Creating an Optimal Hybrid Work Environment with Wayne Turmel

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If you can identify though, how do we communicate and how do we want to communicate, how should we be collaborating and how do we want to work with each other and form a cohesive unit.
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You've got a pretty good definition of your culture and, as you look at, hybrid work, but if you can really identify the factors associated with those, you can pretty much create the culture that you want.
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This is the Reimagined Workforce podcast from Workforce Transformations Australia, the podcast for people and culture professionals seeking to drive meaningful, impactful and financially sustainable workforce transformation through curiosity, creativity and data science.
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In this podcast, we hear from talented and innovative people making a positive difference for their people, their organisations and those their organisations serve.
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They share stories and learnings to help others on their path to transforming their workforce today and tomorrow.
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Now here's your host, Kath Hume.
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Wayne Turmel is the remote and emerging workplace subject matter expert for the Kevin Eichendrich Group and co-founder of the Remote Leadership Institute.
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He has been named in the top remote work thought leaders six years in a row and is a well-known speaker and author on the topic.
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On the 17th of September he will release his 12th book, the Long Distance Leader Revised Rules for Remarkable Remote and Hybrid Leadership, that he co-authored with Kevin Wayne.
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Welcome to the Reimagined Workforce Podcast.
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Thank you so much for having me, Kath.
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This is great.
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It is, and I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
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Would you mind starting by telling us a little bit about who you are and how you support the rest of the people in the world.
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I am Canadian by birth, although I live here in the US.
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I live in Las Vegas, so I have been in the learning and development space almost 30 years now, starting with presentation and communication skills, which is how I got fascinated with how people communicate or don't, and about 18 years ago I really started narrowing down on remote and virtual work, and so it's been my passion for a while, and about eight, 10 years ago I merged with my friend and colleague, kevin Eikenberry, and six years ago the first edition of Long Distance Leader came out, and the rest is kind of a blur of history.
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It's interesting that you've been doing this for 18 years.
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I've said this a lot of times on the podcast that I started working from home.
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It would be 25 years ago now and I can work that out because my daughter's 26 and I did it when she was about one.
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What brought you to that 18 years ago?
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Coming from a performing background, my first kind of area of expertise was presentation and communication skills and I remember very distinctly teaching a presentation skills class and a young lady in the class said you know, wayne, standing at the front of the room is all very nice and all.
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But you know, I only talk to people like three times a year.
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The rest of the time I'm on this new thing called WebEx, which was new at the time, and I got really fascinated because I realized that communicating through technology like this has its nuances and nobody was teaching people how to communicate effectively through webcams and technology like this and other technology that was emerging, and I knew that that was going to have a really serious impact on how we worked, how we communicated.
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And I remember very clear I don't remember the date, but I remember the day very clearly when Oprah introduced the world to Skype and every housewife in America realized that she could talk to anyone in the world on webcam for free and the world changed forever.
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I mean that was it.
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I can remember too during the GFC I actually went back to teaching briefly and I'd just finished a master's and I'd done a big assignment about remote education and asynchronous learning and I was trying to introduce the concept of.
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You know, we are a small school in a very small part of Sydney, but there's this whole world out there.
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If we used WebEx it was WebEx at the time we could connect with kids all over the world and we could.
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You know, the geography and economics and all these commerce classes really open up our eyes.
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But I genuinely remember this it was $10,000 for one licence for WebEx at the time and, you know, just trying to justify the value of it in an education system where there's not always a lot of money was really difficult and I think, fast forward to where we are today, it's quite fascinating that we take it for granted that click of a button we can be talking as we are to people on the opposite side of the world.
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When I was a kid there was a cartoon series side of the world.
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When I was a kid, there was a cartoon series, the Jetsons, where people communicated.
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This is Jetsons stuff.
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This is science fiction.
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We are here.
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I think the concept of hybrid work comes with many combinations and permutations.
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Can you tell us how you define hybrid work and then tell us how you help others come to a common understanding and then?
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tell us how you help others come to a common understanding.
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Sure, first of all, most of what people call hybrid work isn't.
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Here's an analogy that an Australian such as yourself can understand A true hybrid strategy is a mule.
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What most of us have is a platypus, and that probably requires more explanation.
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I'm hanging in here yeah, Okay, A mule, a hybrid, in biological terms, is the offspring of two different beings that form a third, completely different but distinct thing.
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A mule, as an old farm boy is, yes, it's a horse and a donkey, but mules are mules and you treat them unlike mules at your peril.
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A platypus, on the other hand, while adorable and kind of cool I mean, it's got the bill and it's got poisonous toenails and that's cool it's kind of an evolutionary dead end.
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It kind of kept evolving with its environment until it literally can't survive anywhere else and any change to the environment threatens its very existence.
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It's an evolutionary dead end and we would hope that, as we're planning businesses and thinking about the future, that we would be thinking more strategically than just kind of putting out fires until we wind up being cute but potentially threatened, until we wind up being cute but potentially threatened.
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So hybrid is not just what work gets done where, which is how we often think about it.
