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The Two Parachutes Podcast is a collaboration, well, more like a conversation, between a CEO and an FBI Agent. Shawn Baker-Garcia and Scott Olson first met when they were working at US Embassy Baghdad; Scott for the FBI and Shawn for the US State Department. Over the years they’ve worked together, given advice and assistance to each other, and now see that the synergy which comes from open, civil, and thoughtful discussion is very much needed in the modern discourse. Join them as they dive into everything interesting to humanity. The goal of 2PP is to recreate the experience most people have had when they stumble into an insightful conversation with a new acquaintance at a conference or a dinner party. The kind of conversation that makes the rest of the room stop talking and listen. The kind of conversation that gets your mind working as new thoughts tumble out. Let the 2 Parachutes Podcast drop into your world!
Hey, Sean.
Shawn:Hi, Scott. How's it going?
Scott:Pretty good. How are you?
Shawn:Oh, I'm alright. I'm hanging in there. You know? It's like, I don't know if I mentioned to you when we chatted briefly yesterday, but I had a recurrence of my back spasms last and so it's been about a week now officially and much better today, much better today actually than I have been. But a year ago, that exact same week, last week, I had been hospitalized for a week because of the severity of my back spasms.
Shawn:And then I was in a walker for a couple of weeks after that, and then I was on physical therapy for months after that. So, yeah, it was kind of a precarious
Scott:Nothing more debilitating than, a lower back.
Shawn:Yeah.
Scott:I mean, I can't honestly claim that I've had every malady in the world. I suppose nobody has, but I've had a lower back before and oh my god, when the pain never goes away and you can't walk? Yeah. Yikes.
Shawn:Yeah, it's really awful. I don't wish it on anybody because it's just such a difficult thing to reconcile that all of a sudden now it's like you're just like, you know, immobile and, you know, every little thing that we do, every other piece of our body extends to the back or connects rather, you know, is a function of the back in some way. So anyway, so spirits That's are good. You know, we're good. But it was, yeah, physically it wasn't a fun week.
Shawn:It wasn't a fun. It was not a fun week professionally, but there's lots of other fun things that did happen. I think I mentioned we got to take one of our family friends, check her into her dorm. She's starting her undergraduate experience at American University, so that's awesome. And we have one of my organization's fellows.
Shawn:He's a young, just out of high school. He just started at the Wharton School this week is his move in. So he's moving into his dorm today in Pennsylvania. And then my nephew who just graduated high school, Christian, just moved into his dorms out in Reno at the University of Nevada Reno, or Reno, I don't remember the full name. All I know is I think they're wolves or huskies or something.
Shawn:I don't know, we'll find out. I'll find out when the sports gear starts coming.
Scott:So your back is acting up and you got everybody moving, that's awesome.
Shawn:Yeah, Anna Kidd who started her senior year today, or yesterday, sorry, my days are running together.
Scott:I got you.
Shawn:Yeah, senior year of high school, so.
Scott:Wow, well, I mean that's life.
Shawn:Yeah.
Scott:I mean it's just the way things go and I think part of it is it's hard not to get wrapped around that because it's pain. Yeah, yeah. But you're so good at cycling in and out of things is what I see. I mean, you cycle in, you get overwhelmed, but then you cycle back out and you got, as I've been thinking about our conversations, I love your term baby bird. You have all your baby birds that-
Shawn:All the baby birds, yeah. But
Scott:I want to make sure that we stay on track with what we committed to last time, which is this sort of the meaning of presence, what it means to be present. And also, as I've been thinking about this, I've been thinking about sort of the cross generational piece of being present. And I got your email from a few minutes ago and I read through it and I just, for everybody's awareness, I'm in an unusual spot this morning. I'm kind of in listen mode, which is unusual for me. And we'll see how that changes when you speak.
Shawn:I think it will. I
Scott:think it will. And all of the, everything starts to move. But I'm really interested in where you are in the last week as you have been dealing with everything, but also thinking about what presence means, what it means to be present
Shawn:today. No, no, that's a great segue into the discussion. For those who were listening you know, last session, this is sort of, we touched on this right at the end of our last podcast episode, and now we're, we thought that that wasn't important enough, the concept of presence and what does it mean? I think a lot of people throw the word around a lot, and I think there's probably a general consensus on what we think we mean by that, when we're referring to interactions between human beings, right? Whether that's an individual, interaction you have with your partner, you know, romantic business otherwise, or if it's groups of people or your children or your family.
Shawn:You know, it can mean anything. But I think the reason it became a question for humans and people like us to kind of talk about has a lot to do with the fact that we are clearly shifting into a new phase of how we human. And it's that sort of one part, you know, technical device in your hand or in front of you on your desk, and then one part, the human being that's operating those devices. And the reason why this came up for me as a topic and why I was so keen to bring it to the discussion platform today is because work in an organization, a nonprofit that I both founded and lead as the senior executive officer. It is four years old as of February, and it is a five zero one(three) nonprofit.
Shawn:We've always had a spoken hub virtual workforce, meaning that there's no real headquarters other than the fact that it's registered at my home. And I work from home, of course, as a result of that. And then the rest of the staff, whether they're W-2s or 1099s, you know, consultants or teaming partners who are working for their own companies and organizations are all distributed in the world. So across The United States, across the world. And so it's been an experiment.
