How Redvespa prioritised connection over Work In Progress

The Work In Progress (WIP) meeting is an almost ubiquitous part of corporate life. They are also a huge waste of time.

The internet is filled with articles extolling ways to run WIP meetings that “actually work”, how to make them “awesome”, how to make them drive performance, and so on. These articles are all about restructuring meetings to make them effective. There are very few that focus on any real, successful, outcomes from WIP meetings.

I recently took on the task of redeveloping Redvespa’s weekly WIP meeting in to something more effective. The starting point was to determine the point of the meeting, and it was immediately obvious that getting updates on work was no longer at the centre of organisational needs. People were talking in the office, teams were holding standups, projects were being visibly tracked.

With offices in two locations, the true value of the video-conferenced meeting had become the opportunity it provided for all staff to, literally, be seen and see each other. This provided the launchpad to completely reframe the meeting.

The first action was scaling back the regularity, task focus, and reliance on a pre-completed WIP document. Then we empowered people to speak to their successes in the broadest way possible. Been for a walk every day this week? Well done. Signed up a new client? Superb. Locked in a family holiday? You deserve it.

The change has been almost instant with feedback reinforcing that the new meeting style is delivering on what people were missing in the old WIP format. People still talk about work, but they also talk to each other, share stories, show support.

So, what is the one thing we brought to the new that was absent in the old? Simple.

Connection.

In his 2016 book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport sought to outline a way of working that could help people realise their potential.

Newport defined Deep Work as,

Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

Deep Work is scalable, with four different strategies outlined by Newport to enable implementation in to working life. While they all involve focusing on the task and hand and removing yourself from distractions, these strategies range from spending long periods in isolation to alternating between Deep and Shallow Work as our capacity and time allows.

The philosophy of Deep Work has merit through creating a structured approach to working time, alleviating the stress of distraction, and ensuring we have the space to fully engage in the task at hand. These are all, undoubtedly, tools that contribute to mastering complex tasks and ticking off important projects. They are also tools many of us are likely to implement already as we work from home or withdraw to a quiet corner to overcome unique challenges.

However, if Deep Work is a valuable way of working with tools that can be used in achieving success, or great things, then it needs an equitable force that is similarly philosophical in order to encourage a more valuable, holistic, and balanced way of working.

The elusive work/life balance is a focus for many employees and facilitating it is a focus for many employers. With this in mind, the Deep way of working feels isolating. Even if you’re feeding your brain, you’re doing so by removing yourself from the technological and physical connection to your workmates, and perhaps even your family.

At the end of the day, when you step out of your work headspace, the search for this balance means it’s often the connection moments that linger.

Consider then, as we did in revising our WIP meeting, Connected Work.

This already exists under Newport’s thinking as regular meetings and standups replace email, enabling people to connect with their colleagues and project progress without the distraction of message alerts.

To acknowledge Connected Work explicitly and give it a space of its own enables us to implement it in to a more complete and balanced working day. Recognising the cognitive value in connecting with colleagues further boosts this type of work and allows us to embrace it to an extent where we can, perhaps, stop seeing meetings as disruptions to our flow.

That is not to say that we need to hold more meetings, or that we shouldn’t question those we’re already having. As in Redvespa’s WIP meeting example, being honest about your reasons for meeting is important and is the only way to ensure you find value in them.

So, how do you determine whether a meeting has value? Talking to the other attendees beforehand would be a good start.

There is more to Connected Work than simply holding meetings, however, and it’s in those other moments that it is perhaps most valuable. Implementing a Connected Work philosophy could result in more co-working opportunities, with design sprints being a popular contemporary example. These provide the space for people to engage and challenge problems and solutions in real time. There is also the potential to develop learning and knowledge sharing opportunities through events, both formal and informal. These embrace our desire to learn and grow through perspectives of, and connections with, others.

There’s another element which I’ve observed recently in the leader of our organisation. When tasked with telling the story of Redvespa, a deeply personal task, she removed herself from her desk and computer and found space to work independently with a notebook and pen. While this has the makings of Deep Work, where she chose to sit changed the narrative. Instead of isolation and quiet, she sat at a communal work table in the middle of the office. As she wrestled with a challenging task, she opted for a location where she was connected to her people: trying to distill the Redvespa story while we talked, worked, and connected around her.

Imagine a working day that embraces all of these types of work: implementing them in to a schedule, à la Deep Work, but allowing for a rainbow of colours that finds time for logistics, time for inspiration, time for action, and time for each other.

If we return to the resource that is our hungry brain, we can see that, whether we are working in a Deep state or a Connected state, we use the same areas: the frontal and temporal lobes.

When we are Deep Working, the temporal lobe is largely in control as we use our memory, organise our thoughts, and process new and old learning.

Under Connected Work, the frontal lobe takes over as we engage our personality and emotions, ensuring we are self and socially aware. Switching between Deep Work and Connected Work makes a more complete use of our brain than either philosophy can alone.

An efficient, effective, and collaborative brain ensures that we are working deep enough, shallow enough, and connected enough to provide balance to our work, and to our lives.

I believe human contact is the one optimistic thing in our future.
- Michael Palin

This article originally appeared, in its full form, as Marie Curie at the Dinner Table via The Little Curious. This version has been adapted to tell the Redvespa story. For more on Redvespa, visit the website here.