Last Updated
February 28, 2020
On this episode, we dive into the physical and virtual components that form the structures impacting how we work. And increasingly, changing what that looks and feels like. We discuss tools to help us in our daily work and then explore the philosophical when we think about what does it mean for social creatures like humans to work entirely distributed from each other.
Guests: Rachel Casanova, E. Andrew Taylor, and Ramphis Castro.
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin.
Guests
RACHEL CASANOVA is currently the Senior Managing Director of Workplace Innovation at Cushman & Wakefield. She has more than 25 years of diverse industry experience advising companies on how to transform their real estate assets to reinforce long-term business strategies, corporate culture, as well as integrated space, technology and performance goals. Prior to Cushman & Wakefield, Rachel founded Balansett, a workplace consulting practice, with clients spanning legal firms, professional services, technology, non-profits and architectural firms. During the course of her career, Rachel has addressed workplace-related advances from multiple vantage points—working within an end-user environment at Nortel Networks, serving as a design consultant at Herman Miller, and leading Workplace Strategy at Mancini Duffy, Perkins + Will and most recently, R/GA. As the Global Co-Leader of Planning + Strategy at Perkins + Will, Rachel supported clients with various workplace initiatives including activity based working, change management, occupancy strategy, and workplace/business alignment. As the Managing Director of the Connected Spaces practice at R/GA, she spearheaded the digital marketing and communications company’s efforts to use digital design to drive the physical experiences in workplaces. Rachel’s other major achievements include developing the Workplace of the Future initiative for KPMG in the US from 2004-2015. This effort included the development of the overarching strategy as well as the transition management approach and implementation for over 20 KPMG offices. Forward-thinking and creative, Rachel is passionate about the convergence of organizational behavior, the human experience, and real estate. She is frequently called upon as a subject matter expert and has contributed regularly to audiences in conferences and education seminars. Rachel has recently spoken at Worktech. RealComm, CoreNet, CRE Tech, Cornell University, NYU, IIDA, and Neocon.
E. ANDREW TAYLOR is an Associate Professor in the Arts Management Program, and Chair of the Department of Performing Arts at American University, exploring the intersection of arts, culture, and business. An author, lecturer, and researcher on a broad range of arts management issues, Andrew has also served as a consultant to arts organizations and cultural initiatives throughout the U.S. and Canada, including the William Penn Foundation, Overture Center for the Arts, American Ballet Theatre, Create Austin, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, among others. Prior to joining the AU faculty, Andrew served as Director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration in the Wisconsin School of Business for over a decade. Andrew is past president of the Association of Arts Administration Educators, current board member of the innovative arts support organization Fractured Atlas, and consulting editor both for The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society and for Artivate, a journal for arts entrepreneurship. Since July 2003, he has written a popular weblog on the business of arts and culture, ''The Artful Manager,'' hosted by ArtsJournal.com (www.artfulmanager.com).
RAMPHIS CASTRO is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. He is the co-founder of ScienceVest, a venture capital fund for hard-tech and life science companies. He is an experienced technologist and product strategist that has led and supported venture-backed teams from idea to exit. He is a Kauffman Fellow and co-Chairs the NYC chapter of the Society. As a Fellow, his research focused on the funding gaps for radical science companies in the U.S., collecting interviews of over 200 stakeholders across the research & commercialization ecosystem in the U.S. He's worked extensively on grassroots startup ecosystem acceleration & support for the purpose of helping countries evolve into innovation-driven economies. In 2016, upon the invitation of the White House, he was part of the US delegation with President Obama on his historic visit to Cuba. He has a diversified personal investment portfolio of companies ranging from Artificial Intelligence, Drones, Wearables, EdTech, Productivity Software, eCommerce, MarketPlaces, FinTech to Consumer Apps, all of them evaluated through an impact or gender lens. He also designed and is on the investment committee for Parallel 18, a global accelerator based in Puerto Rico, where they now have a portfolio of 100+ seed/series A companies from over 40 countries across multiple verticals that have collectively raised over $95M in venture capital funding from investors from Silicon Valley, New York, and beyond. He is a Computer Engineer and Lawyer by training, serial entrepreneur by experience, and grass-roots ecosystem builder by conviction.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova, and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. A podcast about well, that. On this episode, "What's in a workplace?" we dive into the physical and the virtual components that form the structures around how we work, and increasingly changing what that looks and feels like. We discuss tools that help us in our daily work and then explore the philosophical when we think about what does it mean for social creatures like humans to work entirely distributed from each other. Our guests include Rachel Casanova, Andrew Taylor and Ramphis Castro. And as always, later in the episode, we'll be joined by podcasting favorite co-host, Lauren Ruffin to get her thoughts on the topic.
If you're interested in learning more, we have a number of articles and resources available on our website at workshouldntsuck.co. We have a lot of fun stuff to cover in this episode, so let's get started. Our first guest is Rachel Casanova. Rachel is currently the Senior Managing Director of Workplace Innovation at Cushman & Wakefield. She has a wealth of experience advising companies on how to transform their workplaces to reinforce long term business strategies, corporate culture, as well as integrated space technology and performance goals. You'll quickly learn that she's incredibly passionate about the convergence of organizational behavior, the human experience and real estate. Rachel, welcome to the podcast.
Rachel Casanova:
Thank you. It's great to be here.
Tim Cynova:
So you're currently the Senior Managing Director of Workplace Innovation at Cushman & Wakefield. That sounds incredibly awesome. What does that mean? What kind of work do you get to do?
Rachel Casanova:
I think it helps to just think about the foundation of workplace. It's been called the workplace, workplace strategy, workplace innovation, but largely speaking, we're looking to help organizations figure out who they want to be and how the built environment enables them to get there. So workplace is the place that we're doing our work. Most people come to work at some point. That's really our focus when they're coming to work. And innovation is how do we think about that differently? There's so much information that you're going to hear from other people, even on this podcast about how things are different and where people work and how they work and what they're doing. What can we think innovatively about that when they come to work, we can provide a different experience.
Tim Cynova:
So what does that look like when you're actually doing that?
Rachel Casanova:
So Cushman & Wakefield is a large real estate company. So the drive for most clients who come to us is that they have some changes going to happen to a place, to their real estate, to a lease and so on. So the work looks like, a client says, "Great, I have a lease expiration. We need to figure out if we're going to stay here and go somewhere else." That opens the door for me to say, "Well, how's it working today? What is it that you're trying to do that you can't do? What works really well?" Not so much how does the chair work though those things come up. But it's more about who you trying to attract here, who has to be here and be effective, what does high performance look like? And knowing having 25 years of experience in the industry, having some pointers as to the things you might do to the built environment that will enable these behaviors that you want to see.
Tim Cynova:
What are usually the questions that sparked the most interesting responses?
Rachel Casanova:
Questions from the client to me or questions that I asked?
Tim Cynova:
Either way. I mean, I was thinking about the questions that you ask, because for our listeners, I actually have had the opportunity working with Rachel. And it was an incredible experience. And there are a lot of questions that she asked and it caused me and our team to take a step back to say, what should work feel like here? How can we encourage that? But I can imagine you get questions from clients that you're like, "Oh, that's going in the wrong direction."
Rachel Casanova:
I mean, generally speaking and this could be any industry. We get asked by clients, what's everyone doing? And it's the most painful thing to answer because first of all, it's looking backwards. So what people did doesn't necessarily mean it's an indicator of what you should go do. And if no one went and assess how well it worked, all we know is that it happened but we don't actually know that it was for a good reason or that the outcome was what you wanted. So it's kind of a painful question we get asked by clients. One of the questions I think I did ask here, but that often yield some interesting responses is, how do people take risks here? That's the easy one. Then the question is when someone failed, do you have a story of what it looks like to fail here? Do you have a story of what it looks like when someone succeeds here? And this is not scientific.
But I would say that people remember the failure that went poorly and can tell that story generation upon generation of worker better than they could tell, "Oh well, Tim took a risk. It was a big one, he failed, but it ended up being our greatest success in some other way." So when organizations say we want to innovate, the other side of innovation is risk. And if you have more stories, where taking a risk that maybe didn't go well, did not end with a success story of some kind, we know that no matter how innovative you say you want to be or build us something that enables us and encourages us, those behaviors that leadership style, it speaks more truly to what's going to happen than if we create the right environment.
Tim Cynova:
So you're like, "You might actually like gray cubicles."
Rachel Casanova:
There have been times I say, I've become a no-police. And it's not a place that I really enjoy being. But when you hear on one hand, the leader saying, "We want everyone in the open plan, we want people collaborating. We want people working together." Great. Well, when you evaluate them at the end of the year, do you evaluate them in their group success or individual success? It's like a perfect example of when those two things don't align great cubicles might be the answer, or we're talking about some of the most difficult decisions that they're going to have to make and choosing the environment is not that. That's really the first step and then it's the hard work that we are going to encourage those leaders to do to bring that to life.
Tim Cynova:
The response sounds very aspirational. "Oh, that's what our space should be like. Is that how it functions?" No, not at all. But if we build it, they will come.
Rachel Casanova:
Build the dreams?
Tim Cynova:
Yeah.
Rachel Casanova:
For a long time, that was the common thing we used to hear, "Can you build us what Google has?" And we'd say, "But you're not Google. It's no different from you want that fancy car that can go 150 miles an hour. If you don't know how to drive it, you're not going to get use out of it. And it would be irresponsible to tell you to go buy that car." So that's where we end up branching into all these other areas of an organization. How do you communicate? How do people know what success looks like? How do people learn? How does knowledge get shared? How do leaders convey what their expectations are? How do peers work together? How hierarchical is it? Do you want people to make decisions and come to leadership with those decisions? Or is it much more of a vertical go up to leadership and then across to another part of the organization?
It almost seems like we want to know too much about an organization, but we also know that the built environment becomes that body language of an organization. And when the two are misaligned that incongruence can create pain for employees. So they don't know what the expectation is. You said you wanted us to all collaborate, you said that we're all responsible for the decisions that we make, yet you've just put director levels and above and offices because they have something that other people don't. When an employee can question that, we say we're about sustainability. But now we have paper cups, we say we're this, but we do that. Those are depleting pieces of what human energy, the opportunity for people to be a high performing individual. Those things just deplete from there.
Tim Cynova:
That was one of the most enjoyable and enlightening experiences of getting to work with you, because of the intentionality that went into how do you build a space that aligns with your values and how you work and how you want to work. And before that moment, personally and professionally and as an organization, we had been giving a lot of thought to the Workplace, but much like many nonprofit arts organizations, we just walked into a space that had cubicles and the things that it had, and you just started working there. And it could have been any company in the 1980s. And it was this really exciting and liberating moment to take a step back and have that moment to think about how do we want to intentionally design a space. At the same time realizing in doing that, we weren't going to please everyone. And you helped us walk through a couple of different things.
We learned what the acronym SCARF meant, we learned the three ways to get people to do something, you can inspire, motivate or coerce them. But that even though you're doing this with input, you're going to get to the end and some people are going to hate it and some people are going to love it. And some days you feel like if I could just get 51% that's a helpful thing. And I think that was one of the most challenging things for me to be like there's a lot of thought, a lot of work going into this and some people are still going to hate this new thing.
Rachel Casanova:
I don't think I have a good analogy to something else but because of the cost on day one that you spend, it's really challenging because people will grow into things. And you will find out that even though it worked for everybody else, something may or may not work for you. And unfortunately, the industry is such in balance sheets or such that it can be hard to change the built environment, let alone the people that we say will grow into these things. I've always said, hold a piece of your budget, hold 10% leave a room empty, or leave 10% so that when something doesn't work, you're willing to change. Because I don't think that the industry is welcoming to behaviors that adapt. And maybe you'll find that you didn't think when we went through the renovations here that you would become a virtual organization. But if you had if you knew that you might have made other decisions.
