Context is Queen

There's been a lot of discussion recently about how video call-enabled work is transactional, and how we need to "get to know people better" than remote existence typically allows. While I agree, experiences I've had recently suggest a corollary and deeper issue that perhaps has greater negative impact in organizational life. The issue I see clients grappling with is: remote and video call-based work eliminates context.

Here's what I mean: in the past several years as remote work became the norm for knowledge workers, a key element of that knowledge has been lost: understanding the work of stakeholders and their evolving needs, of the work they do and don't do, and how the pieces of the value chain fit together. It's as though workers have lost the capacity for peripheral vision - the peripheral vision that is essential to ensure value is optimized in that chain.

Teams I work with keep telling me: "'They' don't understand how we work. They don't understand what we do and don't do now." (There's always a "they" in this scenario - the deadly us-them organizational dynamic.) At a time when companies are more and more integrated and less like a relay race, passing a baton from one area to the next, that lack of understanding is a severe drag on productivity, efficiency and value creation.

In my work with teams, two things have helped:

1. Create a "road show" about your own area to share with stakeholders. You should be able to explain to them: What's your purpose, the unique value your team provides that furthers the achievement of organizational goals? What's your strategy to achieve that purpose? What is the work your team does now, and what do you no longer undertake or that you now outsource? (Martin and Lafley refer to these as "Where to play / How to win" statements.) Who are your key players? What do you need from those stakeholders to work best with them? Answering these sorts of questions for your stakeholders provides to them the context they need to better optimize the cross-functional partnership.
2. Create stakeholder forums for information exchange. Invite them to join the team - in panel format or singly, as part of an offsite, or a Lunch n' Learn, or an all-hands meeting - to explain their own answers to the questions above. Crucially, enable Q&A so your own team members can find out more about your stakeholders' work itself, and how to work well together. And always ask the questions: "What do you need from us to better do your work?" And "What should we expect from you?"

The first step out of this bind is the recognition that context has shifted due to remote work, and too often knowledge hasn't kept up with those shifts. The second step is finding ways to revitalize and recreate that contextual knowledge. Have you seen this, too? What have you tried that has worked to rebuild context? And what results have you seen when you have done so?