Tag: collaboration

Trust is key to successful distributed work

You can't successfully operate in a distributed/remote work model unless your organization is built on trust.

So many teams and companies are wrestling with questions around if and how to continue some version of distributed/remote work, now that public health concerns may not require it any longer.

Unfortunately, these conversations often focus on the mechanics of distributed work or in-person/distributed hybrid models: how many days per week, schedules, locations, finances, technology tools and more.

These are important considerations, but without a culture of trust to start, it's like choosing the color of a bicycle that has no wheels.

Managers and supervisors need to trust the people they manage and supervise. If you don’t trust that your people are there to do their best for the success of the organization, and to figure out a way of working that fits their needs and their role or team's needs, no amount of remote work tools or tips are going to help. If you don't empower and enable people to thrive in their work, and acknowledge them when they do, a distributed work model will lead to poor performance, isolation, resentment and worse. (Tip: this is also true in in-person work environments.)

Individual contributors who work together need to trust each other. If you don't trust that your co-worker is doing their best to balance the long-term interests of the organization and their role with their own health and wellness, no amount of communication tools or stand-up meetings is going to help. If you can't be gracious and generous with your co-workers around flexible scheduling, stepping away or taking time off when they need to, offering support and encouragement, and expecting all of that for yourself as well, then a distributed work model will bring out the worst in your professional interactions and relationships.

Is it okay to "trust but verify"? Is it okay to have systems of check-ins and measurement and reviews? Sure! But these should be built on the assumption that the people being verified, checked-in on, measured and reviewed are doing their best to fulfill the goals of their position in the context of everything else going on in the organization and in their personal lives. Instead of being about punishing or scolding, they should focus on offering guidance, direction, constructive feedback, support and encouragement — again, trusting that people are there to do their best work for the long run, and helping them get there.

What if you don't have that trust? What if the people in your organization assume the worst about each other's intentions? What if you can't possibly imagine letting a co-worker decide for themselves, in consultation with their team and stakeholders, what work environment, practices, schedule, tools and timelines make the most sense given everything you're trying to accomplish together? Then there's no way you're going to be able to thrive as a distributed team, or maybe at all, until that trust is repaired or rebuilt.

Can a team work effectively in a distributed model without trust? Sure, for a while. But it comes at the expense of mental health, job satisfaction, a sense of ownership, productivity and long-term engagement. The work will eventually suffer, the people will eventually suffer, things will break. This is not the way to build or grow an organization. (Tip: this is also true in in-person work environments.)

Successful distributed work requires trust. Without it, everything else may be a waste of time.

Disclaimers, notes and further reading:

  • No, I'm not saying that in-person organizations are inherently operating without trust. Nor am I saying that the proper alternative to distributed-without-trust is in-person-without-trust. So many in-person organizations have come to equate "at your desk looking busy" with "high performing hard worker" and we need to unlearn those unhealthy models about what trust in the workplace looks like.
  • If the people you've hired don't seem trustworthy, then you may have hired the wrong people, but it's more likely that you or someone else set a bad example that everyone else is just following. Figuring out what can be salvaged is hard work, but it's essential. Abbie Moore has a great article on how to get started rebuilding trust.
  • One way you can build trust is by frequently delegating reversible and/or inconsequential decisions.
  • I personally don't think hybrid models — some people colocated in an office, some people remote — work well or are sustainable.
  • Power works differently in a distributed organization. Lean in to those differences.
  • You can't have real trust without transparency. Default to having everything happen out in the open, including how you make decisions, handle conflicts, learn from mistakes, document progress. If it's not uncomfortable, you're probably not being open enough.

Photo by Belinda Fewings

Are you working around someone?

Krohn Cactus 1Not every person can do every job or thrive in every role they end up in.

Sometimes people lose interest in their work, get promoted beyond their capabilities, or didn't have the skills/experience to be a good fit in the first place. That this happens at all may speak to some area for improvement in the way people are hired, trained, reviewed or promoted in a given business or organization, but it's also an inevitable part of how companies and not-for-profits made up of humans change and grow.

When someone isn't a good fit for a role, the important thing is how the organization handles it.

