Rethink Collaboration for Hybrid, Remote, and Global Teams
Guest Speaker Gustavo RazzettiIn this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts Gustavo Razzetti, a workplace culture expert and the CEO/Founder of Fearless Culture, a culture design consultancy that helps teams do the best work of their lives. For more than 20 years, Razzetti has helped leaders from Fortune 500s, startups, nonprofits, and everything in between on every continent but Antarctica.
Gustavo is also the creator of the Culture Design Canvas, a framework used by thousands of teams and organizations across the world to map, assess, and design their culture. In addition to his consulting work with clients, Gustavo regularly speaks with leaders and teams about culture change, teamwork, and hybrid workplaces. His coaching and tools have helped countless executives and teams develop work environments where people collaborate to accelerate individual and collective performance.
A prolific writer and author of four books on culture change, most recently Remote Not Distant: Design a Company Culture That Will Help You Thrive in a Hybrid Workplace, Gustavo’s insights have been featured in The New York Times, Psychology Today, Forbes, BBC, and Fortune, among others.
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INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS
We dive into a deeper conversation around company culture and how it has evolved these past few years. Gustavo defines culture as much more than just how we act and behave. He explains that it is also formed by the mindsets and emotions that we bring to the workplace and that a strong culture is built on a foundation of purpose, core values, and behaviors that are rewarded and punished. He emphasizes the importance of creating a psychologically safe environment where people can do their best work without fear of criticism and utilizing feedback to learn and grow from each other. He provides further insight and examples of how to create strong and thriving cultures within any company dynamic, whether in person, remote, or hybrid.
Some key take-aways from this talk:
- Gustavo explains the 5 steps of his Anywhere/Anytime Culture roadmap which outlines how to reset culture and reframe what it used to be to what it could become, to create a shared future and a shared purpose. To achieve this, he emphasizes creating a sense of belonging while rethinking collaboration, to produce authentic connection and promote productivity. (7:38)
- He also provides some amazing examples of how to have effective check-ins by utilizing metaphors with your team, such as asking them ‘how the weather was’ for them in the last week, or ‘how charged is their battery’, which provides an opportunity to share their feelings in a way that isn’t so touchy-feely, but directly speaks to their emotions. (14:17)
- We discussed that rather than forcing games or activities to foster connection, a better idea is to allow individuals to create groups around shared interests or passions to support authentic connection. Gustavo points out that too much structure can hinder connection, it causes resistance, but providing opportunities for people to connect organically will foster more authentic relationships. (9:52, 16:43)
- On collaboration in remote and hybrid settings, Gustavo offers a few pieces of advice to create productive teamwork without over-forcing synchronous collaboration. He encourages managers and leaders to open the conversation to their team to communicate what works best for them, their preferences, and how they perform best to provide individuals with a sense of agency. It’s important to give team members control of their time to manage their own asynchronous productivity and schedule time for team-based collaboration. (15:44, 34:27, 38:10)
Overall, Gustavo provides some very helpful insights and tips on producing a culture based on authentic connection and collaboration. He specifically notes that leaders who are taking the time to do weekly one on one check-ins are thriving within remote and hybrid settings, as are those who support organic connection within their teams. While some companies are forcing behavior and making drastic changes, Gustavo encourages taking the time to shift things progressively, giving opportunities for new habits and mindsets to form to create a lasting impact. The world of remote and hybrid work is here to stay and it’s time to adapt rather than resist the change.
FAVORITE QUOTES
“The pandemic wasn’t just a hiatus or a parenthesis, it was an accelerator of things that were already progressing, and people adapted really well. It was painful, we suffered a lot. But in the end, people started to figure out new ways of working. There are companies that are learning from that, they are taking that experience into their portfolio, into an advantage. And there are companies that are acting in denial, forgetting all that learning and trying to get back to normal, but normal is gone.” (5:50)
“It is about understanding what used to work and what wasn’t working before the pandemic and also what have we learned with the pandemic. And how can we reconcile both aspects?” (7:38)
“The managers that have been able to have a 1-1 on a weekly basis with their team members thrive. And those should be optional. So put it on the calendar, if there’s something that you want to discuss, do it, if not, skip it and see you next week.” (18:57)
“One of the biggest enemies of productivity is other people. So, in order for you to be productive, you need to be in charge of how you spend your time.” (38:10)
RESOURCES
Gustavo Razzetti:
Website | LinkedIn
Book: Remote Not Distant: Design a Company Culture That Will Help You Thrive in a Hybrid Workplace
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everybody to WiseTalk. This is our monthly Leadership Forum. We’ve been doing it for a long time, every month, and it’s still fresh. We’re really excited to have Gustavo Razzetti here today. You’re the CEO and founder of Fearless Culture, a culture design consultancy that helps teams do the best work of their lives. For more than 20 years, Gustavo has helped leaders from Fortune 500, startups, nonprofits and everything in between, on every continent but Antarctica, okay, give you that. That’s great. He’s also the creator of the culture design canvas, a framework used by 1000s of teams and organizations across the world to map assess and design a culture. That sounds awesome. In addition to his consulting work with clients, Gustavo was a sought out speaker and best-selling author of four books, including the recent Remote, Not Distant, a roadmap to build a strong culture for remote and hybrid teams. His work on innovation, culture, and change leadership has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, Forbes, Fortune, and Psychology Today. Welcome, Gustavo, thank you so much for being with us today. Appreciate it.
