Great piece on bonuses. Great to hear self determination theory get a mention too. To often firms try and buy their way out of giving autonomy,feeling of progression and purpose through retention payments.
The return to work is an interesting debate and I'm saddened by the exponential rise of regressive managemt practices that demonstrate a lack of trust and an infered presenteeism that doesn't feel future focussed at all. The approach seems to be hankering back to the building of physical empires and the re-inflation of egos deflated through COVID.
Since I'm no manager, I can't figure out why it's so difficult to manage people working remotely... For me is the trust. Managers have a hard time trusting that employees are typing away 99% of the time, like we're all still in an assembly line making toys.
I also found interesting the dependency graphs. I'm currently in multiple teams of more than 5 people. No wonder it's so hard to know what people are working on.
Cheeky question: could the difference between large companies and smaller ones be that a lot of these smaller companies are VC-funded and care more about employee engagement than value for customers?
Brilliant piece as ever Bruce. The key focus on Trust & culture is critical imho. On that, I was reminded the other day about a brilliant quote by Vaclav Havel: "Seek the company of those who are looking for truth - run from those who have found it". Going to do a wee post on that when I get a minute too!
I am always skeptical about raging reviews of calendar purges; sure, we have done it as well at Dropbox (although that was before I joined so I have no first-hand experience). But I believe the number of meetings per employee is not necessarily an important metric for measuring organisational effectiveness. It is often said that remote work increased the number of meetings but that is to be expected because even a coffee chat with a colleague is now a calendar invite. Instead of measuring meetings to assess company health, companies should measure how much time their employees spend on "deep work" - and make sure there's enough room for that!
But if Microsoft Teams data says that the average hybrid worker spends 20 hours in meetings. then I'd question how much deep work can sit in the rest. I can't believe messages and emails would take less than the remaining 20 hours.
That is true. I am not quite sure though whether this is the study from early in the pandemic where teams had not yet learned how to work effectively in a remote setting (i.e. working async whenever possible). At least to me it seems there is now a better meeting hygience. And yes, of course, this may have something to do with purges as well.
Great piece on bonuses. Great to hear self determination theory get a mention too. To often firms try and buy their way out of giving autonomy,feeling of progression and purpose through retention payments.
The return to work is an interesting debate and I'm saddened by the exponential rise of regressive managemt practices that demonstrate a lack of trust and an infered presenteeism that doesn't feel future focussed at all. The approach seems to be hankering back to the building of physical empires and the re-inflation of egos deflated through COVID.
I have a hybrid team and it works very well.
This was a great read!
Since I'm no manager, I can't figure out why it's so difficult to manage people working remotely... For me is the trust. Managers have a hard time trusting that employees are typing away 99% of the time, like we're all still in an assembly line making toys.
I also found interesting the dependency graphs. I'm currently in multiple teams of more than 5 people. No wonder it's so hard to know what people are working on.
Totally - I did a trend deck a couple of months ago and one of the big points was 'Trust is the basis of good culture' https://www.brucedaisley.com/work-in-2024-deck
Keeping track of all the people in organisations is a full time job in itself!
This is a great deck! Lots of interesting information! Thanks for sharing
I have friends who sell software that tracks everything done on a company computer. They're selling like water in the desert.
Indeed it's a full time job. And companies want to automate as much as possible. Hard to see "trust" growing much with this kind of trend
Cheeky question: could the difference between large companies and smaller ones be that a lot of these smaller companies are VC-funded and care more about employee engagement than value for customers?
having worked at smaller firms nothing is more important than hitting the numbers at a smaller firm
Brilliant piece as ever Bruce. The key focus on Trust & culture is critical imho. On that, I was reminded the other day about a brilliant quote by Vaclav Havel: "Seek the company of those who are looking for truth - run from those who have found it". Going to do a wee post on that when I get a minute too!
Send me the post when you do it. I love it
I am always skeptical about raging reviews of calendar purges; sure, we have done it as well at Dropbox (although that was before I joined so I have no first-hand experience). But I believe the number of meetings per employee is not necessarily an important metric for measuring organisational effectiveness. It is often said that remote work increased the number of meetings but that is to be expected because even a coffee chat with a colleague is now a calendar invite. Instead of measuring meetings to assess company health, companies should measure how much time their employees spend on "deep work" - and make sure there's enough room for that!
But if Microsoft Teams data says that the average hybrid worker spends 20 hours in meetings. then I'd question how much deep work can sit in the rest. I can't believe messages and emails would take less than the remaining 20 hours.
That is true. I am not quite sure though whether this is the study from early in the pandemic where teams had not yet learned how to work effectively in a remote setting (i.e. working async whenever possible). At least to me it seems there is now a better meeting hygience. And yes, of course, this may have something to do with purges as well.
Here you go - it's from Nick Bloom last August. https://www.makeworkbetter.info/p/fixing-work-a-broader-perspective?utm_source=%2Fsearch%2Fhybrid&utm_medium=reader2#:~:text=You%20might%20have,keeping%20people%20busy.