Dr Tim Currie on Swift Trust and the Future of Remote Collaboration

Hey guys. Thanks for the throw. We're here with Dr.

Tim Curry, who's CEO of Nova, and author of a book called Swic Trust. And we're talking about, well, the trouble with remote computing these days because it may not just be a technical issue, it might be cultural. Dr.

Tim, welcome to the show. Thanks, Mike. Great to be here.

We've seen this kinda rush where everybody said, we're gonna work remotely, and some people even move clear across the country. And now there's this whole push to bring everybody back in the office, at least in some organizations. And it seems to be that the leadership doesn't always believe that the folks who are working remotely are actually working.

What's going on here and, and, and how did we get to this situation? Yeah, it's a, it's a pervasive question that everyone seems to be talking about these days. And, uh, I don't know that there's exactly one simple answer to it, but, uh, a few things, uh, that I've seen both in my experience in the tech industry and in my research, um, is that the, the move, the, the sort of drastic remove, we all sort of got kicked off the limb during the pandemic and, and everybody started working remotely.

And I think in many cases, people's, uh, people started to compartmentalize their work life in some cases, um, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, right. Home life, family, you know, uh, your, your personal life are very important too, and should be. But, but some dynamics did change, right?

And I think, you know, especially larger, larger, more traditional organizations struggled, I think to, you know, whether to get the productivity or the same results or provide a similar enriching work experience for their employees. Um, smaller, more agile companies, uh, organizations dealt with it, I think a little better. 'cause a lot of them may have already been hybrid or, or used to being remote or cloud native already.

But certainly the, the, the world changed very quickly. And I think, uh, now people are trying to come to terms with, okay, do we come back to the office? Do we come back to the office?

If we do, is it, is it all the time? Is it hybrid? You know, what are the exceptions?

Or do we, on the other end of the spectrum, do we build and found completely remote organizations from the beginning? One thing, that's one thing that I think is true is that the, the, the answer to it isn't to have HR send out the same satisfaction survey from 2019 to find out what's going on. It requires a new, a new method of engagement and thinking that I think a lot of these bigger organizations aren't, aren't coming around soon yet.

Mm-hmm. I feel like sometimes, and there's probably fault on both ends, right? Um, the remote worker might get disengaged and we haven't quite figured out how to keep them engaged.

And I, that leads to management complaining that, well, I can't manage by walking around and make sure everybody's engaged in the mission at hand. And, and they get frustrated. And, uh, logging, you know, keeping track of who's logging in on their keyboard isn't really a good metric in the first place.

But, um, right. How are there ways to keep people engaged who are working remotely? Because, well, you know, even people working in the office are working at home on projects and remotely too.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, so you bring up a very good word, engagement.

Um, you know, there are different kinds of engagement, right? Like the, the walking around and looking over the cubicle, uh, or, or the virtual version of that, right? If we're just looking at eyeballs and whether you're, whether you're online or not, uh, engagement is, is one of the number one, uh, activities or dynamics that came out of, uh, the research that I did, uh, on remote on, on a hundred percent remote organizations.

And what I found was that authentic enga, what what had decreased with the move to remote work was authentic engagement. And what had increased was task oriented, get the work done, very transactional type of engagement. So when you talk about what is it, what, what is it that we need to do?

Um, it's, uh, leadership and management, and to some cases peer to peer. They need to ensure that they are doing authentic engagement, both work related and non-work related. Because if we're taking away all of the interpersonal relationships and all the interpersonal interaction that used to happen in an in-office environment, not that at all was perfect, good, bad or indifferent.

It was a lot of ways to waste time walking around talking to the water cooler. But those things meant something, they were part of the fabric of how people developed organizational trust. It's how people developed identity in the place that they worked.

Um, and given the amount of time they, they spent in a given, in a given, um, workday, it was a big part of their wellbeing, um, over time. So what we found is that good leaders, uh, that, that where their remote employees felt like there was good leadership, they cared, they were, they were, they could be trusted, was when they engaged authentically, both in, meaning if it's task related or work related, they do what they say they're gonna do, they're transparent as they can be, and they deliver on, deliver on their promises, or they stay consistent to, to, to their talk track. But they also engaged in non non-work related channels, right?

