Stretching the “Remote Muscle” or the top three things I learnt while adapting to a Remote First Culture
A week went by since I wrote the about those things that I’m doing to keep it together during COVID-19. This week I decided to share some of the learning that I’ve been collecting during the last 37 days of Social Distancing and moving the whole company to 100% remote.
This might not a be a silver bullet for everyone, but once again I found myself writing in an almost cathartic exercise, which I should include on my next list of things that help me to keep it together.
I chose the following three things as I can almost immediately feel the value that these things bring to the table while going Remote First, I definitely believe that there should be plenty that I’m leaving outside but these are my Top 3.
Trust + Accountability
Throughout the last couple of weeks I understood that while working remote there is a behavior that we should adapt to: Trust by Default. When you work on normal office setting you might be tempted to teach people to do certain things as baby steps, while you slowly release the leash.
I believe that when we are apart, distant (but closer than ever thanks to technology), and maybe with different time zones Trust plays the most important part on developing any type of project, company or endeavor.
Once thing that has been working well for SOUTHWORKS, and I believe that we should work on this even harder, is to delegate decisions to those closer to those responsible for the outcome. In order to grow healthy we need to defer decisions to those that will be most likely impacted by this, and that will have to carry the consequences upon their shoulders.
That’s when the second part pitches in Accountability. As managers we need to focus hold people accountable for the decisions they make and help them understand whether that was a good or a bad decision, rather than making all because we believe that we know what’s best for that team, or person.
Moving away from the standard bubbling up of these decisions, stars to develop two amazing skills on people: Judgement and Responsibility.
As uncle Ben taught Peter Parker: “with great power comes great responsibility”.
Measure by Output
This has been the toughest lesson that I learnt throughout all my Remote First journey, way before Corona. We are used to do things in a particular way, because as human beings we’re creatures of habits.
I learnt, the hard way, that these habits are developed according to our experience, education, and cultural background. As you grow into a remotely distributed workforce, you can not assume that everybody will think the same way about any given problem. and that’s the magic of diversity.
We need to re-wire our brains to measure work by the outcome. Is this what I was expecting? If the answer is yes, and you know there’s nothing that goes against the principles of the company (which should only be a handful), then you no longer need to care of how that person got there.
I found that this is the only way to truly encourage the flexibility, and adaptability that people always bragged about while talking about Remote Work.
Feedback is King
Alex and I are pretty big advocates for Feedback, we believe that’s what needed to push the company into its next stage.
However, reflecting upon the lessons we learnt over the last couple of weeks, I came to the following conclusions when it comes to feedback:
The power of now (or how to avoid the snowball).
Feedback has a huge emotional component, as it tends to be subjective. The focus should always be on how the things you did impacted me (as a manager). However, a pretty powerful thing is to do it right away.
As emotional creatures we are all the time carrying our own personal things with us, nobody knows those battles that you’re fighting behind close doors. That’s why I found pretty useful to react just in time to those things that impacted me, almost immediately.
I believe that when hoard feedback, and give it all at once we might be diluting its effect. It needs to come out the closest as possible as the situation that originally triggered that moment of joy or discomfort.
When you do it all-at-once you’re missing the point, feedback is the vehicle for working better together, as you end up vomiting a huge snowball overcharged with feelings and emotions that for sure won’t have the desired effect.
We’ve been practicing 1:1 weekly through small improvements, but I think that the goal for those is to create a personal relationship between a manager and those who report to her. Feedback need to happen right away.
Without context, emotions and call to actions, it ain’t feedback
When you give someone feedback it should go straight to the point: Where and when did you observe that something that you liked/didn’t like? How did it make you feel? What should be done better to avoid this situation in the future?
I believe that when feedback goes along the lines of universal truth like “that’s not how you do that” or “we’ve always done things this way” it becomes a discussion upon “the unwritten rules”, which are clearly subjective and that won’t serve the purpose of improving how we work together. You end up trying to school someone in some topic that you believe is an universal truth.
Praise in public, criticize in private
There’s a lot written about this, some of the oldest texts date from the Torah (called Tokhahah —admonition in Hebrew) almost 3,500 years ago. As it’s written, it’s a pretty powerful tool to fulfill the commandment of “To love your fellow as yourself” (in Hebrew: “Ve’ahavta lereacha kamocha”).
Criticism should always be that, an act of love, we want to point someone to his mistakes only to make him the better version of himself. It’s not a for sake of letting our rage and angst go away. We don’t do it for us, we do it for him (who is being scolded).
Now, let’s talk about Praise for a bit, I’m not a very big fan of Praise per-sei, I love to have things to celebrate, to reflect upon someone’s achievements, but I’m not a “pat in the back” type of guy.
However, now that we’re all distributed Praise is the easiest way of sharing with the team that something is good, and if you face a similar situation you should follow a similar approach. I believe that through celebrating these small achievements you’re creating collective knowledge of how should you react upon different situations.
Praise is a tool, should be used as that, as a celebration and one should be very careful of not turning your email threads, slack channels or calls into a popularity contest. That’s the biggest risk that I see with Praise, but I understand that it has a powerful effect as a collective knowledge driver.
These 3 things are what I have been thinking about lately. I’d love to know whether you agree, disagree or have comments. I’d love to get your feedback too.
One final thought — This is not a normal remote/working from home situation. Those with kids “normally” will have them at school, those who get help at home, either a nanny or a cleaning person, will get that much needed help, and under normal circumstances we can go to our preferred coffee shop when we need to breath some fresh air. This is not normal.
So I wanted to wrap up with a big shout-out to those moms and dads who are juggling to get work done and keep their children happy, healthy and well fed. To those children whose parents are within the risk groups and have taken them home to care for them. And to all of us, as we’re all in this together.
Stay home, stay healthy! This too shall pass.
