Jeremy Hutchings

Virtual Teams & Remote Working In 2020 I finished a MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice, the final step being a research project which focused on the aspects of virtual teams and remote working. It's how I've worked for the majority of my career and a topic I think about a lot. I finished the research while coronavirus was erupting, which was as timely as it was frustrating; as I couldn't share the research straight away (due to university rules on plagiarism and sharing before marking). Because of covid-19 I've seen many posts and articles for workers who are new to remote teams, or home working. Most of these are focused on the individual and their working day, ergonomics, routine, etc. Which is great, though, I think they're mostly subjective and a little prescriptive, opposed to informative. I believe it's best for each individual to use those kinds of posts as a starting point and explore what works for them and their team. There are many different ...

I’m happy to see lots of people supporting and stating the obvious about this topic. Though I thought I’d add my 2c to the demise of this all to common evil of open offices. They are typically favoured by individuals who like to interrupt others, and also by those who look to short term visible costs. Open offices are likely the single biggest cause in companies of: The lost of human happiness The lost of team/individual effectiveness The lack of success of companies and projects I rank them in that order for importance as well, as that’s the order I’ve typically experienced them being absent in successful projects. I believe the mental state of the members of the team, and the collective teams health is a core (if not the primary) factor in successful outcomes. It’s good to see the academic community supporting (with research) what many have felt and known to be true for so long [1] , I’ve spent many years in different office environments, when I haven’t...

After the last posting I received a challenge from a reader ( Shane Simpson ) who happens to be the hosting company I've worked with on a few project and continue to do so as well as recommend. The tweet was this one , which made me think of words by Ben Harper, “what good is a critic with no better plan.", a valid comment I thought, so I tried to summarise (some of) my ideas. Now this is going to take some thought, and answering ....... I think I will try and answer the question opposed to being too exploratory, so " what you feel is a better way of running a technical company " which to me infers, "how to be successful, happy and sustainable as an individual at work, as group of people (the team) and ultimately commercial organisation, after all there are bills to pay". A short answer of the top of my head, is healthy relationships between people and a common purpose, the long answer on the other hand is a journey though systems analysis, confli...