Welcome to Design Nerds Anonymous, the podcast that sparks curiosity at the intersection of business and design.I'm your host, Amanda Schneider, founder and president at ThinkLab.
Now, this season, we're shifting our lens to focus on something critical, the B2B decision-making process for the built environment.
Over the past six months, we've been deep in conversation with the decision-makers shaping spaces, whether in corporate offices, healthcare facilities, hospitality venues, educational settings, or beyond.
We've closely examined shifts with these end-users, but also architects, designers, and other key influencers who understand just how intricate and layered these choices have become.
This whole season, we're unpacking how these decisions are made today, what drives them, how they've evolved, and how product and service providers can better serve their customers.
Think of it as group therapy for anyone navigating this complex and sometimes overwhelming world.
In today's episode, focused on the future of work, we're tackling one of the biggest challenges in workplace decision-making, turning overwhelming amounts of data into actionable insights, or as some call it, battling infobesity.
In our research at Think Lab, we kept hearing the call for more data, more data, we want more data. But when we dug deeper, we actually found that many already have plenty of data.Actually, in some cases, too much data.
They're just overwhelmed by the challenge of synthesizing, contextualizing, and connecting that data.Especially when it comes from seemingly disparate sources like commercial real estate, human resources, and IT.
And yet, the future of work will depend heavily on how these three groups intertwine.Infobesity is often defined as consuming more information than one's mind can process.
For more on managing this overload, check out episode three this season with StoryBrand, where we dive into how to engage our lizard brain when we're communicating with our peers and managers.
Today, we're hosting a virtual roundtable with three forward-thinking leaders, each offering their unique approach to turning data into actionable insights and driving meaningful decisions.
Our panelists include Brett Houtop, a trailblazer in workplace design, Holly May, an innovator in leading the people side of organizations, and Brian Hope, a visionary in IT.
As decision-making teams grow larger and more diverse, the integration of IT, HR, and workplace practitioners has never been more essential for success.
Together, today, we'll explore how these disciplines are becoming more interconnected, or maybe should be, and what this means for the future of work.Now, what's so fun about this is that none of our panelists had met before this conversation.
So we asked them to start by introducing themselves and sharing one word that captures the biggest challenge facing the workplace today.Their answers may surprise you.All right, let's get started.
Hey everybody, Brett Haltop.I am a longtime licensed architect.I've had a long career in architecture and thought I was always going to be just a practicing architect.
And then I had an opportunity to take on a role to lead design at LinkedIn for their workplace team.And then that ended up expanding into design and construction.And then eventually I took over the whole workplace organization.
And after almost eight years of doing that, had an absolutely wonderful time and it's an amazing company.
But I decided during the pandemic, all the conversations I was having with so many different companies about we need to evolve, completely change the way we work and how do we do it and where do we start.
I felt if there was ever a time to start a business focused on helping people change the way they work, it was now.And so that's what I did.
Almost two years ago, I started my own consultancy called Work Shape, as in helping shape the way that you work.
And I've been working with companies all over the country, some workplace leaders, some corporate executive leaders, and then also real estate property developers, the prop tech industry, and design firms.
everybody in and around the same idea of why do you have a workplace and how do you evolve the workplace that you have to be more valuable to employees.
If you could give us one word to describe the biggest challenge facing the workplace today from your perspective, what would you say that is?
How do I say lack of clarity in one word?
Lack of clarity.We'll do a phrase that works.Lack of clarity.And what do you mean by lack of clarity?
most leaders can't clearly articulate why it matters to them that people are together in person which translates into people feeling like when they're asked to come together in person it's just because or just because I don't trust you so you need to be here as opposed to
I want you to come together at these times for these reasons, because I feel that we are going to be better as an organization.
You will have better experience as a team and better outcomes as a team, and you will have a better experience as an individual.I think until we get to that point, until there's clarity around the why, and then
what as a leader people are asking of their employees, there's going to continue to be really strong resistance from employees to even bother doing it, which is a shame in a lot of ways.
I think there is a lot of value in the idea of physical proximity.It just has to be clarified at this point because we never had to clarify before because it was we all just did it.And in a world where we don't have to do it,
You either work for a company that says, I don't care how you feel, and you're just gonna do this, or you have a company that says, no, it matters that you care because we know you're gonna do better work if you're here because you want to be here.
