Join John Barker, a veteran in virtual CIO advisory services, as he breaks down his tried-and-true method for setting up a remote work environment that not only thrives but excels. With experience in managing a global remote workforce of over 450,000 users, John shares invaluable insights and practical steps to create a dynamic, cohesive, and productive remote working space, especially for those in the tech field.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• John Barker's extensive experience in managing a successful, completely remote workforce.
• The reality and potential of remote work in the technology sector.

1. Seven key steps to structure a highly efficient remote team:Setting measurable individual and team outcomes.
2. Implementing a centralized dashboard for transparency and accountability.
3. Utilizing a public communication platform for cohesive teamwork.
4. The importance of one-on-one communication.
5. Balancing remote work with occasional in-person interactions.
6. Focusing on results over mere activity or time tracking.
7. The concept of not strictly tracking work hours but focusing on critical tasks.

• Debunking myths about productivity in remote vs. in-office work environments.
• Critical commentary on the current corporate trends of returning to office and its underlying reasons.
• Empowering insights on building trust with employees and enhancing their work-life balance through remote work.

Episode Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

01:30 Benefits of remote work in tech

04:00 Step-by-Step Guide

08:30 Tackling common misconceptions

12:00 Corporate trends

15:30 Key takeaways.

Recommended for: Professionals in the tech industry, team leaders, managers, and anyone interested in setting up or improving a remote work environment.

Follow Us: Don’t forget to subscribe for more insights and join us in the next episode where we delve deeper into the evolving world of technology and management.

John Barker here for Titan of Tech virtual CIO advisory services.

And today I want to break down the seven steps I used to set up

remote work perfection for teams that I've run yes, it is absolutely

possible to create a dynamic.

Cohesive, productive environment for a completely remote workforce.

Yeah.

Now, obviously not everything can be set up for remote work, but if you're

definitely in the technology field, which is whether you run a tech company or

you work in tech, this is aimed for you.

You absolutely can set up a remote work environment.

Now, before we dive into the steps, you may wonder, what do I possibly know about

setting up a remote work environment?

Well, let me explain.

I ran previously to COVID a large program that had a completely remote workforce.

We had a worldwide footprint with over 450, 000 users that we were supporting.

And my team was also part of other organizations teams

that we collaborate on.

Where everybody was completely remote.

Everybody was completely remote.

So this is not pie in the sky.

This is something that I've actually done and have done it successfully.

The clients were ecstatic with the amount of support and

the way our teams functioned.

The ingenuity and the creativity they were brought, brought to the, the

platforms that we were supporting.

And again, nobody ever saw each other.

Very rarely did we ever get together.

It was completely a work in my, a remote work environment.

So.

Let's start diving into how to set this up for your organization and also dispel

a bunch of the nonsense that's out there because there's a lot of these Fortune

100, Fortune 500 companies, the CEOs are, are bringing people back into the office.

You're seeing some smaller places want to mimic or imitate them,

but it's a bunch of garbage.

It's a bunch of nonsense that really doesn't have anything to do with

productivity, but we'll get into that toward the end of this presentation.

So, let's define.

Remote work first.

It's not strictly just work from home.

You can do it from a coffee shop.

I've done it.

Do it from the beach.

I've tried it.

Internet connectivity is a little flaky there, but definitely done it from a

beach house or even grandma's kitchen.

You know, you're home for the holidays.

We just got over that.

You know, as I'm recording this in January 2024, Thanksgiving,

Christmas, New Year's, at grandma's house, baking some cookies, got

your phone up, got your laptop up.

No problem.

This does not necessarily mean Strictly working from your own home

office, it truly means to be able to be transient, you know, being able to

get a high level of productivity, get everything done, but not necessarily

just from one other location.

That's just not a central office.

The other thing, too, is this may not necessarily mean it's a flexible

schedule for a lot of people.

Yes, it absolutely can be.

If you've got stuff where you get up early, I like to get up.

