Episode 042: A Conversation on Hybrid Work Culture with Nola Simon

Join Sarah Noll Wilson and guest Nola Simon as they explore the ongoing evolution of remote and hybrid work, and imagine new possibilities for the future of work.

About Our Guest

Nola Simon is on a mission to make the future of work more flexible, inclusive, and fun. She’s a writer, podcaster, and consultant – a hybrid/remote futurist. Media often interviews her across Canada for her expertise in distributed work strategy. She’s also the creator of the Hybrid/Remote Centre of Excellence, the place for workforce transformation pros to ask questions and get answers from peers.

Resources Mentioned

• The Hybrid/Remote Center of Excellence Podcast
• The Hybrid/Remote Center of Excellence Membership Community

Connect with Us

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• Support the podcast on Patreon
  
• Buy Don’t Feed the Elephants!: Overcoming the Art of Avoidance to Build Powerful Partnerships
• Find Sarah: LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube | TikTok
• Find Nola: Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | TikTok

Episode Transcript

Sarah Noll Wilson
Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of Conversations on Conversations where each week we explore a topic to help us have more meaningful conversations with ourselves and with each other. I’m your host, Sarah Noll Wilson and I’m so so excited for this conversation. Joining us this week is a dear colleague, new colleague in the last year and a half or so we’ve connected. Nola Simon, and let me tell you a little bit about her and the topic we’ll be exploring. Nola Simon is on a mission to make the future of work more flexible, inclusive and fun. She’s a writer, podcaster and consultant. I love this, a hybrid/remote futurist which I can’t wait to get into that, you know, what do you, what are you seeing? We were in it. And then what do you see? She’s often interviewed by media across Canada for her expertise and distributed work strategy. She’s also the creator of the Hybrid/Remote Center of Excellence. This is an incredible place. And we’ll talk about this resource that she’s built for workforce transformation pros to ask questions and get answers from peers. Welcome to the show Nola.

Nola Simon
It is so cool to be here, Sarah. (laughs)

Sarah Noll Wilson
I’m so excited. I’ve been like, (singsong voice) I get to end the day talking to Nola. We’ve been trying to make this happen for a while.

Nola Simon
Oh, I know. Yeah. It’s amazing. And you are like one of the few people that I’ve actually met through Twitter. Most of the time when I meet people like this. It’s it’s LinkedIn. Right? But you are like my Twitter, buddy. And I mean, it’s not like we’re not friends on LinkedIn. But that’s where it started.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, no – yeah, you know, it’s always funny on social media, because people just sort of come into your sphere, sometimes like, and they just slowly, some become more in focus, and you start crossing each other’s paths. And then you go, I don’t, I don’t know that I remember exactly the moment, but you just emerged into my life. And I’m so glad that it happened.

Nola Simon
Yeah. No, it’s cool.

Sarah Noll Wilson
So needless to say, for people who are listening, we are going to be talking about the future of work, and specifically exploring just all things with where we’re at with hybrid and remote and what do we need to be thinking about? But first, before we get into that fun story. Nola, what else would you like other than your beautiful bio. What else would you like people to know about you?

Nola Simon
So I’m a mom of two teenagers. And I think that that really has really focused my development through hybrid and remote because when I started advocating for hybrid remote way back in 2011, it was because my kids were small, and I needed to be home because we didn’t have a lot of extended family, my parents were older, I didn’t have a lot of support. So I live two hours north of Toronto that, at least that’s what the commute takes, it’s only 45 minutes geographically, but I, I either had the choice to actually work or race home to actually get to my kids. And when they were little, they were going to bed at seven o’clock. And I only worked 10 to six. So it was a two hour commute, trying to do it in an hour. And it was just awful. So the reason that my, that I started all of this is really because of my kids. And that’s an interesting thing to talk about as well, too is your motivation for wanting to support hybrid or remote, whatever that looks like for you and your organization will change over time, right. And that’s something that I don’t think a lot of people really talk about, because there’s an awful lot of talk about how it, how it enables caregiving for small kids, but it’s really important for older kids, too. And then what does that look like, as your kids become young adults they leave? And how can you make that work for you on a lifetime basis? Right? So that’s where the futurism part comes in is like, we have to come up with solutions that work right now. It’s not just about you know, where are you going to work? Are you coming back to the office, or you’re going to be at home? But what does, when you’re building all of this, what does that – what is that going to look like in five or 10 years?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, I you know, what my second question was going to be what was your journey? But you already beautifully answered that. And, and in hearing you talk when you when you said yeah, 2011 and and here’s why. What came what was coming up for me it was the fact that that how many people have been in your position, and didn’t know and didn’t think they could challenge it, and didn’t know that they could imagine a new possibility. And we were – this is a story I think I’ve shared on the show before but it’s such a timely example. We were working with somebody, and in this leader was lamenting a little bit and I kind of got I got their frustration of you know, before the pandemic, nobody was really questioning coming into the office, they weren’t really questioning or asking for anything other than Monday through Friday, eight to five or whatever the case might be. And they said some kind of struggling with that and that what was coming up for me is were they not asking or did they not know that they could ask? And so there’s something I I appreciate it by hearing the longevity of how long you’ve been thinking about this, you’ve been thinking about this and chewing on it. And, and that idea of your reason to support will change. You know, it’s an obvious benefit to individuals who have children, for sure. But you know, as somebody who’s not, who’s childless by choice, you know, I sit there and think about how it’s changed my relationship with my husband. How it’s opened up having more time to connect with my parents during the day, and not just at night and all of that. What, you know, we, we’ve been under this massive disruption because of the pandemic and everything that has happened over the last three years. And so I’m curious, I’m curious to hear your perspective on like, what did you observe in companies through that? And where are we now? Because I think some, there’s some false sense of we’ve got it figured out.

