Blog - Muster Genies

09 Jun 2022

What’s Your Problem?

Tim Lambert June 9, 2022

In the wrong tone of voice, a question such as “What’s Your Problem?”, can sound a bit aggressive and threatening, especially if you’re in a crowded bar. But in business it’s an absolutely essential one, as long as it comes with a desire to find a solution.

What’s your problem? was the starting point for our journey to reimagine the way of delivering team development programmes. In a world where more people are working remotely, away from shared offices and from their team colleagues, our clients recognised they had a problem. And drilling down, it became clear that there was a whole list of associated problems to solve. It wasn’t just an alternative delivery mechanism that was needed, but one that would contribute to client sustainability goals, drive high levels of willing engagement, and result in highly effective remote teams. And it couldn’t be Zoom or Teams, because those platforms were too associated with dry business meetings and do not have any learning content.

Sometimes, when you identify a problem, you immediately get stuck. My business has been creative high performing teams through face-to-face interventions for decades and hearing my client’s woes resonated with me because that face-to-face work was in short supply throughout the pandemic years. It was my problem also. And being in the thick of it was a bit scary. I knew I couldn’t solve it alone. Fortunately, I had worked out where to look.

Every problem has a solution

I remember a manager of mine once telling me, “I don’t want to know your problem, give me solutions.” At the time I found it quite rude. Dismissive even, which may have been the intention, of course. It threw the onus directly back on me, absolving my manager from any responsibility for helping me. In my head I was thinking all sorts of negative things, most of which can’t be repeated here! But predominantly I was thinking, “if I already had a solution, it wouldn’t be a problem, so I wouldn’t need to bring it to you, would I, oh great and bountiful leader!”

But over the years I have come to realise that the answers to most problems we encounter are there to be found around us or within us, even if they might seem unpalatable or challenging. Its why I eventually qualified as a coach and pursued a coaching career. Now I do want to hear your problems, and be part of finding a solution. When I realised that the gaming industry had already worked out the power of multiplayer collaboration it wasn’t too much of a leap to imagine how this technology could be used to drive collaborative team learning online. In our business we already had the learning content: we only needed the delivery vehicle. Only!

Finding solutions, or turning those solutions into a reality, is often a collaborative process. Whether it is working with a coach to work it out of you or using Action Learning Sets to open up new possibilities or amassing a great team around you and bouncing ideas around. We should still ask for help, offer help, and engage in joint problem solving, but without diminishing our own capacity to help ourselves. So, our business started recruiting game makers graphic designers, software developers, video makers, immersive technology experts, and product specialists. And we worked closely with one of our partner companies, Gazooky Studios. With this powerful combination, matching technology with our years of team development expertise and proven learning material, we’ve been able to find an incredible solution. I use the word ‘find’ deliberately. Yes, it has been a creative process, but in a sense the solution was sitting there waiting to be found. Many of the individual components were out there, but just not in the same place. The result is Muster.

What we have done is put our own creative spin on it, and loaded it with our playful approach to learning, making it our own. It has become our solution, but one we want to share with you.

25 May 2022

Tim Lambert Uncategorized Permalink

Intentional Communication

Tim Lambert May 25, 2022

This week I was in conversation with the incredible Chris Rennison, People Director at the Stroke Association. We’d scheduled an agenda free meeting to reconnect and chew the fat. Our time together flew by as we shared stories, discussed future plans and past struggles, pondered over current challenges, and discovered new stuff about each other. It was a perfect example of what Chris referred to as ‘intentional communication’.

The pandemic has driven much of our communication online. We are much more accustomed to doing business using apps like WhatsApp, Discord, Zoom and Teams. They have provided a great substitute for schlepping all over the country for a face-to-face meeting. Now, few people think twice about asking to schedule a meeting through a videoconferencing platform instead of wrestling with the road or rail network in rush hour.

