Live with Christy Bolingbroke! (EP.21)

Last Updated

April 10, 2020

Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Christy Bolingbroke, Executive & Artistic Director, National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron. [Live show recorded: April 9, 2020.]

Guest: Christy Bolingbroke

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guest

CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE Following a national search, Christy Bolingbroke was named the first Executive & Artistic Director of the National Center for Choreography located at The University of Akron. In this role, she provides both artistic and administrative leadership for NCCAkron, building upon her extensive experience in curatorial programs and external relations.

Christy came to NCCAkron from the San Francisco-based ODC (founded at Oberlin College in Ohio in 1971 as the Oberlin Dance Collective), where she served as the Deputy Director for Advancement. In that position she oversaw curation and performance programming, managed marketing and development campus-wide, directed a unique three-year artist in residence program for dance artists, and mentored emerging arts administrators.

Christy was formerly the Director of Marketing for the Mark Morris Dance Group in Brooklyn where she increased touring ticket sales worldwide and activated Access/MMDG events in major hub cities nationally. The Access/MMDG program uses custom-tailored arts and humanities-based activities to deepen and enhance the audience experience.

Bolingbroke has a B.A. in Dance from the University of California, Los Angeles, is a graduate of the DeVos Institute for Arts Management Fellowships Program (previously at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC), Arts & Business Council of New York’s Arts Leadership Institute, and holds a Master's Degree from the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. Live, the morning-ish show. On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Christy Bolingbroke. Christy is currently serving as the first executive and artistic director of the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron. Before landing in Akron, she held roles as the deputy director for advancement at San Francisco Base ODC. She was the director of marketing for the Mark Morris Dance Group in Brooklyn. She holds multiple degrees including a master's degree from the Institute for Curatorial Practice and Performance at Wesleyan University.

Tim Cynova:

She has her finger on the pulse of dance like few people I know and fun fact... Christy appeared on the very first livestream show many years ago, vintage livestream, if you will, when I co-hosted a show with Sydney Skybetter called #SYNOVA. Without further ado, Christy, welcome to the show.

Christy Bolingbroke:

Thanks, Tim. Hi, Lauren. Thanks so much y'all for having me.

Lauren Ruffin:

Hey, it's good to meet you. I'm going to stick to our script since I don't have anything to go off-topic with you because this is our first time meeting.

Christy Bolingbroke:

We'll find something. Don't worry.

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm pretty sure. I'll wait to talk about basketball since you're from Akron. So our first question for our guests as always, "How are you and how's your community doing right now?"

Christy Bolingbroke:

Doing okay. As best as we possibly can. I think what I'm really appreciating in my community here in Akron always has been strong in supporting hyper-local, but really supporting the local businesses and how they're stepping up above and beyond to find creative ways of getting things out to us, whether that's moving to online subscriptions or only being open for select holidays and then selling out, which is something we think about all the time in the performing arts, but I don't know that the restaurant industry had thought of previously. So I'm really appreciating that about my immediate community.

Tim Cynova:

Can you talk to us a little about NCC and your work and how do you usually describe yourself?

Christy Bolingbroke:

I identify as a recovering marketer, turned curator and executive leader. So I often think about audience experience and the bridge between communities and artists, and NCC Akron was something that didn't exist when I entered the workforce. Even the first National Center for Choreography, MANCC, down at Florida State University in Tallahassee didn't exist when I entered the workforce. So what excited me about coming to this position was the opportunity to build something from scratch but also to have a platform that I can support as many artists as possible.

Tim Cynova:

Well, Christy, one of the really interesting things that we've talked about over the years was in being the first leader of this organization, you got to set it up how you wanted, or largely how you wanted. What was important to you as you were crafting what the organization looks like, its values, its culture? How did you go about that? And then what might be changing or how might you be rethinking that in light of what's going on in the world?

Christy Bolingbroke:

I moved to Akron and started in my position in the fall of 2016 and a lot of the heavy lifting was done before I got here. We have a three-way founding partnership including the University of Akron, DANCECleveland, the premier dance presenter across Northeast Ohio and much of the Rust Belt. It's just 45 minutes from here. And the John S. And James L. Knight Foundation. And it was through their feasibility studies, Could a national center for choreography exist in Ohio? What would that look like? And then a very unique seeding of a $5 million endowment that they set up through the Miami Foundation and incorporated NCC Akron as a discreet nonprofit that operates in donated space on the university's campus.

Christy Bolingbroke:

That complexity alone, that's what I inherited and I am so grateful and recognize [inaudible 00:03:56] that opportunity. I know. There'll be follow up questions.

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm trying to figure out what they might be. I don't even know where to start.

Christy Bolingbroke:

And then, when I'd arrived, my board, which included appointees from each of the founding partners, said, "You're never going to have this opportunity again. So you have almost a year before we have front-loaded a residency or program to come in, so this is your opportunity to figure out what do you want to do."

Christy Bolingbroke:

We started with bi-monthly meetings and discussions about our curatorial values. What does it mean to be a national center that is not in the physical center of the country or in the perceived center of a field? And I also think a lot about what does it mean to be in residence that is not in a transactional way. In the same like, "I'm giving you a gig, I'm paying you to do something," but rather that spirit of reciprocity that comes from really living somewhere or being somewhere. How are you contributing to a community? And vice versa, that community is supporting you.

Christy Bolingbroke:

And then also just having come out of the dance field, and Tim, you and I were on lots of early conversations with emerging leaders for New York Arts, and [inaudible 00:05:13] shout about the 501c3 model. Is it dead? Is it not? It's dying a slow death, I think, if anything. People are still asking that question now. Was really mindful and still continue that seems to be the third wire to build something, but how do you not become too normalized or institutionalized that you no longer can pivot? You no longer can be responsive to the people you're trying to serve.

Lauren Ruffin:

In terms of your work right now, I still can't figure out one question that's succinct enough to even respond to that because that's so juicy. How has your work changed in the last month or so and has your view on the mission changed? And you did mention when we were in the green room that you were in the process of a strategic plan. Are you [inaudible 00:06:00] a strategic plan right now? So feel free to throw anything about that in, as well.

Christy Bolingbroke:

I was the sole full-time employee up until this past fall and we would strategically bring in consultants or project managers to scale up when we had larger projects coming in. And, in some ways, this moment doesn't feel alien to me for that reason because the first year we didn't have an office and I worked from home. I often travel two or three times a month to see artists all over the country, so I used to say, "Wherever I am, that is the center."

Christy Bolingbroke:

And so we were just starting to expand our staff, and we had built out a six month staffing experiment, including a graduate assistant and three part-time individuals that we were already asking, "So how much time do we need additional staff in labor? How much is that when we have artists on the ground? How much of that is in between and what are those roles? So in trying not to be too institutionalized, I didn't want to just hire a development director. It's really about, especially starting from this kernel, it's about how do you build out a team where it's not their first job, but they also aren't so seasoned that they have rightfully accrued a moment where they can say, "You know what? I want to work at this level. I want to make this much money and I'll take a couple of meetings. I'll write a couple of grants."

Christy Bolingbroke:

So how do you cultivate a middle management team and [inaudible 00:07:35] flat landscape from a structural standpoint so that it's not as hierarchical. I'm not the one running all meetings. There's a lot of cross and peer learning, too.

Christy Bolingbroke:

So we were in the middle of that experiment. And based on when we came in, we already had some individuals who work remotely. Now we're all working remotely but we're also having to deal with daily things. There were huge thunderstorms and crazy weather in Ohio [inaudible 00:07:59]. It was actually snowing 30 minutes ago out of nowhere, and one of our team members is out of electricity. So, okay. Great. We're like, "We're going to take this a day at a time. Keep us posted when you go out and recharge your phone in your car."

Lauren Ruffin:

Crank up the generator.

Christy Bolingbroke:

Yeah. Exactly. And so I would say if anyone's been consistent is that we have created a porous structure. So I try not to set up an environment where it's going to be an all hands on deck and we all can't, whatever latest modern dance emergency comes through, because that certainly wouldn't be sustainable right now in this moment. But everyone has ideas of what can they work on longterm that maybe now they have more time to fit into. And what are the things that they can actually anchor, whether that's our weekly team meeting. We have a weekly-one-on one with each team member and myself that we can continue to sort of feed the machine without letting it run away with us or completely be stuck now that it's held back.

Christy Bolingbroke:

And then from a programmatic standpoint, we were in the middle of a large collaboration, the first phase with the university where we identify NCC Akron as a discreet 501c3, can work more nimbly and quickly, especially, then institutions when they're trying to hire up staff.

Christy Bolingbroke:

We've been partnering with the School of Dance Theater and Arts Administration and had launched a capsule series called 21st Century Dance Practices, where we had guest artists that would come in for a week. They would teach, basically a takeover of the three intermediate-advanced modern classes, and they didn't have to fit in modern technique. It was also about disrupting the binary idea of aesthetic is ballet or modern, but to illuminate the spectrum.

Christy Bolingbroke:

And we were halfway through that and then face-to-face classes were suspended. And I really appreciate as my colleague Valerie Ifill, who is the faculty of record, she was like, "Okay, we're trying to still move forward. Everyone's been asked to move their instruction online and that's going to look different for each of us." And I said, "Well, what would be your minimum? Can we still hire these artists? Can we still create jobs and pay them?"

Christy Bolingbroke:

Most of them work outside of an academic institution, so we identified every Friday for the five remaining weeks in this semester, they have a guest virtual class. And I can't think of anything more 21st century than adapting your dance class to be on the internet. And what actually worked for us was the opportunity we were able to add two more spots than we had originally had lined up because we had changed the structure of what our partnership would be. Originally we would just have had a couple remaining, but now we're able to work with all five and still provide that experience for the students and provide an opportunity for artists, as well.

Tim Cynova:

Christy, you're one of the most well-connected people that I know in the dance field. Working at the Parsons Dance Company. You were working at Mark Morris when we first met, and since then I don't work directly for a dance company. And you know everyone and you see everything, and usually I just nod along when you mention names and what you're seeing. I'm like, "That sounds great."

Tim Cynova:

What are you hearing from the field? What are you hearing from friends and colleagues in the dance field right now? You've talked about some experiments and shifting things online. When you're talking to this meeting, where are they? What's on their mind?

Christy Bolingbroke:

I'll try not to generalize but point out a couple of things and then maybe ask some rhetorical questions where I hope the field is thinking. I think everyone came at this and needed to be given the space to process or mourn where they are in that moment.

Christy Bolingbroke:

When we first went into a suspension of face-to-face instruction, we actually had Stephen Petronio Dance Company coming to Akron. And we had a conversation, "Do you still want to come? Instruction has been suspended, but we have seven studios. If you want to work in them, you can spread the dancers out even. And there were less than 10 of them, so at that moment in time we did make the decision and they came. They stayed as long as they could until it felt like they needed to go back home to make sure while they still could really, because that's the uncertainty is knowing what is going on in one part of the country might not be the same experience somewhere else and things were starting to escalate in New York. I'm really proud that we were able to still fully pay them regardless if they stayed for the whole week or not because that's the position that we're in.

Christy Bolingbroke:

What I have heard from other artists and presenters is that this moment, not only mourning the performance that would have been, but the moment also, it tends to highlight the cracks that we already knew were in our system [inaudible 00:12:59] pushed on.

Christy Bolingbroke:

And one of those in particular has been, a presenter or venue may pay a certain fee and that fee includes maybe it's hotel and travel and then something to pay the dancers for that. And the presenter in the moment, if they're canceling two weeks out or a month out, they were like, "Okay, so sorry. We're going to have to cancel. We'll try and reschedule." But the artist then would take that moment, "Well, I've already incurred expenses and I wouldn't have rehearsed for that gig if we didn't have your gig on the docket."

Christy Bolingbroke:

And I think it truly was illuminating our presenters, that's how tightly budgeted our artist presenter relationship is. And there's no one answer out of that because I'm empathetic for both parties because they come from different financial realities, and some may not be able to be as generous immediately as others because they're also tightly budgeted. But I think that little aha and that realization, I hope that we carry that forward and come up with better solutions. So recognizing that the normal was, in fact, broken and that's not maybe everything we're trying to return to.

Christy Bolingbroke:

The other question that came up with some independent artists who were maybe going to have big breaks. They had received major grants this year and now they're still hopeful and want to postpone, but from a cashflow position, because they just incorporated in the last year after being fiscally sponsored for a decade, they're wondering, what's best practice for my artists.

Christy Bolingbroke:

And I was like, "Well, that's the reality. There is no best practice, so you have a choice and what do you want to do?" So I'm hearing artists that were talking about, like, "I want to take care of my cast and collaborators." So they're actually thinking about advancing them for work that they might not do until July or August. And that's a unique position to be in if you can think about from a cashflow for them.

Christy Bolingbroke:

I also find it interesting I'm hearing also that for some dance companies they maybe kept the dancers at arms-length from the administrative day to day, and now, and I saw this a little bit in the 2008 great recession, too. Now it's like, "Oh, you really want to understand, we need to raise $30,000 in order to pay you through this time." And the dancers have been more active. Some colleagues have said it feels like the dancers are working for marketing, or the dancers are working for the development department because the dancers are really doing a lot of the labor to put out those crowd-funding opportunities and engaging their friends and family, and to some great success. I don't know if that's sustainable moving forward, but those are some of the things that I'm seeing right now in the moment.

Christy Bolingbroke:

And then from a performance standpoint, the thing that I worry about is, what was also in our field, is everybody had a different decision-making timeline. I often would tell artists it might be 15 to 18 months from when you and I have a discussion to when you may actually hit the ground in Akron. There are some entities that they're doing 40 or 50 weeks a year of programming, and so for them it's much faster. It's much tighter. And if we can't be decisive to move forward so they can't... If they're only canceling shows month by month, it's like they're reliving the trauma of cancellation over and over again. And I worry that that'll hold some of us back in the field from being able to think about rebounding or re-imagining the next step.

Tim Cynova:

I think it's worth reimagining. Last week, we had Laura Zabel, executive director of Springboard for the Arts on, another great guest, and we talked about very quickly after South by Southwest was canceled and conferences started to cancel, that Springboard put out ethical cancellation principles for people to consider as they're wrestling with these very challenging times and challenging decisions, or difficult decisions, I should say.

Christy Bolingbroke:

Whether it's the ethical recommendations or some of the small micro-victories as CARES Act and different things get passed both federally and at the state level, the inclusion finally of self-employed and contractors. I hope that's something else that we don't let go because already the gig economy was here. It was the majority of our workforce, not just in the arts, but growing more broadly across sectors, and so those are some of the shifts that I think that we should hold on to as far as, okay, at least we got that into the conversation because that would not have been part of the discussion 10 years ago.

Lauren Ruffin:

I feel like we succumb to the concept of gig economy work in a way that we never really had a national conversation about that because that transition from that work being someone's side gig, that's how it was always designed. And then all of a sudden we had people fall into that as full-time work without any of the safety-net apparatus. It was never intended to be that. And yet, I feel like in the arts sector, everyone I talked to you as an artist is doing side gig work, whether it's the majority of their income comes from working in a restaurant or driving Uber or whatever. I just feel like this is a time for us to stop and pause and really think about, is this really what we want our workforce to look like? Although organizations that did a lot of work to get the freelancers and gig economy workers in that bill, really big deal, and now we're starting to see states augment that. So New Mexico is doing... I think the first 2000 people who apply get 750 bucks if they're self-employed. So we're starting to see states augment that money, as well.

Lauren Ruffin:

I keep thinking about Aretha Franklin in terms of cashflow because she didn't sing unless she got paid. She got her cash up front and I keep wondering when artists are going to start moving back into that paradigm that so many singers for years and years, it's just a best practice. Don't invest any rehearsal time until you've got some sort of capital to cover that time and your efforts. So I think your piece around contracting, it'd be interesting to think about what does new contracting agreement for performing artists, what would that look like? And I know that makes it hard for presenters, but I feel like... My knowledge is limited, but I feel like presenters are often in a better position financially than the creatives that are working with them.

Christy Bolingbroke:

They're just in a different flow. Part of my work that started when I got here and I've tried to continue this, is to do a listing tour around the country, which is a focus group to test everything I think I know about what it takes to make work, and is that the same in Charlotte, North Carolina, as it is in New York City or Chicago. And what struck me as I've been in some rooms, I usually partner with a presenting institution and I invite up to six to eight artists and we go around the room. Okay, what's your average budget size? And if you're project-based, include that, and if you're incorporated include your org budget. And I've been in the room where the range was $34,000 to $2 million. And then if I try to insert what is the average budget size for a lot of our presenting institutions, it might only be $700,000.

Christy Bolingbroke:

So I thought then, would a $2 million arts organization realize that they may have more power when they go to a presenter? Would they ask that question? So it's not just the transactional, I'm trying to get these expenses covered. I think the shorthand and is that the presenting institutions, they have a different kind of stability, but what they give us sometimes is flexibility. And that's what I'm excited to nurture in artists is to really own their flexibility to do what we've been doing, NCC Akron's experiment quickly and fail fast. We don't have to do again if it's not really satisfactory and beneficial on the other side of it. And a lot of times our larger institutions can't take those kinds of risks.

Lauren Ruffin:

I love that you brought up power in that conversation. Are you having explicit conversations about money and time and the power dynamic that those things create?

Christy Bolingbroke:

I'm really mindful of my role and relationship to artists is what I can speak to. So when we set up something or have a conversation start to say, "We're going to build something together," we will start to have a monthly discussion and it's very generative. And I'm sure artists may think I'm losing my marbles and repeating myself over and over again, but I always start it by saying, "Anything I suggest is merely a suggestion, not an expectation. So it is your discretion to say I'm not interested in that. Or what about this instead. Or run with it if it really is satisfying to you."

Christy Bolingbroke:

The other thing, just from an operational standpoint, that we've achieved... So in going into our strategic planning process, we did do an assessment of what have we achieved in the last four plus years. And one of the things is that almost all of our programs are somehow shared, whether that is an artist-directed grant. They've gotten a grant from someone else and NCC Akron matches it to make a program happen. Or we have another partner that has a vested interest in exploring dance on film.

Christy Bolingbroke:

I'm trying to also dissipate the idea that NCC Akron has all the money and we just are the bank, but rather how can we aggregate resources is one of our core values. And to me that's a different kind of way to share power and be able to live that through. So we're looking for those opportunities. I think if... That's what I worry about artists right now, feeling the immediate squeeze. They were already pushing against institutions. And so then to have this sort of backlash and feel... It's like you lost your grip while you're already climbing up against the hill.

Tim Cynova:

We're going to take a little bit of a turn here before we close our show today because a number of years ago I also co-hosted a livestream and Christy was one of the first guests on that livestream. And it was something that I co-hosted with my friend, Sydney Skybetter. We called it #SKYNOVA because we just made up a name.

Tim Cynova:

And Christy, I don't know if you took this photo, but you certainly were right there in the room as we interviewed Robert Battle, artistic director of Alvin Ailey. This was maybe a day after it was announced that he was being appointed-

Christy Bolingbroke:

The new AD.

Tim Cynova:

... the new AD. And how far we've come. Also, this was actually recorded in my hotel room at the Dance USA conference, I think in DC, and we just invited all of our friends to be on this show, and we put it online, and-

Christy Bolingbroke:

There's about 25 of us behind whoever took that picture.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, it's all crowded in and then yeah. Robert Sidney and I are there and I'm fairly confident that the first question that we asked Robert, this might've been one of the first interviews that he did after being appointed, was, "What color are unicorns?" So clearly that didn't last.

Christy Bolingbroke:

Can I offer up this perspective because I think it's relevant now with that, Tim.

Tim Cynova:

Please.

Christy Bolingbroke:

We were doing that in a hotel room because the existing structure, I'm not throwing shade, but the existing structure of the conference couldn't envision space for this wacky, what do you mean you're going to film this and it's not going to come from our institutional voice. And that was the days of social media where any institution was trying to really grip onto their methods and they were not willing to experiment with it. Obviously, we've evolved as a field with social media and then when I think about the moment and how many people are offering free classes online and doing different things. And I was within five years that Sky Nova became a more central part, at least publicly, as part of the Dance USA conference, too. So these things, just because there isn't institutional space for it, can you try it and then how will it morph? I'm really curious, how will online classes continue after this moment when people can actually record them in a studio?

Christy Bolingbroke:

I'm really interested, too, in how it's challenging our field to think about capacity. I've logged into a meditation class, which I normally would be a little wary of, if I'm to be honest, because I'm more [inaudible 00:25:23] , less "om." Because then there's 12 of us in a room and you're really self-conscious. There were 600 people logged on. That's a totally different idea.

Christy Bolingbroke:

Dance Church out of Seattle. They've been doing livestreams on Wednesdays and Sundays. Thousands of people. It's changing our ideas of what capacity could be. It's not going to work for everyone to move all of their shows online or all of their classes online, but new opportunities and avenues are being availed to us and it just takes one person to film it in their living room or hotel room. You got to get started somewhere.

Lauren Ruffin:

There's a power struggle happening right now about that because institutions, and we're all affiliated with large educational institutions, they are not going to let that go easily.

Christy Bolingbroke:

No.

Lauren Ruffin:

They are not going to let legitimacy enter the online space until they're ready for it. And so the question for me becomes how do we organize and how are we savvy enough to form new virtual institutions that carry the same sort of legitimacy and offer the same educational value as the ones that we've acceded power to already. And it's happening right now. I think we were talking about it. It might have been with Laura Zabel again around real estate and educational institutions, how they need those physical spaces. There's a lot actually of capital invested in creating physical spaces.

Christy Bolingbroke:

It's a lot easier to raise a capital campaign and build out a building, and you wish that they would raise a line item for a faculty position.

Lauren Ruffin:

Exactly, so I think this is a really interesting time to be thinking about those power dynamics.

Tim Cynova:

As we land the plane, Christy, what are your parting thoughts for us?

Christy Bolingbroke:

The same both personally as well as professionally. This opportunity of resetting, of trying new things and really thinking about what do I want to carry with me to the other side of this, and what do I want to let go during this period, and I would offer that up for everyone.

Tim Cynova:

Christy, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for being a friend for all these years. Have a great rest of the week.

Christy Bolingbroke:

Thanks. You all, too.

Tim Cynova:

Continue the Work. Shouldn't. Suck. Live adventure with us on our next episode when we're joined by Mara Walker, chief operating officer at Americans for the Arts. Miss us in the meantime? You can download more Work. Shouldn't. Suck. Episodes from your favorite podcasting platform of choice and rewatch Work. Shouldn't. Suck. Live episodes over on Workshouldntsuck.co.

Tim Cynova:

If you've enjoyed the conversation or are just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun, too. Give it a thumbs-up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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Live with Deborah Cullinan! (EP.20)

Last Updated

April 9, 2020

Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Deborah Cullinan, Chief Executive Officer, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. [Live show recorded: April 8, 2020.]

Guest: Deborah Cullinan

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guest

DEBORAH CULLINAN Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) CEO Deborah Cullinan is one of the nation’s leading thinkers on the pivotal role arts organizations can play in shaping our social and political landscape, and has spent years mobilizing communities through arts and culture. Deborah is committed to revolutionizing the role art centers play in public life and during her tenure at YBCA, she has launched several bold new programs, engagement strategies, and civic coalitions. Prior to joining YBCA in 2013, she was the Executive Director of San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts. She is a co-founder of CultureBank and ArtsForum SF, co-chair of the San Francisco Arts Alliance and on the board of the Community Arts Stabilization Trust. Her passion for using art and creativity to shift culture has made her a sought- after speaker at events and conferences around the world.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck Live, the morning-ish show. On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Deborah Cullinan. Deborah is currently the Chief Executive Officer of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, found online at ybca.org. She's one of the nation's leading thinkers on the pivotal role arts organizations can play in shaping our social and political landscape and has spent years mobilizing communities through arts and cultures.

Tim Cynova:

Prior to joining YBCA, she was the Executive Director of Intersection for the Arts. She is a co-founder of Culture Bank and Arts Forum SF, Co-chair of the San Francisco Arts Alliance and on the board of Community Arts Stabilization Trust.

Tim Cynova:

Her passion for using art and creativity to shift culture has made her a sought after speaker at events and conferences around the world and we are excited she's joining us today. Without further ado, Deborah, welcome to the show.

Lauren Ruffin:

Hello, good morning. So excited to talk to you as always. I have been watching Jeopardy and I realize this week feels like champion's week. I'm so excited to see all the shiny faces that we have on our show this week. But first, Deborah, how are you? How's your community doing and what's happening in the Bay Area?

Deborah Cullinan:

Well, I am thrilled to be here too. I was just having a good time with the facts that came out yesterday, Lauren. Peanut butter and jelly.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh, yeah.

Deborah Cullinan:

And I've been really inspired to get to join you guys in the morning and start the day this way. So thank you for what you're doing.

Deborah Cullinan:

I'm all right. I feel like I am very fortunate to be sheltering with my beautiful family and our cats and dog here in San Francisco. I feel like we are really lucky compared to a lot of other people.

Deborah Cullinan:

In California, as you guys probably know, things are happening a little differently and that we've got this flattened curve. I think for us what that means is a lot less urgency right now and a lot less pain and some time to prepare. It also does mean that we don't know how long this is all going to take. And I think that uncertainty is just [inaudible 00:02:05] for people, so I'm just feeling it.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, the uncertainty is ... I mean, we're getting projections of this lasting anywhere from... We were getting the 30 day increment at the state level but anybody who's thinking further out realizes that we're going to be I think stuck in. Or this is going to become a cyclical part of the new norm for quite some time, possibly over a year or more.

Lauren Ruffin:

So Tim gave you a fantastic intro, but how do you typically talk about yourself and your work and what you do, because you've got your hands in so many different things?

Deborah Cullinan:

It's funny, I was backstage listening to that and just like, "Oh, my gosh!" I'm a mom, I'm an activist. I believe in the role that art and creativity can play in helping us imagine a better future for our world. My career in the arts is an odd one. I didn't come into it knowing that I was going to come into it. I didn't come into it with a formal background.

Deborah Cullinan:

My first gig as you mentioned, was at Intersection for the Arts and I stayed there for a really long time. In some ways I think that one of the strengths that I had is that I was just super naive. I didn't understand the arts, didn't get the field, had a lot of questions, didn't understand how an organization like Intersection, at the time, could be so venerable but also be so vulnerable.

Deborah Cullinan:

I didn't understand why arts organizations, and this is now I'm dating myself a long time ago, but why art organizations thought of art program and community program as two separate things?

Lauren Ruffin:

So with your YBCA hat on, because this is a live show about work, how has the way that YBCA's staff is working and what changes, what's shifted in the last month or so?

Deborah Cullinan:

I feel like one of the things that is really fortunate, if there are those things right now, is that we at YBCA have been undergoing a pretty radical transformation. We had been really considering how a multidisciplinary arts center can move from being a presenter on exhibition things to being highly transactional in terms of its relationship with artists and with audiences. How could it become a real creative home for its community?

Deborah Cullinan:

I think to do that, you've got to start with your team. You've got to practice what you're going to preach. So we've been working for years really at this work. I think people have to understand it takes such a long time, but we've been working for years to really think about the culture of the organization, how we work together.

Deborah Cullinan:

Lauren, you've been to the spot and one of the first things that we did was transform our workspace into a hub, much more of a coworking environment, much more of a collaboration space. In recent years, just in the last year or so, because I hardly know what day it is, we collapsed all of the curatorial departments.

Deborah Cullinan:

We created one program and engagement team and we really worked to be an organization, not a set of silos, not a bunch of different disciplines but a crew that is working together to try to achieve something. I think because of that we're tight knit.

Deborah Cullinan:

We had an all staff meeting yesterday and we rotate who facilitates it, got a group of people that are running all of that and really thinking about the culture of the organization. And there are all these things that are happening that I think are really beautiful. Every single day we get a piece of inspiration from a staff member, something personal, something they point us to along with any practical information we need.

Deborah Cullinan:

That might be from like in the early days of this, we're closed for another week to now information that we can share with artists who are on relief, things like this.

Deborah Cullinan:

One of our staff members, Julie May Lopez just launched a Happy Hour and a Movie and so she's getting all kinds of suggestions for movies that can be live streamed where people can watch together. We have something we call the Virtual Hub. Our collaboration space is called the hub in the physical world, so we made one in the virtual world.

Deborah Cullinan:

We have another staff member named [Mani 00:06:00] who just started a book club. We now have a resource list and one of the things that we are doing for each other is helping each other source hard to get things. The really good news for me is that I'm getting some yeast in the mail from Elizabeth so that my husband can make some bread.

Lauren Ruffin:

That's really helpful.

Deborah Cullinan:

Yeah, and that's the team. That's what happens when you really let people shape their space and build their culture.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, so as was revealed yesterday, perhaps I'm a little bit culturally stunted, what movies were recommended thus far?

Deborah Cullinan:

I don't know the answer tonight yet.

Lauren Ruffin:

Okay, oh, it hasn't happened yet.

Tim Cynova:

Probably The Matrix and a tutorial about how to make peanut butter and jelly, Lauren?

Deborah Cullinan:

Yeah, yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

All right, cool. I feel like there's some things we might want to crush an atlas in there.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, it's a great list.

Tim Cynova:

Deborah, as you started, you were talking about un-siloing parts of the organization and leading the organization through uncertainty and into new things. Right now, organizations are very much in an uncertain time. I have some of my students from my leadership and team building course that I teach at the New School watching. As a leader who's done this, what advice do you have for leaders and organizations, people in organizations when they're having to go through change in uncertain times?

Deborah Cullinan:

All the stuff. The part where it takes a really long time. The part where it really is about a sense of purpose for people, right? If you can't help someone see their own place in change, they can't find it, and so really being as clear and as specific as possible.

Deborah Cullinan:

I think the flip side of that is you also have to create the conditions where people can live with ambiguity and the idea that change really is, and it's just constant. If we're going to be a relevant organization that is contributing to the community around us, we're going to change constantly.

Deborah Cullinan:

I think it's about that culture and it's about that building of a unit that can sort of navigate that together so that when you don't know where you are, where you're trying to go, somebody else has got your back. People are working together, you're not alone. I can't say it's been perfect. It's been really hard and definitely painful.

Tim Cynova:

Last week we were joined by Laura Zabel, a member of this past year's Powerhouse YBCA 100 Cohort. Scrolling down the website, the list of honorees is amazing. Abby Wambach, Adrian Marie Brown, Ali Wong, Billy Porter, Hassan Minaj, Lizzo.

Tim Cynova:

The list literally goes on and so could I, but why don't I stop for a second so that you can catch people up on what is the YBCA 100 and how awesome is it to have that thing with all of those amazing people?

Deborah Cullinan:

It is the most awesome. Here's the thing, [inaudible 00:08:43] a culture and the team of people that make up organizations like YBCA. The original idea, [inaudible 00:08:48], the original idea was he said, "Yo, Deborah, the people who work here at YBCA are just ...", and I'm using is language, "dope."

Deborah Cullinan:

These people are awesome and we've got to figure out something about top down territorial structures. We've got to figure out how to unleash and tap into the creativity, the connections, the networks of the people who come to work every day in organizations like this.

Deborah Cullinan:

The original idea was really like a team building, let's start this, this dopeness and let's understand this organization. We did this with the first year. It was this very intricate, a moti-designed approach to getting each department [inaudible 00:09:31] department to surface for us their 10 most exciting people, the 10 people who inspired them the most.

Deborah Cullinan:

Then we interviewed each other, we learned about the people and we had a day long retreat and we've settled on this list of 100. At exactly the same time we were hosting Vanity Fair's New Establishment Summit and are here.

Deborah Cullinan:

This is also a very awesome event, but I will be real about it. It tends to recycle or it did at least, tended to recycle the same couple of guys that were on the list. I was just sitting there in our conference room with all of these amazing YBCA staffers, looking at this list of diverse and beautiful people, some of whom I knew and was already inspired by, some that I'd never heard of before.

Deborah Cullinan:

It was just a no brainer. This is a public thing. This is something that we should give to the world and that we should share together and it also should become our organizing principle.

Deborah Cullinan:

So every year we name the names. We gather people around those names and then we work deeply with many of the list makers to understand how to pursue some of the most pressing questions that we're facing. It's a very timely question because we're thinking right now about where we're heading and how the way in which we were changing points us in the direction of this.

Deborah Cullinan:

Now, I have been very inspired by Arundhati Roy's piece that I think it came out maybe last week in the Financial Times. I think it's called The Pandemic is a Portal. What she's talking about, at least the way I read it, is that this is a portal that we have to move through and that we have a choice. We can either move through it, really heavily, with all of our baggage.

Deborah Cullinan:

We can bring the racism. We can bring the avarice. We can bring the trauma. We can bring it all with us and we can trudge and fight and try so hard to not move through it. Or we can move through it lightly with very little and if we do that we can change everything.

Deborah Cullinan:

For me, the 100 and the people who are most inspiring to us, those who are really addressing the biggest questions, they're going to carry us lightly through and we have to follow them. Our organization needs to figure out how to do that,

Lauren Ruffin:

That's, one makes me want to get behind the Financial Times paywall, but I do worry about all of the structures that people are so interested in getting back to normal. I mean in their little box of normal, that I feel like we're not having those conversations about how much we should. That's really super powerful.

Deborah Cullinan:

I have to take care because I understand that to move lightly through we have to grieve. Maybe some people were already heading there and so there's less to agree, less to mourn. Where for others it feels all lost. I do understand that first we have to help those who are still heavy to kind of lighten that load.

Deborah Cullinan:

Lauren, I forwarded you a cheers with this, remember?

Deborah Cullinan:

I just think of our arts ecosystem as this extraordinary creative resource. It's up to us. What do we want to do with it? How do we reimagine it so that we can better serve the creativity in our communities and so that we can position the arts as the missing piece.

Deborah Cullinan:

We all know that if we don't build the capacity of our arts ecosystem to work across sectors to help fuel change, we're just not going to get unstuck, as a field but also, I think in the world.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, you and I have talked about that a lot around the, and you said it earlier, how it seems to me the arts and culture sector sees itself living outside of the world with everyone else.

Lauren Ruffin:

I think you're spot on around the need to be collaborative with other sectors if we're going to get through this. I've also really been gravitating towards world builders and writers who are really helping us see what all the possibility that's out there. I'm in the process of digging through ... The Hugo and Nebula awards nominees were announced yesterday.

Deborah Cullinan:

Oh, really.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, so I'm going down that list and ordering, not from Amazon but from Bookshop. I'm feeling really hungry for new ways of thinking and of imagining what can happen.

Tim Cynova:

We have a question from one of our viewers, a frequent viewer. "How is YBCA engaging its cashflow challenges in this moment while retaining, sustaining, honoring its values?"

Deborah Cullinan:

First and foremost, the thing we're thinking a lot about is the disproportionately vulnerable nature of the arts workforce. Right? We're really trying to maintain the staff and take good care of people. We're going to be announcing an Artist For Me Funds soon.

Deborah Cullinan:

For us it's really thinking carefully about that and not just in the short term, not just right now keeping people whole, but thinking about what does it look like to develop the workforce of tomorrow? To the earlier point, how do we think about the arts a little differently and drive demand for artists to work to bring their gifts in service of this larger community issues that we're facing?

Deborah Cullinan:

YBCA, in terms of cash flow, we're okay right now. This is obviously not an easy time but we had already been thinking about restructuring even the way we look at revenue. Moving away from what I would call for lack of better words, a more traditional development shop with a Chief Development Officer and really rethinking things like membership program and thinking a lot about how we can drive revenue through partnerships in service of these broader concerns.

Deborah Cullinan:

A really good example of that right now is that we are collaborating with San Francisco's Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs, working specifically on a very large artist-driven project focused on the Census. Specifically, I'm reaching the hard to count communities in San Francisco and raising awareness around those stakes that we face with the Census and this population count.

Deborah Cullinan:

This was brought to us through an extraordinary person named Amy Kish who built this partnership with OCEIA this Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs so that we could work together. What that does for me is it's kind of a no brainer because we're positioning the art and artists as an essential component of a large campaign that will drive participation in civic life. We're also creating financial opportunities for every single one of the artists that we're working with and it's a partnership that brings revenue to YBCA in order for us to hold the structure.

Tim Cynova:

Also another question from one of our frequent viewers, "If the 100 are a source of great hope, what do you see as the greatest barriers to the necessary reimagination and capacity building?"

Deborah Cullinan:

If I'm understanding the question in terms of reimagination and capacity building for YBCA, I think the big barriers for organizations like YBCA and in terms of the reimagination and the capacity building in our world, to me the biggest barrier is actually the lack of imagination and the fear. It's not being willing to take big risks on leadership like those people that are in the YBCA 100, to move us forward. It's sort of a lack of imagination around how we invest in creativity and why we should invest in it first.

Tim Cynova:

That's often one of the biggest disconnects I find working in the cultural sector where there's amazing art that we're producing, we're presenting. Then you look behind the scenes at the organization, you're like, "Well, this is run like any other organization in the 1980s. Why don't we use some of that creativity to create the space that we want, that we want to work in rather than what is prescribed out of a book?"

Tim Cynova:

We have a, "Yes," and a, "Thanks," from your answer. There's about a 30-second lag between when people post online and when we actually see them in the studio. I was able to mark time until that yes came through.

Deborah Cullinan:

Well done. Well done.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, that's right. Thanks. This is also one of those times where I used to take minutes at the board meetings in previous roles and then the conversation got really good and then I forgot that I was the one taking board minutes and then I was like, "Oh crap. I need to go back."

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm the worst note taker. I'm so bad at it.

Tim Cynova:

I feel like that, because I'm like, "This is a great conversation." Then like, "Oh wait, there's other stuff going on that I should be a part of.

Lauren Ruffin:

One of the things I'm also curious about is mission. You've talked about bringing artists into the workforce when thinking about Census. In New Mexico the Census is a really big deal because we have so many super rural communities that are hard to count. Are you looking at your mission differently and or is it simply the how that you're going about achieving the mission is starting to shift or you're thinking about how it might shift?

Deborah Cullinan:

I'm not sure that we're looking at the mission differently. Our mission is really about a belief that art centers, arts organizations can put their resources toward spurring cultural movement. We're very inspired by our board member, Jeff Chang when he talks about the idea that culture precedes change. We want to be part of the change. We want to be able to measure that change.

Deborah Cullinan:

We don't think it's a bad thing to ask an art center or artists to think about how their work fuels societal change. That feels, if anything, it's just more crisp for us now and where we were heading. It's even more clear how we can become an integrated forum, an institute that really is deploying artists in service of civic and public life.

Deborah Cullinan:

When I say that, I know that there's all this art as utility, all of this stuff and it's like, no, it's got to be both hands. We've got to not be afraid of that. We have to believe that we are contributing. If we're afraid to believe that we contribute then we're not trying to contribute.

Tim Cynova:

We have another viewer question coming in here. "Is there a legislative action we should be collectively working to advance?"

Deborah Cullinan:

I think that's a great question. I think as many people do. You had Laura Zabel on last week, and I know she thinks about this a lot as well. I think we can look to programs that have existed in the past like the WPA or the CETA program or even here in San Francisco, the Neighborhood Arts Program.

Deborah Cullinan:

I think whatever we do legislatively, especially in terms of the next Care package or the next relief and recovery package, we should really be thinking about not the arts in a silo, I believe. Not fund the arts, but let's create systems where the arts are integrated and so necessary that they are funded perhaps even more than they are going to be If we just sit outside saying, "We need money. We need help."

Deborah Cullinan:

We have to be of service. We have to be part of moving through the portal. I would think about workforce programs on a federal level. For me, I think the biggest stuff that's going to happen, obviously for a variety of reasons, it's going to be at the local level. So it's about getting federal funding down into the hands of local leaders who can really move policy.

Tim Cynova:

You're a high performing leader in a challenging time. In the best of times being a leader, it can be isolating, can be challenging. How do you approach your resilience and self care in a moment like this?

Deborah Cullinan:

Well, at the beginning I mentioned that I feel very fortunate. I'm home with my husband and my son. We have this amazing energetic nine-month-old Husky and a couple of cats that don't get along but they're very cute. There's a lot about family and about connecting with friends who can inspire right now that feels just really, really central. I think it's super important to take a little bit of time every single day. Where I am, I can go outside and walk safely or take a run safely and that is just a super important part of the routine.

Lauren Ruffin:

Appreciating like those little things that I've always, I shouldn't say I've always taken for granted, but I even more grateful just like outside space. I look at Tim. I'm fairly certain that Tim is like now a part of the chair that he's sitting in, between the ankle and New York.

Lauren Ruffin:

So the leadership, one of the things I've been thinking a lot around leadership right now is that balance between being a happy warrior in the face of everything that's going on and then, how are you talking to your people at like a real level around the change? What's coming and ... I don't know, are you feeling down? How do you maintain the moments of depression and grief that do creep in when you're still having you're leave. I feel like sometimes we can't always be transparent. Do you find that happening to yourself?

Deborah Cullinan:

Yeah, I got really, really, really sad last night when I heard that John Prine had passed away. It just brought me back to a certain moment in my life. I had this really weird occasion where I met him very briefly. It's just those moments when something hits you and it's so real.

Deborah Cullinan:

Also, I'm feeling very deeply for some YBCA staff members whose situations have changed so much and they're not ideal, whether it's a roommate situation or a single mom who didn't plan on being alone with her baby boy. All of that stuff. For me, I guess we've got to see that what is so sad and hard about all of this, but how it actually just reveals what was already so sad and wrong.

Deborah Cullinan:

I think about Rebecca Solnit when she talked about the difference between optimism and hope. Optimism being like, "Yeah, it's all cool. So I'm just going to sit back," and hope being, "I believe in something and I'm going to act." That's what keeps me going.

Lauren Ruffin:

My penultimate question is, what's your prediction for how we come out of this?

Deborah Cullinan:

Wow. Okay, so let's go with hope. Let's stick with where I was. It got a little dark there for a second.

Lauren Ruffin:

See, you're like going to manage the response. It's so hard.

Deborah Cullinan:

The thing is we can't come out of this the same. We just can't. It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. It wasn't working and we have to be willing to admit that. I want to believe that we will and we will come to something so beautiful that there will just be art and creativity everywhere.

Lauren Ruffin:

Awesome.

Lauren Ruffin:

Well, Tim, you going to land the plane or you want me to?

Tim Cynova:

Oh, I can land the plane. Actually, if I was landing the plane, we would not want to be on this plane right now. Lauren looks at me like, "You're doing this?"

Tim Cynova:

I'm like, "I wasn't planning on it."

Lauren Ruffin:

I think it was the New Yorker, the cartoon where it's like, "How many of you think this pilot's not doing their job and you want me to land this plane?" You know, this random person standing up.

Tim Cynova:

Deborah, it was so great to start our day with you. Thank you so much for taking time to sit down and chat with us.

Deborah Cullinan:

Thank you. Thank you both. It was awesome.

Tim Cynova:

Continue the Work Shouldn't Suck Live adventure with us on our next episode when we're joined by Christy Bolingbroke, Executive and Artistic Director of the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron.

Tim Cynova:

Miss us in the meantime, you can download more Work. Shouldn't. Suck. episodes from your favorite podcasting platform of choice and rewatch Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE episodes over on workshouldntsuck.co. If you've enjoyed the conversation or are just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review in iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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Live with F. Javier Torres-Campos! (EP.19)

Last Updated

April 9, 2020

Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest F. Javier Torres-Campos, Director, Thriving Cultures, Surdna Foundation. [Live show recorded: April 7. 2020.]

Guest: F. Javier Torres-Campos

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guest

F. JAVIER TORRES-CAMPOS serves as Program Director of the Thriving Cultures program overseeing a $9 million grantmaking portfolio seeking to advance the Foundation’s social justice mission. His career has been committed to building just and sustainable communities in partnership with artists and culture/tradition bearers.

Prior to joining Surdna, Javier served as the Director of National Grantmaking at ArtPlace America. In his role, he was responsible for building a comprehensive set of demonstration projects that illustrated the many ways in which arts and culture can strengthen the processes and outcomes of the planning and development field across the United States. Under his leadership, the National Creative Placemaking Fund at ArtPlace supported 279 creative placemaking projects totaling $86.4 million across 46 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Prior to ArtPlace, Javier was Senior Program Officer for Arts and Culture at the Boston Foundation where he led an exploration of the role of culture as a tool for transformation, sustainability, and as central to the development of vibrant communities. Javier also spent six years as the Director of Villa Victoria Center for the Arts, a program of IBA, a community based multi-disciplinary arts complex that operates as a regional presenter and local programmer for Latino arts.

Javier was a board member for Grantmakers in the Arts and an advisory board member for the Design Studio for Social Intervention. He has previously served as a board member for the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, MASSCreative, was a member of the MA Governor’s Creative Economy Council and Chair for the Boston Cultural Council.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show. On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Javier Torres. Javier is currently the Director of the Surdna Foundation's Thriving Cultures Program, where he oversees a grantmaking portfolio seeking to advance the foundation's social justice mission. Prior to Surdna, he's done a number of things including serving as the Director of National Grant Making at Art Place America, served as a Senior Program Officer for Arts and Culture at the Boston Foundation, was the Director of the Villa Victoria Center for the Arts, was a Board Member for Grantmakers in the Arts, and once when we were both attending a conference in Los Angeles, he recommended a coffee shop that served one of the best cappuccinos I've ever had. Without further ado, Javier, welcome to the show.

Javier Torres:

Good morning y'all. How you doing?

Lauren Ruffin:

Good. I didn't know this about the LA coffee situation.

Javier Torres:

It was G&B, right Tim?

Tim Cynova:

Yeah.

Javier Torres:

Yeah. It's in Grand Central Market. It's one of the most amazing magical places. You get to go, it's open air. They make a lot of ice drinks that they actually use cocktail shakers and it just gets a special froth and a special flavor. The coffee beans are really roasted well. So I'm a coffee junkie.

Lauren Ruffin:

Okay. You're always good for a good restaurant recommendation. So I'm not surprised. I just didn't know that was a connection y'all shared.

Javier Torres:

Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

So Javier, super excited to talk to you as always. You always drop some nuggets of wisdom, but first just a quick check in. How are you doing and how's your community doing?

Javier Torres:

Times are hard. I have been inside since March 1st when I flew home from the For Freedoms Congress in Los Angeles. We were being given some flexibility by the office to decide whether we wanted to travel in to the office and I realized that there were at least three staff members that lived in the epicenter of the breakout between Westchester and New Rochelle. So I recommended to my team to stay home. As much as I can, I think I'm really trying to stay focused on checking in with family and friends. I'm lucky enough that I live close to Prospect Park, so I take some walks and taking it day by day. I've been inside now, Friday will be six weeks. It's intense, it's hard, and I think it's just important for us all to do if we want this thing to wrap itself up so that we can begin to get back to some level of normalcy.

Lauren Ruffin:

When you popped on screen in the green room, I was thinking about, I know so much about what your life usually looks like with the travel and the working out. I didn't realize you'd been inside for six weeks. How are you maintaining some sense of normalcy because you're on the go?

Javier Torres:

All the time. I am fortunate enough that my good friend and trainer Corey lives not too far from me. We've made some agreements about how we each travel through the city and he is still coming to me three or four days a week to help me with workouts in my apartment, which has been a godsend because I'm fortunate enough to live in a full service building in Brooklyn, but they closed the gym in my building so I have no weights. But it's been good. On days he's not here, he sends me workouts and interestingly enough, good timing. I bought myself an Apple watch four weeks before this all started and for anybody who has one, they have the rings of activity. You set these daily goals about how many calories you're going to burn or how often you're moving. So that's kept me going.

Javier Torres:

I try to keep a routine. I actually get out of my pajamas every morning and make sure that I get dressed. Although I realized that sometimes it's nice not to, and usually by 7:30 I'm winding down. I'm an early morning guy. I get up at five o'clock to start my day and have my coffee and read the news. But that's the way that I've been trying to do it. Also, quite frankly limiting how many people I can stay in touch with. I'm fortunate enough that because of my work, I've traveled throughout the country and know so many amazing, beautiful people that are used to checking in with me once or twice a year, which is manageable. But now everybody wants to talk every other day and it's just humanly impossible. I'm an introvert, I need to have some time alone to process my own feelings and thoughts and I've been trying to figure out what are those little self care moments and just being okay to say I need to be still and not talk to anybody.

Lauren Ruffin:

Prior to this I was pretty, because I've been working remote for the last four years and so getting dressed every morning wasn't as important to me.

Javier Torres:

Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

Full disclosure. But I'm getting up and putting on clothes. I'm not putting on hard pants.

Javier Torres:

Sure. Right. Right.

Lauren Ruffin:

I am at least changing from my evening wear to my day wear. In terms of, you mentioned everyone wanting to stay in touch, how are you communicating with your grantees and can you share a little bit about what your thoughts and messaging is on what a funder's support to their grantees can look like right now or Surdna is sort of approaching that?

Javier Torres:

I think what I've tried to recognize is that everybody needs something different. We created sort of an institutional message that went out to all of our partners about the way in which we wanted to be of support and provide flexibility with grants, with grant reports and applications in this particular moment in time. There are a lot of foundations that are trying to be first out to figure out what is the thing we need to do? What is the fund we need to create? How do we do conference calls nonstop with our grantees so that everyone can process? It has been my perspective that I don't want to take up any more of anybody's time. Folks are already being drained with additional needs in their communities and so we sent two followup messages to our partners and to our direct grantees used for the thriving cultures portfolio to say, "You saw the message from our president, you know the flexibility that you have, but we don't know what we don't know and we're not going to bombard you with requests for your time. You need to let us know what you need from us."

Javier Torres:

Folks have been generous to reach out. Some folks wanted a little bit more of a coached or facilitated conversation, which we were able to do for those that wanted to, but my personal perspective has been just to respect that these are all human beings that have full-on lives, that they need to now manage and maintain both work and home in this crisis, which creates all kinds of other limitations and requirements for who they are. The foundation is being measured. We're really trying to think about the three phases of response and not being reactionary. So we really start first with thinking critically about how do we look at unspent administrative dollars for this fiscal year for us that ends June 30th? How do we convert those to grant-making dollars?

Javier Torres:

What are the other pools of money that folks expected to spend that they just aren't? So there were some communications grantmaking and membership grantmaking that was going to happen that's being repurposed. Beyond that, we're really thinking of the immediate emergency response that needs to happen now for human beings who need to pay rent or a mortgage or get food or being able to buy some hand sanitizer or whatever it is that people need. Then there is as life somewhat begins to go back to normal, what is the investment that we need to do to ensure that nonprofits can get back off the ground? We've been thinking a lot about how do we keep people's payrolls open. And then finally knowing that this is going to last for a long time. The impacts of this are going to fundamentally change our world.

Javier Torres:

Some of our strategy and thriving cultures really anticipated this disruption to our world. It's a world-building strategy that's about imagining the systems and structures we need to build so that we can withstand these kinds of impacts. Then some of it is about the additional resources that we'll have to distribute or how we'll do those. It's a bit of a balancing act. We've taken a hit to the endowment and there are some folks in the foundation that are interested in increasing spending because of the way that the foundation uses a 12 quarter average to determine its annual spending limit. Right now we won't see the impact of that on our budget, but we will in two or three years when the full impact of this decline in the market actually is showing up in the 12 market average or the 12th quarter average.

Javier Torres:

So it's a little bit of, let's wait, let's listen, let's learn and making sure that we are as present and available as possible for folks to know that we're available if there's something that they want and need.

Tim Cynova:

You mentioned world-building, and correct me if I'm wrong, Lauren Ruffin wears a lot of hats literally and figuratively, but one of the hats that she wears is as Cofounder of Crux and I remember something about you all working together on a world-building game or exercise. Is that indeed correct?

Javier Torres:

It is correct.

Tim Cynova:

Great.

Javier Torres:

Lauren can probably talk a little bit about Crux if you haven't before.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I've spoken about it on the show, but I feel like everything that we talk about is about really designing a world, the world we want to see and also recognizing the one that we live in to really pull it apart. And the game we did wasn't as much a world-building game, but it was a game on venture capital investment and sort of coming up with profiles and having funders and investors and walk through various profiles to show the sort of hidden barriers, the implicit bias that exists and who's able to access capital. That was a fun game.

Javier Torres:

It was.

Lauren Ruffin:

It was a year ago and-

Javier Torres:

Because so much of the work you're doing with Crux is about building future infrastructure.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, Exactly.

Javier Torres:

That's a conversation that we've been in with Angie Kim and with lots of others that have recognized for so long that our current systems don't serve our creative community. What are cooperative ownership models and alternative economies that really value love and generosity and abundance and assign values to those things as opposed to our current scarcity models that have already been proven to be false.

Lauren Ruffin:

I think we're seeing so many of those things that ethos rise to the top right now. I applaud Surdna because we talk a lot about all the various roles that you can play in movement building and I think there were a lot of foundations who were first out of the gate and already after the CARES Act passed people are talking about having sort of multiple phases of this because it looks like we're not talking about what people are going to do in April, but we're talking about probably in terms of for the art sector in particular, probably an 18 to 24 month recovery. I mean I'm talking to artists who couldn't pay rent on this past Wednesday, won't be able to pay rent for the next probably, they will have work probably for four to six months, so I think I really applaud you thinking about the long game. Has there been a conversation at Surdna, I know that y'all are a funder who doesn't provide funds directly to individual artists. Has there been a conversation about revisiting that policy?

Javier Torres:

Yeah, so it started before COVID became a pandemic or was named a pandemic that we knew we wanted to work with intermediaries that are part of our regranting strategy at the moment and that we needed to file the paperwork as an institution to be able to do individual giving. That's heightened at this particular moment because when you really think about where does the emergency money need to go, people have just started GoFundMe accounts because they have access to commercial kitchens. They have a car and they're trying to get food money, gas money, protective masks and cleaning supplies. For the folks that can't pay rent, can't buy food, can't get out of their home, and we can't legally in most cases give money to those GoFundMe accounts without making it extremely onerous on them and on ourselves.

Javier Torres:

So we are having that conversation. I think it's something that's absolutely necessary for us to do as 102 year old institution who's currently undergoing a complete internal policy review over the course of the next 12 months. It's one of the things that our relatively new CEO, whose just a little over a year in, Don Chen, really asked us to do is to make sure that all of our policies across the foundation are in alignment with the values that we publicly state. Those are questions and an analysis that hasn't been done in a long time so it'll be part of that process, including other things like thinking about the maximum grants that we can make. Right now, our maximum grants are three years. There's consideration for going to longer and just having all of those conversations with our board so that we can move forward and make sure that we are living that social justice value. Not just saying that we're a social justice foundation.

Lauren Ruffin:

Tim, do you have anything?

Tim Cynova:

Oh, yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

I have so many questions, but I don't want to dominate the conversation-

Tim Cynova:

Go ahead. Go ahead.

Lauren Ruffin:

But you know I could do that.

Tim Cynova:

Go ahead Lauren.

Lauren Ruffin:

So I had a conversation with one of our other, we've asked a couple of our guests this question as we're looking to the future. What do you think is going to happen? We talked about that sort of 18 to 24 month timeline, but how do you think the world opens back up again? And how do you think artists begin to reenter the world? It's dangerous, but do you have any predictions?

Javier Torres:

So here's the thing. I, as a reader of Octavia Butler, I'm anticipating some ugly moments in our future. I've already started to see some of those with friends in Harlem that have been victims of hate crimes from people in their buildings, not even from strangers on the street. And then seeing the sort of multiple repercussions of what's happening in our society, where at least there was a small business that was able to support that individual in Harlem. They called the police, they filed a report, but the courts are closed. So that person knows somebody in their building who wants to physically harm them and cannot file a restraining order to keep them away because the legal system right now isn't up and running for that to happen. And so I think that I've heard of people's cars being broken into at stoplights because people are desperate right now.

Javier Torres:

And I think we need to recognize that. I don't understand how it is that when the market is in free fall, the federal government and the fed are very comfortable stopping trading, but they haven't been able to see the equivalent around a mortgage, utility and rent freeze that can benefit everybody. We're in free fall. Ain't nobody got no money. And so I'm concerned that we're going to be dealing with a much larger homeless population. I'm concerned that our current social infrastructure isn't prepared to deal with the homeless populations that we have. And that's going to have a lot of impact in our day to day sort of social interactions when people again are increasing in their desperation just to survive.

Javier Torres:

The optimist in me has been really focused on connecting with folks that understand that thoughts and energy and ideas and stories can build worlds. The way that our world is ordered is because in general a few men got into a room and decided that something was going to happen a certain way and so what does it look like for us to make decisions intentionally about how we're going to engage with those around us, our neighbors, strangers on the street, people in the grocery store and sort of getting clearer and clearer about our circle of influence and the impact that we can have and if we're all paying attention to that, then there's a way for us to fundamentally shift what happens when the world tries to return to normal.

Javier Torres:

There've been lots of conversations online to encourage folks to think about, yeah, you miss outside, but does the normal that you are used to, is that really something you want to return to? The grind culture of working 10 to 12 hour days, working six days a week or even five days a week. That I think that this is a really powerful moment for to realize, look, for example, as people of color we've been told that for black people in this country, that reparations weren't something that the federal government was capable of doing, that it would bankrupt this country. And now we're seeing that, oh they can just write a $1,200 check to 85% of families across the country plus $500 per child or dependent. So the money's always there. It's about the will and we all are responsible for imagining, believing and then shifting our own behavior in order to change that world so that these potentially really negative things that can happen don't take such strong holds in our society.

Javier Torres:

There are a lot of power grabs in the federal government right now, and we've been thinking about the watchdogs and nonprofit advocacy organizations that need support because this is what governments and people in power typically do is that when there is chaos, it's the opportunity to consolidate power. And so I think we all just need to be diligent about those small things. It is where we have control. It is where we have power and not try to save the world, not try to be out there thinking that somebody like me, yes, I sit in a very privileged position, but I actually don't have millions of dollars in a bank account that I get to authorize to write checks to. So my prediction is things could be really ugly. My hope that I hold on to is I actually believe in human beings and I believe that there are enough of us that are beginning to take that red pill, proverbial red pill from the matrix are beginning to see the code and not just the design and thinking about the ways in which we can shift power and shift our society for the better.

Lauren Ruffin:

Confession. I've never seen the Matrix.

Javier Torres:

Wow. Wow. That's amazing.

Lauren Ruffin:

You guys heard it here first.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, wow Lauren.

Javier Torres:

I love that.

Lauren Ruffin:

It's one of those major cultural touchstones that I at this point know enough about to know about, but I can laugh and smile and be like, oh yeah, the Matrix ha ha ha. Never seen it.

Tim Cynova:

And now you're just not going to see it because you made it this far.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, I've actually that's, usually my secret is that I've never had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but this is-

Javier Torres:

Wow.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Javier Torres:

Oh my God. They're actually kind of delicious.

Lauren Ruffin:

But the Matrix is another secret.

Javier Torres:

[crosstalk 00:17:09] mom has been so lazy, she doesn't want to cook and she's just been eating peanut butter and jelly.

Tim Cynova:

Wow. We are covering a lot of ground in this episode. I mean, no one expected those last two things.

Lauren Ruffin:

But yeah, I mean I think, I worry about that stuff Javier. In New Mexico, we had the biggest gun sales last month. One of my regular biking routes is past one of the big firearms suppliers here. And the majority of gun purchasers were first time gun owners. You can walk in and buy a gun here, which means you've got kids at home all day with people who probably don't have gun safes. I just keep thinking about what are the repercussions of this sort of moment where everyone is fearful. So yeah, I think you're spot on. Are your colleagues and sort of, are they adjusting to remote work? Are you hearing anything from them and sort of practically how is certain a setup to work remote for the near future, for the longterm future?

Javier Torres:

It has been a mixed bag. I have to be honest, I have peers who've lost friends this past weekend. I have a peer that just lost their father to COVID this morning. There are folks on various teams that have been living with family to save money and now are in a position where they're trying to figure out, do I have enough bandwidth so that I can work all day on my wifi. There are folks that are in lower positions, roles inside of the foundation have limited minutes, but they're expected to be on their phone all day making phone calls. So I'm grateful that the foundation created a new homeworking reimbursement policy and allocated a sizable amount of dollars per each employee, whether they were part time or full time, didn't matter. Everybody got to purchase the things that they needed, so I was able to get a mouse, a keyboard.

Javier Torres:

I bought this amazing pad for my floor so that I'm not sitting in a chair all day and my legs don't get tired, an extra monitor for my laptop so that we can try and be as ergonomic as possible and so some folks are increasing their bandwidth on their wifi. Some folks are able to increase their minutes on their cell phone and I think that's been helpful, but I've personally just been encouraging folks that we need to give each other grace. If that means you can't work a five day work week, then fine, let's restructure and don't work a five day work week. If that means that these eight to 10 hour days are too long and you need to start later or end earlier, then we just need to figure that out. The first thing that the foundation did was to create a policy of unlimited sick days that we just needed to register them, but that they would not be deducted from our accumulated sick days based on our benefit packages.

Lauren Ruffin:

That's great.

Javier Torres:

So I've been reminding folks, sick days can be mental health days, sick days can be emotional wellbeing days. You don't need to be going to the doctor or taking care of somebody who is coughing up a lung. You just actually need to think about your whole humanity. And so we've been trying to hold it together with that. One of my teammates is trying to move, was supposed to move on April 1st and there are lots of restrictions about how and when that can happen now in a place like New York City and trying to figure out how we get her into a safer, quieter space where she can both take care of work and take care of herself. But those are just the realities of this changing world. I've been reading articles about folks that are stuck inside now in physically abusive relationships.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh I know, yeah.

Javier Torres:

While that I know of, that's not happening inside of the Surdna Foundation staff, but it's real. We just never know what people's living conditions are and we make assumptions about the fact that just because they work at a high powered institution that their lives are okay, but these are humans with real problems that are, we're all just trying to do the best that we can do. So it's a little bit of just emotional support, some financial support and then providing as much flexibility as possible. One of the other conversations that came up recently in our, we have weekly staff meetings now where we try to bring everybody together, was the real question of there were lots of plans that we had going on before this all started. And so folks were trying to keep those plans on track and do all this other work and somebody finally rang the bell to say maybe we just press pause on anything that we were planning in advance unless it actually addresses the current moment and needs of human beings, which I appreciate and now is an evolving discussion at Surdna.

Lauren Ruffin:

I think that's really smart. One of the conversations that I can't remember if we were talking about it internally at [inaudible 00:21:27] or it popped up on the live stream last week was everyone is sort of issuing laptops to employees and in large cities in particular you have a lot of folks who are living with unrelated roommates and so there's been a rash of laptop theft that's happening, like sort of living with someone who's going to steal. Sometimes the technology actually creates an unsafe environment for folks so I think it's great that we're having that conversation as an organization because we just think about take a whole laptop, this is great, doing you a favor and it's actually not doing someone a favor at all.

Javier Torres:

Absolutely. Yeah. I think most so many of us, and that's one of the fundamental problems is that we don't think holistically about how we're caring for people. We sometimes fall into this idea of, oh well we have so we can offer something that will fundamentally improve somebody's life, but we don't always think about the negative externalities. And it's part of what I admire about the work that the two of you have always done and that I think Surdna really tries to do is to ask the folks that are going to be most impacted by this whether or not it's a good idea before we pull the trigger on something. Is this what you actually need? Otherwise maybe we shouldn't do it.

Lauren Ruffin:

Switching gears a little bit to ask you to put on your GIA Board Member hat, what are you hearing from the field at large and sort of how's GIA thinking about, you have a conference coming up in the fall that I saw. We've extended the deadline for proposals and that sort of thing. So I think sort of my penultimate question, gatherings, which is the thing that GIA does. How is the board, how is an organization approaching gathering right now?

Javier Torres:

The bio that I sent you, as I mentioned, is outdated. So I haven't been a board member for GIA for about a year and a half, but it needs to be updated. But I am the co-chair for this year's conference. So the question is still totally relevant. No, I mean I think what I'm hearing nationally is that everyone's just trying to figure out, there are folks that are worried about the big institutions that generate a good amount of earned revenue and especially the mid and smalls that rely on that. I think some of the more critical thinkers are recognizing that any impact that we're seeing on organizations is exacerbated when you get down to the humans, whether it's the staff or the contract workers that were hired for those performances. If the foundations aren't given the flexibility for payments to be made, whether or not the events happen. And those are some of the sort of transitions that we need go through that we need to think through is that while we fund it for a certain amount of engagement, the reality is people just need to get paid and we need to forgive.

Javier Torres:

And so I have been letting folks know, wherever possible, just like GIA, things are moving to virtual. So in a couple of weeks I am doing a webinar on new economy for artists with Angie Kim and with Dr. Jeffreen Hayes from Threewalls Gallery in Chicago organized by GIA to really think about what are the four thinking ideas for the infrastructure that artists need to be able to capitalize on their contributions to society. So I'm excited for Angie and Jeffreen and to be able to have that conversation because I think there are two of the foremost thinkers along those lines. Recognizing what appropriate support actually looks like. From an event perspective, we've already raised as a committee whether we should be continued planning for GIA. Some folks when the deadline got extended by two weeks, were like, why bother? This isn't going to work out. And the reality is that contracts were signed for hotels, so until the hotel says that they won't be legally open, we kind of have to keep planning at least through labor day for a November event until we have a better sense of what's going to happen.

Javier Torres:

The good news is that the theme that was selected for the conference is still relevant. There are lots of conversations about do we move the convening to the springtime in the case that the hotel will let us out of the contract, they'll be happy to have us on another date. So that's a whole operational question too about a shift in programming that impacts the staff and impacts other conferences that people might have anticipated they'd be participating in in the spring because this is typically happening in the fall. Beyond that, there have been conversations about does the full conference move to virtual? Many of us just think it's unrealistic. Allied Media Conference just announced that they're moving their full conference to being virtual after not having done one last year for their Chrysalis year as they thought about the next generation or iteration of their organization and how it would support the field.

Javier Torres:

I believe in that community figuring out how they're going to do that well because they've historically been great at re-imagining the way that people connect around important conversations or conversations that are important to them. And I have great skepticism about this kind of engagement, effectively replacing our ability to do certain things, learn certain things, and have authentic conversations. So I don't know. I mean, we're moving forward and trying to continue to provide content, whether that's in written form, whether that's a webinar or a virtual conversation. There have been national conference calls for funders to come together to organize, collaborate, coordinate. And so all of that's happening. Just like you were asking about the, I don't know if you asked before or after we started the official stream about the $75 million fund that's been created to support individual artists that's being led by Creative Capital and USA artists, which I think is exciting and great and fantastic.

Javier Torres:

But the other conversation that's being had is do those two organizations actually get the money to those that are most in need? Are they supporting the radical cultural organizer in the South? Do they recognize them within their criteria? And if not, does there needs to be another entity with a whole other fund that it's going to support. So I know there's been conversation about the participants in the Intercultural Leadership Institute that include the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, PA'I Foundation, First Peoples Fund and Alternate Roots to have a complimentary fund that would support those artists that wouldn't typically be eligible for a creative capital or us artists award.

Javier Torres:

So I think it runs the gamut. Again, I don't think anybody really knows what they're doing. As is the case for most of us as adults, we think that we're supposed to have the answers, but most of us are making it up as we go. Some people are just more comfortable trusting their instincts and speaking up than others. Some people like to move really quickly and others are going to be slow and measured in trying to take in as much information as possible and coming up with a more strategic or informed decision. I don't know if I actually got to your question.

Lauren Ruffin:

No, you absolutely did.

Tim Cynova:

Well, and I think that was a great way to end our episode Javier. Thank you so much for being with us today. I've enjoyed riding along with your conversation. It's one of those things where I'm like, wow, this is fascinating. Wait I should be asking some questions.

Lauren Ruffin:

Sorry. I was a Jabberwocky.

Tim Cynova:

No, this is great. Thank you so much for being on the show today.

Javier Torres:

Thank you. Really great to see you both. Stay safe.

Tim Cynova:

Continue the Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE adventure with us on our next episode when we're joined by Deborah Cullinan, Chief Executive Officer of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Miss us in the meantime, you can download more Work. Shouldn't. Suck. episodes from your favorite podcasting platform of choice and rewatch Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE episodes over on workshouldntsuck.co. If you've enjoyed the conversation or are just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review in iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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Live with Aaron Dworkin! (EP.18)

Last Updated

April 7, 2020

Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Aaron Dworkin, Social Entrepreneur, Artist, Philanthropist, & Professor of Arts Leadership & Entrepreneurship. [Live show recorded: April 6, 2020.]

Guest: Aaron Dworkin

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guest

AARON DWORKIN Named a 2005 MacArthur Fellow, President Obama’s first appointment to the National Council on the Arts and Governor Snyder’s appointment to the Michigan Council for Arts & Cultural Affairs, Aaron P. Dworkin served as dean of the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD), which is ranked among the top performing arts schools in the nation. He is currently a tenured full professor of arts leadership and entrepreneurship at SMTD as well as serving as a Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. In addition, Aaron is a successful social entrepreneur having founded The Sphinx Organization, the leading arts organization with the mission of transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts. He is also co-founder of SonoGrub.com, a weekly blog pairing great food and music. As a best-selling writer, Aaron has authored The Entrepreneurial Artist: Lessons from Highly Successful Creatives published by Rowman & Littlefield, a science-fiction novel, Ethos: Rise of Malcolm published by MorganJames, as well as his memoir titled Uncommon Rhythm: A Black, White, Jewish, Jehovah's Witness, Irish Catholic Adoptee's Journey to Leadership released through Aquarius Press, a poetry collection, They Said I Wasn’t Really Black, and a children’s book The 1st Adventure of Chilli Pepperz.

A lifelong musician, Aaron is a prominent spoken-word performing artist represented by Cadenza Artists. He has collaborated with a breadth of artists including Yo-Yo Ma, Damien Sneed, Anna Deveare Smith, Damian Woetzel, Lil Buck and others. His visual digital art project, Fractured History, has been exhibited at multiple galleries and museums to rave reviews. He recorded and produced two CDs, entitled Ebony Rhythm and Bar-Talk, in addition to writing, producing, and directing the independent film Deliberation.

A multi-media performing artist, author, social entrepreneur, artist-citizen, and educator, Aaron continually receives extensive national recognition for his leadership and service to communities. He has been featured in numerous media outlets, and was named one of Newsweek’s “15 People Who Make America Great.” He is the recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society Honorary Membership, Harvard University’s Vosgerchian Teaching Award, National Governors Association 2005 Distinguished Service to State Government Award, Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award, Detroit News’s 2003 Michiganian of the Year Award, Crain’s 40 Under 40 and Who’s Who Awards, BET’s History Makers in the Making Award, AT&T Excellence in Education Award, and National Black MBA’s Entrepreneur of The Year.

As an artist curator, he has served as a juror for some of the most prestigious international competitions including the Menuhin Competition, London Music Masters Competition, Stulberg International Violin Competition and the Sphinx Competition. A sought-after global thought leader and a passionate advocate for excellence in arts education, entrepreneurship and leadership, as well as inclusion in the performing arts, Aaron is a frequent keynote speaker and lecturer at numerous national and global arts, creativity and technology conferences. He served as commencement speaker at the Curtis Institute of Music, University of Michigan, Longy Conservatory and twice for Bowling Green State University. In May of 2013, the renowned Curtis Institute of Music awarded Honorary Doctorates to Aaron and Sir Simon Rattle, longtime maestro of the Berlin Philharmonic. Aaron also holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in violin performance from the University of Michigan.

Aaron personifies arts leadership, entrepreneurship and community commitment with an unwavering passion for the arts, diversity and their role in society. He serves regularly as a board or advisory member for numerous influential arts organizations including the National Council on the Arts and Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. As the co-chair of the Arts and Cultural Education Task Force for the State of Michigan, Aaron designed the required arts curriculum for Michigan schools.

Aaron has strong interests in politics, innovation, creativity, human pair bonding and issues of economic and social justice. In addition to various genres of music and disciplines of the performing arts, he enjoys travel, movies, and the culinary arts. He is married to Afa Sadykhly Dworkin, a prominent international arts leader who serves as President and Artistic Director of the Sphinx Organization and has two awesome sons, Noah Still and Amani Jaise. Find more at aarondworkin.com.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck Live the morning-ish show. On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Aaron Dworkin. Social entrepreneur, performing artists, philanthropist, professor of arts leadership and entrepreneurship at the University of Michigan.

Tim Cynova:

Aaron is the founder and former president of the Sphinx Organization. A leading arts organization with the mission of transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts. He was named a 2005 MacArthur Fellow. He was President Obama's first appointment to the National Council on the Arts. He's a published author and his book, The Entrepreneurial Artist: Lessons from Highly Successful Creatives, is now available on Audible. SonoGrub.com, the site he runs with his wife Afa, pairs great food and great music. It makes me hungry every time they publish a new piece. Without further ado, Aaron, welcome to the show.

Aaron Dworkin:

It's great to be here. Thanks so much.

Lauren Ruffin:

Aaron, can you talk to us a little bit about how are you doing? We were talking in the green room about how our lives have been radically changed in a month. How are you doing?

Aaron Dworkin:

I'm doing great. I think probably one of the key things that I would share is just literally every day I wake up and fall asleep with appreciation. There are so many people, not just in our own community and society who are suffering. Either those who are suffering directly from the health impacts of what's going on, to those who have really significant financial impact that they're already experiencing.

Aaron Dworkin:

To be able to continue the work that I do and to be able to be healthy at this point, is just something that fills me with great appreciation. I'd say over more than anything else, I'm doing great and in the midst of that feeling great appreciation.

Lauren Ruffin:

Fantastic. I'm glad to hear that. Over the weekend, sort of the story that's starting to trend is that black and brown communities are being hit much harder. I think they were saying 70% of the deaths in Chicago were African American. It's looking like Detroit, Michigan might be another sort of epicenter. Are you starting to see these things in your community? If so, can you give us some of your thoughts about how we might be able to combat that or talk about it? Sort of wrap our brains around another sort of racial injustice that's happening right in front of our eyes.

Aaron Dworkin:

It's one of these things that I think is so insidious in our society and that's because it's actually complex. Number one, yes, absolutely. We're experiencing it. We're experiencing it in Detroit. We're experiencing in Washtenaw County specifically. Where I live here, over 50% of those who are impacted by the virus are African American even though we're 12% of a population. Obviously in Detroit, all of our communities that are hardest hit are those that are predominantly African American and those communities and neighborhoods that have the least resources.

Aaron Dworkin:

One of the things is that it would be so easy if there was kind of an evil boogeyman out there and they are just causing the virus to affect black people. We could be like, okay, that's to blame and we can just solve it that way, but the problem is, is that all of these things that already existed. All of these injustices, disparities that already existed in our society just contributes.

Aaron Dworkin:

When something happens when our society experiences challenges, the burden is [inaudible 00:03:32] on those who are in underserved communities or who have less resources. We're seeing that reflected through this pandemic and because it's so profound, it is truly, truly tragic.

Aaron Dworkin:

If we look at the disparities of access to healthcare, number one. If we look at simply the way in which we work and those who are in so many frontline employment positions in our communities don't have the opportunity to social distance the way that someone who might be a college professor. Again, I talk about that appreciation.

Aaron Dworkin:

I am extraordinarily lucky that my main job enables me to pretty much relatively easily work from home, but for the vast majority of people, especially people of color, it's not such an easy option. Then sometimes you're faced with, do I just not make money? Do I put myself at risk? If I put myself at risk, do I go home and then risk my family? All of these types of decisions are just harder and the burden is heavier for those who have the least in our society.

Aaron Dworkin:

That is kind of like, okay, so this really is terrible and challenging, so what can we do about it? One, I think first, obviously me and our family, we're trying to identify where is the need greatest. Especially in our local community and how can we just directly help out whether financially or in other ways. A lot of people are trying to find ways to help out in their communities. Make masks or other things for those who may not have, et cetera. We can delve into it our local shelter association is having extraordinarily challenging times. That's been one area where we've tried to at least help a little bit.

Aaron Dworkin:

Then also, I think it's looking and saying as we move forward from this and before we're too far removed, where the acuteness of the impact of what's happening has faded, which I think for human beings we tend to have it fade pretty quick. Before that fades, can we look and develop policies that will be protective for the longterm so that the next challenge that we face, because there will be one, can it be not as deeply borne by those who have less?

Tim Cynova:

Several years ago, when you were still at the Sphinx Organization, we were hosting a panel during the Sphinx Con and you talked about how the Sphinx Organization used ROWE or Results Only Work Environment and what that looked like at Sphinx. It's been several years since then. You've been the dean at the University of Michigan. You're on faculty now. You're working from the Sphinx Organization to massive institution. There's been several years.

Tim Cynova:

Can you unpack, sort of what ROWE is to begin with and then how maybe your thinking has changed or how it plays out in these different size and different organizations? At the same time that right now, University of Michigan, I work at the new school, Laura works at NYU. Massive institutions are quickly trying to figure out how you put this thing online? That was never meant to be done in 24 hours. Flipped over. So I'm really fascinated by how this all sort of stitches together for you?

Aaron Dworkin:

Well, it's really interesting because you're exactly right. All of these institutions and organizations have had to adjust in a 24 hour period all of a sudden shift. One of the things that I always teach my students in entrepreneurship and arts leadership, is I said, "Instead of letting life happen to you, happen to life. Be intentional. Architect the trajectory of your life instead of letting it just happen and cobbling together things. For example, cobbling together a portfolio life rather than intentionally building it like you might build a financial portfolio."

Aaron Dworkin:

Years ago, Sphinx very intentionally built a work setting that I think has made the organization incredibly resilient in times of change such as this. Years ago we instituted ROWE, which is a Results Only Work Environment. This was originally founded at Best Buy and then spun off as a separate company Culture [RS 00:07:35].

Aaron Dworkin:

The main gist of it we could spend shows on it, is that the primary priority of an organization is results, results only. All of a sudden, once you begin to focus on what are the goals for a particular position? All of these other things that in historically we've tended to notice or pay attention to, don't matter.

Aaron Dworkin:

For example, are you in the office? If all of [inaudible 00:08:03] versus your results, for example, at Sphinx. If you can get your work done on a beach in Tahiti, what does Sphinx care if the impact, for example, on young people and providing them access and instruction on a classical instrument is happening in the most effective and efficient and impactful way, how that work gets done doesn't matter.

Aaron Dworkin:

Part of the components of this is that there are no standard working hours, which means no one's required to be in the office at any particular time. Any day you might wander into Sphinxes offices and there might be one person or there might be 10 people and you just wouldn't know. Some people would be in the office maybe once every couple of weeks and other people might be in six days a week just because of the nature of their goals, but most importantly how they would want to work.

Aaron Dworkin:

Some people, because of maybe their family circumstances want to be able to work at home. Some people want to be able to work from four in the morning until eight. Then take a couple hour break and then work from two until five, or some people don't want to get up in the morning and don't want to start work until 10 or 11:00. Then work until 3:00 in the morning. Whatever those circumstances are, a flexible work environment like that ends up maximizing productivity.

Aaron Dworkin:

One of the reason years ago Sphinx pulled this up and adopted it is because if you actually look at the data, you find that your teams are more productive, are happier, have a longer retention period, less turnover, et cetera and that is why that has now born out for Sphinx over the years.

Aaron Dworkin:

In terms of the current crisis that we're sitting in, there are so many organizations that I know that had to make a drastic change and of course had to do it all of a sudden. Weren't prepared and there was chaos, and a lot of stress, and a lot of mental health impact for teams as part of these organizations because of the stress of that immediate transition.

Aaron Dworkin:

For Sphinx, not much has actually changed internally. Externally obviously for example, Sphinxes summer programs Sphinx is dealing with how to transition those. However, because of the way that Sphinx works, all of its team members are fully engaged, fully operational. Right from the get go, any, even the most quote unquote juniors Sphinx is a very flat organization, but even the most junior if you will, team member who comes on is immediately issued with a smartphone, a tablet if they want one, and a laptop. So pretty much any Sphinx team member can do anything from anywhere.

Aaron Dworkin:

In terms of looking at those summer programs now, obviously some of which may need to go remote, they're working on those decisions at this point. Then how they do that, and how they think about teaching, and how we teach a student, and can that be done remotely? How to adopt or utilize the technology? Sphinx already has a lot of those skill sets. So that transition is happening relatively smoothly and it's happening thoughtfully and in a measured way rather than being very reactive.

Aaron Dworkin:

That's kind of how Sphinx has been able to adopt and again, I think the whole team at Sphinx is very appreciative that they're in that circumstance where they can be addressing it in that way.

Aaron Dworkin:

With the University of Michigan, it was interesting because a little over five years ago when I came in as dean, I was looking at a lot of these ways that a small entrepreneurial organization was working and saying, "Okay, this works at a $5 million annual budget organization. Now I'm moving into the School of Music Theater and Dance, which is pretty much a $60 million operation. Going from 40 to 50 full and part time employees to 180 faculty, 100 staff. It's 1100 students."

Aaron Dworkin:

A much different scale, but part of the reason that I was brought in was to bring those entrepreneurial ideas, but to see how thoughtfully they could be applied in a larger setting like that. Especially that setting in a larger multibillion dollar research university. Obviously, we couldn't just come in and snap my fingers and have the School of Music Theater and Dance operator as a ROWE.

Aaron Dworkin:

However, so many faculty in many ways already do operate in these ways. Really, most faculty members are themselves in a miniature entrepreneurial entity. When you think about their teaching, their professional activities, their service, and how that gets done. Now they have to interact with the other members of their department and all of that and the school as a whole.

Aaron Dworkin:

Anyway, we began to look at these things and I think what is interesting to me is that some of those ideas that we began to adopt, we began to look at, and we have in a few years, but some of that pushback that occurred wouldn't of course occur now. Some of those ideas that seemed far more radical, which was how about we take some of our staff and have them work more remotely? Or look at some of things and now of course they're like, "Maybe we'll keep that."

Aaron Dworkin:

It's interesting to see how the world can change in a month, but I do think that we helped move the institution, which is more of a ship than a little jet boat. I do think that we were able to change its direction and steer it so that now it's better equipped. For example, the whole department that didn't exist before. Then a lab which relates to entrepreneurship, career development, career empowerment, this idea, how are we preparing all of our students to be successful actually out in the world?

Aaron Dworkin:

So separate from the development of their discipline or their artistic craft. What about all those other skill sets that the modern world requires of them to apply that artistic talent and to engage in it in a meaningful way. A lot of those kind of guts of that have now been developed at the institution and are at play because potentially this department, which is the department in which I teach, was more prepared to operate in this environment.

