Please excuse our typos, this episode was transcribed by https://otter.ai. See Blog
Mitch Simon 0:10
Welcome to another episode of team anywhere where CEOs, leaders and experts are building teams, companies, organizations, and amazing cultures
Ginny Bianco-Mathis 0:22
share how to lead from anywhere in the world. I’m your co host on the East Coast chicken Bianca Mathis,
Mitch Simon 0:28
and I’m your co host on the West Coast, Mitch Simon. And we invite you to join us to Team anywhere.
What will the future of work look like? According to Barry Winkler’s chief strategy, Officer CPL and head of CPL, future of work Institute, tomorrow’s workplace will resemble today’s most coveted theme parks, you won’t go every day, but when you do, you’ll be transported, transformed and given hope. leaders will immerse their teams in story HR departments will be the designers of immersive employee experiences and technology will be flawlessly integrated into the online and on site experiences. In today’s episode of team anywhere, Barry will transform the way you think about your leadership, your company, your workplace, and how you will attract and engage the workforce of the future. Hello, and welcome to another episode of team anywhere. I’m Mitch Simon on the west coast and with my co host Johnny Mathis, on the east coast. And today we are excited to have Barry wingless Barry linkless is the strategy and innovation director and future of work lead at the CPL future of work Institute, Barry has over 19 years of experience working across multiple sectors in the areas of strategy, service, excellence, and innovation. Good afternoon, Barry, how are you?
Barry Winkless 2:05
Hi, guys. Hi Mitch. Hi Virginia. Good to see you
Ginny Bianco-Mathis 2:08
Hi, Barry.
Mitch Simon 2:10
So great. So we got Barry, I think he’s like eight, eight hours ahead of us today.
Barry Winkless 2:15
You know, I’m kind of subtly trying to finish my day as quickly as possible. And you’re preventing me from doing that.
Mitch Simon 2:25
So we just want to you know, open up it’s, it’s been a year since a pandemic, what is the last year looked looked like for you? And what are you excited about for the future?
Barry Winkless 2:37
Oh, great question I’m supposed to speak about professionally and personally, because I think that’s, I think everybody’s experienced it kind of that way I’ve never really worked. So profession, it’s been really interesting for us. So feature work Institute as part of cpls are quite a large European talent services business. And, you know, we’ve seen all sorts of things happening in the in the talent space. And overall, our business has been very strong, through COVID. So we’re quite proud of the team in terms of being able to weather the storm so far. I think from a personal perspective, and I think I’ve had the similar challenges to everybody else, you know, adopting to a new way of working, and, you know, kind of trying to lead a team, and in a very virtual and distributed manner. And, you know, really tried to learn new behaviors, your approaches to highlight Lee’s, you know, personal level.
Mitch Simon 3:34
Great, great, thank you for that. And I understand you just completed or your team completed a study, I think, is it nine months that you’ve worked on the study?
Barry Winkless 3:44
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So we’ve kind of just to give you a little bit of context, the future of work Institute, we’re a multi disciplinary team. And our role really is to question explore and design future work solutions. So we’re very much at the I would say at the leading edge, sometimes the bleeding edge, future of work. And in that research, and sorry, in that role, they should too much, you know, we conducted leadership work. And then we also create research, we work with a number of organizations from a consultancy perspective. And that particular paper really came out of a recognition from us at least, that there was no way to kind of clear definition of what the future of work is. There’s not really models out there, that kind of leaders could use to map where they are in work and where they wanted to go in terms of the future work. And we that’s what this paper is all about. So that’s it’s a combination of research of working groups, with with organizations of surveys on our own kind of thought leadership in this space. So it’s been a long time coming. I like to say to the guys, it’s quite a seminal paper, you know, because we’ve tried to create the definitions that we hope leaders can use now and into the next kind of 50 years. So hopefully we achieved that with it with the paper.
Mitch Simon 5:03
Great in the you know, the first thing that anyone recognizes in the paper is available free online, which is really amazing. It’s a really great paper, the first thing that you notice about the paper is first of all, it’s absolutely beautiful. Right? It’s in tell us, you, you were you’re sharing with us right before the podcast that you’ve used a theme park theme to describe to present your concepts. And so I’m really interested, why did you choose the theme park?
