EP26: Lessons from a Later-in-Life Lead Dad

Interview with Jay Lauf / Thinker on the Future of Work, Reformed Daily Commuter

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Jay Lauf is the co-founder and president of Charter, a news site going deep on the future of work. He’s had a great career in magazines and media. He was the chairman and publisher of Quartz, the publisher of The Atlantic and the publisher of Wired. But for 20 years, the constant was his daily commute: he was veteran of Metro North, the train that took him from Fairfield, Conn, to New York City. It was a two-plus hour commute just one way. It got so bad that he preferred flying far away to sitting on that train to go into the office. Covid changed all that. At home with his wife and two daughters, he found the joys of being a LeadDad, getting time back after years of commuting. It changed his view on work and parenting. He’s never going back to the daily commute. But more broadly, he’s using that experience to influence the conversation on what work will look like going forward. Listen to what we should do be productive and happy people and workers.

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Transcript

00;00;05;12 - 00;00;23;06
Paul Sullivan
I'm Paul Sullivan, your host on the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, sublime, strange and silly aspects of being a dad in a world where men were the primary parents often feel that they have to hide, or at least not talk about the rules. One thing I know from personal experience is being a dad is not a traditional role for men.

00;00;23;11 - 00;00;44;00
Paul Sullivan
Parenting is so often left to mothers or paid caregivers. But here at the Company of dads, our goal is to shake all that off and create a community for fathers who have stepped up to be lead dad and other dads who want to learn from them. Today my guest is Jay Lauf. He is a co-founder and president of charter, a new site going deep on the future of work.

00;00;44;02 - 00;01;06;06
Paul Sullivan
He had a great career in magazines and media. He was the chairman and publisher of quartz, the publisher of The Atlantic and the publisher of wired. He was also a 20 year veteran of Metro-North, the commuter train that took him from Fairfield, Connecticut to New York City, where he worked the two plus hour commute one way. It got to a point where he preferred flying far away to sitting on that train to go into the office.

00;01;06;11 - 00;01;27;09
Paul Sullivan
So many lost hours spent commuting. Covid changed all that. And at home with his wife and two daughters, he found the joys of being a dad getting so much time back. After years of commuting and that experience changed his view on work and parenting. Jay, welcome to the Company of Dads podcast.

00;01;27;11 - 00;01;30;02
Jay Lauf
Thank you, Paul, and excited to be here. Glad to be here.

00;01;30;04 - 00;01;38;19
Paul Sullivan
Well, let's talk commute. You know, guy who did this alone? Did you have a seat that was yours? Did you get on every day and like that was that was your seat right there.

00;01;38;21 - 00;02;01;01
Jay Lauf
Oh, yeah. Yeah. When I first started out, you know, I tend to be a cynic at times. And that's when I first started to get on the platform. And you see these guys like the, you know, men and women actually with the wide stance and the elbows out, like at their spot, knowing exactly where the doors would open and, you know, would rush onto the seats and I'd roll my eyes and think, man, these people are wildly intense.

00;02;01;01 - 00;02;11;12
Jay Lauf
And after about a month, I was I was making sure I was there five minutes ahead of them so I could deploy my wide stance and get my seat. So yes, I 100% was that person.

00;02;11;14 - 00;02;26;20
Paul Sullivan
My wife tells the story of how I for years commuted, in the city before she moved her firm out to Connecticut. And one day she just sat down in a seat and a guy came up to her and said, that's my seat. And she looked around and there, you know, the train where we live and you can.

00;02;26;20 - 00;02;37;17
Paul Sullivan
And the train stops here, so you have tons of seats. We looked around at like 20 empty seats, you see, they say, are you serious? Yeah, that's my seat. I said, well, not today, sir.

00;02;37;19 - 00;02;54;29
Jay Lauf
That was not me, by the way. Just for for your listeners. That I would not have done that, but I definitely learned that if you weren't careful, you would end up wedged in that, center seat or some other thing. You also want the front. The lead car, on the way in, for sure. Just a faster exit out of the tunnel.

00;02;54;29 - 00;02;58;10
Jay Lauf
If Grand Central than, the third or fourth or fifth car.

00;02;58;12 - 00;03;14;05
Paul Sullivan
100%. You say you were a trained pro, you know, 20 years of this. What? When you look back on it, any fond memories or memories? Was there anything about the train that helped you be more efficient or to organize your life in some way?

00;03;14;07 - 00;03;47;07
Jay Lauf
Yeah, well, it was interesting. When I stopped doing the commute. I had wondered this for a long time and did find it at first, but it has since shed it, which was the kind of the unwinding time or just the transition time. Particularly on the ride home, from just the intensity. Go go go go go of, you know, work and meetings, you know, every minute of the day to, you know, walking in the door, you know, having that hour and a half to, sort of decompress a little bit, clean up the inbox and so on.

00;03;47;10 - 00;04;04;10
Jay Lauf
I think was was useful. The longer I commuted, the less useful that was. But, I actually, I to, to sort of elaborate on that, you know, it was 20 years. So when I first started commuting, it was really pre, wifi, internet ubiquity and so on the way in the morning. This persisted all the way through 20 years.

00;04;04;10 - 00;04;22;23
Jay Lauf
I really loved the, the opportunity to sort of wake up, you know, read the news, set up your day, think about what the meetings were. You know, just sort of prep yourself for the day on the train ride in. That never changed. It was a paper process, you know, in the, in the first few years and became more of a digital process in the way back.

00;04;22;25 - 00;04;52;21
Jay Lauf
What I found is that that dynamic really shifted things on the return trip, because on the return trip, in those first few years, again, without the access to to the internet, you know, I you'd read a book or, you know, you would do something that was more in the vein of pleasure reading. What I found is the minute you had a device in your hands that, connected to your email or chat or whatever it was, you know, you're in a panic the entire ride back, just attending to that, you know, answering back and forth, conversations.

00;04;52;24 - 00;05;01;06
Jay Lauf
You know, the train could have gone all the way to Montreal, and I wouldn't have even noticed. You know, for the last, you know, the last probably seven, eight, ten years of that trip.

