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How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams To Do The Best Work of Their Lives
Unlock the power of flexible work with this practical "how-to" guide from the leadership of Slack and Future Forum
The way we work has changed. The era of toiling from nine-to-five, five-days-a-week in the office is now a relic of the past, and is being replaced by a better way--flexible work. But flexibility means a lot more than a day or two a week to "work from home" 93% of your employees want more flexibility in when, not just where, they work. They want choice and they are leaving their roles to find it. The most successful leaders will go much further than offering occasional remote workdays--they will redesign every aspect of how work gets done, from defining how they measure organizational success to training their managers to make it happen.
How the Future Leading Flexible Teams to Do The Best Work of Their Lives offers a blueprint for using flexible work to unlock the potential of your people. The book offers the steps necessary to building the new principles and guardrails to empower flexible, high-performing teams. And it teaches readers to lead with purpose, to manage and measure differently, and to believe that by letting go, they'll get more back than they thought possible.
How the Future Works explains how
Establish leadership principles, commitments, and outcomes for truly flexible teamwork Measure and assess productivity in a flexible workplace Reskill managers to ensure a level playing field for all employees Implement the infrastructure necessary to make flexible work successful Using original research from Future Forum, a consortium by Slack, and global case studies from leading companies such as Levi Strauss & Co., Genentech, Royal Bank of Canada, and IBM, How the Future Works offers concrete solutions and practical steps for building high functioning teams of talented, engaged people by providing them with the flexibility and choice they need to do their best work.
The way we work has changed. The era of toiling from nine-to-five, five-days-a-week in the office is now a relic of the past, and is being replaced by a better way--flexible work. But flexibility means a lot more than a day or two a week to "work from home" 93% of your employees want more flexibility in when, not just where, they work. They want choice and they are leaving their roles to find it. The most successful leaders will go much further than offering occasional remote workdays--they will redesign every aspect of how work gets done, from defining how they measure organizational success to training their managers to make it happen.
How the Future Leading Flexible Teams to Do The Best Work of Their Lives offers a blueprint for using flexible work to unlock the potential of your people. The book offers the steps necessary to building the new principles and guardrails to empower flexible, high-performing teams. And it teaches readers to lead with purpose, to manage and measure differently, and to believe that by letting go, they'll get more back than they thought possible.
How the Future Works explains how
Establish leadership principles, commitments, and outcomes for truly flexible teamwork Measure and assess productivity in a flexible workplace Reskill managers to ensure a level playing field for all employees Implement the infrastructure necessary to make flexible work successful Using original research from Future Forum, a consortium by Slack, and global case studies from leading companies such as Levi Strauss & Co., Genentech, Royal Bank of Canada, and IBM, How the Future Works offers concrete solutions and practical steps for building high functioning teams of talented, engaged people by providing them with the flexibility and choice they need to do their best work.
223 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 21, 2022
61 people are currently reading
476 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
January 28, 2023
I have the feeling this book could have been 1/4 of its size. Personally i didnt learn many new concepts but i found the toolkit chapter extremely helpful.
June 7, 2023
Maximize the benefits of flexible work policies by learning to implement them effectively.
COVID-19 revolutionized many organizations by forcing employees to work from home. And much to everyone‘s surprise, productivity improved, challenging old beliefs about what employees need to thrive.
Now that it’s safe to return to the workplace, many organizations want to make flexible work strategies permanent. But how do leaders do so effectively and transition their former systems to this new operating style to reap its benefits?
In this book, we’ll learn a seven-step framework to implement a flexible work strategy in your organization, giving your employees choice about when and how they work. This doesn’t mean they‘ll have total freedom or no accountability. It means striking a balance between autonomy and company guidelines in a way that optimizes individual performance by making space for personal and professional needs.
So, let’s discover how you can carry your organization into the new era.
-
Step 1: Identify principles that will guide your flexible work strategy
In June 2021, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced a new company policy. It required employees to work from the office on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, giving them the option to work from home the other two days. The backlash was swift – many valued and talented employees resigned immediately.
It was quickly clear that Cook had made a fundamental error. He’d believed that flexible work meant letting employees work from home on days of his choosing. But coming into the office on those days wasn’t going to work for many individuals. They wanted choice about when they were on-site and were prepared to find employment elsewhere if Apple didn’t offer it.
