Office of the future and how to foster an innovative culture, with Brett Hautop Founder of Workshape

Innovation happens when we are our most productive selves. On this episode of Borderless Executive Live: The Podcast, we had the pleasure of talking with Brett Hautop, Founder of Workshape. Brett has a unique approach to the world of virtual work environments. He’s leveraged his professional experience, including the years he worked at LinkedIn, to truly understand what the work environment means for businesses today, and how it aids the way companies operate. 

Companies in the current environment should consider answering the questions: 
-What do we do with our offices? 
-Why do they matter?
-Why is the workplace experience important? 

In our conversation, Brett mentioned that more and more companies are asking for insight and guidance about where to go from here, knowing that physical proximity in one workspace matters to them. The challenges are that often, they have no idea why it even matters to them, nor do they know how to get people together productively, in one place at the same time. 

Listen to the podcast for our full conversation about the ‘Office of the future.’ 

Transcript

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Today's session with Borderless Live is with somebody we've come to respect over the years for his incredible creativity, and his approach to the whole world of virtual work environments and in particular, what that means for the work environments set up by companies, and how does that aid the way that companies operate today? What are the things they really need to consider, what do we do about our offices? Why do they matter? Why does the workplace experience matter? Why should we even think about it? This is where his new company, which is simply called Workshape, comes into effect. So with that, I'd like to introduce you to Brett Hautop. So Brett it is lovely to see you again. And thank you very much for coming online. I really want to first of all congratulate you on Workshape and it sounds like you've had a busy couple of months since you founded the company. You were saying earlier on that you just can't keep up? Yeah, there are a lot of people who are asking for some sort of insight or guidance or inspiration about where to go from here. And they know that it matters to them that people are together. And employees find time to be physically proximate, but they don't know how to make that happen or when, and some of them haven't even answered the question why it matters and that's the place where I usually start with them. Is why do you? And not from a biased perspective in either direction. But why does it matter to you? That’s the first thing you should be asking. Yeah. And you were saying that people are saying at this stage just dsay well you’ve got to come back. and the question is what are you going to come back to? And why? Yeah, and I think a lot of companies are just saying, I've heard a number of people, CEOs and the like, make comments saying basically, well, people can't keep working this way. Well, they can't or you don't want them to work this way? and I think if you if the answer is they can't, because of something about the work that you do, or something about your employee population, or where they live, or whatever it is, maybe there is a legitimate reason. Most of them are just well, you can't because I've never worked that way and I can't imagine. But what they're really saying is I can't imagine that you could actually get work done like that. The thing I'm seeing is more and more people just getting to this place of being really worn out. and this is a much longer conversation But there people who went from going to the office dropping their bags at their desk, and then going sitting at a conference room all day, and hopping from conference from the conference room. Now they just walk over to their desk at home, and they get on zoom call after a zoom call all day. But it's even more now, they've gotten to the point where instead of doing nine, now they can do 13 or 14. And I think there are people saying I am so productive and i’ve done so much work. And there's all these studies coming out saying how much more productive everybody was? Well, I have a couple of things like, how do we know? because we've been never able to measure productivity. So I’m not sure how we are now measuring productivity. Is it just a question of time? Yeah. Now, we're 2.78 times more productive? Was the latest one, or something? How do we actually know that? The reality is, being in meetings all day doesn't mean you've been productive. Absolutely. Just that you've done a lot of meetings. And of course, there's incredible fatigue coming with Zoom and with Teams. Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's not to say that that doesn't happen when you're talking with somebody in person. But I think the there’s a lot of different directions, you could take on that too. And just at a basic level, we've become so efficient that and I haveI heard this referred to a few times, but very well stated by some folks over at Genentech from their perspective, why they say they want people to come back in the office. And so they said,“efficiency has no place in innovation.” And to them what that means is innovation doesn't happen in a straight line. And it doesn't happen when I plan my day. I'm going to do this then this, then this and then this and this and I'm going to march through my day in order. Innovation happens when you get out of order, when there's an accidental conversation- when something that you didn't anticipate Or some extra stimulation from another direction that you didn't expect, right? Right and then to that point, but what I'm hearing from a lot of people is, fine, I'd like to come in but I'm coming in and basically what I do is come in the office, I sit and I go into zoom meetings all day by myself. Yeah, and then ask why did I do that? Because this is not easy. I mean, the thing about all of us coming to the office together was that there were very few variables. I knew it was predictable, I knew when you would be there unless there was some circumstances to change it. And I knew where you would be and when you would be. So I could plan around the assumption that you would be there. If I have a situation where all of us are just doing whatever is most convenient for us. We're a bunch of charged particles bouncing around in space, and we may or may not run into each other. So then the solution that a lot of people are throwing out there is well just reduce the space, and then those particles are going to bump into each other more often. And then people come in and are like, well, I don't want to come into this space that I'm packed in here with a bunch of other people. And we're all just doing our own work, and not communicating or coordinating. So there's a lot of decisions that need to be made by leadership about why they're doing this and give people the tools. Because I think people when they do come in and get something positive out of it, it's a really great thing. And they may not want to do it every day, but they say I want to do that again. And I'd love to do that again, how soon again is totally depends on the person and the company. Yes, there you go. And that sounds like the first part of your work at Workshape is in fact, that consulting piece on deciding those kinds of elements. So why are we coming in anyway. Right? Right. And I think trying to first ask questions that you may not have been asking, then develop your own problem statement. Okay. If that's why, if you're saying, I'd like people to come in, because I think they'll be more innovative. All right. If you think they're going to be more innovative. Alright, how do you solve that? What do you do to actually foster and encourage that sort of behaviour that leads to more innovative thinking or more innovations, As you say, it's not linear, you can't say, we're all gonna go and innovate tomorrow, right? Today's an Innovation Day! And companies do the whole thing where one day a year or one day a quarter, there's a passion project, you do this thing. And it's really what that's meant to do, though, is energize you. Get you out of your normal every day, work on something you're super passionate about. And hopefully, that will spark ideas and everything else you're doing. Well, that was the 3M approach, I think, a long time back, right? Yes, 3M, there's a couple of companies that follow suit with them but I think there's some value to that. But I don't know. That's what some companies are saying other companies, I don't know, if they know what they're saying yet. Other than they keep thinking, this is crazy. We can't keep working like this. Some of that is a remnant of them never having worked that way. Some of it is the belief that, and I think there's definitely, it's not just a belief, I think there's definitely truth to this. I think it's not this clear cut, but just for the sake of conversation, there's the people who thrive working from home, and who actually make people around them better. And they get a whole lot out of it. And it's like this super positive thing, because of the personality, their job description, their role, all that, you know, and it just works. Then there are people who are really good at navigating their way through it such that they are- when they when someone tells me because I've had this conversation, and I start asking, What does it mean that you're more productive.“I'm so much more productive at home!” well tell me what that means? And it's like, well, in between meetings, I go do laundry, and then I go do this, and then I'm doing this, I get all these things done. So by the end of the day, I feel like I've done work, and I've gotten done with the house. Now I can really relax instead of doing that when I get home. And my question is always, okay, so from when I think of myself, and those sorts of things happen, those things that I'm doing a lot of times because I don't want to think about the hard problem I'm trying to solve with work. And there's this easy thing that I can check a box and say I completed something. Absolutely, oh, just get that done. It's a task. But what it also does, when I do those things. I try and keep my brain thinking about the thing I'm trying to do at work. And there's some times where I can do that. But a lot of times it just takes me out of any state of flow or any chance I had to be in flow. And then I got to work my way back to it. And I think for a lot of people, the things that they are doing around home or wherever they're working, if it's not the office, not around other people. It's a lot of escapism, but you know, kind of in a way that, again, is making your personal life more convenient. And it's reducing the overall amount of time. I