Hi friends!
HOW is it already the end of September? People are mentioning things like Thanksgiving (both the Canadian and American varieties), and holiday plans and tbh my jaw is on the ground that we are wrapping up Q3. Am I right in assuming you all think about your year and life in quarters?
This week’s newsletter is a shorter one about the struggles of working remotely, which will segue into next week’s newsletter on finding motivation in these weird weird times. (Does anyone else find the word ‘segue’ absurd if you look at it too long?)
There’s a lot of people (especially in tech) denouncing ever needing to go back into the office. This New Yorker article talks about the silliness of going into an office everyday: “Is Going Into the Office A Broken Way Of Working”. I started reading it armed with a heavy eyeroll, annoyed that tech types were going to espouse the benefits of exclusively virtual work arrangements because it’s “efficient” and “productive” and “a something something something hack”…. and I am currently at my limit of working remotely.
Don’t get me wrong. I feel extremely privileged to be able to work from home. In addition to exclusively wearing stretchy pants, I have benefitted enormously from the arrangement by being able to travel and see friends and work anywhere.
But a few things happened this past week that reminded the value of being in person with colleagues. (By the way, once I stopped rolling my eyes and actually reading, the article meanders to that same conclusion). The things that happened:
We had our team offsite in person, the first one in 18 months
We are actively recruiting junior talent, and they are notably worried about a distributed team
I attended a conference in person
Thing #1 that cannot be done remotely: Joyful experiences. And eating together.
We had our first in person team offsite this past week in a year and a half. We did an escape room. We ate lunch together. We bowled. We mocked each other. We encouraged each other. We hugged!
Listen, I’m not a huge proponent of rah-rah team building for the sake of it. But after a year of not seeing each other, having a get-together in person was extremely enjoyable. As a group, we generated investment ideas and chatted about the general market (which you could argue can be accomplished over Zoom). We also had fun, made enjoyable small talk (vs. the dreaded Zoom small talk that happens whenever others are late to the start of a call… SO MUCH UGH), and enjoyed each other’s company.
When your main interactions with a coworker are unilateral instruction giving and status updates, it’s harder to build things like trust and goodwill. It’s also hard to get things across like encouragement and motivation (in a time when employees and colleagues probably need it the most). Sharing in silly/joyful experiences together is humanizing (because literally no one is or looks cool while bowling).
And sharing in a meal together? There’s a boisterous energy when you break bread with a group, and it can actually boost productivity and cooperation (read this article: “The Power of Eating Together”)
“From an evolutionary anthropology perspective, eating together has a long, primal tradition as a kind of social glue. That seems to continue in today’s workplaces.”
- Kevin Kniffin, a professor and applied behavioral scientist at Cornell University
Not that we’re in the business of shaming each other, but gentle teasing about food choices, aversions/preferences breaks the ice. Eating together also levels the situation for everyone - no matter someone’s rank in a company, everyone eats in similar ways, everyone accidentally spills (no matter how senior they are). I’ve found people at various levels are also more willing to speak up at the dinner table (possibly fueled by one or two drinks) than they would at a crowded conference table.
Pro tip: One of my former employers is a gregarious man with an awesome, huge personality, and at our corporate offsites, he would insist that at each new dinner course (or at 30 min intervals), people rotate (a la musical chairs) and sit next to new people so that conversation wouldn’t be silo’ed into small groups.
Thing #2 that cannot be done remotely: Apprenticing junior talent
Proponents of remote work say that you can cast a super wide net by hiring far and wide, not being fixed to a specific location. While this is true in a lot of circumstances, as I’ve been working to hire for associates at our firm, I find that the exception lies exactly in our industry.
It’s my belief that investing isn’t necessarily a job that can be taught or programmed - there is a ‘nose’ for finding deals, underwriting deals, managing companies, negotiating terms… a lot of the ‘art’ side of the profession makes the training of junior people more like an apprenticeship.
You can show someone an investment memo, or the model, but without showing them the full spectrum of decision making, it’s more challenging for them to develop the intangible side of skill set. If you have a firm comprised of all fully experienced individuals, then perhaps remote work can continue forever, but to develop earlier talent, there needs to be opportunities to watch/observe/see how the sausage is made :).
More on this next week, especially as it pertains to communication and motivation in the workplace.
Thing #3 that cannot be done remotely: Fortuitous meetings
Let me be the first to remind you - I kind of hate conferences. If you want a refresher on my secret introversion and why I find networking uncomfortable, revisit this post: “Let’s Make Networking Less Awkward”).
But two interactions at this conference reminded me the value of meeting people in person. You can learn more about people you already know, and you can meet second and third degree connections much more easily than you could virtually.
I had a catch-up coffee with a contact I’ve met numerous times before online. Every update call thusfar has been pleasant, friendly and efficient. It’s nice. But conversation remains high level and polite and focused on the performance of the fund and the investment pipeline. In person - the conversation veered from our personal lives (families/spouses), home projects to public market valuations to talent management. We covered a lot. I felt like I learned so much more about the person in an organic and enjoyable way that will set the stage for future deepening of the relationship.
I ran into a contact who suggested I meet one of her contacts. As in, she immediately walked me over to that person and basically stuck my hand in hers for a handshake. If this had been a virtual offer to make an introduction, it would have required my initial contact to remember to follow up, then reach out to the new person, then the new person to reach out to me, then we’d have a scheduling tetris back-and-forth, and chances are… we never would have met.
I’ll leave you with thoughts from someone who is often contrarian, and who often successfully proves me wrong: my partner. He is someone who has thrived in the virtual-first workplace, even though he admittedly enjoyed going into an office (and others’ offices as a consultant) in a former life.
When I raved about the merits of gathering in person this week, he pointed out that somehow his team has made it work without ever meeting in person.
He joined his company in the heart of the pandemic, and has met one (ONE SINGULAR!) person he works with in person, though he works with a much larger finance team. He’s hired people in and out of the country that he has never met (and may not meet for months to come).
Yet, he feels like his team is productive and cohesive, and he feels motivated and connected to them, so I spent some time analyzing why that might be the case.
Stage/Situation: His team and company are in a stage of high growth, so there’s a natural excitement that buoy them through the lulls of working remotely
Tactics: They use Zoom differently. Not only do they use Zoom for standups or check in calls, they schedule working sessions over Zoom, where they turn on cameras and just work together for an hour or longer. Some key differences between this and a typical tactical Zoom call:
Members of a team feel like they are working on something together vs pitching at each other/jockeying to talk
No set agenda. Just a known problem that needs to be fixed, and screen sharing/talking each other through problems (or thinking through things silently, but together)
This isn’t completely analogous, but a good friend and I do this almost weekly with the Sunday New York Times crossword, and I always emerge from it feeling more productive and connected to her than from any other virtual interaction during the week
They (gasp!) call each other:
I know this is odd and terrifying:
But members of his team dynamically call each other when someone has an idea or a question, and it allows for idea flow and triage. It doesn’t need to be scheduled in advance, it doesn’t need to fit into a neat agenda. It can be over in a few minutes (thank god).
Resources/Links
Remote First vs Remote Friendly: the differences and the benefits (Peoplebox.ai)
Creating culture remotely (miro.com)
“Cool Ladies Doing Cool Things”: you know how you have different categories of dream jobs? Some are more in the realm of ‘possible’ - like a more senior version of you, and some are in the realm of ‘no way, I lack the skills and everything to do this, but damnit wouldn’t it be cool’? SNL personality is one of mine from the latter category, and Edo Nwodim just seems like she’s the COOLEST. (NYTimes)