1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,000
Well, random question of the day to get us started. Potato chips. Everybody's favorite.

2
00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:10,960
I'm just going to say it's everybody's favorite. Do you guys have a favorite flavor? I'm going

3
00:00:10,960 --> 00:00:15,280
to come in right now and say due to food intolerances. I have a love-hate relationship

4
00:00:15,280 --> 00:00:18,960
with potato chips, so flavors are kind of off the table. But I'll put it over to you

5
00:00:18,960 --> 00:00:19,960
too.

6
00:00:19,960 --> 00:00:23,640
Salt. Salty flavor.

7
00:00:23,640 --> 00:00:30,640
So, like original, are you like a ruffles, like a ridges, or like a straight, like,

8
00:00:30,640 --> 00:00:32,360
classical ways?

9
00:00:32,360 --> 00:00:37,720
It would probably be the Cape Cod potato chips. They're a game changer, but just the saltiness

10
00:00:37,720 --> 00:00:42,000
of them. If I had to pick a flavor outside of standard potato chips, it would be sour

11
00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:45,520
cream and onion.

12
00:00:45,520 --> 00:00:54,680
I'd probably have to go like harvest cheddar from like the like sun chips. I don't know

13
00:00:54,680 --> 00:00:56,240
if they're like considered chips.

14
00:00:56,240 --> 00:00:57,240
That means they're chips.

15
00:00:57,240 --> 00:00:59,800
Are they a potato chip though?

16
00:00:59,800 --> 00:01:00,800
Potato chips.

17
00:01:00,800 --> 00:01:02,520
They are not made from potatoes.

18
00:01:02,520 --> 00:01:07,680
Like cheddar and sour cream ruffles are, I had to choose.

19
00:01:07,680 --> 00:01:13,040
And you got to get the extra little salt within like the texture of it. Yeah, these like flat

20
00:01:13,040 --> 00:01:16,120
potato chips don't know what those are.

21
00:01:16,120 --> 00:01:17,120
Nope.

22
00:01:17,120 --> 00:01:21,920
Well, on the vein of potato chips, which is a perfect segue to what we're talking about

23
00:01:21,920 --> 00:01:27,160
today, total sarcasm, we are following up on an episode that was published back at the

24
00:01:27,160 --> 00:01:33,880
end of January of the season that was AJ, myself and Matthew talking about using technology

25
00:01:33,880 --> 00:01:35,320
for employee engagement.

26
00:01:35,320 --> 00:01:39,200
Once we wrapped that episode, we were like, it would be great to take Todd's time because

27
00:01:39,200 --> 00:01:46,040
he loves to talk and ask him questions about all of his views from a leadership perspective

28
00:01:46,040 --> 00:01:48,840
on technology and employee engagement.

29
00:01:48,840 --> 00:01:52,560
A lot of big words there, but it's the Tech of Business podcast. I'm Kelsey, a member

30
00:01:52,560 --> 00:01:58,160
of our marketing team moderating. Todd is our COO and CISO and then AJ is a customer

31
00:01:58,160 --> 00:01:59,160
strategy advisor.

32
00:01:59,160 --> 00:02:00,840
I got that one right.

33
00:02:00,840 --> 00:02:02,920
CSA, there's a lot of acronyms in tech.

34
00:02:02,920 --> 00:02:07,520
But we're all sitting down. AJ and I are also members of our employee engagement committee.

35
00:02:07,520 --> 00:02:11,840
We're also working on a CEC, another acronym. But AJ, I'll pass it off to you to put our

36
00:02:11,840 --> 00:02:14,480
first question to Todd this morning.

37
00:02:14,480 --> 00:02:24,160
Yeah. So kind of how have you seen, like obviously, like with employee engagement, we've had to

38
00:02:24,160 --> 00:02:31,040
change how we're interacting with each other with our workforce being primarily remote

39
00:02:31,040 --> 00:02:40,560
now. How has that changed, if anything, how you think about what you want to see us accomplishing?