question, is the quality of the work you're doing getting better or worse? And that's something that's really hard to measure. But there's a lot of it happening. I had a close friend sent me a selfie the other day from his iPhone. He's out on a lake on his boat. It was 12 o'clock. And I said wow, working hard today, huh? And he goes No, it's lunch, this my lunch break, I just go out for lunch and drive around the lake and I come back. I thought, wow, you know, that's really one in one way, that's amazing. You know, that's like, what a great thing to do over your lunch break. But then I thought, well, are you really thinking, if I'm ever having to work when I'm on vacation, I’m not really working I don't want to be doing it. I want to be doing thing that I'm supposed to be doing and being on vacation. And I think there's a lot of people they're doing these really self-fulfilling things. But it does make it hard to be, like really invested in that thing. You're doing that this job you have that you know It brings me back, Brett to a couple of guys I had a few years ago, working with me in South Africa, who spent a couple of hours a day in the pub for a few weeks. They say, Yeah, we're going there to think about business and to talk about business Said yes, sure. You know, so you gotta decide where is it an excuse? And where is it a logical way of refreshing your thinking? Right. And that's always incredibly subjective. It's difficult to get around that one. On the other hand, if you create a workplace where being able to refresh your thinking, without deliberately doing so, which I think is the point, as you can't force, ‘I'm now going to innovate,’ you cannot do that, that doesn't exist. So how do you create that environment? I guess that's what your business is about, ultimately, isn't it? So I’ve been looking at the criteria that you've been laying down, you know, in terms of creating the optimal workplace, and you did a lot of that LinkedIn. But there's quite a lot behind there. So I saw that the top of your list was geolocation, Brett. You know, where actually are you going to be this much more than, you know, where does my mother in law live, which is typically the way that offices get located. Yeah. Also, that's really hard. That's a really tough one right now. Because if you said, and I've kind of vacillated on this over the last couple of years, and I'm not even totally sure as I don't think there's one right answer on this, I think it's a unique answer. If you say, we're based in California, and we've had during the pandemic, we've had 500 employees relocate to Idaho. And, you know, say we have 2000 employees and 500 of them relocated Idaho. Well, that's a number where you're like, Okay, well, we should probably have a presence there. Because there's enough people and there's some collecting point. It's not often that clear cut, though, because it's like, we have 50 that have moved to Dallas, we have 80, that moved to Los Angeles, we have 100 that have moved to Miami, we have... So they start going through the list. And this is not just in the US, this is happening everywhere. Yeah, sure. You go to that list, and it's like, you know, when I was at LinkedIn, I would get requests, “Hey, just wanted you to know, I set up a company group, I try to find anybody who's moved to this city. This is where I am, we now have 75 people, why don't we have an office here?” And so my question at that point was, well, what's the value of an office? If none of you even work together? Or know each other? Or maybe there's a handful of you that do? And then it was the question was, will you get enough value out of being together with other people that are part of the same company, even if you're not on the same teams? And, you know, I think it's getting to this place where, okay, well, there's a set of people that like to work alone together. So I just come in, I like being around the ambient awareness, the ambient kind of energy of other people. And it's almost better that I don't know them because I can just, it's like being a coffee shop, I can start to build relationships with people in my company absorbed some culture that is inherent in our physical space. But I think other people, it would be like, I just come in, and again, back to the same problem, I come in and do the same thing I do at home, but I'm doing it from the office. But then again, if you think about it as a more distributed model, if I said right now, a company has two locations, and we're on two coasts of the country. But instead, we're going to reduce the size of those two locations and open five more locations in places where we know our employees love to live and where we start to hire lots of people. And the idea is going to be that we're going to have people that move, and they spend time in multiple places throughout the year, a week here, a couple days there, and then they may report to that same location on a regular basis. But it's getting away from this idea that everything happens at headquarters and there's a lot of companies that do this where they were really bad about timezone things and they have people in Singapore, but they have calls that are at 3am Singapore time. A lot of companies were pretty bad about everything being about the headquarters. And I think one of the things this is doing is evolving that and saying is we're more of a distributed model. And we don't have that many people in one