"Beware, office!", Or How to finally do your job when everyone and everything around is against it

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

My experience of working in offices - from a redneck trading office in an apartment instead of an office to a luxurious Yandex office - was almost 8 years, and that's what I understood. The constant “work is an office” is so tenacious that it is very difficult to knock it out of our heads.

The idea of the article came to me after I decided to calculate my experience of hired work in offices and oppose it to the same remote work, which I adhere to and try to promote it in every possible way. Office work is such a twilight of the work process, through which we wade through today, like Anton Gorodetsky in "Patrols". And the more the experience of the "office samurai", the higher it is given, the more freely he moves in this troubled water and the happier he looks from the outside.

Old office model

Watch the TV series Mad Men, which tells the story of an advertising agency during the heyday of the US advertising market in the 60s. People there worked in huge pretentious offices. Each worthy one had a pretty secretary who replaced a smartphone and a computer with a calendar, task manager, word processor, spreadsheets, the Internet, and in general everything that you do yourself today. They also had offices, alcohol within a couple of steps in any part of the office and many other things that have lost their meaning today.

The office has been transformed. You no longer need a person to remember important things, not forget about meetings and just do your job. It became indecent to drink during the working day. Few have offices. But the office itself remained. The constant “work is an office” is so tenacious that it is very difficult to knock it out of our heads. This is a problem not only for life-long top managers of corporations and “red directors”, but also for young startups, who for some reason immediately spend their first “seed” money on an office, and not on a product or sales.

What to do. If you are forced to work in an office and bear the full burden of the duties of an "office samurai", then the tips below will be useful to you.

Head "on elastic"

In general, any manager is constantly worried that the work will not be done, and the presence of employees in the office is very reassuring to him. He, like a brood hen, gathers his "chickens" and is deceived by the fact that the processes are going on because he is near. This is not true. Employees equally powerfully like on Facebook and watch YouTube at home from a tablet, from a toilet from a smartphone, or from a workplace.

What to do. It is difficult to change the boss, but you can change the communication with him: become more open in reporting and just tell without a kick what you are doing. All this will reduce stress and make him a less "elastic" boss. Initiate a 5-minute morning meeting in which you tell what you are doing today and how it will end in the evening. Remind your weekly plan of tasks. Ask for advice. Give him a sense of control, and he, if he is an adequate person, will gradually begin to “get off” with you.

Then you just need to translate such things into morning Skype calls and, perhaps, convince your manager that it is more convenient for you to complete tasks at home. I have managed to implement this repeatedly.

Corporate culture and office hours

Many people explain the desire to drag employees into the office by the presence of a kind of "corporate culture". Here is the classic definition of corporate culture "by the book".

Corporate culture is a set of values, norms and patterns of behavior prevailing in the organization, which determine the meaning and model of employees' activities, regardless of their official position and functional responsibilities.

Not a word about the office, about the position of the tables, about "from 9 to 6", about meetings with just anyone for days on end. Corporate culture, in fact, is how you understand your mission and the purpose of what you do, how you talk to a client, how ethically you behave and how the impression of your company from the outside coincides with what is happening inside. There is nothing in common between why you are being pushed into the office and what corporate culture really is. No amount of traffic jams and anger from the subway ride during rush hour helps build this very company culture. Sitting from 9 to 6 is not corporate culture. Hanging out with colleagues until the night in Counter Strike does not build corporate culture. Doesn't build her beer and pizza. It's just human relationships, but not culture. And certainly not corporate culture.

What to do. If you want to permanently or periodically work remotely, then do not take as a reason for refusal the phrase: "This is our corporate culture." When they say this to me, I hear something like: “I just don't trust you and I want to look after you. But do not worry, not only for you, but for everyone here. So I'm waiting at 9:00, and no delay! " You can try to build trust with your successes and consistent, timely communications in which you are the initiator, or immediately leave the place where you are so distrusted.

The noise and conversations of colleagues

The more open and good-natured your colleagues are, the more they share their experiences with you. Talk about work takes a lesser share of them. I confess that it really hinders my work. Someone is incredibly infuriated. I asked.

What to do. Bring casual discussions to a group chat like Telegram, Skype or Slack. Disable notifications for all messages and enable them only for cases when your name is mentioned (all the messengers I listed allow you to do this). Get used to interacting with you on a postponed basis and transfer all discussions to a joint lunch or to the evening after work (if you have no more interesting classes). This is not just an ordering of connections, but also another step towards teleworking in the future.

Lunch or business lunch

Despite the fact that more than one person is advised to have dinner, I prefer to do it this way. The reason is not that I'm not interested in what my colleagues are talking about, but because I really need to think about the first half of the day and decide what I will do in the second. I always keep this hour for myself. Sometimes I make exceptions when there is a desire to discuss a new film or something else. But the main problem with office business lunches is what you eat, most likely something that someone in the restaurant didn't finish eating yesterday, and today it was brought to you in the form of cutlets or hodgepodge. Don't believe me? Ask a restaurateur you know or someone who worked in public catering.:) And also an office lunch rarely fits into the allotted hour, and the road back and forth, waiting for food, paying and just a collective collection for it take too much time.

What to do. If you are still in the office all the time, then develop your habits and follow them. And also know that lunch when working at home usually always takes less than an hour, even if you prepare this lunch yourself. Cooking spaghetti takes 15-20 minutes, vegetable soup 20 minutes, chicken sandwich 10 minutes. And all this is today's fresh food, and it is 2-3 times cheaper and tastier.

