#569 Why zero distance will make you better at your job

0:00We probably haven't had a language for it before. Like our life priorities aren't always the same. Zero distance is the belief that organisations are strongest when they erase the gap between leaders and teams, between brands and the people they serve. We were like, you can look at zero distance in a few different ways. The more feelings you have, the more likely you are. Suppress, ignore, dismiss the feelings. I carry the weight of the feeling rather than do something with it you know like I carry the weight of the distance and then what we get is the Helen I'm fine robot do you know I'm fine I'm fine we had it three times fine well I'm not fine but it's fine it's fine I was like I'm fine I'm not fine but you know it's fine if you're doing this as a team right you'd be like right well what will mean that we have zero distance from each other yeah what's on your worry list you know like you saying that sometimes I don't know what's most important to you right now.

0:52What's happening outside of work that we don't know about.

0:59Hi, I'm Helen. And I'm Sarah. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, a weekly show where we borrow some brilliance from things we're watching, reading, listening to, or events we're maybe attending. Objects. Objects, yeah. There's been many things since we made a bit of a change to the Squiggly Careers podcast to do Borrow Brilliance. and we are living it. I'm finding it's like unlocking my curiosity. I'm quite excited about this conversation today because since Sarah shared the idea with me, which I'll let her tell you about in a minute, it's just come up quite a lot. I feel like the relevance of this one, it keeps being dropped into conversations.

1:34I hope it's going to be a useful listen for everybody. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen or watch the podcast. That just means that you never miss an episode because it always goes like top of your list on those platforms. Also, it is worth going to our website because every one of our episodes has a pod sheet, like a one page summary of the conversation, the ideas, all the links to learn from. And it's all on amazingif.com. If you just go to the podcast page, you'll see all of our podcasts there, all 500 and something. And the vast majority of those have got this one pager. So it might help you to take what you are listening to in our conversation into some practical actions afterwards.

2:10And this is one of our episodes that we're doing in partnership with Post-it. Yay! And I sort of don't want to spoil the surprise of how we're going to be using them today. But the topic really lends itself, I think, to a bit of visualising, doing a bit of drawing as we go. So we'll come back to how we think they might be helpful. And so the idea we're going to be exploring today is something called Zero Distance. And Zero Distance was first introduced by a company called Haya, who I think are a Japanese company. And the idea of Zero Distance, and it sort of does what it says on the tin, is making sure that between a business and a customer, you have zero distance.

2:50And so, you know, like you, you're so close to your customer that you really understand them and you're learning from them. And actually I went on their website to see how they kind of described like the philosophy. And they talk about this idea of relentless learning, which obviously really appealed to me. I was like, oh yeah, that sounds amazing. And they talk about like maintaining a startup mentality, adopting an agile approach, and obviously like really like listening as well. There's a big thing about listening. But where I'm actually borrowing brilliance from is I saw the marketing director of a brand called Elfspeak, a lady called Corey Marchesotto.

3:27And so we've got some Elf products. We have got some Elf products. This is a great excuse for us to buy some Elf products. Which, looking at these beautiful products, look, which, you know, I'm sure some people who do proper podcasting at YouTube like oh is that because they're sponsored we're like no no we just like I just thought it was a really good idea Sarah said this morning because we always like plan obviously plan what we're going to record yes it is it is planned everybody you may not think it is but we do plan it she's like I think it'd be good to have some elf products so uh Vivi who works the team was then sent to go and get some products and now I'm going to steal them because I'm very excited about using them then you got carried away with the products because I've heard a lot about less about the products more about the company but I've heard a lot about their culture I've heard a lot about Corey as well like she's been on the podcast like energy tenacity like great great leadership yeah loads of energy so she was on the stage we were at an event together I've never met them before and actually I've so I hadn't come across the brand before I think everybody else has to be honest every time I've then used this people are like I love their products um but I just hadn't and she was she is really she did a brilliant job I think partly of like sharing her philosophy on like work and how she worked and she's got a really interesting squiggly career story um but also elf in particular so they uh talk about zero distance as a real philosophy and mindset so that's what kind of reminded me of it and i was thinking i'm sure i've heard about this before and it was through higher yeah yeah it was a bit and they've sort of taken it to the extent where now they have a sub stack so elf have a sub stack called zero distance so they've actually kind of named their sub stack that you can actually read um their chief executive saying exactly what it is for the sub stack in terms of the content oh definitely their community they are so community led as a brand which is probably why the zero distance make like makes a lot of sense but they talk about um zero distance is the belief that organizations are strongest when they erase the gap between leaders and teams between brands and the people they serve and between ambitions and those who bring them to life it's fundamental to who we are at elf beauty and and then in the sub stack it's not just the ceo doing it but there's loads there's loads of them talking a bit about like how they listen how they learn and i think it's actually how they've it's sort of in their dna because then obviously i've got lost in that world of like how did they create that brand and they are very driven by the people the people that they serve they sort of go where their community are so if their community are like hanging out in a certain place or interested in a certain product or I don't know tv show or something they all sort of follow their customer rather than expect their customer to follow them that is interesting so what's two things going on in my head one is interesting concept how does it relate to careers we'll come back to that um the other thing going on in my head is like oh I feel like we have done that with squiggly careers now I you know like we kind of followed the customer if I think about which is hopefully good for some of the things we're going to come on to in terms of how good are we at this at the moment but I think a lot of the time when I think about how what what books we've written um or uh I don't even what podcasts we put out and things like that it's kind of it's quite it's generally quite audience-led like someone will email us and we'll hear we've got this thing going on so I would hope that like the growth of Squiggly has been kind of I want to go deeper into the idea of zero distance but I feel like we may have been doing it without knowing we were doing it i think definitely some of the time and i think some but some of the time less so um and the reason actually we both saying it feels really relevant is with lots of different kinds of conversation we've come back to this idea of zero distance i think it's helpful in quite a few ways but what we have done and to be honest it's not that hard to do we found and actually we've taken quite a lot out of this so you can take this in loads of directions we were like you can look at zero distance in a few different ways so we've looked at zero distance sort of from yourself so self-awareness distance from your team so manager people you work with and then distance from your customers which is kind of where the idea originated from but everybody has customers like in your job that you do there'll be somebody that you are there to be useful for um but actually you could just go with self-awareness I think I came up with about 10 ways and you were like, should we do two?

