The Future of Work: Navigating Uncertainty, Avoiding Pitfalls, and Emulating Success with Peter High, President of Metis Strategy

Today, we're talking to Peter from Metis Strategy about the future of work and Domino's Pizza. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

Alright, man. We're here. I was excited to see third time getting to talk with you and having you on. What's changed in the past year for you?

Yeah, Joel. I mean, gosh, there's so much that's changed for us all, of course, right? The continuing implications of the pandemic, all that's happening in the global economy from inflation to supply chain issues. Of course, in the past year, the war in Ukraine and the profound downstream impacts of that on the technology landscape and so many players who had critical resources either in Russia or Ukraine and had to take action accordingly. You know, navigating through what might be potential macroeconomic headwinds. We'll see what comes to pass. Of course, it's been interesting. I'm sure you're having similar conversations across your ecosystem on and off the record. I'm doing the same and just sort of taking the temperature of people as to what might come to pass through 2023. But, you know, I think what's been, as someone like yourself who prides himself on having a good ecosystem across the tech landscape, I've been really pleased with the resilience across so many organizations, much of it driven by people who run tech and digital for those businesses. And so that's something I think is really, it needs to be underscored that some of the heroes across so many different organizations and industries have been tech and digital leaders. And so to hear their stories, to counsel many of them, to tell their stories through the formats I have at my disposal as you do yours, it's been really inspiring, frankly.

Yeah. Let's do a quick shout out for your podcast. How can people find that if they're looking in the store?

Oh, thank you. Appreciate it, Joel. It's Metis Technovation. We just, couple months ago, celebrated our fourteenth birthday. Recently had our 740-something episode. So that's a good place to find me on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Technovation.

Yes. Huge inspiration because you started before me. And so when I was starting, I was checking out your show, and I love the way you did it. You put money into it. You were professional about it. You had the best guests. So thank you for blazing the trail there.

You're nice to say that, Joel. You've certainly carved out such a great path for yourself, and I'm a big fan of your work as well, but you're very kind to say that.

Yeah. We actually started making podcasts for other companies. So that's a thing that happened at the end of last year, and now we do about 15 shows other than Modern CTO for different B2B type brands.

Wow. It's a little bit like AWS. You figured out what to do well for yourself, and now you're taking it to other places. That's, I mean, congratulations. That's really wonderful.

Yeah. I wish I could say it was intentional, but our sponsors just started asking us to do it. And I was like, okay, we'll do it.

Yeah. Sounds like a good business to be in as much growth as there is in the podcast world.

Are you having any conversations about ChatGPT on your show?

Yeah. I mean, it is coming up so much, frankly. On the show, it's come up a little bit, but in a variety of different conversations. In January of this year, 2023, I hosted five different dinners in this country and in the UK, and every one of them, it was a pretty significant topic of conversation. And interestingly enough, Joel, in a variety of different ways. So for example, there were certainly a number of people that were talking about the profound implications in terms of the development of content in various forms, whether it's content to educate one's team, whether it's content to provide overviews of products or services and the like. I hosted a dinner in Philadelphia, and this is two weeks ago if I recall correctly. And the chief information officer of my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, was with us, and he's been there for a decade now, former CIO at AmerisourceBergen and a variety of different hospitality companies. So he's been both within the private sector as well as at the university level. And he talked about the profound implications on universities and the worry that they have, understandably, that a great number of students are going to be turning in the work of artificial intelligence rather than their own. And so it's really kind of, it's fascinating to think about. There's been so much that's been written about the progress made with machine learning, with artificial intelligence, and the extent to which data analysis, for example, is done now such that the interaction with humans, that is the interaction of humans with that data, is at a much higher plane than even, let's say, five years ago, to say nothing of 10 or 15 or 20. And now to think that from a content perspective, the creation perspective, again, it's at a higher plane that perhaps people will be interacting with it. And so the broader implications of how best to use it, the things to guard against potentially, again, my university example, and frankly, even like, what does it mean in terms of how we're going to think about content generation? I think there's some profound questions to be asked, but perhaps like me, you've had a chance to play around with it. It really is very impressive. And Greg Brockman, one of the founders, I interviewed him probably about six years ago, one of the OpenAI founders. And, I mean, just the work that they're doing is really, really remarkable. So anyway, it's been interesting to sort of track that progress since getting to know him a little bit better.

Yeah. That's one company that doesn't need to do any interviews right now. Their media is off the charts.

That's right. Exactly.

