Mass Customization: The Next Workplace Challenge

0:00Some managers are like, hey, you need to be here five days a week. I don't care if you've got a dentist appointment on Friday, whereas other managers are more flexible. They understand your productivity and success in this role is not going to be measured on time in office. Welcome to Design Nerds Anonymous, the podcast that sparks curiosity at the intersection of business and design. I'm your host, Amanda Schneider. We're back on the road with Work For What's Next. And this stop takes us once again to a showroom in Chicago, where we recorded live from the Hayworth showroom with their newest dealer, Office Revolution.

0:39Now, there's a tension that I've been thinking a lot about since writing the book. We've spent the last few years giving people more choice than ever in how they work. And for good reason. As we learned on last week's episode, one size fits all never really fit everyone. But how far can we take that? If everyone wants something different, how do you create a workplace that still feels fair? How much should an organization bend to the needs of an individual? And at what point does flexibility stop helping the business actually work? That's what we're unpacking today. Because this conversation gets into something much bigger than where or when we work.

1:21It gets into trust, leadership, fairness, and what happens when the needs of the individual collide with the needs of the organization. So come with us to Chicago and listen in on the conversation. First of all, I just want to thank you all for coming. We are recording live from the Hayworth showroom in the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. We've been brought here by their newest dealer, Office Revolution. So we've titled the episode Mass Customization. We know that people are looking for flexibility today. Since 2020, how we work has changed. But if we have so much flexibility that the business can't meet its goals, probably not effective because we all need paychecks, right?

2:03And then if we have so much rigidity that we don't have flexibility, suddenly the human sustainability is not there. We're all burning out. We're all struggling. So when we talk about mass customization, it's really about how do we meet individual workers where they are and help to figure out something that's going to work for the sustainability of the humans and the sustainability of the business. All right. So I've invited two phenomenal panelists here to help us unpack from very different perspectives, kind of where we are. So introduce yourself then in one word, how would you describe the tension between what individuals need to thrive and what organizations need to thrive today?

2:42Hi, my name is Erin Koob. I am a strategic advisor. I run a company where we go in and work mainly with executive teams on helping them decide how to help their people perform more sustainably and create behavioral and cultural shifts. I also do a lot of keynote speaking around a lot of these topics. That one word I would use, friction. I'm Tyler Blackwell. I work for a company called Morningstar. I lead workforce strategy and transformation. And I guess like one word I would use that comes to mind is like trust. And do you think it's trust or mistrust right now? I think it's a mix. I think like your employer is one of the last like remaining places where we can place our trust.

3:26And I think it's like shifting even now, though, a little bit not in a good way for organizations. I think, yeah, I think it's a mixed bag. It's interesting. I love this one word exercise, because when you see these words come together, friction and trust or mistrust, it kind of gives us a quick snapshot of what's happening between individual worker and employer today. And I like that you said a mix of trust and mistrust, because I think that's definitely true. Everyone in this room knows I was recently on the Oprah podcast and there was a viral Gen Z-er and they're talking about the Gen Z stare.

3:59The Gen Z stare is when they look at you like buffering, buffering, buffering, like I'm trying to figure out what you're saying. But all of this friction, trust, mistrust, balance is normal to us. Like we've watched it form. But Gen Z is coming into this environment with no background and understanding. And so a bit of that Gen Z stare, I feel like they're looking at the workforce right now and looking at jobs and looking at some of our norms. Like you stay loyal to a company for 20 years, even though inflation is rising like this and our cost of living raises are rising like this. Right. Like they look at some of these things with their own Gen Z stare about how we got to this moment.

4:40So I guess let's unpack these words a little bit. How did we get here? Why do you think we're in this moment? I look at things as taking a step back for the person behind the performance. And so when we think about an organization, we think about growth, we think about results, business outcomes, and strategy. And none of that is possible without the people. People are the ones that produce those results and outcomes. And yes, we have technology that will help us do that and do that better and faster. But at the end of the day, it's the people. And so I think what has happened or what I've experienced both myself and with clients is that over the last call it 10 to 15 years and certainly since the pandemic we have had this friction between people wanting agency and autonomy and ownership over their days their time their energy their attention and at the same time needing to produce results and perform at a high level for the organization and what I find very interesting is that these two things can coexist.