7:43Should we do two for each? So we've got, we've got, we've got two for each. And what we're going to do for each of them is we'll describe it briefly. What would maximum distance look like? So that's what we don't want. What would zero distance look like? Which is what we do want. And we're going to use our post-it notes and both of us, we're going to sort of, we've done it. We've already got our pre-drawn scales. We've been organized enough to have those. We're going to plot where we think we are on that scale from zero to kind of maximum compare and contrast, have a chat. Yeah, that sounds good.

8:12Okay, what's going first? So first is your strengths. And so maximum distance would look like you do whatever work comes your way and you wait for other people to tell you what you're good at. So that's maximum distance. Well, this is just certainly this is our first go at it. Zero distance would be you're spotting what gives you energy every day, connecting it to the strengths that you're using. and you're always looking for opportunities to use and stretch your strengths more. So this is about like you, you Helen, like how good do you think you are at doing that? Yeah. So place your cross. Place your cross and then we'll hold it up.

8:50If you're watching, if you're watching this, we'll hold up to the camera. But if you are not watching, just imagine. If you're not watching, I'll just describe it. We've basically got a scale and on one end we've got a sad face, which is like there's loads of distance. And one end we've got a happy face, which is zero distance. Okay. I'm intrigued as to where Sarah's put her class ready? we've probably shown the cameras as well oh same place oh this can't be for everyone it'd be really boring won't it tell me why Sarah's basically put hers near to zero distance but not on top of it we're both in the same place there's still a gap there's still a gap so we're not totally zero distance we are moving towards zero distance which is a good thing tell me more about your thinking here I felt that I'm always thinking about my energy I think I try and manage my energy more than my time and think about my energy in the context of my strength so that bit I was like okay I feel really good about that I feel confident that I'm always thinking about my strengths and I do look for opportunities to use them definitely because I know that's what makes me enjoy my work I think I could stretch my strengths more sometimes sometimes I definitely have got some new situations I'm using my strengths in this year that's why um I do an independent director job it's why I do a non-exec job it was very specifically to stretch my strengths um but I think I'd like to do that even more intentionally and purposefully yeah yeah probably similar but slightly different insights so I think I scored myself more towards zero distance because I know what my strengths are and I see where they add value so I have kind of that sort of clarity and confidence in my strengths which I think is a helpful thing but I don't think I spend all of my time on them because I often get pulled into you know the things that I can do yeah I'm good at but they don't necessarily give me energy I think both habitually and also from a capacity perspective sometimes in our business I get pulled onto that stuff and so I don't spend as much time as I could like sitting with the strengths because I get pulled into some of the other areas of the business.

10:59Good observation. Ready for the next one? Ready for the next one. So we're on to... So we're still on self. Have you just taken yours off? I'm going to create a little... I don't know. A little pile of post-its here. So we're still on self and distance with self. So the next one is feelings. Okay. So maximum distance would be you ignore, avoid or dismiss your feelings. Yeah. um i mean that sounds so definitive you're like yes um zero distance would be i think both noticing how you're feeling but you also see it as an opportunity to learn more about yourself because this is about like self-awareness and i suppose even better if you're then sort of taking some action to to do with what you've noticed and what you've observed um so where would you put that

11:51so maximum distance you are avoiding ignoring dismissing your feelings like moving on from them i guess yeah head in the sand type stuff some of the time okay oh slightly different here so sarah has gone um to sort of just away from the middle so she's quite close to the middle but she's closer to the zero distance i've gone the other side so i've gone closer to maximum distance as in I don't think I'm as close to my feelings as Sarah is Sarah is it's more self-aware of her feelings and then more likely to respond to them talk to me about yours then talk to me about why I think you know the maximum distance I'm just looking kind of when we were writing it we said ignore avoid dismiss I think I do that quite a lot I think I'm like I'm feeling a bit frustrated or I feel like I want to say something about this but then I kind of just go go to a I don't know whether it's because I've got the sort of people pleasing likeability confidence gremlin but sometimes I just kind of go oh I'll just let it go I just let it go so I carry the weight of the feeling rather than do something with it you know like I carry the weight of the distance from between like the disconnect like someone's her friend Abby messaged me the other day I think we were just talking about something life and then she was like oh do you think that's a bit a disconnection, Helen.

