Is Remote Work a Huge Mistake?

🎧 Subscribe on your favourite platform iTunes | Stitcher | Spotify | Google | TuneIn and RSS.
✉️ Sign up to receive our weekly newsletter packed with HR Insights sent directly to your inbox.

Join Chris Rainey and his co-host, Matt Burns, as they discuss the topic of remote work with their special guest, Sara Milesson, Vice President of HR for Trelleborg Group.

They delve into the contrasting views on remote work, the challenges that come with managing remote teams, and the benefits of being intentional about productivity, feedback, and performance management. They also share examples of companies that have done remote work well and discuss the importance of shifting the way we view work culture to increase all aspects of productivity, flexibility, and employee satisfaction.

Episode Highlights:

- How some CEOs view remote work as a productivity killer, while many employees believe it boosts productivity and increases engagement and satisfaction

- Why remote work requires more intentionality from leaders to manage productivity

- How open-source work policies can increase collaboration, networking, and knowledge sharing in remote teams

Recommended Resources

Follow Sara Milesson on LinkedIn
Learn more about Trelleborg Group

Learn how to cultivate more future-minded leadership across your entire organization in the full Winter Insights Report from BetterUp Labs.

Download for Free

Chris Rainey 0:07
Today we're going to be discussing is remote work. A huge mistake. So I'm interested to see all of your comments in the chat today is going to be an interesting discussion. To discuss the topic. I'm going to be joined by my co host and partner in crime. Matt Burns, founder and CEO at bento, HR, and host of the thinking inside the box podcast and our special guest. Today, we've got Sauron Wilson, who is the vice president of HR for Trelleborg group, a world leader in engineered polymer solutions based in Sweden. Hello, everyone. How are you both?

Sara Milesson 0:36
Hey, Chris. I'm doing good.

Chris Rainey 0:38
You're doing good. I'm all right. It's Friday, is it Friday? Sometimes I'm like in this virtual world, right? I should even know what day of the week it is. So that's one thing I'd say about remote work is that sometimes I forget about what day of the week is. And I do kind of a

Sara Milesson 0:53
weekend a good thing or a bad thing

Chris Rainey 0:56
is a good thing that you don't even know when it's a weekend or it all blends together as well. So where should we even start things off? Matt? Like, I feel like this is kind of I know recently when you were talking about the Stanford Research, and it was really sort of a two year study that showed that productivity boost of remote was equivalent to a full day's work was that much per month per week, if I remember, the additional full day of productivity was that just for a week, I'm assuming? Or was it for a month, or week or week? So they're saying that basically by working remote, we get an extra day's worth of work out of our employees. Wow. Okay. And then on the flip side of that, we're also talking about the recent article from Sam Altman, who's an open AI CEO, if you don't know who open AI are, they are chatty, witty. If you haven't heard chatty, witty, I don't know where you've been living for the last couple of months. It's always around and he was really insistent of the fact that we need to be in person to be creative. And he was specifically also focusing on startups and tech, as part of that point. How do we kind of reconcile these two contrasting views, the research, and then we've got all these CEOs, you've got Salesforce, you've got chat, GBT, you've got Twitter, you've got Facebook, you've got Tesla. They're all saying, No, we have to come back. Otherwise, we have no creativity.

Matt Burns 2:21
Here's what I struggle with. When you ask employees. And when you ask line managers, they tell you that remote work has increased productivity, increased flexibility and satisfaction, increased engagement, and open up new sources of talent. When you ask CEOs of companies or commercial real estate representatives, they tell you that remote work is the worst thing to happen since I love

Chris Rainey 2:42
the way I do. I love the way you edit. I wonder why they're upset. It's