5:43And so there's this like almost black and white scenario where people are looking at it like, I either need to make it to 65 so I can retire and not have to work and then I get to live, or I have to just sell my soul and let it be crushed and like have no life and be miserable. And I don't agree with that. I absolutely disagree with that. But I believe that is where the friction comes in. And it's why I do the work I do because I changed my own perspective of that from the person that would tell myself, I'm just going to be miserable until I'm 65 and then I get to live to the person that's like, oh no, I'm going to be in this and perform well and actually crush it and make the most of the money I'm earning and my potential so that I can live more now and not just wait for a vacation or to be 65.

6:29Which is interesting because I feel like Gen Z is starting there. The book really talks about using Gen Z as a lens. And they're getting a bad rap for it. People are like, oh, these kids, they have no grit. They have no, you know. So I think what's interesting is what all of us really need to is what Gen Z is coming into the workplace asking for. But Tyler, I'm sure you have something to say about this because we can't accommodate 400 people's desires with 400 different policies. What would you add to this? Certainly Gen Z has come into the workplace in the last six years in a challenging time.

7:01But I mean, it's also impacted all of us in the same way since I'm not Gen Z. And I guess like some of it's certainly related to in-office versus remote kind of work. And then some of it's also related to how work is changing because of new technologies and what that means for us and for people at a more entry-level role. Your question about like customization or like personalization, I think is an interesting one. So if you are working for a company and you accept a job there, and let's say you are three days in office, and then a year later, they go to four days in office, from the employee perspective, that feels tough.

7:46And I think to name it, in some ways, it can start to erode trust because you signed on to something like a contract, right? Certain working norms, right? And then there are other elements of work that are not necessarily a part of that contract, but we often like blend them into the same thing. And so by the contract, I mean like what you do every single day, who you work with, what's expected of you, you know, how are you going to be graded in your performance, these kinds of things. And then like the other element of it, which isn't contractual, when do you go to work? How long do you go to work?

8:23For a lot of us, this is ingrained in the culture, but it's not necessarily written down anywhere. All those sorts of things that are a part of an organizational culture, but it's not like you signed on to them, right? And I think a lot of organizations are sort of thinking about personalization and they're trying to like boil the ocean. As you start to take things away two days remote and now you have one, it starts to erode trust. And I think that that impacts people a lot. It's interesting that you brought up kind of this RTO as one of these things that's like trust, mistrust, you know, where does it fall in that balance?

8:59And I love something that you said in our prep call is this standoff is a zero-sum game because we still measure contribution by time and visibility, an analog norm that survived into a digital world. And it's interesting, again, why I love to look at it through this generational lens. We did a little would you rather question at Neocon, a little trade show here, and we asked, would you rather work five days a week fully remote or five days a week fully in office? Now, most people tried to put it on the line, but we discounted their votes. They didn't count. But the only generation to vote more, a higher percentage of five days a week back in the office was Gen Z.

9:36So as we look at this trust mistrust, I think one thing that's happening is Gen Z and others are told that they have to come into the office for mentorship or they have to come into the office for collaboration and then they get there and their superiors aren't there because they're traveling for business, because responsibilities, because whatever else, we don't know. So this policy that's designed to create camaraderie is actually starting to destroy it. So talk a little bit more about that optionality and maybe, Tyler, what you've found that helps to create that customization without, I guess, fueling that mistrust.

10:13I know Aaron probably has thoughts about this, but I really think about the importance of leadership when it comes to this. Like when you have an RTO policy and, you know, there's built in flexibility that people end up getting depending on who their manager is, right? Some managers are like, hey, you need to be here five days a week. I don't care if you've got a dentist appointment on Friday at 10 o 'clock, like you got to reschedule that. Or, you know, I don't, I don't care if you You need to go pick up your kids from school on whatever day. Whereas other managers are more flexible. They understand your productivity and success in this role is not going to be measured on time in office and whatever other old metrics we have.

