What leaders are getting wrong about return-to-office (from Rapid Response)

Summary

Fixable (TED): “What Leaders Are Getting Wrong About Return-to-Office”

Release date: February 20, 2025
Guests: Frances Frei (Harvard Business School professor, Fixable co-host)
Host: Bob Safian (Rapid Response)

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Episode Overview

This episode features Frances Frei, an influential Harvard Business School professor and leadership coach, in conversation with Bob Safian. The pair dive deeply into the current wave of return-to-office (RTO) mandates, scrutinizing leaders’ motivations, the (lack of) supporting evidence, and the consequences on performance and culture. They also cover the integration of AI in workplace processes and share practical advice for more effective meetings.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Real Drivers Behind RTO Mandates

Timestamps: 02:00–08:50

• Personal Preference vs. Business Outcomes
  • Frances Frei dispels the myth that RTO bolsters performance, arguing that leaders pushing these mandates are often motivated by nostalgia and personal comfort, rather than operational data.
    • Quote:

      “People of a certain age, of a certain income bracket, all uniformly really like to see people when they're at work. ... There is no evidence to support that it leads to better results.” – Frances Frei (04:58)

  • Employees overwhelmingly value flexibility; evidence indicates productivity does not decrease—and may even increase—with hybrid models.
  • RTO calls are typically coming from a narrow demographic in leadership—senior, older, and accustomed to traditional office presence.

2. Mismatch Between RTO Claims and Data

Timestamps: 06:07–10:52

• No Measurable Performance Benefit
  • Research and real-world results contradict “culture” justifications for increased office presence—moving from three to five required days often reduces engagement and job satisfaction, without improving key business metrics.
    • Quote:

      “If you look at all of the evidence in all of the academic research, I don't think there is any like not a single study that says unequivocally return to office helps.” – Frances Frei (06:07)

  • CEOs often avoid discussing the real (emotional) reasons for their mandates, even when shown company-specific data.

3. Consequences of Blunt RTO Policies

Timestamps: 08:50–12:14

• Unintended Talent Drain
  • Top performers—those most able to leave—are the first to exit in response to rigid RTO mandates. Early adopters of strict policies now see unwanted departures and stagnant or declining productivity/engagement.
    • Quote:

      “The research suggests that the best employees are the ones that are leaving. ... If they're not thinking, ‘This too shall pass,’ they're going to go to a CEO who cares more about performance than nostalgia.” – Frances Frei (09:55, 11:27)

  • Frances expects the pendulum will swing back toward flexibility as organizations digest these talent losses.

4. RTO, Politics, and Equity Considerations

Timestamps: 13:15–17:37

• Workforce Stratification
  • Government policy, such as the federal RTO order, may signal alignment with workers who cannot do remote work, but the parallel with certain CEOs’ policies is conspicuous.
  • Some leaders admit privately to using RTO as a means of workforce reduction without formal layoffs—blind to the fact that the most talented, mobile employees are likely to leave first.
    • Quote:

      “People who had an emotional reaction to DEI ... have an emotional reaction to hybrid work, and they want it to go away. ... The market weeds out emotional responses over performance. Performance will win ultimately, but it’s going to be bumpy along the way.” – Frances Frei (16:04)

  • While there's no conspiracy to target women or DEI initiatives, there is emotional overlap in leader resistance to both.

5. Evidence-Based Policy & Adaptation

Timestamps: 17:01–18:50

• Rigor and Kindness in Change
  • Frances emphasizes the need for evidence-based decisions—if data show a need for more office presence, leaders must communicate and implement changes with thoughtfulness, preserving trust and dignity.
    • Quote:

      “Do it with dignity. ... None of us should be pouring liquid cement on our policies. We should stay very adaptable.” – Frances Frei (17:52)

6. AI’s Transformative Impact on the Workplace

Timestamps: 19:02–22:45

• AI as a Game-Changer
  • The adoption of AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT) is already revolutionizing how work is done—improving research, troubleshooting, and ensuring continuous productivity.
    • Quote:

      “I use ChatGPT all day, every day. ... I have yet to ask it a question that it has not been helpful for. ... It increases quality and it reduces time.” – Frances Frei (19:13, 21:52)

  • Frances sees AI as the bigger driver of performance improvement versus RTO policies; soon, AI adoption will be ubiquitous, raising the overall bar but erasing outsized, early-mover advantages.

