Redesigning the Future of Work

A I'm Evelyn Lee, and I'm Janine Chastain. We're collaborating on curated conversations to explore how the industry of architecture is changing.

B Together, we'll find ways to create new solutions to current challenges while elevating the value of architects.

A Welcome to Practice Disrupted.

B Hello, listeners. Hello, Janine. Hi, Evelyn. Hi, disruptors. Co Today, I'm bringing back a fellow Slacker, now a Slack alum, and one of the cofounders of Future Forum, Brian Elliott.

A Co This is a conversation that I've been looking forward to for some time, so I'm glad we're finally doing it. Brian is a leading expert on workplace flexibility. Co After 2 decades building companies and leading teams as a start up CEO and at Google and Slack, as Evelyn mentioned, Brian cofounded Future Forum. Now we've recorded a few prior episodes with the future forum leaders. We'll drop those in the show notes for you to check out. For those of you who don't know, the future forum co was a leading think tank on the future of work. He's also the coauthor of How the Future Works, leading flexible teams to do the best work of their

B So we will also drop the link to the book in the show notes if you're interested in checking it out. It's a really fast and easy read. I highly recommend it. Co I'm looking forward really to talking with Brian about all of his thoughts on return to office, especially the ongoing battles that are waging with CEO in the Silicon Valley across a variety of different industries and what his stance is on how we work going forward. So, Brian, welcome to the show.

C Thanks for having me, Evelyn, and great to meet you, Janine. Now it's been wonderful to hear your voice.

B Co I know. I was gonna say we miss you in our channels and on Huddles, on Slack, so always looking forward to find other ways to connect. Co so we open each of our episodes by you know, we've obviously done your formal bio. But is there a fun fact or anything else that you wanna throw in that you would like our listeners to know about

C you. Yeah. I'm an empty nester. My wife and I have 2 grown adult children. It's kinda crazy. 21 and 23 year olds, one of whom is actually out in the work world already these days. The younger one is, is a senior in college. And we just got back from 2 weeks in Portugal, which is something that in the early stages of child rearing wasn't really ever in the possibility.

C So, co Evelyn, I know you've got kids. You'll get there someday. It happens.

B People keep telling me I'm in the weeds, and I'm keep asking, like, when do I get out of the weeds? Just because you kind of brought up that you are an empty nester and you have 2 grown children, I just wanna throw in this question then, you know, seeing where we are relative to future of work today, did you ever think we would get to this point when, you know, when you first started out and or maybe if you're looking at back at your your time as CEO and how you worked way back then.

C Co No. Not at all. And and in fact, I really do think that the pandemic you know, the the usual caveat of horrible event, But it just taught me personally a lot of things about, you know, the nature of work, but also my trade offs between work and life. I I think it caused a lot of us to sort of reconsider priorities in what we were doing, but also just caused me to chain question a lot of conventional wisdom. Right? As a start up CEO, even though I was someone that was pretty open to different styles of working that people had, I was still showing up 5 days a week on a 9 to 5 basis. And I may not have insisted that my team do that all the time, but I certainly lean that way. And the impact that that had on my teammates and even on my own family, Honestly, it's not great looking back on it, and so there's plenty of things that I would have, done differently if I'd known in, you know, 2000 what I knew in 2021. Co

A Do you think that you did that just out of habit or just because that was the way it was? Like, what or did you even question it?

C Co Never questioned it. It just was the way it was, like, even when I was at Google. So I did the back and forth between San Francisco and Mountain View on a bus Where the bus ride on average was an hour to hour and a half each way for about 5 years. And I knew that I had the option, quote, unquote, see the air quotes around it, co So work from home on Fridays, but I almost never did because more often than not, on a Friday, there would be some big meeting with, you know, a skip level boss. Co And, you know, the pressure to be in the room where it happens was pretty huge. So all of those expectations were really just sort of baked in. Co And even at Slack, Evelyn will remember this too, we were hugely office centric before the pandemic. Most people are like, what? You know, Slack, the the tool that helps people who are, you know, distributed.

C And everything was assumed that, you know, you did it in the office. And I'll I tell the story all the time about Mike Brevoort out of Denver who in 2019 made 23 trips to San Francisco from Denver. Probably half of those were to be with, you know, the team of people that he worked with, but the other half were to be in the room where it happens. Right? Because There's some review with some senior executive, and it felt like if you were dialing in, you might miss out.

B Talk to us about co The Future Forum, which I feel like is a story that goes along with how Slack in its mind changed the way it approached how we all work together as a company. And can you tell us where the people of the Future Forum are now?

