🌿🧭🌳 OD22: Effective teams in uncertain environments ∙ Remote work vs. distributed work ∙ OD goodies
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1. Effective teams in uncertain environments
Our first pick this week comes from the world of social and economic policy and governance. Ben French, part of the Oxford Policy Management team, identifies three critical areas to focus on when setting up teams able to respond effectively to emerging challenges in uncertain environments:
Take time to build teams.
The investment in time will pay off as teams find ways to work more effectively.
We consistently underestimate the time required to bring people together and at worst don't invest in it at all.
Mike Woolcock's term 'useful struggles' used to describe the creative tension and dissent that good teams need is a useful concept here.
Within this context leaders must take time to think about the teams they are building.
Invest in building your team’s story.
The story a team tells itself defines the boundaries of the team, what they are trying to accomplish, and for what reason.
In a crisis, the faster we arrive at this one guiding story, the easier it is for the team to work together.
For teams working in volatile and uncertain environments we have found that static narratives do not work, and neither will a narrative that frames the problem in terms of winning and losing.
Make sure everyone has the same map.
Every team brings a set of mental models with them to their work.
The mental models, or frameworks, are like maps. They help guide how people think and give them directions on where to go next.
Frameworks by their very nature close down options and points of view. But they also provide a simple and easy reference point through which teams can quickly understand each other.
Without simple common frameworks, most teams would struggle to work together. It’s like giving a group of individuals different varieties of maps and telling them to all arrive at the same place.
A useful framework for organisations has three characteristics: 1. easily understood and relevant; 2. looks towards the future; 3. simple and user friendly
Remote work vs. distributed work
There’s so much content on remote work circulating on the internet, most of it written in the past couple of months. If we’re aiming for organizational performance in the current global context, we think that we should be discussing more about distributed work instead.
John Maeda has a visual approach of the topic - here are some snapshots from his CX Report pre-release that we found particularly insightful, along with some of our comments.
The main nuance here is about working together to achieve performance, even when you are not in the same place as your colleagues.
Take note of the three factors and their variation: same space, same time, same mindset.
Even though the examples above might come across as a bit exaggerated, it’s the distinction between cooperation and collaboration that counts. Being deliberate about when you need cooperation and when you need collaboration.
The “time like a place” comparison is probably the most powerful idea that we found in John’s deck. It invites being deliberate in deciding how to use time in the world of working together. Food for thought.
Explore the whole “Distributed Work / Remote Work / Work as Computational Experiences” article:
OD Goodies
Curious about more resources on leading organizations?
Here’s a section with very short descriptions and links.
Hofstede Insights, SPI and the European Commission have partnered to create CUBE IN - Cultural Understanding for Business Expansion and INnovation, an online library where you can learn about the cultures and customs of various countries.
Joost from the Corporate Rebels has written about Mintzberg’s Continuum of Managing, detailing maximal, participative, shared, distributed, supportive and minimal managing.
Gartner’s 9 Future of Work Trends Post-COVID-19 is worth skimming. Trend #9 talks about an increase in organization complexity, which “will create challenges for leaders as operating models evolve”.
MIT Sloan and Deloitte Insights invite organizational leaders to invest in designing opportunity marketplaces.
The OrgDev newsletter is curated by Raluca and Bülent Duagi, the team behind Sense & Change. We work as OD Advisers to high performing cross-functional teams, guiding strategy execution and increasing team effectiveness in complex and uncertain contexts.