Unfortunately, I've seen all too often that some organizations don't handle it at all. Instead, they leave everyone else to work around the mismatched role or problematic behavior. At best this wastes an opportunity for helping someone improve and rearranging "human resources" to better fit the needs of the business or organization. At worst it saps morale, leads to otherwise high-performing people leaving, costs a lot of money and significantly decreases the effectiveness of the organization overall. Working around someone who isn't right for the job does a disservice to them and can be toxic to the life of a business or organization.

So how can you tell if that's what is happening? Here's a list of signs I've seen in my experiences that might mean you're working around someone:

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How to decide whether to join a volunteer board

Dinner Party DessertIt's an honor and a privilege to have volunteer opportunities to use our time and talents for the betterment of our communities. One common opportunity is to serve as a board member at an organization you care about and whose mission you support.

I've written before about things you might consider when leaving a volunteer board of directors for a non-profit or other community organization. I've also had some good conversations recently about the process on the other side of that kind of community involvement, deciding whether or not to say "yes" to joining a board of directors or taking on some other leadership role. For your sake and for that of the organization, it's important to do some research and reflecting before accepting that invitation, to make sure your involvement is a good fit and that the experience will be rewarding for all involved.

From my experience, here's a list of steps to take and questions to ask when you're considering whether or not to join a board of directors:

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Rediscovering what you already know

J.C. Penney Co. store downtownI see a surprising number of organizations and businesses that suffer from the malady of reinventing basic business processes and rediscovering tools and resources they already had, at the expense of using up valuable staff time and straining relationships with their customers and constituents.

Sometimes this reinventing and rediscovering happens because there's been a change in staffing, sometimes it happens because people just don't bother to write things down.  But I'm amazed at the "shortcuts" people think they're taking to work around those cases:

  • We couldn't find our username and password to manage our website domain name, so we just registered a new one and re-printed our business cards.  Problem solved!
  • We forgot that our last IT person already had a Facebook page setup, so we setup a new one and then asked everyone to like the new page.  Problem solved!
  • We're not sure where the source design files are for our marketing brochure, so we'll just design a new one.  Problem solved!

Meanwhile you've lost a bunch of would-be visitors to your website who still have your old business cards, halved your population of Facebook followers, and wasted someone's week on solving a problem that was already solved.

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The power of the agenda setter

In every organizational conversation, there's some process for setting the agenda of what the conversation will be about, and how it will be conducted.  Usually there's a subset of the organization's members who set that agenda - sometimes just a single person - shaping the issues and decisions that the organization takes on.

In a non-profit organization board meeting, it might be the Executive Committee or the board chair.

In a small business, it might be the business's owners or managers.

In a city council meeting, it might be the President of the council or the group's political majority.

In a community of faith, it might be church elders.

Sometimes we forget the power that the agenda setters can have.  We focus on the outcomes of the conversations that we do have, but we forget or overlook that some conversations aren't conducted in the first place.

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Mini-Book Reviews: Sex, Genius, Spying and Cyberwar

I haven't been reading at the pace I want to but I've still be able to squeeze in some books here and there.  Here are some mini-reviews of a few of them:

Sex at Dawn
by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá

Sex at Dawn is an honest and thorough exploration of the history of human sexuality, and what that means for how we understand our sexuality today.  Written by some folks who have clearly done their research, it's part anthropological study and part cultural critique, and it's got plenty of witty humor sprinkled throughout.

Let's be honest, it's easy to take the history and meaning of sexuality for granted in a society that throws images and talk of it in our faces left and right - "surely things have just always been done this way, right?"  And there's so much pressure to understand, have and be good at sex while also maintaining an extremely nonchalant approach to being a sexual being.  But whatever you think you know about why and how people have sex, why monogamy is held up as a moral imperative in modern culture, and how other cultures and species around the world treat sex and sexuality, you should be prepared to be challenged and entertained by this journey through human behavior.  I certainly was! Continue reading "Mini-Book Reviews: Sex, Genius, Spying and Cyberwar" →

10 things about my approach to business management

DIY pen construction - finishWe try to keep Summersault LLC as "flat" as possible, with minimal hierarchy and focus on authority relationships, opting instead for collaborative roles and even aspirations of a tribal staffing model.  But in my role as "Principal," I still end up taking on what would traditionally be called a "management" relationship with other staff.

Recently, as a part of getting ready for some staff training, I tried to write down 10 things that might be helpful for a new member of the team to know about how I approach this role.  For better or worse, I now present them to you.  I don’t necessarily expect you to think that they’re good practices; I offer them as self-reflection, not advice.

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