{"id":582,"date":"2019-02-27T08:04:39","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T13:04:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jebware.com\/blog\/?p=582"},"modified":"2019-02-27T12:36:04","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T17:36:04","slug":"where-is-your-teams-center-of-gravity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jebware.com\/blog\/?p=582","title":{"rendered":"Where is your team\u2019s center of gravity?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As more workers push for remote work, we\u2019ve begun trying to find a common vocabulary to classify how well an organization supports its remote workers. \u00a0There\u2019s the idea of \u201cremote-friendly\u201d vs. \u201cremote-first\u201d — how do your teams tools and processes enable your remote teammates to succeed?\u00a0 The problem is that these terms are very subjective – it\u2019s hard to assess yourself well with this standard.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have worked on teams with various remote and distributed configurations, and there’s one factor that seems to determine whether remote employees can succeed — I’m calling it the “center of gravity.” \u00a0Where is your team\u2019s center of gravity?\u00a0 Let me show you a few examples.<\/span><\/p>\n

The nominally “remote-friendly” team<\/h5>\n

\"If<\/a><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve decided to be remote-friendly, which means letting a few of your good people move back to their hometown, or closer to family, or just stop coming into the office. \u00a0But with the majority of the team still in the office, your center of gravity is in the office<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>This sets you up for failure.<\/b> \u00a0The majority of communication is going to happen in the office over a cubicle wall, or over coffee. \u00a0When you have a meeting, everyone in the office huddles in a conference room around one shared microphone while the remote employees struggle to hear, and can\u2019t keep up. \u00a0This type of \u201cremote-friendly\u201d is anything but.<\/span><\/p>\n

The majority-remote team<\/h5>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Another straightforward example: with most of the team working remotely, your center of gravity is now in remote-land. \u00a0Your default modes of communication move to remote-friendly tools. Instead of conversations over the cubicle, they\u2019re happening in Slack. \u00a0Instead of the conference-room-plus-crummy-audio situation above, everyone calls in from their own desk, setting a level playing field.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They may have lost the center of gravity, but people in the office aren’t put into a weaker position, relative to remote workers.\u00a0 They have the same access to the same tools as the remote workers.\u00a0\u00a0Everyone can contribute, everyone <\/span>can be heard.<\/span><\/p>\n

This works well, <\/span>but a lot of companies think they can’t get any work done with most of their workers out of the office. There is, however, another configuration I’ve seen, and the results may surprise you.<\/span><\/p>\n

The distributed team<\/h5>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a distributed team. \u00a0It has the same amount of remote workers as the first example (the in-office center of gravity) except now the in-office contingent is split up among several different offices. \u00a0Our visual metaphor breaks down a bit here, because the new \u201ccenter\u201d just depends on how we arrange the faces. So instead of taking the top-down view of the team, let\u2019s draw that same team from any one worker\u2019s point of view:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Even though the majority of people are in an<\/em> office, from the perspective of any individual teammate, the majority of the team is somewhere else<\/em>.\u00a0 This forces the team to adopt remote-first tools and processes, even with a mostly in-office team.<\/span><\/p>\n

This theory is based on my own observations, which are admittedly a small sample size. \u00a0Have you seen something different? Tell me about it<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks to my colleague Mike Rooney for suggesting an improvement to this post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As more workers push for remote work, we\u2019ve begun trying to find a common vocabulary to classify how well an organization supports its remote workers. \u00a0There\u2019s the idea of \u201cremote-friendly\u201d vs. \u201cremote-first\u201d — how do your teams tools and processes enable your remote teammates to succeed?\u00a0 The problem is that these terms are very subjective … Continue reading “Where is your team\u2019s center of gravity?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"twitterCardType":"summary_large_image","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"http:\/\/jebware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/office-center-1.png","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jebware.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jebware.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jebware.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jebware.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jebware.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jebware.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":592,"href":"https:\/\/jebware.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions\/592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jebware.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jebware.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jebware.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}