Matt Burns 2:51
almost as if organisations that own their own real estate are incentivized that people back in their own pains like it's exactly so I think that depends on who you ask. Now, here's what we know what study after study has shown us that from an individual contributor perspective, that remote work, in some cases can increase productivity, and certainly, in some cases increases satisfaction. I was having this chat this morning, if you're an introvert versus an extrovert makes a big difference how you answer that question. But I love what Sara said off air, which was, we apply a standard around meeting people where they're at around a number of HR programmes. But when it comes to remote work, we seem to make this a binary conversation, I'm confused as to how it got to that place. I think the reality is, is that we need to find space, to create flexibility for employees to be able to work in the bait way that best suits them. If I'm a single parent, and I have three kids remote work might mean the difference between me having a little bit of time in my day for myself, or spending two hours in my car or on the train or on the bus commuting to and from the office. That's a big deal for me. If I'm an extrovert, I live by myself and I'm 21 years old. And work is the source of most of my social activities. And of course, I'm going to lament the loss of the office. But the reality is workplaces are a composite of a number of different kinds of people. But in making this conversation binary, we're doing everyone a disservice. So I don't know how you reconcile it. There isn't a single answer, because life is complicated and work if nothing else is a manifestation of life.

Chris Rainey 4:22
Yeah. So what do you think, Sarah?

Sara Milesson 4:26
It will live from from the one sentence that I gave you before we went on air. You put a beautiful ring around that. And yes, I do agree because it's coming. We also have some Reacher's research now showing that some of our youngest talents are feeling a sense of isolation. They're feeling a sense of mental burnout and so on. So and of course, of course, because that is totally different. Their life is totally different. And they associate work with different things and their colleagues with different things than you would do. If you're like me, and and you live in a house and you have two children. But I have to take care of. And then again, you would also associate it differently, just like you're saying that if you're extroverts or introverts, that not only in those two contexts, right? So if if we say that everything else that we do we cater for diversity, why are we not catering for diversity when it comes to hybrid work. And I also agree with him that it cannot be a binary discussion, it cannot be, everybody is never at work, or everybody is always at work. And I don't believe in a solution that says one size fits all. It needs to be up to an individual, the team and the actual work that they have to do.

Chris Rainey 5:37
Matt, what do you think? What do you think the reason is, then, because these leaders are seeing the research. They're seeing the data just as we are. But it's still demanding. You have to be in the office these free days of the week? Is it because it's a generational issue? No, because they come from a different generation that can be a part of it, is because it's just hard, is it because it's just hard. Now we're talking about making a, we're talking about creating a, an experience as individual and unique to each person, right, which is really hard to do, is that why we're so fast to combat because it's just too hard to face, the alternative, which is going to take a lot of work time and you're gonna make mistakes and