C Oh, man. I can try my best. So Future Forum itself, fantastic, amazing, incredible team, probably the best team I've ever been part of. We started this in early 2020. Me, Helen Copp, Sheila Subramanian, who were my my cofounders on it. And it was a combination of, like, an idea that actually Stewart Butterfield had percolating in the back of his head for years before this, co That we were that Slack was gonna have a center for the future of work, sort of a a research, organization slash executive engagement arm together with co Christina Janzer and the research team at Slack who are really fantastic and whose work often got, as most research teams do at companies, kinda got buried internally. Co All these rich insights that they were developing with the pandemic, honestly, which when it started out, we found ourselves I found myself and other SAC Executives found ourselves in conversations with companies and executives who are suddenly questioning all this conventional wisdom that we're already talking about. Right? Like, co What's your policy gonna be like going forward around remote work? Not to mention how are you handling, you know, the the situation we're in.

C And so that just became a right moment to pull all those threads together, the sort of research driven insights that we knew Christina and team had, the executive engagement that we were seeing, And really kind of a passion project for Helen, Sheila, and myself around making work better for people. And so we sort of jumped from there and spent the next 3 years building this group that did 2 things. We we put out, research and data co Around what was working and what wasn't for people together with a fantastic team. And then we gather groups of executives to talk through co What their experiences were, what they were working on, what was working and what wasn't to share insights. And that led to a lot of really fantastic co Content by the team around, you know, case studies and how to playbooks that people, including myself, still rely on to this day. And as to where everybody is, man, all over the place. A couple of them, Eliza and Chrissy, are are still with Slack as Evelyn knows. Co A couple of folks are out with other companies and other organizations.

C Helen's doing some really amazing stuff on the generative AI front, the target with, with a group of, fantastic women. Co And I'm out still talking about this and trying to help companies adjust and move forward in a better way.

A Evelyn and I are such big fans of the work that the Future Forum produced. We bought the book. I listened to you on other workplace podcasts that you all were featured on. We would look forward to the reports that you all issued with the latest trends on workplace. And during the pandemic, it was just such a breath of fresh air to have someone a group of people thinking about these issues and giving co Everyone insight into a time when things felt foggy and hard to look forward. It was nice to have someone with their finger on the pulse, literally. Pulse is kind of what you all named it. So I wanna say thank you for producing that content.

A And, also, I'm really sad that I don't get to go look at that, but I am definitely looking at the resources that you created still to this day in my work.

C Co Thank you. No. Thank you, Janine. That's that's really wonderful. The Pulse, that quarterly survey that we did was really fantastic co And it's still pretty reliable. One of the things we found actually, especially in the last year and a half of doing it, so it ran for 3 years almost every quarter. In In the last year and a half, it didn't actually change much. And that actually itself was part of the story.

C Right? That even though we were coming out of the pandemic and in theory, things were going to go back co normal in a pre pandemic mode. People were were not themselves ready to go back to pre pre pandemic ways of working. And so, you know, the insights really came from the fact that what we saw was a sort of a c shift in expectation and understanding That really was there before too if we looked hard enough, I think, but we've hadn't been in this sort of more elastic place to test it out for ourselves.

A Co I'm curious now that Future Farm doesn't exist, where should we all be looking for this type of insight and data? Who's producing it? Where are you looking?

C Yeah. I so I'm a I'm a data geek myself and a work data geek specifically. And so I still follow my old partners who are still producing research. It's actually quite good. So Slack is one of those. Christina Janzer, Lucas Fuente, Ashley Langeron Are still doing really fantastic work, and they're putting stuff out a little less frequently, but still really good deep insightful work. So I follow them, number 1. My friends at Boston Consulting Group and Miller Knoll also both continue to put out studies that are actually quite good.

C BCG's also taken it further into the world of frontline workers, co An area that we honestly neglected in our conversations. Right? So thinking about the other half of the US workforce, the other 80% of the global workforce, which Doesn't have the same options of of office flexibility, and so it's fantastic to see that. And then I follow a lot of a lot of other people, and I actually pull it together. You can follow me on LinkedIn and see a But Flex Index, which is put out by Scoop, they've been doing regular reporting on, policies from an office perspective. There's great work that came out of the lean in and McKinsey work just a couple about a month ago on, the fact that Regardless of what some executives may think, women in particular who want workplace flexibility are no less ambitious than their peers who are in the office 5 days a week. Same thing is true of men, by the way. And so just there's a little bit of, like, going through these research reports and finding, you know, what is common and consistent. And what's really interesting is if you if you read even, like, Cushman and Wakefield stuff, what you see is choice.

C Giving people choice And where and when they work has huge impact on their engagement, on their level of burnout, and on their productivity. Co And choice ends up being this really, you know, key thing. And so it doesn't matter if it comes from a real estate firm or from a, you know, a Slack backed, research organization. If the research is conducted in a proper fashion, you're gonna get pretty similar insights, which is back to autonomy, co Choice team based relationships that are at the heart of, you know, making work better.

B So I think we have some listeners and maybe even some from leaders who are saying seeing certain headlines these days and saying companies might be thinking thinking otherwise. And I know you've had several conversations on LinkedIn about kind of the click baited nature of these headlines. I guess my question is, what are your thoughts on why this topic is so incredibly top of mind and and why people are You know, you have everything from remote work is dead to the office is dead showing up.

