“The last 13 months have not only accelerated the virtualization of work but also everyone’s technological advancement... the digital revolution is right behind us.”
Tsedal Neeley is the Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Her work focuses on how leaders can scale their organizations and recently published her book Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere.
The pandemic accelerated the pace at which remote work and virtualization became integral to organizations. This has created a whole new paradigm, and with it, new challenges for leaders to consider. Creating and maintaining a culture becomes more complicated when employees spend less time together in person. Technology needs to be accessible and used intentionally so that all different worker groups are included. “You need to use the right technology for the right task for the right goals.”
Large segments of the workforce have experienced remote work during the pandemic and have discovered many benefits like savings from an eliminated commute and other associated costs. This will increase calls for more hybrid work models that allow employees to spend less time in the office. “The tension is the majority of employees don’t want to come back [to the office full-time].”
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
SPEAKER
Tsedal Neeley
Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
John Darcie: (00:07)
Hello. Hello everyone. And welcome back to salt talks. My name is John Darcie. I'm the managing director of salt, which is a global thought leadership forum and networking platform at the intersection of finance technology and public policy. Salt talks are a digital interview series that we started in 2020 with leading investors, creators and thinkers. And our goal on these salt talks is the same as our goal at our salt conferences, which we're looking forward to resuming hopefully here in September of 2021, which we'll talk about a little bit with our guests today, but our goal is to provide a window into the mind of subject matter experts, as well as provide a platform for what we think our big ideas better shaping the future. And we're very excited today to welcome a big time subject matter expert onto salt whose, uh, subject matter expertise is extremely relevant, especially in the age of COVID.
John Darcie: (00:59)
Our guest today is professor [inaudible] Neeley. Uh, so doll is the Naylor fits you. Professor of business administration at the Harvard business school. Her work focuses on how leaders can scale their organizations by developing and implementing global and digital strategies. Again, nothing more relevant at no time, more relevant than in the age of COVID starting early in 2020. She regularly advises top leaders who are embarking on virtual work and large scale change that involves global expansion, digital transformation and becoming more agile. Her most recent book is called remote work revolution, succeeding from anywhere, and it provides remote workers and leaders, the best practices necessary to perform at the highest levels in their organizations prior to her academic career. Uh, so doll spent 10 years working for companies like Lucent technologies, the forum corporation in various roles, including strategies for global customer experience, 360 degree performance, software management systems, Salesforce sales, management development, and business flow analysis for telecommunication infrastructure hosting. Today's talk is Anthony Scaramucci, the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge capital, a global alternative investment firm. Anthony is also a graduate of Harvard law school. So the, I know that, uh, Sedol and Anthony have crossed some paths or have some mutual relationships that they might get into today. I'm glad
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:27)
You mentioned it Darcie. Cause I would have mentioned
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:29)
Times that I went to the Harvard law school seven
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:32)
Times in 45 minutes, but professor, what a great accomplishment, what a great life story, congratulations to you and having gone to Cambridge Latin high, uh, and there you are, uh, across the river. What an amazing, uh, experience, um, I guess I want to start, you know, there, if you don't mind, uh, tell us how you grew up, tell us what you were thinking about. Did you think you were going to be a business school professor at the Harvard business school? Tell me, tell me where you were, what you were thinking about.
Tsedal Neeley: (03:03)
Oh, Anthony, you're going to go right to it. Huh? Um, so no, I am a reluctant academic, uh, w this is the big reveal. Uh, I actually never thought that I would be a professor, much less a business school professor. I grew up as the daughter of small business people, entrepreneurs, uh, and when I was about 19 years old, my father said to me, you know, so doll, you're interested in business. Uh, you need to learn how businesses make money. So you need to go into sales. I said, what? You need to go into sales and learn how organizations generate revenue, what kind of sales, anything? So, and like any, you know, self-respecting a 19 year old. I started with candy, Anthony. I sold candy. Uh, eventually I started to, uh, sell technology systems, consulting services, and eventually met all of these mild-mannered academics in one of my big, uh, consulting sales jobs who didn't have sales quotas and who are all mild mannered. I said, you know what? I want to be like one of those people. And so here I am Anthony. I'm a mild-mannered, uh, academic at the Harvard business school. And, um, along the way did a lot of traveling with my work. I've always believed that the world is small.
Anthony Scaramucci: (04:33)
So, so John Darcie, we've established that she's a great sales person.
Anthony Scaramucci: (04:40)
They tell you that your mild
Anthony Scaramucci: (04:41)
Mannered, you got to hold onto your wallet. Okay. So let me just make sure I know where my wallet
Anthony Scaramucci: (04:45)
Is. [inaudible]
Anthony Scaramucci: (04:49)
You're coming at the game with a jujitsu that I can't properly manage. Well, before we go into my more urbane and academic questions though, tell me your favorite candy. You started in candy. I said I'm a, I'm a Reese's peanut butter guy. So what, what, what's your favorite candy?