40
00:02:40,560 --> 00:02:48,800
Sure. Thanks. So from my perspective, just kind of backing up a little bit. When we did

41
00:02:48,800 --> 00:02:53,600
not have a strategic, I'm sorry, how much strategic engagement we didn't have employee

42
00:02:53,600 --> 00:03:01,000
engagement team, we were very much Central Minnesota, Western Wisconsin team and everybody

43
00:03:01,000 --> 00:03:07,560
was in person on site all the time. And we had a tendency to do the same things over

44
00:03:07,560 --> 00:03:10,440
and over again, whether it was convenient or a few people liked it or whatever the case

45
00:03:10,440 --> 00:03:14,560
may be. We kind of went through a process and I was kind of looking at it and I go,

46
00:03:14,560 --> 00:03:19,800
how do we know our employees even like what we're doing? Did we even ask? And the answer

47
00:03:19,800 --> 00:03:27,040
was no, we didn't. And so why so? Why not? We've probably do that. And so that was kind

48
00:03:27,040 --> 00:03:33,400
of how things started originally. But to answer the question that you asked just now is, I

49
00:03:33,400 --> 00:03:39,200
feel it's incredibly important. We have employees that are across the country. So we have them

50
00:03:39,200 --> 00:03:44,160
everywhere. And when we used to be the traditional company that we were, we've been around for

51
00:03:44,160 --> 00:03:48,840
30 years, it was easy to say, hey, we're going to meet up at whatever baseball field, whatever

52
00:03:48,840 --> 00:03:52,760
the case may be, we're going to go to an amusement park and everybody just gathered if they wanted

53
00:03:52,760 --> 00:03:57,000
to. And now you're like, well, that's not all inclusive. We've got half our staff in

54
00:03:57,000 --> 00:04:01,920
various places from Florida to Alaska and everything in between. When you look at that,

55
00:04:01,920 --> 00:04:06,400
you go, how do we make sure that we try to keep everybody engaged? How do they feel like

56
00:04:06,400 --> 00:04:14,000
they're included? I know from my perspective, if you see so much about people quitting and

57
00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:17,800
not being able to go to their jobs and if they can work remote, that's what they're going

58
00:04:17,800 --> 00:04:22,740
to default to. And while I think that's fantastic, I think you lose pieces of what traditional

59
00:04:22,740 --> 00:04:29,360
bonding human culture is based on social interactions. And if you don't have any capabilities of

60
00:04:29,360 --> 00:04:34,320
doing that in any form, they're automatically excluded. Now, obviously, there's introverts

61
00:04:34,320 --> 00:04:39,840
that would much rather prefer to be completely left alone. However, even they do like some

62
00:04:39,840 --> 00:04:44,040
interaction and feel like they're part of a team as well.

63
00:04:44,040 --> 00:04:49,480
As I see it for everybody listening here as I just kind of rolled my eyes because I'm

64
00:04:49,480 --> 00:04:54,280
like, yeah, I'm that person that I was onboarded remotely. So for me, I'm like, I've heard

65
00:04:54,280 --> 00:05:00,320
of these things, never experienced that part. So that's been an interesting to go. Yeah,

66
00:05:00,320 --> 00:05:07,680
for me, it's just normal to go, I'm going to chat my work bestie who's in Anchorage schedule,

67
00:05:07,680 --> 00:05:11,320
like never going to probably meet this person in person, maybe someday in the future, but

68
00:05:11,320 --> 00:05:16,400
that's fine. And that's not odd to me. So that's an interesting point just to put forward

69
00:05:16,400 --> 00:05:20,080
to talk on that just a little bit. But AJ, I totally talked over you. So go ahead.

70
00:05:20,080 --> 00:05:30,320
No, that's okay. And I think part of it is like Matthew is in, you know, a remote look.

71
00:05:30,320 --> 00:05:37,560
He's in Alaska. And he did it, you know, he's one of the people who is just like, Hey, cool,

72
00:05:37,560 --> 00:05:43,200
I want to be part of it. But I could see like Todd, from your perspective, like trying to

73
00:05:43,200 --> 00:05:50,880
like, elicit more of the remote feedback of like, Okay, let's make sure we have somebody,

74
00:05:50,880 --> 00:05:56,680
it already happened. So that conversation didn't need to happen. But I can see how, as you know,

75
00:05:56,680 --> 00:06:00,840
from the leadership perspective, it's like, Hey, somebody who is on all these meetings

76
00:06:00,840 --> 00:06:10,480
should be not in not capable of going to everything because they're remote. And so I could see,

77
00:06:10,480 --> 00:06:16,120
you know, you obviously didn't have to have that conversation. But I can see that conversation

78
00:06:16,120 --> 00:06:20,280
coming through and being like, Hey, this is really change. Let's make sure we're including

79
00:06:20,280 --> 00:06:26,560
these people. So I think that's important too. We kind of just had that dynamic already because

80
00:06:26,560 --> 00:06:33,360
Matthew was outgoing enough and wanted to be part of it. And we've gotten more, you know,

81
00:06:33,360 --> 00:06:40,600
remote employees who join. So that's, you know, it's nice just to be able to throw stuff to him.