Aaron Dworkin:

The webinars, the online access, some of the remote teaching, and sessions, and seminars already were in practice in such a way that the department and the lab have been able to do a lot of work that was already relatively prepared in terms of the capacity to do it.

Lauren Ruffin:

One, I have so many thoughts, my brain exploded a little bit. I'm curious about the transition from Sphinx to University of Michigan as a founder because so many founders personal identities are wrapped up in the founding.

Lauren Ruffin:

I'd love for you to talk a little bit about how long that transition took and how you approached it? Then ultimately it was really interesting even though you're no longer with Sphinx to hear you talk about how Sphinx is handling the transition to remote and sort of ROWE? How did that feel to you and how did you approach that transition?

Aaron Dworkin:

Well one of the things that I was very, very lucky that my successor, that our board went through a very deep dive and process to go through who had been the longtime executive director, former director of development, longtime artistic director of the organization [OFA 00:15:10] was my successor.

Aaron Dworkin:

As a founder it was very easy. Some founders I think feel great, worry, or concern that their organization won't continue to thrive. They worry about their successors ability. That simply was just not a factor for me. I knew that not only would the organization thrive, but that I thought it would potentially grow in ways that it might not have been able to under me.

Aaron Dworkin:

Founders we continue to lead the organization I was almost 20 years. Sometimes a shift, a change is something that can actually be good for an organization and give some new perspectives and new avenues that it can go through.

Aaron Dworkin:

Tim, you were actually talking about with Sphinx Con. That's one of the key things. When I stepped down from the organization, Sphinx Con as it was called, we were struggling to maybe bring in about 150 maybe shy of 200 people. Within just a couple of short years OFA had transitioned that to Sphinx Connect. Had broadened it and now has almost 1,000 people and has transformed as a conference. Would that have been able to occur under my continued leadership? Not so sure. I think I had some different ideas at the time.

Aaron Dworkin:

I had the luxury of not worrying as a founder about your life's work being in good hands. I think that's one key thing. Also, I was deeply dedicated and committed to this new role. I hadn't been looking to leave Sphinx, but when your alma mater calls and when you feel like you can make a difference and that there are either challenges or opportunities at an institution that you deeply love that you can have an impact on. That became my singular focus, which was how can I bring that?

Aaron Dworkin:

I think both the combination of a commitment to that new role, [inaudible 00:16:59] me a level of confidence about my beloved organization that I was transitioning from kind of let that actually happen very smoothly. Also, oddly enough, even though people think that a lot of founders have this, I didn't have kind of control issues. Whether it's the ... It's interesting. I have control issues over myself. I don't want other people to control me, but I don't have control issues over the institutions that I take part in. That includes even institutions or projects that I found or that I start.

Aaron Dworkin:

Ultimately whether you started something or you come in as a temporary steward, which is how I viewed my role at Michigan, which is also why I think that it was easy for me to step down and not invade or try and double question my successor as dean at Michigan. Is because we are all temporary stewards of the organizations that we leave.

Aaron Dworkin:

To think somehow that you're greater, that you have some more divine role that makes you more important than either the person who preceded you or the person who succeeds you, is just number one inaccurate because history will prove that wrong. Also I think it's just unhealthy. It makes us consumed with things that A, we probably don't have the power to change because we no longer sit in the seat and when you don't sit in the seat you don't have the power. Also, it can cause us, I think inadvertently sometimes, people to bring about a diminishing of an institution.

Aaron Dworkin:

Say you step out and down from a role and OFA makes a decision or the current dean of SMTD makes a decision that I don't like. If I somehow then go in and try and convince them otherwise or even worse, try and somehow convince others in the institution that their decisions are incorrect. It's irrelevant whether I'm right or not, I'm diminishing the institution from their current leader.

Aaron Dworkin:

I think A, it's a role that you just shouldn't have. I think it's kind of characteristic of ego that shows that what's more important to you is your own perspective of something rather than the institution that you actually say that you love. I can guarantee you there have been decisions OFA's made that Sphinx's or decisions that my successor at SMTD have made that I disagree with, but I do everything in my power to support and advocate. [Crosstalk 00:19:26].

Aaron Dworkin:

What I've found is that for the most part, almost without exception, their decisions were right. Even though in the moment I may have thought that they were wrong. In retrospect, I'm really glad I did everything I could to support them because it just helps to further both institutions.

Tim Cynova:

One decision someone made at Sphinx, I believe it was your last year when you're there. Was to extend an invitation to me to join at the Sphinx Medals of Excellence, which produced one of the most awesome and awkward experiences of my life. When you said, "It's Justice Ginsburg's birthday, let's all sing to her," and we spin around from where we were and I'm like four feet away from Justice Ginsburg here. I want to thank you for that.

Tim Cynova:

After a certainly awkwardness, it was an amazing experience. Both to be there and to honor the recipients of the Medals of Excellence, but I always assume I got on the invitation list because they're inviting like another Tim Cynova and I just showed up and no one said, "We didn't mean you," but that was a moment that, when my parents were still alive, after I quit playing trombone. I don't think they could tell you what I did in life, but showing them this, they're like, "He must be doing something well." So I want to thank you and your former Sphinx colleagues for providing me with that. A really amazing memory.

Aaron Dworkin:

Oh no, no, absolutely. Your role and your leadership in our community and our field has been so critical. Also vehicles such as the show are just tremendous, especially at these times where it gives people not just an opportunity to be informed about issues, but also to connect because really important.

Aaron Dworkin:

One thing I might just quickly add about that it's was an amazing experience and the medals which are celebrated. Justice Sotomayor is kind of presides and hosts that extraordinary event. One of the things that I always tell my students is they think about things. They think that things like that are somehow a different path. This is one of the reasons I bring in all these arts leaders to talk in an intimate, small format with my students. That those paths to leadership, those experiences that that's not just what someone else might be able to do, but that you can do it yourself.

Aaron Dworkin:

The way that that happened to come about was through literally, I just happened to be at a luncheon where I was seated next to Justice Sotomayor, but instead of having that be just this brief moment and an awe of someone who's one of these amazing leaders in our society and in history really. To then say, okay, to be prepared, to articulate, and advocate for at the time, obviously Sphinx and the work that Sphinx was doing and this issue, this mission. This movement that is so important in our field.

Aaron Dworkin:

To then be able to articulate it and from just that luncheon that then grew this idea and her engagement with it. Just say that any leaders, you can absolutely find yourself either at conferences or at concerts where you can get backstage and meet that particular artist, or at a conference meet that particular head of a foundation, or event and potentially even a Supreme Court Justice, but be prepared with those skillsets of how to articulate what your work is? What you believe in, what your mission is in life? And be able to articulate it to them in a way where they then have the opportunity to make a decision about whether to engage with you.

Aaron Dworkin:

That those are skillsets of leadership that you can develop, you can hone, and then bring into practice because none of us will ever do this work that we do on our own. For example, it's so clear. Five years now after having stepped down from my role and the organization, the mission, the movement, doing more than it's ever done. It wasn't me doing it. It is the collection of all of the artists, the teachers, the audiences, the musicians, the administrators, everyone combined doing this work. Your ability to bring others into the fold of a particular mission or a movement is what actually makes our work really powerful. Never the work of an individual.

Tim Cynova:

As we start to, and Lauren you get the last question, but I want to slide this one in here first. Aaron, your book, The Entrepreneurial Artist: Lessons From Highly Successful Creatives was just released in Audible format. So cool. If you haven't read it yet, it's now available in print and Audible. For those who haven't read it, what are some quick lessons maybe you included in there? Then we can pivot to Ruffin.

Aaron Dworkin:

What I wanted to do is actually almost exactly off of what I was just sharing, which is that we have these incredible entrepreneurial artist leaders in our community. what I wanted to do was to help take their stories and distill them into best practices.

Aaron Dworkin:

I actually went and interviewed all of these leading artists across a wide swath of disciplines. For example, for dance, Bill T. Jones, for theater Jeff Daniels, for musical theater, Lin Manuel Miranda. Marin Alsop for conducting, Midori for violin, et cetera. It runs across a broad swath. Winton Marseilles for jazz.

Aaron Dworkin:

I interviewed them and then share their stories from those interviews. Each of them has their own chapter and then through their stories I then actually outlined the key takeaways. The key artistic, creative entrepreneurial leadership takeaways and best practices. Then actually outline those at the end of each chapter. It both is a great kind of guide and tool for actual arts entrepreneurship, arts leadership, and arts leadership courses, but also just to settle in during quarantine and wrap yourself up in these extraordinary stories of these amazing people.

Lauren Ruffin:

I feel like I need to grab that and then incorporate it into my NYU course on entrepreneurship. I think all of my students should have read that this past semester.

Lauren Ruffin:

As we close, is there anything that's been top of mind for you that we haven't spoke about that you'd like to share with our audience?

Aaron Dworkin:

I think that it's although things are so difficult right now and some people are finding themselves in extraordinary challenging circumstances. That yes, we have to and the urgent priority is to address the now, but to also be thinking about the future. To be thinking about what are the longterm policies that we can potentially enact that will better help protect those in our society and in our communities who have access to the least?

Aaron Dworkin:

Also, I think in a pragmatic way to look at many of the changes that we've made out of a sense of urgency or emergency and say now that we were forced into these, which of these new practices and policies should we hold onto because they actually have value? Maybe we didn't try this particular remote learning or remote work because it just seemed wrong or because culturally our organization was resistant to it, but now that we've done it, we found that it saves us money, saves us time, increases our employee or team member productivity, and or their kind of happiness with work so that work doesn't suck. Be thinking about even in these times of challenge, how we can take advantage of some of these things that have occurred to actually create a better future.

Tim Cynova:

Aaron it's been wonderful spending the morning with you. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Aaron Dworkin:

Thanks so much. It was wonderful to be here with you. Take care.

Tim Cynova:

Continue the Work Shouldn't Suck Live adventure with us on our next episode. When we're joined by Javier Torres, director, thriving cultures at this Surdna Foundation. Miss us in the meantime, you can download more Work Shouldn't Suck episodes from your favorite podcasting platform of choice and re watch Work Shouldn't Suck Live episodes over on workshouldntsuck.co.

Tim Cynova:

If you've enjoyed the conversation or just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic and join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up, or five stars, or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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Live with Nina Simon! (EP.17)

Last Updated

April 2, 2020

Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Nina Simon, Spacemaker & CEO of OF/BY/FOR ALL. [Live show recorded: April 2, 2020.]

Guest: Nina Simon

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guest

NINA SIMON spend her days working on OF/BY/FOR ALL, a nonprofit she founded to make civic and cultural organizations of, by, and for everyone.

If you like to read, check out her best-selling books "The Participatory Museum" and "The Art of Relevance." Both are available for free online or you can buy them for your very own. You can also read hundreds of posts on the Museum 2.0 blog, which she authored from 2006-2019, and her recent essays on Medium.

If you are more of an audio-visual person, the two TEDx talks she gave on opening up museums and deepening relevance are linked from her website, NinaKSimon.com. as well as a short video from when she was named Santa Cruz County Woman of the Year.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi, I'm Tim Cynova, and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck live, the morning-ish show. On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Nina Simon. Nina is Spacemaker and CEO at OF/BY/FOR ALL, a nonprofit she founded to make civic and cultural organizations of, by, and for everyone. She has authored two bestselling books, The Participatory Museum and The Art of the Relevance as well as hundreds of posts on the museum 2.0 blog and on medium. She also delivered two popular TEDx talks on opening up museums and deepening relevance. According to her Twitter bio, tree houses are also in her repertoire. Without further ado, Nina, welcome to the show.

Nina Simon:

Thank you. It's great to be here.

Lauren Ruffin:

Fantastic. We definitely need to talk about tree houses at some point. I'm about to embark on my own journey in that realm, but first, how are you? How's your community doing?

Nina Simon:

I'm doing okay. I'm here in Santa Cruz, California. I actually live in community. I live in a community of 20 folks and seven little cabins off the grid in the mountains. Yes, we are stereotypical California hippies. My family is safe. My husband works in homelessness and housing, so both of us have felt called to step up both as parents to our first grader who's now homeschooling and also to our organizations. I feel fortunate to be in this space and also to be working with a team in my work who are safe and healthy and where we've been able to ensure that everybody has their jobs, has their salaries, has additional benefits at this time.

Lauren Ruffin:

More broadly, are there recurring issues and themes that are happening in conversations with your by, for members, colleagues right now?

Nina Simon:

Absolutely. Our organization works with cultural and civic organizations around the world. Just this Wednesday, we did a call with about 75 of our members in 12 different countries. That's librarians. It's museum folks. It's theater folks. It's parks folks, and so around the world, we're hearing and around these sectors we're hearing organizations are closed. People obviously are struggling. A lot of layoffs are happening, a lot of stress and suffering, but also, a lot of creativity and resilience.

Nina Simon:

I love one person who had actually just been laid off said to me, "I'm feeling creative. I'm feeling hungry, and I'm curious about what comes next." I've just been really stunned by the optimism and hope and possibility in this time.

Lauren Ruffin:

Great. How do you typically introduce of, by, for all and the work that you'll do?

Nina Simon:

We really exist to equip organizations to live up to their greatest visions of equitable public value. I feel like a lot of organizations before this crisis, but even more so now, have said, "We want our theater to be a place that is really in communication and in community with everybody around us. We want our library to be a place that's not just a resource for some, but a resource for all." Our name really comes from the recognition that a lot of organizations have been pretty strong at working on new services, programs, marketing to be for communities, but have not necessarily gotten as strong at being representative of those diverse communities and being co-creative by them.

Nina Simon:

So really, what we do is create and share tools around building that sense of representation, that sense of co-creation, that sense of real ownership of these spaces so that they become of highest civic and creative value to their whole communities. Concretely, what we do actually is we run a digital program called The Change Network where organizations join for a minimum of a year to go through a change process moving towards closer relationship with their communities, so really learning about the communities around them, selecting communities to focus on, going out and listening and learning from folks in those communities, and then building authentic relationships to spur policy and programmatic change to make the organization more open, more relevant, more valued.

Tim Cynova:

We have early question already for you that I think probably slides right in here. I'm curious about which type, size, discipline of organizations were early adopters of your work and which are coming around in this moment?

Nina Simon:

The irony is that when we first started up by for all, I had previously been the director of a museum that I was honored to take over really right at a point of crisis when it was just a week away from closing financially. We radically reinvented it with our community. When we started up by for all, there was a conversation about should we actually be working primarily with organizations that are in crisis. Is that a catalytic moment for reinvention, and particularly if you have a crisis of relevance, is it a catalytic moment to get curious about and get to know new communities?

Nina Simon:

We decided at the time, this is two years ago, it's too hard for us to find organizations that are in crisis. What's the Google ad for like, "Are you thinking of being an organization that is about to or might have just closed?" So we didn't go that path. It's funny that now, I've been really curious about who are the organizations that are newly open to reinvention. I think there actually are some surprises of who that might be. Indirect answer to Andrew's question, from the beginning, we saw organizations that were not typical by sector, size, or type or geography.

Nina Simon:

We really saw it attitudinal in terms of who felt eager to either lead change or who felt like they were already on a journey towards equity, but wanted to double down on it. De silo it, take it across their whole institution. Now, we're getting curious about, "Are we going to see more organizations that are in that reinvention place?" Even potentially, I think it's possible that some of the most historically conservative organizations, ones that we would have seen as very far from ready or eager to do the kind of work that we do, how many of them might quickly start to change their urgency and appetite for change.

Nina Simon:

I think there's a hugely optimistic part of me about that and also a hugely cynical part of me about it. So I'm really unsure what's going to happen.

Tim Cynova:

What's your thing about leadership and crisis, the roles of leaders wherever they find themselves in organizations? What's occupying your thoughts nowadays?

Nina Simon:

Our work is so oriented towards communities, so one of the things that I've been hearing from leaders is a real curiosity and uncertainty about which communities are most important to engage with at this time. Actually, my colleague Raquel Thompson, our head of program, she offered this framework that has been really useful for me in saying there are three different kinds of communities we think about. There are the existing communities who we were engaging before the crisis. There are newly vulnerable communities because of the crisis.

Nina Simon:

Then there also are the communities that we had been moving towards before the crisis, new communities of interest, maybe communities who had been disenfranchised or marginalized in our space previously who we had started making efforts towards. One thing I'm hearing from a lot of leaders is a lot of pressure to focus almost exclusively on their existing audiences. Make sure that people know they still exist, pump out digital content. I also hear from organizational leaders who are very community minded a real desire to do more around vulnerable communities but maybe not have the relationships yet, not sure what they can do.

Nina Simon:

The group I've been most curious about is this third group because I feel like the efforts we started to make before the crisis, whether they were around equity or around connecting with a particular community, I wonder if those are going to get lost. I was just talking to a colleague in Europe who was saying there, "It's basically the law that people on staff who are most recently hired are going to be the first ones to be laid off," and so if you had just started an equity or a community engagement initiative, those are the people who you're losing even as you need to do this work more.

Nina Simon:

I think that as leaders, I guess, I think about on the community side, how can you get clear with your board about how much resource allocation you're putting to these three different communities? What choices are you making based on it? Of course, I also feel, and I feel deeply as a leader myself, you've got to take care of your team and your own crew, both in terms of ensuring people to feel safe and secure, but also that that safety and security in salary and benefits and things like that allows them permission to be part of that creative thinking about what you might do for others.

Nina Simon:

Then the last thing I'd say about leadership, and I don't think we're quite there yet, but is as we start to imagine, how do we want to reopen? I think that there's an incredible leadership challenge and opportunity for leaders to say to themselves, "Gosh, we laid off 85% of our people. Are we going to bring those exact roles back online when we can, or are we going to recharge ourselves in a new direction? Are we going to hire people with the same competencies, or are we trying to exactly bring back those individuals, or are we trying to build in the new direction?"

Nina Simon:

Frankly, I think it's very painful right now to even imagine saying that we're going to permanently let go of those people we've just hopefully temporarily let go. On the other hand, I think there is a leadership challenge and question about where we want our organizations to go with our communities in the future and who are the people who can help us go there.

Tim Cynova:

I want to ask you about OF/BY/FOR ALL. You've set it up as a 100% remote organization. This is in the DNA of the structure, and so you've already set up systems and structures to connect as a distributed team. We often talk about how the tools are the easy thing. It was a relatively easy thing, Zoom and Slack and Google docs, but the really challenging thing is what I think a lot of people are finding out now. How do you connect as team members? How do you supervise teams when you can't see people?

Tim Cynova:

The classic, "If I can't see someone, how do I know they're working?" What have you found useful in your own work to connect as team members, as community when you're distributed around the country, around the world?

Nina Simon:

We're a staff of six in four different States, in three different time zones. I guess there are two things I'd say. One is that we chose this, which is very different than if it was foisted upon you. I used to run a museum with an open office, and there was nothing I love more than walking in, there being people everywhere, there being just hub of activity. I remember being super nervous when I moved to starting OF/BY/FOR ALL of like, "Oh, am I going to miss this?" I had time to prepare myself and to think about what that might look like.

Nina Simon:

So I just want to honor that there are so many people switching to this who did not choose it, and that usually as y'all probably do as well, when you're hiring somebody for an all remote organization, one of the questions you usually ask is, "How do you feel about working remote? Do you really want to do this?" It's considered a mode of work. It's not just going home to work, so honor that this is different when you choose it. One of the things that's different in that way, I've been interested hearing some of your other guests talk about how they're doing things like virtual happy hours with staffs during this time trying to stay connected, water-cooler time.

Nina Simon:

We've actually gone the opposite direction because for us as all remote team, one of the things we've always valued so much individually is maximal flexibility and having a trust-based. One of the things that makes remote work for us is having a very trust-based approach to an expectation about it's not at all based on when are you working, but it's based on what's on your docket. How are we accountable to each other? How do we know we're getting things done? How quickly are we responsive to each other? We've never had a sense of we're all in the office together at the same time.

Nina Simon:

Actually when this crisis started, as we were each talking about what we needed, one of the things we realized is we all needed actually a lot more flexibility and permission about when we work so that people could take care of kids, take care of community, do service, other kinds of things. So the irony as I've been hearing about water cooler talks and things like that is we're actually trying to do fewer all group meetings, still being very in touch with each other, but having a lot more permission around flexibility.

Nina Simon:

I guess to me, as you said, the tools are one thing, but to me, the fundamental thing is, "Can you shift to a more permissive, flexible approach? What does over communication and accountability look like when it's not about, "I see that you're working on that thing?" I think that there is a fundamentally different way to work if you want to do it with power. Now, if you want to say, "Hey, this is a patch for now," just like, "Look, I'm homeschooling my kid. I mean, my kid is technically going to first grade," but everybody knows there's a lot of people tweeting about like, "This is not homeschooling. This is emergency remote schooling."

Nina Simon:

I think that you also have to honor, "Are we switching to remote, or are we just trying to make this work and find some accommodations for ourselves at this time?"

Tim Cynova:

We have a busy chat today. I've been trying to listen. I've been trying to read. We have a theme with questions around community. That seems like a good way to go here, so I want to highlight a couple of things. Apologies if I missed someone or it's out of queue. How do we know if we're really connecting to our communities during this time when they aren't able to come in? Any suggestions for visitor surveys, studies, feedback during this time? There's another one. How does a OF/BY/FOR ALL define community?

Tim Cynova:

There's a conversation that continues to continue on what Keith said. How can we connect with our communities existing or new when the digital world is not always the solution to access and other reasons? Thanks all for the vibrant chat and [crosstalk 00:14:22].

Nina Simon:

The community is awesome. I love it. Let me start with the definition and then we'll shift. We define community as a group of people with something shared, and that could be something demographic. It could be something that is an affinity-based community. It could be something that is a deeply felt belief that shared. I think that one of the actually challenging but also beautiful things about a time when people aren't coming in the building is especially if you run a space, it's very easy to almost exclusively attend to the people who are walking in the door and to have a belief that they are the community.

Nina Simon:

Well, they are some communities. There are probably other communities who are never walking in your door. I think, actually now's a really great time if you have the mental capacity and bandwidth to do some community mapping of who really is in our community. Do we define that as our city, our county, our neighborhood, our world? Which of these sub-communities matter most to us? Is it that we really are focused on teens in our community? Are we really focused on single moms who are starting an entrepreneurial activity?

Nina Simon:

Are we interested in creative immigrants with a cultural and creative practice? I think that getting clear and specific about which communities matter to your organization and to the work that you do, a, is always a good thing to do, and then, b, it can allow you to get focus on who you want to spend time with and what that showing up might look like at this point. You're not going to invite them into your space. They're probably not going to invite them into theirs, but there are a lot of things you can still do to connect with community at this time.

Nina Simon:

First of all, I always say the most important step is to just call people,. Just as you all in the beginning asked how I'm doing, we've been suggesting to our partners like, "Hey, are you reaching out to that refugee welcome center that you've been working with?" Just to see how they're doing. Not to necessarily say, "Here's a long list of virtual resources we have for you," but just to say, "Hey, how's it going? How are things going for you," and to connect. I think that continuing to build relationships with humans is something we can all do right now.

Nina Simon:

Then also, getting clarity, sometimes when the doors are closed is the easiest time to get clarity on, "Wait, who does come here and participate, and who doesn't?" When we reopen these doors, who do we hope will be part of that, and how might we start to build relationships so that that could be possible? If you imagine being in a situation right now... I was talking to a guy yesterday who's in the midst of building an organization in Poland. It has never opened. It doesn't exist, and so he's still at that point of asking, "Who is this going to be for? Who am I building it with, and who will feel themselves reflected in this space?"

Nina Simon:

I mean, I think that if any of us took this moment to say, "If we were going to not just reopen but reinvent, who does this organization exist to serve, and who should we be in relationship with now to figure out how we might do that together?" To this question that came up about how can we connect when the digital world is not always a solution, absolutely. I've been talking to a lot of librarians who have been working for a long time with home bound folks around delivery and things like that. I think there are some beautiful things happening that are in real space.

Nina Simon:

I've seen institutions that are partnering with artists who they were already planning to commission, keeping that commission, but having it be something that is external to their buildings, so people who are on walks see it as opposed to something internal. There's a museum we work with in the Netherlands that is commissioning artists to create and to work with people on these massively participatory comfort art projects, where people are making things and sharing them. I think even these scavenger hunting things that are happening where people are putting objects in their windows and things like that, I think that there are many different forms of what touch looks.

Nina Simon:

Even the question of if you're going for long walks right now, where are you walking, and is this an opportunity for you to walk literally into a neighborhood or a space in a safe way that may introduce you to new ways of expression, new forms of culture? How do you start to break out of some of those previous patterns and use this as a opening and an opportunity to do that?

Lauren Ruffin:

Awesome. Tim, do you want to take any more questions from the chatter?

Tim Cynova:

There are a number of comments. It's all great. Sorry everyone, I've been trying to listen to Nina and read. That's why I'm having a co-host.

Lauren Ruffin:

I spent a lot of time in virtual space, and I'm a VR aficionado, and touching on two points you made, one about staff capabilities moving forward because I think that's a real one in particular because I've been a doomsday prophet around climate change. In the United States, everything's concentrated on the coast, and so I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how do we redefine spaces? How do you [inaudible 00:19:14] digital artists into the art sector at this time in particular since it looks like this is going to be the new normal for quite a while? Even if we do come out, poke our heads out, again, I think we should probably get accustomed to a while of us going back indoors.

Lauren Ruffin:

It's a long winded way of saying, "For those organizations that are considering a more permanent digital existence, are you seeing any organizations that are really thinking long term about having to live online and having to do deep work online?

Nina Simon:

Certainly do deep work online. I think that maybe since I'm such an in-person person or rather somebody who used to run a physical space, a museum and a plaza that was built to be a gathering place, I think one thing I've been thinking about related to what you're saying is, "How are we designing to meet the moment of where people are at at any given time?" So both emotionally in terms of if we're feeling fear, where is comfort, but also if we are alone, how does engagement look different than, for example, when they relax it to a point where we can be in small groups?

Nina Simon:

I think about I'm Jewish. In Judaism, you can go to a temple with maybe dozens, hundreds, thousands of people. You can have a chavurah group, which is a small group of people getting together to share community and share Judaism. You can also pray alone and work with books or digital resources to do that. I guess that I think about, "Oh, probably if I were running a temple right now, I'd be going hard on digital, but I'd also be going hard on the chavurah there, so I assume that before people will want to come sit in the temple with everybody, as soon as social distancing lessens a little bit and people can get together in small groups, they're going to want to do that."

Nina Simon:

So what is the way that we support? I think about all the evidence in the arts around over the last decades increased creative expression outside of institutions, digital and otherwise. So how do we think about, "Yes, I'm curious how the orchestras will come back, but I'm also curious how many garage bands are going to be open? How many knitting groups, who right now are making mat, are going to be sharing material and then they're going to be getting together?" I think that this question of which spaces do we occupy with how many people at what time is going to be really interesting.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, and which spaces become legitimate spaces now that haven't been in the past? What garage bands came [inaudible 00:21:41] legitimacy? I mean, I think that's really an interesting thought. Speaking of small groups, we were in our green room earlier. We were talking about shared leadership and peacetime wartime leaders. One of them get us back into that conversation, so I thought it was pretty juicy.

Nina Simon:

Well, so there are two things with leadership I really been thinking about right now. One is I became a museum director when I was a 29-year-old exhibit designer because it was a museum that was about to close, and I think the board was like... They were at a point where they were willing to take a risk. We always used to say, "What's the worst that could happen? We can close. It almost happened." There is that part of me that's like, "Wow, how many new EDs are going to come out of this who are going to be handed keys to crippled or closed organizations with a lot of leeway in what they might do?"

Nina Simon:

I'm super curious about that, but then also to what you were saying, one of the things I think is weird during this time and maybe not, I'm very curious about your perspective on it, is to mention my title is Spacemaker and CEO. I use the word Spacemaker really to remind myself that when I'm doing my job best, I'm making space for others to do their great work. It's not about the creative output I can do, but I do notice, and we sharing power is a big value in our organization. I noticed that at times of crisis, people actually who used to really want to share power maybe just want somebody to tell them, "Hey, here's what's going on, or here's what's happening next."

Nina Simon:

So I'm so curious since you're in a team of four co-leaders, whether you've also felt that impulse in this crisis of just like, "Could somebody just take charge," or if it's felt like that is not something you want to do?

Lauren Ruffin:

No.

Nina Simon:

No, [crosstalk 00:23:24].

Tim Cynova:

We've talked about this. I can't imagine... Well, I can actually imagine because I've run organizations as the single executive director. The burden that is often placed on a leader, the isolation that often exists in the best of times, and now everyone's looking to you in this uncertain environment with the world, with humanity, with the organization and the incredible and benefit to share this with three other people who fully get what's happening, it can be there for each other and share this burden, is invaluable.

Tim Cynova:

We have different conversations but the fact that we come together as a group of four people has been incredibly comforting and a great resource that... Again, I'm glad we did this before we got to this point because we had some time to figure it out, and it was not at all what we intended we're going to use this model for, but it's been hugely beneficial.

Lauren Ruffin:

I also think that we're fortunate that at least two of us are probably better wartime CEOs anyway. [inaudible 00:24:17] and I are definitely just decisive. Tim, I would probably put you as sort of you have a foot in either camp, but I think that helps that we can flip the personality and the makeup of our leadership team internally when we need to. I think that really, really helps.

Nina Simon:

That makes sense because there are very few who are great both peace time and wartime. I've been slowly working on a new book in process about inclusive leadership. I realized when this crisis started, wow, a lot of what I was writing about feels very challenged right now, and it just made me get more curious with my own team and myself about, "Okay, what does it mean to hold equity and inclusion really at all levels including in a leadership level during a crisis, and how do we make sure that whatever core values are, they're fully expressed in what we're doing?"

Lauren Ruffin:

Well, unfortunately, we are approaching the sadness of the 30 minute mark. Nina, before we close out, do you have anything that's top of mind or anything you'd like to leave our listeners with?

Nina Simon:

We're all experiencing this differently, and there's going to be a lot of suffering. I think that if you are in a place, whether for a day or a moment, where you can find hope, where you can find joy, where you can find a little bit of space to be creative and to dream about where you want to go and what you see being possible on the other side of this, I've just found that to be a very generative healing and energizing process. So I just really offer to encourage people to journal from the future. People are talking about documenting what's going on now.

Nina Simon:

Yes, that's important, but I've been writing stories really inspired by the emergent strategy. Adrian Marie Brown [inaudible 00:26:01] about science fiction. How can you write stories about the futures you want to build out of this, because a lot of people are talking about how the normal wasn't working? We don't want to go back to that. If we want to envision that we're going to go to something different, I think we have to start dreaming about what that is, and I've found when I have the time that doing that dreaming is a gift.

Tim Cynova:

Perfect. Nina, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Nina Simon:

Thank you. It's been my total pleasure.

Tim Cynova:

Continue the Work Shouldn't Suck live adventure with us on our next episodes when we're joined by Aaron Dworkin, Javier Torres, Deborah Cullinan, Christy Bolingbroke, and Mara Walker. Miss us in the meantime? You can download more Work Shouldn't Suck episodes from your favorite podcasting platform of choice, and re-watch Work Shouldn't Suck live episodes over on workshouldntsuck.co. If you've enjoyed the conversation or just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too.

Tim Cynova:

Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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Live with Laura Zabel! (EP.16)

Last Updated

April 5, 2020

Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Laura Zabel, Executive Director of Springboard for the Arts. [Live show recorded: April 1, 2020.]

Guest: Laura Zabel

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guest

LAURA ZABEL is the Executive Director of Springboard for the Arts, an economic and community development agency run by and for artists. Springboard provides programs that help artists make a living and a life, and programs that help communities connect to the creative power of artists. Springboard is a nationally recognized leader in artist-led community development, creative placemaking and cross-sector collaboration. Springboard’s work has been featured by the New York Times, PBS, Wall Street Journal, Stanford Social Innovation Review and The Guardian and directly impacts over 25,000 artists each year in their home state of Minnesota. Through their free toolkits, training and resources Springboard’s programs have been replicated in over 80 communities across the U.S. and internationally.

As Springboard’s executive director, Laura Zabel has been honored with numerous awards, including the YBCA 100, Gard Foundation Award of Excellence and the Bush Foundation Leadership Fellowship for her work with Springboard. Zabel is currently a Common Future Fellow and a creative placemaking policy fellow at Arizona State University.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi, I'm Tim Cynova, and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: the Morning(ish) Show. On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Laura Zabel. Laura is currently the executive director of Springboard for the Arts, an economic and community development agency run by and for artists. They're found online at springboardforthearts.org. She was recently, and deservedly, honored as part of the powerhouse YBCA 100 cohort, is currently a Common Future Fellow and a Creative Placemaking Fellow at Arizona State University, and has a deep love and expertise with shoes, which has been externally verified with one of the funniest LinkedIn recommendations I've ever read. Without further ado, Laura, welcome to the show.

Laura Zabel:

Good morning. I'm happy to be here. I feel some pressure now. Although it's nice, you can just all imagine what great shoes I have on.

Lauren Ruffin:

I can guarantee they're better than the shoes I have on. They might be bedroom slippers.

Laura Zabel:

It's like you're here with me. That's exactly what I'm wearing right now.

Lauren Ruffin:

So Laura, how are things going, and how is your community right now?

Laura Zabel:

As we all are, I think, trying to both sort of hold the idea and the gratitude for what is okay, which is that I am okay and my loved ones are okay. And the reality that our community and our communities are really, really struggling right now. It's been a really intense time, I don't need to tell anyone that, for everyone. And in particular for artists, which is Springboard's core constituency and core work. But yeah, I'm okay and I'm grateful for that this morning.

Lauren Ruffin:

Awesome. And can you share a little bit more for the folks who might not know, a bit more about Springboard for the Arts?

Laura Zabel:

So Springboard's based in Minnesota. I'm talking to you today from Minneapolis, that's where my home is. We have both an urban and a rural office. So our urban office is in the Twin Cities in St Paul. And then we have a rural office in Fergus Falls, which is a community about an hour east of Fargo, North Dakota, in west-central Minnesota.

Laura Zabel:

And we do our work from those two contexts, but we work across the whole state with artists here in Minnesota and also share resources and tools nationally. And our work is really all about helping artists make a living and a life. So we work with artists of all disciplines, all stages of their careers, around business skills, training and healthcare and other kinds of resource connection. And then we also make programs that are about how communities connect to artists and what a community gets back from a healthy artist community, engaging artists in big community engagement work or around big community challenges and opportunities. We think those two things belong together, that art and artists are like a natural resource that needs to be tended to and taken care of, and there needs to be infrastructure to support it. And then people also need to be able to plug in to that natural resource, and understand how it builds power and how they can access power from that resource.

Tim Cynova:

One of the amazing resources that Springboard has just put out is around the Personal Emergency Relief Fund, both your own work and a toolkit for other organizations. Can you talk a little bit more about that work?

Laura Zabel:

Yeah. So Springboard has had an emergency [inaudible 00:03:16] and it typically, in more normal days, supports artists who've had career-threatening emergencies. As you can imagine, those are by and large healthcare emergencies. But we also support artists who've experienced fire or theft after natural disaster. And we also run a Community Emergency Relief Fund that supports artists to do small projects, to respond to community emergencies like police violence or other threats, to immigration or other specific threats to their community, domestic violence, those kinds of things that are less about the personal emergency and more about an artist leading a response in their own community. And so about three weeks ago, when stuff started really being canceled all at once, we realized pretty fast that artists were going to be impacted really early and really severely in that.

Laura Zabel:

We all know the why behind that. Artists are by and large freelancers and contractors, and their work is really dependent on being in the same room with other people. I've been at Springboard 15 years, I never could have imagined that there would be a situation where the bottom would fall out so totally, and so suddenly, for people. You think about all the advice that we give to artists to have diverse income sources. Do school residencies and work in an elder care facility and do community based work and sell your work at markets or perform with a bunch of different companies or perform at events and just... It just all went to zero in about 24 hours here. So we opened up that Personal Emergency Relief Fund because we already had that tool. And we typically get between two and four applications to the fund every month.

Laura Zabel:

And as of yesterday we have over 800 in about two weeks. But I think one of the things I'm super-aware of and that I've been thinking about a lot is that this situation, it just reveals how fragile the ecosystem is for artists. How little net so many artists have. In a way that a lot of us, certainly you all at Fractured Atlas and Springboard and others, have been saying for years, that infrastructure for artists is important, that we need to build systems of support for artists. And I think we have a really terrible example of why that's important now. But I think, in terms of the Emergency Relief Fund, it's a really good example of why that infrastructure matters. Because we already had that system, because Springboard already existed here, we were able to deploy that resource and put it in practice really, really quickly to respond to that community need.

Laura Zabel:

Now we're fundraising for that fund, working our way through the applications. We've distributed about $175,000 in the last two weeks, $500 at a time. So that's put the staff into a situation that has required a lot of work and a lot of attention, and I'm super grateful to them. They've really stepped into this moment in an incredible way.

Lauren Ruffin:

How does that work? I mean one like from a managerial perspective, how do you quickly pivot? I'm assuming that giving out... Again, I had a math completely blank earlier today, I'm going to have another one, but 500 bucks at a time for $175,000 is a lot of work to do and track, and I'm assuming your staff has pretty much dropped everything else and is focusing 100% on doing that?

Laura Zabel:

Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

How do you navigate, practically and logistically, doing that?

Laura Zabel:

I think I've been sort of making this a joke lately, that our values were built for this moment, but our accounting system is not built for this moment. So we're having to navigate all of the practicalities and the system pieces of what it means to try and scale up our program that quickly, and especially when it involves distributing money. We're lucky to have an incredible business manager who is an artist himself, and so is really concerned with getting artists money and also is very good at making sure that we're not flagrantly breaking any rules, or making any giant mistakes. So I think one of the things that has served us well in this moment is that Springboard, culturally, is an organization that really values responsiveness. And I think a lot about what it means to be in response and able to be flexible and bend to what the moment needs, or what our constituents need. So I think part of what has sped us through that process of figuring out the systems is that we didn't have to have any of the conversations about whether we should do this.

Laura Zabel:

So we didn't need to take the time that it normally takes to decide. We just, I mean literally in about five minutes, another staff member and I said, "How much money do you think we could put in?" We walked over to a colleague's desk and said, "We're going to put 10,000 in today, let's open it up," and five minutes later it was live on the website. So that part, we are able to move through really quickly. And then I think that buys us a little bit of time to work out the system piece. So we've definitely had to scale that up. That's typically one staff member who runs that program, and we've gradually, over the last 14 plus days, increased that so that more and more staff members are working on the program, and she's able to train them in, my amazing colleague Nikki Hunt, who's both managing the program and training her colleagues to jump in and help.

Laura Zabel:

And we've learned some things too. We typically, because we value responsiveness so much, the typical way that the emergency relief fund works is that we have the maximum possible mechanisms for getting people the money. And because of both the scale of what we're dealing with now, but also some of the realities of the moment, we've had to pare down what those options are. Like for example, one of the options, that in a normal situation is quite popular, is I will you a gift card. But that means that someone has to go to Walgreens and buy a gift card. So we're not doing that right now.

Laura Zabel:

And we've also just tried to pare back and be a little more transparent with our community about which things work best for us. So one of the things we've done recently is just said, "A cheque or PayPal is what's easiest for us. If you need it another way we will figure it out. But what would be super helpful to us, and to the other artists in your community right now, is if one of these options could work for you because they're the easiest for us to manage."

Tim Cynova:

One of the ways that you just immediately responded to what was going on, and it made it into a recent podcast that Laura and I did when we talked about South by Southwest, was the principles for ethical cancellation. Within minutes, it seemed, that conferences were starting to be canceled and you and Springboard put out, like, "Here are some things to think about as you cancel conferences, and as you wrestle with whether you should cancel conferences." Can you break down some of those points a bit for people?

Laura Zabel:

I think we wrote that piece because we know it's human nature, right? When we're scared, when we're threatened, we're all worried about the economy, about what it means for our organizations and our businesses. And when we're in that fear place, we contract and try and grab onto whatever we have. And the people who usually end up losing in that scenario are the people who are the contractors, who are the folks who aren't on the paid staff. Those are the first people to lose out in that situation. And so pretty early on, I think we had a sense that, as it was becoming clearer and clearer that a lot of things are going to be canceled for a long time, and a lot of people are going to lose in that situation, we just wanted to help people, in that kind of fear moment, think about, "Okay, but how can I do this in line with my values, and what are the things that I might be able to put in place that help support my creative community in a different way?"

Laura Zabel:

Or, where are there opportunities to work with artists in new ways? So that piece has really practical stuff, like really asking folks to think about, if you've hired an artist for an event and they've already put in some work, trying to figure out how to compensate them for the work that's already gone into that, even if the actual event isn't going to happen.

Laura Zabel:

And also trying to help people think creatively about how might you pivot. There's a lot of new opportunity and interest in creating content, or online. So could you ask an artist to do something different for you? Could you ask them to make some graphics that you can use online, or could you contract with them for something that could happen in the future so they know that income will be there at some point? Just, I think, kind of challenging and trying to help people think through, when you're in that crisis mentality, how do you make sure you're making decisions that still are aligned with your values and are still supportive of your community? And don't allow yourself to just get in that mindset where you just pull everything back and hoard the resources that you have because you're worried about the future.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I was really grateful for that resource, mostly because I was talking about it and then I was like, "Oh, I'm going to have to write this thing." And then I finished that conversation and looked, and I was like, "Oh, Zabel got it." I was like, "It's done."

Laura Zabel:

I'm sure there's more things. I wrote that pretty quickly, and I think there's probably... I feel like the situation, we're learning stuff every day, so I think people probably have more ideas that we could add to it at this point. Which maybe we should do.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, South-by was really wild. I mean I was wearing, I was going to go with two hats on, a Fractured Atlas hat and then a Crux hat on and, I mean, the cancellation with no funds back... I can imagine... I'm pretty privileged, but the impact that an Airbnb, after the fact, setting March 15th as the date they would allow cancellations with refunds, to obviously allow for folks not to have to refund South-by, was [crosstalk 00:12:37]. So I'm so grateful for that resource. Oh, go on.

Laura Zabel:

Oh no, go, that's all right.

Tim Cynova:

This is going to be the rest of the episode, "No, no. You." [crosstalk 00:12:45] It's like we're on an [inaudible 00:12:47] call.

Laura Zabel:

I am from Minnesota, I do a lot of [crosstalk 00:12:50].

Lauren Ruffin:

Talk on the phone, remember those days? Do we want to get Diane in, with her question?

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. We have a question from a viewer: "If this pandemic is an opportunity to rebuild in a new way, what changes would you like to see in the sector, in addition to support systems for artists?"

Lauren Ruffin:

That's a great question from Diane. Always a smart question from Diane.

Laura Zabel:

One of the kind of bright spots in the world of support for artists right now, I think, is that we have seen so many folks stepping into this moment and wanting to create, particularly emergency relief funds for artists. So after we opened our fund, we started getting inquiries from people all over the country about how to do that. So one of Springboard's other practices is that we share everything that we do. So we, in the midst of trying to handle our own emergency relief fund, wrote a really quick guide for how it works, just to try and help give people a headstart. And we've seen just tons and tons of people pick that up and develop stuff on their own and make it relevant to their own community. That's a place where I'm drawing some optimism, that it does feel to me like there is a kind of emergent network all of a sudden, of people who recognize the need for support systems for artists and want to build them.

Laura Zabel:

And so one thing I'm really interested in is how we connect that group of people and stay connected, so that we can work on the what's next question. That there's this urgent emergency need, and then I think there's a mid-term need for what's next for artists, and then there's the bigger picture, like what might be built out of this. And I think I've had more conversations in the last two weeks about what, for lack of a better term, what a new WPA would look like, than anyone's ever been interested in having with me before. When I think there's some cause for optimism there, I think there will be, and should be, opportunities for artists be deployed in the kind of repair that will be needed. Both the economic repair and the repair of our social fabric and meaning-making. And I think if that can be combined with this new sense of will and momentum around systems, so that artists could actually be compensated and valued for that work, then I think there's a light there that I feel like really has some possibility.

Laura Zabel:

I guess I will temper that with saying that that's my most optimistic take on things. And then, sometimes... Well, like yesterday, I'll just explicitly say it, yesterday the WHO and the UN launched a call for art for this moment. And you have to submit completed work that will be judged by a panel unnamed panel, and you will receive no compensation. Just exposure. Which, particularly in this moment, I think exposure is a thing we can all agree is not what anyone needs. So I think that I want to stay in that optimistic place, but I also think it's important to acknowledge that that will take a lot of work, to undo our norms around how we value creative production, how we value meaning-making. And that these kinds of crises, if you aren't, and if we aren't collectively as a community, really intentional about what we rebuild, then they just reinforce existing systemic disparities.

Laura Zabel:

So, particularly artists of color and indigenous and native artists, artists in rural places, artists with disabilities, queer and trans artists. They're already more impacted than other folks because they're already dealing with the disparities that existed before the crisis, and a crisis just makes those things worse. So I think there's an opportunity to really think about how we rebuild, and in that idea of, if I'm just thinking about what my biggest wish is, isn't the idea of a new kind of workforce of artists that goes to work. I think it is about rebuilding from this crisis, but also addressing some of those big systemic disparities. Really thinking about how we rebuild in a way that is the future we want to see, versus just getting back to what we thought was normal a month ago.

Tim Cynova:

We have another viewer question: "Since there are so many areas of need in this moment, how do you and your team decide where and how to focus your energy and resources?" This is actually a two part question. The second part is, "Also, how do you decide what not to do?"

Lauren Ruffin:

That's a good question, Andrew.

Laura Zabel:

I think Springboard has a set of guiding principles that we really use and really, I think, are really internalized for all of us, and that guides a lot of our decision making. I think, just for me personally, I feel like one of the things that I care a lot is that, all the time, but in moments like this we lean into the practical. What is the thing that we can actually do right now? So for example, I would like to challenge everyone in our community to not do any more surveys. But think about, instead, what you could do. What resources you have to offer, how you might be able to get those to folks quickly, and maybe there's a way to collect data or to learn something through that process of doing. But I think in our sector, a lot of times the inclination is to want to study the problem first, or want to get some kind of outside validation.

Laura Zabel:

Springboard is, at its heart, a really practical organization. What we want to do is get help to people quickly. So for us, the Emergency Relief Fund was a really logical thing for us to lean into and it felt sort of intuitive. I think in terms of, then, the additional needs, I think a lot of our work in the last few weeks has been focused on how do we connect people to other resources. So we know the emergency relief fund is a thing we can do. That's in our core competency. But how do we reach out to lawyers, to the mental health practitioners, to folks who are working on housing and food, and be able to refer the people that we work with into those other systems, help them navigate those other systems, rather than us trying to develop all of that capacity in house.

Laura Zabel:

So rather than the whole team trying to become therapists in two weeks, which is a terrible idea, how do we find the therapists that are interested in working with the population that we work with, that we have some trust with and can refer people directly to those resources? So a lot of what I think we do, particularly in a crisis situation, is system navigation. In terms of how do we know what not to do... I don't know that we're always particularly good at that. I think part of how we decide what to do, or a part of what I think pushes us to do something, is if we feel like no one else is doing this right now. If there's any way that we can say, "Here's a resource that already exists, let's help people find that," then we're pretty much not interested in recreating that, just for the sake of having it in-house. But if there's a gap, then I feel like our kind of collective culture and inclination is to step to that gap and to try and figure it out.

Laura Zabel:

I think a challenge for us in this moment, and a challenge we've been working through as a staff and having some conversation around, is somebody said to me yesterday, "It's a marathon and a sprint." There is this urgency, and we can't ignore that and just sort of proceed at a pace that might've been normal before. But we're also, I think we're all aware the longer this goes on, that it's going to be a long haul and people are going to continue to need things. And so we do need to protect, just our human capacity, and try to share the load with each other and find ways to set some boundaries for ourselves and for the organization. So, completely honestly, that's not a thing we're particularly good.

Lauren Ruffin:

I don't know if you could tell that really resonated with me, around surveying. You're so right. I feel like there are people who think the world is a House episode, an episode of House, and actually sometimes the dent in someone's head was [crosstalk 00:21:03] trauma. It wasn't anything else. So it's an interesting time. But in that same vein, I'm curious, there's so much information coming out from the government right now, and so much money that's flowing to the government. And my personal worry is that artists and independent contractors and freelancers are going to think that $1,200 that's automatically going to be deposited into people's bank account is all they're qualified for. But there're these huge expansions of... You can actually access loans and emergency funding. Have you started to parse through that, and do you have any plans to roll anything out in terms of information that we can share with our audience, our members yet?

Laura Zabel:

Yeah, we're trying to really parse through that. I agree. I think I both really want people to be able to connect to the resources that they're eligible for, and a lot of really great advocacy went into making sure that, both at federal and state levels, that contractors and freelancers were included in those relief packages. Which I think is fantastic and work that is super-necessary in the arts, but in all kinds of other sectors too. And I think that's a place... Another learning that I think we can take from this moment is that, as artists, I think it's important for us to build solidarity with those other sectors, that sometimes our strongest allies are maybe outside of the arts, are other folks who are in those freelance and contract worker communities. And I have a healthy skepticism about just how those systems are going to work, and how well they might work for contractors and freelancers and particularly folks like artists and creative makers who have really irregular income streams, and aren't able to say, like, "Well, my contract was for $1,000 a month for a year. It was for this residency and these two shows."

Laura Zabel:

So I think we're working on trying to understand what's available, and that's a place where we're also trying to connect to some really great attorneys and folks who can read the minutia of the language a little more clearly. I think we're in this hard space right now where there's been this policy win of inclusion, but there aren't a lot of guidelines yet. So people are just waiting to see how those might roll out. And there's also state-specific resources, and I think that's another place that really points to how fragile it is to make your living as a contractor, that things like unemployment insurance are really important, or being able to take unemployment are really important, if you can make it to the application period. And as an example in the... We were able to gather some data from the first 500 people who applied to the Emergency Relief Fund, and we're able to say that 88% of them needed the money for basic needs and particularly to pay rent on April 1st, which is today.

Laura Zabel:

So there's this real gap between when the bottom fell out and when you might be able to get that $1,200 or see some money from unemployment. And I think we both have to solve for that gap and set people up to be able to navigate those systems in the long-term.

Tim Cynova:

"Laura, I will second these. So smart, so inspiring," from our friends who've been on online. I love that there's just a community who is online having a chat while we're doing this every morning. Also, there is a question that came through, one last question. Let's see. It's someone who is a fellow Minnesotan, [inaudible 00:24:17] Minnesota shoe question because shoes were mentioned earlier, so active listener: "How many Sven Clogs do you own?"

Laura Zabel:

So many. An embarrassing amount, is that an answer? One of my biggest professional goals is to somehow acquire a shoe sponsorship from Sven Clogs in Chisago City, Minnesota, it's a great handmade clog business. Some athletes want to have Nike. I would really like Sven Clogs to be my sponsor.

Tim Cynova:

And with that, Laura, we are out of time. I want to thank you so much for being on the show today.

Laura Zabel:

Thank you so much for having me. It's been great to be here.

Tim Cynova:

Lauren and I started this live stream in part as a way to socially connect with our friends and colleagues, even as we physically distance ourselves right now. To share some laughter and news with each other as we're spread around the world. Before we sign off, we wanted to take a moment to thank the healthcare professionals, the first responders, the scientists, the amazing humans who society depends on who can't simply work from home, and who put their lives at risk in service of others. They're our family members, our friends, our neighbors, and people we'll never meet. Thanks to each of them, and thanks to you. Stay safe, stay healthy, and for those of us who are able, please stay home. Continue the Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE adventure with us on our next episode, when we're joined by Nina Simon, Spacemaker and CEO of OF/BY/FOR ALL.

Tim Cynova:

Miss us in the meantime? You can download more Work. Shouldn't. Suck. episodes from your favorite podcasting platform of choice and re-watch Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE episodes over on workshouldntsuck.co. If you've enjoyed the conversation, or are just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review in iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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Live with Christine Bader! (EP.15)

Last Updated

April 2, 2020

Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Christine Bader, co-founder of The Life I Want. [Live show recorded: March 31, 2020.]

Guest: Christine Bader

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guest

CHRISTINE BADER is co-founder of The Life I Want, a storytelling project with Eva Dienel reimagining a future of work that works for all. She is a coach, facilitator, writer, consultant, and speaker whose sweet spot is the messy intersection of business and society.

Christine is the author of The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil (2014). From 2015-17 she was Director of Social Responsibility at Amazon, where she built a global team working to ensure respect for the rights of workers in Amazon supply chains and operations. From 2011-15 her posts included advisor to BSR and visiting scholar at Columbia University, where she co-taught human rights and business.

Christine's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, and numerous other publications. She has given talks to conferences, companies, and universities around the world, including a TED talk in July 2014.

After earning her MBA from Yale in 2000, Christine joined BP and proceeded to work in Indonesia, China, and the U.K., managing the social impacts of some of the company’s largest projects in the developing world. In 2006 she created a part-time pro bono role as advisor to the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Representative for business and human rights, a role she took up full-time in 2008 until the U.N. mandate ended in 2011.

Christine has also served as a corps member with City Year, a special assistant to the New York City Mayor’s Chief of Staff and Deputy Mayor, and a teaching fellow in community service at Phillips Academy Andover. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Christine was named to the 2012-13 class of the Donaldson Fellows Program, which recognizes Yale School of Management graduates “whose personal and professional accomplishments embody the school’s mission to educate leaders for business and society.”

Christine played squash and rugby at Amherst College and competed in the 2002 World Ultimate Frisbee Club Championships, but now finds her athletic glory running after her young twins. For 2018-19, she lived in Bali with her family as part of the Green School community. She now lives in McMinnville, Oregon, in the heart of wine country, continuing to search for community and a way of life that is sustainable in every dimension.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi. I'm Tim Cynova. And welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck Live. The morning-ish show. On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Christine Bader. Christine is the co-founder with Eva Dienel of The Life I Want, where they're examining the role of work in business in our society and lives. She's the author of When Girl Meets Oil: Evolution of a Corporate Idealist. Written following her roles and policy and planning at BP. She was the former Director of Social Responsibility at Amazon. Previously held roles at the United Nations and Columbia University working at the intersection of human rights and business. And is a fellow member of the Amy Wrzesniewski fan club. Without further ado, Christine, welcome to the show. All right, welcome to the show.

Christine Bader:

There we go. Thank you again for having me. Yay. Good morning.

Lauren Ruffin:

Good morning. So one of the questions that we've been opening up with our guests for yesterday when we did this was how are you? How are you? How's your community doing?

Christine Bader:

Oh well how are we doing? It's up and down. It's up and down. I'd say the last couple days have been tough. I've got seven year old twins here so my husband and I are managing the best we can. But the kids are missing school which is obviously a wonderful thing to be very grateful but it's a little rough.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Christine Bader:

I mean we're healthy and we're safe and all those things to be grateful but this is definitely a difficult time.

Lauren Ruffin:

And so, can you tell us a little bit about how you found yourself on this path? I watched your Ted Talk so I know. But I'd love for you to give us a quick intro into how you got to the place where you are at home all day with the kids and writing books and consulting?

Christine Bader:

Oh sure. Let's see. How far back should we go. Well, I'll go to 2015. I got the job on Amazon that on paper looked like the job I'd been working towards my whole career. I'd been working in corporate social responsibility. Working for BP, formerly British Petroleum. Writing that book that Tim, you kindly held out, and landed this job at Amazon.

Christine Bader:

And so my family, we packed up. My husband left his job in New York and we packed up our kids, moved to Seattle. And I took this job and it was great. It was fun to be in this really historic company and I got to build this amazing team. And then one day, just over a year and a half in, I got home to my husband and our kids who were four years old at the time and they were sitting on the couch reading as they often were when I got home from work, but they were reading to him.

Christine Bader:

And I thought, "When did you learn how to read?" And I wasn't working crazy hours, but just mentally, I wasn't as present as I wanted to be. And I had my kids when I was 40. I'm not having any more kids. And so I was never going to have another three year old or four year old or five year old. And I could see what my life was going to look like. And in some ways, it was like, well of course, why wouldn't I do that because my parents did that and everybody who I know does that. Meaning the work, kids, life juggle.

Christine Bader:

So it took me awhile to give myself permission to articulate that I didn't want to do that. And I didn't have to. So I left which was a hard decision, but I left in 2017. We hung out in Seattle for another year after that. And then decided to go on a much bigger adventure. So we packed up and heard about the school called The Green School in Bali which is all about sustainability so enrolled our kids there for the last school year. And we can talk more about that if you're interested.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, I'm fascinated.

Christine Bader:

Yeah. And then, landed back here because my husband is also an ex-corporate person and had been working on his photography so had really honed in on his love and appreciation of artisans practicing their craft. And so pitched to A to Z Wine Works, the largest wine producer here in Oregon to do a year in the life photo project.

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm very familiar with that Pinot Noir.

Christine Bader:

Very good. Excellent. So he's now their first artist in residence so he's documenting a year in the life of a vineyard.

Lauren Ruffin:

This is so ... I'm really excited. Okay. Tell us about Bali.

Christine Bader:

Yeah, Bali. Gosh. I had lived in Jakarta, in Indonesia's capital, in the year 2000, working for BP. And so I had these hazy, rosy, foggy memories of jetting off to Bali for the weekend with my crazy, ultimate Frisbee playing friends. And for these really fun partying weekends. And so I thought it'll be just like that.

Lauren Ruffin:

With my twin four year olds.

Christine Bader:

Exactly. And so somebody asked me the other day what advice I would have for people looking to do an adventure like that. And I would say first of all, stay the heck off of Instagram. It looks like oh it'll all be smoothies and swings. And we got there and I just forgot what it was like being in southeast Asia. We get in the car from airport and we pull out and we're surrounded by a swarm of motorbikes. Which I'd forgotten about, but my husband and my kids had never experienced. They were like what have we done.

Christine Bader:

So there was that. And then there were three big earthquakes in the first month that we were there which was physically and psychologically unsettling. And so I had just forgotten about all the risks of being there. The health risks of Dengue and Rabies and the lack of road safety and infrastructure and potable tap water and all the things that we take for granted. So I will say that it was the family adventure that we were looking for. And we learned how to live out of one suitcase each so that I have all these lessons and takeaways about consumption that we can more about. And just how little we need, right?

Christine Bader:

And being in this place and living in a village where we were surrounded by people who made much better use of what they have than we do here. And really live in a way that embodies community and spirituality and nature and all these things that it was really profound for us to experience.

Lauren Ruffin:

That's amazing. You've officially made me second guess my desire to ... I lived in Australia for a year and I really want to bring my wife and kids there. And now I'm like I don't know. Let me really go back and find these memories so see what this going to be like with 20 years later with two kids.

Christine Bader:

It'll be different.

Lauren Ruffin:

We're different. But we're going to have a thrill line for this conversation which is wine. The Barossa Valley of Australia, another great wine place.

Christine Bader:

Absolutely. And my writing partner, Eva, so part of her back story is that she left her job in San Francisco a couple of years ago to move to Australia with her Australian husband wine maker to run their family vineyard which they'd been putting together for 10 years.

Lauren Ruffin:

Amazing.

Christine Bader:

And ATR Wines and they've won some awards and they're in Australia and so she went from being a full time communications professional to doing freelance writing and being part of running this wine business and so she's building the life that she wants. And that's part of how we were inspired to launch this storytelling project because I've been on this journey to figure out what do I want to be when I grow up and what do I want my life to look like and how do I put those things together. So that's what The Life I Want is about.

Tim Cynova:

One of the pieces that Lauren and I discussed, or referenced in a earlier podcast episode that we did was the one where you interviewed Christopher Delacruz and wrote a piece called "Work Is the New Religion." And that concept has been on my mind for some time after reading your piece as I meditated on it and then the work of our friend, Amy Wrzesniewski around job career calling. Can you recap that piece for people who might not be familiar with it and give your thoughts on it several months on now?

Christine Bader:

Yeah, happy to. So when we launched this project, I put out a call on Facebook. Just a general call for people to share stories about people who were thinking about work differently. And a high school friend put me in tough with her pastor, Reverend Christopher Delacruz of First Presbyterian in Jamaica Queens. And I interviewed him because he's launching a coworking space for the young adults in his congregation. That they're calling 2030 Dream Hub.

Christine Bader:

And it seemed to dovetail nicely with all the statistic that we've all seen, drawing on research from that Atlantic article by Derek Thompson on work-ism. And research from the Pew Research Center and the Economic Policy Institute and the Public Religion Research Institute that 45% of US worker define themselves by their job or their employer. And the percentage of Americans who don't identify with any religion has tripled in the last 25 years. And it's now at about 25%. A third of Americans under the age of 30 have no religious affiliation. And we all know intuitively that working hours are up. Attendance at religious services is down.

Christine Bader:

So what the Reverend wanted to do is he got a grant from something called the Zoe Project. And it's a joint initiative of the Princeton Theological Seminary and the Lilly Endowment of churches reaching young adults in new ways. So he launched this coworking space and we had a fascinating conversation about the tensions that he's experiencing, right? Because he wants to help financially empower his community but he said, "How do we empower folks without idolizing the American narrative of work being the only source of meaning?"

Christine Bader:

So there's inherent tension in what he's doing which I found fascinating. So he's like okay. Well, I'm setting it up in the old parsonage house. And it's a house. So there are all these different rooms. And can we create one room that's just for meditation and reflection. And so that's what the piece was about. Just how ... Whether or not you live a religious or a spiritual life, how does that come into play? How does it fit with work?

Tim Cynova:

We have a question from one of our viewers. If work is our new religion, basically giving us ideas, do you have advice for people right now who are suddenly finding themselves underemployed and feeling a sudden loss of identity?

Christine Bader:

Oh gosh. The only piece of advice I always give people is never to follow anybody else's advice.

Lauren Ruffin:

Excellent advice.

Christine Bader:

Because nobody knows what you need to thrive. And that's part of why Eva and I are taking this approach of sharing stories, right? We're sharing other people's stories. We're not writing the 10 step manual to here's how to be happier at work and in life. And so, Diane, I guess all I would say is to look for examples out there right now and there's such good writing emerging right now of people being reflective and thoughtful. I assume these people don't have school age kids, but such good writing right now of people who are thinking about their identity exactly because of what you raise. And so, I think just look for other people's stories. I'm not going to give any trite advice on how other people should find meaning in their days because I'm having enough trouble with that right now.

Christine Bader:

But it really is about looking or other people's stories. And I think also now, fiction and great literature is also a really nice place to look.

Tim Cynova:

One of the things you wrestle with on The Life I Want. And it's something we've discussed in our own journey, our own wrestling with and you've talked with our Fractured Atlas colleagues Courtney Hart and Nicola Carpenter about this. This is privilege. And in particular, it's specifically white privilege. And when you think about crafting your work, crafting your life, this shows up so much in creating a life we want. And for me, these days, with a phrase that's been rallying around is privilege pandemic. And when we think about virtual work and remote work and who has the opportunity to do that or do you have a home office or do you have a kitchen table or do you have high speed internet access or are you borrowing from the building or do you have kids that you have to homeschool and take care of? And can you talk a little bit about your journey. You've written about it on the website for people who want to know more. But can you talk about this journey that you've been on?

Christine Bader:

I will say that Eva and I in this project are hell bent on making sure that this is not a story of privilege. That this is not ... It's not about everybody moving to Bali. Right? And one of the things that is our tenet, our foundational belief of this project that is actually underscored by this pandemic is that we can't thrive unless we all can thrive. And so it can't be about the work life balance conversation which tends to only occur above a certain income level and people who can drop 28.95 on a hardback or whatever.

Christine Bader:

That it's not about those people being able to be even happier. There has to be ... That our project is also about the collective. So right now Eva and I are thinking about this in terms of four pillars of how do we fix work. It is partly about our individual relationship with work and how do you think about that. But shifting your individual relationship with work and how you think about work will only help so much if you're working in a hostile environment. Which is why we're also looking at employers like you guys who are really on these journeys to be a truly equitable workplace.

Christine Bader:

We also want to look at communities. Like how are communities supporting each other? And that is obviously coming to the floor right now. How do communities in and outside of work support you in living the life that you want?

Christine Bader:

And then finally governments. What are the structural obstacles and that's like too obvious to even get into right now? So we're looking at them in these four pillars because again a lot of these books about being happier at work or just about be happier. Like change your attitude and it'll all be okay. So that's about the project. And I think as Eva and I are writing like any good authors, for us this is also personal and we are both acknowledging our privilege and the fact that we even have the time and luxury and energy to be able to take on doing this project.

Christine Bader:

And so, for me, my privilege is always about well how do I use that to serve? And I think also part of the lesson of being in Bali last year is also realizing like what is enough and that we have enough. We're not rolling in it. And the kids are going to have to pay their own way through college but we've got enough. And so that's part of what we hope to pick apart too is how do we think about people's individual relationships with work and money and power and then also layer on all these structural pieces of the very real obstacles of health care, cost of education, cost of child care and all those things.

Christine Bader:

So privilege is a theme that runs strong through this project and through every conversation that Eva and I have about how we're going about it.

Lauren Ruffin:

It's a pretty radical idea to even begin to think that work should make you happy. My father's attitude about work is work is the thing that sucks so bad it makes you appreciate the rest of life so much more. That's how I was raised, right? Work is terrible. But the purpose of it being terrible is that you can really appreciate play that much more.

Christine Bader:

Right.

Lauren Ruffin:

If all of life is fun ... And I mean that was my attitude about working. It's privilege. But it's actually subtly really freaking radical. As I was watching your Ted Talk, one you're living in a town called McMinnsville?

Christine Bader:

McMinville.

Lauren Ruffin:

McMinville. I grew up in a town called Woodstown. And I was thinking those towns with those basic names are probably pretty similar except now I know that there's a winery there. Although we have wineries in Woodstown now. Now the town I grew up in which was the town with the oldest rodeo in the United States is now New Jersey wine country.

Christine Bader:

New Jersey wine country?

Lauren Ruffin:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Christine Bader:

Bring it on.

Lauren Ruffin:

But as you're talking, I'm thinking about we still had vocational school and I grew up in the church. And I was always fascinated by vocational school and I wanted to take classes. I wanted to get my CDL and drive a truck across the country. My dad was like "Absolutely not, you're taking college prep courses." So I did and I'm like "Well, why do these kids get to have a vocation. Like being a plumber or a truck driver is a calling and college prep is just got to go do this thing that's slobbing through life."

Lauren Ruffin:

But as you were talking about the pastor who set up a coworking space, it strikes that there's a lot of synergy in that work. And in thinking about work as religion and who gets to think about work as religion and who gets to think about work as just slobbing through life.

Christine Bader:

I love the way you're putting that out there. Because I think part of my evolution in thinking about work, just in the past year since we launched the blog and have put out the call for stories and have gotten a lot back. In part, this project grew out of Eva and I having these really interesting discussions about fixed work or blank work. And because interested in all these stories about great employers and but part of me was like, "Man, I had my dream job. And it just didn't work."

Christine Bader:

And so for a while I was like, "Man, work just doesn't work. It just doesn't work." Right? But some of the interviews and the stories and picking up Stud Terkel's Working Again. That classic book interviews of people from actually almost 50 years ago now, right? I have come to realize that work is also how people find their place in the world. That's not all good because people are put in a place, right? And viewed a certain way by the work that they do. But it is how a lot of people figure out how am I of service to society? Where do I fit here?

Christine Bader:

And again, obviously, there's a dark side to that, but work is how a lot of us figure out our place in the world. I have moved off of that work is bad thing. And nobody should have to work and let's just pump up the universal basic income and nobody should have to work and people should just do what they want to do. But I get the value to work. And even in my own journey of I definitely went through this period of like I am not working again.

Christine Bader:

But now I get it. That again, there are skills and experiences that I have that I want to deploy to serve. And so now it's just figuring out well what does that look like? How do I piece together a life that enables me to do the things that I want to do? And tend to my family and have a sense of place and be active in my community and do all those things. It's more just how do I construct that is the question?

Tim Cynova:

Viewer question. Wonder if you're finding stories of people who prefer to or have to keep their identity/thriving/being separate from their compensated employment?

Christine Bader:

Yeah. This is such a good question. And I'm fascinated by it. I actually interviewed a couple yesterday that I hope I'll be able to profile in the blog in the coming months. And they're a married couple who work together. And they're doing a venture now and they talked about how they have completely different approaches to work. And so one of them is like somebody will criticize my company and I'm like, "Oh that's really interesting. How can I fix it? I'm so sorry you feel that way?" And the other partner is like "I just feel attacked. I just feel like somebody has punched me in the face if somebody criticizes my company."

Christine Bader:

I think it's such a good question and it is one that I struggle with. And one of the many topics that I look to our friend, Amy Wrzesniewski's work for because we see both sides of the good and bad of both. Part of why my last job didn't work out for me is that I couldn't leave it in the office. Even though I could. Like I left my laptop in the office and I didn't have calls at night and I didn't do work. But I couldn't mentally compartmentalize it.

Christine Bader:

And so part of me admires people who can do that. But then the other side of it is obvious, which is that if we're going to spend so much of our time and energy and our identity tied up in work, like it had better be something that's meaningful and that I care about. Finding both. And I'm not placing a value judgment on either. But I'm just curious about both because I've certainly had days where I'm like God, I would just love a job where I can just go and somebody will just tell me what to do for a couple hours a day. And I'm part of a structure within infrastructure and organization and processes. And part of me thinks that would be really nice for a little while. And then part of me knows that maybe it wouldn't.

Tim Cynova:

Another viewer question. How can people who are trying to find sanctity in their work or already do so counter the rising survivor's guilt they may feel in the current situation? How can this reframing help them?

Christine Bader:

Wow. That's heavy. Rising survivor's guilt. Well, you serve. I mean you give it all back and give till it hurts and volunteer if you can and give your money if you can't. That's what we're doing here. I know our food banks need volunteers. I'm not in a position to be able to do that. But we're giving as much money as we can to our local food bank and to our local shops and to our local independent store. And to the restaurants that are shutting down right now. And I don't know. I mean, again, this is one of those things where I'm not going to advise other people not knowing other people's situation but I don't know if you can have guilt about survival assuming that you're not doing it at the expense of others. Right? I don't.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Christine Bader:

I don't know. But I think that's going to be one of the questions that emerges. How do you serve? How do you be part of acknowledging what helped you thrive and survive and honor that?

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. So we've got a couple minutes left?

Lauren Ruffin:

I have more questions, but hopefully I'll get a chance in the future. Make the rest of folks out there jealous. But as we're wrapping, do you have anything that you feel like our audience should know or anything that's particularly pressing top of mind right now you want to share?

Christine Bader:

Oh gosh. I mean this time is just so ... Everything is up in the air, right? Everything's an unknown. And I just ... I mean I'm still an idealist and I'm still an optimist even with all of the privilege that I have. I'm finding this time incredibly difficult. So I guess my hope and my call is that as we all try to figure out how to rebuild that we do it in a different way and that we rethink every move, whether it's moving back towards going back into the office or spending the way that you used to. Or consuming the way that you used to. That each step back in is thoughtful and deliberate and in keeping with building the life that we want and the communities that we want and the societies that we want.

Tim Cynova:

Christine, thank you so much for being on the episode with us today. Absolutely wonderful to spend time with you. Continue the Work Shouldn't Suck live adventure with us when on our episode, we're joined by Laura Zabel, Executive Director of Springboard for the Arts. If you've enjoyed the conversation, or are just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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Live with Jamie Bennett! (EP.14)

Last Updated

April 2, 2020

Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Jamie Bennett, executive director of ArtPlace America. [Live show recorded: March 30, 2020.]

Guest: Jamie Bennett

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guest

JAMIE BENNETT is the executive director of ArtPlace America, a ten-year fund that supports artists working as allies in equitable community development.

ArtPlace has invested over $100 million to support projects in rural, suburban, tribal, and urban communities of all sizes across the United States, as well as in sharing knowledge from that work in ways that are both useful and actually used by practitioners. ArtPlace convenes and connects people who are committed to this work in order to help build a strong and ongoing field of practice.

Previously, Jamie was Chief of Staff and Director of Public Affairs at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he worked on the national rollouts of the "Our Town" grant program and of partnerships with the US Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development.

Before the NEA, Jamie was Chief of Staff at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, where he worked on partnerships with the NYC Departments for the Aging, of Education, and of Youth and Community Development.

Jamie has also provided strategic counsel at the Agnes Gund Foundation, served as chief of staff to the President of Columbia University, and worked in fundraising at The Museum of Modern Art, the New York Philharmonic, and Columbia College.

He currently lives, works, worships, and plays in Brooklyn, NY, and has been sober since 2009.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck Live, the morning-ish show. On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Jamie Bennett, currently the executive director of ArtPlace America. You might also know Jamie from some of his previous roles including such hits as the Chief of Staff of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Chief of Staff of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Chief of Staff to the President of Columbia University and the Chief of Staff for the Agnes Gund Foundation. Without further ado, Jamie, welcome to the show.

Jamie Bennett:

Good morning, Tim. Good morning, Lauren. How are you both?

Lauren Ruffin:

Good.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, we're doing well. So I have question for you to start out. How are you doing? Where are you? What's going on where you are?

Jamie Bennett:

Well, I'm okay actually. My partner lives in Toronto, Canada. And so about two and a half weeks ago he and I decided both that we wanted to be together for this and that it made a lot more sense to do that sort of north of the border. And so I've been up here in Toronto for about two and a half weeks, which means as of Friday I had self-quarantined for 14 days and blessedly many of the people that I'm closest with are surviving reasonably well. And so in this moment I'm just very grateful.

Tim Cynova:

So how has the team and organization doing at ArtPlace? How was it typically structured? Were people are able to work remote? Were you spread out already before this all started?

Jamie Bennett:

Yeah, so a couple of things that are worth noting sort of in this moment is that we were set up as a 10 year fund. So 2020, this year, is actually our last year for the mandate that we were given to do the work. So this has been a year of sort of culminating our work. And so it's an interesting moment for things to be sort of paused in this. We're 11 people and eight of us regularly show up to the same workplace. We're in a shared workspace, a WeWork workspace in downtown Brooklyn. And about two and a half weeks ago we went to sort of all remote. And so a little bit I've been describing it as Goldilocks and the Three Bears because each of our colleagues seems to either have too many people in their house or too few. Almost no one has just the right amount of people, but everyone is doing reasonably well.

Jamie Bennett:

And we made the decision last Tuesday to assume that we would be working remotely through Memorial Day. So asked everyone to sort of think about the headsets, additional screens, the kinds of hardware things that would make life more comfortable, assuming that everyone would be working from where they are for another eight weeks.

Lauren Ruffin:

Good deal. And so outside of your organization, what are you hearing from your grantees, your other partners? And if you're giving people sort of advice or nuggets of wisdom, not that any of us have anything especially illuminating say right now besides stay safe, what are you hearing and what are you saying to folks?

Jamie Bennett:

Yeah, so I'm trying to spend a lot more time listening than I am talking in this moment and that ArtPlace, our mission has been to sort of work around the country. And so we've worked with colleagues in Kivalina, Alaska, which is a 231 person [inaudible 00:03:20] community on sort of the Northwest coast of Alaska, all the way across to Miami and Puerto Rico and sort of all of the communities in between. And one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about, I'm in my 11th year of recovery, and I'm thinking a lot about this virus and that frame of addiction because addiction and the coronavirus both hit people indiscriminately, right? Both of them sort of touch on people regardless of our gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status. But our ability to rebound, to be resilient and to resist the impacts of those vary widely by all the kinds of housing, transportation, public health concerns that we've been working on for the last nine years.

Jamie Bennett:

And so one of the things I found myself saying to sort of friends and colleagues is as urgently as we worked for the past nine years to try and make communities more equitable, more healthy, more sustainable, all of those same problems that existed a month ago now exist 10 times, a hundred times, a thousand times more so. And I'm just sort of really thinking about however urgently we were working was just not urgently enough. And so thinking that there aren't a lot of new problems in this moment other than the economy, ha, ha, big other, but that many of those same things that folks had been working on for 40, 50, 60 years are still the things we're going to need to work on in this moment and beyond.

Jamie Bennett:

And there are a couple, bright spots is an odd phrase the use in this moment, but listening to colleagues from San Francisco where there's a chance that San Francisco might end homelessness in two weeks. Right. The problem that we had thought was uncrackable, all of a sudden they've been doing sort of modular housing and things like that and things that we thought were problems without solutions, not being able to provide homes for people who need them, is something we've been solving. So yeah, I think I'm just having all the emotions, all the feels and all the thoughts like all the people.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. So you've, and I actually didn't know this about you until I heard Tim's intro. You've had a whole bunch of chief of staff positions for really high profile leaders. What did you learn in these positions working with these individuals? Is that having an influence on how you're currently working and leading your organization and others, the field?

Jamie Bennett:

Yeah, I think so. I mean, what's been interesting is that chief of staff is one of those, not a made up title, but I think people use it very differently and mean different things when they use it. And so I've used that title to describe the work I did with Agnes Gund, who's an extraordinary individual philanthropist, when I was working for the commissioner of cultural affairs in New York City, when I was working for the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. And what was interesting in each of those cases is that I was sort of solidly a number two. I could give advice, I could sort of say on the one hand on the other hand, but I would sort of look to the CEO, to the leader, to the principle person to sort of make the decisions.

Jamie Bennett:

And I still remember the first week, two weeks when I was on the job at ArtPlace and I had sort of moved from that number two role into sort of being an executive director. I sort of laid out all of the pros and cons and then looked around for someone to sort of make the ultimate decision and realized all of a sudden that the [crosstalk 00:06:48] and I mean I had extraordinary colleagues at that point. Our colleague, Liz Crane, and I were sort of the two full time ArtPlace employees and we built out the team and do that. But that notion of sort of the first time you realize that you're where the buck is going to stop is a moment of sort of the record player scratching and sort of saying, "Uh-oh."

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, that's, I just, that would be so terrifying for me. Especially after with Fractured Atlas this year, leadership team, I've had the realization I don't want to run anything alone ever again.

Jamie Bennett:

Well you all have, what? You have four CEOs, right?

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. Four of us.

Jamie Bennett:

I can't sort of sort out if that would be more comforting or less comforting.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh, it's so comforting.

Jamie Bennett:

More comforting. Yeah, totally.

Tim Cynova:

That's awesome.

Lauren Ruffin:

100%.

Tim Cynova:

Having been in that role of single CEO, the four is far more comforting and challenging, but also, especially at times like these. Being on calls with our colleagues at other organizations who, are at the best of times in leadership roles, often isolated and then staff members, those they serve are looking to them for answers and we're human beings and it's like I've never been in a global pandemic before. And with things changing constantly and to have three other people in the organization that you can go to, is really comforting.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. And they've managed to do what everyone thought was impossible, which was teach me to collaborate off of a basketball court. So the world thanks my colleagues at Fractured Atlas. So how are you approaching sort of self-care resilience right now, Jamie?

Jamie Bennett:

Yeah, so it's, what's been helpful is there are enough people in sort of my close circle, both professionally and personally, that some of us, about a third of us, are doing okay in any moment. About a third of us are so-so in any moment. About a third of us are really down in any moment. And so having that sort of circle of folks that are in different places on sort of the emotional roller coaster has been really helpful.

Jamie Bennett:

At work, we instituted a daily sort of 10:00 a.m. Zoom call that we're calling the virtual water cooler. And the idea was, particularly for those of us who sort of feel like we have too few people in our homes, this is a chance to just sort of get together and kibitz and gossip with colleagues and we try and not do any work during that sort of 30 minutes from 10 to 10:30 but just sort of share goofy videos or talk about the disaster that we tried to make in the kitchen or do things like that. And I think that's been really helpful to just sort of have a moment of that sort of virtual water cooler of coming together. And otherwise I'm of that school of thought where I sort of wake up in the morning, try and go out for a run, put on grownup clothes for the day and then at six o'clock try and shut down my work computer and sort of go all in on Netflix. Although we've not gotten to the Tiger King yet, so I don't want to... no spoilers.

Lauren Ruffin:

Congratulations on putting on actual clothes. I've started referring to jeans as hard pants and [crosstalk 00:09:55] never again. I tried to put on a pair of jeans, never again.

Jamie Bennett:

Well as someone said, nevermind the freshman 15 from college, this is going to be the COVID-19 that we're all going to put on. And in this moment, sweat pants are not your friends because they sort of make you believe that everything's okay. Then you put on those jeans.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, yeah. Someone on Twitter was talking about do you have to audition for My 600 Pound Life? Or do they just sort of put you on? We're all wondering what happens after this is done.

Jamie Bennett:

I think they'll just work through the phone book.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. Well it's, Lauren, speaking about what happens after this. So Lauren is both podcasting and live streaming's favorite cohost, but also has her own live stream. And yesterday was speaking with Thomas Cumberbatch, the CEO of Godspeed Communications. And during their conversation, one of the things that really resonated for me that I had not thought about yet, and in sort of a deep way, was what happens when all of this is over? We work in the cultural sector that's built on bringing people together and trying to figure out how we do that when we can't physically be together. But what happens when we can go outside and gather again in public spaces and go to performances and whatnot? I'm curious to get your thoughts on this one, Jamie.

Jamie Bennett:

Well, one of the things that I've spent a lot of time sort of worrying about is I think one of the challenges in getting large groups of people to sort of do the things that we need to do collectively in this moment is that this virus is invisible. You can't sort of see it, you don't know that it's there. You can only sort of see the effects of it. So one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about is I haven't seen a lot of folks sort of offer up clear frameworks of when it's going to be okay to get back to normal life. So I sort of worry that even once we sort of turn things back on and government officials say, "Yeah, yeah, go out and go to the coffee shops." In many ways that's going to look and feel like it did sort of during the pandemic. And so I don't know that folks will trust that.