C Yeah. And I'm actually not a fan of either one of those. Right? Like, I think the extremes of it just get it completely dead wrong. And I do think like, actually, my favorite headline of the past week or so that was the least clickbaity one was co Something the effect of billionaire who runs company that has more commercial real estate than anyone else declares remote work to be dead. Talking about the Steven Schwartzman at you know, commentary about, you know, remote workers don't really work hard. That one just betrays, you know, the bias that comes out of one side of things, which is If you are, you know, heavily invested in commercial real estate, you're understandably nervous because the world is changing around you pretty rapidly, And people are not coming back. But the truth is most people don't wanna be fully remote either. Right? We we like to posit this as co As the sort of 2 polls when we know from our research at Future Forum that neither one of those was what the majority of people wanted.

C There's about 20% of people co that need an office 5 days a week. Right? Because home's not conducive for them. They need the space. There are fewer than that. There's about 15% that wanna be co Fully remote, meaning with their team less than once a month. The vast majority of people want something that probably averages out to be 1 to 2 days a week co In an office, but they want it to be for a purpose. Right? They want it to be together time together with their team. The number one thing in most surveys is Socialization and relationship building.

C Right? Coming together to be together. And so, you know, when you look at the headlines that say either remote work is dead or the office co dead. Both of those are just patently false. It's just we have to think a little bit more broadly than just how many days a week somebody's in the office And get into, like, why. What are the what are the reasons why people should come together, and how do we actually organize ourselves to make that easier co for people as opposed to saying, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or the 3 days a week, you will be in the office. We will conduct all of our meetings those days, which results in, You know, closing yourself self up in an office and doing Zoom calls back to back to back to back and coming out after 3 days, a, exhausted, co And, b, having had no time to socialize with anybody, kind of worst of all worlds.

A At some point and I don't remember when this data point co was issued, but I believe that there was also a spectrum based on where you were in your career trajectory, so c suite or middle manager or even early on in your career that those different career stages wanted different things out of their work co from home experience.

C Yeah. There's a little bit of, like there's age assumptions people make that end up being really false. Like, most people I've actually heard this in both directions. Co I've heard some of the most egregiously stupid things out of senior executives recently. Young people really don't wanna work anymore. Like, oh, please, have you met my son? You know, co The the youngest generation is the least likely to wanna be full time in the office. They're also the least likely to wanna be fully remote. They're the ones that want it the most for, ta da, socialization.

C Right? Meeting other people for, hopefully, developing some mentoring relationships. Co People 50 and above are the most likely to want either of the extremes, either, you know, fully at home or or full time in the office. Co And there's a little bit of this that is where you are in your career related. And there's also a little bit of, like, a little bit of challenge in that. Meaning, People who are younger and early in their career that are looking for mentorship. If you've got a good manager, they know and they understand that coaching and mentorship happens regardless of where I happen to be seated, co Seating. Right? Because they give you proactive feedback as you go along. If you're dependent though on going and literally knocking on your manager's door to say, hey.

C Could you give me some feedback? But your manager either isn't anywhere near you or doesn't respond to those kind of inquiries, then it can be more challenging. So it does put more weight on being proactive as a manager in coaching people. And I do think that's where a lot of the challenge has come is we haven't really trained managers to be good at that job. We've trained managers to be hall monitors in a better way than we've trained managers on how to be coaches of people. And that's sort of a decades long failing that has nothing to do with being in the office or not being in the office. Co But it's gotten a little bit worse because it's been harder for people to track them down. There's a woman named Nadal Neely who's a professor at Harvard Business School. It's got one of my lines around this, which is the shift to flexible work just, you know, showed how mediocre some managers are.

C And they always were mediocre. It just co made it a lot more transparent.

A Yeah. It was, I think, harder to hide our flaws during the pandemic in such an extreme environment. Co But do you think that the c suite and I don't know if this is still true, but do you still feel like the c suite is leaning more towards wanting to be back in the office.

C They are they have been typically in a lot of the research that we've done. And I think some of that is driven by co Real challenges that they see in their businesses at times and attributing the solution to those back to what worked for them, which is a mistake. Right? So some of what you'll see is, hey. Look. We're really struggling with how, you know, junior salespeople are learning in this environment. And instead of going back and saying, well, what's our training regimen look like? How are we training, you know, junior salespeople these days? Instead of thinking through things like our co Are our frontline managers skilled in providing people with feedback after a sales call? What some executive Executives are doing is saying, hey. We just need to get back to what worked in the past. And what worked in the past for me was I grew up in a situation where I was, You know, in a bullpen, and I wore a suit and a tie, and I, you know, heard people, you know, giving each other feedback there.

C So let's get back to doing that. There's 2 problems with this. 1 is the tools and techniques of managing people have actually changed and shifted since co Those people like me were, you know, frontline managers 20 or 30 years ago. Let me give you an example. When I ask salespeople, how many of your customers actually want you to come and visit Versus they tell you just do it on Zoom. I almost always get people saying to me, it's almost all done on Zoom these days. Great. Then if your Junior salesperson is doing a sales pitch on Zoom.

