We’re half way through summer, which means the official “return to office” date, the day after Labor Day, is fast approaching. Many companies expect that their employees will be back in the office in some capacity. Which means NOW is the time to be thinking about how to navigate that transition. Enter executive start up coach Alisa Cohn and her client, co-founder and CEO of startup Common Paper, Jake Stein, to chat with Erica about how they’re both figuring out this transition time. In the episode you’ll hear Alisa reflect on her first offsite since the pandemic and the feeling of magic that face-to-face connection created, how Jake is thinking about building rapport, trust, and understanding with new hires in a future of work that isn’t necessarily geolocated, how matching the message to the medium is more important than ever, why old rituals may or may not translate as well in a different context (office setting versus WFH-during-a-pandemic setting), and why reopening may be tougher on us all psychologically than the initial lockdown.
We’re half way through summer, which means the official “return to office” date, the day after Labor Day, is fast approaching. Many companies expect that their employees will be back in the office in some capacity. Which means NOW is the time to be thinking about how to navigate that transition.
Enter executive start up coach Alisa Cohn and her client, co-founder and CEO of startup Common Paper, Jake Stein, to chat with Erica about how they’re both figuring out this transition time. In the episode you’ll hear Alisa reflect on her first offsite since the pandemic and the feeling of magic that face-to-face connection created, how Jake is thinking about building rapport, trust, and understanding with new hires in a future of work that isn’t necessarily geolocated, how matching the message to the medium is more important than ever, why old rituals may or may not translate as well in a different context (office setting versus WFH-during-a-pandemic setting), and why reopening may be tougher on us all psychologically than the initial lockdown.
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Quotes:
Alisa 3:22 – “Being in the same room, being able to have that human connection, that human contact was priceless, and I would say we really savored it because I think that we know that that could be taken away from us.”
Alisa 7:13 – “What have we experienced and enjoyed actually, about remote work, and then what do we need to fine-tune as we figure out what our version of back-to-office looks like.”
Jake 8:44 – “We’re four people who’ve all worked together before. And so we have a base level of trust and rapport and understanding, and we’re trying to recruit more people and one of the things that’s most important to me, is how do we develop that rapport and trust and understanding in a context where there’s not a kitchen to go talk at the water cooler or a Friday lunch for us to cater. And so I think we’ll have to do different things, and it’s something that we’ll need to be really intentional about, and I don’t, candidly, have all the answers.”
Jake 18:12 – “You really need to start from first principles, thinking, what am I trying to accomplish? And then also, what are the pros and the cons of the mediums that are available?”
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