10 ways to become a more flexible company
I am getting tired of the debate on where we should work. I am fed up with the arguments, pros, and cons around remote, hybrid, in-office, and the rest.
It is not, and it was never about the location. The location is just an indirect consequence of one thing: flexibility.
Flexibility is the freedom to choose where, when, and how we work. If you, as a company, have flexible operations, the where and the when questions become choices.
Your employees may work remotely. They may sometimes work remotely, sometimes from the office. They work synchronously, but they can also work asynchronously if they choose.
But how do you have more flexible operations? How can your company become more flexible in how it operates?
This week's issue gives you 10 different ways to start implementing immediately.
Make operations transparent.
The higher the level of your transparency internally, the higher the trust in the organization.
Transparency is a matter of access. Therefore, you need to provide access to five areas:
Information: have an internal hub/wiki where you document your workflows and processes
Operation: have a project management dashboard where you track the work that is in progress
Communication: have transparent communication policies that help you to keep everyone in the loop
Completion/performance: measure and share team performance with people analytics, and do the same with company performance as well in terms of revenue and progress
Decision: open up your decision-making process for everyone and create a collaborative, facilitated approach to how you solve problems together
The more access you provide, the more transparent your organization becomes indirectly.
Transparent companies are more balanced, therefore, more flexible in dealing with challenges.
Learn more about transparent leadership from this previous issue of my newsletter.
Embrace modularity.
The more modular your organization, the more flexible it is. Modularity is essential, especially in a growing phase.
The approach for modularity is simple:
First, if you want to build a team, hire a leader first. The leader will be responsible for all team-related tasks.
Second, test out if you need that team: start with external help, part-time people, fractional employees, and freelancers.
Third, move loosely connected people in-house if you still need the team after testing.
A modular approach saves time and resources and helps avoid miss-hires and bad team-building decisions. It also keeps you from investing entirely in something that is might not for you.
An example can be a marketing team. You might not need it. On the other hand, you might be OK with someone helping you internally, then investing all your resources into external agencies.
I know it is hard to swallow, but if you have 50 people, having a full-fledged HR team in-house is the stupidest waste of money you can do with your company.
To start, learn how to win leaders for your company from this previous issue of the newsletter.
Make hiring & retaining people quick and painless.
Speaking of HR, one of the most critical parts of a growing company is to grow its team.
Again, I know it is hard to face, but your company is not the product that you are building. It is the people that are building it. So, therefore, you want the best ones to work for you.
Flexible HR means two things:
You can hire anyone, anywhere, with no restrictions on location (maybe only on time zones)
You can do it all fast, compliant, and beneficial for everyone
So instead of opening up legal addresses worldwide and trying to juggle 10+ countries' tax systems and employment laws, you should outsource that process.
Use an employer of record company - through them, you can hire anyone, anywhere, and manage their payroll & compliance from a dashboard.
It saves you time and money, and you no longer need to deal with contractors. It is also more secure and safe for your employees.
To learn more about employer of record, listen to this episode of my podcast with Andrea Carlon from Lano.
Invest in documentation from day 0.
Documenting everything, and I mean everything you do, costs you a lot of time at the start but saves you a tremendous amount of resources later.
Documentation is the backbone of asynchronous work. And via asynchronous work, you can allow your team to work from anywhere and almost anytime.
The best way to start is to build an internal wiki or hub. Document the processes first: how you hire, how you communicate, what tools you use, and how you onboard new people, etc. You need to write those once, refine on-the-go, and the content is shareable with everyone.
It provides clarity and transparency, and it saves you time.
Later, you can start documenting your projects. Not just how you work but precisely what you do. So when someone goes on a vacation, sick leave, or leaves the company, it will be easier to do a handover.
The more you document, the more resilient your company and the more clarity your team has.
And when there's a crisis or a great challenge you face, clarity bails you out.
To learn more about asynchronous leadership, get my book which details the exact methods on how to be a better async leader.
Pick your tools and stick to them.
I know companies that still rely entirely on Google Drive, and that's it. I know others who manage their entire operations on Notion only. It works for them. If it ain't broken, why change it?
Managers have a resource fetish - they throw resources at problems. So instead of building an army of tools for your company, figure out your goals first.
Why do you need that tool? What is the problem that you are trying to solve with that tool? Will it be a tool that helps you solve that problem at all?
Once you fix your goals, you can pick a tool. The emphasis is here: a (singular) tool.
Flexibility means knowing where things are and what you use for what. I am sure you are familiar with the pain when managers switch tools, and the migration mania starts.
