Remotely One - A remote work podcast
Remotely One - A remote work podcast
From Clorox to Virtual Work Insider: Sacha Connor’s Path to Advising Companies on Effective Remote Strategies - ep. 095
In this lively episode of the Remotely One podcast, hosts Rick Haney and Kaleem Clarkson chat with Sacha Connor, founder of Virtual Work Insider and a seasoned expert in remote work. Get ready for some valuable insights as Sacha takes us through her professional journey, marked by her pioneering role in remote work long before it became mainstream. Her story, deeply influenced by her Philadelphia roots, is one of resilience, innovation, and a commitment to redefining work in a distributed environment.
Sacha's career took off in brand marketing after she graduated from Lehigh University. She worked at various advertising agencies, including the prestigious Goodby Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco. But her desire to get closer to the products she was marketing led her to The Clorox Company in Oakland, California, where she managed iconic brands like Hidden Valley Ranch, Kingsford Charcoal, and Brita Water Filters!
A pivotal moment came when Sacha decided to relocate to Philadelphia after the birth of her first child. Not wanting to leave her role at Clorox, she boldly asked to work remotely from the opposite coast—a groundbreaking idea in 2010, long before remote work was widely accepted. Clorox agreed but with significant caveats. However, despite these limitations, Sacha embraced the challenge and became one of the early pioneers of remote work, navigating the steep learning curve during a time when the tools and technologies we now take for granted were still in their infancy.
As Sacha's remote work experiment at Clorox evolved, she effectively led distributed hybrid teams. Initially, the company viewed her remote work arrangement as a temporary experiment with strict boundaries. Still, Sacha's success eventually paved the way for a broader acceptance of remote work within the company.
Turning 40 became another turning point in Sacha's life. Contemplating the next stage of her career, she decided to establish Virtual Work Insider. Virtual Work Insider offers training programs aimed at developing virtual leadership skills and equipping leaders with the tools they need to manage hybrid, remote, or geographically distributed teams.
They also assist organizations in developing "team working agreements" or "team charters," which are foundational documents that clearly define how teams will operate in a distributed work environment. These agreements cover aspects like meeting times, communication norms, and how to accommodate team members in different time zones, helping to overcome some of the challenges that come with flexible work arrangements.
Sacha’s experiences and insights provide a valuable perspective on the ongoing evolution of work in a post-pandemic world. As companies continue to navigate the complexities of hybrid work, clear communication, effective coordination, and strong leadership skills are becoming more critical than ever. Through Virtual Work Insider, Sacha is helping shape the future of work by providing the tools and training necessary for teams to thrive, no matter where they are located!
Learn more about Sacha:
- Sacha on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sachaconnor/
- Learn more about Virtual Work Insider’s training programs and speaking engagements: https://virtualworkinsider.com/
Where are you originally from?
Sacha:I'm from a suburb of Philadelphia, Western suburb. So, very close to where I am right
Rick:Philadelphia born and raised.
Sacha:Okay. Chillin out, maxin relaxin all cool.
Kaleem:shooting some b ball. Yes! Oh, the Fresh Prince! I can't, that was, that was pretty good!
Sacha:I, have never rapped on a podcast before, I can tell you that.
Rick:I can assure you I have not either. So, I didn't even get it right. I thought I got it right, but I didn't.
Kaleem:mom got scared. And she said, I
Rick:Moving with your
Sacha:with your uncle and auntie in Bel Air.
Kaleem:Yes, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, you know every verse. I know you do. I can
Rick:We're gonna get famous.
Kaleem:Oh my gosh.
Rick:Welcome back, everyone, to Remotely One. I am one of two fabulous co hosts in this amazing program. Rick Haney is my name. He is Kaleem Clarkson. What's going on, brother?
Kaleem:Hi, you are fabulous.
Rick:I feel fabulous.
Kaleem:You look fab too, sir. You look
Rick:fab. Thank you. it takes a lot of work to be this faB. I will say, you know, we strive for excellence on this show.
