Navigating the Remote Work Landscape

Best practices for remote (and hybrid!) work success

DEAR STAGE 2: What trends are you seeing around remote work/management? Our company is 4 years old and while we were a small, effective, remote team during Covid, we are now a team of ~75 people and it’s getting harder to keep everyone in sync. How are you seeing other CEOs handle this? ~MANAGING REMOTE WORK

DEAR MANAGING REMOTE WORK: You are not alone! The remote work set up is top of mind for many leaders today. There’s the public convo geared towards how awesome it is — productivity is higher than ever, it’s great for equality and you can access a much bigger talent pool. But there are other convos happening too and some CEOs don’t know what to do next. They feel they are losing out on culture, having trouble integrating new employees, questioning productivity, and just not having as much fun as they once were. 

I’ll also share that Stage 2 is a fully remote organization with team members across the United States. As someone who has always worked in an office, it was a big adjustment for me — onboarding into a new company post-Covid was not easy, and while there are many benefits to working remote, I often miss the energy of an office and acknowledge that there are many things that would move faster with a quick in-person convo. 

If you were founding a company today, my advice would be simple - pick a path, commit to it and make it great. There are trade offs, but if you make the decision from day 1 you can build an absolutely incredible, productive and engaged in-person OR remote culture - it just takes work. Replicating what you would do for in-office teams does not work and you need to rethink your meeting cadence, acknowledge that zoom fatigue is real and consider how you evolve your communication. 

But many companies were founded pre-Covid, shifted to remote, learned on the fly, and are now operating in a hybrid model which is incredibly difficult. 

To help dig into this evolving remote/hybrid culture, I called on Robin Daniels, Chief Business & Marketing Officer at LMS365. Robin has been an exec at companies including LinkedIn, Matterport, WeWork, Salesforce and Box, and has seen many interactions of the remote, hybrid and office build-out strategy. 

Robin’s bet? The future is remote. 

With that in mind, he shared a few best practices to make remote work the best it can be:

1. You have to be intentional with how you communicate, when you communicate, and set clear ground rules so it doesn’t become a free for all.

2. Remote does not mean alone. Loneliness and isolation can easily lead to unhappiness, disillusionment and more so offer options to alleviate this with co-working access, like WeWork, Radious, or other.

3. Do frequent check-ins to see how people are doing. Use video. Use phone calls. Use texts. Use weekly check-in platforms. Since you can employ MBWA (Management By Walking Around, made famous in the 80s) you need to do so virtually.

4. Flexibility is key. Trust that people will get their job done and that they will show up for the meetings that matter or the projects that matter, but don’t stress about keeping the 9-5 workday as that’s dead as a doornail, instead focus on the freedom your team can have, including you.

5. Get together when you can in teams or as a company in real life, maybe quarterly or once every 6 months. And when you do, don’t pack the days with lots of content. Use these moments to build bonds and trust between team members.

Whether you are remote or hybrid, we hope these ideas help you drive a strong and engaged culture. 

Until next week!