13:11She was basically like, Abby is a coach. She's a great coach. And she was certainly, I think, trying to coach me in response to something that I was writing to her on the message. And I was like, yes, I think that might be me trying to just sort of. Well, do you know when you do this? Well, I'm fine. Sarah knows me so well that I can shortcut. I was just thinking, actually, you're the biggest clue of your distance being probably like bigger than you would want it to be here is actually the more feelings you have the more likely you are to suppress ignore dismiss the feelings and then what we get is the hell and i'm fine robot do you know i'm fine i'm fine i'm fine we had it three times that robot eroded sarah and i were in a cab going somewhere when did you say like i'm fine about four times i didn't just say i'm fine i went i'm fine well i'm not fine but it's fine it's fine i was like i'm fine i mean i'm not fine but you know it's fine oh it was it was in a cab we were the glamour yeah and um something had happened hadn't it like some that was like logistics I think I got stuck in a cycle saying I'm fine well it's not fine but it's fine but I'm fine though I mean it isn't but I just I think I got stuck and you just kept on saying and I couldn't get out it was the spiral someone else in our team was also in that taxi is Helen error rate he was like we needed to like you know like restart how do you restart her how do you restart okay send your answers to Helen at AmazingIf.com want to work on okay what would closing that distance look like because i guess part of the point of this is what we're doing with the post-it notes gives you the awareness yeah but then and for the first one we were probably both like oh okay we're in quite a good place yeah but what would an action now look like that would you know like move your cross yeah actually you're not going to like this because you're going to probably roll your eyes at me but i actually find something that does help is journaling and i know everyone's like oh i was a journaler but i have to it feels like it's just the answer to everything i know i know but i have got a new little journaling thing in process which i'm actually finding quite useful because loads of people just dump they just dump their feelings and then probably get the zero distance things they're literally like feelings on a page i don't find that works for me because i end up just going i got up at six o 'clock and i'm like like a diary for when you're like 10 like really not helpful i'm like where is where is the insight of this because i haven't got to any so what i've been doing is i set up chat gpt and i basically said send me a daily prompt so it sends me a daily at 5 a.m every morning which is not always when i'm awake early but i'm not always awake it's just it's there when i am awake okay it sends me a um like a question to reflect on and then a quote that kind of matches the question and so then i have my diary because i like writing i even do it like a fountain pen i'm that retro but i like the process of it and i write down the quote and then i write down the um the question and I just do like two it's like a five notebook I just do two pages of like oh what do I think and I find that like a useful way of getting connected to how I'm feeling so that's probably the best thing to me but I just hadn't done I think I haven't had a chance this that was Sarah and I've been away um quite a lot that week and I hadn't actually done a lot of journaling because there was a lot of early mornings and travel and I missed that routine I wonder if we need a Helen I'm fine agent because I feel like it does happen what would it do I don't know yet but I'm just thinking like you know like it happens in Helen is not fine it happens enough that it would be helpful right because that's definitely your default of like when almost like when you need to close the distance the most is in those moments yeah but it's also when it's hardest to do because you're doing it because because things are hard because you're like you're not fine what's this agent gonna do for me well I I was just because I was listening to questions about my feelings well it could well you could be like name it to tame it we know naming it to tame it as a way to deal with your emotions will help to like calm your brain so rather than saying you're fine yeah name three feelings and you might be you might just go frustrated panicking anxious yeah fine but we know that actually naming it you're like i'm like oh that's one action close the distance a bit so you could teach it right to be like well here are things that we know yeah help you you sound like you really don't want to do it i'm just thinking like i'm just thinking of that scenario and i was like maybe an agent would make you more likely to do it than me yeah but if you said to me if i was in the cab and we were like going through my like hell and error ring i'm fine i'm not fine but it's fine um and you're like why don't you just pick your phone up and speak to i feel like you love your phone so surely that i'm always feeling like in those moments you want your phone more than you do me i just want to buy something you want to just buy something well we know that'll be zero distance for whoever you're buying from but uh yeah all right tell me about your little cross which is closer to the zero distance um i think i relatively good at like noticing how i'm feeling yeah um how do you notice how you're feeling um so i don't i don't write things down like you know that you know that i don't um And I just, you know, sometimes, yeah, we talked before about with UKHU, like thinkers versus doers.

