00;00;08;05 - 00;00;36;17
Wayne Turmel
Hello everybody, and welcome to the Long-Distance Worklife Podcast where we are determined to help you thrive. Survive generally make sense of the crazy, ever changing world of remote and hybrid work. My name is Wayne Turmel. This is a Marisa-less episode, because as we do every other week, we have a really excellent conversation planned for you.

00;00;36;19 - 00;00;57;00
Wayne Turmel
So I'm going to introduce today's guest, Sri Ganesan. Is the boss of all things at Rocketlane. We're going to talk about project management, managing projects, setting up teams in a remote environment. Tre, how are you today?

00;00;57;02 - 00;01;03;10
Sri Ganesan
I mean, thank you so much for having me on your show today. I'm doing well. Things are good.

00;01;03;12 - 00;01;15;22
Wayne Turmel
I am delighted to hear that. We will try not to, mess that up. So real quickly, tell us, who are you? Why do we care? And what is Rocketlane?

00;01;15;24 - 00;01;43;24
Sri Ganesan
Sure. So, you know, as you introduced, I'm one of the founders and the CEO here at Rocket Lab, and this is my second SAS venture, built one from 2012 to 2015. And then, you know, that company got acquired, went through a seven and eight year journey overall in the previous business. And had a lot of learnings from that venture, which pushed us, me and my co-founders, the same co-founders of the last time, towards building something new.

00;01;43;27 - 00;02;09;13
Sri Ganesan
And we started Rocket Land four and a half years ago. We found that client facing project delivery felt very broken. We found a category called PSC Professional Services Automation, which had a bunch of legacy tools, and we thought, hey, what if we make this customer centric, modern PSC as a category that we can champion, we can create, and that's what we are on to at Rocket Lab.

00;02;09;13 - 00;02;32;00
Sri Ganesan
So we are a professional services automation tool which has a customer facing angle to it and helps both in the back end of operations for project delivery teams, like resource management, time tracking, etc. but also on the front end of it helps you with the actual project delivery, the governance around it, and so on.

00;02;32;03 - 00;02;40;21
Wayne Turmel
What was actually broken in the client facing piece of this? What was the problem you were solving for?

00;02;40;24 - 00;03;08;22
Sri Ganesan
So it's say two things. One is there's a deluge of tools that people were using. So you use one tool for the actual project management. You use something else to collaborate on documents. You use a conversation tool like a slack or a teams. You also use a PSA tool for same time tracking, budget tracking, you know, invoicing, etc. so information gets siloed across all of these and email as well.

00;03;08;22 - 00;03;30;05
Sri Ganesan
You can imagine. And everyone does also stuff an email. And then also the work gets siloed, which means, you know, there's there's tasks, small things that you need to do emerging from something you documented on email saying, hey, here's the action items from a meeting. There's something else that's in the project management tool. There's a comment on a document that needs to still be resolved.

00;03;30;07 - 00;04;00;14
Sri Ganesan
So work becomes too siloed. It's spread across too thin in different places. It's hard for anyone to be on top of it. And along this journey, the internal team and the customer are on a different page, right? Like you have a version of everything internally, you have a version that you've exposed to the customer. Everyone feels it's a little bit of a black box as to what's really happening, what's happening in the customer's mind the customer is anxious about, hey, are you really going to deliver on time?

00;04;00;16 - 00;04;19;22
Sri Ganesan
Because all they see is like a status update or a weekly status report you publish each week. So a lot of anxiety, mistrust along the way that builds up. People are not on the same page, and things do get dropped as well because of how siloed information and what this.

00;04;19;25 - 00;04;58;29
Wayne Turmel
Now, project management is one of the first areas that really embraced and figured out remote work. And when I say figure it out at least enough to make it happen, right? You remember working on remote projects back in the 90s and what? What has gotten easier over the years with remote project teams and what still remains a bear that we just haven't done as well as we might.

00;04;59;02 - 00;05;33;04
Sri Ganesan
I think what's gotten easier to just meeting more often, I think people have just gotten used to the fact that, hey, there's going to be zoom meetings every other day that we need to jump on and keep each other updated. I think the practice of project management has evolved so much that those who are in the know around those practices do a great job of surfacing risk earlier, being transparent about where things stand, calling out you know, things that need to be resolved, across teams, etc. but it's not necessarily something that everyone still does.

00;05;33;05 - 00;05;49;14
Sri Ganesan
Right? I think those who are who have embraced project management over a period of time as a practice have evolved to a state where they're able to do a great job of all of this. But you wouldn't find this to be universally true. What else has become one of the.