Tsedal Neeley: (05:07)
I'm a toffee with chocolate type of gal. So score Heath bar. You realize I'm answering questions. I've never answered in life.
Anthony Scaramucci: (05:18)
I got to know. Okay. So Darcie, I've got this toffee place in, in, uh, is I love toffee by the way. Cause I'm, I'm a little, I'm a, I'm a total foodie. I got to talk. He place it called N strums in Colorado. We got it. We got to send some to professor Neil. Okay.
Anthony Scaramucci: (05:36)
Okay. I'm gonna try to win your heart and mind.
Anthony Scaramucci: (05:42)
I'm going to try to win your heart and mind through your palette, but let's talk, let's go to the remote work revolution, succeeding from EV anywhere, which is your book. Uh, and let's start with why you wrote the book and how timely the book is by the way, because it's coincident with the pandemic and tell us, uh, what you were thinking about when you wrote the book and now let's apply it to the real world. We're all living through the coma. COVID-19 pandemic. What about the book is relevant and accurate. And what about the book? Did you miss? If you missed anything, tell us, tell us your observation.
Tsedal Neeley: (06:20)
So this book had been underway for a very long time before the pandemic hit. In fact, it was a pet project for me because the problem I was trying to solve was people telling me after years and years and years, working with executives, teaching with executives, managers, and, uh, virtual and global team members that no matter how much they themselves change their behaviors to be fabulous virtual collaborators, unless everyone else develops the same skills. It's not helpful. How do I get my group, my team, my unit on the same page. So Anthony, I started hiring artists to look at visual language. I started to hire curriculum design people to try to produce a book that would have stickiness to it when groups and teams, uh, used it. Um, and I was, I had about two hundred and fifty two hundred sixty pages worth of written material research illustration. And I was walking around with it with no publication date in mind.
Tsedal Neeley: (07:31)
And in the meantime, while actually working on a different book called the digital mindset COVID hits, this book was then produced in two and a half months because all that work had been underway for about three years. Uh, it pains me. It really pains me that we've landed in this place, uh, because of this deadly virus. But the virtualization of work is something that I've always felt would be a core part of modern organizations. That's why the book is organized to bring, to bear all of the success factors when people go remote. And the actual structure of the book, uh, is relevant to COVID because, uh, along with the Harvard business review, we did a Q and a session with managers, uh, and ended up with the, uh, themes of the book, uh, because all these people kept asking about productivity. How do I monitor people?
Tsedal Neeley: (08:36)
How do I ensure productivity is maintained? What digital tools do we need? How do you maintain connection and trust, uh, in global work. And in fact, after this Q and a session, we posted it on hbr.org and it garnered almost half a million downloads in just a few days. So we knew we were capturing the key questions and the book is structured in that way. So you ask what, uh, did I miss, uh, in the book? I actually don't think, uh, uh, I missed the essence of what people need in order to construct a very effective organizations that includes virtual arrangements, but I wish I had some more things around remote teaching, remote learning, uh, things like that, more specific, uh, things, uh, that people care about, uh, and to correct that, uh, in a way, um, I've launched a course called remote work revolution for everyone it's free, it's on the Harvard X platform. And we've, we've made sure that there were affinity groups like teachers who can work together and learn together. Yeah,
Anthony Scaramucci: (09:50)
I didn't, I didn't mean it in a pejorative way. I meant academic setting and then the academic world is meeting the real world. And since you, or a great intellect, you, I knew that you would synthesize and try to figure out what's there. And so more teaching, more online, teaching, more, more of that. I guess the thing that plagues me, uh, which is near and dear to my heart is some of this trying to run a company remotely. Now for the last 13 months, you can never find John Darcie when you need them professor Neely, just so you know. Okay. He does show up with the salt talks appropriately, uh, tired, but I have no idea where he is, unless he's a here on assault org, but we'll talk about that. You and I will talk about that separately, but my issue
John Darcie: (10:36)
Is I'm in the office. Where are you, Anthony? Still on your basement?
Anthony Scaramucci: (10:39)
I'm in my basement like Joe Biden. Okay. It's been a very successful strategy. It's going to be my strategy and I'm sticking to it. So what I want to say, professor Neely is what I'm worried about is what John is actually addressing. We're out of the office. Uh, we have issued a return to work, uh, memo for May 3rd. I believe it is, or May 4th, um, which is coincidence with where the municipal workers in New York city are returning to work. Um, of course we are being lenient related to, you know, people that are concerned or have safety issues, comorbidities, things like that. Um, I've requested that people get vaccinated. I'll just talk to you very candidly. And again, that's a request I'm not mandating it or anything like that, but I believe in the science behind the vaccination, I myself have been doubly vaccinated. What I'm worried about though, is the culture, the lack of physical proximity. Um, I feel like I'm shooting in the dark as somebody that runs the organization in terms of creating the culture. Am I wrong about that? What, uh, what do I need to do? Be my career coach? Uh, you've got so many people that listen into thing that are worried about the same thing. What do you, what do you tell them?