Pretty early work for a couple hours, then go work out that, you know, that

works for me, other people, you may have to still man a support center or a

call center, something along that line where you still have to find work hours,

you're just able to do that from home.

So maybe a flexible schedule, maybe not.

So it's just one of those things to keep in the back of the mind

when we're starting to talk about what exactly does remote work mean?

So let's start diving into some of the steps that I used to structure

the teams that I had in play.

So we actually were performing at a super, super, super high level.

So the next, the first thing is everybody's got to

have a measurable outcome.

So this could be at the individual level, or this could be set based on the team.

So they're kind of usually be to each, each individual person would have their

own key metric that they have to do, and the team would have goals to set

out that they would have to accomplish.

We want to sit there and keep that toe 1 to 3, maybe 1 to 3 for each

category, 1 for the individual.

You know, you got somebody that's more skilled, they can do more.

And also 1 or 2 for the team as a whole, because you want

everybody to still have that.

That singular point, that singular goal that they're aiming for.

So it's one of those things to keep in mind, because what

gets measured gets managed.

And we want to make sure that we're always trying to increase the productivity

that we're doing, and also keeping the quality up at the same time.

Speed for speed's sake, and just to get stuff done, it's not good.

What do you think all the support centers are awful?

You ever call one of them and you get put on hold forever?

The answer is you get bounced around and all that kind of stuff.

And because, because the person on the other end of the line is getting

tracked because their call was one second over what it was supposed to be.

Yeah, you don't want somebody sitting on there and giving you their life

story for 45 minutes, but at the same time to have an arbitrary

number just to speed through stuff.

It's not good for quality, and it kind of gets everybody irritated.

Everybody's in a rush, and the customer at the end of the day is not happy.

So you've got to remember that Parkinson's law work expands to fill time.

So a lot of the stuff is going to be time based when it comes to productivity.

But at the same time, there's a, there's a balance in there that you're gonna

have to experiment with over time.

The second step on here is centralized dashboard.

So after you've defined what your team as a whole and as the individual,

the couple of metrics that need to be tracked, They, you need a place

to put them in these to be publicly publicly visible to your entire team.

Some sort of web based, you know, it can be a Google sheet that

is shared amongst your team.

It can be something that is completely accessible by higher level managers.

As well as every single person on your team and nothing should be hidden that

keeps public accountability because nobody wants to be the weak link kind of gamifies

scorekeeping in the job and if people, you know, nobody wants to be that last,

you know, that bottom producer also it shows who needs maybe additional training.

Where things are kind of slipping through the cracks and also by

having a centralized dashboard, it keeps just dumb meetings down.

I found that this really cut down on standardized meetings.

The length of time we may still have had some remote meetings, but instead

of them taking 45 minutes, maybe it was 10 minutes because all of the

key metrics that we're tracking.

And if I could click on them at any time of the day, there was

nothing hidden from anybody.

Which also led into a public communication platform so people could sit there

and communicate because we were having an operation that was 24, 7, 365,

there was no days off for anybody.

So we had an open source platform that was free, that kind of was our centralized

dashboard as well as communication.

So our team members could talk to each other, but you can use something

like slack or discord to just to keep up to date with the projects, ask

questions, particularly for those things that are non vital, something

that other team members have.

Accessibility to not everything needs to be one on one private communication.

You want to build that cohesive team when they don't have face to face, they need

a way to talk to each other as a group.

Maybe somebody has experienced something that would affect every other person on

the team, or maybe there was some sort of oddball situation that that threw

out there that they need to describe the situation and get feedback and

input from other members of your team.

Having one of those, a public communication platform, absolutely

critical, critical to keeping your team cohesively working together when

they're not sitting shoulder to shoulder.

You need to have one to one communication.

A lot of the platforms we mentioned before, discord.

Slack, you got email, zoom, those types of things as the manager to

set up those times when you need to have one to one communication.

One of the things that I always did was stay in touch with

my strongest performers more.

