Managing Newly Remote Teams

Introduction

In late January I published an article on “Managing in Uncertain Times”.  I called it “Part 1”, knowing there was a lot more that could be said on the topic.  That was just five days before Chinese authorities closed off the city of Wuhan to try to contain the Coronavirus outbreak. Today, only two months later, Coronavirus has become a global pandemic that has changed our lives in many ways, with a new “new normal” seeming to emerge every few days.  We are truly in uncertain times.

Amid the constant drumbeat of disturbing news, we look for new anchors, new ways to create some semblance of order.  As I was composing this article, I received a newsletter from the CEO of a software company. He commented that “a lot of things seem truly uncontrollable.  This is why it’s extremely crucial for us to focus on what we can control because that’s how we will survive and even come out ahead.”

I think that is helpful guidance to frame today’s article.  Offices, schools and businesses are closing and “shelter in place” orders have been issued in many areas. The Coronavirus outbreak has made working from home (WFH) a necessity for many who have not done it before and a more regular routine for many who have.  I think it is likely that WFH will be more prevalent after the pandemic is over. As managers, we may not be able to control where we and our people are physically working, but we can focus on maintaining connection with our teams and making everyone’s working hours as productive as possible.

In this article, I will focus on addressing some of the challenges that managers have when their teams shift quickly, and sometimes unexpectedly, from an office setting to a completely remote model.  I’m going to borrow heavily from some recent writing by several authors and companies with long experience working remote. There are two complementary threads in this article:

• First are approaches that managers should take when working with remote teams and employees.  Most of these were applicable before the pandemic and I believe they will serve us well after the pandemic has passed.
• Second are some ideas and best practices for individuals to consider in order to cope and thrive in a new WFH setting.  I suggest that managers adopt these and encourage their employees to do so as well.

Let’s get started.

Suggestions for managers

When managing a remote team or remote employees, our fundamental responsibilities as managers remain the same as if we were all co-located.  We must demonstrate our values, define our objectives, allocate our resources, plan, execute and monitor progress to ensure we are delivering the results expected by the organization.  Doing those things when we are in different places than our employees and colleagues means that we must think and act differently.

Here are several suggestions for managing when you and your team are in different physical locations. 

Focus on communication

Your ability to communicate with individual employees and your team is more important than ever.  Your communication must be intentional and frequent.  

With individuals, touch base first thing as your day begins.  A quick “Hi, how are you today?” on your instant messaging app replaces the same greeting you used to offer as you entered the office.  Keep an instant messaging channel open with each employee throughout the day to signal your availability for informal chats. Schedule more frequent 1-on-1 meetings and use video conferencing, if available, to conduct your 1-on-1’s.  During these discussions, listen closely for signs of stress and worry.  These will be more acute during the pandemic as your employees may be dealing with kids at home, family illness, and the overall zeitgeist of our current moment. 

Maintaining effective communication with your entire team is also critical.

Your weekly team meetings will now need to happen over the phone or, better, via video conference.  And just like in most face-to-face meetings, you’ll want to allow some informal, fun, interaction. These meetings may be the only time your employees see each other as a group throughout the week, so allowing some time at the start to compare notes on each others’ personal lives, workplace hacks, even inviting them to bring their pets to the meeting, can give people a sense of connection with each other that can easily be lost in a remote work environment.

Erin Casali works for Automattic, a software company with nearly 1,200 people working remotely in 75 countries.¹  Erin has worked remotely for years and offers some excellent advice in a recent article on IntenseMinimalism.com.  Several suggestions he makes would be simple for managers to implement.  One is to have an “asynchronous text standup” at the beginning of each day.  

When you start working, you type in your team chat (or equivalent) what you did yesterday and what you plan to do today. And on top of that, you can also add maybe something personal, non-work related.

Casali also suggests creating group chat channels (in Skype, Slack or your company’s tool of choice) for socialization.

