Show Notes
What is a Virtual Workplace?
Hey, Chad here. Welcome to The Virtual Workplace in 10 podcast.
[
00:00:16] I'm starting this podcast as a response to where we all find ourselves now here in spring of 2020. Being locked up. Or hold up. I should say in our homes, while those of us fortunate enough to work. you know, working from home has been a very, unstable, uncertain, shocking, surprising, difficult and also, I hope delightful experience for all of us. AndIn a concept that's really come to the foreground for me is this idea of a virtual workplace. In a [
00:01:00] remote working context, what it means, to be working virtually, how we show up as individuals, how we come together as teams, how are organizations, look and feel and live in the virtual space when we can no longer get together in person.
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00:01:20] I think, we're, you know, about six weeks in into this, global experiment. It's been enough time for us to get over the initial shock, for us to adapt, get into or create a few routines and before we get complacent and just kind of, creating a remote or virtual culture by default, I wanted to start this podcast to have a conversation with you, the listener and others that I hope to bring on to this show about what it means to build a virtual culture or or build a [
00:02:00] culture for your organization, virtually.
[
00:02:03] And. Yes, I'll be talking about some tools that I've used and found effective and how you can best leverage them, but I also think it's about how we show up or want to show up in in this new virtual first way. So I, I thought I could just talk a little bit about my own experience and experience of my clients, the past few weeks and just some things I've noticed that have gone well that maybe we got a bit stuck in in how we can potentially do things differently going forward in a more intentional way.
[
00:02:47] And I want to give a big shout out and thank you to all the clients that that have persevered with me through this time, and for those clients that couldn't, I completely understand, you know, I count myself amongst the [
00:03:00] very fortunate in being able to continue to do my work from from home and to do it virtually. There's tens of millions of people that they can't do that.
[
00:03:11] And that's another reason that I wanted to to show up here and do this podcast is to, to begin to question why or why not, can those functions, be done virtually or not? In some instances, of course it makes sense that there there needs to be people, congregating showing up in in doing work together, but there's others in which I think we maybe had a bit of a fixed mindset in in believing that we had to all show up in an office with our colleagues, five days a week, sometimes seven days a week, for very extended periods of time.
[
00:03:52] I hope this podcast can help us learn and explore this new environment and situation. We find ourselves in.
[
00:04:01] If you have a remarkable experience that you would like to share, get in touch. You can leave me a voice message or text me. At nine, one, seven, seven, one, nine, three, seven, three, seven. I'd love to bring people onto the show that have learned from this virtual working or remote working environment to make it a little bit better for, for all of us. And to hopefully bring more people into the flexibility that comes with with working virtually and remotely, to help us maybe reclaim a little bit of that freedom that, concentrated, distraction free, sometimes, work that we can do outside of the office. And I think just create a better work experience overall.
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00:04:49] So what do I mean when I talk about the virtual workplace? I think, simply put. It's how people come [
00:05:00] together to do work when they're not co-located using using technology. And there's two kind of main tracks. to this, there's the technical side, but there's also the human side and I'm interested in both, and so I'm going to try and keep those two concepts and balance but I don't think it would be most helpful if I just simply talked about how to leverage a tool like Microsoft Teams or Zoom or chat applications like Teams or Slack because, I also don't want us to become beholden or even slaves to the technology to dictate how we do our work.
[
00:05:46] And I think especially in this time of uncertainty and fear. We have to acknowledge the human side of what it means to be kept home, [
00:06:00] to not know how our employment status is going to be effected, if and how we will continue to have jobs and work and for those of us that are fortunate enough to do the work, how we can best show up, individually in pairs and teams and as organizations.
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00:06:23] This first episode is really just meant to kind of speculate in in what this exploration or experiment might be. I don't have any answers. I just have observations and experience, and so what you can expect from me is going out and finding people that have interesting and remarkable stories to share around working virtually.
[
00:06:49] And the best part is it's going to come to you in 10 minutes or less. That's my philosophy, with podcasting. So I'll guarantee that every episode is going to be 10 minutes or less. Sometimes it [
00:07:00] will be just myself, other times I'll bring guests on to discuss the matters at hand.
[
00:07:07] Most of all, I want to be sure it's interesting and valuable to you the listener, so you have a direct line to me. You can you can call in or text to nine, one, seven, seven, one, nine, three, seven, three, seven, and I would love to hear. you know, what questions do you have about how to work virtually what has worked well for you? Where have you gotten stuck? What are some tools, resources practices that have helped you in working virtually.
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00:07:36] So thank you so much for listening. I can't wait to further explore this concept of the virtual workplace with you. Until next time.