Leading through COVID: 4 - Do remote working really, really well

Welcome to this 5-minute 'deep dive' on the fourth of 8 recommendations for those leading through these challenging times. If you've come straight here, without seeing the summary of all eight, you'll find it here.

Depending on where you're at with your own response to COVID, you might choose to focus more on some recommendations than others. That's fine. They're all connected, but they're designed as standalone 'modules'. Huge thanks to Claire Davey at CD-Performance for her contributions and support.

Working from home brings a whole load of benefits, that many are appreciating already. It's going to be important in the coming weeks to help people hold onto those. They'll vary by individual but in a webinar I ran for a client team in their first week in this 'brave new world', people were grateful to lose their commutes; to be free to set up their work space however they want; to see more of their families and teams than they're used to; to eat more healthily and get more exercise; to make their own bread; to be more focused on their work; and so on.

We're all in a much better position to work from home than we would have been had covid struck 20 years ago. Back then, Amazon had only just become more than a bookstore and the first online grocery services were just appearing. Few people had access to video-conferencing. Social media stalwarts WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter didn't exist. Today, Zoom has reached second place in Apple's App Store charts, second only to TikTok; video-conferencing with family, friends and colleagues is becoming an overnight norm; and a single virtual pub quiz attracts hundreds of people.

Leading a team that's working remotely requires many of the same disciplines as leading any team - albeit, in some cases, tweaked or ramped-up. So it's been impossible to avoid looking at this topic through the lens of the Three Core Disciplines we use in much of our work on leadership and team performance.

Without them, we'd have ended up with just a long list of suggestions and observations. After all, there are more than 10,000 books on remote teams on Amazon, in English alone. You'll have your own models of leadership and team performance, so you're welcome to map our suggestions and observations to those.

When introducing these Three Core Disciplines, we usually start with Establishing Direction. However, with remote working, the first concern has to be whether you and your people have the capacity to do your work remotely.

The Three Core Disciplines: Capacity

Work space

One of the biggest challenges for many people who are suddenly switching to remote working, particularly if it’s expected to be a temporary move, is having a suitable work space. Obviously we can’t speak for all types of work, but for most people a few things are likely to massively impact their ability to work. As leaders, we need to proactively attend to these things with our teams. As hard as it may be, for optimal performance and for sanity, that work space needs to be:

• Dedicated: even if it’s a space that’s only dedicated during the working day and is tidied away at the end - Claire, for instance, puts her laptop in a drawer each evening along with any work papers or books she's been using
• Private: there's plenty of research telling us that open plan offices reduce productivity. It’s even harder when you're in a room with people who aren’t even working, particularly if they’re too young to adapt to the fact that you are. Claire heard from Italian family who have zoned their house to help give everyone some personal space.
• Properly equipped: when I started working from home in 2005, my employer sent someone to my house to check that my office space was suitable. If something wasn’t right, including the height of my chair or screen, then they helped me fix it. That’s not possible right now. However, these days we have the technology to take a virtual look to check that space is fit for purpose. If it's not, and people are crunched up over laptops for several weeks, we're going to be physically injuring our people.

So we'd recommend stepping back physically from your work space and looking at it as a work space - and encouraging your team to do the same. If you were setting it up from scratch, what would you (or they) do differently? When doing so, some people have found somewhere different to take calls, so they switch out of 'desk-work mode' into 'conversation mode'. Others have added a whiteboard or pop-up flipchart for creative work and planning. Others have a bowl of snacks nearby, although we'd advise against anything that'll introduce extra calories or cause your sugar levels to peak and trough through the day. Those peaks and troughs are not only bad for our health, they hit our energy, our mood and our productivity.

Technology

Sales of laptops, webcams and other related products have obviously gone through the roof. If you haven't already, get familiar and consistent with software like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Trello and the like.

You'll want to choose your video-conferencing tools wisely, too. Some clients are locked into exclusive contracts with certain providers, whose products frankly aren't up to the job. Others have staff with poor bandwidth or whose wi-fi is weak in their optimal work space. Now is the time to both invest and be ruthless. Invest in good tech - even wi-fi extenders - and be ruthless with your existing services. Frankly, broadband providers have had plenty of time before this to bring their services up to speed, so unless your contracts prohibit you from doing so, it's probably worth you and your team switching to the best service you can get for the price. Failing to do so could cause your people a great deal of frustration and lost productivity. We can't afford either in the weeks ahead.

Processes

Few teams pay sufficient attention to their unwritten processes for working together. That causes issues at the best of times, but those issues are amplified when working remotely. It pays to be explicit about how you collectively manage communication, decision making, problem solving, sharing information, surfacing and resolving conflicts, and so on. There's no catch-all we can offer here. The best place to start is to make each of those a topic for conversation, agree your future process then revisit and adapt it 3-4 weeks later.