Kaleem:How you been, man? no complaints at all, man. Things are great. Sunny blue skies here in Charlotte. mean, what can we say? What can we, what can we say? You know, it's better than Philly.
Rick:Well, I don't know about that. We're going to, we're going to hear a lot about the benefits of Philly today.
Kaleem:I don't know. I
Rick:Hey everybody, since you know how to find us, do us a huge favor and go to ratethispodcast. com forward slash remotely one and leave us a review. Not a big deal. Not a huge ask. Take it maybe five seconds. Again, ratethispodcast. com forward slash remotely one. If you could do that. That would be amazing, and we'd love you for it. Since 2015, Remotely One is one of the largest communities of remote work professionals, with over 3, 500 Slack members and 5, 000 email subscribers. Five! It's free to join. Go check it out at remotelyone. com. And with that out of the way, Kaleem, please give us a tease or two about today's guest.
Kaleem:know, Rick, today I was really nervous, Rick, for today's guest. Like, like I, I'm nervous every week. Every time we have a guest, but like the more guests we get on when you see their accolades and you start reading stuff. I even bought a new shirt, right? This new shirt right here, bro.
Rick:He's been to TJ Maxx, folks. He's been to TJ
Kaleem:damn it. That's exactly where I got the shirt from guy.
Rick:That's totally a TJ Max
Kaleem:me. Stop calling me out on that. But I got a new one because I wanted to look right. And, also. Our guest is tough, you know, like punch me right in the mouth if I was looking wrong because Rick our guest You know where our guest is from
Rick:Where?
Kaleem:Philly, you know, you heard of rocky, right?
Rick:Oh yeah. Little feel. Yeah. You get this, uh, show on the road here.
Kaleem:But see, Rick, our guests, they're originally from Philly, okay, and they're currently a resident. They had a quick pit stop in San Francisco, which we're going to have to ask them about. But, our guest, Rick, pretty smart, as we'd say up in New England, dude, pretty smart, wicked smart, dude. Graduate from Lehigh. Lehigh now. Yeah. Yeah. Now I thought maybe I had a chance to go to Lehigh until, you know, they saw my grades until I didn't, until they saw my, they don't, I got the denial letter. I think I still got it somewhere. While she was at Lehigh, she got an internship at GE right off the bat. Just a tiny little company, just a tiny little company, a little internship. But for some reason, and I don't know why, and guests, you're definitely going to have to talk a little bit more about this. Our guest has a challenge. They have a challenge and a habit of putting this shirt on backwards, bro. Like crisscross. Remember that crisscross will make you jump, jump. Yes. We're going all the way back so much in this episode to nineties rap. I can't even help it, but
Rick:It's so nostalgic.
Kaleem:it is great. Her shirt is on correctly today though. Cause we did check
Rick:Yeah, we had a wardrobe check. No,
Kaleem:And it's not inside out. So I don't know. It's something that I guess does for some reason, they have no idea why. Our guest has been featured in charm, wall street journal Forbes, just a couple. And she was also, you know, featured in a book, but I'm not going to say what book it is, Liam. I'm not going to say what book it is. You've already been on the show. We've already hyped your book up, but she's always, she's already been in the book. Our guest has been a brand manager for Clorox, but listen to how many different brands that our guest has been a part of. This is why I'm so nervous. Okay. So while they worked at Clorox, they worked with hidden Valley. Is that the salad dressing? Hidden Valley, Costco. Actually wait, I think this is a Costco shirt, son. I think this might be a Costco shirt. Sam's club BJ's home Depot Lowe's family, family dollar, family dollar and dollar general. Why do they always mix those? I never understood why those names guests, do you have an idea of why they were called family dollar and dollar general guests? I mean, like, why, what is up with that? Is there, is there a fit? Is there a special explanation for why their family dollar and dollar
Sacha:It's all about the Dollar right? So they were trying, at the time, at the time, they could sell things a dollar and below. These days, right, you've got the five below, right? That's us dating me back to the, when a dollar would go pretty far.
