• Invest • Attendance • Optimistic • Learning • Engagement •

It's Friday, and the weeks keep speeding along. Tried to keep it positive in the face of negative news, and provide some helpful tips. Sundar's pronouncement is a sample of what is sure to follow in the fall, when the kids go back to school, and the post-Labor Day (US) return-to-office mandates stuff email inboxes.

Instead of mandates, Ryan and the team can help you increase occupancy by focusing on making offices attractive with the spaces and amenities that 'I can't get at home.' Works for restaurants and hospitality. One thing you can do at home is to update your setup with Darren and Amina highlighting relatively inexpensive best-in-class 'what's possible' by getting off the laptop camera and spending a few minutes thinking about lighting. Change isn't slowing, we all need to keep learning, and in fact it's one of the most important character traits for success in business. And finally, a quick comparison of broadcast-centric reach with low conversion, vs narrowcast, engaging directly with the people that matter to your business.

So without further delay, five posts that touched a nerve with my LinkedIn community this week.

This Week's Friday Five

Invest In You

Darren and Amina connect deeply, through the camera, with direct eye contact. Beneficial be they interviewing a prospective team member, customer, partner, or catching up with anyone important to them.

I used to spend a lot of time trying to convince people to upgrade their home setup. We're more than two years post-March 2020, and while I'm a huge advocate of fewer meetings, and less time on video meetings when you do have reason to be on camera, showcase yourself. Be they customer pitches, virtual events, prospect interviews, 1:1s, time with distributed family or others, you can connect deeply with a nice setup, and look at your counterpart on the other side of the lens, directly in the eyes. It's not that expensive, it does take some investment, and paying attention to a few details. A good lens makes better lighting much easier. Invest in you, you're worth it.

Original Post Click Here

Attendance

Attendance or Output?, What's the function of the organization? What are your customers paying you for? - Jeff Frick

Sundar announced that attendance will not be formally tracked, and a part of one's performance review. Is that what customers are paying for? The evidence is in, and pretty clear, norms are best established and maintained at the group or team level, as far down the organization as possible, not as mandates from the proverbial mahogany row. It sounds incongruent as Google creates many of the tools that make distributed work possible starting with Google Workspace.

To paraphrase from a recent interview, if we invested the resources, currently focused on top-down mandates, and instead, invested in ito clear communication on goals, leader and manager training on asynchronous communication best practices and efficient operation of digital platforms, taking a hard look with an eye to 'regularly scheduled meetings', (frequency, attendee list, and objective, effectiveness) and more modern workplace best practices, cultural connection & effectiveness against objectives (aka productivity) will increase.....

With the one significant exception, 1:1s

One-on-Ones are frequently the one place most leaders and managers fall short on time invested, as evidenced by checking the daily calendar. Meet individually with each member of the team, at a frequency that makes sense, but is almost certainly more than is happening now. If you missed Dave's episode, Best in class is 2.5 hours per........ day, not per week. Once a year during the review isn't going to cut it in today's fast-changing world. Think of all the space you'll clear with those recurring meetings. Don't believe me, Spotify opened up over 76,000 hours of people's time, giving it back for heads-down work, collaboration, tea, building, rest, whatever, all of which increases well-being and connection, and output. (Check Dave's Episode)

Full-Length Article - Google to crack down on office attendance, asks remote workers to Reconsider, by Jennifer Elias, CNBC, Jun 7, 2023 - Click Here

Original Post Click Here

We're Optimistic about the future - Office is not dead

Here's my take, and it's rooted in years of research. We're quite optimistic that the next era of office will be far better. In supporting work wherever, the nature of the space is already so much more interesting, desirable, and dynamic - Ryan Anderson

'The Office is Not Dead' is how Ryan started his post this week, but I decided to highlight his optimism that the future is better, but it's not a bunch of average workstations at the end of a commute, to sit on endless calls or punch email. That reality is dying. What Ryan highlights is that now that designers can focus on creating great spaces for people (rather than routing power and ethernet cables), the office can be attractive, they can provide places and environments that not only result in better outcomes, but also in better employee engagement, well being, tighter culture, and increased retention. All good things, all achievable with a focus on people effectiveness, not attendance.

Original Post Click Here

Learning Machines and Growth Mindset

Are they learning machines? Do they have a growth mindset? How much will they be able to start to understand the marketing and sales process, which sometimes they've never thought about and never interacted with? - Greg Sands

No matter how good you are at your field of expertise, how will and able and enthusiastic are you to learn something completely new? Can you embrace being at the bottom of the learning distribution, looking up at the steep end of the learning curve? Threatening, overwhelming, 'Not interested'. Or exciting, scary, and exhilarating? Personally, I a huge fan of the steep end of learning curves, because you learn so much so quickly and get exposed to new worlds that you never knew existed.

Original Post Click Here

Reach ≠ Engagement

If you simply want reach, it's simple and I'll tell you the formula - Jeff Frick

I was discussing this earlier in the week, and thinking about the see-saw, where striving for reach, should increase your followers, which should increase your engagement, but it doesn't quite work that way. Reach via an always 'hot topic' like 'Apple' or 'Crypto', will increase your followers, but those consumers of 'popular topic' content aren't necessarily the same people who are important to your business for specific reasons (customer prospects, key employees, partners, media), so engagement often fall, not just the percentage, but the actual numbers. Follower count is a signal, but more important is the people who make up your community. Do you develop your community with outbound efforts to the people that matter? Or do you accept every inbound request just to jack the numbers? Be Intentional.

Original Post Click Here

That's a wrap on this week's Friday Five. Thank you for reading, If you enjoyed this week's posts, please consider sharing with a friend, and subscribing to the Friday Five Newsletter, or subscribing to my YouTube channel, Work 20XX Podcast with Jeff Frick, & Turn the Lens Podcast with Jeff Frick, or wherever you podcast.

You can support my work on Patreon or Substack.

Thanks and Happy Friday.