18:22I wonder whether part of my just DNA is like, is that I can do that? You know, like natural talents. Yeah. Because it's interesting when you ask me that, I'm like, I always notice how I'm feeling, but there's not, I don't need a mechanism to help me with that. Yeah, yeah. And then when I'm feeling stuck or anxious, I think I know quickly that's how I'm feeling. And then I think I talk to you. um so yeah i suppose i i think probably the person that helps me at work i'm probably out of work the most to like close the gap when feelings are harder because sometimes i'm feeling motivated and like oh i love it um and that will sometimes make me think oh i really enjoyed that am i doing enough of that and i definitely do see this is not just about negative feelings right this is also about really positive ones but i think my equivalent of my i'm fine ai agent is you and I don't even have to talk directly to you in the moment I think my voice notes um are also a way of sort of self-explaining and sharing and then they kind of help me to pro I think I'm quite good at them processing them yeah I think the reason it's not closer is sometimes I blame other people that's that's honest yeah and true um both of those things same word um I think sometimes I was like oh I sometimes get a bit blamey you know like I'm feeling this way like because of something or someone else I sometimes blame things outside of myself and then I was watching just to give you a bit of credit oh yeah go on you reframe blame very quickly yeah because you know it's an emotional reaction to something and then you will go look that's probably not fair you'll always yeah and actually I saw Christine Armstrong which you should all follow on LinkedIn because she's just funny and brilliant to follow on LinkedIn and she does her weekly vlogs and I can't remember if it's just a post she did or a weekly vlog but she was saying one of the best pieces of career advice she'd ever got or something was all around um whenever something's like frustrated or you're blaming whatever she was like you have to just ask yourself well what could I've done what does this mean for me like you've you've got to take back that kind of the inus and the kind of control because then you can do something about it and And I think that actually it's funny that you say that.

20:36I think that is what I do with feelings is like, if I am feeling frustrated, we're not making enough progress on a project. I might get a bit blamey for a moment, but then quite quickly, I think I'm, I start to ask myself questions like, right, how can I speed this up? Or what can I do differently to be helpful? And then I think that's quite useful. So maybe you've been a bit harsh. Maybe you are a bit more zero distance there because you are doing that. Yeah. I think probably I just know people who I feel like are closer. So you want zero distance, zero blame. Yeah, zero distance, which I think that'd be a good way.

21:07And I think some of my, you know, it's interesting, isn't it? Like your scales are impacted by the people you surround yourself with. Yes. I think. Yes. And so I've also got a family who I think have very close distance at times. If I think about like my younger sister, I think she is so good at naming and processing feelings and supporting other people with their feelings. so I can't help but think oh but there are people I know who I think are better than this and I think I can learn a lot from I learn a lot from watching her you know like respond to a WhatsApp in our family group and I think oh that's just so emotionally intelligent I have fewer people like that I'm probably one of your better ones I think you are my context is quite a lot of max distance yeah okay okay next one where are we going so next we're moving we're moving on from distance from self yeah but if you want to keep going with that by the way there are loads of ways you could do it ask Claude or whoever um but lots of prompts at one point i'd gone through every squiggly skill like strengths values confidence and you can do that with you i was really tempted to do that for another day everyone taught me out of it this morning team distance from team so first one feedback okay maximum distance would be well maximum distance i think would be no feedback so you're just like well i never ask the people that i work with my team the people who know me probably the best for any feedback maybe at a push i do it once a year or twice a year because the system tells me i have to yeah which you know we've all been there um zero distance would be you have added in ways of asking for feedback that are unmissable as part of your week um and it's sort of it's become you know just sort of part of how you work so the flow frequency is high of that feedback and I guess you're also sort of learning from it because you don't just want to receive it and just go well I've got it yeah I think there's also got to be something about what are you using that feedback for doesn't mean you have to agree with it but you know you've got to be taking that data for your development and turning it into something useful for your learning your growth for getting better at your job.

23:19Place your ex. Oh, you're not going to like it because I'm going to do two exes. I know, sorry, I know. You're allowed to do two exes. Okay. I'm also interested how you've managed to get to two exes. Okay.

23:35I'm enjoying it. Yeah, me too. I feel like I'm enjoying the process. I can hear us do their things. Okay. Oh, right. So you've gone. Oh, you're quite far. So let's explain. So I've gone. We're in very different places now. Very different, which makes it more interesting. Yeah, so Sarah's gone max distance, as in is not getting a lot of feedback from the team to help her get a sense of kind of what they think of Sarah. I've gone much closer to zero distance. You have? I've got two. And what's the two? Well, because I was just thinking about feedback generally, which probably, because I was thinking about this, this was about distance from team.

24:10Yeah, I stuck to distance from team. I know, but then I was excited. My first thought was feedback generally. And I was like, oh, actually, we are, Sarah and I. So much feedback. We get so much feedback. I think we must get more feedback. Well, I guess some people that are like really popular on YouTube must because they get loads of comments, which is effectively... Is the comments the same as feedback? Well, the people probably think it is. Yeah. I don't know whether it is. My question is, is this useful for someone's voice? Yeah, but I think so. Sarah and I, we run somewhere between 10 and 15 workshops a week for companies all over the world.

