Navigating Virtual Teams and Complexity Theory | Dr. Robert Gordon | 602

Peter Winick.

Sometimes it seems that academics and practitioners speak two very different languages. Academics are investigating big questions while practitioners are trying to solve today's problems. So what happens when a practitioner becomes an academic? Do they ask different questions because of their experience, and how do they attract the attention of their peers? My guest today is Dr. Robert Gordon. He's the interim department chair for analytics, economics, and finance at American Public University. He's also an expert in supply chain and project management. We'll hear how his experience as a practitioner informs the research topics he chooses, how he attracts the attention of current practitioners, and how he's looking at the world around the corner, what it might be and what people need to know. I'm Bill Sherman. You're listening to Leveraging Thought Leadership. Let's begin. Welcome to the show, Robert.

Thank you. It's great to be here.

So I want to talk to you about crossing the practitioner-academic divide, and you cross that from practitioner to academic, and now as academic crossing back to speak to practitioners. So, yep. How did you get into the world of academia? Let's start there. Your journey from practitioner to academic first.

Okay. Well, you know, my journey was— and there was a few factors that kind of went into it. Okay. First, I earned my bachelor's, you know, the usual way, went to a 4-year institution and graduated UCLA. But then it was like another 10 years till I took another academic course. And then I started working on my MBA. And at that point, the company I worked for, which was Walt Disney World, required an MBA if I were to fill into a director position. So I started along that journey. Things did change where, you know, my job moved on. I actually ended up at another different company. Building some other ships for a different operator. However, I was still finishing up my MBA, but at that point my daughter was very young and I thought, okay, if I'm going to push forward to actually get my doctorate, I should do it while she's young because I thought, well, you know, I'm going to be away. It's going to take me to school and I'll be working late and doing all these other things. The other thing, when I started researching different doctoral degrees, I found that because, you know, only 1% of the population ends up earning a terminal degree, it's something that's going to carry me over even as I got older. You know, unlike, for example, when I was in supply chain and working in the industry, a lot of people would tell me, well, you know, if you leave the industry for 5 years, you know, people will look down upon your experience because it becomes quite dated. And I feel that's even more true now than back then, you know, because now it seems like in 5 years so many different systems change and, you know, so many circumstances change within supply chain. You know, if you look at what's happened, you know, for example, the pandemic and how things changed. So my journey then ended up going to be that, okay, I'm gonna now push forward, earn my doctoral degree. And then at that point, shipping took a turn south on the cruise ship side. Which is where I had focused a lot of my experience. And so because of that, I ended up moving into academia a lot sooner than I thought. You know, I thought, oh, I'm going to be much older and I'll do that as a, you know, become this senior person who will be teaching. But it turned out I was actually teaching a lot younger. And in fact, you know, I was, I was quite a bit younger because now I'm teaching these courses and there are people working on their bachelor's and master's, and some of them were older because I was teaching adults. And so some of them are questioning, well, you know, what do you really know? And I looked a little younger because I guess my hair stayed longer than, than with some. So, you know, it all, it all worked out great. I love the transition and everything, but it was a different change. And then as I became into academia, one of the things I love to do is publish and write. And that helped, you know, I've written, co-authored several different books, book chapters, written some books on my own, hundreds of articles that are out there. And all that helped in academia because it helped kind of like get me further along into, into a, you know, a permanent type faculty position.

So let me draw a thread here a little bit. When you were working in the cruise industry, for example, there are many parts that take to make the cruise industry work. Where were you working and practicing?

I, uh, primarily my experience was in supply chain. I actually did some in human resources, um, and quality assurance. But the big section of my experience really was with supply chain and supporting ships, particularly cruise ships that went worldwide. I ended up with different companies that had ships that went around the world. And so because, you know, I had worked at Crystal Cruises, at Viking Cruise Line, I also worked with Residency, which operates the ship called The World. Which is the only private residential cruise ship at sea. And so I got a lot of experience not only in supply chain, but also in logistics, because now I'm working internationally, sending things from the US. Seems that cruise passengers are very particular about their meat because I put a lot of containers of meat that went around the world for various ships at various times because the quality of meat in other countries is very different than the United States. I wouldn't say that it's bad, but a lot of it is grass-fed, which has a much different flavor than, than U.S. beef.

So experience in maritime and logistics. Yeah. Go after a doctorate in business and you're now an academic. So you are, as you said, researching, writing chapters, books, etc. Publication trail. Let's talk about some of that research, specifically the research that you've done that comes back across towards practitioners. Right. And I think sometimes we talk about academic research and it's the question of, but will anyone ever see this outside of the journal? Right. Yeah. Okay. And I want to ask you about a piece of work that you did before the pandemic and how people responded differently before and after. So can you tell us that story?