So I'm curious to know. I've got a couple questions for you. What are these dinners? Tell me about them.

Yeah. So, honestly, Joel, it is an opportunity to get back in person with people and break bread and just convene members of the network after it was something we kind of took for granted that we could dine with people that we don't and we're not related to. And that was taken away from us for a couple of years. And so in some ways, it's a celebration of an ability to get back together and just simply have conversation while breaking bread. You know, the way I think about it, Joel, and again, you play a part in this as well, needless to say, is there is so much that's going on in the world, so many exogenous factors, those outside of our control that are going to determine the trajectory of 2023 and beyond. And our, there's also there's so much that is fundamentally new. One thinks about the future of work, for instance, and where work will be done and how collaboration is best done and the implications of the decisions made by businesses as to those very factors. And I think it's critically important that as we're experiencing so much that is new and so much that is unknown, that we are in various forms, in person, through video conferences, in one-to-one conversations, but also one-to-several conversations, continuing to test hypotheses because the winning strategies are not concrete yet. And so we need to understand, you know, how are you experiencing this? What's worked well? What hasn't? And the extent to which you can share and translating all that back into our own businesses or the businesses of those we might counsel, I think it's an ongoing exercise of sharpening our knives, but also, frankly, learning through unprecedented times.

Do you give a talk there at the dinner?

Yeah. I'll give some perspectives, kind of bring the world of my conversations to each of those conversations as well. Things that I'm hearing, things that, you know, that I learned through a recent either interview or a conversation with peers or another gathering of one sort. Again, small or large as the case may be, you know, as an invitation, frankly, for further sharing across the group as well. So, yeah, it's been a nice mechanism for information exchange, but I certainly believe in the whole motto of giving a little before getting.

Oh, 100%. That's, I mean, we did 200 episodes before we made a dollar. So it took a long time. And if you just keep bringing value to people, then you become useful to them in that regard. And I love the way that your business operates because, you correct me if I'm wrong, you have a consultancy, and then you do the podcast, and they are connected to some degree. Can you explain that?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, basically, it goes back to, so we started the podcast way back in 2008, November 2008. And, basically, even, and if you take it a notch further back to more general media activities of mine, which began with writing, I wrote a lot as an undergraduate. It was one of my majors, and it's something I always really enjoyed. And as I got involved in technology, the thought process of taking what I loved into a realm where that's not necessarily, you know, the norm, not all technologists are great writers given their background. It's not their passion even, nor should it necessarily be. And so the insight of using media, leveraging media, I should say, better put, as a means to embark on conversation and relationship as opposed to having kind of an initial commercial conversation was really valuable. I mean, I think all of us wish to do business with people we get to know first and, you know, get to know whether or not, you know, build trust with them and that sort of thing. And I'm a big believer that at the end, the more conversations you have and the more, frankly, again, you're delivering value in one form or another, the more at least there is the possibility that there might be an opportunity to collaborate in other ways. And, you know, the nice thing about this, you know this so well, also the volume of those conversations. I'm probably in touch with directly 350 people a year and indirectly in larger forms, whether it's speaking on stages or virtual stages, you know, many thousands. And, you know, making sure that there's kind of a volume to those conversations such that no single one needs to ever be transactional, but rather thinking further about ways in which you can learn from each other. Here's what I'm hearing. What are you hearing? And how are you, again, processing things or learning things? What are things that, what are some secret weapons that you have in your arsenal that have been difference makers for you and so forth? And so at the end of the day, the podcast is just a wonderful way to have a reason to be in regular touch with people who are shaping the technology landscape. And given the dynamism of the space, having that regular cadence to conversation and having an understanding as to, you know, which trends are on the rise, which ones may be falling. But moreover, if you were doing special things and have a special way of being able to convey those things, that's an important thing to continue to monitor. So it's been a lot of fun to, you know, have a podcast and therefore give me reason with a very regular cadence to be in touch with, you know, a variety of people as a result of that.

It's amazing. And so GPT, I am using that daily. So we wanted to talk about the future of work. Are you seeing customers actively use this technology today?

