21st Century Work Life - Remote Working, Virtual Teams And Flexible Working

In this episode, Pilar advocates for an Office Optional approach, where the office becomes one more place where we can work from and how the nature of how we work in those spaces needs to change.   Why “Office Optional” is a slightly better term than using some of the words that suggest there is a large physical distance between team members. (There is a complementary blog post to this episode: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/blog/office-optional ) When will sitting next to each other benefit our work?   How “agile working” and “flexible working” are being used as terms that refer only to the physical space where we work from. If we don’t have an option to use an office and we are missing sharing a physical space, why? Pinpoint why and see whether there are ways of working to fulfill those needs. (eg. Push to talk, set times at the computer etc.)   How some companies use their often unused spaces to bring external ideas into the building. Check out the article: Smart Office Buildings: What Features do

In this episode, Pilar and Lisette discuss a few articles that have caught their eye over the past weeks.  (1) Pilar and Lisette discuss a worrying new statistic: one in five employees in the UK are afraid to ask their managers to move onto flexible working. What's going on? Articles about flexible working: http://www.bmmagazine.co.uk/news/one-five-employees-afraid-ask-flexible-working/ https://www.fastcompany.com/3059295/inside-three-companies-that-are-innovating-flexible-schedules https://cms.aviva.com/media/upload/Aviva_Working_Lives_Report_2017_INTERACTIVE.pdf (2) We talk about Apple's new headquarters. The dangers of silos vs a great place where people want to work. Can buildings adapt as fast as they need to? The article about Apple’s New HQ https://hbr.org/2017/06/why-apples-new-hq-is-nothing-like-the-rest-of-silicon-valley (3) Article on the perils of being the only remote worker. The need to have empathy with those who are remote when most of us are collocated.  https://www.hanselman.com/blo

In this episode Pilar talks to David Horowitz, co-founder and CEO of Retrium about why he created a tool to guide teams through retrospectives and how he’s growing a distributed business. How we fall in and out of love with tools. The origins of Retrium. Pre-build facilitation techniques in a package. https://www.retrium.com/ (If you would like some inspiration on running retrospectives or review meetings, check out episode 19 of this podcast. https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/retrospectives) From idea to finding a co-finder and building a business. Recruiting in a distributed team. Finding the right people for a remote team. What helps people gather as an online community? What helps a person create connections in a community? Do people need to be good at “being remote”? What can you tell if a person is a good match for your distributed company? Retrium’s latest hires and the role that social media can play. The importance of culture in remote teams and distributed businesses. (Yes, it do

In this episode, Pilar and Lisette talk about their recent experience being involved in a day online event on working in virtual teams. This might be of interest if you are involved in organising a virtual event for your team or community.  visit www.virtualnotdistant.com Lisette’s update, she’s found the perfect editor! The Internal Affair and Virtual Team Talk The diversity of opinions even in a group that shares a passion for making remote work, work. What happened at this event? Why it was an “internal affair” and not a “conference”. How we organised the event collaboratively, asynchronously. Pilar’s experience facilitating an audio-only session and how she discovered what she needs as a facilitator. Thoughts from the chats on building culture asynchronously and taking an “office optional” approach. “The company behind Wordpress is closing its San Francisco office because their employees never show up.” https://qz.com/1002655/the-company-behind-wordpress-is-closing-its-gorgeous-san-francisco-of

In this episode, Pilar talks to Brie Reynolds, Senior Career Specialist at Flexjobs, about taking control of your career when working remotely. www.virtualnotdistant.com Flexjobs has been around now for ten years, enabling people to find telecommuting jobs and other flexible jobs. Brie works there as Senior Career Specialist.  Brie's job is to help people find those jobs and she does so in a variety of ways, including organising webinars where representative from companies looking for new employees can interact directly with job seekers. Can you imagine the cost of doing that in the collocated space? In this episode,  Brie shares how she built a team of writers at FlexJobs How and why she moved from full time to part time https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-leaning-out-actually-helped-me-lean-learning-from-brie-reynolds Why she created a course for people who are recovering from a layoff.  https://www.linkedin.com/learning/recovering-from-a-layoff/ She talks about career progression in remote work. And

In this episode, Pilar and Lisette analyse a recent article by Patrick Lencioni where he recommends to stay away from working as a virtual team. Visibility in Virtual Teams from the website. Scroll down the Inspiration page. https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/inspiration Other podcasts: Management Café Evidence Talks 1) Lisette's holiday Why it's so important to keep down stress levels. David Burkus podcast Radio Free Leader episode The Art and Practice of Breakthrough Thinking with Judah Pollack http://davidburkus.com/2017/05/0816-the-art-and-practice-of-breakthrough-thinking-with-judah-pollack/ (2) Catch up on Agile conference and Work 2.0 Aginext http://2017.aginext.io/ For more on Work 2.0 listen to episode 125 of this podcast. https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/work-2-conference https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/blog/four-cs-teamwork (3) We recap the five dysfunctions of a team and analyse this article. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/virtual-teams-worse-than-i-thought-patrick-lencioni (4) How M

