.
And as we're talkingabout the communication norms,
what should be donesynchronously
versus what needs to be doneasynchronously, right.
And even with these teamsI'm working with, like
starting with defining even whatsynchronous and asynchronous
means is important.
So asynchronous meaningnot live, not real time.
(32:58):
You know, people responding
when they can bestget to the information.
And so then we start talking about the tools
for the asynchronouscommunication.
And what I find Jeff as you saidis that, for example, Microsoft Teams
a lot of the enterprise clients
we work with,they use Microsoft Teams.
And when I come in, I say, oh,
you know, how comfortableare you using Microsoft Teams?
Oh, we knowhow to use it.
(33:19):
We use it for our video meetings all the time and
and other communication.
And then I say,
Do you know how to use the channelsor are you just using chats?
And then they say,what do you mean channels?
What do you mean?
And then I say, oh, okay,
well, there's a way that you can actually structure it
so that you, you clarify, you know,
(33:39):
which channel is forwhich topic area
and make surethat the right people
are included in each channel.
Well, what they've been doingis all these different group chats
that are super disorganized
and they're having troublefinding the information.
And so we have to kind of back up and say,
Okay, who needs to collaborateon which topics
and how can we structurethat for you?
(34:00):
So even starting with
showing them how to evenset their notifications
right,
they don't even know how to set notifications
to make sure thatthey're not missing a message.
So some of them are using the chats
because they think that they'remissing messages elsewhere.
Right.
It's funny. It's funny.
You used Microsoft as an examplebecause, you know, it's like Word
how many features are in Word
that none of us
don't, and have never,never known.
(34:22):
You know, they’re so farunder the covers
or we just never had a reason to go there.
So I want to shiftgears a little bit.
It's in the headlines
over the last couple of days,
‘Dell's return to office or else’ and like, I don't know, 40%, 50%
I don’t have the headlinein front of me
chose ‘or else’ which.
And I don't even think‘or else’ is defined,
but it really drives tothe fact that flexibility
(34:43):
and trust and agency are the work benefits that trump
everything else and thatpeople are willing to,
you know, suffer the potential consequences of ‘or else’
as you did for the higherpriority thing around flexibility,
not necessarily flexibilityin days of the week.
We're not going to talk about thatat all in this interview,
but really flexibilityin managing their own schedule,
(35:04):
which then reallybegs for, a level of trust.
How are you seeingyou know,
people kind of get it because what then
what it drives to is team level agreements, right?
And where, you know,somewhere down from Michael Dell,
where are you finding
the kind of the mosteffective area or size of team
to really start to putin those team level agreements,
(35:24):
because they can get hardand teams have cross,
you know, they interactwith other teams as well.
So how are youfinding kind of,
team level agreements,best practices?
There's great researchfrom the Future Forum
that Brian Elliott and his team did that showed that
employees want flexibility with their time
even more than flexibilityfrom where they're working from,
(35:47):
which was interesting to me,because for me,
when I went remote, it was all about location for me at first
But that really resonated for me.
Later, when I was reflecting on the work that I did at Clorox,
I was East Coast based,
and the majority of the peoplethat I was working with
were on the West Coast.
And so what that meant to mewas that every night
until almost 8 p.m.,I had to be accessible.
(36:09):
I was on video callsor was
needed to be accessibleto respond to emails.
And so my time flexibilityfelt very limited.
And it got frustrating at timesbecause of, you know,
being a parent andand needing that flexibility to,
to do extracurricularswith the family.
So, you know, as we thinkabout, that return to office
(36:33):
and what you're saying about Delland people saying
or you know, I'm choosing ’else’
I'm choosing
It's back tothat freedom
it’s a piece of freedom,right?
To be able to havethat flexibility of for my time
and my location.
But when it comes tothen operating within that,
there's an incredibleamount of complexity
(36:53):
that comes with everybodyhaving the freedom
to work where and whenthey want to work from.
So it's positivein terms of giving,
employees that freedomso that they feel engaged
so that they feel like they want to stay at the company.
But that complexity
it requires a lot of coordination.
And so that's where the teamlevel agreements can really help.
(37:15):
And what I've seen from the team level agreement is
there are some thingsthat you can consider trying to do
at that more corporate level.
But usually they start to fall apart
because there are so many unique situations,
within a functionor cross-functional team.
So you want to
start to look at that team leveland then have the different teams
(37:35):
that then create
that intersectwith each other.
So if you think about thatteams of teams type concept,
those team leaders
to start to share with each other
what kindsof norms
they've set within their team to see then
where could there besome overlap and consistency.
