Thrive IT Podcast - Are we IT Robots (featuring George Kuruvilla)

All right, all right, all right. Welcome to another Thrivecast. My name is DJ Eshelman, and once again joining me as co-host, Mr. Jeff Pitch himself. Hello, Jeff. Boo!

Hey, there we go.

I gotta remember that.

Yeah, you know, yeah, just put them on audio. No one needs to see them. Yeah, thank you. As always, it is great to, to be here with you, DJ, and, uh, very exciting who we've got, uh, on tonight.

Yeah, we'll do the countdown for them. George, welcome. If you want to introduce yourself and, uh, whatever you want to say about yourself, I should have to preface that.

Well, first off, DJ and Jeff, thanks for having me. It's an honor. Awesome.

Yeah, I'm getting a weird little echo, echo thing, but that's all right. It might be on my end, who knows. It's kind of the world we're living in these days, I guess, right? So, all right. Well, Today we're going to talk about some interesting stuff. So we, uh, had a little side conversation. This is actually all from a, a, uh, a post that George made that I thought was really— it kind of unlocked a lot of thoughts in my head. Uh, just to give some background, uh, I've served in consulting, I've served in sales, I've served in, uh, just straight up IT services a lot. And so we have to deal with this in whatever we're in. If we're part of a company, we have to deal with that company's culture. And it becomes one of those things where we really do have to be aware of that. But at the same time, when is it too much? When, when do we have less of a culture and more just that robotic kind of serve and be the person we, you know, demand that you be. And so, so yeah, we're going to talk about how we can actually be people in IT, uh, and how we can utilize things like training and things like that in the right way in our companies and not do it the wrong way. But also talk about things like performance reviews and things like that that are, um, I won't say necessary evils because I don't think they're evil per se. We always want to be on a quest to improve ourselves, but at the same time Yeah, maybe we could grow together and be better people together. So I actually was going to pull up the tweet that you had, and I totally lost it here.

Maybe a good thing.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's all good. But yeah, so George, I'll let you start off and just kind of talk a little bit through what's been on your mind lately as far as, you know, training programs and things like that. And, and, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I, I guess, you know, first off, I have to, uh, you know, be clear that this has nothing to do with my employer. This is just— this was me, this was me going on my typical rants. And, um, anyway, the topic was really around enablement and training, right? So, you know, what's the right approach as far as as far as enablement and training goes. And, you know, different, especially large organizations. So my wife works for a very large organization, global organization as well. And, you know, a bunch of my friends and we have these conversations and typically in large organizations, there are teams that are responsible for enablement, right? I mean, so, you know, their job is to essentially create this content globally for, the organization and make sure that it fits the needs of the employees, but at the same time fits the objectives that the organization is trying to drive. And that's, that's a delicate balance, right? So chances are that, you know, it's not just about providing enablement to the employees. It's also about certain metrics that you got to meet and whatnot. And therein lies the challenge, right? When, when do you focus more on metrics and when do you focus more on what the employees really need and when, how do you find that balance, right? And so my point is that there's a lot of great content that's being produced either externally, internally, whatever, right? There's just a ton and it's generally overwhelming as is, but then ideally, if the content is good, people will gravitate towards it. And consume it. So there shouldn't be a need for organizations to make content like mandatory or like saying, hey, you got to do this by so-and-so date, right?

Right.

I think when you move to that culture, what happens is people consider this, consider it as checkbox, and you'll leave it running in your, on your background. And yeah, you, you know, you probably hit a metric as an organization, but are you really enabling the employee, right? So instead of that, what if you took the approach of, you know, guiding the employees through potentially good courses? So, you know, maybe there's 100 different things and someone with the same persona as you says, hey, here's the 5 that I think I recommend that you guys do and here's why. And then maybe every employee still has a target to achieve. So every Every quarter they got hit, you know, 30 credits of training or whatever, right? But then they get to choose what they consume. And then guess what? If they like it, by word of mouth, that's going to spread and everyone else is going to use it. And then the attitude they have towards training is totally different from when someone tells you, you got to do this by so-and-so date, or you'll be on some naughty list that someone else sees, right? So it's just a different way of approaching training, essentially.

Yeah, Jeff, this immediately makes me think of what we talked about the other week when we were talking about kind of internal marketing, that sort of thing. So I'm just curious, did that resonate for you as well?

Yeah, absolutely. And it's, yeah, you know, it's, it's amazing when, you know, you see companies, you know, like George is saying, the metrics a lot of times become the end-all be-all. And, you know, there's— I kind of look at it like a sport, right? You know, not everyone is a Michael Jordan. Not everyone is LeBron James. You know, it's those guys on the bench that can literally make or break a team. You know, it's, it's same with football, same with hockey, baseball. It's not always the stars. It's when those people are able to step up and, and, you know, maybe make one big play, or maybe it's just the little things they do day in and day out, you know, that are very difficult to measure with those things.

So it's, yeah, you know, yeah, it's always just a checkbox, you know, are we really getting anything here or even here, you know, are we just checking a box that said, yes, we do this, our, our admin team is now happy or whatever that is, you know, HR is thrilled, whatever that is. Yeah, it's kind of like, how do we grow? Yeah, in that kind of environment.

