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Remote Management
Buzzword Clarification
First, I want to clarify some of the buzz words relevant to this discussion. ‘In-house’ means that they work for you, but not necessarily in your building. ‘In-house’ contrasts with ‘outsourcing’. ‘On-site’ means they work physically with you in your building. ‘On-site’ contrasts with a ‘remote employee’ — both may be in-house, or one or the other may be outsourced. An example of on-site outsourcing is the common on-site contract employee. An example of an in-house remote would be me — I work as a full-time employee of a company that also employs my manager full-time at a different location hundreds of miles away.
Fundamental Lack of Structure?
The context of the question presupposes a biased answer — that being a remote employee somehow implies an inescapable lack of structure compared with working on-site. I have years of experience on remote teams, and I see no evidence of a fundamental difference in the structure of work required when working remote vs. working in an office. I have noticed that some managers are good at getting results from employees and others are not, regardless of where the employees are located.
Mangement By Walking Around
I will concede that some management techniques for on-site employees will not work for remote employees. However, I argue that this subset of management styles is not particularly effective and will inevitably be either replaced or supplemented with a more effective technique that would work for either remote or on-site employees. For example, if the only management style used at an organization is ‘management by walking around’, how much more effective would that become if the manager followed up new tasks or updates with emails? Since those emails would be just as effective for remote employees, I conclude that the email follow-up is actually doing the bulk of the work, while the ‘walking around’ is more of a morale boost for the high-context employees. Unfortunately, the ‘walking around’ style condones the retention of chronic underperformers as described below.
Chronic Underperformance
On the topic of chronic underperformance, I don’t buy that location and performance are as interrelated as the question implies. Either an employee wants to and is capable of getting the job done or they don’t want to/aren’t capable. Consider the employee that requires physical babysitting, in person, in order to get the job done. Without email follow up, there is no way to demonstrate that what was tasked was understood, requiring yet more ‘walking around’ management. Over time, this employee may decide that the only things that are important are the ones that management decides to stop in and tell him or her about. This employee may resign to being unproductive anytime management is away — thus, they are absorbing management time and money constantly, regardless of their location. As soon as I discovered I had an employee like that on staff, I would no longer be interested in retaining their services. I don’t care what discount I’m getting to have a warm body in the building, if they are not productive without constant supervision, they are wasting my time and money. However, I can prove their effectiveness by following up with a consistent and verifiable communication strategy. There can never be an argument over an email follow-up such as: “we discussed XYZ, let me know if you have any reasons this wouldn’t work, otherwise i will assume you can get it done by the date and time specified, and in the manner specified.”*
Working Remote Optionally
I believe this strategy works especially well when employees have the option to work remotely. This option helps because high-context workers will gravitate towards working on-site, while low-context workers will graviatate towards working remotely. Low-context workers may be especially irritated by ‘walking around’ management, while workers from high-context cultures will likely thrive from the extra direct attention. By providing these options, situations where low-context workers or high-context workers were not happy in their existing situation would be diffused, and both types of people would become more productive. Finally, once this option is allowed, no longer will the chronic underperformers be masked by unhappy low-context workers — underperformers should have no further management process-related excuses.
A Consistent Communication Strategy is Paramount
Many underperforming employees will complain about a lack of communication, for example that they are waiting for responses in order to continue working. Thus, it is up to management to set the ground rules for responsiveness by email, voice, internet, etc. on project updates, and management must adhere to those updates themselves. Underperforming employees may have a valid point in arguing that a lack of two-way communication is the cause of their apparent lack of productivity, so I believe that underperforming managers would be as much to blame in a situation of apparent low output (remote or on-site) as an underperfoming employee. The manager must communicate upstream in situations where projects are stalled because of lack of communication. As long as enough trackable communication is happening, there should be no unjustifiable delays.
* This email must be worded appropriately for workers depending on the context of their culture. For more information, I recommend posting a question on the difference in email communication styles between employees from high-context cultures vs. low-context cultures.
