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KP Unpacked
Join serial entrepreneur KP Reddy for conversations and discussions around innovation, technology trends, and AI for startup founders, innovation catalysts & investors focused on the built environment (and beyond!)
KP Unpacked
Remote Work & Event Strategy
Can remote work truly offer the same career-boosting benefits as face-to-face interactions? Drawing on recent conversations with mid-career professionals, KP highlights the stark differences between the productivity of remote work and the irreplaceable advantages that in-person interactions bring to career advancement.
Switching gears, KP explores the art and science of intentional event design. KP shares his experiences of meticulously crafted dinners designed to foster meaningful connections and evoke specific emotions, showcasing how every detail—from the choice of wine to the placement of puzzles—can transform an ordinary gathering into an unforgettable experience.
Want more discussions like this? You can connect with KP Reddy in the Catalyst Network online community at https://kpreddy.co/catalystnetwork!
You are listening to KP Unpacked with KP Ready a weekly dose of insights for innovators and startups from the built environment and beyond. Want more discussions like this? Join KP's exclusive online community, the Catalyst Network. To learn more, visit kpreadyco slash Catalyst Network network.
Speaker 2:All right, welcome back to KP Ready Unpacked. This is my opportunity to sit down with KP Ready every week and ask him hey, what were you thinking when you posted that on LinkedIn? My name is Jeff Eccles, I'm a senior advisor here at KP Ready KP Ready Company, and I'm joined, as always, by our CEO and founder, kp Ready. Hi, kp.
Speaker 3:Hey, jeff, how's it going?
Speaker 2:It's going well. It looks like we're both in our normal quote, unquote normal spots today. So that'll probably help bandwidth and things like that. But it'll be fun to unpack another one of your LinkedIn posts. That'll probably help bandwidth and things like that. But, um, uh, but it'll be fun to unpack another one of your LinkedIn posts.
Speaker 2:And one of the things I would say to people that are listening to this right now or maybe you're watching the, the video we record this live inside of what we call our catalyst network. It's our online community. So, if you, if you want to, uh, well, when I was a kid in downtown Chicago or even up in the Sears Tower and I don't care what you think that's called now it's still the Sears Tower but there were the radio stations behind glass, right, you could walk up and you could see them recording their radio shows. That's effectively what we're doing here right now on the Catalyst Network. You can steer through the glasses as KP and I record this. But but whether you're watching this or whether you're listening to it on the podcast, if you're not following KP Ready on LinkedIn, you need to be, because a couple of times a day, he's reflecting on his travel and on his interactions with students and founders and executives throughout the industry, and those are translated into a couple of posts a day on LinkedIn. So go over to LinkedIn If you're not following him already. Go over to LinkedIn and type in KP ready, R-E-D-D-Y, and there's the guy that's on the screen right now, which, if you're listening to this through your earbuds, you don't see him, but you'll see KP Ready pop up in his Metallica t-shirt at least as your avatar is today. He'll pop up and you can follow him there on LinkedIn and have access to all these posts when they get up there every day. So I know you've had a lot of travel, a lot of travel recently, so maybe that enters into this discussion today.
Speaker 2:But the one that we had picked out to talk about was you're sort of differentiating between remote and in-person. So let me read it and then we can unpack what you're talking about here and what you think is important about the post here. So it starts out KP says remote equals work in person equals career. I get a ton of work done remotely because people are a huge distraction. I execute on my career in person. I think this pretty much holds true for everyone. This balance truly depends on what you're executing on. So that makes sense to me as I read that out loud. I would agree with that. I mean that's, I would say that's pretty much how I operate my life and career, so to speak. But what was it that inspired you to post this?
Speaker 3:Look, I think, post-pandemic, we all got very comfortable working remotely. I think unless you're a retail operation, your customers don't actually come to you. You kind of go to them.
Speaker 2:True.
Speaker 3:Right, and so I think some of this was sparked by some conversations I was having with some mid-career people when I was out and about, basically saying, hey, the job market has changed in every industry, right, so the wages aren't where they are. The hiring cycles are very different, right, so the wages aren't where they are. The time I spend with my boss, with my boss's peers, the better equipped one I'm learning more.
Speaker 3:But, I'm also getting access to the best projects, to the best opportunities, versus the person that's sitting at home. And I think, as you think about career, you know, are you an individual contributor, are you a leader, like what is your path? And maybe an individual contributor sitting at their home producing a lot of great work? That's great. If that's what you're, if that, if that's your aspiration, right, maybe you don't need to be around people. But I would say, for a lot of people that are trying to make their way, especially in a startup environment, we're remote because we live in cities, different cities but last week we got together because we're at a conference and I think we do tend to spend you guys hear from me three, four times a day. It's not like, it's not like I let what's going on, right, I think, and to learn and to build relationships.
