The Edge of Work
The Edge of Work provides new insights and ideas to help leaders navigate the changing world of work. In each episode, we’ll talk to leaders, practitioners, and innovators to explore new ideas for attracting and developing talent, leadership, and workplace culture, all to help you lead and succeed in a changing world of work.
The Edge of Work
Building High Performing, Flexible Organizations with Cali Williams Yost
Cali Williams Yost is the Founder and CEO of the Flex+Strategy Group. With over three decades of experience advising companies on flexible work strategies, Cali has a keen understanding of how flexible work fuels high performing organizations.
During our conversation, Cali spoke about some of the current challenges and bright spots with flexible work policies, the importance of training managers and leaders to work in flexible ways, and some of the latest research she and her team have uncovered in building high performing, flexible organizations.
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Welcome to the Edge of Work podcast. I'm your host, al D. This is a podcast for leaders who want to make sense of workplace trends and are looking for new ideas about how to lead people and grow their business in a changing world of work. During each episode, I'll bring you the latest experts, researchers, founders and leaders to share new and unique ideas, as well as actionable advice around attracting and retaining talent, developing people and building healthy and sustainable organizations. Welcome to the Edge of Work podcast. My name is Al D. I am the host of the Edge of Work podcast.
Speaker 1:Today's guest is Kelly Williams-Yost, who is the CEO and founder of Flex Strategy Group. Kelly has been advising organizations on developing flexible work policies and strategies for over three decades, and I wanted to bring Kelly on because I've been following her work for a couple of years, even prior to the pandemic, because she really has been a trailblazer in this space. Given all that is going on around the discussion around flexible work and what that looks like, and all the different work models that we have today, I can't think of a better person than to have on to talk about this. This was a really interesting conversation and really getting into some of the things that Kelly observes in the work that she does, where she's often advising organizations on really thinking about how do we develop a flexible work strategy and policy, and so this conversation also features some of the research that Kelly and her team have been doing around what leaders as well as employees think about flexible work. So make sure to listen in to learn about some of the research and what some of the key takeaways were, but also to get some more insight into what someone who really is a pioneer in the flexible workspace is thinking and seeing as she looks at what leaders are doing to try to create a better world of work.
Speaker 1:As always, let me know what you think of the conversation. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or shoot me a message, tell me what you liked, and really hope you enjoy my conversation with Kelly. All right, we're back on the edge of work with Kelly Williams-Yost. Kelly, it's great to have you here as listeners for the edge of work. No, I always love starting with a moral question, and I thought an apropos question for you, kelly, is what was your first job and what did you learn from that experience?
Speaker 2:So it's great to be here. Thank you, al, for having me on. Okay, so my first job was back in the late 80s, early 90s. I was a commercial banker in Manhattan and I had gone through a management training program. So, very rapidly I was put in charge of a group of bankers, all of whom are older than I was at the time. I was married but I had no kids, and the particular business that I was in charge of was closely held companies, so the relationship between the banker and the customer was really important. So it was in that job that I first figured out the power of flexibility.
Speaker 2:Now, remember, this is the late 80s, early 90s, before laptops, before mobile phones. But I saw that when I lost a banker, mostly because they didn't have flexibility, it put my business at risk. And so, being a very new manager who had no preconceived notions about how you have to manage people and work, I of course suggested is there a way we can give these people flexibility? And again, early 90s, my leadership kind of was like what are you even talking about? But there was a new, very emerging this is important because it shows that this is not new a very new, emerging field in the area of work-life flexibility and it was really very much in think tanks at the time academic think tanks but I just became obsessed with the power of being more thoughtful and flexible in the way work can be done as a business strategy. That that's where I decided to go into this field was from that first job as a banker. Weirdly, that's how I discovered it.
Speaker 1:That's so interesting and I think it ties nicely in terms of. Today. You are the CEO and founder of the Flex Strategy Group, and so could you maybe share what is your role and how would you describe the work that you do each day?
