Prepare4VC presents The 2mm Rift How Modern Day Leaders Span The Chasm Of A Remote Workforce Economy

All right.

Hi everyone, thanks for joining our Prepare for VC presentation on remote work today, and yeah, excited to have all of you on here. So just for a bit of background, Prepare for VC is our consulting and startup advisory company. I'm working here with Chris, who will be your presenter today, And several other consultants who, you know, have a background across starting startups and ventures of their own, venture capital space, or, you know, just have been working, growing and scaling other startup ventures. And we put teams together to help early-stage companies grow and scale their businesses and also move along the pathway of fundraising. So we do a lot of work putting together pitch decks, business plans, creating the fundraising strategy for technology, healthcare, other industries. And, you know, we focus on just helping you get to that next level of your business and figuring out, you know, fundraising can be challenging as well as like managing the day-to-day changing landscape of the startup environment. And, you know, we have our eyes on a variety of startups, you know, we're learning from every day that we can then take those lessons and apply it to all of the companies we work with. So really excited to have Chris on here as our featured presenter today. And yeah, he's going to talk about this presentation, Span the Chasm of a Remote Workforce economy. We do have a chat feature through GoToWebinar here. If you have any questions throughout the presentation, we can jump in there and make sure all of your questions get answered. And yeah, we'll leave some additional time at the end as well. But yeah, Chris, excited to have you on board here.

Yeah, Jason, I appreciate the opportunity to not only work with Prepare for VC, because I feel like it's a great organization that has strong roots in, you know, helping to build the foundation of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, but also the ability to come and talk about remote work. And today's situation, I think, is I want to be mindful of what it is that we're talking about and why. Remote work, I'm sure everyone knows, has— this isn't a new thing, but it wasn't widely adopted. And so with the current situation that's happening across the globe, you know, today we're really looking to look at how we can capitalize and prosper with a remote workforce. And some people are dealing with the situation in a very different manner. There are a lot of things that are going on. And so I want to be mindful of the fact that, um, you know, we're all grateful and have the ability to use this as a positive stepping stone forward, and some people are affected otherwise. But I feel like it's an important topic because we've all had our life thrown into shambles in some aspect, some more than others. And the way that I see what's happened is There's a chasm that has kind of opened up near, around, underneath every single one of us. And if you're a leader of an organization and you didn't have the things in place before this pandemic hit, it can feel like you're dropping off a cliff, sort of like what you see here, and you have to build the plane, so to speak, as you fly it. So I just want to give a little bit of context into you know, what it is that we're going to be looking at today. And I guess it starts off with who you speak to. I don't want to just be the voice on the other end of the webinar. My name is Christopher Dubey. I am the founder and CEO of Simpatico Consulting. I am a Prepare for VC consultant as well as many other things. And that— I like my life to be full of variety and diversity, and so that's what I've fulfilled inside of it. I've founded 5 startups. I coach executive leadership, strategy, and communication for international organizations, um, in Europe and Asia. And I'm the current entrepreneur in residence at Boston University for a business simulator for early-stage entrepreneurs called TrepCamp. So I try to fill what it is that You're hearing today with a face. It's obviously easier to see the message, hear the message, and feel the message if you know who's delivering it. But today really isn't about me. Today is more about you and knowing that this situation we're talking about with the remote workforce economy— why are we here? So what I want to do is I want to give you some context around where we've been. with remote, some clarity around where we're going, and confidence moving into this with some actionable tools that you can take away and implement in your business today. All it takes is, is 3 skills. So this is the how of what it is that we want to go over today. The 3 skills are nothing out of the ordinary, nothing innovative, but if you use them in the proper way, they are truly transformational. And those 3 skills are adaptability, focus, and communication. The who behind the validation of all this stuff, so that you know I'm not just making this up, uh, elite organizations like McKinsey, NASA, and the FBI use adaptability, focus, communication, and many other complex and many other simple techniques. to do exactly what it is that they need their team to do in high-pressure environments where they have remote employees. So the alignment and context of what we're going for today is exactly this. So this is our, our guide rope as we scale the chasm together. So the context of, of where we are, we're living today in a very different era than ever before, and I think with the state of the world the way it is, that statement is kind of an understatement. But if you look all the way back to the '70s, most of the professional world and even the personal world was trying to access data. Into the '80s, where then we were trying to access the technology that we could process more data. Then we wanted all that tech to be connected in the '90s. And then we wanted to access the experience of other people, our neighbors, our colleagues, our competitors. That was the 2000s. Today we've