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Episode 6 - Culture matters! Don't be a Lobster!
20 Plays3 years ago
In this episode Ross and Gregg discuss cultural exclamation points and the power of culture and connecting with people. They also discuss returning to normal and what the future will look like, what have we lost.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Unmotivated and Unprepared'
00:00:11
Speaker
You're listening to Unmotivated and Unprepared, a podcast where we take a break from the everyday hustle and bustle to muse about life, liberty, and the pursuit of randomness. Now here's Greg and Ross.
Podcast Growth and Aging
00:00:35
Speaker
Howdy, everybody. It's Ross. And it's Greg.
00:00:40
Speaker
And welcome back to episode number six of unmotivated and unprepared. So Greg,
00:00:48
Speaker
We're at six, the podcast is aging. We're getting older. We're getting up there. We've gone past the toddling stage. We now are somewhat self-sufficient, but our parents still have to watch us. So it got me thinking about getting older.
The Evolution of Birthday Celebrations
00:01:06
Speaker
Now this isn't gonna be an exercise. And you know, Ross talking about you're only as old as you act, blah, blah, blah. This is really more about
00:01:18
Speaker
Here's what I was reflecting on. Birthdays. You had a birthday recently. I've got a half birthday coming up in a little bit, you know? And it's always our Mary, Mary on birthday, right? Yes. It's always, always, always. So, but I was thinking about it. There's this, I don't know if it's a bell curve, if it's an inverse bell curve, but it's,
00:01:38
Speaker
there's a sweet spot of when the conjunction of a birthday is both all about you and you're excited about it. So like what under three years old is the birthday really about you? No, it's about your parents, right? I mean, they're, they're excited. You get the smash cake, but do you remember any of your birthday from like years one to four? Probably not outside of pictures.
00:02:04
Speaker
Then you get that sweet spot, thinking like five to 12, five to 13, where you are excited for your birthday. The party is awesome. You've got your friends. It's all about you. And then all of a sudden, birthdays get into this weird place where it's like, it's just,
00:02:22
Speaker
And I'll say an excuse for now, we'll get to it, but it's an excuse for people to come together and party. And then all of a sudden later in your life, depending on the person, you don't really want to celebrate because you're getting older and then really late in life. You're just kind of.
00:02:39
Speaker
sitting there destitute and you've got all your family around and they're meeting so dark and it's like a family reunion. So like, so I got to think about that. I'm like, Greg, should we be celebrating birthdays?
00:02:56
Speaker
I think we should. I think when you look at life, and someone told me this, and there's several books out there, we just did a quick search before we started today, is there's several books out there that say live life with an exclamation point, et cetera. And I think most of those are really about just being excited about just the mundane. I don't want that to be the thought process here. However, I do think Billy Crystal said it best, do something special. Learn from his mother that do something special on your birthday. Now, his stuff that he did special was like,
00:03:25
Speaker
play ball with the New York Yankees. We're not going to have that opportunity. Yeah, no kidding. But I think there is something else to be said about exclamation points in life, which is a weddings in funerals, which sounds really sad, but they're a moment where everybody comes together. And I think birthdays are that one annual moment where you have a date on the calendar that you can come together and celebrate
00:03:50
Speaker
with people. Now you and I both have I think the same sentiment about birthdays, which is I don't really go about celebrating myself that much. Like I don't need that, right? But maybe we're missing out. We're missing out on the opportunity for other people to find a reason to celebrate and celebrate why they love you or why they want to be around you.
00:04:11
Speaker
And for one moment, it takes the pressure off of them and thinking about their issues and their troubles and beginning to just celebrate someone else and someone else being in their life and thinking about those moments. I think those are touch points or touchstones of life that we oftentimes blow through and taking that moment to say, let's celebrate.
Social Media's Influence on Celebrations
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, but do you think going back to people celebrating others, like you look at social media and everything's all about yourself and then you get your birthday and people give you the whole like happy birthday generic thing on Facebook.