But if we're unwilling to make change, then it's really hard to say we're going to take people down a journey because really what we're doing is we're just saying you're going to have to like this, because this is what we committed to. And that really happens to be something that the industry is trying to figure out, how do you make construction much more like a set, much more flexible? So as an organization moves into something, they are one thing, the space is one thing, but that we assume change is meant to happen. And when we ask people how it's working, not only do we want them to understand the intention, but they may know something we didn't know. They may have learned something about themselves they didn't know or how a group wants to work together. And if we can't make that a sort of continuous improvement process, we're really making everybody struggle.
Tim Cynova:
The whole set idea is a really interesting thought. I was thinking about how arts organizations are some of the most creative places or producing the most creative work. And then when you go to the actual office that's running it, it could be in the 1960s, how organizations just work and you sort of check the creativity, but not applying that to the physical space or even the virtual space or how we want to work. We've been working on moving to be an entirely virtual organization for some time now with People now in 12 states and six countries. And we could not have gotten to this place had we not gone through that renovation, because that unplugged people from a space, it introduced multiple different ways of working groups, solo, light-spaces, dark-spaces, comfortable-spaces, hard-chairs, whatever it might be.
When we published the piece about us going entirely virtual, I was sort of shocked at the negative reaction that I was getting from some people. And it took a while to meditate on why am I getting this reaction? Why are people reacting in sort of that way to this? It was always in, something must be wrong. Why would any company do this? There must be money problems, you're getting rid of your office to save money on the lease or what's happening? And I started to realize people were taking this idea of an entirely virtual organization and grafting it onto their current environment. There was such a big disconnect. It was difficult for them to imagine even what that was like, which meant something has to be wrong, like, what would you do? And I imagine when you're working with organizations, you're helping them through different steps. What are some of the milestones that you see organizations go through where you're like, okay, this organization can make that step from cubicles to this, but there's no way they're going to get here.
Rachel Casanova:
Let's see. So it really depends on the size of an organization. If we think about an organization that has 50 offices around the globe, for example, they probably have delegated the responsibility of real estate, it's a line item to someone in the real estate world. So their measures, what they're looking to do is manage those costs either to maintain at a certain level or to reduce. There's rarely a corporate real estate executive who was told go spend 10% more next year. Those are the ones that we understand it's a real estate play first. And what's really important is that we go bring along some other stakeholders, historically you'd go to HR, you'd make sure that what they have their eye on is incorporated, but it's still a real estate strategy. Technology plays a huge part because technology really links us into process. How does communication happen? How does content move? So understanding how that's going in any strategic plan.
The thing that we really need, and we can't always have at that scale, are the business people, are the stakeholders who want their authentic driver to say, "I want to go through the hard work that it's going to take to do this because I see it and I believe this is going to enable us to do something that we couldn't otherwise." We know an organization will have a harder time when it's a real estate person saying we're going to do this because it's going to be better for performance. That doesn't feel authentic. From the time I started my career at Nortel Networks, which was when Voice over IP was becoming a possibility and we were saying we need to design based on need not entitlement and we were creating these great places this is now 25 years ago. I was young, I was probably a little arrogant in my Northeast New York way and working in North Carolina. But I heard people say, "I've made more money for this company in a day than you make in a year. And you're not going to tell me what I need." Because it wasn't believable.
So the errors that we see at that scale are often that it's not a holistic look. And so we are pushing an agenda for one part of the business that is not believed by other parts of business. In a smaller scale, when we meet with leaders who are saying, "I need something for my organization," it can be really empowering, because they're looking for any tool that might be out there. So maybe it's an HR Benefits Program, maybe it's something else. They've decided that the built environment can help them and it's a much different conversation. So when we have that opportunity to really link what an organization is about, who they want to be, in your case, you're supporting artists all over the world. And you're saying there should be no difference if you are in this mothership, physical mothership, or if you are a diverse group of people who are trying to help. We don't need that physical co-location to do it.
I think there are some things that I think we've talked about this that we do believe that place and face-to-face matters. So there are things that you may find you have to recreate. And that's that synchronous conversation that isn't necessarily planned, but it happens because two people are in the same place. It could become a very disciplined work environment, because now when I go to work, I go to work. I think that plays out as to where on the continuum is it all healthy and where does it take something away from the culture of the organization?
Tim Cynova:
When you start to talk to people about virtual or space, it becomes, "Well, where do you have this thing? Where do you do your conference meetings? Or how do you brainstorm? Or what happens to the kitchen?" And increasingly, as we as an organization at Fractured Atlas, look at it, especially through our anti-racism and anti-oppression lens. It's very rooted in white spaces. And what's really exciting is to say, "Okay, so that thing, how might you do that, without that space or without that thing?" And it could be, "How do you have that holiday party gathering not around a holiday that's not celebrated by everyone? And what are we trying to achieve?"
And I think that's some of the work that you really brought to our organization, when we have those conversations, what is the thing that you're doing? And not because you just did it that way for years, because then you open up so many different opportunities and options that you don't even realize. And I think in a scarcity mentality where, especially... I've never met a company who's like, "I've got way more resources than I possibly need." So I think the cultural sector feels like the most scarce resource sector but I think universally, people have the resources they have.
Rachel Casanova:
Well, I think what it brings up for me is, this is not your last move, necessarily. This is the right move for this organization right now. And that's how it should be thought of. So there are solutions for all the things you just brought up and you may find we went too far, but to deplete of the habits and assumptions that we're saying are grounded in something that are just that, maybe we bring back the things we want, and we don't bring back the things we don't. So most organizations don't really have all those things aligned in a time. I mean, you are preparing for this, and you have a situation where you're able to leave this home. So it's worth a try. There's no barrier to entry to come back to the other way. There's no barrier to entry to say we're getting together for a party four times a year. But now you can choose the things that you want to do.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. I'd like to go specifically now to how you work as a person because you study this. You work on this with other companies. And I'm fascinated about what your routine looks like, how you actually work, what tools you can't live without or what structure you use for various types of things?
Rachel Casanova:
Turning this on me. The one thing I hate, I hate to enjoy the giant. But once I move to the Google suite for collaboration, it was something you can't undo. So I've actually moved to an organization that is not that far along on collaboration, the kind that is truly embedded. And what you're able to do in that, in any online co-editable document, but Google does it really well, there are no versions, there is no pulling you back into email. There is no searching for what's the latest and not knowing who owns the most up to date content. It means not depending on people, I mean, it's taking me the red lining and the assistant so far into another world where you're all coexisting in one creation.
At one time, I had my own consulting practice, I was doing some work for a law firm, actually with an organizational culture specialist who gave me the Inspire course and that framework, as well as an experienced design firm. And then a graphic designer who I've met in person once. I've been on video with his team, but I've only met him once. What we were able to create in a short timeframe was exceptional. And it was based on, we're all looking at the same thing, we did not have to be in the same place. And we did not have to own license to, "I own this, you own that," we were sort of in that integrated content the whole time. So that's one. I happen to be someone who loves to hand write things. I understand it better. It's just something that I guess you can call it a generational thing, although I see college students thinking that way too.
But the iPad that I recently got has also been a game changer. So the ability to quickly rather than printing out a document, redlining and things like that, which again, I'm working in a little bit of more of an asynchronous system now. So it's required to edit things like that. But the iPad becomes a tool on the move, on the go with my hand, I don't have to type it, it doesn't have to fit on a line that goes horizontal. It's really a great enabler. I could tell you about the habits I push my kids for because I think that they represent what I think is best. One is the phone out of arm's reach. It's so, we all know, but it's just so easy to get caught up in that urgent but not important idea. So trying to take that device and use it the way it should be used, but not where it becomes really part of our arm. No charging of phones in bedrooms.
Another place like sleep is super important. And that moment of not waiting for a reaction, not waiting for a buzz, not waiting for something I think is priceless and I think most people have given up on it. So you often hear people up at 3:00 in the morning just to check their email. And when I travel, I often use a phone as an alarm clock, which means it is near me and it changes my sleep pattern. So I can only imagine people who are doing it all the time, who becomes habitual to have that right next to them. I think video, video calls, video connectivity to people, it should become the default, especially for a virtual organization, to have to turn it on to make that creates some defensiveness, it creates, "Oh, what am I wearing this and that." If the protocol is, "We don't care what you're wearing," but looking at someone's eyes is part of the game, then that's a fault-on as opposed to default-off, really changes how people interact with each other.
Tim Cynova:
I'm including a couple of classes during my new school course this year that are all virtual, everyone's on zoom. Because I've seen the value of learning what that's like and learning how to be a part of an entirely virtual meeting where there's 25 people. And the things that are just developed by accident I think, at Fractured Atlas, everyone mutes themselves, and you can tell someone has something to say because they unmute themselves. So you start scanning the screen to look at that pulse. And the other part of it equalizes it in a way like you could see the top quarter of someone, which is always fun when you meet someone in person for the first time because you're like, "You're that tall." "You have pants."
Yeah, everyone looks the same. One of my colleagues, she started working last May and hadn't met one of our other colleagues who always wears over the ear headphones. It was like, "I've never seen Gillian's ears before because she's always wearing headphones." So some of those things that are different. And I felt like this is an increasingly important skill that people need to have, and so let's practice it to the point of, don't sit in front of a window, because then you have that certain witness protection look.
Rachel Casanova:
I have actually often take screenshots of people on video with the most awful backgrounds because they're just a silhouette because of the light in the back or things like that. I don't think we've figured out that video is really ubiquitous. Maybe we can be more conscious of where we take that call, but I don't think we create environments with the assumption that framing a person and what's behind them is important. But you also brought up an interesting point, when everyone is virtual, I think it actually does create a better experience than when the majority of people are physically in a room and there's one person on the phone, and that I know I've come up with a really loud... just because I want off the floor that there's no way to get the floor otherwise. And that's just as awkward and almost passive-aggressive in order to do so. But I think the cues that you picked up on are really interesting and it does, it brings an equality to everyone in the room.
Tim Cynova:
Going back to just audio only calls is the weirdest thing. Because half the meeting is you're stepping on something someone says and then everyone waits for someone to say something, but then all of you say something and then you're like, "Oh, excuse me. This is Tim." And it's the oddest-
Rachel Casanova:
And can you imagine if you were in a room, and everyone said, "Hi, it's Rachel, I'm here." "Hi, it's Tim. I'm here." I mean, it's the time it takes, we can all tell. And everyone should learn how to look at that button of who the participants are, and then we can probably move on. But you also don't know whose attention you have. And we all know, I know it for myself that when I'm on a conference call, I will do something else. One of the physical things and I spoke to someone yesterday who agrees with me, but it's not readily accepted, I don't think, you had the walking workstation, right? The treadmill desk?
Tim Cynova:
Yep.
Rachel Casanova:
So when I would use that on conference calls, it was incredible. I had so much more focus because I could do two things at once. Adding that third was beyond. So it was not taking my attention. I mean, I know how to walk and I wasn't thinking about it. But walking felt good. Just felt better than sitting at a desk. And I had more, I think engagement and energy to be part of that call by doing it than I did just sitting at my desk, because now I was unfortunately looking for the second thing to do.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, it's like sitting down to watch TV and then you pick up your phone to look at a video online or flip through it. It's like multi-screen. Yeah, that's a great way to hotwire your brain into that second thing.
Rachel Casanova:
That's right.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. One of the things we've been looking for to try and figure out is when you do have bigger meetings, oftentimes, unless someone proactively does something, everyone joins silently and leaves silently. And it's a really awkward thing if we're just sitting here, so someone has to start chatting and then what is that thing that you'd be doing if you walked into a room together? And at Fractured Atlas we developed this thing years ago where we always clap at the end of the meeting. The meeting is so strange if you go someplace and people don't clap and you're like, "Oh, wait, what? We don't clap when this thing's done?" So what is the equivalent of that punctuation so we can say, "Yeah, we spent time together we're not just disappearing into the ether even though we are."
