How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams

We’re hosting our most exciting Marco webinar yet with co-hosts Brian Elliott and Chrisie Arnold.

You can RSVP HERE: it’s taking place May 1st at 10 am PST / 1 pm EST.

Brian is one of my favorite Future of Work thought leaders, founder of the Future Forum as an SVP at Slack, and co-author of How the Future Works.

Chrissie is equally impressive, serving as the Director of Future of Work programs at Slack.

Future of Work Leaders

I first met Brian when he was an SVP at Slack.

He was leading an organization called the Future Forum, a group created by Slack in collaboration with leading organizations like Miller Knoll and the Boston Consulting Group.

As a founder of a seed-stage company directly affected by Future of Work trends, I was thrilled that Brian was down to connect.

He wrote a book titled How the Future Works…couldn’t be more fitting!

I found that he, and many other Future of Work leaders, are authentically curious and willing to learn from and share lessons with, anyone passionate about improving the way we work.

Some of my favorite Future of Work leaders I’ve met over the past couple of years include:

• Annie Dean - VP of Team Anywhere @ Atlassian

• Rob Sadow - CEO of Scoop and Co-founder of Flex Index

• Darren Murph - fmr Head of Remote at Gitlab

• Darcy Mayfield - Founder / author of SHIFT, fmr Director of Remote Employee Experience at Stripe

  …and many more

Slack…Digital Collaboration and In-Person Connection?

If you’re like me, when you think of Slack, you think about a digital collaboration tool that has been a big beneficiary of remote and hybrid work.

You don’t necessarily think of a leading company in understanding how to make hybrid work more collaborative, increase the effectiveness of in-person gatherings, and improve how we manage distributed teams.

But Slack was quick to invest in research to improve the way we work. The reality is the future of work isn’t an either / or between digital and in-person collaboration. Both play a vital role in building healthy organizations.

During 2020-2023, Slack published quarterly surveys of over 10,000 global remote workers.

Some of the fantastic published research ranged from:

• Executives feel the strain of leading in the ‘new normal’

• Inflexible return-to-office policies are hammering employee experience scores

• The great executive employee disconnect

There were tons of insights shared, but to me the biggest observation in learning from Brian, Chrissie, and others is that we are living through a massive change in the way we work and live.

There are repercussions to how we communicate, manage, where we live, how we lead and manage…almost every facet of how we work is affected by the fact that 80%+ companies are now remote or hybrid.

The Future Forum work culminated into a book co-authored by Brian Elliott with contribution from Chrissie and several others called “How the Future Works.”

So… how does the Future Work?

The goal of the book “How the Future Works” is to provide a playbook for building and leading high-performing flexible teams.

The book breaks this down into 7 steps. While reviewing these, I’ve included some of our own observations and opportunities from Marco.

1. Identify principles that will guide your flexible work strategy

   Regardless of the policy and strategy you choose, articulate why you’re choosing this policy.  

2. Establish guardrails to create behavioral expectations

   Guardrails are rules that ensure everyone is on the same and that policies are executed meaningfully.

3. Ask each team to develop a work practices plan

   This is one of my favorite suggestions. Developing and documenting a Team Level Agreement (TLA) makes expectations clear.

4. Normalize continuous learning

   Create a diverse task force to test and measure strategies. Maintain a culture of experimentation - it’s impressive when talking to Chrissie that Slack continues to do this and publish research.

5. Make meaningful digital connections possible

   Connection is a fundamental human need, and while connection can’t only be built digitally, digital connection is possible. Strategies include (a) making digital channels the primary communication channels (b) building digital social spaces (c) establishing online ERG groups

6. Upskill your managers for the new workforce

   In a distributed world, managers move from gatekeepers to empathetic coaches. Key manager traits include building trust through transparency, providing clarity to employees, and helping employees unlock their potential.

7. Change how you evaluate success

   Move from measuring activity to measuring outcomes. Organizations can now value quality vs. quantity.

Even while writing this summary and reading through the book, I realize that there are tons of lessons our own company could take across each of these dimensions to improve how we operate.

The good news is that we’re already actioning on a few of them, but there are several clear opportunity areas, as I’m sure is the case for any leader reading this!

We’re excited for next Wednesday to have Brian and Chrissie share their learnings and hope you can join!

Cheers,

Suman