Yeah. I mean, human nature is that, you know, when you are forced to do something, you, you, you are not really putting your true energy behind it or your passion's not there. You're just doing it because someone told you to do it. Whereas, you know, if you take a different tact and say, here's why, you know, you know, I recommend this and here's how it benefits you to do X, Y, and Z, then, and then it's, it's not something mandatory. It's more like, hey, you know, do it if you feel like it adds value. It's a completely different approach. Right. And then all of a sudden your attitude changes as well. So that's, that's where I guess both, both approaches are trying to accomplish the same thing. It's just a different way of of doing things.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, honestly, it's just like, what this unlocks in my mind is, um, okay, are we putting people down a singular path? Um, especially with when it comes to— I mean, there's certain things that are HR training-related things, but absolutely, and I get that, and that's, that's necessary, especially nowadays. I mean, we really want to be clear about who we are as a company, right? Or, or as whatever individuals. And we also need to very clear that there's certain things that are just appropriate and not appropriate in our workplace. You know, we need to take a stand on that. I mean, it's really necessary. But if we're taking that too far, like, like I think you're, you're talking about here, it's like, are we just pigeonholing people into something that basically just makes them feel like they're— I don't want to say a victim, that might be a bit too much, but just not, not as empowered as they could be. Whereas if you're like you're saying, if they have a choice of things that they can do to develop, odds are good they're going to be much more engaged and could even find out things about themselves that they didn't even know. I think of people that are, you know, doing, let's say, Citrix administration, you know, and they're in a cubicle and that's what they're doing. And they could unlock something within themselves watching one of these trainings. It's like, you know what, I'm really interested in marketing. I wonder if there's an opportunity for that. You know, we see things like that. And a lot of times we just assume sometimes that our employees are there for a purpose. And that's, that's all we think about is that that will always be their purpose. And that's just not the way human beings work.

And I think that's, I think it's a great point, especially when you got the companies that, you know, focus on the metrics. And I think what happens is you get the employees then doing the same type of thing where they're going, well, if I'm being measured on these metrics, then I'm not going to go outside my job description. You know, it's why? Because it's not helping me meet my metrics to get a raise, to get a promotion, to do whatever. So, yeah, you know, not only are you limiting the employee, but you're limiting what the employee can do for the company as a whole. So it's, it works both ways is what happens.

Absolutely. And DJ, to your point, there's some stuff that absolutely has to be mandatory, like compliance, right? Yes. I mean, there's no doubt that everybody has to do it. But the point is that each of, you know, we as individuals are all unique and the way we get to our goal is going to be different. We, you know, we are all, you know, created differently. Our talents are different. And so So if you create certain training and expect everybody to consume it the same way, it's just not going to happen. So that's where like certain things have to be a little bit more open-ended. And I think the way organizations need to look at their teams is, you know, more about how collectively they can work towards a goal as opposed to everybody doing the same things and getting to, you know, like I think, you know, if you were to think about administration as an example, right? So you've got, let's say an organization that's got, an end-user computing team, there are 5 people focusing on Citrix. Not everyone has to do everything the same way. I mean, there might, there might be one guy who's more skilled at scripting, so maybe he focuses on that. And then somebody else who prefers, uh, you know, architectural stuff, he focuses on that. So my point is, instead of trying to create clones, let's all, let's leverage the strength of each of these individuals to collectively function as a great well-oiled machine.

Yeah, yeah.

Honestly, encouraging, not necessarily cross-training, but, you know, if, if you've got, you know, an architecture guy, and you've got a junior admin or whatever, that wants to kind of take a peek into their world, you know, I think the employers should be encouraging that, that type of thing. And, you know, and because a lot of times then you get into the hoarding of knowledge and Oh yeah, yeah. So, but you know, but there's a lot of times where, you know, there are too many people out there that still feel I have to keep this knowledge to myself because that makes me special and it keeps me from getting fired, laid off, whatever the case may be, which doesn't really happen.

Yeah, I was gonna say people are way more afraid of that than they really should be. That's true. But yeah, what kind of things could we actually do to incentivize people to actually go through trainings that are actually meaningful for them and helpful for the company culture as well? What kind of— I mean, obviously there's things like performance reviews where that's just part of the structure to say this is, you know, I've seen some places do like where it's a number of points and you have to score a number of points to get a raise, that sort of thing. I, I've always been curious if that actually works. Uh, it didn't work in the last organization I was in.