Rachel Casanova:
Well, what I hear in what you've said is that you all choose when the meeting is over. And on conference calls that can happen because body language would also signify people are starting to get up. But on a call, it also often becomes one person whose job it is to say, "Okay, I think we're going to wrap that up." Again, changing the group thing into one person is now leaving with... One person has the command to decide when the meeting is over. So I think you should keep the clap.
Tim Cynova:
I like the clap.
Rachel Casanova:
There's got to be an emoji somewhere in there.
Tim Cynova:
Zoom, I believe just released an updated version that now allows you to put copying emoji next to your image that not all of us had, but one of our co-workers did. So this reminds me I need to download the updated Zoom. Because Yeah, clapping is just you're getting feedback there. So you have to change what that is like. But again, I guess intentionality around how we're coming together and experimenting with different things that work and don't work to figure out what works the best for you now, and I love that point, like we're building this for now or for the future, but recognizing it's going to change, we're going to change. So we need to iterate and adjust rather than this is what we have for the next 25 years.
Rachel Casanova:
Right. And if you're not willing to acknowledge that I think it's just harder. That's when you asked me this question before, like, what's the hardest thing? The hardest thing is when people actually don't have a choice, we act as if they do we want their input, but now you're going to have this. I think, if we apply consumer mindset to the workplace, and we recognize that if a consumer didn't have a good experience and was told to change how they walk or change what they wear when they come into a store, they won't come into the store anymore. So if we treat employees, more like consumers, and we are willing to hear that person and say so what isn't working? Of course we have the bounds and what we're able to do willing to do, there could be lots of reasons why, but most people have an idea of what it is that they'd like. And if we're actually willing to listen, and I think this is again, where corporate real estate, large organizations have struggled, because their job is to scale, their job is to have it one way. But if we really acknowledge that mass customization means willing to listen and willing to adjust, we probably get a lot further.
The industry uses the words changed management, no one wants to be changed. No retailer says let's go change our clients. We're going to now tell them to go. No, they appeal to the heart. They appeal to the mind. They appeal to me choosing to do it differently. They can coerce, I'm thinking of a gym, a gym wants people to come. They're not going to change behavior, but they are trying to use motivation. There is recognition even on the gym front to say, "We want people to use it, we don't just want their money for them not to come here. We want to motivate them to actually be here." So they're trying to change behavior, but you'd never say that someone who works for Equinox is in the change business. And you'd never try to change at someone, you would entice them to see that there's a different way that they might really like. So you do market research you're willing to listen. The outlier may actually be someone who's just more able to verbalize what's not working than the people who aren't saying anything.
Tim Cynova:
I love that idea as it applies to the art going experienced, too. I grew up with classical music. I was a trombonist. I played. I have a conservatory degree, I wouldn't be where I am in life, if not for it. It's sometimes really tough to love it. You go to performance, you're like, "Why does this feel so horrible? I actually love this thing. But the experience of going here it's chairs are horrible, the people are rude. If I wasn't so connected this I wouldn't come here." And I think that's what arts organizations many are struggling with now, and it's by extension, then to the workplace. So you're figuring this out for one part of your circle, but then the other people who are actually making that thing happen to apply it holistically to the organization.
Rachel Casanova:
Yeah, it's really interesting to take Broadway, those seats are awful yet people are coming. So something is enticing them enough that they say I would put up with that. So what are we enticing people at work with that work shouldn't suck? There should be something so great, that they put that into context. And I think maybe we think about the fact that when people don't see all that great, that's exactly when those little things become the problem. So we have a survey at Cushman & Wakefield. It's called experience per square foot, and it measures 40 attributes of the Workplace that links them into five experience outcomes and five engagement outcomes. So if you look at how people feel about certain things that links into the bond component of the outcome, do people bond at work? Do people have the ability to learn at work? Do they have the ability to do their best work?
And what's interesting is that we have 30,000 respondents in that survey, let's say represents 100 companies, the data scientist who's working with it says that there's typically five things that present themselves as really good or really bad. So my question was, "Well, what are they? If we just know that, then we're done. We don't have to survey anyone." He said, "Well, they change by organization." What that tells me directionally is that people can only complain about a certain number of things, they can only love a certain number of things and they can only hate a certain number of things. There's no evidence that once you fix those three, they won't find the next three. So if we work on the ones that are really, really good, I think we just don't fill those bad's with three new ones. That was my conclusion from the data's.
Tim Cynova:
Terrific. Yeah. Well, as we're coming to a close here, I'd like to get your thoughts on your advice for organizations that aren't looking to renovate or can't renovate, or big physical change or virtual change, what can they do right now to sort of move towards what you've been talking about? And then just any other closing thoughts on the topic that you might have.
Rachel Casanova:
I love organizations that can't make the physical change because it challenges them to really think and it challenges them to say, "What experiences are we trying to create?" Like you said, in the past, you had just managed with the space that you had. There's so many other things that impact people's experience. We are 650 people in our New York office. And we're in that situation, our lease is closer to ending than beginning. We know that it was designed for the organization that was 12 to 15 years ago, which, by the way, I was the consultant who worked on it. So it's kind of interesting to see how they've grown beyond. But I was given the challenge to look at the workplace. So people thought I was going to come up with chairs, rooms, things like that. And I said, "I don't think that's what people need."
So we did an exercise, put post-it notes on the wall from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Then it extended from 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM. And ask people with post-it notes to put on the wall, what do they do in the morning before they come to work? What's a ritual they do when they first get to work? What do they do in the middle of the day, last thing before they leave and afterward? And don't mention anything about work. And the wall probably ended up with 500 post-its and so I crowd sourced it. I mean, we have all kinds of people who work there still within a confines of probably people who work in nine to five professional world, then what we try to do is we try to cut that data and say, what is it that we're trying to solve for? And it may or may not be the physical space, but it may be the pressure of what I've got to get home and get to, or making the train or calling a sick relative or doing all these things.
And so we came up with a few ideas on how to enable people to be in a work mode when they want to be in work mode, but also how to support them as individuals. And that is for them as people. We're all people when we're not at work. The breath of seeing those post-it notes makes you realize how many other things are on people's minds when they go to work. It's a small thing, we just contracted with a company who does same-day delivery of convenience items. So an order that gets placed by 11:00 AM, comes in a white shopping bag with your name on it by 3:00 PM. That workplace, I don't know, to me it's something that happened when I was at work that enabled me to say, "I don't have to go get that shampoo that my kids said, please don't come home without the shampoo." It's taken care of my focus is now here. So it's a little thing.
We have a café, served decent food, but we just went to the vendor and said, "How do you treat us more like consumers? How do we advertise this more? How do we put signage around it? How do we increase the offering?" So we increase the soup, we increase the breakfast sandwiches, it was no cost. In fact, the more we sell, the more the organization doesn't have to subsidize. So it's sort of good for everyone. It was just a thought process to say, what are those things that can create the workplace experience? And that more than ever before is acknowledged to be an entire experience, not just what I see, not just the physical furniture design of the space.
Tim Cynova:
Amazing. Rachel, it's always a pleasure spending time with you. Thanks so much for being on the podcast.
Rachel Casanova:
Thanks for having me.
Tim Cynova:
Our next guest is Andrew Taylor. Andrew is currently an Associate Professor and Department Chair at American University, where he explores the intersection of arts, culture and business. He's an author, lecturer and researcher on a broad range of management issues. You might even know him from his long running blog, The Artful Manager. Andrew, welcome to the podcast.
Andrew Taylor:
Hi, Tim. Thank you.
Tim Cynova:
One of the final ways we currently have an opportunity to work together is through your service as a Fractured Atlas Board Member and as the esteemed Chair of our Audit Committee. As part of our work at Fractured Atlas, you recently published a piece titled, "Working Together, Apart", the comment is silent, where you reflected on the transition that Fractured Atlas has been on to become an entirely virtual or distributed organization. You wrote about how the physical workplace is filled with, "a million subconscious cues that help us work together effectively when we're with each other". And then you wondered in a hopeful way, what takes the place of those? And how might we need to approach work differently in an entirely virtual workplace? You also said, "It's not clear to me what we're abandoning when we abandon the shared physical workplace. Humans are evolutionarily social animals." Can you talk through your exploration that took place when you were thinking about and writing this piece?
Andrew Taylor:
Yeah, and it's a bunch of different journeys that sort of came together that for a very long time, I've been wondering about human cognition as just a component of how we engage the world, which obviously is important when you're trying to work effectively by yourself but also with others. So I had done a bunch of reading on sort of the way the brain works, the way language works, the ways we subliminally process a lot of what we do. And more recently, I've been reading and learning about the social components. So I just finished the book Blueprint by Nicholas Christakis, which is sort of about how his social engagement in humans particularly, but other animals too, evolutionary, how is it deep within our DNA in ways we cannot ever see.
Andrew Taylor:
And the general idea is the social capacity of humans and other species that are social, or selected by evolution as being more fit for their environment more and more. And humans are particularly so since we have language and cognition. And that means that probably the vast majority of how we engage the world is invisible to us. What we imagined to be cognitive choice is kind of like a little sidecar on the way the world actually works. And that's not bad or good. It's just how it works. So it just happened to be as I was reading this stuff, and as a board and the executive leadership team, we're talking about going virtual, it just struck me that's curious, like what exactly changes that we are designed over thousands of generations to work in physical proximity.
Andrew Taylor:
And in the last few seconds on the evolutionary clock, we've had telephones, and we've had internet, that may or may not mean radical change, it just means this is pretty recent. And most of how this works is invisible to us. So what does it mean to sort of move physically distant and yet still work in ways that are supposed to be collective?
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Well, you spent a lot of your day working with students in your program and other programs outside of American University. I'm curious as you think about that, as you think about the future of work, building a shared culture, where Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are core, how do you counsel students to think about this when the work today will quite likely be radically different or how we do work today will quite likely be radically different from when they retire from their careers and their work, what pieces of advice? Maybe the fax machine will come back. So learn how to put the paper in the right way or how do you approach that with them?
Andrew Taylor:
Well, I mean, there's a great question in there, is it going to be different? If the assumption is true that humans have evolved to have certain social capacities that are invisible to us just because we're good. I mean, I'll tell you a few of them from Nicholas, what he recommends. Certainly, the means by which we engage with each other change radically, and sort of the tactics and technologies and the sort of process that we might go through through out the day might be quite different. But the underlying way of being aware of other people, understanding their trajectory, their attention, being aware of your own cognition, and its flaws and benefits, and just sort of acknowledging that you're a human creature on the earth that is evolved in ways and a very large part of how you think you move in the world that is invisible to you.
Andrew Taylor:
So I mean, some of the things that Christakis mentions as what he calls The Social Sweet, which is sort of this bundle of evolutionary social tendencies that humans have evolved over thousands of generations. One is cooperation and friendship, what is generally called in-group bias. So you tend to favor people who you believe to be part of your group. Turns out that's pretty malleable. Your group can be people who look and talk and act like you, people who are your family, or when you get to sort of larger visions of how the world works that can be a country, or a group of passion. So there's, in social learning and teaching, capacity to have and recognize individually identity is another one, the idea that we can actually recognize each other as individuals.
Andrew Taylor:
So I think with students, one is just to unbundle the fact that we use all these terms, assuming we know what they mean, like organization is a great one. And like any power tool, it's kind of useful to know the tendencies of the structure, the things to avoid and the things that make the machine work in a healthy and safe way. And a large part of that machine is invisible to us. It's evolutionary, it's subconscious, it's sensory. So just sort of sitting and living with that idea and then say, "Well, okay, given the limited control I have, how do I behave in a world that's changing in small ways? And maybe big ways to?"
