The Real Reason Remote Work Works | Raj Choudhury - Behavioral Grooves Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
Kurt Nelson,

Kurt Nelson (00:07):
welcome to Behavioral Grooves, the podcast
that explores the psychologicalprinciples behind why we do what
we do. I'm Kurt Nelson and

Tim Houlihan (00:14):
I'm Tim Houlihan. On today's episode, we have the
privilege of speaking with RajChoudry, researcher and author
of the book, work from anywherethe blueprint for the new world
of remote

work. Now, Roger's work has been groundbreaking in
showing that remote work isn'tjust a pandemic response, but
potentially a better model forboth individuals and
organizations. What'sfascinating about his research
is how he distinguishes betweenwork from home and work from
anywhere. Now, work fromanywhere gives employees
geographical flexibility tochoose where they live, whether

(00:48):
that's closer to family in amore affordable city or near the
beach. Who knows Tim? I kind

of like that. And the benefits aren't just for
employees. Companies gain accessto global talent, convert real
estate costs from fixed tovariable, and under the right
conditions, can even seeincreased productivity and
reduced attrition. Raj

also addresses the critical challenges that
organizations need to solve whenimplementing work from anywhere,
the isolation problem,communication challenges and
maintaining corporate culture.

But what I found most interesting was the
breakdown of different hybridmodels, hybrids, the weekly,
monthly and quarterly modelsthat he talks about, and how
they can be tailored todifferent teams and different
company needs.

Yeah. Tim, that was really cool. He also shares some
cutting edge research on howdigital twins are making remote
work possible, even intraditionally on site,
industries like manufacturing,healthcare and power generation.
Yeah.

So whether you're a leader considering how to
structure your team's workarrangements, or an individual
looking to make the case formore flexibility, this
conversation offers practicalinsights into the future of
work.

So sit back and relax, perhaps in your home
office or favorite coffee shopor on the beach somewhere with
your dog nearby, as our guestwould understand, you'll

find out about that, and enjoy our conversation
with how work from anywhere istransforming how we think about
work. With Raj Choudry, you
Raj Choudry, welcome toBehavioral Grooves. Thanks for
having me. It's a pleasure tohave you here, and we're going

(02:33):
to start with a speed round.We'd like to know this is a
rather abnormal speedrunquestion, but if you could be
granted the ability to speakfluently to either animals or
babies, which would you choosedogs? No question. Oh yeah.

I love that. I like how quickly that was. That was
you might have thought aboutthat at some point. You have
dogs that you're driving

Raj Choudhury (02:58):
along, and she's my favorite child. So, oh

yeah. So like having the ability to speak and
understand would be prettygreat, wouldn't it? Yeah, okay,
all right. All right. I'm gonnago back to one of our more
traditional ones. Are you acoffee drinker or a tea drinker
both, both? Oh, is there, isthere a process as a coffee in
the morning, tea in theafternoon, or does it just mix

(03:21):
in any way?

Yes, I don't drink coffee in the afternoon.

Okay, oh, okay, okay, so only tea in the
afternoon. Yes, okay, okay,interesting, already. Third
speed round question is thefuture of work entirely remote.

So entirely remote is a misnomer. I'm a huge
supporter of work from anywhere,which we'll talk about. But I'm
also a huge supporter of wellintentioned in person.

Excellent. We will definitely talk about that
Absolutely. All

right, Raj, we're on the last of our speed round
questions, and this is aquestion again, probably part
taking to probably furtherconversation that we're going to
have is geographical flexibilitythe key to accessing untapped
global talent. Absolutely,

I think that's the business case for work from
anywhere in one sentence. Then

let's explore that. Tell us. Tell us about
that. Why? What? Are we missing?Or what are executives missing
when they're so concerned aboutbringing people back to the
office?

Sure. So the first thing I should say is that
work from anywhere is not thesame as work from home. Work
from anywhere is a workarrangement which allows
individuals to choose where tolive, which city, which town,
which state, sometimes evenwhich country. And so
individuals can benefit in lotsof ways. They can go and live in
a cheaper city. They can livecloser to mom and dad and do

(04:50):
caring responsibilities. Theycan live in a in a beach, close
to a beach or close to themountains, based on what you
love. But for companies. Whatwork from anywhere does is it
allows companies to expand thelabor market they can hire from.
So instead of being locked ininto the New York market or 50

(05:12):
miles around New York, now youcan hire from the West Coast.
You can hire from the middle ofthe country. You can hire from
Canada. You can hire from othercountries around the world. So
it's really expanding where youfind talent from. And then we
can talk later about how thatfits into hybrid, and how hybrid

(05:32):
is not one single thing. I talkabout weekly hybrid and monthly
hybrid and quarterly hybrid,which allow for work from
anywhere,

yeah, and I think it's really interesting. And
thank you for thedifferentiation between, you
know, work from anywhere versuswork from home, because I think
that's a really key piece ofthis. And so when a company is
thinking about this, and wetalked about this in the in the
speed round question, right? Soit's accessing global talent
from where they are. But why? Imean, if I'm in New York, I

(06:06):
have, don't I have enough talentthere? I mean, what is, what is
the compelling reason for aleader? Then to really say, All
right, this is there. Becauseobviously there might be some
negative points that we'll talkabout. You know that the idea of
remote work. So, yep. So I

think the argument is that, you know,
talent is everywhere, butcompany offices are not
everywhere. So think about astartup, and the work from
anywhere model is really popularwith startups. So just to give
you a real example, I studiedthis startup called Zapier. They
have about 800 employees now,and these 800 employees come

(06:44):
from more than 30 countries.Now, if Zapier was based in
Silicon Valley, it would becompeting for talent against
Google and Facebook instead. Nowit can find talent in Costa Rica
and Kenya and Thailand and Indiaand other places around the
world. The other thing is, youknow, it's not only just Global

(07:05):
Access, but by going global orgoing national, you are also
getting more diverse talent. Soyou're getting you're getting
more women who prefer work fromanywhere. You're getting people
on on many other dimensions ofdiversity. I'll mention one
quickly. So neurodiverse peoplehave shown a very strong

(07:27):
preference to work remotelybecause they don't want to live
in New York and with the soundsand the noises of New York. So
if you are a leader who caresabout getting talent, and
especially high quality talent,and getting diverse talent. Then
work from anywhere has to bepart of your equation.

Yeah, a lot of employees, I think, can pretty
easily relate to the thebenefits. Let's, let's talk a
little bit more about thebenefits to the organization. I
love this, this example that youjust gave on the startup, this
idea of they could, they don'thave to compete with with Google
and other major Silicon Valleyorganizations by being able to
hire from anywhere. But whatabout I mean, let's get let's

(08:11):
get to ROI on this, becauseultimately, companies need to
make decisions that are going tobenefit the bottom line.

