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In today’s episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we welcome Josh Levine, author of Great Mondays and culture consultant. Josh shares his journey from brand strategy to company culture, revealing why culture isn’t about perks but about purpose and connection.

He discusses the challenges of building a strong culture in a remote world, the critical role of rituals in fostering trust, and why “on-site is the new off-site.” Josh also provides actionable strategies for leaders to make remote work engaging and collaborative.

🎓 In this episode, Josh discusses:

1. Building trust and connection in remote teams.

2. Why rituals are essential for a strong remote culture.

3. Moving beyond perks to build a purpose-driven culture.

4. How “on-site is the new off-site” creates meaningful gatherings.

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Josh Levine 0:00

The little kind of headline here is on site. Is the new off site? So where off sites used to be? Hey everybody next quarter, we're gonna go to some retreat for three days. We're gonna have an agenda. We're gonna have to be everybody's gonna be there. We're gonna do super intense when you bring people together, you better have that kind of rigor, or else it's not going to be, it won't be worthwhile. It's just not going to be a good use of time. And so you can bring people. You can decide to have a three, two. You can decide to have, you know, once a quarter, like Airbnb does, right? Their teams are mandated. You can work from anywhere, but you better come together for a week once a quarter with your team. I love that you've got to have that time together. And so there is a real purpose for that. And just forcing people back to the office, because that's how we used to do it, is the wrong answer.

Chris Rainey 0:59

Josh, welcome to the show. How are you? My friend? Hey, good,

Josh Levine 1:02

Chris, how are you? I'm

Chris Rainey 1:02

good. You got a scarf out. Is it cold? How is that just a fashion statement?

Josh Levine 1:07

Uh, both I am. I am fashionably warm. Okay,

Chris Rainey 1:11

I haven't heard that one yet. I need a scarf. I'm living the UK, but, like, the UK doesn't like it's not a big scarf culture. And that sounds like a really random comment, but no one really wears scarves that much. Yeah,

Josh Levine 1:24

I know you leave it to the French to, you know, maybe it's, maybe it's an anti scarf culture, and

Chris Rainey 1:28

he's got, yeah,

Josh Levine 1:30

not like it's that. It's not that big here. I'm just, you know, I decided a few years ago that like, that would be a good way to spice up my wardrobe. And I live in Portland, Oregon, and it's, it's cold and rainy here, so it's really not, you know, it's not hard to do. It works.

Chris Rainey 1:45

It works. It works. No worries before we jump in. Tell everyone a little bit more about yourself, personally and sort of your journey to where we are now and the work that you do. Sure,

Josh Levine 1:56

sure. So I started life as a brand strategist. So my the early, like the first 10 years of my career, were graphic design and brand strategy. I left brand strategy during sort of tenuous time. It was my firm, the firm I worked for. I left, and there it was the sort of global housing crisis. So I didn't have any place to go. I couldn't find a job, right? I don't know if anybody

Chris Rainey 2:28

remembers that 2008 basically, 2008

Josh Levine 2:31

it was like, exactly that, like, literally the day I stepped out of the door, the markets crashed, right? And so I was like, I had been working so hard to get job offers. And so I had, I had a little kid at the time, had a baby, and I was like, Oh, I don't have a job. Uh oh, I don't have anything. And so I had this opportunity. And I think this is a story a lot of folks that start companies during downturn say, which is, like, there's no other opportunity. Let's, you know, forced to do it. And so I had this chance to sort of think through, since there was no job descriptions, I was like, Well, what do I want to do? And what I realized is that the most important work that we had done as brand strategy firm was internally, and that a lot of the external brand work that we had done these brand promises, they couldn't be delivered on. And so, how do you keep those brand promises you work with the people on the inside? And so I had this, you know, after thinking really hard for about six months, I had this flash of insight around wanting to work internally. And eventually, years on, I learned that that was called company culture, and that's really kind of how it sort of thrust, you know, put me in the in the sort of the direction I had starred in my firm, being a brand guy, I came up with a name great Mondays, and decided that that's what I wanted to do. And so just kind of threw myself into it. I didn't have an HR background or organization development background, and really started thinking through like, what is it that rook that, how do we help organizations in this way? And what I quickly realized is that very few people had a really good definition of what culture was, and a really they didn't. It was very fuzzy. And during that time, I was in the Bay Area, right? So Silicon Valley, like, the everybody would talk about culture, like it was, oh, yeah, sure, we've got a great culture

Chris Rainey 4:26

slide. We've got a slide. We got a slide. Oh,

Josh Levine 4:29

you went to the slide, right? I was gonna say we have a barista. Laundry done, yes, exactly. That's exactly, right. And it was like, you guys, you're missing the point, right? Like, that was, that was really a very like. I was like, no, no, no, no, that's not what this is. Those are just perks. And so I saw a space to kind of come in and define what that was. And so I started working on on this framework, which eventually became my book, great Mondays. And I. And now I have a podcast, great Mondays radio, and continue to run my my firm. We work with hyper growth technology companies, those that are want to be acquired or go public, those are the kind of firms that are ready to invest in culture, because it gonna it matters so much now I will say it matters for everyone, but the but the problem is, most people go, yeah, yeah, that's fine. Culture is great, but it's not a priority for us. And it doesn't, it's not a priority until it becomes a crisis, and it's

Chris Rainey 5:32

interesting now, right? Because, like, even investors, are looking at companies culture as a criteria, right? But that wasn't, that wasn't a thing before now, so there is definitely

Josh Levine 5:47

a priority. I'll sort of, I'll twist your words a little bit and say culture has always been a thing. I know that you're saying investors never looked at culture before, but what I found in our work with companies that are acquiring or have been acquired, is that if you pay attention to culture, your likelihood of success of your acquisition or your merger is going to be a lot greater, right? So just like what we say in culture is, you got a culture, whether you know it or not, right, whether you work on it or not, it's just a matter of whether it's serving your ends. So that's, you know, I'm happy that all of a sudden, not all, I mean, I don't know that. Now there's more awareness where it's like, Hey, how are the people inside the organization? What does it mean? Is it connected? Like, do people, you know, is, is this something that, is this a place that people understand what they're doing and really understand how to get their work done. And that's ultimately what culture is about.

Chris Rainey 6:46

I love that. And I definitely can tell your background by how cool your designs are and your format. I just, I just put those two things together. And I was like, oh, okay, this make this makes a lot of sense. I love to, kind of give your I'd love to hear your thoughts on the current state of play, because, you know, half my conversations now talking to each other, literally, just, I probably shouldn't mention her name, but just spoke to a chro and their CEOs. Just said, Hey, we're bringing everyone back to the office, right? And she's like, what does this? What does this mean for our culture? You know, are we going to see a decline in culture because we're now, we're going because, because we are distributed, are we going to see a decline in culture because we're coming back? It's kind of like a big conversation right now. So I'd love to ask you to start there, like, you know, is there an inevitable decline now we've moved to a distributed world? Yes,

Josh Levine 7:36

well, so I think what you've just articulated where it's like, I don't know, like, if it's everybody's away, and it's like, the culture is kind of crappy because they're distributed, but then we bring everybody back, and everybody's like, why bring us back? It's kind of, you know, it's like, it feels like it's a no win situation. And the the reason is because you're looking at it the wrong way, or we are looking at it the wrong way. So I'll start with this, the trend that I saw coming 36 months ago, and we're now really starting to see it come to fruition, which is distributed teams, your your what, what most leaders are seeing is a decrease in innovation, efficacy, collaboration on these distributed teams and these distributed teams. The reason why is because we no longer have the moments that are keeping us connected. Now, you might think that's fuzzy, that's nicey nice like, Oh, it's good to have a good you know, a friend at work. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is when you have a strong relationship with someone on your team. It it is all about building that trust, and trust as anybody knows, right? As Lencioni would say, or Sinek would say, Trust is the fundamental building block of any team. And so when you don't have those opportunities to connect and build a relationship, strengthen a relationship, your trust is going to start to wane. So what? What the the hard work that the square footage used to do inside the office, where you're like, Oh, hey, Chris, how was the weekend? Yeah, that's gone, right? We know we hop on Zoom. And I'm sure everybody who's listening to this has this experience. You hop on Zoom and it's like, okay, great. We're gonna start point one, point 2.3, what are we working on? There's no opportunity to say, hey, let's just take a moment and connect the the what, what you have we've already talked about is the easy, quote, unquote answer, right? Or solution is, well, this new way of working isn't working. Let's bring everybody back. Let's do what we used to do that is also a fool's errand, because the question becomes, why are you bringing us back? Like I can do my work, just okay, and you're and that the answer is only. Only well to build relationships. The the the calculus doesn't quite work because the commute is so difficult. And often when we're back in the office, we're just doing zooms anyways. And that's

Chris Rainey 10:13

crazy. That's that's the one where I'm like, I've had family members and friends like, I go into the office to do a zoom call, and those people I'm supposed to collaborate don't come in those days because they come in on other days, because we have to be in three days. And it just happens the days I go, those other people don't go in those days. So now you're just like, I'm just here, but it's taking and I

Josh Levine 10:37

suppose, I suppose you could solve that with with an Amazon style, everybody back five days a week. But that's while it's a company's prerogative that is a losing proposition as well. We live in this digital world. We can do world. We can do work remotely. So the number one like most popular request I get, is to talk about this problem and help organizations solve for it without mandating everybody come back to the office. And so this new skill of having to teach organizations and managers how to rebuild these relationships while we're into a distributed world that is the that is brand new. Managers never had to do that before. This is something you have to add on. And so in my in my book, great Mondays, the six the the fifth component of culture is rituals. And rituals I wrote even before the pandemic, right? It's it's how we build and strengthen the synapses of culture, relationships and so ritual understanding, how to create and how to facilitate rituals in a distributed world, that's going to be the number one skill that managers need to learn in the next 18 to 36 months, because otherwise that team is just going to disintegrate, the relationships are just going to fall apart, and that is the crux. Now I do want to caveat it by saying I do believe in person worked. Coming together is really important. It does not have to be five days a week, three or three days a week every week, you can create situations where you bring people together at certain times and you've already risen, you already brought up. That challenge of I showed up and nobody else showed up. You got to make sure that everybody's showing up at the same time. And so the short, the the sort of, the little kind of headline here is, on site is the new off site. And so what that means is, you have better have an agenda, right? So on site is the new off site. So where off sites used to be? Hey, everybody, next quarter, we're going to go to some retreat for three days. We're going to have an agenda. We're going to have to be everybody's going to be there. We're going to do super intense the when you bring people together, you better have that kind of rigor, yeah, or else it's not going to be, it won't be worthwhile. It's just not going to be a good use of time. And so you can bring people. You can decide to have a three, two. You can decide to have, you know, once a quarter, like Airbnb does, right? Their teams are mandated. You can work from anywhere, but you better come together for a week once a quarter with your team. I love that. Or you can do, as my friend Tony, who's the CEO of medium.com does, he brings the entire team, which, by the way, they're global, 100% distributed. They bring every pay for everybody to come together twice a year, and they do a three day retreat. And it is so effective because it's able to focus the kind of work that they need to do. They need to make big decisions, discuss the strategy, and then by the end of the weekend, everybody has their tactics and they go away. But they also

Chris Rainey 14:04

build the relationships whilst they're there, right? They've got to know each other. They built bonds, yes, right? Yes, yes, yes, as well, right? It's got, it's got, that's both, yeah,

Josh Levine 14:13

of course, exactly. You've got to have the, you've got to have that time together. And so there is a real purpose for that. And just forcing people back to the office, because that's how we used to do it, is the wrong answer. Share some

Chris Rainey 14:27

of those rituals. Let's go back. So what are some of those rituals that you share in the book that managers and leaders need to be doing to make this work? Right?