Shawn:This nonprofit was born during COVID. It came of age post COVID, and now it's sort of, we'll see if it's running its course or not. Other things we could talk about in later episodes is, how do you transition a five zero one(three) to a for profit single person consultancy model? And that may be a thing we do talk about at some point, but not for today. For today, was just, last week I experienced a lot of struggle, you know, it's been, you know, and I can't say just last week, I think it's the last week was sort of the culmination of months of, you know, sort of realizing that this distributed workforce, even as it has scaled down, my organization was one of the organizations that, was impacted by, president Trump's executive orders to, sort of put a pause, strategic pause on foreign assistance and in some cases, halted altogether.
Shawn:Philosophically, ideologically, you know, I'm not here to discuss if that's a good or a bad thing. I can tell you I've seen both good outcomes and less optimal outcomes from that. And but I didn't tether my organization's success to that outcome in any stretch, by any stretch of the imagination. So let's just kind of put that aside. I only give it for context.
Shawn:It's like we were kind of a big organization or medium size and now we're kind of tiny. So I thought it was going to get easier, Scott. I was like, okay, this is going to actually get easier to manage because last year, you know, we probably had like 15 to 20 people all over the world that we were actively engaging at any given moment, five big government grants that we were supporting and a handful of contracts. And then, you know, come January 27, we were reduced down to three, you know, grants, you know, one small contract and probably like four or five core people that we were dealing with. So it seems like easy, right?
Shawn:Like that should be more manageable, you know. And for a while it was, everybody kind of took a moment to reassess and recalibrate, maybe like catch their breaths. It was, you know, those first three months we kind of just, you know, went into lockdown chill mode. But as the work started ramp back up this summer, I think it has been increasingly putting pressure on the original model of engagement with the staff. And, you know, everybody is in a different location.
Shawn:It's like here in Scotland and, you know, Germany and Vietnam and, you know, Alabama. So I'm in me being in Virginia. So yeah, anyway, I started to realize it's not that we don't communicate. It's not that we don't know that others are working on things and that we're kind of cooperatively working towards shared goals on certain projects, but I think the biggest difference has been potentially different interpretations of what it means to be present, whether that's a mental state where I'm giving you my full attention because we're in a even if it's a virtual, I mean, it's always for us going to be virtual interaction for the most part, or whether that is, you know, a sort of more physical state, right, which is that, you know, I'm physically attending this meeting, but then I'm also mentally attending this meeting or this discussion. Really, you know, I think because we're also cross generational, so Terry and I, my good buddy, we're both Gen Xers, so closer to your age.
Shawn:We're in the 50 or over club. And then you've got at least one, maybe two millennials and then there's the Gen Zers. Okay, so we're dealing with like, you know, 52 to or 53 to let's say, you know, in some cases 18. Right? So that's a pretty big divide with a few generations packed in there.
Shawn:And I think what I'm noticing is that if done well, if done right, and if defined in a way that everybody understands the terms and definition to be shared, that they all agree that that's what this means. Individual presence can be a game changer. It will amplify your game, but if it's not done well or right, or everybody comes in having a different understanding or expectation of what presence means in the workplace, then that is a recipe for destruction. Like, you know, even the most well intended mission, the most well intended individual, you know, employees or staff or consultants, to me, it's serving as the foundation, particularly in a virtual, you know, sort of spoken hub workforce. And so that is a thing I've now had to turn my attention to to be like, you know, because for a long time it was not recognizing that it was that definite, that core shared definition that was missing.
Shawn:I didn't realize it until you and I had the conversation last week that that might be a thing that I've been trying to deal with the symptoms and not getting to the root cause of what was causing the symptoms, which is
Scott:what thing What's the group thing you're talking about?
Shawn:The people in my organization, none of us have the same definition. Don't think of what presence means.
Scott:Gotcha.
Shawn:And so some folks over here may think it means, you know, oh, I'm well, I'm multitasking and I'm, you know, I'm intercepting things and I'm throwing things out and that's being present. That's responsiveness. That's, you know, whereas somebody like myself is like, I want a thoughtful interaction and discussion. I want consensus on a shared goal or task sort of, you know, order. I want a formal response to an email that I send out that acknowledges received, I understand, I will do.
Shawn:You know what I mean? And so now a lot of that sounds like protocol, but fundamentally what drives what I'm craving or what I think others are craving is what what we are putting out as like, well, this is me being present in my role, in my organization as a coworker. And so I think, yeah, so I think that that like how to be present in in in a virtual setting, in a meeting when you're part of an email thread, when you're you know what I mean? In a one on one versus a group meeting, I think just defining and coming to a consensus on what does it mean to be present in your job and in your role within your job, I think we're going to have that conversation. I think it'll make people kind of pick their heads up and be like, interesting.
Shawn:I wouldn't have thought of that as the sort of, you know, reason behind our disconnect or our inefficiency or, you know, when you kind of fire past each other on the bow. Yeah. You know? Yeah. But I, you know, I turn it over to you because this can go in so many different directions.