00;05;49;17 - 00;06;11;14
Wayne Turmel
One of the things that and I'm throwing you this curveball. So if the answer is you don't know, that's an acceptable answer. But I know that, Project Management Institute and the PIM Borg had instituted a lot of knowledge about what project management is. And I know that plays a role in the fact that people are getting better at it all the time.

00;06;11;16 - 00;06;20;23
Wayne Turmel
Has the Pim Bork adjusted to remote work as well as it might, or what's it missing?

00;06;20;26 - 00;06;43;13
Sri Ganesan
I would say the principles are, you know, universal in the sense that it doesn't matter if it's a team doing things remotely versus a doing team getting together in person, but it's more about, I would say not everyone is going to be a PMP, the new.

00;06;43;14 - 00;07;04;00
Wayne Turmel
Project management professional. And my apologies for throwing Pim back out there. Like everybody knows what it is. That is the project manager Book of Knowledge, the One Ring to rule them all. Project management is industry looks at. So my apologies to the to the listeners who just went Yeah.

00;07;04;00 - 00;07;11;13
Sri Ganesan
So like likewise, my apologies to throwing PMP as a term, but you would see if someone is a PMP you would see it on their LinkedIn. Right? Like the.

00;07;11;13 - 00;07;16;00
Wayne Turmel
Name. Oh, they are not shy about telling you if they're.

00;07;16;02 - 00;07;44;17
Sri Ganesan
My what what I've seen is we are increasingly moving to a world where people are not specialists in project management. Not every project, a big project has an engagement manager, a project manager assigned. But very often people are expected to play that dual role of, hey, I'm, I'm working on the things that need to get done, but I'm also managing the project, in which case, I think, you know, the expertise in project management is not going to be there.

00;07;44;20 - 00;08;32;19
Sri Ganesan
But you expect that with tools that are available, you get the job done. You you know, there's enough, that that you have to, tool systems, emails, etc., that you still should manage to get the project delivered successfully without a full time expert project manager. And that's that's where I think things actually break down. It's true that not every project deserves a full time project manager, but the systems need to adapt and and help bridge the gap in a better way around best practices around governance for projects, etc. because the people you know, and then they're running their first few projects or even later are not necessarily well attuned to.

00;08;32;21 - 00;08;46;02
Sri Ganesan
If you go to any SAS company, for example, the implementation teams there typically are not PMP certified. So you need to deal with that reality in how you deliver on your projects successfully. Even without that kind of expertise.

00;08;46;05 - 00;09;14;15
Wayne Turmel
Well, what you just said is really important because yes, you know, there are project managers and there are official projects, but every leader on the planet deals with projects and, you know, ranging from organizing Alice's birthday party in the break room to huge, you know, system changes. I guess there are two sides to this. One is that my experience?

00;09;14;15 - 00;09;44;09
Wayne Turmel
Is that project teams, project managers are not necessarily the manager of the people on the team. Right. So there is a little bit of you're my project manager, but I answer to Bob. And so there are these, conflicting priorities. Sometimes miscommunication. Can technology help us address that?

00;09;44;11 - 00;10;07;07
Sri Ganesan
Absolutely. I think there's a few. I mean, you made a very good point around you're responsible to get things done on time, but you're not the boss of most of the people on the project. As a project manager and think about customer facing projects where you also need inputs from customers, approvals from customers, things to happen on time, from the customer side.

00;10;07;09 - 00;10;30;26
Sri Ganesan
And you're definitely not the boss of your customer. So how do you handle that? Right? The way I've seen things. Then when you don't have the right technology, the team member is always worrying about, like the project manager or the person assuming that role for the project is worried about, hey, I just asked the customer about this yesterday.

00;10;31;04 - 00;10;49;06
Sri Ganesan
Is it okay for me to ask about it again today, or should I give it a couple of days? Even for an internal team member, I. Hey, the last time I asked about it, they said they'll get back in a week. Should I follow up midweek? About. Hey, are we on track still or is it going to get too annoying if I keep doing this?

00;10;49;09 - 00;11;18;27
Sri Ganesan
So there are these soft software aspects, right? And, you know, there's a gentleman, one of my customers once asked me, how does the project get delayed? And the answer to that was, you know, I came up with various reasons, like, why does the project get delayed? Here are like ten reasons why a project gets delayed. And he said, hey, you know, the question was, how does a project get delayed?

00;11;18;27 - 00;11;59;26
Sri Ganesan
And the answer is one day at a time. So his input was that every day matters, right? And you need to get really tight on your execution for you to actually deliver on time. You're not going to manage to keep a project on track if you don't have that tight governance around how things are happening. And I think the right tool can actually help you with that governance and automation around the governance so that it's not down to, hey, I have this hero project manager here who does a great job every single time and is on top of things and knows when to follow up, but it's more system driven.