Sure. So the benefits to companies are
threefold. First of all, you aregetting better talent access. So
if you are trying to hire amachine learning engineer, and
you're trying to hire machinelearning engineers today or AI
engineers in your local city,you might find such people in
Silicon Valley. But if you are acompany in Kansas, if you are a

(08:37):
company in in Ohio, God blessyou, right, you will not find on
those locations. So you have toembrace work from anywhere. The
second is, if you embrace workfrom anywhere, you can do in
person more intelligently. Whatdo I mean by that you can
convert your real estate coststo a variable cost and not a

(09:00):
fixed cost. Why do you want toinvest in a 20 year, 30 year
office lease if your employeesare meeting once a month or once
a quarter? So you're convertinga very important line item in
the P and L real estate costsinto a variable costs. You use
the real estate only when youneed the real estate, and the

(09:22):
third is under some conditions,my research shows work from
anywhere can make people moreproductive. So that's what I
found in the US Patent Office.The productivity went up 4% and
why does it go up? Because whenpeople are more relaxed in their
surroundings and they have moremoney in their pockets, they can

(09:43):
be more productive. So I'll giveyou a real example. One of the
women in the patent office I hadinterviewed, she moved to a
cheaper location. She moved outof the DC area because the
patent office said you can goand work anywhere in the US. So
she moved to a smaller town in.Got a larger house, and she was
first, for the first time, ableto afford childcare because of

(10:07):
the lower housing costs. Now youcan imagine how that makes a
person more productive. So apotential of higher
productivity, converting realestate costs into variable
costs, and then hiring acrossnationally or globally, those
are the three reasons,

Raj, is your research or anybody else's
research that you know point toanything about retention and
loyalty for those people who arethere? Is there an increase in
that as well?

Absolutely so in the patent office study, we
found attrition went down, andespecially for women. And the
other thing I should mentionhere is that geography has been
a huge constrain for both menand women, but especially women
and women in dual careersituations, because if you are
living in New York and yourcompany now wants to give you a

(10:55):
promotion, but the promotionmeans you have to move to San
Francisco. For women, it's beenmore difficult to make that
move, because the spouse may notmove, the kids may not move. And
so there's at least, you know,three, four decades of research
now showing that in dual careersituations, women have lost
because of geography. But if thecompany offers you work from

(11:16):
anywhere and says you can workin in this new role, but you
don't have to move, then thewoman can take the promotion.

Raj, you talked about the productivity issues,
the sort of the functionalmetric, kind of things that we
look at, that a company wouldlook at, what about the
psychological benefits to toemployees?

Absolutely, I think it is a huge part of the
equation here, because if youare living in a place that makes
you happier because you havefriends and family around, you
don't feel guilty about notdoing your caring
responsibilities, you'reenjoying the weekend sports that
you enjoy, you enjoy the climateor the food that you Enjoy, then

(11:59):
it's going to make you a happierperson, and happier employees
are more productive employees.You know, I think that's that's
pretty intuitive,

yeah. So one of the things I loved about the book
was the how you talked aboutwork from anywhere can unlock a
lot of benefits, like we're justtalking about now, but only if
implemented. Right? You reallystressed that part, and in
particular, you talked aboutthree problems that needed to be
solved. You talked about thecommunication problem, the
knowledge sharing problem andthe isolation problem. So first

(12:32):
off, can you, for our listeners,can you kind of give a little
bit of an overview of what thosethree problems are, and then
let's talk a little bit aboutwhat, how to make sure that we
that if a leader was interestedin this, what do they need to do
in order to implement that?

Right? Sure. So I think the first problem that
kicks in if you're working fromanywhere is you do not have a
shoulder to tap and askquestions. That's what I call
the isolation problem. Thesecond problem relates to
communication, because if theteam is spread all over the
country, or if you have acolleague now living in London,

(13:05):
then you have time zones. Andthen you have to think about
time zones when you schedulecalls. And the final piece,
which I think is the mostcritical piece, is, now, how do
we socialize? How do we onboardpeople? How do we mentor people.
How do new employees and youngemployees get to know the senior
people they need to know anddevelop the social ties? How do

(13:28):
we develop a corporate cultureif we all living in across the
world? So I my research showsthat these are all real
problems. But the good news is,you know, my research also shows
that there are best practices toget around each one of these
problems.

Let's talk about those. What, how would, how
would, how do we best attackeach of these three major
issues? So

the isolation problem and the fact that you
cannot tap a shoulder to ask aquestion is best solved by
creating a culture where you aredocumenting every part of the
work. So if there is a projectupdate, or you have a new sales
call, document that, and thenyou don't have to tap the

(14:18):
shoulder to ask, Hey, what'shappening on the project, or
what happened yesterday, or howdo I file an expense report
here? How do people get promotedhere? What are the KPIs for
promotion? So all thesequestions can be documented. And
you know, the when I wasstudying this, there were
companies doing documentationvery successfully, such as

(14:39):
GitLab, but documentation waspainful because you know people.
You know all of us, we like towork, but we don't like to
document. But the good news isthat now with generative AI,
documentation has becomepainless, so just this call can
be transcribed by a Gen AI. Tooland then summarized in seconds

(15:03):
so any new customer call, anynew sales call, any new team
meeting, can be painlesslytranscribed and summarized, so
that you're not being dumpedwith hours and hours of call
transcripts. And so I thinkdocumentation is key, and
documentation is now very, veryfeasible with Gen AI. So that's

(15:23):
the solution to the isolationproblem. Okay.

And then, so what about, say, the cultural issue?
How do we, how do we form aculture if, if you we've got 600
employees working in 30different countries,

yeah. So there are two solutions to that
problem. So the first solutionis, like I said, I'm a huge
believer in work from anywherenow, given all the benefits, but
I'm also a huge believer inintentional in person. So the
way I've thought about thesocialization problem is we need
in person that is well done. Andthe thing to think about there,

(16:01):
and this is probably one of thedeepest insights of the book, in
my opinion, is that we don'tneed in person for every team
every week. So when you thinkabout in person, there are two
variables to think about. One isthe frequency of in person, and
the other is the venue of inperson. And what most teams and

(16:25):
most companies have got stuckwith is what they're calling
hybrid, which I call weeklyhybrid, which is you meet in an
office every week. And there areterrible problems with that
model, because, you know, inmany cases, people are going to
the office. They're puttingheadphones and getting on zoom
right, Monday, Tuesday. Part ofthe team is going Thursday,

(16:49):
Friday, so they don't have thewhole team together ever. But if
you think about the frequencydoesn't have to be weekly all
the time. For some teams, thefrequency is probably okay to be
once a month. So you all livearound New York. So some people
live in Philly, some people livein Connecticut. And then you

(17:10):
come to New York once a monthfor three days or four days, and
then do quality in person, timewith the whole team is there. So
that's my version of monthlyhybrid. And then for some teams
and for some companies, it makessense to get together once a
quarter, and they they do thesequarterly retreats, change the

(17:30):
location from coast to coast, sothat everyone can travel and and
essentially, that's a modelwhere you can completely
variable eyes your real estate,because you don't need to have
any company offices anymore. Youcan organize these retreats in
locations that can host peopleonce a quarter. Yeah,

