Interview with Robert Glazer - Nir And Far

Hey everyone, this is near from the near and Far podcast. You are joining us mid conversation with Robert Glaser. So we've been talking here for about five minutes before we actually started the real interview.

And it was so interesting, all the problems in society.

Yeah, I'm just turning on the record feature here. We're just going to keep talking. So Robert, you started telling me about AI, so keep going.

Yeah, I mean I'm in a services business and I think any business based on obviously writing, editing, but information, proprietary services that I think is going to be disrupted and you either can use it or someone else will probably come out and use it and do some major damage to your business. In fact, what did I heard some say yesterday? They said it's not that AI is going to take away your job, it's that a person with AI is going to take away your job. But my real realization this week around looking at some of the things that put in and the prompts and sort of the revisions was that AI is like a feedback champion. You tell it shorter, longer, I don't like it, make it more, whatever, and it just does it. And I still type with the baggage that I have around, like could you please make this shorter? Or you missed the thing, could please change it. And it just does it. And I think as a society now, we're terrible at feedback because of our perfectionism. And you and I were talking about some of the education thing around. We just can't get anything wrong or get a B and our sort of intolerance of discomfort. So we have people increasingly super sensitive around feedback. And I just think people are going to choose to give feedback to the robot and not other humans because there's a lot less of a emotional toll.

Maybe, maybe the, the macro trend here is that we've inappropriately trained kids to be more like robots. And maybe this, this technology will free us from having to do that. I mean, if you think about, take a step back, you know, my, my daughter is 14 years old, she's learning chemistry right now. And the amount of rote memorization is ridiculous. Why it's, it's all let alone before.

It won't be needed.

Yeah, it won't be needed. And it's, you know, people say, oh, but you know, you need that skill. You don't want to rely upon the Internet.

Why?

We rely upon technologies all the time. If I said, hey, the technology of fire, make me a fire. How many people can sit down and make a fire?

But the skill they need to learn is how Do I synthesize information, process it, determine what's true, validate it? That's probably more relevant than the memorization.

And something we spend how much time actually teaching versus the rote memorization? Maybe critical thinking needs to make a real comeback here. It's going to be more important than ever. It might be the only skill that matters because the rote memorization part, yeah, it's going to go the way of the calculator.

Here's an ironic twist because again, I have encouraged my kids to use it in a way that is not cheating and test. If you dump a paper into there and you ask it for feedback like an 11th grade teacher, you get a really good summary of. And I said, what grade is? It's a B. How can I make it an A? Well, I would explore these subjects or otherwise. So maybe people who are hypersensitive to feedback, you know, there's no red ink. You know, parents have not read ink. Like maybe they'll take it better from a machine that's just telling them what's good and what's not good about their work.

Or does that make us conform even more? Because now, you know, the way these LLM models are trained is through what's already been done. So it's, you know, it's like. Was it Marshall McLuhan who said that the machine, the machines and the machines make man? Well, maybe what's going to happen is just going to continue this perpetual cycle which I would argue is already part of our institutionalized learning system where here's the five paragraph essay and to get an A, make it look exactly like what the teacher did. And that's how you do well, you know, maybe that's.

I agree, I agree that there is that part of it I think that's weighing against. I think most of the mental health problems come from the fact that people can't handle getting things wrong. They can't handle feedback. Their parents were able to bubble it until college and even there's pressure on college. And then they go into the real world and they work for you and they work for me and we're like, hey, that project is just not very good. And it's just like a complete collapse because no one's told them that before. If it wasn't good, you gotta be. And if you gotta be, your life was over. So I agree with what you're saying. I guess it's a. There's a hierarchy of order. Like for me, I think the biggest thing is like we need to get back to Failure at younger, low cost failure. You forget your gym shoes. Your mom doesn't drive them or your dad doesn't drive them. Like you don't have the shoes that day and it's uncomfortable. Like, that's okay.

So you don't, you don't, you don't buy the argument that it's social media that's making kids, specifically girls, more depressed?