Jamie Bennett:

So I wonder about a sort of, is there a way to sort of do a slower ramp up and sort of, this wouldn't literally make sense, but sort of think about the idea of opening up the 99 seat black box theaters first, then going to the 499s, then going to the 1200s and sort of working up. And I also think it's been really interesting to see some of the ways that artists have been using Instagram and other online platforms to be able to connect with audiences, not just in live venues. So yeah, I don't know. Four years ago I sort of gave up making predictions about the future, so I don't know that I'm going to make up, I'm going to give one now, but I think there's a very good chance that 2021 is not going to look like 2019.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. So we have some of our good friends who are having a good time on the chat with, mainly with each other. They're just mainly saying hi and shouting out. Some have submitted questions. From the amazing Diane Ragsdale has a question for Jamie. Has this pandemic made you think differently about "place" vis a vis creative placemaking? Thanks, Diane for the question.

Jamie Bennett:

Thanks, Diane. And good morning, I hope you are well in New Jersey or wherever you are today. And it's interesting, our colleague, Sarah Calderon, who's our managing director is on the board of a group called DreamYard in the Bronx, which is a place-based education and sort of youth development organization and they've been having daily calls with their board. And one of the things that Sarah said is that frame of place has become much more legible and much more urgent to all of the board members as folks understand what it means to be a group of people who are related by geography. All of us live in many different kinds of communities, communities of identity, communities of affiliation, communities of aspiration. All of us also live in communities where we shared geography with folks.

Jamie Bennett:

So one of the things that DreamYard did in pivoting its work was reinvent itself in this moment as a food distribution hub. So how are we making sure that the young people and their families are still getting at least the nourishment they need? In addition to the online work that they're doing and resources that they're offering. So that notion of place, that those of us who are in a place together are really dependent on the same systems for food delivery, for transportation, for health access, I think has become really, really urgent.

Tim Cynova:

Our friend, Andrew Taylor, great headshot, Andrew, asks us also, thanks for the shout out about my tech set up. You can have whatever you want. I've got way more [inaudible 00:14:46] kits now that I have to stay in my apartment rather than the Fractured Atlas office. But Andrew Taylor is asking us, how is ArtPlace adapting its grants/support requirements in this moment? Are you relaxing constraints, adding more money? Both? Morning, Andrew.

Jamie Bennett:

Good morning, Andrew. And if you're in DC or the DMV area, I hope you and your household are well. So one of the things that makes it a little bit odd to be at ArtPlace in this moment is that we're in the 10th year of 10 years of existence. And so we essentially committed all of our budget last year and the year before, and we're essentially going through paying those things out now. So anywhere that we can relax restrictions, requirements, we are. Certainly with contractors that we work with, we're giving folks the option of front loading payments and so we're happy to prepay for work if it helps with cash flow. But essentially our money is almost entirely already out in the field. There are a couple exceptions that we're working on and trying to work even more quickly.

Jamie Bennett:

But one of the things that I thought was really interesting is, I don't know if folks are tracking the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, which works across the Southern United States, but they've already made a commitment to, I believe, double their payout. They're paying out all grants, they're automatically extending all grantees by a year. They're reducing sort of the oversight requirements for site visits and for reporting and are really moving money out in a really exciting way. So if folks are looking for sort of A plus models in philanthropy, I point folks to the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation.

Tim Cynova:

We've got a question from Jason. What can the arts do to build social cohesion while we are all at home? What lessons from ArtPlace do you have to share? Hi, Jason.

Jamie Bennett:

I was going to say, really good morning since it's whatever, 8:20 out in Phoenix. So one of the things I'll shout out is our colleague at ArtPlace, Jamie Hand, who leads our research strategies, one of the things that she's been doing is working really closely with the University of Florida's Center for Arts and Medicine, which is led by the extraordinary Jill Sonke. And this is one of the things that they are talking about very much and are sharing resources. And I think there are a couple of briefs that are going to go out today.

Jamie Bennett:

There's one around the way that artists can help with communications in this moment. How do we actually make things that are invisible feel real and tangible to folks? How do we sort of help achieve the empathy that allows us to sort of have the collective responsibility to each other, et cetera? And the other set of resources are exactly Jason's question, the difference between physical distancing and social distancing. And so this is a moment where many of us, most of us need to be physically distant. I've been working really hard to learn to say two meters apart now that I'm up in Canada rather than six feet. I feel that I'm officially bilingual now, but that notion that art is what connects us and allows us to still have community I think is really important.

Jamie Bennett:

And it makes me nervous that Andrew Taylor is listening in because I think I'm going to misquote his work, but I think he's been doing some work with Ken Wilber's integral theory, and I'm going to get some of this wrong. But sort of thinking about the external and the internal, the individual and the collective. And so the individual external is psychology. The collective external is management. The internal individual is spirituality. And the internal collective is culture. So culture is what we have in common. And so thinking about the DNI's dance party or thinking about Chrissy Tiegen and John Legend in their bathrooms from their grand piano or thinking about the way that the Billie Holiday theater in central Brooklyn is livestreaming some of its work to remind us of the stories of the tales of the culture that we have in common, to remind us that even when we're six feet apart, we're still connected as a community I think is vitally important.

Jamie Bennett:

So if folks want to know more, Jason and others, either go to the ArtPlace website, artplaceamerica.org and look for the University of Florida Center for Arts and Medicine work or go directly to there's. But they have a longer website that I don't have memorized. So I'm not trying to steal their clicks. I just honestly can't remember.

Lauren Ruffin:

Jamie, why didn't you memorize that website? Oh my goodness.

Jamie Bennett:

That's right.

Tim Cynova:

Andrew has weighed in that you indeed nailed it and that he will be moving on to something else now. If anyone does want to hear more about Andrew talk about that, he was on one of our podcast episodes a while back where we talked about the workplace and now this was recorded before everyone increasingly went virtual and remote. But his thoughts on what makes a workplace and what are those millions of things that we don't even give any thought to when we're in a physical space together and now how does that work when we're not? Yeah. Let's see what else we have here.

Lauren Ruffin:

I think it was, I can't scroll up on our chat but someone asked, Jamie, how are you bringing art into your life right now? And I'm really curious about that.

Jamie Bennett:

Yeah, so I think like a lot of folks it's largely music and sort of video performance. So we've got a lot of music at home. And both of us, my partner and I love all kinds of music, so have been listening to old stuff, new stuff, all kinds of stuff. Friends doing private performances. And then an awful lot of Netflix, Amazon Prime and all of that. And so I am non generative. I am not myself an artist. I don't have an artistic practice. I sometimes, well I sometimes sort of misquote the wonderful principle from the musical Grease when she says, "Even if you can't be an athlete, you can be an athletic supporter."

Jamie Bennett:

So I am not an artist, I am an artistic supporter. So sort of Jamie Bennett [inaudible 00:20:44] audience member is how I identify myself. So I'm assuming art is how I'd been nurturing myself, not making it.

Tim Cynova:

Awesome.

Lauren Ruffin:

It's totally great. So while we're sort of shifting gears on, and I want to make sure that we ask this question of our guests, because it's going to bring up so many different answers. What are you finding really useful in your remote setup and routine? Is it working for you and how are you working remote right now?

Jamie Bennett:

Yeah, so at the moment I'm on a laptop and an iPhone. And so I know that a lot of folks are sort of talking about constantly being on small screens as being really difficult. What I'll maybe reframe in my life as a blessing is that I've worn bifocals since of fourth grade, so I'm quite good at working closely and on small screens.

Jamie Bennett:

So at the moment that's been satisfactory. So sort of email and phone. We use Slack as an organization and we've created a sort of slightly and sometimes goofy, sometimes serious Slack channel just for sort of this pandemic moment. So folks are sharing serious things like the World Health Organization's call for creatives in this moment and what they are asking for from the creative community to the amazing, I don't know if you saw on Trevor Noah reposted a woman and a staircase. And so if you haven't seen it, I don't want to say anything else, but go to Trevor Noah's Instagram page and look for the woman and the staircase and it will be the best 10 seconds of your entire life. So yeah, so so far that's been it. And it'll be interesting to see at the end of eight or 10 weeks if that's doable in terms of sort of work.

Tim Cynova:

A couple more questions here. As we start to bring this in for a landing, what would you say are the next two things arts organizations should think about doing right now? And what should they seed right now for the future?

Jamie Bennett:

Yeah, this is an amazing question. I know that Michael Kaiser and Brett Egan at the DeVos Institute have announced a whole bunch of free consulting services and other folks are sort of stepping up. My quick summary of what I've read and sort of been hearing is that for many arts organizations I've been talking with, their number one concern is payroll. How are they going to make sure that they can keep their commitment to the community of artists and administrators who's made their work possible? Their second concern is sort of rent. Does it mean that we're going to get evicted in this moment? And then their third priority, which are all sort of closely clustered together, is mission. How do we keep sort of sharing the stories? How do we keep making connections? How do we do that?

Jamie Bennett:

And I think one of the things that's going to be really hard in the coming months is there's going to be a lot of attention on the next two to three months in terms of recovery, but it's that six to 24 month period that I'm really worried about. And that entities that have a lot of their wealth in the stock market may not have wealth anymore. So foundations, endowments are going to shrink and because foundations have historically used three year averaging, I think their payouts are going to be a lot less and high net worth individuals are going to have a lot less money because they've been in the stock market.

Jamie Bennett:

So folks who have more of our holdings in cash, who have our sort of bank accounts are going to be the ones that are actually going to have more expendable income. So I think focusing on that lower price point activity, how do we get more folks in for $5 activities, not how do we get more $5 million naming gifts is what I think is going to be hugely important in terms of rebuilding the arts business models, but also in terms of rebuilding our communities and coming back together and remembering how to be physically proximate.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, Jamie, that's a really interesting point that I hadn't really refined in my head yet, which is we're talking about smaller dollar gifts. It's really doing what so many lower income, sort of black and brown communities have done in terms of passing the hat to find support for their work and really finding that as an important audience engagement mechanism. So thank you for that. We're almost at time. Really excited that you were here, Jamie. Do you have any departing thoughts as we wrap this up?

Jamie Bennett:

I just think my only thought is that because I was your inaugural guest, in this moment, I am both the best and the worst guest you've ever had on this live stream. And that duality is really exciting to me.

Tim Cynova:

Yes. Jamie, thank you so much for launching this with us today. Thanks to those who have joined the live stream. Continue the Work Shouldn't Suck Live adventure with us on our next episode when we're joined by Christine Bader, co-founder of The Life I Want. Miss us in the meantime? You can download more Work Shouldn't Suck episodes from your favorite podcasting platform of choice and rewatch Work Shouldn't Suck Live episodes over on workshouldntsuck.co. If you've enjoyed the conversation or just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic and join the fun, too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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Investing in Self: Lisa Yancey (EP.13)

Last Updated

March 27, 2020

We're exploring different perspectives and approaches to personal and professional development and growth in our "Investing in Self" mini-series. This episode features entrepreneurial strategist Lisa Yancey.

Guest: Lisa Yancey

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guest

LISA YANCEY is the President of Yancey Consulting, LLC, advising a spectrum of practitioners, nonprofit organizations, philanthropists, and philanthropic institutions committed to dismantling inequities, enriching disinvested communities, building leadership, and amplifying diverse perspectives. She has worked with, facilitated, and provided pro bono services to over 100 organization or grantmaking institutions in the past 18 years. A lifelong entrepreneur, Lisa’s concurrent ventures include co-founding The We’s Match and SorsaMED, a biologics company dedicated to developing therapeutic solutions for chronic pain management using medicinal cannabinoids.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck, a podcast about well that. On this episode investing in self personal and professional development and growth. Lauren and I have been conducting interviews on this topic with a number of fascinating people and we'll be sprinkling them into the mix with our upcoming episodes over the next several weeks. To start off this mini series of sorts, a few weeks ago, Lauren and I had the privilege to sit down with entrepreneur consultant, multiple business owner, dancer, choreographer, law school, graduate, and so much more awesomeness, Lisa Yancey. We covered a lot of ground in our conversation including why self care isn't selfish, discipline and mastery, approaching our life as the dash between two dates. What exactly were Lisa and Lauren doing in Mexico and why Choice Hotels will likely never sponsor our podcast. So without further ado, Lisa, welcome to the podcast.

Lisa Yancey:

Thank you. I'm glad to be here, Tim.

Tim Cynova:

So let's just start out with, tell us about yourself and your professional journey.

Lisa Yancey:

When I think about when someone asks me to tell me about myself, I'm like, which parts of myself are we talking about? Self. Let's see. I am the eldest of seven. I am the eldest of seven and a single child from the South. Atlanta, Georgia, specifically lived and now 20 years in New York. So I may be official New Yorker, Boston before that. I would say if you want to say what's the self of Lisa Yancey? I was a dancer and choreographer with a law degree and an entrepreneur who thinks about business. So I'm a creative, I live in creativity both in work and practice and I guess body.

Tim Cynova:

What did the young Lisa want to be when she grew up?

Lisa Yancey:

So a young Lisa wanted to be a dancer. She wants to be Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson combined actually. And she totally was in front of the television doing all the videos because we could not afford to be going no dance class. So dance class was television and learning the choreography there. I can't tell you how many times I tried to not fall from a chair falling over. Thank you Paula Abdul for that and Janet Jackson for that and pleasure principle. But a young leaser saw herself as a combination of Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul.

Tim Cynova:

And that leads to a law degree and New York and what you're doing now. So what was that journey like?

Lisa Yancey:

I tell people all the time that what got me through law school was dance and it was the discipline that comes from consuming lots of content and translating that in the body and the endurance of knowing what you can and cannot do and how to really strengthen your body that was transferable to strengthen your mind and absorbing a lot of content in law school. And so I actually went to law school because undergrad ended and I didn't know what I was going to do with myself and I was like, "Wait, I'm supposed to know, right now? I think, Oh, I need more time." Eh, sure. Law school. That sounds like an interesting fallback plan.

Lisa Yancey:

But I danced the whole time while I was in law school. I was in two dance company. I auditioned for Lion King. I got a call back, but it was in the middle of the second year. So I was like, "Oh, do I leave law school or dance?" It's been my journey into life, develop the art of dance, which is a creative practice in my practice and my life now is... I'm an entrepreneur. I have three businesses, one establish that's been around for now 19 years as a consulting practice and launching to other enterprises, one dedicated to black women entrepreneurs. Another is really looking at the medicinal cannabis industry.

Tim Cynova:

Lauren, you also have a law degree and imagine similar discipline from your days playing basketball.

Lauren Ruffin:

It's Lisa used the word discipline and there are words you don't hear very much anymore. And discipline is one of them and people have described me as being disciplined as a person, so that piqued my interest. I also went to law school because I didn't have anything else to do.

Lisa Yancey:

So anyone who's listening and you don't have anything else to do go to law school.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I mean that was a three year break.

Lisa Yancey:

Yes.

Lauren Ruffin:

And almost 20 years later, I have friends who've known me for that long, who met me while I was in law school and did not know I was in law, school because I was doing so many other things. So law school was really on the back burner of my life. Discipline and mastery are words that you don't hear very often anymore. And I spend a lot of time thinking about how do you master something using your discipline, to sit down and learn as adults, we don't do that very often to do something over and over and over and over again until you get it perfect. And so often we're encouraged not to be perfect, don't let perfect get in the way of good or whatever that saying is.

Lisa Yancey:

But my dance teacher would have been like, "What? You've got to get it perfect."

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. You're going to do this, right?

Lisa Yancey:

That's right.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. No. So, and that's pretty old school. I don't hear that too often anymore.

Tim Cynova:

You both are involved in multiple businesses and are also always in your own way further developing yourself. Lisa, you're one of the most hardcore as it relates to protecting your time and your growth. It's like work hard, play hard, and Lauren, every time I talk to you, you've read another article about something in obscure of thing. I'm curious, let's start with Lisa. Lisa, how do you approach your personal and professional growth?

Lisa Yancey:

I think first I understand that they're not separate. It's just the I and the I am. It's not the I personal and the I professional and the I. It's just I. I'm really grateful for understanding that when I show up in my full self, no matter what I'm doing, it's just me in that cell and so how I protect it. I think one of the greatest lessons I learned was the ability to say no and understanding that I don't have to do anything. I don't have do anything I don't want to do, but that's a big deal. As a black woman coming from the South. From my experience, I want to be clear about that framing because I don't represent all black women.

Lisa Yancey:

Although I absolutely love and my work is dedicated to black women and I'm so grateful for the black women who have really been instrumental to my growth and my understanding of life. But we are all different. We are not one. But this notion of how we are groomed to show up and show out, show up and continue to deliver and prove and deliver. And when I learned that I need to show up for myself and that self care isn't selfish and sometimes it's okay to be preserving of self. In fact more times than not, in order to do anything you need to preserve yourself. And I think that giving yourself permission to one, say no and two, prioritize you was a big key moment to open up the doors in rethinking what's possible.

Tim Cynova:

What does your self care plan approach look like?

Lisa Yancey:

Ooh, my self care certainly lives first and fitness and that's probably because I was a dancer and choreographer and I am one of those humans who can't imagine not taking care of myself physically and love it because it is an outlet and it's a part of who I am and my disposition. But another piece of my self care is travel. I travel passionately, I work very hard, but I love to travel. I love to experience different spaces and places and I'm grateful that I've created a practice where my work can happen in multiple places.

Lisa Yancey:

And the wonderful team that I've developed who work with me, appreciate it and understand that their work can happen in multiple places and we're not restricted to conventional standards or four walls and that, so that's one of the ways I travel for sure. Fitness and meditation. I believe in manifestation and being intentional and speaking into existence and my mother would say about what you want.

Lauren Ruffin:

My answer is going to pale in comparison if you're looking at me.

Tim Cynova:

I'm looking at you.

Lauren Ruffin:

Like, I suppose to-

Tim Cynova:

For instance, I'm looking at you now.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, Tim is looking at me. Self care. So I was raised by a black man surrounded by some badass black women who did not have men to rely on them. And so no has always been a complete sentence for me, but I didn't have to learn that. I didn't notice it until I was in my thirties that actually is a skill that people don't... It's not natural and people have a very visceral reaction when you tell them no. Like just no, no explanation, no with a smile, no with high five, nope.

Lisa Yancey:

It's awesome.

Lauren Ruffin:

And then walk away. People have a very strong reaction to that. So that self care, that being said, I really do like saying yes to things and that's my tragic flaw. Good ideas, I can say no to, but there are a lot of great ideas that I get seduced by. And so I say yes to a lot of stuff. I love learning. So if I hadn't sort of decided to go to law school, I would've gotten a PhD. My father talked me out of it, but now I have the sort of... I'm actually been in one place for seven weeks for the first time in the last couple of years. And I am taking two classes, one at a community college. It's a film tech class and the other in Afrofuturism because why not at UNM and what joy?

Lauren Ruffin:

It's like I have a class every day of the week and I just love it. I'm just learning. It gives you time to think. I've always loved to write and Tim, you'll know this intimately. I have for the last four or five years, had a really hard time finishing anything I start writing because I have to stretch that muscle. I haven't had to do it in a while. And so having the structure around writing exercises in a class where I can talk about it and think about it and have other perspectives and that sort of dialogue and interaction, I think it's going to be a really important part of professional growth.

Lauren Ruffin:

And it wouldn't have been possible if I had a job that required me to be there from 9:00 to 5:00 every day at a desk. So in terms of sort of professional growth and thinking about how we structure our lives with strategy so that you can... That growth doesn't just happen. You have to be really intentional about creating the life that you need to be able to do it. I know that's just a lot of privilege for me to say that, but it doesn't just happen and I do admire. I was telling Lisa earlier today that I admire that she works out when she travels. I've lost 20 pounds while I'm at home.

Lisa Yancey:

Yay.

Lauren Ruffin:

I will put it back on while I'm traveling. That's my next life goal is now that I'm sort of back in shape. I'll never be like I was because I played basketball up until I was almost 35. I played four nights a week. That you're not getting back at almost 40 but the level of discipline it takes be able to work out while you're traveling in different time zones where you don't have a routine. You might not know the equipment. That's my block, but you have to be intentional about it and I think that's the part that I'm still learning and that I didn't know five years ago that I know now.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. Lisa, when I think about you, I think about discipline and then same way that Lauren was speaking about, you are an incredibly busy, high-performing person who travels a lot and does all these different things. You still make time for people to help them. You still make time to exercise. You still make time for self care and you have three businesses and how do you keep that up? Because I feel like if I just could do it maybe two days in a row, then maybe I can start some kind of theme. You mentioned dance as sort of maybe grounding in it, but oftentimes over our life that sort of falls by the wayside.

Lauren Ruffin:

But is that discipline or going back to Lisa's last answer about the I?

Lisa Yancey:

Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

Is it the I?

Tim Cynova:

If only Lisa were here to answer this question.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah it's working. Somebody go get Lisa. Can we find her or is she... Let's ask Lisa if it's the I. Is the I the secret?

Tim Cynova:

Get her on the phone.

Lisa Yancey:

First of all, anyone who's listening. I love these two so much, so much. Oh my God. I know you love them too because you've been listening to them.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, both of them, both of [inaudible 00:12:28]. And now they love you too. That's the beautiful thing about our listeners is that they are expansive hearts.

Lisa Yancey:

For good reason. It's interesting to hear it. I'm like, I was going to say Holy shit. Can I say that?

Tim Cynova:

[inaudible 00:12:41] but you can say it.

Lauren Ruffin:

You can say lot of things on this show.

Lisa Yancey:

To listen to Tim to listen to you to describe it. It's different than hearing it like you do all these things then and I guess I don't know any black women who don't do a lot of things. Let me first say that. I was actually in a meeting with Lauren a while ago and we were in a meeting and they were talking about these multiple projects and people were doing this and Oh, you do that and that and that, and I think I actually made the comment, I was like, "I'm sorry, I just don't know any black women who don't do multiple things." So this is just part of the course. This is part of course, like for wall street, they call it diversification.

Lisa Yancey:

For us it's just part of diversifying the multiple passions and desires and things that we love and not feeling limited to fitting in anyone's box because quite frankly, we actually design for many of culture and we designed many boxes and so we don't have to feel confined to them. I think that I do it because some parts of me can't. I cannot. I love Lauren and then there's again, I said I love Lauren and some of the specific things that I really appreciate and connect with Lauren around is the art of learning and the joy of learning, the problem solving and ideation to convert something into something new from an idea.

Lisa Yancey:

The understanding that you don't have to be confined by what others think should be standard to not fall into a standardized thinking and have that liberated, I will say liberated over privileged freedom around that and so I don't know. I mean sometimes I hear from folks like, you don't do much, girl, you need so much. And then sometimes I don't get enough sleep. I will say that there've been plenty of times where I'm like, you need more sleep, or my doctor's like, you need more sleep, so there is a cost to it.

Lauren Ruffin:

Do you know how to sleep?

Lisa Yancey:

I do.

Lauren Ruffin:

Okay. I don't know how to sleep.

Lisa Yancey:

You don't know?

Lauren Ruffin:

No.

Lisa Yancey:

I haven't gotten really in it.

Lauren Ruffin:

Were you always good at it or.

Lisa Yancey:

No? Absolutely not. I had to set an intention. I had to set an intention getting sleep. I had to set an intention of eating regularly throughout the day when in work mode and so those things can be like, "Oh yeah, I forgot to eat or Oh four hours of sleep." You mean that's not normal or five hours of sleep, not norm.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I'm happy if I get six, but it's usually not a straight six. It's a real messy six if I get there.

Lisa Yancey:

I've been doing great at setting seven.

Lauren Ruffin:

Really?

Lisa Yancey:

Yeah. I mean fell in the past three days, but typically pretty great at setting seven.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. As you were talking, I was thinking about work and it's probably in the last six months that I realized there are people who don't think work is the purpose of life and I don't mean work like work with the big W, they'll all caps WORK. Angry work, but I actually, I don't know how to not do something that is progressive in furtherance of change or I guess I didn't know it was an option and it was funny my... Something happened the other day at home and Cassidy who's 12, my stepdaughter said something like, "Oh, I was just lazy." And I was like, "Hold on. Where did that word come from?" Lazy. I didn't know that word was, I still could never imagine that was that we have to do some real reframing of yourself and who you're going to be. Laziness is actually not an option.

Lauren Ruffin:

I do wonder about... I don't wonder. I know my father, so I know where that came from, but he started working he was five and I started working outside the home when I was 12, so I wonder now two things. One, I'm grateful for work ethic and having the ability to have to work all the time to put different tasks on and to be able to constantly iterate and I worry about the longterm impact of being like my father as he's in his '70s and he loves his job. He's a principal. Here's the whole thing is like, I'm going to die behind my desk. He loves his job and he's still high performing turnaround school. Think he got the fifth or sixth sort of highest most gains in Philadelphia last year, but is that healthy? That's my sort of back and forth in my head about work and how we work.

Lisa Yancey:

The healthy is, I feel like on the one hand is relative to the individual and then I'm sure there are doctors like actually no, there are some basics that you need, but there's something about doing the things that give you joy that gives you purpose and where you feel like my mother says this thing and I'll share it with your listeners. She was like, "Ultimately your life is the dash." And you're like, "Well, what do you mean?" She's like, "When you die, there's your birth date and then there's your end date, but everything else is your dash and if you are doing dash work, like if you want, what's your dash..."

Lisa Yancey:

And that's particularly meaningful for me right now given what happened with Kobe Bryant, for some reason I was telling Lauren earlier that it triggered me in a way of... I don't even know why, but I can imagine. What's my story? What will be my story because there's no question of, there are two dates. There's no avoiding of those two dates, you can't get around it, but what you can inform is your dash and so to hear your father about your father doing work that may be part of his meaningful work. That will be that thing that people talk about, that change lives is a part of his dash and that's what we have control over.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, that's really powerful. Death always comes up in our podcast episode.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, we really, it’s inescapable” isn't it?

Tim Cynova:

Even outside of the Grieving While Working episode, but I think it's related. I think being present in what you're doing and trying to find purpose, I think there's clarity and realizing that there is an end date and I think that also certainly informs my work and just what I want to learn. The stack of books that I want to read is just growing and every time I see people that I know read or are reading books, every time I run into you too, it's like I'm reading more articles and I'm more books and there's more stuff I want to learn and then figure out how that connects to my life and my work. And so it keeps driving you forward and then you also have to figure out, I can't just keep going like this because I'm going to burn myself out and I'm not going to have time to think and process.

Lisa Yancey:

Then you travel.

Tim Cynova:

Then travel, with all of them [crosstalk 00:19:00]. Backpack full of books. I love that, what your mom said, and I think it sort of speaks to the journey and being intentional around what we want that journey to be like and being intentional about work. We spend a lot of time doing it and we spend a lot of time doing the things and if that's our colleague Paul Olivia always says, "If it doesn't bring you joy, then I mean, why are you doing it?"

Lisa Yancey:

Yeah. Just say now.

Tim Cynova:

And I get that. There are other things that you might have to do because of that, but at least being intentional and like, I'm doing this because of that. Tell me about what you two did in Mexico because it sounds really cool.

Lauren Ruffin:

That was such a... What were you two doing? I was like, "Oh, no."

Tim Cynova:

I said it with the headphones. It's coming out-

Lauren Ruffin:

That was really intense.

Tim Cynova:

It's here.

Lauren Ruffin:

I think you should keep that in, but it was very intense. I felt under the spotlight. I felt persecuted and prosecuted.

Tim Cynova:

That sounded...

Lisa Yancey:

Yeah. Lauren, what were we doing in Mexico?

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh, Tim, what happens in Mexico stays in Mexico. Nope. Most certainly things happen that we want to disseminate to the listeners of this podcast. Lisa, you want to go first?

Lisa Yancey:

No, you go first. I'd love to hear your perspective about Mexico.

Lauren Ruffin:

So I'll start with the... I mean, we did the things that I love to do most with smart women, with smart black women in particular. We dreamed, we did a lot of dreaming. So Lisa touched on sort of the We's, which is an entrepreneurial group, cohort of women, black women, building businesses across a whole bunch of sectors that are all so intertwined and yet so desperate. And we talk about a model for what look like we work to sustain organizations like that at scale. And how do we feed each other? How do we feed and nourish each other? So that's the business stuff. The beginning of the business stuff. Beautiful house. Lisa has fantastic taste. I also am a bougie traveler. So you learn things about where people have you staying. And Lisa and I have the same sort of aesthetic.

Lisa Yancey:

Awesome. Good to hear.

Lauren Ruffin:

You'll never catch me on a... If I die in a Best Western, you'll know?

Lisa Yancey:

Oh, what?

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, exactly.

Tim Cynova:

We're losing sponsors left and right here Lauren.

Lauren Ruffin:

If die in a best Choice Hotels, nope. Not sponsoring this podcast. Absolutely not. Anyway, so beautiful location. Mexico's amazing. The food was great. I mean all the things that you want that you need to be generative in a group space, but time together, clear agenda, clear expectations. I mean it's Lisa, it was like Lisa in a nutshell.

Lisa Yancey:

It was interesting. So just to give some context, some business partners and I are starting a company called the We's Match and the We's Match and people were like what? It's like the idea of we, because we are one of we and our intention is to build an online and offline platform that supports black women entrepreneurs being able to net $1 million minimum in their business enterprise and have year over year growth. And so our anchors have been scale wealth and wellness.

Lisa Yancey:

And so we've integrated into the business model and are integrating into the business model. This notion that we don't center it the business, we sent her the woman and we believe our theory of change is that when you send her the person, her business will thrive. And when her business thrive, the community thrives. But it's really, I have always been about how do we build around the individuals and shift this notion of unicorns and this exceptionalism that let's just find the one business that hit the right moment and completely take from that moment and then trash it and get to the next thing.

Lisa Yancey:

We actually want to build and support thriving black women entrepreneurs because we know that their ideas, their products, their services makes the world better. And so we have had the opportunity over the past year in 2019, to work with five projects and one of the projects, it also includes the medicinal cannabis project that I mentioned earlier that we were talking as one of the core projects, but it's across industries, high-performing industries, brilliant entrepreneur, founders across the board from culture to AR, VR, construction, retail, medicinal cannabis and arts.

Lisa Yancey:

And so we had been in conversation with these brilliant women closely and as part of the exchange is if you share with us your core needs because your core needs will help us understand what our business model is. We didn't want to say, here's our business model, apply it. We really want to say what's the need and could we be useful? And so at the end of the year, we came together in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico and was intentional about the full experience of both bringing everyone there and creating a space where they understood that we see them and we see an honor their value and that there's a value in the assets that we bring when we can be in a space that we feel cared for and open and free and not overly expect it to give, give, give, give, give to exhaustion and then sleep.

Lisa Yancey:

And so it was just amazing, and I'm so grateful to be in the company of amazing thought leaders and entrepreneurs like Lauren and others who have been helpful in us thinking about our model moving forward. And so the Louisa match will launch in 2020, and a lot of that has to do with what we learned from those conversations in those spaces and the relationships that we developed in those spaces. And the understanding that the assets that we hold within our community is so great that we don't have to outsource everything, that there's a lot of assets and resources that live within and you compliment that with shifting and creating an ecosystem that's dedicated to the values of black women entrepreneurs thriving.

Tim Cynova:

You've been a successful entrepreneur for nearly 20 years. You are one of the people that I have had the ability to work with who puts their finger exactly on the thing that you're talking about. You might talk for three hours and you're like, "This is the one thing," and you like that is the one thing we should have just said that up front. As you start this new enterprise in this project, what learning, what do you have to do differently yourself as you approach this that you otherwise haven't had to do in part of your work today?

Lisa Yancey:

So my consulting practice has been around for since 2001, so this is the 19th year internal Oh my God. The thing that's different with both the We's Match and Source Summit, but the with the We's Match, what I would do differently in it and what we are doing differently is, first is in partnership. I think that we often start things as solopreneurs and one of the key takeaways that we got from these brilliant women in San Miguel is that if we solve for anything we have to solve for capacity and that not just identify where the capacity gaps are and not just make suggestions around what you should do, but actually do the work with the entrepreneur to solve for it and solve for it in a way that's sustainable. And that's one of the things that we will be doing differently is moving and advancing and taking the learnings from.

Lisa Yancey:

It's the market really. I mean they're great and awesome and I love them, but they're also extensions of the marketplace and letting the marketplace inform how we think about business, but actually advancing and moving forward on that thing faster and knowing that now that I have 20 years in this as an entrepreneur in one way, it don't have to be perfect. It's perfect. Is it placebo? Is it illusion? Just do the thing and know that part of doing the thing, it's learning and that the investments actually you should have learning that happens from it and that if something goes a different way than you expect it, it's not failure. It's part of the learning. It's part of the learning investment as opposed to any kind of shame that I've learned that and that I'm going to carry that understanding with my partners into these ventures. And that's a huge difference than trying to get it alright, know it alright, figure it all out in advance before we advance, before we start, before we implement, so that's a big difference. Lauren what would you say?

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm thinking, because you touched on capacity building in the marketplace. We recently had an incident where someone in a meeting brought up the pipeline problem and without going too much into that hilarious debacle. Funny debacle. I am curious on your thoughts about what is a non-existent pipeline problem in many ways. Because you talk capacity building, which is a little broader. What you're really talking about is how do we connect black talent with black entrepreneurs? Because I mean if you were just in the world listening, you would think that there is no black talent out there. So I'm just really, I mean it's a little bit of a tongue in cheek question, but still it'll be fun to hear your answer.

Lisa Yancey:

So if you are a listener, that's one of the listeners is like, "I want to do more. I just can't find them or they don't exist." We do exist. Really we do. It's not a lack of a talent issue is not that the pool is scarce, there's an abundance, it's just that you're not looking in the right place. You're disconnected to where the core source of ideas are. And perhaps that's because we've been structured to believe that A + B equals C. We haven't been liberated enough to know that a doesn't necessarily won't get to that C but let me think of A square times P squared plus two over here and Oh my God, it's just to my left.

Lisa Yancey:

And so I think that this idea of capacity building capacity and I want to hold one of the things that I think is a part of our unique value propositions that we hold. Also, emotional capacity and wellness capacity and wellbeing capacity in addition to the team and talent and people, but really holding mind, space and heart space into our equation of ensuring that the black woman entrepreneurs who will engage on our platform can succeed. I think about capacity and notions of pipelining and sourcing really in the sense of perhaps you just need to shift the kaleidoscope to the left or to the right and not be so pigeonholed in one direction. And if what you're yielding looking at that one direction isn't what you want, then do something different because you'll get different results.

Tim Cynova:

Well. Lisa, what are your closing thoughts today on investing in self personal and professional development? Thanks. But you want might not have talked about yet that you're like, this is actually really important. People need to really pay attention to this. Think about this.

Lisa Yancey:

I think that if I were to give some closing thoughts around investing in self, I would say imagine the individual who you give the highest regard. When you think about them, they excite you and you're like, "Oh my God, they are amazing," and then put yourself in that place and know that you are deserving of any space, time, investments that you are deserving of that. I think that one of the smartest things I did as an adult, and I'll close with this piece, because I walked away and learned a lot, was in 2014. I made a decision that I wanted to go away to think about what I wanted to do before I entered my 40th season, and I don't come from a trust fund.

Lisa Yancey:

I did not have a silver spoon. I work hard every day. There is no one else doing that. And so this idea of saying I want to go away, and I went to go away from six months and I live in New York. And so there's a cost of living in New York and then it costs of going away to a place. And the place that I wanted to go away to was a place that was French speaking, no political unrest, not on the beach because I needed to focus to be intentional and I wanted to make sure I was in a space where it forced me to manage otherness and the otherness that was not just being other as a black woman, but just a different kind of otherness. And how do I navigate that space while I create a space to imagine what I wanted this decade to be.

Lisa Yancey:

And so I ended up in Aix-en-Provence, it was 30 minutes away from the beach, not quite in Marseille. I could not be in Paris, although it was one of my favorite cities ever because I would've been distracted. And the intention set to get there, to create space for myself, to pause, to sleep for two months, to really sleep from working hard, to even be able to afford to be there and then open up and say, "Well, what do I want?" Just to ask myself, "What do I want? What do I really want? What difference? What's my dash? Really? What do I want my dash to be?" At the end of the day, it connects to... And that's why I started by saying the personal and professional aren't separate because my personal self dries the professional self and the desires around learning and thinking and being intentional.

Lisa Yancey:

My future self wants to be a person who makes a difference in the communities I care about. A meaningful difference that when I'm long gone, someone remembers that this was important for their life. I want to do something is meaningful for people other than that, and I needed to create space. And so I think that one of the greatest investments that one could make is creating space for yourself to pause and breathe and imagine, and listen and then do the other stuff. But you're worthy and everything that touches you, will benefit from you creating space for yourself.

Tim Cynova:

Lisa, it's always amazing to spend time with you.

Lisa Yancey:

Thank you.

Tim Cynova:

Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Lisa Yancey:

You're welcome. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Lauren. It's always great to be in the room with the two of you. I really mean that.

Tim Cynova:

If you've enjoyed the conversation or just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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Tournaments & Teams (EP.12)

Last Updated

March 20, 2020

[Note: This episode was recorded in late February and early March 2020 before the global spread of COVID-19, and the subsequent cancellation of the NCAA tournament.]

Basketball, business, and beyond! Exploring the topic of building better work teams through the lens of sport. We talk competition and cooperation, rivals and allies, is it really possible to give more than 100%, business “superstars,” and a whole host of fascinating things.

Guest: Laura Jorgensen

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guest

LAURA JORGENSEN currently serves as the Senior Director, Financial Operations and Analysis where she is responsible for driving Fractured Atlas’s strategic financial goals. Prior to joining Fractured Atlas she held roles ranging from the CEO of e-commerce start-up The RunnerBox to varied strategic and financial positions at Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. She holds a BSBA in Economics from The University of Miami and in her spare time you can find her pedaling her bike up and down the mountains of Asheville, NC. Prior to her life on two wheels, Laura was a First Team All-State shooting guard, multi-time AAU Basketball state champion, and still remains the only woman to ever win Royal Caribbean’s hotly contested March Madness pool.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

This is the third preamble that I’ve recorded for this episode as life and events have changed drastically for most of us over the past few weeks. Lauren and I recorded the interviews for this episode in late February and early March 2020, before the global spread COVID-19. As the pandemic made us actively re-think how and where we gathered together as humans, it became increasingly uncertain as to whether this year’s NCAA March Madness basketball tournament would be played. As you probably know at this point, the tournament was officially canceled a couple days before it was scheduled to start... and our planned release of this episode.

While this episode is framed around a conversation that includes talk of the tournament, it’s ultimately an episode about high performing teams, whether in basketball, business, or beyond. And it was a fun conversation, so we’re releasing it.

Before we slide into this episode, we wanted to take a moment to say thank you. Thank you to the medical professionals and scientists who had been and continued to work so tirelessly, oftentimes putting their own selves at risk in service of others' health and safety. Thank you. Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy the episode.

Tim Cynova:

Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. A podcast about well, that. On this episode teams and not just any teams, basketball teams. Why? Because I work with two of the biggest college basketball fans I know and somehow this episode is going to determine who is the most diehard fan going into the NCAA March Madness tournament. Basketball not your thing? Don't tell my guest. But we'll also be discussing cycling teams. So win-win. I'm joined from the top by podcasting's favorite cohost, Lauren Ruffin. Lauren, how's it going?

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm good. I gave you some early laughter on that.

Tim Cynova:

That's right. We'll leave it in.

Lauren Ruffin:

I think we should.

Tim Cynova:

It's authentic. You've just returned from LA with several interviews in the can for an upcoming “Ruffin on the Road” episode. I'm pretty excited for what you captured there.

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm excited too. I'm not excited about the terrible pictures I took in LA, but we all have growth areas.

Tim Cynova:

Did you take the pictures with your Nokia? I did not. They're not part of my two megapixel photo series. The fact that they're bad, that's actually worse. I took them with a really good camera.

Lauren Ruffin:

You could just say, it was with your Nokia.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, yeah. "All my photos these days are just with my Nokia phone."

Lauren Ruffin:

I should. I should just lie.

Tim Cynova:

Today we're joined by Laura Jorgensen or LJ, she's commonly known. We met LJ when she was hired as the senior director of finance at Fractured Atlas. As soon as this podcast launched, I knew that come March Madness, we are going to record this episode. LJ, welcome to the podcast.

Laura Jorgensen:

Hey Tim. Hey Ruffin. Happy to be here today.

Tim Cynova:

LJ, we've heard a bit about Lauren's basketball chops already on previous podcast episodes. So let's start with you launch us into your own basketball related background. How did you come to the topic?

Laura Jorgensen:

Oh man, I've played basketball for a long time. I guess I started playing as a kid, fell in love with it, went to a pretty good high school for it, so played there and then got a scholarships playing college and tore my ACL three times in the matter of oh man, probably 12 months. So my collegiate career ended quickly, but straight from there, ended in a good way. Straight from there, I went straight into coaching because I wasn't quite ready to give up the game. So I guess when I would have been a sophomore at college, started coaching back at the high school where I played and coached high school and AAU for a long time. So coached women's teams, coached men's teams. It was a lot of fun. So have a lot of experience with not only being on a team but putting together teams. I love it. I love sports a lot. So it could be basketball, it could be cycling, whatever you want to talk about. I could talk about teams there. I have experience as a player and as a coach on the basketball side.

Lauren Ruffin:

I didn't realize we have parallel basketball lives.

Laura Jorgensen:

Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

Except you made it to college before you busted your knees up and I broke my kneecap my senior year.

Laura Jorgensen:

I don't know which is worse.

Lauren Ruffin:

And then broke it again my first year.

Laura Jorgensen:

Which is worse? I'm not sure. The dream question before you go or why you're there.

Lauren Ruffin:

I don't know. I don't know anyone who's come back from the broken kneecap. People come back from ACLs now, but ACL back when I was in college-

Laura Jorgensen:

Devastating.

Lauren Ruffin:

That was, you're done.

Laura Jorgensen:

Yeah. It's so common now. It used to be a deal breaker, but yeah, I got surgery twice in the first year. I came back. I got injured probably first two weeks I was there and made it back for second semester, because that's where the bulk of the games are anyway. And poof, pretty much. Right? I was freak accident. I had my knee brace on and I went to go box out like I was coming back hard [inaudible 00:04:14] hit me in my hamstring and actually shoved my knee so far forward that it tore it against. So a total freak thing because it didn't even go sideways. I anticipated just taking the first semester, the next year off to do rehab and that's when I tore it again. And that's why I was like... So I had already started coaching, my high school thinking it would be temporary and then after I tore it again, that was it. I mean, there was just no coming back from that one. So I still don't have an ACL in my right knee-

Lauren Ruffin:

Who needs it?

Laura Jorgensen:

Who needs it?

Lauren Ruffin:

Overrated.

Laura Jorgensen:

Overrated. Totally agree.

Lauren Ruffin:

You definitely don't need it to be a professional cyclist. So I mean I feel like everything... You barely need a knee for that?

Laura Jorgensen:

No, no.

Lauren Ruffin:

Just some thighs. You just need thighs.

Laura Jorgensen:

Totally fine. Yeah. So one thing led to the other. That's how I kind of got into cycling, because you don't knees for it and most other things you do.

Lauren Ruffin:

That's how I got into riding as well.

Tim Cynova:

According to Lauren Ruffin, you do not need knees for cycling.

Lauren Ruffin:

You don't. Put that on the wall.

Laura Jorgensen:

Put it on a poster, Tim.

Tim Cynova:

I'm not sure if this episode is going to be easy to edit or impossible.

Lauren Ruffin:

We're not going to act right, apparently. We're off the rails.

Tim Cynova:

I've been in meetings with both of you together and this is to be expected. LJ, you told that story during your interview for the job. That wasn't one of the most painful moments. I think my hand started sweating as you were talking and telling that story about your ACL, that's usually not something that's included in a job interview. You're asking questions. Someone tells you a story and you're like, "Oh God."

Laura Jorgensen:

How did that come up? What was the question?

Tim Cynova:

You were doing the top grading interview. Going one thing at a time chronologically through your history.

Laura Jorgensen:

Yeah. So Ruffin when I coached, I also taught middle school.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh. Got it.

Laura Jorgensen:

Which was kind of a deviation from my collegiate experience as a economics major. That was kind of weird to go teach seventh graders, but it was fun.

Lauren Ruffin:

I also coached. I was way too intense to coach high schoolers now, so I got fired from that job.

Laura Jorgensen:

That's great.

Lauren Ruffin:

I was like way too... I was nuts in a good way.

Laura Jorgensen:

In a good way.

Lauren Ruffin:

The parents of small independent schools just really want their kids to hear great things and I didn't have anything good to say about that team.

Laura Jorgensen:

Neither. I cut that right at the beginning. I had a meeting before tryouts with all the parents. I was like, "I don't want to hear from you. If your kid's going to be late to practice, don't call me. If it's not your kid calling. Don't even pick up the phone. I don't want to hear from you. They are 15 years old and if you don't like it then don't even have them try out." But there was a little more leeway with the school I suppose.

Lauren Ruffin:

After that I went and coached a fifth and sixth grade girls team at an Orthodox Hebrew school, which was the loveliest experience. I had so much fun with those kids. They were absolutely terrible. So many kids didn't have TVs. They'd never even seen a basketball game. It was the most fun I ever had because there was nothing serious about it.

Laura Jorgensen:

Yeah, that's cool. That's really cool. I did camps for a while in the summers to make money. We would do... As a coach, at a school, they pay you, I don't know. It's peanuts to coach. So the one kind of thing they toss your way is that you can use the gym all summer to have camps and that's where you can make your money. So just imagine me all summer long with all ages. Oh, I had a blast. It was the most-

Lauren Ruffin:

It's so much fun.

Laura Jorgensen:

Oh, amazing. When I go home, I still stop by the gym. It still feels like home. You know that feeling when you walk in?

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. No, I know.

Laura Jorgensen:

"I'm home." Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

So speaking about TVs, one of the first things I think you both said when we started working together was, "Come March Madness, essentially, don't bother me. I will roll out a television into wherever I'm working and have it on all day long." What is it about college basketball that you two find so interesting, exciting, willing to shut down other areas of your life, perhaps to be part of that?

Laura Jorgensen:

I think it's the authenticity. I think that it's still pure at that level. People play so hard, it means so much to them to win a national championship and I think you lose a lot of that once you get to the NBA. These are dreams. When we talk about our injuries, I think why it's so devastating is because this is a dream you've had since you were a kid, right? To go play in college, you sit in your front yard and you're doing the countdown, "Three, two, one." You're doing the whole deal and so it really is. It's like a lifetime dream that you're watching and you get to experience.

Laura Jorgensen:

For me, I get to experience it by curiously, by just watching it and you just see there's so much magic in March Madness things that shouldn't happen do. It's the Cinderella stories. It's the emotion you get to hear about the fans and the players and the coaches. There's just a lot of mystique to it that I don't think you can find anywhere else. And across sport, I mean it happens at a lot of different tournaments like this world cups and things, but it's just the gravity of it and what it means for people if they were to win it, that you get to watch the whole thing unfold. That you get to see the whole story and that's what's so cool to me.

Lauren Ruffin:

I would say all of that and having played for so long and having been such an obsessive athlete up until recently, you realize mastery, what you're watching is... Especially once you get down to the last 16 teams, you're watching kids who have mastered their craft of playing this game and then you're watching five people work together and basketball is like... My favorite thing to do is to put on headphones and go to a game in person and just watch it in silence. Just with other music on and watching people move and you realize the rhythm of a game and when you're in, the muscle memory that you never forget. So there's a part of me that plays a game with them. When you're watching people play at a high level and it happens in particular women's basketball players, because the game is so pure in a way that that can get into that zone watching college guys play. And then on a less revert level gambling, a couple of prop bets, 50 cents here, a dollar there.

Laura Jorgensen:

It doesn't even matter. A nickel doesn't even-

Lauren Ruffin:

It doesn't matter. When you're competitive, just they're not big bets, but I'm going to win that shit.

Laura Jorgensen:

Yeah, there's a lot of pride in what did that March Madness pool. There is a lot of pride in that. And it sounds like-

Lauren Ruffin:

And shame when someone who picks on colors wins, it's the worst thing ever.

Laura Jorgensen:

It's embarrassing. How many people do you think we'll have in our Fractured Atlas pool? Will it be me and you Ruffin?

Lauren Ruffin:

Two.

Laura Jorgensen:

Two coming in hot. Got it.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, exactly. It'll be us. Unauthorized use of Zoom to watch games.

Laura Jorgensen:

The worst thing is if we extend it to the Slack channel and we come in last place, which will probably-

Lauren Ruffin:

It's going to happen. That's what's going to happen.

Laura Jorgensen:

Good. Glad we're already taken care of. Good.

Tim Cynova:

So we'll come back to how you pick your brackets, but one of the reasons that this episode actually makes it into the Work. Shouldn't. Suck. Podcast is that one of the things that you've said was it's all about high performing teams, not necessarily the most or the best talent. How does that show up on the court and if one of you will please connect us to work?

Lauren Ruffin:

The team-manship at a college level is totally different than it is once you get to the NBA. Because often the teams that win or go to the final four aren't teams that are super stacked. Especially now that you're seeing people go play overseas. I think it's going to be interesting to watch the men's game developed because it's going to become, as kids are opting out of our sort of rigged collegiate system. What you're going to have are just team players and coaches are having to be really thoughtful about how they put teams. I shouldn't say... Because, they're always thoughtful. But how do you create the ultimate chemistry on a team when you don't have a superstar? Because, the superstars are essentially at this point popping out of college basketball.

Laura Jorgensen:

I think like Ruffin is saying, it's really a fine balance because if you look at historically the Cinderella stories in the tournament, the teams that go really far, that shouldn't have gone really far. It's the Davidson's that had a Steph Curry and then a bomb team or like when Kawhi Leonard was at San Diego State and they went... These are future superstars that were surrounded by a supporting cast of everyone who had bought in. That's where I think the team comes in. As a coach, I think it's essential at the collegiate level because you do have so many one and dones guys that come from one year and are out.

Laura Jorgensen:

That generally isn't enough time to build chemistry. So you either have to be a legitimately amazing chemist that can get everyone to gel in a matter of months or you need to get a group of guys together. It's all about that common goal, right? We all want to win the championship, but how does my personal goal of making it to the NBA and getting a lottery after this season fall into play? There's a lot of components that are swirling around and it's getting everyone on board for that same thing and that's how you get the championship team when everyone's all in on it, they're in and on it for each other.

Laura Jorgensen:

I think the best teams I've ever coached or I've ever watched, you can tell, the key thing is that I want to win more for you than for me. I think that's the same thing at work. When you can get people around you that, "I want to do this thing really well for that person and they want to do that well for me." That's when you get really high performing team. When it becomes more than just about you. When that level disappears is when I think you get the elevated teams across any level. It can be in sports, it can be in work, in business. The me disappears and it's more about the us.

Lauren Ruffin:

That's one of my favorite things about the nonprofit sector. Because in theory what we're working towards is really a mission and not the me. That often doesn't happen that way, which is why we have this podcast. But I think that's spot on. The other interesting thing about that chemistry that happens over time with the team is... And I keep thinking about Michigan with John Howard. That team stayed together for a long time and went on to do really awesome things and the negative space, the fact that they didn't win a college championship. It's just so interesting because you have these high performing teams that sometimes just don't get it done.

Lauren Ruffin:

They came back, they did what? Three years together? I think they stayed until their junior year. They were for three years in a row as they came into college, predict to win a championship and did not get it done.

Laura Jorgensen:

But they had that bond. That's like what we're talking about that, "I don't want to let you down, so I'm going to make sure everything... I get my job done because if I don't get my job done, I'm going to let you down, I'm going to let the team down." That's the same in work. You've got to have that spirit of, this has to happen or otherwise it's on me and all the other pins fall, if I don't make sure this happens. When you have really high performing people, they understand that concept and the last thing they're going to do is let their teammates down.

Lauren Ruffin:

Also staying in the face of other offers.

Laura Jorgensen:

Exactly. That's exactly right.

Lauren Ruffin:

It's another interesting... That, that connection to your teammates will do. That correlates to the workplace. We're on a shared leadership team and so the duty that I have to my colleagues, as we all think about whether we're going to stay at Fractured Atlas, take other opportunities that are coming all of our way. It really becomes more of a collaborative conversation than it would be just like, "I'm out of here. I got this other job." It's college sports man.

Tim Cynova:

There's the classic study that was done about investment bankers, highly compensated investment bankers and followed them as they went to their next job from where they sort of made their name and found out that for the most part, none of them were as successful in that next job as they were in the previous job, unless they brought their original team with them. I'm actually fascinated by that. That group that's together actually might be the reason everyone's high-performing, not this person from that person.

Tim Cynova:

We see this a lot in sports. I see this surprisingly in schools and teachers where the third grade class is really high performing. "This class is really high performing and so we're going to break up those teachers and spread them around to other classes or the other classes or grades that aren't as high performing." Then you just end up with usually less than you had before you started because there was something about that group of people who were together that had each other's backs. They had that trust and psychological safety. They work together in a different way and it just wasn't that one person.

Laura Jorgensen:

We see that all the time in sports. I think it's that team. It's that special magic and you can't put your finger on it. And it's why it's so hard to find as a coach because in their individual components, it's one in one, but then it's like one in one makes for. All of a sudden this magic comes together with these specific people that even though they would be superstars in and of their own right, it's that supporting cast that brings the best out of them. You know what I'm talking about. You meet those people that they just bring you up. It's like you want to be your best, they want to be their best, and it's just like oof magic and that's what makes the teams.

Laura Jorgensen:

It's always been interesting to me where that comes from. Is that from the leadership at the top? I think a lot of times it is. They find those people that fit together and they find how to spark that in you that brings the best out of you. But that's interesting for me from both a coaching level in sport but also from a leadership level in business. What forces those interactions? Does it come from the bottom up? Does it come from the top-down? That's always something that I've grappled with. I don't think the answer is always the same but just something to think about.

Lauren Ruffin:

I've always been interested in leaders who... The law firm model, when entire practice groups leave and go elsewhere and also the managerial style of, "I'm going to get this job and I'm bringing everybody from my old job that I like working with me." Obviously I think all the time like, "Could you pluck the four of us from Fractured Atlas and put us someplace else and we will work." Or is it the unique mission? The way that we work here? Is it the organization that makes us high performing? Well one, are we high-performing? If so, is it the organization or is it the chemistry the four of us have?

Tim Cynova:

I think there are some questions that we dove into in the previous shared leadership conversation. It's like the chicken and egg of trust. Where does it come from? I'm curious, LJ, because we alluded to this earlier, not only do you have a background in basketball, but you're currently a professional cyclist in addition to your full time job at Fractured Atlas and running another company. Cycling is different than basketball and that on a basketball team, there are the players and if you win a championship, everyone who is on that team wins the championship.

Tim Cynova:

In cycling, at least the broad perception is that a bunch of people are working so that one player can win, so one person can win. Then I guess if you think about the tour de France, one rider wins that and there are seven or eight other people, just riders on the team who don't get to stand on the podium, let alone many more people behind the scenes who are keeping the whole thing going. Can you juxtapose those two things? How are the dynamics different or the same when you think about a cycling structure versus a basketball structure?

Laura Jorgensen:

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said the broad perception. Because, the thing is that everyone outside of the cycling world looks at it this way. My mom will check results and I've done a lot of things. I've been the sprinter, I've been the lead-out and when I wrote for a really top sprinter in the world and I was last lead out. So my job is to be a last place. I've been first lead-out, I've been last. My mom would be like, "You got 47th place." And I like killed it. We won the race. It is the broad perception that one person wins the race, but in reality that's not what's actually happening. Generally there's six to eight people on a team and they're all working for one person, but if you get the right mix, everyone has a job to do.

Laura Jorgensen:

I feel like between basketball and cycling, basketball I love because it's such a quick game, things are happening all the time. Whereas cycling, you have a meeting with your director before the race. This is the plan. There are intangibles that may happen during the race, but generally you know who you want to win and that is generally what happens. Now everyone's got to buy into the plan or otherwise it's not going to work because if everyone doesn't go all in for that one person, it is going to be a problem, if another team does that. So you're going to line up six people, you're all going to go as hard as you can, make everyone else go flying off the back till the one person sprints.

Laura Jorgensen:

If one person isn't fully committed to that, you're going to lose. So there I think is actually a bigger onus of team commitment in cycling, even though it would appear as if there's not. In basketball, if one person doesn't do, let's call it their job, you can still win the game. In cycling at the top level, you probably can't. One person can mess up the whole thing. I find you need to be jailed more as a team in cycling, even though from the outside it may look like it's more of an individual sport. So it's kind of like this ironic situation you have going on. But from inside the sport everyone is all in. My favorite pictures in cycling are the sprinter winning the race and every one of his teammates have their hands in the air, in the background, especially if they're like right up, they could probably be on the podium and they don't even care. Their hands are in the air because they just won the race.

Laura Jorgensen:

But to your point, a lot of people from the outside don't see that. But it's a super team sport. Everyone has a different role, everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. So I think it's even more like the workplace. Because if you're a director and you're compiling a team, you need lots of different things. You need one person that can just be a workhorse. And then you need one person that can kind of be the in-between. You need one person that can just sprint faster than anyone. And finding all those individual pieces that work together in a functional way is a really, really difficult job. So my hats are off to all the directors out there. And then you've got to make a game plan for each race. So it is difficult, but there's so much teamwork that goes on in cycling. It's out of control and that's probably why I've always loved it.

Laura Jorgensen:

I've always been the type of person I would rather help someone else win the race than win the race. That is way cooler feeling to me. I've done both. There's something more to it, sacrificing your race for someone else, for me. But for other people, they just love to win the race. So you put the two of us together and it's great, but that's the role of a director or the role as a leader in a team, trying to find the right pieces that are going to deliver the result.

Tim Cynova:

I just lucked into some research about cooperation and competition and why it matters. They studied what happens if people compete first and then cooperate? And what happens if they cooperate, then compete. They found that people who cooperate first then compete actually creates friendly rivalries. And then Gavin Kilduff, I think that's how their name is pronounced, did more research about the rival effects and how rivalry impacts your own team's performance. Specifically with NCAA basketball. The better your rival does in the post season this year, the more likely you are to succeed next year. So I thought, "Perfect. I just landed on this research, we're going to be talking NCAA basketball." I know you two have feelings about UNC and Duke. That was actually mentioned in the, the rivalry research about their performance. Curious to get your thoughts on cooperation, competition and rivalry.

Lauren Ruffin:

[inaudible 00:22:00] myself but that's the only way it could work, is if we were collaborators before we were competitors. Because once you're my competitor, especially athletically, I hate you and there's no coming back from that. I can't imagine it working the other way around. Although I mean nowadays the athletic kids, they kind of play AAU and they like each other. But I don't know, I wasn't raised that way. That was not my upbringing. Once we're in the darkness, we have to stay there. We can't come over the other side.

Laura Jorgensen:

It's interesting. Especially in cycling, I've been teammates with almost everyone and now we're all on different teams and all this and it feels like there's a level of cooperation but once that gun goes off or once that ball is tipped, that's all over. It is full competitor and I think in a really healthy way. We are going head to head for the next 40 minutes and after that's over we'll go get a beer. But for right now it is fully on and I think that's a really well understood and accepted concept. There's no bad feelings. "We are competitors right now in this moment and everyone goes all in on that. I'm not cutting you a break. I definitely don't want you to cut me a break." Whoever-

Lauren Ruffin:

[crosstalk 00:23:05].

Laura Jorgensen:

No. Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

I want to be you when I grow up.

Laura Jorgensen:

What can I say? It sounds civilized but it's quite uncivilized during those 40 minutes, all bets are off. I do agree. Rivalry, I think fuels so much of it. I mean, I don't know about you Ruffin, but we definitely had some pretty legit rivalries all throughout my career, both coaching and playing and those games were lit. There was just a different atmosphere in the gym. There was definitely a different energy and I think rivalries sparks so much of progress even in business. Think about it, I mean who... Think of so much happens. Even when I worked corporately, so many of the decisions we make so many of them so asinine, we did because our competitors did. But that's the way it works because rivalry is real in my opinion. I mean, people feed off of it, make really bad decisions or really good ones because of it and it's all part of the deal.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oddly enough, I think that my probably most intense rivalry happened after college playing recreationally. There was a woman that I played with who... I love how you guys are smiling like, "What is she about to say?"

Laura Jorgensen:

Yeah, You nailed it.

Lauren Ruffin:

The rivalry was so intense that I wouldn't give her anything she wanted and we were supposed to be friendly. So we'd go out and have drinks afterwards and everything else, but no matter where we were off the court, even on the court, if she wanted to play four and four, I'd be like, "Oh well we only have 16 players so I'm going to go downstairs and work out." So they couldn't play four on four. I would just walk off the court. Everything that I did, I could not turn the rivalry off. I could name several other instances where I just went out of my way to put my finger in her eye just for fun. But good times. We ended up on the... We got so good that we ended up on the court during a mystics game. You know how they do the little fun activities. So they put the two of us out there with two little kids and we nearly... She ended up leading.

Tim Cynova:

The kid or your rival?

Lauren Ruffin:

My rival.

Tim Cynova:

Okay.

Lauren Ruffin:

So it was two adult women with two little kids doing a little layup drill, put on some pants or something random. I don't remember what it was, but somehow she hurt herself. I didn't do anything to her.

Laura Jorgensen:

I have a similar inability to turn the competition off. We went losing here in New Zealand and it's a downhill toboggan open course. Very little breaks or anything and they don't care so much about liability here. They're just like, "Here, go down in a skateboard helmet and see what happens." We were racing and my wife ran a 10 year old child over so she couldn't win. I mean, it was just like... It all goes out the window. There's blinders, right? Ruffin, there's just blinders on. "I'm here to win. That is what I'm here to do."

Lauren Ruffin:

I must win at all costs.

Laura Jorgensen:

I must win.

Lauren Ruffin:

Cassidy, our 12 year old, when she maybe three or four years ago, did girls on the run, a little 5K. It was mostly a 5K fun run. And she didn't want to run. So we were all the way in the back and I was like losing my mind. Imagine having to go 3.2 miles with someone who is apoplectic about being at the end. So she had to live through that. Poor thing. But at one point she's like, "I just want to have fun." And I'm like, "Winning is fun, kid. Losing is the worst. This is supposed to be fun."

Laura Jorgensen:

But how do you think that translates even in the workplace as well to now kids play games that there's no winner and they don't keep score even though... How does that shape society in the workplace and in sports? Is it okay that no one's a winner? We're not-

Lauren Ruffin:

I mean, I don't know. I read too much of Nietzsche who was a horrible person, but horrible person and he was onto something around competition. So I don't know. I always worry that I sound like the old curmudgeon around competitiveness and sort of the how you constantly push yourself for excellence in everything you do and I learned that as an athlete. I know people like, "Don't say 110%, there's only 100%." But there is a point in sport where you think your body is going to stop and then you keep going.

Laura Jorgensen:

Do you think that's just in sport? I'm going to have you pause on that.

Lauren Ruffin:

I was going to say... And I think I learned that in sport. I remember the first time I ever really lifted heavy... My aunt got really into weightlifting, but I was maybe 15 the first time I lifted with her and my arm stopped working. We lifted so heavy and so hard that I could not lift anymore and she was like, "That's okay. You just take your other arm and help this one up but you don't get to stop." I do feel like there is a certain mindset and a competitive drive to just not stop, that I don't know if it really... I don't see it very often anymore. I don't know what to do about that or how we change that. But it's connected to this idea that it's not important if you win and it's just fun.

Lauren Ruffin:

As a kid, how do you learn how it feels to win? To know that you are the best at something for that particular point in time? Not forever. Not that tomorrow you could be the loser and notice I didn't say second place finish. I said, "Loser." But I don't know. I don't know what to do with that. But I do think about a lot in the work context because there are points in time where we hear a lot of excuses about things. There are parts of me that miss being able to just run through obstacles over, under, through however you get there.

Laura Jorgensen:

However. Don't ask questions.

Lauren Ruffin:

Just do it.

Laura Jorgensen:

I think it's so funny because I feel like sport has always been a place and now it's becoming not that place anymore. It's always been a place where it's been okay to push yourself as hard as you can go. And other places, sometimes that's not so socially acceptable. I mean, you look at why investment banks only want to hire athletes. It's because the mindset, you've been drilled into this mindset that like you're saying, it's not that you're going over 100% but you've learned. Most people don't even go 80 they just think they're at 100. So you've learned how to get that extra bit, all of it out of yourself. I always wondered if that disappears from sport, where it's going to be socially acceptable to be able to still push yourself. In sport, even cycling, Tim, I find to be such a microcosm of life because you do these crazy hard training blocks and it's rest, recover. You've got to go hard to go easy.

Laura Jorgensen:

That's how I live my life. You've got to go hard to go easy. You've got to earn it, right? I'm not saying... Because I think some people, I can be intense for some people if you didn't know that. It's not that I don't go easy, it's just I go hard first and then that's where you find the balance. It's not that balance doesn't exist, but I don't find balance just living in the middle. I find balance and going full gas and then when the time is right letting off and I find that, that probably comes for me from sport, whether that be training for basketball or training for cycling, but that's something that I always wonder in the workplace what that looks like because we talk about work life balance, but what I think that's translated into is always living in the middle and people are afraid to push those limits because if you're pushing the limits, you're not balanced.

Laura Jorgensen:

This will be an argument and I'm sure people will refute what I'm saying, but in my mind that doesn't mean that you don't push the limits. It just means that you push them and then when it's time to stop pushing them, you can back off and take that break.

Tim Cynova:

Man, I think this is, as you both were talking about excellence and excellence in what you're doing. We see this a lot in the cultural sector with artists. I used to run a dance company. Highly trained performers, highly trained artists are pushing themselves to the edge and figuring out where that is so they can hold it right there. I used to play trombone, never got to the edge. I saw someone else get close, but similarly honing a craft over and over and over so that you're getting as close to perfect as you can and where you know where that and then you can translate that into other things if you want, but it's that ability to find out what excellent looks like, whatever that might be in yourself as well, and then dedicate yourself day in and day out to figuring out how to get there.

Lauren Ruffin:

I think I've talked about this article I read last year in business insider on... It was a parent writing about their kid trying out for the youth orchestra at Juilliard when he talked about how rewarding it was to watch his kid master something to play the same piece over and over and over again. To understand the nuance between it being really good and not so good, playing facing the accompanist and not facing just all the various ways that you really get good at something. What I struggle with as a manager in the workplace is, you don't understand what excellence looks like without critical immediate feedback. One of the things I've always loved about sport is whether it's from a coach or from a score or from your time or whatever, you immediately get really, really harsh raw feedback about your performance in a way that it can be really hard to do in the workplace.

Lauren Ruffin:

By that I mean my father was an avid basketball player and fan yelling at me during games about not being able to make a left handed layup. Just completely laying into me from the sidelines. I appreciated that feedback because one, it shamed me into doing better. Shame is a very important feeling for humans. But beyond that, the immediate feedback of missing a layup that's wide open in front of people and knowing that what you have to do the next day is go make 500 of them at different speeds, at different angles on the left side of the basket until you know that you can do it right, every time. It's very hard as a manager to tell another adult.

Lauren Ruffin:

You need to go back and write this paragraph 40 times until you get it right. Or this paragraph is absolutely terrible and I think that editors do that and that relationship. But if you're in an organization where you're managing people who are again juggling different things, that sort of harsh, critical, immediate feedback is really difficult to do and people aren't expecting to receive that in the workplace anymore.

Tim Cynova:

I wonder if this is where rivalries come into play, friendly rivalries. But people who force you to raise your game inside the workplace. I can think of a number of people that I currently work with. The two of you included. There's something about people who make you raise your game, who pushed back, who do it better than you do, who you're like, "I've got to level up because I can't coast off of what I used to be doing." I think that's one way that that shows up in the workplace because yeah, that gives you immediate feedback sometimes, but it's not at the end of the day, no one's flashing up a score. I'm sure there are companies where someone's flashing of a score, maybe sales.

Lauren Ruffin:

So the March Madness, basketball tournament season is upon us and the NCAA bracket announcement is imminent. Talk me through how you each prepare for this moment. How you fill out your brackets, maybe the best result you've ever received or achieved and what are some historical highlights?

Laura Jorgensen:

I got to share my secrets first?

Lauren Ruffin:

I don't have any secrets at all. I gave up doing a bracket that I really cared about 10 years ago. And so now I do one automated, I do one by my favorite colors of the moment. Which people always win using that crap when you're in the office pool. So I do a favorite color bracket type thing and then I do one that's kind of just based on gut intuition. But my best result ever was I picked Yukon to win the men's bracket. Was that like 2014 when they won? 2012 when Campbell Walker was on that team, they won the Maui invitational in the beginning of the season and I said they're going to win the whole thing this year. I called it right that year and I called it right in my bracket. I got a whole lot wrong in the bracket, but the thing I got right was that Yukon was going to win.

Laura Jorgensen:

Since I'm a data person, this is going to be a technical answer to this question. Because when I fill out a bracket, I fill it out to win. And it depends on the pool you're in because there's a lot of different methodologies for scoring. So there's some that it's this... It's simplistic, how many do you get right? And that you fill out a whole different way than a way that's like, "My favorite type is seed times round." And that should points for the round. Because say you pick a number 16 to win in the first round and you get 16 points, that's a big thing. So there's this weighting of underdog yet by the time you get to like eighth round, even if you pick the first seed, that's still a lot of points.

Laura Jorgensen:

So in that scenario, always pick the nine seed, because nine is worth more than eight and it's a 50-50 split of who's going to win that game. Every year there's a five, 12 upset, you got to pick one of those. Now it's getting even like four, 13s. So there's a lot of technical things that go to it, but I'd say I'm an emotional ticker cause I always want the underdog to win. So I pick by emotion and counter to what Ruffin says, I never go by who does well in the early season because none of that matters by tournament time and I go off momentum alone. So who's got the hot team at the moment? Who's rolling into the tournament with a lot of wins and who's going into it with a lot of confidence? Is usually how I pick. If it's a toss up, who's got the better coach always wins.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yes, I do look at seniority. Who's got an older roster? But it's going to get weird because the last couple of years you've got great players deciding to play overseas or just sitting out altogether for a year till they're eligible for the NBA. So I feel like parodies. I think this is the year we're going to see a 12, 13 seed get into the eight round. This year, there's a lot of parody happening, so it's going to be interesting. It's going to be actually really fricking stressful.

Laura Jorgensen:

It's going to be a great tournament. Going to your point. I think everything has changed since they made the 19 year old rule and there's teams that used to have one and dones don't anymore. Now a lot of teams that win it, they either have one superstar. You look at the Steph Curry or the Kawhi Leonard that took these teams all the way. So I'm looking at topping right now, and Dayton. But Dayton, they're not underrated though, is the problem. He's so good or like John Moran. How far did that team go? I think if you have one all star, it could take you-

Lauren Ruffin:

Or Collin Sexton a couple years ago with Alabama, it went way further than I thought with him.

Laura Jorgensen:

Such a toss up. Then you pick, you're like, "Am I putting all my chips on this one kid?" Maybe. And it's a big win or a big loss. I feel like it's always a gamble.

Lauren Ruffin:

On this child.

Laura Jorgensen:

To an 18 year old human.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh, this child.

Tim Cynova:

I went to the University of Cincinnati and before I went there everyone's like, "Bound to make final four at least once during your time there." It might've been my first year there where in the second round, Kenyon Martin broke his leg in the game and it was like poof, up in snow. And there's just a downward spiral. I don't know what they did there in the course of my time there, but they never made the final four.

Tim Cynova:

Selection Sunday is on Sunday. We're recording this on Tuesday. Selection Sunday if my Googling of terms is correct is on Sunday. So you two must already be doing research in the lead up for this because there's some conference tournaments that are happening. What does your prep look like for this?

Lauren Ruffin:

I haven't watched a lot of college ball this year. I've been pretty into the NBA this season because the NBA has been really interesting. So this week is my catch up on basketball. I guess I started last week before. I caught a couple of, San Diego State looks good. I feel like LJ who slacked about that a bit using the Slack for professional reasons only but so I'm catching up. So we'll see where I end up by the end of the week. And then match ups matter. We didn't say that, who they're playing matters. So I don't know if it's really worth it to get really neurotic about it before the brackets are done, before the brackets are kind of set.

Laura Jorgensen:

I agree with that. I think that the match-ups for sure have to fall to see who's playing who, because it makes all the difference in the world. Are you big and slow plane an agile team? Are you playing them in the first round or the sixth round and kind of like you were speaking about the injury there. One of the big things I look at is depth of bench. Because this is not one game, it's several and it's who's got the stamina to make it the whole way. So if there's a team that's got like three strong players, but once they go into their bench, they're in trouble, that is not a team that I pick far along the road. So it is a huge matchup thing. I don't do a ton of prep prior to the bracket being done because it's all just speculation at that stage. Just energy spent, energy spent. So I wait-

Lauren Ruffin:

And conference championships. Inevitably there's a team that would never get the tournament except that they randomly win their conference and then you're like, "What am I going to do now that Tougaloo College is in the tournament? What am I going to do with is?"

Laura Jorgensen:

I'm going to pick them because I just like the name Tougaloo.

Lauren Ruffin:

Apologies to all of our listeners who happened to have graduated from Tougaloo. Surely Thea Franklin who I went to law school with, went the Tougaloo it popped into my head. She's not listening for sure.

Tim Cynova:

All right, so as we close this episode, let's return to the title of the podcast, Work. Shouldn't. Suck. Do you have any more thoughts about how we can relate this topic that we've been spending the best hour on to work, not sucking?

Lauren Ruffin:

Well, I always go with team-manship. Everything I learned in life, and I know that sounds cliche and cheesy, but I really learned from playing basketball and basketball in particular, unlike all the other sports, I played. Soccer, too many people on the field, field's too big. But basketball in particular, having five people on the court in relatively close quarters, it's a dance. When it works, when you understand your team, you have good chemistry, there's nothing better than playing a game with people you like and people you play well with. And conversely, playing with someone who doesn't know the game, and I don't mean from a technical... Technically you play with people of different skill levels, that's inevitable. But playing with someone who just at a philosophical level you really dislike playing with is painful.

Lauren Ruffin:

You can tell a lot about a person from their game. I think that's particularly true with women's sports because the level of technical skill in women's basketball, it's a really pure form of the game. So yeah, I've hired people based on how they played on the court. I hired one of my favorite point guards to play with, to run communications for an organization and she ran the communication shop exactly like she ran the game as a point guard and it was fantastic to watch. So I think it matters.

Laura Jorgensen:

Yeah, I have to second that. I do say so much of this does relate. I mean, just talking about how I pick my bracket and how teams work. I think good teams, so much of it starts at the top down, so it's like where's the leadership at? How is the coach bringing people into the program? It starts at the whole recruiting phase, which I think it does an organization as well. Who are we bringing in? What is the style, what is the mission base of this? And that filters down. That starts at one level of leadership and it goes right down to your team captain who then filters it down to the rest of the team. I think successful organizations work that way as well. There's a common goal that we all have. We all know what it is. It's filtered down through every single person and every single person buys in.

Laura Jorgensen:

It's not like one person doesn't buy into what the strategy is. Nope. It just won't work. I think it's the same in an organization. And once you get people behind that common goal, magic can happen. And that's what happens in the tournament, is that everyone's bought into this thing and they say, "This is our goal. We're going to win the tournament. It doesn't matter if you're 16 seed or one seed, and that is what we're going full force in." That's where you see the magic happen. I think in organizations as well, it doesn't matter if its sport, it doesn't matter if it's business, it doesn't matter if it's dance. When you have a group of people that all say, "Look, I'm putting my blinders on. This is what we're doing and nothing's going to stop us." Amazing, amazing things that shouldn't happen can happen.

Laura Jorgensen:

That's the magic of March Madness. It's the magic of these startups that are in a garage that all of a sudden are these massive organizations. It's because they don't actually care about what's logical, what should be happening. There's a common goal that they all have that they just go all in on and it's beautiful and I think it's beautiful to see in sport. It's beautiful to see in business across all things.

Laura Jorgensen:

So I think teams and leadership are the key to all of it and this common goal that everyone gets behind and goes after. Teams that win the tournament have all sorts of obstacles in their way, just like businesses do. But they're the teams that don't get derailed. There's a lot of teams that they go in, "Hurrah, we're going to win this thing." And it's all great, and then they get one guy in foul trouble and they start to crumble. It's the people that are resilient and can kind of smart these curve balls that really are standing at the end of the thing. That's true in business and in sport.

Tim Cynova:

Lauren and LJ, it's always a pleasure spending time with you. My best wishes to both of you as you enter this college basketball playoff season. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Lauren Ruffin:

Thanks. Really looking forward to the Fractured Atlas pool, with just the two of us.

Laura Jorgensen:

Going to get a top two. I know it.

Tim Cynova:

If you've enjoyed the conversation or just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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Crafting Virtual Workplaces (EP.11)

Last Updated

March 14, 2020

We're talking remote work arrangements. Specifically, we’re talking about what teams and organizations can do to introduce, experiment, and iterate on virtual work tools and arrangements, especially in light of things like the spread of COVID-19.

Read our accompanying piece: How to Transition to a Virtual Workplace Overnight

Guests: Shawn Anderson, Nicola Carpenter, Andrew Hanson

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guests

SHAWN ANDERSON currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer at Fractured Atlas where he oversees the organization's software development operations. In that role, he serves as one of the four members of the organization's non-hierarchical leadership team. Prior to joining Fractured Atlas Shawn was a founding partner at Gemini SBS, where he managed the development of web applications for a number of U.S. Department of Education funded projects including the Federal Resource Center, the Regional Resource Center Program, the Family Center on Technology and Disability, and the Technical Assistance Coordination Center. He Holds a B.A. in user interface design from Hampshire College.

NICOLA CARPENTER works on the People team at Fractured Atlas, where she finds ways for tools and processes to better align with the organization’s purpose. She believes in tools so much that she sets personal OKRs every quarter. Prior to joining Fractured Atlas, Nicola worked for a variety of arts organizations including MoMA PS1, Walker Art Center, and Heidelberger Kunstverein, and she still has a particular love for museums. Originally from Minneapolis, she received a BFA in Art from the University of Minnesota and continues to stay creative through knitting and sewing clothes. She is currently in too many book clubs, but still somehow finds time to read books about organizational culture for fun. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter at @colacarp.

ANDREW HANSON is currently the Senior DevOps Engineer at Fractured Atlas. Prior to that position he has spent the last 12 years at everything from start-ups to Fortune 500s applying his infrastructure design and automation skills. Formally trained as a Research Psychologist, and receiving his M.S. in Social Psychology, he started out applying motivational theory to the world of video games. From there he rediscovered his love of technology and made a career change to the path he is on now. Outside of work Andrew runs the Orlando Linux Users Group, and enjoys being a Disney family with his wife and three boys.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. A podcast about well, that. On this episode we're talking remote work arrangements. Specifically we're talking about what teams and organizations can do to introduce experiment and iterate on remote or virtual work tools and arrangements, especially in light of things like the spread of COVID-19. We'll explore ideas about how to structure the infrastructure from software to stand-ups. We'll talk about spoiler alert, how people can actually get work done when no one's watching them and we'll address things like building trust. Approaching this with intentionality and introducing agency in ways that allow people to better craft work arrangements where they can thrive.

Tim Cynova:

We're joined by people who have a wealth of experience building, managing and working in remote work arrangements. People with titles like Chief Technology Officer, Senior Dev Ops Engineer, and Associate Director of People Operations. Our guests include Shawn Anderson, Nicola Carpenter and Andrew Hanson, and a little later in the show, we'll again be joined by podcasting's favorite cohost, Lauren Ruffin. So let's get going with Andrew Hansom and Nicola Carpenter. Andrew and Nicola, welcome to the podcast.

Nicola Carpenter:

Thanks for having me again. I feel like I'm on these so frequently that I can almost compete with Ruffin for the podcast's favorite co-host, but Ruffin's going to win every time.

Andrew Hanson:

And thanks for asking me to be on.

Tim Cynova:

Before we really dive into the meat of the topic, Andrew, most people probably have some idea about what an operations or people operations professional does. Also, Nicola has been on the podcast a couple of times talking about that, but they might not know exactly what a Senior Dev Ops Engineer does. Can you break this down for everyone?

Andrew Hanson:

I'll try to make this as short of a rant as possible. It's actually funny to me when I hear that somebody works in operations because to me what I do is operations. So generally in the tech field, when you talk about operations, those are the people that keep your servers running, keep your email up, keep it so you can continue to make Zoom calls and all those types of things. When I started in technology, that's where I started my career, which was called operations. Generally you were either called a systems engineer or a systems administrator. That's kind of where I started. And then the field kind of shifted a little bit and we came up with some new... I don't want to call them titles, not that I'll get into this now, but dev ops really isn't supposed to be a title, it's supposed to be a philosophy, but a lot of companies took that and have dev ops engineers now.

Andrew Hanson:

So I am a dev ops engineer, which basically means that I try to take my skills from operation side and managing servers and I try to also marry that with some development work and also understanding what the other developers that I work with kind of go through and making their lives easier on a daily basis.

Tim Cynova:

That's awesome. So also a future podcast episode where you've talked about dev ops as a philosophy. We'll be reaching out about that one too.

Andrew Hanson:

I have a lot to talk about on that one. That would be great.

Tim Cynova:

Great. Awesome. So today we want to take a moment, especially with a lot of organizations right now thinking about introducing almost immediately remote or virtual work arrangements as the spread of in particular, COVID-19 is really making people worry about gathering, taking transit, the spread of an infectious disease. A lot of organizations seem to be going from zero to 60 on this, without having given some thought to this that might allow them to be more intentional with rolling it out. So I wanted to have an opportunity to talk with both of you about in your experience, things you've done, things that have worked well, things that haven't worked well, what tools are available for people to use maybe immediately? What kind of switching costs or adoption costs might be introduced into an environment where there is remote work? Let's just go high level. When you think about the difference between working in a physical office with other people and working remote or virtual, what comes to mind for both of you?

Andrew Hanson:

Well, for me the first thing that comes to mind is a difference in the way that you interact with people. I think everybody can relate to working in an office or in entertainment or restaurant, any of those places where you're kind of around people all the time and you have the "water cooler" talk and you have these kinds of face-to-face interactions with people that don't go away when you do remote work but are definitely greatly reduced. And so the way that you interact with people needs to be more intentional because you're going to have less of these non-intentional interactions.