Gustavo Razzetti 1:22
Absolutely. Thank you, Sue, for hosting me very excited to be here.
Sue Bethanis 1:26
Okay, thank you. I always ask the same question to start, because it’s sort of a hallmark of our show, I just read your very nice bio. But I’m more interested to find out about your journey and how you decided to write this particular book, you’ve obviously written other books, but this particular book, it’s clear from obviously the world we’re in why you wrote it, but how did you decide on the title, and how you came to this? And so talk to us a little about your journey.
Gustavo Razzetti 1:57
Absolutely, I think on one hand, like it happened to most people, in case we forgot, the world hit us. And we have this pandemic, early 2020, I was planning to a global tool to give a masterclass on cultural design. So I was planning to go to different cities in the US, Europe, Canada, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, everything was set even though people have been starting to purchase tickets, and so on and so forth. And then the world collapsed. So I have to quickly rethink my business model, also what to do with people that are expecting me. So I started adapting all my programs and stuff into virtual, but like four months, of course, a lot of work that I do is consulting so I have to start working with clients in projects that were already in place, but most important people say, hey, we have our teams working remotely, what are we going to do now? At the very beginning, it was more like a band-aid. So hey, maybe this is going to take one week, two weeks a month, you know, how people reacted thinking that this was gonna go away. But then there was a problem.
Sue Bethanis 3:03
Yeah.
Gustavo Razzetti 3:04
So at some point, I had to play two roles. One of the roles that I used to play and which clients hire me for but on the other hand, I had to help them navigate this new world, what I learned from previous experience, but also the experiments I was doing for my own business to my clients. So in the end, after over two years, helping companies deal with this pain of okay, we need to collaborate differently, we need to make sure that we can build connection, we need to understand that Zoom is not the problem it’s our company culture. So basically, this camera, this technology, are amplifying the issues. And at some point, people say, hey, you’ve been writing a lot of articles, you work with lots of company, why don’t you write a book. And it was a person that took on one of our programs also as a client, and I say, Well, why not? And that’s why I started writing a book, to share everything I learned. But most importantly, it’s not like a recipe, it’s more like a framework to help people rethink their culture. That’s basically the main one, the driver, don’t get stuck, and give them tools frameworks to rethink the culture they have also embraced technology or distant or distance become an excuse for stop building your culture.
Sue Bethanis 4:23
I get it. And this is, I think, rapid because culture is what, you know, I want to hear your definition, but the way I look at it is, you know, culture is the way things are around here. And there’s no here so there’s no there. So we have to redefine what the here is. And we have to redefine what it is. So tell me what you think culture is. And then how do we look at it a bit different now because we can’t touch it. And there’s not artifacts like there used to be right?
Gustavo Razzetti 4:58
Absolutely. You needed culture is the way we do things here. But what’s here, and it’s not just the way we behave, but it’s also the mindsets and the emotions that come to play. And it’s important because behavior is influenced and shaped, by the way we feel, but also the mindsets companies use. And a lot of companies started adopting this mindset of ‘hey, it’s impossible to build culture remotely’ and things like, ‘Oh, our culture is suffering, because people are distributed’. What I always said is look at Gallup, and other surveys before the pandemic, the numbers were to curse here, but they were pathetic. You know. So engagement on culture and team building and belonging and productivity. People were suffering from those before the pandemic, right?
Sue Bethanis 5:48
It was already a problem, right?
Gustavo Razzetti 5:50
So the pandemic simply, unbelief I was, was already there. Rather than say, ‘Hey, guys, maybe we’re weren’t doing such a good job.’ We started blaming zoom or blaming distance, subliminal stuff, instead of taking care of the culture. And I think that one of the most important issues that came to light is trust. So many leaders were not trusting their employees. When the pandemic started, they didn’t have a choice, it basically was the only option. They have to let people work from home because of health issues and regulations and fear and et cetera. But then what’s happening now that they have the option to choose many leaders are trying to force people back into the office. And I think this is important to understand that the pandemic wasn’t just a hiatus or a parenthesis, it was an accelerator of things that were already progressing and people adapted really well. It was painful, we suffered a lot. But in the end, people start to figure out new ways of working. There are companies that are learning from that, they are taking that experience into their portfolio, into an advantage. And there are companies that are acting on denial, forgetting all that learning and trying to get back to normal, but normal is gone. That train departed, and we’re never going to catch it.
Sue Bethanis 7:13
Right, exactly. So um, so from your reading, and from what you just talked about, I’m hearing you say that culture is the behaviors. So when we’re thinking about having hybrid cultures, or you call it anywhere/anytime, culture, so talk with us a little about like, what that looks like, what are the steps that you call a roadmap, like, what does that look like?
