EFFECTIVE DISTRIBUTED TEAMS
7 Tips for successfully managing a Hybrid work environment
Succeeding at Hybrid is Thinking Distributed
As the world starts to open up and allow use of corporate office space, many companies and teams are confronted with the question of how to engage going forward. On the one hand, they have paid for office space and a feeling that something is “missing” by not being in person. On the other hand, they have employees who have scattered, new employees who have been hired in new territories with the expectation that they’d be allowed to work from anywhere, and data showing them that employees expect flexibility.
Hybrid is the solution many are coming to where the company supports both an office and a work-from-anywhere model for the employees. Below are 7 tips I’ve learned for getting this right.
A Reality Check on Hybrid
Disclaimer — I’ll be honest I’m not confident in hybrid work models because at a practical execution level, hybrid often doesn’t exist. In practice when implemented poorly, it tends to be a distributed environment with mostly unused office space or an office environment with some “remote” people. Why is this?
First, I acknowledge there are valid reasons for coming into the office, and many companies are focused on them now. These reasons include: The connection to colleagues, the habits a lot of the workforce is used to, the mind-space separation between work and non-work, and the reality that not everyone has a home configuration to enable productive work.
Even pre-COVID, with hybrid-distributed teams, I’ve heard these similar arguments. What I found was the office utilization is way less than expected because even the people who want to come in, when they do come in they realize many others are not there. They are not there for good reason. They woke up early to do a call with the team or a client. All of a sudden it’s noon and they haven’t showered, so it’s not worth making the journey. I’ve also tried focusing on certain days, “everyone in on Monday”, and while that does drive up utilization, at a practical level, life always introduces exceptions. Someone is sick, has a doctor’s appointment, there’s a kids event, there’s a business trip, there’s an early morning meeting we don’t want them to miss. Life always creates a set of exceptions for some portion of the population. The manager is faced holding the line on the process vs. the outcome ends up siding with doing what’s right for the business that day vs. being beholden to the process and bringing the person in. So in the end, the actions taken with the intended goal of more in-office engagement actually results in fewer people coming in than hoped.
Or the alternate happens through force or culture and the predominant center of gravity encourages everyone to be in the office if at all possible and those same incentive structures result in a setup that sidelines those who are working from other locations. This is an important assumption to confront, as being truly Hybrid means that all team members are equal, no matter if you are working from the office or from another location. If you believe this, then the proximity-bias can create a new challenge that needs to be actively managed.
These are real-world challenges of trying to do hybrid.
Assuming I haven’t convinced you to go full distributed, here are some tips for maximizing the likelihood of success in a hybrid setup.
1 — Eliminate ”Remote” from your terminology
2 — Default every meeting to a Video Conference meeting
3 — Question if the Meeting is needed
4 — Close the loop: Bring offline conversations back online
5 — Focus on “Where’s the work?” not “Where are the people?”
6 — Invest in tools and create team norms to connect the team
7 — Be a network connector for your team
Let’s dive into the details of what doing each of these things really means and why they are important.
1 — Eliminate ”Remote” from your terminology
My first tip is about setting the tone to be inclusive of your entire team. I wrote about this more here, but think of “remote” as a euphemism for “second class citizens” in an employee class system you are enabling each time you say the word. Unless you mean that, don’t use “remote”. Instead say “Distributed Team”, “Work from Home” or “Work from Anywhere”. Say what you mean, don’t leverage a popular legacy buzz word that’s not reflective of the true goal of “hybrid”.
Think of “remote” as a euphemism for “second class citizens” in an employee class system…Instead say “Distributed Team”, “Work from Home” or “Work from Anywhere”
Terminology is super important in setting the tone. As we plan post-pandemic, I’ve seen Clubhouse and other sessions popping up with titles like “The plan for Return to Work”. What does that tell your employees you think they’ve been doing? Many studies say employees are working harder than they ever have. Work has been integrated deeply into their homes and every waking hour. Yet terminology like this tells our employees we think the opposite is happening and we don’t quite trust them to stay focused and get their job done. Don’t frame the “office” as the place where work happens, because in today’s world, it’s a work-life blend and work is happening everywhere.
2 — Default every meeting to a Video Conference meeting
Every meeting should have a link to join. This creates a level playing field for both the in-office people and the distributed team members and reduces the friction and mindset of “delay” when someone isn’t in the office. Encourage everyone to join on time. For the in-office person, this means getting dialed in on their phone if they are late coming back from grabbing food downstairs, versus having the whole group wait. This helps avoid the “in-person” people being the ones setting the pace.
Every meeting should have a link to join…every conference room should have the ability to join the right meeting with one-click
It also means that every conference room should have the ability to join the right meeting with one-click so that dialing into the meeting is a 5 second or less process max. This means using something like Zoom Rooms or equivalent for your video conferencing solution.
Another consideration here is to have each person actually login from their laptop so you can see their face. This requires a little bit more sophistication as overlapping mics and speakers can be an issue if not configured exactly right. Yet another alternative is to get a product like the Owl Labs camera to help with camera placement.