10:56And so it's not really personalization at that point. It's a lottery, the lottery of who your manager is. And so I think so much of this is dependent on leadership. And if your leaders are not in the office and it's five days a week, that's ridiculous. is that that's not a good thing. And it's going to build a really bad organizational culture if it's not already a bad organizational culture. I think it's interesting Gen Z are the folks that want to be in the office five days a week. But I think it's directly related to the lack of camaraderie community that I think we all have coming out of COVID and then having like so much of us working remotely.

11:35Community is a big thing, I think, missing, not just in the workplace, but like in life. So I agree with a lot of the things that you're saying, Tyler. And I do look at things from the leadership lens because every leader sets a microculture in an organization. And then those compound and add up to the overall culture of what does it actually feel like to work for this company, right? And one of the things that I've noticed happened, so I worked at Goldman throughout my 20s on Wall Street. And I actually believe I'm where I am today because I learned the professional foundation of what leadership is not and should not be.

12:07And so I reported to someone who was all about FaceTime before it was an app on a phone. It meant butt in seat 15 hours a day, right? You came in before your boss, so you didn't leave till your boss left. And usually your boss was there at least a minimum of 12, 13 hours. Was I productive during all those hours? Absolutely not. I had instant messenger and someone would send me a little lightning bolt when my boss is walking up behind me. So that means I can stop planning my next trip and start working again. But of course, we know that we cannot be productive for all of those hours. It's just, it's not even a human thing.

12:40It's just our brains don't want to do that, right? So we're going to find distractions. Now that said, the boss that I had in that instance, and I've seen so many since, not that I've reported to necessarily, but so many people that I have met along the way who either operate this way or report to someone who does. There's this like rite of passage that because I went through this, because this is how I came up through the ranks, this is how I will then treat you. You got to suffer too. Exactly. And that is what I believe actually has to start to shift. My belief is not that it is an employer's job to make their employees happy.

13:16Like that's an inside job for each of us. You know, that's our personal responsibility. And at the same time, we do not need to treat those younger than us in a way where it is our rite of passage to mistreat them. So a little story about this. I have a client contact who I worked with in a different company. She joined as a chief people officer over at a company that's around 120 ,000 people globally. They have a very young distributed workforce. A new CEO came in who was McKinsey trained for 35 years. So we all know that type. And this man was within six months going to his C-suite leadership team saying, we have a problem.

14:01People are logging out before four o 'clock on Fridays. And that's what he looked at. This is the metric that he was looking at. Meanwhile, there's no problem showing up elsewhere in the organization. So when she calls me and she says, what are some things I can talk to my CEO about? What are some things you could help us with? And so I asked some very deep questions after about 45 minutes of chatting with her. where I got to is I'm happy to join you on a call, but you aren't going to solve this problem by solving your people's issues. You're going to change the mindset of the CEO. So don't spend money on all these services that, by the way, a million consulting firms would love to sell you because they're not going to work.

14:44They're a band-aid solution to a problem that is actually a mindset issue for him. And meanwhile, this company, their stock price was phenomenal. The employee engagement surveys, scores are through the roof. People enjoy their jobs. But what he wasn't looking at is who's logging in at 8 o 'clock at night on Tuesdays? Who is maybe leaving at 4 o 'clock on Friday but then works on Saturday or Sunday? He wasn't looking at any of those things. And that is where measuring contribution versus time is really where we have to start to make this shift and help those older than us even start to understand what those shifts are.

15:22Yeah. And I love that you kind of brought in that, what did you say, 15, 18 hour workday? Right. Because as we talk about sustainability, the business and sustainability, the individual, that's not sustainable for either. Your people are going to burn out. You're not going to be able to keep that up.

