WFA

Working from anywhere

communities are the new conference

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Are communities the new conference?

I asked this question in our monthly video call of the perpetual beta coffee club [PBCC] which I facilitate. There was almost universal agreement that people prefer to engage in communities, both online and in-person, rather than a conference, particularly ones that have a lot of vendors. The PBCC was a significant sanity check for many of us during the lock-downs of the early stages of the SARS-2 pandemic. For the first few months we switched to weekly video calls so we could stay in touch and find out what was happening around the world.

Asynchronous, continuous online communities like ours provide something that most conference do not — time for reflection and deep conversations.

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nothing time is for deep work

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In slow media for the great reset I noted that one nice thing about blogs is that there are few trolls because it takes more time write a comment on a blog post and often there is an approval process. Plus, anyone can easily delete crap comments from their own blogs. If more people engage in longer form writing and share through blogging, we may collectively address some of the challenges we face with the misinformation and disinformation on consumer social media. Perhaps ‘slow media’ can slow the reversal effects of digital platforms which create a mono-culture of noise without meaning and meme wars. Or, in the words of Marshall McLuhan, “The ignorance of how to use new knowledge stockpiles exponentially”.

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asleep at the wheel

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A hybrid model — working a combination of on-site and from anywhere — creates different classes of workers and maintains the wall between management and workers. Hybrid workplaces are an effort by management to hang on to power and privilege for as long as possible, I concluded in the worst of both worlds in May 2021. The next month, in not remotely working, I suggested that as — or if — this pandemic winds down, it may get difficult to attract and retain talented people unless they have a degree of control over where they spend their time, especially if competitors offer work from anywhere. This year, in 2023, I note in work is human that the taste of working from anywhere has accelerated the departure of older workers — “Dennis C. would rather retire than return to the office full time — and that’s exactly what he did.”

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work is human

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Is there a talent shortage today, or merely ineffective hiring practices?

While employers lament a talent shortage, they are scrambling to increase talent attraction and retention. They offer new incentives and promises of increased flexibility and an inclusive company culture. However, most of these efforts ignore one key factor that could make a significant difference–including talent across the age spectrum.

Instead, talent management processes such as recruiting, hiring, promoting and retaining tend to exclude individuals under 24 or over 40. The result is a 16-year criterion for talent. —Forbes 2023-03-12

Is ageism a primary factor influencing the retention of skilled and experienced workers?

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time for management to grow up

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In 2008, while working with a team of 40 people spread across several times zones, I suggested that we need a distributed work manifesto. This would include the requirement for collaborative documents, a group text chat, a focus on delivering content and not formatting for style, and reserving email for decisions and contracts. We are still not there yet and even during this pandemic managerial forces are trying to put distributed workers back into the office. The reality is that most workers want distributed work, most of the time.

“As companies come under pressure to offer higher compensation to staff and to recruit skilled workers, the national average base salary increase for 2023 is projected at 4.2 per cent, according to a recent survey from consulting firm Eckler Ltd.

A recent survey by productivity software company OSlash about the ‘great disconnect’ between bosses and workers found that 60 per cent of employers said they would offer employees a hybrid work schedule if they declined to return to the office.

Only 20 per cent would let employees go back to full time remote working.

Of the 800 work-from-home employees and 200 business leaders surveyed, nearly 80 per cent of remote workers believe their employers would fire them if they said ‘no’ to a return-to-office mandate.

Meanwhile, 78 per cent of employees surveyed said they would be willing to take a pay cut to continue working from home, with Gen Z respondents being the most willing to do so.”
—The Star 2022-10-07

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normal is the bias

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Almost a decade ago Harvard Business Review featured Scott Berkun’s article on how Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, was able to function as a 100% distributed company.

“Culture is critical. Automattic has many policies designed to empower employees and remote work is just one of them. They believe individual workers know best how to be productive and that management’s job is to provide choices and get out of the way. If employees are self-motivated and empowered, remote work can accelerate productivity. However in autocratic or bureaucratic organizations the freedom of remote work runs against the culture. Of course remote workers will be less productive if they’re in environments that depend on centralized, rule-oriented, or committee heavy processes. But even then it can work if managers care more about results than pretense.” —HBR 2013-03-15

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distributed work 2021

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I am quite certain that distributed work is here to stay. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci at the US CDC is surprised at how long this pandemic is lasting. With the highly infectious Omicron variant becoming dominant in many countries, it does not look like it will be over soon. In a few months time, some people will have been working distributively for two years, not at their request, but having found new work norms to get things done. I have spoken to many people who will not go back to a carbon-intensive work commute.

Here is a review of some thoughts on distributed work throughout 2021.

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social learning powers distributed work

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Distributed work is here to stay, because many people like it, the pandemic is not over and there will be others, and market forces will seek to maximize profits and reduce labour costs. But Zoom calls all day are not going to create work environments where knowledge workers can deal with complex problems or create innovative solutions. The key to distributed work is social learning.

Distributed work is driving a work-from-anywhere culture and is increasingly reliant on asynchronous communication, as people move to multiple time zones. In order to share the necessary implicit knowledge needed for complex work, trust has to be developed. People only share with others they trust. This trust takes time to develop between people. How can they do this when they are not in the same office?

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leadership in a distributed workplace

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Distributed, remote, and even hybrid work have one similar quality — they expose cracks in the system that could be covered over in face-to-face settings. They make dysfunctional workplaces transparently obvious. Distributed work, like online teaching, has to be much more explicit. Both require excellent communication skills, especially writing, because the work becomes more asynchronous. In a global economy, work is distributed across both space and time.

Those in leadership positions — servant leaders — have to manage networked contributors working in environments that are transparent, diverse, and open. Anything less is sub-optimal. They need the skills developed by leading multiple players in online role-play games — creating highly motivated and remote collectives to battle elves or aliens or build civilisations. These skills are not taught in business schools and few senior managers or executives have them today.

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post-production society

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Technology at Work v6.0 — The Coming of the Post-Production Society, is the latest research report from Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions, published in June 2021 [Disclosure: Citi is a client]. One year ago I summarized the previous version, The New Normal of Remote Work. I concluded that most people would like the option to work from home, most of the time. This is especially true for knowledge workers. They have tasted it, and in spite of the challenges of being forced into what I would prefer to call ‘distributed work’ — they like it.

The report has four chapters.

  1. The Post-production Society
  2. Covid-19 and Digitization
  3. Fiscal Policy — From Life Preservers to Stimulus
  4. Inventing the Future

I will highlight a few sections of interest, but there is much more in this +100 page report.

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