Tsedal Neeley: (11:57)
I think you're spot on when you talk about culture as being the fundamental issue that leaders like you and organizations are concerned about. And it's, for that reason, we find that 68 to 70% of organizations would want people to come back in person. But the tension in that and the challenge in that is that the majority of employees don't want to come back to the tune of 81 to 87%. 81% is the number that Harvard business school online recently, um, uh, gathered from a survey, uh, 87% comes from the Gardner group, a survey they released in December of those numbers, 27 to 30% want remote work, full time and, uh, leaders, uh, who want people in the office. I think you have to be very careful when you force people back. Uh, first of all, because you know that they don't want that. The second thing is physical proximity does not equate strong cohesive cultures.
Tsedal Neeley: (13:04)
In fact, what is culture? If the definition of culture is what are our shared values and for most of us they've stayed the same in our organizations. What are the things that are important to us? The second half of that, or even 75% of that is what are our shared norms? Uh, how do we do things? How do we communicate? How do we solve problems? How do we make decisions? What are attitudes and behaviors essentially COVID has completely killed the cultural norms that we used to have because we've been working remotely for the last year. So the idea that we're going to go back to some old culture is actually not accurate, not true. And for you Anthony career coaching, you have to learn how to lead and build a distributed organization. If you were a global organization and had a presence in other parts of the world, they're not in that same space with you. So physical proximity and borderless meter ship becomes incredibly important.
Anthony Scaramucci: (14:10)
I think that's well said. I think it's an interesting perspective. If you're running a fortune 500 company, you're many of your people in your mind are working remotely. They're not in your corporate office. And I, I respect that, but let me ask you about the, the dilemma. I'll call it a transition dilemma. Uh, we ask people to leave, uh, they left, they're operating to the best of their capability. In fact, our firms doing reasonably good job remotely. Um, I now sort of want them back. Um, but you're saying something that I agree with you, you're a coaxing them back. You're not mandating it necessarily, but I sorta am w you know, in the, you know, passive aggressive sense of that
Anthony Scaramucci: (14:56)
Or aggressive, aggressive, or aggressive and back it's come back. You're the boss.
Anthony Scaramucci: (15:01)
Yeah. So what do you, what's your reaction to that professor?
Tsedal Neeley: (15:05)
I, I think Anthony, um, and I, I, you know, this is how I talk to any leader, CEO, uh, nation state advisor. Um, you have to adapt and be flexible and join the revolution that's taking place. Do you want people to be, uh, having water cooler conversations that are full of resentment? Do you want to lose loyalty and commitment with remote work lifestyles have improved dramatically? And by the way, I absolutely don't believe that remote work is a panacea. Uh, and in fact, in the book, you'll see that I write about all of the challenges that do exist, like being out of sight, out of sync, out of touch, and out of mind, all of those things are very true, but these are all competencies that we need to build in order to reap the benefits of, uh, the virtual environment. People are more satisfied.
Tsedal Neeley: (16:07)
People really value their autonomy, which is really self-control flex time, spending more time with the people that they cohabitate with. It could be family, it could be other loved ones and, uh, productivity has gone up in most places. So our historical arguments around productivity have been debunked as well, right? So the, the, the, the only thing that we need to work extremely hard and developing is how do we connect and how do we convey culture and establish new ones despite, uh, the fact that we're not in the same place. And I'll add one more thing. If I may please, um, Anthony, it's the fact that even physical spaces are going to be different. Uh, we're going to have one way hallways. We're going to have social distancing. Uh, you're going to have signs all over the place. Health will be, uh, something that temperature checks, temperature checks, you know, the whole thing, Pritchard checks. Uh, and even if you want to hold meetings in your old conference rooms, because of social distancing, other people will have to dial in using their laptops. So you're going to have what I call a distributed meeting. Anyway, you're not going to have everyone at the same time. So the idea that we're going to return to our old cultural norms, we need to abandon and learn how to create and maintain culture, even when we don't see everyone. That's interesting.
Anthony Scaramucci: (17:39)
You you're, you're, you're, you're coming at it from a faith perspective. And I don't mean a religious perspective. I mean, you have to have faith in your people. You have to have faith in yourself and you to inculcate that into everybody. Is that a fair assessment of what you said
Tsedal Neeley: (17:54)
Yes. And faith in your people, uh, that have proven that they can do this for over a year. Uh, and in the remote environment, I always find myself quoting Ernest Hemingway, uh, never quoted him this much in my life, but what does he say? How do you know you can trust people or that people are trustworthy by giving them trust? You start with a default of trust.
