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.

00;00;08;01 - 00;00;50;02
Wayne Turmel
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Long Distance It's Work Life podcast where we try to make sense of the crazy emerging, constantly changing world of remote and hybrid work. And today I'm really excited. This is an important topic and we haven't really addressed it before. But one of the most important things in anyone's career is the ability to manage projects and and you don't have to be an official PMI blast project manager because there's all kinds of projects and we have an excellent, excellent guest today we are going to introduce you to.

00;00;50;05 - 00;01;07;14
Wayne Turmel
And here she is now, Cory Cogan, who is the coauthor along with Suzette Blakemore of Program Manager, Project management for the unofficial project manager. Tara Corey, who are you in? What the heck is the book about?

00;01;07;16 - 00;01;37;03
Kory Kogon
High range. First of all, thanks for having me. And I serve as a vice president of content development for Franklin Covey is familiar with God organization, hailing from the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as the where it all started. And I am the lead author on our work around project management. I tend to be what they call the subject matter expert, although I'm not an expert on many things productivity and leadership.

00;01;37;03 - 00;01;49;02
Kory Kogon
So having run many projects in my life as an unofficial project manager on the scarred, unofficial project manager and just delighted that this book is so popular for people like me and others.

00;01;49;04 - 00;01;59;26
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I think a lot of us did our first project management before we knew that's what we were doing.

00;01;59;28 - 00;02;32;06
Wayne Turmel
I kind of explained it to somebody. Once the projects run the range from cooking dinner for your spouse to, you know, putting on a high society wedding and there while they are essentially the same thing, there are levels of complexity and craziness that go along with it. Why do you think people find themselves in unofficial project management? How does that how does one find oneself in that space?

00;02;32;08 - 00;03;08;23
Kory Kogon
Well, first of all, you're exactly right. So since the beginning of time, if you were cooking dinner at the hearth for your family or having a family reunion or whatever, everything that has a beginning and an end, you know, is a project personally and professionally. So it's always been that way. But in the work force in particular, over the years as we've moved from, you know, sort of the factory, the the assembly line process kind of work and we slipped into the roles of being knowledge workers where we're paid to think in a very create and execute.

00;03;08;25 - 00;03;37;02
Kory Kogon
We are tasked today with working on things that have a beginning and an end. And I think the pandemic really helped solidify that as we had to be very innovative very quickly and create new things to be able to adjust to the new world. And whether you are creating a marketing campaign, a learning program, a new system, whatever it all is projects and we think about them, we innovate them.

00;03;37;02 - 00;03;55;21
Kory Kogon
And so like you said, when we've been doing it for a long time and I said, I'm scarred. Everybody's very good at what they do, but never had the benefit of, you know, real training or learning around processes and systems. And we just pushed our way through to the best of our ability.

00;03;55;23 - 00;04;36;29
Wayne Turmel
I think a lot of people, when they hear project management, their brain immediately goes to the very complex, you know, project management, institute, PMI, Gantt charts and stuff, and there's, you know, software and things that I need to know. What are the things that you I don't think you've ever been asked this question this way before. When you start doing projects, what are the things that you absolutely need to know and what are the things that especially early on, you shouldn't worry your pretty little head about?

00;04;37;02 - 00;05;06;23
Kory Kogon
Well, that's an interesting question. I'm going to reverse it on you because I think the first thing you need to look at is some of the trends around why projects fail and the things that we hear. And I you know, data shows this. Whenever I ask an audience, I could be in the UK, in Africa, anywhere, and I get the same list that is, you know, a lack of clear goals or outcomes, lack of communication.

00;05;06;23 - 00;05;40;17
Kory Kogon
People are in the wrong roles, you know, all of those kinds of things. And when you hear that, what comes clear and cutting through the noise, like you said, and you know, PMI certainly has they've done some amazing work out there as well, particularly with their new additions of the pimp office, their new standard. But what's really required upfront is to get a good scope on the project that everybody really understands what the project is and the value that it's providing, whether to your family or the organization.

00;05;40;20 - 00;06;02;24
Kory Kogon
And this comes out of the Agile movement that is so popular now where we had to be a little more flexible about things and get feedback and build value because a lot of projects end up getting done and learned don't even look like what they were to start with. So scoping the project is really important. Planning is next.