82
00:06:40,600 --> 00:06:51,720
Has the your thought of the number of events changed? Or like that you want to like see

83
00:06:51,720 --> 00:06:56,640
because like we we do the traditional like, I think everybody has like the end of year or

84
00:06:56,640 --> 00:07:04,240
like the once a year, like bigger kind of event. Is there other things that you like to see,

85
00:07:04,240 --> 00:07:11,880
you know, with these remote capabilities? I think for us, and this may not apply to most

86
00:07:11,880 --> 00:07:16,240
organizations, although I think it is relatively common from a lot of the places that I've worked

87
00:07:16,240 --> 00:07:20,240
on the past, we try to do two things a year. So we try to do something in the summertime,

88
00:07:20,240 --> 00:07:23,840
and then we also try to do our end of year celebration in some shape, manner or form.

89
00:07:23,840 --> 00:07:29,000
And that number feels pretty good. There are things that I just feel like you kind of got to

90
00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:33,160
keep things going, otherwise people don't feel like they're included. It's, you know,

91
00:07:33,160 --> 00:07:36,560
I never talked to those people or I don't get the opportunity to see people or whatever the

92
00:07:36,560 --> 00:07:41,680
case may be. So I think it's important to do it more than once a year, at least that's my

93
00:07:41,680 --> 00:07:47,040
perspective on it. I did want to kind of expand on the working remote thing and trying to get

94
00:07:47,040 --> 00:07:51,440
those in people in the engagement. Especially if you have a committee, I think it's incredibly

95
00:07:51,440 --> 00:07:55,360
important, right? If you don't have that, how do you know you're getting what you need? Now,

96
00:07:55,360 --> 00:08:00,400
Kelsey said she's been remote, she works remote, that's kind of the way things are for her, but I

97
00:08:00,400 --> 00:08:07,840
do see her from time to time in person. So she has the opportunity to get together that they

98
00:08:07,840 --> 00:08:14,000
don't want. And so you kind of look at that and you go, what? Again, I don't know how I include

99
00:08:14,000 --> 00:08:19,920
them unless I ask. And one thing, and I know I'm completely off the topic that you asked originally,

100
00:08:19,920 --> 00:08:27,360
but I'll try to get back, I swear. I may not. I don't know what that would feel like. I'm not

101
00:08:27,360 --> 00:08:31,760
that person, I'm a little more social, I like to talk, I want to be in person, I like shaking hands

102
00:08:31,760 --> 00:08:36,400
and kissing babies, that's kind of my thing. Well, it's winter here, you get sick when you kiss

103
00:08:36,400 --> 00:08:43,680
babies, so don't do that. Anyways, so as we go through that, sorry, I want to make sure that

104
00:08:43,680 --> 00:08:47,920
we're talking to them. So actually, for what it's worth, when we do our onboarding process, I talk

105
00:08:47,920 --> 00:08:52,800
about the employee engagement committee to every employee that we bring on and saying, we've got

106
00:08:52,800 --> 00:08:58,160
this team, they're doing a lot of really great things, whether it's trying to do book clubs or

107
00:08:58,160 --> 00:09:02,400
how to engage things throughout the year, whatever the case may be, they're doing a lot of those things,

108
00:09:02,400 --> 00:09:06,000
they're always open to having people join too. So if it's something that you're interested,

109
00:09:06,000 --> 00:09:11,200
it's easy enough to figure out how to move forward on it. But then I did, I do remember very specifically

110
00:09:11,200 --> 00:09:15,920
encouraging Matthew to join, I was like, I don't know how to engage you, you're in Alaska, I love

111
00:09:15,920 --> 00:09:20,800
your feedback. From a leader's perspective, one of the biggest concerns I had with it, and I've

112
00:09:20,800 --> 00:09:26,320
shared this with you guys in the past, is I don't want to be the guy that shows up and says, hey,

113
00:09:26,320 --> 00:09:30,880
have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? And the reason is, I don't want to be the

114
00:09:30,880 --> 00:09:35,520
influence that says, well, Todd mentioned it, he clearly wants to do it. We should figure out how

115
00:09:35,520 --> 00:09:40,400
to make that happen. And I just want it to be like, it was just an idea, you don't have to do anything

116
00:09:40,400 --> 00:09:46,320
with it. But I want that team to not have that top down influence that says, you got to think about

117
00:09:46,320 --> 00:09:50,800
this, and you got to think about that, that team knows much better what's important and meaningful

118
00:09:50,800 --> 00:09:55,440
than I do. I tend to get a little disconnected, because like I said, I want to be in person,

119
00:09:55,440 --> 00:09:57,520
I want to shake hands, I want to go do the thing.

