Dichotomies: Rituals and Innovation in the Workplace
Humans tend to create dichotomies. Either this or that. Heaven or hell. Chocolate or peanut butter. Moss or rolling stone. Ritual or innovation. But for all of these choices, we do not have to choose one or the other. There is a continuum of options, with multiple factors that should be taken into consideration. Focusing on endpoints limits what we can learn and how we can benefit.
In the workplace, whether an office is centralized or distributed is one such dichotomy. Some are embracing the virtual office, while others are throwing in the towel. Workplace surveys show that workers love the flexibility offered by remote work, but they also miss the comradeship offered by working together in a place-based office. Managers see increased productivity but also challenges with information sharing, security, and performance evaluation.
Virtual Offices Expose Assumptions about Workplaces
The wide-scale move to remote work in 2020 necessarily focused on immediate term needs: computing resources, internet connectivity, and internal communications. The focus has been on replicating the place-based office in a distributed environment. Because these virtual offices were set up in emergency mode, there was not time to stop and reflect on the unspoken rules and rituals of the office and how to embed these in the virtual workplace.
Some are lamenting the sterile Zoom call as a symbol of everything that is wrong with virtual offices. It is important to bring people together on video calls… BUT the calls need to be part of an explicit goals framework that everyone has access to and understands. And, virtual office tools in addition to the video call platform should be used to track progress, action items, and foster engagement. Further, these technologies need to be embedded in a workplace culture, one with more transparency than in the place-based office. With people working across timezones and flexing hours during a day, having technology to enable asynchrony as well as workplace norms that elucidate communication expectations is critical.
This deep cultural work is often seen as “extra”, and non-essential for all but the enlightened few. But in reality, each office has a culture. As Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy explain, now is the time to Write Down Your Team’s Unwritten Rules. The virtual office demands that workplace culture be intentional — developed with purpose, involving all employees, and embedded in routines and rituals. Culture is the glue that holds together workplaces. It enables teams to hold forth and even innovate in times of uncertainty.
Work from Anywhere Best Practices
Those workplaces that are having a better virtual experience have taken the time to explore their workplace culture and worked to embed rituals into the virtual workplace. Having led a born-virtual company from start-up to sustainability, it is clear to me that we can do so much better than sterile video calls. We can be creative and intentionally inspire our virtual teams, through a combination of workplace values, operational principles, technologies, and social events.
But don’t just take my word for it. Raj Choudhury has been studying practice and productivity trends of work-from-anywhere companies for the last 5 years. In a recent article (also a podcast), Raj summarizes virtual workplace benefits for workers, the workplace, and society: increased productivity and creativity, improved retention and engagement, and opportunities to reverse brain drain and reduce carbon emissions. How these benefits translate inside the companies is a work in process. The good news is that best practices are emerging across a range of remote work environments.
Communication. Enable asynchronous communication to support communication between people and teams between those Zoom calls, and embed these tools throughout your communication workflows
Knowledge Sharing. Map how you share information. Develop and implement a transparent knowledge-sharing strategy, including a working handbook, company core strategies, and team goals, and link your communications (including meeting agendas!!) to relevant items.
Connection. Be intentional about organizing community collisions, using a combination of technical tools (watercooler events), asynchronous Q&A, and temporary co-location events to support mentoring, social interaction, and company values and norms.
Compensation. Cost of living, taxes, health care, and employment legal structures vary by city, state, and country. Navigating these waters is complicated. Do the research, clarify your policies, and ensure they are embedded in hiring and evaluation processes.
Security. Data security is based in workplace culture and reinforced by technology. It is part of your knowledge management strategy, and is likely to interact with external regulatory agencies managing immigration and data privacy policies. Again, do the research, clarify your policies, and ensure they are embedded in hiring and evaluation processes.
Opportunity
In many ways, the 2020 workplace offers a unique opportunity to explore what “office” means. What are the hidden assumptions about place and progress? Not every workplace needs to be on the bleeding edge, but we also don’t need to make a decision about whether work-from-anywhere is good for EVERYONE ALL THE TIME. Again, the dichotomy is distracting us from the deeper work.
Let’s take an iterative approach, experiment, and share the benefits and risks of virtual AND place-based offices, what works and what fails.