00;06;03;02 - 00;06;39;25
Kory Kogon
You mentioned the end chart. Yes, it gets complicated, but honestly and you know, with us we said, you know, you don't have to become an expert. It again chart. But understanding some project management principles like dependencies duration is really helpful to take some of the pressure off of somebody that's managing six or seven different projects. But I'll tell you that the most important part of project management, whether you're official or unofficial, I mentioned value and it's people management and leadership.

00;06;40;01 - 00;06;48;11
Kory Kogon
And the interesting thing is that there are many project managers out there that never wanted to be people leaders.

00;06;48;13 - 00;07;06;03
Wayne Turmel
If like you, how many? I can't tell you how many PMI meetings I've been to where people say, Well, all these soft skills are great, Wayne, but I, I'm not a people manager and I want to grab them by the lapels and go, You better be.

00;07;06;05 - 00;07;31;04
Kory Kogon
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And because really, I mean, if you think about it, you know, I mentioned the failure list before, so you see this list of lack of communication, lack of clear goals, lack of, you know, whatever feedback. And then you're like, Hey, we're going to do this project, let's go get them. And so the people, because of these trends, go into most projects pretty darn disengaged to start.

00;07;31;04 - 00;07;49;09
Kory Kogon
So that's one problem. But again, a lot of people never planned on being people, leaders. And so it's really important that they learn a little bit about informal authority and the principles around You're not going to get this project done well without people. And so the.

00;07;49;09 - 00;08;11;21
Wayne Turmel
Informal, the informal authority, I think is is so critical because I know that most of the projects I've worked on are ad hoc teams, right? They've been put together with a person from this group and a person from this group, and more than once as a project manager, I've had somebody look at me and go, You're not my real boss.

00;08;11;24 - 00;08;18;14
Kory Kogon
Right? Right. Sorry. Did you want to finish that? I interrupted you.

00;08;18;17 - 00;08;35;03
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, well, no, I mean, you just. You know exactly what I'm talking about. This idea of responsibility without formal authority is one of the hardest things when organizing a project.

00;08;35;06 - 00;08;59;23
Kory Kogon
Right? And it is interesting because people know what informal authority you know really is, because, you know, a lot of people it's like, I wish I could report, you know, to that manager, to that person. They're not even a leader, but they're so, you know, good at what they do and they respect people and all that kind of stuff.

00;08;59;23 - 00;09;34;00
Kory Kogon
So that's what informal leadership really is about. It's, you know, do people want to play on your team and do they want to win with you? And if you can do that, that's great. And you know, you know this better than most. There's a million leadership courses out there that people can take and leadership development. And honestly, what we say is that if we can just master five, you know, behaviors, leadership behaviors, you know, and they're your parents probably taught you this, but it's hard when you're under pressure.

00;09;34;03 - 00;10;03;02
Kory Kogon
But if people could manage, project managers can really demonstrate, demonstrate respect. They listen to people, they clarify expectations for the people on the team and really important they extend trust to the team versus I can do it all myself or I don't trust them. And finally, practice accountability both of themselves. First, am I accountable to this and their people?

00;10;03;02 - 00;10;26;11
Kory Kogon
And I think you know this. I'll tell you. I mean, it's tough because first of all, demonstrating respect under pressure can be I'm from New York City originally, not to brand New Yorkers, but I know, you know, I've got a New York kind of way. And when I'm under pressure, it's like, let's just get it done. And I have to remember, I need to just remember that not everybody moves the way I move or thinks the way I do.

00;10;26;13 - 00;10;35;08
Kory Kogon
So what does respect look like? So these five behaviors are really helpful to help people become informal leaders.

00;10;35;10 - 00;11;06;23
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, they absolutely are. And and that's that's a mindset kind of thing, right? As a leader, this is the mindset that we need. But let's talk about let's take that mindset now and move it to the world that we're in where a lot of us cut our teeth on our first project, but we were safely in the womb of the office or the headquarters, and the boss was there to help run under us with a net if we needed it and that kind of thing.

00;11;06;23 - 00;11;23;24
Wayne Turmel
And now we are working in a dispersed workplace, like maybe some of your folks are in one place, maybe not. I mean, whether it's hybrid or completely remote, how does that complicate the situation?

