 From the Computer Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE, covering ACG Silicon Valley Grow Awards, brought to you by ACG Silicon Valley. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Rick here with theCUBE. We're at the 14th annual ACG SV Grow Awards, about 300 people coming together. It's our once a year big event for the awards. They do about two events a month for the bounce of the year. And we're really excited to have one of the speakers on. She's Dr. Karen Lageski, the founder and CEO of Virtual Distance International. Karen, great to meet you. It's great to be here, Jeff. Thanks for having me. Absolutely, so virtual distance. What does virtual distance mean? Well, that's a long story. But the short answer is, virtual distance is actually a measure that I discovered that basically describes what's lost when the human being gets translated through our devices. And it actually shows up as sort of an emotional and social detachment that grows unconsciously when we are constantly talking through mediated communications. And when virtual distance is high, it has a very significant impact on things we care about as business leaders. But we can predict virtual distance, we can reduce it, we can manage it, and therefore we can improve performance while maximizing the technology, but minimizing the impact it's having on human beings. So before we jump into that, so virtual distance can be really close, physical distance, right? I think you saw something in one of your research, doing some research where people are sending IMs and emails to somebody who's sitting right across the way. So it's just so prolific because we're so used to communicating via these devices. I mean, we see it all the time. You go out to a restaurant and have dinner, and you and I could be sitting just this close. And if both of us are doing this, there's virtual distance right at that table. Right, or the kid's not doing what they're supposed to. And you text them, hey, look up, you know. And that's actually affecting how that child develops or how we feel about each other, but it's invisible. So how do you measure it? And what are some of the really key indicators that leaders should be looking for measuring, keeping track of to try to minimize some of the negative impacts of this? Well, we measure through the virtual distance index assessment, and our clients take that, and then we generate analytics reports, and we actually give them predictive solutions on how to reduce it so that they can impact performance in a positive way. So what are some examples? Some use cases you can share that were just one way or way the other way. So I'm glad you brought up sort of it can be, virtual distance can be even as close as we are, and also between people who are thousands of miles apart. And we've also seen virtual distance very low between people who sit oceans away and who've never met. So for example, I had a large financial services company that actually had 90% of their employees clock in to the same location every day, and we went in and measured virtual distance, and we found that it had caused multimillion dollar losses in a strategic IT project, even though the people on that project were literally as close together as you and I. So we were able to show that, we knew exactly where it was coming from, and we could sort of prescribe solutions to reduce it, which they did, and they saw immediate bumps in performance. So what are some of the things you can do, right? Cause we're so addicted to these things. The stats of the number of times we touch them and look at them, and it's mind-boggling actually. So what are some of the things you tell people to reduce that virtual distance? Well, I actually start by telling them that what they have to realize is that when they're talking to the screen, they're actually talking to themselves. I know it sounds crazy, but that's actually how we operate as human beings. So just by becoming aware that that's what we're doing actually pulls people back and makes them stop and think, do I really know what this person means? Because in essence, what happens is we lose all the context we need as human beings to actually figure out what people really mean. So I work with leaders to bring that context back and constantly be explicitly referring to it because unconsciously it's all disappeared sort of behind these virtual curtains. Right, and consciously we actually see evidence of it all the time. Email, I think, is one of the worst communication vehicles of all time. It's certainly convenient, but so many times, the nuance is not carried through. The kind of intention or the degree of pistofness, I'll just use, it's probably not a vocabulary word, but that's okay. And it doesn't really come through either way over positive or way over negative depending on a whole bunch of factors. When you read that are just bad choice of words or kind of unintentional affect onto those words. So it's just not a great form of communication. Well, I would add to that that it actually is a good form of communication but in certain circumstances. So what virtual distance analytics, measurable, quantifiable things tell us is that email is great for things like, Jeff, let's have lunch at 12 and meet at the Computer History Museum. Or here's the file you wanted. Please have a look and give me a call. It is actually a very good tool for things like that. But what we do all the time is we try to explain ourselves in email and that is not a good use of email. Because as you're saying, what happens is since we have no context, we use our own context and that's not good because it's usually wrong. And then we misinterpret everything and people think other people are just jerks or something when in fact it's really just virtual distance. Now what about like Zoom and WebEx and kind of the virtual meeting rooms that are so prolific now as an alternative to the actual phone call? Are those things work from your point of view? Do they not work? Are they a nice substitute and better than the alternative with all these kind of distributed teams or what's kind of your take on video conferencing? Yeah, so the first thing I would say is virtual distance is actually not about the technology, it's about the people. So we sort of have to sort of re-center ourselves on that notion. But things like Zoom and WebEx and things can be helpful but only if they work properly when we need them. And if they don't, one of the ways to reduce virtual distance in an operational sense is we need to have plan A, plan B, plan D, plan C if that technology goes down. Because the problem with it is it's not always reliable and you know, you've been on calls, right? Where if there's a problem, it takes about 10 seconds maybe before you're off sort of doing something else while someone's trying to fix it. And that actually adds to virtual distance. Still one of my favorite YouTube videos and very sad that it's still so relevant is the joke one about the WebEx meeting or the virtual meeting. Especially at the end where it's like, Bob, you've been here the whole time, you know? And it's still the same, right? It's so much wasted time trying to get the thing to work. So I want to kind of wrap it up with what are the consequences from kind of the leadership skills? What should leaders be thinking about? I mean, it's the world we live in. We're still connected to these things. What are some of the concrete things that they can do to reduce the virtual distance and have better comms amongst their people? Yeah. So the first thing we have to do is to know that, I mean, I've been collecting data on this for 14 years more. And virtual distance is now everywhere. It's not a matter of geographic distance, as we said in the beginning. And so first they have to sort of understand that they have to be managing it all the time. The second thing is that there are issues created operationally day to day that we have to sort of always be on the watch for, like, you know, readiness distance or these technologies failing. But the big thing they have to understand is that the things that cause the most significant and negative impact of performance are the things about us as human beings that lie underneath the surface and that sort of disappear behind virtual curtains. So what leaders need to do is make those explicit in everything they do. And we have specific tactics on how to do that so that everybody can see each other in a deeper way because when virtual distance is high, we get much lower trust by 90%. And it's not just lower trust, it's distrust. So if we reduce virtual distance, we increase trust, we get better performance and it's immediately seen by executives all over the world. And trust is one of these foundational things that if you don't have trust, it just crushes everything. No, and without giving away what I'm about to go talk about tonight, I can tell you that we're at the point where we have so much data that statistically speaking, high virtual distance is the statistical equivalence of distrust. So if we lower virtual distance, we statistically get the equivalent of strong trust. All right, well, if you want to see Karen speak, you got to go watch her keynote or I think you've got books and all kinds of great research around this. Yeah, and they can visit us at virtualdistance.com and all kinds of good places. All right, Chief Dr. Karen Logeski, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from AZGSV. Thanks for watching. Thank you.