Raj, I had the pleasure of being able to work
with a company that had a lot ofpeople headquartered around
Seattle, but they also hadmultitudes of people across the
rest of the US and evenglobally, and that monthly get
together is exactly as what theywere doing. They would have a
week, and it was, it wasn'tmandatory, but it was

(18:10):
definitely, you know, it waskind of, we should all get
together on the this week, andthe leadership team would come
together, but then anybody elsewould also be in in that in the
office for that week. It wasfantastic in the consulting that
I did, because you really hadthis energy within the within

(18:32):
the team. You had a wholedifferent perspective. People
were going out for dinners andmeeting and talking about things
that they wouldn't normally do.I mean, you know, they didn't go
out to dinner on a regular basiswith everybody else, but because
people were coming in, it waskind of an event. And then
every, you know, every semester,the leadership team would do an

(18:52):
off site where they would go offand spend three or four days in
a different area to really dosome of that piece. Is that, and
I am feeling like that's exactlywhat you're talking about, is

that is exactly what I'm talking about. And so
the companies I've looked at,and there are many companies
that are following this model,including publicly traded
companies such as Atlassian andNvidia, which is one of the most
highly valued companies in theworld, and Airbnb and many
others, they follow this monthlywith the team and quarterly with

(19:24):
the company, kind of frequency.So the team gets together. And
I'll give you the other exam.The point about the venue. So in
today's world, the office, thedowntown office, is just one of
the venues where people canmeet. So I'm following studying
that the sales team in Cisco,and they have been meeting at

(19:44):
all kinds of places, butinterestingly around sales
conferences, because these salesconferences are places where all
of the sales people go, so theirmodel has been, Let's all stay
back after the sales conferencefor three or four days. Yeah,
and then let's do a fun retreat,and let's get dinner and debrief
about what we saw in the salesconference. Get mentorship time,

(20:08):
get brainstorming going abouthow to think about this new
opportunity. So I think there'sa real way to not not only be
creative about frequency andvenue, but I keep saying this
convert real estate into avariable cost.

Yeah, let's just to follow up on the best
practices. What about thecommunication challenges,
especially when it comes to timezones and that sort of thing.
How do you approach that? Raj,

so there are two thoughts there. So I think first
of all, you have to if your teamis organized. So the first
choice to make is whether theteam should be spread on what I
call a north south corridorversus an east west corridor. So
if you allow work from anywherealong a north south corridor,

(20:54):
then you could have peopleliving in Seattle and San
Francisco or Montreal, Seattleand San Francisco, but they're
all in the same time zone. Soit's like you can have a zoom
call for eight hours or ninehours every day, right? But if
you're spread across east westcorridor, if you have people

(21:14):
living in Europe and the WestCoast of the US, it's very hard
to do synchronous calls. So thenyou have to embrace asynchronous
you have to do some things thatare done asynchronously on
Slack, on other platforms thatnow we have and that has been

(21:34):
shown to help people in manyways. So I'll give you 2.1 that
the synchronous meetings arepreferred by the extroverts, but
the you think about who speaksat a meeting, it's typically the
manager and a few extroverts theback of the room just quietly
nodding their heads. Now thesepeople, turns out, love

(21:58):
asynchronous they love tocontribute ideas in writing,
right? And the other thing thatis now part of my ongoing
research is how, and this is alittle futuristic, but it's
already happening, how thesechat bots, the personalized chat
bots, can help us do asynchronous communication. So

(22:19):
what I've recently done isthere's a new study that we're
working on where we created abot for a real CEO. So his name
is Wade Foster. He's the CEO ofZapier, so he let me create a
bot that communicates just likeWade. And then we ran an
experiment in Wade's companywhere we asked Wade's employees

(22:42):
to guess whether communicationanswers to some questions were
coming from the human weight orthe bot weight, and they
couldn't tell the difference. Oh

yeah, wow, Did that surprise you? It

did. And so this is what we call passing the
Turing test. So today'stechnology, today's technology,
we can create a bot for anythree of us, and that bot could
be employed, I'm not sayingrecklessly, but in some parts of
our communication mix. So Ithink the solution is either
organize your team north, south,if you want to have a bunch of

(23:18):
calls, but if you are going eastwest, then you have to put slack
and these bots into the mix.

I think we could use a bot for Tim. I think
that'll probably be better. Sothere we go. I like that. I like
that idea. Hey, this is Kurt,and we want to say thanks for
listening to Behavioral Grooves,and we hope that you're enjoying
this episode, but it feels alittle bit one sided. You're
hearing from us, but we're nothearing from you.

This is Tim, and we have two suggestions to
remedy that. The first is joinour Facebook page and engage
with us. We want to talk

with you. We want to hear your perspectives, and
hopefully our Facebook pagemight be the place to have some
of that interaction. So please,please come and join us. The
other

recommendation we have for you is to leave us a
quick rating, you know, thelittle five star thing at the
bottom of your app, or a shortreview. Just leave us a few
words about what you like, aboutBehavioral Grooves. We very much
appreciate it.

Thanks, and we now return you to our regularly
scheduled programming. Raj, oneof the things, and maybe I'm
mistaken on this, but it appearsto me, at least from some of the
companies that I've beenworking, working with, but also
in the news cycle, that thereseems to be more of a push to be
back in the office that there isa a kind of pushback from what

(24:44):
had happened during thepandemic, and now it's like, no,
we need to get back. What areyou what are you seeing? Are you
seeing that? And why do youthink leaders are trying or
pushing that? Because it is, atleast in my experience, and. Of
the people, it's coming from thevery top, and they're saying

(25:04):
things around culture and someof the issues that you face, but
it doesn't necessarily alwaysseem to be based in Rational
kind of what is happening on theground. So yeah,

so I'll tell you the scientific evidence around
this. There are three pieces ofevidence I want to present. The
first is, you know, I think weread about the Amazon and the
Dell story a lot, but thereality is that, on aggregate,
in the US economy, thepercentage of days that workers
are remotes has been about 25%for several months and quarters

(25:38):
now. And this was 5% before thepandemic. So my interpretation
of this is that for every Amazonand Dell, there has been a drop
box which has closed down alloffices, and those stories
probably need to be told more.The second is for the RTO
itself. The evidence that I'veseen from Mark Ma, who's a

(25:59):
researcher at the University ofPittsburgh is that the RTO has
has not been followed by anypositive stock market
performance, so it's not beennegative, but it's not been
positive. But what is strikingin Mark's research is that
immediately following the RTO,attrition rates go up through

(26:20):
the roof, and especially forwomen. And he studied this for
Amazon. And the third thing, thefinal thing I'll say on RTOS is,
you know, I think the federalcases, just like I think a great
example here that the RTOS areoften not being done for
enhancing productivity. Thereare other incentives that

(26:42):
leaders have, including largescale layoffs, right? Because
RTOS, if the evidence that Markis collecting leads to
attrition, then that is you'reletting off people without
painful benefits. So the RTO isnot just a productivity measure.
It's often an layoff measure.Yeah,

do you think there's some inherent biases by
leaders, though, too, of the waythat they were brought up? I
mean, and we see this, and sohow can they operate on in this
work from anywhere environment?We have to be together in order
to get all of the benefits,because that's how I was raised.

