Managing performance in a prolonged remote work situation

As the Expansion Operations Manager at Lalamove, my job is to work with a ‘fleet’ of business launchers who are based over the world. I have made many mistakes and learned a lot while managing a remote team. I thought that in the current context, while more and more companies allow people to work from home, and even to work from their home country while the coronavirus crisis unfolds, it would be a good idea to share a few good practices. 

Hopefully, this will also initiate fruitful and instructive discussions with the readers! 

In a remote organization, people are at home, not with their peers, managers, or team, which means they do not physically experience the thrill of collectively working towards an objective. There should be realistic expectations that a remote team is not an in-office team, and people do not benefit from the natural momentum of the workplace. The (healthy) peer-pressure doesn’t come naturally in a remote team, although it is essential to collective performance. Some people can put enough pressure on themselves, but realistically, most of us would get more distracted when they are at home. Instead of 'pressure', let’s call it ‘self-motivation’.

How do you generate self-motivation in your team when people are remote?

• Entertain peer stimulation online: Your online communication tool becomes the town hall, the bullpen, where chitchats and meetings happen in a remote team. In a large team, the motivation that comes from seeing others do good work can be reproduced online in shared groups. Share frequent instructions for everybody at once, with precise mandatory deadlines. Rely on your most passionate teammates to create motivation in everyone else. Do your best to entertain those who are self-motivated and motivate the rest of the group.
• Enforce commitment, because there is a symbiosis between motivation and engagement, meaning if you are motivated, you commit more, and if you are committed, you get more motivated. Therefore, be very demanding in how reactive and participative your teammates should be to any post that comes on the shared group. Whether it’s someone publishing an interesting article, asking a question, or sharing some work, make it more or less mandatory to react with a thumbs-up emoji, and even to give feedback, or add a thank you note. Don’t let people read through the thread of messages brainlessly, or they will get distracted and mentally disconnect from work. Besides, this standard practice will push people to be more demanding to one another, and your teammates will be more careful to publish messages of higher quality, knowing that the group will be attentive.
• Do not be overly specific on the ‘How’. In your instructions as a manager, leave more room than you would usually do on the required methodology or guidelines to execute. Let people come up with their solutions instead of executing mechanically. Creativity will push people to think more, compare their work with others', maybe reach out pro-actively to their colleagues to discuss solutions, and eventually create higher motivation. Some of your colleagues may forget about their cup of tea; they may step up from their couch to pace on the phone with a colleague, making a call on the method they want to use to reach an objective, taking the risk of being right or wrong.
• Be realistic and positive. Consider the fact that a remote organization can't probably be as efficient as a non-remote one overnight (ever?). We can’t underestimate the benefit of an office environment, which is why it is preferable not to micromanage your organization as you transition overnight to a remote structure. By micromanaging, you tell your team that working remotely will be less performing, that you can't really trust your team when you're not checking on them and monitoring them. The better way to maintain performance is by being very positive in every interaction, encouraging flexibility and initiative, demonstrating empathy and trust. Create the will to collaborate more with you, to ask more of your recommendations, to get back to you on time. Showing a lot of enthusiasm in your communication is good for morale too.
• Finally, slow down your operating rhythm and focus more on planning. You can’t ask for everyone to be on the phone for an update at 9 am every morning in a remote organization. You need to be more flexible and try to bring people together at a more comfortable pace for everyone, to avoid stress in your team. A remote organization is less efficient by nature: with people working in different places and time-zones, communication gets way more expensive. When bringing the ‘catchup cycle’ to a longer timespan, a manager needs to spend more time on planning to cope with the lower adaptability of the workflow. A manager should probably embrace his ‘coordinator and planner’ responsibilities much more than his ‘trainer, facilitator, controller’ ones in a remote organization, spending most of his time trying to anticipate the workload and allocate resources accordingly.

These are my main learnings, but I am sure there is a lot more to consider to make a remote organization as efficient as it can be. As long as a good internet connection and a laptop are available, more and more companies are now allowing remote working practices, allowing employees to work from anywhere they please, and employers in getting access to many more valuable skills worldwide. Managing performance across such a structure will probably be more and more of a standard in the future. 

In the meantime, I hope that the current health crisis will be contained in the coming weeks.