Holly, I feel like that was a good bump set for you.Do you want to introduce yourself?
Sure.Thanks, Amanda.My name is Holly May.I am a business leader and executive, and most recently wrapped up a six-year chapter as a chief people officer at a company called DataVant.
When I joined, we were a 17-person tech startup in Silicon Valley working out of a WeWork pre-COVID.And as I left, we were over 9,000 people spread across a large number of geographies across the United States and a little bit in Europe.
with a professional knowledge worker base as well as deskless workers and an hourly services team.
So we touched a wide range of talent markets and workplaces, led through the transition to a largely remote organization with COVID and all of the people team things that we rewired.You'll hear me use the phrase people, not HR.
Strong views about the progressive forward thinking version of the function using words around people versus thinking of humans as simply resources like capital.
And if I had to put one word around the challenges for workplace design, I'm excited to dig into this and unpack it, but I'm going to say offices.
Oh, wow.Okay.So tell us why.
I know most of your audience here is in the world of physical spaces associated with where people produce professional work.I'm not anti-office.I'm pretty distressed by the traditional view of an office.
The bullpen of cubicles and the break room with the dartboard and all of that. I think there's a notion that I hope we explore around coming together, which I'm a huge advocate of.
We had a strong view on purposeful, quarterly, connection-based off-sites from the very beginning as we became a remote organization.I think there's spaces that we'll see and should see that are not offices that become
gathering places for connection and productivity in a professional context.I think you see some crazy things like Equinox and Life Fitness as gyms starting to create spaces for business people to gather for workshops and off sites.
I think there's some interesting things where organizations like Airbnb and other companies that have houses as their asset, rental houses, could create those for spaces for off sites and workshops and coming together.So I think the notion of the
20 story high rise with a bunch of glass windows, every window has a cubicle or an office and people come and walk through hallways.I think that's not the future.
What you said is really interesting because it's not only saying maybe this piece isn't as relevant, but maybe all these pieces are opening up new opportunities.So that should be exciting to our listeners as well.
I also love to listen to a podcast where I don't agree with someone on the podcast.And you're like, Oh, that person bugs me or I don't agree with their perspective.So if I can be the lightning rod or the contrarian, I'm happy to play that role.
It's mental gymnastics.You're gonna you're gonna stretch our minds.So thank you for that.Brian, go ahead.
Hi, I'm Brian Hope, and today I'm here representing the IT organization.I am a strategy execution and transformation leader, specializing in modern ways of working.
And I've done this previously at BusinessObjects, SAP, and then most recently at VMware.
So this includes things like collaboration and productivity tools, work practices and behaviors, and work management, including goal management, OKRs, and things like that. My last four years at VMware actually spanned the COVID pandemic.
So I took over the collaboration productivity function in November 2019.So already it was an important function at the company.And then in March 2020, it suddenly became very important.
It was all of the pieces that you would use to talk to each other. and it was all part of my team's deliverable for the company.And VMware made that shift from being 80% office-based to 95% remote and then never looked back.
We decided to just leave it up to calling choice and let people choose where and how they wanted to work.So pretty wild experience to lead through that pandemic and experience shifting this really large company from in-office to remote culture.
You asked the other guests, what is the one word representing a really big challenge that we feel today?And it's related to what Brett said, but distrust, right?
As leaders are trying to articulate to employees, whether you have an in-office policy or remote first policy, most employees, I think, feel like leaders are just making a gut. gut impulse decision.And there's not real evidence.
Sometimes there's data, but that's not evidence to support the conclusion that these leaders are drawing and asking people to do.So I'm really big on looking at how do you actually do the right research to find
the connection between the policy that is right for the company, right for the job and right for the employee is you have to line up all of these three elements in order to have successful either remote work or successful in office or the hybrid between the two.
So I think that I probably may be in the middle of the spectrum of supporting in-office work and supporting distributed work because I think there isn't a single answer.
What we have to do is get leaders better at finding the right answer for their company and their people.
We'll be right back with more DNA after this short break.
If we can realize that we just need to form connections with one another on a real, authentic level, that provides support, that provides nurturing, it also provides safety.
When all humans feel that sense of safety, they can bring their gifts to the forefront.That's what our job is.And not just in this industry, but especially in this industry. The reason designers do what they do is to bring their gifts to the world.