00:04:51
Speaker
And I wonder is that has, well, one has the pandemic made that worse because we haven't been able to come together. So now it's just like another day and it's just a checkbox. And is that something that we need to be more intentional about is going outside of our way, even if it's just, you know, the one person and maybe not just saying one thing, but giving them a call or reaching out to them.
00:05:20
Speaker
I think there are, face, so social media is an easy, passive thing. I remember when email, I remember when we were kids and email was a thing and you actually had access to it. I remember being in high school and like, everybody's excited to set up an email account with weird handles, right? And you'd have email, but no one ever, we didn't use it. I mean, not really. We like, we always be like, oh, now unlike back in the day, and I lived overseas, right? Now when a friend, and my friends move all the time because we're military. Oh, now we'll stay in touch with email.
00:05:47
Speaker
And we didn't do that. And social media almost always when you look at it is there are probably 10 percent of people that are active users. We can go validate this on the Internet. There's probably 10 percent of active users who actually use it and comment and and those and lots of
Social Media Engagement: Passive vs Active
00:06:03
Speaker
casual users. I think both you and I are casual users. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Total total lurker.
00:06:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we don't we don't post on Reddit, but we read Reddit. I mean, we're not going to go on social media. We're not going to post. Like I'll watch a video on social media on YouTube and I'll never comment. Right. I try to make an active effort, but it's just not my style. I think that speaks to our attitude and perspective of how we view contributors like even us. Right. Yeah. We don't end up having a podcast. We don't view
00:06:33
Speaker
those contributions is genuine, is authentic. We don't see us talking to, and people pay, like two people I like, Rhett and Link, are doing a thing in October in Austin, where they're gonna bring together everyone who likes the mythical world. And there's a cynical attitude on my perspective, be like, you're charging $400 for tickets to meet a YouTuber. That's just a money grab, right? But to the people who are going- It's a sense of community. Yeah, yeah. It's community.
00:06:59
Speaker
Yeah, they have this detachment to these stars and to each other and they have a unified interest. And to them, it is an authentic engagement. To them, it is authentic. To me, it's not authentic. I don't know them. And I don't ever care to know them. It's not a thing that I'm going to feel special because I know them. And I remember this in college, I used to talk about famous people I had met. And over life, I've met famous people here and there. They never seem like anything special. They're just people.
00:07:27
Speaker
Yeah, they're just people which sometimes is a good thing because you don't want someone to be elevated to an untouchable level where you don't feel like because then you ruin that connection like it's weird with celebrities and just people you look up to that are almost untouchables like
00:07:44
Speaker
Part of the reason you look up to them is because, well, maybe, I don't know. Is part of the reason we look up to people because they are untouchable and we feel we'll never reach that status and we want to be like them? Or is it a personality that we respect and an ethic that they have and we want to be like them or associate with them and form that sense of, you know, togetherness?
00:08:09
Speaker
I think leaders, and this is a thought process, leaders at companies that I would like to remind every leader at every company, is we don't have royals in this country.
Celebrity Emulation in Society
00:08:20
Speaker
We don't have any royals. There are no royalty. We didn't grow up with a monarch. We didn't have that.
00:08:26
Speaker
But I think what we do is we put our leaders of companies as royalty. They're kings and queens of the organization. We look at the Kardashians as being royals. They are people that we watch for how to act.
00:08:42
Speaker
I mean, look, take the Victorian era, right? The idea that people looked at tea, the British royals and aristocrats would have tea at four o'clock because they didn't have anything else to do. They're rich people who have lord over minions of whatever and they're like doing deals. But most of their time was a leisure class. They didn't have to do a whole lot and they would just have tea at four o'clock because that's what you do when you have nothing else going on at four o'clock.
00:09:12
Speaker
Yeah, drink some tea. Yeah, drink some tea. So high tea became a thing that the middle class wanted to emulate. That's where China, like porcelain China came in. That's where people began to want to emulate those lifestyles. So it's not a surprise that we're continuing as humans to do the same things that we've always done. So people are emulating Kardashians and we can chastise them for their behavior. And I think we should.
