Why Your Hybrid Work Model Is Failing (And How to Fix It Fast)

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Whenever I hear a back-to-work mandate, I think you done screwed up, and not the employees usually. Yeah, you're looking at me like, I don't know what he's gonna say and I don't know if I want to attach myself to what he's doing. Chrissy, if you're just listening, Chrissy has a very nervous look on her face.

HR look.

HR Chrissy has arrived in the room. No, to me it is The hybrid can be such an amazing thing for businesses and employees.

Absolutely.

So many businesses don't see it that way and they do it wrong. That's because they've done it wrong. That's what we're going to talk about this week. Stay tuned. She's the CEO.

He's the marketing and operations guy.

If it's broken, you need the Business Fix. You guys run hybrid in a lot of cases, correct?

Yeah, I mean, we have virtual team members and then we do have some like work from home, but we're those people though that like really working in the office together. So we're not normal.

No, but it's there. You've worked very hard at doing that.

We have.

And the ones that don't are the ones that, damn it, I need you in the office.

Yes.

Or the ones that are just like, oh, we've got remote people that we're constantly mad at. Yeah.

No, we don't do that. That is not how that works for us.

And it's funny because to me, I like people like, oh, the energy, the office. And I get how some people like that. I am not one of them.

No, it depends for me.

I think my problem is, is I am the guy that's going to stop by your desk.

Yeah.

And have a chat for 20 minutes. Yeah, I'm the guy. I'm— I am that even in my own company. I am that guy.

Yeah, I know. I am too.

Distracts my employees for 20 minutes. Like, hey, they're like, I kind of want to get stuff done.

And I'm like, no, I'm going to stay in here I need to talk to you. We're going to build a relationship. And they're looking like, can I, can I look?

They get this look like they're going to jump out the window. Um, thankfully, I mean, like most of the time, like the studio here is on the first floor.

Yes.

Uh, if you jump out of the window, you're jumping into an art gallery, so it's not the, not the worst place to land. No, but that's, it's so funny that, uh, I, I see that. I see a big part of that is like owners, owners get frustrated. They think people aren't working.

Yeah, I can see sometimes I can see a little bit of that.

Um, they're like, they, they can't work if they're not in dress pants.

No, they can't, I promise.

Yeah, no, I— same, same.

There's—

I mean, not to give graphic visuals here, but there are many times when I am sitting in my underwear like, hey, I'm gonna work, I'm gonna work on something, I'm gonna work on my work, right?

Yeah.

Right. I'm like, if you get an email from me, just realize it could have been typed in my underwear.

Remember a few years ago we were all working in underwear.

100%. Because no one could go to the office. No, correct. So yeah, to me, I want to talk about like why hybrids fail. Yeah. I see so many of the office mandates and I realize in big companies oftentimes it is a cleansing. Um, they are looking for a way to get rid of people.

Well, and you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a new building, like, you're gonna freaking show up, right?

They feel this need.

You got real estate you gotta deal with.

Yeah, right, you, you need to be there. Um, but really, we want to talk about this from a small, mid-sized business angle on the, the, the piece to that. First off, I mean, you guys weren't always hybrid. No, uh, we were not.

We were everyone shows up, right?

Right. And as most businesses were. And I mean, There was a necessity to do that, especially when you— I mean, when you started in the business, when you were a toddler.

Yes, uh, technology did not allow for a hybrid work environment.

Correct. I mean, I'm old enough to remember digging through catalog racks.

Yes.

Um, thousands of pages a book. Um, why— I mean, was it terrifying for you to go hybrid? Why was it terrifying for you if it was? Like, why do most CEOs see an issue with it? Is it a lack of trust? Is it the like, I want to be able to know what's going on with— I want to look over and see that like, oh, Carol's reconciling. That makes me just feel so good about Carol reconciling.

I need to see the person doing the things to know that they're doing the things. I don't think it's even like, to me, hybrid's like just a given. Like most people have the capacity. I mean, unless you're working on like a manufacturing line, like if you're in B2B services, if you're in knowledge work, you are probably already a hybrid worker. So it just, yeah, you should be. So I don't think leaders are really afraid of hybrid. I think they get more afraid of like a fully virtual. But at the end of the day, Josh, it's really about them being afraid of losing control.

I wholeheartedly— I couldn't agree more.

Yeah, so I mean, it's what I've seen before. It's not a hybrid problem. It's trust, training, and tracking problems.

This plays into operations.

It does.

The last piece, I'm like, ooh.

