Time to connect, time to reflect

A few weeks I wrote that, in these strange and difficult times, those of us working remotely from home (which means, we must remember, that we are fortunate enough to be healthy, housed and in work, and are not on the front lines as essential workers) will make habits and break habits, and that some of those habits are worth making while others are worth breaking.

My team mates and colleagues have helped me find a couple of habits which I believe are worth making. They are also answers to the question: what do you do with the time you used to spent commuting when your commute has shrunk from a one hour train trip to a walk down the stairs?

Time to connect

When restrictions on movement started in the UK, my team and I realised that we weren’t going to have the opportunity to bump into each other in the office for some time. We wouldn’t have that opportunity for the chance interaction through which networks are formed and maintained, and through which so much work in large enterprises gets done. So, we agreed that each day we would put a couple of regular times in the diary, once in the early morning and once in the evening, when I would open a video-conference, and anyone who wanted to could drop in.

When we started this habit, the intention was in large part transactional: as in any large enterprise, I frequently need to approve things, help with resource allocation, move things through processes and so on.

But as the weeks have passed, we have found that these meetings provide much needed points of connection. Sometimes we just check in to see how we are coping, but we also increasingly use the opportunity to exchange and explore ideas, to tell each other what we are up to, and to exchange news from all the different countries we live in.

And that last point is important. We live in many different countries: my team is distributed around the world from Shanghai to Vancouver. This means that we rarely had the chance to bump into each other office in normal circumstances anyway, and also means that this small daily ritual has created a point of connection with a higher frequency than we had before.

I know that we’re not alone in doing this: many other teams in many other companies are doing the same. And I hope that we, and those other teams, make this a habit that lasts beyond the current situation. Connecting around the world every day would be a good habit to keep.

Time to reflect

The other habit was formed less consciously, and was prompted by my colleague Mayank Bhundia. After a few days working at home, I noticed that I had the occasional gap in my diary. If I had been in the office, these gaps would have been filled by conversation with someone passing by my desk. But, in my home office, when the video conference ends, there is nothing but time and silence.

My instinct was initially to fill this time, as usual, with electronic chatter, with emails and messages. But Mayank suggested that it would be good, at least once a day, to let the silence stretch, not to respond to that (not really very urgent) email, and to take the time . . . to think.

For me, this means closing my laptop, mentally allocating the next ten to twenty minutes as thinking time, taking out a pen and a blank sheet of paper and seeing what comes to mind. And, so far, it has been a great reminder of how much you can do create and develop ideas in a short but clear time. I have solved problems far quicker than if I had been trying to figure them out in the dash between meetings.

This simple practice has also been helpful for me in what is a stressful and uncertain time (and, again, I must emphasise how lucky I am: I realise that many people are suffering much higher levels of stress and uncertainty than me). I know that many people practice mindfulness, and we have a healthy and growing mindfulness network at HSBC. While I am very happy that this works for many people, though, it has never really worked for me: when I get to the point where I am supposed to acknowledge thoughts and let them go, I find myself getting caught up in them and thinking about them - and enjoying thinking about them. (Perhaps somebody can tell me how I’m doing it wrong.)

But ten to twenty minutes with a blank sheet of paper and the opportunity to explore my own thoughts will leave my mind clearer and calmer, even when the ideas are complex and writing them down is hard. I expect that the same is true for many technology architects.

Lessons for Technology Architects

As ever, I try to draw some lessons for myself and for other technology architects from this experience. I think that, this time, the lessons are easy: it is good to connect and it is good to reflect. We add the most value to our organisations when we are thinkers, figuring out problems which other people haven’t solved yet, and connectors, joining up people and ideas across our organisations. We should not need the current situation to remind us to make time for these two important roles, but if it prompts us to make habits worth keeping then we should try to keep them.