Let’s push remote work into the bronze age
I’ve been using the saying “we are in the stone age phase of remote working” a lot lately.
Screenshot of a Video call. The camera looks at a desk, where a sticky note reads "Gone to make a tea, back soon"
We have a studio space now. It’s a bit of a luxury, but a luxury worth having. I’m looking forward to engaging in a set of habits and routines that fit with a post covid, post remote reality.
Work flexibility is an issue of égalité (freedom, equality, togetherness, as the French motto almost says - the french vibe is cool). We no longer have the scenario of absolute chaos between 7am-9am where stressed parents rush from pillar to post. Or that horrible moment when you squeeze yourself out of the room or conversation at 4:05 as you know you need to be at school pick up by 5pm. Race condition, no room for error, fucking leaves on the track! Emergency! Text text text text text text the parents Whatsapp for help!
But. In return for losing that, what else did we lose? Happenstance, the bubble of presence. The ad hoc hallway chat that lets everyone cancel a meeting. The norms of being able to separate your life and your work. Not having to clear your kitchen 15 times daily. Not being reminded of how much washing there is as you try and decipher a profit margin. I think there are a set of healthy habits that were dropped without thinking.
Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet are the stone age of remote working. I no longer refer to being “on a Zoom call”. I now say, “I spoke to a computer that had postage-sized faces on it and latency, which means nonverbal communication was hard to decipher,” which is demonstrably what happens.
There is also the physiological reality of who I am and my body. When I don’t move around every 90 minutes, I feel awful. Having a watch that pings “keep moving!” is frankly dystopian. When I talk to a machine all day, I feel awful. When I don’t have a 40 minute disconnection routine, I feel awful.
Sure, I could do it at home. But as the household machinery of power starts turning between 4-8pm, and children get hungry and ratty, and pots start clanking and kettles start boiling… are you really going to say “just popping out for my post work decompression walk”?
When I reflect on working in studios there are norms I now miss. I would have a pair of over ear headphones. Two ears meant leave me alone, one ear over meant open to chat, no headphones meant let’s talk. You can see those norms out of the corner of your eye, it doesn’t need an invite.
We’ve been doing meat space communication for 1,000 years - you can tell feelings by looking at people. The silent sound of the room after an end of project call is the most depressing way to end an adventure. Missing someone writing “brb” in a Discord chat means total context collapse as there is no shared experience.
How will the archaeologists of the future identify the moment when bronze age remote working started? What should we look out for? What can we make happen?
We use Discord and have video and audio rooms just to be present. It doesn’t quite work yet. Social norms mean people feel obliged to talk. What’s the equivalent of a gentle, polite nod and then carrying on with your work?
How you work is inextricably linked to the work you produce. Less “team health and psychological safety” and more “make a brilliant environment to make brilliant things” kind of way. Those two are connected, but we embody openness and compassion, so I want some oomph back.
Norms and tools interplay with each other, it was always true, and it’s still true. I think we need the equivalent of the red record button—you’re live. I’d have that in a workspace, but not in my home. We need tooling that can record, stream, and delete. What’s the livestream equivalent of deleting your old tweets? Some words and phrases are just for the moment and were never meant to scale.
So, onto the Bronze Age. I have a Spotify playlist called Shared Experiences Are Great. I can’t wait for a moment in the studio where two people smile at the same bit of the same song at the same time. Imagine that!
I don’t want “back to office” edicts, that’s illogical and irrational. Life can be too logistically tricky and houses cost too much in certain cities for that kind of nonsense. But I want to be intentional and aware of the things that were lost, and the things that I miss. And maybe, actively design alternatives that feel like a future I want to live in.
Eliot Fineberg, edited by Rod McLaren
Make bangers, not anthems
There are still agencies and consultancies out there using slide decks as the only deliverable, like it’s 1995. But it’s 2024 on the internet, so let’s act like it.
Explore Arts Council funding data
The internet is beautiful and incredible. In 1994 my dad printed the Saturday afternoon football results off from his computer, and I was amazed we didn’t have to look at Ceefax. Obviously we’ve moved on a bit since then, but some things remain true, primarily: it’s interactive. You can link to things. You can make things move around. You can keep things updated in real time. So take advantage of the internet and the affordances it offers.
It’s our material: “like any other type of design, you need to understand the constraints of your medium — and ours is mostly the internet”. (But you don’t need to learn to code any more.)
If it’s got (meta) data, make it playable. Share demos not decks.
Times we did this:
- a playable roadmap for the British Library - filter by theme, timeframe and whether it’s something for discovery, build or measurement
Playable roadmap for British Library
- Sportfunding - we used ChatGPT to build different data visualisations of Sport England funding so we could get our heads around where their funding allocations were going
- Setup for the day order-a-tron - to minimise the ‘who’s going next’ at our morning check-ins, we got a computer to do it instead
Setup for the day order-a-tron
Of course there’s still room for well written reports: it’s our job to deliver value for clients, and if a report is the best way to make an impact, then we write it down and make it brilliant.
