Remotely One - A remote work podcast

Back to the Future: The Origin of 'Telework' with Jack Nilles in 1973 - ep. 081

• JACK NILLES, RICK HANEY, KALEEM CLARKSON • Season 1 • Episode 81

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In this captivating podcast episode, we're treated to an engaging interview with Jack Nilles, the esteemed CEO of JALA International, Inc., affectionately known as the "father of telework and telecommuting." With a global reputation as an applied futurist and consultant, Nilles has spearheaded award-winning telework programs that have truly transformed the landscape of modern work practices.

As a former rocket scientist turned researcher, Nilles takes us on a fascinating journey through his exploration of remote work practices. Beginning with his early fascination with leveraging technology to alleviate traffic congestion, his groundbreaking research at the University of Southern California led to the coining of terms like "telecommuting" and "telework" to encapsulate the revolutionary concept of working remotely through telecommunications.

Throughout the interview, Nilles provides insightful reflections on the evolution of terminology surrounding remote work. He eloquently emphasizes the core principle of utilizing technology to facilitate remote work, irrespective of the specific labels attached. His observations shine a light on the transformative potential of remote work, offering profound insights into its ability to enhance work-life balance, alleviate traffic congestion, and amplify productivity.

Delving into Nilles' pioneering experiments with telecommuting in the '70s and '80s, we gain a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by corporations and public sectors in embracing remote work. The discussion also touches upon the sudden surge in remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, which, while accelerating adoption, posed unforeseen challenges, particularly for downtown areas unprepared for the mass transition of workers.

Despite these hurdles, Nilles remains steadfast in his belief that telework is not just a passing trend but a transformative force with far-reaching benefits, including reducing fossil fuel consumption and traffic congestion. Envisioning a future where remote and office work coexist harmoniously, he underscores the importance of gradual adaptation, especially for downtown areas seeking to thrive in this new paradigm.

Hosts Kaleem and Rick express their deep admiration for Nilles' groundbreaking work and its profound influence on their lives. Their heartfelt appreciation sets the tone for a poignant conclusion to the interview, filled with gratitude and eager anticipation for future discussions with Nilles. In essence. A rich and comprehensive exploration of telecommuting's past, present, and future, infused with personal anecdotes and a fervent advocacy for the transformative power of remote work.

Learn more about Jack:

Rick:

Where are you currently at? Are you, uh,

Jack:

Los Angeles,

Rick:

you're in Los Angeles, okay. I lived in Northridge for a couple of years. Right after the earthquake.

Jack:

Oh yeah, I remember that. We had an observatory near there that had problems.

Rick:

Oh, yes they did. Yep, they certainly did.

Jack:

That's when I was still a rocket scientist,

Rick:

Uh huh. Way huh?

Jack:

I'm originally from Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago.

Kaleem:

Yes, I'm a diehard Bears fan. Do you say you're originally from Chicago or no you actually say the town

Jack:

Well, usually I say I'm from Chicago because I've told him from Evanston. They say, Wyoming is that where it's from?

Rick:

Welcome back everyone to a special episode of Remotely One. I am your co host Rick Haney, joined by my esteemed colleague Colleen Clarkson. You ready for this, sir?

Kaleem:

I I'm not, I'm not ready.

Rick:

I have faith.

Kaleem:

had to shower. I had to shower before our guest today because I sweat through my shorts and my undies sweat through everything. I sweat through everything. So I had to shower before today's guest. I am so effing nervous. Holy shit.

Rick:

you took precautionary measures, and for that I appreciate it. Your dedication will not go

Kaleem:

I took a modium brick so I didn't get bubble guts.

Rick:

Oh! Oh. Ladies and gentlemen, today's show is brought to you by Emodium AD and Kaleem Clarkson. Hey everybody, listeners and viewers, since you know how to find us now, do us a huge favor, go to ratethispodcast. com forward slash remotely one, and just leave us a review. That would be amazing. Again, that site is ratethispodcast. com forward slash remotely one. We would be ever so grateful if you could leave us a review. Since 2015, Remotely One is one of the largest communities of remote work professionals with over 3, 000 Slack members and 5, 000 email subscribers. It's free to join, so go check us out at remotelyone. com. And with that out of the way, Kaleem, please give us a tease or two about today's guest.

Kaleem:

Oh, yeah,

Rick:

Nervous as

Kaleem:

me shake it down, shake it down. So our guests, Rick, they're originally from Chicago, Illinois, go bears,

Rick:

hmm. All right. Okay. That bears.

Kaleem:

uh, currently are resident of LA. Okay. Go Lakers. Go Lakers. RIP Kobe. Rick, if it were not for Today's guests, honestly, if it were not for today's guests.