Nola Simon
Definitely. I would agree that that’s false.

Sarah Noll Wilson
And we, and we don’t. And we don’t and so I’m just curious to hear your thoughts.

Nola Simon
Yeah. So actually, I’m going to tie it back a little bit more, because my journey is a little bit more twisty than it sounds. Yeah. So if you don’t mind, if we take the time –

Sarah Noll Wilson
I would love it.

Nola Simon
I started advocate in 2011, the pilot didn’t start until 2012. And the reason that I knew I could do that is because one of the few people who actually lives in the same town as I did work for the same company. And she had worked for the company for so long that she had actually gotten to the top of the salary band. And the only thing they could offer her to reward her for good work was flexibility. And so she had negotiated working at home 100% of the time, right. And so I went in with that offer going, I know you do this for certain areas of the company, what does that look like, for our division? Right? And so that’s where a pilot started, but six weeks into the pilot, I actually broke my foot. So yes, that took a year to negotiate. And six weeks into it is like, oh, I’m going to have to lose this because I’m going to have to go and leave because I couldn’t drive it was my right foot. Right. So just so happens, the director that I had was on vacation. And there was like somebody covering for her. And she was very persuaded by my argument that there was nothing wrong with my brain, I just couldn’t walk very well. And since we had the capability, why couldn’t I try to work from home rather than have to go on leave? Right? So I became this guinea pig for everything hybrid/remote. And back in 2012 we didn’t really have a whole lot of systems, right. So it was a wonderful learning experience for me to be at the forefront of how all the processes were working, the systems, everything that could go wrong, that would go wrong. How you would actually cope if you actually couldn’t go into the office, because that was something that they struggled with, because their gut reaction was, if something’s not working, you have to come to the office. Well, I couldn’t. Right. And so eventually, after two and a half months, they decided to pull the pilot and I think in part that was actually to bring me back to the office because it couldn’t figure out another way to do that. And so I went on leave.

But then in 2013, we lost it completely. And then we went back 2014. And we started gradually adding a day, because every every year we got out of it, we had better and better systems. So by 2018, I was working at home four days a week.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Wow.

Nola Simon
And then I had fallen into the trap where I did too much work. Because that happens.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Sure. Yep, yep.

Nola Simon
We don’t have great boundaries, and too much workload. I developed pneumonia. And I the one day that week that I had to go to the office, I passed out at the wheel and hit a fully loaded double car cement hauler, oh my god close the major highway into Toronto and made a million people late for work. And that’s where I went on leave again to recover from the pneumonia and the car accident. I mean, nobody else was hurt, I destroyed my car, I walked away, I was fortunate to walk away. I lost my license until I got medical approval, because they wanted to make sure there’s nothing wrong with my brain.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Sure.

Nola Simon
But that was where I’m like, I’m not commuting anymore. So I managed to actually get the only remote job that existed in the whole company. And it was actually based where I lived. The odds of that happening, were kind of fun. And then my role was restructured in 2020. And that’s when I was looking at what I wanted to do. I determined that the most valuable thing that I had really done was actually help people understand how to actually make hybrid work and how you really kind of have to base it into remote and get the remote aspects right. And then you can really layer on what you want the in-person components really to be because most hybrid is really remote first.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah.

Nola Simon
Right?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.

Nola Simon
So that’s, that’s the journey. So I usually tell people that I’ve worked every kind of version of hybrid/remote that there is except digital nomadism. I think my husband would have objected to that.

Sarah Noll Wilson
(chuckles)

Nola Simon
I used to have to travel for work. So I have experience with traveling like that, too. And your question that you asked was about where we stand and what we’ve learned and where we are when we’re going forward? I think that people just don’t understand that it’s not new. Right, that there is expertise out there. And that they can call upon that. And we’re in that phase that I was in, in 2013/2014, where it’s like, we just need to bring everybody back to the office, because we don’t know how to lead.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah.

Nola Simon
Right? And that’s what the magic is right now. Managers and leaders and like, executives really have to figure out how they have to change the way they lead and how that impacts their work. And there’s a disinclination to actually do that work by a lot of leaders, right? Because it’s challenging their their notions and their stories of what it’s been like to be successful for themselves, because most of their success probably happened pre-pandemic. And when they’re mentoring people, and they’re telling people about their career. How do you tell those stories in a way where the office doesn’t resonate?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah.

Nola Simon
Right? So there’s a lot of unlearning that they have to do and reskilling and upskilling, and that motivation to change. People hate losing. I think you said that in your book, right? So there’s a perception. And that’s I think what the struggle is, is leaders perceive that they’re losing something by not being able to bring people into the office, and staff feel that they’re losing that flexibility by having to come into the office, right. So everybody feels like they’re losing something. But it’s about how you do that reframe. And that’s where I was really interested in your book in the elephants, because there’s elephants galore in the whole office/hybrid/remote/digital nomadism. What does it mean to work?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah, well, and there’s some, like invisible, you know, like invisible elephants of, you know, what you’re hitting on is the some of those beliefs or fears or losses that are at play. I hadn’t – we’ve thought about, we talked on our team, and we’ve talked about different losses we’ve witnessed, and it’s, it’s interesting, I hadn’t also made that connection of what made you valuable, right, what made you valuable as a mentor, what made you valuable as a coach, and maybe more of, again, a mentoring style isn’t, isn’t as relevant anymore. And I hadn’t thought about that layer of loss as well of is just not going to, it’s just not going to work. Like it’s not going to the the whole system is changing, and the expectations are changing. And the experience of the younger generations and their familiarity and comfort with digital technology is so so fundamentally different than say, when I look at, you know, people who are maybe in the boomer age or the late, you know, Gen X age, it’s a very significant gap, of of experience. So sorry, go ahead. What were you gonna say?

