← The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
512. Rethinking the Office: How to Lead Hybrid Teams Effectively
00:54:11
In this episode of The Brainy Business podcast, Melina Palmer welcomes Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts and author of the practical guide on returning to the office. This refreshed episode, originally aired in October 2021,...
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- [00:00]
Melina Palmer
Welcome to episode 512 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy in today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Gleb Sapersky to discuss avoiding disasters when returning to the office. Ready? Let's get started.
- [00:21]
You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast, where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.
- [00:37]
Dr. Gleb Sapersky
Hello. Hello everyone.
- [00:38]
Melina Palmer
My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's refreshed episode originally aired back in October of 2021, and honestly, it's kind of wild that this conversation on Return to the Office Strategies is still so relevant nearly four years later. But that just goes to show real, lasting change takes time, especially when it comes to big foundational shifts like how and where we work. In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Gleb Sipursky, CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts and author of a practical mini book on returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid Teams, as well as several other books. He's been a repeat guest on the.
- [01:23]
Dr. Gleb Sapersky
Podcast and is awesome.
- [01:24]
Melina Palmer
He brings so much, so much value when it comes to navigating change thoughtfully, especially when our brains want to cling to the familiar. Today, we're going to talk through the psychological traps that leaders can fall into, how to create more inclusive policies, and why a thoughtful approach is far better than a reactive one. Whether you're helping shape your organization's hybrid work strategy, weighing job options for yourself, or simply curious about the psychology behind workplace transitions, this conversation is packed with useful, actionable insights. And while we don't dive directly into the topic of meaningful work, this episode sets the perfect foundation for Thursday's conversation, which is why I chose to refresh it today, where I'm going to be joined by Wes Adams and Tamara Miles. We are going to be talking about how leaders can foster meaning in the workplace, whether you're remote in person or somewhere in between. Really quickly. Before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show notes, but for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch, and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 512 now let's talk about avoiding disasters when returning to the office. Dr. Gleb Zypersky welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.
- [02:47]
Dr. Gleb Sapersky
Thanks so much for inviting me back, Melina it's a pleasure.
- [02:50]
Yeah, really excited to have you here. And we're talking about, well, you've actually written, I think, a couple of books since we last talked, but this most recent, we are going to be talking about returning to the office and hybrid work and things like that. But before we jump in, can you tell the audience that isn't familiar with you yet a little bit about you and your background, all that sort of good stuff?
- [03:14]
Sure, Happy to. My background is in decision making and risk management. So that's my area of expertise. The dangerous judgment letters from folks who know about this show. Of course, you know about these cognitive biases and all the ways that our brains are screwed up and the points don't matter. That's the stuff that I study. And specifically my expertise is in debiasing. How do you defeat these cognitive biases? The first generation of scholars, Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky and so on, they were studying the way that our brain is screwed up because of our evolutionary heritage, because of the structure of our brain, then we're not adapted to the modern environment. Our brain isn't. And so that's a problem for us because we live with a savannah ancestral environment in a modern world. So that day we're discovering how we're all screwed up. My generation of scholars, I spent 15 years in academia. I got a PhD at UNC Chapel Hill, and then I taught for seven years at Ohio State's Decision Sciences Collaborative. And my generation of scholars, or the second generation, was looking at and is looking at, how do you solve these problems? Debias, the cognitive biasing, that's kind of the behavioral science academic aspect. Now from the business pragmatic. The business aspects, you know, that's the brainy aspect of the podcast. The business aspect of this podcast is that I spent about 20ish years since 1999 coaching, training and consulting for companies ranging from Aflac to Xerox. So looking at these cognitive biases in the companies and how do you address them effectively? Of course, leaders make all sorts of screwy decisions all the time because of these dangerous judgment errors that really caused them to make some pretty problematic choices. And we want to address that. We want to prevent that, because if you don't prevent that, that causes a lot of suffering for not simply the leaders, but the employees, the external stakeholders. So my expertise has been in helping these companies make better decisions and future proof themselves against an increasingly disrupted future. And I published a couple of books on these topics. The one Melena and I talked about last time was Never go with your gut. How Pioneering Leaders make the best decisions and avoid business disasters. Another one that I published since knows both of those two are my globally known global bestsellers. They were translated into Chinese, Korean, Russian, other languages. The other one is called the Blind spots between Us. How to Overcome Unconscious Cognitive Bias and Build better Relationships. And most recently, I've been helping companies return to the office most effectively and prepare for the future of work, which is definitely going to be mostly hybrid from what we're seeing extensively. So that's what I've been working on. My newest book is called Returning to Office and Leading Hybrid and remote teams Benchmarking to best Practices for Competitive advantage. And that's based about 12 companies that I helped return to the office strategically, including large Fortune 500 companies, including manufacturing companies in the Fortune 500 sector, as well as several middle market companies and quickly growing startups. Since I published that book in May, I already helped four more. So I have 16 companies under my belt helping them return to the office in an effective strategic manner that addresses cognitive biases and helps them make the best decisions to seize competitive advantage going forward. So that's what my expertise is in and that's how I'm applying it right now.