Speaker 5: (18:20)
You equip, you empower. Yeah. Uh, it's
Anthony Scaramucci: (18:23)
Interesting because it's also, how do you, how do you become powerful it's by giving power away. Okay. That's the irony of it? You know, unfortunately I had one or more conversations like that. See, Darcie's laughing in that other Hollywood square box, because I've had more than one conversation with various people in my short stay in the white house about calm down, share the power, but we didn't go in that direction, but that's a whole other topic. So, and, and, and, and while I'm looking at Darcie, how do you deal with guys like Darcie that are at the water cooler talking resentfully? How do you deal with those types of people? Well, I'm kidding about him obviously. Cause I love him. I'm talking about, you know, how do you deal with the resentful employee?
Tsedal Neeley: (19:10)
You know, if you are the cause of that resentment, it's not going to bode well. So you deal with that resentful employee by meeting people, halfway, you, you, you talked about power and I love to hear from, uh, John as well, because he represents an age group. That's been struggling, uh, a good deal that we should all care about in just a moment. But this, this thing is when you have up to 81 or 87% of your workforce, wanting to retain some form of remote virtual work who holds the power, really who holds the power.
Anthony Scaramucci: (19:50)
We want hearts and minds. Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: (19:53)
I I'm a big believer in delegation and creating autonomy. So I'm I'm for the openness. But I also believe that we've got to mix it up a little bit together once in a while. And so I'm hoping to get to that compromise. We're going to let John talk in a second. He's got some tremendous
John Darcie: (20:10)
Lead, good HR meetings.
Anthony Scaramucci: (20:12)
He's got tremendously good millennial, like questions. He'll out stage me here in a moment, but I want to ask about workplace equality initiatives. And I want to ask about issues related to race and progress while we're operating remotely. Is it possible impossible? What do you say to people when they say, geez, I'm searching for more diversity. I want to create more inclusion, but I don't, I don't have my office, uh, together. Is that an issue or not an issue? Tell me what you think their professor.
Tsedal Neeley: (20:45)
Yes. So the topic of equity is incredibly important, especially as we are mapping out the future of our work and our workforce. And there are a couple of ways of thinking about it. One is, uh, we want to make sure that, uh, we, um, uh, are thoughtful about the people that we're asking to come back in a hybrid environment that we're not looking for low status, or even people who are just super junior, starting out in their workforce and pulling people back, uh, who, uh, are of certain demographic groups. Uh, we need to watch our bias. The other thing is, uh, many organizations have talked about the fact that they have much more diversity in different parts of their organization with people that they deemed to be essential onsite people. And, uh, if you are devising and you talked about mixing it up a hybrid workforce, your onsite essential people need to be able to participate in being able to learn from home and do certain things from home.
Tsedal Neeley: (21:56)
So we need to be very creative in ensuring that everyone gains from the virtues of remote work in terms of inclusion. Uh, one of the things that we need to make sure is that people have the technology that they need to work, uh, that they are in areas where broadband is accessible. Uh, that's one, uh, equipment structural point, but we also need to make sure that we're democratizing conversations that we're pulling people in. If we're in a video conference, call a zoom call, uh, we need to make sure that certain groups are not receding because when you're in the actual communication event, uh, you end up losing a lot of voice. So people have to work extra hard to draw people in as well. So I've talked about structural. I've also talked about the very micro and communication event. Last thing I'll say is that people are beginning to tap diverse talent from outside of their headquartered areas, uh, in order to bring them into their organizations, without asking them to move. This is a competitive advantage. This is an opportunity to seek diversity for more places than we ever have. Once we begin, we begin to detach our talent pool, uh, from, uh, uh, physical locations.
Anthony Scaramucci: (23:24)
It's a really good point. You know, that, you know, you, you, you create more competition, um, for staff, but you're also broadening the staff pool by having all of this remote activity. So hopefully it will lead to higher quality people. So let me turn it over to John Darcie, who is sitting in my office while I'm here as Scott safely in my basement, drinking my Starbucks and John, you know, you may want to turn my kids' pictures a little bit so they can get it, get in the view there.
