Episode 6: Kevin Hoffman on Remote Meetings

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Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to Surfacing. In this episode, hosts Lisa Welchman and Andy Vitale speak to Kevin Hoffman, a design industry veteran who is currently the digital services expert leading design for the Veterans Affairs administration. He is also a speaker and author of Meeting Design: For Managers, Makers and Everyone. This episode covers a wide variety of topics, including how meetings have changed since the shift to work remotely during the pandemic, what can be classified as a meeting. And the group explore different types of meetings, including the meeting where he introduced Lisa and Andy to each other.

Lisa Welchman:

Kevin Hoffman, how the heck are you?

Kevin Hoffman:

I'm good. How are you?

Lisa Welchman:

I'm all right. So Andy and I are super psyched they you're going to be on this podcast with us, not only because i have an actual list of three very important questions to ask you about meetings.

Kevin Hoffman:

Oh, sweet.

Lisa Welchman:

But also because you introduced Andy and I.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah, I did.

Lisa Welchman:

And so did you ever think that we'd make a podcast?

Kevin Hoffman:

I have introduced, no assumptions here, but I have introduced married couples before. I have introduced co-workers. I think I helped Jared Spool find a good chunk of his current staff, or at least a few people, via mutual friends, so I like to connect people. And you are two people that I'm happy that I helped connect via a, I would say a moderately okay meal in Cleveland, if I remember correctly.

Lisa Welchman:

I think that meal was fantastic.

Andy Vitale:

I do too. I think-

Lisa Welchman:

That was at the hookah bar, right?

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah. I thought that the experience of the meal and the company was better than the food. I thought the food was good, but it wasn't great. But the experience was a little surreal. It was almost like being in a pandemic if I think back to it, because we were the only ones there.

Andy Vitale:

Yeah. Yeah, and what was weird is, well, it wasn't our first choice. We just stumbled upon it.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah.

Andy Vitale:

We were in Cleveland, but not Downtown Cleveland.

Lisa Welchman:

You say that like it's a dirty word. We were in Cleveland.

Andy Vitale:

No. We were just off the beaten path, wherever we were.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah.

Andy Vitale:

It was...

Kevin Hoffman:

It's actually a really good area for restaurants in Cleveland. That side of Cleveland, which I guess is kind of across the river, I'm not sure exactly. I think it's called the east side, but I'm not a Cleveland expert. But there are, I know of at least two or three good restaurants in that area. But they're all either further down the road or closer to the city, and we were kind of in the middle area between the two.

Andy Vitale:

And it waws freezing and icy.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah.

Lisa Welchman:

And icy. I remember that, because it was slippy and I think it involved a couple of different Uber or Lyft rides. Anyhow, those were the days when you could slip slide around Cleveland looking for a restaurant. And I remember it being kind of good, but I agree. It wasn't fantastic. It wasn't fabulous. It was a good meal and the company was great, and it was great to talk and it was fun. But it wasn't a meeting and so...

Kevin Hoffman:

Sure it was. It was a meeting.

Lisa Welchman:

It was a meeting. But if it was a meeting and you evaluated it as a meeting, Kevin, how good would it have been, and what was wrong with it?

Kevin Hoffman:

That meeting? There was nothing wrong with it. I think that every assembly of humans has intention, and I think that particularly assembly of humans was really interesting to me. Something I really miss about my life in the last, I don't know, year plus, or I guess coming up on a year, right? Something I really missed during the quarantine is when I would travel, I don't love travel. I'm okay with travel. I don't feel strongly good or bad about it. But when I would travel and be in cities with people that I would only see in other cities that weren't our home cities, I often had occasion to pull meals or coffees, or whatever, together, where I happened to know everyone but everyone didn't know each other. And that particular one was really interesting to me because the two of you were speaking at the same event that I was speaking at, so we were all there for the same reason.

Kevin Hoffman:

But then a co-worker of mine who is probably having a baby as we speak, she lived in Cleveland at the time and is somewhat new to the design field and was really excited to meet you and learn from both of you and just to hang out. So it's just... I don't know, I just like making connections. I thought it was like... if your question, going back to your actual question, which I've rambled on way too long. I would say that the best thing about... what made that a good meeting is the willingness of people to put the experience of being together above their... like, we were walking through the cold and we were determined to find a restaurant that met everyone's dietary needs.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. That's right. You gave up on the first choice, because I was like, I don't think I could eat here.

Andy Vitale:

Yeah. There wasn't any-

Lisa Welchman:

And you were like, okay, we're going back in the cold. We're going back into the restaurant wilderness.

Kevin Hoffman:

But there was no negativity, and we were all in a city somewhat, like I know my co-worker lived there, but she wasn't a Cleveland resident. She was just there for year or two. I think she might've been there for three years and didn't know the areae, so anytime you're with a group of people and the gratitude that you have about being together and the positive intent of creating a positive experience makes you... I don't even really remember the cold, to be honest. If I think about that night, I don't remember feeling particularly uncomfortable walking around, maybe a little slipping around. But I don't remember feeling particularly cold. But I do remember some of that conversational topics, and I remember the colors in that restaurant. It was so Christmas-lighty and red and yeah. I just... I like that. That's a success to me.

Andy Vitale:

It's funny, because that was November 2019, I think.

Lisa Welchman:

Wow.

Andy Vitale:

And Lisa and I have been meeting now every Saturday since probably February or March 2020.

Kevin Hoffman:

Every Saturday?

Lisa Welchman:

Trying to produce something.

Kevin Hoffman:

Just meeting every Saturday to come up with a podcast or just to hang out or...? What are you guys talking about?

Andy Vitale:

So it started as, we were working on a book on designing for safety and it's evolved into lots of things-

Kevin Hoffman:

Awesome.

Andy Vitale:

... a podcast being one of them. It started with the idea of a book and a workshop and a workbook and lots of other things as we refine this idea and converged and diverged and reconverged again. And the podcast came out of that too, so we're still working out the details of what the book is or becomes or is even a book. But I think we're in better place. And Lisa's been my, aside from being in this house with my wife and dogs, seeing Lisa on Saturday is the normalcy in the world in a crazy pandemic. And it's hit everybody hard.