- [06:32]
Right. Returning to the office is obviously a huge topic that everybody's really thinking about now, even before, you know, Delta surging happened and we don't know what's going to be coming. There could be additional variants and surges or maybe things are just magically, quote, unquote, normal again, knowing that we won't actually get back to where we were. But like you said, there was the line in the book of the genie's out of the bottle. So we're here, you know, we've, we've gotten a taste for remote work. And so that's something that we have to all be keeping in mind as we look for whatever that new normal becomes. But I think just to kind of kick things off is what questions should businesses be asking as they're trying to figure out if they are looking for hybrid models, if they're wanting to stay all remote or bring people all back in, you know, what should they be thinking about as they evaluate this sort of question?
- [07:30]
They should be thinking about two questions, two related questions. And of course, the goal is to seize competitive advantage in our increasingly disruptive future. So to future proof yourself, you want an arrangement of work for the future of work that helps you be most fit for our increasingly disruptive future. And we know it's whether it's COVID variants, whether other things, you know, cybersecurity threats, all of these other things that are going on. We know things are troublesome in our world. So you want to think about that. That's kind of the broader framework in which we're coming. And then the two questions you want to ask yourself are, well, given that our main source of competitive advantage for businesses is their people. So people are your main source of competitive advantage and the systems and processes through which they go. But the people are there, they compose the competitive advantage. They want to ask what, what do your current people want? And then you want to ask what do your potential hires want in regard to returning to the office? So those are the two fundamental questions you want to be thinking about. Because if your current people are not happy with your choices, you will not have very good retention. And if your future potential hires are not very happy with your choices, you will not have very good recruitment. And therefore your productivity, your morale, engagement, basically your bottom line will not go in the right direction. So that's what you want to be thinking about. Now for of course your people internally, you want to look at surveying them. And I'm shocked by how few companies have surveyed their employees. I was working one of the companies organizations for which I consulted is a large global group, that organization of peer executives. So it has peer executive chapters across the globe, centered in the US and Canada, but also across the globe. And it's mostly middle market companies with folks anywhere from, I mean as low as 10 people, more like 50, and as high as 3,4000 people in these companies, some higher, but that's the general segment. When they were doing surveys with my input on what their leaders were thinking about in terms of returning to the office. And these were surveys done In April of 2021, we found out a shocking statistic. But only 44% of these leaders asked their employees what they wanted, surveyed their employees on their preferences for returning to the office. Now that's kind of ludicrous. Only 44% asked their employees what they wanted. If you're people are your main source of competitive advantage, wouldn't you think you would want to know what kind of things they want to do in returning to the office, given it's their future? So that's a big problem. So that's one. So you want to survey your employees and for knowing what your potential hires will want, you want to look at external surveys, external surveys of folks. And we know from external surveys, these are surveys conducted by organizations like the Harvard Business School, Society for Human Resource management. There are eight major surveys that I describe in the book. And what the surveys clearly tell us is that the future is very much mostly hybrid. So 85% of people in various surveys, a little bit more, a little bit less, want substantial remote work that's either hybrid or full time remote. Of those, 25 to 35% want full time remote work. So you have the largest chunk, of course, something like 55, 65% want hybrid schedules coming in one to two days into the office and then something like 20, 15% want full time back in the office. So that's kind of the breakdown. Now how important is it for people when you ask that people refer to this choice of their schedule as the most important thing, even over healthcare, as the most important thing that they're thinking about when they're choosing employees. So really important, I mean, salary, right, always first. But the other perquisites, other things that they're looking at is the actual flexibility that they're given. And we know from surveys that 40 to 55% would be willing to leave a current employer. So that's retention if they're not given their preferred schedule. So I bet some of those 40 to 55% are working at your company. So that's what you want to be thinking about. That's kind of one dynamic. Another dynamic is the diversity inclusion angle. So when you there was a survey of white knowledge workers, that's kind of people who are experts who. And that's what knowledge workers refers to. So anyone from computer software programmers to engineers to consultants, so those are white knowledge workers. It asks do you want to go back to the office or do you want to have substantial remote work? What do you want? Well, we know that 80% of white knowledge workers, so white knowledge workers want substantial remote work. So 20% of them want to go back to the office full time. What about minorities? Black knowledge workers, Black knowledge workers, 97% of them want substantial remote work. 97%. So only 3% want to go full time back in the office. Well, why is that? Because in the office they face microaggressions and discriminations every day. You know, it's still an issue. And they face that and they know that. And this applies to other minorities, especially disabled people, but other minorities as well. Disabled people have physical reasons why they would prefer to work from the home they can. And other folks, other minorities also definitely want to work more from home than from the office for the same microaggression discrimination reasons. So you will retain less people of diversity, you'll have only white males at the company, much more white males at the company. If you force people to go back to the office and you will be find it much, much harder to recruit black workers and other minority workers. So that's kind of going to be for your diversity inclusion. Trying to get people back to the office full time, not a good idea. So that's diversity inclusion. We also know that people report very much higher productivity, much higher health, happiness, health and well being from when they are working from home. So something like 75% say that substantial remote work after things become safe, after Covid will make them health, happier. 70% say it will make them less stressed. 