7 QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD BE ASKING!

Remote Work & Digital Transformation

By Josue Sierra | www.linkedin.com/in/josuesierra

It’s important that leaders and managers

reframe the challenges to

leveraging remote talent or telecommuting.

Every business leader must do a reality check—and ask themselves key questions—in order to

stay competitive and digitally evolve regardless of whether you’re considering or further exploring

remote work.

Here are 7 questions

that might help change the

paradigm by which you

explore how to:

Take steps forward in your organizational digital transformation.

Improve your team collaboration capabilities.

Set up your organization to take advantage of remote-work capabilities.

The Opportunity:

As with everything in life, remote work does, in fact,

have both advantages and challenges

Part of being a leader or manager is learning to inspire teams and provide the digital tools to execute

successfully in order to achieve measurable results.

This is true whether your team is sitting in the same physical location or not.

CUSTOMERS

BUSINESS PARTNERSHIPS

VENDORS AND SUPPLIERS

MARKETING AGENCIES

FIELD SALES TEAM

THE REALITY CHECK AND PARADIGM SHIFT:It is highly likely you’re already leading people

who don’t sit in your same location

Are you providing clear, strategic objectives or priorities?

THE RIGHT QUESTIONS01

The biggest source of team dysfunction is miss-alignment or lack of clarity around objectives.

Author Patrick Lencioni argues that organizational silos occurbecause executives fail to give their employees a compellingcontext for working together--what he calls a “rallying cry”.

Without this context, everyone moves in different directions, often at cross purposes . This

results in conflict, breakdown of trust, and even resentment.

In his book, "Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable about Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues Into Competitors", Lencioni describes what every professional on a team knows--these team and collaboration dysfunctions and issues usually start at the leadership level.

"The problem is, they can’t do anything about it.

Not without help from their leaders. And

while the first step those leaders need to take is

to address any behavioral problems that might

be preventing executive team members from

working well with one another—that was the

thrust of [Lencioni's] book The Five

Dysfunctions of a Team—even behaviorally

cohesive teams can struggle with silos. (Which

is particularly frustrating and tragic because it

leads well-intentioned and otherwise functional

team members to inappropriately question one

another’s trust and commitment to the team.)"

Team health and cohesion comes from strong leadership with a clear vision of what matters the most.

“Strong teams are strong teams because they are clear on what

is the priority, and have strong

leadership that is engaged in setting the

direction and communicating it

often.”

~ Josue Sierra

THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

How can I improve communication across functions and teams?

02

All companies struggle with ensuring their leaders are taking the opportunities to improve interpersonal and team communication.

Every company needs to continually explore whether they are providing

the right tools to enable easier communication and collaboration

among teams.

Too many companies under-estimate the value

of soft skills essential to good

communication and collaboration.

Consider providing development tools and training in communication soft-skills, emotional intelligence and collaboration skills.

When you’re evaluating new hires or training programs, interview for soft skills, not only functional skills.

When you start identifying the challenges and opportunities, and start applying the right corrective actions, and providing the tools

for improvement, you’ll find that where the team members sit won’t matter.

This has the clear potential to open up new benefits and

strategic advantages for your organization in digital

transformation, as well as retention, recruiting, and

productivity.

THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

Am I mastering the technology tools needed to improve team productivity?

03

Even if you don’t have remote or co-located teams, your teams are

Most companies don’t use these tools as well as they could.

Most employees are not properly briefed or trained on these tools.

And many times, the tools or technology have not been set up correctly for maximum effectiveness and adoption.

Common Existing Challenges:

When you’re physically located in one place, team members likely develop behaviors to compensate for any gaps.

These behaviors could hinder your company’s growth and

productivity.

Making sure your tools are mobile-enabled.

Consider outside agencies and partners

when determining access needs.

Make sure accessing and logging in to these tools is easy while maintaining appropriate security levels is essential.

THE RIGHT TOOLS

TAKE STEPS TO ENSURE THAT YOU HAVE

THE RIGHT TOOLS, AND THAT THESE ARE

SET UP FOR MAXIMUM ADOPTION.

Poor collaboration capabilities and set up should not be an excuse to take a pass on remotely located employees;

rather, it provides an opportunity to address gaps in your technology tools that will ultimately help your

organization grow and improve.

THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

How can I help my team members build closer, stronger interpersonal relationships?

04

Strong leadership is rooted in effective followership and trust

building.

Leaders are faced with continuous opportunities to identify hidden relationship problems and to continue to grow and improve the relationships that exist.

Building interpersonal relationships does not come easy to everyone. Inevitably, you’re going to have employees who struggle building strong, close interpersonal relationships, but their talents and strengths make it worth the extra effort.

This is where investing in the right team-building gatherings is essential.

It is unfortunate that, when things get tough during downturns, relationship- and team-building efforts are

often laid aside.

When launching important or large projects, invest in the early team-building phase of the project and

plan for mid-way touch points before you get further into the

effort, and friction and emotions start running high.

Authors Kimball Fisher and Mareen Duncan Fisher talk about key practices that can help you build trust with team members over distance and suggest that there are various types of meetings that warrant face-to-face presence. Many, if not all, of these practices could help you improve relationships and build trust regardless of the type of team you’re leading.

THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

How can I build a culture of collaboration among my teams, and what tools should I be providing to foster better - and easier -collaboration?

05

Many people think of communication as the same

thing as collaboration.

Communication ≠ Collaboration

Every team leader needs to consider whether his or her team has the right tools to collaborate and share work output easily and effectively.

While it takes effective communication to have strong collaboration, one can do a lot of communicating and still struggle with collaboration.

You’ve most likely heard of popular new file sharing and collaboration tools like DropBox, and Slack or Salesforce Chatter. There are hundreds of different options designed to fit every unique situation and for companies of every size and budget.

Here is the bottom line: Email is not a collaboration

tool.

Companies and leaders that don’t understand this end up punishing their employees and teams with overloaded inboxes, and reduced productivity lost in managing excessive email volume.

The need to review "useless" emails and the time it takes to get focused again on important tasks.

The "deluge" of information that plagues organizations.

The "pile" of email that employees end up sorting through after hours

and the associated drain on employees' personal time.

Recently, Thierry Breton, the CEO of Atos, announced their intention to eliminate email as a communication and collaboration tool. In a Forbes magazine article, he is quoted as having outlined three examples of how email results in wasted time:

Thierry Breton also points to research showing that reading irrelevant emails is bad for concentration and that “it takes 64 seconds to get back on the ball after doing so."

THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

How can I provide team members with better structure and processes?

06

Does your organization have effective structures and processes to support your employees in their work? Or, if one of your key top performers leaves, do all the processes leave with him or her?

Regardless of whether you have remote team members or not, leaders need to ensure that:

that employees find them helpful and useful

structure and processes are formal and documented

tools to manage and enforce them are in place

The goal is not to create red-tape but to provide structure.

Don’t under-estimate the value of best-in-class project management practices, process-improvement tactics, and the valuable tools needed to support these.

Even if you’re running a small operation, having these in place early in your business development can provide a more effective growth runway and set you up for continued success in the years to come as a larger organization.

THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

How can I provide all employees of diverse personalities and interpersonal needs with the ideal environment in which they can thrive?

07

Many companies are experimenting with various formats and setups of their physical spaces, and there is

an increasing amount of data around the impact office spaces has

on productivity.

I’m excited to see organizations slowly turning away from the traditional “prime corner office” setup (that sits mostly empty because the executive is on the road a lot).

Whether you test out open seating areas or want to give different employees diverse options to foster optimal productivity, retaining top talent in today’s market requires proactive efforts in the area of work-space innovation.

For many of your employees, letting them work from a Starbucks will result in better output. For a working mom, knowing she can be steps away from her kids in a home office will give her the peace of mind to dedicate more effort to the company’s success.

Consider that no country, city or region has an exclusive lock on the variety of talent you’ll need.

Opening up your organization to remotely located employees can be a source of a significant competitive advantage.

Author Adam Heitzman concluded an Inc Magazine article about remote work by saying,

“The real takeaway is to be flexible in accommodating the needs of different employees to cater to their strengths and offer and environment of productivity, regardless of whether that’s in the office or out of the office.”

#StartWithWhy

I challenge, inspire & lead people and organizations to be more effective communicators and to better connect and engage their audiences utilizing digital tools.

ABOUT ME:

@jmsierra

linkedin.com/in/josuesierra