from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world this is a cube conversation hey welcome back all righty Jeff Rick here with the cube we are in our Palo Alto studios today and as we continue to go through week after week after week of the kovat crisis the kovat situation you know we've been focusing on leadership and we've been reaching out to the community to get their take on you know what's happening best practices things that they can share to help and to share knowledge with the rest of the community and we're really excited to have our next guest Rebecca Knight you know her as a guest host on the cube she's actually been a freelance journalist for decades and writes for all the top pubs it's how we met her in the first first place doing some working at mighty so Rebecca first off great to see you it's been too long we were supposed to be together this week but situation kind of changed the schedule a little bit indeed it's so it's so good to see your face Jeff and it's so fun to be working with the cube gang again even though we are we are many miles apart right now we should all be together but but I'm really happy to be you're happy to be talking to you great well I am too and let's let's jump into it because you know you've been writing about leadership but really why I wanted to reach out with you is instead of you kind of co-hosting our guests really get get your perspective on things because you've been writing about leadership for a very long time so now that we're I don't know six weeks into this thing what are you writing about what you know it has it has the the topics kind of shifted you know over the last several weeks what's kind of top of mind what do you publish in this week absolutely the topics have shifted in the sense that there is only one topic and that is hope at 19 and that is how our managers coping with this with this health crisis this pandemic that is all over the world of course and a huge part of our workplace right now managers are just dealing with this unprecedented event industry and trying to be a sense of strength for their colleagues and for their direct report at a time where they themselves don't really know what the future holds none of us know what the future holds and so this is a very our managers right now and so that's that's a lot of what I'm doing for her for Harvard Business trivia now there's so many pieces to that one you know we've been talking a lot about it as being kind of this light switch digital transformation moment because even if you had planned and people have been planning and things have been slowly moving whether it be working from home for jobs or remote education in higher education or a lot of these things they were kind of you know moving along and all sudden boom full stop ready set go everyone has to stay home so that there wasn't really a plan a rollout plan and it's quite a challenge and the other thing is not only for you the individual who's going through this but their significant other or spouses also home the kids are also home and again nobody really got an opportunity to plan and try to think some of these things through so it's it's it's not only just working from home but now it says pandemic that adds all these extra layers of complexity and to you to your point uncertainty which is always the hardest thing to deal with you know Jeff I've actually been working from home for over a decade now I work for the Financial Times for about four ten years and that and I even and then I was Boston corresponding for the FT working from home I was following a bunch of writers on trip Twitter people are writing and saying working from home is the worst and I'm constantly please like concentrate this I will never want to work from home and then all these writers were chiming if they hold up theirs working from home and then there's working from home during a global pandemic two totally different things um but you're absolutely right this is a time where our families are underfoot we're trying to homeschool our children we are quarantined with our spouse trying to make our marriages work and also trying to do the job that we're being paid to do if we're lucky enough they'll be employed or still have assignment I in the hoppers though you're right this is this is a very this is not necessarily the test of remote work and remote learning that I think we all deserve and we will some day have and we're showing this is obviously an experiment and in some ways that's showing that it can work in ways but there is also this is this isn't exact this is more oh hey you have eight days to get all your employees online right now or eight days to roll out your curriculum so this is not quite exactly what we'd all had in my remember talking about the future of online education or the digital organization but but it certainly interested the watch all happen so it's funny as part of this we had Martin make us on and he has been running distributed teams for decades and it was really funny his take on it which was that it's so much easier to fake it at the office right and and to many people we had Amy Hayworth on from Citrix and in a blog that she referenced you know eventually people will start judging people based on outcome versus behavior and activities and it just it strikes me that in 2020 you know is this what it's taken to get people to actually judge people by their output and I think you know Martin's other take was that when you work from home all you have is your output you know you don't have kind of looking busy or saying hi to the boss or the car looks really great today you know you only have your output in his take was it's actually a much easier way to decide who's doing the job and who's not doing the job yeah you know I'm of two minds with that because I think that there is so much to be said for the teamwork there so I mean you may not be the person who is definitely always pedal to the metal getting every single thing done checking all the boxes you you know I mean obviously you have to be sort of have a baseline of productivity and engagement but there's also just you're someone that other people like to work with you're