75% say it will give them better work, life balance, well being. So all of those things are really important. Let's talk about productivity for a second. So productivity is a major, major issue that people talk about. Oh, are people more productive working from home? Are people more productive working from the office? We have unequivocal research, very clear research, that people are substantially more productive working from home. On average 10 to 14% more productivity from working from home, even more on your individual tasks. Your individual tasks are definitely much better done at home. I mean you don't have those interruptions, you can focus more, you can do your individual tasks on collaborative tasks, it's more of a wash. Some people and some tasks are better done the office, some are better deal at home. So it depends on the person, depends on the task, that's more of a wash. But the individual tasks definitely better deal at home. So this is something that people are much more productive and they're willing. So that's kind of on the front end of productivity. What's your actual output on the back end, how much does it cost? People are willing to take substantial pay cuts for substantial remote work. So anywhere. I mean, if people want to work Monday for Friday, 9 to 5 in the office, they're not willing to take a pay cut. But you know, if people want hybrid or remote work, they're willing, I mean especially remote work, up to 25 to 30% of their salary, an average of 8% of the salary. So across everyone who wants to go back to the office full time to hybrid to full time remote, 8% decrease of the salary. So people are much more willing to decrease salary. So there's a lot of advantages to having substantial remote work and a lot of disadvantages to forcing people back into the office. So these are the kinds of questions you will want to be thinking about in terms of retention, in terms of recruitment, in Terms of well being, stress, diversity, inclusion, productivity, and then your bottom line.
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Right. Well, and I know we didn't even talk about this. There was a little bit, there's definitely a section about it in the book. So that exists for people when they go to check that out. But in evaluating your physical space, so in a world where you had everyone on site for the most part, and then now you have this opportunity to say, well, do we actually need x thousand square feet that we have in this building and do we need all the buildings that we have? What if we were to shrink things down and then you have, you know, less real estate that you're having to pay for and you're able to, you know, shake that up a little bit and save on the bottom line as well.
- [16:46]
You're absolutely right. And so this is, comes after the decision of whether you go, how much time do you spend? So you should not let the real estate drive the decision because that's kind of like a downstream dynamic. But you want to be thinking about, okay, now that we just. Because your primary consideration should be your people, that's your key source of competitive advantage. They don't want to let real estate determine that. But once you are thinking about, okay, so we're going to go, let's say we're going to go hybrid. The best part, the model that my clients overwhelmingly adopted. One of the 16 companies decided to go full time remote. 16 companies decided to adopt a hybrid first model with some people fully remote. And that means people coming in, most people coming in one to two days a week. That's 70 to 90% of the population of the workforce and then 10 to 30% being full time remote. That's kind of the best practice. And we can talk about that. Once you adopt something like that and you say, okay, that's what we want to do, then you want to figure out, okay, how much usage am I actually having in my space? Now you want to look at, okay, how much are people coming in? So let's say on average people come in one day a week. That means some people are full time remote. That means some people come in two, two days a week, maybe three days on average, you have one day a week. Now you need some office space that's kind of basic for your payroll, for those basic functions and hr, stuff like that, where people can walk into an office. Then you need some leadership space. So that's not going to change. You need those leadership private offices where you can have those conversations and you need other activities. So you still need Training spaces, you need conference rooms, all that sort of stuff. So it might occupy 20 to 30% of your space right now. And the rest of it depends on occupancy. Depends on how many people actually come in. Right. You know, the usual typical approach to office buildings is having 20% collaborative space, 80% private space. Some that private space is leadership space. So you have something like 70% of your space is based on occupancy by workers. Now if you only have them coming in one day a week instead of five days a week, how much space does that free up? You know, you don't have that space occupied and you want to make sure to distribute them throughout the week so that you don't make the mistake that Apple made and say everyone will come in on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and you have your space standing completely empty four days a week. That's not very smart. Okay, talk about other poor decisions that Apple and some other large companies made. Now, like I said, the biggest top companies makes pretty poor decisions significantly often. So going back to the space, you figure out, okay, distributed throughout the week, people are coming in an average of one day a week. That means that if we had 100% occupancy before the pandemic, now we have 20% occupancy for the part of our real estate that depended on occupancy. So you have again, 70% of your real estate depends on occupancy. So you can get rid of something like of that proportion, you can get 20, get rid of 80 to, you know, something like 80% of that space and you'll have 50% of your previous space left. That's great. You know, you don't have to pay for the rest of the space. You don't have to pay for the lease, obviously, that's great. And then you don't have to pay for the real estate based services, things like janitors, things like security products like commercial printers and so on. So companies have been, with which I've been working have been finding a lot of costs savings as a result of this transition. Now something you'll want to be thinking about is that the space that you'll have left, how do you use it? You'll want to make sure to transform that space to be much more collaborative. Because when you're having people coming in one day a week, they're going to be doing in the office collaborative tasks, not individual tasks. Individual tasks are much better done at home. People strongly prefer to do their individual tasks at home. They'll come in for a Team meeting, maybe some collaboration with somebody else, maybe a cross functional team meeting, maybe a training. And that's going to be like on that one day of the week that they come in and then they go home and they do their individual tasks at home. They're not going there in the computer. So they don't need cubicles. You don't need that space for them. You need to transform that space into collaborative space, into conference rooms with a good video conferencing equipment because you'll have a lot more people coming in by video conference. You'll need to have good training and good lounge just so people can formally collaborate and boardrooms for small subgroups of larger teams. So that's the kind of spaces that the companies with which I consulted, how they transformed their spaces.