Speaker 2:So I am the CEO and founder of the Flex Strategy Group, as you said, and I started my business back in the late 90s excuse me when I could not find a consulting company that did this work. I was very willing to go to a bigger firm that was looking into how to execute flexible work strategies, but at the time, none of them were doing it, and so I had to go out on my own and create a firm that would support organizations in their flexible work execution process. So what I do every day, al, is I help organizations and individuals perform at high levels. Working flexibly that's what we do.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that I appreciated about what you shared in the first job story, it was this idea of you realizing that flexible strategy, a flexible work strategy, could be a business strategy and a differentiated business strategy. And the other thing that I really enjoyed about what you said is that, just highlighting the fact that, while many of us are waking up to this in 2023, this is not necessarily something that is I want to quote new, being the evidence of being that you have been in business for some time, and so what I'm curious to know from you is what earned insight do you have, because you're working on this for some time, that the majority of the rest of us might not see, because we haven't been studying it or working in it for as long or as experienced as you have been?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the first insight would be that it's not just about place flexibility. There's a lot of focus on remote work and a lot of focus on hybrid work, and that's great, but really, at the end of the day, place is just one aspect of flexibility. There's time flexibility. There's where work happens, there is the process that you have to execute in a flexible way and, of course, there's the how you use technology. All of those pieces have to come together in a whole, so that's why we say it's about how, when and where work is done. That truly is what a successful flexible work strategy is based on. But we're still pretty focused on where, and I think that'll evolve, because I think going into the pandemic work was a place you went, so now we're figuring out oh, how do we have flexibility in the place that we go to work? Hopefully we will evolve beyond that and now see it as all these elements having to come together into a strategic whole.
Speaker 2:The next thing that I know for a fact is it's not just about managers. Managers cannot manage the flexibility for everybody. They can't. All an organization can do is support a flexible operating model, put the parameters in place. Managers can be set priorities, collaborate and coordinate with their people, but at the end of the day, people also have to play a role in how that flexibility is going to work, and so we have to start talking about that as well. That it's a true partnership in terms of the execution. I could go on now, but I will leave it to those two things that it's more than just place and it really is a partnership between managers, teams and individuals to make it work on the day to day.
Speaker 1:So I really like both of those and I want to go a little bit deeper into where we are today and maybe just to tee up this question, because of the work that you do in terms of the consulting work and also talking with lots of organizations, I would love to know from you what changes are you observing in work, and just the workplace today that you're excited about. And then maybe the flip side of that question is what are those changes that you're observing that you are concerned about?
Speaker 2:So I, of course, al am super excited that we're all talking about it now, because for many, many years I would bring it up and there we get I like to call it the sort of slow clap, like, oh, that's interesting, and then nobody would yeah, just nobody would continue the conversation. Now it's really everywhere. Honestly, I can't get out of a dinner party without somebody talking to me about oh, how do I do this in my organization? That is super, super exciting and I think that's great because, as we said, it's not new. So we're finally thinking about it and how we do it.
Speaker 2:What concerns me is we still think that it's a matter of putting a policy in place one size fits all, sending out an email and calling it a day, and that we're done. That is not how it works and we have to start looking at flexibility as a way we operate across workplaces, spaces and time, and then how do you actually operationalize that way of working? And that's much different than just writing a policy, and I'm concerned that we haven't quite grappled with that yet. I'm also a little bit concerned that we seem to have moved on from it. We're now really focused on AI, which is great because that's a how, and that's important, but we are so far from landing the plane on where and where we're working. That it's just. We have to stay focused and know we have a long way to go to make it real and effective.
Speaker 1:So I want to pull on a few threads there to what you just said, and maybe even pulling back to something you said earlier. One thing is that so much of the conversation with flexible work is on the where, which has a lot of benefits and probably, I would argue, is not a bad place to start. So that's one thing I want to pull on. And the second thing I want to pull on is this idea that flexible work is a policy. So could you talk to me just a little bit about what are some of the challenges in terms of what are we limiting ourselves if we only focus on just flexible work is where you work as well, as it's just a policy, and how do we think more expansively about getting over those two kind of just narrow minded pieces of work?
