21st Century Work Life

In this episode, Pilar and Lisette analyse a recent article by Patrick Lencioni where he recommends to stay away from working as a virtual team. Visibility in Virtual Teams from the website. Scroll down the Inspiration page. https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/inspiration

Other podcasts: Management Café Evidence Talks

1) Lisette's holiday Why it's so important to keep down stress levels.

David Burkus podcast Radio Free Leader episode The Art and Practice of Breakthrough Thinking with Judah Pollack

http://davidburkus.com/2017/05/0816-the-art-and-practice-of-breakthrough-thinking-with-judah-pollack/

(2) Catch up on Agile conference and Work 2.0 Aginext http://2017.aginext.io/ For more on Work 2.0 listen to episode 125 of this podcast. https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/work-2-conference https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/blog/four-cs-teamwork

(3) We recap the five dysfunctions of a team and analyse this article.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/virtual-teams-worse-than-i-thought-patrick-lencioni

(4) How Microsoft is supporting their mobile workers

https://www.wework.com/blog/posts/city-as-a-campus-the-future-of-work

(5) Two more tools from Lisette that look promising. Telepresence Robot Ohmni Pukka Team

Welcome to a special episode of the 21st Century Work Life podcast, where I share with you my main reflections after attending the Work 2.0 conference last May 2017, in London and where I bring in the thoughts and opinions of other attendees. Don't forget to visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

Thank you too to everyone who very kindly agreed to taking part in this episode, it means that listeners get a much more varied view of the world of work, and it's always great to hear different voices.

Work 2.0 consisted of the Future of Work conference and the Wellbeing conference. I attended mainly sessions on the Future of Work track – but I also managed to pop into a couple of sessions of the wellbeing track. I won't go into the content of everything I heard, but I just wanted to give you an idea of what the main themes were. The first thing that I noticed when looking through the programme was the focus on Activity Based Working. Now, I hadn't really heard of this in the context of organisations, but it's basically about designing the office so that people can choose where they work from depending on what they're doing – the activity they're doing.

https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/blog/four-cs-teamwork

https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/favourite-tools

I really enjoyed the presentation by Dr Nicola Millard from BT who talked about people needing to do four types of activities. Those involving Collaboration, Communication, Concentration and Contemplation. I love this last one, it really acknowledges that part of our work is to think.

Dr Millard presented a few numbers, including the percentage of people at companies who work from the office. Some interesting differences and I'm very biased in the numbers I took down: UK, 48%; Spain 53% and Germany 61%. This is a similar distribution to the recent Eurofund study on working from anywhere. Another interesting number: 82% of high performance companies provide anytime/anywhere collaboration tools, which also raises the question, probably for the less high performing companies, do we know what the tools are for? And talking of tools, while I was wondering around the exhibition floor, I came across the team from Sapenta, an 'All-in-one' software for getting work done." , where they are paying attention to Contextual Communication.

Guest segment: Colm Digby from Sapenta

www.sapenta.com

Other stuff I jotted down in my notebook (thank you Podcast Website for the freebie last year at New Media Europe, by the way) :

Shoulder bag workers

Isolationists in a company,

Echo chambers forming around teams where there is no cognitive diversity.

Getting the balance right of We/Me; yes, we need people who are different, but there also needs to be some commonality, as we tend to gravitate those we can identify with.

The first panel session was around How workplace design can meet the needs of tomorrow, and because it was in the main hall, it was difficult to take questions from the audience, the whole audience was there, so the organisers used Slido, www.sli.do an app where people can post their questions and they are then shared on the screen, and other people can vote on the question too. I'll share some of these questions with you in a second, but what I found most fun is that it can quickly become the way in which audience interacts with organisers or presenters, so at one point someone posted, Hey, we can't hear at the back. It was really quick adoption of tech to suit the user, don't you think?

Guest Segment: Paula and Eduardo from Schneider Electric

David Fano from wework.com really highlighted how we're moving away from the workplace as somewhere where we go to work and start to focus on the place where we create relationships – this comes very much from the coworking space point of view, where you go to be with other people out of choice.

Technology has given us this choice and I'll bang on another drum to say that Flexible working is not working from home – a lot of the time it is, because some people like that, but sometimes it's about not working in close proximity with your team, but you might well be with other people. Or you might even be with other people inside your organisation, or with clients, but there is an element of choice in how or where you do that from.

It's time to share a story with you – I was just going to share it with you myself, but I thought I might as well bring the person who told it into the episode.

Guest segment: Katharine Metters from Posturite www.posturite.co.uk

I have to say, that's the most extreme story I've heard about not supporting your employees when you need to work from home. I would have loved to know more about why on Earth somebody needed a photocopy in their home to do their job in this day and age, or why such person was being forced to work from home… Anyway, I hope you chuckled, or cried… Ok, let me share now a more thoughtful approach to designing how people work, and a wonderful example of how tech can be used to fuel that intrinsic motivation that lurks inside all of us.

