Where we work has become a ubiquitous debate. How often do people need to share space to do their jobs well? How do we make a world of hybrid work productive?
It is an important topic that we must consider alongside the equally important issue of the way we work.
How can we make the most of the time we spend together, wherever that is? How can we maximize people’s time and optimize the collective capacity to make progress on a particular project or problem?
This came to mind during a recent mentoring session. My mentee was a project manager who was overseeing a complex IT program and bringing together multiple teams from across the company, including some senior people. They had a workshop coming up and were concerned about whether everyone was on the same page.
“Have you thought about preliminary interviews?”
It was a simple suggestion, but a relevant one under the circumstances. I suggested that they approach the various team leaders and ask for 15 minutes to discuss the project, their perspective and what they hoped to achieve with the workshop.
The next time we spoke, they had done this and were happy with the results. Seniors were much more approachable than they had feared. The differences were smaller than expected. With the right foundation, the workshop had been a success.
Not only was this a great example of proactive project management – and indeed of ‘managing up’ – it was also a lesson in how small interventions can make a difference and the importance of closing the gaps that can arise in complex projects.
I’ve been involved in enough of these things in my career to know that even small deviations can lead to significant friction. When someone from the outside comes in to assess progress and make recommendations, they often conclude that the two camps are not that far apart. Yet within those camps, a siege mentality has developed and they believe that the differences are huge. They think they disagree far more often than they actually do.
Global SVP for Professional and Educational Services at F5.
Building bridges in three steps
These kinds of issues are particularly relevant today, as physical distance often drives people into their boxes and makes it harder to reach the consensus you need. People start working in a bubble consisting of themselves and their immediate team. Tunnel vision sets in and it becomes harder to see a shared problem from other perspectives.
That’s why I believe it’s more important than ever for teams to work on breaking down these silos and take a deliberate approach to building consensus. The steps to achieve this are simple, but in my experience across multiple organizations, they’re often not taken.
The first thing you need is a clear problem statement. Something that sets out what a team or group of teams is trying to achieve. The language is really important, because small differences in terminology can hide big differences in perspective. Until you agree on the words, you can’t set a direction for the project. It’s worth investing time in this as early as possible. Whatever you agree on then becomes a north star for the project.
The second imperative is preparation, especially for the time spent together. As I advised my mentor, if you are organizing a workshop or group meeting of any significance, leave nothing to chance. Talk to the participants, get their perspective, and anticipate problems. Build relationships so that you don’t have to start from scratch in a major meeting. Make sure people feel heard and understood, and that no one is waiting for a problem that they will only reveal later.
Finally, if you do encounter a real stumbling block, don’t assume that you have to address it right away. Be willing to set aside a difficult problem if it means making progress on other fronts. Once you’ve pushed a project past a certain point, your problem may resolve itself, or it may help to bring in an independent third party to act as an arbiter. The one thing you shouldn’t do is get bogged down in a single problem and allow it to undermine the project as a whole. (I wish I’d known this earlier in my career: as I often tell my mentees, the lessons I share are often based on what I should have done rather than what I actually did.)
High value on time
These simple techniques are more important than ever when we’re working in ways that promote distance and can inadvertently create division. If you want consensus, you may have to work harder than you used to to plan it, encourage it, and see it through to the finish line. If we spent a little bit of energy thinking about where people should be working and investing in facilitating how they collaborate, I think everyone would benefit – whether it’s at home, in the office, or somewhere in between. But this doesn’t happen by accident. You have to plan it, invest time in it, and make it a priority. If you manage the project, coordinate the people, and value people’s time, you’ll be amazed at how many problems solve themselves.
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