Shawn:Mine right now just happens to be in a work context, but like there's implications from personal relationships of course.
Scott:Yeah, I agree and it's I mean part of this and as we get to unpacking we have the same issue that you and I have in doing this podcast, the 2 Parachutes Podcast. It's you know, how do we stay on track without being too narrow?
Shawn:Yeah.
Scott:Because everything pours over, we're not drawing within the lines and so we're talking about the meaning of presence, but we can't talk about presence unless we talk about organizational structure and leadership. And right at the end of what you were saying, I'm thinking about the impact on being present of communication and not just communication style, but whether to communicate or not. The portion of communication that is acknowledgement. I got your message, the importance of tempo. Some people are at this very, very quick tempo and they respond to everything very quickly and some people you don't know if they ever respond at all and then you want to be sensitive to that, right?
Scott:Because pushing somebody who never responds to respond puts them in a place where they are not able to perform the way that makes sense to them as well. But at the same time, if you're in a role where you need to be responsive and you're not a responsive person, now as a manager, as a CEO of a company, you need to be sort of aware that position play matters. Putting people where they're strong matters, but I agree with you that position play is a part of this because people communicate in different ways, but there is a baseline and it's this baseline of how do people communicate without, getting frustrated? Because again, I mean, frustration is a normal emotion, but frustration is that, I'm going to channel Star Wars now, right? It's the beginning of the path to the dark side.
Scott:Presuming that the dark side is bad and we can set that debate away for another time, but the frustration is what leads to being angry and angry can get you into that, the recrimination or being impolite or throwing insults to people, and then the communication protocol becomes apologizing and repairing that. But if we're just talking about how people communicate and how people, appear, how they appear to be present and how they don't. I think a big part of that, particularly if you're the CEO, so just by virtue of the fact that you're older, you've seen more stuff. There's an advantage in that and a disadvantage in that. The advantage is that you've seen more stuff, the disadvantage is that you're used to older tools and older tools are a dual deficit.
Scott:You have older tools, they work just fine in my day, so why would I change them? The problem is you're dealing with people that don't even know those older tools exist and you know pick your metaphor. Someone who grew up traveling by horse doesn't understand that now with paved roads, we can get from the outskirts of Virginia into Downtown DC in a fraction of the time. And why would you not do that? Oh, well, it's dangerous to go that fast.
Scott:I'm much safer on my horse. And someone from our generation would go, Well, that's ridiculous. It's just not that dangerous. You look at people that are, say in their 20s or in their 30s, they have grown up with tools that you and I think are innovative, that they think are old technology. And understanding that perspective, I think, allows us to reframe the question.
Scott:So for example, I remember, and I'm an actual baby boomer. I was born in 1962, so I'm just inside that 1964 birthday, line, and my kids grew up, they were all born in the 90s, and they grew up in the aughts between 02/2010. I remember at one point before I carried a cell phone with me every day, my kids had cell phones, and I remember them, I remember my oldest two sitting next to each other on the couch in the living room, texting to each other and not talking. And for them, it was more present and less disruptive because they could communicate without interfering with, their mom who was sitting in the room watching TV. And they weren't doing it consciously.
Scott:They weren't saying, Oh, we can communicate without disrupting mom or without moving, but it's just something that they did. And so my question is, is the stuff that some of us consider to be disruptive technology, is it actually disruptive? And is less disruptive better? And I'll push one more question to you, which is if we're talking about what's disruptive and what's not, and being present, we're really talking about how do you choose to spend your time? Not how do you want to spend your time, but how are you choosing to spend your time?
Scott:And if you're thinking about how you choose to spend your time, you're thinking about what you want to pay attention to and what you don't want to pay attention to. Having available tools that can push the stuff we're interested to us might be good. So if I set up whatever feeds there are in the electronic world, it doesn't just have to be an X thing or an Instagram thing or whatever, it can be AI now can grab the things that you're interested in and push it to you. But why would you stop and take the time to search for what you're interested in when you can set something up to push it to you so that when something interesting happens in real time, it gets sent to you. Isn't that more efficient?
Scott:Isn't that less disruptive? And how do you balance the ping of your phone and now the mini decision about do I look at that or do I not In terms of is that disruptive or is that a push system signal that I have chosen? And so I've already chosen that when my phone pings, I'm going to look at it. And so it's not disruptive. I'm expecting to see something that I'm interested in.
Scott:And then we can get caught around, well, I'm being interrupted by a lot of stuff that I don't care about. And so I need to change my system. It requires a certain level of continued presence. But is so called less disruption from electronic devices actually less disruptive?
Shawn:Well, yeah. So for me, listening to kind of everything you're saying, there's a number of things there that probably, again, I think anybody who's in a modern workforce or modern family or modern life, anybody who's human right now, who has a cognitive ability to engage, right? These are the questions that I think people are asking. They're questions a lot of us are asking, but I think what it probably sounds like it's going to have to come down to is people to decide for themselves in each of those. Whatever your enclave is, is what is appropriate for you, for whatever that sort of group of humans is trying to do.
Shawn:If you're just trying to live in a family, then your example of the kids debating on the text while mom watches a show, that's pretty cool. That's pretty self aware. That's intuitive. It's you know, and it's very in harmony with, you know, maintaining peace in the home. Think anything, but again, each family is going to be a little different.
