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Sander Dur (host)

Scrum Master, Agile Coach, trainer, and podcast host for ‘Mastering Agility”

Sander Dur is a Professional Scrum Trainer at Scrum.org, podcast host of Mastering Agility, Professional Scrum Master and Lead Agile Consultant, and trainer at Xebia. Besides this, he’s an avid writer for predominantly Serious Scrum on Medium.com. Sander has a major passion for the human side in complex domains. Ensuring a high level of psychological safety, therefore, is a critical part of his work. Organizations in complex domains can only survive when innovating. Innovation can only take place with the right balance between low social friction and high intellectual friction. While most organizations now understand how to apply Agile frameworks, they struggle with the delivery of value. Psychological safety is the next step in this evolution and Sander has a huge drive to help organizations reach that step.
 
 He gained experience as a Scrum Master, Agile Coach, and Leadership consultant in many different top-tier organizations, including Nike and ASML.
 
  Sander is enthusiastic, open-minded, and ambitious. He finds interpersonal relationships and intrinsic motivations very important in team dynamics. Besides his work, Sander loves to spend time with his family, enjoys sports and eating healthy, barbecuing, riding his motorcycle, and traveling.
 
 Let’s connect! Sander is always up for new connections and discussions!
 
Masteringagility.org
https://xebia.com/academy/nl/trainers/sander-dur
https://sander-dur.medium.com/ 

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, organization, scrum master, jeff, scrum masters, class, teaching, talking, camera, hybrid, team, point, work, pandemic, question, change, life, coach, bit, understand

SPEAKERS

Jeff Maleski, Jeff Bubolz, Sander Dur

00:02

Welcome to the Agile wire where professional scrum trainers Jeff Bubolz and Jeff Maleski discuss agile topics. Now here are your hosts, Jeff Bubolz and Jeff Maleski.

Jeff Bubolz  00:14

And we’re recording all right, Mr. Maleski. him kicking it over to you.

Jeff Maleski  00:18

You motherfucker. We clearly designated you to kick this off.

Jeff Bubolz  00:25

You kick it off all the time. So I’m just throwing it back.

Jeff Maleski  00:27

Okay, I see what you meant there. All right. Welcome back with with Sander, Bubolz, and I. So we didn’t quite get as much time as we had wanted last time to jump down into a few additional topics. So we were thinking about was our failures as coaches. And I think Bubolz and I, you know, we’ve we’ve talked a little bit about this in the past, but I think, you know, just jumping right into it, like one of the biggest failures that I think about not just having, thinking back like, sorry, let me rephrase that. One of the failures, I think about during my time as an actual Agile coach, one is that stupid title of Agile coach, I really think it’s one of the dumbest roles that we’ve got right now. Just because I don’t think it’s well understood what that is. But more importantly, like my functionality, as a coach was not meeting people where they were at on their journey of whatever they were working on. And not understanding the diversity of the tools that that you have, like there’s a time and a place to sit back and allow a person to come to their own solution, there’s a time and a place to tell the person what the solution should be. And there’s a time and place for something, I think a little bit more in between there. And really just really not appreciating that spectrum of meeting that that the customer essentially where they’re at in that journey and what they actually need help with. What do you guys think?

Sander Dur  02:00

How did you get to the conclusion? What was the point that you figured maybe I’m not delivering the value that I envisioned myself to do.

Jeff Maleski  02:09

So this, this is probably top of mind for me recently, just because, like one of the past engagements that I was on, you know, listening to the Scrum Masters there. And one, I did not understand what the fuck they were doing. Like on a daily basis, I have no idea why that team even had SCRUM masters to begin with. sitting in meetings where from the product side, I would be talking about things with another product manager with the engineering team and a scrum master there. And the questions that were coming out of the Scrum Masters were like, how do we do that? Like, how do we how do we find out what the customer needs? And it’s like, where did what do you think the job description of a scrum master is that you would be asking that type of question instead of leading in helping coach your product owner in getting to that point? So anyway, I’m rambling a little bit here. But like, my, my cynicism comes from the perspective that I feel like and I’ve got this blog article ready to go, but like the scrum master is the most, most worthless job in America right now. Like, it is. So

Jeff Bubolz  03:23

is that just because? Is it because the misinterpreted stances that we have, like in our PSM two, right, I think that’s what the job descriptions almost all say, you know, they talk about the scribe the JIRA admin, the doing things for the team, protecting the team, making decisions for the team, when they can’t make them, you know, helping them solve problems removing any and all impediments. And that’s really becomes a crutch, right? Like the, they talk even about knowing scrum by the scrum guide or stuff like that the scrum police, right. So I think it has a lot to do it that I it’s just a glorified project manager.

Jeff Maleski  03:59

What I would argue with that ovals is, there is a time and a place for that Scrum Master. I don’t even think those are necessarily anti patterns. I think, okay, there is a time and place where this team has gotten fucked up so many times that I need to protect them at this point. All right, they have gotten the rug pulled out from under them constantly changed direction, there’s churned to the ninth degree like, okay, at a certain point enough is enough, and somebody needs to step in and deflect us to a certain degree, and help get these team members like we were talking about psychological safety last time, like there’s a time and a place to be a defensive scrum master. So I’m not even going to say that that’s a that’s an anti pattern. Where I’m going is that is just one tool in your toolbox that is required to understand the time and the place to use to what I think you are getting at was like you can’t be a one trick pony. And this is what I do all the time, every time. But I do feel like a lot of those things that you just talked about, like there is a time and place for that. If nobody else on the team knows JIRA and nobody else know was how to update tickets. Okay, well, great. Maybe that’s sprint two and three, I started talking about coaching and mentoring, but sprint one, fuck it, somebody’s got to do it. So I’ll do it. Like, I just feel like that that need to actually get shit done is absent somewhere.

Jeff Bubolz  05:15

Yeah, and I think those are the things that we want to, they may need to be done at a time, but not forever. So there’s a lot of Scrum Masters out there, that that’s all they do for years, and they spend 99% of their time at the team level, they spend zero time at the product level and zero time coaching the organization. And when that happens, I think we optimize at a very local level. And then there’s very little value because guess what, if you don’t change the system, good luck changing anything else, like you’re gonna run your head into the same exact problems over and over and over again,

Sander Dur  05:46

now many people europeas M courses that supposedly had years and years of experience and go away after those two days, like, I never knew I was supposed to do this. Organizations limit their SCRUM masters to only operate in their single mold of this is your scrum team and stick with them. Instead of a you got to work with the entire organization, maybe do some stakeholder engagement as well, if the product owner is not doing that vividly enough, work with management ensure that leadership sets the right environment, they’re just forced by the organization to work just with developers and little bit of the product owner.