I've always actually enjoyed performance reviews. I mean, when performance reviews, when done right, are extremely valuable. I think the key to performance reviews is that it should be collaborative, right? So it's, it's one where you kind of establish your long-term goals. So it's not just your goals for this position or the next year. It's, it's basically coming up with your career goals and then working backwards and figuring out what I need to do over the next year, over the next 18 months, and then making sure your boss is aligned with that and, and making sure that he agrees with it. And then collaboratively you come up with some high-level goals, and then within those goals you break it down now in terms of the actual steps, and then you create— so this one of the steps could be training, right? I mean, so So, you know, if my goal is to be an expert at, I don't know, Azure, let's say, right? Guess what? One of the steps has to be certification. I mean, you know, it helps to go through— I mean, maybe not certification, but training for sure. But then, you know, you know, if you want to, you know, like, I'm not saying the boss should force you to do certification. Like, personally, when I do training, I like to do certification because it's measuring how well I've absorbed to some degree at least I'm not saying that makes you good at the job, but it at least helped me get a gauge of how well I've learned the material that I was supposed to learn. So I like certification, but again, I agree certification is not for everybody. There are people that are way more practical. They learn something and they can apply themselves but fare poorly in certification. So it's not a measure. But my point is that define high-level goals, define, you know, then steps to get there in whatever that might be. And then have regular touchpoints. So in other words, don't just define it and then wait till the end of the year to discuss it, but have like 3 or 4 touchpoints through the year and then have a talk to your boss once a month or so about those. And then it can be very, very effective. The problem is very rarely does it work that way.

Do you find that, that with the performance reviews, like you mentioned, you know, laying out a career path, In, in, in the world we are in, in technology and the way the technology changes so fast, do you find that, that having that longer-term outlook is still effective, or do you cut it down a little bit more? Like, you know, like, what do you think you want to be doing over the next 2 years? Because it used to be, you know, what do you want to be, where do you want to be in 5 years? Well, you know, our jobs change. You know, the technology changes, our jobs change quite a bit depending on what we're doing. We, you know, we may be on-prem today, we could be in the cloud tomorrow, and that requires a different little skill set and everything.

So my take on that is, yes, you still— you should still have long-term goals. Now, there's a difference It depends where you are in your career, right? So obviously when you are starting off your career, you need more guidance. So like, this is where a good effective boss can help you define those goals. Like, if I were to, you know, define my goal when I was 22 and when I started working, and if somebody told me to define my 5-year goals, I probably wouldn't define it properly, right? I would need guidance from others. This is where mentors come in. Where a good boss comes in. But then as you progress in your career, you become much more acutely aware of where you want to go. So at this stage of my career, I, you know, my 5-year, you know, goals are not necessarily tech, you know, technical goals, right? Yes, there are technical goals, but then it's one of those things where the technology might change and I have the confidence that I can pick it up. But so that when you, when you reach that level of your career, those goals that we're talking about are at a much higher level, right? So it's, it might be things like, hey, you know what, I want to be an effective leader. I want to pick up— I want to spend some time understanding business strategy, or, you know, that— those kind of things. And, you know, those high-level goals don't necessarily change that much, right, over time. I mean, yes, the minutia changes, but that high-level goal doesn't change. So that's where, like, yes, you define that high-level goal for, um, you know, 3 years from now, but when it comes to the details, you keep iterating over time based on how the market's moving.

I like that. Yeah, good answer.

Honestly, I think one of the things that I love about, you know, the time that I spent in— well, I mean, we can say Citrix Consulting, I spent some time there. But even as somebody that was external and was serving as a third-party consultant within the organization. Even then, I was still encouraged to participate in that. And I resisted at first. I was like, this is— what's the point? You know, it's just like, I'm not growing inside your organization. But it unlocked something that actually became a key for me down the road. And actually, I think is what led me towards being more of a coach in the first place. And that is the ability to mentor. So when you have that ongoing thing, then you're inviting others to participate in as well. And In consulting, the cool thing about it was that it was a very frequent thing. It was either at the end of the contract or the, the statement of work, or sometimes like weekly, monthly, that sort of thing, depending on, on the, on the project. But having that back and forth from not just a performance review standpoint, but more to what you were saying as far as like If we're waiting too long to make any changes, then we're not really gonna make any changes. And I honestly saw some people grow way, way faster than I have in other organizations because of that, because there was that constant, yeah, is it painful? Yes. But I can point to circumstances where, you know, we had to really, you know, hone in on somebody and say, look, you're capable of this, but you're held back in these areas and you need to work on them. Otherwise, It's just a reality. You can't progress unless you do this. And working with them on a weekly basis or whatever it was to get those kind of— a lot of times it's soft skills. I mean, pretty rarely is it you need to learn more about the technology. In fact, I'm finding extremely rarely is it actually you need to learn the technology. It's usually all those soft skills that are surrounding that. And so getting them involved in that process is great. But here's the thing. What was useful in that regard for me is knowing that they were reviewing me as well. And so I could grow not just as a person in technology, but also as a leader because of the feedback I was getting. And I knew, I kind of learned how to better encourage people as well. And I think that was awesome.

Yep.

And I made him speechless. What the heck?

You've blown our minds. Yeah, no, it's in, you know, you can always tell, you know, good organization the way they've got things set up, a bad organization the way they've got, uh, things set up, you know. And I think there is, to kind of tie into training, you know, you still have companies that don't really put forth a lot of effort in, in training, um, you know, and it's, it's It's sad because, you know, you want your employees trained because when the next new thing comes along, you don't want, you know, you typically just don't want to go out and have to hire a whole new brand new skill set. Use the people you have, get them the training, get them the knowledge for them to be able to do their job and continue to grow. One thing I was thinking about, DJ, is when you were talking about having the, you know, investigation of, you know, what if I want to see what is marketing like or something, right?

