Hybrid Collaboration and Innovation

Had enough meetings? Had enough video meetings? If hybrid and remote work stick around as may be the case, Keith Ferrazzi, chairman and founder of the consultancy Ferrazzi Greenlight, wants the meetings to be shorter, not as often and much more productive.

After more than a year of remote work, some employers have begun ushering employees back into the office and more plan to do so in the coming months — at times against the wishes of employees themselves, some who would rather quit than return to their desks.

Recently, Keith has been at the forefront of remote team transitions since his published research in 2012-2015 appeared in Harvard Business Review. Keith Ferrazzi & Peter Diamandis talks about how leaders collaborate & lead their team in a remote settings.

Today’s thinking about remote work and virtual teams returning to the office is full of wrong-headedness and academic research that looks at failed use cases rather than best practice. 

As we move into this new paradigm of business post-pandemic, the hybrid workforce—where some team members work remote and some from the office—is our new reality

In teams, there’s no absence of innovative ideas, but rather, the unwillingness to speak courageously. Keith Ferrazzi sat down with Jim McKelvey to define best practices for boosting team innovation.

People have foretold the future of work as long as there’s been a modern notion of work. There has been more change in how we work in the last two months than we’ve seen in the last 20 years. The pandemic made change a necessity, not a choice, and most of us didn’t have the luxury of time to find and share best practices in the new ways of doing work.

Let's start by remembering why companies have strategic off-sites in the first place. The overall goal is to figure out the best strategy for a business, a process that can be broken into five major steps, each of which can be performed better in a virtual environment:

The two most common time-wasters during a meeting are lack of engagement during a meeting and the existence of conflict avoidance. Try this the next time you have a large meeting and see the results for yourself.

Distance can absolutely be destructive to a business, unless you leverage the tools described in this video. Try these and let me know down below what happens to your team's productivity.

“Back to normal” is a dangerous nostalgia. Like a fire that liberates pinecones lying in wait on the forest floor, this crisis is both a great tragedy, and a chance for rebirth. In this crisis, technologies that were mostly bought by early adopters are now, immediately, suddenly, everywhere. The second-order impacts are massive.

Peer-to-peer accountability is a new muscle that our teams need to regularly exercise in order to fully develop, but once unleashed, your colleagues will realize that they need to own one another’s success. Only then will they cross the finish line together.

Above all, when collaborating, Candor is King. Team members must be willing to speak courageously in service of the mission and each other. The best way to reinforce the power of candor is to reward naysayers. You’ll get more criticism, but with criticism comes critical thinking.

Over the course of the last three weeks, as corporate America has made the transition from meetings in conference rooms and common spaces to Zoom calls and other online sessions, I’m struck by the number of confident, competent executives who’ve confessed to me that they’re struggling to lead teams in the virtual world.

Leadership - The ability for our leaders to be an extra ordinary coaches the way the are used to be are now strained.

Going back through that research now, I’ve put together a comprehensive list of some simple do’s and don’ts to help you get the most out of your next virtual meeting.

Physical distance is not the death knell to collaborating effectively and forming strong relationships. In fact, it may be irrelevant altogether.

Whether you’re a virtual team leader or team member, there’s no honeymoon period anymore. The pressure to be productive from Day 1 is enormous.

Technology has too often been disruptive. It sets us on edge and discourages us from coming together. But I’m seeing tools leverage the relationships and discussion threads captured in team interactions over time to foster very human connections.

Setting up small, high-performing virtual teams has enormous potential for companies to increase sales, penetrate new markets, improve business processes and come up with the next generation of disruptive innovations. But putting together a great team is tricky.

Why is miscommunication common in the virtual workplace? Lack of context. And it’s not just that e-mails and phone conversations lack a person’s visual reaction to what you’ve said.

We all tend to trust what we can see. If someone is always in the office early and leaves late, you’d probably assume he is a dedicated, hard-working employee. But he might actually be the least productive of his co-workers

Such benefits, though, can only be obtained by pro-actively managing the online discussion board in certain ways. Otherwise, it will likely become just another task that team members always find themselves too busy for. To avoid that, here are some best practices:

Teams can’t function well when co-workers don’t trust one another. Building and maintaining trust in the traditional, physical workplace is difficult enough, but the process is even tougher in a virtual environment, where people often have to work with people they haven’t met in person.

Teleconferences can be a huge waste of time. But, when conducted properly, they can be both efficient and effective, even more so than face-to-face meetings.

Let’s start by remembering why companies have strategic off-sites in the first place. The overall goal is to figure out the best strategy for a business, a process that can be broken into five major steps, each of which can be performed better in a virtual environment:

A systematic approach to collaborative problem-solving .Definition of participant buy-in and a measurable method to determine final outcome. A series of exercises demonstrating the creation of a safe place where innovation and creativity can flourish.