- [21:22]
As we transition the conversation to be talking about some of the brain biases that are keeping leaders stuck. I know you talk about it in the book, of course, but whether it's global Fortune 500 company or you know, Fortune 10 or whatever we're talking about, to anybody of any size in a company company, there are some seems like consistent issues that they have with. I know you talk about status quo bias and being anchored on the familiar of what they want and not looking at what the teams want. Can you share a little bit about those biases? Both to make sure that people who are the remote workers, you know, have some awareness of what they might be fighting against, but also for the leaders that are listening, that they're able to kind of look inward at themselves to ask, you know, am I being hung up on some bias that shouldn't be impacting this decision?
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Sure, happy to talk about that. So let's start with status quo bias. As you mentioned, the status quo bias is one of the biggest, biggest problems here. And the status quo bias refers to the fact that we prefer things to remain stable, things to remain as they were as we perceive the right them to be the right way. So leaders have been successful for 20, 30, 40 years of their career by leading in person. They like that, they're comfortable with it. They know how to do it. They know how to do it well. They are, tend to be extroverted, tend to be gregarious. They like people. I mean, I can't, I've lost count of the number of leaders who say that, you know, I really, really like being surrounded by people. I'd really like to do that again. So there's kind of that personal discomfort with working alone and there's that personal desire to have people there. So you couldn't see them and you could see them working. But leaders like to have that perception of control. Of course, it's an illusion of control. One of the cognitive biases, the illusion of control refers to us perceiving us as having more control over the situation, including other people, than we actually do. I mean, when you look at the research on how much time people in the office actually spend working out of a 40 hour work week, it's about 20 hours. I mean the rest of the time there's a reason that Amazon gets most of its sales during the, during people's working hours. So that is how people spend their time. So you don't want to exaggerate the way you have control over them. But leaders feel that they have control, they feel comfortable. And that feeling should be a hint to you that this is the cognitive bias, the gut intuition, the feelings. That's why I say never go with your gut is the title of my most well known book. It's something that people tend to make serious leaders tend to make serious mistakes about and they want to turn back the clock to January 2020. They want to go back to the time even though it's completely unrealistic because the world changed and because the people around them changed. But leaders really don't like to acknowledge it. That's why you see top leaders. So we talked about Apple, right? So Apple is trying to make its people go to the office. And this is a serious problem. People at Apple are rebelling that are publicly going out and saying, look, top people are resigning, leaving Apple. Because of this we have a lot of low morale, turnover issues, there's conflict in the company. Apple employees tend to be very, very loyal. And for them to come out and say this is a very strong indication that things aren't all right at the largest company in the world, right? So Apple, that's Apple, right? Their decision making. We saw that at other top companies. I mean Google, Google has been saying for many, many months that they were all going back to the office. Going back to the office, going back to the office. And my internal source of Google tell me that they had started having people leaving and they started again having conflicts, low morale. And on May 5, so long before the delta search, Google announced that we screwed up. We are going to change our policy. We'll have 20% of our work be fully virtual and another 20% working from any office they want. And the rest hybrid. So Google had to change its mind. How many billions of dollars did that cost Google to change its plans? And of course to have top people leaving and so on. Same thing happened at other prominent companies. Amazon had the same situation with Google. It reversed its decisions on June 10 to try to force everyone back to the office. Uber did the same thing. And these are top technology companies, so very huge companies. Same thing is happening at other companies elsewhere. So this is a very big problem. The status quo bias, where leaders want that status quo. Another related cognitive bias to this issue is anchoring, where we tend to be anchored to the initial information that we have about topics. Leaders have been successful, I mentioned, but they also learned about how to lead and how to behave in the office, that environment often predating digital offices. They tend to be, of course, leaders tend to be older, experienced, and so they don't have this kind of native virtual appreciation and association with a digital environment. And so they're much more uncomfortable in virtual environments and in collaborating virtually. And so that's. Their information is really stuck in the past. And they filtered all this new digital stuff from their initial in office experience using Rolodexes, if you remember what that is. So those are kind of the anchoring things, the status quo bias, the anchoring bias. Some other biases have to do with information. Now, leaders tend to perceive themselves as having shared perspectives with the people they lead. And again, that goes back to tribal savannah environment where, where we perceive ourselves as having the