00;05;01;08 - 00;05;17;10
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. And I think about that because and on the one hand, it could have been so efficient, but it's not like you had to work. You worked a shorter day in the office. It's not like you could tack on those, you know, four hours of your commute and say, look, I only need to be in the office for five, five hours.

00;05;17;10 - 00;05;21;06
Paul Sullivan
That just made your day longer, correct? Your workday longer.

00;05;21;09 - 00;05;41;19
Jay Lauf
Absolutely. Which is the thing we can talk about, because I think that's a big perception shift that has changed for me. But. Right, exactly. I would always try to as the, you know, the entire time I was doing that commute, I was the leader of something. And so I'd always want to sort of set the tone, be the first person in the office, one just again, to set myself up a little bit, but also just to make sure people knew you know, that, you know, there were expectations here.

00;05;41;19 - 00;06;09;02
Jay Lauf
So I would try to get into into my seat by 8:00 am most mornings. So that means obviously leaving on a, you know, six ish train, to do that. And. Right, exactly. Then between the meeting schedules, the desire for your team to have FaceTime, etc., you know, you're finding that you're leaving the office at six, getting on a 630 train home, and, you know, home by 830 makes for a and working, you know, that entire time, makes for a really long day.

00;06;09;02 - 00;06;10;00
Jay Lauf
Yeah. That's right.

00;06;10;03 - 00;06;27;18
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. I mean, we're talking 14.5 hours a day. And I know, you know, the future of work is something that charter is really, leaning in on when you look at that now, like how and how abruptly, you know, Covid has shifted our perceptions around work and then office, you know, and I know you guys don't even have offices.

00;06;27;18 - 00;06;57;26
Paul Sullivan
You you're all sort of spread out around the country. When you look back at how quickly, you know, decades and decades, it goes back to the 1950s, 1940s, that commute when when this part of Connecticut was, was built out, people just did it. They didn't think they had a choice, sort of 70 plus years of doing this. Did you ever imagine that it could change, so, so abruptly and so totally that that the commute would be questioned or that the efficiency of the commute would come into question?

00;06;57;29 - 00;07;24;14
Jay Lauf
Yeah. I mean, the efficiency of the commute was in question for a long time. And yeah, I think a lot of these questions were sort of bubbling under the surface for a long time. So I think subconsciously, yeah, I did suspect that there was a way to reveal what's been revealed. It really took the pandemic. To your point, I think to, you know, we talk a lot about we'd steal a phrase from, Linda Gratton, you know, who is an expert on this stuff that, you know, everything on froze.

00;07;24;14 - 00;07;43;02
Jay Lauf
You know, our way of doing things was frozen pre-pandemic, and the pandemic thought everything out. And part of what you know, I'm working on right now with charter is to ensure that before things refreeze, we shuffle the deck, that we change things around so we don't just refreeze back to what we were doing before. But sure. Yeah, I, you know, for a lot of years, it's interesting.

00;07;43;02 - 00;08;01;27
Jay Lauf
I just put a LinkedIn post on this. I used to say to myself, I am going to at least every other week, maybe once a month, take a Friday and work from the library up here in Connecticut to get heads down work done to avoid all the interruptions that happened during the day. And to, you know, preserve myself on a Friday for the commute.

00;08;02;00 - 00;08;18;11
Jay Lauf
And I, I always felt guilty when I did do that because for all the reasons you might imagine, you know, you're not in the office. You're missing FaceTime. You all your colleagues are there. But I sat next to Beth Comstock, who used to be the, chief marketing officer at GE during the the Jeff Immelt kind of heyday.

00;08;18;11 - 00;08;33;07
Jay Lauf
She's a it's just really one of the the one of the, you know, all star CMO of all time, and just business people of all time. And I sat next to her at an event, maybe back in 2010 or something. And she told me she did the same thing. So I live in Fairfield, Connecticut.

00;08;33;07 - 00;08;46;24
Jay Lauf
GE was based up here, and she said, yeah, know I go. She went to the same library I did, which felt very validating to me at that time as a woman who, who's sitting on the board of Nike and other things and who was doing the same thing. But the truth is, I could never I never actually did it.

00;08;46;24 - 00;09;03;04
Jay Lauf
So I said to myself, I'm going to do this, you know, once a once every other week, once a month. And, you know, I probably three times a year did it. So I knew it was there. I knew and when I did do it all, the thing, all the benefits were there. I would knock out so much important work I would do incredible thinking.

00;09;03;04 - 00;09;22;13
Jay Lauf
And guess what? Oh, wow. I was home for dinner with the family, and felt, you know, and would come in, you know, recharged on Monday versus resentful on Monday. But, yeah, I just I could never bake it in. And now that, the pandemic, you know, thought out that thinking, I would never go back to not doing that.

00;09;22;18 - 00;09;37;08
Paul Sullivan
I mean, why do you think that was? Because, as you said, I mean, you were a leader of things, you know, during that that commute, you you weren't, you know, the middle manager. You weren't the person right out of college getting the job. You were setting the tone. So if you did it, it would have been, okay.

00;09;37;08 - 00;09;57;01
Paul Sullivan
You know, you know, nobody's telling you, you know, you can't do it. What do you think it was when you sort of analyze it and look back that kept you from doing something that the few times you did it, you realized it was more efficient for your work, and it gave you more time to be with your your wife and your two daughters.

00;09;57;03 - 00;10;30;28
Jay Lauf
Yeah. It's a it's a really, really good question I should probably spend more time on because, you know, part of it is probably my own neuroses around a neurosis around, you know, what I would have thought was the value of, you know, just being there of the physically being there, to be present to answer, you know, ad hoc questions that pop up or to participate in, you know, serendipitous brainstorms or just or again, just to I think just, you know, I also had an old school way of thinking that was, you know, if you weren't there, you know, who knows what you're doing?