C What prevents you from giving them a call right away afterwards to provide them with feedback as opposed to sweating whether or not they're in the office? Those kinds of examples help them think through, you know, how they can act on it. The second problem I think that a lot of senior execs have in this situation is What worked for them didn't really work for everybody else. Right? I mean, let's face it. The c suite is still largely older, white, male, And we're are not we're not primary caregivers. And so they're not always accounting for the fact that, you know, the rest of their population faces a hard different set of challenges than they based. And what worked for them may not work for everybody else.

A Yeah. That's true. And I'll say it a couple of thoughts on that, which includes housing insecurity. Just if you're if you're struggling to pay your rent, if you're struggling to figure out where you live or where you might move, if you're managing childcare, that's an entirely separate but similar related topic. There's so many instances that we can think of co that if you feel like your situation is stable, it gives you a completely different outlook than someone who's early on in their career trying to figure all those things out.

C Co Absolutely. And these these things also cut across demographics in very bad ways if you're not careful. Meaning, if you think about the firms that said, hey. Look. Co We'll allow you to move further afield. We're gonna, you know, get people together once a quarter for team building activities. What a lot of those bigger firms did is having said, you know, you can move move further afield. We'll bring you together once a quarter or so.

C The first thing that happened in late 2021, early 20 22 was they pulled the funding on the quarterly gatherings. Right? And so that was, you know, the first step in a line of sort of mistakes along the way. Because what that did is it meant that teams weren't getting together. People weren't building the relationships and the bonds they do need to build. I actually do believe it's important to get together at least once a quarter. But then when you also said, now that things aren't working as well, we want everybody back in the office. What you forgot is that The people who needed that, you know, move the most, who needed that flexibility the most are women with children, co are people who are black, Hispanic, Latinx, Asian American office workers whose, you know, the tax on them of code switching 5 days a week, 9 to 5 non in the office is far higher. We've seen this even in the data.

C When you look at things like federal government job applicants, co Way more likely to be women, way more likely to be veterans, way more likely to be the disabled than people who have to be in the office 5 days a week. Co So if you start doing the forced march back into, you know, 5 days a week, even 4 days a week, sometimes 3, and you're making people move, There's a cost of living element to that. There's a cost of childcare element to that that your people at the ground level are gonna feel a hell of a lot more co Then your c suite is ever gonna feel it.

B So I know that some people are going to be hearing this and they're like, oh, well, he is talking about cloud sales teams. Like, that's not relevant to the architecture industry. What do you have to say about innovation co or innovative teams or teams trying to do innovative work in this new flexible workplace.

C That's a great question. Actually, I'll start off by saying, I've had this conversation with pretty much name your vertical, name your function. And what I get at first is a question that says, Yeah. But this isn't relevant to us because, you know, it doesn't work that way in health care or retail or financial services or engineering versus marketing. At the end of the day, people are people. And what we're talking about here is actually a really core element, which is how do you drive engagement co of employees in the mission and purpose of your business because that engagement is what gets them to go the extra mile to try harder, to work harder for your customers. It shows up in things like trust and transparency and how that actually impacts people's work ethic much more so than anything else. Co When it comes to innovation, one of my favorites on that front is, you know, the usual euphemism of why should people back in front of the whiteboard? And, usually, the person who's saying that the loudest is the person who loves to hold that pen and control that pen on that white co like there's no tomorrow.

C Right? They're gonna conduct that meeting, and by god, we're gonna come out of this meeting with some great ideas. And there's all kinds of academic research that says those types of things are almost always groupthink. Because what happens is the people that sit on their hands are The younger workers, the newer workers, the people who don't look like the person who's holding the pen. Right? And That's where all your new ideas come from. Right? If you think about, like, the reason for having these types of events, it's to get new ideas out on the table co To find new solutions, they're gonna come from the more diverse aspects of your audience. But if there's no trust, if there's no, way for them to voice that without feeling Feeling like they're challenging the person at the front, it doesn't work. So from a whether it's architecture or design, product and development inside of software companies. What you really need is for ways to create space for those voices to be heard.

C So So one of my favorite examples is this concept of brain writing, right, which is instead of starting out with the event where you're saying, hey. Let's all, you know, brainstorm on idea x. Co You give people the prompt a week ahead of time, and you ask them to come up with 3 to 5 ideas. These can be just bullet point ideas, jot them down, but keep them to yourself. Co And then when you come together, throw all the ideas together at once. And that way, what what you avoid is that filtering mechanism that's gonna happen otherwise. You can still use the meeting as a as a sortation event, right, to start going through all those ideas and and and filtering them then. What you're avoiding is the sort of pressure to, keep it to yourself that a lot of people feel in those kind of classic brainstorming environments.

