BenP (00:01.445)
Hi everybody and welcome to the Tech World Human Skills Podcast. Now today, we're talking about remote working and how you get the best out of it. COVID changed how the world thought about remote working and now there's some great bits about remote work, but also some really tough things. So we're gonna talk about this today with someone who is an expert in the subject. She...
authored the Work Together Anywhere handbook is a TEDx speaker and runs the company Collaboration Superpowers so please welcome to the podcast Lizette Sutherland.
Lisette (00:43.925)
Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here.
BenP (00:46.981)
It is an absolute pleasure to have you with us. So thank you so much for taking the time to be with us. I wonder for all our lovely listeners out there, could you introduce yourself and let everybody know a little bit about yourself?
Lisette (01:01.013)
Sure. Well, so I'll start with I'm almost 50 at the time of this podcast and I'm living in the Netherlands. You'll hear though that I do not have a Dutch accent. I am an American living in the Netherlands, have both passports. I got involved with online working and remote work about 20 years ago and I was helping to build intranets or actually at the time we called them private social networks for companies who wanted to do things internally but not share all of the stuff with the outside world. So I started building private social networks.
And then I got really interested in, well, how do you actually work remote? So I started interviewing people and companies, how they were doing that. And from that, there was a book, like you mentioned, that was created, a podcast with all the interviews that were started. And then we also developed a workshop that goes through, it's a live synchronous online workshop that helps people think through all the things that they need for that. So that's generally in a nutshell, like, you know, very nutshell, like how things came to be.
BenP (01:56.965)
how things came to be. And so it's lovely to have you with us and to talk about this topic that I think for people in the tech world, I think is a really important and interesting topic. And for my perspective, the reason for that is a lot of tech companies have been quite progressive maybe over the years in terms of embracing remote working. Then of course, there was this massive pandemic that just shook
of the world. And now things have really changed. And again, the tech world being still quite progressive, but still being humans, I think it's really important to think about how we get the best out of it and when it works well and when it doesn't work. So I wonder if we could sort of start off from your perspective, you know, what's the recent history of remote working? You know, how has it gone and what state are we in now?
Lisette (02:53.621)
I mean, if we go back, I always start my presentations by doing a tour of offices over time. And I always started in the seventies where open office plans in the seventies were really popular, sort of the standard. And you could even move the furniture around because it was modular. And then we get to the eighties and cubicles start to make an appearance, right? We start to get the, and you know, if you were really lucky, you had high walls in your cubicles. So you have some semblance of privacy.
BenP (03:19.941)
Ha ha ha ha.
Lisette (03:23.029)
Right. And so we get that through the nineties and then in the 2000s, something interesting starts to happen, which is open office plans, make a comeback. And we start to see the rise of social media. Live journalists started in 2000, MySpace and Friendster in 2003, Facebook in 2004. And we start to see people sort of socialize and organizing themselves online. Then, of course, comes the cloud -based project management software, the base camps, the Zoho's, the Trello's.
And all of that starts to make a change in sort of how we interact with each other. And then we get to the 2010s. And that's when you start to see a real split. You start to see like Apple Park and, you know, and people's offices becoming more beautiful and full of perks to try to attract the younger generations to come and work for these hip and cool technology companies, right? And you start to see the rise of digital nomadism, which at the time was just considered like a fringe fad.
you know, just like kids that are in their campers traveling the world, you know, and they were sort of on the edge of what was possible. But, you know, as the decade progressed, you started to see like digital or co -living spaces pop up and really people really embracing this culture. So remote work has always been around. I mean, it's been around for decades and decades now. And in the beginning, when we started collaboration superpowers, like 15, almost 20 years ago, we were solely focused on distributed agile teams.