Yeah.

You know, the training doesn't always have to be about a person's job. You know, you could set it up as sort of like college courses, you have electives, and you can take this many hours or whatever the case may be. And, you know, just, you know, feel free to pick and choose what do you want to learn. You know, it's, it's, those are just, I think those are good things that help encourage people as well, you know, because they're, they're the company showing that they care about the person's growth, not just from my job today, but in general.

So that was my point earlier, right? So about having the elective kind of mentality, right? And it's one where company still has goals and we have to make sure that that's a part of the curriculum, but you have to think about the employee and their career as well because, you know, we, you know, at Citrix especially, right, we are all about— we keep talking about productivity, right? So now you kind of take that and extend that across an IT organization, right? So What keeps the employee engaged? What makes the employee want to be productive, right? If it is just me coming in and checking in and checking out, I'm not going to give it my 100%. But if I feel like my employer cares about my career and my future and not just about the next 6 months, guess what? I want to contribute, right? I want to be part of that success. I want to see my employer be successful. So that's where like, show empathy and show your employees that you care by investing in them, investing in their future, and they will pay back tenfold. That's, that's really how I feel.

Yeah, honestly, I think there's a certain level of— when you have a good business acumen, when you really understand why your company is doing what it's doing, not only does that lower resistance, but it increases buy-in. I mean, it really makes a difference. And so if people have a broad array of understanding and To that end, I, I think I was thinking, too, along the lines of we, we get so focused on, like, official trainings and video trainings and things like that, which are great. But there comes a time when, you know, there, there needs to be some interaction between other teams to say, okay, here's— we use marketing, for example. You know, here's why you do things this way, and here's some ways you can do this in your daily life, that sort of thing. And that's really been huge for me to get a broad array of different understandings of the way different departments work. There's always having this drama around accounting and the people that have their way of doing things. And it finally took me just cornering one of them one day and saying, "Look, I don't understand why I can't just submit my expenses like this." And they said, well, because when you do it like this, here's all the things that I have to do, you know, and that sort of thing. And when she explained it, it's like, okay, now I understand that and I'm willing to help you out.

That's such a great point, right? So I think a lot of organizations are employing this shadow me like program, right? So the idea being that, so like, let's take an IT vendor, for example, right? I am being asked to do something, but I don't know why I'm doing it. So like, hey, go solve this problem, but you don't really understand what the implication is in terms of the business workflows, right? So if I were allowed to go shadow that business organization for a couple of weeks and see exactly how they function, I will develop empathy and I'll have a better understanding of why a process is done a certain way without just assuming that that process sucks. Sucks, right? And, and they should be doing it my way. So yes, that's important. The other piece is, you know, I always find it interesting where everybody blames support, right? Oh, your support organization sucks. I wish everyone just spent some time in support, you know, and, you know, go, go do a rotation in support and then tell me it sucks, right? Things, things like that, right? I mean, I think, uh, but I— organizations are getting better at it, and I think they're realizing even between things like product management getting more engaged with the field, you know, instead of building features in your own little bubble, you know, why don't you go talk to a few customers, right? And, you know, see how they use your product. Or better yet, why don't you use your own product for a bit? You know, things like that, that really goes a long way.

Yeah. Yeah.

Working for a few software companies, it's that— that is— that is a hard— can be hard. To tell developers or the product manager, look, people aren't using it this way. They're really doing it this way. This is the real world. And, you know, they do at times live in their own little bubble and, well, I do it this way. I'm smarter than them. And in a way, but yeah, I do like the point of You know what, how often does, you know, so we have the traditional administration, IT versus the rest of the company.

Yep.

Right. And a lot of that is just simply neither side understands where the other side is coming from. You know, what if, you know, in, you know, these, these companies started putting like, yeah, hey, let's put IT in marketing or IT and accounting or blah, blah, blah, you know, so that both sides get to know each other and understand, like you were saying, George, is, you know, why are we doing these things? Why are things done that way? And instead of, you know, just guessing or saying, that's stupid, I don't know why they do it, but it's dumb, let them learn from each other. And with better understanding, things— I, you know, my belief is that things will go much smoother.

There is, I think, a tendency in the market towards business units owning tech now, right? I mean, there's, there's the whole shadow IT piece, obviously, where, you know, businesses find that IT is not moving fast enough and hindering their progress, and they go do their own thing, especially in this cloud world where stuff, you know, solutions are turnkey. You can go purchase, you know, whatever it might be, a SaaS service or a PaaS or whatnot, and you can get going really quickly. But as part of that now, I think a lot of organizations are now decentralizing IT and thinking of IT as not just a support function, but thinking of it as being a critical piece in the revenue generation path. And that's really what needs to happen. You've got to stop thinking of, you know, us employees, us IT guys as purely, you know, there to fix your computers, but think of how we can solve your business problems. And guess what? That again, back to that training and enablement. You know, when, you know, I remember being working for a global law firm and, you know, basically, you know, these attorneys obviously paid a lot of money and they make you feel like dirt, right? I mean, it's like, you know, you, you know, you basically, their perspective is that you are costing them money because you are paid through their profits. And so they treat you like dirt. And instead of them looking at me like that, if they made me feel like, hey, Hey, you know, you're helping me, you know, generate revenue and, you know, thank you for your solutions. And that's what— that's why I'm able to build it the way that I am. And let me teach you a little bit about how we function and where you play a role. My attitude would have been totally different. All I wanted to do while I was there was get out because— yeah, because— and it's nothing to do with the money or anything. It's just that feeling of, you know, like, you know, they don't value you.

