2021 Stern Innovation Conference: Brainstorms & Working Sessions

[Music] all right i now have the pleasure of introducing my my very dear friend and colleague colin anthony who is professor at in my department at management organizations department at nyu she studies the role of new analytical technologies in the production of knowledge and also studies the emergence of new technologies in technology-enabled industries and she also studies the effects of identity on innovation choices she's going to moderate the next speaker and so i'm going to let her introduce our next speaker and let's see oh yeah there she is hello callan welcome hi melissa thank you so much uh and i am very excited to introduce our next speaker uh it is my pleasure to introduce claire tandy claire is the innovation product manager at paypal and she is a bay area native born raised and educated in the world of silicon valley claire holds a bachelor in engineering and a master's in management science and engineering both from stanford but her intellectual footing is actually much broader so claire combines backgrounds in marketing analytics classical archaeology digital humanities and design thinking to pattern find and analyze the human behaviors underlying technical systems in her role at paypal claire works to connect the dots between individual innovative action and scalable organizational change and today claire is going to share with us how virtual innovation in teams has changed over the last two years so this is something i have been looking forward to all day um so you know for folks who are joining us please use the q a to ask any questions for claire during her presentation claire thank you so much for being with us and welcome thank you so much professor anthony i really appreciate that that really wonderful introduction and i'm so excited to share with all of you today a few learnings that i've had in my role and working with people at paypal throughout the last two years or so of working virtually i titled this session a quasi-case study on innovating virtually across the 20-21 intern cohort and this is really because this is the case study that i'll be looking at and sharing some learnings from today but the underlying learnings are much broader and really come from the work that our team does in the innovation lab at paypal paypal is interesting because we don't actually have a formalized r d department so one of the things that we look at and really try and prioritize is creating this grassroots movement of innovation throughout the company not just localized one specific team and uh from this session i'm really hoping you'll take away some best practices that we've developed as well as just hear a fun retrospective story and understand you know maybe see how your experience with innovation has changed over the last two years so i'm going to get this off with the story uh that goes actually back in time a little bit further in march of 2020 i was a graduate ta for a stanford undergraduate course on on innovation that had shifted like everything else in the world uh to an all virtual format how to do really anything virtually was totally top of mind once that first email came out uh to the students letting us all know why don't you head over you know head home a little bit early for spring break and we'll see what happens you know later but in the frankly chaos that followed innovation was present but highly reactive the remaining school year was a mixture of cancelled classes postponed activities and the one thing that i was now looking forward to was a now virtual master's internship with paypal my role at paypal in the summer of 2020 was as an intern in their innovation labs the team that i now work full time with these innovation labs are highly physical spaces located across the globe ranging from singapore to scottsdale to san jose where people gather spontaneously share ideas attend training working sessions etc to really try and bolster their innovative skills in their daily life paypal as i mentioned is unique in the fact that we work on these innovation labs and with our innovation team to inspire this innovation which is one of our core values which we define as creating amazing experiences for our customers thinking differently looking end-to-end and practicing empathy by putting ourselves in our customers the team i'm on specifically is responsible for increasing the creative output of employees throughout the company we help our employees learn new ways to problem solve to with training workshops and things other uh sessions and we really focus on improving this ideation technique across the company while building prototypes on platforms like augmented reality blockchain and even occasionally robots and what i'm going to share uh illustrated from the three experiences i'll describe are lessons that we've learned through two years of remote work but moving gears again back to 2020 instead of thriving in this in-person innovation lab environment gathering with other interns on campus i was sitting alone at my desk that i had frantically picked up from ikea the week before they closed before sitting down for a future of team calls zoom calls all of the online virtual video calls that you've heard so much about today and while that particular role had its own set of opportunities and challenges one experience specifically that reshaped how i thought about virtual innovation was a collaboration experience put on by our university team and that's the experience from which i'm going to share a few lessons today now imagine if you will you're a small business maybe some of you don't have to imagine uh and work in small businesses or know exactly where i'm going with this in any case mo think back in your mind and it's roughly july of 2020. the pandemic has been in full swing for about three months in the san francisco bay area where i'm currently located and from and near santa clara county which is the location of paypal's headquarters and which was also the very first place in the country to announce on march 16 2020 a full shelter in place order in response to the growing code 19 pandemic all non-essential businesses have been closed big box stores are allowed to remain open due to selling critical items like toilet paper