Effective flexible work strategies aren’t underpinned by a one-size-fits-all policy that comes from the top down. This is especially true for complex, global companies whose employees perform diverse roles. So if a series of rules like Cook’s doesn’t determine flexible work practices, what does?
The answer is a series of principles.
To effectively implement a flexible work strategy, you and your fellow leaders need to identify why you’re introducing this new policy. Is it to attract or retain talent, become more agile, shift from a physical to a digital HQ? Your why will create an objective which will form the basis of your core principles.
Once you’re clear on your why, you can formulate three-to-five principles that evoke a sense of what your new work model will look like. These principles shouldn’t contain tactical targets, like minimum on-site hours. Instead, they should identify the mindset that leaders and management need to adopt to support this organization-wide change.
For instance, the Royal Bank of Canada’s set of principles includes a statement that proximity is still important. This identifies that the bank values bringing all employees together regularly. But, by not stipulating how regular – as Cook did – managers have the scope to negotiate this with their teams in a way that supports individual and team outputs.
-
Step 2: Establish guardrails to create behavioral expectations
Imagine you’re an executive calling into a meeting remotely, only to find that all the senior executives appear on one screen from the board room at HQ. This signals that you should really be on-site, even if your company’s flexible work policy says otherwise. It’s behaviors like these that sabotage messaging about equality in a flexible work model.
If you want to implement a flexible work policy effectively, it’s crucial that there are clear expectations about behavior – including that of your senior executives. These expectations act as guardrails that help everyone live the principles you’ve established in Step 1. Guardrails ensure your new policy is executed meaningfully. Remember, there’s a reason you’ve introduced this policy – the why you identified earlier.
In addition to this, guardrails protect career progression from being impacted negatively by flexible work models. In 2014, Nicholas Bloom at Stanford University found that employees who work from home are 50 percent less likely to be promoted, even if their performance is equal to – or better than – that of their colleagues.
To level the playing field, listen to the concerns your employees have – such as lack of visibility for those calling into video conferences. To counter this, you might introduce a rule that everyone must call into the conference individually, even if they’re on-site. That way, each person has equal visibility and you overcome the feeling that offsite employees are second-class citizens.
Ensure that all your leaders are role-modeling your flexible work principles and honoring guardrails. This will empower employees to adopt your new framework. You might even introduce guardrails specifically for executives like software engineering company Atlassian has done. Its executives are only allowed to work on-site one day a week and hold in-person meetings once a quarter. This sends a clear message to everyone that flexible work is the new norm.
-
Step 3: Ask each team to develop a work practices plan
When a CEO dictates how flexible work plans operate – like Tim Cook did at Apple – they assume that everyone in their company has identical needs and that their work practices can be optimized uniformly. But we all know this isn’t the case.
The needs of a sales team are wildly different from those of an engineering department. And that doesn’t even account for differences in personality. An introvert might need a quiet, private space to do their best work, while an extrovert might excel in a more dynamic environment. And then there are the needs that belong to our personal lives – caring for others, maintaining our fitness and health, and pursuing our hobbies feed our vibrancy and social connections. All these elements mean a blanket policy will never work.
What’s far more effective is for directors to formulate a flexible work model based on their specific teams – one that takes into account outputs and individuals. So how do you do this in a meaningful way that respects the principles established by company leaders but also supports your team members to reach their full potential?
You can achieve this by drawing up a Team-level Agreement – or TLA. This document is a framework that allows team members to put the principles of Step 1 into practice. And like those principles, rather than being a list of rules to follow, TLAs identify the behavioral expectations for everyone in the team. It’s these guidelines that provide team members with both flexibility and structure, which is what the workforce is looking for in a post-pandemic world.
One important role of a TLA is to establish core collaboration hours. These are blocks of three to four hours each workday when the whole team agrees to be online and available to each other. How the remainder of the workday is structured is up to the individual – offering flexibility but also protecting against burnout that can occur when people feel pressured to always be available.
-
Step 4: Normalize continuous learning
While most of us spent the better part of the pandemic working from home, making flexible work the norm is still new terrain – and one that has many executives nervous.
It’s important to remember that – like anything new – we all need to keep an open mind and experiment with how our new workplaces operate until we can determine best practices for our specific organization.
Rather than taking a punt on whether or not an aspect of your new flexible work strategy will be effective, create a task force of knowledge gatherers. This task force should be made up of diverse employees with differing needs and points of view. They must be flexible work advocates, dedicated to smoothing the transition for others and not afraid to ask hard questions.
