Michael Hyatt:
Hi, I’m Michael Hyatt.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

Michael Hyatt:
And this is Lead to Win, our weekly podcast to help you win at work and succeed at life. Today, we’re going to be talking about what Elon Musk gets wrong about remote work. Megan, you talked to our Business Accelerator clients, our coaching clients about this recently. Why do you think this is an issue today?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, we’ve certainly gone through a seismic shift in how we work and how we think about work. I mean, I don’t think there’s any going back to pre 2020 to that time when the majority of people did not work remotely, when the majority of people worked in the office and maybe had never had an exposure to working remotely.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And so I think on the other side of COVID here we are, 2022, almost everyone, especially knowledge workers have had the experience of working remotely. And there’s a tension because it’s now safe to return to the office. We have these office buildings and employers are thinking to themselves, okay, what am I going to do about this? Meanwhile, the employees have had the benefits of working remotely, which we’re going to get into here in a little bit.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And so I think that this is an inherent tension between what oftentimes employers think makes sense and what employees want for their lives. And of course, right now employees have more power than they’ve ever had to not let that tension be resolved in favor of the organizations like it might have several years ago.

Michael Hyatt:
By the way, interesting fact that I just read this week is Apple’s employees have voted to unionize.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Really?

Michael Hyatt:
And that’s like one of the last companies that I thought would go there, but it’s interesting, the changing power dynamic that’s happening in the workplace.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yep.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay, so half of companies want workers back in the office five days a week, according to research by Microsoft, half of companies. Meanwhile, the same research shows that 52% of employees want remote work. In other words, they admitted to considering new fully remote or hybrid jobs. So that’s kind of an interesting tension between these two.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Right. That’s a setup, which will be interesting to watch it unfold and how it resolves. And we have some predictions I think about that.

Michael Hyatt:
Yeah. So the poster child for in office only is now Elon Musk. So he is famous for a lot of things and including this. And at the end of May, he sent an email to his team and he said, quote, “Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum,” and then he put in parentheses, “(and I mean, italics, minimum) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla.” And then in a followup message, he said, quote, “If you don’t show up, we’ll assume you have resigned.” And when someone asked about it on Twitter, you got to love this response, he says, quote, “They should pretend to work somewhere else.”

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Oh my gosh.

Michael Hyatt:
Wow.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, he’s nothing, if not a lightning rod. So that’s so interesting because it seems that his position is that unless you can physically see your employees working and unless they’re in the physical office, there’s no guarantee, in fact, maybe there’s a guarantee to the contrary that they will be productive and be able to deliver results. And that’s a very strong position to take. It’s a very contrary position to take, I think against the cultural tide that is leaning toward remote or hybrid work. And so it’s going to be interesting to see how it plays out for him.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
But we think that there are things that are great about remote work, there are things that are great about in person work, and we’re going to talk today about what’s best about both of those, and also what’s best about a hybrid options, some of both, which is what we do here at Full Focus.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And again I shared some of this with our clients several months ago and it really got a great response. I think it helped frame up the conversation in a way that as always is focused on how do we drive results. And part of driving results is keeping our teams engaged, satisfied, excited about their work that they’re doing so that they can produce fantastic operating results. And so we’re going to dig into that today. I’m excited.

Michael Hyatt:
There’s a sense in which nothing is new under the sun. I can remember having these debates when I was in the big corporate world 15 years ago, when we had some employees that wanted to work remotely, including me, and there were others that were really opposed to it, including my successor, but I think we’ve come a long way since then. But I think it might be helpful before we get into this conversation to say that I think it depends upon the nature of your work.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Sure.

Michael Hyatt:
Like for example, if you’re a doc or a nurse in an emergency room, remote works probably not possible. If you’re working, and this, you have to give Elon Musk a little bit of credit here, if you’re working on a factory floor, assembling automobiles, remote work is probably not possible. I think the issue is that he didn’t distinguish between … I don’t know what percentage of his workforce works on the factory floor as opposed to those that are more or less knowledge workers that really don’t have to be there, but I think we have to differentiate between different kinds of work. So we’re not talking about businesses for whom physical presence is an essential component.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Right. I think that’s really important to say. And as we get into this conversation, what we believe is that there are things that are distinctly great about both in person work and remote work, and that when you try to shoehorn something that doesn’t fit well with that format of work into it, then you end up with problems. And so this is not without its pitfalls.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
I think for our clients, our Business Accelerator coaching clients, and for those of you who are business owners and leaders listening, this is going to require a nuanced response from you. It’s going to require a lot of thought, probably some conversations with your team to get it right for your unique context. This is not a one size fits all kind of a scenario.