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Wow. I love how you started that answer with the classic Andrew Taylor putting a giant hole on the thing that I asked you.
Andrew Taylor:
[inaudible 00:41:23] what I do.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. I love that about every time we get together, or you tweet about something I wrote, and we're like, right, yeah, my whole argument unravels on that one piece that Andrew Taylor just pointed out.
Andrew Taylor:
And I hope you know I made it with love and generosity. But I find a large part of what I do as a teacher is to notice assumptions, and then just to poke at them. And sometimes the assumptions are absolutely valid and valuable. And sometimes they're like, why do we think that? Is that true? So a large part of our survey course, which is the opening is just saying, well, what's an organization? Do you work in one, do you work for one, do you work through one? How do you know you're in it? How do you know you're out? To just tease a part this idea that everybody assumes they know what they mean, I work at this place, well, do you? And that's to me again, what leads to such an intriguing adventure that you're on with Fractured Atlas saying, well, let's imagine an organization that has no common physical place. What does that mean? And that's why it led me to say, "Well, I don't know what that means. And isn't that exciting?"
Tim Cynova:
Well, in that poking that you do is really core to thinking about how work can be different. Because in the same way that you're asking, "Well, what is an organization?" You start to go into, "Well, what does a conference room allow us to do? And what is a water cooler when there isn't a water cooler? And how can we capture the thing that we're trying to do that in sort of the "traditional workplace", you just take for granted? You don't even think about it. There's the physical proximity and you can always just turn around and ask someone or whatever it might be. And so I think that poking is what leads to some really fun and creative solutions to being intentional about creating the workplace and creating work in a way that fits the way we in whatever collection want to work rather than what maybe a book 50 or 60 years ago said, "You should craft an organization to look like..."
Andrew Taylor:
Yeah. And that's what I really love about Fractured Atlas, just as a corporate culture. And I could say that because I'm not in it. And I just admire it from a distance. But you can see how easy it is to slip into sort of the analysis paralysis. Like I wonder how we could set up the best possible conference call. Let's spend a lot of time thinking about it. And let's make a plan. And let's review multiple vendors. And let's test those vendors. And you actually never do any work if you did that. So I think what I admire about you guys, your whole team is you dive into it. It's like, well, we don't know. Let's get as smart as we can. And let's do it. And then as we do it, we're going to learn where things make sense and where they don't. And that to me sets the organization up to be more likely to succeed in a radically different structure.
We're all aware of other organizations that always think, usually in a very narrow group of people decide how things work and how they work best, and then they're wrong. So I think the real benefit I know your team brings is just this sort of voracious curiosity. But you're moving. It's like, let's do stuff. And let's figure it out as we do stuff. And let's get better, in the same way you iterated around what the offices does in benefits and payroll. So that to me it's a great way to approach this challenge.
Tim Cynova:
I'm curious to get your take on, on what and how this might translate. You work and have worked for a number of years in university environments. You also work in the cultural sector and with culture sector organizations that serve where I spend the bulk of my time. Universities aren't often thought of for their innovative organizational designs, although much like the cultural sector where amazing art is being created. There's a lot of really great thought I think that goes on in university environments. And so there's like this weird juxtaposition of these institutions were amazing thought is going on, amazing art is being created, you pull back the curtain and you're like, it could be 1945 in the way that the organization is structured and run and how people work. And I'm always curious why, why that doesn't filter into? Why are you running it that way? Why do you just accept that that's the way it's done? And with your lens into multiple different sectors and workplaces like this, I'm curious to get your thoughts on this one.
Andrew Taylor:
Well, we could talk for a long time about University structures. But I mean, any human structure is complicated and nuanced. And it is what it is for all sorts of reasons. Some of them are useful still, some are just legacy. And it's just how I usually first sort of say, "Well, let's be generous and kind of just say, okay, well, we got to this place through some means, everybody trying to do something the best they could." But I think where I keep coming back to this idea, Howard Becker in his art worlds book talks about convention as sort of the established ways of doing something is a convention. So a way of running a theater, for example, its convention that a theater has a raised stage and an audience chamber and sometimes a proscenium, and it's got fly space.
These are just ways that if you wander into a theater, you can recognize what it is, how it works, and what's expected of you. And you can hire a stage manager from multiple different theaters, and they will have a general idea of how to work in that space. And that's hugely efficient and powerful and productive. You couldn't actually do complex work without convention. But then there's invention, which is I don't want to do theater in a proscenium stage, I want to do it in a parking garage on a Sunday afternoon, without telling anyone. And that's no longer a conventional theater space. So you get a stage manager in there from a traditional theater, they're like, "What? I can't even... Where's the power outlet? I need a board. Where's my board?" And so they're out of their element there. So I find convention, the way Becker describes it is really useful because it's hugely powerful. It's not bad to have a standard way of understanding how something works in the world, and what the various roles might be to advance that and the skills required of those roles, those are all really helpful until the moment they're not.
And then they become barriers to innovation or invention. So it's like almost everything we talked about as either a positive or negative is both at the same time. So in-group bias is another great example. It's horrible. In-group bias is what leads to racism and to nationalism and to violence against others that's in-group bias. In-group bias is also what creates a sense of connection and core in an organization, "We're in this together, we're going to stand up for our friends and neighbors and co-workers, we're going to be there for them." So in-group bias is both horrible and fantastic. Conventions are both horrible and fantastic. And the underlying theme is these are all elements of complex human systems. So it's more about just saying, "Okay, these conventions are great, maybe what we need to do is poke at them every now and then and say, Well, why are we doing it this way? Oh, it still works. Okay, let's keep doing it this way."
So I think in response to your question, it really comes to me about convention invention that that's a tension. And I'm going to use that poetic words now, convention, intention, pretension might come next. That's the way I tend to explore it. And certainly at the university and in arts organizations, the first thing I tend to do is, "Well, what's the convention in play here? What does this organization supposed to be and look like? And what do people think it is and it looks like? And is that right anymore? Does it fit?" And sometimes the answer is yes and no, simultaneously.
Tim Cynova:
I think that might actually as you were saying, convention invention. Is this Andrew Taylor schoolhouse rocks about workplace culture?
Andrew Taylor:
I'm in on that lets do it.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, I just want an animator, see if we can get this one done by the time this episode is published.
Andrew Taylor:
Excellent.
Tim Cynova:
Nice. Let's go tactically. I'm curious. We've known each other for a number of years now. You're incredibly thoughtful in how you structure your work and working with people. I've seen you teach. I'm curious, tactically, how you put your day together? What tools do you use to do your own work? How do you really thrive? What kind of environment do you hang out? At coffee shops, zoos? Do you have an anodic chamber where you do all of your best thinking? What does Andrew Taylor's setup look like?
Andrew Taylor:
Boy, it's a mess, and I'm always changing it. So just get me into an office supply store and I will have all sorts of false hopes. And I'm very fond of new systems and structures. And at the end of the day, I find I spend almost all my energy on those systems and not on the reason I got the system. So I have a bunch of blind spots that I try to avoid as best I can. I know my best thinking and working energies between nine and 12:30 ish afternoons is different kind of energy and just being aware of that. I know I don't work well in my house, for all sorts of reasons that I could try to fix or just say, "No, I don't really work well there." It's sort of noticing and trying to reinforce the positive aspects of how I work in the world and also noticing my blind spots and weaknesses and saying, "Well, how can I mediate that?"
And I love Dan Kahneman's report to this. He studied this stuff his whole life and he hasn't done the most, anything to change it because he can't. So I guess my day is I do my best work if I'm really focused in the morning on generative work. And the afternoon on sort of structural tactical, cleanup administrative work. In the evenings I'm best if I can read or engage something that makes me curious. If I'm driving, I have a book playing often. How can I get sort of new stuff into my head and ponder on it? And then how can I watch a stupid movie that has no variation from conventions that I find very satisfying? Movies that absolutely do exactly what you know they're going to do next just makes me really comforted.
And in terms of organizing how all the various pieces and what I need to do I'm not getting any better yet. I just started using things. So that's my new things the program, yes, the to do manager. Even there, I have an awkward relationship with to do managers, I noticed when I write down a task for myself, I get mad at the list for telling me what to do. You can imagine that's just a sinkhole. It's like, "Don't tell me what to do." It's like, "Well, I just wrote that."
Tim Cynova:
It's like getting mad at Waze or Google for telling you which way to turn.
Andrew Taylor:
"I don't want to go that way."
Tim Cynova:
"Why do you keep yelling at me to go left?"
Andrew Taylor:
That's right. So I don't know if I gave you a useful answer. But I guess the summary is around just noticing when your energy is appropriate to the circumstance and what might you do to change that when it's not.
Tim Cynova:
One of the other things I heard and what you're saying is, nothing lasts forever. And you have to iterate on it. Like that thing might work for a little while and then you find another to do manager to be mad at and then you find something else. And I think, both personally, I've noticed that, but also sort of organizationally, that way we work, that thing we do worked for a little while. And then the organization changes what we need. And you're constantly iterating on things, trying to maybe make them fit better for what you need. But it's not like, once we get this done, we're set. And that's part of the creative journey, and also the frustration that exists, because it's a thing that's constantly evolving, much like people.
Andrew Taylor:
Yeah, and it's not just over time, it's given the situation, the environment, mental models that you try to use to make sense of the world are useful until the moment they're not. And sort of being able to say, "Hey, that was really useful in this context to think of the world like this. And now I'm noticing it's not as useful. So maybe I should put that model off to the side for a minute, find a different, more robust model for this moment, but keep the other one because it might come back to that moment." So one of the examples I found in the arts where we talk about production and consumption. So there's a producing side and there's a consuming side, the producers, the artists, the consumers, the audience. That's useful and productive. And it's also wrong. It's not true that who's making meaning in that moment, when an artist and audience member really connect, everybody's making meaning everybody's brought something to the room.
So really, they're co-producers. That's another way of thinking of it, which would be useful in a different context. I think it's George Box. There's a great phrase I use all the time, "All models are wrong. Some are useful." No matter how you would describe the world, it's wrong. It just has to be wrong, because you cannot encompass the world in a single perspective. But it's useful. So me against an enemy. Sure that's useful. It's not true. But sure, in this moment, that's a useful way of thinking. And I find the most successful leaders I meet are really adaptive, in which model they have and use. And when they set it aside, and when they start to say, "Hey, this is feeling like we're at the edge of this model. Maybe we need to interrogate it," or sometimes like, "Hey, this is working. It's wrong, and it's limited and it's flawed, but it's good enough for now, and let's keep going."
Tim Cynova:
You included a number of questions in your piece that you wrote, but I'm wondering, what are the burning questions that you have about workplace, how we work, the future of work, what that might look like?
Andrew Taylor:
Well, I guess I'm still interrogating the conventions of a workplace. So workplace is, like if you walk into a room and you can say, "Hey, this is a workplace." What is it? You see, that tells you that? Oh, there's a desk, there's a phone, it looks kind of professional. There's nothing particularly personal on the walls, there might be a photo. How do we recognize a workspace from a living space or a coffee space and just noticing sort of the indicators and then starting to poke a little bit. It's like, "Well, desk, okay, let's talk desk for a minute." So I think one is just really to say, well, what is the workplace and I don't believe a workplace is anywhere, I believe there is a particular quality, maybe it's different person to person, but there's particular elements of the environment that help people be productive in a work like way.
And again, for some people that's their bedroom, and a messy laundry pile behind them and it's totally fine. For other people like me, you got to be in a different place physically that just tells you where you are and how to be. And then the other thing I think that's coming on real fast is so many conventions of the workplace are racist and oppressive. They are the product of systems of wealth and power, and therefore they are just dripping and infused with all sorts of problematic things. And it's not obvious when you first look particularly like me, you're a white male who grew up in the water, you don't see them. So what in this environment, first, well, what do we consider a workplace? What is it the sort of qualities or attributes or indicators that suggests a place is a place of work? Two, is among those and even among the ones we can't see right now, which are products of oppressive racist power, imbalance systems in which are more malleable.
