Managing Remotely: How Video Killed the Radio Star
“We can’t rewind we’ve gone too far
Oh, a, a, a, oh
Oh, a, a, a, oh
Video killed the radio star”
In 1981, MTV aired its first ever music video, “Video Killed the Radio Star”. With this choice the nascent network was making a bold statement, that the era of audio music was over and that the music video would become the primary way music was consumed. And for more than twenty years music videos reigned supreme.
Even before the COVID crisis, more and more companies began embracing either fully distributed teams or a subset of employees working remotely. Remote working is our new reality and will be a necessity in some form for the foreseeable future. What follows are the key practices for effective remote management during this period as well as considerations for the post shelter-at-home world.
Remote Advantages
First, there are some clear advantages to going remote:
Since location is irrelevant you can hire the best talent in the world, wherever they are.
Because you can hire people outside of expensive cities you can pay lower average salaries
You can save money on renting expensive office space by either giving up your office entirely or downsizing to a smaller space.
And there are some inherent challenges with distributed structures, namely around communication. Here are the keys for managing those challenges and running effective remote teams.
The Basics (ensure people have what they need)
Invest in good quality cameras and headsets and make sure team members have high speed internet.
On-Boarding - Ship fully configured laptops and other ready-to-use equipment new hires will need. Explicitly document the process to get new people on-board (First day, first week, etc.) and create overly explicit guides for new employees about how things work.
Consider providing a co-working space stipend for people who don’t feel they can be productive at home.
Create structure
Start the work week with a stand up or team meeting that gets people’s heads back in work from the weekend and focuses everyone on the most important objectives for the week.
End the week with a celebration of wins for the week and to help people shift from work to the weekend.
Encourage team members to create work environments that invite focus and creativity since our environment can enhance or impede our productivity.
Create touch points
1-on-1s take on even more importance in a remote environment as they are your main opportunity to build relationships, provide support, and make sure you know what’s happening on your team.
Hold meetings as you would in an in-person environment (weekly staff, decision meetings, critical issue deep dives, etc.) Consider who you really need in a meeting and be extra discerning about who is critical (a good rule of thumb is only those people needed to make a decision should be included). Ensure all meetings have an agenda and a facilitator.
Team off-sites are critical in a remote environment. They help people build relationships in more nuanced ways. These meetings can be social, work focused, or a mix depending on your goals.
Have virtual coffee check-ins. When you don’t physically work in the same place you lose the more informal but really important relationship-building time with your colleagues. So schedule these informal times to check in, catch up, and hear how things are going.
For teams where some are remote but most are not be careful that the remote people don’t feel disconnected and take extra steps to involve them.
Create Norms
In the same way there are norms in an in-person office environment there need to be norms for your remote team. These should be explicit and will probably differ slightly from office norms. You can come up with them on your own or together as a team. These norms cover what is expected of team members in terms of things like:
Work schedules (e.g. I don’t care when you work as long as you hit your deliverables vs. we’re working on a team and all need to be on the same schedule.)
Timeliness of responses (1 hr, 2 hrs, 24hrs, etc.)
The need to communicate to you when they are not available
Who gets included in what conversations
How transparent with information will you be (one remote company I spoke to records all meetings of more than two people and shares a copy after the meeting with everyone on the meeting invite.)
What you as a manager need to be kept abreast of and what you don’t
Expectations around participation and speaking up in meetings. (One company I interviewed has an expectation that everyone speaks in meetings. Meeting leaders reach out to people who are not speaking up and ask them to participate.)
Create Communication and Documentation Protocols
Use the communication tools that work best for your company culture and make sure everyone is using the same tool for the same purpose. (Zulip and Chime are alternatives to Slack and Zoom.)
How will information be documented and organized? Wordpress uses a blog to capture information. Wordpress, a fully distributed company relies on an internal blogging system to capture and preserve information, messaging for one-to-one, and video for meetings. Email is primarily used to alert people to new postings on the internal blog.
Transparent calendars - Having access to each other’s calendars can help with scheduling and discerning which meetings can be moved and which can’t.
Time zones - Create as much overlap in working hours as possible between east and west coast time zones. For example everyone works from 10am to 6pm eastern or 7am-3pm pacific. People working outside those two time zones adopt working hours of the closer of the two.
Evaluate based on work output
In a remote environment what people produce is the key evaluation criteria. Make sure it is clear what people are supposed to be producing and by when.
Having a performance management system (like OKRs) can help ensure clearly defined work deliverables that are aligned to overall company goals.
Create a regular and consistent schedule of performance evaluation. (One fully remote company I interviewed holds a formal review every six months with two pages of question prompts where the manager reviews their direct report and vice versa). Yearly bonuses are based on company performance with manager discretion based on metrics laid out at the beginning of the year.
There is a higher likelihood that you will make mis-hires in a remote environment. So be prepared for a higher attrition rate.
These past few months have become this era’s Video Killed the Radio Star moment for traditional office work. Companies have proven that they can function productively as fully remote entities. Those that embrace this new way of working and optimize for it will have the edge in this uncertain future.
I invite you to share this with others if you’ve found it useful.
For Further Reading:
The Year Without Pants: Wordpress.com and the Future of Work