Shawn:Some people may want that sort of environment where it's like, no, well, it depends on what the situation is. If we're all sitting around and it's family movie night, then maybe not so much of that because you want to be present. You want to be focused in watching the film and taking it in. And, you know, we've had those conversations with our daughter, and in some cases she's had those conversations with us because she really wants us to be paying attention to a show that she's watching. And we're over here responding to my sister or Greg to his mom or his sister or whatever.
Shawn:So I think the key thing and then in the workplace you know, where that translates in the workplace is, you know, are we, you know, being distracted by the notifications, right, that we're getting or the side chats that are taking place and transpiring? And are those taking you away from your attention to what is being said? Because if it's a situation where, you know, you're multitasking and you think you're like, oh, I'm just knocking things out because this is a less important part of the meeting and I can tune it out and I can just knock these emails out or, you know, I can answer side questions. It's interesting because are probably well, two things could be happening. One, either you're at a meeting that you really didn't need to be at, which is why you're able to not pay attention or maybe the meeting just didn't need to be called.
Shawn:Right. And that's another thing I think organizations, especially virtual ones, are probably all similarly struggling with is like how frequently is too frequent? Like, you know, are meetings killing productivity? Right. And then second, because I always think people start to do things in their behavior if the circumstance encourages it somehow.
Shawn:So again, if you've got people multitasking during meetings, then that tells me either the meeting was unnecessary, the wrong people are in the meeting, or somewhere down the line maybe you have a personnel issue you need to address. There's a few reasons why that could be happening. But I think right now we're confusing regardless who we are on the age spectrum. I think that one of the downsides to the virtual workforce is that we did lose some of the efficiency of working in person. It's really hard to deflect or shield yourself from an issue or from accountability when you have to go up the hall and talk to the person who's right there next to you.
Shawn:Right? So the digital sort of age has kind of created a smoke and mirrors mechanism for people to be like, oh, I didn't get that notification, or oh, I missed that note, or oh, I like, you know what I mean? I didn't remember that that was a deadline because it came over this platform and now I can't find where that directive was given or where that request was made. And I even find myself on that end of it. It's not like this is just me talking about my subordinates or my peers.
Shawn:It's like, you know, yeah, it's impossible. I'm like working across five different digital platforms and I don't remember where the hell I saw something. I was like, I think I saw a document or I think I saw a request, but now I got to go back and look for it. So you end up, it would be interesting and I'm sure studies are going to be done or if they are not already being done to actually understand how much time is being wasted because people can't find something or aren't sure what they were told to do or they don't remember. So the trick, I'll just close with this, I think we shouldn't confuse motion for progress.
Shawn:We need to balance what's new and what's necessary. Or another way to say that maybe is to balance technology against tradition, because not everything in the past was bad and not everything new is good. Then you just got to get with your people to kind of create a shared understanding of what your workforce is going to do, what tools you'll use, at what times are they appropriate, and making sure that you're really not sacrificing depth at the sort of altar of multitasking.
Scott:Yeah. Yeah, and I and a number of things there sort of in Yeah, I actually see the physical presence at work thing 180 degrees the opposite. So while I agree with your point that if you have an issue to deal with, it can be more difficult for some people to walk down the hall and talk to somebody in person, and it's a lot easier just to sort of break up by email. I get that part. However, spent a lot of my time in my work career commuting and going to a physical workplace, I was really impressed and even more impressed now at how much time is wasted by people And who I don't mean to commute, I mean at work because, well, I'm physically at work, I am in my office and at my desk and I'm in the conference room, comma, therefore I'm working and you're not producing anything.
Scott:I think if you review a day pre Zoom call and you review a day post Zoom call, I don't think that you're going to see an appreciable difference if that research gets done. I don't see there's going to be an appreciable difference between wasted time. Because when you go to an office, it's easier to waste time because you're physically present and I'm going to go get coffee and I'm going to go talk to Sarah or Bob about this or that or the other thing and you're walking down the hall and you're wasting time. But you're physically present and that part of the challenge when you're the boss and you're trying to assess people is that it's easier to say, well, this person is here on time and stays until the end of the day and therefore they're good because it's an easy metric to gather and it's a lot harder to say, what is that job and what exactly is it? What are the do outs and what are the production of results?
Scott:And I think part of that is because sometimes you work your butt off and you don't make a sale. Sometimes you pick up the phone and you make a sale that makes half your year. And yeah, you had to pick up the phone, but sometimes the stars align, and it doesn't make you better or worse. So performance is a difficult thing. I think what I take away from what you're saying is that wasting time is sort of the issue.
Scott:And again, my response is, is wasting time necessarily bad? People talk about taking a mental health day. People talk about getting away from the stress. That sort of leads me into the other sort of big thing that you made me think about, which is we have technology now which nudges the presumption. A hundred years ago, if you wanted to get a message to somebody, you wrote them a letter and you didn't expect to hear back for a couple of weeks.
Shawn:Absolutely.