The purpose of this task force is to test out potential new ways of working, to see if they’re worth rolling out company-wide. If your task force represents all the sectors in your organization, you’ll end up with a solid idea of how new tools will work within different departments. Identifying any pitfalls before a universal rollout mitigates the resistance to change that you’ll inevitably find somewhere among your ranks. Despite compelling evidence that shows flexible work plans lead to increased productivity, many executives still aren’t convinced. They’ll be even less so if your digital tools and infrastructure don’t deliver.
It’s important that this task force is recognized as a crucial element of your change management strategy. Reinforce the importance of this group by asking your senior managers to commit a portion of their time to the task force. For instance, at Slack, department leaders committed a fifth of their time to the task force. This sent a strong message about the important function the task force was performing.
-
Step 5: Make meaningful digital connection possible
No matter who you are or what you do, connection is a fundamental human need we all share – one that serves an evolutionary purpose to keep our species alive and functioning.
Many executives have concerns that flexible work models will erode an employee’s sense of connection and that innovation and collaboration will suffer as a result. But this begs the question: When it comes to creating connection, is meeting in person crucial?
Interestingly, during the pandemic, Slack’s research consortium – Future Forum – found that connection between employees increased by 36 percent when they were working remotely. In addition to that, creativity wasn’t impacted regardless of where people worked – whether in the office, at home, or a mix of both.
This research shows that connection is more than possible in a flexible work environment. You just need to invest in properly supported digital tools to facilitate that connection. Here are three ways you can do that.
First, make digital channels the primary location for communications, from vision and mission statements to newsletters and announcements. And ensure that each team and project has its own digital home, where people can collaborate, share, and access resources. This might be documents on a shared drive or a hub on your intranet.
Second, foster a sense of community by establishing digital social spaces. Set up channels where people can share photos of their kids and pets, or chat about their hobbies or interests – aspects of life outside work that nurture community and connection.
Finally, establish online employee resource groups for people who belong to particular communities, such as the LGBTQAI+ community, abilities-based groups, and people who share a culture or identity. Creating a digital space for these communities allows their members to come together, find support, and share.
Embracing digital spaces in this way might even change how you use your physical headquarters. Perhaps it’s time to do away with those cubicles and open up your office spaces to increase chance encounters across sectors and levels of seniority.
-
Step 6: Upskill your managers for your new workplace
Prior to the pandemic, managers mainly served as “gatekeepers,” ensuring that their teams delivered on targets and monitoring productivity using metrics like hours spent at the desk. But this approach to management isn’t possible in a flexible work environment because micromanaging and in-person supervision aren’t possible.
This means that the role of managers needs an overhaul so that it still has value in a flexible workplace. The manager must leave their gatekeeping days behind and become an empathetic coach.
Being an empathetic coach involves three core roles:
First and foremost, a manager must foster trust by being transparent about the team’s goals, expectations, and performance indicators. Second, they must offer clarity around individuals’ roles and responsibilities, so that each team member understands how they’re contributing to achieving those goals. Finally, the manager must help each employee unlock their potential. That way, the organization will get the best out of everyone, while creating scope for individuals to excel and progress their careers.
So, how do you transition your managers to this new leadership style?
Start by investing in coaching. Ideally, every manager should have a coach all the time – not just when they’re dealing with a crisis or are at risk of losing their job.
Then, implement a system of structured feedback by allocating an accountability partner to every manager. These manager pairs can give each other regular feedback, to help them both stay on track, while also sharing insights and potential solutions. This system has the added bonus of making managers feel less isolated, which is a common occurrence under the old management model.
Be sure to celebrate managerial successes at company events too. This sends the message that your organization values the new model of management and appreciates the efforts managers are making.
-
Step 7: Change how you evaluate success
Transitioning your managers from gatekeepers to empathetic coaches causes another need for change: the metrics you use to measure success. If you’re no longer using hours logged or physical presence in the office as a way of evaluating performance, how will you know that your employees are actually being productive and not watching TV or cat memes?
Take a moment here to think back to your company’s most recent annual report. In the “achievements” section, did you celebrate the collective number of hours everyone worked or did you highlight outcomes – like a new product being launched or a research breakthrough? So, if we’re using company outputs to evaluate organizational success, why aren’t we doing the same with our employees?