Andy Vitale:

There's been off days, like a day I had to go to the ER because I had a foot infection and I'm like, I can't meet-

Kevin Hoffman:

Oh no.

Andy Vitale:

... in the next hour. But all sorts of interesting things to experience remotely and have our meeting are Saturday.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah, is your foot better?

Andy Vitale:

Yeah. It was just so weird. I don't --

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. It was weird. That was weird. I was like, go to the doctor. You were like, I'm just going to look at it for a while. And I'm like, nah, text, text, text, I think you want to take that foot to a medical professional.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah. Your foot starts talking to you, maybe, and you start hallucinating and then your foot is telling you to go to the doctor.

Andy Vitale:

My temperature kept going higher and higher to the point where they almost wouldn't admit me to the ortho urgent care.

Kevin Hoffman:

Oh no.

Andy Vitale:

And I was like, no, I haven't left-

Lisa Welchman:

Because of COVID.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah.

Andy Vitale:

I was like, I haven't left my house in months. It's not COVID, I swear. Look how big my foot is. And it just turned out to be a bit of skin infection.

Kevin Hoffman:

Good. I'm glad you're okay.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. No, it's been a fun collaboration and this podcast is the first substantive thing that's come out of it. And it's fun because we have different backgrounds. Andy's got a design background, I have a governance background, and we firmly believe between those two disciplines, plus a few others, that we can solve the problem of the web, the crazy problem of the web. So hopefully, we'll actually do a session where Andy and I can talk about that and explore those ideas. But I'm going to bring us back home to meetings, because I have a fundamental question about meetings for you, Kevin Hoffman. I read your book.

Kevin Hoffman:

Thank you.

Lisa Welchman:

And it's been a few years now. It came out after mine, so I'm going to guess, I don't have it in front of me. I'm going to guess that your book is three years old?

Kevin Hoffman:

Nope. Just two, I think. No. Oh my gosh, you're right.

Lisa Welchman:

Pandemic year.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah. Yeah, you're right. The year that should not be. So yeah, and it'll be three years in, I think, March or thereabout.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah, so you may not know this but that book has actually had a tremendous impact on the way that I consult and the way that I interact with other people. And-

Kevin Hoffman:

That makes me really happy and really humble. That's a... I got a lot of respect for the work that you do.

Lisa Welchman:

Well, thanks, I appreciate it. And I don't know if this idea that I came away from, the one, it's not that I only got one thing from it, but the thing that really stuck with me, that I've passed on to other people and that I've used to drive things is this concept of don't have a meeting unless you need to make a decision.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah.

Lisa Welchman:

That was huge, so it drives the way I interact with my clients. It's just like, do I need to email them maybe, or do I really need a meeting? Do I need to pick up the phone and just talk to one person? Do we actually have to have a meeting? What is it that we're actually trying to achieve or do?? So that's really slimmed down my meetings a lot.

Kevin Hoffman:

Nice.

Lisa Welchman:

And just was a really great insight and was really powerful for me, so thanks for that. And it leads me to a still in, how about let's say in the third quarter of the pandemic, hopefully, we're in the third quarter of the pandemic, now you have to have a bunch of meetings. So what's your insight on that particular idea of you only have a meeting if you need to make a decision? I guess there's a broader question just around so many online meetings.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah.

Lisa Welchman:

But that's just me pushing a bunch of stuff at yod. And I'm sure you can talk about any and all of it.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah, just cut me off when it gets boring. It won't take long. So there's a few things in there. So I think the idea of a meeting as a tool for decision-making, I learned, I think I first was exposed to that concept from a Google Ventures video or a post, something out of Google Ventures, where in the startup space, as a mechanism for avoiding some of the Google Ventures-funded startups, as a mechanism for teaching them how to scale their organizational culture, how to prevent those kind of emergent meetings where everybody wants to have a say in a thing, just keeping it focused on decisions. So as much I would like to take credit for that idea, it's definitely not my idea.

Kevin Hoffman:

I think the way that I frame it in the book, and this comes up a lot when I do talks or workshops, or talk to people about this topic is, what about culture? So if you think about all the functions that gathering community provide and if you think about your workplace as a community, there are cultural functions that meetings serve in terms of the feeling of belonging, in terms of the feeling of being heard and being validated that are all important. And the thing that I've slightly modified my framing of meetings as decisions tools is to say that is a design principle you can choose to use and apply to meetings. So if you think about the idea of what is the job that meetings do in our organization or in our team or in our massive multi-hundred thousand person company, what are the jobs that meetings do? If you recognize that meetings serve a cultural touchstone, or they serve a cultural value, then not all meetings have to be tied to decisions.

Kevin Hoffman:

But the difference is being intentional. So I think a lot of organizations meet without even thinking about the intention of those meetings and the outcomes that they're seeking. If the outcome is cultural in nature or human emotional in nature, that's okay. You don't have to have every meeting be tied to a decision. However, I do think just putting as a way of examining your own work experience, putting the question, how many of our meetings actually result in decisions is a good exercise.

Kevin Hoffman:

So that's the first thing that comes to mind. But the other thing that comes to mind that I think I'll briefly describe is the whole question about more meetings. So you can google "quarantine and meetings" or "online meetings" and there's all kinds of tips and opinions and New York Times articles and LinkedIn posts and whatnot about how we're having more meetings. I looked at my own calendar in February-

Lisa Welchman:

Are we? Do you believe we are having more meetings-

Kevin Hoffman:

I am.

Lisa Welchman:

... or is it just because they're online it feels like we're having them, or-

Kevin Hoffman:

No.

Lisa Welchman:

... I guess you can't have the lunch thing or the whatever thing, the casual things. If you want to talk to anybody it's a Zoom meeting.

Kevin Hoffman:

I think you can have emergent meetings in a distributed culture. I think you have to be deliberate about it. Like, I have people on my team that we regularly, we very freely offer, do you want to talk about this right now? And it's a race to throw a Zoom account to one another. But you have to establish that behavior, because I think, first of all, before the quarantine, I averaged around three and a half hours of meetings a day. I looked at January, February prior to the quarantine, and now it's six and a half hours. So I definitely meet more.

Kevin Hoffman:

My role changed once in the last year. That seems to have changed the nature of my meetings. I ended up managing a rather large contracting team for a while, and they had a lot of rituals baked in. So I had to do all of their rituals plus anything felt I needed. But all of that said, I definitely meet more. And you have to be more intentional with the desire to have emergent conversation, which I think is important.