Rick:

Mm hmm.

Kaleem:

There would be no remote work today. It would not even exist. Yeah. It wouldn't even exist. And not only that Rick, this show wouldn't exist off the show. It wouldn't exist.

Rick:

Oh, this could be a full circle episode for all of us. Mm

Kaleem:

Full circle, our guests. They have their bachelor's degree in physics from Lawrence University. They went to UCLA and they just got their master's in a little degree called systems. Engineering was just an engineer. Oh, this is interesting. Rick, you ready? You ready for this? Our guest today was the associate director. For the aerospace corporation where he advised. NASA. Here we go. Here we go. Where he

Rick:

Ho ho ho ho!

Kaleem:

on the landing site selection technology for the Apollo moon landing program. What, what? Yes.

Rick:

on our show! This is incredible.

Kaleem:

On our show. And guess, guess I got a quick question for you. Guest, was the moon landing real

Jack:

it was like, I just, I just helped him select the cameras to use. We

Kaleem:

OK listen We don't want our guests to disappear so It was a prank, it was a prank

Rick:

We'll protect his identity.

Kaleem:

I ain't going to

Jack:

had the hot dog stand off to the side, so you didn't see it.

Kaleem:

Guests don't do that! I don't want men in black showing up! I don't, that's the best. our guest was a contract photographer for the Milwaukee Journal. our guests then went on to work for the university of Southern California, the other USC as people from South Carolina say, as the director of the center for future research and the center for effective organizations. And Rick they coined the terms telecommuting and telework, sir.

Rick:

Wow! I did not know that.

Kaleem:

yeah. yeah. Oh, yeah. They didn't stop there It just kept going which led to the publishing of the book the telecommunications transportation trade off that was originally published in 1976 And oh, yeah, we've had this for a minute because it's

Rick:

You have got that book. You've got that book.

Kaleem:

Heck. Yeah. Heck. Yeah our guest consulted with the european union on the development of telework programs You our guest was deemed the father of telework and telecommuting. Our guest is the CEO and founder of the firm JALA International, which does all sorts of cool consulting. Listeners and viewers, please give a warm welcome to Jack Nilles I I can't help it settle down studio audience quiet

Rick:

This is a professional atmosphere, people. Settle down in front.

Kaleem:

oh they're so loud oh my gosh

Jack:

It's a pleasure, I'm pretty sure.

Kaleem:

getting

Rick:

So far.

Kaleem:

i'm getting emotional

Rick:

get your tissues.

Kaleem:

i don't think i've ever cried on a show rick i don't think i've ever cried on a show guy

Rick:

We are so excited to speak with you. I have so many questions, Jack, you know, as does Kaleem, as you can see, I don't even know where to start, but I'll start somewhere. You've done so much research. You've such an amazing history, getting up right off the bat, what were the, some of the circumstances that led to the research so much of working from a distance. Like, what was happening in those days and why are we still learning them today?

Kaleem:

50 years later

Jack:

Well, this, this actually all started when I I was still a rocket scientist. And designing space reconnaissance systems

Kaleem:

wow

Jack:

to keep track of the Soviet Union. And,

Rick:

Someone had to.

Jack:

I guess I

Kaleem:

Ivan Drago was on that ish back then

Rick:

Yes.

Jack:

I was getting kind of bored by this, you know, same old thing. All the time. So I have started to look around, find out some ways that we could use all our nifty technology for work in the, you know, in on the ground

Rick:

Yeah.

Jack:

from water space. And I was talking to a, an urban planner one day. And he said to me. You know, if you guys can put man on the moon, I said, yeah I had something to do with that. Why can't you do something about traffic?

Kaleem:

I mean, it's a valid question.

Rick:

Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Kaleem:

and Jack. What year is this? What year is this? Roughly?

Jack:

This was 1970, 1970, and that changed my career. I got fascinated by this and I got so interested because I happened to be also be chairman of the company's, planning committee at the time. And I said, Hey, why don't we put some money into this and see if, if we can get our people to work from home or somewhere remotely, instead of coming down here to El Segundo every day. And they said, well, what would it take? And I said, well, I mean, it's not always a technological problem. You need to think about, are people going to work this way? What are the legal implications? You'd probably have to hire a sociologist or two to see what happens like this. And I said, forget about it.

Kaleem:

Like no, they told you now.