Matt Burns 6:19
control. Yeah, I don't want to speak for all leaders, but I can speak from personal experience. I've worked predominantly for global organisations. And the last role that I had in the CHRO, I was one of two people in my office and a team of 2422 people work off site, either across the country or across the world. In some cases, my current team at bento, HR is completely remote. And it's way more difficult as a leader to manage work when people aren't in the same office as you because you have to be more intentional about productivity, feedback, conversations around performance gives you much better about delegation follow up if you much stronger about being thoughtful about inter intervention points, because you can't just simply rely upon the fact of, Oh, I saw you in the hallway, Chris, I forgot to mention, let's have this conversation. I can't control your schedule and say, hey, I want to meet right now, I popped by your desk, let's have this conversation. It's a different, it's a different dynamic. And it's more difficult as a leader I have found to do this remotely. That being said, the world doesn't revolve around me as the leader. If nothing else is a leader. My job I've always thought was the facilitate it was I've always grew up in a world of servant leadership. So if my employees wanted more flexibility, or one of the ability to work from home, or I needed to leave the work two hours early for an appointment, my answer was always yes. Because it's the give and take, and you find space in there so that people can live their best lives, but also deliver to the organisation purpose, and you try and find the soft spot there. And, you know, let's be honest, if somebody's not performing, it doesn't matter whether they're at work or at home, you still have the obligation as a leader to manage their performance. It's just it requires more intentionality. Now, I think Sarah said it really well. There are some activities that let's be honest, they're better in person. If we're doing team building activities, I'm sorry, I've been to enough wine conversations over zoom to know, it's not as fun as meeting for drinks at Friday afternoon, after a long week. Yeah, it's not the same to do a performance conversation with my manager about my career development. If I'm doing so over email, like there are some things that make sense to do in person. And we we're not trying to say to Sarah's point that it's binary, we're saying that let's be thoughtful about the types of social interactions that occur at work, and figure out what makes sense because it doesn't make any more sense to say to somebody come to the office for eight and a half hours a day, sit at your cubicle, stare at your laptop, with no interaction from your colleagues and call that work either. That doesn't feel like that's an genuine use of people's time as well. So I'm thinking, it's really about fitting the activity to the purpose, Chris, and just trying to find a spot that makes sense. And for leaders, it might mean that you have to test yourself and learn and grow. But we'd have three years of practice. So if you've just stubbornly stuck to what worked for you for the last 20 years and haven't evolved for the last three years and kind of Shame on you, because there was an opportunity there for you to learn some skills and build some tools. And I know I'm papering over this and making it intentionally combative, because I think it's worth challenging. I understand it's not that easy. But I also don't think the solution is everyone go back to the office five days a week. That doesn't seem like a good solution, either. It doesn't account for all the nuances that affect people's lives day to day.

Chris Rainey 9:27
Yeah. But

Sara Milesson 9:29
then on the on the leadership part. Yes. I think that what what everything that you said matters on on how you view yourself as a leader and how you view yourself as a servant leader to your team. That is what we asked for pretty pandemic as well. It's just been amplified in this setting. You can no longer be a half ounce manager to be honest. If you're if you have remote teams, you have to show up and be really good at something. But leaders are also humans, so they also have days when they are not at 100% of their game right So we also have to have a little bit of reflection also not only from a leadership perspective, but also from an employee perspective. What are my expectations on my leader? And how do I verbalise them to make sure that we are on par with each other? That's not a this is something that management needs to fix, or I'm on six. I think it's a responsibility and everyone's great.

Chris Rainey 10:24
Yeah. And I think everyone listening can can agree is hard. And,

Matt Burns 10:31
Chris, here's what I would I would add, Chris, that same report that talked about open AI CEO talked about how remote work has been challenged for technology companies in the very same breath. He says, Some of my best employees are remote workers. Yeah,

Chris Rainey 10:44
sure. You just say that? Yeah. It's kind of Yeah,

Sara Milesson 10:49
it's hard even for them. Right. Yeah.

Chris Rainey 10:52
I want a one. I wonder what their thoughts are when they read that the demand is there, his own remote employees are like what? What's going on? It is interesting. Let's, let's talk about some examples of companies, Matt, who are some examples of companies that you've come across that are doing a great job. And so I wanted

Matt Burns 11:15
to focus in on technology companies, because the article dealt predominantly with worst thing that happened to tech is this advent of remote work. So we often in the broader, you know, industry, I've never worked in tech as an HR leader. But we often looked at Tech, as you know, Netflix and Apple and Google as kind of like as you were shining lights of what employee culture could be. They had sprawling campuses and Michelin star chefs and all these wonderful places that you could go to and work. And those of us in retail, were trying to figure out how we could order extra paper clips for the end of the week in terms of making things happen. So I often look at Tech as the example of how things worked really well. But the honest truth is that Tech has had a tough go the last few years as a lot of organisations overstated their growth objectives, and they've had a lot of significant layoffs in the tech industry. And it's causing a lot of pressure in those organisations to deliver results. And unfortunately, what you see Chris is organisations when they feel pressure, revert back to what is comfortable, and this case means going back to the office. Now to answer your question, there are many companies out there that have done remote work really well. I think about three GitLab is one example of an organisation that's been remote first, since the very beginning. Yeah, was impossible plus employees. It's a technology company that's gobbling up market share that is growing like weeds and is having significant success. I also look at a company like Zapier, similar story. Zapier is not a technology company that's predicated on integrations and collaboration and wouldn't you know it, they've been able to do that with 1000 plus employees since the beginning. And then last but not least, I look at a company like Ceridian 6000 employees spread across the world in HCM technology company that has employees scattered everywhere, but seemingly is publicly traded a billion plus dollars in revenue 6000 employees unable to make hybrid work, work as it were, and the vast majority of employees aren't coming to an office five days a week. So there's lots of examples out there to look at. But to our earlier point, it just requires a greater amount of intentionality from the organisation and its employees to make it work. It's a shared responsibility. But there are lots of examples. Base Camp is another one organisations that have been remote first, since the very beginning, if you build it into your DNA, obviously much more easy to continue that path, harder to transition if you've been a people first company in office first, but it is possible to make that switch.