Scott:If you walked out your door and went to school, even in my generation, your parents didn't expect to hear from you until the end of the day. And those times were not appreciably more dangerous than now. I mean, yeah, plenty of instances about kids never making it home and all those things, but it's not appreciably different than the way it is now. I was watching a documentary on Ulysses Grant, and one of the interesting things about how the civil war military operations were conducted and were different than military operations say in The US in the Spanish American war, which is sort of the comparable operating environment with this one difference was the advent of the telegram. Because the telegram allowed president Lincoln to send directives, it allowed Grant to give specific orders to his generals in real time, where in the Spanish American war, you just sort of said, you know, colonel, I want you to take your regimen and go do this, and then you'd find out a month later if that the regimen succeeded.
Scott:And so now, you know, when I send a text to my brother who never looks at his freaking phone, I kind of know that he's not going to look at his freaking phone, but it's annoying because I know that he carries it on a little pouch in his hip and he could look at it, he just doesn't. And I've had bosses who do this, and I had this last year, send me a text, send me an email and then call me, all within the space of about 90 to see if I got this thing. And this is a big problem, what am I gonna do about it? And I'm like, well, I'm looking at your text and I don't know what I'm gonna do about it because I just got this. And so it's the ability to speed up.
Scott:It reminds me of one of my favorite things. I'm a huge fan of this guy, Peter Drucker. I know I've mentioned him before, he's passed away, but he was one of the earliest management consultants. He wrote this book called The Effective Executive. And one of my favorite stories from that book, Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive, is he had a, executive coaching client who was the most efficient executive that Peter Drucker ever had contact with.
Scott:And he basically said, how do you make time for me? It's an hour and a half session. How do you make time for me in your really busy schedule? And the guy told him this, he said, There is no emergency. There is no bad thing that can happen that can't wait for me to pay attention to it for an hour and a half.
Scott:So my instructions to my staff are that when I'm in my session with you, Mr. Drucker, if the president of The United States calls or if my wife calls, then you put that call through. But if anything else is happening, somebody else in my organization will deal with it and I'll catch up with it when our session is done. And that takes a lot of intentional thought and courage on the part of that executive. Because what do we do with all of our technology?
Scott:Oh, you know, people are tied to their phones, but I've got an emergency and I need to get to person now and why aren't they responding to my email? Sure, And I think part of the distraction paradigm is understanding that we, the people who think we shouldn't be distracted by our devices are potentially part of the problem because when we have an emergency, we want people to jump on their phones right away. Yeah. We don't want to wait an hour and a half. And I think part of that is tempo and it's coming back to expecting that I can actually, even though I'm a part of this community, I can act like an individual.
Scott:I can handle this thing until somebody else can break away and I don't need to be in this fast tempo. But it takes us right into recrimination land. And our instinct to say, Well, gee, I was dealing with this mess and I let you know and you let me twist on the hook for 35. What were you doing that was so important that you couldn't come and cater to me? That again is a very human thing that is driven by the existence of the technology.
Scott:So fire can cook your meal or burn your house down.
Shawn:How
Scott:do we deal with this technology that lets us be quick, even though if we're on the receiving end of it, we don't want to be quick, but if we're on the giving end of it, we do want to be quick. How do we balance that? It's sort of the walk a mile in somebody else's stilettos kind of thing. And so what I'm seeing is in some ways that the problems are eternal problems.
Shawn:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Scott:Even though we wanna say, kids on those cell phones, but then why didn't you call me when you were walking home from school?
Shawn:Right. Just to go back, I wasn't advocating that virtual is not a good workforce model. I think it's inevitable. We're not getting out of it now and there's plenty of benefit from it. But what I was saying is that because it's a new and only now maturing model, we're humans and we're going to fall victim to, which I think is largely what you're saying is we're going fall victim to the same human frailties regardless of the modality of work, right?
Shawn:Before it was in the workplace and, you know, and not and again, I'm a I'm a no, all is good, is bad. I'm never that person. I'm always like that's why it's like, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, take, you know, take the tech with the tradition and find the best of those worlds and then integrate them and merge them. But what I do think, you know, which I think you've actually masterfully demonstrated, is that it is a sort of human, a chronically human condition. Anytime we're in a new sort of circumstance where we're refashioning how we live and cohabitate together or work together, there's going to be a learning curve for creating, building that to be efficient and effective.
Shawn:And it was funny you were talking about the telegram invention and the first thing that went through my mind is, know, always, you know, and I'll probably get chewed alive for this if anybody ever hears this, I always used to say that-
Scott:A lot of people are going hear this.
Shawn:I know. I always used to say that I feel like if somebody did a historical study, that the beginning of the end of global diplomacy was when the internet was invented and all of a sudden now it took seconds instead of days or weeks for cables to get back to Washington DC or to London or wherever your home government's capital of government or seat of government is. Because from this person's very unsophisticated, but I consider myself to be fairly observational, It seemed like diplomats lost agency and they lost power. It used to be you send your envoys on a ship, they go to a country, you would put them there and you would fully expect that they would be doing the bidding, of working on behalf of your government's interests. You may not have that immediacy of access, that meant you really had to, one, cultivate professionals and really be selective who you put out there.