place. And maybe we do come together as a large organisation once a year. But otherwise, we create these, outposts and satellite hubs, whatever. And that’s been talked about for quite a while and you know, the Hub and Spoke thing, people have been talking about for years. But I think this might be a further evolution of it. And it’s one of the things I'm working with companies on. And in doing that, what's at that location? Let's be totally honest with ourselves. Nobody ever said, When I grew up, I want to sit at a five foot desk in a row of other five foot desks in an anonymous office what is it that no, nobody said I want to get locked in a conference room with eight other people, seven other people for the next hour? So what are the environments what are the things that people will come in to come in for and say, I don't have this at home and I got value out of this, and maybe even I came up with some new ideas I wouldn't have if I was stuck in the same four walls looking at the same space at home Absolutely. You know, I was gonna say work with, or suffer from similar situation. We've done this for 20 years at Borderless. With our team, we are a distributed business. we have one location- a physical location, which is pretty pleasant location from a classical perspective. It happens to be in Brussels. And this is a place where we plant our flag. So at least you're going to associate and yuo can say, hey, we do have a flag somewhere. And that's our flag. So it goes from being a virtual, virtually a business to being a virtual business So there is a difference. But still, we deal with those kinds of things, by bringing people together as often as we can, in one place. So we maintain that social infrastructure, that's really critical to get people to work together. And that's at least one way of handling it that we've experienced. But the physical location thing, which is where you and your business comes in. It's a different story, particularly for very small business of course. Well yes, and I will tell you, in the last couple of weeks, I've been at three conferences that I've spoken at or participated in. And I was leading a session with about 70 workplace leaders about a week ago and so I started this, it was an interactive deep dive into how does your workplace bring value to your employees? And we talked about it when we said employees or company? And can it be both at the same time, because a lot of these are very disparate. What the player wants and what the company wants are two very different things. So we had to split that apart. But the point was, we started with a poll and kind of took people through a poll to see where they were at and take their temperature. So everyone in the room could understand what their peers were, how closely did they relate and align with the people around them. And then we did roundtable conversations, we had different topics by table, we were supposed to have 45 minutes for that portion, and I was leaving the first 20 minutes to kind of talk and then we were gonna break out and come back to it. The energy that happened around these tables, and the people, and all the comments and feedback, they talked for 45 minutes, I couldn't get them to stop, we had to, we had to turn the lights on in the room, and alright it's gotta go the next thing. And so many people come up to me and said, “that was the most impactful thing we've done this whole week” because we had this opportunity and the way we were sharing and learning from each other. Because I started the whole session, I said we're going to do something that maybe you all don't remember how to do. And that's in person collaboration, we're going to work together. And it's not like this is anything new, or I hadn't seen before. But it's been so long since I've seen that and felt that energy. And it was amazing. It's amazingly positive. Because what I keep telling people is going back to the idea that if I’m remote, and probably a lot of your employees, you're a remote worker, but you are really good at focusing on the person you're talking to and focusing on the task at hand. So many people that I deal with and see even when they're in a very important conversation are letting themselves be distracted by all the other things, the phone, the other thing on their computer, whatever is going on. And when you put everybody around a table or in a same room, you see a whole lot harder to do that and you have to become present and yes, it's sometimes more tiring because your full self is there. But I think if nothing else, getting people to see the value in that and the value in that being something that's not just a social thing. It's not just oh, we just we only get together when we're trying to be social. So well, there's nothing negative about that. But I think you're missing an opportunity. I think you're missing an opportunity to be better at your job. And, you know, businesses are all social enterprises, but they're not a 100% social purpose. And so, you know, people tend to forget that there is a business at the end of the day too. So bringing that two together, and matching it up is a critical part of a workplace. I noticed though, the way you are structuring things. Starting at location, then looking at space utilisation, I mean, in history, there was a lot of concepts around space utilisation, I think the first time I came across with the space time thing, you know, the space you