Managing, but Remotely.
The Day-To-Day Characteristics of Remote Management
Hey, fellow Leader 🚀,
I am Artur, and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach out to me and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
Things never went back to normal after the Pandemic. To the very least, hybrid working became the new norm, and for most modern companies and startups, they ventured into the advantages of a remote workforce. We are the pioneers of the next breed of leadership, who need to learn to manage people remotely. I have covered some topics already, and they can be read in the article below. This article will cover some tips and tricks to manage people remotely.
Some Things Never Change
Despite working remotely, some things remain the same as before. Some of those are simply done in a virtual context instead of a live event. For example, the importance of creating rapport with the team, to be able to convey information, and implement feedback loops remains the same.
For some people, they would be lazy in the office or outside the office. Some people will value the need for connection with colleagues and sometimes saying what's on their mind spontaneously is very important. For other people, they would need a quiet space for focus and uninterrupted time to do work, the same as they would in the office, but at a space of the person’s convenience.
It’s Not For Everyone
Over time, I've learned that not everyone thrives in a fully remote environment. Despite what we read online and what others claim, we know this to be true deep down. There are countless instances where people disappear during working hours, or have meetings with kids constantly playing in the background, leaving you to wonder, “How can they possibly work in that environment?” Yes, remote work offers a better balance between personal and work time, but people are being paid to work nevertheless. For those who merely pretend to do actual work, the consequence will be a bad reputation for the entire remote working experience.
So, I've learned it's not for everyone. While it's more comfortable, it demands commitment and discipline to make it successful. The conversation around asynchronous working hours is often the root of all evil. If a manager has a 'freestyle' worker with little overlap in working hours with the rest of the team, everyone knows it will be a challenge: exchanging information, helping colleagues, arranging meeting slots, and so on. No one in Europe has ever said it was great to work with Australia. It's not our Aussie friends' fault. It's simply that they're on the other side of the globe, and finding overlapping working hours for even a single call is a headache. Try running a User Acceptance Testing (UAT) phase with a nine-hour time difference to truly understand how thrilling that is.
Focus On Outcomes
This is the holy grail of remote working: what matters are the outcomes, not whether someone is pretending to work in an office. Everybody has a story of a colleague who pretends to work long hours just for the praise, with little to no actual work to show for it. It's actually very comfortable to lead an outcome-based system, where things need to happen and are properly communicated. If a developer is a week late for a feature that should take four days to complete, this raises serious eyebrows. The attempts at vague excuses still exist, but there's more pragmatism in the conversation. What truly matters is what's delivered.
In contrast, someone might argue that focusing on outcomes alone is brutal and could ignore important events or situations that would have made delivery impossible, regardless of the modus operandi. This is true, but here's where the point that remote work isn't for everyone comes into play. There's less room for communication mistakes or lapses.
Silence Means Something (or Someone) Is Failing Behind
When a project is launched, the least stressful moment is at its very beginning. The project team feels they still have time, even when unknowns start to appear left and right in the project's execution. Someone who tends to be very autonomous and senior becomes uncomfortable with these unknowns, conveying the risk and following up thoroughly.
However, if you're on a call and someone is still complaining about an issue that hasn't been fixed for five days, this is a red flag. Probably it wasn't escalated, they didn't ask for help from anyone. It was just there, waiting for the "Ether" to magically resolve the issue. This marks the beginning of the end for some team members. A focus on outcomes is brutal, and if people are comfortable having issues with little evolution, maybe they need an office to address those problems better.
The Rounds
While working in an office, people update their status almost by accident, with little effort. So many times I was near the coffee machine, and a colleague would join to talk about a particular event in the project. We would brainstorm on the spot and discuss different strategies. In remote working, these coffee moments don’t exist anymore and need to be actively created.
From time to time, I just ping numerous people to get a small update on a particular subject. I call it 'The Rounds', and I do it every day, often with different people. I ask them how they're doing and what the status of a given work item is. For some situations, I don’t need to ask the same person two days in a row, but I actively start conversations with multiple people every day. It can happen first thing in the morning or at the end of the day. On some occasions, I get a 'Can I call you for 5 min?' and we end up spending 40 minutes talking. The coffee machine doesn’t exist anymore, but informal status updates have shifted to a different form.
The Chats
There's a science behind creating a good group chat. It's not a straightforward process. While working remotely, meticulously curated chats with specific people become tactical for project execution. There's little value in being part of a group chat with 15 people: it's messy, nobody wants to see their name on that chat, it's not friendly, and it has high visibility if someone screws up.
Having curated and private chats with a select few and tactical contacts is much more productive than a random group of 20 architects. It creates a channel of trust where ideas can be shared, and there's a tacit agreement not to add outsiders to these chats.
Other chats have a wider audience but include people who are impacted by a specific project stream or deliverable. It's a way to make them aware of what's going on while providing a central method for sharing information. Once these chats start to have a small army of people inside, it's simply better to cancel everything and start from scratch. Chats can easily add noise, and making them focused and valuable is key.
That’s it. If you find this post useful, please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest it in the comments or send me a message.
Cheers,
Artur
I also used to think that EVERYONE should be remote. I don't anymore. But if it is something you want to do, you absolutely can. And by 'you' I am referring to the reader of this article, wanting to create a new/different/better life for themselves.