Jeff Maleski  06:25

So I would take it one step even further than that sunder is it’s like this was literally on top of mine this morning, like that same scenario plays out for your product managers as well. And I in to me, like looking at the vast difference between what as a stereotypical product owner is, and a product manager. And I think Safe is a great example of this, like, if you’re a product owner, in safe, you’re more like a backlog manager, you are not strategically defining direction, you have little to no ownership of your product, quote unquote. And like whatever, if that’s helping the organization before, this isn’t a shit on safe because that’s, that’s just like punching down. But I think it’s the same thing for the scrum master in a safe environment where like, we would aspire Jeff to what you were just talking about, okay, we’ve got a scrum master who’s used to working down here at the team level working, maybe, maybe they build out a little bit horizontally. So they’re working with two or three different team members or two different delivery teams, but they’re generally not going up in the organization. They’re not, you know, growing in any of those other aspects. Same thing with the product owner, the product owner is really just a team level backlog manager versus doing anything strategic like okay, are we figuring out a value proposition canvas, figuring out the pain points of our customers figuring out market placement and strategy? Like, what is our go to market plan for this product? What’s the marketing campaign that we’re going to be doing right? Like, a product owner is very rarely going to be part of those conversations or even thinking about that in these limited environments that we’re talking about.

Sander Dur  08:06

But bringing that back to your initial point, and bringing that to your back to your initial point of meeting them where they’re at. It’s good to create that baseline. This is where just where we’re supposed to be this is where we want to go, this is where we’re currently at. But how often do you get the opportunity to set such an environment? Let’s put it like that there ask these kinds of questions like, Where do we want to go? And what do we want to achieve with this whole agile mindset? And what do we need to do first?

Jeff Bubolz  08:37

I think it’s a lot like a family. You don’t get a great family, you have to build a great family. Oh, like takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of work. And I think that’s it your job as a scrum master, you got to build a good environment for Scrum. And you have to educate a lot of people, you got to mentor people, you got to teach people like it’s hard, hard work, it’s not going to be glorified. It’s going to be behind the scenes. There’s no, not many people are going to recognize it. But a lot of people are gonna have a better life because of it. That’s and I think it’s something worth doing. I don’t know that there’s there’s not a lot of great professional Scrum Masters in some of the, I guess the organizations that hired me, they usually have a problem. And so then they’re they’re spending a lot of time at the team level. They don’t know what they don’t know. And a lot of them are hungry, and they want to do better, but they don’t know how. And that’s where I think they need help. And I think the things we’re doing from our classroom as change agents, those are the things that we can help I use this. I was working with Chad. Yeah, I actually was yesterday. And we were talking with some Scrum Masters. And we use this analogy with them. You know, like a changings, kind of like a boat rocker. And that’s like one of the stances maybe you need to have as a scrum master. And this was probably one of my failures early on in my career. I felt like I couldn’t boat rock the boat too much. And so you should feel that pit in the stomach like when you’re on a canoe and you’re standing up and you’re like wobbling and stuff like that, like you’re gonna fall, like, that’s a good feeling as a scrum master, like you should be on the edge. And sometimes it’s, you’re gonna tip, that’s okay. But I guess that’s how you move the environments forward, if you’re just always doing the same thing, you’re probably not gonna see a lot of growth inside the organization. You know, I think it’s a lot like your muscles, right? Like, if you don’t ever test them, if you don’t have to strain them, they’re not going to have the chance to repair and grow and get bigger or stronger, or be do more reps or whatever you want them to do. And so I think that organization is very similar to that. And we’re there to stress it.

Sander Dur  10:34

organizations tend to be reluctant to that pain, you know, that changing pains, they got to feel some of the pain, but they don’t want to feel too much of the pain, whereas they’re looking for the next silver bullet. The one size fits all project, we’ve implemented Scrum, and all of a sudden, we have all these issues. Now, the issues have always been there. But Jeff just made them very transparent. Now you got to deal with them.

Jeff Maleski  10:58

Right? So I guess the the pushback, though, I want to give to Bubolz what you were just saying was I had mentioned size of organizations previously, and I think in small to medium like that, that can be it. But thinking back on those coaching days, it was at best, you’re going to create a small pocket of change. And at best, you’re going to try to make life better for these people. And then oftentimes, because it cuz I remember these stories, right? Like, they see how good life is. And I’m a victim of that as well. Like, I saw, hey, I don’t want to just be a backlog manager. During my days of product ownership, I wanted to do more. And then I just got really frustrated with the job and I quit. So I don’t know if that’s necessarily making life better. By help exposing people to the way it could be, but then forcing them to work. Not I don’t know if optimally is the right word there. But

Jeff Bubolz  12:01

I mean, if you’ve, if you help somebody discover where they their career can go, and it’s not with the current organization, but it’s the best thing for them as a person to provide the most value to society. I think that’s a great thing. Like, so. I don’t know, I just hope that as we’re going through and doing different things with different organizations, even if they regress, that we made enough differences with people that were we were working with, that they found better ways of working. And when I look at people that we worked with, especially, you know, Jeff, where I said to you look what they’re doing now, I think they’re doing great things, and they’re helping other people. And I think that, you know, that’s that’s a positive indicator that we made a difference at one point in our career. So people

Sander Dur  12:41

from your perspective as a scrum master, does it add more value to you that you’ve helped change or catalyze change in an organization? Or that you’ve made a positive impact on someone’s live? or personal lives?

Jeff Bubolz  12:58

Good question. I mean, I think it starts at the individual, and you hope if you add up stack enough of those up that it helps an organization too, right. Like, it’s really you’re trying to do it all. But I think the thing that’s most satisfying is the individual. Personally, I don’t know, what would you say, Jeff?

Jeff Maleski  13:16

Yeah, I agree. I think it’s the personal aspect, like improving the workplace is secondary to improving the individual in their life.

Sander Dur  13:26

Great. Yeah. Same for me.

Jeff Maleski  13:29

So I kind of launched us in a little bit left field, but like, going back to the original topics under, you know, since I had to be put under spot, what, what, what are your thoughts on some failures that you’ve done as coaching?

Sander Dur  13:40

Oh, I’ve had so many, the, the one that I think impacted me the most and made me go into an introspection mode was that I assumed self managing capabilities within a team, where I figured you guys are all grown up, you’re, you’re super intelligent, you can do this, while they actually needed way more guidance than I was providing them. And when they push back on me, it was like, you can do this. But they were actively asking me for help. And I was sort of keeping off and put them above it. I kept them at bay, because I figured, from my perspective, you are able to do this. And they were just literally asking me for help. And I didn’t provide them the help they need it. So that was a was a was a painful lesson.

