20. Remote, Not Distant: Create a Thriving Hybrid Culture with Gustavo Razzetti and Prina Shah

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Hello and welcome to this episode of Ways to Change the Workplace with myself pretty much out. I love what I do. I'm a global leadership coach, a consultant, a trainer, a keynote speaker, a podcaster. I help you to develop your leaders, your teams, and I help you to optimize your organizational culture. I'm here to help you find ways to change your workplace. Why? Because we spend more time in our waking day at work than we do with our loved ones. It has to be a good place to be. So in this podcast, you can expect a mix of interviews with amazing thought leaders and then some solo episodes from myself as well. Strap yourselves in. Hello and welcome to this episode of Ways to Change Your Workplace with myself, Prina Shah. And I'm really happy to be welcoming Gustavo Rossetti all the way from Chicago today.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

I'm excited, so happy to be here. I mean, I was we were just chatting that you are one day ahead, so I'm trying to catch up with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Gustavo Rossetti is based in Chicago. He is the CEO and founder of Fearless Culture. Gustavo has another upcoming book, which is called Remote Not Distant. Gustavo, I really wanted to talk to you today about creating a fearless work culture. Welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited. So where do you want to get started?

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Cool. To begin with, Gustavo, can you tell us just a little bit about you, uh, your story, what you do, how you came about doing what you do as well, um, and why you do it, please.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Sure. Long story short, I mean, I worked my whole career as a consultant in different areas, marketing, advertising, innovation, and so on and so forth. And one of the key realizations I got is that clients were organizations were looking for we need to have more ideas, we need to have better ideas, we need to have better talent, we need to move fast. But in the end, uh companies have more resources, more talent, more ideas than they actually realize. It's their culture that's not helping release that power. So at that point, I released, you know, instead of putting that energy into helping companies come with more ideas, what if we create the right culture so that the ideas that already exist see the light of day? That's why I decided to create my own company and help organizations build fearless culture.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Beautiful. I love it when that aha moment happens and just that light bulb of joining the dots, and joining the dots is the organizational culture needs to enable people to be fearless and beyond as well. Um, so you study social psychology. I I've done a lot of stalking on you, Gustavo, and the work you're doing now. I have been um following you for quite a while. So you're you're marrying elements of social psychology, what I'm seeing, with elements of human-centered design as well. Can you tell us why and how that came about, also?

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Yeah, I'm very curious. And to your point, you also mentioned that before we started the interview that you like to connect the dots. Well, that's me too. So I'm always curious about trying to find and understand what drives people, no. So try to understand human behavior. And uh, I mentioned I work in marketing, I work in innovation, and of course, I was trained in design thinking, human-centered design. I went to Stanford to D school and and not only learned how to use their framework, but then I was trained to actually facilitate and lead culture engagements about uh human-centered design. And at some point, when I click and I realize that I need to work on culture, I say, well, the principles are exactly the same. So uh the users for a company culture are the employees, the different stakeholders, the leaders. And also usually people think of culture like something that leaders create and leaders own. My take is that leaders have a bigger responsibility when it comes to culture and leaders' behavior shape culture. But in the end, the culture of a company is not just about what leaders do and don't, but it's also about tapping into that uh talent pool, that people. Like an analogy is like what happens in any city. So if you are the major of a city or the governor, whatever the title is, you can define uh which roads are two-way. I mean, your case, you drive on the other side. Uh, what's the speed and things like that? But in the end, how people drive, what's uh if they like to bike, walk, uh, drive a car, which music they're listening to, that's on people. And I think that's the right balance when we need to come when it comes to culture design. So leaders can set the overarching rules, but in the end, we need to tap into people to understand what are their preferences, their needs, and expectations, what drives them as people to do great work.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Yeah, and I know that you are a big advocate for co-design, not just design at that level, but design at every level, so that there is um empowerment, there's ownership as well, and from an organizational culture perspective, that is the best kind of organizational culture that you can have, one that is created by your whole entity of an organization, ideally. Yeah.