15:41Office Revolution is proud to support this episode of Design Nerds Anonymous because honestly, this conversation hits home for us. We get to work with some incredibly talented designers and clients to create great workplaces. But we also know that getting from a great idea to a great outcome can be complicated. The work is more customized. The expectations are higher. There are more people involved. And we're all moving faster than ever. But in a lot of cases, the systems and processes we're using haven't really kept up. So if we're asking people to do more and deliver better experiences, maybe it's time to rethink how the work actually gets done.

16:18That's why Office Revolution wanted to support this conversation. Because we believe that better systems can lead to better collaboration. Better collaboration can lead to better ideas. And ultimately, that means better outcomes for our design partners, our clients, and the people who will actually experience the spaces we help create. We're not claiming to have it all figured out. But we do believe it's worth talking about. Challenging some of the old ways of doing things. And being open to building better ones together. Because great workplace design deserves a great process behind it. We're excited to be part of the conversation and invite you to get to know us.

16:51Visit our website or send a message on LinkedIn. Let's connect and work together for what's next.

17:04I want to talk about a quick moment. When I was preparing for my TEDx talk, I was practicing on my best friend and running through. and one of the lines in it is the future of work starts with each of us understanding when and where we work best. And so funny, she pushed back and was like, Amanda, because of the industry you're in, you think about this all the time. But she's like, I've honestly never, ever thought about that because for many of us, work is just something we do, right? You get the job, you get a key card, you come into the office because that's what we do. But if you think back to how you could be most productive in that workday, some of us are wired for early morning.

17:40I love. I wrote this book between 4 and 6 a.m. Most people think I'm crazy, right? I know, not normal. But other people are wired to be night owls, right? So Erin, I know this is a big part of your book. I have one little chapter, chapter three in work for What's Next talks about this. But talk about how you start this process of just even self-discovery and identifying where and how you work best. Because I feel like we can't design the future of work for all these different needs if you yourself don't understand your needs. Absolutely. You know, it all starts with self-awareness. And that is where I begin the process with any organization, with the executive team, because they are setting the tone.

18:19And that will help inform these decisions they make on a personalization scale, customization scale, and all of the above for their teams and for the company. When I think about self-awareness, and there's this metric that I learned in a neuroscience course I took at MIT that says 85 % of people think they're self-aware. Guess how many are? Barely 10%. The other five or six don't even think about it. Everyone's thinking of someone in their office right now. Yeah. But seriously, like look around this room, you know, it's like, we're not all self-aware and self-awareness is a practice. It is a practice and it is a choice and it requires intention in order to develop self-awareness, but then to maintain it.

18:59And so in my book, I do write three full chapters in the beginning, all about how do we start to notice patterns in the ways that we think and the ways that we operate or show up in our behaviors and look at where those patterns are stemming from. They're usually stemming from some sort of antiquated or outdated belief, right? So case in point, I was at a talk not long ago for the book and there was a room of about this size and I didn't know anyone in the room. I was asked to join a Chamber of Commerce event. And this guy, towards the end, everyone got the book and they're asking questions. And this guy says, I've got a real problem with something that I do is a dichotomy of rituals and routines and how we look at our lives.

19:40He goes, I have a real problem with this because my whole life is routine. Every single day, it's so structured. And I said, okay, that's great. There's nothing wrong with that if it works for you. And I said, rituals and routines both have structure. So tell me, is there any part of your routine, your structured day that does not energize you, that absolutely zaps you and drains you? And he goes, yeah, the part where I have to go to work. And I said, bingo. Okay. So this is where you've got to pull back the hood and you've got to start looking at your relationship to what work actually means for you.

20:15Is it just a paycheck? Is it a livelihood? Is it a pathway to something else? Like you have to figure out how does that serve you and then embrace that. And really, and honestly, if you're in a toxic environment, find a new job. If you have a toxic boss, see if you can do something else in the company. And that is, that's a very real thing people go through. But if that's not the case, like you have to change your relationship to it, which requires self-awareness and asking some deeper questions. So we get all this self-awareness and now 400 people come to Tyler with their newfound self-awareness from chapter three in my book and from your whole book.