Inconvenient furniture, appliances and all that

Only serious companies can afford to buy for you an ergonomic chair, a comfortable table, and good technology. In most of my works, these were broken-down chairs that every newbie gets (the best is always taken by old-timers before you come), computers that pissed me off with their ugliness and the presence of Windows on them …

What to do. Buy a comfortable chair for your office for your money. Why do you suffer from terrible furniture for years if it is your back and your body? How do you explain this torment to yourself? Offer your comfortable laptop as an office computer: VPN, HDD / SSD encryption and more make it safe for the company to take home. This will prove your loyalty and also provide you with a ready-made tool for working from home - another step towards working remotely. And don't skimp on your home office and buy the best there. I always do this.

Visitors and the time spent receiving them

If you've worked with a big company as a contractor and visited these monstrous office buildings, then you know how long it takes. It usually happens like this:

1. You get to the BC by traffic jams.
2. Looking for parking for another 15–20 minutes.
3. You are waiting in the lobby of the business center until you receive a pass or call the person who invited you.
4. Then you wait for him / her to come down to pick you up. Sometimes it can take 10-20 minutes or more.
5. You are seated in a meeting room, offered coffee / tea / whiskey, and at this time all those involved are gathered. And they are not always in place. It so happens that the time for a meeting has come, and someone is at another meeting or at lunch, and everyone is waiting for him.
6. The meeting itself.
7. Scrolling.
8. Items 1 and 2 are in reverse order.

Such meetings can actually last half a day!

What to do. Agree with clients about the schedule of such meetings in advance. Try to keep the client part of the process and don't leave them nervously waiting for the deadline. He pulls you in and out himself. Invite him to your project management system as an observer. For example, Bitrix24, Basecamp, or simply a shared and regularly updated Google Docs document, in which you can enable email alerts, can do this. Let the stream of letters fall on him, which shows that everyone is busy with his project with maximum concentration. Let it go to Dropbox, let it live with you virtually. And remember, if you and your team can set up work with a nervous remote customer properly, then doing it inside your company is a trivial matter.

Meetings and Brain Storms

People are like companies - they have a bunch of breakthrough ideas, but for some reason they all lie in the closet. But both people and companies are obsessed with creating more and more new ideas instead of implementing those that were invented long ago. To do this, managers constantly organize meetings and discussions, they constantly want to talk with you about something and discuss something in different configurations. I have not seen anything dumber and more ineffective than meeting an entire company or a whole department to "invent something new" or "share experiences." This is truly a real disaster. A mess, dregs and nonsense.

What to do. Sharing ideas has nothing to do with these gatherings. Very expensive, by the way, if you count the hours spent by everyone present. For example, in advertising agencies there is such a thing as “creative couple”. This is when 2-3 people (usually the configuration is: "a tedious manager and a creative" or "a tedious manager and a couple of creatives") sit down to create ideas. This is a finely tuned process that does not tolerate unnecessary people or, heaven forbid, the whole company or department. Ideas can also be generated during a Skype call, and couples do not need to get together in the office. In general, keep track of invented and implemented ideas. Raise questions about the implementation of these very ideas and take on their implementation. This is an independent work that requires full focus, and the worst place on earth to do this is an office with its movement.

Working with other continents

If you work with European partners, then everything is a little simpler - the time difference is not significant and does not bring adjustments to your work. If you work with the USA, Australia or Asian countries, then the difference can be as little as a few hours, or "we have a day, they have a night." This will require you to interact with people in the early morning or late evening.

What to do. Again, it is not very clear why you have to rush to or leave the office at 7:00 in the morning or leave it at 23:00 or later. I made such calls from home in the morning and continued my business there - I did not want to waste time on the road during the day. If you have an evening call, plan to make it from home and when it is over, you will already be home, and you do not have to get to it at night. If your boss's argument is “the phone is in the office!”, Then tell him about SIP telephony or find another acceptable solution. Most communication systems today have web gateways, open protocols, and can be accessed on a computer or smartphone. Western colleagues willingly jumped over to Skype, Google Hangout or WebEx, if I asked them to. Security policy is cool, but everyone has smartphones.:) And if they need to sell you something or solve a problem, they will be where you ask them to be.

Personal files system GTD

No chaos creates order. If you want to get things done and tidy up, then there is nothing better than the GTD system. Let a hurricane rage around, but on your front there will be complete order and an empty head in the evenings, as well as the confidence that you have everything under control.

What to do. Install Todoist or Omni Focus for yourself if your taskbook at work doesn't meet GTD requirements. Understand this system and make it work for you. Thinking and talking about telecommuting should start with trust between you and your boss. If you do not dig into you, if you always have everything under control, then you do not need supervision. This means you can work anywhere.

Total

I hope I was able to convince you that it is worth trying to work remotely - even if not all 5 days a week, but only 1-2 days. If you are a shepherd leader, start respecting employees who are asked to work from home. Create a roadmap for the transition with them. If you are a subordinate, then be patient and begin personal transformations.

Accept that this is a long road ahead.

You need to be able to work remotely. Nobody knows how to do it just like that. How to read, swim or drive a car - you need to learn!

If the topic of remote work is close to you or it is your dream, if you are full of doubts, then I want to share my experience and many practical tips in. And if the topic of office and remote work is not indifferent to you or you want to spread the topic further, then share this publication on Twitter or Facebook.