Problems that arise when people work from home
There are many, many ways for meetings to be sabotaged when everyone works from home.
CEO John Donahue says Nike is no longer innovative because people are working from home.
I'm curious why he allows people to work from home if he thinks it is bad for the company? Why doesn't he fire them and then hire some people who are ambitious and eager to get into the office? Wouldn't that be better for the company?
If he seriously thinks that "work from home" is bad for the company, and he's allowed people to "work from home", and he's the CEO, then he needs to take the blame for any lack of "innovation."
But I mostly agree with his point. Over the last month I've been working with a client where everyone was working from home, and all of the meetings were over Zoom. A few things I noticed:
* 8 of us in a meeting, but only 5 had the video turned on. One senior engineer was muted and had the video off. We needed to ask him a question. We asked. No response. We asked again. No response. We asked a third time. No response. We waited. He came on the video then. Apologized, said he'd been busy (could have been cooking, or outside, or using the bathroom, or whatever). Said he had missed some of the conversation, could we repeat the context and the question? So we repeated the previous 2 minutes of conversation, but that didn't give him enough context, so then we repeated the previous 5 minutes of conversation, but that didn't give him enough context. I asked him how long had he been away from the conversation? He refused to answer. We ended up repeating most of the conversation, so he could answer our question. Then we ran out of time with half our agenda unfinished, but the people had to go to other meetings. A complete fiasco. If we'd been in person, we would have at least known he was not in the room.
* A group of 12 are talking about a sensitive issue regarding the financial status of a company whose insurance policy had come through us. One of the (male) managers is listening closely, but he is working from home. He is not using a filter, so we can see his home office. We can see when his wife enters the room, rummages around for several minutes looking for something, finds it, then leaves. If we are being strict, this was a violation of the confidentiality agreements that we all had to sign. She was not supposed to hear what she heard.
* A large meeting of 32 people has been called, bringing together 3 different teams of software developers and their managers and the POs (product owners). One of the teams has been doing absolutely terrible work. The software developers are novices and, worse, they seem unmotivated. They are not passionate about learning. They take no initiative. At least 4 times during the last 6 weeks they pushed changes that broke the system, but they had not checked to error log, so they didn't know they had broken the system. It was the other teams that had to inform them that they had broken the system. When one of the novice engineers was asked why he pushed code that broke the systems and why didn't he check the error log, he responded, "I don't have access to the error log." He's been working with the company for 5 months, but he has not asked for permission for the things he needs. Then a top manager starts talking. She is Head Of Product. She is angry at the disorganization and lack of initiative. She starts into a speech about changes that need to happen, in both attitude and process. I say nothing, but inwardly I am cheering for her. She is saying everything that I have been thinking. I am pleased that someone is finally cracking down on bad behavior. I think what she is saying is brilliant. But just as she gets to her main point, her 2 year old child starts crying, loudly, in another room. She apologizes and says she needs to drop out of the meeting. So she drops out. I then repeat some of her points, but I'm an outsider, so my voice carries less weight than her voice. (Some will say this story reveals that we need subsidized daycare for children. I strongly agree with that. Free daycare for all working parents. I support that 100%.)
I could go on: meetings interrupted by cats, dogs, babies, spouses. It's become difficult to reach anyone after 4 PM, or even 3:30 PM, with the implication that some people stop working early, but who really knows?
The product teams say they are getting their work done, but is it innovative work, or something they slapped together in 2 hours?
The marketers say they are getting their work done, but are they doing good work, or just slapping something together in a few hours?
It is obvious to anyone with eyes that the USA has suffered a massive productivity hit because of "work from home."