2006
Splendid Isolation*
Before the industrial revolution, there was “professional” isolation. People worked – literally – in cottage industries, in their homes and on their farms, growing, building, making goods that would then be transported to markets or urban centres and what have you. People had connections to others in their lines of work, either just casually within the community, or through guilds and whatnot. But they did not necessarily work at the same time or in the same place as many others involved in the same profession – people who could potentially assist with their work, share ideas, commiserate on commonly experienced problems, or perform functions useful but peripheral to any given endeavour. There were no meetings. However, these people were not subject to “social” isolation. Generally people didn’t live alone, and chances are members of your family were also involved in the blacksmithing or weaving or butter-churning. Additionally, markets were community-oriented. You knew people there and they knew you. Probably had for generations. People bought from and sold to each other, gossiped, inquired about the health and welfare of families, commented on the effects of environmental factors on the quality of goods at any given time, etc. All that was missing was a water cooler.
With the advent of the industrial revolution in the late 18th century, among its many world-changing impacts was the fact that people now worked together. Lots of people, in the same place, doing the same or similar or inter-connecting tasks. To get the job done, “the machine” required many human parts as well as metal ones. And lo, the modern workplace was born. We are not sure when the first meeting took place, but we are fairly certainly that the sandwiches were soggy and tasteless and that someone had computer problems.
Fast forward a couple centuries, and there’ve been some changes in the workplace. Not too many of us are operating cotton gins anymore, but we generally still file into large buildings five mornings a week, sit in rows, and do stuff for The Man. Back around 2000, when the internet was going to save/transform/cool-ify the world, I think our bright and glorious future also involved most of us, before long, telecommuting. Doing stuff for The Man from the comfort of our own homes, drinking better coffee, and taking full advantage of pants-optional policies.
Now, with the dearth of good technical people available to staff any given company, let alone the body-and-brains-hungry Web 2.0 industry, many companies have had to make distributed teams work. Perhaps the rock stars just are not available where your headquarters are located. Perhaps you have the rock star working for you already, but he has to move 3000 miles away, and your only hope of keeping him on staff is to allow him to work remotely. Perhaps your company is located in an area where the average human simply cannot afford to live, and allowing more scheduling and geographical flexibility is, essentially, a humanitarian gesture so that employees can have lives outside of their commutes. In these situations, the key is to make sure everyone feels like a part of the team, and to ignore the fact that all the faces are not around the conference table once a week. In these situations, it’s about making sure everyone is “in”. Working relationships are not like romantic relationships. Sharing “meatspace” is not a quotidian imperative.
Yes, I know. “Working from home” for most people has become a joke that pretty much everyone is in on. It’s a “get out of jail free” card. But, as I mentioned, I’m talking about teams who are and who remain connected even though distance is a way of life. I’m not talking about the director who happens to call in from his car on the way out of the parking lot and says he’s going to be “working from home” and it just happens to be a gorgeous Friday afternoon and aren’t those his golf clubs in the back seat…? For example, I used to provide the tip to any number of former co-workers that if you change your BlackBerry sig to match your Outlook sig, then when you send/reply to emails, no one can tell whether you’re at your desk or on the golf course. What is or is not actually getting done is understood in those circumstances. I’m not saying actual productivity while working from home sometimes doesn’t happen or never works, especially for people in tech. However, unless you are the Unabomber, or Greta Garbo, not many people do their best work in isolation.
It is nearly impossible in a work situation to excel when you are isolated. Companies are not structured to encourage individuals to possess all the knowledge, skills, problem-solving capabilities, time, resources, and authority to be super heroic machines of mass production. While large teams become bloated and bogged down and get nothing done, people who work without peers, feedback, challenges from other people’s ideas – in a vacuum, more or less – can’t thrive, either. Isolation affects productivity, motivation, and loyalty. Employees can be professionally isolated – left out of the tick-tock of projects and changes and brainstorming and whatnot – and they can be socially isolated – left out of the politics and pede-conferences and gossip and after-work beers and lunches where great ideas get sketched out on napkins. And while one might sound more frivolous than the other, a balance of both is essential to a thriving work environment.
A case study: it’s quiet in my office. Probably rather different over in the call centre, but IT and Finance are generally located together, and it’s always quiet. There are the ever-present sounds of HVAC, of course, but generally, all is silent over here, in part because people just aren’t talking, and also, more subtly, due to the ridiculously effective functioning of the white noise/sound dampening system they have in place. (If someone even six feet away is talking right to you, except in oddly clear pockets of space, most likely the talker sounds like a fading version of Charlie Brown’s teacher.) The effect of this environment is that casual conversation is not all that common. You have to make a physical effort to talk to people in person, which means overhearing others is well nigh impossible. Email is easier. Especially to talk to people in the other part of the building. It’s a bit of a hike over there. People don’t overhear off-the-cuff exchanges or ad hoc mini-meetings and thus cannot throw in their two cents. Or laugh at you when you’re swearing about some problem.
