In my previous article [1], I noted that hybrid working is here to stay, even though it severely disrupts traditional in-person people management and firms haven’t yet found a satisfactory way to overcome this. In this follow-up piece, I outline the thinking behind a new ‘best of both worlds’ solution that keeps the benefits of hybrid while helping firms negate the disadvantages.  

In the first article in this series I proposed that the trouble with hybrid working is that leadership and supervision can’t be done effectively when people work remotely.  What I call ‘two-minute management’ is missing in action, so managers struggle to manage. This can lead to serious long-term consequences for the firm.

These can include chronic performance and commitment issues and flagging productivity, or its opposite, which is burnout. Without traditional levels of people visibility, managers are managing blind. Hence, firm leaders are trying to cajole partners and associates back into the office full time, while they’re simultaneously wary of upsetting lawyers who’re productive at home, and of being so heavy-handed with calls back to the office that talent leaves.  

Nor will things improve as time passes. Firms will increasingly rely on Gen Z lawyers who’ve never known what working full time in an office is like, and who evidently mostly prefer the flexibility of hybrid work arrangements. [2] Despite what firm leaders would choose, hybrid working will thus likely become entrenched. Nonetheless, leaders will admit that when Covid-19 forced them to enable remote working, there was a silver lining in greatly reduced office overhead costs.

We’ve arrived at a place where law firm leaders would ideally like to strike a balance between keeping talented lawyers hybrid-happy, while also gaining back the control and visibility of in-office work. In effect, they want the best of both worlds. How can they get it?

A faulty lens

To find the answer, let’s ask a core question: how do we know what people who’re working remotely are doing? The current answers are a) we ask them, or b) we somehow track their activity.

As discussed in the first article, asking produces unsatisfactory results. For different reasons, people can be less than transparent about what they’re doing and how busy they are. But of more concern is that continually asking and checking-in leads to a kind of over-management. This disrupts workers while they’re working and uses up too much of their time.  

Work Management solutions

The main alternative is to use a mishmash of reporting, project and Work Management tools. Unfortunately, most of these are also a source of interruption as users must regularly tell the system what they’re doing, which takes time and adds another layer of effort.

In addition, traditional Work Management software tools give a dangerously distorted picture of what it is that remote workers are doing at home. The trouble is that they lean too heavily on the word ‘task’. Everything’s conceived of as a task. But what they mean by ‘task’ is what you and I would more clearly understand as a deliverable.  

We know a deliverable is an output (letter, contract, report, plan etc) that can be seen, measured, and handed over. Deliverables generally have a deadline, can be completed, reviewed and approved. A deliverable is a thing. What traditional project management tools mean by ‘task’ is actually a ‘deliverable’.

But it follows that in calling deliverables ‘tasks’, traditional Work Management software doesn’t give any visibility at all to the things that actually are tasks.

I’m thinking of things like doing research and self-education, e.g. reading about new legislation and case law or analysing data and trends. Or when lawyers network and collaborate with peers and clients. Or develop policy. Or just do some work-based thinking, maybe to solve a problem, or create a new approach to something. Then there’s mentorship, teaching and training. And general admin like time sheets, work planning, calendar management, and giving and receiving feedback. None of this will show up as ‘tasks’ in conventional work management tools, which is a problem if you want a clear, real-time view of what people are doing.

Also, a lot of traditional Work Management software is simply far too complex to be suitable for smaller firms.  

Within the hour

A final way that law firms can ostensibly find out what remote lawyers are doing is to look at billable hours and time entries. The rub here is that, again, this only gives you a partial view of total activity because it’s only ‘counting’ billable activity. Also, the line entries in an invoice don’t provide sufficient detail to tell you what’s actually been done.

Another wrinkle is that time is still generally captured retrospectively. Distortions can creep in, or alternately – and more likely – lawyers will go back over their records in a conscientious effort to construct a more accurate time sheet, which of course leads to more time being consumed unproductively.

To return to the core question then: how do we know what people who’re working remotely are doing? The answer is that using traditional tools we can’t. We need a new lens through which to “see” them, using a new management framework.  

Building a new management framework

To build a robust new framework, we need to go back to first principles. What firms need is a way to accurately and efficiently understand what remote workers are doing so that managers can manage effectively.     

To achieve an accurate picture, we need a ‘bottom-up’, rather than a ‘top-down’ model of information gathering. That’s to say it needs to start, not from the place where work is commissioned, but from the place where the work is actually taking place.

For efficiency, and to overcome the significant drawback of Work Management systems where you must periodically interrupt yourself to tell the system what you’re doing, the new model should ideally work ‘in-flow’. In other words, operate in the background, without interrupting the natural flow of what people are doing.

Finally, this new framework should take maximum advantage of the capabilities of the newest wave of AI-native software in order to achieve a granular picture of activity ‘in-flow’. This would enable identification of all the individual elements of what people are doing at a functional level, creating remote visibility.

Introducing a new style of Work Management

We can then develop a new Work Management tool that categorizes all knowledge work activity into basic types of transaction. As to why we’re categorizing knowledge work this way, it’s because it structures how all activities can be given remote visibility.

The two main categories in this taxonomy are ‘meetings’, which are simply events with other people, or ‘tasks’, which is work done individually. 

Thereafter, both meetings and tasks can be sub-divided into ‘everyday work’ – so standing meetings like team standups; or everyday tasks that are part and parcel of a person’s role such as administrative duties, and month-end closes. Or into meetings and tasks that aren’t ‘everyday’. These can be categorized as one-offs that arise as the result of requests.

Everyday work is known; while the ad hoc elements arise as a result of a request – in emails, chat tools and document collaboration platforms. And the thing is that requests are the harbingers of activity. They’re also detectable by AI, making all types of activity in effect visible. The net result – which we’ll examine in greater detail in a third article – is a brand new ‘lens’, or rather a new Work Management application that gives managers the visibility to manage remote workers much more effectively.

Twenty-twenty vision

In summary, what’s happened is that dispersed teams and hybrid working have arrived, but the means to manage them effectively is only now being developed. This new approach gives managers real-time insights into work progress and team workloads, without incurring over-management.

The result is that teams and individuals can be given the right amount of work, allocated in the best ways. Partners and associates can be developed sensitively, getting the right experiences to mature them in their role. Work demands can be managed dynamically, with workloads balanced across the team, and rebalanced if someone’s out or sick, ensuring timely delivery to clients. Managers can also plan, based on who’s got capacity, this week and next. It abolishes continual checking-in and eliminates the need for status meetings. It ensures that managers can manage insightfully based on clear information, driving productivity as well as heading off burnout.

The trouble with hybrid working is that leadership and supervision can’t be done effectively when people work remotely. But that doesn’t have to be the case anymore.

Sources:

[1] Has your firm adjusted to how management has changed?

[2]Gen Z likes hybrid more than older workers. How should that affect HR strategy? ; Exploring Remote Work Trends: Millennials + Gen Z Lead the Way - Venn ; Gen Z: They Want To Work Remotely And In The Office