Goal Setting in a Hybrid World
It was a great pleasure to be one of the Breakout session speakers at intelliflo’s connected conference in May 2022. It was my first time back speaking in front of a live audience for almost 3 years plus online attendees at this hybrid event and great to see so many people in a conference environment again.
Topically my talk was about ‘Goal Setting in a Hybrid World’, in other words, how do you set and achieve realistic goals when people are now working across home and the office and you rarely have everyone in one place.
Back in 2019, companies were already moving to a hybrid working environment but there was still an expectation of being present in the office and being ‘seen’. Conferencing facilities were not used by everyone and it was considered easier to be in the office, particularly for key meetings.
Three years on and the hybrid world is very different. Zoom and Teams conferencing facilities have been widely adopted for online meetings and considered technology everyone can comfortably use. There’s also a broader acceptance that people can be productive regardless of location. We’ve also mastered a new art of online communication to the point that we’ve had to readjust to face-to-face meetings and then learn how to manage hybrid meetings.
So how does that impact goal setting? Moving into this hybrid world has brought welcome flexibility to working but it’s also created complications for the same reason. When the majority of people worked in the office, it was straightforward to set up meetings and have a quick chat as required. Likewise, when everyone was forced to work remotely you knew everyone was online (‘you’re on mute’ will no doubt be known as one of the most used phrases in this decade). Now we can be anywhere and everywhere so a previous impromptu chat in the office has moved to a pre-planned diarised meeting invite with both a physical meeting room and dial in technology options.
Despite these changes, business goals remain largely unchanged across Technology, Strategy, Operational, Products and Services, however the journey and the solution to achieve these goals has altered. For example, in my recent talk I mention a Financial Adviser firm which originally wanted a freelance Training & Competence person based in the office but were struggling to find the right person locally for the role. Partway through the lockdown situation they realised that with the new conference technology the service could be handled online which meant location was no longer an issue which opened up a far wider pool of people.
Clear communication and organisation across the business are the keys to working in a hybrid environment. The past few years I’ve had the privilege to work on some really interesting projects with great Project teams who have demonstrated that significant change can be successfully handled totally online or across a hybrid environment. These Projects would have previously relied on everyone being in the office such as starting up a new subsidiary company, an integration merger, D2C propositions, system enhancements, nationally and internationally. Working together face to face is still considered the optimum in many ways and thankfully we are now able to meet up again, but we have proved that goals can be achieved in the today’s hybrid world in ways no-one thought would be possible 3 years ago.
If you’re interested to see my full talk and some of the other themes discussed, please see the video on the Mint Blue Consulting YouTube Channel. With many thanks to intelliflo for their permission to make this video available.
Helen runs operational and change management projects to support growing and / or changing businesses, tailored to requirements. For more information please contact [email protected].