Of course, pre-pandemic we still had email, texting, conferencing platforms, and mobile apps, but these were more likely to be considered as lazy communication whilst face-to-face was still possible.

One casualty of the pandemic is the infamous water cooler moment: casual, accidental, personal points of contact where two or more people found themselves at the same relaxed location at the same time. These were typically where people discovered what was really going on in their organisation, and how their colleagues felt about it. They were moments of interaction between colleagues where personal details, thoughts, and feelings were shared. They were touch points of recognition, and an opportunity to demonstrate affection, interest, and shared struggles. They also provided moments of temporary relief from long periods of concentrated work.

With hybrid or fully remote practices bedding into the way we do our work, we must find ways to recreate these accidental moments, intentionally. We cant’ afford to leave it to chance because chance encounters are less likely to present themselves. Without the opportunity to bump into each in corridors or kitchens, we must deliberately create those ‘bump moments’ some other way, without interrupting, distracting, or annoying our colleagues. That’s what we mean by ‘intentional communication’.

Many of the tech-based communication platforms we use drive transactional conversations. Meetings are set up to discuss a specific business issue where information is traded and discussed, and where expectations of each other are established. But how often do we set up a ‘water cooler meeting’? We might fear that this would appear frivolous or indicate that we are slacking. It’s almost as if the water cooler moment of the past was a guilty pleasure that we don’t want to signal.

There is a misnomer about these moments, and that is that they were entirely accidental. The truth is that we manufactured them by creating a meeting place where at various points of the day the chances of encountering someone was high. They were communal spaces. We designed them as touch points. So why not do the same now, but online?

Becoming more intentional about creating opportunities for people to engage at a personal level is not only desirable, but also essential. The effects will be felt in terms of wellbeing, productivity, engagement, and team performance. Of all the things we do at work, these moments are the hardest to replicate through AI, because they are intensely human and fulfil a vital human need.

Intentional communication in a hybrid world requires dedicated online spaces and platforms that evoke sensations of safety, relaxation, and respite. Their design should be inviting, and act as a stimulus for meaningful sharing, learning, and relationship-building. So maybe not Teams or Zoom which have become synonymous with a different type of communication. And that presents a challenge for HR and those involved in shaping positive work cultures: to find a vehicle that can meet this need. Our Muster toolkit is part of the solution and will continue to evolve to address this lasting need.

10 May 2022

Tim Lambert Uncategorized Permalink

Muster at #LT22 — Exhibiting at Learning Technologies 2022

It’s good to stand out

Tim Lambert May 10, 2022

I have recently returned from exhibiting at an international trade fair. Our pink, orange, and yellow t-shirts and colourful stand design stood out majestically amidst of sea of greys, whites, and the occasional navy blue. On arrival at the event, I momentarily found myself thinking: is this the right event for us? Have we perhaps gone a bit over-the-top?

Exhibiting at Learning Technologies 2022

I grew up in a family where the unspoken motto was ‘keep your head down and don’t draw attention to yourself’. Ironically, as a family we did just that. Our poverty, third-hand unwashed clothes, and extreme religious fervour meant that we were commonly known as the ‘weird family’. At the time, it was unpleasant. Now, I’m not so sure. Gone has the religious fervour and third-hand unwashed clothing. And I can no longer plead poverty, but standing out, I realise, is a good thing.

Our exhibition stand was proof, if needed, that standing out attracts interest. We were inundated with visitors from start to finish. Some seeking refuge in our warm and colourful surroundings, others excited by the fact that we were offering something totally new.

The responsibility that accompanies standing out

But standing out comes with a responsibility to stand up. Otherwise, its all show and no substance (or all fur coat and no knickers) as my genial neighbour would say). If you’re going to stand out, you have to stand for something worthwhile, and use the interest you amass to make a positive difference.

Exhibitions are a costly affair. At every twist and turn someone wants to charge you more than an arm and a leg for basic services like access to a plug socket or decent Wi-Fi. After forking out for all of this you might even be lucky to escape with a torso intact. So, it has to be worth it. We calculated that it was. Why?