There's a real opportunity to upgrade the way we approach meetings. Far too many meetings are under-productive and, frankly, a bit dull. Virtual meetings allow us to use chat, 'hackathons', breakouts and other means to bring teams together in more effective and engaging ways. Ironically, all of the tools are merely digitised versions of things we could always have done face-to-face. Most of us simply didn't. At the most basic level, do make use of breakouts to get pairs and small groups working on key topics. And - if you haven't already - do consider allocating time at the start before the 'task stuff' begins: at least two minutes per person to share whatever is front-of-mind at the moment. You can always make that section optional, if some people would rather only arrive for the 'task stuff', but that needs to be a very conscious decision as it will have ramifications.

Speaking of meetings, back-to-back meetings (where one starts the second the previous one ends) were a terrible idea when we had to walk from one to the other. We wasted time waiting for latecomers and they left us feeling we were always behind ourselves and desperately trying to catch up. They are still a terrible idea, even if webcams mean back-to-back meetings are physically possible. Time between meetings is absolutely essential. It's a huge mistake not to take time between meetings to review and respond to what's just happened, and prepare for what's coming next. It's those gaps that maximise the efficiency of the meetings we're in, which reduces both the length of meetings and the number of meetings we need to attend.

Access to others

We and our individual team members are limited not just by our own capacities but by the access we have to others'. Their counsel, their knowledge, their skills, their sheer ability to get stuff done. When we're working remotely, it's harder to just grab someone. So you'll want to discuss, as a team, the best way to draw on each other and on people outside the team.

The Three Core Disciplines: Direction

Clarity

Clarity is hugely important when working remotely, but clarity on what? I've addressed this in one my books, so if you're looking for a deeper dive on this we've made that chapter available free from our website. It’s a book that’s written from the perspective of 'managing up', so it focuses on how to best get clarity from our boss. However, it’s equally valid if you’re the one doing the leading.

Linking back to matters of 'process', you'll want clarity on your ways of working as a team. For instance, what communication channels will you be using for which purposes? For example: email for the detailed stuff, WhatsApp for light-hearted stuff, phone or instant messaging for urgent needs, and video-conferencing for things that require collaboration.

Even more importantly, two things most military organisations place heavy emphasis on when it comes to clarity are 'intent' and 'desired outcomes'. If people know what we as a team are intending to achieve and what outcomes we're looking for, then they'll always be heading in the right direction even if their style or circumstances dictate a different route to the one we might have expected. Focusing on outputs also means you need to worry less about your team sitting around all day watching Netflix - and that they can worry less that you might be thinking that's what they're doing all day.

Autonomy and delegation

Speaking of Netflix, as we'll see in a moment: trust is a critical ingredient in all teams, but even more so when we're working remotely. Our people need autonomy, but it will need to come with that clarity, and the way to manage that balance is to be really good at delegating. Not really good at passing stuff off to others that we don't want to do ourselves, then checking back several weeks later and hoping they've done it the same way we'd have done it. Properly delegating.

The best single tool I've come across when it comes to delegating is 'Seven Levels of Delegation'. You'll find a summary of those seven levels below and more detail, if you want it, in that chapter I mentioned previously. That chapter also cites the original sources.

Routine and boundaries

The perceived wisdom is that routine is essential to remote working. I reckon this varies depending on the individual and the routine. Boundaries, though, are already proving challenging for many people working from home. Key things to consider here:

• Definitely encourage your people to prepare for the working day like they would normally, as much as is possible given their circumstances
• Starting work at the same time every day makes a difference for a lot of people and helps reduce 'cabin fever'
• Stopping work is proving even harder at the moment - working from home often sends workaholics into overdrive. A 'crisis' mind-set will exacerbate that, as will increased workload and people's fears that their failing to meet their bosses' expectations of them. Leaving or clearing the work space, and ditching the phone will be critical
• Many people counsel against doing household chores during the working day. For those with kids at home, this and similar disruptions are going to be inevitable. Where it is a matter of choice, my sense is that the impact on performance of pausing to put the laundry on will be different for people with different personalities and working styles. For many people, work intrudes into 'personal time' on a daily basis, so taking time out during the working day feels like a fair exchange. For others, it helps to be utterly focused on work for the whole working day. One important factor to consider is that we know people's performance dips after 60-90 minutes without a break, so it may be good for performance to pause briefly to hoover the room. It'll be the longer or frequent distractions that'll get in the way.
• Some teams are starting the day (or at least the week) with a team meeting. This might be a good thing in the first couple of weeks, but may grow stale so it's worth monitoring and adapting over time.

The Three Core Disciplines: Commitment

Trust

Trust is always a necessary condition when it comes to securing and maintaining people's commitment - whether that's the commitment of people within the team or the commitment of the team's stakeholders to what the team is trying to achieve. So, it's no surprise that one of the key recommendations made by Ernst & Young's global Chair and CEO Carmine Di Sibio when addressing a 10,000-strong, cross-sector audience in April 2020 was this: trust your people.