Chris Rainey 13:34
Yeah, I love the fact you said get lab I interviewed their global head of remote work, no surprise, they have a global head of remote work for an all remote company. And I've interviewed many other heads of remote, which is a new job. Now that seems to be a springing up left, right and centre. And one of the things that I found across all of those companies that you mentioned that because I've interviewed all of their leaders, is they all have an open source work policy. So what that means, therefore Listen, is that anyone in the business can see at any given time what anyone's working on. And they can contribute to that which is completely a massive cultural shifts were in the past, it was like the most thing you are the more access you have to information. And that was like a, you know, part of now they kind of got rid of all of that structure and said, anyone can see anyone's project, you could click on Chris, what's he working on? Who's he working with? Where are they, in terms of of their journey on that particular project? And you can often contribute to that. That's a big shift. Obviously, there are some other projects that are sensitive that obviously only certain people have access to, but the vast majority of work is open sourced and have created more collaboration, more networking, you know, the challenge that companies have now have have that knowledge share when you work remote. If you're new, for example, coming to a business, in an office in an in person office, you had that organic knowledge share, that kind of happened. And those interactions then are recreating that using technology. EEG, which I think is really cool. And it also fosters that shared responsibility of collaboration, despite the distances you have between you, as well. So that's something I've seen that people are getting this right. They've really shifted that. And more worked on well, and

Matt Burns 15:15
it actually, it it torpedoes an argument around accountability that often exists with remote work. People say remote work reduces accountability, because you can't see people and therefore you can't actually control what they're doing. Yeah. But when you offer open source, there's no greater accountability, being able to see what people are working on. So yeah, again, it dispels this idea of I've I've had a lot of bosses over the course of my career, some which were quite micromanaging, oriented. But nobody actually ever leaned over my shoulder for eight hours a day and looked at what I was doing every single hour, but they gave the illusion of accountability. Open Source actually is transparency can also lead to accountability as well. So I think the more we discussed this, Chris, the more I'm convinced that it's just a matter of us need to shift the way we look at things, versus to dispel the wave of remote work being, you know, if people work from home, they're not doing eight hours a day of work, or they're not contributing to the company's objectives. And they can't be as creative. Like, you're right. If we apply the same thinking and the same paradigms, and we apply the same tired habits that we've brought to the workplace for the last 100 years, then you're right, it's not going to be the same. But if you shift the way the culture works, you have the opportunity to increase all of those aspects. And a for people flexibility. So I think it's just a matter of making that shift. And it's clear that a lot of organisations are struggling with that shift.

Sara Milesson 16:29
And for me, honestly, guys, it's also like, how do you how do you measure success? How do you know that you were productive before? What What was that it's based upon? It has to be based on some sort of KPI or the money you made or whatever, whatever. Has that particular sense of measurement dramatically shifted since news and people working from home? If that's the case, yeah, then I understand your argument and see what needs to come back to the office. But if that's not the case, then maybe just maybe they are actually working, even though you can see them.