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
Managing the internet generation, or the ‘I can work from a coffee shop in Paris’ 30 somethings doesn’t require constant diligence or even much management… instead, the manager of a digital workforce simply must INVOLVE the digital nomad the same way they involve employees sitting in the office next to them.
COMMUNICATE the day to day triumphs and challenges. Â Nomads typically prefer the road to the desk life, but the still need to feel an active part of the business. Â A quick email about a new biz dev deal or an exciting bug fix is well worth the 3 minutes it takes to write.
COMMUNICATE how the employee will be evaluated. Â From the beginning, you must explain how, when, and against what metrics, quota, or production the digital nomad will be evaluated. Â People can’t break goals if they don’t know what the goals are.
COMMUNICATE on the nomad’s terms. Â A person who has renounced the office life typically has the quirks, and their own form of communication. Â Whether it’s via email, phone, skype, IM, twitter, text, or facebook messaging, adapt to their medium, don’t expect them to adapt to yours.
Finally, spend a day with them how they work (unless of course they really are in Paris) if you can afford it, as you’ll gain new appreciation for the lifestyle, and a better understanding of your employee.
Don’t Pressure Digital Nomads To Stay Hyperconnected
Don’t pressure digital nomads to stay hyperconnected
Ask almost anyone if it’s important for them to stay in touch with their coworkers and they’ll say “of course!” Digital nomads will respond the same way, and at surface level there are a variety of services available to keep in touch with peers. But before listing off a variety of trendy new web sites to visit with the latest twist on sending text and media to each other, it’s important to stop for a moment to think about why people stay connected with their teammates in the first place.
Why should digital nomads stay connected with their team?
- Team members can point out new problems they’re encountering in the field with customers or business processes and share it with the greater group.
- For leadership, it’s important to regularly communicate with the team on what initiatives are the highest priorities, and share any changes to the strategic direction. It helps everyone continue to focus on what benefits the overall success of the company instead of tunneling into pet projects.
- Whenever a team member shares a story about how they screwed up with a customer and what they did afterward, it’s an immense payload for any company. People are drawn to problems, they’re curious about situations that don’t look squeaky clean and perfect. They’re more likely to take the time to read a post about a problem, and if there isn’t already a happy ending they may assist with working toward a good solution. In the end team members are learning from their peers’ mistakes.
- Sometimes it can also be effective to hear from customers directly and collaborate on solutions. Get Satisfaction does that very well, in a fun way.
- Logistically, communicating helps to organize events like product launches, conferences and networking opportunities. It keeps schedules in sync.
- There are a variety of solutions, but Google Calendar works well (installing Google Apps is even better). Backpack is another good option with lots of collaboration and project tracking built in.
- Brainstorming is always the most effective with multiple people. For digital nomads that’s difficult without an easy-to-use digital communication medium.
- A great way to share ideas online is through digital whiteboards. That allows digital nomads to quickly sketch out ideas for discussion. Skrbl is a great example.
- The web is big on mob wisdom right now, and it’s no different for teams inside a company. Whenever a problem surfaces, exposing it to many viewpoints all at once will usually result in a pretty smart suggestion or decision.
- Yahoo Answers, Digg, and Mixx are all examples of sites that use mob wisdom effectively.
Even with all of those advantages, there are times when it makes the most sense for digital nomads to work independently. Help point them toward effective communication tools but don’t create an expectation of hyperconnectedness. That will add stress and detract from productivity.
Why is it important to preserve independence for digital nomads?
- Sometimes people need space to experiment without fear of judgment. Working independently creates space to work with different ideas without the pressure of delivering an instant, ideal solution.
- Independent exploration frequently yields more diverse idea sets. After creating those ideas digital nomads will be looking for ways to share and grow them with peers.
- Too much collaboration can distract from individual goals.
Beyond the services listed above, a combination of phone, e-mail, instant messaging and a little Twittering usually takes care of the essential communications.
