Lessons From Remote Management

Nadia Udalova at UXDX Community: Netherlands. Video: https://youtu.be/4rQmK7duM1M

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

GitLab and the question of remote versus co-located leadership

[00:00:03] Hi all. I'm extremely excited to be joining you at UXDX Amsterdam remotely today, from my home office here in Amsterdam. My name is Nadia Udalova, and I'm the product design manager at GitLab. GitLab is the world's largest all-remote company. We're 100% remote, with no company-owned offices anywhere on the planet, and we have over 1,200 team members in 67 countries today. My room is the place where I often work from, before COVID-19 and of course during it. Often I would try to go to co-working spaces to spend my working hours there. This helps me to add a little bit of creativity and fun to my day.

[00:00:46] In case you've never heard of GitLab before, GitLab is a complete open source DevOps platform. We help engineering, security and operations teams to build and deploy their software, all the way from writing and managing their code to deploying and monitoring it. We are used by more than 100,000 organizations around the globe, and we're extremely proud of that.

[00:01:07] In my team management experience of five years, I have gone through both types of management, in person and remote. Today I would like to talk to you about what the differences are between the two, what it means to be a leader of a co-located versus a fully remote team, and also share a few things that remote leadership has taught me.

[00:01:36] If you're switching from managing a co-located team to leading a fully remote one, you may be wondering: do I need to shift some of my attitudes and behaviors? What do I need to do as a remote leader to make sure that my team is as successful in a remote environment as when we were co-located? When I first asked myself those questions, I really needed to take a few moments to think about the differences. Are there actually any differences? I realized that people leaders, regardless of the type of team that they are leading, in general need to master the same types of skills: honesty, great communication, accountability, decision-making, delegation, empowerment, et cetera.

What the research says: communication and trust

[00:02:25] In my presentation today I will be using some data from Know Your Team software. This is a great place for managers to go and search for information on how to become a better leader. Check out some of the research that they're doing around remote management and in-person management as well. Know Your Team ran a study with almost 300 remote managers and employees to learn about remote management and how it's different from in-person management. What they found was that most people who work in both remote and co-located environments found the two to be only moderately different; 59% of people said that.

[00:03:08] Here is my question: are those leaders who work in in-person teams a world apart from the remote team managers? My answer here would be no. However, there are certain things that remote leaders need to deliberately focus on, and there are some things that you cannot survive as a remote manager without doing these days. There's a lot of information about how to transform to remote work and make the best of it, of course, due to the COVID-19 situation, so I will not spend too much time giving tips around this topic during today's talk. If you want to find more details, feel free to go and read my article about the lessons on remote management, following this button that I added to the video.

[00:04:04] If we were in a co-located environment having this talk today, I would be asking you what, in your opinion, is the biggest difference between managing a remote team and managing an in-person team. I'm curious what you would say. I think many of you would have answered correctly: it is, of course, communication. 30% of managers surveyed by Know Your Team said that how people communicate with each other on the team is the biggest difference between remote and in-person team management, and it is also one of the top three biggest challenges to overcome.

[00:04:40] For most managers who are used to operating in co-located teams, it can be really hard to adapt to other ways of communicating from what they're used to in a co-located office. For example, when you have a question, your instinct is to go and talk to someone about it, and definitely not to write it out. When you have a new project to kick off, you would hold an in-person meeting. However, in remote teams you cannot do that. You cannot have in-person meetings or just walk to somebody's desk to talk about it. You need to write it out. But how do you write efficiently? How should you use Slack? Should you use it all the time? How quickly should your colleagues respond to your messages? How would you communicate something less concrete, like values and team mission? And what about when you need to deliver some tough message or hard news to your team?

[00:05:36] According to the survey that I mentioned earlier, communicating effectively without in-person cues is the second hardest part of the remote manager's job; 15% of remote managers said this. The number one challenge, though, seemed to be building trust and rapport across the team. It is what managers should prioritize, and something that new managers most frequently overlook; 33% of remote managers said this, by the way. And managing individual performance while not being in person was the third most popular response for the hardest part of the remote manager's job; 8% of remote managers answered this.

How GitLab communicates: a single source of truth

[00:06:18] What can help us here, and how do we deal with it at GitLab? Of course, tools come to help. At its core, remote communication is around documentation, calls, videos and chats. It's about delivering a message or series of messages in a way that does not necessarily require the recipients to be available at the same time, and in some cases not even to be awake at the same time, when talking about different time zones. If your organization has no standardized methods of documentation, you have to establish that first. Otherwise your team will be left to determine their own ways to communicate, and they will create a lot of textual noise that's really hard to figure out.