And to me that second question is a big one because the people designing these spaces they're all predominantly of and from and for the systems of power that created them in the first place. So I'm really curious how that evolves. And it can't be me that figures it out, I can just try and sort of flag it and then amplify the people who are making productive discovery.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. And I think that's one of the reasons workplaces should be intentional, be questioning all of the things that make up their workplaces, because that's when you start to uncover things that are problematic, things that prohibit or hinder people's ability to thrive in the workplace and in the work that they're doing. And it's work that we've done together, not coattail we've adjacent taught together. And I think that's increasingly important for workplaces to question conventional wisdom when it comes to how we show up and how we support and what those systems and structures are.
Andrew Taylor:
Yeah, and just to acknowledge how challenging that is. So convention is efficient and effective, and it's comforting. And I know what to do when I get to work. And I know what's expected of me and I know how to behave with my peers. It's a lot of convention stuff that is sort of the oil that makes an organization work. And you can hire people, and you don't have to train them for 17 years, you've trained them a little bit, but they get the general idea. So there is a lot of benefit in convention, as is a lot of damage and danger and destruction.
You can imagine a workplace where they're questioning every single thing about everything they do, like the stapler, are we doing vertical or horizontal staples? And why? Is that a racist thing? What's up with that? As opposed to... And maybe it is, so I don't want to discount that. As opposed to that sort of how do we find a balance between pushing the things that really caught our attention and sort of other things? Okay, we need some stability and understanding and conventions here. But let's think together about where really to push and not be either A not pushing it all or B pushing all the time. Otherwise, we're crazy.
Tim Cynova:
Do you have any final thoughts on the topic?
Andrew Taylor:
No, I'm just excited. I think going virtual as you guys are is an experiment. So my thought is how do we pay attention in ways that is productive and not distracting? And how do you actually do the work while you're building the work? I'm really curious how we do that. And I don't know. So I get to learn by watching you guys.
Tim Cynova:
Andrew, it's always wonderful and thought provoking to hang out with you. Thanks for being on the podcast.
Andrew Taylor:
Thanks, Tim.
Tim Cynova:
Our next guest is Ramphis Castro, among a myriad of other things, Ramphis is a serial entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist. He's the co-founder of ScienceVest, a venture capital fund for hard-tech and life science companies. He's an experienced technologist and product strategist that has led and supported venture-backed teams from idea to exit. Ramphis, welcome to the podcast.
Ramphis Castro:
Thanks, Tim. Great to be here.
Tim Cynova:
When you think broadly about the concept of a workplace, for you, what comes to mind?
Ramphis Castro:
So I'll circumscribe my comments within the creative field broadly, right in that box, because if you're in manufacturing, you have to put things from point A to point B. You have to do point A to point B, it's a little bit more difficult for everybody in the creative fields. Thinking about workplace broadly, to me everything is work. And I am lucky to be able to say that in that way, so nothing feels like work. And that is broadly how I think about it is what are the things that I am good at that I can go the geeky guy type efforts, this overlapping circles about like, what are you good at? What does the world need? What do you get paid for? And all this overlapping intersections. And I've gotten the chance to operate within that space and find that and evolve that. But over time, it feels and gravitates in the same type of center.
So to me, workplace, the spaces that you create to get that type of creative work done, whether that's in the specific case of creative where you have focused time for producing something new on your own, but then the other efforts around sharing that in a way that reaches the audience that needs to experience your work in that way. I'm trying to keep it super abstract because I feel that I've seen the experience of the creative as a field being very horizontal across a wide array of fields, I mean science, engineering, art, music, movies, and within those fields, different roles, the producers, the directors, the software engineers, smart engineers, the designers.
So it's distilling the practices themselves, workplace is just the space and creating the relationships, the interactions with people around me, that allow me to put my best work forward, which I've decided on in terms of supporting more entrepreneurs and expanding the definition of those entrepreneurs more broadly, which include new fund managers, entrepreneurs, new business and founders entrepreneurs, artists, the space creating new space entrepreneurs, and creating those spaces like round-tables and conversations around this work which I can then take to other spaces. But broadly, workplace to me is, and these days its New York City. So it is abstract and it is more broad, because the creative work is not siloed in just the organization, the corporation or ScienceVest or some other organization, that is not the work that I'm putting forward, does not depend exclusively within that organization.
So, understanding how other organizations, other individuals that I work with, how they work among themselves and with each other, and with myself is a part of the framing of workplace. And we can kind of unpack that more, but broadly, keep it at that sort high level, and we can kind of dig into more of that.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Let's go straight down to the ground. And then we'll come back to the middle. Life Hacker had a series, maybe they still do that was called How I Work or something like this, and you talked to various people and you saw snapshots of their desk and what they needed and apps that they couldn't live without. I'm curious, what's the Ramphis Castro, how I work portfolio look like?
Ramphis Castro:
Yeah. Glad you asked the question because I obsess about this forever. And there's all these thoughts around like productivity, it's not more around productivity, it's more around, "How do I get the most out of Ramphis and how to frame that?" And at a tactical level, it starts with calendar. So if it's not as my practice, I guess I learned and maintain for Microsoft. If it's not on the calendar, it's not happening. So carving out time for pieces is these first sets of tools thinking about time and 168 hours and the week and that breakdown of all the different things that you think you want to do in terms of tactically. So there's a spreadsheet with the hours and how those are broken down, but that is flow through from calendar in terms of you are what you carve time for.
That's one, the other is organizing thoughts and referencing them in different ways and seeing what comes back. So you have notion for organizing and for example, meetings with different individuals and notes around what stuck about different conversations at different points so that when you're meeting with that person over, you're seeing is there an evolution into how those works. And then a lot of different tabs for different topics around the ideas, parking lots, around new sets of ideas. So notion as a tool. Obviously, email, I couldn't live without an email, I've tried my best to get away from it. And so Slack is the tool for collaborating with organizations that I control or I'm a part of, and for others, that have their organizations that include me to best engage with me in real time. Yet, outside of those organizations, the way they access me are all these different tools, but primarily email in terms of either close, if it's a direct, personal, external relationship.
Superhuman is the email tool that I use for that. [inaudible 01:03:59]. Condor for what's going on, Notion for the note taking and coordination and thoughts and journaling and morning pages of where I'm at and what's going on, Email Slack. And then across the board in terms of messaging, but most of my phone as you've seen doesn't have notifications on. The only way would ring is if my wife or my parents or my brothers call me, and it's structured in a way where everything is, I reclaim all of my time for myself. It's all about carved myself and then it carves out based on what I want to achieve. And then I carve out time. So tactically, those are some of the tools.
Tim Cynova:
Our colleague, Lauren Ruffin just recently changed over to a Nokia phone. And she was talking about how that's changed just her interaction with the world. Because when the bank says, "Yeah, we're going to text you this code to put into the app. She's like, "I've got to go to a computer now with that code because I can't do it on my phone." And it's caused her to change her interaction with how she goes through her day and what's possible and protects her time. But then how do you be available when you need to be available for your team, if you might be out because she travels a lot, but it sounds like you've similarly carved out when I'm focused on this thing, I'm doing that thing. And I'm not being pulled in 16 different directions at the same time.
Ramphis Castro:
Yes. And I think that is crucial in terms of carving out time to think about how to organize the work so that emergencies, what are the emergencies? In my world like engineer, those are exceptions and exceptions, there's the phrase around exception handling, there's entire coding structure around thinking about how to handle exceptions. Because if everything in your work is an exception, and by exception I mean, an interruption, an email that you need to answer, a message that you need to look or something like that. If your entire work is an exception, then you've literally not designed your worst structure and I know most of everyone operates under interruption work, especially workplaces. You're there like, "Hey, I have this thing." How can you achieve focus work if you're constantly interrupted in all this other work?
So exception handling and thinking about what is the work to be done? How does that work achieved, and then creating the framework processes, checking whatever makes the most sense for that particular type of work, so that you have all of your time to do what you're supposed to be doing, whatever that is. And then the challenges are if the exceptionists reach you, then they reach you in a way that you already have a process in place to know that it's going to come in. And you know how you're going to manage it and you know the time shifts for responds and those expectations have been managed, which going back to service engineering, service level agreements, by when do you should expect a response from Ramphis? When should you expect a response and I do not respond.
There is no emergencies, unless it's like a baby something, but still, those are the way we're thinking about it is around that work of being available for that very particular exception where you literally have no control over. Yet, most or the other types of emergencies are work related, someone something like that has happened before. So being able to think about what are the nature of exceptions and organizing and unpacking that, and structuring that so that when it happens, it's taken care of, or there's all this work to be able to achieve it because it's already carved out for you to say, "Oh, what are the exceptions and happened and this is something I need to take care of." Well, the time is there, and then there's ways to manage that.
And that's obviously difficult to reconcile, limited resources and time and budgets and others, but at the end of the day, if it's a sustainable organization, you're thinking about all these things, so that the work that actually moves the work forward, is it will happen otherwise, everyone is in fire reaction mode, and no work gets done. And then the organization dies. And that's it, which I've seen over and over and over and over in all kinds of ways.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, that's the battle the urgent versus the important. But what I really loved about how you broke that process down and the structures down is that it helps address unplanned versus unexpected. I was doing some research into scarcity mindset. And one of the examples they were highlighting was around operating rooms that were overbooked in a hospital, I think Massachusetts and they're trying to figure out how to solve this problem that was pushing surgeries later in the day and into the night and into the weekend and more mistakes were being made. And they eventually solved it around realizing that things that came in to interrupt emergencies. They were expected, but they were unplanned.
So after a little while, you're talking about like, I see how my work week goes, it's going to be interrupted by all these things. It's not unexpected that it's going to be interrupted, but they're unplanned in how they come in and I love how the structure that you've built helps to address how do you handle those unplanned things as they come in, so they don't become just the normal way that you work. And interrupting all those important deep thinking times, where you're trying to move forward the important or the urgent and the important.
Ramphis Castro:
Absolutely. I mean, again, keeping it in the box of creative work, because in the context of a lot of other types of work workplaces and the way things are versus the way they should be, a lot of it is not designed. Everything, which is sort of having happenstance, I mean healthcare system itself, it has all sorts of challenges around how it's designed broadly, like all these issues that affect different industries, where the type of planning for the work to be done, they may not have those options. That's it. This is how things happen. This is how much control they have over how people react to emergencies. This is how things are reversed. There's just so many things in there that are outside. They control of one particular workplace to be able to manage where those constraints, obviously, it just makes total sense. Versus if we're in the creative with some creative endeavor, then ideally, you're putting something out into the world. So you're thinking about to who and in what way and everything around that interaction and all the other pieces that affect that.
So you're able to design the business, going back to the business model, thinking about what is your business model and breaking that down. And then really taking that down to like the super granular level of there's an email that's going to come in, because there's a customer support need, well, what are the customer support needs, and how do those work? Those are things that require real dedicated time to think about and process. But the opportunity for a lot of organizations is that there is a lot of lessons learned around these things. We do not have to reinvent the wheel on a lot of pieces, some things work really well.
And then you can just adapt to what makes the most sense, or not dedicate all the time that's needed for that particular thing, because that is not the thing that moves the needle on your business. That doesn't affect, let's say in startup, your core metric. What is the core metric? This could be multiple, but it's typically one and one them tends to be revenues. If it's startups, what drives revenue is one metric. So anything that does not help move that needle then are things that I might not get time allocated to it.