Josh Levine 14:36

Well, in the book, I have a bunch of in in person rituals again, because it was pre pandemic. And those are, those are, you know, those are kind of standard lunch and learns, or days off to, you know, as a team go there at Square. They, they the square. Office was downtown San Francisco, in a really, really crummy part of town. They used to take the afternoon off and go clean up around the office. Everybody was to leave and actually clean up the trash in the neighborhood. I think it's a great ritual. So how do we then create those moments where we actually get to spend time together and purposefully, right? Because now it's like, it's got to have a very, you know, condensed meaning, we got to learn more about our our colleagues. And so one of the one of the tools that I teach now is something that I'm sure everybody's heard of, which is active listening. And so what you need to do is be able to, in order to get to know somebody, if you're able to ask a question and then withhold judgment and just let that person talk to you and tell you about themselves, where have you always wanted to go? What kind of work style do you have? You know, tell me about a time you made a mistake, and what did you learn from it? What's amazing is that, and you're not only learning, but they're feeling seen, and that creates that deep kind of connection. Now you can make it, you know, silly, easy questions, and you can just start your weekly stand up with some of those, right? What was your favorite concert? Or you can go round robin, and

Chris Rainey 16:13

everybody can come with a different virtually, right? Those, those, that's

Josh Levine 16:16

when that's, that's no, that's, that's exactly right. That's why sort of, you gotta make space for it. You

Chris Rainey 16:21

gotta be intentional. It's not just gonna. It's not gonna. I'm at the office where it happens spontaneously, virtually. I'm assuming you tell me you have to be more, more intentional about making sure it happens, because you're not gonna bump into someone virtually online. You

Josh Levine 16:35

have to do it. Yeah. So when you so this is, I'll go back to the the you know, our weekly zoom. You pop on, and as the manager say, it is really important that we stay connected. And so for the first you know, 15 minutes we're gonna do, we're gonna talk, we're gonna talk about, you know, something happened this weekend. We're gonna learn a quick, you know, when I answer a question. And those moments and opportunities, although they're less organic and may feel a little hokey once you start, if you can figure out a way to create some authentic rituals. And this is another piece that I do, which is like I can come to so this is one of the sort of like basic structures that I bring to the table. But what I can do is I will have teams, I'll give them examples, and then I'll have them if you know, tell me some ideas about how you know what's an authentic ritual for them. What are they gonna do? And that is, that is

Chris Rainey 17:31

crowd source. It Right, rather than thinking you have all the answers, which is what many leaders and managers, that's right.

Josh Levine 17:39

No, I never, yeah. I learned that pretty early on. It's like, I don't, I'm going to give you some examples, and then you get to come up with and, and it's like, if the team, yeah. So I was just at a fortune 100 tech company doing this for one of their their the legal team, and they have a bunch of groups that work around the world. And so some of them actually get together, you know, and they're like, Hey, we're going to do pizza and beer, and we're going to do it when we get together. And some of them were like, Oh, we really, all really love to travel. And so we're going to do, like, every every month, someone's going to present a different sort of travel log of where they just went. That's cool. And, yes, right? So it's like, it doesn't have to be a big deal. The hard thing is actually making the space and deciding that you're going to have to do this. And we've just never done it before, which is why it's not an obvious answer, and that's so those I would say this in person, deciding in person, like, how are you going to bring together people, together purposefully, and then how are you going to create those relationships in a distributed manner, regularly, right in the it's either weekly or monthly or whatever it might be, what's authentic for you that is going to build those relationships? And the relationships there's the synapses of culture, and that's how you're going to rebuild. And not a lot of organizations are doing this. And do not be misled by the data that's coming in. That's saying, Hey, your distributed teams are are doing poorly. They're performing. Their performance has been depressed. It's not that the the answer is, oh, well, we'll just do what we used to do. No, let's push it forward and talk about how we might be able to solve the actual problem. And this is how, this is the, this is how I'll wrap this up. And I'll say, Do not let the where define the the how. Allow define your how. First, how is it that you want to be working? And then you can decide when, where, how are you going to right? Like, are do you want to be more efficient or innovative or collaborative? And then we can talk about, oh, well, it makes sense for us to do this, this and this, just because we know the what the answer used to look like, and we feel it. It's a human bias, right? We know. Yeah, that was the good old days, right? That's the stats, the feeling. It's the good old days. That's what we used to do when I was a kid. Whatever it is, right? That's and so that's the war word of warning that I would give to leaders now, is do make sure that you define your how first, and then we can get into the where and the when you work. Yeah, I love

