21st Century Work Life

Pilar and Lisette review the last year and look forward to see what 2018 might bring.

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com "Leadership in Remote Teams" online course 12 – 23 Feb 2018 www.virtualnotdistant.com/open-workshops/

Why Lisette won't be joining us for the first two months of 2018.

The difficulty of saying "no" and how difficult it is to hear it.

Last year's episode was episode 104 www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/2016-headlines This was the article predicting 2017

10 Workplace Trends You'll See in 2017 http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2016/11/01/workplace-trends-2017/#6954cfed3457

What we've seen happen in 2017

Skype for Business seems more popular while individuals seem to be moving away from Skype.

How "co-working" means different things to different people. If you find it isolating to work from home, you need to be proactive in reaching out.

The shift in mindset is slow…

The use of technology in recruiting.

"Experiences" as rewards.

The gig economy. If you would like to know more about this, check out episode 19 of Evidence Talks.

What's been happening in 2017 in our own work lives

Virtual not Distant Ross Winter took over the podcast polishing https://podcastpolishing.com/

Maya Middlemiss has joined the company! www.mayamiddlemiss.com

Pilar and Lisette co-interviewed, and they also recorded an interview that will never air!

Join us for Virtual Team Talk http://www.virtualteamtalk.com

Online learning communities

Lots more podcasts have been created. Pilar's doing lots of podcasting, including Word Maze.

Tom Petty and Ueli Steck died…

Lisette delivered a TedX talk!

2017 Developments in the World of Work

Are we working longer hours if we work from home – so what about employment law?

Office 365 – the integration of tools

More conversation around what is an office space for?

ONE SIZE OFFICE DOESN"T FIT ALL https://www.standard.co.uk/business/will-the-traditional-office-exist-in-the-future-a3693196.html?amp At Deloitte, 83 per cent of the consultancy firm's 16,000 UK employees use agile working — working from home or elsewhere when it suits them, and the business. Companies are also embracing the idea of collaborative working, in which they share office space with each other. Regus, which provides shared and serviced offices, has 300 sites in the UK serving 250,000 businesses including Uber. Clients can pay-as-they-go from £15 per person per day. https://www.wired.com/story/why-wework-is-buying-meetup/

Unlimited Vacation https://hbr.org/2017/11/the-ceo-of-kronos-on-launching-an-unlimited-vacation-policy

Distributed agile Thanks to Heidi Araya - @HeidiAraya on Twitter

"Building career lifestyles"

Pilar appeared in this Spanish podcast http://www.futureforwork.com/podcasts/equipos-virtuales-pero-no-distantes

What We Look Forward to in 2018

Coaching online also works! https://scienceforwork.com/blog/workplace-coaching/

Talk of how much home and work life should overlap or not.

Online meetups and conferences – what will happen in that space? What will be different?

An article about trends to look for in 2018: https://www.inc.com/christina-desmarais/22-trends-to-look-for-in-2018.html

Automation

and of course the books "Collaboration Superpowers" and "Online Meetings that Rock"!

Maya Middlemiss shares her experiences as a freelancer and joining Virtual not Distant and Management 3.0.

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

Check out our new open course Leadership in Remote Teams, starting in February 2018. We also deliver in-house.

https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/open-workshops/

Find out more about the VIRTUAL not Distant® framework from this episode with Pilar on the More Time More Profit podcast

https://www.moretimemoreprofit.com/podcast/069/ Maya is a freelance writer, who's moved on from running a virtual company to joining two teams (and more!) online.

Check out our About Us page to see Maya and Ross, our podcast polisher.

Connect with Maya www.mayamiddlemiss.com

She also contributes to this: valencia-property.com/denia/

She tells us a bit about her work – adopting different voices as a freelance writer and keeping the "heart" of it.

The need to build up your repertoire of tools when joining virtual teams.

How free are freelancers?

Accountability, trust and measuring output, when most of your work is not measurable…

The face to face component – the social and 360 degree aspect.

From manager to employee.

How do you sense how much you can adapt something in a team so that it works for you?

What helps during the onboarding process and as a freelancer. (Last time Maya was onboarded, it was the 20th century!) She shares the experience of being a freelancer for a mainly full-time, colocated company. And the early internet days!

Looking out for the unspoken during the onboarding process.

Observing the culture – being deliberate about communication.

Piece on security https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/blog/virtually-secure-is-not-enough

We talk about this article https://work.qz.com/1118489/your-job-as-an-employer-is-to-make-sure-every-voice-is-heard

The separation between people who are embracing technology and those who don't. And also different levels of comfort with change.

The new open course: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/open-workshops/

What can Maya see when she looks out of her new window?

