Issue.13

Welcome back to Collective Bookmarks. This week’s newsletter is a 6 minute read or about 12 TikToks.

The world of workplace is going through what we often refer to as the “messy middle.” We can’t go back to the past way of doing things, and the beautiful future is still in the distance. This is the time where we try things, figure things out, and work towards that future. It can feel confusing, messy, and just downright not great sometimes. However, we know that if we work as a collective we can get there, and so we move forward. Onwards.

In This Week’s Issue:

• Three Things You Should Know
  • What is a Digital Nomad?
  • Talent, Scarcity, and Culture
  • Productivity, Do Bosses Really Understand It?
• A Person You Should Know: Lauren Pollack
• A Product You Should Know: Archilogic

As always, if you have feedback or want to sponsor this newsletter please reach out below.

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Three Things You Should Know

From The World of Work and Place

1.What is a Digital Nomad?

To write her recent study on digital nomadism Alma Andino Frydman spent a summer living as one in Mexico. She conducted 50 interviews with digital nomads to get at the heart of who they were, and why they choose to live / work this way. What she found were people who valued new experiences, freedom of movement, and a craving for work life balance. She also found that issues such as gentrification and loneliness come along with some of the more positive aspects of digital nomadism. However, still 70% of these digital nomads would quit, if asked to change their way of living.

What We Think: We found Alma’s work through our LinkedIn network and were immediately hooked. We definitely need more people looking at digital nomads, and other new ways of working to better understand the real affect they have on local communities. Studies like this will also help us to better understand the needs of future generations of workers and what kind of changes we need to make or adapt from a compliance perspective in workplace. Tax code hasn’t quite caught up with digital nomads, but it certainly will soon.

2. Talent, Scarcity, and Culture

In a recent article Dror Poleg breaks down a new theory from Nadia Asparouhova about how company culture forms. The premise is that cultural norms are dependent on the type of talent each specific company is looking to attract. These three types as Dror calls them are industrial, modern, and creative companies. For example, a modern company would be current state Google with their emphasis on top performing generalists. As a result their company culture is a meritocracy oriented towards innovation. The mapping has a multitude of implications for how companies develop.

Why it Matters: As Dror points out in his article, the scarcity of talent will drive each company looking for these more rare types of talent to adopt different working models to attract / retain talent. “Corporate structure and culture are downstream from talent distribution. The type of talent a company relies on determines how it is managed and the type of stories it tells itself.” We think this is an interesting dynamic for workplace teams to understand as we select which companies we want to work at / build culture at. As Dror points out Google started as a creative company 20 years ago, but is now a modern company. Internally we always just referred to this as working at a different “stage” of a company’s lifecycle. We frequently saw counterparts going to work at an earlier company because they preferred that early creative mode vs the later mode. We encourage you to read Dror’s whole article, then Nadia’s too. If you’ve got even more time, why not pick up her book.

3. Productivity, Do Bosses Really Understand It?

In this article for Vox Rani Molla does an excellent job of breaking down the issues with measuring productivity in a modern context. Most knowledge workers aren’t really making widgets and as she points out there is a focus from managers on measuring inputs vs outputs that can lead to negative effects such as “performance working.” She emphasizes that the results of research are variable about whether people are more productive remotely or in person. When it comes to productivity, the context of each individual company is extremely important. Much of the reversion to the status quo seems to be about ease vs pushing to learn new management methods.

What We Think: Rani does a great job of breaking down the latest research and emphasizing why it is important to understand productivity better. Worker engagement is dropping lower and lower. However, those who are forced to RTO have the lowest engagement scores of all. Workplace teams have their work cut out for them but are on the front lines of helping executives to understand that new methods of management are needed for working remotely / hybrid but also that there is no one size fits all approach.

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