Business first: I need your suggestions.
More and more, COVID-19, race relations, and politics seem to be crowding out all other subjects in my day-to-day thinking. That doesn’t make them interesting reading. There have to be other topics to write about that are timely and relevant without being repetitive and boring.
So give me some hints — let me know what other subjects you’d like me to cover in these weekly screeds.
And why.
You’ll be helping both of us.
Thanks.
– Bob
P. S. Oh … before I forget and apropos of nothing in particular, are you as puzzled as I am that with all the buzz about the Microsoft Duo, nobody has even mentioned its uncanny resemblance to the ill-fated Microsoft Courier? It’s sad beyond words when yours truly has the best memory on the block.
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The KJR Manifesto devoted two chapters to the primacy of relationships in effective organizations. It might be time for a re-think.
Chapter 4 (Relationships precede process) describes the “process distrust loop” — a diagrammatic representation of how poor working relationships and the distrust they breed act like sand in an organization’s operational gears, just as strong, positive, trust-based relationships are an organization’s metaphorical graphite dust.
Chapter 5 (Relationships Outlive Transactions (it earned the acronym ROT) talks about relationships in more personal terms, describing the impact of winning the proverbial battles (transactions) in ways that result in losing the legendary war. Personal success, that is, depends far more on working relationships than on even the most important achievements.
So here we are, collaborating via Zoom or WebEx, TEAMS or Slack, IM, email, and other electronic channels (sorry if I left out your favorite). Sometimes we have a foundation of trust from prior face-to-face teamwork, but increasingly we don’t. We have nothing to base trust on, and have structural reasons that make distrust logical: With workforce reductions turning many situations into games of musical chairs, trusting a total stranger just means I’m more likely to be the one with no place to sit on the day the music dies.
Wise leaders have been doing everything they can to overcome these challenges. As I said a couple of weeks ago, “Merely competent managers will accept purely transactional relationships as an inevitability and adjust how they assign and receive work accordingly.
“Excellent leaders will fight this every step of the way, recognizing that effective organizations are still built on trust-based relationships. For example, just because Zoom has supplanted … let’s start calling them “flesh-to-flesh” interactions … is no reason for leaders to abandon the once-common practice of weekly or bi-weekly one-on-one conversations with their direct reports.”
But I been thinkin’. Is it possible I’m just geezing, anchored in ancient thought patters and mistaking How We’ve Always Done Things for How We Should Do Things Now?
Much as it pains me to suggest it, this might be the right time to think about adopting a post-relational, purely transactional model of interpersonal interactions and organizational effectiveness.
Call it the Grasp the Nettle strategy.
Don’t get me wrong. When the situation allows for it, interpersonal trust repays the investments needed to achieve it many times over. Call it the Return on Relationships, and when it’s possible it’s huge.
But wishing something is possible doesn’t make it possible. Given the inflectionary, linguistic, time-differentialed, structural, and above all cultural barriers to relationship building, it might make more sense to just give up and base all work and responsibilities on specific assignments — nothing more, nothing less.
The specifics depend on … well, the specifics of the situation. As an oversimplified overview, managers might organize the work to be done into two categories: delegations and a Kanban queue.
Delegations are operational responsibilities. They’re for categories of work that, taken as a whole, deliver the results the organization is responsible for.
The Kanban queue lists everything that must, should, or might get done that doesn’t nicely fit into one of the delegations. Employees who have enough spare capacity can snag one of the queue items and get credit for dealing with it.
And maybe even extra credit for collaborating on it with another team member.
Not that organizing work this way will be easy. Especially, organizing tasks to minimize the extent to which team members are dependent on each other will be a challenge. If you don’t, should Fred’s inbox be empty at the beginning of the day because Adina’s didn’t finish the work in progress Fred is supposed to add his bit of value to, or didn’t finish it to Fred’s satisfaction, we’re right back into the process distrust loop with no resolution in sight.
Traditional trust-based teams solve this through an arcane procedure called “helping each other out.” Transactional not-really-team members might mitigate the challenge by working on something in the Kanban queue while awaiting the work in progress to show up.
They might use the time productively by taking on-line training classes or perfecting their FreeCell skills.
Or, they might try something radical, like getting to know their teammates better.
I know it sounds like crazy talk …
I think that relationships still matter as much as ever. More and more people are realizing that pressing flesh (as in shaking hands or other greeting rituals) doesn’t build relationships. Time and shared experience build relationships, and physical proximity has little to do with it. Across the last 30 years I have frequently known people in different states better than I have know people on different floors in the same building. And people in different states call me rather than the helpdesk because they know that I can fix some types of problems, and I’ll listen to them because we are friends. I still insist on getting a ticket number because problem tracking matters, but I can jump in and help them.
On the flip side, experience with some people has shown me that they want me to do their work rather than solve their problem so their requests get last priority whether they start with a ticket or a phone call.
1) I think you could find a wealth of topics to write about regarding the transition to remote work. Most people have been surprised to discover that can be more effective and less expensive.But there are certainly some interesting IT aspects, along with the more general business aspects, and I’d welcome your insights on both.
2) We have also now discovered that a lot of business travel that was previously considered “essential” isn’t actually necessary to get the job done. Again, your insights on the IT and the general business aspects would be welcome.
