Distributed work
Just a few months ago, at the end of 2019, it was predicted that 2020 was going to be the year of distributed work, remote working. Little did we know that the world would put us in one of the most complicated social experiments in our history — the COVID-19 pandemic; an event that forced us to stay at home, not only a local recommendation, but an exercise that continues to be carried out worldwide.
Suddenly, we all had to become experts in remote work; It is true that technology allows us to adapt to a remote working model. But more interesting is understanding the art of distributed work and how we can elevate our current practices.
Distributed reality is here. #dr is the new #vr — Wendy Johansson GVP Publicis Sapient. (MVP of Appendix to the 2020 CX Report) ”
It is important that we respect our schedules when working remotely or from home, since we could fall into bad organisational habits or fall behind with our responsibilities. However, it is equally important to understand that working remotely or from home may not result in transferring the same style of work from the office to your home and we will need to make adjustments to how and when we work.
More and more I have heard in these last weeks from colleagues and friends how these days they end up having more meetings and working long hours into the evening. Some have even gone to the point of generating comments like “Home Office = inspiration comes at night.” But working from home should not result in complete blurring of lines between work and personal life and as such we must understand and learn to incorporate this asynchronous work style into our routine.
We should not see this model as something just for this pandemic or while working from home; in fact it began to gain popularity with the growth of many companies having teams distributed in different time zones.
First things first
Remote work is not the same as distributed work or asynchronous model, the first is the ability to communicate between two or more people without the need for them to be present at the same time.
An asynchronous model is to work towards the same objective, in tune without having to be limited to a particular space or time.
Let’s look at it this way; Imagine a work meeting, in a typical scenario, we expect everyone to be present at the same time (regardless if it is in person or remote). Bring together a group of people to discuss one or more particular topics. This is what we know and are used to as synchronous work style.
An alternative to this would be communicating the issues by any of the tools you already use every day:
- Slack, FB Messenger, Whatsapp, Microsoft Teams, etc.
- Google Docs or Suite for Microsoft, any editing tool live documents
- Basecamp , Quip, Asana, as well as any other project management tool
- Dropbox, Google Drive, Box or any file repository.
These are just some examples of asynchronous communication that are even natural in the day to day of all of us.
In these examples, someone communicates an idea or opinion in a way that does not require the other person to be present at the same time and moment. For example, if you send a message via Slack or email, it gives you an opportunity to read and reply at a later time.
The internet has made asynchronous communication possible, even to the degree that I’m sure you use it more than you think.
Examples of Synchronous work is
- A meeting at work
- Call by Zoom, Skype, Hangouts or similar
- A phone call
As such, moving towards asynchronous work does not require the implementation of new technologies or investment in additional services and products that we do not already have; it is rather about adopting new work models that give us greater flexibility to respond and collaborate. In addition to this, it provides a model that results in data persistence, having a history of the development of different initiatives and creating a more honest and transparent culture within the organisation.
Ultimately, what we are looking for is to generate a culture of collaboration, which will result in a good model of distributed and / or asynchronous work. Collaboration is not the same as cooperation, collaborating is much more important, however more complicated.
“Cooperation is about working with another party at arm’s length, whereas collaboration is about having arms hugged around each other” — John Maeda in How to Speak Machine (2019)
In the end it is not a situation where we should stop working synchronously and adopt the 100% asynchronous model. Like everything in this life, it is a matter of generating balance between both forms of work. It will still be important to have 1 :: 1 meetings with collaborators, to have moments where the place and time are crucial, but just as important to be able to work, collaborate and make a great impact on our goals.
This is the first part of two that am planning on writing; the article was published in Spanish at Tec de Monterrey internal magazine. I took great inspiration from the CX Report that was led by John Maeda and in which Wendy Johansson participated greatly. Big thanks!
My name is Martin Moscosa and am a leader and connector in the Guadalajara tech and startup community. Always up for a cup of coffee or tea looking to help others. visit mmoscosa.com to know more about me.