because those were the people, or Agile teams really, because those were the people working remotely because they had to, not because they wanted to. It was just the nature of the beast in software that you cannot find all the people you need in the same city, or even sometimes near the same office within driving distance of the same office. So it just became a necessity. And the pandemic just pushed it all forward five, 10 years. We've all seen this coming, but the pandemic made it possible so that everybody had to try it. And it turns out,
You know, all of us were in the pool already like, hey, over here, the water's pretty nice. I mean, this is a great way to work. Don't you guys want to try it? It's pretty nice in here. And all of a sudden everybody jumped in the pool and like, you know, half of everybody's like, this is pretty nice. I could live like this. So that's sort of, that's sort of where we are now. And, you know, bosses are bringing people back to the office. I would say, you know, part of it is that's the way work has always been done. But part of it is because they never plan to go remote to begin with.
BenP (05:23.653)
You
BenP (05:31.813)
Yeah.
Lisette (05:49.397)
And during the pandemic, nobody knew how long it was gonna last. And so I think we just didn't use our time to put all the systems and processes in place so that it would work well, because it's really a culture overhaul and nobody was prepared for it. So I think the people that didn't do it well are the ones that are really mandating people back to the office.
BenP (06:11.845)
And so where are we now? I mean, as I just think anecdotally about the people I see and the jobs that they've got, it seems I've definitely know some folks that are fully remote. I know some people that are digital nomads. I know some people that I'd say that are hybrid, where they've sort of got one or two days a week that they've got to be back in the office and maybe two or three days a week where they can be wherever they want.
What's the sort of situation now? What's it looking like post -COVID?
Lisette (06:46.645)
it's pretty messy and everybody's trying everything you know everybody's trying to get back to add the productivity that they think that they should have and sort of where we are now i would say is fifty if you look at all the surveys fifty percent of people that respond wanna be hybrid they want to be back at the office between one and three days a week just sort of depending on where you are in the world thirty percent of everybody wants to be fully remote and twenty percent want to go back to in -person working so those are sort of the statistics of the number so
BenP (07:13.957)
So that was 50 hybrid, 30 fully remote, 20 in person all the time.
Lisette (07:18.901)
in person. Yeah. So, you know, with those kind of numbers that sort of flipped, it sort of flipped the script in terms of that. It's like the people who want things to go back to the way things were are not going to win. They're in a huge minority. And you have to sort of just say like, you know, that book, Who Moved My Cheese, like the way we worked is changed. The cheese has moved. We need to adapt.
to this. I mean, it was going to move in this direction anyway, but before the pandemic, we had another few years to think about it. Now it's like, okay, now it's here.
BenP (07:50.277)
Yeah, yeah. And interestingly, I would definitely put myself in that 50 % box. I like to do some remote work and I love the freedom that that gives me. But if I just do that 100%, I think I go slightly, well not even slightly, I'd go fully insane. It would be a bit of a, so I'm definitely in that hybrid. I like a bit of space to work from home, but I also like to see real humans and build those. So I'd put myself fully in that category.
Lisette (08:16.821)
Yeah, totally. And also I think what everybody wants is the freedom to decide what works best for them. That's what everybody wants. So it's like we're adults, you know, we can, we are experts of our own productivity. We know what we need. We know, you know, we should know what the goals are. We should be able to decide as adults how, how to work, but it does require proactive, deliberate collaboration. And that's where things kind of that, that's where things are going wrong, but everybody wants the freedom.
BenP (08:22.309)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BenP (08:29.733)
Yeah. Yeah.
BenP (08:41.125)
Yeah.
Yeah, okay. So you start to segue then. So what are the good things at the moment about the kind of the situation that we're in today, and where we are today? What are the really good things about the way things are set up at the moment?
Lisette (08:59.221)
Well, I think that people are finally experiencing the freedom that we've got. But, you know, there's a focus on work -life balance. There's a focus on your work life not being the center focus of your life. I think that's a healthy transition from where we were before. So people just working, looking into more work -life pleasure overall. I think that's a, I think that's generally the outcome. But, you know, we're also starting to now really explore new ways of working. It's not just remote.