moved into what I call the age of human connectivity, or the era of human connectivity. It is all the previously explained mapped into one era, one state of being, and it has the human element attached to it. It's as you're accessing the data and using the tech, through connected devices to get an experience, how are you able to preserve the human aspect of that in a world that is seemingly adopting tech at a faster rate than we've ever adapted to or adopted anything in our lives? If you look back to the Industrial Revolution and the use of cars and then the use of industrial machines and then the introduction and use of robotics, All of that together, we're seeing an increased rate of adoption around technology and how we can do more faster, better, and more frequently. So what this brings us to is where we are today. Business as usual is going virtual, and in most cases that's mandatory. And I feel like this is the apex of what we're going to be talking about today. Virtual and remote workforces were not anything new, but we were forced into this mandatory remote workforce economy. And in some instances, if you were a leader of an organization and you were thinking, feeling, starting to adopt, and you didn't have all of your eggs in the basket, you could have found yourself in a position that was something you didn't want to find yourself into. But the reality of remote workforce economy is, that's where we are and that's where we have been for years. Virtual is becoming normal. On top of that, the way that we work when we're doing this new way or newly adopted way of delivering products and services to our customer segments, there are a lot of remote, 100% remote companies that are working around work cycles, high-speed project-based workstreams, and their ability to produce at a high level and keep overhead costs low is unfathomable. Their performance is based and reliant highly on tech. And when I talk about these companies, I'm talking about companies like Buffer and Doist or Todoist. These companies are 100% remote workforces with leadership that is 100% remote, and their ability to produce A premium product, a premium service with a premium workforce is unrivaled. That's what it is that we're trying to go for today with just a few 2-millimeter adjustments. So where we should start is by looking at a day in the life of us. People all around the world, ages 25 to 50 years old, on average, are having 22 Physical interactions a day, up until what we're up against now, where we have health issues and a global pandemic. So this puts strain on how we work if we are not used to working remotely. I'm 100% positive, though I don't know the actual numbers, that people in this day and age right now where we sit are not having 22 physical interactions per day when they're. out and about. On average, we hear about 25,000 words a day from other people. And the surprising thing is we're only aware of about 10% of the communication signals. With all of that interaction and all those words that are coming in and going out, we're really only aware of about 10% of our communication skills that we're giving off to other people when we're face-to-face. So what that looks like is what people are picking up on when you're speaking or when they're around you. Most of it, over half of it, is nonverbal. Then it goes to your voice tone, and only about 7% are the words that you use. So if I want to give myself, um, a little bit of confidence, most of the words that you're listening to right now are not the thing that you're focusing on. Though you can't see me, it's mostly voice tone and content So what does that mean for a leader of a business organization? Well, they're a little bit different. 6 out of every 10 of their interactions per day are face-to-face. So if you were one of these leaders and you were having 60% of your meetings face-to-face and then are forced into a situation where we have mandatory remote workforce and the state and structure and framework of your business has to change, That could be a huge jolt. It could be a huge jolt to you, and if it's affecting you at that level, think of your workforce and how it's affecting them. An average CEO of a company with less than 100 employees uses about, on the high end, 47,000 words a day. That's almost twice as much as the average person because of all the communication that needs to happen. Organizations with less than 100 people Spend 17 hours per week going over communication that needs clarity, which leads to about $525,000 spent or lost because of miscommunication. So this is where I wanna pause for a moment and just kind of absorb what I— all the stuff that we've talked about so far. Clearly, leaders in this day and age in business Are face-to-face. They're talking a lot, and most of that communication is taking hours afterwards in order to revisit what it is that's, that's really being said. And this is when we're face-to-face. So what I want you to think about now is what happens now that we can't be face-to-face? What are the implications now of Not being able to walk into someone's office and get it fixed now. What do you have to do? What do you have to learn? How do you need to move forward in order to remove these risks from your organization? Because the remote workforce economy as it stands now with this global pandemic, it's, it's not going away anytime soon. And it is— this is a pivotal transformation moment for a lot of leaders. So what I'd like you to do is just, if, if you can think about, offer, or give an example of how this could apply to you in your life, whether you share it in the chat or it's something that you just write down for yourself. Think about what's the one thing that you've seen here so far that directly, directly relates to you, but is the easiest to pivot on. It's the easiest to change your trajectory for the best outcome for your people and your organization. And if you can hold on to that as we go forward, that could be your one big takeaway from all of the stuff that we talk about here today.

