Since the pandemic began, many organisations have flagged up their fear of losing the creativity and relationship-building that came from chance encounters. The happenstance conversations that came from making a coffee, waiting for a lift, or getting some water are seen as vital for forging connections within and between teams and sparking novel solutions. And think of all those times when you leave a meeting and then have a great conversation about the issues as you’re walking back to your desks?
In a fascinating article from back in 2014 a senior Samsung executive states their new office “is really designed to spark not just collaboration but that innovation you see when people collide.”
So what is happening without this collision? One of the big problems is that the absence may not be felt in the short-term; it is only as we move into the long-term of remote and hybrid working that this lack of connections will impact on creativity, relationships and performance. You’ll see it in greater friction and blame between teams when things go wrong, you’ll notice fewer cross-team solutions and you’ll see teams proposing new ideas that get quickly shot down by other teams.
So how do you get round this? Our Remote Leadership Mastery course introduces managers to our Creating Collision 3-step process:
1. Identify the mechanism
We encourage managers to consider the mechanism that they’re trying to replace, as that will help them choose the right solution.
Mechanisms that underpin the ‘collision is beneficial’ theory can include:
- Social bond as a bridge between teams: “I know Alex a bit, so I’ll approach her first about what the sales team are doing on this problem…”
- Opportunity to answer/raise questions: “…by the way, I’ve been meaning to ask your team about…”
- Opportunity to gather/offer knowledge: “So what are you up to now…..? Oh, we tried something like that last year and learned….”
- Opportunity to gain/offer differing perspectives: “But if you try that, it’ll cause problems for the Finance team’s workflow…”
- Opportunity to suggest enhancements: “Well if you’re thinking of doing that, it would be really helpful for us if you could…?”
2. Learn from others
Many organisations have tried differing approaches to this problem, and we always encourage our course participants to share their knowledge and we all learn from each other.
Some great ideas that we’ve come across include:
- Virtual coffee machine: An always-open chat room that anyone in the company can enter. Employees are encouraged to take 10-15 minutes coffee breaks just chatting with whoever is there.
- Chat partners: Employees are assigned a person at random to have a conversation with – using emails, video chat or telephone.
- Communication champions: Each team member is assigned another team in the organisation and tasked to build up a link.
- Cross-team projects & activities: Encouraging and actively designing projects, working parties and discussion groups to maximise engagement from across all teams. In the past we’ve seen Diversity working groups, fundraising groups and traditional ‘social committees’ all play a great role in forging connections.
3. Share leadership
A top-down solution probably isn’t the best approach. This is an area where you need your team, and all the other teams, to be driving this forward. Your role should be to think about how to get everyone to appreciate the issue, accept responsibility, and give them the freedom and resources to discover and try out some solutions. You’re going to need solutions that fit the organisational and team cultures – but most importantly with individuals.
So it’s unlikely a single solution will address all the mechanisms that you’re trying to replace. In an office there are multiple opportunities for collision, and you need to replicate this variety when remote or hybrid working.
Finding the solutions to the lack of collisions is actually a great example of using a project to create new collisions – get teams working together, forging new connections and promoting innovation and creativity!
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Unsurprisingly it is this final element of implementation that proves most difficult for managers and leaders. On Remote Leadership Mastery this is where we spend the most time, discussing in the interactive workshops how to identify the mechanisms you want to address, to assess your organisational and team cultures, to consider which approaches fit best and to develop a strategy for successful implementation.