Michael Hyatt:
That’s right. You got to think through it. There’s no perfect solution. You’ve got to consider your particular circumstances and then adjust accordingly. So let’s talk about what’s best about in person.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah. Well, this is kind of easy to forget and I think sometimes lately we’ve thrown the baby out with the bath water a little bit. We’ve gotten so excited about remote work and the benefits of that, which we’ll talk about here in a couple of minutes that we’ve actually forgotten why we got together in the first place and why it’s so beneficial to be physically in the same space at the same time.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And there’s some really good reasons to do that. The first one is collaboration. This is one that I think, if you look back at your experience through COVID, you could probably remember times when you tried to do the equivalent of whiteboarding over Zoom and it’s just not the same. It’s hard to articulate why it’s not the same, not the least of which is you don’t actually have a physical whiteboard. You’re trying to use it either in the Zoom app or some other kind of app.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And there’s just some kind of magic that happens when you get people in the same room and you’re trying to think of big ideas. You’re trying to do work that requires the thinking of multiple people. There are just aha moments and breakthroughs that happen when you’re sitting next to each other across the table, that don’t happen so well in a more transactional virtual environment.

Michael Hyatt:
Yeah, it’s funny, I just had this happen a couple weeks ago. I was in a meeting, we’re doing the whiteboard and we were having this incredible deep, fast-paced conversation and the whiteboard was there to record our insights, but it wasn’t front and center. And I think too often in a Zoom meeting, the whiteboard becomes front and center when really the conversation should be front and center. And it sounds like a minor thing, but I find that when I try to use a whiteboard in most Zoom meetings, it kind of gets in the way. It’s a little bit too intrusive.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah, I think that’s totally true and I don’t like it at all. I, for a while was trying to use that and it was annoying, honestly, not to mention the fact that sometimes it doesn’t work or it sticks or people can’t see it, or I don’t know, there’s just technical issues that come up that gunk up the process.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And there’s something about the physical, tactile experience of being in the same space, hearing that squeak of the Expo marker on your whiteboard, changing colors, being able to free associate and get people up there together, that you just come up with ideas and solutions to problems, and I think that’s a really important point, the solutions to problems, that you might not have if you were doing it virtually. So I think collaboration is a big reason that in person is a great solution.

Michael Hyatt:
Before we get email on this from the geeks, we’re not opposed to digital whiteboards in offices. In fact, our financial advisor uses one and it’s so cool. And every time I’m there, I just drool. And we’ve got to get one in our own office. So it’s not that, that’s not the problem. It doesn’t require a physical whiteboard, it’s just in the office when you’ve got a whiteboard of any type it’s just less intrusive.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, you know you’re up and down off your feet, one person will be up there writing in digital or otherwise, and somebody else will jump up and start drawing arrows. I mean, there’s just something that happens with people in the same room, which leads us to the next point here about what’s best about in person, which is innovation and teamwork.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
These are versions of collaboration in a way, but if you’ve got to think of ideas, it is very difficult to be creative in a virtual space. I mean, I can think of so many times during COVID where I just thought, gosh, if I could just get people together in a room, I know we could crack this so much faster, so much easier than we could in a virtual environment, which is just kind of two dimensional, it feels more transactional, you don’t have those little side conversations. It just feels a little bit more formal and I think that gets in the way of innovation and teamwork.

Michael Hyatt:
I think another thing about innovation is that it happens in the cracks. And what I mean by that is it’s not in formal meetings, but it happens in those water cooler conversations, the coffee pot conversations, on the way to the restroom conversations. It’s not planned, it’s not scripted, it’s not time allotted for innovation. It’s just you have an idea and you run it by a colleague in the moment and sometimes those turn into multimillion dollar ideas, but you can’t always do that in a virtual setting because it’s not that predictable.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah, and if you’re tempted to think, well we came up with some really great stuff during COVID, I mean, we did too and honestly, 2020 in particular had some real highlights that I think were surprising considering how restricted everything was. I think part of the reason that was possible is because the relationships that we had developed with our team prior to going into that lockdown period were really strong. And so there was just all this relational equity that we were able to draw on.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And then we found it much harder in 2021 after hiring a whole bunch of new people that we didn’t have that equity with. Until we were able to get back together in person, the innovation, the collaboration, the teamwork, those things were harder with those people that we didn’t have all this history with.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And so, if you’re listening to us and you’re inclined to be dismissive maybe of well, yeah, but it actually went okay, just ask yourself that question, could relational equity have been the thing that carried you through? And maybe that’s something to consider as you’re asking yourself, okay, what’s the best long-term solution, because that may not always be in play if you’re adding new people to your team.