The Machine And The Will
For three years I worked in an office where everyone was a contractor. Except for a few managers, all the work was done by specialists flown in by the company from cities across America. We were working on an environmental remediation project on a decommissioned military base which brought even more challenges. Most of the buildings were abandoned several decades ago, and even the post office had discontinued service. There was no running water, and some of the streets literally did not have names.
We set up base in a rented trailer, and I learned a lot of tricks about coping with the mobile lifestyle. Rule #1: Everyone carries a cell phone. For redundancy, when people left the trailer, they also carried a short-range two-way radio. The important people even carried pagers. The truth is there’s already plenty of ways to keep in constant communication. What’s needed is a commitment to using them.
A lot of the work was done “in the field,” usually abandoned buildings that dated to World War II. But our mobile workers were expected to maintain daily communication with their offices back home. The IT department kept their laptops up-to-date, making sure they had dial-up lines that were always secure to connect to the corporate network. From there they’d download their email, and important files were often circulated as email attachments but each region also had a file directory on the corporate network, where each worker received a subdirectory. This made it even easier to swap files from one desktop to another. (For bulkier hard copies, we’d still use Federal Express, but with our corporate network, it was easier to copy the file into a remote directory and let them print out their own copy!)
But best of all, when workers logged into the corporate network, the messaging application also detected their presence and updated their online status. People with questions would know when to seize the opportunity for a conversation — and messaging allowed several real-time conversations at the same time. Needless to say, everyone also took their phone lists very seriously, and the secretaries were very diligent in keeping them up-to-date (including a date on the phone list to make sure no one had the old contact information). Email actually became a second choice, when messaging wasn’t an option or a real-time response wasn’t required. Again, it’s a case where the technology exists for everyone to communicate, and what makes it work is a commitment from the workers in the field.
And all our workers were very serious about keeping their batteries charged…
But our on-site manager always tried to maintain a “human” connection, and scheduled a regular conference call every week. (Even if there was nothing to discuss, remote managers would dial-in so that everyone would receive the same status updates.) My next employer took this one step further, with web-based chat rooms. Using “presenter” software, they could share their screen view with everyone else in a conference call. (Messages could also be typed in a chat room below the window, but this was superfluous since we already had a voice connection). This was surprisingly useful, since the meeting “moderator” didn’t need to prepare a full presentation. Since we were working on building web sites, they’d simply lead everyone through a “walkthrough” of the past and current pages while describing the key features that needed to be discussed. One worker even pointed a webcam at himself, creating a cheap and effective one-way teleconference!
The tools exists. All that’s needed is a commitment to using them.
Managing Mobile Productivity… and Productive Mobility
One Size Does Not Fit All
If you manage enough different people, in enough different jobs, you get to realize there is one universal truth about how to get the best from people: that there are no universal truths about how to get the best from people. People come in many shapes, colors and sizes, whether you look at them from the outside, or are trying to get inside their head. Some people are more motivated by what is in their compensation package. Others are driven by the prospect of promotion. Whilst high-achievers tend to get the most management attention, not every job is, or should be, ideal for high-achievers. Every team, even a team of nomads, will have some jobs that are better suited to the less ambitious. The goal of a good manager is to maximize motivation and productivity overall. This requires a mix of pragmatism, amateur psychology, listening skills and trial and error. There are lots of motivational techniques, just like there are lots of different people. You would not motivate an artist the way you would motivate a salesman. To some extent, you can infer what motivates people just from their choice of job. To take a simple example, gregarious people typically seek jobs that give them social contact, and will often be motivated by the praise, esteem, or signs of status given to them by managers and peers. It is a manager’s job to look for the best ways to get his team motivated and productive. Inevitably, this will involve a regular striving to find the best approach for the individuals in the team. This will involve a mixture of tried and tested techniques, and new ideas to avoid the feeling that the team or manager has become stale.