Speaker 3:But I was talking to a really large real estate company based in New York and they had a 10 or 20 percent layoff. The people that got laid off was direct. It wasn't even close. It wasn't like, oh, it's kind of close or it's a pattern. In a binary fashion, if you were in the office, you didn't get laid off 100%. Now there were some people that got laid off, that came to the office, but 100% of the remote workers got laid off and so when you ask, well, why'd they get laid off? It's like because there was no personal, I don't know.
Speaker 3:Steve, I haven't seen Steve in a year. Put them on the list. Joe, joe, I've had lunch with Joe three times a week. I don't want to. He's doing a great job. Joe's doing a great job. I have lunch with him three times a week and that was the pattern, right. So I think you know. So that's a very binary view, like, oh, I'm an individual contributor and this is just about work, so I'm doing remote work, or I'm a high potential, career-driven person and now I'm 100% in the office.
Speaker 3:But I think for most people, there's an in-between space, and that is, you actually have to get work done right. You have to get work. We all have to do deliverable work, and when we have to do deliverable work, it's probably best would be left alone to do it right.
Speaker 3:Um, and it's interesting because I've I've been really analyzing it for my own self, right, I'm always trying to hack the next level of efficiency. Not that I end up working any less, I probably work the same. It's just more about throughput for me, and one of the changes I've made is really I have a really good desktop with four monitors, like I've got a setup at home and then I'm switching off of having a laptop to having an iPad from when I'm out and about, and the idea there being is when I am home at my desktop. That's when I do. That's when I schedule my deliverable work when I'm out and about. I'm not going to let deliverable work get in the way of me being present and engaged within the market, within whatever it is I'm doing right. The last thing I should do is go to a conference where I'm speaking, give a talk, go sit at the desk, go sit at a table and bust out my laptop.
Speaker 3:That's not what I'm there for, right, I'm there to meet with people and engage with people and so really starting to kind of create both physical spaces and work blocks that are very intentional. This is about me getting my work done and this is about me growing, expanding my growth and really blocking out time to understand and to help me help myself better understand, like, how do I spend my time both in person and remotely?
Speaker 1:Do you want to connect with KP? Join his exclusive online community, the Catalyst Network, today. Visit kpreadyco slash Catalyst Network. That's C-A-T-A-L-Y-S-T Network.
Speaker 2:So that idea of intentionality and presence right, that's huge. Those are life lessons, right, they're life skills, life tools Let me ask you about maybe you know these are some what ifs, maybe Thinking about, like, our mastermind groups we've been talking about mastermind groups a lot in the shop basically the way our mastermind groups work.
Speaker 2:They're virtual twice a month but then once a quarter they meet in person. So it sort of blurs the line a little bit between what you're saying or around what you're saying. But I wonder if, in the scenario of a mastermind group, and so you and I sat in on two of them yesterday and over the course of those conversations with a dozen, 18 or so people yesterday that spanned from the East Coast to the West Coast of North America, those were virtual right, those were remote, so to speak, but in a way they feel like these in-person connections because we're having having not one-on-one although some of them did end up in one-on-one conversations, but but they're they're more connected conversations Is, is there an exception to the rule in those types of cases, or is that a a third category or something?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think I don't think it's a category right. I think you can have remote. So I think I don't think it's a category right, I think you can have remote. So if you think about community building right, which is a lot of what we right this is what I've devoted I don't know how many hours a week to this building community. You can build community. The key to building a great community is creating shared experiences. Right, you can do it well. Remotely. You can also do it poorly in person.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:Right. So I don't know that I would categorize. I've seen some really effective remote shared experience things. I think we all kind of went through different cycles during the pandemic. I mean, I had a group of leaders that we were playing online trivia together, right, and nothing better than competing with each other to build shared experiences, right, that's why we have corporate softball teams and things like that. Right, it's about creating competitive. Shared experiences are very valuable, right, but at the same time, you can have an in person experience that nobody's talking to anybody, right, everybody's just like. There are no shared experiences.
Speaker 3:So I think, what? I wouldn't create a third category, but I think there's a way to do both really well, yeah, and I think you have to be. You know, you have to be somewhat. You're an architect, you have to be a great designer, right. And I think, if you think about in person how you design an experience, like how design summit, it's very intentional. We design it very intentionally so that people walk away with, wow, this is what I got out of that. And if all people walk away from summit and they say, oh, I met some great people, I'm like, so what? Like, you meet a lot of great people, you're getting ready to go to AIA, you'll meet a great people. That's a big sellout. If they don't walk away and they're like man, that session on whatever, wow, blew me away. If they don't have those kind of experiences that they walk away from, then we haven't done our job. And I think same thing goes for the mastermind groups or anything.