John Darcie: (23:52)
I think it's, it's emblematic of the times that we're in. So I've obviously been working from home for most of the last year coming into the office sporadically, but when I'm in the office, I struggled to work in a COVID work environment. I don't have my webcam set up on my desktop in the pit that we have here on our office. I have to come in here into Anthony's office and onto his machine to have the capability to operate in the way that people normally do. I'm almost feel handcuffed when I'm at the office because of the environment that, that most people are working in still, which is a remote work environment. So I'm trying to retrofit my workspace slowly in my office to meet sort of the capabilities that I'm able to achieve from home. And I think Anthony has experienced that as well, coming into the office, which he's done periodically, uh, is that he's got a state-of-the-art studio in his basement, which you have as well. Uh, professor, you talked about how all the Harvard faculty has multiple cameras and virtual backgrounds and everything set up, uh, for a remote teaching environment. And it's almost, it's jarring in a way to come back to the old way of doing things because we feel, uh, like, you know, we, we sort of went into the future in terms of our capabilities, uh, that we're able to achieve from home. That's incredible.
Tsedal Neeley: (25:01)
That's really incredible. This is very, very true in that we've set up super advanced home offices and our work environments are not set up this way. And what about the commuted? W co can
Anthony Scaramucci: (25:15)
You say a word about it? No, I would say
John Darcie: (25:18)
It's jarring in some ways, you know, again, I've been coming in a couple of days a week, uh, over the course of the last several months on and off. Um, but yeah, it's jarring, you know, I think before you got used to two and a half hours of commuting, probably every day is what I have in my life. I live on long island. I commute into Midtown Manhattan, and I think my commute relative to some of my colleagues is actually less. Um, so you talk about two and a half, three hours a day commuting when you're used to waking up and being able to start your day, as soon as you get out of bed and, and end it, you know, at the end of the day, without having to commute home, you know, it is jarring to sit there on the train and the subway and everything to go through that process, to get into an office where you do feel somewhat handcuffed in a lot of ways.
John Darcie: (26:00)
And so I think going forward, you know, a lot of people talk about the hybrid work-life balance, where you're able to come into the office when you need to and work remotely in your state-of-the-art home office. When you need to, if I were designing the future of my workplace, that's what I would probably choose where it's also mentally healthy to be able to spend more time with your family when you need to and things like that. But, um, you know, I do think that I sort of fall somewhere in between that old school thinking, and we've got to get everyone back in so we can really look over them and make sure they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. And the new school of, you know, just go out there and, and trust that everyone blindly is doing the things that they're supposed to be doing at home.
Tsedal Neeley: (26:39)
You know, John, uh, I'll add to your, thank you sharing by the way, this is incredibly valuable because it provides insight into the lived experience of coming back and what that's like. Uh, Microsoft recently did a major survey in looking at people's experiences and behaviors through, you know, all the data they collect, uh, and they surveyed some 30,000 people, uh, and part of what they are learning as well is people are saying that they're saving money, uh, from the commute that every day you buy coffee, you have lunch. So there's been a lot of savings for a lot of people as well, uh, in the last, uh, in the, in the last year. But the, the, the part that I wanted to highlight too, is people want, like Anthony mentioned to be in person for the bonding, for the culture, for the connection. Uh, it's not just, uh, to monitor people's work. Behaviors is just, you want to see, you want to connect, but if you go in the office and no one's there, or two, three people are there, it's not going to be like, it used to be. So connection has to be, uh, really created in a more intentional way.
Anthony Scaramucci: (27:53)
What are you love? Yeah,
John Darcie: (27:55)
I think one of the great parts of your book is you, you go into critical and concrete steps that people can take, um, you know, best practices, both for organizations and for individuals in terms of maximizing productivity and maintaining culture in a remote work environment. So what are some of those best practices? Let's start from an organizational perspective. If somebody is looking to really optimize this remote remote work environment, and they want to maybe go to a remote work environment long-term and may I point out the two of the most valuable private companies on the planet? One being Stripe is now a hundred billion dollar company. They have emphasized a remote workforce, and they have one of the most global engineering workforces of any company in the world and Coinbase, which is set to start trading lives, uh, on the NASDAQ exchange, probably at about a hundred to $150 billion valuation. Doesn't have a headquarters. They've basically committed themselves to saying we're a fully distributed workforce. So what are some of those best practices that you think some of those companies that have done it? Well,
Tsedal Neeley: (28:55)
Yes. Yes. Um, so first Anthony you're right. Uh, here's better questions. I'm just kidding. Um, so here's, here's, uh, the thing, the, the, the first thing is, um,
Anthony Scaramucci: (29:06)
I'm stopping my video just
Anthony Scaramucci: (29:10)
Because
Anthony Scaramucci: (29:12)
All of my confirmed fears and insecurities have been proven true by professor Neil. Let me just turn the video off as we're doing this. That's that's really, that's really funny. Yeah. Well, he does have better questions and by the way, he's a star, he's a star. So I like, that's why I like teasing him. I mean, come on. It's a, it's a Jenner. It's a generational struggle over here. Neely. Let's go help out your fellow, baby boomer. Okay.
Tsedal Neeley: (29:37)
I see, I see that John is a star and I'm trying to you to retain him. Okay.
