This year I tested out a new work schedule that included four weeks of no meetings. I scheduled them in two-week blocks of time. It didn’t go smoothly. But it did give me a new perspective on the remote vs. hybrid vs. in-office debate. Because I remember way back to when I first switched from multi-tasking work as an administrative assistant and then program manager to a full-time prospect research role. It was a challenge to sit still all day and work on the computer. I broke up the hours by regularly getting up from my desk to refill my water glass. Decades later I need to do concentrated work again, but only some of the time. Most of my days are spent in and out of meetings and writing short items such as emails and proposals. This makes it difficult to block out the hours of time it takes for content creation (such as new educational content) or planning. Both of these tasks require uninterrupted concentration – much like prospect research. This led to my plan for two weeks of uninterrupted, concentrated work in August and November. The goal was to complete everything on task for the current year and jump ahead on the next year. And I did get a good chunk of that work completed. But it was a struggle. First, I have no-one to back fill my position when I am unavailable. Telling a potential customer or a current client that they have to wait two weeks or more to speak to me doesn’t go over very well. Second, there was a flurry of activity that I did not anticipate and had to stop and act. But something else happened during this experiment. I lost touch with my team. We are a fully remote team and always have been. I was on the computer all day during each hiatus. So, what am I talking about? Sure, I was available via Teams and was monitoring email, but there were many hour delays as I willfully ignored both in my pursuit of concentration. But the biggest cause of disconnect for me was losing all of the “little” conversations. I could check our work queue anytime online. I still had access to everything as usual if I wanted it. But I did not participate in our routine weekly meetings. This can be a really good thing occasionally because it shakes up team dynamics and allows different people to step up. And yet, after two weeks I felt really disconnected. I use the word “disconnected” because access to information did not give me access to how people on my team were feeling or what they were facing at work or in their private lives. Text messages and emails don’t convey much in the way of emotion. In addition to the emotional disconnect, there was no-one for me to bounce ideas off of or share some of the content and plans I had developed. I had no feedback loop. My team isn’t shy about dishing out feedback and I value it highly. Many a gaffe has been avoided and good ideas get way better. Which brings me to the remote vs. hybrid vs. in-office debate. I have never quite understood why organizations wanted research staff to show up in an office when the work is very effectively executed, and pretty easily managed, remotely. It is pretty clear that keeping remote teams emotionally connected and on task does require different behavior from being in the office. My exercise in unplugging from meetings had me really thinking about the raging debate over where to work, following in no particular order: • Work-appropriate emotional connection is critical no matter where the team is working and is often done poorly everywhere. It’s about building personal rapport among all team members and creating a culture of healthy communication. Without it, false assumptions can run amok – especially in a text-only environment. • Ditto for onboarding new team members. Maybe it’s easier to pop over to someone’s cubicle in the office and check on progress navigating online and offline, but wherever it happens, the intensity of supporting a new team member is easy to ignore, most especially when that person is added to a team already over its capacity! It requires remembering to do frequent check-ins and when remote, requires scheduling them. • Training team members new to the role is a special challenge and to do it well remotely requires a clear and deliberate understanding of what is needed. For example, how do you set up a solo researcher, with no previous experience, for success in an all-remote environment? Multiple layers of learning are usually needed – hard skills in research, fundraising, and navigating the organization’s systems, as well as soft skills navigating the political culture. Solo researchers need to be able to explain their work and manage leadership’s expectations about their work. That’s a tall order for a new researcher. Heck, it’s a pretty wide mix of skills for an experienced researcher. • Meetings matter. The opportunity to get to know team members requires small talk and sharing about things that are and are not work. What used to be affectionally known as “water cooler chat” may have served this purpose in the office. But remote work requires intentionally creating boundaries around this to respect personal privacy and limit it to an appropriate amount of time. • Well-run meetings matter. I need to work on better agendas to create a cadence for how work is accomplished each quarter and each year. After listening to The Economist podcast, Boss Class, I want to be sure every item on the agenda is marked one of these three things: (1) make a decision, (2) provide input, or (3) build awareness. • Hybrid work baffles me. I understand why it’s ideal for a team to meet live and in-person at some point, but it would seem that it might require an even more choreographed effort to work well in a hybrid environment than either all in-office or all remote. Being in-person is not a substitute for intentional team building or successful collaboration across teams or departments. And hybrid anything, such as concentrated tasks and short tasks, requires a “gear shifting” that results in lost momentum. • Is there a replacement for the synchronous work environment? Is it useful to work alongside team members on a video call for the opportunity to ask questions and make comments in real time? This sounds awkward to me, but new things often are. This may be an experiment for our team in 2024! • Two weeks is too long without someone to back fill my position and active work requires connection with the team. It would be easier to block off one or two days at a time or even swap a weekend day. The experiment continues! And indeed, the experiment continues across the workforce as companies swing wide from forced all-remote during the pandemic to forced return to the office years later. If this article has you thinking about how you work or how you want to work, I hope you’ll consider sharing your thoughts on the debate. The more thoughtful voices there are speaking, the better the solutions we can create!