Nicola Carpenter:

So we have this ongoing joke that just keeps on getting more amusing of the working from home and homing from work is how I think about it, my mind. But think of two comics. One of them is the things that you imagined someone doing when they work from home but in a physical office. So like there's a laundry machine next to their desk and their pet is sitting below them, anything like that. And then there is someone working from a coffee shop that carries along with them a whole fax machine and printer and a physical phone and then just plugs it in, in a coffee shop. I mean, it's an absurd thought, but I love how it kind of shows some of the things that we think about that might be different. And then also shows how we're not doing those things.

Nicola Carpenter:

I mean, if we're working from home, it's not like we have an actual physical water cooler, which would be amusing if we all had water coolers in our homes. But I mean I think a Fractured Atlas, we try to... And I think we've gotten really good at communicating virtually in a way that is just as... I don't want to say productive, but I guess it is productive but just as decent of a conversation as we do in person. I mean for example, we are recording this podcast virtually the experience of doing that is very similar to the two podcast I recorded with people in the same room. So I think that there are a lot of similarities that we don't necessarily think there would be similarities for, but there are definitely differences. I think that if people were to say there are no differences, they would also not be correct.

Tim Cynova:

I saw on Twitter yesterday that someone posted, "I guess we're about to find out which meetings really could have been emails after all." And I thought, "Yeah, right. Yes. Finally."

Nicola Carpenter:

I know. First, I just want to say not everyone can work remotely and I think that, that's also important to acknowledge in a conversation like this. There are jobs that it is impossible to do remotely. I mean, sure there's telemedicine, but for certain things you have to go to a doctor in 3D. There's food service. There's lots of various things where it would just be impossible to have that work in a virtual world. So I think that we are talking about a smaller group of people than every single employer, but also it's bigger than I think a lot of people think. I mean, I do talk to people and they're like, "Oh, well I could never work remote because of this, this, and this." But they say things that aren't necessarily barriers. But I think that, that's something... Where was I? What was the actual question? I wanted to use it as a caveat and I was going somewhere that was going to be really interesting.

Tim Cynova:

We might actually find out what meetings actually could have been emails.

Nicola Carpenter:

What magic. What magic we need. Part of me is kind of happy that people are rethinking these because I think we always should have been doing this. We always should have been thinking about what meetings do we need? We always should have been thinking about, how can we have more flexible work environments? Because I mean, you already have people in your workplaces who live with disabilities, who live with chronic illnesses, who might not be as able to come into workplaces, et cetera, but part of me is thinking, "Oh, okay. Well, this is an opportunity to have people think of this, but I also worry that people are going to do things too quickly, not put any effort into making virtual work, work and think that it fails. I wonder if this push to have more people working from home will make more people think that it works or have more people think that it doesn't work.

Andrew Hanson:

I think that's a good point that you bring up because for context, I've been working on remote teams for probably six out of the 12 years that I've been in tech. So obviously in tech, remote work is something that's very normal. Even here at Fractured Atlas, the engineering team has always been completely remote while the rest of the team has traditionally been in an office and has made that move only fairly recently. But I think it's a good point that you have to be very intentional about these moves and you have to be very intentional about the things that you're doing when you're making this move to be remote. It's very easy to just say, "Oh, you don't have to come into the office because you have a laptop."

Andrew Hanson:

But if you don't think about the things that people do in the office, if you don't think about the ways that people communicate, if you don't think about the ways that meetings are handled about the tools that people have access to or don't have access to when they're not in the office, it's going to sink and it's going to cast a shadow on working from home, when the problem wasn't working from home, the problem was the way that you implement it. So prior to coming to Fracture Atlas, I worked at a fortune 500 company and this is exactly what happened. We had an amazing manager. He did a very big push to do remote work and work from home.

Andrew Hanson:

Our team was doing very well at doing that remote work, but that wasn't being reported back to my manager's manager and so at this point it was cut off and suddenly everybody had to be in the office from eight to five every day. And one of the worst things you can do is to take your team who's working very well, who maybe not all, but for the most part 80% or more are enjoying remote work and then suddenly take it away from them. Because remote work opens up a lot of really great things for people, a lot of freedoms in the way that they can work, in a lot of the things that they can do and generally speaking, people don't like when something they like is taken away from them. That's kind of the flip side of the coin, is that when you're pushing for this momentum to do these things, you have to be very careful and very intentional. Because if you take that away, people are going to generally be upset.

Tim Cynova:

The loss aversion theory. You don't know what working virtually is like and then you have it and you're like, "Oh that's actually really great." And now you lose it and you didn't know how much value you put on that. So I once was speaking at a conference in Canada and I did the classic thing where it wasn't until like four days before the conference that I thought, "Oh, is my passport still valid?" I looked at my passport and sure enough, no, it had expired. So I had to go to the passport renewal website and look at expediting renewal for a passport. On the top of the expediting your passport page, it says at the time, "One way to avoid expediting your passport is to not wait until it needs to be expedited." But I thought, "I mean, that is great information and great advice, but I'm sort of in this situation where I need to expedite my passport, so not really useful this time around."

Tim Cynova:

I kind of feel like for organizations, yes you should have been putting a lot of thought into intentionally creating workplaces and how people work in different styles and whatnot, but at the same time we need to do this tomorrow is what I think increasingly a lot of organizations are feeling like. So for people who are like, "Yeah, that's great. I'll give some more thought to it the next time around, but how do I do this right now? What's the first thing that I need to do? Where do my files live? We don't have phones. We might have desktop computers and hardwired phones and a physical server at our location that has files maybe we have laptops. Maybe we use something like Dropbox. I haven't heard of Slack. I don't know what flow dock is. There's this Trello, there's Zoom, there's BlueJeans. It seems overwhelming in the moment. What advice would you have for organizations who find themselves in this position right now?

Andrew Hanson:

Before we get into that, I have two points I want to say on that. The first thing is from a technical operations perspective, that's absolutely terrifying. To have your boss come to you and say, "Tomorrow we're going to have 500 remote workers." From an infrastructure perspective alone, that gives me heart palpitations. So please if you're listening to this, don't do that. Try to be a little more intentional than that. The second thing is like it blows my mind that in 2020, this is the first time that we're really having this conversation about this. What is so great about the typical office? What is really the benefit of the typical office? The thing that I hear all the time is like, "Oh, but you get people together and people need to be together." But you look at all the research and everything out there and it shows that, that's just simply not true.

Andrew Hanson:

All the research shows that people work just as well from home. People work just as well in remote spaces, doing remote meetings, things like this where we can see each other on a screen. So why is this the first time we're having this conversation and why are we freaking out about this now, because this is the first time we're having this conversation?

Nicola Carpenter:

I also think that it'd be very hard to say, "Oh 500 people, they're all working throughout tomorrow." It also stresses me out a little bit and I understand that there are companies that have to do that and are trying to figure out how to do that. I'm trying to think, I'm like what is the first steps I would say, but I guess my first thing is that, okay, you haven't thought about this before, so it is going to be hard. I don't think it's going to be easy for anyone if you've never thought about it and you have to do it now. I think that kind of is a good? Well, I mean this is a reason that we've had as a argument for having remote work options from forever in that like what if something happens to your physical office? What if people can't get there? What are your backup plans? So I think that, that's maybe not the most optimistic and being like, "This is going to be hard for you." But I also don't want to make it seem like it will be super easy and set people up for immediate failure.

Tim Cynova:

One of the things I'm hearing from both of you or one of the themes or reading between the lines is it's not one thing, don't set it and forget it if you have it, if you're not iterating and adjusting, I guess is the point. Yes, it maybe that one person that one time used to work remote when they needed to for whatever reason, but it never really worked for anyone else. Or we try it right now because we have to, it fails because we weren't prepared and we never do it again rather than why might that thing have failed? Was it the right person?

Tim Cynova:

Were they able to work from home? Did they have the right tools? Or did it fail because they had to call in on a physical phone and they were the only person of 20 people who wasn't in that meeting and their voice couldn't be heard, literally or figuratively in that meeting. And then so how do you address for that? How do you iterate and adjust because of that? Not, "Oh, it didn't work for us at one time." Or, "It doesn't work for us this time." It must be in that, remote work does not work for our organization. Broadly speaking.

Nicola Carpenter:

I feel like that's recurrent on this podcast is, how do you think about these things and iterate on them. But I would want that to be the biggest takeaway of, okay, we're going to try these things now, but we're going to continue to have those conversations that we don't have to be in the situation again in the future.

Andrew Hanson:

I would definitely agree with that. And in technology there was this big shift and it came with the dev ops movement, so they call it agile. Being agile basically met you fail fast. So you build fast, you put out the smallest amount that you need just to get your product out to market and you fail on these small little things, but you iterate, you iterate very quickly. I think the same thing can be applied to this and I think it's to that point, which is you shouldn't just say, "Well, we put Slack and Zoom out there and people didn't use them and nope, it just doesn't work. We can't do it as an organization."

Andrew Hanson:

I have a hard time believing that most corporations, businesses, obviously with the exception of some things like Nicola pointed out before, I have a hard time believing that you can't have remote work. I just really do. After being in the industry for 12 years and seeing the amount of remote work across a plethora of different types of businesses. It would strike me as very surprising that your company is the proverbial special snowflake that can't make remote work, work correctly.

Tim Cynova:

One of the things that probably bears mentioning is at Fractured Atlas where we all currently work, we have coworkers that includes some of us who work in 12 different States and six countries. We're an entirely virtual or distributed organization, but that didn't happen last month or that didn't happen all in Q4 of last year. It was multiple stages that took us from being a place that everyone worked in the same physical office to where we could support people that wherever they wanted to work. Because they had tools like a laptop and VoIP phones and it was virtual first.

Tim Cynova:

Everyone joins a meeting on Zoom because that's just what you do even if you're physically co-located and that Slack is the way we communicate and that everyone uses Slack. Not just this team or a couple of people, but we also did it in a way that rolled it out. Almost all of the tools that we used or the very beginning iteration of the tool started with our engineering team. Andrew you mentioned has always been entirely distributed but people vetted that and then thought, "All right, here's how it works. Now, let's roll it out to another team." And then you sort of spread through that. So for those who have slightly more time, who are looking to do this over slightly more time, that's one way to get the organization familiar with tools before company wide adoption.

Nicola Carpenter:

I would like to say, I mean, I know that people are feeling the urgency right now, but I hope that people don't avoid thinking through some of these things just because of the urgency. I hope that people are still taking the time to think through all of the things that we like to think through when we do change management. How is racism and oppression layering over these changes that we're making? How is this setting up teams for resiliency and self care? How is this... I hope that people are still thinking about all those things that we continuously talk about here and in our work at Fractured Atlas and with Work. Shouldn't. Suck. I mean, yes, there is a sense of urgency here, but I also think that we can't forget a lot of these things that we're also trying to think about, at the same time of creating great places to work.

Tim Cynova:

Let's go to some listener submitted questions because I think this will bring us down to the tools that we can use, how we can roll things out, how we can approach things. One of the things we've already touched on a little bit is something that Kate Stadel sent us around managing trust without micromanaging. It's a really big theme. One of the reasons people don't introduce remote work is because we hear this all the time, "If I can't see people, how do I know they're working?"

Andrew Hanson:

I always find that the most hilarious question. Because would you rather have the person underneath you, your work or whatever, working incredibly hard, as hard as they can, putting out a ton of work for five hours a day or sitting in an office for eight hours and four of those hours they're on their phone looking at Facebook. People do this, right? Obviously you're not going to work five hours straight, you just can't, right? Our brains cannot focus in that way. We need to take these kinds of structured breaks from the things that we're doing, but the point is kind of do you trust your worker? Are they getting their work done? Are they missing deadlines? Are they hitting deadlines? What does it matter if you can see them or not? If you don't have trust in them, you don't have trust in them. Quite frankly from my perspective, being a manager, that's a management problem. That's not a worker problem.

Nicola Carpenter:

I think if you're talking about specific tools that help with this, I mean, we have a whole podcast about objectives and key results. It's a way to transparently see and set priorities throughout the quarter to have these conversations more frequently. I know some people at Fractured Atlas have used something called GoalFest, to plot out what work is happening in a week. But yeah, I completely agree with Andrew that there's got to be a way, besides seeing people sitting at a desk to assess if people are doing their work or not. Because sitting in a desk and looking at a computer screen doesn't necessarily mean that work is actually happening.

Tim Cynova:

This kind of feels like designing for the one percent or maybe designing for the five percent, the edge cases. To the point that if you could trust this person to get their work done the way they're supposed to get the work done before you introduce this, why would you not trust them until they prove you otherwise that maybe they can't work remotely? Maybe virtual work just doesn't align. There are some really amazing, high-performing, talented people who do not like working remote or virtually, they just don't work well in that kind of environment. But let people demonstrate that after you've provided trust. If you can't trust the people you work with, I think you have bigger problems than that and maybe things that relate to performance improvement plans or moving them along or whatever it might be.

Andrew Hanson:

I think just to tie into that point is that the old saying, the bad apple spoils the bunch, right? You're taking a very extreme case and guess what? There are absolutely going to be people who abuse the system. There are always people who abuse the system for their own game. That's just how it works. Are they necessarily on your team? Maybe, maybe not. There might be one in an organization, there might be five, there might be none. But we can't take an extreme situation of one person or two people who are going to abuse the system in order to not have to do as much work and look at that as a reason to not do something across an entire organization.

Tim Cynova:

Paul Millerd posted some questions on Twitter, also wrote a great article about virtual work. One of the questions that they sent us was, how do people raise issues when they're stuck? It feels related to this. I trust the people, what they're doing, but getting stuck in person when you just spin around and talk to someone might be different than getting stuck and spinning your wheels for hours while you're trying to figure it out. Because what do you do? Reach out to someone, toil away. What's your advice for when this happens? When people have issues, they feel stuck. This might also relate to their other question about how do you control flows of information?

Nicola Carpenter:

So I think, I mean, if there was a company that had this question that they're trying to look into what it would mean to working virtually, I would say, how do people do it now? If it's that someone walks over and asks them a question, then maybe something like Slack asking quicker questions via some sort of messaging thing would work for that. But also, I mean that's why we have some meetings. I think that setting those expectations is just as important in an office as it is working virtually. And that, yes, maybe you can't walk over and ask a question but maybe that wasn't the best use of time in a physical office anyway.

Andrew Hanson:

Being from the engineering team, I have a slightly different perspective on this. So first just let me say, getting stuck is not necessarily a bad thing. People come up with incredibly creative solutions when they get stuck. That's something that happens all the time, especially in engineering where you're dealing with a really tricky problem and you're trying to figure it out and you get stuck. Sometimes if I spend an hour or two on it, I come up with a really great solution.

Andrew Hanson:

So let's not get stuck on getting stuck is a bad thing. That'd be the first thing that I would say. The second thing, to Nicola's point is you have Slack. We mentioned Slack a lot. There's other chat tools out there as well. I worked at companies that have used Skype, which is now I guess transitioning Microsoft teams. If you're a more security conscious organization, there's self-hosted things like matter most, which is basically a Slack clone and other tools out there that you can use, but you have a chat system and you have private channels or you have being able to privately message someone and say, "Hey, do you have five minutes? I'm stuck on something." Something nice and easy.

Andrew Hanson:

Maybe it's just done via Slack or you say, "Hey, can you jump in? For instance, Zoom with me and I'll share my screen. Can you look at this with me because I'm just stuck on it. I think it probably takes a little more... Self-discipline is not the right word, maybe it is. To reach out to someone and ask for help versus just maybe spinning around in your chair being like, "Hey, I need some help with something." But to say that there's no way or that there's no real corollary between working from home and working remote between the two, I think it's just incorrect. There's absolutely ways to be able to do that exact same thing and have that exact same interaction.

Tim Cynova:

I know different teams approach this in slightly different ways. Andrew Taylor posted a question asking, "Curious about how you make opportunity for "drop-in" or unscheduled conversations among the team. Do you leave your video running during an open office hours or is it that you just ping someone on Slack and pop in? I know on the engineering team you have some pairing together. You also have open conversations where you just talk about other things, but some teams have fully scheduled days where there isn't really a drop-in. You wait until the next meeting that you have and you bring your thing to that or you post a question in Slack. Curious if you have any thoughts on Andrew Taylor's curiosity about this drop-in or unscheduled conversations.

Andrew Hanson:

So again, I think this is interesting because to me it's the exact same as in an office. If my boss is running from meeting room to meeting room, I don't really have a chance to drop-in and ask that question either. That to me is kind of the same thing. I can speak on engineering, specifically what we do is all the time with my boss and I'll just private message him, "Hey, do you have five minutes? Do you have 10 minutes?" "Yeah." We jump into zoom room, we do a quick five, 10 minute call. A lot of times it ends up being 30 minutes as most of these kinds of ad hocs do and then you kind of go on with your day. So a lot of this, I think for me with my background in psychology, just goes back to not knowing and then being afraid.

Andrew Hanson:

So people are afraid that you're going to lose all these things when you go to remote work and you're really not. There's really not that much difference other than you're not in the physical same space as the other person. Now you have to be intentional about the things that you do. You have to be intentional about the changes you make and the way that you put these opportunities forward for people. But it's really not that different.

Nicola Carpenter:

I think that that intentionality kind of forces people to figure out what is important in the day and I think that that can be helpful. For example, I've learned that it's very difficult for me to sit in front of my computer for eight hours without having some kind of either communication with people or podcast, if I don't have some sort of interaction. If I don't do that and I've learned that I should either intersperse this or there are a few people also work at Fractured Atlas who also work similarly where we'll just like, "Oh, do you want us to talk about something?" We'll either talk about something related to work and make an excuse to have a meeting or I'll just listen to podcasts, which somehow fills that kind of need for human interaction. I don't know. I don't exactly know how that works, but it fills that.

Nicola Carpenter:

I think that that it's helped me realize how I shape my day and how I work best and I think that if everyone has to think about that, I think that it helps people be more mindful about what they're doing in a workday, how they're shaping their day, what they need to be successful in that day, which are all the questions that I think that we have been asking with Work. Shouldn't. Suck. from the start.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. They're often the things that when you go to the office, you just know you show up at 8:00, 9:00. You leave at 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, whatever time and you assume without really thinking about it, if I'm at the office, I've been working and however I get what I need done during the day is maybe the best way to do that. When you work at home where you can work virtually distributed, you have to give some more thought to what times is the best time to eat? I need to make sure I get a shower and get dressed. How long can I work before I really need to stop because my brain just shuts off and I need a break? When we were getting ready for the transition at Fractured Atlas, we had a lot of monthly full staff meetings that just took a topic every staff meeting.

Tim Cynova:

Loneliness or creativity, what do people do? How do you set up your work day? Do you have something on your calendar that says you need to get up and have lunch? Do you have kickball scheduled at 6:00 PM three nights a week because it's going to get you out of the house, otherwise you'd just work until 9:00 and then... Or not even realize what time it is.

Nicola Carpenter:

We should probably talk about how do people structure their day.

Andrew Hanson:

The one that I really want to talk about besides how people structure they day, I'd to talk about that one, but also how does anyone get anything done working from home? I think that's such an important question and I always love when that question comes up. I'm a father of three, my wife is pregnant, my wife's a stay-at-home mom. My house is constantly crazy. Probably unless we have a phenomenal editor, you're going to hear that baby screaming at some point in some of these questions. So my house is super chaotic and that question comes up a lot. How do I get anything done from home? The thing that... I actually think that it kind of ties into how you schedule your day.

Andrew Hanson:

So for me, I wake up because I don't have to commute because I don't have to wake right up, take a shower and get ready to go to a workplace. I wake up at six o'clock I grab a cup of coffee and I'm at my desk by 6:10, 6:15 and I'm working for an hour or two hours before my house is even awake. I'll tell you those are the most productive two hours of my entire day. And then usually around eight o'clock. I'm helping getting kids ready. I have one kid that I have to take to school, things happen. Then I'm usually back to my desk by 9:30 work until around noon, eat some lunch. But you structure your day how it works for you.

Andrew Hanson:

That again is one of the beautiful things about working from home. Within reason and depending on what your job is, if you're answering phone calls and things all day, you might not be able to structure quite the same way. But you could definitely wake up a little earlier and answer those emails you need to or write those couple documents you need to, so you don't have those things weighing down on you first thing when you come into the office. That's a beautiful thing about working from home. You do have this sense of autonomy. When I was working as a psychologist, a big thing we studied that motivated people, big three, autonomy, competence and relatedness.

Andrew Hanson:

Those three things are the most motivating things that anybody can have. When you're giving people the ability to structure their day in a way that works for them, you're giving them an incredible amount of autonomy.

Nicola Carpenter:

Yeah. So I am still very new to working from home and it's been a fun and interesting transition. I don't know if either of you watched the Netflix show, The Circle. But I reference it very frequently and basically the premise, if you don't know, is that there are a number of different people who are put into separate apartments and they're communicating with other people through a voice activated social network basically. And so the only communication they have is via text and it's very amusing. I find it charming and hilarious and just absurd in all the best ways. There's this one person in it named Seaburn who just... They show different clips of people just hanging out in the day. There's this one clip that Seaburn is just like sticking stickers to his face. I feel like there are some days when I'm working from home where I'm just finding random craft materials and just start playing with them, which is kind of silly, but I mean, I'm so used to doing so many tasks in an office that if I don't have things to do, I have to make them.

Nicola Carpenter:

There was one day when I was like, "Oh, I can't look at my computer anymore." But there's nothing to do in an office. So I just cleaned my windows. And so, I mean, my prom is going to be really clean now and so I feel like there will be a point when I'm more used to it, but I guess I just bring it up in that it is a transition and our brains don't really like change and it'll take some getting used to and I think that, that's fine and I think also recognizing that makes it a little bit easier. So just like, "Okay, how can I make this easier? I'll just have a little dance break or I'll do something that's not just sitting in one place so that I still get that kind of activity that I'm used to getting of walking around changing a light bulb or there's a leak or other random things that often happen in a physical office.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. In the same way that organizations need to be intentional about introducing remote work arrangements, we as human beings should be more intentional about what those remote working arrangements look like because if you just go with the baseline, you're going to get up, not brush your teeth, walk in, sit down, work from 6:00 AM to 9:00 PM not having eaten anything, not interacted with... Just the inertia of it. If you're not giving thought to setting these things up, it could be quite bad if you possibly live by yourself or if the people you live with might be away for the day and you're working someplace else or going to school, but setting this thing up might have a negative impact on you as your health, your wellbeing, self-care.

Nicola Carpenter:

Now let's please all agree to brush your teeth and wash your hands. I was a little grossed out thinking of everyone just not brushing their teeth and just go on right in the work.

Tim Cynova:

No, I was going to make the connection to unlimited vacation days and what research has for unlimited vacation days, that people take fewer days and being more intentional about it.

Andrew Hanson:

I think that's interesting, because like what you were saying, there were people taking less days when you have more vacation days. People tend to work longer when they work from home. That's another reason why I find the question so interesting from managers, especially when they're like, "Well, how do I know if somebody is working?" If you look at the research, most people end up working longer hours. I am in no way forced to work the hours that I work, I generally most days... I mean, now take it like I'm taking kids to school, I'm bringing kids back home from school, so on and so forth. But it's not unusual for me to spend nine or 10 hours in a day to be working because I'm just here and I'm just doing my thing. And so I think the thread that we kind of weave throughout this entire thing is being intentional. And that's the companies have to be intentional, the managers have to be intentional and the people have to be intentional when you're working. It could easily-

Nicola Carpenter:

Yeah, I think that's a good point too of also what you perceive to be the issues might not be the issues. The issue probably isn't going to be that people aren't working enough. It might be that they're working too much and burning out. So I think that, that's another thing that we need to about, is the expectations that we all have surrounding remote work might be totally incorrect. I think we have to be willing to correct those assumptions if our assumptions are incorrect.

Andrew Hanson:

Absolutely.

Nicola Carpenter:

But one of my favorite tips that a friend gave me was to have a virtual commute, to have some sort of thing that you do at the start of the your day and at the end of your day to notate that your work is starting or ending. I have been working on my kitchen table, but I sit on a different side of it than the side that I eat on and I specifically set up my laptop with my laptop stand, my keyboard, my mouse, my notebook, and I set it all up. I then start my Workday. At the end of the workday, I put it all into a box and I do not see anything related to my work. Because I don't own, I don't... I mean, I live in the New York city area.

Nicola Carpenter:

I have a smallish apartment. I don't have space to have a dedicated desk just for working, but that is enough for me to kind of separate my workspace from my home space in a way that I'm not necessarily thinking about work when I'm eating dinner and watching The Circle. Although apparently I do think about work when I'm watching The Circle.

Andrew Hanson:

I like that you bring that up and that's something that's phenomenal for a lot of people is being able to really divide that time in your mind. I've been working remotely for a very long time. I still have a very hard time with that. And part of the reason is because even before I got into technology, at a very young age, I was very fortunate to have computers in my life. I am 100% a computer geek and I often not so jokingly say my hobbies are in the same place where I work. So I sit here in front of this computer and I work, and then this is the same place where I also like to do other things. I like to program my own things and build my own things. So sometimes I have a very hard time separating that and it's very difficult because then I'm in the same space for 12 or 14 hours a day.

Andrew Hanson:

So I haven't quite found a way to combat that yet. So even someone who's been doing this forever, it seems like, doesn't have it all figured out. But one of the things that I do that's very intentional is when I'm not in my office, I'm not working. If I'm downstairs having dinner with my family, I'm having dinner with my family. If we're watching TV, I'm not on my phone, we're watching TV. If we're outside of this house, I do not think about work. It is all about my kids and about my wife and about my family. That's at least one way that I can separate at least a little bit. When I figure the rest out, I'll let you know how I got there.

Nicola Carpenter:

So I went to this art event a few years ago and there was this art project where they were selling products and I ended up buying a pair of shoes. But before I could make that exchange, I had to sign this waiver that I would only ever wear that pair of shoes to work. It always has stressed me out because I'm like, "Well, does a commute count as work?" So I've never worn them. I mean, it's kind of silly, but I'm like, "Oh, when does work start? When does it not? What happens if I go to event after work? Do I have to change shoes?" But I'm kind of thinking about having these shoes be my work from home shoes because I have my slippers that are my house shoes and I have my outdoor shoes but I kind of want to try having my work shoes. I just changed-

Tim Cynova:

Mr. Rogers.

Nicola Carpenter:

Mr. Rogers. Yeah, exactly. I kind of love that and want to have something, some way of changing the work to not work.

Tim Cynova:

I think this is one of the other things that you can do, when you're working remote is sharing that. On our Slack channel, someone posted a couple of months ago, "Do you wear shoes and socks when you work from home?" A sincere question and the amount of new information and how people approach it, and, "I wear slippers, but only during these times of the year." Was really fascinating. Just one simple question posted there really opened up all these different ways of people approaching how they think about their home workspace in a similar way. When I put these slippers on, do we have a coworker who has work slippers? When they put the slippers on, they're working. When they take the slippers off, they're not working. They have to have those slippers on. So I think that's sort of a fun way, but also gets useful information for teams to connect, to see how everyone's doing and also learn different ways of approaching maybe how you want to think about your remote work.

Tim Cynova:

So let's transition to tools. We've mentioned a number of them as we've been talking. We'll post links in the episode description so people can go directly to that description and find out what the tools are that we're talking about. We had one question that came in that I want us to address first and then go to some of the other tools that we use for remote or virtual work. The question came from one of Nicola's friends asking, "What's a good remote desktop solution for Windows to Mac?" Does someone want to explain what that means and then let's answer it.

Andrew Hanson:

With all tools, the first thing I'll say is especially because we're talking about work, if you have an IT department, if you have people who work in IT, please ask them first. That would be the first thing that I would say. You might have security requirements that you're not aware of. You might have certain policies that are in place that you're not aware of that you're already in compliance with, because you're in an office, so please always check with your IT person. Nothing is more frustrating than when somebody tries to get around those things and in some ways not only frustrating, but it can also cost the company a lot of money. That's the first thing I'll say about tools.

Tim Cynova:

Andrew, when you say that though, when I worked for smaller arts organizations, I always hated that I was the person who worked with the computers and the message comes up like, "Contact your IT specialist. I don't know what to do about this thing that just popped up."

Nicola Carpenter:

Same.

Andrew Hanson:

Well, in that case there a much wider tech community you can go to. There are lots of great places to go to. That specific tool. I did a little bit of research. There's a lot of tools out there. There's a lot of different implementations of something called VNC, some better than others. I'm not going to speak on which ones are which. I don't really have a ton of experience with VNC. There's also go-to PC. There's a lot of tools out there that can do exactly what you're asking for. All it takes is just a little bit of research. If you're looking at GoToPC, go to news.google.com which is all the Google news type in GoToPC, see if there's any horrible news articles in the last three years, talking about a giant security breach they have or something really terrible that happened with them or any of the VNCs or anything like that. Really just spending 15, 20 minutes of research. You're going to find the tool that works for you. Almost every tool that's out there as far as remote tools with rare exception, are going to work across both Macs and PCs.

Nicola Carpenter:

GoToPC years ago, might be the first tool that I used to start working remote. I was traveling for work, and for those unfamiliar with the tool, you essentially have it open on your "work machine" and then you can access it through a portal, wherever you might be from your phone, from a tablet, from a laptop, but while you're moving it appears as though you're sitting in front of your desk using a tool like that. GoToMyPC is not the only one. It was the one that we used at the time, but it does allow you to access things that you might not be able to access. Although Andrew's advice about making sure that you inadvertently aren't exposing the organization over various networks to a myriad of threats while you do this on the open wifi network in wherever place you choose to be working. I know he has a lot of thoughts because both he and Nicola had been in various ways working on solutions for this. I wanted to throw that broad enough.

Andrew Hanson:

I feel like public wifi is an entire another podcast. The short of it I'll say is public wifi is generally pretty horrible and I wouldn't recommend using it for anything. I definitely wouldn't recommend you do your banking over it or anything like that. The general suggestion we give to people is, if you can't work from home, if you don't have good reliable internet and you have to be in a public place all the time, it's generally about the same cost to go to Verizon or AT&T and get... They call it MiFi which looks like a little... We always used to call them hockey pucks, a little hockey puck that lets you connect to a wifi network and then it goes over the cellular network. Generally speaking, I would recommend that over using public wifi.

Andrew Hanson:

There are other things you can do on public wifi. You can use VPNs, you can do other things. The simplest is just not to use public wifi. I'm not saying don't connect to it and look at Facebook, I'm saying don't connect to it and do your banking or look at highly classified documents because you work at some banking company.

Nicola Carpenter:

So there was one day when I was on the New York subway and there were two people talking about things that made me think I should maybe call the SEC or something. I mean, they were talking about super classified things and they were like, "Oh yeah. Did you hear about that person at some golf course talking about something?" "Yeah, we should go and do..." Whatever this thing because of what they said. I was like, "This feels illegal. And also why are you giving me all of this information on the subway?" So I feel like that should be obvious, but maybe just pay attention to also who is around you when you're having conversations or when someone's looking over your shoulder, even if you're not connecting to public wifi,

Andrew Hanson:

That's an absolutely phenomenal point. In security, we call that OPSEC, operational security. You need to be careful what you're saying, who you're saying it to, when you're saying it. I'm probably slightly over paranoid just because of the industry that I'm in. When I go into a Panera's or a Starbucks or something, I tend to find a seat that's against the wall, not close to a window. I don't like people looking at my screen, even if I'm not working on something super top secret. But yeah, these are all things to be mindful of, if you're going to be working in public. Again, intentional. The string of all of this, intentional. You have to be intentional with all of this.

Nicola Carpenter:

For those who might have flown and sat on an aisle, you can see someone who doesn't have a screen protector on 10 rows back. You can read what they're working on if they're there. So yes, there are technology tools. There's maybe "common sense". Don't talk about highly classified stuff in a crowded place and there are physical tools like MiFis and screen protectors that make it more challenging for people to read what's on your screen. Let's post the rest of them. We've talked about Slack, we've talked about Zoom and a myriad of other ones. I want to go with last thoughts or maybe not last thoughts closing thoughts on this topic for this podcast, especially recognizing these aren't your closing thoughts ever on this topic. Nicola, what are your closing thoughts on the topic of organizations introducing remote or virtual work arrangements?

Andrew Hanson:

I would say that if people are coming to the Work. Shouldn't. Suck. Podcast for this topic specifically, I think they should go and listen to all the rest of them and read the other things. Because, a lot of this stuff that we talk about in this podcast is relevant to making the transition to virtual work. I think that people might not necessarily draw that connection and I think that they should.

Tim Cynova:

Andrew thoughts.

Andrew Hanson:

As long as they're not my last thoughts ever, then I'll give you my thoughts.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. Not your last thoughts ever.

Andrew Hanson:

I know. I think as I've said kind of throughout the podcast, intentionality. Just make sure you're very intentional about the things that you're doing, whether you're at the top of the food chain or the bottom, intentionality is the way to do this correctly. I think the other thing is to make sure you're always iterating. Make sure you're always making changes. Make sure you're open to making changes. I joke with my friends all the time that my wife hears me say I'm wrong probably more times than any husband has ever said it ever. I'm perfectly fine with being wrong all the time. We only learn by trying new things and by looking at new information. I think part of that comes from being a scientist. Scientists should be wrong all the time. Our theories are always changing and this is no different. We're navigating for a lot of people, uncharted waters, and it's okay to be wrong and it's okay to iterate and just keep moving forward. Don't take something small and leave that as a sign as the whole thing is a failure and should be abandoned.

Tim Cynova:

Terrific advice. Andrew. Nicola, thank you so much for sharing your expertise today and for being on the podcast.

Andrew Hanson:

Thank you. It's great to be here.

Nicola Carpenter:

Yes. It's fun.

Tim Cynova:

To close out this episode. It's again my pleasure to welcome back to the show, podcasting's favorite cohost, Lauren Ruffin. Hey Lauren, how's it going?

Lauren Ruffin:

Hey, it is a rainy morning in Albuquerque, which is rare and my voice hasn't changed yet, thanks to daylight savings time. So hopefully I'll be a little bit more chipper as our conversation goes. Guaranteed, because this is a dope conversation, but the voice is really something right now.

Tim Cynova:

We have a special returning guest on the show today, our fellow co-CEO and Chief Technology Officer at Fractured Atlas, Shawn Anderson. Shawn, how's it going today?

Shawn Anderson:

Hanging in there. I'm in Denver. It's not that far from Albuquerque, but it's sunny and nice here.

Lauren Ruffin:

Dang! Shawn. That is brutal.

Shawn Anderson:

I can't complain.

Lauren Ruffin:

Dang! Early in the morning, a knife to the gut.

Tim Cynova:

So this episode is all about remote work. Something many organizations have been giving serious thought to, especially in light of the spread of COVID-19. Both of you have extensive experience working and managing remote teams. Sean, for nearly the entirety of your career, I imagine you've only worked that way virtually and remotely. With that in mind and with your CTO hat on, what advice do you have for organizations now wrestling with how to quickly implement these types of arrangements?

Shawn Anderson:

Well, first of all, don't be too afraid. The consequences for not finding a way to allow your workforce to engage remotely is probably greater than letting them work from home. It's really important to get tooling in place as soon as possible. I certainly recommend using video communications over the phone or trying to rely on email. Those are both notorious for horrible lag time, feeling very disconnected. Video really does help get over a lot of the bumps that you would experience with managing a remote workforce.

Tim Cynova:

At Fractured Atlas, we use zoom. We've used BlueJeans, we've used Skype in certain situations. We used to use whatever Google had-

Lauren Ruffin:

Hangouts.

Tim Cynova:

Google Hangouts.

Lauren Ruffin:

People still use that.

Shawn Anderson:

My least favorite of the bunch, but yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, mine too. My computer doesn't let me use Google Hangouts. It's pretty finicky. So we use Slack as a messaging tool. We used to use Flowdock and there's a built-in function though in Slack that allows you to hop onto video lines as well, right?

Shawn Anderson:

Yes. So Slack has integrated video and it also has integrations with tools like Zoom that you can launch off into your own Zoom channel at any time. I think those things are all great, but you really just have to get whatever the low hanging fruit is for your particular company or organization. So if you're already in the Microsoft ecosystem, go ahead and lean into Skype, lean into Skype for business, look at those kinds of tools. If this is something that you haven't really done anything with at all, I would suggest checking out. Even though I'm not a big fan of Google Hangouts, it's free and it's fairly simple to start rolling that out to your teams. But if you can't afford to pay, we've definitely found Zoom to be a really good platform. It's fully featured, it's very easy for people to get it installed on their systems and I think that's really the way to go.

Tim Cynova:

One of the things we haven't mentioned yet on this podcast, I know we have a number of people who work with nonprofits who are looking for the free or inexpensive options. Oftentimes companies provide nonprofit discounts for some of the subscription services available. So it's always worth asking.

Shawn Anderson:

For sure. That's kind of our built in first request to any vendor that we work with across the board. So whether it's a communications platform or just any kind of software license, it's like a knee jerk. "Hey, we're a nonprofit. What kind of nonprofit rates do you offer?" You'll find that sometimes you'll even get stuff for free. So Slack, we get an organization level membership entirely for free, which is fantastic. Thank you Slack. For Zoom, without any nonprofit discount you can get, I think it's 40 or 45 minutes per session for free. So you can just try it out. Worst case scenario, you just hop right back in to the room again. But they also do provide nonprofit discounts. I can't recall what the percentage is, but it's a fairly healthy percentage.

Tim Cynova:

Or maybe your meeting doesn't need to be longer than 40 or 45 minutes and Zoom tells you that.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, exactly.

Tim Cynova:

It's like, "You're done having this conversation."

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. That's my philosophy. 45 minutes max.

Shawn Anderson:

It's a great built in reminder. We've actually done that a few times where we've scheduled meetings to be 40 to 45 minutes instead of the full hour to prevent the lengthening of meetings. I don't know. I've just seen this tendency that if you schedule an hour, it's an hour and five an hour and 10 minutes. If you're seeing that tendency within your company, schedule 45 minute long meetings if you want to make sure that you get done in under an hour.

Tim Cynova:

Well, Lauren, we talked about earlier in the podcast, a lot of the intentionality that goes into how we work and how we need to work differently when it's remote or virtual than if we were just all in the same place. Both of you have managed completely virtual teams. You're a co-CEOs of an entirely virtual organization. I'm curious, Lauren, why don't you start, how do you structure team interactions? What does that actually look like and how might it be different than if everyone were in the same space?

Lauren Ruffin:

There's a mind shift that happens when you have employees who occasionally work from home to really being intentional about implementing sort of remote work practices, that I think those are totally different philosophies. Mostly because, and we've spoken about this on the podcast and I know that you chatted about it with our other guests, but to me it's important that everyone's having the same experience professionally. And so I found it particularly hard being the only non-engineer working remote at Fractured Atlas. It wasn't even that the systems weren't there, it was that the culture hadn't shifted 100%. But I know the engineering team really felt that as well. But I manage my team remotely the same way I would manage them if we were all in the office. That's just about maintaining fidelity to whatever model you set up as a manager.

Lauren Ruffin:

So we do stand-ups in the morning. They should be no longer than 15 minutes. Sometimes we do a little water cooler talk on Mondays and Fridays in particular, but we're in and out just sharing what we're doing during our day. And then we do our team meeting midway through the week and that lasts usually anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. But all the processes are the same for everybody on the team. And we always end up talking about trust and to me, trust starts with hiring. Hire people who want to do the job. But the shifting point for my team, we had people who we hired who were in the office five days a week and I think at one point it was pretty much only my team and Tim and Nicola were in the office five days a week at that point.

Lauren Ruffin:

Shifting to being virtual really had an impact on one of my staff members for sure. She couldn't handle it, which is great and I completely support her self-awareness around knowing that remote work wasn't for her and deciding to leave the team. But mostly it's about making sure everyone has the same experience, which is what you want to do as a manager anyway.

Shawn Anderson:

Yeah, Lauren. Building on that, this idea of blending onsite and remote staff I think presents some of the largest challenges. We've had tons of meetings at Fractured Atlas, over the years where you have a conference room full of 10 to 30 people and then a number of people, maybe another 10 to 15 people coming in through a screen. That is the least ideal way to have remote work ongoing. I've heard anecdotally from other people as well that you end up with these separate cultures. That you have your online culture and then you have your onsite culture and that is a recipe for stress and strain within the organization and I feel like this outbreak that we're going through, it's an opportunity to lean in and try to set up something that allows remote work to flourish across a larger swath of the organization and just raising awareness here that if you think you're just going to have five people working from home and 25 people in an office, there's going to be struggles. There's going to be problems in maintaining consistency across your whole team.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, I mean there's nothing dorkier than when you're on video and people are in the conference room. Somebody says something funny, everybody's laughing. You're like, "Oh, what happened? What are they saying?" And then they're like, "Oh." You just miss stuff.

Andrew Hanson:

You had to be there.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I'm like, "But I am here. I'm still a person." It's so awkward.

Tim Cynova:

Which is likely why I think when organizations are experimenting with this a little bit here, but everyone else really isn't in person, they're having such a bad experience with it. "We tried that once and it didn't work." Type of thing. Rather than virtual first. Everyone does it. It equalizes the experience and we figure it out together and we figured out what's necessary for us to do on Zoom, necessary for us to do in email, when do we really need to meet in person, but this one foot on one side, one foot in the other, creates this place where it never works out great for the people who are not in the physical room because of those things. When you laugh it overloads the microphone so you can't even hear the followup. You just know people are laughing and you're missing something and you just have to sit there until it's done and then hop back into the meeting.

Shawn Anderson:

One of the things we've tried at Fractured Atlas that I think works to a certain extent, even staff in the office can come to the meetings through a screen. You do have to watch out for having people sitting right next to each other because you'll experience what latency there is, as you hear someone in real time in one year and then you hear them coming to the speakers on the other side. But aside from that, it's a good way to try to go virtual first even if you don't have everybody literally working from home.

Lauren Ruffin:

I do think that one of the things that has surprised me in the last couple of years as 10 people have reached out to us to explore going remote has been the idea that I think people overestimate the value they're getting by being face-to-face. I like people well enough, not a whole lot but for the most part I've been fortunate but I find the being in the same space means that people lack boundaries and getting work done in the office is really hard, especially when you're in a managerial position, people need your time a lot, so you can't really structure it or set boundaries and it becomes really informal, which can be really distracting.

Lauren Ruffin:

I just keep thinking about just sort of the experience people have with commuting. Instead of being like, you're not getting face time. Imagine a world without traffic. Imagine what your employees would be like if they could just be in the office in two minutes when they walk to wherever their designated home office is and especially in cities like LA and New York where the commute is just even on a good non-pandemic day, the commute is just so hard. And then you're getting there. They have to shake off their commute. Working despite the time it takes to get to the office is really just, I don't know, I just think there's so many opportunities to going remote in addition to just the savings and overhead for once you hit a certain size organization like you do experience a return on the value is pretty significant.

Shawn Anderson:

Often people express concern over, "How do I know what my people are doing? How do I know that they're being efficient?" I always say, "You think they're being efficient in the office. There's so much wasted time." To Lauren's point. That shouldn't be your biggest concern. It's just human nature. People are going to find ways to waste time wherever they are and I've found more often than not that when you allow people the freedom to start working from home, they are more committed to making sure that they're getting the work done, that they're being efficient in their process, that they're staying in touch with people around the organization and then yeah, Lauren, you're right. The commute thing. I lived in New York for a long time. I spent three hours a day going back and forth just to get to high school. That's a lot of time that your employees have to spend and it's kind of passive time that's wasted that they perceive as part of their work day.

Tim Cynova:

Well, and I think there is the issue if you're in an office, "Oh I can just walk over and say this to this person." Without giving thought, "Do I need to walk over there right now? Is what I'm going over to interrupt them with, really important?" And when you're virtual you have to give some of that thought. There's a couple more hurdles before you could just talk to Sean on a video. From a managerial standpoint though, I think it's sort of the flip side. How do you make sure that people who are on your team know that they can come to you? What kind of conversations do you have so that people just aren't struggling for four days but that they feel like it's not a big hurdle for them to ping you if they get stuck on something?

Tim Cynova:

What does that look like on your teams? We all have logistically it a team Slack channel for our specific departments. We can do one-on-one Slack exchanges. We have a full staff Slack if we need to talk that way. We have weekly check-ins like Lauren was saying that, are there stand-up? Also one-on-one team. What does it look like more managerial and guidance for people who might need a little more virtual assistance.

Shawn Anderson:

So on engineering, we do daily stand-ups but we don't actually do them in a meeting format. We do them posted as a bulleted list in Slack and one of the things that I watch out for is people not posting their stand-ups. What's going on? Why are you distracted? What can I help you with? Because a lot of the time it's not them forgetting per se. That's an indication that they may even be overwhelmed. On the other side of the stand-ups though, you can look out for people who are posting the same thing over multiple days, which suggests they are stuck and if they're not reaching out and asking about it, it's an opportunity and an indication that you need to reach out to them, which I will almost always do in a direct message.

Shawn Anderson:

So you want to be careful about how your communications as a manager are perceived by the rest of the team when it may be leading to a conversation that is a little bit more challenging or a little bit more personal in nature. But I use those kinds of things to know when is it time to reach out. And then the other thing that I have in place is every two weeks I do have an in person, but virtually, an in person meeting with every member of my team and they are encouraged to write the agenda. This is your time, not my time. Since you're not seeing people in the in-between times, you need to be super intentional about giving them the opportunity to reach out and telling you about what is going on that might be impacting their work? What is going on that might be impacting them personally? And that really helps to keep them connected.

Lauren Ruffin:

Shawn that raises something I hadn't thought about around the difference in providing feedback in an office environment and providing feedback virtually. Because when I worked in an office, open-door policy, there was a signal that happened, if someone was talking in my office with the door closed for a while. There's a social signaling around the entire team knows this person is struggling, they're having a conversation with their manager or how you provide feedback face-to-face versus how you provide feedback virtually.

Lauren Ruffin:

Perception shifts in remote environments because people don't see all the conversations happening in an office environment, even if someone's not privy to the conversation, they see the conversation happening. One of the things I try to do is I'm intentional about when someone needs motivational feedback. Doing that in a full... Picking out when to do that. Whether it's when we're all in-person on Zoom. Sorry, I'm using Zoom as in-person, but when we're all on video as opposed to doing it in our Slack channel as opposed to doing it in a private message.

Lauren Ruffin:

All of those things do require a little bit more thought once you get to the point where you have a team member who is struggling and you need to let everyone else on the team know that you're aware of it, the signaling looks a little bit different than it does when you're working in the same space.

Shawn Anderson:

Yeah, it's hidden. You won't see it. You're right. That's one of the contrasts of working remotely.

Lauren Ruffin:

I guess what I'm saying is I tend to keep everything either in our weekly team meeting or in our... "You didn't do your time sheet." I don't make that a private message. I do that in our department team Slack channel because I think it's important. I think that when feedback happens or things that are shared that shouldn't be known by the entire team, it's usually the staff member reaching out to me one-to-one as opposed to me initiating a one-to-one conversation. I actually try to keep my one-to-ones pretty minimal.

Shawn Anderson:

My scheduled one-on-ones are really short. So they tend to last 15 to 30 minutes. I offer very often, "Hey, if you have nothing and I have nothing, we can skip it."

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh yeah, no. I'm like, "This is your time. If you don't need it, I'm happy to give it back. I am good to go."

Shawn Anderson:

As far as the critical feedback out in the open or private, I think this might be a place where we differ. I tend to subscribe to the idea that you celebrate accomplishments in public and then you provide critical feedback mostly in private. Sometimes however, let's say I was seeing something in a couple team members, let's go back to those stand-ups. Not posting the stand-ups or the quality of the stand-ups diminishing. That is something that I might address in a team meeting or in our engineering Slack channel or say, "Hey everyone, stand-ups, mandatory enough detail so that anybody could read this and understand what you're doing." And then I would follow up with the individuals to say, "Yeah, that was you and I hope you knew it." And if they didn't know it, that leads to a whole other set of conversations.

Tim Cynova:

Well, I think the defaulting as much as possible to open in a channel even if it might not involve everyone. Let's just talk about work in general. If you're posting about this thing we're working on, the annual appeal and you're posting with what could be a one-on-one conversation, but in the channel the team has more context for what's going on, who's working on what, and it can be done one-on-one, but probably more useful, especially because everyone's remote from each other to have this all in one place. I also would say, I think we also all differ or I differ from the two of you on check-ins. If you don't have anything to talk about, I still want to talk to you. It doesn't have to be as long, but this is also one of the opportunities to do the social check-in. The general question, how's it going? And just let someone go from there often yields things that... It didn't rise to the level of agenda item perhaps, but actually should be an agenda item to talk about whatever it is that sort of comes from that.

Lauren Ruffin:

Tim, does your team do daily stand-ups?

Tim Cynova:

We don't do daily stand-ups.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. A lot of my social stuff happens during stand-up. I do check-ins on Mondays, but my check-ins yesterday were totally social. So I get that, but I wonder what my team would look like without a daily stand-up. Now that's an interesting thought. I think they hold me accountable. I need stand-ups. I don't know if the team does, but I need them.

Andrew Hanson:

If you're in an office, you have that natural... You're going to see people. You get a sense of where things are. I think in the remote working environment, some kind of stand-up is pretty much required. You need these reminders, stay connected, stay connected to your team. As a manager keep on top of the way people are feeling and operating. I'm sure there's other ways, but stand-ups of all kinds are just a really simple way to make sure that you're staying connected.

Lauren Ruffin:

I also, in my sort of paranoid brain, you got to know people are alive. If you're working with people who live by themselves, who work remote, if they just start showing up the stand-up, it's like, "Are you dead in your apartment?"

Tim Cynova:

Not dead in apartments. But we have had instances where we've had to call emergency contacts because we haven't heard from someone. We've texted them, we've Slacked them and yeah, it does become posting a message in the morning or so when you start working, so everyone knows you're online and sometimes things happen and that's the way you find out about them. God, though to go straight to someone's dead in their apartment, Lauren that's like-

Lauren Ruffin:

well, I guess I think about it like... I had a cold a couple of weeks ago and I had this really bad coughing episode on my oatmeal, like an old person, and the first thing I thought was like, "I'm going to choke to death here in my house and nobody's going to find me until four o'clock. It's like nine o'clock in the morning. There's nobody who would think twice about it. Just me and my house till pour little Enzo gets home."

Tim Cynova:

Oh my God.

Lauren Ruffin:

I think a question that I would have for Shawn is, do you need a dedicated sort of tech specialists, for lack of a better word, to be able to implement remote policies?

Shawn Anderson:

Oh, that is a good question.

Lauren Ruffin:

Or can the relative lay person figure it out?

Shawn Anderson:

I would like to think that the lay person could figure it out, but I think the path to really effectively implementing a remote work policy, all of the remote work procedures, you are much better off having someone with knowledge of all of these tools to get you going. Otherwise, you're going to bump into things that you'd be better off avoiding and you're going to quickly sour, I think on both sides of the equation. On the management side as well as on the employees side. We're going to feel like, "Oh, this isn't for us. I guess we're just going to have to all get infected with COVID-19 and deal with it." If you want to get to the end in a shortcut fashion, I think you need to work with someone who's the tech on their side.

Lauren Ruffin:

I mean to be clear, I think what we're all saying is either you do the remote thing or you don't do it, but-

Shawn Anderson:

Correct.

Lauren Ruffin:

The worst thing you could do is kind of that. If you want to work from home, you can for a long period of time. We either do it or don't.

Shawn Anderson:

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's like Mr. Miyagi said, "Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, think. Walk middle of the road sooner or later, squish like a grape."

Lauren Ruffin:

You said Mr. Miyagi and I was like, "Mr. Miyagi didn't say shit will get off the pot. It's like, he didn't say. That's what I was thinking.

Shawn Anderson:

I know. I mean I have a love for the karate kid. I don't know why. I think it's because I grew up with it, but I always think of him saying that because it's totally true. Whenever you do something in that halfway state, you're taking on the risks from both sides. So you're better off fully committing to a strategy that works than doing half measures.

Tim Cynova:

Shawn, before we say goodbye to you in this episode, what are your closing thoughts on the topic?

Shawn Anderson:

I think remote work is work. I don't actually think it differs all that much from what people are generally used to. I think there's a ton of benefits to the people who have families, to the people who are looking to not get sick, to the people who are trying to find a way to stay engaged if they potentially feel sick. I just don't think it's something to be feared. I think this is something to be embraced. I think what we're going through right now as a country and a world is just a reminder that there are ways to stay connected that don't require us all to spend an hour in the car, in a train and then eight hours a day in an office.

Tim Cynova:

Shawn, thanks so much for spending some of your time with us this morning. I always end our video meetings by saying something like, "See you online." Of course, we already are online. So we'll see you online in different ways.

Shawn Anderson:

Thanks Tim. Thanks Lauren.

Tim Cynova:

So Lauren, we're talking remote work. We work in the cultural sector for the most part, a sector largely built on bringing people together in community to engage in experiences. One of those experiences is the annual South by Southwest Conference or convention in Austin that was announced late last week that it was going to be canceled. You wearing your Crux hat and your Fractured Atlas hat. We were on several panels. You had several events that you were producing. What's the update on that? What's going on?

Lauren Ruffin:

Well, I'm still going to Austin. Austin's a fun city. Whether there's something happening or not, it's like this year it's the not. But what is happening is so for South by, I partnered with an organization called Zebras Unite. Zebras unite is becoming pretty well known really around finding alternative capital vehicles for underrepresented entrepreneurs. So we were going to participate in a round-table and a series of discussions with them. That's all going to happen online now. So we'll all be in a venue together. Having these conversations, bringing people in from around the country, around the world, we just won't be all in the same place as planned. The reality is between Fractured Atlas and Crux and time and pulling people together.

Lauren Ruffin:

This is sort of at the nexus of about not as much money as some people, but still five or six grand, which had they canceled the festival a day earlier from everything I've seen in people I've called to beg to plead to get this money back, if they had done it a day earlier, I would have been able to recoup a fair amount of all of those funds at the seven day policy. But it's sort of the way they chose to cancel it means that I'm out of that money. But I've been thinking a lot about the idea of how do you ethically cancel a large event? What are the ethics involved and how do you bring partners into the conversation?

Lauren Ruffin:

It's clear that the city of Austin and the festival that South by did not come to an agreement. And so what ended up happening is the people who were attending are suffering. I think figuring out ethical cancellations isn't just about a pandemic in the `Rona. It's really about how the world is shifting. Climate change is real. We're going to see more and more events happening, especially on coast that are going to be canceled. So how do you do that in a way that doesn't... How do you have virtual opportunities anyway for everything you're doing? So it's easy to shift people into virtual spaces. How do you have those contingency plans? Hurricanes are real earthquake surreal. If you're doing something in Phoenix in the summer, being 115 degrees is real. So I just keep thinking about what do the ethical practices look like in event management and I think that the conversation has to advance beyond where we are today. The only upside to this is I think it's forcing a lot of conversations that we need to have anyway.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, a lot of things that were not possible or "weren't possible" are all of a sudden possible because of this. I enjoy the pre-mortem exercise when you're starting something. I find it sort of a really fun and fascinating exercise to go through for those who might not be familiar. A pre-mortem is after you've come up with your plans for something and they're going to be wildly successful and everyone's going to love it and it's going to make a lot of money, you do a pre-mortem about what happens when that thing that you're so excited about is going to end in tears and ashes and then you list all of those things and he'd go one by one to, if that thing happens, we will put them in order, what's most likely to happen... But then you go one by one and say, if that thing happens, this is how we're going to respond. And then you essentially put it in your back pocket.

Tim Cynova:

If that thing does happen, you're much more prepared with what happens if an earthquake hits this area during our conference, a day before our conference, whatever it might be. And so I think yeah, ethical responsibility around convening people is something that needs to be at the top of that list.

Lauren Ruffin:

It really isn't. Planning a convening at the end of September at Albuquerque, well outside of Albuquerque, and I'm thinking top of mind wildfires and what follows is normally a beautiful time, in New Mexico. It will be around the river, gorgeous resort. But I'm like, "What if there's a wildfire?" Or, "What if there's a wildfire and it's windy, which happens here." So it's going to be like, it was during SOCAP a couple of years ago with the fires in Northern California where there was just ash blowing over, blowing across the bay into where SOCAP's held. And then just heat. It's normally beautiful in September here. But what if this year it ends up being super hot and the space that we have on the resort is an eight to 10 minute walk. Can I ask everybody from the conference to do that walk? They do have shuttle buses, but again how do you prepare for those things and how do you start just thinking about them way ahead of time?

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. Thinking about everyone who wants to be a part of that convening and is it truly open and available to everyone and what might be prohibitive and how can we remove some of those barriers so that it's as inclusive as possible? No, just I would say inclusive period not as possible. Because I think a lot of people were like, "It's inclusive as possible, right now."

Lauren Ruffin:

But I think that just raises a larger conversation about physical spaces. We and I mean we, people writ large and I think the arts sector is one of those sectors that is particularly beholden to physical spaces on either coast. I had a conversation with someone a couple of years ago who was raising a ton of money for a physical space in a very vulnerable city. I kept thinking those hundreds of millions dollars could be repurposed and I said this because I'm crass. I was like, "Do you ever worry raising all this money for this thing that like could be gone with a couple of hard shakes of the earth?" And they were like, "Yeah, I do think about that, but this is what we're going to do."

Lauren Ruffin:

I kept thinking like if he were to spend that money doing a really, really great virtual version of the thing that you want to do, it can be accessed by so many more people and really pushed technology and really you could build something that could last forever. But our continued reliance on physical spaces and the work that it takes to maintain a large physical plant for performances, for art shows as museums and everything else, to me it's wasteful. I mean for lack of a better... I mean, it's legit wasteful.

Tim Cynova:

With your Crux hat on the virtual reality, augmented reality as it applies to convenings, you mentioned the Zebras Unite partnership that you have is going virtual. Who's doing this really well? Who might be pairing these new technologies with virtual convenings to use as a case study for how might one do something that's not "old-school conference, old-school convention."

Lauren Ruffin:

Everything about my life is spent between sort of industries and organizations that I really love that I have a lot of work to do, structurally. The VR/AR space is no different. So AltspaceVR is a convening space online that people often use to have meetings, put on a headset. I love everything about immersive storytelling and I have a hard time spending more than 10 or 12 minutes at a time in a headset. So the hardware has to improve. But I mean, I think some of those are great, but I also... We've done lots of cool things just with Zoom. You can do breakout rooms, you can do small... You can bring people together, you can sort of sort folks into different rooms. That's not super hard to do once you figure it out. So there are a couple of conferences that I understand.

Lauren Ruffin:

So I believe E3 is being canceled today, which is huge. GDC is on the bubble. Actually GDC might canceled. Actually, I'm not sure. So both of these are huge gaming and online entertainment conferences. My understanding is that E3 is doing something online. I haven't checked Twitter yet this morning, but when I went to bed last night, the rumor was that E3 was being canceled today. So I think we're going to have to figure this out really quickly. And the good thing is you have people who are really sophisticated technologists who are now in this conversation. I think that what today seems like a, "How are we going to do this situation?" Is in three months going to be, "This is how you do it." I think we have people who are quickly blazing the trails on that.

Tim Cynova:

You brought up how long you could wear a VR headset and it reminded me of the Zoom meeting coefficient of the two to one. For those who have spent any time in Zoom, it's twice as tiring as a meeting that's done in person. It just takes a different attention. So if you have a two hour meeting in person that's going to feel like a four hour meeting and you need to be cognizant of that, to build on breaks and ways to let people just decompress.

Lauren Ruffin:

You're spot on. And I say this as someone who is difficult to meet with.

Tim Cynova:

I've worked with you for a number of years, Lauren.

Lauren Ruffin:

I think the last time we were together I was like, "Where else am I going to work where I can essentially spend hours walking in circles around the room and nobody thinks I'm a total nerd?" But the other thing I was thinking about is, how much easier it is to do everything with people. You've met in person or you spent a lot of time with. I was thinking, what if Zoom went down and the four of us had to do tacticals by phone? I could do a tactical with you. We could probably do a tactical on the phone. But there are... Look I've lost the skill of phone conferencing. Remember when you used to... I remember being a lobbyist and it would be like a weekly call with X client and there'd be 30 consultants on the call, which seems like a nightmare now.

Tim Cynova:

So yeah, still do that with law firms. That's like the last remaining convening that is almost always on audio only and then it becomes, even with three people, you're stepping on each other and half the meeting is just crosstalk.

Lauren Ruffin:

When I was in high school, I used to frequently do a three way call and then the connecting chain, there would be a whole bunch of us on the phone and we could do it. And I'm like, "How have I lost the skill?"

Tim Cynova:

You've developed other skills, [crosstalk 01:21:00].

Lauren Ruffin:

We hope that I've developed other skills since then.

Tim Cynova:

I totally forgot about the chain calls like that.

Lauren Ruffin:

But now being on the phone with any more than one person is a real challenge and so I say that to say, it takes a while to get accustomed to being on video. It's always easier being on video. People you really know that I think holds true for anything. It's hard having dinner with somebody you barely know. It's not like video is immediately easy. You have to get good at it and you have to get to know the person on the other end. It's interesting times. I'm such a fan of... I'm a total convert, I'm such a fan of remote work now.

Tim Cynova:

I was not.

Lauren Ruffin:

I know, I remember those conversations. You and Pallavi were the holdouts. Shawn and I were like, "Do it now."

Tim Cynova:

There's clearly a lot of benefit to it. My holdout was, I feel like we're losing something as human beings in not being in a physical space together. And we are, but you also gain other things.

Lauren Ruffin:

Germs.

Tim Cynova:

Yes, exactly. We're losing-

Lauren Ruffin:

Losing out on germs.

Tim Cynova:

Germ transmission. Yes. We lost on that one.

Lauren Ruffin:

Office gossip. I think that's the culture.

Tim Cynova:

We're losing positives and negatives, but we also gain in other things that I think you don't, in having that. Having seen what those things are and how people can change the way they want to live and work. I've increasingly been a convert to, this is how you can work, even if it's not the entire organization needs to go vertical, but having an intentional plan that's set up or intentional structure that's set up to be able to work this way and for everyone to be able to work that way and understand what that's like. This is a skill that almost everyone in the 21st century needs to have in order to be effective or productive as just a coworker.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, I think you're so right and I'm really excited in the summer months... Well, one, I love working from home in the summer. It's fantastic. You can sit outside, you can sort of be in your best self. But in the winter time, one of the things I always hated about working in an office was I would get to the office when it was dark and I would leave when it was dark. And so if I wanted to run outside, if I wanted... I was walking the dog and the dogs are dark. I felt like I never saw the sunlight. And just being able to step outside or spend in Albuquerque, it warms up so much the middle of the day.

Lauren Ruffin:

If I was in an office all winter long when I knew it was going to be dark, but there was gonna be this beautiful 90 minutes where it was 55 or 60 degrees in November or December. But being able to just see that and get outside and experience it and work out there and breathe some fresh air is transformational. I'm so excited for you because once your foot heals-

Tim Cynova:

That's all right.

Lauren Ruffin:

I don't know if we've told our listeners that you snapped your ankle.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, I came back with some really cool Canadian souvenirs in the form of a handful of surgical screws. Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

But once that's over, you're going to be able to ride your bike in the middle of day.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, you're right. And that will be the subject for a future episode conversation where we talk about guilt that comes from taking time during the day to do something possibly even when you're working.

Lauren Ruffin:

No, that guilt. I shut that Catholicism I was raised in. I no longer experience guilt.

Tim Cynova:

I mean, I think that's though... We talked about this earlier in the podcast with Andrew and Nicola. When people work from home, they tend to work longer hours than they would if they went into the office because they don't have an easier or clear delineation of start, stop. And then if you are working say eight or nine hours that you typically would, but you start earlier and later you might initially feel guilty to say, I'm taking two hours to go work out at the gym, walk around, stare at the sun, breathe fresh air, and then I'm going to come back. And there's a hurdle that a lot of people need to address.

Lauren Ruffin:

I feel it in particular living with children. They get home from school and I'm still working and then it's like, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "Working." "Well, you were working when we left." I was like, "Yeah, I was working when you left." And then it's like, "We're going to bed. What are you doing?" "I got my laptop, I'm working." But what I've been trying to do is... It wasn't my own idea. I can't take credit for it, was putting the laptop away at six o'clock.

Tim Cynova:

I love that Nicola puts her work laptop and materials into a physical box and then puts them someplace else so that in a small apartment she doesn't just sit down for a quick email, but it's physically in a different place.

Lauren Ruffin:

But in particular working on East Coast Time, there are days where I start working at 6:00 AM by time and you all have gone home, but it's still, my brain's still on my work hours, so I look up and it's the only thing that stops me is that I have to fix dinner for somebody.

Tim Cynova:

I think that's one of the challenges in that, when you do work with people across time zones, for instance, I do my best work in the morning if we're accommodating an 8:00 AM Eastern time meeting, because we have people, our colleague Pallavi lives in India, and so there's only a couple points during the day where we can have a meeting. I start my day in a different way, and then it rolls right into just the regular workday and meetings. And then some people work until 7:00 or 8:00 PM Eastern time. And you could stretch your day from 8:00 to 8:00 and not still have that personal time that you typically would because it becomes the other type of work, not the solo thinking ideating, if that's still a word part of your day. It shouldn't be a word if it still is.

Lauren Ruffin:

And Pallavi usually hops back on. I go to bed pretty early, so I'm climbing into my bed at 8:30, and Pallavi is hopping on at 8:30 PM, so it's 10:30 PM your time. So it's like, "Well, let me start Pallavi's day by responding to these things and end my day by responding to these things." On the whole I'll take that as opposed to the alternative, which is working in an office from 9:00 to 5:00 and then still bringing work home with me, which is really terrible.

Tim Cynova:

Well Lauren, we have covered a lot of ground and a lot of different topics related to the overarching remote work conversation. What are your closing thoughts on the topic for this episode?

Lauren Ruffin:

I think there are just so many benefits to doing it and I think it's something that allows you to future proof your organization. One of the things I've been thinking about in the last week is as I get emails from various cities, state governments, organizations, everyone else, we haven't really had to send an email out to our staff at all. This has not impacted our work. It's not... I mean, I'm sure our staff are feeling it, but what we've done is we've liberated our staff to figure out what to they want to make in their lives and the one thing they don't have to figure out is how they're going to work, which I think is just so I feel really fortunate as a manager to not have to be navigating these things on the fly.

Lauren Ruffin:

The only thing we know to be true is this isn't the last time we're going to have to figure this stuff out. So I would encourage every organization who's really feeling it in a pinch right now to figure it out now. Commit to figuring it out, so that if we're talking about months of this conversation or if we're just talking about this becoming an annual conversation, which is what's most likely is that this is going to be like a really, really bad freaking flu every year. You got to figure this stuff out,

Tim Cynova:

Lauren, it's always a pleasure starting my day chatting with you. I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day and a great week.

Lauren Ruffin:

You too, Tim.

Tim Cynova:

If you've enjoyed the conversation or you're just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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The Behavior Dashboard (EP.10)

Last Updated

March 6, 2020

What behaviors differentiate a Director from a Senior Director? What traits does a CEO need to demonstrate to be successful in their role that are similar or different from what an Admin Assistant needs? On this episode we're talking tools, specifically one called The Behavior Dashboard.

Guests: Pallavi Sharma & Jillian Wright

Co-Host: Tim Cynova

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Guests

PALLAVI SHARMA currently serves as the Chief Program Officer of Fractured Atlas where she oversees the team responsible for program strategy and growth, product development, customer service, and R&D. Prior to joining Fractured Atlas, Pallavi was a full-time consultant helping nonprofit organizations and women entrepreneurs develop strategies, streamline operations, improve team effectiveness, and market themselves successfully. Her previous roles were varied and global, including working at large organizations like 1800Flowers.com and Everyday Health Inc., to startups funded by Goldman Sachs, as well as an early stint in the luxury retail industry in India. After her 16+ years in the corporate sector, Pallavi is excited to transition her skills and experience to follow her passion for the nonprofit space. Pallavi is a voracious reader, an aspiring writer and a lover of all things in nature – plants, animals, even bugs. Pallavi completed her MBA from IIM, Bangalore India and holds a Bachelor’s degree with triple majors in Psychology, English Literature and Journalism.

JILLIAN WRIGHT is currently the Senior Director, People Operations & Controller at Fractured Atlas, an organization she joined in 2010. As Controller, she manages and oversees all financial procedures and policies for the organization, as well as supervises compliance reporting including the annual organizational audit. As a member of the People Team, Jillian manages the company payroll and benefits, and assists in the organization's strategic HR efforts. Prior to Fractured Atlas, she worked in arts management and accounting for Stephen Petronio Company, Robert Battle’s Battleworks Dance Company, The Center for Kinesthetic Education, and The Diller-Quaile School of Music. In her spare time, Jillian enjoys taking ballet class, gardening, and hiking with her family. Jillian is a certified Professional in Human Resources (PHR).

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi, I’m Tim Cynova and welcome to Work. Shouldn’t. Suck., a podcast about, well that. On this episode, we’re talking tools. Specifically, we’re talking about a tool called the behavior dashboard. The behavior dashboard was developed by the team at Fractured Atlas to help staff articulate the often murky areas of behaviors and quote unquote soft skills that differentiate, say, what’s necessary for someone to succeed and thrive as a senior director versus someone in a director position. Or what are the behaviors you most need to see from someone in the CEO role and how might those be similar or different from someone in an admin associate role? Spoiler alert, it’s not just the passage of time. I talk with Pallavi Sharma and Jillian Wright about the journey they took that helped lead the creation of this tool, what it is exactly, how it can be used, and what questions and future hopes they still have for it.

If you want to follow along at home, you can download a copy of Fractured Atlas’s behavior dashboard from our website at workshouldntsuck.co. So let’s get going. Jillian and Pallavi, welcome to the podcast.

Pallavi Sharma:

Thanks for having us.

Jillian Wright:

Thanks for having us. Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

So you both were the driving forces behind the creation of a tool used at Fractured Atlas called the behavior dashboard. Jillian, do you want to get us started with what is this dashboard and why did you two set out to create it?

Jillian Wright:

Sure. So the behavior dashboard is essentially the articulation of the knowledge, skills, abilities, this sort of sometimes called the soft skills that we feel like people need to be successful at the organization.

Pallavi Sharma:

And I guess if I had to talk about why we created it, it actually started during a performance review process and as with most organizations, we had a pretty traditional process where we focused more on metrics and key result areas and kind of job based performance. In going through one of those formative evaluation processes, talking to a number of different members of the team, it became quite apparent that we were missing something very critical, and that was stuff beyond just work performance and metrics and things related to how they were connecting with other people in the organization, what their behavior was like, what were the skills and abilities they were displaying that went over and above just work knowledge that was helping them and the team and the organization kind of do better. It also became more important as we started talking about growth and promotions and growth in professional development.

Pallavi Sharma:

As you move higher in an organization, job knowledge and specific understanding of the work that you have to do starts to become more standard. Most people at a certain level have the requisite knowledge to do a job. What sets people apart then is the so called soft skills, the abilities, the team dynamics, the behavior that makes them stars or superstars in an organization, and it felt like we were missing that piece in our evaluation process.

Tim Cynova:

How did you start to identify what are those things and how do we perhaps map this in a way that people could then use, either with the conversations between someone and their supervisor or to look at and think, “I’m at this level and how do I get to that level if it’s maybe not just the number of years that I stayed in a role.”

Pallavi Sharma:

I think this is where Jillian’s expertise and just the amount of work that she put into this whole process comes in, because when I started thinking about this requirement through the performance evaluation process, after the performance evaluation process, as I started to talk about it, I mean, what I had literally was a list on a document of some things that I thought were important. And again, these came out while I was having these conversations. It was helpful to capture them in the moment, but clearly what I had was a very rudimentary starting point. And then it was after that that Jillian and I started talking about what happens with this and then I’ll let Jillian jump in, because it went from like a basic, it’s like riding a unicycle to going full Concorde, is the analogy I’d give you, because where she took it from there, it was just like a place I never imagined was possible.

Jillian Wright:

Yeah, I feel like I saw a missed opportunity here, but being able to articulate this could be such a great management tool in a way that people could really start to see sort of what the future looks like. I just … I got really excited about it. I started doing a lot of research and I thought, this must be a solved problem. There must be some sort of tools or a set process or something out there that exists that we can just use and adapt and see if we can make it work for Fractured Atlas. I did a lot of research and I found some things, but nothing was quite sticking or nothing felt like, oh that’s really easily applicable. And it made me think even more, gosh, this is really something the field needs or something that the field could use. Yeah, I think Pallavi and I started just kind of thinking who’s been really successful at our organizations and thinking about we have really strong articulated core values, but we don’t have how those show up, and let’s try to figure out how to articulate how those show up at Fractured Atlas.

Tim Cynova:

You identified a need, you identified that there aren’t great tools out there to assist with this. How is the dashboard supposed to work? We’ve talked about a dashboard, but for listeners, what does it look like? How do you use it?

Jillian Wright:

First I want to say that when we built the dashboard, when we were thinking about these skills and knowledge and things that people need to be successful, we really tried to think across the organization, not just specific to a department. When we built it, we tried to think about this should not be a carbon copy of what our different titles of the organization are. It’s not just about associates are this, this is this. It’s really about the growth of your career and how things show up within that context.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah, I think if I had to frame it differently, I think it’s kind of an increasing level of impact in those areas, which is usually something that comes with time and experience and frequent usage of those skills and behaviors, and as folks have more exposure to the opportunities to use those behaviors, they usually become better and better at it and it manifests very differently. It’s kind of width and breadth and depth of impact, I guess in each of those areas, which doesn’t necessarily directly tie into kind of seniority in years, but again, like I said, I think more in terms of how many opportunities the person might have had to exhibit or use those skills and abilities that they had. To Jillian’s other point, it kind of crossed functional areas as well as levels of depth of experience that different team members may have.

Jillian Wright:

I think we also tried to be really mindful of that point too, Pallavi as you were mentioning, about seniority. It’s not a number. It’s not like you have to have done this for X years to be able to meet this sort of impact or have this sort of impact. We really wanted to think more globally about opportunities that you’ve had or ways you’ve been able to make that work show up.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah, which was also an interesting exercise, because as we obviously … As this behavior dashboard was developed, we tested it. I mean, and kind of whether it was internally or just thinking through it, it also becomes a management tool in that if you believe that certain skills or behaviors are necessary or valuable in a role, then you need to create the opportunities for team members to exhibit and learn those skills and abilities. And that actually became one of the interesting conversations we started having, is it’s not just about whether they exhibit certain behaviors or abilities. Do they have the opportunity to? Did we create the opportunity for them to use them? Because that’s what develops expertise in anyone.

Tim Cynova:

The tool that you created actually has four different tiers. One, two, three, four, with one being sort of base level. If you … When you enter the organization, this is what you should be able to do at say an associate level across the board. And then four being an executive leadership you need to exhibit all of the skills in one, two, three and also four. They don’t map directly two tiers at Fractured Atlas. There’s some … You need to do 3.5 or two to 3.5 in this area, and then others depending on what the column is. You have five different columns that cover expertise, what you need to know is number one or listed first, manifestation, how you do things is the second column, collaboration, how you work with others, leadership, how you lead and inspire, and vision, how you see things. Those are the four rows and then the five columns and then you two mapped each one of the roles, associates, specialist, associate director, director, senior director, sort of C level to all of those across the organization. How did you come up with those from your exploration? Why did you choose expertise, manifestation, collaboration, leadership and vision? Was this divinely inspired right out of the gate or did you like, okay, that’s not exactly … We’re missing a hole here or something like that?

Jillian Wright:

During some of the research process, I was able to see other examples of how other organizations were articulating these things. Some of these things are things that really resonated from that, thought were super applicable to things that we think people need to have when they are growing and having growth at the organization. Yeah, it was certainly a many, many, many times revised tool, and it continues honestly to be something that we look at, we assess, we think, hm, is this still what we should have for that?

Pallavi Sharma:

To put this in perspective, I mean, we have what, 20 boxes, grid boxes in this and the process took us a year maybe, more. It was definitely an iterative process. I mean, it didn’t just like suddenly appear one day. There was a lot of back and forth and a lot of evaluation and review and modification of each element of a grid. Definitely a long, well thought out or thoughtful process. Well thought out, history will tell us whether it was well thought out, but it was definitely thoughtful.

Tim Cynova:

I remember specifically you two were wrestling with, during that year as you’re testing and seeing where the holes might be, the distinction between a director and a senior director. In a lot of organizations, it just means time. The difference between a director and a senior director is that the senior director has been working in the field for 15 years and the director has been working for five. And you two were really wrestling with, no, that’s not. It’s not just time. Some people jump right into their careers and have the behaviors, the knowledge skills and abilities to be a senior director. That’s not necessarily time. Can you talk a bit about maybe that example or other things that you wrestled with that were particularly thorny to boil down to? What are the behaviors that make that distinction?

Jillian Wright:

Well, something I’d like to say too is that, so visualize in your mind each of these boxes and each of them have sort of a subheader. As you’re talking about that, Tim, it made me think of this one bullet point that we have. We went around on it Pallavi, and I think we came to a good place. Under manifestation, which is how you do things, a level three we have advising, and the bullet point that I’m thinking about specifically is this point that says, “You are not afraid to dive in and make mistakes when faced with the unknown.” And we felt like that was a pretty critical skill that people needed to be successful. People can make a lot, maybe it could be this way, but actually just diving in and doing it and not being afraid to make a mistake and just do the work. We felt that was a really important point.

Pallavi Sharma:

And the way that kind of showed up to kind of answer the question about senior directors versus directors is when it comes to opportunities, again to exhibit behavior or having had the chance. And sometimes it really is about how long you’ve been working, because the opportunities don’t all show up in one year. They show up over the course of time and as you spend more time in a working environment, you get more opportunities to exhibit that behavior. And so that ability to dive into the unknown, kind of this comfort with ambiguity, seemed to be really critical, because some of them at a senior director level or a C-level, not only has to be comfortable with that for themselves, but be able to drive the team to be comfortable with that. And that experience often does not come early in folks career, or not the experience, but the ability to manage that experience and handle that experience and show success in managing that experience outside of yourself.

Pallavi Sharma:

Managing ambiguity for yourself or within your role could be easy, but managing it for a larger group of people is where the challenge comes in. And folks who would have had that opportunity tend to be folks who have been, unless you’ve been in a startup environment or something where this kind of stuff gets thrown at you all the time. But even then, that tends to be more of an individualistic kind of achievement. I think that’s a very specific example, but it kind of speaks to the back and forth we had to put in in order to make sure that we were not only recognizing skills and abilities that are somewhat unique and maybe don’t show up that often, but also are critical to the organization and we need to be aware of as folks come into the team.

Tim Cynova:

I remember one of the challenges that you’re wrestling with was both the frequency of being able to do that thing, but also the calibration maybe of what that thing is when you’re in an associate role versus what that thing is when you’re in a director role. You may actually be doing that thing, but it could be different. And so there was this, how do you actually articulate it in a way so that it’s properly, I guess calibrated so that there is a progression.

Pallavi Sharma:

I think that’s where the subheaders actually come in and again, without actually seeing the dashboard or having it in front of you, and I would say please go to our website and check it out. I think it’s on there, the Fractured Atlas website, the subheaders actually do talk about the progression. If you take leadership, for example, as one of the columns, which is how you lead and inspire, level one talks about the self. Talks about how you show leadership for yourself, you hold yourself accountable for your own decisions, you share, you raise questions, et cetera. Then you get to team, where it’s just not you, but it’s maybe your immediate team that you’re working with. Then you go to community, which is a little bit broader. And then finally, at level four, you’re impacting the whole sector. It really is not necessarily about how much you manifest it, but as I said, right in the beginning, it’s about impact. How many people … What breadth of impact are you having with that behavior or in what you do and the kinds of decisions and choices you’re making. And I think that was a very, very critical part of how the progression was defined.

Tim Cynova:

How is this tool actually used then? Everyone in Fractured Atlas has access to this. What does it look like when it’s being used?

Jillian Wright:

We feel strongly that professional development conversations and opportunities should not just be stagnant to once a year. You only talk about it at one time and it’s queued up right with your self assessment and in the new year starting. We’ve implemented it in a number of different ways. We do use it during the annual self assessment process, which happens for us every summer, but we also have embedded it into when we bring new people on board. When new staff start, they go through a core curriculum program that we’ve developed at Fractured Atlas, and they really start to learn about this tool, and we hope that they have set conversations as they begin their tenure with us at the one and three and six month marker, and we have created some sort of targeted questions that help managers sort of talk through the dashboard with new folks, talk about where they’re fitting on the dashboard, what skills and opportunities can come up to help them sort of grow in areas where they need to grow. We also use this tool in our performance improvement plan process, otherwise known as PIPPs. When somebody is having a challenge with one of the behaviors that we think are really critical, we can really point to this tool and say, “This is where we can help you develop. How are we going to do that?” And kind of rally around some really clear guidelines on what those things are.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah. The other thing, I think we encourage managers to use behavior dashboard more frequently. Again, to Jillian’s point, this shouldn’t be something that comes up only at formal check-ins or formal evaluation timeframes. It’s something that should be used on an ongoing basis. Whenever behavior either manifests itself or doesn’t manifest itself when it should, this should be a conversation, and the behavior dashboard is a great tool to use to say, “Okay, this is what we’re looking for and you either manifested it or didn’t.” And then helping team members learn from that experience, give them the guidelines, the guidance, the help, the support they need to start exhibiting the behavior or become better at exhibiting the behavior or create more opportunities for them to exhibit that behavior. There’s a number of different ways, so it’s not just performance improvement, but if we find someone who’s a budding star, because they’re showing signs of using some of these skills and abilities at a level where maybe it’s not expected of them, then the idea would be how do we create more opportunities so we can help them grow and develop and maybe contribute to the organization more as well as just grow in their own development and understanding of their professional behavior and life.

Tim Cynova:

I know when this tool was originally envisioned, there was an additional piece to this that was going to … Hopefully, the idea was I believe, objectively assess performance in sort of a Myers-Briggs type, staff member completes this survey, a supervisor completes this survey based on where the person is in the role. It maps both of those things to the behavior dashboard, and then while we could see it’s perfectly calibrated, everyone … They are where they need to be for their role and their understanding of what they do is the same as what the … Or their abilities and behaviors are directly in line with their supervisors. That is not a currently a piece of this.