00:09:37
Speaker
Right. Them getting all the plastic surgery is telling young girls to get plastic surgery. But that's expected. When you put a group of people up as royals, that's expected. Yeah. And so I think those those cultural touchstones, those things that we look at, the royals, the celebrities, the people, they they tell us how we should act, how we should operate.
00:10:04
Speaker
Most of us. And they're there, and they're there, and they're there to tell us how not to act, right? They're there to help us understand how to navigate. Yeah, you can get some really good life lessons from the situation. Oop, don't do that. So now I will say, we're getting kind of deep here at a moment of levity. You said we don't have Royals in the United States. That's not completely true, Greg. Ever since I've got my Vitamix, I feel like I am a smoothie king.
00:10:35
Speaker
don't don't don't say you don't have any but that being said people aren't watching me make smoothies being like I want to be like him so that's right to your point like all seriousness but but yeah but you're emulating right you're emulating like buying a Vitamix makes you feel like I mean I don't have one it makes you feel like you're the king of the blend like you've got like this king of the blend oh I love it
00:11:01
Speaker
That's the best king of the blend. But that's, but that is, I mean, it is, it's a luxury product. It is without question. It's a luxury product. 100%. I have wanted one for like 10 years, finally convinced the appropriations committee, my wife, to allow me to purchase a Vitamix. And I've used it every day since then to prove that I want to get the value from it. But she's had smoothies too. She likes them as well. Oh, I love them. I mean, you can make soup in it. I mean, we could talk about the Vitamix for a whole 15 minutes about why I like the Vitamix.
00:11:31
Speaker
Yeah, but not an advertisement. But how different is it from an actual regular blender? Faster, stronger. It's powerful. Sure. We could say it's made in America. I mean, we could say a lot of things. But functionally, it's just a higher end product that you could buy as a minion. Yes. So going back to, I think it's interesting that you brought up
00:11:59
Speaker
emulating things and For these for these kind of moments and then combining that with the sense of community because We talked about we talked about birthday parties and I think it is good to have get-togethers And you if a birthday party
Pandemic's Impact on Social Norms
00:12:16
Speaker
is an excuse for it family reunion is an excuse for it Even though family is a whole different topic Born born into that is
00:12:28
Speaker
Is there something that in the last couple of years and returning back to normal where everybody's trying to go back to normal.
00:12:38
Speaker
Did the pandemic really just screw us up when it comes to what we see as normal and these cultural norms? Because obviously the in-person thing prevented a lot of the distancing, prevented a lot of the birthday get-togethers, and we started to go virtually. But is that recoverable? Because I feel like it's a very polarizing thing now.
00:13:03
Speaker
You have this other kind of polarizing topic that you want to get together, but then you want to be cautious about it. So I think a good analogy here is unless you're Inuit,
00:13:20
Speaker
or, you know, original peoples or however we call, whatever we call natives of the Arctic, right? The Alaska area, etc. The only people who are moving to the Yukon territory or going to live in Alaska are people who want to be all by themselves, right? That's it. That's the only people who are going there or buying a giant ranch in Montana. Like the only people who are doing that are people who want to be alone.
00:13:46
Speaker
Yes, and there's a reason why people who buy ranches in Texas don't live there full time for the most part. They love the idea of being of the solitude that comes with it for a weekend, but they're not spending their life there. And it's hard, right? It's hard to be alone.
00:14:05
Speaker
And so when I look at remote, I get that we have all of these virtual technologies that emulate social connection, they emulate human contact, but they aren't real, right? We take the podcast, we invented this on ourselves to maintain this kind of social connection that we, you and I absolutely adore, but it's still not the same as every day sitting there having breakfast together like we used to.
00:14:32
Speaker
Yeah, of course not. No, even yesterday I was talking about, I asked my wife, I said, when's the last time we saw Greg? I was literally trying to think of, when's the last time I saw Greg? She was like, oh, Christmas. I'm like, man, it's been a long time. And coming from me who's like, I'm totally a...
