21st Century Work Life

There are many valid reasons for resisting going remote in your team, but today we cover those reasons based on myths and common misconceptions about personalities suited to remote work and communication. visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

We start with the one piece of often misquoted research, something that really frustrates Pilar in particular:

1) 93% of communication is non-verbal.

The assumption of this is that therefore, virtual teamwork will never work as well as collocated.

However, this statistic, which comes from Mehrabian's work needs more context.

It relates to emotional content and is more pertinent to situations where there is a disconnect between what is being said and what the listener is perceiving is going on.

This article explains it all:

https://www.businessballs.com/communication-skills/mehrabians-communication-theory-verbal-non-verbal-body-language-152/

2) The only way of generating ideas and innovating is by being in a room together shouting out ideas.

Therefore if we can't do this as a remote team, we will never be able to generate new ideas and be creative.

Well, guess what, brainstorming doesn't always work anyway!

https://www.inc.com/melissa-schilling/the-science-of-why-brainstorming-in-groups-doesnt-work.html

3) Only introverts are suited to working from home. (We know that virtual teams don't always have people working from home, but we thought we'd tackle this one as it also gets us going…)

Well, what is an introvert anyway? And some "extroverts" make remote work anyway, they just know they need social interaction and make sure they get it in some sort of way.

We challenge the fact that there is one type of personality that works best from home.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3046450/do-you-have-the-right-personality-to-work-from-home

https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlmoore/2017/06/01/why-i-never-work-from-home-i-need-my-extrovert-breaks/#4b7cc2897711

We like this other article because it looks at personality traits or characterisitcs that might go best with remote work.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/289370

What factors in the workplace affect where we choose to work with others? Dr Kerstin Sailer and Ros Pomeroy from BrainyBirdz talk to Pilar about what they're finding out in their experiments. visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

What factors in the workplace affect where we choose to work with others? Dr Kerstin Sailer and Ros Pomeroy from BrainyBirdz talk to Pilar about what they're finding out in their experiments.

What does the experiment in the workspace that Ros and Kerstin run involve?

An experiential approach.

You can find out more about the experiment here: https://brainybirdz.net/2017/07/10/experimenting-with-workspace/

Understanding patterns of behaviour. So, when people have the choice to pick where they work from, what have you found affects that choice? Spatial visibility Daylight Furniture Personality Type Team Dynamics Perception of Task

Prospect and refuge; intimacy, visibility. Ros mentions the software DepthmapX How do organisations use this information? How can data inform decision-making? How can collaboration be improved?

What are the different kind of areas we need in the workplace?

For more information on Brainybirdz go to brainybirdz.net

We continue talking about co-working, this time with Bernie J. Mitchell, who tells us about engineering connections between members of co-working spaces.

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

From freelancing to supporting freelancers.

The journey from visitor to key staff member

Bernie's role in WorkHubs is connecting people.

"Helping people finding their voice with each other."

"Finding ways of connecting people without engineering it too much."

What things haven't worked - (guess what, pure socialising is not the most important).

Focused meetups.

Bernie shares how he arrived at the most efficient mode of communication within the community.

Involving the community in the running of the space.

What does co-working mean to people?

Learning about their members' stories: why they do what they do and how they ended up doing it.

Do online platforms help co-working communities? What has Bernie tried?

Bernie mentions: https://included.co/ https://www.loomio.org/https://fizzle.co/ Coworking Europe

Have coworking spaces lost their initial purpose? Maya and Pilar discuss three recent articles about co-working: the diverse types of co-working spaces available, the move of corporations into the co-working space and whether blockchain might well bring back the original spirit of co-working.

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

We love co-working spaces because they allow people to choose to work in spaces that inspire them.

To drive the conversation, Maya and Pilar have focused on three articles:

Part 1

https://styleblueprint.com/everyday/coworking-spaces/

We talk about the different type of coworking spaces, how some of them mirror what you would expect what you go into a corporate office.

Now we can find a place to work in that suits us. We can even belong to a coworking space that matches our values/personality, while working for an organisation where we don't feel so attached to their physical space.