Anthony Scaramucci: (29:42)
Thank you. Thank you. All right. Let me pay attention.
Anthony Scaramucci: (29:45)
Let me put the volume up higher than hold on. So,
Tsedal Neeley: (29:50)
Um, I think you won my heart when you referenced my book, John, let's just, uh, so listen, here's the deal. The very first thing to do is to make sure you survey your organization and your workforce anonymously to understand true and real preferences. Because once you do that, then you can look at what jobs, what tasks, what functions can actually be remote and how remote can those be. And in some organizations we need to really look at what is the optimal level of fluidity that the organization can bear. So you mentioned a couple of companies, Dropbox and others are not declaring themselves as your moat. First companies, Zillow notice they're all tech companies, um, and Twitter and others are saying that people can autonomy mostly choose to go remote, or if not, they can come in. This is one of the important conditions of an effective remote workforce is that people have choice.
Tsedal Neeley: (30:56)
This is why I worry about forcing people in the other thing. Uh, John is that we need to make sure that people have the right competencies, uh, managers and leaders need to know how to lead virtually it's different. It's not the same set of things. There's some very natural, but detrimental aspect of virtuality that people have to manage very intentionally. Similarly, everyone needs to better understand how to use all of the digital tools to be effective, uh, at work. What do I mean by digital tools, anywhere from email to, uh, enterprise wide software systems to video conferencing, how do we use them? When do we use them? Because there's a phenomenon called tech exhaustion tech exhaustion, which is about cognitive overload, because people have just been using technology nilly, Willy. There's actually very systematic ways of doing those. Those are all the things that are important. And then finally, some of the large companies are bringing in chief remote officers into their C-suite, uh, in order to manage the large workforces or their highly distributed workforces. This is where the question of culture comes in as well. I'll pause it.
John Darcie: (32:14)
Let's go to the individual. You know, I think we've all experienced zoom, fatigue. You know, a lot of companies are going to zoom free Fridays, you know, to get people off of staring into the screen, you know, uh, as they've done for most of the week. Um, so, but I think zoom also has the benefit of, I used to do so many conference calls, right, where I would be on the line. There was a faceless person I was talking to on the other end. And during the work from home period, I've actually gotten to know some of these people better through zoom because I'm seeing their face. And I'm having, before we even start a conversation about, you know, whether it be a sponsorship for our conferences or, you know, whether it's capital raising that we're doing, I'm sitting there looking into the face of people around the world that I didn't necessarily wasn't necessarily able to do that at scale before. So what are some of the best practices for people to leverage the technology that's at their disposal, but also to avoid the, you know, the, the technological burnout that people experience when you have high volume of zooming going on?
Tsedal Neeley: (33:10)
Yes, let me first begin by saying that zoom fatigue should not exist. Once you learn some of the best practices related to digital digital tools. Like we should not have zoom fatigue, it should go away and we call it zoom fatigue. You know, Eric Yon has endorsed the book. So I won't call it a zoom fatigue. I'm going to call a tech exhaustion because you can have the same problem with, with other, uh, tools, but here's the thing. You use the right technology for the right task, for the right goals. Not everything requires live or what we call synchronous communication. Some things are actually much better for it to be used in an asynchronous communication mode. For example, if we need to process very complex information, the last thing you want to do is call a zoom meeting or a Microsoft teams meeting and have people listen to some terribly complex, uh, information.
Tsedal Neeley: (34:09)
It's better to email that information and have people asynchronously absorb that information and internalize it. So two dimensions that I will mention, uh, when it comes to digital tools, one is synchronicity, should it be synchronous or asynchronous? The other dimension is, should it be lean media or rich media, lean media includes things like Google docs or email. They don't convey just like you mentioned, John, um, uh, variety of expressions. They don't convey, uh, emotionality. They don't convey context, but not every communication requires that rich communication does. So you can imagine a two by two, which is actually in the book where certain activities work really well, depending on whether you want it to be synchronous, asynchronous lean, or, uh, or, or rich, not everything requires rich and synchronous, which wa, which is what a video conferencing is. The other thing is meetings are too long. For some reason, meetings have gotten longer in the last year. They need to get shorter. Yeah. You
John Darcie: (35:20)
Know, it's difficult because we try to maintain that SkyBridge, the TA the type of engagement that we have at regular meetings and in-person interactions that manifest itself in the form of frequent, you know, large-scale, uh, conference calls, but at the same time, it potentially detracts from productivity and, and things like that. So it's an interesting balance that we're trying to strike, and I'm sure that many others are trying to strike as well. I don't want to talk about loneliness. So I have the great fortune of having a beautiful wife, three beautiful kids. And so during the pandemic, I have enjoyed spending time with them and not felt some of that, you know, level of loneliness that I think a lot of people have felt that are a little bit more isolated with that being said, you know, I haven't been able to nurture a lot of my friendships the same way, uh, you know, with, with my extended family or my friends, the way I normally would.