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's start with the where piece. All right, so I'm going to start with a story. So I had a group of senior leaders in a room not too long ago 20 so senior leaders and they were talking to me about their RTO return to office policy and I said, okay, let's just level set. Is it that you want people in the office or is it that you want people to have more intentional in person interactions that lead to particular outcomes that you think are important and to the person they raise their hand to? The second, okay, and they really are about how do we have more in person interactions that are intentional, that they drive toward the outcomes we want to see happening? When we focus on where none of that is being discussed, none of it. Okay. So what happens is we focus so much on where we're working that we don't focus on what we're trying to achieve and then how being in person can support that and what does that mean about being in the office and how are we doing these things when we're not together and what does that look like? So you have, we need to start with the work and the outcomes and the activities that are important. Then think about how they are happening where most effectively. So when we just lead with the what and with the where, we miss out on starting with that what and then optimizing where all of it is happening. Okay, the other piece of this is remote, is just one piece of a puzzle, and so when you talk about, there are going to be very, very few organizations that are 100% remote, that never have any in person interaction. So that's just one way the work is enabled, but it's that's got to be part of them. More broadly than what's happening on site, then what's happening maybe at the client site or what's it must. It must, it has to be a multi-dimensional conversation about where those outcomes happen best, and that's what gets lost.
Speaker 2:So the second question that you asked me was how do we move past the policy part, thinking that it's just a matter of policy? I think the easiest way to think about it is if it is a way of operating, it really is about practice, right? How do we prioritize the work? How do we communicate and coordinate with each other when we are across all these different dimensions? And the policy, I think, is sometimes used to set the parameters within which we're working. But again, when you set policy from the top down. People are not involved in the discussion about what are the parameters that work best for our business. It's how you want to execute this, whether it's collaboratively focused on the work, defining the parameters that work for your business and then making sure you're planning and coordinating within those effectively, or you just want to set a policy, send an email and think you're done with it. You see which one is more effective, right.
Speaker 1:Sure, sure, sure, yeah, and I think maybe to a couple additional data points to add to that. I mean, from some of the research that I've seen, particularly for frontline workers, like one of the best things that you can do for them in terms of engagement is providing that schedule flexibility 100%, 100%.
Speaker 2:Yep, and that's what you miss when you're focused on where, because those people they do not have flexibility necessarily in where, although ironically, al, I'll tell you, if you start to ask them and get creative, sometimes you can find some things that they can surprisingly do remotely.
Speaker 2:I saw a story recently where a fast food company hired somebody to take orders in another city because they thought, oh, you know what, they actually don't need to be here to do that. So let's try that out and I would tell you before COVID court organizations would swear to me that their customer service people had to be on site in a big old phone bank. Right Now we see, post COVID, you've got all sorts of customer service people all over the place effectively working. But, to your point, frontline workers need to be part of this discussion about how do they perform at a high level, working flexibly, and they can get some of that time and even, to your point, process flexibility in terms of how they're scheduling and how they're coordinating with each other that otherwise is not identified when they're not brought into that strategic approach.
Speaker 1:So one anecdotal data point to add here. I remember, maybe about seven or eight years ago now, I was doing some back when I was working in consulting. I was doing some benchmarking for a project I was doing on digital transformation and one of the things we were looking at was the operating model of some of the teams, and I remember coming across a story from JetBlue back in maybe 2013 or 2014,. The story was about how they actually moved a lot of their customer service and call center jobs remotely, and at that point in time, they were talking about how, in their social media team, 80% of their social media team actually lived nowhere near JetBlue's headquarters and this was back in 2014. 100%.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and so that's where you have examples of organizations that started to think about based on the jobs that these people are doing how, when and where can they be done and they started to get creative. But here's the interesting thing Not everybody at JetBlue could do that. Not everybody, but that's okay and that's what we have to start getting comfortable with is that the process can be consistent across an organization, but the way it's going to play out is going to look different based upon the job, and that's what we're. I think we're still stuck in this. It has to be equal and fair. The fairness is in the process, not necessarily in the outcome.
Speaker 1:I think to your point about the policy, where I think that if you are going to be a leader who's developing a policy, the policy is going to be as strong as how well that leader actually knows what goes on in terms of how work gets done on the front lines, or even in the middle, for that matter, and it was interesting.
Speaker 1:I was reading a story in the I want to say it was the Wall Street Journal about Starbucks, and they just we're recording this in November, so they just had their most recent earnings report, where they had a really good quarter, and the story was really about, though, the fact that their CEO has been spending time as a barista a couple hours a month.