BenP (09:14.693)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lisette (09:29.109)
There are all kinds of things beyond remote. There are virtual reality worlds. There are 3D virtual offices happening. There's telepresence, right? There's holograms. All of these technologies, when they get good enough and when they get inexpensive enough, are really going to change just how we operate with each other. So, I mean, I feel like we're at the basic level of like...
Can we work remotely? Because in a few years, all this AI and holograms, all this other technology is coming. We should get the basics right soon because this other stuff's going to change everything.
BenP (10:01.605)
Yeah, yeah, well, I'm going to put a pin in. Let's get the basics right. I'm going to build the tension for the listeners out there. Let's just paint a bit of a picture of what are some of the things that are going wrong at the moment. So it's great that we've got freedom. It's great that we can perhaps get a better work -life balance if that's how it's working out for us. What are the challenges we find with the situation we're in at the moment?
Lisette (10:08.853)
You
Lisette (10:27.637)
Well, the specific ones that get mentioned and I sort of have narrowed them down to the top three, because there's a lot. I have a list, like a huge like Wiki list of all the things people are challenged with everything from just too many meetings to information overload to, you know, like not feeling a sense of team. But the three things that leaders are struggling with is they're saying that productivity is down, that people are disappearing and that the company culture is suffering. Like that we
BenP (10:35.045)
You
BenP (10:53.413)
Okay, so sorry, productivity is down. What was the other one? Yeah, as in resigning and going to other companies.
Lisette (10:56.917)
People are disappearing.
Well, no, they're just lost in the ether. You know, before at the office, we saw everybody every day. Now with remote, like you can kind of hide in the shadows if you want to. You know, you don't have to be so present. So they feel like, you know, the people are disappearing literally just we don't know where they are, what they're doing kind of things. And then company culture is suffering. That whole sense of belonging and feeling like a team together.
BenP (11:10.661)
Yeah.
BenP (11:22.437)
Okay.
Yeah.
Lisette (11:26.581)
and belonging to a company culture, you know, like that sense of belonging, that is definitely diminished.
BenP (11:33.815)
And so I guess all of those are looking from a leader's perspective and going, right, I am now leading this group of people, whether I run the company or I run a team or whatever. What about from the individuals as well? What's going wrong or what are the main challenges from people that are working in those environments at the moment?
Lisette (11:53.717)
Well, one, there's a tremendous amount of self -discipline needed when you craft your own productivity and your own work day and your own environment. So there's another, you know, you really need to know what you need in order to get work done. And, you know, for me, I know personally, I have to be productive consistently over time. Otherwise I don't earn enough money, right? So, you know, I have a real drive, but for...
BenP (12:18.789)
You
Lisette (12:20.213)
But if you're just working for a paycheck, you still have to maintain your productivity consistently over time. And it's easy to do it. It's like dieting, right? The first week's easy. It's like the fourth, fifth week where it starts to really be a chore. And so with remote, you have to have a self -discipline. And then there's the loneliness that people have and the boredom of just being in the same workspace every day. I mean, that's a real challenge for people. That's a real change, because we used to get that from the office environment.
BenP (12:27.717)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
BenP (12:49.413)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, as just as you're saying that we I did a podcast, I did an episode or it was a good few ago now with Scott Hanselman. And I think you've been on Scott's podcast as well. And he talked about the third place, this idea that you used to have homework.
Lisette (12:50.645)
You know, you come home tired because you were social doubt.
BenP (13:07.813)
and a third place, you know, and that might be a social club, a sports club, a church, you know, whatever it might be, a third place that you go to. And all of that has then just been condensed into there is now just one place where everything happens from, and that actually causes a real challenge for people in terms of boredom, loneliness, all of that kind of stuff.
Lisette (13:27.029)
Well, yeah, but it goes also back to the self -discipline that also touches on the self -responsibility for making sure that we get what we need. We were talking earlier and I mentioned my neighbor who was really struggling with remote work. I see him on my morning walks. He goes for a walk with his dog and I'm usually out there too. And he was telling me like, I'm really struggling with remote working, like sitting at home all the time. You know, it's rough. And I was thinking, well, you're not locked in your house. Like there are many places to go.