Tim Cynova:
Speaking about being intentional and designing work and workplaces, I had the pleasure of co-authoring a briefing paper with you for the Fractured Atlas Board a couple months ago on creating resilient and entirely virtual organization. Some questions we posited included in five years, what does it look like to work with and at Fractured Atlas? What is the future of work in service of creative expression? What do we gain by a transition to being entirely virtual? What outcomes are we looking for? What are the potential pitfalls? What's not being talked about? Sort of the, what do we not know that we don't know that we're going to find out on some random Tuesday. And the context of the board? What's the board's role in the journey? How does it intersect with their own service engagement? How might we use our resources today to achieve this future state.
I want to get your thoughts on the process? We had a number of long conversations that would make its own podcast series if we would have captured them about what is work, what do we track? What are we looking for? What's our responsibility to people and to the organization? I want to get your thoughts on this topic and if there's any questions that are still outstanding for you on just the future of work, as it relates to entirely virtual organizations, and perhaps any aha moments that you had, during that process, or after about, "What does work look like?"
Ramphis Castro:
So that exercise, by the way, it's just a fun because it really dig into what are the environments that allow an organization to capture an individual's best work, best-self? And that the organization is invested in that success within and without the organization, so as that individual thinks about the rest of their career, how does Fractured Atlas play into that? I think it's an exceptionally important effort to be constantly thinking about that. And one of the things that I kind of stuck in my mind, that's, it's tricky. I'm still learning about it. I think that's why we're all here kind of learning together about how to reconcile all the various levers that can be pulled in the context of a fully virtual organization with anti-racist and anti-oppression work that's at the core of Fractured Atlas. In the context of what is not talked about in terms of workplace design, when we're thinking about "future of work", is something that at the intersection of these two pieces, the AR it'll work, is right at the top and everything should flow from that.
Yet, the practices of how it operates and practice some of the mechanics of thinking and achieving that feels emergent, from my perspective, that certain aspects of like a field of study itself, this is an opportunity that's been exciting to unpack. So as I think about future work and fully virtual organizations and the learning and also things that have shifted since this work started is that it is the absolute trend in creative fields, talent is everywhere, full stop. It is everywhere. And given the continued access of the internet and mobile phones, globally, [inaudible 01:14:20] it's just going to continue to be that explosion of perspectives and backgrounds and cultures and others that will feed into the creative fields, which ideally Fractured Atlas should be able to tap into, continue to tap into over time and allow for those perspectives to kind of go in and out.
So that is the absolute trend it feels around that more of that in the individual where everyone is sort of an individual organization within a larger organizations and we pull in from how that's being seen in practice in the blockchain space around distributed architectures just thinking about where, it's how do you organize networks and relationships. So as we rethink how individuals go in and out of organizations that will continue to be the trend. So making it virtual allows for that evolution of how that type of work gets achieved. That might not be exclusive to just Fractured Atlas, yet absolutely led by Fractured Atlas because the leadership is within the conversation of how is this achieved? And how are we learning to do that? And how is that shared amongst individuals inside and outside the organization so that more can participate in the work beyond just the no longer available four walls of Fractured Atlas.
I mean, even the symbolic nature of that is very exciting from the creative fields, this idea that something is bound within, first of all, creativity and human creativity within Fractured Atlas and all the talent that's potentially a part of it now, and it's potentially a part of it in the future is distributed. Then how is that captured in terms of what is the evolution of that culture look like is an exciting come to see is about.
Tim Cynova:
It's exciting and incredibly exhausting.
Ramphis Castro:
Well, I mean, that's why it's well work, everything is work. It's just fun, I mean, in terms of having the opportunity, think about how everyone moves forward on who they are and who they want to be, and how that relates to pushing this other mission forward of enabling more artists to create art and other areas of opportunity there. It's incredible. There's so much of everyone that hasn't been shared yet, and having more opportunities for our platform Fractured Atlas to expand that opportunity and share that with others and then leverage additional structure virtually, with individuals on the ground where the artists created everywhere. It just makes so much sense where they are constantly exposed to as best as we know about what's happening within what's most helpful to artists in the field. And that is constantly learn internally, but then immediately a part of the communities where everyone operates in that makes so much sense and that trend towards virtually connecting where we're all indirectly living already where our families and friends are distributed.
And that'll continue to happen more and more, as we're sort of more and more connected, but then how does that work captured virtually. And then it permeates the communities where we operate in and everyone around us. And then we're influenced by them in their way how they are connected in some other organization that's virtual and global as well. And then that affects them. So it's more of, hopefully the future of work trends towards getting to sort of anti-racist anti-oppression culture broadly faster, because we're sharing faster and we're learning faster because we have all these other pieces in place. So that is the trend, globally and the trend as I see it for Fractured Atlas is leading that charge in the context of how artists access the tools that they need to succeed wherever they are. It is exciting and exhausting, I imagine exhausted and endless work.
Tim Cynova:
It's a largely positive exhaustion. But it's it's intentionality around a different type of work, different type of working and connecting, that you can't go on autopilot, especially when you consider the importance of our commitment to anti-racism, anti-oppression. We could go on autopilot, but what would happen is it would default into typical ways of working that are largely rooted in things that are not helping confront racism and oppression. And that's where you're inventing or finding or crafting ways that allow you to work in a new way that also has this really deep commitment to anti-racism, anti-oppression so people can thrive in the way that they want to.
Ramphis Castro:
[inaudible 01:19:04] talked about enough it's sort of the negative aspects of all the weight of all that work in all these different contexts and how to embed the practices to process experience, discuss and talk about that growth. Because a lot of this work is extremely uncomfortable for a lot of people, whether it's operating in uncertainty in terms of creative fields in terms of talking about the different challenges of what is racism, how is that experience and acknowledging it and how it operates on a daily basis and practices, cultures and policies that we just take for granted, like we default, because we live in the real world. So it's just super normal and challenging that because that sometimes means challenging yourself, and who you are and how you're wired. And that is super hard, because then you're questioning, well, your own core beliefs were not yours to begin with. You sort of inherited it from operating in some community or real world, whatever it is.
So unpacking all these pieces about yourself is also part of the work. And then it's difficult to stay in that space of questioning everything about yourself all the time. And everything about how you react to something to how you do work, to how you feel about how you feel. I mean, this just that in itself is a lot of work. That should be a big part of the work work of the day to day work. And not just the supporting of creatives, but really that supporting creative is, again, supporting yourself like you're going back to personal development, and how is that integrated into the way we work and burnout and depression and how is that process internalized? And that's a part of the organization is something that is absolutely, specially in startups, not talked about enough. I mean, there is a trend, but in terms of the actual mechanics and practices of including how does that bereavement process actually work and talking about what's experienced.
How is it I mean, same thing with being a parent or new parents or they're just so much about, I guess living. That's not a part of workplace and how that translates into affecting the mission around creatives or artists. So it is like this sort of exhausting word, but then the negative aspects of operating that space, negative in the sense of the difficulty of managing it, I don't think it's negative in the negative sense. It's more of, there are consequences. So operating to your creative maximum, and managing how that energy, your energy levels and your work and your mindset and your thoughts and feelings, all of that and the practice required to manage that as well is also not talked about enough.
Tim Cynova:
It's often a hurdle that when I'm talking with organizations, about either our anti-racism, anti-oppression work and how it actually is a part of our organization in the hiring process and other aspects. Or I have someone who I'm going to lose if I can't let them work remote, but we don't have the possibility for them to work remote, we don't have a structure like that. And so you sort of talk through it. And then you realize that's a scary unknown thing. They're already working at what they perceived to be maximum, there might be some benefits there.
But there it's unknown, and maybe it's longer term. So you're not going to even address that and then you start getting this negative spiral, where it's like if you can move forward in ambiguity and leap towards that and continue to iterate on processes. Like it's not a fully formed remote policy, just experiment. Try that thing out, try this thing out. But it's the unknown and the potential negative and more work that I need to do on top of, I'm already working with too few dollars, too few people and too few hours in the day, that maybe that's what I should be doing, but I can't even.
Ramphis Castro:
I think there's a tricky balance between how to support organizations as they are to move to where they need to be. And what has happened is happening will continue to happen more around this is the direction that individuals need when we have the opportunity to acknowledge that and create new spaces. And they create it for themselves. Artists create it for themselves literally is like, "I am going to do my thing in my way, how I think, and others that share in that and collaborate with me are also a part of constructing this new kind of world." Same thing for startups and others. So how much is dedicated towards shifting those that are, where they are, where they are, if they brought in their lens, they are facing an existential threat, they are losing people left and right, because of how that's wired. But more importantly, from a broader like economic lens. I mean, companies are dying faster, companies and others.
So part of it is because they're in it, they feel this is their entire world. So it's normal. So what is the process of zooming out zooming in so that that opportunity is created to help themselves? And something that feels like, "Oh, well, I'm doing this thing, the site thing," because they're clearly obviously not operating at maximum capacity, because a lot of those companies are getting challenged by new types of companies all over the world in all the fields in almost all the things all the time. And the reason they stay operating, is because of how sticky a lot of this practices and culture is. But that's been challenged now, versus do we also allow more of these new kinds of spaces to create in and those practices to be a part of that?
There's always sort of this balance between how do we help those that are trapped? Because at the end of the day, that individual that's like, "Oh, I'm going to lose this employee," it's a good chance they feel that because it comes from some other way of a culture that is outside, it's in control, and immediately go all the way up to CEO or even the board or whatever the structure is, it fills in the broader business culture of others. So we kind of keep zooming out and always feels versus the artists, and I'll put [inaudible 01:25:14] in there, we feel like we're going to do it, you're compelled to do it and get it done. And then if you're lucky enough, you find others where it is a practice. And that is the conversation on how do we create, like anti-racism, anti-oppression, [inaudible 01:25:30] organizations and you have the space to explore.
And you're giving the support to explore and learn and share so that others can experiment and share and then that can be fed back into and we're all in this thing together. Feels like the right approach? They feel in the sense of the data and the research and all the other pieces that support all these aspects. A lot of that still feels anecdotal from my experience, because the world is happening real time. In terms of the breath and scale, and this speaking as an engineer operating within kind of the species, it feels emergent in that way where the opportunity to be able to operate virtually in that way, at scale, with all types of timing and all types of environments feels is still happening real time. So like, what is the effect of operating virtually? And how to best enable that to achieve all these goals? And what's the data that supports doing all these pieces? If you're going to need data to operate in that way, then you probably have to wait, which is what's happens with a lot of these practices for traditional companies or corporations.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, as someone who's worked almost in my entire career in the creative sector in the cultural sector, this is the biggest irony. One of the biggest ironies I find about it. Our whole sector is dedicated to creation, art, do things, experimentation, and creating mind blowing things. Pieces of art in whatever mode you're working. And then behind the screen, behind the curtain, it's like your organization isn't the same thing. You're built off of like how someone said an organization should be structured. Most of these organizations is built and run by artists, or people who used to be artist, why do we not have that same creativity and risk and experimentation in that in all of the areas of the organization? Why do you check that when you come into the organization versus what would be in the art form?
Ramphis Castro:
I love your answer to that. I'm unpacking that, which is a quick comment is, everything you just said, if I replace artists in the industry that you're in to venture capital, to companies, it's almost exactly the same as specifically venture capital, where we will say, "Oh, you have X, Y, Z. we find all these crazy innovative X, Y, Z super disruptive et cetera, yet there's 2020 models, they're sort of the way things which [inaudible 01:28:02] are paid and compensation, it's the same thing. Somebody sometimes said, "We're going to do it in this way." And we're like, "Why?" And there's a lot of other pieces around that pressure. And yet, people in it, even myself and others, into entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs in the context of building a new kind of model and things of that nature. So was it just one that Larry said, "You experience that and it's experienced in a lot of spaces."