Gustavo Razzetti 7:38
Yeah, I think it’s important. You make a good point, which is the conversation when it comes to remote teams, or hybrid teams, you talk on the title of this, talk about also global teams, it’s still stuck on the location, so we work from the office or not. And that’s the thing, it’s an obstacle because the hybrid and the magic of collaboration in a remote environment. It’s not just our location, where do we work from as a team, but it’s also about having skill, flexibility, and also, team members having the freedom to define how they want to work. So the roadmap to get there starts by resetting or reframing what culture used to be. So it’s not that the past culture was wrong and then the post pandemic was good, or either way around. It is about understanding what used to work and what wasn’t working before the pandemic and also what have we learned with the pandemic. And how can we reconcile both aspects? It includes different steps in terms of we need to redefine, where are we working together? Many companies don’t have a future, a shared future, like a purpose, or things that we want to accomplish, that’s important. And then, only then, we can take a look at how can we keep that glue, the sense of belonging alive despite of working remotely, maybe we see each other once a week or maybe once a month, or once a quarter, but how do we keep the people connected? And then the other two steps have to rethink how we collaborate. There are different ways of collaboration, we need to start thinking about a syncer of collaboration, not just synchro. So mix of both how can we make decisions in distributed teams to make sure that we adapt fast and we move fast as well.
Sue Bethanis 9:23
So let’s talk about the sense of belonging first, cause I’m with you on that. I’m an advocate and a flag bearer for keeping a sense of belonging, keeping the sense of connection to our teams. So tell me a little bit about how you coach teams to do that.
Gustavo Razzetti 9:52
There are many ways to do it, it all depends on where each team is, right. I think that first of all, we need to understand what we mean by belonging. So some people understand that what we need to create is a friendship or bonding and that stuff. When we talk about belonging, it’s people, because we’re social creatures, we need to feel that we are accepted by the team, which we’re part of, we know that we are tribal, since we started hunting many centuries ago, we realize that the best way to not only survive, but to thrive is we are part of a group. So unconsciously, we’re always asking these questions ‘Do I belong?’ So basically, I’m not being accepted by my colleagues. And that’s what we need to work on. I’m accepted first as a human being, and then as a professional, so that includes accepting me on a personal level, and then how I think, what are my ideas, what are my perspectives. So depending on where the teams are, there are two things that are important. During the pandemic, many companies started to make time for personal connection, right? It was maybe check-in rounds before a meeting, maybe icebreakers. What I say is, forget about the icebreakers those are gone, that now people are getting tired of having, like fun little activities to just do something, basically, because the lack of purpose, however, check ins are really important. And people have lost, they have become like, maybe you need to change how you do it. Checking in before you kick off a meeting. If you see your colleagues once a week, twice, you need to make sure that people are connected. So that’s very important.
Sue Bethanis 11:34
I want to stop you because I think I we could do nothing else this whole time, and just talk about check ins and probably doing ourselves a service because I’m sure I’m gonna hear new things about your check ins and vice versa. And certainly, for everyone else, I actually, I think this is key. So I don’t want to be lost, I want you to tell me, and the group like, what do you see as good check ins like, I have like a list of 10 different ways to check in, I want to hear yours. What are some ways that you’d like to check in?
Gustavo Razzetti 12:08
First of all, what’s important is that every company needs to experiment and see what works for your team. So there’s no like good or bad. But there are certain practices, right? I think that metaphors work really well. So we use one check in that is what was the weather like for you the past week? So basically, was it Sunny, foggy, rainy, and windy, whatever. Yeah, or a mix of both. First that allows people to connect with your emotions without having to talk about emotions. Some people, I have engineers that say, Hey, I don’t have emotions. Well, that’s a separate conversation. And also, it removes the touchy feely that some people resist, right? In the case of the weather, what’s really good for people is that also connects that our change and our mood and the way we feel changes. And that’s also a good reminder that it’s not, we cannot expect to have a sunny day, every day, right?
Sue Bethanis 13:09
I love that
Gustavo Razzetti 13:12
There’s other check ins that we do this a basically a silence. So basically, I allow people to have one or two minutes of silence, no one talks. And it’s just to settle down because one of the purposes of check ins is to transition from as you mentioned, at the very beginning, I had a call with a client, so you need some time to maybe capture notes from that call or maybe it was good to celebrate the moment if it was a tough call to
Sue Bethanis 13:39
clear my space. Plenty to do yes. Right. Yeah, that’s true. It’s true. I think that the check in serves the purpose of transition. Because what was we obviously we found out what Zoom is this, like, there was no breaks, people are just going from one call to the other. And at least, you know, when we were in offices, we could walk from one place to another so we’re getting some exercise. We’re getting a break. We might talk to somebody on the way there was some lingering so that went away. So that’s why the check in serves a lot of purposes but I love the idea of silence, I love the idea of weather, what others do you want to share?
Gustavo Razzetti 14:18
There’s others you see like a thermometer basically or like a battery as an image to see. How’s your battery, is it charged? Is it empty? Charging is empty. Yeah, metaphors for people to talk about how are they doing this addresses topics from workload, burnout, emotions, or maybe they’re upset or there’s some friction within the team members. And you can know when you see that thermometer like finally is about to explode because so, it’s a good point. But once again, it’s about transitioning from one state to the other. So we can put aside what was worrying us and we can focus on the meeting.
Sue Bethanis 15:00
Well, I just said, I love these metaphors. And I love the idea of a check in. So I interrupted you. So I want you to keep going. So you talked about there’s other ways to think about belonging and connection. So keep going.