There's hotel lobbies, there's coffee shops, there's co -working spaces. There's all kinds of facilities now since the pandemic that have been set up where you can go and work. And it's not like maybe you would go for every day or for video calls, but you can take some tasks to another place. You know, like every, I used to go to a coffee shop on Monday mornings before the pandemic and do my finances. Like I hate doing my finances, but.
doing it at the coffee company was really nice. Like I got my favorite coffee, I sat in my favorite chair, you know, like I made it into something. And then, you know, then I went home and focused and did my video calls. And so I just keep thinking like it is his, my neighbor's responsibility to get himself out of the house. His boss isn't going to do them for him and nor should he.
BenP (14:36.037)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean that's a great segue into maybe Should we get into the meat of the potatoes of the podcast? I guess we've understood the situation and what people are thinking like and what bosses are thinking and what people are thinking so
What can we do about it? How can we make sure that we really thrive whilst we're able to work from home or work remotely? What would be the key things you'd share with us on how to get better at this?
Lisette (15:08.245)
Well, I'd say one, start by knowing what you need to be productive. Like think about what does your ideal day look like? Like if you could really, you know, your ideal work day, I think that's different than your ideal, you know, personal day. Your ideal work day. What does your ideal work day look like? And then really map it out and then map out like what is it that you need? Are you a phone person? Like how do you like to communicate with people and just, you know, and what do people need to know about working with you? Like I'm a really slow writer. That's good to know. And
BenP (15:20.197)
Yeah, right, okay.
Lisette (15:36.277)
I hate talking on the phone, but sign me up for video calls any day of the week, right? And so those are kind of good things to know. So if you're working with me, so just start out with creating a personal user manual for yourself that you can share with other people that just lets them know what you need and what it's like to collaborate with you. And then from there, I would say, get together as a team and talk about what's normal behavior for your team. Create a team agreement for how to work together because especially when you're hybrid, people are everywhere.
And you need to have some standards. And starting with a team agreement helps to align on what those standards and agree as a team together on how we want to behave as a team. Right? And those are going to change over time. But one of the things that I recognize in going through all of the interviews and then I interviewed
an astronaut a year ago and he said, because I wanted to talk about remote work from space. Like they've been dealing with remote work for ages. You know, like what does NASA teach their astronauts about this, right? And he said, you know, there's a lot to it, but if you put it really simply, it's that astronauts train to have the right information at the right place at the right time. So information is everywhere, but they train on
BenP (16:32.677)
Right. Yeah.
Lisette (16:55.733)
how to access it. So what I mean by information is everywhere. So I can say, for instance, like when they're talking to Houston, they actually, he said, have all the lines open and everybody's listening all the time. Sounds like chaos, but I'm sure they train for how to do stuff like that. If you want to get somebody's attention, there's certain protocol that you use to get that person's or department's or whatever it is attention amongst all that noise. And they train for both how to get that attention and how to listen for that. Same is true for Slack channel.
I mean, you could easily make the analogy with a Slack or Microsoft Teams channel. Well, there's all the channels, it's all open, but you have to like pick and choose what you're paying attention to. So that with team agreements, you start to get to that. You start to get to like, what are our norms for working hours? Do we have any, are there any security issues we need to think about? Like, do we need VPNs if you're working from anywhere else? Or how do we name our files? Like what are the expected response times?
All of that stuff can be sort of normalized. And then you've got all the, it leaves the basic stuff out of the way. So you can really get into the meat of collaborating. But I would say starting with that gives a good place to start. So personal user manuals, team agreements. And then from there, it starts to get a little bit more sophisticated, but I'll stop and take a breath. Let you, let you.