someone who offers good ideas who can be a really good sounding board who just will have those moments of creativity that are really important for a theme to be to succeed and to get to get to the finish line and I can get again I'm not saying the people who are just have just been coasting oh yeah this is it for you but I'm just saying that there's a lot of different personalities and a lot of skills that then go into making a great high-functioning team it takes all type and so and so I think that we are missing that we are missing the camaraderie the collegiality of the watercooler chat and and that where teams do a lot of problem solving is is sort of that informal conversation that right now a lot of us are missing because we've all had way too much zoom and no one wants to just sort of shoot the breeze on zoom with anyone so what so what are you telling people so unfortunately you know this is not how we would have planned it and we would have probably transitioned it a little bit smoother matter but here we are and were actually now five six weeks into it and the I think the the Monday was I think March 16th was the big day here in the Bay Area when it all kind of got got official so what are some things that you're sharing with with leaders and managers you know some specific things they can do some specific tasks that they can do to help get through this better the first thing I would say and this is what I'm hearing from the experts that I'm talking to the people who really study crisis management is first of all it's deal yourself this is this is a challenge of a lifetime and you are leading through something that is hard and you need to understand that and and first of all don't be too hard on yourself because this is this is this is really difficult this is what they're going to be writing case studies about in business schools for decades for to come these are really big management challenges steal yourself be ready for the challenge make sure you are taking care of yourself getting enough sleep getting rest on the weekends time with your family and friends do exercise eat right don't just snack on Cheetos all day long make sure you are taking care of yourself in terms of interacting with your employees and your team obviously like I just said everyone everyone cannot everyone's zum fatigue is real um but at the same time you do need to make time to talk to your team and say hey how are you how are things make sure that people are you wait no baby we need to make sure that you have your your finger on the pulse of your team and make sure everyone's mental health it is they okay so yeah empathy humility it share with your team problems that your the your face singing yourself I mean obviously they should not be the repository for all of your fears and insecurities and worries about whoa I don't know if I got a turn am I gonna have a job next week but um but at the same time II talked about the challenges you're facing too your team needs to know that you aren't a superhuman you know you you're a human too you're going through this just like they are right that's what's such a weird thing about it - you know having been through a couple of events like the earthquake or Mount st. Helens blowing up you know the people that were into that area when something like that goes down have a common story right where were you in the earthquake where are you and mount st. Helens blew up but now this is a global thing where everyone will have a story where are you in March 20 20 so the fact that we're all going through it together and there's so many stories and impacts you know the more people you talk to you know the layers of The Onion's just keep on peeling - more and more and more impact but I'm curious to get your take on kind of how you see once we do get out of this because whether it's 12 months or 18 months or 24 months to get to a vaccine you know now it seems like forever and the grand scheme of things it's going to be a relatively short period of window but but over that time you know behaviors become habits and I'm just curious to get your take as to when it's okay to go back to work whenever that is I don't see it going back the way that it was because who's gonna want to sit on highway 101 for two hours every morning once you've figured out a pretty good routine and a pretty good workflow without doing that how do you see it kind of shaken out so I couldn't agree more and this is a night like I said I've worked from home for many many years and so I do think that people this is dispelling the myth that you need to work where you live you have a lot more agency and a lot more freedom to get your job done anywhere you want to live and if that's in a city because I mean God willing sports will come back and pewter will come back music and all the reasons we love living in cities but will one day be able to do that again but if you like living near the mountains or near the ocean you can do that and get your job done so I think we're I think you're absolutely right about that we're going to see many more people making a decision about you know this is the life I want to live and I can still might do my job and yet people still like being around other people I mean I think that's why we're all going a little stir-crazy right now is because we just we missed other people we miss interacting and so I think that we will have to think about some ways to create different kinds of offices and crap we work type things but I think they could just be different offices all over and they can be in the suburbs they can be in the mountains and it could just be a place where people come together and sometimes they're in the same industry field sometimes may be the same company but I think that they don't even necessarily need to be that way I think that some people will want to work from home and I think other people will want to go someplace even if it's not what we think of as the typical American office right but I even think in and I used to think this before right as you know I ride my bikes and do all my little eToys but you know even if people didn't commute one day a week or didn't commute one day every two weeks