Speaker 1:Now you might think, oh, this seems like an undercover boss kind of thing, where the CEO is just trying to score some brownie points, but the story actually talked about how, in a executive leadership team meeting, he brought in a latte machine and basically asked everyone on the team raise your hand if you know how to operate one of these things, and he basically said this is the challenge, this is the problem. We have people who are making decisions about things that are happening for our people when they don't actually know how work is done. So what did they do in the next quarter? They ramped up the spend in training, they ramped up the spend in capital equipment, and guess what happened? The ruptured, went through the roof, productivity went up and earnings went up, and so it's just one of those things where, be sure, policy matters and if you want a really good policy that really drives towards a business outcome, it's got to be correlated with how well that leadership team actually understands of how and where work gets done for the rest of the people in that organization.
Speaker 2:And now I'm going to take that to now, even more broadly, where we are. Okay, yeah, so right now, there are some real performance challenges that leaders are genuinely concerned about, like developing the next level of talent and cultural cohesiveness, and all the things that are not untrue, but their default context for how all of that happens is still in the office, so that is driving a lot of this. If we can just get back to the office, these things will happen. The idea is, your workforce has worked in a radically different way for three years, and so you, as a leader, now need to be willing to go to them and say okay, so what do you think is working? Well, like, how did you learn to do things that we should still consider and continue? But here's the things that I think are missing. So how do we now work together to figure out what this is going to look like?
Speaker 2:Next, you have to be willing to go out and see how they've been working, because we're going to get to my research, I think, but my new research shows they think they've been pretty successful. Okay, they think they've been killing it, okay. So when you start coming out and saying we need to get back to the office. In many cases they are in the office, maybe just not as much as they were. They think they're interacting, but you are coming in to say you're not doing a great job, it's not tracking with them. So you, as a leader, it's your job to step back and say let me understand what is working. But here's what I see Now let's think about how to do this next. So it's the same basic story taking a step back, letting people tell you what they're doing, you learning and then helping them figure out how to take it to the next level.
Speaker 1:Hey, there, it's Al, and thanks for listening to the Edge of Work podcast. I wanted to take a quick break to ask you a small favor. I'm loving doing this show and I hope you're enjoying it, and that's where I'd love your help. If you're enjoying this episode, I would really appreciate if you take a few minutes to leave a review and rate this podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, or simply just share it on social media or with your friends. I'm incredibly grateful for your support. Thank you, and let's get back to the show. So that's a great segue, and one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you was, in fact, some of the research that you just put out, and I'm looking at the report right now. The title of it is the promise of high performance flexibility. Could you talk a little bit about what you found in the research or what were some of the key themes from the data that you gathered and the insights that you've gained?
Speaker 2:One of the reasons that we've been doing this research now since 2006,. And the last time we did it was 2017. So we purposely waited until the health emergency for the pandemic ended in May Okay, I'm not saying the pandemic's over, it's just the health emergency ended Because I wanted a really clean pre and post indicator of how things might have changed. And the other piece of this is all of this is. What I wanted to mention is that the flexibility that we've experienced over the last three years is crisis driven. It is not thoughtful, it is not deliberate, so this should not be an indication of how this can optimally look for organizations. So I wanted to get a sense past that crisis craziness to see, as we begin to level out, where are people landing and so what? Some of the key findings are that if you said you were going to did most of your work in an office pre pandemic, you are mostly on site still, but you have more flexibility, which means you're probably not on site as many days, but you're still mostly there. If you were primarily remote, you are still primarily remote, but there's more flexibility in that. So, again, you may have been on site a couple days a week, but maybe now you're not at all, or one day a week. So I think what we have to think, understand, is effectively, people are still fundamentally working the way they did, but maybe in a much more flexible way. So those people who are going on site, they think they are interacting with their colleagues. But the problem is, being on site does not necessarily mean being in person. So are we being as intentional as we now need to be about how that time together is being used, and are we being clear about what we're doing when we're not together?
