Serendipity not productivity is the biggest remote working challenge

So last week I wrote that, post-pandemic, if companies wanted to retain and attract high performing employees they would have no choice but to embrace some form of permanent remote working.

Some organisations will choose to go full remote whist others will offer hybrid working by having a few employees in the office over the course of a week. Regardless of what they choose, all are going to face some challenges with this transition, and in this article I will take a look at one of the biggest concerns; the potential loss of serendipity.

Serendipity: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way

For those of us that didn’t get a chance to architect the way we were going to work remotely, it’s likely that our initial approach was to try and replicate how we worked in the office. Most of us already had the necessary tools; some form of video conference software, email, instant messaging etc. These tools worked, and made the immediate transition to WFH possible, but they are all very… transactional.

As somebody with a technical background, like many engineers I was never a big fan of ‘meetings’, and even today the word has connotations of being the antithesis of productivity. Yet, as we have transitioned to working from home, all of our interactions with one another seem to have become ‘meetings’. Scheduled events that last the templated calendar time of either 30 minutes or 1 hour; not exactly the conditions for spontaneous creativity!

“ Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.” — Steve Jobs

So if as employers we believe in the value of creativity, then we’re going to have to design opportunities for it to occur. Naturally an adoption of remote or hybrid working will change the physical office requirements for organisations and likely free-up some budget. This leaves us to consider how could we use this budget to architecture the opportunity for creativity, spontaneity and serendipity in a remote working world…

Encourage effective physical get togethers

All but the most introverted of software developers recognise the value of some in-person interactions and the majority of surveys show that most people want some time “in the office”. These in-office days should be specifically set up to promote more informal, social interactions that are not possible when remote; no cubicles, no expectation of long periods of uninterrupted time, no meetings with strict agendas etc. Let’s keep that stuff for home.

“In office” doesn’t have to be a permanent HQ. One option could be for organisations to provide co-working memberships in geographically convenient locations. Co-working spaces have been around for several years now and most cities have multiple options. Given the change in working practices, I’d expect a lot more co-working locations to pop-up post-pandemic.

Another option could be to let teams choose themselves. Provide them with their own budget to spend as they see fit on events that bring people together for a few days a month. These events could have a fairly loose, relaxed, agenda — their primary purpose being to build bonds between team members, encourage socialisation and provide the opportunity for serendipitous interactions.

Or… wait for software to solve it

The global lockdowns and prediction that the long term future of work is remote has lead to investment into a new generation of software designed specifically to address these challenges.

While it’s still early days there are number of start-ups trying to tackle this problem. The current approaches seem to be to combine some kind of top down 8-bit video game experience (think the original Legend of Zelda) where you walk around a virtual office to engage with your colleagues (https://gather.town, https://branch.gg) .

While these seem fun to try and are maybe good place to start, it’s hard not to see them as a bit silly and difficult to imagine them as the final solution to the serendipity problem. Although with new generations entering the workforce that have grown up socialising on Roblox and being taught over Zoom, who knows.

There are however some interesting premises here, the first being spatial audio; the opportunity to overhear nearby conversations that you might not be involved in that get louder as you move closer. The second is the concept of having to locate the members of your team; the fact you have to physically find your team members before you can initiate conversation may seem counter productive, but perhaps interrupting your colleagues shouldn’t be made too easy.

Conclusion

To jump to an all remote or hybrid way of working without considering the impact on serendipity could be costly in terms of innovation and creativity. While it’s great to see this problem recognised and being worked on by a number of tech start-ups, it’s early days and I don’t think software is going to solve it for us just yet.

By it’s very nature it’s not possible to force serendipity, but by moving away from the office the opportunities for it to occur naturally are reduced, and it is these opportunities that we’ll have to engineer back in. Whether this is at a co-working space, a company retreat or a re-imagined company HQ is probably not all that important, as long as teams are provided the opportunity and the space to get together in person to brainstorm, socialise and collaborate on a regular basis.

Explore this with me

Each week I’m going to do a deep dive into a different area of work that has been permanently altered by our collective experiences in lockdown. I want to look into the direct benefits and challenges these changes could bring to both employers and employees, as well as imagine some longer term second and third order effects.

Throughout this process I hope to get ideas, not only of how to re-design Meetupcall as a place to work post-lockdown, but also identify opportunities for products, features or companies we could build to tackle some of the inevitable new challenges that organisations will face.

If you re interested in exploring ways I which we can re-imagine the way we work, learn, live and interact in a post-lockdown world then then please follow me on Medium or Twitter, connect with me on LinkedIn or sign up to my Substack newsletter. New content will be published every Tuesday.