Remote work is still in its nascent stage so everyone’s pretty much figuring it out for themselves. My experience with it over the last year has shown me a lot of the pros and cons aka “the tradeoffs”.
My biggest pain point as a product manager with remote work has been the lack of time together in person during quarterly planning periods. This results in more drawn out planning phases with a lot of asynchronous feedback. One daylong planning meeting could accomplish what sometimes takes weeks of back and forth over documents and calls.
The biggest advantage of remote work has been the autonomy, productivity, and focus that come with the lack of distraction during long stretches of heads down execution. Offices tend to get in the way of productivity during execution phases.
I see a remote work model in the future where four times per year the product/eng/design people involved with planning spend a week together in person somewhere with the goal of planning the next quarter. When planning is complete, everyone returns to their various home bases and executes asynchronously for the duration of the quarter. There are 52 weeks per year, 13 per quarter, so this translates into 1 week of planning followed by 12 weeks of execution. Or P1E12.
This is different than how remote companies plan in-person time together today; I mostly see companies bring their employees together once or twice a year for fun and team building. My sense is most companies don’t use this time to plan work.
The model I’m picturing would offer the best of both worlds for people like me who are deeply involved in planning. I recognize that it wouldn’t be cheap and some people couldn’t take 4 weeks of time away from their families. That said, I think there’s a there there. If a week of planning in person could replace 3–4 weeks of going back and forth remotely, it just might be worth it. Speed of decision making is essential in a startup.
The future of work is evolving and the marketplace of ideas will determine the best ways of operating remote companies in the years to come. It’ll be fun to observe and learn.
This post originally appeared in my newsletter. Subscribe here.