Chris Rainey 20:20

that, because then it gives you a foundation, a sense of direction, you know, and during chaos or uncertainty, or, you know, good times or bad times, at least, you can make a decision from that foundation. And not, you know, just react to some data that you just see or react to you, the fact that you used to work that way, and that once upon a time, did work that way, and you just, you have a knee jerk, yeah? And that's kind of what you're seeing with a lot of these CEOs and companies that are sort of slowly reverting back to comfort, because they're comfortable with that, right? That's what they did. That's what they did for 2030, years, right? Because it's hard to it's really, it's hard to do, to be, to work remotely, and it's really hard. It's again, like I said, many, many managers of leaders have never prepared, or, you know, been trained on how they how they do this. This isn't something you did. I didn't

Josh Levine 21:10

learn this. And, you know, getting my MBA, I didn't learn this. When I, you know, when, when I think about the model of a great manager. These are all the things and in, you know, implicit, explicit learning opportunities. This never showed up. This is an entirely new model.

Chris Rainey 21:23

Yeah, no, you made me think about some. I was just thinking about some of those rituals in my own team. And I was thinking really far back, what something maybe just gave me think. And I just thought of a couple I'll share, which I just may be interested in. Yeah, love it. Love it. So I used to work in like, a really kind of high pressure sales environment. So imagine a sales floor of like 300 sales executives. You've got like seven or eight team managers. I was one of them, and I was managing, like events companies. I had a supply chain portfolio, or oil and gas farming. It was like cold calling, kind of like a Yeah, super high pressure sales environment, right? And it was quite overwhelming. Targets, deadlines, everyone's got hit at commission brackets, you know, etc. And one of the things I started doing, because it was high turnover as well. So it was, you know, it was hard to build real strong trust and relationships when that person may be gone next week. So it's tough. So when I started doing is, once a month we had everyone on everyone in the team, brought in food that represents their ethnic background and their culture, and we had a big feast. So put it all on the tables, and we sat together as a team and had a conversation. And AI is talking about how his auntie made these samosas, and they're the best samosas ever. And you know, you kind of just get into these stories, and you start to learn about people's backgrounds, experiences and journeys. And it kind of just bonded everyone over food. And it became a thing. We did it. We did it for like, 10 years, like not exaggerating, and great way to do it. Yeah, it became a thing. And then so that was one thing. And everyone was excited. Everyone really looked forward to every month, and everyone was excited to bring something new. And the other thing we used to do is whenever I felt like the team was a bit overwhelmed, I could sense it. I could feel it like it's just a lot, like there's a debt end of month deadline, everyone's rushing to do it. I would just tell everyone to drop the phones, and would all go to the shop grab ice lollies and ice creams and just take a walk around the block. And it's so random. And I remember ice and I used to get a lot of heat from my global cells. Yeah, exactly like, have they hit their number of dials and their KPIs and but I know I yeah, I just kind of took the heat, to be honest. And all the other salespeople used to be really upset, because they would complain to their managers that Chris' team was just going out for a walk in the middle of a Power Hour, and sales Power Hour, right as well. But the energy and and the that they would come back with after that 20 minute walk, they would try, all of a sudden, we'll be closing deals. It's not even exactly, I could literally directly see. I just took everyone out of that mindset for a second. We went for a walk, had a laugh. Everyone's like choosing the different isolates and whatever. We come back, everyone goes back on the phone, and all of a sudden there was a sort of level energy and food. And I do it all the time. We do it like a couple of times a month when you felt like they did a bit of energy in the room. Those are too silly. I say silly. Those are things that I just randomly did at the time that I kind of look back on now and think they're actually really important. And I've got a photo I'll share with you one day. It was going back through my old Facebook photos, and someone had took a photo of all of us holding our isolis up together. And there's a photo of, like, 15 hands of 15 nice ollies, and they've stood on the table and took a photo of it. And I was like, Oh, wow. Like, that's that's from when one of the walks. And then we have another photo where just the whole sales desks, and every single one. My team members are standing on the desks with the phone trying to close the deals. And it was just like me taking a photo of, like, my entire team, and everyone was helping each other because every phone had another phone connected so you could help second voice and, like, guide each sales person. Yeah. And it's just one of those moments. I was like, wow. Like, that captured the essence

Josh Levine 25:18

of your Yeah. It's like, the team as well.