00;10;31;00 - 00;10;57;07
Jay Lauf
And probably a lack of trust to a degree across not everybody on the team, obviously. Probably not even the majority of the team, but a handful of people who, if they decided, okay, on Fridays, I'll do that too, that are they really going to get stuff done, which is really, you know, hypocritical and silly of me because we can also talk about I had long experimented with people who worked remotely for me, and were among the highest performers.

00;10;57;07 - 00;11;13;29
Jay Lauf
One example I'll give you and and we can I think it's worth talking about others is there was a woman on my team at wired back in the arts who was our top one of our top sellers out of the LA office, working on accounts in LA. And her husband, did a residency, was a was a heart surgeon, and he did a residency in New York.

00;11;13;29 - 00;11;28;03
Jay Lauf
So she called me up to say, listen, I don't know if I can if you have a spot for me in New York, but I may need to resign or look for another, you know, another position within Condé Nast. And she was so good. And luckily, the way that the team was, was constructed, I was able to find a spot for her in New York.

00;11;28;03 - 00;11;46;17
Jay Lauf
So she does two years in New York while her husband is doing the residency kicks ass. There is one of our best salespeople in New York, and then comes into my office and says, I think this is really it. I'm really gonna have to resign. My husband just got a partnership and a heart surgery, group in Las Vegas, which is not exactly a hub for, you know, ad agencies or advertising.

00;11;46;17 - 00;12;02;07
Jay Lauf
Right. So she said, you know, I I'm sorry to go, but I think I'm going to have to go because we were just gonna make this move. And I said, hang on a second. Can you handle the southwest territory from Las Vegas? And she said, yeah. So I fired our rep firm and she covered, you know, part of Southern California.

00;12;02;07 - 00;12;23;00
Jay Lauf
Texas. I'll forget the other, you know, make Colorado and the other major markets. And guess what? In about an eight months, tripled the revenue that we got from those areas. And she joined me over at the Atlantic in the same set up in the same situation. One of the Atlantic magazine's best sales reps was based in Las Vegas, which is counterintuitive, but that showed me way back when, very early on, that it didn't matter.

00;12;23;00 - 00;12;32;00
Jay Lauf
If you have a high quality person working from anywhere, they're going to get the job done. And it didn't matter that she was in an office in LA or New York or anywhere Chicago didn't matter.

00;12;32;02 - 00;12;55;07
Paul Sullivan
I think the interesting part here, though, and this is something that at the company dads were really focused on, is that if you have, a senior executive versus a senior female executive in this, this case here wants to have a family. You have to, you know, if she doesn't have a lead, dad who has some level of flexibility, who doesn't have an employer who understands it, you're going to lose that person.

00;12;55;07 - 00;13;15;28
Paul Sullivan
And, you know, you talked about being fearful of working from the library because, you know, you had a few employees who are not going to do their job. That's the case everywhere. It's I think now in 2022, some very passionate about is really focusing on those high performers, like a woman like you just spoke of. She would have just laughed and you would have lost something, somebody who was so amazing.

00;13;16;02 - 00;13;33;05
Paul Sullivan
So even before Covid, you had the sense as a publisher like, okay, I need to accommodate her. And now there are a bunch of guys here who cannot be left to their own devices. They need to be at the desk. They need to be. But your lowest performing employees are never going to leave because nobody wants to hire them.

00;13;33;05 - 00;13;50;19
Paul Sullivan
They have no place to go. It's these high performers. And I just wonder what you think about, you know, in this moment as people are coming back to offices or not going back to offices or being ordered into offices. If you're an employee at Uber, you know, what is it going to mean, you know, for those high performers?

00;13;50;19 - 00;14;00;27
Paul Sullivan
And why do you think, some leaders of companies still have that perception that people, you know, need to be in an office to, to do the job?

00;14;00;29 - 00;14;23;21
Jay Lauf
Yeah. Well, I think again, when you're, when you're in leadership, you know, you're, you're assailed with all kinds of, inputs and, you know, and fears and concerns and some of that is never going to go away exactly around performance. But I think one of the things we write a lot about at charter, and that's really shifted my thinking is I think it's really important to do a couple of things.

00;14;23;21 - 00;14;45;28
Jay Lauf
One is measure outcomes, not ours. And therefore you need to make the, implicit explicit. So you need to be really clear with everybody in every kind of a role what the expectation is for the job. And be and managers need to be explicit about what they will measure and what they expect and what the norms are.

00;14;46;00 - 00;15;15;13
Jay Lauf
And if you do that, it alleviates the need to, to think about whether somebody is, you know, within your line of sight or, you know, tethered to their desk or not. Right. And I think actually has a chance to your point, to, to, to have us focus more on high performers and, you know, and even in some ways we'll be able to, you know, to measure lower performers, more objectively than we might have in a, in a situation where ambient they're, you know, in your line of sight, you're like, okay, good.

00;15;15;13 - 00;15;33;19
Jay Lauf
That person's working away. They must be doing something. You know, that dumbs it all down in terms of, I think, my own thinking and approach, there was obviously a lot more nuanced than that ever was. And then I think there's a whole host of leaders who just, you know, themselves love being in the office and in the thick of it every single minute.

00;15;33;21 - 00;15;55;16
Jay Lauf
And it's just the way they are and the way they operate. But they need to I think you need to realize that, especially at larger companies, you've got thousands of employees with a thousand different, you know, home, you know, situations or life situations that may not, either, be able to, you know, do what you do in terms of, of time in the office.

00;15;55;21 - 00;16;03;26
Jay Lauf
It may not thrive in that situation either, in the same way that you do. So, you know, we can again, we can we can talk more about that if you'd like.

00;16;03;27 - 00;16;24;13
Paul Sullivan
But, I mean, do you think employers have, any real rational reason to force in the majority of their workers back into an office? I mean, obviously, if you're, in hospitality, you need to be the avian, a restaurant worker. You need to be there. But, you know, my daughter's best friend, both of her parents are doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

00;16;24;13 - 00;16;47;25
Paul Sullivan
And, I mean, they're saving, literally saving people from cancer. And both of them work at least one day a week from home because they, you know, you're not always same people from cancer. Sometimes you're doing, you know, paperwork. And I just wonder if, you know, we've had these, these two years where people have either proven that they can do this because they're highly motivated and they know how to do their job wherever or, or they've struggled.

