Remote Work Revolution

Tsedal Neeley

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780063068322
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Workplace Culture
• Index: Business

LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES & MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR

"I often talk about the importance of trust when it comes to work: the trust of your employees and building trust with your customers. This book provides a blueprint for how to build and maintain that trust and connection in a digital environment." —Eric S. Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom

Harvard Business School professor and leading expert in virtual and global work Tsedal Neeley reveals how to thrive in remote and hybrid organizations.

Succeeding in a hybrid work environment comes with unique challenges. Managers must lead virtually more and more, keep teams motivated and productive, employ the most effective digital tools, and build trust. Employees need to feel connected, foster creativity, and continue to learn and feel supported. Remote Work Revolution answers the eight questions Tsedal Neeley gets asked the most about overcoming hybrid and remote work challenges, such as: How can I trust colleagues I barely see? How should I use digital tools in remote work? What do I need to know about leading virtually? Can my team really be productive remotely? Providing evidence-based answers to these and other pressing issues, key takeaways, and an interactive action guide, this book will help leaders and team members quickly develop an actionable plan and deliver results previously out of reach. This book is essential reading for navigating the enduring challenges teams and managers face in remote and hybrid work.

Chapter 1

How Can We (Re)Launch to Thrive in Remote Work?

James sank into his home office chair as he listened to his client through the headset. “You destroyed my children’s future,” said Cliff, his voice laced with as much disappointment as anger. “I saved for years for this. How could you let this happen? I trusted you and I did everything right.”

James had nothing to say. He worked for one of the fastest-growing residential real estate firms in the United States, and he knew that Cliff was right. He’d been so sure that he could help Cliff and his family fulfill their home ownership dream, but now, realizing that he’d betrayed Cliff’s trust paralyzed him with regret and guilt. “I’m sorry,” was all he could say. “I’m truly sorry.”

Cliff, an exemplary client buying his first home, was the type of person that made James love his job. But his apology could not make up for the mistake his team had made. When the call ended, James sank deeper into his chair and tried to figure out what had gone wrong.

He remembered his first conversation with Cliff, which had taken place over the phone. Cliff said he’d spent his whole career making sure to save from his hard-earned income, even though it meant forgoing vacations. In the weeks that followed, James had been impressed at the watchful eye Cliff had kept on the costly and competitive California real estate market and at how focused and decisive he was in the search for just the right house, one with enough room for his wife and three children and in a neighborhood with good schools. He’d completed the application and verification forms as fast as they appeared. How elated Cliff had sounded when James gave him the news that he’d been approved for the home loan! Cliff wasn’t one of those complaining clients that James knew too well. Even when the loan process began moving slower than promised, he was patient. James had been glad to be able to reassure Cliff. “Your interest rate is locked. We will push this through. Everything looks great. I’ll call you next week to schedule the closing.”

“I’m so excited,” Cliff had said. “I can almost feel the keys in my hand.”

Real estate is a volatile business. After that phone call, everything changed for James and the remote team he relied on to fulfill Cliff’s loan request. A change in interest rates spiked a sudden volume of loans as people rushed to capitalize on available deals. James and his team were inundated with an increased number of interested customers. Unfortunately, they’d responded with a reactive mode to this sudden busyness.

A week passed, then two. Cliff called again, wanting to know how things were progressing. “The whole team is hard at work funding the loan and scheduling the close,” James had said. He tried to sound reassuring. “I’ll text you just as soon as we finalize the paperwork internally.” He didn’t mention to Cliff how long it had been since he’d talked to the team member handling the finer points of Cliff’s loan or how busy they’d all been.

And then the call today. James’s heart sank. Cliff had told him that his income had unexpectedly fallen. To avoid layoffs, his company had decided to impose a 25 percent salary reduction to everyone at his level. Cliff’s voice shook with anger. “I don’t have to tell you that I’m no longer going to make enough to qualify for the loan. Even with my excellent credit record. Last week, I would still have qualified! If you hadn’t taken so long, I would be holding the keys in my hand by now!”

James wanted to blame the volatility of the real estate business for Cliff’s lost opportunity. But the truth of the matter, he knew, was that volatility was what his remote team was unprepared to manage, slowing down the process so much that they ultimately failed a client. If only they’d been on the same page. If only they had taken the time to hold a meeting to devise a coordinated plan to meet the increased customer interest. Even a half day spent on reviewing and reorganizing work processes would have made a difference. If only they’d held a relaunch session.