Chris Rainey 25:22

So yeah, like, and I remember getting told off by my manager, like, hey, they're not your friends. You don't do that. You're their boss. You know you're not, you're a friend while you Yeah, doing these things right? They need to. They're not gonna respect you if you do. I mean that I sort of did. I used to lead with fear instead. And then I remember, there's another photo last thing I'd say that the last ritual there was a group of about 13 of us who used to train together after work or at lunchtime. We'd go gym and train together. And it became a ritual that we would always work in the summer, we would work out outside in the local park, and in the winter, we'll go train at the gym that was around the corner. And again, just built relationships. You got to know each other, about the families, friends, etc. And when you have a really hard time at work, you then dig deep and go above and beyond for each other, because you kind of, you know that, you know that's where that person's coming from. Yeah, I never looked at them as those rituals, by the way. I just kind of, they just happened that is

Josh Levine 26:18

exactly that, that exactly what you want, because is you're gonna go, you're gonna do so much more for someone who they may not even be your friend. It's just you understand who they are, yeah, and, I mean, even just imagine the difference between getting a Rando phone call from some other person in the company being like, hey, I need this report, and you're like, Who's this asshole asking me for you know, you know five minutes before close, yeah, but if it's someone that you know, and, even better, someone that you actually have a relationship with, yeah, hey, Chris, can you help me? I'm hustling on this thing. I really need to blah, blah, blah, absolutely, absolutely, I'm gonna go above and beyond. And so I think the way you've just articulated that is, is is perfect, and that is, those are, those are perfect examples. I would have never been able to come up with the ice cream break, but

Chris Rainey 27:13

the well being people out there gonna tell me off with your ice cream break.

Josh Levine 27:16

Well, it sounds like, it sounds like, maybe you, maybe you balance it with the workout. So yes,

Chris Rainey 27:21

sir, but I think there, but also there was a mindfulness thing of just going for a walk. Yeah, it was just a separation, of just escaping. Even for me, it helped me. I think I needed it too, just to go for a second and escape. But when I started one, because when I was a sales person, because I spent 10 years at this company, it was me against my whole team. That's how my manager ran it. It was like, you Chris, against this person, against this person. I hated that, right? And it was always like any you know, and I moved my team to another floor, which was a big controversy in the company, because I didn't want to be part of that culture. And one of the things that you started noticing is when we had everyone had, you know, to hit X many sales per month, if, if someone was behind, people would start giving each other deals to get each other over the threshold so they can make their bonus. And then maybe a month later, that person's indeed, that other person will, you know, best help so and so get above that. And that was, like, even I was shocked as a manager, to be like, I remember a team coming to me and like, is it okay if I give because they knew that it was obviously going to make that trigger, that bonus. And I was like, fine. Like, just don't tell CEO to do that. And I was like, wow, this is great. And we had a vision board. And everyone a giant vision board that is huge, like, three meters by two meters, and everyone put all their things they want to achieve, and everyone was helping everyone achieve what they wanted on that board, right? And again, like, how do you recreate that virtually? Like, yeah, like, a virtual vision board, it's not gonna be the same. I don't know. I just I, I don't know how to, I don't know how you there are, yeah,

Josh Levine 29:02

here's what I'll here's what I'll say, Chris, is, is, is we all have, we all experienced, at the beginning of the pandemic and the lockdown, what, what was an inauthentic replication of an in person ritual, which was, Hey everybody, let's Have, let's do a zoom happy hour, and it was so bad, you're like, the last thing I want to fucking do, it's like, it doesn't, it doesn't work. And so I think that we could come up with some kind of way to replicate that, that vision technology I've seen do that. Yeah, right, but, but what I will say, is be cautious and aware that some things just don't translate. You have to reinvent the and this is, this is where it comes back to being strategic. What are you trying to achieve? What you did on those walks, what you did with the vision board, right? It's, it is a break. It is, you know, reinvent. Operation. It's, it's, you know, mental and in a physical break, it is connecting with other people. So how are we going to do that now that we're distributed, right? That's the, you know, you need to kind of go into the, what is the what is the output? What is the goal? What is it that you achieved by that vision board? And then, once you've identified and written down that, then you can say, Okay, what is the purpose? Fit, exercise, structure, technology that's going to help us get to that point. And I, and that's what I learned going and we all, I think we all learned going through that it's like, this sucks, and it's just not gonna it's just not gonna last. So let's do something that makes more sense for us. And you know, we didn't know what we were missing. We just didn't have that, you know, perspective. But now we understand that it's really about relationships and trust. Yeah,

