E003 / Let's Talk Space / Noa Ronen & Ofir Ronen

Written By Noa Ronen

In this episode of Peer Ripples, Noa and Ofir explore the idea of space and why it feels harder to find than ever before.

From back-to-back meetings and remote work to AI and constant connectivity, many of the natural pauses that once existed in our day have disappeared. Together, they discuss what happens when we lose the space to process, reflect, and be intentional.

The conversation explores how leaders can create more meaningful conversations, reduce noise, and make room for better decisions, stronger relationships, and greater presence at work and at home.

Takeaways

  • Space is not just time away from work. It is the ability to pause, process, and be present.

  • Leaders need to create intentional space rather than waiting for it to appear.

  • Fewer, more focused conversations often create more impact than more meetings.

  • Asking "Should I be here?" can be a powerful question for leaders, teams, and families.

Chapters

00:00 What Does Space Mean Today?

07:08 Creating Intentional Space

13:39 The Lost Spaces of Travel and Work

18:45 Less Noise, More Meaningful Conversations

22:00 Reflection and Takeaway

More About Us:

Episode Transcript

Noa Ronen (00:00)

Moving to English.

Ofir Ronen (00:01)

Moving to English.

what does space mean to you?

Noa Ronen (00:05)

So I have to say that I loved what you said a few weeks ago when we thought about starting this podcast that we had as a couple this conversation for 15 years or even more since you become a leader, I became an executive coach, leadership coach. And now we just

Push the record, it is recorded.

so space.

Ofir Ronen (00:26)

Space! Let's talk about space.

Noa Ronen (00:28)

Okay, why do you want to talk about space?

Ofir Ronen (00:30)

Why do we need space and how do we create space? Do we need space from each other? When, why, how?

Noa Ronen (00:38)

Yeah. So, why, space? when I talk with people, I say that I am in the business of space, not, And then they think I work in NASA. but where I started was.

in change management. when we took organizations through change, it was very long. It was a long process. Re-org was every three years. Implementing technologies was two, three years. It was really

Ofir Ronen (01:04)

Sounds

very slow when you think about it today because today takes two months and technologies change every two weeks.

Noa Ronen (01:11)

and now when I talk with developers, they will tell me that things that would take six months, now the client will ask them to provide in three weeks. So reorg, you're a leader. I know how many times being next to you, you went through reorgs in the past few years. So the pace is so fast today that I think what people need the most

is space.

Ofir Ronen (01:39)

So what does it mean when they need space? Do they need space from work? Do need space from their boss? Do need space from their peers? Do need space from themselves, from their families? What type of space do you hear and your peers talking about?

Noa Ronen (01:58)

So yes, for everything. And I just want to talk about us and what we experience and the people we see around us and you as a leader. So I think we all need space. The pace is so fast that even the switching is just intense. I think since COVID before people will drive home

And I remember when we lived in New York City taking the subway before there was the wifi in the subway, it was so great to just read a book or listen to the iPod and listen to music.

Today we don't have those switches. People just open their door and they are with the family and maybe the child is already inside their office. So everything is mixed and we don't have space to switch. Even with meetings, think about it, when you worked in the office, you would walk to another meeting

Ofir Ronen (02:47)

between conference room from one conference room to another was a little bit of space.

Noa Ronen (02:52)

and you would meet people, you will talk with them. Now people jump into another remote meeting. So it's like, go, go, go, go. Even your brain is not able to switch. So that's what I'm noticing. And I see you nodding.

Ofir Ronen (03:05)

definitely a lack of space or time to process, Space in the terms of processing what happened in this last meeting. What do need to do? You end up the day after, you know, six, seven, 10 back-to-back meetings. You don't remember what happened in the first two, three, four meetings, but you didn't have time to process the actions to...

figure out what you want to follow up on and all those things. It's definitely lacking throughout the day. It's lacking throughout the week. And for many of us, it's lacking even when you go to the weekends, because weekends are many times and evenings, weekends, it's when you catch up on the lack of space. So everything that maybe in the past you would have done between meetings throughout the day, you now have to either do at the end of the day or do it over the weekend.

and the space that you talked about at home, definitely a gap like, being able to sit on the train or sit in the car and decompress for a little bit, process your thoughts from the day, prepare for, okay, what's going on today at home? Today, it's a five seconds walk out of your office, open the door and...

and you walk right into the next scene in your day.