(27:26):
Is any of that coming out inthis as well?

I think as a researcher, I should be careful.
That's a very fair hypothesis,and there's correlational
evidence that the University ofPittsburgh study collects, which
is that RTOS being donepredominantly by older, white
male CEOs.

But, you know, I see that surprising, but yes,
yes, they're good, yeah, but you

know whether, and my sense is, for every JP
Morgan, there is a Citibank andJane Fraser, the CEO, has been
very, very consistent that shehas embraced hybrid for good.
And I think the point I like tomake is that, you know, it
doesn't matter what leadersthink in a moment the labor

(28:12):
market will force them tocorrect because you cannot, in
today's environment, have apolicy where talent is going to
bleed and you will not be ableto compete for talent, and then
the labor market will force you,in sometime in the future to
change that policy and go backto flexibility. Our

listeners might be thinking a lot of this
discussion is about knowledgeworkers, but in the book, you
actually present data that saysit doesn't just have to be for
knowledge workers. This could bein a variety of different worker
environments, manufacturing,healthcare, airports,
agriculture, you talk about thedigital twin. So first, make a

(28:53):
case for how could someone whois not a knowledge worker work
remotely or work from anywhere?Yeah. So

this is probably one of the most exciting things
that I'm following. So a digitaltwin is a combination of sensors
AI and automation, where you cancreate a virtual replica of any
physical operation. So anyfactory, any warehouse, any
farm, a hospital ward, airportwith all its conveyor belts and

(29:25):
all the busses and everything.So what do you do is you put
sensors all along the operation.So you put sensors in the wind
turbine, you put sensors in thefield, you put sensors on the
patients or the patient beds,and then you collect data in
real time on the cloud, and thenyou have algorithms predicting
how to run that operation. Sobased on the weather today,

(29:49):
based on the quality of theinput, how much gas should be
used today, which patient needsattention right now, based on
the sensor data that we arecollecting. Acting based on the
arrival and departure ofaircraft, which conveyor belts
needs to be run right now. Andso once you have that real time

(30:10):
copy of the physical operation,then you don't need all the
engineers and technical workersand the blue collar workers to
be standing around theoperation. And so in the book,
what I document is two examplesfrom my research, one with a
Unilever factory manufacturingdetergents in Brazil, and then

(30:31):
the other being a Turkish powergeneration company which has
created a digital twinheadquarters in Istanbul from
one single building, in fact,one floor of a building. Now
they are running more than 15power plants all over the
country. Wow. And the engineers,the reason they did it, the

(30:53):
Turkish example, was actuallynone of the engineers and their
families wanted to live in thesefar flung places in Turkey,
because, you know, you set up apower plant where there's a
river or the mountain has agorge, but no engineer wants to
go live there with their kids,so they built this digital twin

(31:14):
headquarter in Istanbul, and theonly people left back now at
these locations are themaintenance

Unknown (31:21):
people, and

it's a smaller staff then as well. Is that
correct?

So it is a slightly smaller staff. But
also, the other important thinghere is that there's been
tremendous re skilling that'sbeen needed to do this, because
now you are a turbine engineerwho's sitting on a computer,
looking at AI algorithms andeither overriding what the AI
algorithm is saying or goingalong with it. So you need to

(31:49):
learn a little bit of Python.You need to know how machine
learning works. So it's what Icall the Indigo colored workers.
So they are a mix of blue andwhite.

That's That's fascinating. And I like, I like
the Indigo component of that,there is an another interesting
piece that this brings up rightin in how we work and various
different things. And Tim hastalked about this idea for, for
a lot of of you know, preindustrial revolution, we, we
almost all worked from anywhere,right? We worked where we lived,

(32:23):
in various different pieces. Andthere's a commute aspect that
that is going on, that we know,if we don't have a commute, we
save that that time. Is thereanything that your research has
shown, or that you know ofaround the psychological
benefits of not having acommute, of being able to, if I
so desire, to be out on my farmand working in a job, you know,

(32:48):
two hours away. And I know it'skind of going back to what we
talked about at the beginning,but I thought, I thought that
was an interesting piece.

Yeah, I don't see commuting going away. I think I
see commuting gettingtransformed. So instead of
commuting in the car every daytwice to a downtown office, like
we said, now I'm commuting oncea month to meet my team, and I'm
actually looking forward to thatcommute, because I know we're
going to have fun dinners, we'regoing to play some games, I'm

(33:17):
going to be with my colleaguesfor three days in a fun
location, even in the downtownoffice, and we're going to have
a really good time. So commutingis no longer a chore. So I think
it's just reimagining commute.It's reimagining in person, so
that in person and commuting isactually helpful to the person
in the team.

Raj, what do you say to the leader who is kind of
on the fence like, Well, I seeall the data, but I'm not sure
if it's really right for mycompany culture, because I'm a
old guy who has grown up in thisenvironment of everybody comes
to the office, what do you sayto them to persuade them to give
it more consideration? So

what I do in the book is, I say you don't have to
jump into the deep end all atonce. So this can be a journey.
So if you are a leader who isright now comfortable with a
weekly hybrid model, then yournext step is to try a monthly
hybrid. And you don't have totry it for the entire

(34:19):
organization. You could pilot itwith one or two teams in the
organization, maybe the techteam, maybe the sales team, and
then let that monthly hybridpilot run for a few months,
collect the data, see how theycompare before and after. And
then if you confident that thisworks, then you can roll it out
to a few more teams. Butcritically, what I also do in

(34:43):
the book is, I say, based onwhich hybrid model you're
choosing, the weekly version,the monthly version or the
quarterly version, you need tobuckle up on the management
practices you need to supportthat version. So it's going to
be a lot of bottom upexperimentation. And why should
you do any of this instead ofnot just being comfortable with

(35:04):
the whole company doing thisweekly couple of days, because
then you might lose the leg upin the talent game going ahead,
because your competitors mightdo this, and they might start
poaching some of your best

employees. Yeah. So are there people for which work
from anywhere doesn't work?

So I think work from anywhere works in the
monthly and the quarterly hybridforms in the weekly hybrid. If
you have to go to a office everyweek for two or three days, then
of course you have to livewithin commuting distance of
that, and that might be okay forsome teams, or that might be
okay for some durations of theproject. So maybe when we are

(35:48):
starting the project, if we arebuilding a new product, maybe
the first six months, we have tomeet every week. But once we
have a beta version of theproduct, maybe then we can
switch to a monthly hybrid. Soyes, I'm not going to say that
the monthly and quarterly hybridworks for every single team, but
the thing that I'm trying to,you know, sort of like open

(36:09):
minds and hearts to, is that youdon't need to do a top down one
size fits all mandate for theentire organization. Don't say
that for the whole company, it'sonly this weekly hybrid model
that that's correct. That's notcorrect. There are teams in
every organization which couldtransition easily to a monthly

(36:32):
or quarterly hybrid form. I've

worked with other companies too, where for
employees, they have a basicallya work from anywhere, from most
of them open nests, but formanagers and above, they don't
have you seen any of researchthat you have about that is that
something that you've seen ornot seen, and Why? Personally, I

(37:00):
think that that is an incorrectkind of assumption, that the
managers have to be together,because that's the, again, some
of the biases that I thinkpeople have. But just thoughts
on that, I

think that's, I totally agree with you. It's
completely incorrect. And thereason I say that is, you know,
my research is drawn from bothlarge companies, but also these
all remote startups such asGitLab and Zapier. So in a
GitLab which is 3000 people now,or a deal which is a 12,000
strong company now, they don'thave any offices, no offices,

(37:36):
and they follow the monthlyretreats and the quarterly
retreat model. And for thosecompanies, the deals, the
zapiers, the gitlabs, the thedoists, everyone is work working
from anywhere. The C suite hasworked from anywhere. The senior
managers are working fromanywhere. Accountant team has
worked from anywhere. Sales teamhas worked from anywhere.

