Working from Home as a First Line Manager: Achieving the Impossible
I have worked in the IT industry for close to two decades now. Much of those years were spent in product companies in the data-storage domain — Veritas (which became Symantec, to be back to Veritas again), EMC (now Dell), HGST (Now Western Digital). The engineering community working in this domain is a small community (especially in Indian) with two degrees of separation¹. It needs some niche skills, and they are only seen in people who are really interested in things such as system internals — once cool, now losing their sheen to the latest trends like AI/ML and UI/Ux and DevOps. That has meant that good engineers are highly valued by these organizations, and the leaders are effective only when they really do value good engineers. Why this history, you ask?
The current #CoronaVirus pandemic has suddenly brought the concept of work from home into the limelight. Many companies have started asking or encouraging people to work from home. For individual contributors, given the right set of tools (VPN mostly, and good instant messaging app) it is not that difficult a shift, but people managers and/or engineering managers may find the transition difficult. It’s here, that I believe there is much to learn from my niche domain, which has enabled the “work from home” culture very effectively.
Leaders vs Managers
Good product-based companies (in particular, but may also be true with good service-based companies — I have no direct experience there) have been making a shift to their leadership model over the last decade, where the managers are really expected to be coaches/leaders. Micromanagement is frowned upon (rightfully so), and a lot of effort is spent in setting the right culture in the team where the teams are self-driven, to a large extent. Setting the right goals, and frequent check-in conversations, as opposed to looking over the shoulder and asking for status frequently; delegating with clear outcomes; being approachable; inspiring people rather than managing them …
This transition is, of course, not overnight. But this transition does pay off. I’ve always maintained that the job of a good manager is to make herself almost redundant. The fact is, that the traditional manager is less likely to succeed as a remote manager.
Managing is a bit like parenting …
If you micromanage (the so-called helicopter parenting, for instance) your kids, you never let them achieve their best, because unless there is a freedom to try and fail, there is no learning. So parents, or good parents, at any rate, learn over time to trust their kids and start backing off from one area after another; but they’re always there to share insights, to offer suggestions, to advice, to inspire, to console, to provide with the right tools and opportunities. With good managers, it’s not very different. They don’t need to be in the room always, because they know their team well, and trust them to do the right thing. A lot of work goes on a continual basis to reach that level, and that’s almost an invisible work — from active listening² to mentoring, to providing opportunities for the trust to develop (wasn’t it Reagan who said: “trust, but verify?”), to providing performance coaching as needed. And much of it is communication. So doesn’t it require one to be in the office, next to the team?
Prepare for Remote Work
While a sudden transition to remote work may not be easy for you as a manager, if you still have time, start preparing for it anyways³. You shouldn’t need a pandemic/epidemic situation to start work from home. In fact, if you’re not prepared, it could be terrible for both you and the team when you eventually have to: remember, your team needs you as much as you need them, so if they are not used to you not being in the room, they will have problems too (unless you’re a jerk, then you shouldn’t be a manager). As a manager, I’ve always been used to reporting to a remote manager — as that’s more of a norm when you’re working in a satellite location (I work from Pune, which is many times the location where a smaller Indian development team is — with a bigger one in Bangalore/Hyderabad, and another big team in the US, say). But at the individual contributors level, one may not have enough experience of working with a remote manager. So how does one prepare, both oneself and the team, for extended work from home?
First Step: Let Them Work From Home
Can’t stress it enough. First, you need to wean yourself of the need to constantly know what everyone in your team is doing. This implies that you have defined the work well (with teams moving to Agile and such methodologies, this may not even be your problem), and agreed upon a cadence for updates on the work items (again, if the team is already using a collaborative tool for tracking work, and updating regularly, this is more or less taken care of). Beyond that, it’s about learning to let go of the (false sense of) control. Learn some Zen habits ;-).
Start small
Typically, for your more reliable employees, start allowing casual work from home (even, make it look like a privilege or a special concession for high performers )— casual is in: at short notice, not planned. As a safety net, in the early days define a work-from-home policy for your team. Mine, in the early days with my team, was something like this :
- Call me to confirm (relaxing it over time to notify by email to the team at the start of the day)
- Being the workday with a mail that, on a very high level, specifies what you intend to do (or achieve)
- Be online on the group chat (almost) all of the time, so that the team/I can reach you (phone isn’t the most convenient medium, but WhatsApp can work here if your setup doesn’t have Slack/MS Teams/…)
- At the end of the day, send an email with what you were able to achieve.
Of course, it was pre-Agile time, when work items were not all tracked in some collaborative tool, but in spreadsheets/MPPs. Now I’d just insist on updates in the tool, being connectable, more responsive on emails (because people can’t just drop into your cube), and dialing into calls on (preferably 5 mins before) time.
But this may still be a good idea to ask the team member to spell out their work items while starting their workday, just so that it becomes a commitment to self in their minds. Not everyone is good at working remotely, so help them to get better at it.
Also, monitor the situation, provide feedback in 1:1s if something isn’t working. But basically, make sure that they know that you want it to work as much as they do.
