National University Podcast Series

CAVO Ep. 94: The Hazards of Hybrid

• Laurel Farrer and Dr. Jeff Belsky • Season 5 • Episode 94

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As return-to-office mandates continue to roll out, the national majority of teams are now working from a variety of workplaces. Listen to hear Laurel Farrer, CEO of Distribute Consulting and CAVO Visiting Virtual Expert, and Dr. Jeff Belsky, Director of Strategy and Leadership Development at Solutions 21, discuss what hybrid companies can learn from remote work to help prevent the risks of imbalance, miscommunication and discrimination.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Center of Advancement of Virtual Organization Podcast, The Hazards of Hybrid. I'm Jeff Belski at National University, and today I'm joined by CAVO visiting virtual expert Laurel Furrow. Laurel's globally renowned remote work expert, business consultant, and pioneer of virtual organizational development. With almost 20 years of operational experience, she has collaborated with Fortune 500 companies to enhance hybrid and remote work infrastructures and optimize employee experience in the future of work. In 2021, Laura was included in the Forbes next 1000 list of Inspire entrepreneurs. Her insight has been featured in major publications such as Forbes, BBC, Fast Company, and the New York Times. Today, we're diving into a timely topic. As return to office mandates keep rolling out, most teams across the country find themselves working from all kinds of different places. So, what can hybrid companies learn from a world of remote work? We'll be exploring some key strategies to help prevent issues like imbalance, miscommunications, and even discrimination in these new hybrid environments. Welcome, Laura. How are you?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm doing well. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

How are you, Jeff? Fantastic. Glad to have you on. And before we really jump in here, uh, why don't you share a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Well, I am the founder of Distribute Consulting, which is the world's leading consulting firm that specializes exclusively in remote work. So I like you so eloquently introduced in the introduction, I just am a remote work nerd through and through, and I love solving the problems that often come with virtual first collaboration and really leveraging workplace flexibility to enhance the lives of people and businesses and communities.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, great to have you on, Laurel. It is a pleasure, and uh I'm sure that the conversation we have is gonna give some insight to the people that are listening to this podcast because it is such an important issue right now. I mean, we're coming off of, of course, COVID, where uh organizations went immediately into remote work. And uh now we find ourselves, you know, sometimes going hybrid and so forth. And I know we're gonna talk about that a little bit. But talk to me a little bit about some key lessons that hybrid companies can learn from fuller remote work environments to maintain balance and equity across different work locations. What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_01:

You know, this is just such a simple concept, but so hard to understand and so hard to adopt that if you are a hybrid team of any level, you have to operate according to the principles of remote work, which means if you have a remote team member, you are a remote team. So there's really not such a thing as an entire category of hybrid work versus remote work. It's all distributed. So as soon as you take one step into that world of flexibility with your workplace model, you have to operate in a new way.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it really is. I mean, I and it's it's something where you said operating in a new way. And that's something so important that organizations understand that. One of the things that organizations are are faced with and have been faced with with remote work is this whole concept of miscommunications. And, you know, how do you prevent that? When you have people that are remote, hybrid, uh, you know, how do you prevent that miscommunications in organizations?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh man, I tell you, if there's anything that's going to be on my gravestone someday, because I've said it so often in my life, it's going to be the phrase that in virtual work, overcommunication is just communication. We have to communicate in a new way and in with so much more frequency and consistency and transparency in order to facilitate collaboration in a virtual environment. And that's because when we are distributed teams, we don't use time and location in order to stay aligned. We share information to stay aligned. So as we are operating in a new way, what that means is that we have to manage work and information differently. That means we need to manage knowledge differently, projects differently, performance differently, and even how we manage people.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's you know, it's a it's interesting because um, you know, you're mentioning somewhat a different way of managing people, which is true. Um, you know, when we talk about communications, let's go back to that for a second. Do you feel that through your experience, do you feel that some people worker remote need more communication? Some are maybe happy, you know, some some feel that there's they're being isolated by worker remotely, but do you believe that some people are okay with the word isolation?

SPEAKER_01:

That's a really great question. Several years ago, we conducted a deep research study on this about what the sources of isolation were as they are correlated with remote work. And what we found is that very, very few people actually felt socially isolated. What they felt was informationally isolated, because at work, people are a resource. And if you don't have access to people, you don't have access to the resources that you need in order to stay productive. So we rely on communication in order to have access to the information that we need to do our tasks. So, yes, that it is we all crave social interaction, but whether or not we actually need it in a work environment is really based on are we getting the information that we need in order to be our best professional selves? And so that can come through multiple sources. Yes, it can come through communication, more synchronous experiences like meetings and instant messaging that give us more of that social feel, but it can also come from more asynchronous resources like handbooks or emails or messages that can equip us just as well as maybe sending messages back and forth.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I like how you kind of separated out the social interaction and the information, because you're correct, when people state isolation, they always think social interaction. But in a sense, information is information, and everybody really needs that to, you know, to keep going, uh, regardless of whether they're in-house or uh remote. Um let's talk about collaboration a little bit, because you know, regardless of isolation, regardless of somebody, you know, it has no problem with isolation or even information. I mean, regardless of anything, there still has to be collaboration as far as building teams and keeping dynamics of teams going and ideas flowing and so forth. How do you keep collaboration when you have a remote workforce or even a hybrid workforce?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, so this is where I'll say the same phrase again that uh, you know, traditional teams use time and location in order to stay aligned, and distributed teams use information to stay aligned. So the more that we can strategically develop information channels, the more that our teams will feel aligned. So this is really based on the premise of cognitive mapping. We need to give all of our team members a sense of where they are, especially because we don't have the environmental cues to give them a sense of place. You're not walking into the office and being like, oh, I'm in this building surrounded by these people, sitting at this desk, and now I know that I'm a part of something. So we have to recreate those same cues psychologically with some stronger information sharing in order to create that same cognitive map for our teams when we're collaborating together. So this is really where we create, again, documentation and information that gives our team members a strong sense of place. Where are you? Where are you going? Uh where have you been? And this is done through very clear metrics, um, like your success metrics, strong project management plans, strong reporting channels, strong um OKR uh measurement tactics, like the all of that data and information can surround a person to really give them the security to know exactly what they're working on, that it's valuable, that they're contributing to something, and that they're appreciated for the value that they bring.

SPEAKER_00:

So, what I'm hearing from you, Laura, is really if if you manage to process and lead the process and the structure appropriately, you'll have the collaboration, you'll have the teamwork and the outcomes that you would, even if the individuals were in-house, correct?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. I think the biggest change that people might notice from more traditional teams to virtual teams is that because we don't have that synchronous experience together every day, we don't have as much opportunity for delays or reactive, spontaneous troubleshooting. Any delays that happen in our workflows can turn into hours or days because of the asynchronous dynamics of our teams. So what we have to do is be much, much, much proactive in our organizational behavior than traditional teams do. We invest much more time into project management planning and behavioral alignment before a project starts so that we have as little reactive uh responses to manage throughout the process.

SPEAKER_00:

Fantastic. Let me let's stay on the concept of of managing and leading for a second, because you know, I I always say that you know remote, remote work and virtual teams were were coming regardless. Prior to COVID and so forth, I I think that organizations were kind of dipping their toe into it and you know seeing how it would work. Of course, COVID, what I always say is put us 10 years, you know, it what would happen in 10 years happened in like you know, 10 minutes. Um, organizations were you know were were floundering, wondering what to do, um, going out buying computers and trying to figure out how to have virtual teams. And you know, with that being said, I think that um in a sense, we came to a fact of you know, how do managers that were managing organizations in-house, you know, now they're managing virtually without any training at all. It's been it, you know, so I guess the question is is that twofold. One, do you think that organizations have got to a point where, yeah, they are now effectively managing remote teams? That's one question. And the other question is, is how do they learn to do that? Because it happened so quickly.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it was definitely uh a sink or swim moment for us, uh socially as well as professionally. Um, you know, this is this is a really good topic because I think it also comes back to that same concept of uh a proactive mindset and organizational behavior versus reactive mindset and organizational behavior. So for so many years, what has been happening in our businesses is that we've been expecting people to be dependent on certain circumstances in order to be productive. So you come to a certain place, you're supervised by a certain person, you're sitting at a certain desk, and that is what means you are productive. And so we have to wait for them to be in those scenarios until they produce their best work. And that has really caused some bad behaviors in which people are waiting. They're waiting for instructions, they're waiting for supervision, they're waiting for motivation, they're waiting for inspiration. So, what we're seeing in the future of work, not just remote work, but all of the future of work, is a higher level of autonomy. We want to empower professionals to be professionals, to be trusted, uh, expert adults that really own their zone of genius and can be productive and valuable and appreciated no matter where they are or when they're working. So, what we see in terms of membership about what that means to manage more autonomous individuals is that we need to shift our management tactics away from supervision and more towards a servant leadership mindset. So we're not controlling anybody, we're not monitoring anybody, we're empowering them, we're supporting them to say, you are your own boss, you are your own manager. How can I help you succeed? What do you need from me? What uh, you know, what kind of support and encouragement and resources do you need to do your best work? And so managers are more on call than they are supervising.

