Episode 32: Office Optional

angela_howard (00:01.398)

Hello, Larry, welcome to Humanly Possible. It's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, yeah, and we were just talking earlier, but Centric is close, near and dear to my heart because I've known about you all for almost a decade now. So to be able to meet you and really hear a little bit more about the company and the evolution of Centric and the work you all have been really...

larry_english (00:07.659)

I'm excited to be here.

angela_howard (00:30.826)

I mean, it's kind of a heavy word, but revolutionizing the way that people are working around hybrid, remote working, and providing services and specialty and actually transforming and operationalizing that work. I'm just really excited for us to chat today. So I will let you introduce yourself though. You are a giant in this space. You're a thought leader when it comes to flexible and hybrid work. So I'm gonna pass it to you to just do a quick introduction.

larry_english (00:59.59)

Wow, you are too kind. So I'll try and live up to that. All right. So I'm president and co-founder of Centric Consulting. And we've been around for about 20 years, a little more than 20 years. And we've been a remote company since the beginning. We are a management and technology consulting company. And we have about 1,200 people in 14 US cities and in India. And early on, we were trying to figure out

angela_howard (01:00.804)

Hehehe

larry_english (01:28.798)

create the best consulting company that had never existed. And one of the ideas that we had was we thought our employees could have a better balanced lifestyle if we could be remote. And so we've been trying to figure this out for a long time and we think we've got a lot of it figured out, certainly not everything and happy to talk about all that. And then, so I kept having to explain to people because it would blow people's minds. When I would go to talk to an executive, they're like, wait a minute, you win culture awards and you don't have an office? I don't know, how's that even possible? So I...

angela_howard (01:50.231)

Hmm.

larry_english (01:57.158)

Like, you know, I think this might be the future of work. So let's, you know, let's just get this down on paper. And so I started to write the book and, you know, my partner was like, this is the dumbest idea you've ever had, don't do it. And, well, and so I'm getting, it was a labor of love, as you know, from starting to write a book. And the only time I could do it was like early in the morning and, you know, on weekend mornings, because you can't be interrupted, you have to have that train of thought. So anyway, I, you know, it was a year and a half maybe.

angela_howard (02:08.699)

What they didn't know was, yeah.

angela_howard (02:15.883)

Yes.

Mm.

angela_howard (02:23.832)

Yes.

larry_english (02:26.674)

and I'm getting ready to publish it, and the pandemic happens. And, you know, just completely accidental, right? And it obviously accelerated what I think would have eventually happened anyway, but then everybody wanted to talk about how in the heck do you do this? And so the last year and a half, I've been writing and speaking nonstop on, you know, remote and hybrid.

angela_howard (02:37.462)

Hmm.

angela_howard (02:49.558)

Yeah, it's just serendipitous, but I think you had something. I don't think it was by accident. I actually think it's probably, you know, based on individual experience with your team. So yeah, I don't think it's by accident. I think he had something brewing there.

larry_english (03:06.726)

Well, I appreciate, you know what's funny, because we see it today when everybody's surveying employees that have been living through remote, like, wait a minute, this is awesome. I love this. I do not want to go back to the office ever. And so you're right. We've kind of known that secret for a long time, but nobody believed us.

angela_howard (03:25.79)

Yeah, and I will even tell you that I mentioned I've been familiar with you all for about a decade because actually I interviewed with you all. And I remember sitting down with one of your leaders and them talking about how different like, you know, there wasn't a ton of traveling. It was all remote. It was a very different consulting experience. I was expecting, you know, the Big Ten, the Deloitte's of the world and all of that. They're very

I hear a lot of burnout stories, to be honest. So you all caught my eye very early on because of the work life consideration that you all had even a decade ago.

larry_english (04:02.61)

Well, thank you for that. And that was intentional. And what's interesting is I think this pandemic has caused not only to adopt remote work, but employees that have had a taste for, I can live my best life if I have a remote job and my wellbeing is better. And so I think it's forcing a lot of companies to finally adopt that. And they've kind of caught up to us, quite frankly.

