Recently I conducted an interesting (written) conversation about organizational development and leadership. Some excerpts of that conversation I’d like to share here.
What elements of management practice or posture do I think are most important?
…for both co-located and remote teams?
In a team of experts, I as a manager most certainly am not the top expert on all things, most likely not on anything that they are experts is. So the practice of humility, of asking questions and being curious about what people bring to the table has always been essential to me.
Even more so, because for my previous job, in both roles I as the manager was the only computer scientist among mechanical, aerospace and electrical engineers, physicists, mathematicians, and alike, many of them with PhDs in their subjects. So acknowledging as a manager that you are not the best subject matter expert on everything is very important and also sets the tone for the whole team, appreciating and using each others’ specialties to the greater good.
What management practices or approaches do I think are most important in remote teams?
Then for hybrid teams of co-located and remote members, or pure remote teams, establishing transparency in communication to me always was paramount. Coffee machine talk is good, and has to be augmented with lightweight electronic channels. Making channel based chat communication the norm and getting away from internal email sending certainly has an important role in that.
Again, the leader models the way; only if I use the channel for all my written communication instead of email, the team will adopt that too. Maintaining an internal blog or intranet for documenting practices, changes and alike are equally important. I found this holds true for all sizes of organisation, be it on team level, division level of corporate level. It takes a while, but ultimately people appreciate true transparency and location independence of information and connection even when being co-located. Even more so for folks that in principle are colocated, but effectively are in the field with customers several times per month.
Also, for all direct reports I have been using 1o1s on a weekly or biweekly basis to keep in touch, and encourage all leaders to do the same. I position the 1o1 as their meeting, with the agenda set by them, often following a template that we agreed upon. And in some weeks, when there is really not much to talk about, it can be over in six minutes. And people do appreciate these 1o1s when clearly making them a service to the individual, not yet another duty on them.
Which companies do I consider having the best remote work and management practices?
From both conversations with employees as well as from reading about, I got a good impression of the following, in no particular order and without any intent of completeness:
- Canonical: remote first company, presence in many countries, great setup and readiness for remote work.
- Salesforce: legal presence in many countries, and good setup and readiness for remote work.
- Github: remote first company, wide presence in Europe.
- Atlassian: remote first company, with legal presence in many countries
- Automattic: fully remote company, with all systems in place for that.
As for practices for remote work and remote management, I consider the following as important:
- Employer branding. But not the shiny, website focused type of employer branding, but embracing the fact that everything leaders and managers do and every process the company runs is effectively part of the employer branding.
- Onboarding. A conscious, well crafted, central yet individualised onboarding has a great impact on the performance of every new member. Teams where the leader has a focus on onboarding, in my experience usually do better. I have a whole guide paper for both managers and newbies on onboarding containing non-obvious aspects.
- Transparency and check-ins. When not hanging out at the coffee machine together, people can feel isolated and loose emotional connection to the company. Encourage and foster multilateral communication, encourage discussions in the intranet, and embrace virtual office grapevine as a necessity for people socialising. Regular check-ins with team members should have the openness to also make issues in personal life a topic, since only then the leader, colleagues and eventually the company can accommodate, accept or support. Each individual has their unique and changing situation, in work space, internet connection, family, societal challenges, that play a role in how they perform.
- Vision and purpose. Whenever appropriate, and when in doubt more often, help people draw the connection between what they are doing and the purpose, mission and vision of the company. The sense of belonging does not evolve spontaneously, and especially for companies where employees do not see the products physically manufactured and shipping out on a daily basis, the sense of what the company effectively does, and why, can fade.
What is my ideal ongoing development approach for leaders and management, to grow their confidence and consistency.
For me, learning about Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory in a programme called Future Leadership: Organization designer for agile teams and enterprises was a very important insight. It does not have to be a multi-week session at once for all leaders and management, but over time educating them about what makes an organisation, and what not, is important. A lot of leaders in the corporate world aim to influence things they cannot influence, and thus learning about decidable and non-decidable decision premises has a great influence on how leaders focus their energy.
The word ongoing in the question describes it pretty well: leadership and management development is not done in one-time events, but in regular safe space exchange and reflection. So my approach does involve a framework with which leaders and managers can self-reflect their management practices, and share with others. Regular exchange forums in smaller and larger scale will then allow for gaining consistency across individuals, and also consistency within individuals over time. Being consistent, however, shall not be read as being static, but allow for development, yet without unpredictable jumps from occasion to occasion.
While some colleagues do like book-clubs, a book is always finite, and different pace of and time for reading varies among members, so often these fall apart quickly. Recommending specific podcasts, however, that are relevant to one’s specific role, and having a regular discussion on episodes can bring actual application of the stuff from the podcast into the work.
How can I drive colleagues to best use their personal development budget?
In all levels of experience, development goals can be identified and set, mostly by the individuals themselves, but supported by their respective direct manager, who is usually closest to them, and supported by organisational development by frameworks or directly. The goals of course shall be aligned with what the company needs.
These development goals, shall drive the best use of their personal development budget. A mixture of centrally provided programs and suggestions with proposals from individuals for sure can make for good progress on all levels.
It is generally assumed that employees would take advantage of the opportunity to take part in advanced training, but in reality this is often not the case. People always feel under time pressure, project pressure and thus indispensable in the daily hustle and bustle. That’s why plans and goals for further training alone are of no real value. As a manager, I also have to make it clear that further training is important to me, also by setting a good example and providing meaningful further training myself, both in self-study and in guided training sessions, and making both transparent to people.
In addition, I recommend taking stock of the programs that have been used by employees not only in my team, but throughout the company, and especially, of course, collecting feedback from participants directly after participation and a few months afterwards. This can help to increase the average quality of the training programs used.
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