BenP (18:16.229)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So personal agreements and then team agreements. So personal agreements is thinking about how you like to work and actually writing that down and thinking I'm going to dedicate a bit of time to thinking about this, understanding myself, being self -aware. Because if I understand that, then we can use that as a great foundation. Whereas if you're not self -aware, then you just start to get the feeling of this isn't working, but maybe you can't start to put your finger on why it is.
Lisette (18:45.173)
Totally. I mean, one of the things I used to have this when I was working in cubicles in the 90s and the 2000s, I was having this allergic reaction to the whole situation, but I couldn't figure out what was going on. I mean, it was a good job. I liked the people that I worked with. I liked the work. And it turns out I took a motive, one of the Reese motivation profiles. And it turns out that one of my primary motivators is beauty. Like it's really important that I have colors and plants and pretty things around me. And I was really like having a weird reaction to the
boring, dull, gray cubicle walls that had no soul. Like I was finding it difficult to work in that environment. I didn't understand because it's not rational. You know, it's like, you know, it's just a desk and a chair. You should be able to work from anywhere. But like I had a hard time with that. So knowing that about myself helps. Like if I have a cubicle, I'll decorate it. I'll bring in my favorite things to make sure that that's what I need. But knowing that is important.
BenP (19:17.285)
Right.
BenP (19:37.605)
Yeah and then you then start to scale that out and go right now as a team this is how we are going to work as a team. What about and this was the bit that I found probably a bit harder I think with my direct team that was easier.
The challenge when I was in the big corporate world was this highly matrixed environment where I had all of these different departments that I needed to interact with. And then there were customers and partners, you know, people that were third parties that I needed. So it wasn't as simple as well, what does what do I like and what do the five or six people that I work with all the time like there was this massive sprawl.
Lisette (20:24.053)
Totally.
BenP (20:24.741)
What about that? How does that work from, I guess, a user man in a team agreements perspective?
Lisette (20:30.069)
Indeed, because again, we're talking about like, how do we get the right information at the right place at the right time? And when you've got this immense sprawl, how do you do it? And so that's where technology comes in. I mean, using project management tools, whatever you can do to visualize the work. And so whatever tool that helps you understand what are people working on and how is it going at a glance. So you want to be able to like look at a dashboard and see what people are working on, what are the stages and how is it going.
BenP (20:37.509)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lisette (20:58.485)
And so for that, depending on the organization, you need a number of things. One, you need really good tools for that so that you can visualize the work. You've got, you know, Trello, I mean, there's hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of project management tools, Jira, Microsoft specializing in this stuff, right? So you want to visualize the work. You want to have one source of truth where everything exists as much as possible. So at the team and the company level, and then you want to be doing sort of these pulse surveys.
regularly to understand how people are doing. So those are sort of, you know, there's one tools, there's the scorecard and one source of truth, and then the surveys to understand how people are feeling. Because there, I talked to a company the other day that said that they had two main metrics. One is revenue, right? We've got to make money. We're a company. That's what we're here for. And the other is happiness. And if they make a lot of revenue, but the people are unhappy in any particular quarter, it's not a successful quarter.
BenP (21:54.821)
Okay.
Lisette (21:55.061)
They have to both be happy. So even if people are happy and they're not making revenue, that's also not a successful quarter. So when we start to scale out, we have to visualize it. And that's where tools and technologies come to the rescue, especially hybrid. There's no other way. You don't have a whiteboard. You don't have an Obeya room where everything ahead of control, you have tools.
BenP (22:01.989)
Yeah.
BenP (22:19.237)
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we've got this kind of personal agreement. So we know ourselves, we've got some team agreements with those people that we work most closely with. Then we're trying to use tools, single source of truth, that kind of stuff to help us with perhaps the broader sprawl as it were. What else? What are the tips?