same opinions as others in our tribe having similar values. Now unfortunately, that's often not the case as the leaders at Google and Amazon and Uber and Apple found out when they had to reverse their plans. Well, Apple didn't yet, but the other companies reversed their plans. So top leaders, that's called the false consensus effect. When we perceive other people who we share similarities with, especially having similar beliefs to us when they often don't. So that's the false consensus effect. Now another big problem here is called the confirmation bias. Been checking out this show for a while. You've probably heard about this one several times. Confirmation bias is one of the biggest problems we have in terms of information gathering. We look for information that confirms our beliefs and we ignore information that doesn't confirm our beliefs. So the companies that I work with, when I found out several companies, how the leaders tended to get information about what they should do in returning to office. So that the CEO talked to the C suite, the C suite talked to the senior vice presidents, and that's all. And then they just talked to each other and they didn't talk to anyone else. And so this was a serious problem because they all Came from the same background of shared perspectives, leaders, long time in the company, gregarious, social, wanting control, wanting accountability, not the best environment for decision making. So that's when we had those issues also with top leaders not serving their people. Only 44% of these middle market companies serving their people, that's very bad confirmation bias. Looking for information that confirms our beliefs, ignoring information that doesn't. Now another cognitive bias here that's really important is underestimating threats. That's called the normalcy bias. When we underestimate threat, the possibility of major, huge, serious disruption. And of course the pandemic was one such disruption. That Delta surge was another such disruption. Really, really very serious surge, very serious problem. And companies greatly underestimated it. They thought vaccines, now everything's back to normal, everyone should go back to the office. Well, I mean the research shows that from that Pfizer effectiveness, Pfizer is a really effective vaccine. But Pfizer effectiveness against Delta after six months wanes to something like 39% for symptomatic illness. That's not great, that's a big problem. And that means that you should really be rethinking your plans to go back to the office Monday for Friday 9 to 5. Right? And this is not a good idea in many situations where the Delta surge is serious. And that's the normalcy bias where we tend to perceive that the future will be normal, much like today. And we underestimate major threats and disruptions and leaders who are delaying their return to the office and are saying oh instead of, you know, Apple said, well, originally they intended to come back to the office in September. Then once the Delta search got going, they said, okay, we'll come back in October. Right? I mean that's like a month's delay. That's not very smart, not very wise. Eventually they gave it and they said we'll delay to January. But that's another sort of problem. You're kicking the can down the road and you're not thinking about the long tail risk of variance, the possibility that other variants will arise and what will happen then when other variants arise, you'll have to have all of this disruption. Again, that is not a good idea. What you want to make sure to plan for is the possibility of other variants going down the road. That's why it's very valuable to have some people always working full time remotely because that allows processes and systems and a culture that, where people can switch to remote work at any moment. So that's great. Now the last cognitive bias, it's very important here is called functional fixedness. Also known you might have heard of the hammer nail syndrome. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Well, functional fixedness is kind of like that. When you have figured out one way to function, one way to lead, one way to collaborate, one way to innovate, one way to work together, one way to address diversity, inclusion issues, one way to do performance evaluation, one way to do training, you tend to stick to that and perceive that that's the right way to continue doing it going forward. And that's a big, big problem because what happened in March 2020 is that companies, when there were the lockdowns, they transposed their in office culture, in office ways of collaborating, leading, innovating, all of that sort of stuff on virtual work and full time virtual work that does not work well in many, many ways. You know, nobody enjoys zoom happy hours and managers have to force their employees to go to zoom happy hours. And there's research showing that zoom happy hours are actually correlated with disengagement from the workplace. That is not a good idea. But the managers were trying to use their existing ideas about what is the appropriate way of engaging workers, to engage them to with and build teams. That's not a good idea. So you wouldn't want to instead strategically adap to the virtual format and use native virtual forms of bonding, collaboration, innovation, which all of which I talk about in the book. But that's not what companies did and that is a big problem. And it's still very much impacting companies when they're trying let's say in the hybrid workplace, you do not work in the same way in hybrid as you work Monday through Friday 9 to 5, you need to work in a different way and people need to be trained on it, on innovation, collaboration, all of these sorts of things. But that's not what companies did. And so the functional fixedness is a big, big serious problem as we're moving into the future of work, which I think will be hybrid.