I managed to get a whole paragraph into this answer before I mentioned technology. Why am I not starting by talking about the digital aspect of digital nomads? There are two reasons. First, people who make, supply or work with technological products and services are equally as likely to have chosen a career that suits their personality. That will influence their opinion on what a remote worker needs, but there are lots of digital nomads who have no interest in the technology itself, and only use it as a means to an ends. It is worth remembering that when trying to make the leap of imagination from what the technologist offers to what the user really wants and needs. Even that last sentence does the user is a disservice, as if one user was just like the next. Each user is an individual. That axiom is the starting point for good management of people. Being wary of the potential bias of technologists (and of the would-be business gurus that surround them) is doubly important, because the user may not always know, or be able to express, what they really want and need from technology. However, they can usually tell what does not work, once they start to use it. The evidence for that can be found lying dusty in desk drawers, in the form of expensive gadgets that failed to live up to expectations. What is more, for every surprisingly successful innovation, there will be another supposed sure-fire winner that turns into a flop. Of course, the disappointed technologist may wonder what is wrong with people, whenever they fail to appreciate his product. We might as well ask why people behave differently to the way we expect them to. It is probably at then that we remember there may have been factors that motivated their behavior, but which we had not considered.
The second reason for not mentioning technology in the opening paragraph is that technology involves the art of what is possible. Just because something is possible, does not mean it is desirable. Just as importantly, what is desirable to one person may not be desirable to the next. Technological straightjackets may fit some people perfectly, but leave others very uncomfortable. Freedom suits some, but is a burden to others who prefer structure and order. Freedom also carries a burden of responsibility, and may be open to abuse. By the same token, staff that crave freedom may, consciously or otherwise, use it to evade important tasks which then have to be taken on by other team members. A good manager seeks the right balance of skills and motivation in his team, and also the right range of tools that they can utilize. Digital technology is a tool, which can be used to enable remote working. This analysis is about the relationship between people and the technology that enables them to work on the move. The technology defines what is possible for remote and distributed workers. To understand motivation for mobile workers, and what they need and want from technology and management, first we need to identify what kinds of work there are, and how they determine the manager’s goals.
Necessary Mobility vs. Freedom and Flexibility
It is possible to forget that there were mobile workers long before there were mobile computers or mobile phones. Some jobs require people to be on the road, whether it be a salesman, home decorator, or business consultant. With jobs like these, mobile productivity is about helping the worker to be more efficient, by enabling them to do things that would otherwise require a return to base, or by simplifying the communications that take place between them and their colleagues. One good but striking example of how mobile technology can help nomadic workers would be firefighters who use camera phones to relay images of the injured people they rescue, so a hospital can be prepared for the kinds of treatment needed. Another example is sending constantly updated work schedules to domestic plumbers, so they avoid wasting time on cancelled appointments. …Read More
Collective Presence Helps Nomads Do The Right Things
Presence is a stream of signals you give off. You’ve seen simple availability presence signals in instant messaging: I’m online, I’m offline, Do Not Disturb. Some of us lifestream what we’re doing during the day: I’m in this meeting, I’m catching up on email, I’m making soup. We also give off contextual presence signals: I’m available for lunch on Tuesday if you’re a recruiter, my dream date, or someone I know.
Disclosure like this feels strange. At first. And then something unusual happens. We get used to it. It starts to feel familiar. Like being in an open plan office where you overhear smalltalk, see people come and go. Or having a break room where you catch up with people a little bit here and there.
And then presence becomes useful.
People use our signals. Strangers decide if they should introduce themselves. Colleagues decide when they should interrupt, and for what. And that makes your life better, because the people around you are making better choices about when and how to engage with you.
We use many tools to broadcast our presence. Twitter, blogs, public calendars, job sites, project status systems, IM mood messages. Even simple things like IM and email. So long as the people in your world can easily see and update, which tools don’t matter too much.
Because presence is a social interaction. You share yours. You consume others’. And through this, you get to know each other in ways that may be more intimate and current than if you were in the same physical office.
Collective presence is what it sounds like. A stream or a place where you can see what a group of people are doing. Where you aggregate your group’s presence signals.
