described as inferior to in-person learning and teaching. The common perception is that if you translate what you are used to doing in person and on campus, such as a lecture for example, and put its equiva- lent, such as a lecture recording, online, you lose something in the process, it’s a “lecture-deficit” model, if you like. Which is why it is so important that we
shift “the narrative about online education from a deficit one… We need to find ways to ensure that we see some advantages to this different mode of education and garner the benefits of its particular world of possibilities. … It won’t be easy; it won’t be cheap; but our online education won’t be a paltry imitation of old and tired gen- res like the lecture.” (
https://bit.ly/32ieGEp)
Equitable and engaging
Creating a richer vision for the future of the virtual classroom highlights what we need to imagine for the future of the virtu- al workplace, too, and this is the primary purpose of this book.
In this book I want to look at what’s beyond translating office-based working practices online and not focus on what home-workers lose in the process, in a kind of “office-deficit” model. Instead I will share how a distributed organisation can be a welcoming and warm place to work and how you can empower staff in making virtual working an equitable and engaging reality that benefits the organi- sation and the individual alike.
18 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL DIGITAL
In 2017 I embarked on a journey of organisational transformation as the CEO of an independent charity, as we took our organisation from a traditional, office-based model of operations to a fully virtual, distributed team. In comparison to many businesses who were forced to adopt home-working in response to the global pandemic, we made the transition for strategic reasons over the period of a year. Instead of sending staff home with a laptop one day and starting home-work- ing the next, we went through formal consultation periods and implemented the transition gradually, providing support and training at every stage. As a result we made a very successful transition and started to focus on how to evolve our approach to working as a virtual team beyond practical considerations from the outset.
People and business needs When I set out to create a new vision for what working for our virtual organisa- tion would be like, I came across a lot of practical advice about infrastructure and business processes (like article this from Scientific American,
https://bit.ly/3DJ9JCr) and I also read a lot of management books (such as Dr Gleb Tsipursky’s Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Bench- marking to Best Practices for Competi- tive Advantage
https://bit.ly/3oP0GJV/) that seemed intent on helping leaders and
managers to translate traditional power structures from the office to the virtual workplace with a strong emphasis on productivity, cost-savings and employee surveillance. None of what I came across helped to answer my questions. What I was looking for was authentic insight into what it’s like to manage people remotely and to lead an organ- isation from home, and to do it well. And by “doing it well”, I mean not only meeting budget targets and KPIs but to balance business needs with em- ployee happiness and wellbeing. I was looking to find creative and fun ways to work with people you may never meet in person and to build meaningful working relationships. I was looking for ethical ways to work online that respect employee privacy and build trust between the organisation and its staff. In short, I was looking for the opposite of the ‘office-deficit’ model. This is why I am writing this book. It’s the book I wish I had found when I was setting out on my journey to lead a virtual team. I hope it will provide a source of inspiration and a prompt for reflection to my readers and will be of practical help with managing hybrid, blended and fully distributed teams and organisations.
Although for many people around the world remote working has been a pan- demic necessity, it is by no means a new practice. Working from home has a long
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