It really does. So I mean— Trust. This is— it's trust. Duh, duh. It's really what I want to say. Trust. Duh. All right, if you have to see someone to believe they're working, you don't have a hybrid issue, you have a hiring or a leadership issue. And you— I would say a lot of the time it's, it's the person that's doing the hiring that is the problem, right? And research-backed Gallup consistently finds that high-trust workplaces outperform low-trust workplaces. So I mean, that's the other part. If you've got to have everybody in the office because you can't trust that they're doing their job, chances are they don't want to do their job for you anymore and they're looking for another one. So leaders who rely on visibility instead of results create that disengagement. They don't get performance.

So I have one simple statement about trust.

Go ahead.

If you don't trust them, Why in the hell are they working for you?

It's such a good question.

If you don't trust Betty in accounting, why does she have your checkbook?

Yeah, she's got to be here. It's like, okay, right. Yeah. You know, trust isn't built by watching people. It's built by knowing what they deliver. You've got to understand how the business works. And it doesn't— they don't have to be in person all the time to do that. So that trust, number one, trust. Yep. Number two, training. Right? Most leaders are never trained to manage outcomes. They are trained to manage presence. Right?

Have you mentioned something about training managers?

Training, yes. Promoting people without leadership training is irresponsible.

I wanted to give you the opportunity to say that.

I will continue to say that. So when hybrid removes that visibility from people, because of course they're trained to manage presence and the people in the office, they feel unanchored. And they don't know what to do. So this really ties directly to management capability gaps. And it's something that Harvard Business Review has kind of written about extensively. And they talk about how leaders default to control when they lack clarity in their systems. So I think this is probably even more of an operations issue for you.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we don't have clarity in our systems. We haven't trained them to be able to navigate a virtual environment. It's not really about hybrid breaking leadership. But usually, they talk about how our virtual environment has broken our leadership. No. It has exposed it.

Yeah.

Saying that you have some training gaps.

It was done broke before.

It was broke before. You just— now you don't have a choice but to see it.

It's right there.

Yeah.

Staring at you.

It is.

And you know where it's staring at you through? The mirror.

Yeah. So trust and training. And that third is tracking. And again, this probably ties more into you, but it's a lot of them we're talking about. A hybrid environment or a virtual environment, we really are talking about operations. We're not like— this is not high level. This is not like visionary stuff. This is very basic.

But it's the thing that you still need to be aware of.

You have to be aware of. So tracking, if you don't have clear expectations, deliverables and timelines, your only fallback is, are they online? It's the little dot like, are they there? You have to know that. And that's not management, that's monitoring. You've got to be able to know what are the expectations, what are the deliverables. And so when you don't track outcomes, you track activity, and activity is a really terrible proxy for value.

They're doing the work.

Well, what is the work? I don't know, but they're doing the— they're green or they're red. Red means they're in a meeting. I'm like, they are meeting with themselves. They are not— what is it?

Remember all the mouse moving things. Yes. Like, you'd see, like, people that divide— like, especially during COVID Yes. When all these software trackers came on and people came up with things that would just move their mouse all day long, and you'd see them taking a nap.

You would. And what was so frustrating to me is, because we dealt with— with not within our own organization, but we dealt with clients who started having those issues, and they're like, we're going to install monitoring software, what do you recommend? I'm like, Nothing. They don't. Because if you don't know what your people are doing already, there is a bigger problem. Like, you should be able to know what the outcomes are, like what's going on. Like, for us, we're still solving HR and insurance headaches, and I can tell that we're doing that because our customers are happy, no one is going anywhere, and we're continuing to grow. Oh, is it really that hard? No, it's not. It's not hard. This is not hard. You need to know how your business runs, whether you're the CEO, whether you're the business owner, whether you're a key manager, you got to know how it runs. So that's it. It's, it's really simple. It's trust, it's training, it's tracking. 3 T's. You're welcome.

I love the just, this is it. It's done.

It's not hard.

I know it really is.

It's not hard to say. It is hard sometimes to do if you haven't done it. Ever in your business, but start doing it the right way. Like, start at the foundation. Create those SOPs. Follow your operations manual. Oh, I know, actually follow it. What's that? Follow your handbook if you have one. Actually do the things in it.

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I'll give you a few seconds to go to the website while we get ready to get back to the show. So when you talk about the tracking software, what do you get with Visibility? Oh, I'm excited to hear your take on— yeah, like, because I, like, I, I worked someplace where they literally every day from IT got a printout of every website that every— the owner got a printout of every website that every employee visited.

Yeah.