Okay, yes, absolutely. Uh, you know, I did, I did research with complexity theory and virtual teams, particularly related to project management. I have authored a couple books. However, the first book that, that I had written, um, you know came out, was received by the community. However, a lot of people thought that these virtual teams and complexity theory was kind of this niche market. And, you know, people at that time, you know, had worked in, you know, going to the office and office buildings, and that was the norm. And when that got published, you know, Project Management Institute really kind of felt it was one of these advanced theoretical things and they, and they didn't feel that it was something that practitioners were really going to need. What was interesting was also some of that material also ended up in a number of different courses in different universities, including some of the, some of that book actually ended up being part of Boston College's Project Management program. So, you know, it was out there. It was, it was considered theoretical. And so there were many things that we talked about with virtual teams. And so, you know, along came the pandemic and then suddenly now, you know, what was written and what we discussed and explained and offered became kind of common. Suddenly across the U.S., you know, companies strove to become virtual and looked for ways on how to do it, because even, even while I was working at different places, certain, certain, you know, certain institutions or organizations I'd worked with had trouble transitioning to, to being virtual because now, you know, how do they communicate? How do they work with each other? You know, I, since I was in the maritime industry working with ships around the world, it never occurred to me, but I had always operated virtually.

And that's exactly where I was going to go.

Yeah.

If you're working and doing supply chain For cruise ships, you have to work virtually because, because of the nature of the work. And so I think there are experiences which may be commonplace and one perspective where people go, oh, but that's not how we do things, right? And it's easy to discount, you know, a shift in requirements or a shift in need or context.

Yeah, exactly. And so, and so it's interesting because some of these institutions that, that adopted the, the books that, that, you know, the book and the other books, um, still find it useful. And, and I teach some courses and I always ask the students about it, and they're, they're always surprised about how cutting-edge, you know, the information is. And I'm kind of like, well, you know, if you really realized it, it's been written quite a while ago, and, and now it's like a You know, people were like, oh, well, this makes so much sense. It explains how to operate virtual teams. It explains how to operate and work remotely. And it becomes kind of very mainstream now, in my opinion. I think that so many companies have adopted it and people are going to be remaining virtual. I know that some organizations are kind of harkening back to try to bring people back into the office. However, you know, my opinion is that as we research, there's economic factors against it because when you, you know, commit to this operating, operating institution that's going to be working out of an office building, you're going to say, well, you know, it's going to only get a third utilization, meaning it's going to be only occupied at one-third of the time. And so the remaining time— but you're paying for 24 hours worth of access.

How do you support and justify that?

Yeah, correct. Yeah, exactly. Particularly as it grows, you know, It's one thing when you're a small organization, you know, say dozens of people up to 100, you know, you could fit that into a small building or maybe a floor of a building. But once you start hitting thousands and tens of thousands, you know, when you think about, you know, some of the large, you know, internet companies, you know, like for example, a Google or an Apple, they're gonna have these huge campuses. And there's a huge overhead that goes with that. You know, I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to get, people together, but I'm just saying it comes at a price, both directly loaded on the balance sheet and some of that price also put onto the balance sheet of the workers. Yep, exactly.

So you're doing research in a variety of areas, some of it around, um, maritime issues, some of around business practices. Who's your audience? Who are you trying to reach? Who do you want to pay attention?

Well, it's a few. Okay. First, first, I like to get attention from the maritime industry to continue to be relevant and people to know me. And then because I've done so much writing in that area already, the other area I try to focus in is project management and management in general, because I feel that again, I have a doctorate in management. I feel that's part of what I should be contributing back to the community and to research. I feel those are areas that are important. A little bit of being vain is also my family and peers, only because, you know, my, my wife and my sister-in-law also have doctorates and they do research in their field, which is education and sociology. And so, you know, it's nice to be recognized by other people in the family that have doctors.

So it sounds like, you know, you get together at the family gathering or the weekend and there's the, oh, look what came out, right?

Well, we do have weekly family Zoom where we all get together on Zoom, which is a holdover from the pandemic because in the past we would travel to see our family once a year. We live on the East Coast. They live on the West Coast. So we'd go over to California or again, Washington and visit family. But when the pandemic came, it was really just a nonstarter. There was issues with, you know, my mother and my mother-in-law being old. My niece had a new baby. And all of this during the pandemic was, you know, I just couldn't justify getting on a plane and exposing them potentially afterwards. Um, you know, so, so, uh, you know, we do family Zoom once a week, and it— a lot of times it will degenerate back to academics and, and what people are researching and publishing and doing in their different fields. Um, and so just because people—

I love it.

Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's great, you know. And, and to some degree, you know, my, my wife was more of a practitioner because she was in education. She taught third grade for, I think, 20 years. So, you know, there's some practitioner as well as teach. Now she teaches adults, so we have a little bit more in common.

So we talked a little bit about audience.

Okay.

And I love the aside and the candor on vanity. That, that's fantastic. Right. But I want to push forward and say, okay, so whether it's someone in the maritime industry or someone in project management, How are you getting them to pay attention to issues they may not be thinking about now? How do you get them to look ahead? Because often it's, is it on fire today? Great, I'll deal with it, right?

Oh yeah. Well, well, to some degree, you know, you, you have to remain publishing out there. I continue to write, I'm active on social media, LinkedIn, And so I try to keep the conversation going. I also try to keep the conversation going on the maritime side with different colleagues and keeping abreast of what's going on. For example, on the maritime side, I've been doing some research on different fuel issues. You know, in the past, I don't have exact data. However, I know that in the past there was much fewer fuel issues than now. But I think part of that is because there's different types of fuel now. You have like low sulfur diesel, you still have bunker fuel. Now there's the rise of, of, you know, again, other, other renewable type fuels, you know, like soybeans or corn. And so they're all treated differently. However, when you look at it, you know, they're still being managed and controlled by, by you know, oil, oil type companies. And so now you're, you're dealing with all these different items that could mix or contaminate or be problematic. It's also that since the price of fuel has gone up so high, price will drive people to potentially cut it with things that they shouldn't or potentially put in additives that perhaps are not to the advantage of the of the person buying the product. You know, it's, you know, it's a cost.

If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. And so if I'm hearing you correctly, you're talking about not just publishing, but also sounds like not only social media conversations, but also one-on-one conversations.

Yeah, but, but with practitioners, because that's the only way you can really find out what they want to hear. For example, say more on that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, well, for example, you know, it's similar to the concept that we use at the university, which is the IAC, the Industry Advisory Council, where we go out to industry and discuss with them what would you expect from graduates. And so you're speaking to industry professionals to understand, well, If they were to hire a new graduate, doesn't even have to be from the university I'm affiliated with, what skills are you expecting them to have? What are you expecting them to be able to do in order to integrate into a new job? And so you get that information and then obviously you plug that into your classes and then that makes you more relevant. And then from my perspective, I find that's also something you can write about because now I've suddenly tapped into what the industry is interested in. And now you can, you can turn that into an article or a book or research, because if everyone's interested in it, well, you know, then you can find out, well, what's really behind that, what's, what's driving it. And that's what kind of gets me going.

Well, and it sounds like there's both an informal process of checking in with people that you're in contact with, as well as like you said, a formal advisory.

Yeah.

You can say, hey, what questions are you thinking about? And sometimes that flips the— here's something we think, but we're not sure what the data says. Can you research it for us?

Right.

Or it could be, do you know something already that we don't know because we haven't gone looking in the literature? Right.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, and when I was doing some, some research, you know, I had done some some items on more on the IT side regarding, you know, for example, individuals' relationships with their computers as opposed to their personal devices like smartphones. We have a different relationship with our computer than we do with our smartphone. Our smartphone we carry, we take it everywhere with us. And because of that, we have a greater deal of trust. Now, when hackers or mal— you know, people with malware are trying to get something out of you. You know, we have to be more careful about our cell phone or our smartphone because we're more likely to trust, "Oh, well, I got a text from Joe and there's a link here. It's probably a great joke. I've gotta see it." Rather than when, you know, we're on our computer, particularly our work computer, we're like, "Oh my God, you know, okay, I got this email, it's got a link. I better not open it because I've been told so many times don't open links because," If the people you don't know, so, you know, it's a different relationship. And I find that's also what you learn informally as well as with research. Then, you know, I started looking into that to try to understand. And so, you know, you start speaking to people to understand what that difference is, the relationship they have with their phone. And, you know, that's when I started researching more the concept of the digital trust. We have certain levels of digital trust with our computers, with our phones and with other devices. And, you know, it impacts practitioners.

Mm-hmm. Well, and let's take a look at the questions that you're asking now. What sort of things are intriguing you for research now? We talked a little bit about this before around AI and project management.

Yeah.

And I think that's an interesting intersection. So Where are the questions you're asking?

