Against the Herd With Liza Mash Levin

Against the Herd is a podcast where I speak with contrarian leaders and visionaries at the cutting edge of the future of work—and living.?

I recently chatted with Liza Mash Levin . Liza is the co-founder and CEO of Gable , a workplace-as-a-service solution that helps companies manage the physical spaces their hybrid workforces need. On-demand flex office space is helping support the future of work, so I was looking forward to this conversation.

Liza loves that a work-from-anywhere model is providing people opportunities to join amazing companies that they previously couldn’t due to their location, but she understands that there are some drawbacks that need to be addressed. That’s why she is at the forefront of solving a new challenge: Choosing the best space, when needed, for your distributed workforce to collaborate effectively in person.

When I brought up how hybrid productivity is viewed (and measured) differently compared to the office—where people are on hand, all the tools and equipment are there, and the setup has what you need to get your job done—she had two great points. The first is that companies really need to step up their documentation game and get out of the Slack message silo. Having an employee onboarding handbook and vigorously documenting trainings, how-tos, company value props and mission statements, product features, and other important things will enable success for all your employees. Async communication is important, but being able to find answers to questions that are already written down should make learning (and iterating) easier.

The second point? Liza believes that it’s going to be hard to be truly successful if you never want to meet people in person. Humans are social creatures at heart, and she posits that there is a breaking point where exclusively working from home full-time is going to feel isolating; everyone has different stressors that will cause the fracture, but it will eventually start wearing people down and make them feel disconnected from their peers. Sometimes, you need to interact with your peers in a face-to-face setting—while being intentional about it.?

A data person at heart, Liza believes that you need to collect information about how to best run your business from a bottom-up approach; that is, the only way to create an intentional working environment is for executives to ask their employees what their challenges and priorities are. You should fine-tune your workplace policy based on what your employees are asking for. How many people are collaborating? Is there a positive correlation between those working from a shared space at a specific cadence (e.g., every Wednesday and Thursday) and meeting deadlines more quickly? How do mandatory team days “in-office” affect hitting KPIs? What obstacles need to be removed so that you can feel more productive and satisfied? These are just some of the metrics organizations can measure before iterating on (or completely changing) their current policies.

She ends the podcast by saying that being upfront about your policy—whether it’s fully remote or an expectation to visit a co-working space once a month—is the first necessary step in ensuring the people you hire are going to feel supported. It’s clear how important creating an employee-first experience is to Liza. Listen to the full Against the Herd episode here to learn more about her insights: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2162318/13381184-liza-mash-levin-ceo-co-founder-at-gable ?