Jeff Bubolz  14:30

I think for me, one that I struggled with, especially early on was knowing what stance to use when like I kind of got thrown into it. When when I first started, it’s like here, here’s 20 teams, you need to teach them Kanban and Scrum and go and I was like, Okay, and so it just they got through some training and now they need your help to implement it. And I think I don’t know my strategy early on was I didn’t know when to be a teacher when to be a mentor when to be a coach like when it actually is you know more like a professional coach. stance, I probably leverage that one way too much. And tried to have them figure things out, I probably pissed a lot of people off, because they’re just tell me what the fuck can do you know, like, I don’t know. And I’m like, you know, I had the answer, but I wanted them to help figure it out, you know, and their journey of self discovery. So I think just like the Agile Manifesto says, you know, we discover better ways by doing it. And I had to do that. And I hope that, you know, I figured it out fast enough for I think I did. And then some teams, you know, got a lot of value out of it, some didn’t. But that’s probably because, you know, I wasn’t as good as I, you know, grew to be. So I think that’s all a part of our journeys, too, right? Like every Scrum Master is going to have teams that it doesn’t work with, you know, what worked over here isn’t going to work over there. And until you find better ways, you just, it might be very frustrating for you, you know, like you don’t quite get why, why it’s not working.

Sander Dur  15:50

It is, what about because you mentioned teaching as well as what, at what point do you take one of those teaching stances as a professional scrum trainer, what has been your biggest mistake or learning point? Let’s put it that like that.

Jeff Bubolz  16:07

Like in the classroom? Yeah. Don’t know, I don’t know if this is a mistake. I’ll tell a story. So when I first got into teaching, I didn’t want to teach, like I was, I told him, like, I’ll do this agile coaching thing. But I’m not teaching these classes. No, like, Oh, you’re teaching these classes. And I’m like, you just don’t know yet. And so that they tricked me into it. So I, they brought me along. And I taught a coke taka class, you know, it was fine module here, there. And ping pong, some stuff. And there was a few later. Also, they’re just like, Yeah, I got stuff to do. I’m gonna sit the back, I gotta check these emails and deal with this emergency that’s going on. You got this today. And I’m like, what? And I had to teach a class. And it was just the first time I’ve ever seen it. But I teach taught other classes is a new class, I just had to do it. And I’m sure it was rough. I know. It’s rough. But it will, but I learned a lot from doing it. And I asked for a little grace from the class for the situation. And I think that a stood and I think I had people come up to me, you know, years later that said, you know, like, it wasn’t a great class, at first wonder you did on your own. But now I came to your second class, holy cow, like this was amazing, like, and so I don’t know, I think that, getting back to it, like everybody’s growing, and as long as you’re hungry to grow, and you you take feedback, and you try to improve on it, I, I just, you know, give yourself some grace, that you’re not going to do it perfect. And you’re gonna have to, you have to go through it. Like the only way through something that kinda sucks is to just to do it. I think you just got to just kind of move forward through it.

Sander Dur  17:41

How did it make you feel? It was a bit of a touchy feely question. But how uncomfortable was at that point?

Jeff Bubolz  17:48

Well, at the moment, I was freaking out, like, I was panicking, or whatever else after I got done, though, like, I felt really good. Like I did that. I didn’t think I could. And I did. So I felt a whole nother, you know, new level of confidence.

Sander Dur  18:00

Cool. Thanks for the honesty. Yeah, it’s very challenging. What about you? MSK?

Jeff Maleski  18:07

we restate the question.

Jeff Bubolz  18:10

What are your failures for in the classroom? Like, what are what are your greatest failures in the classroom teaching?

Jeff Maleski  18:19

think one of the first times I did it was I have? Well, one, I cuss a lot. And so to a certain degree, I don’t care. But also, I try and test the waters a little bit with that when I’m in a class, because again, like language can really turned some people off. And I am aware of that. And it really, when I teach a class, my goal is that they first and foremost walk away with valuable learning. Like, that’s the that’s the point of the class. Secondly, I want them to have a good time when the class so like, I have a tendency to cuss a lot. We’ve already established that. And by and large, people, like find that comforting. There’s a certain level of casting that people actually do. And they’ve done research on this that finds a comforting or more relatable, like blue collar, if you will. But then there’s, there’s another aspect of I oftentimes just say crazy shit to try to get people to laugh, right? Like, there you go. Bubolz you know, you just articulate something funny and somebody chuckle a little bit. And when you have an emotional response to something, you tend to retain that information better. Like, again, they’ve done some studies on it. And so for me, like I can’t remember exactly what I said. But it wasn’t exactly appropriate. But I was saying it to like, because when I teach a class it’s it’s half teacher have comedian like I try and crack jokes so that people are entertained. They’re having a good time. But for me, it’s just learning, learning that that balance between the two It’s almost like, man, it’s a terrible fucking analogy. But if you think of Donald Trump, like, you can love or hate that guy, but you really should appreciate or like, at least acknowledge the fact that that dude is kind of funny. Like he just says really weird shit sometimes where it’s just like, yeah, yeah, he’s kind of funny. You can be a complete asshole. Like, I fucking hate that man to death. But like, I think he’s funny. And so just like being able to hold two thoughts in your head at the same time. So anyway, those are those Sunday, sorry, a really long winded way of saying, oh, one of the big things that I needed to learn was, and maybe there’s a better way of articulating is learn to read the room better. Learn to understand what people are comfortable with, and what people are not comfortable with. And adjust accordingly. I don’t think I was like, I don’t have a dreadful detail to tell about that. But I know I wasn’t good at that at the beginning of teaching. And that was something that I really had to to map master. And I think I’ve done a really good job with that. I think when I did a review of my class, it’s because it is something to the degree of like, he was really entertaining, right? And that’s what I want. I want people to be entertained. It’s not good enough that you’re learning some really great stuff. But you should be entertained the whole time. Like I want you smiling. I want you walking away with a little bit extra sunshine, you know, actually put on you. Well, yeah,

Jeff Bubolz  21:22

I was just gonna push the question back at you. What was what, what’s your greatest failure in the classroom,

Sander Dur  21:28

also reading the room, setting the dynamics now to work with setting up a class room itself. That’s the first time I’ve ever taught a class was an I’m going to swear here, I was teaching safe. I’m sorry, sorry, I’ll never do it again. I was teaching safe. But we had this. We were doing this at this hotel. And they put the whole setup in a boardroom way. And they bolted it to the floor. So there was no way for actual engagement, people were stuck in their seats, they couldn’t really get up because the walls were basically behind their backs, that was so boring. And that made my position as draining. Even worse, because I can work with the dynamics. And then I already felt bad about that. I took a picture and put it on LinkedIn. And then James James complaint came in the first comment, death room, that ah, yeah, fuck this, and never do this again. That is, it was a horrible experience in that sense. But it made me better as a trainee, because I know now what not to do. And I think that drawing that parallel to Maleski, into Donald Trump, you have improved because you have an introspection level, Donald Trump just continues down the same rabbit hole and keeps fucking shit up.