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You know, sometimes they're in the office, sometimes they're at home, whatever.
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But truthfully, hybrid work is not only what work gets done where, but when it really leans into the idea of synchronous and asynchronous work.
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I'll give you an example of a platypus kind of strategy.
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People do the job they do, but we expect them in the office three days a week.
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The job they do, but we expect them in the office three days a week.
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And one of the things that we're hearing from people who do that is I can't get any work done.
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Right, I show up and people are talking to me and there's conversations by my desk and it's Alice's birthday, so there's cake in the break room and I just can't get anything done.
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And I would suggest that if your job is, come in, hang your coat over the chair, put your head down over your keyboard, you know at 4.30, you lift your head from the keyboard and you leave.
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You're right.
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That's probably not a great place to do that kind of work.
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On the other hand, if you're trying to work from home and you're on Zoom meetings from morning till night, maybe that's not when you should be having your meetings.
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So a hybrid strategy is really to say let's maximize the time that we are physically together to do the coaching and the meeting and the collaboration and the team celebrations and that kind of thing, and when people are doing their head down focused work, we let them do that and we let them do that when it makes the most sense for them.
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You know, does it really matter that everybody logs on at the same time in the morning and logs off at the same time at night?
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For some organizations it does, and this is why hybrid work is so tricky.
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Is that?
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I wish I could just hand somebody a blueprint and say, here, right, this is how you do it.
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Right, this is how you do it.
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There are things that you can think about and questions that you can answer that will give you, you know, lead you to some kind of net, correct answer.
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But it's so dependent on what kind of business are you in and are you a startup or is the boat already in the water?
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You know, if you want people in the office three days a week, but your strategy is we're going to hire the very best people.
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What you've really said is we're going to hire the very best people who live within 30 kilometers of the office.
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Yeah, yeah.
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I think it's interesting.
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There's so many things that you're talking about and I interviewed Melissa Marsden on the podcast last year and she is a workplace dynamics strategist and she was fascinating, talking about even the difference of working in different coloured environments.
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So she was saying, for deep thinking, you have I think from memory it was muted colours, smooth surfaces like stiff chairs, whereas if you're wanting to do some collaboration, you'd have bright colours and you'd be having standing desks and just the nuances of understanding the different environments and just the maturity of what she talked about.
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But I think also, how do we help people to break down the tasks that they do and then craft their work to suit the environments that are available to them?
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And also, I think then we'll go into it too around there's also a level of autonomy.
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We need to provide empowerment.
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There needs to be a basis of trust to enable that.
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It needs to be an ongoing conversation.
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It can't be set and forget and it also can't be, and this is, I think, where the real challenge is.
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And it also can't be, and this is, I think, where the real challenge is.
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It's not a one size fits all, but we're dealing with humans who look at each other and will experience the sensation of there needs to be equity and fairness, which there absolutely has to be.
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So it's just such a complex storm that we're trying to navigate.
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Yeah, and it's funny as I'm listening to you there's a part of me who's the old cishet white guy who has been in the workplace since I was 13 years old and I'm going smooth surfaces and whatever colors.
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I'm Canadian, I'm just glad to be working indoors.
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What we expect from the workplace and what it means to work, and all that is just changed so dramatically.
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And I think, because we have so many generations in the workplace and so many different experiences, it's really hard to even establish a common terminology in a common language so that we can have the discussion about this stuff.
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And I think too, when we use words like flexible working and hybrid working interchangeably, I think it's really important that we have an understanding of what we mean when we're using those terms and to also be empathetic to this actually plays into people's quality of life in a massive way, and how do we recognize that and understand that but ensure that there is that mutual benefit for the individual, but the organization and then the people that the organization is serving?
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Yes, and living in a predominantly capitalist planet as we do, there's always going to be a tension between what the employer wants and expects and is willing to pay for and what the people want and expect and are willing to pay for.
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Realizing that we are going through the kind of seismic change that I don't think the Western economies have been through since maybe the 1920s and 30s, when we instituted a 40-hour work week and office hours of nine to five and an eight-hour shift, and that was a radical change.
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At the time, when people started commuting, the notion that you didn't live within walking distance of where you worked is a relatively new thing, but it's been that way now for the better part of 80 years.
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And now we're going through a change where we're asking questions like do I need to work where the person who pays me sits, and what do I owe my employer and what does my employer owe me?
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It's not a deep, controversial statement to say that the employer-employee contract has changed radically.
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You know it used to be if you got a good job right, good union job with a big company.
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You could get hired and circle your retirement date on the calendar right, as long as you didn't mess up and the company didn't go broke.
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You had a job and you knew that, and they would do certain things for you and you owed them certain things and everybody knew the game.
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That's no longer the case.
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Employers are more and more hiring as needed, they're firing at will, they're doing all those kinds of things and then they complain that people aren't loyal and aren't willing to sacrifice for the company.
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Well, add that to the desire for flexible work, the desire for work-life balance.
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There is a tension, and it used to be.
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You could want work-life balance all you want, but the office is there and if you wanna get paid, that's where you'll be All of a sudden.
