Weak Ties and Brainstorming
What we miss when we don’t organically share space
Drew Pearce looks into research undertaken recently by Jen DiZio and Amanda Gail Miller of Dropbox:
They surveyed 4,000 people from the US, Canada, Australia, France, UK, Japan, and Singapore in industries ranging from construction, education, engineering and architecture to finance, health care, media, technology and real estate. They also interviewed 36 workers — half from historically remote companies and half from recently remote companies.
Workers were asked a range of questions, including which tools they used to communicate with colleagues before and after COVID, which tools they used for virtual meetings, what challenges they faced moving to remote meetings, how they’re trying to build community, and what they miss most about working in the office.
What DiZio and Miller discovered is that although distributed work can boost productivity, people are feeling blocked by the absence of one factor that’s harder to measure: human connection.
Actually, I think DiZio and Miller are using the wrong term. It’s not strong connections but weak connections that are hard to maintain or create when working remotely. We can maintain our strong connections with the members of formal teams, our managers, and close…