There are even now women only coworkind spaces… http://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-wing-allbright-women-coworking-spaces

Part 2

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/307085

Big businesses are taking over some co-working spaces for their own employees. So should we still be calling them "co-working" spaces?

IBM has taken over a space for 600 of their employees, vs Microsoft that has provided co-working passes to some of their sales force.

Mingling of employees with entrepreneurs: is it about checking out the competition? And are we in danger of new businesses getting mentored into the traditional way of doing business?

Part 3

How are Cryptocurrencies Changing Coworking?

http://newworker.co/mag/how-are-cryptocurrencies-changing-coworking/

Maya explains what how blockchain works.

Is blockchain the way in which technology can reignite the original spirit of co-working?

Other episodes in the 21st Century Work Life podcast on co-working:

Episode 83 The Spirit of Co-working with Alex Hillman

Episode 30 Co-working at Impact Hub

Episode 158 (to be released on 22 February 2018) Building Community in Co-Working Spaces with Bernie Mitchell

Pilar talks to Dom Price from Atlassian about how to maintain a playful, collaborative mindset in a growing organisation.

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

Introduction Pilar mentions these other podcast episodes that might be of interest:

https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/trello-and-coffee (with Brian Cervino from Trello)

https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/evolve-rituals-include-remote-colleagues-2/ (with Dom Price, today's guest)

The Conversation The role of Work Futurist. His job involves looking at macro-level trends in the workplace to understand the complexity of the future world of work. (Although much of it is guess work...)

How Dom takes the "less hippo, more elephant" approach into his interactions with other companies/organisations.

What Atlassian does and where its employees are based.

From 500 to +2,000 people and the change that this brings.

How Dom's role emerged and how Atlassian developed its own way of staying agile.

They have now opened up their internal ways of working:

https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook

"We don't want to be famous for how big we are, but for how awesome we are."

How and why the playbook was created and opened up.

"As we scale, we want to feel smaller, not bigger. More creative, not slower."

As the company has grown, it has become more distributed in many ways. A shared language and way of working has become essential.

Building the awareness in companies of the need to remain adaptable and the dangers of "transformations".

Preventing hierarchies from emerging as your company grows and how the fear of failure could be driving this.

How you operate has nothing to do with size, it's all to do with attitude and mindset.

If we have to add something in, what other things can we stop doing?

"Collaboration is about being willing to be wrong."

"Organisational structure can give you a comfort blanket that's not real."

How remote working is evolving at Atlassian and how so many assumptions were challenged after acquiring Trello.

Dom's article on remote working: https://www.inc.com/dom-price/why-ending-remote-work-in-name-of-collaboration-is-bs.html

@DomPrice on Twitter

There are some questions we ask ourselves when designing our physical collaboration space. We can use most of these questions to design our online collaboration space too.

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

Pilar attended this event:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/experimenting-with-workspace-an-interactive-experience-tickets-41004688126#

The importance of the location of toilets in the workplace https://workdesign.com/2016/03/why-restrooms-matter-in-the-workplace/

Culture What's the culture like in your organisation? Competitive, collaborative? Will you design the workspace to support this or to challenge it?

Identity What can you do to remind people they belong to your organisation/team when they log onto the workspace? Check out this episode about How Zappos Lives its Culture, in the Happy Melly podcast https://www.happymelly.com/zappos-lives-its-culture/

Do We Need to Keep People Together or Keep them Apart?

Do you need spaces where people can mingle and bump into each other?

The coffee machine as an "attractor". Google Docs and Trello are places where people can "bump into each other" when they're doing the work.

Some final questions for you:

What's your culture like, competitive, collaborative, something in between and what's the use of the space encouraging?

How do you make the digital space unique to your organisation or team?

Have you got spaces where people can feel connected to each other and spaces where they can feel they have sole ownership of their work?

Have you got places where people can bump into each other and feel connected to other people through the work?