Lisette (22:41.109)
So, I mean, this is going to be no surprise to any software team that's doing it, but I really think that the regular feedback loops is where it's at, the continuous improvement. So whether it's retrospectives, whether it's one -on -ones, whether it's these pulse surveys, we need to sort of get into the flow of feedback. There's a good system called merit money from the management 3 .0 community, it's called merit money. And the way that it works is that
There's no money involved, it's just an alliteration. Everybody gets a hundred, let's say, points. So every month, everybody gets a hundred points. And the only rule is you can't keep them for yourself. You have to give them to others and you have to be transparent about who you give them to and why. And there are tools for this and stuff. So what this does is it, one, encourages people to work out loud and make their work more visible to others so that everybody understands what you're doing. And two, it starts to promote a culture of appreciation.
where you're giving points to people for work well done or something like, thanks for being there for me or thanks for staying late. You know, you start to give people sort of, and that creates a 360 degree peer to peer continuous feedback system that helps. So because it's like an appreciation, yeah, an appreciation loop in some ways.
BenP (24:00.165)
Yeah and you need to spend it so you've got your hundred whatever it is that you're gonna be spending and if you never spend them that's probably a bit of a reflection there isn't it? Like I never actually give these out to anybody, there's a lesser lesser for me.
Lisette (24:13.493)
Well, because it's trans indeed. Well, and also it's a, it's transparent. So people can see that you're not giving any points out to anybody. So you could, they, you can see the participation. It's like, I've never gotten points from Ben before. Like, I wonder what's going on. Like, maybe I should talk to Ben, you know, one person on our team, he never got points. He was a, it was a really good team member. And in fact, he asked about it. He said, like, I'm making, he was our video guy and he's like, I'm making really good videos. You know, what, what is it? Why am I not getting any points? And the team replied and said, well, everybody's doing a good job.
BenP (24:20.741)
Yeah.
BenP (24:27.941)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lisette (24:44.053)
So it's like, we just feel like making videos, that is your job. So you're doing a good job, but you don't ever come to any of the team coffees and you don't participate in any of the things. And there was nothing above doing a good job that he did. And everyone was like, yeah, we're all doing a good job. What do you want? So it's good feedback. The team wanted him to be there with them as a team. And that wasn't what he was interested in. So it was just good feedback.
BenP (25:02.085)
Really? Right, okay.
BenP (25:07.525)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a way to kind of get that conversation out in the open as opposed to just something that festers in the background.
Lisette (25:18.325)
Right, right. And it brings me to the last point that I have on that is, of course, there's a whole team building component, right? The culture and team building component of all of that. All right. I wasn't sure if you were going to get to that in a second, but I'll. I mean, companies are really complaining. We've lost that culture. We've lost that sense of belonging. And I think on the one hand, companies kind of showed us who they were during the pandemic when people lost their jobs. You know, it's like.
BenP (25:32.069)
No, no, no, go for it. No, go for it. Go for it.
Lisette (25:45.813)
What kind of a family was that? They're like, it's just business. It's just business. We'll lay people off. So now people are a little bit less loyal to the company knowing that it's just business. So I think there's a little bit of that culture got lost during the pandemic when we saw how businesses treated people. But I think part of it is also that when we're not visible with each other, you're out of sight, out of mind. It happens with old friends. It's like, I haven't seen Alexis and
BenP (26:03.653)
Yeah.
BenP (26:12.421)
Yeah.
Lisette (26:14.677)
and ages and I should catch up, but I never do. You know, everybody's busy kind of thing. So, you know, there's part of that. So one of the things with team building is one, we have to be deliberate about team building. And two, mostly team building comes from how we work together and not pizza parties and quiz nights and that kind of thing. It more comes from how we work together, not how we socialize together.
So that's why I spend so much time with teams talking about your team agreements and, you know, like, how do you like to work and how are you going to align on the goals? How do you create one source of truth? All of that will go much further than organizing pizza parties. They're still important, but team building doesn't depend on that. And in fact, there's a, along the lines in the merit money, there's moving motivators, which is a game that really helps understand why people come to work to begin with.