Pilar hops on the microphone for this Fickle Friday episode: Reflections on one of my jobs today as a voiceover. No personal stuff, no quick round robin of how everyone was feeling or any "chit chat". And yet we did a cracking job. So, why do we insist on sharing so much when we work with others in a team? (And to find out more about Pilar's work as a voiceover artist, check out "Hi, I'm Here for a Recording. The ordinary life of a voiceover artist.")

In this episode, Pilar talks about the fears that arise around the use/overuse of technology when we introduce a remote setup.

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

In this episode, Pilar talks about the fears that arise around the use/overuse of technology when we introduce a remote setup. In the second part of the episode, she talks about the new open course run by Virtual not Distant.

Check out this new, two-week course (though you'll only need to commit about 30-60 minutes a day) on leadership in remote teams. With voucher code. https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/open-workshops/

https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/blog/sickness-remote-teams

This episode will be of use to team members, managers and those responsible for supporting the shift to remote work / agile working in organisations.

What are the fears of tech overload?

- That all our interactions will be online and we will lose our human connection. - That we won't be able to switch off. - That learning to use new platforms will be stressful and take up too much time.

Human connection and overload

Move away from email onto platforms/tools. (We'll talk about tool overload later.)

Different people have different relationships with email. The problem is that our inbox tends to mix our team communication with our organisational/external communication.

We haven't trained ourselves in using it and we haven't agreed how to use it.

Most emails don't have a personal picture, but collaboration platforms do. Sense of connection.

Tool overload

Agree on what will be used for what.

What is "urgent"? (Saturday email from Santi.) As you get to it, send messages to say things have been updated. Adjust your notifications. It's your responsibility to check. Hypercommunication until you get into a rhythm. False sense of security with Office 365. (Still lots of choices and updates.)

Make yourself comfortable / Create comfort for those in the office to work remotely with others

Practical aspects: Devices, wireless, adjustable desks, screen behind you (separate home) I use a Kindle to read, dictate emails into phone and use pen and paper!

In office, create a space for meetings and necessary equipment – simple equipment!

Work Life Balance Fusion Interference (episode 120 with Lisette)

https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/work-life-what

Our Open Course

12 – 23 February 2018 https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/open-workshops/

VIRTUAL framework Lots of questions for you, make the material your own Become a tech DJ, navigate through tech.

First time we run it so we have a discount for you: 15% off just enter code PODCAST at checkout.

Pilar talks to Elise Keith, co-founder of Lucid Meetings. We talk about why "training how to run meetings" often fails and why you should take a holistic approach when trying to improve meetings in your organisation.

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

Pilar mentions the new course on Leading Remote Teams, which will run from 12 – 23 February 2018. More information here: https://virtualnotdistant.squarespace.com/open-workshops/

In this episode, Pilar talks to Elise Keith, co-founder of Lucid Meetings, a company providing a software product to help meeting leaders prepare and run their meetings, as well as offering consultancy/training on improving meetings in organisations.

What does "scaling effective meeting habits" in an organisation refer to?

Understanding what the purpose of each meeting is, what are you trying to achieve?

There are lots of different types of meetings! https://www.lucidmeetings.com/glossary

Should we stop calling "meetings" meetings? Specially in the online space.

"The perverse psychology of meetings". When someone has a problem with a meeting, they rarely have a problem with a meeting.

Why learning to run a meeting doesn't mean you've learned how to guide a conversation.

How and why Lucid Meetings was founded. http://blog.lucidmeetings.com/blog/why-were-focusing-on-meetings

We need a shift in perspective not "training on running meetings".

How Lucid Meetings' is evolving, from helping them run better meetings, to helping then have better conversations. How the templates in the software support this.

The software as the "bad guy".

The Effective Meetings Results Programme – a more holistic approach to improving meetings in organisations and why our approach to meetings NEEDS to be holistic. https://www.lucidmeetings.com/effective-meeting-results-process

Elise's favourite meetings.

www.lucidmeetings.com

Follow on Twitter https://twitter.com/lucidmeetings

A short rambling by Pilar on how the word "learning" is usually used to mean information-absorption or acquiring new skills, rather than the broadest meaning, whereby we are constantly adjusting our behaviour and changing how we do things. Plus, how assumptions landed Pilar on the wrong side of town to her friend.

Working out loud takes effort and energy – and it becomes really hard to do when we are struggling with the work or when we are afraid of breaking the "good vibe" of the team or of not being a "positive team member".

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

Links mentioned in the updates:

Our listener Steve recommends: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/secret-behind-happy-productive-companies-brian-de-haaff

Pilar's family friend was a pioneer in 2009 of "Mobile phone-based telemedicine system for the home follow-up of patients undergoing ambulatory surgery." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19566396/

The article that inspired today's conversation:

The 6 Exercises We're Doing to Help With Artificial Harmony from the Open Buffer blog

https://open.buffer.com/artificial-harmony/

The benefits of Working Out Loud. (For more on this check out episode 48 https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/working-out-loud )

We recall a conversation on the Virtual Team Talk Slack.

