From Remote Work to Distributed Collaboration: It’s not where you work, it’s how you work.
As we attempt to redefine what we call “workplace”, maybe it’s time to review our work practices and processes. In this “new way of working”, completely digital, we must ask ourselves: are we really being collaborative?
Note: This article has been translated to english. The original version is written in portuguese. You can read it on the link below.
It’s been months since we entered quarantine, or rather, social isolation, in the main capital cities of Brazil.
Far from me to say that we are already used to being isolated, but I guess we can all agree that, after some time in social isolation, some of us are feeling a little more emotionally stable and adapted (body and mind) to the conditions imposed on us by the COVID-19 pandemic.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It may not be the moment to seek an increase in productivity or to finally resume giving 110% on the daily work routine.
In her article “Why You Should Ignore All That Coronavirus-Inspired Productivity Pressure”, researcher Aisha S. Ahmad, addresses the mindset change that, according to her, will happen in a moment of relative stability that will succeed the initial shock caused by the crisis :
“Things will start to feel more natural. The work will also make more sense, and you will be more comfortable about changing or undoing what is already in motion. New ideas will emerge that would not have come to mind had you stayed in denial. Continue to embrace your mental shift. Have faith in the process. Support your team.”
With this relative emotional stability, we may have now the space we needed for reflection.
Right now, we don’t know how or when this period of confinement will come to an end. Nor when this so called “new normal” (term that was born a cliché) will finally establish itself, but we have already managed to identify some practices that are taking hold during this period of confinement and that will invariably compose this new definition of normal.
It is important that we begin to think back on these practices and how are they applied, since trying to simply stage on-line, what we used to do in the physical world, will be frustrating and unproductive.
New cases of COVID-19 begin to emerge in China (where the scenario seemed to be stabilizing) and Low Touch Economy model is gaining momentum, so there is no denying that the practice of remote work will have a part to play in the context of the “new normal”.
But are we remote working to its full potential? Now that we have “rehearsed” it for at least two months on a much larger scale and intensity than we used to (at least for the most of us) and emotional stability begins to permeate the context of social isolation, it is safe to take a deeper look at this way of working.
Before going any further, it is important to note that “working from home” is not for everyone. Due to the pandemic, this practice is increasing and gaining adepts. Companies that were previously opposed to home office have been forced to endorse it. As more people (and organizations) gain confidence in working remote, this practice will become even more popular, but for now it is a PRIVILEGE restricted to a small portion of the population.
In the words of Brendon Craigie, co-founder of Tyto PR agency:
“Ultimately, this scenario might act as a catalyst for employers to allow more flexible working in future, given they’ll have adapted their capabilities to enable this now.”
Notice that he employs the term “allow” in the sentence. But what about training? And how? How to learn to work in this new medium? Just keep on doing what I’ve always done at work, except that I’ll be at home, communicating and sending files via the internet is enough?
In 2018, Publicis Sapient’s Chief Experience Officer (CXO), John Maeda, shared some survey results on distributed / remote work:
Yes, remote work is a new skill. For most of us. A new skill that can only reach its full potential if we start working collaboratively. Well, this is not as simple as it sounds. Let’s see…
Maeda, in his CX Report (formerly Design in Tech Report, a study that gathers trends related to how business now happens in the computational age) points out that the practice of distributed work goes far beyond remote work.
First, he enphatizes that we should differentiate both definitions:
Travelling to a central place of work is no longer the matter. The real issue here is the ability of a team spread over several locations, to collaborate to achieve their goals with agility and efficiency, when working on the same project or product.
Another important distinction made by Maeda is between collaboration and cooperation. Collaboration can play a much bigger role in the success of a project or product, when you have a team working in a distributed way.
In a recent interview to Wired UK, Maeda states:
“Collaboration is built on top of cooperation. Cooperation is that easy thing you can do when you are together or near each other (like sending a file). Then, if you trust each other, then you can collaborate. That’s what makes this COVID era so difficult. Everyone thinks they are collaborating, but in reality they are just cooperating.”
Cooperating remotely, but not collaborating …
Collaboration requires commitment, responsibility and proactivity. You must be able to see the whole picture, focus on solving the real problem (not on crossing a task off your list). At the end of the day, you should be able to ask yourselves, “Did we solve the problem? Did we do it together? ”
“To innovate, you need to collaborate” — Marissa Mayer (Co-founder of Lumi Labs, former Yahoo CEO, former Google VP)
Marty Cagan, founder of Sillicon Valley Product Group, was in Brazil in 2018. In his talk at “Tera Product Talks”, he listed 3 key features for the success of a product based company or area. Item 2 was about collaboration. He emphatically stresses the importance of having the PM, tech lead and product designer (ahead of a product or products) co-located. And to use developers not only to code, but as “inventors”. For him, technology and design must interact the whole time. And the main reason why products or companies fail is precisely because they are working as they did 20 years ago: using the waterfall method. In other words, cooperating, rather than collaborating.
