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Nancy Dixon
July 01, 2015
Many companies feel they face a conundrum when it comes to determining remote
work policies. Perhaps the most common misconception about adopting virtual
work is that it is an all-or-nothing proposition, such that once we have
networking tools in place, there is no need to come together or conversely
that we have to be in the office all the time. But this paradigm often forces
knowledge workers to choose between two strong drives: the need for autonomy
and the need for a purpose that inspires and unites them.
It is neither wise nor effective to turn our backs on the benefits of having a
virtual work force. But it is also true that in this increasingly digital age,
we stand to lose something integral to what makes organizations both humane and
productive places to work: the relationships and sense of purpose that can only
be built by having in-depth, face-to-face conversations about important issues
what I call collective sensemaking (based largely on the work of Karl Weick).
The way to satisfy both needs is to blend sophisticated virtual tools with
periodic face-to-face meetings. This involves what I call the oscillation
principle, which allows you to tap the best attributes of both virtual work
and face-to-face convening.
Virtual work allows for:
Drawing on the global talent pool
Reducing costs from office space
Providing greater autonomy to workers by giving them room to experiment and
control their workflows
Being able to respond quickly to local customers
More satisfying integration of work and family life
Convening fosters:
Strong commitment to jointly made decisions
Shared understanding of goals and a larger purpose
The ability for components, developed independently, to smoothly come together
into a meaningful whole
Diverse and innovative solutions to complex issues
A sense of community, cohesion, and belonging
One example demonstrates how. Proquest, an information company, has a Research
Solutions Division comprised of three remote teams, with members scattered from
Amsterdam to San Diego. They are in daily communication with each other using
multiple forms of media, but everyone comes together for a three-day Summit
every four months to plan the work they will be carrying out virtually. Taco
Ekkel, the division manager told me, We would need four scheduled calls to
accomplish what we get solved around a white board in an hour. Without the
Summits it would definitely slow things down.
During the Summit, he creates a culture to foster collective sensemaking. This
means: 1) actively seeking members input into the agenda, 2) abandoning
hierarchy and giving decision-making power to the group, 3) whiteboarding to
jointly design features and build group ownership of ideas, and 4) preserving
social time to help team members build important relationships. (He makes sure
work sessions end promptly at 5PM so they can socialize at 5:30PM.)
Outside of the Summit, he maintains this collaborative culture by holding
(almost) daily virtual meetings so everyone is aware of what everyone else is
doing.
And they ve learned which virtual media is appropriate for certain tasks. For
example, email works best for requesting or passing on factual information,
while a teleconference is typically necessary for a problem solving task, such
as deciding who should represent the company a client meeting. A face-to-face
meeting might be needed for a brainstorming discussion about ways to alter a
product s design. Proquest usually saves larger conversations about new
features for their Summits. We d never really effectively get them
conceptualized without the richness of face-to-face contact coupled with
sketching, Ekkel said.
In this example, workers are both virtual and remote. But the oscillation
principle is equally applicable to organizations where workers spend some of
their time working remotely in a client office, at home, or even at temporary
hot desks when they re in the office. If these workers aren t periodically
connecting, in person, around issues that matter, they ll find themselves
disconnected from their colleagues and the driving mission of their unit.
And how frequently your employees come together depends on task interdependence
or the extent to which one person s work affects what other team members do
and complexity. The greater the interdependence and complexity, the more
frequently collective sensemaking meetings need to occur.
The more virtual organizations become, the greater the need for oscillating
between being remote and coming together on a regularly scheduled basis. I can
conceive of a time when employees will conduct their individual work where it
is most convenient to do so. They will come together to innovate, share new
experiences, understand issues they are all are facing, solve problems, and
develop strategy. There will be an understanding that when they convene it is
to make use of all the knowledge and analytical ability that is in the room.
Everything else will be effectively conveyed virtually. The normal way of
working will be: isolate to concentrate, convene to collaborate.
This post is one in a series of perspectives by presenters and participants in
the 7th Global Drucker Forum, taking place November 5-6, 2015 in Vienna. The
theme: Claiming Our Humanity Managing in the Digital Age.
Nancy Dixon founded Common Knowledge Associates to help managers make the
oscillation principle work in addressing difficult organizational issues.