3 Keys to Making Remote Work...Work

I'm accustomed to remote work. But not everyone is.

I've also learned that not everyone who works from home, works well from home. For some, it brings out their best work. For others, the lack of structure results in them falling apart or at least feeling frustrated or disorganized.

Part of that is having the right systems in place organizationally and personally. Otherwise smart people might succumb to bad work-from-home habits without having a system in place: This goes here. This goes there. I organize my day like this. This is what I start with. This is how I handle interruptions. This is when and how I deal with email. This is how I deal with last-minute requests from others.

While I don't think I have all the answers, I jotted down three elements that I can influence as a team leader to make working from home...work.

1. People

Some people love that they can hunker down and focus on their work, without distractions. But others need to be able to connect with other humans more regularly. There's a balance necessary, obviously, but I need to make sure I do what I can to help facilitate the right level of connection and communication across my team. Not too much for some, but making sure others don't feel too isolated.

Beyond connecting and communicating, people value transparency all the time from their team leaders, but especially at times like these. I need to make sure that I provide that.

Finally, my team aren't the only people in the equation. Company cultures are built as much off of the cross-departmental collaboration as anything. Adding value across teams and connecting to get input from others is a great way to keep a culture humming (or improve it?) while everyone works from home.

2. Policy

Having good systems in place can make it easier for remote work to get done efficiently. This is important at a personal level, but team leaders and organizations should have this on their mind as well.

It doesn't mean being heavy-handed, it just means having a playbook so the team knows the rules of engagement. Here are the standards; here are the landmines to avoid. Here's our primary means of communication; here are our standards of conduct for interpersonal communications.

We live in an age of experimentation, where best practices are great starting points to find the next wave of innovations and efficient ways of doing things. But you don't even get to the point of best practices if you're not having your team share and write down those practices. The best learning comes from considering the things you're doing, not just in the doing.

3. Practices

There's policy — the way things are supposed to happen — and then there are practices. The way things are actually done. Your team or company's patterns of behavior. Hopefully, there's not much of a gap between policy and the real world with yours.

What are your team's real ways of communicating and collaborating? How do you actually share info, documents, insights, and "Aha" moments?

How can you challenge people to still bring good daily work habits to their new work-from-home situation? Can you still help them think big? As a leader, how can you make sure each team member feels valued, appreciated, and respected, and wants to improve just a little every week?

These are the things I'm thinking about even more as a team leader. People, policy, and practices. What do you do to make sure you're working at your best with your team now fully distributed — especially if that's never been the case before?