Barry Winkless 5:34
Yeah, look, it’s number one. My kind of background is very much in this area called experience design. And really, what is that it’s around? How do we actually create things that are memorable or transformational in some way, or at least ultimately, my definition. And you know, where, when you really think about it, you guys have this great person called Walt Disney back in the 1920s, and 30s. And he was actually the guy who really invented the theme park in 1955, with the opening of Disneyland. And really, it was what I would call the first properly experiential destination where people were fully immersed. You know, we’re excited, you know, created memories within the context. And really, for me, the reason we use that theme park analogy is because that’s what we’re trying to create now in our workplaces, right. We’re trying to create memorable, transformative experiences for employees in organizations, and hence, these of the theme park motif in the report. And actually also right at the core of some of the principles that we use ourselves in thinking about this thing called the employee experience. So it’s very much around that level of attention to detail, the same attention to detail that we put into all of our view of products and services that we also put into the design of beautiful and memorable experiences for you know, really, what are the driving force behind any business to people?
Mitch Simon 6:59
So I guess, listening to you, and thinking about where we are, with the future of work. One would, one would suspect that, it seems like a lot of us are not going back to work five days a week. And then you’re bringing out a theme park theme, and someone say, Well, that doesn’t make sense. You know, I live in I live in California, and I’m just a few miles away from a theme park Disneyland. And it’s shut down like nobody’s going. So I’m just wondering, how do you use the theme park experience theme, when a lot of people won’t be in, you know, in work? five days a week like they used to?
Barry Winkless 7:41
Yeah, yeah, that’s a great question. And look, I think first and foremost, we talk about the idea of a theme park. We think about it as a concept that exists both physically and virtually. Okay, that’s the first thing. So if you think about this as a multi, multi, various multimedia, you know, theme park that exists both virtually and physically, that’s the first thing. Okay, think that’s really important thing to get across. I think the second thing is one of the things that we’re seeing in our work that we’re doing ourselves, is it’s not that we’re necessarily moving away from offices, some organizations are definitely going back to that brief, you know, where they’re going to have zero office organizations, and we are starting to see an increase in those types of businesses, we’re seeing more of businesses being a hybrid type business where they might be moving towards, you know, one or two days in the office, you know, versus, you know, your kind of five days in the office, and then even organizations moving towards four days a week and all this kind of good stuff. I think what’s really happening when it comes to physical place, is because of that change, there’s a fundamental rethink needed and happening, actually, in terms of the role of physical spaces. I think that’s a really important point to make, right? In the sense that, you know, if we don’t all have to go to this kind of physical place anymore. What What is the role of the physical place? Right? What is it about? Is it is it now going to be a oneness center for employees? Is it going to be a collaboration center, you know, is it going to be something more than what it has been for the last period of time, because if you really think about it, if we’re going to come together, less frequently, in a physical way, it changes the nature of what our physical place needs to achieve. It places a greater emphasis on the importance of those types of physical meetings and nearly creates those physical meetings as almost being an event. Hence, the theme park kind of analogy, because now we’re talking about bringing people together less less often. And then trying to make sure that those experiences when we do bring people together, kind of bind them to our organizational brand or essence and create experiences that they can kind of sustain them in that virtual world when they kind of move away from the physical space. So like, as far as I can see, Mitch, to the to the kind of the COVID piece. Well, it’s really done is it’s made people stand back and ask questions around the world of work that haven’t been asked in a long time. Some of these changes were happening before COVID. And COVID has accelerated some of those changes as well. So I think there’s all of this kind of stuff going on, we’re fundamentally off the belief that, you know that the principles that we talk about in terms of story, in terms of narrative, in terms of theme, in terms of good design, are equally irrelevant across physical and virtual spaces, you know, when it comes to designing the workplace of the future. So hence, the as the theme park concept.
Ginny Bianco-Mathis 10:27
That is a great point, Barry, I’d love to emphasize, it’s sort of turning the pyramid upside down. Now think about when we do get together, that’s an event. Usually it was we went to work every day. And that was the norm. Now, that’s not the norm getting together now is the event. And now then that gives you the opportunity to think, well, how are we going to make this event and use some kind of theme park. And also, and maybe you can give us some examples of how to even do that virtually. I mean, I think of Disney now. And at least 50% is virtual, you go in, and you enter this incredible digital space with movement and so forth. But you’re not moving it out of your seat. So a lot of that’s why your future work?