00;16;47;25 - 00;17;03;15
Paul Sullivan
And that's a different issue. But, you know, because we had this, this pause or as you call it, this, this unfreezing, I mean, is there any real justification for, you know, some of the firms that have really, you know, drawn a line in the Santa suit, you have to come back in?

00;17;03;17 - 00;17;33;22
Jay Lauf
Well, you know, I it's I think that's hard to answer because, you know, roles are different, you know, the companies and what they're doing, are different. So, you know, a doctor has a very different need and rhythm of work, from a marketing person, for example. But I think I think a better way to think about it is that the what the research seems to be showing, and a lot of the best thinkers on this will tell you, is that there are definitely advantages to co-location, that can't and should not be ignored.

00;17;33;24 - 00;17;51;04
Jay Lauf
But, hybrid is probably the way to go. So, you know, I know this is an overused term. We're talking about remote work hybrid. But the one thing I'm kind of sort of settling in on is that I don't think, you know, come and go as you please is exactly the right way to do it. All remote is probably not ideal.

00;17;51;09 - 00;18;12;19
Jay Lauf
Except for in the situation. Like I just described. Somebody moved to Albuquerque who's like, a really high performer and is not going to be able to come into your office in Chicago, you know? Right. You live with that. But I think for teams that are in and around, an office hub, the idea is to to be really, again, intentional and prescriptive about which days you will be in the office and why you're going to be there.

00;18;12;21 - 00;18;39;19
Jay Lauf
And so shifting your thinking from the office being a place where work is done to it's a tool for how work gets done. And so Tuesday through Thursday are the days that you're going to have, you know, live in person brainstorms and, you know, team building sessions and one on ones, you know, that that need to to, you know, to be, done together, you know, all team standups, that kind of thing.

00;18;39;22 - 00;19;06;21
Jay Lauf
And then on these other days, we were all going to work remotely. And I think if you set that those parameters, you're going to get the best of both worlds. You're going to get, you know, the benefits of co-location because everybody's in the office and they know why they're there and they're excited to be there. And then on these other days where you can offer flexibility, the people who need want the flexibility for everything from caregiving to actually getting heads down work like I was describing, I was able to do in the library.

00;19;06;24 - 00;19;12;20
Jay Lauf
They can do that. That's that's where I think this all starts to land at some point. Yeah.

00;19;12;23 - 00;19;29;19
Paul Sullivan
You know, this is great. Let's let's kind of pivot a bit and talk a bit about about children, about about your children and about, you know, the children of people who who work for you during that, that 20 year commute. You know, I was doing a podcast the other day and for the first time and I probably done a couple dozen of these at this point.

00;19;29;25 - 00;19;44;06
Paul Sullivan
For the first time, one of my daughters walked in, the door behind me. And I don't know how that has happened. But we all remember this famous moment, where this guy was on the BBC. His son comes in and his wife dives on the kid, and, like, really?

00;19;44;08 - 00;19;45;04
Jay Lauf
I think it was the nanny.

00;19;45;04 - 00;20;19;01
Paul Sullivan
Maybe. Maybe Idaho, like. But. But they say, like, pulls the kid out, like, you know. Yeah. Like you're either watching Greatest Catch or something like that, that they got this 600 pound tuna and the kid goes out. And the thing is, that happens all the time now. And this is, you know, the power of hindsight. But when you look back at, you know, the different leadership roles, you know, how did you, how did you manage people who had, you know, needs around, you know, caregiving around their own children, whether they were, a mom and a, high performer or a dad and a high performer, a dad who's who needed to to

00;20;19;01 - 00;20;26;20
Paul Sullivan
help out, how did you, you know, handle some of those situations then. And when you look back, you know, how might you have handled the differently.

00;20;26;22 - 00;20;42;13
Jay Lauf
Yeah. You know, I have to say I'm pretty proud of my track record there. I was always, I think, an empathic, you know, parent myself who, you know, I was not I was never one of these fathers is like, oh, thank God, I'm going to get on the train or get out of the house. You're like, these kids are driving me crazy.

00;20;42;13 - 00;21;11;17
Jay Lauf
I craved time with these kids, with my kids, and missed them terribly when I was doing those 14 hour days. But yeah, I, you know, there's probably a better way to do this in the sense of, you know, not limiting it just to parental care giving necessarily, but really any time, you know, even even in my, my most, obnoxious days of, you know, getting in the office early and leaving late and making sure people knew, you know, that there was face time if somebody had a caregiving need.

00;21;11;17 - 00;21;26;20
Jay Lauf
I just, you know, the the answer was clear. Go do it. Like that's your priority. Do it. You know, if you've got an ailing father and you need to take care of them for a few days, take the time off. I would. You know, if the company didn't offer the amount of time off, I would let him do it.

00;21;26;20 - 00;21;49;06
Jay Lauf
Not till you know the the the bean counters that this person took extra time off. If you had a, you know, if you had a child's concert or you needed to do something, just go do it like that. That to me was just a no brainer. Just I think, as a human being, you know, those to me, were always priorities, both for me and I'm sure for these folks.

00;21;49;09 - 00;22;16;14
Jay Lauf
I tell a story where when I got a I. And I'm going to leave out the brand I was at and the person I was reporting to for probably obvious reasons. But I got a new job as a, a leader in the, you know, on the sales and marketing side. And I pulled together this incredible dinner of CMO, that was tied to their annual youth gathering, an annual CMO gathering, and, in New York for a dinner, we got one of our all star journalists to headline this dinner.

00;22;16;16 - 00;22;33;06
Jay Lauf
And so there were like 30, 40, 50 CMO at the center that was hosted by my company. And it happened to end up coinciding with the night that my daughter had a concert. And so I said to my boss at the time, who was the president of the company, I was, I was a publisher. I'm not going to be able to make it to this dinner.