7. Meeting Culture: Where Major Gains Are Hiding

Timestamps: 23:02–27:43

• Reducing and Improving Meeting Time
  • Most organizations can cut meeting time by 50% while improving outcomes through better design and selective attendance (“judicious about who comes, ... live or asynchronously”).
    • Quote:

      “Audio is better than video. Listen to it at one-and-a-half speed while you’re in motion—you will retain more than the people who were there live.” – Frances Frei (25:05)

  • Meetings should have a clear purpose and agenda, with leaders empowered to end meetings as soon as goals are met (i.e., “declare victory”).
  • Encourage and welcome alternative views to create higher-quality decisions.
    • Quote:

      “If a meeting doesn’t have an agenda, there’s a pretty low ceiling on how effective it can be.” – Frances Frei (25:42) “We retain more information when we are moving than if we’re sitting still.” – Frances Frei (27:01)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the RTO push (02:53, 04:58):
  Frances: “Otherwise rational people, otherwise performance oriented people ... just, this is like a third rail. We get down to it, they're like, 'I just don't like it.'”
• On performance (10:22):
  Frances: “The only person who can push something like this through is an emotional CEO.”
• On leadership mindsets (12:23):
  Frances: “It’s conspicuous from an outside person that so many are picking something, at this moment in time when performance matters so much, that they’re taking their personal preference over the company’s performance.”
• On adaptability (17:52):
  Frances: “None of us should be pouring liquid cement on our policies. We should stay very adaptable.”
• On AI’s disruption (19:13):
  Frances: “We have—in my lifetime, we've never seen anything like this ... I use ChatGPT all day, every day.”
• On meetings (25:05):
  Frances: “Audio is better than video. Listen to it at 1.5x speed while you’re in motion. You will retain more of what happened than the people that were there live.”

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Key Takeaways

• Return-to-office mandates are driven mainly by leader emotion, not by data or performance outcomes.
• Rigid RTO policies damage employee engagement and spur the departure of top performers while failing to improve results.
• Leaders must check their own biases, trust their data, and stay flexible.
• AI tools are a seismic force reshaping work, promising much greater performance impact than RTO debates.
• Rethinking meeting norms—making them shorter, agenda-based, with selective attendance—can save time and improve results.

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Useful Timestamps

| Segment Topic | Timestamp | |--------------------------------------------|---------------| | RTO leader motivations & lack of evidence | 02:00–06:07 | | “Office culture” myths | 07:01–08:05 | | Who's leaving in response to RTO | 08:50–10:52 | | Policy, equity, and DEI connections | 13:15–17:01 | | Using data and adaptability | 17:01–18:50 | | AI’s disruption and workplace benefits | 19:02–22:45 | | Transforming meetings | 23:02–27:43 |

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Summary prepared for listeners who want the full story on what leaders are missing about RTO, how AI and better meetings are changing work now, and what evidence-based, agile leadership looks like in today’s world.

Transcript

[Frances Frey]

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[Frances Frey]

Hey it's your host Frances Frey. Today on the Fixable feed we've got something really special for you. I recently sat down with Bob Sofian, former Editor in Chief of Fast Company on his podcast Rapid Response. We had a super interesting conversation about return to office mandates, what's driving them, what leaders aren't saying out loud, and how these mandates are actually impacting performance and culture. Hint, not positive. Stick around to hear our full conversation on Rapid Response. And if you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an update. If you look at all of the evidence, I don't think there Is any like, not a single study that says unequivocally return to office helps.

[Bob Safian]

I know you advise CEOs and business leaders when you raise this with them. What do they say?

[Frances Frey]

I have learned they can't handle it directly. Otherwise rational people, otherwise performance oriented people, they just, this is like a third rail. We get down to it, they're like, I just don't like it. It's just conspicuous that at this moment in time when performance matters so much that they're taking their personal preference over the company's.

[Bob Safian]

That's Frances Frey, professor at Harvard Business School and co host of the TED Media podcast Fixable. We're seeing a sweeping rise in return to office policies from big corporations to the federal government. And I wanted to speak to Francis, who does deep research in just this area to understand why the push for full time return to office is taking hold and the implications for business performance and employee satisfaction. Frances also digs into the coming impact of AI on corporate life over the next year. Plus, if you're like me and overwhelmed by the volume of meetings on your calendar, she shares how we can improve our efficiency and outcome with just a few simple changes. So let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian and this is Rapid Response Foreign. I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Frances Fry, professor at Harvard Business School and co host of the TED Media podcast Fixable Francis. Thanks for joining us.

[Frances Frey]

Oh, so thrilled to be here, Bob. Thank you.

[Bob Safian]

So you're an expert in many things in workplace issues, your research, your podcast, you took a leave to work at Uber as SVP of leadership and strategy to address the workplace culture there. There's so much discussion right now about return to office RTO for federal employees on the corporate level, Amazon, JP Morgan, others calling staff into the office full time. Why is this discussion popped up so much at this moment?

[Frances Frey]

I'll give you my hypothesis, which is that people of a certain age, of a certain income bracket, all uniformly really like to see people when they're at work. They just like it. They're used to it. When they walk around, it just makes them feel better. When the offices are full, it makes them feel like work is going on. And so if you notice who is calling for these rtos, the demographic is super narrow, like by age, by shirt sleeve. I mean, it's, it's incredible. Who wants it? I personally believe it's out of nostalgia and I'll tell you why. There is no evidence to support that it leads to better results. In fact, all of the evidence points in the other direction. So what's amazing to me is these otherwise like pretty brutally performance oriented people are willing to take a performance hit at the altar of their nostalgia.

[Bob Safian]

You've been resisting this idea of this poll that sort of statistically, numerically it's a bad idea. Can you explain that?

[Frances Frey]

There are some places that you might have to do it. If you're serving customers live and they're pulling into the driveway, you gotta be there. Right? But if you look at all of the evidence in all of the academic research, I don't think there is any like not a single study that says unequivocally return to office helps. What it says is employees value flexibility to a startling amount. And then what it also says is that productivity not only does it not go down when you have hybrid work, because that's really what it is. You know, so many of these places we had employees could come in three days a week and now they've changed it to five. The value proposition for the employees just got a lot worse and the value proposition for the firm got no better. It's a super curious thing and every study shows this.

[Bob Safian]

And the idea that being in office all the time strengthens company culture, that's just a myth.

[Frances Frey]

It's silly because again, we're going from three days to five days. What they like to do is say, oh well, compare it to zero days. I know very few companies that had all remote. This is typically a three day to five day thing. And what often happens, the rest of the research shows us, is that when people are there all the time, they come in wearing noise canceling headphones because we didn't give anybody a private office. If you did give them a private office, they shut the door. And then if you don't have a private office, you put on noise canceling headphones so that you can get work done now.

[Bob Safian]

Yeah. Or you can all be on the same zoom together in the same room. Right.

[Frances Frey]

With your laptops up because that's good meeting maintenance. What we're doing is forcing people to be together for activities even when they aren't needed to be co located. What you really want to do is bring people together when it's valuable, but instead they're like, nope, don't be here all the time, whether it helps work or hurts work. And then we start doubting whether or not you're really looking after the best interests of the firm.

[Bob Safian]

Can you give us sort of a snapshot of like what's happening right now? Who's back how often if it's different in different fields.

