People Before Tools: Creating a Better Remote Working System

by on January 3, 2012 in Organizations

Stop whining and start hiring remote workers. This is David Heinemeier Hansson’s advice to companies in need of tapping into a wider talent pool. And on the surface, it’s fantastic advice. It’s becoming increasingly obvious the world is highly interconnected. Technology makes communication and collaboration nearly instantaneous so geography is no longer a barrier to getting things done. But if this is so, then why in the world haven’t most businesses caught on to this? Why do company execs make trips to places like Silicon Valley to try to attract workers to their home towns? For the reason that Hansson fails to mention: most companies have absolutely no idea how to operate effectively with a remote workforce. 
 
If it were only so easy to just wake up one day and proclaim: “My talent problems are solved. I’ll hire the best from anywhere in the world! And I’ll give them all the collaborative tools they need. What could possibly go wrong?” 
 
I can’t argue with Hansson’s and 37 Signal’s success. But I’ll wager it took him and his business far more than a day to get current on remote working practices (which is his simplistic advice for getting started). And I’ll bet their structures and cultures needed to support remote working didn’t take shape over night (likely they were baked in from the beginning). And therein lies – in no small part – as to why most companies still operate with a primarily local workforce:  
 
 

Remote working means significant change (read: disruption) to business.

 
I’m a great advocate for hiring remotely. I even think it’s a worthy idea to allow a local workforce to work wherever they’re most comfortable and productive. We don’t need to be sitting in our assigned seats at the office any longer to produce great results. Times have truly changed and I think this is what Hansson was getting to in his blogpost. But none of this can be possible without changes within the organization to create more flexible work systems. That means changes to not just how things get done, but how people think and interact socially at all levels of the business. 
 
In your experience, what has worked and what hasn’t worked to create a successful remote working system?

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About Chris Bailey

Since I was a kid, I've have been fascinated by the concept of work and how we choose our distinct career paths. My own career path has included work in nonprofit membership, customer service, career coaching, entrepreneurship, and marketing. I'm currently working on writing a book called The Alchemy of Soulful Work. Learn more.
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JoeCascio
JoeCascio 8 pts

I commented on that very post, saying that a lot of what holds back remote workforces, at least in knowledge-based enterprises, is management insecurity and self-justification. But it's also some curious cause-effect feedback loops in organizations and offices. Offices need to be managed in large part because it's working together in the same physical space that causes a lot of the problems that need to be managed. If people aren't in the same physical space, a lot of issues just go away, reducing the need for management oversight.

Also, attempting to centrally plan and perfectly coordinate every person's contribution so that no time is wasted and no mistakes are ever made is what causes most of the wasted time and mistakes that require yet more planning and coordination to remove. (It's so ironic that free market corporations internally resemble nothing so much as a centrally-planned communist dictatorship :).

Open-source projects have always operated in a distributed, remote fashion and are successful because the people who actually control what code gets into the releases aren't concerned about "being in charge", "keeping an eye on people" or "eliminating redundancy".

So I think all the talk about tools and culture is secondary. The thing that will most encourage remote work is for managers to get over themselves and take a chance.

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ChrisBailey
ChrisBailey 5 pts moderator

JoeCascio Really appreciate you adding your perspective, Joe. And I think you're right. It does start with management and a change in their mindset. In order for a business to align culture and systems need to make remote work successful, there needs to be management buy-in.

But once management does cast their buy-in, they can't leave the success of remote working up to chance hoping that it'll all just "work out." That's a recipe for disaster and one I've seen play out far too many times to count. We'll label it as Doomed to Fail. That's where the culture, process, and systems are so important.

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JoeCascio
JoeCascio 8 pts

ChrisBailey Yes, people have to agree on what modes of communication they'll use, but my feeling is that this too can be overanalyzed and thrown into committee where 8 different departments have to sign off on it as is usually the case in corporations.

There are so many options for people to use nowadays, all it takes is a little bit of experimentation and people will find the path of least resistance. Again, I'd point to open-source as a model. Usually people end up using what the project initiators use and it all seems to work just fine. What's interesting is that 37signals developed their products by designing distributed working tools for themselves.

I would be very interested to hear about your experiences where lack of planning led to a disaster with remote working.

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  1. JoeCascio.net » Blog Archive » On Remote Working says:
    January 3, 2012 at 5:26 pm

    [...] Chris Bailey published People Before Tools: Creating a Better Remote Working System, which was a commentary on a previous post, Stop whining and start hiring remote workers, [...]