Week 9 - Collaboration and the Future PDF

Week 9 - Collaboration and the Future Wednesday, 12 July 2023 9:03 PM Managing People Page 1 Lecture Friday, 8 September 2023 6:11 PM • Collaboration • Work is more flexible but digital overload is still a risk • Takes a lot of time which we do not always manage well • Coordination headwind ...

Week 9 - Collaboration and the Future Wednesday, 12 July 2023 9:03 PM Managing People Page 1 Lecture Friday, 8 September 2023 6:11 PM • Collaboration • Work is more flexible but digital overload is still a risk • Takes a lot of time which we do not always manage well • Coordination headwind  the 'inescapable' force that makes life in successful organisations increasingly miserable.  When organisations grow larger, the structure and dynamics of the system come to dominate • Working with different stakeholders • Happiest moment at work are normally with other people, interacting with others • Collaborating can be fun • What are the key ingredients for a good meetings?  Punctuality  Right people, stakeholders  Prime for meeting  Technology challenges  Clarity of actions, ownership and timeliness of action  Walking meeting is also good for health • Women are expected to look good so will spend and energy to prepare for this • Meetings are partly self-inflicted • The future of work • Where we work is changing  Remote and hybrid work have altered how people structure their workdays □ Days are longer □ More (but shorter) meetings □ Working across time zones □ Fitting work around life • Pandemic accelerated of 30% of projected growth • A lot of change happening with work plans stabilising around 40% working from home • WFH saves 72 min per day with 40% spent on extra work. Employers need to consider this. • Increased geographic dispersion of teams through hiring • Used to be 2 peaks but now 3 peaks (after dinner)  Can be more balanced lifestyle or overwork behaviour • Technical solutions available • Flexible collaboration modes  Timing - synchronous and asynchronous  Location - Remote/Distributed and onsite • Individual solutions • Challenge beliefs that promote over-collaboration • Improve structure to preserve focus time • Alter behaviours to increase efficiency • Certain beliefs get translated into certain behaviours and norms • How do the times when I preserved time for myself make me a better colleague? • Collective solutions • Meeting-free / enhanced productivity days • Predictable, structured flexibility • Allocate Chief Collaboration Officers Managing People Page 2 • Allocate Chief Collaboration Officers • Ask "when am I supposed to be at the meeting?" • Your future • Vampire moment - no-return decisions • For sustained flourishing., we need to close gap between our current and future selves • Will you be there for me when things go right? Managing People Page 3 Collaborative Overload Wednesday, 12 July 2023 9:03 PM Link: https://1drv.ms/b/s!Avqcu-_gQmL_gew2ZQb6KmvLnDUQmQ?e=ocRS7M THE SITUATION Over the past two decades, the amount of time managers and employees spend on collaborative work has ballooned. At many companies people now spend about 80% of their time in meetings or answering colleagues’ requests. THE PROBLEM Although the benefits of collaboration are well documented, the costs often go unrecognized. When demands for collaboration run too high or aren’t spread evenly through the organization, workflow bottlenecks and employee burnout result. THE SOLUTION Leaders must learn to better manage collaboration in their companies by mapping supply and demand, eliminating or redistributing work, and incentivizing people to collaborate more efficiently • Introduction ○ As business becomes increasingly global and cross-functional, silos are breaking down, connectivity is increasing, and teamwork is seen as a key to organizational success. ○ Collaboration leads to too much time spent on other activities than their own, causing stress, burn out and turnover. ○ The distribution of collaborative work is often extremely lopsided. As people become known for being both capable and willing to help, they are drawn into projects and roles of growing importance. Their giving mindset and desire to help others quickly enhances their performance and reputation. ○ Escalating citizenship fuels the demands placed on top collaborators which eventually turns into helpful employees becoming institutional bottlenecks • Precious Personal Resources ○ Three types of collaborative resources  Informational - knowledge and skills expertise  Social - awareness, access and position in a network which can be used to help colleagues better collaborate  Personal - one's own time and energy ○ Informational and social resources can be shared without depleting collaborators supply but time and energy is finite ○ Two ways to resolve this problem:  streamlining and redistributing responsibilities for collaboration  Rewarding effective contributions. • Redistributing the Work ○ Any effort to increase your organization’s collaborative efficiency should start with an understanding of the existing supply and demand ○ Three levers  Encourage Behavioural change □ Show the most active and overburdened helpers how to filter and prioritize requests; give them permission to say no (or to allocate only half the time requested); and encourage them to make an introduction to someone else when the request doesn’t draw on their own unique contributions. □ Less ad-hoc requests and more training, coaching and mentoring □ Requests for time-sapping reviews and approvals can be reduced in many riskaverse cultures by encouraging people to take courageous action on decisions Managing People Page 4 averse cultures by encouraging people to take courageous action on decisions they should be making themselves, rather than constantly checking with leaders or stakeholders.  