Jack:

Tell me now. We're, yeah, we're metalbenders. We deal with stuff that goes up in the air. We don't want this fool around with this touchy feely stuff. I got a little upset by this and I was moaning about it to a friend of mine at the University of Southern California. And he said, well, maybe we have some people here to do it. And I said, yeah, certainly you've got the kinds of talents I need and that my company won't hire. So maybe we could work out something. And, um, it turns out, he says, well, why don't you, Move from there and move to here and do research self sought. I had a meeting with the executive vice president of the university and I said, you know, here's the kinds of projects I want to work on. They require Lots of different kinds of disciplines, uh, which the company doesn't have. The university does have universities on the other hand, have a reputation for not being able to manage anything. And I'm really good at managing multiple corporations. So. Why don't I work for here and try and set this stuff up? So I became USC's first and possibly only Director of Interdisciplinary Programs. And one advantage of that was that nobody knew what that meant. So

Rick:

Heh heh.

Jack:

I could go around anywhere in the university and talk up people and get them to work on my research programs. One of which was with a grant we got from the National Science Foundation. In 1973, entitled Development of Policy on the Transportation Telecommunications Trade off.

Kaleem:

Wow.

Jack:

It's the idea of substituting telecommunications for transportation.

Kaleem:

Ah,

Jack:

the grant, but if I told people what we're working on, they'd say, Oh yeah, we're working on a telecommunications transportation trade off. And they'd, I'd get this blank stare and say, Oh yeah, well that's, that's interesting. But. So I said, I had to think of a more approachable word for that. It's like, we're trying to get people off the roads commuting. So why don't we call it telecommuting?

Rick:

That's where it came from.

Jack:

that's where it came from.

Kaleem:

Holy shit, let's just take a moment for a second. Let's take a moment to thank you sir. Thank you. you. came up with the term telecommuting

Jack:

telecommunications, computers to get, to reduce the commute to zero and, uh, let's try it.

Kaleem:

Wow,

Jack:

so USC has great connections with the business community in Los Angeles. So we're thinking about, you know, what's the best way to do this? So, uh, You want to set up an with a company that has information workers who are spending their time doing this kind of work. And see if you can get them to work either at home or close to home. Turns out working at home was just not economically feasible at the time. You'd have a, basically have a phone line which is getting, you know, 30 characters per second and you don't get a lot of work done like that. So we had them set up a, what we call satellite offices, which A company facility that's located near where employees live, which turn out to be mostly in the San Fernando Valley, that they can work to work, or ride a bicycle to work, or if anything, not drive to work. We're trying to get rid of the car, we're trying to get rid of traffic congestion, air pollution, environmental damage, and so forth. And so we set up an experiment a program with an insurance company, which had to do this. And it ran for six months, I guess, something like that. And insurance company couldn't care less about telecommuting. What they weree worried about was their turnover rate. They had to hire, basically. A third of their staff every year because they, people get it and they get tired of the commute and they can find a job that's closer. So we cut down their turnover rate from a third of their staff to zero during

Rick:

Hmm

Kaleem:

Whoa, so let me get this straight. So The purpose of the whole project was to reduce traffic. Like that was the goal of trying to figure this out, get cars off the road. So then you work with this insurance company and then I just out of nowhere, like you weren't intending to kind of do this as a, employer engagement or employee retention. You weren't, that wasn't your original intention, but you're saying after a few months, do you notice that because people. Like people were probably not driving into the city and they were working out in their closer neighborhoods. Did people just enjoy that much better? Is that what you were finding?

Jack:

You know, the company couldn't have cared less about this university nifty experiment called telecommuting.

Rick:

Right. Mm-Hmm.

Jack:

we did have an instructional TV system being built up at the same time that I was involved in too. But, they're interested in the bottom line, which is making money.

Rick:

Of

Kaleem:

Yeah.

Jack:

And the way you make it. Money is not keep having to hire new employees all the time and training them and getting them up to speed. So, Hey, look, we'll just cut down that particular cost of yours. And if this works out we'll have them in facilities with a lower rent. So that you save money on the facilities as well. And as it turned out, productivity went up about 15%.

Kaleem:

interesting.

Jack:

So it was a great success. End of the project, we figured they'd save four to five million dollars a year in reduced costs and improved productivity because for recruiting and space. And they said it was a great experiment. but We're not going to do it.

Rick:

Yeah. We love the idea, but no thanks,

Kaleem:

That's the best. Oh, thank you so much. We haven't had any employees quit. Attrition is down to zero and you saved on commercial real estate. Thank you so much, but we're not going to do it do

Rick:

not interested.

Jack:

And I said, why not? Well, We're a non union company, you understand. We don't like unions. We don't want anybody in the union. And we're afraid that if our employers are scattered around the countryside, you know, in the valley or ultimately working from home or something like that, the union can come in and organize these places one by one. They can pick them off. And before we know it, we'll be unionized, so we're not going to do it. Okay.