I think it's like a confluence of things. I think the work that Jonathan Haidt did, and I'm forgetting his, his partner's name, where, you know, what the thing they said is that, you know, boys injure boys physically and girls injure girls mentally. And so giving girls the social media and the way that they use it is kind of like giving teenage boys a gun. And I actually thought that that was very insightful. Again, let's take a picture of all the people who aren't, you know, so people can see who's not the party. So, yes, I agree that. But I think if you have low resilience to begin with and low sense of self worth and low figuring things out, then that is on top of that. That's pretty, that's pretty difficult. So technology is a huge piece of it. But, but I would argue that parenting style has. And the educational system around perfection is the lab manifestation of anxiety in everyone. And then that's just layers on top of it.

I would. You know, one of the things that a lot of people struggle with is trying to explain why it's only with girls. Right. That it's really only with teenage girls that we see this uptick in self harm and depression and suicidality. It's only, it's really only girls. And I wonder if part of the reason is that boys have video games and, you know, male adolescents play collaborative video games in a much higher rate. Right. When you think about Fortnite or any of these games where you're on a team and so I'm wondering if there's actually a. I don't know. I haven't looked at the research on this. There probably hasn't been any research on this because we're always looking at the bads. Right. How many studies have you seen about how the protective effects of technology. You never see that kind of study. Very, very rare. Is that study done because someone just.

Actually said it was very good for. Adam Grant published something, I think, around motor skills and stuff and that it was better than people thought. I'm not sure about the boy thing. Look, it's, it's, it's the boys that are all walking into schools with guns. And obviously a lot of them are. Are hurting. I don't know whether it's just manifest in a different way or they don't talk about it or they don't create the video of it. So I, I'd have to see the data on that. I know there's kind of a certain version with girls, but I'm not sure it's only girls. I think they're struggling in. In different ways.

It's also, I think probably one thing that's definitely not discussed is that all the stuff that used to kill kids, the stuff that we were when we were young, our parents worried about those things are at record lows. Right. Drunk. When we were kids, drunk driving was the.

But now you have to worry about. But now, I mean, my, my biggest fear is too early in the morning for me. What's the Fentanyl. People are just putting that in everything where it's not supposed to be and. Yeah, so there's a lot, though, from.

From a drug abuse perspective. The only drug that is not at record lows is cannabis. Everything else that teenagers used, you know, when we were kids, it was. It was coke, it was. There was barbiturates, there was speed, there was all kinds of crap that kids.

You went to different parties than I did.

I'm taking the fifth year. Even smoking, right? Like, fewer kids smoke than ever before. Fewer kids are getting pregnant than ever before. Fewer kids are truant than jails. Remember when, when Hillary Clinton ran for office, she was warning us about this generation of super predators. Never happened. There are prisons all over America empty because these kids never became criminals. Well, why? Part of it because they're indoors playing video games. That's why.

Anyone thinks that the metaverse is going to make this better, that less human interaction is going to make this better. I think a lot of the problems in the workplace now. And look, I say this from someone who's run a company that's been fully remote for 15 years. However, how we run our business and how we get together and things is very different than most. But, you know, this engagement crisis in the workplace, I think it's because a lot of people aren't part of a team. They're kind of like a. They're like a freelancer and a freelance thing, and they don't feel any connection. So they say that they're. People don't know what's good for them. I think in a lot of cases I have seen this in our company or otherwise, where they Say that these are all the things that they want, but then they're inherently lonely and not. And disconnected.

So how are you dealing with working remote?