Speaker 3:I think even thinking about how you engage with your boss right, how you engage with your boss is an experience that you can design as an employee, so that maybe you're doing a remote check-in on things and how you you know, this is how I look at things sometimes is you can either send your boss a report ahead of time for a check-in meeting about what you've accomplished and then have a conversation about it, or you can walk them through a deck about here's where we're at, and you've left no room for any kind of shared experience. Right, the idea of like chit chat. Hey, did you just check? You know if your boss is from Kansas city? Hey, did you see what?
Speaker 3:The punter for Kansas city, right, Boom, right, like your boss is no longer looking at their phone while on a zoom call with you there. They pick out like oh yeah, oh, my God, man, like what Right, like whatever it is Right. And so I think, like the discipline of like kind of ice breaking and you know your boss should hang up from a zoom call with you, not just feeling fulfilled that they got the information they need, but like man, that dude's great, like I, like that guy Right.
Speaker 2:I like that guy.
Speaker 3:He's an up and comer, Like, if you think about it, I work with these multi-billion dollar organizations and they talk about someone being tapped as being a high potential employee, Right, An HPE or an HPT, high performance talent and they label these people in organizations in multibillion dollar companies a lot less so in tech person companies. And when you ask the executives like, why is that? And I've asked this question, why is that person a high potential talent? And they're like, oh, I mean person's fantastic and they've hit their numbers. And I'm like no one else hit their numbers. Oh, I mean, yeah, a thousand people hit their numbers. Okay, so what's the difference? And you quickly find out that it's a lot less factual. A lot of people put up numbers, right, A lot of people do that. What you start figuring out?
Speaker 1:is that it's?
Speaker 3:really these intangibles around their personality and how they approach people and what other people say about that person. Oh, he's so smart. Well, did you test his IQ? Is he smarter than the 10 other people in his cohort? Probably not, right. So there's this layer of feelings that gets wrapped around facts that determines who a high potential talent is in an organization, and you're finding that the people that do that really well are the ones that are excelling. And you can sit there and but I do great work, just because I don't play golf with the boss, I didn't get the promotion. It's like what you're saying is there is a predictable outcome If you play golf this is not an enigma, right?
Speaker 3:This is like I don't know how they got there. Oh, they play golf with the boss twice a month. Guess what? Play golf with the boss twice a month, like the formula is in front of you, right, it's not like some big secret yeah, well, yeah, I mean it's.
Speaker 2:It's the level of engagement you're what you're talking about. Part of what you're talking about is feelings, right? Oh, I, I feel like this person is a great guy or is whatever, and that comes from playing golf with the boss twice a month, or you know. Whatever it is, but it's a level of engagement that drives those feelings. And you mentioned Summit and, without you know, trying to seem too self-serving, I mean the way that our summit is designed, which is, if you need to know more about that, of course, just go to kpreadyco, or actually, the summit website is up now. We'll pull the URL for that. Aecsummitco, I believe, is the URL for that. But you said it's intentionally designed, and it is intentionally designed.
Speaker 2:I'm going, as, as you mentioned, to aia national here in a week as we record this, and it's intentionally designed. It's intentionally designed so that you spend several days sitting in chairs listening to people talk. What's going to be the takeaway from that? Well, I'm going to get some learning units. I'm going to hopefully hear some great speakers. Maybe I'll get some things to talk or think about. Maybe I'll derive something from these talks that I sit and listen to. You know, maybe I'll derive something from these, these talks that I sit and listen to. And, of course, then there's always the. You know, the value is in the, the corridors, the networking in the corridors.
Speaker 2:But the differentiator for summit is that the entire thing is designed around me having conversations with other people on these topics, where, together, we're engaging to come up with ideas and solutions to these things that we're talking about.
Speaker 2:That's vastly different and obviously, what we're betting on, what we're, the reason we're doing this so intentionally, is that that will be more engaging, it'll have a better impact and there'll be a feeling of accomplishment, one I feel like we accomplished something. You know, I sat there and I talked with eight other people at this table and I got to know them and we, we solved some problems together, you know, like playing trivia or or whatever. So, um, that intentionality around the way that things are designed so that they're next level, engaging and they drive those feelings we're getting into some psychology there and such, but but I, I, you know what you're saying um, we see this all the time and it does come back to how are we designing this to be engaging, to drive these feelings that are going to accelerate, fill in the blank, whatever it is right, whatever it is that our goal, the goal that we're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 3:No, it's so, it's. It's super interesting. Um, before the pandemic which I'm kicking them back up now I would host these private dinners, like super exclusive people flew in for my dinners. I would have a special like James Beard chef type of deal, like it was like very high end, 10 people, 10 people at the table, and I did this wild thing. Have you seen the? There's this thing that psychologists use. It's like a color wheel of emotions. I would look at that and say what feelings do I want people to have during this dinner?
