Debbie Lovich: 3 tips for leaders to get the future of work right | TED

115,421 views ・ 2021-12-24

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When I moved from New York to Boston in 1989,
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I completely lost my sense of direction.
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It wasn't me, though,
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it was those winding, nonsensical Boston roads.
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Urban legend has it that in Boston,
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they paved over cow paths to form the very roads we have today.
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Now, if you're an urban planner designing a city from scratch,
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you would not base it on how the cows wandered.
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And if you think about it,
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that's exactly what we've done with work.
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Hundreds of years ago, in the industrial revolution,
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people left their homes to perform repetitive tasks
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in the fixed time and place of the factory floor.
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And when knowledge workers entered the scene,
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we kept the same model,
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this time with fixed job descriptions and fields of cubicles from nine to five.
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Even globalization and technology did little to change the dynamic.
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Fixed time, place and job descriptions are the cow paths of work.
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And like cow paths for roads, it just doesn’t make any sense.
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I've been challenging and changing how companies work for the past 15 years,
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starting with my own company, Boston Consulting Group,
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and then with dozens of other Fortune 500 organizations.
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And I have to tell you something amazing happened to work
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during the tragedy of COVID-19,
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especially those first weeks and months.
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If you remember,
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all the low-value work disappeared.
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It didn't matter what your job technically was.
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People just worked together across silos and even companies
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to get stuff done wherever, whenever, however it was needed.
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Leaders simply had to trust their people.
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They didn't have time for endless steering committees
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or death by PowerPoint.
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We just needed to trust people to deliver,
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and they did.
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So I'm on a mission.
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A mission to bottle these great work practices
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and not go back to the old ways.
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And yes, of course, I want to get rid of endless back-to-back zooms
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and loneliness and days that blend into evenings.
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But we have to make sure we don't go back
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to the rigid, structured, bureaucratic,
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sluggish ways that sucked the joy out of work.
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And I have to tell you,
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the future of work is not going to be created
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with top-down, opinion-driven edicts
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from senior leaders whose day-to-day realities
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don't match those of us dual-career, time-pressed and income-pressed people.
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Of course, senior leaders want to go back.
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That worked for them.
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But they have to recognize that for 18 months now,
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their people experienced unprecedented agency, control, flexibility,
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trust and accountability.
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And people don't want to go back.
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And it's this difference in perspective from senior leaders and their people
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that's one of the main reasons driving so much backlash
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to all these return-to-office announcements over the past months,
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with employees venting on social media
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and quitting in what’s being called the “great resignation.”
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And employees, I don't blame you.
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But before you take to social media and walk,
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try talking to your leaders,
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tell them what you loved about the past 18 months.
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Tell them what you want to keep.
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They might be more receptive than you think.
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And leaders, let me share three tips --
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rather three must-do’s -- to get the future of work right.
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Number one, trust your people.
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Millions of workers and employees have proved their trustworthiness
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since March 2020.
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But even with that, so many leaders want to go backwards.
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As part of the work I do, I've spoken with hundreds of leaders
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over the past 18 months,
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and I get some really crazy questions.
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One is, "Well, Debbie, how can I tell if my workers are productive
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when they're working from home?"
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And I can't help but say,
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"Well, how do you know they were productive
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when they were in the office?"
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Just because you could see someone, doesn't mean they're productive.
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Or I have to love this, "You know, when it's safe to go back to the office,
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we're going to let people work from home two days a week,
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as long as it's not a Monday or Friday
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because we don't trust them not to slack off and take long weekends."
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What does that say about the culture of trust?
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Will there be abusers? Of course, but they'll be a tiny few.
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So why make rules for the vast majority
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who've earned your trust every day for the past 18 months?
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A trusting culture will not only attract, retain and motivate your people,
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it'll also save you a lot of time enforcing rules.
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So that's number one.
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Trust your people.
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Number two, be data-driven.
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We all have our opinions about how work should be done,
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and the more senior we are, the more we're convinced
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that our opinions are not just opinion, but they're fact, they're truth.
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But one thing COVID’s taught us is that people are so different.
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I have genetically identical 17-year-old twin boys, Abraham and Boaz,
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and I emphasize the point "genetically identical,"
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because these two guys could not be more different.
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Abraham really struggled when school went online.
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He did everything he could
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to engineer outdoor, socially distant get-togethers
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because you can't call them playdates when the boys are 17.
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(Laughter)
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But his brother, Boaz -- Bo was loving life!
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"Ma, this is fantastic!
