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In This Edition - Remote Work Is Highly Dependent Upon Communication
The debate continues about whether companies should force folks back into the office or allow them to work remotely. This is the first in a series of posts where we will look at remote work opportunities, troubles, and the ways in which management can proactively determine if moving a job remote will be successful.
Remote work has been around for a long time. I recall in the late-1980s thinking to myself that at some point I would like to make a living and not have to go into an office. I had just spent the prior decade commuting at least an hour each way to work through Silicon Valley commute traffic and if there was an accident the trip could take up to two hours each way!
At that time, the most viable approach I found for making that happen was to work as an author where I could write books, sending and receiving drafts with my publishers from my campsite using overnight delivery services such as FedEx that delivered anyplace in the country. It worked! This is one of the reasons I became an author. I believed that the benefits of working fully remote were worth shifting careers. Looking back based on what we know now, I guess I was ahead of my time.
Perhaps it was because I had worked for several Silicon Valley startups related to improving high speed data communication that I knew the day would come when where we worked would be less important than what we accomplished when we worked. Initially, the problem with remote work was the limited number of places where high speed connections could be obtained given that the costs of obtaining a personal high-speed connection were prohibitive. Cable modem changed all that and offered the chance to get a high-speed connection to the home that rivaled that of a major corporation. This allowed folks to work from home and not feel communication speed limited, but the concept was still new. Few were doing it, and the norm was to go “into the office.
It was tectonic when cellular communication removed the wire completely but the initial speeds and costs for data were prohibitive until 4G/5G offered higher download speeds with unlimited plans and more complete coverage. Hallelujah for the mobile hotspot!
I just ran a speed test on my cellular phone and the results were 566 Mbps download and 25.7 Mbps upload! Just as a basis of comparison I ran the same speed test on my home internet cable modem connection and the results were 217 Mbps download and 22.8 Mbps upload speeds. Five years ago, who would have thought that Internet speed through a cellular phone would be higher than a direct wired cable connection to Xfinity? But I digress. This may be a topic for future posts.
Even though technology was no longer a limitation to remote work, management thinking, culture and adherence to norms held the remote work transition at bay, much to the chagrin of many of my co-workers and colleagues. Even at the University where I taught, we continued to offer, and I continued to teach, courses in-person, or “on-ground,” partially because the courses were set up that way and partially because some course and students lent themselves better to in-person learning. In other words, for certain topics the needs of the course and student dictated whether the course should be offered remotely or in person.
I always enjoyed the student live interaction, but I often struggled with the commute and travel schedule limitations involved with my being physically in Downtown Chicago on certain evenings. My consulting work often called upon me to travel and the time conflicts became too great, so in early 2017 I shifted my teaching online, revising my existing courses and developing new courses with no in-person component at all. I’m pleased to say, “It worked!”1
Then came COVID! We all know that story at this point. Companies really had no choice but to either shut down or figure out a way to make remote work functionally viable. It wasn’t pretty and there were a lot of mistakes made, but we made it. I believe management initially thought that life would go back to “normal” after the Pandemic subsided but something unexpected to most happened: Workers wanted to keep working from home! This was no surprise to me because there are tremendous personal benefits associated with working from home and giving them up after an extended remote work period is asking a lot. I honestly had wondered for years why remote work had not become more popular. The recent struggles between management and workers in navigating the return to the office indicate to me that some version of remote work is here to stay and workers are not going to easily give up their remote work life and work style. On the other hand, there are strong arguments for engaging in-person as well so balance is needed, and this will be covered in future newsletter editions.
As I see it, here is the question facing business leaders, managers, and employees in this Post Pandemic world. The question isn’t whether remote work will be part of the corporate landscape in the future. It will be. The real question is how does remote work fit into our future, when will it be beneficial or detrimental to business and employee performance, and how can we determine this in advance?
I will dig into remote work over the next few newsletter editions, and I hope you will come with me on the journey sharing these posts with colleagues wrestling with this important topic. The more folks we have engaged in the discussion the more fruitful it will be for everyone who needs to make remote work … work.
There is an argument that remote work isn’t the problem. Remote work may be shining a spotlight on a bigger problem that was minimized when folks were in closer physical contact which allowed for more spontaneous interactive communication. The problem is poor management communication.
Image created using Dall-E by Ed Paulson. I keep experimenting with this tool, but it does a poor job on proportions and hands. They always looks unnatural. Too bad.
When managers don’t know what they want from their workers and/or how they will measure their performance, they shouldn’t be too surprised when they get poor worker performance. There is a symbiotic relationship between managers and employees that is developed through their communications. Poor communication = Poor performance.
During a normal workday, workers and managers regularly send messages to each other, creating perceptions in the minds of the receivers, but they may not think of them as such. The managers send messages in the form of job descriptions, performance reviews, and periodic check-ins to see how workers are performing with respect to expectations, etc. For example, the job description typically details the deliverables (outcomes) that the worker is expected to accomplish. In this case the manager is the “sender” and the worker is the “receiver” of the message. When the worker completes the stated job objectives on time, to specification, and within the budget set by the manager everyone should be happy.
A good manager will want periodic updates as to how the worker is progressing toward meeting objectives. This is done through an employee reporting method of some kind. In this case, the worker is the message “sender” and the manager is the “receiver.” Workers send messages to managers updating them on their progress toward achieving their deliverables. These messages inform about the tasks that were completed, tasks that are in process, and tasks where assistance is needed. Again, if the employee is progressing as expected then everyone should be happy.