The Taylor Swift channel or, you know, the sports team channel or you know, wherever you're sharing pictures of your kids. 'cause you don't have picture of your kids on the desk anymore for people to see, for you to reveal layers of yourself over time, they want to see you engage in those remote channels. And that was, that was a big part of, you know, engagement.

Meaning, I, I don't want, I don't need eng, I don't need micromanagement from you. That's not engagement. I need meaningful engagement.

Are you, are you helping me do my job better? Are you giving me the resources I need? Are you helping to drive the company that I'm rely reliant on, uh, for my, for my wellbeing and my livelihood?

And then, you know, are you human? Uh, do you engage with us in something that isn't just task related? So it's, it's, it's a lot of work for a leader though, uh, to, to, to work that way.

It's a very different mode, um, from just like working the room, you know, walking the halls. Well, I think you maybe come to the next big crux of the issue. I think, you know, there's a whole generations of managers who do not know how to manage remotely and therefore they just can't handle it.

So it's not really the fault of the employees, per se, for not being able to work remotely. They'll tell you they're doing just fine. Made me even happier than ever.

It seems that have a generation of managers who don't know how to manage folks remotely. And, and I would pause the fact that a lot of people were being managed remotely years, decades, even before COVID. So what's the problem with the management squad?

Well, I, I think what you say is absolutely true. And in fact, there's a, it's be it started to become a rather famous study that Microsoft did during the, uh, during the pandemic. Um, and 87%, I think it was across 250,000 employees.

87% of them said they were highly productive working remotely. 12% of management agreed that their employees were even productive working remotely. So that's a huge perception gap.

It's a huge trust gap. It's also a huge sort of operating like impedance mismatch on the, the organizational design, right? And then this gets to your point, everything, yes, a lot of people worked remotely, especially those of us in the tech industry.

We've all been remote for a good, a good portion of our careers, but hybrid. And there was always a, I would, I would argue that there was always a satellite office or a headquarters or a regional place or a, a briefing center where, where people worked every day and things got done. And that's where the, the corporate culture was hatched and reinforced.

But that being said, yes, there, there are a lot more people who never, surprisingly enough, there are a lot more people who never work remotely and many more who never managed remotely. And I think, uh, I think that we are three dimensional animals. And if my, if my success is dependent on a group of people that work for me, I'm gonna manage them in a particular way.

Um, and I think my, this isn't based on any of the research I've done, but I suspect that you had a lot of managers that worked in places that had amazing cultures and were amazing brands where people thrived on being either there in the office or part of, you know, whatever, call it Google, Google or Amazon or Unicorns pit you pit. And though they, they might have had a very antiquated management style, they kind of had to operate within this, within this very, um, you know, very supportive, uh, very energetic, you know, kind of modern workplace. And when that got pushed out into being more fully remote, they couldn't rely on that.

It sort of operate in this happy place. And all it was was really that them and their, them and their, and their directs. And, and I think things got, things got a lot more tactical, things got a lot more task oriented, a lot more outcome-based and maybe a little more transactional than it ever had been before.

Once everyone's just on 10, 10 hours of zoom every day. Uh, and, and you're seeing the effects of that. Like no one was ever retrained, you know?

And, and they didn't, they didn't, they couldn't operate. They didn't have all the, this other, you know, sort of backstop to work, work, work within. Yeah.

But I'm not sure, like, just because people are showing up in an office that they're any more productive. And to your point about those cultures, they spend an inordinate amount of time going out for lunch and sitting around the water cooler BSing about, you know, what happened in the NFL Sunday. And it's not always a hundred percent clear to me that being in the office is more productive than being remote.

And it may just come down to the people. 'cause vice versa, being remote doesn't always mean you're more productive either. 'cause you as a person may get caught up on Gilligans Island every three o'clock in the afternoon.

Hey, there's nothing wrong with Gilligans Island. Everybody needs, needs a break every now and then, right? Escapism.

Um, I, I would say that all things being equal, yes. Uh, which is, I think, I kind of feel like this is one of the biggest misleading statistics of remote work. And again, I'm not saying, uh, we should all go back into the offices, right?