[00:07:05] A common frustration in a large organization is the splintering of communication. Projects frequently end up being spread across emails, chats, text messages, unrecorded meetings, Google Docs, et cetera. At GitLab we have only one destination where all the product-related information is stored, and this is GitLab, the product. We store all feature requirements, epic information and milestone goals there, in GitLab the product.

[00:07:37] For business conversations, team check-ins and other calls, we use video conferencing software like Zoom. We always record those meetings for those who cannot be present, so they can watch the meetings after the fact and not miss anything. Any conversation that happens in the meeting is documented at the same time using the Google Docs agenda. It is really fun to see all of the team members that are in the meeting taking notes on the conversation that's happening during the meeting directly. It's really funny: you can see all these colorful cursors with people's names, and everyone in the call is accountable for taking the notes.

[00:08:22] Team and one-on-one conversations also happen in Slack; we have lots of channels for that. Again, if there is anything useful that was mentioned there, we always port it back to GitLab as the single source of truth. And if those conversations last too long, we usually just jump into a call instead. For team cohesiveness, building trust and having fun, we use video calls, as it helps to make it more fun. There are some other tools that we use at GitLab here on the screen, so feel free to go over those.

Lessons one and two: empathy and output over time

[00:08:57] But what are some of the lessons that remote management has taught me personally, and how did I learn to overcome those three previously mentioned challenges for remote managers? Here are a couple of lessons that I would like to share with you today.

[00:09:09] The first lesson is practicing empathy. Since you switched to remote work during the pandemic, have you ever found yourself in a place where you have sent a message to a colleague or your direct report, and after some time you're not getting any response, and you start to get worried? If you're a manager, you would be thinking: is your direct report even working? Are they taking a nap, playing games? Why are they not responding? During remote work it is so important not to allow yourself to go wild with those thoughts, and to teach yourself to practice empathy. Maybe your colleague is working on something important and does not want to be distracted at this moment, and they will come back to you later. Maybe they have gone out for a short time to buy some lunch for the family and will be taking time to finish the work after hours.

[00:10:13] With the remote way of working, that's totally fine, and that's okay. Our hours have shifted and the working day has become more flexible. One way for us as remote managers to overcome those thoughts is to create as many opportunities as possible to get those in-person cues with your team. Video calls and meetings are ideal for this, as they give you the closest fidelity to in-person. Instead of writing a long email to your colleague, ask if they can hop on a quick video chat.

[00:10:46] It is also important, before jumping directly into business talk, to ask your team: how are you doing? How is your family? How are you handling all-remote work? These questions may give you so much insight into why your report may not be reaching out immediately or not reacting to your questions directly, and will put you in the place of a human and empathetic leader.

[00:11:07] In a remote type of working, it's really hard to read people, and it's very easy to make wrong assumptions about how somebody is feeling. If somebody's message comes across as too short to you, assume positive intent. Maybe they've been quickly switching between emails, or maybe they meant to add a smiley at the end and simply forgot. Always clarify, seek understanding, and try to make sure that you and the other person are on the same page. As the manager, you also have to pitch this attitude to other people on your team.

[00:11:48] My second lesson is focusing on tracking the output and not the time. In co-located companies, managers are used to tracking the time by watching when employees enter the office until the time they leave, or walking behind somebody's back and checking what they are looking at at the moment, a webshop or the work application. Remote collaboration will force you to drop these well-learned habits and pay attention to something more valuable instead, like team output.

[00:12:16] You have to ask yourself questions like: is your team meeting the goals that you have posited for them? How are those goals being set? Is everyone contributing? Is anyone quiet, or does anyone need help? Time applied is not equal to the progress that your team is making, and it's so important not to conflate the two. As the remote manager, you have to kill this sneaking voice inside your head that asks, "Is my team working? What are they doing right now?" You can never answer that question truly, even when you are in person, when you are co-located, so why bother in the remote environment? Instead of becoming consumed by this paranoia, you have to remind yourself to focus on your team's results, and the path to that is creating the best environment for your people to achieve those results.

Lessons three and four: measuring results and building connection

[00:13:14] My lesson number three is measuring results and productivity. Similar to what we discussed just now, tracking your team's productivity by walking beside their screen to see how busy they are at the moment will not work with the remote location of people, and that's not to say this was ever a right way to measure your reports' performance. At GitLab we use KPIs and OKRs for tracking the team's output against the goals that we have set.