Barry Winkless 11:30
And you’re absolutely right. I think, you know, when we talk about these concepts, first of all, we’re definitely moving into this mixed hybrid world in terms of, you know, physical and virtual mixing up in different ways, right? So, okay, we might have a physical meeting, but we can use technology in really interesting ways to add to the, the impact of equity in a virtual space, we’re seeing lots of really interesting things that they were seeing people starting to play around with platforms like zoom, and try to create 3d environments for people to kind of immerse themselves in. So what we’re seeing on one hand is this massive, you know, increase in sophistication around collaboration tools, virtual tools, and everything really, that you could possibly ask for. And on the other hand, when we’re thinking about, okay, there’s an event where people come together, so let’s really focus our minds on designing that event to make it as successful as a member of that can be. So there’s all sorts of really interesting things kind of happening, you know, because of this kind of future work. And, and some of it was kind of mad, you know, so when I say things like, you know, how do you apply, you know, the principles of theater, you know, to designing a meeting people, a lot of marketing parties, Marty’s talking absolutely crap. But actually, you know, there are people that have learned how to create emotional impact in audiences through it. So why not use, you know, some of those learnings? You know, if we think about any, you know, I come from a strategic background, as mentioned, mentioned at the start, you know, why should I tell people about a strategy, when I can immerse them in a story of a strategy when I can immerse them in the excitement of the strategy, what, what’s what’s what’s more impactful, right, definitely the embarrassing of the strategy, right? If we’re coming together last Virginia as people, then we have a greater emphasis on those meetings to, to tie people into our brand into our essence into our purpose into our direction. So it’s really interesting that this is kind of really put new questions on the table. It’s put old questions on the table in new ways. So Barry, I
Mitch Simon 13:31
love this, when you know, when Judy and I got together before the podcast even started, we were really, we knew that this was coming. We didn’t know how to really explain it. And so it really kind of captured I think some of our initial conversations. And now what I’m thinking about is, you know, before COVID, it was hard enough to plan a meeting where you’d actually have an agenda. People would show up on time, and you would take notes. So now you’re saying, okay, Mitch and Jimmy, here’s the deal, you need to have a theatrical experiential plan for your meeting. I think a lot of managers would just kind of throw their hands up in the air and go, are you? Are you kidding me? And what I’d love to know is what do you think will be the future and how people are going to figure this out in how to create an experiential experience, experience and experience, right? Because, you know, you know, I didn’t go to theater school. I’m thinking, you know, I didn’t major in cultural cultural anthropology, which I’m thinking is like, behind all this stuff. You know, I’ve done some stage work. But but most leaders will not have done that. What do you think will help us get there, as and be competitive, to understand these new ways of viewing and meeting and actually the practicality Of what will happen first next
Barry Winkless 15:03
year with a man, I think the first thing that he goes, you know, when I look, you know, the reasons I’m speaking on this podcast, because, you know, you guys are kind of part of this change race, you know, you’re kind of starting to see, you know, you’ve questions in your head about all this kind of stuff. And really part of my role is trying to answer some of these questions, you know. So, like, if you really think about it anyway, right? People throughout this 10 year range, leaders need to become better storytellers. I’m sure you’ve read on teen articles around that. And let’s be honest, most of it’s absolute, you know, it’s a real throwaway statement, you need to better storytellers. Most, most people that I know, don’t really even understand the structure of a story, or even how to tell an interesting story, whatever, anything else. And as a result, it’s very hard for those leaders to really connect with people, right. So I always say it’s a big difference between, you know, there’s my two page strategy and telling the story of a strategy, two totally different things. So the first thing is we need to embrace storytelling, and what I call immersive storytelling, so storytelling, from all the way from a simple story, all the way to whatever we call a big marquee experiences that are, you know, that makes sense for that particular time. So I think maybe not saying all the all meetings should be experiential, but the really important should be, because we’re gonna have, you know, large groups of our leaders together, you know, less frequently, so let’s kind of make sure we put time into that, you know, into those experiences, I think the three report, so I think the first thing is, is that leaders actually finally embrace this power, the superpower of