As often distracting as the open workspace at the old company was, it facilitated a sense of team (and, by extension, of community). Truly private conversations were taken to meeting rooms, but everything else was fair game. Random questions or comments were just thrown out verbally, and responded to the same way. (That said, we also IM’d people at the next desk…) The prevalence of BlackBerries did the same thing. As I’ve mentioned before, they were far more valuable as a socializing and team-building tool than as a straight up business communications device. You could share those random, in the moment comments or occurrences through which people bond. Now? Not so much. Well, except the handful of IT guys who have BlackBerries, but they were already friends to begin with. And they’re young enough that they actually use text messaging.
Now, management may be inclined to view groups of friends working closely together much the way teachers view groups of friends sitting together in the classroom: an open invitation for disruption and goofing off. Work to be done? Yeah, in a minute, but dude, check out this YouTube video… This is a possible scenario, however, if there’s that great a lack of motivation, the fundamental problem is not the fact that the employees are friends. In a work environment where people know what they’re supposed to do, and need to do, and have clear avenues for questions and feedback and recognition, and where they understand the work at hand and are passionate about it, occasional goofing off is a non-issue. Why? Because these are the teams that you will find in the office at 2am manufacturing genius or annihilating issues amidst half-drunk cups of cold coffee and empty pizza boxes. These are the teams who develop something of a hive mind, where ideas and innovation can flourish because there is an unprecedented cohesion of memory and support and trust. It is a collective “zone”. How many of the great tech companies out there have nice, shiny PR blurbs that begin with “Mr. X and Mr. Y sewed the seeds of Z Corp. back when they were college buddies…”?
Friendship with one’s manager is a trickier avenue to navigate, but if you’re both intelligent and mature enough to recognize and respect boundaries, it can also be invaluable in gaining mentorship, encouragement, and the confidence borne of knowing someone with (hopefully) status and pull has your back. It can also jumpstart your professional network and connect you to a whole raft of people a step or three up the corporate ladder from you. Because, as we know, it is all about who you know… And should you be having problems outside of work that are bound to affect work (let’s face it, “leave it at home” just doesn’t happen), it’s easier to get consideration for your temporarily messed-up mindset if you’re talking to someone who knows you and likes you and probably already knew at least some of what was going on.
Okay, so… you have one of those “zoned” teams. They’re great. They might be better at asking for forgiveness than permission sometimes, but they fire on all cylinders and they get the job done. Perfect, right? Well… depends. The haves (exceptional team members) and have nots (isolated team members) where I work are divided by interconnectedness, or lack thereof. This is especially noticeable if, like I was, you are on an interconnected team, but are the only one disconnected. Add to that being the only one not directly involved in the technical aspects of projects or development, and you’ve got a recipe for Grade A isolation. And when, as I mentioned, the others on the team are already friends as well as co-workers, the isolation is as thoroughly social as professional. The psychological effects of not being present for that 2am football game can be as damaging as the embarrassment of finding out in a meeting with a lot of other people present that you’re rather inconveniently out of the loop in terms of what direction your project is going. As noted, this is not an ideal – even good – working environment, and it will cause problems. Thing is, what’s the alternative? Is it even possible for anyone to raise the issue without it sounding like a) a parent insisting the child “play nice with the other kid(s)”, or b) management is trying to micro-manage and take even more time away from getting shit done.
There are debates even still about whether technology encourages or discourages the development of interpersonal relationships. This is a question for “real life” as well as the workplace. My thinking is that it depends on the environment, and that “different” communications media need not automatically mean “non-existent” communications media. How people communicate with each other has been evolving since day one, and the office is no exception. It just tends to happen a lot more awkwardly and slowly. Especially when you mix people together whose communications comfort zones are all over the map.
A lot of technical people are simply more used to and more comfortable “talking” via technology, and there are efficiencies and advantages to text-based communications. I’ve observed any number of situations where endless email trails or walking around could have been headed off at the pass by a quick instant messenger exchange. I don’t get many phone calls at work, and so it has become a pretty obvious sign to me that if I do get one, something I thought was clear has derailed badly. However, there are still a lot of companies that see communications technologies as things to be stamped out, secured against, and monitored for surreptitious abuse. In reality, at its best, email and, even more so, instant messaging, function the same way the BlackBerries did for my department: they allow informal, in-the-moment conversation, exchange of information, commiseration, or humour, which are the best ways to bond any team. As anyone who’s ever sat through a day-long meeting knows, nothing ever really gets accomplished by a horde of people slouched over a table, or in the presence of PowerPoint.