angela_howard (04:26.602)

Yeah, well, before we jump in, we know about Larry, the president co-founder. We know a little bit about the work you do, but tell us what makes you human. What's your human experience?

larry_english (04:40.362)

Well, so the personal side of it, I'll start there, has been I've been married 28 years and I have four boys and we are an adventurous family. So we love to travel. My wife and I have backpacked around the world. And so we had that bug from early on. And then when we started to have kids, we just took them with us. And so they've gotten to go a lot of places, but it's kind of bad now because they're so used to adventure that if, you know, the trip that doesn't involve some sort of chance of death, they're like, this is boring. We're not going.

angela_howard (04:52.412)

Oh my gosh.

angela_howard (04:58.046)

I love it.

angela_howard (05:09.154)

Like what is this? Safe stuff.

larry_english (05:09.598)

You know, we're out. And so and then the other fun thing to talk about what makes me human is I just completed a it was an online course called 45 Days to Awakening. And it's this Harvard or Stanford Ph.D. They've done this tons of research of what the best techniques, the best practices that help people get to fundamental well-being and kind of define that as kind of always being at peace.

angela_howard (05:37.974)

Mm.

larry_english (05:38.374)

And I just completed that course. And it was, I would say it was transformational for me, but a couple of the cool things that relate to what you're asking is, one of the techniques is there is projecting love on each person because we're all connected, we're all in this together. And the other thing that you do is, everybody you're encountering, you're wishing for them to live their best life. And so, that is the human condition, what could be better than that?

angela_howard (06:00.692)

I love it.

angela_howard (06:06.35)

And it's so connected to, I think, your philosophy around business. It seeps into the legacy you're leading. And so, you know, really just want to hear from you when it comes to, first of all, trends, right? So if you look at, you know, 20 years ago when you had this idea compared to now, what are some of the main themes or trends that you're seeing around flexible work, hybrid work and what's changed over the last two decades?

larry_english (06:36.954)

Ooh, well, I would do up until kind of COVID and then I will do after that, because what I would, after that, it's evolving really fast and almost every month it's changing. But up to that, it was, we could start to see the tools and the technology were getting better and better and we could start to see clients were getting a little bit more accepting of remote work.

that, you know, there was more, okay, I can trust, I can trust them to get this done. And then quite frankly, they just have enough space and they couldn't find enough people to get stuff done. They're like, okay, we'll try it. And so we could start to see if the pandemic hadn't happened. I think, who knows, it might've never happened this great. Um, or it may have taken, I think it would have taken 10 or 20 years to get to where we are today. So it accelerated that because it forced companies that were just dragging their feet and trying to, you know,

all the concerns that they have. And then you've obviously seen it explode. And so the trends that are today, so there was what we saw during, we saw a few early adopters during the pandemic. They're like, this is great, we're all in. But most people were, you know, they're kind of fence setting. And now what we started to see though, is like we were talking about before, employees love it. And if enough companies started to offer it, companies were gonna go where they could get that. And so we thought what would happen is,

angela_howard (07:38.818)

Mm-hmm.

angela_howard (07:43.475)

Mm-hmm.

larry_english (07:58.066)

companies would be forced to adopt this now. And that's exactly what is playing out. McKinsey just did a study in nine out of 10 companies are gonna adopt a hybrid model. And the companies that we work with where the C-suite is reluctant to do it, they're losing people. We had one client, they lost one technology team the next week. As soon as they said, you're coming back in the office, they're like, no, we're not. And so they're like, hey, can you talk to us about this again? And so I...

angela_howard (08:19.172)

Like, nope.

larry_english (08:25.758)

I think it's going to be a better world. I think people live better lives. It has huge implications on real estate and cities and taxes and all kinds of things. But that is very, I think it's no longer a question if it's going to happen. I think we are past the tipping point and we're going to adopt this remote model.