So for example, one of the clientsthat we've worked with now
for over two years,where we're working with
(37:56):
their marketing and techcross-functional teams,
whenever we create a teamworking agreement,
we also deem somebody as the team effectiveness lead.
So that person is responsiblefor that team's health moving forward
that and adjusting the team norms accordingly.
But now we get to create some cohortsof these team effectiveness leads
(38:17):
so that they can actually startsharing across the teams
what's working and what's notworking and evolve together.
Interesting that’s aI had never heard that.
That's cool.
One of the conceptswithin that realm is
I think you called it ‘Spark’ in one of your other interviews, or
I always call it,you know, kind of
mutually agreed to collaboration windowswhere there is some point of time
(38:39):
where you say, hey,
you know, I will be available for calls,
I will be available for quick chats,
I will be available, you know,for kind of quick, responses.
So is that somethingthat you see,
pretty frequently where, you know, you do have times
where you want you set aside for work,
but then you do have times
that you are set aside as if you were sitting next to one another
in terms of somebodyreaching out for, you know.
(38:59):
via an IM or direct message or text or whatever.
Yeah.
So that gets to the coordinationagain across time zones.
It starts with first understandingwho's in what time zone on your team.
And that might sound really simple and basic.
And it's quite amazingwhen I get in with a team
and I realize thatthey don't even know
that some of their team membersare in a different time zone.
(39:20):
So we'll just start there.
First you have to
to do what I call is like mapping thegeographic anatomy of your team
so that you understandwhere you're starting from,
and then from there
discussing some norms aroundyour synchronous time together.
So you have some companies,like for example, Dropbox,
they are a leaderin virtual first,
they have core collaboration hours where they’ve set aside to the whole company.
(39:44):
You know, these are the hoursthat we need to be available
to each other for live synchronous meetings.
And what you were referring toabout Spark Time?
Well, this is something that I did
with my team at Cloroxmany years ago
where we were working acrossdifferent time zones,
and so what we had onour calendar was twice a week.
We had two hours blocked oneverybody's calendar, and that was
(40:06):
so that we were availableto each other for in the moment,
impromptu problem solving,brainstorming, discussion, debate.
Because otherwise
it becomes really difficultto try to find time with each other
on an ad hoc basisbecause we're
in way too many meetings.
Overbooked back to back.
Right? Right.
(40:26):
All right, so
You brought it up.
You know, we have to go there unfortunately
which is themeetings thing.
you know, I thinkif people spent,
I don't know, 25% of the time they spend
worrying about days of the weekon better meeting processes
better meeting etiquette,you know,
canceling a lot of meetingsthat they don't really need,
(40:46):
share some best practicesaround meetings,
and really trying to get bettermeeting culture
because I think a lot of peopleequate work to meetings
and even some of the surveillance,software that we hear about.
It's like, you know,are you booked in meetings
so many hoursa day, it's ridiculous.
Like, are you payingpeople to go to meetings?
Are you paying peopleto actually do their job?
So I wonder if you couldshare some of your,
some of yourobservations on meetings.
(41:09):
I would say thatmany enterprises
have a highlysynchronous culture,
meaning that they'reusing meetings to get work done,
they're using meetings
to get updates on workand to talk about workflow.
And it's a big behavior change
to start to reduce that type of culture.
And when I get brought into work with a team,
(41:29):
sometimes the vice president or theteam leader will come to me and say,
can you help ushave better meetings?
And I say, okay, so I come inand I observe some meetings
and I start to understand what the goals of the team are,
what I've seen over and over again
is that the meeting situation
is just a symptomof a broader problem.
You can't justfix the meetings.
(41:49):
You actually have toagain, go back to
what are our communication norms?
How are we goingto design our time to
get things done synchronouslyand asynchronously?
So you have to start putting
into place some of theasynchronous communication norms
in order to solve the meeting problem.
Because whathappens is
the meetings are being used as a crutch.
(42:11):
A lot of time to get updateson progress on projects.
And if you have no asynchronousdashboards, tools, communication options
you're going to keephaving these meetings
where they feel like
they're inefficientand ineffective
because they're just being used to get updates.
So that's number one
is that you need to lookat the whole kind of ecosystem
(42:31):
of how is this team communicatingand what can be done
synchronously versusasynchronously.
And then with the remainingsynchronous meetings,
what I like to talk
a lot about is that
meetings are notjust meetings,
but meetings are actually where your culture is being
built or it's being torn down.
Because when we thinkabout culture, which is, you know
(42:53):
our values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors,how we operate as a team,
how we work together,how we treat each other.
Well if you're allin different locations,
the only peaks that you get into that culture
are in yourlive meetings
or maybe in your asynchronous communications.