00:14:52
Speaker
Introvert I'm a homebody. I like to explore things but leave me leave me alone my small small group, but I was even like I kind of crave that crave that social interaction with people with certain was with some people so yeah as much as the technology is there and
Human Need for Social Interaction Post-Pandemic
00:15:09
Speaker
I will admit, I was two years ago, you would have asked me a question. I'm like, I never need to see another person again. Technology is amazing. There's, there's a gap. Now it's helped, it's helped me buffer some things that I'm like, good. I didn't really ever need that anyways, but there are things that I miss.
00:15:28
Speaker
I think one of the things that I notice about myself, and I had an opportunity this last week to go and be with the leaders of the company, the leaders of the company that I work for and be around them. And someone made the comment to me that they thought I was an introvert.
00:15:46
Speaker
And I thought it was an interesting comment, right? I thought it was an interesting comment. And I think what's interesting about it is that because I don't have that constant interaction that you would have on a normal basis where things are organic, and you just flow, I have this
00:16:02
Speaker
unusual awkwardness and I overcompensate by being super on like totally on and I'm not normal right and and I didn't have a chance to recover since I got back and so I've noticed how
00:16:17
Speaker
my personality is not in that good equilibrium where I'm both fun and interesting, but also muted and whatever. I was just completely drained and the exact opposite. At that moment, I was like, maybe I'm an introvert. And then I was like, oh wait, I'm going to go talk to Ross. Yeah, no, no. Let me introduce you to my friend. I'll show you what an introvert is.
00:16:43
Speaker
But I think even introverts, I think what the challenge is, is that we're going to try to force hyper interactions by maintaining remote because we're so afraid now. I talked to flight attendants, right? Great example. Used to be flight attendants had to be located where they were, right? Like if you were at a Dallas office, you had to be at the Dallas flight crew. Now you can live in Ohio, get up in the morning, catch a flight and get there and make your flights
00:17:14
Speaker
The idea that you're now not where you were before, not in that culture that you were, not attached to the sense of community that that company, because most of us don't sign up for a job just because of the salary. Correct.
00:17:29
Speaker
One of the questions that I think is important you always ask in an interview is why are you hiring in the first place? Like what happened last time? What happened to Joe who was here before? Why did he quit? I think if anybody asked us about a previous employee that we worked for, I think that would be the question that I would ask them because there's been such a shift in employees that have worked there. Why did people leave and why are people joining? And the answer probably is a lot more tied to
00:17:58
Speaker
culture values, et cetera, than it is tied to what salary people were making in the job they wanted to jump to. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I had somebody ask me what's the biggest risk we have to our organization, and I said culture.
00:18:10
Speaker
I would I would have told you attrition yada yada, but that's that's just a symptom. It's more it's more culture and I think Just when you hear the term, you know new normal or returning back to the new normal It sounds like such an edict and so forced like to your point of hyper collaboration. You must do that We've got to give it and I think
00:18:31
Speaker
And we'll look back, there's probably some equation for every year of the pandemic that we had that there's probably X number of years that we have to ease back into an understanding of what that looks like. And some things may fundamentally change and others might not. I was talking to my wife about activities and things, because we have a, this is part of my new normal. I invented something yesterday, it's called Adventure Coffee Saturdays.
00:18:57
Speaker
And we go find a random coffee place to get coffee at each Saturday. Normally, you know, I make the coffee. I'm not a coffee drinker, but I make the coffee. It's kind of fairly cathartic for me. But I've decided on Saturdays, adventure coffee. So she was drinking her coffee and I said, do you think coffee will be around in a hundred years? Like the art of like going to a coffee shop, everything like tea has, I mean, tea, ancient.
00:19:24
Speaker
thousands of years, thousands of years. So there's certain things that, and that was, I was kind of like, do you think this product and this product, cause I need to talk to Greg about what are the things that we feel are totally a 20th century invention that won't be around versus things that have staying power. And I think it's right back to these cultural things that we do. What are the things that actually have staying power?
00:19:49
Speaker
Well, I think, I think humans will always be a social animal, right? It's weird to watch. I don't know if you feel this way, but I watched like an animal documentary and you realize how quickly animal doc and most animals are solitary. Like most animals have want nothing to do. Like we think about the lobster and how the lobster would like, we're like, Oh, look, all the lobsters lobsters want to be all by themselves. They don't want to be near any other lobsters. Yeah. Unless it's mating season. They want to just be alone.