Jeff Maleski  22:44

We’re gonna go left field if we keep going down there, but

Jeff Bubolz  22:47

I’ll go with another training failure. So similar to yours, I’ll get us back on topic. It was one of my first classes to and the person who was supposed to teach it got sick. And then me and then another trainer that we’re both brand new wolf warrants from that our traders, we were like early in our careers, had to train this Liske course I got sold as a hybrid Kanban scrum class never been built before were delivered before by anybody in our practice. And, and it was kind of just, you know, just do that part, this part and flow together. And we had never seen all this stuff. So we just were like, Okay, we got to do it. And so we just got there super early that morning, got to the room. And it was a lecture hall, but a lecture hall that felt like 200, maybe 250 people, and it was all like, you know, stadium seating up and around you. And you couldn’t move anything, everything’s bolted down. And we have to be like in the front here. And we have like, these mics with the stand behind the podiums. And it’s like, it was horrible, like setup. Anyway, that was that was we made it work. But the room made it awful, we weren’t quite prepared in something was sold, that probably wasn’t the best thing. It was like, Oh, these managers need to know these things. Just give them all these learning outcomes. And, and don’t take the time to actually like go through the activities, just teach them what they need to know, like, just go through these things. And so I think like, we weren’t really set up for success, you know, in the room, and the expectations, and even the content we were trying to teach, you know, like, there’s a better way. Yeah, that’s one, two, like, so it’s like, I don’t know, make sure you believe in what you’re teaching, make sure you have the right facilities rooms. The way that you facilitate makes a difference in the delivery, like we’re talking about. So I think those are very crucial things.

Sander Dur  24:35

I hear quite some painful stories here. But I also feel that these are still impacting the way that you deliver courses of this moment. So even though they’ve been super painful, they have been incredibly useful.

Jeff Bubolz  24:48

Absolutely, you know, not to even come close to something like that now because like you hear the red flags, you know, like hell no, I’m not doing that, you know. So, so I made an impact.

Sander Dur  25:00

If I walk into a room and they see the tables in the U ship, they have nope, nope, not this again.

Jeff Maleski  25:06

It’s a Yeah, I know, Jeff, you you’ve you’ve gone back to in person. But Sunday Have you gone back to in person training? Are you still doing virtual training?

Sander Dur  25:15

No, I think the only virtual courses that I’ve delivered this year was because their US base in company course. And that was the only reason other than that only in person.

Jeff Maleski  25:26

Okay. Yeah, I’ve only done virtual now for ever since the pandemic started. So it’s like so much of the stuff I don’t even have to really even worry about. Not to say like, virtual has its own limitations and hurdles, what were we gonna say, Jeff?

Jeff Bubolz  25:41

Well, I mean, virtual does, right. Like, you know, early on in the pandemic, we definitely did tech checks to make sure people had video and things like that worked. And now we’re like, wow, that’s just, you know, status quo. Like, everybody’s gotta be able to turn their video on and have a mic that they can use, right and be able to share their screen if they need to, and use a collaborative whiteboard. Like who hasn’t done that now in the last few years. But every once in a while, you run into somebody where they’ve got a VDI issue or something happens, and then they can’t do it. And it just, they don’t have the same experience as others do. So I think that those are similar. They’re similar things, it’d be really weird to be walking into a classroom, and you couldn’t see people’s faces just think well, what that would be like in the in the, in the physical world, it’d be like everyone came in with like, a ski mask on or, or a bag over their head. Like, it’d be just odd, you know. And we’re seem to be okay with it, I guess, in the virtual world. So I guess, nudged out there to the people. I had some clients recently, actually was this week. And we’ve been working with them for a while. And I saw their faces for the first time some of the people on the teams because we got into finally turned the cameras after multiple, multiple images. And it was awesome. Like to see a smiling face and the other side of it, it’s just like, I don’t know, it makes a huge difference in the collaboration, the energy in the room, how we get things done. So it’s I don’t know, I don’t want it to mandate it. But I think you can be the change you want to see inside organization. So if anyone’s out there like thinking, Should I turn my camera on? Do it and be the ad net for a while, and hopefully other people start following you? Because it’ll change your interactions day to day? For sure.

Sander Dur  27:15

How does how does it impact your your work as a scrum master, that people have their camera turned off, because for me, I read people’s energy, I go off on people’s energy, and then I can, you know, reading the room go and coming back to Maleski. That’s not not just in courses, but just as well. In working environments. In general, even if it’s virtual, you know, if people are having a shit day, it’s really easy to hide, just by putting your camera off in person, that’s a whole lot more difficult. Or if people run off, they close the lid and they run downstairs crying, you can see that in a virtual world, you can in the physical one. But for me, my life as a scrum master has been a lot more difficult in a virtual world.

Jeff Bubolz  27:57

What do you think, Jeff?

Jeff Maleski  27:58

Man, I haven’t, you know, I was looking at you because you’re the you’re the professional scrum master, they’re not me.

Jeff Bubolz  28:07

I mean, I think it’s, it’s huge, right? Like I, I gain a lot of energy from the video and in the face. Like, I always give feedback, there’s usually one or two people in every course or workshop that I’m doing. And they give you that smiling, you know, like that feedback that that nonverbal feedback that they’re understanding what you’re saying, or not understanding what you’re saying that they like, what you’re saying the nods, the, just the expressions on their face. And I just focus on those couple people. If I have them in the room, and everyone else that they have the camera off, I just tried to forget, they’re there for a little bit, because that’s what gives me energy. If everybody has a camera, which I’ve had those experiences, it sucks, like it drains you, I can only give so much it’s like I’m putting in but not getting anything back. And if I don’t get anything back, eventually I’m going to be drained to and I know I’m not hitting the market sometimes, but I have no indicator. So it’s like, I can only do what I can do when you’re not giving when you’re not participating at the same level that I you know, that’s required really, for good experience. So I I put it a little bit on the people that don’t won’t turn their cameras on. And I mean, there’s so many options now, like blur your background, show me whatever, like, I don’t care if your kids are there. If you got pets, I’d like I love it like bro, show me who you are, like we talked about last, the last episode, like bring your whole self to work. I think it’s an amazing thing. Anytime I see a kid pop out of camera, or a pet pop out of camera the whole time mood changes. Everybody in the room is smiling and laughing and it goes from anything serious to like, hey, like we’re all people here. Right? And, and you just connect at a different level. So I don’t know, I just think it’s, it’s invaluable. There’s a reason why they put face to face communication and say the Agile Manifesto, like as a principal back in the, you know, 2001 timeframe, because they didn’t have good video conferencing if they had what they had now, they would say like video on I think and is required. I think that’s what it would be. Because we’ve proven it can’t work with video on, it’s just without it becomes very difficult.

