How can you succeed in hybrid work for Business Services?

I get what I measure. When Covid struck the world it became important to define what are the parameters of productivity. What we are going to measure and how we are going to measure. Team was happy that they had clear definition of what I measure, how do they get assessed and just being online doesn't add value.

It's necessary to set boundaries when working at a home office and proactively diarize your day - work, home chores, recreation and sport. It is possible to be more effective at home by aligning your work-time to your body clock. Create focus-time to deliver on core-tasks when at home and use office-time for face-to-face meetings and socialization with colleagues. Get the balance right with practice and you are on to a winner!

We use a number of tools to help the team stay connected while working from home, to maintain the collaborative environment even while remote. (1) Daily huddles - a set time for the team to come together virtually to share what they are working on and if they need any help. (2) Status on Teams/Slack - showing where they are and if available (e.g. home, office, in meeting, out for lunch etc) (3) Instant messaging app e.g. Teams/Slack - for brief questions/chats (4) Open calendars - to easily see everyone's availability We then havr regular Office days for meetings where it is beneficial to be face to face.

For a hybrid work business service to succeed there have to be not only personal infrastructure, but public one. In an environment with constant, and for an unknown amount of time, cuts of electricity and Internet, it is highly unproductive to run any kind of business service, hybrid or not. If there are also other kinds of scarcities, such as water, cooking gas, and gasoline, it does not help at all. Besides, if in that environment there is hyperinflation, hyper devaluation, and monetary exchange control, among other economic distortions, then it is almost unfeasible to run any time of business. The best thing to do is to try to flee, or pray for godfather(s)/mother(s) to beam them out of there, just like Scotty in Star Trek.

While working hybrid we use teams extensively. We make best use of teams channels and Kanban bord on Jira. Though some of the projects are waterfall and planning is done on MS Project but for daily track we use Kanban. We also make sure anything that need a bigger announcement it goes on Yammer.

Most important thing while working hybrid is Trust in-between all of us from senior leaders to the junior most employees. I have observed the communication and transparency increases trust. I help my employees to move forward with ease and this motivates them to make me successful.

Learning is employees responsibility largely but at the same time it needs me as their leader to help them understand what is in it for them, how learning is going to help them channelize their career and energies in right focused direction and keep them at pace with the changing technology.

Having the right processes (aka "rythm of business") in place is important as well. I personally work over 20 years remote, but I also go 1-2 times to one of our offices - but always with a clear agenda and plan. What helped me most to provide as much value as I can to my teams and my peers: - Weekly check-ins with my direct reports (1-1, formalized) - Occasional check-ins whenever needed - A weekly check-in with my boss(es) - Weekly, bi-weekly or in some case monthly check-ins with peers and some "relevant" colleagues in other teams - No spontaneous calls with externals - only calendly. If you combine this with good time management (another topic), you should be all set to know anytime what's going on, if in the office or remote.

I believe Hybrid needs a relook. We shall not see it as work from office or work from home or work hybrid. We shall see it as "Human Connect". How much human connect we require to be at best in our day to day jobs and we shall strive to have that human connect. It will differ from industry to industry, company to company and team to team. Leaders have to find that out. New generation is surely looking to work differently and we should all find the best for all of us to grow.

Embracing asynchronous work—where team members aren't chained to real-time communication—can bring remarkable benefits. It fosters autonomy, trust, and independence, promoting productivity and employee morale. In contrast, synchronous work can be a productivity bottleneck, tethering progress to immediate availability. The key benefits in my opinion are: - Asynchronous work emphasizes documentation and transparency. - Asynchronous work doesn't demand simultaneous online presence from employees. - Synchronous work hinders project progress by creating productivity hurdles.