I read an article in the Times this week about a Harvard Business School study ( Want to Be More Productive? Sit Next to Someone Who Is) which has determined that placing workers in an office next to colleagues who are extremely good at their job raises the standard of the co-located workers – and vice versa.
I am sure this is right and recall how trainees placed with good mentoring partners in law firms flourished whilst those with less committed principals (one even through a very heavy law book at his trainee) tended to regress.
Anybody who has managed a youth soccer team will know that skilful players with a good attitude tend to lift the standard of the whole team. Selfish or uncommitted players have the opposite effect.
However offices may be becoming a thing of the past – see this article, also by Harvard Business School, Will the Gig Economy make the Office Obsolete?
The gig economy, where independent consultants, contractors, and freelancers create portfolios of work in lieu of one full-time job, is transforming the way we work by disconnecting work from an office.
So how in an environment where people work from home or on trains or at client’s offices and see their colleagues far less frequently can good behaviour even be recognised yet alone spread contagiously?
The answer seems to be to use all of the tools and opportunities of the virtual world to re-create the same sense of team and closeness and ability to learn from one another as exists in a traditional office. Just because teams are not physically located in the same place does not mean that the dynamics identified by Harvard Business School in a physical environment cannot apply in a virtual one.
And indeed to complete a triumvirate of references to Harvard Business School, this this article Getting Virtual Teams Right addresses the question So how do you create and lead an effective virtual team?
Francois de la Rochefoucauld a seventeenth century French author of summed up this concept of learning by example quite well:
“Nothing is so contagious as example; and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like.”
I am sure this is right and recall how trainees placed with good mentoring partners in law firms flourished whilst those with less committed principals (one even through a very heavy law book at his trainee) tended to regress.
Anybody who has managed a youth soccer team will know that skilful players with a good attitude tend to lift the standard of the whole team. Selfish or uncommitted players have the opposite effect.
However offices may be becoming a thing of the past – see this article, also by Harvard Business School, Will the Gig Economy make the Office Obsolete?
The gig economy, where independent consultants, contractors, and freelancers create portfolios of work in lieu of one full-time job, is transforming the way we work by disconnecting work from an office.
So how in an environment where people work from home or on trains or at client’s offices and see their colleagues far less frequently can good behaviour even be recognised yet alone spread contagiously?
The answer seems to be to use all of the tools and opportunities of the virtual world to re-create the same sense of team and closeness and ability to learn from one another as exists in a traditional office. Just because teams are not physically located in the same place does not mean that the dynamics identified by Harvard Business School in a physical environment cannot apply in a virtual one.
And indeed to complete a triumvirate of references to Harvard Business School, this this article Getting Virtual Teams Right addresses the question So how do you create and lead an effective virtual team?
Francois de la Rochefoucauld a seventeenth century French author of summed up this concept of learning by example quite well:
“Nothing is so contagious as example; and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like.”
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