- [32:38]
First, thank you for going through those kind of top biases and things to be keeping in mind, I do have episodes on several of them. So status quo, bias confirmation, bias anchoring and some others that are in the book. I know you talk about planning fallacy and you know, whatnot. So we'll have links to all those in the show, notes for people that want to dig in and learn more about those biases moving forward. So there's a lot that makes us feel like we want to go back to what we had. And so we have to realize we can't. And it's important to know, like you said, that the people that are doing a lot of that work are not just like you at the top. Essentially where you learned this way, you want to go back, but they would actually be happier and they're willing to give up a significant portion of their salaries to be able to stay remote. So there are a lot of great benefits to that. But I know with that, the types of things that people feel like, you just can't replicate virtually. So there is that camaraderie. There's a lot of culture that gets lost. It feels like when you don't have that integration, I know that you also lose perceived loss. Like, well, we can't replicate that. Innovative. Everyone getting in the room and brainstorming together. The audience potentially knows I'm not a fan of brainstorming. We do question storming here at the brainy business. But being able to all be in a room and, you know, write things on the wall together as well as I know one of these things that I've heard people talk about a lot, and I was glad to see you have some ideas for within the book is that serendipity. So we, when we lose the ability to just randomly walk by somebody on our way to a meeting and have a conversation that turns into this amazing project that we didn't even know could happen. You know, people will argue that these are the reasons we can't go completely virtual or have these hybrid offices, because we're going to lose that. And that's like, you know, the juice that helps us run. Right? We're going to not be us without it. So, thankfully, that is potentially not true. And you have some suggestions for businesses to help bring that into this virtual space. Do you have a couple tips for that?
- [35:11]
Yes, happy to. So let's talk about innovation first. We can talk about collaboration next. There are two dynamics here, and of course they're related, but let's talk about innovation. So that serendipitous Holy Conversations is definitely a major, major issue that a number of companies that I helped were dealing with, especially this Fortune 200 manufacturing company, which had a lot of technology, high tech, so they really had a lot of issues where, okay, we really need to bring back our people Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, a number of people in the company, none of the top leadership, otherwise they wouldn't hire me. But a number of business units were kind of going for full time because when you have more time in the office, you have more opportunity for Those serendipitous conversations. And they were afraid, well, we'll lose our innovation advantage to other companies that will have those conversations. Well, when you look at what is happening in those conversations, those serendipitous conversations, they're right that you can't replicate them online. The efforts to force those conversations through zoom happy hours and trying to get people to chat with each other about these sorts of things, or after work meetings to have people chat about innovative ideas, that just does not work well. And that's what these managers were doing. I asked them, well, what are you doing to promote serendipitous idea generation in sort of virtual settings? Because that's what we're talking about. Either the amount of time that virtual, so virtual teams, virtual individuals, or full time virtual, spend all their time virtual. The amount of time that hybrid teams spend doing work by themselves, they're coming in one day a week. That means they're only in the office for 20% of their time. So that's kind of perceived as a major lost opportunity for serendipitous idea generation. But what they should have been doing and what I pointed out and that they started doing is that they need to create a native virtual format. One that does not have the forced experience of zoom happy hours, which people are not happy about, that is not a good idea. And that kind of forced meetings to try to talk about innovative ideas. So that's, that just doesn't work. So instead what you need to do is have a channel for serendipitous idea generation for each team. What does that mean? In your Microsoft Teams or Slack or Trello or sun or Mondays, whatever collaborative software you're using, each team should have for itself a channel that says this is for serendipitous idea generation. And that's a six to eight people team. Then each. If you have a cross functional team, that should have a separate channel. If you have a business unit, that should have a separate channel for the business unit as a whole. And if you are a small company, you should have one for the company itself. If you are department, you should have one for the department itself. So depending on the size of the business unit and anyone at any time can post in their team any serendipitous idea in their own team and their cross functional teams and in their business units to which they belong to, or the whole company of the small company. Now what happens then? This is native virtual format. So what happens then? Will other people see that comment, see that idea? And people love to give advice that's one of the things about us, we love to give advice and they comment on the comment, they say, oh, that's a good idea. How about improving it this way, how about improving it that way? And then comments start to snowball and other people come in, other people feedback. Oh, that will never work. Here's what you should do instead, and so on. And then that transforms into a really great conversation about this concrete topic, which you can then take into brainstorming. And we'll talk about brainstorming late. But here's the thing, people, you want to make sure that this is visible, this is visible to the team, if it's a team, relevant comment to the business unit and so on. Because this is really a lot about social status. People get social status from this commentary and from both from originating in the comment and from giving good advice on the comment. So you want to get that social status and peer reputation, social engagement going. So that's very important, valuable. That's for serendipitous idea generation. And it worked wonders for that manufacturing company and other companies at which they wanted more of these novel ideas to have those certain depressive dehgeneration. So that's part one. The second thing is about brainstorming. Now traditional brainstorming, it definitely has a number of advantages. So when you look at the research on brainstorming this in person's brainstorming, where you get groups of four to eight people together in a room and you have those generating ideas where you're writing on the whiteboard and so on, there's some benefits. One is called synergy, where you are inspired by the ideas that other people share to have innovative ideas yourself or to improve other people's ideas. So synergy is a benefit. Another