Kaleem:Okay, not a dollar billio. Okay. I get that. I get that. Our guest Rick has also been a LinkedIn top voice for remote work. They are the founder and CEO of virtual work. Insider listeners and viewers, please give a warm welcome to Sasha. Come with
Rick:yo!
Kaleem:me. If you want to live, come with me. If you want to live. Oh my gosh. So great.
Sacha:Now everybody's gonna start calling me Sarah.
Kaleem:sorry. I can't help it. Thank you Sasha so much for coming on the show. Listeners, viewers, audience, another guest where if you need to book them, you better book them ahead of time because this guest is busy.
Rick:Calendar is filling up.
Kaleem:Yes, the calendar's filling up, but thank you for finally connecting. I appreciate it.
Sacha:Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to be on with the two Of you and let's have some fun.
Rick:Well, we'll see how you feel about that at the end of the
Kaleem:Yeah.
Rick:this any more awkward? Sure I can. So Sasha, first of all, again, thank you for being a part of this. You have such an impressive resume and, a really great background. at what point did you decide that remote work was your path? And what was it that kind of led you there?
Sacha:Yeah, this, this story is kind of interesting in that it was something that was really never on my radar. So Kaleem, you went all the way back to my time at Lehigh University and, you know, got me thinking about, what did I do at Lehigh? I was a marketing major there, right? So I wanted to really get into brand marketing and started out at advertising agencies first. And I worked for a small ad agency in the Philly suburbs, and then I moved to a much larger agency in San Francisco. So you, you mentioned that pit stop in San Francisco. So what brought me out to San Francisco originally was to work for Goodby Silverstein and Partners, which is a world renowned creative agency where I worked in account management to begin with. So, while I was, while I was working there, I was in San Francisco, but I realized I wanted to be on the client side, so, so, you know, when you're working agency side, you're working with a bunch of different clients, but I really wanted to go and work client side. And the Clorox company, which is a 7 billion company. is located in, what did you say?
Kaleem:Tiny.
Sacha:Tiny. right? Tiny. But they were located in Oakland, California. So Just across the bridge from where I was working in San Francisco. And I was able to, to work there. And I was super excited to move into a company that's so many different brands that you wouldn't expect. So Kaleem, you mentioned Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing. They have KC Masterpiece Barbecue Sauce, Kingsford Charcoal, Brita Water Filters. Like, I worked on all of these businesses.
Kaleem:cool. It's so cool.
Sacha:While I was there and I was working from the headquarters for six years when my husband and I had our first child, my daughter, Nevin, and we wanted her to live and grow up around her extended family, which was in the Philly area. So, Kaleem, you brought up Philly earlier.
Kaleem:Down eagles. I'm a Bears fan. Down eagles, but I get it. I get it. Keep
Sacha:So we, we wanted to move back to Philly and at first I thought that meant that I had to leave Clorox and I loved my job at Clorox. I was learning so much. The marketing programs I was responsible for were so fun. I was working on new product innovation as well. I was working with sales teams and I, so I asked the question. Which at the time felt pretty bold, which was to say, like, could I keep my job with Clorox but move 3, 000 miles away? And that was back in 2010.
Kaleem:Yes, Sasha. 2010. Oh, gee. We have. Oh, geez. Remote work. Oh, geez. On this show. Okay. That's why we have the show.
Sacha:2010, you know, so I, the good news was I had a good relationship with the chief marketing officer and he said, okay, like you can be an experiment. Let's see if you can do your job and lead your teams from the opposite coast of the United States. And that, Rick, to get to your question, that's what started my journey on learning how to work across distance.
Rick:So you took a chance. I mean, you had no idea if this was gonna work or not, and the company believed enough in you to say, Let's try it.
Sacha:Let's try it. And it was a steep learning curve. I mean, he's going from, you know,
Kaleem:not trip. Let's not trip, Sasha.
Rick:You had it under control.
Kaleem:You perform at a very and I think a lot of people need to hear this too because a lot of people like well Sasha's i'm doing it You perform at a very high level for six years like you're being modest. You're a very modest person I know you pretty well like like not super super well but like i've talked to you before like you don't like to gloat about your skills, but you're really nasty at everything.
Sacha:Well, I work hard. I work hard. It doesn't all come really naturally, but my superpower is hard work and focus.
Kaleem:So you had already performed for these brands. So when you brought up the question, they weren't going to say no.
Sacha:Well, at the time, you know, it was about retention. It was about how do we retain you and also use this as an experiment to see how this can work. But it did come with some caveats. So I was told, you know, Okay. you can, you can move and do, do the job from Philly, but you'll never get promoted to director level and above.
Kaleem:Right away.
Sacha:Yes, I mean, because they wanted to be clear. I mean, the part that I loved about Clorox was that. they were super clear with expectations, right? They wanted to be upfront and not change an expectation on me, but so they said, you know, you'll never get promoted to director level or above because you have to be here at headquarters for that Right. Back 2010 again, Right. We're talking about a while, a long time ago, they said, you will never get to work on some businesses or in some roles because those roles must be here at headquarters.
Kaleem:Okay. Okay.
Sacha:you're going to move from being a high potential employee, hypo, to low potential employee. So that's how, some large enterprises, they look at succession planning, they look at, they provide long term compensation that's based on potential, not just performance.
Kaleem:Oh, you mean like stock options, stuff like that? You're saying,
Rick:Wow.
Sacha:So, You know, in my head I was just going like, just get me back to Philly, but I'll show you, I'll show you that? I can get promoted, that I can run those types of businesses and those types of roles. I don't know how I'm going to do that, but I'll show you.
Kaleem:that's that Philly. That's that Philly, Rick. That's that Philly. Oh, really? Really? We'll see. We'll see about that, son.
Sacha:I think it was actually a real motivator for me because I felt like so many weights on my shoulder around, you know, being one of the first in brand marketing to go remote that if I didn't make it work, then they weren't going to let other people do it. And so I took it really, really seriously.
Rick:Well, in that line of thought, I mean, this is a huge company. I mean, world renowned. It's very recognizable brands. What has the evolution been like in your eyes? Like you've seen them kind of evolve as you have as a remote worker um, you know, especially since the pandemic, how has that company Embraced or maybe not embraced remote work.
Kaleem:Yeah,
Sacha:I can talk. more specifically about kind of the year. So I was remote for eight years then working for them. So I then led distributed hybrid teams while I was fully remote for eight years. So I can talk a little bit about how that transition went. Can't talk as much specifically about today, but we, can talk about that a little bit since it's been now five years since I've been gone. But, when I did first go remote like I said before, it was a huge learning curve. Especially if you think back to 2010, a lot of the technology tools that we take for granted right now actually Weren't in existence. Exactly. And so there was a real big tech component to this in terms of how do I stay connected? How do I stay top Of mind? How do I do my job every day when I'm three time zones and 3000 miles away? And so, like, small things, like, my laptop wasn't even really set up to do the video conferencing that they had just started to experiment with. So, what was funny was we Didn't when I first went remote, they didn't have all, like, the in conference room,
Kaleem:cameras.
Sacha:and big screens and things like that. So if I wanted to present to a leadership team, one of my direct reports would, like, carry me around on a laptop. Like, do you remember Mac's Headroom? Like, that's, right? Like, that's, right?
Kaleem:max, max,
Sacha:Like, on a, on a laptop and put me in front of the general manager. And I would be presenting through the computer, but my laptop would start to like whirl, and like, I would think I would smell smoke, and then I'd be mid sentence, and the laptop would turn off because it couldn't handle
Rick:b b b buh bye. Buh bye.
Kaleem:Holy crap, I haven't heard the phrase, I can't get Max Hedgeham out of my mind, it's been so long. This is the best episode ever, by the way. I'm just having so much nostalgia. So you had to, They walked you around even on man. And then the laptops weren't great either. Cause I mean, like you said, they probably didn't even have the embedded cameras yet in the
Sacha:Oh, right, right. I can't even remember about the camera thing.