BenP (26:57.061)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lisette (27:11.861)
Like for some people, it's all about solving challenging problems. And for others like me, it's more about who I'm working with rather than what I'm working on. Like it doesn't matter to me what I'm doing as long as the people around me, I can trust wholeheartedly. And for others, it's just a job. So you'll motivate each of those people in a very different way, right? So that's why you focus on how to work together, not the socializing stuff.
BenP (27:36.869)
Yeah, okay. So it's back to those basics really. If you're doing those basics really well of understanding the people that are there, what motivates those individuals, what they care about, what they're passionate about, then again, that will then translate through when you're collaborating remotely. Almost doesn't make any difference whether you're remotely or whether you're face to face. They're just good things to do anyway.
Lisette (27:55.989)
exactly. Exactly. I mean, you have these same issues when you're in person. It's just that they're exacerbated when you're online because it's a different medium.
BenP (28:06.021)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also I think it's very focused, isn't it? You know, like when you just go, when you are working remotely and you just go, team's cool, team's cool, team's cool, or Zoom cool, Zoom cool, Zoom cool, you just go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Everything maybe is for a purpose, has got a structure and you start off, you kind of miss that serendipity, you miss that...
Just the little chats, the little humanisms that perhaps happen when you are face to face that just while you're opening the door to get into the meeting room, you have a little chat about something you watched on telly last night or something like those little human points just sort of, they just disappear a bit, don't they? Yeah.
Lisette (28:37.941)
Yeah.
Lisette (28:50.133)
Yeah, you have to build them in. I mean, and it sounds so weird to say like, yeah, build in your serendipity, but that is how it goes online. That is the medium. You're not going to accidentally bump into somebody online unless you're in a virtual office. I mean, if you're in a virtual office, you could very well accidentally bump into people online. So when you start to get into, that's why I'm saying like look towards the new technologies like spatial working and holograms.
BenP (29:02.821)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
BenP (29:14.629)
Okay. So what's that? I don't know much about spatial working and you did mention like 2D offices and that kind of stuff. What are they?
Lisette (29:23.861)
They are basically offices that you go to in your browser. And when you go into your browser, you'll see like a floor plan of an office and there's individual office rooms. And you basically can only see and hear the people that are in the same like virtual box as you. And, but then you just double click on another room if you want to go to that room. So like you can set up a whole office. Everybody's got their own office if they want their own room, but you can see where everybody else is on the virtual floor plan. And I can see if I was like, so -and -so they're at the lunch.
they're in the lunch room, meaning maybe people are hanging out having lunch together online. I'm going to go join them. Or there's even like a water cooler room that you could like just like, hey, I'm in the mood for, you know, it's like Friday afternoon. I've got some stuff to do. But if somebody wants to come by and chat, I would love to have a quick chat. So you put yourself in the like water cooler room kind of thing. So there's there's a whole new way of working that opens up when you start to get into the tools like the holograms and the telepresence and the virtual offices and these kind of things. But I think. Yeah, the the.
BenP (29:56.869)
Yeah. Okay.
BenP (30:08.261)
Yeah.
Lisette (30:22.165)
The uptake is low because there's no, one of the things that I learned is people don't know how much pain they're in. Like it's all working, we're hobbling along just fine. It's working, but I think people don't understand how good it could actually be with some of these tools.
BenP (30:37.509)
Okay, yeah, yeah. Now that's interesting. I've not thought about those virtual offices before. I mean, I know we advertise presence, you know, am I available? Am I do not disturb? That kind of stuff. But not just all, you know, it's like that, you know, we're in an actual office together. And if I'm over here, come and chat to me. But if I'm in the private booth, leave me alone kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, fascinating.
Lisette (31:02.613)
Yeah, I mean, I just have like, you know, my virtual office open in my browser on another monitor all day long. I come in, I start work, I go into my virtual office. I've got colleagues there. I used to run a virtual coworking space for years. I'm probably going to start that up again now that these tools are getting more popular again. And people just stop by and work together.