B I feel like everybody is in this figure it out moment. Whether or not they're actually trying to actively figure it out is another question or not. Co Who do you think are the most innovative company? Like, if I wanted to to actually look at companies that are doing it well. Who are you referencing these days?

C There's a bunch of companies, and what I try to do is spread it around so it's not just the tech companies. There are some great tech companies that are doing it well. Co The last scene is still one of my favorites because they talk about it a lot. They share what they're doing in terms of team oriented gatherings. Give you an example. They do these quarterly gatherings that I was, talking about. They've actually measured the results and seen that a team gathering actually gets you 4 to 5 months of ongoing engagement and well before it dissipates. And that those team events are the one thing that can take somebody who is potentially negative on the company and move them into co Neutral or positive territory.

C My running joke on that one is you can't happy hour somebody into being happy with the company. Right? It's just not gonna happen that way. So Atlassian's done some really great work. HubSpot also in terms of thinking through what the right balance is of gathering people together and actually looking at their own underlying data. Co PagerDuty actually does activities where they bring people together on a regional basis. But then you can look way further afield than than tech into companies like Allstate. So Allstate got rid of the massive corporate headquarters in suburban Chicago, now has 7 regional centers, and they focused on a key co element that we talk about in the book, which is team level agreements. Because what they recognized is that even within marketing, The needs of the design content team are vastly different from the data analysis marketing team.

C Right? So So the data analysis marketing team might come together once a month for 3 days versus the design content teams are, you know, locally housed, and they're together 2 to 3 days a week on average because they wanna see the visual design work that they're doing together. And so you can go through those guys, AmEx, co Fidelity in the financial services sector. And you can find examples in pretty much every industry of companies that are taking an approach that says, co We know 1 size doesn't fit all when it comes to flexible work. We're gonna put some guardrails in place. Things like once a Quarter at a minimum, we want you to come together with your team, but we're also gonna support teams in figuring out what the right cadence is from their perspective co To do this type of work, and then they hopefully go a step beyond that and stop talking about how many days a week in the office or how many weeks in a quarter And start focusing on things that matter even more, like how do we spend our time together? How do we get control over a co Meetings driven calendar. How do we make sure that we don't have too much burnout by co Insisting that people are always monitoring, you know, Slack plus email plus Teams, plus 5 other tools, 24 by 7. Like, Those types of issues actually go much further into building team engagement and productivity than how many days a week in the office. Co

A So we were gonna ask you what these characteristics of these companies, what they share, but it sounds like the the co Emphasis. What I'm hearing is the emphasis on people first and team level agreements being an example of how that comes into play. What are some tips? I've tried to incorporate the team level agreement with a couple teams or get them to take it on and co And write those documents. What do you recommend for teams trying to get started having those conversations? Because for some of them, co It's a strange concept to go into that mind space of deciding what's important to you.

C Co Yeah. The starting point might not be to start the team level agreement, but start out with stuff that is a little bit more about developing your own relationships as a team yourself. So I'll give you a 2 2 tools there. 1, I've had plenty of execs say to me, co You know, it was great because back when we were in the office, we'd have the chit chat chit chat before the staff meeting. And now, you know, it's all about efficiency in the staff meeting. We don't do that. My question is, like, Why don't you just start your staff meetings with an icebreaker? Like, the simplest thing in the world, but start off your staff meeting every week with an icebreaker question. It can be social in nature.

C Please don't make it what was your biggest accomplishment last week because that's just about the work. Use something that's gonna get people to develop a relationship. Co My favorite still, and and this is the season for it, is, where do you stand on pumpkin spice latte? Because Everyone's got an opinion about pumpkin spice latte, and you'll get into a debate about it. But starting to do that is just starting to build relationships. And then we, I've used a lot, and I've used this even back in my in my Google days, personal user manuals. Like, describe me how you work as a person like, I'm a morning person, not a night person. I prefer written communication over watching a video. Here's my background.

C Here's my likes and dislikes, that type of stuff. Knowing that about each individual is actually an important starting point before you start figuring out a team level agreement because what you're doing is you're building a little bit of muscle around how we work together. Right? And then from a team agreement perspective, besides the fact that on futureform.com, there are still some templates for this that are actually quite wonderful. It's really about having people understand. Hey. Look. If we get on the same page about how we use our time together, how we use a common set of tools, Even just those 2 issues alone will make us much more productive as a team. So let's just let's start off, you know, really simply with things like, Hey.

C What are the key things that we wanna do together as a team? Like, when we're gonna get together in person, what types of activities? Co And the common ones are things like, you know, new project kickoffs, new team formation. And maybe for a team, it's like, At least once a quarter, we wanna be together because we wanna do some team building exercises and get some meals together. For other teams, it might be, hey. We actually think that the weekly pipeline review meeting for our sales team is the right day of the week for everybody to center on to be together in the office. But just figuring out what those activities are can then help bring the team together about the why. Why do we come together? And then you start getting into more fun questions like, co We have way too many meetings. What are we gonna do about it? Well, how do we think about, you know, how we organize meetings, how we cover for each other, what types of roles people play in them? And just start 1 step at a time, then build it up. And then every month or so, add another question into it and keep building and keep building.

