Remote Work, Human Psychology & The Water Cooler

The following are responses I gave to queries I received from tech-focused journalists on the new era of work, and its effects on work, life & the balance therein.

TOPIC 1: Are?Remote Workers Collaborating Too Much?

"With Zoom meetings, Slack messages and emails remote workers have plenty of tools for collaboration. But these tools can also negatively impact productivity..."

1. What?are?the dangers of too much "collaboration"??(yes, this was a real question)

When all tasks, domain crossovers, or any other surface area for collaboration is exposed - the danger comes in a vacuum of 'this then that' focus. Without defining how the collaboration happens, ie. this role owns 'x' decision, that role gets involved after this point and owns 'y' - you get 'Too Much Collaboration' or committee execution, where you'll get the median insight and ability across all teams involved - and everything will take about 4 times longer to reach these mediocre outcomes.?

Another danger of everyone slogging through every detail at the outset of everything, is that this creates a kind of Zeno's paradox of constant work with no progress, blocking out the basics sets the tread to a sprinter's pace on getting things done and moving on.

2. What can companies do to ensure that workers remain productive??

You micromanage by constantly checking in and asking where things?are, whether they're being done, it's for two reasons. 1.) You're not capturing that data anywhere useful, which leads to the second cause, 2.) You don't trust your team.

By making a time, place, and simple format for your team to update each other in direct and actionable ways, you don't need to compensate?by dragging talented people onto calls that waste time, money, and potential to ask where things?are?- which, by the way, can be very demoralizing to encounter that mode of implied mistrust that things?are?being handled - but is valid if you're not updating any other way.

Eliminate the need to micromanage, and build the simple but rigid rails for Trustless Ops. In doing so, you'll quickly in-kind build morale, momentum & the operational agility that is becoming exponentially more necessary to compete in current-year global markets.

3. What can individuals do to remain productive?

Instead of micro-managing your own work or your colleagues' via slack or an email volley of spam, thereby tying things up into 3-legged-races of synced-up meetings where most people spend most of the time sitting on their hands - collaborate around clear, simple, and appropriately asynchronous places to update the relevant information.?

Eliminate time-synced time sinks, and replace them with event-based ops. ie. Once the person responsible for x has completed the task - submit it for review, once it's been reviewed and approved, move it to the next phase where the next team gets their ping that it's ready to worry about. Stick to this & hold your colleagues to it, and you'll fly through what matters, so there's time to dive into the details, the value-adds & the fun.

TOPIC 2: Office Life: At Odds, or Aligned With Human Psychology?

"Some psychologists argue that we will eventually need to return to offices because of the need to socialize with other people..."

1. Do we need to be physically around our coworkers to get work done??

As previously mentioned: In a word, no - apart from the anecdotal evidence, the data has been proving this out. The pandemic was a remote-first advocate's Monkey's Paw wish fulfilled. Suddenly, the world was adopting the methodology, but without the ops or philosophy to do so at its best - and for the worst conceivable?reason.?

Fortune 1000 CXO surveys through 2020 & 2021 have shown that, after swallowing the force-remote pill, those that have been able to adjust have seen overwhelming benefits to overhead costs and productivity boosts, driving an average 30% boosted long term commitment to stay remote should the public health necessity diminish.

2. How can companies recreate office camaraderie in a remote work environment??

When operating in a co-located, or in-office, environment, we fool ourselves into thinking we have a lot more insight into the status of work and our teams than we actually do. The 'looking busy' and white noise phenomena create a false perception that work only gets done when it's being observed in real time, IRL. The logic follows that remote work is something that happens best with constant check ins, sync ups, zoom meetings etc. It is very much the case that the inverse is true.

3. What?are?some tips for those people who might feel lonely while working remotely?

*One emerging space (forgive the pun) that is growing in response to this more-common-than-ever issue is the toolset for continuous and or spontaneous remote collaboration. Whereby, Spacial,?Gather.town ?or?Cosmos.video ?+?Tandem.chat , or the recently debuted?Lounge.place ?- which looks the be a hybrid of all the former.

TOPIC 3: How to Replace The Water Cooler

1) What is the office water cooler concept??

The idea of the office water cooler is the spontaneous time and place made for colleagues to cross paths outside the weekly sprint, so to speak. Literally, in a brick and mortar office, and over the course of 8+ hour days, people eat, drink, caffeinate - and in doing so, get the opportunity to relax and catch up with those around them, heirarchy and OKRs removed.

As global business finds its footing in remote & hybrid decentralized work - about 60% still predominantly remote, and over 30% in a hybrid still model since March 2020. This poses a problem, or at least a perk removed from the co-located workplace.

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