And so those meetings need to takeon a whole new level of importance,
(43:15):
because it's notjust this thing
that we're showing up toand we're getting assigned tasks.
It's actually where we're buildingor destroying our team culture.
Yeah, well, I would say they're building it,
but not necessarily building itwhere they want it to go.
I mean, the culture is the way they behave.
So they might not be acting
in the way
that they wanttheir culture to go,
(43:35):
but unfortunatelythey're just reinforcing
some of the bad behaviors.
It’s funny, Shani Harmon, I had on from‘Stop Meeting Like This’
and they asked her the same thing,you know, can you help us?
And she says, yeah,I can help you, but you know, you
you're not going to get it.
It's like dieting.
We all know we're not
What we're supposed to eatand not eat and exercise more
and keep an agendaand keep the notes and
so it's not for lack of knowledge.
(43:56):
It's just kind offor lack of discipline.
And as you say,I think
it's kind of a lazy way out of
when you don't have those other kinds of communication, methods.
So we'll just have a meeting,you know,
it's like this default thing.
We'll just we'll have a meeting,have a meeting and,
you know, there's so manyother options today
besides meetings to actually geta piece of communication across or,
you know, kind of whatis the objective of this meeting?
(44:16):
Because when you have a great meeting with
engaged people who are care about the topic
and educated about the topic,and you need to come to some
decision around something,you know, that's not
a status meeting where everybody’s
checking out, and doing email on the side.
And, you know, falling asleep.
So I thinkit's pretty interesting.
I want to shift gears a little bitand talk about trust,
(44:37):
and really asking for help,
which is a super important thing
for managers to have this culturewhere people feel comfortable
asking for helpso that they can get help
on the things that are,blocking their progress.
That really takes a lot of trustand a lot of people,
I think, sometimesmight be afraid.
If I ask for help, it'sa sign of weakness
and maybe I'm goingto get whacked
(44:58):
when they take outthe bottom 10% of the company.
So when you talk about trustand helping people establish,
you know, psychological safety.
So they want to ask that question,
what are some best practices to help people
create an environmentwhere the front line people,
who are the ones that seemost of the problems
are usually closerto the customers.
And you need that information to percolate,
(45:19):
especially negative information,because a lot of people
don't like to tell the bossbad information, right?
I'd rather not.
And so what happens isthey don't hear it
until it's too late
or too late to do somethingor something really bad happens.
How do you build more trustso that people are
are willing to ask for help?
Well, first we need to humanize each other.
So if you think aboutwhen we were working
(45:40):
in an office situation with each other,
we had this continuous
kind of informal connectionwith each other,
whether it was like bumpinginto each other at the watercooler
in the elevator.
We had, different piecesof information
about our personal life,maybe on our desk.
That would cause somebody to ask a questionabout your family or a hobby
or something like that.
(46:01):
Now that we're allin these different locations,
and even people coming inand out of a hybrid office
are often working with people who are in
a different hybrid officeor working remotely.
We have to intentionallyhumanize each other.
We have to pushpast the transactional
to get to that trustand that relationship being built.
And when I come into work with teams,
(46:21):
oftentimes, especially thesecross-functional teams,
I'm just seeing transactions happening.
I'm actually not seeing trustand relationships being built.
And again, this might seem super simple,
but one of the thingsthat we teach is to
create an About Meone pager.
So some information that you're sharing on a one pager
(46:42):
about your family, your lovedones, your hobbies, your.
And then it can even get into things like your communication preferences,
your hot buttons,your personal values, your,
your educational background,
your professional background,things like that.
And it's not good enoughto just fill this thing out
and put it somewhere, but
it's actively using it.
(47:03):
So there are many waysto use this.
So for example,
when we were talking earlierabout building your network,
so if you are about to
ask somebody to do a one on one virtual coffee chat
to get exposure to somebodyyou don't know yet,
you can send your one pagerahead of time.
So it's almost like this like an introduction
before the introduction, so thatthey get to know you a little bit.
(47:24):
These become great piecesof information for somebody new,
joining a teamwho can read through the files
of the one pagers of the otherpeople on the team,
we often use them also to create funpop quizzes within our meeting.
So as we were talking aboutmeetings where we build culture
so we would create momentsthroughout a virtual training
(47:44):
that we dofor example
where we're leveraging the fun facts
from the one pagerto create these moments of trivia,
or using photosfrom the one pagers to build
that feeling of connectionand warmth with the group.
Because if you do that again over and over across time
you're going to start to build that trust
so that we get to
what Jeff you were talking aboutaround that psychological safety,
(48:07):
to be able to speak upabout something
that may be an unpopulardiscussion point.
