Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well, one thing
Speaker 1: we love trying to figure out is what the world
Speaker 1: is going to look like on the other side of
Speaker 1: this pandemic and when we're actually going to get there.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people trying to figure that
Speaker 1: out right now. Airbnb said last month it's gonna allow
Speaker 1: its employees to work from anywhere. We learned yesterday Goldman
Speaker 1: Sachs is giving unlimited vacations to senior employees. And then
Speaker 1: just today, a few hours ago, we learned from Mark
Speaker 1: German that Apple is delaying it's three day per week
Speaker 1: return to office plant as a result to an uptick
Speaker 1: in COVID cases. Somebody who spends a lot of time
Speaker 1: thinking about all of this the future of work is
Speaker 1: Sheila supermanny In. She's co founder and vice president of
Speaker 1: the Future Forum. It's a research consortium founded by Slack
Speaker 1: that focuses on the future of work. She's also the
Speaker 1: co author of the new book How the Future Works,
Speaker 1: leading flexible teams to do the best work of their lives. Sheila,
Speaker 1: It's good to have you. How are you. Thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. I am doing great. The first thing
Speaker 1: I noticed you're joining us via zoom is that it
Speaker 1: looks like you're joining us from a home office rather
Speaker 1: than from a corporate office. Is that right? Yes? This
Speaker 1: this background, This is not a I'm calling in for
Speaker 1: my basement. Okay, So how does how does one and
Speaker 1: how does an executive lead a team in an environment
Speaker 1: like this, in a world like this to perform the
Speaker 1: best when they're so distributed? Yes? So one thing I
Speaker 1: just want to set the context on is so much
Speaker 1: of the conversation about flexibility is about location. It's about
Speaker 1: where people But what people find more important is actually
Speaker 1: when they work. What we're seeing from our research a
Speaker 1: Future Forum is that employees want flexibility in their schedules
Speaker 1: as well. And so the last couple of years, I've
Speaker 1: really marked a shift in terms of what people's expectations
Speaker 1: for work truly are. And also to your question, how
Speaker 1: executives can lead in this new world? Um, A big
Speaker 1: piece of advice I give executives is that you need
Speaker 1: to lead with trust. So much a performance measurement prior
Speaker 1: to the pandemic was this person the first in and
Speaker 1: the last to lead so they're worthy of a promotion,
Speaker 1: and there often wasn't conversation about the results, the outcomes,
Speaker 1: the impact that that person was making on the organization.
Speaker 1: And so this has been a massive shift for leaders
Speaker 1: to think more about how do you lead a distributed team,
Speaker 1: how do you lead with trust, and ultimately, how do
Speaker 1: you make work work for all types of people rather
Speaker 1: than the select few who benefited prior to the pandemic.
Speaker 1: I love that you brought up the trust factor because
Speaker 1: one of the inventions of the pandemic. I have to say,
Speaker 1: a friend of mine actually introduces to me tim Um
Speaker 1: and Sheila, you'll find this funny as well. But the
Speaker 1: software that like moves your mouth for you if you're
Speaker 1: ever away from your desk, no idea what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Sheila, have you heard about this? Yes,
Speaker 1: And we write about this in the book. It's it's
Speaker 1: monitoring software to ensure that your employees are working when
Speaker 1: they say that they're when you're saying working in air
Speaker 1: quotes right now, yeah, I am saying, but just you know,
Speaker 1: it's just to show that your your online while you're
Speaker 1: actually you know, getting a bite to eat or whatever.
Speaker 1: And basically just moves your cursor for you, so your
Speaker 1: online for for for a hot second. Um. A friend
Speaker 1: of mine told me this and she's like, I'll share
Speaker 1: it with you. And I was like, well, no need,
Speaker 1: I'm in the office there, they'll see if I'm if
Speaker 1: I'm not there, But sheilla, I have to ask you.
Speaker 1: You talk about trust so outside of the mouth software apparently, Um,
Speaker 1: how do you build that kind of trust in an
Speaker 1: environment where so many people are saying the only way
Speaker 1: to learn is shoulder to shoulder, face to face. M Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there are many outdated ways of working that leaders
Speaker 1: have been increasingly relying on. It's being shoulder to shoulder,
Speaker 1: face to face, working between the hours of nine to five,
Speaker 1: being in the office five days a week, and so
Speaker 1: much of the shift that that leaders need to make
Speaker 1: is yes, trust and trusting people to do their work
Speaker 1: on their terms. And one key way to leaders can
Speaker 1: do that is actually by focusing on the outcomes, the
Speaker 1: results that people are producing, rather than this person responded
Speaker 1: to my email in five seconds, so I know that
Speaker 1: they are dedicated employee. We've seen a lot of CEO
Speaker 1: say that people who don't want to come into the
Speaker 1: office they lack hustle or they lack motivation, or commutes
Speaker 1: are not that big of a deal. But over the
Speaker 1: last two years, we've seen productivity measures rise. People have
Speaker 1: actually been able to exceed what people what leaders star
Speaker 1: was ever possible um and they were able to do
Speaker 1: this overnight. And this is thanks to collaboration technology. This
Speaker 1: is thanks to the way that we communicate with one another.