Yeah, just wanted to jump in for a second. That was a great point. Yeah, again, if anybody are going off of that, yeah, if you do want to put, you know, any thoughts in the chat, any questions you guys have from the presentation so far, feel free to do that. And, you know, I can ask it to Chris here. But yeah, you know, it's also very interesting time, like, especially going off of that topic you just said, you know, this current situation is going to end, but, you know, the main thing is like now all these companies, regardless of whether or not they were remote before, are set up for remote work. So I think, yeah, that's an interesting, you know, it'll definitely be interesting to see like how that plays out and, you know, how— I mean, there's a variety of You know, companies that were already completely remote, some that offer, you know, some remote work for their employees, and now ones that have, you know, sort of had to transition throughout this coronavirus pandemic. And yeah, definitely excited to see what you— or not excited about the pandemic, but excited to see what you're going to share with us on, you know, how we can navigate the current situation.

Sure. And I think that provides a good transition segue into— we've given you some context where we were before, where we are now. So you're probably asking yourself, well, what is the chasm? What is the problem that you will most definitely run up against, even if you were prepared before? Okay, so take into consideration some companies were prepared and had remote workers and have a framework in order to move into and scale up quick. Let's say you were that type of organization. That's great. That's admirable, and it's something that makes you innovative. You're ahead of the curve. But at the end of the day, the things that are at play in the current workforce economy, with health issues, with, in some cases, in some countries that I have colleagues that are working in right now, they can't leave their home office. They can't leave their houses. They have their own stuff. If you put yourself in that place for one moment, what is that like? What does that do to your work ethic? What does that do to your mindset? What does that do to you physically? Even if you're not ill, even if you're 100% healthy and you're abiding by all the things that your government, your organization, and your family are asking you for the best possible outcome when all this blows over, it takes a toll on you and your team, your workforce, having to live under those mandated adjustments to their everyday life, to how they work, where they work. And what comes out of it? What I'm essentially asking is, what is the chasm? What are we dealing with? And this is this is the chasm here. You're looking at it: certainty, safety, significance, connection, contribution, purpose. These six things are the chasm. They are levels. Obstacles, challenges, and levers for you to quickly move your team up and into prosper or down and into struggling if they're done correctly or if they're not. So the advantage that you have today in seeing this, these 6 things are, are how the human brain works. These are 6 needs that every person on the planet needs to have some part of in order to grow, prosper, and progress through their life, through their relationships, through their work. It all has to do with how we are physically and mentally put together. So what is the, the ability for someone like you, a leader, to start to apply this stuff into your life? These are outcomes. Certainty is an outcome. Certainty is the ability for you as the leader of your team, your organization, your family, your group to say, this is where we are, and we are going to build a way that is going to help us prosper no matter the odds. It's the ability for you to raise awareness around The type of leader you are and how you will lead your group, your team, your organization, your family towards prosper. That's the first level of attainment that you have to shoot for— certainty. They're certain that you are the person that you have always been, and now with an obstacle that's faced with everyone around the world, you're still that person, and you'll even have more of a time to shine. Once you have certainty locked down with your group and yourself and your people and your family, it then goes to safety. That's the first level of trust. That's when everything else in the world is burning. You create a safe place for your people to learn, grow, make mistakes. And as I say in all my classes when I'm teaching entrepreneurship or with clients, fail forward. A safe place that doesn't exist anywhere else except for where you create it. Once they have certainty and they begin to feel safe behind your leadership and the, the way that you are allowing the adapt— the adaptability of a situation that could be very sticky to come into form, things start to shift. Starts to shift away from, is this right? Am I in the right position? I don't know if this is the right thing. Are we going to have what we need? It moves away from that fear and it moves more into significance. How is this going to significantly affect the way that I did my job before? How is this going to significantly affect the way that I can, if I do feel a dip in that performance, get back to that place as quickly as possible? And the answer is Level 4, which is connection. The ability to solidify certainty, build a safe place that significantly affects you and your employees immediately, like that immediate, is with connection. The ability to connect, understand, and take action on the things that you can't see, hear, or feel because of the world we're living in right now. Once you build those 4 levels and people go through those stages over and over and over again, testing, proving validity to the way that they feel certain and safe and significant and they're connected, things start to normalize and a shift, a major shift happens. It then goes from Me at this, what I call the money line, into we. The top 4 levels will be 80% of the energy that you have to put into creating certainty, safety, significance, and connection with your people, specifically in a time like we're living in now. That's all the me aspect. They're thinking about me. How am I feeling? How is this affecting me? How How am I going to do my job? If you can show them this, have them feel this, just