Jillian Wright:

Yeah. One thing that we really tried to address with the dashboard, with this questionnaire that we were building, was bias. Everybody has biases. Let’s try to figure out a way to much more objectively assess where people fall across the organization. It’s a challenge. It’s a challenge to calibrate results of that sort of questionnaire, it’s a challenge to articulate a soft skill in a way that’s going to be read the same by everyone. And I think that’s kind of where the challenge … Where we came up against some challenges.

Pallavi Sharma:

I can see Jillian’s trying to find a very dramatic way to say it. But I mean, it’s in the name. I mean, how do you put hard numbers to a soft skill? I mean, that’s effectively the place we ended up. Not even hard numbers, but hard data to a soft skill. And by definition, all of these traits and behaviors, and the fact that they were filled in by individuals, there was a difference in understanding. I mean, folks just read the questions differently. They interpreted how they had used it or manifested differently. I mean to go back to what something that we talked about earlier, which is kind of the incremental impact of what you’re doing, until we started to get more clear on the importance of the breadth of impact that someone was having in manifesting this behavior, a lot of folks thought they were at the highest level of manifestation.

Pallavi Sharma:

I mean, everyone was ending up at level four, because they were doing great. That was true, but it was true for the context of their role and the work that they were doing, and it was hard for individual team members to calibrate what their impact was in the context of the overall organization or the sector at large. And so even though we tried to figure out ways that we could find some way to differentiate between those impact levels, again there didn’t seem to be a quantifiable way to do that. It also felt like that’s where the expertise we needed maybe was different. What was built was built by business leaders, human resources and people ops leaders. And then this questionnaire kind of gets into the ultra high level market research type question.

Jillian Wright:

The people analytics.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah. Yeah. And I don’t think … We didn’t think it was a necessary component at that point to kind of invest in building out the super sophisticated tool. We first wanted to make sure the behavior dashboard, as it was created, was useful and helpful for everyone in the organization. But you never know. Maybe that’s something we can explore in the future.

Tim Cynova:

You two spend a lot of time with this, thinking about it, piloting it, iterating on it. What are some of the behaviors on this list that you were able to articulate that you’re like, these are core to people being successful in their roles and maybe just their professional careers?

Jillian Wright:

A couple things that I think are really interesting is when you think about leadership, you always think about otherness, like how you’re impacting other people, but I really liked how through the conversation in the vetting, we came to this idea of self-leadership. How can you really show up and inspire sort of at an individual impact level, if you will. Being a positive influence, sharing your thoughts clearly, even when they’re not popular. Holding yourself accountable for your decisions, like these are just things that are really valuable and might not be having a sector wide impact, but are really key to a positive environment in the organization.

Pallavi Sharma:

I would say much of this is contextual. When we look at Fractured Atlas as an organization, we are an entrepreneurial organization. We are always challenging ourselves. There’s a lot of change that happens with that. I mean, we challenge what we do, we challenge how we do it, which was how we ended up at the behavior dashboard. Change is an important piece of what happens in the organization, and with change comes ambiguity, uncertainty. And one of the things that I felt was really hard to kind of quantify or put into words, articulate … Thank you, I’m having trouble articulating that, are things around comfort with ambiguity. As we mentioned earlier, you’re not afraid to dive in and make mistakes when faced with the unknown. You also have to motivate teams. I mean, it’s not just about you. You motivate teams in the organization, you facilitate safe and constructive communication.

Pallavi Sharma:

And again with change and ambiguity comes stress and discomfort with lots of people. I mean, everyone’s … Nobody loves change. How do you kind of bring the team with you? How do you manage conflict? How do you get people on board with the idea? There was a number of things around that that I felt like were really relevant to Fractured Atlas as an organization and we hadn’t articulated that in a way or checked in with team members during that time with us on how they were handling that or how they were helping others handle that. And I think bringing that piece in really helped in some of the conversations we had after.

Tim Cynova:

One of the things we haven’t mentioned yet is how this helped in the job interview process. Things like comfort with ambiguity and constant change, we knew those things were part of sort of the Fractured Atlas environment, but … And we had ways of asking questions or doing scenarios around them, but it wasn’t mapped specifically to, in a specialist role, this is going to be key so that we could then create scenarios around that specific thing or questions or figure out how to dive into that, to then go a little bit deeper when we were interviewing people to get more understanding, more data, if you will, around does this candidate have those things that we know you need to be successful in this role?

Jillian Wright:

I totally agree, and I think that you have such a small window of time in an interview process to really learn about somebody and if you can be really clear about yes, these are the behaviors, you can’t see their work product. What you can see is how they might embody these behaviors based on scenarios.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah. In fact, one of the things that happened very quickly, not just after we finished the dashboard, but as the dashboard sort of started coming together in a much more cohesive way, is we started changing questions along the interview process. I mean, the programs team had a number of hires that happened after the dashboard was created and with every round, we got better and better at modifying the questions and making them more tailored to the specific role that we were hiring for, and there were a lot more questions around what if scenario planning or giving them examples of situations that they might face in the organization and in a certain role and giving them the opportunity to explain how they would approach it with the hope of kind of eliciting out of them the kinds of behaviors we might be looking for. We changed questions I think across the board all the way from associates to senior director level, we added in more questions that allowed us to kind of hone in on the things we believed would be most important in that role. Not just, did you achieve your results, key results in your job, but did you ever struggle with the team? And that really helped. That was, I think, a huge advantage in the hiring process overall.

Tim Cynova:

Are there any other things you still want to explore with the tool?

Pallavi Sharma:

I’d say I think that we need to be using it more. I would really say … One, it’s a new tool. Folks are not used to using it. We’ve definitely gotten better at going back to it when the time is right, but I think we need more active usage of it on an ongoing basis at all points, like we talked about earlier, in the hiring process, in every kind of evaluation along the way, in any conversation with team members, I’d say that’s probably the biggest piece of it.

Tim Cynova:

Jillian?

Jillian Wright:

We’re constantly iterating, so maybe taking another sort of fresh … Continuing to take a fresh look at how we’re articulating things and making sure that they still really mean what we want them to mean and are articulating as clearly as we can, what we still think is really important.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, the ability to change this … The usage of this into a habit. That’s not like, oh, we have that and then, oh, where is that? It’s like, no, this is just something that in regular courses of conversation, as we do with our programs and services, there is constant iterating. How do you make professional development and growth just a habit of the conversations that you have so that you’re setting people up, yourself included, for further growth inside the organization and outside the organization, but also making sure the things that we need to do are not being forgotten in the urgent versus the important rush of the usual day.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah. I remember when we were talking about how to encourage folks to use this more often, I recommend it to the programs team that they make this their screensaver or windows or the background, their laptop background. I’m pretty sure nobody did that, but … Including me. I’m as much at fault on that as anybody else. But yeah, I think really making this … That’s also how we would be able to evolve it. I mean, it’s … With usage is when we’ll be able to get more regular and consistent feedback, which will allow us to evolve it. I think the usage is not only helpful to make sure that we’re constantly reminding ourselves and each other about the behaviors that are needed to be successful that would allow folks to grow in the organization, but it would also be really helpful in ensuring that we have all the right abilities and skills captured and if any changes need to happen, that’s how it’s going to happen, from feedback.

Tim Cynova:

What advice do you have for other organizations who might be listening and think, oh, that’s a really interesting thing. I’d like to explore that, see that, maybe not the year and a half that went into developing this for us, but with the organizations who are thinking those are actually really great questions for us to wrestle with and to articulate, and maybe we don’t have this tool, but what kind of advice do you have for them?

Pallavi Sharma:

Well, as they say, smart person learns from other’s mistakes. Learn from our learning, not from our mistakes. I mean, the tool is there and it’s been shared and other organizations should definitely look at what’s available out there, because there may be something that comes close to what they need, but guaranteed that nothing outside there is going to meet their need exactly. I think modification and application to the specifics of your own organization is really key, so even if you find something that you think is close to what you need, take a very good, hard look at it and make sure it really maps to your core values, what’s important in the different roles within your organization and what you’re trying to achieve. Don’t assume that it’ll work as is. And again, as we do, iterate. Start somewhere and then build on it so you don’t have to take a year and a half. You could jump in with something that’s available, maybe tweak it a little bit and start sooner, and then build on it as you go along. Know that it’s an experiment. It doesn’t have to be something that’s set in stone from day one.

Jillian Wright:

Yeah, and I would just add that, I mean, we started with a list that Pallavi just kind of wrote on the back of a napkin. I don’t … If you just started thinking like, okay, what are successful people at our organization doing differently than other people? How do we articulate those things? And just really went from there and yeah, I think that would be sort of a good starting point. People were looking for ideas.

Tim Cynova:

What are your closing thoughts on the topic? Closing thoughts on professional development and growth and tools that work and organizations working to support people where they are and where they need to be and where they want to go and what they want to be when they grow up.

Pallavi Sharma:

I would say, on a purely intellectual level, this was a really fun exercise. We don’t often get to do things like this. Mostly your life is just consumed by tactical things that you’re doing on an everyday basis, you’re focused on your job and this was something completely new and not done before and so it was an exciting process to go through. It gave me an opportunity to work with Jillian on something completely different. For a change, we weren’t looking at finance numbers, and that was really great, because it also gave us a chance to get to know each other in a very different way. From that perspective, it was just a fascinating process to go through. But I think for me it also just reinforces, and I don’t think anyone should … I think a lot of folks as they’re entering their professional careers, and even along the way, they’re always thinking about, oh, what course should I do? What further degree should I do? And where’s this Excel class and where’s this writing class that I want to do? And there’s not enough talk put into what are the soft skills or the behaviors or values that I want to hold and exhibit in my professional life?

Pallavi Sharma:

And I would say, it’s never too early to start. I mean, the sooner you start, the more experienced and expert you’re going to be at these skills and abilities. I would say, I just wish more folks would be thinking about it early in their career and work on it at every step along the way.

Jillian Wright:

Yeah, I totally agree. I feel like this was a really exciting opportunity to help people think about their career path that they’re on. And really, it makes a lot of good organizational sense, because when people feel like they have an understanding of what’s expected and where they’re growing and how that aligns with the organization, they stay much more engaged and then I think that makes the work better, people feel better. Just a win-win.

Tim Cynova:

Jillian and Pallavi, it’s always a pleasure getting to spend time with you, working with you. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Jillian Wright:

Thank you.

Pallavi Sharma:

Thank you for having us.

Tim Cynova:

If you’ve enjoyed the conversation or are just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review in iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or a five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn’t enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don’t like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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What's in a Workplace (EP.09)

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.

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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.

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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:

If you've enjoyed the conversation or just feeling generous today. Please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on iTunes to help others discover the podcast.

Shared Leadership, Part 2 (EP.08)

Last Updated

February 20, 2020

In this Part 2 of our exploration into shared leadership models, we sit down with a team that lead the transition from a single founder/CEO model to a four-person, shared, non-hierarchical co-CEO leadership team.

Guests: Shawn Anderson & Pallavi Sharma

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guests

SHAWN ANDERSON currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer at Fractured Atlas where he oversees the organization's software development operations. In that role, he serves as one of the four members of the organization's non-hierarchical leadership team. Prior to joining Fractured Atlas Shawn was a founding partner at Gemini SBS, where he managed the development of web applications for a number of U.S. Department of Education funded projects including the Federal Resource Center, the Regional Resource Center Program, the Family Center on Technology and Disability, and the Technical Assistance Coordination Center. He Holds a B.A. in user interface design from Hampshire College.

PALLAVI SHARMA currently serves as the Chief Program Officer of Fractured Atlas where she oversees the team responsible for program strategy and growth, product development, customer service, and R&D. Prior to joining Fractured Atlas, Pallavi was a full-time consultant helping nonprofit organizations and women entrepreneurs develop strategies, streamline operations, improve team effectiveness, and market themselves successfully. Her previous roles were varied and global, including working at large organizations like 1800Flowers.com and Everyday Health Inc., to startups funded by Goldman Sachs, as well as an early stint in the luxury retail industry in India. After her 16+ years in the corporate sector, Pallavi is excited to transition her skills and experience to follow her passion for the nonprofit space. Pallavi is a voracious reader, an aspiring writer and a lover of all things in nature – plants, animals, even bugs. Pallavi completed her MBA from IIM, Bangalore India and holds a Bachelor’s degree with triple majors in Psychology, English Literature and Journalism.

LAUREN OLIVIA RUFFIN currently serves as Fractured Atlas’s Chief External Relations Officer where she is responsible for the organization’s marketing, communications, community engagement, and fundraising. Prior to joining the team at Fractured Atlas, Lauren served as Director of Development for DC-based organizations Martha’s Table and the National Center for Children and Families. She was also fortunate to serve in various roles at and various positions at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Children’s Defense Fund, New Leaders, and AAUW. Before entering the nonprofit sector, Lauren held the position of Assistant Director of Government Affairs for Gray Global Advisors, a bipartisan government relations firm. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in Political Science and obtained a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law. Previously, she served on the Board of Directors of Black Girls Code. And in her spare time, she can be found mountain biking or gesturing wildly at the teevee in support of Duke University’s men’s basketball team.

TIM CYNOVA spends his time assisting teams and organizations with the things they need to create workplaces where people thrive. He is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR), a trained mediator, on faculty at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity and New York's The New School teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design and Leadership & Team Building. He is a certified trainer of the Crucial Conversations and What Motivates Me frameworks, and is a firm believer that Work. Shouldn't. Suck. He currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer of Fractured Atlas where he oversees the FinPOps team (Finance, People, and Operations, as well as is a member of the organization’s four-person, non-hierarchical shared leadership team). Prior to that, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville Courier-Press. Also, during a particularly slow summer, he bicycled across the United States.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi. I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. A podcast about well, that. On this episode we're joined by Fractured Atlas' four person shared non-hierarchical leadership team for part two of "CEO Not (Necessarily) Required." In part one, we spoke with Mike Courville, Kelly Kienzle, Holly Sidford and Russell Willis Taylor. We dove into what shared or distributed leadership is, explored some models, discussed the criteria that's useful for successful implementation and chatted about our thoughts for future exploration. Now we'll spend some time with a group that helped craft and lead the transition from a single founder led company to this current experiment. But first, let's welcome podcasting favorite co-host, Lauren Ruffin. Lauren, how's it going?

Lauren Ruffin:

Hey Tim, I'm good. Living the dream. It's New York Midtown. It's clean and sunny here in January. What a blessing. It's good.

Tim Cynova:

Today's a special day because we're joined by two of our colleagues who help us form a Voltron of sorts of the leadership team.

Lauren Ruffin:

I always think of us as Captain Planet.

Tim Cynova:

Captain Planet of sorts. Shawn Anderson and Pallavi Sharma who help us form the Fracture Atlas four person shared non-hierarchical leadership team. Pallavi and Shawn, welcome to the podcast.

Shawn Anderson:

Thanks Tim.

Pallavi Sharma:

Thank you for having us Tim.

Tim Cynova:

As if there was a choice.

Lauren Ruffin:

Captive audience.

Shawn Anderson:

That's right.

Tim Cynova:

So the four of us have been working together for about three and a half years at this point for that entire time we've served as members of the Fractured Atlas leadership team. However, our foray into shared leadership really began about two and a half years ago when Adam Huttler, Fractured Atlas founder and CEO at the time, began his sabbatical to explore to launching another company that ultimately became what he left the organization to run. Shawn, you mind giving us a once over of how our leadership team is structured? How do we coordinate? When do we meet? Things like that?

Shawn Anderson:

We do have a basic meeting cadence. Yeah, so every week we're meeting for our weekly tacticals. We have quarterly ad hoc scheduled, so meetings that are beyond the tactics. We used to do quarterly off-sites. Those have turned more into once or twice a year now though.

Lauren Ruffin:

That's new.

Shawn Anderson:

Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. We were supposed to have one this fall but moving and then it was just holiday scheduling. But I could see us doing twice a year moving forward it seems like.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. Because Shawn you live in Denver, Pallavi lives in India, Lauren you live in New Mexico and I'm in New York and we've actually been entirely distributed for quite some time and the organization now is entirely distributed. But it means we see each other mainly online and only two, maybe three times a year in 3D in person.

Pallavi Sharma:

I just want to jump in. I mean I think the one thing that's important is... Tim you mentioned this, that we had been working together for three and a half years and it was well over a year later that we actually formed the shared leadership team. So we'd already established kind of relationships and understanding of each other. And as far as how the team got structured, I mean it was just an organic thing. We were the four kind of leaders or whatever you want to call it off the functional/operational areas in the organization.

Pallavi Sharma:

And it made logical sense for us to kind of come together to form the shared leadership team. Even though we may not have formal or we may not stick to the formal schedule all the time, I mean I think we have such a great relationship with each other that we're able to communicate anytime we need to and all the time we need to address things. So the formal meetings I think are more time that we require when there's really something significant that we need to discuss and otherwise we have a strong enough relationship that we can discuss things on the fly.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, we have our Slack channel and then impromptu zoom meetings in other exchanges.

Tim Cynova:

We've all been in other organizations, we've all been in leadership positions in other organizations. How does the shared leadership model that we're experimenting with differ from a leadership team model in a maybe traditionally hierarchical organization where there is one CEO?

Pallavi Sharma:

I mean, I'd say the first thing that always... I mean as cliche as it sounds, they always say it's lonely at the top. And that I think has always been my biggest concern in any leadership position I've been in. There never really is someone that you can be completely open, honest, candid with. Someone that you can trust to help you through some of the challenging times that the organization or your team might be going through. So I think the biggest advantage I feel in this shared leadership model is we have that. We have that support system, we have people that we can talk to and share even if we're not looking for specific input. Just being able to open up to someone who gets it and understands it and can contribute to solving it. That's a pretty amazing feeling.

Shawn Anderson:

Yeah, I would agree. I mean, in the tough moments, it's so much easier when you're not alone. Just having someone to say, "Hey, you're sharing in this pain, right?" They're like, "Yes." That's a big difference. I felt what it's like to be alone in the tough situations and there was really no place to turn. It's nice to have a team of people you can count on.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. And I think that people will tell you you can find that support network outside of here. They'll say like, "Find a mentor or go have a drink with someone at another organization."

Shawn Anderson:

Not the same thing.

Lauren Ruffin:

No. I mean you need somebody to complain to in your organization about the unique situations that are happening in your organization.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah. I think the other thing is when you are in a traditional hierarchical model there's always someone who holds the ball. The buck stops with one person. Again, boy I am loving the cliches today. And the challenging part, I always feel like is you need to know enough about everything to be able to make the tough decisions and the opportunity for smart, talented, differently skilled and just different experiences that every one of us has had makes it a lot easier to come together to find the ideal solution as opposed to trying to figure it out ourselves or independently. And yeah, I think that also is a huge advantage.

Shawn Anderson:

We talked about non-hierarchical commiseration.

Tim Cynova:

Where in a traditional organization, right, it's just you. And so you have to go someplace else and people just won't understand it as much and sometimes there's times I just need to talk to someone right now about this who deeply understands all the complexities at play here.

Lauren Ruffin:

Tim, you were at Fractured Atlas when it had a CEO. And you were both you and Shawn, but what feels different now? I'm just thinking you're the only person who's been in your role still with the three of us now. That's a lot of change and also not very much change. So in so many ways you're like a baseline for what the experience is.

Tim Cynova:

There's been so much change that's just been going on sort of naturally through Fractured Atlas that it's tough to separate what might be because of the shared leadership team. Holly, Russell and I talked about this a bit where just after getting into this, then we started switching to an entirely virtual distributed organization. But there are also different changes in programs and people are always coming and going and it just feels like different challenges, new challenges. I think one of the interesting things though when I came into Fractured Atlas was I believe I was the first person on the Fracture Atlas team who had ever run another organization.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I mean that shows up at Fractured Atlas. The way we're structured sometimes and who we hire and how we hire. But, yes.

Tim Cynova:

And I think Adam appreciated that. Finally someone else, it wasn't the same level of the knowledge of the complexity and stuff. Adam literally built the company type of thing, but I understood what cashflow issues were and what it meant to fire someone and how to go through hiring and all of those things that just as CEOs and executive directors, it's tough to explain to someone what firing someone is like until you've done it. Or when you're going every two weeks to figure out how to make payroll. You can read about it, but when you actually do that thing, you understand the toll that that takes on you. I think that was appreciated.

Shawn Anderson:

So when I first came to Fractured Atlas officially, we experimented with the 10 person leadership model. I never really had the experience of just the pure CEO. We were there for the move towards where we are now because I see that as an intermediate step. First trying how do we distribute leadership in some way? How do we give more ownership and agency to people throughout the organization and not rely on a single person for every single decision? It's almost as if we're in a more refined version of where we started.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, because 10 people is most certainly unrefined and maybe a little bit vulgar. That is horrible.

Shawn Anderson:

It was very challenging.

Pallavi Sharma:

Really.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Shawn Anderson:

Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

That's got to be.

Tim Cynova:

Pallavi what were your leadership teams like at the organizations that you were with? You worked for Everyday Health, 1-800-Flowers. What were those structure like?

Pallavi Sharma:

It depended on the organization, but typically I'd say for most of the places I worked at, there was a CEO and then they were heads of business units which had independent P&Ls. And I was a head of P&L at many of my jobs. Again, depending on the organization, sometimes you had functional leaders who were responsible for say key support functions like IT or finance. We had legal teams sometimes. That group of business unit owners and the CEO tended to work together to make decisions.

Pallavi Sharma:

But again, as a business unit owner you again, within the context of your own work, you are the head of the organization and that makes a challenging. Or if it's not at that level, if it's one level down or a couple of levels down. There is some more opportunity I guess to share and seek help from your colleagues and your peers. But it isn't the same because the experiences are different for each of them based on what their roles and responsibilities are, their team sizes, things like that. So I'd say this is a very unique kind of structure we have, which is what makes it so exciting and fun to learn and grow from. Most places follow variations on hierarchy that pretty traditional.

Shawn Anderson:

So we started to talk about things we've enjoyed about the shared leadership team or the shared leadership team structure. For the record. I enjoy immensely getting to work with each one of the three of you individually and together. And always look forward to our weekly tactical meeting Wednesday at whatever time we have that meeting. Because it varies and depends on where you are in the world.

Lauren Ruffin:

I look forward to the 6:00 AM ones a little bit less than when we meet at other times.

Pallavi Sharma:

Oh, the 2:00 AM ones.

Lauren Ruffin:

Those are...

Tim Cynova:

Frankly the best.

Lauren Ruffin:

I think the earliest I've had is four. But when you were in Hawaii, you had-

Tim Cynova:

2:00 AM.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

I was in Hawaii though. So it's-

Lauren Ruffin:

You're right.

Tim Cynova:

And I was getting to meet with you all.

Shawn Anderson:

Give some, get some.

Tim Cynova:

But it's the opportunity to... Already talked about people who understand exactly what's happening and to be able to bounce things off of each other and to be in a place where you can't just slide through. I mean Lauren, you and I've talked about this before, where there's an idea that's dumb. So someone in this group is going to say that and be like, "In the kindest of ways or with the kindness of intentions [inaudible 00:11:00]."

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah. Let's clarify that.

Lauren Ruffin:

Tim looked right over in our direction.

Tim Cynova:

With the intention and hope that it's making that idea better. It slows down decision making a lot of times if you're just a CEO you do it and you'd move forward.

Pallavi Sharma:

Fall on your ass and figure it out later.

Shawn Anderson:

Disagree and commit.

Pallavi Sharma:

Disagree and commit.

Tim Cynova:

Several of our listeners on Twitter posted question for us and there are a couple that relate to decision making. So Carl Swanson from Springboard for the Arts asks what are your systems or guidelines for strategic decision making? Do you use a consensus or compromise model?

Tim Cynova:

Neither.

Pallavi Sharma:

Neither.

Lauren Ruffin:

Neither. I've been thinking about how to try to describe how we... It's almost a committee report out with recommendations model. If you were to think about how a board works and I won't go that far. But often because we are responsible for our own operational areas, what we do is how do we operationalize this idea or this goal we have, go back to our teams, work independently and then we present. And it's fuzzy sometimes it's conversation but we usually have a recommendation to make. I think we should do this thing.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah. I think the other thing is, again, I think because of the fact that each of us has an area that we're focused on or are responsible for, we trust that we have the expertise on decision making in that area. So when we come in with a recommendation and we have to bring the information on the detail, the kind of logic to share about why we're choosing to make that decision. We trust each other enough to support a decision unless it's way off track or it has a significant impact on the rest of the organization or some information is unclear or needs clarification or something like that. Where it's a joint decision where it affects the whole organization, I don't think it's a consensus model, but nor is it a compromise model. I think as Lauren said, it's more of a disagree and commit. We spend a lot of time arguing and our conversations I'd say on not like calm, peaceful. There are no systems and guidelines.

Lauren Ruffin:

They're pretty wild.

Pallavi Sharma:

They're pretty wild and there are no systems and guidelines. I want to be sure and clear about that. I don't think we have anything specific documented, but we very vigorously and energetically discuss anything that we have to make a decision about. And then either we're won over and we're all on the same side, or some of us disagree but agree to commit to the decision anyway.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. And also just because someone's quiet is not necessarily they agree. So given the different personality profiles on the team, we have to be conscious. I think we have actually gotten the point where we're all really conscious of everybody's energy levels.

Pallavi Sharma:

Right.

Lauren Ruffin:

And trying to bring folks into the conversation.

Pallavi Sharma:

To model that, Shawn, what do you think?

Shawn Anderson:

I think there are downsides to having four people trying to make large decisions. There are things that we've decided to do that were discussed again months or years in the past. And I feel as if, if we were just a single CEO, if that was our model, these are things that would have been in place earlier. But instead because there's so many perspectives, even something you're confident in, you could back away from because there's voices that you respect.

Lauren Ruffin:

Is that a byproduct of how decisions are made or byproducts because the way that our unique organization is set up. We have really imperfect data.

Shawn Anderson:

I think that's a good question.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I think the second guessing ourselves is something that this particular leadership team has fallen prey to in the past and talking about that, how we got out of that. But I think we struggle not uniquely. The four of us are pretty data-driven. We're handed to a certain extent, a product, an organization that just-

Shawn Anderson:

Didn't have data.

Lauren Ruffin:

Didn't have clear data. We have lots-

Shawn Anderson:

We have lots of data.

Lauren Ruffin:

We have lots of data but it's mumbly jumbly so it's really hard to see. It's hard to use data to back up your decisions and I don't know if even one person would have followed their gut to the point that they would have been able to make the decisions that we've had to make.

Pallavi Sharma:

Right.

Lauren Ruffin:

It would have taken a special kind of leader to be able to in the midst of so much change, be able to make some of the decisions we've made without given the status of what we knew to be true 100%.

Shawn Anderson:

I think we're all cognizant of the fact that we were part of the change.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Right.

Shawn Anderson:

So that brings in some amount of caution I'd imagine and wanting to, can you overdo it?

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Pallavi Sharma:

The other thing I would say is just because of, as you mentioned Lauren, the number of changes and the pace of changes, sometimes it becomes tricky to kind of sift apart and say, "Wait, this thing is still a priority because so much has shifted since we last talked about it." And I think that's another thing that maybe trips us up a little bit. It's like, "Oh crap, here's a new list of priorities that we have to look at." And the list we were looking at a few weeks ago may not be relevant anymore. And I think that's something that we constantly face where we're rethinking earlier decisions or maybe going back on earlier decisions just because something new has come up that seems more important.

Shawn Anderson:

Yeah, and having four leaders operating on parallel tracks, there's so much more room for things to change.

Pallavi Sharma:

Right.

Lauren Ruffin:

Our decisions are better.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

Thinking back to the single CEO thing, we do make better decisions and often way more quickly. I do think that.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah. I also want to say, I mean going back to the original question, we've had this question so many times. I think if someone else said, "Hey, what about the gray fuzzy area where it's not clear which way to go?" I honestly cannot think of a single example where we haven't gotten to a decision. I mean, this question has come up repeatedly, but I don't think we've ever left without a decision. I mean, again, it might not be a 100% consensus or it might be kind of some folks saying this is not critical enough for me and my team to have a clearer perspective. But literally, I can't think of anything that we've spent an inordinate amount of time discussing and trying to... You're right Lauren. I think we get to decisions well and we get to them quickly.

Lauren Ruffin:

We make the right decision for that moment. There have been decisions we've had to revisit because the environment's changed, climate's changed. But in hindsight I feel like they are better decisions because we fuss with each other over-

Shawn Anderson:

Well, they're going to be vetted.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Shawn Anderson:

Which in general is going to be the better decision and that's the weakness of the CEO model. They can just snap all of a sudden switch direction and not have put enough thought into it.

Tim Cynova:

Similar to hiring, you can put the time at upfront or you can put it in when the hire isn't working. And so the decisions might be slower for a four person team to make. But if you look at the full arc of whatever you're making and what's happening, and if it's a single person who makes a decision, then you have to iterate and change and stuff. Over time, those might be shorter in the aggregate than they are in the moment. It might take us a month to make that decision because someone in one tactical says, "I think we need this piece of data to get more clarity on that thing. So we need to go look at that and come back or just let it sit for a bit." But then when we do make that decision, it's been vetted, it's solid. We have that thinking behind it that we're much more certain that that will be the right decision for that thing.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah, there's not a lot we've had to roll back either I think on decision making. I mean we've revisited and tweaked but yeah, there hasn't again been I think something that we could say, "Well that was a bad decision."

Tim Cynova:

Well, an early on, six months, maybe a year into our operating as a four person team, we realized that we needed help. We realized that we were spinning in our meetings and weren't moving forward. And we were coming back and revisiting things that some or all of us thought had been resolved. I guess probably not all of us, some were. The majority of us thought were resolved and we fortunately were able to turn to our board member, Lisa Yancey, who could come in as just she is a consultant. And she was able to come in and parked her board member hat and just be a consultant with us to listen to what we're being challenged with and could say, "Here [inaudible 00:18:54] pull apart the pieces and here's what you should do." Am I describing that correctly?

Lauren Ruffin:

No, you are. I'm remembering that feeling. Yeah.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah. We got really stuck. I don't know what happened, but we kind of went into the spiral that we were unable to-

Lauren Ruffin:

That was the first time we realized how bad our data was and we couldn't make a choice. Yeah, you're right.

Pallavi Sharma:

Actually you're absolutely right.

Lauren Ruffin:

That we realized how our data was so poor that it was paralyzing us.

Pallavi Sharma:

You're absolutely right. That was all around decisions, around products and services and the lack of data made it really hard for us to prioritize.

Shawn Anderson:

I also feel like I failed to communicate how absolutely sure I was about the correct direction at the time.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah.

Shawn Anderson:

I knew what we needed to do. I thought I had conveyed it, but in retrospect it makes me feel like I probably soft pedaled it. I probably did not clarify the urgency of what we were trying to make decisions on.

Tim Cynova:

There are some things that we talk about that we've realized, "Oh, we're not talking about the same thing." Or we don't understand this the same way, but we think we do and some of that came out early on because we were trying to figure out how to work together. Some of that I think comes from most of the time that we see each other is in a zoom box or we're talking online and gotten really good at saying, I can look at Lauren and know she has something to say.

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm a fairly transparent person. I mean if you can't look at me...

Tim Cynova:

All right, well, bad example. Pallavi, we can look at Pallavi.

Lauren Ruffin:

Who also makes [crosstalk 00:20:22].

Pallavi Sharma:

I mean we all do it. All four of us. There's no poker face.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

We can look at Shawn and see that. But I think that that becomes part of our shorthand for communicating.

Pallavi Sharma:

It's our version of body language.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. I read a couple of books on body language by body language experts and they often talk about if someone moves their leg like that, it doesn't mean they're lying. It might mean they are, but it's more data that you're putting into the mix that you might want to explore. And so I think those are those data points for our team. They were like, it might mean that they have something to say or they're just hungry.

Shawn Anderson:

So we had Kelly Kienzle work with the board and our team about a year ago because we were trying to figure out, we had been in this model for a year, year and a half. And one of the board's roles is to evaluate the CEO. And we as a team with a board, we're trying to figure out how would you assess a four person shared non-hierarchical leadership team without it being simply assessing the four people and adding it together. And one of the things that came out of that, Kelly talked with us, talked with the board, talked with staff. Trust that we all know is a trait that high performing teams often demonstrate came up as something that people saw in this group.

Shawn Anderson:

And the question that they had though was, "Do the four of us just have a propensity to trust people or did we go through something together that built the trust or where did the trust come from?" In a way of if not these four people, how might you build that trust? Or does this model just work here right now because of the four of us and what happens when one or more of us start to leave and then someone else comes in? How do you reconstitute that team? How do you build that trust? And I would add as a close related trait the psychological safety that I think we all feel that we have in this group.

Pallavi Sharma:

The first thing I would say, I mean I can only speak for myself is, I've always feel like if you can't trust the people that you're coming into work with when you first come in, whoever they might be, then you're setting yourself up for a lot of work and a lot of headache and a lot of overhead. So if you come in with a distrust upfront, then you've already set yourself up for a lot of emotional heartache and pain and challenge. So I would hope that we're coming in trusting each other.

Pallavi Sharma:

But I think working together, we all are extremely candid or honest in different ways. And going back to what Lauren said earlier, I think some of us take a little longer to kind of process and communicate what they really feel like, but we tend to be very direct and honest with each other. And I think that can only build trust. If we were soft pedaling the issues or we were not sharing all the facts or holding something back, I think that would eventually come out. And that would cause us to lose trust in each other. But we haven't had that situation. So I think coming in with a little bit, for me at least, I came in with, "Okay, this is the group of people and I have to trust you otherwise I'm never going to get my work done." And then that trust just kept building. I think if it had broken along the way, then we'd be in a very different place along the way than we are now.

Lauren Ruffin:

There's an ego thing.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah

Lauren Ruffin:

So many people that I know who run organizations, their personal identity and ego is so tied to that organization and the fact that they have a CEO or executive title in front of behind their name. And the way our team formed and I had just started at Fractured Atlas. I think Adam and I worked together for maybe two months, one month of which was spent at the Hermitage. But when it became clear that Adam was transitioning out, my assumption was that Tim was going to step up and do the thing because, I mean why not?

Shawn Anderson:

He's Tim.

Lauren Ruffin:

He's Tim. Why not?

Pallavi Sharma:

Logical.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Joke's on you.

Lauren Ruffin:

I was like, yes. I came in to work for Adam. I was at the point where I was like, "I'm probably never going to work for anyone ever again. But let's do this thing with Adam. The guy seems interesting." And then I was like, "We have to work with Tim. Is Tim interesting?" And I was like, "Yeah, Tim is interesting. A little uptight but interesting."

Tim Cynova:

But not uptight enough that I wouldn't start a podcast.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, exactly. A little uptight. You've loosened up. That's my influence. I take credit.

Shawn Anderson:

Why not?

Lauren Ruffin:

Speaking of ego, I take credit for lots of things but I think there was a moment with the four of us. We've talked about this I think where it could have gone sideways because someone actually wanted to be CEO. And I had spent three years in. It's so interesting that truly none of us want to run this organization by ourselves and at this point, I don't want to run any organization ever by myself. But I think that's the undercurrent with regard to trust and candor and everything else. It's because, I mean you have to have the lack of ego to be able to step aside and listen to the people and build that relationship without an ulterior motive. If Tim or Pallavi or if any of us secretly wanted to be CEO, this would not work.

Shawn Anderson:

Yeah. That would set up competition amongst team members which-

Lauren Ruffin:

Which exists?

Shawn Anderson:

But there's no room for that here. If you're going to have a trust [crosstalk 00:25:27].

Lauren Ruffin:

But that exists in so many organizations that when you have different people managing P&Ls and different business lines and competing at the end of the year for a budget.

Pallavi Sharma:

Right.

Lauren Ruffin:

So many organizations are set up for that adversarial relationship between colleagues and just by virtue of Tim not wanting this job, we were all cool. So we can work together and actually work together.

Shawn Anderson:

I mean candidly the 10-person leadership team, there was a lot more of that lack of trust, more competing for air time for influence over the direction of the organization. And that's not something that we've seen with this particular group.

Tim Cynova:

There's also more overlap in that group. And one of the things we found in the research while we're looking at this model was what are the criteria for success? What are ways to set this up to be successful? And the research found that the less overlap each one of us has over the area, the more likely is to be successful. So in a traditional arts organization with an artistic and an executive director, there's very little overlap. You sort of have those two things. Here, we each have our four departments and there's overlap in different ways, but that Venn Diagram is not a solid circle on circle. And in that 10 person team, there is far more overlap and I think that's why you saw that it was because you had multiple programs in that room, multiple different activities and programs and services and departments that you almost could stack circles on top of circles. The Venn diagram was-

Shawn Anderson:

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean I was in every one of the Venn Diagrams, not by choice.

Lauren Ruffin:

You just get trusted a lot though.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah. The other thing I think that I'm thinking about as we talk through this is maybe because we didn't found all of these products and services and the team, yet we were close enough to see the details of it. We agreed on a lot of the business decisions and choices. We agreed in a lot of the direction. I think if we had diverged a lot or even some on kind of which way we need to go, that may also have led to some pretty challenging conversations. But I think we were pretty much in agreement from the beginning about what was most important and what needed to happen. And we saw things the same way because we saw it from a similar high enough but not so high that you missed the details to feel that way. Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

So our colleague Courtney Harge submitted a question. How do you use each other's strengths to support the team as a whole? How do you mitigate each other's weaknesses? Who wants to start with that one?

Pallavi Sharma:

I feel like we talked about that earlier. That's the whole benefit of having a four person leadership team that's making decisions together. Is we can leverage each other's strengths, fill in for each other's weaknesses and past experiences. I mean pretty much everything that we're going through, one of us has seen in a previous role or lifetime and therefore can bring that experience and bring that journey with them in the decision making process. So again, it's not one person trying to figure it out in their heads. It's four people who can verbalize and talk and hear things happening when decisions are being made.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. It strikes me that this team with four people or have three people, the ability to maximize assets like your personal assets while absolutely minimizing your weaknesses. I try to be self-aware, but my impetuousness around let's just f'ing do it. Just like, "Why are we still talking about this? I hate this meeting, can it be done? Can we make a decision? Let's go." The ability to pull me back from the cliff, the three of you do it all the time. And I hopefully I pull you all a little closer to the cliff. And the four of us are a spectrum in terms of risk tolerance, processing speed, everything else I think. I mean that's the piece that folks miss and that's when we stop working. That's what I'm going to miss the most. I'm actually terrified to be by myself, with myself and all of my flaws. We might have to keep our weekly tactical [crosstalk 00:29:25].

Shawn Anderson:

It's a support group thing.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah it is.

Lauren Ruffin:

Right.

Pallavi Sharma:

One with geriatrics and fooling about.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Earlier this week, since we're all in New York city meeting, we went to speak at the new school. Wasn't that a question that someone asked about how you make decisions when one of us isn't there or something like that. If Pallavi is not there. [crosstalk 00:29:49]

Lauren Ruffin:

Right.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah. The time zone thing if someone's not available.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. Someone was asking, I think specifically with the time zone difference between they asked it of you, Pallavi. In India, what happens if there's an emergency in the middle of the night?

Pallavi Sharma:

I think what you said Tim, that really resonated which is one, we've learned each other's styles and approaches to things well enough that we can get to a certain point. But then we've also made enough decisions together.

Tim Cynova:

Over the years, we've learned each other's shorthands and tendencies between at least the three of us. When you pull one of us out, the three of us could sort of play that role, play through that. To work through the issue far enough so that when that person comes back online, they can weigh in at a way that's not like, "Well we need to wait 24 hours before everyone's here for us to do this thing." We can move forward and then it's much faster to then implement whatever it might be the issue.

Pallavi Sharma:

I also feel like we do a good job saying like, "There probably isn't an emergency in what we do."

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Pallavi Sharma:

Like a real emergency. Shawn, you have some stuff that's on fire but even in the grand scheme of like life or death-

Shawn Anderson:

It's not life or death.

Pallavi Sharma:

Emergency.

Shawn Anderson:

It feels like life or death for the organization, for our customers. And I think that's where when I'm experiencing an emergency, that's where my sense of urgency comes from.

Lauren Ruffin:

But I mean for the most part I thought that wasn't such a sweet question from your students because I was like, "There're really aren't any emergencies in the arts." This is not super high pressure.

Pallavi Sharma:

Not just arts. I mean most organizations unless-

Lauren Ruffin:

I mean most organizations, right?

Pallavi Sharma:

Unless they are working on life and death.

Lauren Ruffin:

Unless you're working with kids or the elderly and infirm in a hospital.

Pallavi Sharma:

Right.

Lauren Ruffin:

Fire, rescue. I worked with someone for a while who was always having emergencies. I worked for a boss who would be like, "Tell so and so it's emergency." And I'm like, "What you're doing is actually not an emergency. That's not an emergency. That's just you have a competing priority."

Shawn Anderson:

You're just going to burn out your employees that way.

Lauren Ruffin:

It's not an emergency. You have something else that's due and that's all it is.

Shawn Anderson:

There's times I think something's an emergency, I just don't tell them.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Another question that came in from Twitter is from Daron Hall. How is responsibility and salary quantified?

Pallavi Sharma:

Can you quantify responsibility?

Lauren Ruffin:

I guess that's what we do with salary.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah. Well Fractured Atlas we have a-

Shawn Anderson:

Fixed tier compensation system.

Pallavi Sharma:

Thank you. Fixed year compensation system. So the same fixed year compensation system that applies across the organization applies to the shared leadership team. And while our individual roles and responsibilities within our teams might be different, we carry an equal weight when it comes to the running of the organization. I mean all of these places that we talked about earlier about jumping in when someone's out, handling emergencies. And I'm saying this with air quotes that nobody can say are all reasons why fixed year compensation makes the most sense? Again, like Shawn was saying earlier, it takes away the competition, right? We're not fighting to get to that next level because we're already at that same level.

Shawn Anderson:

I think not having strict fixed year comp would make a shared leadership model so much more challenging.

Pallavi Sharma:

Totally.

Shawn Anderson:

I'm not sure exactly how you'd approach it too because all of these issues that we're talking about would be exacerbated when we all know we're not making it the same and when a 990 lists what everyone's making, and that was one of the biggest challenges that we had in setting up this model. Was that we wanted to set it up where there was no first among equals. There wasn't someone who, "Oh yeah, they can sign for the CEO." Type of thing because then it wouldn't be truly non-hierarchical.

Shawn Anderson:

And that created issues with Chase Bank and a lot of different state bureaus where they're like, "What do you mean you don't have a CEO?" So we had to create board resolutions that said, "This group and the people in this group can function as the CEO of their department or of the organization so they can sign for the CEO." Some of the models that I studied in advance, particularly in corporate, where you need someone to be able to sign contracts and filings and whatnot. They did have a first among equals even if it was as part of a shared team. I think that would make it exponentially more challenging to come together in the same way where there's... You could simply be in the room as equals.

Lauren Ruffin:

I think it can happen. It's just a lot more fragile. I was just thinking if the person who managed the largest business unit, our team sizes vary. I have the smallest team managing the smallest budget and if Pallavi or Shawn went out of their way to say, "Well, I mean I'll manage. This is clearly my team is more important." And that could happen again to a certain extent it does come down to who's on the team and what's their worldview and what's their ego like? But I mean even in a situation where salary isn't the thing, it could just be same salaries and that person wants to throw my program area or my department is more important because we do X amount of business or we oversee X functions. I mean if that's what you bring into work everyday, that you believe that your work is more important, that's going to come out in how you interact with your colleagues.

Pallavi Sharma:

I think again going back to the fact that all of us have worked different places doing other things. I think we've also held different kinds of responsibilities so we understand the importance. We've been on the side where we were told we were not the most important or we've been on the side where we believe we were the most important and realizing that everyone's important. And every department and every area is equally important and has a role to play. So that makes it less likely that we're going to have that challenge.

Tim Cynova:

There's also something I think related to the shared identity versus shared purpose focus because sometimes we might get into this is not necessarily anyone says, this is mine. One of us can redirect to say, "How does this help serve our members? How does this help further the mission of the organization?" And that's usually enough to say, "Right. This is what we're trying to pull together to do. This is what we need to do." And that's enough to sort of break from a shared identity, internal focus to an external focus. So when Kelly helped us with our assessment, she gave us a 30 page document or so that had about 17 themes in them. The model represents and encourages diversity, one.

Tim Cynova:

Two, the model reflects our values and mission. Three, the model is effective and efficient. Four, the model enables us to be bold. Five, the model generates collaboration. Six, responsibility is shared and that's good. Whatever number is next, responsibility to share it and that's difficult. That was actually, there's nothing in that to have a board section and a staff section. Seeking an answer from four people is frustrating and slow, but maybe the quality of the answers is better. This model creates more transparency in decision making, makes it easier to approach the leaders. This model is exhausting for the leaders. Every time that it's come up I've reiterated what was said at the time, no (beep).

Tim Cynova:

Every time I say it, I know I have to edit that word out. This model is better than a single CEO model. This model is potentially better if we address vulnerabilities. This model means we might mean we need to reimagine how leadership and board work together. Establish how the board will evaluate the leadership. So I think that's putting a pin in the board likely needs to do more work around what the evaluation process looks like in the future and need to understand why/how these individuals are so successful together. Anything on that list that I just read resonate more than others?

Lauren Ruffin:

I mean the bit about how your model needs to reflect your values. It's pretty early up, so I might be getting it wrong. But I spend a lot of time thinking about business models. And it strikes me that some of the conversations we've had this week even we're realizing we're being very candid about the fact that the model that we currently have, which is a nonprofit model that relies heavily on philanthropic subsidies to survive, is probably not the most innovative cutting edge model for the organization to be sustainable long-term and to really make change and meet our mission long-term. So I mean, and when I'm talking to people in classes I teach or folks come up like, "How do you do this thing?" I think we tend to follow the default assumption around what type of organizations like what organizations look like. So everything from the having one CEO to you go ahead and get your (c)(3) status.

Lauren Ruffin:

We just kind of follow this sleepwalk through this path of starting something and it feels like as a team we've been liberated because of the four of us and over time some of the freedom the board has given us to really dream a little bit about what could this container be? What could the organization do? What kind of model could we set up to make sure that we last for as long as we're supposed to last, which is likely not in perpetuity. And I wish that we'd done that sooner. I wish we'd been able to pull ourselves off the page enough. I mean, there's been so much change and so much work that we had to do to get this point, but I'm appreciative of this particular opportunity to do it now.

Shawn Anderson:

Along those lines, I feel like it's enabled us to be bold. I'm seeing that now and like you're saying Lauren, it feels like that has evolved. A lot of the list feels like it was reaching into the future. A bit of the what could be the aspirations for this model and I think some of that is starting to crystallize more now.

Pallavi Sharma:

Yeah. For all the positives I think, I mean the one thing, maybe it's because you emphasized them. But I'm thinking about a difficult aspect of it and for all the positives of sharing, the decision making and having someone to talk to, there's also an added burden now. In a traditional model, you would only be deeply burdened by the decisions around your own team and then you would take it up to a CEO who would either help make the decision or guide you to the decision.

Pallavi Sharma:

But now I think we take up a little bit of the burden of every one of our teams when we have... So not just our own, but a little bit, a little bit, a little bit of everyone else's burden. And that on the one hand that means that everyone's burden is a little lighter. But it also means everyone's burden is a little heavier. And speaking to the exhaustion factor, it definitely doesn't multiply by four but feels like it in terms of just we are now involved in everything. Whether actively or inactively or just mentally. We're aware of everything that's going on, we're involved in everything that's going on at a conversational level, at a decision level. I mean different levels of involvement, but that's a lot for four people to be carrying as opposed to one person to be carrying.

Shawn Anderson:

That's true.

Pallavi Sharma:

And even that one person, I'm not sure in a traditional CEO model they would be carrying all of those things because they I think that sense of helping share the burden doesn't come into play. I think that's a valid statement or word or whatever that they used is that it's difficult and it's tiring and it's exhausting and all of that fun stuff.

Shawn Anderson:

I wonder to what extent the exhaustion is about the model or is it about the organization and the things that we need to do. So if we were to let's say pick up this exact team and put us in charge of something that had a very clear straightforward business model, would there be the same amount of exhaustion?

Pallavi Sharma:

Actually, it's interesting. I think it would simply because of what you said. You said the things we have to do, it's we.

Shawn Anderson:

Yeah.

Pallavi Sharma:

Even if there's something on your team, Shawn, I'm a part of it.

Shawn Anderson:

Yes. Yeah.

Pallavi Sharma:

Even if it's just a little bit, it's in the list of things that I'm waking up at 2:30 thinking about. I mean we're all waking up and thinking about not just our stuff but everything because it's all in there in some way or the other. And I think that's the little bit of difference I see. So there is the support, there is the comfort of having someone, but there's also the added weight of knowing and being responsible for all of these things.

Tim Cynova:

As we close our conversation on shared leadership and reflect on the model, our team, what are your closing thoughts?

Pallavi Sharma:

I really am curious about how it would work if it were a different group of people in a different place. I mean one of the things we know from all of the research, Tim, you were trying to do is that there's not a lot of examples out there. And I really wish more people would try it. I mean you've mentioned this enough times, it's an experiment. Sure, We'll try it and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. That's what anything is about in an organization.

Pallavi Sharma:

You try products, you try services. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. So I'd be really curious to see if this is a model that can work in other places because there's just so many advantages to it and I think it really shakes things up, brings the organization to a different place and you can always go back to the traditional model. It's tried, tested, it exists anywhere. It's an easy thing to slip back into. But to go out there and try something that's different I think would be an incredible experience for any organization. I'm just curious. I'm going to be watching to see now if there are others doing it and what their experience is like. All those questions about, "Is it because it's the four of us or it's the individuals?" And, "Is it because we came together a certain way." Or, "Did it happen because we're in a shared leadership model?" I don't know the answers to the question because there's no other benchmark to go by.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Along the same lines, I mean we've talked to organizations who are thinking about it and then decide not to. The shared leadership question, I feel like once you ask yourself that, how can you not say yes? It's the sort of question that would keep me up at night forever. As a board, as a CEO, whatever role. Once you start asking yourself, "Can this be a little bit more egalitarian? Can I distribute responsibility in leadership and power?" We didn't talk about power at all.

Pallavi Sharma:

We didn't talk about power, yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

But can I share power from a Can I? Like that I, me, am I strong enough to share power with someone else and trust someone else and build this thing with someone else? I don't know how you start asking yourself that question and say no. That to me is the... Tim, you and I have talked to organizations who are curious or to listeners who are curious about it. That's a little shade at you all, you should do it.

Shawn Anderson:

That's a pretty challenging, no.

Lauren Ruffin:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tim Cynova:

There's a lot behind that that you're saying no to and exploring it and thinking you're going to just turn that down on, keep the status quo. Especially in this day and age when so much of what we're certainly focused on as organization with the field is focused on inclusion, equity, racism and oppression and to say, "No, we're going to still stick with that one person at the top and the hierarchical organization and it's not important enough for us to start looking at how we structure organizations differently." We don't have it in us to do that.

Shawn Anderson:

I agree with that wholeheartedly. I mean, this notion right now of executive power seems to be blaring in your face. I don't know of a better way to start transforming organizations and corporations then trying to embrace some form of shared leadership.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Gosh, that executive power and then abuse of power. It's a really hard to get to the point where you're abusing your power if it's shared.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. I think on that note, getting to work with each one of you together and individually is a huge privilege and incredibly meaningful. We won't work together forever unless we do.

Lauren Ruffin:

It's the podcast, Tim.

Tim Cynova:

It's the podcast.

Lauren Ruffin:

This is how we're going to work together forever.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, at least [inaudible 00:44:46]. It's an incredibly meaningful part of my professional career, getting to work with each one of you in this. And Pallavi and Shawn, thank you for joining us on the podcast. Lauren as always, always a pleasure to spend time with you and each one of you. Thanks.

Pallavi Sharma:

Same. Thank you.

Shawn Anderson:

Thanks Tim.

Tim Cynova:

If you've enjoyed the conversation or just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review in iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on iTunes to help others discover the podcast.

Shared Leadership, Part 1 (EP.07)

Last Updated

February 14, 2020

On this episode, part 1 of “CEO Not *Necessarily* Required.” We look at shared or distributed leadership models, what are they, what aren’t they, how they work, how you might evaluate different models, and might they be right for you and your organization.

Guests: Michael Courville, Kelly Kienzle, Holly Sidford & Russell Willis Taylor

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guests

MICHAEL COURVILLE is Founder and Principal of Open Mind, an independent consulting firm that combines research insights with direct social sector experience, to tackle problems that impact people and spiral out to organizations and into complex systems. Michael has deep experience with organizational capacity building, change management, applied social research, community development, and social sector strategy formation. His current research and client projects focus on workplace democratization and decision-making systems in nonprofits, understanding the role of arts and culture in community change, social policy under neoliberalism, and the political cost of inequality for civil society. Michael holds graduate degrees from the University of California-Berkeley in social welfare and comparative development policy. He is an associate member of the National Network of Consultants to Grantmakers and an affiliate of the RoadMap consulting network. He currently serves as adjunct faculty in the Department of Sociology at Sonoma State University. (The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation's case studies in Distributed Leadership can be found here.)

KELLY KIENZLE, founder of Open Circle Coaching, provides leadership coaching and professional development programs to individuals and teams to improve organizational performance in the private, public and nonprofit sectors. Kelly is a people development specialist with over 25 years of experience and is a certified coach of the International Coach Federation logging over 1,500 hours of coaching leaders. A description of her philosophy and approach to coaching can be found at www.opencirclecoaching.com.

HOLLY SIDFORD is an expert systems thinker–seeing connections and making more than the sum of the parts. Her endless curiosity, penetrating intelligence and commitment to excellence underpins all of Helicon’s work. Holly draws on her training as an historian and her experiences as a program developer and funder to inform Helicon’s efforts to elevate the role of artists, recognize the full diversity of creative expression and make the arts and culture a more central part of community life. Holly has a knack for identifying the most important issue facing the field at the time, and her work is often a thought-provoking catalyst for change. Reports such as Bright Spot Leadership in the Pacific Northwest (Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, 2012) and Fusing Art, Culture and Social Change (National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, 2011) have stimulated field-wide discussion. Earlier in her career, her work at the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund helped shift national discourse and practice in the ways cultural organizations engage audiences and communities. In 2000, Holly’s work prompted unprecedented research on artists, Investing in Creativity (Urban Institute, 2003), and the creation of Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC), a unique ten-year initiative to expand support and recognition for artists nationwide. Holly serves on the board of Sadie Nash Leadership Project, an award-winning leadership program for young female leaders in metropolitan New York, and Fractured Atlas, a national organization pioneering technology-based ways to empower artists, cultural organizations and other creative enterprises.

RUSSELL WILLIS TAYLOR served as interim Vice President for arts and leadership at The Banff Centre in Canada from 2016 to 2018. Prior to that, she was President and CEO of National Arts Strategies from January 2001 to December 2014, and she has extensive senior experience in all areas of strategic, financial and operational management. Educated in England and America, she served as director of development for the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art before returning to England in 1984 at the invitation of the English National Opera (ENO) to establish the Company's first fund-raising department. During this time, she also lectured extensively at graduate programs of arts and business management throughout Britain. From 1997 to 2001, she rejoined the ENO as executive director. Russell has held a wide range of managerial and Board posts in the commercial and nonprofit sectors including the advertising agency DMBB; head of corporate relations at Stoll Moss; director of The Arts Foundation; special advisor to the Heritage Board, Singapore; chief executive of Year of Opera and Music Theatre (1997); judge for Creative Britons and lecturer on business issues and arts administration. She received the Garrett Award for an outstanding contribution to the arts in Britain, the only American to be recognized in this way, and in 2013 was honored with the International Citation of Merit by the International Society for the Performing Arts, presented in recognition of her lifetime achievement and her distinguished service to the performing arts. She currently serves on the advisory boards of the British Council's Arts & Creative Economy Advisory Group, the Alyth Development Trust, the Salzburg Global Seminar, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. A podcast about, well, that. On this episode, CEO, not necessarily required. We look at shared or distributed leadership models. What they are, what they aren't, how they work, and might they be right for you in your organization? We're joined by Mike Courville, Kelly Kienzle, Holly Sidford, Russell Willis Taylor. And if after this episode you're still hungry for more about shared leadership, next week's episode we'll dive into part two of this adventure by chatting with the members of the Fractured Atlas Four Person Non-Hierarchical Leadership Team. We have a lot of ground to cover, so let's get started.

Tim Cynova:

Our first guest is Mike Courville, Founder and Principal of Open Mind. Mike and I connected after he published a series of case studies based on his research around how different organizations are distributing leadership. And since our first few conversations flew by, I'm excited to have him on the podcast to kick off this episode. Mike, welcome to the podcast.

Mike Courville:

Hi, Tim. Great to be here. I appreciate being invited and looking forward to talking with you today.

Tim Cynova:

We had a conversation a couple of months ago, it ran long, it was rich with a lot of information, around shared leadership, around just workplace in general. I'm really excited that we can capture some of this for posterity on recording, because you've done a lot of work around shared or distributed leadership models through your work at Open Mind Consulting. You've been engaged in research around this with various different organizations. What do you call it, shared leadership, distributed leadership, and whatever you call it, what is that thing?

Mike Courville:

It's really interesting. When I really started to get involved and thinking about this more deeply, I recognized quite quickly after talking to a lot of organizational leaders in the nonprofit sector, that people describe shared leadership and distributed leadership often in similar ways. They'll use both words and they use other forms of leadership to describe what they do, collaborative leadership or they might sometimes describe it as relational leadership. And I think what I was recognizing is that taking together, what we're talking about here is when there's more than one person who's essentially making decisions and ultimately driving something forward. It's really about a more participatory approach.

Mike Courville:

So I think shared leadership is lik a concerted action between many people or groups of people within organizations to get something done. And distributed leadership is a really deliberate, intentional effort to include people in decision making from many different levels within organizations. That's kind of how I think about it. One is going down vertically and across horizontally. The other is more just saying, how do we bring as many people into this process as possible?

Tim Cynova:

We first met when you were presenting at the Grantmakers in the Arts Conference in October. You were a part of a panel about the work that you had been doing with the Hewlett Foundation and some of the organizations that have various different models around distributed or shared leadership. Can you talk about that work? Was this your first foray into it or do you have a prior background as a shared leadership aficionado?

Mike Courville:

My interest in this stems from both having worked within large nonprofit organizations that were truly trying to figure out, how do you bring in new perspectives, new ideas, new voices into complex decisions? And I myself had worked as a co-director, co-executive director for a while for a nonprofit or research institution. And myself and my co-leader really sort of went back and forth about what does that look like? How do you do that in a way that's truly shared? And then I've worked in larger organizations where I saw leadership teams trying to figure out, how do we include people from the right level of the organization to inform decisions.

Mike Courville:

But I also started to observe and notice that a lot of folks were talking about being more inclusive and participatory, but sometimes their practices weren't quite participatory and inclusive. And so I got more driven to think about this as a research question and I started looking at the literature and talking to colleagues who are both scholars and researchers around leadership, nonprofit management, and other fields. And what came to recognize is that we haven't done a good enough job of really understanding and parsing out the practices or what I call the cultural attributes that actually sort of manifest when you actually distribute and share leadership.

Mike Courville:

And so the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation gave me an opportunity to think more deeply about what's happening in the arts sector, arts and culture sector. And so we took a close look at arts and cultural organizations in other nonprofits to see how do people actually do this. When I started to sort of point finger on with my colleagues from Informing Change with my research partners, was that we're really thinking about the way decisions get made. Like, it's a really practical location within organizations that see how power, participation and inclusion play out when big decisions are made that are high stakes decisions.

Mike Courville:

So decisions about how resources should be distributed, who gets paid what, what are we going to produce as an organization, or if it's a performing arts organization, what are we going to put on to our performance calendar for the year? Big decisions. And we really look closely at that. The research kind of helps bring into sharper focus some of the attributes, I think, practices and organizational forms that manifest as a result of being more distributed in your leadership practice.

Tim Cynova:

What were some of the forms like? A lot of your research is available? I've watched video series that you put together, I've read some of the research. What were the different types of organizations that you studied that are part of this cohort?

Mike Courville:

Yeah. So we did a combination of things. We collected data that was more of a narrative, kind of told a story about different organizations who have adopted distributed practices. And we often say that they're adopted to different degrees. So in some instances, we have organizations who have boards of directors and you've kind of ... Maybe this is something going on for Fractured Atlas as well. Boards of directors who actually reflect or include individuals who may have actually been participating on staff or were as staff at one time. In an organization we saw called Orpheus, which is a conductorless chamber orchestra in New York City, we saw this example where they actually had members of the orchestra just sitting on the board as voting members. And then they would rotate and other members get to sit on the board.

Mike Courville:

So they're participating and thinking about big governance questions. And they're bringing perspective from the performers side, the practitioners side, and also the side of leadership and making decisions about the organization. So in that form, we're seeing how even at boards of director levels, you can have this sort of participatory opportunity for staff to be part of the leadership process in an organization to high level. We also saw organizations who distribute to different degrees, where what they built are really intentional teams to deal with day-to-day decisions that have to do with operations, have to do with strategic plans, that have to do with resources and expenditures.

Mike Courville:

So we would see smaller teams coming together, like at the Denver Center for Performing Arts, they run a sort of experimental program called Off-Center. And in this particular effort, you have a lot of new leaders who are coming together to think about new ways to engage audiences who didn't traditionally show up for performances that were taking place in the Denver Center. They were looking for younger audiences, and they were trying to figure, how do you engage them? So they started to make more decisions together and they kind of brought people in from marketing, people who were actually involved in the design and the decisions about the performances and about the artistic director. Everyone coming together and thinking through, what can we do to bring more people in to see our performances from a new demographic?

Mike Courville:

In that size of distributed leadership, you have small teams that membership often changes and adjust and adapt over time, depending on what they're trying to accomplish. But you have more people getting engaged in a decision. And those people actually take full responsibility for whether that's a success. Or if it didn't go as well, what did we learn from that? How do we change and do it differently next time? So you can have people involved with very formal leadership practices like at the board level or senior leadership teams, but you can also see groups coming together to make decisions about programs or about performances, or about the production of something really specific for an organization.

Tim Cynova:

When Fractured Atlas started our exploration or journey into shared non-hierarchical leadership, I was struck by the number of cultural organizations I spoke with who thought this is really novel thing. And then I pointed out well, you have an artistic director and an executive director, that's shared leadership at the highest level at the organization. And there's a lot of aha moments, were like, all right.

Mike Courville:

Yeah. I'll say something about that. I think that there's definitely moments where people kind of lead alongside each other and we looked at that in organizations. We may have like, what's called the co-leadership model. And while I do think that's opening up for shared leadership, for me, and for what I'm thinking about when we look at organizations, it's too much agree are more people participating in decisions? So if those two individuals are co-leading, how are they practicing their leadership in ways that makes room for others to participate? So this can include, what we noticed was a lot of directors who are more distributed, they see themselves as sort of a central communicator within the organization.

Mike Courville:

They're really helping to push out information, connect people across departments or across service providing areas of an organization. Like, how do you connect people? They don't see themselves as having all the authority vested them can make each and every decision. So I think co-directorship is a great example of sharing. And then what I'm interested in is, how does that then sort of manifest further in the organization in practices across departments and teams elsewhere where others get involved in decision making? And that was something we looked kind of closely at because, well, I think shared leadership can be expressed as just two leaders working alongside each other as a co-leadership, that may not be sufficient for truly building the kind of inclusive participatory workplaces we see.

Mike Courville:

I think they're more democratic and more collaborative when there are more voices and more people making the decisions together. And not everyone's going to be a decision maker. But we did see a lot of organizations like On The Move, which is based in Napa, which is not necessarily an organization that traditionally operates with just sort of programs and services. They really are a leadership pipeline organization that tries to match leaders to new projects and community that can make kind of progressive social change. And in doing that, they built out this cadre of powerful leaders who then can participate in senior leadership decision making. They can participate in leadership decisions for programs. They become more engaged in leadership decision making.

Mike Courville:

And that was really interesting to see. Because it's not just the executive director and a team of senior directors, you see people from within other programs stepping in to make big decisions with them and collaborate with them on big decisions. So I think that the multiplicity of voices and the opportunities for people to participate, really strikes me as a more significant degree of distributed or shared leadership. And I do think it's good to acknowledge that co-leadership can be right size for some organizations, but there are further degrees you could take that to be more distributed.

Tim Cynova:

Your concept of co-leadership, your categorization as co-leadership might actually hit at some of the problems that actually exist in organizations that have two different leaders who are operating effectively in silos, they're co leading, but they're certainly not shared leadership model. And that just because you have that, there are other things that actually need to be present in order for distributed or shared leadership models to be successful.

Mike Courville:

Yeah, it's a great point. I think that a lot of times people make an effort to bring new leaders or more leaders into positions of authority. And so they might have a co-leadership model where someone's a senior director of operations. Someone's a senior director of finance, someone's a senior director of program or in modern arts organizations, an artistic director, an executive director and they're like side by side or alongside each other. But they may still be operating within silos and be thinking these are my respective areas of responsibility. And so it sounds like you've built a team in title.

Mike Courville:

But in practice, what we often would observe in organizations that did that was that there wasn't really any sort of collaborative, deliberative kind of collective sense making around big decisions. People weren't necessarily participating or feel like they had a stake in driving or determining the outcome. There's a lot of opinion seeking that goes on in organizations like that too. Where they'll say, well, let's listen to each and every director and see what they think. And then the executive director still makes the final decision or in the case of an arts organization. We might solicit input from different people on staff but the artistic director makes the final decision.

Mike Courville:

That kind of sounds like it's making an effort to be more participatory. But when you step back and you think about who still holds power and who actually operates and practices leadership, as in the intentional sort of setting of direction of the work, I think that's what starts to become interesting to think about. In organizations that we looked at where they were making big decisions, where they took a lot of people's input, they oftentimes had to organize that in some manner, and then realize they come with like ... Almost a matrix where they would say, let's have like 25 people get together, have a conversation about, what might be produced this year? What might go on to our performance calendar?

Mike Courville:

We want to be more inclusive and we want to have more stories and shows about communities of color and people have been excluded historically in our community, LGBTQ folks. And the organization that did this kind of brought all that information together in sort of a master matrix and then working together with the artistic director, with managing director of marketing, with all the staff sorted through that and said, what decisions would be the ones that most people are invested in? It's kind of a more democratic process. So it's not just opinion seeking. It's actually kind of like ... I mean, it's really the old school crowdsourcing. It's like how do we get as many people to make a contribution and then together, figure out which of these is the best choice for us?

Mike Courville:

One thing I'll say about this is that also distributed and shared leadership, it takes more time to do this well, and that's because the more democratic you're, the more time it takes to include more people. But there's a sense of authenticity and genuineness that a lot of the organizations describe. That by being able to participate more intentionally in decisions, staff from many different levels in the organization would convey a sense of feeling connected and feeling like what they were providing to the organization was meaningful. So when we're thinking about building organizations that are both equitable and feel more democratic, there's something about distributed leadership when it's practiced right that seems to convey to staff and to organizational participants that they matter and that their voice matters and what they have to say is important.

Mike Courville:

Even if their particular opinion or issue doesn't get selected in the end, they felt like they got a chance to contribute. And a lot of executive directors in our study would tell me things some [inaudible 00:14:07] of, I spent a lot of time cleaning up messes because I didn't include enough people. I didn't actually collaborate and distribute the leadership process. It made me have to go back and clean up a lot of messes that I could have avoided making if I had been more intentional about it. And I think that's an interesting insight from sort of an executive director who sees the value of being more distributed as a way of making smarter, better decisions, and then having people feel enlisted to support them and engaged in the process of implementing them.

Tim Cynova:

It also creates transparency that helps people make better decisions in their own right. They have context, more context for how they're making decisions, and seldom are people making just bad decisions to make bad decisions. Despite someone, it's usually they're making the best decisions that they can based on what they know of the context in which they're operating.

Mike Courville:

Yeah. And I think we're trying to build out cultures in organizations that have a more equitable set of practices at their center. So thinking about equity and inclusion which becomes something of a real concern for many organizations today, and also in our society thinking about how to bring in more voices. And particularly, when we're talking about the work around racial equity, what we also have come to think about and sort of wondering about and wanting to do more research around this is that, are there conditions that distributed leadership creates that actually help accelerate organization's efforts to become more racially equitable, to become more inclusive, and to become more participatory?

Mike Courville:

Because what we found in the organizations we study is that they're creating spaces for staff to feel like they can contribute in a genuine way. And they're helping executive leaders and traditional senior leaders with positional authority, we would say reconfigure their relationship to others, they start to lead more from the middle. This was something we found was a pretty powerful practice. Meaning, it's not like one individual has all the answers and makes all the decisions and this sort of command and control from the top.

Mike Courville:

They really find themselves centered in the middle and they're having people get together and gather around them and gather with them to make smart decisions around oftentimes complex questions or tough calls, not always simple of yes or no kind of things. I think by pursuing distributed leadership, an organization may be helping itself create the conditions that will help build a more equitable organization with regards to inclusivity, but also in regards to race and other forms of identity and other forms of inclusion.

Tim Cynova:

What are some criteria that organizations need to have in place or immediately start to address in order for a shared or distributed leadership model to be successful?

Mike Courville:

From all the organizations we've looked at, they all sort of picked up and adopted distributed leadership at different points in their history. So some built it in at the beginning. It's kind of in their DNA. And others have tried to figure this out after having been long standing command and control kind of organizations. Shifting gears. I think some of the steps that organizations can take to get started is first number one, is think about the values that drive your decision making in the organization. Have you taken a look at where you share values as leaders in organizational stuff and where you might diverge? Do you have a value around equity? Do you look at who's missing from decision making opportunities? Do you look at who's present and who's missing?

Mike Courville:

Because if you start to build a sensitivity towards what equity looks like in practice, it starts to open up the possibility that you can change the way you actually practice decision making so it's more equitable. But first, you have to understand the value of equity, and building that in to organizational practice seems to help organizations get closer to adopting more distributed styles of leadership. The other is sort of your thinking through your board and your senior staff have to really take some time to build trust. And we found this to be really important as well. And trust building means listening to other people, hearing what they have to say, and not necessarily passing judgment but really listening. And then being able to respond in a way that's sort of thoughtful and reflective. And this is another set of practices we find often coexist in or distributed organizations.

Mike Courville:

Reflective practice on the part of leaders themselves, building a sense of trust with the other people you're going to make decisions with, and a recognition of the value of equity. And I think if you start working towards those three values, attributes and practices, you're starting to open up the pathway forward. And then you have to come up with some really explicit rules of engagement. I think this is important to lift up and elevate. Because other people have talked about forms of kind of distributed leadership that involves practices that don't actually allow others to step in and participate, because they don't know what the rules are. How do we do this?

Mike Courville:

So you kind of have to be clear with each other about when you're inviting people in to make decisions, what are the expectations about that? What is the amount of preparation required? And what's the time that's going to be necessary to do that? Another thing I'm noticing organizations have done, some of the realizations in our study did this, was thinking about the equity that comes with the pay to do the leadership work. So how do you actually allocate pay or salary so that people who are spending more time leading and making complex high stakes decisions feel like they're being compensated adequately. So that there's not going to be this sort of off-kilter or tilt of people still getting elevated salaries, because they're supposed to be positionally making all the decisions when you're now asking for decisions to be made across the organization. So you're going to have to take a look at that.

Mike Courville:

It's not to say you have to bring everyone's salary in line with each other. It's thinking about how you do that in a way that's equitable. And so I think all of those things may be helpful for organizations who are starting to think about this. But I will say one more thing, Tim. Something I've observed, and this isn't something we've studied deeply, but it's been sort of emerging from the findings. Organizations who've done this well have already accepted and embraced the importance of managing and being good managers. And there seems to be a relationship there. Meaning, thinking about time, thinking about how you give supervision and feedback, being reflective, being thoughtful, being intentional.

Mike Courville:

All of those things seem to carry well and carry forward. Because when you distribute leadership, you're going to have to pull on all those practices and really rely upon them in a more diffuse way. And so I think it's good to think about it. Is your organization already doing some things now that make you stronger organizationally as far as management, because then you can start to open that up and bring more people in and do it in a way that seems fair and inclusive.

Tim Cynova:

That's a good point. Yeah. If your organization doesn't already have those things, then it's going to be very obvious when you start to mess around with it that those will be problem points. It reminds me the point I read when I was doing some research in our own exploration around shared leadership. If you looked at sort of a tier, the leadership team tier, researched showed that the tier right below the leadership team often suffered maybe the most because it didn't have the same relationship that the leadership team had. It didn't often have the same trust and psychological safety. And so you saw this breakdown immediately below as they're trying to struggle with it, but hadn't yet done their homework.

Mike Courville:

Yeah. I think that's really important. I agree. And I think with almost all the organizations, there was some reference to the importance of trust building, even if it's a group of people who see each other regularly is maintaining that trust and understanding and listening. I can think of a couple examples to make this really accessible to the listeners. There's a group Terrain and Spokane, Washington. It was founded as a very community-based, community connected organization that would incubate arts and economic development in the community.

Mike Courville:

As they started to formalize and grow the organization, they got a little anxious that they might lose the collaborative ethos of the organization and the participatory ethos. But they also recognized there have to be some ways of helping those who come in who are new to the organization, know the rules and know how to participate, and know how much time it's going to take to do that well. This included their board having to understand that as well as the staff.

Mike Courville:

So the reason I'm lifting up Terrain as an example of kind of what you're alluding to, is that this was an organization that really had to figure out how to take the time to build relationships and ensure that the trust continues to flow as new staff come in, as they grow in size and they bring in new individuals to participate in decision making. Because they're kind of growing as they're simultaneously trying to continue to foster distributed leadership. So it's trust building is happening constantly as people come in. And you can't minimize the importance of that, whether it's someone coming in to do operations for your organization or finance or whether they're going to actually be a program director. How do you fold them in?

Mike Courville:

And then another organization that's been doing this for such a long time, which was Orpheus, they've been doing what they would describe as a form of shared distributed leadership since 1972. They recognized that they had to as they grew and developed and matured, everyone has to come to performances and rehearsals with some level of self-leadership and individual maturity to know how to manage time. So that you respectfully listen to each other, give contributions and ideas and make decisions in a way that's also timely. And I think that includes trusting that just because you didn't get to speak and say something about this particular issue or decision, you trust that others who weighed in have said something important and of value that you can kind of trust to follow that lead of others for the time being.

Mike Courville:

So it's not that everyone has to speak. But if you're building trust even within a large group, like in this case, an orchestra working together, they trust each other enough to say that, I don't always have to be the one to make a comment. Every time you bring new members in, they talk about how do we bring new members in and fold them into those practices that they feel like they're part of that. And they can share in that. So it is beyond just the leadership team. And if you are bringing people together, and you want to see them do more work, to distribute leadership within their teams or departments, or more broadly, they do need the time to build trust.

Mike Courville:

That can be simply a matter of making time on the front end of meetings to have conversations about what's been happening for you outside of just work, what else is happening, and how do you share and disclose a little bit about who you are and the way that people become to appreciate you. But it's also about realizing that you may have to take a little more time to connect with people around the table before you can actually take on a big project together. Because it might stall out if you don't build the trust.

Mike Courville:

There's a group called Thousand Currents that we studied. They're actually a grant making institution that works mostly in the global south. They talked a lot about moving at the speed of culture and the speed of trust. It's not about getting it done within a 30-day timeline. It's about building that arc of relationship that will sustain the work long-term. And then that makes them go faster and I think makes them smarter about the work they do in the future. And this would include executive assistants, admin assistants, all the way up to policy people within that organization, all of them throwing out how to work together with a way of trusting each other.

Tim Cynova:

A new different way of working that might seem ... It's an intentional new way of working, rather than just the way it's been done. You think it's good and you think it's fast, but then it's not.

Mike Courville:

You said intentional, I tend to call these things intentional actions. What you find within organizations that distribute to some degree is that more often than not, there's a cadre of leaders because we are building more leader-full organizations through this work, who are really making intentional steps to both listen, to be reflective, to solicit input, to inform individuals who historically maybe weren't informed about big decisions and bring them in.

Mike Courville:

So it's a really intentional effort. And it happens periodically and then it keeps happening over time. And that's something that we also noticed, particularly executive directors who've recognized that they got to change their way of operating from being just like the final decision maker at the top. It's sort of like, how do you intentionally keep engaging actions that let other people lead, that give people enough information to make smart choices and be part of the process?

Tim Cynova:

I want to come back to founders as it relates to this question, because the last time we spoke, I know you get some questions about this and I'm curious where you got with this. I guess there's that. And also, some of the questions I frequently I'm asked relate to those who are not at senior levels in the organization who ask, can we still do this? Or how would we approach it? It's usually, what if leadership or what if our board doesn't go for this? What do you say to organizations? What's your advice?

Mike Courville:

Let me take the first question from founders. I didn't want to come at this work with an assumption that if someone was a founder, they couldn't necessarily be distributed in their style and practice are shared in their orientation. We were open to that and I've been open to that. What has been hard is that a lot of founders came into the role they're in now during an era of a certain kind of organizational psychology of sort of the command control. And today, some people talk about this as sort of everything ... There's scarcity and resources are limited. And just like, we got to always keep our hands on the wheel, we can't share it with anybody else for fear that will lose out. That's a reality, sort of political economy of this that we have to keep in mind.

Mike Courville:

But I have seen some founders who have intellectually an orientation to wanting to share and wanting to build new leadership. And what I've seen, though, is that if those leaders don't feel like they necessarily have the time to be able to change the kind of practices that they would need to deploy in the organization to shift, if they will be willing to step either aside or let someone else step in. It's kind of thinking about stepping up and stepping back. Like, how do you move around the space. And I've seen organizations where founders have stepped back and said, it is time for someone else to lead in this organization.

Mike Courville:

And because I understand the importance of distributed, shared leadership, but maybe I haven't quite been able to practice it like I hoped, how could I bring in a new leader or a new set of leaders who are already oriented to that? Or are already practicing that to some degree. Who bring that reflective posture, who have demonstrated an ability to be very collaborative, and to kind of make sense of other people we call it collective sense making. Bringing in leaders who could succeed them, who can bring that forward more rapidly, would be one way founders, I think, can help this flourish.

Mike Courville:

So that's to say, there are some founders who have led organizations in a distributed manner. But I do think sometimes it's harder because historically, many organizations were being pushed to move away from that and to kind of centralize authority and so sometimes that's hard to see. And I think to your other question, which is when people work with an organization at different levels. We took lot of time thinking about positional authority because we thought it was important to make a distinction between that and leadership. So positional authority is sort of that tendency to confer upon an individual a set of responsibilities, a certain kind of recognition, whether it's to pay or titles, almost status.

Mike Courville:

Within organization, there's always going to be different levels of positional authority that are formal. But leadership can happen at any level. And with distributed and shared leadership, we're trying to ask people to lead in many ways and in many different circumstances. And so your position of authority doesn't always equate with your chance to lead, to help make a decision or to move some things forward. And I think that I would say to folks who are coming in, maybe they feel like they're at a mid-level organization or they're entry level, but they'd like to see more distributed leadership or more shared, would be to start a conversation with their immediate supervisor or with those who work with them on a regular basis. And just maybe explore how they actually make time within their group or with their supervisor to think about how they might be able to include more people in an opportunity. Just like one small opportunity to get started.

Mike Courville:

Like, how could you practice bringing in more people to a process of decision or making opportunity for more people to have their voice heard in a decision that's coming up? And the other would be to kind of use like, there's a quiz that I created working with William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Performing Arts Program, we created a quiz to help organizations start that conversation about whether or not they're even oriented towards distributed leadership, and how that happens across generations. And that's available on their website. And that might be something you could use, a simple quiz. And then you could have a conversation and discussion about it very informally, to kind of get the ball rolling and open up a conversation about the language of distributed leadership.

Mike Courville:

Which is something else we've learned from doing this study, that a lot of organizations don't always know how to describe what it is they want to do, and they're not always crystal clear what it means. So that may be a first step. I will say that it's hard for organizations to practice distributed leadership to a deep degree. So I'm using degrees here to distinguish between there can be a modicum level of sharing leadership. That's like you had talked about co-leadership model. Vary a certain amount. But then to get to a deeper degree like what we saw with Orpheus, where like literally everyone, there's no conductor. They're all making the music and deciding things together. And then people from the orchestra are actually sitting on the board. That deeper degree of distributed leadership does require board orientation and awareness of why it matters to have the process of inclusion, and why it matters to have that kind of collaborative effort within staff and among staff.

Mike Courville:

The other organization we talked about, which was Terrain, which is a small organization, their board took a little while to figure out why would it be important to maintain the distributed practices that we can have a board with as we grow. Eventually, the board recognized the value of that and how it also made them better at responding to staff, and how it allows them to be more inclusive with what the community continually wants to see happen within the organization. So it was a benefit to the board, I think, recognizing that if we support this, then we also become more responsive to our community. And so I think it can be more valuable when every level is understanding it to some degree. But not every organization has a board that fully embraces and understands distributed leadership in practice. But the staff may have figured it out to a certain degree and it's working. But at times, you recognize where it could be more robust if everybody was kind of on the same page around that.

Tim Cynova:

Well, there seems to be things that any organization can take from this. Think about the different types of decisions that you make, command, consult, consensus and vote. And just being direct, as a leader or being open as a leader say, this is the type of decision I'm coming to you with. So everyone understands that this is what they're being asked. And this is how much their feedback or input or ... Actually, feedback and input. Those are two different things. So you could have more of a hierarchical traditional organization that still benefits from this in being intentional and being clear about what are we asking what are we doing. Even if you're not sharing leadership, being a leader-full organization, there are still waiting For you to tweak and hone even the most traditional hierarchical organizational structure.

Mike Courville:

Yeah. I think that there are always opportunities within any organization to begin to try on some of these practices to a degree or to the right size for where you are. I've had executive directors work with me from a consulting vantage point will say, I want to shift this organization to be a distributed leadership organization. What do we need to do? It's as if overnight, we're going to flip a switch and we're going to shift what is essentially a set of cultural practices and a set of intentional actions that are not yet in the repertoire of how to do things. And so I think the smaller incremental steps you can take can be really important and impactful for helping people understand what it might feel like if they tried to do it differently.