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That doesn't have to be the case.
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I mean, what was then?
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It's funny, as I was listening to you talk about WebEx back in the day.
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Back then, webex was the generic term for this kind of media that's?
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right Now it's Zoom we're going to hop on.
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Zoom went from non-existent to a verb to a syndrome in like 18 months.
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You know telework was what we call telework, which nobody uses that term anymore.
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Before COVID was growing at 30% a year.
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But when COVID hit, it pushed us across the Rubicon and what happened was the ground shifted in more ways than one.
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We found out that jobs we didn't think could be done remotely could, and very successfully.
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We found that employee engagement not only was not negatively affected in some cases it went up was not negatively affected, in some cases it went up.
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We found that productivity did not drop in most instances at most organizations and people kind of like being home and if you live in a Western society, big city, you probably got a $4,000 or $5,000 a year raise because you weren't driving to work every day.
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Yeah, and not to mention the time that you were saving.
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And all the time.
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But with all of that there were some things At the beginning of the pandemic.
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When I asked people, what are you doing with that extra two hours of your life?
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The number one answer by far was working.
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That's right.
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That's right Because we've been programmed for 80 years and the guardrails on our time were you started working when you got there and you quit working when you left and in between you worked your tail off.
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But people didn't know how to do that without guardrails.
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So I'm really interested.
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So you work with lots of companies on this and I think we're just continually morphing.
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I don't actually ever think we're going to land.
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I'd really love to hear about if you've got any stories to tell us about organizations who have done this well.
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It's interesting because we kind of assumed before the pandemic what companies would be able to do this well and what wouldn't, and the organizations that are struggling with reaching what the new place is going to look like are traditionally high bound big money types of things.
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Jamie Dimon from Citibank actually gave a speech in Australia that kind of echoed around the world when he said if you want a career, you come back into the office in New York or wherever it happened to be.
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If you choose not to come into the office full time, you are no longer on the career track, you're on the job track.
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And everybody kind of lost their minds and said what a dinosaur.
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And far be it from me to cut Jamie Dimon any grace, but he deserves a little.
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This is an industry that for 200 years, is built on relationships, is built on mentoring.
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The people at the top only know one way to do this, and so this is the way it's done, and as a leader, I want my people to be successful and since I got to be successful doing it this way, clearly this is how it's done.
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At the same time, there is one of the guests on my podcast who is not a top five but probably a top 10 accounting firm in the US has gone 80% remote and talk about a hidebound, very traditional kind of company.
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A CPA firm is about as hidebound as it gets.
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But think about the work that almost everybody in the organization, other than a handful of support staff, actually do.
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You have your clients, you do your work, your billable hours.
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So if you don't work and you don't bill hours, you don't get paid.
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And you go into a CPA office and everybody is either on the phone with their client or head down typing into a keyboard.
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There's no reason.
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That can't be done almost anywhere.
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And what he found in his organization is what a lot of companies find, which is the people who are engaged and happy and have flexibility are the most engaged and happy people you have.
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So we like engaged and happy and have flexibility, are the most engaged and happy people you have.
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So we like engaged and happy people.
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It allowed him to expand his search for the best people not in a 20 minute radius from each office.
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So the quality of people he could draw was higher.
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Quality of people he could draw was higher and, as a result, they're doing better than ever with you know 20% of the real estate and in-office staff that they had before the pandemic.
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I think that's a really good story.
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What I'm intrigued about is why they made that decision.
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Did they have some evidence?
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Did they do some research?
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Did they have some evidence?
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Did they do some research?
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Did they have some level of comfort?
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Because I think leaders really need to have some evidence to say this is a safe thing to try.
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But also I do think, and I think us people in culture, leaders really need to support those leaders with that evidence and with the and this is how we might make it work and this is how we might set and I don't want to say rules, but the guardrails.
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I'm laughing because the reason that it happened okay, this is really behind the scenes kind of stuff the reason that it happened is the head of the company had never really worked remote before and he spent most of the pandemic at his lake house digging life.
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I liked it, yeah, and he went holy cow and that was a huge thing, because before the pandemic, the people most resistant to remote work were senior leaders.
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The people most resistant to remote work were senior leaders.
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When we surveyed for the first edition of the book what are your worries about your team I'm worried that they're not working did not make the top five right.
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Individual leaders, for the most part, did not worry about whether their people were working, but the senior leaders were freaked out.
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They're not going to work, they're going to be slacking all day.
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They're going to be, you know, at the supermarket instead of chained to their desk like they should be.
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Cats and dogs living together.
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It was going to be chaos and there were enough case studies that made the news.
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You know the guy who had two jobs on the go, those types of horror stories but for the most part, people didn't do that, yeah, and they had never worked remotely these senior leaders and they didn't see how that could work.
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And suddenly they did.
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Experienced it.
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Yeah, and just as an example, the new CEO of Starbucks is not moving to Seattle.
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He's staying in New York, and the world is going crazy and people in Seattle are losing their minds, but it's not like he's never going to be in Seattle.