00;11;23;26 - 00;11;32;12
Kory Kogon
I don't know if complicated is the right word in our organization. First of all, I've been remote for a long time, really before I was even.

00;11;32;14 - 00;11;35;03
Wayne Turmel
Neither of us needs to do the math.

00;11;35;05 - 00;12;05;06
Kory Kogon
Right. Right. And our organization has also for the last probably decade now has been mostly remote, I guess we call it hybrid today. And I said, I don't know if the word is is complicated, but again, the experience of some of these people that are managing projects, they don't have you know, they don't they don't come ready with the skills.

00;12;05;09 - 00;12;35;01
Kory Kogon
Well, I can't see them, so how do I manage them? And the principles behind unofficial project management and people management and value management are sound or are correct. And I will use the word complicated. I think it does get you know, it is more complicated because these leaders obviously need to do this when people aren't around them having said that, I'll go back to what I said.

00;12;35;04 - 00;13;08;27
Kory Kogon
Even if we're doing this by Zoom or teams or whatever, really key, if you are if you are scoping, planning the project, using some tools in a way that is real clarity for everybody on the project team to know what's going on. And with that in mind, when you have like a visual scoreboard, we call it of the project and you're able to sort and help and with your team together assign resources appropriately.

00;13;09;00 - 00;13;40;11
Kory Kogon
And so to use a sports analogy, but even create a cadence of team meetings, that's not about the leader telling people what to do, but everybody having visibility into what's going on with the project and people stepping up and saying, you know what, we're crazy busy this week, but here's the one thing I'm going to get done this week that's going to make sure that the project is in play and the leader steps back and only does what we call clear the path, meaning I'm just going to get Wayne's going to do this thing.

00;13;40;13 - 00;14;02;22
Kory Kogon
Facilities isn't responding to him. I'm going to make sure that they respond so he can continue that task. The last thing I'll say on that, So if the team is engaged in that kind of way and you're leading in that kind of way, all of this is around extending trust to the team. So if I've got the right team together and by the way, we don't always get to choose that as we know.

00;14;02;25 - 00;14;27;21
Kory Kogon
But if I generally have the right team and I'm inspiring them to want to play on the team and when I extend trust to them and I make sure I'm practicing accountability with myself as the model, then even, you know, you can cut through remote and hybrid. Yeah, and nothing's perfect. So you're going to have issues along the way, but it shouldn't be that complicated.

00;14;27;24 - 00;14;55;26
Wayne Turmel
One of the things that I that you said, and I want to drill down in it to the very practical level because a lot of people listening to this, maybe, you know, they think that they need Microsoft teams and they need Basecamp and all these fabulous tools. But you said you need a visual dashboard, that people need to be able to see where they are at any given time.

00;14;55;28 - 00;15;08;17
Wayne Turmel
What are the kind of absolute basic tools that will enable a new unofficial project manager to do that?

00;15;08;19 - 00;15;31;03
Kory Kogon
Really whatever you want. But I mean, so in all of our research and every time we, you know, we do polls on this and we say, you know what you go to? And the answer is Excel. Excel always comes out, number one. And again, I want to be careful about the can chart if you don't want to use it, don't you know, I'm not about telling people what tools you have to use.

00;15;31;06 - 00;15;53;06
Kory Kogon
If Excel works for you, fine. You can organize it and then you can put that up. People can see that. I do think that using some of the other programs out there like and there's a lot of new ones out there, but that has Gantt chart capabilities in it and really very simplified. I call it demystifying the game chart.

00;15;53;06 - 00;16;06;02
Kory Kogon
In just a couple of minutes. This idea of tying dependance these together, I think, and and duration, those two things are modern life time management principles.

00;16;06;04 - 00;16;29;16
Wayne Turmel
That I can share with you. What what solve this for me because I use it. I heard the word Gantt chart and I thought this was incredibly complicated and I suddenly realized we use one almost every day of our lives, which is the TV guide. You look at the TV guide and though this show runs till 7:00, but this one starts at 630, that how do I do this?

00;16;29;21 - 00;16;32;16
Wayne Turmel
And you look at that and that's a Gantt chart.