Well, for, for just starting with product management and AI, I feel that there's a lot going on. For example, PMI has developed their own AI system, which is available to PMI members, which immediately tells me just by the fact that they have it and it's available tells me that there's a lot of tools that, that practitioners are already looking for, for AI. I see other organizations pushing different areas. I, for example, use ChatGPT to assist with writing. I, you know, one could argue Grammarly is also AI, not even using the Grammarly AI piece, but just using the Grammarly for editing and stuff. You know, there's so many different elements in AI to research. I've also been doing research on AI on how it impacts the, the educational process, particularly with the instructors. You know, for example, are people willing to give up instructors and move solely to AI? Right now they're not. However, I do see that as, as more younger students are working with AI, they will grow more comfortable with it. And perhaps down the road, you know, things may change. But for now, I still seem to have a job as an instructor and at a university. But one never knows, you know, and there's other universities that have done different tests with different AIs to see how it works. And, and, you know, with, with greater or lesser results. And sometimes even students have a difficult time telling the difference between interacting with an AI rather than a human. Not always, but sometimes, you know, sometimes AI has gotten so sophisticated that there is so much going on that they could you know, obviously if you're having a very direct conversation, it's harder, harder to understand that. I also feel that there's a lot more interest on the, on the consumer side dealing with bots and, you know, people that kind of, kind of can work with things a lot faster, which helps, you know, again, when you're a 24/7 organization, if you want to be able to answer questions quickly, you know, you want to have that ability to do that. I know even on the educational side, when you're dealing with students, you know, students want to find out, well, can I get my transfer credits quickly? What's it going to take? How long before I can enroll in a class? How do I get financial aid? How does that work? And having these AI tools can help. See it in contract management too, where AI is helping write contracts, particularly on the government side, as well as to answer contracting questions from people that are trying to work with government?

Well, and I think there's two layers of questions here and research opportunities. The one of what is happening today, let alone what will look like in the future.

Yeah, well, well, those, those two levels of what's happening today, as I see this explosion of AI, I see that there's going to be challenges when it comes to smaller companies and larger companies being able to utilize an AI entity, for example. It's also gonna be some challenges in how it's gonna be sold and partitioned and packaged out to the consumer. For example, I can buy a sliver of ChatGPT, ask my questions, get that for a low monthly fee. Again, so I'm still tapping into what they have, but it is a little bit different than, for example, what you could get if you actually were an IBM and you owned all that. You could crunch it and do so much research differently.

If you own your own quantum computer, then you have an entirely different level of access.

Yeah, right. Totally different, and totally different perspective on what you're trying to do next. Because I maybe tried to find out how many AI tools I can use for management, project management, writing, education and use all those tools to, to help me grow and expand and even some degree consult. But I'm not going to have that tapped-in access to say, well, you know, I can have this quantum computer at my disposal and I can use it to, to create, you know, new products or create new programs or create new, you know, opportunities within the marketplace.

Absolutely. So as we begin to wrap up here, I want to ask a question for you, Robert, and I want you to think back to the days you were working in the world of cruise ships and logistics. First off, did you ever at that point envision yourself having a career in research and thought leadership?

When I first started, no, you know, I was just excited. I was a graduate out of college. I, I had this opportunity to work with a new cruise line that was starting up, and that was just exciting enough, you know. In fact, I even took a, a bit of a pay decrease to take the job there. I was, I was working as really as a restaurant manager, and, uh, you know, this opportunity in supply chain came up at a cruise line, but they couldn't pay me that that much. And I said, well, I really am totally enthusiastic about this area more than, you know, closing restaurants for the rest of my life. And so I thought, well, let me go that way. Eventually it worked out, you know, I, the money followed after I followed my passion. So, so it did kind of work out in the end.

And then when did the light bulb come on? When was that aha moment of, oh, I am doing research, I'm advancing the conversation, I'm practicing thought leadership. When, when did you have that aha and sort of self-awareness?