Kaleem:Yeah. Wow.
Sacha:But then they started to put the cameras in the rooms at the Clorox headquarters, and so I started to befriend a lot of the IT people because I was like, how do I link into that? Because for me to overcome what I now know is called distance bias at the time, I didn't, I felt this unconscious bias, but didn't realize that it was actually like a unconscious bias that we have around proximity bias. And so I guess this idea of, Right, this idea of our brain's natural tendency to put more value on The people and things that are closer to us than those that are farther away. And I felt this on a daily basis, but I knew that if I could get my face on the wall in the rooms that I was bouncing between, then I'd have a better chance of staying top of mind, influencing conversations. And so the IT team, they IP addresses. That's And I, we had something called Movi, which was a Cisco product that is before WebEx. And I would have to enter in the IP address, like 5, 1 point. And then I would just show up in the room. Nobody had to touch a button. So I could bounce between rooms and people be like, how'd you do that?
Kaleem:That's kind of, that's super innovative, actually. You think about it now, I mean, I don't even think you, like, right now, I don't, jumping in on screen, like, instantly, probably a lot of people don't do that. So that's,
Sacha:Well, it probably was a bad idea because that meant no security, Right, So like I could have actually jumped into the executive suite rooms if I had wanted to without anybody actually saying enter.
Kaleem:So you're working with this different technology. At what point did you start saying, Hey, I, I want to lead a team. So like, at what point did your experiment start spreading a little bit through the company or did it?
Sacha:Yes. So what was happening? So I was already leading teams. I was leading at the time I was working on new product innovation team. So it would seem counterintuitive that they would say, Oh, some of the roles that you can be on, you can't work on, unless you're at headquarters. Are these kind of like business facing, like products that are already out in the market. But as a remote worker, you can't. You can work on new product innovation, which in a consumer packaged goods company is very tangible products. So like, what is the new pine salt scent? What is the new packaging development for
Kaleem:You gotta, You gotta, actually smell it or
Sacha:Smell it, feel it, touch it Right. And I'm 3000 miles away. So I was leading new product innovation strategy for the home cleaning division and commercialization of new products. And I was finding pockets of people in the company that were also fully remote in other functions. And also there was a brand marketer, her name is Kira, and she went remote in brand marketing around the same time as me. So we kept communicating. It's conversing about how are you doing this? How are you? How are you meeting with your advertising agencies to give feedback on creative remotely, right? Because that was a whole different process. How are you giving feedback on packaging graphics when you can't be in the building with the graphic designers? Things like that. And so we started to meet on a regular basis, this small group across different functions that were fully remote to share best practices and learn and what we then had an epiphany that we should formalize it as an employee resource group. So are you familiar at all with ERGs?
Kaleem:Yeah. ERGs. Yep.
Sacha:Yeah.
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 RemotelyWeAreOne or visit my website at rickhaney. me for more information. And now, back to the show.
Sacha:so Clorox already had different ERGs. but we said, you know, we have this idea of bringing together people who are, at the time, we thought it was just bringing together like the 5 percent of fully remote people at Clorox. And we started an ERG, we called it ORBIT. The acronym stood for Offices Remote But Integral Teammates. That was
Kaleem:What? Okay. Acronyms are, you know, we love acronyms and companies. That's a good one. Orbit Well
Sacha:ORBIT. And so we thought it was just, you know, a small group of people that was going to build. We became the largest. and fastest growing ERG at Clorox. And I couldn't understand why all of these people who were based out of headquarters, out of our technical centers, out of our sales offices were signing up for the ERG. And I said, why are you joining? And they said, well, we're working with people who are in other offices and we need to learn How to collaborate with them. And that's when I had my big epiphany. I was like, Oh my gosh, everything I've been learning is applicable to 95 percent of this workforce here. It's not just the remote People
Rick:Wow.