Sander Dur  30:08

It’s an interesting point that you bring up about kids, because last time I’m gonna ask you, you mentioned that yeah, it’s you’re allergic to kids. How does this work with you? And when you are on, on a call and kids start walking, walking through the screen, do your eyes get red? Do you get rash? This is work?

Jeff Maleski  30:28

No. So I love other people’s kids. I just don’t think I would. Well, that even that doesn’t sound right. Like if I was in that situation, okay, I would love my own kids. Alright, let’s be clear. Like, I’m not that much of a devil. I just like the renting model of kids, I think it works really well. But I’ve had even, I’m a big one on standards and expectations, like, set, set your expectations upfront and hold people accountable to standards. When I’m teaching a class, we’ll go through and we’ll list things out like Vegas rules, right? What happens is Vegas stays in Vegas. So anything that happens in this classroom, we should feel comfortable sharing the good, the bad, the ugly with each other, right, and we’re not going to judge each other. But one of the other ones is real life comes first. When I first started doing the virtual classes, there was some dude who had like, I, again, like Kid days, I don’t know when they come home from the hospital generally, but it was like a week and a half old, infant Sunday that he had. And like literally half the damn time, he had this little kid in his arms. And he was you know, taking the course with and that was just his wife was working, he was taking the course. And so he was stuck on Dad duty. And like that was fine. And then like a week or two later, and I was telling this, this the story to the to the class. And another dad was there. And he had an infant that was a little bit older, but I would say like less than one year old or something like that. And I shit you not at one point during the training, he’s sitting there with this, this little kiddo doing like overhead tricep extensions, holding the kid by the legs like that. That was his thing that he would do every once in a while and it was just committed. Every time he’d start doing it. The class would chuckle a little bit. And like, cool to Jeff’s point. Like we’re all human beings. He’s not disrupting the flow of the class. That’s fine. Like doesn’t bother me at all. In fact, to echo Jeff’s sentiments, like, that’s awesome. Alright, life comes first. You got your family there with them. You don’t have to pretend like they’re not there. The flip side of that, though, and I think it’s interesting. I think it’s the World Health Organization recently put out this like, I forget the way they phrase it don’t necessarily agree with it wholeheartedly. But it was like, it is a human rights violation to make somebody turn their camera on in their home when they’re doing their remote work. So Oh, Jeff, see, he had a knee jerk reaction. But I understand that because it’s what it’s saying is you have a human right to privacy. Okay, you have a human right to not have to show off your working environment. Now I know where you’re immediately gonna go, Jeff, but like, okay, yes, you can blur your background. And this, I still don’t understand why zoom, meet whatever the the other applications are out there. Why don’t they have like live emoji versions of your face like that technologies out there? Why wouldn’t they at least do that that at least gives you one level of security between, okay, they can actually see my face, they can see my environment that I’m in maybe that’s a privacy issue for you. But at least you still get the responsiveness. You can tell when somebody’s looking at you versus somewhere away, frowning, smiling, whatever that happens to be like, we have that technology. It’s right on your iPhone. We see it all the time. Why is that not integrated into our web conferencing software? Anyway, sorry, went a little bit out there. But like, No, I’m not definitely allergic to kids. But I do agree like this is this is just part of life, like embrace that bring that in with you. It’s it’s part of, again, like we were talking about for bringing your whole self to work. Like I expect that you have significant others in your life. If I see a significant other walking around walking paths on camera, cool, as long as they’re closed that like note, no big issue, right? So I don’t know, I think people just make a bigger deal out of it than it is. But that’s just a personal opinion.

Jeff Bubolz  34:23

Yeah, I mean, about it being a human right thing, I guess let’s just play play it off. From an organization standpoint, the videos not on and people don’t collaborate, they don’t feel the connection to people. What does an organization to do? They’re just gonna mandate everybody come back. Like that’s what they’re gonna do. And so do we all want to have to go back to work and be physical and take that hour commute everywhere, you know, every single person do that? Or can we just turn our cameras on and like, at least for some of the time, this is gonna work really well for many of our communications. I mean, it’s a lot more work on everybody. It’s a it’s a stress on the environment. Think about the plane tickets to get everybody somewhere for these courses that we were doing, like we can avoid A lot of things and help provide the same type of value to people and not hurt the environment. Same time, I think it’s a win win. So I don’t know. Like, I just think we got to think big picture, we got to think about what’s best for the whole. And if you’re really not okay with it, then I guess there’s there’s in person options, but like that, that would be where I would go like, it’s turning your camera off isn’t a good option.

Jeff Maleski  35:21

So I guess my point being is I’m not disagreeing that it’s not like, ideally, I would love it if everybody did. But it’s not like we didn’t have conference calls before the pandemic, right. It’s not like we weren’t able to hold conversations with people when we couldn’t see their face. Like we have those all the time in business.

Jeff Bubolz  35:39

But we didn’t do them all day, where we couldn’t see their face. And all week, all month. And there’s a lot of people out there they, I mean, literally, there was a person I was working with, and like, I haven’t seen these people since the pandemic started, they did not turn their camera once since 2019. Like, that’s a long time, then I turned to Canberra and see somebody and he worked with him every day.

Sander Dur  36:02

How do you feel about putting this in the light of self management? If this would be a team that is completely fine. With the entire team not putting their cameras on?

Jeff Maleski  36:14

I guess that’s that’s kind of where I’m going with this. Like, if it’s not impacting your ability to get shit done, like, okay, cool, do it. Don’t turn your camera on. I mean, just because I would prefer that you do it doesn’t mean I’m right. Or I shouldn’t be able to

Jeff Bubolz  36:30

maintain it for that person or the team who we optimizing for either. It depends, I think, I think we know what happens here in the Midwest, we don’t like conflict. So we’ll just ignore it even though it’s more painful. And so I think that’s just and then what happens is a company gets frustrated, they keep hearing about it from backchannels. And then it becomes a policy and then everybody loses that. Well, I

Jeff Maleski  36:52

just think that look back back to Sanders point. Like if the team has decided this is genuinely like they all get together. They say, You know what? Cameras? We don’t need them. Like we don’t really we don’t whiteboard that much. We don’t see each other that much. We’re really just talking through what piece is being worked on by what person? Like somewhat?

Sander Dur  37:14

Yeah, exactly. Because when just when the epidemic hit, I was working for this super high tech organization, Star Wars technology. And those people were the biggest glob of introverted people that I’ve ever seen. No, they were like, everyone needs to work from fucking sweet. I won’t have to see anyone ever again. Nice, then who am I to judge them for that?

