Latest / The Steve Harvey Morning Show / Couch vs. cubicle: is the future of work hybrid?

Transcript

Couch vs. cubicle: is the future of work hybrid? · The Steve Harvey Morning Show

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hello there.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: This is Smart Talks with IBM podcast from Pushkin Industries.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: iHeartMedia and IBM about what it means to look at
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: today's most challenging problems in a new way. I'm Malcolm Glamwell.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Today I'm chatting with Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist and
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: professor at the Wharton School and author of one of
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: my favorite books, Think Again. He's a longtime friend and
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: I love to disagree with him.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: Well, I hope you're wrong.
• 0:33
  Speaker 4: I'm afraid you might be partially right, which is as
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: much as I can ever acknowledge around you being right.
• 0:39
  Speaker 4: But you always challenge me to think again, which I
• 0:42
  Speaker 4: thoroughly enjoy.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: This chat was a part of IBM's Think Conference, where
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: leading innovators talk about technology that makes a difference and
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: other intriguing conversations with global perspectives.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Let's dive in.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: He and I are going to have a conversation today
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: about this moment that we're in, about whether something transformational
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: has happened in the way we live and work, and
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: do not expect us to agree. We disagree on virtually everything,
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: but it's always with an undercurrent deeperfection. Adam, welcome, Thank you.
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: I don't know if we actually disagree on everything, but
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: I kind of like the sound of that.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: It's always important to start on to acknowledge the fact
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: that there may be major riffs.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: So you're so Canadian, but keep going.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I am very Canadian.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to confess that I may I would
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: describe myself as a pandemic skeptic. And I was a
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: pandemic skeptic at the very beginning of the pandemic. And
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: I'll define what I mean by skeptic at the moment
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: I wavered in the middle, and now I'm a skeptic again.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: By pandemic skeptic, I mean I do not expect the
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: pandemic to radically change the way we work or even
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: live our lives.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: I think it's all going to go away.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Where would you stand on the continuum of radical transformation
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: at one end, radical skepticism on the other.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Well, I hope you're wrong.
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: I'm afraid you might be partially ripe, which is as
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: much as I can ever acknowledge around you being right.
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: But you always challenge me to think again, which I
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: thoroughly enjoy. I think you know I've already started to
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: see some real changes, right, So let's go back to
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: winter twenty eighteen. I went to a bunch of CEOs
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: and startup founders and said, I think the future of
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: work might be hybrid. Let's do a remote Friday experiment
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: where people have one day a week to work from anywhere.
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: And every single leader I pitch turned me down. They said,
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: we don't want to open Pandora's box. We think people
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: will procrastinate constantly and our culture is going to fall apart.
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: And a lot of those CEOs have started rethinking. Some
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: of them announced they're going to be permanently remote, many
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: others are at least rolling out hybrid plans, and so
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: I don't think the flexibility is going away. They've realized
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: now I can hire anywhere. I don't have to maintain
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: a really expensive giant headquarters office necessarily. And I've got
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: to imagine that some companies, especially when you look at
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: the National Survey data suggesting that most people are expecting
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: to work two days a week from home, and most
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: companies are encouraging that. That seems like something that's going
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: to change, don't you think.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I yes, and no.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: I feel like there was obviously a steady push in
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: that direction over the last fifteen.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Years or so.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: But I have some specific questions. So the first would
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: be young people. My sense from the young people who
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: work at my company and my memories of my own
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: thinking when I was in my twenties was that going
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: to the office was the single most exciting thing in
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: my week.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Right. I wanted to meet, I was new, I wanted
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: to learn.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: When I was at the Washington Post, I was ten
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: feet from Bob Woodward, the greatest reporter of my generation,
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: was ten feet away. I knew nothing about reporting. He
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: knew everything. And I used to sit and watch him
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: and listen, and I learned so much. Next to me
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: was a guy named Michael Usakov, another legendary investigative reporter.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: He was next to me.
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  Speaker 2: I would sit and listen, and I understood that the
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: only way I would get I would learn that way
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: was to go to the office, right, I mean, there
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: was just no reason not to go to the office.
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  Speaker 4: No.
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  Speaker 1: Do I feel the same way now or fifty seven? No,
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  Speaker 1: I don't.
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  Speaker 2: But if you're a company that employs young people, can
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: you really hire the best and brightest young people by
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: saying we're going to have you work out of your
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: apartment or a Starbucks.
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  Speaker 1: Seems nuts to me.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: No, I don't think you can.
