Speaker 1: Hi everybody, this is Liam Martin from Running Road, and in today's video, we're going to be talking about how to transition your company to a remote slash hybrid work model. So many people are asking me this type of question, and to be honest with you, it's a really long video. It's not as simple as a lot of people think. I know that everyone transitioned during the pandemic to quote unquote remote and hybrid work, but unfortunately not very many of them did it very well. So this video is the video that I'm going to make for everyone that asks me that question in the future, so I can just send them this video and I don't actually have to send them like 40 blog posts as an example. Let's get started. So first off, there's some broad stuff that you need to do in order to really make your remote work transition actually work. First off is you need to build an asynchronous communication model. Now I know a lot of you probably are thinking to yourself, what is an asynchronous communication model? Well, thankfully we actually have a video connected to that, which you can check out in the description and quite possibly it's going to exist up here for you as well. But fundamentally it is the ability to be able to communicate with your team and manage your team without actually speaking with them live. So asynchronous is things like email, instant messaging, process documentation, effectively almost like the Netflix model of work where you can consume the interaction effects of work whenever you choose as opposed to saying, Hey, I have to show up at 3 p.m. for this particular meeting and if I don't show up at 3 p.m. then I'm going to miss it and my boss is going to get angry at me. This is not the way that regular remote teams work. Really successful remote teams adopt an asynchronous communication model and you should too. Next thing is you actually need to pull and align your team towards an asynchronous model. A lot of people don't necessarily like asynchronous work. You have to really recognize who those people are and do course corrections as quickly as humanly possible to be able to make sure that everyone is aligned towards that goal. Next thing is you actually need to build and digitize processes into your company and if you don't have any processes yet, this is a fantastic forcing function to get you actually start building process. What do I mean by that? Well, inside of our company, we have a company handbook. Most successful remote companies have handbooks that outline absolutely everything that you can possibly think of inside of the company. So if you want to figure out how to sign your email signature, if you want to figure out how to do a demo, how to do marketing inside of the company, how to build code inside of the company, all of it is actually written and documented inside of these handbooks or what we generally call process documentation so that anyone in the company can have access to any of this form of information. And more importantly, anyone can learn that information without actually interacting with someone else synchronously. You see, this is the magic of actually allowing people to be able to have access to this information because that allows your organization to scale at a rate that you probably have never seen before in an on-premise or in-office model. Next up is you need to provide a reporting structure that actually allows for everyone to report their core numbers to everyone in the organization. Remember, ideally every employee in a remote company should have as much information as anyone else in the organization, including the CEO. So if you report all that information into one singular place, you should give everyone access to it so that everyone can consume that information. So if I'm in customer support, as an example, I can figure out how development is going. And if I'm in development, I can figure out how the marketing is going. And if I'm in marketing, I can figure out how sales is going. You get the idea. But basically it allows all of those pieces of information to exist on one single dashboard so that everyone has access to that information. And it really creates an environment that someone had just told me yesterday, which is like the ideal meritocracy, which I think is a fantastic way to define how remote work companies really operate effectively. Next, you need to start to meet about issues and not metrics. Metrics can be consumed asynchronously. Issues can't as they require debate. The vast majority of the time when there is an employee that isn't necessarily hitting his or her numbers, and we know that they could hit those numbers, it's usually due to some type of issue that is not directly connected back to the metrics. Stop wasting time on reporting metrics synchronously. Focus on actually communicating to your team members synchronously, and you will have a much more profitable organization. Also generally, you need to measure employee changes towards remote work and provide course corrections as quickly as possible. Is someone not getting remote work? Are there problems or issues that are arising? Address them as quickly as possible, because if you even let things sit for a week, it can generally end up in a problem that ends up basically moving out from that one individual, and you don't really want that virus to spread. So it's important to be able to knit that in the bud as quickly as humanly possible. So once you have your broad strokes all set up, there are some sins of remote team transition that you also need to pay attention to, as I just mentioned before, with regards to those slight course corrections. Number one, remote isn't just recreating the office remotely. It's a different animal altogether. You need to recognize that when you actually deploy a remote team, they're going to communicate differently. They're going to interact differently. They're going to do work differently. They're going to work on different work hours and probably in different areas. It's really important to recognize it is a different animal. It is not just recreating the office. So everyone needs to take a real kind of open concept view towards this new project and really give it the benefit of the doubt. This one's really hard for a lot of people to swallow, particularly ones that have existed inside of an office model for an extended amount of time. Remote work is not about communication, but instead the lack of it and sometimes less communication is actually better. And this is something that, again, really goes against everything that you'd learn in a classic MBA program, managers that have been taught that collaboration is always good and more collaboration is better. Not inside of remote teams, they've recognized that you can choose an a la carte model where you can decide to choose when you will collaborate synchronously. And therefore, once you've chosen that time, you've recognized that you can actually spend a lot more time just doing deep work and getting yourself motivated to focus on doing things that are going to move the business forward. I know for me, this has been something that has completely changed the way that I see work. And for anyone that can really adopt this, it is, in my opinion, the single fastest way to be able to grow your business. Next one, does time actually matter if they get the work done? I have this philosophy, which is not managing through presence. Most office environments manage through presence, show up from nine to five, but to be completely honest with you, the vast majority of those people that are in your office, they're actually just playing solitaire or going on Facebook or playing on their phone. They're not actually doing any work, but someone that maybe just shows up from nine and leaves at 12 may actually get more work done than the person that's in the office from that nine to five or even that nine to eight and think, oh, they're such a hard worker when in reality, actually just twiddling their thumbs, they're in the office. Just because you're in the office doesn't necessarily mean that you are working. You should optimize your productivity, not time spent on a computer. Measure engagement above all else. It is so important to be able to measure that