Jeff Bubolz  37:36

Yeah, I just think that, maybe that’s okay. I would fit that culture, I guess. You know, like, I’d say many people. Yeah,

Sander Dur  37:44

same. But yeah, if I’m the only one in the team who wants other people to put their camera on? I mean, the whole recording of this podcast would be way less fun than engaging. If you guys had your cameras off. And I’m the only one here with my stupid face on on screen.

Jeff Maleski  38:00

Yeah, so let me let me clarify. I am not necessarily disagreeing with you, Jeff. I am disagreeing with the need to mandate it. Yeah, I don’t think you should impose your perspective on somebody else in the form that takes away their right. So it’s taking away their right to turn the camera off. That’s the piece that I’m not that I that I would be opposed to. So

Jeff Bubolz  38:25

sure, I can I can get behind that. I don’t like anybody taking away that self management. Even when it might be a little painful for a while for some of the people, you know, but because then what else do you take? It’s a slippery slope. So I get I get we’re going there.

Jeff Maleski  38:41

Right? And then because I think another extreme to this is what we’ve been talking about, but like, okay, so should I not be upset if the company installs monitoring software on my computer to make sure that I’m not idle for more than five minutes at a time or something to that degree, right? Like, where all of a sudden, does that line become tolerable and not tolerable?

Jeff Bubolz  39:04

Right, I get it. Yep. It’s, you know, one of those. Those lines, we got to balance right. And I think it’s okay. I think if you’re right, like we should mandate it, I think as we should be, have the courage to talk about it as team members and the effects that it has. is, you know, inside organizations, I just think that maybe it’s not talked about enough. But if you find value in it, maybe bring it up. Like, that’d be a nudge. I think it will change your collaboration if you have video on

Sander Dur  39:38

Yeah, that was my follow up point on this was I was talking about this with the ESA housing today on the pspo class that we were teaching. How many organizations have you experienced that have actively discussed or Scrum Masters in this pandemic’s In this situation? Throughout the entire thing on how to collaborate how to implement improve collaboration, post pandemic as well, not just you know, in the beginning, it was his hype and people needed to work with it because you’re continuously confronted with it. But going down the line, how did you experience this? You know, I

Jeff Bubolz  40:16

don’t know that there’s too many that just like bringing that up as a total, like, this is the topic it comes up maybe secondarily and other things they’re trying to solve. But you know, it’s probably a good just retro question. They’re like, Hey, we’re still doing virtual, how do we improve our virtual collaboration? Or, hey, we might be going to hybrid soon? What would we do there? That’d be different. You know? Those are those are great questions to ask and, and work through as a team and probably don’t do it frequently enough, you know? Are you know, so,

Jeff Maleski  40:49

Sunday? Are you are you asking? Because you’re still seeing that we’re like, teams are still struggling with collaboration tools? Or was that brought up in your pspo? Course?

Sander Dur  40:58

No, it was just a discussion that I was having with, with the ESA. I’m in the luxury position or so the luxury depending on how you look at it, we fly to different locations on the assignment that we’re working on. We’re working now for Sky media, a big Broadcasting Company, over here, and we go to London, to Munich, to Milan, back and forth. So we were not really struggling with those challenges, because we meet people as well as that we have the hybrid, the hybrid thing going on. But for instance, my the teams that I’m working with in Latin America, they all have their cameras turned off, they’re not sitting in the same location, but they also refuse to do anything about it or to discuss it while I as scrum master or not necessarily as a scrum master before as an organizational coach, see so many points to be improved, that they’re just reluctant to touch upon. So it really depends on what kind of area what kind of assignment, what kind of questions, but it was really curious about your perspective on this.

Jeff Maleski  41:57

So I’d be sorry, because you just made me think of another question, I want to turn it around back at you, when you’re seeing an organization that is resistant to any type of change. So whether it’s change of turning on the cameras is the change of feeling open to just being able to discuss issues, whatever that may be, like, what is what is your approach to highlighting that issue? Like, Hey, guys, you want to be a great organization, but you can’t even come to do little changes, like what’s, how are you thinking you’re gonna get to whatever it is you want to be when you grow up as a company.

Sander Dur  42:34

I did that recently, where you know, if you fuck something up, they’ll point you to, this is what you’re supposed to do. And this is what you’re not doing. I do the same thing back. This is what I’m supposed to do. This is what you guys want me to do. This is what I need to do that, but you’re doing exactly the opposite. So if you want me to do my job properly, and you’re paying me a shift on the money to do my job, please walk with me through this. If you don’t want to change. Sure, fine, that’s by you. But then I’ll give you back the assignment.

Jeff Maleski  43:05

What about you Bubolz?

Jeff Bubolz  43:09

You know, I think that there’s three types of people when you go into organizations, there’s the resistors, that people on the fence, and then there’s the people that are going to like they’re the just longing for change. And I try to listen, I try to build some rapport. When I started an engagement, I tried to find those people that are really hungry for the change, and put them in a group and try to show the benefit. When you do that, if you can do that, usually the people on the fence want to join. And then the people that are the detractors, like usually they either come to the fence or they decide, Hey, I just want to be a part of that, or I don’t, usually that they work themselves out somehow. And so I guess that’s what I try to do. And sometimes like, you know, it’s not even the teams. I rarely find the teams don’t want to improve, I think most people want to do, they want to wake up in the morning, and they want to provide value. They want what they do every single day to matter. I don’t think people come up and say I just want to go to work, twiddle my thumbs for eight hours, and like, go home and not provide any value. Like I want to waste my life away for the next 40 years. I don’t think people say that or think that. I think they want to do good things. Now, if they if they feel like they can’t or there’s something in their way. Those are things that we can talk about and empower but they have to trust you to tell you those things. And I think you have to be able to show them that you’re there to help you get to show them some quick wins and that you’re not there to like be the Bob’s because I think sometimes that’s what people think when I walk in with Chad is like where the Bob’s from office space or what is it you actually do here? And you know, where we’re at? I don’t know, they might think that initially like, hopefully, you know, by the things we do around the community and things like that and people see us on the podcast or that all talking at meetups or conferences that we’re at like they know that our intentions are Are you no good, and we’re just trying to help organizations and the people inside of them. But you know, that’s that is a Persona Persona out there for people coming in from a consultant standpoint. And so you got to be aware of that, like, that’s how people might see you. So I think that it’s just about finding the right people to get started, carve out a very small enough niche where you can make a difference, and then just show the results and be open and be curious. And you know, change doesn’t happen really fast that people aren’t ready for it. Like it takes time. And I know everyone wants the results. Now. It’s like everything. We’re just like, instant gratification culture. But like, it takes time, it just does. And so I think you got to be patient with it.