120
00:09:57,520 --> 00:10:10,800
How has your thought about like spend change? Because it's, we have the

121
00:10:12,640 --> 00:10:17,840
things that didn't cost money at the office. When we were in the office, we would play basketball

122
00:10:17,840 --> 00:10:23,760
or bags, or it was a minimal cost, or we'd do a grill out, which was maybe a couple hundred bucks.

123
00:10:23,760 --> 00:10:33,760
But there's a lot of different spends that we have now. Thankfully, we've found a ways to not

124
00:10:33,760 --> 00:10:42,400
do it of like the book club. It's just creating a regular meeting that reoccurs third Thursday.

125
00:10:42,400 --> 00:10:49,360
Okay, everybody knows. And encouraging other people to do that. But when it comes to

126
00:10:49,360 --> 00:10:59,120
other outreach for remote employees, has it changed kind of how you think about the spend

127
00:10:59,120 --> 00:11:06,000
per employee? Or what's that kind of thought process like? I think the answer is yes.

128
00:11:08,160 --> 00:11:12,720
It just naturally had to happen. There are things that definitely come up in just thinking about

129
00:11:12,720 --> 00:11:18,640
spend in general. Kelsey had mentioned it earlier, it was, I mean, I never see that individual aside

130
00:11:18,640 --> 00:11:23,600
from video. What would that be like? And it often comes up and says, what would it be like if we

131
00:11:23,600 --> 00:11:27,680
had some sort of outreach where we had people have the capability of meeting us someplace?

132
00:11:29,680 --> 00:11:33,840
So there have been things that we've done that are somewhat creative. I don't think they've been

133
00:11:33,840 --> 00:11:39,200
formalized. But I'll use an example is from time to time, we'll bring people to conferences that may

134
00:11:39,200 --> 00:11:44,960
or may not have had an opportunity to do that in the past. So for example, our security team said,

135
00:11:44,960 --> 00:11:49,600
I'm going to be at this conference if you'd like to join us, we can figure out how to meet up and

136
00:11:49,600 --> 00:11:54,160
get together for dinners or whatever the case may be. Those were very easy to do because it was

137
00:11:54,160 --> 00:11:57,600
already business related. And it wasn't like, well, what I'm really going to do is I'm going to fly you

138
00:11:57,600 --> 00:12:01,440
to Minnesota, and then we're going to put you in a hotel and you have to come into the office and

139
00:12:01,440 --> 00:12:04,800
you have to meet all these people. Kind of a different experience, but it was something that

140
00:12:04,800 --> 00:12:10,640
you consciously look at and say, what does the budget look like for that? But then kind of expanding

141
00:12:10,640 --> 00:12:14,960
on it, there are a lot of other things that I think are great too. And again, this is where I think

142
00:12:14,960 --> 00:12:19,920
the power of the employee engagement committee comes from is they have the capability of going

143
00:12:19,920 --> 00:12:24,080
and thinking outside of the box and says, what would be fun? What if we did Dungeons and Dragons?

144
00:12:24,080 --> 00:12:28,080
What if we did Book Club? What if we did? And most of those things you can do remote.

145
00:12:29,040 --> 00:12:33,440
As Kelsey mentioned, I have the CISO title, so I know that my security team does this. And this is

146
00:12:33,440 --> 00:12:38,960
maybe a little nod to an organization that's free. So there's no, no costs associated with it. But

147
00:12:38,960 --> 00:12:43,840
there is a group called Black Hills Information Security, and they have a card game which somebody

148
00:12:43,840 --> 00:12:50,320
has turned into a web tool called Backdoors and Breaches. And our security team has got a schedule

149
00:12:50,320 --> 00:12:55,040
on a Friday evening, where we're going to like four o'clock at night, we're just basically shutting

150
00:12:55,040 --> 00:12:59,120
it down. We'll be on call. We'll be shutting it down and just kind of going, all right, we're going

151
00:12:59,120 --> 00:13:04,800
to work through this as a game. And the intent is to have fun, team building, etc. But there's no

152
00:13:04,800 --> 00:13:09,680
cost to it other than our employees are there. So kind of like you said, with the bags and the

153
00:13:09,680 --> 00:13:15,280
basketball hoops, there's creative ways to still get that engagement, still have things that are

154
00:13:15,280 --> 00:13:20,240
very team building type things. And then also, it is important to do the additional spend on

155
00:13:20,240 --> 00:13:26,320
things that do matter. Like when we do our in-person events, this is something that maybe is obvious.