Well, we always designed our culture around, although we didn't work together, it was very specific reasons. The industry we're in, where the talent was, where our clients were, the kind of work we did, people tend to work. I would say it's a little like the Navy seals. Like there's a general ethos and training and otherwise. But people work in their team of eight, you know, most of the time, and that's 80% of their experience. So we, we always had hubs, so we had specific areas that we'd hire people in. There's a whole bunch of legal reasons and otherwise why hiring people everywhere is a disaster. But we made this decision before that because of the culture. Our leadership team can go to five hubs in a week and sit down with the entire company. We have a retreat where the whole company comes every year. We do quarterly events. We do events in those hub cities. People want to meet and connect. We have a lot of parents that work. They just want flexibility. We push people, too. There were times when they say, let me want to do stuff. And we plan a nightly event and a six o' clock event, and then all the cancellations come in. I couldn't get a sitter for my kid or my cat, and we're like, look, it's once a month. Like, don't do this. Like, you're going to want to see these people going. I know when it comes up and you have to get dressed that like, you know, the momentum in the moment, but it's actually something you're going to want to do. You know, I wrote a book on virtual work. I would never give this advice in any context, but the number one question people are asking me two years later is how do I, like, without threatening people, like, how do I get. I'm doing these events. We're hybrid, we're virtual. And I do these events. How do I get people to come in for them? And I was like, fomo, that's the.

Number one thing now is that is not structurally, but they're, they're, they're planning some stuff, they're doing some stuff, and the turnout rates really low. So how do they get people? I was like, look, I would never say this normally, but fomo, you need to make that a great thing that you take pictures of and that you share and that everyone who didn't go feels like they were missing out on something. And that it's actually worth being at. And you know, you might want to do it after a really important meeting. So have a afternoon of meetings where it really made a difference to be in the office. Maybe you're announcing bonuses or this or otherwise do that event afterwards. And so then that's a real miss to someone who chooses to opt out of that.

So let's do this episode in reverse. I didn't introduce. Usually I introduced. Why don't, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit so everyone knows more about you?

Sure. I'm Bob Glazer. I am the founder and now chair of the board of an organization called Acceleration Partners that I started almost 15 years ago. It's about 350 people now globally. We're a partner and affiliate marketing agency. So I founded a couple of companies and in growing these companies over the years, I started kind of writing and sharing experience about culture and things that we were doing differently. And so that, that turned into a night and weekend writing career. And I just published my sixth book actually called elevate your team, which has the same exact color scheme as I can see is indistractable behind you.

You know the secret color?

Bright yellow. Yeah.

Excellent. All right, so tell us more. What, what, what can we learn from elevate your team?

Timing's always interesting. Sometimes better to be lucky than smart. And I wrote this book, started writing this book two years ago. And then I actually delayed it because I had a marketing book that came out. But the book was really about how do you build an organization by growing your team and growing your team holistically. And rather than deciding that you're going to grow the organization irrespective of what that means for the team and for a lot of people. If you're in your 20s or early 30s, you might think that the last 10 years and you've been through another, probably the similar amount of tours that I've been through. Near. Near. And I think we're similar age. You might think the last 10 years was kind of normal in startup and growth world where this free capital, grow the top line at any cost, doesn't matter if you've figured out how to make money or otherwise. Like historically, this was a massive aberration. Then we have a pandemic. People are totally burnt out. I actually think it's moved from employee all the way up to the leaders now just seem to be really burnt out. I mean, I was in a group a while back with a whole bunch of CEOs and their companies. Were doing great and otherwise and you would not know that talking to them it was like, it's just hard. This is like you can just sense, sense it. So, so now everyone's being a little defensive. The money spigot has totally turned off, you know, they're cutting, otherwise everyone's defensive. We are going to get back to growth because businesses need to grow and startups need to grow. However, right now it feels like a dirty word for a variety of reasons. And I think because it just feels like what happened is the equivalent, I would say in a lot of these organizations of if NASA commissioned a new project to send a module to, they're doing the moon, so let's not do it. They're sending a module to Mars, right? And they plan the thing and that module gets to Mars and all the astronauts are dead. They're not going to be jumping up and down and celebrating. But that is kind of what startup world has felt like for people were like, here's the goal and the company is going to go there irrespective of what happens to everyone on this journey and who's committed this time. So the book actually the Time that's coming out now is a blueprint of like how do we grow by growing the people, investing in the people. Not all of them will work or make it, it can do it, but kind of bring them along on that growth journey rather than decide that the growth of the company is paramount first and fore. And it doesn't matter what happens to the people, it doesn't matter how many of the people that we, that we break. So it takes the same capacity building framework that I had in elevate around spiritual, intellectual, physical and emotional capacity and talks about how do you build these in your team or your organization so you have a company again where people are growing and learning and kind of becoming your future leaders.

