What I Wish I Knew Before I Became a Remote Worker and Team Leader
Early 2020 is a scary and uncertain time. As I write this, schools where I live in Spain have been closed for a week, along with many other countries in Europe. The UK will be joining them on Monday, and many in the US either have already closed or will do so over the coming days or weeks. As newspaper headlines of Coronavirus and tumbling stock markets leave everyone with a sense of dread, containment measures are being implemented that mean many people are suddenly being asked to work from home without any planning, preparation or training, and will be looking for guidance.
What qualifies me to say anything about this? I think I can add something to the conversation based on my experience for the last 18 months working fully remotely, and leading a remote team of 10 people to deliver a key business objective of my employer. Moreover I was working remotely not in some sexy Digital Nomad profession like web design or drop shipping, but for a large blue chip organisation – the type that is not normally accustomed to remote work. In short exactly the type of organisation that will be having to suddenly get up to speed with remote working practices over the coming days and weeks.
I’ve seen lots of articles written about the logistics of remote work, including tips like getting an external monitor (or two) or ensuring you have a dedicated space to work from if at all possible - if you haven’t read these yet google will offer you a number, and they are worth reading. However what I plan to address is something I’ve not seen discussed much, and that is how the wider ways of working, and in particular of managing a team are quite different when you’re in a remote environment. This is where I’d like to share some of my key learnings.
My own move to remote work in 2018 was a transition that I had dreamed about for years, planned for months and was looking forward to enormously. Was I excited? Of course. Was I scared? Hell yes.
But I have gained immensely from the change in working practices. I also need to be clear that I have been hugely lucky to have worked with some outstanding managers over this time, and that without their trust and willingness to adapt I could not have made this move so effectively. Many of the key learnings I talk about here are theirs rather than my own, and I’m sharing them because I believe that the hardest part of the remote work challenge falls on managers.
There are some obvious changes that come from working remotely - I spend less time commuting, and more with my family. But there are have been other changes too. Ones that I did not expect, and which I believe have made me better as both a staff member and a team leader.What were these changes, and how can you learn from them if you are about to become unexpectedly remote for the foreseeable future?
As a team member I have benefited by becoming more focussed, more results orientated and more self-reliant, and in doing so was able to make myself more valuable to my boss and to my employer. I’ve also learnt just how much wasted time there is in office work, and how much more efficiently and productively I can work from home.
Tips for team members
The first rule of Remote Work Club is, don’t talk about Remote Work Club. Sorry, wrong movie. The first rule is to understand at all times what your priorities and objectives are, how they relate to the team’s wider objectives and the organisation’s goals and mission, and keep them top of mind at all times. By ensuring that you deliver on your key objectives and that these support the organisation’s mission you will ensure that you are creating value instead of simply keeping busy.
Plan your day out the day before; this enables you to focus on achieving priorities instead of getting sucked into fighting fires, or other work that feels productive but does not ultimately advance your objectives. Don’t over engineer this; a good template is to simply write down on a notepad or post-it the three most important steps you need to take in order to advance your objectives. Then in the morning ensure you focus on those before getting drawn into email requests.
Set aside time for deep work when you are most productive. While you are doing this avoid distractions and resist the temptation to check emails. Of course email is important but its easy to get drawn into checking it constantly and focussing on whatever it flags up to you. This is a sure ticket to spending your time in the “Urgent but not important” quadrant of the Eisenhower Matrix - if you’re not already familiar with this I recommend you look it up as a priority!
One way to minimise time suck is to use set times for checking emails, and focus on priority work outside of these times. If necessary you can use email rules to flag messages from managers or key stakeholders so that you see their messages outside of these times. Also let people know that you are always contactable by phone - this ensures that people can always get hold of you if it is genuinely urgent, without breaking your focus to constantly check emails just in case something important came in.