John Darcie: (36:09)
And again, going back to those people that are even more isolated, you know, you can zoom as much as you want, or you can go on Microsoft teams as much as you want, but it maybe doesn't replicate, uh, the level of social interaction that's healthy, uh, for human beings to have. Is that true? How can we nest, how could we potentially use technology to replicate, uh, some of that social interaction in a way that eliminates some of those feelings of loneliness and how in general do we maintain our mental health in a way, you know, our humans are hardwired, I think in a lot of ways for some level of social interaction. So how do you find that balance in a digital world? That's, that's mentally healthy from a social perspective
Tsedal Neeley: (36:47)
Problem. Uh, and in fact, uh, I call it poor professional isolation. Uh, millennials have struggled in the last 13 months with isolation, uh, and especially if they're not necessarily, uh, um, with others in a household or their back into their intergenerational homes, just feeling isolated, uh, and kind of excluded from the activities that, uh, make them feel connected to others. It's a massive problem. And in fact, uh, us surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, and I had a conversation about this. It was a NASDAQ podcast where we talked both of us, because he thinks a lot about this topics, a mental health issue. Um, so you cannot think about replicating what you do in an in-person, uh, into a, a virtual environment. You have to think about these things differently, and you have to think about them, uh, through, uh, multiple means. So the VEC actually talked about how even a 10, 15 minute phone call, uh, can nourish us in extraordinary ways, rather than zero.
Tsedal Neeley: (38:01)
I believe that organizations did they have a responsibility, particularly if people are engaged in profesh, professional work outside of their organization, to make sure that people feel connected to others in the organization, meaning you actually want to pair people up to work together on projects, create teams when in the past it could have been achieved through individuals. You, you need to check in on people more. The Gardner group conducted a survey several months ago and found that percent of managers never checked in on people not to even to say, how are you, how are you doing so you have to make sure you're building in micro moments, uh, in, uh, for example, a regular meeting, uh, of 60 minutes, 10% of it is spent on checking in, connecting at the top of the hour, six, seven minutes. You pair people up and you have them working together. You do all of these virtual, uh, activities and including learning, training, doing learning that are interactive together. Another powerful way of breaking the isolation. So we have to do things outside of being taskmasters to make sure that people are connecting with one another. That's part of our,
John Darcie: (39:22)
So I want to talk about the future. So right now we're going through this sort of the beginning phase of what I think is a transition back into somewhat of a hybrid environment where you start to see some organizations like SkyBridge, like Goldman Sachs and others pushing their workers to come back to the office. As soon as may, you have a lot of companies talking about the fall, they're going to encourage people to start coming back. But I want to talk about, let's say 2030, or, you know, almost a decade down the line. How can you reimagine the world in a way using things like remote work and digital tools that you write about in the book? What does our world look like? And how can we reimagine our society more broadly in a way that leverages remote work to make the planet thrive, to make human beings thrive? You know, w what is the future of work really look like in 2030, if we were to get an a time machine,
Tsedal Neeley: (40:10)
John, this is a dissertation topic. I think you might have to take it up. Um, it's a very good and important question. I strongly believe that the last 13 months has not only accelerated the virtualization of work, but it's accelerated, everyone's technological advancements. Every organization had to leap forward when it comes to technology. What I think is right behind us, which is why I think we need to get this hybrid virtual, right? It's not going to go away. We need to learn how to do it. We need to take a leap of faith that we need to experiment. We need to lead, not in terms of fear and anxiety, but opportunity and, uh, scale. And, uh, the digital revolution is right behind us. And what do I mean by that data machine learning, artificial intelligence, personalization, matching building, online communities and building networks of people.
Tsedal Neeley: (41:12)
That's what I perceive based on everything that we know and all the acceleration that we see that, um, uh, that work is going to shift in extraordinary ways. We're going to have AI bots and agents who we're collaborating with. We're worried about building connections with other people. We're going to have AI agents working with us and institutions are going to use bots to practice, to have people practice negotiation skills. 2030 is quite to look very different. And I think 20, 20, 20, 21 is preparing us for it. And those who do will leap forward, and those who don't will move slowly at their peril.
John Darcie: (42:00)
I would love to hear you, uh, do an entire podcast on that subject matter, because I think it's fascinating. Like you talked about AI, there's a lot of different views on what it's going to do to society. I think there's some people that think it's going to displace a massive number of jobs in a way that we're going to have to find new ways of connecting with each other of adding value, uh, to society and just rethink our place in the world. And I think that's a fascinating point that, uh, that the pandemic sort of gave us a preview of that world. I want to ask you one more sort of big picture macro question. I'd also like to get Anthony back in here just for some final remarks on everything we've talked about, but what is one innovation or product, you know, I don't necessarily want you to feel like you're having to shell for, for one software solution or something, but what's one innovation you think has the potential to most markedly transform the workplace.
