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hybrid office

Why Hybrid Is Not Working For You

Why Hybrid Is Not Working For Your Business - Focus Hybrid Guide

Many of us are twelve to eighteen months into Hybrid work. 

We have seen many thought leaders and business leaders have their say, whether it is good or bad for their business. 

For the most part, we have been working on a variety of “hybrid” since March 2020. It is not new and despite being frustrating at times, businesses just haven’t reshaped their own business to make this workplace environment work correctly. 

Some industries have fully embraced hybrid, invested in the right infostructure, the right tools, the right ‘in office’ cadence and been flexible to accommodate the new requirements during the pandemic. 

Others have defaulted back to full-time in the office, often stating culture and then performance as the main drivers for returning fully to the office. 

When questioned the move back to the office full time is about a control culture.

The hardest decision many leaders have had to make is what is right for this business and how can we shape the business to be performance first and many landing on pre-March 2020 setups. 

Why is hybrid not working? 

Software 

  • Many have forced fit the wrong software to attempt hybrid work 
  • Many companies are relying on software to make the hard decisions for them – software will never make the right decision for your specific business it builds for mass problems, not your business problems 
  • Businesses have replaced whiteboard sessions and idea sessions with Mural or Miro and the ideas still are not revisited and creating a worse experience
  • Poor software choice makes ‘time’ a more important factor and highlights when you feel like you are wasting time 
  • Businesses have moved to default chat rather than default work, a lot of chat happens and is signalling in chat apps (like slack and teams) but this often means context is lost, a lot of conversation requires translation and delivery slows 

Meetings 

  • We have relied too much on meetings and working in meetings in real-time, meaning there is no time for deep thought or intentional thought and analysis 
  • Meetings are often taking 60% or more of people’s work time, this is not allowing time for deep work or true collaboration 
  • Almost every business fails their teams by not allowing their teams to succeed with the right agenda templates, with the most efficient ways of communicating post meeting  
  • Many have not discussed or worked with those companies who made the decision to go hybrid or fully remote. Learning from others and hiring these as consultants will help to reshape your business 
  • The common complaint is decisions are only made in meetings and follow-up actions get lost 

Culture 

  • We have allowed managers to have their own rules and many middle management are used to policing in person and trust is secondary 
  • Lack of training for hybrid work and training managers who are used to in line of sight management 
  • There were limited workstreams to build intentional hybrid culture – more than just a few quizzes and getting everyone in the office on a specific date, culture requires dedicated workstreams, workshops, departmental principles created, what is good and bad hybrid behaviours. 
  • There has been a lack of reshaping of the HR team to accommodate hybrid, many not having the training or trust to help support and train managers in hybrid environments, all combining in culture taking a hit
  • The leadership team have struggled to designate one culture community manager to build a hybrid culture and reward away from department leads and traditional HR methodologies 

Workplaces / Environment 

  • The office was not reshaped and is not an environment helping to make work fair 
  • Home is still not considered by most as a workplace despite having worked from home for many years, often to get their head down. The definition of home should be replaced with workplace home and considered a place for deep work 
  • Many businesses have not enabled their workforce to understand if it is private, semi-private, semi-public or public work, meaning many are in the wrong locations for important fully private work. Private is financial work, important one to ones, layoffs, reshaping your department, and pitching to management. Many one-to-one’s took place in coffee shops were semi-public, and team meetings are often semi private as the content of the discussion or working session and should not be held in an open space or in open coworking spaces

