Remote working? Take the lead

My beliefs about the role of leadership

Enrico — Founder & CEO at Enrian Partners

I define remote working “at scale” when it is applicable flexibly to the majority of your Company collaborators and maybe even Clients. It is becoming now incredibly urgent due to the terrible virus outbreak.

Remote working needs the appropriate technology, tools, working practices, operational processes, cybersecurity, legal compliance, and people mindset & behaviour. I may miss something… but I will leave to others the pleasure to expand the list, while here I will share only my personal beliefs about what Leaders should do to make it happen “at scale”.

Be on the front line

I am a believer that good Leaders set the example on everything, and this is valid for remote working at scale as well. So if you, dear Business Owner or Manager, are not a believer or a practitioner of remote working, forget that your Company or your Team will be effective in adopting it. Your people may be smart and proactive enough to reach a certain level, but “at scale” is something that requires leadership example and guidance.

Doing conf-calls and videoconferences is not remote working, neither is it sending emails around and CCing anyone you feel has to be bothered. So, if this is all you do as a Leader, you are not a good example of remote working “at scale” for your people. There is much more to practice and enjoy.

Accept and embrace the digital evolution

The technology to enable remote working is highly mature and evolving rapidly, so quickly that in effect you may have to introduce or change tools and tech every 18 months or less.

Right now I am a fan of Slack, Google-Suite, Zoom, Trello… but there are many other tech toys that may work better for you, it is not worth starting a pub debate about iOS being better than Android or vice versa. Just don’t hang-on too much on any of them, in a few months something more effective will be on the market.

It is wiser rather to accept that you have to innovate your remote working tools over time as much as you will evolve and enhance your remote working habits.

Get the basics in place

We at Enrian Partners work only following agile practices, no matter if it is about executing internal or client projects, or about running the Company Managerial Activities. So we take for granted to follow “ceremonies” like stand-ups, retrospectives, a weekly planning and to use kanban tools to help us in tracking, managing, resolving, escalating and celebrating what is going on.

If you are not yet familiar with this, you better hurry up, because these are not only great practices in the non-remote working world but they are the basic foundations for remote working at scale.

Learn the new rules of the game

Traditional old-world leaders - forced by the recent virus outbreak - needs for sure to learn how to work agile and become a bit digitally savvy. That’s still not enough. Most of all, they need to follow some non-obvious personal behavioural rules.

I will mention the 5 behaviours that were most challenging for me to change when I transitioned, years ago, from a powerful yet very traditional Corporation into a neo-company like Enrian.

Run the remote meetings in a super-effective manner

There is no time for politics, passive-aggressive behaviors, long speeches. There is time only for lean content (yes lean!) and quick decisions. “Let’s take it offline” is the safety word when somebody does not follow this behavior.

A tip: remote meetings work better when everyone is remote, rather than when you have 3–4 people (or more) physically together and a few others remotely. And please, switch on the video, at least from time to time, humans also communicate with facial expressions.

Work on documents and reports in a collaborative manner

This means that you and your peers or yours and their direct reports will be editing, elaborating on and commenting on the same content at the same time. You have to get used to seeing their “work in progress” thoughts and sentences. You have to get used to the fact that others will see your “work in progress” in real-time. There is no chance to hide your “work in progress”, or you will slow down everyone.

You can prepare in advance, but at a certain point (the sooner the better), you have to give your collaborators the chance to read, comment, edit what you shared, with no fear of public shame or reaction. Everyone has to be consistently collaborative when collaborating, sounds obvious but it is not. It takes some time.

Stop using emails, really

Chats are way more effective. Leave emails for spamming clients with adverts. The less you email, the better. You need things to get done, and done in a collaborative manner. Thus, you need a place where the flow of a discussion is clear, visible and traceable. Email threads are pure hell. Chats are not perfect either, but they are better than email.

And no, I am not talking about WhatsApp, that’s more for your personal life, better not to mix it with work.

Learn the tech yourself

Do not rely too much on others to set it up for you or to troubleshoot things on your behalf. If you are remote, there will be no one there in person to help you. Doing this, you will also save money for your Company, by avoiding to run expensive tenders or advisors to compare what tech is better for your Company.

Just try some tools yourself: unless you’re a digital native, once you find some tech tools that you can easily use on your own, the majority of the collaborators in your Company will be able to use them properly as well.

It’s not all about you

And last but not least, take a serious dip into the working life of your direct reports and their lines below, down to the people executing the bare core of your operations (where the real value for your customers materializes). Be humble and hands-on enough to go and see for yourself, at least for a bit, what are the hurdles your people encounter in trying to adopt remote working. It will show respect, understanding and signal them you are serious about it.

Working in this manner has been a great learning experience on how to be much more effective and less stressed than in my previous professional life. Actually, I have no idea how I was able to work otherwise before. And I am class 1968, not a rookie, even if I still feel like one.