Nola Simon
That’s okay. I was gonna say it’s not necessarily like it’s not relevant anymore. It’s about how do you reframe those stories, right? Because there’s value in in what they learned what they experienced, but how do you reframe it so that the location where things happened isn’t the star, right? Oh, and that’s really what it comes down to. People get used to telling their stories in a certain way. I mean, my dad is horrible for this, right? Like, he’ll tell you the same story like 10 times, and it’s comfortable for him because that’s just his perception of the world. And that’s the way he likes to tell stories, to to actually go back and reframe it to make sure that the story is going to track for somebody else. It takes a certain level of empathy. And I think you really need to do the work to realize that that’s needed. Right. So what’s the purpose of your storytelling? What’s the purpose of you mentoring or sponsoring? You know, you really kind of have to focus on the person who’s receiving those stories, right? To really kind of think that about that reframe. And that takes effort and that takes work. And everybody’s so busy, everybody’s so overwhelmed. And that’s a thing that I really think came out of the pandemic as well. And again, this is because everybody’s still at the beginning of learning how to work remotely. How do you create those boundaries that allows you the space to reconsider what it is you want what others need, and how you can really help, right? Because they haven’t built the boundaries to give themselves the space to do the, the internal work that they really need to do to be useful.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. And then that’s such a great point you bring up from the standpoint of, and we haven’t necessarily had to, or have chosen not to think about it really think about people from a very individual level, right? If you want to work here, we work here, whatever the hours are, depending on the industry, this is when the work gets done. And, and now we’re adding another thing that we have to think about and be intentional about. And it is much more individualized than just some carte blanche policy or whatever the case might be. And I think that’s a that’s a really interesting, again, another perspective that I hadn’t heard offered in that way. And there is this tension, you know, I want to go back to something that you said, you know, we think about for those organizations that are really trying to shift into more of a hybrid model, what we are definitely seeing with the clients that we’re supporting is it’s in-person first, and then remote is still a bit of an afterthought, or it’s how do we, how do we, how do we replicate what we did in person to online, realizing that that might actually, that has to look different in some cases? And, you know, but you, you had mentioned that, no, it’s remote first, and then then it’s in-person talk to that a bit.

Nola Simon
So, this really comes down to intention. And so when I’m working with people, and like, the framework that I’ve laid out, is really, what does remote work, what does hybrid mean to you? Right? You need to define it, right? And are you treating it as a perk? Is it a benefit? Is it a program? Is it an operating system? Or is it in the bones of the organization? Right? Because those intentions all look really different. So if you’ve got a company, and I think this is where a lot of people kind of struggled in the last few years, just like they’ve been putting things off until people come back in person, right? So what if you delayed because you, you didn’t want to deal with it, and you were just gonna wait until you could bring people back? Right? So now there’s like a backlog of things that you need to deal with immediately. And you only know how to do that in person. Right. But there’s been a hiccup in terms of bringing people back because people aren’t cooperating, they’re not complying. Because, you know, for variety of reasons, you know, people move during the pandemic, people don’t feel safe, people still feel that they’re at risk, or they have immunocompromised family members. You know, there’s a lot of various reasons that they might choose not to comply, right. But it really comes down to the company is not really defining what their commitment is to flexibility. Right. So the companies that are, you know, in person first, that’s their commitment, that’s their intention, they really want to be in person, they are only supporting the flexibility because they think that they’ll lose staff. Right. And it’s, we’re offering this because we have to, but as soon as we can get away from it, we’re going to write, but people know that staff know that. And this is where trust becomes this whole underlying currency. People are going to see the true intentions. And it’s going to filter through your storytelling, it’s going to filter through your processes and your procedures. And it’s only going to be once everybody trusts the process that it’s going to become embedded in the organization.

So what’s happening is, you know, a lot of leaders, I often have a visual of an ostrich in the sand, burying its head in the sand, because they want to kind of avoid what’s going on. Right? And they don’t necessarily want to commit to it because they’re, they’re following the news. There’s a lot of noise going on. Somebody like Elon Musk comes in and then just shuts it down completely. And they’re like I why, if he can do this, why can’t I do this? I mean, what he did was awful. But that tells you an awful lot about the people who want to emulate him, right. And it didn’t work for him either, right? Because a lot of places he’s he’s already telling the staff, especially in Europe, and in various different places that they can actually work remotely still. So it was really hard for him to actually undo that. Despite his grand intention to do that, right? Because that culture was really well embedded before he even got there. Right. So it really comes down to the systems that surround the intentions. And it’s also not completely in your control either. So I came from financial services, right, I was in wealth management. The stock market operates at a certain time of day.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Right, right, right.

