Sustaining the human connection
The human connection is beginning to matter more than ever in the digital world.Tanveer Ghazi texted his poem Kaari Kaari to music composer Shantanu Moitra. Shantanu read out the lyrics on Skype to QB (Qurat Ul Ain Balouch), a Pakistani singer based out of New York. QB and Shantanu record the first version of the song on Skype. They keep refining the song on Skype. It is meant to be part of the film Pink.
Hyper-connected but alone
This is how work happens in a hyper-connected world. A slice of the work can be carved out and given to someone sitting in one corner of the world. The other parts of the job get done by others scattered elsewhere on the planet. Finally, there is someone who stitches all the disparate pieces together to create the complete picture. That is how it was happening until the composer stumbled on to something by chance. In Shantanu’s words
“I had never done a long-distance recording like this. Both of us were developing the song. Finally, she had to come to Pakistan for her Coke Studio recording. And because she was in a comfortable zone of her hometown, I saw a complete change in her approach to the song, in her voice. This is the version she recorded from Islamabad. This is a lament that comes from your heart. There is this introspectiveness which was there in QB’s voice.”
It is interesting to note that while the song recorded on Skype in the initial stages, it was the recording in the studio along with the musicians, in QB’s hometown, that brought out the emotions that made two million people listen to the song within 72 hours of its release. The “lament that comes from your heart” and the “introspectiveness” in the singer’s voice seems to have been that extra something that came up in the studio. Listen to that song & you will know why millions love ithttps://youtu.be/fFdyUJcqMQQ
Work is like a slice of pizza
That is the new world of work we live in. Imagine making a pizza where the ingredients are sourced and supplied from different corners of the world. The dough is kneaded in a different city and sent to the chef who puts it all together and bakes it. The master chef is in another restaurant where the customer is. The master chef adds the toppings and serves it to the customer. But what happens to the workers who have been involved in making the pizza? Do they have a sense of ownership of the product? Do they care that the customer loved the pizza? When they go back home do they think of what work means to them? Should it even matter to the customer who pays for the slice of pizza? That is how a lot of work is getting done. Digital tech allows us to slice up the work and get discrete parts of it done by different people. This allows the producer to keep costs low. The outsourcing industry in India was the by-product of a hyperconnected world. Labor arbitrage made it an attractive value proposition to move several call center to India. Customers resented the move. And the call center employees sitting thousands of miles away did not relate to the world of the customer even though they were trained to speak in the American accent (in the initial days) and take on Western names while conversing with customers. Something was missing – authenticity. We crave for authentic human connections.
Authenticity impacts bottom line
Call centers are notorious for extraordinarily high turnover among new hires. In 2011, with 605 new Wipro employees across three different operations centers were part of a field experiment to see if an authentic approach leads to greater performance and retention. The result was a stunning 33% improvement in retention and impact on the bottom line. How was it done? During the new hire onboarding, the newcomer’s unique perspective and strengths were sought to be incorporated in their work. This acknowledges their individual identity. A conscious effort was made to align them to the organization’s norms and values. When employees take pride in the organization, they perform better. Feeling of being part of a whole makes human beings feel valued.
Look into my eyes
When a human connect is made by meeting face to face allows for eye-contact between people. Dr Fiona Kerr, a Neuroscientist tells us that eye-contact between patients and doctors releases serotonin that allows for faster healing. When leaders make eye contact and speak to their team members, oxytocin and dopamine gets released. Laughter during an interaction releases endorphins. This builds an authentic empathy based engagement that has an impact on the organization’s culture. https://youtu.be/019Z0dAzNsQRemote working takes away that human connection. It impacts the identity of the worker and makes the work purely transactional and a way to earn a living. No surprise that engagement levels are dropping. Only 13% employees world-wide are engaged. As more and more organizations are learning to work with gig workers, they have to learn how to engage someone who is baking just one slice of the pizza. It is like trying to make your Uber driver care about the importance of the meeting you are running to. Leaders have for long worked with virtual teams. What they are not used to is working with a virtual team of people who are NOT employees. Not every manager who is good at managing a team of co-located team members will be effective in engaging a remote group of gig workers. When a large tech company gets its employees together for an annual offsite, they use the two days to create social bonds rather than to upskill them.
Fragmented learning
When we learn something, we are most motivated to learn what we can apply immediately. Most micro-learning modules do just that. It is a transactional view of learning. Without creating a context information does not translate to knowledge that we can use to add to our inner world. That means finding inter-relationships between what we have just read to what we already know. Unless we are able to retrieve that at will, the information remains like a drop of water that evaporates quickly. To be able to make that learning a part of our mental model, we need to take a long term view of what we learn. Expertise is built when we learn something in depth and apply it to solve known and unknown problems. When learn something just-in-time to solve an immediate problem, we are missing the sense-making process that is so important for a learner.
Meaning matters
Recently I sat through the onboarding process of first time managers of a Fortune 500 company. The MD talked to them about the dilemmas he faced when he had joined the firm twenty years back. He spoke about the need to build soft skills while being a domain expert. He spoke to the lot about the need to balance accountability while allowing the team members to make mistakes and learn. The ten-week journey was aimed at helping the new managers make meaning of their new roles. Our work is more than a source of livelihood. It shapes our identity. As the world of work and careers is changing, it needs leaders who can avoid “conversation fatigue”. In the last two decades, the profusion of social media platforms, flatter structures and constant change is creating a “collaborative overload”. Yet never before has the need for human connection been greater. The ability to make meaning and connect the dots will fast become a skill that will define successful leaders. We hope organizations will deepen their investments in building these skills. =======First written for Business Line 23 May 2018 <read original>