[00:13:43] Key performance indicators, KPIs, are a set of quantifiable measures that a company uses to track its performance over time. This is a super nice way to track company productivity, and KPIs can also apply to projects, programs, products and a variety of initiatives. Something that's better applied to measuring personal performance is objectives and key results. Those are defined as a metric that outlines company and team objectives, the O in OKRs, along with the measurable key results, the KR in OKR. Those key results define the achievement of each objective. OKRs represent aggressive goals, and they determine the measurable steps that you and your team need to take towards achieving the goals that you have set. If you're interested in learning more about those, read this amazing book, Measure What Matters by John Doerr, and you will learn a lot about how Google, Bono and the Gates Foundation use OKRs to rock the world. Here is the button to the book on Amazon.

[00:14:59] My lesson number four is building a strong connection with the team, and this is probably the hardest thing to do with a remote team. In order to build trust and work efficiently together, you need to make sure that you know each other, and this takes time and effort. It is much easier to do this in a physical location, as you can always meet for a drink after work and share some personal news. For a remote manager, it's very, very important to do this. Take some time to get to know everyone on your team, hold those one-on-ones, and try having them not only around work check-ins but also about something personal. Some people can be more reserved about discussing their personal lives, but you need to try and see where those boundaries are for each person.

[00:15:56] Dedicate some time to schedule some social fun meetings for your team, as ways to get together and talk about their hobbies, or play games, or discuss favorite animals, whatever they find best. At GitLab we have those fun sessions scheduled often, and they are recurring. Additionally, remote managers will need to invest some time and money in doing some sort of in-person team meetups. At GitLab we do this every year, and we meet with the whole company in one location to spend some time and to get to know each other. There is usually no work happening at this time; we are purely focusing on the personal connection. Here is an example of a group social call at GitLab where we had a hot dog theme, and this was a great way for our remote teams to get connected and bond with each other.

Lessons five and six: documentation and feedback right away

[00:16:57] My lesson number five is about effective collaboration. When you don't have all your team around you, you will unconsciously leave people out of some discussions and decisions, so proper documentation is very critical here to ensure that everyone is on the same page. We talked about this topic earlier, but I'm just reinforcing this message again here. By documenting these essential conversations, you're making sure that no one is left out. Therefore you have to practice documenting each meeting, decision and ritual, and allowing people to have access to this information.

[00:17:34] Here are a few important points to pay specific attention to. Make sure that all of your documents are open by default and shared via the cloud, so no local stuff, because this will not allow your team to get access to it. Make sure that content is easily searchable: use clear document titles, tags, et cetera. Spend some time setting up proper information architecture, so prepare and provide an example of folder structure and proper file naming. At GitLab we post announcements about new documents being added in the company chat, or we announce them during a call, to make sure that people go and make themselves familiar with the newly added information. And we always default to over-communication. If you don't say or explicitly communicate something as a remote manager, your team has absolutely no idea what you are thinking or what you are planning.

[00:18:29] My last lesson, but definitely not the least important, is delivering feedback right away. There is never a better time for feedback than right now, directly when the situation has happened. With the remote way of working, it's so easy to get carried away with other work and never come back to discussing the situation and sharing the feedback. Make sure that you reach out to your team member directly for a small debrief to agree on improvements. I also suggest inviting your team to participate in 360 feedback reviews. At GitLab we do those every six to twelve months, and this is a great way to ask managers, peers and possibly reporting staff to provide feedback on how they see your work, how they see your soft skills, and where you can improve.

Summary

[00:19:17] Whew, I know it was a lot of information, and probably not everything was new to you, but let me summarize a couple of important takeaways that I want you to remember. Good remote managers are not far away from good in-person managers. Great leaders do the same things, but remote leaders need to focus on some things a little bit more closely. Good remote leaders are great at communication, and they possess writing as a tool. Try to assume greater positive intent in communication, and look to establish more empathy in the absence of in-person cues.

[00:19:59] Focus on your team's output. Don't track your team's time behind a laptop as a way to measure productivity; it's a bad way. Trust your team. You hired them as professionals, so give them the opportunity to showcase it. Be more intentional about how your team members are connecting with one another and how you're connecting with them. And deliver bad news and feedback right away; this will help you.

[00:20:23] Remote work has made me a better leader, I truly believe so, and has taught me a lot of good lessons. I hope that my story today will help you too. I will leave you with some good resources about remote management and leadership, some of which I mentioned during today's presentation, but also feel free to connect with me on social media, and don't hesitate to reach out with any questions. Thank you.