Michael Hyatt:
So yeah, it’s really difficult to build culture remotely. And I hate to say this or hate to admit it, but I think there was a real difference between the people that we hired during the pandemic and the people that we hired before the pandemic. And this was none of their fault, it’s just that the circumstances didn’t allow us to build culture in the same way that we could when we were in person because values are often caught, not taught, and it’s just the way that we are and the way that we are being around each other that creates the culture that drives the operating results. And I think that’s really difficult to do in an exclusively remote kind of situation. You can do part of it for sure, but you definitely have to be more intentional. But when you’re in person, that stuff comes naturally and it’s more easily done.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, and what we’ve seen with our own team is that we’ve had to be very intentional and purposeful now that it’s safe to be back together, we’ve been back in the office for several months, to really create those bonds with people, get to know the people that are new and really assimilate them into our culture and help them feel like they belong, help them feel like they’re connected to one another. Because you can get the work done remotely, but that’s not the same thing as having cohesion on your team.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
So for us, we’ve had to make culture a real priority and find ways to help people connect to each other in this new season, because there was a period where it was difficult where we were in this extended remote period. We’d hired a bunch of new people and there was a real difference between the people who’d been there a long time and how they felt connected to each other and the newer people, and we had to bridge that gap. And fortunately we’ve made great progress with that, but it was tough.

Michael Hyatt:
One last item here in terms of what’s best about in person and that’s having hard conversations.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
And it’s inevitable in any kind of community, but particularly in a work community that they’re going to be occasions when you have to have difficult conversations, performance related, attitude related, whatever it is. And the more personal that can be, the more in person-like that can be, the better off you are because you want to be in that situation.

Michael Hyatt:
If you’re the leader, if you’re the one initiating that conversation, you want to be able to not only hear that person’s voice and see that person, but pick up on all the subtle cues that often aren’t communicated virtually. I mean, it makes the conversation go better because so much that’s communicated is nonverbal.

Michael Hyatt:
And I think that’s one of the great things about being in person. You have, I think a much better chance of it being accepted and received and being successful when it’s in person. So the worst thing, the worst way to have a hard conversation is to send somebody a text message, the proverbial text breakup. The next best is probably telephone, at least you get the audio component there. Even better than that is video conferencing, but the best of the best is to do it in person.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah. And on a regular basis, I have to have hard conversations and I can say having had hard conversations in all of those mediums, I would always rather do it in person because I think it was Mike Tyson who famously said, everybody has a plan till you get punched in the face. Hopefully nobody’s getting punched in the face at your workplace, but figuratively speaking, it’s like we have a plan for a hard conversation.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
One of the things I’ve learned is it’s so helpful to go into those hard conversations, whether you have to terminate somebody or do a coaching up conversation around performance or conduct or whatever, or just bring something up with somebody that’s just more of a constructive feedback kind of thing, you always want to go in with a plan. The problem is you’re dealing with two people, at least in a conversation like that and you don’t really know how it’s going to go until you’re there.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And your response can be so much more precise, so much more nuanced. Like you said, you have a much better chance of steering the conversation toward a positive outcome, if you can be there in person, because you have so many more cues to read than just someone’s voice or just someone’s face. I mean, even on Zoom, it’s amazing how much can be lost in translation.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
So as you’re thinking about this for your organization, I just want to really encourage you to prioritize having these hard conversations in person. It builds relational equity because there’s a vulnerability to it that creates trust and intimacy, if it’s done well, which is going to help you in the future, but much harder to do that in these other mediums.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay, so what’s best about in person? We’ve given several points, collaboration, innovation, teamwork, culture building, hard conversations. What’s best about remote work? And before we dive into the points on this, I’d just like to say, if you’re going to do remote work, for goodness’ sake, this far into the pandemic, maybe this side of the pandemic if we can say that, invest in remote work.