SPEAKER_00:

And it really does have a mindset change. Don't you agree? Um when you look at it historically, you are right. You were productive by the boss turning around seeing you at your uh your your seat. And you know, if you stay till five, you're great. If you stay till 5 30, you're better. If you stay till six, you're promoted. Okay. Um, you know, you came in early, that's great. Come in even earlier, and you're, you know, so it we it was measured by time and presence, um, where now it's measured by productivity. Um, so you know, let's talk about that mindset a little bit because we're we're on the cusp right now, and it's been happening, and and this is what I want you to talk about um is the whole fact that companies are still resisting this. And now they're starting to pull employees back in, and it's causing some problems. And you know, because culturally, uh it's almost like you know, you can't put the genie back in a bottle. Uh so now we're saying to somebody that's been remote for a couple years, hey, listen, we want you back in the office. So what do you what's your thoughts on this? What's happening in the industry? And, you know, how is it gonna, how do you think this is gonna land? How's the plan gonna land with this?

SPEAKER_01:

It's a complicated situation, isn't it? Um, yeah, this is happening for a lot of different reasons. And as leadership, we need to be so, so careful when we are announcing a return to office strategy. We need to be careful for multiple reasons. Number one is are we making this decision based on real data or just subjective opinions? If you have real data that is proving that your team members, your workforce is genuinely significantly less productive in off-site locations than they are in on-site locations, then yes, bring them back into the office, put them in whatever environment they do their best work. But make sure that those metrics are valid and sound, that they are based on a variety of different results and outputs. Are they producing more deliverables, better ideas, stronger support? Um, are all of the metrics in which we are using to measure productivity all happening in the right place and at the right time? And can we prove it with data? Otherwise, if we cannot, then we are into the territory of made making very major business decisions based on completely subjective opinions. And we know from history that that's very dangerous territory. So we really want to make sure that leaders understand exactly how productivity is measured and where it's being measured and what the metrics are that are that the workforce is is putting out. Along with that, we want to control the messaging as carefully as possible. Because when each one of these leaders is saying it's time to come back to the office to get back to work, what you're saying is you have not been working for the past two years, four years, five years, right? We're saying that the work that you have been doing is not valued, not appreciated. And that is going to do absolutely nothing for motivation, retention, and engagement. So the entire process of calling a workforce back into the office needs to be much, much, much more carefully handled than it sometimes is right now.

SPEAKER_00:

So, Laura, let me ask you, uh, you you know, you being in this field and and really having your your you know ear to the ground of what's happening out there, do you think more companies are analyzing it and doing the right thing as far as saying, yeah, it's it's fine, productivity is is remaining high, we're gonna keep it, or do you find that the kind of the mainstream is, well, nope, uh I I didn't agree with it in the first place, and I'm not agreeing with it now. So we're just gonna pull people back because that's what I believe as the you know executive in the organization that we're we should be because my history has been you come to work and you're productive only if you're sitting in your seat. What are you seeing as being kind of the driving force right now?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, the short answer is don't pay attention to media because it's all based on clickbait. So, yes, there are many, many reports of these, you know, thousands of businesses calling their workers back into the office. That is true for some large fortune companies that especially have really high real estate investments because obviously they need a ROI on those investments. However, for mid-sized businesses, small businesses, startups, um, remote work is very, very, very much the new normal. Um, for companies that do have real estate investments that are in that same smaller demographic, hybrid is the new normal. So, yes, this is very much part of our future permanently. It's something that we all need to embrace, become comfortable with, and upskill for because we have entered into this new chapter of the future of work and it's here to stay. And you know, you have to choose sides or else you're unloyal, or I mean, I don't not even committed to your career. Like it's just such a dramatic conversation. And I'm so disappointed that that has happened because this really is such an exciting opportunity for so many people for their individual career trajectories as well as the success of business. And if we could just come into this change with more patience, more critical thinking, um, more open minds, we can really embrace the opportunities that remote work has to offer to their fullest potential. But as long as we're stuck in this contentious fight, um, we're really not seeing the forest for the trees. This is really about enabling people to be people, to live life more fully, to produce better results at work and ultimately to just be living better lives, both personally and professionally. But we're never gonna get there if we get stuck in this, you know, drama about hybrid working.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, great. That's that's a great ending. And one thing that we didn't talk about that we could have connected the dots multiple times is happiness. Um you know, and really when you're happy at work, you become more productive. Um so I mean that I I again we can write a book on that. So um, but you know, I I do want to thank you, Lori. It's been a it's been a true pleasure meeting you and having you in this podcast and chatting with you in this what I would consider an extremely valuable topic uh in today's business environment. And I've joined enjoyed, you know, learning from you and also the conversation. I believe our listeners will benefit from this great information uh as well. So I do want to thank you very much. I also want to thank the Center for Advancement of Virtual Organizations National University, who is really spearheading so much about this uh important topic. So, with that, Laurel, thank you so much. I appreciate uh you uh you being on this podcast and taking the time to share your valuable information to the listeners and myself. So thank you so much, Laurel, for uh being here.

SPEAKER_01:

It is my pleasure. Thank you so much for the invitation and yes, a great conversation. I hope we can do it again in the future.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you, Laurel.