Hybrid work is the new baseline

“Argh, sorry! I touched your screen.”

I didn’t mean to leave fingerprints smeared on their computer monitor. I was just excited about spotting the bug in our code and I mashed my fingers on it like a toddler pointing at a butterfly through a window.

Fingerprints on computer screens annoy me, so for me to be the culprit is a sign of how fully immersed I was as we huddled around that workstation.

When we’re deeply engaged on a problem, working side by side with our teammates, there’s an energy that is so incredibly hard to replicate with remote colleagues that many leaders have decided it’s not worth trying.

But they’re wrong.

When COVID-19 triggered a wave of haphazard work-from-home arrangements, pundits declared it was the new future of work. Knowledge workers wouldn’t go back to offices. I’ve never believed that. We’re a social species and while many of us can thrive working from home full-time, it’s not for everyone. And it simply doesn’t work for countless roles.

Going back to the office was always going to happen.

I’ve been surprised by how soon and how aggressively companies and governments have rolled out return-to-office mandates. Unfortunately, too many executives have failed to disentangle run-of-the-mill productivity challenges with the inevitable productivity loss from our whole society dealing with the fear, trauma, and distraction of a global pandemic.

Here’s the problem with the typical return-to-office mandate: unless you can get your entire organization to truly return all day every day to the same physical location, you’re going to be working in a hybrid environment.

And if you don’t plan for effective hybrid work, you’re leading your team toward mediocrity.

I work in software. In a traditional office setting, you’d gather around a whiteboard to design a solution. As soon as you have one participant not physically present in the room, though, that style of collaboration falters. If virtual attendees can’t see the whiteboard, point at it, or draw on it, you have two classes of participants.

Physical kanban or scrum boards? Forget about it.

Good luck doing an effective dot-voting sticker exercise if half your group has dialled in.

You may not have the power to reshape how your organization manages its return to the office but there are a number of simple things you can do to increase your chances of success:

Set ground rules for hybrid meetings. You have to adapt how a meeting runs based on the room and the distribution of in-person and remote participants. Announce and enforce rules for conduct such as:

• one speaker at a time - no crosstalk in the room

• everyone joins the meeting from their device so remote attendees can see who’s speaking

• everyone uses the “raise hand” feature to queue up to speak

• no props or tools (e.g., whiteboards) that only in-person attendees can use

• remote attendees turn camera on when speaking

• remote participants are in appropriately quiet and private environments

• everyone mutes during breaks, including the in-person conference rooms

Be intentional and set clear expectations. If you want a high bandwidth collaboration session or have a sensitive topic to discuss, you can insist everyone attend in person. When a meeting is predominantly remote attendees, you might insist everyone connect individually and not have small groups in conference rooms. In a hybrid world, it’s important to make intentional compromises in the interest of serving a group’s best interest. That might mean someone working from home while sick might not be part of a collaboration session and that is OK. That’s what used to happen when someone was home sick.

Facilitate buffer time in meetings for casual conversation. One argument for return-to-office mandates is to restore the serendipitous hallway and lunchroom interactions that strengthen relational bonds. For hybrid teams, it is absolutely worthwhile to create space for comparable conversations to happen. This might require you to prompt people with questions or prime conversations with personal anecdotes. It means not falling into the trap of making your video calls too transactional. Yes, there is important work to do, but spending some time on relationship building is worth it in the long run, even if it takes a few extra minutes to get to the “real agenda” of a meeting.

Ask a colleague to stay on a call after the agenda concludes. This one can be dicey if it risks some team members feeling excluded, so be mindful before doing this, but asking someone to hang behind for a question is a great replacement for post-meeting hallway conversations. (A text or DM is a less conspicuous option to make the request.)

Call someone after the meeting ends. If a meeting wraps a few minutes early, this is my preferred way of replacing hallway chats with people I already have good relationships with. I’ll call just to debrief, express exacerbation, or hear the other person’s reaction to the meeting outcome.

Do working sessions with screens shared and cameras off. Not everything has to be a video call with full-frame faces staring at each other. A great way to get collaborative work done in a hybrid world is to use remote screen sharing and a voice-only call. In fact, some days this mode of work is going to be superior to an in-person session and requires no commute.

Experiment. Don’t stop with my list of ideas. Come up with your own, read what other folks like Marissa Goldberg are trying, and talk with your coworkers about what works for them.

Share. What have you tried that has worked? What’s failed spectacularly? Come find me on LinkedIn and leave a comment about what is or isn’t working for your team.

- Derek