Are we asking the right questions?

To be honest, I have been on a bit of a rant lately. Some days I feel like I am standing screaming into the void and there is no one there listening. I know that is not true because my colleagues who are truly in the agile space are screaming along with me and so are my colleagues who have been working with distributed teams and remote workforces long before the pandemic. But nonetheless, here we are screaming to an audience that seems to be locked away behind the plexiglass barriers that have erupted all over the world with earplugs unable to hear and see what is right in front of them. Or is it? And is that the problem? For all the articles and proclamations of a changed world, are the majority of companies and its leaders just waiting to get back to their comfortable version of normal pretending that systemic racism doesn’t exist, pretending that their companies are flexible, inclusive, and diverse, pretending that the remote work of the pandemic was just a short term emergency fix and not a changing dynamic.

Well here we are. And at the same time I am screaming into the void, I also keep thinking about how memories for those in places of privilege are so short. I keep thinking about how easy it is to post memes and angry protestations and then just drift back to comfortable. I myself have been guilty of oversimplifying the remote work situation during the pandemic. I have had to stop myself from generalizing and assuming that it is as simple as I have always made it to be because I have made the effort to create inclusive, collaborative, distributed teams. I have had to check my own privilege because I live in a flat on my own with all of the resources I could possibly need and an office that can be closed off from the rest of the space. I don’t have children or others sharing the space all trying to juggle the time space continuum and bring some sense of calm to the chaos of children, pets, and spouses all being in the same small space day after day.

We are focusing on the wrong questions

But what has me writing this blog today is that I am frustrated and if I am honest a bit afraid of what I am seeing emerging from corporate entities who just a few months ago declared remote first as their stance. And in our Agility for All team meeting last week as I was explaining this frustration to the consulting team, I realized what the problem is. Remember I always ask “What is the problem we are trying to solve?” And that was the first actual problem. That question is not being asked. Everyone is focusing on should remote work continue or should it become the new normal. That is NOT the problem we should be trying to solve. The question that every organization should be asking is more along the lines of “how do we provide the maximum value to our customers?” The question of where and how teams work should be addressed by those who are providing the value. But instead the focus is on emptied buildings, past ways of working, and this sense that somehow there is more structure or control in a brick and mortar structure.

Do you need walls to create high performing teams?

This speaks to the general cultural failing of many organizations. If you need walls to create value, you have missed the mark by a long shot. If you need walls for teams to be productive, then you have also not created a culture of self-organization and high performing teams. And if you need walls to define success, you have created a hierarchical leadership structure that is more about egos than about a mission of accomplishing well-defined goals. And interestingly I am hearing so many protestations from organizations that not only excelled during the pandemic but increased profit margins by incredible amounts.

So if anyone is interested here are my insights into how we stop the train going in the wrong direction and focus on the problem we are trying to solve. We may even find that there is no problem at all to solve but rather we need to reconcile ourselves with new ways of working and new cultures of productivity. If we let go of “but that is how we have done it” or “the corporate handbook doesn’t allow for this” or “but how will we….” we may find that we can open ourselves to new, more effective ways of approaching the corporate structure and culture.

Stop asking if you should keep remote work

If you find yourselves spending inordinate amounts of time trying to figure out if your company will continue remote work, go back to the office, or offer hybrid solutions STOP. Just stop the conversation right now. Instead have a retrospective. Take a look at what went well in the last 15 months and what didn’t go quite as expected. Then take a look at the column of what went well and talk about why it went well. Was it due to policies or due to people? Likely it was due to people. So then if the people brought the changes for success, we need to focus on the people for what comes next.

THEN look at what didn’t go well and ask yourselves some intention questions and dig deep for answers.

• Why didn’t it go well?

• What was creating a block?

• What was standing in the way of success?

• What could have been done differently?

• Why wasn’t it done differently?

This exercise should be done at all levels of the organization. And as a note, if people find these conversations uncomfortable or don’t want to contribute with honest accountability you have already found one of your problems you need to solve. You do not have an organization with psychological safety and that will always prevent success and high performance.

Compare results across all levels

Once the exercise has been completed at all levels, do a comparison of what leadership felt went well vs an individual team or department. I recommend this be done over a few days because many will need to participate in more than one retrospective. AND if you have safety in your organization then you should be able to collect these results and post them where the entire organization can see how their colleagues feel things have gone.

The inclination after the retrospectives will be to go back to the question of “so should we continue remote work?” and please don’t regress. The next step should be to examine what went well and determine how you build on that and continue to grow in those positive directions. Create actions that will extend these successes. For example, if the success happened just within a team, is it something that could be replicated or encouraged throughout the organization. Another example would be if the teams felt supported by human resources in getting what they needed to work in a different location, how does that support continue or get bolstered now?

And for the things that didn’t go well, use your retrospective feedback of what you could have done differently to make an experimental backlog of what you can start to change to prevent that from happening again. Start making incremental changes toward success.

Now there is going to be a lot to sift through after 15 months of a world turned upside down for many so don’t try to solve all of the issues at once. And some of them just won’t be solved or need to be solved. At the end of the day keep asking the right question. How do we continue to bring value to our customers? And remember, if you are the leadership team your customers are not only the people who buy your products and services, but your customers are your employees too.

And if you find yourself going back to the question of should we continue remote work, think of it this way instead. Ask yourselves, how can we make it safe and productive for everyone to work from where they want. Don’t call it remote work or work from home or return to the office. Build a culture of work from anywhere. What that looks like may be different depending on the team or department, but at the end of the day they are best positioned to self-organize and determine what makes sense for their contribution to the value you are bringing to your customers. And remember that while the pandemic forced a solution upon us, what happens going forward is within your control to guide and shape with the end goal to create safe spaces for high performing teams who can focus on delivery value.

Author’s note: This suggested process depends on the organization as a whole understanding what brings value to the customer. If there is not a deep understanding of the why then you are going to have additional work to do to get everyone to a baseline.

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About the Author:

INDRA A. BOOKS

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