Welcome to a special episode of the 21st Century Work Life podcast, where I share with you my main reflections after attending the Work 2.0 conference last May 2017, in London and where I bring in the thoughts and opinions of other attendees. Don't forget to visit www.virtualnotdistant.com   Thank you too to everyone who very kindly agreed to taking part in this episode, it means that listeners get a much more varied view of the world of work, and it’s always great to hear different voices.   Work 2.0 consisted of the Future of Work conference and the Wellbeing conference. I attended mainly sessions on the Future of Work track – but I also managed to pop into a couple of sessions of the wellbeing track. I won’t go into the content of everything I heard, but I just wanted to give you an idea of what the main themes were. The first thing that I noticed when looking through the programme was the focus on Activity Based Working. Now, I hadn’t really heard of this in the context of organisations, but it’s basic

In this episode, Pilar and Lisette share their favourite online tools and why they work for them. Can you add any to the list? visit www.virtualnotdistant.com How important are tools? Get out your pen and paper - or your favourite note-taking app! Lisette mentions HuddleWall (though she hasn't tried it out yet). TRELLO We talk about Trello!!!!! (Planner is the Microsoft 365 version.) Find out more about Trello and the company behind it in episode 68.  http://virtualnotdistant.com/trello-and-coffee/ SOCOCO To find out more about Sococo: #118 What Virtual Coworking can Teach Virtual Teams https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/lessons-virtual-coworking.com Join Virtual Team Talk www.virtualteamtalk.com IDONETHIS For narrating the work. What do you prefer: to know about people's tasks or their thinking process? Take diversity into account when selecting your tools.  Spying vs Working Out Loud Narrating the work shouldn't be linked to Performance Management, or else it becomes something else...  P

In this episode, Pilar talks to Chris Slemp about working out loud with teams, creating a collaboration environement and I how remote work has the potential of changing the structure of society.  visit www.virtualnotdistant.com A little bit of an intro from Chris. https://medium.com/@cslemp/leaving-a-global-company-to-change-the-world-b083839a2d0e How Carpool works and how they track how communication flows through an organisation. http://carpoolagency.com/ The "collaboration environment" and building the ecosystem. When the reality and our perception of what's going on is different - the importance of data. An anecdote. Will people misbehave in social networks? Working with clients as a remote company. Working Out Loud within the team and with the client. Role-modelling transparency and collaboration through a tight relationship with the client. The transition of Carpool to remote and the differences in the generations - not the ones you would expect... http://425business.com/the-anywhere-office/ The oppor

Steve Holyer shares why he works as Product Owner coach (amongst other things) and the importance of allowing teams to find how they best have fun together. visit www.virtualnotdistant.com for information on our training, coaching and consultancy services A short description of "Agile" and why Steve coaches Scrum Product Owners. The ever-changing role of the Product Owner. Working with distributed agile teams and what happens when they start to play hard during retrospectives. How retrospectives help teams work better together. Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen. https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Teams-Great/dp/0977616649/ Working collocated and working distributed. When retrospectives get hacked. Finding out what "fun at work" means for your team and working within that. Pilar mentions "The Science of Great Teams", a study by Sandy Pentland. How this playful team continues to work together. www.coachingcocktails.com Creating a live community meet

The programme of the Work 2.0 conference, in London, 25 & 26 May 2017, gives a good overview of what companies are addressing when they plan for the future of their workforce. In this episode, Pilar shares some of the session titles that have grabbed her attention.  You can find the programme here: http://www.terrapinn.com/conference/work2/index.stm Pilar will be covering the conference in a future episode. If you would like to attend the conference, we have a 15% discount for you. www.terrapinn.com/virtual  use the code: WXWW

Pilar talks to Paul Thoresen about developing teams, trust, and using surveys in organisations.  Visit www.virtualnotdistant.com for information on our training, coaching and consultancy services.  Paul on Twitter https://twitter.com/surveyguy2 Paul on Medium https://medium.com/@SurveyGuy2 Paul talks about what he learned during his attendance to the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology' conference in Orlando. http://www.siop.org/conferences/17con/ The importance of change management for organisational psychology professionals, most of what we introduce in organisations is going to involve change. Experimenting vs piloting; they're different things. Look for Episode 9 of the Evidence Talks podcast with Paul http://www.futureworkcentre.com/what-we-do/education/evidencetalks/ There's a lot of research at the moment around teams. Paul recommends us to check out the work of Suzanne Bell https://twitter.com/TeamsLab Teams and groups; not everyone forms a team and that's ok! Sentiment anal

