Where hope, strategic foresight and research meet organizational development.
Who Am I?
I’m Nola Simon. I’ve worked some version of hybrid or remote for the last 10 years and when my job was restructured, I realized that the most meaningful work I’ve ever done was influencing the design and implementation of hybrid/remote strategy. It’s not just about work but how lives can change.
Why Hybrid/Remote Excellence?
People are stuck - so much of the content about hybrid/remote is repetitive, boring and just plain wrong. Organizations are having a hard time deciding how to proceed - they often want to skip steps. The focus is on the tactical - how many days in the office is ideal? What perks will convince people to commute? How much salary will staff forgo for flexibility? Hybrid/Remote doesn’t start with process or perks. It starts with imagination. The dream matters. We are striving for excellence. If we are going to reinvent work, shouldn’t we make it amazing?
Most organizational design is done top down. I did it from the inside out. For 2 decades, I worked in operations of large financial services companies in Canada and the US - customer service, relationship management, sales, training & development. I understand how to operationalize change because I’ve lived it. I started advocating for work from home in 2011 because I had young kids and a long commute. After an almost fatal car accident on the one day of the week I had to commute to Toronto in 2018, I changed jobs to a fully remote role. It was the only job in the company based where I lived and it happened to be remote. To my surprise, I despised it because of the way the remote employee experience had been designed. More likely, it was never intentionally designed, it just developed.
Along with an actively engaged following on LinkedIn and Twitter, I’m often interviewed in media and on podcasts for my expertise in distributed work. I find that these conversations often lack depth and are limited by specific agendas and algorithms. That’s part of the reason I created my podcast and membership - Hybrid/Remote Centre of Excellence. But I’m a writer so I’ve been looking for a platform that allows me to combine writing, the podcast and other audio along with the ability to comment and engage with readers/listeners. This is what I hope this Substack will be.
To Niche or Not To Niche? Or Too Niche?
Someone recently told me that they thought that my business was too niche because I’m focusing on hybrid/remote strategy. That just tells me that they doesn’t understand what is involved in hybrid/remote. It’s so much more than something you just add on to your organization like it is this year’s fashionable accessory. It touches every role in the company from CEO to front-line staff - it’s leadership, it’s learning and development, HR, policy and procedure, employer brand, employee advocacy. Hybrid/remote restructures lives and jobs and it’s the doorway to most future of work discussions.
The articles I plan to write here will be broader in focus and we will look at how worldviews, personalization, decision making, autonomy, learning and leading factor into good hybrid/remote strategy. How will families, housing, education, businesses, transportation, travel, cities and towns, even countries, be affected? What are the economic and social impacts? How might climate change factor into what we design? How do we make what we design more equitable?
There is no one definitive answer to these questions but it is important to talk about these topics and co-create ideas and experiments that might lead to solutions. It’s useful to get all different types of comments from different types of people with different lived experiences.
Pricing
I’ve designed this Substack so you will always have access for 4 newsletters (once I write them, that it is. I haven’t started yet!) It’s like getting a month free.
After that, you have the option to subscribe:
Why subscribe?
Please buy a paid subscription if you have found the work I share to be inspiring, thought-provoking and helpful to you as you advocate for the future you want for your life and your work. I intend the resources, theories and questions I share to be transformative and I’m making this a safe space to ask questions and test out ideas without attracting the self-marketing I sometimes get from people on LinkedIn and other social media.
Hopes & Dreams
I hope that this Substack will allow us to road test ideas and theories about alternatives ways of working and living. Let’s develop future-focused skills that help us imagine and create the future of work. Magical things happen when we train our imagination and intentionally choose to move optimistically into the future.
Stay up-to-date
You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox. To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
