The New Nomad

Data Driven to Data Informed for Remote Teams with Imram Rehman | TNN50

April 04, 2022 Andrew Jernigan and Allen Koski Episode 50
The New Nomad
Data Driven to Data Informed for Remote Teams with Imram Rehman | TNN50
Show Notes Transcript

The modern business marketplace is a data-driven environment. The role of data is to empower business leaders to make decisions based on facts, trends, and statistical numbers. But with so much information out there, business leaders must be able to sift through the noise, and get the right information, so that they can make the best decisions about strategy and growth. Imran Rehman, CEO, and co-founder of Kokoro knows how vital data is in teams and how to make data work to benefit your business.

This episode of The New Nomad talks about how data should be used to make your team and business flourish. Imran, with his expertise in the topic, added an emotional touch to data measurement and management. With this kind of personal approach, our teams will have better communication and will be more productive. Dropping gold nugget after gold nugget, this episode of The New Nomad is certainly timely so listen and enjoy.


[3:35] Humans don't need to be fixed

[8:38] Psychological Safety for Remote Workers

[12:49] Quality over quantity anytime

[15:26] Good pressure vs bad pressure

[21:31] Creating inclusive environments

[26:58] Continuously be a student


GUEST BIO:

Imran Rehman is an organization and performance specialist, with expertise in measuring and developing high performance. Based in Vienna, Imran is a leadership coach as well as co-founder and CEO of Kokoro, which is a web-based tool that helps create the conditions for successful teams through strengthening psychological safety, belonging, and flow in real-time with a data-informed approach. 


Imran Rehman Links:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/imranrehman
Twitter: ImsRehman
Website: www.bekokoro.com


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Allen  

Welcome today to The New Nomad podcast. Imran Rehman is with us today the CEO of Kokoro. Or he'll pronounce slightly different when we ask him about the name and how it came about, but before then like to bring in my co host, Andrew Jernigan, Andrew, lots of conversations about teamwork. A lot of interesting ideas today. What's on your mind today?

Andrew  

Yeah, this is a pertinent topic as we enter a new season of growth and experiences as the world is adapting and changing to hybrid. And for many who have not done this before. So it's on my mind today because of my love for systems like EOS Entrepreneurial Operating System and which keeps KPIs and things like that forefront. But yet, I'm so passionate about the person and what everyone's going through. We can't throw out the baby with the bathwater is an old American saying in that you've got to be so conscious of the person on the other end, they've got to be an exception. So I look forward to hearing what Imran has to share with us today as we take a deeper dive into globally distributed teams or remote teams, and how we can be a lot more empathetic and compassionate, and in how we operate.

Allen  

So love to bring Imran in the myths of measuring humans. But before we get into some of those myths, and some of the other issues of making teamwork effortless. Tell us a little bit about yourself and about Kokoro.

Imran  

Thank you, Allen and Andrew. So where do I begin? I grew up in London, I'm English, I'm sure you can hear that from my voice. Grew up in an Asian family, I'm sure you can guess what I became. You won't have to do any guesses. And it wasn't a doctor, it wasn't an engineer. And went to school there went to university in the UK and then started traveling and working abroad. First it was Spain and then Germany where I learned my other languages. And then as I got into the corporate world and into the working spaces of where we were trying to create some sort of value, whatever it was you're trying to create, you're trying to get some sort of value either for yourself or your customer for the company. And the thing that happened along the way was going to conflict a lot, not because I was up sorry. And I got into conflict. And not because I was creating them, but I was observing them and being part of them. 

And that's where, for example, I started to realize with mentors, and with coaches and the training I got that I was quite good at them dealing with them helping in interpersonal conflicts, people have contentious with themselves because they feel that we're not good enough things like imposter syndrome. And then also the role conflicts you had in teams, as well as a governance level across the organization, and getting people together and talk about and collaborate. And I just kept on realizing that the people are not broken, the systems were broken, and then take me long before I then found one of the myths we need to bust is this whole idea of fixing humans. We don't. Stop fixing humans, start fixing environments. Humans don't need fixing. And they very often are the result of the system or the structure or the organization you've put them in. And that's where I think the whole story began. And that's where I think Kokoro was really born many years ago. In one way I didn't see it back then because we were not digitalized. We're entering the world of dissociation. And that's where Kokoro began for me. And just to give you an idea of what I mean by Kokoro. I don't think we've done a bad job until now, KPIs I think we've done okay. But it has also shown us what we haven't done. And I think it's about expanding that. And improving that and growing on that and learning that. And that's where Kokoro comes together with the perfect Japanese word, which means to bring mind, heart and spirit together. And it's just one word in Japanese. And in English, you need three sentences. 