C That also helps you keep it fresh.

B I think, you know, just starting even with the tool is so important. Because days, I was in a converse I was overhearing a conversation and, you know, they were asking me, did I did you put that in Teams, or did you email me that? Yeah. You know? Right? And it's like, here, we have all of these tools. And unless we figure out collectively as a team which tool all the communications are gonna come from, then There's so much more opportunity for things to get lost in all of these tools that are supposed to be adding efficiencies to our day.

C Co Absolutely. That's a great place to start. And I'll give you one on top of that, which is how do we actually help people build boundaries by telling them what tool we use co Outside of work hours to notify somebody when there's something that's actually urgent. Right? So our team did this and said, hey. Look. If there's something that we need your attention for outside of work hours, we will text you. And what that means is when you're outside of work hours, you can turn off notifications co Slack and for email and for whatever else. But if it's really urgent, we're gonna text you and and let you know.

C That can go a long way too because, Otherwise, people are watching all the little red, you know, dots and notifications pile up all over the place. And then they're getting nervous and worried about doing to stick my head in and do this. And it just, you know, continues the burnout, stream.

A Boundaries is such a good topic. I find that a lot of the people that I'm working with, they either struggle to set boundaries where they struggle with boundaries feeling like they're one directional. Like, they're coming from the company to you, but they don't feel or they're not sure how to set boundaries back in an appropriate way. And so I find that that can always there's a lot of assumptions I think people make or fail to make around what is okay in terms of setting boundaries.

C Can you

A make some recommendations on common boundaries that you're seeing or observing?

C Yeah. So one of the things that we did, co There's there's this concept of core collaboration hours, which is a good starting point for some of the stuff too, which is, like, 9 AM until 1 PM on the Pacific time co Was, you know, our team's core collaboration hours that meant that Monday through Thursday, you were expected to be available during those hours co For meetings, for chats, for conversations, for phone calls, for whatever else. So please schedule your doctor's appointments outside of those windows and kid pickups and everything else. But what that meant is that outside those hours, you wouldn't necessarily not ever have a meeting, but we have to ask you first. Right? We have to have a good reason for it. And it meant that you could start scheduling the doctor's appointment, the kid pick up, you know, other the the workout you wanted to get in co Outside of those those hour boundaries, that's a that's a helpful first starting point. The other part of it is even just understanding, you know, back to What is it that's actually urgent? And what is it that actually needs immediate response versus what can wait until, you know, further out there? And having that conversation as team can be really important too because it's a discipline you gotta build. But the third one for me is, like, how do leaders show up for this in the 1st place? And I used to be one of those folks that would, send out the email at 9 o'clock at night and say to people, hey.

C Don't worry. I'm just getting this out because this is the hour that I happen to be working. You don't have to worry about it till tomorrow morning. And I don't know if it was Helen or Sheila or maybe it was both of them pulled me aside one point and said, you know that doesn't work. Right? You know that what happens is I see that come in, and co I start thinking about it, and I now have a choice. Do I actually deal with it here and now, or do I think about it all night long? Co And so the thing I say to leaders is you may think that you're, you know, progressive and forward by saying that you don't have to sweat it. Doesn't work for your team. Scheduled send is your friend.

C There is scheduled send functionality in email. There's scheduled send functionality in Slack. I'm sure it's there in Teams too. Just if it's not that important, set it up to go out tomorrow morning at 9 AM.

A Yeah. Hey. I totally agree. And I think co Another thing that I heard in that that you just said is that your your leadership team felt comfortable enough to approach you, which I think is, co I'd like a really good metric that they felt comfortable enough to tell you that they that that was an issue. In some cultures that's, You know, people don't feel comfortable approaching their c suite leaders, but being able to have those candid conversations is so important to get that kind of feedback from your team.

C Co Yeah. And as a leader, you gotta set the context. That's why on things like personal user manuals, as a manager, you need to go first, not last. Co Right. Because the tone you set in whatever you share out in your document is gonna be what your team then, you know, is willing how far they're gonna they're gonna be willing to go. Co And the same thing when it comes to, you know, vulnerability and being able to share what's going on in your life. Vulnerability doesn't mean that you need to tell everybody every stage of co of your emotional, day, but it does mean that you are sharing with them. Hey.

C Look. Rough week because I got something going on at home, So I may be a little bit less available to you. And teams need to develop at least that bare minimum level of trust to be effective co Just so that they can operate. And then hopefully, you're getting beyond that into places where, like, not only am I willing to take feed not only only am I asking for feedback, but I'm actually willing to co hear the feedback and act on it and reflect on it as a manager, not just as a team member.