Shawn:But also you trusted them. You trusted them to get the job done. You know what I mean? Where, I don't know, you and I were both at Embassy Baghdad. I felt like there were not so invisible leashes everywhere and it was all tethered back to Washington at any given moment.
Shawn:And so when you enter when you let technology interfere in human interactions, sometimes in that context anyway, that can be really damaging because now it's like a police state almost. It's like you're kind of like, oh, like, I'm afraid to say anything because I don't want, you know, I don't want to put myself sideways with my government or step out a message. But it also prevents you in that context from having a natural what I saw as a natural conversation with people. You know what I mean? Just want a genuine interaction.
Shawn:It's just about the balance, right? It's just about balancing the new technical modalities of humaning.
Scott:Yeah, agree and I think I absolutely see what you're seeing as well. Process it in terms of tempo. One of the things that we've, talked about and I hope becomes sort of something that people always take away from our show is be thoughtful, have opinions, and be open to being convinced. But it starts with being thoughtful. And if you're on a really fast tempo, you can't be thoughtful.
Scott:You can't be. And people think that because they can multitask, which has been demonstrated to not be possible, the human brain is not capable of holding more than one task or more than one thought at a time. It's like a computer. A computer can only process one bit of information at a time, it's just really, really fast and computers can have 15 tasks and they do something on this task, something here, something here, something here, but it's so fast it looks like it's doing things, all at the same time. I think people's brains are the same way.
Scott:People's brains that work fast, oh, I want this and I want that and I want this color. They look like they're multitasking, but they're actually just moving really fast. But if you're moving really fast, you are on instinct, unless you're going into an environment where you've already done all of the thinking. So it just appears that you're moving fast because you've accurately predicted what your choices are gonna be and you already know what you're gonna do, but you've still been thoughtful. And so this ability to communicate immediately is not only that leash, I don't feel trusted on being told what to say.
Scott:It's also that the person who's sending those messages is responding way too fast and do this and do that. And how many of those messages that we all got that said, you need to do this and you need to do that. And you looked at it and said, well, the situation on the ground has changed in the last ten minutes. And so doing that is actually the worst possible thing we can do. And you don't know that boss back in Washington because you haven't gotten this information yet.
Scott:And you're in that place where now you're calling back and saying, but, yeah, but, yeah, but. And they don't wanna hear it because somebody else is pushing them to get something done quickly. And so I kind of sound like the old guy saying, just
Shawn:slow down.
Scott:Slow down and talk about stuff.
Shawn:But you're saying go slow to go fast. Know what I I think what you really said is go slow to go fast. That's what I caught.
Scott:Yeah, and it's finding those times to be thoughtful so that when you need to go quickly and pick a military metaphor, sports metaphor. Why do you train a SWAT team to do arrests? Why do you train an American football team to run plays? And so we know what we're gonna do, but then in the moment when something doesn't go according to the plan, we can very quickly shift. And what's that?
Scott:That's experience. I've seen this play go sideways a lot of times, so I knew what to do. In sports we call that reps. But it's the same thing and it kind of pulls me to, another aspect of being present. I mean, part of us wants to say, okay, in this new world with all this modern technology, how are we present?
Scott:And as I've been thinking about this this week and listening to you now, I'm realizing that being present is always gonna change based on the environment you're in. Being present with you here is one way of being present. If we're all at a football game in somebody's house and there are 25 of us and we're watching the game, it's not gonna be like movie night where everybody's watching the movie. We're gonna watch the game and we're gonna be talking and someone's gonna be you know making sure the nachos don't burn and then you know the people watching the game are gonna cheer and this guy's gonna be mad because he just lost his bed and it's a different kind of being. I remember when I was a very new trial attorney, I was handling this case with a guy that I did not respect at all, and he was saying things that made me angry.
Scott:And so we're in a chambers conference with the judge. So it's the judge, this defense attorney, and me, and I'm pissed and I'm interrupting him. He's like, he would say something. No. That's not true.
Scott:I told him that. And finally, the judge looked at me and he said, Mr. Olson, this isn't a poker party. You don't get to interrupt people. Let him talk, then you talk, and then I'll make my decision.
Scott:And I was like, Okay, I get it. I get it. I can sit here and be annoyed, but it's not a poker party. At a poker party, it's okay to interrupt people. When you're in a chambers conference, the main thing is the judge needs to be able to make a decision.
Scott:And so having him not referee two people talking at once is important. And so I think if you're in a one on one with an employee, it's different than if you're in a meeting. It's different than if you're in a virtual meeting versus an in person meeting. But it still comes back to how does a person in all of those different environments sort of pay attention? And how do you manage it as an individual?
Scott:How do you manage it as part of a group? I think part of sorting it out is recognizing that at any different era, at any different time in the history of humanity, you have different tools and those tools impact how you make those decisions. And it's just so easy to say, well, kids these days are on their phones. It's a tool. It is a different tool.
Scott:And I think it really behooves us to recognize that it's a tool and to focus on the human part of it. I loved how you said that and I loved that how we're you know, where we're getting to is the tools matter, the environment matters, but fundamentally still it is not a problem, but it's an issue of being human. And if we go there, now we're at the root cause, maybe we have root access and we can make it better. Everything else is just chop on the surface of the water.