[Frances Frey]

So most of the headlines are from the CEO who formally said, I care about performance. Employees are telling me that they're going to do better work at three days. Let's test it. And everyone who did it saw engagement go up and performance go up, but they still didn't like it because their sentiment went down. There was a period of like two years where CEOs were grumpy. It was like, oh, like if you got them in private, they just couldn't believe this remote work. Even if they had said, we're a hybrid first location, they all just resented.

[Bob Safian]

It because they're paying for all that extra real estate that they're not using. Or like, what?

[Frances Frey]

I actually don't even think it's that as much as it is that they just want to see people, it just makes them feel better. Now, of course, this flies in the face. Every single international organization in the world. You could only see a subset of the employees in any specific physical geography. But that is just lost. Even the CEOs of international companies, still, they wanted to see people in their location. And so what happened is there were a few first movers and a few big dogs, said, we're going to do it or else. Made their employees furious. The research suggests that the best employees are the ones that are leaving. They feel like tough guys because they stood up to the employees. And then the other people who were resentful, we're like, well, look, we have license to do it. He did it. He's tough. We can do it. And so I think right now they all feel like they're getting away with it. Although the early evidence, when they look at who's leaving and the productivity gains that haven't manifested and the engagement scores that have gone down, the early ones who are willing to look, because most people are just saying, don't tell me. But the ones that are looking are like, oops. So I expect the pendulum to switch back.

[Bob Safian]

They sort of falsely extrapolated that, like, well, if three days is fine, why not five? And there, there are things that they didn't get about that shift from three to five.

[Frances Frey]

Well, yes. So from three days to five days, they thought, I want better performance and this is the way to get better performance. If I said to you, I have a great idea to improve performance, it's going to make my employees less happy and, like, make them less individually productive, even if I don't tell you what my black box idea is, are you going to be psyched to have it happen. The only person who can push something like this through is an emotional CEO.

[Bob Safian]

I mean I could see an argument that like it's better to have one uniform policy for an office as opposed to different rules for different folks. And some jobs may be more effective full time in office, of course. So, so why shouldn't we make it consistent?

[Frances Frey]

We are optimizing on everything except for this blunt instrument. Why are we taking a blunt instrument to our entire employee base? It's not for performance reasons, it's for emotional reasons.

[Bob Safian]

And are there parts of it, I mean obviously about like control, trust, all those things? Sort of.

[Frances Frey]

Well, I think the problem is they reveal that they don't trust their employees and, and they reveal that they are not looking at the data because there's no performance data to support them. And so they reveal two, I think unpleasant things. Which means the employees who have a choice, which are your best employees, they're looking at their CEOs right now. And if they're not thinking, this too shall pass, like my CEO just saw their friend do it and now they're doing it. But you know, we just gotta grin and bear it and it will change. But if they're like, oh my gosh, my CEO really feels like they believe this, I'm going to go to a CEO who cares more about performance than this, who wants to win and is not going to indulge their emotions at the expense of our performance.

[Bob Safian]

I know you consult with advise CEOs and business leaders when you raise this with them. What do they say?

[Frances Frey]

This is one of the few issues. So I'm a very direct person and I have learned they can't handle it directly. So this is an issue where you gotta come at it at the side. But even then, otherwise rational people, otherwise performance oriented people, they just, this is like a third rail. They just say, I just, when I, we get down to it, they're like, I just don't like it. I mean they start with bluster of performance and I'm, and I show them all the data and I'm like, but let's look at the internal data. And then they just admit I just prefer it. And that's of course a fine reason CEOs are allowed to do that. It's just conspicuous from an outside person that so many are picking something at this moment in time when performance matters so much that they're taking their personal preference over the company's performance.

