When Remote Work Does Not Work Well

Most companies and academic institutions have engaged in some for of remote work by now. Is yours one of them? Is remote work new to you? We know it can work, but does it work well for you?

If the answer is not a resounding "yes", then you may be wondering: What is the secret to improving remote work capability? Improving remote work practices for hundreds of employees has given me some interesting insights. Some efforts are far more successful than others. Where did I see consistently better results?

If I have to put it in just one sentence, it would be this: Companies that succeed in improving their remote work capability understand that remote work is mostly about interactions. It is not just personal skills. Nothing you can hack on your own. It is about more than two, more than three or four people interacting. And so remote work is also about culture, processes, policies, and tools that influence those interactions as much as it is about personal skills.

And yes, tools are an important factor, and probably the first thing Learning and Development departments will try to address. But remote work is more than that. In a recent LinkedIn webinar, Simon Brown, Chief Learning Officer at Novartis, described how during the pandemic lockdown attention among their 90,000 employees quickly shifted from tools on the first week to Time Management on the second week, to Resilience on the third.

So what should a strategy for remote work include to be comprehensive? In my experience (from bringing teams to work remotely together for the first time to implementing remote design thinking) there are six areas that influence remote work capability. They are not a sequence or a set of stages; organizations should work on them concurrently. This is because they are dependent in ways that will become obvious as you go through them.

Enablers

The first that usually comes to mind. Sure, for remote work everyone needs a computer and possibly other gear. But that is not all. Do your video conferences always begin with a long wait while some participants troubleshoot audio and video? Are cultural differences understood? Are meeting times inflexible, almost impossible? Are misunderstandings caught on time, before they cause tension or waste?

A friend of mine told me recently he had to go to his main office to get some paperwork done (yes, actual paper) so that he could continue working remotely. Paper. I am sure you can think of other examples with the potential to drain your remote productivity before you even start working. That is why I call them enablers: they must be present if you want to do any remote work at all. Yes, some are personal skills, but note how many others are related to interactions dictated by culture, processes, and policies.

The Basics

Think of this category as the set of individual tasks that appear on your job description. It is the individual work you must do to be successful. Some of these tasks will have generic descriptions: Conducting research, writing documents, presenting reports, participating in meetings... Less obvious are the interactions hidden in many of these tasks. Although you may be performing those tasks, they all rely on interactions.

A good example is that document you carefully prepared that keeps traveling by email looking for review and approval by a magically growing number of stakeholders. By now, it has forked out into three or four email threads and finally hits your inbox in the form of five different copies containing multiple, and sometimes overlapping requests for change. Frustrated? Mastering these Basics is a requirement for individual performance success.

Wellness

Interruptions, non-work demands, unexpected requests… There are days when time seems to warp in all the wrong ways, and by the evening you feel exhausted and frustrated. Little got accomplished. You did not learn anything new. As your motivation fades, it is tempting to think that you must be doing something wrong. But remember: the office is a perfect cocoon that shelters you from much of what may come your way when working elsewhere, while providing what you need right when you need it. Remote work is a different game requiring different tactics. You need new skills, but importantly, the interactions that supported you while in the office should adapt to ensure continued and appropriate support.

Leadership

For years, I worked with remote managers and reports. And I mean truly remote: we were in different continents. But despite the time zone challenge, we connected at least once every week. At some meetings, we had already covered all important matters in previous communications, so we just chatted about work. And in doing so, we were upholding a fundamental principle of remote leadership: keeping the lines always open, always functional.

A remote work organization is digital. Leadership helps create a digital culture: leading by example, bringing communications to a whole new level, clearly articulating goals, explaining how remote teams contribute to those goals, celebrating progress made, redefining boundaries, empowering teams, and building trust and accountability. Remotely.

Team Dynamics ("Beyond The Basics")

While “The Basics” cover individual tasks, Team Dynamics is about the multi-disciplinary interactions that make complex projects successful in a remote setting. It includes collective ownership that I have seen so successfully implemented with Team Charters, sharp customer focus and ability to pivot quickly in response to new findings and requirements.

Note that we are moving from relatively isolated tasks to deep interdependencies that are probably more important to the success of a project than the individual ability of any member of the team. If you have ever been pulled into a "quick video conference" to fix a troubled project, but seen the call end up dragging for over an hour without actionable outcomes, you have a good example of how team dynamics can inhibit remote work capability.

Innovation

Sure, not every company engages in continuous innovation, and that is fine. Organizations that do engage in remote design thinking and other innovation practices are likely to display a level of fluency in the five preceding areas that demonstrates good remote work capability. So if your company does well in those five, it is probably ready. Innovating remotely means breaking departmental silos, preconceptions, and technological obstacles. It involves more and trickier interactions than the Team Dynamics of a typical project. It means applying methods requiring intense interaction in an environment where things like meeting rooms, whiteboards and sticky notes will not be missed. Consider it the top level in a remote work maturity model.

What's Missing?

These are the six areas I use to enable, measure and improve remote work. They look at personal skills but also interactions and the factors that influence those interactions. They are based on my experience in contexts where I could observe and measure results, ranging from tech (like Microsoft) to finance (Absa Group). But different contexts are likely to bring different perspectives. Do you see other areas that are important to ensure remote work truly works?