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...]
Remote Work: Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too
The age of endless, boring meetings with a sea of eyes peering at us through an ever-increasing number of miniature squares is sadly upon us. Strict face-to-face meetings are likely a thing of the past, and the need to wrestle with videoconferences won’t be going away any time soon. Many of us love the convenience of working at home at least some of the time, and if suffering … [Read more...]
Welcome to Productivity Theater
How much time do you spend proving to others that you’re working when you’re not in the office? This sounds silly, but my long-time colleague, Jessica Stillman wrote an article for INC.com recently that gave a name to that behavior: Productivity Theater. Productivity Theater is engaging in behaviors that aren’t terribly productive but give the appearance of working hard. A … [Read more...]
Where Should We Work?
by Kevin Eikenberry Everyone has an opinion about where and when people should work. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, was an early staunch advocate for Return to Office, stating at a Wall Street Journal event in 2021 that “Working from home… doesn’t work for people who want to hustle, doesn’t work for culture, doesn’t work for idea generation. We are getting blowback … [Read more...]