know that's going to be 80% of the battle. Once you get to that money line, it changes from me to we. People jump on board and say, how can I help you? How can I help to make this better? How can we put our heads together and contribute to the purpose, which is no matter where we work, how we work, Or what happens? We have the right people at the right place at the right time. We could all work from home and it doesn't matter. We're going to get this done. Yes, they're going to have to be some things that are put into place, technology and framework and— but the things that I coach, the things that I talk about, the things that matter the most is people and proficiency. People is your team. It's you. It has all to do with the stuff at the top, all the way into contribution, and then the tech part. That is just a framework for you to amplify what it is that's already happening in the team. Take your team from me into we, and then you don't have to churn your legs as hard. This is the chasm that we all face. Whether it opened up underneath you suddenly or opened up right next to you, this is what every single person in every single organization, whether they're a leader or they're a person on the front line, is dealing with right now. How do I know that this is going to be okay? I don't really feel like things are going well. It's significantly affecting my mindset. I need to connect with my people. And once that happens more frequently, and we'll go over this as we move on, I'll show you the examples of— show you and share with you techniques in order to make this happen. Once that connection happens and they understand when, why, and with who those things are happening, that shift goes from me to we. The next thing, in order to make this shift happen, I talked about when we opened up in the intro, 3 skills, critical skills that will allow all of this to take place. And the first skill is adaptability. So what is adaptability? Adaptability is nothing more than understanding, taking that understanding, taking action to connect, and then using that connection to get better every day. Adaptability is understanding connection and proficiency. So the way this breaks down with a remote leader and the skills that they need to possess, we are no longer in a one-dimensional straight-ahead trajectory. There are no charts and graphs for that. We are living in a 360-degree 3D world. So the way that I look at the skills that a leadership— that leadership team or a leader needs to have is in 360 degrees. The first skill, 270 degrees of communication. You may be asking yourself, that doesn't make sense. What are you saying right now? Well, 270 degrees of communication means communication in every way, 8 out of 10 times the way that it needs to happen, whether that's having to do with who your people are and how they communicate best. Maybe some people, it's through voice chat. Other people, it's through video chat. Others, through text messages on technology like Slack or WhatsApp. And then others, it's still email. But the most important thing is 270 degrees of communication covers all of those things simultaneously. It's multichannel communication into an omnichannel mindset or one-channel mindset. You have to know how to communicate, when to communicate, and how the other person on the other end on your team prefers to communicate so that you can start to build your second skill, which is adaptability. Adaptability, as we said, is the understanding that needs to take place about who your team is and how they work best, when they work best, the ability to connect to them, and then the ability to take those things and get better every single day, no matter what the odds are, whether you're face-to-face or you're Using technology to do that, you need 240 degrees of adaptability, meaning you have a certain focus, but you have to be able to adapt on everything that is outside the blinders of your focus, which leads to our 3rd skill, which is focus. 190 degrees of focus. You probably can't focus on everything that's behind you. You usually focus on most everything that's in front of you. So focus on that and then hire the people that will be adaptable enough to focus on all the other stuff that is outside of your periphery. 190 degrees of focus, 240 degrees of adaptability, 270 degrees of communication leads to what remote leadership skill takes in a 360-degree world. So let's start to unpack What all this means. Understanding is adaptability. If adaptability is one of the 3 critical skills in order to create certainty, safety, significance, connection, contribution, and purpose in your remote workforce during this time, this economy that we're in, your first skill is adaptability. In order to be adaptable, you need to understand who your people are, not just who they are, but how they are. When and what they are. This is from RescueTime blog in an article that was put out the end of 2019, The State of Work-Life Balance. This slide does not do the data that was combed through any justice. RescueTime blog worked through 185 million work hours to come up with this time, this median timestamp by job type. Across the world. So these are averages of 185 million work time hours being assessed for when certain job types do their role. This is critically important to you if you're a leader and you're trying to understand how people aren't going into an office where you see them anymore. How do they work? When do they work? All of these things are all balls that are left up in the air or on the floor, depending on where you were thrust into this remote workforce economy. Support usually is first on the job. They are in around 8:30 AM, followed by executives, and then you move through. Software development is around 9:20-ish, and arts and design come closer to 10 AM. If you have this piece of information in your back pocket, And you're trying to put together an all-hands call in order to increase that connection, to get everyone's face onto a video chat. It would be better placed and better adopted and seen as a positive if you know when that's best for everyone. Understanding leads to adaptability because people can make small adjustments. Asking them to make huge adjustments based on what it is that you think and not what you know can be critically damaging when we're in a fragile beginning of a transformation like we are right now.