Yeah. I mean, I think by and large, I would say it's more a curiosity. So playing around with it, you know, asking it questions, getting feedback from it, perhaps as a topic comes up that seems a bit esoteric, you know, plugging that in just to at least get kind of the 101-level knowledge, probably a little bit less than that actually, but, you know, get a baseline knowledge as to what the topic entails and maybe, you know, what some of the primary factors associated with it might be and so on. I haven't seen a lot of people, at least among the folks that I've spoken with about it in the past few months, talk about, you know, like what you talked about, of deriving value or savings, in your case, you know, something contributing to the profit equation from it just yet. I'm sure that that is out there. For whatever reason, it's not necessarily made my radar in terms of my conversations across people who run tech and digital for larger organizations. But no doubt those tests, which are happening, obviously, in structured and unstructured ways, are going to yield, I think, a lot of ideas. So I would say stay tuned, and we're going to be hearing more and more about the ways in which large businesses are using it and deriving substantial value from it.

And if you could remind me, what ways do you, consultancy is such a broad term. Are you consulting with tech departments about the efficiency of their dev teams? Are you working with entrepreneurs? Can you tell me a little bit about what type of advice your consultancy does mostly?

Yeah. Happy to do so. So we've been around for twenty-two years now, and the primary group that we work with are heads of tech and digital of major enterprises in the private sector. And so, you know, it's sort of the Fortune 500 companies that are, you know, billion plus in revenue. So that extends beyond the Fortune 500, but scaled organizations, some digital native, that is born in the past, you know, thirty-ish years, and others that are digital, and quite a number that are digital immigrants, if you will. And it's been interesting. In some cases, it is kind of bringing the magic from one to the other. What I mean by that is our experience, a lot of it in our West Coast office out of the Bay Area, of helping newly scaled organizations, companies that might be, you know, eight or ten years old, but are already at the billion, 2 billion revenue levels. They want to understand what are the practices we need to put in place to prepare us for being 5 to 10 billion. And then the reverse is true as well. Those already scaled, maybe a 100-year-old businesses need to understand what are the practices we need to emulate from the digital native organizations to ensure that we can survive another hundred years and thrive another hundred years in the digital age. And so it's been, frankly, a really interesting give and take across a different variety of cohorts of kinds of companies and monitoring the sorts of needs they have. And a lot of it is associated with, you know, strategy, so literally helping them formulate their plans for the next year or for the foreseeable future. A lot of it is also, frankly, centered around modernization. My most recent book, we spoke about a bit about it last time, Getting to Nimble, is a playbook centered around the modern technology landscape and the practices one needs to put in place associated with people, with process, with technology, development, better ecosystems, and ultimately strategy in order to compete at the pace of business today, which is only increasing. So a lot of our focus is helping organizations in a variety of ways associated with some of the thematic areas I just articulated.

So you'll do research, use that research to help articulate a strategy. That strategy is often related to monetization. Is that the general idea?

Yeah. I mean—

For example, not monetization.

Yeah. Modernization certainly and monetization as well. Actually, it's been great, frankly. It's funny. So my career is long enough that when I started working with heads of technology and big businesses, which is really kind of where I've always played even when I was much lower man on the, you know, in the orchestra, when I started counseling them, working with them, these were sort of definitively across so many industries support organizations, C-suite titles, you know, C-level people in title only but not indeed, not necessarily reporting to chief executive officers and not viewed as particularly strategic.

(Peter at 00:15:12) This is also, by the way, the time, Joel, when you could go into the chief executive officer's office and he or she might not even have a computer on the desk. And so my how times have changed, needless to say. And so now as technology becomes sort of the central nervous system across most industries and I would say a good majority of companies, the necessity to think less tactically—again, the historical orientation of a lot of technology organizations—and more strategically, where are we headed as a business and how can technology be used as an accelerator to get to that destination? That sort of thinking is really necessary. And so as these are disciplines that are not the historical norm among tech and digital leaders, we've spent a lot of time in helping to build that up. My second book was, it's called Implementing World Class IT Strategy. It's centered around how best to create and formulate these plans, how to work in concert with your colleagues in other parts of the organization to ensure that you are driving the mandates of the entire organization forward effectively.

(Peter at 00:16:10) And so a lot of it is centered around those sorts of things and for those reasons.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:15) And I want to talk about the future of work, but I want to briefly go back to earlier when you were talking about the economy. So I've gotten to speak to so many different people in such a variety of industries. And at first, I would say maybe a year or two ago when the sky was falling—essentially from The Economist and every other article on your financial news feed—it was gonna crash. And it's gonna be the best time ever. It's gonna—so there was just no consensus among the, quote unquote, experts in the financial world.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:47) So that caused

(Peter at 00:16:48) a little

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:48) bit of an unsettled feeling. Right? So I started looking into it and talking with people, and the way I look at the market now is not as one economy. It's several small economies working together. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:03) And you can see, for example, in mortgage technology, those tech companies not doing so well, right, because of the interest rates. But you'll see in other industries that they're having record profits. So rather than me being concerned about the economy at large, I started focusing on what verticals am I operating in, and we changed all of our outreach and all of our language to focus on the most recession-proof markets because we wanted to get ahead of it. So we did that back in October of this past year.