Having a channel/group/section for disagreements.

Building relationships so that we can then have candid conversations. Pilar recommends the book Radical Candor by Kim Scott.

Direct messaging vs open conversations.

Making the transition involves changing how we communicate, including talking about when we should make our conversations public.

There is value in talking about how we will disagree with each other and even in giving permission to disagree.

If we're not disagreeing, do we care?

Language matters: does the way in which we express our values discourage disagreement and healthy conflict?

Having a place for team members to share "stuff" that's not easy to read or talk about.

If emotional support is important for you, decide how you will reach out.

It's better to communicate, even if we communicate badly. In remote teams, it's easy to disengage.

Morgan Legge from Convert.com shares the company's journey adopting a "holacratic approach".

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

What Convert does and what the original team looked like. www.convert.com

Why the company decided to go down the Holacracy route: "to give people the freedom to make decisions that would grow the company in the direction that it needed to grow."

They haven't yet formally adopted the constitution – Morgan explains what this would mean.

SO 21st Century that we can find enough information online to digest it and start to implement change. Where did she find the information?

"We're kind of making it up as we go along, and we're ok with that."

Who makes up Convert? Distributed over 9 timezones.

Holacracy – a structure about the work, not the people.

How does that look like in practice.

The "tensions" between the current reality and where you want to be.

The freedom also leads to you failing or succeeding in a very public way.

Roles and assigning tasks. (The company uses the software Asana to do this.) Morgan gives an example of how a task can be assigned (as a request) to another role, but you can't hold onto how they manage it. They can also give it back to you.

To be able to do this, you need to know who to reach out to in the company. What are circles in Holacracy?

If you want to find out more, go here: https://www.holacracy.org/constitution

Morgan's shift from a more traditional setup to a "holacratic" distributed organisation. The similarities and the change in mindset.

Recruiting for the company – the hiring process and what they look in a person. How do you find someone who can take the responsibility that comes with the freedom?

Values and being yourself at Convert. Morgan's piece: https://medium.com/optimize-everything/how-convert-turned-down-over-100-000-in-revenue-and-profited-7211ba33bc52

There are many ways of learning from others in our remote team: through asking for feedback and running activities where we can learn from each other.

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

A few updates:

Lisette is looking for beta readers and there will be a range of ways in which to give her feedback on her book. To do so, sign up to her newsletter: https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/

Why are companies still asking people to work from home without providing them with the support they need?

Are there two "camps" of organisations working with remote teams: those that have been doing it for decades (and will not change their ways) and those making the transition who can see the potential of integrating a wide range of tech into their communications.

The main conversation:

Asking for feedback. Lisette shares how she's gathering feedback on her TedX Talk.

The kind of questions / directions we can use when asking for feedback.

Using Google Docs to gather feedback and turn it into a conversation.

Latte and Learn sessions. https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/blog/learning-remote-teams

Learning from each other asynchronously. Happy Melly's weekly challenge.

Using online apps/tools to capture thoughts as they come – and then sharing them so that others can build on them.

We are really talking here about building a learning culture, so that people get used to trying things out, sharing their experiences and focusing on improvement.

Nurturing curiosity – it's something that can be developed given the time, space and structure. And encouragement, of course…

Is asking "which tool when" the right question to be asking? And how is a training programme for remote team managers different to that for office-based managers?

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

We welcome Maya to Virtual not Distant. You can read her first contribution to our blog here: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/blog/presenteeism-in-remote-teams

Thanks to guest Chris Slemp, who tells us about his new venture/conversation-starter: Which Tool When? http://whichtoolwhen.com/

You can find out more about what Chris does, how he views the world of collaboration and why he advocates for an "office optional" approach by listening to episode WLP123 Building a Collaboration Environment https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/collaboration-environment?

To read the article on which this episode is based on, head over here:

https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/deliver/training/how-to-design-a-development-programme-for-managers-of-remote-teams

There are three steps to developing the programme:

1) Getting yourself ready by assessing how culture will affect remote work, what technology is available to managers and their teams and what support people will get, how and when.

2) Develop the content, bearing in mind that you might need to cover self-awareness (in relation to communication preferences and tech preferences in particular), working out loud, designing for spontaneity, creating/adapting a team charter and technical training on tools.

3) How will you deliver the training? There needs to be an experiential component to the programme, including participating in video meetings and taking part in thorough asynchronous conversations.

Can we help? Check out our services. https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/services/