In his words:
“… And then the product manager (PM) will go to a product designer and say,‘ Design me a solution to this ’. And then the PM and the designer will go to the developer, usually in the sprint planning and say: ‘This is what we need to build’. Just to be clear, this is precisely the waterfall method. If that’s how you’re working, this is literally waterfall. I don’t care if you’re calling it Agile. This is not Agile. Not in a meaninful way. And more importantly, you will not have innovation. ”
When working collaboratively in an organization or team, we are seeking to emulate the network model. We are seeking the heterarchic model and pulling away from the hierarchical model. Simply put, the network model (made possible by the emergence of digital communication technologies) is more agile, as it grants you direct access to whoever makes the decisions or that person who will be able to solve the problem with ease. In an abstract way, the network also has the flexibility to reconfigure itself quickly in case of damage to its structure.
As we attempt to redefine what we call “workplace”, maybe it’s time to review our work practices and processes. When reviewing our current configuration as an organization, a lot comes up. We got to ask ourselves: are we working in a really collaborative way? Or are we using labels as shields?
Boundaries
While virtual reality (and other emerging technologies) does not arrive effectively to help us fill this gaps, we are trapped in an intermediate layer of reality and we need digital fluency and tools to operate as efficiently as possible.
This can be a challenge, especially when the borders that separate personal life and work life get blurred.
By working exclusively online, we get the feeling that the borders are even more defined. We lose visibility, so the problem of silos in teams tends to get worse, right? Not necessarily.
It may seem that isolating a group (or individual) is the best way to make them focus and increase their productivity. But when redefining or optimizing the new work environment (online), we are at the same risk that exists in physical locations: the creation of silos.
One of the first steps to start using this (forced) change to remote work in our advantage is to realize that, in the digital environment, everything is more intangible. Just as the borders between personal and work life (or real life and the virtual world) are blurred by the intersection of this realities, the barriers between groups and tribes become permeable.
If I still couldn’t convince you to read John Maeda’s CX Report 2020, let me try again:
With all of us online most of the time, and with the right tools, it is easier to get to whoever has the information we need. What we lack, as soon as we land in this new way of working, is the detachment to do it. Have you ever stopped to consider that in a physical workplace it is easy to walk to a co-worker’s desk and ask him for some information? So, why not do it remotely? It seems harder, but this is a behavior that we can start to actively pursue in order to create encounter situations that would not happen otherwise. This will not only facilitate access to information, but (depending on how you do it), it may help you to create chance encounters. The term serendipity in the image above refers to this, and it is also one of the basic conditions for innovation to fleurish.
In this sense, be alert to any micromanagement attempts that may arise, in the form of “we need visibility for the team” or “the team needs to stay focused, so productivity can ramp up”. They can do more harm than help.
On the subject of micromanagement …
In a recent interview, Deepali Nayar, Publicis Sapient acting head of experience in India, states the following:
“I see three practices becoming more common: better prepared meetings, easier collaboration and a shift towards leadership, rather than micromanagement.”
Well, it is no longer possible to micromanage (or at least it is much harder). With a distributed team, and every single one of us working from home, that particular kind of manager who is addicted to micromanagement, will have to give up some control. Trust becomes more important than ever. And for collaborative work to happen, whether in a remote or physical workplace, we need a healthy organizational culture.
It is important that teams are not forced to work collaboratively. Collaboration only works if the people involved want to do it willingly. Creating an atmosphere of friendship and camaradarie is basic to the process.
In addition, creating and maintaining a workplace that provides psychological security is essential to foster collaborative work. When employees are restricted to a toxic environment, which fills them with reactance and leaves them trapped in emotional states such as fear, anger, guilt and shame, it is very difficult to be productive, creative, fertile. In a psychologically safe workplace, feelings like pride, pleasure and happiness tend to appear.
A mindset change sets in, leading to behaviors and characteristics such as curiosity, DIY attitude, resilience, analytical thought, and self-confidence.