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They have airplanes he can certainly afford to be on one, but they had never experienced it.
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And one of the things that is going to make hybrid work happen and we don't know how yet is that we have discovered that there are generational differences that aren't the ones we thought they were.
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For example, new hires, young people mid-20s and younger want to be in the office.
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They want to be in the office more often than not, and if you think about it, it makes sense.
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First of all, they don't know what they don't know right.
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They're picking things up by osmosis.
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Also, think about them socially.
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They've just gotten out of school where they were incredibly social.
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Their social networks have disappeared because all their friends got jobs.
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Uh, they may even have moved to a new city for this job.
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They don't have a social life.
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They don't have a social network.
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They're learning and mentoring in close proximity with people.
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Sometimes they're learning the very industry that they're in and you pick that up through osmosis.
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So yeah, they'd like to work from home once in a while, but in general, newer employees and younger employees need office time.
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It's interesting that you say that because I'm not sure in my experience and it's probably more to do with the people I know in my outside of work, so this is not related to work so much.
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But they do like flexible work and I think they lack an awareness of what being near people physically offers in that mentoring and that informal and that experiential learning and there's two things that you said there that are really important that I don't want to let go.
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So, forgive me, go for it.
00:25:22.303 --> 00:25:26.026
One thing is that they don't understand what they're missing.
00:25:26.026 --> 00:25:40.382
But the reason for that is when COVID happened and we said, well, remote working or hybrid working is just like being in the office, but Right, but we're going to use webcams, but we're going to.
00:25:40.382 --> 00:25:48.123
But you've got half a generation of young people who don't know what it is to be in the office.
00:25:48.123 --> 00:25:51.368
They don't know the rules of working.
00:25:51.368 --> 00:26:05.859
They don't know the unwritten rules of behavior and comportment and professionalism and you learn that the hard way, but you learn that a whole lot faster in contact with other people.
00:26:05.859 --> 00:26:12.441
It's funny One of the complaints I had a customer say to me I go, how's your return to office going?
00:26:12.480 --> 00:26:13.442
And she said terrible.
00:26:13.442 --> 00:26:14.665
And I said what's wrong?
00:26:14.665 --> 00:26:15.488
And she goes.
00:26:15.488 --> 00:26:19.059
They don't dress professionally.
00:26:19.059 --> 00:26:24.288
They play their music at their desks and bother everybody.
00:26:24.288 --> 00:26:36.989
They argue politics, they do all this stuff that had been kind of trained out of us over the last 80 years because we knew how to work in an office environment.
00:26:36.989 --> 00:26:39.577
Well, they knew.
00:26:39.577 --> 00:26:42.064
They just kind of forgot and didn't bother.
00:26:42.064 --> 00:26:44.635
There are people who don't know at all.
00:26:45.678 --> 00:27:07.698
But it sounds too there's a generational difference as well, like I do wonder too if part of this is because we haven't all been so close in proximity and that cultural nuance of how we work together hasn't been embedded as strongly as it was when we used to work together five days a week.
00:27:07.698 --> 00:27:21.864
And so if there's also a level of tolerance that we need to bring in around the people who, like me, started work started work when you were 22 or whatever it was, and it was five days a week, monday to Friday, 8 am to 5 pm.
00:27:21.864 --> 00:27:25.660
That was my experience, but that's not the world as it is today.
00:27:26.521 --> 00:27:27.384
Well, it's not.
00:27:27.384 --> 00:27:33.845
And if you're asking people to come into the office and then nobody else is in the office, that doesn't really make any sense, right?
00:27:33.845 --> 00:27:58.490
Which gets back to what I was saying earlier, that you need to look holistically at the business and originally we wrote this in our book the Long Distance Team, but we've included it in the updated version of Leader is people say, well, we want people to come together because we want a certain company culture, and we say, okay, great, what culture do you want?
00:28:00.734 --> 00:28:13.890
And they usually can't describe it, but all companies form a culture, and the HR kind of smart-alecky response to what is culture is this is how we do it here.
00:28:13.890 --> 00:28:17.986
But what most people can't identify is what is the it?
00:28:17.986 --> 00:28:32.616
Yeah, right, and what we've done is we've established kind of three pillars that, if you can answer these clearly, we'll tell you what your company culture is, or how to get the culture that you want.
00:28:32.616 --> 00:28:34.561
The first is communication.
00:28:34.561 --> 00:28:36.126
How do you communicate?
00:28:36.126 --> 00:28:37.637
How often do you communicate?
00:28:37.637 --> 00:28:39.402
What style do you communicate?
00:28:39.402 --> 00:28:42.308
What tools do you use to communicate?
00:28:42.308 --> 00:28:44.176
That's part of it.
00:28:44.979 --> 00:28:47.503
The biggest one, the central pillar, is collaboration.
00:28:47.503 --> 00:28:51.778
How does the work get done?
00:28:51.778 --> 00:28:53.021
What are the workflows?