And he looked at it. We were in the office. I mean, this is—

what do you get? Litter. I mean, that's it. It's litter. A whole bunch of scratch paper if you're not printing on both sides. Like, what is the value there? I don't know that you get any.

I mean, I don't think you do.

Because you're dealing with culture of visibility versus culture of results. And I think often they think, well, if I have visibility, I have results. That's not— they are not the same thing.

No.

No. They're not.

No.

So I would say visibility doesn't always equal value. So here's one thing I will say, though. Visibility bias is real as far as it relates to people getting promoted, people being seen in an organization. There's that visibility bias. And I'm not sure it's something that— can easily be changed simply because it's human nature and we've been doing it since the dawn of time.

Yes.

We fixate on what we see. If we see it, it's real. I mean, it's really how we are, but we can ask ourselves questions and be conscious. So I will say this, visibility does not always equal value. Doesn't.

I agree. No.

Just because someone is seen more doesn't mean that they're contributing more. Just because their mouse is moving all the time doesn't mean they're doing the thing.

Right.

Right. And we've had, you know, presence creates perception and not necessarily performance. So when people are talking about like, I want to work in a virtual environment and I want to get promoted and they're like, what's the best way to do that? I'm like, you need to work on being seen. Well, I don't ever want to go into the office where the managers are. I'm like, then you're probably going to have some more challenges around that.

Yep.

Because it's really important because there are studies on proximity bias, like Harvard Business Review has done some significant ones that show in-office employees are more likely to be promoted. Sure. Even when performance is equal. And that's where I think people get upset is they're like, well, I'm doing the same job as Joe. And we're like, well, Joe is in front of the manager every day because he sees him working. He's got to be able to do this.

And they see the non-tangibles.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes. So I mean, it doesn't— so visibility doesn't always equal value.

No.

But the other part is visibility must be defined. So if you haven't clearly defined what success looks like—

Oh, 100%.

—leaders are going to default to what they can see. So you've got to make sure that if it is a virtual environment, You know what success is. It's not just the mouse moves. It's not just the websites.

It's why I love those tracking software things, because I'm like, why am I— why am I doing it?

Now, if you're talking about screenshots of like, is this person actually on the screens that they need to do? Like, I understand sometimes you need to do that if you really want to make sure. But is that something you do all the time? No. No. Do you have the right to do it at any time as an employer? Yes. Do your employees need to know that you are monitoring them at all times? No, they need to know that you have the ability to do that. Yes. That's where I think sometimes people get tripped up.

Because once again, that trust needs to go both ways.

Yes, it does. And so at Clarity, when we're talking about value has to be defined, we lean heavily into, for organizations, defining your outcomes, defining your expectations, and then defining accountability. Oh, I like that. Yeah, because if you don't define value, visibility becomes a substitute. Yep. And visibility is a poor substitute for value.

100%. Yes. You think there's a direct correlation. There's not. There's not. No, they're not.

And here's where I would also say that, you know, visibility has to be structured and reviewed. Okay. So this is, I think, again, where you come in. This is more of like we don't eliminate visibility, we standardize it.

Yep.

So we have dashboards, we have reporting, we have clear metrics because when everyone is evaluated on the same criteria, then we truly get fairness because fairness doesn't come from watching, it comes from measuring. Fairness is, well, I see this per— it seems that fairness is not a seem. It is and is.

I can look really busy and still not get a damn thing done.

Oh, absolutely. That's what lots of small business owners do all the time. Duh.

Look at all the stuff I didn't do today. Yes. Yeah, no, 100% makes sense. Like, is there a spot where it becomes a risk for HR? Oh, absolutely.

What is that? So I would say part of— you've got unreasonable expectations. Sure. Part— you talk about like the overwork, like we expect salary people to work 50 hours every week all the time. Yeah, no, you can't do that. Um, or we, we expect— or we freak out when they leave at 3 o'clock on a Friday. No. So, um, inconsistency and expectations creates exposure for you. So there's a few things you have to do. One is perception. So if employees feel like expectations are uneven you have created a problem. Yes. Right? And perceived unfairness is one of the top drivers of employee turnover and complaints. Yep. If they perceive that there is something that is unfair. Done. So you've got to eliminate perception of an unfair environment. So that gives you that paradox. The other one's precedent. And this is where we talk about consistency. Consistency gives you that precedent. If you allow flexibility sometimes for some people, and not others, you're creating a precedent that you may not be able to defend. Yep. We only give the, the every sheet. So Jessica is allowed to leave at 2:30 because she needs to get her kids off the bus every day. Betty needs to leave at 2:30 for a doctor's appointment. No, Betty cannot leave, she has to take PTO. But we'll let Jessica do it all the time, same job, same salary. That's a problem. That's a big problem. You've got to create some cadence around it, or you like document why you're doing it or what's going on. So if you, if you create that precedent, you can't be able to defend. So legal risk answer: inconsistent treatment and unequal expectations. Do not set those precedents. Yeah, 100%. And then the third is that protection piece, and this is again documentation and consistency, because you've mentioned documentation before a lot of times. Documentation is not bureaucracy, it is protection, and documentation protects the employee and the company.