storytelling, and stop talking crap about it, and actually, you know, put the effort into this and see it as a core competency. Because, uh, you know, I think if you were to say to a leader, you know, what guys, see, storytelling is as important as coordination, right? In terms of your management toolkit. So just just make sure you learn, and put the effort in, like you’ve done with shorter skill sets to learn. I think the second thing for me is what I would call the need for HR and people teams to become much more multidisciplinary, in terms of their makeup as a team. So you’re absolutely right, which, you know, the HR team of the future, needs to include anthropologists, experienced designers, you know, cultural kind of programs and everything in between in order to be the thing that HR teams have been talking about for the last 20 years be more strategic and and verta commerce wrote, to me that that’s what the HR needs to do needs to think about itself more as a design center for the employee experience, right and develop of a team based on those principles. So I think that’s the second thing. I think the third thing then for me, is what I would call the use of index in kind of an increasingly sophisticated array of technologies, right? So why do we even need to take notes anymore, when we’ve got technologies that can analyze our voice, you know, that can record a voice that can turn our voice into notes, you know, they can do kind of everything in between. So they’re the kind of three things that I think, for me would help the business to become a much more technical centric, experiential driven, you know, business and make that kind of hold thing real. I don’t know about you guys. But I saw the menus of a leadership meeting, don’t be bored to tears. You know, it says to me that they haven’t faced storytelling, right, in any shape, or form. And it’s a lot of a lot of things, a lot of the stuff we talk about, actually, when I boil the time comes into, how do you turn direction, into something exciting and immersive, because everything else follows after that, you know, if your story isn’t exciting, your companies aren’t going to be exciting, you know, if your company’s not exciting, people aren’t going to join the bloody thing in the first place. You know, so, you know, everything kind of stems from, you know, that kind of, you know, perspective for me.
Mitch Simon 18:47
Yeah, it’s interesting. As we said before, of course, this is coming from Ireland, where you guys have always been like, historical storytellers,
Barry Winkless 18:55
right? Yeah. Well, it’s true. So maybe, maybe, Mitch, we’re kind of trying to sell our own. I think for me, the biggest mindset that a leader can adopt for the future work, it’s a holistic one. So thinking about joining the dots before they make, you know, a decision on the workplace, or, you know, because for example, right, we could turn around tomorrow and say, Hey, guys, are you in five years time? I’m going to have an organization with zero employees. But I’m going to have 1000 people working with me. Right? We could never have said that 30 years ago, I never know the reality is by 2040 by 2040 2045. Globally, the predominant employment type will be freelance. Right. So we will transition from a place of people like ourselves working for organizations, to people like us working with organizations. That self changes absolutely everything in terms of the power dynamic in terms of what is a supplier versus an employee, you know, versus what the hell that employees in the first place is It changes absolutely everything. Right. So that is the world that we are now living in, we are living in a world where a 15 year old kid can be really interested in a really, really nice, nice subject, they can develop their passion online, they can link with a network community across the globe, they can monetize their, their opportunity, and then create a business out of nothing, right? So this is the future of work. This is right at the core of the future work, right? In a world where actually think about this, your people will no longer really need to work for companies, they will work with a multitude of companies. Right. So that in itself is one one massive discussion point, you know, around the future of work. So when we talk about, you know, what is a workplace just as an example, the workplace of the future is really just a network. It’s a network of people connected together by common values, hopefully, by a common purpose, you know, for that particular group of people. And I have used the phrase in a recent article of mine that I call it a disposable organization, you know, because you know, where we can bring 20 people together for a project that might last 12 months, and then it’s just disposal, it was a long run organization.
Ginny Bianco-Mathis 21:16
And what I expect, a lot of that is then if I put myself in a leaders, shoes, collecting that talent, I need to tell a story, I’m not good at that, who can help me I need to have it visually pleasing, though, is that, you know, these are different skill sets that I might have done once a year for some big Gala. But now to make that part of who I am, what I am, I just know coaching the CEO on start telling stories, that took me three months for him to get comfortable around telling stories. So there’s some skill sets there.
