Future of Work: Working from Home? (part 3)
A few weeks ago, BOND Capital and Mary Meeker published a coronavirus trend report (read it at Axios). One section of the report included an informal survey of some of the companies in the BOND Capital network discussing the benefits and concerns of Working From Home (WFH).
The Benefits of Working From Home:
- Office, hospital, and other telehealth visits will now be covered and reimbursed for the same amount as an in-person visit.
- It’s still early — and the novelty may wear off and things may begin to break — but, so far so good.
- At the margin, productivity is the same or higher.
- Video calls, when not overused, are efficient / productive and they tend to start / end on time (or early).
- Messenger & video-based information sharing / editing is very effective.
- People outside of headquarters feel more included.
- It’s easier to bring outsiders in for quick video discussions.
- Time flexibility/commute time elimination/family meal sharing are big wins for workers.
- Pre-existing management bottlenecks — around individual performance or organizational design — are only amplified in a distributed environment.
- Biggest productivity and balance challenges come from parents with pre- or school-aged children that had other support systems during the working day prior to the implementation of work-from-home mandates. In addition, there’s work to be done in understanding potential psychological and physical stress and other challenges related to remote work, especially in the current ‘shelter-in-place’ environment.
- Companies that focus on effective written communication and documentation (dubbed the ‘Amazon way’) — where plans are shared in written form for editing — either synchronous / asynchronous — have had an easier time shifting to distributed work. Many observe this form of communication can lead to more insightful input and decision making.
- ‘Creating the office’ online can be successful — including regularly scheduled meetings plus active social experiences like work-related classes and training plus outlets like live-streamed workouts.
At a high level, it seems to be working, we’re figuring out how to use these tools at scale, and starting to collaborate across and beyond our ecosystems.
COVID is an inflection point.
And WFH is the future of work. Not because Twitter, Facebook, Salesforce and Google have all agreed to WFH, But because WFH forces companies to reconsider their operating model in light of a new set of constraints that cannot be managed from a top-down hierarchy. And I believe this is the tip of the iceberg.
See this great post from my former Dachis Group colleague Dion Hinchcliffe on How Work Will Evolve in a Digital Post-Pandemic Society Dion’s infographic below offers a series of shifts in how we view the organization’s operations, model, and approach.
This graphic is one great representation of what I think the future holds: the successful, surviving post-pandemic organizations will operate as distributed teams, designed for a loss of control (always calibrating back to first principles), with a focus on communities of stakeholders within (employees) and beyond (suppliers, channel partners, customers) the organization. These organizations will deliver value through partnerships that increase their surface area, enabling their network to drive exponential growth, as they test out the new value and delivery models.
Within that same survey, BOND Capital also surfaced the concerns with large-scale remote work include questions of how to:
1.) Ensure creativity is captured and productivity is maintained
2.) Determine which teams are optimized by working together in-person all the time / some of the time / rarely.
3.) Maintain engagement and culture(s), recruit / train / develop / retain people, and manage human resources
4.) Manage technology/security with rising numbers of remote workers
5.) Think about recruiting if physical proximity to headquarters/office is less relevant
6.) Organize / utilize office space(s)
7.) Evolve business travel and entertainment
These questions have been addressed successfully by other organizations big and small in the past, however, answering them in light of COVID is a necessary exercise in establishing the new rules of the game and how we should think about a new environment and operating model.
- Ensure creativity is captured and productivity is maintained/evaluate the new business models,
Many organizations will find themselves adrift and unprepared for their current situation. COVID19 is stretching organizations that were long due for an upgrade. Their culture, processes, and business models are all lagging — as a result, creativity, and productivity will suffer in the long term if a new approach is not implemented.
Our current constraints are changing our business and delivery models. We’re no longer conducting business as usual and instead are revisiting our jobs-to-be-done for our organizations and people.
The nature of work itself changes when we are all forced to work from home and I would suggest that perhaps we don’t have 8+ hrs of work a day to get done. Some times it is a lot less — occasionally if planned, it may be more — but broken up into separate sessions. Working from home is a different beast altogether. It requires a mind shift internally, and a cultural shift in an organization. WFH forces us to communicate more explicitly to coordinate the abilities of our organization to work to achieve the same goals.
We are exploring new operating models for ourselves and our organizations. We are in innovation accounting territory, not financial accounting territory and as such — the metrics we use to evaluate our activities should reward our rate of learning, not our ability to optimize and generate efficiencies.
2) Determine which teams are optimized by working together in-person all the time / some of the time / rarely
Determining whether or not a team is optimized for performance based on in-person vs virtual attendance is a function of what needs to be done, and whether that action requires asynchronous make time or synchronous collaboration.
Fully remote teams require trust, radical transparency, and effective communications using both active/passive signals to enable synchronous collaboration and asynchronous deep work.