or two days a week you know the impact on the infrastructure to me some of these second-order effects is you know looking at empty freeways and empty streets demonstrate that we actually have a lot of infrastructure it just gets overwhelmed when everybody's on it at the same time so just the whole concept of going in the same time every day of course if you're in construction or you're in trades and you got a truck full of gear that you have to take that's one thing but for so many people now that our informational workers and they're just working on a laptop whether it be home that we work or we're at the office you know even shifting a couple of days a week I think has just a huge impact on infrastructure or quality of life you know the environment in terms of pollution gas consumption and on and on and on so yeah I don't think it will go a hundred percent one way or the other but I certainly don't think it'll go 100 percent back to you know going in the office every day from 8:00 to 5:00 I I couldn't agree more and just be the idea of the quality of life I mean you know I'm I have two children 9 and 12 and they are doing their school work from home and they're they're doing all right they're hanging in my older one in particular I say that she's sort of this mix between a graduate student and a young MBA because she's got her little devices already zooming with her science teacher than play rehearsal there but but um you know why I think that the slowing down has actually been kind of good for them too because they're busy kids and they have a lot going on and actually having family dinners having board games watching family movies going for family hikes in the weekends that has been really good but in her forever I mean obviously we're also indebted and grateful to the frontline workers and and we we also see there is a lot of loss around us people losing loved ones to this horrible disease and then losing livelihood but I think and then we are seeing a few silver linings than this too so I think sometimes our quality of life it has for some people this has been quarantines getting a little old but at the same time I think that there has been some bright for a lot of for a lot of people yeah I think I think you're right in again it's a horrible human toll people getting sick and dying and in the economic toll is gargantuan especially for people with no safety net and are in industries it's just don't exist in right now like travel and leisure and and and and things that are in the business of bringing people together when you can't bring people together but just final question before I let you go is is really on higher education so it's one thing with the kids and in k-12 and you know how sophisticated are an ability to learn online but I'm I'm really more interested to get your take on higher education because you know you've already got to kind of this scale back in terms of the number of physical classes that people attend when they're and when they're an undergrad and the actual amount of time that they spend you know in an lecture I mean this is this now knocking that right off of the table and I'm just really curious to get your take on higher education with distributed learning because it's it's something that's been talked about for a long time I think there's been a lot of resistance but again this light switch moment and if it goes on for into the next school year what's what what's that going to do to the kind in higher education and the stance of of how much infrastructure they actually need to support educating these kids well I am a Wesleyan grad and the president of Wesleyan was quoted in the New York Times this weekend talking about that this very topic thing that this has really shown us the value of a residential or not necessarily for year but residential education where people are together and they are able to Bure be creative have fierce debate in the classroom that is just frankly not possible with remote learning or at least not to the same degree since the same extent and the kind of accessibility you have with professors particularly at a small liberal arts school like the one that I went through I think that Jeff a lot of a lot of colleges are not going to be able to survive this because they're just they are so different tuition dependent and a lot of kids are going to defer if they if they say you know if I can't be at college in the fall I'm gonna take a year off and go to Community College or I'm going to you know do something else take a gap year and then reassess my options once this health crisis passes and I think that for a lot of colleges that's just that's just not tenable for them and for their for their operations so I'm afraid that a lot of businesses and a lot of colleges their point of closed yeah it's just it's just crazy the the impact and just showing you know as you said we are social beings we like to be together and when you when you stop people from being together it makes you really realize how often we are together whether it's you know weddings and funerals and and bar mitzvahs and and those kind of things in church and family stuff or whether it's business things conventions concerts sporting events means so many things street fairs you know are really about bringing people together and we do like to be together so this too will pass and and and hopefully you know the Warriors in this battle thankfully are super smart you know we're hopefully using a lot of modern compute that we didn't have in the past thankfully we have things like like the Internet and zoom that you and I can talk from 3,000 miles away so I'm glad you're hopeful I'm hopeful we'll get through it and and then we can get together on a set and do some interviews together I can't wait exactly all right Rebecca well thanks for checking in be safe look forward to seeing you in person and and until then have a great I guess May we're into May Mother's Day coming up so happy Mother's Day a few days early thank you very much Jeff it was a pleasure working with you again all right we'll take care she's Rebecca I'm Jeff you are watching the cube thanks for checking in wolf see you next time [Music]