Noa Ronen (04:22)

Yeah. And I have to tell you, I told some parent leaders to close the computer and stay in their office for 20 minutes before they jump and open the door Because part of that space is that we can be intentional and present. And I think when you say decompress,

you have the ability to think about all those thoughts that when you come to the family, mostly you're able to be more present with them or even if you move to the next topic with another meeting. And what I find right now that we are missing that intentionality. We jump into another meeting. We have no clue what we talked before, what we'll talk after. We are missing that intentionality and

I am curious about that. I'm not concerned about that. I feel like we go into one extreme and my sister is a scientist and she says that the nature will bring us back to balance in one way or another. COVID did that in a weird way and then we went to the other

Ofir Ronen (05:22)

It created a different problem of space.

Noa Ronen (05:24)

⁓

Yeah, it's COVID, it's the AI. Where are we creating space? you mentioned that

You don't even remember the four meetings earlier. So how do you do that? You're on the leader side.

how you navigate this experience of intensity right now.

Ofir Ronen (05:46)

I think there are a few on a very tactical level, there are a few kind of tricks that you can use or few systems that you can put in place. Very simple, very common. Make sure that your meetings are not 30 minutes, make them 20 or 25 minutes. people have this nature when Zoom or Teams is popping, you have five minutes to the end of the meeting.

Everyone in the room are starting to wrap up. So if you do it five minutes before, often you will go over the 25 minutes for the meeting, but otherwise it would be on minute 29, minute 30 people are starting to wrap up and you're already, your head is already in the next meeting. So, setting the stage for shorter meetings, be more prepared with agenda and be more focused and have the entire meeting more focused.

which is something that a lot of people struggle with. Today we have a lot of tools again in Zoom, in Teams, tools that can take notes for you. I personally take notes in every meeting. Otherwise I know that by the end of the day with so many meetings, I'll remember the high level details of what was discussed, but going into the specific details and who needs to do what and what exactly do I need to deliver to.

to my peers, to my customers, to my team. It's harder to remember all the details if you don't take notes throughout the meeting. But what's really important is just put some space blockers throughout the day that will give you some breathing room. It will also allow you when you have emergencies during the day and it always happens, something always comes up.

It gives you some space throughout the day to take care of something that is urgent or move things around to shift changing priorities If you get to a day where you have eight, nine, 10 straight hours of nonstop meetings, it will never end up well. You need some space in between to be able to navigate the changes that happen throughout the day.

Noa Ronen (07:31)

Yeah.

Ofir Ronen (07:49)

That's another thing that didn't happen in the past, like five years ago. We didn't have so many changes throughout a single day. Today, almost no day ends up like you look at the calendar the night before and kind of prepare, okay, what's waiting for me tomorrow? It's almost never, you look 24 hours later backwards, okay, so which meetings did I have today and what was the focus of the day? It's almost always changing. It's rarely staying as is.

because of the nature of the business today that things are moving so quickly and priorities are shifting sometimes throughout the day so quickly that it's really important to have this space in between meetings and throughout the day to be able to navigate this.

Noa Ronen (08:34)

That's a very interesting point. A lot of people talk about time management, but I take it a step forward to a strategic time management where in your week, where in your year you want the spaces because when you lead a team,

where you want to create intentional spaces with your team to meet together and have intentional conversations where you create that in your day. And a lot of people that travel, they don't think about the space before and after the travel. I know when you travel and you travel internationally, you start your day so early and then if you're in Europe, you keep going with the US.

Ofir Ronen (09:13)

itself used to be a great space. You would get on a plane a couple of years ago and you had, whether it's two, three hours or 10 hours, you would have peace and quiet for this amount of time. Now you have internet on almost every flight, so you're not disconnecting. Emails keep coming in. Teams messages keep coming in. Everyone are sitting with their laptops and working.

Even that space is no longer there for us.

Noa Ronen (09:38)

Yeah,

so I am wondering, you know, looking forward, what do we think

what space will look like, what's needed around space because I think one of my favorite conversations was with a chief of operation. And he said, you know, when we go to those off sites and we have to do all these conversations, I feel like someone is killing me because they are taking my time.

So where are we going with space?