20:53And they have all of these different needs. Tyler, where do we start there? Like how do we start to build this trust in a way that benefits the individuals and still make sense for what you're trying to do in the business you're trying to run? Well, I would say, first of all, Well, thankfully that's not my job in real life. I mean, it is and it isn't. We of course survey our employees all the time and we do take that really seriously. And we do try to demonstrate that we're doing something about it. Because of course, a lot of people feel like they take a survey and nothing's ever done with it.

21:30But we do try to do things all the time. Our chief people officer is very serious about that. And so each year she tries to do something related to what we found in our poll survey globally. We have a little bit more than 11 ,000 people globally and 31 different offices. So it's not like it's not ginormous like this 120 ,000 person, but it's not it's not tiny. and so what we do try to do is to think about what's actually like actionable here that we can commit to and actually commit to for a long time instead of doing it next year because it's like kind of in the moment and and then maybe like next year we oh god that's too costly we won't be able to do that and so I think we've tried to take the approach of a smaller menu of items that can feel personalized and, and customized for our global audience, which again, like that you have to take lots of things into consideration with a global audience.

22:35Like what Americans might want is very different than what our employees in Japan might want versus what our employees in Sydney might, you know, so there's a lot of like factors there. But I think the answer really is to, again, don't try to boil the ocean and do everything for everybody. an example is a change we made to our sort of like stipend that we give folks at first it was just like an education statement you got i think five hundred dollars and you could use that for a variety of different things like going to a conference or you know um books and things that you want to read and people were kind of like that you know i don't know i'm not i don't feel that so much um it's fine but like it's also not that much money what else could we do people were talking about like doing something more in fitness and well-being and so we increased it to a thousand dollars and also made more flexibility in terms of what people could do with that money they could they could still use it for education but they could also do something like within wellness if you demonstrate that you're doing something for people when they say x y and z and and you're open and transparent about what you can't do and what you can do and then you stick with those things instead of like taking them away the next year.

23:51I think that builds trust. And I think any employee understands like you're not going to get everything that you want. Hopefully you're not being exploited and you don't feel like an unbelievable amount of gratitude just for having the job, which I think a lot of people do feel right now. And I think there's a lot of fear and anxiety that people feel around changes to the economy and how we do work and what that looks like. But I think just like building trust in some of these smaller ways goes a long way. And I think that anxiety is probably increasing as AI comes into the picture and some of this.

24:27And interesting story, you mentioned your global survey and some differences in cultures. So I was speaking at a recent event and there was a woman from Japan in the audience. And she was talking about in Japan, they have height adjustable desks, but no one will use them because the sound, they're too afraid that it's going to bother their neighbors. All the Americans in the audience are like, well, that's not happening here.

25:00You talk, Tyler, about what you call shadow customization. And I think this is a really important piece because you mentioned earlier, you know, it's that contract between your manager. So that means some people get this and some people do not. Talk about that shadow customization and what that means, first of all, for anyone who hasn't heard the term and how you at Morningstar kind of overcome that. I do think it's important to say Morningstar is a great place to work. And I've only been there two years, but it's the best place I've ever worked. And I was attracted to Morningstar in part because of their commitment to design.

25:36Design is really important to Morningstar. We have a chief design officer. Our design ethos and values are directly related to our mission and our values as a company. And Morningstar was founded in 1984 because the guy that started Morningstar wanted to make data more transparent and available to everybody. And I'd never thought about this stuff until I got to Morningstar. but nobody has an office globally at Morningstar. Our CEO sits on the floor like everyone else, not literally, but like, you know. Thanks for clarifying. We have desks and he sits on it. Like, I love that personally. Shadow customization means that you may have your policies and the contracts that you have as an employee and HR may come up with policies X, Y, and Z and that's great, but then you have things happening on the side.