How can you evaluate if your team can be optimized for work without face-to-face interaction? For the most part, I believe every team can be optimized, however, their jobs-to-be-done may require in-person work. The concept of latency can help us understand whether a team is optimized for in-person vs virtual collaboration.
Via WIKIPEDIA; Latency is a time interval between the stimulation and response, or, from a more general point of view, a time delay between the cause and the effect of some physical change in the system being observed.[1] Latency is physically a consequence of the limited velocity with which any physical interaction can propagate. The magnitude of this velocity is always less than or equal to the speed of light. Therefore, every physical system with any physical separation (distance) between cause and effect will experience some sort of latency, regardless of the nature of stimulation that it has been exposed to.
The precise definition of latency depends on the system being observed and the nature of stimulation. In communications, the lower limit of latency is determined by the medium being used for communications. In reliable two-way communication systems, as there is often a limit on the amount of information that is “in-flight” at any one moment. In the field of human-machine interaction, perceptible latency has a strong effect on user satisfaction and usability.
This last part is key: latency is tied to the literal medium being used and there are expectations we have for the amount of latency that is permitted. If you’re playing chess-by-mail, you are used to waiting at least a few days for the response to your last move. If you’re playing a chess game on your phone, any delay for more than a few seconds will make you divert your attention. Latency as a concept to evaluate work must take into account a few variables that are the building blocks to work.
Latency is a time interval between the stimulation and response, therefore it is ultimately the delay between the signal sent and the signal received. When thinking about the concept of latency within the context of work, we can consider a signal sent once the tweet, email, or message leaves the outbox of the person sending the information.
Your latency is determined by the speed of your connection, your accessibility to the connection, and your ability to process the content.
Speed of connection: Internet access is not a basic human right (yet), and connection speeds vary within the US and of course across the globe. The upper limit speeds of your network are determined by your distance to the main backbone of the internet — Which is governed by where you live since we are all at mercy to where the telecom companies have invested in their infrastructure. The speeds are ultimately determined by the level of access you can afford.
Accessibility of connection: we’re a few years away from a pure neural interface so in the meantime most of us surf the information superhighway via our cell phones, tablets, or computers. If you are working from home, what kind of device do you use? Is it your device? Or is it a shared device? Does your family have a device per inhabitant, or is it a family computer? Do you have more than one computer? Does your internet connection allow you and your household to access the internet at the same time without any degradation of quality?
Ability to process the data: can you sit down and think? Can you consume information and process it? During COVID how much concurrent time do you have for your work tasks? Is your day broken up into 30-minute chunks or do you have at least 4 uninterrupted hours of solid, focused time? During COVID having 8hrs free is a luxury if you have children at home.
When thinking about team performance, consider the latency of each teammate and build those delays into your planning, to ensure you identify the best network to enable WFH. Latency is a construct of both networks and teams, and co-location isn’t the answer.
In theory, when you are able to congregate a bunch of humans in-person and under one roof, you eliminate latency. In-person should be close to zero latency, but it isn’t. In practice, matrixed, complex organizations tend towards siloing, information hoarding, and weaponizing information. Survival through obfuscation.
In-person, close-to-zero latency only happens with radical transparency when everyone understands the inputs and outputs of the business and the value of their individual efforts in driving to a shared end goal. Group mind is possible. Remote zero-latency requires the appropriate hardware, connection, and work schedule to allow our workforce to manage their lives, families, and work obligations. It requires a shift to our work culture and trust in a more bottom-up approach to our employees and teams.
3) Maintain engagement and culture(s), recruit / train / develop / retain people, and manage human resources
Given the constraints of COVID we are seeing a dramatic acceleration to telehealth. This is due to the new CMS guidelines:
Office, hospital, and other telehealth visits will now be covered and reimbursed for the same amount as an in-person visit.
A wide range of providers can offer telehealth services across the nation, including nurse practitioners, psychologists, and licensed social workers.
Medicare beneficiaries are now able to receive a wider variety of services through telemedicine — such as evaluation and management visits, mental health counseling, and preventative health screenings.
The HHS Office of Inspector General is providing flexibility for healthcare providers to reduce or waive cost-sharing for telehealth visits paid by federal healthcare programs during this time.
The rules for compensation as well as an openness to existing platforms are changing alongside physicians who are getting upskilled and delivering teleconsults to help address the physical and mental needs of their patients. They are staying on the digital pulse of their patients given the circumstances, using wearables, and other tools for remote monitoring to bridge the #GapsofGoodness.
Leaders need to understand how to measure and manage the digital heartbeat of their organization, culture, and drive cohesiveness and team camaraderie. HR managers need to be considering similar approaches and upskilling. HR needs to understand how to help people realize their best selves online and offline. The emojis and memes/gifs shared are just as important than the number of steps an employee takes and how stressed they feel
We’re still trying to understand what makes good Digital teams tick. Face to face engagement is not required. There are lots of high functioning teams that exist that are global in their reach and comprised of teammates that have never met each other in real life and keep their collaboration and work solely focused on online interactions.