Well, we were able to promote our multiplayer team development toolkit, Muster. It is an application proving it is possible to replicate online the dynamism of face-to-face interaction by co-opting multiplayer gaming technology.

But why is that important? Here are three reasons why.

Think of all those air and road miles, that are needlessly travelled for teams to meet. Until now, they’ve had no choice, but with team development delivered via multiplayer game tech, the planet is a lot happier.
Remote Teams have had to miss out on regular team development, with the result that productivity and engagement levels across all industries are woefully low. Now they can access the coaching support they need, whenever they need it.
With hybrid and remote working patterns bedding in, more and more teams are going to need tools that work for them, helping them to become high performing and maintaining high levels of effectiveness.

So, I and my team were pleased to stand out, not like a sore thumb but a very colourful blossom among a field of brown, or a beacon in a foggy grey.

26 Apr 2022

Tim Lambert Uncategorized Permalink

How Many Roads?

Tim Lambert April 26, 2022

The pandemic wasn’t a friend to anyone. However, it did stimulate a huge shift in behaviour that, temporarily at least, made a positive impact on the environment. It forced us to find new ways of carrying out our work. Ways that meant we weren’t piling into cars, clogging up our roads, and squeezing into overcrowded, poorly ventilated trains. Air travel plummeted, in a good way. How many roads do we really need to travel when there is a viable alternative at our disposal?

Out of Step?

Recently a high-ranking government minister hit the news. He’d been engaging in a passive aggressive exercise by leaving sarcastic notes on staff desks. The notes indicated that he would prefer to see them sitting at their desks rather than working from home. He isn’t the first manager to be out of step with the prevailing mood. The evidence is becoming clear. According to recent report published in the McKinsey Quarterly, 85 percent of employees who currently work in a hybrid model, want to continue doing so. Fully remote or hybrid working patterns are not only desirable from a productivity and lifestyle point of view. They also have a hugely positive impact on the climate and on employee wellbeing. Managers who fail to see this, do so wilfully because they are unable to adjust their management style.

When I moved into the world of corporate learning, one of the first management concepts I was introduced to was Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y. It’s a model that describes how a manager’s style of management is influenced by their understanding of what motivates their people. According to McGregor, Theory X assumes that team members dislike work and will find any reason they can to avoid it. Theory Y, on the other hand, assumes that team members are self-motivated, engaged, and take pride in their work. It strikes me, that many leaders who are calling for people to return to the office may have explicit or underlying Theory X leanings. If they didn’t trust their staff when they were in the office, there’s little chance that they will trust them when they are working from home.

Opportunities

Remote working certainly has its challenges. But the opportunities it presents are so vast, that we owe it to ourselves and to the world we inhabit, to make it work. That means creating new ways for teams to engage meaningfully in virtual spaces. And it means re-educating our leaders to manage from a distance and feel comfortable doing so.

Our contribution to this seismic shift is Muster. It is a multiplayer online toolkit that delivers powerful team development. It’s the first of its kind. And it plays a vital role in reconnecting teams, stimulating high levels of engagement and productivity, and making teams great even if they are remotely located.

So how many roads do we need to travel? A lot fewer than we used to. That has to be worth something.

21 Apr 2022

Tim Lambert Uncategorized Permalink

AIM Straight, but don’t be afraid to adjust your sights

Tim Lambert April 21, 2022

During a recent conversation with a Polish counterpart, I was introduced to a new expression that really resonated with me.

“Don’t fall in love with the solution, fall in love with the problem”.

My first response was a confused one. Surely, being solution focused is a great thing. We need solutions for the many problems we face, and we need people who can find them. But through further discussion with my colleague, I came to realise that one of the big problems product and process designers face is that they become so wedded to a solution, that they stick with it even if it is imperfect or has ceased to be pertinent.