00;12;00;03 - 00;12;18;12
Sri Ganesan
So can we move from hero driven to system driven? I think that's the responsibility of a great client. Facing project delivery to a great PSA will throw risks at using hey, this project has a schedule risk, a scope risk, a budget risk, etc. so that you get ahead of the problems.

00;12;18;15 - 00;12;52;04
Wayne Turmel
I think that is such an important point, and I think on remote teams, because you can't just poke your head over somebody's cube when there's a problem. I think that it's really important to remember that systems are replicable and heroes seldom are. It's way easier to build a good system that people can plug into than it is to try to create a whole bunch of great project managers.

00;12;52;06 - 00;13;15;29
Sri Ganesan
Absolutely. And I think, you know, it's not just for internal when you're working with the customer. It's also about, do you have a sense of what's what's going on in the customer's mind in a remote world? You see them on zoom for like one hour every alternate day maybe, and you don't necessarily. You're paying attention to what you're presenting and how someone reacted to that.

00;13;16;01 - 00;13;38;21
Sri Ganesan
You're not necessarily gauging what else is running on their mind, and very often, you know, you think things are going great. And then there is an escalation from the customer. And by the time that escalation comes in, it's too late to recover from that. There's there's so much that has built up in the customer's mind around what's working, what's not working, why this partnership is good or not good anymore.

00;13;38;24 - 00;14;07;15
Sri Ganesan
And that's led to that escalation. Whereas if you have a great system, the system should capture along the journey. What's the sentiment of the customer as well and help you get ahead of a problem the first time you have a three star rating for like a workshop or a training or something else you did with the customer, is a great opportunity for your leader to connect with them, saying, hey, what could have made this a five star experience?

00;14;07;18 - 00;14;19;26
Sri Ganesan
And, you know, turn things around if you have if you don't know about like if it's a one star experience, you hear about it because there's someone shouting at you already. Yeah, but if it's multiple three star.

00;14;19;26 - 00;14;50;13
Wayne Turmel
About it very quickly and then actually, I think is a point whether you're using project management software or not on remote teams, I think it's really critical that there are the big check ins, right? The the meetings, the conversations. But there's also this constant feedback loop of the ability to check in, the ability to just check a number rather than call a meeting.

00;14;50;13 - 00;15;20;06
Wayne Turmel
The, you know, that information needs to be flowing both ways all the time. And that's just true of remote work, right? If you wait until there's a big challenge, it's very often too late or it's created way more drama than it needs to. Let me ask you this. We're going to switch gears just a bit as the guy running the company, right, has the CEO.

00;15;20;08 - 00;15;44;05
Wayne Turmel
And I know that just because people make a certain software or have a certain expertise, doesn't mean they always execute perfectly. So what are the things that you wish your team did better? And how do you handle it? Because you're sitting in Lehigh Utah, and they're not. Yeah.

00;15;44;08 - 00;16;13;20
Sri Ganesan
So we actually have, team members globally now, of course, as you would expect. And I think the way we've thought about this is we look at it from the customer's perspective. What is the journey that a customer is going through with us when you are executing on a project? So our projects, for example, are we are delivering like we are implementing our own software as a project and it is project management software.

00;16;13;20 - 00;16;36;08
Sri Ganesan
Of course, that's it's sort of a I think question over there. But but we are implementing using our own software. So we need to come across as the experts. We need to be one of the best customers of our own. Software is not the best. And we learn from our customers all the time. But we sort of engineered a lot of things to get this right.

00;16;36;08 - 00;17;13;06
Sri Ganesan
I would say it starts at making a great first impression and setting expectations right very early. So that kickoff meeting, even right from kickoff and kickoff, I think there's a lot of effort that's gone into perfecting what needs to happen over there. How do we help customers see us as experts early on? How do we help create a few teaching moments, even from the kickoff meeting where the customer walks away from that meeting thinking, hey, I learned something today from the Rocket Lab team that I can put in use in my projects with my customers.

00;17;13;08 - 00;17;43;23
Sri Ganesan
It's also about, you know, getting their permission for, hey, we're going to be intense in this project. That's our style. Are you okay with that? So one of the questions we ask in the kickoff meeting is what should we do if your team is not reacting or responding to what we need on time and with the exec sponsor on the other side, usually they're going to say, hey, if there's a day of delay on your site, suffice it to me, I'm happy to figure out like how to solve this and move things forward.