Michael Hyatt:
Nothing is worse than being in a remote conversation and somebody has a laggy camera or a bad internet connection, or my favorite, bad lighting. So you’re looking at a person who’s basically a silhouette because they haven’t lit the front of their face. And by now you should be able to figure out where the mute button is and make sure that you don’t start talking on mute, but still from time to time, we all find ourselves there. So what’s best about remote work, Meg?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah, well assuming none of those things go wrong, there are so many great things about remote work. And I think we all discovered this together, maybe for the first time for many of us in 2020. One of the things is just focus. When you’re not at the office and you’re being interrupted all the time, especially if you’re the boss, there is so much value in doing solitary, asynchronous work, meaning it’s work that you don’t have to do in collaboration simultaneously with others, synchronous work. If you can do your solitary, asynchronous work at home or wherever you like to work remotely, you’re going to be able to focus in a way that drives your productivity, probably like you’ve never experienced before.

Michael Hyatt:
Yeah, it’s so true. I mean, I can get so much done and when I have to do that deep work as Cal Newport calls it, I’d much prefer to do that at home because when I’m at the office I get distracted, I get involved in conversations and all that can be valuable in terms of all the things we’ve said before, but for really knocking out the work and seeing progress, there’s nothing like solitary asynchronous work.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, and I think this is something to lean into here for a second because when you go back to the beginning of our show, we were talking about Elon Musk and his position being that basically people can’t be productive and produce results when they’re not in the office. I mean, that’s just so untrue. We all know that from our own experience, that being in the office is really distracting. Even if you have a private office, people are probably coming by, they’re knocking on your door, maybe you get stuck in the hallway talking to somebody. If you can have uninterrupted time, there is no more productive time than that.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And hopefully you’re hiring people that are inherently trustworthy, who are mature, who understand the link between their daily productivity and the company’s results. But if you care about focus and productivity, embracing remote work for that kind of activity is hugely beneficial.

Michael Hyatt:
This is something I want to say that doesn’t quite fit here, but I’m not sure where else to do it and it’s occurring to me right now. But I think that one of the things, if you’re like Elon Musk and you rule out the possibility of remote work, one of the things that you’re inadvertently communicating that you probably don’t want to communicate is that we don’t trust you. Unless we have a situation where we can observe you all the time, we’re just going to assume that you’re a bad person and you’re goofing off.

Michael Hyatt:
But I’ve said to people who have had that argument with me, and again, I’ve been listening to this for almost two decades now, but I said, “How do you really know? Even if the person next to you, unless you’re looking over their shoulder, that they could be scrolling Facebook, they could be shopping on Amazon. They could be goofing off in a thousand ways. What difference does it make if you’re there or not, because you’re probably not going to hover over their shoulder and look at everything they do and monitor it?”

Michael Hyatt:
But most of us don’t need a big brother, a big brother in that sense, at least. And I think that one of the things that remote work communicates is that, hey, we trust you and we expect you to be productive. And in my experience, and again, it’s limited and it’s smaller teams, but in my experience, people usually live into that.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah, absolutely. It also says we’re focused on outcomes, not the process to reach the outcomes. And I think if you’re going to be a results-oriented company, a company that is consistently producing great operating results, you want to be focused on holding people accountable for the outcomes and not micromanaging the process. People are productive in different ways and the more autonomy you can give them, the better. So I think this is a great option.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay, here’s another benefit about remote is that it avoids the dreaded commute.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
And depending on how long your commute is, that can give you back a lot of time, but it’s not just time, it’s the lack of stress. Occasionally, I mean for decades, I commuted back and forth probably 30 to sometimes an hour and a half each way. And one of the things I forget when I drive to the airport now, which is up where I last worked in the corporate world, so it was about a 30 minute drive, I forgot how stressful it is just being in traffic and trying to navigate all that and just the time. It’s a real stressor. When that goes away, suddenly you get the time back and you’re more relaxed-

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Absolutely.

Michael Hyatt:
… which also is conducive to productivity.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, and now as we’re recording this, gas prices, I mean just the cost. Yesterday, I filled up my big car. I’ve got a bunch of kids, so I got a big car and it cost me $135. I mean, that’s crazy.

Michael Hyatt:
Wow.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
$135. Now, if I were commuting, maybe I would choose a different car, but nevertheless, the prices have gone up. And I think that part of why we feel this tension between employees and employers around remote and in person work is because employees are thinking to themselves, listen, why would I give you an hour or two a day functionally for free that’s unproductive time that I could be spending at home attending to other more important things or working on more important things. It’s just the value proposition or the cost benefit around that makes no sense at all. There’s just not value in going to the office every day, and the trade offs that are required, if somebody has to commute.

Michael Hyatt:
I think this is one of the ways in which the rise in leadership, you lose the ability or the sensitivity of what people who are at lower echelons of the organization face. Elon Musk is the richest man in the world. It’s no big deal for him to pay to however he gets to work. I mean, it’s not a big deal, but when you’re talking about entry level workers or people that are not in those executive positions. And essentially, and I’ve never thought about this, Megan, but you’re asking them to give up whatever it is the commute time is. They’re not getting paid for that, right?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Right.

Michael Hyatt:
Plus the gasoline. And for some people, I mean, I read with great sadness this week, that there are people in the United States today who are parents who are deciding that they’re not going to eat one day a week, so they can afford to feed their kids.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Right, because of gas prices.

Michael Hyatt:
Because of gas prices.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Right.

Michael Hyatt:
And so I think anything we could do to try to stay in touch with that and realize that even though as business owners, we maybe can afford it, we may gripe about it, but we can afford it, but that’s not everybody and we need to be conscious of that.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, especially when you think about what the trade off is in terms of the time. It means your kids are in daycare for longer, maybe up to two hours a day longer. If you have little kids, those are probably almost their only waking hours. And you’re talking about getting home with maybe an hour left at the end of the day. I remember when Joel, my husband was a single dad before we got married and he was commuting almost an hour, both ways. And our oldest two kids were little at that point, his two kids, and that was running through McDonald’s on the way home and go home and put the kids to bed. I mean, there was no time for that relationship because you’re just spending all that time.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
You think about, that’s the margin where you get to exercise. That’s the margin where you get to meal prep. That’s the margin where you’re reading or where you’re making sure you’re getting to bed early enough to get enough sleep, or you have time to go to the doctor. I mean, there’s just so many things happen in that hour before work and hour after work, that if you’re commuting, making dinner for your family, so you’re sitting down instead of running through Chick-fil-A, right? We know the research around that is so strong in terms of predicting positive outcomes for families. And so the trade offs just aren’t there. And I think you’re right, it’s easy to forget if you are the big cheese, so to speak, what the impact is on the people that work for you, if they have to commute every day.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay. One last benefit of remote working because I know we need to move on and that is virtual meetings can be enormously productive. As much as we’ve talked about in the previous point that it’s really valuable to be in person for a meeting, there’s a certain efficiency to virtual meetings that I really like. I personally like both.

Michael Hyatt:
But I’m on a nonprofit board, we used to meet always in person till COVID, then we went exclusively remote. And we just decided at our last board meeting that we would do two meetings a year in person, but two meetings a year remote. So we got to the place where during COVID, we could do in six hours, which I know sounds like an enormously long meeting, but six hours on Zoom what in person would take us two days.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Wow.