Kaleem:in satellite offices that have to collaborate location independent. We're distant. We're not together
Sacha:It's about distance. It's about, we're just working across distance because the Clorox headquarters was a 30 minute drive from the Clorox technical center. And so a lot of the teams were working just across that short distance, but that's distance. And that's when like my brain would just like lit up around like, wow, there's so much that we as the employee resource group can now do to teach the teams how to work better together across distance. And in the back of my head, I was like, there's a business idea here for myself, but you know, that, that happened, you know, much later when I launched virtual work insider.
Kaleem:So now we have to ask you about virtual work insider, of course, because. Your experience now, now you're leading this or part of this ERG of all of these remote employees and you're noticing, Oh wow, there's something that we can teach people on how to work better with distance at what point did you start thinking, Hmm, I think I can help other companies besides Clorox. So how did the concept of that percolate? And can you just kind of tell us a little bit about the story and what it is that you all do?
Sacha:Yes. So because of my time working in brand marketing and leading new product innovation teams, like I've trained as an innovator, so I'm trained to kind of see where there's trends and where there are unmet needs. And I started to see that I was being asked to speak at external conferences about Orbit, the employee resource group. I started to see that I was being asked within Clorox to come speak at different leadership teams that were distributed leadership teams I started to see that there was a pull for this, and then with the research I was doing, I was realizing that within teaching leadership skills, a lot of those leadership skill training courses were done under the premise of being co located with your manager, being co located with your team members. That, that lens of how to do this across distance was never. Integrated into the training curriculum. And so I started to really like take note of all of the ways in which I had to change my behaviors to be able to lead my teams when I wasn't sitting next to them and thinking like, this could be a really? Cool. curriculum. To help others. And so that's when I started to think about, you know, when it, when might be the right time for me to start my own business, which was a super scary idea. Cause I'm pretty risk averse and I loved my job at Clorox, but I got to the point where I said, well, if I'm going to do it now, now's the best time. And So that was back in 2018 when I decided to finally leave Clorox and start Virtual Work Insider.
Kaleem:before the pandemic, you had already been working remotely for eight years. The ERG group you're presenting, you're doing all these cool things. What was the thing that said, I'm going to do this. Had you worked with some clients on the side first to kind of see how it was going to work. And what specifically does virtual inside of do what virtual work inside of do? Like, how do you help people?
Sacha:Yeah, so what specifically was turning 40 and saying, like, really, like, what do I want for the next stage of my career? And kind of reevaluating those things and my husband being really supportive of taking a risk and trying this. And I, I knew that I had a really great network of people I had worked with at Clorox that had moved to other, uh, companies that were interested in, in me helping them work in their distributed teams. you. know, it's never been about just helping with fully remote teams or fully remote team members. It's always been about how do we help teams work across distance, whatever distance means for them. Whether that's geographically distributed, hybrid, remote, whatever that means for them. So, I knew that I had, you know, a network to kind of fall back on to, to try out some of this curriculum. And so what we do is we provide training programs to teach virtual leadership skills. So how to lead teams when you're in a hybrid, remote, or distributed work environment. And we teach skills like how to communicate, collaborate, build culture, influence, in those distributed work environments.
Kaleem:Hmm. Of
Rick:So what is your, I mean, you've, you've been around this a long time and you've seen how the pandemic changed everything. People are really anxious to get back to normal. What are your thoughts on this pushback, uh, the push to return to the office? You know, what are people saying and what is your reaction to it?