A Can I ask you both for your opinion on co Team disagreements and how to approach that as a leader and manager because that, I feel like, is co usually, what a lot of leaders are trying to avoid is the disagreement and spending time in the disagreement? So if I'm a leader and I'm running into a situation where I'm trying to create an environment where people feel heard and they get to share their opinions, but we reach a point where there's a fundamental disagreement within the group. How should I approach it?

C It's a great question. I'm sitting here staring through the camera lens at Evelyn and see if she's gonna answer it first.

B Co I don't know why this is coming out. When did I become the interviewee in this episode? I think it also depends a lot co Back to what Brian was saying about the trust that you've built with the team and the acknowledgement that you are all in line to co serve the same mission, vision, and purpose of the company. I think if a leader has built that trust in and if there is a disagreement co a safe space where everyone feels that they can share that space. Then there's also the trust that the leader will take that information and make the decision that's ultimately the right decision that we need to to go in no matter what. Now if that leader has not built co up that level of trust and people are questioning whether or not they would make a decision that is co For the good of the company, then I then that becomes a much more complicated situation.

C So

B Thank you.

C Yeah. I agree with that. I think there's also, like there's a couple of couple ways this stuff shows up. Right? So I've I've been in early stage companies and fast growth companies co Most of my career. And there's these times and periods where things continue to grow and evolve. Right? And what you go from is like this co Little kids playing swarm ball, the euphemism of a team, right, where everybody's on everything all at once, and they're just sort of you're running around to where you're learning to play positions. And that's one of those times when it does happen, and you have to figure out like, hey. Which decisions get taken by what parts of the team? And, honestly, as a leader, you also need to let go.

C And I wasn't always great at doing that. Like, letting go of parts of this and letting the team come to their own decisions on the right aspects of this so things could move forward. And part of that is helping everybody learn to let go of some of these decisions. But, usually, what you're talking about there are co Somewhat lower risk things that also don't necessarily impact everybody in the team. I think where it gets harder is when you start talking about decisions that actually people impact people's work lives. Co Right? Where we saw this, by the way, in research. When something like 2 thirds of executives felt like they were being transparent with our future work plans, And they probably were. They were probably telling everybody what they're planning on doing, but, like, 40% of employees believed them.

C Co And the issue isn't that they weren't telling them. It's just they weren't involved or engaged in the conversation whatsoever. And so that's when you get into this thing about you need to have two way conversations. Right? But when you do that, you also have to have guardrails around it. Because realistically, you can't debate forever. So you need to think through things like what over what time period are we taking input? How are we collecting that input? Is it survey mechanisms? Is it people giving us feedback? Does it require does it depend on the loudest voice in the room to do it? Co And then what are the criteria sharing out the criteria we're using for making the decision? And the biggest thing I think at the end of the day is helping people understand why decision was made, not the decision was made. If you can do those things, you at least in a better chance of the majority of your audience understanding why you came to the conclusion you did. Co And at least feeling like even if it didn't go their way, at least they're they had an opportunity to voice into that decision as opposed to The mandate comes down from on high, and it doesn't ring true for you, and you don't know anybody who is involved in it.

C Co So, of course, you're not gonna trust that as a as a decision, and you're really not gonna trust it when it impacts your personal life as well. Co

B I do think, you know, so much of the work that architects do is time bound. Right? It's hours in. It's not necessarily task completed. Right? It's hours in for hours out. And this new way of working requires kind of a different way of measuring productivity. So here's maybe a question that you don't get as often. Does that mean that we should be looking at switching our our business model in terms of how we account for hours in versus hours out and make the switch from butts and seats being counted as productivity to actual productivity, I guess.

C Yeah. I I think at some point in time, you kinda have that's a great question. I think you've you've self co answered it, to be honest, Evelyn, because I think you do have to start making that switch, right, which is the output isn't the hours. The output is what's the quality of the product that you've created? Does it fit the client's needs? At the end of the day, does the client accept it? And in other professional services firms, I have seen people making the shift from co It being a Billable Hours thing to I mean, famously, by the way, if you go back and you look at Twitter's post acquisition fight with a law firm co As an example, the bill from the law firm was this astronomical sum, and it was pretty clear. It had nothing to do with the number of hours That the lawyers worked on it. It had something to do with the specific expertise that law firm had and the value they were delivering in the sale of Twitter to Elon Musk. Co God. I'm getting really into a weird esoteric example here.

C But, you know, billable hours are really more about an internal tracking mechanism for a co firm of, you know, of something. Your client doesn't really care about billable hours in as much as they care about the outcome of the project, whatever it is. And so I suspect there's actually an opportunity there, which is the more you can align, you know, your firm to delivering for customers, co The happier your customers are gonna be, and you'll start rethinking, you know, how your talent internally co those outcomes in ways that don't have to do with, you know, hours and padding of hours.