Chris Rainey 17:01
Yeah, just because the person is in the office doesn't mean they're actually delivering an output now. Yeah, I, yeah. I've seen people work more hours than me and do less. Right. You know, we all know that as well. And it's so funny, because I mean, Shane was joking about our KPIs in our previous company before we started this business. And the KPIs had nothing to do with output. It was like, How many hours did you spend on the phone? Yeah, so we use in sales, right? So the measurements were how many phone calls you made, per day, how many hours of conversation you had, but that has nothing to do with how many sales you're making, which is everything I can keep going. And we didn't notice at a time, we were obviously just locked in early in our career. And everyday our manage Well, Chris, you've done this many hours, you've done this, somebody calls, there were times you're sitting there like it has nothing to do with the amount of sales that you do with people being rewarded for doing free hours for hours on the phone, but they haven't even done a deal. Or a sale. Right? So you're like, Whoa, we tried to measure right now. Like what, what's, what's going on. And I remember I had a hilarious meeting with my HR team, they took me into meeting to talk to me about the fact that my performance was was wasn't as high as it should be. But I had the highest number of sales in the company. They're like, Chris, you're only doing one and a half hours on the phone. So if you did free, then you'd have doubled the sales. I was like, it doesn't work that way. The reason that I have one and a half hours and they have free is I'm having higher quality conversations with the right people. And then speaking to hundreds of people that aren't even buyers of our product. But trying to explain that to the team as a as a 20 year old. We're like, what are you anyways? It's just a good example. Right? Like you could have someone doing all sending all the right signals, but they're not actually delivering it isn't

Sara Milesson 18:53
that great? I mean, you were 20 some years ago. But we're still saying that that's the way some of our CEOs are still saying that that's the way that we shouldn't measure. If people are actually showing up to work, we're not showing up.

Chris Rainey 19:08
Yeah, some are for example, I think to share from lobby come to that get back get lab is another thing that again, other companies that I've seen do does really well is they document everything, every single product. So for example, if that person was to leave tomorrow, or that team just disappeared, they would have a detailed document of all the processes, all the systems, all of the templates, how it works, everything. And you have to have that again, if you don't if you're not does something a mouse or you're not in a way that I know you agree with this one, make sure unless something means Shane learned the hard way as as as founders, when we stepped away from from managing everything, which is we obviously what we had to do when we first started the company. We had to start documenting everything because you realise that just because it lives in Chris's head or Shane's head doesn't doesn't mean it doesn't help. It doesn't help anyone so we have to start documenting everything. So when someone comes into the Business and they working remote HR leaders, they can go and see and access everything and understand every single function. And we have documented in real detail every element.

Sara Milesson 20:11
Think about that from the successful CEOs of tech companies that you mentioned before matter, we were talking about them. And you know how you revert back to something that you feel that this is what brought me success. And now I'm in a different context or going up to go back to being in the office. I do not see those particular people as being people of documentations. I, you know, if I just look at them and who they are and their personalities, how do they, what is creativity to them? And how do they act creatively, they do that by interacting with other people. And you only can do that if you have people around you all the time. Ergo, they're saying that the only way to be creative, and the only way to be productive is to act exactly like me, because I'm the CEO. But it's an interesting thought, in the sense. Okay, so documentation. How?