And if we don't create a space where those designers can bring their gifts to the world, then we're all going to suffer for it.
So if Mannington can put more time in their day, support what they're trying to do, educate them, help them, partner with them, all in the service of their customer, their client, the outcome of the space,
then, you know, we're really doing a service to the world.And that's how my company goes into the world, is that we are here to serve.That's what our company is about.Mannington Commercial is here to do good.We are here to serve.
We take a lot of care in producing, manufacturing, in the United States, very high-performing products of all categories. Hi, this is Cindy Kaufman.I'm vice president of marketing.
Mannington Commercial is always a proud sponsor of Design Nerds Anonymous, my favorite podcast.
All right.And now back to our show.
So I want to respond to both something Holly and Brian said, and I couldn't be more aligned with both of them. in that my company, what we talk about is getting more out of getting together.This is a conversation started back in 2016, 2017.
Hey, the office as we now know it, even if you make it really sexy and you put all the bells and whistles in and all the amenities, it's still mostly just desks and conference rooms.
And the majority of the expectations, people are gonna sit at those desks and just be there throughout the day. And there really wasn't a lot of intention about why am I in the office?Why did I take the time to come in here?
Why did my teammates take the time to come in here?So I think the biggest struggle right now and why we're stuck in purgatory is the why.What are we actually doing here?
And to Brian's point about research, what we're trying to do is get to a granular level, human engagement in physical space. What are we doing right now?
What we're trying to study is the difference between the four of us having this conversation all seated at our, it looks like everyone is at their houses in maybe four different time zones having this conversation versus if the four of us were sitting in a lounge
we were facing each other versus the four of us sitting in a conference room at a table having this conversation and looking at the nuanced differences between those things, the pros and cons of the way you work in these different settings.
And what we're trying to do is identify specific activities and functions that make sense to be done where you can amplify the success or the success rate or the quality of the engagement
by doing it in person versus other things, you might say, this thing, strictly speaking, is far better done when we're not around one another.There are reasons why we shouldn't be around one another actually to do this.
And so what is very little of right now is this conversation.
Most of the conversation is around reducing the cost of the assets that everyone already has and then trying to force people to come back in through mechanisms that involve like not getting bonuses or not getting promoted or just not having a job.
And really, there's very few companies making fundamental changes to two things.
Now, one thing they have been changing, most companies have at least gone as far as adding video conferencing to their conference rooms, or trying to add it, and they're in the process of doing it.
Beyond that, they haven't changed physical spaces much at all, other than to reduce the footprint in a lot of cases.And they haven't really changed their policies or their training.They may say, it's totally up to you.
That's great, it's totally up to you, except for, how do you align?How do people get coordinated?
How do they know if I just come in and I have this space that was designed for the way we used to work, I'm there, you guys don't show up, I thought you might be there and you're not and I don't get any value out of it then and then I say it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, I am not going to come back because that was not worth my time.
It was actually a negative experience for that perspective.So that's why I think we're stuck in this place of
People wish it was better, but they don't really want to say they wish it was better because then that's indicating that they're willing to give. They don't really want to give because they're giving up autonomy and control that they have right now.
But the reality is we need to find things that resonate.And I love what Brian said.It's got to work for the individual.It's got to work for the team.And it's got to work for the organization.
I think what we need to get to is a place of focusing on the teams and the quality of the team experience and team engagement.
Because people are willing to sacrifice for each other on their team, their partners, their teammates, whereas they're not willing to do it for a large organization typically. I think this gets back to specifically, what are you doing?
How can we get aligned as a team?And how do we make more out of that time we spend getting together, whether it is once a quarter, once a year or once a week, whatever the cadence is that you're doing?I think that's where we need to get to.
And there needs to be rules and guidance around that that is specific to your company, not anybody else's.And it's not about benchmarking.That's where we need to start.
Brian, I'm sure you want to respond to that.
Yeah.Oh my, there's so many good nuggets in there.I almost don't even know where to start.But I think the one thing that really just came to mind brought reminded me here in Silicon Valley.