00;17;43;25 - 00;18;10;12
Sri Ganesan
But I want to hear early because the exec wants to hear early and we are thinking about, hey, Will, will we be throwing someone under the bus, should we escalate or not, etc. but now you have the permission from the leader saying, hey, here's the way you're going to operate, here's what's going to happen every week. So that's those are some things that we've done early in the journey and then throughout the journey, if it's a large project, as you said, there's like a steering committee meeting that happens.

00;18;10;14 - 00;18;23;28
Sri Ganesan
But for smaller projects, we have a set that goes out automatically for every deliverable along the way. So you catch sentiment problems early. You also catch like a critical milestone, slipping early.

00;18;24;00 - 00;18;49;15
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. I want those of you who are listening who are not necessarily project managers. I don't want what Sri just said to slide by because it's something not enough people ask, which is you're talking to your customer, you're talking to your stakeholder, and you want to say, hey, everything's going to be great. And here's what we're going to do.

00;18;49;17 - 00;19;22;17
Wayne Turmel
But pointing out if there is a problem, how do you want to handle it as quickly as you can? And getting agreement on what that is prevents so much drama. And and Shree, thank you, because I haven't heard anybody actually put that into the process. And I think that's really important. We are running out of time. Sri, what is the one thing that you want to leave with the folks who are listening?

00;19;22;25 - 00;19;41;06
Wayne Turmel
We will have links to Rocketlane. We will have links to the demo. We will have links to Sri in our show notes, but, Sri, what's one piece of brilliance that you want to leave our listeners with?

00;19;41;08 - 00;19;48;15
Sri Ganesan
I'll say two things, if that's fine. One is. Oh, fine. I would say just remember that.

00;19;48;17 - 00;20;09;00
Sri Ganesan
I would say one thing for any project team to remember is if you're working with the customer on a project, the ball is always in your court. You may believe that it's in the customer's code, but you still need to internalize that it's still on you to hold them accountable and make things happen because you don't want finger pointing later.

00;20;09;03 - 00;20;47;12
Sri Ganesan
The exact on the customer side, you know, trusted you to deliver as a team, and that includes making their team do work on time. So that's one second I would say is pay attention to what's happening in the last year and a half around AI, because it's going to change a lot in this space. You need to, if you're like in your budgeting season budget for I need to do some AI experiments to to figure out how to make my team more efficient, to get more, you know, high quality, work, focus on our team versus like the mundane tasks that people are doing, etc..

00;20;47;12 - 00;21;03;03
Sri Ganesan
Right. So I think very important for us to actively be experimenting with new AI tools in this space and to ensure that we are getting ahead of the game and equipping ourselves and our teams to to embrace what's coming our way.

00;21;03;05 - 00;21;16;25
Wayne Turmel
Without going down the rabbit hole. Because, boy, that's a big rabbit hole. What is one thing that you think AI is going to change about the way rocket land works?

00;21;16;28 - 00;21;41;23
Sri Ganesan
We already have a bunch of things that have come in that use AI to make our teams, the teams that use rocket, land more productive, but I feel the biggest thing is, again, the system identifying opportunities, risks, you know, things to surface for at a county level, not just one project, but you're running multiple projects with customers across a project.

00;21;41;23 - 00;22;06;06
Sri Ganesan
You're playing on different calls and emails and so on. How do we identify risks? Early problems early surfaced not letting it to be something that someone needs to raise their hand and say, I need help, but instead the system saying, hey, pay attention. This project. Someone needs to look at what's happening over here so that a leader can help resolve things before something goes south.

00;22;06;06 - 00;22;08;20
Sri Ganesan
So catch it while it goes sideways, not after.

00;22;08;27 - 00;22;41;14
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. So it's surfacing things proactively. Yeah, that's very cool. Thank you I appreciate that. I am going to excuse me for just a moment while I tell you that, you know, leadership is an important part, whether it's project leadership or traditional leadership. Kevin Eikenberry in my new book, The Long Distance Leader Revised Rules for Remarkable Remote and Hybrid Leadership, that is the second edition updated for 2024.

00;22;41;20 - 00;23;24;09
Wayne Turmel
You can find out more about that at long distance. Kevin eikenberry.com/ldl or long distance work life.com/ldl. And the book is now available on audible. If you enjoyed the show, please like subscribe, listen to past episodes. If you have an idea for, topics for guests, if you have comments, questions, vicious personal attacks, you can contact us directly Wayne at Kevin eikenberry.com Marissa at Kevin I can barrie.com or through LinkedIn for either of us or the long distance work life page.

00;23;24;11 - 00;23;48;17
Wayne Turmel
You know what? The world is changing so fast, and that's why we're here. As I said, we will have links to Straight to Rocketlane. You can learn more about the software, on our show notes. Long distance work life.com. That's it for another week. I'll be back with Marissa. Marissa. Next week we will be having a really fun conversation.