A Yeah. I'm glad you made the comparison to professional services and consulting because I think I'm seeing that trend too of of consultants moving to value based metrics for what they're selling versus hourly, and I think there's a lot of potential there for architects if and when they're willing to take the jump. Co and that might be small steps at first, but, like, could could become a new trend, I think, in our industry one day. Co We also wanted to know if there are leaders interested in thinking about change. We have a, you know, an industry that's co been stuck for a while, and it needs significant change and shift. What are your recommendations for those leaders to get started within their organizations or within the industry as a whole.

C So from, within your industry, well, industry as a whole, Part of that is just making connections with one another of like minded people in your space. You can find people like the 2 of you on LinkedIn to follow. You can also find organizations. I mean, the collective, an organization that Evelyn and I have both supported and been part of has been really, I think, helpful in this in this field, workplace collective. Co Finding communities of like minded individuals, I think, is really helpful because that's where you're gonna get new ideas. And, honestly, from time to finds co Time to time, find someone who will, you know, help you grapple through, you know, hard challenging problem. Within your organization, co There's probably more people than just you. There are probably are a small group of people who are thinking a little bit differently about how the business works.

C And so finding allies and basically building up your case is, you know, a great starting point. I've seen this happen in a lot of different organizations where co By the time I'm coming in and talking with somebody, they've already identified, like, the team that's ready to go on this already. Right? And these are the people that are willing to be the pilots on rolling out team level agreements as an example. I'm actually currently working with a defense contractor on this. Co It was people that had read the book, decided it was great for their team, went from being a couple of subteams within a business unit to co One of 6 big business units. And now it's the kind of thing that's gotten enough traction and attention that the entire company is gonna start deploying it in January of next year into the other 5, biz big business units. So building it up Within even your own team, testing things out, seeing what's working, finding allies within your organization, and then using that to build your case more broadly co is just as important as taking, you know, the outside research and bringing it into your boss.

B So it's been interesting. I think you and I have talked about it, and, also, it's shown up in even future forum research to see the ebbs and tides of calling people back to the office, getting pushed back, co And how that continues to adjust and flow. I think there was a big breath being taken following Labor Day weekend, right, when we anticipated more people being called back in the office at that moment. Yeah. What do the changing tides of the economy do you think that people are gonna buckle down more now and and revert back more to what we know before as money becomes effectively more scarce. What's your prediction on that?

C Co It's kinda funny because we're in, like, what is this? The 4th rolling quarter of maybe there will be a recession, except actually predictions keep getting lighter and lighter about maybe there will be a recession. Co Yeah. What you're referencing to, Evelyn, is the the 4th annual post Labor Day returned office battle, which resulted the same freaking thing as the the prior co 3, right, which is not much actually changed. At a gross level, if you look at the metrics, office occupancy has barely budged since then. And it has changed in some companies in one direction, some companies in another direction. But I think at the end of the day, this is back to, you know, battle for talent and how do you co Attract, retain, and importantly, engage talented people. And what you're seeing is companies in every industry doing battle with each other, Which actually I think is the the better part of this. Right? You do see the Atlassians and Hubspots and NVIDIA's They're taking a much more flexible approach to this against the, you know, larger incumbent, you know, bigger companies.

C Co And people are gonna look at that and say, you know, where do I wanna work? And they will make decisions over time. And, You know, engineers will have an easier time of that than potentially a finance person as a as an example. But co Over time, it'll play itself out in the engagement of their employees. And I think it'll end up working out that we see a we still see a continued amount of growing flexibility As it goes forward. By the way, the other side of this is, you know, the frontline workforce, which Needs even more investment and support behind it and where that battle for talent is only gonna get harder and harder in the years to come. So co If you think about it from a broader, you know, labor force movement perspective, as an executive, I wouldn't wanna be on the side of going backwards at this point in time.

A If we wanna hear more, Brian, how do we stay in touch with you?

C I'm I'm on LinkedIn. I'm a little too much on LinkedIn some days, but you can find me there, Brian Elliott. Co And I'll share research as I find it and other speaking opportunities as I see them.

A What do you think your purpose is? Your personal purpose. What you're trying to achieve now that you're moving forward in your career.

C You know, I've worked for 30 years. I've been a CEO of start ups. I've worked at big name tech companies. Co I've led teams of hundreds and thousands of people. My goal at this point is to make the world of work better for everybody else, co Including people who don't look like me. I really, really deeply believe that you can generate better organizational outcomes co Out of creating workplaces that are better for people, I think the 2 things actually go hand in hand. And so I'm sort of on a mission to find a way to convince co My peers and people who look like me that that that's true through both research and examples and case studies. And so that's kind of my mission in life, making work better for people and improving organizational outcomes together, hand in hand.

A Hi, disruptors. If you like the content from today's show, you can find all of our cast episodes over on practice of architecture.com/podcast.

B Be a part of the conversation by joining co our speakers and others in the community at practice of architecture.com/community.

A Our social media handle is co of Arc. That's practice of ARCH. We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to drop us a DM and say hello.

B Thank you for joining us on Practice Disrupted, a podcast by the practice of architecture. Tune in next week for a new conversation on change in the profession.