Collective presence is a mix of informal, unstructured, casual talk and structured messages. The Europeans in our team are coming online now. The programmers are working through a pre-release checklist. Someone’s dealing with a problem today.
Members of a team experience this collective presence through group chats, like IRC’s or Skype’s persistent chat rooms, or a listserv. At Skype Journal, we augment group chats with RSS aggregators and other software that pull in team member blogs, twitter updates, public calendars, public bookmarks, new photos and illustrations. So all through the day we keep in touch.
So I have a few lessons to share.
First, social media and presence tools sustain bonds that help a team know and trust each other.
Second, collective presence cultivates situational awareness. So people make better choices about what is important, what is urgent and what needs resources.
Third, collective presence means you are not alone. When those feelings of isolation kick in, it’s easy to drop into the group chat and see what everyone’s been up to.
The essence of productivity is choosing the right things to do and doing them. Collective presence makes remote team productivity easier and more immediate.
My toolkit:
- Skype public chats, Skype contact groups
- iGoogle and Google Reader (aggregating news and blog feeds)
- twitter, TwitterBar (so I can post from Firefox), TweetDeck (aggregating tweets), Twype (putting my latest twitter into my Skype mood),
- Yahoo!’s flickr (images), delicious (bookmarks), upcoming (events)
- Google Groups for email lists
Quality, Quantity and Happiness
Nomad Centric:
A happy nomad is a productive nomad. Happiness is measured on three dimensions:
1. The right tools
2. The right time
3. The right place
The right tools are self evident, in order to do a good job the nomad must be armed with both the right tool, be it email, connectivity or development tools. Equally important is an actionable IT policy and local administration rights that allow the nomad to install any additional tactical tools that they need to be productive. Typically nomads are your more experiened staff with a proven worth and allowing them to roam is a decision taken to retain them. However out of sight, out of mind is all too easy for managers who manage through proximity. Don’t forget that what makes your nomad useful is their skill, they do need to be able to keep their skills up to date and aligned to the business and re-skill when required.
The right time is the second dimension that keeps nomads productive. In the age of the knowledge worker and the global business there are as many personal reasons for a nomadic lifestyle being attarctive as there are business models. Long commutes, distances from the head office, satellite operations and a global customer base all create influences on staff that make remote working compelling. Family is a key facet that makes people consider becoming a nomad. Being able to work first thing in the morning, then have breakfast with the kids before walking them to school. Coming back to work and then sharing dinner with the family before finishing up for the day. This kind of flexibility cannot typically be offered by an office based business model but giving a worker this opportunity could be the differetiator for retention. When a worker wants to work is when they will their most productive.
The right place will vary depending on role but it main idea is it is what the nomad sees as right and not what is dictated by a cookie cutter approach to office design. Where many companies could benefit is by bringing some of the place thinking inside the company environment. The move to hotdesking and roaming has led to an inpersonal, sterile work place that does not lend itself to productivity. For some it’s music, others photos whatever it is that makes the worker feel comfortable should be considered.
Manager Centric:
For many managers what you can’t see you can’t control. This makes nomads an unknown entity that many managers don’t or can’t trust. The reality is that the benefits a nomad gets from being remote, their happiness, usually means they actually work harder than their office bound colleagues. It is just as easy to dodge work sitting at a desk in the office but proximity is still king.
Nomads can be found in the office place, they face the same challenges as “real nomads” but you might not see them. The worker that comes in early to bypass the traffic gets more work done in the first two hours of the day before the rest of the staff arrive. They often work without the standard support structures (IT, HR, admin staff). How many of these workers aren’t treated the same as their colleagues because they are seen leaving the office at 4pm?
The other nomads amongst us are those that have managers working in a different office (often in a different country). Even though they are in the office they still have to sell trust to their distant manager that they are working and pulling their weight. These semi-nomads are accepted so why shouldn’t we learn from their examples and apply to full-nomads?