Notice that without an accurate understanding of management expectations the worker may, with the best of intentions, embark on tasks that are not desired by management. Additionally, without accurate worker progress status reporting and understanding the manager may develop a negative (or positive) perception of the worker based on inaccurate (or no) information. Do you see why effective communication is essential to successful team management? For leaders, managers, and workers, communication should be a core consideration and not an afterthought.
Many manager-worker relationships break down over misunderstandings about worker expectations and worker progress toward goals. To me, this is a lost opportunity that could be avoided if communication were considered an integral part of the manager-worker relationship.
Each worker objective will have a task (or series of tasks) that must be successfully completed to achieve each desired outcome. The manager wants to be kept informed about how things are progressing to make sure that the tasks will be completed as needed. Good managers will track progress along the way so that they can intervene, in the case of poor progress, to get things back on track before it negatively impacts group performance. As we all know, when people in a chain do not successfully complete their tasks, it affects everyone.
Chronic individual underperformance can impact group performance which can jeopardize careers. For this reason, underperformance is risky to the worker, the manager, and the overall organization and should be caught as early as possible. On the other hand, if the workers are fully engaged and completing their tasks as expected but the manager is not accurately informed of that progress, then negative judgements can ensue for all the wrong reasons.
My supposition is that the possibility of missing a poorly performing employee is a major reason why managers are hesitant to move to remote work environment. Their thinking: How am I supposed to know someone is underperforming if they cannot personally monitor their activities?
Being able to walk down the hall and check on someone’s progress requires less planning and forethought than developing a communication and feedback framework upon which everyone agrees. When a manager is accustomed to “winging it on the fly” with respect to managing workers, then remote work presents problems because remote work communication is limited when compared to face-to-face interaction. It’s much harder to wing it over the phone or by video conference than by grabbing a few folks for an unplanned meeting around the water cooler.
Here is a little homework to get you started on the path of improving your internal communications:
Start with an introspective review of how communication happens between workers and managers.
If you are a worker, how confident are you that you understand exactly what your boss expects from you?
If you are a manager, how confident are you that your team members clearly understand specifically what you are expecting from them? Additionally, how clear are you on what your team members want from you?
Next, take a look at how team members learned about management expectations?
Conversely, look at how team members inform their leaders about their progress toward meeting desired expectations.
Should you find out that there is confusion today and you are working in the same office where communication is relatively simple, then these problems will only get worse if you implement a remote working environment. These basis management practices must be cleared up first.
Next time I will offer some steps that you can take immediately to set up your existing management communication framework to be more effective, whether you have a remote operation, or not. The better your framework, the more successful you will be incorporating remote work into your organization.
#remotework, #highspeeddata, #communication, #feedback, #performance
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LEARN MORE ABOUT BUSINESS COMMUNICATION FROM MY “GETTING THROUGH” BOOK
New! Listen to Ed Paulson explain his latest book “Getting Through.”
(Short 3 minute YouTube Video)
To become a better communicator, check out my recently published book “Getting Through: A Systematic Approach To Being Understood” (ISBN: 9798987950807) available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other retailers. It is only 130 pages long and can be read in just a few hours. Those few hours will change the way you communicate long into the future.
Getting Through: A Systematic Approach To Being Understood (ISBN: 9798987950807)
From the “Getting Through” book description on Amazon:
“Have you ever wondered why you are misunderstood? Would it shock you to know that it could be HOW you delivered the message? Did you know that the media you use to deliver a message affects the way it is interpreted by others? That’s right! Texting, email, video conference, telephone, and in-person meetings are not interchangeable, but nobody explains that to us, so we are forced to learn the best way to use them by trial and error. Until now!”
“Getting Through” Makes A Great Gift To A New Graduate Or Employee
It has been shown time and again that those who are perceived as better communicators are more likely to get ahead within an organization. “Getting Through” makes a great gift to a person who is new to working within a larger company and required to use their communication infrastructure. By applying the methods detailed in this short book, employees can increase their communication effectiveness and decrease the likelihood of making communication errors that can negatively affect their careers.
What Others Say About “Getting through”
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Copyright © 2024 by Ed Paulson. All Rights Reserved.
By the way, moving a course online from on-ground is not a simple process if you want to do it properly. The same can also be applied to moving a job remote.
Interesting history of work from the nineties to the end of the aughts. Share some anecdotes with specifics? Aside from writing gigs, what else was working remotely for you? I’ll bet your publishers were doing remote work plans for their most significant creators: the authors.
When you say “Being able to walk down the hall and check on someone’s progress requires less planning and forethought than developing a communication and feedback framework upon which everyone agrees,” how did that manifest for you by the aughts?
I’ve worked from a home office since the early nineties. We needed to be better writers (email!) and communicators (phone) to pull off the work. My dog barking, whenever the FedEx guy rang the bell, always gave me away during a call. What glory, for a meeting-free day. Now, just calls (a la Zoom) instead of hoping the Timberfall Room was open for a meeting. Or that our co-workers could be interrupted by us, instead of them finishing that report.
Our ability to schedule flexibly now is more important than download speeds. Well, maybe not, considering how essential Zoom is. Keep us up to date with your specifics.