Education Bookcast

Workplace professionals have worked with corporate real estate and facilities to build productivity and people-centric improvements in the office and work environment for decades. But resistance was usually high and progress measured, frustrating many who saw opportunities to do so much better and move beyond historical habits that continued to dictate so much of our work routines. As we come into Fall 2022 in the northern hemisphere, summer ends, and the kids go back to school, While some companies go fully remote or fully on-site, it appears that most companies are going to offer their people some type of hybrid working plan. The bad news is no one really knows what Hybrid means generally, and more specifically for their team. The Good News, there are workplace professionals who have the knowledge, experience, and tools to help. Welcome to Work20XX, a show focused on work, and the future of work, where we bring you the professionals to provide insight, direction, and specifics actions leaders, line managers, and individual contributors can use to navigate these sometimes choppy waters. Adrienne Rowe is Head of Workplace Strategy at Raytheon Technologies. Adrienne’s college summer internship sweeping the streets of Disney World turned into a 20+ year career with Disney, where she developed many of the foundational values that continue to surface today, starting with the connected threesome of the customer, the product or experience, and the employee. Purposeful attention to detail centered on the customer’s experience defines the perception of the company in the customer’s mind. In Workplace, Adrienne works in partnership with other departments like real estate, facilities, communications, technology, human resources, and others, to create a collection of work environments that are not just a place for calls and meetings, but where people can do the best work of their lives. Adrienne and I discuss a number of strategies and methods organizations can use to increase the chances of hybrid work success moving forward. Starting with the reality that we don’t have all the answers, and must be willing to try some things, and learn, knowing that not all the experiments will work. It’s a dynamic and changing world of work, and we’re entering new territory. As Beth Comstock reminds us, get comfortable being uncomfortable. As we dive into the vocabulary and priorities of the hybrid workplace, most importantly, Adrienne reminded me, that we have to think and frame the conversation not in the words of the experts, but in the words of people learning new behaviors, new management techniques, new 1:1 strategies, and more; many for the first time. I’m thrilled to share this interview with one of the leaders in workplace strategy. Without further delay, a conversation with Adrienne Rowe.

What happened when the world of ‘agile, flexible, and dynamic’ crashes into what my Wharton Real Estate Professor used to describe as  ‘big, lumpy, assets’? Best in class Real Estate, Facilities, and Workplace Professionals are on board, and early results are out, including the recent opening of LinkedIn’s Office One, where 50% of the workstations were removed, and replaced with over 75 different seating configuration options throughout the building. Who better to ask than Julie Whelan, Global Head of Occupier Thought Leadership for CBRE? Julie has been leading a longitudinal study with occupiers since 2015 and shared some of the latest results on Work 20XX, a show focused on work and the future of work. In this episode, Julie shared some of the latest data from the Spring 2022 US Office Occupier Sentiment Survey.  Individual workstation occupancy has been in decline long before 2020. Ironically, Julie and the team published Global Outlook, “The Age of Responsive Real Estate’ in March 2020, foreshadowing a more flexible, activity-based real estate portfolio. And as we’ve repeatedly seen, Covid accelerated said transformation, compression 10 years into two.  ‘Activity based’ is the way to think about usage, which drives employee experience and productivity, which drives retention and innovation. No one wants to be considered overhead or SG&A. How can Real Estate and Facilities professionals use their expertise and resources to help make everyone more productive?   Real Estate also represents a huge lever in achieving corporate sustainability objectives, which are important for everyone from the boardroom to line people.  These are still early days. Listen, watch the data, and be ready to adjust.  Without further delay, enjoy this conversation with Julie Whelan  This Episode of Work 20XX is brought to you by Webex by Cisco.  Webex Ahead Page - Click Here  Work 20XX Episode Site with Transcript and Show Notes - Click Here 