I saw a YouTube video the other day where they looked at how many phone books it takes to stop a bullet.

Oh, how many does it take?

I didn't watch the whole thing, but the question to me kind of— as soon as you said the documentation thing, yeah, I thought, yeah, protect yourself in paperwork.

You do. You need to build yourself a fort. Exactly.

And what I would say too, you're picturing it now.

I am. HR fort. So the HR fort of documentation. That's That sounds like absolute hell. Or really good protection for your organization.

That's the other part. Unless they have a Molotov cocktail.

That's— yeah, don't do that. Right. So, you know, as we talk about, you know, why does a virtual or hybrid environment fail? Like, people are like, well, it fails because it's location. Like, we're not all together, so that's why. No, it fails because you have lack of that clarity, consistency, care. You have lack of trust, you have lack of visibility, and because of that, you're not dealing with the protections and the precedents that you need, creating a perception that it doesn't work.

Yeah, the— I love the piece going back that you said about you just exposed the leadership. You did. It was a problem before. Now it's just visible. That was—

that to me is huge. It absolutely is. So I've talked a lot about operations, but I think you should talk more about it.

Yeah, no, I— like, there's stuff I've got to add to this.

Yeah, so you kind of talk— we talked a little bit about like salary paradox, you know, hourly versus salaried versus hybrid. So like, most of the time people handle it wrong without not defining their expectations. How does that operational failure make hybrid work fail to me?

So the, the salary paradox that I look at, and I've experienced this in a lot of cases, is you pay people a salary but you treat them hourly. Yeah. Um, I was operations manager, I was a marketing manager, and yet I had the same hours as the guy at the parts counter. Um, wait a minute, what? No, right? And then it was 8 to 5. If I showed up at 8:01, I got yelled at. And I'm like, wait a minute here, I worked till 6:30 last night on stuff.

I did— well, and I'm sure they expected you to take a 7:30 PM phone call, correct? But you still had to show up at 7:55 the next morning, right?

So it's— the, the problem is, is salary was designed to an unleashed to, to pay on productivity. It is now paid the same way as on presence for so, so, so many positions. There's a reason why legally you cannot pay someone's salary unless they're in a management position. Exactly. That's because the expectation of a management position— clear definitions and rules.

And the federal government has set expectations for what the minimum of salary is allowed to be. And if it falls below that threshold, you must pay overtime.

Correct. So with all of that being defined, hybrid work is the same way. Yeah, because to me, if you're paying someone hybrid, if you're paying them an hourly rate, I under— I fully understand. Let's say you have a customer service rep that's call center. I fully understand you saying, hey, look, you need to be at your desk from 8:30 to 5:00 so you can answer phone calls. And you're, you're going to look at their productivity in terms of how many calls did you take. But Once again, seeing them sit at their computer and moving their mouse no matter what, no, doesn't do anything. The problem that happens with this is we as business owners, as leaders, we always want more. We— hey, can you, can you do, can you do just a little bit more? We talked a couple episodes ago about being a little bit better than you were last week. Yeah. The problem is, is most employees are given the vague directive of just do more or keep busy. Just if there's time, if there's time to lean, there's time to clean.

We say that at our house to our teenagers.

You're— some days, like when I like do the mission statements, the things like that, your, your house, I, I mean, is vastly different than mine in terms of how it is run.

How long did you think that? You should come visit sometime.

No, I mortified.

Like, this is what they do. No, no, I—

it is so different than— I mean, just knowing the stories about it. But nonetheless, it is to me is the, the just keep busy. Yes. Doing what? Accomplishing what? I've seen it so many times where— and it's the problem is, is this is a failure of leadership. Just do more. You see stuff around, just do it.

You've got to clarify expectations as to what it is. What does done look like? Especially now as we're starting to move, as work is changing with the innovations of AI and adoption of new tools. Now we're going to talk about, okay, well, you're supposed to work 40 hours. Now your job can be done in 10. Yeah. Let's define then what, not what are the other things you're going to do or what are the things that we need to change? To make sure that we're still optimizing for the business. Correct. And it may not be that you work 40 hours a week. It may be that you work 30 hours a week, but we pay you the same amount. And oh, by the way, you get some time to decompress because now you're dealing with technology all the time, which burns a lot. Our brains are not designed to work the same way.