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I don't ever have to leave my bed!"
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My boys couldn't be more different, and so are your workers,
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so we must get data.
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How? Well, try this.
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Get some of your best people together and ask them,
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"What did you love about these last 18 months?
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What did you hate?
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If we were to give you a magic wand
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and you could create the perfect work environment for you,
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what would your days, weeks and months look like?"
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And then experiment. Yes. Experiment.
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So many people are saying COVID's been the biggest work experiment ever.
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I beg to differ.
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I'm not a scientist, but I know
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that prospective experiments have hypotheses, control groups,
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data collection, learning loops and revisions.
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We didn't do that.
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And so now’s the time to experiment.
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And we don’t have to wait until it’s safe to go back to the office.
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We could do it now.
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Take two teams that do similar work,
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let one flex and work whenever and however they need,
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and another, give them fixed times.
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You want them online and you want them working.
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And then measure.
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Survey them every week.
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Everyone says people are oversurveyed.
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People are not oversurveyed when it comes to this topic.
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They want to have their opinions heard.
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So ask them, "How's it going? Are you delivering value?
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Are you able to collaborate well? How's your work-life balance?
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What do you love? What do you hate?"
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And take those learning and spread them around.
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This is new for all of us.
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We're not going to get it right
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the first, second, third or even fourth time.
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But together with conversation and data, and experiments,
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we're going to learn our way to a better future of work.
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So that's number two.
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Number one, trust your people.
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Number two, be data-driven.
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Here's number three.
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Think beyond the schedule.
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Guess what? The future of work
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is not two days that you get to work from home.
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This is our chance right now
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to reimagine, reduce, replace or even eliminate things
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like long commutes,
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endless meetings with too many people there,
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recurring meetings that never go away,
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synchronous work, silos, command-and-control leaders,
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administrivia --
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that's my word for the low-value stuff that clogs our calendars.
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In other words, we could stop contorting our lives around work,
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but we could actually reshape work to better fit our lives.
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So that's number three.
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Think beyond the schedule.
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And guess what, a lot of companies are getting it right.
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Take Dropbox, for example.
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Before COVID, Dropbox only had three percent of their workers
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working from home.
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They're now moving forward with a remote-first model
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and trying to push as much asynchronous work as possible.
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And to help collaboration with their model,
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they're setting core collaboration hours that very slightly by time zone,
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so they have four hours a day
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when you know everyone is online in case you need to collaborate.
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One of my favorite examples is the Mr. Cooper Group.
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And Mr. Cooper Group's been described as a mortgage giant no one's heard of.
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A lot of their workers, a large percentage,
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are call center operators.
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And like many, in the first days of COVID,
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they got them all home safely and successfully.
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And guess what?
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They were more productive, and they were happier.
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But even with that data, many on the leadership team
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wanted them back in the office as soon as it was safe to do so.
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They just couldn't imagine call center work
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being done from home permanently.
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Well, that's where Kelly Ann Doherty,
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their amazing Chief People Officer comes in.
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When Kelly Ann and her team presented their recommendation
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for a home-centric working model,
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she got a ton of questions.
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"Well, Kelly Ann, what about onboarding and training?"
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She said, "Of course, we're going to get people together for that.
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Home-centric doesn't mean we're never together."
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"Well, what about day-to-day coaching and mentoring?"
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"We're experimenting with software
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that allows managers to do that even better."
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"Well, what about culture? Communication? What about --"
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And she just stopped them
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It was a moment, and she said,
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"I know you all want to go back to your offices.
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So do I, but we have to take a minute
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to walk in the shoes of our call center operators.
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They are loving the flexibility.
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They're saving real money by not commuting,
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and we know this is a high-turnover population.
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Imagine if one of our competitors is more flexible than us.
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How many people are we going to lose?"
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And with that, Kelly Ann and her team had the leadership team on board.
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They’re moving forward with a home-centric model,
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and they're investing in upskilling all of their managers
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to be able to coach, mentor and manage their teams remotely.
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And now they're taking it one step further.
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They're tapping into more flexible talent pools,
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like military spouses,
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who need a ton of flexibility when their spouses are deployed.
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In other words, Kelly Ann and the Mr. Cooper Group
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are urban planners of the future of work.
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They're trusting their people.
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They're using data.
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They're thinking beyond the schedule
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to not go back to the old cow paths of call center work.
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They're making work better for them, for the company,
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the customers and their people.
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This is our moment, right now,
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to together with our people and our teams
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design a future of work that's more engaging,
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more productive and more humane.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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