Ramphis Castro:
I feel the same way in philanthropy, government, it has to have experiences where I would just shift the words just include whatever manifestation of some, I guess, sector, and it feels that way. Science. I was in conversations around how scientists, some scientists and the way they kind of practice kind of risk averse in terms of kind of new developments in the field and how that's integrated across the field. And it's been just interesting to see progress in that, but I'd be more interested in where you at in terms of answers to why that is. Why is that the case in the creative field.
Tim Cynova:
You're not rewarded for risk when it comes to running an organization in nonprofit, I think it creates risk aversion. As an executive director, if you take a risk, you're only going to get fired, or you get to keep your job and your same salary. So there's no real reward or it's not structured for that. I mean, think about art. There's some art, that's great. And there's some art that's horrible. And however you judge great and horrible, but a piece of horrible art, I mean the great artists have created bad pieces of art, but you just keep moving forward. But somehow when we create the organization, it's got to be created in a way that there's no horrible, there's no bad, so it's mediocre. It's just like, we can go middle of the line just to keep this thing moving forward.
Ramphis Castro:
This is great, because becoming what you're saying it's internal, it's an internal concern where the executive director or someone within the organization will have potentially a negative consequence to them, which goes back to the professional development conversation we were having. I was trying to share in terms of like the constant change and whatnot. Because sounds like what you're proposing, your experience is, is that it's widening the lens piece. Like, for example, in startups, this was super difficult for me to see like, "Oh, is that true?" As an engineer or in startups, they fail all the time for all kinds of reasons, yet, it feels okay to fail, because part of that is rewarded by being able to switch career. So you go somewhere else. And recently, there was all the we work back or whatnot. And almost immediately, you would see the list of like 2000 plus employees of who they are, where they want, what are their skill set, and many of them were placed really quickly.
Ramphis Castro:
I'd be curious to see the kind of outcomes of where we displace, but it's normal in startups where when the company dies, you're like, "Oh, there is a lot of talent now," and they can move on to the next opportunity. So the way I typically think about it when organizations is, is to take all those risks, and especially sharing the experiences so that others that can see the next thing for them when they potentially fail or they're not rewarded for those risks in a way that they lose their job or something, they have the next thing. But then other creatives can appreciate the risk and effort that they took versus what I'm hearing it sounds like it's not appreciated internally by the organizations that want things to run in a particular way.
Ramphis Castro:
And actually, I would challenge the finance piece as well. I mean, there're all these rules and also, this is more as a lawyer, there's all this mistrust. A lot of the rules are based on bad behavior by someone else and bad intentions in that behavior. Yet, we take it as gospel that there are these finance rules and you can't do things differently. Well, why? "Oh, there's criminal X, Y, Z," and yes, you want to ensure but it's also a conversation, what is the right kinds of conversations around finance and exploring what is the right kind of approach. And there are spaces where that's rewarded, and others where, why do that? But it's the intentions, it's more the point, the intentions of kind of the creativity is around finding a new approach to solve real problems for people or enable something that is better for others. Then that should be generally rewarded versus if the intentions for being creative and like finance or something is for benefiting yourself at the expense of others, then that is why we have all these compliance requirements is because that is what has been seen. And there's this mistrust.
So I kind of balance that where yes, don't be creative. And I'm glad that those rules exist in that way. Don't be creative in finance, if your intentions are to benefit yourself. Yet, if it's in the service of others with the right intentions of supporting a mission, then it's not around doing it's more like you need to explore. That's what lawyers are for and then bringing in regulators and others. And we just went through this in the context of blockchain again, blockchain regulation, the intention is in the direction of moving the field forward of technology and support and others. Let's explore what this looks like with regulators, with lawyers, with policymakers, with entrepreneurs, with investors, everybody figuring out what's the right approach, so we can move forward versus saying, "Nope, the rules say you can't do X."
Well, just doing things because they're there doesn't help anyone. And actually, this is something that's been very, I guess frustrating as worries, because everyone that's in the field, always defends the field as it is, a lot of people. So there isn't this conversations around, well, why is that? Should it be that way? Should we have contracts that operating this way? Should the format of the contract and the clauses are included in this way? Same thing for production of a new film and how its finance and how it’s structured I mean, is that the only way? Can we use other mechanisms to think about how we get to the outcome?" So I'm super interested in that is the feeling that is taken internally is that it's not rewarded. And so I guess broadening the scope of that reward and outcome is important.
If you take the risks, then there needs to be... And maybe that's something to explore where, if the risk is taken, there is a more explicit commitment to the development of the individual. Because I think that's what we're getting at where there is a commitment to the institution versus the individual where the individual is sacrifice and then the institution itself is being hurt, because it can't leverage the creativity needed to evolve as it requires a constant change. So a more explicit commitment of the individuals in the service of each other, versus in the service of the institution, is something that's probably worth exploring and not hiding behind, oh, fiduciary duty, about X, Y, Z versus again going back intent. What is the intent of the effort? And how thoughtful is everyone around the table to try to figure out what's the right approach and try things? Because if we do things the way things are, then we have what we have. And we know for sure that most workplaces do suck. So, anyways..
Tim Cynova:
Do you have any final thoughts on the workplace topic?
Ramphis Castro:
I think at the core, people should gravitate towards workplaces that resonates with them and who they are. I don't think they should give workplaces that much of a chance. They think that they're either built to help them be who they want to be and who they could be, or they're not. They're just interested in how can they extract from them a particular skill set for a particular goal, and then who they are isn't of consequence to their organization. And they should presume bad intent from the company unless the company is extremely proactively thinking about them and how they can be their full-selves. Like there shouldn't be a cliche or something, it should be at its core of how everyone in an organization, think of it as like workplace activism. Everybody should get together and say this is how things should be. And if not, then there are organizations that are thinking about it in this way.
And there are a lot of startups creative organizations and others that are pushing the [inaudible 01:36:25]. That's why we're having this discussion. We can have this discussion now. It's because there's enough of us now globally, pushing for these changes, and having experiences around creating these spaces successfully, that there are opportunities for everyone, yet, closing that gap on how people know about them and access them is still part of the conversation.
Tim Cynova:
Great. Ramphis, it's always a pleasure to spend time with you. Thank you for setting aside a couple of your 168 hours this week to chat. Thanks for being on the podcast.
Ramphis Castro:
Thank you, Tim for this work. I'm excited for hopefully work, not sucking for everyone in the future.
Tim Cynova:
Great. Thanks Ramphis. To close out our episode I'm again joined by podcasting favorite co-host Lauren Ruffin. Lauren, how's it going?
Lauren Ruffin:
Hey, Tim, it's good. Sun's up. Finally. I'm ready for these short days, dark mornings to end.
Tim Cynova:
It's good. We usually are recording our episode snippets at the very beginning of our days. And that's a two hour time change between Eastern and Mountain Time. So yeah, you're literally starting the day. So I appreciate you doing the early morning shift there.
Lauren Ruffin:
It's good. It kind of makes me feel cool like the radio folks.
Tim Cynova:
It's the morning show.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, we're doing a morning show. It's totally cool.
Tim Cynova:
I can't imagine doing an actual Morning Show.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
Or television. Television is worse, you've got to be actually be awake. You can't just keep your eyes closed.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, I will say that Albuquerque, watching Albuquerque Morning News is always just a hoot. This morning, apparently today is National Handwriting Day.
Tim Cynova:
Oh, nice.
Lauren Ruffin:
And I've heard it even before we got on here, he brought it up like at every segment how he needed to find a handwriting analyst because he used to know one it's a whole thing.
Tim Cynova:
Okay.
Lauren Ruffin:
This would not fly in a major city, can't talk about National Handwriting Day.
Tim Cynova:
Well, now I need to do a little research on this as I get my day going.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. One of my favorite things about you is that you love obscure topics as much as I do. It really really is.
Tim Cynova:
The list though. The things I want to dive into just keeps getting longer and longer and longer. And it's not sustainable.
Lauren Ruffin:
I know. It's not, we should just retire now.
Tim Cynova:
Just start reading all the books that I have. Yeah. So in this episode, we spoke with Rachel Casanova, Ramphis Castro and Andrew Taylor about the things that make up a physical and virtual workplace. We explored practical tools to get your work done, questions to explore, for those wanting to incorporate alternative work arrangements, and how to approach creating connections in an entirely virtual workplace. There was a time for about two years, maybe two years plus when you never seem to join a Zoom meeting from the same location twice. You once joined a full staff meeting from a flight. You participated in many meetings from the backseat of taxis.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh, God.
Tim Cynova:
We're talking video meetings too. We're just not talking, you called in. You're doing video meetings. So you clearly proved that you could join meetings from anywhere. I'm curious, what do you need to do your best work and thrive?
Lauren Ruffin:
An internet connection. I don't even need a laptop anymore at this point. Well, actually, since I switched to my dumb phone, I do need a laptop. But before that all I needed was an iPhone and I was good to go.
Tim Cynova:
What does your setup look like in the sort of how I work? What does the Lauren Ruffin workplace setup look like?
Lauren Ruffin:
So for the first time ever, I have a physical, not ever, but in the last three years, I have a physical desk with a monitor and a camera. I have an actual setup now, but it always feels luxurious to me, I really just need a laptop and headphones. And in some ways I do my best work when I'm on the move. There's something about being in a different place that generates creativity. It helps me think outside the box. Yeah. And I think it's really hard. And I also think one of the things I loved and I haven't been on a plane and I think eight weeks, which is the longest ever for me. I think I haven't been on a plane or train or anything in eight weeks. So I'm really feeling like I haven't been as generative as I could be. But yeah, I mean, just a laptop and it's good to move. It's good to watch scenery pass by.
Tim Cynova:
Well, certainly, I know you're traveling this weekend. So I imagine this is going to start 2020 with a bang, and then come summer, you're going to have spent every other week traveling somewhere, I'm sure.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, what is it like 12 degrees in New York?
Tim Cynova:
It's slightly warmer today. I think we're mid 20s.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, I shouldn't put a little asterisks next to that whole generative thing. Traveling to frigid temperatures just slows you down. There's nothing generative about being in permafrost.
Tim Cynova:
I don't know. I sort of feel the opposite, is the cold you're shocked into being awake and alive and you're like, "Oh, God," certainly when you get down to I don't know, negative 20 that it sort of goes the other way again, but there's something about waking up and it's cold that my brain just engages in a different way.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, my brain engages in a different way but it's not...
Tim Cynova:
Survival in [crosstalk 01:41:21] that are warmer.
Lauren Ruffin:
It's different. Yeah, I do. I go right into prepper mode, how we going to survive? We have fat wood? Who's got the door flame logs? Are my feet really going to touch the ground? Where are my slippers?
Tim Cynova:
What apps do you use? How do you structure your work?
Lauren Ruffin:
My Google calendar is amazing. I don't know if we've talked about it on this show. But the one thing that's been hard about the transition to a dumb phone has been not having a calendar. That's a function that I didn't really think I had grown to really rely on. But I do and having to go to a physical day planners been really, really hard. But the brilliant, amazing magical wizard technology of your devices knowing what time zone you're in and giving you reminders is such a lifesaver. I mean, I definitely have missed meetings, but I would have missed every meeting over the last three years if I had not had a smart device to keep track of what time zone I'm in. That for me is the one. And then there is I think an app that you turned me on to maybe, Dark Sky?
Tim Cynova:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
For weather. That thing is amazing.
Tim Cynova:
First thing in the morning.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. So it's the first app I look at in the morning.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, I once saw that as a way to differentiate between some Myers-Briggs personality types. Maybe it's not the personality type, it's one of the letters in the Myers-Briggs. It's like, you're either the person who checks the weather or you go outside and just risk it.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, Katie goes, "We have French doors that open up to the outside in the bedroom." And so she opens the door and steps out.
Tim Cynova:
And then an hour later when it's completely changed...