Those are the ones that usually brought the little more creative solutions.

They were recognizing patterns of things that were starting to degrade

and they're like, Hey, here's ways we can improve this, or this

isn't starting to work anymore.

And so I would spend more time with them.

To get those inputs so we could push the programs that we're working forward

and bring new ideas to the table that would make things better for everybody.

Now, one of the other things we're going into after you've got your

communication down with your team is you may want to get together in person.

You may want to set up a quarterly meeting that you bring everybody in or I usually

did twice a year if it was feasible for everybody to get together again.

Our operation was 24 7 365, so it was kind of hard to get.

100 percent of everybody together, but it was one of those types of

things that we did do that option.

So people could go and hang out and do fun, but the, one of the

things where it wasn't forced fun, definitely do not do forced fun.

Don't be an ass about it.

Don't sit there and force somebody to come in on an off hours when they're

supposed to be off, not supposed to be working to do and make sure this is

done on company time on a company dime, because there are so many times that

you've Maybe you've seen this in other companies, even in, in person where it's

like, all right, now we've got to go do this thing on a Saturday for four hours.

I'm going to drive an hour and 40 minutes because somebody thought this would be

cool to set together and it's that thing of it's not mandatory, but it kind of is.

Yeah.

Stay away from that stuff.

You want to put a company event together and I would say the, usually the outside

exception of that is maybe a, a Christmas holiday party type of situation, but

just your random event in April because you want to get everybody together.

Maybe it's cool.

Maybe everybody will enjoy it.

Make sure it's not forced fun in the, in the process.

The other thing too, is not just tracking motion.

Activity has nothing to do with results.

Activity has nothing to do with productivity.

Activity is just activity.

So you want to make sure that the work being done aligns with the company's

goals, aligns with those key metrics that were defined, and somebody is not sitting

there doing a lot of stuff that doesn't integrate into what the overarching

mission of what you're supposed to do is.

So it's one of those things.

There's, there's tons of tracking software out there.

I've seen and heard, I've seen this personally as well as heard

about it from others where let's say you're using Microsoft teams

as your communication platform.

Well, teams will color code who's online.

So you can sit there and say red, they're busy or do not disturb

yellow is maybe they're away green.

They're actively online.

And I've seen managers who absolutely had nothing to do, and they were

just plain awful were sitting there tracking, Oh, they're yellow.

Now.

Oh, they're red.

Now, you know, type of stuff to try to determine if that activity had anything

to do with them actually being productive.

They were sitting at the computer doing this.

It's, it's absolutely a waste of time, particularly with the bulk of

your probably going to be working in a small business anyway, set up key.

Again, going circling back to that key tracking, what are the metrics

that the people need to be doing to accomplish the goals and missions of

the organization, not just tracking motion, not just tracking activity,

which feeds into the last thing.

Now, it didn't really, it didn't play for most of my team when we were doing remote

work, but it was don't track the clock.

And what, here's what I mean by that when you're working on the network

engineering side of the house, there are those times where, yeah, maybe

it's a 9 to 5, something along that line, but you've got those periods

where the system's got to come down.

Somebody is going to have to work at an off hours time where there's reduced

capacity on the system to patch the system, or maybe they're deploying

code new system into the updates.

And maybe that's something that you have scheduled every 2 weeks.

Instead of making, you know, that thing of, Oh, no, somebody's worked

40 hours this week, but they're also going to have to stay, you know, the

night to work another five or six, don't just track the clock track.

What needs to be done?

There's a thing in project management called critical chain path.

And what happens is you literally cannot do the next thing until

the previous work is done.

So if you've got people on your team that cannot literally move

forward because they're waiting for that next milestone to be hit.

Cut them loose, let them go, because they're going to end up making that up

and probably then some, seeing that on way too many projects, tech projects

to deploy where it's like, Oh, hey guys you know, I just take Thursday

and Friday off because we're, we're going to have some long days next week.