But it’s also our job to push the practice forward and show what’s possible. Computers got cool again. Use them to explore ideas. Use them to run your projects better. Use them to deliver your end ‘deliverables’. Have fun!
Series 3 - episode 2 - Mad props
I’m coming to the end of ten days in my home office, sleeping on the day bed in the corner, rolling over to finish Radical Help in the morning, sitting at my desk to hop onto Discord around lunchtime and check out what’s going on with work. That’s right, it’s covid isolation! The things we do for love.
The end-of-year wrap up emails have started coming in just as I’ve been thinking about this sentence on our website: “Our primary contribution to the future we want to live in is to work alongside organisations in the fields of design, technology and storytelling.”
We could probably write hundreds or thousands of words about ‘the future we want to live in’, maybe it’s enough to say for the moment that Simon Kuper writing about Paris feeling optimistic made me feel wildly jealous. I was 22 when the coalition government showed up and I’m sick of everything feeling like it.just.gets.worse. But I’ll save that for another day.
Instead the thing that has been on my mind in amongst my reading material and my general soppiness and these end-of-year reflections is relationships, how we show up in them and what that signifies for the future we’re pushing towards.
As an example. Eliot and I have a standing meeting in our calendars every fortnight. It’s called ‘Looking back, and looking forward (Retro)’. When we started doing retros, just the two of us, we had three columns - Start, Stop, Continue. And then one day we added ‘Feelings’, and now that’s the only column that gets used. As co-directors we look after each other, hold each other to account, deliver the compassion that perhaps we don’t give to ourselves. I have no norms for a co-founder relationship, so every day we are shaping it and how we want it to feel and be. And that gives me hope of all the other possible forms of relationship that could exist in the world if we prioritised compassion and honesty over… well, over a lot of other things.
A relationship full of abundance, generosity and a good dose of keeping ourselves honest.
Which we will keep on attempting to embody when we interact with our co-workers, colleagues, clients, suppliers, customers and everyone else showing up every day trying to do a decent job.
So to everyone that’s held us to account this year
Or reposted something
Or commented on LinkedIn
Or got one of these emails
Or taken us for coffee
Or made us lunch
Or bought us a pint
Or hung out in Discord
Or sent some work our way
Or done some work with us
Maybe next year we’ll get it together to have some nice studio Christmas cards done and be able to express our gratitude to friends and colleagues individually. For now, I reckon you know who you are. Thank you.
Finally, the work is not the only way to pay stuff forwards - the money helps, too. We’re making some charity donations to the tune of 1% of this year’s turnover. More on that next year. In the meantime: hope you get some time off in the next few weeks. Happy new year.
AG
Series 3 - episode 1 - Fuck it, write it.
It’s been ages, sorry about that. Appears we have been starting a real company. So here is another meta-talk-about-writing-about-the-writing weeknote which is obviously just me talking about my feels. Hey ho.
Right now I’m supposed to be pulling together a list of blog posts that have been burning a hole in my head for - shit - a decade. But when I was looking at the folder I’m pulling together I saw two Google Docs, Series 1 - What is this thing? and Series 2 - Lets go.
… and I thought nah. Let’s talk first. I’ll avoid the hard thing for just another day.
So this is Series 3 - Make sure the ground keeps getting further away.
I just checked the last time I sent a message. It was June 12th. I turned 39 three days later. I never write that down and never say it in rooms at work. A career of being one the youngest in the room has taught me to not mention it in case you get ignored based on your age.
The last few years have been about being one of the older ones now - fewer people to look up to has both benefits and pains. It metaphorically clears a space to run into.
Managing self doubt about running into the space is 80% of the effort. The last 20% of effort is about using that sense of freedom to say and do something you believe.
We’ve been working on writing down what we think. Doing that has been building a huge sense of self confidence within me to talk about what we do, who we are, what motivates us.
Which brings me back to blog posts. I want to write and say the things that probably, undoubtedly, more than likely are the underlying issue. It reminds me of the abilene paradox. That saying things we probably all agree but haven’t said yet takes courage. We keep cycling back to courage.
We’ve been working with Conor Delahunty on brand. Writing pithy statements about nuanced realities of life makes me want to be sick. But having someone guide us through it is really helpful. The mad irony is we do this for other people all the time. Doing it for yourself is hard af. This blogpost by Camilla Petty has helped. The website isn’t really for you. And I can’t control what you think. So I just need to be honest and proud.
Anyway - we wrote a document called ’fuck it, just write it”. It is a long list of things Anna and/or I feel or believe based on our collective experience of doing this kind of work for a while. The courageous thing to do is publish it. I’m not there yet. But we are getting there.
We also started a risk register like proper grown ups. We are going to run a brain trust with some trusted folks to get their “feedback” - but let’s be honest - get their emotional support. Being small and scrappy is exhausting some days.
If you’re so inclined. Request access and leave your feedback. We’d appreciate it.
And so we circle back. 80% of the effort is managing self doubt. And that is why I’m really writing this down and emailing you. Just to say this stuff out loud and hope you smile and nod back.
Anyway - this has been a long winded way of saying we launched a new website.