In a flexible work environment, measuring outcomes needs to be the metric for performance, not activity. Activity-based metrics are prone to sabotaging performance anyway. Say, for instance, a sales team had a quota of making 40 calls to potential clients each week. In order to meet this quota, employee behavior might change. Employees might start to compromise the quality of calls, so they can phone more people. And in the end, they might hit their quota but it won’t increase their client base.
New flexible work metrics provide organizations with the opportunity to value quality over quantity. As a starting point, managers need to identify what outcomes actually matter. This might include employee experiences and not just outputs.
Next, managers need to translate those outcomes into deliverables. Again, while this might be completing a project for a client or resolving customer queries, it should also include deliverables that support employees, like ensuring that everyone’s focused work time was respected.
Finally, clear expectations around timeframes provide another way of measuring success. Implement digital systems that all team members can access, to communicate work progress and status updates. That way, you’ll all be on the same page, even if you’re working different hours offsite.
-
Successfully transitioning to flexible work practices requires planning, change management, and a shift in mindset.
Adopting a flexible work strategy isn’t just something that helps employees achieve a healthier work-life balance; it can help your company thrive by attracting talent, increasing productivity, and unlocking potential.
But these aren’t the only benefits. Flexible work plans acknowledge that every employee has unique needs, based on their circumstances, preferences, and personalities. And those needs aren’t a liability, they’re an opportunity to design a work life that honors our humanity and creates a point of deeper connection with those we work alongside.
COVID-19 revolutionized many organizations by forcing employees to work from home. And much to everyone‘s surprise, productivity improved, challenging old beliefs about what employees need to thrive.
Now that it’s safe to return to the workplace, many organizations want to make flexible work strategies permanent. But how do leaders do so effectively and transition their former systems to this new operating style to reap its benefits?
In this book, we’ll learn a seven-step framework to implement a flexible work strategy in your organization, giving your employees choice about when and how they work. This doesn’t mean they‘ll have total freedom or no accountability. It means striking a balance between autonomy and company guidelines in a way that optimizes individual performance by making space for personal and professional needs.
So, let’s discover how you can carry your organization into the new era.
-
Step 1: Identify principles that will guide your flexible work strategy
In June 2021, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced a new company policy. It required employees to work from the office on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, giving them the option to work from home the other two days. The backlash was swift – many valued and talented employees resigned immediately.
It was quickly clear that Cook had made a fundamental error. He’d believed that flexible work meant letting employees work from home on days of his choosing. But coming into the office on those days wasn’t going to work for many individuals. They wanted choice about when they were on-site and were prepared to find employment elsewhere if Apple didn’t offer it.
Effective flexible work strategies aren’t underpinned by a one-size-fits-all policy that comes from the top down. This is especially true for complex, global companies whose employees perform diverse roles. So if a series of rules like Cook’s doesn’t determine flexible work practices, what does?
The answer is a series of principles.
To effectively implement a flexible work strategy, you and your fellow leaders need to identify why you’re introducing this new policy. Is it to attract or retain talent, become more agile, shift from a physical to a digital HQ? Your why will create an objective which will form the basis of your core principles.
Once you’re clear on your why, you can formulate three-to-five principles that evoke a sense of what your new work model will look like. These principles shouldn’t contain tactical targets, like minimum on-site hours. Instead, they should identify the mindset that leaders and management need to adopt to support this organization-wide change.
For instance, the Royal Bank of Canada’s set of principles includes a statement that proximity is still important. This identifies that the bank values bringing all employees together regularly. But, by not stipulating how regular – as Cook did – managers have the scope to negotiate this with their teams in a way that supports individual and team outputs.
-
Step 2: Establish guardrails to create behavioral expectations
Imagine you’re an executive calling into a meeting remotely, only to find that all the senior executives appear on one screen from the board room at HQ. This signals that you should really be on-site, even if your company’s flexible work policy says otherwise. It’s behaviors like these that sabotage messaging about equality in a flexible work model.
If you want to implement a flexible work policy effectively, it’s crucial that there are clear expectations about behavior – including that of your senior executives. These expectations act as guardrails that help everyone live the principles you’ve established in Step 1. Guardrails ensure your new policy is executed meaningfully. Remember, there’s a reason you’ve introduced this policy – the why you identified earlier.