24:39And in all of those workshops, we get feedback on both our content. So is it useful? and we get feedback on our communication. Like, were we helpful? And we get words and we get numbers and we get a constant stream of feedback. So I was like, I think that is quite a unique position to be in. So, and I kind of sort of considered those learners like our team. Yeah, I mean, that is 100 % cheating. Well, that's where I realised I was like, okay, well, that's not my team. That's like a pseudo team of people that I've created around our work. But you still put team high? Yeah, because I think I do ask.

25:12I do in one-to-ones, I do ask quite regularly, like, like, how am I coming across? So I will ask people like, is this working for you? Can we change our ways of working? I do ask people that regularly. It's the reason I didn't put it closer was because I don't think, I mean, I'll just give people random surveys. Often for the podcast, I'll be like, oh, I need to know what three words or I need to know, I'm trying out this tool. Can you just give me feedback on this? And so I kind of get it. The reason I didn't go closer to zero distance was because I don't think I've got a really good rhythm. Mine is random.

25:44Okay. I'll be like, okay. So you're doing it, but in a random way. I'm doing it, but in a random way. So I feel like I've got some information, but I probably could get richer information if I had more of a rhythm for how, more of a regular rhythm for how I asked Teema for feedback. I don't think it's awful. But I'm very interested that you've gone to max distance. So Sarah's like, I don't think I get enough feedback about this. well I always think this is my fault because I don't ask for it okay so sometimes I like on very our team like you give me feedback I put you in that as well that was another person we give each other quite a lot of feedback yeah I forgot about you sorry I wasn't actually thinking about you I actually had taken you out um yeah um but everyone else I so sometimes people in our team will give me feedback um great like that so I can think of an example actually recently where someone was like this morning did i yeah because you did something for someone and they were like that was really useful because i just went that's great and you did you went standard you went more than me oh yeah yeah yeah um yeah but i didn't ask for it right okay so my filter i think because i was it's you know like you am i taking the initiative am i creating not waiting not really i'm doing whatever i do at work and then sometimes if obviously people take the initiative for me they will then say they might give me some feedback and you're like well that's still great but I haven't made feedback unmissable I don't ask for it that often the the reason I'm not completely maxed out like completely sad face yeah was we do have a channel a team's channel called what worked well even better if and that I am good at so for all of the projects that I work on with people in the team I'll always be like where's our what worked well even better if um I'll contribute to those I'll talk to teams about it we came out of a meeting on Tuesday this week and straight away we went into what worked well even better if and then I said to someone I was like oh let's get that on the team's channel so that we can learn so you have a rhythm but it's not directly related to you yes what worked well even better if and you and you asked the team to do it for you for me so I was like it's sort of more on my actually I was sort of the opposite to you I kind of got the rhythm and I really like that as a way of doing it and that's on my work because some of that is reflected in like the work that I do but less about say my impact like I could have asked someone in our team was in that meeting that you were both we were both in on Tuesday and we were like pitching for something that we're excited about and um I could have asked that person what three words would you use to describe me in that meeting and I and I didn't I could have asked you that yeah um yeah go on um i thought you i'm like leadership i have definitely there was like a leadership um i would say there was confidence okay uh yeah leadership of a conversation with confidence and um i think you had like humor hilarious i mean i didn't say hilarious you were the person who injected humor into the conversation so yeah leadership confidence and humor they would be my words but i you know like even just listening to that i'm like it would have been helpful for me to ask that question maybe i could have asked the what three words from not from you from the other person and then i could have asked you for one even better if what would one even better if have been um oh i'd probably have to think about that one for a bit longer maybe longer than and that's not because i'm afraid of saying this i kind of think actually if I'd have asked you in the moment it would have been easier right yeah yes yes if you ask me in the moment because if you miss the moment then it's harder to remember I could give you it but I would need to think about it because I'm always I always really I even better if I never want to go oh there's nothing because there's always something there would have been something and so I always want it to be a thought through response um so that's not me I might I'll give it to you after the episode I like the fact we're like genuinely now just doing work I was like the podcast has now just turned into work but I think um yeah so I just think I've got I think I've got work to do there that would be really helpful for me and for the team it's good chats I think if you had post-its and you were having this conversation as a team I think it's nice I think there's something tangible you know because sometimes these are tricky conversations like reflections on your self-awareness reflections on your relationship with your team and they're not easy but I feel like as soon as you do something like this and you're like comparing and you're like it doesn't matter right where are we going next manager so who's my manager are you my manager in this instance yes I am Okay, well, I'll be yours then.