I recognise this in myself. Having invested so much time, money, and creative effort in finding a neat solution, it can be very hard to give it up. This happened with our first iteration of Muster. We started out making a piece of software that clients would need to install on their company systems. It took a while to accept that this was never going to work, even though we had already done a lot of the work and spent a lot of the money. So we pivoted to a WebGL solution instead. Now clients access the software via a browser and the whole thing is hosted securely in the cloud.

It’s why I propose a solution creation approach called AIM. Adapt – Improve – Modify.

If our aim is on the problem we remain alert to the way problems evolve, shift and disappear; and when new problems enter the frame. This allows us to be flexible in the way we develop our solutions, and the type of solutions we create. And it allows us to give up on solutions that are no longer fit for purpose.

Adapt.

Our solutions can quickly become irrelevant and redundant, having been designed for a problem (or need) that no longer exists. It’s like continuing to create imaginative storage solutions for DVDs and CDs, because we love the look of them and the process of making them. The trouble is that however glorious it might look and whatever design merits it might have no-one needs it anymore. The problem has gone.

So, we need to keep our focus on the problem and how that problem shifts or disappears. And then we need to adapt our solution or invent a new one rather than hanging on doggedly to the old one. Keep designing beautiful storage solutions, but for different things.

Improve.

However good our initial solution might be, we shouldn’t fall into the trap of believing that it is perfect. By maintaining a continuous improvement mindset, we remain open to the possibility that it might have flaws, and that we can find ways to remove them. Falling in love can mean overlooking imperfections and irritants. It can blind us to other ideas and opportunities. That might be fine in an intimate relationship, but less fine when it comes to product and process design.

Modify.

Improving and adapting, doesn’t always need wholesale redesign or starting from scratch. Reuse what you can and what remains relevant but tweak a little here and there. This allows you to test as you go, and make further small modifications based on what you learn. You can find out more about this in a great book by our CEO called Small Change Big Returns

We should fall in love with problems because they give the us the reason for inventing solutions. Our AIM should be to wrestle with them until they become problematic no more, and then be ready to move on to the next one.

28 Mar 2022

Tim Lambert Uncategorized Permalink

Show the Way, Clear the Way, Get Out of the Way

Tim Lambert March 28, 2022

The idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful leader has shown itself to be a dangerous fallacy. It isn’t possible to know everything, and power is complicated by nuance: where people have freedom of thought, no one single truth can prevail. A Leaders knowledge is an approximation only; a course summary of reality. That is why despots rule via a process of simplification, dumbing everything down to three- or four-word soundbites and doing away with worrisome concepts such as human rights, ethics and empathy. It’s the only way they can keep a grip on power. The result can be a broad brush, dogma-driven, tyranny. This is what we are experiencing in many parts of the world today.

This is not how we should run our countries and it certainly isn’t how we should run our companies or lead our teams. Does the world really need charismatic leaders? Does your company need an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful CEO? And does your team need a leader that sets themselves up as an expert at everyone’s job, with the power to destroy on a whim? Wouldn’t we rather that our leaders chose to show us the way, clear the way, and get out of the way instead?

When leaders have a large span of control, they probably need to stop trying to control anything. Instead, they should pivot towards being listeners and supporters. Chief Operating Officers typically have their fingers in many pies without having the recipe for any of them. Only the very best manage to make a success of this role; too many others simply interfere and spoil the broth. That is not what we need or want.

We are increasingly looking to our leaders to provide hope, inspiration, ideas, and a sense of direction. We don’t need them to be gurus. They don’t need to have all the answers or wield all the tools of power. We mostly want them to show the way, clear the way, and get out of the way. Maybe we should stop looking at Leadership as a position and more as a responsibility; the power of leadership should not lie in personal investiture, but in the ability to remove roadblocks, open doors, and inspire people to walk through them.

The way we have developed and rewarded our leaders in the past, may have been appropriate for the needs of the past (although even that is questionable), but we now need to rewrite the narrative about what it means to be a leader.