and your niche business that often relied on things like corporate scam corporate sales farmers markets in-person trade shows and distribution to local specialty shops all of which have been halted for several months due to the pandemic is bleeding money what do you do this situation faced businesses across the country including the handful who agreed to partner with paypal's university program team to leverage our interns experience to develop an innovative path forward for these individual businesses while some companies had specific problem statements and others had kind of a more general one this was the gist that united all of them help us get through covid now fast forward a year it's july of 2021. from 12 months ago i a lot has changed since spring of this year uh the bay area has been relatively unrestricted having uh shut down and opened up with the fault rise and fall of cases santa clara county which 17 months ago had ordered the first ever shelter in place has over 87 of their eligible population vaccinated again another handful of businesses partner with the paypal university program team but this time they have a different ask help us figure out what comes next with these two problem statements in mind what do we do now to get through covid and then the what do we do next to get uh beyond covid that two teams of interns a year apart in 2020 and 2021 formed each summer these six to seven teams of interns had a week one week while working in flash groups which were optimally sized for innovation with roughly four to seven people apiece including one to two full-time mentors um to meet both years virtually on uh with their respective business owners and then in one week as i said on top of their regular full-time job come up with a pitch deck to present the business owner with an actionable plan forward a panel of internal leaders then would judge their presentations and additional output based on a 60-second video that summarized their analysis recommendations and next steps as well as how innovative their ideas were in 2020 i took part as a master's student in this project as an intern and in 2021 i joined as a mentor as a full-time employee in both cases the groups i worked with had relatively similar backgrounds and demographics mostly male mostly software engineers with academic backgrounds ranging from anything to a about to be a college undergrad junior to an mba student returning after a long career both groups also followed a similar blueprint when it came to their innovation process and this is an innovation process that we identify and talk a lot about paypal and with our various teams we work with because the thing about innovation is it isn't just the ideation part you really need that communication to implement the ideas and then finally that work to implement and get those ideas delivered whether it's as a prototype or fully scaled no doubt you're familiar with some of these from your own experience but i'll take a moment to kind of briefly describe each of these and the outcomes and purpose of describing them in ideation you want as many ideas as you can in innovation it really is a case of a quantity leading to quality and i know uh dr uh schilling has done done a fair amount of work on this therefore ideation and brainstorming or whatever method you use really is crucial and next communication working in groups has benefits but identifying and using reliable channels of communication to communicate effectively really is a prerequisite for success identifying what those channels are when you're working in a group like this should happen early and you should choose channels that lead to painless adoption and finally implementation think of this as the actually doing the work part in these cases the work of following through on the ideas proposed understand which would be best to implement making the pitch deck and then creating the video simple right while these three components of innovation are present generally i do call them out here because they're particularly relevant to see and identifying the differences in how these teams worked across the years i think it's also relevant for this topic of innovating virtually to bring in a third comparison an in-person very pre-covered in 2017 design project that i worked on though we had a slightly longer time frame of about three weeks instead of one week that just was the same work in the team to develop an idea for an external client's business make a prototype instead of a presentation and then create a 60 second video demonstrating its value now with this additional example we have three different cases where flash teams work together on projects where one of the criteria for their evaluation was how innovative they were considering the drivers of innovation virtual or not let's take a look at how each team implemented the three key components of the innovation process and how they differed so first ideation in 2017 our group in person was formed randomly right before we listened to the company pitch their problem we gathered in a room in a couple rooms and started talking about what ideas for the company might be i'm sure you've been in a brainstorming session like this at some point where you're all frantically scribbling down ideas on post-its putting them up on a whiteboard moving them around and this usually culminates in you taking a picture of the ensuing mess on the whiteboard and coming next back the next day to squint at that tiny little picture you took to then ultimately vote and decide on a particular idea that you are happy to move forward with but the good news is this did lead to a clear vision that we all felt worthy of tate was worthy of taking to the next step now by contrast in 2020 though our group was also formed randomly we met for the first time when we were all virtually added by an innovation uh by a university program team member to a slack team that they had suggested we set up brainstorming in this case took the form of adding ideas and thoughts to the slack channel and then adding further paragraphs and thoughts about those particular ideas on different whiteboarding environments whether that was a shared cloud document um or some a mind mapping tool like a miro board or team's whiteboard everyone had their