No. And to me, the thing that, that, that's missing for people, and this is what kills employees, is there's no defined done point. You are on this endless treadmill. So if I do more, they're going to give me more. Yeah. And when I do more of that, they're going to give me more. There's no done point. I mean, like, the— I get it, the, the showroom is always going to need cleaned. Yeah, there's always going to need something. Something's going to need dusted, something's going to need organized. But have a spot where you can say, look, Thank you for doing that. Yeah, not just do more.

Well, and what I want to say for the done point is, you know, there is absolutely no done point for you, the business owner. Right. And you have a lot of times unlimited energy, unlimited capacity, and you just love your business so much. You just want to work all the time. Your employees don't. There's a reason why you own the business and they work for the business. Correct. Do not expect them to love your organization, work in your organization, or want to do the things in your organization that you are willing to do. No, it's not their baby. And if you're mad at them because it's not their bit, don't, don't be a jerk. I want to say other words too.

Don't, don't be them. No, to me, so this is the thing that I always find the most interesting in a lot of the places that I've worked in, was what I like to call, and I'm coining this, as the 34-hour reality. Okay, um, someone has a set of assigned tasks that they have been given. Yeah, it's done Friday at 10 o'clock. Yeah. What happens? You see them sitting in their office.

How do you want me to visually show you? They're spinning, right?

They're spinning in their chair.

They're on their phone.

They're scrolling Instagram, right? They are pissed off that they are sitting in the office for a day that they do not need to be there.

They have their head on their desk, right?

Like, and this to me on the hybrid side of it is a huge issue. But when you are starting to look at that visibility, yeah, because once again, why do— like, why does the person need to sit there for 4 hours moving their mouse when they are not doing a damn thing related to your business?

They're like, hey, can you do— no, don't get— and don't give them at that point that we're going to do more training, we're going to do more networking, we're going to do more of this, like, no.

Once again, you're— I'm going to go back— you're moving the goalposts and you're getting do more, keep busy. Yeah, that's all you're giving them. Yeah, that's what— and that's why people like, yeah, totally check out or structure their day differently.

If you are hell-bent on them being there in the afternoon on Friday when they don't have enough to do, you've got to figure out how to change the work week around so that you can get the things that you want.

Yep. To me, how do you avoid some of these things? Well, operationalizing list and dates. Yeah. Um, what is required of you by when? Yeah. If you manage the task and when it's due, if it's done by the date, what do you— what else do you want? Exactly. If you say, hey, this needs to be to a client by Wednesday, and they get it done on Tuesday, what do you need them on Wednesday for? Exactly. Other than just do more? No, no. Just get the stuff done. To me, every role has to have that clear list of deliverables with hard expectations. It is done by 10:00 on Tuesday. It's here. It's— I mean, I don't like— it's funny, we're just bringing on someone else and I'm in talking with this person. They've typically worked hourly and I'm like, you're going to be on a production-based basis. If you get it all done on Monday, great. Yeah. Check your email every day. Beyond that, have a great week. Exactly. What I mean, because once again, I don't— for us, I don't care when it's done as long as it's done on time. I, I, I, I don't need the them sitting there because I am managing. It's, it's tougher initially, but once you get there, it is so much easier to manage expectations than it is to manage minutes. Yes. It is not my job to manage dates. It is not my job to manage time. It is my job to manage output. Yes. If, if not, if you're not managing that output, you have come across that coach correct or cut moment. Yes. Go back and listen to that episode if you haven't listened to it. Hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. The other thing that I, like I said, the, the— if you are saying do more, is a recipe for less. Because once again, as you ask for more, people are going to be like, oh, they want more? Well, I'm gonna stop doing more. I'm gonna slow down, right? So that way they don't ask for more. Um, uh, 100% capacity leads to quantity over quality.

Yeah, they get burned out.

100%. If you don't give people a finish line, they will stop running. Um, there, there— I do not have any Forrest Gumps working for me. They aren't just going to keep running. No, I have to like— I— hey everyone, this is a 5K. Yeah. Hey, we're walking around the corner. Um, hey, maybe this is a marathon. This is going to be long and difficult. This is not run for 5 months straight. No one wants to do that. Not— I mean, no, they can't. No, they just— they can't. Um, the, the thing that I see is One of the reasons why it doesn't work too is people like, well, we need this collaborative environment. How many meetings, right? How many meetings have you been in, Chrissy Myers, where it's passing out information?

