17/7/2020 Remote Work and Distributed Organisations

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Remote Work and Distributed

Organisations
Jon Ingham Follow
HR Trainer at joningham.com 6 1 0
Iʼve been speaking at a few online conferences recently about building on remote work to
create distributed organisations.
I like this distinction because many people have been calling remote work ‘distributed workʼ.
But I donʼt think it is. Or at least it doesnʼt have to be.
The best well known example of equating the two terms is probably Matt Mullenweg, CEO of
Automattic (Wordpress and Tumblr) who notes: “This is not how I envisioned the distributed
work revolution taking hold. Millions of people will get the chance to experience days without
long commutes, or harsh inflexibility… This might be a chance for a great reset in terms of how
we work.”
(That was before people started to return to the office of course, and the reset he was writing
about started to fold back in on itself.)
But the main thing is that whilst people have been working at home, ie they have been
geographically distributed, their work has remained largely centralised.
I wrote about this in ‘The Social Organizationʼ, using Paul Baranʼs ideas on network
communications which lie behind the internet from 55 years ago, applied to human or social
networks. Of course this isnʼt a perfect analogy but it serves to describe the main differences
between the main forms of communication, which are centralised (as seen in functions);
decentralised (teams and communities) and distributed (which we / I just call networks, even
though of course, all three forms of communication are networks).

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Distributed communication networks are really important. They are based on weak ties, people
who do not know each other well, and hence are vital to innovation and change. We need more
of it, not less.
There have been some great examples of distributed networking during the pandemic. Iʼd
point in particular to:
McKinseyʼs network of crisis management teams
The success of Haierʼs platform based network
The UKʼs ventilator challenge:

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And just because someone is at home makes them geographically distant, but it doesnʼt make
their work distributed, unless we make it so, or it emerges as such.
However, remote work using digital technology does enable distributed working, because the
technology enables it more easily than having to bump into lots of different people in the
corridors at the office.
Actually, itʼs not just more important, itʼs strategically important. Whether one organisation can
distribute work better than another is a potential source of competitive advantage. That is, itʼs
what I describe as creating value.
Whereas whether someone works at home or not is just about efficiency, or value for money. It
may make a difference to a person's wellbeing and productivity, but it doesnʼt change anything
fundamental about them or their work, meaning that itʼs not going to change the organisationʼs
strategic differentiation.
Or itʼs less likely to, anyway. Unless, for example, it enables the company to do something else
significantly different, like recruit much better people because everyone that company is trying
to recruit wants to work from home.
Just because people are communicating with each other over Zoom doesnʼt do it.
So my hope at the beginning of the pandemic was that this time would see an upswing in
distributed working.
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17/7/2020 Remote Work and Distributed Organisations
It hasnʼt happened. Actually, weʼve become even more centralised, or at least just more
decentralised, than before. My great reset hasnʼt had any more impact than Mullenwegʼs. Iniciar sesión Únete ahora
In my presentations, Iʼve referred to Swoop Analyticsʼ data on the adoption of Teams and
Yammer during the adoption.
No alt text provided for this image
Microsoft 365 provides people with the opportunity of using Teamsʼ modality for decentralised
chat around current questions within your project team, and Yammerʼs for distributed
knowledge sharing and re-using.
So it provides a perfect test ground for examining the changes in decentralised and distributed
communication. And what Swoop has found is that Teams / decentralised communication has
increased hugely (though we still need to get a lot better at using it), but that meanwhile,
Yammer / distributed communication hasnʼt really changed much at all. (Hopefully the new this
week integration of Yammer into Teams will help with this.)
As another example, I was listening in the SimplyIC Live internal communication conference
today and heard that BA have turned off their popular Yammer network on their dark mode
intranet. As part of their crisis communication model they want to control the message and
donʼt want it to be harvester of fake news.
BA are still listening to people, just in different ways. And I hope theyʼre plugged into the
WhatsApp group that everyone is probably using instead of Yammer now!
But are they still doing distributed communication? I doubt it. So when things start to improve,
whatʼs the chance that people are going to be clamouring to start cooperating over Yammer
again? Pretty low, Iʼd suggest.
And whatʼs the chance people are going to be able to, or want to, participate in innovating and
transforming BA out of the situation itʼs in right now. Almost none.
(Itʼs the same mentality behind the company making it so difficult to get refunds for my
cancelled flights for the various keynotes I'm no longer doing. Yes, it saves them some money
short-term, but will I want to fly with them ever again, even when safe to do so? Not so much.)
HR and OD need to be on top of this, and to be working with IT and Digital to make these tools
work, in a distributed as well as centralised or decentralised way, and then start to align the
organisation with this too.
Weʼve potentially missed the opportunity of building distributed organisations during the full
lockdown, but remote working isnʼt going to disappear (see my next article on this). So we can
still recapture the opportunity for the reset, if we're willing to do so.
For more information, see 'The Social Organization'
Jon Ingham
@joningham, http://linkedin.com/in/joningham
info@joningham.com, +44 7904 185134
Top 100 HR Tech Influencer - Human Resources Executive
HRD Thought Leader - HRD Connect
Mover and Shaker - HR magazine
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On creating truly distributed organisations, not just geographically distributed (remote) workers
#DistributedWork #DigitalTransformation #SocBiz #Collaboration #Networks #HumanResources
#OrganisationDesign
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Venkata Nemani MSP, PMP

Venkata Brace for Safe Impact. Innovation Catalyst | Mentor of Change - AIM, NITI Ayog(Policy 2 meses
Nemani steering) | Servant leader | Strategic Innovator
MSP, Decentralisation by policy Distributed by Practice Asynchronous by process Is the
PMP way forward.
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