00:28:53.021 --> 00:29:06.660
Who works with whom, and do we have to be all on at the same time, and do we need a lot of meetings, or can we do work asynchronously and meet virtually on occasion to really get the work done?
00:29:06.660 --> 00:29:10.608
And then, finally, the third pillar, is cohesion.
00:29:10.608 --> 00:29:18.559
How do we want to work together and how do we come together as human beings and relationships and all of that stuff?
00:29:18.559 --> 00:29:20.963
And every company is different.
00:29:20.963 --> 00:29:29.797
If you can identify, though, how do we communicate and how do we want to communicate, how should we be collaborating and how do?
00:29:29.797 --> 00:29:33.002
We want to work with each other and form a cohesive unit.
00:29:33.002 --> 00:29:46.260
You've got a pretty good definition of your culture and, as you look at hybrid work and again, this is a whole lot easier to do with a startup right- when you're starting from scratch.
00:29:46.942 --> 00:29:51.238
Because you don't have to unlearn and you don't have sunken real estate costs.
00:29:51.238 --> 00:30:01.486
But if you can really identify the factors associated with those, you can pretty much create the culture that you want.
00:30:02.055 --> 00:30:02.676
For me too.
00:30:02.676 --> 00:30:08.316
I think culture is about purpose as well and that, why are we here, what do we care about?
00:30:08.316 --> 00:30:14.047
And that always bringing it back to that and, I think, the decisions that we make.
00:30:14.047 --> 00:30:40.039
If people's hearts and minds are in the culture and in the purpose of the organisation, then I find that it's easier to make those other decisions because it reverts back to what will help us achieve that purpose in the best way and it becomes less about the individual and more about the collective, and I think that that's really important for people's wellbeing.
00:30:40.039 --> 00:30:46.281
And the other thing I was wanting to touch on too is I mentioned on my podcast that I did on hybrid work.
00:30:46.281 --> 00:30:46.963
Last year.
00:30:47.505 --> 00:31:26.249
I actually went into my story a little bit just to say when my kids were little I did have a five-day-a-week working from home model and in theory that sounds like the ideal scenario because I could walk my kids to school and it was all very wholesome, except for five days a week I was sitting in a room by myself, not talking to anyone, and I didn't realize how poorly that impacted my wellbeing and I really treasure the times when I go into the office and I still to this day you know it's 10, 15 years later, still, to this day, get real shivers and goosebumps just going.
00:31:26.249 --> 00:31:34.402
This is so good that I've got people to talk to and that we care about the same thing, that we're all on the same page, working towards the same thing.
00:31:34.402 --> 00:31:47.315
That, to me, is really a critical part of why we work and the whole hybrid thing can work, but I think that the purpose of why we're there is central to all of it.
00:31:47.836 --> 00:31:49.597
But it all starts with purpose.
00:31:49.597 --> 00:31:59.931
I said before that one of the big surprises at the pandemic was, at least during the first half of that time, employee engagement shot up.
00:31:59.931 --> 00:32:02.742
Well, why would engagement shoot up?
00:32:02.742 --> 00:32:07.464
We're not seeing each other Because everybody was pulling together.
00:32:07.464 --> 00:32:08.941
There's a crisis.
00:32:08.941 --> 00:32:12.104
We want to support each other.
00:32:12.104 --> 00:32:16.237
We want to make sure the company survives, so we have a job we want.
00:32:16.237 --> 00:32:22.375
There was a sense of purpose and a pulling together, and when people do that, they care.
00:32:22.375 --> 00:32:26.727
They weren't working extra hours because they didn't give a darn.
00:32:27.315 --> 00:32:31.246
No, that's exactly right, it mattered it really mattered.
00:32:32.295 --> 00:32:43.443
Now what we found is that teams that were highly functioning and really cohesive for COVID remained that way and in fact maybe were even stronger than ever.
00:32:43.443 --> 00:32:57.169
The problem is that the nuclear team, like the nuclear family right Mom, dad, kids, the nuclear team manager, direct reports was really, really tight and worked at a really high level.
00:32:57.169 --> 00:33:01.964
It was the connections with the rest of the organization Interesting that were suffering.
00:33:02.145 --> 00:33:02.507
Right.
00:33:02.747 --> 00:33:13.818
Interesting so that, on a team basis, things were great, yeah, which is why it's hard to get people to say, yeah, let me go back to the office because things were going great.
00:33:13.818 --> 00:33:19.026
Yeah, yeah, yep, and I didn't sit on the freeway for an hour and a half every day.
00:33:20.296 --> 00:33:22.601
And I think there is that mutual benefit in.
00:33:22.601 --> 00:33:28.785
How do we arrive at a place where everyone's got a bit of a win out of this scenario?
00:33:29.894 --> 00:33:30.939
Yeah, that is.
00:33:30.939 --> 00:33:34.755
I think that's the biggest problem with the hybrid work argument.
00:33:34.755 --> 00:33:41.348
Mm-hmm, I think that's the biggest problem with the hybrid work argument is the company is used to saying this is what we want and they should.
00:33:41.348 --> 00:33:47.268
They're cutting the checks and they know their business and they have a right to be in business and make money.
