From the office to the lounge

The pandemic caused a mass shift to remote working, and organisations tried to take the operating models they had designed for the office and make them work in a remote context. While we’ve seen the benefits of working remotely, we haven't changed anything about the way we work, and this is causing a multitude of challenges. In this episode, Andrew and Tony focus on how you can align your team to strategy when the whole team or part of the team is not co-located.   Key points you’ll hear in this episode include: Strategy formulation and implementation has to be an interactive, iterative process – you can’t just set and forget. (5:28) The length of your strategic cycles is inexorably linked to your delivery cycles. In remote work, you have to nail short cycle times. (6:29) We need to make sure that everyone understands with real clarity, what the intent of the organisation is and what part they play in helping the organisation to move in that direction. (7:58) Setting the intent should be bi-directional. (9:19) Information flows that allow you to think about how you're going to intervene in the system and make the right interventions. (10:00) OKRs and Kanban systems can be used to help create alignment. (11:14) Flow-based metrics are critical management information that allow you to make valuable systemic interventions. (13:05) Virtual Obeya is a place where you can surface the information at the right level so you can make complex decisions. (14:16) Building culture and informal networks are especially important in the absence of ‘watercooler conversations’. (15:08)

Leaders are really starting to feel the lack of proximity to their people, particularly those who are spanning multiple teams or multiple layers of an organisation. They’re feeling fatigued, overburdened, and there is a loss of visibility and control. The answer is to rethink governance. In this episode, Andrew and Tony discuss governance frameworks that can help you get that sense of control back without them having to micromanage your people in order to get it. Key points you’ll hear in this episode include: The need for decision making guide rails so that your people understand what decisions they can make without having to wait for leadership to intervene. (3:49) The need to focus on enabling the entire system of work (4:24) Remote governance is governing the system rather than the individuals in the system. (5:40) How micromanagement creates a cycle of delayed decision making, over-processed work, and vital information is withheld. (7:33) Knowledge workers need to be motivated differently to people who are doing more mechanical tasks. Autonomy is one of those key motivators. (9:11) You get an exponential increase in performance when you provide a mechanism for your people to learn more rapidly. (10:28)Having the right data visualised and available, that enables you to take a systemic view of the organisation's performance, is a fundamental shift in governance. (14:13) Start making operating model design part of your cadence. (15:48)

Although it’s good for personal productivity, coordinating a team across different working hours can make it hard to have timely and open communication. If you don’t have the balance of synchronous and asynchronous communication right, you can run into a host of different problems. In this episode, Andrew and Tony discuss how to identify problems and how to get the best out of asynchronous communication. Key points you’ll hear in this episode include: Where work is not time-sensitive in nature, you can reimagine and redesign ways of working that are more flexible. (3:50) The first sign of a problem is a lack of responsiveness from your team members. (5:05) You can’t go too far where everything is asynchronous – at a minimum, teams require messaging options, they need to have collaboration and artefacts in real time. (8:01) Virtual whiteboards allow you to create artefacts that can remain useful and valid long into the future. (9:43) Teams are struggling with the loss of context from tone of voice, body language, facial expressions. (11:03) One of the things you can do when you're setting up your team is to create situational empathy and let people into some of the challenges in your home environment. (13:13) You need to be quite explicit with your expectations and your instructions. (13:49) Be careful about using language using slang or emoticons or emojis, which can be open to interpretation. (14:33) Virtual collaboration in a remote environment is probably the least productive time that people have, so use it sparingly. (15:58)

Even before the pandemic, accountability was a common leadership concern. Now, remote working has added extra complexity. Hard conversations have become more difficult without the opportunity to control the environment, read the body language of the person you’re speaking to, and make sure they're cared for. In this episode, Andrew and Tony tackle how you can make sure the things that you’re accountable for are getting done. Key points you’ll hear in this episode include: As a leader, you have to understand the situation that your people are in. And from that point, you can plan how you're going to communicate, coordinate, and help them through issues that are affecting their productivity. (3:45) Responsibility and accountability are very different things. Understanding the difference between them is key. (4:49) People don't spend enough time on delegation design. (7:11) What we've seen work well in practice is thinking about individual accountability. (8:27) Designing operating models that enable people to be accountable is a critical part of giving accountability. (12:56) In operating model design, you need to think about the hierarchy, how decisions are delegated, team design, the interactions between teams, and how things are governed. (14:01) Make sure you're using patterns like the remote:af team launch pattern to relaunch your remote teams and get people to think about how to work in this new environment. (15:13) To get visibility of the things you need to effectively lead your team, you need to create an environment where people are comfortable to share. (17:06) Don't be bound by the constraints that used to exist, design something that works better for you. (19:59) 

As we move forward, a likely scenario for many organisations is going to be a hybrid or remote-ish operating model, where teams partially return to the office. Amid the ongoing uncertainty and possibility of being remote for at least the next 12 months, organisations should prepare for what happens next. In this episode, Andrew and Tony look at how you can make hybrid working more effective and give you some pitfalls to avoid. Key points you’ll hear in this episode include: Because we've proven that remote working is a good way to do things, we're now in a position where that's going to be the next normal. (2:56) We have to be aware that in the future, people are going to want to work remotely at least part of the time. (3:51) As leaders, we need to role model the idea that you don't have to be in the office to be productive. (8:40) We need clear guide rails on how to handle the power imbalance of situations where someone is remote but a meeting is taking place in the office. (9:04)  Equity in the workplace is about providing an environment where the rewards are commensurate with the effort. We need to make sure that people who are working remotely aren't disadvantaged. (10:49) To overcome lack of clarity, you need to focus on interactions between teams, the flow of work across value chains, customer feedback processes, and metrics that give you a holistic view of the system and how it's performing. (14:00) If we’re going to be remote-first versus remote-friendly, we need transparency, inclusivity, and focusing on building a culture where people can work with bounded autonomy in directional alignment. (16:35)