Yeah, that's, and that's huge. You know, it's, yeah, it's, it's feeling, feeling valuable, feeling that, you know, that you're not being talked down to all the time or whatever. Absolutely, that, that's, that's a big thing. And I know working with law firms and insurance companies like that, you know, there's a lot that, especially, I hate, you know, I hate saying it, but lawyers do tend to have that attitude. And, and I, you know, but a lot of companies do, they have the attitude that IT is a money sink.

Exactly right.

In reality, you know, there's two, the other side of it is, is that, well, you wouldn't be making as much money if it wasn't for what we're doing.

Right.

But I want to go back to those credit card slide things. But this is where like, if they, if organizations spent more investment or more time in making their IT organizations understand the business, I think it would be a huge change in terms of the attitude these employees have.

Yep, absolutely.

Yeah. Well, yeah, actually, just remembering something that, like, the very end of the book— this is actually something I decided to put in there. I had cut it out initially. But yeah, talking about that, that whole team dynamic thing, and what I was kind of thinking about is how we need to teach people the differences in how communication works. Like, we don't all think and communicate the same way. So, so that's one of those soft skills that I think gets, it gets missed way too often. But, you know, it's, it's a whole stack of things. And it seems like just if we're not communicating well enough that there's benefit for everyone, if we all understand all these things, then You kind of might as well just not matter. It's like, like you're saying, George is just checking the box at that point and it's like, why, why bother? Yeah. So how can, how can, I guess there's two core questions that are coming to mind here. There's two perspectives. One is how can management get better about this in the real world? Kind of like a success manual kind of a thing. But also how can people that are employees of an organization be better at this?

Yes. So let's start with the management, right? So I think as managers, don't look at performance review as something that you do once a year. You know, when you, when you go through that process, put, put real effort into it and try to understand where your employee is, what the strengths are, what the weaknesses are, and provide genuine feedback. I find a lot of, you know, organizations, like, you know, when I talk to people and in terms of how they go about performance reviews, it's a number, right? At the end of the day, you're given a number. A manager might spend half an hour with you to kind of explain, "Oh yeah, you did a great job, this and that, and here's your number." Right? That means nothing to me. I mean, that means absolutely nothing to me. Instead, if the manager said something along the lines of, "Hey, I went and I reflected on your year or your last quarter." and, you know, I just want to say you did a great job on X, Y, and Z projects, and here's what you did really well there, you know, and here's the feedback I received. You know, I reached out to a few people, and here's the feedback I received about you. So great job there, right? But also, you know, from a constructive perspective, on this project, you could have done things a little bit different, and, you know, here's what I'll recommend the next time, right? And then here's a way you can kind of test that approach. And then also reflect back on Hey, one year back you said your career goal was this. What have you done towards that goal? Like, you know, outside of your job, have you— you mentioned at that point you wanted to do certain training. Have you invested in that? So showing the employee that you genuinely care and providing, you know, not these, what do you call it, cookie-cutter responses, and instead just showing them that you really invested the time and you've really reached out to people to see how they've done. And you, you know, you are You know, fully invested in the employee's success because you realize that that employee's success is your success. You know, a good, a good manager always hires people smarter than them and empowers them, right? And because what happens, they will, if they do their jobs well, you look good, right? So, so that, so that is basically where it's at. As a manager, be a really good coach, invest in your employees and invest in their their career and give them, you know, constructive feedback, honestly. And then also, obviously, you know, don't just think about your objectives, think about their objectives as well. I mean, both, both are important. Now, as, as an employee, now I think one of the things you need to do is, again, similar to what I said about the manager, think through your goals and aspirations. Don't let the performance review be a checkbox. It's very easy for people to get jaded with the process. Give it a proper shot. Like maybe it hasn't worked the last 4 years. What, guess what? You take a different approach this year, give it a, give it a shot, talk to your manager and see where it goes. And then take your goal seriously, right? I mean, don't let it be one where you ignore it the whole year and then towards the end of the year you're like, oh, sheesh, it's time for performance review. Let me make sure I fit the checkboxes so I get my raise. It shouldn't be about that. You should be thinking more strategically, more long-term. And that's where, like, you know, and keep that communication flowing. Ask your peers for feedback. You know, even now, after all these years, I always reach out to multiple people, uh, you know, and both within the organization and out, to see, you know, what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong. I might assume that I'm doing a lot of things right, and that might not be the case, right? So that feedback is critical. And so make sure that you have a mentor, make sure you have, uh, peers that you constantly talk to and get feedback up, and then make sure that you're serious about your goals.