Speaker 2:And the other piece of this is that employees feel like they are being very, very effective. They believe they're being productive, they believe they're communicating well, they believe they're being innovative, even more so than they felt before the pandemic and going into the pandemic, flexibility was already very prevalent. 97% of full time US workers said they had some degree of flexibility. That's everybody almost. Now that could be very small amounts of time flexibility. It could be much more remote, but again, on the other side of this, people still felt that they did their jobs really well. And why this matters again is when you're a leader coming to the table saying we've got to do things differently. They're not understanding why, because they think they're doing a pretty good job. That being said, they're open to improving their situation. There's a high percentage say they're somewhat satisfied, and that means there is some room to do things a little bit better and smarter.
Speaker 2:But the real powerful takeaway for me were two. One was the impact of training. When you train people, that effectiveness goes off the charts. Now again, remember going into COVID people were already pretty flexible. Now they're even more flexible.
Speaker 2:And if we need to now acknowledge that this is the way we work, how do we skill people up to do that? Well? And what happens? When you give managers, teams, individuals those skills and tools, they really do bring all that innovation and all that engagement and all that productivity that you're looking for. So that's important. We have to train people. And finally it's interesting, this goes back to the policy versus practice. Right, half of people still see flexibility as a perk and not as a strategy. And until we start to position flexibility as a strategy, as a way of operating, it will not get the focus of senior leaders, it will not get the resourcing, it will not get the attention to really make it effective and optimize it that it ultimately requires. Because, as we also found in the research, it's not going away. This is not going away. People expect to work flexibly, they want to work flexibly and they believe it's only going to continue even if there is a recession.
Speaker 2:So this is really some of the key takeaways that we focus a lot on flexibility like it's a new thing, versus how to look at flexibility as something that is here to stay and make it really effective.
Speaker 1:So I want to drill into the training piece, but before I do that, I'd just be curious to know where do you think that gap is in terms of Employees saying hey, we're being really effective and leaders being like maybe my perspective is, you're, maybe not. Where do you think that we're? What is that gap materialized?
Speaker 2:So the gap materializes in three ways. One, as I said, I don't think a lot of senior leaders fundamentally changed their context about where work happens and performance happens. Remember they. For them, many of them, work was where you went and that's what they know, and they genuinely see performance issues that they are concerned about and they think they will be resolved by being back in the office. Okay, that's just their context.
Speaker 2:Second thing is the flexibility that we have experienced over the past three years was crisis driven. There wasn't a lot of time to deliberately put measures in place that either supported or disaffirmed that this performance was successful. Okay, we don't have a lot of great specific data that clearly indicates what the outcome was from the crisis driven flexibility that we've experienced over the last few years. That being said, organizations did pretty well over the last three years and employees really genuinely do believe that they are doing a great job. Now, maybe there are degrees of that that you could argue, but not everybody can be 100% wrong. Okay, in what they're saying.
Speaker 2:And the third thing, in addition to the sort of leaders not changing their context, not having really great data, is we don't really know how to a lot. In many cases, we still don't know how to execute flexibility. Again, it's very random, very organic. Randomly happens. If you happen to be a really intuitive, good manager, you understand how to do it, but that's not good enough anymore. You now need to bring everybody along.
Speaker 2:So you're going to have that bell curve of the manager who just knows how to do it. Then you're going to have the managers on the other end. They're like I'm never doing this, okay, and you've got to deal with them separately. But in terms of executing flexibility as a way of operating day to day, you've got to train people and you've got to do it in a way that makes sense for the business. So everybody's on the same page that this is how we're doing things, and that has not happened. So you have this gap because leaders haven't changed their context, we don't have great measures and it wasn't really well executed and many cases, we don't know how to execute it, which is why we keep thinking, if we just put the right policy in place, it's going to be fine. That's not really going to be it, so that's the source of the gap.
Speaker 1:So I do want to talk about the training piece, and one of my observations regardless of flexible work, but I think this ties into this is that when we join let's just say when we join the workplace, or we join and we take a job for the first time we get taught how to do the technical components of that job. I'm making you something that we get taught.
Speaker 2:I was going to say I'm like Al, that's pretty aggressive.