Leverage technology and physical space □ Make informational and social resources more accessible and transparent. □ colocate highly interdependent employees to facilitate brief and impromptu face-to-face collaborations, resulting in a more efficient exchange of resources  Consider structural changes □ Shift decision rights to more-appropriate people in the network □ Use "utility" players • Rewarding Effective Collaboration ○ Organizations should track collaboration and individual achievements, using tools such as network analysis, peer recognition programs, and value-added performance metrics. ○ Efficient sharing of informational, social, and personal resources should also be a prerequisite for positive reviews, promotions, and pay raises ○ Leaders must learn to recognize, promote, and efficiently distribute the right kinds of collaborative work, or their teams and top talent will bear the costs of too much demand for too little supply. Managing People Page 5 Manage Your Team's Collective Time Wednesday, 12 July 2023 9:03 PM Link: https://1drv.ms/b/s!Avqcu-_gQmL_gew3Sf1o6hcdJL6gkA?e=7F7Ter • Introduction ○ Time management is a group endeavour. The payoff goes far beyond morale and retention. ○ The real problem is how we manage our collective time—how we work together to get the job done. This where the opportunity for productivity gains lies. ○ They put the ownership of how a team works into the hands of team members, who are empowered and incentivized to optimize their collective time. As a result, teams collaborate better. They streamline their work. They meet deadlines. ○ Teams that set a goal of structured time off—and, crucially, meet regularly to discuss how they'll work together to ensure that every member takes it—have more open dialogue, engage in more experimentation and innovation, and ultimately function better. • Creating "Enhanced" Productivity Days ○ Every task can be approached in a variety of ways and that any given team can often find far more efficient ways to get things done ○ Examples of time based interventions:  Predictable working days - Create off the clock time or more consistent workday hours for 24/7 cultures  Control of our lives - Designate periods of time off during normal week for teams working very long hours, especially during peak periods  Set up quiet, uninterrupted time, including meeting-free time.  Enhanced productivity days, meeting free day for own personal work • Building a grassroots movement ○ To help workers manage their time, we should stop telling individuals to change themselves and start empowering them to act together to change the way they work ○ team time management can mitigate the problem of overworked and overstressed employees while making the organization better at doing its core work. Managing People Page 6 Satya Nadella is Building the Future Wednesday, 12 July 2023 9:07 PM Link: Satya Nadella is building the future | Re:Thinking with Adam Grant • Need to find sense of purpose and mission • Look to what systems, processes and behaviours makes the company successful and not successful and re-inforce or get it off as needed • Triple peaks - peak productive in the morning in afternoon and before bed time • Linked to WFH being a dial, need to rethink how people collaborate, learn and use physical space • Success of company relies on model management care, on managers • Psychological safety is important to allow people to express themselves. Can be done via accepting criticism publicly Managing People Page 7 Will AI Fix Work? Wednesday, 12 July 2023 9:11 PM Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/will-ai-fix-work • the fix can't come soon enough. The pace of work has increased exponentially—along with the crush of data, information, and always-on communications. People are struggling to shoulder the weight of it all, while business leaders feel pressure to increase productivity amid economic uncertainty. We spend more and more of our days separating the signal from the noise—at the expense of creativity. • “This new generation of AI will remove the drudgery of work and unleash creativity" • Three key take ideas 1. Digital debt is costing us innovation i. We’re all carrying digital debt: the inflow of data, emails, meetings, and notifications has outpaced humans’ ability to process it all. And the pace of work is only intensifying. Everything feels important, so we spend our workdays trying to get out of the red. ii. In a world where creativity is the new productivity, digital debt is more than an inconvenience—it’s impacting business. iii. Take action: 1) Identify and address your organization’s productivity disruptors with insights from employee listening. 2) Radically rethink the workday. As AI frees up time and energy, protect focus time for the creative work that leads to innovation. 3) Think of meetings as a digital artifact and not just a point in time. Encourage people to leverage AI-powered intelligent meeting recaps, transcripts, and recordings to engage with meetings how and when it works best for them. 2. There’s a new AI-employee alliance i. employees are more eager for AI to lift the weight of work than they are afraid of job loss to AI ii. Take action: 1) Bring leaders together across the organization to create guardrails that help people experiment safely and responsibly with AI. 2) Be intentional and programmatic. Like any platform shift, adopting AI at scale requires change management. Pick specific disciplines, processes, and workflows to test and learn, and identify evangelists to lead the charge. 3) As you begin to adopt AI, deploy it where people need the most relief based on your organization’s pain points and challenges. 3. Every employee needs AI aptitude i. Skills like critical thinking and analytical judgment, complex problem solving, and creativity and originality are new core competencies ii. human-AI collaboration will be the next transformational work pattern—and the ability to work iteratively with AI will be a key skill for every employee. iii. Take action: 1) Help people embrace a new way of working, starting with building AI aptitude— from practicing prompt engineering to fact-checking and verifying AI-generated content. 2) Leverage learning resources and crowdsource best practices from employees as they adapt to AI as copilot. 3) Consider how roles and functions can evolve alongside AI, creating opportunities for reinvention. • The Path Forward ○ AI will create a whole new way of working Managing People Page 8