…when work becomes remote, trying to recreate a “socializing virtual room” is very important, as much as it’s crucial to make sure it remains a place “for fun”. Having a #watercooler channel for example is a good one, but also having themed ones, like #cats (memes of cats), #emojis (where people can only talk via emojis), or #photography (let’s talk about our shared passions).

Learn and use the tools available to help maintain connections with your people

Hallway conversations are out and email is not enough.  There are tools available that make individuals and teams more productive, but they have a learning curve. I’ve known many managers, particularly senior ones, who had the attitude “I don’t have time to learn that stuff”.  If you’re in that camp, you probably still think you don’t have time, but to be successful in this new environment, you need to make time. 

There are a variety of tools on the market, and your company probably already has a standard for providing various functionality:  

• Instant messaging (or “synchronous communication”, meaning “real time”). Skype, Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc. allow for quick conversation, clarification of ideas, even brainstorming when all participants are in the conversation at the same time. 
• An “asynchronous communication tool” that allows information to be published by one individual, then reviewed and responded to by others at different times.  This allows for continuity when people are in different time zones or working different schedules. Examples are Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Google Drive.  Email is also asynchronous, but has limitations, since email is visible only to the recipients, while a Slack channel can be open to all who have access.
• Document repositories, like Microsoft Teams, Google docs, Dropbox and others provide a place to create and store information for ready access across your team or company.  These are valuable for long-term storage and retrieval of information. See more under “Write It Down!”, below.
• Video conferencing tools are now available on your desktop or laptop computer.  Skype, Zoom and others are useful, as noted above, in group meetings and in 1-on-1’s.  A good rule of thumb is to encourage your team to have their webcams on, but to allow individuals to decide.  Don’t make video mandatory. Erin Casali suggests this approach to using video:

On the human side, it’s usually advisable that everyone in the call has their webcam on, as it helps countering the detachment of a remote call. However, it’s also important to not make people feel pressured to have the camera on. A camera off might work well for some people, maybe due to the space they are working in, or maybe for neurodiversity reasons. Don’t create a culture that blames people if they prefer having the camera off.

• And, of course, there’s always your cell phone, though few of us need training on one of them any more.  What we do need to consider carefully is the need to drop off the chats, IMs or email chains when an urgent issue arises.  My rule of thumb was always “if three emails don’t resolve the question, get everyone on a phone call!”.

Write stuff down!  

With your team members working in multiple locations and perhaps on different schedules, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep everyone informed about decisions, plans and direction.  A common recommendation from fully distributed (remote) companies is to create a central repository where the team, and perhaps the entire company, can find updated information.

GitLab, a maker of software for version control and collaboration, describes itself as the “world’s largest all-remote company, with over 1,200 team members located in more than 65 countries around the world.”  They have no company-owned offices anywhere. Their entire company operates with a “Handbook”, a massive on-line repository of policies, procedures, company performance reports and other information.  It is a company-wide “single source of truth” for all aspects of how the company works.  The practice is even documented in their company values (also found in the Handbook):

“We document everything: in the handbook, in meeting notes, in issues. We do that because “the faintest pencil is better than the sharpest memory.” It is far more efficient to read a document at your convenience than to have to ask and explain.” 

To assist other companies making the transition to remote work, GitLab published a “Remote Work Emergency Plan” that offered five practical suggestions, including (no surprise), “Establish a handbook”.  They say:

One of the most sizable challenges when going remote is keeping everyone informed in an efficient way. Put concerted effort around systematically documenting important process changes in a central place to minimize confusion and dysfunction.

They recommend starting small, with a single webpage or document repository, adding to it as you go and engaging all employees in the processes for determining new content and suggesting revisions to existing documents.

Maintain your focus on results, but be alert for new obstacles

Peter Drucker, in his book Managing in Turbulent Times*, writes

Managers need to realize that they are being paid for enabling people to do the work for which those people are being paid.  It is the manager’s job to ask anyone in the organization – first himself, then the boss, then the people who are his colleagues, and finally his subordinates… “What do we in this organization do, and what do I do, that helps you in doing what you are being paid for?  And what do we do, and what do I do, that hampers you?”¹

Drucker suggests asking those questions every six to nine months.  If you are managing a team of newly remote workers, I’d suggest asking the questions every week, both in team meetings and in 1-on-1’s.