unknown 5:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

I think that you don't need to study psychology to realize that I have kids now, they're grown-ups, they are men, but when they were kids, since they started talking, they realized that no one wants to be told what to do. Kids don't want their parents to tell them what to do, and the same happens at work. People don't want to be told what to do. So we know that autonomy is critical, it's what drives us, yeah, and also a sense of purpose. So leaders need to realize that uh telling people what to do is not gonna work. So they need to co-create culture with them, you know, rather than imposing that culture into people.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

And that is that's that's breaking a lot of systems because we are a lot of hierarchies, especially the mammoth organizations, Gustavo, are very much focused on I say you do, uh, you know, mandating this is the way we will work. Uh, and the larger the organization it gets, the the more that happens, rather than that autonomous and the co-design element of it. Apart from the stuff that I've read that you are proposing, even mammoth organizations can co-design and apply that human-centered design element to their organizational culture. So, your next book segueing to that is called Remote, not distant. The title says it all. Beautiful title. Why did you focus on this as your latest book?

SPEAKER_00 7:11

It's interesting because uh, to be honest, I was writing a book on culture design as a whole, and then the pandemic hit, and uh, it was a huge shift. So I was raised like many of us, like uh in a corporate environment, working in large offices, and always believed that people, in order to succeed and work together and collaborate, we need to be in the same room. And I'm not saying that's not the case. What I'm saying is I realize that we can, like we're doing now, building and connecting remotely. You are in Australia, I'm here in Chicago, we talk, we exchange emails, and we can work together without having to be in the same place. So, the point about the book, it's not about remote over in person. So, basically, it's about understanding that each uh way of working has its own merits, and it's about bringing together the best of both worlds. So, we went through a pandemic that forced people to work remotely. Yeah, and now what's happening is employees want to continue to work mostly from home, not all the time. They want to be flexible, to have this right balance between working at the office, working at home as needed. But most leaders want people to go back to the office and they want people to work from the office because they believe that's where culture happens. My approach is we need to blend both. It's not one or the other. It's when does it make sense for people to work from home or wherever they want to work from, and when does it want to make sense for them to work together? And that's kind of the key challenge. So basically, don't throw away all the learnings that the pandemic brought, but try to converse those learnings into something mindful moving forward.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Okay, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Gustavo, okay, loads of questions coming your way. So we are now seeing in the world, as you've already alluded to, lots of leaders saying, okay, business as usual, come on, back to normal, back to normal, back to normal. And then there's that tension and the resistance that's created by me who may not want to go back to business as usual because I have I have had an epiphany, you know, the pandemic has asked lots of questions of all of us. How do you respond to those leaders who are very much in that old style of mentality, who are back to business, back to business as usual, bum on seat, you know, in the office. What would you say to such a manager or an organization who has that perspective, Gustavo?

SPEAKER_00 9:31

For me, it's like the first thing I would tell them is lack of common sense and lack of gratitude. So your people were able to sustain your business, to keep it running, working from home in very bad conditions. And what everyone thought it was a temporary band aid, no, first it's gonna take one week, two weeks, a month, and then it lasted almost two years. Teams and people were able to prove leaders that they could work remotely. So when everyone thought it's not gonna work, actually it worked. So now that we have an opportunity to redesign what we need to do moving forward, rather than waste all those learnings, listen to your people. If you trusted your people when you didn't have an option, why wouldn't you trust them now that you have one? The other thing that's important is there's a myth that the office brings the culture together, the notion of serendipity, spontaneous encounters, oh, that drives innovation, that drives magic. That's not true. There's no research in the past decades, not even recently, that shows that that's the case. And that's a the bank myth. Actually, what happens in the what they call the water cooler conversations usually brings the worst out of culture. No, it's the meeting after the meeting, criticizing, backstabbing, talking about people that's not there. It doesn't create all innovation. Innovation needs to be designed, and you can do that in an in-office environment, in a remote environment, and in a hybrid environment. There are many companies that have that have been working remotely 100% and they're being successful. So it's not about how you do it, but how you design the experience. The other thing that's important is we need to stop thinking about the office versus not the office, because in the end, what people are looking for is scheduled flexibility. That's the key new theme. People want to design their work experience around their life experience and not their way around.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