Tim Lambert

24 Mar 2022

Tim Lambert Team Development Permalink

MUSTER PRESS RELEASE

Tim Lambert March 24, 2022

The pandemic has resulted in a glut of new platforms for team collaboration. But team learning and development has largely been left out in the cold.

Thanks to Slack, Zoom, MS Teams, and multiple new virtual conference platforms, it’s been possible for teams and groups of people of congregate on-line to run their business meetings, but informal chat has gone, and spontaneity has been compromised. People are feeling less connected, less focused, and less engaged.

And teams need more than vehicles for hosting meetings. They need tools to help them focus on how best to organise themselves, and how to develop strong internal alignment. They need to carry out self-evaluation and fine-tune their working methods and practices. Like elite athletes, they need great coaching. Without this, they underperform massively. Industry studies routinely suggest that they can be at least 30% less productive. In a world where teams are increasingly dispersed and more people are working remotely, there is a huge risk that business teams will not be able to afford or access this type of support, further impacting their performance at a time when we need strong, healthy, and productive teams.

Learning professionals have attempted to find imaginative ways to redesign their programmes for virtual delivery, with varying degrees of success. Sharing a screen online has enabled the same presentations to be delivered from the comfort of a bedroom. And various tools to drive interactivity such as polling, chat and breakout rooms have helped to break up the monotony. But surely teams need and deserve more than this. They have particular needs that demand to be addressed, and they need access to guidance and support that helps them navigate the plethora of daily challenges they face. They need to access this support regularly, easily, and affordably.

One company that feels the same is Muster Genies. It has spun out of a partnership between two award winning companies, Kay-Lambert Associates and Gazooky Studios, and they have come up with a solution that means no team needs to be cast adrift. It is called Muster.

Remote teams learning together

Muster is a new concept in team coaching. It is a repository of rich and immersive learning content, that provides teams with all they need to become high performing. The result is a dynamic, real-time alternative to those face-to-face team bonding sessions. Now, teams can not only meet online, but they can also simultaneously interact with materials and content designed to stimulate the development of team skills, behaviours, and performance.

Drawing on their years of experience within the Learning and Development and business consultancy sector, gaming and filmmaking industries, the designers of Muster have created something that no business can afford to do without. A tool that ensures teams focus on the right things, develop the right capabilities, make the right decisions, behave in the right way, and deliver the best results. They have been able to produce exciting and intuitive experiences that teams will want to come back to time and time again.

With Muster, you can set up a team meeting; keep a log of critical team decisions; monitor team performance and progress; complete surveys to measure how effective your team is in various operational areas; play immersive multi-player games that test and develop core teamworking skills; use interactive tools to improve thinking, planning and execution; and access a library of information and ideas that help your teams flourish.

Muster is a flexible product, allowing teams to run sessions of any length, at any time. Teams can choose to have an extended session where they work through a number of activities together in a sequence; or they can join a session to do just one short team activity. They can even use Muster as a straight swap for Zoom or Teams, taking advantage of the crystal clear and highly responsive video and voice chat function.

Muster is designed to be an accessible product. Sessions can be self-curated and facilitated or run by the companies own professional trainers. No matter where in the world your teams are; whether they share an office or are spread across different sites, cities, and countries; whether they are mobile or not; and whether they have low or high-spec devices, Muster is available to them all. When logging on, Muster points team members to the nearest available server, ensuring optimal connectivity.

We think that Muster is a truly original application that will become a staple tool for the best teams, and a blueprint for any team that wants to become one.

27 Jan 2022

Tim Lambert Team Development, Uncategorized Permalink

Realistic Earth Planet against the the star sky

How sustainable is traditional team building for remote teams?

Tim Lambert January 27, 2022

Whether we love it or hate it, the truth is that outward bound teambuilding isn’t the most environmentally friendly way to develop teams. Neither is it the most effective. Sure, some people have a whale of a time leaping from high branches like Tarzan, or finding the hidden treasure like Indiana Jones. But for many others it is an ordeal to be endured rather than enjoyed.