Mike Courville:

I think what was really compelling for me and for my colleagues when we looked at this was that, when a decision was collaborative, and it was truly collaborative, meaning multiple voices came together, there was some compromise, you synthesize the input into one decision. We kind of called it collective sense making. It's not the same thing as saying that it's a consensus. I think that was something we also walked away with. I want to throw this out to the listener, because I think it will be interesting what your other guests will talk about this at all. But there's this notion that consensus means we're all 100% in agreement on every point in every way. And getting there is not an always a clear path for folks. And they spent a lot of time trying to build towards that unless ... If they can't get there, they think that they haven't been collaborative. I'm not sure about that.

Mike Courville:

I'm more of the opinion that collective sense making is learning, and this is the democratic moment in this. This is what helps us as a society be better as a democracy. How do we refine what we already think is the right answer or the best path forward and reconcile that with each other's perspectives and input? Because I think when organizations have done this well, what we see as they come to rest on an agreement that's shared, meaning, it's not exactly the one thing that one person said, or it's not just the one thing we all exactly agreed on every point. But we come to embrace it that it's inclusive of all of our good thinking. And we've actually now test it out. And if it goes really well, we take shared responsibility for that. And if it doesn't work out, we take responsibility for that.

Mike Courville:

So there's a learning to it. Its to say, it may not be that we were all 100% lined up on every point here, but we came to agree and rest in this space so we could take action. And now we're going to learn from it, and we may have an incredible success from it, but we're in it together. So this is why I think you're building trust as well. Every time you do this, you build deeper trust. I think we saw several organizations demonstrate this process. I think it's an important part and can't be overlooked. I wanted to lift it up because we get a lot of questions like, does this mean we have to have consensus? When I always say, I don't think so, some people get really anxious. Like, wait, what? Isn't that one of the most important parts of building something that's shared?

Mike Courville:

Well, it also means having to learn how to build some compromise into your conversation, but not in a way that excludes or historically negates individuals who haven't been heard. That's the other thing. By bringing more voices in, really finding collective sense making solutions, you are actually reconciling with groups or individuals who may feel like they haven't been heard or haven't had their perspective understood. And that was something else we saw as people actually felt heard. That's important.

Tim Cynova:

We borrowed from Patrick Lencioni, the Disagree and Commit, where we have healthy debate. And because we built trust, because we have psychological safety, we're willing to really bring it to have those hard conversations. But at the end of the day, recognizing that the decision that we ended up with is probably much better than had one of us done it individually. And sometimes we just have to disagree and commit on whatever it might be. But you're right, that we put our voice into the pool and move forward with whatever's best for the organization.

Mike Courville:

And in a way, that's sort of also demonstrating, I think, in distributed leadership, it seems like organizations become more ... This was a concept that became more popular for the last decade of being adaptable. Some of that has to do with responding to external factors, but it also to do with internal factors. You can adapt and adjust how you do things so that others can participate, who historically may not have been able to participate. This includes people within different positions of authority, but I'm also talking around lines of race, gender, sexual orientation, other forms of identity.

Mike Courville:

That if you're going to practice including more voices, including more people, and for thinking through the best decision, with all that informed opportunity you have among yourselves, you are building trust, and you're going to possibly shift and adapt a little bit to do things a little differently. It's when you start carrying it out. And that seems to be good for organizations. Organizations have to have a way of changing and adjusting. I think in distributed leadership, what you are seeing and observing is organizations are trying to figure out, we need to have some space to adapt and make some change. How can that look differently if we bring more people into that process? So the changes and the adaptations are more beneficial to more people and make more sense to more people, not just to a few. I think that's pretty powerful.

Tim Cynova:

I'm curious. In your exploration of distributed leadership, leader-full organizations, what are the big questions that you're still wrestling with that you still want answers around? What's next in your research lineup to dig into?

Mike Courville:

I think that we have a lot of questions that I still do about the timing at which people adopt distributed leadership practices. So the timing within the sequence of their own sort of organizational trajectory, like when did this organization decide that this makes good sense? And individual leaders like, when do they arrive at the awareness or the recognition like, I want to try to do this differently. I think that timing question both for organizations and for individuals is really important to understand, because it could ultimately help advise and guide others in the future on when and how to pick this up and really put it into practice more deeply. And that may shed some light on the degrees of practice, like why some organizations go really deep and do a very deep dive on distributed leadership. Why others only find they're able to do a small amount of this on a certain level. So we're interested in that.

Mike Courville:

The other was, and I think I lifted this up earlier, but I'll come back to it is, as we've seen organizations who distribute leadership become more aware of equity and questions of who's included, who's been excluded, and how do we bring more voices in, we think there's something there between that recognition and understanding of equity. It's fertile ground to kind of have deeper discussions and further conversation about racial equity, gender equity, other types of equity that we want to be able to address and think about within organizations and in practice. And so I think we're really interested in what are the relationships and connections. And right now it's kind of, we're hypothesizing a little about this, kind of, theoretically, it makes sense, but we'd like to see what it really means concretely with some data. So we're really wanting to dive in on that more deeply.

Mike Courville:

What is the promise that this might hold for creating more inclusive organizations where people truly belong. And that's something that I think is really important to a lot of us right now in the field, and it's something that's important to me and to others I work with. We see within the practice of distributed leadership, some potential conditions that maybe if they're kind of cultivated in foster in the right way, they will really deepen our practices around racial equity and other forms of equity and inclusion.

Tim Cynova:

What are your closing thoughts on the topic on distributed leadership? Maybe it's something we haven't covered yet.

Mike Courville:

I think we're at a really important juncture in the nonprofit sector and in the world of work more generally. We are seeing a need for smart, thoughtful, complex problem solving in nonprofit sector and workplaces more generally today. We live in a very complex world, things move quite rapidly. And we have a lot of blind spots as human beings. It is near impossible for a small number of people to really see something that complex with the potential for that many blind spots well. I think distributed leadership is up a practice that has been identified in the past as useful and meaningful because it's participatory and collaborative.

Mike Courville:

But now I think in a way, it's actually probably necessary for the sector to adapt and to stay responsive, whether it's to communities who you're providing services to, or whether it's to a complex world where you're trying to deliver and produce something that's very eclectic or requires a lot of moving parts to get it done. I think we're seeing that need now. And so I think distributed leadership can be promising in that regard. But I also really think that we're at a point where more people are coming to work with an expectation that they have something to say that, they have significant value and they have a higher level of education. This is true nationally right now. More people are finishing their bachelor's degree than in the past.

Mike Courville:

We also have a lot more diversity within our workplaces by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability and other forms of human difference. And we are at a point where we need to figure out how to bringing all of those experiences and those perspectives into that sort of decision making process, because we don't want to continue to miss those blind spots. So I think organizations are at a perfect location within history to now really leverage all of this leadership possibility, all this leadership potential, and we don't want to lose that. And if we lost that opportunity to bring more people in, we may be missing the opportunity to solve some complex issues and complex problems, both as organizations and as individuals.

Tim Cynova:

Terrific. Mike, thank you so much for making time today to be on the podcast.

Mike Courville:

Thank you so much for having me join you. It was really great. I appreciate it very much.

Tim Cynova:

Our next guest is Kelly Kienzle, Founder of Open Circle Consulting. I first had the pleasure of collaborating with Kelly about a year ago when we worked to create an assessment process for the Four Person Leadership model at Fractured Atlas. We've since gone on to work together on several other things, and I'm always excited to chat with her. Kelly, welcome to the podcast.

Kelly Kienzle:

Thank you. Thrilled to be here.

Tim Cynova:

So the first time the two of us met and had an opportunity to work together was when we created the structure and process to evaluate our own Fractured Atlas, four person shared leadership team. Before we dive into that, because there's a lot of stuff that came out of that, there's a lot of stuff you helped us learn about that. Let's just take a step back and ask, how do you define shared or distributed leadership.

Kelly Kienzle:

I would define it as when more than one person shoulders the responsibilities and authority of an organization. So by this definition, frankly, most organizations have some form of shared leadership. But the scope of their responsibilities and authority gets gradually larger as you go up the ladder of senior leadership until you get to the top where the CEO typically sits, and that is where the greatest port of responsibility and authority rests. What's unique about Fractured Atlas is that your shared leadership does not have that variance in scope of responsibilities and authority. But at the top, the four of you each sit there and have the exact same amount of authority and responsibility. That's how I would define it traditionally and how I see it for you guys.

Tim Cynova:

When you came into the project with us to figure out a system and a structure for assessing our shared leadership team, what were your initial thoughts? What were you maybe hoping to get from it, hoping to learn, maybe some things to real life examples of backups and research and maybe hunches about shared leadership?

Kelly Kienzle:

So what I was hoping to learn was whether this ideal that I talk about a lot with my clients and hundreds of articles have been written about was possible. And that ideal being a true shared leadership model where people in an organization have equal voice to help shape the future of that organization. So that's what I was ultimately hoping to learn from it. I was also curious just to get under the hood of Fractured Atlas and see how operations had been working since you'd been in it for a year or a little more at that point. And answer questions like, can non-experts in a particular area contribute meaningfully to a decision making process outside their area? For instance, you sit in the seat of operations, yet you have equal voice in IT decisions. Can you contribute meaningfully? Because part of that answer leads us to answering, is the single CEO model, in fact, a strong one? And the answer we found was resoundingly, yes. That was exciting to see.

Tim Cynova:

Before we get to what you found during the process through your interviews and research, what was the process like for you?

Kelly Kienzle:

It was fascinating to go through the process. It was a mental exercise for me in that the key question I was trying to answer was, how effective is this model? Not, how effective are these four individuals as leaders? And it's that latter question that I'd always been answering in all my previous work. Any performance review in the organization goes through that process, and they're trying to evaluate the performance of a person. Here, I was trying to evaluate the effectiveness of a model. So for me going through that process was trying to, sorry to say Tim, but kind of dehumanized you and the other three of you and instead ... Every time I would start to picture you as individuals, I would instead try to picture you as a four-headed piece of art and evaluate that. So that was what it like for me.

Tim Cynova:

Nice. I imagined the leadership team will now commission a four-headed piece of art or a piece of art that has four heads for our next assessment.

Kelly Kienzle:

That'd be excellent.

Tim Cynova:

Actually, we should have asked the board for that as a momento from this last assessment, having known that.

Kelly Kienzle:

Yes.

Tim Cynova:

Well, that's a challenge to separate those things. Because it is such a natural thing, we're evaluating a person, how well they did and then maybe we roll it all up together to see how well that group is doing. But not from sort of maybe reverse engineering to the model into the people. And then what are those traits and skills and the knowledge that's necessary to make that a success?

Kelly Kienzle:

Yeah. And then the challenge got even trickier when I started talking to people in the organization, board members and staff. And they started telling me how the success of the model was largely because of the personalities of the people. No.

Tim Cynova:

It’s not at all helpful here.

Kelly Kienzle:

Right. Yet, going into this as objectively as I can, I had to take in and absorb that data, that input from them, and understand how personalities affect the success of the model. That was an interesting intellectual exercise too.

Tim Cynova:

Well, you have a master's in positive organizational development from Case Western, where you focused on how to build resident leadership and achieve positive organizational change. You also are a graduate of Georgetown University's Leadership Coaching program where you studied adult development, communications, somatics, and behavioral science. So based on a lot of research and work, what do you feel like are the qualities and traits that need to be present in this type of model to be successful?

Kelly Kienzle:

It did come down to several factors and one of them is the nature and characteristics of the people in those positions. Interestingly, none of the feedback from this process said that there were any particular environmental factors or organizational characteristics that had to be present. Which reflects what you read in the research. The research says, shared leadership is the ideal. It's effective, it's efficient, it allows to have an expert in every decision. Yet, it's just so hard to sustain. So when organizations think about what needs to be present for this model to be effective, they do need to look at their people and which people have the characteristics that would work in this model.

Kelly Kienzle:

At the top of that list of characteristics that people should have for the model to be effective is trust. Trust of one another, trust in the organization, trust in their staff. But what was interesting was for that first type of trust, trusted one another. So in this case, trust across the four of you. What was interesting was that people, both the staff, the board, and I think the four of you weren't sure whether the trust that you felt for each other was the product of having worked together so closely for over a year, or it was the prerequisite that you had going into it. It was interesting, you guys couldn't even quite remember what your levels of trust were to for each other before you became a four person leadership team. You felt that it was strong and that it was good and the staff felt that also. But it was uncertain whether, again, it was something that existed beforehand, or something that resulted afterwards.

Tim Cynova:

It seems like the chicken and the egg of shared leadership models, where trust fits and how its developed, because it keeps coming up again and again. And really for any team, trust, psychological safety, these are traits that all high performing teams exhibit or all teams need in order to perhaps be "high performing". But yeah, it was this weird thing where we're like, I can't remember that time and maybe even what we did to create that trust, because we were all individuals when we started. It wasn't like we came in together. It wasn't like we founded this company. We all joined the company at different points and did different things, and just happened to all end up on this team together.

Tim Cynova:

I mean, still to this day, I'm not sure. And it's frustrating because you want to grow more in different shared leadership teams and this is a prerequisite, I think, for that. And so how do you recapture that thing or build that thing? And maybe even faster. Not everyone has the luxury of three half years together to get to this point. That's still an outstanding question for me about shared leadership.

Kelly Kienzle:

My theory on it is that it's both chicken and egg, right? You guys have now moved from being a piece of art to being a chicken and an egg, where the trust did exist, beforehand, and it grew deeper as you guys worked together. So what I would say to other organizations is, do the people that you are looking at for this leadership role, do they have the propensity for trust? Are they inclined to trust the others of this group? And if you have that propensity, then that starts the relationship off on a positive, hopeful note. And then the trust can deepen as the group works together, debates with each other, kicks ideas around, fails together, succeeds together, and then that deeper trust can grow.

Tim Cynova:

You mentioned a little while back that this kind of model is so hard to sustain. Why is that? Why do you feel that way?

Kelly Kienzle:

Yeah. Because it's exhausting. Right? I should turn this question back to you, Tim. Right? You're the one who lived this. But again in the interviews that I did with the staff and the board, no matter how close or far they were from the leadership team, they could see how exhausting it was. It's exhausting for some interesting reasons. One is that this model is exceedingly efficient. You guys can work at four times the pace, four times the scope, because you are a four person team, than a single CEO. And so your factory is a 24/7 factory that is just inherently exhausting. It's also tiring because every decision does go through debate and vetting across the four of you, which in the end, it's also a great thing like efficiency and broader scope. It's wonderful that ideas get vetted so well because they are rock solid when they come out at the end. But the process, again, as you know, is extremely tiring. It's kind of a bittersweet revelation that something so good does have a high price to it.

Tim Cynova:

When you first gave us the research that you had pulled from the assessment, it's like a 31 page document. And you sat down with us and our board chair, Russell Willis Taylor, and just walk through it. One of the slides was, the model is exhausting for leaders. And I'm going to totally have to bleep this, but a sound was like, no (beep), Kelly.

Kelly Kienzle:

I think it was important to bring that out because it is something that is so enticing. I think that other organizations see it. They're like, we can do four times as much work and we can be so much more effective and we can have an expert in every decision. Let's do it. I think it's good to put up a great big caution sign. Say yes, and watch out for this. And that frankly, that's the second horizon of this work with this model is answering the question, how do we make this sustainable? Because even with a marathoners pace, this is still not sustainable long-term. Right, Tim?

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. There's a flip side to this where ... I've been a CEO, before I've been an executive director, a sole executive director before. And to me, that's a really lonely place. No one else in the organizations where I worked had been in that role before, and understood what that was, and the weight that you hold. Especially, when money gets tight and you're trying to make payroll, and you don't have anyone else really inside the organization to go to. And while it is an exhausting model, there are three other people with you in that journey, who understand exactly what's going on, and that you can turn to. And for us, we have a weekly tactical meeting every Wednesday. And that hour is the most important hour of my week. That I look forward to because we wrestle with a really challenging things.

Tim Cynova:

We have really tough conversations. But it's the one time I'm in a room with people who totally get what is going on, and will challenge and make better the things that we're trying to do by going through that leadership team process. So it is an exhausting thing. But on the flip side, a lot of other executive positions are exhausting as well and you oftentimes don't have that backup. You have to look to mentors and executive coaches and other people to help bring some of those things. While, those are still really important things to have for any leader, it's not always that you have something like that inside of your organization.

Kelly Kienzle:

Yeah. It's true. One element that does exist, though, within every organization is the rest of the staff. And this is another discovery that came out through the research, which was by having this shared leadership model, you guys inspired the rest of the team to think more collaboratively. To consider how they can enact shared leadership at their level of the organization and with their teams and in their departments. And because it created that kind of culture shift, I think that's where the opportunity lies for the leadership team to offload some of its work. To again, live the mission of bringing equity to all by thinking and constantly pushing yourselves to identify what responsibilities and tasks you can share with the rest of the staff.

Tim Cynova:

One of the things that came up related to that is, we saw this in the research before we adopted the model. Is that rather than just one line of succession, it's X times how many leaders you have, because you need ... I mean, we need four lines of succession. Because the person or people who might replace me, are likely not the same people who will replace our chief technology officer. It's even more exhausting because you're looking for all those different things in the combination, while you're trying to take what exists on this leadership team as it spreads to the organization so that more people understand how it works and that they would be ready to slide into these roles. But it's even more exhausting because it's just not, that person will take over if the leader leaves. That's a really convoluted way of saying something. So I hope to God that I can edit that one slightly more concise.

Kelly Kienzle:

No. I think it touches on the point about how having the shared leadership model, yes, you do now have to have four succession lines instead of one. Yet, there are also a couple benefits of that. One that the staff pointed out, and I think the board did as well, is that it will be less traumatic when one of you eventually leaves as compared to a single CEO model. When that CEO leaves, that creates significant anxiety and stress within an organization. Here at Fractured Atlas, it wouldn't create about a quarter of that. I think another piece of it is that the responsibility of filling in the gap when one person leaves can be shared, again, by the other three, because all of you are so intimately involved in every decision. You do have, I believe, far more knowledge in IT now than you did 18 or 24 months ago.

Tim Cynova:

That could be a very dangerous thing, Kelly.

Kelly Kienzle:

It could be.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. When working well, the shared leadership model is much more resilient for that team, for the organization. Because Yeah, you're not reliant upon one person who holds a lot of information that may or may not be shared in various ways with the organization more broadly. Let's look more specifically at some of the themes. I shared these in a blog post about the assessment process that we put together. So for those who really want to dive into this a bit more, there's a blog post that has sort of four different stages or four different components of our assessment process, and then the 17 themes that came out of Kelly's interviews with staff. Why don't you take a moment to explain sort of how this actually worked? What did you do? How many people did you talk to? Where were they in the organization? And then how did you pull your themes together for us?

Kelly Kienzle:

Sure. So the way the process worked was, we interviewed every manager in the organization. I interviewed them. And that was six managers and then I interviewed all, I believe, eight board members, and ask them all the same series of questions with a few additional questions just for the board. I ensured that all of those interviews would be kept completely confidential so that people could speak freely. So the output of this process included no direct quotes, no attributed comments. So people felt safe to speak frankly and plainly.

Kelly Kienzle:

After I conducted all of the interviews, I went back through my notes and pulled out the common themes. I defined a common theme as the same idea or sentiment shared by at least three people. And I put just those common themes into the summary report, which I then shared directly with the four of you plus the board. The reason I do those common themes is so that you would know when you got the summary report, everything in there was real and substantive. There were no one off comments. There was nobody's bad afternoon when they were feeling grumpy. It was something that had been reiterated by others. So that was the process for it.

Tim Cynova:

Was there anything that came up that didn't fit the three time theme that you're like, that seems pretty significant, but only one person said that.

Kelly Kienzle:

No. I mean, in my mind, then it's not significant. [crosstalk 01:01:17].

Tim Cynova:

This is the way it works. Three people say, actually ...

Kelly Kienzle:

I feel like I'm dissing on that one person. So just to clarify, so it's very real for that one person, then that's something that needs focused individual attention. It's not something that is relevant to the organization as a whole. And again, we were evaluating the efficacy of the model in the organization. So yeah, a one off comment, just by nature is not relevant in the context of a whole organization.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. I think that's a useful clarification too. It is a real thing for that person. But it might not be maybe real within the organization or-

Kelly Kienzle:

I heard someone refer to it once, slightly harsher terms than I would use, but as tyranny of the minority when you let one person shape the overall course of a much larger entity. No tyranny of the minority here.

Tim Cynova:

The other thing we had talked about going into it, because it was looking back, primarily looking back at a year in sort of change was how do we adapt for the recency bias? Because we all have it. It's like you get asked something and you remember immediately what happened or within the past month or so, and you forget that there are 12 other months that we're talking about. And because things at Fractured Atlas, specifically, in this instance, move so quickly and change, we often forget that, yeah, that happened in the same 12-month period. And so part of the process that you engaged in was that you were having the conversations and you would sort of help people adapt for that recency bias as they were talking, so that it wasn't just the immediacy of what they remember.

Kelly Kienzle:

Exactly, yes. So if they would give me an example from last week, all right, I would ask them, so how prevalent is that trend? How often do you see that? Would you consider that a minor or major theme? And get them to give me a little more context for the size of that issue. Because you're right, we do have that recency bias, and it's a natural way for our minds to go. But I would try to draw them out and get up on the balcony and see the broader picture of how the model had been working over the last 12 months.

Tim Cynova:

Well, there's also the negativity bias that you also just highlight. That as humans, this is something that we have. And so the questions that you were asking, were sort of reframing or giving the benefit of the doubt or whatever it might be. So what's the learning here? Because a lot of 360s, some of the reasons people don't like 360s is because people confidentially just offload all the stuff that's wrong, and then it's up to the person who's co-leading to make sense of it. And a 360 done wrong is far more harmful than a 360 well.

Kelly Kienzle:

That's absolutely true. So I use two things to combat that. One, I would remind them that we're not talking about the individual performance of the four of you. We're talking about the model. So to separate out behaviors of people from operation of the model, and it's the latter that we were focusing on. The second thing I did was to ask, instead of giving me feedback, give me feed forward, which is a concept that Marshall Goldsmith put forward a couple of decades ago now. About how it is far more effective for the recipient of input or feedback to receive that as feedforward, which means it's something that is phrased in the positive and phrased in the future tense. So it describes what they can do going forward. What is the positive behavior that the team would like to see from that person in the future? So I would ask feedforward questions about the model. To say, what would you like to see this model be instead going forward?

Tim Cynova:

We covered a number of the themes already that you pulled together, that the model represents encourage diversity, reflects specifically at Fractured Atlas, our values and mission, especially our commitment around anti-racism and anti-oppression. It's exhausting. It's better than a single CEO model. What are some of the other things that came out for you that you think are really important to highlight?

Kelly Kienzle:

One of my very favorite themes was how this model helped people be bold in their creativity. The model for the staff provided a kind of safety net for their new crazy, innovative ideas. Because they knew that if they took their new and crazy idea to the leadership team, that four people would be evaluating it, poking at it, debating it to determine how successful it could be. And so that made the staff feel that they could be as innovative as their imaginations would take them. And that's after building trust as a foundation in an organization, fostering innovation is the true magic fairy dust that every organization wants to sprinkle over their teams. So that was exciting to find out that simply the presence of the model created that.

Kelly Kienzle:

I think another theme that emerged that was exciting was how the model helped unsilo the organization. Because so many organizations struggle with silos, because we have to. We have to have departments across any organization of complexity so that the IT function runs effectively, the operations run effectively, et cetera. And so silos crop up. However, with this shared leadership model, where the four of you are the horizontal band across those four what would be silos, that created a very real connection across those. And so ideas traveled faster across the different silos is what the staff told me. It was easier to get input and perspectives from different groups on changes or ideas that were being batted around. And so that gave a vibrancy and cohesion to the organization that I think is just a wonderful byproduct of this model.

Tim Cynova:

We've touched on this a bit already. But for organizations who think, is this kind of leadership team structure right for us? What would you counsel them to consider?

Kelly Kienzle:

So in addition to considering the potential players and their propensity for trust, I think another characteristic is the mission. Asking themselves how strong is the mission in our organization and how deeply is it felt by the potential leaders we're considering to put in this role? And the reason that I say mission is that one, this role of being a shared leader is demanding, and so you really, really have to believe in the work that you're doing. That is the only thing that can drive you. And because if each person in the shared leadership model believes in that mission, then you are all ready and inherently tied together. You already have that common ground that is deep, and that can help you be that cohesive team from the get go.

Kelly Kienzle:

Because I think that also creates mutual respect for one another. Because you know if the other three people on the team believe in the mission as deeply as you do, that means you guys shared some of the same values. And if you share some of the same values, then there's respect there. Which means when you do bring up an idea, and it gets debated and eventually shut down by your colleagues, it's okay. Because you respect them. They have an opinion that you respect, it's also okay because you know they're shooting it down for the sake of the mission of the organization. And that's what you believe in too. So I think that sense of mission is another characteristic that an organization can look at to determine, are we right for this shared leadership model?

Tim Cynova:

So Kelly, do you have any closing thoughts? Well, probably not final thoughts on the topic, but closing thoughts on shared leadership?

Kelly Kienzle:

Yeah. I think shared leadership is a fantastic model that every organization can strive for. And if it seems like it's something that is too far out of reach, I would challenge you on that and have you look at your organization now and see where you already have shared leadership. Because I would suspect there are several ways in which any organization already does exhibit shared leadership. And so the question then just simply becomes, how can we make that shared leadership broader? How can we make it more embedded in the processes that we do? And how can we shape it so that it reflects the mission of our organization? And then you get started doing that.

Tim Cynova:

Kelly, it's a pleasure getting to work with you on this work. And thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Kelly Kienzle:

I've loved every minute of it. Thanks, Tim.

Tim Cynova:

To close out this episode, I'm now joined by two cultural sector powerhouses, Holly Sidford and Russell Willis Taylor. Both of whom I've had the wonderful privilege to work closely with over the last decade, who have served as mentors and friends, and also as members of the Fractured Atlas Board of Directors during our transition to a shared leadership model. I'm excited to get their thoughts on the topic. Holly and Russell, welcome to the podcast.

Holly Sidford:

Nice to be here.

Russell Willis Taylor:

Thank you.

Tim Cynova:

You've both served together for a number of years in the chair and vice chair roles of the Fractured Atlas Board. Holly, you initially were in the Chair role with Russell as Vice Chair before you swapped roles a year so back? As such, you both were in those board leadership roles working together when we started our exploration into shared leadership, an exploration that coincided with a founder transition. Holly, can you start off by describing what the process was like from the board's perspective? What was going on "behind the scenes" if you will?

Holly Sidford:

Be happy to. I guess I would start by saying, it didn't suck. It was a very, very interesting dynamic process. All the board members had been serving on the board of Fractured Atlas under the leadership of the former executive director, the single Executive Director, Adam Huttler, and had worked very successfully with him in that singular role. When he decided to leave and the opportunity to consider on a shared leadership model came forward, the board was very engaged with us. It was a very interesting idea to us. It was a challenging idea. It had a lot of risks involved. But also we saw great opportunity, particularly to advance some core values that the organization held. That is, distributed leadership, recognizing multiple varieties of talent, actually, affirmative placement of leaders of color.

Holly Sidford:

So it wasn't a slam dunk by any means. But it was a very interesting process of considering what Fractured Atlas needed, what these four individuals brought to the next phase of our development, and how we could support such an innovative model. Just say one other thing, which is, that at the time of the transition, we realized it would raise new questions for how the board functioned. And we knew that, that would take some time to iterate and develop. And I would say 18 months later, we're still engaged in that, but affirmatively engaged in it in a way that still doesn't suck.

Tim Cynova:

Russell, what kind of questions did you have about the shared leadership model when we first started talking about it?

Russell Willis Taylor:

Well, one of the things that I love about being on the Fractured Atlas board is that the default position is not to go to the default position. There's always, should we keep doing it this way? Under Holly's leadership, the board was able to stop and not just get on autopilot about how we were going to replace an outgoing leader. There was also a lot of interest in talent retention, if you don't mind my referring to you and your three co-leader's talent. We had really good people and we didn't want to lose them. And that's not the only or the main reason that we did it, but we were very lucky. We started knowing that we had people who were interested in this kind of experiment.

Russell Willis Taylor:

The questions with regard to how the board would perform is with what would we replace the kind of traditional pipeline of accountability and information that comes from a single person? Where you get to know that person and you begin to be able to communicate almost in shorthand about what's happening and about what their feelings are about the organization. Now, we were going to have four people that needed to do that. And I think we're still finding our way on that. But I also, what I liked so much about this adventure, is I really believe that this outdated notion that we have that leaders are supposed to look like and sound like and be like, it's actually much more kind of bred into our subconscious than we think it is.

Russell Willis Taylor:

By having a four person leadership team, all of whom are very different from one another, but who have complementary abilities, talents and experiences. It's a constant reminder that we shouldn't have an assumption about what a leader looks like or what a leader sounds like or how a leader brings an organization together. It's just this constant reminder.

Holly Sidford:

Could I add just one thing to that, which is, that the idea of a shared leadership model came from the staff. And to me at the time and still reflects a new generation or an upcoming generation of leaders who expect collaboration. It's not that they don't understand that organizations have hierarchy and need accountability and all that. But they are interested each in their own way in a different approach, a more collaborative approach to the role of leader and the advancement of the organization. So that was really, really an important thing. We wouldn't have come up with it on our own as a board.

Russell Willis Taylor:

I think that's true.

Tim Cynova:

Well, in this more collaborative approach is an experiment that is risky, and it's unfamiliar and not traditional and nonprofit boards are not often thought of as risk taking, cutting edge innovative bodies. Can you talk about what that was like for the board to wrestle with something that is more risky than just the status quo of here's another single CEO, and what questions might still exist for the board?

Russell Willis Taylor:

Well, I think the whole culture of Fractured Atlas since its founding has been one of embracing risk in a way that many nonprofits don't. And some of that has to seep through the board. So while we are in some ways risk averse, because our charge is to keep the organization going, not necessarily in perpetuity, but to keep it going, as opposed to the operational charge. So we're probably a little bit more risk embracing than many boards because that's part of the culture of Fractured Atlas, is to experiment and to do new things. Having said that, it didn't feel risky to me because the four people were so good at what they did. And I have to admit that there were some things that I hadn't anticipated. Touch we're very lucky we haven't had huge problems crop up.

Russell Willis Taylor:

We have realized the board needs to communicate, by which I mean, listening as well as talking in a different way with the team than perhaps we would with a single leader. But we haven't had something kind of yet blow up in our faces. But it didn't feel risky because the four of you were so good at what you did, and knew there was alignment between the direction we wanted to go in and the direction that you were already moving in. It would have felt unspeakably risky to me if we had brought in four new people to do this. I think that I probably would have had to label that reckless.

Holly Sidford:

I would only add two things. One that it would have been a bigger risk to go with a single leader. So we did debate this calculated risk or assessing risk. I think if we had said to the leadership team, no, actually we're going to go through a search. We're going to hire one individual leader. I think, if not one, if not all, many would have left the organization because they were themselves so committed to this concept of collaboration. So risk in whose eyes? That's one thing. The other thing is that once we decided, then we put into place staff and board some structures for how we would move forward.

Holly Sidford:

So it wasn't just, we have four new leaders, everything's going to be dancing and happy. We said, here's how we're going to define the roles. Here's how we're going to monitor progress. Here's how we're going to deal with the departure of any one of the members of the leadership team. We worked hard at the very outset in creating some parameters for how it would work. And staff was fantastic in this. Tim, in particular. Just giving ourselves some guideposts that we could rely on. So it wasn't a completely uncharted plan.

Russell Willis Taylor:

I think that, just add to that, we did have a map. What I really enjoy about being on this board is we were perfectly content with the fact that not everything could be mapped. That there were going to be places where maybe I would say there be dragons and we didn't really know what was there. And that I think is where the Fractured Atlas board compared to other boards that I'm on, I'm certainly not universally knowledgeable about all boards, but compared to a lot of other boards with which I've been engaged, the Fractured Atlas board was a little more comfortable with ambiguity than many boards. And I think that's good. I think in the current environment, having a board that's comfortable with ambiguity is probably pretty important.

Tim Cynova:

What do you think are the key criteria for this model to be successful?

Russell Willis Taylor:

We got to have the right people. It all comes down to have you got the right team? And is that team committed? If they don't come to it with the chemistry between them being healthy, are they committed to making the chemistry between them healthy?

Holly Sidford:

Are you talking about staff or staff and board?

Russell Willis Taylor:

Well, staff first and foremost. I think the board has to be ... You've got four people generating information, I think the board has to be more attentive and yet non-intrusive in perhaps more detailed information to understand what's going on. That can be tricky. Like many boards, we have a lot of people who've run organizations, I've run an organization and you have to know when you need to step back and go, okay, I'm not doing this. Someone else is doing this. So we need to be in receipt of information that helps us make informed decisions. But perhaps on a more regular basis than we would if there was just one person.

Holly Sidford:

I think people in the talent it's really key. But I think everybody has to want in, has to want to engage with the experiment, stay in the experiment, whether challenges that come up during the experiment. I mean, people need to want to make it work. And I think with that comes a willingness to be candid and a determination to work on candor and building trust. I mean, I think in a lot of cases, there's very little trust between the board and the staff of an organization, particularly executive director. Anyway, people are hiding certain kinds of information or protecting their territory a bit. Not that we've solved that but I do think that there's a desire on the part of board members and staff to be more candid than maybe truth in the conventional situation.

Russell Willis Taylor:

I think that's a really important point. Because one of the things that makes this work and makes it enjoyable and a learning opportunity for both board and staff is a radical form of transparency. Where the leadership team feels like they can tell us stuff that they don't want us to act on and they don't want us to overreact. Just we need to know these things. Where I think we still have some scope for improvement is how the board reciprocates that radical transparency. Not that we're hiding anything but that we regularly communicate sort of what we're thinking and how we're feeling about things. Because silence or the absence of information, we are hard wired to take as, I wonder if something is not as it should be out there in the environment. I think the will is absolutely there and the personal relationships are absolutely there. But we haven't systematically introduced a way of making communication rapid and a two-way street in quite the way that I think we need to.

Holly Sidford:

What you just said makes me think about another item, which is new in my mind. I do think that another thing that's required of a multi-member leadership team is a relatively small board. Now, if we had 25 or 30 board members-

Russell Willis Taylor:

Absolutely.

Holly Sidford:

I mean, we would be in the Hudson River right now. It would never have worked. So I think that scaling the size of the leadership team to the size of the board is important. We happen to have a relatively small board when this happened. But we're now thinking that we don't probably want to increase the board because of this communication issue.

Russell Willis Taylor:

Right. That then prompts another thought for me. It's easy to think about this staff talent was in place and that was all completely apparent. But it's also important to think about what conditions at board level had been in place for quite a while. Under Holly's chairmanship, we had already Ready devised a slightly different way of the board working. Board meetings work half the compliance and the work that a board has to do in law and that is expected of a board. And then half a kind of no judgment brainstorming or learning. So we had already rehearsed some behaviors that help with this transition.

Russell Willis Taylor:

The second thing is because this board is not required, although we all support the fundraising, and we want to be as engaged as we can, because of the financial model behind Fractured Atlas, this is not principally a fundraising board. So you don't need 30 or 40 people. And I think that Holly's absolutely right, the smaller the group, the more likely you are to be able to build a very high degree of trust. And that's important.

Tim Cynova:

When I was talking to Kelly Kienzle for the interview earlier in this episode, she and I were talking about the issue of succession planning. And it came up rather early when we started to study this model that you were no longer looking at one line of succession, you're looking at X number of the people on the team. So we were now looking at four people for succession lines, because someone who can replace the chief program officer might not be the same people who can replace the chief technology officer. And then she brought up something I hadn't thought about before, was that the speed at which a shared leadership team can work is almost times the number of members as well. I'm still processing this, but a single CEO can work only so quickly.

Tim Cynova:

When you have for people, it's not times for because there are switching costs and coordination costs. But you each can work faster than just a single person. And then she took that to say, it actually is that much more challenging to build trust, because a board is no longer building trust with a single person. You're building trust with four people and you certainly to build trust at four times the speed to just stay up with where you typically were. So it feels like shared leadership introduces some really big challenges between how quickly the board and staff and organization move and coordinate. So I'm curious to get your thoughts on whether you're skeptical of those multipliers or what that might prompt for you in your own thinking about board, staff collaboration when it comes to shared leadership models.

Holly Sidford:

I can I add one and one. So anything beyond that, I don't do times tables. So I'm skeptical of the multiplying factor. I don't think it's that simple at all. I think that there are, I can't finish the metaphor, but it's not a simple equation. And a lot has to do with the skill of a given member of the leadership team in their job. It's not just how fast they can run, it's how well they can do the work and how well they communicate and coordinate their work with the others. So you can have four members, but they could be functioning at a minus one in terms of effectiveness, because they don't have autonomy. Not that a single executive director has autonomy completely, but we don't have four countries, we have one country that's trying to move into the future. So that's kind of garbled. But the point is, I don't think it's as easy as a multiplication of members times speed.

Russell Willis Taylor:

I think you do. I agree. You have four times the ability to generate ideas and start new programs and all that. But actually, we had that before. We just had somebody at the head of the line saying this is what we're doing. And I think that any addition of speed is offset by the fact that the consensus based leadership that you guys have in place, there has to be agreement if there are implications for another program before you launch something new. I do think that one of the things that I've learned about that I didn't think through before is how positive if the four of you trust each other, I don't have to talk to everybody on the team. Because if I talk to you, it's going to filter through to the team.

Holly Sidford:

And what you say, what Tim says to you in response represents the others. Or he will say ... Actually, we need Pallavi in this conversation because it's her perspective. I can't represent her perspective.

Russell Willis Taylor:

Right. Exactly, right. And I think the learning for us as a board, now how do we replicate that on the board where you don't have to talk to every board member? Or I'm fastidious, I'm trying to be fastidious about when I have a conversation with the team, I share it with everybody. How do we absolutely bake that into the culture of the board? That we're sharing information in exactly the same way. At the moment, it's not a problem, but you can see how if we were to launch three new programs at the same time, and they needed resource, all three of them needed resource, and there were board members that were interested in each individual program. You can see how it could become a problem where one board member knows more about something than a ...

Russell Willis Taylor:

So we're trying to figure out how do we get aboard that encounters one is another episodically because we are a first board in the sense that we're not all co-located. How do we get a board that interacts with the organization episodically and encounters one another episodically, to have the same consistency and collaborative trust that you do when it's harder to form the habit, because it's not happening all the time. It's happening, and I feel optimistic about it. I would say that, wouldn't I.

Tim Cynova:

Kelly Kienzle helped us create the assessment process that we used last year, to help assess this specific model, not the individuals in the model, as part of the board's duty to evaluate on a regular basis the CEO. She gave us a 30 page document and there were 17 themes that we've all read and discussed in various meetings. I highlighted a couple words from the themes. I want to see what might resonate with you. But the things about the model encourages diversity, reflects our values and mission, effective, efficient, bold, frustrating, difficult, exhausting, better than a single CEO model, addresses vulnerabilities, reimagine how leadership and board work together. Those and beyond. When Kelly delivered this, what really resonated with you?

Russell Willis Taylor:

Well, I'm biased because I know her work and like her work. So I recognize my bias. I really respect her thinking on these things. I think I was really pleased that what we were seeing in that list and the discussion that was outlined in her paper, was something that embrace the complexity of what we're doing, but didn't make a meal out of it. It's like, yeah, this is great. But here are the pieces of it. I like the fact that in conversation with the team while we were going through Kelly's process, because I think I was probably more closely involved with it in the beginning stages than anyone else as chair of the board. What I really liked was we were recognizing that for everything that's good about this, there's something that could potentially not be good, but we weren't getting bogged down in the stuff that couldn't be good.

Russell Willis Taylor:

We were just saying, okay, let's recognize that. There is a pothole. How do we drive around that? As opposed to, oh gosh, terrible things could happen. I do think that this model is a model for optimists. I don't think this is a model for pessimists. I think you would find that Debbie Downer should not be part of a four person leadership team. Because one of the benefits is that you do bully one another up when necessary. But I think overall, there has to be the assumption of positive intentionality in making this work. Both in Kelly's assessment tools as you guys were building them and the way you were approaching it, there was the assumption. Not naive, but the assumption that there'd be positive intent behind most of this.

Holly Sidford:

What she said. And what I recall being hit by Kelly's report was that we were living our values and being brave about taking the next step on those values. We were willing to embrace something that was uncertain and certainly in our context, untried. What I was also struck by was the concern about the exhaustion the staff was experiencing. I wasn't completely sure whether that was actually the model that was exhausting, or just the transition that was exhausting, or what came with the transition, which was a reflection and review of pretty much everything that we were doing, and resorting about the priorities for the organization's next phase of work. But I do think that this is not easy. The decision to change the management of the first year, two years of the change, and maybe that's true into the future. But this is not for Debbie Downer. It's not for the tired and sleepy either. It requires a kind of energy on the part of all that are involved, which we may not have anticipated.

Russell Willis Taylor:

I think that relates to your question about succession planning, your comment about succession planning. We have the opportunity. We're hoping that we don't have any ... We don't have to deal with this on a practical level for a while. But when someone leaves, there's the opportunity to ask a lot of questions about the structure of the organization that you wouldn't if you have a chief executive, she or he leaves, you go and find another chief executive. We know if one of you, God forbid, were to say, well, it's time for me to do something else, that we would have as a team, a leadership team and board together as a thinking team, we would have a conversation about, should this still be for people or should we look at whether it's three people?

Russell Willis Taylor:

Now, again, something that I think a lot of people ... We live in a culture where there's the mythology of action orientation being always positive, which is not true. And the level of discussion and debate that needs to happen every time there's a change, some people would find it ... Some board member personality types might find that tedious. I don't find it tedious. I think organizations don't ask enough of those kind of structural and existential questions. We have a built in way of making sure that we have to stop and ask those questions, because our succession planning has to be a creative exercise, not rote memorization. I'm pleased about that.

Holly Sidford:

Earlier, you talked about the CEO function. I do think that this whole process has pushed us to think more about functions as opposed to job descriptions. What's the leadership function in an organization? What we've said now is that is not embedded in one person. That's an array of responsibilities and talents that can be broken up and distributed in different ways. And not only that, I think it's raised questions or suggested that some of the leadership function traditionally held by the CEO, can be distributed into the organization beyond the four members or the three members of the two members who are now the "top people".So this has been very interesting to me, as we think about functions. Because I do think that cultural institution generally are required now to think again about their function. What is it that they are here to do and how are they going to do that in a contemporary context?

Tim Cynova:

There's reflection and tension that came in this that also extended to, how do we become a virtual organization? In the same way, what is it conference room for? What do we do in that conference room? Are there other ways for us to do that thing if we don't have a physical conference room? And then going on to the next thing. It was a part of that same exploration into questioning what it is? How we do it? Is there another way of doing it than the typical way from the book about how to run organizations?

Holly Sidford:

Yeah, exactly. And what's the central now that we have to retain? And what did we used to think was essential, but is no longer so essential given that it's 2020? I think that's a continuous process that we're now engaged in much more consciously, which is good.

Tim Cynova:

So for organizations to think, is this kind of leadership model right for me? Is there anything else that we've not covered that you think, yes, you really need to think about this before you take the leap into a shared leadership model exploration?

Russell Willis Taylor:

Well, I'd like to introduce a few questions on that cosmic quiz that people should be filling out. First of all, if your board is dysfunctional, please don't do this, because you'll make four people unhappy instead of just one. So that would be number one. Number two is if communication is not good, you need to get that better before you embark on this kind of adventure. Number three, is if the board's not prepared to be really actively engaged in understanding what the operations of the organization are, without intruding on the operations of the organization, this probably is not going to be a smooth transition. And number four, if the board is inextricably linked to outdated notions of hierarchy, this is not for you.

Holly Sidford:

I would only add to that great list if the organization is in a financial crisis. Stay away. This takes some runway and a fair amount of financial confidence to be able to work out the details and make it work.

Russell Willis Taylor:

Absolutely right.

Holly Sidford:

What would you add to that, Tim?

Tim Cynova:

You need a reserve of energy. Kelly and I were laughing when we went down the list and I was recounting when she delivered the report. And one of the slides said, shared leadership model is exhausting for leaders. And I said, this is going to you have to get bleeped out. But no, (bleep). You're totally [inaudible 01:36:25]. It's a different way of working that requires ... With that intention, you need to be much more on top of how things are working. Autopilot doesn't work.

Holly Sidford:

Well, that relates to the speed with which ... I mean, that equation of numbers times ... Her equation about just a multiple of the number. Not true. In part because of that, if some people don't have that reserve, and can't draw on it, it's going to slow the whole thing down.

Tim Cynova:

There's a catch-22 in that as well though, because in having three other members on this team who understand what you're dealing with, it's a different place than I've had in other organizations that I've been the single executive director where, for the most part, I was just the only ... I had other people I was working with, but no one understood the level of the things that I was dealing with in that organization. So I had to find mentors and friends and other people outside of the organization. So at the same time it's more exhausting than just the regular model, you have that camaraderie and support and understanding in that group that makes it almost net equal or almost equalizes that. So there's pros and cons to that.

Russell Willis Taylor:

And how would you characterize ... Now we're going to turn and in interview you.

Tim Cynova:

We just run out of tape. So I'm not sure.

Russell Willis Taylor:

I'm sorry. We're out of time. Matt Damon cannot be on the show tonight. How would you characterize this as, be careful what you wish for or I told you I was right? I mean, as an experiment. Because there have been some revelations for this staff as well.

Tim Cynova:

I did a lot of research before we jumped in. Looking at a lot of different organizations and different models of shared leadership and criteria of high performing teams and what needs to exist. For the most part, pros and the cons, I remember talking with Kelly, yep, all those things were on our list and those are the pros. The things like trust, you have to have a great degree of trust. There has to be psychological safety in the team. And then the flip sides, all those things were there, it's a little difficult to separate our transition into entirely virtual organization from this. So to say this is specific to the shared leadership team, but at the same time, halfway through our time into shared leadership, we are transitioning the organization to become entirely virtual.

Tim Cynova:

Which added another complexity, more complexity around change and change management, to how people are adjusting to this different way of working at Fractured Atlas, where you start to have different conversations. Which might make it more exhausting if you just went to shared leadership model without transitioning the organization to be entirely virtual, I'm sure it would feel less exhausting. For me it's intertwined and it's tough to pull out, this is the shared leadership part, this is the entirely virtual transition, and then this is just business as usual for Fractured Atlas.

Russell Willis Taylor:

Success of either virtual working conditions or shared leadership puts some really heavy onus on communication, communication community all the time. So you're kind of doubling. I mean, you could say it was a really appalling piece of judgment by the leadership team and the board to do both at the same time, but it wasn't, we hope. Either one of those things would require stronger communication, more regular communication, a more intuitive way of communicating. And when you do the two of them together, you really are adding quite a lot.

Holly Sidford:

Could I add one more thing to that? Which is that we embrace the shared leadership model after you'd actually been working it for a year, more or less, while the then executive director was on a sabbatical. So you had already piloted it. And while you were piloting it, one member of the team was not in New York, was not in the office every day, was essentially virtual. And then another member of the team decided to move outside of New York. Two points I want to make. One, shared leadership model has to be based on trust and some prior collaborative experience.

Holly Sidford:

But also it enables organizations to tap talent outside of the location of the organization. And that that is really a virtue. Not only does it allow you to hire somebody who doesn't want to move to where you are, but it allows somebody who you already have in the team to move where they want to go. So it seems to me that that was one of the kernels of becoming totally virtual. Is in and of itself, you don't have to go totally virtual and you can still have some members of the leadership team which are basically off site.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. It was all very organic. It just felt like that was the next thing. As we close, any other thoughts you have on the topic that we haven't discussed? That you think, if this doesn't make it in the podcast, this would have been a waste of time.

Holly Sidford:

I would just say that it's an ongoing experiment, and likely to be so into the future. And that that's a good thing because it requires us to stay alert, sort of in the moment if you pardon the expression, and not default to old behaviors or old concepts of what the organization is, what leadership is, or what the board's role is.

Russell Willis Taylor:

I am as I often do, anyone listening to this who knows me will laugh hilariously, I like to compare this to quantum physics, which I never do, obviously. That will be like a sports metaphor for me. I mean, what is she talking about? She has no idea. But in quantum physics, one of the premises that's been proven is, by virtue of looking at something, you change the nature of that thing. I think that's what we've done here. By virtue of looking at the leadership format, if you like, and saying, does it have to be that way? We've changed the way the organization works just by posing that question because we said, we're going to test that assumption. Does everybody have to be in the same room? We're going to test that assumption. Posing the question changes the way you view the organization, giving board members and staff members the permission to ask those sorts of very basic questions.

Russell Willis Taylor:

The challenge is to not do that so often that nobody ever knows where they are and what are we doing. There's a joke in our field that you can always tell in art conference, because the first 20 minutes will be spent talking about whether or not the conference was properly titled. Is this really what it should be called? I kind of love that. It's a ritual of our field, where language does matter and we do want to make sure that we're expressing ourselves clearly. But you don't want to be reinventing things so often that it's just disorienting and dispiriting for people. But having said that, particularly if we want younger people in an organization to look at things and say, well, really is the status quo the most positive and healthy way for us to proceed? You have to create that environment in which it's okay to do that. This creates an environment in which it's okay to do that. You look at something and by asking the question, you change the nature of the way you do business.

Tim Cynova:

Holly and Russell, it's a huge privilege to know and get to work with you. And thank you so much for being on podcast.

Holly Sidford:

Thank you for asking us.

Russell Willis Taylor:

Thank you.

Tim Cynova:

To read more about this topic and a rabbit hole of related information, visit us on workshouldntsuck.co. If you've enjoyed this conversation or just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review in iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic and join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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Transparency, Accountability, & Alignment (EP.06)

Last Updated

February 7, 2020

If you don't know where you're going — personally, professionally, as a team, as an organization — you'll have a hard time knowing if and when you ever get there. In this episode, we explore ways to create more transparency, accountability, and alignment in the workplace with tools like Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).

Guests: Nicola Carpenter & Erica Seldin

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guests

ERICA SELDIN is an organization designer and coach to leadership teams that seek purposeful growth and change. Erica founded the organization transformation consultancy August to spark movements toward a new way of working and organizing inside the world’s most ambitious companies. From global enterprises including PepsiCo and Colgate Palmolive to civic institutions like Planned Parenthood and NYC’s Department of Education, Erica has guided leaders and teams to design operating models better suited for the 21st century. Her approach is supported by over a decade of experience in organization development, digital transformation, and grassroots organizing. 

NICOLA CARPENTER works on the People team at Fractured Atlas, where she finds ways for tools and processes to better align with the organization’s purpose. She believes in tools so much that she sets personal OKRs every quarter. Prior to joining Fractured Atlas, Nicola worked for a variety of arts organizations including MoMA PS1, Walker Art Center, and Heidelberger Kunstverein, and she still has a particular love for museums. Originally from Minneapolis, she received a BFA in Art from the University of Minnesota and continues to stay creative through knitting and sewing clothes. She is currently in too many book clubs, but still somehow finds time to read books about organizational culture for fun. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter at @colacarp.

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Transcript

 Tim Cynova:

Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck, a podcast about, well, that. On this episode, transparency, accountability and alignment, who's doing what when and how can we know that the work that we're doing on daily basis is actually helping move our organizations forward? My former mentor once told the younger me, “If you don't know where you're going, personally, professionally as a team, as an organization, you'll have a hard time knowing if and when you ever get there.” On this episode, we'll explore ways that we can create alignment, accountability, and transparency around doing the right work rather than that vague sense of more or better, or working hard until we're exhausted figuring that that must mean we're doing the right work.

Tim Cynova:

We're joined by Erica Seldin, co-founder of August Public, an organization transformation consultancy found online at aug.co. Side note, if you're a fan of People Operations and organizational design, and have yet to fall down the rabbit hole of their public Google drive, you've not really lived it. Joining Erica is Nicola Carpenter, currently the associate director of People Operations at Fractured Atlas. You can find their complete bio's in the episode description section. Later in the episode we'll again be joined by our podcasting's favorite cohost, Lauren Ruffin, to get her thoughts on the topic. Both Erica and Nicola have dedicated quite a lot of time and thought to this topic, so I look forward to digging into this with them.

Tim Cynova:

Erica and Nicola, welcome to the podcast.

Erica Seldin:

Hi Tim, happy to be here.

Nicola Carpenter:

Yeah, I'm excited to be on the podcast again, especially with Erica. I was telling Tim that I feel like the last time that Erica and I had a conversation, we talked both about literature and missing books, and then also just philosophically what is compensation for work. I'm just really excited about this conversation about, okay, I see where it goes.

Erica Seldin:

And I think if you, Nicola, somebody that I run into just everywhere that I'm doing something that I care about. So it seems like you have these naturally intersecting interests with mine and you show up one place and I'm like, “Of course, Nicola is here.” And then you show up another place. I'm like, “Well, obviously, Nicola would be here.” I'm happy to be here in chat with you about this topic, something that I don't think we've ever discussed, but-

Nicola Carpenter:

I think that's true.

Erica Seldin:

-that I know that we both care about, so.

Nicola Carpenter:

Yeah, thanks for bringing us together.

Tim Cynova:

It's exciting. Great. Let's start high level. Erica, when you hear transparency, accountability and alignment, what comes to mind for you?

Erica Seldin:

What comes to mind for me is that so many people are doing this wrong. Everybody wants transparency, everybody wants accountability, everybody wants alignment, and yet there doesn't seem to be a common way or understanding for how to achieve those things. And creating accountability is something that I spend maybe 75% of my time talking to people about and yet it seems like they still don't want to believe that it is actually as simple as just writing it down and being transparent about what it is that you hope people will do, and then actually following up on those things that you've written down.

Erica Seldin:

We also have a saying in August about alignment, which is replace the word align with magic everywhere you see it and it would be more appropriate. Like we just need to magic on that topic because actually it's the case that alignment is not something that should be a goal of ours, but it's something that we might get if we do a lot of other things correct. Otherwise, it's just like saying, let's magic it.

Tim Cynova:

That's terrific.

Erica Seldin:

My co-founder, Mike Arauz gets all the credit for that.

Nicola Carpenter:

Now I just want to add magic into everything.

Erica Seldin:

Yeah, yeah.

Nicola Carpenter:

Just replace other silly words just with magic.

Erica Seldin:

Right. Like do you want to have a magic about that instead of meeting?

Nicola Carpenter:

Yeah. That's good.

Tim Cynova:

People who are more excited to come, “Oh, I don't know what this is about, but it's going to be magic.”

Erica Seldin:

That's right. That's right. It's going to be magic.

Tim Cynova:

You don't want to miss the full staff magic.

Nicola Carpenter:

That's right. Replace work with magic and then you would never say magic shouldn't suck, you know? Right.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. So much to think about already just a couple of minutes into the episode, Nicola, when you think of those things besides magic, what comes to mind for you?

Nicola Carpenter:

Yeah, I mean I like a lot of the things that Erica mentioned. I feel like when I think about OKRs especially, I sometimes get stuck in the how does it happen? How do we do it? How is the phrase? But when you step back and think about like what are you trying to do at work? I mean, okay, so we're a non-profit so I feel like it's especially prevalent to say what are we trying to do? I mean, I know that that's true for companies as well, like people who have purposes, but I think that in non-profits, especially presence like okay, what are we trying to do and how do we do that?

Nicola Carpenter:

And if you don't know where you're going and you don't know what you're doing to get there, I don't know how you're going to get there. Like you mentioned in the intro, but also, I mean I think that so many other companies that I've worked at has been… I've gotten hired, they tell me, “Okay, this is what you do,” and then I do that, but I don't really know why I'm doing that and I don't like doing things if I don't know why. At Fractured Atlas, especially with the OKR process, knowing the why behind pretty much everything that I do is incredibly helpful to be encouraged to actually do the things.

Erica Seldin:

Yeah, that's a great point. I think that you brought up OKR, something that I know we want to talk about on this subject. And I think that creating this connectivity between what we're trying to achieve, why we're trying to achieve it, and then how we're going to get there is what's so powerful about this framework. And it helps to connect those dots for each individual, but then also for teams. And the added layer of making those things as OKRs are your what, your why, and your how transparent all of a sudden unlocks this connectivity between each team member of teams and gets to a place where you're actually creating maybe the magic or the alignment that we're striving for.

Nicola Carpenter:

And I think so what we used to do was thematic goals, and I've nothing against Lencioni, but I don't love thematic goals. And I like to tell the story that we had this thematic goal number three, and it went by probably five different words. If you look in past meeting minutes, there's five different words to describe the medical number three. And we had a party at the end of thematic goal number three where we had t-shirts. But I, to this day, kind of could explain what thematic goal number three is, but there is no way that I could explain how my work at Fractured Atlas fit into thematic goal number three.

Nicola Carpenter:

And I just feel like that's a missed opportunity and now I'm like, “Oh no, do I actually remember what my OKRs are this quarter?” I mean, but I like to think that now in my work that I know how my work aligns with what the company is doing and I hope that that's the case for a lot of people in the organization. And I feel like that is the case. I mean, we've heard that people say that that's what they get out of it.

Erica Seldin:

I hope that the tagline on your t-shirt for thematic goal number three was been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Because it sounds like that was what happened there with that particular goal.

Nicola Carpenter:

I don't remember what it said was TG3.

Erica Seldin:

TG3.

Tim Cynova:

And that was the last thematic goal that we had in the organization, which led to OKR. It was an iterative process though. It went from… At Fractured Atlas we've never had a strategic plan. We've had strategic priorities and strategic priorities memos, and those were pretty high level. I'm not sure how my day-to-day works. So then it's like, all right, let's try thematic goal, and you did a couple of those and then it became, “I'm on the leadership team and I'm not sure how my work impacts this, so let alone everyone else in the organization who's not in this room.”

Tim Cynova:

Which led to, “All right, well, let's try OKRs because that seems to cascade.” I guess it depends on the organization. There are smart goals, there are smarter goals, there's thematic goals, there's strategic plans or is everyone sitting in the same room talking about what you're doing until someone passes out?

Erica Seldin:

Totally. I'm sure you're both familiar with James Clear on atomic habits, and this is something that I love on this topic. And my favorite thing that he says is both winners and losers have the same goals. So it's true that both winners and losers, the goal is to win, but some people lose. And why is that the case? And I think that one of the things that's great about OKRs are about coming up with a different framework that gets into more nuance both for individuals and for teams. Then the actual goal itself is that it helps us to break down the difference between winning and losing beyond just this idea that we all want to win.

Erica Seldin:

It sounds like that's the progression maybe that you've made here. And I'm curious, does every team have OKRs and then individuals also have KRs? Are individuals accountable for particular OKRs? How are you thinking about that? And maybe just we should quickly, for all of the listeners, explain that when we're talking about OKRs, we're talking about objectives and key results. And so when I say KRs I mean the key results that ladder up to a particular objective.

Tim Cynova:

Let's take a step back and explain how OKRs work. We've lightly touched on it, but Nicola, you managed the OKR process at Fractured Atlas. What does it look like?

Nicola Carpenter:

I do this a lot where I just assume that everyone knows what OKRs are because I feel like they're so embedded into my work life and personal life. I have personal OKRs-

Erica Seldin:

That you post on Instagram.

Nicola Carpenter:

I do, yes. I did not do it last quarter and I haven't done… I mean it's what, mid-January and I haven't done it for this quarter yet, but it's fun.

Erica Seldin:

Still plenty of time.

Nicola Carpenter:

Yeah, plenty of time.

Erica Seldin:

Plenty of time.

Nicola Carpenter:

But an objective, I like to think of an objective is why do you do what you want to do? It's aspirational, it's inspiring. It's what gets you out of bed in the morning. And the key result is a measurable way of how you're going to get there. I think that for each individual person, like what their objectives are going to be, what inspires them is going to be different. And also in the key results, there's lots of different ways to measure things, and I feel like we can talk about this a bit more.

Nicola Carpenter:

But at Fractured Atlas currently, how it is, and we've iterated a lot, but currently what we do is that the four-person, non-hierarchical leadership team sets organizational objectives. Usually, there's two or three, occasionally they have a little blurb about why it's important to focus on those things. Often, they're very similar from quarter to quarter, just with a little bit of tweaking to prioritize different things in different ways. And then the leadership team sets their objectives and key results, and then from there their direct reports set their own objectives and key results and further on.

Nicola Carpenter:

We don't have any organizational key results. I know that a lot of organizations do and it helps them, but we haven't necessarily found helpful metrics for the entire organization to work around. But we'd have found that the organizational objectives are a really helpful way to, as an organization, prioritize different things each quarter.

Erica Seldin:

And then how do you hold people accountable for their KRs?

Nicola Carpenter:

Everyone can see everyone else's. I think there's a little bit of that peer pressure of, “Oh no, I'm getting-”

Erica Seldin:

Shame.

Nicola Carpenter:

Yeah, exactly.

Erica Seldin:

Shame.

Tim Cynova:

Don't look at me. You know I got an 8% on that score.

Erica Seldin:

I didn't know.

Tim Cynova:

It's awkward now.

Nicola Carpenter:

And then we also have a dashboard that has the whole organization. What is our percent complete on an organizational level. And generally at staff meetings I share back what our organizational, the average percent completed across the organization is. And I always like to celebrate when it's more than past. And then we also have a BI team, so I feel like there's builds in a tiny bit of competition. I mean, not like it's a real competition, but some people like that side where they're like, “Oh, I'm going to make sure that my team wins and so I'm going to finish my OKRs more.

Tim Cynova:

By some people may mean Nicola.

Erica Seldin:

Yeah, I mean the person who creates the competition wants to win the competition. That's usually the case.

Tim Cynova:

But it's great because Nicola and I are on the same teams, so I appreciate that.

Erica Seldin:

Right, so winning all around.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah.

Nicola Carpenter:

But also I want to say that we haven't said that the goal of an OKR is to hit 60 to 70%. Will you say the sweet spot is 70%? If you get 80%, that's not winning anymore, so-

Erica Seldin:

No, you're doing it. It's not a bad goal.

Nicola Carpenter:

-exactly. There's some added complexity in there. Exactly. I also am disappointed if I'm at 80%. I'm like, “Oh man, I sent some terrible key results this quarter and then I go the opposite direction, only finished 31% so.”

Tim Cynova:

And there are some teams who cross departmentally share some KRs or maybe an objective, and then some teams, within the team, they have similar ones that when they're creating it rather than having a specific this is the team objective or KRs. And we've iterated, I think we've already on four years now. Three or four years that we've been doing it. Every quarter we've changed something about the process.

Erica Seldin:

That's great.

Nicola Carpenter:

Yes.

Erica Seldin:

That's great, and it means that it's working for you all, so that's also really wonderful. It's a good testament to the value of the tool. And always our journey has been a bit different. I think that we came to OKRs late in the game and I would say somewhat skeptically, but we enlisted OKRs at a moment when we needed to really focus. And we were doing a lot of different work across a very small group of people and we realized that it wasn't adding up too much, it wasn't adding up to enough.

Erica Seldin:

And this is one of the downfalls of self-organization that I've seen being part of a self-organizing business now for almost a decade. We have a bunch of different experiences of how the organization works and it tells us what it needs in lots of cases. And in this particular moment, we were many people working on many different teams against many different goals and not getting anywhere, really to say it quite bluntly. And I think that we realized that if we just wrote down the few things that we thought that we could do and how we intended to achieve them over a short period of time, like a quarter.

Erica Seldin:

At August, we do trimesters. I'm not sure why. It's just a little bit more time to sink into. It works for us, and so we take that amount of time just what do we think we can achieve in that amount of time. And we wrote them down and that was a real pivotal moment for us to start to build some accountability. To start to say, “Okay, these are the things that we believe are going to be the best things for us.”

Erica Seldin:

And that step of itself was really hard, because it's all of the things that you're not doing more than it is the things that you are going to do, and we were looking at it that way in that moment. And choosing to focus on those things meant some people thought they were the wrong things. We did do it very collectively, very holistically. It wasn't individuals writing down cares for themselves but instead a couple of us who were accountable for the business's purpose at that moment in time, sitting down and writing the KRs for the business.

Erica Seldin:

Writing the couple of objectives, but really just focusing on the KRs, because the objective itself where we were was pretty clear, which was these growth goals that we had and also our purpose. That was really the thing that was guiding us. We gave it a shot and we had these KRs and they helped us to make what wasn't working more discussable. And that was the thing that really became clear. That was the big win for us in that transition where we were able to say, “Look, you wrote this down then we were going to do this particular action and we expected to see a particular outcome from that action, and we're not even doing the input.

Erica Seldin:

We're not even doing the things that are necessary to get into that action, and discussing that was a real turning point for our team and helping each other to raise our own expectations, to raise the bar and help everyone hit that bar of what we wanted to do together. And so that was sour experience. It's been interesting since then. I think that we're a rapidly evolving organism of some kind. We're like a very small cell, early days in evolution is how I think about us. The kind that's just mutating faster than we know what to do with and there's all issues from the mutation, but it's a lot of fun being a pioneer in that way.

Erica Seldin:

But we've now evolved our work, our KR work to be much more focused on habits. We've taken our KRs and turned them. Those KRs that worked really well that particular trimester because for us two things don't change that much. Trimester to trimester, things are relatively consistent. The goals look pretty much the same, the work is evolving, but those stuff we need to do to be successful is relatively similar, and so we've found it much more useful to develop a set of habits that we've all committed to, that we're doing on a regular basis.

Erica Seldin:

And that's actually what we measure, is the habits. We have this list of, I think it's 10 or so things that we expect everyone to do, and we're tracking those things on a weekly basis, and then we have a trimesterly average of our performance on those habits, specific activities that everyone should do every week. And it's binary, so either you've done it or you haven't. And that binary metric, everyone wants to debate.

Erica Seldin:

It's like, “Well, I did this version of the thing or I did half of it. Does…” No, it doesn't count, but also sure. Count it, if you want to count it, I don't care. And the idea again is making it discussable. And that's really where we get to the next level of our teaming which is the ability to pull each other forward, help each other to achieve our collective purpose. And that's where we've seen a lot of value from this system.

Tim Cynova:

We started OKRs about the same time that we were going through crucial conversations training, which was about the same time that we started in earnest, our journey in anti-racism and anti-oppression. I think to your point. When you write it down on a piece of paper and you have a conversation with your supervisor about it, then it's easier to come back to it and say, “Remember we had that conversation. You said you were going to do this thing. Why didn't it get done? Now it's three quarters in a row or what do you need?”

Tim Cynova:

And then it's less, you're not doing your work in general and more specific, that is a fact that we all agreed on in the moment. Makes it easier. I think for newer managers too, there's some framework to follow, but it's not… I think because we've iterated every quarter, clearly there's challenges with it and we've debated binary, we've debated various departments that are like, “This framework doesn't work for us.”

Tim Cynova:

And then others who are like, “Well, doesn't work for us in a different way.” And then you just keep iterating while also asking the question, if it's not this, do you remember… Before this happened, no one knew what was going on, and so what's the alternative? I love the idea of the habits as something to-

Nicola Carpenter:

What's funny is that one of my ongoing personal objectives is focused on habits.

Erica Seldin:

Well, there you go.

Nicola Carpenter:

Which is just an objective, which I think is funny that that is one of the objectives, because I try to be more simple because tracking personal life seems silly anyway sometimes, so I try to not think too hard. But I also really liked what you talked about of the needing to focus and coming across OKRs in a time of needing to focus. Because I feel like that's something that it's helped us with too. Because as an organization, we want to do all the things and it's hard to do all the things. It's impossible to do all the things.

Erica Seldin:

We want to do all the things.

Nicola Carpenter:

Exactly.

Erica Seldin:

Even all the things, emoji and slack.

Nicola Carpenter:

Amazing.

Erica Seldin:

And so we-

Tim Cynova:

It's just a pile of books that just keeps adding, because-

Erica Seldin:

-no. Well, yes, it should be that, but if there were animated emojis, maybe that would be it.

Nicola Carpenter:

There are.

Erica Seldin:

Oh, like the party parrot.

Nicola Carpenter:

Yes, we have an absurd number of animated emojis in our Slack. I love it.

Tim Cynova:

We have a very talented people in our team.

Nicola Carpenter:

I need to get in the animated emoji game.

Erica Seldin:

Actually animate. We have people on our team that animate the emojis. Yeah, it's great.

Tim Cynova:

Everyone should have one of those people on their team.

Erica Seldin:

Apparently I'm missing a core skill for the future of work, which is the emoji animator and noted.

Nicola Carpenter:

My favorite is sparkles that animate like rainbow sparkles that animate. It's great.

Erica Seldin:

Oh that does sound very nice.

Nicola Carpenter:

It's magic.

Erica Seldin:

It's magic.

Nicola carpenter:

Back to magic.

Erica Seldin:

You can use that when you have an alignment meeting.

Nicola carpenter:

Yes, exactly. It's the new alignment emoji. But one of our taglines for the past year that we've been trying to focus on is do less better. And I feel also that has helped us change OKRs in our documents, so we have a sheet in our shared Google Drive, and there was a while when I was just auto-populating blank three objectives and each objective had, I think three key results and we're like, “Wait a second. What if we just got rid of one of those objectives and the default was two objectives with three key results each. Is that going to have people create less OKRs, less things so that they could then focus on it?”

Nicola carpenter:

Because we were getting as an organization probably 30% when we were hitting super low. [inaudible 00:21:12] 40%, we were not doing less better very well. One of the things that we used to say all time is focus even over more. That was a really a strategic filter for us, is how can we focus even over more, because we want to do all the things. And then someone on the team says, “Focus is more,” which really worked for me because I was like, “That is so true.” When we are focusing, you get to do so much more depth, and so thinking about fewer objectives and higher output on your KRs, all of a sudden, that's what more feels like.

Nicola carpenter:

It's like you're making more progress against the things that you really care about and so that started to feel really good. It started to feel like, “Oh, I'm getting smarter and better at the things that I care about as opposed to doing more stuff that helps me feel like maybe there's more out there for me to be successful at," so I really liked that. But it also connects into another way that I think about OKRs which is that the objective itself is a version of naming the uncertainty that we have.

Nicola carpenter:

What we would like to have happen in the uncertain context that we operate in. And then the KR makes it certain, it's writing down what the certainness is, what we can be sure about, or at least, what we think we can attain in the context of that uncertainty. My work is all about balancing certainty and uncertainty and helping people to operate more in an uncertain world, and if you think that writing down what you think you can achieve in the form of a KR as a way of making the uncertain more certain, that feels really good.

Tim Cynova:

Some of the good things about OKRs are that they're transparent. They're transparent and they cascade throughout the entire organization, so the idea is that everyone wherever they are in the organization sees how the work that they do day in and day out impacts where the organization is going and what the organizational objectives are… what the organizational objectives are for that period. That's one of the good things, but I know both of you maintain some skepticism on varying levels probably depending on the day in OKRs as a framework. I'm curious who wants to jump in first with their skepticism about OKRs as a framework.

Erica Seldin:

I'm happy to say some of the things that I told you. I was like, “I'll come and talk about OKRs but you have to know that I'm skeptical, which I love the answer because same. Obviously I love them but also you got to have some healthy skepticism in there.

Nicola carpenter:

Totally, and for me, I think it comes down to a couple of things. The first is just the… I have a real problem. I think with this idea of 70% is good. That's what success looks like. I think that it plays into this hyper-competitive over achieving cultural… work culture narrative and I think a lot of that comes from Google, I think mostly popularized. OKRs.

Erica Seldin:

And I think that the culture and this idea of the startup culture and that nothing is really ever fully achievable is something that bakes in this mindset of where the workplace becomes a place of never being able to succeed fully. And that you're always striving for something more, and I think that I want it to be the case that we feel that we're doing things that we can achieve, that are really achievable and I don't know. There's something about the competitive, overachieving, ‘you're never good enough' element of it that just irks me.

Nicola Carpenter:

It's so interesting because I have viewed that in such an opposite way. I feel like that 70% has let me let go of some perfectionism, and I was always the person who was like, “I need to get an A in school. I need to do all these things.” And I also live with multiple chronic illnesses, so I just can't do everything. And if I try to do everything, my body is like, “No, you're not going to do all these things.” And I feel that built-in scarcity is actually really helpful to have in when I'm thinking about work. Because I tend to overthink what I can do and then hit not to a hundred and then I'm sad that I can't hit a hundred. If it's built-in and that 70 is what you can do, I feel like that built-in little bit of buffer is helpful.

Erica Seldin:

Then why not just write down what you actually can do?

Nicola Carpenter:

Great question. I don't know.

Erica Seldin:

I feel fitness, physical fitness and it comes up a lot as a good metaphor for these goal-setting conversations and I've recently… I've joined the Peloton revolution or whatever is happening with Peloton. There's one of my building, it makes it very easy for me to do it, but in particular, I've gotten to be a big fan of this one type of training on the Peloton. I think it's called FTP test. Functional threshold power I think is what it stands for. Are you a cyclist? Do you know this or Peloton or anything?

Tim Cynova:

I'm a cyclist. Aspirational at this point, but we also work with… One of our colleagues is a professional cyclist and also our senior director of finance. You're in good company. Usually Nicola just rides along with the cycling conversations until we get back to the actual topics, so we're good.

Erica Seldin:

We're good.

Tim Cynova:

We can keep going.

Erica Seldin:

We're okay. Well, I'm not a cyclist and I won't spend too much time here but I feel it's so relevant to this conversation because basically the way that this works is I don't feel good about my own physical fitness. I've never felt like I am an athlete or I'm great at stuff. I have arthritis and issues that I cannot actually do these things, but this particular way of working on the Peloton is that you set your own threshold power. You do a test, it's just for you. And then every class that you do is in these zones.

Erica Seldin:

It's still on one to seven and they call out the zone and you're just doing your own zone. You can be successful in the class because you're riding your zones. It reminds me of this conversation because it feels like if you set the goals that you can achieve, it still feels good to achieve a goal, even if you've written it down for yourself, but you know what's achievable and you're able to work in your zones.

Erica Seldin:

You're still getting better, and you can always push yourself to the next zone, but you can also lift yourself up by doing the zone below where you are consistently. And so I think that there's something about that. It was the inverse. It's like write a lower goal and achieve it more regularly, I wonder what that would do to a culture around OKRs and goal setting, so just a thought. And sorry for the cycling tangent.

Nicola Carpenter:

Oh no, it's fine. I enjoy it. I feel I've gotten a whole another side of knowledge of acronyms and things that I don't necessarily need to know, but it's enjoyable.

Erica Seldin:

You don't need to know it.

Tim Cynova:

It comes in handy every July with the Tour de France. You can cocktail party or something like that.

Nicola Carpenter:

Something to talk about, yes.

Tim Cynova:

I love the idea about the equivalent of an FTP as an organizational tool, and what would that look like?

Erica Seldin:

Yes, I think it's a similar concept in a lot of ways. The thing I like about it is that you can choose the zone that you're in. You can be operating at a variety of different zones and to be intentional about that, where each zone has its purpose. Each zone you're maintaining. You know that you're in maintenance or endurance mode, you know that you're maximizing effort, but you can't do it for that long.

Erica Seldin:

And there's something about, we all do that. We all know when we're in a high intensity moment. We're in that moment right now at August where everybody is just cranking on what we're doing and we've all looked each other in the eye and said, “This is one of those moments. We're just going to do it, power through and we know that it won't last that long. It's temporary, so we can help each other succeed in that mode and then we can all commit to an endurance mode for the next couple of weeks once we get through it.” It's really nice to think about different modes of working in that way.

Nicola Carpenter:

It has to be sustainable. I think that engagement is something that we think a lot about and engagement has a lot to do. There's so many different factors in engagement, but one of the things is just feeling you can sustain. You can sustain in the organization and that requires sometimes being challenged and pushing and that requires sometimes having it be okay to coast, and thinking about acknowledging those modes when you're in it or those zones when you're in them is something that's really helpful and to be able to do that transparently with your colleagues. It's also really helpful.

Nicola Carpenter:

I think we use vacation as a proxy sometimes for that and I think things like unlimited vacation policies or work from home or whatever it is as a proxy for saying like, “It's cool to meet a minute and that's okay.” But actually being able to talk about it in the way… And sometimes I need a week. I've had this week which has just been wild, back to back and so much challenging stuff, but it's one of those weeks where it's like, “I can do that too. And it feels good also.” Yes, there's something to it maybe.

Nicola Carpenter:

And I think for organizations who are good at setting realistic goals, then yes, why not have it be 100% as your goal? At [inaudible 00:30:46], we've consistently hit it 30%, 40% maybe 50 or maybe 63% I think is the highest it's ever been. I feel like even just pushing us to get closer to 70 is still a decent goal.

Erica Seldin:

Definitely, definitely.

Nicola Carpenter:

Okay, so where does your skepticism about OKRs come from?

Erica Seldin:

Yes, so I feel I had a falling out with OKRs. I read the book, measure what matters and it may be really sad realizing that they were created in an age of work that was not for me. And if I feel that as a white woman, what do colleagues of color feel? How do people who are oppressed in ways that I'm not feel, and just reading a whole book, I was like, “Ah, this is just so bro-ey and I don't feel comfortable reading this book.” And then there was this whole section about using a sports metaphor.

Erica Seldin:

And I was like, “Okay, well, what is the end goal of football? To make money for the owners.” And then I just went on this rage spiral of sports hatred, especially football and oppressing players to give money into the hands of owners. I was like, “Oh, who cares they're being used for such horrible things? How can I get behind with this thing that is used in such nefarious ways? And is there ways to use that framework in a better way?” And I was just so frustrated with it, but I feel like there's still benefits to it.

Erica Seldin:

In the last podcast episode that I was a guest on with my colleague Courtney about anti-racism, anti-oppression, and Courtney gave the example of that, racism falls through the cracks. If you don't see it, it'll fall through the cracks. We were talking about what can you focus on and how do you focus on things to make sure that you're looking at everything. And I feel like writing down what your priorities are can help you find what those cracks are.

Erica Seldin:

And so I feel like even though it is important to say how was this created? What was the environment that this was created in and how is that not necessarily the best way of doing things, but also saying, “Well, how is it beneficial?” But I do think that there are still pros even though don't love the origins.

Nicola Carpenter:

Yes, totally. I think that that's a much better way of articulating what I was trying to get at with this idea of competitive culture at Google or whatever. It's like that is exactly it, which is this very bro-ey and profit-driven environment where goal-setting is a means to an end and not necessarily a way of creating a more transparent, more equitable environment where everyone can succeed. And so it is both sides of that. And I do apologize for the sports metaphor in the middle of sports. I need a little goal-setting-

Erica Seldin:

It's especially football that I have issues with for some reason. There's so many brain injuries and now I'm going to get all hate tweets of football fans, but oh well, brain injuries.

Nicola Carpenter:

I'm a huge football fan. I grew up with football and over the last couple of years, I've been making an active effort to stop giving my money to the football industry. Not paying for cable anymore just to watch football and not going to bars to watch football at that time. I'm just trying to not reinforce that, but it's challenging. I really do like it. Then I feel bad about it.

Erica Seldin:

And then there's something fun about sports. I wish there was a way to make it so that the end of sports wasn't to give money into the hands of owners, but it's the same as so many things.

Nicola Carpenter:

Yes, exactly. It's capitalism.

Erica Seldin:

Capitalism. Is it over? Are we done with capitalism? I think we're getting close.

Nicola Carpenter:

That's a different podcast, but I would come back for that.

Tim Cynova:

As we start to land the plane on this portion of the episode, what are your final thoughts, on this topic?

Nicola Carpenter:

Not on capitalism?

Tim Cynova:

No, we can go with capitalism. I've got an episode that I'm going to have to put together about the conscious capitalism movement and how it might not be all that conscious.

Nicola Carpenter:

Yes, I look forward to that episode. I think my final thought is that accountability and creating tools that help to build accountability is more important than success, than actually the success itself. And so many organizations are striving for just winning in some way. Winning in the market, winning against their competitors, coming up with the next best idea of being best in class, and that success can be very distracting.

Nicola Carpenter:

And in my experience when you have the best people coming together, helping each other and holding each other accountable for a shared goal, that you achieve success that you didn't even know it was possible. It's different from what you would write down. If you could write down a particular goal of yours, you might actually exceed it if you are focused more on the ways that you are getting there and how people help each other to get there than if you just wrote down the goal itself.

Nicola Carpenter:

That's what I hope for from the iterations that we're all doing around OKRs and goal-setting and all of the above. And I think that leads into what I like to tell people too is if they want to try it out themselves, don't worry about it being perfect because the wording is never going to be perfect. You're never going to have a perfect OKR, but that's not what's important. What's important is that you're having these conversations regularly, writing them down and then seeing if you did what you said you were going to do.

Erica Seldin:

Yes.

Tim Cynova:

Great. Eric and Nicola, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Erica Seldin:

Thanks Tim. It was fun.

Nicola carpenter:

Yes, it was fun.

Erica Seldin:

This is a side note and probably something to be edited out, but I've been having a lot of conversations in my overlapping self-organization nerd friend group about whether or not the problems of Holacracy are foreshadowing for the problems in democracy. And if it's the case that… Well, you have self-organization Holacracy and sociocracy are these accelerated microcosm of what's happening in democracy. And I'm compelled by that argument because it feels real.

Tim Cynova:

I was at Zappos probably 18 months after they started their experiment with Holocracy and it was also about the same time after they had been acquired by Amazon. It was a really interesting time to be there, and I was there for a couple of days. I went to their all hands where Tony Hsieh did a presentation on teal, whatever they were doing that quarter. And it was interesting to talk to people and ask them questions and have the very strong feeling that there was a lot going on underneath the surface that they were not telling you about. All of the things being thrown up into the air and being acquired by Amazon and everything else. And I'd love to go back and see where they are now.

Erica Seldin:

Yes. Well, you can do an episode about that with my colleague Alexis Gonzales-Black who is the part of that whole change there at Zappos and led the transition to Holacracy. I'm sure she has much smarter things to say about that. But it does come back to a point you made earlier, Tim, which is about how it's better than the alternative. And that's the thing we never… As humans, we're always looking for the downside or the reasons why it's not working and this negativity bias comes into how we think about stuff.