A launch session (and periodic relaunches or reappraisals), which puts in place a clear group plan to meet the demands at hand, is crucial in remote work. Precisely because virtual workers are often distributed across many different geographical locations, work requires explicit planning. Like James and his team, those who are out of sight can fall out of sync at even the slightest bump in the road.

Holding reappraisal sessions may seem counterintuitive. In the thick of an overloaded work schedule, with deadlines whizzing by left and right, the concept of talking about teamwork instead of actually doing it may seem like an extravagance. Like James, many of us respond to limits on our time by immediately picking up the pace without the slightest pause for reflection. But this thinking could not be more misguided. In his decades of research, the pioneering expert on effective teamwork J. Richard Hackman (whom I will discuss in more depth later in the book) determined that actual day-to-day collaborative work is only the tip of the iceberg—10 percent, to be exact. With what he called the 60–30–10 rule, Hackman concluded that 60 percent of team success depends on prework, or the way in which the team is designed; 30 percent depends on the initial launch; and only 10 percent depends on what happens when the actual day-to-day teamwork is under way.

Teams are always worse off without a proper launch session, no matter what. For a team to execute on its tasks—whether collocated, remote, or hybrid—it needs the right ingredients and the right preparation. This point may seem obvious, but it is very often overlooked for the reasons described above. While the “prework” determines what shape the team will take—its function, composition, design, etc.—and thus happens even before the team itself exists, the launch takes place at the moment the team comes together. As Hackman puts it, the team launch is what “breathes life” into the team by ensuring that every member understands and agrees on how they can work together most effectively. If teams skip this step, or brush past it in an effort to start work immediately, they often lose direction and falter down the road.

Team launches (and periodic relaunch sessions) drive performance throughout the team’s journey. Relaunches are critical to keep remote teams cohesive, but even more so when teams transition to remote work, and especially by necessity as with COVID-19. Leaders need to be proactive about more, not less, periodic relaunches. The typical length for a launch is an hour or an hour and a half, and that time can be spread across two sessions. Every member needs to be present for an open discussion to share opinions and contribute perspectives on the best ways to work together as a team. When working remotely, launches should be video meetings where people can be as connected as digital technology allows.

This chapter will take you through the theory and practice of team launches by detailing the four essential elements of teamwork that each member must agree on.

1. Shared goals that make plain and clear the aims that the team is pursuing.
2. Shared understanding about each member’s roles, functions, and constraints.
3. Shared understanding of available resources ranging from budgets to information.
4. Shared norms that map out how teammates will collaborate effectively.

Notice that each of these four domains begins with the same word: shared. That’s because the fundamental goal of a launch session is alignment.

Relaunches are periodic appraisals of how the group is faring with the four key areas. I often joke that a relaunch is like a couple’s date night because in both instances you revisit what’s important and may check in on the present, past, and future to figure out what’s working and what might need adjustments. As a general rule, teams should revisit their standing via a relaunch at least once per quarter. When people work remotely, I have found that relaunching every six to eight weeks to orient or reorient based on evolving dynamics is more important. During these occasions, virtual working groups and leaders acknowledge how each member is doing, figure out how to address concerns, and ultimately get everyone on the same track to achieve team goals.

In other words, relaunches are never a one-and-done event. Because work conditions are often dynamic, hitting the reset button once won’t be enough. Periodic relaunches are important in good times but crucial in times of uncertainty, as James’s story illustrates. The team might need to switch to a new mediating tool that calls for new norms of communication. The government might introduce new regulations or laws that affect people’s work patterns, as we saw when millions were switched to working from home during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Countries, markets, or entire industries might make a sudden shift that requires the team to reorient their goals. Periodic relaunches are the only structured mechanisms to give teams the ability to quickly pivot in a systematic way.

GETTING ALIGNED ON SHARED GOALS

Contrary to what many people believe, team alignment is not synonymous with agreement. In fact, disagreement—often miscast as the enemy to cooperation—is a crucial part of refining ideas, identifying mistakes, and growing as a collective unit. The difference between successful and failed team alignment is thus not a matter of whether teammates disagree, but what they disagree about. Steve Jobs famously said, “It’s okay to spend a lot of time arguing about which route to take to San Francisco when everyone wants to end up there, but a lot of time gets wasted in such arguments if one person wants to go to San Francisco and another secretly wants to go to San Diego” (1997). In other words, teams can disagree on the how—that is part of the dynamic process of teamwork—but before that process can even begin, teams must build a shared understanding of the goal, or the what. In Jobs’s analogy, everyone must first be in agreement about the goal of traveling to San Francisco. Or bringing a specific product to market. Or growing a customer base. A team launch session is the opportunity to identify clear and specific team goals before taking any other steps forward.