Right, right.
So we're getting towardsthe end of our time
and we could go for hours
I have pages and pagesand pages of notes.
But one of the thingsI think that comes out
even in this discussion is that
it is not easy.
you know, it takesintentional effort.
And you talked about something
in one of your podcastsabout just change fatigue
(48:29):
that said, you know,we're in an era where, you know,
there aren'tnecessarily the answers.
and it's really an era of experimentation
and trial and see what works,see what doesn't work.
And don't be afraid to necessarilynot have the right answer
out of the gate, but to basicallyget your hands dirty
and start to try some of thesedifferent techniques.
I mean, the world isnot slowing down.
(48:51):
And, you know, we have constant,you know, kind of changes
and disruptions and,
and what's happening,
you know, the most latest being,you know, ChatGPT,
which everyone isall up in arms about.
So I wonder if you can share,
you know, kind of helping people understand
that, you know, we're notgoing back to any state.
There's no stasis anymore.
It's a constantlyevolving world that we live in.
And you really have to be opento listen and try new things
(49:14):
and explore best practices
and kind of get out of your comfort zone,
and get kind of comfortablebeing uncomfortable
because we live inan uncomfortable world.
Or as Pierre Nanterme
the former CEO of Accentureused to say the, you know, VUCA
it's volatile, and it's a crazy, crazy world.(VUCA - Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity)
So don't be afraid to try things.
Absolutely.
We know moving forward is that we're notgoing to become more co-located.
(49:38):
We are going to be continuouslyworking across distance
with nationally,internationally, globally.
And so we need to get moreand more comfortable
with working acrossmultiple modes.
So I like talkingabout a framework
that we developed calledbeing an omni modal leader.
So being able to movethroughout the modes
of being fully in person,in a hybrid environment,
(50:00):
and then in afully virtual environment
and be able to move between those modeseven within a given day.
And so we want to be ableto communicate
and collaborate
and build relationshipsacross all those different modes.
And that is areally hard skill.
And anybody who's listening now,I want you to think about
(50:22):
what it takes
to build that skill for yourself,for your team members.
Because what I findat the more senior levels
of an organization
they take for granted that they know how to be omni modal,
they know how to move across those modes.
But the more junior employeeswithin your organization,
they need the enablement,the skills development
to help them be comfortable acrossall of those different modes.
(50:44):
So we can'ttake for granted.
what the other levels ofthe organization need in order
to enable theminto this
forward looking area.
Right? Right.
Yeah.
So as we close, I mean,I think most people that get async.
The whole beauty of async isyou move all the, the busy work,
off your plate so thatthe time that you do
spend together,
you know, you can spend
(51:05):
on these types of things,you move kind of the,
the garbagemeetings off your plate
so you can spend the time togetheron these other things
that are much more importantbuilding culture,
building relationships, building trust,getting to know one another
so that when the proverbialyou know what hits the fan,
you know, people know each other
and you can call outand reach and get support
because weknow each other
So I'll give you the last wordbefore we sign off.
(51:26):
You know, you werea pioneer in 2009.
You must have beenbanging your head
and when did youstarted this, 2018,
still trying to get people to figure out it's not supporting the remote people.
It's let's changeour communication.
And now suddenly, Covid hits.
And as Kate (Lister) likes to say,the rock turned and started
chasing her down the hillinstead of the other way around.
So as you look backwith a little bit of perspective,
(51:47):
what your kind of final thoughtsas we sign off in terms
of what you seegoing forward over the next,
I would never say morethan two or 3 or 4 years.
Well, I love that thepositive of the pandemic
was that it did accelerate a lot ofthe trends that we were seeing,
that Kate was seeing from many, many years ago
that I was seeing from 2010 onward.
(52:08):
So it accelerateda lot of those trends.
So I think thatthat was a positive in that
it got us to think differentlyabout flexibility and allowing
freedom in locationfreedom in, in our time as well.
But I think that those skills,mindsets and behaviors to enable
this kind of complexityare going to be really important.
So thinking about how can youbest enable yourselves
(52:30):
and your teams to work withinthat kind of work environment?
Awesome.
And if you need help, reach out toVirtual Work Insider.
Sacha’s got all the classes
and the programs, and lots of experience in the space.
So Sacha, really greatto have you on.
I appreciate you sharingyour insights and perspective
because you certainly havea lot of experience in the area.
So thank you very much.
Thanks for having me.
(52:51):
My pleasure.
All right, she’s Sacha, I'm Jeff,you're watching Work 20XX.
Thanks for watching.We'll see you next time.
Thanks for listeningon the podcast. Take care.
Great.
Thank you.
That flew by. Thank you.
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