Maximizing Remote Outcomes Worldwide

I moved to Dubai in 2012, and have worked as part of an international project team ever since. We have many international clients, vendors on the other side of the world and partners that are also in different time zones.

International work is not new to working in O&G, and there are both positive and negative aspects of working across multiple time zones. It is vital that these positives and negatives are acknowledged - as some can often be optimized to reach the maximum benefits while minimizing any adverse effects. 

For example, if I get to the office at 8AM and my Project Manager gets to the office 90 minutes later, we lose the benefit of 3 hours of shared office time. This quickly becomes very difficult to manage. The easy calculation for the time zone conversion between Dubai and Calgary is that it is basically 12 hour’s difference. In some senses we are working in the future - ten hours in the future, from the second Sunday in March which then reverts to the standard eleven hours on the first Sunday in November (also known as Daylight Savings Time).

The trickiest part of the calculation, however, is not how many hours ahead we are here in Dubai - that is the easy part at approximately 12 hours. The particularly difficult part is in regard to the weekends. The weekend in the United Arab Emirates and several other Muslim countries takes place on Friday and Saturday. The UAE therefore closes on Thursday evening, which is the start of business over in North America. Two full days left of work - and a lot of opportunity, if managed correctly.

Reverting back to my example above, this would mean that there are 4 full days per week in which we are out of synch. The UAE will start work on Sunday and work on Monday, and leave the office before the work week starts in North America – most problematic.

All of this can create some unusual meeting times. If you ever have to plan a meeting for 3 or more time zones I would recommend using The World Clock Meeting Planner at timeanddate.com. Meeting in the evenings or early mornings can wreak havoc on your daily routine and your essential work-life balance - it then becomes difficult to allocate your time commitment each day for anyone who is not 100% business, 100% of the time. The reality is that at least one person is going to have to struggle to make the meeting at the appropriate time - maybe too early in the morning or very late at night. To these people we are apologetic and extraordinarily grateful for their time, but obviously it is far from ideal.

Socializing in these multi time zones is also an issue. You cannot step out on Friday afternoon for a beer with the team without replacing beers for a Zoom chat and switching from after work on Friday to Thursday at 8am. This makes it almost impossible to recreate a “War Room” mentality where you sequester everyone in the board room until there are some mutually acceptable solutions drawn out regarding the issues at hand. Digital presence in these situations is better than nothing, but it does not hold the same weight as in person, in time, in place meetings. When it is difficult to encourage and maintain a consistent office culture it becomes equally important to do two things.

The first thing necessary is to get everybody focused on the practice of a crystal clear hand-off at all times. If you have been waiting for a task to be completed for 4 days, and you open it up from your email on Sunday morning, it needs to be bulletproof - in all actuality you probably need it to be complete. If it is not complete, however, you need to encourage your team to make that phone call on the weekend and work things out. The instruction needs to be resoundingly clear and the action needs to be swift.

The second practice that helps a lot is the paradigm shift from time-in-seat to focus on output, and defining the differences between output and outcomes. 

If the outcome of people’s time commitment is that all of the problems are resolved, then this is the best case scenario. This is a dramatic shift away from the 40-hour work week mentality of the past. This is a results oriented model that honors solutions above toil. Now we are starting to get somewhere.

“To get the context right, let’s start with a simple, non-IT example. Imagine it is Billy’s 5th birthday. You go to the local bakery and order a Spiderman-themed cake for the morning of the party.

If I ask a group of people the outcome of this transaction, most people will answer that the outcome is the birthday cake. That is not correct.

The outcome of this will be a delighted birthday boy and a group of happy, cake-filled 5-year-olds. The cake itself is the output, provided by the bakery. If the cake had not been tasty, or if the bakery had delivered a fairy-themed cake instead of the desired Spiderman-themed cake, then the desired outcome—happy children—would, in all probability, not have been achieved.”

The above is taken from: https://bit.ly/2QE3oon

The work, the toil, the time spent, and the deliverables generated are not as important as the impact of these things and the resulting outcomes.

There has been a lot of discussion around WFH and digital nomads since the pandemic began. There is a lot to be gained if this is done correctly. One of the largest benefits is that it is possible to have someone working on a solution for a project around the clock - if managed correctly this can have an enormous impact on project success. If managed poorly, however, it can have a harsh impact on project economics. Over the last year it has been easier to see who is committed to outcomes and who is focused on outputs. With all of the time spent working from home or working remotely leaders have to step up and drive outcomes.

Managers have had to toe the line and communicate to their employees the expectation that quality performance leading to high achievement in a reasonable time period is the priority, not simply occupying a seat and booking an 8-hour day to a random timecode. 

Generally speaking, our systems and processes have worked very well for us when we have shut down the office. Our document control system is cloud based, encrypted and mirrored on 3 continents. The goal of our information management system is perfect control of documents and to be able to find any document in less than 10 seconds - that is the backbone of our system and it does not matter if we are in the office together or not.

There can be fewer distractions when everyone is not in the office together - assuming you do not get sucked into a YouTube Black Hole. Whether or not you are working across different time zones or not, it is generally better to be committed to being clear and concise, communicating well, and practicing better handoffs between work colleagues.