I'm just saying that the world has changed and we haven't figured out the new operating system yet based on everything I'm seeing. Right? Um, but if you think about, okay, so you take a per, let's say you get eight hours of, you get eight hours of somebody, right?

For a given workday, which is probably a stretch, uh, in some cases, uh, in the tech industry, you probably got a lot more than that on a given workday. Um, but there's still, there's, we are three dimensional beings and we are social animals. And so people are gonna find a, they're gonna find a replacement for the water cooler.

They're gonna find a replacement for talking about the NFL, you know, their, their fancy football outcomes. The, the, the difference is they're gonna do it where there's, where they're gonna do it in their home office when there's, there isn't any other of the, of, of the reinforcing infrastructure of being in the office with a bunch of other people that'd have a job to do. Right.

That rely on you to get things done. Um, and I would take it one step further, and that is, um, I was traveling and stayed at a friend's house, um, recently, you know, of course, you know, he's, I'm traveling. I'm actually, this is one was a great opportunity to actually go to see a customer who's actually in their office like, like in the before times.

Um, but I stay with him and he's working remotely. He's on his Zoom. I, I happen to notice is he's on a Zoom with the camera off.

He's got something on the tv, he's got his phone and he is scrolling. And when I left, that's what he was doing. And when I got back, that's what he was doing.

And he is like, yeah, I just got done with 10 hours of Zoom. I'm like, yeah, you were probably on your, you know, you, you talk about like attention distraction now. I mean, you have to compete with so much just to have a meeting, right?

Because everybody's, I think that he's probably not that unusual in that, you know, whether it could be the kids or it could be the UPS guy, you know, and the dog barking. 'cause the UPS guy's at the front, I, I once had an, an employee, almost every meeting I had with him, something happened and his dog barked, right? Like, and that just becomes normalized, right?

Wasn't anything we would ever have of, of accepted, you know, years ago. But it becomes like, that's just, that's the work mode, right? It's a, so I think there are plenty of opportunities for us to get distracted in the remote world.

Uh, some of us are better than others and locking it down and focusing when we need to, um, and being productive. But I think, I think the danger is that many corporate cultures have reacted by just stacking, stacking. I had a meeting the other day that had four people on it and five AI note takers.

And I'm like, are we, are we productive? Are we, is this, is this what productivity looks like? I don't think so.

And I did what you did earlier. I kicked, I kicked the note takers out. I said, if you want to be in this meeting, be I, I've got a note taker.

Okay. So, you know, whatever. But, um, I, I, I think the whole productivity thing is kind of a misnomer because I think we're viewing it purely from a task oriented, task completion, you know, Gantt chart view of the world.

And I think that isn't what made Google and Amazon successful, right? Or the unicorn successful, or the disrupt or uber successful, right? It's, it's something that has at least for a very long time resided inside of a corporate culture of innovation.

And I'm not sure how you get that. I, you know, there are certainly customers absolutely thriving in a hundred percent remote environment. I, I interviewed some of them and, and they're part of my research, but they weren't the bigger customers.

They weren't, they weren't the bigger organizations. They were usually very specialized groups who had known each other for years, can finish each other's sentences. They have a lot of trust and, you know, interpersonal stuff built up from the before times, right?

So, um, I, I think, I think that there is something lost. I don't know how to get it back. So the thing that you're describing as lost is what we might have referred to as esprit de corps back in the day.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and some execs will say that that manifests itself because, you know, cross departmental teams are not talking about the customer and having a conversation that sparks some great new idea because it's too hard to do remotely.

And that's a possibility. But at the other end, I would say that having worked in those office buildings, um, they go for four or five floors, and I might not have ever been on three of them. And so it's true.

So the level of it's true collaboration that exists there may be exaggerated as well. So to your point about needing a new operating system, which I don't disagree with, we need to, it seems like rethink how we're gonna create something that feels like ESP street core in a remote environment. And that's the challenge.

It is the challenge. It is the challenge. And, and it's certainly, uh, a combination of, it's a combination of recognizing, you know, it maybe not each individual employee's positionality, but yeah, I think every organization has to ask themselves some hard, some hard questions.

Um, you know, this idea of swift trust just, uh, which we talked about earlier, is it is something, it's, it's not, it's not mine. It's a common research term, and it means a very transactional, provisional level of trust. It means I trust you to do the job I asked you to do.