During 1-on-1 conversations you should review your employee’s work plan and development objectives to identify any new obstacles related to working remote that you had not imagined when you were co-located.  As noted above, listen for signs of stress and worry that reflect additional personal burdens, like kids suddenly home from school or day care, illness affecting family or friends, or concerns about elderly relatives. 

There may also be work-related obstacles, like difficulty navigating new tools, problems finding information and new challenges in conducting meetings with other remote employees. You may need to help your employee reorient their work schedule to allow time and attention for these new concerns.  Their work hours also may need to shift. They may need coaching or additional training.  

Erin Casali suggests a useful rule of thumb for managers of remote teams:  “If something is harder to do remotely, get it fixed.” 

Pay attention to the little irritants, particularly now.  They may get blown out of proportion as a proxy for bigger issues.  Identify the problems, get them tracked and resolved.

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Best Practice Ideas for Individuals Working Remote

These ideas are geared toward individuals working from home.  Managers should incorporate them into their personal routines and encourage employees to do the same. 

Establish a routine, similar to what you had when you went into the office

Get up, clean up, have a meal and make the “commute”.  Brian Barrett, writing on Wired.com:

…if you don’t get up, take a shower, brush your teeth, get dressed—whatever your morning routine entails when you actually do go into the office—you’re breaking the cardinal rule of working from home: Set boundaries.

If you don’t get ready for the day, your day never really starts. Instead of working from home, you’re just at home, with the occasional work check-in. That’s fine and healthy now and then! You are not a drone. But if you’re in this for the long haul, you need to treat it like any other day at the office, minus the office part. Besides, it’s good to be prepared if someone springs a surprise invite on you.

Establishing a routine is important to help you shift into “work mode” every day.  It is equally important at the end of the day, when you shut it down and “go home”.

Create a dedicated work space

Now that you’re working from home, you need to create a dedicated space to do your work.  If at all possible, avoid the couch or your bed. As tempting as it may be to lie on the couch with your laptop, that will be uncomfortable for the long haul, and blurs the line between “work area” and “living area”.  You want to create a space that you can mentally associate with “being at work”, so when you’re there, you’re working. Just as important, when you’re not there, you’re not working.  Melanie Pinola, writing in the New York Times, suggested:

Ideally, your home office would be in a room with a door. That door can help signal to other people in your household to not interrupt you… , keep pets out, and provide a way for you to physically and mentally close up shop each day.

She acknowledges that not everyone will have a spare room and many of us will have to work in a corner of the dining room, kitchen or living room.  In those cases she recommends creating some sense of separation, like “a privacy screen or curtains hung from the ceiling can add that division, and even a tall plant can mark off the work territory.”

Outfit your work space with the right tools

This includes good lighting, a webcam (if your computer doesn’t have one, or a better one, if it does) and noise cancelling headphones.  An ergonomic chair and an adjustable desk are big ticket items that will make working from home more comfortable and productive.  

Even the little touches can help, according to Melanie Pinola:

Working from an unfamiliar desk can throw off your groove, so try replicating your office desk’s setup at home. Get the same supplies you use at the office and place them all in the same spots on your desk: For example, a paper inbox tray on the left, a pen holder and sticky notes on the right, and so on.

Note to managers:  Consider allocating budget for employee tools.  Snyk, a “globally distributed” software company with five hub offices and twenty five percent of employees fully remote, recently did a rapid pivot to a complete WFH model.  Among other things they set aside a technology budget in anticipation of equipment (headsets, monitors, etc) that employees may need.

Set a schedule

Whether you work 9 to 5, 7 to 7 or midnight to dawn, now that you’re working from home you should create a schedule that works for you and that helps you create a balance between your work life and your home life.  Just like it’s important to establish a routine, you also need to define for yourself when it’s time to “go to work” and when it’s time to “leave”.