00;22;33;08 - 00;22;54;25
Jay Lauf
And he said, what? What are you talking about? Like, you put it together, first of all, and like, all your top clients are going to be there. And I said, yeah, no, I know, but my my daughter has this concert and I don't I don't miss those. And so fast forward, you know, we had he he attended. He was going to attend anyway I had a couple of my senior salespeople there attend and I didn't.

00;22;54;27 - 00;23;09;28
Jay Lauf
And so at the start of the dinner, this the president of the company got up to say, you know, welcome, everybody. And Sanjay did the invite and but he can't be here tonight because his daughter has a concert. And apparently he told me afterward, I got a standing ovation from the CMO. I was in the room.

00;23;10;00 - 00;23;12;04
Paul Sullivan
For you not being there for you, picking your not being.

00;23;12;04 - 00;23;30;15
Jay Lauf
There for me, deciding to go to that, not to be there. And that was that was just such a stark, seminal one for this person to admit it to me, to say that to me versus like still haranguing me, that I didn't go to this thing, but to recognize that and to recognize that these high powered people also felt the same way.

00;23;30;15 - 00;23;41;06
Jay Lauf
Just that really validated, a way of life that I had developed, all along the way, way of working, that that I think made me more that more empathic leader.

00;23;41;08 - 00;24;11;11
Paul Sullivan
It's interesting. And I love that story. Dana Suskind, who's, surgeon at the University of Chicago, just came out with a book called Parent Nation. And her first husband, who died, young, unfortunate, was a famous surgeon, like, you know, the surgeon of all surgeons teaching people. And he had something in his calendar, that would say, you know, private meeting with, so-and-so, head of the department, and it seemed, you know, this is really important, like, you know, don't don't mess with this.

00;24;11;14 - 00;24;34;27
Paul Sullivan
And one of his residents one day saw him on the baseball field, watching his son play. Play ball, resident, you know, pretty great. You know, creative guy went up to him and said, you know, doctor, so and so, is this a high level meeting that you're having with, you know, so and so and Epidemiol and the guy, you know, this famous surgeon kind of looks at him shocked and he says, yeah, yeah, you know, but don't tell anyone.

00;24;35;00 - 00;24;53;03
Paul Sullivan
Don't worry, it'll be our secret. And you see like and that was, you know, in the 80s or late 80s or the 90s, you see it sort of, you know, iteratively we're getting better. Like, you know, that guy had to fake it. You you could at least say, you know, my daughter has a concert in my, in my dreams.

00;24;53;03 - 00;25;08;25
Paul Sullivan
You know, if you have really good workers, I would love somebody to say, you know what? I need to take the next hour. And just go take a walk with my daughter. She had a hard day at school. Was going to take a walk. I make it some ice cream, but, I'll log back on an hour.

00;25;08;25 - 00;25;25;17
Paul Sullivan
Hour and a half, and, you know, don't worry, I don't have any plan tonight. I'll finish everything up at ten. Do you think we're at that moment where, you know, the worker parent can be that level of honesty? Or should we just be happy that we can say, hey, I got to go to a baseball game and you get a free pass for that?

00;25;25;19 - 00;25;46;15
Jay Lauf
Yeah. No, I hope so. I think I think we're getting closer and closer to that. And I think the reason is if you look at the data around that, you know, there's a lot of talk about the great resignation. The numbers are true. I think it's something like, you know, 4 million people have a month for, you know, the latest since February or something have, you know, have left their jobs.

00;25;46;18 - 00;26;04;24
Jay Lauf
And the number of people who are considering leaving their jobs remains incredibly, historically very high. And if you look at the number one and two reasons which are neck and neck for doing that, one is pay no, no surprise, but the other is flexibility. With flexibility, often leading people want flexibility for the very reason that you're saying.

00;26;04;26 - 00;26;22;06
Jay Lauf
And part of that flexibility is the ability to work from anywhere. Or at least that's the other point, I guess, Paul, about, you know, going back to the office, people are not actually a lot of people are not resistant to going back to the office, per se. It's going back to the office, you know, 9 to 5 or 9 to 6 or whatever the hours are.

00;26;22;06 - 00;26;43;11
Jay Lauf
It's without having the flexibility to do exactly what you were just talking about. Now, with a commute like mine, you know, sure, the walk is going to be delayed by two hour. I mean, I can regale with stories of, you know, having to rush to to take care of my dad, who was, you know, in his 90s and ended up in the emergency room and take me 3.5 hours to actually get to the emergency room from the minute I got the call.

00;26;43;14 - 00;27;07;17
Jay Lauf
But I think having that flexibility is becoming a more important thing if if not, because it is the right thing to do, it's is an unnecessary thing to do because you're going to lose people. People are going to leave. They're going to go to greener pastures that allow that flexibility. And so the competition for quality talent who, you know, when they're number one expectations, that flexibility, I think is going to remain acute and probably change what the dynamic is here.

00;27;07;19 - 00;27;22;06
Jay Lauf
And I think I think it's a great thing, you know, to to tell another story from my own life in, in with charter, the current thing that we're doing. And as you said, the teams are all remote. We're all on slack all day and you know what people are doing on slack? You or you're in a meeting, you're you're available or whatever it is.

00;27;22;08 - 00;27;39;11
Jay Lauf
I very intentionally because I could not do this for 20 years. I have dinner with my wife, who luckily still likes me. The loving was it was a given because we've been together a long time. But it turns out we still like each other. I have dinner with her every night from about 6 to 715.

00;27;39;11 - 00;27;56;10
Jay Lauf
We like to eat early, and I could never do that before. And I put on slack, like dinner with Dawn. And it's. And it means don't try to ping me between 6 and 730 because I'll be doing dinner and doing the dishes and playing some music and engaging with my wife. And then, yeah, sure, I go back to the office a lot of nights because there's a lot to do on a startup.

00;27;56;17 - 00;27;56;25
Paul Sullivan
Right.

00;27;56;26 - 00;28;02;18
Jay Lauf
But I, I'm, I'm really clear about what that hour and a half is in the fact that I'm going to take it. I don't care what everybody else is doing at that point.

