The future of co-location

I used to be the one preaching co-location, emphasizing the importance of small teams working together in close proximity, as one of the main ways to increase productivity and employee engagement.

Now here I am saying, "remote working works!". What's changed and why?

Remote working pre-Covid

In January 2015, when I was brought into IBM to help shape and lead their global Agile transformation, very few people used video conferencing even though it was around for years. Approximately 400,000 people, in large teams, were distributed all over the world in over 150+ countries. A significant number of people had never ever seen their bosses, virtually or otherwise. Most of the day was spent jumping from one teleconference to another. People belonged to matrixed teams, work was pushed to people by remote managers and a person on average worked on 5-7 things at the same time. 'Switching loss' killed productivity. People were disengaged, morale was low, and productivity was sub-optimal.

The IBM executive leadership team knew that Agile was the way to solve this problem and create engaged teams that were highly productive. Ginni Romerty (CEO) and Jeff Smith (CIO), championed this change to an Agile way of working.

The teams were restructured into small, cross-functional units (5-10 people), called squads, the leadership layers were flattened, work was broken down into small features and the squads pulled work from a pre-prioritized funnel. Video conferencing and collaboration tools were made available. Leaders and their teams were trained in an Agile way of working.

Productivity and engagement increased immediately.

However, in Version 1 of this design, the members of a squad were globally distributed over multiple timezones and locations. Many worked from home most of the time. Collaborative design, clarity of purpose, and innovative creativity still suffered.

In keeping with the basic Agile principle of co-location, a 'back to the office' drive was initiated and significant effort was made to group people into co-located squads. Many resented this, as they had built a life around working partly or wholly from home. However, it was clearly visible that the co-located squads performed much better and the engagement and productivity of the co-located people went up significantly.

In some cases, the squads were not co-located but people were still required to go into the nearest office, as opposed to working from home, in order to share and learn with other colleagues in the eco-system. This was not very popular and the feedback was that people still felt disconnected, as they were not part of any team in that office building.

The overall Agile transformation was so successful that IBM's clients were soon reaching out for help in moving to this way of working and it spawned a new division and revenue source for the company.

This change, to a distributed Agile way of working with small cross-functional, co-located teams, has now been successfully adopted across the world in multiple industries and sectors. The results are generally positive, and numerous global Agile surveys prove the increased productivity and employee engagement.

Then came Covid-19 on a dark horse, and disrupted the co-located squads in every corner of the globe.

Remote working post-Covid

Everyone now works from home. This has been enabled with video conferencing and collaboration tools, business processes that have been digitized to be paperless, and new routines and disciplines adapted for remote working.

Many leaders have changed their style of management and are more caring and considerate with remote team members than before.

I have also heard of many cases where teams are reporting increased productivity. Meetings are shorter and more focused, more self-development and training is taking place and of course, there are huge savings in commute time.

Remote working now works.

Drawbacks of the 'always remote' model

On the other hand, self-motivation gets harder and there has been a rise in depression and loneliness. Consistently working from home can be tough.

It has been novel over the last 2-3 months but many people I've talked to say they miss the office environment, their friendships at work, and even the banter.

It's been even more difficult for people who have young children. Homeschooling, babysitting, doing all the housework with no help at all, plus working a full-time job from home is challenging to say the least. Single parents have it toughest of all and hats off to every parent who has somehow managed to pull this off. But is it sustainable in the long run?

While it has been proven that innovative workshopping can be done remotely, it's not as effective as face-to-face workshops when it comes to creativity. Shared understanding and buy-in are greater in a face-to-face workshop setting if the process requires brainstorming and creative thinking.

While we see large companies, like Twitter and Google, talking about having their employees work solely from home, I feel there will be a reversal of opinion on this by the end of this year for the reasons mentioned above.

Balance and a blend, like anything in life, appear to be the way ahead.

6 Tips for effective and engaged remote working

1. Blend 'all at home' with 'co-location', based on the activity at hand.

I'm working with 2 companies that are planning on having a roster of 3 days when everyone works from home, and 2 days when the whole team comes to the office. Another is planning odd and even day rotations of the whole team. The days they are face-to-face could be planned for more creative work that requires hyper collaboration.

The one thing to stay away from is to have some team members work from home, and some from the office. This model was popular pre-Covid but is the least effective.

2. Size matters - The smaller the better

Keep your teams small and cross-functional. This will keep them more engaged and focused.

The smaller the team size the better. My experience has been that 2-3 person 'pods', which are loosely coupled and tightly aligned, deliver the most value, and result in the highest employee engagement.

3. Timezone co-located

If you are going to have people distributed across the world in a single team then try to have them in the same timezone +/- a couple of hours.

4. Clarity of purpose

There is nothing more disheartening and demoralizing for a remote team member than not knowing why they are working on something.

Explaining 'the why' is more important than 'the what' and 'the how'.

If you are to keep engagement and morale high, then leaders have to focus on clarity of purpose and clearly link the work people are doing, to the overall strategy and objectives of the company.

5. The right tools and & tech

Digitally enable the workforce and let them pick the best tools for the job.

Zoom, Teams, Slack, Miro, Jira, Trello, Netflix, Confluence, Box and Google docs are some examples of great remote working tools.

In today's API world the best-of-breed tools are able to integrate seamlessly with each other. Companies can still get the benefits of standardization from a best-of-breed toolset, as opposed to one vendor that offers it all.

Infrastructure and Telephony as a Service, are almost a must for a cost-effective way ahead.

6. An Agile way of working

Last but not the least, the values and principles of Agile lend themselves perfectly to remote working as they do to face-to-face working. Empowered teams that feel psychologically safe to ask questions, challenge decisions, have hard conversations, and hold each other accountable, are key to success. This applies even more to remote teams as its easier to disengage in a remote setting.

Companies that don't adopt an Agile way of working, with a set of human values and Agility principles at the core, will soon realize that remote working will negatively affect their productivity.

If the culture is not conducive to remote working, no tools will help.

PS. For those of you who spotted the 'Netflix' plant in the list of remote working tools, you can stop scratching your head. My 'cabin-fever-humor' got the better of me.