Go West, Young Remote Worker?
Jigsaw Foresight
Your expert companions in strange making and change making. From the personal, to the planetary...
Teams adopting distributed ways of working have proven surprisingly resilient throughout the pandemic, despite the challenges.
Surprise! We snuck in a second card about remote-vs-in-person work (see One Foot In, One Foot Out.) As we know, this is a hot-button issue for many companies right now grappling with whether to insist on co-located work or adopt more distributed ways of working. But what does the data say? Mostly that distributed working has improved culture at many corporations, with leadership getting a trust boost for their increased candidness and empathy throughout a very stressful period for all of us. That’s not to say distributed working comes without challenges: Microsoft studies have shown that employee communications became more siloed when working primarily from home. Finding ways to replicate in-office impromptu conversations is a key strategy for more distributed work suggested by Microsoft researchers—though another option is to ditch impromptu conversations altogether and adopt more asynchronous tools for working, like more rigorous documentation and negotiation of expectations, as in a Results-Only Work Environment. No matter how your company chooses to navigate the perils and pinnacles of increasingly distributed work, the key skills for leadership in a digital era are all about curiosity, adapatability and empathy—perennially relevant skills no matter how digital-first a business becomes.
"Assumptions about corporate culture relying on employees physically working together aren’t borne out.?In fact, the survey results indicate that remote work improves corporate culture."
Pairing Notes
Want to experiment with more asynchronous ways of working? Maybe?this meeting time calculator?will convince you to try new ways of distributing information and making decisions.