Barry Winkless 22:00
So it’s a really, really interesting place that we’re in and Virginia fine, you’re buying on what you said, because, you know, we’re moving beyond this thing called marketing. Right? We’re moving beyond moving into meaning and purpose, we’re moving into people wanting to work with organizations that mean more than the bullshit, you know, that’s paddled arrangers. Excuse my language, I’m not sure if I’m allowed to use that phrase, on this podcast. But anyway, I’ve laid out there my Irish background and my Irish roots from that. And but you know, that that is the reality. And you’re right, Virginia, in that, you know, that those organizations that have a fully defined lay called tale of direction, which is a purpose process story, they’re the ones ultimately that are gonna really attract people, you know, to those organizations. You know, there’s reasons that certain people work with, they’re really cool companies out there, it’s more than just, you know, what, what it says on the tin, it’s much deeper, you know, that’s why people are attracted to those types of businesses, right. And so there’s really interesting things happening, you know, and then we’ve got this massive wave of people that really believe that their path in life is to work for themselves and work with companies as opposed to for them, do you think about the challenge that that poses for large organizations, trying to develop talent pipelines at a global level, you know, to sustain their business? There’s a really interesting kind of things going on there. You know,
Mitch Simon 23:25
so let me ask you very, again, all right. So I need to become a better storyteller. If I’m a leader running a company, I need to create better experiences. So how Then am I maybe we’re just a little bit ahead of, you know, your, the the future that you’re creating is a little bit ahead. But I’m just wondering, how would I practically sit down and think about my next gathering? Like when we’re gonna, you know, God willing, we’re going to be be going back to work? Starting maybe September or January of next year? How would I sit down and design either my, my all hands getting together? Or my next video call or zoom call with my team? What you know, what are some places that I can go to piece all this stuff together? Are there books out there yet? Are there people out there who
Barry Winkless 24:30
are much? Yeah, they’re great questions look, like I go to what I call the source, the sources of storytelling. And I’ll tell you a story now myself, okay. All right. They kind of 1516 years ago, and I was thrown into this project is working on a very difficult management team, you know, to tell you, you know, know, everything, you know, totally infallible, you know, they think that they’re getting to the next kind of Steve Jobs type situation. You know, and I needed that. They needed a mechanism to really get their volume and to change the way they’re thinking about things. So the only thing I could turn to was this thing called storytelling. 16 years ago, I had no clue about what it was. So I immerse myself in storytelling. And my key moment and was speaking to my mother, my mother was actually involved. She’s a musical musical producer. And she said, Have you heard about this thing called the show Bible? As a show by what the hell is a show Bible? So my show Bible is a thing that TV executives use to pitch TV series, you know, like, the idea behind it the might use some imagery to, to highlight, you know what it is, right? And what’s going to be a page you know, so you can imagine trying to think of some really good us shows like Stranger Things or you know, CSL You know, this is our show Bible, this is what it’s going to be a page. And these are going to be the main characters, and there’s going to be the atmosphere of it. And here are some images to get across. You know, water is really interesting, which is another really important thing along with us, which is thing called a logline. And a logline is the one line that very quickly gets across the concept of a, you know, a TV series, right? So I always like to ask a kind of a leader start with your log going, what’s your log? Like? What’s the log line of your business? COVID? All the brand stuff? What’s that core log, knowing that you would write about your business? What’s up online? The second thing I asked them to do is if you’re going to create a show Bible, for your business, what would it be? What pictures would you put in that show Bible to represent the culture you’re trying to create? What atmosphere would you describe? Right? What key characters way to kind of develop? That’s right, start much, I would start what I would call out the sources of storytelling. Then if I was in a kind of a, a more interesting kind of mode, I would go back to my, as I said, my old Disney roots and kind of look at all the things he learned about storytelling, and you know, how to truly tell stories in three dimensions. And also look at things like, you know, how, you know, great storytellers, kind of develop stories are under three acts, you know, kind of three acts approach. You know, I’ve learned from all of those different sources and over doorways, but I would start with my logline. And let’s start with that my short Bible of my business. And actually, there’s a, there’s a little segue in the in the report, or when we talk about the show Bible, you know, in that, and that was the moment for me where he said, okay, storytelling, storytelling, is the key to creating emotional impact, not just on a personal level, or at an entertainment level, at a core business level, to create change. You know, I think storytelling for me, particularly in the business context, it’s it’s a gel, it’s a connector, you know, it’s a light, it illuminates a direction that hasn’t been fully formed yet. You know, it’s a, it’s a motivator. And it’s all of those things, you know, and everything in between. And I actually think the key thing for me, for leaders is to make sure that that leader creates other storytellers in their business, you know, by practicing what they preach, and we buy stories, because we don’t buy really anything, you know, except stories, you know, any every product we buy as a story. Every service we ever bought, have a story or somebody has told us a story or an organization’s are exactly the same an organization needs to recognize that in itself is almost like a product that’s been sold to potential future employees have to recognize that, you know, that that’s, that is the reality. And we need to tell the stories that get across the essence of what we are in an authentic way. I think Virginia has come back to your point. You know, that’s not makeup, but it’s really the core of the soul of the business.