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  Speaker 4: But I also don't think you're going to get the
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: best and brightest young people by saying you have to
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: be in the office every day and we're going to
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: measure not your results, not your contribution, but the amount
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: of FaceTime that you contribute. That seems ridiculous. And I
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: hope that that's one thing that the pandemic erased. I
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: think you know we I guess we have precedent for
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: this in some ways. So think about what Ricardo Semler
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: did at Semco as an interesting example, right, originally in Brazil,
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: now in twenty some countries, very traditional manufacturing company. They say,
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: we will let you buy back one day a week
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: for ten percent of your salary.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: And they're thinking this is.
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: An early retirement move that will appeal to the baby
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: boomers who say, all right, I want to enjoy a
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: day a week of retirement.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: Before I get really old.
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: But no, it's most popular among their youngest employees in
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: their twenties and thirties, who want that day of freedom.
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: And I think this is going to be a competitive
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: advantage for companies moving forward. Right, the organizations that are
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: willing to give you that little bit of flexibility are
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: going to do a much better job attracting, motivating, and
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: retaining people than the ones that say you have to
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: be here all the time.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Well so, but there's two things we're talking about here.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: One is workplace flexibility and the other is dislocation, right
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: or remote work, And they're very they're quite separate. So
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: I am quite in fact, I practice flexibility, have been
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: brexing it for years and years and years.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: I love the office.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: I don't go into the office every day, nor do
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: I expect all of our employees to come in every
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: day at the same time. For certain key events, like
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: in my for a podcast, the crucial moment in the
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: creation of one of my episodes of Revisionist History is
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: the table reading where we reenact the podcast that we're
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: working on. I read the narration and we play the tape.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: I have a team of six people and we've been
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: doing those on zoom and I'm sorry, it doesn't work
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: on zoom And I actually said and to our staff.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: The minute we're all vaccinated, we are meeting again in person.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: Because this is creative work. It can't be done. I
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: need your feedback in the room. It doesn't work on Zoom,
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: so that you know that idea. I don't mind flexibility.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: But if someone said to me, I'm in Denver, Colorado,
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: and I'm your producer, and I'm going to work from
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Denver for now on, I say you can't work in Denver,
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, you can't. You need to be unless you're
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: willing to fly in two days a week and then
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: fly back, fly into New York and fly back.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: It doesn't work.
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: Malcolm Gladwell, you are one of the smartest and most
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: creative people I know, and yet you can't bring yourself
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  Speaker 4: to imagine doing a table read for a product that's
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: audio only without seeing people's faces, when you yourself wrote in
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: Talking to Strangers that we overrate seeing people's faces.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: No kid, no no interesting, interesting? Why do I need
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: them in the room when I'm doing a table read?
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: I need them in the room because it's imperfect. So
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: I'm creating a product for audio, but I'm only in
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: round one of what will be four rounds, and I
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: mean I'm handing in something that is very much your
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: work in progress. I need immediate, high quality feedback a
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: B I have found I also need my entire team
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: to pipe up, and I have found that people's responses
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: are inhibited online.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: And that doesn't work for me.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: I need everyone I want to say, I want to
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: I keep telling them that this, even dumb comments are useful,
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: and I feel, I feel maybe this is incorrect. I
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: feel that on Zoom people are editing themselves more and
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: even one when I'm doing a table read, one comment,
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: even a dumb comment, can be transformational in the final script,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: so I can't afford closing their mouth when they should
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: open it.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: I accept the whole premise.
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: I think all of it makes sense, except the basic
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: idea that you can't create the psychological safety you're looking for,
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: that freedom to take risks and point out problems and
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: let ideas fly. That you can't create that in an
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: online environment. So let me throw out a couple examples
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: of how I think this works.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: First of all, literally, Adam position healed myself.
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  Speaker 2: Are you trying to tell me that you're going to
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: give up on teaching in person now that you're so
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: in love with online that Wharton's going to go.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Going to turn into a digital platform. Is that what
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: you're saying?
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: That's exactly where I was not going, but sort of going.
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: Let me say a couple of things here. The first
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: one is that I just came from a table read
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: work Life episode that we did over Zoom, and I
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: got better feedback than we did when we did these
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: face to face, because we know that you know the
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: science of brainstorming right in group brainstorming, and this is
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: true in group feedback too. You run into production blocking,
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: where we can't all talk at once and you lose ideas.
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: You run into ego threat where people are worried they're
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: going to get judged and we lose ideas, and you
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: run into conformity where the hippo that's you the highest
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: paid person's opinion. As soon as that's known, we all
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: jump on the bandwagon. And we know that if you
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: can give people multiple channels for voicing their independent ideas,
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: they're better off.