Kevin Hoffman:

I mean, the thing about emergent conversation, none of this is science, these are my opinions. I'm sure there's people who have done real research on this, but I think emergent conversation is the result of a singular person's intent. So there's a guy I work with, he used to, in the before times, always walk around with his computer and would say, can you look at this for me and tell me what you think? And sometimes it would be like, we would gather around it like a fire and warm our brains on his ideas. But he had the intent to receive other people's participation and that feels natural when you're in the same physical space. It's definitely not the first thing on your mind when you're sitting by yourself at a coffee table or on your couch, or if you have a office in your home.

Kevin Hoffman:

So I think you have to think to do that. And I think it's healthy to do it. I try to do it every day. I probably do it two to three times a week, but every... I'll just reach out to people and be like, how is your new baby doing or your dog? There's a handful of people that I just have recurring social meetings with. And the thing I always put in those invites is, can be reschedules or canceled without regrets, because I almost like the idea of having those social channels as an assumption and stripping them away than trying to create them and not being able to get people's time.

Andy Vitale:

I love that. I love being able to cancel it without regrets or reservations.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah. To me, I think that's the digital version of the two-foot rule. Yeah, I think that's what it's called. The if you're in a co-located workspace, the two-foot rule, I think, is if you're in a meeting and it's not valuable to you, you can use your two feet and walk out and that's okay. That's acceptable. And a lot of work cultures, I think, struggle with that because it feels disrespectful or it feels awkward to just... it feels like you're judging the people you're with, say, I'm leaving this. But-

Lisa Welchman:

But isn't that a reflection of the broader culture of the organization? Because I mean, if you have a good rapport with people and you understand that, then it's okay to leave. That's saying to me that says something, really, about the organization. I have a work colleague that I work with a lot, have worked with for over 10 years, and she and I worked together and we were supposed to have a meeting today. We work on 90-minute work sprints when we're working on stuff together with folks. And three hours before, sound familiar, Andy? Three hours before, I realized I'm just not ready. So I just texted her and I was like, I'm not ready. I'd be wasting your time. Let's just do this another time. And she's like, cool, great, thanks for giving me my time back. But that's resting on the strength of our relationship.

Lisa Welchman:

So I think that can happen brought in another... you can build that kind of culture, even in a very large organization. We've worked with a bunch of organizations that are large that it's like that. I think that's just being respectfuL of somebody's time. But anyhow...

Andy Vitale:

I always feel guilty about canceling, especially last minute. So I will say looking at my day, hearing six and a half hours of meetings, that's a dream for me. I've got eight, nine, maybe more, 10 hours of meetings. Hopefully not every day, but-

Kevin Hoffman:

On average?

Andy Vitale:

I'm looking, and I have about 30 minutes free from what I would consider meetings. I would love to play meeting or no meeting with you to see if it's like, yes, that's a meeting, no, that's not a meeting. Because literally, I've got... yeah, I mean, I'm in conversations, whether they're "working sessions", as I use air quotes, but they are actually working sessions or design critiques or just conversations and interactions with people throughout the day that, again, I'm a few months, three months into my role. So I'm still meeting a lot of people in the organization. I'm still trying to understand how things work. So it is a lot of getting together. We just restructured how the teams work and how they're aligned with our products, so we had two hours of each group gave us deep dives on what they were working on for the last two days. So it is a lot of meetings.

Andy Vitale:

And then in those free moments, it's those just in the moment meetings. Like, hey, do you have a second? Let's jump on a call. Let's walk through this, let's talk through this. But even if I'm not in those sessions, there are Teams chats and Slack and texts that are happening. And to me, now that we're all virtual, whether I talk to you face-to-face through Zoom, or even a text chat to me feels like a meeting. We're actually spending time and conversing and getting a result from that interaction. So I mean, to you, are those meetings?

Kevin Hoffman:

Which one?

Andy Vitale:

The-

Kevin Hoffman:

Yes. The answer is yes but which one?

Andy Vitale:

The text, the Slack chats, the text messages.

Kevin Hoffman:

I think-

Lisa Welchman:

I think that's even the broader question. Does the nature of a "meeting" change because it's all moved online? Would you define that differently now, in the after times, than you would have before when you were writing the book?

Kevin Hoffman:

It's interesting. When I was writing the book, I think I struggled with how much time and attention and data I wanted to gather about the concept of remote meetings versus in-person meetings. The way I thought about it then, and still think I think about it this way, but I haven't reinvested a lot of mental energy in this question, because of all the meetings. The way I think about it is, is it asynchronous collaboration or is real-time collaboration?

Kevin Hoffman:

If it's realtime, I would say it crosses the threshold of a meeting. And the difference between remote and in-person is a function of communications channels. So in-person communications channels, you have a physicality and the nature of body language and 3D space, and the nature of sound without digital conversion of analog sound waves, the communications channels, the character of them and our experience of them is more pure or neuro typical, I think is a better word. You could say neuro typically, you're used to have a conversation with someone where you hear their voice in realtime. And if they get really quiet or they get really loud, you can pick up on the subtleties and infer meaning based on those subtleties.

Kevin Hoffman:

Remote meetings change all of that, but it's been my experience that I've been in meetings where people have said, hey, seems like you're not comfortable with this, or, hey-

Lisa Welchman:

You mean remote meetings.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah. Remote meetings, where those kinds of things are picked up on. I think there's an adjustment. I think any time the... these are the things about remote meetings that I wish I would've written about more. I wish I would've written about the concept of multi-channels. So the thing that I have found incredibly powerful in remote meetings that you can't do in in-person meetings is if you have a parallel digital channel and you purpose it-

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah, the side chat.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah. So there's always a back channel. People often talk about back channels in meetings like, "DM me in Slack. Can you believe this BS," or whatever. And it's usually framed negatively, but sometimes it's like, oh, awesome, we won the debate of the thing, or whatever. But there's this meeting that we have. We have this meeting, some people call it a sprint of sprints. We call it a team in Teams, but right now it's probably close to 30 teams and it's an hour. And every team has to report on what happened over the past week, and everybody has really a limited amount of time. This is a meeting that was incepted before I was on this team, but I had a hand in helping evolve it.