Once this has worked (which would have also trained you in the process, in letting go of your need for control), you can make unplanned WFH available to more people in the team, always with making your expectations clear.
Have a regular WFH day for the whole team
Once the occasional unplanned WFH starts working well for the team, you may want to consider WFH day for your whole team. This could be a monthly one to start with, but in steady-state, you should aim for at least fortnightly, if not weekly. One thing I’ve observed is this: some employees will be less productive from home, but some will be more productive. In fact, the more productive your employees are in the office they’re more, not less, likely to be productive from home — with the distractions of office environment eliminated. So overall team productivity more or less remains the same unless:
- Your team is not ready for it because you’ve never really brought in the culture (or worst case: your team is not a habitually high-performing team, and needs slave-driving mode to reach its optimum potential — you’ve got bigger problems then than remote working)
- Your team has a majority of people who need either hand-holding or tight-looping.
You can always tune the frequency of your work from home days depending on the readiness of your team. But the more you do it, the easier it will get.
Topical Question: What About Forced Work From Home?
If you and your team have not tried work-from-home before, the current conditions could, ironically, be a blessing in disguise for you: you and your team may well be forced to work from home due to the COVID19 pandemic reaching your city/province. Yes, you’re not prepared. Neither is your team. But consider this: a failure is now an option! It won’t be blamed on you: if you’re afraid of such things (but then, are you really a leader?). So make the best of it.
Pick whatever of the preceding paragraphs seems reasonable. Especially the bits about coming up with a process, setting right communication and feedback channels, and so on. If you’re going to have to do it, as well do it as well as you can. You may actually learn swimming by being thrown into the deep end of the pool. You may even learn that you (and your team — because, remember, you’re as good as your team) are good at it, but had never tried it for the fear that it won’t work. And while at it, also check out if something in the next section also is helpful.
The Productivity of a Remote Manager
Now for the main subject! Weaning yourself of a sense of control is one thing, but what about your productivity? With individual contributors, most of the time, work is well defined and can be measured well too. A leader’s work is a lot more reactive, a lot more interactive, a lot more dependent on other people’s availability, and so on. So planning a day while working remotely can have its own unique challenges.
Even here, you should start small. Take unplanned work from home once in a while. Proactively let your team know it by email, and assuring them that you’re accessible on all communication channels (mail, instant messengers, phone) all through the day. In the early days, you may want to have a quick call with the team just to go over that day's priorities (unless there are daily standups already happening).
When working from home, split your day into smaller chunks, some for interactions, some for the relatively isolated work — checking mail, prioritizing action-items, setting up meetings, going over bug/work dashboards, following up on action items, general bookkeeping activities. And yes, make sure to have your 1:1s from home even if it’s just unplanned, isolated work from home, just to get used to the mode.
Between remote meetings, and small chunks (Pomodoro⁴, anyone?) of interactive and non-interactive work (don’t mix it in one “chunk”, because the non-interactive work will suffer from interruptions), make your day a mixed bag to stop it from being monotonous. Remember: you’re getting back your commute hours, plus coffee table discussion time — so you’ve enough time. It’s your discipline that will decide how productive you are.
General Tips for Being Productive From Home
Although these are intended more for the managers working from home, many are relevant to individual contributors as well:
- Mark even small meetings on the calendar, so that people know when not to disturb you
- Note down every time you tell someone you’ll get back to them (when you’re face to face, you still need this, but since people know when you’re busy, they typically won’t barge in, so it may not require a system)
- Take walking breaks — when you’re at home you’re that much more likely to sit in one place (which is as big a killer as cigarettes, right?). Just use some browser/phone app to remind you to take breaks (and do take them!). In-office, this happens on its own — coffee breaks, casual conversation and so on.
- Use instant messaging for both work and chit-chat. Talk to your team. It will give you a pulse. Just randomly ping someone as you would in office, crack a witty line. Let them know that you’re around and that you care.
- If your company doesn’t have a team chat platform like Slack or MS Teams, do get after your IT to provide one. It will help in keeping the communication lines open without overwhelming emails.
- Invest in a good home office setup — a room you can close the door to, a large monitor, a good headset, broadband connection with a very low failure rate, low latency, and good upload speed, power backup (if your area needs it), backup internet connection.
- If you’re stepping away, do communicate (ditto when you’re back).
- Lastly: remember that leadership is like parenting, it’s not what you say, but what you do, that will be replicated.
The Most Important Quality: Trust
If you cannot trust, you can’t really be a great leader. This does not mean you should trust blindly. You need to have the right systems to verify the trust. But still, you have to learn to trust first. Incrementally. Let your team see you can trust. And let them know that that trust comes with responsibility. But if you can’t trust, you can never manage from a distance.
[1] Two degrees of separation: ref — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation
[2] Active Listening: There is listening, and then there is active listening. Trust me, you want to know the difference.
[3] Of course, the assumption is that your organization supports work from home — and has VPN access and such enabled, or available for all your team members.
[4] Pomodoro Technique: named after “tomato” — thanks to a tomato-shaped kitchen timer, it’s a productivity technique I discuss in detail in my productivity series.