Yeah, and I think, I think, you know, another argument against just doing a yearly review is how hard— for me, at least, it's hard to remember what I was doing exactly 9 months ago, a year ago. What were the wins? What were not? You know, if you're meeting with an employee to do kind of a not so much a performance review, but just a Hey, let's meet quarterly. Let's, you know, kind of see what you've done. All, you know, like you were talking about, George, and, you know, you one, you get the feedback, the mentoring, hopefully from your manager, you know, those types of things. What could you be doing better? What have you done great? But you also have the documentation on those checkpoints of what you had done versus trying to remember everything that you just did over the last 12 months.

Yeah, no, that's a great point. In fact, it's funny you say that. So I mentor a bunch of people at Citrix, right? And one of the first pieces of advice that I give them is document everything you do. Nothing is insignificant, right? Every— you know, if you go day to day, you might be doing so many things that, you know, you might not even remember. Like, you know, maybe at the end of the year you go through your calendar to kind of track what you've done. But you'll still miss a ton. So it's very important to document everything you've done, every minute detail, so that you can create that narrative that you're working towards in your performance reviews and your touchpoints.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think taking that seriously too. I mean, I am obviously self-employed, and so it's even worse for me to not document things, but I have started writing things down, like, like writing out my day, you know, actually planning things out and writing notes like a journal. Throughout the day of things that have happened. And it has been amazing to me the growth that I've had as part of like going back through this, even just a few weeks. And all of a sudden, I'm noticing, yeah, okay, yeah, my attitude sucked there. I need to improve that. Or things like, you know, I felt really a lot better about this back then. You know, I should really focus in on that. I think the other thing that I will say as an, as as somebody who has been an employee and been with managers that don't take this seriously themselves but have to check the box. And so next thing you know, they've got a performance review. So they just kind of pull you into the office and say a bunch of things. And it's actually not just not meaningful, it's actually hurtful because, you know, you're not really part of the conversation at that point. And there's been no conversation. It's just like you just did something that's just like, It's, in some cases, it's almost like an assault, for crying out loud. It's like, hey, I know you didn't have any time to prepare for this, but let's go and do your performance review right, right now. And I want a bunch of answers out of you and all this kind of stuff. It's like, I've seen that happen so many times. In my mind, I think the manager should take it more seriously than the employee. And absolutely, yeah, really, they should spend the majority of the time and making sure they're very, very appropriate about this and saying, you know, I've got a performance review coming up. I'm going to block off my calendar before then and absolutely do not disturb. There's no emergency that's going to be bigger than this performance review. And actually stick to that. That's actually really important too, to actually say to your employee, you know, you're worth more to me than this list of tasks.

No, I think a manager's attitude towards a performance review tells the employee how much the manager truly cares about the employee, right? I was talking to somebody yesterday and he was telling me he hasn't talked to his manager, like had a touchpoint or a review in a couple of years. And he was telling me how miserable he feels because of that. And not that, I mean, he's doing great and, you know, He's, you know, like, it's not that, you know, his job is in jeopardy or something, but to him, that the fact that he can't talk to his manager really matters. I mean, it makes him feel like, you know, alienated almost, right? Like, because he's not receiving the feedback. So again, it goes back to the point that if a manager cares about his employee, he's going to carve out that time and be serious about that review. It's not just something that he's just going to do on a whim.

Yeah, yeah.

And yeah, I recently went went through that myself where I wasn't getting any feedback. And when there was feedback, it was, you know, there was never a, hey, you know, that was a great job. It was, oh, you know, you made a mistake over here or, you know, something along those lines. It was there. There was never encouragement in that respect, you know. So it's, yeah, you start feeling like I'm not appreciated and, you know, maybe I am just doing a bad job. It starts to wear on your self-confidence. And then it starts to affect your work and then it just, you know, cascades from there.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing. If you're constantly worried about, am I going to be fired because I'm not getting any feedback, you know, I'm not worried about being fired. Well, most people without realizing it will start to set up patterns in their work life that actually make it so that they will be fired. It's like kind of weird, those weird little things that this is how our minds work and we need to be very aware of that.

Yeah, right on.

Oh, drop the mic.

We're done.

Well, as we approach the last few minutes here, just kind of popcorn this. What kind of other things have come up in your minds as you've been thinking through all this?

And no, I think, I mean, you know, it's good to kind of— it's good to have this chat, right? Because you don't really think through these things on a day-to-day basis. So I think As employees, I think it's, you know, you can get really busy with the day-to-day stuff, right? I mean, most of us, I mean, Jeff, you know this, I remember seeing you at every CUGC event at one point, I'm sure, and then I'm sure that's outside of your regular work, right? So things get so crazy that you don't have the time to really think about yourself, your career, none of that. You're just going through the motions. And it's funny because, I don't know if you guys noticed this over COVID the last few months. I've seen more job changes now than ever before. And I think it's because it gave people a time to reflect right now. All of a sudden, these people who traveled a whole lot, you know, all of a sudden they've got all this downtime and they're like, ah, so what have I been doing? What else is out there? So, so, so I guess the point I'm trying to make is make sure that, you know, you carve out You know, block some time, right, out of your regular schedule to kind of think about the goals that you've defined for yourself and where you are with those goals. And, you know, over-communicate, right? I mean, don't think that people are just going to come to you and ask you things. You have to over-communicate. I always say squeaky wheel gets the oil. You have to always be on top of that, whether your managers ask you for it or not. Provide touchpoints, send an email once a month, or or maybe a few weeks depending on what's going on, just kind of summarizing what you've been doing so you are top of mind. Keep in mind that managers have a lot of things that they're working on, right? If they're probably managing large teams, they've got all kinds of stress coming from up above. So it's your job as an employee to over-communicate and let them know if you've got something going on. Don't just expect them to know that you are going through a tough time. Like over-communicate. Don't think that, oh, they're going to judge me. No, they won't. I mean, I think it's your job unless they tell you that, hey, you know what, I'm sick of this, stop. Overcommunicate, right? I mean, I think that's, that's something that you need to do. And then be conscious always about what you, the goals that you've set for yourself personally, professionally, and work towards them. Be diligent and disciplined.