So if I'm a night owl and I like to work at night and I'm performing better well, when I write, I write at 9 p.m. at midnight, and sometimes I stay until 2 a.m. writing because that's where my brain is working and focused. So the leaders need to understand don't dictate the rules, create an environment where people can do their best work. And what works great for a team might not work great for another team. And that's what I need to design. So, and if people are going to go back to the office when they do for a week for two days, make it matter, make it meaningful, don't just get together to basically show that they are there.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

Yeah, yeah. And that's a lot of what's happening. And I'm hearing lots of complaints about oh my gosh, I have to commute again and what's the point of it? I could be doing the same thing at home, but now it's just costing me a bomb as well. Okay. Um, Gustavo, you are super generous in your book. Can I ask what gems you are sharing with the world in your book? I saw that you released a few pages. I had a read this morning on LinkedIn. Can you tell us a little bit more about the book and the kind of gems that you're sharing within remote not distant, please?

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Yeah, sure. I mean, the book basically is a five-step approach to how to build a culture that helps you thrive in a hybrid workplace. Hybrid is not a nice word, but it's the only word we have in a place in which some employees are going to work fully remotely, some are going to work fully from the office and a mix depending on their needs and their preferences. And D5 step covers the it doesn't have like a silver bullet, but it has like a structure for each company to define what works best for them. So that's the key approach in my book. I'm not telling you this is the way to go, I'm giving leaders and team members different approaches that they can design and co-design to their own needs and their own realities. They're talking about gems, there are a lot of QR codes included within the book. So people can download lots of tools that they can use to start designing their culture. And there's also a surprise I'm not going to mention because you have to find out if you go to the last page of the book, there's a QR code with a surprise only for book uh buyers. Part of the gems, so to speak, or I guess, is that I uh spend the time interviewing lots of people across the world, from entrepreneurs, from a large Fortune 500, and everything in between to learn what's working for them, what is not working for them, and sharing those insights. So I did a lot of research. Uh, I spent a lot of time talking to people, getting their insights, getting their takes, and capturing all those best practices. So it's not just my point of view, my insights, but also a lot of examples. I'm very much into giving people concrete things. So there's theory, there's research, but also there's very uh actionable little things that you can start doing with your team in different aspects of culture, from creating a sense of belonging to improving your meetings, to improving how you make decisions, to building team rituals and everything else.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

Yeah, yeah. I love that you are um, yeah, your book is a pick and mix approach. So whether I'm a huge organization or a small business, I can read the book and I can take what I can apply to my organization. And Gustavo, so where I live in Perth, I don't know if you know, we have been one of the luckiest, luckiest places in the world not to be honestly, not to be affected by pandemic, you know, uh variant number one. We have now opened our borders and you know, things are very well compared to, you know, how the world has been. And therefore, I find where I live in Perth to be quite the good case study, in that I'll be honest, Gustavo, we really truly have not learned from the awful stuff that happened with the pandemic because we haven't been affected by it in Perth. So there are a lot of organizations who are still very old style in the sense of you have to come into the office, you have to do this, you have to do that. But from your learning, what can you talk to to the people of Perth first off in how businesses are globally and what your insights are from all of these interviews that you've had in terms of the way the workplace is going, please?

