The 4 Pillars of A Resilient Remote Work Transformation

This comprehensive guide aims to benefit leaders and teams from all business tiers—Directors, CEOs, COOs, Managers, and Employees—by presenting a robust framework for developing an effective remote work infrastructure. The strategy outlined here is a fusion of personal insights, literature, webinars, and educational materials, all of which have informed the development of four fundamental pillars: A Prepared Mindset, Team Empowerment, Integrated Tools/Software and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

Pillar 1: A Prepared Mindset

1- This is not a Black Swan

The term "Black Swan," as coined by Lebanese-American scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb, refers to events that are highly unpredictable and carry profound consequences. Although these events may seem explainable in hindsight, they are not always foreseeable. However, the COVID-19 pandemic does not fit this criterion, as indicated by Taleb himself. He labels the pandemic a "White Swan"—a predictable crisis within the realms of financial systems, not an unanticipated anomaly like the events of September 11th.

I joined an interesting webinar on April 4, 2020 by Singularity University titled: Strengthening Your Company’s Resilience Against Existential Threats. During which, I learned about the concept of the Black Swan and bookmarked the above books to read later but took the below quote from one of the books that stood out to me and is relevant to our current situation: "An annoying aspect of the Black Swan problem -in fact the central, and largely missed, point- is that the odds of rare events are simply not computable. We know a lot less about hundred-year floods than five-year floods - model error swells when it comes to small probabilities."

2- It's okay to be paranoid

Being overly cautious, or what's referred to as "Productive Paranoia," is a trait shared by successful business leaders. As I remember going into a stressful phase during the end of February (2 weeks before Jordan's lockdown) and brainstorming with the team on how to immediately design an Emergency Remote Education Plan and activate it, if a lockdown happens. As the saying goes "Luck prefers the prepared mind."

3- Adopt a mindset of preparation vs. prediction

Even if you were prepared, your plans should always be be dynamic and designed on multiple scenarios. Always have a plan B, C and D if need-be, depends on your level of paranoia! Have an agile mindset as well, things are changing at a fast pace and we need to learn how to keep up.

Pillar 2: Team Empowerment

The steps Luminus Education took as a response to the COVID-19 outbreak were very impressive that you might think that the team was on steroids during this phase, making it one of the first virtual colleges in the Middle East and the region by putting its students well being and education ahead of all. More details in Luminus Transformation Report*

As an education for employment institution; ASAC is considered one of 12 schools that aims to guide people and change their lives through career-focused education in the technology sector. ASAC's team today consists of 27 academia and industry experts that were chosen from 1800+ job applicants and I believe that by far an empowered team is one of the most important pillars of digital transformation success. Here's what you should focus on:

1- Create a Digital Transformation Task Force

Regardless if you are in a big organization that already has one, you should build one for your team and meet regularly to make sure that the transition of the transformation is going smoothly without affecting your day in-day out operations.

2- Empower Managers and Coordinators (Choose the Doers)

Mobilize the managers with strong leadership skills and give them the authority to put in motion the digital transformation plan and autonomy to make decisions that serve the goal.

3- Document Everything

Documentation and making information available to the entire team is important to keep everyone aligned, engaged and maintain a collective team spirit, as well as having references to minutes of meeting and day to day decisions.

Since the closure of all educational institutions in Jordan on 15th March until today, ASAC virtually conducted a total of 95 Diploma Classes & 55 Software Development Activities (Lectures, White-boarding, Class Graduations & Presentations) for 175 students with a 95% average attendance rate. As well as receiving more than 1000 applications for scholarships for its upcoming programs

Pillar 3: Integrated Tools/Software

Luminus has invested millions in digital transformation tools in the past couple of years and had planned to become fully digital in Q1/2021. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Luminus activated our Business Continuity Plan to ensure our team of over 1,050 employees, across three locations in Jordan, is prepared and equipped to adapt with confidence to the changing circumstances.

At ASAC we were already using, integrating and adopting tools and software within Lumius Education's architecture. Here are some tools we’ve found handy; you will need tools in certain categories like video conferencing, team chat and call center to make remote working successful.

1.Slack

We treat Slack as our virtual office. Once you're available on Slack, you have entered the office. Depending on your team size, you’ll want to make use of channels in Slack as well. You can section off rooms into things like , “finance”, “marketing”, “projects” etc.

2. Maqsam

We recently announced that even under the current circumstances, we are still accepting applications for our Software Development Scholarships. We currently have over 1,000 applications and under normal circumstances we conduct interviews at our campus utilizing LTUC's call center for the process. However, we had to find another solution to adopt quickly as LTUC's call center was at full capacity.

Maqsam is MENA's friendliest cloud telephony solution. It took our team literally less than an hour to be up and running on the system, trained on the platform and start calling applicants. Its reporting features help us find ways to become more efficient in our communication.

3. LastPass

Since we have logins to many services and not all employees should have access to all services, we created an authorization matrix and use LastPass to enable any teammate to integrate with or log into any of the services, without having access to the credentials.

4. SharePoint

We share documents for contracts, manuals, SOPs and records. Anything that might get used multiple times should be documented, and SharePoint is an easy, shared environment to make that happen.

5. MS Project

This is where we document our project's road-map, KPIs and extract reports. Since Luminus is a Microsoft Partner, it was also beneficial and cost-effective for ASAC to use and integrate such a tool in its architecture.

Tip: If you work in a large organization, always make sure to be updated with the groups systems and architecture to help choose the right tools for your department that are easily integrated and cost effective

6. Zoom

We tried many tools for video conferencing but found Zoom the most reliable and tailored for our Academic Needs. Checkout what our students have to say about their virtual learning experience in this video:

7. DocuSign

The DocuSign interface is clean. It's really easy to organize documents and their dashboard view makes it easy to track which documents are still pending or have been completed. The feature that we like the most is that you can send a document to a bulk list, which is a time saver.

Pillar 4: Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

The last pillar is very important to keep your business continuity plan efficient and agile. Creating manuals and SOPs will help you create a culture of remote productivity, it provides structure and direction on how to get things done. Here are few manuals that we run at ASAC and were inspired by Code Fellows' operations:

1- Operational Manual:

This document is designed for our employees to easily access the information to understand every part of our school. It has links to operational SOPs, vision, mission, values, software we use.. etc

2- Communication Manual:

This document is designed for our employees to understand our protocols, communication etiquette and code of conduct that are essential for a healthy remote culture.

3- Remote Working Manuals & SOPs:

Documents providing guidelines on remote work etiquette and best practices.

The journey toward a resilient remote working model is ongoing, but by sharing successful strategies and practices, ASAC hopes to inspire and guide other organizations through these challenging times. This guide has been shaped by various resources, which are acknowledged below, emphasizing the value of shared knowledge in the era of digital transformation.

• Singularity University Webinar: Strengthening Your Company’s Resilience Against Existential Threats
• Zapier's guide to working remotely
• Luminus Transformation Report
• HBR: Rethinking Efficiency