00:20:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I'm just going to go over here on my side of the pool, just chill. And it's a secret to their survival because if they're all together, then it's like a feeding frenzy. If they're by themselves, they can maintain. But we are the opposite. We are only effective and successful because we were together, right? I mean, it used to be, I was reading this article about tribes and hunting and the fact that the human body was designed to do a flat out sprint for five miles. Yep.
00:20:44
Speaker
I can't do a flat out sprint for a minute and a half, let alone five miles. But it was because the way it worked was one would run faster than one human would get tired and run, slow back a bit. The other one would speed up and we would basically run a deer out. That was how humans hunted. We would just tire them out, just run until they passed out. Until they fall over. Yeah, I read a book about that, about, oh gosh, I feel bad because I can't remember the name of the people in Mexico.
00:21:14
Speaker
And they were just so good at running and everything. And then I read some more stuff and like there are, you know, there are tribes and still somewhat exist where they will run and they will share the running burden until the animal is just worn out. And that's how they were built. But you can't do that by yourself. You can run. You could run five miles sprint nonstop. You're still not going to be able to catch your food in a more prehistoric society.
00:21:41
Speaker
And we got smarter. We invented better weapons to hunt them. We invented different ways. We invented traps. We would like push something into a region. But again, we couldn't take down a Macedon by ourselves. There's no way we could have taken down a Macedon by ourselves. And our tribes got bigger and bigger based upon the food sources. So if we wanted to hunt a Macedon, which would feed, let's say, 40 people,
00:22:02
Speaker
We would need about that many to hunt the damn thing. To hunt the thing. Yeah. So it was at scale. So you needed people, which is so interesting. So like all of these activities we do and things that, you know, quote, have staying power, whether it's a social activity or a necessity, hunting, gathering food, cooking food, you know,
00:22:23
Speaker
And now and nowadays, you know, having a sustainable income to support a family of four or five, six, whatever that means, it's all a sense of community and there's others. So it's all wrapped around that. So then it's also down to what are your. What are your activities that you do from a community perspective by need versus for fun and social interaction?
00:22:47
Speaker
I think about the thing that's happened with the pandemic. The number one thing that I've seen show up. Humans are naturally, I mean, unfortunately, we are what we are, and we're an animal. Anybody who's not keeping score knows we're an animal. And we're self-interested, right? Animals are naturally self-interested. What the pandemic did, I mean, look, 10 years ago, even five years ago, you would never have thought of telling your employer, I'm not coming back to the office.
00:23:12
Speaker
Like the idea that you have the gall to say, I'm not going back to the office and the office is like, okay, I can't afford to lose this person. What is that nonsense? Like I'm sorry, you exchange your human capital for monetary capital, for financial capital, right? That is the equation. And I'm sorry employers, like you tell us what to do if we work for you.
00:23:39
Speaker
Yes. The idea that any employer out there thinks it's okay, and I get it, right? And I think the company that I work for, and not to talk too much about because we have rules about what we talk about, did this all remote strategy. And I think it's backfiring. I think it's dramatically backfiring because there is no unifying source at the beginning of the company to say this is what we are.
00:24:03
Speaker
Right. And that alone makes remote very hard. But now take companies that had unifying missions and visions and values. They've hired in some cases, 20, 30 percent new staff that have never been
00:24:18
Speaker
in the organization to understand the mission, vision and values. And so they're operating from their previous mission, vision and values. And they're working with people and sometimes half their team or more than their team have a different set of vision, vision and values that are incongruent.
00:24:34
Speaker
Yeah, because they've never had that solid understanding and had the mechanism to come together and do that. And if a company was originally remote and all remote, they might be fine. But that's because when they started out, they had a strategy for how to embed that culture when somebody came on because you were remote. That wasn't a part of it. And I think that's what a lot of companies are struggling with is hybrid, remote,
00:25:01
Speaker
in the office. What does that look
Productivity vs Effectiveness in Remote Work
00:25:04
Speaker
like? How do you keep that? And I mean, I'm still a skeptic when it comes to... Well, I'm a skeptic because I don't know. I need the data. I need the data to show me how much the culture plays into the effectiveness of people. But then again, I'm one person. I'm one
00:25:19
Speaker
I'm one data point. I know I can be productive remote. I can be really productive remote, more so than in person, but that's because it's my personality and I have the, you know, I feel like I have the maturity to recognize that.
00:25:33
Speaker
I think that's where the conversation is completely disjointed. So there are narratives and the thing is they don't have the words. They don't have the words for it. We say things like productivity. I believe that people are very productive because they just are. I don't believe people are sitting around watching YouTube. Look, I can't.
00:25:53
Speaker
Like, I can't sit at my desk and I can maybe spend 15 minutes shopping for a minute, like taking a break from work. But anything more than that, either I feel guilty that I should be doing work or I just don't want to. I get bored. I need to be doing something. You need to contact Switch at some point back to what you were doing.
00:26:11
Speaker
Right, so I don't think that productivity is the issue. However, I will qualify productivity with a different word, which is effectiveness. I don't know if people are as effective outside. They can work for hours. I can sit down a programmer for eight hours, and I see this at my company. I see developers can actually do work. I can see them actually do the code, but it's not good.
00:26:36
Speaker
Like it's not where it should be. Like it's not the quality that it should be. And the reason it's not at the quality it should be is not any fault of the developer. It's because there isn't that unifying, hey, we're a team. Look over your shoulder. Look, let's talk about the gym. All right.
00:26:53
Speaker
I can go to the gym and work out. I can go to the gym and work out and I can be productive. I can do, if the time thing says I'd have to do 220, I have to do 200, two minute, like to get it to 220 on the rowing machine or whatever it is or the bike or whatever I'm doing, I got to get to a certain number. I can get there.
00:27:09
Speaker
Yeah, but but guess what? That's not my best. That's just what I get because my best is when the trainer comes by and I strip out and go go faster. Yeah. Yeah. You weren't you weren't being as effective. You're being productive. You were making you were making progress. That's right. Were you as being as effective as you could in that situation and on top of that. Oh, don't you go ahead. So Russ.
00:27:30
Speaker
Well, and I think and that's where to your point is you needed another motivating element. You know, you needed something else or someone else and that's different for everybody. And maybe that's not a good example because I think that's just when I get tired of the gym. I think I try to do my best every time I start something.
00:27:46
Speaker
But we'll use a better example from the gym, because this is real. This is legitimately real. I am not a coordinated individual. There's nothing about me that's an athlete. Like, I can't do the movements right every time. And if the trainer doesn't come by and help me fix, I think I've won a medal, but also I get worried that somehow
00:28:04
Speaker
She's just not paying attention. I'm doing this all wrong. And better than not, about two minutes after I have that thought, the trader comes by and goes, you're doing that wrong. I'm like, yep, thought so. I was pretty sure I was doing it wrong. And that's the part. That's probably a better analogy of what's actually happening, is that I'm doing the lifting. I'm there. I'm doing the work. I'm doing the things I'm supposed to be doing. I'm doing the exercise. I showed up at 5.30 in the morning. I'm doing the exercise. I'm spending the time.
00:28:31
Speaker
But I'm not doing it at the best of my abilities because I don't know how to do it the right way because I don't have someone who's helping me and helping me grow. And we as humans require that. We require that engagement. And it's just it's physically impossible to do that remote. And the reason it's physically impossible is because every meeting has to be of every interaction has to be a meeting. Like if you walk by someone's desk at the office
00:29:00
Speaker
And I'm an MBWA. It may be my because I'm a manager by walking, I manage by walking around, but I spend time with the people. And so you build cultural connection, you build visibility, you're able to answer questions. And half the time, you don't know what to tell somebody. I hate to break it to anybody, but you got a bunch of stuff in your brain that's in compartments that can come out as soon as somebody asks you, but you're not exactly sure they need that information right now.
