Leadership in the times of COVID-19
How do deal with the Remote Work Curveball
As the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed, companies around the world have declared an extended remote work program for their employees. This is likely the world's largest WFH experiment ever, as I had written in my last post. However, I started thinking of what are the things that we as leaders need to think (and worry) about, esp when it comes to engineering and product teams. In some ways, this post is written as a reminder to myself - as well as hopefully a helpful guide to others.
A Lot... to think about!
The biggest difference between this forced experiment and every other time companies pro-actively plan to test out Remote Offices is that this has come suddenly and most people are unprepared. Companies that start with remote-first get the opportunity to thoughtfully craft the culture as the company grows and learn and iterate on best practices that work for them. However, it's an entirely different thing when it comes suddenly. The good news is that even "office-first" companies today work in a largely distributed fashion today with distributed sites and people spread across the world. What that means is that the table-stakes like collaboration tools, documentation, security infrastructure, etc. are already in place. The challenges start after, as the great Scott Adams nicely sums it up in the strip above!
Given the novelty of this crisis, a lot of people may find themselves unprepared and find themselves worrying about what this means for their teams, the productivity of the teams, and how this will play out if this extends for a long time.
Concern for your Team and Building Trust
The first thing that our teams want to hear from us is that we are there for them and are concerned about their well being. Also, as leaders, we need to set an example and do our bits to "flatten-the-curve" - the only way we know today to slow down the spread so our health systems can cope. Of course, this is just stable stakes - and most companies are rolling them out across the board.
The #1 task of a leader is to build trust with their team, and sometimes emergencies are good opportunities to remind your team members that you are truly concerned about them. As a vast majority of people start working from home, they will be put in unforeseen situations while life goes topsy turvy. Some team members are more gregarious and will find it hard to cope with being isolated without the jaunts to the water-cooler, while others may feel too shy to ask for help and get blocked on something they could have resolved in minutes in the office. At the same time, some may feel super productive without all the distractions that an open floor plan brings. Remember, all this is new, and your people are probably not used to this. Add to the fact that a lot of people are not leaving home, or have small kids whose schools have closed, you have the perfect recipe for an emotional breakdown.
What we can try to do is make sure that we provide all the support we can. We have to remember that each person is different and has different needs, constraints and frustrations - esp. during this time - and will cope differently. Two things that may really help are more frequent 1:1s (even if it’s just a slack check-in), and discussing how everybody is coping within team meetings and tips from fellow team members - so people feel that they have a safe zone and can relate to each other better as human beings.
Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.
One of the most valuable things that an office setting provides is a high degree of "easy to access" communication. It's likely that most people will need to re-adjust not just to new tools but also "ground rules" - e.g., should I ping on slack, email or call for this question? In an office setting, one can easily look over your shoulder and see if the person appears busy, and walk up to them. This is harder to replicate in a remote work environment. Although there are probably lots of benefits of asynchronous communication, it’s not something that comes naturally to everybody especially when one has to get acclimatized to it suddenly.
The golden rule of dealing with any emergency is "communicate, communicate, communicate". So, how do we ensure we are doing a great job of it with all the sudden changes? Some tips are: be pro-active about establishing what the new lines of communication are (slack, email, WhatsApp, zoom), and what would be the medium to do team stand-ups, etc. It may help to do more frequent check-ins, demonstrating empathy about their challenges and ensuring they are unblocked. It's important to make sure that people don't feel they are being "monitored" - I have heard of companies asking people for daily reports of what their teams worked on! There's no greater demotivator.
It needs no repeating that we should encourage our teams to turn on video at every possibility (or at least during daily check-in meetings or stand-ups if people are worried about presentability). A face to face interaction really helps bring the team together. More importantly, it helps the team engage in non-verbal communication and about "non-work" topics. Most people are shy about "turning on" video — and this requires behavior change and perhaps some insistence from leaders :)
It helps also to open up meetings with some ice-breakers so that people feel more connected with the people they work with — something we need more during these times of sudden change. It's important to re-create the feeling of being a "team" - as I pointed out in my previous post, sometimes the #random channel is more important than #general. Communicate clearly, communicate often and communicate inclusively.
Documentation and Dashboards are your Friends
In most remote environments, everything being clearly documented is a huge asset. It's very hard to get everybody into one room if you want to get them onto the same page - GitLab is a classic example with their public handbook. However, due to the sudden shock of #Covid19, a lot of companies will find that their documentation is woefully inadequate. As Leaders, we have to make sure that there's a productive conversation and workflow systems are kept updated - we want to continue to run as fast as possible, and that means it's our duty to make sure that our teams are not blocked due to lack of information.
At the same time, in times such as these, a metrics-driven culture turns from a competitive advantage into a sustainability imperative. Nearly everybody is worried about this curveball will impact their team’s productivity, and without having dashboards that guide teams on what is most critical, evaluate progress and course-correct, we would be walking blindly into this forced experiment.
Measuring outcomes instead of effort are something that's been written for a long time in management books - however, its probably more important in such a scenario than ever before. A lot of our workforce will have to deal with new ground realities that demand more flexibility - whether its power cuts at home, or having to entertain young kids, or even some burning out because they forgot to take a break while working at home (surprisingly enough, I have seen this happen!). The best way to let people adopt is by clearly specifying the outcomes that we are looking for and not measuring effort on a day to day basis. Staying away from micromanaging is a leader’s best friend here!
Be a Cheerleader for the Team
These are uncertain times and people feel disconnected and under-appreciated. In my past experience of working with remote teams, many people who transition from an "in-office" environment to a remote work environment feel isolated and miss human touch strongly within a few weeks. It starts on a high note (no traffic!) but the isolation builds up over time. It will be even worse with the 'shelter in place' requirements in many areas around the world. It's a difficult adjustment to make, and our ability to connect with people and make people comfortable will go a long way in helping people adjust to this new reality.
One of the best ways to demonstrate leadership is by being a cheerleader for the team and appreciate their work - it takes a little getting used to when people move remote suddenly :-) A few ideas: Find small ways to celebrate achievements - even a slack message with fun emoji is good! Get started with ice-breakers in team meetings so that people can connect with and build empathy for their colleagues, perhaps even have them share ideas about #WFHHacks so people can get over their fears and frustrations together, see how their colleagues are coping with their own challenges, or even just get a few laughs.
Ultimately, none of this is ideal. The world has turned topsy-turvy and we all have a 'new normal' to deal with. We can only hope that the crisis gets contained soon and humanity stays one step ahead of the virus. However, one thing is certain -- once we come back from this we can definitely expect to see some changes in the way we live, work, shop, study, play and interact with the world. I'm pretty sure that this massive remote work experiment is going to teach a lot of people about the pros and cons of distributed engineering - the biggest impact will happen if it turns out that it wasn't as disruptive as we feared, and our teams can stay productive. Maybe the way we work in the future will change just a little bit.
I’m not alone. The world is thinking about this: