The five key ingredients of a thriving remote team
[Music]
the work from anywhere revolution has
begun
but it isn’t about where or when you
work
it’s about so much more about a decade
ago i learned that from my 11 year old
daughter
amy she was on school holidays and she
was
bored like any good pre-teen she tried
to make that my problem
and not hers i’ve worked from home all
my life so
there’s always work to do and admin that
can be done even by an 11 year old in
the business so i asked amy
if she’d like to help me with my job she
was so excited
i settled her down in front of the
computer made sure she could do the work
and left the room or at least i tried to
as i got to the door
i heard a little voice saying oh dad
we haven’t discussed payment yet
i thought i’d got away with that she
might have done it for love
but she was right we needed to negotiate
it was a decade ago and we were living
in london so i said amy
uh how about two pounds per hour how
does that sound to you
amy thought about it for a moment and
said okay dad that sounds fair
but would you mind if i worked
really slowly
how is it that an 11 year old a decade
ago has worked out something that most
companies have failed to understand
even now we shouldn’t be measuring
people by the hours that they work
or where they work we should be
measuring their
outputs that’s always been true
but covert proved that beyond a doubt
during covert a lot of managers were
asking how do i measure my team’s
productivity
i think what they really meant by that
was how can i measure
my team’s hours how can i make sure
they’re working
the hours they’re supposed to be working
how can i make sure they’re not being
lazy and being
sucked in by the three dangers of
working from home
the bed the tv and the fridge
well this is what the revolution is
about
it’s about shifting that mindset from
not measuring
where people sit when they work or how
many
hours they work for but rather by
measuring their contribution
amy was right i needed to change
back then we
need to change now some people might
think
that that’s just millennials gen z
whatever you’d like to call them they
they’re so entitled you know if they get
into the real world of work
they’ll discover what the world is
really like and then they won’t think
that way anymore
maybe other people might think this
output-based mindset
is something that was just due to covet
you know because we were working from
home during covert
that was a historical exception and it
won’t happen again and as soon as people
were able to get back to the office
they’re rushed back to the office
well i don’t think so there might be
some people who say that it’s not for
everybody
and they’re right not everybody can
choose where and when they want to work
some people have to work at a certain
space at a certain time
but i think that almost everybody can be
measured
on their outputs rather than their
inputs
and some people might just choose to
ignore the
myriad technology advances that are
rushing hurtling our way that allow us
to be more flexible and mobile than
we’ve ever been before
there are so many trends all
pointing in the same direction and
they’re
pointing at a very different workplace
a work from anywhere revolution
we we might want to call it the work
from home revolution i think it’s the
work from
anywhere revolution and it is here
and it is now it’s a fundamental shift
that i’m talking about yeah that’s why
i’m using the word revolution
it isn’t just a simple shift in
how we measure time sheets or how we
manage people it’s a fundamental
management
mind shift if we don’t do this
we have the potential of ending up in
the worst of all possible worlds
stuck at home pretending to be at the
office
and not getting the benefits of being in
either place in fact the only benefit i
can think of that kind of world
is that you wouldn’t have rush hour
traffic i mean rush hour traffic
really must be one of the dumbest things
we’ve ever done
as human beings since the invention of
the light bulb
why we thought we had to all rushed to
the office as soon as the sun came up
and then all rush home again just before
it went down
all of us at the same time
rush hour is truly stupid
but then so is measuring your employees
contribution
by the hours that they work what’s even
worse
is that over the next decade we are
going to see
an explosion of globalization
as amy and her friends
start to look for their first jobs
they’re not going to be restricted by
geography
they know for sure that they don’t have
to live in the same city
as their job in fact to be honest they
don’t even have to live in the same
time zone they don’t even have to live
in the same hemisphere
as their jobs and so they are going to
search the world
over for their job and
companies the world over are going to
look for them
if you don’t understand this you might
really
battle to find the talents that you need
so what do we do how do we respond then
to this work from anywhere revolution
well sadly there isn’t a silver bullet
there isn’t a magic
formula but the companies that i work
for and work with who are getting this
right
i think they do five things
they use all sorts of different models
uh models of motivation and team
dynamics
they use even psychological frameworks
like
the circle of courage that was designed
for at-risk
youth to bring them into a sense of
community
so there’s a lot of different things
that they do but i think that there are
five
things that they all do in common five
pillars
on which to build your work from
anywhere
workforce the first of those pillars is
belonging
this is a fairly obvious place to start
we’ve got to create a sense
of identity of team of tribe if you like
in the physical workspace that just
often comes by being in the same space
as other people
on a daily basis in a more remote
environment you’ve got to be
more deliberate about building that
belonging and you can’t just do what you
did in the physical space online you
can’t just have a
monday morning zoom meeting and think
you’ve created belonging we’ve got to
build
rituals and and rhythms that really
create a sense of belonging
even in a geographically distant world
but a sense of belonging is a good place
to start
the second pillar is mastery mastery
is about our competence and our
confidence to contribute to what the
team needs to do
and about our ability to know that we
are getting better and better all
the time this is about us and what we
give to the team and what we contribute
and again in a remote and virtual
environment
leaders might have to think about people
people who
maybe are very masterful in the way they
were doing things but now maybe don’t
have the technology skills maybe they
don’t even have the technologies
itself to be able to contribute properly
virtually that’s your task as a leader
to
build that sense of mastery
the third pillar is the pillar of
autonomy
now this is kind of the heart of the
model because this is about
letting people just get on with it and
doing
what needs to be done agreeing what
needs to be done when it needs to be
done by
what success looks like and then just
letting them
do it but it isn’t about leaving them
alone
there’s a balance that you have to find
between
giving people a sense of autonomy a
sense of agency
but then also making sure that that
sense of belonging and mastery
is integrated it’s not
every person for themself because
the fourth pillar is about generosity
and that’s about
helping others being there for others
showing
empathy and care for each other and for
the team
and extending beyond just your team
and looking at society and the community
as a whole
and having a sense of are we generous
and
impacting society around us so a sense
of generosity is the fourth pillar
and that leads to the fifth purpose
a sense of purpose now by purpose i
don’t mean
vision mission values purpose the you
know that stuff that’s on the poster in
the ceo’s office
uh what what’s on those posters again
it’s trust respect integrity
and what’s oh customer service
every company is the same it’s not those
things
by purpose i really mean a sense of
making a difference in the world the
sense of
contributing to society now of course
not every job changes the world
but maybe in this remote working
environment
you can at least give each individual in
your team a sense that
their world has a sense of purpose to
it you want to be able to give that
autonomy and mastery and be
generous in the way that you engage
people
such that they know that they can
manage their work around their lives
rather than the other way around which
is managing our lives around
our work whatever these five things
mean for you and your team in your
context
you’re gonna have to work that out for
yourself it’s different
in different places it was a little bit
easier for me i suppose
10 years ago with amy because well
she’s a member of my family and back
then she was a child
so we could do these five things with
her but now that she’s in her twenties
and she’s looking
for her first real job in the real world
those five things are still important to
her
and they’re important to all your people
we need to build a sense of belonging
a sense of mastery a sense of
autonomy a sense of generosity
and a genuine sense of purpose into
everything that we do
if we fail to do this we will discover
that the work from anywhere revolution
really really does hurt us in fact
if you don’t take the steps that are
necessary
to build these into your business
you might discover that the work from
anywhere revolution
is about where
people work from because your people
might choose to go and work somewhere
else
you