Pilar mentions this episode from HBR IdeaCast, broadcast on 14 July 2016 "We Can't Work All the Time" https://hbr.org/ideacast/2016/07/we-cant-work-all-the-time.html Challenging the identity of the person who sees themselves as a different individual at work and at home. Work-life balance doesn't always mean work-family balance. You might want to check out the 27 March 2017 episode of Business Daily. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04xd4jy Are customising your notifications the key to achieving separation of work and non-work activities? Work-life balance Work life integration Work-home interference https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/publications/report/2017/working-anytime-anywhere-the-effects-on-the-world-of-work Does job insecurity contribute to stress if you work from home? Unusual suspects who want flexibility in the work: Lisette and Pilar! Don't forget to visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

In today's episode, Pilar talks through the things we can tweak as individuals, to make our virtual meetings comfortable. 19:25mins Virtual meetings are gradually becoming one more way of talking to those you work with. And if organisations want their employees from different departments to network with each other, to increase the chances of innovation, they should be encouraging the use of video meetings.  Talking to others through a screen might feel a bit unnatural if you're not used to it, so here are five things to look out for to help you feel at ease.  (For episodes on running virtual meetings, check out episode 107 Facilitating Virtual Meetings with Nancy Settle-Murphy and episode 13 on Collocated and Virtual Meetings (1) Pay attention to your background and any windows behind you. (2) Remember that you have a chat function. (3) Remember that you can mute yourself. (Don’t wait for others to get so fed up with you they mute you!) (4) Do you need to see yourself? Pilar mentions this article htt

In today's episode, Pilar and Lisette share their experiences in virtual coworking and highlight those elements that can be applied to working in a virtual team. Check out www.virtualnotdistant.com for coaching and training for managers of virtual teams or to help with the transition to remote. Check out www.collaborationsuperpowers.com for the Work Together Anywhere Workshop Updates - Lisette shares her experience hiring virtual freelancers - and she has great tips! - We share this article which suggests you're better off hiding your image from yourself during video meetings http://www.hrdive.com/news/study-videoconferencing-is-more-effective-when-you-cant-see-yourself/439772/ - Amazon has created 5,000 new US remote jobs http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/local/amazon-to-hire-5000-at-home-workers-in-massive-hiring-binge-of-30000-part-time-employees/429755118 - Pilar has been listening to the Leading Wisely podcast with Ricardo Semler and guests and she's loving it! http://podcast.leadwise.co/ Lessons f

What contributes to team members trusting each other in virtual teams? In today's episode, we present a range of thoughts, questions and suggestions to help maintain trust in virtual teams. visit www.virtualnotdistant.com “If we don’t have the trust, eventually you don’t have a team, you have a bunch of individuals that are sort of working together, but not really working together towards the same purpose.” (Mark Kilby) History of Virtual Team Talk and this project 06:50mins "What level of trust does my team need, right now, to be effective?" Calculated Trust: You follow the rules because the cost of not doing so is greater then the value of breaking the rule. How Trust Emerges 13:10mins Self-Awareness: What helps us to build trust, how does my behaviour impact how others trust me You can read the blog post about the first meeting we had in virtualteamtalk.com In this episode you will hear the voices of Mark Kilby, who’s an agile coach working in a company called Sonatype, which is 95% distributed. They ha

This is the full version of our live broadcast earlier in the year. For an edited version of the conversation, with other thoughts and reflections, and show notes, check out episode 117.  visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

In today's episode, Lisette and Pilar continue their conversation about how the collocated space can evolve by adopting virtual teamwork practices. (Don't forget to visit www.virtualnotdistant.com to check out our services and more blog posts and podcast show notes.) Quite a long catch-up today, but it's all related to our theme... How Sococo is now the first place where Pilar looks for Lisette when she needs to speak to her online and how the different rooms can induce a different mindset. (Hello, Terrance!) (Join Virtual Team Talk to experience virtual co-working and be part of a group of people championing great ways of working remotely with others.) Lisette met Voranc and Ralph in person at a Management 3.0 retreat and it confirmed how much of a bond they'd already built just through online communication. Pilar went to a launch party of a game she voiced and she noticed how strange it feels to watch photos of people working in the office together. We talk about this recent article in Quartz about th

In today's episode, Pilar talks with Eva Rimbau-Gilabert about a recent piece of research on how "managing up" tactics differ between collocated and virtual workers (those in close physical proximity to the manager and those working away from the office). The research that Eva shares was conducted by Sebastián Steizel, who is Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the University of San Andrés (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and Eva was director of the thesis. http://www.tdx.cat/bitstream/handle/10803/369313/Sebasti%C3%A1n%20Steizel%20Tesis%20Doctorado%20.pdf?sequence=1 Eva Rimbau-Gilabert's Twitter handle: @erimbau 06:20 Different tactics that people use to influence their boss and how they differ in use between virtual workers and collocated workers.  Ingratiation Rationality Assertiveness Coalition Intermediation Upward appeal 13:00 The use of technology and how this changes when people try to influence their boss.  Synchronous vs asynchronous.  16:54 The importance of synchronous communication to give

Pilar introduces the concept of Cognitive Tunneling, after a couple of things that happened yesterday to her. And she recommends "Smarter, Faster, Better" bu Charles Duhigg, once again... visit www.virtualnotdistant.com