Speaker 1:I have to say so on a good day a perfect world and a good day to perfect world. We get taught the technical components of how to do a job, how to do a task, how to do the deliverables that we have, how to do the responsibilities. One thing I've noticed or observed is that we never really actually get taught though the how of work, of like how to work or the ways of work, and so that's just like an observation of me. But as you're talking and honing in about the training piece, I'm wondering if there's a connection point there in terms of, yes, the training is important, and part of why it's important is because of this deficiency that many of us have for no fault of our own, that we just never really learned how to actually like work together, right? So, anyway, I'm curious if there's anything there, and also to give you a chance to talk about what is that training like actually look like.
Speaker 2:Okay. So if you were, if we were to position flexibility as a way of operating across workplaces, spaces and time Okay, so we are flexibly operating across all those different dimensions together Then you can no longer afford not to train people on how to actually execute the work effectively. You can no longer not train people on how to communicate effectively with each other using the technology that's available to them, but just also have those skills that they need to effectively communicate. If we are now working across all of these different dimensions intentionally, then we need to train people just how to think about prioritizing what they need to get done and where it is done best not only their work priorities, but then their personal life as well. And so what we used to do is just assume that by showing up in the office every day, it was happening Like you would just learn that right, and there is an aspect of that that still is important, where you're sitting in a room with somebody who knows more than you do and you are having that opportunity to observe them and ask them questions, and that's one of the things that needs to be prioritized. When are you going to do that? But what you can no longer avoid is not training. This is where I'm going to go into what training has to be. You have to train managers and teams how to intentionally set the parameters within which they are going to work together, based on the work they are doing. That is a skill.
Speaker 2:Now remember going into the pandemic. Flexible work was already happening, but that parameter setting was not happening. So work was getting pretty inefficient and people were burning out and there wasn't a coordination about where work is happening best, when we're working together, how we're using technology. So on the other side of COVID we now need to have teams and managers know how to set those parameters with each other. Secondly, we need to teach managers how to do the basics of good management.
Speaker 2:A lot of managers don't know how to manage. You have to teach them how to use the technology to allow them to understand how people are working. You have to teach teams how to coordinate with each other, because you can't rely on your manager to do all this when you're working across all these different dimensions. And then you have to train individuals how to be intentional about how they're using that flexibility to get their jobs done and manage their lives. So that's a real high level of just what that training has to involve. But it's also all the things like having those difficult conversations. How do you do this Managing conflict when you can't see each other? How do you use that time together really intentionally, to make sure that development is happening? And that's what people need to be trained on.
Speaker 1:So, on this notion, what you just shared, that makes a lot of sense to me, and I'm sure that you talk a lot about this with leaders that you work with each and every day. I'd be curious to know what parts of that are they like yes, sign me up. What parts of that are they like I get that. And then, what parts of that are they? Just maybe not so much. I'd just be curious to know, like, how are people like taking that in, knowing, in this case, these leaders are people that are making decisions for their organization.
Speaker 2:Okay, so the leaders are falling into those three categories. Okay, hey, sign me up. Okay, now those tended to be very similar to the leaders I dealt with before, that hired me before COVID. Like they saw the future coming, like they understand we are not like the traditional work models over, like we have to really think about how we're working effectively with each other. And those leaders still exist and they are surprisingly. I'm going to be honest.
Speaker 2:There is a shocking percentage of leaders that I still believe think they just are done with it. Like they've set their hybrid policy three days back in the office, even though it's not necessarily working and maybe there are butts in the seats and people are pretty disengaged. Like the things that really should be happening when you're together aren't necessarily happening. Like it's not optimized but they think they're done and you know they're supportive, but they don't necessarily think they, they don't necessarily know, nor do they think they need to do more than what they're doing. And I got to tell you, al, there's a shocking percentage that still think we're going back. Shocking and I didn't really have the number on that until the recent KPMG study came out of CEOs or almost like 67%, I think it was of CEOs said they think office jobs are going to be back in the office in three years and I thought, man, wow, wow, okay. That's really surprising to me, especially when you see what employees were telling us in our research, which is they're already flexible. One third are already doing their work from a remote location and that was before COVID and they fully expect to be able to work flexibly. It's an interesting, we're in an interesting moment and I think it's a transition moment that we still have to work through.
Speaker 2:In terms of the parts that they get the leaders that are totally embracing, like yeah, we have to think about this differently. They 100% understand that teams have to be involved in setting the parameters for their business and one size will not fit all. They 100% understand that just saying three days everybody come in, these are the three days does not reflect the reality of their business. They 100% understand that people, especially managers managers need some skills to be able to manage in this new way, and they 100% understand that technology plays a key role and that technology needs to be embraced and adopted effectively by everybody.