Chris Rainey 30:58

I think it's also about the type of work you do, right? Like, for me, my team comes in every Monday, but it's purely focused on content, content creation, product innovation, like creative, creative work. You know, we've got the big whiteboard or idea in we're together. We're shooting content, obviously. So we literally do have to be together because we're in the studio, but trying to do that virtually and come up with ideas and content and anything creative and based on like trying to disrupt our current products or offering that in person is sort of a magic that happens. And we always talk about how, we always talk about them, how much work gets done. And actually, when you're together, people challenge each other more. I've seen like, like people in the room are actually Chris. I disagree, and I think we should try that. And then someone was in the rooms like, I don't know, for some reason, I'm virtual. It doesn't translate the same way. Sort of this aha moments. And the sort of, I don't know, it's almost hard to describe.

Josh Levine 31:53

No, I do think in person innovation, you know, there's sort of this energy. I think there is absolutely valuable. It's valuable to be together. And I last week, I was on a call and someone described what they were doing with their team, which is interesting. Now, I don't know if it gets to the level that you're describing, but it did what you what you're talking about, and remind me of it, which is his whole team of 12. They keep their zoom windows open all day, and so it's essentially this kind of, like, instant access. Oh,

Chris Rainey 32:28

my God, that's interesting. Interesting. Just

Josh Levine 32:31

did the Think about it? Because I also had that same reaction. I was like,

Chris Rainey 32:35

Okay, it's almost like you're sitting in the room each other, like you'll be in an office, like, and then

Josh Levine 32:38

if you if you need to close your door, right? If you need to do some work, then you're like, on silent or whatever. Or if you're like, Hey, Chris, can I talk to you for a second? You do a little breakout? Yeah, I was like,

Chris Rainey 32:54

awkward. Used to do, right? That's, that's, essentially, it's just through lens of a video camera versus someone sitting next to you. Yeah, that's quite I never heard of that one. That is a very I know, I

Josh Levine 33:06

know. I was like, Oh, that's really interesting. And that's like, is

Chris Rainey 33:09

it mandatory? Though, that's the bit, that's the bit that's that's the important question, because that's the equivalent of lack of trust. That's what message that would send if you said that you have to do that. It's like the equivalent of my wife's last company. I can say it now. She's not no longer there that they had, like, this software that tracked every Oh, yeah, anywhere, yeah, basically so and if she didn't type a keyword or or a mover mouse, it would log out after a certain time. So you, your manager would know you there was an hour gap where you didn't move a mouse. But the thing it didn't account for is we just had a baby, and guess what? She had to feed the baby, and her hours aren't going to be always the same, because we have to, you know, like it was. And I remember, I remember being in the car, holding the baby and her laptop, and she said, every few minutes, just moved the mouse. I'm like, Is this serious? So, like, are we actually just, just so whilst we were driving her manager didn't think she wasn't working. And I was like, This is insane. This is actually crazy. I was like, No, I'm closing a laptop. Like, tell your manager that I close the laptop. Yeah, I love doing it, but anyways, but I love the long term, how that plays out

Josh Levine 34:18

with the team. Yeah. I mean, I think there's some interesting thing. I mean it, you know, I don't know, like, I think it's, I think it's worth thinking through it, right? You're like, oh, that's what is that doing? There

Speaker 1 34:29

is something there. I know there is something that you're right. How do you do it

Josh Levine 34:32

right? Like, what is and so I would go, right. So, Mr. Brand strategist, I would go back and go, Okay, what? What is that? What is the like? What am I getting from that? What is the what is the goodness of that? And then can I replicate that in some way? Like, is this the best way to do that? You