Rick:

That is, so interesting. You were credited with coining the term telework and telecommuting. And it seems that those terminologies have kind of been phased out by the term remote work. How do you feel about that and why do you think that change happened?

Kaleem:

Tell the truth Jack How do you feel about it? Jack, tell the truth.

Jack:

you know, two ways. Let's talk about terminology for a while.

Kaleem:

Oh,

Rick:

Hmm.

Jack:

It's Telecommuting, because that's what the commuters like. They want to stop the damn commute. They, they don't like inhaling carbon monoxide from the car in front of them for half an hour each way. Employers couldn't care less about the commute. They don't figure they're paying for it. Employers like teleworking. Oh, they're going to do useful work. Their productivity is going to go up. Fine. Okay, so that's basically what we're using. We're telework to convince employers to do this telecommuting because the employees like it. But first you have to, convince the CEO that this is a good thing to do, that it's good for the bottom line. Nevermind if your employees are happy or not. I don't care if they're happy, as long as they're working well. Okay. The other stuff comes along people have fiddled around with these words forever, but now because it's the technology has advanced way beyond what was available, you know, in 1973 work from home has become the okay word now. But basically it's the same thing, you know. You're using technology to substitute for moving your body. You're sending the work to the worker instead of sending the worker to work. You know, simple. Whatever you call it.

Kaleem:

well, Jack, I want you to know personally my partner and I, when we started our company in 2013, you were the primary source of information that we used and we always. Still to this day in every one of my presentations, I have a slide in there that gives you homage and it pays homage to the stuff that you did, because I always feel like a lot of times everyone wants to look at the flashy new thing today. And I just want to say, you know, I always talk about how great the term telework and the stuff that you did. So I just want to let you know that it's always been kind of a basis for us telework. So thank you. Thank you for all the stuff you've done.

Jack:

Well, the other end of this was, is, you know, a few months after my confrontation with the manager of the insurance company, I was in a conference with the head of strategy for the A-F-L-C-I-O. Okay. The labor unions, you know, and I was telling him what our stuff was about and dispute the workers feel better about this and so forth and so on. And he said telecommuting is a terrible thing, and I said, why is that? He says, well, if the employees are scattered all over the countryside, how the hell will we ever get to organize them? The exact opposite of what the insurance company would say. The insurance company said it's going to be too easy to organize. The AFL-CIO the unions, are saying it's going to be too hard to do it. So they both turned them down. Okay, that began another, you know, couple decades of trying to talk people into this. And, uh, in the late seventies, early eighties, I was getting fortune 100 companies involved in this. One of the requirements for them was we'll do this, but we're not going to, you, you can't tell anybody about what we're doing, because

Rick:

Hmm.

Jack:

it's happening, productivity is going up, and our facility costs are going down, and turnover rate goes down. Why should we tell our competitors? So.

Rick:

Absolutely.

Kaleem:

They didn't want that information to get out that it was helping so

Jack:

basically I was getting people to indulge in covert activities like what I'd been doing for the Air Force for the last 18 years before this, you know.

Rick:

Sure. Sure. I'm gonna quote you with one of the questions from your own book that was asked, and that question is, Is it easier to move people to their workplaces or to move their workplaces to the people?

Jack:

Well, it's, it's easier from the standpoint of we've always been doing it this way,

Rick:

Mmm.

Jack:

the workers, the workplace. But once you get the message across how you do this successfully. How you change your attitudes toward work, and what's the purpose of all this, and what's everybody's responsibility in getting it done. Change your management techniques. All of a sudden, getting people to work remotely has nothing to it.

Kaleem:

Yeah,

Jack:

but don't tell anybody, see?

Kaleem:

don't tell anybody.

Jack:

Yeah,

Kaleem:

I'm going to do the same thing Rick did. I'm going to pull a quote from your book and it's the quote that I share on most of my slides. I just find this so fascinating. Here's the quote and I quote technology was not the limiting factor in the acceptance of telecommuting. Organizational and management and cultural changes were far more important in the rate of acceptance of telecommuting. Wow. So to me today, Jack, we have all this technology, way more technology than you had in the seventies. But we're still seeing all these major companies resisting the adopting of telework. So I'm just curious, you talked about it a little bit, but what was some of the evidence or the types of themes that you heard back then that really led you to the conclusion that the technology was not the limiting factor, you know, like all this stuff, everybody would think, Oh, we can't do it because of the thing. But no you were saying it has nothing to do with the tech It's about the organizational management and cultural stuff and it's like wow, we're seeing that today 50 years later

Jack:

look, the problem is you're trying to tell somebody who's in charge of making something happen, right? That we're going to do this differently. We did before, and I know how to make these things happen, being brought up as an employee who does whatever it is, now I'm an expert, and you're asking me to change how we do this? Whoa, that's scary, that's scary.

