5 Tactical tips when working remotely, due to COVID-19
I’ve always been a big believer of co-located product teams, comprising of product, design, and engineering.
Living in NYC, I understand this isn’t a cheap option when you consider the cost of office space, commuting, and salaries in an expensive city. But I believed that relationships built in person are simply harder to replicate over distances and take a considerable long time. But with mandatory social distancing and business shut-downs as a result of COVID-19, what do we do? And is this just accelerating the remote work trend of the last few years?
COVID-19 work from home != remote work
It may seem to some that it’s obvious, but my last 2 weeks of working remotely quickly told me that this style of working from home is not the same as remote work. What are some differences?
Choice: Remote workers often talk about the freedom that comes from remote work. With a laptop and internet connection, you can work anywhere: on the beach, at your favorite local cafe, or while traveling. Even if you aren’t traveling and working, there’s the possible freedom to complete daily tasks without the hassle of daily commute. Want to drop off the car for maintenance or pick up the kids from daily care early? Remote work presented at least the possibility that you could do so. But COVID-19 work from home is different. It’s the opposite of choice. You can’t work from a cafe, they are shut down. You can’t leave to do errands. As for travel, closures for international flights and quarantine restrictions for domestic travel makes it difficult, if not impossible. Thus, the mentality of COVID-19 is very different from the freedom presented by remote work.
Childcare: If you don’t have children, especially young children, you may not recognize this. Remote worker don’t typically have to also be child-care and educator on top of their job. That’s because there are options such as daycare and schools. But with COVID-19, many schools and daycare are shut down. This means that remote workers have to provide childcare and become teachers. Multitasking and task-switching became exponentially more frequent, making collaborating with coworkers who don’t have children more difficult.
Technology Limitations vs. Change Management: If we get past the physiological confinement and childcare duties, now comes the task of tackling day-to-day remote work. You’ve got your video conferencing (WebEx, Zoom, Google Meets, Skype, BlueJeans), chats (Slack, Microsoft Teams, Hangout Chats, WhatsApp), emails, collaboration documents (Google Docs/Sheets, Microsoft 360) and the list goes on. But product manager knows that tools are only part of the solution. They rarely win hearts and minds if you don’t think about also changing processes and people’s habits. You can’t just slap on a video conference call to replace the previous in-person meetings, if those meetings feature activities that are physical. Examples of physical activities that may have to be re-evaluated??
How do you facilitate Q&A sessions or breakouts?
How do you draw or what replaces a whiteboard?
What do we replace with catered food or snacks
How do we give recognition and awards?
How do you gauge participation and engagement?
You can’t expect people to naturally adopt new tools if people’s mindset think about remote work as the same as in-the-office. Examples of changing mindset.
If I can’t tap someone on the shoulder for urgent requests, what do I do when I email or chat?
What’s the expectation of how quickly people should respond to different forms of digital communication?
What should be the norm if one person uses video call, but another person calls via a phone?
How do you react to internet connectivity or bandwidth issues?
How quickly can your organization and people adapt to change?
Thus, as product leaders, what can you tactically do with your teams during this time?
Don’t treat work from home due to COVID-19 as the same as flexible, remote work arrangements. While there are similarities in some actions, acknowledge the differences by discussing the above 3 with your team.
Be especially mindful of coworkers, especially individuals with young kids. This may require adjusting roles and responsibilities, delegating dues, assigning co-product managers. Knowing even who on your team has young children and if they have childcare and education responsibilities is a start. But I recommend setting specific child/parent time so everyone knows and block it on calendars.
Pick 3 frequent in-person meetings you’ve transitioned to remote and evaluate how they should be restructured. Do they need breaks that replaces the catered food? Do you need to nominate a master of ceremonies? Would it be better to take real-time notes that people can see? Would it be better to remove the meeting entirely with something else?
Define what is a quorum for meetings, if you experience technical difficulties such as poor audio, bad video, to missing individuals who have to suddenly get up to help their kid, pet, etc.
Reset project timelines and expectations. In the short-term, work for many individuals will become less efficient, even if it’s more efficient for others. That’s the nature of any newly introduced change. As teams work together for some time, set 30 minutes after 2 weeks to run a retrospective on what’s working and what isn’t.