Elevate Classics — Keith Ferrazzi on Competing in the New World of Work

URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/f990af8c-0a02-496c-a2fe-eda94cefc10d

The Sacred Cows of Remote Work: Insights from 2000 Executives
Key takeaways:

• Remote work became possible during the pandemic despite initial skepticism.
• The speaker was concerned that old ways of working would return.
• Research was conducted with 2000 executives to identify best practices.
• The book identified four key groups of best practices for leaders.
  Transcript:
  Speaker 2
  The pandemic killed all the sacred cows. We can't do this. We couldn't do that. Right. Remote work would never work for our company. I mean, all those absolutes just went right out the door.
  Speaker 1
  Well, and my big concern was that we, those sacred cows would come back from the dead, like the fucking Grateful Dead. I mean, like the, what is it? It was not the Grateful Dead, the walking dead. Like I thought they were going to be cow zombies. And that's what I was fearful. What happened? So I wanted to make sure that we took advantage of this and we researched. So we took 2000 executives didn't think it was going to be that many at the beginning. 2000 executives in one on one interviews and then small group research forums. And we asked them the question, what are you loving about the way you're working now that is a best practice that you want to share and hold on to and not lose? And so what we found out was that there were four fundamental groups of best practices that came out in this book as a leader. One was how we were leading and looking around corners because look, it used to be you'd build (Time 0:03:26)

The Importance of Asynchronous Collaboration in Remote Work
Key takeaways:

• The book aims to provide a roadmap of the best practices followed by executives.
• Even executives who did not do everything right were doing parts of it.
• The pandemic accelerated the adoption of certain practices by five years.
• Starting collaboration with meetings is not an effective approach.
• Old style collaboration was ported into a remote setting, leading to degradation.
• The importance of asynchronous collaboration and starting meetings in the cloud has been realized.
• The power of asynchronous collaboration is highlighted.
  Transcript:
  Speaker 1
  That's who you are. That's the whole reason for the book was to give you a roadmap of the best. Look, no, I didn't meet anyone executive that did it all right. But I did meet 2000 executives that were doing parts of it, right? And we wanted to aggregate that into a single roadmap.
  Speaker 2
  So when you talked about some of these things, but what were the, what were the things that weren't obvious to anyone before the pandemic that you would say just got the bleeding edge People knew and I know you and I were talking about some of them, but they just got pushed up five years.
  Speaker 1
  And now it's, yeah, I would even say I'll give you one that even the bleeding edge still hasn't figured out. Yeah. So that's you do not start collaboration with meetings. So everybody said, Oh my gosh, we can do remote. And everyone was patting them on themselves on the back proud of themselves that they could take an old form meeting that they used to have physically in a room.
  Speaker 2
  This is how, it's how all technologies get misused plays. The first movies were videoed plays. The first e-commerce stores were what physical like malls recreated. Yeah.
  Speaker 1
  These folks just ported old style collaboration into, into a remote setting. And then everybody was degraded by zoom bloom because one meeting after another. So the big thing that we've made teams awaken to is the power and the importance of asynchronous collaboration. How do you start meetings in the cloud? How do you begin? So, you know, give you a simple example. (Time 0:09:31)