(37:58):
Product Development is working.So it works now for a
traditional company that's beentogether for 40 years or 100
years. I'm not saying you can dowhat they're doing in six
months, but you need to startpiloting bottom up and finding
those opportunities to run thosepilots wherever they're
appropriate. Yeah,

yeah, Raj, I have to say I was super excited about
the book and talking with you,just because my company is work
from anywhere company, and Iwant to just share an experience
of one of my employees, who Ben,who Tim knows. So Ben started
off working for me fromMassachusetts, he said, He then

(38:41):
moved to Hawaii for a year. Hethen moved to Colorado. Then he
he and his fiance, girlfriend atthe time, who was a visiting
nurse, or basically a, you know,they got an RV, they moved to
Lake Tahoe, and then they weredown in San Diego, Seattle. They

(39:02):
for three years. They were goingthree, four months. Then he came
back to Colorado, then he movedup to Alaska for eight months,
then he moved down to Belize forthree months. And it has been,
it has there's never been a timewhere it has been an issue,
right in the way that we workand and for Ben, I think it's
one of the reasons that he'sstill with me, you know, I mean,

(39:24):
I he can probably earn a lotmore working somewhere else, but
he knows that this is, this isthe way we work. And I don't
think there's a question there,but I think that I just wanted
to say I am a firm believer inin the the way that you're
talking and I love the idea ofbeing able to share that and
hopefully get more organizationssaying, Yeah, this is a good

(39:47):
model.

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. And I'd just like
to add one thought there. Sothere is this whole phenomena of
digital nomadism that's alsovery related to work from
anywhere. And it seems Ben isone of those digital nomads.
Right? And there are now 50countries and counting,
including New Zealand lastmonth, that have special visas
for digital nomads. So they haveinvented this visa category only

(40:13):
for remote workers. And thereason so many countries want
remote workers is these remoteworkers are not coming for local
jobs. They already have a job,right? But they're contributing
to the local community throughtax and consumption and ideas
and connections. But I'll alsomention this other thing that
work from anywhere. We talkedabout how it benefits companies

(40:34):
and individuals. The other pieceis really about how it benefits
smaller towns. So I've doneyears of research now with the
city of Tulsa in Oklahoma. Sothey have a program where they
pay remote workers $10,000 ifyou relocate and start living in

(40:57):
Tulsa. And when Tulsa startedthis program, they said we'll
probably get 50 people. They'vegot about 4000 families so far,
wow. And I've done many studiesabout how this has benefited
Tulsa, with tax revenues, withvolunteers for local community

(41:17):
causes. We have a new study onentrepreneurship, how this is
triggering entrepreneurship inthe city of Tulsa? And I want to
say this, the Tulsa model hasnow led to about 40 to 45 cities
in the heartland of the UStrying to do the same, including
cities in Ohio and Michigan andWisconsin and West Virginia. So

(41:42):
remote work, and especially workfrom anywhere, could be great
for the Heartland for years andyears and years, young people in
the heartland just grew up andleft for the coasts, and now
this is such an opportunity forthe Heartland to get some young
people and even older peopleback and this can be a level

(42:03):
playing field for the Heartlandcities.

We first learned about your work during the
pandemic Raj and instantlybecame fans, by the way, because
of what was happening in ourworld. Has what's changed in
your research from 2020 when youfirst published that that
article, I think it was Forbes.Was it or HBr and HBr and and

(42:28):
now what's what's different?

So I think two or three things are different. So
first of all, we now know alittle more about the best
practices to to mitigate theisolation, communication and
socialization problems. Sothat's why I thought I'll just
write the book and documenteverything we know at this point
in time. The second thing isthis phenomena of digital nomad

(42:51):
visas and Heartland citiesoffering incentives has grown.
So prior, when I was writing thearticle in 2020 there were only
two countries, Estonia andBarbados, which had visas for
remote workers. Now it's 55 or60 countries, wow. When I was
writing the article in 2020 itwas only Maine. There was a

(43:13):
program in Maine, there was aprogram in Hawaii, and there was
a program in Tulsa to attractremote workers. Now there's a
website. You can go, it's calledmake my move.com and they have
incentive programs for remoteworkers across 50 countries in
the heartland. So Heartlandmayors and Heartland governors
have, it seems, taken a note ofthis. And the third thing

(43:37):
that's, I think, new from 2020is Gen AI. I think Gen AI is a
game changer. It helps usdocument better. It's it's lead,
it's the digital twinrevolution. So I think between
those three things, the bestpractices, technology and now
the the proliferation of theserelocation programs nationally

(43:58):
and internationally, that's thebig change. Love that,

Raj. This is the part of the discussion where we
get to turn 90 degrees and talkabout music. We would like to
know if you could imagineyourself being stranded on a
desert island for a year, andyou have a listening device with
you, but you only have twomusical artist catalogs with
you. Which two would you pick?

So I don't know if you know I'm myself, a singer
songwriter. I write songs in mylanguage, Bangla, but if I had
to pick two albums to take withme the entire

catalog of that entire catalog. It wouldn't

have to be restricted to two records. Yeah,
you can Yeah. I

would take the work of Tagore, who's a Bengali
poet, and I would just takeeverything that Tagore has
written and composed, and then Iwould take Leonard Cohen.
Leonard Cohen, yeah, I just loveLeonard Cohen. So I would take
every. You think that LeonardCohen has

written? Well, it's interesting. You so the first
gentleman tango, or was thatthey said that? Right? Yes,
poet, right. And I would sayLeonard Cohen as a poet. I mean,
when you look at his lyrics,they are very, very poetical.
And I know, I mean, I've seensome documentaries about how
much energy and focus he putinto every single word and how

(45:24):
that worked. And it's just, youcan see it in in the lyrics that
that he has fantastic, yeah,that

is, that's a the strikes me as one of the best
responses that we've we'vegotten on that question. I love
it. Raj Choudry, it is such apleasure having you on behavior
grooves. Thanks for joining ustoday. Thanks

for having me. Guys really enjoyed it.