Sander Dur  45:38

And to that extent, I want to nuance my very black and white answer, just before because this, the way that you describe it, Bubolz is the way that I feel that Scrum Masters and agile coaches or whatever kind of coach that you are, should go with open curiosity with with with an open mindset, curiosity, empathy, ask these questions on what’s going on. And ultimately, again, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. You don’t want to continue just for the hell of it. And for making money until you’re about to retire, and you spent 40 hours or 40 years on nothing. What about you, but that’s good,

Jeff Maleski  46:14

I am grateful that I don’t really have to worry about that question anymore. Like there’s, there’s a reason I kind of hung up my hat with the whole agile consulting thing, or organizational change agent or whatever you want to call it. Like, I just got tired of trying to convince people that there were better ways of doing things. And I just wanted to get myself into positions where I can mandate the better ways of doing things without like, I forget who articulated this to me, because I certainly didn’t come up with it. But you essentially have two different powers in organizations, you have organizational power, that is the power that the organization gives you as a manager, director, whatever, right? So there’s organizational power. And then there’s relationship power, the ability to influence change without direct authority, right. So basically, when you’re trying to enact change, you’re those are the two levers in essence that you’re trying to pull on. And just personally, like the influencing without authority is probably the better lever to pull like long term, you’ve got to, you know, the whole ad car model, I think, is great for understanding the desire to change what needs to change all that jazz. But oftentimes, that is influential, you’re trying to win somebody over and helping them understand why this change is going to be better. Versus I’m your boss, I can fire you, you’re going to change in this way, or just maybe even not, not to that level. But just being in a position where I can directly influence things without needing to necessarily win people over. I sound like a jackass. And that’s okay. But I’ll just be honest about it. Like, I just don’t want to have to spend weeks, months years trying to show people the right way and win them over, when I could just say just do it this way. And you will see the results in a few weeks. And then we can go on like, again, in my head. It’s cost of delay again, and again, like what is what is what is the cost of this organization, by me taking a very long, slow, steady approach to getting this change out there versus just mandating the change. And if people don’t want to go along with it cool. They can self select out. Yeah,

Sander Dur  48:28

I think to me, that’s one of the most frustrating parts as well, that whole reluctance to change. And everyone needs to have their opinion and have their opinion heard all the time. And it takes so long for actual change to happen. That part, I never said that.

Jeff Maleski  48:45

You’d look like you want to chime in with something Bubolz? Well,

Jeff Bubolz  48:48

yeah, I mean, it does. But also whenever there’s a good emergency, oh, you can change pretty fast. Can’t We? Like, oh, yeah, we are pretty responsive species when we need to be. And, and so I’m not saying manufacture that. But if you really want to be in an organization, where they change fast, and everyone’s on the same page, like we’re, we’re kind of startup like, I know, Jeff, you’ve done that for sure. Like, I’ve been a part of some consulting recently. And like when shit needs to happen, like, there isn’t like weeks to months is it that there’s days to hours get shipped out, like, and we got to make things happen, or we don’t get paid this week. Like that’s, like everybody’s in the same boat. And we all have families and we all have to do this, you know, like, and we all know that there’s upside if we can make this thing work long term, but like, we got to do it together. You know, and I think there’s just as stressful as that can be at times. It’s like some of the best times to write when you go through something hard with a group of people and then you like, get to the other side of it. I mean, I think you look at look back at that journey and maybe it’s just over time the nostalgia of it, but like, you look back at that and at least I do in the memories I have of going up doing it where It’s like, a proud of those days, like, that was really fun. I really enjoyed those people. And the time it sucked, like, like you felt you’re gonna wake up and cry in the middle of the night because it’s like, you’re worried about stuff, you get that pit in your stomach and you’re like, What am I doing here? And you wake up in the middle of the night, you’re like, I gotta go down and start working on something, because what else can I do? Those are, it’s tough at the moment. But I think that those also like me, and when you get something done, and you feel like you’ve worked so hard for it, it’s it’s really rewarding.

Jeff Maleski  50:27

So I feel like I’m being extra cynical this episode. But the one thing I want to not even push back on, but like the consideration in there is I have been in the trenches. I’ve app. Like, I agree, like I have had that feeling before. But I guess my point is, if you can get to the same outcome without all of that misery, like, wouldn’t you wouldn’t you choose to get to the outcome without all that misery?

Sander Dur  50:54

Yeah,

Jeff Bubolz  50:55

I mean, yeah, yeah, we all want pleasure. But I think it takes hard work to get to that, you know, like, that’s where our minds go,

Sander Dur  51:01

I think the level of satisfaction is different as well. If, if you really have to work for it, and you have the same result, then the level of gratitude and satisfaction is different than when you would just snap your finger like that, and it was in the whole world would change. It would have been differently work different on people’s motivation.

Jeff Maleski  51:23

And let me let me detail a little bit more here. And I promise I won’t go down into the weeds. But it’s more about like, I’ve seen this rodeo before. I’ve seen this issue before I know what the solution is. So and probably because I’ve gone through the trenches. I’ve done that with right like exactly what you’re saying. So I guess my point is, why would I want to keep reliving that nightmare to get to the outcome when I’ve like I’ve lived the nightmare once I know what a good solution is going to be or something that’s more ideal. Like, let’s just do that, and then go on with our lives. That’s kind of that’s more than the what I’m trying to get after. But yeah, it’s playing devil’s advocate, I’m robbing those other individuals have living that nightmare and potentially coming to the solution themselves. So maybe we’ve come full circle and understood, like where I have failed as a coach and not understanding and meeting people where they’re at. Maybe I’m still doing that, and not necessarily appreciating the benefits of people going through the experience for themselves. And I bet somebody who does have to go through that nightmare scenario, it’s it’s more ingrained into them versus me giving them the solution at the end of it. So who knows, maybe I just talked myself out of it here.

Sander Dur  52:38

I think it’s beautiful that you want to share your nightmare with others. Oh, go ahead. Oh, that’s the last thing and then we’ll shut up, which is a challenge in by itself for me. But that comes back to what you were saying about people can change really fast if they want to. And that’s just like a free pandemic. When organizations said, Well, you’re never going to be able to work from home full time because you just again, pandemic it to magic people can work from home. Oh, shit, we really can’t. Yep.

Jeff Bubolz  53:14

Yeah, it’s, it’s amazing what can happen when you were having an emergency. And, you know, you just have to do it.