So I want to ask you more about this. I think what you're referring to is to fail fast. And that's kind of been the startup ethos and that's kind of more my world. I have a lot more experience with startups, but when it comes to that philosophy, I don't think it's, you know, get to the moon and oh my God, all the astronauts died. It's, we don't even know where we're supposed to go. Because the start definition of a startup is where you have an unknown solution and an unknown problem where you really don't. That's pre market fit, right? If you have, if you have market fit, that Means you, you know the problem and you have the solution. But most startups, you know, the reason we say fail fast is because they have no clue what, what people actually want, let alone what to build for them. Do you think that this framework applies to that type of, you know, very volatile, uncertain situation before product market fit.

Or is it mostly for the pro? The problem with fail, I don't think we've had fail fast because I think you've had so much capital that you don't know if you're failing or not failing. Fail fast implies there is some scarcity, right. Where you have to figure it out or otherwise. I think what's, you know, simple economics, you know, would tell you that as you scale the business, right, you will have economies of scale and be easier to make profit and otherwise. I think we have a lot of really big businesses that fundamentally don't have a model that works right. And if the musical chairs and money stopped, they have not figured out product market fit. There was a joke that, something about Gen Y that like, you know, the amount of loss per company on their day of, it was two years ago of taking an Uber, ordering doordash, getting Instacart doing all that. Like those companies, you know, they lost like a billion dollars, you know, on a day on people doing that. If Instacart. And I'm just picking on, if the Uber costs you $100 to the airport and not 40 and DoorDash costs you 40% of the meal or the true cost, you might not do it. So I think a lot of businesses, I think just the volume of capital has actually totally blown through fail fast because they don't have to figure it out. And so again, it just becomes grow. So grow, grow, grow. And then if we're big enough, we, we can figure it out. Yeah.

It just reminds me, I just saw the other day that did you hear Groupon was sold for. I'm looking up the number here. I have to see if, figure out if I can get the news here. It's hard to multitask, but just pennies a dollar, right? Like they never, I and I, I, I remember when I graduated from business school, like Groupon was the hot company and I remember like pulling my hair out trying to figure out like somebody explain it to me. I don't get it. Like, how are they going to make money, right?

Like they, they lose. This is the old GM thing. What we lose on every car we make up in volume, right. I feel like that's what's been, that's what's been going on. Exactly.

But these crazy valuations, you know, in the, in the multiple billions of dollars and now they sold for, you know, a few hundreds of millions. It looks like, you know, everybody.

Yeah, look, there's some, look, cloud kitchens. I mean this was one subscription boxes, like people pouring money in and you're like, again, food delivery is not a super exciting, high margin scalable business, but the money that went into it would make you think that, you know, this is life changing AI, you know, sort of technology. So it's just interesting to me right now. I think, I think for a lot of people, if the CEO of the company came in and said we're growing 300% next year, like five years ago, people have been like, yeah. Now they're like, oh, but, but that.

Was a basic confusion over, over why grow fast. Like there, there is an argument to grow fast when there's network effects. When there's, you put your foot on the gas, you grow as quickly as possible because you can, you know, grow as a monopoly essentially when you have that network effect. But I think that kind of, you know, investors wanted everything to be a network effect and for many businesses they're just ain't. And there's never.

Food delivery is not really a network effect there. Yeah.

And you know, this is kind of, you know, my, my wheelhouse around habits. A lot of these products, if you actually could get the kind of customer loyalty that these companies were pitching in their investor decks, there was a case to be made that actually, you know, the customer lifetime value is X but the acquisition cost is Y and that Y is less than X. And so, hey, we've got a viable business. But the customer lifetime value never came true. You, they couldn't keep their customers.