Kaleem:

yeah

Jack:

So I have to think up some excuse. Well, you know, we're going to need broader band technology that you can possibly afford to give us. We can't possibly do this for maybe 20 or 30 years from now after I've retired. You can try it, but not on my watch. Okay.

Kaleem:

huh.

Jack:

this, this is the case particularly with middle managers, even when you got the CEO say, Hey, this is a pretty good middle managers or found that this is threatening to them

Kaleem:

Hmm.

Jack:

because you have to learn how to manage people differently. And that's the key to making it happen. You have to learn so that you can trust people to get the work done when you're not watching them every day.

We'll be right back after these words. 2020 was no joke. It changed the game for everyone. Workplace flexibility is no longer a perk, but an expectation. In fact, a recent study showed that a flexible schedule is more important than salary. Yeah, you heard that right? Employees want choices over cash. If you're a startup or a small business that doesn't have a remote work strategy, stop what you're doing right now and complete our free tree assessment at blendmeinc. com. Since 2013, BlendMe Inc. Has been helping small businesses improve the remote employee experience. Let's stay local, but compete global. Visit us at blendmeinc. com. That's blendmeinc. com. Ever wonder how certain ads catch your attention or get stuck in your head? It's because the person voicing it knows how to tell the story. Maybe they're telling you to stumble over to Sullivan St. Patrick's day for green beers, Irish car bombs, and con beef all freaking day. Don't miss the deal of a lifetime this President's Day at Callahan Ford. Savings like these should be unconstitutional. Or maybe Come wash away your troubles here at Cooters Car Wash. We ain't no soap opry, but you'll be singing high praises. Hoo wee, Cooters! Or, here at Brooks Brothers Mortuary, we put the fun in funeral. Everyone is just dying to join us. Alright, well that's a bit much, but for you, I'll do it. I'm Rick Haney, and if you're a business owner looking for a creative voice in your marketing, look no further. I'll tell your story the way you want it told. Follow along at Remotely We Are One, or visit my website at rickhaney. me for more information. And now, back to the show.

Jack:

Tom Peters, the management expert, I used to have this conversation with him and his motto was management by walking around. You got to walk around and see people and busy and that's, you know, let's see, you know, what's happening. And I said, look at Frank over here in the corner. He's on the phone all the time. He must be talking to clients and selling, you know, stuff. And He's wonderful. I'm going to promote him. He says, you know what Frank is doing? He's talking to his bookie.

Kaleem:

Yeah, I need the, I need the Patriots getting five.

Jack:

for judging their performance. And companies usually You have to have more objective criteria for judging their performance And companies usually have, well, we, we manage my objectives. Right? What that means is that once a year, you sit down and have a discussion with your boss and you write down here's what we're going to do next year, and you write it down, and everybody signs agreement. Put that agreement in a file cabinet and forget about it until next year.

Kaleem:

Yeah.

Jack:

For telecommuting, you have to manage by objectives every day. And it takes a while to get used to this. You know, what is it I'm going to do today? What is it I have to get done? When does it have to be ready? We make our training sessions for both managers and the employees concentrate on getting yourself organized so that The work that's needed actually gets done on time and on schedule and with right level of quality. That's it. Once you get that to happen and you get it to happen often enough so that the boss can now trust you to actually do it so he isn't worried about whether he should drive by every morning to see if you're up, you're awake or something.

Kaleem:

that'd be great. Just get a knock on your door and you're like, oh, who is that? Oh, it's jack. He's just checking on me. He's just checking on me today

Jack:

with this, uh, you

Rick:

you are clocked in am I right? You are clocked in, aren't you? Just making sure.

Kaleem:

doesn't look like you're sitting in your room talking to two goofballs right now I don't think you're working at all

Jack:

all this technology about, counting keystrokes and this kind of thing,

Kaleem:

Oh

Rick:

Oh.

Jack:

it's just, this is counterproductive, guys. What you're saying is we don't trust you for anything.

Rick:

That's exactly it. It's a major trust issue.

Jack:

No, look at trust is what makes this work and you've got to manage it so the employees trust you and you can trust the employees. I know that sounds simple, but it's really hard. To do, and you got to work at it and work away at it, and that's, that's been the basic message I've been trying to get across to people for 50 years now.

Kaleem:

my gosh. I can't like, it has to be frustrating. And then when you see these return to offices, cause I, yeah, when I messaged you on LinkedIn, I couldn't believe you messaged back. And I was just thinking, wow, this man must be really pissed off. He's been saying the Same

Rick:

Same thing.