156
00:13:26,320 --> 00:13:31,360
I don't think it is, but maybe it is. When we do our in-person events, we kind of say, you know,

157
00:13:31,360 --> 00:13:35,360
we think that cost is whatever, I'll just use a random number. Please don't put anything on this,

158
00:13:35,360 --> 00:13:41,120
it's just a number. It's going to cost us about $500 an employee to have that event. We want to then

159
00:13:41,120 --> 00:13:45,280
take that dollar amount and say, we're going to make that available for the people that Lado can't

160
00:13:45,280 --> 00:13:50,720
make it. So we'll just do something that's in a similar vein that may be a gift, it may be a party,

161
00:13:50,720 --> 00:13:55,920
whatever the case may be. There was a conversation that said, what if we had a group, hypothetically,

162
00:13:55,920 --> 00:14:01,040
we had four employees that were in a single city, and they could easily get together. What if we

163
00:14:01,040 --> 00:14:05,280
funded the dinner? What if we funded the party, whatever the case may be, those are absolutely

164
00:14:05,280 --> 00:14:10,400
things we want to consider and find ways to make happen so we can still celebrate our organization

165
00:14:10,400 --> 00:14:15,840
amongst ourselves. Well, this is a little bit of a tangent of what you're talking about. Maybe think

166
00:14:15,840 --> 00:14:20,640
of it as right before everybody was in the same spot, and now we've not only gone remote, but we've

167
00:14:20,640 --> 00:14:26,960
also gotten bigger. So right previously, if we were saying, oh yeah, there's 50 people, that's

168
00:14:26,960 --> 00:14:30,880
easier to work with and to budget for than right now, you're saying, okay, the security team does this,

169
00:14:30,880 --> 00:14:35,280
and they do that, and they do these things, which is great. But then how do you look at it and say,

170
00:14:36,160 --> 00:14:40,480
what does that look like? I'm part of a two-person department, spoilers. So right, that's a little

171
00:14:40,480 --> 00:14:44,320
bit different than I'm like, yeah, Darren, I talked for five hours yesterday, casual, that's just

172
00:14:44,320 --> 00:14:49,360
getting work done. But right as teams grow, there's so many different dynamics. How do you look at

173
00:14:49,360 --> 00:14:56,320
that? And how do you kind of prioritize and foster that? Well, the fostering is being supportive,

174
00:14:56,320 --> 00:15:02,320
at least from the leadership aspect of it. I want teams to feel like they're empowered to do the

175
00:15:02,320 --> 00:15:05,920
things they need, and then if they need funding, if they need encouragement, whatever the case may

176
00:15:05,920 --> 00:15:09,280
be, that's typically what I expect them to come back and say, we're thinking this, what are your

177
00:15:09,280 --> 00:15:13,600
thoughts? How can we make that happen? There are times when, as you mentioned, there's budget

178
00:15:13,600 --> 00:15:18,320
concerns, and we go, yeah, no, but let's think about how we can make that happen next year.

179
00:15:19,760 --> 00:15:24,320
There is our accounting team actually did a team gathering, and they're all local,

180
00:15:24,320 --> 00:15:28,640
but they all went out to lunch the other day, and they managed to take their lunch time and

181
00:15:28,640 --> 00:15:33,360
do their team building and had a meeting during lunch, etc. So there are ways of doing some of

182
00:15:33,360 --> 00:15:38,320
those things, but again, I'm not necessarily fostering it as much as I'm encouraging it and

183
00:15:38,320 --> 00:15:42,080
saying, yeah, do what you need to do. I'll happily pay for lunch. That's no problem.

184
00:15:43,040 --> 00:15:47,280
Saying choose your adventure. I like it. And this is a little bit maybe off topic, but because I'm

185
00:15:47,280 --> 00:15:51,760
on social media too often, I just saw something that was like, right, don't expect your employees to

186
00:15:51,760 --> 00:15:55,360
spend their evening time or their weekend time because we didn't see that as an EC that we were

187
00:15:55,360 --> 00:15:59,440
like, oh, we'll get together on a Sunday and watch football. And everybody was like, I don't really

188
00:15:59,440 --> 00:16:04,000
want to drive to Woodbury and watch it when I can watch it at home on my couch with my family. And

189
00:16:04,000 --> 00:16:07,760
I was like, I get it. We still put it out there as a thing. And people were like, nah, and we were

190
00:16:07,760 --> 00:16:12,640
like, well, that's the answer. We'd rather have you say no than say yes and then not like it.