space in the document and we then used asynchronous but not anonymous voting like the post-it notes to find out which one was the most popular if this does sound familiar it's a very similar process to the one that was done in person however because it was done virtually and by people who weren't uh extraordinarily familiar with these tools it meant that it was done without the benefit of being in person to read body language and to assess buy-in and general uh consensus around ideas for the before the voting began while this has benefits for reducing bias and reducing the things like group think it does also mean that it's harder to understand whether everyone in the group is willing to fully buy into the end result idea and now in 2021 the mood was different we met at first when one of the group members initiated the slack channel for collaboration instead of being told to do so by the university team we met officially for the first time in the meeting with the business but already had a debrief meeting scheduled to get to know each other and to start brainstorming and brainstorming in this case meant following best practices turning our cameras and mics off for 10 minutes to create a list independently not in a shared document before throwing them all up onto a virtual whiteboard and moving them around together once we narrowed it down to two ideas we used an anonymous poll and slack to vote and finally we had our idea now if you take a step back and compare 2020 and 2021 you'll see a lot of the same virtual collaboration tools however the tools weren't used the same way for brainstorming in 2020 the focus was on replicating the ability in an in-person environment to use a whiteboard to share process and select those ideas like the team in 2017 had done but virtually by contrast in 2021 you had a group of people who were very familiar and comfortable using these tools they had been well trained on them throughout their experience both in university and now working remotely for several months it's essential for brainstorming for everyone to come up with an essential set of ideas independently when you start from nothing together all subsequent ideas tend to be influenced by whatever the first suggestion was however when you dedicate time to brainstorm independently first this improves the quality and diversity of ideas and doesn't bias the ensuing discussion but in person this can be hard to do you naturally pay attention to the people around you how quickly are they scribbling down notes on the post-it notes i know i've done this you always pick up and look around and say oh is someone writing more than i am but when you turn your mic and camera off you're fully alone with the exception maybe of the pets and children that were discussed earlier the lack of contextual information that does make this soon-to-be-hand discussion harder actually gives you more freedom of space to truly think your own thoughts use this benefit to technology when brainstorming virtually and in general use the tools that you have to enhance aspects of the experience that can get lost while in person now the teams have come up with their idea and the second part that becomes important is further communication to actually work to execute on this idea more specifically discussing what the communication channels that we will be working with are in the 2017 case the group members had everything ranging from in-person body language to texting each other on a group whatsapp communication to uh asynchronous kind of notes and and doodles left on whiteboards but what this meant was in 2020 when there was no option for in-person communication and the closest anyone could get was those video calls on which they could uh discuss shared face-to-face documents this meant that asynchronous communication became increasingly important whether that was a a slack or a mirror apologies for that um these these were really the tools that everyone had to work on in the different different times this also meant that because most of the channels were these asynchronous or sometimes synchronous communications it meant that it was really hard to read the tones of interactions is this one joking is this one sarcastic is this one excited or concerned and there's not really an opportunity to get a sense of anyone on your team beyond the occasional emoji that they put into the slack message this lack of tone is a crucial difference from in-person communication and one that i'm sure we've all felt acutely over the past year this lack of ability to honestly even get a read on if you're landing with someone in the room or have failed or if your audience has failed to understand a point you're trying to get across is something that creates a fair amount of inconsistency and uncertainty especially when speaking with an unfamiliar group for innovation one of the things this is really important for is that inconsistency and uncertainty do not create psychological safety a crucial component for effective communication and ideation and now consider the contrast that in 2021 the team actually started using face-to-face meetings first for that opportunity to get some root on each other by structuring time for icebreakers casual warm-up chats and clarifying working hours setting those limits and boundaries as well as you know sharing a few basic likes dislikes the team had a better sense of how to interpret the barrage of asynchronous communication that was uh flowing almost at all hours again because this was a flash team experience not something we encourage you to replicate for all of your working experience moving forward and i'll say as a side note on this in general for innovation virtual or otherwise and your everyday work get to know something about your teammates when you're meeting as a group for the first time spend the first five minutes talking especially if you've hired new team members who've joined a fully remote organization this makes a world of difference in their willingness to share opinions ideas and to just get business done better this is really about changing your mindset from we're wasting meeting time to we're developing a better read on each other and practicing communicating to be more effective you'll amp up the psychological safety in the room as people