Distributed Work / Remote Work / Work as Computational Experiences

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Key takeaways:

• Remote work isn’t the same as distributed work.
• Placemaking forms the grounds for work-making. 
• Ch-ch-change is always an emotional journey.
• Collaboration is better than just cooperation.
• Future’s so bright. Gotta wear XR/AR/VR shades?

The idea of a CXO isn’t tenable when everyone owns the experience. And because everyone “owns” or uses technology in some shape or form, it’s unclear who is accountable versus who is in charge.

Erika Hall’s made me sufficiently skeptical of surveys but nonetheless with what I’ve gathered from the 2020 CX Report Survey so far this year has been helpful when reading the free-response entries. They’re incredible!

In How To Speak Machine, I lay the foundations for understanding how computer science works in practice today. And when armed with that computational mindset, then the products that you make will become fundamentally different.

“Distributed reality is here. #dr is the new #vr.”

—Wendy Johansson / GVP Publicis Sapient

It’s easy to confuse remote work with distributed work. The former means working remotely; the latter means getting work done in a distributed fashion. You can be working alone, remotely; but need to work in a group to be distributed.

The Notion of “Place” Has Changed

Automattic CEO and WordPress pioneer Matt Mullenweg in “Coronavirus and the Remote Experiment No One Asked For”: “If you can minimize the number of real-time meetings, do so. Embrace asynchronous communications.”

Wendy Johansson: “Without psychological safety, no matter what conditions and tools are set for working together, not a lot will get done. Consider the people first.”

These three modes are now blended because of the way that smartphones, AR/VR, IoT, and other connected paradigms are blurring how an experience hits your mind, body, and tribe. Or, “Alone together,” as Sherry Turtle says.

Change is something that we all talk about as “exciting” but the way it can actually feel will differ — because it usually starts out somewhere in between “wow” and “oh no!” And sometimes it can turn out really great. There are 5 steps for managing organizational change that I’ve found useful over here.

Mind The Emotions

The way we handle grief is not dissimilar to how we manage through changes that happen in our environment. Taking a model from Kübler-Ross and Jobcentre Plus results in a figure where you can point to how you feel.

Cooperation is about working with another party at arm’s length, whereas collaboration is about having arms hugged around each other.” 

howtospeakmachine.com

The tools we use are levers for leaders and followers to shape, preserve, or break culture. There is a deep connection between tools and culture, so be sure that they both align with your organization’s values.

Jesse Shore et al in “Facts and Figuring: An Experimental Investigation of Network Structure and Performance in Information and Solution Spaces” shared research on how dense clustering can be superior to network clustering.

Interpreting Jesse Shore et al in “Facts and Figuring: An Experimental Investigation of Network Structure and Performance in Information and Solution Spaces” in the context of how trust forms and matters within networks.

Ian Wharton: “When you remove serendipity, you remove the opportunity for by-chance encounters.” Digital presence lets you drop into many different tribes with low friction, but it’s still a concerted effort to do so.

A wall that prevents you from learning isn’t good; but a wall to protect you from too many distractions is not a bad thing when you absolutely need to focus to get work done. You are the one who controls your wall’s permeability.

“We found that 38% of remote workers and 15% of remote managers received no training on how to work remotely.”

—State of Remote Work Report 2019

Wendy Johansson advocates for “the efficiency triad” to be used in advancing distributed collaboration. “Each bit of effort to remain at the intersection of the efficiency triad enables your organization’s machinery to gain momentum.”

“Emotions are discrete, automatic responses to universally shared, culture-specific and individual-specific events. …These affective responses are preprogrammed and involuntary, but are also shaped by life experiences.” —Ekman (2011)

Benedikt Lehnert at Microsoft has open-sourced his guide entitled, “OMG I’m working remotely. Now what?” which is eminently useful for folks who are looking for a soup to nuts guide. Zapier has the best-in-class guide on the topic.

Tools For Time

Time is like a place that needs different rooms where you do different things. It needs a door and window curtains for you to function well in your house of time. Check out Raanan Bar-Cohen’s: “Make time for light stuff.”

Proponents of working in a distributed fashion are understandably proud of their way of life. If you’ve ever seen the impact on a young parent and their ability to spend more time with their children, then you get it in a heartbeat. 

In the 2016 Design in Tech Report, VR was approaching its 50th birthday: “Almost 25 years ago, Ivan Sutherland developed, with support from ARPA, the first surprisingly advanced VR system.” —Nicholas Negroponte (1993)

Professor Hiroshi Ishii is the Douglas Engelbart of our times. While at NTT, Ishii long foresaw an era when realtime video communication combined with the ability to annotate and collaborate would someday become a reality.

The Publicis Sapient approach to Digital Business Transformation integrates operational leadership with customer leadership to drive high efficiencies and customer happiness via strategic application of technology and design.

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