Ways to address hybrid issues 

  • Have the courage to make important decisions in improving the core areas, software, meeting, culture and workplace. If it means running tests or trialling these, it important to build these muscles  
  • Build out the right hybrid software stack, create a list of requirements and why current tools do not work and what you require from specialist tools. Many tools will be low cost and reduce friction versus being seen as an additional cost 
  • Create pods to tackle these core issues, no leaders usually mean no action  
  • Use statuses to reduce interruptions, green, amber, red lights to encourage fewer interruptions and allow more focus 
  • Make the intentional shift to async work, embrace more thought-written debates – remove the need to quickly ping someone a brain dump of thoughts in mass groups 
  • Leverage new tech, offer the ability to use audio notes, to record a “Story” based on the spreadsheet to explain why it is formatted this way, embrace wiki’s and formats that encourage thoughtful comms 
  • Remove the real-time decision-making by creating one and two pagers to really inform and keep colleagues abreast of the most important information. The best companies have created templates and frameworks for their teams to use. Very often the best Product Teams have this already and could be tweaked for the other departments to adopt 
  • Always justify why this meeting wasn’t an email in the meeting request 
  • Build out the right frameworks and templates to improve meetings and making the decision does this need to be a meeting or a working group. Internal costs of meetings and meeting recovery syndrome are core problems within a business that many are overlooking or misunderstanding the knock-on effects of 
  • Remove proximity bias, in sight management is hard, hybrid is harder, bring in coaches and training companies to help retrain managers and improve the quality of management within your business  
  • Build out EQ frameworks, remove IQ and PQ as the main incentivise drivers within your business  
  • Make the office a workspace more equal (be inspired by LinkedIn hybrid approach to the office)
  • Ask for feedback from the team on how to improve core sticking points 
  • Rephrase working from home or working from anywhere to workplace home/workplace coworking / workplace satellite office.

Good luck creating the right environments for hybrid to succeed. Hybrid is more a choice, it is a working style that requires iteration and intentional leadership.

Resources To Support Your Move To Hybrid 

The free hybrid work guide

Designing the hybrid office guide  

Simple ways to improve company culture 

Ten misunderstandings of good company culture

How to connect with company leadership team

What makes great hybrid leaders and hybrid managers 

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hybrid office

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella: The Hybrid Work Paradox

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella- The Hybrid Work Paradox

Recently the Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called out hybrid work, and the challenge in getting it right. 

This is a challenge almost every organisation is battling with, especially with almost every country and US state having a different approach to COVID and handling different and ever-evolving scenarios. 

Satya Nadella was quoted as suggesting
“Short-term productivity goes up, long-term creativity goes down”. 

With quant data and qual data, many CEO’s and business are reporting and experiencing similar challenges. 

Learn Lessons From Remote Organisations 

Where many organisations are getting this wrong, is by not discussing how remote companies have had successes, companies like Gitlab (Gitlab all remote guide is brilliant) and Automattic (the Automattic podcast is great) have been successful in operating in a fully remote fashion. 

Learning from what makes great hybrid and remote leaders is going to help improve your operations and organisations health. 

There Is No One Size Fits All

Satya isn’t the only CEO suggesting the same, Facebook, Apple, Dropbox and Slack have all come at Hybrid from different perspectives with different solutions and ever-changing return to the office dates. 

Google’s is it ok to manifesto went viral across LinkedIn and has helped some businesses rethink how they approach this evolving working situation.

No one company has nailed hybrid but many are making significant progress.

The Study Was Too Early 

The study that was undertaken with Microsoft employees is a great read, however, the study was from the first six months of the virus and does not account for 2021 data and the way we have adapted and changed over the last 12 months. 

Large Company Battles

Companies the size of Microsoft have a number of battles to fight, the first is safety, the second is productivity and the third is keeping shareholders happy. 

Keeping staff happy, engaged and helping to balance work demands, home demands and burnout is something every business has to be proactively managing and addressing. 

Ensuring teams are productive while away from the office (or working in hybrid) is challenging almost every team member, manager and company leader. 

Shareholders are always looking for returns, getting the most of the staff is one of the main concerns for any CEO, especially for companies the size of Microsoft. 

The way we work in office environments has changed: 

  • The demand for video calls increased, 
  • The demand for more meetings increased, 
  • The way we continue meeting conversations has evolved, 
  • “The water cooler moments” decreased 
  • The way we keep connected has changed and the great unfollow has started to happen

The intentional and deliberate way we address these changing working methods has fallen behind and should be in the most pressing items to address as any leader of any business. 

