Leading and Working from Home
This is my WfH framework, a list of problems and an assortment of solutions that I used throughout years when working remotely, from home, hotels, planes, trains, and beaches.
The way I frame the overall problem that this framework aims to solve is: There was some kind of balance between health, sanity, relationships, and productivity. It wasn't ideal balance, but it worked, we were content with that. There were a lot of problems, but we knew how to deal with them. Now we have new problems, that we didn't account for.
The main takeaway is – have a list of solutions that you can apply, and be ready to iterate through them quickly, to see what works in your given scenario. If you listen to Silicon Valley, the mantra for the last 30 or 40 years is Fail Fast. So, do not expect these things to just work, cycle through them until you find something that works for you.
The inspiration for this framework comes from four major sources:
Senior management in large corporations – Senior management are kind of remote workers. They have stakeholders, investors, regulators, recruiters, peers, and other people who work from different offices and organisations altogether. This is mostly inspired by seminal “High Output Management” by Andy Grove.
Writers, Composers, and Photographers – Writers and Composers work from home a lot and work with family, they have to juggle a lot of things while communicating with their spouses, parents, and children that they have to work.
My personal experience. I moonlighted in University, I worked as a Freelancer, and I build a start-up in mornings while I had a full-time contract.
Random bits of information, from people and books.
Working from Home
So, you are working from home now, and for the near future. For some, it will be easy, while will be extremely hard for other people.
Shit that you will have to go through, it will be easier over time, but there is no magic:
Children are very good at reading emotions from adults. They don't know details, but they know stuff is happening. They will be stressed.
The people you live with, your children, your parents, your spouse, will spend a lot more time with you than usual. There will be arguments and maybe even fights. Work to resolve them.
Your home might be a horrible place for work. Hopefully, this statement is wrong.
Other people are just as uncomfortable with the arrangement as you are.
Desk is not a Holy Place
Try working at your desk, or a kitchen table, but don't think it's the only place to work. When I used to freelance – I worked a lot on my sofa, and to this day even when in office – I can abandon my space and go in search of a sofa to write that strategy, review that code, etc.
A desk is a preferable solution, but if it doesn't work for you - iterate through furniture in your place.
Try Different Self-Organising Techniques
If you think you need better organisation when Working from Home, and really need it, try various techniques:
Bullet Journaling – Simple paper-based To-Do management.
Getting Things Done – This book changed my life, but it's way too long for what it has. Do buy it, but skim through it.
Pomodoro Technique – Good for certain things.
Triggers by Marshal – Systematic approach to change your behaviour.
Block Sites
If you find yourself checking Twitter 50 times a day, consider blocking them. Btw, don't feel guilty for blocking news sites, if you find that they bring more emotions and anxiety instead of information and facts – they are not all that useful.
Every single news outlet is blocked on every single device of mine except Economist, Sky, and Guardian.
Start with something Numb
I tried for months, probably more than 6 months to start journaling daily. I knew that it’s an extremely productive and effective activity in my case, I did journal for 2 to 4 weeks at a time, and found it to be profoundly effective, but couldn’t make myself do it for longer than a month.
The way I solved it – was a two-step approach:
Create enough reminders. I’ve used reminders in my todo-app.
Start with something numb. I decided that I wanted to work on my handwriting, namely letters “S”, “G”, “C”, “E”, and “F”, and I just started every morning with tracing a couple of letters until I filled in a row
I now easily journal for 2-4 months at a time these days. So if you are trying to get into the daily regime – start with something that doesn’t require too much thinking, making a decision, or anything really. After doing something stupid for 3-5 minutes your brain will beg you to do something smart.
Do not Over-Plan
Do not start your day with 20 or even 10 things to do. Start a day with 2 things to do, and then add 1 more thing to do, and one more.
Unless you know that you are amazing at estimates – double your estimate, if you know that you are bad with estimates(like me), triple them. It’s better to underpromise and overdeliver.
Asking for Focus Time
I’ve stolen it from writers, as in people who write novels – communicate to your family, that you are at work, and not to be interrupted. Easy right? Well ok:
If it’s unrealistic to be uninterrupted for 8 hours, negotiate 6-4-2 hours. Start small.
Use visual queues, for example - switch the light on your desk, as an indicator that you can’t be reached, and need time to focus.
Use Pomodoro Technique, feel free to modify time, for example, 25 minutes of focused work, and then 25 minutes when people can interrupt you.