(Peter at 00:17:41) If you don't mind my asking, what were some of those industries that you found to be recession-proof?

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:45) So we found that healthcare was really good. Insurance was good. Financial services is fairly resilient because while they might be doing bad, they typically have really good financial habits. Right? And they're still spending and investing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:01) And they'll often look at downtimes as investment times as well. So those industries. We also have seen securities doing pretty well. Cybersecurity—you can't get your stuff hacked. Right? That's no good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:13) Or when you do, you need to be able to respond swiftly. And I think that's it. Now I've gotten to the point where I'm not on the sales calls anymore. I'm on some of them, but it's great because we have a whole team now and Chloe and David and all of them, they know these industries a lot better.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:31) But doing research was something new for us, which is why I like what you do because I always thought, oh, you know, what's Peter doing with the research and the strategy? Then I went and I hired a researcher, and I said, hey, research my competitors not in the podcast market, but in the cybersecurity newsletter market, because I wanted to start a cybersecurity newsletter. And the quality of the work I got back, I was dumbfounded. I said, I am such an idiot for not having figured out the value of research earlier in life.

(Peter at 00:19:09) That's a fascinating insight. And, well, better late than never. Right? So now you have the opportunity to capitalize on or fill a need that's there. So good for you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:20) So tell me a little bit about what the future of work is looking like.

(Peter at 00:19:24) Well, gosh, it's fascinating how this is really kind of an evergreen topic, Joel. As I speak with people, I'm almost waiting for somebody to say, you know what? I'm done talking about it. Can we move on to a different topic? And yet when I gather people together, it's always a curiosity because, again, there's so much dynamism to this. And the way that I like to frame it, Joel, is in 2019 and for basically the history of business, 95 to 98% of business was done in an office. And, you know, if you change jobs, you change offices. You might change cities or even countries because of that change of a job. And that was just a given.

(Peter at 00:20:00) It wasn't—very few people would even think to ask for some liberty associated with that. It's just, I'm sorry, my kids and my spouse are coming with me, new schools, new house. That's just the way the business is done. And, you know, 2020 came around, March of it, and all of a sudden the world changed. And if you were fortunate enough—we need to be mindful, of course, that not everyone was—but if you were fortunate enough to be in a job that you could work virtually, obviously for your health, your families, and for your colleagues, there was no choice but to work virtually.

(Peter at 00:20:32) And a couple things that I will say about that transition. Number one, I think we pat ourselves on the back for how well most companies seem to do in moving virtually. And I think part of that is most businesses at least had folks traveling and therefore logging in from a client's office or from a hotel or from an airplane or, you know, making sure that you are productive no matter where you are. And it was simply sort of amplifying some of the practices that executives or maybe the entire team had in place at least from time to time, obviously with a lot more resilience and strength to it given the quantity and regularity and frequency of this. But the other thing that we need to be mindful of is we went to virtual, and by the way, from a level playing field all in the office to a level playing field of all virtual, therefore, common experience between those folks with people that we once were in offices with by definition.

(Peter at 00:21:25) And so there is a baked-in trust. If you and I were colleagues dating back to 2015, Joel, and then in March 2020 we went virtual, we know each other's what sports teams we like. We know our spouses' names and can ask about them. We know that you're an evening person and I'm a morning person and therefore when to contact each other in order to get a quick response. You know, we know that. And frankly, we—there's probably a bank of trust such that if I'm having a bad day and I say something that seems a little sideways to you, you don't hold it against me because of that bank of trust that I'm asking you to draw upon through our interactions.

(Peter at 00:22:03) And so things actually went surprisingly well through 2020. Obviously, all things being equal, if you're a hospitality company or an airline or a restaurant company, not so much. But, you know, if yours was an organization that wasn't overly impacted like that, a lot of companies were surprised by how well they were doing through the course of that time. But what happened then, and here's where I think the real challenge came, once the vaccine came into place and once more people frankly got COVID, once there was a greater comfort in being together in person and we began to be able to do so, really for the first time, the unleveling of the playing field happened. And so eighteen months into this is the first time that you see that unleveling happen—some coming back into offices, some continuing to work at home, and frankly, a great deal of flexibility on average from employers to their employees as to where work was done. And so and then you add an additional dynamic of, again, by definition, more people joining the company in a hybrid form.

(Peter at 00:23:04) Perhaps some of them in places where there's not even an office, several hours or even flights away from where offices once were. And so how do you build trust in those scenarios, Joel? How do the things that kind of—examples I gave in this fictional example of you and I being colleagues for many years—how do you accumulate the sorts of experience such that that trust is there and that knowledge of each other is there? And, of course, it's not impossible, and there's some organizations that have done great work in accomplishing that. But I think it has to be very intentional.

(Peter at 00:23:34) You know, there's so much that frankly when you're in an office that you take for granted, just sort of the—you know, you and I have been traveling for a week and we come back and we happen to see each other in the cafeteria at the office and we catch up on our travels and what we're learning and so on. And it wasn't planned. And moreover, in so doing, we're enjoying each other's company. We're reminding ourselves of how much we like each other and so on. Now we need to create those sort of happy accidents where we can, at least so that the folks on our teams who are rarely in each other's company, if in fact that's our employer's decision, have a way of feeling like they're part of something that's bigger than just themselves.

(Peter at 00:24:15) And then I think I'll just add one other point and let you go for a moment in my monologue here. But I think it's important for us to remember that as this continues to evolve, we will learn more about what is working and what is not working. And so what I've been advising executives who I counsel is borrowing from, though we use it in a different way, borrowing from Jeff Bezos, don't go through any one-way doors. You know, if yours is a company where you say you will never have to work in an office again, boy, that is very difficult to walk back. And you may find out frankly that a year or two or three into this experiment that things are not working so well and some change is necessary.

(Peter at 00:25:02) Again, I think there are some companies that will continue as hybrids or frankly even continue as primarily virtual and succeed. I'm not here to say that everyone needs to get back 100% into offices or even necessarily half-time into offices. But we need to be intentional and even thoughtful about what has been lost in so doing and find ways to replicate what has been lost to make sure that we are not losing our culture at the same time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:26) 100%. Now these happy accidents and building relationships while remote, have you seen anyone do things that are fairly unique or creative?

(Peter at 00:25:36) Yeah. I mean, unique, I'm not sure. I've seen some practices emerge across a number of companies. So one company that I've been getting to know, admittedly they were born virtual, and that's always interesting to see somewhat scaled organizations that have been virtual really since the beginning. There are few of them.

(Peter at 00:25:55) And the CEO with whom I'm friendly talked about the necessity of having basically a RACI matrix, if you're familiar with those. Right? Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed, and determining for every topic that we are tackling as a company, who is the R, who is the A, who is the C, who is the I. Use that to then determine who is in the meeting to talk about what, but also, frankly, to understand on the back end of that, as we go off into our separate spaces, perhaps not seeing each other for hours or days or weeks as the case may be, that we know clearly what you're doing, Joel, versus what I'm doing. And, frankly, who's reporting to whom on this very topic so that we're not losing something because of an amorphous understanding, a lack of clarity as to who is responsible for what.

(Peter at 00:26:41) And then I think associated with that, a related topic certainly, is the metrics associated with it as well to make sure that we're—there's clarity around when we're getting together, when we are delivering what we need to deliver, that we have clear lines of that also. I think on top of that, especially if you are erring more towards virtual work, being very intentional about what it is that brings us together. There's a framework that I wrote about in my Forbes column a few weeks ago. It centers around five Cs. And the idea is understand the type of work that we're doing that should dictate that we are together in person.

(Peter at 00:27:18) I define that as Connect, Create, Collaborate, Career Plan, and Celebrate. And it's not to say that all five of those always have to be done in person. I just mean to suggest that they are, I think, best done in person. And frankly, if you've got a framework, whether something like that or something of your own creation, that helps frankly—it helps us get past some of the ambiguity. Let's say, Joel, that you love working in the office.

(Peter at 00:27:44) You work in an efficiency apartment with your spouse, your dog, maybe a new baby. You can't wait to find a quiet space to do some thinking. I work in a comfortable house where I've got a dedicated office space and everything in reach. My coffee's right here. I can go make myself a lunch out of my kitchen.

(Peter at 00:28:01) I don't ever want to go into an office again, let's say, and you and I work for the same company. Well, if that's the case, then I may be kind of pushing more and more that what we do is virtual when in fact you're pushing more and more for us to do things in work. Let the framework determine it. If you and I can come to the conclusion, today is a Create day. Today, we're brainstorming and developing something new, and it's gonna be really good for us to be in the same room with the rest of our colleagues on this team and around a whiteboard and brainstorming together.