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Sure. I think that's uh one thing that we need to realize the pandemic wasn't the cause of this new way of working, it simply accelerated a revolution that's already in the work, and that's something that's important to happen. People were really challenging their idea and their relationship with work, and they realized, you know what, stop trying to create this wall, fictional wall between my personal life and my professional life and one single person, and we need to start integrating both. So I would tell people in Perth and similar uh regions or cities, don't wait for a pandemic to shake things up. The revolutions are there happening, and is there something that you can learn is that work is changing, right? And people want to work in a place where they feel rewarded, where they feel comfortable. And in the end, presentism, the act of seeing people that they show up from nine to five or from 10 to 6 or 9 to 12, whatever the schedule is, doesn't guarantee work. So one of the biggest challenges is deals need to shift from seeing people being busy, no busyness as a badge of honor, to people being actually delivering great work. So focus on the outcome. Many companies reward people that are working late at night, that are being in meetings all the time, that are sending emails all the time, but they produce nothing. So you you as a leader need to focus more are my team being productive? Is the outcome and the quality of the work great or not? I don't care if people work two hours or 20, but if they deliver great work, that's really what people kind of need. Yeah, and I think that organizations need to realize that autonomy is critical for people to do great work. So rather than try to control how people work, you need to tell find out. I mean, as I mentioned before, some people, my wife wakes up at five in the morning and I couldn't, and she performs great by being an early riser, so you cannot expect everyone to work the same way. The other thing that we uncovered in research is how much time people waste in meetings, no, and because we think that the only way to produce work is actually to get together, and one of the things I talk in the book is about like collaboration, means that many times you don't need to collaborate together, no? It's like divide and conquer and let people take care of their own parts, and then they get together when everyone has made progress rather than being all together communicating in Zoom meetings or in actual meetings.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

Yes, yes, there's there's there's a lot that we need to undo in the traditional old-style ways of working. Beautiful. Are there any cons to hybrid or remote work?

SPEAKER_00 18:45

There's cons to everything. I think that the most important thing is becoming more intentional. So doing hybrid or remote well takes a lot of effort. And I think that one of the reasons why leaders want to go back to whatever normal is, it's because it's comfortable, it's lazy. No, yeah. So many teams learn through the pandemic about hey, we need to build connection, we need to have a checking rounds to make sure that people are taking care of, that people can share this stuff. And then at some point they stop doing it. And now that they want to go back into the office, they want to stop taking care of the culture. So if you want to do it right, whether you work in the office or a mix of office and remote, you need to take care of the culture, you need to take care of the people, you need to make room. So 10% of the time that you spend together needs to be invested in personal development, in team development.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

Yeah, yeah, it's that human connection. Absolutely. So um, Gustavo, you have interviewed hundreds of people, as you said, for your book. Have you come across any unexpected uh pros of working in a hybrid manner? Things that we don't know yet from your perspective.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Well, that's a good question. I think that even people in very senior executive uh positions, they are realizing that basically most of the things that they were missing from the office were actually more of a myth than a reality. Some people miss the space because they felt safer there in terms of feeling like, for example, if you are a leader and you have a corner office, then well, people have to get to you and you feel more important. But now that you're working from home, you just become one of these rectangles in the Zoom call.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

And that's something. But on the other hand, many people, even in senior positions, have realized because they are women, they belong to minority groups, they are more introverts, that they feel safer working from home than they were in the office. That they felt that there was more microaggressions when they were in the same room with people than now they are in the in the in the office. Sorry, in the working from home.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Fascinating insights. I think we're going to be learning so much more as well. Gustavo, I have looked at your website and you are super generous. So for our listeners, I am going to put uh Gustavo's details in our show notes. Now, Gustavo, I have a question for you. You share so much open source, free material on your website in the form of templates and tools and all sorts. What drove you to be so open with your material?

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Why not? That's the way to take it. I think that the the we need to be uh uh generous, we need to be open in order because uh in order to change the world or change a team or change a company, no one can do it alone. We talk about co-creation, yeah, and uh co-creation starts by sharing what you know with others so people can share what they know with you. It's like trust. I always say that trust is a two way street, but someone needs to take the first step.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

So if you really are a true leader, don't wait for others to trust you, start trusting them. So that's my way of doing so.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Yeah, that's cool. Um, and yeah, you see your website is not only available for leaders, it's available for anyone who makes who wants to make that change in their organization, which I love. You're so generous. So thank you for being so generous on your website. Do you have any practical tips for organizations who are I'm not sure about hybrid, still iffy about it?