need for the time you need, and that kind of stuff, which made a lot of good sense of the at the time. But I think we're totally different mood, I think, looking at design philosophy, which is one of the things that you're doing as well is going to be really important in all of this, not to say the other aspects. So I noticed on your website, workplace policies, workplace programmes, your ESG profile, as a consequence of doing all of these things, these are really critical things and it's very nice to see that your new company is actually really focusing around every aspect of this. And I think that's why, for me, the aha moment that has happened a couple years ago, while I was at LinkedIn was realising that between the people who are leading these functions within large corporations, and all the folks that they bring in who support these activities and these services in these spaces, they're all kind of individually siloed. And then often there is a pretty big gap between the subject matter expert, and the person leading that function within the organisation. And it's mostly because neither one of them is sat and the other one seat before and they don't understand the service provider and the subject matter expert doesn't necessarily understand the processes and the things it takes to put those things into place and how decisions are made. And the person leading the function doesn't understand what it takes to do the work. And you know, what is the process. And so a lot of what I'm trying to do is both fill that gap and be the glue, the kind of stickiness that brings those things together. That more clearly articulates what people are trying to solve for, and then compile and assemble the best people, the best team possible to come up with even better solutions. Well it sounds like that upfront, understanding why we're doing this in the first place. Sounds like a really critical part of your work, which is clearly an enormous time sink, upfront that you need to invest in. I just wonder how you cope with all of that personally, because I'm sure your time, particularly in this first couple of months, must have been so tied up in those activities. Yeah, I think it's interesting, because the clients I have are not all one industry. And they're not all one kind of prototype. Some are corporations, some are property developers, some are prop tech companies, some or you know, institutions, they all have a different problem to solve. And they all come at it a different way. So the conversations are all unique. But there is a lot of time spent in just digging, and asking lots of questions and probing. And you know, I think people have a knee jerk reaction, they go well, this is why. This is why we do it. And then you start to break that down. And then they start to realise, I've been saying this, but actually I hadn't really thought about it. And I don't know, that is actually an adequate answer. Because when you know, when you break it down, I think we're a lot of people are at the answer really is just because. Not because of these things. It's well, just because this is what we've always done. And it's so hard to imagine doing anything else. So I think that's the thing that's really unique about this is even as more companies, because I have heard of a few more in the last week, very large ones who are now making their their employees sign contracts, saying they're going to come back to the office. I've heard about more companies starting to use AI software that you are required to have the software installed. Yeah, all that kind of stuff Activity Monitors Which I think these companies are going to do, and they're trying to find the easy button, and they're getting to this place where that over time is going to have a tremendously detrimental effect on them. No question. You know, we see it already interviewing people and so on for some senior roles. And even the most senior people now, today are saying, no, no, no, I don't think so. This one I need out of a work environment. This is what I need from the employer. It's often not the same thing at all. And the employers are coming back saying, well, that's not the way we work. So, this is clearly going to be also a barrier to employing the best people, or at least enough of the best people. with this way of working, Well, this is going to be to me the new amenities race, you know, the arms race for well, these are the things we do, and it's going to be more about enabling employees to be flexible and work in the way that makes the most sense for them. I think though, you can, if you're just saying that, and it's lip service, people will quickly default to, I'm just gonna go the company that says they don't care, they literally don't care where I work, or they don't have offices, and I'm okay with giving that part up, because I have so much more freedom and flexibility to manage my life the way I want. And it's going to be the ones who come up with who have a perspective and opinion and are willing to say, this is why this matters to me, it might not be for everyone. And that's okay. But this is why it matters to our company, and if you want to be part of what we're doing, this is what to do. Because I think there's the other part of this that is a lot of people just want something they want some sort of direction. They're so tired of the ambiguity of I could do anything. and I think in life now, we all have so many choices