Bad meetings are the bane of the modern working world. The back-to-back, uninterrupted energy crushers have only gotten worse over the last two years. We’re asked to be “always-on” and ready to jump on the next notification (i.e. email, message, IM, DM, text, etc.). This type of work culture is burning people out to the point we gave it a name: “The Great Resignation.” There’s a better way.  Welcome to Work 20XX. A show focused on work and the future of work, as the world of 2019 fades further into the distance. I wanted to move from beyond meeting bashing to sharing best practices. And while some organizations and consumers of expensive executive time do invest in this most important skill, most don’t, and assume that somehow, people will get it. We’re still collectively battling “We’ve always done it this way.”  Welcome Shani Harmon, Co-Founder & CEO of ‘Stop Meeting Like This.’ Shani shares the best practices, tips, and tricks that many of our managers seem to miss, including when NOT to have a meeting (i.e. weekly status meetings).  And while we already know many of the tasks to improve the probability of success (e.g. agenda, objectives, clear roles for each participant), Shani shines a light on many of the gravitational forces, (e.g. institutional, cultural, social, and psychological) that keep us from being more effective, including fear of missing out (FOMO), office politics, and lack of trust due to ineffective communication cultures, channels, and systems. Hopefully, this combination of simple instruction, and focus on the real barriers to implementation, will help you and your team learn and adopt the mindset and techniques to start gradually removing barriers. You’ll end up with more effective meetings, more effective people, higher quality work, and less burnout. And you won’t have to ask your people to turn the cameras on.   Without further delay, enjoy this conversation with Shani Harmon. This episode of Work 20XX is brought to you by Webex by Cisco  Webex Ahead Episode Page - Click Here  Work 20XX Episode Site with Transcript and Show Notes - Click Here 

Do you know the biggest challenge your team faces outside work right now? Be sure to ask and listen. And watch PayPal’s Dave Montez on the power of the one-on-one. Welcome to Work 20XX. A show focused on work as we continue to navigate these transformational times. I am your host, Jeff Frick. Whether you’ve been on our Work 20XX journey from the first step or just joining us now, you can quickly grasp a consistent theme—transitioning more work activities to asynchronous and reducing the number of face-to-face meetings. We’ve been advocating the investment in automation of routine tasks and powering self-service as the default way to find information. The reason for this ruthless prioritization is simple—to put people at the top of the list! Not human resources, but the people, with all their subtle and not-so-subtle nuances, interests, imperfections, and unique perspectives. Invest your most precious resources, your time and attention, into the people who will have a significant impact on the success of your endeavor. An engaged team will deliver better results. How do you create and nurture an engaged team? How do you measure their outcome when not working in person together? In Episode 4, we dive into the art of the one-on-one, with a master of the art, PayPal’s Chief Audit Executive Dave Montez. Full disclosure, I’ve known Dave for decades, and a year ago he shared his measurement technique of over-indexing on one-on-ones, in a way I’d never heard before. Again, pulling from lessons shared by Darren Murph, Meg Bear, and Ryan Anderson, the best way to engage people is to ask them questions and listen. And listen to the question behind the question, and then do something about it. And the best way to really understand your people is to get to know them. And Dave doesn’t just talk the talk—he spends a minimum of two and a half hours per day with individual members from their globally distributed team of over 80 people. Without a doubt, Dave sets the standard for anyone looking to invest time in developing their people. In this segment, he shares some of his processes, and more importantly, the results of what he calls the ‘compassionate engagement.’ You won’t be disappointed. So, without further delay, my conversation with Dave Montez. This episode of Work 20XX is brought to you by Webex by Cisco  Webex Ahead Episode Page - Click Here  ork 20XX Episode Site with Transcript and Show Notes - Click here   