Putting aside the argument about its contribution to team effectiveness (which is heavily dependent on the skilful facilitation of instructors), outward bound activities are still what many people think of when they hear the terms ‘team bonding’, ‘team building’ or ‘team development’. But this causes major problems for teams, especially remote ones. That’s because travel to these venues steals productive time and depletes the planet’s precious resources. It adds to a company’s carbon footprint, especially when bringing together remote teams whose members may be distributed all over the country or world. And even if the team event is more sophisticated in its design and execution, the fact that people have to gather in a physical space to experience a team development programme inevitably works against any sustainability aspirations.

For some time now we have had adequate alternatives for business meetings. Communication platforms enable teams to meet online and conduct their normal business discussions. Some of these platforms have evolved through the use of avatar, VR, and 3D simulations giving the illusion of being together whilst logging in from different locations. And as the metaverse unfolds, who knows what that will look and feel like in the future? But team development is not just about talking, and none of the current platforms seem interested in expanding what they do beyond providing a virtual meeting space with varying degrees of glamour.

What is urgently needed is content and experiential activity that focuses on building strong and resilient teams. Only then, will we be able to replicate the impact of face-to-face teambuilding in a virtual setting. And thankfully, one organisation has started to create this.

Muster Genies is a new company growing out of an established training and development business. Its breakthrough web-based application could revolutionise the way teams access team training. That is because Muster not only provides a platform for communication: it also presents teams with multiple, mixed media, gamified activities. It is s designed to stimulate engagement, play, exploration, discovery, and effective development planning. This wholly sustainable vehicle doesn’t require any additional travel: team members log in from wherever they happen to be, and teams can set up short team sessions as often as they like. Distances travelled are limited to how far the home office is from the bedroom, and clothing below the waist is optional.

Sustainability can no longer be considered a novel thing. It must be much more than a badge. Every business, for its own sake as well as for the sake of the planet, must begin to factor in sustainable practices to all its decisions and operations. The Muster application developed by Muster Genies recognises this. It includes a Sustainability Tracker which records, and reports CO2 emissions savings accrued by the team through gathering in Muster. The data it presents can at first sight be shocking, until you realise that it refers to carbon saved rather than carbon actually consumed.

There will no doubt be others, but Muster is the first. It is at the forefront of new thinking about how best to support remote teams sustainably, throwing down the gauntlet for others to follow suit. It shows that it is now possible to give teams great experiences that stimulate high levels of team effectiveness without dangling them off cliff edges, or plunging them in freezing water, or drinking vast quantities of alcohol. And what is more, without inflicting great harm on the planet. All it takes is a bit of imagination.

17 Dec 2021

Tim Lambert Team Development Permalink

What makes Muster a must for any team?

Tim Lambert December 17, 2021

This revolutionary SaaS product transforms the way business teams grow their capability. And all from the comfort of your living room.

Let’s start with the assumption that spending time developing your team is a good thing. It’s not overly provocative to make such a statement, and hard to dispute given the amount of reliable data that exists to back it up. You don’t need to look far for evidence that shows effective teamwork:

1. accounts for lower staff burnout
2. raises financial performance by as much as 30%
3. raises individual performance by as much as 25%

But becoming an effective team isn’t a given. It takes effort, time, and focus; it often relies on accessing professional support; and until recently, it nearly always required teams to gather in person to participate in teambuilding activities.

So much has changed in the last decade. Most recently, the pandemic has forced us to re-evaluate where we work from; the climate catastrophe is forcing us to consider whether road, rail, and air travel is strictly necessary; and productivity pressures are making us think twice about spending two days plus jet lag traveling to a meeting that could easily be done by other means. The trouble is, that team building has been left out in the cold. For many teams, it’s been put on the back burner, waiting for that mythical time when things ‘return to normal’ and we’ll all be together again. That isn’t likely to happen, at least anytime soon. The rise of remote working, proliferation of global teams, pressures on company budgets, and planetary concerns all mean that team building activity runs the risk of being side-lined…at considerable financial risk to companies that choose that option.