Erica Seldin:

But actually, it's important to remind ourselves as change agents and people trying new things and having these conversations about how things can be different, that it's not perfect, but it is better. And as long as we keep trying to notice what's not working about it and coming up with solutions for it, then maybe that's okay. It's a lot like OKRs and goal-setting, choosing your framework for how you do that, building transparency and accountability into your organization, building more equity, being on a path towards anti-racism and anti-oppression. I've made more mistakes in that journey than I could possibly admit and probably even more that I don't know, but it's just better than the alternative.

Nicola Carpenter:

I think that brings it back to what we were talking about earlier, is that these are tools to start conversations. And I think that at the end of the day, that's important because we're not necessarily having a lot of these conversations about what are we prioritizing and regularly having those conversations. I don't think it's necessarily the perfect tool, but it is something that gets us to do that regularly in a way that I think is really helpful and important.

Erica Seldin:

Absolutely, and again, writing it down creates more equity. It creates the opportunity for everyone to engage in a way that makes sense and then also gives permission to have conversations when things aren't working, which is something that's really hard to do, but something that we can all look back at and reference and agree that we wrote down.

Tim Cynova:

To close out our episode, it's my pleasure again to welcome back. podcasting's favorite co-host, Lauren Ruffin. Hey Lauren, how's it going?

Lauren Ruffin:

It's okay. I knew it was coming and I still almost spilt my coffee into the microphone. [laughs]

Tim Cynova:

[laughs] That's [inaudible 00:40:12] good morning.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yes. Good morning.

Tin Cynova:

This episode we spoke with Nicola Carpenter and Erica Seldin about transparency, accountability and alignment, because the OKR framework is a tool that we can use on multiple of these fronts. We spent a good bit of time talking about it, the pros, the cons, the alternatives. You've been working on the Fractured Atlas team for about three and a half years during the entire time we've used this tool. You also are a member of the leadership team as we work each quarter to set and articulate our organizational objectives. What has been your experience with OKR?

Lauren Ruffin:

At the risk of undermining everything that we do, I hate OKRs. [laughs] I hate them so much and they're like the dentist, which I also hate. I know that I have to do them. I know they're going to make everything better so I do them, but I don't get joy. They don't spark joy in my life, but they have gotten better. When I first started, they were really an onerous process. Do you remember when we had to do really lengthy everything?

Lauren Ruffin:

And I also feel like I didn't quite understand them and I knew that I'm not a dummy, so if I don't get them, that a lot of people in the organization really didn't understand how to do them. And it's probably really stressful for folks who are in positions of power in the organization to figure out how to do it. I'm glad that we've really streamlined our processes to make them more palatable. But some folks jumped right into them and really love them. It's not me, they're not my jam. They're helpful and I appreciate them, but the dentist.

Tim Cynova:

Has there been any tool that you've used in the past that you prefer in a similar vein that attempts to help with transparency, accountability and alignment?

Lauren Ruffin:

A lot of the organizations I've worked with do strategic planning, and they plan down to the quarter. Well, I should say I don't think that in those sectors, in the human services sector, in the organizations I was working, they were really as attuned with the Google trickle-down of OKRs, so no, we never really called them that. I also think that when you're in an organization that's making incremental improvements over the same four or five programs and two events a year in the non-profit sector, they're probably not as necessary.

Lauren Ruffin:

You do something two or three times and you get in the cycle of, “This is what we do every year and we try and make incremental improvements about it,” but naturally, staff knows what's happening because you're not really making huge organizational changes. But Fractured Atlas is an organization that really does need something like OKRs. Otherwise, people get lost and or they make assumptions, and assumptions are, that's the death toll for organizations that are changing as quickly as we are.

Tim Cynova:

Yes, I can think back to some of the organizations that I used to work for and it probably is 15, 20 years later, it's probably the same cycle. You create two new works, you do the gala, you do the season about this point. This is how we tour. After one cycle you've got it. But yeah, as you introduce more complexity and different types, like drastically different types of things. We have this software engineering team over here which is completely different or works in a different way and thinks in a different way than this team over here, you need some type of tool to help coordinate that.

Tim Cynova:

I remember when you came in, it was starting to get to be like, this is really… this is tough to do. We've got to like a lot of columns that we need to fill out. And it felt like it was moved away from what the initial interest that we had in it. And so quarter after quarter, I think we've paired back to, “Oh here's the thing that is the thing.”

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, and I also think it helps at the leadership team. We have clarity on where we're going in a way that three years ago things felt a little bit jumbled. There were a lot of priorities. Some of them were competing. The organization was in transition from a much larger leadership team to the four of us that we have now. It was hard. So yeah, I'm really glad that we've streamlined it. I also think for other organizations who want to do OKRs, you have to have like an OKR warrior. I know that we're trying to get done with the military terms, but I can't think of it, like you've got to have someone who's willing to go to battle like a happy warrior for OKRs in an organization.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. It really makes the difference that someone deeply understands the way it works, is positive about it, is helpful and in the face of skepticism and delays just continues to go forward with, “Yep, we do this every quarter and here's the thing that needs to be done.” Even when you're like, “Really? The quarter just passed,” we were like, “We're doing this thing again? I just set them.”

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Exactly.

Tim Cynova:

We set hours every quarter, every three months, and the entire organization from the leadership team setting organizational objectives, to everyone in the organization having it locked in, we do that over the span of two weeks. The first two weeks of every quarter we do that, so effectively you get two and a half months for your OKRs, but it never fails. It's like it just feels like we did this and I think that's part of the thing that I like about OKRs and the thing I hate about OKRs. Because you can see the end, but also it comes so quickly and you start to realize how fast time is passing.

Tim Cynova:

And especially if after quarter, after quarter after quarter you're like, “I still have this thing on my list and it's not done. So what's happening that I can't get this thing done that I say is important that I'm trying to dedicate resources to.” Just trying harder is probably not going to get it done the fourth time if it's been an OKRs for the past three quarters.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, I mean we settled on the quarter thing because at that time we felt like we needed to make quarterly changes like we need to track by quarter. I don't know. I also think that we should give ourselves the flexibility to figure out as we settle into, because we've had some of the same organizational goals now for a while. It'd be interesting to think about what would happen if we were to lengthen the timeline.

Tim Cynova:

Erica said that August does trimesters.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh, interesting.

Tim Cynova:

You get the three to four months and that might be just the month that you need.

Lauren Ruffin:

A lot of mine are, I put them on for the next quarter because I was so close to finishing them.

Tim Cynova:

Well, and for the leadership team, for the past year at least, we've been doing binary. You achieve it or you don't, you don't get any partial credit while the rest of the organization is still doing partial credit. So there are some things where 85% there, but it depended on this other person and maybe I should have written it slightly better, but it was a big enough project that I want the dopamine hit from completing it and crossing it off my list. It was going on the list next quarter.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, the lawyer training in me always wants to gain the words and the OKRs like can I add a timeframe in here or can I add a number that I can… Like if I put that number in, do I want to say complete or started, or just leave it kind of like let it just tail off so I could-

Tim Cynova:

Ruminated over the thing.

Lauren Ruffin:

Exactly. Identified and solicited, not closed.

Tim Cynova:

What does solicit mean exactly? It's like I've drafted the letter or?

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I mean, OKRs, I think they've been really helpful for us. I mean going back to the other thing, like I think for some organizations they probably would feel pretty meaningless.

Tim Cynova:

I remember the time before they existed at Fractured Atlas and it really was, if you didn't ask someone, you had to proactively go and ask someone what they were working on, if they worked outside of your team. That transparency and I also liked the breadcrumbs it gives. Like if someone joined tomorrow, if they had time and interest could go back and read all of the OKRs that we've ever created, that anyone at the organization has ever created. See how we've graded ourselves to get the flow for what's happened.

Tim Cynova:

But before that you had to say, “Hey Lauren, can I go have lunch with you and ask you what you've been working on because I don't know what you're doing.” And there was a lot of uncertainty even when we all worked in the same office, that then leads to skepticism and you're filling in the blanks that really with the wrong answers, and then it creates tension in teams that isn't helpful.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, I think you're right. I feel, especially for folks, it's been so long since I really reported to anyone other than a CEO or was running something, that that trickled down of confusion. I feel like I've always been in the loop on what's happening across the organization. But I think if I had been at an organization like Fractured Atlas 20 years ago, I would probably be really frustrated if I didn't have something like OKRs. For me, they're like, at this point, the annoying nut that's flying around my head. And I'm like, “God, I got to squash this nut real quick so I can get onto the real work of life.”

Lauren Ruffin:

But they are, like I do understand like how excited my colleagues are when we're talking about OKRs. Like, “Did you see what so and so's doing?” And I'm like, “Oh, actually I didn't, let me go look at that right now.” It helps you be a better manager, it most certainly helps you be a better colleague. And yeah, I do think staff appreciate it because a lot of the questions we used to get around transparency and what people are working on, especially since we've gone to the organizational goals cascading down, I think that really was the game changer for us.

Tim Cynova:

Right, before that it was just CEO singularly what their OKRs were, but they weren't necessarily… some of them were probably organization-wide, but it could have been like write a book and that didn't necessarily cascade in the same way. So yeah, now that everyone can plug directly into things, even if maybe their supervisor or their team isn't directly working on it, you can see how that rolls up to support the organizational objectives.

Lauren Ruffin:

So if let's say tomorrow OKRs are copyrighted patent and nobody but Google can use them, what do we do? Where do we go with that? How we modify them? Make not OKRs or would we totally… have you come across other systems that are interesting to you?

Tim Cynova:

Well, OKRs were popularized I think with Google, but they predate that to OKRs were originally called Management by Objective.

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm going to get an OKR history, what a great way to start my Thursday morning. Thank you, Tim.

Tim Cynova:

This might be the end of that history.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh, is that it?

Tim Cynova:

I mean, if you look back, I don't know when they started, maybe in the ‘50s, ‘60s, but it was a framework called Management by Objective and that's what OKRs are or became. And then with Google, really popularized the concept of OKRs or Microsoft, the Silicon Valley group there. I'm interested in two things that came out of our conversation with Nicola and Erica. Erica talked about how August has been focusing on habits, the habits that we want and tracking those. Also, what came up in the conversation was this idea of adopting an FTP framework, this idea from exercise, specifically I know from cycling where everyone is able to map what their 100% is because it's different for all of us and that then you work toward that.

Tim Cynova:

Not this 100% is equal across the organization we're trying to get 70%. What might that framework look like if you've meshed it together with OKRs? There's always the Bridgewater Ray Dalio alternative where you just videotape everything and all notes are public. That's probably way too much data, which I think is what they've also found out. Certainly the people I've spoken to who've worked at Bridgewater say it just gets overwhelming because everything is available, but that's probably on the radical transparency side of things and I'm not sure how well that actually tracks to performance and improvement, and connecting what you're doing on a daily basis to the organization's goals.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Can you think of a time when OKRs created problems for us? I also am skeptical of the former lobbyist in me is uncomfortable with transparency all the time. Have they ever created issues?

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, certainly from just people issues. When you put what you're working on and the entire organization can see it, you have to expect that people are going to read it and start asking questions. And then maybe it's not fully formed and if people see it in print, they think it's fully formed. And then you're like, “Well, it's an idea that we're working on and it's not really a thing yet. It might not be a thing.” I'm always reminded of a piece of advice Amy Wrzesniewski gave me when I was talking about this way before OKRs, but when she was saying it's not that people who want to make bad decisions, they're making the best decisions with the data they have available to them in the context in which they work.

Tim Cynova:

Defaulting to open, defaulting to more information allows people to see the context in which they work, which will hopefully, and usually leads to better decisions. And so I think there's a messy part though that exists when you default to open because it means you're answering more questions, you're having to explain things in ways that you might not have to if no one knew that that was a thing. But hopefully in the longer run, it's a net positive. I can think of a number of examples where that happened, but-

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, no, I get it. I get it. OKRs.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, I know you're a big fan of Patrick Lencioni. Have you ever experimented with the thematic goal framework that he outlines?

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh gosh, I am a fan of Patrick Lencioni's. I'm fairly certain I only work at Fractured Atlas because that came up during the first conversation we ever had. I don't play around with it too much. For me, the beauty in Patrick's work is giving people a tool, and instead of being that manager who talks about trust in a spiritual, you actually have a tool to be able to really talk about how important trust is in the workplace. And how when there is no trust, people's behaviors are just so convoluted because they're working in all their childhood nonsense in the office.

Lauren Ruffin:

That's been my big take away that and like death by meetings. Oh, what a blessing. Someone who hates meetings. I feel like the more these episodes go on, the more people are going to be like, “She really doesn't like working with people.” Okay.

Tim Cynova:

Do you know that then you can adapt.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, I know, exactly. Like the people, I want to work with three people. That's enough for me. Anything more collaborative than that is really too much, too much to manage. BUT death by meaning, I mean, organizations do get in the habit of having meetings and feeling like the meeting is the mission. And to me, those are the two biggest takeaways from his work in terms of helping organizations really have the language and the tools to be able to diagnose themselves.

Lauren Ruffin:

But no, the thematic goals get lost. For me, they're fine. I think we've implemented some of that, but yeah, no, I mean, those are my two big Pat things. I'd love to meet him, I think. I think, I'm not sure. His team's really, really wide and he has zero racial or cultural framework in his work, but-

Tim Cynova:

Well, that's something you can talk to him about.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, I want him to rewrite five dysfunctions but actually have a little bit of identity there besides gender, and maybe not have the women perform as men in the workplace. I'd love to see a deeper analysis of that work.

Tim Cynova:

I would love for you to write a deeper analysis of that work and then let's share it with Patrick, and then I-

Lauren Ruffin:

Like fanfic?

Tim Cynova:

Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

Except with organizational development.

Tim Cynova:

There's an audience out there. Look-

Lauren Ruffin:

There probably is.

Tim Cynova:

Totally.

Lauren Ruffin:

Five dysfunctions of your diverse team.

Tim Cynova:

Every time we talk there's an idea like that that comes out of our conversations, whether it makes it on the air or not, so I'm totally game for that.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, I think I'm going to update Laurenruffin.com but here's a list of all the ideas I have that are actually viable ideas that I'm never going to do. I have a list that's on a pad, but I need to just publish it so somebody else does it. I don't have time.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, claim the idea. Cross it off. Give me an update.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

That's a great idea. That should also be an idea on your ideas list.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Here's an idea, do it. I only want 3%.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. I just know they're like 3% of solid percentage.

Lauren Ruffin:

Listen, I can 3% my entire life and be okay. Can I just get the 3%?

Tim Cynova:

That's the next t-shirt, I'm going to die for you.

Lauren Ruffin:

It's not book supporting your family on 3%.

Tim Cynova:

If you're presenting your life.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Lauren, it's always a pleasure spending a few minutes with you and have these chats. Thanks for making time and have a great week.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, you too.

Tim Cynova:

To read more about this topic, find templates and a rabbit hole of related information, visit us at workshouldn'tsuck.co. If you've enjoyed the conversation or just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or a five stars, or phone or friend, whatever your podcasting platform or choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until then, thanks for listening.

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If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on iTunes to help others discover the podcast.

Decade in Review (EP.05)

Last Updated

December 31, 2019

It's the end of a decade, and Lauren and I totally missed that's what everyone has been posting items about. In this episode, we sat down for a virtual fireside chat to record reflections on the past decade. Soft launch your new decade with a look back at ours.

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guests

LAUREN OLIVIA RUFFIN currently serves as Fractured Atlas’s Chief External Relations Officer where she is responsible for the organization’s marketing, communications, community engagement, and fundraising. Prior to joining the team at Fractured Atlas, Lauren served as Director of Development for DC-based organizations Martha’s Table and the National Center for Children and Families. She was also fortunate to serve in various roles at and various positions at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Children’s Defense Fund, New Leaders, and AAUW. Before entering the nonprofit sector, Lauren held the position of Assistant Director of Government Affairs for Gray Global Advisors, a bipartisan government relations firm. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in Political Science and obtained a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law. Previously, she served on the Board of Directors of Black Girls Code. And in her spare time, she can be found mountain biking or gesturing wildly at the teevee in support of Duke University’s men’s basketball team.

TIM CYNOVA spends his time assisting teams and organizations with the things they need to create workplaces where people thrive. He is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR), a trained mediator, on faculty at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity and New York's The New School teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design and Leadership & Team Building. He is a certified trainer of the Crucial Conversations and What Motivates Me frameworks, and is a firm believer that Work. Shouldn't. Suck. He currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer of Fractured Atlas where he oversees the FinPOps team (Finance, People, and Operations, as well as is a member of the organization’s four-person, non-hierarchical shared leadership team). Prior to that, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville Courier-Press. Also, during a particularly slow summer, he bicycled across the United States.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi, I'm Tim Cynova, and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck, a podcast about that. On this episode it's the end of the decade as we know, it but for Ruffin and me, we actually didn't. Who saw that coming? Now that we've figured out why everyone has been posting those 10 year recaps on social media, we're game for our own reflections.

Tim Cynova:

For this journey into the past, I'm again joined by podcasting saver co-host, Lauren Ruffin. Lauren, how's it going?

Lauren Ruffin:

Hey. It's good. So, how is your vacation? You've got a nice fireplace behind you.

Tim Cynova:

I do, it's really heating on my back. So-

Lauren Ruffin:

You look a little red in the face. But we should really do this with a video at some point because this is amazing. We're wasting a video.

Tim Cynova:

Well, I've go one image that I'll post to show our listeners what this is like.

Lauren Ruffin:

Okay.

Tim Cynova:

So yeah, it's the end of the decade, neither of us saw this coming, but we've decided to go year-by-year and pick out something that is a memorable highlight or just something to fill the space. So we'll let the listeners be the judge at what falls into which category there.

Tim Cynova:

How did you approach your compiling of your top 10 list for the decade?

Lauren Ruffin:

I did one of my favorite exercises which is I just picked random dates in my email. I've had the same Gmail account since 2002 or 2003, so there's lots of nuggets of fantastic-ness in there.

Tim Cynova:

All right. Let's get going.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Let's do it. Are you going first or am I going first?

Tim Cynova:

Do we want to go one by one?

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Let’s just take turns.

Tim Cynova:

Okay, great. So 2010, start of the decade, what did you pull up?

Lauren Ruffin:

My random email from 2010 was my dad, an email scam, where my dad and I had started this charter school and it's a board of older people, and he apparently got hacked and it said he was in Mallorca, Spain without the money. And so, I wake up in the morning to all of these emails from old people being worried about him. My dad is definitely not in Spain. He is most certainly in Woodstown, New Jersey where he's been for the last 25 years.

Lauren Ruffin:

So that was my random email. But yeah, email scams were a whole thing.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. I like that. That's the second time I've heard that story. It still is funny as the first time. All right. So, for mine, I decided to flip through all of my photos on my phone starting back in 2010 and pick something that seemed like a highlight from the decade.

Tim Cynova:

For 2010, I have photos of us moving into our new Fractured Atlas office which you'll see a theme for how this bookends my decade. It was the first time I ever had a chance to envision what an office might be like. It was pretty generic though, it looks like an office from 1980s, 30 years later. That was the first thing that I came to. I had a lot of photos from that office, so it's more quantity than quality, I think, for 2010, but that was what I picked for 2010.

Lauren Ruffin:

It didn't occur to me to look at photos. That's brilliant.

Tim Cynova:

I think picking a date and looking in email is also brilliant.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, my list is such a random hodge-podge of randomness.

Tim Cynova:

We're only a year in, so-

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Okay. No, I have something to do for the next decade, actually have an account with photos on it would be a step up for me.

Tim Cynova:

Well, in 10 years we'll come back and I'll do the email and you do the photos.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh, I should also say that 2010 was the year I switched from government affairs, lobbying corporate stuff to the non-profit sector. That was the year it happened.

Tim Cynova:

That's nice. Well, and so that also bookends your decade.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I hadn't thought about that. That's why I need you.

Tim Cynova:

All right, so that's 2010. What's 2011?

Lauren Ruffin:

2011 was a lot of basketball games because I was playing in four different leagues. So there's a lot of emails about basketball, and the occasional one about volleyball. I don't remember playing in a volleyball league, but apparently I did.

Tim Cynova:

You just played in so many leagues you forgot.

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm a terrible volleyball player and I need to email people on that chain to be like, "Did I ever show up to these games?" I have no recollection of playing volleyball.

Lauren Ruffin:

And then Netflix. Getting the red envelope. I was getting emails constantly about what I was getting, what I needed to return, and then taking these to other people's houses to watch a movie.

Tim Cynova:

Oh, nice.

Lauren Ruffin:

Remember that?

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, totally. Yeah. And then, it was the person who had the Blu-ray machine.

Lauren Ruffin:

Nobody I knew had a Blu-ray machine.

Tim Cynova:

I had a friend that had a laser disc machine, but all he had were operas to play on it, so we never went over to his house.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Do you want to watch a six hour opera about somebody pulling a sword out of a tree?

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. No.

Tim Cynova:

No.

Lauren Ruffin:

No, I don't. Remember those mini discs? What happened to those? They seemed like they could have been cool, but they really never took off.

Tim Cynova:

They were so much easier to lose than the regular sized discs.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I don't know.

Tim Cynova:

I had a mini disc that had my business card on it for a little while when I worked at the Parsons Dance Company.

Lauren Ruffin:

And you hand it out?

Tim Cynova:

Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

Okay.

Tim Cynova:

It was the cool thing to do for a year.

Lauren Ruffin:

Huh. New York. Only in New York.

Tim Cynova:

You only could do them in the tray disc players and you couldn't do them in the ones that inserted in, and so once those became popular with Apple, whatever.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

All right, so a lot of leagues. That's great. And Netflix. Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

So let's see. 2011, I have that it was the fifth and final time that I attended the Tour de France.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh.

Tim Cynova:

I used to be a regular. Well, for five times, it was a summer vacation, to go spectate at the Tour de France. It was the year that I came to realize that it was disillusionment with elite professional cycling, and if it seems too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true, because that was at the end of the Lance Armstrong, where people were still doing amazing things and it was just getting too tough to believe. So-

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

It was still a great vacation, you just have to ignore-

Lauren Ruffin:

The drug scandal?

Tim Cynova:

Ignore the drug scandal and it's beautiful. It's castles and-

Lauren Ruffin:

Wealthy white men doing drugs in public, in plain sight.

Tim Cynova:

That's right. While everyone picnicked. Picnics along the side of the road.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

So quaint. All right. So that was 2011. 2012?

Lauren Ruffin:

The Olympics. Every Olympic year is a highlight for me.

Tim Cynova:

So you had a lot of emails that included information about the Olympics?

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Watching parties, or?

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, watching parties. Where are we going to go hang out? Yeah, no I guess I spent a lot of time thinking about the Olympics that year. There were a lot of emails of the Olympics. That was also the year Katie and I started dating. That was also the year that I got laid off from my first non-profit job. I didn't know non-profits laid people off. I thought only corporations did that.

Tim Cynova:

That's quite the list.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

You're covering a lot of bases on that year.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, I did, I found a lot of... There was an email thread that I found in September of 2012 that recapped my summer of the Olympics to a friend.

Tim Cynova:

What were the highlights of that?

Lauren Ruffin:

Talked about hurricane Sandy which, the house that I grew up in, slid into the ocean, and so there was a picture on the front page of the Express that day. I had just gotten laid off, so I had a job interview that morning, and then talking about me and Katie and how we'd started dating.

Lauren Ruffin:

So that happened to be the day, the email that I found for that day.

Tim Cynova:

That's a great email.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. No, it summarized apparently the entire year. I was done in September.

Tim Cynova:

Just play this one out for the next four months.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

What are your Olympic highlights? What do you watch? What do you have to watch for summer Olympics.

Lauren Ruffin:

I have to watch track and field. That's the most less interesting. It's one of the few. Basketball is an option but it's a little less interesting to me, but for me, it's track. How about you? Do you watch the summer Olympics or you a winter Olympics guy, or neither?

Tim Cynova:

I do. I seem to get really invested in obscure sports, but not every Olympics. I think I usually watch, at this point, winter Olympics more than summer Olympics. I get invested in winter Olympics in a way that, I don't know.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Summer Olympics don't hold it for me.

Lauren Ruffin:

I got hooked on winter Olympics, was it last year? Yeah, 2018? Yeah. I discovered this sport where you're cross-country skiing for a million miles, and then you have to do it with a gun, and then you have to take the gun off, lay down on the cold ground and shoot at a target, and then get back up and ski some more. I got obsessed with that sport.

Lauren Ruffin:

What crazy person said, "Let me just have these people ski through the woods in a pack with loaded guns on their back, lay down on the cold-ass ground and shoot at targets."? That is insane.

Tim Cynova:

I could see you getting really into actually doing that sport.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh yeah. When I was 16, if I had known this existed, it would have been all in. It was like me spending two and a half hours just screaming and laughing at the TV, being like, "This is amazing. Why didn't I know this existed?"

Tim Cynova:

I bet you're going to spend maybe half an hour on the internet trying to find places where you can actually go and do this, and then that's going to be a vacation soon.

Lauren Ruffin:

Well, that's the best thing about being in Albuquerque. All the outdoor stuff that I want to do here is around the corner. I can just go throw knives at a knife-throwing range here. I'm like, "Awesome. I don't have to do it in my backyard anymore.", where the neighbors got really angry at me downtown. Someone throwing those knives poorly at a wooden board makes a lot of noise.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. I might get angry for different reasons than the noise. Errant knives flying through your backyard. Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. No, metal slamming against wood at high velocity. The butt of the knife. It was so bad. But my attitude is as long as I can hit the thing, you could take somebody out with the pointy end or the blunt end. It doesn't matter. I'm just throwing them.

Tim Cynova:

Oh God. All right. The Olympics, great. 2012. Yeah. Just on the completely opposite end of the spectrum, that was the year my mom died.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh gosh. Yeah, that's more grieving.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah this is the regular point in our episodes where we talk about grief. So that's about all I'm including for 2012. That's a pretty life-changing experience.

Lauren Ruffin:

I have been thinking about the holidays so I'm hugging people a lot. So I'm thinking about the story you told about how your mom gave great hugs. I've been thinking about someone I've never met way more than is probably normal.

Tim Cynova:

You would remember the hug.

Lauren Ruffin:

I love a good hug.

Tim Cynova:

All right. So that was 2012. 2013?

Lauren Ruffin:

2013 is pretty short. The email I found reminded me that I was in my first development director job that year, and more basketball. Still playing a lot of basketball, still probably pretty fit and sexy. Yeah. That's it for me that year.

Tim Cynova:

Nice. Do you still play basketball? Still doing development-ish, so.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Not a whole lot. Just a basic year. No elections, no Olympics, no nothing.

Tim Cynova:

That's right. Just regular emails.

Lauren Ruffin:

Regular odd-numbered year.

Tim Cynova:

2013 was the year I biked the 340 miles from my apartment in Manhattan to Canada in two days. Started on the first day with a double century.

Lauren Ruffin:

Wow.

Tim Cynova:

And that's the first time I've ever biked 200 miles in one day.

Lauren Ruffin:

Wow. That's a thing.

Tim Cynova:

The idea was to bike Manhattan to Montreal because the alliteration is great. Montreal, I think where I was going to stop was about 40 miles north of the Canadian border. The first time I tried, it was about 50 degrees and raining and I made it 156 miles from Manhattan to Albany and pulled the rip cord. I was stopping every 10 miles at gas stations to fill up with hot water because it was just on the verge of being too cold.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. 50 degrees and raining is pretty miserable in the saddle.

Tim Cynova:

The next time, it was beautiful. It was one of those days where you get out on the bike at five a.m. and the sun is just coming up and it was clear skies, no wind. The 200 mile day, it was actually 202 miles. During the last two miles, a half mile of that I had to walk because I was going through an unpaved road.

Tim Cynova:

It was at that point, my legs were just cramping. I couldn't get my leg off the bike without it seizing up and I couldn't get it back on without it seizing. So it was this really painful thing, but it was a great day in the saddle.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. That's awesome. I can't imagine going that far, and then having to relearn how to walk like a little baby. How do you do that?

Tim Cynova:

If you're ever up for a 200 miler, let me know.

Lauren Ruffin:

I will, especially now that I have an electric bike. I can do it pretty much any day.

Tim Cynova:

What's so hard about this?

Lauren Ruffin:

What are you complaining about, Tim?

Tim Cynova:

But I made it to Canada, took a picture, hopped in the car, called it a day. All right. That was 2013. 2014?

Lauren Ruffin:

2014, from my emails, from what I can tell I think that was the year that I finally stopped bartending. I bartended well after I had a well-paying job just because I felt like I needed to keep talking to people, force myself to be an extrovert.

Lauren Ruffin:

Also, I worked really hard that year. So the organization that I was working for, the National Center for Children and Families, had its centennial celebration and it was the entire year. I found the host letter that we sent out in February and the thing wasn't until October.

Lauren Ruffin:

And that was my entire year, was wrangling a huge, affluent, incredible host committee and fundraising for the thing, and doing logistics for the thing. That was just the beast of a year. It was no sports, man. I couldn't find any. Did I play basketball? What did I do that year? It was just the centennial.

Lauren Ruffin:

We had people which had been involved with the organization who were still alive for 60 or 70 years. So it was wealthy, affluent people, and then really old people who didn't do email, so I was doing house visits, and they all had their memories that I became this basket of memories for this organization that was 100 years old. It was just a lot. It was a very busy work year.

Tim Cynova:

How were you collecting them?

Lauren Ruffin:

Paper. Paper, in my head, in notes, people sending letters. I had a lot of handwritten letters.

Tim Cynova:

What did you do with them?

Lauren Ruffin:

They're probably archived still at NCCF.

Tim Cynova:

Were they supposed to be in some book or something, or?

Lauren Ruffin:

Everyone had a memory of the organization. The organization was originally 140 acres and they sold off the land to build the community. So the entire community that is North Bethesda now was part of this orphanage, it's all Baptist homes. And so, there are people who are still alive who had bought the plot of land and built their houses in the '40s and '50s who were still living there, who remembered, who had this longstanding relationship with this organization that had these kids living on the grounds.

Lauren Ruffin:

There were kids who had grown up on the grounds who were now in their 50s, 60s, 70s who remember being there. So you do become, not the actual memories physically, you became this holder of memories that everybody wanted to be involved and celebrate this thing.

Lauren Ruffin:

But it was really meaningful and it I look back at my emails and remember how tired I was that entire year. I just worked. It was emotionally hard work, just a lot.

Lauren Ruffin:

So that's the second oldest Baptist home in the country. It might be the longest continuing, so the records there. One of the things that I really wanted to do that I didn't have a chance to do there was to really build out an archive. There was just so much stuff that I came across just, I'm not an archivist. But someone should do that. They have pretty meticulous records, there's never been a fire or a flood, or anything. Digitizing that stuff would be amazing.

Tim Cynova:

Well, for any of our listeners, there's a project there.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Seriously.

Tim Cynova:

Right, so that's 2014. My 2014, I have a random collection of things that I find very interesting. So that was the year that I visited Zappos, which was a highlight in itself. I started a daily micro-journal that I still continue to this day, where I write a one sentence journal entry at the end of my day, and sometimes include a photo, and it includes a lot of commas and semi-colons to make it one sentence and capture everything for my day.

Tim Cynova:

I read Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project, and she had mentioned something about that so I started that. So I still do that. And that was also the year that I got hit by a car on my bike and broke my collarbone and five ribs. So a little bit of everything in 2014.

Lauren Ruffin:

That is a little bit everything. Was your collarbone break the most painful break you've had?

Tim Cynova:

No, ribs are far more painful. The collarbone was annoying in that, until they plated it, it slides back and forth, and every time you moved you could feel your collarbone slide back and forth because it's not connected to itself. But the ribs, by far, were the most painful because you breathe, you laugh, you can't sleep laying down. You have to sleep sitting up and you can't do anything about it except just wait.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I've heard ribs but I was talking to someone not too long ago about breaking his collarbone and he's broken a fair number of bones. He said that was the most annoying. But he's also a basketball player so I imagine that I'm using the collarbone probably.

Tim Cynova:

It's also, if you could break one at a time, and then compare them then maybe it is, but five ribs compared to one collarbone, the amount of pain that was going on, the ribs felt worse than the collarbone. Yeah. That was my 2014.

Lauren Ruffin:

2015 right? Is that where we are? So 2015 was the year I got married, at the very end of the year, and I also think, in reflecting on it, it was the year that my attitude about work changed.

Tim Cynova:

How so?

Lauren Ruffin:

We had that conversation early on about work as a vocation and I stopped feeling like work was a vocation in 2015. I really felt like the work I was doing an NCCF was really meaningful. It felt like a calling to me. I grew up, my father started group homes, and I grew up with kids whose parent's couldn't take care of them. We had 130 of them.

Lauren Ruffin:

And 2015 was the year where I was like, "I just need a job, so I'm just going to go ahead and..." I hopped over to Martha's Table, we did a capital campaign, and yeah, that was when work became a job. That was when my understanding of laborer versus owner really changed. That was 2015, but other than that, I was, again, just working.

Tim Cynova:

As I look back on this decade, it was, for me, the decade that my relationship with work and understanding work changed, maybe because of the work that I actually do around trying to understand work, for myself and others, and I would say this is the decade that I found what my purpose is in work. But if I looked at other decades, it would be a different thing. It would be a different relationship to my work.

Tim Cynova:

Well, it's a good thing that this podcast is also about work because then we just talked about it. So, great.

Lauren Ruffin:

I did that on purpose. See how smart I am?

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. That's right. As if we had planned it. 2015, this is also... I came across a number of different photos in my highlights. It was the year I turned 40. It was the year I raced the Gran Fondo in New York, which is a 100 mile race from the George Washington Bridge up to Bear Mountain and back. Except for that other race, it was my sole race-race that I actually trained for.

Tim Cynova:

I went to Prince Edward Island for a vacation to cross something off my mom's bucket list for her.

Lauren Ruffin:

Cool.

Tim Cynova:

And the thing that they don't tell you, the thing Anne of Green Gables doesn't tell you is that in certain places of Prince Edward Island there's a lot of mosquitoes during the summer, so it's not very pleasant. Yeah. It's beautiful but you don't want to stop for too long.

Tim Cynova:

2015 was the year that my journey in anti-racism and anti-oppression began.

Lauren Ruffin:

Cool.

Tim Cynova:

It was the year that we really started doing work at Fractured Atlas and I found pictures of some of the sessions that we did together, and then as it related to training in crucial conversations that I did that year.

Tim Cynova:

So it was a busy year, a lot of different things, photographic memories and proof.

Lauren Ruffin:

Prince Edward Island. I felt the same way the first time I went to Assateague, because you read those books, Misty of, or something like that, those books about the wild horses on an island off the coast of Maryland. I feel like those books never mentioned the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes are unbearable, and the wind. It's a barrier island.

Lauren Ruffin:

I probably missed a big event that must have been maybe in 2013. I think that spring, I took Katie and the kids camping for the first time. We went to Assateague. We went there for spring break in March, and when we booked, I have this habit of booking things two weeks early because the weather is nice. The weather was beautiful when we reserved the camping site. We reserved it for the first day the park was open, and then there's a snowstorm that happened two weeks later.

Lauren Ruffin:

So it's me and Katie camping on a barrier island on the beach with wind. Enzo might have been two years old and Cassidy might have been five. It was winter survival. So there were these angry, skinny, hungry horses from the winter and they were wild and running around the campsite and I'm trying to pitch the tent and I'm trying to figure out what's going on. As I'm putting the stakes down, Enzo is so little he doesn't know. He's running behind me pulling the stakes up. And the wind is blowing.

Lauren Ruffin:

At one point, and it was actually really serious wind. It's maybe 20 or 30 miles an hour wind. We should not have been out there. And the tent falls over and smacks me so hard in the face I thought I broke my nose. But mosquitoes, islands.

Lauren Ruffin:

It was so bad that my dad, who doesn't worry about anything, he was at his girlfriend's house. She happened to live 15, 20 minutes away. I didn't have a cell phone so apparently he drove around the island looking for us because he was worried.

Lauren Ruffin:

He said he was outside yelling my name into the wind. I have this image of my father standing at the beach, click Ahab yelling. Yeah. Anyway. That's a flashback to 2013. Islands and mosquitoes. Ugh. What a trip.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

So where are we? 2016. Dun, dun, dun. The schism. That's when I started working with you.

Tim Cynova:

Seriously a highlight of a decade, getting to work with you.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. It might have been. Yeah. That was the highlight for that year. Low lights, I stopped playing basketball pretty much that year. That was when I started traveling too much to really be in a league. The

Lauren Ruffin:

That was also the year that the election happened and I talked a lot about moving to Belize.

Tim Cynova:

Every other conversation, you were mentioning Belize and looking into Belize.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh yeah. I had a lease ready to sign in my email. I was ready to go. Let's really test out this remote work policy at Fractured Atlas.

Tim Cynova:

That would have been too soon. Oh.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Too soon.

Tim Cynova:

All right. 2016, let's see. That was the year that I studied for and passed my senior professional in HR exam.

Lauren Ruffin:

Awesome.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. That was a crap ton of work, a lot of studying. I don't have a formal background in HR so it was three months non-stop of studying for that. Passed it on the first try so very thankful for that.

Tim Cynova:

That was also intertwined with our entire office renovation. I remember studying for that exam in different stages of prep for renovation, completely gutted, and then in our new space. So yeah, that was 2016 in photos.

Lauren Ruffin:

So I think your year is pretty front-loaded because I don't remember '80s office.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

I don't remember office number one.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. March to May was that part because our colleague Pallavi had to work from a picnic table in the middle of our... We had great cubicles except we took out some in the middle of the office and built a backyard with a picnic table, an umbrella and synthetic turf, and a fence around there, like a backyard fence, and pink flamingos, and a garden gnome.

Tim Cynova:

And we were all out of desks by time Pallavi started so she had to work from the picnic table.

Lauren Ruffin:

Knowing Pallavi, that's really priceless.

Tim Cynova:

I think Pallavi was excited that we didn't have that in the new office. A couple months sitting on a picnic table bench, not the most comfortable.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. And I also missed your exam, because I remember you, that must have been toward the beginning of the year too.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. I think that was April or May is when I took that.

Lauren Ruffin:

I have to tell you. Before I met you, I didn't know HR was an actual profession. I didn't know that people studied for things. I had never met someone who actually knew what they were doing. Yeah, I just didn't know. You changed my mind about it. There are actually skilled professionals in HR. There should be more of them.

Tim Cynova:

There should be more of them.

Lauren Ruffin:

Do you think you would ever go to law school?

Tim Cynova:

I thought I would go to law school. Early in this decade, actually, I was really considering going to law school, and then I thought, "Why don't I just take all of the books that my friends who went to law school studied before they passed the bar, and then just see if I can pass the bar without going to law school."

Lauren Ruffin:

New York is one of the few states you can do that.

Tim Cynova:

I got that far. And then I thought, "Do I really want to spend all that time studying for the bar exam or maybe...", and then that's where I saw HR stuff, and I thought, "This is actually the law that I get really interested in." Yeah. I don't know. I've got a lot of things on my wish list for life.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Law school is tumbling down toward the bottom. All right. So that was 2016. We've got three more years. 2017. What's on your list?

Lauren Ruffin:

Man, I only had one thing. Artist Campaign School.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. That was a great one. That's a great highlight.

Lauren Ruffin:

That's all I had.

Tim Cynova:

It's one of the examples that I go to when I highlight the diversity of teams, and thought, and backgrounds, and what can happen when that actually happens. Artist Campaign School is the perfect example.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

You knew the people, you heard what people were saying. It was the right moment and you just did it. We didn't have a strategic plan for that.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, exactly.

Tim Cynova:

MVP, and it was terrific. And then, someone came out of that, ran for office and got elected.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I talk about it on how non-profits and their boards need to be nimble, and give the staff the flexibility to do what they want to do. I just didn't hire someone that year, and did the program. I made the sacrifice that we were just going to pick up a little bit more workload because the program needed to happen.

Lauren Ruffin:

Not to spend forever and ever planning and fundraising and just do it. Yeah. That was the highlight for that year, and again, I had never worked some place where I had the flexibility to be able to do something like that. Every place else I'd worked would have made that so complicated, and I was like, "Let's just do it. Let's bring in a consultant, let's just do it." So yeah, that was my highlight.

Tim Cynova:

My 2017, I think the highlight is, it was the year I started to slow down. I bought a camera, an actual camera. It actually caused me to slow down on hikes, or if I went to the beach because I was trying to get the photo. Of course, that led to a whole series on site-specific bourbon that was an unintended consequence of having a camera.

Tim Cynova:

But that was also the year that I started meditating with regularity. Daily meditation, and also owning a camera and noticing what's around you in the world were highlights for 2017.

Lauren Ruffin:

That's awesome. So I'm two years behind you on the slowing down and buying a camera. I wonder if there's a correlation between camera-buying and slowing down.

Tim Cynova:

I think there probably is. You could take a lot of really crappy photos, I guess, but to actually figure out how you want to photograph something and you have to get up earlier, you have to stay up later, you have to try different settings.

Tim Cynova:

There's a course that Diane Ragsdale teaches, she created and teaches, Beauty in Business, the Aesthetic Advantage, and part of it is she takes business people without arts backgrounds out into the woods and just lets them stand there for a little while and just start to notice what's around you.

Tim Cynova:

And I feel like she was creating that course at the same time that I got a camera and I felt like, "Oh yeah, right. That's what that camera does." You just have to stand there and wait to see what's happening. And then, if it's not sunny, you've got to take different photos because photos with a gray sky aren't that interesting, unless you're Ansel Adams and you're shooting in black and white.

Tim Cynova:

So you have the new camera.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. It's New Mexico so I could take pictures of the landscape here, and the people, and random little... Katie and I were driving down the Turquoise Trail yesterday and stopped into Cerrillos, they turned the entire town into the set for Young Guns forever ago.

Lauren Ruffin:

We go into this little saloon yesterday and it's just gorgeous. You could just wander around New Mexico taking pictures of interesting things forever, and maybe that's just me because I'm not from here. I understand what as far as the eye can see means now. I've got bad eyesight and I was, "Whoa." But now I'm like, "Oh wow. Even my bad eyes can see really, really far."

Lauren Ruffin:

So yeah, but slowing down. Yeah. And I never was one of those people who had my iPhone out taking pictures all the time anyway. I take more pictures now with a camera than I ever did with my phone.

Tim Cynova:

The newest iPhone has a pretty awesome camera. I've seen professional photographers that I follow on Instagram that are posting some pretty amazing low light shots especially. But I think it's just a different thing. When you pick up a camera, you're doing something different with it than when you have your phone in your hand that also has a really good camera on it.

Tim Cynova:

The common phrase is the camera you use is the camera you have on you, or something like that.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I took a picture of local, neighborhood coyote on my little two megapixel Nokia phone the other day.

Tim Cynova:

Nice.

Lauren Ruffin:

I was like, "Oh, you can kind of see it there." So yeah, you're right. I had a camera in my hand and I used it.

Tim Cynova:

That seems like an Instagram feed you could do. Just photos on your Nokia.

Lauren Ruffin:

I've been thinking about posting that one because it just looks weird. You don't see things in such poor resolution anymore.

Tim Cynova:

All right. Cool. So, let's see. That was 2017. So, 2018. What's on the list?

Lauren Ruffin:

I moved to Albuquerque, 2018. Squeezed that in at the end of the year. And then Crux. That's when Crux really crystallized in my head, and everything that started in 2015 around workers and ownership, and tech, and everything else fell into one place. That was my 2018.

Tim Cynova:

That's great.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Oh, hamstring is seizing up. So I've got nothing to come back.

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm like, "Tim really didn't like that story at all."

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. No. Oh yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

Sorry. Do you need-

Tim Cynova:

The searing pain is, no, no. It will be fine. I've got a hamstring on one side, and then I've got a hip that might be getting too old to go running.

Lauren Ruffin:

They make new ones now that are amazing. It almost makes sense, I think, at this point to get new hips when you stop growing at 18 or 20. Apparently the titanium ones are amazing.

Tim Cynova:

It's probably not medically sound advice. So if anyone is listening.

Lauren Ruffin:

There's a reason why I'm not a doctor.

Tim Cynova:

So why did you choose to go the Albuquerque?

Lauren Ruffin:

Low cost of living. Depending upon who you ask, 320 or 340 days of sunshine. And just the pace. I've been done with the east coast for, God, probably 10 years. It was time to go some place else and broaden my horizons. It's a great place to live, and it's just visually stunning. Artists hang out here because of those things too. I think people who are ready to make the leap and who realize they can have a life outside of either coast, this is a really good place to call home.

Tim Cynova:

Crux is two years old?

Lauren Ruffin:

Crux is two years old. Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Time is flying.

Lauren Ruffin:

It really is. It really, really is. I think 2018 might have been the year when I knew how to do my job at Fractured Atlas too. It took that long.

Tim Cynova:

Well, it's not a typical place where you just go through one cycle and you're like, Okay, I've got it."

Lauren Ruffin:

Yup.

Tim Cynova:

Which is the interesting thing but also the thing that is exhausting.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, yeah. So I feel like I finally, by 2018, had a 90% understanding of the job. The job, we do so many things that just haven't been done before, so it was that, but the routine stuff, I'd wrapped my brain around by then.

Tim Cynova:

I feel if you've got to 90%, that's 5% better than I have at this point. Get above 80, and then it's like, "Okay. Great."

Lauren Ruffin:

You're dealing with people. People will always keep you on your toes.

Tim Cynova:

That's right. Yeah, if you could just operate at 50% if you're dealing with people, you're doing well.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

All right. 2018. It was the year that I was invited to serve on the faculty of both the Banff Centre and the New School. Yeah, my habit of saying yes to things that sounded interesting has proven to be deeply rewarding and extremely exhausting, because neither of those things are my full time job and they're a lot of work when I'm doing them.

Tim Cynova:

But that was 2018. It was also the year that we officially started our shared leadership team.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh yeah. Officially.

Tim Cynova:

Officially.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. We had been doing it for the previous year when Adam was on his sabbatical, so unofficially, about three years now but that was two years ago we started doing that.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, that's been really rewarding. I should have put that down.

Tim Cynova:

Well, that's shared leadership. One person puts it down.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

We don't all need to put it down. Just one of us needs to remember.

Lauren Ruffin:

We all might now be thinking that it's a great thing.

Tim Cynova:

That's true. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's totally a good thing. I was going to put that one down too.

Lauren Ruffin:

It was on my mind. I just figured somebody else would say it. Oh man, I crack myself up. Oh man, we are coming up on two years of that. Okay. I might have to do a reflection there too.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. Well, I think that's the exciting thing that we have the entire leadership team together and you're all going to be guests at my New School class around leadership and team building, so 2018, the strings are coming together on that one.

Tim Cynova:

So both New School and shared leadership, and then we'll share our pros and cons in other things with people who are interested.

Lauren Ruffin:

2019. 2019 was the year that I officially felt like I had three full time jobs at various points of the year.

Tim Cynova:

Seems to be a theme.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I had two with Crux and Fractured Atlas for most of the year, and then, thanks to you, Tim, I crossed something off my bucket list, which was to teach a college course. When that was in full swing for six weeks, that was another full time job.

Lauren Ruffin:

It was a lot of just karmic and intellectual, and also systems. The systems that people use to work really matter. And that became a full time job just because I wasn't accustomed to working with the systems and maybe they were a little clunkier than they should have been.

Lauren Ruffin:

But that was something you hooked me up with that crossed off my bucket list. I would love to teach more at the college level. I think it's something I've always wanted to do, but I think I'd be pretty good at it.

Tim Cynova:

Well, I'm glad that you're able to do that. I think that's a really exciting thing to watch you pull together from the idea that you had, of just an idea that you were thinking about doing, and then how it developed into an actual course that people were taking.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. The whole thing. Okay, so what's your 2019?

Tim Cynova:

So 2019, continuing with the theme for the decade, so I lost my dad earlier this year, so I lost both of my parents this decade, and also, on the less grief-related, fully virtual organization, and closing out the decade similar to how I started the decade with looking at how people use physical and virtual spaces to do their work and thrive.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. You've done such a good job with that. It's cool hearing the arc of everything at Fractured Atlas. You might be Fractured Atlas at this point, Tim.

Tim Cynova:

Ooh. That's a heavy mantle.

Lauren Ruffin:

No, exactly. You've done a lot. If you were to summarize your decade, for you, in one sentence, how would you summarize it?

Tim Cynova:

Probably something around what it really means to live and how you can use that information to help others thrive. How do you summarize your decade?

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm just torn between, I'm still not very grown up. I might be as grown as I'm going to get. I think this was the year that I grew up as much as I'm going to grow up. I still really prioritize fun, but I've gone from being a wilding Ruffin to being a little bit more anchored.

Lauren Ruffin:

I always think about mortality because my mom died when she was so young and I was so young, but as I approach her age, I'm probably thinking more than a healthy 38-year old should think about mortality, and it's increasing all the time.

Lauren Ruffin:

But yeah, probably just this is probably the decade I grew up. People grow up in their 30s, I hear.

Tim Cynova:

Thinking about mortality allows you to recognize what being present actually means, and I think that's, for me certainly, it's been reflecting on mortality allows you to show up in a way that's more present, and engaged, and more meaningful, and I think people deal with that at different ages, having realizations where that comes together.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, and I guess it's less morbid mortality. I've been on my own since I was 17 years old. I've always taken care of myself, but I've also crammed a lot of fun into my life because I know how life quickly can be gone. Sleep when you're dead. I'm legit trying to suck every ounce of life out of what I have.

Lauren Ruffin:

And for some reason, I feel like this is just a decade where I got a little bit more serious, maybe. We'll go with Patty Pan grew up. That was probably what it is.

Tim Cynova:

Are you a person who does New Years resolutions?

Lauren Ruffin:

I do.

Tim Cynova:

Are you currently making them?

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. They're good to ground. Yeah, I've got a couple. They're not super-serious.

Tim Cynova:

I have a to-do list of things I'd really like to get done but I don't make resolutions. We're recording this right before the new year. It would be the end of January before I'd go, "Oh crap. I probably need to write something down."

Lauren Ruffin:

I don't know. I'm continuously improving. So my New Years resolutions are, 1) I'm only going to wear sweatpants two days a week. This is going to be very hard for me. I anticipate that going quicker than a gym membership. [crosstalk 00:38:43] That's probably not going to last through week one.

Lauren Ruffin:

And then, my second is, I've never been to Europe, Tim.

Tim Cynova:

Where do you want to go in Europe?

Lauren Ruffin:

I want to go to Prague. I've never been. Whenever I've had the time I've not had the money, whenever I've had the money, I've not had the time, because of work. I'm going to go to Europe this year. Those are my two resolutions. But yeah, the sweatpants, I'm already going to fail. I haven't actually bought any pants. I don't have any pants. If New Years is really coming in a couple of days and I don't go shopping, which I'm not going to do, then it's not happening. I just don't have enough pants in my world.

Tim Cynova:

Go to Prague instead.

Lauren Ruffin:

So my New Years OKR is going to be at 50% for this year. I already know it.

Tim Cynova:

That's a solid percentage.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Well, Lauren, I hope you have a restful and restorative rest of the decade and look forward to seeing what's next in the years to come. Getting to work with you has been a highlight of my 2010 decade so very excited for the 2020s to roll around here too. Happy New Year, Lauren.

Lauren Ruffin:

Happy New Year, Tim.

Tim Cynova:

If you've enjoyed the conversation, or are just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up, or five stars, or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on iTunes to help others discover the podcast.

Workplace Journey in Anti-Racism & Anti-Oppression (EP.04)

Last Updated

December 28, 2019

In this episode, we discuss Fractured Atlas's organizational journey towards anti-racism and anti-oppression. We'll also discuss how unlimited vacation days, shared leadership, and fully virtual organizations can further this work, while at the same time creating new and different challenges.

Guests: Nicola Carpenter & Courtney Harge

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guests

COURTNEY HARGE is an arts administrator, director, and writer originally from Saginaw, MI who has been working in the service of artists for the last fifteen years. She is the founder and Producing Artistic Director of Colloquy Collective, an emerging theater company in Brooklyn, NY. Courtney is also a proud member of Women of Color in the Arts, and a 2016 alum of both APAP’s Emerging Leaders Institute and artEquity’s Facilitator Training. She holds a Masters of Professional Studies, with Distinction, in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute. You can find more information about her at www.courtneyharge.com and find her on Instagram and Twitter at @Arts_Courtney. Her credo (#HustlingKeepsYouSexy) is not merely a hashtag; it’s a way of life.

NICOLA CARPENTER works on the People team at Fractured Atlas, where she finds ways for tools and processes to better align with the organization’s purpose. She believes in tools so much that she sets personal OKRs every quarter. Prior to joining Fractured Atlas, Nicola worked for a variety of arts organizations including MoMA PS1, Walker Art Center, and Heidelberger Kunstverein, and she still has a particular love for museums. Originally from Minneapolis, she received a BFA in Art from the University of Minnesota and continues to stay creative through knitting and sewing clothes. She is currently in too many book clubs, but still somehow finds time to read books about organizational culture for fun. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter at @colacarp.

Interested in exploring the topic further? Check out Nicola’s collection of Resources for White People to Learn and Talk about Race and Racism.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck, a podcast about, well, that. I'm Tim Cynova and on this episode, Racism and Oppression, more specifically Anti-racism and Anti-oppression. And the work we need to engage in to co-create that future world. What can individuals, teams and organizations do to embark on and continue with this journey? We're joined by two people, Courtney Harge and Nicola Carpenter, who have a wealth of experience working together and separately to bring this work to Fractured Atlas among other places, the company which we all currently work. Both of their bios are included in the episode description and we'll learn more about their backgrounds in the work during our chat today.

Tim Cynova:

And their bios are packed with interesting work to things that might not make the cut. Both are originally from Midwestern States. That started with the letter M in both among a myriad of other fascinating things. Enjoy talking about fabric, shopping for fabric and talking about shopping for fabric. Conversations that I've had the privilege to listen to and have made me more conscious about the sourcing and sustainability of my own apparel choices. Courtney and Nicola, welcome to the podcast.

Courtney Harge:

Thanks Tim. Happy to be here.

Nicola Carpenter:

Yeah. Same. I'm excited.

Tim Cynova:

You both are deeply engaged in Anti-racism and Anti-oppression work, working together at Fractured Atlas in separate and other aspects of your life. How would you describe your activities?

Courtney Harge:

My activities, this is Courtney, are connected to one, just making work, a sustainable place for me as a black woman. I've been in a lot of working environments and so I tend to approach it like how can I thrive in whatever space I'm in. And so that includes running the POC Caucus, previous included facilitating the Anti-racism, Anti-oppression committee, in Fractured Atlas. It also includes doing the actual work that focuses on women of color and existing as a black woman in 2019.

Nicola Carpenter:

And I increasingly having these conversations realize that a lot of my motivation is to make sure that Courtney doesn't have to do it all by herself. And so at Fractured Atlas, I am currently the liaison for White Caucus and have been for the past three-ish years and kind of helped with Courtney form the current format for the Anti-racism, Anti-oppression committee and outside of Fractured Atlas. Just making the knitting and slow fashion communities that are quite White, better and more inclusive places.

Tim Cynova:

Starting with Fractured Atlas, can you talk a little bit about the journey that the organization has been on? Fractured Atlas is a non-profit arts organization with a public commitment to being an Anti-racist, Anti-oppressive organization. You both are deeply involved in that work to people unfamiliar with the journey that Fracture Atlas has been on and the work that we're doing. How would you explain it?

Courtney Harge:

I can offer that it's been a process. I walked into fractured Atlas five years ago, actually. At the beginning of January, 2020 it'll be five years for real. And the statement was made that Fractured Atlas was committed to be an Anti-racism Anti-oppressive organization and as a new employee, my concern was what does that mean? There's a lot of language thrown out, anti-racism, anti-oppression or diversity equity and inclusion work or diversity and inclusion work or there are a lot of words that happen, but what are you doing? And so for me, that moment kind of five years ago I was saying, okay, what do we do?

Courtney Harge:

And engaging with leadership thing about how does that play out when you're saying the thing and releasing the statement, that's one thing. But what does it mean in your policies? What does it mean in the everyday existence? And so there definitely been some steps that we can talk about more specifically like what some of those steps have been. But it has been ultimately the goal of we say this thing and then what do we do to back up the thing that we say. And that is I think manifested in a variety of different ways over the last five years.

Nicola Carpenter:

Yeah. And I think that at Fractured Atlas, it was started as a staff driven effort even before I started working here. And for a long time was talked about in relation to our mission, specifically the eliminating practical barriers. And I think that framing kind of helped the organization figure out that it wanted to make this commitment. And then yes, ever since then it's been figuring out how do we live up to this commitment because lots of organizations have statements, but do they actually do anything? Not so much.

Courtney Harge:

And to list some of the things we did before I joined members of the staff and the leadership team specifically to The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond Anti-racism Training. There was commitments to address hiring and making sure that was operating both in from a functional lens and from an anti-racist lens. There was commitment to all staff trainings as we persuaded with outside facilitators that kind of grew in length and purpose and really trying to create a baseline of what is everybody's understanding of what it means to be anti-racist and anti-oppressive. And then a variety of different tools that weren't necessarily specific to anti-racism but were specific to If we are understanding that something we were doing is an equitable, what can we throw at it? What resources can we throw at it to make it more equitable, to move in a way that is directionally correct.

Courtney Harge:

And so being able to recognize it doesn't have to just solve racism. Sometimes it feels like when organizations make these types of choices, they have to do a thing and it has to be, this thing directly says that this is anti-racist and it's like, or this thing addresses an equity as a whole. And sometimes they're like, well, if it's not anti-racist or if it's not specifically like about race and it's not fixing the inequity, and it's like, no, sometimes you can just do things better. That also as a byproduct will help support everyone. An example I'm thinking of is the Unlimited Vacation day policy. That's not an anti-racist policy. So much as it is something that allows work to not suck and having a workplace that doesn't suck actually becomes a tool to address inequity because people can enjoy their work. People can then bring their whole-ish selves and or can be more supported and that sure isn't an anti-racist policy. However, it is a policy that informs and it's connected to our values.

Nicola Carpenter:

Yeah, and I think that that's something that I've also recognized recently is that we've been on these kinds of concurrent paths of striving to be anti-racist, anti-oppressive and then also making work suck less and they have been kind of happening in parallel and at some point realized, Oh they actually do work hand in hand. I don't know. I kind of love that they work together and, working on The People team. It's exciting to think about policies in that way. But I don't know if Fractured Atlas would've ended up now if we didn't have that component along with it.

Tim Cynova:

One of the things at Fractured Atlas that you two get a lot of questions about. Because you both have written about A Race-based Caucusing that we do. We have People of Color Caucus, we have a White Caucus that meet on monthly basis and a lot of people want to talk to you both about why do we caucus and then how does that process look practically.

Courtney Harge:

The first thing simply, we started caucusing because we met with an outside facilitator who was like this is the thing you should do and we were open to the idea that we should do that thing. And I say that story, I want that to be an example of like some of it doesn't have to necessarily be driven from a giant external space or even a like morally motivated space. This is a moment of we needed to try something and somebody was like, this is the thing. And so we did it and it has been working for us. But yeah, it wasn't a deep compelling reason. It was as a result of working with a trainer, this is what they suggested and so we did it.

Courtney Harge:

Our approach, however, was very one I think driven by who Nicola and I are there ways in which we sat next to each other for a long time in the office and our energies are compatible. And so there is a bit of kismet in the sense of we both try to be really thoughtful about spaces that we cultivate and spaces that we operate in. And so given the opportunity to cultivate these spaces in accordance with these values and to do that in conversation with each other became an opportunity for us to be thoughtful about what these individual spaces were for the individuals who you're serving, but also what they were in relationship to each other.

Courtney Harge:

I facilitate the POC Caucus liaison for that caucus. And the practical thing is once a month we meet based on people's self-selection, people's identification, and there's an hour of space that's given to really talk about what is needed for the people in that space. And we recognize the White Caucus operates very differently from the POC Caucus. And I can give some insight into what the POC Caucus is like, but it is ultimately a container for POC to process whatever they need to be processing without the White normative gaze. Sometimes you just need a space to be a Person of Color without White input or White commentary or White observance.

Courtney Harge:

And knowing that hour becomes a very precious hour. Knowing that that's the rule of the space and it becomes an hour that can also be very casual. It can be very supportive. It can get really serious, but knowing that this is a secure hour in the day to just not have to engage with Whiteness as a whole, as a property makes it a really powerful space for us, for the POC who are experiencing and engaging with it.

Nicola Carpenter:

Yeah. White Caucus, as Courtney mentioned, as a different objective or our only objective is to talk about whiteness, which there are professional spaces where there are only white people, but there aren't that many professional spaces of white people talking about what it means to be white and what whiteness is and how white supremacy culture embeds itself in our organizations and work. It's really a time of education and there's often homework involved. We take notes and just in that structure there is some accountability involved. All of the notes are sent to the POC Caucus after the White Caucus finishes just so that people know what is happening and just have some transparency there which is kind of built into that structure and on the structured side.

Nicola Carpenter:

The White Caucus meets for one hour once a month. POC Caucus meets for one hour once a month and then Courtney and I are currently the White Caucus and POC Caucus liaison and we meet monthly and kind of I present what White Caucus did and what the topic was and go over the notes without the expectation that I received any information back from the POC Caucus, which I think is another important thing built into the structure.

Nicola Carpenter:

Also, at fractured Atlas kind of early-ish on the POC Caucus, gave the White Caucus the opportunity to ask questions and so we often try to come up with questions, but we also don't have the expectation that those questions will necessarily be answered.

Courtney Harge:

To speak further on that. The practice of accountability in this case being unidirectional like this, accountability goes one way in a way that everybody is aware of and everybody understands really is one of the strongest tools in de-centering Whiteness as a focus and in really practicing what anti-racist, anti-oppression values are because White supremacy culture centers White comfort and centers White authority in a variety of ways and so having to make an act of practice of de-centering White authority.

Courtney Harge:

Yes you White people are required to report and be accountable to this other group who actually owes you nothing in return. One is a challenge. It is worth knowing that that is a struggle. It takes a second to really understand because it's really easy to fall back into this concept of fairness, welfare reporting and we should be reporting and it's like, no, this is a corrective action. We have to in this space practice something different.

Courtney Harge:

And also even in the POC Caucus very early we had to de-center whiteness. The POC Caucus was receiving the White Caucus questions and they were spending time dealing with them and it's like there are no White people here but we are talking about what the White people need. Again, it's like this is not right and so it became a commitment that even if we don't have an agenda, whatever the White Caucus has asked us is the last thing on the agenda as a practice and so also communicate to the White Caucus like there is a strong chance we won't get to you.

Courtney Harge:

That's again by design this one hour of no, we are not centering Whiteness at all and it became the consciousness of the practice. This'll be the last priority and that makes engaging with it the highest priority. Making it a point to not bring that into the space unless we all choose, unless we all kind of consent.

Courtney Harge:

Making a conscious decision to deal with whiteness. And sometimes it's been like these are the questions from the White Caucus. Do we want to engage with them? Do we have something else we want to talk about? Now it's like, okay, we can spend our hour with this, but being able to choose become super powerful as opposed to trying to replicate this idea that this is a work meeting and so we need to be productive in a way that really is just replicating the ways that white supremacist culture says that we are productive and it's like no, taking care of ourselves is productive.

Courtney Harge:

Giving us the space is productive even if it's just the hour to exist. We've actually sometimes met at the in the first five minutes and decided that what we wanted was this an hour where nobody could deal with us, nobody could talk to us, so we keep the hour on the calendar and don't meet. The hour is to take care of us. It's an hour where we are not accountable to anybody else and that has been helpful, particularly in the transition to virtual.

Tim Cynova:

We recently realized that we have been caucusing on a monthly basis for three years as of this month, December, 2016 and it's right now it's December, 2019 which initially blew my mind.

Nicola Carpenter:

I know so weird how time works.

Courtney Harge:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

But that has been three years where we've not missed a month caucusing. As you also mentioned, there have been mandatory all staff trainings around depression, around racism, around disability and accessibility that have been part of this work as well. We've done things like the negative interaction document that would be useful to hear I think, but think about caucusing and looking over three years. What do you make of that besides the exponentially increasing passage of time is really not great.

Courtney Harge:

The POC Caucus is going through a really active transition and we're figuring out what that looks like. We still want the space below three years of having this safe space has actually meant that we need it less or at least we need it to be different. Where it was primarily a space for us to gather and support and hold each other up in a particular way that still exists there. But the parallel of three years of being able to do this work and three years of the organization actively making work, not suck and three years of just life and being able to create better tools, has meant that the container that we previously needed is very different from the container that we need now. Particularly again connected to this virtual work now that employees have more control over what their working space is like now that it is not the same coming to the office in engaging with the White gays in a workspace in a particular way.

Courtney Harge:

How we can serve each other and how we can support each other is different and what we need is different. And so that's been fascinating to really consider what happens when you get to the next level of doing the work. Three years of support leads to people feeling more supported. Now what nobody you do when there's still clearly issues to address or there's still space to address. But if the fundamental kind of baseline is people feel safe and cared for and able to exist more fully with themselves at work, then how do you go to the next level of care and respect for the space? And that is a conversation we are having in the Caucus.

Courtney Harge:

It is worth, we're all kind of all on board with we want to protect the space, but we need to really make sure that you're actively using the space and the resource that it allows us to have. But that was fascinating. That's just a question we never, I know three years ago we didn't think about what does it look like when we don't have to have this space?

Nicola Carpenter:

Yeah. I was recently looking at all of the topics that White Caucus has talked about in the past three years and it's been really interesting to see the topics that we come back to, the topics that change. Also, I was surprised at how many, I have facilitated, this is a slightly funny story, but the only reason why I became the White Caucus liaison is because when we were working with an outside facilitator was wondering who would be the White Caucus liaison. I knew that it was someone that needed to find some time on schedules and would meet with the POC Caucus liaison once a month and I knew that was either going to be Courtney or another person that I also enjoy talking to.

Nicola Carpenter:

It was like, "Okay, I can schedule stuff and I will for sure have a meeting with this person once a month." Great. Sign me up. But when no one was volunteering to facilitate, I quickly then became the facilitator for a lot of them and which I'll do and it's fine, but I don't think it's the most helpful for the organization to have only one person do that. We found an outside facilitator. Also, it's hard for someone within the organization to keep the group accountable. I think that it was helpful to have someone outside of the organization help us figure out what it means to be a White Caucus.

Nicola Carpenter:

And then we revisited and had someone do that again periodically over those three years. Yeah, and I think that we're also trying to figure out how do we get more people to facilitate and how do we spread that out to more people and I don't think that's necessarily something we've figured out yet, but I think it's something that we are figuring out and we do still feel like we have a lot to learn that there is still value in White Caucus and infinite numbers of topics. We're not going to dismantle White Supremacy in one hour a month.

Tim Cynova:

It's been an interesting challenge really because we're doing this work inside of an organization. I know many of our colleagues and coworkers are active in similar spaces outside of work, but having caucusing inside of a workplace where you also have people who are hourly and only have so many hours in the week to work. It's been an interesting constraints to have to figure out how this becomes DNA-level part of our organization to have the conversations. It's not the only thing that we've been doing. We think about the three years in the three years at Fractured Atlas that we've been caucusing on a monthly basis.

Tim Cynova:

We've gone from a single CEO to a four person shared non-hierarchical leadership team. We've grown our programs. Whereas you both have alluded to, we're days away from being an entirely virtual organization with team members currently in 12 States and six countries. That's adding an additional component maybe worry, concern that the three of us have talked together and separately about what does this work look like when none of us see each other in person but maybe two to four times a year and how might we need to double down on some of this work so that a virtual organization doesn't benefit white people but we're-

Courtney Harge:

To jump into that. It feels like White Supremacy like fills in the cracks. If wherever we are White Supremacy is the water and if there's a hole in the boat, if you heard mindful about it, White Supremacy culture or oppressive culture seeps into the cracks. It is about how do we engage in once we change but once we pivot into a place that we haven't been so where we don't necessarily know how to identify the cracks, how do we make sure that we are being mindful enough to keep White Supremacy at bay in the spaces that we can now that we are going into new spaces.

Nicola Carpenter:

And I think it also comes down to who do we look to when we're doing things like this as well. Because, I mean we really love seeing what other organizations are doing. And I don't know of that many other organizations who are fully distributed, who are also committed to inter-racism and oppression just based on talking to people. Because there are a lot of people who think that you can't have a conversation about racism on video. But my argument is, well, if we can't have that kind of conversation, how can we have any other kind of work conversation? If we can't do that, then we are not functioning as a fully distribute organization in a way that works. I think that there's a lot of things in here, but I think that we've gotten good at communicating virtually and I don't think it's impossible to have difficult conversations in that way.

Tim Cynova:

... I've had the pleasure of getting to do workshops with both of you always have a great amount of fun. One of the things we often start with is a disclaimer. We're going to tell you about our story. It's not the only story. It's certainly not perfect. We've made plenty of mistakes along the way. We couldn't even follow this if we were to do this again because it's a different place, different world, but what can we learn from other companies? How can we continue to iterate on this and how can we continue to share what we all in organizations have done so that there's more information that people can draw upon.

Tim Cynova:

I'm not sure how to do this thing. I've never read about it, so I must not be possible. I can think about the questions that are next. Well, how do you do it? Or what if the leader in the organization isn't receptive to it or I'm the leader in the organization. What if the board's not receptive to it? Is it possible to even do the work or should I go to a different organization?

Courtney Harge:

I have a lot of feelings about that question. I recognize progress is not linear, but go with me in the sense of like let's say progress is linear and it goes from like one to 10, 10 is the utopia. The utopia of everybody's fine, Everybody's taken care of. No racism, no oppression or whatever. One is the world's most racist organization, you know like the DMV inside of the Klan rally. The worst thing with all the hierarchy, all the terrible things, right? It actually is the same net gain. If you take an organization from two to four as it is. Take an organization from five to seven that gain is two. But the amount of work it takes to get an organization that is starting at two up to four, the amount of effort and energy and resources it's going to take to get you there, so much more than it takes an organization to get from five to seven.

Courtney Harge:

From two to four is still only two deviations of progress, but it's burned through you and for other people and they're still not even on the right side of history. Five is the middle. They aren't even still there. And so organizations and institutions will protect themselves. You are more valuable as a person than any organization or any institution. And so burning through you to get an organization from two to four an organization that is not doing some of the basic things that are just necessary is not worth it, frankly for me. If you can find an organization that's already at five or already at six and then you can use your energy to get it further on the right side of history, that is I think far better for the world and for you than it is trying to get a bunch of organizations that are on the wrong side of history to just be slightly less terrible.

Courtney Harge:

Because if we can tip the scales to where more organizations that are starting at five get to seven, eight, nine, 10 they can then offer pressure as an institution, as a field for these other organizations to change. But the organizations that are again at two three and four they're actually going to spend all their work trying to maintain that. Than they are going to be to like address the field. My short answer is, if you can properly assess what the change is and how you can make it happen in a way that's sustainable, that can maybe last after you leave, then make the change. But if you can't, if it's not going to change, and if you're again operating in the two, three, four level and you're going to burn yourself out trying to get them to make minor changes to quote LeBron James, "Take your talents South beach," go somewhere where you can be appreciated and recognize that frankly the institution will be fine, it'll survive. Take care of yourself over it.

Tim Cynova:

The six, seven, eight reminds me of the pyramid about the three ways you get people to do something or change. The top, being inspiring. You try to get the most people in the inspire bucket and then the next one is motivate. You try to get the next people and do that. At the bottom of that inverted pyramid is coerce. That's the other way, but it's oftentimes, forget it. They will never come along the amount of time it'll take you to get that group to not realize that they will not do the thing. It takes so much time and energy. It's better just to cut your losses and go someplace else or realize that's never going to work. I'll focus on the other areas where I actually can impact to change.

Nicola Carpenter:

I fully agree with that. And I also think that sometimes when White people say, well I can't do this because leadership doesn't want to, or I can't do this because the board doesn't want to. I wonder how much of that is the case. Cause I know that white people like to pass the burden to other white people. Sometimes I like to push back with that and ask, well what is something that you can do in your current position to do something? Maybe you won't be able to get a full staff training without getting senior leadership on board, but there's probably something you can do.

Courtney Harge:

And not everything requires permission. I recognize not everybody is comfortable with taking like work risks and I don't want to advocate or forcing people to do things that they feel are reckless or dangerous, but some of it is just like is the worst consequence of this and awkward conversation. That's actually not a consequence really. It is a mildly unpleasant moment. I guess to follow up on what Nicola's saying, sometimes asking what are the real consequences of this thing? If I like include my pronouns in my email signature, does that just mean that one jerky coworker is going to ask me about it every time? That's annoying, but that's not actually a consequence, right? Or am I going to have to explain it? Yes. Annoying, maybe, but not really a consequence. The impact is that somebody who's receiving your email may feel more open or may feel that you are better understood or at least can have a conversation about it.

Courtney Harge:

That might be it. I think about the ways in which White supremacist culture and work culture and professionalism really maintain each other in a variety of ways. They work to this culture of quote on quote understanding. When I say understanding, I mean this idea that these social norms, these ideas that we just aren't supposed to do this thing, but the thing that we aren't supposed to do is almost always a thing that holds up White Supremacist culture. I'm thinking about salary transparency. Where you're just not supposed to talk about what you make and it's like, well that's just so people can underpay you. That's actually the consequence of that. It's that people get upset because they find out they are being underpaid. And so being transparent actually helps overturn the system. But the norm about not talking about being paid is a thing to support the system.

Courtney Harge:

And so I think about other training that Tim and I did in Dallas. We went to work with an organization and I made the room say the phrase White people just say the words. Because we do a lot of time, we do a lot of work protecting Whiteness by not being able to say that this is the thing that's going to make white people uncomfortable. And we use coded words like donors. We use code words like the board, we use coded words like people. It's going to make people uncomfortable. It's like no, it's going to make White people uncomfortable. And one of the first things we can do is say the phrase White people in a professional setting. And so I could see we were in the room and we're getting pushed back and I was like, we're all just going to take a deep breath and we're going to say the words White people.

Courtney Harge:

We're going to get through this barrier together. And there are some people who resisted. And so then I said, I see some resistance. That means we're going to do it again. We're going to take a deep breath and as a community we're going to say White People and we're going to see that the office didn't blow up, nobody got fired. There are no consequences. We are just, we're going to call the fact that what we're talking about is whiteness is White People. And being able to say that is one of many first steps to being able to address the issues. But if you can't even just say whiteness, White People, White Supremacy, there's so much more really hard work after that.

Courtney Harge:

That like if that's the barrier, there's so many ways in which you're not ready, so it's worth it to know that when there is something you can do, but one of the things might be able to just say, this is a problem because of racism. This is a problem because it's oppressive. This is a problem because it is systemically a problem. It's not just a business problem. It's not just a, well, some people might be bothered by it as a problem because it replicates oppressive systems. Let that be enough of an argument for something to be addressed.

Tim Cynova:

One of our colleagues in the field was speaking at my new school class last year. He has a friend who was recounting the number of years of sleepless nights and stress and worry that people endure for the awkwardness of a 90 second conversation is amazing. You just need to have a little awkwardness for 90 seconds, but you're worrying about, should I say this? Should I not say this? You're lying awake at night asleep or whatever it is. It goes on for years and years and years for just, this is going to be awkward for a couple of minutes or it's going to be stressful. If I do this then I can move on to the next thing rather than have this as a blocker.

Nicola Carpenter:

Just put the information into the Shared Pool of Meaning.

Courtney Harge:

Yay. Shared Pool of Meaning.

Nicola Carpenter:

Tim led crucial conversations training and me and Courtney especially loved the Shared Pool of Meaning and talk about it all the time because it's just so good. It's like if you just put the information into the Shared Pool of Meanings, so many things will be solved.

Courtney Harge:

It's both perfectly accurate and also corny in such a way that it's just fun.

Nicola Carpenter:

Right. It's so corny.

Courtney Harge:

Right and all of the... I mean it's both corny and useful, it is like one of my favorite sub genres of existence.

Tim Cynova:

One of the things we often hear is, well what if we do this work in our organization and we lose people?

Courtney Harge:

I have an answer for this. I'm going to let Nicola go first because I get super excited about it.

Nicola Carpenter:

I was just going to say, well Courtney would probably say you're already losing people-

Courtney Harge:

That was my answer.

Nicola Carpenter:

... And then I was just waiting for Courtney to say it, but I'll just say it anyway. I mean we have this conversation a lot that you are losing people. I mean I think this works for any kind of loss of version. If you're afraid to lose something, how do you reframe that and show that your current situation is also losing something? I mean, I think that some of these questions are helpful, but I think that oftentimes these questions are coming from people who want to make it more complicated than it is, which is whiteness at work.

Nicola Carpenter:

But I think it's helpful to reframe it as also, I mean if you're not working towards being into racist, you're being racist. And so in various policies also people are like, well, Oh this is going to take so much time and effort and how are we going to do this? And it's like, well you're already being racist. So what is your argument to continuing being racist?

Courtney Harge:

I love to make people argue for the racism because very few people... It becomes a fun, like rhetorical trick. But very few people want to be on the wrong side of history. And so if they can talk way out of being on the wrong side of history, they will. And so that's why we get some of these questions around like, well, if we lose people or it'll be difficult or it'll be there. And by presenting the fact that not doing this is racist, so now I need you to make an argument for keeping the racist thing for doing the racism, right?

Courtney Harge:

If you're going to do a racism, choose it, and you have to convince me that that's the better answer, that the racism is the right one, and all of a sudden it becomes much easier for people to do the other thing, because very few people want to go on record and say, I want to do the racist thing. I want to be a racist. There are people who do that, right? Here's a whole subset of people who are like, no, I choose the racist thing and that's fine, but the majority of people who don't want to be in that group when forced to argue for racism won't. There are just ways to talk about the reframing.

Courtney Harge:

You're already losing people. If you have staff of color or even staff who are just uncomfortable with perpetuating racist systems, one, very few people are going to tell you that in their exit interview. They aren't going to be like, PS, this department is hella racist and so I don't want to be here. That's not how people communicate. It's not how people communicate at work. Partially because oftentimes we can't say racism at work. It becomes this proving how racist it was. It becomes this whole thing and it's just much easier to say, I got a different commute or I want a new opportunity or I just got a better offer and it's been really great to work here and now I'm just ready to move on. Those phrases do a lot of work to cover what they want because particularly if they feel like this working relationship with you was over, they are going to invest in the 90 second awkward conversation about saying, well I think you're racist because they're already exiting.

Courtney Harge:

They're already done. If you know that, and if you see that like, hey, we keep losing some really great people and Oh well it's just not the right opportunity. Consider that there's a bunch of stuff that you don't know that may be why they are actually leaving and that's why you're losing them. Just because you're the one donor would be like, well I'm uncomfortable with this and so I'm going to stop because we're an arts organization so I'm going to stop supporting it because you guys are getting political.

Courtney Harge:

That donors may say that thing or that board member may say that thing, but and so sure that looks like that's why you're losing them. But again, there are all the other staff members who are dealing with toxic environments, who are dealing with like racist and oppressive policies are just not vibing with what you're doing because they can see what you value and they aren't going to say that. They're just going to assume that you're not going to listen to anyway and they're going to walk out.

Nicola Carpenter:

I actually think this is similar to when people say, well, I just can't find diverse candidates for this job opening. I like to push back and I was like, why? Why is that? What are you projecting to the world that is causing that? There are lots of people out there, there's lots of very qualified people and maybe there's a reason why they're not applying to jobs at your company.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, there's 7 billion people in the, I'm reminded of a comment, one of our awesome board members said when confronted with someone saying, "How do we do the work? What do we do and do we need a plan or something?" And she said, "When I decided I want to be a vegetarian, I just stopped eating meat one day." I didn't have a strategic plan. I didn't go into a planning process or anything. One day I ate meat, the next day I didn't. What's the equivalent of that to this work? We often use the question, what can I do right now to move towards what I really want? You don't need to ask permission to introduce yourself with your pronoun. You just do it. What else do you want people to know?

Courtney Harge:

Well, don't be afraid to fail. Nobody's going to fix racism. You can't. We want racism to be fixed and oppression to be fixed, but it is not a one size fits all multi-year analogy is great about how doing things like it is not vegetarianism. It's like, Oh, today we eat meat and tomorrow we don't eat meat. It is like today we're racist and tomorrow we're not racist. Right? Racism is a system. And so acknowledging the ways in which we participate in the system is helpful and knowing that we're all going to fail at some point, but then we have to keep doing something else. We've talked about oftentimes there are policies where like people try to actually nickel a story where somebody is like, we're looking for candidates and we submitted a job application and we just, we just didn't get the right candidates. The assumption is that well the candidates aren't out there, which isn't true.

Courtney Harge:

Because the candidates are out there. Okay, so you didn't do it and so you don't just make the hire. Actually you do the thing where you go back and you fix your process and you come back or you say, hey, is our workplace actually safe for People of Color? Is that why they aren't applying? You have to maybe ask more questions and you might find these failure points that you have to fix that aren't about implementing a EDI program. They are like, "Oh, our hiring is fundamentally problematic." Racist is one of the issues.

Courtney Harge:

Yeah, do things. Know you'll fail and then keep doing them. Whatever you can do, throw everything at it because racism is the train. Everybody likes to think that progress is a train and if progress gets far enough, then we will have fixed racism and that's not true. The train is racism and all we can do is throw whatever we have at it to slow it down a little bit. And so if you threw something at it and the trained in stop it all, keep throwing things at it, you have to.

Nicola Carpenter:

I think one thing that I would want people to take away also is that you're not doing this alone, that lots of people are doing this and any idea that you have, there are probably lots of people that are also working on it. And I think that there have been times in the past years where it can feel slightly lonely. Like if you talk to your friends. I mean especially as a white person, you're talking to friends, they're like, what are you talking about? I don't know what you're talking about. Which can sometimes feel weird, but there are so many people doing so much work and finding those people and working with people I think can kind of counteract some of them. A lot of people are doing it, which can make it less discouraging.