benefit is social facilitation. So this feeling that you're doing things together helps us be motivated and more creative. So those are benefits. There are unfortunately some problems with traditional brainstorming. Now one of the problems is called production blocking. Imagine you have an idea, but other people in the room are talking about another idea and they're steering the conversation away from the area that you want to talk about. Many people, especially people who are more introverted and people who are more pessimistic and people who are more lower status in the group, tend to not want to interrupt that and then their idea gets lost. That's production blocking causes big, big problems. Another problem is called evaluation apprehension. Now evaluation apprehension refers to people being worried about the evaluation of others either by proposing a too crazy novel off the wall idea or by criticizing other people's ideas in the evaluation stage. Then the other problem is called social loafing. Interestingly, research shows the more people you have in the room, the less ideas you have per person. Because thinking is hard, generating ideas is hard. And it's very tempting for us to not work hard and loaf. It's just the way our brain works. You've been checking out this show. You know, our brain is very much a lazy brain. It's the autopilot system. So to address that, it very much helps to have virtual brainstorming. Instead of virtual brainstorming involves people separately. You can also do it at the same time, but separately, individually, using their own homes or somewhere else, just typing in ideas into a digital spreadsheet anonymously, so nobody knows whose idea from. I often use a Google form for this. You can use some proprietary software for this, Microsoft Teams, whatever. Just a Google form is easy enough. Then you get a spreadsheet output of a whole bunch of ideas that each person individually and team, entered. Then what you do is you clean up those ideas, remove duplicates, categorize them, and that's step two. So step one, idea generation, step two, cleanup. Step three is evaluation, where all team members anonymously go through each remaining idea that's cleaned up and evaluate it by rating it for novelty and rating it for practicality. And you can have other ratings if it's relevant. And then you also give a comment on your thoughts on idea, and then you go for all those ideas. Now you have step four where you have revised idea generation. Everyone has again an idea generation stage based on what they saw in the initial ideas in the comments. And then you have cleanup and then you have again rating. So evaluation stage at stage six and stage seven is a meeting you can have. And that should be a synchronous meeting. Virtual or in person, for hybrid teams. Hybrid teams, I generally recommend you have that meeting in person. Virtual teams, of course, meet virtual and that at that meeting you essentially know which ideas are already well rated and you just are choosing which of the ideas that are well rated should be implemented short term, medium term, long term, and what the next steps in implementation are. That addresses production blocking, naturally, because you're not blocked by anybody else's production, and the anonymity helps address evaluation apprehension. And of course, because you're doing the work individually that helps address social loafing. This has been shown to greatly, greatly improve the number and quality of ideas generated. And that's both an external research and the companies for which I helped implement this Methodology. So that's kind of the two aspects of innovation. You have the serendipitous ideas and you have the deliberate intentional innovation around this virtual brainstorming.
- [43:28]
Yeah. And I love that you walked through the steps.
- [43:31]
Melina Palmer
And there's of course, more detail in.
- [43:32]
Dr. Gleb Sapersky
The book which we'll have a link to in the show notes so that people can check all of that out. And just, you know, as we wrap this up here, I think in general, the kind of overarching piece I see from the book and the suggestions you have very much aligns with something I've been saying through this entire pandemic time is really things changed while we have a status quo bias, like, yes, we have to just accept that it's a new world. But you can either frame that as this negative and looking back and saying, oh, I wish, or again, that normalcy of waiting for things to get back to the way they were and knowing that your competitors are going to likely have that mindset because we're kind of wired and programmed to do this. And so for those leaders, for those organizations that are able to flip the frame and say, how is this a benefit? How can we make this something amazing versus something we're kind of stuck with is a really great way to advance past the competition. In my book, I talk about nudge stock, which is, I'm guessing you are familiar, but a behavioral science event that was put on by ogilvy in the UK that, you know, they had 3, 400 people that would come to this in person event and it was a really cool conference, but, you know, there aren't that many people that can go participate in this in person. And it was planned, you know, for June of 2020 and they have that moment of, yeah, like, I guess we need to shift. And instead of like all the conferences where people were saying, well, we have to make our less good version of a conference just to deal, like, put a pin in everything we wanted to do this year and we'll do something good next time. You know, what's the worst version that we can do? And sort of saying, like, well, people aren't going to want to sponsor a virtual event because, you know, we've got our confirmation bias there. People aren't going to want to attend, oh, it's going to be difficult. We can't charge for tickets anymore, whatever. Like, all these things that get us stuck. And Ogilvy looked at this differently and said, you know, how can we make this awesome? Like, how can we make this just this really amazing, fantastic event? What benefits do we have of now being virtual? And they had 120,000 people sign up and go watch the event that happened. And it was over, you know, 24 hours really of all these really great speakers coming in. And Instead of the 400 people that would have been there, 120,000 is amazing. And you know, they had another very significant event in 2021. They kept virtual. And so when you look at the opportunity, really just like I said, flip that frame, you are able to beat out your competitors. And if, when, you know, when things get back to normal. Ish.
- [46:25]
Right.
- [46:26]
It's the. We're able to travel again. We have in person conferences again. Nudge stock is, I think on a lot of people's lists of something they want to go to. And the brand of Ogilvy has this great space that people see, see them as this innovative company. Of course, a lot of people saw that anyway. But it really stands out for people that weren't familiar with them. And so looking at this return to work as an opportunity to have hybrid offices to look at the benefits for your people and coming up with better ideas with virtual serendipity and brainstorming, I think if we look at it as an opportunity, it can do really great things. And I love the tips that you provide in the book to help with that.