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: There is a chat window in Zoom.
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: I don't know if you're textavvy enough to have discovered
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: it yet, but I will tell you that I have
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: had both in teaching online and also in the group
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: table reads of my podcast and in actually getting feedback
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: from my students on the early drafts of Think Again,
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: I have had more honest and more I would say,
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: diverse comments than I've ever gotten before because they are
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: all these people who would not speak up out loud.
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: But we have this very very active chat window going
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: and it allows me to get everybody's participation in. So, No,
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: I don't want to leave teaching online only, but I
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: would sure love, like I've been able to do online,
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: to call on someone who's gonna bring up a relevant
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: point or debate me on something, as opposed to the
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: random hand that happens to be willing to speak, which
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: is usually a white male extrovert and least likely to
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: be the person that I want to learn from.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Uh, you know this, No, I'm not.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: I'm saying you and I are probably in agreement in
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: the sense that I have that mode as well. So
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: as we go through the drafts of my episodes, we
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: move from an in person to an online thing, and
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: people weigh in, editors wigh and it's a it's a
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Google doc. People can make all the comments they want
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: and they do, so I have that. I'm just saying
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: there's a particular moment in the creative process where the
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: room and the energy in the room is important to
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: measure and to feed off, but do you say.
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: Something else, wait before you leave that, before you leave that,
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: I think, I think that's an important distinction to make here.
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: I think, so you're talking about what Anita Wooley would
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: call it burstiness, right, that sense that the room is
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: literally bursting with energy and ideas, And I don't know
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: how to recreate that online.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: I feel like we're violating one of the laws of
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: thermodynamics every time I have a Zoom session where I
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: put in a ton of energy and less comes back.
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: And I think that part is very hard to replicate
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: in the online environment. But I think sometimes the flow
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: of ideas is still worth it.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: The second and more important point, though, is about fun.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: So I have had You've had more conversations, but I've had,
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: you know, a lot of conversations with college kids over
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: the last year, and I have yet to find a
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: single college kid who found the last year more pleasurable
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: than the year before it?
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Or high school kid? They all hate it? Why do
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: they hate it? Because it's not as fun now? Fact,
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: the same is true of employees. Sure, even if you
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: convinced me that Zoom was a more efficient way to
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: get feedback from my employees, you cannot convince me that
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: they're enjoying it more. And ultimately, if they're not enjoying
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: their jobs, we're doomed as a company.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: As simple as that. The whole point, the founding.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Principle of Pushkin Industries, from the moment this company was
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: I'm now talking about my company that I started two
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: and a half years ago. Jacob and I when we
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: sat down and start the company, we were like, we're
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: gonna make cool things. Number two, we're going to have fun,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: right and if everything is online, it's not fun.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: And as far as I'm concerned, we failed. I want
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: to have fun. Is that wrong? Why are you, Adam?
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Why are you standing in the way of my enjoyment? Now,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: my employees enjoyment.
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: I'm standing in the way of your enjoyment because you
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: would never be allowed to run a company. Can you
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: Can you imagine, Malcolm Gladwell cea like, you know what,
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: We're gonna make cool stuff, but almost as important as
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: we're going to have a lot of fun.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: That would never work. Wall Street would laugh you out
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: of your job in a day.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Wait wait, wait, wait, wait, wait hold on, hold on, Adam,
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: in the course, don't count pandemic year in how many
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: years have you been teaching teaching?
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: I don't know, fifteen maybe?
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, do you have fun doing it?
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: Of course, that's part of the fun.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Hold on, hold on.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: If you didn't have fun doing it, would you have
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: left your job as a professor by this point?
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: No, because I think it's meaningful and I'd rather bet
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: on purpose than pleasure.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: You would have gritted it out for fifteen years, even
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: though it's like every morning like, oh, do I have
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: to do this again? And you would have looked at
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: your wife and she said, Adam, there's.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: No way around it. Just grab your hard hat and
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: go off to the salt mines. Please.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: I'm not buying that you would have got because a
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: million other things you could have done that that could
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: have made you a good living, that you could have
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: found fun.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: You would not have stayed a professor if it wasn't fun.
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: Okay, Maybe it depends on how you define fun. So
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: I'm thinking now of Dan Coyle's distinction between deep fun
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: and shalah fun. And when you say fun, I'm thinking
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: about shalah fun, which is, you know, we're going to
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: go and party, and we're basically going to revert to
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: our college selves. That is not my idea of fun.