191
00:16:13,600 --> 00:16:18,960
Granted, that wasn't a forced thing. But right, we've all, I've never been to one of those things,

192
00:16:18,960 --> 00:16:23,760
but there's certain right that we could easily fall into that bracket of going,

193
00:16:23,760 --> 00:16:27,440
we're spending the money, you got to be there. It's important for you to be there.

194
00:16:28,480 --> 00:16:32,320
How do you kind of walk that fine line of saying, hey, you don't have to just use your lunch. You

195
00:16:32,320 --> 00:16:38,720
don't have to use your Friday night. What are your thoughts on using work time for team building?

196
00:16:38,720 --> 00:16:45,200
Yeah. Yeah. So again, my point of what I was saying is they happen to do it over lunch, but

197
00:16:45,200 --> 00:16:49,280
it could have been at three o'clock in the afternoon. I'd have been completely fine with that. I mean,

198
00:16:49,280 --> 00:16:56,720
again, one thing I think people forget is we used to do a lot of that in person.

199
00:16:57,520 --> 00:17:01,040
When I worked in other organizations, they always called it the flypaper meeting, right?

200
00:17:01,040 --> 00:17:04,720
Somebody walked by and they kind of got sucked into a meeting. And a lot of times it's just

201
00:17:04,720 --> 00:17:08,880
a casual conversation. There's nothing to it. Those happen. And those, in my opinion,

202
00:17:08,880 --> 00:17:13,360
are important conversations. You're having them today in a modern world with the new tools,

203
00:17:13,360 --> 00:17:17,600
et cetera. You're typically having them via chat or, hey, can you jump on a quick call or whatever

204
00:17:17,600 --> 00:17:22,400
the case may be. They're still happening. They just don't tend to happen in groups as much.

205
00:17:24,240 --> 00:17:29,280
But going back to where I was originally trying to make my point is it's what you expect is an

206
00:17:29,280 --> 00:17:34,800
organization has a certain amount of time that isn't expected to be. You must be at your keyboard for

207
00:17:34,800 --> 00:17:38,720
nine straight hours. That is not the intent. Organizations don't actually expect that of you.

208
00:17:38,720 --> 00:17:43,280
I shouldn't say that. There may be some organizations that expect that out of you,

209
00:17:43,280 --> 00:17:47,840
but most organizations don't, right? They understand that people get up, they stretch,

210
00:17:47,840 --> 00:17:52,800
they go to the bathroom, they get coffee. All of that matters. And in fact, there's

211
00:17:52,800 --> 00:17:58,000
tons of studies out there that say if you get up and you walk around, your mind works differently,

212
00:17:58,560 --> 00:18:02,640
and you can actually solve problems better by doing those kinds of things. So in my opinion,

213
00:18:02,640 --> 00:18:06,080
those things are very, very important. And again, kind of getting back to where I was

214
00:18:06,080 --> 00:18:11,360
intended to say this is there are times that I would anticipate that there is an extra,

215
00:18:11,360 --> 00:18:16,000
if you're not in video, you can't see me doing the quotes, productive periods of time where people

216
00:18:16,000 --> 00:18:21,760
are pounding away on the keyboard. That is not what it should have to look like. The security one,

217
00:18:21,760 --> 00:18:27,920
it's at the end of the day, and it could potentially go an hour past to the end of the day for work.

218
00:18:27,920 --> 00:18:33,440
If it does, people can drop off. It's totally fine. But it was intended to be during the workday.

219
00:18:33,440 --> 00:18:37,040
So we were carving out a portion of the workday saying this is what we're making time for. Now,

220
00:18:37,680 --> 00:18:41,680
in that particular case, that group does potentially have to be on call and could

221
00:18:41,680 --> 00:18:45,520
potentially get pulled over for an emergency of, hey, we need you to work on this or,

222
00:18:45,520 --> 00:18:49,440
you know, drop off for 10 minutes while they look at something. All of that is perfectly

223
00:18:49,440 --> 00:18:53,280
acceptable. But the intent was still to get the engagement, the team building,

224
00:18:53,280 --> 00:18:57,600
doing all the things that are important. Not every team is like that, though, or there are

225
00:18:57,600 --> 00:19:03,040
emergencies popping up all the time. No, and I wasn't. That sounded like I was poking on those

226
00:19:03,040 --> 00:19:06,400
going, they were at lunch. That was thereafter. Not what I was saying, but, right, I mean,

227
00:19:06,400 --> 00:19:09,600
that's kind of a good point of it's a Friday afternoon. There's probably less

228
00:19:09,600 --> 00:19:13,840
emergencies coming through on a Friday afternoon. So you're being strategic about the timeframe

229
00:19:13,840 --> 00:19:17,840
that you're picking instead of Monday morning when everybody's forgot their password. I'm pointing

230
00:19:17,840 --> 00:19:23,520
it myself when I say that. Not anybody else, but just side notes there. But I think too,

231
00:19:23,520 --> 00:19:28,880
where was I going with that? I was going with, even right from marketing, we're not customer facing.