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:And you can't just say happy, sad, fun Like those are just not, those aren't feelings right or they're too broad. Fun like those are just not, those aren't feelings right or they're too broad. So I'd pick three or four off the emotional wheel and say for this event, here's what I want people to feel. And everything I designed around it in detail was around that feel right, right and lots of fun. Things Like sometimes I'd put little, we'd have, I'd have puzzles out on the dinner table, like whatever it was, the selection of wine, like everything. There's lots of good wines out there, but I would care about the name of the wines and the story of the wine so that it lined up with the feelings I wanted. So highly orchestrated design.
Speaker 3:And a friend of mine was like dude, why are you like hacking people? And I'm like I'm not hacking people, I'm trying to bring them joy. Fundamentally I'm trying to, and you know joy takes lots of forms, right? Sometimes people are joyful because they feel intellectually inspired, because time, I want them to feel this, I want them to feel that and they can walk away saying that man, your dinner was fantastic, I felt X and it lines up with what you were trying to achieve, then they want to keep doing it. I mean I probably have 50 or a hundred requests right now to kick off my dinners again.
Speaker 3:I I mean I probably have 50 or 100 requests right now to kick off my dinners again. I'm like I don't have time, y'all and they're like what do you mean? You set up an event, right, and I'm like you don't know what I do behind the scenes, like the preparation that goes into this stuff to create a great experience. Because, money aside, most of these people, money is not the driver, it's their time. Like I have one friend flying on his private jet like that's expense, expense and time right away from his family to come hang out with one of my dinners.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it was interesting because one of the people that come came to my dinners. He said I loved your dinner idea. I started throwing my own dinners in new york city. I'm like how are they going? He's like they're not going as well. And I'm like well, what do you think? What did you do? He's like, oh, I've got a great chef, I've got a great space.
Speaker 3:So he followed the tactical playbook of what I did and I was like, yeah, but you didn't design it. Yeah, great scotch Check. Great food Check. Great menu Check. Did all those things Hit the checklist? I was like but what were you trying to emote? And he was like, what do you mean? I was like oh, you think I just put together a great menu and buy great booze. Like, is that what you think I do? And so was like what do you mean? I was like, oh, you think I just put together a great menu and buy great booze. Like, is that what you think I do? And so I think we can be more deliberate and intentional. As a remote worker, I mean, take 10 seconds longer to write a better Slack message, right, because guess what? That's maybe how your team is, or maybe that's how your team is viewing you Like. You're only as good as your last Slack message, so maybe add a couple sentences with an intention to emote something from the readers and the people that read your Slack message.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that comes down to perception, right? I mean what you were just talking about. I know we don't have time to go down that rabbit hole, but you're basically talking about high-level UX, right? User experience In the real world for your dinners. Perception is everything. Perception is reality, and so if you're being intentional and you're designing this whether it's your Slack message or it's your special dinner or whatever it is it makes a big difference.
Speaker 2:The LinkedIn posts that we've been talking about from KP Ready's LinkedIn profile talking about from KP Ready's LinkedIn profile Again, if you're not following him, go to LinkedIn and type in KP space ready, r-e-d-d-y and follow KP there. He posts a couple times a day. This one reads and as we're recording this on May 29th, it looks like if you scroll back to about May 28th, you'll find this post on KP's LinkedIn profile. It says remote equals work, in-person equals career. I get a ton of work done remotely because people are a huge distraction. I execute on my career in person.
Speaker 2:I think this pretty much holds true for everyone. This balance truly depends on what you are executing on. So, kp, thanks again for joining me today and unpacking this post. It's always fun to see what's behind the scene. What's the inspiration for these posts, and you know they're thought provoking. Sometimes they're stirring the pot, always informative, and I think this one is good advice for people wherever they are in their career. So appreciate the opportunity to sit down and unpack this and I'll see you and I'll see everybody else again next week.
Speaker 3:All right, thanks, jeff.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to another episode of KP Unpacked. You can connect with KP Ready today at kpreadyco that's K-P-R-E-D-D-Yco, and additionally follow him on LinkedIn at wwwlinkedincom. Slash IN slash KP Ready Until next time.