I have been asked very many questions about hybrid work of late, and I have noticed how often the answer to so many of them is the same.  How do we maintain organisational culture?  How do we support new starters?  How best to communicate or collaborate?  How can we build teams and relationships, enable wellbeing and how best to manage hybrid teams? And so on. 

Here is that answer: everything needs to be more intentional.

Time together.

Communication.

Being in the office.

Time management.

Organisational culture.

Onboarding.

Collaboration. 

Social connection and relationship building. 

Team cohesion. 

Meetings. 

You can’t assume these things will happen by themselves, in a hybrid world.  Arguably they never did, but in a co-located environment it was perhaps a little easier to get away with it.

When working hybrid, you can’t rely on the ad hoc, the casual, or even the metaphorical, mystical watercooler.  You can’t just let the day or the thing happen, take it as it comes.  Everything needs more planning and more focus, if we want it to be successful.  We have to think about the best way to do something, carve out specific time, ask more questions, do the detail.

We have to apply our mind to the things that we do at work in a way that we didn’t when we all turned up at the same time in the same office.   We have to be more intentional.  In every single thing that we do. 

Intentionality. It’s a hybrid thing.