One of our core recommendations is the requirement for a culture community manager for those companies with over 30 people. 

So is Satya right or wrong about Hybrid?

Unfortunately, in this situation, every company is different, every company requires their own approach, however with hybrid being deliberate and intentional with the 3C’s: Connection, Communication and Collaboration is key to winning.

Getting Hybrid Right

The future of the required for a large office (or series of offices) is under review, the long term future of work is no doubt hybrid, creating a highly engaged, connected and productive workforce is going to be something we learn to develop and “perfect” over time. 

Are You Struggling With Hybrid? Here Is Our Free Guide 

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The Hybrid Work & Hybrid Meetings Guide

Here are other great resources to help you with hybrid: 

How To Win At Hybrid Office Politics?
Should Every Team Have A Roadmap?
Hybrid Work Tools & Hybrid Software Guide
Leaders Letter 63 – 40 Tips To Improve Work For Everyone
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Anonymous Career Advice hybrid office

How To Stay Visible When Working Remotely?

Dear Focus, how do I stay visible when working remotely? 

Working remotely or in some cases hybrid has become a challenge for some team members to appear to be visible. 

It is actually a series of different questions I have received via the anonymous career advice form in recent weeks. 

As recommended in is playing the game essential advice article, there are many times you will need to be available, be part of things you do not naturally lean toward, times where what you need to do is be more proactively and importantly managers, bring those up around you. 

Delivery Presence, Deadlines, Internal Networking are the key categories for you to consider when considering how you are visible, and importantly, how you might manage and tackle this as a leader of the team.

Delivery 

  • Delivering on a project, a campaign or a product release is the best way of staying visible, being able to take your opportunity is always the best way of staying visible and demonstrating you were part of important part of work. 
  • Be The Sender: Sending out the message that you or your team have delivered on a large project or campaign is a great way to be seen and a way to be celebrated or supported. 
  • Be part of fixing the problems. One problem two solutions is a great framework to use and introduce
  • Celebrating the metrics vs just celebrating delivering is always favoured within mature businesses so keeping this in mind is impartive.
  • If you and your manager are not having regular check-ins but you would like to ensure they know what you are ‘doing, done and achieved’ I recommend a weekly email to your manager with (a) what is working, (b) what are you working on and (c) what has been delivered and (d) anything to be cautious of, trends within the industry or larger themes you should be on top of.  
  • Managers: Be able to congratulate and bring your team members to present and send the email or company-wide slack update is essential. If you are a c-suite exec or on the management team always bring your team members to discuss the delivery and early numbers in leadership meetings, help to prep them and bring them along the journey 

Presence 

  • Build out your presence while online meeting, offer to take notes, chair the meeting or own the workstream. This is more work, however, with structure and operational excellence this will help to stay visible and build your presence around the company 
  • Concentrate in the meetings and taking part of meetings, always be prepared to add value or unique insights (versus adding more opinions) and contribute to the follow-up conversations or offer to lead new projects.  
  • Managers: Asking for your team feedback and for someone’s expert opinion particularly when they prefer to be asked is essential, it will help you bring on others presence and their visibility but also helps the team to know their presence and their expertise is vital for the companies success. 

Deadlines 

  • Something many have allowed to slip while working remotely is deadlines slipping or not hitting deadlines.
    Hitting deadlines will always be essential and be vital for a companies success. Hitting a deadline is often the difference between being seen, respected and having positive mindshare vs having negative mindshare and having trust.
  • If/when possible create the GANTT or the roadmap and be the point of contact on the deadlines and deliverables 
  • Be deliberate in communications, not over-communicating, update colleagues on the progress of the project and how you are progressing against deadlines. On many occasions, this is happening however remember internally marketing is as important as externally marketing and applies to projects of all sizes 
  • Managers: Setting realistic deadlines – this is the flip side when a manager of a team or business leader, very often setting aggressive deadlines actually hinders your teams chance of being visible and hitting targets and creating a negative 