Jeff Maleski  53:19

I so I agree wholeheartedly with that one. And in fact, I think Bubolz. And if we went back and looked at some of our earlier recordings, like, I’ll only speak for myself, I was dead set against remote work, I was like, This is bullshit, you’re never going to be as productive as a team when you’ve got remote people. Now, in my defense, I think it was because the majority of those teams, and maybe even all of them were hybrid. And I still think there’s dysfunction with hybrid that we haven’t quite sorted out. But like, if your entire team is remote, or your entire team is there in person, I think they can be just as effective as a team now and I totally eat crow on having bad things to say about remote work earlier.

Jeff Bubolz  54:00

We didn’t know we didn’t know, right, we weren’t we had never experienced it. So like we can only judge from what we had seen in the past. And we’d seen the past was a lot of hybrid. And that didn’t work so well. So I think you’re right, you know, like, now we’ve seen it, we’ve proved it. Like sometimes you just got to run the experiment. You know, like, I guess that’s good advice. And the outcomes of running an experiment are different, too. I think, you know, when you’re trying to do change in an organization, you have to let go that there’s a deterministic path. Like if I do these things, these other things will happen. They won’t, there is a probabilistic path, there’s you can add a pretty high probability that certain things will happen if we do these things. But there’s other influences out there that may make them go the other direction. So like, to your point before Jeff, like, I’ve seen this nightmare. Yeah. And maybe 80% of the time, the solution you have works, but maybe we’re in that 20% Right now, I don’t know. And so we kind of just got to go through it and maybe we’ll run into the next nightmare. Maybe we can, you know, we’ll take the 80% odds and we’ll get to in and it’ll just lead into the next nightmare if it really is a 20% but we could be 80% and a good dream for your pretty soon. So, I don’t know, I just think that some people just have to experience it and they need the they need the experience of going through it until you do it. You just you don’t know what you don’t know, you know,

Sander Dur  55:14

coming back on the original topic, before we went to take a walk in the jungle. What’s your biggest failure when it comes to hybrid work? Or virtual work?

Jeff Bubolz  55:27

Forgetting about people, it’s got to be that like I’m there in person and I forget someone, or you know, you just don’t plan for it. Like you’re like, oh, yeah, those people are there and you just lose sight because it’s like, you’re in the moment you’re having this interaction. You’re right here. And they’re like, oh, yeah, that person is right there over there on that speaker. And we haven’t even talked or brought them into the conversation at all. It’s, it’s something I had to remind myself about all the time when we’re doing hybrid. I don’t know. How about you guys, what’s, what’s some of your failures with hybrid?

Jeff Maleski  55:59

You go ahead. Alright,

Sander Dur  56:02

so I’m an avid Call of Duty play, right? And

Jeff Maleski  56:07

that’s a video goes an

Sander Dur  56:08

hour. Okay. Fucking amazing. Next one is about to be released. And I’m already hyped, like a 13 year old anyway. I was there was a gap in my agenda. I was like, figured, fuck it. Let’s go play a game. And it wasn’t a role. And I saw this. I saw on my phone. These notifications popping up. Yeah, for me to get me. Yeah, in a minute. And I continued because I was on a winning streak. Like, ah, I’m 25 minutes late to a very important meeting, because I wanted to win my games. Like, maybe I should not do this ever again. So the balance between the way that you can set up your private life versus versus work life has become for me, it has become better. But it took me a couple of lessons to get there. This one was very, not the most professional one.

Jeff Maleski  57:02

That’s okay. I’ve got a good not professional story that I’ll share with you when we’re offline here. But yeah, it’ll be fun. You’ll get a chuckle out of it. But what I want listeners to check as well, no, no, it’s it’s not a good like podcasting story. But anyway, going back to a little bit more of the technical side with hybrid, there’s there’s one specific team that I was thinking about. And to me, it was more of a tooling issue. But it was just the the frustration of when we’re having team meetings, it’s like, the the sound. So is everybody at their computer with their headphones on and their mic, which is then like, if you’re in the room, you’re catching that audio coming through on other people’s mics in the room. And so on the actual call, you know, it’s a little bit frustrating. But then also, to your point, Jeff, it’s also really hard to come up with good facilitation, that isn’t a hybrid facilitation, you’re either using something like mural mural jam board or something like that. So to compensate for the remote people, but then to the people that are in the room, it’s like, well, why are you even in the room, you’re all sitting at your computer on the the jam board, you might as well be at home, right? So that’s, and that’s just a personal limitation for hybrid that that’s why I say like I that was never enough that I necessarily cared to crack. Because I wasn’t, there was a very limited engagement and moving forward, all the teams were either all on site or on remote. That being said, I don’t know if you guys watched the last meta presentation, I, I find that incredibly interesting in a good conversation in that conversation. If you guys watch or listen to Joe Rogan experience, he had Mark Zuckerberg on there recently, and he listened. And I thought that was an incredibly fascinating conversation, to hear about the future of work. And essentially that that really does solve a lot of these hybrid problems, like you do have that like the way we engage with each other even sitting on the screen, like our listeners can’t see it. And even when we edit this and put it on YouTube, but like I see me sunder and Jeff on my screen in that order, right. And so when I’m looking at one of those individuals talking, I am looking at a different spot on my screen. And that kind of looks goofy to somebody on the receiving end of that and just expand that out to the nine, you know, the zoom, whatever it is the nine square that you’ve typically got, it’s just those little human elements that we were talking about earlier. And I think a lot of this stuff will we’ll solve for assuming he doesn’t bankrupt Mehta in the process over the next few years of trying to build this thing giving avatars legs, which is like what the fuck really? That’s where you’re spending your money. But anyway, sorry, long winded answer there. Some prefer just the tooling in a hybrid environment. So I think is still really lacking or it’s just a, I haven’t solved for it yet. Maybe others have.

Jeff Bubolz  1:00:05

Yeah, I think it’s it’s getting there though, right, like tooling is getting better and better. I’ll tell you about one tool that I use right now, a few clients, we’ve recommended it, and I think it works really well. I think it’s semi affordable. It’s like $1,000. It’s called an owl. And you plug it into a conference room, and it has a camera 360 all the way around. And it focuses in on whoever talks. So then you see them, and then focus. And then I mean, the mics great at it, and then it sits right in the middle of the room. It’s pretty portable. It’s like only like, you know, what’s nine inches, 10 inches tall, something like that, maybe. And man, it works pretty well, I think from a conferencing solution. So when you have that, at least in a conference room, at least everyone you know, that’s at home, can still see everybody in the room really easily because a lot of times those cameras don’t work. Well. You can’t quite see everything. This is this is pretty nice, actually from from different clients. I’ve used

Sander Dur  1:00:59

1. I haven’t noticed I don’t.

Jeff Bubolz  1:01:02

Yeah, it’s not the same as VR, Jeff, but it’s, it’s something we have right now. That’s, you know, it’s there that could help. Sure.

1:01:09

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