Case Study from Heathrow's Innovation Department on their Enterprise Mobility Programme.

Neil Usher, who was Workplace Director at Sky. I really enjoyed hearing about taking into consideration the diversity of the workforce, depending on the type of work they need to do and how they go about doing it.

There was also a separation between different types of workspaces that people might need access to: primary workpoints, like desk or a teamtable; alternative workspaces, I imagine, like a café or a quiet office from which to make a call; and ancillary spaces, like amenities, place to eat. Long are the days when everyone just has a desk at the office. In Sky, there are 3,600 people but only 2,500 desks.

Guest Segment: Andrew Spence @AndySpence on Twitter http://www.glassbeadconsulting.com/hr-transformer-blog/

The company we were talking about that does sound insulation and other stuff is Echophon Saint Gaubin. http://www.ecophon.com/uk/products/

In this episode, Pilar and Lisette share their favourite online tools and why they work for them. Can you add any to the list? visit www.virtualnotdistant.com How important are tools? Get out your pen and paper - or your favourite note-taking app! Lisette mentions HuddleWall (though she hasn't tried it out yet). TRELLO We talk about Trello!!!!! (Planner is the Microsoft 365 version.)

Find out more about Trello and the company behind it in episode 68. http://virtualnotdistant.com/trello-and-coffee/

SOCOCO

To find out more about Sococo: #118 What Virtual Coworking can Teach Virtual Teams https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/lessons-virtual-coworking.com Join Virtual Team Talk www.virtualteamtalk.com IDONETHIS For narrating the work. What do you prefer: to know about people's tasks or their thinking process? Take diversity into account when selecting your tools. Spying vs Working Out Loud Narrating the work shouldn't be linked to Performance Management, or else it becomes something else... Pilar mentions Work Rules by Lazlo Bock and the episode 82 Work Rules Without Pants http://virtualnotdistant.com/work-rules-without-pants/ SLACK Signalling status. If you're using an online conversation system rather than email, customise your notifications. Pilar mentions this article by Oliver Burkman: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/apr/14/turn-off-notifications-break-free-distraction-oliver-burkeman Pilar has an article on Your Notifications are Your Friends https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/blog/notifications-settings

"Under New Management" by David Burkus and the link of notifications and stress. ZENDESK Lisette describes how the Happy Melly team uses ZenDesk Inbox to manage team emails. TOODLEDO For prioritising and scheduling tasks. WUNDERLIST For a beautiful ping when your task is complete. KUBI Telepresence! Episode 87 on Hybrid Teams https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/hybrid-teams PERSONIFY For presenting online in front of your slides. FACETIME and WHATSAPP POCKETFor saving articles. You can send PDFs to the Kindle. Send it to your Kindle email address and put "convert" in the subject line. KUDO BOX Say thank you via Twitter!

In this episode, Pilar talks to Chris Slemp about working out loud with teams, creating a collaboration environement and I how remote work has the potential of changing the structure of society.

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

A little bit of an intro from Chris.

https://medium.com/@cslemp/leaving-a-global-company-to-change-the-world-b083839a2d0e

How Carpool works and how they track how communication flows through an organisation.

http://carpoolagency.com/

The "collaboration environment" and building the ecosystem.

When the reality and our perception of what's going on is different - the importance of data. An anecdote.

Will people misbehave in social networks?

Working with clients as a remote company.

Working Out Loud within the team and with the client. Role-modelling transparency and collaboration through a tight relationship with the client.

The transition of Carpool to remote and the differences in the generations - not the ones you would expect...

http://425business.com/the-anywhere-office/

The opportunity to change the world and the structure of society through changing how we work.

Having "culture conversations".

This isn't about the tools it's about thinking differently about how we work.

"Office optional".

Video: do teams need to use video? Using video as a broadcast mechanism in organisations. An example. Going live on Workplace by Facebook

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cslemp/ Twitter: @cslemp

Steve Holyer shares why he works as Product Owner coach (amongst other things) and the importance of allowing teams to find how they best have fun together. visit www.virtualnotdistant.com for information on our training, coaching and consultancy services A short description of "Agile" and why Steve coaches Scrum Product Owners.

The ever-changing role of the Product Owner.

Working with distributed agile teams and what happens when they start to play hard during retrospectives. How retrospectives help teams work better together.

Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen. https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Teams-Great/dp/0977616649/

Working collocated and working distributed. When retrospectives get hacked.

Finding out what "fun at work" means for your team and working within that.

Pilar mentions "The Science of Great Teams", a study by Sandy Pentland.

How this playful team continues to work together.

www.coachingcocktails.com

Creating a live community meet-up online, using Zoom. The virtual fish bowl. Pilar mentions another recent episode from this podcast with Paul Thoresen.

Twitter @zurcherart www.pobydesign.com

The programme of the Work 2.0 conference, in London, 25 & 26 May 2017, gives a good overview of what companies are addressing when they plan for the future of their workforce. In this episode, Pilar shares some of the session titles that have grabbed her attention.