and figure out, okay, what did you actually do with your time? Where did it go? And how can we make you more productive tomorrow? Next one, when you do meet, make it count. Everyone shows up on time, looking at the meeting details, ready to discuss the actual deep issues. It's important to be able to do this because if you don't do this, if you're not properly prepared for meetings, then the amount of time that you do meet synchronously is really fundamentally wasted. I am blown away at how many people can't requisition a paperclip inside of a company and yet they can have eight executives that are all six figures of pop sit in a room for an afternoon. I have looked around a room sometimes and I've just recognized, wow, this meeting costs us $1,800 an hour. And that's absolutely ridiculous. Focus on actually getting your work done when you do meet synchronously, make it as productive as humanly possible. Next one, company culture doesn't actually just happen on Karen from HR's birthday party. You need to look deeper at your company culture and what really binds the company together. It's actually time to look back at your company culture and ask yourself, what do you actually stand for? Possibly again, maybe you're doing this for the first time and take that time to really ask your other employees, Hey, why do you like working in this company? Why do you think that what we're doing is exciting in the next five years? If you're not working at this company, what will you remember in terms of accomplishments that the company created during that time? Those are the questions that you should ask and then build that into your culture document and get it to the point in which everyone really aligns with it in a fundamentally good way. The next one is you actually need to have a life for yourself and hopefully all of your employees and coworkers outside of work. Your social network shouldn't be your work network. Choose people who you want to hang out with and not just people you work with. This is very difficult for a lot of people because they just work at their work and then they go home to their families and there's nothing really in between. And to me, that's a real shame. And you should focus on building those social connections because those are the ones that are going to make you happy long term. So now that you're building your culture, you're adopting an asynchronous work model, you're doing course corrections as quickly as humanly possible. How do you actually know your remote team transition is going well? What should you actually look for? Well, here's a couple of things. What's your employee attrition rate? It should be lower than when you were in the office. So generally, if your employee attrition rate is going up, if more people are quitting than they were before you went remote, that's something that you need to take into consideration. Take a look at, figure out why those people are quitting either on an exit interview or even just call them back up if you're hopefully on somewhat good terms with them and figure out, hey, was it remote work that was really impacting this? Because it quite possibly could be, and you need to figure out a solution to that problem as quickly as humanly possible. In addition to that, what is your employee net promoter score? If you didn't measure it before you went remote, is it currently going up or down? I know for us, this is a really important metric. We measure this all the time inside of the companies that I work at and super important to be able to figure out are people happier or not as happy about your performance, the company's performance and their coworkers, particularly in a remote work model, because you don't see them every day in the same way that you do inside of an office. Really important to be able to get that data. Next up, are you actually meeting virtually more or less than when you were in the office? You should be meeting less, obviously, because if you had not heard up at the top of this video, I talked about asynchronous work and making sure that you are only talking about the important things, i.e. how is your life going? How can I make your life easier as opposed to just reporting on metrics and kind of just wasting a lot of time doing presentations for people? So focus on what matters. No one likes Zoom meetings. No one likes Zoom meetings. So give your team a break, cut as many as humanly possible and see what happens inside of your business. Next step is how often are you actually having disagreements with your team more or less than you were back in the office? If that's true, then that's maybe something else that you need to actually address. I have a rule, which is always assume positive intent, particularly for asynchronous forms of communication. So sometimes things will be interpreted incorrectly, but you really need to assume that positive intent and then just address that, say, hey, it looks like maybe this was an issue. Is there something that I can do to be able to help you with that? Or is there a problem that you have with me? As an example, I really want to see if I can address it and listen to you. Those are the things that are really important when you are looking at conflict inside of companies. And healthy conflict is good. Having a lot more conflict or disagreements than you had when you were in the office is probably bad. So you need to go back to your culture, you need to go back to your communication and really kind of figure out, OK, what's causing this issue? Next thing is who hates remote work right now inside of your company? It usually boils down to a few core categories. There are super extroverted people and they love the office. They have no social life and work is their outlet. They have kids and those kids don't have boundaries or they're a micromanager and really need to see everyone at all times. This is something that you're going to break them down into those categories and then you can actually address them all separately. I can make a separate video on that if you really are interested in it, because I've done it a couple of times, but I won't really address it for this video. Next up, people are having social meetings virtually and nothing is forced. That's a super important metric to pay attention to. We have a lot of people that do kind of like online game days, so they'll play like Oculus Rift virtual reality headset stuff or they'll play Cards Against Humanity or they'll do online gaming. And it's really just to socialize on like a Friday afternoon, as an example. And usually we never force that. No one ever says, hey, you have to show up to this particular meeting or you have to show up to game night. It's just something that is voluntary and some people show up and some people don't. But it's important to be able to measure that to be able to figure out, OK, are you moving in the right direction without forcing them to a point in which they're having more positive synchronous interactions with their team members? Next up, are you discovering processes that need to be built that you couldn't detect inside of the office? Are you building these processes? If you aren't detecting any of them, that's probably wrong. There's going to be a lot of new processes that come about when you transition to a remote or hybrid model. So it's important that you pay attention to what those are and start writing them down. And if you haven't actually detected any, you're either the best remote transition company I've ever seen in my entire life or you don't know what you're doing. You're probably the second one. So make sure that you're paying attention to those processes, building them into your organization. It's absolutely critical for your company to not only continue to operate, but also scale in the future. So did I get everything right here? Were there things that you thought you agreed with or disagreed with in the video that I just gave you? Put it down in the comments below. And if you like this video, please like this video. It helps out the algorithm quite a bit. And if you really like this video, why don't you subscribe to this YouTube channel? It is indeed free. And we talk about remote and hybrid work stuff all day long. See you next video.