00;23;48;17 - 00;23;55;01
Wayne Turmel
You want to check that out? And in the meantime, my name is Wayne Turmel. Don't let the weasels get you down.

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00;00;08;03 - 00;00;34;01
Wayne Turmel
Hello, everybody. Welcome. Welcome to the long distance work life. My name is Wayne Trammell. I am thrilled to be with you. This is the podcast to help you thrive. Survive, generally. Keep the weasels at bay in the crazy and constantly evolving world of remote and hybrid work. we have a really, really good show today. We are going.

00;00;34;04 - 00;00;58;09
Wayne Turmel
We sadly do not have Marissa with us, but what that means is we get to meet somebody else. Really cool. And in this case, that person, I say bringing her into the room is Jessica Kriegel, who is the brains behind Culture Partners and Jessica. who are you and what does culture Partners do? And then we'll get into our conversation.

00;00;58;12 - 00;01;19;18
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Well, thank you for having me. I am Doctor Jessica Kriegel. I'm the chief scientist of workplace culture at Culture Partners and Culture Partners. As a workplace culture consulting firm that is focused on helping organizations drive results. That's what we do. We help companies get the results that they're trying to achieve. And the way that we go about doing that is through activating their culture.

00;01;19;20 - 00;01;44;23
Wayne Turmel
Okay, so there are about four things that you said there that worthy of diving in. And I'm going to start with the one that kind of catches people off guard, which is the idea that you are the culture scientist. Yes. Other than working for Dannon yogurt, I do not know that I have ever met a culture scientist before, so what the heck you want?

00;01;44;24 - 00;01;51;18
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
I have not heard the yogurt metaphor or analogy to my title before. That's a good one.

00;01;51;21 - 00;01;54;10
Wayne Turmel
so what the heck does a culture scientist do?

00;01;54;11 - 00;02;20;06
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
He asks. Yeah. I mean, my job is to research best practices in what gets results and culture is, you know, let's start there. Because so many people view culture as something that's touchy feely or woowoo and ultimately it's deeply misunderstood because people are trying to solve culture issues with ping pong tables and virtual pizza parties, and those things are fun.

00;02;20;06 - 00;02;43;02
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Maybe if you like those things, but they're not culture. We view culture as the way that people think and act to get results. So as a scientist of culture, my job is to understand how do we get people to think and act in the way that we need them to think and act in order to get results? That works for them and works for the company over the long term.

00;02;43;05 - 00;02;57;27
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of definitions of culture. The one that I usually work with is this is how we do it here, right? Right. And how we do it somewhere else, which is different than somebody else does it. But what is the it.

00;02;58;00 - 00;03;18;21
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Right. The reason this is how we do it here is I don't know how to scale. This is how we do it here or how to shift. This is how we do it here. That gets us pretty stuck into one kind of culture. And we did research last year with Stanford University to help finish answering that question about how do we actually do the research?

00;03;18;25 - 00;03;49;10
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
We partner with academic institutions and other organizations that are interested in this stuff. And last year with Stanford, we looked at what of all the different culture dimensions, which one actually wins to drive revenue growth? Just very simply, revenue growth is the focus in that particular study to show the results, orientation of this impact of this work. And what we found was an adaptive culture, was the kind of culture that always won the most for far above all other type of cultures.

00;03;49;16 - 00;04;10;05
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
So an adaptive culture is not getting stuck in one culture. It's about being able to shift from one to the next and the next and pivoting when technology changes, when our circumstances change, when our competitive environment changes, that that is actually the skill is is not just choosing one and getting stuck in the way we do things around here.

00;04;10;05 - 00;04;13;00
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
That can be a death knell for your culture.

00;04;13;02 - 00;04;44;00
Wayne Turmel
Well, that, of course, leads us to the next thing, which is the big push back after Covid. Yeah, everybody got scattered to the winds and then they said, no, you're coming back in. And we're hearing more and more even from companies where you maybe don't expect it, like zoom, zoom, Google. In fact, the zoom is calling people into the office just drips with an irony that does not even begin to be described.

00;04;44;03 - 00;05;06;24
Wayne Turmel
but the reason for that over and over and over again, we're told, is, well, we need to keep the company culture. And the only way to do that is to have people in the same building at the same time, at least part of the time. And I'm willing to bet that you probably view it differently.

00;05;06;26 - 00;05;31;06
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Yeah. so think about the language that leaders are using to get people back to the office. Back right. Or we need to return to the office return. These are all backwards looking phrases that we need to use to go back to how it was before Covid. And for some organizations, they've been remote for a long time. I was an Oracle for ten years.