Kevin Hoffman:

One of the design contributions that I made to the experience of this meeting was instead of asking people to not use Slack, we purposed the Slack channel, when that meeting is happening, every time there's a tangent in the meeting, we message the people that go on the tangent and we started a thread. And the threads just continue well after the meeting is over, but it really creates fantastic follow through on ideas that come out, but there's not space for in a 30-team share. I love that, and I try to do it in more of my remote meetings.

Kevin Hoffman:

So I think that's different. And I think the other thing that I wrote about in the book but I didn't write about extensively, I just wrote about the... and I don't think I would've put it in the book extensively anyway, because that's not what the book is about. But the concept of visualization as it relates to shared experience, so we're all talking about a thing, by visualizing the thing, it creates a shared locus of attention. I think there are things you can do in remote meetings that amplify that interaction and that make it more powerful in some ways than a whiteboard is.

Kevin Hoffman:

Certainly, it's like going from a typewriter to a computer, like a program like Word. A whiteboard is kind of like a typewriter in that it's real, physical and although we can erase things, there's a physical destruction to it. Whereas digital destruction is just, it's a vice. It's kind of meaningless. So I don't know, it feels faster in some ways. I don't know. I'm a avid user of Mural. I've really sometimes can't be in the meeting when that's not a component of the discussion, where we aren't creating some visualization of what we're talking about.

Andy Vitale:

Yep. I agree. We do the same thing. We actually, we use Miro, but I've used Mural in the past, virtual whiteboard. Lisa and I actually use Milanote to collaborate too, to store notes and share notes.

Andy Vitale:

But I'm thinking, usually I'm in a meeting, then there's the public side chat and then there's the back chats that are happening that are group chats and single chats, and then there's the group text and then the one-off text that come in all about the meeting. To me, those are lots of distractions that didn't happen in face-to-face meetings. Nobody's going to pull somebody to the... there might be a few whispers, but nobody's going to pull someone to the side and have a conversation during someone else talking. And then someone else pull them in... but there were those texts still, and there with as that if you were in a meeting and you were on your laptop, there was that back channel happening. So I don't know that it's very different, but for me, it adds another layer of distraction.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah. I would agree it's a distraction, but I would hypothesize, and I don't know enough about your work culture or the meetings that you have, but the way you're describing, just from what you just said, I would hypothesize that you could see a... what's the right word for this? Where one thing goes up and one thing goes down, a reverse correlation. That's not the right word. There's a word or a phrase that implies as one thing goes up, another will go down. I would hypothesize that you could run experiments in your workplace where if you increase the intentionality of the experience of the attendees, you would see a decrease in non-directed, or non-applicable, channeling.

Kevin Hoffman:

That's not to say it would go away, but if you're having a meeting, and I'm going to try to make someone... Well, no, I did this recently. So if you're having a meeting that's a retro, let's say you're having a sprint retro or a post mortem from a project, and I did this yesterday. God, it feels like it was a while ago, but it was yesterday. So I guest- facilitated a Teams meeting, a retro around a particularly... it felt like the team had some challenges on a particular body of work. They invited me as a guest facilitator because I didn't have a stake in anything. They wanted an outside facilitator, which I think is a good idea. And I did something a little different than I normally do. I would say maybe a little less than half the time when I use visualization in a meeting, I will actually visualize for everyone and let them talk, instead of making them all go to a shared digital tool, and have everybody type into that tool.

Kevin Hoffman:

So imagine right now, instead of the three of us being in a Miro or a Mural or whatever together, that I'm in one and I'm sharing my screen, and I have, essentially, a preset number of blanks and we have to fill in those blanks. That's the way I ran the meeting, and it was very thick. And I don't know what the back channel was or if there was a back channel because I was facilitating. Nobody back channeled me until afterwards, and it was primarily positive, I think, overall. But having people's attention on a thing and the ability in the visual to see the beginning and the middle and the end of the thing, I think, is really important.

Kevin Hoffman:

A lot of times with designers, I think they'll get together in a Mural, and they don't put intentionality into the use of the Mural prior to getting to the meeting. So it's like a blank whiteboard as opposed to a whiteboard that has a story on it that you have to create. And-

Lisa Welchman:

That's really interesting what you're saying, Kevin, because I'm sitting here and I'm thinking, both of you all work inside of organizations where you have all kinds of meetings. I've been a consultant for 20, 25 years or something like that, something longer than I want to know. So if I'm going to have a meeting with someone, I don't have that. I'm sitting here and sort of halfway feeling bad because I don't get any side conversation. I get side conversation when I go visit the client to do discovery and we go out to dinner. That's it. Or I'm there for four days of discovery and we eat lunch together.

Lisa Welchman:

So if I'm having a meeting with them, it's always intentional. I'm always driving to a purpose, because a lot of the stuff that you're talking about sounds really alien to me. I'm like, come on, pull it together. But I'm not actually trying to... This is going to sound colder than I mean it to, but I'm not trying to develop and maintain a relationship with them. I'm specifically trying to solve a problem for them. And yeah, I'm nice about it and if for longer projects you start to develop a rapport, maybe you have a little chitchat at the top of a meeting or at the bottom of the meeting or remember that somebody was sick, or something like that, human. Being a human being. But in between these very intentional meetings that always have an agenda and that I always come in saying, this is what we're doing today. By the end of this meeting, I want this to have happened. Even if it's just I'm confused about something and I'm talking one-on-one with someone, I'm still like, I'm talking to you for this reason.

Lisa Welchman:

So this whole idea that you come into a meeting, and I'm not talking about the design process. I know there's a lot of... I brainstorm with my work partner all the time and we have this open sky meetings, but even that has intent. So I'm just really curious, both of you, what are these unintentional weird meetings that you're having?Or am I misunderstanding?

Kevin Hoffman:

No. I don't think you're misunderstanding. I think everybody has different takes. Here's a take. If you look at the history of software design, let's just say software design. I think you can, over time, see a pendulum that swings back and forth between the desire for predictability and control and the desire for outcomes and measurement. So in the 1980s, if you were designing software in government and private sector, it was pretty locked down, and really there were companies that made, I'm assuming, millions of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars just being in the business of writing requirements, not actually-

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. Well, that was the client server world. I mean, it was all waterfall insanity but yeah.

