WLP288: Rethinking 'Thinking Remote' - Designing the Digital Workspace
This episode kicks off a series reflecting on Thinking Remote: Inspiration for Leaders of Distributed Teams, which was published in 2018 - a geological epoch ago, in remote work terms. What has changed, what has stayed the same, and how have Pilar and Maya changed and evolved their own thinking on these themes?
The first chapter of the book dealt with designing the digital workplace, and you can read the original blog post from which the chapter derived here: Designing the Digital Workspace: What We Can Learn from the Physical Space — Virtual not Distant.
The digital workspace, broadly defined, is continually changing, and this changes what we can do with it - like Microsoft recently adding an audio studio directly into PowerPoint for the first time. But how have mindsets changed, with the recent explosion of remote work adoption, under circumstances we never could have foreseen back when this was originally written.
We talked in the chapter about creating a collaborative vs competitive workspace, and being intentional about the kinds of behaviours we wanted to manifest. Behaviour springs from culture, and we stressed that it’s important to understand the values which underlie this, and consciously consider how you want those values to show up in the remote space (either supporting or challenging these cultural norms.)
There’s something almost nostalgic, about the way we recommended teams to work through this evaluative process and design their digital tool stack, even when most ended up with a similar list of applications at the end of it - because it’s always been about HOW you use the tool, and it doesn’t matter how many there are to choose from nowadays. And the jarring way the world had to adapt in March 2020 surely created a lot of dissonance in teams which were used to a more consensual and discursive way of working, who found themselves locked into a digital ecosystem overnight, just for business continuity… and contributed to a wave of shadow IT problems as people figured stuff out for themselves.
Understanding these different tools has become part of the core skill-set for the modern remote worker, and being flexible is still essential - because clients and external collaborators may have a different set-up. Also, there is so much convergent design and overlap of functionality, that it’s no longer a case of ‘if you want a Kanban-style workflow you have to use Trello, for example (because ToDoist and Asana and many others have this style of visualisation now).
The digital workspace can reflect team and organisation identity to an extent, but there remains limited customisation in most collaboration tools. Maybe this will be the next wave of differentiation, once every app can do everything every other app can in functionality terms? But businesses are starting to bring in brand identity, e.g. by specifying a corporate a background slide for videoconferencing, and it would be nice if there were more ways to express values and outlook and team identity in our everyday digital workspaces.
Indeed, some of the default working spaces may not be a fit for the organisational culture and way of working at all - perhaps there was never a watercooler in the physical office, so what is this channel even for? There are teams who have never ‘worked out loud’ to any extent, just sat side by side for years, each doing their thing… Some curation and cultivation of the online conversation can be helpful, not just at the outset but always, because communicating in the online space has to be so much more structured - and some people can find this inhibits spontaneity. It’s a fine balance, between creating clear structures as guide-rails, to unlock real flexibility in terms of how the work is done (e.g., asynchronous collaboration can only work if everyone knows where to find everything they need, and the latest part of the conversation.)
Curiously you can see in this chapter a lot of the frameworks and vocabulary we later evolved within Virtual Not Distant, like the components of Visible Teamwork(™) The role of planned spontaneity in particular has become more central, and finding ways to connect effectively through the work itself, while minimising disruption and breaking of flow.
On reflection, the principles we wrote about in this chapter 3 years ago have not changed much. The tech has become more refined, and there are more choices - we didn’t cover VR metaverses back then, but we don’t know anyone who’s actually using this stuff at work yet anyway (though Remote are using it for parties, so that sounds fun!).
Obviously, there’s a lot of investment flowing into this area, and we’ll keep an eye on it, as we will less immersive solutions like Remotion - who are finding ways to frictionlessly connect people working together apart. Technology like this has real potential to help unite hybrid teams in a virtual space, because it has to be as easy and natural for the colocated contingent to connect there, as to look up or walk across the room.
So much has changed, but so much has stayed the same - why not find out what else is covered, in Thinking Remote: Inspiration For Leaders Of Distributed Teams, by Pilar Orti and Maya Middlemiss (also in Spanish!)
38.30 Audiobook Free Sample
And this podcast concludes with the chapter from the audiobook version (at 38.30), so you can review the original chapter we have been discussing here.
Don’t forget to keep in touch and let us know what’s evolved for you in your thinking around the digital workplace. We have a form for you to contact us, or you can tweet Virtual Not Distant, or Pilar and Maya directly, with your thoughts and ideas about anything we have discussed in this episode or others, as well as links or themes you’d like us to explore in future episodes.
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