Yeah. And I would say be careful about your tone as well. Yeah. Something we really kind of miss sometimes is that, and this is still true in information technology, that blows my mind that it is. You know, sometimes we still have the social skills of your average troglodyte. You know, it does still happen to us. And so we really do need to be aware of that and say, if you're giving those kind of things, is like reporting up to your management and saying, you know, things like, here's what I've been doing, and you're— it's a little passive-aggressive at times, and you need to worry about— yeah, you did not worry, but you need to be very aware of how your word is being perceived. And so what I actually told one of my coaching clients was, take your email before you send it and just read it out loud. Not to yourself silently, like find a quiet place and read it out loud. If that's an email that you would want to receive after reading it out loud to yourself, then go ahead and send it. But if not, if it comes off as snarky, if it comes off as pushy, or if it comes off as just straight-up angry, then you've got some work to do to rephrase this, you know, and taking the time to do it is much better than sending something you're gonna regret.

Well, and that's always the hard part, right? I mean, we always say you can't read tone from an email. Yeah.

Exactly.

Dude, sarcasm. It's just not there. So, you know, something you may think is just you being funny is, could be taken the exact opposite and So yeah, that happens.

Yeah, if our modern world has taught us nothing else, is that perception is not in our control and perception is still everything.

Perception is reality. Optics matter more than what you know.

Yep, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And it also actually, this brings up something else that might be good to key in on here. So There's a misunderstanding sometimes about how these kind of things work. And a coach of my coach of my coach, his name is Steve Chandler. And the way he put this was this, that there are agreements and then there are expectations. And if we just have expectations and don't have an actual agreement that goes along with that, then we've got tension. And so The other thing that I think is really important here is that you actually set up with your management actual agreements that are not just expectations that are out there. And this goes on both sides. There has to be— it doesn't necessarily mean a negotiation, but it does mean to say, you know, like, for example, we were talking about performance reviews. Our expectation is that we will have a review. Our expectation is that that'll be something that's been meaningful and thought out throughout the the year or whatever. Well, if the agreement isn't there and it's not solid and in stone, well, that's where these things fall apart, where the employee might have one expectation, the manager might have another expectation, and HR might have a completely different expectation.

Absolutely.

If they all don't have the same agreement, then that's where it falls apart.

Yep.

And agreements are generally better in writing, by the way.

Well, that's the other thing.

Yeah.

In fact, I would say that if it's not in writing, you don't really have an agreement.

Exactly right. I often hear of disgruntled employees about, hey, my manager promised me this. I'm like, okay, is it written? Is it in your performance? No, it was verbal. I'm like, at that point, it doesn't matter. I mean, it's your word against his word.

Yeah, exactly. And it's something like that typically. The manager is going to win. So, yeah. So, George, how's working from home for you?

You know, honestly, you know, in my role prior to COVID, I was either traveling or I was home. And incidentally, right before COVID hit, I developed a medical condition and I had to change my office setup. So the timing was just perfect. So I had a sit-stand desk and my new ergonomic chair all ready to go, and then COVID came along. So, you know, it worked out just great. I mean, you know, I feel like in many ways I'm probably even more productive because I'm not traveling. I used to travel every week. So, you know, the fact that travel is not around, you know, there, it's really helped me be more productive, almost to a fault now, where I have meetings from probably 7:30, 8:00 in the morning all the way to 6 PM. So that part sucks a little bit, but overall I'm happy because I'm with my family. My kids get to see me a whole lot more, and I think it's, it's, it's been good. And I— what, what a lot of organizations are realizing is that, guess what, you know, you don't really need to be traveling as much as you think you need to be. You can get what you need accomplished. The tools exist, right? I mean, if you look at what's been mind-blowing is like, if you look at all the virtual collaboration tools, even outside of video and voice and all that kind of stuff, like things like Miro and Mural and all these other cool tools. It's amazing what you can accomplish virtually, like even from a collaboration perspective. So, I think it's opened up our eyes in terms of how you can be productive, how you can reduce operational expenses, and it's been great. I mean, I have, I've enjoyed it, to be honest.

So, just, sorry, are you seeing What do you think the end result of this will be? Do you see companies taking a serious look that, you know, after this is 2021 now, do you see, think companies will follow through and do more work at home or will they start to revert back to office? You know, and I know some of it depends on position and what people do and like that, but just kind of in general.