Chris Rainey 21:01
Yeah, yeah, again, it's possible role

Matt Burns 21:04
specific. I mean, Chris, I remember there was a study in 2020. And I think, fall 2020. Google, everyone knows Google. And they did a study of productivity for their engineers. So very much a productivity based role, very easy to measure. And Google, probably the one of the best jobs of any organisation of measuring employee sentiment and performance. So when they measured sentiment and performance in the fall of 2026 months into a pandemic, they actually were surprised to find the people struggling most in this new world of work where new employees, people that were new in the organisation and new enrol, so when they dove deep, and they started to have townhall conversations and meet with employees, they found out that documentation was one of the big gaps that people missed out on knowing where information was, but also who to go to for answers, which traditionally, Google meant, you go down the hallway, by somebody's cubicle, you have lunch with somebody, and you fill in those knowledge gaps. So what a Google do, they began to double their efforts to document practices, document SOPs, create open source sources of knowledge to fill in those gaps. So that new employees, whether that be in the organisation, or in the role could catch up. And when they did that, would you know it their performance rose to meet their peers. So if you Google, who is again, a lot of times held up as an example of what to do, right? They struggled as well with this. So we understand that documentation may not be your number one priority. It's not frankly, one of my favourite things to be doing. But when you work with remote teams, you if you want to transfer knowledge, you have to create a single source of truth. Otherwise information is being passed around. And it's all being based on context, and on leaders preferences, and you have inconsistency and congruence ease.

Sara Milesson 22:42
But don't you think that that's one of the very main reasons why some of these CEOs are saying they don't like remote work, because they hate documentation, they hate everything that goes with how to be a good leader in remote work. Second, it's easier to just have everyone

Chris Rainey 22:56
it's like, remote works like shine a spotlight on bad leaders, hasn't it? Like if you're, if you're a bad leader, and then you've gone remote, it's just 10x. Or one of those. And if you're a great leader, you was an easier transition. And actually a lot of the things that you were doing already, making sure you check in with your employees, making sure that you have those conversations, like all of those things that you mentioned before, you can lean even more into those as well with the help of a technology, of course. So yeah, communication is a big element of that as well, all companies that I've seen doing great remote work, they've have incredible, great, great communication strategies, very asynchronous communication, making sure that they understand how to communicate across different time zones, using technology for that, right, even if it's something simple, like at the end of your email saying, hey, if this isn't, I appreciate this, we come to you during a time that you're, you know, in a different time zone, don't feel obligated to reply. Even just having things like that, that people don't end up seeing. We saw some research from Microsoft from teams that they realised that, you know, people were working over their entire weekend to reply back to an email, but because that CEO sent it on a Friday evening about realising the knock on effect did our den have across all of those poor people, and we don't really realise sometimes, and I've done I've made that mistake before my team, just because I'm up at 1am thinking about work and I drop an email, not really thinking, the knock on effect of work that it has on them. So it's really important that we get that communication piece, right.

Matt Burns 24:32
But those are leaders. I mean, we've done we've done thought leaders a lot in this conversations I want to try leaders, like like and it's it the historical bias around leaders is such that you bring people to you when you want them to do work. And the you centre, the work around the leader. So it's a centralised form of communication, centralised form of accountability. It's almost like a hub and spoke method. If you look at transportation EPs in remote work that doesn't that doesn't actually make sense, because in remote work, you need to create decentralised forms of decision making decentralised forms of communication decentralised forms of creativity, which makes the leader not at the centre of it. And for some leaders, that's really hard, both in terms of how they lead in the past, yeah, and also for their egos, and also for the tools. So by empowering people, you actually create leadership at the individual contributor level. And you can still create touch points and checkpoints to do that, but it requires a fundamental shift in how you look at leadership, if leadership for you as always been holding court, and sending people out to do work, having them report back, that will not work in a report remote setting and the same degrees in the office. Because you, you rely upon so many assumptions that are being made that you can't affirm in a remote setting. So you fundamentally have to shift work, and you have to trust people in a way that you haven't trusted them before. And that for some leaders is really, really hard to do when you're being held accountable by your leaders to get certain jobs done. So again, we go back to some things would benefit from being in the office, maybe you need to bring people in, there's a SWAT team needs to come together because you have a special project, tight timelines, high urgency, high visibility, okay, fine. But if someone's doing their mundane week to week tasks, we can afford them more flexibility, more autonomy, more agency to get the work done. And as a leader, I mean, just letting go a bit and finding that space. And I get it, it doesn't happen overnight. There's learning process that has to occur, but it can include accountability, it can include communication, and Chris, in a world where I don't know about you, but I've never felt more expected to check my emails today as I did ever before. Like, the reality is we're all living in a global world 24/7 365. And the expectation around response times means that we're all essentially working kind of asynchronously anyway. So it just, it's a migration more towards that way of working, as opposed to fitting things into the traditional nine to five schedule.