Andrew  

Oh, well. So what does Kokora do exactly?

Imran  

So what it does it, it's for busy team leads. And one of the things we kept on finding our job perform was either a leader of teams or busy team leads. And there were three things that are going on. There was number one, this whole idea of I have a distributed team. I don't know how they doing, you know, how's my team health? The other part was god! I need to do development and to keep my team learning and focus on the team as well. I know we deliver for the company, we do it for our customers, but also as a team you don't want to take care of the team, the final thing was the team experience because no team experience happens, you have to curate it, you got to make it happen. And those three things is what Kokoro brings together for busy teams. And currently out there, there is no expressly known tool I know that helps teams, and also gives them the data back instantly. And what makes us unique as Kokoro is that you can see where you are in the data. So once you get the data back, you can see where you are. So the reflection start straightaway. And that's what we've brought together. So we're different from the How can I say the engagement tools, which are great, you understand how the organization is engaging, I don't think it really helps because it's too late. I think you have to get in there before people are disengaged. And that's where Kokoro differs, because Kokoro works at the team level with the other tools work at the organization. So it's not necessarily a child that deploys it is sometimes a head of transformation. Sometimes it's just a unit head. It can be anybody in your organization that can use code, because it's very unique. It's very targeted. And it's what I call, it's all about formative data. It's data, we don't collect data that evaluates people, we collect data to form the future. Because those conversations matter. What's the next decision that we have to make, because that's what makes meetings productive. And we kept on finding with all the hundreds of teams we looked at. What teams found very frustrating was meetings that didn't work, team found at purpose rating that it was, can we move on from this topic, it's a legacy topic, we can't change this. But what we can do is have fun, and really deliver on what we have access to an opportunity to deliver on. So let's do that. So all these things sort of came together, and I created Kokoro.

Andrew  

Interesting. So how do you feel the sudden newness for so many employees to working outside of an office affects this dynamic of review evaluation, evaluation of performance, evaluation of mental presence and the absence of those fiscal times to say, Look, our family member just died. And I'm not able to keep my mind in focus this week, where we're all out of where many people are out of the office out of the factory out of the previous experience, do you think this changes your work and studies a bit is?

Imran  

No, it doesn't. Because we were ahead of our time, we still have a tool that's coming to market. So we're working with customers and learning. So the pandemic has created an education around recovery, and emotional health. And we were already on to this, but we didn't know how it looked like because all the tools out there only measure performance from one angle. And that is the you know, do you deliver? Have you achieved it? And we wanted to do that as well as measure psychological safety and belonging. So what makes Kokoro, so we actually know what to be honest with you. We were just to, you know, when the pandemic came, we thought, oh, no, I wish we already had a product. We didn't because we still had to learn with hundreds of teams. And now we're getting to a point where we have good market product, market product fit. It's bringing value in one of our early adopters, they have now scale to 250 people. And we're looking we're working with more customers. But the three things we really focus on what we found now for the distributed experience is psychological safety. So what trust is for two people psychological safety for the group, just to make that clear for some people, belonging, you know, do I Am I important in the system? Do I have an identity? Can I be who I want to be? And do I have access to the social structures and systems in your organization so I can progress and build? And then the final part, which is all around performance, which is flow, and you can't get to high level of performance, and as you have psychological safety, and so you can see how it all came together. So you know, people are talking about mental health. I'd rather call it emotional health. And there's one other aspect Andrew, which I'm realizing is, you know, like, I think this will resonate with all of us across the world now as people who've worked in organisations is how often have you gone on holiday? With this thought in your head, I'm going to recover once I'm on holiday, and how wrong that sort is and how broken that thought is. Because what we should be doing is while we work we should be recovering. So when we go on holiday, we recovered. 

Allen  

Interesting. 

Imran  

So holiday should just stand and that's what we're not doing. What we've done is we've created a system where we say okay, once I get there, I'll go on holiday, and then they go on holiday and they get ill. 

