The 50 steps you need to do to be better at remote management - Part 2
Last week, I started a 2-part series on the 50 steps you need to do to be better at remote management.
My goal was simple: there are many arguments around this subject. Yet, I believe we need certainty. Even if we're wrong in some steps, we must clearly state what needs to be done.
Here comes the second part.
26
If you have a remote team, you have more control.
The biggest lie managers tell themselves is that if you let people work from home, you will lose control over workflows. The exact opposite is true. Almost all aspects of work are trackable if you work remotely - it's called people analytics. With that data, managers have more control and options to amend existing workflows for better efficiency.
27
When you hire globally, quantity has no meaning.
Everyone understands that hiring remotely means you tap into the pool of global talent. But only a few think this through - if the planet is your marketplace, candidate quality overwrites quantity. As a hiring manager, your job is to meticulously filter and put barriers of entry for applications so you would speak only to those who really fit your needs.
28
Diversity has nothing to do with politics.
I know it's hard to get, especially if you are from the US. Diversity is not a political issue - it's a simple mandatory need for innovation. The more diverse your team, the more likely they can innovate better. As a remote manager, one of your most important responsibilities is to hire a mega-diverse team around the globe. It will literally translate to market advantage.
29
Diversity comes in culture and location too.
The beauty of distributed teams is that you can hire people from different cultures. If you have a company in Denver, you can have people in Bangkok. If you do that right, you unlock the ultimate version of diversity, where you bring different people with different backgrounds together to work towards the same goal. That's innovation on steroids.
30
Remote work is the most inclusive way of work.
Not many people highlight this, but the option to work remotely allowed some people to enter (or re-enter) the workforce who were previously struggling to retain or get a job in the office. People with disabilities, people with little kids, people who prefer to work part-time only for various reasons, and many more. The commitment of these people will always be higher than others as they now have access to work. Cherish them.
31
Working remotely is eco-friendly.
If your company is looking for an easy-to-promote value, ecological consciousness is an easy pick if you have a distributed team. Many studies show that remote work saves a heck-of-lot carbon footprint and energy. It has never been easier to become a green company with remote work.
32
Remote work is a great equalizer.
There are many biases in the office, starting from gender, race, faith, and even style, culture, and more. When working remotely, most of these biases go out the window. Extraverts can't dominate that much in conversations. Introverts start to produce value because no one is dominating them. A great manager facilitates work, and a remote setting promotes equal participation through technology.
33
Intention VS Intuition.
I should have added this point as the first one. You can't wing most situations in distributed teams with intuitive & organic management practices. You can't "walk the floor" or manage people on a "fly-by." You need to be intentional in everything: prepare and plan out all the details of work in operations intentionally. Otherwise, you will have chaos.
34
Your greatest challenge as a remote leader is empathy.
I'm not joking here - this is why most people struggle as a leader in a remote work setting. Remote teams are, by default, culturally diverse, honest, and transparent. Leaders require vast empathy to " manage " and "lead" people in this scenario. And we can all agree that empathy is the hardest skill to learn - if it is a skill anyway.
35
Level up coaching and advisory options with remote teams.
One of the best-kept secrets of distributed teams is the number of experienced people available to provide services for you. Many people retained decades of careers and are now switching to remote work to phase out and transform their careers in a more relaxed, lifestyle-focused way. As a manager, you have access to these people who can provide super valuable knowledge for you in coaching and advisory. Use them.
36
Step up as a mentor.
Return-to-office promoters often say that it is harder to train juniors remotely. They are right in a way. As with anything, you have to be intentional in mentorship as well when you have a remote team. Juniors can't just organically learn the tips and tricks of the business from seniors. They have to be proactively mentored by them. Stepping up as a mentor and intentionally creating mentorship processes within your remote team is mandatory.
37
Onboarding is a thing of its own.
Speaking of mentoring, onboarding new people to a remote organization is one of the most challenging tasks for managers. It's not just "showing around the office" anymore - you must create a step-by-step process, gradually including new hires into existing transparent processes. If you mess onboarding up, you will have a fragmented team with low productivity and high churn.
38
Rules of engagement.
One of the most important things to define as a manager is the rules of engagement: how, when, and where to collaborate. It's not the office where things happen organically. You need to be intentional in where you communicate what. Have you seen teams with 100+ email chains on projects or 1000+ chat messages over a task? Yep, it's chaos. They are the ones who have not defined the rules of engagement before work.
