Align Remotely

You've had a few months of sliding by with your remote team. You've installed the basic tools. You've dissected the evolving situation with stakeholders, customers, and team members. But now, you're ready to adapt to the situation. It's increasingly unlikely we will ever return to a world of work like before.

If we're being honest, there were a lot of assumptions we made in 2019 which were tenuous if not misleading. For one, most people assumed that team productivity summed up individuals' productivity. If that was true, adding more people to a project would always bring in the dates. There is little point in pressuring employees to meet individual targets. It increases their anxiety and their chances of making mistakes. Now that we're working remotely, it's even more obvious that's the case.

Team dynamics are much more important when remote than when working in-person. Teams want to stay productive, not just grimace, grunt and survive.

In turn, managers want to unblock their productivity. And make sure that each person remains motivated. And for sanity's sake, everyone still wants to work. To ship. To hold on to the remaining scraps of our reality from before the pandemic.

This book will help you and your team of knowledge workers transition to a remote-only team format. By focusing on systematic re-alignment and patterns from flourishing remote companies. At all levels.

Consider this book a permission slip. Muscling your way through what you'd originally planned will only get you more stuck. Your previous assumptions may imprison you, if you aren't methodical. If you need to, let yourself and your team off the hook. Reassess your strategic plan and budget. Because honestly, that will be the fastest path to thriving in a crisis. 

Instead, position your team for maximum productivity. Figure out the best way to spend your time together, now that everything has changed. Take into account all the details you are aware of. Clarify what needs to happen. Earn buy-in. And make it all happen. Together.

In this book, you will learn:

• Why you need to realign your teams when shifting to remote only
• How to track productivity in real-time using an operational heartbeat
• How to run successful meetings, ones where you arrive at good decisions quickly
• Why obsessing with Gantt charts blinds you to true progress, and what to do instead
• Why you can often fix erratic behavior with a structural issue, one that's hidden in plain sight
• Why remote work requires a different work breakdown than what's acceptable in person
• Why remote management problems stem from differences of opinion about one specific topic
• Why working harder, harder, and harder when going remote becomes a trap
• How to reduce the number of meetings everyone attends while increasing team productivity
• How to use the limitations of distributed solo-working to bolster team output
• How to maximize team buy-in to the company's strategy
• How to shift your culture to one of greater accountability, respect, and inclusion

All without hiring, firing, or late-night phone calls with HR at headquarters.

Alignment is the key to keeping your sanity when things are moving a million miles an hour. If you are doing exactly what you should be, you are patient, clear, and productive. You naturally get into flow. You know what to say and do at any given moment. You achieve effortlessly.

Your mindset spills over to a team level, even during a crisis. You coordinate and communicate to achieve something meaningful. Align execution with strategy. It is the key to the same patience, comfort, and confidence for teams. And companies.

The fact of the matter is that crises often help people come together. And to help each other out. Now, more than ever, you need to open your eyes to see what is happening. To lean into your company's strategy. And to align it with what actually happens on everyone's screens at home.