3 — Question if the Meeting is needed
Speaking of meetings, the first question is: “Does this topic need a meeting?” Many talk about the value of the office as the ability to “get into a room together”, but the question should always be asked if the meeting is actually needed and is not unique to a Hybrid setup. There is value in “getting into a room together”, though most can attest that meetings are overused and many could have been an Email or Slack. Oftentimes, the Collaborative document is another great meeting alternative. In fact, it’s one of my personal favorites, as leaning on documentation instead of having a meeting immediately puts the discussion in the digital domain and creates a level playing field for all involved. Even better, your thoughts, discussions and decisions are then documented for the larger team rather than lost in the ether and whiteboards of a single conference room. If you ultimately need a meeting, it sharpens and focuses the conversation to a more narrow discussion.
The first question is: “Does this topic need a meeting?”
If the meeting is indeed needed, leverage different meeting formats that help create a level playing field across those who are distributed and those in the room, those who react quickly in the moment and those who want to digest, and those who have the loudest voices and those who have great thoughts but are waiting for a gap in talking so they can get a word in.
4 — Close the loop: Bring offline conversations back online
When discussions happen offline or without other people, document it and share it back into the digital domain. This is equally relevant in a pure “office” environment for keeping all your team members on the same page with respect to the evolving context and decisions of your business. If you do this quickly after discussions, it speeds the rate of movement in the organization. If a meeting is truly needed and important, it’s likely that a broader set of the organization is waiting on outcomes from the meeting, as it might impact their work. Doing this in a Hybrid environment is even more imperative, as it ensures everyone is getting the same information at the same time and a bias isn’t created for those physically closer to the meeting.
When discussions happen offline or without other people, document it and share it back into the digital domain.
5 — Focus on “Where’s the work?” not “Where are the people?”
The technology industry promised a new type of work that relied on technical skills combined with creativity to solve complex problems as part of a broader system. The industry tends to think in agile environments, picking up tasks and interfacing through well-defined technical and human APIs. Yet we as an industry have failed to be consistently great at focusing on outcomes vs. activity. The more we can focus on defining the work to be done, when it should be done (even if super aggressive timelines), and how it connects to the rest of the system and teams, we free our people to define how and when the work happens. Too often employees complain their managers are not providing enough autonomy and freedom for them to thrive in doing their work.
The more we can focus on defining the work to be done, when it should be done (even if super aggressive timelines), and how it connects to the rest of the system and teams, we free our people to define how and when the work happens.
By focusing on the outcomes along with the right context and expectation, you not only become a better leader, but you’ve also freed yourself from the constraints of feeling the need to be in the same office to measure progress.
Along the same lines, it’s easy to miss the office feeling the ease of “grabbing everyone and jumping in a room on a minute’s notice.” While this is of course super helpful in some situations, it can also create a fire-drill culture conflating urgent with important. Activity for progress. By focusing on the most important work that actually needs to get done, you drive real progress wherever that work is happening.
6 — Invest in tools and create team norms to connect the team
Many of the reasons we like the group setting in the office are around the serendipity, the whiteboard sessions, and the personal connections that can often be established. We’ve spent years evolving thoughts around desk layout, collaboration spaces, group events, team lunches, etc. For distributed and hybrid to work, you need to invest in the same way and with the same energy to deliberately create those moments or create the frameworks for them to happen. Using the right tools can help a great deal. The great news is there have been huge improvements in the tools around distributed collaboration over the past 20 years. Covid-19 accelerated many of them. Make sure your team has access to the tools that are super easy to enable this organic type of interaction. Creating team norms is also important to help with team bonding as well as setting expectations across the team to define how people should work and interact.
Make sure your team has access to the tools that are super easy to enable this organic type of interaction.
A key thing to do is to focus on building personal connections across the team. This an approach one of my teams used, and you’ll be shocked at how much you’ll learn even about people you sat right next to in the office. Invest in ongoing check-ins on the team health to continue to tune the interactions and the relationships.
On the investment front, invest in enabling people to come together. Regardless of if you are 100% distributed or Hybrid, finding moments for small teams or the larger team to get together is very valuable and will carry you forward across all the digital conversations. My general feeling is every 9 months is a good moment to reconnect in person as a larger team, filled in with specific needs-driven touch-points in between. These moments often serve to create deeper and richer bonds than the day in day out passing by that can happen in the same office space.
7 — Be a network connector for your team
Lastly, with all this in place, as a leader and an individual focus on being a connector. With every meeting, every 1:1, every new document, think: “for whom else might this be relevant?” Forward it, @ tag them to include them, or mention it to them to spark the conversation. Don’t passively suggest it, but actively spark it. I often would see two parallel conversations happening and would do a quick DM slack to the two different people and say “I think the two of you should talk about X.” This helps build connections across your organization and drives the serendipity you want regardless of if people are together. More importantly, it’s not constrained to walls, nor is it constrained to timezones for alignment and connection and ultimately productivity to happen. It’s present, quick, and global.
With every meeting, every 1:1, every new document, think: “for whom else might this be relevant?”
My last tip on being a network connector is to pick up the phone and call. In our over-scheduled Zoom-fatigued world, one thing we miss is the unexpected nature of a call. Voice provides so much richness in the emotion, tone, meaning, and intent that is often lost in other forms of communication. Encourage your team to jump on the phone. It speeds the conversation and you find the distance quickly shrinks in the hybrid environment.
Do you have more tips? Would love to hear them in the comments!