232
00:19:28,880 --> 00:19:33,520
So Tara and I one day literally went and just painted pottery because we were like,

233
00:19:33,520 --> 00:19:37,760
it's creativity. We also did an event venue tour and other things layered in those days

234
00:19:37,760 --> 00:19:42,240
that we were like, because we're going to be here. Let's do that because there's two of us.

235
00:19:42,240 --> 00:19:46,640
And that's kind of the getting up and walking around thing. Because as you say that, I'm going,

236
00:19:46,640 --> 00:19:52,240
yeah, do I take those breaks? It's easy. It's easy to forget to take them, right? When you're at

237
00:19:52,240 --> 00:19:59,360
the computer and you're chatting and whatever, it's hard sometimes. Yeah, I agree. I don't want

238
00:19:59,360 --> 00:20:04,240
to tangent off too much, but it's like, even just getting a cup of coffee in the office,

239
00:20:05,280 --> 00:20:15,200
or water or whatever beverage you indulge in, it's easy to tangent sometimes and be able to

240
00:20:15,200 --> 00:20:23,520
talk to somebody when you don't have that. So I think fully utilizing the tools and being able to

241
00:20:24,880 --> 00:20:32,800
enable the teams to be like, hey, here's the tools in order to work together better.

242
00:20:35,120 --> 00:20:40,400
I know that that's something that we're working on in the C is like kind of having that like kit

243
00:20:40,400 --> 00:20:46,400
that like on that onboarding that you talk to people, Todd, is that you can give that, hey,

244
00:20:46,400 --> 00:20:58,640
if you really want to have a Frisbee golf group, here's how you set it up. Here's a basic toolkit.

245
00:20:58,640 --> 00:21:07,360
I'm like, what we're hoping for. Or if you want to start a little knitting club and you want to

246
00:21:07,360 --> 00:21:14,960
meet remotely and do that, here's how you do it. So I know that that's something that we're working

247
00:21:14,960 --> 00:21:21,520
on that we'd like to provide to you, but I feel like that is kind of a toolkit that I would like,

248
00:21:22,720 --> 00:21:29,200
you know, that I feel like is important for the organization. So.

249
00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:35,200
Yeah, I think that's fantastic. Again, I love Kelsey's comment too, which I think wasn't exactly

250
00:21:35,200 --> 00:21:39,760
designed to tie to what you just said, but the creativity of doing something that helps you

251
00:21:39,760 --> 00:21:44,800
think of new things and go through a process that kind of goes, well, what if, what if this,

252
00:21:44,800 --> 00:21:48,240
what if I had a toolkit, etc. I think it's outstanding. I love it.

253
00:21:50,320 --> 00:21:58,320
Is there anything else on that vein that you either have like, I don't want this to be like a critique

254
00:21:58,320 --> 00:22:05,600
of EC, but like something that like we've done or implemented that you like, or something that you

255
00:22:05,600 --> 00:22:11,360
haven't liked or something that we can like learn from, you know, like, oh, that event didn't go

256
00:22:12,160 --> 00:22:17,360
how we wanted it to kind of thing. Any examples like that?

257
00:22:18,640 --> 00:22:22,000
No, from my perspective, there aren't any negatives that went with it. Again,

258
00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:28,000
so you'll bear with me as I go tangent across the country. But just what I do.

259
00:22:29,840 --> 00:22:32,320
Some of the most amazing productive,

260
00:22:34,800 --> 00:22:40,240
efficient, effective teams are the ones that are self forming. So again, if anybody knows me,

261
00:22:40,240 --> 00:22:45,120
some of them that I really enjoy listening to is assignment cynic. Self forming teams are

262
00:22:45,680 --> 00:22:50,480
amazing and our EC team is a self forming team, right? All we said is, here's a concept. What

263
00:22:50,480 --> 00:22:54,720
would you do with it? The team got themselves together. They invited people. They expanded.

264
00:22:54,720 --> 00:23:01,280
They pulled in an additional people as needed. It's an incredibly powerful process. And I've

265
00:23:01,280 --> 00:23:05,440
purposely kept my fingers out of it. Like I said, I don't want to influence it, but it's doing exactly

266
00:23:05,440 --> 00:23:10,640
what I would have dreamt of. If you in a perfect world, what would it look like? It looks like this.