Sara Milesson 27:02
I want to add to that, because I think it's not only what type of tasks that you're doing, but it's also who you work with. I mean, even before pandemic, my job has been global, it that means that even if I did go to a particular office, half of the people that I that are my stakeholders, were not in the same office. And we didn't even have they do count, we call each other on the phone. And we didn't

Chris Rainey 27:28
remember those things called phone calls. Yeah.

Sara Milesson 27:33
Right. Yeah. I mean, we are kidding ourselves. If we say that this is a brand new era for everybody, everyone who's ever worked in the global setting, has already experienced remote working. Why is it all of a sudden, they were so scared to do

Chris Rainey 27:50
such a good point. I think the one of the problems I am having Matt, you mentioned about never more precious to have email. But now after check flight five or six platforms, like Slack, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp email, is that's a, that's a whole nother challenge as well, like technology is also is great. But we need to make sure we get it right. If I find a balance, so. And again, it's part of those remote companies of working remote, clearly, you have to have a set of practices around how and where we communicate. Because that can also get pretty tricky. And this is our chat to have these conversations versus the chat to have those conversations. And that's not, you know, go crazy. And it's funny, cuz Shane was like to me yesterday, you said, Hey, did you get that contract I sent over? And I was like, No, I haven't seen anywhere. And it was in my text messages. Like, it's so obvious. But I looked every single place. But my text messages, I was like, Okay, we need to when we talk about these things versus where we communicate, you know, you and you have to have, you have to create processes around that. And be very clear. To avoid that miscommunication. A lot of the things that we're talking about is lack of communication. Like most, I'd say, 90% of the issues that I hear people raising stems from bad communication, as well. And it gets, as you said, it gets even harder when you're remote in terms of how you communicate, as well. So I'm sorry, to those leaders and managers, we're not trying to pick on you, we're also in the same position as well, I find it just as challenging. But just because it's difficult doesn't mean that's an excuse, just to default back to where we were before, because it's really easy to do that, you know, and I've had to learn that from my team who I, I originally, also personally decided to default back to the old way because it was easier and it wasn't better. It's just what I was used to. And my team was like, Hey, Chris, no, you know, if we're coming in, we need to come in for a reason. And I was like, okay, all right. And I've been working with them. And today, for example, we're celebrating some wins. So we're all meeting as a team. We're going to do virtual Formula One racing today after work wherever that is. And then we're gonna go to a bar and play table tennis in a bar, so it's nice to set Write those wins come together and, and, and celebrate. And I think those things are best done in person. So everyone's coming to meet. And if it was missed anything we've missed a lot, we cover quite a lot. There. Yeah, I have parting parting piece of advice for the audience. Sarah was

Sara Milesson 30:19
like what you were saying first that just because it's hard doesn't mean that you get to revert back to what what's comfortable for whomever you is, right. And the title that you hold. So just, I have that in mind. Yeah, as

Matt Burns 30:36
well. I would just I would just add, sorry, Chris, I would just add that I think this is a great time for us to deploy some empathy, like everybody is feeling the pressure in 2023, whether you're leaders, whether your employees and ask yourselves, whether or not the decisions you're making are in service to you and only you or until your broader team because the reality is, if you can work with your broader team and be a servant leader, then you'll be able to empower them to do their best work, which will as a leader ultimate, make your life a lot easier as well. Yeah.

Chris Rainey 31:07
Well, I think that's a perfect, perfect place to end it. Thank you for joining us. And coming along and Matt, good to see you. As always.