BUSINESS INSIGHTS
Consensus is the magic word of hybrid work
There is often a focus on where we work , but what about the question of how we work together , regardless of where we all are . Ian Jones , Global SVP for Professional & Education Services at F5 , has learnt a lot over his career and offers his advice on how to get people to work well together , including tips on proactive project management .
The question of where we work has become a pervasive debate . How often do people need to share space to do their job well ? How do we make a world of hybrid work productive ?
It ’ s an important topic , which needs to be considered alongside the equally significant issue of how we work . How can we make the most of the time we spend together , wherever it may be ? How can we maximise peoples ’ time and optimise the collective capacity to drive progress on a given project or problem ?
These thoughts came to mind during a recent mentoring session . My mentee was a project manager overseeing a complex IT programme , bringing together multiple teams from across the business , including a number of people senior to them . A workshop was in the diary , and they were worried about getting everyone on the same page .
“ Have you considered pre-calls ?”
It was a simple suggestion , but in the circumstances a relevant one . I suggested that they approach the various team leaders and ask for 15 minutes to discuss the project , their perspective and what they hoped to get out of the workshop .
Next time we spoke , they had done this and were delighted with the results . Senior people had been much more approachable than they had feared . The differences were smaller than expected . With the right groundwork in place , the workshop was a success .
This was not only a good example of proactive project management – and indeed ‘ managing up ’ – but a lesson in how small interventions can make all the difference and of the importance of closing the gaps that can open up in complex projects .
Over my career , I have been involved in enough of these to know that even minor misalignments can lead to considerable friction . When someone comes in from the outside to review progress and make recommendations , they will often conclude that the two camps are not so far apart . Yet within those camps , a siege mentality can set in and they believe that the differences are huge . They think that they disagree much more than they do .
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