How Distributed Work Can Unlock Your Potential | Avani Prabhakar | TED

Like many of you, I am an introvert.

And I know it sounds ironic

because I'm the chief people officer of a large tech company.

But I've never been the loudest in the room.

In fact, I've never been the first,

second or even third to offer my opinion.

I've always listened more than I speak.

And in a world where most dominant voices are often seen as leaders,

I've had an uphill battle at work.

Until distributed work changed my life

and many others.

I have always had what I call a grinder’s mentality,

and it was shaped early on in my life.

I was born in a tier-two city called Indore in India,

a country that still favors boys.

I was the youngest of three sisters.

But my parents were very progressive

and they expected me to excel both at sports and academics.

Hindi is my first language, not English.

And for those where English is not your first language,

you may understand that it's one thing to be fluent at English

and it's another to argue your point in it.

Well, with all of that prep, when I joined the workforce,

it got further amplified

because corporate environments expect you

to show up in a certain way.

For you to be successful, you have to be articulate,

you have to be the first one to speak,

you should be able to hold the space in the room

and the list goes on.

Well, I was putting a lot of energy in showing up in a certain way,

and it was really affecting my life outside of work.

I would come home exhausted

and all I could think of was,

how quickly can I retreat to my room for the night?

Well, 2020, fast forward,

as we all know, we became remote workers overnight.

And the future of work was here.

Since that day,

my company went fully distributed,

meaning every single employee could choose every single day

where they work from.

We have over 12,000 employees

working across 3,000 cities and locations

in 14 countries.

But we are not a remote company.

We are distributed.

We have over 12 physical offices

which many of our employees choose to work from.

But there is no return to office mandate,

no compulsory days, just choice.

We moved to team anywhere and when we were doing that,

we had to really get focused in terms of how we work,

because where we work is one variable of the equation,

but how we work is the most important variable.

And there is a spoiler alert for all of you,

that we had to get really, really good at collaborating.

First, we had to move to asynchronous ways of working,

meaning work happens in its own time.

So meetings are not the default.

Meetings are the last resort.

We use tools such as Loom,

which allows you to create shareable videos and content

which your teams can listen to,

look at it and react to in their own time.

By using Loom, we have saved one of the dreaded thoughts,

which I’m sure some of us might have experienced sitting in a meeting,

which is "Oh my God, this could have been an email."

(Laughter)

Like, "Why we're here?"

By using Loom,

we have saved close to about half a million meetings.

Second thing we had to focus on

was we got really deliberate about how we design our workday.

Today, 65 percent of knowledge workers

think that it's more important to respond to a notification

rather than moving actual work forward.

So we get our teams to really design their day,

which is divided in three halves.

One designated time for meeting.

There is designated work block to only do deep work and focused work,

and then there is allocated time to do project work with your teams.

We've also realized that working across time zones can be a real challenge

for global companies,

so we make sure

that the work is not divided beyond two time zones

to make sure there is four hours

of collaboration time between teams.

The third most important aspect

is how do you build real connection in a distributed world.

And let me tell you,

there is a myth that you build connection by sporadic office attendance.

Like, you sitting with your mate next to each other,

staring at your laptop,

you're not building any connection.

(Laughter)

What we found out is that you build real connection

when you bring teams together

to work on a problem or on a strategy,

ideate new things,

but bring them together for a reason.

That's when you build intentional togetherness.

I also get asked,

"So have you seen any drop in productivity?"

And my answer is no.

Ninety-two percent of our employees say

that they are doing [the] best work of their lives,

and one third of them have seen improvement in focus.

Well, working this way, for me personally,

it really unlocked my potential almost immediately.

We often argue that smart people think on their feet,

and of course, many do.

But there are lots of super smart introverts

who show their intelligence differently.

That has been my experience.

I fundamentally believe that I've been able to accelerate my career faster

in a distributed world.

It has leveled the playing field for me

and created an environment

where career growth was location-agnostic.

Today, the talent is not defined by whether you live close to an office

or a city.

You can be living in Atlanta or Albuquerque,

and you can find the best talent in any of those locations.

So there are lots of benefits I can go on about distributed work.

Other thing I would like to say is,

you know, when we reduce the future of work

to a conversation or an argument

between working from office

and working from, you know, home,

we are thinking too small.

Sweeping mandates of return to work is a very easy and a safe option.

And a lot of organizations use it for whatever various reasons.

But having worked in the people's space,

I can tell you,

when you give people the choice of when and where they work,

you are giving them the key to accelerate their full potential.

For me, that is the future of work.

Where we stop focusing on when and where the work gets done

and start focusing on the how.

A world where work works for everyone.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Rachell Morris: Thank you so much for that, Avani.

Stay with me for a minute.

Before you leave us, I just want to ask a question.

You make a compelling case for distributed-first teams.

How do you approach mentorship in a distributed workforce?

Avani Prabhakar: So like I said, when you make the choice,

you have to build a lot of enablement in the organizations

in order to do that.

Which means starting from entire life cycle of onboarding.

So what we experienced, based on where you are in your career

and your journey,

if you're a new grad or if you're a new hire,

you need more curated in-person experience to build that enablement upfront.

When it comes to the leaders,

it's a very different skill

to have a performance conversation in person

versus having it remote.

So you have to really switch your entire L and D muscle to build around that.

We also have seen that having bite-sized learning is much better

You absorb better in a distributed fashion

rather than sitting against like, you know,

online training and going through it.

So there are various ways.

RM: Fantastic.

Well, if we've got people in organizations

that may be considering a move to a distributed-first working model,

if they're concerned about the impacts on culture,

what advice would you give those folks?

AP: I would say, when you're thinking about culture,

and based on, you know, how distributed and how global your organization is,

you have to get really nuanced about it.

So one size will not fit all.

You have to cater to different cultures where probably coming together

for a different reason makes more sense to build some connection.

So it has to be very, very nuanced when you're thinking about culture.

And you also have to anchor yourself to two or three values,

which you believe in as a company,

because that will help you make some decisions.

Those will be your guiding principles on this journey.

RM: Fantastic, thank you so much.

Another round of applause for Avani Prabhakar.

AP: Thank you.