Levels of Remote Work

Podcast Transcript

Hey Charlie, good morning. How's everything going in this quarantine week? What is it, three or four right now? I'm losing track of time.

I think it's probably week six. And I don't know, I'm not sure if it's Saturday or Monday, but we're here and happy to start with this new project.

Well, I'm excited as well. So let's talk about this whole thing that we're living right now. We're actually facing a disruptive trigger, which is this quarantine forced by COVID-19. And there's different ways of looking at this, there's people that are looking at this as a tremendous disruption. But there's also people that are considering that this is a trigger for innovation. And that this will transform our way of doing work for the better into the future.

I totally agree there.

So, here we are.

Yeah, and we can see it as an opportunity or as a problem. I'd rather see it as an opportunity to better ways of working, so yeah. But it definitely has changed our way of thinking. Suddenly Friday the 13th, coincidentally-

Ironically, yeah.

... we received the news that on Monday everything was shut down. So I guess many companies, suddenly, and many employees on Monday, they didn't know exactly what to expect. But they just had an email that they received and it said we're remote.

So yeah, that's where we were. Monday morning, we all wake up, we're remote. And at that point, I guess we're all thinking, what are we going to do? We have certain tools that we've been using and now we're not going to be leveraging. And I think that week must have been filled with confusion for everybody. And the next thing was, do we know how to use these tools? And it absolutely started to feel really weird.

Yeah, it was really weird because we knew that we had the tools, some tools in place, but we actually didn't know how to use them in the correct way. So yeah, and it definitely posed a challenge for a lot of people, especially those that were used to have, for example, an assistant and things like that. So yeah, definitely a complication.

And you bring up a great point because we need to look at the complexity of remote work. And I think that's our starting point, right? Because I think that some people were more accustomed than others to be able to deal with this whole complexity of working remote. And it has to do with where each one of us was when this whole thing got started from that perspective of the complexity. So let's quickly run through some basic levels of complexity. So you've got level A, which is working in the office, that's what all of us were accustomed to.

Nine to five.

And then we stepped into-

Monday to Friday, yes.

Yeah, same place, right?

Yeah.

Where we knew where the coffee machine was and then some of us were accustomed to some kind of an office, home-based type of a hybrid. Especially people who did maybe three days in the office, two days from home. So there was this mix.

Yeah, and those I think were better suited, but still it was a challenge. I think we still didn't have the tools or we were in the right place to just flip the switch.

So it just felt like it was a temporary change, let's just try to adjust. And then you've got level C, which is the people that were working remote but essentially in the same time zone. So there's different type of functions that we're actually accustomed to working from home 100% of the time, but within the same time zone. And then there's another group that those of us that work globally were already dealing with, which is essentially we are working remote but in many different time zones. And this is where we get into that complexity of scheduling some of our conference calls with people that are in India, in China, or in Japan, where we are at night, they are early morning, or some other type of combination. I'm sure you've been here as well, Charlie.

Yeah, and Europe as well. So yeah, it's difficult sometimes to coordinate to have meetings or calls at definitely challenging times. So, yeah.

And then level E, as far as complexity is concerned, are the field workers or people that already consider themselves nomads. So these nomads, they're essentially not tied to an office, and in many situations, not even tied to a specific time zone or a specific place of work. So remote, you might think, I'm not in the office, but I'm at my home office, and at my home office I've got my setup, it's my comfort zone, I'm doing work in the same place. But at this level with the nomads and the field workers, the place of work is essentially changing. And the time zone might be changing. We see this in certain industries like the oil industry. So if you're in one rig today and then in another rig the next, when you find yourself in this type of an environment, what they tell you, you're going to be working remote. I guess it's just business as usual.

Yeah, and not only the people that are used to work like that in all industry, but also I was thinking more about the younger generations that they're native to the technology and they basically work wherever they have a place where they can sit down or just type something quick and respond to a message. So yes, it's definitely a different mindset.

So definitely the place where we were as far as complexity when this whole thing started and the level of skills that we had already developed played a significant role in our comfort level once this thing started to roll out.

Yeah.

So the place where we were was definitely a baseline for how comfortable we felt in this new environment. So the complexity of somebody that is always in the office, that is accustomed to having an assistant close by just maybe a shout away and somebody that is already accustomed to working in a remote office, this was a very, very different experience. The previous experience did mark the level of comfort or uncomfort that we're all feeling.

And you can put an example of a race, somebody might had a 50 meter headstart against somebody that wasn't necessarily in this environment, initially. So yeah, it's like running a race where everybody starts at a different spot.