every single day that we have to make. And for a lot of people just the choice of, well do I go in? Do I stay at home? If I do go in, Where do I meet? which office do I go to? And it's too much. So I think people need, they need some direction and guidance. Yes, some light structure and process is required. For sure. And if it doesn't, if you believe that it's not right for you, that's okay. Then find that company that has that structure. But I think there's so many companies afraid to say anything for fear that it will send lots of people running for the door, that they've said nothing. And so that's far worse. And then eventually they will leak employees over time. But they’re sending mixed signals, because then they're reducing their footprint. And they're getting rid of services. And it's like, wait, you're really just trying to save money over here? Like what's going to happen? And then and then there's the ultimate fear, you're just going to make me come back to the office in a smaller space, and you're going to cram us all in and you're not going to give us assigned seats. And this is going to be worse than what I had before. And that's I think, like, why people why the other thing to say with all this is, this is not something you can solve overnight. And this is a sea change in how we've all worked before. I think by listening to you talking about this, Brett, so eloquently as always, I get the impression that all of this is really situational, and it ultimately does depend on the character, the nature, culture of each company, and it’s business objectives. So no one solution would be identical for every company, right? I truly believe that. I believed that before the pandemic, and we would talk about it a lot, I would talk a lot about all the spaces I delivered, each were unique. The reality was they were 95%, the same. And the 5% was the makeup that went on at the end. That makes them feel a little different. But fundamentally, they were the same. And I think this is getting to a place where this is not the difference of you know, 1% of DNA differences needs to get to that there's a fundamental difference. And it may even happen within a company by location, that a location has a very different way of doing things in another state, city, country. And I think people have been so afraid to do that, because we need to have the homogeneous of what we offer for the sake of equity. I think that the conversation around equity has to change, to this is equitable in relation to the people where they live and where they're at and not a matter of it being equitable. Because anytime you try and make things equitable, globally, within a company, you've already alienated so many people. Well you sub optimise everything, of course, right? Right. And it doesn’t matter. My culture, the culture of one country versus another can be so different, that thing that's a positive, you know, even saying which days of the week you're going to work, some countries, a lot of countries, they work on Saturday. And if you go to the Middle East, of course, you're working different schedules, different weeks. So anyway, I think it's a super complex problem. I'm excited because there's no shortage of companies looking for help and guidance. Well you're doing it for yourself. First of all, Brett, congratulations. That's a great start. So I wanted to ask you about geography. Right now I can imagine you're pretty tied up just where you are right now. Are you considering working in different parts of the world at this stage? So right now, I'm pretty much across the US but I'm trying to have conversations with some folks who are interested in Ireland, in Australia, and potentially Singapore. But I'm trying to just get my feet underneath me at first and just you know, have all processes in place. And as I try and decide what kind of team I'm going to build and beyond the kind of outsource help that I have currently, I think what I'm after is, what about what I'm doing is repeatable? And, you know, what can I expand to have others help me with and what are the things that I need to stay close to because for me though, I want to stay close to the work, I want to stay close to clients and I plan to. So it's really about finding a balance there. Well and finding a balance and being able to scale that wonderful experience that you have is going to be the biggest challenge for you, I suspect. Yeah, for sure. Well if we can help in any way, at some point in future it would be great pleasure. But I know that the subject matter is of incredible interest to our clients. You know, we've seen also, for example, just last week, wonderful candidate, really top of the game, working with a client in the Nordics, the individual was probably the best person around for that particular role. They said, well that's fantastic, I'm happy to work from my current location. He had a couple of things here and there, but, you know, a month in a year, I’m actually going to be working from Spain during the school holidays. You know, is that a problem? You know, if I'm working from there, and they say, oh, no, we can't have you doing that. We can't, we will have no provision for that. So you know, immediately, they lost the best person. So, that's a reality, of course, when companies really haven't thought through these kinds of things. Thank you so much Brett. Thank you, it's always a pleasure. Thank you. Lots of energy, take care.