00;05;31;06 - 00;05;55;13
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
I started in 2008 and I was working remotely. So this isn't just a Covid thing. This has been a slow transition that got accelerated due to Covid, but we cannot go back because to go back and to return to this way that it used to be inherent in that is the idea that Covid was simply a pause and that the pause has been unpause.

00;05;55;18 - 00;06;19;12
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
And now we can go back to how it was before, as if Covid wasn't transformational to our social psychology, to the norms and behaviors of how we operate. We saw a different way. And you can't go back. You can't undo do this complete transformation of everything about the way that we work. Now. Some people will go back into the office because that's what they want to do, and they like it that way, and that's fine.

00;06;19;14 - 00;06;38;13
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
But I think that those companies are failing to adapt. And I just told you that the culture that wins and gets the most results is the culture that can adapt and move forward. And if you're stuck and trying to go back, you're not working on that fundamental progress that needs to happen in any organization to innovate and grow.

00;06;38;15 - 00;06;51;19
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. I mean, it's so funny. People misquote Darwin all the time. They always say it's survival of the fittest and it's not. It's the creature that learns to adapt is what survives. Right?

00;06;51;22 - 00;06;53;25
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Did he really not say survival of the fittest?

00;06;53;25 - 00;06;56;10
Wayne Turmel
He did not. He never used that phrase.

00;06;56;12 - 00;06;58;27
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Wow. Who said that? Was it the. Who's the other.

00;06;58;27 - 00;07;00;25
Wayne Turmel
Somebody that read him in the market?

00;07;00;25 - 00;07;06;05
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
It was that other guy that also did evolution. Anyway, we're on a tangent, but that's fascinating. I gotta go double check that.

00;07;06;05 - 00;07;22;07
Wayne Turmel
If that's when you get a couple of geeks together. This is the kind of conversation that you wind up having. Ladies, we can't go back to the before times and we can't write clearly the big concern, the thing that we hear is we're worried about culture and and.

00;07;22;10 - 00;07;25;27
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Losing, you know, losing our culture. Have you heard.

00;07;25;28 - 00;07;33;22
Wayne Turmel
Losing our culture like the before times was some glorious time where there were no problems and everything worked just fine?

00;07;33;24 - 00;07;35;02
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Yeah.

00;07;35;05 - 00;07;36;03
Wayne Turmel
Yeah.

00;07;36;05 - 00;07;57;12
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
I mean, like, where did the culture go? If we're losing it? I would love to know the island of lost cultures, you know? I mean, that doesn't even make any sense. So yes, the, the, the saying goes that if we don't get back to our together, we're going to lose our culture. What makes us who we are. And the reality is of cultures, the way that people think and act to get results.

00;07;57;17 - 00;08;18;22
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Well, we're still thinking virtually and we're still acting virtually. So let me break down what we think culture really comes down to where it emerges and what it results in. So, you know, every company is trying to get results. Where do results come from? They come from our actions. We do stuff and that stuff produces a result right?

00;08;18;24 - 00;08;42;07
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Our actions come from our beliefs. We have beliefs about the nature of the work we're doing, about what drives meaning in our lives, about whether it's worth it about each other. Right? Those beliefs are what drive our actions, and that is how we think. And so if you want to change how people think, their beliefs and their actions, then you have to create experiences for them.

00;08;42;07 - 00;09;01;22
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Because all of our beliefs come from experiences that we've had. Why do I believe that you're a nice guy? It's because of the experience we had in our email exchanges and in the conversations we've had. Those experiences led me to a belief that took me to take an action, which is to join you today, and that's going to get you a result, which is an episode that people will listen to right now.

00;09;01;29 - 00;09;22;17
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
And the episode that result is an experience, too, that they're having that will lead them to a belief about the nature and power of working from home and culture or not. Right. And that's going to lead them to take an action and that's going to get a result. And so it's the cycle. That's culture. So it really if you want to influence culture, you start at the experience level.

00;09;22;17 - 00;09;42;09
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
What experiences can I create for people. And virtually getting an email is an experience. Getting a text message is an experience. Having a zoom call is an experience. Just like bumping into someone in the hallway was an experience. Having lunch at the cafeteria was an experience. But the experiences don't stop just because we're doing it in a different format.

00;09;42;12 - 00;10;02;11
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
And the kindness that you show me in those virtual experiences lead to a belief, or the bitterness, or the short nature of your emails or texts or whatever, all of that. We just have to be intentional of the experiences we create, no matter what the delivery mechanism of that experience is.