[Bob Safian]

Ah, emotion takes precedence over data. Despite the availability of more information than ever in today's world. Sometimes human impulses carry the day. It's a reminder to all of us to check our assumptions and try to make sure we're clear eyed about decisions. After the break, Frances and I talk about the impact of AI on office life, including how she uses AI as a research assistant, plus her tips on making meetings more meaningful. We'll be right back. Before the break, Harvard Business School professor Frances Fry deconstructed why full time return to office office is in vogue despite data contradicting it. Now Frances explores how return to office relates to the war on dei, the impact of AI on corporate life, and making the most of your meeting time. Let's jump back in. When President Trump signed his executive order requiring federal workers to be in person five days a week, I wondered how much of that sort of decision was about signaling support for those who don't have the option of working remote. You know, bus drivers and store clerks and factory workers, you know, people who don't work in offices. It's like we run the risk of creating a two cast work system, right, if, if white collar folks don't do what everybody else does or something.

[Frances Frey]

Look, it's hard to not look at his policy and look at the head of DOGE and look at the policy he implemented at his company. In fact, I, I believe the subject line was a curious subject line and identical for both the government and for his organization. And so if you wanted to follow the breadcrumbs, I think you can follow the breadcrumbs to the exact same set of CEOs that as they get more and more sway, there is no question this is their preference.

[Bob Safian]

But it's not a political calculation necessarily.

[Frances Frey]

I have no idea what's on the mind of the president. So I don't know what he's doing it for. There are some people who wanted, who have confessed in private that they wanted to have a workforce reduction without having a layoff and that this was a reliable way to do it. Now, when you say back to them, yes, people are going to leave, but you realize it's your best people that are going to leave, right? It's the people with options. That's the part where they're like, oh, I'm not sure it's going to play out that way. Of course it's going to play out that way.

[Bob Safian]

Is there any connection between the RTO wave and the animosity toward DEI initiatives? I mean, you've mentioned on your podcast that women especially value work location flexibility.

[Frances Frey]

I don't believe that this is Like a cynical way to get rid of women. I don't. I don't believe that. I do believe that there were people who had an emotional reaction to DEI and they want it to go away because they felt uncomfortable around it. And they have an emotional reaction to hybrid work, and they want it to go away. And they saw their window. The reason DEI came around is because some people didn't get to participate in a meritocracy. And now there are a different set of people who don't like DEI because they feel like they don't get to participate in a meritocracy. The natural next step is, how do we figure out that everyone gets to participate in a meritocracy? Now, the truth is, if you look at the long arc of time, I love competition. And the market weeds out emotional responses over performance. Performance will win ultimately, but it's going to be bumpy for people along the way as we indulge these emotional responses.

[Bob Safian]

If any of the leaders listening to this think they really need team members back in the office more frequently, like.

[Frances Frey]

Look to the data. I'd say you have a hypothesis that it will be better off. And like every other idea you have for improving performance, look to the data. Go test it like you test everything else. Just bring your everyday rigor to this as well. I don't even think you have to look outside the company. I bet you have data in your own company that will show if you're right. And maybe you do have a context where it matters. Let the data guide you.

[Bob Safian]

And if your organization is fully remote, say, now, and you realize, oh, you know, the data is, I need to bring people in more often than I've been. But in this environment, it's really tricky. Like, it's going to be interpreted in different ways.

[Frances Frey]

I'm not sure. I mean, if you designed a business to be fully remote and now you're finding out that you're not winning in the market the way you did, and now you want to do a test to see if you can do it with a couple of days, I think you do it. Some employees will come with you, some won't. I'm all for winning. Like, that's what I stand for. And if you find that you will win with something else, it is actually your fiduciary responsibility to do it now. Do it with dignity. And so if it's an abrupt change for your employees, you know, but if you have to go from zero days to two days because that's what your customers demand or that's what's needed, you know, do it with kindness in your heart. But none of us should be pouring liquid cement on our policies. We should stay very adaptable.

[Bob Safian]

And any change in this, you're likely to have some fallout with some employees. That shouldn't restrict you from trying something different because maybe there is something that will be more effective for your business.

[Frances Frey]

I don't want to give in to the emotions of some employees. I don't want to give in to the emotions of the CEO. I really want us to be. And I don't mean to sound so crass, but I want us to be ruthlessly performance oriented.