00:33:47.268 --> 00:33:48.921
Right, it's their football.
00:33:48.921 --> 00:34:01.198
They get to to the employee, the company, I mean.
00:34:01.198 --> 00:34:05.567
Ultimately they care because miserable, unproductive people aren't worth paying.
00:34:07.355 --> 00:34:09.463
But that's not their priority, right?
00:34:09.463 --> 00:34:12.360
They care about exactly as much as it impacts the work.
00:34:12.360 --> 00:34:25.628
The problem is that if all you're talking about from the company side is this is what the company wants, and the workers are saying this is what we want as workers and human beings, you're going to have a hard time reaching a win.
00:34:25.628 --> 00:34:27.119
Win, Right.
00:34:27.119 --> 00:34:29.206
That's how you wind up with the platypus.
00:34:29.206 --> 00:34:35.246
Yeah, that's because you keep making these kind of arrangements so that it kind of sort of works.
00:34:35.246 --> 00:34:41.347
There's something and we don't say this in the book, because I came up with it about the minute after.
00:34:41.494 --> 00:34:43.987
Right you signed off on it, right.
00:34:43.987 --> 00:34:57.684
But there's something about remote work that I call the Spider-Man paradox, which is, if you know your Spider-Man culture, there's that line that echoes through everything with great power comes great responsibility.
00:34:57.684 --> 00:35:05.385
Well, as a workforce, there's a little Spider-Man paradox going on.
00:35:05.385 --> 00:35:20.072
We've never had the opportunities for flexible work and the chance to do things like this and work in ways that our parents never dreamed of working Mm-hmm and we have some responsibility.
00:35:20.704 --> 00:35:22.992
We owe something to the people who pay us.
00:35:22.992 --> 00:35:33.931
Now it might be different than our parents thought we owed them, but if all you're doing is give me time off and the company isn't seeing the benefit to them, how long do you think that's going to work?
00:35:34.193 --> 00:35:47.193
Yeah, and I think that's where I see our role in people and culture is to explain the benefits and give the evidence and say we're not only doing it because we want these employees to be happy in their own right.
00:35:47.193 --> 00:35:53.311
We're doing it because happy employees are going to be more productive and there are mutual benefits.
00:35:53.311 --> 00:35:56.318
And that's what my organisation is.
00:35:56.318 --> 00:36:14.596
Workforce Transformations is all about is how do we get this mutual benefit, how do we make sure that individuals, organizations, the people we serve there's positives that come out of that, and I think that's where hybrid work trumps all others, if done well and if done with intention and empathy.
00:36:15.465 --> 00:36:18.751
And if it helps the business make money and continuously correct.
00:36:18.751 --> 00:36:42.072
I remember during the pandemic, the woman that cut my hair asked me what I did for a living and I was feeling kind of guilty because you can imagine, long distance leader came out in 2018, 2020 and 2021 were pretty good years to be us and I had a lot of survivor guilt about that but she was cutting my hair and she said what do you do?
00:36:42.132 --> 00:36:42.853
And I told her she goes.
00:36:42.853 --> 00:36:47.780
Well, I'd love to work from home, but nobody can mail me their head Right, so it's not.
00:36:47.780 --> 00:37:05.987
You know, I get a little crazy with the remote work zealots who are, you know, death to the office, and and all of that because, unless you have a job that permits you to do, that's not an option but I think, too, you can very be very creative with that.
00:37:06.047 --> 00:37:11.887
So say you don't want to be so you could use your skill adjacencies in that scenario.
00:37:11.887 --> 00:37:16.487
So if working from home was really important to you, could you do color consultations, or could you do?
00:37:16.487 --> 00:37:26.251
Could you do ai generated I'm coming up with things on the top, on the fly, but ai generated hairstyles so people can look at it before they actually commit to actually having it done.
00:37:26.251 --> 00:37:35.007
And I think that this is where we can encourage people to think about what their life is, think about their careers, think about the things that they enjoy.
00:37:35.007 --> 00:37:36.934
What is it you enjoy about being a hairdresser?
00:37:36.934 --> 00:37:38.947
Is it the tangible the?
00:37:38.947 --> 00:37:45.050
You know the feel of cutting someone's hair, which we know, for example, for surgeons, the you know the, the feel of cutting someone's hair, which we know, for example, for surgeons.
00:37:45.070 --> 00:37:49.222
Touch is important, um, and doing things remotely is not so much so, but it's a.
00:37:49.222 --> 00:37:53.472
It's about helping people to understand it works such a huge part of our lives.
00:37:53.472 --> 00:37:58.809
How do we craft it so as it works for us, we can add value.
00:37:58.809 --> 00:38:07.994
That's why purpose is, I think, because that gets us away from the conversation of I want to work from home because I can drop my kids off to school.
00:38:07.994 --> 00:38:10.746
That's a great benefit, awesome.
00:38:10.746 --> 00:38:12.552
But how does it help you?
00:38:12.552 --> 00:38:17.166
How does that enable you to add more value for the organization and yourself?