angela_howard (08:41.933)

Mm.

angela_howard (08:46.558)

Yeah, I would agree with you. And, you know, that the thing that comes to mind for me, because I've been tracking this, I've worked for organizations that were hybrid way before COVID. And so I was kind of in a similar spot. I think this is not a new concept, but it's really becoming a paradigm shift for the world of work versus like only, you know, a few people who really got it were doing it. Now it's like, we all have to work towards this paradigm. So,

So my question is, when it comes to remote work, how, what's your perspective on losing culture? Because when I talk to a lot of executives, I hear that seems to be the biggest block or barrier when it comes to remote work or hybrid work. There's a sense of office culture is culture, and if we aren't there, we're losing it. So what's your perspective on that?

larry_english (09:42.962)

So that's why I wrote the book is because nobody believed me that you could have an amazing culture and not have office space. So, you know, we're proof that you can be highly distributed with a lot of people and have an amazing culture. We win lots of awards for our culture and our, you know, our internal ploy set, our turnover is very low and people love it there. But what I would

larry_english (10:12.574)

culture the way you were doing it if you were on-premise. There are different techniques that you have to use, but you can have that same great culture and that's what the book is all about is, okay, it is a how-to guide. If you want to be remote and you want to have a great culture, here are all the things that you have to do. And it is people, process, and technology. So having great technology that lets you work asynchronously and interact in the right way.

We train our leaders on how to build relationships and lead in a virtual workforce, which the tactics are different. And then it starts with people. It starts with a base level of trust and making it okay for people to live their best life and trust them that they're gonna do their best work. So you put all that stuff together and we've kind of developed all, we've overlaid all the techniques that you need to do to have a great culture.

angela_howard (11:06.678)

Does anything get lost with the lack of live interaction between people? I mean, because my biggest project right now is doing like empirical research. Like I really wanna know, is there data that tells us that something is lost with a distributed workforce?

I have an idea of what you're going to say, but I would love to hear some of the maybe research or background that has told you that culture is possible, even in a distributed workforce.

larry_english (11:42.13)

Sure. Let's see. So one place I would start is what we learned is face to face does not go away if you're a remote company. There's something to your question that can't be replicated when you are face to face. There is an energy, a connection, and it reinforces the relationships

angela_howard (12:05.973)

Mm.

larry_english (12:11.822)

virtually and it we see it when we get everybody. So in the US we get every the whole company together three times a year in person. And I would say the formula for that is 25% of it might be business related. 75% about is just connecting with each other, you know, building your network and having shared experience together. Those. So we know that you.

That is, and so you can sort of feel the energy drop a little bit in between those meetings. And so you have to do that. And then within our cities, we actually have a whole process that we use where we overlay when we get together, even though we don't have office space. And so it could be one individual team that's meeting for a happy hour. Could you be, you're meeting with your coach face to face. So you can see that we still, even though we're remote, we get together.

angela_howard (12:56.875)

Hmm.

angela_howard (13:08.802)

I see.

larry_english (13:10.51)

there's increase, because this happened, the volume of research has really started to increase. And there's really interesting stuff. For example, there was one, the other one right after culture is innovation can happen in a remote environment. And we won one of the Fast Company's top 100 employers to work for that are innovative employers to work for. So we know it can happen, but you have to do things differently. But there's some research that just came out that actually said teams that are remote.

angela_howard (13:22.355)

Mm-hmm.

larry_english (13:40.262)

actually innovate better than ones that are in person. And there's a number of takeaways from it, but one of them is in person, the extroverts tend to dominate the conversation and the introverts get kind of shut out, but it's a level playing field when you are in a more asynchronous remote environment and all ideas can be shared, even the introverts. So I think you're gonna see more and more research prove out what I know to be true because we've been living it, is

It works

angela_howard (14:10.958)