Please don't do it. Switching tools should be your last resort.
Invest more time in goal setting and less time in tool hunting.
Flexible companies have fewer tools, but they use them effectively.
I am building a remote manager toolkit - a collection of remote tools that I recommend. More info on that soon.
Measure everything.
Invest in performance metrics. The more data you have, the more insights you have. The more insights you have, the faster you can make legit decisions.
Hell, sometimes you don't even make a decision - the data shows you what to do.
Metrics start with company performance. If you don't know where your money goes, you have a problem. If you don't know where your money comes from, you have a problem. If you can't predict the next 3-6-9 months in terms of revenue, you have a problem.
Go beyond the company - invest in people analytics—measure team performance. Maybe your team is not performing well - the worst thing you can do is to call that a people problem. It is an operational problem. Know the problem from the data - it will be easier and faster to adjust activities and policies on how you work together.
The goal is to have those dashboards on autopilot. Do you have a problem? Look at the numbers - call your shots. Do you need to know something fast? Look at the numbers - get your insights.
Flexibility means you are fast and easy to adjust. Insights are here to help you. The era of gut feeling is over.
I recorded two episodes with two different people analytics companies lately. Those contain more insights on people analytics & metrics - stay tuned and follow the show.
Outcomes matter. Everything else don't.
We know around a million examples that the bigger a company gets, the slower they innovate.
I can tell you why it is like that: mid-management.
The mid-management primary purpose was to monitor the work, get reports from teams, and measure the progress.
Those days are over.
To stay flexible, you must switch from tracking progress (tasks) to monitoring outcomes (results). Nothing else matters.
The goal for the new era of mid-management is simple: provide coaching, support, and mentorship for teams to deliver outcomes. Be the amalgam that sticks teams together. Mid-managers should also invest their time to facilitate cross-functional teams and their collaboration.
The first step is to switch the mindset from tasks to results. Or in other words: please, stop micromanaging your team.
The more you focus on outcomes, the more time you will save for facilitation, coaching, and mentorship for your team.
Don't become that slow behemoth of a company that spends a month realigning a project just because specific tasks are not delivered.
Flexibility starts with letting your people do their work.
I wrote a piece on asynchronous workflows in a previous issue of this newsletter here.
Chemistry is overrated. Facetime isn't.
Understand that people can do meaningful, collaborative work virtually. You can argue with that, but the argument is meaningless. All the studies show the opposite: productivity rises when people are working remotely.
But, there is a big but here. It is still essential to get your people together time-to-time. Get that facetime.
Offline meetings strengthen bonds between people. Therefore, it will produce stronger teams for you.
You need to figure out the how. You can do it every week or month, and you end up with a hybrid company in terms of location. You can do it every quarter and end up with a remote company in terms of location.
There is no one-size-fits-all, but you must decide and create a policy around it.
One thing is sure: the less money you invest in a fixed location, the more flexible you become. As a remote company, you can work with anyone, anywhere. You also don't spend your resources on big-time office spaces.
Make sure you reinvest those savings in culture - a retreat or a company get-together means a lot for your team.
Company culture has three pillars. I detailed all of them in this issue of the newsletter.
People-first benefits & perks
Every company compensates its teams with non-monetary methods. But if your company is super flexible, how do you also make those perks and benefits flexible?
Simple. Let your people decide and make choices of their own. Every individual is different, with a different lifestyle and background.
By now, we can probably agree that company culture is not a ping-pong table. So instead of things, focus on what you want to promote inside your company.
The best and most generic answer is to have categorized allowances. A set of non-monetary compensations that people can use to meet their personal needs to improve certain things in their lives.
So instead of giving everyone a gym membership in the local area or having your own company gym, just have a personal health improvement fund. Your team can use it for whatever they want: yoga classes, meditation sessions, their local gym, personal training, etc. Same with mental health, flexible office setup, personal travel, etc.
The goal is to let your individual team members decide what they want to do. People-first means you care about your people and give them the most flexible way to care for themselves.
Never stop learning
A flexible mindset is a constantly improving mindset. A flexible company is an organization that is continuously improving itself through learning & development.
As a leader, one of your primary purpose in being there is to coach and mentor your team.
On top of your approach, invest continuously in learning and development programs. Also, let your team members learn anything they want (flexible perks: personal development fund). Then, if they improve, your company improves.
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That's it for today. You now have a comprehensive list of what you can do to increase flexibility in your company.
Remember, it is not about where, when, and how you work. It is about how flexible your company is. The more flexible you are, the better you can address challenges.
And we are living in very challenging times.
Take care,
Peter