We have precedent — massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs).
Here’s the beginning of a great piece on leadership, What MMORPGs can teach us about leveling up a heroic developer team: The team-building skills that make winning gaming guilds also produce successful work teams via Aly Fulton on OpenSource.com
The first step to building a successful team, whether in software or MMORPGs, is to recognize your problem. In video games, it’s obvious: the monster. If you don’t take it down, it will take you down. In tech, it’s a product or service you want to deliver to solve your users’ problems. In both situations, this is a problem you are unlikely to solve by yourself. You need a team.
In MMORPGs, the goal is to create a “progression” raid team that improves over time for faster and smoother tackling of objectives together, allowing it to push its goals further and further. You will not reach the second objective in a raid without tackling the initial one first.
In MMORPGs, progression teams commonly have different levels of commitment, summed up into three tiers: hardcore, semi-hardcore, and casuals. These commitment levels translate to what players value in their raiding experience.
You may have heard of the concept of “cultural fit” vs “value fit.” One of the most important things in assembling your team is making sure everyone aligns with your concrete values and goals. Creating teams based on cultural fit is problematic because culture is hard to define. Matching new recruits based on their culture will also result in homogenous groups. Hardcore teams value dedication, mastery, and achievements. Semi-hardcore teams value efficiency, balance, and empathy. Casual teams balance fun above all else. If you put a casual player in a hardcore raid group, the casual player is probably going to tell the hardcore players they’re taking things too seriously, while the hardcore players will tell the casual player they aren’t taking things seriously enough (then remove them promptly).
Values-driven team building
A mismatch in values results in a negative experience for everyone. You need to build your team on a shared foundation of what is important, and each member should align with your team’s values and goals. What is important to your team? What do you want your team’s driving values to be? If you cannot easily answer those questions, take a moment right away and define them with your team.
The values you define should influence which new members you recruit. In building raid teams, each potential member should be assessed not only on their skills but also their values. One of my previous employers had a “value fit” interview that a person must pass after their skills assessment to be considered for hiring. It doesn’t matter if you’re a “ninja” or a “rockstar” if you don’t align with the company’s values.
These are powerful insights around MMORPG's, but directly apply to our current situation — as we reevaluate what we are doing in light of the pandemic and if we are aligned on our paths forward.
We’re going to need to revisit our operating models and recheck our values and those of our teams to make sure we are aligned on the problem we are solving.
That said, I’m extremely bullish on social platforms and products helping us bridge the gaps of face to face engagement. And I think we are also on the cusp of enterprise video gaming.
4) Manage technology/security with rising numbers of remote workers
The idea of on-premises vs in the cloud seems quaint when the premise of your premises is out the window. I’ve heard of an increase in spearphishing attacks. I can see how being at home might make it easy for individuals to stop paying attention.
COVID helps IT teams push/prioritize any remaining projects tied to the legacy architecture. We’ll need to focus on the importance of identity management and mobile device management. Services like Okta and AWS Workspaces (especially when combined) can help an organization manage access for their workforces (h/t @Doza). Beyond the technology tools, we’ll also need to work on a culture of transparency and smart information/data governance. You can lock down systems and information, but I believe you should be more concerned with rogue actors and a cultural issue that allows the softest parts of your infrastructure to be exposed to the outside world by humans intent on destruction? Do you have a social media policy in place? Do you have a crisis communication policy in place? Pick and choose where your users can share what content. I understand why Microsoft’s Teams product seems like it is the silver bullet for all organizations to manage access to secure content.
Have you seen the great Microsoft teams commercial getting a lot of airtime during COVID?
Nice job McCann on a good piece of creative content that showcases the voice of the customer. And yes, I’ve used Teams before and understand the value from a CTO/CIO’s perspective on a full-stack tool kit for an enterprise to use the MSFT toolset of spreadsheets, presentations, documents, projects, email, video conference, scheduling, and other quasi-collaborative tools with a set of people who all have the same email address.
I can also see the appeal of content and information control.
Beyond bolting on a bunch of software and calling it collaborative, my biggest problem with Teams is how MSFT defines teams — to them, Teams = Everyone as part one of one org with the same email address. But in times where we need to figure out how to do something differently, we require lots of collaborators from many different backgrounds, convened around the work table, to get the work done. The amount of difficulty in creating a shared space to engage people outside your company on Teams is too high. The way this problem is solved is usually by issuing the outsider a pre-provisioned separate piece of hardware that provides them access to the appropriate services and files.