Pilar's updates:

Online Meetings that Rock https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/book-on-online-meetings/

Podcasting as an internal communication tool when introducing agile working. What do you think?

Other podcasts that Pilar is involved in:

Management Café My Pocket Psych

Fernando Polo describes his company's journey towards salary transparency, and tells us why they're moving towards self-setting salaries at Good Rebels.

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

Pilar mentions this article about millenials and their attitude towards salary transparency: https://amp-businessinsider-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.businessinsider.com/millennials-are-breaking-the-one-big-salary-taboo-reasons-why-2017-12

She recommends this episode from Ted Radio https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/567499335/transparency

And also episode 137 from the 21st Century Work Life podcast with David Burkus.

We start at the beginning of Fernando's journey, when he joined the company during a very difficult period.

The present Good Rebels structure, company make-up, locations, etc.

Fernando mentions the book "The Future of Management" by Gary Hamel.

How he shifted his mindset, from a hierarchical mindset to self-management after reading that book.

Fernando's own book, which he co-authored with his brother: "Lidertarios".

The journey begins: according to the values of openness, engagement, commitment, etc, they decided to transform the company from a family owned business company to a co-operative partnership, there are now 12 partners, "and growing".

The titles the company uses internally, eg Knights.

The company is structured as Client Squads, autonomous client teams.

The "Hubs" are centres of excellence to spread best practice throughout the company, eg data hub, technology hub, creativity and design. They have Hub co-ordinators, who are voted in.

"Rebel ships" and "Basecamps". Using a language that allows for remote operations and remote client work.

More on the role of the co-ordinator. How difficult it is to define the role of a manager, or similar – a good one, that is!

Basecamps, not "implants" in client offices. Manifestos, instead of rules and procedures.

How Good Rebels work with a client remotely. Offices in big cities are less used to working with agencies remotely than those in small cities.

First steps towards Salary Transparency, stemming from the value of Radical Transparency.

"The Outlook" was the first meeting to be opened up to all employees. The "In Progress" ranking and what happened when this was opened up. (Hint: not pretty.)

The "In Progress" has now been split into two: feedback mechanism and self-setting salaries.

The question of privacy laws when publishing salaries (internally).

"Transparency builds honesty."

It's difficult to have inequality when you have salary transparency.

How this affects recruitment.

No longer about "owners and employees", but more about a group of entrepreneurs. Your salary depends less on your relationship with your boss.

https://www.goodrebels.com/why-an-open-salary-policy-will-make-our-good-rebels-stronger/

Research around salary transparency. https://www.worldfinance.com/strategy/pay-secrecy-could-soon-be-a-thing-of-the-past

The potential to reduce gender gap by introducing open salaries! Not all organisations are ready to introduce open salaries – just notice the long journey Fernando has been talking about…

A new way of deciding / formula who gets a raise in the company. A system that takes into account that some people know better than others the quality of the work of others.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/abladias

Current research suggests that having text-based debates can diminish our perception of the other person and that audio-only conversation can build more empathy than that involving also visual elements. What does this mean for virtual teams?

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

Pilar and Maya discuss the article: Why You Should Never Ever Argue with Anyone on Facebook According to Science

https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/you-should-never-ever-argue-with-anyone-on-facebook-according-to-science.html

Is the phrasing "according to science" trying to prevent us from questioning the findings?

Do Emojis communicate emotion or belittle it?

And what happens when we add contradictory emojis?

Are managers nervous about giving negative feedback and causing conflict or upset?

Maya gives an example of how easy it is to misinterpret a text message's intentions.

Are even full stops conveying emotion?!

If you are nervous about how a message will be received, when possible, get on a call. Moving onto voice/video call also signals that the conversation is important.

Pilar mentions this previous episode 115 on Managing Up in Virtual Teams with Eva Rimbau-Gilabert

https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/managing-up-in-virtual-teams

How polarization can easily turn into the wrong image of someone.

When did we need to start asking for an appointment to ring someone up?

So how does this influence how we communicate in virtual teams?