00;28;02;25 - 00;28;22;27
Paul Sullivan
But unlike you know, with you, when you're a publisher of various magazines and you would go to the library, which you didn't go to, here, you're really setting the right tone because you're being very open about it. Like, oh, that's right. If Jay is taking this, you know, hour and a half, to have dinner and to talk, but you're not eating for now.

00;28;22;28 - 00;28;43;03
Paul Sullivan
You're talking with your wife, you're spending time in there, you're discussing your days, or you're talking about your children or where you want to eat, and all kinds of things that are essential to being a human. I think, you know, in you putting it down like that, I think what you're really doing is giving your employees, you know, license to do the same.

00;28;43;03 - 00;28;50;04
Paul Sullivan
And I go, okay, precisely. Jay can do it. I can do it. He's not gonna yell at me. He did it. You know, this is how we're wired.

00;28;50;06 - 00;29;10;25
Jay Lauf
That's right. Yeah, yeah. No, that's. I think that's exactly right. I think what we do really well, the companies need to adopt as well as, like, have clear stretches of the day that are designed for meetings, so that you've got chunks of hours where that where people can be flexible. So we're experimenting with successfully thus far. No, no meeting Fridays.

00;29;10;25 - 00;29;31;04
Jay Lauf
So we don't have any internal meetings on Fridays. It frees people up for, all these things that we're talking about, like we haven't said, like meetings are from 10 to 4. You know, on the other days of the week. But it's pretty clear when the standing meetings are and so that people can build the kind of flexibility and and you're right, I'm trying to model it with that, with that dinner, that dinner slack.

00;29;31;06 - 00;29;38;18
Paul Sullivan
So so let's talk about your own, Covid experience, you know, court cells and 2008. Correct?

00;29;38;20 - 00;29;38;28
Jay Lauf
Yes.

00;29;38;28 - 00;30;02;14
Paul Sullivan
That's right. And then you stay on, for a couple of years and in different roles. But ultimately in 2020, during Covid, you leave, you leave and you're going to explore other opportunities. But but you're leaving when you're you're at home, there's no more commute. Nobody's commuting the trains. You know, those parking lot, that used to have millions of dollars of fancy cars in them are empty.

00;30;02;16 - 00;30;18;21
Paul Sullivan
And what was that adjustment like for you? Because, as you said, you know, your wife is there, but your your daughters are there because, you know, I think one was in college, was live in New York, but nobody wanted to be there. You want to come home and have a little bit of space? You don't want to be in that 500 square foot New York City, apartment.

00;30;18;21 - 00;30;32;05
Paul Sullivan
So what was that moment like for you as the world paused or froze, as you say? And you were kind of thinking, This is this is kind of nice not to have to do this commute anymore.

00;30;32;07 - 00;30;59;12
Jay Lauf
Yeah. You know, I that the first thing I'll say and I don't say this performative Lee and I don't say this lightly, what really came clear to me in that moment was the level of, but just a sense of gratefulness and just, you know, what privilege really is? I quit before Covid, so I did, December 31st, 2019 was my last day at, quartz with the very intentional, plan to take a year's sabbatical, in 2020.

00;30;59;12 - 00;31;22;25
Jay Lauf
So I had all kinds of glamorous travel plans, and as you can imagine, you know, blew up. I did get a trip to the Caymans in, in February, but, or January and then. Yeah. So I was I was just getting into the rhythm of not working for the first time since I was 15, basically. And, and trying to, you know, reboot old habits and get eight hours of sleep and stuff, and then, boom, all of a sudden, right, I found myself with my two adult daughters home.

00;31;22;28 - 00;31;48;05
Jay Lauf
And, you know, again, I'm sheepish about saying this because so many people have had a horrific, time during the pandemic. For me, the fact that it coincided with intention to free up my time and my mental and emotional space to explore other things, and that my two daughters walked right into that space. I mean, it couldn't have been more, you know, fortuitous for me.

00;31;48;07 - 00;32;13;06
Jay Lauf
So I went from never being home for dinner, you know, Monday through Friday to not only being home, but like cooking dinner together, eating it together and, you know, playing cards afterwards or whatever for, you know, for six months. And it was just it was incredible. It was magic. A whole host of things like that, that just that just seemed to really work out well for me.

00;32;13;08 - 00;32;21;19
Jay Lauf
Yeah. So it's you know, I just, to this day, I'm just so I'm grateful for, you know, all of all of that.

00;32;21;22 - 00;32;49;27
Paul Sullivan
What was it like, like, for them, you know, what was it like for everyone to, to be, you know, it can either go 1 or 2 ways. It didn't your way. Fortunately, with with the positive way you all ended up, you know, still liking each other. But what was it like to have that moment that nobody would have expected that you would have, that you'd have, you know, your adult children home and be together in a way that, you know, you might have had, you know, some summer vacation or something like that when they were ten and eight or something.

00;32;49;27 - 00;32;56;20
Paul Sullivan
What was it you just delve into that, that feeling? How did it feel to to as you said, you know, recapture some of that time?

00;32;56;23 - 00;33;18;15
Jay Lauf
Yeah. I mean, it just felt it felt you just magic in, in so many ways that I'd wake up in the morning and come downstairs just like in my heart would fill up because this office that I'm. I'm sitting in now that you you see me, they don't. You can hear me in this office. My oldest daughter, who has a, you know, as a great job in public radio, took this over and was in it.

00;33;18;15 - 00;33;36;21
Jay Lauf
You know, she was in it before me. Like I would come downstairs and she's already in here working, you know, and we'd both laugh about it. And, you know, she would raise me about, you know, taking over the family, you know, the family business and, you know, all of that. So it was just, it was.

00;33;36;25 - 00;33;49;12
Jay Lauf
That's where I found out my wife and I still like each other because, you know, we didn't see each other a lot during those 20 years in a lot of ways, because we're taking care of the kids that, again, we were taking care of the aging parent. So, you know, I got to reconnect with my wife as well.