- [47:09]
Oh, I think you're absolutely right, Melina. Whenever I start my presentations for leaders on this topic, I for boards, leaders, C suites, I always start with, you know, this is a key inflection in the moment of work. We will never have this again, hopefully.
- [47:24]
Right.
- [47:25]
This is a kind of a once in a century sort of event where, I mean, it's definitely will never happen again in terms of transforming our perception on remote work, but we can actually successfully work remotely and do all this stuff remotely. It's a fundamental transition in how we think and how we approach the world. And so this key inflection, you want to not let a good crisis go to waste, right, as the saying goes. And you want to use this not as a problem, not see this as a huge pain point, as a source of suffering and struggle, but as a way of seizing competitive advantage. So think about your competitors. As you rightly pointed out, they'll be making bad mistakes as you see Apple, Google, Amazon, Uber and many, many other companies making. So they're making really bad mistakes. And where do you think all the people who are leaving those companies are going to go? They're going to go to companies that are not making those mistakes. And your key source of competitive advantage is your people. So you'll retain your people and you'll gain top top producers from the companies that are making serious errors if you seize competitive advantage and adopt these best practices. Again, not simply. There are a number of companies that are saying okay, we'll go hybrid, but they're trying to use the same leadership style to collaborative style, innovation style in hybrid settings. That is a very poor idea. You need to adopt best practices for hybrid and remote settings, so don't fall into that functional fixedness. You want to take maximum advantage of the skin flexion in the future of work to seize competitive advantage. So absolutely agree with you.
- [49:08]
Awesome. Well, for everyone who wants to pick up the book, like I said, we'll have a link in the show notes and you know, ways to find you. But what is the best way to get in contact with you and to learn more? What's their best course of action?
- [49:22]
Sure. So check out for example on Amazon and elsewhere, the book Returning to the Office and leading hybrid and remote teams benchmarking to best practices for competitive advantage. So check that out. Now to get in touch with me go to disasteravoidance experts.com I'm the CEO of a boutique future proofing consultancy, disasteravoidanceexperts.com so you'll have buy my blogs, videocasts, podcasts, online training courses, books, manuals, coaching, consulting, all of that good stuff. You can get in touch with me there. Especially check out the free course on making the wisest decisions for the future of work at. It's going to be called the Wisest Decision maker course@disasteravoidanceexperts.com subscribe again disasteravoidanceexperts.com subscribe Perfect.
- [50:14]
Well thank you so much. And again we'll have links for all of that within the show notes and just appreciate you taking the time to compile all this information and then share it here on the Brainy Business today. Just yeah, thanks again for your time.
- [50:27]
Thank you again for advising me.
- [50:30]
Melina Palmer
So what got your brain buzzing as you listened to this conversation with Gleb today? For me it's the reminder that even well meaning leaders can fall into into common traps like status quo, bias, anchoring or the illusion of control without realizing it. I've seen this in so many organizations and it's something I talk about in my book what your employees need and can't tell you as well. Which I'm very thankful Gleb actually wrote the forward too. So thank you Gleb. Just because something feels right to the leadership doesn't mean it's what your people actually want or need. What I really appreciate so much about Gleb's approach is the balance of evidence and empathy. He's not just pushing for data or gut feelings. He's encouraging leaders to ask real questions, gather real input, and be open to answers that challenge their assumptions. That's what it takes to lead thoughtfully in today's world of hybrid, remote and rapidly changing work environments. And for me, this episode is a real important reminder that change, especially change that lasts, takes time. The workplace doesn't snap back into place like a rubber band. Even now, years after the initial transition to remote and hybrid work and coming back into the office, you know many teams are still figuring it out. And that's okay. What matters most is that we approach these decisions with curiosity, empathy, and intention. If your company is rethinking its approach, whether that means heading back to the office, staying remote, bringing more people remote, or anything in between, this episode is.
- [52:06]
Dr. Gleb Sapersky
Such a helpful gut check.
- [52:08]
Melina Palmer
Ask questions, check your assumptions, be aware of biases like the status quo that might be keeping you and the team stuck in old patterns that no longer serve you. And if you're feeling the effects of a not so meaningful return, or trying to build a deeper sense of purpose when wherever you're working, Thursday's upcoming episode is for you. I'm going to be joined by Wes Adams and Tamara Miles to talk all about meaningful work, what it is, why it matters, and how both leaders and individuals can help create it. And if you aren't already, subscribe to the Brainy Business podcast. Now's a great time to do so to ensure that you don't miss that or any other episode. In the meantime, I'd love to know your thoughts about remote versus Hybrid versus fully in office work. Which do you prefer? How was your transition? If you've been through one anything that really stood out, good or bad, come share it with me on social media. You'll find me as the brainy biz pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. There are links in the show notes to make it easy as well as links to top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 512. And just like that, episode 512 with Dr. Gleb Sapersky is done. Join me next time for a brand new episode with Wes Adams and Tamara Miles to talk about meaningful work, how to create it, support it, and find it, even in challenging times. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.
- [53:54]
Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.