Ofir Ronen (10:05)

I think that it's twofold. One is in our own management of our priorities. We need to make sure that we're focused on less items and more impactful items. So we can have more time and more focus on fewer things. This for itself creates space. If you have to think about 10 things all the time or about three, four things,

It creates a lot of space in your mind. And two, the word that we can't have any conversation without adding it, mentioning it, AI using it smartly can help you reduce a lot of the noise. Cause to create space, need to reduce your overload and reduce the noise. using AI properly can reduce a lot of the noise. And then if you're

prioritizing and using tools that help you to reduce the noise around you, you save a lot of time and it allows you to be focused. If you use AI or any other tools or systems that you have in place to come more prepared to a meeting, Jeff Bezos was the kind of most vocal leader about this. Come to the meeting.

read in advance the materials and have short but meaningful conversation about the topic. this is where people waste a lot of time and they can make smarter and better decisions if they are actually educated about the topic that they're discussing. And today because people

chase. It's kind of a cycle. It's a vicious cycle in a sense. People run from meeting to meeting so they don't have time to prepare, but then the meeting is inefficient I see so many meetings that people, including myself, join a call and what is this meeting about? And so like you, waste few minutes just to

orient everyone about what, are we here? What are we talking about? Instead of coming prepared to the meeting and everyone already know what, what is the topic. They had a little bit of time to think about it. So you can have less meetings, more effective meetings. And again, create space by that. It benefits all those different aspects, both in creating the time and space for, for leaders to, to think properly.

you make smarter decisions by itself at large. It creates more space because you're not going to make stupid and unnecessary steps afterwards just because you didn't think it through. So by not being prepared you're also creating more noise afterwards. So it's

counterintuitive to creating space.

Noa Ronen (12:53)

Yeah, you were talking and I was wondering if people that listen to you will say yes, but how? Because I'm in meetings all the times and ⁓ how less meetings when every time we say less meetings, we add more meetings. So it made me think while listening to you that, there is a lot of.

discussion about back to the office for full week or almost full week. And maybe we need to go a little bit back in time to the formation that was before COVID that made us move into too many meetings in a day. No matter who I talk with, especially when they move to a new organization, they say there are too many meetings in my organization.

I'm wondering if you come back to the office, it removes a lot of meetings because there are those in between the water fountain conversations that are missing right now. And something is happening right now with the human connection because we are not next to each other that creates those over meetings, over interactions, probably in the wrong way. We're trying to overcompensate for something.

Ofir Ronen (14:01)

transactional today and it doesn't allow to solve problem quickly. When you meet people in the office face to face, can in two minutes finish a meeting that usually would take on zoom 30 minutes. you walk to someone's office or someone cubicle or just meet them,

that's for itself creates a lot of efficiencies. When you schedule meetings, the nature of the beast you invite two people to a meeting, you end up with 10. Everyone are forwarding their meetings. There is a, I don't know if it's FOMO or if it's delegation or whatever it is, so many people.

that are wasting their time being on meetings that they don't add value to, but also they're asking questions because they don't have the context, because they don't really need to be there. So if you walk around the office and you have those meetings just with the person that actually needs to be involved, it doesn't always have to be the leader. It needs to be the person that owns the task, that owns the decision. Then they can be effective, they can make the decision. If they need to then go and talk to their teams, to their peers, to their leaders, great.

And by bringing everyone to the same call, it's creating a lot of noise and a lot of inefficiency. Going back to the office, I can say the challenge today is even when people go to the office, everyone are so distributed that they're not all sitting in the same space. So it's not completely solving this, but definitely meeting more each other in person, kind of traveling to your offices or

Noa Ronen (15:17)

Yeah.

Ofir Ronen (15:38)

If you're located around the office, then going to the office definitely is something that saves a lot of time and makes space and gives you the time to travel back and forth to the office that gives you space.

Noa Ronen (15:52)

Yeah, and create intentional space for people to meet with each other and also unintentional space, by the way. I think what's missing right now is the way to influence around the water fountain. think a lot of influencing of decisions are happening in that in between, I call it the space in between. And ⁓ we're missing that right now that space in between.

And where can we create spaces even when we bring people to the office that they have the space in between that they have the space to be intentional and have intentional conversations and just something about the AI. do agree that.

Especially for me, the taking notes allows me to be present with people rather than writing or doing something else. So even if you're some people type when they take notes, that can look like the multitask and do something else.

Ofir Ronen (16:41)

If you're taking notes like the old-fashioned way, like this, this is also helping and it's very hard to do it when you're on a Zoom meeting. It's inefficient. But when you sit in a room with people and you write into a notebook versus typing to your computer, it's very, very different. And it's helping you to focus.

writing down, I think, at least for our generation, writing down the notes is much more impactful than and kind of

getting into your brain much better, more effectively than typing it on the laptop.