Just a quick question on that last slide. Yeah, so, like, you know, there's different types of remote work here, and, you know, especially, like, you know, businesses that were in place that are now shifting to remote and, you know, near their headquarters. It's still going to be, you know, all in the same time zone, same, you know, schedule as before. But, uh, you know, how do you see companies that maybe have, you know, some workers on the East Coast, some on the West Coast? Like, do they all adapt to the timing of their headquarters, or do they make adjustments based on where their employees are?

So for me to answer for those leaders, I think would be a gross understatement or miscommunication of me knowing everything about everyone at every place at every time. The thing that I would say in order to answer your question as concisely as possible is understanding where your people are and how they work is the answer.

Right.

The decision and the action you take in order to foster the most engagement and the best outcome for everyone. Maybe that means you have 2 all-hands calls for your East Coast and your West Coast because of that time difference, or your Asia group and your North America group, if that is the case. The most important aspect of this is with everything else that's going on, few leaders know truly when a lot of these job types, these roles, these critical roles that need to continue to do and put out the performance that they were completing and doing before we were forced into this situation with remote. They don't have these things in their back pocket. So that is, that is number one, the first thing you need to do. And then you have a leadership team. Whether it's a small one or a large one, that will help you dictate the logistics or the tactics of getting those people together. But if we look at this as a holistic approach, understand the beginning, understand the outcome that you're trying to achieve. So the beginning would be, when do these people usually start and when is the best time for us to get together as a group? And then the outcome is a positive connected team with smiling faces that everyone can see that we are still part of this together. All the stuff in the middle sort of takes care of itself with the right other team, team members that are in place. Right. So I hope I answered your question, but there really is no one size fits all, I think, for that. Yeah.

I appreciate that.

Yeah. No, no problem. So if understanding is adaptability, And understanding leads to connection. What is connection and how do you build that connection? This is a part where we could get really deep into what connection means and how you can build it, but essentially connection builds trust. Seeing someone's face that you would normally see every day and then you can't see it does something to us, all of us, in our mindset, in our mental wellness. So after, you know, going through and looking at companies like Buffer and Stripe and their 100% remote workforces, I took some of the stuff that they said, which is everyone feels more connected and our productivity continues to be around the 90 to 95% level, even though we're 100% workforce. When people can know when we're going to have a call, see everyone's face on there, And the relationships are built instead of deteriorated. People in, in those companies, with many sources of information that I was looking at, went out and purchased, um, podcast light rings that they can put, uh, in back of their phone or in back of their laptop that will shine onto them so that the perception they're giving off is a glowing, smiling face on the other end of the camera. And that makes That them feel better about themselves and the way that they look, because we can all see ourselves when we're on a web call. We can see the people we're talking to, and it makes the people on the other end of the camera feel that much better about you and know that you're okay, even though they can't be here physically in order to feel that. That's, that's the trick about connection. Most of what I shared in the beginning, connection begins with nonverbal. It begins with tonality, begins with feeling. And when you have that removed, how can you build trust by connecting if you can't have those things? Well, perception is reality. And so one suggestion that I would make is for you to suggest to your team that people use the right lighting and they come with their smiling face, because that's what builds relationships holistically across teams. The second thing is Connection is fostered through not just gathering about the critical things and the important things in the professional daily workings of life, but I would even suggest and go as far as to say gather socially, maybe one time a week where everyone gets a beer or a soda or an iced tea or whatever, a coffee or tea. And you just mingle and chat, do trivia. My brother and my father have a manufacturing business that had to shut down, most like the other businesses around the world. And they've taken their team and they do once a week a company-wide trivia over video conferencing software. And it's been hugely important to the morale of the team for everyone to get on for 45 minutes to an hour and just chat and do something social with each other in a time where we can't have those social gatherings and connections face-to-face. And lastly, with connection— connection, when you're doing things like social gatherings and professional gatherings and we're seeing faces, and video is so important because it builds relationships, which builds trust. Make sure you're recording some of these things and you can reference back. There's no stronger ability to bring a point of reference of progress in how the team has evolved than at some point in the future pulling up in all hands meeting when your company has grown from 5 and you've grown to 500, and you play a recording back when there was only 5 of you. going through the COVID-19 pandemic to motivate and inspire the new people on your team, to show them how resilient you've been. That piece of connection cannot be purchased, but it is a true indicator of what the foundational pillars of a company and a team are made of. So I would highly suggest that you