30:10Okay, thanks. So maximum distance would be you only find out what's on your manager's mind when they tell you. Or when you get something wrong and they're like, well, why did you do that? Zero distance would be you're like 100 % connected and confident that you know your manager's motivations and priorities. And I think my build would be you can connect the dots with what you're doing and kind of what they care about. This will be interesting. ready yes okay well hold it up we'll describe where we've got ah so sarah's okay i think this is accurate so sarah's gone almost zero distance complete like which basically means you know my motivations you know my everything's going on with me you're very very close to i've got a little bit further away so i'm definitely i'm closer imagine if there were massively difference and you were like you're a closed book i know i know nothing yeah yes well we'll come on to that because i'm you're my i guess because mine's a bit more towards maximum distance the implication is i think you are a bit more closed than me so my sometimes my reflections are do i know your priorities yeah i know your priorities we've got the same priorities let's hope we talk about them we know them even though sometimes they're different like our life priorities aren't always the same no that's true but we do talk about our life priorities and then we work in a way that enables them and we support each other's life priorities even if they're different like so i would do are you gonna share what's happening soon with one of your priorities come on you've got to share i'm getting a puppy oh it's so exciting very exciting copying me i know i'm like some sort of trendsetter the first person ever to get a puppy would you know you were pivotal because you helped me convince my husband because she looked after my puppy for me yes yeah that was a pivotal moment pivotal puppy moment yeah when i think it was real my husband was like oh dog everything's okay and my dog's gonna be worse than your dog so my daughter was like do you love the dog more than me some days maybe never listen to this podcast my daughter um so uh yes we know that about each other yeah however i i can definitely think of situations that we have had in our long long friendship partnership and all things where i haven't realized how you felt about something like oh god i can think about so many so many situations where i'd be like oh oh, I didn't realise that you were so worried about that.

32:33Or I didn't realise that was on your mind so much. Or I thought I'd helped, but clearly I hadn't. You know, we know the moments. We know many of the moments. And so in that situation, I think I just haven't, I'm not as in your head as I thought I was because there's something else going on there. And so I don't think I'm, I don't know, actually you're closed or I don't know what the right thing is, but I never feel completely aware of what you're thinking or feeling. I quite like that though. Yeah, of course you do. A bit of mystery about me. You have like zero mystery. Zero. That is so boring.

33:10You know when you do that. Helen has zero mystery. I'm going to put that on my LinkedIn profile. Well, also we once did insights profiling, which is like where you get a colour if you've not done it before. And then they also talk a bit about like the, what you're like at work and what you're like at home and like whether those two things are different and like there's something to how open everything is and Helen's just like literally reads it's like she's exactly the same and she's an open book and it's always the same and she's just always who she is and then mine is all like this like myriad of like weird and wonderful mixes which is like she's very hard to figure out and so it's just like we and I think that probably reflects our I think when we think about our work I think we are very zero distance because a we have just worked together for so long but I actually do think we have done some things practical things that have helped us be zero distance like clarity creators it sounds really boring but like we've actually we are better now at writing down those priorities and we do our win watch every quarter yeah and so actually we could we would have more distance if we didn't do win watch i've got a build on this because we don't call it a manager but you could do i think you could do colleagues so you're like because this is about kind of distance from your team and we just pick the manager as a specific person I think also because they've got quite a lot of influence over your work generally but you could scrap manager you could put team and then you could think about who are the people that you work with and we just yeah what's the distance c d and I think you might be like oh quite interesting why am I closer to person why am I closer to person a or maybe is it just because person d is new and I haven't talked about them and like what questions might I ask we do do that a little bit because we when we are thinking about projects and if usually one of us might lead more than the other I think sometimes our decision making is based on distance so we'll say Helen has a lot of distance from that person and actually that's not useful it's quite it's useful for us both to know everybody in our team as well as we can and then sometimes we'll switch up and what you might be like okay well I'll work on that with that person and I'll be like well I already know them my my distance is already closer so we probably haven't had a language for it before but i think it has been a it's been a helpful filter yeah um and also i think then you can get into really practical actions you know like if you're doing this as a team right you'd be like right well what will mean that we have zero distance from each other each other yeah um what's on your worry list you know like you were saying like sometimes i don't know what's most important to you right now yeah what's happening outside of work that we don't know about yeah you just there's some you get to some quite nice questions quite quickly I think.

35:42Distance closing questions. Nice. Let's introduce those. That's good that is good. Okay so the last one which is I suppose where zero distance came from and we've now really we've really borrowed the idea now is this idea of like distance from customers. So who do you want to be useful for? Some people will be in jobs where they literally are serving the end customer but you know you might be let's say you're a finance business partner and it's like well what's the team that you're kind of working with um and it'd be like well how do i have zero distance from that team and when i was thinking about this one actually like internal zero distance like maybe across team if they're your customers across companies sorry um i can think of people i've worked with who are really good at this and it's i think it's really helpful in your job and in your career because they don't get too preoccupied with almost like the team that they're in yeah you know too tunnel vision too siloed doesn't mean you don't know your team but You know, like you can get a bit, oh, well, I like the team that I'm in and it feels comfortable.

36:42And they are really good at having like zero distance with, well, I'm in sales, you're in finance. Like we need to have zero distance because actually that's how we help each other. That's how we do a better job. So in our framing for this, our customers are whom? Our learners? Our learners. In its broadest sense, so podcast. Anyone who learns with and from us. Okay. so maximum distance for us would be I suppose for what we do let's take the podcast you would record the podcast on anything you want to do the whole time you'd like you you define everything then you'd put it out and that's it you don't you don't care so you don't care about feedback you're not asking your community for ideas you're certainly not giving people an email address to tell you what they think yeah you'd just be like well this is kind of what we want to do so that's you're completely disconnected i suppose from like the end user um and then zero distance would be i mean if it was the podcast this would be creepy it would almost be like spend time watching someone watch the podcast okay or like yeah talk to people about how do they listen to the podcast yeah i mean and again it'd be weird i'm trying to work out how you do this but you know like if you like a screen record of how someone used a pod sheet, for example.