[Bob Safian]

I have to ask you about AI.

[Frances Frey]

Yeah.

[Bob Safian]

And I'm curious what kind of an impact you think AI will have on workplace culture and on all these discussions.

[Frances Frey]

Oh, I. So first of all, I don't know and I don't think anyone else knows. Let me just begin with that. But I will just dream with you about what I'm saying. But we have. In my lifetime, we've never seen anything like this which has the ability to so dramatically change our capacity. I use Chat GPT all day, every day. I have it open in a browser and it is another one of my research assistants. It's never tired. It's infinitely patient. I'm polite to it, it's polite to me. It's a beautiful relationship and I can ask it anything. And it's helpful. Used to be helpful on a quarter of it. Now it's helpful on 40%, then 60%. I am startled at how even questions it wasn't helpful to me from two months ago. It is helpful to me today. I'm editing something in Final Cut Pro and I'm getting this error. Can you guide me on how to troubleshoot it? I just bought a coffee machine. I'm getting this error. Can you guide me through troubleshooting? Like, once you realize it can guide you through troubleshooting on anything, you never have to pick up a manual for anything ever again. So I use it for that kind of clarification that a Google search would have taken an infinite amount of time. I'd literally ask it the questions I have in the language that I have them. That's one set of things. But here's another one. I will be preparing something. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. You know, the company went up here and down there. ChatGPT in the last five years. Can you give me 10 examples of companies that went up here and down there? I'll be like, oh, yeah, those three. Oh, of course, write that fourth one and I'm like, seriously, that one too. Now I treat it like an ra, which is a trust and verify relationship. And that's the relationship I encourage people to have with it, which is with an amazing ra. But you have to go and make sure. But just for how many answers it gives me that if I had perfect recollection and I was always well slept, I would get many, but not all of them. Well, I have yet to stump it completely. It comes back with incomplete things, but I have yet to ask it a question that it has not been helpful for. But it gets increasingly more helpful.

[Bob Safian]

So it is gonna like radically change what we thought of as corporate office life.

[Frances Frey]

Oh my gosh. Corporate office life, education, our relationships with our family members. And if you're not using it directly, you will be interacting with people who are using it directly. It increases quality and it reduces time. This is a pretty breathtaking thing and I don't think we're anywhere near the frontier of it increasing quality and reducing time. Which is why I don't know what it's going to be like because I can't see the curve bending yet. I'm sure it will sometime, but it's not on the horizon. I have.

[Bob Safian]

But you don't expect that like office life is going to go away. Like you're just going to be you with your.

[Frances Frey]

No, we're just going to. We're not going to be like saying, I'll be right back and go do a two hour search. That was a waste of time. And I come back frustrated. The beautiful creativity and all of that stuff is unleashed because it removes the obstacles that would SAP our energy and our time.

[Bob Safian]

When you think about AI, the return to office, things like, do you have a sense about what this will look like in like say a year? Like, are we going to see more reversals from CEOs about return to office, more versions of hybrid work? I don't know.

[Frances Frey]

Well, I mean, if you ask me, like, what's got a stronger coefficient on performance? AI or rto? It's AI. I mean, it's not even close. What you do with AI is going to dwarf any mistakes you make with rto. It really just is. Now that's in the beginning and it's because different companies are adopting to AI at different speeds. At some point, I believe it will certainly be within a year, everyone is going to be using it and you're no longer going to get the disproportionate advantage. Like everyone's lives will have changed I will tell you the thing that's most on my mind today about office work is meetings. My research suggests on average people can spend 50% less time in meetings and have better outcomes. So if you spent 40 hours in meetings this month, we can run our meetings better so that you will spend 20 hours and every single performance measure will be better. So we are off the efficient frontier in meetings and we now have ideas of what's happening. And this is, to me, thrilling. Now AI is going to give you more than a 2x return. So still AI is going to be better, but this is a 2x and we will end up with better decisions, better engagement. Like better, better, better, better.

