By far the most common concern of senior leaders is developing a corporate culture that creates great work and engages both customers and employees. While those are critical characteristics, the secret to any successful culture is the answer to the question: how will work get done.

In our book, The Long Distance Team, Designing Your Team for Everyone’s Success, we introduced the “3C Model” of culture. The pillars of your company or team’s culture are Communication, Collaboration and Cohesion. When it comes to how work gets done, the most important one to focus on is collaboration.

What is collaboration?

Collaboration is how work gets done in your organization. We make a lot of assumptions about collaboration. We assume it’s done best in person. We conflate collaboration and meetings. Many teams assume for good brainstorming and innovation to occur, everyone needs to be “on the clock” at the same time.

Here are some ways to analyze how your team should collaborate, which then helps set the norms and behaviors that get you the results you want.

• Start with what work needs to be done. This isn’t how work happens now, but what are the outputs that create success. Do you have measurable indicators of success?
• Make smart decisions about what truly needs to be done synchronously. One of the big complaints today is too many meetings –virtual or otherwise. How much work really needs to be done at the same time? Does it matter that everyone processing paperwork does it between 8 and 4 in the same time zone? Most importantly, why?
• Where does co-location really add value? If you have people who aren’t thrilled with coming into the office, why insist on it? What happens there that couldn’t happen anywhere else. Take a close look at whether different work (more important, better work) can be done in the office than elsewhere.
• Think about where pre-and-post meeting work can add value. Can you have fewer and more impactful meetings by putting in some of the work pre-and-post meeting.
• What gets rewarded? (Really) A true hybrid culture supports work from anywhere and allows all team members to contribute and engage with the work. Do your systems for succession planning, career development and managing performance engage employees and reward or recognize good work no matter where it happens?

What really matters?

Understanding what work really matters is not the same as knowing how it really works. Odds are asking these questions will uncover incorrect assumptions and negative behavior that gets ignored or even rewarded. When you look at what SHOULD happen, you can make better decisions about where, when and how it occurs.

Whether you decide your work is best done in a central location, remotely, or in a hybrid matter, make that decision based on good information and not gut feelings.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wayne Turmel
Co-Founder and Product Line Manager

Wayne Turmel is the co-founder and Product Line Manager for the Remote Leadership Institute. For twenty years he’s been obsessed with helping managers communicate more effectively with their teams, bosses and customers. Wayne is the author of several books that demystify communicating through technology including Meet Like You Mean It – a Leader’s Guide to Painless & Productive Virtual Meetings, 10 Steps to Successful Virtual Presentations and 6 Weeks to a Great Webinar. His work appears frequently in Management-Issues.com.

Wayne, along with Kevin Eikenberry, has co-authored the definitive book on leading remotely, The Long-Distance Leader: Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership. Wayne and Kevin’s follow-up book, The Long-Distance Teammate, offers a roadmap for success not just for leaders, but for everyone making the transition to working remotely.

The latest book from Wayne and Kevin shows leaders how to design a team culture that has a one-team mindset and gets great results under hybrid-work conditions. You can order The Long-Distance Team: Designing Your Team for Everyone’s Success now.