"Hybrid" is out, already.
Good morning.
Here’s a thought from day one of the Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington: it may be time to drop the term “hybrid.”
“I think the word hybrid is super loaded,” said Colleen McCreary, whose job is chief people, places and publicity officer for Credit Karma. “It locks you into certain ways of working. Flexible work is what we are talking about. We are freeing up the conversation to think about things we never thought about before.”
“We don’t call it hybrid. We don’t call it flexible. We call it being intentionally flexible,” said Nickle LaMoreaux, chief human resource officer at IBM. “It’s about people coming together as a team and intentionally deciding what flexibility works for them and their team.”
The two were speaking at a session on “The Great Hybrid Experiment,” which was at the start of Fortune’s first in-person event since the pandemic hit. There are more than 300 prominent female executives attending. All have been vaccinated. All have been tested within the last 72 hours. All are wearing masks except when speaking onstage or eating. And all seem truly excited to be together in person—many for the first time in 18 months.
A few more takeaways from the session:
“We don’t want to come to the office and sit in front of our laptops or a video screen to talk to people who aren’t there. We will be reconfiguring our space to be someplace where collaboration and team building happens. It’s really about the experiences we want to happen.”
—Francine Katsoudas, chief people, policy and purpose officer at Cisco
“Job seekers are demanding you do good in the world. They are demanding you have an inclusive environment. And they are demanding you have a flexible schedule.”
—LaFawn Davis, group vice president, ESG, at Indeed
“You are missing a huge opportunity if you just focus on where, and don’t focus on when and what…Not since the industrial revolution have people really had the opportunity to dissect work.”
—LaMoreaux
“Even if you have a very distributed workforce, you have to find the opportunity to bring people together, to take the time for events, offsites, conferences, to build the glue, and be intentional about what those experiences are.”
—McCreary
“No one has figured this out. No one is ahead on this.”
—Davis
In my attempt to figure it out, I read this weekend a review copy of a book coming out later this month called The Workplace You Need Now, by Sanjay Rishi, who runs JLL’s corporate solutions business, and two of his colleagues. It struck me that office designers now face the same challenge that retailers have faced for two decades. With the rise of digital, it’s no longer good enough for spaces to be functional. They need to be “experiential”—to make people want to be there for experiences they can’t get elsewhere.
By the way, the highlight of day one of the MPW Summit for me was a lively debate at my dinner table between the CEO of a New York investment bank who argued workers need to get back to the office full time and the CFO of a California tech company who insisted remote work is here to stay. That one was off the record, so I can’t report it here. But the clash of business cultures between the coasts remains strong.
You can follow more from the summit here. I’ll have more to report tomorrow. Other news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
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This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.
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