One of my coaching clients recently illustrated the problem of not having a schedule and boundaries. He told me that since he has begun working from home, he gets up in the morning and before doing anything else, walks into the room he uses as an office to check his email. “When I worked in the office”, he said, “my laptop stayed in my backpack when I was at home. Now it seems like I’m never not working.“

This is particularly important if you are working from home and have children there, too.  Karen Beattie is Senior Content Manager at SmartPassiveIncome.com, a small company with a completely remote staff who provide training and other resources for entrepreneurs.  She recently surveyed her colleagues to get tips for “staying sane while working from home”, including this from their CFO:

Segment your parenting time with your working time. Multi-tasking does NOT work with kids, especially young children who should not be left unsupervised and/or cannot adequately entertain themselves. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can do both. Provide dedicated, quality time to each obligation separately.

Some other suggestions include:

• Schedule breaks in your day.  Give yourself a chance to get up, stretch, recharge.  
• If possible, get outside for fresh air and a walk around the block.  I heard someone say recently “why trade one office for another?”. (Your dog will thank you, too!)
• Keep your team informed about your schedule.  Melanie Pinola suggests creating virtual boundaries by “setting your online status to ‘focused’, ‘out of office’, or ‘lunch’, and set your online status to reflect what your regular working hours are so teammates know when you’re available.”

Two more suggestions, for managers and employees

First, recognize the positives

It’s easy to get overly focused on the challenges of working remote / WFH, particularly during a crisis like the pandemic.  But we’ve already noted several positive aspects, including the opportunity to flex schedules to accommodate children and the chance to get outside more often.  Consider this comment I received from a friend who was in her second week of mandatory WFH:  

I’m really loving the work from home situation. Some of my pals are stir crazy, tired of being cooped up with their kids, need to think out loud with others or have an uncomfortable work set up at home – which sucks and I feel for them. But I’m completely dialed in. No stupid work clothes, I walk 5 miles/day on my desk treadmill, I’m doing better work in less time, have 14 hours of my week back (no commute, no make up, no ironing) so I don’t have to work so much at night or on the weekends. People are listening, asking better questions and communicating more clearly instead of talking over each other.  I feel guilty being happy given the circumstances.

She went on to say

When all team members use video and/or phone, the playing field is leveled. I work from home one day/week in normal circumstances and have found that when I dial into a meeting where everyone else is in the room, I either get ignored or struggle to get a word in edgewise. In this new world, it’s easier to be heard. I also suspect there are fewer “meetings after the meeting”. These informal chats can be dysfunctional – something is agreed to in the real meeting but when the call is over, chatter continues in the room or hallway where different decisions are made.

I say there is no need to feel guilty.  Accept the fact that you are in a more productive space and take advantage of it.  You can choose to be negative, and miserable, or choose to see the opportunities in your changing situation.

Gitlab, in their Handbook section for new employees echo this idea:

Look for opportunity in the midst of what will likely feel like a chaotic and destabilized situation. Remote is a chance to rethink how you live and work, and though it may sound counterintuitive, unleashing your imagination to take advantage of your new working reality may lead to long-term efficiencies.

Second, maintain your sense of humor, especially now

Yes, the news is dire.  Yes, your kids are restless and bored.  Yes, your spouse or partner is making you nuts.  But there are things to laugh about. Here are a couple from a recent thread on Twitter.

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Conclusion

Working remote is part of the DNA of many companies. For others, it is a brand new thing. Some people thrive in a remote environment. Others miss the structure and connection found in an office. For now (March, 2020 and the foreseeable short-term future), many more people will be working remote, most from their homes. This creates many new challenges and opportunities for managers and their team members.

Stay safe. Stay well. Wash your hands!

To your success,

Mike

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Footnotes

¹  Automattic is the company that created WordPress, the software that powers this web site and over a third of all others on the internet.

² Peter Drucker, Managing in Turbulent Times* (New York, Harper Business, 1993), p. 24.

* This link is direct to Amazon.com. At the time of this writing (March, 2020), I receive no affiliate payment if you buy a copy. If that changes in the future, I’ll let you know.