Have you noticed this?
Have you noticed that some people seem firmly planted and comfortable with their surroundings, but there are others that can't operate a hammer or a screwdriver?
Have you noticed that on many projects there is a unofficial segregation of the workforce something like this (*):
- The "practicals" who live and work and think in the physical world (whether in the office, or not)
- The "virtuals" who live and work and think in the remote, virtual, and digital space (even if they go into the office)
Join things up: Leverage the differences and make it an "And":
In the best of all cases, the win-win is to leverage the conjunction of 'practicals' and 'virtuals' as a reinforcing join of culture, skills, and interests.
Architecture is a good place to start. How could you build a new "anything" without both working together: Design, analysis, construction?
Have you ever looked closely at a sweeping fly-over highway bridge, as a good example?
- How do they get those massive iron beams to gently curve over hundreds of feet and join seamlessly with the next?
- How do they get the concrete columns to have just the right arc to give the roadway above the right degree of bank on the curves?
- How would the CAD ever match up with the 'physicals' who drive the rivets and build the molds if they didn't work together ... rather than apart.
Practicals Versus Virtuals
'Versus' doesn't buy you anything
Instead of the joy of a 'reinforcing join', the opposite may be a dis-attraction, rejection, or tension between strangers from two spaces: physical and virtual.
In systems terms, there may be little or no throughput, poor gain on resources committed, and outright hostility. Obviously, there is nothing to be gained by being at loggerheads about the differences in experience, attitude, and values. Those who can type should also be able to use a screwdriver; but it works the other way around also.
But, in fact, the cultural divide can be a chasm: pay, promotion, recognition, status, security to name a few of the HR issues, but also respect, arrogance, and elitism that unwittingly divide rather than unite, to say nothing about herd loyalty and commitment to win-loss.
If there were an answer ...
If there were an answer for this, other than self-awareness and walk-in-their-shoes exercises, I would put it down in the next paragraph
But, there is no next paragraph .....
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(*) Credit to Ross Douthat for the idea of 'practicals' and 'virtuals'
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