Remote Not Distant Book Review
“For decades, business experts have glorified ‘collaboration’ as a way for organisations to be more productive and innovative. However, there was never a lot of evidence that collaboration was the key to either innovation or productivity - and now there is even less.
A meta-analytic review of over 800 teams shows that individuals are more likely to generate a higher number of original ideas when they don’t collaborate with others. The push for hyper-collaboration drains people. It creates collaboration burnout and may be just as likely to undermine performance as to enhance it.”
This is one of many bold claims that Gustavo Razzetti lays out in his book Remote Not Distant: Design a Company Culture That Will Help You Thrive in a Hybrid Workplace. You would think collaboration would be more important than ever in a company where some people are working remotely and others in an office. And you would be right.
Razzetti reframes this traditional approach of collaboration as being about knowing when it’s necessary through original frameworks that are useful for L&D professionals, founders and trainers tasked with developing hybrid teams. Read on to discover what some of these frameworks are and why this book is worth reading.
Five steps for building a resilient hybrid workforce
Razzetti’s thesis throughout the book is that you can build a strong and productive hybrid workforce in five steps:
Resetting the culture
Reimagining a shared future
Reignite belonging
Rethinking collaboration
Release agility
To do this at the most basic levels, it’s important to understand and define the different kinds of hybrid work models. Razzetti explains there are four:
Remote-friendly or ‘office’ first: The traditional method of being in the office with some flexibility to work remotely. For Razetti, office first is “a frustrating model that reflects the gap between what senior leaders want and what employees expect.”
Fixed hybrid or ‘buckets’: A company will determine a set of categories that employees fall into, and there is little input from staff. Razetti believes “the downside of this model is that it creates an unequal workplace. Some people have a lot of freedom and flexibility, while others have none. Also, many assumptions behind the categories are based on how people used to work rather than exploring what the future could look like.”
Partly remote or ‘collaboration days’: Employees are expected to work on site most of the time but have the flexibility to work remotely a few days a week. This is different from the office first model because employees can choose the days they want to work from home.
Razetti highlights, “the problem with this model is that it’s still office-centric. Although it provides more flexibility to teams, it’s based on the assumption that people need to be together to do great work. Most importantly, collaboration is structured around a schedule rather than a project or different modes of work.”
Flexible hybrid of flexible schedule: Staff have the power to choose their own working hours and location, and teams have more agency.
While this seems to be Razetti’s favourite model, he acknowledges “the biggest challenge is that it’s less predictable. For example, it makes it harder to assess needs such as office space. It can also promote proximity bias.”
Being clear on these work model definitions is a good starting point for Razetti’s five steps, which he reinforces with various practical concepts.
Psychological safety ladders and ritual development
There are two concepts that stand out for me. The first is Razetti’s Psychological Safety Ladder. He defines psychological safety as a ladder that people can scale or fall down depending on their behaviours. There are three rungs to climb to make sure the highest amount of psychological safety is achieved:
Level 1: Welcome
“Many people confuse ‘feeling safe’ with being risk-averse. That’s because they get stuck at level 1. The purpose of developing an environment of high psychological safety is to promote diverse thinking and innovation.”
Level 2: Courageous conversations
“Courageous conversations are critical for teams to perform at their best. This stage is about feeling safe enough to contribute your unique skills and talents, speak up about tough issues, disagree or think differently, and ask for help. Level 2 invites team members to constantly reexamine facts and remain objective.”
Level 3: Innovation
“Innovation addresses the end result of high-performing teams. It’s not just about developing new products or services but also about coming up with new solutions that help people work better. Level 3 is about feeling safe in challenging the status quo, using questions to explore what’s possible, making mistakes, and experimenting.”
The second concept is the author’s perspective on rituals being crucial to building a strong team culture, and how rituals are different from habits and routines. Habits are small acts done regularly. Routines require more effort than habits and may involve more planning and thinking. Rituals are acts that develop profound emotional meaning. They require triggers, have a beginning, middle and end, they transform behaviour, and they can be symbolic.
Some team rituals Razzeti suggests are:
Celebrating failure to increase mistake tolerance and develop a learning culture.
Run friendly sparring sessions between teams that incorporate structured feedback.
Create ‘design detentions’ of partial or full days where teams gather to do deep work without interruption from emails, Slack and meetings.
Remote Not Distant is chock full of helpful exercises for leaders and training providers to build into their learning workshops and cultures. Hybrid working will continue to develop in the years to come, yet the tactics and strategies Razzeti lays out in his book will be, in my opinion, timeless.