Allen  

You know, it brings up a lot of interesting thoughts because one of the studies that I've seen over the years that ties into your psychological safety conversation quite a bit is people If they have a good friend at work, tend to love to come to work. There was a study that came out many years back, that if you have somebody you can rely on somebody you look forward to seeing. And that's of the safety. I love the fact that you brought that holistic approach in. But one of the interesting things  that you speak about in one of your presentations is measuring outcomes increases productivity. And then that's a myth but I love what you added was or was added in the conversation you did was, if a measure becomes a target, a measure then is a target becomes a target, it changes. I know it's a little bit wonky, but could you help our audience understand that because to me, of the things I took away from that, I understand exactly what you were talking about, as I sat and had to think about it.

Imran  

Well, think about it. So I want you know, I'm a big, you know, like when, if you, I'm a big fan of OKRs. And I'm a big fan of outcomes, and I'm a big, you know, putting the goal into place, I'm not against goals. But if you look at the data, only 20% of people can work with goals, the rest come. And we know that from the medical world, because otherwise, you know, doctors would have been much easier to get people healthy, they don't need to visit the people don't want to improve their lifestyle. So because there are many other ways humans work and are motivated. So goals work for some. But there's one thing which we have gotten lost in and that is this whole idea that if I set a target, and I focus on it, and I run towards it, it will work. It won't, because you haven't there's something missing in there, isn't it and if you then measure that person against that target, people will start playing the system and try to look good. Now, there was a great economist that around the 1950s, who said like if, you know if, if a measure becomes a target, it's not a measurement. And he applied it to the world of policy and law, where people made law and said, Well, look, if we create a policy and it's, and we're using it as a target, then we won't, people will start playing the system and say, look, the laws working, the laws working, you start defending your corner, because you are put on the spot. And very often we also do then is some leader is measuring you up against that target. And you know, what happens if I try to measure you and when you Allen, up against the target, I'm measuring myself, and I'm trying to compare yourself to how well I do things. So this is broken at two levels. And so what we're trying to do here is really saying that look, so what is that we need to measure? And what environment can we then create around this measure, so you can talk about the measure, and it's not treated like a target. And that's when healthy high performance just happens. 

Allen  

Yeah, I totally agree. 

Imran  

That's the most fascinating. 

Allen  

I agree. I'll use the example that I've had in my careers, I had a sales organization that, you know, people would say, Well, how come you don't tell these folks, they got to do 30 calls a day. And I'm like, Well, if I tell him to do 30 calls a day, 29 of them may be unproductive. There might be one productive guy, I'd rather have them do five productive calls, then try to make this target for me. And I trust them as highly intelligent, incentive-compensated people to do the right thing. Because if they don't do it, the only person who gets hurt first is themselves, but also want to give them the tools to do the correct thing, is that kind of what you speak as far as that.

Imran  

Exactly. So when we then try to then this in what you do then is make sure if the environment is right, then these people will create the right thing to talk around. So like you do want to put something in place, don't you want to say well, how can we then learn as a group? So if we do by, you know, whether we do 10 calls, 20 calls, 30 calls per day, how do we make those calls most effective? Or how do we hit home with those calls? And what is the thing that we can talk about as a team? So we all learn around that? And that is then the hard work of a team. Because they won't get it right first time? Because maybe the first thing maybe it's maybe we should always, you know, like see if the customer is happy at the end of the call. And they'll try to measure that. And they'll realise that's not working because measuring happiness doesn't mean they bought something because it doesn't have a bottom line. Hang on what we're trying to do as a team do do is it about our bottom line, the money we make is that why are we doing the calls? Why are we doing the calls they are? Well, maybe we need to look at our purpose, and then they have the better conversation. And it will lead to them working out what is the variable that they need the indicator, that they need to, to have in their team to be able to say, Well look, once if we connect every two weeks in our retro and we look back, how can we learn from that? So a measure stays a measure, and the measure creates a learning conversation and moves them forward. Now, then there might be another metric around numbers that you bring along and you say look, but I want to see how much money we're making? How often do I bring that one? And where do I bring that in? So it actually creates a healthy conversation. And one thing that you want to be aware of Allen, as the head of sales, or the, you know, the director of sales, is how do I create an environment in which we can talk about comfortable things, but also make it comfortable to talk about uncomfortable things? So accountability. And that is the thing, the difference between good pressure and back pressure. 

Allen

Gotcha. 