The Future of Work is collaborative, and spans work across organizations. Teams break geography and organization. We’re eyeing broad collaboration across organizations of all stripes and nations. From my experience, Slack provides the easiest and most effective approach for organizations that need to create multi-layered permissions spaces to get work done. I understand the arguments around efficiencies of scale and a full-stack approach, but I’d argue that to be effective, we need to choose tools that remove friction and help employees focus on maximizing the abilities to get their jobs done in the fastest time possible. CIO/CTOs — If you must use a MSFT stack, consider ditching Teams in favor of Slack for communications. You can lock down file sharing and other services, but at minimum, you should provide a communications layer that helps your organization engage You can integrate much of what matters to you in IFTTT or Zapier.
5) Think about recruiting if physical proximity to headquarters/office is less relevant
I think this is a great way for us to consider how to increase the quality of our teams by finding diverse candidates not constrained by geography. The investments we are making in technology to support remote collaboration and group work, alongside a written-first culture can be the same tools to make an organization more inclusive of a diverse set of employees with a variety of learning styles, and abilities. Again, we are well served in the words of Aly Fulton on OpenSource.com:
Diversity in roles is important but so is diversity within roles. If you take 10 necromancers to a raid, you’ll quickly find there are problems you can’t solve with your current ability pool. You need to throw in some elementalists, thieves, and mesmers, too. It’s the same with developers; if you everyone comes from the same background, abilities, and experience, you’re going to face unnecessary challenges.
It’s better to take the inexperienced person who is willing to learn than the experienced person unwilling to take criticism. If a developer doesn’t have hundreds of open-source commits, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are less skilled. Everyone has to learn somewhere. Senior developers and operators don’t appear out of nowhere. Teams often only look for “experienced” people, spending more time with less manpower than if they had just trained an inexperienced recruit.
Teams often only look for “experienced” people, spending more time with less manpower than if they had just trained an inexperienced recruit.
Experience helps people pick things up faster, but no one starts out knowing exactly what to do, and you’d be surprised how seemingly unrelated skills translate well when applied to new experiences (like raid leadership!). Hire and support junior technologists. Keep in mind that a team comprised of a high percentage of inexperienced people will take considerably more time to achieve their objectives. It’s important to find a good balance, weighed more heavily with experienced people available to mentor.
Every member of a team comes with strengths we need to utilize. In raids, we become obsessed with the “meta,” which is a build for a class that is dubbed most efficient. We become so obsessed with what is “the best” that we forget about what “just works.” In reality, forcing someone to dramatically change their playstyle because someone else determined this other playstyle to be slightly better will not be as efficient as just letting a player play what they have expertise in now.
6) Organize / utilize office space(s)
I think we are going to see a reimagining of space. If we do have offices we will have more space for fewer people and a higher biosecurity level of trust. Shared office spaces may take on the same hygiene profile as a public restroom. Savills, the global real estate service provider, put out a report earlier this month entitled ‘Getting Back to the Office: A Holistic Approach to Workplace and Operational Management’ in which they provide a framework to evaluate readiness and a return to office spaces.
You can download the full report here:
Two excerpts to highlight; key questions to ask your employees regarding returning to the office (page 6 of the report.)
1.) What aspects of the office are most important to them?
2.) What are their cares and concerns for today?
3.) What about their remote work set-up works? What doesn’t work?
4.) Do they have everything they need to be productive?
5.) How would they rate your organization’s communications during this crisis?
6.) What do they want to see in the workspace to make them feel safe?
7.) How is their work/life balance?
8.) What are their thoughts about returning to the workspace?
When thinking through the plan for your team, be mindful of the other humans you may encounter in your office space, including your clients, your landlord, and contractors necessary for your business.
7) Evolve business travel and entertainment
In-person isn’t going away. It will come back. In-person will matter more than it did before — There is an inherent risk, so I predict it will be smaller market overall, with higher levels of checks and balances. Handshakes, hugs, and close-talking will be verboten. Masks at all times — perhaps overly clinical, but there are ways to make them bespoke.
I’m betting mid 2021 When we return to high volumes of business travel and entertainment. In the meantime, programming will shift to virtual. VR will be huge. Oculus continues to have its breakout moment, with $100M in contet sold within the first year, and work/telepresence tools being created to connect teams and people worldwide.
Apple is betting on it and may have hardware to add to the party.
Online events are taking place. At humble we have transitioned our programming online. Sign up for our newsletter or follow our Medium / Twitter accounts for more.
WFH and remote work are changing companies. We’re questioning everything, including whether or not working a 5 day workweek is optimal. Everything is open to consideration, so it is our responsibility to articulate an inclusive and sustainable model tied to what works for our teams and organizations. In my next post, I’ll show you how we are helping other organizations get their bearings and chart a plan to move forward.
This is part 3 in a series on the Future of Work. Part 1 and Part 2 are here. In the next and final installment of Future of Work, we will discuss how to build and test a post-pandemic plan for every organization.