[Bob Safian]

And you say time in meetings. So not necessarily fewer meetings, but more efficient meetings.

[Frances Frey]

So it's two things. One is we're inviting too many people to our meetings and we're running them ineffectively. So it's being judicious about who comes, and here's a teaser, it's judicious about who comes live because there are lots of ways to consume information. Only one of them is simultaneously live.

[Bob Safian]

I feel like a lot of meetings could be recorded. I could then take that recording and put it through ChatGPT and it could give me a summary of it and I get it all much more efficiently.

[Frances Frey]

Right, here's what we have learned. Audio is better than video. Listen to it at one and a half speed while you're in motion. You will retain more of what happened than the people that were there live. This is magic dust. You can sprinkle it on it, your calendar and you get back 50% of your time. And my only plea is once you sprinkle the magic dust, please don't fill it in with other meetings. Do all of the important things you're supposed to be doing outside of meetings.

[Bob Safian]

And the meetings themselves, when you say they're not sort of as efficient in the way they're run, it's that we're not clear why we're having the meeting or we're not.

[Frances Frey]

Yeah. So there's a few things. Yeah, both. So one is if a meeting doesn't have an agenda, there is a pretty low ceiling on how effective it can be. So we have to have an agenda now for a whole bunch of reasons. But here's one reason that, that people don't always realize I need to know when to declare victory. And what I mean by that is when I get to the third item of the meeting, even if it's a two hour meeting and we're in minute 40 when we're done. Number three, declare victory.

[Bob Safian]

We're done.

[Frances Frey]

Congratulate everyone for how much they helped each other. Give them back the most precious resource you can is their time. But Instead, at minute 40, when we finish that, somebody says, does anyone have anything else? And you have just snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. So that's like the management is problematic. And then we also, in the management things like we don't encourage alternate points of view nearly enough in meetings. So meetings have like a scripted march. And when you are gathering the precious resource of people together, you should be doing it to surface differences. Because if I diverge in order to converge higher, I'm going to get much better outcomes.

[Bob Safian]

There's one other thing you said in passing that I just wanted to double click on. You said, listen to the meetings in audio while you're moving.

[Frances Frey]

Yes. So this is a really fun thing. So we retain more information when we are moving than if we're sitting still. And I have no idea physiologically what's going on. I just know I put you in motion and then I give you a recall test and I have the other person sitting here, the person in motion when they were. They retain more information. And also, by the way, 1x speed is not. We just say listen to it at whatever speed you want. Nobody has their optimal retention at 1x speed. It's always higher. The average is about 1.5x. So which already then instead of me going live for an hour, I can listen to it at 1.5x. I've already saved time there.

[Bob Safian]

Francis, this has been great. Thanks so much for doing it. I really appreciate it.

[Frances Frey]

Oh, Bob, this was a delightful conversation. Thank you.

[Bob Safian]

I like the way Francis combines the prioritizing of business results with an appreciation for the human elements. Whether it's return to office AI or meetings, we need to be informed by both the data and our own tendencies. As Francis explains, there are ways to solve for both. And if you. If you've listened to this episode at 1x speed while sitting at your desk, try it next time at 1.5 speed while you're out walking. Regardless, I hope you find our time together worthwhile. I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening. Rapid response is a. Wait. What? Original. I'm Bob Safian. Our executive producer is Eve Trow. Our producer is Alex Morris. Assistant producer is Masha Makutonina. Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastinelli. Theme music by Ryan Holiday. Our head of podcasts is Lital Malad. For more visit rapidresponseshow.com.

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[Frances Frey]

Yep.

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[Frances Frey]

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[Bob Safian]

Locked in at a great rate for five years. Really?

[Frances Frey]

That's great news. High five everybody. The Comcast Business five year price lock guarantee is back, but only for a limited time. Sign up today. High five ends 92125 for new customers with qualifying bundle. Current customer eligibility varies by service and area. Guarantee rate applies to monthly service charge excluding taxes and fees. Other restrictions apply.