Many managers still want to know for sure that the nomad is working. This is a problem that has been solved by at home call centre providers and freelance for hire type businesses. Arise provides call centre agents that work from home. Freelance sources oDesk offers coders and writers for hire from their home (or working location). The trust is given by the buyer (read manager) being able to track how the worker is working. Measuring key strokes and taking hourly screenshots provides evidence that the nomad is being productive. In the case of oDesk this information is used to form the basis of the billable charges.
Such technology could be used to check up on your nomads. However many would reject it as too big brother. A good compromise could be to use it as part of a probation period to help the nomad sell the proof that they can be productive when away.
Building Virtual Proximity is the Key
Distance might make the heart grow fonder but it does nothing to help people work together. How many times do you find yourself sitting on the edge of the desk of your colleague discussing a problem or opportunity? what about the opportunistic discussion in the kitchen? the natural separation of digital nomads is the greatest obstacle to good team work.
This is the challenge facing todays mobile work force, so how do we enable an equivalent environment?
Many would say that the internet becomes the office, IM becomes the water cooler/kitchen or the quick discussion with a colleague, wikis become the filing cabinet or network drive. These all work with varying degrees of success but some of the key elements for me are missing.
Where is the whiteboard where you can scratch out some ideas? how do we enable small team theory to work, how/when do we form –> storm –> norm –> perform?
There are lots of IM’s that enable many-to-many conversations (Yahoo, Skype IM, MSN). For teams that are not yet standadrised Meebo is a valuable alterntaive that creates a bridge between the common IM’s (both SIP and Jabber based). IM’s give one significant advantage, that of presence, that allows team to work more effectively by minimizing interruptions. However they do not meet the basic requirement of personal discovery; the forming stage of team development.
Large group discussions are the foundation of good teams, an environment where the team gets to know each other on the individual level. This is best done face-to-face but where geography doesn’t allow video conferences are the next best option. A free service that allows multi-party video conferencing seems like a good solution. The value of such a service is multiplied when this can be enabled from inside MSN and Skype combining a close facsimile to face-to-face with the bnefits of presence.
Forming is further aided by the use of LinkedIn. This niche social networking site allows for a business profile of the team members that acts as a yellow pages of team members. So often it’s not what the member knows but who that is the biggest asset to the distributed team. This is the value add of LinkedIn as the three degrees of separation that the tool shows provides some sound insight on stakeholders.
The storming stage needs to be facilitated through organic growth and discussion. Wiki sites and collaborative tools like Sharepoint are natural resources for this task. The structure of these tools allows for a framework for discussion but can become an overhead to manage. More versatile, disposable aggregators can be much more applicable to these early stages. Idea generation needs to be an organic process where new branches can be added and the “bunny trails” closed down quickly. Jeteye allows weblinks, video and IM messages (from Meebo) to be grouped into a shareable repository. These are accessiblle from the cloud as no client tools are required, just an internet connection will suffice. These Jetpacks can be public or controlled access, which ever best suits the teams. The ability to easily make them available to a client is a real bonus.
Norming is wher the team starts to use common standards, best made tangible through templates and document standards. The virtual filing cabinet both supports a common documentation set and collaborative review and editing features. Online services such as GoogleDocs or Zoho are more preferable than Wikis as the output is more easily consumed by the client.
With the foundation in place performing should now be possible. It is also good to know who is doing what and when so a shared calendar forms the core of the technology. Again Google is a good fit as the price means that nomadic teams can quickly and cheaply form, collaborate and disperse with minimal transitional effort. Other online services such as Basecamp and Lighthouse offer the same functionality but with more cost in terms of setup and portability.
Where does all of this converge into one virtual office. Most of the tools mentioned thus far are competing and do not easily fit together into one platform. With the rollout of LinkedIn applications Huddle seems to fill the platform gap in many ways. The basic toolset includes calendar management, presence, file sharing, online whiteboards and member biographies. The integration with LinkedIn gives you access to the team’s network. One of the links on the member’s profile could also be the MeBeam video conference room.
Tools mentioned:
