38. The New Normal: How Hybrid Work Actually Works
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One of the things I love most about hosting this podcast is that I get to ask important questions to really smart people. And today, I have a really important question and a really smart guest. So here it goes. Will I ever need to wear pants again to work? Hello, I'm Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast.

The pandemic accelerated the existing momentum behind remote work. How will things change as we transition into a hybrid way of working, some at home and some in the office? Today, I am super excited to speak with Pamela Hines. Pam is the Fortinet Founders Chair and Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford, and she co-directs the Center on Work, Technology, and Organization.

Pam's research looks at the effect of technology on teams, teamwork, and innovation by exploring issues of culture, language, identity, and conflict in promoting knowledge sharing and collaboration. Welcome, Pam. Thanks for being here. Oh, thank you. It's great to be here. Awesome. Let's go ahead and get started.

You and others believe that the new normal of work will be hybrid. Can you explain what this looks like from your perspective? And what are some of the key tenets to successful hybrid work? Okay. Yeah, quite simply, hybrid means that some people will be working at home or in co-working centers, and others will be going into the office. And what that looks like, we really don't know yet, because it may mean that

You've got some people that are always in the office, some people always at home, but it may also mean that you've got people who are in the office part of the time and at home part of the time, at co-working centers part of the time. It's really unclear how it's all going to look.

Yeah, and some of that, I think it's exciting. We've learned during the pandemic that people can be quite productive working at home, but it also sounds like a whole layer of management and logistics have to be put in place to make this work. Yeah, absolutely. And you're right. I mean, most of the evidence is that most people were as or more productive during this sheltering in place experiment that we've done globally. And

People don't necessarily want to go back to the office. And I think that it's going to be a big recruiting issue for organizations if they don't offer the kind of flexibility that employees have become accustomed to. So I think you asked, you know, what some of the key tenants are. I think flexibility is going to be key. Employees are going to expect flexibility. Organizations are going to need to

sustain a higher level of flexibility with regard to when and where people work. And it's not just where, it's also going to be when.

And I think another tenant is going to be experimentation. One of the things I think is really exciting about all this, and perhaps a little bit frightening, is nobody actually knows how to do it. It is not something that we've ever done before. And, you know, I've studied a lot of globally distributed work and virtual teams and so forth. But hybrid work is not that.

And it's not telecommuting, which we know a bit about, but it's something that is a mix of these multiple different modes of working. And I think organizations are going to need to do quite a bit of experimentation in order to figure out

what works for their organization, for their employees, for their customers, for particular jobs, for particular classes of workers and so forth.

Yeah, so certainly a lot of flexibility and very specific, nuanced approaches that are going to be required to make hybrid work work. I'm curious, what advantages do you expect and what pitfalls do you foresee with this hybrid way of working? Yeah, I think that one of the advantages is just the flexibility. I think that employees have become accustomed to

having more flexible lives over the last year plus. Although, of course, they couldn't go many places, so they didn't have that flexibility.

But they did have the flexibility to have dinner or lunch with their families, to go walk the dog in the middle of the day, to extend or shorten their workday as needed. So a lot of flexibility in terms of how they were actually working. And that, I think, as I said earlier, is going to matter for retention. There's a lot of evidence right now that employees...

you know, considering leaving organizations if they aren't going to have the kind of flexibility that they have come to enjoy over the time of the pandemic. There's also, of course, a number of pitfalls. One of the things that I worry the most about is that

People who go into the office are going to have more benefits in a way than those who are not going into the office. They're going to have access to more information. They may have access to more mentoring, more access to

You know, the opportunity to connect with a broader set of individuals to develop a stronger identification with the organization and so forth. And those are the kinds of things that happen when you are in a physical location that has all of those signals and symbols. And when you're with other people and have the opportunity to run into one another. And those that are working from home, it's going to be,

much tougher to keep them integrated. And it's been fine during the pandemic because everybody's been remote. And it's fine. You know, they're these fully remote organizations and it works fine for them too, because again, nobody's in the office. But once you have some in the office and some outside of the office, I think we're going to start to see some issues with ethical

equity and difficulties in people being able to stay connected and stay coordinated. So that's one big issue. And then another pitfall is just onboarding. I mean, one of the biggest issues that I'm hearing is that for new employees, people who are new to the organization or new to the profession are having a much harder time

figuring out how things get done and learning because so much of the learning that takes place is being done at the side of another more experienced employee.

It strikes me that a lot of what you're talking about goes back to what you said earlier around experimentation. People are going to have to get very creative because the variables are different when you're in the office, when you're at home, or when you're doing a little bit of both. And it might be that...

firms and the way they meet, et cetera, are going to have to really try different things to see how that works. And it's my hope that the leadership of these organizations is open to that experimentation and that the employees are too, because this is new for everyone. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think it's experimentation with

you know, new ways of evaluating performance. It's experimentation with how we coordinate our work together. It's experimentation with new kinds of technology. And as I said, it's going to depend a lot on

the kinds of jobs that people are doing. We may expect that people in different kinds of jobs will have different needs. There might be differences in the stage of a project. Oh, true, yeah. There might be...

