Work-from-Home is a Leadership Test. Are You a Good Enough?

COVID-19 has put many leaders in a tough spot. If they did not embrace work-from-home in the past, it is no longer an option - it is a matter of survival. When I ask those leaders why they did not embrace it previously, I hear a few common themes - some spoken, some unspoken:

• My business is not suited for work-from-home. Different reasons follow; it wouldn't be productive, or we need to be together to troubleshoot, problem-solve and whiteboard.
• They are young employees and need in-person coaching to be successful.
• The unspoken reason for some - I do not trust my employees. Without the office, they will spend too much time on Facebook and are not as productive as when they are sitting at their desk "where I can see them". That was the case for Yahoo! destroyer Marissa Mayer.

There is another reason; work-from-the-office is a LOT easier for the leader.

If there is a problem, the leader can grab everyone and rally around the issue. It is easier to assess someone's performance when you get the opportunity to interact with them face-to-face regularly. Last, it is a lot less effort to stay connected to someone when you are in the same office - you bump into each other in the hallway, it is easy to grab a coffee or to schedule a face to face meeting.

Work-from-Home is HARD for the Leader

For Work-from-Home to be successful, the leader needs to make significant effort to keep the team together and performing; social connection, goal setting, and regular 1:1s are just a small subset of the elements that a leader must consider.

An example, the transition to a work-from-anywhere model for our interns - which we piloted last year. From my point of view, it was highly successful for two reasons:

• We acquired great talent and we were not constrained by our San Jose HQ location.
• The interns had a great experience. They did regularly video stand-ups, remained connected, were given executive coaching and insights (I enjoyed doing virtual meetings to share on career paths) with a number moving into full-time roles at Calix.

It was a win-win. But this required a LOT of effort. The Talent and Culture business partner ran the program with a field leader - executing the program above-and-beyond their day to day role. To make this work required planning and a lot of thoughtful effort on their part (Thank-you Allison and Rebekah)

The point: It was a lot harder, significant effort and was successful because two great LEADERS made it successful.

If you are adjusting to this, accept that the new normal will require a lot of effort to get right. But when you do get it right - you will come to realize that it is worth it.

Work-from-Anywhere is the New Norm and a Competitive Advantage

I have been an active advocate of work-from-anywhere since my first sales job out of school. I worked from my tiny apartment and on the road, making calls from payphones while leveraging an old PC, Maximizer and a dot-matrix printer to manage contacts and run my own campaigns. I learned early on that when I was afforded flexibility, I spent it wisely resulting in higher productivity and better results.

With that mindset, in every job I have been in since, I have pushed for this model. The reasons why:

1. Productivity. Simply eliminating the commute has a huge impact on employees and how they spend time. That newfound time is put it into succeeding in their role. I believe that work-from-anywhere is at least 25% more efficient.
2. Job satisfaction and retention. Once people get accustomed to work-from-anywhere, few want to go back. No commute, flexible hours, the ability to adjust to family demands and the ability to pick where you live without the constraint of a commute (and the price you pay to live there) all add up to a GREAT work experience.
3. Talent acquisition flexibility. To point #2, once you build a culture with the flexibility to work anywhere, it gives your team the ability to eliminate geography as a constraint which means that you can reach more talent at different price points easily.

It is with the extra effort, but it takes effort. A lot of effort.

My Top 5 for Building a Successful Virtual Team

There are lots of ways to build a great virtual team. Over the years I have assembled an approach to building a great virtual culture which I have listed below:

1. Equip the Team. Many companies miss this step and do not make the right investments. In our team, if you are working-anywhere we equip you with:

• A proper headset. My favorite is the Plantronics SAVI as they have a spare battery and only one earpiece. For long periods of remote work, switching ears is effective. We prefer this unit. Headsets need to be reinforced as mandatory, there is nothing worse than listening to someone "talking" through their laptop.
• A proper video camera. Laptop video cameras do not work well and are awkwardly located. We provide team members with the Logitech units. Reasonable price, high quality.
• A proper office set up. Provide a large monitor, standing desk, standing mat, ergonomic chair, keyboard, and mouse. They deserve a proper set-up.
• Provide a broadband stipend. Encourage a fiber connection as cable broadband is problematic. The video needs a good upload speed. Cable is fast down (Up to 1GB) and TERRIBLE up, topping out at 30MB (I may be channeling my unhappiness this week from using ZOOM on a Rogers connection - if fiber arrived at my home I would convert in 4 seconds). Brutal. Fiber will kill cable in the long run - just a matter of time. Wait till the NFL cities start seeing Verizon's offerings on their NGPON-2 network - watching their army lay down thousands of miles of fiber a month is remarkable. When we buy our next house one of the most important decision points will be whether or not a fiber provider like ALLO or GVTC exists in the community. One last item .. encourage proper Wi-fi also!

2. Video MUST be on. I assume that the use of a video system like ZOOM, Google Hangouts or GoToMeeting goes without saying. I exclude Microsoft Teams as Microsoft has never gotten Skype right (in my opinion). Once you pick a platform, every meeting should have a video link.

Do not allow people to join video conferences with video off. It is something that the leader has to address directly - it will require a push and reinforcement. No one should be allowed to be on with video off.

3. Allow banter, humor and socialize. In the office, you would socialize before a meeting, in a meeting or in the hallway. Ensure that you encourage virtual socialization. We use SFDC Chatter as our social media platform and have a group called "Calix Moments" where people post stories, pictures or call out a humorous conversation for everyone's enjoyment. At the beginning of virtual meetings, we allow the normal back and forth such as "how is your family" before we get into the meat of the meeting.

4. 1:1s and team meetings: In a virtual environment, when you lose the "bump-into-each-other" factor, regularly scheduled interactions become critical. Proper 1:1s and team meetings specifically. This meeting hygiene becomes really important to ensure that there are regular connections and opportunities to coach.

It goes without saying that to be effective, team members need to have clear goals that can be measured and are reviewed regularly. Those goals then ensure that each employee has a plan on how to execute to those goals. Those goals, plans, and current measures become the focus of 1:1s as you work hard to coach your team members to success.

5. Schedule breaks. Make meetings 20 minutes instead of 30 or 45 minutes instead of one hour. Create breaks. This one is hard, but it works very well. I had stopped doing this ... writing it reminded me to get back at it.

Over the last few weeks, we have been hearing a lot about the "new normal" and one of those new normals is a shift in where and how we work. This isn't going away.

A great opportunity to lead your team to even greater levels of success.