WLP272 What’s Going On With Hybrid And Asynchronous Workspaces?
In today’s episode (recorded on 4 May 2021), Pilar and Maya discuss what organisations are planning for the near future and some recent news in the world of remote.
What do people mean, when they talk about hybrid work?
Everyone’s talking about it, but are they talking about the same thing?
Pilar proposes a taxonomy of remote-acceptance in hybrid working arrangements, ranging from remote first through remote ready to trusted (hopefully) remote - though our old friend Professor Gloria Ramsbottom Suggests this is a continuum which extends through to ‘work from home over my dead body!’ at the far end… So, it seems that very little has really changed, in many workplaces.
There is variation, with Google embracing flexibility to some extent, whereas Nationwide in the UK tells 13,000 staff to 'work anywhere' - hurrah! (Thanks for sharing this perspective in your newsletter, Anish.)
There’s still not enough conversation about the array of options between working from home and working in a city centre office, and the real flexibility that activity-based use of shared resources could offer. Underpinning this often remains a depressing underlying assumption that collaboration can only happen when you’re face-to-face real-time in a room with other people… What on earth do people think has been happening for the past year?
The physical workspace needs to change to an activity-based mindset and a holistic approach - the quote from the article about Nationwide is really encouraging: “The move towards flexible working will see changing the configuration of offices, with more collaboration spaces and fewer meeting rooms, as well as introducing quiet areas and designated walking and cycling routes.”
By the way, Pilar wrote about using spaces according to activity 4 years ago in Finding The Right Work-Environment Fit — Virtual not Distant!
And here’s a good round-up About new ways of working from @Hofy on Twitter, (and a really next-level remote idea from Atlassian - but do check the publishing date!)
Seriously though, we like GM’s extension of their famous dress code:
WORK APPROPRIATELY.
(You can read some background to this short and sweet policy in this Linked In post from Mary Barra. With trust in place, you can leave it to people to use their judgement, and get the work done in the best way.)
18.36 Where does this leave coworking?
There’s still too much equating of remote and WFH, and Pilar shared some recent thoughts from Bernie Mitchell, host of the Coworking Symposium, Workplace Trends Research Summit.
There’s still a lack of understanding about what co-working is, or could be, and what it could offer in the future of work. Amid the matrix of office-optional working there are many alternatives to going back to what we had, and mostly people are missing people, rather than the office. So the co-working industry has a job to do, to advocate for itself and carve out a niche in the new reality.
25.34 The Basecamp saga - and implications for asynchronous communication
We’ve often talked about the Basecamp team, as exemplars in the collaboration space, and publishing lots of content about how to work from anywhere. (To find out exactly what the changes were that prompted the controversy, check out Jason’s Fried’s post Changes at Basecamp.)
In recent weeks they have experienced a very public meltdown of team communications and trust, and this is a live ongoing situation which at the time of publication is far from resolved. Rather than digging into the rights and wrongs of the dispute itself, let’s explore some implications and learnings for distributed teams communicating primarily by asynchronous text messages:
To every tool a purpose… And Basecamp is not ideal for complex discussions (no threading, etc)
Dictating what people can talk about on business channels is quite a controlling action, and banning political talk is a political act in itself - particularly when this means a change or crackdown
In a text-based space, content is typically going to be there for a long time, maybe forever - and as organisations and their personnel and practices mature, this may become inappropriate
When conversations take place asynchronously, you can lose a lot of the nuance and spontaneity that contextualises heated conversations in real-time… Where you can make allowances and let things go, in a way that doesn’t work when you come to it 24 hours later
Maybe some conversations or channels need to be deliberately ephemeral - archiving or even deleting over a time period? Synchronous apps like Clubhouse encourage this approach - no ‘listen later’ option. (But would this segmentation reduce spontaneity further?)
39:20 Community conversations
Speaking of ephemeral audio, Pilar has been experimenting with Twitter Spaces (audio chat on Twitter) - live group audio (though there are options for real time captioning too.)
Pilar is thinking of hosting a regular Twitter Space chat at midday UK time on Wednesdays - so keep an eye out and make sure you’re following Pilar for the alerts when the chat starts. This may be branded under Pilar’s other show, Management Café.
Another tweet that caught our eye from fellow podcaster Luke at @managing_remote, who shared that he enjoyed our What’s Going On shows, particularly during the pandemic lockdown. A nice reminder of how podcasting helps us all stay connected with each other, whatever else is going on.
Remember, we love your feedback - please contact us, or you can tweet Virtual Not Distant, or Pilar and Maya directly, with your thoughts and ideas, and do let us know if you try out any of the ideas that were discussed in this week’s episode.
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