Imran

And I think every leader knows when they're creating bad pressure. And every good leader knows when they're creating good pressure. And my job as a coach, which I've been doing passionately for the last 20 years, very often is about helping leaders very often to, to move their environment from a bad pressure environment to a good pressure one. And they have that they've been unintentionally, very often, they haven't done this with, you know, like, an evil heart, I'm going to come out and make my people feel terrible. No, they keep pushing with a passion and passion, actually gets there.

Allen  

Well, I mean, one of the things that I think is interesting, you know, talk about measures, like friends is net promoter scores is a big deal for a lot of folks. I, I always felt the most important thing out of Net Promoter Score is not what our score is. But it's the comments that come out of the score, that somebody would say, but you're doing this wrong, or you could do this better or you send us something that we think is a bill, but it's not it's realizing that maybe we should put in bigger print. This is not a bill. I'm just getting at is, if you're using it to get better as opposed to just scorekeeping for scorekeeping's sake, it's a better deal all the way around. Correct? 

Imran  

You can see what happens, can't you? And you end up going into just defensive mode. Like I've known the like the head of engagement from Google Emir for a while. And his biggest criticism is that for the last four or five years, he's singing, right, I'm just in defence, I just defend myself most the time as a leader. And that's not always we can create values in our meetings, the first 20 minutes are looking at the data, then we question what's the data mean? And then we got 20 minutes for the meeting. And that's not the point. So coming back to this way we call we started exploring, we started realizing could we do this in a different way. So we use visualizations so we started creating things you answer with animated graphics. So we use vector graphics, which animate, and then we present those animated graphics back to the team so they can use the picture to assess how the team is doing. And it's been really, really, it's been fascinating to see how this has worked with teams, because a picture tells 1000 words and it allows for more room to maneuver with your conversation. And that's what this is about for me. This is about creating the right environment for teams so they can have the right conversation, make the right decisions and keep moving and improving. That's ultimately what I'm trying to do is I want us to move and improve. And we need to move and improve faster today than ever before.

Andrew  

Moving, improving, but yet keeping conscious of humans in front of us not machines. It is so critical. That when we're all attempting to accomplish our goals, our personal goals, our corporate goals, our team goals that we realize it's run by people that go through things and we things can change in a heartbeat in an instant in someone's world, to where everything could have been completed except for the the last save on a report when they got got the news. And being willing to do what you're saying, to lead with such awareness of the person behind the project is such a crucial element as we lead endeavours these days. And I think so many times we've been focused on the mechanisms that we've forgotten the the the mannerisms to watch to see what's happening tying everything.

Imran  

Totally agree, Andrew.

Andrew  

This is exciting. I know you've spent time living in different countries and living this life observing people putting so much thought into your work in this environment where I know we have people listening from around the world, whether they lead remote teams, they manage expats, they are just curious about the lifestyle and thinking what it's going to take for them to live in Portugal or Bali or Thailand or, you know, Brazil, and still work with their company or their industry. Where, you know, there's some things that you've seen, and I'd love it if you'd share in the segment that we do with all of our guests. What is the one thing that you have, you'd like for our listeners to know about the overlooked person, place, experience, book? That one thing that jumps out at you that you'd share?

Imran  

Oh, it's a really good question. I think this is a really, really important one at the moment for me. There's, you know, I lived in Spain for five years, or four and a half to be more exact. And one of the things that got me when I was out there was the exclusiveness of the language, it didn't matter where you spoke one word, or a hundred, or you were fluent the minute you could say, or like, you were fluent, you were part of it. And I for the first time, when I started to get to know the Spanish culture and go to the bars, I saw professors talking to somebody who clean the streets about politics, I saw levels of society interacting with each other, and seeing how inclusive they are. If you look at the data of what pay how many female scientists register patents around the world, you will find that Cuba is the number one country and all the other Spanish speaking countries come after that. So there's something about that culture, which people I don't think really sees as how inclusive it is. And for me today, that is the biggest topic for leaders, is how do you create and create inclusive environments? And how do you use the language in a way that you can create that environment and it is leadership's job. They have to model it so people can embrace it. So what I'm trying to get to, is actually a Japanese book, and a Austrian psychologists who have mured themselves in the Spanish culture, because Spanish people use encouraging language and tone of language continuously. And that is the only way to create high healthy, high performing environments. The Austrian psychologist I would look at is called Alfred Adler. And he talked about developing horizontal and vertical relationships. Vertical relationships are praise and punishment. So leaders who praise will always punish in their language doesn't mean they're bad people. But people who create horizontal relationships will always use encouragement as the way to move their people. And they'll build more sustained teams and groups and individuals that keep going and find their flow. And the book, I will mention which people I think should read this The Courage to be Disliked. I can't remember the author's name because it's a Japanese name. But the book is called The Courage to be Disliked. And it's about Alfred Adler, the psychologist who developed individual psychology, and its connection to creating inclusive environments, through building horizontal relationships, which I found very often and only in Spain, when I first moved there. And even today, I find them very, very inclusive. You go to a party, and you're standing around, or to everybody to turn around, face each other and create a circle. And these sort of mannerisms is something I think we can all learn from. If we all do go on holiday to Spain, or Spanish speaking countries look closely, you realize how inclusive their languages and I think it's very. 

