Here’s a question I bet you’ve never been asked. How would you describe the hybrid workplace: as a mule or as a platypus? Stick with me.
In the six years since Kevin Eikenberry and I wrote “ The Long-Distance Leader, Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership,” a lot has changed about the way we work. Foremost among those changes is the rise of “Hybrid Work.” For most of us, this is a way of saying, “some people are in the office, sometimes, and others are remote.”
We had these kinds of arrangements before 2020. They were usually informally negotiated, and the work and systems usually defaulted to those in the office. Work hours, when you held meetings, and meetings with some people in the conference room while others dialed in were becoming common. Not great, but common.
After Covid, there was a rush to return to some kind of normal. Some teams chose to remain fully remote, others were told to get back in the office where they belonged. After some drama and expectation setting, 70% of organizations now have some sort of agreement that the work might be primarily in-office, but there’s flexibility and a more formal structure around what the team looks like. So, back to work.
I submit that what you have in those situations is not really hybrid work. It’s a blend, to be sure. Most often it’s a negotiated compromise (how often can we make them come back to the office before they quit? How much can I refuse to go to the office before they fire me?); The results don’t really satisfy anyone completely, but it works.
That brings me to the original question. When you have a blend and not a true hybrid, you are likely to wind up with a platypus.
I love platypuses. They’re adorable and unique. They evolved in a very specific corner of the world, in a kind of messy way and they’re a blend of a mammal, an egg laying creature, with a duck on one end and a beaver on the other. Over time they evolved to meet circumstances as they arose. As a result:
- They have evolved unique defense mechanisms (cool, venomous toe nails!) that protect against ancient foes but have little use against animals that share their current environment. They are easy pickings.
- Fossil records say they used to be widely distributed and over time have become perfectly evolved to a very small part of a very small part of a remote corner of the globe. They simply couldn’t survive anywhere other than in a small piece of Eastern Australia and Tasmania. They don’t survive worth a darn in captivity or when relocated.
- They belong to a family of animals (monotremes, if you’re geeky) that has almost completely died out but stubbornly cling to life, although nobody knows for how long.
- Their breeding process is… complicated. They don’t lay a lot of fertilized eggs and it’s a lot of effort, which is why you don’t have a lot of them out there.
In other words, they adapted to what was around them, until (apologies to creationists, just go with the analogy) they became a bit of an evolutionary dead end, stubbornly hanging on.
Mules on the other hand, are true hybrids. Yes, they are a blend of a horse and a donkey, but the definition of a hybrid is that it takes two parents and creates a third, unique, entity. A mule is different than either of its parents:
- Mules can walk further in a day than either horses or donkeys.
- They handle drought and weather extremes better than either.
- They can carry heavy loads for longer distances than either.
- Their personalities are very different from horses or donkeys. They have a reputation for being stubborn which many claim is actually heightened intelligence. (If you are afraid to cross a stream, and look like you might fall in, don’t expect the mule to follow you. It’s dangerous!)
- They CAN reproduce naturally under rare conditions, but usually have to be intentionally bred and it takes time, money and humans to make it happen.
By now, you probably see where this analogy is leading. Teams that form and then keep changing and adapting to specific conditions with no long-range plan often find themselves highly specialized, but unable to adjust to changing conditions and can’t replicate themselves easily.
True hybrids are not just a blend, but a new entity. In the case of hybrid work, it takes the best of co-location and remote work, and creates a new way of functioning. Not only is WHO works WHERE, but usually builds in the added element of WHEN. Time is a crucial part of hybrid work. Successful teams balance synchronous and asynchronous work in brand new ways that are more efficient and productive than even the old ways.
In planning the second edition of The Long Distance Leader, Revised Rules for Remarkable Remote and Hybrid Leadership (out September 17th) we have taken the rise of Hybrid Work into account. I hope you’ll check it out, and it’s helpful as you try to create mules, not platypuses out of your workplace.