That, that started after Disney when I worked for another cruise company that was building new ships that were U.S. flagged. I had the opportunity at that point to, to be a speaker over at MIT about the U.S. cruise market and the U.S. cruise building because we were building two large new cruise ships. In, in the U.S. and no one had done that, I think, in 50 years, I think was the, the, the, the time frame. I think it was the, the SS, uh, the U.S. United States, which was, uh, a ship that's actually up in Philadelphia right now. Um, but that was the, the last, uh, large U.S. cruise ship. So I spoke at MIT, I started discussing with some other colleagues, um, I started doing some writing. I had spoken to another colleague in the industry who was a magazine editor, and he had said, you know, hey Robert, I've seen you speak, I've seen you, you want to do like some articles? And I said, all right, sure, I'll write some articles. And one article became 3 articles, and then other people had read those articles and were interested. And then suddenly I'm starting doing some writing. Eventually I actually had one opportunity with an academic journal to do some academic writing. So then I had to do that research. And then from there, it just kind of like I went, wow, I kind of like this. I'm good at it. People seem to read the article. I get positive feedback, you know, even at some point, you know, I got some negative feedback, which is very interesting. I found that, you know, I guess, I guess once you are known enough people will dislike you. Just— I never felt I made this person mad, but they just felt that I was— I must have been somehow snobby and arrogant and full of myself because I was writing and writing about things I knew.

I love that sort of evolution that you described where it goes from, hey, here's one opportunity, and then it sort of cascades. Now, not everybody has their opening debut speaking at MIT. But that's a great story, right?

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Yeah. And a bit of a thrill from that. So what insight have you gained from the practice of thought leadership that's made you better at doing, doing thought leadership? So how have you gotten better over the years?

I think, I think one of the biggest things is reflection. You have to look back on what you've done. And, and for example, I wrote my dissertation, and I remember some, some very kind words given to me by my chair. And he says, Robert, you know, this will not be your best work, but it needs to be good enough to get you through this. Your best work will come later. And at the time, it was really puzzling to me because I thought I wrote a great dissertation that approved.

You spent years on it.

Yeah, but years on it and everything. And I thought, you know, and then, and then I took that dissertation along with research from another of my colleagues and we turned it into a book and that got published and was well received. And so, you know, I really, you know, wasn't, wasn't quite ready to accept that. But then a few years later, I went back and I looked at my dissertation and the research I had done, and of course it was good and it made sense. And of course, but I started poking holes in it saying, oh my God, you know, had I— if I were to do this over again, I would have taken a completely different view. I would have used a different way of doing it. And then some of my writing, I was like, oh my God, you wrote like that? It's like, you know, I could have written better. You know, you just see it. In all new light. And it made me realize that, okay, with reflection comes great, great new knowledge. And then after that experience, I then went out and started purposely researching how great writers became great. So what I would do is I would go to various, I guess, institutions or kind of museums and I would try to get a hold of to at least see some of the writing of some of the great writers of our time and how they did it, you know, because— and what I found was that you could find their, their original manuscript and there's all these edits all over it, you know.

Absolutely.

And you, and you read the original and you go, that's good. And then you read the edits and you see what they did and you go, that's great. So now I understood that it really was a matter of, of, of, you know, brutal editing to some degree to make something great like that. And you have to reflect on it and you have to, you know, sometimes, you know, look at your work and just say, well, you know, it's not that great and it has to be better. And if it— if I'm going to make it better, I have to reflect on it and change it.

So in a previous life, I studied for a PhD in English literature. So you talking about manuscript and notation by the writer, as in terms of seeing those layers accumulate, is absolutely true. And I think one of the things— we had a conversation about digital, but I think it's worth talking here as well— is we do ourselves a disservice in writing on computer and on phone because all we ever see or send is the fair copy, the clean copy, right? And so we start creating this myth that it has to be perfect the first time when it goes to digital print or whatever that means, right? And your point of it's an evolutionary process. You will sweat the details. It's almost like, you know, living under permanent track changes except with pen and ink, right?

Yep, yep. And, and, you know, again, that's, that's how I started, you know. You're, you're right, handwriting, you know. I was just even talking to my wife about that, like the last time we wrote something cursive, you know. And of course, they— in, when growing up in school, that was a required thing you needed to know. And, you know, here I am going, wow, I wonder if I could actually write, write out something like a chapter of a book cursively again, you know, because I'm just so used to a computer now.

So Robert, I want to thank you for joining us for today's conversation and sharing your journey on thought leadership. It's been a joy.

Well, great. Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate this opportunity. Been a great conversation, um, and, you know, I wish you all the best in the future.

Thank you. Okay, you've made it to the end of the episode, and that means you're probably someone deeply interested in thought leadership. Want to learn even more? Here are 3 recommendations. First, check out the back catalog of our podcast episodes. There are a lot of great conversations with people at the top of their game in thought leadership, as well as just starting out. Second, subscribe to our newsletter that talks about the business of thought leadership And finally, feel free to reach out to me. My day job is helping people with big insights take them to scale through the practice of thought leadership. Maybe you're looking for strategy, or maybe you want to polish up your ideas, or even create new products and offerings. I'd love to chat with you. Thanks for listening.