Welcome to Work 20XX. A show focused on work as we continue to navigate these transformational times. I am your host, Jeff Frick. In this episode, we explore the world of Design, Real Estate, and Facilities through the eyes of long-time industry veteran Ryan Anderson, Vice President, Global Research & Insights, MillerKnoll. No surprise, these professionals are moving from cost center/efficiency thinking to a more human-centric, and ‘seat-at-the-table’, rethinking their resources. How can we use our portfolio of resources? (real estate, facilities, interior design, remote support, etc) to help our People CREATE the BEST WORK of their CAREERS. It’s hard to attract talent, you want to retain good people, you’re looking for engagement. I invite you to take raise your expectations by changing the focus to the small discrete things Ryan and the professionals at Herman Miller Labs have been studying and documenting and reporting for decades. I didn’t realize how much the tethered-PC infrastructure of the last several decades inhibited the execution of Activity-based spaces, something on design boards long before the PC. The infrastructure has caught up with the vision, with advances in Mobile and WiFi technologies, powerful handsets, and the proliferation of the cloud as an application delivery method. No department wants to be a cost center, and by shifting the focus to human productivity, from spreadsheet-centric optimization and utilization, Real Estate and Facilities are stepping up to do their part, in collaboration with HR and IT. ‘Average’ offices spaces, where everyone got the same ‘here’s your computer here’s your chair’ regardless of function aren’t good enough anymore. A single space built to accommodate all can’t be optimal for the individual, doing all types of work, in all kinds of conditions. Historically, organizations, over-indexed ‘private desk/cube/office’ and under-indexed in meeting collaboration space, even as private desk utilization rates continue to drop, even before the pandemic. In fact, offices should invest in places that support these activities including Community Socialization, Team Collaboration, and Individual Focus work. In this far-ranging conversation, Ryan shares his deep data-based expertise and best practices. The pandemic showed that work could get done outside the office, and on closer inspection of workspaces (COs, Air Quality), there are environmental improvements to be made. Most importantly, the promise of Activity-based spaces and concepts like ‘neighborhoods’, and a more agile/flexible mindset, will make the spaces and places of the future much more attractive, and productive than the rows of desks and tables and cubes of cabled computers in the past. My conversation with Ryan Anderson. This episode of Work 20XX is brought to you by Webex by Cisco  Webex Ahead Episode Page - Click Here  Work 20XX Episode Page with Transcript and show notes - Click Here 

Episode 2 - Meg BearWelcome to Work 20XXA show focused on the future of work as we continue to navigate these transformational times. I’m your host Jeff Frick.   The world changed in March 2020, Chief Human Resources Officers and Chief People Officers had to quicklyadjust to the new world. Amazingly, the companies and people adapted faster than anyone would have imagined.It quickly became apparent that this wasn’t a temporary situation, but really a catalyst to change the expectation of what’s possible, and the relationship between output and location, between employer and employee.  SAP SuccessFactors is a leading human resource solution provider, and as such, sits at the engagement point between company and employee, where the rubber meets the road in terms of systems and processes that define much of what the company means to the employees. Post March 2020, as the demands in the market, changed, far beyond simply supporting remote workers. It created a new demand need for better engagement tools, sentiment analysis, connection  In this episode, we are joined by Meg Bear, Chief Product Officer, SAP SuccessFactors. Meg shared the challenge many faced in responding to the shelter in place demands and working through a distributed team. But she had the added burden to deliver tools and applications to support this evolving relationship between employee and employer. In this far-ranging conversation, Meg shares her views on the factors behind the great resignation, what hybrid really means, and the fact that organizations need to get better at responding to change. We discuss authority, agency, control, flexibility, choice, collective intelligence, and intrinsic motivation because as Meg says “that’s what this is really about.”From the impact of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to the role of leadership and communications, Meg shared her perspective and vision of the path forward. So without further delay, my conversation with Meg Bear. This episode of Work 20XX is brought to you by Webex by Cisco  Webex Ahead Episode Site - Click Here  Work 20XX Episode Site with Transcript and Show Notes - Click Here     

Episode 1 - Darren Murph Welcome to Work 20XXA show focused on the future of work as we continue to navigate these transformational times. I’m your host Jeff Frick.   Who better to kick off the show than the #1 expert on the distributed team in the world, Darren Murph, Head of Remote for GitLab. Darren shares the lessons and best practices in making distributed teams successful. And the best part, all the lessons are applicable regardless of where you plug in your laptop. And since GitLab is Open Source They publish for all to use.  They include the power of intentionality, documentation, and moving as much work to asynchronous as possible, freeing up the extremely valuable face-to-face time (via room, phone, or Webex) for higher-value activities like 1:1s and culture and rapport building.  This episode of Work 20XX is brought to you by Webex by Cisco  Webex Ahead Episode Site - Click Here  Work 20XX Episode Site with Transcript and Show Notes - Click Here