Remote Management Models
Cultural or methodological change?
Following on from our previous article in which we addressed the issue of new operational models arising from remote working, today we would like to focus in particular on remote management.
By Management we refer to the way of planning activities in general (of an area, a team, a position), the processes of execution of activities, the organization and execution of initiatives and projects, the follow-up and evaluation of the progress of processes and projects, the solution of unexpected problems, and the conduction of improvements in general.
And thinking more in terms of area leaders, the question would be to ask ourselves how we should do all these activities in remote mode and what changes with respect to the traditional model; asking ourselves how we used to do this in face-to-face mode.
Or better yet, what challenges does the remote mode impose on us to perform effective area management?
The fact that 2020 forced us to work in remote mode does not necessarily imply that the management model was structurally redesigned. So, was there a fundamental transformation or did we tend to do the same thing, but in virtual mode?
We are convinced that the challenges will depend to a large extent on how we have been working, but we are going to reflect on some points that we think may be common to several leaders:
Planning and Organization: face-to-face meetings often made it possible to set up unscheduled team meetings, or to call collaborators to review or transfer a specific topic. Although today’s virtual tools offer a considerable number of advantages for meetings, saturating the agenda with virtual meetings (planned or unplanned) does not seem to be a healthy sustainable mechanism. This will lead area leaders to outline longer-term team planning schemes, considering objectives and actions and even establishing check points for each particular topic.
Control and follow-up: this would be the “how we are doing” and “how we did”. This point may be the one that implies the biggest changes. Because keeping abreast of the progress of the employees’ agendas can lead us to saturate their day with virtual meetings, e-mails and phone calls.
It would therefore seem important to rely on virtual tools that allow the shared visualization of project progress, process developments and indicators that define their progress.
It could be a good practice to suppress periodic and unscheduled contacts to the extent that they can be covered by the monitoring and evaluation tools mentioned above.
Solution of unforeseen problems and improvements: although when we talk about problems, we are not referring to those already known but to situations that arise in everyday life, it seems to be one of the topics that would represent the least changes.
On the contrary, all ideas for improvements in the area’s processes should, more than ever, materialize themselves as initiatives or projects that can be organized and monitored through the digital tools selected.
Returning to the reflection in the title, we should ask ourselves whether these issues represent merely methodological changes or are in fact cultural changes.
Today more than ever, it is necessary to seek efficiency in team communication and prioritize meetings (virtual and face-to-face) focusing on the strategic orientation of the area, general work guidelines, coaching, motivation and integration.
While virtual communication tools (meeting rooms) are great in terms of the solution they provide, they are limited by the saturation of people exposed to screens for hours at a time, every day of every week of the year.
Everyone will reflect on their own methodologies and work cultures, while we leave the following reflection: 2020 forced us into remote mode, 2021 gives us the possibility to design our best remote mode…let us not let it pass us by.