record And at some point reference back to the things that you've overcome and progressed through as a team, because those are the moments that can be lost when you don't, but can be critically important to where you're going in the future, whether you can see that right now or not. Lastly, for adaptability, adaptability is proficiency. That means getting better every day. And when we're remote from each other and we're having to deal with things that are outside of work, because now home and work are kind of mingled. It's a gray area. It's a perfect shade of gray, I guess I would call it. Proficiency requires daily management, and that means management of stress, of physical wellness, of mental wellness. Breathing, yoga, meditation, sun are all critically important and things that you should have at the top of your list to ensure Adaptability of your people inside the professional space, that they're taking care of their personal space, because those 2 things are— never have been separate, but even more so than now are intermingled. The reason behind that, 1 in 2 remote workers struggle with wellness, physical wellness, mental wellness, because those lines are blurred and there's no direction and trajectory set. By the leadership team. Make sure you breathe deep. Make sure you physically are aware of what's happening with your body. Take time out. Use the things that you need to manage in a positive movement for your people. Because if you do and you look at those as levers for progress, All of your people will thank you for it. So when we're looking at the 2nd critical skill, that's focus. Focus simply is the ability to have a routine that provides accountability through prioritizing what is most important. And when we're dealing with focus, I think there's no better way to look at this than to look at what NASA astronaut Scott Kelly did by staying on the International Space Station for an extremely long amount of time. This is a quote from him. Routine is focused because when you're living and working in the same place for days on end, work can have a way of taking over everything if you let it. If that happens, you start to lose sight of what good performance looks like. You start to lose sight of what a good relationship with your family looks like. And those things start to affect your physical and mental wellness, increase your stress. And what starts to take hold and, and attack your focus is what I call Code S. Code S stands for cortisol, which is a stress hormone. Oxytocin is a love or happiness chemical. That's what you want to bring in by having a routine, which leads to dopamine, which is a chemical that is released when You do something well and you do it well consistently. Endorphins are then released, which is the E. Endorphins tell you when you've done a good job and continue to have you push forward even though there's pain involved, which then increases your level of serotonin. Serotonin is what I would call the Good Shepherd chemical that allows you to pivot, dictate, and perform consistently because you've adopted Your roadmap, your routine. Focus is something that is very simple to understand, very hard to adopt, but you have a leg up on others if you adopt a routine. Coming from someone like Scott Kelly, I think it's something that you should keep in the back of your mind. Focus is also accountability. So accountability in this day and age is usually metric-driven. What I'm suggesting here is the opposite. Yes, metrics are important, but more importantly are the people. When I teach and coach, the 2 things that I look at are who are your people, how are they, what are they, and how much do you know about them? And then proficiency. Are you setting up the things they need in order to get better every day? Everyone, or most leaders I speak with, say they have an open-door policy. But most times that open-door policy, when it comes to frontline employees, it never gets opened. It's usually the people directly beside or directly below that leader that hears 2, 3, 4 segments down the way when there's an issue. What I'm suggesting here with accountability, in order to increase focus of your team and yourself, I would suggest you create daily accountability partners. People that are directly in contact with regularly and, and talk about the things that those frontline employees, those software developers, those marketers don't feel comfortable coming to you about because you're the CEO or the COO or the CFO. Have them adopt one or two people that can have daily accountability of 3 of them. They can be in constant contact. They can have 3, 4, 5 video conferences per day. You can have them start to become resolution advocates for each other. Once that happens, those accountability partners have a clear view of what is necessary for understanding each other, which builds team cohesion because you have peer support. The most important thing in a time like we're in now is to know that you're not alone. And when there's one or two other people that are accountable for how you're performing, how you're feeling, and what it is that is attributing to that lack of or increase of performance, I would highly suggest that you create an accountability partner framework for your employees to know that It came from you, but at the end of the day, it's supported and seen through by the people that are standing next to them on a daily basis, even though they're not there physically. The 3rd aspect of focus is priority. Priority in 2019 was something that led to a lack of productivity. In an 8.5-hour day, workday in, the global workforce. 