Gustavo Razzetti 15:09
No, you didn’t interrupt. Let’s chat. That’s what we’re here for. Yeah. So another thing that we use for belonging that’s really, really good. It’s, we create like a tool, a canvas that’s called washing instructions, the same way that your clothes come without labor. Indicates how do you want to be treated. You want team members to tell people how they want to be treated. Because we usually assume that hey, I’m going to show people how I like but people are different
Sue Bethanis 15:40
diamond method, I love it.
Gustavo Razzetti 15:44
Basically captured the do’s and don’ts, communication preferences, are you a night owl or a early riser? Different type of stuff to make sure people can engage. How can people engage with you? What are the topics they can reach out to you for help?
Sue Bethanis 16:03
What are you good at?
Gustavo Razzetti 16:04
What are you good at? I don’t think that’s important is because we will say, Well, if we only capture people’s preferences, this is going to create like a tension or it’s like, and that’s not the purpose first week to understand our clicks and then we need to start finding some common grounds, okay. You like to work 6am, I’d like to work at 10pm. We know. And then we need to find some collaboration time and stuff, too. So it’s a good starting point, to understand your colleagues and then find ways in which we can complement each other.
Sue Bethanis 16:36
Well, and also in that situation, especially with global teams is like, you know, somebody who’s raising really early on the west coast will complement somebody on the East Coast pretty well. So it’s good to know, it’s good to know that stuff. Yeah, I love that. Okay. Anything else you want to add as far as the belonging as connection sort of throwing them together?
Gustavo Razzetti 16:53
No, I think those are the most important just to get started. Like, there are tools that will, there are many other tools, and we can share with the audience later. But in the end, whatever you use it’s important that is meaningful. So don’t try to find fun activities. No, I think that it’s, I don’t have any issue with fun, but I think that many leaders miss the point, just hey, let’s do something to connect with people and people who Oh, another, like, memory game. Yeah, but tell the story that you don’t have I mean, groups by interest, like different interests work really well. So a lot of companies have created, like, for example, reading, like book clubs, or music groups in Slack, or sports groups, so people can stay connected with your colleagues around a passion. So it’s not something that your boss defines or defined, but actually, you know, people generate different types of groups, so they can linger and have some informal converse about things that they care about. It doesn’t matter if they’re work related or not.
Sue Bethanis 17:56
Right? One of the things that my client, one of my clients, at the very beginning of the pandemic talked about, that I have spread the news about is this idea of lingering and, you know, to me, this is the biggest issue with pandemic not being able to go in the office because you know, don’t have the watercooler, you’re not walking from me to meeting, what he did is he is, you know, he has his meeting is meeting and then he’ll actually pick somebody to call, right away, on the team, so that he could linger with that person on the phone, at the least he would text somebody. So he was trying to demonstrate this idea of continuing that connection. Besides, instead of just like, moving from one thing to the other. So because you end up having like, eight transitions, that are kind of harsh, in a way. So in this case, you know, he actually would end meetings early and then linger with somebody. So what are some ideas around that, this idea of lingering, that you’ve seen?
Gustavo Razzetti 18:57
One thing that works really well is when people for example, have these virtual coffees, there are some companies that have some tools that pair people, having like buddy systems in place also helps a lot. Some people use buddy systems to immerse people into the culture. So when you’re new, they assign a buddy, that’s going to help you get acquainted with the culture. But we will be working with what we call like success buddies before the pandemic and having those relationships work really well having What’s your go to person when you’re stressed out, lost, or whatever type of help you need. So there’s someone within the company, one on ones, I mean, the managers that have been able to have a one on ones on a weekly basis with their team members thrive. And those should be optional. So put it on the calendar, if there’s something that you want to discuss, do it, if not, skip it and see you next week. One of the teams I interview for my book was from Fannie Mae, this government probably boring company, they scale of the mortgages, but they practice a couple of interesting rituals. And one of the things they do within one of their teams is that people go for a walk. And they take their pets for a walk. And they use that time to connect to talk about personal stories, what’s going on, and then maybe discuss issues in a very informal setting. And they were in a different state or city, but they’re still connected. And they allow people to do that stuff.
Sue Bethanis 20:30
Just for like a team meeting? Everyone’s just gonna walk when the team’s meeting? Got it, yeah, yeah, we really advocate that too. In fact, yesterday, one of my clients said, Hey, can I just call you on the phone? I’m gonna take a walk, I’m like, Yes, please, because she hadn’t had a break the whole day. So she went outside, you know, it’s like, I totally encourage her to do that. And I’ve actually encouraged executives to do that with their teams, individual, like, you may not be able to with a customer or, you know, a peer or whatever. But with their team members, it might might be better. So that’s great. Okay, I want to stop right now, we definitely have some people on the call here. And you’re welcome to ask a question or make a comment. So basically, we focused on culture and connection and belonging, we’re going to then move on to collaboration and communication and hybrid, especially with global teams. So we’re going to move to that. But anybody want to make a comment? Or ask a question of Gustavo? Hey, Michael.
