…can help the work along in a different way. A place for workings as well as meetings.
A meeting is about the work, often necessary and essential, frequently in a board room or around a board table.
A working, on the other hand, is the work. Everyone in the room, whether physical or digital, working simultaneously instead of throwing it here and there waiting for responses and approvals.
In our present ‘at a distance,’ ‘remote,’ and ‘distributed’ work environments this could be a worthwhile practice, something one can try out or work with which will also help build teamwork and culture.
It can also be valuable in a co-located work environment.
That board room down the hall, which seems empty most of the time, doesn’t have to be just for meetings about work. It can also be for work, where the group gets together, working their corner of a project, not in their office alone but together with the other members of the team.
A few hours in the same room simultaneously working on the same project seems to help clarify things more, issues get solved quickly and people are able to see each other’s processes a little better.
The practice can be more intrinsic in both settings than just team and culture building.
Remotely, everyone can leave their Zoom, Skype or Google Meet open as they work. Colocated, take over that ‘bored’ room or table and put it to a better, or at least a different, use.
Not an everyday thing, just when something needs to get done or moved forward.
Written while sitting at the beach listening to Hania Rani.
The best thing I read online last week,
“Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires or ambitions we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.”
though I can’t remember where I read it.
William Kerr And associates 