This could have been an email. 100%. So this could have been an email meeting.

100%. I'm, I'm working with someone right now on this very specific thing where I'm like, look, the next meeting we have We're not going over things that you've typed out. Yeah, we have those 2 days in advance.

Yeah.

And we will discuss those things.

If it is not brainstorming, I generally don't want to have a meeting. Like when we do, we do a leadership team meeting every week, and in that there has— there is— there are problem solvings, there are action steps, there are to-dos. I think one of our first episodes was about meetings. We talked about to-dos, to-dones, and all the things, and No, like 90%, I would say 80%. I think 80% in our office, like if it's not brainstorming or like we don't do just information unless it's state of the company and even then it is, this is the direction we're going, this is what's happening and we're having this conversation because if there are questions we need to talk about it. Correct. And we need context.

Correct. Yeah. The, to have someone in the office, if you're bringing people, like I remember this as plain as day, I started work for a company. I wasn't there very long, thankfully. Um, my first 4 days I came into the company, my first 4 days I had 14 Zoom meetings.

I have no words, right?

I, I mean, that is when, like, literally on day 3, I was like, I have made a terrible mistake.

I mean, I know that I have weeks like that sometimes, and I'm just mad at myself as I did it to me, but I can't— why would you ever do that to somebody. It's one thing if you do it to yourself and you're dumb, but why would you do that to you as a business owner? No, I would never.

We're doing outreach, we're doing other things where it's different as a business owner.

You want them to come back?

Clearly they didn't want you to come back. No, no. And I mean, to me, once again, like, office days should be for what I like to call the high friction activities. Those are the things where people need collaboration. SOP reviews, um, these discussion things where it's tough to interact and it's Zoom, the thing that's tough on Zoom is interactions are slower. If someone needs to speak up, there's that half a second delay where you can't be like, oh, wait a minute, what about the this? Exactly. Zoom meetings are slower. They don't carry some of that momentum. So if you can have people in for that, do it.

Well, it can be hard when you're learning new things or you're doing a rollout of something that's vitally important to your organization. I think it's really important important that you have everybody in the room together. It is not necessary for just an update. No, no.

Um, one of my favorite things is what I like to call the home day sanctuary. Um, I know, I know you have the same problem that I do, is you start working on something, the phone rings, start working on something, get a message, start working on something, something else happens.

People walk into my office, right, all the time, right?

Yes. If Someone's working from home and they're getting stuff done. Leave them the hell alone. Yeah, stop distracting them. Stop sending them 10 messages. Stop making them think, how do I have to look productive to this stupid program on my computer? Just let them work. Yes, that's what you need to do. I, I, to me, it drives me absolutely insane when people are like, hey, just wanted to check, is like, are you working? Yeah, yeah, I sure am. Um, it just drives me absolutely nuts when like you've got someone that's in a situation where they can work without distraction. So true. You don't have me stopping by their desk going, hey, how's it going today? Right? No.

And if their door's shut, if they are working in a regular environment and the door's shut or they've got their do not— like, could you just let them do the thing?

Just leave them alone. Uh, going off so far, like, this, this one's going to be interesting. Um, do you guys use Slack?

We do not. We have Teams. Um, so you use the messenger in there? They'll— so one team uses the messenger in Teams a lot. The other one, they're, they're email people. It's like email is how we work.

So we, we use, we use Google Chat. Yeah. We have a lot of remote employees. Yeah.

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And now back to the show. And WhatsApp. We use WhatsApp. I'm like, wait a second, we use— we use WhatsApp.

Oh, WhatsApp. Okay, makes sense. With that, yeah, how many times do you see or know of, or at least have heard of, in companies where there's the— the— once again, we talked about the meeting after the meeting. How many side text messages do you see sometimes? Oh yeah. And to me, once again, Slack is the new hallway. Exactly. It's the new water cooler. Yep.

Without visibility. Right. Because you don't see what's going on, right? Depending on how it's worked, how it's worded, how it's worked. Like, same thing with text messages. Like, you know, when you're on a virtual— okay, we're gonna squirrel. Yes. No, let's do this. You're on the Zoom meeting. And you're watching— and I've done this, I've watched it in other organizations, or I've been in— I've been in organizations and like they're talking and I'm a conscious observer. And all of a sudden I see, I see eyes, I see divert down, I see hands. I don't necessarily see like phone. They're not phoning, but— and then all of a sudden I see another person just pop up and then they look down at their phone and I'm like, I know what they're doing. Like, you are having a side conversation. Or you're all on your laptops and then all of a sudden one pops up and somebody's like, and they're like typing. I'm like, why are you on an email and not in this meeting? Why are you not paying attention?