also learn to predict others reactions and honestly you'll just feel like more of a team but now back to the other communication channels although i referred to them a couple of times as asynchronous channels the 2021 team was much more comfortable going between synchronous and asynchronous for many of the real-time messaging apps that they used while this does represent an evolution in the actual technology because everything from slack to mirror to teams as we heard from the teams team earlier today have made changes and have evolved their technology over the course of the pandemic these changes resulted ultimately from people wanting to use these tools differently and learning how to use these tools differently there are more nuances now to each communication method and from frantic slacks real time discussing you know who should take a question in the meeting to sporadic updates on different types of progress and in case you're wondering about something that seems to have been left out in all of these three cases email was used almost exclusively for communication with the project coordinator for setting up and confirming meetings and for identifying what were major milestones that needed to be reached or presented so for virtual innovation my recommendation is find the innovation channels that are most comfortable for your team to use what do they spontaneously gravitate toward what comes naturally and within those channels it may sound simple but think about what are you actually encouraged to do within them is it better for real-time or staggered communication can you use only voice calls or have messages send themselves later so you might be up late working but uh you don't need your team member to receive that email right away find a balance between the two to make space when you need it and come together when you can now gone through ideation and communication and uh you've come up with an idea your team is excited about you've established effective communication patterns and what comes next the third component and arguably one of the most important parts in actually having effective innovation implementation this is really the culminating step of innovation and honestly it's always hard two things that are hard about it time management and equitable not necessarily fully equal distribution of work in these three cases implementation consisted of delivering a potential idea or prototype to the client in the form of either a presentation or a looks like prototype and that 60 second video demonstrating the work that was done while the timeline might be accelerated doing this in one to three weeks uh sometimes it isn't this is this is a generally realistic sprint timeline for many companies for a particular set of innovative related action but in a lot of cases you are looking at longer term goals especially with proactive innovation strategies you really need to to do something like this you need to come up with your ideas you need to discuss and communicate throughout the duration of the project and then finally you do need to implement the ideas in the 2017 in person version our client liberal was a physical object to bring in and then a video describing the work that we had done in person our group fell back on tried and true methods for low resolution prototyping ranging from cardboard laser cutter laser cutting foam core maybe a bit of photoshop over several iterations that led to something we were happy to show the client and the distribution of work was pretty equal because it was all done in person during this kind of flash team experience and i'll say from personal experience when you're in a room and someone breaks out the hot glue gun and cardboard it's pretty hard not to participate and then to create the final video team members divided the work by creating a storyboard and then uploading uh different versions that uh pieces of the film that were shot by the individual team members to a shared drive with one person volunteering to do some final editing in exchange for missing a few of the last prototyping sessions however in the 2020 version distribution of work was put lightly an issue and i'll point out that none of these teams had any specific state of the hierarchy as far as allocation of work that was something that in some of them a small version came up naturally but there wasn't a kind of in-place existing hierarchy to rely on the 2020 team challenge resulted in part also from everyone being slightly unclear on what the work required actually was and then having vastly different standards to which they wanted the work to be done this resulted in things like remaking presentations rewriting scripts for the videos and then reproducing effort in a lot of different ways opportunities for miscommunication are increasingly present when people feel obliged to make executive decisions on the fly without clear ways to communicate to the other members of their team in one sense this was a result directly from the challenges of the communication channels established earlier however it also came from the imperative to get something done in a short amount of time something that is particularly relevant when working under a time crunch due to the virtual nature of the environment the video was in 2020 assumed right off the bat to be an individual's workload while one team member wrote a script and the other team members provided a few options for video content or stock photos to use it was ultimately up to one person to alone in their house over the weekend and working into the night take the task together and make something realized the group didn't have the opportunity to see the video until it was finished and submitted for judging but in 2021 by contrast the team members set up the expectation up front that they wanted to come together and put in what felt like an equitable distribution of work up to and including the video this meant that not only did we have more live working sessions on meetings where we would all log on with video on or off and work synchronously on different parts of the slideshow or documentation we were able to do this with us we were able to get real-time input from our team members in doing this while this was and i i was deciding whether to say that there then but this