After The Storm

Why are we trying to coin a phrase: “the Work From Home Evolution”? It looks pretty impressive with its fancy capital letters doesn’t it? Our industry could have been a lot further down this road to the distributed model and therefore less vulnerable to the current ambush. Technology and productivity are two very popular buzzwords at morning boardroom meetings. We are now being forced to find out how the former can encourage the latter.

In the previous article we introduced Matt Mullenweg’s (founder of WordPress) broad categorisation of organisations who are experiencing the shift to a distributed (a better word than “remote”) working model. They are:

Level 1 – Limited remote access for some workers in place, mainly in use for emergency situations:

• Mainly for IT users and other managers, or access via third party support apps provided by IT support companies.
• Devices remain in the office and any remote access relies mainly on BYOD.
• The office environments we are used to, from soul-crushing cubicle farms to spaces converted to Instagram-worthy timber and chrome cathedrals.

Level 2 – Organisations trying to recreate their office conditions for workers at home:

• IT and Practice Managers working hard to put the required infrastructure in place.
• Partners/Directors perhaps realising that investment in IT is not merely an expense.
• Firm-led IT education campaigns and training.

Level 3 – Beginning to take advantage of the Evolution:

• Workers’ level of trust and autonomy has been recognised as one of the major contributing factors for morale and job satisfaction. What better expression of trust and autonomy is there than being able to work from home?
• Collaboration via tech: e.g. use shared Google Docs to take notes at meetings. A shared responsibility to accurately record notes can be incredibly clarifying and allows a shared sense of ownership.
• Shared screens/present desktops.

Level 4 – Expectations shift as asynchronous productivity sets in:

• Distractions such as loud co-workers, smelly food, uncomfortable environmental settings and jealousies over who has the corner office disappear.
• Do all staff really need to be online at the same time? Is 9-5 really relevant or even possible now that kids are being kept home?
• Can staff be more productive overall if they’re able to work around whatever challenges face a household under quarantine?

Level 5 – Nirvana. We actually perform better as a distributed organisation:

• For most organisations this is seen as unattainable but something to strive for.
• Can everyone perform at their best if social awkwardness is removed? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to:
  • Exercise during the day: imagine how weird you would feel if you dropped to do push-ups and squats between meetings in the office.
  • Play your own weird music as loud as you like.
  • Leave the desk at odd times to pick up kids or get lunch outside the ‘normal’ times.
• Full responsibility and autonomy for improved productivity, education and overall performance rests with every employee.

Under quarantine conditions, how can we help to guide our firms into Level 3 and beyond?

1. Remember you have a job to do. If you’re not already time-recording, find an app that you can use to time yourself such as Harvest. No one else needs to see this but you can measure your own output.
2. Be honest with yourself. How productive are you really being? What is distracting you? What can you change about your environment, Internet browsing habits etc.
3. Be considerate. At my place we now have 4 people with different requirements sitting together in our home office. We need to get into better habits such as leaving the room to make long calls and helping each other with household chores and generally trying to stay patient and kind.
4. Exercise. Stop and do those push-ups, squats and walks/runs if you can fit them in. Your mental energy, alertness and concentration will be boosted.
5. Collaborate. Find ways to stay in touch with your team members. Compare and share notes, tips and tricks. Talk about how your kids are coping and your strategies/ideas for the Evolution. My wife’s company had the great idea of sharing Spotify playlists between team members. Ideas like this provide connections at a time of enforced isolation.
6. Upgrade your tech savvy. At online meetings, mute your mic when not talking. Turn off video feed to save bandwidth. Learn about file sharing or hooking up extra monitors or setting up a better docking station. Learn how to upgrade your home IT security or operating system.
7. Be kind and patient to your IT help. Right now they are probably swamped and more stressed out than normal.

The Evolution is here and we’re all learning as we go. Whatever our industry looks like after the Coronavirus pandemic has passed, it will almost certainly be more reliant on tech than ever. You and your firm can embrace the change and be better for it after the storm has passed. Face to face still matters for all sorts of reasons and situations but the day to day running of a modern firm can be accomplished from the comfort of home, if we evolve.

(The above thoughts are inspired by Matt Mullenweg’s conversation with Sam Harris. To hear the complete conversation on these topics, go here and download the podcast.)