And to me, the thing is, is why are you not smart enough to realize that if I see one person typing, then I see another person typing, I'm going to connect those dots.

And I know exactly how to look like I'm not doing that, but I know exactly when people are doing it. I'm facilitating and I see that happen, I'm usually like, hey, so Alicia, tell me what you think about this topic. Like, I am that person and people are just like, shoot, say it.

No, I hate her. Why is she making me lit?

And I'm like, no, no, no. We're like, we just— I'm like, hey, sounds— it looks to me like you may have a question or you may have some comments. Let's—

it's to me, talk. That is the— like, those are the ones though when you realize that, okay, we have a hybrid issue. Yeah, that is the whole— that is the water cooler.

Or we have a cult— we have a culture issue.

We have a cult— like, we have a culture issue with those types of things. Um, like I said, I'm at least smart enough that if some— I see someone in a meeting and I know they just texted me, I'm probably gonna wait a solid minute and a half, 2 minutes. Yeah, before I pick up my phone.

Yeah, snark exists in a virtual, a hybrid, and an in-person environment. It doesn't matter, it goes everywhere.

I To me, it's one of those things where it, like, once again, this is a way to keep the finger on the pulse because everyone's like, I've lost control of everything. Yeah. When people are hybrid or remote. And to me, once again, those conversations, you can see them. Yes. Remotely just as well as you can in person. Yeah, you can.

But I would say if decisions happen in those side chats, you're breaking alignment and accountability. So 100%. As a manager, it's really important that if you see that happening, you bring it back together, which again is why I'm like, hey, looks like you have something that you may need to say. Or do you know, you look— you— I saw a look on your face. Are you, are you confused? You have a question? How can I help? How can I explain this? I don't feel like I'm connecting with you. Trust me, the— I'm sure the 4 and 5 letter words that they have for me when I'm asking those questions, I don't care. That's why I'm there. That's what I get paid to do.

I have, I have called people out before. Absolutely. I'm Uh, so Bob, what are you and Denise talking about?

Uh, now if I'm at a board meeting or a networking meeting, that happens all the time and I am totally okay with it. Usually the ringleader of the text message. But if we're in a work environment, if we're in a facilitative environment, I want your attention.

That being said, um, to me, one of the, like, the big advantage that I see with hybrid, you share, you save office space. Yeah, um, as an employer, um, as an employee, you've got freedom. You've got— and I mean, like, look, that is the number one— like, when people say no one wants to work anymore, right? If, if I've got the ability to take a doctor's appointment at 2 o'clock in the afternoon without getting 10,000 questions, that's it. Wonderful. Um, that hybrid environment allows that. Now granted, you should still probably say, hey, I'm going to be away from my desk for that amount of time.

Yeah. Um, well, and flexibility. It's flexibility too. I mean, even if you're in an in-person environment, to have that flexibility, I mean, that's really the big thing.

I mean, have you ever watched the— like, through some of your remote workers, have you ever watched that spark disappear or the eyes go dim where you're like, uh-oh, uh-oh, we're losing them? Yeah. We're losing them. We're losing them. They're falling off the hook. Yeah.

Yeah, I have. I mean, and then you got to figure out how to get them back. Like, what's going on? Like, is it a communication gap? Is it a skills gap? Is it— have we talked too long on Zoom? I think that, yeah, it's really easy to do that. And you can still see engagement. You just have to be really intentional in how that works with employees. So, and we have like, there are times where we'll do team meetings And they are, they're a hybrid meeting. We have people in a room and we have people in a different place. And so it's really important that you build that engagement too. But I would say disengagement shows up in behavior before it shows up in performance. So you see it. Yeah. When you start seeing the dimming, that should be your note of like, what do I need to do?

And to me though, like that dimming can be just the, that can be a culture thing or that can be a performance thing. Yeah. Um, and once again, if it's a culture thing, Look to see how you're monitoring people. Are you monitoring their performance or are you monitoring their, their visibility? Yeah. So to say, have awareness around it. Yeah. A couple of key actions and takeaways. These, these are going to be interesting. The one is to me is define done. Yes. Let people have that. If you cannot tell your employee exactly what finished for the day looks like, you aren't ready for hybrid work.

Yeah. And I would say in addition to defining done, you have to define the difference between busy and done. Because if your team doesn't know when work is complete, they're going to default to staying busy. Clarity creates completion.