00;33;49;12 - 00;34;09;05
Jay Lauf
My wife and I would go on a hike a minimum once a week, sometimes twice a week, to little corners of Connecticut that we'd never been in, ever didn't even know existed. We go for 3 or 4 hour hikes and then like an afternoon dinner. So we connected a lot. And then my youngest daughter, who was in college, I felt pretty sorry for because she, you know, she had her college year sort of blown up.

00;34;09;07 - 00;34;25;17
Jay Lauf
Also is, among the funniest people I know. And so, you know, she had me in stitches all the time. We were doing things together, that were just so much fun. We she she would do cocktails on Wednesday night. She's not even a drinker. Didn't know how to make a cocktail. She just make stuff up on Wednesday nights.

00;34;25;19 - 00;34;42;20
Jay Lauf
We got it. We got, sticking poke tattoos together. I've never had a tattoo in, you know, in my 50 plus years. And my daughter said, let's get tattoos, dad, one day, because we're a board, you know, at home and so I have, I have a tattoo on my arm that I. That is self-inflicted. I put that on myself.

00;34;42;24 - 00;34;44;15
Paul Sullivan
What? What it what is it? It describe it.

00;34;44;16 - 00;34;49;17
Jay Lauf
It's a Roman numeral. It's a Roman numeral three, representing my three girls, my daughters and my wife.

00;34;49;20 - 00;34;50;22
Paul Sullivan
Okay.

00;34;50;24 - 00;35;08;03
Jay Lauf
You know, I, I never got a tattoo for tons of reasons. Among them, you know, you never know what you want to put on your body. Well, I didn't care about. That's like actually doing them yourself is really painful. I bet an artist would have done this lickety split without any, without any pain. But in any case, I mean, you know, we just we got to do.

00;35;08;03 - 00;35;27;05
Jay Lauf
And we got to be creative, I guess, is the way to say all of that. It opened up a whole creative, aspect of my relationship with these three people who mean more to me than anything in the world. That I just that was squeezed out of the, you know, the other the other life rhythm.

00;35;27;08 - 00;35;54;21
Paul Sullivan
And then, if I had the timeline correct, you know, after really kind of reconnecting and getting this experience, the opportunity came to sort of rejoin, Kevin Delaney of the great journalist, you know, was at quartz to sort of rejoin him in, in charter, and, you know, really delve into the future of work. I mean, it's a softball question, but I mean, if that's not serendipity, I don't know what serendipity is mean.

00;35;54;21 - 00;36;11;09
Paul Sullivan
You were sort of primed to do. You were primed to look at work differently because you're working. Life had changed so dramatically. And here's this guy who has this idea, and, you know, you're getting the band back together, except you're not getting the band back together in an office. Correct? Like you're ten employees are all everywhere.

00;36;11;12 - 00;36;38;13
Jay Lauf
Yeah. No, that's that's right. We've got ten of us at charter right now, and we have one in LA, one in San Francisco, one in Ohio, one in, new Jersey, one in, Washington, D.C., one in Brooklyn, one of Manhattan, two in Connecticut. So we're we're kind of all over the place. Yeah, I think I was I was really primed for, for this both the topic train and the chance to actually do something on our own, and not, you know, be working for another company, at least at this stage.

00;36;38;13 - 00;36;55;22
Jay Lauf
I've always wanted to kind of scratch that itch and take a swing at my own thing. Quartz was pretty close to it because David Bradley and Atlantic Media funded the idea. But then let us run it, you know, with, with an incredible degree of autonomy, that I also very much recognized at the time. But yeah.

00;36;55;22 - 00;37;22;25
Jay Lauf
So when Kevin, you know, I joined Kevin's company, as an advisor, and the more we talked about it, the more interesting it kind of became as a as something I could really throw myself into full time. And it should be said, we have a third co-founder, Aaron Groh. This incredible, person woman who is was a VP of transformation, The New York Times for a stretch of time and then was, VP of, people operations at way the luggage company.

00;37;22;28 - 00;37;43;08
Jay Lauf
And so we're kind of an interesting mix. I, you know, I'm bring the business side experience from publishing, Kevin, as you said, as an editor and a writer and a thinker. And then Aaron is kind of, this really great operational, the person who's been in the seat of our target audience in HR graded operations and actually a really incredible thinker in this space on, in her own.

00;37;43;08 - 00;37;53;19
Jay Lauf
Right. So I feel really lucky to be once again at the front row seat of cutting edge thinking on a thing, which I was. I had that at wired, I had that at the Atlantic. I had that, of course, and I've got it again here.

00;37;53;21 - 00;38;09;25
Paul Sullivan
I gotta ask, like, what's your you know, parental leave policy? Like, what's your vacation policy like, are you, are you walk walking the walk or do you like, you know, limit people to two weeks and that's it. And you get to make up a lie if they wanted to do something with their kids.

00;38;09;28 - 00;38;33;18
Jay Lauf
Yeah, yeah. No, there's there's no lying. Total transparency. Kevin, as we speak, Kevin is driving to Oberlin College to pick up his daughter. From her, freshman year. I think it is. But, yeah. No, no, we so we, you know, we've adopted the, the notion of unlimited vacation time, which, you know, again, all the research will show you is, fraught, potentially because people tend to take less when they've got, choice.

00;38;33;18 - 00;38;50;18
Jay Lauf
So we also try to be really prescriptive with people about, you know, here's the minimum amount you should be taking. If you're not taking that, let's talk like it means that, you know, either we're not giving you enough time or you haven't carved out enough time to to take off. We have mental health, days. It's roughly every 6 to 8 weeks or so.

00;38;50;18 - 00;38;55;21
Jay Lauf
We give every the whole company a Friday off, just to recharge, like.

00;38;55;23 - 00;39;01;24
Paul Sullivan
Off. Off like. No, no work. Go to work. Good. Go take a hike. Go get lunch. What?

00;39;01;26 - 00;39;30;03
Jay Lauf
Yeah. No work, no meetings. We again, the leaders model it. We don't show up. We don't. We're not slacking. You. We're not like, oh, this is one other thing we got to do. We we all we all take it off. And we're constantly reminding people about, attending again at, attending to their wellness. You know, whether it's through reminding them of resources, even as a small startup, we've got, you know, mental health resources through our benefits provider, that we prioritized, and felt worth was important.