was a more significant initial time burden since we were juggling several different time zones i think we covered all of the american time zones uh and one or two others and led to some memorable experiences like one team member joining one of these audio calls from a actually from the new york city subway prioritizing the splash innovation project and dedicating time to it during the normal working hours of the day made it something that could be worked on with more active engagement from all the team members at one time and it also just made the experience slightly more fun however we also broke these sessions up none lasted more than an hour and a half straight but we did also have a few during the day and we encouraged people to drop in and out as was necessary for them to complete these and other tasks conflicts were handled real time and stayed as task conflicts instead of spilling over into personal clashes by working this way everyone was able to feel like part of the team and like they were contributing and had an awareness and understanding of decisions being made and the work that was being done when it came to the video we got the trickiest part you know got around the trickiest part by having one person work on it by a screen share while this can veer into backseat driving limiting the length of these sessions enabled us to reaffirm the group's value of the effort and to make it so that no one had to work all weekend so what's the takeaway for virtual innovation work together even when you're apart it is not a waste of time in fact active working sessions enabled you to see what others are doing in real time and to better understand the process while this style of work is not required for every single piece you know for instance we did have drafts and we took and put together a slide uh before editing it's a really important part of the process especially for longer projects because it builds trust among your team members for times when you aren't able to communicate real time so finally to recap use virtual tools to enhance the process of innovation not create recreate in-person experiences we saw this in ideation where in 2020 the team attempted to recreate what works in person while the 2021 team took advantage of the features of virtual work to reduce bias in their initial ideation sessions and in their discovery and voting process in communication when the 2020 team used tools that other had suggested minimally and shifted most of their communication offline the 2021 team initiated contact on the channels they were most comfortable with which enabled them to change between real-time and asynchronous communication depending on the immediate needs of the group members and the project and finally in 2020 implementation work was redone and led to conflict among team members who didn't trust each other whereas in 2021 work was done both together and apart enabling team members to learn each other's working styles and develop trust and understanding of the group members processes well i've hoped i've convinced you on the benefit of using the tools you have effectively i also want to take a really quick step back and note that these three innovation activities were happening in radically different contexts and with different motivations the 2017 activity was a proactive approach to innovation seeking to get ahead of the curve and develop something new while both the 20 and 20 2020 and 2021 examples were reactive the small businesses needed help surviving with their customer base disappearing and evolving from aggressive pivots to survive that they had just done during covid in both cases the issue needed an urgent actionable solution rather than blue sky ideas or broader creative thought while proactive innovation and frankly all innovation has a long history of being done virtually as almost all innovation has been done in person because most of human history has been in person on the flip side most of the innovation that's been done virtually at least recently has been reactive as we've considered how to innovate virtually it's often in place of in-person innovation a second-tier replacement almost to excuse the fact that you can't be together and to address immediate high stakes issues but proactive innovation is what keeps you ahead of the curve if you're always reacting you'll always be behind so as we engage with whatever this new normal becomes start asking yourself how can i find ways to innovate virtually proactively are there opportunities to use native tools differently to create a hybrid model that can enable broader collaboration across locations even without a reactive sense of urgency and finally how can you use new tools to gather creativity at scale and innovate for the longer term future even when not in person with those questions in mind i'll leave you with the final challenge to do the following three things embrace virtual tools when to turn them on and when to turn them off avoid the tech exhaustion whether this is notifications from messages online or audio and video in a brainstorming session be mindful of when and how you're connecting virtually because there's a requirement to opt-in in virtual settings that's easier to ignore when it's happening around you in person be intentional about what's on and what's off and why second make time for that virtual small talk it has a big impact shift your mindset during project work meetings from this is wasting our time to this is teaching us about how we communicate look to learn something about your co-workers that they're willing to share of course even something as simple as you know what what's the weather like near their house or uh you know if they're interested in any sports events that are happening currently and if they do have a pet or a dog make that pet get on camera so you can wave and say how cute it is sharing this basic human curiosity helps you develop empathy and makes you feel like more of a team rather than disembodied boxes on a computer screen and finally support it but don't force it for virtual innovation find what works for the group you're in whether that's fewer or more synchronous working sessions meeting daily or monthly having purely social or minimally purely social time teams are different recognize that