I talked to a lot of people and the phrase I hear from a lot of people is I'm more productive at home.And I think as leaders, we need to acknowledge that there are things people will be more productive doing at home, but also help those people see.
and think about is my team also more productive if I'm always at home?Is the company also more productive and successful if I'm always at home?So we need to bridge that gap between that feeling of I'm more productive at home.Why is that a problem?
Why shouldn't I just always be at home?And help people see that there's another side to it.I think IT really needs to step up.And this is the thing we were doing at VMware was first and foremost,
As a company, if you have a hybrid or distributed work strategy and policy, that's only the first step.
You need to trickle that down into what are the changes I need to enact across people, process and systems to actually support and enable this policy.
So having the policy, which I think a lot of companies think they have, is only a very first step and it doesn't get you all the way there. And then from my IT perspective, the IT contribution to that is when it comes to tooling, Brett's right.
We need to make video more of a default option, make it easier.But we also, on the other side, have to clean up our long history of just adding more and more applications into the ecosystem because we're at a point where fewer applications is better.
We need to help colleagues. be in fewer places with less context switching to help them feel more connected.So this is truly a time when less is more for our colleagues.
And then the other thing I think IT can really step up into, and this is where the input from the people organizations and from the real estate workplace organizations is critical, is what we called work practices, the behaviors.
How do people actually get work done at our company and in our culture?Because we found that when we simply told people, go home and do more asynchronous work, people had no idea what we were talking about. How do you actually do asynchronous work?
So we had to start documenting.This is what asynchronous work is.This is how you and your team can adopt it.
This is how you run a virtual workshop where people are in different physical locations, but participating in the same workshop using technology and workplace together.
So we have to get more prescriptive in IT on not just tools and how to use tools, but behaviors and how to actually work with each other.
Picking up on something Brett said, I think it's really important in these conversations that the organization, the client in this case, is making a decision that's right for their business goals and their talent strategy and not looking at the average of what do all companies in America do or what are the trends that we're seeing in real estate.
And what I mean by that is you have business goals, you have talent strategies.I would hope most organizations have a sense of who is their desired worker.What is the archetype of the employee?
Are we paying at the 30th percentile and we don't think that we're going to pull in top talent?Are we paying at the 95th percentile and we think that we're pulling in truly autonomous and high judgment and highly capable individuals?
Are we a place that has strong values around independence and autonomy and kind of leadership gets out of the way and lets team members run?
Or do we have more of a traditional command and control kind of things trickle down, people take work orders, and they produce those work orders.Those are very different ways of running an organization.And they can work for the right goals.
Are you a production oriented organization?Are you creative problem solving frontier, part of the economy, but the way that we think about
The business objectives should directly impact how we think about our target talent and the way that we manage our workplaces and our gatherings and our offices should align to those goals.
Team members where we expect a high degree of judgment and autonomy probably should have all the flexibility they need to deliver at their highest impact.
team members that we expect to follow rules and orders and do what they're asked probably need more being together where you can have that sense of quality control of what the employee or the team member is producing, whether that's a call center or something else.
So I think differentiating to the business objectives and therefore the talent and labor market dimensions of the individual business is really important.Rather than saying, here's aggregate data of a thousand companies of my size,
here's what they're doing.Their size doesn't really matter if they're in creative fields and you're in production-oriented fields.It doesn't really matter if they're going after the top 5% of talent in California and New York and you're not.
I think part of this is as Americans, we want a magic pill that's going to solve everything for us.We don't want to do the diet.We want to take Ozempic, right?This is culturally where we are.So we want these aggregates.
And what's interesting to me listening to three of you is that I feel like the three of you are quite aligned on this spectrum.Some people, it might be the right fit to go back to an office full-time five days a week.
Some people, it might be fully remote that's the right fit.It's probably most are probably somewhere in the middle.I feel like that's a tough concept for a lot of people to take in still for one reason or another.
Like we still want to push to extremes. And I'm curious from your perspectives, although you three seem aligned, do you feel like most of your peers are aligned with the viewpoint we're talking about here?
Or do you feel like there's some stumbling blocks culturally to get to this nirvana we're all seeking?
I'm jazzed on this question, Amanda.Before COVID, I'd never worked remotely.I'd always been in offices.And so I did a lot of intentional things when we just said, take your laptop home and we'll figure it out in the next few months.
One of the things I did was put a large sticker on my monitor that said what voices are missing.
