It'll be the next one

Lately, the world feels pretty small, and pretty big.?

I’ve been traveling a lot more recently, and I keep running into friends at airports, restaurants, playgrounds, you name it - and that makes it feel really small. Then something happens like what is currently happening in Ukraine, and the world feels vast again.?

Over the last few years, our world shrunk. We traveled less (or not at all), saw fewer people, stayed home - everything was smaller, closer. At the same time, we’ve been experiencing profound changes to work and life. In many ways, those changes brought us closer together.?

Thanks to remote work, many of us now have colleagues halfway across the world - working different hours, living different lives, but still closely connected to our day-to-day. Peers in far flung places suddenly don’t seem so far away when we’re all working on the same project.?

We’re just starting to scratch the surface of what remote / hybrid work will look like,? but it’s clear that hiring from across the globe will be the norm. Collaborating with colleagues in remote destinations will be our daily routine. These changes will impact how we think about distance and the world at large.?

I’ve been thinking a lot about that as I’ve watched the events in Ukraine unfold. How will remote, global teams change the way we respond to things like political turmoil? When you can put a face on an event, it’s more real. If you have colleagues in Ukraine, the situation seems closer to your own life. You care more.?

What does that mean for People/HR teams and CEOs??

We started to see this question come up a bit here in the US over the last few years. Following intense social unrest, people demanded to know where organizations stood. Leaders had to confront and define their own stance. Some took clear advocacy stances, others focused exclusively on business. Now that’s being pulled to a global scale. Company leaders will be called on to comment on events occurring all over the world.?

Global organizations aren’t new. What is new is the sheer number of global teams and how connected we are to our co-workers across the world. Global companies used to be the realm of the behemoths. Teams were local, only occasionally working with their global counterparts. Now any company from 5 people to 500,000 is likely to have a global presence. And those teams are highly connected thanks to new work tools and norms, collaborating literally 24/7. It’s no longer the Asia team and the EMEA team - it’s the team. Period. That means that what’s happening anywhere in the world may very well impact your people.?

Maybe you don’t have employees in Ukraine. Maybe this doesn’t feel that close to home. But if it’s not this crisis, it will be another. People Leaders are entering a new reality of global connection via remote work. We’ve seen it already play out in Pandemic responses. It will only accelerate. Political instability, climate impact, any number of global crisis and emergency responses.?

What does this mean for People Teams and Senior Leaders? How does this reshape the way we think about official statements, taking a stance, and most importantly, taking care of our people and each other??

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