38:00It would be that. So you're seeing real life interactions, which sometimes people are really kind and tell us. Yes, and I have heard of a podcast where they kind of do some of that, where they have technology that helps them to see what words that someone is saying are particularly engaging. Like they literally, they know by kind of watching on YouTube when people are engaging more in the content, when they get distracted. In like a stalkery way? No, in a way that they gather data about. So that does happen on some podcasts. I have heard. I've heard. We've both got an example actually here outside of our world before we do our scoring.

38:40One of maximum distance, which I'll show in a minute. And a good one of zero distance where you got to go shopping. Yeah, I mean, joy, joy. It links back to old jobs in innovation that I have done. and I got to go. So I worked for a credit card company and zero distance is basically going shopping with someone with their credit card. That's the fact. It was a funny thing because I went shopping with a lady, this is in Nottingham, and we were sat, I remember we were in a Costa coffee and I said, oh, you know, can you show me your credit card? It was like the start of the journey. And she said, oh, I haven't got it with me today.

39:16And I was like, well, this has gone wrong quite quickly. I was like, oh, where's your credit card? And she said, oh, it's in the freezer. i was like oh stay curious interesting stay curious i was like why is your card in the freezer i said oh because i've got you know i shop a bit too much yeah me too um but she said puts in the freezer puts it in a glass of water and therefore it has to be defrosted before she can use it so it kind of forces a pause but then she did go on to say oh but at the moment i've actually frozen it in a glass of orange juice because she said she could still see when it was frozen in water she could still see the numbers and then she would just go online and shop so she was freezing it's next level she was freezing it in a glass of orange juice but the insight of that we took this idea back into the company about this idea of freeze like freezing like if there's that much fear of spending how could you create a freeze on a product negative relationship with your credit card do you not at all you don't really want people to be doing that so um and it's you know you have a responsibility as well as a company with credit cards not to create those kind of emotions yeah um with money and spending so um yeah we had a really interesting ideation then about how do we create this kind of freeze idea but within the context of the product and that would have never had happened that we wouldn't have those ideas without that and i have actually loads of um loads of little stories like that where when you're doing product development i think a lot of the time if you were doing product development or any kind of customer insight and research you are naturally close to customer so i always think the challenge is if that isn't the job you are doing how can it still be part of the job you do yeah like how can you get as close as close as you can what's yours well mine was a maximum one that i had recently where i went to the doctors um for something quite kind of specialist this is like a specialist expert doctor yeah that i had gone to see um and she was prescribing me medication yeah and she said um so that's what i'm prescribing these are the tablets um oh just so you know i've heard they're really big oh but actually I've never seen them and I was like okay so you're you're like an expert and you know she she is in this like area but you're about to prescribe me a tablet that you've sort of gone is like massive enjoy this but you've never but you've never even you know like you you've never held it you've never touched it you've never seen what that is yeah and so how can a you have any empathy for what you're asking me to now take twice a day um but also So you sort of made me a bit scared of it, but without the actual, you know, if she had then said the tablets are quite big.

41:47I've seen actually what I wanted to do was to show me one. Yeah, here's one. Here's one just as an example, because I was like, well, how big are these tablets? And I was like, you know. This is one of a submarine. They actually are that sort of shape. That's the sort of shape they are. And they're great. They actually do look a bit like a submarine. But, you know, I was just like, oh, when you think about like why you would want zero distance, it's because it shows yes it helps you come with ideas but i think it also shows that you care and that you're committed and i was like well how much does she care about me getting better if you want to kind of call it that if she doesn't even know what this looks like yeah i mean i did want the tablet so obviously i just just fine just moved on from it but i was like it's quite a big reflection but it is it is true like i don't care um should we do our exes yes okay um okay I did mine quite quickly.

42:39I don't. So all of our learners. Okay. I've done mine quite quickly. Oh, yeah. You've said all of our learners. All of our learners. Okay. Okay. Sure. Go on then. 3, 2, 1. Okay. So for everyone listening. Helen has added hearts. Because I care. Just because you care doesn't mean there's zero distance. All right. All right. Let's explain where our Xs are. So I've gone the closest. I've gone very close to zero distance. Sarah's gone a little bit further away so you go first why won't you love hearting it and getting close to zero distance with our learners well so first of all obviously I really care but I think it probably sounds like a don't to be honest like saying it like that but I'm like but I do actually really care um hmm I think sometimes so I would if I really cared I was like would I read YouTube comments if I really cared.