Yeah. So I think one of the issues in the past, and you know, is that employers believed, or there was a taboo or a stigma, that employees can't be productive at home, right? Or, you know, they're going to slack off or whatnot. And what COVID taught employers, or is teaching employers, is that that was just a misnomer and a misconception, and employees can actually be productive, in some cases even more productive. So I think a lot of employers are way more open to the idea of letting employees work from home. Now, that does not mean that— I mean, and there's obviously economic aspects to this, right? Operationally, think about it, right? If people are working from home, the real estate aspects, you know, the talent attractions, all of a sudden, you know, your talent pool grows infinitely, right? In many ways, if you think about global collaboration and stuff, even there, there are some benefits, right? So there's all these operational and strategic benefits to allowing people to work from home, not to mention happier employees too. So I think employers are looking at ways to— I don't think it's going to be a fundamental shift, but what I think is going to happen is they will look at every function within an organization and see which ones can be performed effectively from home. And then give employees the flexibility. So they— I don't think they're going to force employees, because even as employees, we like to see our peers once in a while. So maybe, you know, what I, what I suspect is going to happen is, you know, they'll be like more open to allowing employees to work 3 days from home or whatever, right? And they will downsize their real estate, perhaps make it move more towards hoteling and whatnot. And then so it's better for the employer, it's better for the employee. It's a win-win. And so yeah, I definitely see working from home, those trends to increase. And I think there's been a bunch of studies around it, surveys and all, which all reflect that, you know, that's going to be the case. 70% of large organizations are looking at this as a go-forward strategy.

Awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually kind of curious how this is going to play out too with exactly what we're talking about today. Like, how is this going to, to change the way a company's culture is actually run? You know, is it, is it going to be that we're, we're seeing a lot more of town hall meetings and things like that, that, that are more attended now than they would be in person even? You know, I'm wondering if this is going to start happening and my gut says that they will, but the company needs to embrace that if it's going to happen though. It needs to say this is something that we're doing because it's beneficial. Not because we're forced to, or worse, that it is a cost-saving measure. I think that's what I saw after bird flu. A lot of companies said, "Man, it's a lot cheaper to have people working from home. I should, I should, we should do that." Yeah.

And I think you need to realize, too, that there are going to be some growing pains because, you know, you've got processes that may have been in place for years that are going to have to be changed. And there's going to be hiccups along the way. But like anything else, you got to push through it.

Yeah. And I think the key is, again, just like training where we talked about don't make things mandatory, I think when it comes to working from home too, it's kind of like that. Give employees the flexibility, let them figure out what works best for them. But, you know, the goal should be not just what's good for the employer, but what's good for the employee and kind of see what that fine balance is and which functions work. So there's a little bit of experimentation that needs to happen over the course of the next, let's say, 18 to 24 months to figure out what works and what doesn't. But at least based on what I'm seeing over the past 2 to 3 months, even internally at Citrix, right? I mean, I think meetings are better attended. They are more productive, like, because we all turn our cameras on. So we are all focused on what's going on. The other thing I've noticed, which has been amazing, is now I have the ability to pull in resources from other parts of the globe. Right? Because, uh, you know, because everything's virtual. So let's say I have a customer engagement and I feel like there's a resource that I can really tap into, because it's virtual, I can actually do that, right? And even customers, I'm finding out in a lot of cases that there have been customers that I've really found it hard to get access to certain people, all of a sudden they're accessible. They're, you know, they're joining meetings and, you know, they are open to discussions. And so it's, it's been really, really good for— I mean, personally, I've really liked it.

Yeah, I think so. I think you're right. You nailed it, is that you're more productive in the meetings because people aren't scheduling the pre-meeting to the pre-meeting to the meeting. You know, they're not going to schedule a meeting just to have it on the schedule type of thing and waste people's time. So yeah, it makes it much more productive from that standpoint.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Well, gentlemen, we are at the hour point. George, thank you so much for being on with us. I really appreciate your time and giving us some of your insights. I really enjoyed this conversation today. This is exactly the kind of things that I enjoy talking about, and I hope it was useful for everyone as well.

Yeah, thank you very much, George. We really do really appreciate it.

You know what? Your followers are probably disappointed because we didn't talk about any bits and bytes today.

That's the whole point of this. Everyone else, the technology is covered, right? So that's our approach is that we're not talking technology, we're talking the other side that techies don't necessarily pay attention to. No.

Yeah.

Great job putting this together. I mean, I honestly really enjoyed this conversation. It's funny how, you know, like I had a chance to kind of reflect on all these things that I have in thought about in a long time. So great job. I hope you have more of these topics in future episodes.

We absolutely will. And, um, for all of you out there, make sure you hit the subscribe button because we're all over the map as far as when we're going live. So if you want to get a notification and put it on your calendar, uh, you can do that. We are almost done with the website. It'll be up hopefully within the next week or so. We'll get that up and running for you so you can find us there. Until next time, I need a clever saying to insert right here. Thanks for joining us, everybody. We will see you next time.

Take care. Thank you.

Thanks.