Right. And people knowingly funded it. And, or they said, look, we'll flip it eventually if we just get big enough, we can flip that, we can flip that equation. And actually look, you get this more than anyone. This is, this gets into some marketing geekery, but that's. It becomes more, I actually think the more money you have to spend in marketing, the less efficient you're forced to be. Right. Versus, like when you have a little bit of money. I've heard honest tea, I've heard what's the yogurt coming. These stories were like, we only had $10,000 and so we had to come up with the most creative marketing campaign we could that had kind of unfair advantage versus the. If I, if I come to you and you're the CMO, I'm like $10 million. You're probably going to go right to Google, right to Instagram, you're going to drive up the market. So. So that was probably the fallacy of that math.

Yeah, I mean, and my first question is, okay, before you blow all that money, can you show me the, the numbers that show that once you acquire a customer, you can keep them? I mean, this is what, this is what I do every day, right? Like, they call me the plumber because I believe the leaks, because every company who calls me as a consultant calls me because they have a leaky bucket, right? The customers come in, the customers go out. No customer loyalty. And that's. Yeah, you blow money on marketing and growth before you nail engagement.

The leaky bucket. That's a good name. Look, I love the 37 signal. Guys have been talking about this stuff for years and they have some incredible videos. And you should go watch DH's video from Startup Business School from like 12 years ago. It's still the best thing ever. And I think he said, there's a product, there's profit, and then the missing P is price. Figuring out what people are willing to pay for and that, how they value your product and service. And that's a really important component is, is to put the rubber of the road and say, what are you willing to pay for this? And it might. Sometimes they want to pay for something different and you learn something. So, yeah, I think it's going to be interesting. Look, we're going to get back to growth. I think that here's another huge systemic change since the pandemic. This is why I said part of the problem. Everyone I know who is a cmo, who's had an exit or something in Silicon Valley, like, they don't go into the job market. It's like condo conversions into apartment rentals. So all the talent is going into, like, you can't buy me anymore, but you can, you can rent me. And I think for a lot of companies, you're going to have to have something compelling in the world of sort of independent, remote freelance work to have people want to be part of your team, be part of your journey. And being part of a team has pros and cons and sacrifices. I think as we were talking about with boys, like, there is something missing in a lot of people being part of a team. What's in it for the person? Is there a chance to grow? Is there a chance, you know, for them to get better and do things that impact them inside and outside of work? Because if not Just be a mercenary. Right.

It's interesting reading, reading your work. I don't get the impression that you put a lot of stock in terms of company values, in terms of, or even like the mission of the company or the product, for example. It seems like you put a lot more emphasis on that teamwork and growing talent, growing that bench so that people want to work with others. Not necessarily, oh, it's about our mission. It's about our value statement. Is that, is that an accurate reading or maybe not.

I'm much more on values than mission and look for running a services firm. I will say this openly, like I am jealous of companies, you know, whether it's Boeing or Elon Musk Space, you know, division where the mission is to put a plane on the moon or otherwise. Like, there are some missions that are just really lofty, you know, for some people. Yeah, and, and they'll put up with a lot. And honestly, like an agency, I think, like we have, you know, a mission around how we're changing the marketing industry to be performance based. And that is really exciting, but it's not gonna pull people out of, you know, whole other industries and want to do that. I am very focused on, on core values. And, and I think that core values drive the culture of an organization. I think it's like these colleges we were talking about. Everyone's different and you have to find the one that is authentically the right fit for you and that you resonate. So I do think the values are the basis of it. I think the people. But I, but I am a centrist on everyone. So I was on a panel yesterday where someone was like, it's all about the people feeling good and the people being happy and if they do, they'll do good work and otherwise. And I was like, but you got to make sure they're working on the right things and that the customer likes the product or else you have no business. So I think those things go hand in hand. I think you need to have a good culture, excellent strategy, high accountability. Part of the reason why everyone is struggling now is that all they know how to do is manage inputs. They know how to manage time in the office, hours worked, phone calls made. This is what they've been doing for years. I think we have a great culture, but we have all of our output metrics that we expect people to deliver that align to our one year goal and our three year goal. Those are all public. They all have red light, green light, they have your name on it. So, nir, you're on the sales team. And we all said that we need to do a million this year and your piece is a quarter million and you're green, red or otherwise. That to me is the missing piece in having a strong culture, but also holding people accountable to the results that everyone said that they need. I think companies tend to go to results oriented too culture oriented.

