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...]
Team Collaboration Tools Prove We Don’t Deserve Nice Things
When you were a kid and you broke something, or treated your parents’ property with disrespect, were you told, “This is why we can’t have nice things”? It’s the same idea with technology and team collaboration tools. The tools are (mostly) fine. People are the problem. When we talk to our clients about the challenges to team productivity, there are a lot of complaints about … [Read more...]
Is Interacting with Colleagues Now a Problem?
Several well-known magazines have done features lately on the subject of returning to the office and why some people are concerned or hesitant to do so. If you look at the top five reasons, there are things you’d expect to see, and one thing you might find odd (or at least I do). In no particular order, (Most lists agree on the top five, just not the order): Fear of … [Read more...]
Learning in Cohorts for Hybrid Teams
How can you help new hires to a virtual or hybrid team connect and learn about the company culture faster? That’s a question we get a lot, and there’s no one simple answer. That said, one solution is to resurrect the idea of cohorts. How cohorts used to work By definition a cohort is a group of people banded together or treated as a group. It can also mean a supporter or … [Read more...]
Do You Trust the New Team Member?
When the pandemic hit, one of the more surprising things we learned was how well teams maintained existing relationships and work processes. People who were co-located and teams that functioned at a high level managed to keep it up when they were dispersed. Trust was a big part of that. But two years in, many teams have new members, and some are being completely reformed. Do … [Read more...]