Kaleem:

and no one's listening.

Rick:

Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting because you pretty much just answered what was going to be my next question. When you started talking about the technology, before we hit record, Kalim and I were talking about, Our generation, you know, we're the first generation that had to adapt to this new thing called the internet, right? I guess you would call us maybe the hybrid or the crossover generation or the bridge generation, right? And

Kaleem:

the rotary phone

Rick:

we had the rotary phones. Yeah, the three channel televisions, you know, we remember what life was like before technology Really started beating its marching drum and We have done so many wonderful things because of technology, but I'm wondering, from your perspective, you have so much more experience, you know, underneath you than we do. What are some of the things that we've gotten right along the way with, you know, the advancement of technology and what are some of the things that we haven't learned yet that we still need to grasp?

Jack:

Well, we've gotten right a lot of, a lot of useful uses of the technology. I mean, clearly, you know, what I was saying,

Kaleem:

Video.

Jack:

technology is making all this a lot simpler.

Rick:

Mm

Jack:

But my point was, it has never been. A barrier to lots more people telecommuting than we're actually doing it.

Rick:

hmm. Mm hmm.

Jack:

In the, you know, the first project we had, we had people working at dumb terminals. I mean, It was a terminal hardwired to a computer somewhere, to a mini computer that we had in each local facility. And they were doing all their stuff, loading it into this mini computer. The mini computer would upload all the day's work from everybody in the project to the mainframe at night because the bandwidth available was not enough to do it. You could do it. You could do a day's work and upload it at night. Well, now, you know, the personal computer showed up. All of a sudden, you've got the office in a box in front of you and the software to do it. You know, All of a sudden, you know, 1980, 1981, a guy from IBM came to me and he said, do you think people would buy a computer? I said, if it says IBM on it, definitely they will, you know, they weren't sure whether they should do this kind of crazy stuff.

Kaleem:

Imagine that. Did he give you stock? If you don't mind me asking. I mean, did you get IBM stock back then for that consultation?

Jack:

yeah,

Kaleem:

That's great. That's great. I wanted to ask you a question about, you know, you did some consulting with the European Union and On the development of their telework programs, right? So you did some of that. What's the difference? What's the difference? Like, what was it like working in Europe and were the challenges the same or were they different when you were working with them?

Jack:

The challenges are the same everywhere.

Kaleem:

That's good to

Jack:

In Europe. In Asia, in, in the Americas, it's all, the challenge is always wait a minute, we've been doing things the way I know how to do for all these years. You want us to change? You know, it's the management, it's the management has always been the problem. The language they use may change. It might be German, French, Russian, Chinese, whatever, Latin or, or Spanish, but the attitudes are universal. Managers who have the responsibility for making things go right for the company are really nervous about stuff that they can't see it every day. And that's, that's basically the message kept trying to get over and over and over for people to understand. You know, we got, I got, finally got tired of companies saying, yeah, this is a great job, but don't tell anybody about it. So I finally went to the public sector. And a guy named David Fleming, who is in charge of general services department of company was looking around for ways to cut down on office space because the California government was increasing along with the income of the state and they were running out of building space. So he came to me and I said, okay, let's try the same experiments in a public operation so I can finally publish reports about it with details in it and make it all public instead of dealing with corporations who want to hide all this. So we started in the Mid eighties developing this project with the state of California and later on with the city of Los Angeles and everything was fine. And I've done it with a lot of our companies. We've had people started working successfully, and, uh, everything goes well, all this stuff that I predicted would happen. Productivity goes up, their facilities costs go down, turnover rate goes down. Okay. The big

Kaleem:

The big three. There's still the big three and I just it's

Jack:

three and then

Kaleem:

amazing.

Jack:

fine. And then a new CEO comes in.

Rick:

Restart.

Jack:

Restart.

Rick:

Yeah. And that's

Kaleem:

Wow.

Jack:

So finally I was, you know, throughout the seventies, eighties, nineties, I was trying to figure out, you know, what is, elixir that can get people to understand this? Very, you know, it's very simple concept. You know, why does it, I have to put in so much effort to get people to understand simple things.

Rick:

Yeah.

Jack:

Finally,

Kaleem:

Wait, I want that. I want to repeat that. Why do we all have to put in so much effort audience for people to understand very simple things? It's simple.

Jack:

simple stuff. Finally, the elixir showed up. It's called COVID.