Developing Your Internal Network 

  • Build out connections – something when working remotely or in the hybrid workforce is you tend to neglect networking and building internal and external connections, actively work on networking and connecting with colleagues within the organisation and have quick coffees and be available to help colleagues if they need someone to assist them or be a support network  
  • One to one’s are always important – ensure you are keeping up with your one to ones, where possible look to meet with your bosses boss in skip meetings. This is often invaluable and creating a connection with your bosses boss or your team’s team creates better connections 
  • Virtual lunches – this might sound like more work and your time however one of the missing parts of connections when remote or hybrid is eating together and drinking together. I recommend making the same lunch and having 30 minutes where you just talk or connect over something trivial, a tool like donut (slack tool) will help you with virtual meetings and randomised meetings, you scheduling this and working with colleagues will be important 
    Here are a number of hybrid work tools and apps to help you become successful in hybrid.  
  • Hybird lunches – sometimes teams go to lunch when in the office and those who are not there will miss out, where possible consider how you might integrate those working remotely or organise a day and time where colleagues can come together and eat or allow those remote to be present in the hybrid lunch. This also works offsite too. 
  • Network events – something a handful of mart companies have created is hybrid and remote network events with tools like hopin and riverside and connect colleagues in break out rooms, with Q&A between departments and presentations on important projects and successful campaigns and releases 
  • Managers consider building out management pods to connect you and your management team more closely 
  • Managers: It is important to remember remote offsites and remote sessions are not always the silver bullet to bring teams together 

There are many more brilliant pieces of advice for managers and leaders in the fixing the broken world of work podcast. 

Best of luck and keep moving forward.

Thanks,

Danny Denhard

Read the future of work keynote from the end of June to learn more about how the world of work is changing and how to be successful in the hybrid future.

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hybrid office Leadership

What Makes Great Remote and Hybrid Leaders

what makes great hybrid managers and remote leaders

The burning 2021 and beyond question to answer:

What makes a great remote and hybrid work leader?

In the move to hybrid work, we have seen many reports suggest hybrid and remote work is going to hinder performance, we will see company culture become toxic, it will slow the development of younger members of staff and we will encounter higher staff turnover while having to completely change the way things are done. 

With all of these points reported, there are very few resources that offer advice on what actually makes a great remote manager and a great hybrid leader. 

Here are the five categories and qualities that make brilliant distributed and hybird leaders:  

Connection  

  • Helps to guide and direct teams
  • Connects work together with teams  
  • Champions the team and their connections 
  • Builds better internal networks – constantly looking to improve the nodes between the department’s networks particularly cross-functionally. 

Awareness  

  • Keeps the heartbeat going throughout the business 
  • Ensure work progresses at the right pace 
  • Sits across workstreams and keep ahead of the potential issues or jumps into action when required 
  • Check’s in and check’s out at the right amount per team member 
  • Understands when there will be a requirement for personnel change, to bring in the right external consultancy or add or replace the supporting agency
  • Ability to be aware if a Team A and Team B mentality starts within the business and removes any issues
  • Helps to monitors how people are feeling alongside their performance 

Organisational  

  • Helps to set the right priorities 
  • Helps to realign or prioritise where required 
  • Helps to shape deadlines and is available for when their teams need guidance 
  • At hand to review the team’s task list when struggling or hit a large bump in the road(map) 
  • Coaching and mentoring those around them pairing awareness and connection 
  • Understands when it is time to train team members in their new environment or when it might be time to let their team member go for performance issues 

Productive

  • Applies EQ and IQ and understands when to apply 
  • Is happy in doing (delivering the tactics) and thinking long term (keeping up with the company-wide strategy) 
  • Is alongside the team in getting things done and helping to set the right goals 
  • Knows when to step away or step up for their team and the project they are delivering 

Communication  

  • Good writer, detailed and deliberate comms in an asynchronous world helps  improve the flow of communication and wins in the hybrid workforce 
  • Understands when to send a detailed update, when to create a short, articulate deck or to speak to those people “face to face”
  • Understands that a quick self-recorded video will land better and have more  impact with their team members than rely on a long email chain 
  • Can understand when a video meeting (zoom, teams etc) is going to be important vs an audio-only meeting or a walk and talk meeting 

These five categories will help guide you and your management team to build out better teams and improving managers in the hybrid and remote work world. 