Noa Ronen (17:18)

Okay. So, I think we created Space for Space. It was a lot about meetings. Are we ready for some reflection? Yeah. So, we always take time to reflect peer to peer and see what we can learn from our conversation.

what each one of us is taking as a reflection.

Ofir Ronen (17:40)

Think, be intentional, plan in advance and focus on more meaningful conversation and less noise.

Noa Ronen (17:51)

Tell us more, Ofir

Ofir Ronen (17:53)

about what about more meaningful conversation less noise.

being intentional is plan your day. always, every day I'm looking at like before I finish my day, what's coming tomorrow. So starting to build the space in my mind of what are the meetings that I have tomorrow? In a sense, even if I don't think about it this way, my brain starts thinking about, okay, for this meeting, I need to prep this, for this meeting, I need to come this way. Sometimes for this meeting, I need to dress up in this way, right?

Starting in advance, if I wake up in the morning and five minutes before I start meetings, I open my laptop to figure out, okay, what meeting is next? It doesn't leave the space for my brain to be prepared. So that's the intentional part of this. And also in general, in building your and scheduling your meetings. less noise is really make sure that

you're only attending meetings and activities. It's not just meetings, right? It's mostly meetings, but it's not just meetings where you're needed, that you can make an impact. If you're meeting internally or even when you meet with a customer, there is a tendency to bring 10 people to every meeting and eight of them will sit the whole meeting and just be a fly on the wall. Sometimes it's necessary and makes sense.

Most of the time, it's not an efficient use of the time. Make sure that you have the right people in the meeting and they can lead the meeting. They can share a summary with the rest of the team, but you don't always need the entire team in every meeting. It's not a good use of your time. And this again, can create a lot of space, give you a lot of time and it can multiply the power and the resources that you have as a leadership team.

to be in more places, in more meetings with more customers. If all the leaders are sitting in every meeting, there is a limited number of meetings and customers that you can meet in a day. So less noise and more intentional planning of your time can really, really help creating a lot of space.

Noa Ronen (20:01)

That was interesting. I was thinking that it's also impacting the system as a whole, because when there are only two people in the meeting and the other eight can be somewhere else. It's the multiplier that we talk about.

So it's not about just where I should be. One of the leaders I work with, he started asking himself, should I be here? And I think it's very important question and not just, I be here? Should my people be here? Where should they be? Are we wasting people time? So I think it's a very interesting conversation. And so I was thinking about the system,

where they bring more impact to the company as a whole or the organization.

Ofir Ronen (20:46)

It's

the same thing, by the way, at home, right? As parents, you don't have to always go both parents with every kid to every activity, right? At some point, especially if you have one more than one child, you need to divide and conquer. You need to make sure that you can be in more places and it cannot happen when both parents needs to be everywhere all the time.

Noa Ronen (20:49)

I was thinking the same.

Ofir Ronen (21:08)

So One is let's not always be in the same place, but then let's make sure that the one that can really help the child more effectively is the one that's helping.

Noa Ronen (21:19)

You're always the best parent to do that. ⁓ what I'm taking away from this conversation is really questions. I think space is about creating questions. Where should I be? Where is my impact?

Ofir Ronen (21:23)

works.

Noa Ronen (21:35)

What's the intention here? Why are we here? Why do we need that? And a lot of other questions. for me to create space, it always starts with a question. And in everything, even when I have a moment of a meltdown, is what do I need right now? I need to step away and create space. I need to have a meltdown.

down, no matter what it is. I learned that to create a space for myself, it has to start maybe even with a pause and then a question that I need to ask there to be more intentional. So that's kind of like when listening to you and our conversation today, I went back to questions are great way to create space, even between us. Sometimes we don't.

Ofir Ronen (22:17)

That's why we're not in the same room.

Noa Ronen (22:19)

Yeah, we created space, right? As always, my partner to life, to whatever, thank you so much.

Ofir Ronen (22:26)

Let's take some

Noa Ronen (22:28)

Let's take some space. Cheers.

Ofir Ronen (22:27)

space.

Noa Ronen (22:30)

Ofir and I have a little favor to ask you. We would really appreciate if you can follow us, like us, and share our episodes with your peers and friends.

And hey, this podcast is all about the peer ripple. So share this episode with your friend, maybe even with your team and take the space to create meaningful conversations. That's what we are all about. Cheers.

 

Noa Ronen
Next

E001 / Let's Talk Change /Vittoria Burr