Sacha:So when the pandemic hit and everyone had to move into emergency rapid remote work, I knew that that was going to be short term. I didn't know how long the pandemic was going to last, but I knew once that subsided, the most large enterprises were going to come back to some sort of Now we call it hybrid, but hybrid situation where they were going to ask people to come back into an office. I just knew that that, that Change management curve for a large enterprise, and we work mainly with large enterprises. It's a really hard one, to go from something that's super office centric to begin with, to then saying, like, we're going to, we're going to decide to go virtual first ongoing. So I, I knew that there was going to be this journey of experimentation, and I think we're still in this journey of experimentation, and it's hard because I know there's so many headlines about return to office, and there's so much judgment about these decisions that these companies are making about, is it three days? Is it four days? Is it now five days back in the office, but I know that those decisions are really complex decisions, and each company, I think, should have the freedom and flexibility to look at it. What type of work do we do? What is our, what are our values? What do our employees want? What is our real estate footprint? There's so many different aspects to this that each company needs to make the decision that's best for their situation. And I think it's really hard from the outside to, to be able to judge that accurately. So, when I work with companies, I usually come in after they've decided what their workforce or workplace strategy is because my goal is enablement, and it's enabling the employees and the team leaders to be able to get their work done effectively in whatever that workplace and workforce strategy is, in whatever distance means to them, whether that's three days in the office, two days in the office, or just working across different office types.
Kaleem:Right. Right. So, enablement. That's interesting. I like that word there and the question that kind of popped up to me in my mind is like, okay, you know, I love your answer. Your answer is, you know. a professional politician answer, political science definitely was probably your sub major. You didn't pick a side. Well done. I like that. You know, it's like, Hey, it's whatever you want, baby. It's good. It's good. It's good. You know, we can figure it out. But my question to you is what has been some of the biggest or the most common challenges when you're talking about, enabling this type of change. So everybody wants. Everyone says they want to do this. Like we, we get that all the time. Oh yeah, we're this. And we can't wait to, you know, do all these wonderful things. But then when you start kind of getting into it, you know, change is difficult. And, you know, you have different emotions, motivations are involved with it, power struggles are involved with it. What are the most common challenges for you when you're trying to implement This new way of working after they've already made the decision to, to go that way. What are some of the things that kind of stick out for you?
Sacha:I, think everyone wants to allow some, some type of flexibility. And I really like what the future forum talks about in terms of the data that they've seen that people want flexibility when they work even more than flexibility for where they work. So there, those two types of flexibility are really important. And from what I see is that when you allow that flexibility, what comes with it though, is a lot of complexity in terms of how do we coordinate the work when we're Across different time zones now when we're on different hybrid schedules, because, you know, for some organizations that do have some sort of hybrid structure, they might say marketing has three days in the office Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, but R and D only comes in. Monday and Wednesday, right? So they're not always on the same same schedules. And we also see that from the pandemic, the number of meetings, the synchronous meetings went through the roof. A lot of that still remains. So people are in back to back meetings all day long. And now they're across time zones. So they're in back to back meetings all day long out even outside of their own time zone windows. Right. And so Mhm. With that again, that puts a constraint on the flexibility of when I work, Right. If I'm, if I'm in back to back meetings all day long now, spanning from Pacific Coast time to East Coast time, I've taken away some of that freedom and flexibility of when I work. So this piece, this piece of helping to coordinate within the complexity is where my team has really been helping organizations and teams to develop their team working agreements to get really clear on how are we going to work and operate when we're in this distributed work environment.
Kaleem:Love that. Team Work agreement. Arrangements. Agreements.
Sacha:Team, team working agreement. So it's like, like Brian Elliott talks about in his, in the future forum book. He calls them team level agreement. Sometimes we call them team charters, but even starting with teams like super foundational, you're going to laugh because you're going to say like, how has nobody actually done this before? But when we work with teams, we actually plot out a map for them of where their team members are located. And this Is normally cross functional teams I'm talking about. Yeah. And they don't even realize that sometimes that they're that they have people in a different time zone, and so they have meetings scheduled at times that makes zero sense for some of the people who are on the team. But those people haven't felt like they could speak up and ask for the time of the meeting to be changed.
Kaleem:So the complexities of when and how we work are really the kind of the big things that pop up when people are trying to implement a flexible model because it's interesting how you just you paraphrased it that way because it's um, You know, now I'm kind of thinking about, Oh, asynchronous. Now you got to train everybody how to be asynchronous and implement more, you know, things where people can do things on their own time, or else that freedom that you talked about is taken away. I did. That was something interesting too that you said, like, I never thought about remote work actually being more constrained than flexible.