In addition to this, guardrails protect career progression from being impacted negatively by flexible work models. In 2014, Nicholas Bloom at Stanford University found that employees who work from home are 50 percent less likely to be promoted, even if their performance is equal to – or better than – that of their colleagues.
To level the playing field, listen to the concerns your employees have – such as lack of visibility for those calling into video conferences. To counter this, you might introduce a rule that everyone must call into the conference individually, even if they’re on-site. That way, each person has equal visibility and you overcome the feeling that offsite employees are second-class citizens.
Ensure that all your leaders are role-modeling your flexible work principles and honoring guardrails. This will empower employees to adopt your new framework. You might even introduce guardrails specifically for executives like software engineering company Atlassian has done. Its executives are only allowed to work on-site one day a week and hold in-person meetings once a quarter. This sends a clear message to everyone that flexible work is the new norm.
-
Step 3: Ask each team to develop a work practices plan
When a CEO dictates how flexible work plans operate – like Tim Cook did at Apple – they assume that everyone in their company has identical needs and that their work practices can be optimized uniformly. But we all know this isn’t the case.
The needs of a sales team are wildly different from those of an engineering department. And that doesn’t even account for differences in personality. An introvert might need a quiet, private space to do their best work, while an extrovert might excel in a more dynamic environment. And then there are the needs that belong to our personal lives – caring for others, maintaining our fitness and health, and pursuing our hobbies feed our vibrancy and social connections. All these elements mean a blanket policy will never work.
What’s far more effective is for directors to formulate a flexible work model based on their specific teams – one that takes into account outputs and individuals. So how do you do this in a meaningful way that respects the principles established by company leaders but also supports your team members to reach their full potential?
You can achieve this by drawing up a Team-level Agreement – or TLA. This document is a framework that allows team members to put the principles of Step 1 into practice. And like those principles, rather than being a list of rules to follow, TLAs identify the behavioral expectations for everyone in the team. It’s these guidelines that provide team members with both flexibility and structure, which is what the workforce is looking for in a post-pandemic world.
One important role of a TLA is to establish core collaboration hours. These are blocks of three to four hours each workday when the whole team agrees to be online and available to each other. How the remainder of the workday is structured is up to the individual – offering flexibility but also protecting against burnout that can occur when people feel pressured to always be available.
-
Step 4: Normalize continuous learning
While most of us spent the better part of the pandemic working from home, making flexible work the norm is still new terrain – and one that has many executives nervous.
It’s important to remember that – like anything new – we all need to keep an open mind and experiment with how our new workplaces operate until we can determine best practices for our specific organization.
Rather than taking a punt on whether or not an aspect of your new flexible work strategy will be effective, create a task force of knowledge gatherers. This task force should be made up of diverse employees with differing needs and points of view. They must be flexible work advocates, dedicated to smoothing the transition for others and not afraid to ask hard questions.
The purpose of this task force is to test out potential new ways of working, to see if they’re worth rolling out company-wide. If your task force represents all the sectors in your organization, you’ll end up with a solid idea of how new tools will work within different departments. Identifying any pitfalls before a universal rollout mitigates the resistance to change that you’ll inevitably find somewhere among your ranks. Despite compelling evidence that shows flexible work plans lead to increased productivity, many executives still aren’t convinced. They’ll be even less so if your digital tools and infrastructure don’t deliver.
It’s important that this task force is recognized as a crucial element of your change management strategy. Reinforce the importance of this group by asking your senior managers to commit a portion of their time to the task force. For instance, at Slack, department leaders committed a fifth of their time to the task force. This sent a strong message about the important function the task force was performing.
-
Step 5: Make meaningful digital connection possible
No matter who you are or what you do, connection is a fundamental human need we all share – one that serves an evolutionary purpose to keep our species alive and functioning.
Many executives have concerns that flexible work models will erode an employee’s sense of connection and that innovation and collaboration will suffer as a result. But this begs the question: When it comes to creating connection, is meeting in person crucial?
Interestingly, during the pandemic, Slack’s research consortium – Future Forum – found that connection between employees increased by 36 percent when they were working remotely. In addition to that, creativity wasn’t impacted regardless of where people worked – whether in the office, at home, or a mix of both.
This research shows that connection is more than possible in a flexible work environment. You just need to invest in properly supported digital tools to facilitate that connection. Here are three ways you can do that.