Uh, you trust me to pay you if you do the job. And I interviewed some people that that's what they were looking for out of their workplace. And there might be a lot of workplaces that that's maybe all they're looking for outta their employees.

And that's okay, as long as everybody understands upfront that that's the, that's the arrangement. Remote workers can compartmentalize their workplace knowing that they're responsible for the outcomes. And employers can understand that.

That's a, that's a very transactional relationship. That's likely not to last very long. Um, but most of o overwhelmingly, most of the people I talked to wanted everything else.

They loved the autonomy of working remotely, um, and also wanted to be part of something special, wanted to have interpersonal relationships at work. They wanted all the things that they might have gotten, you know, in the past. Um, you know, prior to the pandemic, one third of all, some, somewhere close to one third of all marriages originated in the workplace.

You know, either with coworkers or friends, coworkers or, you know, what have you. Um, as we all know, that's drastically changed. Uh, it's shifting to, you know, online and dating apps and so on.

Um, the, there's, there's a, there's a big piece there that's gonna be very hard to, you know, and maybe that'll never be the case again. And that's okay. Um, but I think you've gotta have some combination of understanding that what people generally want from their workplace hasn't changed that much, even though the situation has, they still want to be part of something.

They still wanna identify with something. They still want interpersonal relationships that, that they can rely on and build over time. And that's what builds organizational trust.

Organizational trust is what helps organizations through the hard times, the big pivot shifts the bad years. Um, and there's, you know, if I segue into ai, like there's gonna be a lot of organizations that are disrupted by, um, by Gen AI and, and Agent ai and understanding, you know, how they still maintain what the, not just how they operate their organization, but how they reimagine what they need to do now. Um, and that organizational trust is the kind of the sinew that holds it all together.

Mm-hmm. I think to your point, there is no substitute for, uh, personal interaction. And that occurs face-to-face.

But I also noticed in the age of remote work that we tended to stop inviting people into the office. We didn't wanna fly them in 'cause that was cost, and managers didn't wanna go see the remote workers. So maybe this issue for building the esprit de corps is just, you know, old fashioned, get on a plane and go see somebody.

I absolutely, um, almost everyone I talked to in my research said that, you know, that I had one, I had one person I talked to who had worked remotely a hundred percent for three years and never met anyone. And they were fine. You know, it was, it was, you know, good days and bad days, and a lot of the things that I, you know, that we talked about, but one of their coworkers was going to a wedding that was six hours away, and, and she got in a car and drove six hours.

She was so desperate to see one of their cowork, one of her coworkers face to face, you know, and people want that. People need it. And they need to see that that leadership wants it to, um, the CFO, the CFOs have not forgotten, right?

Like, they're like, no, no, no, we, we got rid of all those expenses. It's like, okay, yes, but that was the reason we got rid of those expenses. They have to co, the world has to come back.

Um, I mean, think about it from a, from a, like, I'm, I've spent most of my career in the consulting world, consulting and sales. I mean, so little of what you do that what you used, what used to determine how well you did with a customer, how well what you delivered was how much time you spent on site in their environment, how well you got to know them, their organizational structure. Like, I remember a time was like, if you could get someone on the softball team, you know, you knew you had, you had a good client, right?

Because you knew what they needed. And you also had built, uh, a trusted relationship. And, and you did that through going through authentic experiences together, right?

If you, that doesn't ha that that doesn't happen as much anymore. It's really hard to have those, um, both in the sales role and in a consulting role. So yeah, I think leadership has a huge responsibility to, to make it clear, you know, again, when and where they, they wanna make it happen.

They have to make both the resources and the expense, uh, expense, uh, available. All right, well, folks, it's clear we need a new playbook. And I spoke if you wanna run a company and everybody you want there to work is within two hours of a commute, that's possible.

And you can make that work, but you might also not be making available the best talent you possibly can because there could be somebody sitting four states away who is actually the best at that particular task and anybody's seen, and you're never gonna hire them. So think about it. Hey Tim, thanks for being on the show.

Great to be here, Mike. Appreciate the conversation. All right.

And back to you guys in the studio.