Working Remotely: Before, During and After the Pandemic

world has changed. And we will never go back to exactly where we were before March of 2020. Joining me in the studio today is my brother Dale, who's not only my business partner and great friend, but also comes with extensive project experience around the world. Ela's our producer and sound engineer and occasionally jumps in with some ideas, but she doesn't have a mic today. So we'll see, uh, waving her hands at us. And we'll know that she has something else to add.

Before we go too far, though, let's let's look at the safety side. You know, when we talk about working from home or working remotely, as opposed to perhaps where we're used to working, safety, maybe doesn't quite have the same meaning, if you were used to working in industry or working in an office building or working in a plant, you know, safety has certain things with it. But at home, I think in many cases, we take safety a little

bit more for granted. And we're not quite as determined, if you wish to pay attention to safety, it's just that this is home after all, we're very comfortable here. So when I think about safety at home, I think about little things like, you know, the tendency to put something on the stairs, you know, if you have a two story home, and you know, you just put something on the stairs so that the next time somebody is going upstairs, they'll bring it up.

But now I will tell you that, you know, I raised four daughters in the house, I'm in, and I don't think things I put on the stairs ever made it upstairs unless I brought them up. But you know, I digress. But it is a safety issue. Because of course, any thing that's left on stairs can be something that you can trip over. And you know, there's an accident kind of waiting to happen. But I think we're all

guilty of it. You know, many of us have, you know stairways in our homes that don't have handrails. Putting in a handrail, you know, it changes the dynamics, or the aesthetics, or maybe the stairway is not really all that wide. So those are safety things that we take for granted in industry and in places of business, but not so much at

home. So just safety note today, I think it's simply around paying attention to our home environment, or wherever we're working, that isn't our usual working environment, and ask ourselves is it as safe as it could be? So let's jumping into today's topic. I don't think you know, if we go back to you, and we're now in the month of March in 2021, when we're recording this. a year ago, nobody thought we would be you know, locked down in isolation, quarantine all of these good things for a year.

And so I think in many cases, we went into the pandemic thinking, we can tolerate a lot of stuff for a couple of months. And then we will get back to normal whatever that is. But here we are a year later with, in some cases, maybe not an end in sight, but some hopeful signs. But we're still working remotely in many cases and trying to make

things work. So let's talk a little bit about just generally, we'll do maybe touch on a bit of your in my experience Dale in working remotely, because we both been doing that for quite some time, long before before COVID, and then talk about some of the challenges that you know, people who perhaps have not been as familiar with working from a remote location have been experiencing.

So let's talk a little bit. You know, you working in the the kind of industrial side of the world where you both dealt with work sites, as well as having an office from home. What are some of the challenges that that posed? If you think back to those early days when you moved from that typical work environment, to getting to work from home and I say getting to work from home because in some cases it can be you know, an added value.

But it is it is change and obvious You know, there we we went through a long period of time where tools and technologies advanced rapidly and made that ability to do your job from somewhere else significantly different than it was early on. Right. So early on, you know, we did have some big challenges in terms of what work could be done where, because the tools and the technologies just weren't up for

that. And you know, the few people who worked from home put up with things, because they had a reason they had to, I think things have changed a little bit. And we've opened up more possibilities for people to work from home. And we've seen that during this, this whole pandemic, we've because of necessity, people have embraced some of the capabilities that are there and some of the tools

and technologies we have. And because of that, we've seen the ability to do jobs from home that we wouldn't have said were possible in the past. But I think it's it's a good conversation to have, that there's a difference between it being technically possible to do a job from home. And to that being the desirable thing for a given an individual or given organization or given team. right, to have that person working from home, or working remotely.

quickly. And the other challenge, of course, when we talk about working remotely, you know, is that if that was an enforced choice, it often wasn't just enforced for us, there are other people now within our home, let's say, who are also working remotely. So now we're trying to share resources, we're trying to, you know, even something as simple as sharing, you know, Wi Fi bandwidth. That

wasn't an issue in the past. So clearly, you know, it's If nothing else, this pandemic has given us exposure to a part of the working world that for many people was very, very strange and that they'd never encountered before, I think there's been some really positive things coming out of it. We've certainly seen technology grow, we've seen, you know, advances in in a lot of areas. But it also has brought about, you know, a number of challenges that many of us hadn't faced in the past.

Let's, let's step back a little bit if we can, then because there's no question that, you know, you and I have established a certain level of comfort working from home. But in both cases, we have clients we get to visit and that type of thing. And that becomes becomes our foray out of the home, but we don't have the traffic, we don't have all the rest of those good things. But I want to go back a little bit to the mental setup, when you first begin working

remotely? And what are some of the things that, you know, we stumbled across? If you wish, in that remote work that today we just take for granted? Because we've got that figured out?

