In our new work-from-home world, your workplace is wherever you happen to be. Offices are an increasingly distant memory, and many of us expect to be logging into work well into 2021. We’ve all made our individual arrangements and developed our personal rituals, so you might be surprised to hear me make the case for standardizing business ops with a shared services model. 

Without a proper shared services model, daily operations can be chaotic. Now I won’t deny that sometimes a little chaos is productive, and even fun, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. No, I’m talking about proliferating inefficiencies and inconsistencies. Why does one team use one tool, a second use another, and the satellite office use a third?

What you want — and what I think my SourceCode colleagues have accomplished — is to create systems that let us devote more time to our actual jobs. We can work the same hours and accomplish more. Because we have internal consensus on little issues like workflow, I have more time to think about the big challenges and bigger opportunities fast approaching this industry.

At SourceCode, we’ve been fortunate in the shift to remote. With our shared services system, I talk with colleagues just as much as I ever did, but the content of our conversations is better. We talk about ideas and inspirations, not who is in charge of Process X or what tool we use for Task Y. It’s better for our team and for our clients.

Five months in, how have organization’s systems accommodated to the new world? How has collaboration changed, and what lessons will you take back to the office when you can go back?