First, make digital channels the primary location for communications, from vision and mission statements to newsletters and announcements. And ensure that each team and project has its own digital home, where people can collaborate, share, and access resources. This might be documents on a shared drive or a hub on your intranet.
Second, foster a sense of community by establishing digital social spaces. Set up channels where people can share photos of their kids and pets, or chat about their hobbies or interests – aspects of life outside work that nurture community and connection.
Finally, establish online employee resource groups for people who belong to particular communities, such as the LGBTQAI+ community, abilities-based groups, and people who share a culture or identity. Creating a digital space for these communities allows their members to come together, find support, and share.
Embracing digital spaces in this way might even change how you use your physical headquarters. Perhaps it’s time to do away with those cubicles and open up your office spaces to increase chance encounters across sectors and levels of seniority.
-
Step 6: Upskill your managers for your new workplace
Prior to the pandemic, managers mainly served as “gatekeepers,” ensuring that their teams delivered on targets and monitoring productivity using metrics like hours spent at the desk. But this approach to management isn’t possible in a flexible work environment because micromanaging and in-person supervision aren’t possible.
This means that the role of managers needs an overhaul so that it still has value in a flexible workplace. The manager must leave their gatekeeping days behind and become an empathetic coach.
Being an empathetic coach involves three core roles:
First and foremost, a manager must foster trust by being transparent about the team’s goals, expectations, and performance indicators. Second, they must offer clarity around individuals’ roles and responsibilities, so that each team member understands how they’re contributing to achieving those goals. Finally, the manager must help each employee unlock their potential. That way, the organization will get the best out of everyone, while creating scope for individuals to excel and progress their careers.
So, how do you transition your managers to this new leadership style?
Start by investing in coaching. Ideally, every manager should have a coach all the time – not just when they’re dealing with a crisis or are at risk of losing their job.
Then, implement a system of structured feedback by allocating an accountability partner to every manager. These manager pairs can give each other regular feedback, to help them both stay on track, while also sharing insights and potential solutions. This system has the added bonus of making managers feel less isolated, which is a common occurrence under the old management model.
Be sure to celebrate managerial successes at company events too. This sends the message that your organization values the new model of management and appreciates the efforts managers are making.
-
Step 7: Change how you evaluate success
Transitioning your managers from gatekeepers to empathetic coaches causes another need for change: the metrics you use to measure success. If you’re no longer using hours logged or physical presence in the office as a way of evaluating performance, how will you know that your employees are actually being productive and not watching TV or cat memes?
Take a moment here to think back to your company’s most recent annual report. In the “achievements” section, did you celebrate the collective number of hours everyone worked or did you highlight outcomes – like a new product being launched or a research breakthrough? So, if we’re using company outputs to evaluate organizational success, why aren’t we doing the same with our employees?
In a flexible work environment, measuring outcomes needs to be the metric for performance, not activity. Activity-based metrics are prone to sabotaging performance anyway. Say, for instance, a sales team had a quota of making 40 calls to potential clients each week. In order to meet this quota, employee behavior might change. Employees might start to compromise the quality of calls, so they can phone more people. And in the end, they might hit their quota but it won’t increase their client base.
New flexible work metrics provide organizations with the opportunity to value quality over quantity. As a starting point, managers need to identify what outcomes actually matter. This might include employee experiences and not just outputs.
Next, managers need to translate those outcomes into deliverables. Again, while this might be completing a project for a client or resolving customer queries, it should also include deliverables that support employees, like ensuring that everyone’s focused work time was respected.
Finally, clear expectations around timeframes provide another way of measuring success. Implement digital systems that all team members can access, to communicate work progress and status updates. That way, you’ll all be on the same page, even if you’re working different hours offsite.
-
Successfully transitioning to flexible work practices requires planning, change management, and a shift in mindset.
Adopting a flexible work strategy isn’t just something that helps employees achieve a healthier work-life balance; it can help your company thrive by attracting talent, increasing productivity, and unlocking potential.
But these aren’t the only benefits. Flexible work plans acknowledge that every employee has unique needs, based on their circumstances, preferences, and personalities. And those needs aren’t a liability, they’re an opportunity to design a work life that honors our humanity and creates a point of deeper connection with those we work alongside.
December 25, 2023
Nothing revolutionary if you're already accustomed to a flexible work environment, but it's great reinforcement of good ideas.