Schedule Breaks
If you are one of those people who can forget to eat because you dive deep and focus on your task – then schedule breaks. Put an hour for your lunch, and 10 minute breaks every hour. The last thing you need is to burn out.
Get into Regime or Don’t
So, it took me between 2011 and 2013 to get into a daily regime, so don’t expect to actually get into a regime, unless you already working on it, or have military training or something similar. If it doesn’t work for you – don’t stress.
Reminders
Find reminders that work for you. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I never see reminders by Microsoft. Whether it’s Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Teams, my brain knows how to ignore them. So I always make sure that I duplicate important meetings into my to-do app. Find what works and what doesn’t for you. Don’t be shy, there is nothing wrong with you, we all react to different stimuli, try:
Timers on your phone.
To-do apps.
Post-it notes on your computer.
Ask your spouse.
Ask your line manager.
Do what works.
Conferencing
Here is the thing – the way modern telecom software (the one we use for conference calls and video calls) work is that it tries to optimise the hell out of voice. That means that if you were silent for say 2 minutes and then started to talk, your first word or two will be garbled by optimisation algorithms.
Start with “So, so” or “Ehm”, announce to an invisible optimisation algorithm that you are about to start speaking, and then start. This also helps with letting other people know that you are about to interject. In real life, people can see you raise your hand, change posture, or raise your head.
Another thing – consider shutting down other applications, especially expensive ones, such as development tools, anything made or touched by Adobe, and Microsoft Office.
Health, Psyche, and Ergonomics
If you are using Laptop – Consider laptop stand or put it on books to avoid neck strain. You’ll need a keyboard too. Ask your employer to provide both, or to file it as expenses.
Make sure you have a good chair. Even better - consider changing chairs throughout a day.
Try not to work in your rest area and not to rest in your work area.
Be careful with cables and children. Consider using duct tape to make sure they don’t dangle all over the place.
Schedule breaks and chats with your colleagues. Do you have your “gang” that you go get coffee, play table tennis, or bounce ideas? Well, keep talking, find something else to do.
Ask your Employer to Buy Stuff
You might need noise-cancelling headphones, pillow for your chair, footrest under your desk, new keyboard, etc – do ask your employer to provide these things.
Things That Never Worked for Me, but People Advise Them
A lot of things never worked for me, but maybe they’ll help you.
Dress for the work. I’m extremely good at procrastinating in suit and tie. Dressing for work never put me into a working mood, also working in swimming gear was never an obstacle.
Make a schedule – I’m good with tasks, and I know I will accomplish them, but I was never good at following hour-by-hour schedules.
Microsoft has Skype channels open for people, they can join them and chat.
Make your bed – I mean seriously. But whatever, if it helps you, I’m envious.
Leading from Home
What's important to understand – is that your team doesn't have a level plain field. Some will have a home office set up, while others have to share a room with their children. As a leader, we have to understand that our team members will have a different set of difficulties, and deal with them in a more ad-hoc manner than we used to.
Some quick wins:
As leaders our goal is simple. We are there to act as a lubricant and make our team is able to do their jobs with minimal frustration, confusion, and blockers. Simple :)
Make decisions, if you feel like team will not come up with one, make for them, you can always change it, but decisiveness reduces overall stress.
Ask people to block their calendar, for any events they need to do. Lunch, or if they have to go for an appointment – ask them to mark it, so that larger team is aware when they are not available.
If a person has a family, ask them if they want to shift their day, maybe they want to start earlier, or later, to make sure that other family members do not disrupt them. There are four effective strategies that I cover below
You might even consider scheduling social time, 15 minutes of coffee breaks to catch up.
Schedule office hours, where people can approach you. This sounds trivial, and people can approach you anyways, but having it as a visible reminder for team members will help.
When working with a remote team, as a leader you have to make sure that objectives are achieved. Don’t just share current tasks, always communicate “Why” is this task being done.
Try to get logistic nailed down with your peers. If there is something to mail to your teams – make lists, and have a solution on how to ship small and large items.
Culture Will Change, It Is Already Changing
In his latest book – Ben Horrowitz stated (multiple times) that culture is a sum of our actions, and whether we like it or not – our actions and modus operandi changed, for some a little, for some drastically. This will have an impact on culture. Don't panic, but keep this in mind, and don't be surprised.
Shared Objectives
When everyone is in the office, you can see what’s going on, what’s taking extra time, and have more importantly, after some time working with your team, you learn to read the room, knowing if everything is alright.
Let’s say we have a demo to an investor next morning, and you want to make sure that certain section in your app is polished, you create a bunch of tasks:
Update compression on all the photos.