Fortunately, companies no longer have to make that choice because with Muster, teams can continue to focus on becoming a high-performing team without leaving the home office. That’s because Muster is a multi-player toolkit that presents teams with everything they need develop the skills and behaviours required for team excellence. It is collaborative, interactive, playful, flexible, and highly engaging with its comprehensive multi-media, gamified content.

This SaaS product developed in collaboration with our partners at Gazooky Studios not only delivers the benefits of teambuilding in an accessible and more affordable way. It also benefits from the fact that:

https://mustergenies.com/#section-benefits
1. Online collaboration tools scale up productivity by 30%
2. Mixed reality learning results in 25% increased productivity
3. Game-based learning delivers 11% higher factual knowledge, 14% higher skill-based knowledge, and 9% higher retention rates

So, Muster really is a must for any team, whether remote or not.

Talk to us today to find out how Muster can help your teams come together and prosper.

07 Dec 2021

Tim Lambert Team Development Permalink

Muster Logo

Working Together When Apart

Tim Lambert December 7, 2021

Office Withdrawal ?

I’m hearing a lot about people’s desperation to return to the office. After months of lockdown, isolation, and working from home, many are chomping at the bit to get back to some semblance of what constituted normality before the pandemic. Whilst everyone’s circumstances are different, closer inspection tends to reveal a different general picture. In most cases, it isn’t the office per se that people are longing to return to.

They haven’t been experiencing a state of mourning by being separated from their 6×2 desk, or their pod. It isn’t a craving for the 2 square metres of workspace on a floor carved into 100 similar 2 square foot territories. It isn’t the cacophony of ringtones, or the tidy desk policy. For many, it isn’t the commute, although some see this a necessary bridge between work and home, allowing them to de-pressurize.

If it isn’t these things, what is it.

It’s the knowing look between colleagues across a desk or as they pass each other in a corridor.
It’s the gentle hum of industry
It’s the miniscule connections between people
It’s the laughter
It’s the exchange of ideas
It’s not feeling alone
It’s the ability to gauge the mood
It’s the sense of excitement when wrestling with a shared challenge
It’s the opportunity to break up the day with different interactions
It’s the ease with which you can share and resolve a problem
It’s the moments of celebration, congratulation, and appreciation
Its someone noticing when you’re having a bad day

Shared Experiences

Post-Covid, the challenge for employers everywhere is to find a way for their staff to experience these things even when they are not in a shared place of work. As hybrid or fully remote working patters gain traction, and colleagues spend less time together in a physical space, solutions are needed to ensure that those casual interactions, and a sense of belonging are not casualties.

The pandemic has in some way democratised employment. Certain barriers to entry have been removed. Geography and Different-ability have become less significant factors in the recruitment process: you can now work from almost anywhere; and physical disabilities that previously relied on often inaccessible transport systems, poor town planning, and expensive workplace reconfiguration do not need to keep people out of meaningful employment. That is the silver lining of the pandemic: even though it is one that shouldn’t have taken a pandemic to bring about.

But it doesn’t come cost-free. In this new world, people need the tools, mechanisms, and infrastructure to keep connected, committed, and communicating. They need access to different, more deliberate ways to replicate those casual but vital exchanges and to pick up on the nuanced dynamics of a shared experience. And we need leaders to take the issue seriously because simply forcing people back into the office is an old-world solution that might be missing the point. We need to be more creative, imaginative, and focused on creating healthy relationships between colleagues, healthy teams, and healthy organisations that can thrive in a world of hybrid working.

Technology, such as our Muster application, is one part of the solution, but let’s keep working at it to protect the welfare and performance of our people in all possible working environments.