3) A lot of technical conferences are being forced to go virtual. Not necessarily a bad thing; if people can attend a conference at much lower expense, companies may be willing to send more people to the conference. But again, there are a lot of interesting IT and general business aspects. For example, lots of people need the continuing education credits that they receive from attending conferences and short courses to maintain their professional accreditation. Attendance is easy to certify when they’re physically in the room. When you’re running a virtual conference, what are good ways to certify attendance without insulting your attendees?
Thank you for the book recommendation, I have a copy coming from Amazon. That said, it is “Kehlog Albran” not “Khelog Albran”.
Thanks again, great column as always.
This remote working business and trust of the ‘team’ are really impossible for me to grasp. I suppose different businesses might have ways to get things done without direct collaboration, I just have so little experience with working in isolation coupled with periodic sharing. While working on a problem, casual conversations seem to help past the myriad interactions needed by those involved. In my familiar areas that would be in a semi-bullpen arrangement of co-workers on a common project or segment. It will be interesting to see how creative organizations get stuff done. As a manager I was always working the floor interacting with teams. We had stand-ups for major re-alignments but the dailies were more checking by walking around. Within a project there were always those who could help others crack a difficult area, moving things along, but the needs had to be shared within the team. I just can’t see how that can be done remotely.
The other thing I worry about in the long term is related to training and rolling people in and out of a team. Some training nearly must be side-by-side & show-and-tell. How this can get done for remotes seems to require some thinking I haven’t spent the time yet to crack. It might require multiple video feeds and more displays to accomplish. Bringing new people into a team when they clearly are not able to know or trust others seems hard. Ordinarily they could be closely monitored while also tracking their interactions as they integrate. I can see that effort taking more time to develop bi-directional trust, particularly for junior people.
What you call “transactional relationships” is also called “the gig economy.” We are hired for specific work-related skills and have limited interaction with anyone outside the position. More freedom; don’t have to do work I hate because it’s the current open project. No security, but I lost that in 2008.
Hollywood works the same way. Everything’s project based.
The Microsoft Duo looks like another phenomenal waste of a company’s money spent to create something few will want. I want to pull my phone out of my pocket with one hand and see the screen immediately. With facial recognition or fingerprint recognition I can do that instantly right now. I don’t want to have to go back to flipping open my phone, especially when it’s now the size of two phones side by side. No thank you.
I share your skepticism of the long-term outlook for teams working solely from home. As you sad, the training aspects alone are going to be substantial.
When buying a home, you always hire a building inspector to make sure everything is sound, right? A week or two later you’ll get a detailed report. But if you walk through with the inspector, you will often learn a lot more than what typically goes in a report. He’ll point out little things as he notices them, give you advice on how to fix things, show you what to look for in various situations. That extra information is invaluable. The same thing happens when you work side by side or even in the next office. I’m much more willing to yell, “Come look at this” and point something out than I am to waste extra time logging into Zoom, contacting someone and waiting for them to connect.
Oooo goody, you want more topics to write about, besides the morbidly compelling topics of virus/racism/politics?
. Great Depression 2.0! personal bankruptcies! small-business mass die-off! unemployment! homelessness! starvation!
. rent nonpayments, therefore evictions! mortgage nonpayments, therefore foreclosures!
. the NEXT exciting step: all the too-big-to-fail banks start failing again and get bailed out again!
. carnage in restaurants, hotels, spectator sports, live music, live theatre, movie production, airlines, airplane manufacturing!
. Boeing 737 Max! systemic failures within Boeing! systemic failures within the FAA!
. 747 and A380 are dead, dead, dead! the end of an era!
. tariff wars / trade wars ! governments banning corporations (e.g. Huawei, TikTok)!
. pension crisis! Social-Security crisis! medical-care price-rise crisis! affordable-housing crisis!
. the average new car is now too expensive for the average American! (and ALREADY was BEFORE Great Depression 2.0).
. an entire Lost Year for ALL students, pre-K through B.A.!
. child-care crisis! day-care crisis!
. the NEXT exciting step: women-in-the-workplace setbacks! also: child abuse!
. global climate change / warming / hurricanes / derechos ! (what? THAT’S still happening?)
. MeToo! (what? THAT’S still happening?)
But also, new developments in:
. telework, telemedicine, e-education, personal Zooms.
. live theatre via Zoom, including audience-participation live theatre via Zoom.
. live music performances/concerts via Zoom. the Met Opera gala!
. YouTube entrepreneurs! Patreon! Kickstarter!
. e-commerce, home grocery delivery, home meal delivery, meal kits.
. streaming video. Peak TV.
. rumors about iPhone 12 & Friends.
. Macintoshes transitioning away from Intel chips to Apple’s own ARM-based A-series chips.
. electric cars, autonomous driving, ride-sharing. clean energy.
. whatever happened to “the sharing economy”? anything besides AirBNB and Uber?
. the wild proliferation of corporate Unicorns.
. income inequality, at the same time as: absurd highs in the stock market (Irrational Exuberance 2.0?).
. let’s gawk at Jeff Bezos’s net worth!
Yep, news is still happening that ISN’T virus/racism/politics.
A series of succesfull transactions will build trust.
The most important aspect of in-person is the casual interaction.
With remote, communication is deliberate. And most of the time, we do deliberate communication when there is a problem.
People do not call the Help Desk, 911, or coworkers just to chat
I’m a heathy, in-person work environment, we not only have immediate and easy access to collaborate on work, we share in all the minutia that comes with being in a room together for a third of our lives (during the work week).