Nola Simon
There’s, there’s privacy guidelines, there’s controls, you know, some of that some of it needs to be done in person, right. So what regulatory restrictions are you dealing with? Not every industry can, can pivot directly, and a lot of people will actually will come to me and say, oh, you don’t understand, well, my husband is a home renovations contractor, he literally can work out of everybody else’s house except mine.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Sure. (laughs)

Nola Simon
So I understand what in-personal work is, right? But I think that you, if you’ve got flexibility within your organization, you might have pockets where you can’t necessarily support, but treat those as the exceptions, don’t build it for everyone, based on the fact that you have to have exceptions, right?

Sarah Noll Wilson
There’s – I – Well, first, I feel like I’m just, I want to be a student, and just sit and listen to you. I’m learning so much, and how you’re talking about it and how you’re thinking, like, I gotta sign up for that, I got to sign up for that community. So I can deepen my, my knowledge of the the that idea of really clarifying your commitment and being honest and transparent with it, because so often, what happens is, I mean again, what what we’re seeing is that the commitment that the company is making is more like a perk, right? It’s a it’s a it’s a perk, it’s a privilege. It’s a privilege. And the tension, is that team members are saying no, this is just a right now, like I’ll walk it I have to.

Nola Simon
Right and what’s different from – Yeah, what’s different from now to, like, 2013-2014 is now there’s options. So if you don’t offer that flexibility that people are wanting, I mean, that was partly why I stayed with my organization for so long, it’s like I would lose, I was afraid that I would lose that flexibility that was enabling me to take care of my kids. And so I stayed because that was valuable and it couldn’t necessarily be easily found or negotiated, because it tends to be offered to people with tenure, right? So it’s like, if you’ve already gotten yourself three or four days at home, how do you walk away from that when you know, you can’t necessarily walk into something else, right, that’s the way it used to be.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Right.

Nola Simon
Now, it’s a lot more common that, especially if you’ve got valuable in demand skills, and you’re somebody who really can easily kind of translate into from one company to another, you can negotiate that. And it’s not that big of fear, right. So that’s where companies have to worry, and really kind of rethink whether they want to treat it like that perk, that they can kind of just continue down the line. You know, it’s it’s no longer – intimidating. And I think that’s where a lot of companies are still trying to use that mindset where they’re like, we can pull this in anytime we want. I mean, I used to have to sign off on paperwork that if my dog barked, or, you know, my kids cried, and a customer complained that I could lose my work from home.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Wow, wow.

Nola Simon
That was like a legal contract, I had to sign. And that’s another thing that actually happened with with the pandemic and that was good, because it became very common to have interruptions like that, because it’s almost impossible to control if you live in a house with other people. And it’s gonna be different for everybody. My biggest challenge a lot of times was my dad just wandering in the middle of the day. And I’m like, I’m on the phone, like, literally, I’m on a video screen, they could see you. What are you doing? He doesn’t even live here.

Sarah Noll Wilson
(laughs) But he shows up –

Nola Simon
But he would just show up. Right?

Sarah Noll Wilson
You know, he just wanted to be part of the experience now. It’s I mean, that’s that that is definitely one of the gifts of the pandemic is it just normalized being human. And in normal, even in the prep for this, you’re like, hey, my dog might bark and we’re like, yep, that happens. Yeah –

Nola Simon
We’ll just edit it out.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, if it gets distracting, we’ll edit it out. But if it’s just once or twice, then that’s also just part of the the norm. What –

Nola Simon
I leave it in, honestly, just to make sure that it’s normalized.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Right, right.

Nola Simon
Yeah.

Sarah Noll Wilson
What would you say to the – uh, you know, I love I love that, you know, because a lot of the people who listen to the show are either in HR, they’re in formal leadership positions, or they’re, you know, trying to impact the world that they’re in whatever that looks like. And so I think that is such a gift that you’ve given all of us to think about, what’s really the intention here? What’s the commitment we’re willing to make, and let’s be really honest and transparent with it, and to speak to the fact that by not doing that, one, we can espouse this value, but our actual behaviors are going to be different. And then that can cause distrust, and people can be conditionally like, oh, when is the, when’s the shoe gonna drop. But you also spoke to the fact that there are just depending on the industry, sometimes, and this is it’s, it’s, it’s fair, true and accurate. And sometimes I think it’s used as an excuse. So let me finish my thought so you can know where I’m going. (laughs) Because it makes sense in my brain. But when you have – when you’re in an organization that has different needs, right, you have a bank that has tellers who have to be public facing, and, you know, I was gonna say, manning the stage, but I wanted to rephrase my language there but had to be present for public or, you know, a lot of times we’re working with manufacturing clients, well, the line doesn’t move if people are working from home, but then you have backoffice individual. So sometimes the excuse or deflection is like, well, we can’t do it, because we can’t do it for everyone. Right? And what would you say to those leaders or people in those situations that might be struggling with that.

Nola Simon
So I used to have a client who was manufacturing based, and they had a separate head office, and they were actually actually different 401K plans for each division. And so they had problems like that, always. And there were always a feeling of unfairness between the people who worked in the office and the people who worked on the floor. So I think that that is endemic. It’s built into the culture that you’ve created and built, and it’s really just going to amplify what’s already there. So I think that if you’re experiencing that, and you’re afraid of that it already exists in your company. Right.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. Totally, I mean, yes, keep – I will continue being at the Church of Nola, continue.