Michael Hyatt:
Because there’s no side conversations, no chit chat, everything’s very controlled, very efficient, very focused. And so there is some value there for virtual meetings. Again, I don’t think it’s the best solution, but it’s an advantage certainly to being remote.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Absolutely. And there are so many things that we can just do more efficiently in a virtual space if it’s transactional or informational, which let’s be honest, a lot of our work is. There’s no reason to gunk that up with more relational freight than is necessary. Let’s save that for the collaborative, innovative kind of work that we were talking about earlier. And again, that’s why you got to know the difference between the two.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Hey, one thing I forgot to mention when we were talking about commuting, this isn’t specifically related to commuting, but it is talking about attending to your personal life, another thing that we can forget as leaders that has become important to our team. When you are working remotely most of the time, you can go down and make yourself lunch and pop something in the Crockpot for dinner. That’s a big deal.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
You can let the guy in that’s coming to fix your AC in, in between meetings without disrupting your work or your productivity. I mean, it’s you just got to be there to let the person in, in a way that really impacts your quality of life. You’re not trying to squeeze all those things in at the end of the day or on the weekends. And for a lot of people, that’s been a major stress relief and something they don’t want to give up.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay, so we’ve talked about what’s best about in person, we’ve talked about what’s best about remote, including the ability to focus, avoiding commuting, virtual meetings, attending to our personal life, a shorter workday. What’s best about hybrid? This is what we do at Full Focus. But Meg, what’s best about this option?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, I love this option because I’m all about win-win. Let’s get the best of both worlds and let’s give people what they need for collaboration, but let’s preserve a lot of autonomy so that we can win at work and succeed at life, which is what we talk all about all the time here at Full Focus. So here, what we do is we ask people to come in on average, one to two days a week. There are some exceptions to that based on different kinds of positions, but I would say on average, most people come in one to two days a week, which is enough time to do that collaborative, innovative work, to develop relationships with your coworkers, to be in person for hard conversations when needed. That just seems to be the sweet spot for us.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Then we also find that executives and directors, our leaders, end up being in the office more. And I think that’s because they’re doing more idea type work. They benefit from collaboration more. It’s helpful from an alignment perspective. So I personally am in the office most days. Occasionally I work from home right now, but mostly I’m in the office and I love that. And that’s true for a couple of our executives and a lot of our directors as well.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
We usually have people meeting once a week for what we call a weekly focus meeting, basically a team version of our weekly preview modified from the Full Focus Planner. So that’s important. And if possible, we try to do that meeting in person. I think it’s helpful to have the whole team physically in person together once a week, if at all possible. Sometimes we don’t hit that exactly, but that’s what we strive for, and we’ve seen really great results from that.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
We also have a company wide ideal week. So you probably have heard us talk on this podcast about the ideal week for individuals and in particular for leaders and for business owners and the value of having a sketch of what your ideal week can be. So you ensure that you’re getting that high leverage work, work that’s in your desire zone, that drives result in your business. Well, the same is true for an organization.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
For example, in our company wide ideal week, we have what we call flex Wednesdays. This is a no meeting day. People can decide when they start work and when they stop work. In general, that’s a six hour block of time, but some people like to break it up into two blocks. They like to get up really early or they like to have the whole day and do it in the evening, and people love that autonomy. And because that’s not synchronous work, it doesn’t really matter when people do it. And that has been really beneficial.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Also, we try to have collaboration happen in person whenever possible. We just want to be with that whiteboard. We want to be around the table. We try to avoid meetings that need to be hybrid meetings. Meaning some people are in person, some people are remote. Not such a big deal, if it’s a presentation or if it’s information sharing. We have found, it can feel frustrating to try to collaborate.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Let’s say you have five people in person and one or two that are virtual, even though we’re using some neat camera technology from a company called Owl that is helpful in bridging that hybrid meeting gap, it’s still not ideal. So that’s other than we might have one of our executive assistants, who’s taking notes, who’s virtual. And that seems to be okay, but if they’re really participating in the collaboration, it can be hard.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And then we do routine one-on-ones that are virtual for the most part. And at least once a month, we like for those to be in person. Again, you want to develop those relationships with your direct reports, but sometimes it’s fairly transactional and as long as it’s not only transactional and you’re still having time to be in person, you can maximize the time by doing the majority of those in a virtual setting.

Michael Hyatt:
You know what I love about this? So often we get into these debates in our culture that force an either or answer.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Right.

Michael Hyatt:
And so often the best solution is a both and answer. And that’s what’s great about this. I mean, there’s not really a reason to choose unless you have unique circumstances in your business that require exclusively in person or exclusively remote. And that’s why I think hybrid is something that really everybody should consider if you can, because there’s benefits to both, and I think you’ll work optimally when you employ both.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yep. I absolutely agree.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, for all of these reasons in case you hadn’t already gotten there with us, what we’re really advocating for is a hybrid solution to work, one that incorporates the best of in person work and the best of remote work. We feel like that is the best thing for most companies, especially if the work you do is knowledge based work, to get the best from your team members and the best in terms of results. It’s really a win-win solution.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And if this is not something that you have given a try, I just want to encourage you, like we often do, to set this up like an experiment. Go ahead and sketch out what you think your ideal version of this is of a hybrid plan and give it a try for 60, 90 days and get feedback. Don’t commit to it long term. But rather than having everybody come back into the office, full time I mean, see if you can come up with a hybrid plan that fits your needs and then tweak from there and give your employees some autonomy, some agency, some input into this process. And I think you’re going to like what’s on the other side of that.

Michael Hyatt:
Megan, this is the kind of thing that we talk about inside our Business Accelerator coaching program. And the reason I love that program so much is it gives us a shop or a workbench on which all of us can work together and debate this kind of stuff, and really encourage one another to try new things.

Michael Hyatt:
And so if you’re a business owner, I want to encourage you to check out our Business Accelerator coaching program. You can do that at businessaccelerator.com. I also want to encourage you to schedule a free business growth coaching call with one of our business growth consultants. Again, it’s free, it’s only 45 minutes. You can do that at leadto.win/call, leadto.win/call. And they’ll help you get really focused on the things that you need to address to move your business forward in a big way, along with your personal life. So check it out again at leadto.win/call.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well guys, thanks so much for joining us today. This has been a really fun conversation about something I think we’re all thinking about right now. Hopefully it’s been useful to you. And we’re going to look forward to seeing you right back here next week. Until then, lead to win.