Chris Rainey 34:49

know, be interesting with that, right? If they're using teams, and it's linked with their calendars, and it also looks at their productivity, and you have the transcription, imagine the insights you. Get from that, yep. So you could really, because if it's there, like the AI, if the, if the, what I call a note, note taker, is active during that day, this, you probably could really look into that data and look at the productivity, the calendar, the meetings, because what happens when one of them has a meeting, right? Or that the mute, obviously, you know. So that's yes, that's kind of Yeah. Anyways, that's a new one. Now, be interested in everyone listening right now, what your thoughts are. Leave it in the chat yeah as well. But honestly, I love that point you made. The that didn't the new the on site is the new off site. I honestly, I love that, because you would never turn up to an off site and be unprepared and it didn't and non intentional, etc, you are right. I just, I've never heard that before. This listen before I let it go. I couldn't talk to you forever. Oh, first, let's have a little bit about the show, because on the on the podcast, you got the book, right? So everyone don't go grab a copy. Great. Mondays, how to design a company culture that employees love. So grab a copy of that. And the podcast is that you telling people stories and journeys around this the same content I

Josh Levine 36:07

do. I do a different interview every week, so candid conversations with culture leaders, and so I bring in C suite leaders and veteran consultants and experts to talk through different specific ideas, emergent trends, ways that they are seeing things start to happen inside their organization. We had VP of employees and research from Expedia. I just talked to the CEO of Aurora, which is one of the biggest self driving, software, hardware companies in the United States. We let's see who else I've had on, executives from Autodesk and Facebook, the my friend Tony from medium did that whole episode about his off sites. That was amazing. So there's all manner of amazing conversations and insights, and I'm learning too. That's what makes this so so interesting to me, is like, I'm bringing people on that I want to learn.

Chris Rainey 37:10

Did I do this?

Josh Levine 37:11

Yeah, exactly. I'm like, it is so it's like, it is such a powerful, you know? It's like, I'm able to engage. And folks really appreciate asking. You know, it's like, wait, what? How do you actually go about doing this thing? We had the chief people officer on from Simply Safe or I recorded with her, and that'll be out before the end of the year. I'm not sure when this is going live, but before the end of 2024 and she's talking about how their brand message is all about the safety of humans, and, you know, respecting of each other, and that that brand is replicated internally in their culture as well. So we got deep into that and talked about their return to Office, and what does that mean. And you know that respect piece, so it's great. Money's radio is an opportunity to really dig into some of today's kind of more progressive culture leaders. Sometimes they're, you know, HR folks, sometimes they're executives and others in other areas, but always, we're talking about culture and culture adjacent. Concept, people

Chris Rainey 38:17

can check it out. Where can they grab like anywhere

Josh Levine 38:20

you listen to your podcast. So most people get it on Apple podcast. You can also find it on Spotify. Those are the two biggest places. You can also listen to past episodes at Radio. Dot Great. Mondays.com, they're all listed there as well. So

Chris Rainey 38:37

what about your What about you personally, if people want to work with you, connect with you. Where's the best place?

Josh Levine 38:41

Yeah? Well, so you can just go to great mondays.com

Chris Rainey 38:45

Great website.

Josh Levine 38:49

Thank you. Yeah, great mondays.com you feel free you can, you know, write to me, Josh, at great mondays.com you can also find me on LinkedIn. It's a slash LinkedIn in slash, aka, yeah,

Chris Rainey 39:09

and I would say, I'll leave Josh's LinkedIn below, and anyone who goes on there, make sure you follow his newsletter as well, so you also release some of the episodes and stuff. Right? Find a newsletter.

Josh Levine 39:21

Then follow the page. Follow the newsletter. Yeah, all those things. We will send out summaries and captions of those, so you can get a good sense of what's going on there, for sure.

Chris Rainey 39:30

Cool man. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show. I'm glad we got connected, and I honestly love the work you're doing. So everyone listening, all those things will be the load to the podcast, to the website, LinkedIn. There's no excuses. Wherever you're listening to watching right now. Click the links below, go and follow Josh and Yeah, we sure the best until we next week. Man, appreciate you coming on. Thank

Josh Levine 39:49

you, Chris. It's it's been a real pleasure talking to you. You.

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