Welcome to our grooving session where Tim and I
share ideas on what we learnedfrom our discussion with Raj.
Have a free flowing conversationand groove on whatever else
comes into our beach livingbrains, because that's where
we're going to be working from.We're going to be working from
the beach. Tim, is that whereyou want to be working? No, I'd
be in the mountains. I was gonnasay that. I wasn't surprised to

(46:15):
be, I think I'd be, I'd be bywater, though, if I could, I
would love to be by a mountainlake

like that would be Flat Rock Lake in Montana, or,
Oh,

that, I love Flat Rock Lake

in Teton lake, or Jenny Lake and in the Tetons and
Wyoming.

Yeah, you know, there's, there's a whole bunch
of them. Even doesn't have to bea big lake. It can be a small
lake. Doesn't need to be huge.Hell, even a babbling Creek
would be, you know, cool. SoLake

De Smet in saddle string Wyoming. There you go.
Okay, okay, I don't, you know,don't know for it's because it's
small. It's a small lake. But

Unknown (46:59):
how about you? Would you be the beach,

beach, beach. Me,

yeah, figured you'd be the beach. Yeah, yeah.

I like the mountains.

I mean, world, would you be a, would you need
to be a warm beach? Or could yoube like a main beach or a Canada
beach? A cold

beach will not work. Water has to be, no no.
It's got to be, it's got to beat least mild, like Acadia and
up there in Maine. I mean, thosebeaches are beautiful, like
superior Lake. Superior hasgorgeous

beaches. I love those beaches.

But not, I would not want to live there. No,
nope.

Too cold. I love, I love that cold water. That's, I
mean, that was the up at thecabin this weekend, and the
water was really, really cold,yeah, and I was the only one
swimming in it. I mean, that wasafter a sauna, mostly. But it
was still, yeah, I was, I wasout swimming and staying in.
Everybody else might jump in andout. And, yeah,

but you were doing the sauna, legs

floating and freezing my my tushy and my toes
off. So I thought it was cool.Okay, weird, like that. All
right, what? What did we sofirst off, I think this hit home
for you in this, thisconversation with Raj, yeah,
because you have, literally, thepast few years, not necessarily

(48:28):
worked from anywhere, but youhave moved around and worked
from multiple differentlocations, in different areas,

five homes in three years. Yeah, yeah, it's
and it's been a lot of movement,

yeah. And for me, I have, you know, my my right hand
person, Ben, who I just dependon all the time. That's how
we've set up our structure. Imean, when, when he first worked
for me, he worked, was workingfrom Massachusetts, then he
moved out to Hawaii, then hemoved back to Massachusetts for
a while, then to Colorado. Thenhe and his girlfriend, now, wife

(49:05):
at the, you know, moved to orstarted doing RVing and like
going and living in places formonths, right,

right? And that was with her work. Was the
traveling nurse thing. And sothey have, like,

nurse, and so they could go anywhere. So they
started off in Lake Tahoe, orjust out there, outside of
there, and truck eat. Lake Tahoewould be another place I could
live right there, you know,that's a good little crowded,
but anyway, but you know, andthen going up to, like, around
Seattle and down to San Diegoand Arizona, and they stay there
for three, four months. And he'salso spent he did last year or a

(49:46):
year before last year, eightmonths up in Alaska, he's done a
couple months down in Belize,yeah, you know. So we've, we've
lived this. I mean, this hasbeen a piece so,

and a cool thing about that is. Because Ben has
figured out how to really makeit work, like how to how to tap
into the Wi Fi, foraccessibility, for file sharing,
for all those kinds of workrelated things. And he's just
continued to to work. I mean,it's never been all. It wasn't
like kind of thing,

no, it wasn't no. But he we also had the ability
to go at three in the afternoon,you know, if work was done, he
could go for, you know, a bikeride in in the mountains. He
could go, when he was in SanDiego, he would go surfing at
the beach. You know, they wouldtake extended weekends up in
Alaska and go do some travelthat was there. But while he was

(50:42):
he was able to work from all ofthose places, and the technology
has gotten such that it's not anissue. It really is a non issue
in 99% of the cases, yeah, in WiFi and all that, it's more about
work routines and and doingdifferent pieces around that so
well this, this

reinforces because we're hearing you as the boss,
the owner of the consultancy,talk about a guy who has worked
for you for many years. Yeah.And so the I think one of the
cool insights that comes fromour conversation with Raj is
that this location independenceisn't just about employee
happiness, but it actually leadsto productivity and opportunity

(51:23):
and and good things for thebusiness as,

yes, yes. I mean, you think about, think about the
I mean, he is, by far, way moreproductive than I am, and, and
just in a whole number ofthings, just shines. And he's
able to do it. I don't know ifworking from being remote helps

(51:48):
that, but it definitely doesn'thinder it by any means. And
there's no it doesn't cost meanything. It doesn't, you know,
bring any difference outside offiguring out what time zone he's
in. That's it, which is actuallyinteresting sometimes, because
sometimes he's out on the EastCoast and he's an hour earlier,
versus, you know, he's inmountain time most of the time,

(52:12):
and that's an hour later, andthen sometimes other places. So,
but it's, it works. It worksreally well. So, yeah,

yeah. I think that that's fantastic. It seems to
get to, I think the key driveraround this, and Raj spoke to
this, is autonomy, right? Yeah,it's, it's from DC and Ryan,
their work on self determinationtheory and this whole idea that
when we have autonomy, when wefeel like we have a sense of

(52:39):
agency and can make our ownchoices that that is an
improver. It's a it's a way tocontribute positively to our,
our general sense of well being.And Ben has absolutely
flourished in that, yeah,

and I think other people do as well. It doesn't
matter. I mean, if you choose tolive near family, if you want to
be out in nature, and maybe moreadventuresome kind of pieces if
you're just going foraffordability. Hey, New York is
New York City is expensive. SanFrancisco is expensive. I can go
live a few hours away or evenfurther. I can go live in

(53:15):
Montana and be as productive,but my cost of living has gone
down, and where I live mightbetter suit my personality. So
this, this also

connects to environmental psychology. We
were talking about Robert Ulrichearlier, and his, his
development of the environmentalpsychology about where we live
matters, whether that, thatmight be proximity, like you
said, it could be nature orfamily, or whatever that
proximity thing is, or thelittle literally, the physical
environment of the space thatwe're in, yeah, all contributes

(53:49):
to our well being and and how wehave this, how we have this deep
connection between our physicalenvironment and our
psychological states.

Yeah, there's an interesting aspect of this, and
we've talked about this othertimes, like you've had to move
your offices multiple times, andthere's pluses and minuses to
that. I know I've been we'velived in this house for 26
years, no, not 22 years, right?My office has been in this room

(54:23):
for 20 of those, 22 years,right? And you know, my desk
configuration, I have to changeevery once in a while just to
get into different viewpoint,because I find that I get
lethargic and in a rut in theseconsistent habits. And I think
moving and changing that can beunleash some creative elements.