Two Invaluable Resources 

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Company Culture Leadership

Why Sports Clubs Are Using DNA Documents and Team Trademarks As Guiding Principles

Over the past few months, we have seen large companies request staff to return to the office, to a hybrid work environment and suggest culture is impacted by proximity (proximity bias), mere exposure effect and the Allen curve. 

Whereas professional sports at large has been working throughout lockdowns. 

For front line workers, teams have had to work in brand new and unique conditions, pushing them to record levels of anxiety, fatigue and unfortunately in many cases burnout. 

Every different work environment and industry have had various stress and anxieties to deal with throughout the pandemic, for many it has been a forcing function.  

Enter Agreed Principles

Here at Focus one of the core recommendations, we provide to any business of any size is to have leadership principles. Guiding and agreed on principles that everyone across the business follows to know they are making the right choices and to empower them to make the right decision. 

Recently Rugby league club Leeds Rhino’s stripped their captain for “behaviours not aligned to team trademarks”. 

For many this would seem unusual, trademarks is not a phrase commonly used and sports is typically a winner takes all business and typically captains and stars of the team tend to be given special dispensation vs the rest of the team. 

This is great leadership from the club, poor “leadership” from the ex-club captain. 

Leadership principles are a brilliant way to align management teams and hold yourselves accountable. 

What Leeds Rhinos did here was suggest their club and their beliefs are bigger than any player and their behaviours have to be aligned to their agreed principles. 

New Zealand Rugby has some brilliant rules for their players including:

  • No d*ckhead rules – The All Blacks New Zealand rugby team motto 
  • Sweeping the sheds – leaders clean and tidy the locker room
  • The principle of ‘Whanau’ which translates to ‘our family, our friends, our tribe.’

DNA Documents

We have also seen football clubs like Hibs reference their DNA document, what they want their DNA to be so their staff and their players can understand what it means to at Hibs. 

This also acts as a guiding document and informs some of their most important decisions, especially when to comes to buying players and negotiating transfer fees. 

Company culture is most often the behaviours when no one is watching and the glue helping to make the right decisions for the company. This is where DNA documents and team trademarks really help keep accountability and actionable. 

Guide Behaviours

Businesses big and small need to go over how to be successful, what behaviours are rewarded and those which are not. Creating an agreed guide is essential in the way we working particularly with the move towards the hybrid office and guiding the next generation of leaders within your business. 

Actions You Apply Within Your Own Business

  1. Create your own guiding principles for your business – requires business leads and HR
  2. Create a DNA document of who you are, what you have been and where you are headed – requires the leadership team 
  3. Create leadership principles where you show what leadership is and how you are accountable – requires the leadership team 
Download the free hybrid work guide

Five Related Resources 

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hybrid office

Hybrid Work Tools & Hybrid Software Guide

Hybrid Work Tools & Hybrid Software

A hybrid work set-up can seem daunting and appear challenging for many organisations making the switch to the hybrid office.

With Focus’ commitment to helping to fix the broken world of work, the following tools have been tried and tested with Focus customers and coaching clients and come recommended with clients requiring help with their move Hybrid.

Read Our Free 35 Page Comprehensive Guide:
The Hybrid Work Guide

The tools are alternatives to what you and your teams may have used or the best software available on the market. 