Shawn:Yeah. Well, think you said at one point, I think when you were first started up here in this last segment, said you asked the question, how are we present? It's always going to change based on the environment you're in. And I think that's a really, you know, if we were putting this like a segment of a clip of this, I would put that as the highlight, right? I would put that as the real because that's the question, I think, that matters.
Shawn:You know, how are we present right now? I mean, presence in the old days used to, you know, just mean that I was paying attention to you and I was listening, not listening to have something to say back, but listening to understand what you're trying to tell me. And then in thoughtful, you know, mutual conversation, then you have something you can respond with and add on to either empathize or to build off that that idea or, you know, something else. And I think that that's still true. But I think that because of all the different ways that technology has integrated itself into our day to day lives, whether at home or at work, I do think that each little enclave of humans that you engage with for work or for home, you know, personal reasons.
Shawn:I think it's up to that group to decide how are we going to be present with each other? What is it? What does it look like for us? And actually, for me, it would be having calling a team meeting and saying, Hey, guys, there's something that's been on my mind. And I think if we can reach a consensus about what this means for us, then I bet you anything, we're going to see an increased productivity, improved communication, meaning we're not going to fire past each other as frequently.
Shawn:Know, I think that because again, I think part of defining how we define present is also then defining, what tools or what protocols are we putting in place that we are then being seen as abiding by the rules of engagement. You know, it's like we all agree this is what presence means. This is the behaviors we will pursue. Then that way, you know, if it's outside of that, it's going to be a flag for you. Hopefully each of us will be more self aware about when we're going outside the rules of engagement that we agreed to for what it means for us to be present as a workforce together in our little small conclave.
Shawn:Small but distributed.
Scott:Yeah and that makes perfect sense. You're basically saying you know we need to agree, are we playing baseball, are we playing soccer, are we playing knuckle, you know what's the game we're playing? And then have the know that's the anchor and then have the behaviors fall from that. But that brought me back to something that you wrote in the email you sent to me before this session, which I love, which is your concept and this is your phrase of performative presence. I love that, because partially I think because it resonates, but partially because I see how it's a way for me to, I want to say a danger and it's not a danger, but I don't have a better word at the moment.
Scott:It's like a dangerous place because it takes me very quickly to this concept of, these kids, they just got to get their faces out of their phone. I see performative presence as a bad, but I also see that I may be blind to it and, maybe it's not as bad as I think it is, even if it's not great for me. If I am in a group, I am not going to pretend to be present when I'm not. I'm either going to be present or I'm going to say, Hey everybody, I'm just not all here right now, my apologies. But I see other generations where if you want to be a part of that group, everybody expects you to put on the performance and nobody expects you to be genuine.
Scott:They want the like and they don't care if you don't care. And that's because it's their paradigm. But the reason I'm speaking a lot is because I'm struggling with it. What I really want is to get a better understanding of what you mean by performative presence. How did that phrase come to you?
Shawn:It's funny because I use the word performative a lot lately, It's been in my vernacular. My phone, I think, is listening to me a lot. And so you know how when you start talking about, I want to go learn archery and all of a sudden Facebook is sending you reels of, oh, learn archery So here. Partially, I think my phone's listening to me because this is not what I sent you is actually a segment of a conversation I was having with chat GPT. Right.
Shawn:And it it actually coined that term. But again, performative, if you ask any of the baby birds who I just dealt with all weekend, performative came up like a 100 times because, well, because for this Gen Z particularly, that's an important concept because it confuses action or motion with substance, with doing, you know what I mean? A lot of the conversations I was having with them had to do with performative activism, which is like, don't confuse performative activism, which is getting people spun up on Facebook with actually doing something that Whatever you're being active about, like if you want change in a certain area, go go do the change, go be the change, go work for the change, you know what I mean? But but like, you know, it's like that armchair activism where you don't do anything practically speaking and you just kind of get the internet all spun up, right? You're being incendiary and volatile in many ways.
Shawn:But what I think it's saying here, which is the reason why I cut, because there were actually more segments and I cut some of them out because I didn't agree with the other ones, they just didn't make any sense to me. Was like, that's weird. The three that I sent you were the ones that resonated with me because those I did see a connection to. In this context, it means that in my context at work, what I would consider performative presence is kind of what I was talking about when they're staffing the meeting, but they're not actually paying attention to me. You know what Not I even just me, whoever's speaking.
Shawn:And that's something I think that the millennials and below, millennials and Gen Zers, they'll be on camera, mostly because they have to, they don't like being on camera. That's one thing I notice is different from them. But when they are on camera, what I find as somebody who's constantly, because I'm a natural facilitator, even not as CEO, just as somebody who goes and facilitates things all the time between people, I'm always scanning the room. So what I'll notice is if they have their screens on, you can see them like, and type, type, type, type, type, he, he, And I'm like, Oh, so you're not actually engaging in this. You're having a separate interaction and I can see it.
Shawn:Yeah. That's performative because you're just there. You're not actually engaged. You know what I mean?
Scott:Oh yeah.
Shawn:Right? And sometimes I'm wrong though, Scott. Sometimes I'm wrong, and I want to admit this because I'm not perfect and I am human. But here's the problem with that, is because of the tool, it's difficult to know, oh, are they laughing at a thing that I just said or that the last speaker just said or are they having a side conversation?