Yeah, don't move the goalposts. Don't move the goalposts. Um, to me, the other one is, is like, if you have the salary bias, is what I like to say, is audit your salary bias. If you are punishing your fastest workers by giving them the reward of more work to do than your slow workers for the same pay. Yeah. Ever seen that? I have. I see it all the time.

I have. And that's why those people leave. And you're like, I don't understand why all the good people left or nobody wants to work. It's because you did it wrong. It's really simple. Usually when you're like, I don't know, I'm like, it's because you did it wrong. But that's okay. Do you want to do it right? You want to do it wrong? I would say in addition, we reward results, not residents. Ours. Yes, lots of ours. Reward results, not residents. So if person who gets it done fastest gets more work, you're punishing performance. So similar, it's similar to auditing the salary bias. We don't reward time, we reward impact.

Yep. Um, one that I like is the date— like the date and expectation-driven management. If everyone gets the thing 100% done Give them a reward for that. Yeah, um, it's done, it's on time, it's delivered well. Great, let's celebrate.

We got it done, let's celebrate. They got it done, celebrate them.

Yes, yes. Um, quick shot. Yep.

Camera on or off? Oh God, okay, it depends on the meeting and it depends on what they're doing. I am always a strong proponent on, for the sake of understanding, cameras on because body language is important. And you want to eliminate the sidebar conversations of people truly texting all the time, make the cameras be on. So collaboration, cameras on. If it's just information, cameras optional. And when I say it just information, like it's a mandated thing that everybody has to be on, like maybe it's a like required government training. So I really am, I'm a huge proponent of cameras on because I think it's just really important as humans. So But don't confuse visibility with value. If you consistently need to coach, then you need to see engagement.

I wholeheartedly agree with all that. To me, it's for the most part, I ask for cameras to be on. And it's just— and once again, I feel pressure to make sure that I am delivering value because this person had to get up. They had to some way, shape, or form put themselves together for this. I need to make this as quick and as painless and as effective as possible.

Well, and here's the other thing I say as the leader, model. Again, we talk about model what you mandate, model the behavior you want to see. I want people to be engaged when I'm talking to them. So, when they are talking, I need to be engaged too, which means as the leader, your camera should never be off. Correct. Ever. Correct. There has to be a significant reason as to why your camera is off. You're, you're like in the hospital and you got to take a meeting.

I've done that once.

Same. So in the hospital, like the emergency room, not with me, not me, wasn't me. There was somebody else. But yes, that's it. Like you do not like your camera's always on because you need to be the like you model what you want to see.

The hospital was upset with me because I put my shirt on because I was like, the client was like, Is that a hospital bed? Yeah, I'm good. Fine, it's not a problem. I'm good, no problem.

So what's a tool that's mandatory for a hybrid team?

Um, to me, like, you have to have some sort of task management. Uh, like, we use Asana. Um, big proponent for that. But there's, I mean, ClickUp, there's Airtable, there's all sorts of others. Because once again, what's done? Yeah. When is it done? How is it done? And yeah, the beauty of that is You know when it's done. Ah, I like— we, we use a ton of triggers. So when, like, let's say Lance the editor, when he's done with 10 things, it lets me know, hey Josh, it's your turn. Yes. Which means, hey, I just automatically know Lance did the things. Yes. Imagine that.

It doesn't just live in Lance's head.

Correct. I, I know it's all— so yeah, to me, you have to have a tool for remote workers that tracks, once again, productivity. Okay, like, is it getting done in the time that it's supposed to get done? To that, to me, is just a really big thing. That being said, um, speaking of tools, yeah, you've used a number of AI tools. Yes, we use a lot of AI tools. We aren't going to talk about those next week. No, I wanted to build— I wanted to get everyone excited. We're gonna talk We're going to talk about AI. No, we're going to talk about innovation that isn't AI. Oh, nice. Because right now, so many people, when they say innovation, they automatically go to AI. I thought, you know what, let's talk about making sure— like, if I love that, if everyone's innovating through AI, that's not innovation anymore. Yeah, you're just following the trend. So guess what we need to do? We need to talk about how you're going to innovate besides AI? Oh yeah, I'm already thinking what letter I'm gonna do.

I got it. It's exciting.

This is not a surprise look on our face. To everyone out there, thank you very much. What's a topic that you would like us to cover? We love getting the feedback, we love the comments. By all means, keep those coming in. businessfixpodcast.com. Make sure you go, you visit, you say hi, send us an email, all that happy jazz. Do us a favor, take care of yourself. If you can, take care of someone else too. We will see you very, very soon.