Ginny Bianco-Mathis 28:48
All right. What, one playing a bit of devil’s advocate here, I love this body and into it, I can see some new skill sets, I want to learn myself and or make sure I make this this group full time or part time or 20%. How does this tie to the bottom line?
Barry Winkless 29:11
Is is tied to the bottom line. Okay, so let me take you on a journey. Let me take you on the journey of success. What if I used to say to you, we’re going to we’re going to be a business with no offices. We’re going to be a network. straightaway, we’ve taken probably five to 7% capex off the bottom line. Now you tell me what kind of process Efficiency Program was going to, it’s going to kind of give you that kind of give you that right. Then let’s talk about employee engagement. And let’s talk about for every 1% we improve employee engagement experience, we’re probably going to get 10% performance increase. That’s a 10% increase in your performance straightaway. Then we go into the kind of tools that we’re using and the appropriate use of robotic process automation, the proper use of collaborative technologies, you’ve got another five to 10% in terms of performance increase there. So straightaway, I’ve kind of improved your bottom line by 25%. So those numbers are a little bit spurious, but trust me, they are based on you know, some of our research
Mitch Simon 30:20
various wondering if these I’m, I’m blown away by this new way of thinking in this new world of work.
Barry Winkless 30:32
Nicholas Kuzmich now?
Mitch Simon 30:35
Well, again, again, the the study is free online, you can get it for nothing. Yes. When, you know, we don’t imagine that employees are coming back five days a week. And and again, you’re saying, you know, I might have a company where I might not have any, any employees. But you know, as a transition, I think for many companies, they do have employees that will be coming back. Take me through, if you can, what might it look like when, let’s say, let’s say my company, I’m going to have my employees in the office just on Wednesday?
Barry Winkless 31:13
Yeah. Yeah.
Mitch Simon 31:15
What are some of the events? This is again, what Jimmy and I were asking ourselves when we started this podcast, what are some of the events that are going to happen? Again, your you know, your Walt Disney, you’re taking us to tomorrow land, right. And we walk into, and we see, I just, I just have to say, my favorite, favorite ride at Disneyland. When I was a little I grew up right by Disneyland. So this is a great
Barry Winkless 31:39
thing. I’m so jealous much I have to say.
Mitch Simon 31:42
Yeah. So it was it was the carousel of tomorrow, which came from the world. Oh, yes. 67 or whatever.
Barry Winkless 31:48
But it was originally a fight from wrong was premiered at the World’s Fair flank and 64 was 65. Yeah, yes. Yes.
Mitch Simon 31:56
And you would go and you would basically, the the seats would move around this round. odditorium. And then you would see the past you would see now and you see the future. Right. And tomorrow. That’s the song chairman. Great. big, beautiful tomorrow. Yes, yeah. Anyways, getting back to the question, Barry. I know it’s late Friday. Over there is. So I’m going to come to the office on Wednesday, and I’m going to now you know, you’re gonna you’re gonna bear we’re gonna have a peek into what is what does it even look like? What’s going on in that workspace? When they’ve all come together? That’s different than it was before?