Tsedal Neeley: (42:51)
Ooh, one innovation, one product
John Darcie: (42:55)
As a teleconferencing. Is it something like slack, that's a, you know, asynchronous collaborative tool or, or what are things that you've seen, uh, people experiment with that you think have the potential to create sort of new paradigm in terms of how we work? Because I think email is an example of something that's so archaic and, uh, it creates so much stress and anxiety. You know, that ping that comes in through email, that I think there's much more effective ways to collaborate. I'm just curious if you've observed anything that you think is highly innovative, that's disrupt existing system. So
Tsedal Neeley: (43:27)
My answer is going to be different. It's not about the technology, by the way, I get about 10 emails a day, we've got a new innovation. Would you talk to us? Would
Anthony Scaramucci: (43:36)
You look at it? It's hard
Tsedal Neeley: (43:39)
To sort through them. And they're, I cannot tell you how many people are working on different things right now. And I don't think that's where the innovation is going to be. The innovation is going to be in our behaviors and how we use them. The number of technologies and their proliferation is not going to go down. It's actually going to go up, but we need to develop digital first mindsets and think about scale and think about augmenting everything that we do through the technology that's currently present. So I don't even see people using present technologies effectively and to scale, to connect, to do work, uh, in smart, intelligent ways. I would begin there because what you don't want to add, John is more technology, uh, in our world. There's so many of them how we use them and how we strategize around them is what we really need to innovate around. This is my true belief,
John Darcie: (44:38)
Right? Anthony, you want to chime in with any follow-up questions before we let [inaudible]?
Anthony Scaramucci: (44:43)
Well, listen, I could listen to you all day, professor. I mean, the thought the thoughts are, uh, right in the wheelhouse of where everybody needs to be. Uh, I want to thank you for joining. Um, I think the future of work is going to be very different over the next five or 10 years, but you're going to have a lot to say about it. And so, uh, I'm looking forward, looking forward to following up with you. And since we praise John Dorsey, I'm very grateful that we're in the month of April and not December because he be counting the coins. You know what I'm saying? As a bonus, right? So the good news is I can get his head back into the right space, hopefully over the next six months. So listen, John I'm teasing you he's professor Neely. He gets fan mail. Okay. Does he really? Yes,
Anthony Scaramucci: (45:30)
He gets fan. I love this.
Anthony Scaramucci: (45:35)
Please send me some fan mail, please. I mean,
Anthony Scaramucci: (45:38)
It was a real, it was a
John Darcie: (45:39)
Real, a breaking point in our relationship professor when I started getting fan mail. Cause listen,
Tsedal Neeley: (45:45)
You're a superstar and that's really obvious. I'm so thrilled to have spent this time with you, Anthony. Uh, please let go a little bit, trust a little bit, join, join the revolution.
Anthony Scaramucci: (45:56)
Uh, and uh, and I think you'll be happy.
Anthony Scaramucci: (45:59)
I think you said some very meaningful things. And I'll say to all my old fashioned friends out there that got raised in the seventies, uh, we have to embrace the future. And I think that you've made a very big statement today about how to do that. And I'm, I'm looking forward to pushing this out to as many people as possible. I want to thank you for coming
Tsedal Neeley: (46:18)
On. Thank you so much. Bye Jake.
John Darcie: (46:22)
And thank you everybody who tuned into today's salt talk. We think these topics as professor Neily alluded to this is sort of the beginning of a new world. I think there's pre COVID the pre COVID world and there's a post COVID world. And the people that think that we're going back to the old ways, I think are mistaken. And I think that people that are preparing for the future are the ones that are going to Excel. A lot of the companies that we mentioned that are already embracing remote work and all the tools that you need to make that work productive and mentally healthy for your workforce. So please spread the word about this salt talk and all of our salt talks, which we think are, are very important to educate people about different things that are going on, but just a reminder, if you missed any part of this talk or any of our previous talks, you can access them all on our website@sault.org backslash talks, instead of doing virtual conferences, which we also also think are an ineffective delivery method for, for thought leadership.
John Darcie: (47:11)
We've created this webinar series just to allow on-demand resources for people to consume them on their own time and at their own pace. And whenever they feel compelled to watch a video or listen to a podcast. So, uh, we look forward to a lot of people consuming. This one we're also on social media on Twitter is where we're most active salt conference. We're also on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram as well. And on behalf of Anthony and the entire salt team, I want to thank you again, professor Nila for joining us and signing off for today. We hope to see you back here again, soon on salt talks.