For example, should we stop "working out loud" in writing? Not always, we just need to be mindful and this article by Jochen Lillich Founder and CEO of freistil IT. has a great description of how.

https://blog.freistil.it/working-out-loud-doesnt-mean-being-noisy-c71010e0d236

Yale Research on Voice and Emotion: Five Experiments and What it Means for Speakers

https://rogerlove.com/yale-research-on-voice-and-emotion/

(Pilar mentions the podcast Evidence Talks, which looks at evidence-based practice in organisations.)

"Empathic accuracy".

Empathy is only a part of business, using video does have some benefits, like keeping the team conversation fluid and a sense of team unity.

But as always, it really depends.

The context in which the experiment was run was different to that we experience "in vivo".

Pilar mentions episode WLP136 https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/happiness-at-automattic

And the article on hiding your own face from view during video calls

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/videoconferencing-workplace-productivity-1.4053566

Maya's been in the virtual space for ages, before Facebook!

How switching on video can actually help us to focus when in a distracting environment.

Our backgrounds during video calls.

Laura Roeder, founder of Meet Edgar, talks about how her company is structured and the role that clarity and transparency play in ensuring the right culture-employee fit.

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

What is Meet Edgar, why it was set up and how. https://meetedgar.com/ Bootstrapping it, decisions around funding in the company. How Meet Edgar was/is funded and why Laura decided not to raise any venture capital for the business. How this funding model influences how people make decisions in the company. Apart from salaries, the company's financials are shared throughout the company, so that employees can understand why profit margins need to be high, where the money is coming from and where it's going. Company make-up and structure; the need for manageable timezones. Mainly working with others synchronously, but working from home. Products, Customer experience, Marketing, Operations. The company has set working hours, there is some flexibility but you're expected to be "at work" during core hours in the normal workday. You know when you're online, you know when you can schedule meetings with them. Slack is main hub, or use Zoom or Slack's call feature for video calls. Have a rule: You should be on video as much as possible, seeing someone just adds a strong extra layer of communication, seeing facial expressions, and whether someone is paying attention or not. "If we're not typing, we want to be talking on video." Regular meeting rhythms. Every Monday, company wide meeting; each department has a Monday planning meeting and Fridays are for retrospectives. Set up early in this way from the beginning to be able to scale. Ideal is that developers, writers can spend their time doing what they love to do, not managing or being part of other structural roles. The online employee handbook is a great tool for recruitment, letting prospects know if the fit is right, especially for a remote company when people can't come and visit.

https://meetedgar.com/careers/

What does "we're really collaborative, etc,we have free beer" what does that mean for the day to day? http://handbook.meetedgar.com/ Clarity around what it's like there. Shares so that it can help others.

https://lauraroeder.com/opening-up-our-internal-handbook-add655179251

Documenting the handbook is time consuming, but small details are very helpful for people. Eg if you are offering to cover learning, what expenses are appropriate? Non-believer in Unlimited Vacations, because it can be unclear. Clarity and transparency and what values mean to employees. What does following values mean for my behaviour? The Culture Guide:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12mv0roRKL5qULoV_JUcDC8OD6lnF0YlVktuyMlFka7A/edit#heading=h.ssrcdfb4qpvk

"Advocates", the managers. What are their responsibilities in Meet Edgar? The manager should be at the bottom supporting their team. They are advocate for their area, their team and team members. What does having a great conversation look like? Learning hands on and training for managers. Studying books together as a company. "We don't have to do it like everyone else does, let's just use our common sense, let's think about how we want to work together, how we want to be treated at work and let's base our policies around that."

Laura's own journey as CEO and how fascinated she is with the way in which companies can be structured.

Connect with Laura: lauraroeder.com

Laura Roeder on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lkr

meetedgar.com

Pilar has a go at translating this great summary of the world of work, written by the Spanish organisation Future for Work Institute. You can have a look at the original article here: http://www.futureforwork.com/noticias/nuestra-primera-navidad-juntos

Don't forget to visit www.virtualnotdistant.com for more on remote work. Happy 2018!