Michael 21:21
I appreciate both of you and leading changes. So we’re, I’m both an entrepreneur, and we have a platform that helps people transform so forth. But we also have a thought leadership group pretty, pretty good one I think very diverse group of people. And we are on this subject, too. And we really appreciate trying to explore it. And I think part of it is, to me keeping it simple, right? What is some of the norms and, and some of the rules that you guys can collectively put together that basically allow people to understand, well, this is kind of what we do in order to make things happen, right. And, and so I think part of what gets lost if we try too hard of a longing or too hard connecting, it doesn’t feel authentic, right, it doesn’t feel genuine. And I think that emotional connection of really connecting on an emotional level without trying but just really being authentic. You know, when you’re connecting, right? I think we do, right? Isn’t that true? And so
Sue Bethanis 22:21
Well i think intuitively yes, we hopefully are.
Michael 22:25
Yeah. And so, you know, we do our whole development team and everything is remote. But are we friends? Yeah. And why are we? Because we naturally just talk to each other, like, we’re in the same room. And we don’t know what’s going on. And we don’t spend a lot of time overdoing it. In other words, we don’t overdo it to make sure that Oh, yes, we’re connecting, you know, I checked it off today, I check connected I connect today. Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s why it’s so so important. And then you can have one on ones, and so forth when you want to do it. But my part of my concern is that we’re in this redoing the culture, there’s too much left brain, you know, trying to weigh in and sort of allow And so anyway, I just like to get your observations on that.
Gustavo Razzetti 23:07
No, I think that a the key word that you just nailed Michael, it for me, it’s authenticity. And I think that once again, what we want to do is to find what’s the secret recipe, the silver bullet, and they tend to copy what other companies are doing, rather than find that something that’s going to work for them. I agree with you that people are still struggling with, well, this is remote for me. I mean, I work with people from all over the world for many decades. And they have a lot of people that our friends and we never met in person, because when we’re talking like this, we’re not saying hey, the for example, many people still say, Hey, nice to virtually meet you we need to get rid of those stupid things. I always said that there’s a fantasy, that proximity guarantees connection, and I use an example that some people take it not necessarily good, but I’m gonna share it, which is how many couples so marriages? Have you seen that yeah, they been sharing the same space, sleeping on the same bed under the same roof for decades. But there’s no magic, there’s no connection. So we need to get let go of that things are going to happen organically or just because if we put people in the same room, they’re going to love each other. That’s not going to happen, I think that we need the people do. And lastly, it’s important that we mold people so when leaders try to go back to the left brain, try to re engineer everything and make it too much structure, then people are going to resist it. We are much about involving people in the process. Let people figure it out, rather than having a top down approach to how to be human being.
Michael 24:49
Yeah, so back to your point, and I won’t keep going on here. But you’re absolutely right. I mean, how many relationships break up, either families or relationships. I mean, we’re not all that great it, right. So one of the tricks is listening, and just acknowledging without reacting to whatever the person needs to say, and just, you know, connecting again in a genuine way, not mechanically. And so, you know, I think that’s part of what I see. And we, you’re right about these meetings after meetings and meetings. Well, at some point, somebody should say, Well, what’s our norm is our norm to have meetings, after meetings, after meetings? And why are we having all these meetings? Right? And instead, you know, maybe how do we get the best work done? And what if you empower people? And so we have one of our things, just to share this, again, is that equal voice. So I have a tip reinforcing that no matter what equal voice, so you gotta voice you have want to say something that’s really important. We want to hear it. And then you really do want to hear it. You can’t just say it right. So anyway, but I really like your platform that you got Gustavo. I think the transformational thing, I think that’s a good mechanical, and I don’t know if you’re gonna get into that at all, but I saw it on your when you guys advertise this event, that’s what attracted me to come.
Sue Bethanis 26:04
Thank you, Michael. Susan. Hi.
Susan 26:06
Hi Sue. So, you know, I work with a lot of professional service firms, Gustavo, and, you know, architects, engineers, who design our built environment. And the way their process works is either young folks come up in their learning process by being, at least traditionally, in the same space, as the more experienced folks and the more experienced folks, just kind of by virtue of being co located and wandering around the same space notice when somebody is struggling with something, or working on something, and needs some coaching and whatever. So and that’s just one scenario of mentoring coaching, what my clients are saying they’re struggling a little bit with the culture. And I, you know, I appreciate everything you’re saying about that. But I think the really core thing they’re upset about is that coaching and mentoring, they can’t somehow reclaim the informal circumstances in which it occurs when people are in the same office. Yeah. So I wonder if you have some thoughts about that.
Sue Bethanis 27:25
Yeah. That’s a great question, Susan.
Gustavo Razzetti 27:27
Yeah, I’m thinking because it’s a very difficult question. I don’t think there’s a solution to that. I think there are two things. First of all, there are some things that when they happen in person, they’re better than when they have been, remotely. And there’s some things that wouldn’t happen in real time, or better than when they happen asynchronously. Right? So if we have that, I always like to think of this like a design challenge. Usually when we have a constraint, people resist it. But for example, when you have a budget or a time constraint, whatever resource constrained, you need to start thinking differently. So I think that my invitation I work with lots of companies that are in that same actually my wife is an architect, so I know. Okay, the feel and I worked over two decades in design and marketing and running advertising firms across the world. So I know how that works. But I have people that have been able that forever, they resisted if one person from the team wanted to work partially remote, they say no, that’s not going to work. And now they’re running a design firm with all the people remote. So I think that I’m not trying to say move from one to the other. What I’m seeing is, first of all, ask the question, how can we make it happen? I think that people are emphasizing that it’s not working the way used to it feels more like a complaint more that we are attached to. But Hello, at some point, people didn’t have email and when email came, people resist it. And then when the web came, so there were a lot of changes that happen in human existence that we resisted until we started thinking differently. So I think that’s the most important. So the question will be, how can we still create those mentorship opportunities despite being there.