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: My idea of fun is deep fun, which is we're
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: working on hard, interesting problems. Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we're
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: you know, we're really puzzled and confused, and we're trying
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: to get to the bottom of an important question. And
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: I think you can have that kind of deep fun
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: in a virtual world. In fact, it's the same kind
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: of deep fun that I have when I'm writing books,
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: and I think you have it too.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: Isn't that fun?
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: Are you saying that the time you spend sitting in
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: front of your computer writing New Yorker articles and best
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: selling books.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Is not fun? It is. It is fun.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: But there's a rest my case here on her.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: So let me tell you about a conversation I had
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: this weekend with an old college friend of mine who's
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: now a he's a senior of the straight out a
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: big hospital system, very large hospital system, and he was
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: talking about what the last year has been like and
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: also every time I've seen him, but over the last
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: five years he has registered a long complaint about electronic
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: medical records, which are part of this conversation. Right, So
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: as his role has gotten more digital, he will tell
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: you he's now in charge of he's the chief wellbeing
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: officer for his hospital system, and they have a serious
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: problem with morale in their ranks.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: He will be the first to tell you this. Why
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: do they have a serious problem with him?
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Among other reasons, because the people entered the profession to
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: do something and have an experience that they're not having anymore.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: My friend can he can track when people are online
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: late at night doing their electronic medical record and they're
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: logging on eleven at night and it's just not He's like,
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: that's the death of I'm not going to be able
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: to retain those people. They're not going to do good work.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: They're going to turn out. That's the daily reality of
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: his job is that they're trying to do something very
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: important in society, and the people who are charged with
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: doing that are not enjoying themselves. What do they enjoy?
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: They enjoy sitting down and getting to know a patient.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: That's why they became doctors, right, and so this last
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: year when everything's been done with really has been hell. Correctly,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: that's not why they became physicians.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: So like, they're not going to want to do we
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: want to continue this for them?
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: No, there'll be no one left in the hospitals to
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: cure patients, give them their patients back, because that the
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: deep fund is gone when they're on computers all day long.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we're in strong alignment there.
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: I definitely do not want to take somebody who got
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: into a profession to help people and say you're going
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: to spend forty percent of your time entering information in
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: electronic medical records. But I think that's the presence of
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: an unpleasant, pleasant task, right, not anything inherent to working
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: electronically or virtually.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: I think there.
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: I've met surgeons over the past year who have said,
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: you know what, going remote has been the best thing
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: I've been able to do because I can spread my
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: expertise around the world more efficiently. I don't have to
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: travel to go and do a grand rounds. I can
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: reach patients who you know, otherwise wouldn't be able to
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: benefit from my care. And that's been a really meaningful
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: change to my job. And so what I want to
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: do is I want to I want to keep that
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: connectivity and meaning and I want to subtract out some
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: of the things that are clearly a source of burnout
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: and a chore for too many people and too many jobs.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: So wait, let's talk about your job for a moment.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: We alluded to it earlier.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: But so you're at a school which is very selected
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: and which charges a lot of money right for presumably
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: because of an expectation of a certain kind of experience.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: So what do you do? What do you guys do
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: next year?
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: In the year after, do you do you cut your
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: tuition in a half and go fifty zoom classes?
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Or what are you going to do?
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: Don't know yet. I think it's an open question. I
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: think the first thing we should be doing is running experiments,
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: which you know, look, I'm obviously, like everyone else, devastated
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: by the pandemic, but given that we're stuck with it,
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: it has been a good excuse for us to do
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: a lot of rethinking and experimentation. So I mentioned the
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: chat window earlier. When I started teaching online some colleagues
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: and I said, all right, we're going to use hashtags,
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: and we had students put in hashtag question if they
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: had a question, hashtag on fire if they had a
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: burning question or comment. And that means if I see
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: on fire, I will literally stop in mid sentence. Floor
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: is yours? And that way, you know you can jump
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: the line. I then added hashtag aha if you had
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: a Eureka moment, which helped me track what people were learning.
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: And sometimes I realized I hadn't gotten my point across
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: other times I saw that I clearly made a point
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: that I didn't even realize I would make was making.
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: And then in some cases too, it was kind of
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: a guide for students to track the learning that was
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: happening as it went. My favorite thing that was hashtag debate,
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: where if somebody wanted to disagree with me or one
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: of their classmates, I could get them into the conversation.
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: And I think that it's such a small innovation, right,
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: but I don't want to lose that when I go
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: back into the classroom. I want to keep that dialogue going.