8.5 hours led to about 2 hours and 48 minutes of employee productivity, which, in my opinion, not that great. In a 40-hour workweek, 14 hours and 8 minutes of productive work. That's face-to-face. That's not remote. That's not with all these other challenges. So how do we take that and increase that by, I don't know, 10%, 20%? That's a huge increase. Well, I have a way that you can increase it by 50%. You can go from 2 hours and 48 minutes per day of productive work to 4 hours and 12 minutes. Over a week, that equates to about 7 hours and 4 minutes more per week. That you are dedicating almost one full day of productive work that's happening if you do one thing. If you prioritize the most important things and only the most important things and let everything else fall away, and then delegate those other things to the necessary people. So that's prioritizing number one focus, number 2 focus, number 3 focus. If you get those 3 things done, then 4, 5, and 6 come into play. Don't start 4, 5, and 6 until 1's done, and then 2 is done, and then 3 is done. But inside of doing those tasks, you have to give yourself a mental, physical break. We judge our success by 60-minute segments every day— 60-minute meetings, 60-minute sales call. That's just the way that the professional society has created the framework in which we deem success. The human brain can only take about, at the most, 90 minutes of focus time. And that's from pre-setup all the way through the meeting to the end to get the most performance out of what you just did. So science around a technique called the Pomodoro technique says every 60 minutes, take 10 minutes of break. So that's from 60 minutes of work to 50 minutes of work. 50 minutes of work, 10-minute break, you step away, and then you move back into it. every hour of the day that you're working, whether it's remote or in person. So if you have 50 minutes to work on something and you dedicate task 1 in your priority list, I have 50 minutes to get this done, your level of focus and priority to that will increase 5 to 7x. If you do that and time yourself and have the timer right next to you to say, I only have 35 minutes left. Am I able— gonna be able to get this done, or did I bite off too much? And then make slight adjustments. If you time yourself and prioritize and do not move on to the next task until task 1 is complete, you will see a 50% productivity increase. And here's the reason why. This isn't coming from me. This is coming from a man who was a performance and productivity coach back in the '20s and '30s. His name was Ivy Lee. Ivy Lee was a really smart guy that a lot of people knew or were after to have him help with their business. There was a railroad tycoon that was having a lot of productivity issues. And so he had Ivy Lee come in. And he said, so what am I gonna— what is this gonna cost me? And Ivy Lee said, it's not gonna— it's not gonna cost you anything right now. What I want you to do is just give me 20 minutes with each one of your most critical people. And at the end of 4 weeks, if you don't see a 50% increase in work, pay me nothing. If you see 50% or more increase in their productivity, pay me whatever you feel is necessary. So the railroad tycoon said, well, that sounds like a deal for me. Hopefully you do what you do, or else you may not be getting paid. So Ivy Lee met with all 296 of the critical workforce members for 20 minutes, had them prioritize the top 6 tasks, and said, only start with one. That is task number 1. If that's the most priority you're giving to this, only do that, and then only start number 2 once you've completed number 1, and so on and so forth with 2, 3, 4, 5, however long your list is. If you see a trend every single day that you're not getting to 4, 5, and 6, that means I want you to let those things go away. Dedicate them to your manager and have him redelegate and redistribute to the people that are able to capitalize on 1, 2, and 3, they can handle more work. But it doesn't mean that you're not doing your job as well. It just means they're able to do more faster. So all 296 people did that for 4 weeks. At the end of the 4 weeks, Ivy Lee went back to the railroad tycoon, and the CEO of the company cut him a check for $25,000. $25,000 back in 1930 is now equal to about $527,000. So that's one check over 4 weeks, helping 296 people increase their productivity. Got him paid $520-some-odd thousand dollars with one client. That is the power of what you see here. And something that I would highly suggest to implement into your focus priority. Prioritize what is most important, time yourself on doing those things, and at the end of a 4-week time frame, you'll see productivity increases of 50% or more. Skill number 3, the 3rd skill and final skill that we'll be talking about today, is communication. Communication is simply awareness around a process and a technique to make sure that what is being communicated, specifically when we're used to face-to-face and now we have to do remote using technology, how your awareness and the process you use to do these types of communications gets the results that you want. So there's No better way to showcase this than to share 3 elite organizations and how they use communication through a process and technique in order to get to the bottom line. So we'll start with McKinsey and Company. McKinsey uses what's called the PIP technique. PIP stands for purpose, importance, and preview. You wanna state right up front the purpose of the communication. and/or presentation. I did that with you today because this is a technique that I use whatever, wherever, and with whoever I'm speaking. For someone to know the purpose of why they're here allows for them to listen closer, for their brain to be primed in order to take in information and know that the importance of the implications and possible outcomes will affect them negatively or positively. The preview of the topics and the critical takeaways and the examples that are given lead to validation. So you've gone from the beginning of the circle to the middle of the circle to the end of the circle with the PIP technique covering the purpose, importance, and preview of what is to come and how that will directly relate back to them, not you. As the communicator or the presenter. NASA. NASA, with their space missions, has team dynamic techniques that allow for their space missions to come in from back in the mid-'80s at around a 72% performance level, around now 96 to 98% positive performance. The way that they do this is they use intensive communication. So what does that mean? That means the communication is focused, frequent, and is— every participant is mindful of what they're saying and how they're saying it. Remember, nonverbal in what we communicate is the most picked up on. But if one person's face and the other person's Back on the ground. How do you relay the nonverbal nature of what you're dealing