We used to overhear spontaneous conversations, loop each other in, and have ad hoc engagements that led to creative leaps. We can’t do that over Zoom.
I haven’t talked to anyone in marketing in months. I feel disconnected; I don’t know what’s going on over there.
We just aren’t collaborating as much as we used to.
We can’t be as innovative if we only meet on a schedule.
If you are you trying to manage your company culture and processes under the paradigms that worked for an office and it’s not working, that’s not surprising. There is no more watercooler, or coffee machine. There is no more open office plan where you can overhear a conversation between colleagues and jump in uninvited.
Remote forces us to be intentional in our collisions and collaborations. I see too many teams bemoan the loss of the old patterns, because the remote version of those patterns either doesn’t exist or isn’t producing the outcomes they did while in an office. Of course they don’t — the entire context around communication has changed.
Rather than focusing on how to manage towards the desired outcomes, teams try to replicate the inputs — with predictable results.
If our use of technology and corporate infrastructure is changing, shouldn’t our approach to management evolve as well?
Where I work, we’ve reevaluated our entire approach to work as we shifted to fully (and permanently) remote. We created cross functional positions deliberately to drive more conversations and shared work across groups. We’ve brought standups to everyone and made them public, and managers and leaders drop in across the company. We push as many conversations as possible to public Slack channels, avoid email, and standardize short 1:1s among any pairs that regularly interact, or whose work intersects. It takes intentional and thoughtful management work, and we don’t have it all 100% right, but it’s working. We’re more productive, more collaborative, and more collegial than before. It’s eliminated the physical domination of some types from conversations, brought more voices into conversations more easily, and made content more powerful than presence. We can manage meetings better than ever.
Remote-first companies have their challenges. Collaboration and innovation needn’t be one of them.
