Work Together Anywhere summary

Let’s say you’re a manager, and one of your team members approaches you about the possibility of working from home two days a week. What would your initial reaction be? Would you question her commitment? After all, everyone else seems to be perfectly happy to come into the office day in and day out. Or would you try to see the advantages of letting her play a more proactive role in optimizing her work-life balance? 

Despite some employers’ valid skepticism of remote work, mounting evidence suggests that organizations that refuse to offer their employees the possibility of remote work end up jeopardizing their competitiveness in the long term. 

You’re a hard worker, and everybody knows it. You get to the office, sit down at your desk, and stay there till lunch. And actually, since you eat at your desk, too, you stay there through lunch. You keep your head down, indefatigably working until the clock strikes 5 p.m.

“What a diligent, dedicated employee I have!” thinks your manager as you put on your jacket and wave goodbye. And then you’re gone, driving down the highway with the wind in your hair, Fleetwood Mac blasting from the stereo. 

Imagine you’re a baker, and your lifelong dream has been to open your own bakery. Sure, you know how to bake, but is that all you need to succeed? Well, you might need a space to bake in and sell your goods. In this space, you might need some equipment – an oven, perhaps, bowls, ingredients – things that were just magically there every day at the bakery you used to work at, but that don’t automatically come with the signing of a new lease. 

The same issues apply when changing from a co-located office position to working from your living room. 

Maybe you really are a workaholic, and for you, it’s more difficult to stop working than to start. One day bleeds into the next, and each morning you heat up yesterday’s leftover coffee and expertly traverse your bed-to-desk commute. 

There’s nothing so wrong with day-old coffee, but failing to establish a more disciplined routine can lead to overworking. It can also lead to extra distractions. For example, people you live with might not know when you’re working and when you’re not. While there are some superheroes out there, most people find it more difficult to concentrate with their two-year-old running around the room. 

As a manager, you may be worried about what might happen if you let your team out from under your nose. In fact, in one survey, 70 percent of managers said their greatest fears about managing remote employees concerned productivity, accountability, and reachability. After experiencing it in practice, however, the same managers said the most difficult thing about remote managing ended up being communication. Productivity ended up being far less of a problem than first feared.

What does this tell us? Well, it suggests that managing a remote team might not go exactly as planned. It’s therefore important to move your team to remote work slowly.

If you were hiring a violinist to go on tour with an elite symphony orchestra, what interview questions would you ask her? “Do you play the violin?” would likely elicit an immediate “Yes.” But just to be extra sure, you’d probably request that she demonstrates her skills. After all, it’s a performance-based position, and if she can play, she can play. 

All too often, however, when it comes to hiring new employees at a less musical company, such vetting techniques can be overlooked, especially for remote workers. Just as an applicant who lists Microsoft Excel under “Computer Skills” on his résumé might not actually be able to use spreadsheets in a meaningful way, the basic minimum competencies required to be a successful remote worker are often claimed by the candidate but not verified during the interviews.

If you’re sitting at your desk and you have a question about a report you’re working on, what do you do? Assuming your desk is in the same building as your coworker’s, you can just mosey on over and ask him yourself. But what about if you’re in different cities, countries, or even time zones? Sounds like a big problem. But it really isn’t. It just requires frequent communication through the channels available, be it telephone, email, video call, or apps like Slack.

In many cases, remote workers are actually easier to reach than their co-located counterparts, and part of working from anywhere means communicating clearly to collaborators about when and how they can contact you.