(Peter at 00:28:31) And so let's agree that Thursday of this week we're going into the office, and maybe some of us are flying in accordingly, because that's going to be the richest kind of experience given the kind of work that we need to do. Once the plan is then set after that creation, that brainstorming session, let's go off on our different ways, maybe even borrowing from my example a moment ago, each of us understanding what our responsibility is, and then we'll determine when we're going to need to get back together as a result of reaching some sort of milestone or getting to another one of the Cs as the case may be. So I think that is something we've developed as a result of seeing what's working well across a number of companies that we have the blessing of collaborating with as working towards a productive end to determining when we should come into the office versus those experiences that may be best done virtually.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:25) I love those five Cs because what it does is it takes a conversation that is almost always binary. Are we remote or in person? And it's taken it and it's added the definition that you need to make those decisions because you're exactly right. With startups, people would say, okay, if you're doing a startup, you need to be in person because you're solving a lot of problems.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:49) And I said, well, that's true. It's definitely easier to solve them in person. But I'd say, you know, is 80% of the work things that you're creatively solving, or is it the 20% and then you go back and do the work? And so what I found is that the hardest piece from remote is the ideation with a whiteboard. I haven't successfully found a tool that allows you to have the same feeling as that type of tool. If you have, please let me know.

(Peter at 00:30:15) Well, there's Miro. Maybe you've seen some of these tools. Miro is actually a really good one that we use. I will say, Joel, I agree with you even though I'm a proponent of Miro, and there are a couple of others that I've experienced that I think do a nice job of collaborating around virtual space. There still also is something really magical of simply reading the room and making sure that everyone's speaking. I think being in the same milieu is conducive to a different kind of thinking in many cases. And so, yeah, there I think there are tools that replicate it, but there's also—we need to acknowledge that there are still some really important aspects to working together in person from time to time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:54) Now what's the arc of evolution in regards to the unleveling aspect of your practice? Are you fully remote, in person, hybrid, get together?

(Peter at 00:31:04) Yeah, it's a great—so, yeah, we're trying to eat our own dog food from that perspective. We're certainly hybrid, leaning more towards virtual. We gave up all—we had shared office spaces for a couple of our offices. Our one in DC was a dedicated space.

(Peter at 00:31:18) So when the lease ran out on that, we gave it up. And so now for all of our offices, we have shared spaces that we take on when we need it, whether in small groups or the entire office from time to time. Just last week, for example, for a couple of days, we had everyone associated with our DC practice together. Some of them have gone to live somewhere else and, therefore, flew in for the meetings. And, of course, those who were in the area drove in or trained in as the case may be.

(Peter at 00:31:44) And so it is like what I describe: it's being very intentional as to what brings us together, not going too long before doing so. Also, and I didn't mention this yet, I talked about celebration, for example, as one of the C's, but making sure that there's ample time also for having fun in each other's presence because, really, I mean, that's how you really get to know people. As much as we want to make sure that these are productive times where we are doing some of that creative brainstorming and tackling some of the bigger issues that are there, also grabbing dinner together or getting to know each other personally and what makes each of us tick. That's such an important aspect that, again, is very difficult to replicate virtually that we're really being intentional about how we do it as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:25) Yeah. We've found that three to four times a year, we fly everyone to one specific location and have a team dinner on a Thursday night, Friday morning, do a company activity of some sort late Friday morning, and then we wrap up, and that's the day. So it's a nice little two-day trip. Some people get to stay in that city for the weekend and explore whatever that may be. And so we found for us, we're about 15 people, so that's working well for us right now. But we were in person before the pandemic, 100%. And then when the stay-at-home orders were filed and they were saying, like, you physically cannot go to places, and you should only be driving if you're a doctor or an employee at the grocery store, that's when we stopped. And then I found myself after a year of paying for this lease of this building that only I went into. I said, this is silly. So we just decided to go fully remote. But I haven't dug my heels in to it. As you were talking about one-way doors, I'm not out there preaching that there's no way we're ever going to be in person. I think there might be a time where we have, I guess, like a sales pod. Maybe when we're like 50 or 100 people, they start to collect in the major cities where talent are. And it's like, well, we probably have a space in that area and let them sort of figure out amongst themselves how that should work.