Check it out. Share with your friends. Or more ideally. Share it with people who have deep pockets and good ideas they need help with.
Peace.
EF
Series 2 - Episode 3 - We good?
It’s been a long while, I shouldn’t have left you. But I did. Things around here are starting to look and feel… stable. That’s new. What is this funny feeling? Is it the idea that death isn’t impending. That we will definitely exist in 6 months time. Well hello there feeling. I might just enjoy this for a moment. Take a look at the plants, smile at the good people and then breathe. Yes boss. That’s been an adventure. I liked doing it together. Let’s keep going.
Had a session with Georg Fasching where we discussed how to avoid the standard traps of agency life. I’ve realised I’m interested in the work, and the people i’m working with. The vehicle is just the vehicle. In fact, it’s not a vehicle. It’s an organism. Which is just the people. Our relationships, norms and tools. I’m naturally good with the relationships. The norms and tools. Christ. Thought I was better than I am. Shout out to all the good delivery people I didn’t realise I depended on quite so much. Love you. You dunno what you got till it’s gone.
Timesheets and utilisation is a standard measurement for agencies - how much time is anyone working on a client project. It feels like a terrible measure of success. Quality of work, how I feel and cashflow are really what I’m aiming for. But having something a little simpler to track and predict would make my cortisol levels drop a touch. Outcomes are great. But everything isn’t a spreadsheet. Kickbacks and financial incentive structures always feel…dirty? Or too powerful. Or something I can’t quite figure out yet.
I’ve read a couple of times about not getting stuck in the trap between being a partnership that works and an agency that is self-sustaining. That the space between those is the trap of continuous almost death that you want to avoid.
I can see that being true if you promise people (inflated?) wages and then build an payroll cost you just have to hit. But. Yeah. No? Not that?
What if the mastery looks more like a film production house. Skilled people on reasonable wages or rates. Swarming. All for one, one for all. Then away. Reminisce about the good times. Spend good patient time percolating a sequel. Or an offshoot. Let’s hang out more. No, not all time is charged. Only the intentional stuff is. And if so. Hold it lightly. Amazingly there is probably enough money to go around. What a privilege. Especially these days.
We were chatting with Max Cooke a few weeks ago - the culture around doing sessions among writers and musicians feels exciting, generative and kind. Feel your way into it. Yeah, a usual session is 6hrs. But if you are onto a winner stick it out till midnight.
Anyway. Starting to feel like we know what a full team looks like. Missing a couple of skills. We know what good play looks like. We need a pre-season. And perhaps a couple of seasons. But we are good. And we will be better. And knowing that? That’s niiiice.
EF
Series 2 - Episode 3 - We good?
It’s been a long while, I shouldn’t have left you. But I did. Things around here are starting to look and feel… stable. That’s new. What is this funny feeling? Is it the idea that death isn’t impending. That we will definitely exist in 6 months time. Well hello there feeling. I might just enjoy this for a moment. Take a look at the plants, smile at the good people and then breathe. Yes boss. That’s been an adventure. I liked doing it together. Let’s keep going.
Had a session with Georg Fasching where we discussed how to avoid the standard traps of agency life. I’ve realised I’m interested in the work, and the people i’m working with. The vehicle is just the vehicle. In fact, it’s not a vehicle. It’s an organism. Which is just the people. Our relationships, norms and tools. I’m naturally good with the relationships. The norms and tools. Christ. Thought I was better than I am. Shout out to all the good delivery people I didn’t realise I depended on quite so much. Love you. You dunno what you got till it’s gone.
Timesheets and utilisation is a standard measurement for agencies - how much time is anyone working on a client project. It feels like a terrible measure of success. Quality of work, how I feel and cashflow are really what I’m aiming for. But having something a little simpler to track and predict would make my cortisol levels drop a touch. Outcomes are great. But everything isn’t a spreadsheet. Kickbacks and financial incentive structures always feel…dirty? Or too powerful. Or something I can’t quite figure out yet.
I’ve read a couple of times about not getting stuck in the trap between being a partnership that works and an agency that is self-sustaining. That the space between those is the trap of continuous almost death that you want to avoid.
I can see that being true if you promise people (inflated?) wages and then build an payroll cost you just have to hit. But. Yeah. No? Not that?
What if the mastery looks more like a film production house. Skilled people on reasonable wages or rates. Swarming. All for one, one for all. Then away. Reminisce about the good times. Spend good patient time percolating a sequel. Or an offshoot. Let’s hang out more. No, not all time is charged. Only the intentional stuff is. And if so. Hold it lightly. Amazingly there is probably enough money to go around. What a privilege. Especially these days.
We were chatting with Max Cooke a few weeks ago - the culture around doing sessions among writers and musicians feels exciting, generative and kind. Feel your way into it. Yeah, a usual session is 6hrs. But if you are onto a winner stick it out till midnight.
Anyway. Starting to feel like we know what a full team looks like. Missing a couple of skills. We know what good play looks like. We need a pre-season. And perhaps a couple of seasons. But we are good. And we will be better. And knowing that? That’s niiiice.
EF