Don't just sit there and have them sit there for the sake of sitting there

because somebody arbitrarily said.

Don't just track the clock.

And these are things when I was working for other organizations

that I would just do on my own.

People saying this now that may have worked for me or didn't realize that.

But again, my team had the productivity, the results, the

client backing, excellent ratings.

To back up the steps that I put into place that others were trying to emulate.

And this was kind of the steps behind the secret sauce behind all of that stuff.

Now that you've got those seven steps and follow those, find

what fits your organization.

Let's talk a little bit about some of this nonsense you're seeing in the

news and other organizations about.

Coming back to the office that this, this, the companies are sitting there

going in person is more productive.

That's a bunch of junk.

There are so many HR studies that are out there.

There are so many other reports from layout, you know, your entrepreneur

magazine, things of that nature that have done studies on this stuff in person does

not make things more productive in person.

It's just another way to work.

Matter of fact, most studies say the opposite.

That's because there's no, if you just bring your bike to the office, there's no

guarantee that they're sitting at their desk just because you physically know

that they badged in on the system and you can see, oh yeah, Tommy's here today.

Great.

He must be working.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't.

Again, it comes back to what's getting done.

It comes back to where you can go back to Tommy and go.

Hey man, these, these five things were due, you know, and none of them are done.

So what difference does it make where they're doing it at?

Exactly.

So there are, again, there are software out there where there is some extreme

tracking going on that would make it to me a hostile work environment.

I was reading some information about some financial institutions that

you had to turn your web camera on.

You had to turn your microphone on.

There were every little action, how much your eye movement was on your computer

screen, how much your conversations were, everything was being tracked.

And if you fell outside of whatever the norm was, you

could get reprimanded for that.

That is absolutely not a place I want to be in and has really

nothing to do with productivity.

You want something like that.

That's where your AI robots are going to come into play.

That's going to be where that type of stuff goes because I don't know about you.

I'm not a robot.

I can't sit at the computer without having to get up and move around a little bit.

Another one is another reasons behind.

I think it has a lot to do with boosting real estate value,

particularly in your cities.

I've seen studies and reports there, San Francisco, in particular, one of the most

expensive cities in the country, if not the world to live in, a lot of their tax

revenue is dried up because real estate values are down because the occupancy

rate of those buildings Is empty.

So it's one of those situations where they're trying to get businesses.

You gotta bring your people back into the office to boost that real estate value.

'cause they wanna get that tax revenue in there because that million dollar

that, that building that was worth a million dollars, you know, before covid

may now be worth 7 50, 600, 500 depe because it's being vacant all the time.

Another reason for these return to office companies that don't want

to do like announced layoffs, they know that by forcing people to

come back into their office, it is going to make them lose employees.

That is something that they want.

We're seeing this all the time in the tech sector now.

So many tech companies are laying people off.

Now your big guys, your fortune 500 probably.

It may go strictly a little bit into the plan.

They're more likely to sit there and announce, you know, a 5

percent workforce reduction of 10 percent workforce reduction.

But you're also seeing this as another way to get some attrition within the

workforce and make them cut and run.

And I think the last thing, and I think this has more to do, I don't

know about the large businesses.

But definitely your smaller ones, it's your insecure leadership, the ones that

feel like they, the people are not being as productive if they can't touch them

on the shoulder and do their thing.

It's a bunch of garbage.

Those are the type of places.

If you're seeing that type of workforce, and I've seen that in about three

different places, you need to cut and run.

You need to go look for something else.

So hope that helps use my seven steps, structure your remote team that way.

You're going to get the results you're looking for.

The trust will build with your employees and the benefits that they're going

to get from not having to commute.

More family time, more downtime is going to pay off because

again, we're not robots.

We're not, you know, yes, I think we're here to to provide value to the world

and to your families, but it doesn't mean you have to sacrifice everything

for a bunch of nonsense people that don't know what's going on till the next one.