00:38:18.289 --> 00:38:22.094
Yeah, and there's some deprogramming that needs to happen.
00:38:22.094 --> 00:38:24.498
Not everybody's ready to have that conversation.
00:38:24.518 --> 00:38:24.960
No, no, no.
00:38:25.445 --> 00:38:40.586
Remember, we've got the majority of the population has been, we've got two and a half generations of people who thought they knew what it was to have a job and go to work and work for people, and so these are new conversations for a lot of people.
00:38:40.586 --> 00:38:59.684
And so these are new conversations for a lot of people, and one of the challenges that we've got with the young'uns and I say that as the father of a 31-year-old is they're starting with those conversations, yeah, yeah, but they don't know quite what the other looks like yet.
00:38:59.724 --> 00:39:00.505
Yeah, yeah.
00:39:00.505 --> 00:39:03.474
And so it's going to be interesting times.
00:39:03.474 --> 00:39:05.391
The next few years are going to be very interesting.
00:39:05.693 --> 00:39:07.269
Exactly and I'd love to do.
00:39:07.269 --> 00:39:09.972
What do you think is going to happen over the next five to 10 years?
00:39:10.835 --> 00:39:16.969
You know, when I look at the future, I always ask myself am I a fruit fly or an oak tree?
00:39:16.969 --> 00:39:28.028
And and the reason I say that is fruit flies have very short life spans, so every day matters and every day is a big deal.
00:39:28.028 --> 00:39:36.505
And if you're an oak tree, you tend not to be in a hurry and you're not don't tend to panic about every little thing, right, because you're still here.
00:39:36.505 --> 00:39:43.378
And so I think I like to take the kind of oak tree approach.
00:39:43.378 --> 00:39:49.478
I think that clearly the technology is going to change.
00:39:49.478 --> 00:39:53.985
Next time we have a chat will probably be by hologram.
00:39:53.985 --> 00:40:04.530
You know the technology is going to continue to change and I think we are going to.
00:40:04.530 --> 00:40:28.969
I think the really big companies are going to start breaking up and we're going to see kind of a dissolution of some of the big mega companies because more and more people are going to choose to work in small, boutique, bespoke, found, family kind of companies.
00:40:29.371 --> 00:40:29.893
Interesting.
00:40:31.317 --> 00:40:33.884
The remote work trend is going to continue.
00:40:33.884 --> 00:40:36.168
I really believe that hybrid is the future.
00:40:36.168 --> 00:40:43.311
Yeah, at least for the next 5, 10, whatever foreseeable future, there is going to be a percentage.
00:40:43.311 --> 00:40:44.605
If you look at theable future, there is going to be a percentage.
00:40:44.605 --> 00:40:50.293
You know, if you look at the bell curve, there's going to be a percentage of people who work fully remote.
00:40:50.293 --> 00:40:53.099
And look at the rest of the people, very askance.
00:40:53.099 --> 00:40:56.034
And you know why would you idiots do that?
00:40:56.034 --> 00:41:11.543
That there is the percentage of population and it's generally the lower paid jobs that are not going to have the options to do that.
00:41:11.543 --> 00:41:14.925
And then there's the rest of us.
00:41:14.945 --> 00:41:22.119
I said earlier that people were surprised by how much the younger generation wants and needs together time.
00:41:22.119 --> 00:41:32.498
The people most supportive of hybrid work are the people in the middle of their careers, and that's for two reasons, I think.
00:41:32.498 --> 00:41:39.375
One is I know my job, I know what I'm doing, I can go in, I do it.
00:41:39.375 --> 00:41:42.262
I don't have to think about it, I don't need a lot of training.
00:41:42.262 --> 00:41:43.105
I've been doing this for a million years.
00:41:43.105 --> 00:41:43.206
So leave me alone.
00:41:43.206 --> 00:41:43.505
I do it, I don't have to think about it, I don't need a lot of training.
00:41:43.505 --> 00:41:44.831
I've been doing this for a million years.
00:41:44.831 --> 00:41:47.635
So leave me alone to do it.
00:41:48.556 --> 00:41:58.688
The other thing is those people are at a stage in their lives I was going to say that might be past the little kid, little baby, they're past the little kid stage.
00:41:58.947 --> 00:42:10.021
I mean, one of the interesting things about return to work is, ironically, one of the big reasons people wanted to return to office is for peace and quiet.
00:42:10.324 --> 00:42:20.572
And that was exactly why it was a big motivator for me to return to work when my kids were little is just let me use my brain for a little bit please, and it was definitely very hard.
00:42:20.634 --> 00:42:33.710
well, and let me do this conference call without, yeah, people tugging on my leg and and having a conversation that doesn't involve bluey is helpful.
00:42:33.809 --> 00:42:36.273
Yeah, yeah, so do you.
00:42:36.273 --> 00:42:41.452
The last question that I ask everybody what does your reimagined workforce look like?
00:42:41.452 --> 00:42:42.621
So this is if you, if look like.
