18. What Has 2020 Taught Us About Our Need for Human Connection?

This week's episode is going to have a different twist to it than the previous weeks. A few days ago, an article came out where JP Morgan(one of the world's largest banks) told a portion of their staff that they must come back to the office.  This report said that through internal data collection, they saw decreased productivity on Mondays and Fridays and worries that remote work is not a substitute for organic interaction and creates missed learning opportunities for younger people. This article got me thinking about previous episodes that we have had on this podcast where Covid-19, relationships, work from home, development, engagement, and community have come up during each conversation. I thought it would be helpful to publish one episode with combined clips where this topic is addressed, and overall themes are exposed. It's fascinating to think about all the technological advances that we have today and what's ahead for our world, but how some things don't change. These are our need for community, relationships, encouragement, accountability, motivation, connection, and more. I hope you enjoy this week's episode.        00:39 Well, I think there are several factors there. The big question I have, and I think a lot of people do is, "What happens to mentoring and culture and training in a digital business environment? 00:39  And I think CEOs are wrestling with this. I had one tell me 30 days ago, he said, "I'm really concerned about my young people," his twenty-somethings. "How do they learn the company culture? How do they learn who we are? They graduate from college, and next thing you know, their whole business is done on a screen." 01:52  I think that's missing right now, and I think it'll continue to be a shortfall from a digital office world although I do think that it's a part of the future. 09:09 Yeah, I'd love to know in those companies, you just mentioned if their C-suite people are all working from home. Are their R&D people working from home? My guess is that there are probably the C-suites in that office [chuckle] because there's enough stuff going on that they've gotta talk to each other 18:35 We're in the first inning of a nine inning baseball game here. We haven't gone through... We've gone through a quarter working from home, not even a year, not a budget, we haven't set a budget or missed a budget yet. And I think some of what we are missing is the personal interaction and the coaching opportunities 19:51 Now, that said, what you said is right. I lived in a big corporate enterprise where we had quarterly meetings, and we had meetings, 'cause we've always had these meetings, and I suspect that a lot of that has gone away, as it should have. 22:08 One is that this COVID-19 has taught us that people really wanna have contact with other people, a lot of the face-to-face and interpersonal interaction. Informal interaction, is a critical piece of the experience. People may not have recognized and understood how profound that was 23:11 One of the lessons we've learned is, "We're gonna keep some advising services online after this is over." And so we I think have learned on both the ends that human contact is critical, people need to have contact with one another, but there are things we can transition online for support that really helps students that have a lot of demands or working excessive hours and need to have access simplified.     JP Morgan Article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-14/at-jpmorgan-productivity-falls-for-younger-employees-at-home?srnd=premium Matt Haaga State Farm: https://www.matthaaga.com/ www.abjets.com