43:35I do read YouTube comments. Yeah. And I don't. And I read Spotify comments this week. Yeah. And I don't for self-protection. Someone was cross with us. I don't for self-protection reasons. Okay. So I, I was like, oh, zero distance. You would have to read them, right? You'd have to get really close because I don't know. There's probably, I'm sure there is learning in there, but I definitely choose not to. Same on like Amazon reviews for the book. Yeah. I don't. Please, please leave an Amazon review. It's really helpful. It's really, really helpful but i think it's because i know the ripple effect that that would so there's a little self-protectionism in there um also i do think we listen but we don't have like i think there are companies when i look at like elf and what they've done they have these really well designed like well thought through feedback mechanisms to like to learn and to spend time with their learners and I think we do it in quite an ad hoc way so we might do a listening board which are always brilliant um or we will say email us like we will we like encourage it and we definitely want it but we've not systematized in the way that someone like Elf has being like really close to our learners and I do think sometimes we choose our own things so if you're like each other we you know sometimes I think we'll listen to learners but sometimes there's just something that we are interested in learning yes that's true and that's you know again if we're going to be really honest and then that ends up being our starting point so I think I think I was really holding myself to account to going if you're looking at like hire an elf as like that is a zero distance company their culture the communities their customers like it's all kind of embedded into what they do i was like oh i don't think we are built in quite that way in our dna i think we do some good stuff and actually what this has really inspired me to think about is like how do we do those i actually do want to do those things i'm not sure i want to read youtube comments because sometimes people are really mean yeah but i did see one that's one in our team and like messages about this week and i was like okay yeah that's why i i don't i don't know i don't know if i've got the resilience i think i doesn't it doesn't bother me it doesn't Just be nice.

45:50Just be nice, pack. Maybe I'm thinking about back to the feelings thing. Maybe I have because of the feelings thing. You could like process it much better than I can. You put super close. I think it's because I think about in our newsletter that goes out every week, we have a scale of like, let us know how useful it is. Yeah. So that is like, that's in there. People can vote on that anytime. We ask for feedback regularly for things via the newsletter. So I kind of look at that as a community that we are. I feel like if you're subscribed to the Squiggly Careers newsletter, you're quite close to us.

46:18that's probably a better example of something we've done more recently yeah that's in there regularly and we get people to like vote on topics and things we're going to cover and I think all of our learners we ask for feedback at the end of our sessions and we give out our email get loads I get loads of emails from people that I'm responding to and so I get a kind of sense and a sentiment I read all the comments and I'm probably more active on social so I get a sense of what people like and what they don't like I do our social media review every month and I scan across all of our platforms what are all of the um things that we've put out where there's the highest levels engagement and so it kind of and then it helps me go we should do more of that we should do more of that so I think I am probably spending more time you're right you're working with the data from you we spend equal time with our learners but I'm probably spending a little bit more time with the data yeah which but this is one actually across all of them but it definitely made me think about I think it's a really inspiring way to run a company um and I think it's a really useful way to think about your own development and really helpful for your team I think you can kind of take this in whatever feels helpful um and actually we were laughing with a company earlier this week that we work with and you know like loads of companies say oh we're going to be really close to our customer or we're going to be the champion of our customer and I think if you do this really well like it's true in your actions not just in your words like not just in kind of what you say um and I think I do like I do want to do that you know we talk about we want to make squiggly careers better for everyone yeah and I think to do that really well you want zero distance with those people I did have one example uh recently with a different company who are doing some work on early careers and I had made this suggestion actually and you know what I think it's because I knew we were doing zero distance so I'd read the substack was talking to the company and I said oh let's do a listening board yeah for this group of people um well the listening board will be people in their early careers um but like a range they were all doing kind of different things some of them were i think the youngest girl was 19 up to about 23 24 and i sort of got to interview them as like a panel for this group who were thinking about like their learning and that created even that one action created so much sort of like this like zero distance yeah um because also they said things that definitely that surprised me you could see that group being like oh well we thought this would be important but actually it's something slightly different they were all describing what it's like to be in the first year in like a new job and a new company they didn't all agree you know sometimes I think it's really um it's always tempting isn't it to go oh you've got a group of people in their early careers yeah they're all the same and I and I know that was one one moment one example but I was like they were really different yeah they were really different in their attitudes to ai they were really different in their attitude to learning like obviously i asked them some questions i was interested in i was like how do you feel learning as you go and like what does learning look like and you know what how are you experimenting with ai do you use ai outside of work yeah a couple of them were like no just like not and you know like everyone's like of course they're all like digital natives and yeah it was just and it was really interesting when i asked that group who I was doing loads of learning with that day like for some of the standouts they were all just like it was so powerful and I was with them again yesterday and they they can still remember they were still repeating back to me what they had heard and I was like I mean that was like a tiny example yeah closing the distance so I was like just the more of those things you can do I think the better at your job you are so other than picking up some post-its and doing this with your team I guess also looking at the zero distance sub stack yes would be something as well it's only a five minute read really easy um and then getting the pod notes from the episode and we'll just put all the questions that we've talked about on there so that's we link to it in the show notes but it's always on our website amazingif.com but that's everything for this week thank you so much for listening and we're back with you again soon bye for now bye everyone