Nola Simon
(laughs) So you’re going to, that opens up a conversation, to say, okay, what does it look like right now, in-person, because the work that you have to do is really culture based in terms of how those two areas are interacting to begin with, right? So I agree with them, that hybrid or remote or whatever they put in place for the people who have the ability to be flexible, will cause problems, because those problems already exist. They’re going to, they’re going to amplify the feelings of unfairness, because those feelings already there, it’s going to fan the flames. Right? You have to do the work. And that’s what I think a lot of people don’t necessarily understand. This is not just something that you discuss, as like a band-aid. It’s something that you add on. If you want this to work, you’re working through all of the issues that work in your organizations already, or don’t work in your organization already. So this is where it becomes leadership. It’s, do you have policies spelled out? What do exceptions look like? Because a lot of times the scary stuff is how you deal with the policies that you created. But the exceptions that you allow. I’m not a big fan of exceptions. I’m a fan of creating policy that is more flexible, and then you can detail it down. And I find that, especially the industries that I’ve come from, they tend to detail out the the policies to the extent where you have no choice except to nix exceptions, because they’re too detailed. Right? And I find that that’s where the scary stuff lies. And that’s where the uncertainty and the ambiguity lies, and people just don’t know.

So you really have to start at a bird’s eye view of the organization and it starts with that intention. And it’s about how that intention looks at every different level. Because what’s happening is your executives, the people who are creating this, are going to have one perception of how it’s going to work. And the people who are on the frontline are going to understand it in a very different way because it’s like a game of telephone. That communication doesn’t go straight through the organization. And middle managers,` middle managers are taking the brunt –

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.

Nola Simon
From both ends. So you really have to streamline the intention. And you have to look at how the story is being told at all levels of that organization. And only then can you move into the process and procedures. And I think what’s happening right now, and where a lot of the, like the content that’s happening on LinkedIn and Twitter is just like, eye rolling, like it’s just massively annoying. And boring, is because everybody’s jumped into the process without really doing the imagination and the creativity and looking at the possibilities of what is it we’re doing? What is it we want this to be? What could we create, if we didn’t necessarily worry about all the details right away?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah.

Nola Simon
Right. And that’s where the futurism aspect comes into it. It’s like, sure, you can do all of that, but what are you going to end up with? Because, I mean, there’s a lot of people who say, like you, the pandemic is actually like a really big opportunity to recreate what work has always been, right. How often are we going to get this opportunity to do this?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Right.

Nola Simon
So if we don’t take the opportunity to imagine what this could look like five or 10 years from now, we’re gonna get stuck with what we we put in place right now. Right? And that’s where it’s really important to really consider what else you want. I put it on Twitter the other day, I don’t know if you happen to see it, but it’s like, forget about, like, all of the details, like throw the rulebook out the window and just say like, if you could imagine your perfect day at work, what would that look like? What would you what would you do? When would you wake up? You know, how do you breakfast? Who are you eating breakfast with? What – when you go to work what does that look like? Are you walking into a door in your in your like your your home? Are you commuting? Are you going to an office? Are you going to a co-working space? Are you going to a house that’s been renovated and like made into like the neighborhood co-working space? Because that’s happening, I know a company that does that. You know, what does that look like? And how often are you working? Because like four day workweek is happening around the world, there’s experiments going in place. And for a lot of people they’ve experienced – tried this already. And I honestly tried four day workweek all way back in 2019 2009. It was awesome. But I don’t think that that’s the future. I think the future is more like what does a three-day-workweek look like.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yes! Yes, yes.

Nola Simon
Because if you bring in AI, and you can get all of the grunt work, the boring work, the repetitive work and really the the work that you’re doing is the imaginative, the creative, the human work. Can you go down to three day workweek and still make the same amount of money?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.

Nola Simon
Then you have all this time to really kind of look at other social issues. So like, you know, what does community look like? Are you volunteering? Are you supporting people? This is how we finally get away from loneliness, because we’re tipping the balance back to life rather than work.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. Yeah. It’s no, I mean, yeah, that’s why I love you.

Nola Simon
(laughs)

Sarah Noll Wilson
Because I, I, the charge you’re making of how do we slow down a little bit and not just do technical tactical fixes to get us, right, what’s like – and maybe there is some band-aids. Short term, what’s the band-aid so we can make this work make it sustainable, but a lot of companies figured that out, because they had to, and they figured out very, very quickly.

Nola Simon
Right.

Sarah Noll Wilson
And it is this –

Nola Simon
They know.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Right.

Nola Simon
They know what didn’t work during the pandemic and so they can start there.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.

Nola Simon
And really just continue with what was working, and then look at what wasn’t working.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Right.

Nola Simon
And that’s where you, you do the imagination.

Sarah Noll Wilson
It’s and I think, I do feel like I personally, I very, I feel this very deeply in my bones that just like you said, we’ve been given this opportunity to rethink work, you know, something my colleague, Dr. Teresa Peterson, and I have explored is just, you know, the decentralization of work in our lives. And, and I think that’s the value also of, you know, the type of work you’re doing and the community you’re building is because sometimes you can’t always imagine something you aren’t aware of what it could look like – here’s what I mean. Is that, just to your point, you know people thinking about boy, how do we just work 40 hours a week instead of 60? Or how do we work four days instead of five? And I mean, I’m like, I just want to work three and a half days on and three and a half days off, like I’ll split my days. I know my thinking will be better. I know my rest will be better. I know my health will be better all of that. And that’s something we as a team internally, we were just talking this week of we love that we are at – anyone who’s full time on the team is 30 to 32 hours. But even that is like really loose because we don’t track anything and yet get your work done, right. But we’re like, how do we get it to 20 or 25? You know, how do we get it? So it’s about three, three to maybe five hours a day, or you know, or maybe you have an intense couple of days, and you have the time off.