Ask yourself regularly whether what you are doing right now is directly contributing to the achievement of your objectives, or those of your team? If not it may be busy work that can be dropped. As a worker you may not be in a position to make this call yourself, but you can make a proposal to your manager. Don’t ask them whether you can drop the task, rather propose that you stop doing it, including a brief description of the amount of time spent doing the task, why you think it is not of value, and ideally a suggestion for what you could do instead to use the time saved more productively. They may come back to you with a reason you hadn’t considered for why the task is important. But it’s also possible that there really is no good reason - such as a report that was requested by a director who left years ago and was used for a part of the business that has since closed, but that has continued being done because nobody asked to stop it.
If you are unsure what to do or how to complete a task don’t simply ask your manager what you should do. Instead tell them what you propose and ask for their feedback. This way you ensure you have their agreement, but they see that you are proactive and over time will develop more trust. If possible keep a running list of issues or questions you need to raise with your manager, and take them to her in one go, rather than regularly calling or emailing her during the day. This will show that you are able to work more independently, and will allow her more time to focus on her own priorities. Of course some issues will be time sensitive and need to be escalated right away, but this should be the exception. If these emergencies seem to be happening regularly it’s worth looking at what you can do to avoid it.
One of the greatest benefits of working remotely is choosing your own work environment to suit the kind of work you are doing at any given time. Ok during a pandemic you are a little restricted, but you can still make adjustments. For example if you’re working on a large spreadsheet you’ll want your full monitor set up at your desk. But if you’re say reviewing documents, making notes ahead of a call or doing more deep thinking work you might be better off in your favourite armchair with an iPad or an old fashioned notepad and pen. Also ensure you take regular breaks. Stretch, walk around. This is especially important if you have a less than perfect ergonomic setup.
Many people find it helpful to have a transition between home and office, in terms of space and time. If possible try to work in a separate room, or at least ensure that you can put your computer away at the end of the day to remind yourself that you are now at home. I find going for a walk at the beginning and end of the day provides that transitional time between home and work, and effectively takes the place of my old commute while being more enjoyable and less stressed. Some deep thinking is even best done while walking around.
Always be conscious of security, and ensure that you are protecting your company’s and your customers’ data and privacy at all times. Several sources have warned of an expected increase in fraud, and activity such as phishing attacks. Ensure that you know what to look out for, and only use IT, including apps or programs, that have been approved by your company.
Lastly read all of the tips below for managers, and suggest them to your manager or take the initiative in using them with her. Remember she is also working without a script for this new world, so show that you are proactive and make her life easier.
Tips for managers
As a manager, if you sit in an office with all of your team you can look over their shoulder at any moment. You can see the hours that they come and go, and can easily see whether they are putting in the required time. You’re always there to answer their questions and to check on the quality of their work. How on earth can you do these things if you are in another office - let alone another country, or time zone?
The answer is that you can’t - managing a remote team is simply not the same as managing a co-located team. If you try and use IT tools to replicate looking over their shoulders and ensuring they are “on the clock” at the right times you will end up very frustrated, and the team will end up very demotivated.
What is the answer then? I think the first step is to realise that remote management is a series of compromises - but guess what? So is in person management, and indeed everything in life. You just don’t see the compromises that you are already making, as you have become so used to them.
Probably the biggest one is that being able to exercise “management by walking around” gives a feeling of control over your team that is usually unwarranted. Sure, you can easily see what time they arrive, when they leave, and whether they are checking Facebook at work, and this gives a feeling of comfort. If you can see that they are sitting at their desk and not goofing off, they must be working, right? But this apparent transparency is like a cozy blanket that masks the fact that you do not have full visibility of what they are actually working at on a day to day basis, how they are progressing with it, and whether it is really supporting the team’s objectives or the organisations mission.
It is easy to fall into the trap of monitoring inputs (ie time spent sitting at a desk) and assuming that the correct outputs (ie work that supports the organisation’s mission) will follow.
But when your team are remote from you, it isn’t possible to do this anymore. The good news is that the replacement for it is something far more beneficial. It will give you better control over your team, improve their engagement and morale as well as their productivity.
The answer is to forget about inputs, and instead measure outputs. This means that you need to:
1. Understand what each member of your team should be doing
2. Communicate this to them clearly
3. Establish success criteria - how will you know when the team have succeeded?
4. Decide how to monitor progress against these objectives
When I talk about objectives here, you need to think much more granularly than annual performance management. Think about what you need the team to achieve over the next day, week or month. What will they need to have done for you to be able to say they have succeeded?
