Can video calls replace informal office conversations?
Not fully. A scheduled call is a structured activity, and what remote teams lose is the unstructured, accidental conversation that drives creative work.
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Not every digital problem is about websites
When the problem is how people work together. One of the 55 businesses I audited was a gaming studio employing hundreds of people that needed no help with its website, SEO or social media. Remote working had removed the moments when a developer spots something on a colleague's screen and a conversation solves a problem that has been stuck for a week. More video calls and virtual coffee breaks did not bring that back, so the audit became research into asynchronous creative sharing and virtual studio spaces.
What did a gaming studio need from its digital audit?
A way to replicate the spontaneous creative moments of an office once everyone was working from home. The studio employed hundreds of people and did not need website, SEO or social media advice. Its digital problem was one I had not met in any other audit.
What had the studio lost?
What I came to think of as the shoulder-tap moment. A developer spots something on a colleague's screen while walking past, a conversation starts, someone overhears and adds a thought, and twenty minutes later a problem stuck for a week has a solution. You cannot schedule that on a video call, because a call is a structured activity. The studio had tried more video calls, virtual coffee breaks and Slack channels for casual conversation, and none of it replaced what happened in a shared room.
What did the audit recommend?
It became closer to a research project into how creative studios around the world were handling remote collaboration. The recommendations covered tools for asynchronous creative sharing, so people could see what colleagues were working on without interrupting them, virtual studio spaces people could drift in and out of, and ways to keep a creative culture going across a distributed team.
Which other businesses face the same problem?
Any that relies on people sparking ideas off each other. For 54 of the 55 businesses, digital meant a website, some social media and perhaps an online shop; for this studio it was the whole working environment. Architecture firms, design agencies, marketing teams and software developers face the same challenge when they go remote. The question is whether the accidental conversations that drive the best work are still happening, and project management software cannot replace them if they are not.
Related evidence: 55 digital audits. Here’s what I found.. Earlier in this journey: The first question I always ask.
Questions people ask
Which teams lose most when working remotely?
Any that relies on people sparking ideas off each other: creative studios, architecture firms, design agencies, marketing teams and software developers.
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