Speaker 1: So leaders need to show what good looks like. They
Speaker 1: need to set expectations on what some of the goals are,
Speaker 1: and they need to empower their employees to do it
Speaker 1: on their terms, rather than continuing to expect them to
Speaker 1: adhere to really outdated norms of professionalism. We're speaking right
Speaker 1: now to Sheila Supermanny, and she's the co founder and
Speaker 1: vice president of Future Forum. It's a research consortium that's
Speaker 1: founded by Slack that focuses on the future of work.
Speaker 1: She's also the co author of the new book it's
Speaker 1: called How the Future Works, Leading flexible teams to do
Speaker 1: the best work of their lives. When we come back,
Speaker 1: I want to hear about case studies when it comes
Speaker 1: to what's working right now. Considering that this is all
Speaker 1: an experiment that's really still relatively new, we're gonna continue
Speaker 1: our conversation with Sheila Sumrani in in just a few minutes.
Speaker 1: We're going to get back and do a really interesting
Speaker 1: conversation here with Sheila. Sheila's Supermannian excuse me, co founder
Speaker 1: and vice president of Future Forum and the co author
Speaker 1: of How the Future Works, leading flexible teams to do
Speaker 1: the best work of their lives. She joins us on
Speaker 1: zoom from Oakland, California. Sheila, we were just talking about
Speaker 1: Apple delaying a plan to have staff in the office
Speaker 1: three days a week, and they specified which three days.
Speaker 1: They said, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Can you explain the
Speaker 1: logic behind that. I can't explain the logic behind what
Speaker 1: Apple's decision was in terms of those specific days, but
Speaker 1: I can't explain some of the backlash we're scene with
Speaker 1: the cards to top down mandates across entire companies. Um
Speaker 1: In our book, we talk a lot about the importance
Speaker 1: of team level agreements, where teams get together and say
Speaker 1: this is how we want to work together. These are
Speaker 1: the days we want to come into the office, either
Speaker 1: quarterly or monthly or weekly, and these are the hours
Speaker 1: where we want to collaborate with one another. And the
Speaker 1: beauty of team level agreements is that it's about the team.
Speaker 1: And with the top down mandates that we're seeing across companies,
Speaker 1: not just intact, but across the board. The challenge there
Speaker 1: is that you're assuming that work is one size fits all,
Speaker 1: that everybody's work is similar. But the work of an
Speaker 1: engineering team is fundamentally different than a work of a marketer.
Speaker 1: And you're also assuming that everybody is located, um within
Speaker 1: driving distance of headquarters or of the nearest office. So
Speaker 1: this is an opportunity for leaders to say, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna build our principles, the purpose behind our flexible work.
Speaker 1: We're gonna encourage some behavioral guard girls, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: empower our team. Leaders are managers to figure out what
Speaker 1: works best for them um. And by doing that, you're
Speaker 1: enabling teams to do their best work on their terms,
Speaker 1: rather than saying this is the only way that people
Speaker 1: can work. Sheila, When I see news like you know,
Speaker 1: Apple requiring their workers to come back three days a week,
Speaker 1: you know, putting that off for now, but we know
Speaker 1: it's inevitable, at least that's what it sounds like from
Speaker 1: the company. Uh. And then I see companies like Airbnb
Speaker 1: Branchski coming out and saying you guys can work from anywhere.
Speaker 1: No granted, okay with an Airbnb. Obviously, the company's talking
Speaker 1: it's book right there, because if it's saying that it
Speaker 1: can be successful with people working from anywhere, then that's
Speaker 1: good for its business because then people, well, you know,
Speaker 1: use airbnb s to go live anywhere and work from anywhere.
Speaker 1: But from a competitive standpoint, how does the company like
Speaker 1: Apple compete with a company like Airbnb when it comes
Speaker 1: to attracting and retaining talent. What we're seeing from the
Speaker 1: research is that flexibility matters. It's it's second only behind
Speaker 1: compensation when determined in job satisfaction. And what's more interesting
Speaker 1: in the context of the Great Resignation or the Great Rethink,
Speaker 1: is how I like to frame it is that employees
Speaker 1: who are not happy with their current levels of flexibility,
Speaker 1: both in terms of where they work and when they work,
Speaker 1: are open to looking for a new job in the
Speaker 1: next year. So it's really critical for for companies, regardless
Speaker 1: of size and brand and compensation to think about flexibility.
Speaker 1: And I said, as I said earlier, it's about trust.