To ensure there is shared agreement on the goals that the team has been mobilized to accomplish, the launch session must be a dialogue. As leaders and team members offer input, ask questions, pose concerns, and respond to others, they begin to understand and buy into the goals from their own perspectives. Leaders can make sure the conversation stays focused on the big picture. Quibbling over the details of how is a necessary conversation—but for a later date. Perhaps your team’s goal is as simple as “delivering value to stakeholders in our industry.” The only condition is that every team member agrees on and is fully committed to advancing it.

CONTRIBUTIONS AND CONSTRAINTS

Surprisingly, people are not always clear about where they fit on the team. A launch is an ideal opportunity for each member to explicitly articulate their individual roles and how they can contribute to the team goals. One member might volunteer previous experience on a similar project. Another member might acknowledge inexperience but express enthusiasm to learn. Someone else may show their aptitude for a specific skill that is needed to meet the team goal. As in a sports team, when members play different roles on the field, leaders may help identify each member’s specific area of responsibility. Team members should understand everyone else’s role as well as their own.

Clarifying individual team roles and each person’s current responsibilities will also guide expectations about individual time and attention for collaboration. Remote team members often belong to multiple teams simultaneously. Multiple team membership—or at the very least, interdependence across teams—leads to varying or even conflicting expectations about how much time a team member devotes to each team. A team leader might assume that a colleague is prioritizing their team, when in actuality that person is focusing more on the work for another team. In fact, it is not uncommon for an individual to be involved in company work that isn’t visible to teammates and managers. On a collocated team, someone’s absence is an obvious fact. But in a remote format, there is no visual evidence of how team members spend their time. A launch that includes a frank discussion of such constraints enables the team to set expectations around how teammates allocate their time to different commitments.

While misaligned expectations could make teams less effective, the opposite can also be true. In fact, the ability of each team member to candidly share their unique constraints and perspectives on how work should be done can be a strength. To capture the dynamic nature of multiple team membership for employees, relaunch sessions give team members the opportunity to discuss new assignments that they might have had added to their load. Awareness about how team members are coping with the added demands prepares the team to support each other, manage deadline expectations, and rebalance task loads accordingly.

RECOGNIZING RESOURCES

One of the benefits of working in teams is the ability to draw on the distinct knowledge and skills of your teammates to help accomplish tasks. When team members are collocated in the same office, they can use each other’s resources when collaborating face-to-face. But when distributed, opportunities for in-person interactions may be limited or nonexistent. Imagine two scenarios: In the first case, you’ve been working in the same office with your teammates for years. You’re huddled around a conference table discussing the details of an important project. Because you know one another’s strengths and weaknesses, it’s easy to ask for or offer an opinion or specific piece of information. Now imagine that you’re still discussing plans with your teammates, but instead of working in the same office, you’re working remotely; these days, you only meet your team members on videoconference calls or online chat rooms. If you’ve had personal experiences working together in online environments, you already know how difficult it can be to establish an interdependent dynamic that shares information and makes decisions.

On a material level, a launch session should identify resources pertaining to information, budget, technology, and internal or external networks that will help the team advance its goals. Generating a detailed list of every single item is not necessary, but the launch period is the time to reach a general consensus about the team’s current resources, what it needs, and how to access them. Especially in a remote environment, this is the time to ensure that individual members of the team have the right technology and support to get work done. We can’t assume that everyone has proper internet access, and some might need upgrades in devices or additional ones. Making sure that all employees have the proper financial support to outfit a working home office is imperative.

Relaunches are occasions for the team to reappraise available resources. For example, COVID-19 might have affected the team’s budget and partnerships with other organizations. Individuals and leaders must make sure team members are aware of what is still within the team’s tool kit as they press forward.

ESTABLISHING INTERACTION NORMS TOGETHER

Consider this scenario: A remote team of six excitedly downloads the latest chat applications on their smartphones. Even though they are distributed across five countries, now they chat anytime in a more informal way than email. One day, four members in the same time zone hold an impromptu conversation on the new app to discuss possible fixes of a bug on a software program. From there, the conversation jumps to an issue that the entire team is going to meet about the following day. The informal and ad hoc nature of the private conversation allows the four members to be candid with one another about their ideas and make significant headway on the tasks to be discussed at the scheduled meeting.

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