00:29:23
Speaker
Yeah, otherwise you just be like word vomiting all over the place. Mm hmm. Everywhere. You'd be like, Oh, I really want to say that. Yeah, right. So so I think that's that's the part that's missing is that people get stuck. I had this I had this with one employee. He's he just
00:29:39
Speaker
get stuck because he has lots of questions and has no one to ask them to. Well, part of that, I think it's his own self efficacy, his own his own self motivation to go find people. But part of it's also just it's a natural human condition that and I've seen this in developers a lot. They get stuck on something and rather than going to the next story, they get sidetracked or distracted by something else rather than going, OK, I'll put this as a block or grab a new story or I'll go ask someone this question to solve my problem.
00:30:08
Speaker
and just knock it out and get it done. Yeah. But on a team, you can have that. You don't get that in a remote setting as effectively because we don't have the skills. We as humans have never been this way.
00:30:23
Speaker
Yes, this is the first time we were, it's like we're for, the pandemic has forced us to become lobsters. That's what I've learned from this entire 30 minutes. The pandemic has forced us to become lobsters. But unlike lobsters, but unlike lobsters, we're not willing to be uncomfortable and grow.
00:30:40
Speaker
Right? We don't want any uncomfortability now. We want everything to be easy. And like lobsters, they have to be uncomfortable to molt their, molt their shell and grow into a bigger lobster. Instead of like, I'll just dig a hole. I'm just gonna dig this hole and stay here. And if food comes by, I'll eat it. And yeah, and somebody keeps paying me. So I'll just keep doing the same thing because they keep paying me. And no one's growing to the next level.
00:31:04
Speaker
I'll leave you with one last story and I thought it was funny. It was on LinkedIn and a guy said, I've been working remote for the last 10 years and I've been effective. And I looked at his job title. He's in sales. So I pinged him. I pinged him on LinkedIn. I just wanted to. I wanted to ping him on LinkedIn. He said, no, he said, I've been in remote. I've been remote for 10 years. I've been effective. And he goes, I work in my home office all the time. I said, sure. So before the pandemic,
00:31:30
Speaker
Did you go to offices? He goes, yeah, yeah, if I had an issue with a client, I'd get on a plane and go to their office. I'm like, so were you really remote? He's like, well, I was remote because I did my work at home. I'm like, yeah, but what was your work? He's like being on the phone with people and doing sales.
00:31:42
Speaker
Right. And then if you had a problem, you would go get on a plane and go to their office. Yeah. So he was remote when needed. Remote when needed. Right. And I think that's the difference is that I'm I'm forward having a couple of days that I think employers who can't offer their employees one to even three days at home, I think is a short sighted perspective because they call him productivity. But those are companies where there's an established culture, the people are connected and the work is effective and they have the leadership skill set to be able to spend the time. Here's the other part.
00:32:12
Speaker
Leaders are so often politicians, not actual leaders, and they spend their time going to meetings where they politic and posture, but have no idea what the day-to-day looks like on their teams unless they were sitting there osmosisly and they don't have the skill set to understand the intentional actions to be able to engage with their people.
00:32:32
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But we, but we forced that, right? Being a leader, we forced that situation where it is a lot of politics and there, and don't get me wrong, those meetings, there are decisions that need to be made. I think you could make a decision in five minutes versus a 30 minute meeting and cut, cut down on that. But I guess my struggle always is, and you know, being the introvert, I'm like, I'll come in one day a week. I'm good. But if none of my folks are there,
00:33:03
Speaker
I can't do that anyway, so that goes right back to, will it ever change? And I think that's just the data is just going to have to show that, and you're just going to have to, because I don't necessarily think if I built a team of all people that wanted to come into the office, would they necessarily be a more effective team than a team that was all remote?
00:33:26
Speaker
I don't know. What are they working on? What are they what are they doing? And just because they're all in the office, then they might sit there and chat with one another all day long and not do work. So it's you know, it just depends on I think it depends on the situation. There's so many different elements that I think we just weren't ready for when the pandemic happened. But also it's exposing some things that in the past we probably we probably would never we'd be completely blind to it had the pandemic not happened.