I feel like OKRs are kind of a well trodden path. You don't, you don't think most companies hold people accountable to OKRs?

Oh, I think, I think OKRs, you come a little bit more from the high tech. Well, I think Silicon Valley and okrs are pretty well embedded, I think in a lot of middle market companies and companies I've seen in other industries.

Just we don't want to be too jargony. That's objective results. So basically it's a process of saying exactly what Bob was saying, right?

Whether it's. Whether it's okrs, whether it's gazelles, whether it's traction. I think any of those systems that sort of makes all of that stuff public. Because one of the things that people said to me that would lead me to believe that they don't do this is like when we are fully remote, they're like, how do you. How do you know what people are doing? How do you keep track of them? Like, they're just as display. I was like, it's really not that hard. Like they all have the same amount of clients. Every client has a performance metric. If the client hits their performance metric, we're getting paid this and we know we're doing well. We kind of line all this stuff up. And if somehow they are getting extraordinary results for their clients, their clients are happy and retained and they're working two hours a day, I don't care. They have the same amount of clients as the next person. So if they have figured out the two things to do every day that drive disproportionate results, like we're in the performance business, like that's the outcome that we're seeking.

You're finding that managers want to know. Okay, like, but how do you make sure that your employees are. Are busy? Is that what they're asking? What are they worried about?

That was the question we were at. Like people were incredulous. We were remote before COVID and people were incredulous that we had these people all out there doing things and could not see them and know what they were doing every day. People are still like, how in remote work do we. I mean, I was at A conference. And it was really uncomfortable speaking of this company. And a woman in the audience said, you know, so I have my team run zoom all day long and leave it running. So, you know, and what do you. What do you think of. I was like, that is like the worst practice ever. That just tells him. So she had her entire team running the video. But that's still how some people think out there.

I mean, there's a whole section in indistractable about why that practice is absolutely awful. Jason Fried said a work for the.

Company that I was giving a keynote to, so I couldn't like, roast her in the room.

I was gonna send her an article saying, like, that is psychologically the worst thing you could do to people.

Yeah, totally. Totally. The right approach is it's a sauna or it's like a hot tub, right? You get in, you get out. You don't stay in a hot tub all day long. I could not agree more. But there is a one practice I'll run by you that I find is. Is actually super effective. But it's at the. It's. It's flips the script a bit. It's not how does the manager know everything that the employee is working on. It's how do you, as an employee manage your boss? And the technique that I like to to promote to folks is called schedule syncing. So this is where the employee, right, sits down. And this is for employees who are having trouble balancing multiple teams. I see this a lot. When you've got multiple stakeholders and you've got to report to two parties at once and you're overwhelmed, there's just too much to do. How do you tell your boss to stop constantly distracting and interrupting you? And I hear this all the time. I get pinged on WhatsApp or Slack or email.

2,000 times a day. I'm constantly inundated with these messages. How do I focus on. And so the advice I give is to sit down with your boss on Monday morning and say, hey, boss, here is my schedule for the week ahead. Here's how I plan to spend my time. You see, here's my time for meetings. Here's my time when I'm going to be having my office hours, my emails, my sales calls, whatever. And you say, here's how I'm going to spend my time. Here's the stuff you asked me to do that I'm having trouble prioritizing. Please help me prioritize. Tell me where this stuff that you said I should do. Where does that go exactly in My schedule and what the boss will do is to say, hey, you know what? That meeting that you have on your counter, that's really not that important. You can take that out. But that other thing that you have to do, that your sales calls, that's way more important. And so that schedule syncing process at least gets people on the same page so that now the boss can say, okay, I have an idea of how you're spending your time. But more importantly, the employee has this physical artifact that now they can stick to. So they know the difference between what's traction, what's moving them forward, and what's distraction. What do you think?