Interesting. Yeah, I love the level playing field. And I think there's also something to say about general diversity, diversity of thoughts, diversity of the way we learn, but also just diversity when it comes to women and people of color, especially. There was some research that came out, and I can't remember the source, but they were talking about the fact that when they

who's the most excited to get back to the office, it was white males. And women and people of color were saying, no, this moment in time, I feel like I belong the most because I'm able to do things on my terms and in a flexible way.

larry_english (14:56.89)

Yeah, I think it will help diversity and inclusion. One of our clients was a great, one of their data points was that there were, people said that they experienced less microaggressions online than they did when they were in the office, which is fascinating, which points to a more underlying problem, but I'm very hopeful that this will improve diversity and inclusion. And certainly people that,

angela_howard (15:12.941)

Mm-hmm.

angela_howard (15:18.81)

Mm-hmm.

larry_english (15:24.942)

have a disability, this also makes it much easier for them to participate in the workforce as well.

angela_howard (15:26.667)

Yes.

angela_howard (15:30.502)

and economically, right? So now you can, from a geography perspective, you can work in Silicon Valley and live in Ohio. So it just levels the playing field. Yeah.

larry_english (15:39.91)

Exactly. Well, Mark Andreessen, who he's the guy that started Netscape and he has the big venture fund. He said this is more profound. Remote work is more profound of an impact than the internet, because it has the potential to unlock and make economic prosperity for everybody in the world. You know, it's no longer a geography lottery, but it can take you. So I'm very hopeful of what this could do.

angela_howard (15:45.623)

Mm-hmm.

angela_howard (16:03.05)

Yes.

angela_howard (16:09.942)

So what do you think about organizations? I've been seeing kind of a wave of organizations that are kind of extending remote work indefinitely. I think Google recently announced that. There were some others that recently announced that. But there are some that I'm starting to notice are making people come back to the office. So either like a few days a week or for five days a week. What are the implications of that?

larry_english (16:38.522)

You're going to lose your best talent. Is that don't do it, please. So it's so funny. I mean, we work with a lot of really fortune, you know, 100 clients, Fortune 500 clients and one, you know, one CEOs, they're, they're offering all kinds of temptation, like awards and cash prizes. And they're like, why is nobody coming back in? And we don't understand. Like this is very, I can explain it to you. It's very easy.

angela_howard (16:47.96)

Mm-hmm.

larry_english (17:08.206)

I, if, if people are fighting it, I, we, I try to, I'm like, look, this is, this is over if you want to, if you want to not lose employees and you want to start to move to the next, um, the next wave of work, please embrace this because you, you will absolutely we've seen, we've worked with so many clients where this story plays out. I see this movie, repeat, where this CEO is like, Nope, we're doing it. We're coming back in.

They don't listen to the HR data because they're pulling their employees and it's somewhere around 5% want to come into the office five days a week. The other one that they try to do is be very prescriptive about, okay, it's these, everybody has to come in these three days. That also doesn't get to true remote work and people don't like that. And so right now where it is so easy for people to move jobs because the economy is so good.

angela_howard (17:44.579)

Hmm.

larry_english (18:06.518)

you want to be on the leading edge of being a place, an employer of choice where people want to.

angela_howard (18:11.646)

Yeah, no, that's a great perspective. And I know it's challenging for some organizations. Like for example, I'm working with an organization that has knowledge workers, but also manufacturing, production workers. So what are your thoughts about those mixed work forces that may have a group of people who have to come in physically, but also have knowledge workers who could work from home? How do you level the playing field with

the work-life balance and the wellness element of remote work.

larry_english (18:43.91)

Yeah, there's a number of areas to talk about there. So let's take, excuse me, health care as an example, where obviously a decent amount of that needs to be done. The care needs to be done in person, but the back office administrative work does not. And so what we're seeing is because hospitals want to be cost competitive, they're actually getting rid of all their corporate space. And all of those people are going to work remotely because there's good cost savings. But.