Lauren Ruffin:
This is New Mexico. I'm like, it starts off... It was like 28 degrees this morning when I woke up, it's going to get up into like 50 or 60 today, and then it's going to drop back down at night, kind of the flavor of it every day. But yeah, the stepping outside in the morning isn't as helpful as it would be someplace else.
Tim Cynova:
Well, I guess if you have a car, you can have an umbrella in there. And it's not the same thing as you're in Midtown and all of a sudden it rains.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
So part of this conversation was around the transition between physical and virtual workplaces, or straddling those two things. And you've been a part of our conversation and at times fervently leading our conversation around transition to entirely virtual I'm thinking after the 2016 presidential election. So now that we're an entirely virtual organization, and we've gone through through the 12 to 18 months of getting there. I'm curious to get your thoughts on what that was like, what concerns you had that actually were real concerns, what things didn't we think about that maybe we should have thought about? And what are sort of the outstanding things that we will just have to wait for time to pass to see if it actually becomes something?
Lauren Ruffin:
So, one, my first concern about virtual started when I was hired, because I think I was the first non-engineer hired as someone who was not in the office full-time. Maybe me and Polly, no, probably wasn't full-time then. But I remember transitioning from organizations that allowed work from home. But it was really a paranoid thing. What are you working on? What are you doing? You're really going to work from home? And remembering how seamless it felt to work from home and even to be in the office couple days a week when I first started. But I don't think organizations know how much it means to have colleagues who really trust that you're doing your work when they can't physically see you or you're not present. And conversely, you understand this just because you're in the office, you might not be working.
I quickly realized that the three days week that I was in the office were my least productive days because I was in meetings all the time. So there's that. The second interesting thing about our transition is how there was a split on the leadership team around... Sean and I being completely comfortable with it, like just flipped the switch. And you and Polly probably being like, "I don't know, there's gonna be a lot of change and a lot of blah, blah." And then Polly walking in and being like, "Let's just do this, I'm ready now." And that happened in like three months. I don't know if we ever really talked about how quick Polly flipped the switch?
Tim Cynova:
No, I don't think we did.
Lauren Ruffin:
And Tim, I'm a little worried about you, because you're still in the office.
Tim Cynova:
I'm still in the office, but I work on the ops team that is the last team that has to be.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, I mean, I can't tell if you're done with like the five stages of grief?
Tim Cynova:
I'm going through the five stages of I've got a lot of crap here that it's time to get home. And it takes like, every day I'm taking another bag of I've worked in this office for 11 years now and I've just stored a lot of stuff at the office. And it's stuff that we've used like light kits and green screens and stuff. So it wasn't just me at the office using it, but yeah, part of it is just practical. I'm taking a load of stuff home every day. But also because the team needs to clear out the space and make sure that there's not a water leak that floods the office. That's the last thing we're doing.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, I'm curious about... So my workplace setup is way less interesting than yours. You've been working in the same office for so long. You've been there five days a week.
Tim Cynova:
Unless I'm traveling.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, I mean, but what are you going to? Do you have a workspace at home?
Tim Cynova:
I do.
Lauren Ruffin:
Well, you're in like a New York apartment, what's the square footage on that?
Tim Cynova:
I don't know. I'm really bad at square footage, actually, because I thought that the Fractured Atlas office in New York was 3,000 square feet. And then I saw the building owner listed and it says 8,000 square feet. I don't have a concept for square footage. And I read that and thought, this can't be 8,000 square feet. That seems massive. But I don't have a concept for it. So I imagine that the building owner is correct on the square footage.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, I didn't think it was that big either. We looked at a building in downtown Albuquerque that was 7,500 square feet on two levels. And it was most definitely significantly larger than our office space.
Tim Cynova:
It could be something with common areas that they have to factor in for tax purposes and stuff, but my apartment is certainly not 3,000 square feet. And I mean, I am fortunate that I have a room that the computer is not at the end of the bed anymore.
Lauren Ruffin:
Got it.
Tim Cynova:
I do different, as to you, we do different types of work. And the home office is great for some types of work for me, but not for other things like thinking and I find too when I travel that I'm processing things in a different way. And while it can be exhausting to travel, there's actually some really great benefits to how it influences my work it allows me to make connections between ideas that if I'm in the same space, I don't have that benefit. So one big monitor at home and a really old desk that was my great grandfather's. The only two things I have from my family, great grandfather's desk and my grandfather's chair, both of which were not made for people working in the 21st century. Let me just say that.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, now I get it.
Tim Cynova:
Beautiful pieces. Really not functional.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, I looked at, as I'm furnishing, I looked at a desk that I feel like the desk was probably 50 square feet. One of those, like desktop was expansive, and I was like, "I have a really big house now, should I get this big old style governor's desk?" It's probably the size of a double bed. It is huge. And I was really tempted. You look at those things and you realize they're huge. It's not like they were made to have a monitor on top. They were just big for just big sake. It was no reason for anyone to have a desk that huge except for ego.
Tim Cynova:
Well, interesting point. In one of my previous organizations, one of our board members was the CFO of a publicly traded company, and I went to his office and I imagine the desk you're looking at is what his desk was like. And it was back in the day where he just had spreadsheets all over his desk. And I thought, "That's why you need a big desk." But yeah, besides that, yeah, if you take a 15 inch monitor or a laptop, a lot of space to collect dust.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, I remember when working in politics, people have very large desks. And then there's like, I have a really big desk, but nothing on it. Because when you go to very rich guy who will remain unnamed, you'd go into his office. There's nothing but a phone on his desk and zero inbox in his life. He agrees to do something in a meeting, picks up the phone calls the Secretary to do it and puts the phone back down. But there's nothing on his desk and I'm like, "This is such a badass power play."
Tim Cynova:
He should have like a TV tray.
Lauren Ruffin:
Exactly, like nothing on your desk at all? And then now that I'm taking a film class and watching old movies, I realized that becomes like a hiding place. You can't hide under a very desk, like little...
Tim Cynova:
[crosstalk 01:49:58] going, "I see you. I see you."
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, like you're totally transparent. So now I watch movies and I'm like, what kind of does this person have because the desk becomes its own sort of hiding place its own landscape in a way that's really interesting.
Tim Cynova:
I saw recently that one of the standing desk manufacturers created a hammock attachment. So you can put a hammock underneath your standing desk.
Lauren Ruffin:
Viewer you can't see my face right now, but Tim knows that I'm going right to Amazon or to someplace that's a little bit more worker friendly than Amazon to find said hammock as soon as we get off of this conversation.
Tim Cynova:
It looks really dangerous. You should be very careful.
Lauren Ruffin:
I live on the edge if that's how I go, I'll be proud.
Tim Cynova:
That would also be how the hammock desk trend ends.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, exactly. Well, my family tradition is the laugh at funerals so that gives them lots of material. They will talk so much shit about me at my funeral if I died in a hammock desk.
Tim Cynova:
It's a hammock underneath the desk. So it's like a standing desk. And then there's a hammock underneath.
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm sorry. This just got more ridiculous.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm sorry.
Tim Cynova:
But to your earlier point, it's not like you're protected from anything so everyone could just see you like, hanging out in the hammock underneath your desk.
Lauren Ruffin:
Just swinging under your desk.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh gosh. I mean that feels like a great like baby attachment. Super mom worker. Dad friendly.
Tim Cynova:
I'll split snacks down there. I don't know.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. I mean, even Cassidy and Enzo, nine and 12, but if they see a hammock under a desk they get right to swinging. But like a grown ass adult underneath desk?
Tim Cynova:
I know.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh, that is a blessing for this morning. Thank you for this Tim. Thank you.
Tim Cynova:
Well send me photo when it arrives.
Lauren Ruffin:
Thank you. Yeah, I don't know if I could hang it under here. But now I definitely have to buy a desk to swing under. It's on. It is on.
Tim Cynova:
Yes.
Lauren Ruffin:
How did we get here?
Tim Cynova:
The future of work.
Lauren Ruffin:
Future of work. That's right.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. I can't imagine my grandfather, corporate job. What you do at four o'clock in the afternoons? Get underneath your desk and slip into a hammock.
Lauren Ruffin:
It's so wild.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
I do wonder with the sort of gimmicky office stuff, you walk into some office spaces, and there's so much extra stuff, there's candy machine, a vending machine and video games and foosball. And I'm like, you could just take this and pay your workers more to work from home, you could take all this money on this physical space and give everybody on your staff a five to 10% increase, and let them buy their own crap for their house. And that, to me is the biggest waste of I mean, I think physical offices are a waste at this point for most organizations. But the ones that sort of decorate them like they're supposed to be a fun home place, I'm like you could give your workers, you could give that money to them so they can actually have a fun house to work from, to improve their quality of lives.
Tim Cynova:
Probably nine times out of 10, if not more, it's not a fun workplace just because it has that.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, there's got to be like a curve there.
Tim Cynova:
It also masks intentionality to, this came up in prior conversations, in alternative work arrangements and going entirely virtual and designing an office, like you're asking yourself questions and a lot of times like the foosball table and the snacks, that masks sort of what should a workplace actually be and have so that when people show up, they have what they need to be successful.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, I was in one in the [inaudible 01:53:31] in May, I was in one where they had a bunch of beanbags and a quiet dark space for people, it was like nap room or some shit. And I'm like, "Is this is a kindergarten?" Do you know unsanitary having people just lie down in their dirty ass street clothes in an office environment is? That is disgusting. Yeah, I don't know. It's a weird thing. But if you want to have a nap, take a nap at home. Well, I would have thought until 10 minutes ago, take a nap at home. But now I'm like take a nap in your own personal hammock desk. But these workplaces?
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, the nap pod was something that over the years at Fractured Atlas, people routinely put on the list of things that we really needed for the office. But when we started talking about like, "Okay, so, right, people are all just napping, who cleans it? How sanitary is it? Do we really need a nap pod in the office?" Sort of went the same way as the frozen margarita machine. It might be fun the first time but then someone has to clean it and no one's going to make margaritas again.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, there's some things like that, that I will say really when I was working in D.C., I always loved having a couch in my office, but it was my couch. I could take a nap on my couch when I had to work late or be in early.
Tim Cynova:
I had a conversation with the Director of Development, who came to our office right after we had renovated, Director of Development at another Arts organization. And was saying that he was trying to get a work from home day because he writes his best when he sits on a couch. He said, "Actually, I just would be fine if the company could buy a couch to put in the office so that I could sit on it and do my writing." And after he left, I'm like, "Wow, that's a really, that's like a $500 IKEA max proposition for the person who's actually writing the grants to keep this organization in business." And that felt like an easy thing to just say, "Okay, let's just put a couch in the office." But it seemed like a massive bureaucratic issue about whether they would just put a couch in the office so that this person who raises all their money could work more effectively.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, but I do feel like organizations missed the point. So often on that, just so often, if somebody wants work, just give him a work from home day. It is the cheapest yes, you can possibly say yes to. But you say no, because of control.
Tim Cynova:
Control. What does it mean? Setting precedent? Yeah, a lot of other things that aren't really about the work for home day.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, but again... Not again. But like, Lencioni, trust, if you have a healthy organizational culture, you can talk about why that person gets a work from home day and you don't and the difference is in your work, and why you need to work from home, and why someone else needs to work in the office. I also think the problem is people start thinking that once you flip that switch in your head into who needs to be in an office all the time and who doesn't need to be in office all the time, then you realize for most organizations, you don't need an office space.
Tim Cynova:
And on that note, yes, lots of stuff to think about. Lauren, it's always a pleasure spending time with you. Thank you so much for these chats. Thank you so much for making time and have a great week.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, thank you so much for letting me know about the desk hammock. Thank you, truly blessed. Have a great day, Tim.
Tim Cynova:
Thanks, Lauren.
Lauren Ruffin:
Bye.
Tim Cynova:
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