39
Management is hard. Learning is harder.
Management on its own is a hard thing to do. But learning how to manage is even harder. Most of the knowledge available around management comes from the 50-60-70s - it has nothing to do with modern principles, let alone with remote work. Information about distributed team management is scarce. As an aspiring manager, the best bet is to build relationships with other remote managers and learn from their experiences - that's the only way.
40
FUTURE: The youth has already set the scene for you.
I'm 41 now, so I remember how boomers bashed millennials entering the workforce as lazy, entitled, and needy employees, pretty much how millennials bash GenZ now. Whatever you think about the youth entering the workforce, it doesn't matter: the stage is set. All stats show the same thing: if you don't offer flexibility in work, you won't be able to employ young people. So whatever you think about remote work, it's here, it will be here, and it will be even more prominent.
41
FUTURE: Cross-company learning.
One of the beauties of remote work is coliving, and it will be the biggest boom in real estate & tourism for the next decade, I'm sure. What's even more fun is spending a couple of months living with others who work in the same industry as you do but at different companies. Cross-company learning will be a thing, and it will kickstart new avenues of growth for those willing to be transparent.
42
FUTURE: Say bye to the HQ. Say hi to the distributed office.
Parallel to remote work, the office will transform as a whole concept. There won't be any HQ left - no need for that. People won't commute to a massive building with thousands of employees. But, there will be a sprawl of distributed small offices and micro-HQs. There will be small offices and a new era of branded coworking. People won't go to the office. The office will come to them.
43
FUTURE: Augmented reality will play a key role in work.
Augmented reality is one of the most promising tech developments, which will blur the lines between real and digital. As work becomes a blurry space between real and digital, we will develop more tools to match that reality and work more efficiently. Within years, commuting to the office will be a simple act of picking up your headset. As a manager, it is not too early to experiment with these tools.
44
FUTURE: Business operations will become a system that you install.
After consulting and working with hundreds of companies, I might not unveil a big secret for you... Almost all businesses are identical in terms of operations. The ideal way to operate a remote business is almost the same for everyone, regardless of your industry or size. Therefore, it makes sense that if a company operates fully digitally, the entire operation will become an AI-powered operating system that companies can install and use from day 1.
45
FUTURE: More companies will become fully transparent.
Transparency will go extreme for many companies. If you think about it, public companies are already transparent with their operating numbers. It will be the case for non-exchange-listed companies: small and medium-sized growing companies. There are some early birds already: open startups and their initiative. Sharing all your numbers have an amazing benefit: easier recruiting, onboarding, and better PR. I'm sure this will be more popular in the future.
46
We are at a tremendous shift, and managers lead the way.
Work as we know it is at a tremendous tectonic shift. The next 2-3 years will answer not just where we work but also when and how we work. Management has an inherently dominant role in how this will shape out. How you decide now will shape your company's future in 2-5 years. It's an enormous responsibility.
47
Remote work is not for everyone.
If you ask a remote work expert, they will probably tell you that remote work is a God-given gift to people, and anyone not doing it is missing out. There's a massive FOMO. But that is simply not true. According to many statistics, only 25-30% of the workforce can work remotely. Not because there are no opportunities but because they simply can't do their work online. Remote work gives you freedom but comes with another set of responsibilities - not everyone prefers that deal. It's OK, but we need to understand that remote work won't be the only way we will work in the future.
48
Remote companies are not for everyone.
As with people, the business is not for everyone. If you, the manager, decide that your team will work fully in-office, it's OK. You won't be the evil force of nature or the old-school oppressive grandpa who forces people back to the office. Not every company has to be remote, and not every company CAN be remote. Like people, managers can choose what type of work they prefer.
49
Remote work is a teenager.
We were in our baby shoes when I started working remotely 10 years ago. Only a handful of startups allowed people to work remotely. And the digital nomad concept was new. Now, 10 years and a pandemic later, we think this is remote work. Wrong, we are still in our teenage years: finding the right balance, our barriers, our limits with remote work. We are still figuring it out. So when someone tells you - including me - what remote work is, treat it cautiously. We are, at best: guessing.
50
The better the quality of our lives, the better we work.
This learning is the most visible learning we had in recent years. People make decisions about their work because they need to change their lifestyle. They prefer a life with more freedom, more time to spend with their loved ones, etc. Yet, on the other hand, they become more committed to doing better work for those companies
That's it. That was part 2.
In the comments, what did you like, what did you miss? Let me know.