Rick:

The elixir, you said? Now, when you use that term elixir is it because that was like the magic pill or the final straw, I guess, that would finally convince these guys that telework was here to stay

Jack:

Yeah, the potion with the presents, the potion that gives the pressure. All of a sudden, there's no choice, guys. If you want to stay in business, you got to get your employees to work at home, because they come in here together and they're all going to be dead. I

Rick:

for it, if we don't figure it out.

Kaleem:

So, did your phone start ringing off the hook? I mean, you know, the whole world is remote instantly overnight and people start, Oh, well, this actually existed before the pandemic. I mean, remote work, Oh, telework was a thing. So did your phone start ringing off the hook? and were you just sitting back like, Ma like laugh, like not laughing, but

Rick:

you. I told

Jack:

back there. Two points of view. One is, great, at last, this will happen and people can start getting used to it. And the other part is, oh my god, these poor boobs haven't a clue as to how to manage this successfully. There's going to be thousands of disasters.

Kaleem:

Poor boobs.

Jack:

People will work together. No idea what to do. No, no way to get organized. Nothing happens. so the big company's crashing all over the place. And, uh, as it turned out, it was much less of that than I was worried there would be. I mean, some companies still couldn't do it. Big companies still having a problem with this. Oh yeah. There's still, you know, meanwhile, I had basically said around the year 2000, the key thing that happened was I had a report of what I was doing published on the front page of the Financial Times on January 1st, 2000. And I said, wow,

Rick:

Yeah.

Jack:

can retire. And I thought, well, okay, I'll worry more about bigger the topics like climate change, which is basically the, you know, the fundamental part of what I was doing anyway, for all these years, cutting down on air pollution, cutting down on fossil fuel use, reducing global warming, as sort of a side effect of telecommuting. And I got involved much more in sort of the broader aspects. Of global warming and it was turning out, it was in fact, worse than I thought it was and still is, but, uh, people did not start ringing my phone after the COVID thing, because nobody remembered what I'd been talking about all this time.

Rick:

That's, so unfortunate. And I find it, and I find it hard to believe, to be truthful. But You know, attention spans are what they are. I mean, in a lot of ways, we never learn. We're all, we're so distracted by so many different things these days that it's hard to remember what we had for breakfast.

Kaleem:

I mean, what kind of reporter though, like just, I'm just going to go on a quick little rant, Jack, what kind of effing reporter, right? They're going to talk about remote work. You're not going to just Google like when the shit started. Like, there's no doubt I'm Googling that first, like, Ooh, I'm going to do this article on remote work. Let me Google this shit when it started. And your name's going to pop up. I mean, you should have been on every single news channel. Every single day for all of 2020, in my opinion, that's all I'm saying, you know, I'm going to give you your props. CNN, get on this.

Jack:

Well, I actually, I was on CNN quite a bit, but in the 90s, not 2000,

Rick:

was that like?

Jack:

Well, I mean, I used to be sort of the expert on anything technological, and CNN would give me a call and I'd go down to Hollywood and do a number on CNN explaining Blade Runner. So,

Kaleem:

blade runner. That's great.

Rick:

Wow. So we're talking about the last 50 years. What are your thoughts on the next 50 years? Where are we going? do you think is going to happen with telework?

Kaleem:

Hmm.

Jack:

Telework's here to stay. Look at the problems.

Rick:

hmm.

Jack:

of the things I worried about in even the early times, you know, well, look, it's great. We're getting people to work at home, but cities have grown up to the point. Where central cities are basically office buildings

Kaleem:

Right.

Jack:

because all the, you know, shopping and stuff has sort of come out into the local concentrations of things, but the big business stuff goes on downtown. So what happens when you people start working at home and not spending all the time downtown buying lunch or doing other stuff with their office? I was hoping well. Over these years, as companies start doing this gradually, the downtown areas will adapt, you know, they'll change to where they're, they have combined residence and office buildings, the restaurants will change, uh, being fewer of them downtown, but more of them in the suburbs and this kind of stuff. But when it happens all at once, as it did to us. You know, then it's a major shock. Instead of smoothly going into it over the last couple of decades, bang. Now everybody's gone from downtown. New York's disappeared. Chicago's disappeared. You know. The people have left there, and as it turns out, they're not coming back. Office occupancy had a big drop, and now it's moved up back to about 50 percent of where it was before.

Kaleem:

Yeah,

Jack:

And the bosses of big corporations are trying to get their employees back, and, uh, they're not, yeah, they're not doing it. one point I want to clarify is that when we were first doing all these, Telecommuting tests. It was always For people working remotely one or two or three days a week and spending the other time in the office. So it was always what's now called hybrid working.

Kaleem:

Yep.