267
00:23:10,640 --> 00:23:15,680
I didn't have anything to do with it. Other than let's see what this looks like and start to move

268
00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:20,240
it along and hopefully it goes. So from that perspective, I think that if anybody's out there,

269
00:23:20,240 --> 00:23:24,800
that's interested in what it potentially looks like. We can certainly have conversations about

270
00:23:24,800 --> 00:23:28,880
it because we have one. And in my opinion, it's an incredibly powerful, effective process.

271
00:23:30,480 --> 00:23:35,280
But ultimately, from my perspective, the fact that it's self designed, it's bringing it stuff up,

272
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:40,240
it's creating ideas, even when things don't go right. The football example that you mentioned

273
00:23:40,240 --> 00:23:43,920
earlier is a great one, right? We think this is a good idea. We're going to throw it out to the

274
00:23:43,920 --> 00:23:48,480
world and the world says, no, that was terrible. We're not doing that. Great. We still tried,

275
00:23:48,480 --> 00:23:53,840
but we learned, right? We understand that Kelsey's point, maybe afternoons, evenings, and weekends

276
00:23:53,840 --> 00:23:58,240
aren't the time that people want to put their work hats back on or even gather. So if that's

277
00:23:58,240 --> 00:24:03,600
true, let's pivot and change. And I think that group has been tremendously adapt at doing that.

278
00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:13,840
Adapt, adapt. They've been adept at adapting. Any of the eight words? All of them. All of them.

279
00:24:14,400 --> 00:24:18,080
Jeno, we're kind of getting close on time as much as I could open up a whole other tangent,

280
00:24:18,080 --> 00:24:21,120
but AJ, do you have anything else that you'd like to kind of comment on?

281
00:24:22,240 --> 00:24:31,040
No. We've obviously outside of podcast format. We've heard Todd's feedback and we appreciate that.

282
00:24:31,040 --> 00:24:37,040
But just having that open conversation between the leadership and whatever group that is is

283
00:24:37,040 --> 00:24:42,320
really paramount of just being like, hey, you're doing a great job and having that feedback.

284
00:24:42,320 --> 00:24:51,760
We had a recent employee survey that had that culture and involvement. So getting that feedback

285
00:24:51,760 --> 00:25:00,720
as well, being like, are we doing the right thing? Because it's easy to see other people

286
00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:09,760
other metrics work related, close tickets, hours worked, response times. You can see other processes

287
00:25:09,760 --> 00:25:18,640
coming through, but employee engagement is a little harder to kind of get a grasp on.

288
00:25:19,680 --> 00:25:25,120
So having some sort of survey was really nice for us to have some of that feedback

289
00:25:25,120 --> 00:25:32,240
and know that as an EEC, Todd appreciates what we're doing. He likes how we're doing it on a

290
00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:40,960
leadership side, but also on an organization side. That feedback was nice as well. And honestly,

291
00:25:41,840 --> 00:25:46,080
we've been doing this over a year and a half, two years.

292
00:25:47,200 --> 00:25:48,560
It's a year and a half, yeah.

293
00:25:48,560 --> 00:25:56,400
And it's taken a while to get it going, but I feel like we're in a good spot as well. So

294
00:25:57,360 --> 00:26:05,440
if anybody is out there and they want to create this committee, it's not going to hit right away.

295
00:26:06,080 --> 00:26:10,880
You're going to hit some spots where it's, okay, that didn't work or this is working.

296
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:19,600
Stick with it. In the end, you get the things that work for your organization

297
00:26:20,320 --> 00:26:25,200
and what worked for your organization may not be what works for other organizations. So

298
00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:31,120
keep trying things, keep people engaged and just continue working through it.

299
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:38,320
That's the best way to close it out. I'm like, I could keep on going, but that was so beautiful

300
00:26:38,320 --> 00:26:42,080
that there's nothing else I could say beyond, yeah, you can always connect with us on LinkedIn or

301
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:46,160
via email if you want to talk to us. But right, that's kind of a whole separate, but I will wrap

302
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:51,040
us out. But thank you, Todd. Thank you, AJ, so much for sitting down and chatting today. If anybody

303
00:26:51,040 --> 00:26:56,240
does have questions for any one of us, you can reach out at info at cit-net.com. We'll give you

304
00:26:56,240 --> 00:27:00,400
our LinkedIn right through there, so send us an email. Or else you can always go out to our website

305
00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:12,560
at www.cit-net.com backslash podcast and we'll be back next week with another episode.