Speaker 1: Employees want to be trusted and they want to have
Speaker 1: the choice in terms of working on their terms. That's
Speaker 1: going to be really important as we move forward into
Speaker 1: this new way of working. Sheila has got to ask
Speaker 1: about the role of women here, because I believe there
Speaker 1: was a stat out that when you had so much
Speaker 1: of the labor force essentially pull out in terms of participation,
Speaker 1: women took the brunt of that because of childcare issues. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think that that goes to serve or goes
Speaker 1: to kind of point out so many issues that have
Speaker 1: to have to do with kind of the role that
Speaker 1: women play. But as they get more and more back
Speaker 1: into the workforce, you see childcare becoming a bigger and
Speaker 1: bigger issue. I remember a conversation and Tim backed me
Speaker 1: up on this order for for lack of better term, Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a conversation ages ago I remember from Chryl
Speaker 1: Sandberg and Emily Chang, a very own from Bloomberg to Technology,
Speaker 1: asked her when you do kind of remote working. Sheryl
Speaker 1: Sandberg was very vocal about wanting to put her kids
Speaker 1: to sleep and um, you know, taking time off between
Speaker 1: five and seven to just spend time with their family.
Speaker 1: And Emily asked her, well, do you log back on
Speaker 1: after they go to sleep at nine ten o'clock and
Speaker 1: she goes, of course we do. Of course I do. Um.
Speaker 1: And so Sheila have to put that that scenario to
Speaker 1: you because you you made a very strong point about
Speaker 1: trusting the work gets done and trusting Um. The flexible
Speaker 1: hours are in fact used. But does it still make
Speaker 1: sense to offer say a late night like nine ten
Speaker 1: o'clock for for people who do still have to do
Speaker 1: child's care for example. Yes, there's a lot in there. Um.
Speaker 1: What we're seeing from our research is that of working
Speaker 1: moms want flexibility and where they work, and that's the
Speaker 1: highest since we began surveying two years ago. Um, there's
Speaker 1: a lot in terms of flexibility and when you work.
Speaker 1: And an example that we've adopted is from Dropbox. They've
Speaker 1: incuraged their teams to have core team working hours, So
Speaker 1: that's chunks in any given day where people come together
Speaker 1: to collaborate, to meet to discuss specific topics, and outside
Speaker 1: of those working hours you're able to do what you
Speaker 1: need to do. For my team, our core team working
Speaker 1: hours are nine am to one pm Monday through Thursday.
Speaker 1: Outside of that time, I dropped my kids off at
Speaker 1: school and sometimes chaperon field trips. I picked them up
Speaker 1: and it's been able to provide a balance that I
Speaker 1: didn't have prior to the pandemic, when I was running
Speaker 1: to commute to the city every single day and coming
Speaker 1: home exhausted. NICKI dinner for everybody and put them to bed.
Speaker 1: It sounds great, seriously, of like of you know, you
Speaker 1: put the consident and then you have to go back
Speaker 1: to work. That's not always the case. Um. And the
Speaker 1: beauty of a non linear work day or flexibility and
Speaker 1: when you work is that people have choice as to
Speaker 1: one works best for them. For some people it's it's
Speaker 1: in the morning, some people it's the middle of the day.
Speaker 1: But at least people have a choice in terms of
Speaker 1: when they're able to do their best focused work. Is
Speaker 1: this I mean, I'm trying to think of what's permanent
Speaker 1: and what's not, Sheila, but it really seems like this
Speaker 1: is a fundamental shift in the way we work and
Speaker 1: it's gonna stick. What do you think? Absolutely, I think
Speaker 1: that we're not going back to how things were um
Speaker 1: back and now leaders need to adapt, They need to
Speaker 1: just they need to be intentional in terms of building
Speaker 1: a new way of working that meets employees needs. What
Speaker 1: is that dangerous? And I'm gonna put my contrarian hat
Speaker 1: on here for a second, because you hear the stories
Speaker 1: from even China, for example, the closed loop system where
Speaker 1: they're spending thirty six hours NonStop working sleeping in um
Speaker 1: you know, the factories or wherever that they work, and
Speaker 1: they're able to say that this is a more efficient system.
Speaker 1: So I have to ask you, if you do have flexibility,
Speaker 1: is efficiency then at risk. I think a big piece
Speaker 1: of this is also like what the guardrails that leaders
Speaker 1: are setting from the top. You can't say, hey, we're flexible,
Speaker 1: just do what you need to do. You need to
Speaker 1: have some level of principles as well as what are
Speaker 1: the behavioral guard grails that we're looking to encourage. And
Speaker 1: a big piece of that is to ensure that people
Speaker 1: don't burn out or they're not working around the PLoP,
Speaker 1: to show that they're always online, are there, committed to
Speaker 1: their jobs, and with figuring out what flexibility of site
Speaker 1: for specific organizations, leaders need to set that tone from
Speaker 1: the top. Like at times Black as an example, we said,
Speaker 1: like you can't come back into the office five days
Speaker 1: a week if you're a senior leader within the organization
Speaker 1: UM Also, you scheduled scent. It's kind of like it's
Speaker 1: kind of like what are what Matt Boyle wrote about
Speaker 1: when it comes to leading by example, when it comes
Speaker 1: down limited vacation. Sheila Subramannian, co founder and vice president
Speaker 1: the Future Forum, also the co author of How the
Speaker 1: Future Works, leading flexible teams to do the best work
Speaker 1: of their lives.