Sacha:Well, the distributed nature of it Right. Yeah, it can. It
Kaleem:I might be able to live wherever. I might be able to live wherever but like I'm on calls from 8 until 10 o'clock at night so now I'm not I can't even enjoy the flexibility. Yeah, I can't enjoy the freedom that I have because I'm stuck. That's really really interesting. Well
Sacha:And that's, so That's one area I see a lot of need for help with enablement is at that team level and helping them to design how they're going to work together. And then I also see from a people manager perspective that they haven't been taught the skills for how to coach and connect with and create inclusive environments. With their direct reports when they can't be with them in the same office side by side every day. And so we actually recently launched a program with Udemy, which is a cohorted program called the Invested Leader Program. And it provides a six week program with live and on demand components to help people managers to learn these skills.
Rick:Mm. That's great.
Kaleem:Good
Rick:Sasha, can you tell us about a comical or inspiring moment you may have had while working remotely?
Kaleem:Ooh! Richie Rich just throwing out the good questions. That's what it is.
Sacha:Yeah, well, all sorts of things, especially when I was first going remote, just trying to figure things out. But as I mentioned before, I went remote in 2010. So we moved from San Francisco to Philadelphia. And while my husband and I were looking for a house for our family, my grandmother said that we could live with her. So I, my first remote home office was on her all weather patio. At her house and my grandma was in her I think late 80s when we moved in with her And so she like really didn't have an understanding of like what was I doing out on that patio on the computer all day long? And so I would post a big note for her on the door saying like in Meetings because I was doing the video conferencing meetings even back then in meetings don't disturb But she, she would still open that door and she'd shout in like, hi, honey. Like, do you want some chicken soup? And I'd be in these leadership team conversations, Right. Again, I'm the only one who's remote. So this is not usual.
Kaleem:all sitting there suited up in the meeting room.
Sacha:And I'd be like I'd be like waving her off.
Rick:Yeah.
Kaleem:You're like, she's like, do you have any of that Kent's ranch that we liked? You have any like Kent's ranch salad dress is so much better than Hidden Valley. All right. And you're like, no, no grandma, no
Sacha:do that.
Kaleem:I can't do that.
Sacha:And flash forward, you know, pandemic remote work. Everybody, it's normal to have your family in the frame or your dog or your pet. But at the time. for me, I had to be so buttoned up, Right. Everything had to be as if I was in that building. I couldn't afford to have any of that seen as a distraction.
Kaleem:Right, right. So were you suited up too? Like, I mean, like the dress, did you take ultra serious as well? Like how you were, I mean, did you put your suit on out inside out? I
Sacha:Well, the good news is by the time I was at Clorox, they weren't wearing actual suits and ties anymore. Thank goodness. They were just starting to integrate jeans on Fridays during the summer only,
Kaleem:big deal. Friday jeans. All you people
Rick:Love it.
Kaleem:what work used to be like.
Sacha:right? No, Friday. jeans during summer only too, right? summer only. And then it moved to full time year round jeans on Fridays.
Kaleem:Crazy.
Rick:The
Kaleem:Grandma, Grandma, thank you for putting up that office because if she didn't let you have that office there we wouldn't be here today.
Sacha:That's
Rick:Yeah. That's awesome. Sasha Connor, so much for joining us. Where can our listeners and viewers find
Sacha:Well, on LinkedIn is the best way to find my content. So just Sasha, S A C H A, Connor, C O N N O R on LinkedIn. And then virtualworkinsider. com. That's where you? can find out more about the services that we offer, including that investor leader program I mentioned.
Rick:Well, leader is a key word. You are definitely an awesome leader. We thank you for
Kaleem:Alpha
Rick:skills.
Kaleem:loser. Take that alpha leader.
Rick:yes, yes. You are an outstanding member of this community and we value your leadership and thank you for all that you're doing. It's great.
Sacha:Well, thanks for having me today.
Kaleem:Appreciate you. Talk to you later. Peace
