The operator's guide to remote work

Wow, 2021 feels like a bit of a lingering hangover, amirite?! We are almost three quarters of the way through the year after The Very Dark Year??, and I had naively assumed life would recalibrate somewhere near the old normal. Alas, the new normal is very much here to stay and it’s significantly changing the ways in which we work again.

If you’re a builder or an operator, your new normal involves working with teams in some remote-IRL capacity. Most companies are delaying bringing people back for in-person time, but some of you are starting to see your coworkers again, even if sporadically. You might even get a chance to meet people who you’ve been working with for some time that you hadn’t met yet (and you get to see how tall they are! this feels like a big deal for some reason!). Or if you’re me, you spent the year leading remote teams distributed across the literal globe, without meeting anyone. It was a lonely year for me, and I’m guessing many of you, like myself, who “grew up” leading teams in person are realizing that the same practices and ways of working you used to apply just don’t work anymore. Your job is not the same as it was two years ago, WILD!

A lot of the writing I read on the “FULLY REMOTE VS. OFFICE VS. HYBRID” discourse misses a key line of thinking that I personally want to read more about. That line of thinking is not how the existential ways of working have evolved, but how that evolution changes the day to day of how you do your job.

Essentially, how do you change how you’re working to be more effective in this new environment? Especially as it continues to be fluid (????delta variant). I wish I had all the answers, but like you I’m figuring it out by doing it and have learned a ton in the last year.

So, before I share some of the themes I’ve seen for successful building in the never-ending panny times, let’s look at what it meant to build pre, peak, and lingering panny. This is non-comprehensive but it paints a picture of the shifts in ways of working, especially in regards to “how” you were working before:

And then we all shifted 100% remote and were living in the peak-panny times:

And now it continues to linger on, making us need to be more adaptable than ever. We are still mostly remote, but are inching towards more hybrid work. This presents a new and unique opportunity to rethink how we were working before, which in my opinion was overly IRL focused and often not inclusive to the entire team. So, considering all of the above, how do you evolve your ways of working to excel in this landscape that continues to be fluid? Here’s my operator’s guide for ever-changing hybrid work:

Align on first principles

As a builder, one of your chief jobs in the new normal is to make sure everyone understands what you’re trying to do at a fundamental level. By aligning on principles, you’re cementing the most important details to the ship so they don’t wash away in the storm. In past normie times, you should have already been doing this, but your ability to catch misalignment IRL was still there. Now though, you’ve decentralized your process. Your team is coming together in new ways, and you can’t always be there and you don’t always see the work happening. This is extremely healthy and will push you to manage differently! Use first principles as a tool so everyone knows what direction to run in.

????@swardley’s Next “Next” Generation of organizational change.

Find the right outcomes to work on

With clear outcomes alongside first principles, you’re well on your way to giving your teams the guidance they need in distributed environments to ship and be successful. Outcomes are especially great because they help center the customer in the work you’re doing. (Reminder: the world in which your customer lives in is changing too, give teams space to explore how to deliver on an outcome. Expect it to be different than you imagined). Since you’re not able to “see” the work happening, having aligned on outcomes can help focus the team on what you’re trying to achieve and will help you measure progress in more real ways.

Make sure people understand

Over-communicate, say it often and through different mediums. People need to hear something multiple times for it to stick in their brain under normal circumstances, and throw in a lingering panny where the playing field keeps changing and yiiiikes. Take this to heart on important information that your team needs to know. Try to repeat things at least three times and communicate it in multiple places to catch people where they best absorb info. Furthermore, use consistent patterns in your comms to help people know what to look for, messages easily get lost in the digital ether.

???? Made up example alert! Be consistent and clear with your communications to make sure people have the right info and know what to look for. Texas is on my mind ??

Be the queen of collaboration

Studies show that working remotely has shrunk our networks at work, which hurts innovation. As chief builder, make it your job to keep connections high. This will be much more of a hustle than it was before.

???? Teams become more silo’d when working remotely. Read Microsoft’s 2021 Work Trend Index for more insights into how our work is changing.

Iterate on your process

The ways that you’ve worked in the past don’t work anymore. They just don’t. Make the ways in which you work adaptable. Reflect often with the team on how you can better work together, be more effective, honor each other and your shared shifting circumstances.

Don’t make people sit on video calls all day

Try new ways of synchronous and asynchronous communication. Many new tools will start to ship in the coming year, try them. Center yourself in the unique nexus of where your team is most productive, and remember that all teams have different dynamics and different needs to be successful.

???? Pick your box, I'm "Female Interrupted." LOL/SOB.

Find new ways to build trust

Creating psychological safety and trust in teams is critically important. Teams that have high psychological safety and trust each other build and ship better products. The ways you used to build trust and create this vibe have changed. It’s harder to do this through the screen. Carve out time in 1:1s to ask how people are doing, ask for feedback on your own process regularly, and find more frequent methods of reflection than you had in the before times. Your team will thank you for it.

Finally, have a learner's mindset

You’re going to need to relearn some shit. That’s okay, commit to re-teaching yourself. Make this a practice.

-----

When I sat down to write this article, I started by writing a long list of all the ways that I changed my process to adapt to a new way of working in the last year. That list had 42 things on it when I stopped and I could have went on! You should have been doing most of the things on the above list pre-panny, but they are especially critical now. Some of the poignant ones I shared above, but I’d love to hear some more specific examples of how you’ve changed your process in the last year(s). You can share them with me in the comments below ??????

Read next:

And finally, I’ll leave you with some more relevant reads on this topic:

• This research published by Dr. Allison Gabriel about camera-on virtual meeting fatigue, and how it's worse for women and new employees. Not sure about you but I am extremely sick of looking at my own face ??
• This thread by Steven Sinofsky on how ways of working are shifting in lingering-panny times.?
• This write-up by the team at Slack that launched the new Huddles feature to combat some of the fatigue people were feeling from TOO MANY ZOOMZ. Your tools will continue to evolve, try them!
• The 2021 Work Trend Index from Microsoft that talks about how leaders are out of touch with employees. Don’t be out of touch, dear builder!
• This write-up from Nicole Forsgren, VP, Research & Strategy at GitHub, on workplace productivity trends observed through Covid. I agree that what we used to measure around productivity doesn’t make sense anymore. How can we evolve here and make our measurements more human?
• The critical work issue companies should tackle now from from a product marketer and survey data at LinkedIn. Spoiler: remote workers need more separation between work and their personal life. How can you as a builder, set better boundaries for your team?