And it was a prompt to me to remember if I was making a decision in a one-on-one conversation, what people on my team could I not see and what voices were missing.
And I'd actually love for that concept to get extrapolated to big decisions on these questions.And what I mean by that is the folks in organizations who are making choices about real estate and workplace strategy and distributed policies are
not representative of all of their employee base.They more likely have a home with a home office and may not be a recent university graduate who is working at a kitchen table with three roommates in an apartment in San Francisco or Manhattan.
They may not have dual working parents, so they may have a childcare situation that's different than others.They may not have any minority identifiers.
And so I think there's a big question to answer here on what voices are at the table and what voices are missing in the rooms where these decisions are made.And I think organizations that can take the pulse and sense
within their own organization, whether it's through focus groups or across business groups or surveys that can pulse check, not just those with power to make the decisions about budget and real estate.But again, back to the talent strategy.
If you need to have a bunch of people in San Francisco and New York who are talented software engineers, you need to think about what do you 20 to 25 year olds need in their work setting?How much flexibility and how much together time do they need?
If you're onboarding people all the time because you have high turnover, you need to think about the most effective ways to onboard large employee groups at volume.
So I'll go back to the what voices are missing and who's at the table when making these decisions.
We'll be right back. Tune into The Design Board, a podcast by Upspring for the new series celebrating women who are redefining leadership.
Inspired by Upspring's inaugural LaunchHer Awards, this series highlights female entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders who are driving change and making a lasting impact on their communities.
Join hosts Tiffany Raffi and Susan Fernandez as they dive into the journeys of women breaking through the barriers of a male-dominated business world. building mission-led organizations and sparking social change.
You can tune into the Design Board on the Surround Podcast Network on surroundpodcast.com.
Let's dive back into the episode.
When we look on publicly available things like social media, it's very attractive for people to argue the extreme ends of the spectrum.
But when I talk to the leaders who are actually wrestling with these decisions, I do get the impression they're trying to do the right thing.They're not trying to force people to do something they don't want to do.
They are trying to find the right thing for the company to be successful. But when we talk to all the way from individual contributors up to senior leaders, we commonly see a couple of things that get in the way of that, right?
Individual contributors tend to want to have the flexibility to work wherever they want to work.As you go up the chain, the senior leaders tend to have an opinion that innovation and speed only happen when you're in the office.
But then when you look at behaviors, you actually see a flip where individual contributors, if there's a policy of coming in the office, we've seen them often come in more often than their leadership because the leadership feels like they have the luxury of being exempt from certain policies.
Or if the leader has a home in Hawaii, they might take a few extra calls from Hawaii and take liberties with their authority as a leader.
So we, I think leaders want to do the right thing, but sometimes their behaviors don't, don't demonstrate that to the rest of the employees.
So I don't see a lot of misalignment from other folks in the industry necessarily.
Most people in the workplace industry that are focused on either design or workplace technology believe that a change needs to happen in the product that we've all been developing for decades.
And they believe that there is a better version of it out there. Most of them believe that it's rooted in variety and more options and higher quality, lower volume.
Taking the time to create the right place is gonna get you a lot more value in the long run, and it may cost more, but the reality is you need less of it, because having the copious amounts of space just to have a space for every person really never made sense, and especially doesn't make any sense now.
But the disconnect is still with Leaders, there's a couple different narratives going around.One is this idea that if I just give everybody their own desk, it solves the problem.The way the media has picked this up, they like to focus on two things.
Either companies are all making everybody hot desk, or it's leaders saying that the reason people aren't coming into the office is because they don't have a desk assigned to them.And the reality is, as with most things in life,
the real answer is in the middle of those two things.
The reality is, if you come back to the team, you come back to people being together at the same time and saying, well, our team has a space, our team has a home, and we use that when it makes sense for us to use it.
And there may be people on a team, those individual contributors that want to be there all the time, may have an assigned seat because it becomes their space and that team may decide, yeah, Brian's there all the time.
Of course he should have his own space. I'm only there once a month, so let me come in and fill in the gaps and be there where it makes sense for me to be.
But the reason that this has never really happened at scale is because in the big picture, if you say, so you're saying I have 50 teams in this company, all 50 teams are gonna have a different setup and they're gonna have a different set of rules about how they work and how they use space.