Because, you know, I've known people who, you know, give them a set of headphones, some music to listen to, and a computer and it can be a laptop on a coffee table, it can be in a coffee shop, it can be sitting on a sidewalk outside of a public library on the steps or something. And they can work as effectively no matter where they are, because they can they have this ability to just kind of be into their own little world and, and, you know, be themselves. That's not everybody.

You know, for me, I think one of the things that I early on discovered was that I needed to be able to separate work life from home life. Because I was one of those people that bled those things together very easily. You know, I didn't I wasn't the type of person that had a rigid schedule. So you know, it was hard for me mentally to decide that, you know, my work day went from eight to five, and that at five o'clock things ended.

You know, the minute I had the ability to remotely check on things at eight o'clock at Night or 10 o'clock at night, when all of a sudden a thought came into my head about something to do with work. I did it. Right. So I was I was always more kind of idea driven more those things, and I was scheduled driven. And so one of the things that I discovered was I needed this ability to create a physical space. That, to me was work.

That helped me set those boundaries that helped me, you know, disconnect for periods of time, to be with my family, and to do those other things. And so you know, the office, going into an office, and not being able to use the tools outside of the office has one dynamic to it, it physically forces you into a certain setup. When you work

from home, that's gone. So now you have to, you know, if you're the type of person that absolutely needs those things, you need to know that about yourself, and you need to then recreate some of those same conditions for yourself, in your home environment that you had in your office environment.

whatever. But at the you know, at the end of the day, prior to that, it was really a bit of a moot point, because there was the conductivity wasn't there. As we built in conductivity, we started having these conversations, and it was so hard to wrap our heads around the possibility of a workforce not coming into work. And you know, people said, Yeah, it's because you want to control us and you want it? Well, some of

it was that for sure. And some of it was just, we couldn't envision that scenario, all of a sudden, pandemic hits us, and we're forced into it. And being human beings, who are while messy, also incredibly resilient. Overall, we've managed to cope pretty well through this doesn't mean that it's been perfect, and doesn't mean that we've, you know, we've liked every minute of it. But overall, it's been quite surprising how well, businesses

have managed to cope. When two years ago, they would have said it was impossible.

you use the term boundaries. You know, in many cases, depending on your personality, depending on your thinking, preferences, and so on, you know, some of us are more defined, if you wish, by certain physical boundaries, and they help us keep track of things, you know, I, I, for me, personally, it's very easy to procrastinate, when there's something that I am not quite

certain how to tackle. And so I can kind of put it off, you know, well, in the office, you didn't really get to, you know, you might put it off by doing another office task, but you wouldn't likely to get stuck doing dishes or vacuuming. You know, whereas, you know, a large part of that those boundary settings was being able to say, Alright, how do I stay focused? How do I stay on track? Now, if you happen to be a very focused person who's able to tune out all the rest of that?

You might be thinking, well, it's easy, you just don't pay attention. If on the other hand, you're visionary, big picture, big spaces, kind of thinker like I am, who struggles with focus, there's a million things at home, that could distract me. So I mean, I think to your point, we're all different, we each are approaching this differently. And there is no one size fits

all. And I think that's part of you know, an important part of today's message is that there is no one size fits all, don't get into a fisticuff argument, because the way you do it, you might think is the only way it can be done. There are so many different ways of working remotely. And one of the things I would want to encourage us as project leaders to look at is have an open mind. Yeah, you know, be able to explore why this works for one person, but doesn't work for another person.

So when we start talking policies and things like this, that's a real challenge, because those policies ultimately, you know, it's really hard for a policy to to deal with such a wide variety of preferences and, and possibilities. so, I mean, that would be my one of my first messages if you wish to us as project leaders. Keep an open mind. Let's not get stuck in the trap of my opinion is the only opinion accounts.

