“The World is Flat” was written in 2007, yet for more than a decade since then companies have needlessly been forcing their staff to waste years of their lives burning up the planet getting to and from offices, for very little tangible benefit.

Some face-to-face contact among teams is priceless, but every day?

It creates an enormous set of externality costs that will limit business growth from death by a thousand unseen cuts.

Becoming an efficient fully remote organisation needs some work and isn’t complicated.

A friend of mine, an MD at a decent-sized professional services firm, pinged me recently.

They had just sent everyone home to work remotely.

My friend’s company is far ahead of the curve in many respects and had already installed some remote processes. Still, they were in a bit of a spin, so here’s what I told him to help fill in the gaps.

1. Chill!

Many successful global companies have always been 100% remote.

You can do this!

You’ll be fine. Your company will do better than survive, it can come out of this crisis stronger and better for it.

If you’ve got time and want to read the book on this, or more accurately the booklet, then the best one I’ve found is written by the management team at Zapier. Click here to download it.

If you want a ‘quick hit’ of my topline things to do, read on.

2. Build an Online Watercooler

You need an online equivalent of the office so everyone at work can communicate in all the ways they usually would in the office; to share notes, be productive, hang out, chat, and easily talk to everyone else at work, just as they normally would in person.

Slack is the best tool I’ve found for this.

Ping me and I can run you through the basics (and some advanced stuff) including how to set it up and some simple protocols your teams should follow.

Slack is easy and free, then also good value when you start paying for it. Beware that if you don’t set some ground-rules, it becomes just as much of a time-suck as email has; Slack is not a panacea.

Quicktip: Set up channels for work streams AND all-important non-work social stuff.

3. Schedule Stuff You’d Normally Take For Granted

1.   Weekly online equivalents of 'all-hands' catchups,

2.   Weekly 'paired buddy' calls (a weekly random pairing with 2-3 people on the team that allows them to catch up on work, life, or anything else),

3.   Weekly one-on-ones between direct colleagues up and down authority chain.

You need to schedule this stuff because it won’t happen serendipitously, as it’s more likely to in person when everyone shares a physical space, an office.

4. Look Forward To Something

Schedule the next in-person all-staff get-together now.

Even if it gets postponed, it's a great reminder to everyone that they're all still in the company fold.

It's also great to remind your customers, your clients, that business WILL be back to normal, face-to-face will return and 100% remote is not a 'new normal' but temporary.

You’ll come out of this stronger. Together.

Part of what you’ll do at the next in-person get-together will be a crisis debrief to review what worked, what didn't, what to keep and bed into ongoing ops, what to have ready to deploy next time, etc.

5. Verify

Trust is key in any workplace, but 'trust and verify' your teams’ performance with weekly Friday "What I did this week" catchups (part of the calls suggested above).

6. Extra Efforts

Provide more feedback, more often. Remote is lonely without proper processes, especially when newly remote.

Put in extra effort to make your people feel included. More frequent contact and feedback, but also random 'surprise and delight' things like "Everyone can spend £$€20 on a nice takeaway this Friday, on us" or similar.

Or it could be "Spend $£€20 on takeaway this Friday lunch, and we all eat it together in the Zoom or Slack video conference virtual canteen."

Part of what makes this last thing work is it's quirky, funny, awkward, and binds your people when they're physically distant.

7. Mental Health

This one particularly applies during a crisis like Covid19.

Ask if anyone's suffering any issues from working remotely, and if so, HELP THEM.

You shouldn’t need to tell any of your managers to do this, but I have personal experience of how crises can bring out nastiness in people, that they then pass into your company culture, that then erodes your company’s value.

It might be the opposite, if your colleagues’ train and petrol (gas!) bills have gone down they may be better off and happy.

Either way, you need to know, so check! Give leeway during the adjustment phase.

Technically, make sure everyone at home can sit comfortably, have a good sized screen, etc . All the boring stuff you do automatically in the office.

Let people know that they can ask for, and will get, help with physical, emotional and practical challenges of this temporary 100% remote stuff.

8. Security

Remind everyone to back all their work up online (presume you already have a system like Dropbox, Box, a VPN etc but if not, get in touch, like, NOW).

Minimise saving files locally to remote computers, or better, ban it.

Remind everyone that when you step away from your desk remotely, it's more important than ever to password-screensaver or sleep your computer, this is stuff everyone should know but it's more important when working remotely.

Everyone must use long passwords unique to each login and 2-factor authentication.  

Take extra care for common scams like client invoice account switching. Remind everyone to be paranoid.

Remind your clients this too, specifically that you’ve taken measures to ensure your usual levels of security, but that operationally they too ought to beware of common security issues themselves.

There are going to be a rush of online crimes over the next few months. If I were in that business, I'd be having a field day.

Review where your data is…. who can access it? How easily can the wrong people access it? Can the right people access it easily?

Some suggested software;

• Zoom - videoconferencing. Pay for it, for extra security and NEVER use the “Waiting Room” feature, it’s insecure.

• Trello - online post-it wall (and more) great for tasks and projects.

• Basecamp - online project management.

• Slack - virtual chat...  Needs channels and channel rules, I can help but it's pretty straightforward.

• 1Password - to securely share security info like passwords. LastPass is also good. They have teams functions and can work with fingerprint readers on your laptops.

• Signal, Telegram or iMessage NOT Whatsapp.

• EveryTimeZone - meeting scheduler for other geo's.

• SelfControl (Mac) or ColdTurkey (PC)-  apps to help you reduce distractions on your computer.

I hope this quick hit of suggestions and software gets you started.

If you want to jump into a lot more detail, or if this goes on much longer and you need more pervasive operations refinement, get in touch.

—————————————-

Want to subscribe to this blog? Follow me on Twitter or copy and paste this link into an RSS reader like Feedly: https://www.jamesmadelin.com/james-blog/?format=rss