Kevin Hoffman:

That's in service to predictability.

Lisa Welchman:

Yep.

Kevin Hoffman:

We want to know that after we pay all this money that this thing's exactly will exist as we can predict. But as we've learned over the last 15, 20 years of software development, predictability, it's great to be able to predict that the software will look and work a particular way, but if it doesn't get you the outcome you want, it doesn't really matter. So now the pendulum has swung more towards outcome and measurement. So a lot of the agile manifesto is based on real software and learning and requirements lists and documentation.

Kevin Hoffman:

And I think as that pendulum swings back and forth between different values, along the way, the pendulum will catch at different points and someone will give it a name. Like, this is lean or this is safe. One of my friends calls it SAF little E. This is SAF little E agile, which is what big organizations do. I love calling it SAF little E. It's safe and it's funny, because that's what they call it. It's like big S, big A, big F, little E.

Kevin Hoffman:

And those are models that help you take a thing that you observed in the past, having this particular effect, and put them in another place in time or in another organization and try to get that same thing. But the reality is that models don't transfer. They rarely transfer cleanly, if ever, and sometimes they don't transfer at all. And so as we're doing all of this, figuring out what we value in the process and there's all these little stops between predictability and measurement. In a big organization, you have hundreds, if not thousands, or hundreds of thousands, where I work now is 400,000 employees. All of them have things they picked up along the way in their careers that are different versions along that spectrum. And-

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah, so they're just oddly at each other. Yeah.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah. They're all trying to work in the way that makes sense to them, but nobody is in exactly the same place, because nobody's had the exact same experience or career. Not everybody had a class with Marty Cagan or not everybody read Sense and Respond or whatever. Not everybody has the same touchpoints. So everybody's bringing to the table what they think is the right thing and process. And with each process, there are rituals. That's the thing that they all have in common. Waterfall has rituals, Agile has rituals. I'm looking forward to chaos as a third option, or chaos as an org strategy or as a product strategy, and there'll be rituals associated with that.

Kevin Hoffman:

But everybody's trying to enforce those rituals, and the one thing I've learned about, I don't know, 30 years of being in the workplace, is the one thing that is always true is that whatever happens comes down to the decision of one person. So it's one executive. They can be influenced. Sometimes they can be influenced by a large group of people or a particular advisor or whatever. But ultimately, how things play out in an organization is the decision of a single individual. And you have to exist in that context. In order to do that, you have to adapt to meeting rituals that aren't your own and try to imbue them with intent.

Kevin Hoffman:

And that's really what the book is about. In a way it's like, you may do Agile one way or the other, but it doesn't really matter how you do it. What matters is how you're present in what's happening where you are. And you may be in a role where you can make the decision about how it's practiced or you may not. But-

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. I'm going to say one thing and then I'll stop talking and let Andy ask a question. But the work I do in governance is all about decision-making, and so it's interesting, I completely agree with you that it might be a different decision-maker depending on what type of decision you're making. But the decision's usually made by one person. And the work that I do is about being intentional about who that decision-maker is and being intentional about the inputs that go into that person, so that the decision that they make is informed and comes from the right place. Actually designing that mechanism in a super serious way that actually creates agility, and so that you're not just like, wow, that guy, he's such a jerk. I can't stand him. And then you've got all this resistance because someone's made a decision that nobody feels empowered by or doesn't feel right. But anyhow, that gives me a lot of food for thought.

Andy Vitale:

Yeah. Just to add to a little bit of that, I think not only did the methodologies change, because different leaders or the organization takes on a different way of doing things and then has to align a bunch of humans that were working a different way. But it's also this idea of alignment. A lot of these meetings are really just... you have to be able to get to know people and you have to have good relationships with them. And you have to build alignment.

Andy Vitale:

There are people along the way that, they think they speak on behalf of that decision-maker and they're like, I know what this person wants or I know what they don't want. But then when you talk to them, it's completely different. So all of these meetings are kind of just ways to align large groups of people on making decisions so that it can get to the point where that final person is like, yep, this is good. Because that decision-maker really trusts the people that are leading that work. They're just the final nod on some of these decisions.

Andy Vitale:

Now, there are times when they're deeper, like they're driving the strategy. It's a thought. But so many times you see someone has an idea and it's from someone high up, and the idea that they throw out might not be what they're actually intending. Like, how many times do you hear someone say, aw, you know what? We should use voice. How come we don't have the Siri app for that? But that's not really what they mean. It's up to the team to have the discussions to really, what is the value from what was just said? Should we explore the way we hand off across devices? Should we explore potential voice capabilities? It's not necessarily that that ask.

Andy Vitale:

So there's these different layers that understand different contexts. I guess context is what I'm trying to say in a very long way. Meetings help provide the context that can go bi-directionally to get decisions made.

Kevin Hoffman:

In many ways, I think they create the context. I don't think it exists without them in larger organizations or in teams of teams. You said something that made me have a random thought that I don't know if it's really obvious or really interesting or really, it might be just no duh. But you said something about alignment, and I was thinking about, like I was born in the early 70s. I'm not going to make assumptions around when you were born, but I think about growing up in the 70s and the 80s, certainly the 70s, I would say, computers were not common, certainly not personal. I don't remember the personal computer even appearing in my life, in the orbit of my life much less in my own household until probably about 1983, maybe '84.

Kevin Hoffman:

I remember game systems in the late 70s, which were computers of a sense, but they weren't used the way that personal computers are used. There's a part of me, and I've read some books about collaboration from that period, that are still very applicable. There's a part of me that wonders if the human expectation of alignment on a thing, like we are saying the same thing with a strategy or a design or an idea, that our expectations around our alignment have been changed by the ability to use a device and have an experience where you can have 100% alignment. Meaning, I can create a thing and send it to you, and it will be exactly what I created. And a computer makes that possible. Whereas prior to computers, in organizations, if I wanted to prototype a thing, I might draw it, but it would be two-dimensional when I was prototyping a three-dimensional thing. Or I might have to carve it or sculpt it out of some material, like a car, a miniature, but it's a simulation.

Kevin Hoffman:

Where software and computers, they allow us to achieve 100% alignment on, like I can send you at thing that is exactly and you can continue working on it, pick up right where I left off. Here's the thing that I think is interesting about that. I wonder if as a result of that, subconsciously, we expect that of other humans, that we expect that level of fidelity of alignment from human to human, which is fundamentally not possible because we're mushy, meaty organic things. We're not computers.

Andy Vitale:

Yeah. I think about the tangible product or the thing that brings that idea to life can allow people to see it from all angles or from an end-to-end experience perspective. And it helps people fully understand so there's less ambiguity in the output. But I think when we talk alignment, so say we're creating an app, it's a real simple thing, or even a website is even simpler, there are still multiple audiences for that. There's the designer that's like, I'm creating this experience. There's this developer that's like, I want this to have beautiful code and be perfect. There's the marketing team that has to actually come up with a marketing plan around it.

Andy Vitale:

So there's all these different robust agenda with everyone focused on the experience. Even if it's not the user experience designer, we know that overall experience is how anyone interacts with it from the moment, the brand through every touchpoint. So the alignment really happens, that tangible artifact helps everyone get their own position and share it on how their function is going to leverage that creative thing, that artifact, that prototype, that website, to help meet the overall goals.

Andy Vitale:

But I still think there's not hat 100% alignment. There's the give and take and there's, again, when it comes to people it's just those different agendas that they have with the same exact output that still don't have 100% alignment, but people are okay with that because it's outside of their... Like, I'm a designer. I'm not worried about marketing. I'm a designer, I'm not worried about governance. Or I'm the legal team, I'm not really worried about what it looks like. I don't know that we, like you said, we ever have true alignment.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah.

Lisa Welchman:

I want to push on your original assumption, Kevin, just... I don't think when you give that person that experience, even if it's an actual clickable experience, let's just stay with something easy like the website. Because we can all not argue too much about that. If you've set up a prototype, here it is. It looks the way it's going to look, you click through it, it works. I think part of where we get into trouble and how we've gotten into trouble online is that very shallow definition of what it is. There's also the logs and the data, and all of that stickiness and transactional stuff, the use of personally identifiable information, personalization, things that only happen with time and with scale. And so I think...

Lisa Welchman:

I'm just, this is sort of off the point, but I just want to stick in an oar to say, I think that's how we get into trouble. Look. It works, it's beautiful, it does what I intended it to do and we stop.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah.

Lisa Welchman:

We stop. You're not actually saying, oh, and by the way, after three years, we're going to have all this personal identifiable information of people and we're going to sell it to a pharmaceutical company. I mean, that's part of the experience too. And so I think people think they're in alignment, sometimes over a very shallow set of information. I like this experience. This is really good. I got my driver's license super fast. Or I paid my credit card bill, or I signed up for my aura ring that I have on my finger and now they know everything about my heart beat for the rest of my life.

Lisa Welchman:

So I mean, there's, and I think we get in trouble. I know this is a little-- but I got to stick that in there because I really believe we've got to get more sophisticated about what the information that we convey when we prototype, the information that we convey when we say that a product or service that we've designed is good or bad. Even if you don't address every single one of those problems, at least know that that could happen.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yes and I believe with everything you said, and I think if you combine what feels like surface alignment, that initial, oh, it feels like we're aligned, let's go for it. Yeah, we're all looking at the same thing, but we're all actually thinking about different outcomes. And if you combine that with this hypothetical, like I'm hypothesizing that in the age of the computer, we've come to expect quick high fidelity meaning.

Kevin Hoffman:

So an idea, if I could say to you, Andy, take this design system, take material design and give me this flow of step one, step two, step three. And very quickly, you can pull that together and using React or whatever technology you use, make it real. As human beings, we come to expect a very quick high fidelity alignment. And from human to human, that's very hard. It's a lot harder than it is human to software. And that's the thing that I'm curious if before there was computers, what it was like to be in the workplace. I experienced that briefly, at least for a couple of years in high school and a little bit in college too. But so much of what we do now is based on that really fast high fidelity alignment. I don't know. I'm just cycling on that question.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. I would imagine that that stuff has happened also just over time as technologies enter into the workplace. The phone. You can pick up the phone and call someone. I don't have to go have lunch with you. The ill-served fax machine, which is oddly still in service in some places, just why? We don't know. But I think that's cool.

Lisa Welchman:

There's one last thing that I just really want to ask you about, and I'm going to date this podcast by bringing up the "I am not a cat"... the "I am not a cat", was that...? I don't know whether that happened on YouTube or whatever, some poor guy, somebody in his life was using a cat filter on Zoom and so-

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah. I think it was a Texas court.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyhow, I'm bringing that up and it really makes me have a lot of compassion for folks who have to work at home in an environment, sometimes using machines that they may not use otherwise or other people are using their machines, and I'm wondering, just from your perspective, just fundamentally thinking about meetings and the human being that's in the meeting, what do you think are some really, and you probably having had that own experience yourself, and Andy. I've always worked from home, so I'm kind of like, okay, it's just more of the same.

Lisa Welchman:

But what does that do to a person, to have this combined intimacy of constant home and constant office. I have it as an individual, but that was a choice that I made. I didn't make the choice to go out and have a job, so... I mean, maybe I'm asking a vague question, but I'm just curious what your thoughts are about the experience that human beings have having meetings in their home around their personal belongings and their family and their dogs and their kids staying at home schooling and all that other kind of thing. Does that impact some thoughts that you've might have had about meetings before the pandemic?

Kevin Hoffman:

I think there's lots of things there to pull on. I think one of the things that comes to mind is I really have seen in my workplace team, my culture, a celebration of the humanity of working from home. So kids, pets, I have a weekly call with about 150-ish people who all are a part of this service organization. And for a period of time, there was a cat that had his own camera. Like there was a cat, I'm blanking on the name of the cat. I feel really guilty and anybody who knows me from this organization will probably be shouting right now, "It's so-and-so," and I can't remember the name. But maybe I just didn't connect with that cat to be honest.

Kevin Hoffman:

But it became a part of the culture, and the idea of embracing that changed as opposed to wearing the mask of, oh, no, we're still in a workplace culture so we should behave seriously. There are no cats. There are no kids. There are no making grilled cheese sandwiches in the middle of the day while you're between meetings or whatever, if you have the time to do so. But the thing about that was, and this is a really kind of a weird story to bring up. So that cat passed away and it was a day, it was the Tuesday meeting where the cat wasn't there. And in the Zoom chat somebody asked about... I'm blanking on the name of the cat. I'm so embarrassed. But somebody asked about where Charlie was. It wasn't Charlie, but I can't remember the name. And he shared in the chat that the cat had passed away and I will never forget that meeting.

Kevin Hoffman:

I have that meeting every Tuesday. I run a little part of it, and it was just something, it created a shared moment of meaning and emotion that everybody felt really bad for this person because we had all accepted this thing into our life. And I don't think that could be felt in a way that if we were all going into an office. And this is a group where we don't all even go to the same office. This group would meet once a week in person, but it would only be half of the group because not everybody could physically get to the same place and a very small minority weren't even in Washington D.C. Now everybody's there. This meeting now, they won't start the meeting until it gets to 100, and it regularly gets to 150, because we have alumni who are coming to this meeting now because it's a really positive experience.

Kevin Hoffman:

There's something really unique about that thing that happened there, that wouldn't have happened otherwise without, A, embracing the humanity that surrounds remote work. And B, us all learning that fact at the same time in the same way, or the vast majority of us. So that's one thing that comes to mind.

Kevin Hoffman:

The other thing that I think about with regards to the transition is I think that... I'm trying to think of how to put this. I think I was fully remote for a good six and a half, seven years, before I went back into the office. And then I was remote again briefly before I started another job where I went back into an office, and that's the job that-

Lisa Welchman:

Were you working for yourself or were you working for a company?

Kevin Hoffman:

For myself. Yeah, when I was independent.

Lisa Welchman:

Okay, okay, okay. Just want to be clear.

Kevin Hoffman:

Yeah. No, that's fine. So when I was independent, I preferred remote. Did a lot of flying to meet with people, but I had an office in my home and I just got used to it. And then when I went back to the office, there's something about... I don't know how to put it. There's something about that transition that when I transitioned back into remote work for me, I felt like I was at a little bit of an advantage. I felt very comfortable. I felt very... I felt like, oh yeah, I know how to do this. I know how to get ahead of my calendar. I know how to deal with technical issues and make sure that people have the documents in advance of the meeting. Some of that stuff is not specific to remote. It's just good sense.

Kevin Hoffman:

But I have seen... I think there are people that, and I think it is human, there are people that, whatever paths their life has taken, have ended up in a workplace where the workplace probably provides them with more than they realize. And losing the happy hours, losing the emergent conversations. I remember there was this joke I used to have in the office with an assistant that was all the way across the office. She had a phone. She was an executive assistant to an executive in the government organization where I worked. And she had a work phone that would always ring when the other phone would fail, because every call to that executive had to go to her if he didn't pick up, or if one of a couple different lines failed.

Kevin Hoffman:

So her phone would go off all the time. She would always leave the ringer on, because she had to answer those calls. But she was never at her desk. So she would leave her phone there... not never but she was often at meetings with the executive. So she would leave her phone there and it was this really hippie wind chime ringtone. And so every time it would go off, I would always stand up and start doing a dance and that being gone for me, I realize that touchpoint, it was silly and I think it was, there's not mean intent in it. And after a while, other people would do the dance and it was just a thing we would do. It was funny, but when you take that stuff away, I think there are people who aren't quite as, I don't want to say self-aware, but they don't, maybe, reflect on the minutia of their lives and how it creates or destroys their energies.

Kevin Hoffman:

And this experience for some people, I think, has been that, which is realizing, oh, I got so much energy from all of those things that I didn't pay attention to but had emerged as part of being in a physical space with someone. And I think people who have thrived have found ways to recreate that or to replace that with new things. And I think people who are struggling, who are fortunate enough to have work, I think it's important to say that, obviously. But if you're fortunate enough to have a team that you work with and you have a job and you're doing okay, but you're really struggling emotionally, it's important to think about, how do I create a workplace culture that gives me the energies that I need or the positivity that I need within the constraints and the channels that I have.

Kevin Hoffman:

I think it's good to think about that, because even if it wasn't a quarantine. Let's just say you go to a new office and you lose all of those little rituals or you decide to go into business for yourself, or whatever, I just think it's important to reflect on, okay, what is the experience of work that makes me both fulfilled and happy, which aren't the same thing.

Andy Vitale:

Yeah. It's funny. I went through that full gamut that you just described at the beginning of this year. I worked for a company in an office in Atlanta, a large bank that went through a merger. So I moved to Charlotte and ended up in an office with almost nobody there. Literally, people were just starting to move and take the role and then we hit legal day one and then we had a handful of people, there were probably five or six steady people I worked with in the office. And we started to have our rituals, and then we went, quarantined and work from home.

Andy Vitale:

People at first were like, they had their filters on. They didn't show their house. And then we had a talk about it's okay to have children in the background, pets in the background, your succulents behind you. Be yourself. Bring yourself to what you do. And then I left that company and I started a new role. And it's interesting because I see a lot more vulnerability when the entire company is home now. It's not like you're in an office and it's stuffy in this room, and there's an executive. Everyone's home so everyone's on par with each other. It's not like, here's the CEO. He's actually, he's just home. It's not like he's in an office and I have to go and meet him. We're just in the moment.

Andy Vitale:

So I think that's made people a little bit more comfortable, either that or time. But I don't know what it's going to be like the day that I go to see my co-workers that I haven't met in-person in Detroit or... we're remote, pretty much, the team, anyway, passed when those that are local go back to the office. But it's going to be so weird to see people with legs. I'm so used to seeing them from the neck, basically, a head and some shoulders one in a while. And every now and then there's an arm that flies around, but it's going to be so weird. I don't know. I can't wait for that to happen, but I also... it's going to take a lot of getting used to.

Andy Vitale:

Now, I'll be remote most of the time with the exception of going into the office for some workshops or gatherings. But it's been an interesting transition. I'm comfortable. I'm fortunate enough to have a room that I have dedicated to work out of. But-

Kevin Hoffman:

And a sneaker collection, man... I've been observing your sneakers.

