How the Future Works

Our guests last week in the Turning Companies into Communities content series are leading thinkers in the Future of Work.

Brian Elliott: Brian founded the Future Forum while serving as SVP of Slack. He’s now a Future of Work thought leader and expert, serving as Advisor for some of the leading companies innovating to make work, work. He’s also the co-author of How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams To Do the Best Work of Their Lives.

Chrissie Arnold: Chrissie is the Director of Future of Work programs for the Workforce Lab at Slack. She worked closely with Brian when he was at Slack and has worked for almost 10 years at the company!

Here’s a link to the full fireside chat from last Wednesday.

This past Sunday night I ended the evening watching the movie Air.

The movie, directed by Ben Affleck, is about the story of sports marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro and how he courted Michael Jordan while at Nike.

Michael Jordan went on to be…well, Michael Jordan.

Jordan helped build the Nike brand into one of the most successful shoe franchises globally.

In 2023, Nike made $46 billion in sales, and $5 billion of that driven by Air Jordan.

Nike founder, Phil Knight, said that signing Nike was a huge turning point for the brand. It fundamentally changed the industry, allowing Michael Jordan to share in the royalties in the shotes that he helped sell.

MJ has made $1.5 billion from Air Jordan royalties, well over his basketball salary.

Nike’s current CEO, John Donahue, recently said that remote work was hurting innovation.

Donahue said, “it’s really hard to do bold, disruptive innovation, to develop a boldly disruptive shoe on Zoom.”

This feedback was given as Nike has recently lost market share against new brands like Hoka and On Running.

Part of the scenes in the movie Air resonated. The team worked together in a late-night conference room, designing the first Air Jordan concept shoe.

In-person collaboration can help with creativity and collaboration.

But how has nearly unprecedented innovation continued in companies globally over the past few years, especially in technology and fields like AI with 80% of companies remote or hybrid?

I sometimes have to remind myself of this new way of working. At my first job out of school at a consulting firm, I would fly each week to the client site to get work done in person. This was often a huge waste of time, and could easily have been accomplished digitally.

Like most things, the answer is likely somewhere in the middle. 

There’s a place for both online and offline work.

Online vs. offline work was a big topic during last week’s fireside chat.

Some companies have been able to innovate, grow, and perform despite not being in person all the time.

Brian and Chrissie are or were a part of Slack, which is probably the biggest collaboration tool many companies use, right up there with Zoom, Notion, and others.

Digital tools make it easier than ever to do work flexibly. Whether it’s communication tools like Slack, or collaboration tools like Miro, it’s easier than ever to collaborate and get done work globally.

But there are certainly moments when being in-person with teammates and coworkers can allow for creativity, spark inspiring ideas, and build connection.

Here’s what online vs. in-person work can be best for:

Online:

• Transactional work

• Deep work (e.g. writing code, performing analysis)

• Meetings where everyone can’t be in person

In-person:

• Trust-building

• New team formation/onboarding

• Major project kickoffs

The reality is that remote and hybrid work can certainly be productive. But to maximize its potential, we need to fundamentally change the way we work.

Brian makes the point that being a good distributed manager or leader is mostly about being a good manager in general.

Brian emphasizes that the most important thing to do while managing and leading flexible teams is setting the right goals.

If done effectively, you can effectively manage, lead, and innovate in a flexible world.

The best companies have strong and distinct cultures - Airbnb, Uber, Nvidia, etc.

The best companies are likely to innovate in how they build their culture.

Regardless if companies choose to be remote, distributed, or mostly in-person (perhaps with multiple hubs), their leaders will need to invest in building intentional connections between their employees.