SPEAKER_00 22:25

I think that more than practice, I mean, and the book has a lot of practical tools, but I'd like to basically step back. And when people are hesitant, my question is why? And I say, have it talk to your team, because in the end, if leaders start talking to their team members, they're going to realize first that people have have a more of a cum baya moment, they have a realization through the pandemic and now they have a different relationship with work. But actually, many people have realized they can be more effective when they have time to focus. So we need to stop thinking about work of being busy and running in all directions versus okay, I need to protect my time. I need to make a, for example, the idea I had to fly to Los Angeles for a client engagement, and I had that's a less than four-hour flight from Chicago. And in that time, I was able to write an article, publish it, edit it, and then share it with the world. So because you're in a plane, no one's distracting you. I was able to achieve something really meaningful, and that happens with people. When people have protected time, they can do much more.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

So I think that more than being hesitant, ask your team, do you want to get into the office which is full of distractions, or do you want to have more protected time working remotely? And then get together when you want to build relationships with your colleagues on, for example, we have a huge challenging problem and we need to get all together and solve it at once.

SPEAKER_02 23:51

Yeah, beautiful. And you know what? It's as simple as treating humans like humans rather than that into the office. So we're changing the way of working, yeah, and enabling people to be people and live their lives fully, with work being one component of it now and filling the whole picture of life. Beautiful, Gustavo. Uh, are there any juicy past projects that you could talk about? Obviously, not breaking any confidentiality.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Yeah, uh, it's hard to share things because of all the contracts and confidentiality agreements, as you mentioned, but in the end, I think that uh what I can share, it's the all the successes we had with clients are those related in which leaders were able to uh uh um acknowledge that's the word that they should open their culture conversations to other people. So when leaders believe that culture is something that they own and they control, then they're not going to be able to change their culture. Actually, I don't like to use the word change, I like to use the culture evolution because every company has already uh things that are working, strengths that exist within their culture. Yeah, and a wise leader tries to identify those things and build off of them. So when a leader comes to a new company and says, hey, I'm the new boss, I'm gonna change everything, they usually screw things up versus tapping into that collective wisdom and see, hey guys, what's working, what's not working, what can we do together?

SPEAKER_02 25:21

Yeah, beautiful. I love the the lingo about culture evolution, um, and the lingo that I use is culture optimization, because you've already got the culture there. How can you enhance or enable it more so? Gustavo, my final question to you. If I was to offer you a magic wand and say to you what is one way you would change the way of the workplace, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Wow, that's uh let me let me think about it. I don't want to rush and give you the first answer. I have many things, but I think that's the the the thing I would say is that we need to basically change our mindset when it comes to what leaders are. No, you mentioned earlier leaders. I use the word leaders not as a position, but as a mindset, and I think that in our world we still think of leaders as someone who has a CEO title or as SVP, whatever title. And it that's wrong because we assume that because you have a position, that you're a good leader, and that position doesn't make you a good leader, and there are people that behind the trenches are better leaders, but also the leader leadership sorry model that's broken has to do that we reward leaders that are uh articulated, that are uh uh uh seductive, that are persuasive, that are good uh at speaking and convincing us and selling, no, basically we confuse leadership with salesmanship, yeah. But in the end, the best leaders tend to be more introverted, tend to be more cool, more hands-down, more problem solvers. They're less into being on the spot, yeah, but they're more about helping their team get their full potential. So the type of extroverted leader that we always uh uh kind of seductive that we reward, usually research shows that are the worst for the organization.

SPEAKER_02 27:17

Yeah, so beautiful. We need to redefine leadership. Thank you so much, Gustavo.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

That'll be like my one, boom. I will change that a minute.

unknown 27:26

Done.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Um thank you so much for your time. And for anyone who wants to hear more or start with Gustavo, I'm going to put all of his details in the show notes, as I mentioned. Gustavo, I feel like I could talk to you for so much longer. For now, I will say thank you so much. How good was that episode? If you also stand against crappy workplace cultures, lousy leaders, and toxic teams, you need to join the Ways to Change Your Workplace Facebook group, which is linked in the show notes. I'll meet you at the next episode. Ciao for now.