00;10;02;13 - 00;10;26;25
Wayne Turmel
Okay, so before you continue, because I know we pulled the string in your back and and you're off and that's great. We dig that. But you said something that I think we need to highlight and that is this notion of experience. And there are two parts to this. The first is if your experience with somebody is purely transactional.

00;10;26;27 - 00;10;40;03
Wayne Turmel
Hey, can you send me that file? Here it is. If their experience is purely transactional, it's not going to create a bond, a relationship, a psychological emotional connection.

00;10;40;05 - 00;10;40;24
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Exactly.

00;10;40;25 - 00;11;11;03
Wayne Turmel
They have with people. Right. So we need to crank that up and have different types of experiences. But let's talk about the word experi sense. what do we need to be aware of? What kind of experiences? Virtually do we need to do that maybe used to happen organically, or at least unconsciously, when we were all in the same mosh pit.

00;11;11;05 - 00;11;38;13
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
It's all about coming from the heart in the experiences that you create and doing it, doing it intentionally. So some examples of experiences that happen virtually is me calling you and recognizing you for something that you've done, giving you feedback, either positive feedback or constructive feedback about some thing that happened. Telling you a story about something that you weren't even involved in that someone else did that was really wonderful.

00;11;38;19 - 00;12;01;06
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
That's an experience. Last night, you know, I got this big interview this week for my show, and I was really proud of it, and I did a lot of work to make it go well. And last night my boss called me he that the show got released yesterday and he called me and said, I just listened to the interview and I took notes and I want to share them with you.

00;12;01;06 - 00;12;25;24
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
And he spent 20 minutes basically reading me his notes about all of his favorite parts and why that was powerful and what he thought was a good question. And it was all positive feedback. And at the end he was like, so that's what I thought the the time and attention and thoughtfulness that he took to give me that feedback was so impactful because it was an experience that like, wow, he really cares about the work that I do.

00;12;25;27 - 00;12;44;25
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
He could have just as easily sent a text that said, great interview, exclamation point, exclamation point, and I would have felt good, but it didn't go the extra mile that he took. Both of them were virtual, right? But it's about coming from the heart and giving someone an experience in the way you communicate with them.

00;12;44;28 - 00;13;00;25
Wayne Turmel
And you said something again, you know, there are micro cultures and macro cultures. There's micro culture of your specific team. There's the macro culture of your organization. This simple way to kind of divide it.

00;13;00;27 - 00;13;01;07
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Yeah.

00;13;01;14 - 00;13;34;00
Wayne Turmel
My experience and maybe you can speak to this. My experience is it is fairly easy for an individual team to intentionally form a culture. The nuclear team is very much like the nuclear family, right? There's mom, dad and the kids. Yeah, and they're a tight unit. But inside the larger organization, the interactions don't always happen virtually. They don't experience each other the way they do when they share an office space and they're bumping into people.

00;13;34;02 - 00;13;50;12
Wayne Turmel
So can you. We'll just step aside from the micro culture for a moment. How do you intentionally or what kind of experiences can you create to help influence the macro culture, as opposed to just your particular team?

00;13;50;14 - 00;14;19;17
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Yeah, that's a great question. And that's really what we do with our clients. So, you know, most culture consultants, they go into a company and they start by digging up all of the dirt. So they interview people and they do focus groups and they do surveys. And they're asking what's broken here, what doesn't work? And then they come up with a list of 20 things that they found, and then they present this list to the executives and say, well, here's everything that's broken that needs to be fixed, and we can do that for you for the low, low price of $5 million or whatever it is.

00;14;19;17 - 00;14;42;26
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Right. And so we don't do that. We start with, what result do you want to achieve? What is the goal? Give me a key result. We call them, which is a meaningful, measurable, memorable number that you want to achieve. And then let's reverse engineer that number to figure out what beliefs people need to hold in order to take the right action to get that result.

00;14;42;29 - 00;15;12;25
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
And once you understand those beliefs and you're really explicit about them, you label them and you identify what they mean. Then you intentionally create experiences across all levels of the organization to drive those beliefs. So, for example, at Culture Partners, we have a cultural belief of taking accountability. That's one belief we know needs to be held in order for people to take the right action for us to get our result, which is we want to impact 5 million lives in 2025.

00;15;12;25 - 00;15;40;01
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
It's a measurable number. It's meaningful and it's memorable 5 in 25. So we know people need to take accountability. So we recognize when people do take accountability and we give feedback to people when they're not taking accountability. And we tell stories about taking accountability and always tying what the action was that they did to that belief of taking accountability and reinforcing that that's going to help us get to five and 25.