Scott:Yeah. You know
Shawn:what I mean?
Scott:Oh yeah, exactly and I'm laughing because you're just triggering a bunch of old memories. Hopefully
Shawn:good ones, I don't know.
Scott:You know, it's taking me back to this concept of, you know, this is the current iteration, the current manifestation of a human problem. I remember, back when I was, you know, this is the early nineties, I was being a trial attorney and going to training classes and saw all the new deputy prosecutors are taking these classes. And I remember an assistant US attorney coming in and saying, it's really important when you're in trial and you're at council table, always take notes even if there's nothing to take notes about, always take notes so the jury can see that you're working hard.
Shawn:Oh wow.
Scott:It's performative. Remember when I got
Shawn:to- such a great example.
Scott:Yeah, I got to FBI headquarters in 2003 and learned very quickly that when you went to one of these big meetings and you're new and you're a backbencher, always put your jacket on, never show up in shirt sleeves. Of course, you're always wearing a white shirt and a tie and a suit, but never show up without wearing your jacket and always take notes so that you're present. And it started when they issued us BlackBerrys, to date myself.
Shawn:I love BlackBerry.
Scott:Yeah, it started with, and always have your BlackBerry on the table. And then about nine months later, was never have your BlackBerry on But the it was all performative. It was all showing up and looking and behaving the part, and then you could go back and do your work. And so I love that we're seeing the way that that performative behavior set manifests itself now and we still, we get fooled, right? We think it's different because it's not the way that it used to be.
Scott:Tools are different, but people are still people. I mean, fifth graders have been snickering and knows when the teacher turns their back as long as there have been fifth graders. I remember talking with kids when my son was in the Boy Scouts and I was one of the dads. And, I remember these guys talking about how, their school said that they couldn't have phones, but everybody kept their phones. And they could always text each other because they could set the ringtone at a high enough frequency that they could hear it, but the teachers couldn't.
Scott:Wow. And that's just, when you become 35 or 40, you don't need hearing aids like I have. You lose high frequency and the average 16 year old can hear a tone that the average 35 year old teacher simply can't hear.
Shawn:Fascinating.
Scott:Yeah, yeah, and it blows my mind. And this was fifteen years ago. Fifteen years ago.
Shawn:So it's So we're really saying, we're not solving any new problems, right? The world has got the same communal cohabitation issues that we've always had.
Scott:Yeah, and that's why the thing that is for me a huge flag on the play is when people start talking about how these young kids don't know anything. And this generation uniquely sucks in a unique way. The answer is no. The reason you think that generation sucks is because they're not your generation. You are now the old guy that when you were their age, you thought the old guy sucked because he was completely out of touch.
Scott:You are now the out of touch old guy who's looking at these young kids and think they don't know anything and it is uniquely human. It has been going on for as long as there have been humans. And I think that is a lens. Certainly it's a very useful lens for me, but I think that it is a great lens to make the conversations that we're having as people more dignified. It keeps us away from ridicule and keeps us on track to, you know, how do we communicate?
Scott:And it takes us right back around as we're coming up to our hour to the things that you started this conversation with, which is, how do I run my company? How do I run my company when I got all these generations and all these different tools and I just want things the way that I want them? And how do I make this work? And I think a lot of the beginning of solving that is understanding sadly that you're not really dealing with a unique set of problems. It feels unique to you because you're approaching the problem set for the first time as a 50 year old CEO.
Scott:You had these problems solved when you were a 25 year old, you know, employee, you knew exactly what to do.
Shawn:Yeah. So. Yeah, no, it's a good point to land on. You know, I think that again, human communication is, even though in many ways it's the same as it ever was, you know, I think it's also with new sort of environmental dynamics that make us have to relearn, you know, the same lessons, which are, you know, simply that we're all just humans trying to live and work together and that there are no inherent, like you said, generational sort of truths outside of, you know, what are the new conditions that they've grown up with? And, you know, but I think as long as the older generations are doing their job and imparting wisdom, right, the goal is to impart wisdom that is sort of transcends generations because we do have that.
Shawn:It's kind of going back to what you were saying about the experience, right, because we've lived through more and we, you know, so we know things. So it's finding a way to graft that age old human wisdom that we are the keepers of that is our job to hand down to the next generations, while also acknowledging and helping them to actually live in a productive way within their reality. Because that's what they need the help with, is just what is going to get in my way? What's going to hinder my progress? What's going to prevent me from succeeding?
Shawn:So you do have to get a little bit literate on what their reality is so that, you know, you can then help them find ways to determine whether, you know, is this a new thing that needs to be adopted or is this a new thing that's getting in the way of my self realization and my ability to optimize whatever I'm doing, my productivity, my communication style, like, you know, and I think that's where we come in handy.
Scott:Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And that's a great last word for this episode. Yeah.
Scott:Hope your back feels better. Thank you. Keeps on the mend. Yeah. Can't wait till the next time we get a chance to talk.
Shawn:Absolutely looking forward to it Scott.
Scott:All right, have a great week.
Shawn:You too, thanks.
Scott:All right, bye.