Unknown Speaker 29:13
I love that you use the word we. Because I think, you know, maybe something that isn’t happening enough is that the people being coached and mentored aren’t necessarily being consulted, about how it could work for them. In other words, the more senior people are sitting there thinking, Oh my God, how do I redesign the process? How can I fix this, you know, but are they really engaging the folks who would be on the receiving end and figuring it out together? And I think what you said catalyzed me to think that and so I appreciate that because Gustavo, thank you.
Gustavo Razzetti 29:54
No problem. There are some things that for example, we started explaining with certain clients one is, and it feels like weird but imagine I’m going to be working doing it for hours, like, on my own because I have to do some deep work, let’s say I’m going to be designing something. So I don’t need any interruptions. However, I’m going to be working like this on Zoom, I’m on my own and designing no one’s there. But if someone wants to join, and observe me, when I’m working and see my process, they can do that. So that’s an interesting, kind of,
Sue Bethanis 30:30
like an open office. Just, it’s just open, you have zoom on all the time.
Gustavo Razzetti 30:36
Yeah, but it’s less like an office that we structure a meeting. It’s more like, hey, whenever you want to see what I’m doing, look at it. And if you want to drop in,
Sue Bethanis 30:45
yeah.
Gustavo Razzetti 30:46
So basically provding the observation, which is what you get in the office. Another thing that it’s really good is to understand that we’re not talking about either fully in the office or fully from home. It’s create spaces in which the team gets and use those for a mentoring for coaching. And as Michael was saying, that involve the team and how they want that experience to happen. Don’t do the today is coaching day, come in to the office, because it’s gonna be
Sue Bethanis 31:13
right, that’s not gonna work.
Susan 31:16
Well, thank you.
Sue Bethanis 31:18
Thanks Susan. I just want to add that my word that I continue to use is intentionality. And I think that we have to be more intentional about these more informal moments, and you have to, like be intentional about informality, which is kind of like seems like an oxymoron. But we have to be intentional about creating those mentorships. So yeah, someone’s gonna have to initiate like, can I get on your calendar once a week to talk about design or, you know, it used to be that you’re a designer, so you know, like, it used to be that designers would get together, I call it with a designer, like every Friday, at one o’clock, there was design team would get together and there would be critique, critique. And if you’re talking about industrial design, or product design, or graphic design, it’s hard to do that, you know, online, it just is. So it’s possible to have people come in on, let’s say, Wednesdays, and Fridays are probably good day to do it. But maybe you have design day on and feedback day on Friday, on Wednesdays, so that you do have a day that people come in. So they can do that. So I know you’re gonna we’re gonna get into this asynchronous and synchronous communication. But I think that’s one example. But it has to be intentional. So like, I have a client who just got a new job. And I said, Hey, are they requiring you to come in? And yes, they have to, you know, three days. And I said, Well, what about your team? He said, Well, it’s not a requirement. I said, What if what you’re going to do is, well, I think I’m gonna have them come in on Wednesdays, and he’s gonna start doing that. But he’s just starting, so he’s not gonna do it yet. But I actually do think it’s important that its not a free for all, that there is a day that everybody if you’re going to have a day that have already have everybody come in on the same day, on a team, so that there is a chance, it’s like, there’s more chance for these informalities that can happen. So they have to be planned. They do. That’s my belief about it. I want you to spend some time on this, this collaboration and communication and hybrid, especially with global. Well, I don’t think it matters if it’s global teams or not. It’s like, every team is a global team now. And I think one thing is important, especially for people who are going to be listening to this, it’s like Gustavo and I, we were in global teams, if you will, or working with clients globally, whether they’re down the street, remotely down the street, or across the world, we’ve had a lot of practice on this. And I think that that’s part of what happened three years ago, is that people hadn’t had a lot of practice. They’re much more practice now. So hopefully, people are better at doing this remote thing now, and then weren’t used to it because it takes practice. You know, it’s not something that’s normal. So I just wanted to point that out. I think that’s something like you can’t just expect people to all of a sudden become really good at remote learning, or remote communication. Or asynchronous, I should say or synchronous, either one. Alright, so I want you to talk a little about your frameworks around collaboration with the synchronous and asynchronous and how you kind of balance those.