That's really good advice. There are two things that we do, or I just wrote an article about that are sort of cousins of that. I would say first is we actually try to think physically schedule, sync what we call GSD time or like airplane time. Like, no distraction. So a team would say, look, from 8 to 10:30, this is our heads down, no notifications. So if they all do it at the same time, then they're not bugging each other during that time, which is helpful just to not get distracted. The other thing, a Friday forward I wrote, which is basically the advice you're saying in a different way was called bad for you. And it was like, what I have found is that when you explain to people why something is bad for them, not for you. No one cares why it's bad for you. We're all selfish, right? And if it's clients or bosses or otherwise, you say, hey, boss, like, I just got the new five things you asked me to. Like, I totally appreciate that. I'm not gonna be able to actually get all of these done. So is it okay if I don't do this project, this project and this project? And then they're like, oh, no, no, no, that's not what I meant. Or the client, you say, I. You know, I now I saw your request to focus on these four markets. You know, instead of saying no because no one likes that, we can either cut back on the markets that are 90% of our revenue and focus on those, or we can add scope to the team. Like, which would you like to do? So it's a similar strategy of just implying to people that, like, more and more and more is not going to work, but putting it back on them. Because once they see the mirror on it, then they're like, oh, that's not going to work for me. So they help you with it. Exactly as you said.

All right, well, our time is Winding down here. Are there a couple of points or anything else that surprised you in your research that you might want to share?

Yeah. So what I'll just say is, you know, there's some tactics, particularly in the physical capacity section around I think, you know, I have this anti case study of Marissa Meyer and her time at Yahoo. If you want to see what like a focus on workaholism and no outcomes looks like, it's really how you as the people need and they're working from home and this ties with a lot of your work. Like they need rest, they need quiet time, they need work to be off at some point and actually just to do better work. And so there's a few little things again like a leader can do. One I started five years ago, delay delivery. If you're sending emails outside of work hours and they're not urgent, people really appreciate not getting emails at one in the morning or otherwise because it was on your brain. Particularly if you're the CEO or leader of a team, they will feel the need to respond. Just delay delivery till 8 or 9am the next day. And people know that they'll get that stuff and they appreciate that. I also think how you create your vacation out of office says a lot about how you model that to the team. So if you say hey, hey team, I'm going on vacation this week with my family, I will be available if you need me anytime. I set aside each time a day, here's my cell, here's slack, call me. Otherwise, whatever you tell about people going on vacation, they will now say that I am expected to be on duty on vacation. I just saw one from another leader who said I'm going on vacation next week. This time of my family is really important. If there's a real emergency, here's my wife's cell phone, you can text her and she will get ahold of me or email me at interrupt my vacationcompanydomain.com and I will get back to you. Right. That sends a totally different message to your team around it's okay to take some time off.

Absolutely, absolutely. And culture flows downhill, right? Everybody looks at what the big boss does and whatever she, you know, her, the culture that she has at the top or he has at the top will be the culture of the rest of the company. One other technique that I like a lot, I mean I love the delayed delivery. A lot of people have trouble with it technically. Like they find it's really hard to remember or they, you know, make a.

Habit of outlook actually suggests it to. I don't know if you use Outlook, but it actually suggests it to you when you're sending these late emails. Now, it says, this is like way out of the work time. Do you want to send it tomorrow? It's an interesting tool.

One additional thing I've seen is to make the default the next morning. So what we used to do at my last company was unless it says urgent, like in the subject line, it says urgent. All caps, colon. And then the subject line, unless it says urgent, it can wait till tomorrow. There is no rush. I'm sending this out of my inbox. But unless it says urgent, you don't even need to read it until the next day or whenever you're ready for it.

It's a great idea. And again, it's sort of a gift to people. I found as a leader or an apparent that people do what I say, not what I do. Right. So the problem and why Marissa Meyer created such a fury is that she came back to work two weeks after she had her kids. She made sure the press know she was working in the hospital, she built a nursery next to her office and then told the rest of the women at Yahoo that that's not what she expected them to do. Right. And that just doesn't. It doesn't work, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, there's a lot more gems in this book. Elevate your team. I encourage everyone to please go check it out. Bob Blazer, thank you so much for being here with us on the near and Far podcast, and we'll see you next time. Thanks so much.