Allen  

I think that's great. And I think as you touched upon something that may take a different title that people aspire to. And you see the people in the especially where I've worked in the past is the conversation about being a servant leader, that everybody has that value. Everybody has an important input. And frankly, in The Courage to be Disliked makes me also think of how important it was that you also mentored those who were sceptics that were willing to speak truth to power, because sometimes those folks get put to the side. But their input actually saves you a lot of times, because they're the only one honest enough to say, I'm not sure this is going to work for all of us. And then you can reevaluate lately.

Imran  

And another thing which I like about No, I have to say about servant leadership. Because one thing Alfred Adler points out in his book, he says, it's about you working out your contribution to society, that is where you want to find happiness. So he talks about your connection to community, which is what a servant leader does. And the servant leader begins always with giving first rather than taking. So it all then does tie back together about learning to give first and if you learn to give and continuously give also in your networks, then the network will provide. And I think those are the underlying sort of thoughts that I think we're trying to which I think the pandemic has asked us to integrate into the way we work. Because once you have a distributed team, as you so rightly said, Andrew, people are isolated. Some people, you know, have struggled, some people have actually just flourished in these environments. But how do you take either or, and work with it. So you can create that feeling of togetherness, which I think most of us need to work on a daily basis and to build the resilience we need to deal with the current state of affairs that unfold on a daily basis. 

Allen  

So Imran I'm sure people that listen to his podcast will want to learn more about Kokoro. Could you tell them where they can find you, and catch up and learn more,

Imran  

They can find me on LinkedIn. Yeah, they can claim me on LinkedIn underneath under Imran Rehman, REHMAN. They can find me on Twitter with @ImsRehman REHMAN so @ImsRehman and also @bkokoro.com. And also, they could also write to you, Andrew and Allen. And finally there. But generally, I think those are the three for limitation. 

Allen  

Fantastic. 

Andrew  

Fabulous watch for it in the show notes on social media, and the links will be there. Catch us at TheNewNomad.net. And you'll find those links also. So it's been a pleasure to have you on today. Thank you for sharing stimulated some great thoughts, yes. 

Allen  

So as I take away today, I'm going to research and we'll put in the show notes, the name of that book also. Which is fantastic. And, you know, once again, Andrew, you and I have this conversation about leadership and teamwork and having everybody feel a part of the team. I think this was spot on today. Give me a quick takeaway for our audience.

Andrew  

My takeaway truly is to continuously be a student. We've got to be learning every day, being willing to own our mistakes, and study further. So we don't do it again. And so these things that Imran and his team, and what they've built really helps people move past the mistakes after discovering them. And so this is, this is good. You know, we all need to realize our areas for growth and Imran has done a good job for stimulating the desire for that today with our teams.

Allen  

Fantastic. Well, thank you for joining us all today. We look forward to hearing from you again, for those of you in the remote lifestyle community, we wish you the best. We're going to continue to bring many more leadership conversations. My last thought on things is I love the fact that analytics don't tell the full story. And you need to see more holistic picture of things because, you know, life is not so simple. And like me who comes from a sales background, you would look at analytics, but it didn't tell the person who has the spark who's out there who really is helping others get better. A lot of times, a lot of times this success among the team is hard to pinpoint who that particular individual is. But you kind of as you speak to folks say, Who influenced you and helped you along? And then they would mention that person then you'd realize there's a lot more going on here than just 30 phone calls per week, etc. So thank you for opening your eyes to that. So a great takeaway today. I look forward to hearing from you all next week. Once again. Thank you for joining us on The New Nomad.