Targets and Communications

by Steve Litchfield / Jan 12

We’ve all been there. Mobile, in a service station or hotel lobby or hanging around for a meeting at a client’s offices. We know we’re supposed to be getting that report finished during the day but between ‘just checking our email’ (for the dozenth time that hour), ‘heading in search of a coffee’ and ‘having a quick game of Bejewelled’, somehow the report doesn’t get fitted in and the day becomes more and more fragmented. “I didn’t have enough time”, you tell your (remote) boss.

Of course you did, you just didn’t make the task one of sufficient priority. It’s true that there are just as many distractions in a traditional office, not least that of chatting to fellow workers face to face, but the solutions are similar in each case.

• Make sure targets are set each day/each week for your nomadic staff. As with any employees, they need to know that ‘you’re on their back’. Not necessarily in a heavy handed way, but with enough sense of communicated urgency that the priorities filter down into their hourly activities. There has to be some sense of guilt when a nomad veers too far in the ‘email/coffee/Bejewelled’ direction. And, of course, targets needed to be daily/weekly checked, discussed and revised.I’m not advocating driving staff too hard or shouting at them down a phone line. I’m talking about recognising that distractions are all around and making sure that the things that need to be done are seen as appropriately urgent.
• Helping to achieve the above is the world of modern, mobile broadband/Web 2.0 communications. What’s needed is a virtual office, to replace the physical one, even if it’s something as cheap (free) as a joint Skype (or Google) chat group. With such an IM-like virtual office, the news, notes and instructions being bandied around your team can be seen by all and everyone will feel involved in the group’s endeavours and accomplishments. Email (both one to one and group cc:ed) is another important tool, of course, with lengthier documents and communications keeping the digital nomad in the loop.

With 3G-connected laptops, sophisticated hands-free car kits and smartphones, there really isn’t any excuse these days for many digital nomads not to feel almost as part of the ‘office’ as the guys and girls stuck in the stuffy, air conditioned complex on the 13th floor….

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