Entitlement in Work Culture
00:33:55
Speaker
So I think I'll sum up Americans entitlement with work and one statement I read, which was your employer should pay you from the moment you leave your house to when you get to the office and then pay you on the way out to go home. And their argument was about remote, the idea that you're getting more work hours because I'm remote versus when I would drive in.
00:34:21
Speaker
I didn't choose for you to live that far away. I didn't say you had to take the train for an hour. I didn't make that rule. You decide as a human that that's what you wanna do. You took the job with this employer but wanted to live where you wanted to live. You could go live in a shoebox in New York City. That is your allowance. You're allowed to do that. But you chose not to. I'm not paying you as the company to do it. This idea of entitlement, you're not an entrepreneur. You are choosing to sign up to work for an employer to get paid.
00:34:50
Speaker
I like remote work two days a week. I get more done remote. I'm gonna work today. I'm gonna spend probably four or five hours on a Sunday doing work because I gotta get this stuff done for a Monday morning. You work as needed. Life is a blend. You work as needed. However, there is no doubt in my mind that humans require tribal connection. They require a social reason for showing up. There is a purposeful connection for working with your friends.
00:35:19
Speaker
Right? They should be. Right? If you don't go to work and have friends at work, I love this cynical attitude about, I don't have any friends at work. I'm like, yeah, right. Because if you don't, then you should get another place to work. Because like, I'm not saying you tell everybody about your like social issues or talk about your spousal problems. But I mean, there should be friends enough that like you enjoy going to lunch with them or getting a cup of coffee. I have some interaction. If when you have those bonds and those social connections,
00:35:45
Speaker
You will inevitably want to do more work. You will be more inspired to do work because you don't work because of salary. You don't work because you look like if we boiled our companies down to they are just places to make money for some sort of shareholder or some other entity or for CEOs with the astronomical salaries. Like if you break it down.
00:36:07
Speaker
to what you really do for a living, you wouldn't work. We'd go like all-star intentional communities and start communes or something else. We do it because we like the people we work with. We like the office that we go to. We like having those shared moments. And some of us have found our wives, our husbands, our partners. Some of us have found, we've found our life at our employers. And they are centers of that. And right now, I don't think there's an American right now that can tell you they work
00:36:36
Speaker
for a center. They don't work for, like they don't work. And yes, you can find other things. You go to your church, you can find clubs, you can find other things. But if we don't bring people back together at their employer where they spend 90% of their life at, we are going to continue to have an entitled culture that's going to breed animosity, that's going to breed a culture where people don't depend on each other. You're going to breed a place where all you are are insular and humans are not lobsters. They are not lobsters.
00:37:06
Speaker
We are not lobsters. Take that some bit. No, this is good, Greg. And I think I'm sure it will be a, for those that make it through 36 minutes and some odd seconds of our podcast, definitely be some people that disagree with you, definitely some people that agree with you. And I think it's a balance. And it also shows that this is probably why when people retire, they quote, get bored or they start doing something else because they lost that work.
Retirement and Closing Thoughts
00:37:35
Speaker
So I think that's, that's a whole, we have to have a whole topic on retirement. Cause I, I think we need to talk about retirement because you know, I mean, I plan on retiring in two or three years and it's going to be the best three years of retirement ever. Nobody knows how old I am. I just said I was getting older. I'm not, I'm 92 folks. I'm 92.
00:38:06
Speaker
I did mention my mom in one episode, she was listening, so she's 114. So anyways, but yes, I think it's a good topic, a little deeper today, I had to get a laugh or two in, but it's good, and I think it...
00:38:21
Speaker
These are the topics. These are the topics we have at breakfast. I mean, it's not quite breakfast time right now, but I like this. This is good. And back to my question of how long has it been since I've seen Greg? I look forward to seeing you again sometime soon, Greg. Very soon. Very, very, very soon. Very soon. So look forward to that. Thank you everybody for listening in. You can
00:38:44
Speaker
turn your radio back to FM now and enjoy some delicious tunes. Talk to you all soon. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to unmotivated and unprepared. Join us again next time as we continue to meander through random topics at a pace defined by our mood, the weather, and what happened five minutes earlier.