Tim Cynova:

Well, Nichola in the description for the episode, I'll include a link for the resources that you compiled from a variety of places, specifically for white people to talk about race and racism. It's a lengthy, an incredible list of various media. What are the other things we've done at fractured Atlas was to create a negative interaction guide. Courtney, can you talk about how that came to be, what that is?

Courtney Harge:

To go to something I said a bit earlier, sometimes it's not just about doing the thing that is anti-racist, it's about doing the thing that fixes a problem. And so this is an example of the majority of our customer service I've had the time where a young woman of color and we're noticing, just like observationally that they were staying on the phone in negative interactions. Just way too long. And so this is the thing where it's just like customer service. It's ingrained. You're talking to people and this notion that the customer is always right was translating into kind of a racist practice where they were enough members particularly are a kind of White middle-class artists. Were basically using the time to yell at these young women of color. Nobody is saying that. I don't think anybody's making that choice or it's like, I am a white person and I'm going to call and yell at this person because that's just what I want to do today.

Courtney Harge:

That's not how it's going. But it ended up being falling into this customer service mentality that meant that people felt like they could not get off the phone because this was a member and this person was paying or was going to engage in our services, that the power imbalance was automatically in their favor and that if they complained or if they exited the conversation or something, that the institutional power would not support them. Those are the assumptions and I remember having a conversation with our then CEO about it. He was like, why would you think that was like part of the question? It was like there's no way that if somebody's mistreating you and if somebody's like that, that's not it. And I was like, it's easy for you to say that partially as a white male, partially because a lot of white men in power have said that and then have fired people who went against that.

Courtney Harge:

And so it becomes something that people say, but there is a visceral understanding that that's not how institutional power plays out. Even if somebody is saying that that's how it will. And so the negative interactions document kind of came from really understanding that and saying we have to make explicit both what people on staff's options are and what the support will be if they choose to enact those options. And it was very important to me that the document did a few things. One that it gave a variety of options without prioritizing or ranking the options. Because people have different capacities. I'm a talker. I can talk through most things, it particularly uncomfortable or possibly confrontational interactions, but that is a particular skillset connected to my personality. Not everybody can do that. A lot of people, particularly if they are faced with something that is racist or sexist or just outright rude, shutdown and can't process through what's necessary to like continue the confrontation or even to continue the interaction.

Courtney Harge:

And so by having a list of eight different tools, including being able to hang up on somebody, no question to ask, just hang up the phone allowed people to one, be able to trust their own instincts, know where they are in a space and act accordingly. Two, it didn't prioritize one solution over another so that, and if people are in different spaces or differently resourced or if the level of disrespect was different, they can make a different choice and it detailed how senior staff would support them in that space. You hang up on somebody. Specifically right away you don't have to try to justify why you hang up. You can just simply say, I hung up here is the number so that person can't call back and continue to harass or bother other people and knowing that somebody who has more institutional power than you then is responsible for taking care of it.

Courtney Harge:

You don't have to manage both that person and your feelings and your manager. You can just say, I had to walk away from this. This is what's up, and that has been I think, helpful for staff, but it is also really just led to a conversation around how do you trust your instincts and how do you take care of yourself in these interactions that prioritizes the fact that you are the person working here. You're the team member, you have the skill set, you have the information and the customer is coming to you for your expertise. They don't get to both ask you for your expertise and beat you up for it. You can't do both of those things and if we are in community with each other, we can all respect each other and I'll be in community and be equitable in this community.

Tim Cynova:

What are the next things we did with that was that you publish that online. There's a public document that anyone who's a member who is interacting with us can see. If you go to workshouldn'tsuck.co it's linked there, it's on the Fractured Atlas blog. I know of organizations who have taken that and repurposed it in their own organizations as a document to guide interactions, but for those who call in and engage in that type of behavior, it's public. We say exactly what we're going to do and what people have available to them.

Courtney Harge:

Yeah, because it's helpful. Again, I believe in transparency and accountability and sometimes people want to prioritize simplicity and I believe things can be simple. But I think actually it's more important to say this interaction can be complicated. These are all of the tools we have at our disposal to deal with it. And so you knowing that choose to kind of misbehave, then you also know what the consequences are. That is helpful. And so that people who choose to misbehave are making a choice. Are in fact doing that and so they know what that response could be. It becomes, for me also both a matter of consent, a matter of transparency, but also making the implicit explicit is a strong driving force for me. The ways in which I talked about norms and talked about like these things that are understood and it's like, or we can take the understood and write it down. And if we're committing to it, then everybody knows what the rules are.

Courtney Harge:

But our working knowledge is based on this. Well, we just know that this is just how it's done. Again, that's where racism, White Supremacy, that's where it seeps into the cracks. Normally, this is just how it's done this is the racist way we've learned how to do it. And we can make changes, particularly once we take these implicit biases or these implicit understandings and make them explicit and make choices about what they are.

Nicola Carpenter:

I do actually love that to tell people, re-examine anything where your answer is, this is just how it's always been done. Because those are the things you don't necessarily think about. It's not necessarily the obvious things, but those are the things that probably need the most changing or to be explicit. Otherwise, yeah, you get those cracks.

Tim Cynova:

Courtney and Nicola, thank you so much for your time today for joining the podcast for your work you do at Fracture Atlas. Getting to work with both of you on this work and through Work. Shouldn't. Suck and thinking of new ideas to put Work. Shouldn't. Suck on whether it be buttons or track jackets.

Courtney Harge:

I want the tracksuit.

Tim Cynova:

We'll see what 2020 brings. It could be the year of the Work. Shouldn't. Suck tracksuits.

Nicola Carpenter:

With the anniversary gift Tim, come on.

Tim Cynova:

It's a perfect gift to give. It's a gift that says "Happy Fifth Fractured Atlasversary."

Courtney Harge:

Yes.

Tim Cynova:

It's an absolute pleasure getting to work with both of you and I want to thank you for your time today. If you want to follow along with Courtney and Nicola's adventures, you can follow them on Instagram and Twitter at @Arts_Courtney and @Colacarp. It's my pleasure to welcome back to the podcast everyone's favorite co-host, Lauren Ruffin. How's it going Lauren?

Lauren Ruffin:

It's good. And I am still everyone's favorite podcast co-host.

Tim Cynova:

Two consecutive episodes running.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

In this episode about Racism and Oppression in the workplace, I talked with our colleagues, Courtney Harge and Nicola Carpenter. We chatted about the work that they'd been deeply involved in at Fracture Atlas. I want to get your take as a co-CEO in an organization that you joined relatively early in our Anti-racism, Anti-oppression journey with also perspectives and other organizations doing the work. Want to get your thoughts on what that journey has been like for you and how is it the similar or different or met expectations or didn't?

Lauren Ruffin:

I just think the journey of our organization is sort of watching the personal journey of our colleagues in so many ways. I go back to starting at Fractured Atlas in the summer of 2016 where I feel like I walked in the door in June and was like, "That man is going to win." Do you remember, I was like, "Are we serious about remote because I'm moving to Belize. Do you remember that?

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. I do.

Lauren Ruffin:

And you all were like no, he's not going win. I'm like, "Oh, he's going to win." And I'm moving to Belize. But going from having those early conversations with White male colleagues like you, and it's been, I think really rewarding to watch you and Shawn, your personal journeys as white dudes and quietly Tim, you're like a bit of a radical in a way that like a preacher's son, probably never from Indiana. You've gone from really sort of just thinking everyone should be treated equally, which is a beautiful place to be in. But also recognizing that that's not what happens in the world and standing up at a conference full of white guys and being like, you're not diverse enough and everything you're saying is BS until you get better until you get people of Color on this panel.

Lauren Ruffin:

I mean, I think an organization's journey is really a journey of individuals. I think Fractured Atlas has come a long way because the White people in our organization were willing to do the work and the People of Color and the overwhelmingly sort of Black female population, I would say makes up our People of Color on staff. I think we've been willing to struggle together. And that doesn't really happen, but we have the people on staff who are willing to do it together. And that to me has been the coolest thing about watching it because I think a lot of organizations just don't have the staff or the culture to really be able to struggle together and to make mistakes and to be patient with each other.

Tim Cynova:

We work on the leadership team together. It's a unique group of the four of us and you and Polity do not let Shawn and I off the hook on a thing and it's made real change in the way that I look at my own journey and my responsibilities as a White man and what needs to be done in organizations. You're always helping with, you should read this thing or you probably shouldn't include that quote because that person was a racist.

Lauren Ruffin:

I forgot about that-

Tim Cynova:

... It kind of really-

Lauren Ruffin:

... I'm not a racist. It says that person was an actual Nazi.

Tim Cynova:

... Good and done in a caring way. We're like, Oh God, I had no idea and now I need to yet again. Something I need to add to learn more about and as I go through this personal journey, it's one of those things where the more you learn, the more you know that you don't know and the more that you just need to read more and-

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm always amazed by how our history has been whitewashed and even the history that we think is radical or we sort of take for granted. It's been simplified and it's sort of turned our brains to mush and really stifled our ability to analyze and think and speak and engage with each other critically. And it just makes me crazy. But we could all read, we can spend the rest of our life reading about race and racism and then the more we read, the more we learn that it's not just people of color and black people in particular in this country who have been, a native people who have been really oppressed and held back. But White folks suffer from it too.

Lauren Ruffin:

And I think that's the piece that folks don't really think about. I will also say in the workplace that the conversation that you've had at a leadership team level have been sort of my probably least professional conversations at moments where I just completely blow my lid at somebody. It's been about just like what the (beep) I can't remember who I unloaded on the day after the election. I can't like white guy facial blindness. I can't remember, which one of you white guy said something about let's just wait and see what happens. And I was like, what's the (beep) talking about?

Lauren Ruffin:

I just totally unleashed on somebody and I don't remember where it was but passion and professionalism often walk very different paths. I am like the grace of the organization to put up with me and my mouth when I'm like, this is absolutely unacceptable. It's also something that I think is really unique to Fractured Atlas.

Tim Cynova:

We talk about traits of high performing teams and how trust and psychological safety. I think also the willingness to be vulnerable. I think those are three things that come together that allow us on the leadership team to have conversations that we might not otherwise have in leadership team settings outside of this organization. And I think that's why I find that group to be, well I don't think I'll ever find another group like that in a professional setting. And it's one of those moments where I see this right now and I realize this and that makes it even more special to be a part of that group as you grow personally and professionally because you have people willing to say because they care that is completely messed up.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, it is a weird thing. It's also weird to work someplace where in this particular regard, even though it is not perfect, it's likely to be the, I would say unless the four of us worked together again, you know like after we transitioned from Fractured Atlas, it might end up being maybe the healthiest work environment to do this sort of work in a way that's challenging and respectful and yeah, it's a really good place to be. It's weird to be in the thing. And know that because usually when you miss a job, it's after you're gone and when you left, you're like, man F this place.

Tim Cynova:

It's funny. You're saying, yeah, we could just all work together and be like, "Oh right. We could just all work together and we still have that." When I was a cashier at a grocery store, as my high school job, someone came through and I rang them up and all their groceries equal to $100 and they're like, "I could never do that again." And I said, 'Well you still buy the same groceries."

Lauren Ruffin:

Okay, good to know High school Tim was exactly the same.

Tim Cynova:

What about you said like, "Oh, we could all just work together again." I'm like, "You are right."

Lauren Ruffin:

We could just work together forever. I mean that could happen. It can happen.

Tim Cynova:

Speaking of workplace culture. We recently were on a Slack chat with Courtney and Nicola about the verge article about a [inaudible 00:53:50] corporate culture. It's an article that seems to have prompted the resignation of their CEO. Courtney said it also because she knows I have an away bag. I remarked that, oh God, as an owner of an away bag, I'm now greatly conflicted about I really like my bag, but what does it represent? To which she responded, "I got to tell you everything that we love is tainted, which is why my only brand loyalty lies with Celine Dion." If she's terrible, I'm officially staying in the house for the next 40 years. I did not [crosstalk 00:54:21]-

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm just saying, she's been in public forever and she's amazing.

Tim Cynova:

I did not expect that that was... That the sentence that was going to be a part of our conversation there.

Lauren Ruffin:

What? The Celine Dion point or all your favs are terrible?

Tim Cynova:

No, I did not see Celine Dion coming in that conversation.

Lauren Ruffin:

I think in a future episode we should interview former colleagues of mine and people who've known me forever, who know how I was a stand before stands were thing, for Celine Dion.

Tim Cynova:

Maybe just like a birthday episode for you.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Maybe it's like this is your life. But for everyone who has a Celine Dion story about me.

Tim Cynova:

Have you ever met her?

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh my God, I can't. Like you said it and my heart jumped. For Christmas one year I got the album that she did with Barbara Streisand. I love her.

Tim Cynova:

It's amazing.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

This is so beautiful.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, but all your faves are really problematic and that's why I vet my people very carefully because I can't deal with a heartbreak. I'm a delicate flower, Tim.

Tim Cynova:

Oh, well on that note Lauren, thank you again for joining the podcast as America's favorite co-host. And until next time, thanks.

Lauren Ruffin:

Thank you.

Tim Cynova:

If you've enjoyed the conversation or just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on iTunes to help others discover the podcast.

Working While Grieving (EP.03)

Last Updated

December 20, 2019

The process of grieving in the workplace goes often undiscussed. This episode connects with people who have experienced the death of loved ones while working, and explores how we might improve this journey that most of us will confront during our careers.

Guests: Sophia Park, Melissa Haber, Jim Rosenberg

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guests

SOPHIA PARK is part of the External Relations team at Fractured Atlas. She studied neuroscience at Oberlin College, and conducted research in neurotoxicology and neurodegenerative disorders before pivoting into the arts. Before joining Fractured Atlas, she worked at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She loves the arts, and runs a small exhibition project called Jip Gallery based in New York City. She is also a writer - you can find her writing in StrataMag and Womanly. In her spare time, she likes to run longer than normal distances, find a good spot to go salsa dancing, or sit in front of art work she enjoys.

MELISSA HABER is the Assistant Director of Volunteer & Student Services at Montefiore Medical Center. Previously, she was a Project Manager for Community Workforce Programs at Montefiore. Melissa was born and raised in southern Brazil and moved to the United States as a teenager. She has a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Boston University, and master’s degrees from Sarah Lawrence College (Health Advocacy) and New York University (Arts Administration). She is passionate about increasing equity in the health care workforce, eliminating disparities in outcomes, and improving patient experience. In her previous career in Development, Melissa raised funds, wrote grants and planned events for organizations such as the Joyce Theater, Parsons Dance, and the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center. Melissa lives in Westchester with her husband, daughters (ages 10 and 13) and dog. She enjoys reading, writing, taking pictures and yoga.

JIM ROSENBERG is Lecturer and Director, Corporate Engagement, Healthcare Division at the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee where he works with healthcare leaders who are transforming access, affordability, equity, and excellence in healthcare. Jim designs and delivers degree and non-degree executive education programs, and supports leaders through personalized consulting, teaching, facilitation, and coaching. Jim also works with a diverse mix of mission-driven leaders on strategy, innovation, and growth projects through Workbench, his consulting business. His background includes experience in both nonprofit and commercial organizations, including venture-backed startups, mission-driven nonprofits, and Fortune 500 corporations. Jim holds an M.B.A. from Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. You can learn more about Jim's work at www.workbenchdc.com and his career at www.linkedin.com/in/jimrosenberg. 

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck., a podcast about, well, that. I'm Tim Cynova, and in this episode, we're spending time with a topic we seldom talk about in life, let alone in the workplace, death and grief. We're joined by three colleagues, Melissa Haber, Jim Rosenberg, and Sophia Park, who have all experienced the loss of people close to them during their careers. They'll offer different and similar thoughts on what it's like to go through the grieving process while working and what coworkers and organizations might consider to help the process be just a little bit easier. They will be joined by podcasting's favorite cohost, Lauren Ruffin, who will help us close out the episode.

Tim Cynova:

One of the things I often have to clarify when I say that work shouldn't suck is that it's not that work won't suck or can't suck sometimes, but that it shouldn't. One of those times when work shouldn't suck is around grieving the loss of a loved one. While it can be tough to make things better, workplaces can certainly make things worst. We'll hear from our guests that sometimes it's the seemingly littlest of things said or not said that can make a big difference. A workplace is a collection of people who come together for a common goal.

Tim Cynova:

It also can be a place where people show caring and concern and support not just during the company softball game or the 5K fun run or when your team scores above 70% completion rate on their objectives and key results. We're human beings working with other humans and we sometimes forget that at the very moments that matters the most. This episode isn't meant to be a downer. It's a risky move launching a podcast and then including an episode about grief so soon in the queue. In our recent episode, we talked about augmented reality and virtual reality, how many bikes would be too many bikes to own, and mail flow in virtual workplaces. This episode focused on grieving while working might feel like we're taking a pretty hard right turn.

Tim Cynova:

But it's a deeply personal topic for many of us and a topic that often goes undiscussed in the workplace, so we want to give it some space. Because when it goes undiscussed, that makes it even more challenging for us to know what to do or how to respond when death and grief show up in our workplace. While these things are near universal, their impact and how they're felt is deeply individual and personal. My guests and I aren't speaking for all those who had grieved while working, but as people whose individual journeys might be useful to hear. Without further ado, let's get going.

Tim Cynova:

My first guest is Sophia Park. Sophia has a degree in neuroscience, which led to several years of conducting research in neurotoxicology. She was a teaching artist with RoboFun, creating stem curriculum for little engineers, PreRobotics, and maker technology courses among others. She's worked with The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She's currently an external relations associate at Fractured Atlas, where I have the pleasure of being a coworker with her. She's the co-founder of Jip Gallery, a small arts exhibition space in Harlem, and she recently completed the New York City Marathon. The idea for this podcast episode came from an exchange that Sophia and I had on Slack. We both experienced the death of someone close to us in the past year, and we both have been trying to write separate pieces about this topic.

Tim Cynova:

We both haven't been making much progress, so we thought, let's just try and record a podcast episode instead. The topic for today is working while grieving. Something that we often don't talk about a lot, that doesn't get a lot of space in the workplace to discuss. How do you come to the topic?

Sophia Park:

This past summer, I lost one of my close friends that I met in college, and we were close because of my tie to neuroscience. He kept on pursuing science, but we met initially because we were both setting science and science is really hard. It was really sudden. He was very young, and I also happen to be at a conference when I found out. It was also a marketing conference that started every day at I think 8:00 AM and they had a DJ and lots of loud music and lots of people talking about marketing and selling things. It was just really tough. It was tough because internally I was hurting, but externally I was like, "Wow. There's a lot of stimulation and there's no space." Then I kept on working.

Sophia Park:

Obviously I finished out the conference in somewhat one piece and then thought a lot about what I was doing. I don't know. Many thoughts that go through your head when something like that happens also out of nowhere. Yeah, the next I think probably around a month was pretty tough. I think what really helped was actually working from home because I could just turn off Zoom and just be kind of sad for a bit and then get back to it. Other people might want the company of others in the office kind of doing things around them. but for me personally, it worked best that I was at home and I could be comfortable. I can have some tea or text a friend who knew my friend as well.

Sophia Park:

I think my hesitancy talking about this in a blog post or in any kind of public setting is that I don't want it to seem like I'm just doing this because I want attention. I just think that so many people go through this. I think that's where my kind of block personally came from was how do I talk about this in a genuine way especially when I don't have many answers of how to navigate it, and then just coming kind of to the informal conclusion that maybe the best thing is to just talk about it and be okay that it's not going to be perfect.

Tim Cynova:

It's like uniquely individual, yet also universal experience to go through. Being at a conference and all of a sudden having a different lens to view things through. I mean, you see things differently. You weigh differently. What's really important when we get caught up in life, we would just keep moving and then all of a sudden something happens and you're like, "Oh."

Sophia Park:

Breaks.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, something breaks. You have a different perspective especially for people who might not have gone through it, or even if they do, again, it's an individual thing. Sitting in meetings, I was at a conference a couple of months ago and someone was talking about how they loss their mom. I think she was 95, 98. They knew it was coming. They said still they found themselves for months just sitting in meetings probably being about 25% there. There's this disconnect in work I think when you see like companies have a bereavement policy that's three days. That's just for logistics, for maybe going to a funeral, but that doesn't cover grief.

Sophia Park:

There are I guess tangible things that a company can give, things like time, and there are also intangible things that a company can give, especially your colleagues, right? I was very fortunate that my manager was just very understanding. But even getting there, for me, I was so surprised because I was so sad and I knew I needed the time to travel, but I just didn't know how to say it. I realized that's partially because I've always been uncomfortable with asking for time off in any regards, whether it's for a vacation or anything like that. I think that comes from this belief that you shouldn't ask for time off even in cases like this. I was just very grateful for the understanding, not the...

Sophia Park:

I don't know how to describe it, but I think it depends on how someone says like, "Are you okay? Yeah, do whatever you need," instead of kind of creating roadblocks, right, for you to grieve. It's emotionally difficult and then if it's also logistically difficult, then it's just bad, right?

Tim Cynova:

It's one of those times where I think if you've gone through something personally or know people who have gone through it, just talk about it. I think this is one of the reasons why it's important for companies to talk about it so you know when this happens, part of that is supervisor is being very opinionated about, "You need to go now. You need to take the time. We'll be here when you get back." Because you have a rush of how do I get there, maybe how do I pay for... I need to get there. There might be financial concerns. There's certainly logistical concerns. Where do I stay when I get wherever I might need to go if you're traveling?

Tim Cynova:

Having to get up the courage to ask for time when you might not even know that that's something you need. I have former colleagues who is like, "Well, no, it's fine. We're in the season. It's busy. We have shows going up. I can't take this time," and then they realize several months when they're at Walmart and they have to sit down on the floor because that's the first time that they've had a chance to process.

Sophia Park:

I think you bring up a good point. I think it taught me in the future if I'm in a position where I need to be supportive, I think I learned a lot of how to's and how to be supportive and just be generally understanding. Well, I would think that I would already be like that, but I think in a work environment it's very different, right? In a personal case, if it's a friend who's grieving, it's a slightly different attitude that you would take towards that person. I think that's also part of navigating being a professional is how do you say things and how do you do it in a kind manner. I think that's also something that I definitely learned.

Tim Cynova:

You mentioned this upfront when you talked about writing the piece and realized, "I just need to start talking about it." It might be not perfect or right the first time, often feels like that when we're providing condolences to someone. I truly mean this. It might not be the right way. Hopefully it came across as I'm caring, but you sort of learn better ways to provide condolences and caring. You're right. It's complicated because it's also a workplace where a lot of times people check a lot of themselves at the door.

Sophia Park:

It's just so interesting to see how different people bring different parts of themselves to the workplace in general. But something that I also thought about was in terms of that, as a colleague and a co-worker, I can't expect someone to fully understand what I just went through, and I don't think it's fair to expect that they'll understand it. I think navigating how different people react to you grieving is also part of the workplace kind of grieving situation as well, knowing that there are certain colleagues who will understand it a little better and some that may want to just have the time to not really engage in it because maybe they went through something similar and it kind of triggers them.

Sophia Park:

Navigating that field is also something interesting as well. Just being mindful. I think learning how to be mindful also helped me grieve in a way in the workplace because it just kept on reminding me I'm not alone. You never know what's happening on someone else's end, but everyone's okay. Ultimately they're okay. They show up to work and kind of reminded me like, yeah, it kind of sucks right now, but ultimately it'll be okay. You show up for work every day and it's kind of a reminder that maybe you're only like 75% there or 75% present that day for work, but at least you're 75% present for work versus just not showing up.

Tim Cynova:

Was there anything particular that people said or did that really resonated with you that maybe you even thought, "I totally need to remember that thing that someone said because they said it so well or whatever they did was really caring and I appreciated that."

Sophia Park:

It was actually in my first day meeting one of our new colleagues who flew in. I just felt really bad because I was engaged, but also not engaged. It was my first time seeing her. They're talking about data and data's kind of dry. Then it just happened that she found out and then she told me grief comes in waves I think not just within the workplace, but outside. That has been really true. Whenever I'm really engaged in a work project... When I went to New Orleans recently and we were just kind of running around, shooting video content, I felt really alive. In that moment, I really thought about my friend because it's an experience that he won't have anymore.

Sophia Park:

Then even just like what you said with the marathon, I remember running it and everything was fine up until mile, whatever, 15, and then I was just so... It just hurt everywhere and then kind of just living in that kind of pain that my legs were going through, I was like, oh. I thought about my friend again. It really does kind of hit you in random moments. There are other instances where I feel very much alive and that's when I feel it the most. Sometimes, like I said, that's either during work or outside of work. But yeah, I think that stayed with me and actually helped me cope really well with it.

Sophia Park:

Because something else that was really helpful was all of my friends were grieving as well, so it was really hard to ask for advice or for words of care. In a way, it's an outside voice, right? Someone from work. If they've gone through something like that, then it's kind of a good reminder that your support comes from all sorts of places. I tell my friends, "Oh yeah, a colleague at work told me this and it really helps," and it actually has helped other people. Yeah, that's something that stayed with me.

Tim Cynova:

That's great. When I lost my mom, one of our coworkers at Fractured Atlas just put a card on my desk. When I came back, we never even talked about it. I assume she knows I got the card. It was very simple. I think she had like two lines in. She had lost a parent. It was one of those thinking of you cards, let me know if you want to talk. There's just different ways of showing.

Sophia Park:

Any little reminder that you're not alone I think really helps. It's interesting because I think I'm fairly young and in kind of like the beginning stages of figuring out what I'm doing for work and what I like doing. I always think about what skills do I need, so professional, do I need to know how to use Airtable, et cetera, and then you forget about all of these I guess they're called soft skills, right? I think resiliency is one of them and resiliency can be developed from anything. But this in particular I think is a moment when I felt myself kind of building that skill.

Sophia Park:

Because it's easier to say it now, "I know how to do this thing on Excel," but it's really hard to say, "Now I know how to grieve better at work," right? You can't just quantify that.

Tim Cynova:

One of the other skills is ability to be vulnerable. Certainly Dr. Brené Brown has talked about this in plenty of TED Talk and Netflix specials about people who are able to be vulnerable, especially in positions of leadership. It makes it easier. Because if you can't, then you wouldn't say something.

Sophia Park:

Yeah, I think that's also very hard because I think vulnerability at the workplace is tied to how comfortable you are, right, also in the workplace. Something that I really talk to a lot of my friend about is how they don't feel comfortable in the workplace. I'm very fortunate that I can bring that sense of vulnerability, but I wonder what it would look like if you could bring at least a little bit of that. Because I think if you're able to be vulnerable with someone, no matter whether it's in the workplace or not, it kind of expands your relationship with that person.

Sophia Park:

I talk about this all the time with my manager where I kind of had some difficult workplaces in the past and kind of building that trust and opening up and being vulnerable has been something that I've been working on. I know I'm very privileged in that way, but I just hope that... Or I don't know if there's a way to grow that culture in a place where it doesn't exist.

Tim Cynova:

That's a big challenge. A lot of people ask, if leadership isn't onboard with it, is it still possible to do in an organization? Yeah, it could be a team-based or it could be a group of people inside the organization. But if there's not a lot of psychological safety there, then people aren't going to be as vulnerable or won't put themselves out there in the same way.

Sophia Park:

Yeah, that's very tough I think to navigate. I think it's easier in a smaller group, like you say, maybe in a team. But once you start adding a bunch of people, then I think it gets a lot more difficult.

Tim Cynova:

Probably some recipe for life in general.

Sophia Park:

Yeah, that's true.

Tim Cynova:

Once you add more people, it just gets really difficult.

Sophia Park:

Yeah, too many cooks.

Tim Cynova:

What is it? The research that more than seven people in a meeting have declining or diminishing returns for each additional person you add to that meeting.

Sophia Park:

That sounds like a lot. Can you imagine just seven people in this room and just going at it and trying to make decisions?

Tim Cynova:

Well, the irony there is that a lot of organizations have seven or fewer people, but act like they have hundreds of people. You're just seven people. You could easily come together and make that decision with just seven people. But it's like, "Well, we have all these committees and all these ways of doing things." I think about a lot of nonprofits and arts organizations.

Sophia Park:

Yeah, that's the difficult part of I think just being in a nonprofit arts organization in general.

Tim Cynova:

Or a group of people trying to organize to do something.

Sophia Park:

Yeah, literally anything.

Tim Cynova:

That's right.

Sophia Park:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Is there anything else you'd like to say on the topic? Things that resonate with you, or when you do get around to writing the blog post that you want to make sure you include?

Sophia Park:

I was actually able to finish draft and I tend to always have more questions than answers. That's kind of how it ends is there are just so many more questions than answers when it comes to this. Also, you can't just differentiate it, right? Grieving versus any other stress that you encounter in your life. When someone gets sick who's close to you or someone loses a job who's close to you, those are all things in some way I think require the same skills as grieving does to be able to deal with in the workplace. I think it's okay if you don't know what you're doing when it comes to dealing with any of those stresses as long as you're satisfied that you're navigating things well for yourself in that moment.

Sophia Park:

While that might sound very spiritual for a workplace topic, I think just gauging whether you're okay, right, and being okay with having something that could be a challenging conversation with either your colleagues or someone else, all of those little pieces is how you "deal with it." I feel like I'm being very vague about it all, but I likened it to when someone asks how do you know you want to marry someone. The answers are always like something like that. I think it's the same way like how do you grieve, how do you deal with stresses in your life, and you say, "Well, I'm me and this is how I dealt with it, but that doesn't mean that you have to do anything that I did."

Sophia Park:

Especially during the holiday times, I know it can be very tough whether you're grieving for someone or not. Especially for younger professionals, I hope that you're okay with asking for help, you're okay with asking for time off because you deserve it in order to be your whole self no matter what the situation is. I think the more you keep hearing that, the more it'll hopefully stick to others, trying to be a gentle person navigating the world and the workplace when it's hard to be that way especially now.

Tim Cynova:

Thank you for spending time and for your openness to chat. I really appreciate the time today.

Sophia Park:

Thank you.

Tim Cynova:

My next guest is Melissa Haber. She currently is the Assistant Director of Volunteer and Student Services for the Montefiore Medical Center. She has a master's of arts in health advocacy, also degrees and background in arts administration and journalism. She's a certified translation professional. Fun fact, Melissa and I worked together in my first job in New York City nearly 20 years ago. It was my first stint as an executive director where she witnessed me making a myriad of mistakes. To her credit, she still agrees to be my friend after all of these years. Can you talk about your intersection with the topic?

Melissa Haber:

My very first intersection was actually when we worked together and my father died. He was in his fifties. Certainly not expected, but awkward because I had to leave the country very quickly and wasn't really sure how long it would be, and then flew back. I was new I think at the job, so it's not like I had all this time to take off, which was really excruciating. But I came back and sort of jumped back in very quickly. Then like five years later, I lost a baby while her surviving twin sister was very, very sick in the NICU. She was in the NICU for five months. But in any case, I went back to work without having really processed the lost of one of them and the fact that the other one could go at any minute.

Melissa Haber:

It was interesting going back to work and jumping into gala planning.

Tim Cynova:

Certainly changes prioritization and just view on life and importance.

Melissa Haber:

It does and then it doesn't because the stuff still has to happen. Whether you're sad or happy, it still has to happen.

Tim Cynova:

Well, in that context, coming back into work, what was helpful? What did people in your workplace do that were helpful, and what wasn't so helpful?

Melissa Haber:

It's hard because not every day is the same. There's days when you really want to talk about it and there's days when you really don't. You can't expect to read your mind and know today is the day when I want to talk about it. But I think that in very small close workplaces, people give you the freedom and the space to just jump in and out if needed. When it's a tight knit group, it's a little easier. You can say, "I'm having a hard day today." When it's a bigger situation, you kind of just go with the flow and do what you have to do. I think what's not helpful is when people avoid you because they're uncomfortable. I mean, death is a part of life, right?

Melissa Haber:

It's worst when it's a child, obviously, or a young parent, but you have to deal with it. Avoiding the person, turning around when you see them walking down the hall is probably not the most helpful way to deal with it. People will say stupid things, but it's better that you're trying I guess. I was just saying to one of my colleagues that one of the least helpful things that people can say is like, "I can't even imagine. I just can't even imagine." You're like, "No, you can because you're putting yourself there, but you don't want to go there. You're saying you can't imagine. I'm living it, so there you go." But even that's better than avoiding.

Tim Cynova:

When your dad passed away, I remember that. That might have been the first time that I worked with someone where they experienced loss.

Melissa Haber:

Oh, really?

Tim Cynova:

Other than grandparents, which... Loss is a deeply individual thing, also a universal thing. People feel it in different ways. I certainly grew up... My dad, he was a pastor, so went to funerals as a kid.

Melissa Haber:

Death was definitely part of your life.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, I certainly knew what that was like, but it was the first time that someone who I knew as a co-worker and friend was going through it. I remember I didn't know what to say at times because it was a different... Because you don't about like grief in the workplace and we were earlier in our careers.

Melissa Haber:

No, because you're supposed to come back ready.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, you're supposed to take your three days and then be just like you were before you took your time.

Melissa Haber:

Right.

Tim Cynova:

I think it was also like because we don't talk about it a lot, I think partly because we're... Certainly I was earlier in my career and I hadn't seen examples of how should a workplace-

Melissa Haber:

Deal with it?

Tim Cynova:

...deal with it and be supportive and understanding.

Melissa Haber:

There's the paid bereavement, which is nice. But then when you come back, you may not necessarily be ready to take on everything you were dealing with before. I always thought both times, both when my dad died and then later, the fact that the world continues turning as it did before in much the same way is offensive when it's raw. It's just very offensive. It's like, do I have to sit here and do a mail merge and do I have to book the whatever for the gala? But I mean, the world doesn't stop because you lost somebody, but the mundane is just really hurtful. But what are you going to do? Somebody still has to do it. If it's a small staff, there's nobody there to back you up.

Melissa Haber:

I mean, here in a major medical center, we hire temps, but it's certainly not the case when we worked together.

Tim Cynova:

Well, I wonder what it looks like in smaller organizations to say... What might it look like. Why don't we hire temps?

Melissa Haber:

Because there's no money.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, right. 20 years ago that's the knee-jerk response that I would have given as well. Resource scarcity is...

Melissa Haber:

There's a learning curve, right? You're going to train somebody to do what the person does. Yeah, it's clunky. It's awkward. But I think having somebody come back full-time and full force when their brain is just honestly not there is also not great for productivity. Not that that should be the main concern, but it's business.

Tim Cynova:

I often wonder if there's bereavement tempting. I don't know. I'm thinking out loud here. This is clearly going to be the part of the podcast that gets cut, but I'm going to pocket this one as an idea like what might it look like for there to be assistance around this, recognizing people don't come back maybe even 50% for a long time. It could be 25% for months.

Melissa Haber:

We had somebody here who passed away a few months ago and it was an associate. It was an employee, not a family member. But he was young, was super young, like in his thirties I want to say. Died in his sleep. It was very unexpected, but they have this employee assistance program and they swooped in and they were available. Any colleagues who wanted to talk, they were set up in a conference room. They rented a van so people could go to the funeral. There was a lot of support for colleagues and the family. We have 40,000 employees. Yeah, there should be. If there weren't, it would be terrible. I don't know.

Tim Cynova:

The conversations that I've been having with people about working while grieving, there are themes around just be human.

Melissa Haber:

Try. I think we're expected at work to be professionals and to get our work done and be on all the time. It's very hard to be on when you're sad. There's sad and then there's grief. When you're in grief... I mean, there's like movies when people were in grief and they say horrible things and they say what they also thought and never wanted to say. It's impossible to be on when you're that vulnerable. That just totally goes against work because you're supposed to not be that way. Vulnerability at work is a no-no, particularly in certain industries. Yeah, it's hard.

Tim Cynova:

Vulnerability in the workplace makes better teams and stronger organizations.

Melissa Haber:

Absolutely. If we acknowledge each other as human beings before anything, before we're colleagues or reporting structure or whatever, we're all people. Ultimately we love our parents and our siblings and our children and we try to do our best, and then there's all the other stuff that comes on top. But that's our common denominator, right? We're all people, whether they report to us or we report to them or we share a cubicle. I think that's what makes death awkward because people... First of all, death is taboo, right, even though we all die. But you know exactly how that feels. If you don't, you can imagine it. Then that makes it uncomfortable because you don't want to touch it.

Melissa Haber:

We all do. That's kind of the one certainty is that we're all going to lose somebody someday, whether we work or not.

Tim Cynova:

I think Christopher Walken has a quote, "None of us is getting out of here alive."

Melissa Haber:

No, we're not. We're all very good about somebody who's 99 passes away. We're all very good at that. It's like, "Oh, they lived a great life. So nice that the family could be together. Whatever you need." We're good at that I think. What we're not so great at is like, "Oh, your father was 55 or you lost a baby," that we suck at because it's, first of all, less common, thankfully. Second of all, just so painful. The flavor of pain that people don't want to imagine. That's why they say the stupid things or they don't say anything at all. When the person who I reported to at the time when my baby died and her sister was in the NICU wanted me to jump into a conference call from the hospital bed.

Melissa Haber:

I was like, "You know, I'm not going to do that." I'm usually one to like sort of not say no, but I was like, "I can't. No. I just can't." The fact that he followed his condolences with, "Oh, so we have this call tomorrow. Do you want to get on?" It's like now I laugh about it. At the time, it was like, "What?" Maybe he thought he was being helpful and distracting me from the pain. Maybe. This wasn't like a bad person.

Tim Cynova:

It's seldom people who are like, "I'm going to wait until that moment, and then I'm going to deliver this piece to inflict harm."

Melissa Haber:

Right. Yeah. I don't think the intention is ever to inflict harm. It's just cluelessness or just... I don't know, a lack of humanity I guess.

Tim Cynova:

What do we make of it? What do we about it besides talking more about it?

Melissa Haber:

Like I said, there's the official policy. HR has a policy. There's bereavement. There's how many days paid, but there has to be like a structure for that person to come back. I mean, whether they're somebody... I don't know. I mean, we have tons of social workers and psychologists here, so it's easy, but somebody who's sort of like checking in on the person. I don't know who that would be necessarily, but just... Or maybe come back part-time or maybe take a personal day a month. I don't know. There's a combination of policy and like flexibility I guess. I recognize that bigger organizations are less flexible.

Tim Cynova:

Interesting though because the bigger organizations are less flexible, but have more resources to do some of the things that small organizations couldn't.

Melissa Haber:

Right. It depends who you report to. I mean, I work with people now who, if God forbid, something happened, they would... I'm 100% certain that it would be fine and I would be allowed the space that I need. But what if I'm hourly and have a union job? You get what you get and that's it. I don't know. I think open honest conversation is a start. When there's trauma involved, if it's something unexpected or a young person who died, there needs to be some healing because you can't just... Once the person's six feet under, you're not better and ready to go, right? Most religions have some kind of mourning process that you're supposed to observe and I think there's a reason for that. But like a week is certainly not enough.

Tim Cynova:

Really even getting through that mourning process, you're usually on adrenaline.

Melissa Haber:

And surrounded by people.

Tim Cynova:

And surrounded by people and everyone leaves and adrenaline stops and then you're hit with this wave at the same point that you're going back to work and trying to reestablish a routine.

Melissa Haber:

Right. The people on your commute are still going to be jerks. They don't know what happened to you. I just remember like wanting to cry when people in the subway were rude. That's something you encounter every day because people are always rude. But when you're so raw and sensitive, it's just like everything gets to you. Like I said before, it's offensive because how dare the world continue to turn when I'm in so much pain?

Tim Cynova:

I was walking down the street after my mom died. I was back in New York. I think about something and walking home and someone walked past me and were like, "Man, why don't you smile? Come on, man."

Melissa Haber:

Oh no.

Tim Cynova:

It's like I'm not going to engage here.

Melissa Haber:

That's another thing is that grief is not linear. It's very cyclical. You could be like totally fine and "getting better" and then something will just hit you and you're back at that beginning. You're very upset, but then immediately self-judgment jumps in and you're like, "Why am I this upset? I shouldn't be this upset. It's been however many months. I have no business being this upset." It sneaks back. I think that's hard too because yes, everybody expects you to be upset in the beginning, but there's like a statute of limitations on your being upset and showing it, God forbid. But it is kind of cyclical. It comes and goes. Yes, the holidays are hard and milestones are hard and that first anniversary and the firsts.

Tim Cynova:

What else do you want people to know?

Melissa Haber:

What is that saying? It's like silly. Everybody's fighting a battle and you don't ever know what people are dealing with. Yeah, you just don't know what people are bringing with them. Yes, your immediate colleagues and your supervisors and the people you work with directly may know what's going on, but other people don't. They maybe super insensitive without knowing or without knowing enough, but it's important I think that we all do it and we all face it. You could be dealing with somebody tomorrow who had just had great loss and not know it. The cashier helping you at the grocery store maybe lost somebody and it's their first day back.

Melissa Haber:

Clearly you're not going to think that at every interaction, but I think if we go back to just we're all human and if we treat each other with humanity and kindness, then it'll be okay. But you just don't know if the person you're dealing with had a great year, a horrible year, and anything in between.

Tim Cynova:

Melissa, thank you for taking time out of your day to chat.

Melissa Haber:

Of course. Yeah, no, thank you for making me think about these things.

Tim Cynova:

Lastly, we're joined by Jim Rosenberg. Jim and I have known each other for many years, dating back to the time when he was vice president at National Art Strategies. He's currently a lecturer and director of corporate engagement at the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee. He's the founder of Workbench Consulting and also recently complete The Coaches Training Institute. He's worked with and for a myriad of organizations around entrepreneurship and organizational change, and he created and led a project several years ago called I Know Something that created a network of individuals sharing their experience of dealing with chronic and advanced illness.

Tim Cynova:

Our topic today is working while grieving, as much as you're comfortable discussing sort of how you intersect with the topic.

Jim Rosenberg:

Thanks for having me on the talk about the topic. I've had the experience of losing a parent and working while losing a parent. But really for me, the more intense experience was my wife Amy had cancer. She died not long after diagnosis. She was diagnosed end stage. About four months later, she was no longer with us. When I think about grief and my experience with grief, I think about that period before Amy died, which is caregiving. But the reality is that you're also emotionally... You know that the person you love is going to die and you've got that preparatory grieving happening.

Jim Rosenberg:

I think about that intense period after she died, really that first year or so, and I think about now further removed where grief means a really different thing, really different part of who I am, but it's around that experience with my wife and my experience of grief at work comes from.

Tim Cynova:

Let me read part of the mission for people. I hadn't gone back to the site for a while to look at the material. As I was prepping for this episode, I was reading back through some of your back. You wrote, "I've met a lot of people who are living with complex illness, caring for an elderly parent, or have lost someone close, and everyone says the same thing. When it happens to you, it's like you're the first one. Suddenly you need to find your way through a new world and make constant decisions where there is never a "right choice." Millions of us have been in those situations before. What if we could unlock all that knowledge to help families in need today?"

Tim Cynova:

As you worked on that project, as you talked to other people, what resonated for you in people's stories and going through grief and terminal illness?

Jim Rosenberg:

It's a great question. I find myself stopping to think. What resonated was just how common it was, how unavoidable the experience really is, how much it touches all of us, how close we all are to it, how many of the challenges are the same, whether you're dealing with a situation where you've known for a long time that somebody is sick and you're caring for them for a long time, whether it's much shorter and more sudden, whether it's an instant experience, come home and the person you love has had an illness or heart attack and is no longer with you. Given how common it is and how close we all are and how much we share in it, how little we talk about it.

Jim Rosenberg:

How much people appreciated the opportunity to have an intimate conversation about their experience because we don't talk about it? We keep death as far as away from us as we can in the U.S., at least, in American culture.

Tim Cynova:

In a work context, that's even more heightened or exacerbated, right? We rarely talk about this to begin with. Then when you add work to it, you might not bring your whole self to begin with. Then something like this happens or you don't know what to say and people don't know what say. You get your bereavement leave, come back, and then you're supposed to just keep going like nothing happened. I think part of that stems from because we don't talk about it. We go through the process. It's personal. Maybe we have some friends outside of work who we talk with about it, but it's not a conversation about like what's the place of grief in the workplace.

Jim Rosenberg:

We always bring our whole selves everywhere we go. We don't share our whole selves at work. We're not invited to. It's uncomfortable. We have a façade we're keeping. Grief's a really big hole in that façade.

Tim Cynova:

What were some of the things that people said really were helpful, specifically around work, but what do you appreciate hearing? When you're grieving, what's the better thing to say and what's the thing you probably shouldn't say? From a workplace, there's oftentimes where we can be harmful and make things worst, but what are ways that we can approach things to make things better?

Jim Rosenberg:

Part of it is that even now or having gone through this experience or having been in this several month intense experience of the person I love most in the world being sick and knowing that she's dying and then losing her, I talk to people who say, "Oh, my daughter just got this diagnosis," and I still don't know what to say. I think we all want... I hear from people, we want to have the words. I'm going to say this and you're going to know everything I feel. You're going to feel cared for, and it's going to be perfect, right? My experience is that there really aren't right or wrong words. I guess there are wrong words, but like most conversations, I just always found that it came down to intent.

Jim Rosenberg:

If you're coming from a place where you're concerned about me, you want to know I'm okay. You want me to know you care. Whatever words come out, we see intent. We're really good at intent. One of the funny things in that trying to hide stuff in the workplace is nobody's very good at it. We, as humans, are just so wired, we're so tuned to understanding the words not said between the words. But if your intent is from a positive and caring place, for me at least, that connected. I could tell that and I appreciated it.

Jim Rosenberg:

If the intent was more for better or worse like, "Wow, I want to keep away. I want to say something so I can move on. This is scary. I don't like it. I'm uncomfortable. I don't know what to do," I would just feel that discomfort and in some ways I just want to help you move along as quickly as you could, right?I want to get you out of your discomfort so I can be out of your discomfort. I talk about Amy having died. I don't tend to talk about her having passed or left or moved on or not being with us. People wince when you say the word died. It's unvarnished, right? Something that I always appreciated just for me was I say that because it fits my spiritual beliefs.

Jim Rosenberg:

It doesn't mean that I don't have a belief about where she is spiritually, but it fits my real feeling of things. I've just appreciated when people can accept that, not be scared of the word, not be scared of the sort of unvarnished description of yes, the person I love died. Let's think about this question. I think back, there's this moment that had nothing to do with words. I used to study martial arts and my sensei heard that Amy had died. She came over to my house. I hadn't seen her in a couple of years.

Jim Rosenberg:

She just hugged me. It was just like this hug, this holding you, this intense hug, that was just this physical way of saying, "I am here." It's been several years, and I remember that moment because in all the different people coming by and saying and the sort of gentle hugs that you get, it's like, "No and I'm not letting you go. I'm here," was probably the most powerful... That's the most powerful communication I remember from somebody just wanting me to know something about how they felt for me. Maybe the work equivalent is just inside the hectic busy running around day, that intentional sit down, be present, I'm really here with you right now.

Jim Rosenberg:

I'm not getting up to runaway in 30 seconds. Maybe that's the work equivalent of that hug.

Tim Cynova:

A hug like that, you're distracted by other things. You're entirely present in the moment. Yeah, I think you're right. That's other ways of being entirely present in the moment with someone else to share that with them. My dad passed away in the spring. As I was getting condolences from people, I was making a note like, "Wow. They said that in a really great way. I should write this down some place." It's sort of like when you look at someone else's resume and be like, "I totally need to copy that format because the way they say that is perfect."

Jim Rosenberg:

A friend of Amy's from college, one of her best friends, Emily McDowell, has this amazing collection of greeting cards that were started for cancer and then sort of expanded from there, but they were just funny and they're incredibly frank. They're complete irreverent and they just blew up. She was on the Good Morning America and The Today Show and all over the place because people were so hungry for this honest way of communicating around illness and loss. Her cards have just been amazing just for that.

Tim Cynova:

Wow. Do you know where you can find them?

Jim Rosenberg:

Emily McDowell Studio. EmilyMcDowell.com. Yeah, her cards are great.

Tim Cynova:

Usually I go to Papyrus because it's the only place I can find sympathy cards that don't have long poems or flowers on them or something.

Jim Rosenberg:

I'm sitting here looking at the site and I remember this being one of the... I think one of the first cards. The cover of is beautifully hand-lettered and there's flowers and it says, "Please let me be the first to punch the next person who tells you everything happens for a reason." It's in that vein at all of her cards. They're true. They're honest. That's what you want when you're going through these experiences. There's not a lot of room left for that veneer of bullshit that we deal with day to day. You just want honesty.

Tim Cynova:

I know grieving is individual. Certainly in my own grief, laughter is a part of it. I guess like in life, there are a lot of feelings, a lot of things going on, but that laughter and joy can also be a part of that in a weird way I think, at least for my experience.

Jim Rosenberg:

I agree. I think again it's part of that... For me, it's just part of that honesty and honest experience of things. That even when things are going to hell, there's still funny stuff that happens. Your nine month old still tries to pull the IV stand down, right? You're just like ah and you're jumping around to get the baby, right? That's just normal human life. Normally that would be pulling the table cloth off the table, but you're still living, right? You're still going through these experiences.

Tim Cynova:

Is there anything else on the topic that you like to say or you like for people to know or think about?

Jim Rosenberg:

Just coming back to the workplace specifically and some things that I experienced that were helpful and not helpful. I think the helpful ones stick out more for me. Things that organizations do to be supportive. Even in the middle of Amy's illness, we used to talk about how in so many ways we were rather blessed, right? In that I had a job where if I took a day off or I took a week off to be at the hospital with Amy, I wasn't going to lose my job. I wasn't on a, oh, you're 10 minutes late for your shift, kind of a situation. We had really good health insurance. We had the wherewithal to make sense out of how you get through the health system, right?

Jim Rosenberg:

We had people around us to help us try to make sense out of that. A couple of specific things, Amy was at the State Department. She had spent her career. State Department has a policy where anyone at state can contribute leave to somebody who is sick and absent from work. Through the generosity of all the people in her organization, Amy was sick for four months, but had a salary the whole time. That's directly off a policy that allowed people to contribute. From my organization where I worked, we always talked about being family-centric, but we truly were family-centric. There were things that the team did. One was I had lots of responsibilities, right, like anyone doing a job.

Jim Rosenberg:

Some of those were things that it was essential I did and some were just things I did. The team really let me focus on those contributions that I was the only one in the organization who could make that contribution, that particular way of solving a problem or that particular process I knew how to do. Everyone picked up the rest of the work so that my workload could go down a bunch and I could continue to be a useful part of the team even as I wasn't there 50% of the time. That allowed me not only to continue to be effective with less time that I was working, it allowed me to feel effective.

Jim Rosenberg:

It allowed me to feel that I wasn't letting down my colleagues, I wasn't letting down my friends at work, or needing to make this choice between failing at my job or failing my wife.I wasn't put in that situation. The other thing is that my organization is incredibly flexible about the time off. I was treated as a professional. I knew what I had to do. No one was checking about, did you let us know that you weren't going to be here on Monday? Did you let us know how many days you were going to out to stay with your wife at the hospital? I just took care of the things I had to take care of. I made sure that I didn't leave anyone waiting for a phone call because I was just treated as a professional.

Jim Rosenberg:

Yes, you have important things to do in your life. You know what you need to do. Go ahead and do it. I think also after Amy died, the group was great in sort of allowing me to kind of stair-step my responsibilities back to my normal job.Those first few months were overwhelming and a bit surreal if you will. I remember there were days where I'd go to the office and I'll be working and I realized that no matter what I did, there was no way I could get any work done right now. I just couldn't take this overwhelming experience and put it over the shelf for a minute. I would just go home because there wasn't anything else to do at that point.

Jim Rosenberg:

Overtime, as I was adjusting, then our CEO would sort of ratchet up like, "Hey, I need you to do this now too. I need you to do this." Those were just some really practical things that happened while Amy was sick and after Amy died that were a big help to me that honestly any organization can do. it's a matter of the will and the intent to support each other in that way.

Tim Cynova:

I've been writing a blog post for months now and it's about working while grieving. This podcast actually came out of a conversation with another colleague who's similarly writing a post. It was like, let's just record something because we've got these blog post that are not done. The reason that I got stuck in my blog post is we're doing a lot of work at Fractured Atlas personally around racism and oppression and white privilege. I realized while I was writing that post the privilege that I had in grief, and yet another thing that I had not even considered, the ability to drop things at a moment's notice and the means to fly back and forth to be there with my family, to work remotely, and all of these things.

Tim Cynova:

I guess that where I'm stuck because I'm still wrestling with that. I think, as you pointed out, there's really great things, simple things that make a big difference. I'm forever thankful to Fractured Atlas where I work when both of my parents passed away because I've had great teams that I've worked with and the flexibility. That's not the case for a lot of people.

Jim Rosenberg:

The thing that really struck me and I remember Amy and I talking about while she was sick is I said that we would talk about how fortunate we were even inside of this situation where we knew Amy had a prognosis that she wasn't going to live three or four more months. But recognizing that there's bad things that happen, right? Like getting cancer, right? There's suffering that happens in the world that we can't do anything about. They're sort of parts of the universe, if you will. What struck us is that there are these layers of additional suffering that we create, that we as a community, as a society, as an organization, we create those.

Jim Rosenberg:

The pain you're feeling because the person you love is dying, that just is. But the pain you're feeling because you're stressed about whether you're going to lose your job or not, you're stressed about whether you're going to go bankrupt or not, you're stressed because you can't figure out how you're going to take care of your young child during this illness and afterward, you're stressed and suffering because you can't get access to the medical care and specialist that you need, these are all layers of suffering that we just create those. Because we create them, we can change them. It's a matter of will.

Jim Rosenberg:

It's a matter of recognizing how we as people and as a community experience grief and loss has only partly to do with those bad things that happen. They have a lot to do with how we want to commit to each other to alleviate that suffering.

Tim Cynova:

Work shouldn't suck is the phrase that our friend, Russell Willis Taylor, sort of picked up from a presentation that I did. I often have to clarify that it's not that it can't or it won't, it's that it shouldn't. As leaders, it's our responsibility to continually be working to make sure that it doesn't. We're shirking a core responsibility of our duties if we're not constantly trying to make things suck less. When it comes to grieving like working, why does it have to be so hard?

Jim Rosenberg:

Recognizing as leaders that grief is out there, right? It's happening. No one is far removed. When I would talk about the I Know Something project, this project to lift out the stories and the lessons from people who'd gone through end of life experiences, when I would tell people that, they'd be like, "Oh my gosh, I wish I'd had that when." There wasn't anybody I talked to who said, "What would that be for?" Right? Because everyone's been there. As leaders, to recognize that grief is out there, the fact that we have a culture that pushes death away, means that we don't... I'm trying to think if I've ever had a conversation where we talked about policies around how to support people dealing with grief.

Jim Rosenberg:

I don't remember ever having that conversation. We talked about other kinds of events, both positive and negative ones. When we stop pushing it away, we bring it closer to ourselves, we can make choices, as you say. Work shouldn't suck. We can make it suck less. I recognize there are trade-offs. When I was working less, other people were choosing to carry the weight for me. Yeah, there's financial cost to it, but it's a choice to say, "Yeah, we're not getting the same output from Jim that we were last year, but he's a part of this community. He's a valuable part of our organization. We will down the road. We're not going to ask for part of his salary back. It just is."

Jim Rosenberg:

But those are choices that as leaders it's one of the privileges of being in a leadership position. You get to actually make those choices. You get to create that environment for other people.

Tim Cynova:

Jim, thank you so much for taking time today to chat about this, your openness, for your honesty, for the laughter we've shared. Really appreciate it.

Jim Rosenberg:

Yeah, no. Glad I could take some time and chat. Hopefully some of that wasn't just stuff that make sense to me because I lived through it. Hopefully there's some ideas in there that will be useful and interesting to other folks who are listening.

Tim Cynova:

Most definitely. It's my pleasure to welcome back podcasting's favorite cohost Lauren Ruffin. Lauren, how's it going?

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm good. You're really silly. Favorite. I like it though. Keep stoking my ego.

Tim Cynova:

We just need to claim it.

Lauren Ruffin:

Okay. You're right. I got to get a shirt made. Christmas is around the corner.

Tim Cynova:

Who knows what'll arrive on your doorstep in the next week? In this episode, we talked about working with grieving. I had the opportunity to speak with three people who have each experienced the death of someone close to them while working a full-time job. Many expressed some of their thoughts and sentiments about what's the right thing to say, something that's sincere, and what can workplaces do. Don't forget humanity at a moment when it matters a lot. I want to get your thoughts on the topic.

Lauren Ruffin:

Before I started working at Fractured Atlas, my very first job managing a decent size team, we started off being known as the D Team for development, and quickly over like six months we moved into the D Team for death, which is really messed up. Everybody on this team that I managed as a new manager lost someone close to them in the first six months I managed the team. I hadn't thought about that until this very moment, even though I knew that we were going to be talking about grief for this episode. It is one of those times when regardless of what someone's vacation policy says, two or three days for bereavement is not enough.

Lauren Ruffin:

Also, when you start looking at the science of it, we know that grief hits everyone differently and it often can last for years. It can be legitimate when someone says two years or three years after someone dies. I'm actually grieving right now. As a manager, one, I think it's important that you let the space exist in your team for that conversation. My mother died 31 years ago this year in November, and I still like every year take November 14th to myself, but it never stops, right? I don't think your standard HR policy ever really takes that into account.

Tim Cynova:

You're right. It covers those couple of days, but because it is such a deeply individual thing. One of the things I came up was anniversaries, firsts, all of those things resurface or can resurface. I was recounting the holidays are particular a tough time for me as I think about the loss of my parents. You're walking down the New York City street corner. You turn the corner, it's like there's a brass quartet that's playing holiday music. You're like, "Damn you for playing the holiday music." Tears in my eyes. I'm going to have to edit that curse word out or I'll have to put explicit on this episode, which is going to be a really weird-

Lauren Ruffin:

Hold on. Get you... That gets an explicit?

Tim Cynova:

I don't know. I don't know.

Lauren Ruffin:

Is that explicit? I thought it was just the f bomb or like a nipple.

Tim Cynova:

I'll review the rules.

Lauren Ruffin:

I felt like we were... Yeah, please do.

Tim Cynova:

We need to know what kind of curse words we can use on the show.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, because we're going to be editing out a lot with me. Yeah, I do hold the title of the only person who's ever been edited out in ESPN Magazine.

Tim Cynova:

Let's take a tangent here. Did you appear in ESPN Magazine?

Lauren Ruffin:

I was quoted in the ESPN Magazine, and I can't remember if I said... I don't think I dropped the F bomb. I think I said like and they edited me out. I'm like, "You have rappers and athletes and these things and I know they curse more than I do, but you give me the little star dollar sign in the middle of my word? What the heck!"

Tim Cynova:

What were you being interviewed for?

Lauren Ruffin:

Homophobia in sports. I used to do a lot of work because I was like the first black female athlete in college sports to come out publicly. My friends used to call me Lauren Ruffin... For whatever reason, there were several articles that had like Lauren Ruffin, openly gay basketball player. That was my life description. They'd be like, "Oh, OGBP is here."

Tim Cynova:

I did not think that our working while grieving episode would pick up this anecdote.

Lauren Ruffin:

Brent used to segment on like how did Dick Vitale get to this particular sentence. It'd be so winding. In any case, I feel like you could probably do that with me because I go off on so many tangents.

Tim Cynova:

One of the things that came out in a conversation was that grieving takes a lot of different forms, but there's also laughter during the process. That's natural and human and also can be really confusing. I see Tim laughing. It must be fine now. Really you can laugh even in the darkest times of being faced with the death of a loved one.

Lauren Ruffin:

Grieving is so cultural and like so familial. My family has a tradition of we tell jokes about the person at their funeral. The first time my wife met my family was at my great-great-aunt's funeral. She just did not understand why we were all essentially telling snarky jokes about this woman at her funeral. That's my family's tradition. We laugh a lot. She's Irish and she's like where the pub and where's the alcohol?

Tim Cynova:

I don't know if I told you this. When my dad died, it was at his home and I was able to be with him. The electricity went out in the subdivision 20 minutes before he died. Did I ever tell you that?

Lauren Ruffin:

No.

Tim Cynova:

You don't know when the end is going to come, but you sort of sense that something has changed over the past couple of days. All of a sudden like all of the power goes out. I'm calling my sister who had just run to go get coffee and be like, "Does this happen all the time?" She's like, "Oh, just call the power company." I'm at hold for the power company waiting to see what's happening.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh my goodness.

Tim Cynova:

Then I think wait, he was a pain pump. I'm like, "Wait, is that plugged in? Is that not working?" Thankfully, the engineers foresaw this so there's a battery power thing. Yeah, the power went out 20 minutes before he died. About 10 minutes after he died, the power came back on. Immediately I thought, dad would love this story. How absurd is this? You're at sort of the depths of grief and at the same time you're like, "What's going on with the power grid here?"

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I mean, there are always moments like that. No, you didn't share that story, but you were just such a shell of yourself because we have a shared leadership team. The three of us, Shawn, Pallavi, and me, were just sort of trying to figure out how do we support Tim. One day it's okay and one day it's not okay. Again, how do you just help someone if someone's in grace? It's really hard and I can't imagine working in like a big corporate with really structured rules or like in government. I feel so grateful as a manager to have worked places where I had the flexibility to sort of say, "Just take the time. Be a shell of yourself for the next three months."

Lauren Ruffin:

It's just really, really hard in a workplace, but people have to work. Work has to accommodate that. It has to accommodate like the grieving process.

Tim Cynova:

It's interesting. You go through the process and it's not the same. I lost my mom and I lost my dad and it was different things. It hits you in different ways. I can remember sitting in meetings as soon as I came back from leave when my mom passed away. I just sat through meetings and I sort of just floated through a meeting and I'm not sure what people were saying. It was similar, but different when I lost my dad. One moment I'm like with you and the next moment someone has said something and my mind's spiraling off. Some of it's time. You just need to just get back into a rhythm. Other times it's hard enough knowing personally what to do, let alone I don't know what you're thinking and what's going to be best.

Tim Cynova:

Just being human and being flexible and understanding. If this person was able to do the job beforehand, let's give them the space and time and support.

Lauren Ruffin:

I've lost so many people close to me, close family members, close friends. I'm very comfortable talking about death. I've been through it a lot. When I was eight years old, my mother died. I've had subsequent people die since then. As I sort of approached my forties, it's a totally different experience when you are close to someone or approximate to someone who's our age and never lost anyone. I can't imagine being 40 and losing someone close to me for the first time. I think that is just in terms of life experience has got to be so difficult because you don't have the tools to really cope with it. It's such a new feeling, whereas I feel like death is very close to me, has been close to me for most of my life.

Lauren Ruffin:

I also as a manager and colleague realize that the first time somebody losses someone, they're just going to be need a lot of time. It's going to be really, really hard for them to navigate the world for a while.

Tim Cynova:

That's partly why I wanted to do this episode because it's not something we talk about in the workplace much if at all, which makes it even harder when something does happen to know what to do. Do you just not say anything? Do you just act like it's fine? As managers, how do you approach it if you've not lost anyone and gone through that experience?

Lauren Ruffin:

You want to talk about the themes that sort of came up?

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. I remember the themes were just to be sincere. There's a conversation that started with Jim Rosenberg who lost his wife from late stage cancer right after their daughter was one year old. He was remarking that one of the things that stood out to him was someone gave him a really sincere hug after his wife passed away. What that led to was this conversation to realize what happens with a really sincere hug is your entirely present with someone. You're not thinking about what's next. You're just right there. What's the equivalent of being entirely present with someone in the workplace to show I care, I'm here, I'm not thinking about other things right now. In this moment, you're just present.

Tim Cynova:

There are a number of conversations that came out of this episode, but that was one that really stood out to me. I think also because my mom used to give really great hugs. My friends still remark, "Man, your mom gave really good hugs." You're going for like the quick hug and there she's like, "No, we're going to do this for like at least 10 seconds." You get pass it like, "This is a weird long hug." She'll be like, "This is a really good hug." I mean, that's probably why that resonated with me. My mind started to go like, what's the equivalent in the workplace of a hug like that? There are other things, sort of practical things like the ability for people to trade days off so they could give them to people who needed paid time off.

Tim Cynova:

Also, coworkers who had come walking toward you, see you, turn around and walk the other way. Those were some of the things that came out of it. You just don't know when thoughts of a lost loved one and grieve will hit you. It becomes part of your life.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yup. That's so true. That is so true.

Tim Cynova:

Well, Lauren, thanks for starting the day talking about grief and working while grieving. Pleasure and highlight of my day getting to chat with you. Thanks again to our guests, Melissa Haber, Jim Rosenberg, and Sophia Park. Thank you so much for sharing your personal stories. If you've enjoyed the conversation or you're just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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Meet Lauren Ruffin (EP.02)

Last Updated

November 8, 2019

In this episode, Tim chats with Lauren Ruffin about the launch of a new AR/VR co-op, Black capitalism, Work as the new religion, Vocations & Callings, Figuring out physical mail distribution for an entirely virtual workplace, and at what point you might own too many bicycles.

Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin

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Guest

LAUREN OLIVIA RUFFIN currently serves as Fractured Atlas’s Chief External Relations Officer where she is responsible for the organization’s marketing, communications, community engagement, and fundraising. Prior to joining the team at Fractured Atlas, Lauren served as Director of Development for DC-based organizations Martha’s Table and the National Center for Children and Families. She was also fortunate to serve in various roles at and various positions at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Children’s Defense Fund, New Leaders, and AAUW. Before entering the nonprofit sector, Lauren held the position of Assistant Director of Government Affairs for Gray Global Advisors, a bipartisan government relations firm. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in Political Science and obtained a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law. Previously, she served on the Board of Directors of Black Girls Code. And in her spare time, she can be found mountain biking or gesturing wildly at the teevee in support of Duke University’s men’s basketball team.

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Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hey, this is Tim. I wanted to include a quick preamble to this episode. We've envisioned the Work. Shouldn't. Suck. podcast to have two different formats. For some of our episodes, I'll be conducting one-on-one interviews. For others, I'll be co-hosting episodes with my friend and colleague, Lauren Ruffin. To get to know Lauren a little bit better, we sat down to record this get to know you episode at the Eaton Hotel in Washington, D.C. Eaton loaned us their radio studio, so we likely are launching this podcast series in the fanciest way possible and it's all downhill from here. Without further ado, here you go.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, we've got like 30 hours worth of time here, so.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh, yeah.

Tim Cynova:

We're going to be good. It's like three o'clock. No, we're going all the way to Tuesday. Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck., a podcast about that. Today I'm joined by Lauren Ruffin. She does fascinating things. I'm lucky to actually be coworkers and colleagues with her at Fractured Atlas. Welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. podcast, Lauren.

Lauren Ruffin:

Well thanks, Tim. We're back in D.C. Together. Very cool of you to make the trip down Amtrak, riding our country's aging infrastructure to get from point A to point B.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, that's great. For those who don't know you, you're currently the Chief Operating Officer at Fractured Atlas.

Lauren Ruffin:

No, that's you.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, that's right. You are not.

Lauren Ruffin:

That's you.

Tim Cynova:

We spend so much time together, you're actually taking on my job. One less thing on my plate.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. No, you're the Chief External Relations Officer at Fractured Atlas where the two of us are two of a four part shared nonhierarchical leadership team. You are the co-founder of Crux, working in Black Storytelling in Immersive Technology. You are currently on the board of Black Girls CODE. You are the founder of Artist Campaign School. You're on faculty at New York University where you're teaching a course this semester and you are an avid fan of world-building games.

Lauren Ruffin:

And Duke basketball.

Tim Cynova:

And Duke basketball. We will cover, how do you decide who's a bigger basketball fan later in the show because we have a colleague, L J, who I think come March madness, there's going to be some tension in the office.

Lauren Ruffin:

I can't wait for there actually to be tension in the office. Just really excited that someone else cares about the best month of the year.

Tim Cynova:

We'll have to do an episode with you and L J come March.

Lauren Ruffin:

We should. That's a great idea.

Tim Cynova:

One more...

Lauren Ruffin:

It has to be video because she and I have to do the map on the wall.

Tim Cynova:

Okay. Want to talk about a couple of different things with you because you're engaged with and co-creating around the future of work in a number of different capacities. Do you consider yourself a futurist?

Lauren Ruffin:

I know people who are actually futurists who would hate that I would co-op up that term. So no, I don't. I think that I am good at reading data and turning data that feels far out into action now. So when you look at some of the data points around work and around the future. There was an interesting article that ran, I think, and I read in the Times last year that talks about how our government was almost defunded.

Lauren Ruffin:

We almost ran out of cash because so many people filed for extensions. And when you dig deeper into the data around, because I was like that's really curious. Why so many extensions this year in particular? Is everyone a conscientious tax abstainer? I was like that'd be really cool. But it turns out there are 40 million people who are on the verge of having to file some sort of 1099 and with that comes a different way for taxes to work because all of a sudden tax dollars aren't automatically being deposited into government accounts. So what do we do about that? I don't know, but I just think about the way that we work is going to change the way for everything. And I think there probably aren't a lot of people thinking about it. So how do we prepare for that and how do we talk about it?

Tim Cynova:

I was thinking about how is work going to change? You are in leadership of two different organizations that have shared leadership teams both at Crux and at Fractured Atlas.

Lauren Ruffin:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tim Cynova:

And Crux is working in some really cool new ways around structure. So you just had a convening, an uncommon Crux convening what, what went on and what are you just launching? What have you just launched?

Lauren Ruffin:

For the last 18 months, Crux has been a public benefit corporation. It's really designed to partner with black artists as we begin to think about the future of immersive storytelling look like. Virtual reality, augmented reality as an industry doesn't really exist outside of a handful of large corporations. So how do black people start to organize now before all the money and all the content is being concentrated and sucked up by a couple of big studios. And then two weeks ago we announced that we had formed a cooperative. We have an opportunity for us to begin to pull our resources to fund our own content so that we can retain our own intellectual property and begin to carve out a brand in this new space. So that's crux in a nutshell, but really thinking about the entire pipeline of creation from sort of when we first begin, when people first need $2,000 to spend some time working on a script all the way through to distribution. So the cooperative will begin to accept members at the middle of December and then we'll soft launch the distribution platform for XR content in January. So things are moving.

Tim Cynova:

You just came off of a presentation at COCAP called "You Can Keep Your Black Capitalism" and based on the enthusiasm that I heard on the recording, it was incredibly well received. Can you talk to me about that?

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I've been thinking about this a lot. You hear about these singular black people who are wealthy, billionaires, millionaires, Bob Johnson, Oprah. There is this question out there which is, do black people have a history or do we have a duty to treat our workers differently because of our history in this country as enslaved persons? Should we spend some time thinking about how we organize and how we start our businesses, what our business do and how we operate and how we create and share wealth because we were marginalized for so long? There's a current controversy with Jay-Z and the NFL. When you look at black capitalists, there's something more disappointing in it because they've not chosen to take a different path. And then you have to ask how much is enough? At some point, you have to think about what would your ancestors want?

Lauren Ruffin:

And I don't know that our ancestors would have wanted us to sort of hoard wealth in the same way that your traditional capitalists do. So that's where that really sprung from. And then just at a basic level, Bob Johnson was the first black billionaire. And I keep thinking what if BT had been a cooperative? What would our country look like if there had been, instead of one billionaire, there had been thousands of black millionaires? How would that wealth have been distributed differently? What would our communities look like? What would the narrative around black wealth and wealth disparity, how would that have changed? So yeah, you can keep your black capitalism, Tim.

Tim Cynova:

And that's the show. So what was the reaction like after your presentation? Because it was about a five minute long presentation that you gave.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. It was just a quick one. I think people were interested. I think I was the second or third person. It was a lightning round type thing. I'm always surprised that I think back to the world building and some of the things that you and I talk about a lot. I'm always surprised that people don't ask why more often and I think there are people who were like, I had never thought about that before. And I'm like, that's why you're so sad when you have essentially capitalism has pitted Jay-Z against Colin Kaepernick. That's why it feels that way because we do have sort of different expectations of a guy who grew up in poverty, selling drugs and has made it. We want him to do something different with his wealth. And the reality is, he hasn't and people are sad about it. We don't have the words to talk about it.

Tim Cynova:

You said people don't ask why enough. We've had conversations recently around the why around virtual work and fully distributed organizations and sort of the disconnect that people have with even imagining what the future of work might look like when it does include a physical space. Has that conversation surprised you in any way or what do you think that will help connect the disconnects?

Lauren Ruffin:

There are a couple of things happening. One is the shift in just the demographics of the workforce in the U.S. generally. Folks in leadership tend to be a little bit older and have really latched onto this notion of the idea that you owe some loyalty to your employer and what the employer, the sort of worker-owner relationship looks like. I mean since I'd been in the workforce even, last 15, 20 years, that's changed right down to how much, one like technological advances mean that you really can have almost the same level of oversight. I'm going to use that word with air quotes up. You can have the same level of oversight of virtual workers that you can, and in some cases even more depending upon how like creepy you want to be with Big Brother technology, than you can when they're in your work environment.

Lauren Ruffin:

There's a health and wellness piece. So many of our staff members at Fractured Atlas live in New York. I got to say like, how can you expect someone to bring their best selves to work when several of our employees who are black and brown people and especially women of color, have experienced harassment in the subway system? How can we expect them to have to do that, to show up to work and do their best work when at some point there's got to be some nervousness about what it feels like to just get on a train? I think there are a lot of sort of reasons why virtual work works, but I think it's definitely the right choice for us, for our sort of tenants of trust the people you work with to do their job and leave them alone. Let them figure out when they want to do it, where do they want to do it, how they want to do it, and trust that they're going to give you the best work possible because we're a cool organization and we're fun to work with.

Tim Cynova:

I read an article recently about work as the new religion and it included a lot of statistics about the changing demographics around those who consider themselves affiliated with organized religion. I don't know the exact specific, but between 18 and 25, those who identify as being a part of organized religion is so much smaller than it was in previous generations and how there's this effect where work you see work as your calling, as your religion. And I've been wrestling with this idea of how do organizations take care of those who work for them and what's the line? But this shouldn't be your entire life. And even if you see it as a calling, it shouldn't be your entire life because you're missing a lot and you'll probably burn out really quickly.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, that's really interesting. I grew up in the country, in a rural community, that still had a vocational school and I also grew up in the church. So we talked a lot about sort of vocations generally and to sort of feel like you had a calling and everything else. I remember that's so interesting that the trades, like my friends who would go off and get their CDL or become a hairdresser or barber at vo-tech would have like a vocation. Meanwhile, I was just in college prep and I was like, well that just means I haven't found my calling yet and I guess that was always the way I thought about it.

Lauren Ruffin:

There's something to that. I'm going to have... But I also think that there, and we struggle with this at Fractured Atlas as well, because I mean I feel like you and I are the ones who are like, please don't bring your whole self to work. Bring 85% of you and I don't bring my entire self to work. I think that work has started filling a void in some way and I don't quite have the words for it, but there are moments at work where I'm like, something's going on with this person that I care about, but that isn't my family. I don't want them to think that we're family, but I care about them and I want them to be happy. But I also feel like this is a job. I don't know. I don't know how to fix it.

Tim Cynova:

Calibrating caring.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh yeah. I mean, I don't... It's a struggle, right?

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. Well, I think of the work that Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton are doing around job career and calling and how you perceive what you do. One of our former colleagues went to a dinner party once where people weren't allowed to talk about what they did for work. You could talk about anything else, but you couldn't talk about what you did. So this is a similar conversation or a question in my mind about if you view your work as a calling, that can be difficult to have a conversation where you're like, I don't know. I mean my dad was a Lutheran pastor and viewed his as a religious calling. I don't know. I guess these are points I'm wrestling with as we think about what does the future of work look like and where are healthy boundaries so that people can bring as much of themselves as they want to work but also don't end up in a charred mess because they can't calibrate that and turn it off.

Lauren Ruffin:

Fractured Atlas for me was sort of a random place to end up because I'm not an artist and I didn't know anything about the arts. Fractured Atlas for me is not a vocation. It's a job that I enjoy my colleagues, I like the work, I like the autonomy but it's in this weird place where it's not a calling but it's also not a job because I bartended forever and I bartended all through law school. I loved that I didn't have to take that work home with me but I take Fractured Atlas home with me and there are two things I miss about work. The first is that like just having a job and the second is because I feel like even if Fractured Atlas was my only sort of hat I was wearing, we still do so many things and add on to all the other things I'm doing.

Lauren Ruffin:

I miss that feeling you have when you're in school where you get to go into the library, walk into the stacks and spend hours sort of pulling every book off the shelf about a topic until you get to know that topic really, really well and I feel like I don't know anything really deeply anymore. People will call me an expert and I have to push back because I'm like, I remember what expertise looked like. I wrote a paper on Jim Jones. I was an expert in that for this finite period of time. I read everything that the library had on it, as much of an expert as you can be at 19, but do you feel like you are an expert in anything or do you feel like the more you learn, the more you like are like, Oh, I really don't know this at all?

Tim Cynova:

Two different ways of looking at this? Yes. I think the more I learn on various things, I think, Oh God, there's so much more to learn about this and you just realize you're never going to get that curve that never reaches a hundred. The closer you get, the farther you are away from it. And then at the same time though, there's moments where you can pull yourself out of the thing that you're in and realize, wow, we've done a lot on this. We've thought a lot about this and I probably know a lot more about this than I thought and sort of that perspective shift of saying, Oh right, everyone else hasn't been thinking about in an entirely virtual organization, how should mail work? We have colleagues that spent a lot of time, like granular stuff like how do you deal with 13 different mail flows where you have no physical place to send the mail?

Lauren Ruffin:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tim Cynova:

And so I think things like that. That's why I always people they should write blog posts about it. The work that went into mail distribution and how we handle mail flows. There's so much learning, I think that would be useful. Other organizations just take this and use it, probably not, but I think it shows steps that you walk through that can be applied to different ways of thinking.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

Maybe someone on our staff is, well, certainly an expert in how Fractured Atlas has figured out how to deal with it's mail flow. But I think there's just a lot of things, I didn't even name everything that you're involved in and you come and talk to my class at the new school every year and one of the things every year they remark, you're introduced as the Chief External Relations Officer at Fractured Atlas and then we go down the list and they're like, wow, Lauren does a lot of different things and it's so great that she does a lot of different things. It's not just like she's a Director of Development at XPlace. That probably speaks to the type of person you are and the interests you have.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I mean, no shadef to development directors at XPlace. Yeah, that's a hard job.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

But there's a sense of privilege there. Who else has the freedom to start a company openly while they're at another company? How privileged am I? I had a friend who worked on a really cool board game a couple of years ago in DC. She launched her Kickstarter and her company found out about it and they fired her. And I'm like, how could you? Penalizing someone for entrepreneurship really stinks, but that's the reality of being a worker. So I mean there's a lot of privilege there. I come from a family of workers. I kind of expected to be sort of approaching 40 and having to work really, really hard to get to the place where I could do the things that I really wanted to do and do things like this, talk to people I like to talk to and work with people, sort of Marie Kondo my life. I want everything to spark joy. Tim, you spark joy. Working at Eaton sparks joy.

Tim Cynova:

Thanks to Eaton for letting us sit in their cool radio lab here. This is way more professional than inaugural episode or how the podcast should be.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, this is actually, it's all downhill from here.

Tim Cynova:

It is all downhill.

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm pretty sure that it's all downhill.

Tim Cynova:

To both of our listeners, you're welcome. So Lauren, besides working at Eaton, what sparks joy? When you decide what you want to work on, how do you decide if it makes the cut or not?

Lauren Ruffin:

It's that. It's I'm excited to do it. I was a lobbyist for a long time. I worked with a lot of people that did not spark joy in my life. Yeah. It's like, am I excited about the idea of partnering with this person for the next three to six or nine months? And that's really it. Someone would say like, it's either a hell yes or a fuck no. And that's how you make decisions. I want to say it was Warren Buffet, but that feels way too vulgar for him to say publicly. But it's someone who's very wealthy who was like, that is how you make decisions and you should feel that strongly about the work you do. It's pretty simple. People make time for the things they care about. And so when someone approaches me, especially for Crux with a project that I believe in, it's like I find a way to make the work.

Lauren Ruffin:

I find a way to sort of lean in and do these things that I care about. I think we all do that to a certain extent. I feel like I've just had the freedom to kind of be able to do that.

Tim Cynova:

Why do you think that's not the norm in work?

Lauren Ruffin:

It's got to be either scarcity mindset or trust issues. It's kind of the root of all things evil, especially in the work we do.

Tim Cynova:

It starts with resource scarcity.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Yeah, it's got to be either that or just you don't trust the people that are coming to you to do things or you don't trust yourself maybe to make the leap. I don't know.

Tim Cynova:

I wonder if it's just, you don't think about it. It's that thing that you do and it's like this is how an organization should work, this is how a board should work, this is how people should work and you don't ask the why and question it in a way that allows you to see the autonomy and agency that is there.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

That's certainly not the entirety of it. That's probably several books long.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, and someone way smarter than us.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:18:45]

Lauren Ruffin:

Or at least if they're not smarter, they're most certainly more charismatic. They've definitely been thinking about this for awhile.

Tim Cynova:

As we wrap up, I want to know how many bikes is too many bikes to own? You're an avid owner of bikes, so what's too many?

Lauren Ruffin:

This is a really relevant question in my life because I'm moving into a place with a garage.

Tim Cynova:

The sky's the limit.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, that's exactly it. I'm sitting here being like the garage is approximately 200 square feet and each bike takes up this footprint. So, I don't know. There's a difference between having a hobby, which is bike riding, and buying bikes, which is kind of what I do. I buy bikes. I think 10 has to be the number that I have to keep beneath and I'm at five right now.

Tim Cynova:

10 is almost like a small bike shop.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, so I think 10 is my personal bikes, but I also have three other people who I cohabitate with, two who have little bikes and one who has a full size bike. There are nine bikes in the house right now, but I have just limited myself to 10.

Tim Cynova:

If you enjoyed the conversation half as much as we did, you're in luck, maybe a quarter as much as we did, you're in luck. Lauren and I will be co-hosting a mini-series within the Work. Shouldn't. Suck. podcast where we chat with cool friends and colleagues. So stay tuned if you like this or you didn't like it, let your friends and/or people you don't like know. Thumbs up, add stars, whatever combination is on your podcasting platform of preference. But until next time, thanks for listening. Thanks Lauren.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Thanks, Tim.

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