Sshhh you’re the not the co-located service you think you are

I work for Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives within the Bristol City Council local authority. Every assumption is that we’re a bunch of co-located teams and services. Yet the 10,000 plus email I’ve received says otherwise. I go days and weeks without seeing many folks within our service and I think we’re unknowingly actually a distributed or remote team. Our offices are spread thinly across 10 plus sites and that’s without the local authority aspects. Meeting spaces are elusive as is bumping into team mates. Our ways of thinking, our tools, processes etc are all working to this co-located fantasy. The trouble with this is that we then blame email and meetings for not letting is focus.

I wonder if we accepted that we’re really remote teams if we could shift for the better.

See you at the water cooler.

PS worth a read is 37signals REMOTE on the subject.

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