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Remote work: Relational tasks or transactional tasks

 Remote work or in person work. That is the question these days.

Rather than where work takes place it is the nature of our transactions between coworkers: Are they transactional or relational? Much of work is things we do for our fellow coworkers. It is more enjoyable and we do it better if it is a relational transaction (e.g. like bringing a cake to my friends birthday party) and not transactional (a call with comcast about bills). It's also true that many of our best friends and relationships are the result of circumstances and not choice. Few of us choose our first college roommate or our platoonmates in the military.

So the goal of good work culture is to provide the circumstances that create a relationship for our work and coworkers rather than caring about the physical location of the rest of our transactions. Do I care where my friend texts me from to invite me to a birthday party? No. But without some type of shared physical experience together it is hard to have a great friendship. I really don’t want to attend a birthday party on zoom. Yuck!

Practically, I think this means that businesses should focus on getting teams together at certain points: 1. Onboarding new teams or people. 2. When you are in a fox hole of trouble (system outages), and 3. Celebrations (yeah, we launched a new product!). Rather than rigid rules around quantity of face time (even though I would agree that time together matters), it should circle around specific times that help build that friendship, trust, and fun culture that does make work better and more enjoyable.

Comments

Joe Song said…
I love the distinction between getting together because it facilitates something (critical responses, celebrations) rather than because management decided everyone needs to come in on Tuesdays. We've been trying something similar, and I feel like it makes commutes feel like a necessary bother instead of just a pain, for example.
May 9, 2022 at 6:31 AM
Unknown said…
Thanks for the note Joe! Our conversation has inspired me to think about our shared experiences and create some at our work too.
June 24, 2022 at 2:19 PM
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