Andy Vitale:

Yeah. Actually, it hasn't been a pandemic hobby for me. I've actually only worn a pair of flip flops and I-

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. Isn't that amazing? You wear the same clothes, the same-

Andy Vitale:

I bought a pair of Crocs.

Lisa Welchman:

... yeah. There's redundancy to it.

Andy Vitale:

I know.

Lisa Welchman:

Well, all of this... what were you going to say?

Andy Vitale:

I was going to say Crocs are making a comeback-

Lisa Welchman:

Really?

Kevin Hoffman:

So that's

Lisa Welchman:

You have Crocs? I would not have taken you for a Crocs dude.

Andy Vitale:

Oh yeah. I do.

Lisa Welchman:

I would not have taken you for a Crocs dude. So I'm shocked.

Kevin Hoffman:

I hope not.

Andy Vitale:

I have one pair. I love it. I saw them on Hype Beast. There was a GQ article and maybe Vogue in UK on how they're coming back. Post Malone's got a Crocs deal. Those sneakers resell for $1000.

Lisa Welchman:

So Kevin, would love to continue to talk to you forever about everything, because it would just be fun. Unfortunately, we're not in a hookah bar with great hummus and a variety of other food items and it's cold and there's ice on the ground where I am, so that's all familiar. But before we leave, can you tell us what you're doing now? What do you want people to know about your work? Where can they buy your book? How good of a dancer are you to this phone dance? Thing likes that.

Kevin Hoffman:

The phone dance is really kind of a... it's kind of like if you imagine, again, there's a reference, I don't know that people will get. But like the "I Dream of Jeannie" little magic thing where it's wind chimes and I'm just waving, kind of like a hula dance. It's not really a good dance.

Lisa Welchman:

It's not good, is it?

Kevin Hoffman:

But it's not a good song. It's not really a song, it's more interpretive than it would be the celebration of movement and rhythm. So putting that aside, I'm always pleased if anyone is interested in the book. You can get it at Rosenfeld Media. It's called Meeting Design: For Managers, Makers and Everyone. I mean, you can find it in all kinds of places, but if you buy it directly from Rosenfeld, they'll probably give you a little bit better of a deal or give you a discount on some other books as well.

Kevin Hoffman:

In terms of what I'm up to, the one thing I will say is I'm a part of the United States Digital Service, an Obama era agency that has persisted through the Trump Administration and, obviously, into the Biden Administration. It is an agency that is growing. If you are interested, you can go to USDS.gov to learn about the agency. We are definitely looking for people, so if you have an interest in public service, USDS, United States Digital Service, USDS.gov, or 18f18f.gov are both places to look at for if you're an American citizen and you're interested in being public service. I've done it for almost two years, and for the foreseeable future, I don't see stopping. I might do it for the rest of my career and it's been a varied career, but I think people often talk about mission-based work. This is as close as you can get to real at scale impact for human beings.

Kevin Hoffman:

I work in Veterans Affairs. We have a team of, oh gosh, probably to about 50 odd people, maybe a little more, serving the entire digital experience for 20 million veterans and all of their families and the people that support them. So it's an honor to be a part of that work. And if that's something that you would be motivated by, you the listener, I encourage you to check us out at USDS.gov.

Kevin Hoffman:

Other than that, man, I just... the thing that I am the most grateful for during this pandemic, during the quarantine, that'd I'd like to talk about, if we end up in a Zoom call at some point, is just I've just rediscovered making music and having a relationship with a musical instrument. I was a amateur touring musician through my 20s and had stopped in my 30s and recently picked it back up and started taking lessons, because I really wanted to get my ability back. And right when... I started taking lessons two months before the quarantine. And once the quarantine was a thing, every day I got a good hour or more in. I usually get a 45 minutes to an hour in on the instrument, on guitar. And I've just been able to make a lot of really good progress, and it just makes me really happy. I've wasted hundreds of dollars on guitar pedals that I don't need, but some of them are really cool. They have cool picture son them and they make cool sounds. And-

Lisa Welchman:

That's cool. I've been making a lot of music during this pandemic. I think that commute time... you think you don't have time to practice and then all of a sudden, you do and you do it. So I think a lot of that stuff that both you and Andy were talking about, it makes it, if you are lucky enough to have a job and you are not oppressed by your financial situation, you haven't lost a loved one or someone important to you, or you yourself got sick, there's a lot of conditions that coming towards this statement. In some ways it's been an opportunity for people who are fortunate to be able to express themselves and spend time doing things that they wouldn't otherwise have the time to do. Whether or not that's spend additional time with their kids to practice that instrument they love, or have that garden or not. Yeah so...

Kevin Hoffman:

My son is 14. He'll be 15 in a couple of months. And he wrote a book. He wrote a 400-page science-fiction novel. First book he ever wrote. I finished reading it about two or three weeks ago. And I just can't imagine, I really can't express the gratitude I have for, A, being able to know my son through this expression of his ideas and seeing so much of his own challenges and the things that he struggles with expressed through fiction. And just the idea that he created this really rich, complex world and these characters. But it was all very much through the lens of Black Lives Matter and the pandemic and his own experiences in school and in life, just expressed through this wonderful story. And that wouldn't have happened without this, so I'm really grateful for that and all the noises I make on guitars and...

Kevin Hoffman:

One thing is my wife, she started crocheting and after about three months, she crocheted a giant blanket of all of the virus designs.

Lisa Welchman:

Oh that's great.

Kevin Hoffman:

So she has this wall that's like a four-foot square blanket and has 16 viruses on it. They're really detailed and she, not crocheted but what is it called when you sew letters? I can't remember what it's called. But it's very beautiful.

Lisa Welchman:

Applique? Embroider?

Kevin Hoffman:

Embroidered. Yeah. She embroidered the names, but the viruses themselves are all crocheted. And if you go to her Twitter account, Angela Colter, C-O-L-T-E-R, you can see... that's her... a lot of her pictures from the last year are just making this blanket. It's just... I don't know. Just getting to know my family in those ways as they figure out how they want to express themselves and I'm figuring that out, I don't know, just I think about what my life way before. I was on the subway every day and I would listen to podcasts and I'd learn about what Mark Maron thinks about things, but I really wasn't getting to know my family better. Now I am. That's awesome.

Lisa Welchman:

Fantastic. I think that's a wrap. What do you think Andy?

Andy Vitale:

I do too.

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