Marieke Flament is the executive director of the NEAR Foundation, a non-profit organization that oversees the sustainability of Web3 in the NEAR protocol.
The pandemic has replaced many things, adding our focus on the physical size of jobs. While more and more people have become accustomed to video calls and jobs from anywhere, the demanding situations and opportunities to lead decentralized work go far beyond whether to use Microsoft. Teams or Zoom.
New laws have been introduced since the beginning of the pandemic that will replace long-term work. These come with the law on the “right to disconnect” that came into force last year in Portugal, as the Portuguese Labour Code states that employers have to prevent staff from contacting their rest, except in cases of force majeure. Companies that violate this right are exposed to fines of up to € 9,690.
Similar legislation on the “right to disconnect” exists in Belgium, France, Italy and Spain, as the ongoing digitization of paintings has caused many painters to paint beyond scheduled hours. and the expanding standardization of running from home blurs past definitions of the start and end of operating hours.
Beyond legislation, however, new questions arise about how leaders can manage their groups well as the workforce becomes increasingly decentralized. For example, many corporations introduce “closing weeks” for certain groups to walk away to rest and without returning to an uncontrollable inbox. Mental conditioning platforms are also emerging to help cope with the new overall work.
For us at the NEAR Foundation, our groups are spread across 4 other time zones and across several countries and continents. To make sure no one is running 24/7 and running out of time, set up several measures that may work for you.
First, we have transparent written communication, designed to be collaborative at its core. We keep our written communication open but documented at all times. Are we missing something? Written communications in a remote, decentralized environment are for asynchronous collaboration, as other people can respond when it works for them.
Written communication is also a difficult way to keep track of what has been said, which is even more so in remote environments. Finally, it gives more transparency, accountability and inclusion, because with this approach to communication, it’s not about who screams the loudest.
After all, in this new reality where workers are scattered around the world, the role of leadership is changing. The role of a manager or leader is more focused on training, inspiration, and communication. People want to be more and more motivated and transparent. ownership and objectives. In a way, it’s much more about empowering workers, and those shared documents are a must-have feature and a demonstration of the key team to achieve this in practice.
Then, we have linked ceremonies, such as team meetings or team meetings, that take position at the same time. We also record them in case someone is unable to attend in real time. While a distributed workforce automatically provides more freedom to workers. To customize your routines and work positions, we created those rituals to help shape a more collective design for our team.
Many other people are now virtual nomads. This can be wonderful for creativity, but it also requires new degrees of private motivation to organize. How do you design your routine?Where do you paint?How do you find a suitable paint area for you?We use a global virtual work platform so that our groups can go to any area in a place that fits them. We also make sure to have team rituals to give our painters a sense of shared gravity mindset, which will help them anchor themselves as a team as they work in other cities and have a great diversity of configurations and work routines.
Finally, we make sure that there are as many moments in the user as possible. We also appreciate the importance of synchronous communications. It can be as undeniable as picking up the phone to dispel any kind of tension or misunderstanding. Often, written communication can be misinterpreted, and someone thinks after reading a short email, “Oh, they’re mad at me. No, they are not. ” They’re just busy. Picking up the phone helps relieve that tension.
Beyond that, meetings like meetings can be difficult because they allow a team to link at other levels. Even though most of your time can still be spent communicating about work, the way you communicate about it may be different. When you’re face-to-face with other passionate people looking to get things done, it can give you a feeling that’s hard to portray online.
Having time in front of other scheduled ones can be incredibly helpful. This normal physical contact with other workers fosters team spirit, which is why we inspire groups to come together in a genuine life in both quarters and both to cement and deepen relationships. We also offer an “on-demand workspace” and work area if someone just wants a speed upgrade and wants to spend a day playing with a colleague.
In general, the skills to look for in a decentralized work environment may be different from those required in a centralized office. Communication is usually non-verbal, meaning that intention, tone, and intonation are lost in the virtual world. it is essential to teach other people to speak more in particular and speak something more than once. We also work with a trainer, do exercises on topics like active listening, provide feedback, and explain what we mean when we operate remotely.
Moving away from top-down leadership and toward self-organization raises other questions about how we teach tomorrow’s leaders. Homeschooling is booming as a component of this ongoing revolution around a different, more autonomous, artistic and independent way of operating. For today’s leaders, we all remain informed in practice as we adapt to this new world.
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