And, and I know that for me, sometimes it’s even, because you’re so used to this one way of working, you’re so used to this being – that anything better than that feels innovative and substantial and significant. And that’s why being in community with other people going, yshieah, but what does three and a half days look like? Well, shit I hadn’t even thought about that, like, I just want to get to four days. Or what is you know, even you know, the what is a neighborhood co-working space look like? Wow, couldn’t have even thought of that because – hadn’t even considered that as a possibility, which is why it’s so important we are in conversation about this, because otherwise we’re limited to our rules and experiences and all of that. And that can limit the dreaming. But the dreaming is definitely – I mean, what we’re observing is the dreaming is not happening near – it’s just not happening. It’s –

Nola Simon
It’s not

Sarah Noll Wilson
I don’t think I know a company actually, maybe I mean, I’m thinking of maybe one that is like, this is how we want to work. But this is a company that’s been doing virtual or hybrid for 10 years. So they’ve been thinking about it a long time. They’ve been experimenting with it a long time.

Nola Simon
And that’s really what it has been. It’s like the pandemic really was an experiment. But so many people just didn’t take the time to dream, what their dream was. It was go, let’s go back to normal. Let’s just go back to what it was we knew, right?

Sarah Noll Wilson
So for everyone listening, we’re in the middle of this conversation around the necessity of dreaming when actually we got completely obliterated by the power outage. So for those of you watching this on video, you might be wondering, wow, Sarah is wearing a different outfit. Nola, though, however, is very much consistent in how she’s showing up but we wanted to make sure we came back to this, because it’s such a great point to land. And so Nola, one of the things you were saying is that what you are seeing, and I think this is such an astute observation is that people are just trying to band-aid, right? They’re trying to fix and do what they’ve always done before. And they aren’t taking the time to actually dream about what could be. So just say a little bit more about that. And what what are some of the things that we should be thinking about? Or what are even some of the traps that we might get into that would limit us from thinking about, you know, what the world of work can look like?

Nola Simon
So yeah, in terms of dreaming bigger, I think that there’s an inclination one of the traps humans in all circumstances are, tend to do this is they tend to think that what’s the reality right now is going to be the reality like 10 years in the future, right, that the more things stay the same. But it’s not really that way. There’s, there’s a lot of things that change, you think 10 years ago, 15 years ago, the impact that the iPhone had on how we work, right. So that’s significant in terms of keeping in mind as well to have like, what’s reality right now isn’t necessarily going to be reality, in fact, 10 years from now. So what trends what signals can you pay attention to? To help you imagine what’s possible? Like we were talking briefly about the four day workweek? Well, that’s a reality right now, that’s being tested, it’s been trialed. I mean, I tried that, like 10 years ago, as well, too. But what’s going to be like 10 years from now? Is it going to be more like three days a week? Or is it going to be completely different? And we don’t even know what that’s going to look like yet?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.

Nola Simon
One way, I do a lot of futures training, strategic futures foresight and one of the things that you can actually do is actually make a list of things that you think to be true right now. And then completely flip it and say, what’s the opposite? And often people give the example of shoes, right? So shoes can be – you think you know everything about what shoes are, right? So like, you have multiple pairs, you coordinate them with multiple outfits. You know, you wear them inside, you wear them outside, you have different shoes for different activities. Well, what would be the difference? You’d have one pair, and you’d only ever have one pair. And why would that be? And a lot of that could be like haptics, sensors. It could be like, government issued tracking. Right? What are the reasons that shoes might be a little bit different, right? How can you apply that to your work, right? And it’s gonna be a little bit different for everybody as well too, but that’s where it’s like, you know, make a list of what things you think are true, and then flip it and that’s a way that you can stretch your imagination.

Sarah Noll Wilson
I love I really, I love that as an exercise because, you know, again, we get exactly to the point you made you know that because it’s true now or right is it feels like a rule – and this also goes back to, you know, making the connection of what you said earlier in our conversation of as a company, you need to decide what your commitment is, what does this actually look like? And I think for some companies, it’s also do you do you want to transform the way of work? Do you want to be behind the transformation? I mean, because we have been given again, this incredible opportunity. And, you know, at the time of recording, I feel like this will be a time capsule, you know, people are just starting to – the exposure to things like machine learning and ChatGPT. I mean, the masses are starting to figure out like, oh, oh, things are –

Nola Simon
Yes.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Exponential – I mean, I don’t want to get into it now. When I was first, when I first started tinkering a few weeks ago with that technology, I was like, oh, gosh, the world as we know it is going to fundamentally change in ways that I think we’re unprepared for. And I think that, you know, like that, that push of, we need to be thinking differently. And you know, one of the things you said before we hopped on that I wanted to make sure that I brought into this call was just how critical it’s going to be to listen to your people.