When communicating these objectives to your team members, you should always focus on letting them know WHAT you need them to achieve, and WHY. It’s easy to fall into the trap of telling them WHAT to do and HOW, but this means that as soon as something doesn’t work as expected they will need to come back to you for a decision.
Instead, ensuring that they understand the WHY of their objectives, and trusting them to use their own initiative to determine the HOW, they will be able to proceed on their own without constantly needing to check in. They will also feel more trusted and empowered, which over time will improve their productivity, engagement and morale.
There are no hard and fast rules about how to monitor progress against objectives, or how often to do it, as the needs will vary from team to team, but some options to consider might be:
Short daily “stand up” calls at the start or end of each day
Weekly or twice weekly team calls
A shared document that each team member can update daily
End of day emails from each team member
Whatever format you use for status updates, it is important that each team member covers
What they are working on at present
What progress they have achieved against objectives
Any areas which are at risk of falling behind schedule
Any issues on which they need guidance
Any blockers they need support with
One of my wife’s colleagues asked her today what their employer will do about flexibility on hours when schools close and large numbers of staff are suddenly working with young children at home. The answer has to be that trying to keep to strict hours in this situation will be not only impossible but also pointless. Instead teams need to ensure they have clear expectations and clear measures of success, so that they can ensure that they are moving ahead with priorities as needed, and identify any areas that need additional guidance or support.
Being remote from your team forces you to understand in detail exactly what is expected from them, and communicate this to them clearly. Having done this, you will be able to hold them accountable to delivery of these objectives. This not only ensures that they stay on track, but frees you up from having to worry unduly about the hours you can see them available. After all if they are completing their deliverables and meeting their objectives does it matter if for example they need to spend some time with their children at points during the day?
This flexibility will be especially necessary during the Coronavirus crisis. Moreover, you are likely to find that working capacity is reduced at this time. In part this will be because team members need to split their time between work and childcare, but you also have to plan for team members to become unavailable due to sickness. Your initial response to dealing with this may be to ask staff to work longer hours to accommodate the workload, but this will be difficult to sustain over the long term and will lead to lower staff morale and productivity.
A better response is to use the opportunity to really focus on the core deliverables and eliminate as far as possible any unnecessary busy work. If you are following the steps recommended above to ensure your team are working on priorities you are already moving in the right direction.
In terms of specific tasks, regularly ask yourself whether what your team are doing is directly contributing to the achievement of their objectives, or those of your organisation. If not, it may be busy work that can be dropped. Your team are likely to be closer to the detail and have ideas for work that can be dropped; let them know that you welcome suggestions and encourage them to send you a brief proposal as outlined under the section for remote workers. As mentioned previously, large organisation often have zombie processes, which have outlived their usefulness but are still performed thanks to organisational inertia.
Always question, don’t be afraid to challenge stakeholders or recipients of a work output to validate whether they still need it. If you can’t get any response confirming that it is still valuable and the output is a deliverable like a report or file, try having the team continue to produce it but not send it out for a trial period. This is a great way to identify who actually is using the output, and if nobody is it may no longer be necessary.
Even if someone does complain, it may simply be because they are used to it, so you should go further by challenging them to justify to you the business rationale for needing it, and what impacts it would cause them if you were to stop. What would be the real consequences to the business? (nb this will require them to understand the reason they use your output - the first answer is likely to be along the lines of “but without it we can’t run x process” - but it may be that x process is no longer needed either). What would be the impact to the business of dropping their process? And if they do still need to continue with their process, how could they get the same result a different way if you stopped your part?
The current situation is unprecedented, and will require many of us to rethink the way we work. If we can use it as an opportunity to improve the way we do things, focus on what is really important and empower our teams, maybe we can come out of the experience stronger, more productive and more engaged.
For more information see the guides, videos and helpful resources that have been put together by a dedicated team of remote workers at:
https://www.remoteworkassociation.com/keep-the-world-working-learn
Please also share this article with anyone you think could benefit from it, and let us know your tips and experiences of remote work!