00:42:42.621 --> 00:42:52.786
So this is if you could have your ideal state, if you could start again, wipe the slate clean and reimagine what it looks like, what would that be?
00:42:53.748 --> 00:42:59.199
Yeah, I think I'm brainwashed by my 63 years on the planet.
00:42:59.199 --> 00:43:04.273
I don't have a very utopian vision, quite frankly.
00:43:04.273 --> 00:43:06.538
I think work is important.
00:43:06.538 --> 00:43:12.458
I think people need to do good work that they care about, that they feel good about doing.
00:43:12.458 --> 00:43:34.293
To me, my entire mission, my entire career has been you know, if you're a leader or even if you're just a worker, you're going to have to work, and sometimes it sucks and sometimes it's hard, and sometimes you work with cool people and that makes it easier, but it doesn't have to be awful.
00:43:34.293 --> 00:43:36.358
You know, misery is optional.
00:43:36.664 --> 00:43:38.590
Because you spend a lot of time working.
00:43:39.152 --> 00:43:49.396
I would like the majority of the people to be that's a happy time, spend a third of your life working, and it doesn't have to be misery inducing.
00:43:49.396 --> 00:43:55.059
As a leader, you can do it in ways that make you happy and don't make you miserable.
00:43:55.059 --> 00:43:59.407
And you can choose not to make the people that you work for miserable.
00:43:59.407 --> 00:44:11.181
And you can choose that, if I don't like my job, work for miserable and you can choose that if I don't like my job, I can go elsewhere, yeah, yeah, and that to me, is a pretty good deal.
00:44:17.144 --> 00:44:21.565
You know, if you can pay the bills and do work that matters to you and makes you happy, and it doesn't have to be altruistic and all that stuff.
00:44:21.565 --> 00:44:27.130
I mean, there are people with shovels in their hands who love it Correct, and thank goodness there are.
00:44:27.130 --> 00:44:39.916
You know, go for it, but you don't have to be miserable and you don't have to be trapped and you don't have to be at the mercy of everything else.
00:44:39.916 --> 00:44:42.552
That, to me, is the ideal workplace.
00:44:42.552 --> 00:44:43.867
Yeah, quite the opposite.
00:44:43.907 --> 00:44:46.452
I love a world like my book is.
00:44:46.452 --> 00:45:00.489
It's called Learn, solve Thrive, but the subtitle is Making a Difference that Matters in a Fast and Complex World, and I think I finish off saying something like you don't have to change the world, but you just have to make a difference.
00:45:00.489 --> 00:45:08.885
That matters, and I think that if we can help people to have work that they find meaningful, where they contribute value, they feel a sense of belonging.
00:45:08.885 --> 00:45:11.737
You know, work actually contributes to our well-being.
00:45:11.737 --> 00:45:14.427
It doesn't have to be this negative component of it.
00:45:14.427 --> 00:45:17.273
And, as you said, one third of our lives.
00:45:17.273 --> 00:45:27.451
Let's make that part of the most positive portion of our lives and, and you know, and then our leisure time can also be contributing to our wellbeing as well.
00:45:28.485 --> 00:45:32.956
Well, when you consider that another third is spent sleeping Sleeping, yeah there's not much left.
00:45:33.385 --> 00:45:34.590
It gives you so much time.
00:45:34.590 --> 00:45:36.869
That's exactly right.
00:45:36.869 --> 00:45:38.034
Excellent.
00:45:38.034 --> 00:45:42.431
Now I am going to have to finish up, but tell me a little bit about your book coming out.
00:45:42.431 --> 00:45:45.715
It actually might be very close to being out.
00:45:47.226 --> 00:45:53.590
This is the second edition Long Distance Leader Revised Rules for Remarkable Remote and Hybrid Leadership.
00:45:53.590 --> 00:45:59.135
It is coming out in the world September 17th, although you can pre-order it now.
00:45:59.135 --> 00:46:00.478
Excellent, it's a book.
00:46:00.478 --> 00:46:03.512
Anywhere you buy books clearly is going to work.
00:46:03.512 --> 00:46:08.992
You can find me on LinkedIn and connect.
00:46:08.992 --> 00:46:11.476
I love connecting with people wherever they are.
00:46:11.838 --> 00:46:15.293
I think we've covered most bases, so thank you very much for your time.
00:46:15.293 --> 00:46:16.556
It's been great chatting to you.
00:46:16.556 --> 00:46:17.907
I will put your.
00:46:17.907 --> 00:46:22.436
Linkedin profile and the link to your book in the show notes.
00:46:22.436 --> 00:46:26.329
And yeah, thanks for the conversation, it's been awesome.
00:46:28.492 --> 00:46:31.579
Thanks for listening to the Reimagined Workforce podcast.
00:46:31.579 --> 00:46:38.208
We hope you found some valuable ideas that you can apply to transform your own workforce today and tomorrow.
00:46:38.208 --> 00:46:48.057
Additional information and links can be found in the show notes for this episode at workforcetransformationscomau slash podcast.
00:46:48.057 --> 00:46:54.818
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