You can find the programme here: http://www.terrapinn.com/conference/work2/index.stm

Pilar will be covering the conference in a future episode. If you would like to attend the conference, we have a 15% discount for you. www.terrapinn.com/virtual use the code: WXWW

Pilar talks to Paul Thoresen about developing teams, trust, and using surveys in organisations. Visit www.virtualnotdistant.com for information on our training, coaching and consultancy services. Paul on Twitter https://twitter.com/surveyguy2 Paul on Medium https://medium.com/@SurveyGuy2

Paul talks about what he learned during his attendance to the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology' conference in Orlando. http://www.siop.org/conferences/17con/

• The importance of change management for organisational psychology professionals, most of what we introduce in organisations is going to involve change.

• Experimenting vs piloting; they're different things.

Look for Episode 9 of the Evidence Talks podcast with Paul http://www.futureworkcentre.com/what-we-do/education/evidencetalks/

• There's a lot of research at the moment around teams. Paul recommends us to check out the work of Suzanne Bell https://twitter.com/TeamsLab

Teams and groups; not everyone forms a team and that's ok!

Sentiment analysis.

• The importance of propensity to trust and swift trust.

(Check out episode 117 in this podcast, A Question of Trust and the blog post https://virtualteamtalk.com/2016/11/05/trust-in-teams-1/ )

How we can show we have integrity, competence and benevolent in virtual teams?

Paul mentions this article from Science for Work:

Teams Going Virtual: Why Focusing on Trust Matters http://scienceforwork.com/blog/virtual-teams-trust/

• Paul explains the Rocket Model. http://www.therocketmodel.com/

To create strong teams, you need the processes around it.

Dissecting the team.

• Using surveys in organisations. "Survey readiness checklist"

• Dialogic OD

• Paul's work. Social media as a support mechanism for freelancers.

Cozy Calendar http://www.cozi.com/calendar/

virtualteamtalk.com

Pilar mentions this episode from HBR IdeaCast, broadcast on 14 July 2016 "We Can't Work All the Time" https://hbr.org/ideacast/2016/07/we-cant-work-all-the-time.html

Challenging the identity of the person who sees themselves as a different individual at work and at home.

Work-life balance doesn't always mean work-family balance.

You might want to check out the 27 March 2017 episode of Business Daily. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04xd4jy

Are customising your notifications the key to achieving separation of work and non-work activities?

Work-life balance Work life integration Work-home interference https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/publications/report/2017/working-anytime-anywhere-the-effects-on-the-world-of-work

Does job insecurity contribute to stress if you work from home?

Unusual suspects who want flexibility in the work: Lisette and Pilar! Don't forget to visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

In today's episode, Pilar talks through the things we can tweak as individuals, to make our virtual meetings comfortable. 19:25mins

Virtual meetings are gradually becoming one more way of talking to those you work with. And if organisations want their employees from different departments to network with each other, to increase the chances of innovation, they should be encouraging the use of video meetings. Talking to others through a screen might feel a bit unnatural if you're not used to it, so here are five things to look out for to help you feel at ease. (For episodes on running virtual meetings, check out episode 107 Facilitating Virtual Meetings with Nancy Settle-Murphy and episode 13 on Collocated and Virtual Meetings

(1) Pay attention to your background and any windows behind you. (2) Remember that you have a chat function. (3) Remember that you can mute yourself. (Don't wait for others to get so fed up with you they mute you!) (4) Do you need to see yourself? Pilar mentions this article http://www.hrdive.com/news/study-videoconferencing-is-more-effective-when-you-cant-see-yourself/439772/ (5) Better to have an audio conversation than an annoying video one.

In today's episode, Pilar and Lisette share their experiences in virtual coworking and highlight those elements that can be applied to working in a virtual team. Check out www.virtualnotdistant.com for coaching and training for managers of virtual teams or to help with the transition to remote. Check out www.collaborationsuperpowers.com for the Work Together Anywhere Workshop Updates - Lisette shares her experience hiring virtual freelancers - and she has great tips! - We share this article which suggests you're better off hiding your image from yourself during video meetings http://www.hrdive.com/news/study-videoconferencing-is-more-effective-when-you-cant-see-yourself/439772/

- Amazon has created 5,000 new US remote jobs http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/local/amazon-to-hire-5000-at-home-workers-in-massive-hiring-binge-of-30000-part-time-employees/429755118

- Pilar has been listening to the Leading Wisely podcast with Ricardo Semler and guests and she's loving it! http://podcast.leadwise.co/ Lessons from Coworking in Virtual Team Talk's Sococo space

1. Easy to communicate your mood. Finding a way to allow for serendipity Guiding people on how to use the space A visual component for sharing mood and status

2. No physical commute but a change in mindset. Webcam covers. Use what tech you've got. Flexibility + communication = autonomy! 3. Emotions are part of who we are. Show your willingness to interact. 4. What are you working on? 5. Mix up your communication: chat/audio/video 6. Relatedness and identity, without removing autonomy. Join us for Virtual Team Talk