BenP (31:18.981)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. fascinating. Well, Lizette, I have just glanced at the clock and we are very fast approaching the end of the episode. Any final things you want to share before we move into maybe a quick wrap up and the key takeaways and summary? Any final things that you want to share at all?
Lisette (31:41.077)
I would say if you have been mandated back to the office, fear not. Flexibility is the future. And there are lots of things that you can do to create and prepare for that inevitable flexibility that's coming your way. And I would say one of the easiest things is start with a personal user manual and then go from there. But don't worry, fear not. We won't be mandated for long. We're just in an in -between phase.
BenP (31:59.909)
Okay. Yeah.
BenP (32:07.141)
Yeah, people have still got expensive leases on properties that were made before the Covid pandemic happened. Right. Well, shall we wrap up? From your perspective, what would be the key takeaways for everybody that's listening?
Lisette (32:10.517)
Right.
There's weird things still that need to be sorted out before we all get our freedom.
Lisette (32:27.221)
That's tough to, yeah, a key takeaway. I would say one, if you're with your team, visualize your work and try to create one source of truth and have one dashboard where all the metrics can be seen, can be, are visible to everybody on the team and preferably any, everybody in the company. It's good to have those dashboards to understand where things are. So I'd say, yeah, visualizing your work after personal user manuals and team agreement. I think that that's where it's at really understanding who's working on what and how it's going.
BenP (32:50.277)
Yeah.
BenP (32:57.573)
Yeah, brilliant. And I think from my perspective...
I really like the idea, firstly, of just taking a bit of time to think about how you like to work remotely and just getting a bit of clarity in your mind. Because I think if you've got that clarity, then you can start to think, well, like you were talking about beauty and hating your little grey cubicle. If you understand that and you're self -aware, then you can start to take some action that makes things better. So I think that's really good. And then getting that team agreement, this is how we're going to work together as a team, really powerful.
And I think then the thing to then think about with the big corps, the big corps is when you're in that highly matrixed environment, how you extend that because that's certainly the challenge I've faced. It's very different now I'm running my own business, but when I was in that massive corp.
you know, well, how do I get this notice? I don't want to be notified when that group bings, but if they ping me, I want to be notified. And then, you know, that was all just really hard how to kind of get the tools to work with me for that. So I think that that's an interesting thing to maybe think about going forward.
Lisette (34:06.645)
Yeah, and also if you're a leader in a company, make sure your team is getting the support they need for the tools that are there. It is, I can't tell you how many people have said to me, I'm too embarrassed to ask. I'm supposed to know this and I'm too embarrassed to ask. Or people that don't understand the tools. I mean, I had a colleague who didn't understand threading in Slack. She is a wicked smart person, right? Wicked smart, could not understand threading.
BenP (34:13.061)
Yeah.
BenP (34:20.389)
Yeah.
Lisette (34:32.693)
You know, it's one of those things like, okay, like, well, I didn't, I didn't know that was, could even be a problem. Okay. Like how do we help? How do we help train her on how to use threads? Cause it was driving the team crazy. It's those small things that like ruin team spirit, you know?
BenP (34:44.133)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, if people have loved listening to the things that you've been saying today, where can people get in touch with you after the episode?
Lisette (34:49.429)
Okay.
Lisette (34:59.061)
I'd say everything's at collaborationsuperpowers .com. All the resources. and I've got a special remote working success kit for people. So if you go to collaborationsuperpowers .com slash super kit, everything we've talked about in today's episode, the personal user manuals, the team agreements, icebreakers for virtual meetings. We didn't talk about that, but that is in there. There's a whole remote work success kit that you can download.
BenP (35:23.461)
Yep. Okay. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much. It's been absolutely fascinating, Lizette. So thank you so much for taking the time to come and share everything you know with us. So thank you so much.
Lisette (35:35.477)
Thank you, I've really enjoyed being here.