Nola Simon
It is definitely and your point about AI is, is very true, because what’s exciting is not necessarily what ChatGPT is right now, but it’s about how people are actually looking at it and going, oh, things are gonna be different. It’s like this light bulb moment. And it’s like, okay, how is this going to change the way I approach my work in all different aspects of work and in a different ways. And it’s not just just that, because now there’s a whole thing about music and art and how that’s going to change everything. But what’s really exciting in all of the posts that are being written about it is all of these people considering and opening up their minds to the possibilities. And that’s what I find very exciting about it. The actual outcomes of what comes out of that right now, I’m not too excited about.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nola Simon
But, the mindset, the mindset is really what needs to shift. And that’s where companies really have to pay attention to what their employees are thinking and feeling because those are the companies that are actually going to do the future of work well, right. Because a lot of this is not really just about hybrid, or remote hybrid/remote is almost like an entry point for this discussion about what we want future work to be. It’s an excuse to get in there and talk about mindset, and what leadership has to be, and what skills we’re going to need to have for the future. And really what we want to change and make sure happens, you know, five, 10 years from now, right? Like futurism is not prediction. Nobody has a crystal ball. We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. But we have an idea of what we’d like to see, based on, you know, what our past was based on what we see in terms of the possibilities. And we know that we can create wonderful, magical things, if we work together, collaborate and put our minds together, right?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.

Nola Simon
And we have technology to help. And I mean, quantum computing is coming too, like, it’s not even just AI.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Right.

Nola Simon
So that’s the exciting part. But it requires that collaboration. And how do you find the people who are going to have that mindset to be able to listen? Well, it’s going to be in all different places, right? No, one person, it’s not HR, it’s not the leaders, it’s not the current executives. It’s everyone is gonna have like a shared perspective on what the possibilities can be. And how do you collect all that information? How do you encourage people to share your hopes and their dreams, and you can only get to that part if you’ve got a commitment to listen, and taking action based on what you hear. So that’s really where I see things getting exciting, is you want to find those organizations and those people that are going to be willing to listen and just stretch our imaginations.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, you have to be willing to experiment a bit. I mean, that’s something I feel like we’re constantly working on for ourselves and also with folks is just how do we embrace an experimenters mindset? Now that you know, and that doesn’t mean you’re, you’re throwing everything away and rebuilding everything, but things are moving. They’re just moving really, really fast. And change was always a constant, but it feels like we’re in a state of acceleration. And I want to go back to a point you made because I think it’s a it’s a really powerful reframe. So many people think the, I think that – my experience let me clarify is that so many of us look at hybrid, virtual as the end game to clarify, instead of the entry point in and then when you offer it up like that it’s like, and so then what? And I think that’s such a beautiful invitation for us to consider, so and then what? And then what can it look like? And that’s going to be a real challenge for some of the folks that are currently in positions of power and authority, because they’re used to doing work a certain way. That were used to communicating a certain way, leading a certain way and how do we, and how do we change it?

I will share with you, (chuckles) I have been inspired by our conversation where it’s reinforced things that I’ve been thinking about, but I was just having a conversation this morning with our new client experience and business strategy team member and I’m like, so how do we do like, just how do we do it all differently? How do we grow this company, and get to a point where we can truly be working you know, three and a half day work weeks? How do we grow this company? And how do we think differently about compensation? And how do we, we were even joking about – I’m not joking, but I was, like, you know, VR, I think will eventually become something more substantial than it is? Or it has the possibility. And so how do we start to be how do we how do we start playing in that space? How do we understand, even get familiar with the technology? So as that evolves, right, and as humans are interacting and communicating in different ways, and it was fun even just to think like, well, maybe for our fifth year anniversary, we need to just get everyone VR headsets, and we’re gonna play around and explore with it, but –

Nola Simon
Choose a system that other people have legs. I find that very –

Sarah Noll Wilson
I know.

Nola Simon
distracting when they don’t have legs.

Sarah Noll Wilson
(laughs) Yes, I understand that. (laughs)

Nola Simon
I did actually participate one and I asked the designer, like, why did they do that? And they’re like, it’s like, you could just kind of like port from like, one space to the other. And you don’t really have to walk there like you would never walk there. And that’s why they don’t have legs because the visual is just let go. But I found it incredibly distracting to have half a body.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Sure. The brain is like, wait, this all feels very real until I looked out and I can’t see my feet. But but that –

Nola Simon
Exactly, yeah, exactly. That’s right. And that’s, that’s, that’s where it’s like, unless you start with, with it now and experiment. You can’t, you’re not gonna see the progress, right? And that’s where it’s like, you have to play around with it. And I think we kind of have to let go of that certainty, right, like people have, especially leaders, the more senior you are, you like to operate in a feeling of of certainty, like you have that authority like to convey, you like to trust that you know what you know, right. But I think that the more we get into the future of work with the pace of change where it is, it’s only going to get faster, I think that you actually have to embrace that ambiguity, that uncertainty and that vulnerability to say, I don’t know, but I’m willing to learn. It’s that learners mindset, right? And then how can we leverage the skills and the abilities of other people who work with us to really leapfrog and learn from each other? How do you – it’s not that one person is going to know everything. It’s like, how do you work together and collaborate?

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah. I mean, all research shows that the more diverse your team is, the more – and it’s not just the makeup, you have to actually then listen to the diverse minds. And again, I mean, that no one person is going to know everything they don’t now. But sometimes we behave in those ways.

Nola Simon
That’s right. (laughs)

Sarah Noll Wilson
Boy that’s not another, you know, invitation for being really thoughtful about inclusion and how do we how do we make sure all voices are heard? Nola, this has been such a treat to have you on the show. And before we before we give people a path to connect with you, I want to ask you our last question that we asked everyone. So first, clearly, we need to have you back. There’s at least three different topics that I want to explore with you. So we’ll definitely make that happen. But in the spirit of Conversations on Conversations, Nola, what is a conversation you’ve had with yourself or with someone else that was transformative?

