Ep. 215: Mark A Herschberg - Working out the kinks in your hybrid work plan

Links mentioned in today's Podcast:
https://www.thecareertoolkitbook.com
https://www.thecareertoolkitbook.com/resources

Connect with Mark:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hershey/

https://twitter.com/CareerToolkitBk

https://www.facebook.com/TheCareerToolkitBook

https://www.instagram.com/thecareertoolkit/

Full Episode Transcript:

  < Intro >

Adam:            Welcome back to Count Me In. IMA's podcast for finance and accounting professionals working in business. I'm Adam Larson, and today I'm excited to bring you part two of my conversation with Mark Herschberg. In which he provides a helpful framework for thinking about hybrid work plans and how you should approach finding most productive balance for individuals, managers, and teams within your organization. 

In the interest of time, I'm not going to list all of Mark's credentials, again. Just high-level for those who missed the first episode. Mark teaches at MIT, he's a serial entrepreneur and business innovator, and he's the author of The Career Toolkit: Essential Skills For Success That No One Taught You, which I highly recommend you check out, just follow the link in the show notes. 

Okay, that's enough introduction. Let's get right into another highly insightful conversation with Mark Herschberg.

< Music >

So, Mark, I want to welcome you back to the Count Me In podcast. We had a great time talking about The Great Resignation last time. And today we're going to be talking about hybrid and hybrid work and what that means for organizations. And, so, to start off, I know that during Covid everybody went remote because you couldn't unless you were certain types of organizations that had to still work in person. 

But many organizations went remote completely. And now as we're on the third year of Covid, and people are coming back to work, everybody's moved to hybrid. So what it really boils down to is what can we do to be more effective in this hybrid model, going forward?

Mark:             That's a great question, and there are a number of ways we can look at this. But to start, here's four things to think about as you begin to return to the office. 

First, let's formalize the rules. Often we have a certain way of working, and in our last episode, we talked about corporate culture. Usually, it's not written down, we just know this is how things get done on our team, in our department. But we want to be more explicit about how we do that, and this is for two reasons. 

First, it's a little different, this is a disruption. Now, we had a disruption in 2020 when we said, one day, "Stop coming to the office." And that was very disruptive. We know what's coming, we can be a little more intentional and planned this time. But also we have new people coming on board, who aren't going to be around us as much to learn by seeing. To get that osmosis, that just feel for it by being there.

So we want to be more explicit with the rules. I don't mean employee handbook; I mean how we do things. When should you call a meeting, versus this could have been email, versus this could have been a Slack message. 

When you create these rules get input, you, the manager, you have enough to do. Don't think, "Here's one more thing I have to do." Get input from the whole team. In fact, you can even potentially pass this off to others to take the first pass. 

Now, you as the manager will get the final say, the ultimate decision. But others are probably really excited to say, "Oh, I get to be a larger voice in this. You're asking me to take the lead on this, this is fantastic." They see it as opportunity, whereas you see it as one more burden. But, again, you will have the final say.

But that's to say you should really, as a leader, incorporate the voices of the whole team. Don't be afraid to almost be a little formal, in terms of the welcome back. There was a trend back in the .com era, back when companies would shut down. It was very sad, these people you had worked with for a while, there was a shift, and they did something rather clever. They said, "We have some experts who understand how to make a shift, we call them clergy."

Clergy are very good at you're transitioning from being single to being married. You're transitioning from having this person in your life to now they aren't anymore, and we have ceremonies to mark that. You're doing a big transition when you say, "Welcome back to the office." 

You can just say, "Well, you're showing up Monday, deal with it." Or you can say, "Hey, we're coming back and we want to welcome you back. We want to recognize there is a formal change here." And that can be a ceremony and that can be a fun, good ceremony. It doesn't have to be solemn, it could be a party. It could be more than just a happy hour. 

Don't just say, "Well, we're going to do drinks, Monday, when you're back in the office." Make it symbolic. Make people understand and feel this change, just as we do with other life cycle events. So I think you should create a formal one. 

And, finally, don't be afraid to change what you're doing, this is new for most of us. Now I've run hybrid companies before. I've run virtual companies before, but everyone has been different, and, especially, as we do it at a global scale. 

As we do it, not just our company, but every company. Don't be afraid to say, "Maybe we need to change this up, how we do it." And that's okay, it's not a mistake, it doesn't make you look weak; it makes you look responsive to your employees.

Adam:            And it also sounds like you're saying that when we come together, it should be more than just doing our meetings. Like when we come together makes sure we're meeting face to face. It should be more than that. It should be more social activity, so that we're engaging and connecting outside of, "Hey, let's meet about this spreadsheet."

Mark:             Well, the ceremony I was referring to is when you first come back. Maybe in the first week or two you do something formal and that's probably more of a one-time event. But you've brought up a very good point. 

The initial thinking by many people is, "Okay, you're in the office two days a week, three days a week, you really need to be productive." 

We know employees, you're at social or chat, you surf the web sometimes....