00;16;32;18 - 00;16;38;04
Kory Kogon
That's again, I'm going to take I'm going to steal that one away from my next conversation. That was great.

00;16;38;05 - 00;16;39;13
Wayne Turmel
My gift to you.

00;16;39;16 - 00;17;05;29
Kory Kogon
Thank you. But that's exactly right that we are that a lot of these are principles that we do in real life that are just being raised up to institutionalize, to be able to have repeatable success. So, you know, giving it a shot. And then, like you said, having this visible scoreboard and it's easier than ever, particularly in a hybrid environment because people can just go on the cloud and pull it up and we're all looking at it.

00;17;06;02 - 00;17;33;05
Wayne Turmel
Absolutely as I knew we would. I mean, we have filled lots of our time with really good stuff. If you are about to undertake your first project and this is a critical thing for a lot of people because this is how we make our bones as leaders, right? Is we very often before we are actually managers, we head up a project or we head up a team.

00;17;33;07 - 00;17;57;18
Wayne Turmel
And this is our first kind of foray into leadership. So if somebody is about to undertake their first unofficial project, what are other than take a deep breath and know it's going to be okay, what are a couple of key things that they need to do to arm themselves to get really prepared.

00;17;57;21 - 00;18;02;16
Kory Kogon
For leading a project? We people both.

00;18;02;18 - 00;18;06;12
Wayne Turmel
Well, the one's a subset of the other, right?

00;18;06;14 - 00;18;43;03
Kory Kogon
So I think, you know what what I said earlier that you do have to realize that it's the people that are going to get the project done, not you, not the I mean, you know, we have a great process scoping and planning and engaging and tracking and adapting and closing a project. The process is fine, but it means nothing unless they realize that people are the ones that are going to get this done for you.

00;18;43;05 - 00;19;17;01
Kory Kogon
So as a leader, are you prepared back to informal leadership to help inspire your team to do that and I'm going to go back to what I said before about the failure list. You have to be prepared to help yourself and the team scope this project in a way. I mean, there's so many things to talk about. Scope this project in a way that people have a clear line of sight because of all the things we can talk about from failure.

00;19;17;03 - 00;19;42;20
Kory Kogon
Once somebody says, Well, I don't know, maybe we'll go this way, or maybe we'll go that way, I'm in the middle of this right now with one of my own things, and it's like, you know what? We're not moving on until somebody comes clear on what the outcome is. And so I think for a leader, just knowing you got to get two clear outcomes and not having anything wishy washy in the project but know where we're going because for you that's satisfying.

00;19;42;20 - 00;19;51;03
Kory Kogon
And few people, they'll be totally frustrated if you don't. So people first scoping clarity on end in mind.

00;19;51;05 - 00;20;20;11
Wayne Turmel
Sam Absolutely terrific. Thank you so much. Corey. That's great stuff. If you are interested in learning more, First of all, the transcript from this conversation is available on Long Work Life dot com. We will have links to Corey and Suzanne's book and to their work and all of that good stuff, as we always do. Corey, thank you so much for being with us.

00;20;20;11 - 00;20;25;10
Wayne Turmel
This has been really terrific and thanks for being with us on the long distance work life.

00;20;25;13 - 00;20;28;01
Kory Kogon
Thanks for having me, Wayne. It's been a pleasure.

00;20;28;04 - 00;20;58;17
Wayne Turmel
Well, as always, thank you for being head and for those of you who are listening, thank you for being here as well. This was a merciless episode. She will be with us in future episodes if you want to contact my self or her questions, comments. Vicious personal attacks, ideas for episodes, by all means, reach out to us. We are available at long distance work life dot com.

00;20;58;19 - 00;21;25;18
Wayne Turmel
You know the drill. You listen to podcasts. If you enjoy this and want others to find us, please like and subscribe. We enjoy the heck out of hearing from you. And if you are interested in learning a little bit more about leading at a distance, check out our open enrollment public programs for Long Distance Leadership series. The U.

00;21;25;18 - 00;21;50;02
Wayne Turmel
R L is here and it will also be in the show notes. Thank you so, so much. Again, my name is Wayne Turmel. Thank you for being with us on the long distance work life. Don't let the weasels get you down, do you?