Remote by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried
I recall reading Remote with the intention of bringing ideas to the management team at the time in order to set up policies / procedures for working from home.. unfortunately it didn’t eventuate at the time.
Just this week however (2018-06-05), I’ve finally had approval to trial working from home one day a week.. better than not at all! Will likely re-read at some stage this year.
My Highlights and Notes
By rationing in-person meetings, their stature is elevated to that of a rare treat. They become something to be savored, something special.
coming into the office just means that people have to put on pants. There’s no guarantee of productivity.
If we’re struggling with trust issues, it means we made a poor hiring decision. If a team member isn’t producing good results or can’t manage their own schedule and workload, we aren’t going to continue to work with that person.
Sometimes, distractions can actually serve a purpose. Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, they warn us—when we feel ourselves regularly succumbing to them—that our work is not well defined, or our tasks are menial, or the whole project we’re engaged in is fundamentally pointless. Instead of reaching for the video game controller or turning on soap operas, is it perhaps time to raise your voice and state the obvious?
You certainly don’t need everyone physically together to create a strong culture. The best cultures derive from actions people actually take, not the ones they write about in a mission statement. Newcomers to an organization arrive with their eyes open. They see how decisions are made, the care that’s taken, the way problems are fixed, and so forth. If anything, having people work remotely forces you to forgo the illusion that building a company culture is just about in-person social activities.
not every question needs an answer immediately—there’s nothing more arrogant than taking up someone else’s time with a question you don’t need an answer to right now.
Questions you can wait hours to learn the answers to are fine to put in an email. Questions that require answers in the next few minutes can go into an instant message. For crises that truly merit a sky-is-falling designation, you can use that old-fashioned invention called the telephone.
Forcing everyone into the office every day is an organizational SPoF. If the office loses power or Internet or air conditioning, it’s no longer functional as a place to do work.
One way to help set a healthy boundary is to encourage employees to think of a “good day’s work.” Look at your progress toward the end of the day and ask yourself: “Have I done a good day’s work?” Answering that question is liberating. Often, if the answer is an easy “yes,” you can stop working feeling satisfied that something important got accomplished, if not entirely “done.” And should the answer be “no,” you can treat it as an off-day and explore the Five Whys (asking why to a problem five times in a row to find the root cause).
The bulk of the hassle in adjusting to remote work exists as soon as you’re not sitting in the same office. The difference then between sitting in the same city, the same coast, or even the same country is negligible. Once you’ve formed good remote working habits, the lack of proximity between coworkers will start mattering so little that you’ll forget exactly where people are.
When the work product is out in the open, it’s much easier to see who’s actually smart (as opposed to who simply sounds smart). The collective judgment rarely even has to be verbalized. Conversely, if the work keeps getting flagged with problems, it’s evidence that the Smarts aren’t sufficiently present for the work at hand.
Remote work speeds up the process of getting the wrong people off the bus and the right people on board.
Start by empowering everyone to make decisions on their own. If the company is full of people whom nobody trusts to make decisions without layers of managerial review, then the company is full of the wrong people.
As a manager, you have to accept the fact that people will make mistakes, but not intentionally, and that mistakes are the price of learning and self-sufficiency.
If work is all-consuming, the worker is far more likely to burn out. This is true even if the person loves what he does. Perhaps especially if he loves what he does, since it won’t seem like a problem until it’s too late.
It’s much likelier to breed a culture of overwork if managers and owners are constantly putting in He-Man hours.
Divide the day into chunks like Catch-up, Collaboration, and Serious Work. Some people prefer to use the mornings to catch up on email, industry news, and other low-intensity tasks, and then put their game face on for tearing through the tough stuff after lunch.
Motivation is pivotal to healthy lives and healthy companies. Make sure you’re minding it.
When the walk to the office is literally five seconds, family folks can put in the hours with less guilt and less stress. That means better work, better collaboration, and, in the end, better business results.
Details
My Rating: ★★★★☆
ISBN: 9780804137508
Date Finished: 2016-03-13 / 2018-06-10 / 2020-06-10