Trust is a huge topic in its own right, so we're not going to unpack it all here, but trust will be tested when your team is working remotely. With something as big as covid-19 in play, it will be tested in at least four directions:

• Their trust in you
• Your trust in them
• Their trust in each other
• Their trust in other teams and important stakeholders

There are a number of different ingredients when it comes to trust. The ones we'd encourage you to pay most attention to right now in your relationships with your team and stakeholders are these:

• Faith in each other's competence, reliability and capacity to get the job done
• Belief that we're all on the same side, we're safe in each other's hands, and no one is taking advantage of anyone else
• Trust in each other's integrity
• A sense of common ground

The world as it is offers opportunities to build trust in each of those areas. It also offers plenty of opportunities to mess it up. It's worth keeping track, each day, of the things you and your team have done to increase trust and protect against things that could potentially erode it.

Connection

There's plenty of this happening already - too much for some people. The obvious things most people are already doing by creating virtual versions of everyday individual and collective rituals like someone saying 'Hi' at the start of your working day; coffee breaks, lunches and pizza evenings; 'dress up' and 'dress down' days; 'wear a hat' or 'bring a pet' days; quizzes or a collaborative 'playlist of the day'; virtual office parties, where everyone receives a (non-virtual) goodie bag on the day.

One person proposed 'wine and whine' slots at 5:30 on 'hump day' Wednesday. We'll tackle 'hump day' shortly, but I'd counsel against focusing too much on booze (as many people don't drink or will be seeking to drink less). The 'whining', too, is a risk. While people do need to vent sometimes, negativity breeds negativity. If you are going to encourage people to get things off their chest, it's probably a good idea to also ask them to share two things they’ve appreciated that day or week. That could be something they've achieved; something they've enjoyed doing with (or for) others; or something someone has done for them.

Accountability, celebrations and milestones

It's hard to hold people to account when everyone's struggling to do a good job under the weight of multiple competing responsibilities. Unfortunately, it is still necessary. When our colleagues aren't held to account, it eventually erodes our trust in them and the team's leadership. That doesn't mean coming down hard on people without displaying compassion. It means being clear about the expected outcomes and having a robust conversation when people don't deliver. It means holding back from judging people and seeking to understand the real reasons they're not delivering.

Too often, we talk about 'accountability' as the proverbial stick, forgetting about the 'carrot'. Really, it's about both. It's about knowing that we and our peers will be treated fairly and consistently for the effort we put in and the results we get. Most people - indeed most animals - respond better to reward than punishment. Especially now, it's going to be important to celebrate the successes, whether they’re personal, professional or contributions to the wider world.

Most teams and organisations fail to properly celebrate. They also overlook the importance of marking significant points in time. We humans need beginnings, middles and ends. Failing to punctuate our lives with proper milestones leaves us feeling we're on that horrible hamster wheel. For the next few weeks, there's a real risk of the days and weeks blending together. We won't feel the same about weekends and the idea of Wednesday being 'hump day' might no longer make sense at all. We'll need to find new ways to mark time and the way you mark milestones in your team's work will be a vital part of that.

Co-creating

Co-creation is a source of energy and feeds commitment. It also leverages and builds our collective capacity. Too many of us - leaders or otherwise - think and act like we need to solve every problem ourselves. The more Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous the problem, the less likely it is that we'll be able to do so.

So it's well worth changing our game when it comes to co-creation. These are extraordinary, 'VUCA' times. Our ability to survive and thrive will be largely determined by our ability to work collectively to redefine our challenges and co-create the solutions.

In summary, then, when it comes to doing remote working really, really well:

Thanks for ‘joining us’. In the spirit of co-creation, do please add your own suggestions in the 'comments' section.

If you'd like to explore our 8 recommendations further:

You'll find links to each of the other 5-minute 'deep dives' below, and the original summary of all 8 recommendations here.

1. Be mindful and make conscious choices: five steps to keep your wits about you and steer clear of the palpable panic that's gripped many leaders and their organisations who are already making well-meaning but highly questionable decisions
2. Manage your own and others’ well-being: the best practical tips we could find, plus insight into the ways different kinds of people will experience the coming weeks - and how things will change over time
3. Use ‘virtual’ really, really well: we cover the 9 essential ingredients for getting maximum value when bringing people together on video. We're all already adapting quickly on this front, so this isn't 'Zoom for beginners'
4. Do remote working really, really well: Three Core Disciplines for leadership and team performance, expanded and applied to the world of remote working
5. Embrace and encourage creativity: four highly impactful and easy-to-apply techniques - one idea from one of these saved one organisation over ￡1m
6. Get your house in order: how best to invest for payoffs in the short, medium and longer term
7. Balance short-term and longer-term thinking: including managing those tensions with the help of a crisis management framework from Cranfield, and Three Horizon Thinking
8. Go beyond your normal ‘borders: including tips, benefits, mutually-sustainable virtual circles, and sources of inspiration