(Peter at 00:33:51) Yeah. Smart to think that way. And, of course, Joel, it means kind of continuing to gather data on our teams: What's working well for them? How does that compare with how things were back in 2019? Everything from, of course, job satisfaction to productivity to creativity, the extent to which you can develop some creative ways of monitoring that as well. And, you know, being humble enough to recognize that some changes may be necessary depending upon what the data and your team are telling you. You know, it's interesting—let me offer you a counterpoint or at least a different perspective, not a full counterpoint, but I recently interviewed the chief information officer of Goldman Sachs, and they, like several financial services organizations, kind of famously said, "We are going to be back in offices." And, you know, you have like a date by which you need to be back in an office, and it's going to be more or less full-time. And the way that he put it was David Solomon, the chief executive officer of Goldman, developed this pronouncement and the rationale behind it, and it was painful. As much as recognizing that this was kind of the way forward, some people opted out that they didn't want to. They were getting used to not commuting an hour or more into Manhattan, for instance, if that was where they were primarily professionally domiciled, and preferred waking up with their kids, picking their kids up at school, having dinner at regular rather than irregular hours and so forth, and they voted with their feet. And so that was a painful transition. But what was very interesting was the way that he framed it was it was short-term pain for long-term gain. That from that point forward, because of the clarity of that vision, everyone who joins the company knows exactly where the company stands. And so eyes wide open, this is the experience. If you're looking for hybrid or primarily virtual work, good luck to you. It's not going to be here. Now I think we should hasten to add, Joel, that Goldman has the advantage of an unbelievable brand that, you know, for decades has been close to the top of the list in terms of most coveted jobs to take. So that's a pretty big advantage that they have relative to it. But it, nevertheless—take, you set that aside for a moment, and there's something at least interesting to contemplate. Again, I don't offer this story saying that is correct and certainly don't offer it as saying it's correct for everyone. But it's an interesting perspective, let's say, that I think we should at least bear in mind as we think about how we contemplate the future: that there are different ways of operating. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of those modes of operation, and it's important for us to actually continue to have the conversations with people who have very different perspectives to understand, what are you gaining from that, what have you lost from that, how is that evolving, and are you changing that playbook at all based upon what you're hearing or how your employees and colleagues are voting, again, whether to stay, whether to leave, et cetera. So anyway, another interesting anecdote.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:48) Yeah. I love that you brought that up because it brings up an important point that I see happening from time to time, and that's when people are misaligned with the culture—their culture and values are misaligned with the culture and values of the company they're working with. Right? There are some workaholic-type startups, and then there are people that don't do anything and just float along at Fortune 500 companies, and then there's the in-between. So it's a huge spectrum. Right? It's not just any one specific group. But the problem I see is when people are incorrectly associated with one. So they are a workaholic, but they're at a company where it's just, you know, float on. And so I think that's put a premium and allowed people who have more self-awareness to go farther in their career.

(Peter at 00:37:36) Yeah. Great points. Great points, Joel. And it is really important that we also be respectful of the fact that some people are going to choose something different based upon the decisions we make and, you know, wish them well when they do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:47) Isn't it hard as hosts to not necessarily really take the view, but be able to explore a view that's controversial? It's so hard.

(Peter at 00:37:57) Important to do so, though, as you're suggesting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:01) Yeah. You do it well. Okay. I'm watching time. We have a few minutes left, but there was one topic we haven't gotten to, which is about evolving and cannibalizing your own business for the future. Do you have any good stories or examples about that?

(Peter at 00:38:13) Yeah. I mean, I think this is a critical element. The best work on this is the late Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma and the necessity for all of us to be aware that what has worked to date will not necessarily work going into the future. And don't be—you know, past performance doesn't guarantee future performance, to paraphrase what one always sees with the materials that come with mutual funds and so forth or investment portfolios. It is critically important that we recognize the evolving landscape of business and how fast change is coming and the many great businesses that once were that are no longer as a result of not being able to kind of cross that chasm to a new way of operating. And so, you know, there are a litany of once-leading companies, the best-performing stock of the S&P for the 1980s was Circuit City. I can't remember—we've talked about this story before or not, Joel, but, you know, best-performing stock in the S&P 500, only went public in '84. So in less than six years, returned more than 8,000% to those who participated in the IPO. Super successful in the 1990s. CarMax, among other companies, are born out of it because of that success. In 2001, they're featured in Good to Great, Jim Collins's classic tome. 01/2009, they're liquidated. And part of the story there is not recognizing some of the dynamics of what were coming to pass in the aughts, the early 2000s, that shaped their outcome for them. And we need to be humbled by stories like that, a Blockbuster, one of the best-performing stocks of the 1990s that couldn't pivot based upon where digital business was going, as another prominent example of many that we could state or come up with together. I think, you know, there are a number of companies that have done remarkable jobs of reinventing themselves and, you know, digital mediums and digital engagements being at the center of that. One thing that—Domino's Pizza is one of the great examples of, you know, one of the best-performing stocks. You know that in the last decade, 2010 to 2020, Domino's stock performed better than Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple. Just an interesting fun fact. And part of it was, admittedly, in 2010, it was not a great stock, so it was not performing particularly well. You can argue, of course, that the starting point helps. But, nevertheless, that point passes quickly when you see just how well they did. And a lot of it—I mean, part of it was also recognition that their product was not what it should be, rather. The CEO, in fact, had a national ad campaign where he apologized to customers for sucking. "We're sorry for sucking." So pretty significant mea culpa there that was basically suggesting, "Look, we're gonna get the product better." Obviously, that's first and foremost. Without that, forget all the other things. So they worked on the product, but they also worked on the technology behind it and ensured that—I'll fast forward to part of the kind of punchline here. The technology, they insourced a lot of what was once outsourced, recognizing those aspects that were most strategic. They created, basically, the ability for customers to interact with the company how they wished as opposed to dictating it to them. So early adopters of, you know, being able to Slack with Domino's or text with Domino's, the ability to have pizza delivered to somewhere without an address, a beach, or a park, and have it find you, and, you know, order contactless order and pickup, but also, you know, reducing the number of steps to order your pie, especially if you've got, sort of like, consistent orders that you want coming every Friday. And so just really rethinking the experience for customers, leveraging digital tools in super creative ways. And let me add, Joel, they were one of the enormous success stories during the pandemic as well for their ability to pivot so quickly for the digital channels that they had already put in place. It was actually not that much of it in an industry that was one of the hardest hit of all restaurants. It was one of the quickest to pivot towards actually increased sales through the early part of the pandemic, interestingly enough. And so, and then on top of it, developed kind of this sexiness to the brand from a tech perspective such that this company based in suburban Detroit became sort of a landing place for a lot of really talented tech folks. So anyway, I mean, there are a number of examples like that of companies that had done very well, had a humbling, and then recognized something needed to change with tech and digital being an important ingredient in that change. And so that's one of several that I can offer, but one of my favorites anyway.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:00) Yeah. Domino's is great. When we had our third child, this one was a little bit more tricky because the other two came the first trip to the hospital, and this one came like the eleventh trip to the hospital. So I had a lot of time in the hospital with my wife over that two-month period, and Domino's Pizza was great because hospitals are super tricky with the addresses and how to get them and where the entrance actually is. But I was able to get them to deliver pizza right from my phone and watch it come to me, and I was just like, this is exactly what I would expect. So maybe I should go buy some Domino's stock. Well, I own some S&P. So they're in the S&P 500. Right? I think so.

(Peter at 00:43:40) I believe they are now. Yeah. That's a good question. They should be, probably.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:44) Yeah. Anything else that we didn't get out there that we want to get out there to the world?

(Peter at 00:43:50) Yeah. I mean, I would just say, Joel, you know, this is a great time during times of uncertainty to take a hard look at your business and recognize that this is the fastest pace of business in history and yet the slowest that it will be from this point forward. And so if you agree with that, as I certainly do, then making sure that you are setting up your organization to compete at that pace. And so having that kind of beginner's mind, an inventor's mentality, a willingness to explore trends and technologies even if they seem far afield just to test whether or not there are applications of that for your organization, but also just bending your culture towards a recognition that change is coming. Change is not natural for us. We crave routine. But despite the fact that we crave that, change is coming. And it's those who get set in their routines who are the ones that often have the most adverse actions taken against them, whether ultimately, perhaps with the business going out of business. And so it's important for us to develop those practices, those nimble practices, in order to ensure that yours is a business that can survive and thrive in such a fast pace. And if anything, of course, the three years of the pandemic have taught us that necessity for resilience. Don't let the lessons of this go to waste.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:14) I love that. And the book is Getting to Nimble. Correct? It's in Amazon?

(Peter at 00:45:18) It is indeed. Yeah. Thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:20) Everyone go buy the book. Peter's great. We want to support him. So thank you so much for doing this, Peter. Thank you so much for listening.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:27) And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.