Barry Winkless 32:36
Yeah, well, I think I think, you know, it’s a good question, which I think the first question you ask yourself is, when employee Do we need to bring these people together? Right. So that that’s really important, because by default, it’s going to be much more of a kind of, you know, key moments, right. So that’s the first thing, you know, to see is your Disney analogy there again, but you know, the key moments with Abraham Lincoln, I think, was one of the other things I remember watching other robotic animatronic pets, right? So I think that’s the first thing you know, because we’re going to be in a world where those meetings have a much greater premium. So the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to really focus on the design of that experience. I think, you know, I’ve listened to some of your podcasts before, guys, I’m consistently on underwhelmed by the quality of meetings. I know you guys have touched on that subject before. And you know, this is going to put an even greater premium, a greater premium on the design of a meeting. So that’s the very first thing. So what why do we need to have people together for this meeting, by default is going to have to be for a big reason, right? And that the reason I’m saying that is because that will then dictate the kind of design that we’re going to create, for and for that particular meeting. So give you one very specific example and something that I was involved in a few years ago. And let’s say we’re going to bring people together because we want to have a strategic visioning session. Right? What might what might I do differently there, what I might think about is I may think about creating a crop that is a newspaper that talks about the company 10 years from now, written by a well known journalist, and you know, I have two papers, I have one that shows what went wrong. And then one that kind of a celebratory article around, you know, success or no, build an experience based on that. And because, for me, what experienced those guys is, it gets behind the thinking mind gets into the emotional and real world conversation that we’re all striving to have. So that we want example, Mitch, right. So we create this alternative newspaper led feature, you know, and pointed out our business and then really create a, you know, much more emotionally led conversation and tell you a little bit of a mad one of my previous job. And if we want to gather people together because we really wanted to get across the message around DNI diversity and inclusion, I might actually create an experience where we get Don’t laugh at this one, but we get our people to meet with different alien races, and to try to converse with them in different ways. And through that process, we’re actually teaching them the the value of diversity. And I should say, guys, that was actually something that we did do. So that’s on the make your thing. So it’s to make sure that we’re using the appropriate physical meetings, for big buying opportunities. Right. And I think that’s, that’s the really kind of important thing for me. And, you know, we kind of we, I think we’ve, we’ve devalued the meeting, we’ve devalued the concept of meetings, right? You know, 200 years ago was very, very hard for people to get together, right? Very hard for people physically to get together and do something. And when they did, it was a celebration of some shape or form. You know, you might have people that were away for nine months, you know, on a ship, going back to harbor and you know, all of a sudden, you know, so it’s that kind of concept. So number one, why you have these people together, number two, purposeful design. And number three, use a kind of story driven, innovative, exciting approach using props, that’s not going to cost you more time or more money, or create a different type of experience that brings you to somewhere else. And you know, when I think that that that is kind of, for me, is what that kind of that kind of thing would look like. And again, that’s me just taking those very specific, you know, examples on that, I’m not saying that we all should be doing everything experiential, all of the time, very much comes back to the types of meetings, you know, and what the most appropriate one is. Barry, thank
Mitch Simon 36:35
you so much. I just want to sit here and listen for hours, because it’s just like, we’re just, we’re hitting on. We’re like, on the vein of, you know, some really, really key insights and directions on the future of work. So if we could close up Barry, if you want to share any last last words, and we’d love to know, if you could tell our listeners, you know, how to find out more about this report, how to find out more about the future of work. If you could fill us in on that,
Barry Winkless 37:07
ya know, problem. So, if you go to, if you basically type in CPL, future of work Institute, that will bring you to lots of really interesting articles, or papers, and you know, some of the things I talk about a lot. So, you know, you go on to Google there, but I should also say, as well, if people put my name in there, Are you anxious to get some of my talks that I’ve done, and you know, and that kind of stuff all up, they’re all free, all available. And then you know, to those links, then people will be able to kind of log on and find the white paper, feature work world, which I definitely don’t want to kind of do the salesmanship here much. But I do think that in that paper covers a lot of the concepts we talked about today in a kind of a structured fashion. And you know, things like the show Bible, isn’t there things like three w model is in there. Some of the experiential trends are in there. So I’m very open, guys, for people reading it, you know, could get in touch base with me. Barry dot winters at CPL daata, eak, please do we really mean that I’m a huge believer in the network effect. So you know, please tell your listeners to kind of touch base at any time.
Mitch Simon 38:13
All right, Barry, thank you for your great generosity. We love your company. We you know, we love Alicia having her on the podcast a couple months ago. I think it’s time for you to go have a weekend. Thank you so much.
Ginny Bianco-Mathis 38:28
Thank you. This is fabulous.
Mitch Simon 38:30
Thank you. So for listeners. Great. Thank you, Barry. And thank you all for listening to another episode of team anywhere. And if you’ve loved this episode, like we have, please share this on your social media. Let people know that this resource is available. Okay, great. We’ll see you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai See Blog.