Challenges and Difficulties
Working in a distributed way can be tiring (in addition to being lonely). So get ready to learn how to manage your personal energy.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic forced us into confinement, video chat tools like Zoom, Whereby, Hangouts, etc. are enabling us to continue working. And many people are finding this exhausting. In a recent interview to BBC, Gianpiero Petriglieri, a professor at INSEAD Business School, cites some of the reasons why acting with our mind immerse in a digital environment is so tiring:
· The video call is our reminder of the people we have lost temporarily. (disruption of the familiar context during the pandemic).
· Imagine if you go to a bar, and in the same bar you talk with your professors, meet your parents or date someone, isn’t it weird? That’s what we’re doing now… We are confined in our own space, in the context of a very anxiety-provoking crisis, and our only space for interaction is a computer window.
· Some of us tend to work excessively as a way of trying to secure our jobs.
· It doesn’t matter if you call it a virtual happy hour, it is a meeting, because we are used to using these tools to work.
In addition to the inherent exhaustion, there is another concern: interruptions.
Bruno Bonini, from Inovação Lado B podcast (available only in portuguese), is currently airing a series of short and very enlightening episodes about remote work (“Viramos remoto, e agora?”). In episode 6, he points out that interruptions are the biggest threat to productivity:
“Creativity is a process that requires concentration and stimulae in the right dosage. There are more complex jobs and there are less complex jobs. Jobs that require a high degree of concentration for a long period of time are very affected by interruptions. Good work takes time and concentration. Always.”
I couldn’t agree more. One of the biggest challenges of working from home is to manage interruptions in both physical and digital worlds. Now, there are two realities that are likely to interrupt you. Even more so in a situation of social isolation, where there are two worlds (the personal and the professional) fighting for your attention.
A step in learning to work in this new format is knowing how to deal with interruptions by creating a new daily routine, or by using tools that prevent you from being interrupted (in the digital world) and the main thing: knowing how to use the flexibility that remote work provides in order to balance moments of immersion and moments where you have to give in to the interruption, in a natural way, and then resume where you left off. It is possible, but it is exhausting. Very draining at first. Less stressful according to practice. If you have a child at home, you know how this feels.
Another challenge is to do everything you can so everyone has access to the same tools and information. If in a physical workplace, where you could turn around and ask something to the person sitting next to you, this already seemed like a waste of time (for both you and him), in a digital workplace this barrier intensifies and this loss of time is much greater. This can be exhausting. Especially for someone who just arrived at a team that is currently developing a project or product and needs to understand the context, processes and tools to be able to perform.
Finally, creating a stimulating atmosphere to foster organizational culture becomes even more difficult. Companies no longer have a workplace filled with “cool” furniture and things like that. Not to mention happy hour…
Switching between sync and async
But at this point, the best advice that I can give you is this: know how to plan and alternate between synchronous and asynchronous moments precisely. This is an insight that I could check out for myself.
During the last (almost) 2 years, I have worked on a team distributed between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. As a team member of Unboxlab (Afferolab’s innovation lab), I was able to participate in a series of jobs involving some remote and distributed work practices, from co-creation sessions, to daily on-line routines. This practice intensified and was put to the test in the last 60 days. To the point of going through with a project creation marathon, called a Creathon (Hackaton style), completely online.
During this period, one thing became clear: in the transition from physical to remote work, the “cost” of each work moment (synchronous and asynchronous) gets evident. Working in a synchronous way, while online, is much more “expensive” (or mentally taxing) than face-to-face sync time (as in co-creation sessions, for example). We can’t be productive for so many hours in a row in this digital real-time collaboration mode. Therefore, these moments have to be carefully planned so that they last less hours, but in a way that we can benefit from them in equal measure as we did in person. In addition, it is important to exit these synchronous moments with tasks assigned for each team member so they can continue work in asynchronous moments.
Synchronous moments are more tiresome. Use them sparingly. If you and your team need to be together for a longer period, do it in co-creation sessions, by using a real-time collaboration tool (like Miro, Jamboard or Freehand). Alternately, use asynchronous moments to give yourself more time. Time to focus and carry out activities that require concentration and time, or to be able to deal with daily interruptions before resuming work, or even to carefully plan the team’s next synchronous moment.
These are delicate times. Learn to manage your personal energy. Take care of the ones you love. Take care of yourself. Do not work more (hours). Work as efficiently as possible and learn how to optimize your resources. Time is one of them. This crisis will eventually pass and you will come out of it with a new repertoire.
In short:
· Plan and switch synchronous and asynchronous moments accurately.
· Learn how to manage interruptions.
· Seek (and create) a psychologically safe workplace.
· Make boundaries permeable.
· Work collaboratively.
