Spontaneity, Perfect Hybrid, and Visibility Traps

If you work in a hybrid setting, is there an optimal number of days per week to work in an office? Of course, this is highly situational. However, there are some clues to be found, and they come from the nature of the type of work employees do as individuals and in teams. Dr. Gleb Tsipursky (who will be a guest on a future episode of our remote work podcast) has looked into this in some detail, something he covers in his very interesting book – Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams. Most of us do a combination of work that is naturally suited to be done in isolation (what we at BillionMinds call “me” time) and work that is naturally suited to be done in the company of others (what we call “we” time). Interestingly according to the work of Dr. Tsipursky and others, most of us spend the vast majority of time doing the former type of work, and the split can be as high as 90:10.

You can maximize the 90% by working at a place that is most conducive for focusing, which is often away from the office, but how do you maximize the 10%? Well for some teams this DOES mean gathering together as a group, so team members should agree on days where everyone who can be in a shared space, and all team members should focus on collaborative work at that time. Dr. Tsipursky’s work suggests that in the majority of circumstances, this is no more than 1 day per week. If you do this well as a team you should see individual and team productivity increase dramatically.

What if you are 100% remote? Well, actually the principle still applies. For example, you may agree on a day each week which is focused on collaboration, put team meetings on those days, and perhaps have open ad hoc working sessions where cameras are on in the background and interruptions are encouraged. By separating the “me time” and “we time” in this way, you can get more done overall.