Yeah, absolutely. And many people say that this is forcing us into a five year jump ahead as far as the tools and as far as the level of remote work, which is what we're going to talk about because this is just baseline of complexity. But let's jump into that levels of remote work. And the levels of remote work versus the complexity is digging into the depth of the work that we're doing. So we talked about the first level, which is just focused essentially on the tools that we need to substitute the location. So we were working in an office, now we're working from home. We're trying to build our home office. We're trying to get used to these tools, right?

Yeah, and again, on that example of Friday, the 13th. We just took our laptop home and opened it on Monday and just started typing, and working and with the idea that it might be temporary, so we didn't pay a lot of attention to exactly we're placing things or arranging stuff. So yeah, it was just temporary measure, even though it wasn't. So, yeah.

Yeah, and I think that's what you mentioned, temporary, perhaps is at the core of what this level of work means, right? Because in the back of our minds, we're thinking, okay, I'm just doing this, while this contingency last. I'm eventually going to go back into the office and everything's going to be back to my normal or what I was used to normal. But something very important about this level one, is the fact that it's focused on the individual work. So we're thinking about ourselves, we're thinking about how we're doing work. And then you've got the second level, we're essentially now we are at a point of coordination. So we've got communication where we're figuring out a way to delegate tasks remotely, to follow up on the tasks, and essentially to supervise the tasks of others. So that would be the second level, just the remote coordination.

Yeah, but that's where the thinking starts changing because you might still have the expectation of having the same office hours, nine to five or nine to seven, but the reality starts getting into you and you realize that it's not necessarily like that. So you start supervising, but you also start putting accountability into people based on tasks and batch work.

Yeah, I think batches is an important component. And this was happening at first, essentially trying to mimic the same work hours, right? I mean we were still measuring performance in a sense with the availability of people within a certain amount of hours. There's was this expectation that you're going to be available at 8:00 AM or whatever time you're usually available at. And then you're going to be available until 5:00 PM or whatever time you're usually ending your workday.

And not only as a supervisor or as a leader, but also on the other side, the employees also have that same mindset that they try to make themselves visible to the boss just to make sure that the boss saw that they were there or that they were sitting at the desk from nine to five. And can I go? Is it okay if I disconnect for a while? So yeah, all this mimicking of the office hours was-

Office behaviors.

Office behaviors, exactly.

Hey teacher, can I go to the bathroom?

Yeah.

Yeah, so I think that pretty much covered the first week for most of us, we were essentially supervising, sending out tasks, receiving tasks, working on our tasks in batch, maybe sometimes communicating unnecessarily just to feel that we were all available and not that isolated. And then we began to figure out ways to step into the third level of work, which is essentially the real time collaboration, right? We started rediscovering some of these tools that allow us to work on the same document online at the same time. This is some of what Office 365 brings to the table or Google Docs can bring to the table as the basic tools, right? Because we've also discovered other tools like Mural.co. I don't know.

... many others where we are now collaborating in real time.

Yeah, and again, it's a step but also a shift in the mindset because now the meetings or the calls or the Zoom calls where everybody its giving their input real time, and you can come out of that meeting with a real document or with a real strategy. And so you don't have to go back and forth with emails or things like that. You just work through it and get everybody going on the same page.

Yeah, it's now a collaboration meeting. It's not a follow-up on the tasks and walk out with your to do list. It's actually doing things while we are all connected, logged into the same document. The information is in the cloud. It's not batch anymore. I mean that's part of the characteristics. So at this level three then, we are starting to step away from just the basic supervision, stepping into collaboration, and stepping into management.

And one of the key things at this point is that you have to let people start building their judgment. Because even though you come out of that meeting with some points or there are still tests that they will have to do, but you have to trust on their judgments. So that's another shift on the management focus as well.

Yeah, it's no longer just as task-driven, it becomes a bit more broad as far as the responsibilities that we are delegating. So at this point, really when we start implementing judgment, we are essentially now starting to delegate objectives and not tasks. So with an objective in mind, we are trusting that somebody is going to be able to implement their own judgment to be able to meet that objective and what their role is within a collaborative team.

Exactly, exactly. And again, it's a mind shift because people that were used to being supervised, so now they have plenty of time to go and develop their work or their task and at different times maybe, actually what they were used to. Because now they have a deadline, but they have to create the solution by themselves sometimes.

Yeah, and at the time that they see fit, right?

Right.

As long as deadlines are met and the objectives are met.

Exactly.