Nola Simon
Transformative, actually, when I switch jobs in 2018, I had a conversation with myself where I was moving to 100% remote role, and it was the only role that was 100% role in that company. And I remember thinking to myself that if that job didn’t work out, I was going to have to leave. Right. So that was actually a transformative understanding to have because when my job was actually restructured a year and a half later, my lawyer had asked me, are you do you feel you’re being set up for success with the offer that had been given? Because I was actually offered a different role? And I’m like, no, and I knew from my previous understanding that it was likely I was gonna lose that that ability to be 100% remote. Right? So I think thinking ahead thinking about all the different options almost like strategically go, like, how do you how do you get 30,000 feet and above, and look at where your role is in the company, how the company makes money, and where your path is, the next step, right? Know where you want to go, because that’s going to prepare you for whatever is going to happen to you. So that’s with what’s happening right now in the world with all these layoffs that have happened, if people are prepared, and things unexpectedly happen, and you have to make quick decisions, if you’ve got that understanding, and you understand how you’re being set up for success, and what your next logical step would be. It’s like choose your own adventure. You’re proactively planning, like where that can go know what that story looks like. And I think that’s a transformative conversation, if you don’t actually know that or have that understanding, like, talk to your manager, talk to other people that you work with, and understand what that maps out to be. So you can make sure that you’re setting yourself up for success.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, beautiful. Nola, I have no doubt that there will be people listening who are like, I think we need what she’s offering. And there’s a couple of different ways that you support companies and leaders. So can you talk just a little bit about, you know, what, what are the different ways that you support companies? And then finally, what are the best ways for people to connect with you, if they’re interested in reaching out?

Nola Simon
Of course. So it really all is sort of part of the path. So I offer consulting services to help organizations, leaders create like hybrid/remote strategy. So how do you move from like an office-centric strategy to to hybrid or remote wherever you decide that to be? Right, so I can work with you directly to do that. But also, I’ve created a membership, which is really for people who are working in that transformation, because typically, it’s not going to be the CEO who’s going to create all of that work and that policy. It’s going to be somebody in HR or somebody who’s involved in like digital transformation, who’s going to actually be working that way. It’s actually very lonely work, because who do you talk to about the future? Everybody has an agenda. Everybody wants a decision. Who do you, who you talk to? And how do you learn best practices, because there may not be a lot of people who work within your company who do that same sort of work, right? And in terms of community, even if you were part of like an HR organization or whatnot, there’s a lot of people who are very office-centric. And do you want a community where you can go and you don’t actually have to prove yourself or stand up for your beliefs constantly. So I offer a membership that is building out like resources and best practices, courses, and really just a space where we can actually kind of learn from each other and build that hybrid/remote excellence. What is hybrid/remote excellence? We don’t we know what excellence in Human Resources looks like. There’s Centers of Excellence for Project Management, all kinds of different things, right. But I’ve never seen one that’s for hybrid/remote and that’s what I’ve been creating there with that membership too.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Awesome.

Nola Simon
And you can find me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn and Twitter are my places. If Elon Musk behaves, and Twitter sticks around (laughs) I will stay there. Otherwise, it will just be LinkedIn then to me.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, awesome. And we will post we will post all of those links in the show notes so people can connect. And thank you so much for this conversation. I think this is it’s such an important – I mean it’s just a necessary topic and you bring such a wealth of wisdom and insight and thoughtfulness. And there’s definitely some things I’m pausing and reflecting on like, oh, I hadn’t. I hadn’t even thought about that. So, Nola, thank you so much for coming to the show and being part of this conversation.

Nola Simon
No, thank you. And you know, it’s the perfect example of how we keep persisting even when technology and the power goes out. Thank you for take two.

Sarah Noll Wilson
Our guest this week has been Nola Simon. And there’s a lot that she is giving me to chew on not only as I think about the way we build our company, but in the clients that we support. And that idea of how do we really take the time to dream about what could be. You know something we’ve talked about on the show is that work hasn’t necessarily worked for a lot of folks for a really long time. And we’ve been gifted this opportunity. So I hope that you all are leaving this conversation thinking differently and more expansively about what’s possible when we think about the future of work. And we want to hear from you. What resonated? What are you chewing on? What what is your company doing that you’re really proud of related to the future of work? So you can send us an email at podcast at Sarah Noll Wilson dot com. You can also find me on social media where my DMs are always open and we’d love to hear from you.

And if you’d like to find out more about the work we do in helping you and your team have conversations that matter, you can check us out at Sarah Noll Wilson dot com. And if you haven’t, you can pick up a copy of our latest book, Don’t Feed the Elephants! wherever books are sold to help you get rid of those pesky elephants in the room. And if you’d like to support the show, there’s two main ways you can do that. First, you can consider becoming a patron. You can sign up at patreon dot com/conversations on conversations where your financial support will support the incredible team that puts the show together. And we do do appreciate it. Also, if you haven’t already, please be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the show on your preferred podcast platform. This helps us increase visibility of the show so that we can continue to bring on really awesome guests like Nola Simon.

Big thank you to our team that makes this show possible. To our producer Nick Wilson, our sound editor Drew Noll, our transcriptionists Becky Reinert, ksn marketing services, who’s our marketing guru, and the rest of the SNoWCo. crew. And just a huge final thanks to Nola Simon for her patience as we navigate, coming back together and just sharing so much incredible wisdom. This has been Conversations on Conversations. Thank you all so much for listening. And remember, when we change the conversations we have with ourselves and others, we can change the world. So take care, please rest, rehydrate and I’ll see you again next week.