Managing remote work is incredibly hard: 5 success factors in a distributed workforce.
Article 4 of 10
Creating a healthy and thriving growth culture inside a distributed workforce is hard, but it is not impossible.
So far I have talked about the way the pandemic accelerated, then completed the shift to remote work. I told you this has forced knowledge work companies to revisit the way they think about remote work. Finally, I covered the primary advantage of moving to a distributed workforce before taking an honest look at the risks. At this point, I hope you agree that you need to solve for remote work at your company. You do, and you know it.
The last article gave you a lot of very good reasons not to touch it. You probably finished that article saying, “Too risky. Better to stick with what has worked in the past.” Well, I have bad news. If you have meaningful growth aspirations, you don’t have a choice. As you think about what’s possible, the old way just won’t get you to the best possible outcome. The company that has figured out remote work will beat you there. Their distributed team of highly talented developers and salespeople will seize the opportunity you are after.
The reality is you have to solve for remote work, and there is an advantage to figuring it out now. Don’t put it off.
I’m going to show you how to be successful with a distributed workforce. Let’s go!
Remote employees have the same wants and needs as the people sitting in your office.
Great news! The components of a healthy growth culture are the same regardless of where your employees do their work. So if you were able to create and maintain a thriving growth culture previously, you can do it again. The strategy is the same, it’s just a matter of executing it in a new, distributed environment. It’s going to look a little different, but it should feel the same.
Ben Horowitz has defined a healthy company culture as a company where employees know that if they come to work every day and work really really hard then good things will happen for the company and good things will happen for them. He’s right, but I think we should add some Simon Sinek to his formula. In order to have that confidence, your employees need to feel safe and connected. I think of Horowitz as the hard-nosed, do whatever it takes, CEO that has actually built and led a company into battle. Sinek is the HR consultant who is in touch with your employees’ basic needs and true feelings. Mix the two together and you have an absolutely incredible culture!
A simplified Horowitz/Sinek culture combo is a company where all employees feel valued and are proud of what they do because they know it matters.
Let’s talk about how to create that dynamic in a distributed workforce. In this article, we will define the necessary components of a healthy growth culture in a distributed workforce. We will dive into the details of each component in subsequent articles.
There are five components absolutely necessary for success:
1. Mission/Purpose → The Why?
In order for employees to do their best work, they need a sense of purpose. My guess is you are doing, or trying to do this already. Most companies try to create a mission statement that provides employees with a sense of purpose. It’s a great idea but doomed to fail if the mission statement prioritizes business results over human results. We’ll take a queue from Simon Sinek here and talk about how to answer the “Why?” for your company as you craft your mission and give your employees a purpose for doing their very best work. It’s easier than you think. You just have to come at it with the correct frame of mind.
2. Connectedness → Human to Human
It’s important for employees to feel connected to the mission, but even more important they feel connected to each other, incredibly important. Human connectedness is a basic human need. Beyond being a requirement for employee satisfaction, it is a requirement for mental health. Your employees need to develop meaningful relationships with their coworkers. Why? Employees that care about each other do better work and stay with their companies longer. You need to provide them the opportunity to get to know each other beyond work.
3. Communication → Open AND Equal
Even if all of your employees sit in the same room all day, communication becomes a challenge as you grow beyond twenty employees. Whatever communication problems exist with everyone in office are amplified in a distributed workforce. Left unaddressed, these problems will inevitably lead to remote workers feeling isolated and disadvantaged (Simon would say unsafe). They will shut down and eventually leave. In our discussion of communication, we’ll talk about strategies to open up communication channels and ensure everyone feels like they have equal and appropriate access to information.
4. Rhythm → Engineer your Flow
Working in an office synchronizes certain aspects of the “going to work” experience and imparts a natural rhythm and flow to the workday without any effort on the part of leadership. A distributed approach introduces an asynchronous workflow that many companies struggle with. There is value in establishing a rhythm to the workday. Employees subconsciously appreciate knowing what to expect and having the ability to plan their schedule around a known rhythm. A lack of rhythm is frustrating. It’s frustrating to be interrupted. It’s frustrating to play the guessing game on how and when to communicate issues. It is not necessary to synchronize everyone’s schedule, but you do need to be intentional about engineering the rhythm of the workday.
5. Systems → Walk the Walk
The challenges faced by a distributed workforce are not easy to overcome. A great culture will require great leadership AND great technology. The first four components are easy to talk about but impossible to implement without the right systems in place. You cannot implore your employees to communicate in the open and not provide them with a means to do so. You cannot establish a rhythm to your workday without empowering your workforce with the tools to stay on the beat. We’ll talk about the minimum toolset required to support a thriving growth culture in a distributed workforce in our systems article.
There is a best way to create culture in a distributed workforce and it is known.
It takes great leadership and intentional planning to build the culture you want regardless of where your employees are located. Embracing a distributed workforce increases the level of difficulty, but it is not something to be fearful of. There is a playbook. You can do this. In the next several articles, we will cover the specific tactics and implementation strategies for building the growth culture you need.
