The Information and Communication Revolution

In your opinion, what is the biggest barrier to effective communication in today’s workplace, especially in an environment where increasingly there are more distributed workforces, people working more and more from home?

Well, it’s almost a two-part question. I think the first part of it is just empathy. In other words, looking at another individual and trying to see things through their eyes, rather than getting stuck in an ego clash, where I believe I have the answer, you believe that answer. Not doing that, but rather, really trying to understand where the other person’s coming from, and then asking to be heard as well, so that all the data can be put on the table so both can see it.
And I think that could be achieved through remote work. We’re proving that at Coupa. I mean, we have people all over the world, many folks that we’ve—well over 1,000 people that we’ve hired, we haven’t met, you know, many of us haven’t met physically, and we’re working collaboratively together, we’re doing great things for our customers together. Having said that, it is wonderful when you get to meet. We just had our annual conference, we had thousands of people all together in one place, it was great. But I think a lot can be achieved on a day-to-day basis in a remote environment.

What’s the secret sauce behind that, would you say? Is it a regular cadence of meetings? Is it more meetings that are shorter, or perhaps fewer meetings that are longer so that you can have chances for breakout rooms, for example, or maybe it’s a combination of both?

I think it begins with making sure you have an authentic relationship with people—person on the inside. So, if you’re managing a team, the only reason really, I need to see you physically sitting next to me is because there may be some lack of trust, or maybe because we actually have to collaborate on something together right there in front of us. But if there’s an authentic relationship with folks where they can say, “Look, for me to develop the kind of trust in you and be able to work from another part of the world, and achieve the deliverables that we set out to achieve, I got to know that we’re having a real conversation with each other that when I asked you for this, you’re going to achieve this, or when you’re seeking this, I’m going to do my best to help you.”
That authenticity has to be established. And when that authenticity exists between people, everything else is just a challenge to overcome. Do we collaborate weekly, monthly, daily? Do we meet in zoom rooms or however it is. Those are just the tools, but the authentic relationship is the critical part of it. And I think when that isn’t established, a whole set of games get played through either physical work or virtual work, right?

Yeah.

I mean, it’s not that long ago that we had punch cards, right? Because there wasn’t any trust necessarily.

Yeah, Yeah.

So we’re living in a different world. We’re in the information revolution now.

And sometimes, you know, really the physical world, that has its own set of problems, right? I mean, there’s a lot of gossip sometimes, a lot of politicking happens around the watercooler.

That’s right, and a lot of mobility, a lot of physical movement of one’s body for no apparent reason that relates to productivity or collaboration or development of a relationship.