it is hard to innovate virtually still there's tools and structures that make it easier be proactive about group size ruthless about time management clear about communication expectations and at the end of the day some things will always work better in person and some will work better virtually and now as we move back to hybrid don't try to recreate these better innovation practices in the physical world keep the learnings that you've gathered and build through this process and build from there thank you very much for your time uh and i look forward to taking questions about this experience uh and innovation at paypal generally so thank you wow thank you so much claire that was fantastic um so we have a bunch of questions uh pouring in um but i thought i would just take a step back first and say i really appreciated this talk i really appreciated the themes that you brought up and how you know you actually paint a really hopeful picture um of distributed work and of virtual innovation such that we don't just have to think about how do we you know translate or attempt to recreate you know online offline onto online but that online itself has all of these you know its own unique features and tools and modes of interacting that themselves enable innovation in different sorts of ways so you know thank you so much that's a very hopeful message uh and certainly resonant so i guess you know building on that i'm curious as a manager how can you foster that comfort with experimentation with digital tools and practices that were important for you know online uh and virtual innovation practices that's a great question uh and definitely something that's really a challenge and i think uh the previous speaker addressed this really well saying that this shift to virtual has been a challenge for everyone and managers especially working you know with a distributed team who maybe was used to seeing each other in person every day um and who now you maybe haven't seen in over a year and have hired on new team members who don't have that understanding of the previous group dynamics or communication that's a really hard situation to be in um and i think for you know helping to in you know imbue this wisdom and and teach these managers to how can you actually kind of build some of that trust build some of that communication i mentioned a couple of the tools but i think starting with how do you how do you as a team communicate is really important and that's something that it's really important to address and take a step back and understand what currently is before you try to change it so what i would say is for managers you know take that second even if it's an hour you know for a week to say what what are the emails that i've been sending what have i been talking about on slack you know what have i been talking about on teams chat whatever it is method is that your company or organization uses for that either real-time communication maybe it's text maybe it's phone calls maybe it's zoom calls teams calls how do you do most of that communication and then when you're looking at kind of that that's a way for you to step back and say how is my team interacting are they interacting enough are they interacting maybe too much and we need a little bit more time for that focused work time so by taking that opportunity to get a read on what the current situation of your team is you can make a more informed decision about how to then go about sharing that information on innovate and innovating virtually with them is your team one that's going to really enjoy kind of a workshop or a session where maybe you bring in someone from the company who has a degree of expertise in it to speak maybe you bring in an outside speaker maybe you lead a session you know and and show your leadership that way um or is your team one that will love to read you know a 20-page article that you send them and encourage those working habits so i would say that that's something where it's really important to understand your team understand what modes of communication they prefer and find channels to kind of train and educate them that fit with what already works fantastic uh that actually segues nicely into a question that we have um any particular strategies you would suggest that managers use for managing uh psychological barriers um for managing innovation during pandemic times that's that's a great question and i know one that we have all faced to varying degrees um it's such a big question especially as the idea of wellness of psychological safety of how do you actually feel included in teams and i know there are you know a good bazillion studies that will will talk to different aspects of this and i encourage you to look those up because they're very interesting and i don't have time to just allude to all of them right now but i would really say you know at the end of the day it comes down to recognizing that the people you work with are also people they're also human they have their own set of baggage they have their own set of expectations of weird things that will make them more or less reluctant to speak up in a specific conversation and it's really about especially in a virtual setting figuring out what are different areas of flexibility what are those areas of autonomy that you can extend to give people that ability to choose what's right for them and it's something that's really frankly really hard and it's really hard because we especially in america aren't necessarily used to or expecting and especially with the last you know there's been an increased focus and awareness on kind of your mental health as something that you need to cultivate something that you need to like your physical health take care of you know in in the course of the pandemic that's something that's been brought up in increasing amount i'd say uh more so than in previous years but that's something where you know in the business setting i don't know that that's quite translated yet so really being aware of is there you know a two hour block i need to have on my calendar just to decompress to take a step back from work to think about something else you know is that something that is enabled by having the flexibility of remote work or i like the the um the dynamic work description from the previous