Management Initiatives for post-COVID Times
Part One
Are we finally entering the post-COVID era? Nobody really knows.
One thing we do know, however, is that managing people who are doing remote work is here to stay despite increasing “Office Call Backs”. The last two-plus years of the COVID pandemic introduced new challenges in managing remote work and expanding its presence in business and startup culture. That new mix includes remote and in-office workers interacting with remote and in-office managers. (“1-3-1” is the new standard: One remote day followed by three in-office days followed by one remote day.)
In several meetings over the past month, I’ve heard people discuss the following themes, issues and concerns about the rising post-COVID culture, the changes involved, and the new challenges it’s creating in this altered workplace.
For the many leaders wrestling with these changes, here’s an initial installment of 10 reminders and suggestions for the road ahead (with 10 more to follow in a post appearing next week).
Effective management in the office should translate into equally effective management of remote workers. A big part of that success is managers ensuring that they’re available to their staff. Negotiating the new terms of remote work can be challenging given the mix of more traveling for business, in-office meetings and doing daily work and planning.
Guideline: A good manager makes herself of himself readily available to their in-office or remote team members. In other words, a good manager makes time for everyone.
Only hire the best people. This rule has come under great pressure as the tech labor market grew to be highly overheated in recent years. As the market cools, compensation packages will equilibrate, but keeping the standard of hiring only the best people won’t change.
Guideline: Teams require executive management dedicated to this one unequivocal, principal concept of hiring. We’ve wavered on this principle; it’s time to get back.
Screen for trust. Trust is a key criterion you need to screen for in interviews and, ultimately, when making hiring decisions related to remote work. Trust needs to be conferred to the worker from the first minute they are hired. Always assume the best intentions.
Guideline: Trust, but verify. In-office or remote work requires verification of results in order to have optimum team management.
Hire team members with excellent communications skills. This is a standard item that is listed on almost all job descriptions. Many hiring managers have taken this skill for granted recently and gotten fixated on a candidate’s or employee’s Slack or email skills. Hiring managers also can make assumptions about a candidate’s comms skills just based on a sound or lively interview. Excellent verbal and written communications skills are absolutely critical in this transition period from COVID isolation to post-COVID business life.
Guideline: Specific questions should be seeded into applications and interviews to test verbal and written communications skills. Comparisons by interviewers is a standard way to sort out these skills.
Hire a team whose members share values. Shared values manifest as policies, communications systems and practices. Combined, they enhance a startup’s competitive advantage and advance a company’s business functions and channels.
Guideline: Activities related to supporting the Ukraine, for example, have been universally positive for startups that have addressed this issue. Donations to worthy causes, community sponsorships, volunteering and addressing societal issues forges a bond among in-office and remote employees and the larger business community.
Once hired, set expectations. Create two separate but integrated plans – one 30-60-90-day plan and an annual plan – with targeted goals.
Guideline: Plans should conform with the overall company plan. This matters if the company or divisions are run on a P&L, or not.
Limit the number of your reports. Effective remote work managers get more reports for many obvious reasons. Limit the number of direct reports to no more than eight (8). Typically, having a headcount of five is a good number to aim for. Effective managers need to work through the agency of others. Splitting the team, adding hierarchy or restructuring should be a regular intellectual and leadership exercise for managers.
Guideline: Today, as the COVID era winds down, many companies are considering new org structures that bring about the short- and long-term optimal mix of remote and in-office worker management.
Introduce new initiatives and approaches. New initiatives – such as ABM (account-based marketing) and PLG (product led growth) are game changers in two ways. First, they change specific functions (ABM digital marketing and PLG product ownership and management). Secondly, they can transform and enhance companies and businesses in many ways.
Guideline: The COVID era has ushered in these new ways of marketing and product management. Expand their adoption in your company and watch as your organization reaps all kinds of valuable benefits.
Document interactions religiously. Remote work performance has to be carefully and thoroughly documented. In other words, managers must track how remote workers and their accomplishments compare to their managers’ expectations and company goals. Also, do your own documentation. Don’t delegate this management tool no matter how mundane it seems to you.
Guideline: When friction occurs between remote and in-office workers (and it will), documenting the relationships, frictions, etc. will set you free – not tie you down.
Arrange for regular 1:1 in-person meetings. Regular 1:1 in-person meetings make it easier to remotely reinforce work standards, set goals and assess progress. As we return to “normal” business travel, the number of 1:1 in-person meetings are expected to increase.
Guideline: Plan and track these and other meetings to make sure you are scheduling regular facetime via Zoom with your direct reports, as well as in-person contact when possible.
Your mileage will vary … but it’s important that boards, startup leadership and managers understand that we are in a transition period. The COVID-driven paradigm – in which 100% of work was remote – is quickly fading. Replacing it is a model with a decreasing remote element and an increasing in-office component.
Whatever the new mix winds up being, the important thing is to be attendant to the needs of both remote workers and in-office personnel. Have some flexibility as these new circumstances shake out. After all, intelligently managing all workers requires will require that you make frequent adjustments. In many respects, however, the core tenets of good people management are still as relevant and effective as they’ve always been.
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Great article today in Bloomberg: "One Or Two Days In The Office Is The ‘Sweet Spot’ Of Hybrid Work". https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/one-or-two-days-in-the-office-is-the-sweet-spot-of-hybrid-work
Leading primarily remote teams for the past decade+ has led me to care deeply about messages in public channels vs private messages. Slack allows you to track this and I aim for less than 50% of messages being via PM. If you wouldn’t need to step into a private conference when in person why would you need/want to preclude the broader team?