August 21, 2022
This book provides practical advice on creating great teams, when people are not present together in the same space and time zone. The pandemic highlighted that most organisations had already switched from a mode of operation where digital technologies supplemented in-person communication, to a world where in-person supplemented digital. With the growth of remote work, many leaders grapple with questions such as:
What will happen to our culture if we aren’t in the office?
Won’t it hamper our ability to innovate and be creative?
This new reality is providing an opportunity to reimagine how work gets done, to break bad old habits, and to make make work better, both for people and companies. It prompts conversations around what is required to make flexible working, work. I particularly appreciated the examples of guard rails applied in some teams such as:
‘I pledge to support no camera ready times'
'I pledge to frequently check in on people – and to be connected'
'I pledge to be available during core collaboration hours'
This book is of value to those interested in building an organisational culture that supports and motivates employees, who can now work-from-anywhere.
p.s. I read the book on my kindle and found the writing a little squishy. Makes reading harder. Dear editors please use more carriage returns next time.
What will happen to our culture if we aren’t in the office?
Won’t it hamper our ability to innovate and be creative?
This new reality is providing an opportunity to reimagine how work gets done, to break bad old habits, and to make make work better, both for people and companies. It prompts conversations around what is required to make flexible working, work. I particularly appreciated the examples of guard rails applied in some teams such as:
‘I pledge to support no camera ready times'
'I pledge to frequently check in on people – and to be connected'
'I pledge to be available during core collaboration hours'
This book is of value to those interested in building an organisational culture that supports and motivates employees, who can now work-from-anywhere.
p.s. I read the book on my kindle and found the writing a little squishy. Makes reading harder. Dear editors please use more carriage returns next time.
January 26, 2023
Inspiring read and wake up call for founders
After reading 40% of the book I was inspired to make bold moves at my company including transitioning to digital-first and incorporating a hybrid work week. We kicked off a 4 work day week with Mondays dedicated to learning. Meetings were eliminated where possible and slack became our town hall. The results were mixed but what came out of it was the potential of experimenting and finding what works for the changing workplace.
As the world embraces hybrid and as some companies require 3 days in office, I know some of the concepts in the book won’t stick. But that’s okay - the book is primarily to get leaders to get in touch with their team better.
Sheela shares great stories from leaders who made life changing transitions and they were key to give myself the confidence to make these changes.
After reading 40% of the book I was inspired to make bold moves at my company including transitioning to digital-first and incorporating a hybrid work week. We kicked off a 4 work day week with Mondays dedicated to learning. Meetings were eliminated where possible and slack became our town hall. The results were mixed but what came out of it was the potential of experimenting and finding what works for the changing workplace.
As the world embraces hybrid and as some companies require 3 days in office, I know some of the concepts in the book won’t stick. But that’s okay - the book is primarily to get leaders to get in touch with their team better.
Sheela shares great stories from leaders who made life changing transitions and they were key to give myself the confidence to make these changes.
September 14, 2025
وأنت تقرأ هذا الكتاب ستشعر أنّه يخاطبك مباشرة ليضعك في قلب التحولات التي يشهدها عالم العمل اليوم. سيجعلك تدرك أنّ العمل لم يعد مجرّد حضور في المكتب، بل تجربة تُبنى على الثقة والنتائج والإنسانية. ما ستلمسه في صفحاته أنّه لا يقتصر على عرض واقع جديد، بل يزوّدك بأدوات عملية تساعدك على فهم معنى المرونة وكيفية تطبيقها في حياتك المهنية أو مؤسستك. ستجد نفسك تفكر في علاقتك بالتكنولوجيا، وفي دورك كقائد أو موظف في تعزيز الشفافية والتوازن. سيقنعك بأنّ النموذج الهجين ليس مجرد صيحة عابرة، بل هو مستقبل لا مفر منه. وعندما تصل إلى الخاتمة، ستخرج بقناعة راسخة أنّك إذا تبنّيت هذه الرؤية اليوم، فستكون أقدر على الازدهار غداً في عالم يقوم على الابتكار، العدالة، والعمل الإنساني الحقيقي
تابعني على شبكات التواصل الاجتماعي
سليمان العوشن
http://about.me/aloshan
تابعني على شبكات التواصل الاجتماعي
سليمان العوشن
http://about.me/aloshan
November 22, 2023
This book is best for founders / CEOs who are leading their company's structure. It will get a little frustrating for the next level down (or lower) who understand the necessity of what needs to happen but don't have the jurisdiction to get it all done.
The main sections of the book can get a bit repetitive, and if you've followed the research or general trajectory of this space, you might not find much new.
That said, there are helpful parts in here for any team. The toolkit at the end is exceedingly useful.
The main sections of the book can get a bit repetitive, and if you've followed the research or general trajectory of this space, you might not find much new.
That said, there are helpful parts in here for any team. The toolkit at the end is exceedingly useful.
August 19, 2023
If you work in Culture & Comms - you won’t learn much from the book, as it contains mainly the compilation of well known basic principles and ideas around remote work…
It might be helpful for somebody, who has no idea about how the remote culture in a remote corporate setup works.
I liked the toolkit in the back of the book - it is a quite helpful summary of the book… actually the whole book could have been a brochure or an extended article based on the mentioned toolkit.
It might be helpful for somebody, who has no idea about how the remote culture in a remote corporate setup works.
I liked the toolkit in the back of the book - it is a quite helpful summary of the book… actually the whole book could have been a brochure or an extended article based on the mentioned toolkit.
September 16, 2022
Very useful for my work - for anyone embarking on improving post covid remote or hybrid work practices the thinking is laid out clearly and the toolkit section is particularly helpful.
That being said I wouldn't say there's any fundamentally new concepts in there that I wasn't already aware of or practising, it just nicely captures them all in the one place!
That being said I wouldn't say there's any fundamentally new concepts in there that I wasn't already aware of or practising, it just nicely captures them all in the one place!
Read
February 11, 2023One interesting point the Author raised for creating remote working environments, is when the hybrid meeting happens, some are meeting physically, and some are meeting online. For the ones meeting physically, they start talking earlier and end later, they get more insights and exposure. It is a bit unfair to the people meeting online. Hence, he advised to have meetings either with all participatns online or all offline.
Overall, it is a good book for directors/managers. How to create a better flexible workplace, things like changing working culture, measuring performance in a different way (focusing on product roadmap completion instead of individual tasks).
Overall, it is a good book for directors/managers. How to create a better flexible workplace, things like changing working culture, measuring performance in a different way (focusing on product roadmap completion instead of individual tasks).
June 24, 2022
Outlining many of my issues with limited definitions of "flexible" work, this book also taps into the idea of team charters that I support. Great work from Slack that can be implemented right away. (Even if you don't use Slack.)
June 7, 2023
Maximize the benefits of flexible work policies by learning to implement them effectively.
striking a balance between autonomy and company guidelines in a way that optimizes individual performance by making space for personal and professional needs.
striking a balance between autonomy and company guidelines in a way that optimizes individual performance by making space for personal and professional needs.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 7, 2022
Useful book about designing workplace policies to define how to effectively work in a remote/hybrid environment.
August 1, 2022
I bought a physical version to use everything in this book with my team
November 28, 2022
One of the most helpful, practical books I’ve read to date that addresses the challenges of working in hybrid environments. 5 stars!
January 2, 2023
Very helpful guide to best practices in leading flexible teams. Practical suggestions and exercises.
March 18, 2023
the same thing repeated in every chapter
April 14, 2023
Interesting food for thought as we co-create what the modern workplace will look like moving forward. Hint: not the "9-to-5" that was popularized by Ford in the 1920s!
February 9, 2025
If you are familiar with the best practices of remote working you can skip this book. If you are looking to implement them at work then this is a good primer.
May 20, 2024
If you work in an office environment or lead people who do PLEASE read this book.
It gives the WHY combined with the HOW and WHAT to go about building a more effective way to accomplish your missions, your business goals, to take care of your team while you do so and to provide value to those u=you serve (employees, users, buyers, shareholders.)
Trust is critical and must get built
-When work gets done is the most important (hint its asynch)
-Where matters a lot too (hint it should be everywhere most of the time)
-Enough alignment and leadership from the top as the framework and foundation on which empowered teams can build.
It gives the WHY combined with the HOW and WHAT to go about building a more effective way to accomplish your missions, your business goals, to take care of your team while you do so and to provide value to those u=you serve (employees, users, buyers, shareholders.)
Trust is critical and must get built
-When work gets done is the most important (hint its asynch)
-Where matters a lot too (hint it should be everywhere most of the time)
-Enough alignment and leadership from the top as the framework and foundation on which empowered teams can build.
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