The impact of COVID-19 on our ways of working has been staggering. The most obvious, the shift to remote work, has impacted organizational cultures and employee engagement almost overnight. Beyond remote work, it has accelerated a number of key future of work trends, in some cases irreversibly. In the years to come, it will continue to reverberate in the ways we collaborate, balance our career and family obligations, and think about our teams and organizations. 

The shift to pandemic-related uncertainty and distributed work caught a lot of teams unprepared. By now, most have adjusted to the basics of remote work – spending most of your days on video calls and chat with your team, but have you asked yourself whether—and how—you could be doing things better than you were before disruption? 

Over the past few years, more and more corporate leaders and consultants have been talking about a “new” kind of workplace diversity: cognitive diversity, which can also be referred to as diversity of thought.

All the attention it’s getting is something of a double-edged sword, though. On the one hand, it’s great that so many people are beginning to see that cognitive diversity plays an important role in a business’s success.

But on the other, the term itself is getting thrown around so much—often in very general or superficial ways—that it risks becoming just another piece of meaningless jargon.

Cognitive diversity isn’t just new packaging on an old idea about the dangers of surrounding yourself with “yes men.” It’s also not just another way of saying that if you let conflicting ideas and perspectives rub up against each other for a long enough time, eventually something positive will come from it.

Managing stress during this COVID-19 crisis is definitely easier said than done. We all have different ways of thinking and processing information. Therefore, it makes sense that we all have different ways of internalizing and reacting to stress.

This blog post is a brief excerpt from our latest white paper on adapting to uncertainty. The full piece can be found here.

It is no surprise that in the face of today’s constant volatility and uncertainty, agility is frequently cited as one of the most important attributes for leaders to be successful in growing organizations. Yet most managers and leaders have not been prepared or trained for how to deliver this agility, especially in a crisis. It’s one thing to have reactively put things into place in response to a new reality, often with a lag that creates competitive disadvantages. It is another to think about what’s next in the midst of a crisis and stay ahead of change, rather than chasing after it.

As the virus has swept its way across the planet, people from all walks of life, families from every region, and businesses large and small have all had to adapt to change. The most common change, and the most likely one to be affecting you right now, is adjusting to any social distancing measures you're taking or a shelter-in-place mandate from your government, which has likely resulted in you staying at home. For many companies, it's also led to remote-working measures being set in place.

In some form or fashion, working virtually has quickly become the reality for most of us today. And whether you’re working with colleagues, customers, vendors or others, there are more tools and apps than ever to help you collaborate across any distance, whether it's across the country or even across the globe.

But no matter how many tools and devices you have, effective collaboration still comes down to how effectively the parties communicate with each other. Particularly when you don’t always have the advantage of visual cues, tone of voice, or cultural nuances, the chances for miscommunication are high.

Here are 4 steps for making sure your communications get across in the way you intended, no matter what technology you use (these can even useful for when you’re communicating in person):

Note: This post was written pre-COVID-19. However, the engagement tips are extremely relevant and the team wanted to reshare! For more tips, check out the rest of our remote work blog series here.

We made a big move at the end of 2016. After three decades in our headquarters, Herrmann went completely virtual.

This virtual workplace reflects the increasingly global and dispersed nature of our organization—even here in the U.S., many of our employees are scattered across states and time zones. At the same time, technology is offering more ways than ever for people to stay connected and interact with each other, whether they’re in the same building or not.

But we also recognize that you can’t just flip a switch and expect everything to continue business as usual. So we’ve been approaching this move from a Whole Brain® perspective: The goals and objectives are clear (A quadrant), and we’re keeping our eye on the future (D quadrant), but we also have to prepare for the journey (B quadrant) and keep people engaged every step of the way (C quadrant).

In the last few weeks, there's been a lot of content floating around focusing on what it means to work remote.

But one thing that many of these articles have assumed is that even if everyone isn't working at the same place, they're all working at the same time. Once you've given up all going to the same office, it's worth asking, do you even need to keep the same office hours? As a manager, can you effectively manage people through asynchronous communication, team members who aren't even online at the same time as you?

I used to get up, get ready for the day, watch the news, and drive half an hour to the office. But about three years ago I found myself doing more and more from home. The rest of my team were in other locations in the country, so why was I spending all that time, gas, and wear and tear on my cute little car?

So I created a mini-office in a corner of my spare bedroom. Now, I get up, get ready for the day, watch the morning news, and then trek all the way to the other end of the house and get to work.