Make sure that all buttons use the same style.
Fix spacing between paragraphs to make it more consistent.
And let’s say, “Updating Compression” will actually take more than a day, maybe we don’t have photos any more, and have to find the owner, or whatever. Point is – if your team knows “why” are they doing it, they can suggest alternative solutions, or just drop the task that will take longer than expected, and pick prioritise work that can be accomplished in the given time.
New Context, new Yak Shaving
When I start a new product, a new team, or a new job – I have an exercise that I do first for 2 weeks:
I reserve 20 minutes in the morning in my calendar to write what I think we as a team will accomplish today.
I reserve 15 minutes in the afternoon, and another 20 minutes in the evening – to list things that actually happened.
Schedule repeat of the routine for next month, or quarter depending on how it went.
Did you want to change logotype on a home page? And then you realised, that designer doesn’t work for us any more, and the folder where new logotype located is protected? And then you need special permissions to get VPN access to the said folder? And you asked somebody to get it? But Security Officer tells them that they need 2 signatures from senior managers to get permissions?
And it’s all done, but they need a hardware key, which will be sent from China? Ah, no biggie? Funny thing…this is not even an exaggeration, I saw the simplest tasks snowball into abominations. Once I emailed CTO of a major global bank in frustration to get a password reset on tablet.
Checklists
You might find yourself in need for a checklist, I recommend following Checklist Manifesto, this book, if you don’t have time to read it, consider the following three things:
Items can be either Read-Do or Read-Confirm. Read-Do means, do after reading item aloud. Read-Confirm – well you get the gist.
Put things that your or your team can plausibly forget to do, don’t put everything.
Follow your checklists, simplify if they are hard or too long.
Stand-ups
Morning stand-up meetings become even more important. But in order for them to work remotely we have to make few adjustments:
Ask everyone to type their updates into chat software that you are using. The connection can be unreliable, and some people might be too shy to point it out.
Use chat, such as Slack, Skype Signal (if you are paranoid like me), Telegram, Microsoft Teams, or whatever drives your boat. I would only ask you not to use WhatsApp, don’t make people use software made by Facebook.
Have a list of people in front of you, make sure you don’t forget about anyone, and try to randomise the order. You can use note-taking software, such as Apple Notes, Microsoft Notes, or Google Keep, as shown on the screenshot below.
Example of how checklists for stand-ups could look like.
Shifting WorkDay
The different situation at home might make standard working hours less effective for some people, due to a family situation, or any other reason. Consider offering your team option to work hours the way they want. For example:
Start earlier, i.e. 07:00-15:00 or 06:00-14:00.
Start later, i.e. 11:00-19:00 or 13:00-21:00. Some people are legitimate owls, and might even be much more productive later in the day.
Siesta. i.e. 08:00-12:00 and then 15:00-19:00.
Or any other combination.
Office Hours
This is direct plagiarism from “High Out Management” by Angy Grove – if we think of an output of managers and leaders as Decisions and Risk Management – then we have to think on how to produce it. Regular office hours allows us a dedicated time when people can batch their questions, concerns, and other topics.
Everyone should be optional at this meeting if somebody would rather work, or doesn’t have anything to add – they don’t need to attend, but a leader should make themselves available.
Ask for Reports
Another advice from Andy Grove is to ask your team to write reports. He openly admits that he doesn’t read them all that carefully, and they are created mainly as thinking prompt – and exercise that makes people think about their work.
I would use this technique very selectively and carefully, you don’t want to look like you are being paranoid and distrust your people.
Praise People
You know those moments when you might tap somebody on a shoulder, or smile at them, or just nod. Well – that’s much harder when remote, so do praise them. If you find it hard, create a checklist or reminder, and ask – who should you praise today?
That said, be mindful. Different people, might enjoy public praise or not. Don't make it awkward by praising people who turn red publicly.
Calendar Software
Have you noticed that only about 25-35% of Software Engineers, Designers, and other Individual Contributors actually check their calendar software? I’m pretty sure most people attend meetings when they see two or more of their colleagues leave their desks.
You should expect the same in the first week, make sure you remind people about meetings.
Create Routines and Rituals
Friday - Coffee with a Team. Regular video chat. Send a newsletter to your team about the company every two weeks.
Talk to Compliance Officer
You will do a lot of new things, check in with your compliance officer whether new ways of working are in agreement with regulations.
In Conclusion
I hope this mish-mash of points, advises, and random knowledge helps you in these crazy times.