Gustavo Razzetti 34:27
Absolutely. The first thing that we want to challenge this idea of collaboration, because we’ve been hearing from leaders, I want my team to collaborate more, collaborate more, simply say we need to drive hyper collaboration. So there’s an obsession about collaboration, especially that collaboration for many people believe it’s people in the same room all working together. And that’s chaotic because if you’re always in the same room, virtual or physical with other people, you never have time to think, you don’t have time to learn, you know, time to read, you don’t have time to do research and other stuff. So I think that what’s important is collaboration is not always at least real time all together, it’s not always the solution. And actually, there are a lot of research that shows that sometimes the cost of collaboration, it’s bigger than actually the outcome that collaboration drives, many times it gets them stuck. You’re narrowly challenged to collaborate within your team, but also cross collaboration with different functions, different markets, or products and areas and so on and so forth. So it becomes really complicated. So the framework I present is our understanding, there are two types of work that teams need to do, and individual’s need to, some is a shallow work, now day to day stuff minutia, sending emails, chit chatting with people like reading some stuff to get my work, sending an update. And there’s there’s deep work like designing something, creating something, coming up with a proposal, writing a recommendation making a decision. So the reality is, most of the teams spent 70% of their time doing shallow work, basically jumping from one thing to another being distracted, and only around 30%, doing the work. We should aim for the other way around, the majority of team members should be doing work that actually is going to move the needle, and it’s going to be focused. There’s a lot of research that shows that we’re interrupted everyday constantly. But also, it takes around two hours per day that we waste because we need to switch from one thing to another. So our brain is not working. Now the this idea that, hey, we can multitask. But actually we can’t. So we need to rethink how we collaborate, we’ll spend deep work, deep work could happen at an individual level, it could also happen at a team level. So to your point, it’s better to have people five days in a row in a room working as hard and crush a project than maybe show up one day or half day per week.
Sue Bethanis 37:07
if they’re working on a project for sure, yeah.
Gustavo Razzetti 37:09
What are you trying to accomplish? And then define what’s the mode? So rather than define, let me reframe this, we’re letting the skill define how we work rather than the type of project definine our work.
Sue Bethanis 37:25
That’s awesome. That’s so great. Um, this is sort of an offshoot of what you just said, this 30 70% is really, it makes a lot of sense. It’s super interesting. It seems to me that, there should have been a silver lining, to going to zoom in the the deep work, because deep work does require oftentimes some silence. The creative works without distractibility. So it seems to me that people who are disciplined about blocking their calendar out that they should have, it’s possible that they could be more productive. Being at home. What do you think about that?
Gustavo Razzetti 38:10
Yeah, absolutely. I think we talk a lot about productivity, but one of the biggest enemies of productivity is other people. So in order for you to be productive, you need to be in charge of how you spend your time. However, in real life, what happens is other people, basically they see, hey, there’s a opening there, boom, I’m gonna send you an invite I see this. So people are managing our calendars, our clients, our colleagues, our leaders are determined how we work rather than us having control of that, as Michael said, when he said that this was the year that fair participation and exactly the language, equal voice. Equal voice also means that at some point, well, I’m not going to join that meeting, I have to take care of some work, and I need to be focused, so sorry, I’m gonna pass. Giving people control of their own agency.
Sue Bethanis 39:07
That’s the key word, their agency. I love that. So what do you do to help? How are you helping teams go from 70/30 to 30/70? How you can help them to do that.
Gustavo Razzetti 39:21
First, I like the think how you frame the question. So it’s a journey. So the jump from one, maybe some things are never going to get to the ideal state, or maybe their work is never going to demand that mix. That’s more of a rule of thumb. Even though we talk these with different teams, right? I think the most important thing is understanding in a rather than focus on how I do more deep work is how I stopped doing work that is meaningless. And also one of the things that we do is we ask people to list all the things that they do and start to track their time and how they allocate their time and realize what are the things that are stealing time from your life. And, I think that the easiest trick is to remove the things that are getting in the way. If what I want to caution the audience and our clients is don’t jump too extreme. So a couple of weeks ago, lots of companies made the headlines. One was Shopify, because they say, Hey, we eliminate all meetings. So getting rid of something by force is not going to work. Because in the end, people are gonna get back to you’re not changing. We’re we talk about mindsets, you’re not changing mindsets, you’re forcing our behavior, when people are gonna get back to hear, how do I talk to my colleagues? Well, let’s start with a little meeting.
Sue Bethanis 40:40
so basically, they’re gonna sneak meetings
Gustavo Razzetti 40:42
Exactly. Because we’re tackling the symptom, I think that we need to understand what’s the root cause many times, norms or rules? Well, a presenteeism is a behavior and virtual precedent because people are rewarding, be a being visible over if you perform your job well, if you create a huge impact on the company or not. So we need to start rethinking what reward and punishment systems we have in place that are forcing people to do things that are not productive, for example, showing up in meetings that no one cares about.
Sue Bethanis 41:17
Right, right. Love it. Love it, love it. Well, I have so appreciated our time together, Gustavo, I just want to give the audience one more shot at if you have a question or a comment you’d like to make. Go ahead and you got Michael, what do you got?
Michael 41:33
So I’m gonna give you a 30 second view of what you just talked about. So what if actually, people understood what was in your cup, and what’s in your cup is what you actually do? The work that you perform, and who you benefit. What if you have that data, right? And it was transparent. Everyone else can see what everybody else is doing. The beauty of that is you’re pointing to stuff. So if you if your cup is full, the question is what’s in it, right? And so what needs to get out of it, in order to do something better in it. And if you have that dialogue, and you set some rules around that. And again, it doesn’t matter who you are what you do, if you have the same basic process, then basically now you’ve lubricated the system. And that’s, that’s the direction that we will people go. So anyway, I really enjoyed you guys today. And some more than take care a little hug to you guys. And let’s have a good day.
Gustavo Razzetti 42:31
Thank you. I love the example. I would like to add that, that’s great what you said I think that leads us straight to enlarge the can try. But they don’t understand the can is feeling. There’s so much work we can do in a day before we burn out. So to your point, we need to start monitoring, what are we putting inside the can? And if we want to add more, something else need to go.
Michael 42:52
Exactly. And that’s where you get this work life balance. So it was a fun topic. Let’s reach out, thank you guys.
Sue Bethanis 43:01
thanks. Anyone else?
Janet 43:07
Hi, Sue. So I’m thinking of how to phrase this question in, in person organizations, and this I mean, it happens virtually, it happens in person. But there is a tendency for people to accumulate in tribes. And for particularly those people who historically have had power in an organization to have their own kind of clique where they talk with each other more, they share more ideas with each other. And then when you go virtual, that becomes even more opaque to the people who are on the outside of that insider group. Because how do they know who to reach out with? How do they know what kind of information is being shared? So how do you kind of balance that dynamic and make sure that when people are distributed virtually everybody is getting included in the conversation?
Gustavo Razzetti 44:10
Yeah, my question would be, do you think that the tribes were inclusive to start with, I think that in the workplace was divided, we talk about a lot about water cooler conversations. There’s no connection between water cooler conversations and positive impacts in things like creativity or innovation, whatever. However, there’s a lot of research that shows that many water cooler conversations were used to criticize people who weren’t in there to have conversations that were in there and also think that the tribe, the tribal aspect of a team has always liked this balance, which is good about their tribes that are positive people that like each other that are under tribes that are really exclusive, that basically don’t share information they meet without. Those tribes existed in physical spaces, so I think that I think technology allows for more transparency. If you agree how you’re going to share information, how decisions are going to be made, for example, there are companies that have adopted this to make it a handbooks. And when they have to make a decision, rather have a meeting, they do it a synchronous, and the decision is in a light, it doesn’t have to be Wikipedia in a light document in which anyone can say, hey, this is what’s going on with the company. These are the challenges. This is what I’m, for example, the leader can say, I’m exploring option A, B and C, what do you think? And anyone not only can chime in as questions, provokes ideas, but also they can read what everyone else is doing. And how is that. Another thing that is important is clarifying decision making processes, so people are clear, who has the last call when people are consulted or should be consulted, and make sure that those happens. So when you codify your decision making process that allows for a lot of transparency, to make sure regardless if you’re working in person, remotely or hybrid that people are left out of those critical conversations.
Sue Bethanis 46:10
Do you have a follow?
Janet 46:13
Yeah, I mean, I absolutely agree that there are aspects of virtual that are actually superior to in person, because of that kind of transparency to make sure that there’s a process around decision making. I do think that there is an aspect of virtual where there is the opportunity to just serendipitously run across somebody and talk to them, and build rapport and check in with them, that tends to be more difficult in a virtual environment. And that the people who feel most comfortable in the dominant group are most likely to reach out just kind of casually in a virtual environment. Whereas if you’re in a in person environment, and you past somebody in the hallway, or you’re in the cafeteria, there can be these kinds of spontaneous conversations that don’t so much happen in a virtual world. So I do think there’s still an issue around that maybe it exists in the in the in person world, but I think that it can get amplified in the virtual world.
Sue Bethanis 47:32
Right. That’s what I was gonna say is, I was gonna use the word amplification. So thank you. I was talking to a client yesterday about how she feels in the outs, she actually use that word. She didn’t feel like she says, I’m not in the I’m not in the inner circle. And she should be in the inner circle. And it’s like, how does somebody who’s not in it, who doesn’t feel like she’s an inner circle do that virtually? It’s so much harder to get in to get in the in? And to like, how do you do that? Like, you could you could say, alright, well, hey, would you like to go out to dinner? Or would you like to have like a virtual coffee? Like, No, you’re not gonna go for a virtual coffee. So I think that whatever it was before, in terms of power dynamics, it’s just worse. So to influence it’s just, it’s much as we always was already hard to influence. Now it’s even harder because you have this like, what are you gonna do like so that’s why I think the lingering like after meeting and hey, so the person that’s trying to be in the house, the person that wants to be in the in group if you will, or whatever, or it doesn’t even matter influence. You have to like initiate Hey, can I catch up on the final call?
Janet 48:40
And should be sensitizing leaders to being very aware of how they’re proportioning that time.
Sue Bethanis 48:47
Totally, totally. So um, this is getting be juicy but we gotta go. Bummer. Yeah, we can linger after this talk about it. So Gustavo, thanks again for giving your time. It’s really nice of you to do that. And and I know you’re busy and you’re doing your book and everything. So I do appreciate this a lot. I just want to tell everybody, Gustavo Razzetti – GustavoRazzetti.com And also fearlessculture.design. And on LinkedIn of course. And the book Remote, Not Distant love that title, design a company culture that will help you thrive in a hybrid workplace. Thank you again, Gustavo.
Gustavo Razzetti 49:39
Thank you. Bye.
Sue Bethanis 49:41
Bye.