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: I don't know what that's going to look like yet,
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: but I want it to happen. And then the other
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: thing that really opened up that I've never been able
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: to do before is we brought guest speakers from all
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: over the world. Instead of just asking the people who
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: live in or near Philly, I was able to go
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: to people in multiple countries, on multiple continents, in lots
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: of interesting places, and say, hey, would you come to
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: class for half an hour? I think I might go
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: guest speakers fully and permanently remote now, because it means
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: we can all go on zoom and we can have
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: an awesome conversation with somebody who would never show up
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: in my class. So I want to see us do
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: more of those kinds of experiments. But I don't want
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: to give up on the burstiness or the connection that
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: happens in the physical classroom.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: Is that fair?
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: I did it, It's fair. I would a couple of
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: caveats here, which is that I wonder whether there isn't
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: a great deal of nuance and variability in different audiences
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: responses to digital environments.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: So I need an answer to a question.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Suppose I have a room full of kids in an
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: economically disadvantaged neighborhood. They're in fourth grade. How much what
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: is the right what is the right mix of online
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: and in person for that group versus your students are
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: not only are they much older, but they are you know,
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: the best in the brothers, So the cream of the.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Crop is it? Does that make a difference?
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Are they are? Is it more mature and disciplined and
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: intellectually engaged group of students better suited for online experiences
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: than kids. You know, I think both of us have
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: suspicions about the answer to that question. But I wonder
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: whether we need to get a lot more nuanced in
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: what mixes worth work best for what kinds of students,
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: and what kinds of situations.
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's such an important point. I haven't
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: seen good data on it yet, but I have the
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: same intuition that tech savvy and and also some degree
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: of intrinsic motivation is a huge set of contingencies for
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: determining whether online is going to be even remotely engaging
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: no pun intended. I also think the type of work
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: and the type of learning we're doing really matters. So
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: in general, I hate sports metaphors when applied to work,
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: but I'm going to use one here. Normally, I think, Okay,
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: we haven't agreed on how to keep score, we haven't
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: agreed on all the rules, and we don't have a referee.
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: We're also leaving out maybe half the population. But this
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: is a rare exception where when we study interdependence and
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: organizational psychology, we distinguish between pooled, sequential and reciprocal interdependence,
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: say that five times fast. I prefer to think about
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: them as individual sport, relay sport, and team sport. So
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: if your job or your classroom is basically an individual
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: sport like gymnastics, where everyone's going to do their own
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: floor routine and their own bar and their own vault,
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: you don't need that much coordination. You can do a
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: lot of independent, individualized remote work and learning because the
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: whole will basically be the sum of the parts. If
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: you're in a relay sport, though, the person who's handing
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: the bazon to the next runner needs to actually talk
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: to that unner, and then also the person at the
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: start needs to talk with the person that the finished
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: to make sure they're going in the same destination or
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: the same direction. I think the most important context for
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: really getting real synchronization of time and space is probably
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: when we're playing a true team sport like basketball or soccer.
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: Right If I'm going to pass you the ball, and
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: then you're going to send it back to me, and
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: then I'm going to send someone else and then it
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: goes back to you again, and everybody has multiple pairs
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: of eyes and multiple touches on the project or the lesson.
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: That's when it's it becomes really difficult to substitute for
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: the face to face, in person experience. And I don't
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: think we've had enough of these conversations in our organizations
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: or in our schools asking what are we doing right now?
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: Are we playing individual sport, relay sport or team sport?
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, no, absolutely, Adam. As always, this was delightful.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: I'm still that slightly baffled that we seem to have
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: so little to disagree about, but yeah, there's.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Always hope for next time. Next time, I hope both
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: of us are you know, bloodied and torn by the
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: end of our encamp but in this case, this was
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: not the case.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: So but thank you very much for joining us, and
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: thank you to IBM for bringing bringing us.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Together and sponsoring this lovely conversation.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: Thank you thrilled to be here, This is great fun.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Thanks again to Adam for having a great chat with
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: me about the ever present cubicle versus couch debate, and
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: thanks to IBM for setting up such an informative conference.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: Smart Talks with IBM is produced by Emily Rostag with
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: Carly Migliori, edited by Karen Shaker g Engineering by Martine Gonzalez,
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: mixed and mastered by Jason Gambrel and Ben Tolladay. Music
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: by Gramoscope. Special thanks to Molly's Sosha, Andy Kelly, Mia, LaBelle,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Jacob Weisberg, Head of Fane, Eric Sandler and Maggie Taylor,
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: and the teams at eight Bar and IM Smart Talks
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: with IBM is a production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: You can find more Pushkin podcasts on the iHeartRadio app,
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: See you next time.