Yeah, so then we step into this next level, which might be less intuitive than the other ones. And I have seen a lot of people at this point work at level three. There seems to be an easier transition at level three, now we're getting stuck at this level four, which is building an organization virtually, working on shaping the culture virtually. And what this means is that at some point, we're being forced into it, but at some point we will be able to do many things that are related to human interaction or human development more comfortably through the virtual tools.

And this means certain things that are somewhat of a taboo at this point, which is I'm not going to hire somebody that I have not met face to face. I'm not going to accept a job offer if I have not stepped into the office and kind of felt the desk and talk to people face to face. But in certain situations it is happening, people are getting hired, people are getting onboarded virtually, because certain parts of the economy that are essential are having to move forward. So I think that this is one of the most complicated emotionally to be able to deal with. But I think we will eventually get there.

And it presents a very difficult challenge for the company or the HR departments or just the structure just to make people feel part of the organization while even not seeing them previously. So it takes a lot of coaching, a lot of development of expressing through different tools what the culture means or what the organization. It also implicates a lot of really being transparent and communicating well on the tasks, of responsibilities, the objectives, and what is expected of the people.

And beyond that, at this level we are working with purpose, we're working with vision, and it's not just about the management. This is exactly where at level four, our focus is leadership, which is it's harder than just the management. So if we walk back and we look at the four levels that we have discussed. We've got level one which is essentially focused on the individual. We've got level two that is focused on supervision. So we're sending out tasks and just monitoring the tasks. You've got level three, where now there's effective management happening remotely. And then level four is now leadership and building these broader connections that are centered on values, on purpose, and on a vision, and a mission. And this is what you do when you onboard someone. This is what you do when you connect. And this is probably the hardest to achieve, the level four,

And if you take a look at what you said, those steps were very clear and indicated, and you can call it a career path. But now you had cramped five years or seven years of a career path in through a couple of weeks or months. So the challenge is just to be able to be very agile, very speed-driven to get the wrong way. Before you were on the car doing 60 now suddenly, you're on 15 doing 300 miles per hour just to take off.

And off roading because there's no path.

Exactly.

But that's where-

And so once we achieve-

Yeah, but-

Yes, go ahead, Charlie.

... leadership becomes very important because you have to transmit your purpose and your vision and the realization that you have to let people know where you want to take them, even though the path is not clear.

Yeah, exactly. And it's dealing with this ambiguity and not just dealing with it, but getting to a point where everybody is comfortable with it. And it's not creating tensions. So after we go through these levels, level five is what we have coined the flip. And we've had this discussion before we started recording. And if we consider going through this path of the four levels, we essentially discussing two worlds, the office world where we have been living for most of our lives. And then this new world of the virtual world where we are now living. And I'm going to just kind of jump forward into this, but when we get into the flip that is where the virtual, the remote becomes the norm and the office is the one that starts feeling uncomfortable.

Jose Ruiz:

So if we look at this as some curves over time, if we start getting more comfortable with the remote work and we start feeling more uncomfortable with the office work. And there's already some people that are at this point. People who have been working remote, field people. You try to bring them back into the office, you try to get them into a desk and it's just impossible. Emotionally, it's very difficult to deal with. And this is something that is going to be a topic for another conversation. Because at the end of the day, after weeks of working remotely, after weeks of adapting to this new normal, we're going to have to get used to the office again. So that's going to be a challenge.

Yeah, and companies will start really... or leaders will need to start thinking about if this is necessary even. Because the mindset and the experiment that we just have gone through, it really will define the future. And maybe companies will decide that it's better to have better communication tools instead of having everybody in the office.

In the office.

But yeah, it'll be a challenge. But I think this experiment, and we talked previously in other conversations about this. This might be the biggest experiment in work. And I don't know if we skipped from revolution 3.0 to revolution 5.0, I don't know. But this is definitely a flip that will define the rules of work for the next couple of years.

Yeah, and it also might be highlighting some of the generational differences. And maybe some of the younger generations, millennials, and Z, they're just finding a comfort zone in this type of an environment. And it's just going to make it more difficult to be able to go back to what the X generation, which is us, and the boomers had defined as the office for decades, right?

Yeah, but there's a great chance if younger generations really understand this and be proactive, and maybe they can help people bridge the gap, then new leaders will emerge. And not necessarily based on their age, it's just the way of thinking, so yeah.

Yeah. So yeah, so definitely this will change and transform the way we do things. So it's going to be interesting to see how we can blend that old way of doing things with this newly discovered ways of doing things. Hey so, Charlie, it's been a lot of fun going through this. Let's see what this brave new world brings to us.

Yeah, and thanks again, Jose, for setting this up. I think we'll still have a lot of things to talk about. So this is a good start.

Yeah, thank you everyone. And until next time.