00;39;30;05 - 00;39;55;08
Jay Lauf
And. Yeah, no, I think we're doing a really good job right now. Sort of walking that talk. Which is hard to do in a startup where you've got a, you know, a lean team, but no and no shortage of things to do. You know, part of it is, you know, hours and intensity do matter. And so it really it's about, I think, imbuing the, you know, these folks with the sense of ownership and excitement about what it is we're doing and then trusting them to be ups about exactly.

00;39;55;08 - 00;40;05;07
Jay Lauf
Like if you put in, you know, three, 14 hour days back to back and you need to start at 11:00 the next day and maybe cut out at four, like, go ahead as long as you the outcomes that hours, you know.

00;40;05;11 - 00;40;22;21
Paul Sullivan
And I was just kind of come back to that. We said earlier on like when you're measuring people on their productivity and their outcomes, not on how long are they saying, you know, so-called face time? I think it has to be inspiring. I mean, and people are going to you hire good people, they're going to want to do, a good job.

00;40;22;21 - 00;40;50;04
Paul Sullivan
And, you know, I think of this one professor I interviewed named Jamie Lee, at northeastern. And, you know, she's written a lot about fathers, not just, you know, we all know about the sort of penalty that mothers face or have faced historically in the workforce for having kids. Okay. Over time, lack of promotions. But men who sort of put their hand up and say, you know, I'm going to take more parental leave or I want to do more of, you know, my children, historically, they've been seen as is not sufficiently committed to their job.

00;40;50;04 - 00;41;17;20
Paul Sullivan
And that's been a knock against them. And Jamie Ladd, the professor at Northeastern, very funny and says, you know, well, what do we want? Like, you know, all these consultants who work, you know, 20 hour days and don't see their family. And we're having like a company of sociopaths, like, is that really what we want? Yeah. Well, you guys seem to be, you know, the future work hopefully is having a company filled with, with humans, who have lives and, and part of that life is working and part of it is parenting and part of it is, you know, being with your spouse or taking a hike.

00;41;17;20 - 00;41;19;14
Paul Sullivan
And that's okay.

00;41;19;16 - 00;41;41;19
Jay Lauf
But I think, I think the other part of that is that what you find. And so this has been demonstrable for me, is what you find. Is that so burnout is a real thing, right. All the research will say like you can do, you know, 55 hours plus in bursts. If you have a project to get out the door you're launching, something like, you can do that for maybe like 6 to 8 weeks.

00;41;41;21 - 00;42;02;09
Jay Lauf
And after that it's like every hour over 40 basically is diminishing returns, like you just lose and lose and lose in this productivity. And so if you think about, you know, doing 50 some odd hours a week, 60, 70, like 50 some hour is nothing for a lot of people. Right? But it's you know, I was doing like 60 some odd as a, as a regular diet that didn't include evenings.

00;42;02;11 - 00;42;25;09
Jay Lauf
You if you're just doing that as a study that is your normal state of things, you're going to burn out. And the way that shows up is, you know, you know, insufficient decision making, potentially bad judgment, lack of creativity. Eventually you start building a program. And the point is, like, you're just going to be a less productive employee if you, you know, if you're just burning people out.

00;42;25;12 - 00;42;56;23
Jay Lauf
Yeah. And so you actually get better results if you give people that room. And I've seen it myself again, like when I have been able to, you know, have these dinners with my wife, I actually don't resentfully go back into the office. I kind of charge back into the office at 730. Sometimes when I have a thing that's kind of interesting or important to do, I'm excited to go tackle it because I've recharged versus in the old days where I would be plowing through that on the train straight through to 830 and I'd walk off the train, you know, the shape of a human being sometimes, and you know that just you

00;42;56;23 - 00;43;06;17
Jay Lauf
wake up the next, you're not waking up the next day going, wow, let me go attack it. You're like, wow, I got to get my wide stance on the train platform or something else that you're thinking about.

00;43;06;20 - 00;43;09;08
Paul Sullivan
Today is the day I did my own seat. And you.

00;43;09;13 - 00;43;10;14
Jay Lauf
Right? Yeah, exactly.

00;43;10;18 - 00;43;36;26
Paul Sullivan
Jayla, thank you so much for being, my guest on the Company Dads podcast. I've really enjoyed it. One last question for you on the optimism meter. How optimistic are you that what we've unfrozen these these past two years will, become some version of of the new world of work from 2022? Going, going forward?

00;43;36;29 - 00;44;10;18
Jay Lauf
Yeah. Wow. That's a really, really good question. On a scale of 1010 being the most optimistic, I'm probably at an eight, which is the qualify in some ways. I don't think we're going to get all of the things that we want, or that people think they want in the moment, whatever it is. But I, I do think we're not going to freeze back to it, refreeze to where we were, you know, pre-pandemic, I think there going to be a lot of new norms that have, that have baked in and become frozen, whatever, to continue to build bad, you know, food and temperature analogies.

00;44;10;20 - 00;44;38;07
Jay Lauf
But I think, I do have a lot of optimism that this is a real endemic change that's happening. Is certainly around the idea of providing people with flexibility because that's been proven. You know, you can look at productivity, statistics. You can look at, again, you know, the the departure, the great resignation statistics. Everything points to being more people needing, flexibility and being able to cope with and do flexibility successfully.

00;44;38;09 - 00;44;51;14
Jay Lauf
And I think that's a huge step. It might seem like one minor part of it, but if you just think about anyone who's listening, you think about that in your own life. If you had the flexibility to come and go as you please, a little bit more than you had four years ago, that's huge. That's a that's a game changer.

00;44;51;17 - 00;44;59;22
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Good. I'll take that. An eight on the optimism scale. That's that's good. Thank you again Jay I've really enjoyed our talk today.

00;44;59;24 - 00;45;05;06
Jay Lauf
Yeah same here Paul. And I really appreciate what you all are doing. I think it's, it's both interesting and important work as well.