(54:49):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, yousaid there's positives and
negatives from your constantmoving. Yeah,

if we're constantly in flux, I mean, I've
lived in five. Different homesin the last three years, and
it's, it's that's disruptive,you know? That's, that's too
much novelty,

yes. Well, you've had other Airbnb places too,
that you've

12 Airbnb Yeah, for four months, yeah. So

when you take all of that into account. There's,
there's a lot there, yeah, and,you know, and again, depends on
personality. Some people mightthrive in that that doesn't feel
like you need more stability,you need a little bit more but
that, that being said, thatthere hasn't been benefits of it
as well, right? Absolutely,

because we were on a quest to figure out, where do
we want to live, and you kind ofonly know if you if you go, I
don't think that you can justask chat GPT to to answer the
question, Where should I live? Idon't think that that's a good I
don't think it's a good use ofno AI. I don't could

get here's my here's my requirements, here's
my personality. Find me theperfect location.

Well, so what if, maybe, maybe chat GPT could
serve up five locations and say,Here's five for you to consider
that that might be interesting.

Oh, go ahead. Well, I

was just, I was just thinking about how, how
well Raj addressed, I think thethree key concerns, the three
problem areas of remote work, Ithink he did a really nice job
of of teasing these out, like,like, isolation, you know, he
said, with with the world thatwe live in, we have an abundance

(56:36):
of opportunity to havedocumentation of What's
happening and where things aregoing. Like every conversation
that we have can be transcribed,yeah, and we can keep them as
notes and and that helps, helpskind of keep us in touch. And,
of course, the idea of of justhaving video conferencing, those

(56:57):
are good reliefs for forisolation,

they are, but as he talks about, they're not
necessarily sufficient, right?So we're not, not all of them,
right? So there is we need. Weneed more than just reading the
notes from the meeting, havingeven video chats like this.
There is real value in gettingtogether, and we'll talk about

(57:22):
that, right? And one of thethings I think that you like in
some of this ways, but also thatcommunication, right? So
isolation is a big issue. So howdo you overcome that? How do you
get to places where you're notfeeling so isolated? And
isolation isn't just being hereby myself in the office, it is
about that human connection andand having that and, and as

(57:44):
we've talked about, we we canhave connections across the
globe with people we've nevermet. It's just what are the
conversations that you'rehaving? How are those
interactions happening invarious different things? The
other piece he talked about wascommunication, or one of the
other pieces communication,right again, as you said, there
is this asynchronous workflowsometimes where we can now have

(58:09):
all of our meeting notestranscribed. We can have a
summary of them createdinstantaneously. So we're
improving our ability, or theease with the of having
communication happen moresuccinctly and better. Yeah,

it's impressive to see, for instance, what otter
can do when, when it's takingnotes and an otter comes back
with, here's the, you know,identifies, here's the three
bullet points that we talkedabout doing. It's, it's a big
time saver to have tools likethat available to us.

It is. But there's also this aspect of
communication that is like, whatwe're doing right now is having
conversations and sharing thatis different than reading, you
know, a summary of thisconversation. And there's
nuances that get picked up onthat this is the the other piece
of this, which is voice only,written or video or in person,

(59:10):
right where we know fromcommunication that much of our
communication isn't just fromthe words that we speak. It's
the inflection, it's the waythat we pause it is a number of
things reading. That's why textsget misunderstood so much,
right? Because we don't alwayshave those other points of
reference to understand. Is thisa joke? Is this being serious?

(59:34):
Is this being said ironically?Those are all things we pick up
on from other cues. So am I? DoI have a little grin on my face
when I call you. You know, thebest looking guy that I've ever
seen. You know, do I do? Do welaugh at the end of things which

(59:54):
the laughs Don't get caught inthe transcription? Right? Right?
So, right. We. Have a number ofthings that we need to
understand about communication,and it can't be just, oh, I sent
you an email and you sent me anemail back that that is
communicating certain things,but communication, in the

(01:00:14):
broader sense, needs differentavenues, needs different
modalities to be able to do iteffectively, particularly when
you're thinking about coworkers,teams, boss to subordinate,
sharing organizationalinformation, all sorts of those
types of things.

Tim Houlihan (01:00:34):
That's a great tee up, I think, to get us into the
third element, the third problemthat goes along with work from
anywhere, and that is culture.Like, how do you build culture
in a way that is sustainable andmeaningful? Because if, if we're
going to be in a work group, andthey're going to be part of my
they're my tribe, I want thattribe to be some, some group of

(01:00:56):
people that I can connect with,right? Yeah.

Kurt Nelson (01:00:58):
And I think part of the heart, part of this isn't
necessary with intact teams whomight have been in person for a
while, right? It is new teams oronboarding new team members, and
that's the part that gets reallydifficult. And I think there's,

(01:01:19):
there is some truth to like,learning through following
somebody around, learningthrough having kind of just that
shadow perspective. I rememberwhen I started off working, I
sat in a cube next to Fredbomber, who, you know, who was

(01:01:39):
not in my group, not wouldn'thave we wouldn't have
interacted, except for the factthat we were spatially next to
each other. Yeah, he was in anentirely different group, and he
that that connection changed mycareer trajectory. It is why I'm
here today. Is because Fred, youknow, we started talking, he

(01:02:04):
somehow liked something I did,took me under his wing, and I
went down a whole differenttrajectory. And that's a
cultural piece to a certaindegree, because that was a
different work group, and hebrought me in and shared ideas,
and I was able to assimilatethat, because he wasn't my boss,

(01:02:27):
but because I was interested init, he was close, and we were
able to make that happen. Well,

then shouldn't, shouldn't companies do we have a
client that was that mandatestwo and a half days a week in
the office, and they and theyand they they check when you
badge in, and they check whenyou badge out, and there's no
fudging. Wouldn't, wouldn't thatget to that Kurt? Wouldn't that
be

great? Well, so this is, I think, part of the
issue, and this is Raj talksabout this, right? Is that a no,
it doesn't necessarily solvethat. It can be purposeful. And
maybe, yes, it does. And ifthere's a real reason for it,
great. And we'll talk about someof the other solutions that he
has. But those two and a halfdays, here's the issue is, I

(01:03:06):
could go in Monday, Tuesday,Wednesday morning. Fred could
have come in Wednesdayafternoon, Thursday, Friday. We
could have never met, or wecould have overlapped a little
bit in a disjointed way. Itwasn't every day, five days a
week, and where he was able tolearn who I was in a more, you

(01:03:29):
know, focused under in deeperlevel. And that, I think, is an
interesting piece of this. Sothat gets into some of these
solutions, Tim, and I know youreally liked some of these
different hybrid solutions.Again, not saying that there
isn't room for fully remotework, but there's also these

(01:03:52):
hybrid things you want to talkthrough, some of those that Raj
talked about. Thanks

for teeing them up, because I really like the
idea. Since I am a remote guy,right? I've been remote since
2017 and have worked remotelyWell, except for a little bit, a
little bit in Charlotte, with,with, with the bank, but, but
even that was a hybrid model.And so I think that there are

(01:04:19):
these three models that Rajtalked about that are really
great. The first one is, is theweekly hybrid this. It's, it's
to say, Okay, we want everybodyin the office two to three days
a week, you know, something likethat. And I think that this
works really well when you haveoffices that are easy for people
to get to. This doesn't work ifyou live 50 miles away from the