It is important to understand with Hybrid work tools and hybrid software there are minimum requirements including:

  • Being cloud-based aka usable anywhere 
  • Many third-party integrations, reducing the need for multiple tabs to be open at once and working on many apps is not required 
  • Simplicity as standard: Easy to learn for all users and does not require expensive onboarding is essential 
  • A need to work across all browsers and devices is a minimum 
  • Multiplayer as standard (show who is editing and where and being able to have conversations within the app is important 
  • Keyboard commands and quick commands lines to reduce user friction 
  • Quick and auto save and tracking edits is essential 
Continue reading “Hybrid Work Tools & Hybrid Software Guide”
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hybrid office

The Hybrid Work & Hybrid Meetings Guide

The Hybrid Work Guide

The Hybrid Work & Hybrid Meetings Guide

Guide By Focus – Danny Denhard – Released July 2021. Updated September 2021.

Guide Audience: C-Suite, Founders, HR Leads, Operation Directors & Digital Transformation leads

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The Intro 

We are about to embark on a brand new journey, a hybrid journey. 

July 1st was a landmark date for the business epicentre New York, July 19th is a landmark date in England, many other businesses in Asia, Australia and New Zealand have moved back to the office and are working in the hybrid model. 

The tech giants have suggested 3 days a week, Apple’s 3 days a week in the office has come under fire from their employees, Google has experienced similar feedback and smaller companies are wrestling with how to make hybrid office work for their business.  

Other large brands have stayed consistent in their messaging Facebook and Salesforce have been clear that Hybrid is in their long term future and Slack have moved to a digital first mentality. 

While Dropbox has changed the language they use, their office (now named  Studio’s) setup to encourage more collaboration and deliberate hours.  

We are re-entering the world of work where businesses will be experiencing the previously hotly discussed topics such as: 

  • Who ate my avocado? 
  • Are you using my cup? 
  • Did you really book this meeting room? 
  • And are you using my iPhone charger?   

Will businesses be prepared to handle these micro-moments where these silly annoyances didn’t happen for so long. 

Throughout this Hybrid workplace guide, you will see Hybrid Tip: to help you act upon important lessons and learnings from other businesses to help you and your business win Hybrid.  

Many businesses will look for the ‘magic moment’ in the new Hybrid set-up, it is important you celebrate small wins along the journey and micro moments as a company, this will ensure you make a celebrated and smoother transition to Hybrid.
The magic moment will be a journey, however, you have likely made good progress while in lockdown/quarantine periods.  

Many businesses who made the Hybrid switch pre-2020 celebrated small wins such as product releases, Hybrid offsites and Hybrid training sessions that develop teams collectiveness and delivery. 

Continue reading “The Hybrid Work & Hybrid Meetings Guide”
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Business Performance hybrid office

Dropbox Studios Vs Traditional Office Set Up

Dropbox The Virtual First Plan

Dropbox: The Virtual First Plan – Will It Work?

From removing the word hybrid to changing offices to studio’s, Dropbox has made a deliberate act in changing their future of work.

How: 

  • Reshaping their offices and renaming to Studios 
  • Why? 
    • 1/ Building more space 
    • 2/ Offering more freedom
  • Consider interpersonal connection around meeting spaces 
  • Offering one employee experience not two to ensure everyone has a fair career trajectory and remove any inequalities 
  • Shaping employees days helped meeting time vs deep work time, individual work vs teamwork and the need for collaboration. 
Continue reading “Dropbox Studios Vs Traditional Office Set Up”
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Company Culture hybrid office Leadership

July 19th – Time For Leaders To Lead

July 19th - Time For Leaders To Lead

Important Leadership Tips For Returning To The Office 

Your teams will be nervous about July 19th, there will be many who look forward to the old normal, there are many who are used to this normal and enjoy working remotely, and there are many who expect a hybrid office approach.

Here are the leadership tips to follow to ensure smooth sailing for July 19th – back to the office day.

Continue reading “July 19th – Time For Leaders To Lead”
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hybrid office Leadership

Anxious About Returning To The Office?

Return To The Office Q&A's

Are you based in England and concerned around July 19th return to the office?

The future of work should be flexible and hybrid (consider reading our free hybrid office ebook), however, we have seen many businesses default to a return to the office.

Here are the questions to ask your leadership teams on how they are thinking and how they made the key decisions.

Continue reading “Anxious About Returning To The Office?”