00;15;40;04 - 00;16;05;21
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
So we're being explicit in our language about the things that are usually implicit. Whereas usually feedback looks like great job on that presentation here. He says. In this presentation you did x, y, and Z. By doing that, you demonstrated the belief of take accountability, and that's going to help us get to five and 25. And so it's a self reinforcing system that we help organizations implement at the macro level.

00;16;05;27 - 00;16;15;05
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
And everyone owns culture in that way because everyone is responsible to use the tools to reinforce the explicit cultural beliefs to get the results.

00;16;15;07 - 00;16;35;19
Wayne Turmel
Okay. Can you give me a I'm sure you can. Will you give me a specific example of something that an organization did to kind of expand that across divisions, across functions, something very specific?

00;16;35;22 - 00;17;00;26
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Yes. We are working with a medical institution. And this, the client was the director of the emergency department. And there we said, what's the result? You want it? We always start with results. Right? And they said, we only gather next of kin information for incoming patients 42% of the time. We need to collect it every time. So we looked at the action was people were not filling out the form.

00;17;00;26 - 00;17;24;13
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
So she had tried already to fix that number. Through a bunch of actions, she would try translating the form, simplifying the form, training people on the form. She'd actually spent six months on this, and after six months, she was able to increase the gathering of the form to 47%, which is like 5% growth barely moved the needle. Six months of effort shifting the shift schedule to get people out of work to do the training.

00;17;24;13 - 00;17;42;01
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
It was a laborious project and it cost money and it barely worked. So the belief we were like, what's the belief getting in the way? She's like the belief that these people have is that it's a waste of their time. They're trying to save lives. People come in in emergency situations and I'm trying to get them to stop and do paperwork.

00;17;42;01 - 00;18;12;07
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
Like it just doesn't feel important. Right. And the experience that they were having was nag, nag, nag, do the paperwork. And there is generally tension in the health care community around patient experience and data entry. Right? That's not an uncommon issue. So we helped her identify stories in this case where the experience that she could use to create a new belief, and she told two true stories from that emergency department of patients that had come in.

00;18;12;07 - 00;18;32;04
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
One was a woman. She was, in an emergency situation came in. They did not gather her next of kin information. They treated her when she fell unconscious, but she died. They later found out that she had had a, a condition that if they had known about by calling the next of kin, they might have adjusted the protocol and been able to save her.

00;18;32;07 - 00;18;55;23
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
The second patient, different time, same hospital came in. They did gather as next of kin information. He fell unconscious. They called the daughter. The daughter informed them about his medications, and they adjusted protocol and they saved his life. She told those two stories for three weeks, and in three weeks they started gathering next of kin information. 97% of the time the belief changed.

00;18;55;25 - 00;19;08;01
Dr. Jessica Kriegel
This is important. This is part of the process of saving lives. It's not just paperwork. And they started taking a new action. That's culture creation in action at scale.

00;19;08;03 - 00;19;35;29
Wayne Turmel
That is fabulous. doctor Jessica Kriegel, thank you so, so much for being with us on the long distance work life. If you are interested, ladies and gentlemen, in contacting Jessica culture. partners. Partners, listening to the Culture Leader podcast, we will have links to all of that good stuff in our show notes at Long distance work life.

00;19;35;29 - 00;20;01;29
Wayne Turmel
Dot com. Jessica, thank you so much for being with us. And ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, thank you. If you enjoyed today's conversation. And I can't believe, frankly, that you didn't, you know, like and subscribe. You know how podcasts work. We're trying to grow our listenership. You we want to find more smart people like you who want to, learn how to do this better.

00;20;02;02 - 00;20;28;24
Wayne Turmel
Also, on the subject of doing it better, shameless plug time. September 17th is the publication date for the new edition of The Long Distance Leader Revised Rules for Remarkable Remote and Hybrid Leadership. the original came out in 2018. The world has changed since then. Our book is new. It's exciting. We talk about culture. We talk about hybrid teams.

00;20;28;29 - 00;20;58;13
Wayne Turmel
Please, please, please, wherever you get your books from. And of course, there is, a place you can find all of this. Our, long distance leadership series of classes. We have a new one that begins in late September. You can find that at Kevin eikenberry.com/lds, LDS, less LDS is a very different thing. no judgment. It's just a different thing.

00;20;58;13 - 00;21;25;09
Wayne Turmel
Darn it. if you want to reach out to myself or to Marissa, show ideas, guest ideas, questions, pet peeves, things you'd like us to, talk about and discuss on the show. We are easy to find. Thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us. We will be back next week with another episode. This time, Marissa and I will be there.

00;21;25;11 - 00;21;30;19
Wayne Turmel
Thanks for joining us on the long distance work life. Don't let the weasels get you down. Hey.