(01:04:40):
office. This a hybrid model tosay you're going to have to come
to the office, you know, two orthree days a week and commute
two hours on each end, does notmake sense to me that. So there
are exceptions to that. Well,

isn't that the issue of the employee? Then? I
mean, why did they choose tolive two hours? Away or an hour
away. Can't they live closer so

well, how about, like, affordability, you know,
how about, how about maybefamily or there's a whole
variety of reasons that I might,I'm going to choose to live
where I live,

and that's what Raj talked about, right? So again,
there's, there's an aspect ofthis, and there's, I again,
understand why some managerswant this, or leaders want this,
but there are other hybridmodels. Tim, you wanna talk
about those? Yeah, so

that's the weekly model, right? But then there's
also sort of a monthly model,where you have three to four
consecutive work days everymonth that everybody gets
together, and this is when, thisis when the commutes are longer,
but everybody can reasonably gettogether in the same place. And
then you structure those data. Imean, all of this, all of these,

(01:05:52):
all three of these models, arepredicated on thinking about
work in a new way, and that'schallenging, because we have
this status quo bias to just sayno, it's butts in chairs, but
it's just not anymore. So Ithink, you know, put on your big
girl panties and just, let'skeep moving here, because the
world is is progressing well.And I had

a I worked with a company that basically did a
week a month, and so it was afull week in the office, and
they had people across thecountry that they would fly in.
So you would fly in for thatweek. And they often did it
where they had the entirecompany try to come in, not just

(01:06:36):
your team, but the entirecompany coming.

How many people were that? Are we talking about
hundreds of, I mean, how many?Not hundreds of? There was

1000s of employees, okay, you know, this was a $2
billion company, right? It wasnot a small, was not a small
little, you know, Mom and Popkind of thing. But that was
interesting because it allowedfor that cultural piece. It
allowed for some of thecommunication in person.
Communication allowed for yourteam to gather. And often, I

(01:07:05):
mean, there were people thatlived in the town and weren't
went to the office on a regularbasis because they chose to. But
there were others who came in,and when they came in, it was
kind of a celebration. It waslike, oh, let's go out for
dinner. Let's go. Let's do someother pieces here, because I'm
staying in a hotel, and so thateven added to some of the

(01:07:30):
bonding, because you don'tnecessarily do that with your
teammates if you're all in thesame town all the time, right,
right? Which leads it to thelast one, which is the quarterly
hybrid that that Raj talksabout, which basically it's
gathering teams or the companytogether on a quarterly basis.

(01:07:52):
And this doesn't even have to beat the headquarters. It could
be, or you may not even have aheadquarters, right? You could
just do this as a nationalmeeting. Many of our sales
people who are listening, oranybody who's been associated
know they have a national salesmeeting, often, right? Or even a
quarterly, you know, salesgathering. Those are those times

(01:08:16):
where you pull everybodytogether and have a retreat.

How many sales teams have we do we have? We
worked with where the salesmanager has got people in five
different states, and everyquarter they get together in a
different location to spend acouple of days out of the field
to get focused on, what is itthat's what's important right
now? Set their direction,strategize, share best

(01:08:43):
practices, all those kinds ofthings in person, which are
really, really good things todo, but they just, that's just
part of their plan, that's partof their their business

well, and here's the key piece of this, because
I've seen national salesmeetings, I've worked on
national sales meetings. It'spart of the, you know, some of
the work that we do that arehorrid, that are presentation
after presentation afterpresentation that are I remember
one, actually, this was a Fredbomber story. It was with a

(01:09:12):
large financial servicescompany. They brought everybody
down to Phoenix or scottskill,Arizona, right? And basically
started meetings at 730 in themorning, ran till like 530 at
night, with maybe 15 minutebreaks in there and an hour for

(01:09:32):
lunch, 15 minute presentations,back to back to back in a huge
ballroom, 800 plus people inthis ballroom. Translation,
because this was global. So youhad back row with, you know,
people doing real timetranslation. And everybody got
their 15 minutes from this multibillion dollar global
organization. So what did peopledo with those 15 minutes? They

(01:09:55):
tried to pack everything in into15 minutes. And so. So you just
had a parade of 20 people in aday. Think about the retention
of that information. Think aboutthe energy level of people that
left that that doesn't work.That's not what we're talking
about. We're talking aboutchances to come together. You

(01:10:18):
can share information. That'spart of this, you have to share
information. What are teamsdoing? Where are we? Where's the
strategy that we're heading for?But you need time to connect, to
bond, to build interpersonalrelationships, to have some fun,
to create that culture thatyou're talking about and that's

(01:10:39):
structured. You need to puteffort and thought into it, and
we help companies do that too.So

absolutely, I couldn't agree more. Kurt, all

right, sorry, my little sales pitch there. All
right, ready to wrap up with mylittle quantification there?

I think we got there. Yeah. I think so, yeah.
So one thing

just on last note is that struck me. And Raj said
this, and I'm going to quote himhere, said, talent is
everywhere, but company officesare not everywhere. And I
thought in the globalenvironment that we have today,
that was really, reallyinsightful.

I couldn't agree more. Absolutely couldn't agree
more. It's really a reallynugget. Like, if we want to
attract and retain the besttalent, we've just got to meet
them where they are not, notwhere the building is. Basically
just love that.

So if you are a leader. So I think we're making
a point here we're taking we'reputting a flag in the ground.
Yes, we are this. Yeah. So ifyou're a leader still holding on
to these old ideas thatproductivity lives in cubicles,
it's time to let go of that. Itis time to rethink this. Yeah.

Raj reminded us that with the right systems in
place, emphasis on the rightsystems in place, work from
anywhere can be more productive,more diverse and more humane
like so take the idea join ourBehavioral Grooves Facebook
community and share yourthoughts about working from
anywhere and not

just humane. It could be more human, right? It
could be, yeah, so, but now thatyou say that, Tim, I'm like, oh,
that's an odd connection, likework from anywhere and group
community, but you know, I'mstretching, I'm I'm stretching
here. You're stretching. You'resaying that our groove community

(01:12:44):
is from everywhere. It's like a

work from anywhere community. It is. You don't even
have to work with the groovecommunity. You just

have fun. It's a fun anywhere. Fun from anywhere
community. There you go. Allright, we would love it. We
would really, really love it. Ifyou joined our groove community
on Facebook, you can just go outto Facebook search, groove,
behavioral, groove, groovecommunity, it'll come up. We

(01:13:12):
have about 140 150 members now,and we're getting

150 million. I thought it was 150 million
people. Did I get the numbers

wrong? You had a couple extra zeros. Mr.
Houlihan, all right. Anyway,please join us. We would love to
have you. We'd love your voiceto join in wherever you are in
the world, and because maybe youcould pose a fresh question or a
fresh idea that you might learnfrom that group community that

(01:13:46):
might help you this Week asyou're going out to find your
group you

All Episodes

The Real Reason Remote Work Works | Raj Choudhury

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

United States of Kennedy

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Real Reason Remote Work Works | Raj Choudhury