Remote work is great!
Remote work is slowing us down!
There is no collaboration!
If we ask team members to come to work, they will leave!
If you a in a tech company, you might have heard one or more of these over the last 12-18 months.
All of us were forced to adopt and adapt to a remote working environment.
As with anything like this, there are pros and cons.
But one area, where we continue to see real challenges is: “Creative problem solving in product teams.”
As a #productmanagement consulting company we run into this on a daily basis.
– In a remote work environment most interactions are reduced to scheduled meetings.
– People don’t get the chance to get to know each other
– And no, coffee over Zoom, just doesn’t cut it!
– Eliminating chance conversations and informal conversations also means people don’t collaborate as much or as often
– There is a false sense of productivity when you look at the output.
But, quality of work and innovation may be suffering.
Some of the ways in which we have improved this is:
– encouraging employees to come to work 2-3 days a week
– having informal meetings once a month – team lunch and such
– tasking sub teams with problem solving, works well if overall team is large
– we are ourselves making it a point to visit clients more often
Possibly, “days of remote work are numbered” pun intended…
At least going to be reduced, if not eliminated…