with? Well, you do that with synergistic agreement. You do that with your tonality. You do that with your cadence. You do that with your facial expressions. Intensive communication means how often and how focused you are on what it is that you're trying to achieve, gaining synergistic agreement, which all that means is when someone recommends something to you, A teammate, a colleague, or your significant other. How do you build synergy between you by making an agreement and not breaking down what they've said and analyzing it, but building off of it? If you think about communication as you're building a structure, they've started to lay the foundation. Don't kick it out of the way or break it. Build off of it. Put your block, your material, your communication on top of it. They will intrinsically feel more indebted and more connected, and synergy will be created because when you have synergy, you have positive effect. Positive effect in NASA space missions— those astronauts utilize 75% more positive word associations than the average everyday human being. All that means is that when they're building off of what their teammates suggest and recommend, because they have total focus on this communication and they're replying back and communicating that they understand. The things that they're using, the words that they're using, are selected to get glass half full understanding, never glass half empty, because it's much easier in the vacuum of space for things to go wrong and for it to be terrible than it is for it to be Happy and bright sunny days. So utilize 75 to 80% more positive word associations. It will help your team specifically in a remote situation move towards the prosper side of, of performance and stay away from the deterioration side of the performance. Last but not least, the FBI. FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss is someone that I have taken courses and gone to seminars. He talks about the 3 types of voice communication that directly deal with 3 types of people that are walking around in everyday life: assertive people, accommodating people, and people who analyze. So the 3 types of voice you want to use are assertive, accommodating, and analyzing. This leads back to understanding who your people are, how they work, and how they respond. All these little 2-millimeter shifts will add up to you allowing your team to amplify and build off of the momentum and progress that you can gain inside of this time, where more organizations or some of your competitors will be deteriorating because they don't adopt these things. So what does an assertive voice sound like? Well, it's very dry, straightforward, and always, always, always, always, 100% of the time, if you're going to be delivering assertive voice, usually it's disagreeing. You start off with, I'm sorry, because that preps the brain. It primes the brain for what comes after it. I'm sorry, I'm going to be 5 minutes late to that meeting, instead of, I'm going to be late to that meeting, I'm sorry. One way of saying it Dictates and gets a very different response out of the person you're communicating with when you say, I'm sorry, but I'm going to be 5 minutes late to that meeting. The response in that case, in some— in most cases would be, well, I'm glad. I thought you were going to say you weren't going to be there. You're getting that type of response as opposed to, what do you mean you're going to be late? An accommodating voice communication, happy, sarcastic. If you start off with something that's lighthearted and get people to laugh, Science says that there's a 31% IQ increase in the audience members that got the joke and laughed at it. That's a way to make people smarter instantly in what I call how to be brilliant in a moment's notice. Bring humor and make people laugh. That will automatically get everyone at an amplified level. If you have analyzing people, those people are slow, low, and methodical. than a late-night DJ. That's how you have to communicate with them. Understanding who you have, how they want to be communicated with, and what can come out of it when you look at and validate these 3 elite organizations in the way that they do things, I think lends credence to everything that we've covered here today. And at the end of this, I'm Not only honored to be here sharing this stuff with you, but I also want to take this a step further and say, if you enjoyed the content here and there are some things that you can take out of it, some notes, you have questions, you want to talk to Jason or myself about this personally, or you just want to become a little bit more connected with us in this time, visit us on prepareforvc.com. You can connect with me personally on LinkedIn. And I truly sincerely hope all of you and your families and your organizations and team members across the world are safe as we stay together in this, in this fight for transformation and to come out on the prosperous side of the, of the scale. That's what I truly hope for everyone. And I thank you for having me be here today and share this with you.

Yeah, that was an amazing presentation. I know I learned a lot and, you know, really appreciate you diving into all those aspects and definitely makes sense. I mean, yeah, I like the way you went about this and, you know, makes sense to turn to, you know, people like, yeah, especially some of those examples at the end, you know, NASA has been sort of, they're another situation that you're forced to work remote and, you know, look to examples like that and people that have had success. and the way they're doing business. And yeah, I really like the way you put all this together. Yeah, so I'll be— if you're watching this or if you're watching this live with us here today, you'll be on our follow-up email. And yeah, happy to— if you have any questions, I'll include Chris on that as well. You can respond back to us with any questions, follow-ups, or any other ways we can help. If you're watching the recording of this, definitely check out our website and feel free to shoot us a message, whatever platform you see this on as well. So yeah, appreciate everyone for joining and thanks again, Chris. Amazing job here.

Great. Thank you very much. It's an honor to be able to share.

Thanks.