session so i think that that's something where you really as far as tips for managers to kind of improve that be be clear about kind of what you expect because if it's something where you're sending me an email that i'm getting at 10 o'clock at night and i don't know whether or not i need to reply to that that creates uncertainty that creates kind of that sense of do i know what's going on are you expecting a response or are you just letting me know and i can deal with it you know tomorrow midday so really being clear about what are the expectations that you have for that type of work for the boundaries that you need to set and with the clarity of expectations providing the very like the specific space for your uh team to set their own batteries and to say you know hey i go play volleyball you know every week on wednesday afternoons from two to three i need that for my time i need that for you know my mental well-being don't schedule meetings with me that i won't i won't respond to that you know that's an example that might seem silly but it's one of the benefits of especially in the knowledge worker space where you don't necessarily need to be physically doing something for an extended period of time build in that flexibility and provide your teams the opportunity to set those boundaries fantastic point and maybe you know when we think about going back to hybrid some of that you know empathy and boundary modeling i think is something i hope i hope you know we take with us uh from the virtual space um uh another question so a huge part of in-person innovation is chance encounters unplanned water cooler talks with random people outside the team either within an organization or outside how can we simulate this or replace it with another mode uh for innovation and virtual innovation that is such a fabulous thing to wrap up on because i think it is the hardest part and and that's something that i'll be honest we haven't even figured out a really effective way to simulate and to recreate that i think there's there's a story that's told about um i think it's the the bell labs instance where they were you know who files the most patents and it was everyone who is interacting with one specific individual you know with those chance encounters that that in the lunchroom that's by the water cooler how do you somehow replicate that and so a couple of things that you can do is first of all just reach out to random people in your company and this i will say depends a lot on your company's norms as to whether or not this is something that is comfortable that is appropriate um but having that opportunity to talk across silos across organizational boundaries even if it's not necessarily about work even if it's just say you know hey i saw this post on linkedin by you i thought it was really cool do you want to grab you know 15 minutes to chat something like that where you do need to be a little bit more proactive about it and be proactive about setting those opportunities to have those chance encounters even if they're a little less chance and i'll also say that this is something that is increasingly resonant as companies are more globalized and as you have offices that are distributed across the globe how do you actually create those chance encounters when you're not in an office and never will be working in the same office as maybe a portion of your team or a good portion of your company this is something that there are you know opportunities for random connections or if you're able to meet in in a talk or a presentation that you're able to view it's an it's an opportunity for you to be proactive and whether it's posting a reflection on link linkedin is great for this by the way you know posting a reflection posting something you found interesting to start to build your profile not just as you know software engineer x in in what level in what organization but as someone with thoughts you know about other things in the world because then people will start to gravitate towards that and start to just ask you about these things creating that network of connection that goes beyond those physical encounters awesome wonderful well we still have lots of questions but i think i see melissa so our time must be up claire this was fantastic i've got so many notes all over my pages i've learned so much from you so thank you so much for your time and for sharing your experience with us thank you for thank you for having me it's been wonderful thank you so much claire and also thank you so much callan you got you were a fantastic moderator and claire you were a wonderful speaker it was really a joy to hear from you i had some questions i had lined up that i would ask you but we ran out of time so i'll have to ask him offline but thank you again for joining us and i just want to say uh thank you to all of our speakers who uh contributed today we had a really incredible high caliber level of speakers coming today for this this conference and i'm i'm so grateful to all of you i'm also really grateful to our moderators callan natalia and justin you guys were terrific um i would be super remiss if i didn't say thank you first of all to liz chen who did so much of the heavy lifting for this conference so liz could you on could you open up your video so we could see you maybe she's not uh not can't open her video that might not be set up for her to do that there she is liz you did so much of the hard work for putting this thing together and you were amazing and it was seamless and thank you so much and i also want to say thank you to doug bleaker who set up all the i.t which is a bigger job than you might realize and he did a fantastic job so thanks to those guys last but not least i want to say thank you to the folks at the at support this endeavor and thank you to all the attendees for coming and sharing this time with us because without you there would be no point and it wouldn't be possible so we are so grateful that you are here and we hope you will join us for another one of our events coming up be sure to check out our website and our hashtag we'll keep you posted you can follow us and we'll keep you posted on events coming up and that's it folks thanks again [Music] you

2021-10-12 13:38

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