However, when an employee is isolated, those ad hoc meetings, random comments that solve big problems, or business direction that’s determined from conference learning and analysis? You’re not part of that. That Nerf football game that occurs at 2am after a big project is finally pushed, kicking and screaming, into production? You’re not part of that. And should there be some reorganization, if you’re moved to another team and “officially” become a “resource” and a “customer”, then you essentially cease to exist unless the others need or want something. This is not the path to job security. This is not how to produce a cohesive team. No one member should ever be left chasing after the test of the team just to find out what was going on, let alone what is, or will be.
The result, when you become a resource, almost a contractor to your own department, is that your inclusion is done reluctantly. When the work is mostly done, and no one wants to know what you have to say, it’s thrown over to you for your input, since they have to, and really all you are is a roadblock to Getting To Done (unless, potentially, you can shed light on a particularly thorny problem that’s been plaguing them). You’re not making the product more usable to the user, to certain minds; you’re holding up development or production. And when you’re not working on a specific project, you’re trying to invent mini-projects to keep yourself busy, because chances are your boss is very busy and has little idea what you do and figures no news is good news. And you are left wondering what’s really going on. No one thrives in this environment. No one remains motivated. No one operates at optimal, even good, productivity. No one feels passionate about the work. No one feels loyalty to the company. Great things are not born from an absence of passion, in the workplace or anywhere else. An isolated employee will probably answer “no” to almost all of these questions. Thing is, isolation not only lowers the amount and quality of work getting done, and the happiness of employees, for the individual, it also puts your job at risk. If you’re effectively invisible, people (especially the ones who matter) don’t know what you do. Your network is not supplied with any current (or currency). As a result you can’t really be valued, and should layoff time come around, it becomes hard to justify why they’re paying your salary, if no one (especially you) can come up with any stellar moments from the past week, month, or year with your name on them.
I did some Googling to see what had been researched, pondered, and written about personnel workplace isolation. Strangely, (and, perhaps, tellingly?) one of the most common threads that came back related to violence, either specifically in the workplace, or the tie-in to domestic violence. Well. Wasn’t expecting that.
I did a quote search on isolation as a subject in general, and most of what came back related to politics and the geopolitical climate of the world over time (hence the title of this piece). That hadn’t really occurred to me, either, since I was really expecting profound statements on the subject from the literati.
I found links to a paper called “Human factors and the work environment. II. The impact of isolation upon personnel.”, but couldn’t manage to actually get to the paper, and it appeared to be from the early 60s. Oh well. Would have been interesting, but I suspect it would have lacked the strong influence of technology that is inextricably intertwined with my perspective.
So what do you do? As any person who was ever a kid in school can tell you, interaction cannot be mandated. Not group work assignments, nor recess buddies. Professional interaction can be mandated to a general level. At the very least there is no reason why any employee can’t and shouldn’t be kept up to date on projects in which he or she is involved (unless you’re talking situations with seriously fucked up internal politics, and that’s a whole ‘nother story). People need a certain amount of information and interaction to get the job done. Any project team that prevents that from happening is just shooting itself in the foot.
Social interaction? That’s another kettle of fish. To a point, managers can make sure that people who seem to be isolated, or are slipping in that direction, are included in everything they need to be. (This does not mean more team-building events or motivational posters.) More fundamentally, they can make sure they hire the right people in the first place. Clichéd as looking for “team players” sounds, for most jobs, even a genius with a stellar resume isn’t enough if the person doesn’t play well with others. Being hard to work with, amazingly enough, makes people want to avoid working with you. (A lesson I learned a long time ago…) Employees? Speak up. Make sure you’re included. Be friendly, helpful, and prompt with assistance or getting your part of the work done. You can make sure you’re not a bottleneck, at least. But don’t try too hard. Desperation is no more attractive in an adult than in a child who is aching to be one of the Cool Kids. Sometimes you will end up in a position of at least some degree of isolation at work, and there is little or nothing you can do about it. If you are the only person in the company who does what you do, attempts at “team” 2am Nerf football games are going to look a bit silly. If isolation happens, then it’s really up to you to determine what kind of isolation it is, and how much it matters, personally and professionally. If it means you end up spending less time chatting with the butcher’s wife on market day, that’s one thing. But if it means that half the village whispers behind your back and won’t buy your wares, which puts your livelihood at risk, that is something else entirely.