And I would say, if you set the high level rules and you say this is your sandbox that everybody has and you all have a similar size sandbox, These are the rules of engagement.Outside of this, you do what you want with it.
That's an opportunity for people to do things and learn and try and to share and to say, hey, new best practice here.We started doing this on Tuesdays from three to five, and it's proven hugely successful.Other people might want to try.
You don't have to, but they're sharing it with their peers.And people are leading, which is very different from saying,
our organization does this and we work this way instead of that it should be we're focused on outcomes and these are the types of things we want to see your businesses do here's some tools and the workplace is a tool if a company decides to have workplaces like this is a tool in your arsenal you could also go other places outside of the office here's how you do that
Flexibility is great.Flexibility with no support is tough.
If I have flexibility with all these tools and they're clearly articulated and they're aligned and they will come to you as a package all woven together, that's a company you want to work for.
And I think that's where the real opportunity is and where the gap is right now because I think a lot of leaders are somehow not going from that intention of we want to do the right thing
to actually putting this into practice because it is a lot of work.And right now they're all just defaulting to, you know what, it's just easier if we go one end of the spectrum or the other.
Right.I would absolutely agree with you.Everyone does want to do what's best.I think people struggle a lot with how.
I know that one thing is not going to work for all organizations, but in terms of the how to go from good intention to implementing this.
What is one thing that you've seen in each of your roles that is something that you would give advice to our listeners about how they can move from good intentions to action?
Brett said the word outcomes, and it really just triggered me.My advice to companies of any significant size is you need to invest in becoming an outcomes-obsessed culture.
If you can rally people around a really clearly defined picture of what needs to happen, what outcomes have to be achieved, that allows you to empower different teams to then make decisions around, we come in the office X days a week, we get together once a quarter in person, we're fully remote, remote first, right?
If everyone knows the outcome they need to deliver, you can delegate more of that decision making around how it actually gets done.It doesn't have to be the same across an entire huge company.So I think invest in becoming outcomes obsessed.
And from that also, Invest in the talent and the capabilities to interpret data and turn it into action.I would say invest in areas that really allow you to take data and turn it into actionable intelligence and make decisions on it really fast.
Strategic risk taking and they need to create new space types, new experiences with a plan in place for how to measure success and
the what I've really seen all I've really seen much of is companies have set up new sort of hospitality leaning furniture arrangements and said we're making something that feels less office like and more like a lounge and come hang out here and work and if people show up
then it's a success, and if they don't, it's not.And this is not a binary thing.To them, the outcome is binary.Are desks in use or not?Did people come to the office or not?
And it's not for how long or for what level of quality, it's not did they actually achieve something or did it actually negatively impact them coming in, it's were they here?The second thing is letting go
of the way you've always done things, and starting new, and thinking about this from a different perspective, instead of being hung up on, again, this is too complex, so I'm gonna go back to what I know, and what I know is if people are here, and they see each other, more things get done, this is what we've always done, and you may not like it, but this is how it is, instead of, we're gonna create a series of new types of experiences, types of spaces, types of engagements,
measure the quality of the outcomes of those experiences against the status quo.The status quo could be what we used to do.It could be working remotely.It could be any number of things.And then decide, is that something we're gonna put into action?
So the problem is workplace organizations are scared to death right now.They're getting cut down in size.They're losing their funding.And they're worried about making a mistake.
That if right now they convince their CFO to spend a few million dollars to do a new type of space or a pilot or a program, and it fails because people don't show up.
This is where if the people organization is not involved, if the technology organizations aren't involved, and it's expected that just creating a cool new space is going to solve all these problems and cause people to all come together all the time voluntarily, then they're setting themselves up for failure.
So a lot of workplace organizations and leaders are sitting back and doing the only thing that they're being asked to do, which is give more accurate and detailed accounting of how many hours or days or weeks people spend in the office.
And unfortunately, that is not a good place because I've been trying since I got in this profession to elevate the workplace conversation.When I first started in this, we were facilities.
Facilities is like keeping the lights on and keeping the building safe and keeping it clean.We're trying to help people accomplish work more effectively and build stronger relationships.You know, I think we're all in that place now.
Three pieces I might add here in brief, pulling on what Brian said, I think focusing on cross-functional outcomes instead of departmental outcomes is an important distinction.