Speaker 2:I think, in terms of have they made the line of sight between the flexible way the organization is going to operate and how they're maybe going to use their workspace. I don't know if they've always made any of those broader connections. They're starting to see it. They are the other two groups. They think they're done. They get it, but they think they're done with a policy and that's all. And then the other group who just think we're going back again. They just still do the polite clap and move on.
Speaker 1:So I want to do, I want to take some time to pay homage to the office, because I think it's important. Yeah, maybe the way that we can tee this up is let's just I want to throw a hypothetical at you. So let's say that there is a company that started tomorrow and we just knew that they were gonna be a successful Yep. So my guess, my question to you is how might you encourage them to think about the role of the office and and and an office, for that matter, yep in the forming of their company? And the reason why I tee it up like this is that they don't have the organizational debt of being, yeah, exactly, years are always working.
Speaker 1:Yeah so what? How might you encourage them to think about using the office for this new yeah whenever?
Speaker 2:I get questions like this. I think about my young self when I was my late 20s, working in the bank hey, why don't we do this? I was so unburdened by any kind of preconceived notions that I was able to think about this differently. So I again, I completely get that headspace. So let's, let's start from there.
Speaker 2:Here's what I would say start with the work that you are going to be doing, start with the culture that you want to build, okay. And Then break it down and say, okay, based upon the work that we are going to do and the culture that we want to create, and Also, I think you have to say, and the technology that we are going to use, okay, what role could an actual office or in a place that enabled the in-person interactions that we think, benefit that business, our business, the work we do, the culture we want to create? What does that look like? What type of workspace? Where is that workspace? How is that workspace organized Based upon what we've determined in the way we work, how often are we in that workspace and what are we prioritizing for that time together, and what is the configuration of that space to best Enable that outcome that we are trying to achieve.
Speaker 2:But, as I always say, I say two things out over and over again you got to start with the what, start with the what. What do we need to do? Then the where, because then you'll understand what where Enables what it is that you're trying to do and you'll understand what that structure should look like. The second thing I always say is you got to start with we and then you go to I okay, what do we need to do and where do we do it best? And then the individual can figure out what they're going to do based on that structure.
Speaker 1:So before we wrap here, kelly, I always have a couple questions that I ask every guest on the Edgework podcast. So my first question to you is what is one idea that you want leaders to think differently about so that they can create a better world of work for their people?
Speaker 2:I want leaders to think differently about the fact that the way they see work is not necessarily the way work is, and I still don't think a lot of leaders understand that. They need to be willing to step beyond what they believe, work where work happens, where performance happens, how it happens and be open to hearing other Opinions and other ways of doing it. Not that they're wrong. Bring their ideas and bring what they believe, because they're not necessarily Unclear, but I think you need to be open. That maybe something it needs to evolve.
Speaker 1:Last, question what does a better world of work look like to?
Speaker 2:you oh, that's easy. Better world of work to me looks like an organization that has taken the time to Set the parameters within which their organization is going to operate, across workplaces, spaces and time, intentionally based upon their particular strategic objectives. They have trained their managers to be able to lead in that environment. They have trained their teams to be able to coordinate effectively within that environment. They have trained their people to be able to prioritize their work and their life and how it fits together in that environment. And they continue to ask the foundational question over and over again what do we need to do and how and where do we do it best? So they continue to evolve and innovate and, as a result, they've unlocked all of the performance, engagement and well-being that is possible from that approach. So that is what I want to say.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a better world of work. Cali Williams Yoast, the CEO and founder of Fox strategy group. Thank you so much for coming on the Edge of Work podcast.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks. Oh, it was great to be with you.
Speaker 1:Hi everyone, aldi here. Thank you so much for listening to the Edge of Work podcast. If you like what you heard, I encourage you to share the episode with a friend, as well as to head over to Apple podcast to leave a review and let us know what you think. I would be forever grateful if you did that. I would also love to hear directly from you about what episodes you're listening to or any suggestions you have for how we can make it better. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. Thank you.