Reflections on Working the Research Life

Uncategorized

This year I tested out a new work schedule that included four weeks of no meetings. I scheduled them in two-week blocks of time. It didn’t go smoothly. But it did give me a new perspective on the remote vs. hybrid vs. in-office debate.

Because I remember way back to when I first switched from multi-tasking work as an administrative assistant and then program manager to a full-time prospect research role. It was a challenge to sit still all day and work on the computer. I broke up the hours by regularly getting up from my desk to refill my water glass.

Decades later I need to do concentrated work again, but only some of the time. Most of my days are spent in and out of meetings and writing short items such as emails and proposals. This makes it difficult to block out the hours of time it takes for content creation (such as new educational content) or planning. Both of these tasks require uninterrupted concentration – much like prospect research.

This led to my plan for two weeks of uninterrupted, concentrated work in August and November. The goal was to complete everything on task for the current year and jump ahead on the next year. And I did get a good chunk of that work completed. But it was a struggle.

First, I have no-one to back fill my position when I am unavailable.

Telling a potential customer or a current client that they have to wait two weeks or more to speak to me doesn’t go over very well. Second, there was a flurry of activity that I did not anticipate and had to stop and act.

But something else happened during this experiment.

I lost touch with my team.

We are a fully remote team and always have been. I was on the computer all day during each hiatus. So, what am I talking about?

Sure, I was available via Teams and was monitoring email, but there were many hour delays as I willfully ignored both in my pursuit of concentration. But the biggest cause of disconnect for me was losing all of the “little” conversations.

I could check our work queue anytime online. I still had access to everything as usual if I wanted it. But I did not participate in our routine weekly meetings. This can be a really good thing occasionally because it shakes up team dynamics and allows different people to step up. And yet, after two weeks I felt really disconnected.

I use the word “disconnected” because access to information did not give me access to how people on my team were feeling or what they were facing at work or in their private lives. Text messages and emails don’t convey much in the way of emotion.

In addition to the emotional disconnect, there was no-one for me to bounce ideas off of or share some of the content and plans I had developed. I had no feedback loop. My team isn’t shy about dishing out feedback and I value it highly. Many a gaffe has been avoided and good ideas get way better.

Which brings me to the remote vs. hybrid vs. in-office debate.

I have never quite understood why organizations wanted research staff to show up in an office when the work is very effectively executed, and pretty easily managed, remotely. It is pretty clear that keeping remote teams emotionally connected and on task does require different behavior from being in the office.

My exercise in unplugging from meetings had me really thinking about the raging debate over where to work, following in no particular order:

  • Work-appropriate emotional connection is critical no matter where the team is working and is often done poorly everywhere. It’s about building personal rapport among all team members and creating a culture of healthy communication. Without it, false assumptions can run amok – especially in a text-only environment.
  • Ditto for onboarding new team members. Maybe it’s easier to pop over to someone’s cubicle in the office and check on progress navigating online and offline, but wherever it happens, the intensity of supporting a new team member is easy to ignore, most especially when that person is added to a team already over its capacity! It requires remembering to do frequent check-ins and when remote, requires scheduling them.
  • Training team members new to the role is a special challenge and to do it well remotely requires a clear and deliberate understanding of what is needed. For example, how do you set up a solo researcher, with no previous experience, for success in an all-remote environment? Multiple layers of learning are usually needed – hard skills in research, fundraising, and navigating the organization’s systems, as well as soft skills navigating the political culture. Solo researchers need to be able to explain their work and manage leadership’s expectations about their work. That’s a tall order for a new researcher. Heck, it’s a pretty wide mix of skills for an experienced researcher.
  • Meetings matter. The opportunity to get to know team members requires small talk and sharing about things that are and are not work. What used to be affectionally known as “water cooler chat” may have served this purpose in the office. But remote work requires intentionally creating boundaries around this to respect personal privacy and limit it to an appropriate amount of time.
  • Well-run meetings matter. I need to work on better agendas to create a cadence for how work is accomplished each quarter and each year. After listening to The Economist podcast, Boss Class, I want to be sure every item on the agenda is marked one of these three things: (1) make a decision, (2) provide input, or (3) build awareness.
  • Hybrid work baffles me. I understand why it’s ideal for a team to meet live and in-person at some point, but it would seem that it might require an even more choreographed effort to work well in a hybrid environment than either all in-office or all remote. Being in-person is not a substitute for intentional team building or successful collaboration across teams or departments. And hybrid anything, such as concentrated tasks and short tasks, requires a “gear shifting” that results in lost momentum.
  • Is there a replacement for the synchronous work environment? Is it useful to work alongside team members on a video call for the opportunity to ask questions and make comments in real time? This sounds awkward to me, but new things often are. This may be an experiment for our team in 2024!
  • Two weeks is too long without someone to back fill my position and active work requires connection with the team. It would be easier to block off one or two days at a time or even swap a weekend day. The experiment continues!

And indeed, the experiment continues across the workforce as companies swing wide from forced all-remote during the pandemic to forced return to the office years later. If this article has you thinking about how you work or how you want to work, I hope you’ll consider sharing your thoughts on the debate. The more thoughtful voices there are speaking, the better the solutions we can create!