What I mean by that is if you're a people team and your quarterly or annual goal is about employee retention, Or you're an IT organization and your focus is about managing your AWS spending.
Or your workplace team goal is around number of swipes or times people come into the office and you want to have more people in the office more often or cost per square foot.Those are siloed goals.
And it's really critical that we as leaders move our goals towards cross-functional business goals.Why does employee retention matter?
Because replacing and training new people is expensive and it delays the time to ultimate productivity and that hurts our bottom line. Why is managing our AWS spending important?
We want to have high impact tools that people are using in the most efficient way possible.We don't want to flush dollars down the toilet.We don't have to.Why do we care about cost per square foot?
Or why do we care about number of visits to the office?What business goal product expansion into Europe or revenue targets or EBITDA targets or whatever the business priorities are at the highest level.
Having all our goals at a team and a functional and departmental level linked to a North Star that's set by the senior leadership team that's on behalf of the business and the customers we serve, I'd be the first one.
I think if we have workplace teams only focused on the workplace space and IT teams only focused on the IT space, we miss a huge amount of value that we can form by having these cross-functional connective tissue.That's leadership basics.
To get a little more specific, teams that are trying to take good intentions and put them into practice in this world, there's so much great stuff out there.And I don't mean data and surveys, but practices.So use concrete examples.
The GitLab playbook, their handbook online, has a million details on how to run one-on-ones, how to escalate, how to be a new team member, how to onboard people, how to run meetings.Borrow from things like that.
Atlassian has a bunch of great playbooks.
You want to do a personal user's manual that gives information about you as a leader for your team to better understand how you work, how you receive feedback, the hours that you like to work, your things that make you a little triggered and anxious.
Here's a 30-minute exercise in a template form.Have your team run through it.
Those are just examples, but there's great documented, easy to impact, easy to apply resources out there that you just need someone to bring into your organization and have a willingness to try.
And then the more quirky one, I'd say, is all of this involves a mindset towards innovation, a willingness to change, I think, as Brett called it.In the world of Silicon Valley and tech, there's a practice called hackathons.
Usually it's about product development and software development.
But the idea is let's take a one or two day holiday a few times a year from our regular work and put all of our regular work on pause and put all of our great innovation and creative thinking to focus on a particular new project.
It could be something business relevant, it might not be. We used to run these for two days every quarter as a small tech startup.
And you get incredible innovation and creativity and energy, but you also get some good business ideas and some templates and proofs of concepts for products that might come to market in a few years.
But you took the germ of an idea, the seed of an idea from a hackathon. Why don't we do more things that are hackathon inspired for the way we work, the where we work, the how we work, the leadership practices around work.
What if we could do once a year a hackathon sponsored by whomever your workplace champions are and say we want to do A business plan competition for things that we can do across the organization.Source that from your organization.
What's working great in one team might work great across your whole company.How do you find a way to spotlight that to identify it?Have judging, have points, have rewards, have some sort of prizes.
Make it fun, and it's a great way to pull existing ideas from all parts of your organization and elevate them and give visibility.And when you frame it in this concept of a hackathon or a competition, it lowers the barrier to entry.
It doesn't have to be perfect.It doesn't have to be reviewed by nine consultants.It doesn't have to be prepared by McKinsey.
It can just be something that a few folks at a water cooler conversation or a Slack huddle had a great idea and said, hey, I want to try this.
Holly, I love that you brought some examples in.So the GitLab playbook we're familiar with.We've had GitLab on this podcast before.Atlassian.
We've also had Brian Elliott and Sheila Sapermanian on who wrote How the Future Works, which is an excellent resource.I'm curious, Brian or Brett, if there's any other places to look, any other tools that come to mind for either of you?
Yeah, team level agreements.So there are resources out there that help a team as a team based activity go through and define their team level agreements, which is how are we going to work and communicate and respect each other as a team?
What hours of the day do we work?When do we have meetings, not have meetings?Which tools do we use for which purposes? And it's a great resource.
It really allows a team to proactively decide on things that you will otherwise stumble through over many months or years.And you can do them all up front.
I know Future Forum has some content online for that, but also tools like Miro have templates for doing a team level agreement exercise.
Two books that I've read recently that I would highly recommend, Annie Murphy Paul, The Extended Mind.
Her whole concept is on the idea that our brain is not just contained in our body, but our brain is partly connected to and attributed to the surroundings in which we're in at any moment in time.
So the way we think does change based on our surroundings and how we solve a problem or how we come to a conclusion.
And it's pretty cool because she starts to break down the science of the differences between being together, being alone, being outside, being indoors, and the different sorts of activities you're doing and how it can actually challenge or improve the way you think about things and how successful you are at solving problems.
So that's one.The other one is a book called The Art of Gathering. And that book is exactly what it sounds like.And it's saying that there is an art, the nuance and the difference of coming together with other people.
And it talks about things like, even just things like meals, really successful food gatherings.And it's something I spend a lot of time on is teams that say, oh, yeah, we get together once a month, we go out and have dinner.
And that's our kind of time to connect. Some teams do it really intentionally and really well, and they've thought about the room, they've thought about the seating layout, they've thought about how they're going to engage in conversation.
Most people, though, just have a big space and they all get in there and it's like you sit next to your buddies and you might not even ever talk to the people that are under the table over the course of an evening.
It really isn't as valuable as you think it is.That book is not really about work, but it is about people coming together and getting more out of it.And I think there's a lot that could be applied to everything we're talking about today.
Great suggestions.I'm going to close us up here with our final closing question.This is a question we're asking every single one of our podcast interviewees this season.
Looking ahead, what is one word to describe what most excites you about the future?Holly, let's start with you.
One word is hard.I'm going to go with a phrase.I'm going to borrow the permission you gave Brett at the beginning.New leadership practices, not about the people, but the how.
Brian, what would you say?
I am so excited about what this new fourth workplace will turn into and how we'll use it to work in a very expansive environment, but also how we'll figure out how it can be used to make us feel more connected to people, even when we're in a device.
Brett, what would your word or phrase be?
Experimentation.There is no one answer to this problem.There aren't a lot of solutions currently out there.And I don't think we're going to arrive at solutions unless we get there together.
Companies are going to need to try things, fail, share their learnings and their failures, and other people will build on it.
And maybe three, four or five years from now, we'll have a really thoughtful, robust set of solutions for how people can come together to work.
I'm really excited about the storytelling that's going to come along with that because I think that is part of our challenge today is just getting those stories out there about who's trying what and what's working.
As we reflect on today's conversation, it becomes clear that the future of work isn't about a single solution or a perfect policy.It's about the courage to experiment and the wisdom to listen.
In a world overwhelmed by data, perhaps our greatest challenge isn't to collect more, but to discern what truly matters and take intentional steps towards that. Think of it this way.It's not just about making workplaces more efficient.
It's about making them more meaningful.It's about finding those moments of connection, whether through new technologies, innovative spaces, or the simple act of gathering with purpose.
The path forward might not be clear-cut, but as Brett, Holly, and Brian shared today, it's filled with opportunities for those willing to innovate and adapt.
So, as you go back to your teams, your spaces, and even your own ways of working, consider this.How can you be more intentional about the environments you create and the experiences you shape?
And how can we, collectively, make work a place where people don't just perform, but where they belong? Thanks for joining us on this journey.And if these ideas sparked something for you, let's keep the conversation going.
So until next time, stay curious, stay connected, and remember, the future of work is something we're building together, one thoughtful decision at a time. We'll be back next week to spark new ideas at the crossroads of business and design.
Next week, we have a phenomenal guest, an expert in soft skills, which you may think doesn't apply to you, but I think it'll surprise you. You can send us a direct message or join the conversation on LinkedIn or Instagram.Find us at thinklab.design.
Make sure to subscribe to Design Nerds Anonymous wherever you get your podcasts.You can find past episodes, show notes, and additional resources at thinklab.design backslash podcasts. Your feedback means the world to us.
Feel free to reach out on social media.We'd love to hear from you.Design Nerds Anonymous is a proud member of the Surround Podcast Network, dedicated to exploring the most intriguing aspects of architecture and design.
Check out more of our partner shows at surroundpodcasts.com. This episode was produced by the talented Hannah Vitti with support from our production team, including Rachel Senator and Rob Schulte.
We'll be back next week to spark new ideas at the crossroads of business and design.I hope you'll tune in.
Sign in
