There’s a lot of talk today about company culture and the effects of people working remotely, or in whatever hybrid way they’ve assembled themselves to get the work done. Primarily organizations and teams are asking if we can be the kind of connected, productive, engaging workplace we want to be without being in close physical proximity. The question is important. It also … [Read more...]
Return to the Office: Pilot Before Policy
As companies schedule their return to the office (RTO if you’re playing Buzzword Bingo), we have been checking into them with a simple question: How’s it going? Their answers fall into a couple of broad categories. Everything is fine and dandy A few report that everything’s great; they are either going to the exact some structure as before the pandemic (usually, everyone … [Read more...]
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Remote Leader
What does leading a remote team have to do with Sherlock Holmes? Whether you play the violin, smoke a pipe or enjoy deerstalker hats or not, there’s one important similarity. Most of the time, when something goes wrong, we don’t witness it ourselves and have to find out what happened. I am a big fan of “the Wizard of Baker Street” (That’s me with his statue in London this … [Read more...]
Does Working Remotely Make the Workplace Less Toxic?
We are reading a lot about Return to Office (RTO) and how it’s critical to company culture that people get together. In fact, senior executives are telling us they are depending on it to maintain or create the culture they want. But what if your workplace culture is toxic? Does getting together help or make things worse? The survey says... A recent survey by the consultancy … [Read more...]
When IT Seeks One Ring to Rule Them All
Is your IT department your savior, your enemy or something in between? It might be all those things, but have you ever compared your Head of Technology to Sauron, the bad guy from Lord of the Rings? I was talking to a client the other day about the challenges remote workers face and the subject of IT came up. The client made an observation that I hadn’t heard, but it struck a … [Read more...]