Differences in the stage of life, you know, for people who have small children at home, they may want to work in a particular way and then five years from now, they may want to work differently. So, you know, one of the things that I think is going to be fascinating is watching

how we're able to sustain this level of flexibility and almost ambiguity in order to continually make the adjustments that are needed for the given organization, project, individuals, jobs, and so forth.

Yeah. And it strikes me, you know, people have different tolerances for ambiguity, for flexibility and creativity. And so it'll be interesting to see if people self-select for certain roles or projects or even companies based on how the organizations approach all of this.

I'm not sure if you remember this, but I first met you six or seven years ago when you were so kind to spend some time with me as I was initiating my GSB class on effective virtual communication. Who knew that that topic would become so important in just a few years? At the time, I was fixated on virtual tools and how to maximize their use, but you rightly reminded me that leadership and cultural acceptance are critically important.

Can you share your current thoughts on the role of leadership and corporate culture in remote and virtual work? Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think that in many ways with hybrid work in particular, leadership is going to become much more complex. Leaders need to be able to communicate a vision and have that

be understood across a wide variety of groups and locations. And that can be tough. If you've got an all hands meeting and everybody is in the same place and you communicate the vision and then you go back into the office and people are reinforcing that and you've got all kinds of symbols and so forth in the office space that reinforces that, it just is a little bit easier job than if you're trying to communicate the vision when many people are

are remote and then trying to reinforce that vision again when you don't have the opportunity to talk with people face to face and have physical symbols in the environment. So I think that's going to be an opportunity for leaders to figure out ways to do a better job of

of conveying and reinforcing the culture of the organization and doing so in a way that is evenly distributed, if you will. And I think it's going to require that leaders be even better communicators than they had to be before, because communicating over some of these more lean, if you will, media platforms

can make it harder to rely on what we've always relied on in the past, our physical presence, our charisma, and so forth. We need to develop other ways of capturing people's attention and compelling and persuading people.

I think you're exactly right. I think leaders are going to have to rethink the way they communicate in terms of frequency and what they communicate and how they do it. And I also think based on what you said that we have to re-envision what culture looks like and maybe there are ways to package up parts of the culture and the mission and the vision

That work better for remote, that work better in person or in a hybrid fashion, just instead of thinking of culture and mission and vision as one big monolith, it might be that there are ways to package it differently depending on where the recipient is getting the information, if they're at home or if they're in the office. So I think that creativity and flexibility you mentioned earlier really will come to play.

to play. Before we end, I like to ask all of my guests the same three questions. I'm curious, are you willing to answer these questions? Yes. All right, then let's start. Question number one. If you were to capture the best communication advice you ever received as a five to seven word presentation slide title, what would it be? I think it would have to be, it's not about you, it's about them. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Yeah, I actually, I learned that when I started teaching because I got very, very anxious when I was teaching. And

you know it's just really have evaluation anxiety was concerned about what they were thinking of sure and at some point i thought well what would happen if i actually thought about them and thought about their learning experience and the value that they're getting from this and it completely changed the way that i showed up you know in front of an audience because um you know i

there's no reason to be anxious if I'm thinking about them and the value that they are getting out of the, you know, the talk or the class. So I just, for me, that is,

a really powerful way to do a much better job of communicating and enjoy it far more. I love that. Much more fulfilling that way. Right. So being audience centric not only takes pressure off of you, but it allows you to focus and be present and ultimately helps you to improve the experience for you and for the audience, which is fantastic.

So number two, who is a communicator that you admire and why? Yeah. So the person that comes to mind is John Chambers, the former CEO of Cisco Systems. Yes.

And, you know, I think I've always just been so impressed with the way that he communicates. And I think it's in part because it just seems as though he is so authentic. You know, I don't get the sense that he is...

you know, getting on the stage and becoming some other person. You know, it's like, you know, what you see is what you get. He's also very clear in his communication. He is very passionate about the things that he cares about. And

I get the sense that he's also really compassionate in the way that he communicates. He seems to connect with people in a very human way. Yes. And he brings a lot of energy and authenticity to his communication as well. I agree. A very good communicator. And the final question, question number three, what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? Okay. I mean,

For me, not surprisingly, some of them are going to be things we already talked about. So authenticity is really important to me to just really come from a very grounded and authentic, transparent, open place. Being engaging is really important. I'm still working on that one, but I think being engaging and having a story or a vision to...

to help people connect with what it is I'm communicating.

And I think it's really helpful to have explicit goals or objectives. You know, what is it I'm trying to accomplish in this communication? And that's particularly true. I guess it's true in any formal kind of communication, whether I'm teaching or leading a meeting or something along those lines. You know, I want to structure things in a way that have a goal in mind and hopefully get us there.

Right. I like your three ingredients because they cover three very important areas. There's the approach you have. There's the way you deliver the message. And then there's also the content and how it's focused and goal driven. So very, very useful and practical advice there.

Well, Pam, thank you so much for your time. Our topic today is incredibly timely. Many of us will be thinking about exploring and figuring out how to work in a hybrid environment. And thank you for sharing your suggestions and ideas about how to optimize our work globally and in this new hybrid way. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. It's been fun.

Thank you for listening to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast, a production of Stanford Graduate School of Business. To learn more, go to gsb.stanford.edu. Please download other episodes wherever you find your podcast. Hi, Matt here. Quick question for you. When was the last time you took a step back from your daily life and took the time to invest in yourself and your education?

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