There isn't a sense of organizational animosity because of have and have nots. The care provider is like, this is what I love to do and I wanna be in person and I want to do that. And I understand that this is the best way that they're helping their organization by working remotely. And so I have not seen that. And the other interesting thing is even within the care provider, virtual work is starting and virtual care is starting to take off. So you're gonna see.

because it's more cost effective and the outcomes are way better if you can get people out of the hospital. So people love to do telehealth visits and the equipment's becoming, the technology's becoming better and better so that people can recover at home and they can be monitored. And so you're gonna see, and physicians that were very reluctant to do this love it. So I think you'll see that across all industries. Now, certainly manufacturing, it makes it harder, but what we've done in some cases with some companies

angela_howard (19:57.935)

Interesting.

larry_english (20:11.654)

with Teams is we've been able to look at the body of work and maybe redesign the work so that you can give people occasional time to work remotely for some tasks, and so that you can provide some benefit to that. So there are ways that this will get figured out and ways around.

angela_howard (20:21.079)

Hmm.

angela_howard (20:28.618)

Yeah, no, that's the other piece, which could probably be another podcast episode, but I've been talking to a lot of folks, obviously through the podcast, around the future of work, and one of my guests was talking about this idea of...

you know, knowledge working and soft skills being so crucial. I mean, we know obviously in day-to-day business life, but because we're actually probably moving away from wage work and people just aren't.

going to want to do that work at some point. Because oftentimes those are the roles where you think about the waitress or the waiter or the production worker doing monotonous work all day. Eventually those are going to phase out with AI. And there's a big technology element I think that's going to eventually take over. We're going to have to do some upskilling when it comes to this new wave of work.

larry_english (21:28.574)

I couldn't agree more. And it's you worry that it will cause a bigger gap in disparity. And so one of the things I've done, all the proceeds from the book I've donated to helping improve the digital divide, and there's a charity out of St. Louis called Launch Code. And what they do is they help bridge the digital divide. So they take people from the jobs that you were talking about and train them to be technologists and coders and then help them get an apprenticeship.

angela_howard (21:37.158)

Yes.

angela_howard (21:54.722)

us.

larry_english (21:57.73)

So I think there are ways to solve for this, but it requires cooperation of business and education and private sector nonprofit.

angela_howard (22:08.222)

Yeah, I think it's a really important step. You can talk about the skill divide and the skill gap, but we have to fill it. We've got to find a way to fill it.

Larry, I just want to close with first of all, a huge thank you to you. I mean, you bring such knowledge and like I said, I think you were ahead of the head of our time. And what if we can just close with maybe just a message to executives, business owners, folks who are making the decisions around hybrid work, remote work, what are your closing words?

I know, no pressure.

larry_english (22:51.555)

I would plead with them to please believe me, please adopt remote work because it is the way of the future. So if you think about it from not just taking my plea, but there's actually there's an ROI to this and there's a business reason why you'd want to do this. So there's actually studies that have been done and

If you are trusting your employees, they're gonna be happier and they're gonna take better care of your customers and it's gonna lead to better ROI. And what we know from all of the data is that employees much prefer working in a remote world. And so this is the new wave that how everybody's going to work and you're gonna have happier employees that stay with you so that your business does better if you can help them learn to do this.

And then the final thing that I would say is all the things that are important to a business leader's business like culture and innovation and productivity, they can be just as good and most likely better with a remote or a hybrid workforce. So please, please get on the train.

angela_howard (24:05.758)

Love it. Well, Larry, remind us the name of your book. We'll make sure to put it in the show notes.

larry_english (24:13.302)

Oh yeah, so it's office optional how to build a connected culture with virtual teams. And you can find me at LarryEnglish.net.

angela_howard (24:17.954)

Perfect.

angela_howard (24:21.366)

Wonderful. Yeah, we'll make sure to link up all your information so folks know where to find you and Larry Just thank you for sharing your insight and your knowledge today. I really appreciate it

larry_english (24:30.234)

Oh, it was so fun. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for having me.