as organizations. Our accounting department, however, will that that took place physically in the office, and so they had to be there, you know, one time they touched a lot of paperwork, and it didn't make, you know, and obviously wouldn't have made any sense to be shipping paperwork back and forth to people's homes. But you know, as we computerized them, we became digital, some of

those things disappeared. But the idea that accounting took place in the office stuck, and there might be good reasons for that in a given industry, etc, etc. But I think the thing that would be a shame for us to lose from this going forward, is this new flexibility, and this ability to look at individual circumstances and say, Okay, "this makes sense here, this doesn't make sense, you know,

here." So, for example, you know, there are, you know, the people who employees with disabilities, okay, or disabled employees may need different accommodations than other employees. In the past, or a lot of organizations have said, we can't do that it's not possible. A lot of those possibilities we embraced and took advantage of because of COVID. So things that in the past, we said, were impossible, suddenly, were possible for everybody, because

we had no choice. You know, if we can carry forward some of those ideas, and keep those possibilities available going forward, there's some significant advantages for organizations that, you know, another example was when we implemented a lot of work from home, and work from home flexibility. So, you know, we didn't go when I was doing this, for other organizations, we didn't necessarily go to 100% work from

home model. But we would go to a flexible work arrangement where you could work from home a couple of days a week, be in the office, you know, the other days a week. One of the things that happened with that was you then had to recognize that at any moment in time, people in your meeting, you were calling a meeting, you had a project, meeting, everybody got together for that project, at any moment in time, a portion of those people may not physically be on site.

So every meeting became a remote meeting, or every meeting became a hybrid meeting. And how did you do that? How did you make it so that hybrid beings were as effective as possible? Because you introduced that as a mindset. And that flexibility was there that gave you options in all kinds of circumstances. So what happened when that one key individual private individual had to be in another country, for the project that

week? Well, that wasn't really a problem, you were used to bringing in people remotely to your meetings and engaging with people remotely. So the fact that that person wasn't physically there was didn't change anything, you know, a person who all of a sudden their child was sick, and they had to stay on the lookout for that child that day. Well, it didn't mean that that person couldn't attend the meeting.

Right, so suddenly, we got these, we got all of these great flexibility advantages that, you know, we could take advantage of in projects, and we can accommodate changes or accommodate differences or accommodate things that were going on in people's lives, and still keep ourselves incredibly effective. But that was only possible because we, we intentionally realized that we always needed to have that option open.

simply there. So for instance, it might be a cat or a dog walking by or, you know, having to for a moment, you know, talk to a child and let them know that you're on the phone. And I remember very early on when I was doing a lot of that type of work from home and so on. I used to get so uptight, over anybody, you know, thinking in any way that I was human, and that I had a cat and I had distractions, and I had, you know, so it would be like, quiet, it's like, and tried to create that sterile

office, in my home. And hopefully, if there's anything that this person endemic has taught us it's that our humanity and our vulnerability helps us to build trust with each other helps us to know and understand each other better, helps us to be better colleagues, better friends, better teammates, because we're allowed to be real. You know, and we, we have this kind of window into people's

homes. And being able to laugh about it, I had a call a couple of months ago, but with a client who, you know, had set up a specific space in his basement, and he kind of had a background, it looked quite professional. And he had, you know, a couple of awards specifically placed on a shelf behind him, obviously, he kind of created this, this whole world for himself, where he did his teams, or zoom or Google Hangouts, or whatever meetings. And so I, you know, they're very impressive, and he

was well dressed at cetera. And in the middle of the meeting, his eight year old son pokes his head into the frame and says, you know, my dad's wearing shorts. It totally changed the tone of the conversation. But he all of a sudden, it was real, it was like, this is where we are, right. So you know, I think as a kind of a departing thought would be that the remote work brings with it lots of benefits and lots of challenges. It's, we are each going to approach it

differently. And hopefully, we can learn from each other, and listen to each other, and respect that each one of us is going to deal with it a little differently. But I would also hope that the remote work allows us to understand that as human beings, we are messy, there isn't one size fits all. And we can be constantly learning how to do it better, that continuous improvement, remote work isn't going to disappear. Because we've had a taste of what's possible now. It is, however, going to

continue to evolve. And as project leaders, I think we're, it's our mandate, our responsibility to try to make these things work as best as we possibly can, without getting rigid without getting dogged. But by being open, having the dialogue, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, and recognizing that we are messy as humans, and it's not always going to be easy. But we have the ability to make it work. Dale, it's been it's been fun chatting with you about this.

And certainly there's tons more that we can deal with on this topic. And obviously, there are some people for whom this has been a disaster, and others for whom this has been the greatest thing. That's, you know, that's happened. And there's obviously a whole bunch of people somewhere in the middle on that spectrum. But I, you know, my encouragement to all of us out there in Project world is that we have, we've demonstrated that we can actually make things work that two years ago we thought we

would never be doing. And so to me, that gives great hope for where we can be going in the future, and how we can make projects continuously more successful by being adaptable.

future of work. It's one person's view, but might give you some food for thought. Thanks and keep leading projects in this messy world.