Jack:

It was always because I figured if people are going to have to work, say at home, full time, they'll go stir crazy. You know, they have to do this all the time. People have to get out and, you know, get some other experiences. I figured maybe 4 percent of the workforce would be working at home full time, you know, that's what 4 percent are guys like, you know, programmers who are glued to their machines anyway, but, you know, real people have to go out and talk to somebody

Kaleem:

Yeah, you know the point that you made about it happening so quickly. It's a really really really good point that you made as far as If we would have just kept moving at the rate that we were moving at because we were increasing remote work every single year for Years and years and years it was slowly going up and if we would have stayed at that speed You know downtowns would be able to slowly adapt to that change But because it happened overnight downtowns became ghost towns immediately And now we're seeing this challenge. I was reading an article recently of the commercial real estate, especially commercial real estate that's attached to offices. They're seriously, seriously concerned over the next 10 years, because these leases are about to expire. Like we haven't even seen a majority of the leases expire yet. When that happens you know, what's gonna happen so that's really interesting That's a really great point that you made of if the pandemic didn't happen downtowns would have been able to slowly adjust and transform Whereas right now they're kind of forced to transform Probably, you know 50 years quickie quicker, you know, so it's tough

Jack:

I was hoping, it would be, you know, the tides coming in, kind of a thing that we'd get used to it. But instead we got a tidal wave,

Rick:

We,

Jack:

in and mashed everything up.

Rick:

My goodness.

Jack:

history says that you know, cultures do not change overnight, let's face it.

Rick:

no,

Jack:

And what we're, talking about is we have to change the culture.

Rick:

That's a great point.

Jack:

We got to get people to where. they travel less,

Rick:

Mm-Hmm.

Jack:

at least as long as they're using up fossil fuels to do it.

Rick:

Yeah.

Jack:

And if they keep doing that, as what we're doing now with, you know, telework being at roughly half time, uh, so that's a significant cut. In fossil fuel use and traffic congestion and the like traffic congestion is now all day instead of just two rush hours day.

Rick:

Yeah. It's real. Really unbelievable. Oh boy. In the interest of lifting spirits a little bit, can you share with us a comical or inspiring moment you might have had while working remotely?

Kaleem:

Ooooooh, what? Let's go into the vault here, go into the vault.

Rick:

What sticks out in your memory?

Jack:

well, the one, the The funniest thing was this conversation with a guy from the AFL-CIO who says we'll never be able to do stuff like this. And I said, just you wait, you know, you know, there used to be a show on the radio, remember radio,

Kaleem:

Oh, yeah.

Jack:

They're just a panel of people telling jokes and they're all sort of laughing at each other. And one of them was portrayed as an Englishman and, uh, they, And They go through this series of jokes, and uh, they all were laughing except Englishmen. And finally, at the end of the show, he says, Oh, I get it! In response to the first joke that was told. Okay,

Rick:

Everyone else had forgotten it.

Jack:

that's where I am. Now they're saying, Oh, that's what you were talking about.

Rick:

Okay, now I get it. I get it now was great. Jack, can our viewers and listeners find you?

Jack:

Well, they can find me, there's two ways. The website is JALA. com. I should point out JALA is a made up name from Jack and Layla, my deceased wife, who me to get into this to begin with

Rick:

Mm.

Kaleem:

Shout out to Layla.

Jack:

Yeah. so the website, we set up, as jla.com. I have a blog on that that's been running since 2006. I just blog like once a months, so, all that stuff is available

Rick:

Yeah.

Kaleem:

Listening to you still serving it on your own server? That's what I'm talking about, Jack.

Jack:

yeah.

Kaleem:

I'm talking about.

Jack:

Yeah, I am still an engineer at heart, you know?

Rick:

Yeah.

Kaleem:

that.

Rick:

And you're still active on LinkedIn.

Jack:

Yeah.

Kaleem:

Thank you so much for joining us Honestly, like when I say that you're my hero. You really are. You're one of my heroes one of my idols I mean I have Kobe up there. I got Shaquille O'Neal. I got Kareem Abdul Jabbar Walter Payton Barack Obama, right and I got you know who Jack Nellis on there, bro. So I really do, honestly, that ass here is like, this is the pinnacle, of my career. And I can't, I cannot even tell you how much impact you've had, on

Rick:

That's great.

Kaleem:

family's life. Just so many people, I'm getting emotional, getting emotional, but Thank you. Thank you.

Rick:

Thank you.

Kaleem:

it.

Jack:

was a lot of fun and it was a pleasure for me. So,

Rick:

Oh, good. Well, we hope to connect with you again very soon.

Kaleem:

We'll talk to you soon, Jack. Thank you.

Jack:

all right, take care.

People on this episode

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Kaleem Clarkson

Co-host
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Rick Haney

Co-host