Lisette Sutherland - Work Together Anywhere: A Handbook on Working Remotely -Successfully- for Individuals, Teams, and Managers

LISETTE SUTHERLAND and K. JANENE-NELSON

foreword byJURGEN APPELO

Copyright 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

ISBN 9781119745228 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781119745259 (ePDF)
ISBN 9781119745242 (ePub)

Cover and interior design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt (www.erinhiatt.com)
Photo of Lisette Sutherland by Jos Ignacio de Juan
Photo of Kirsten Janene-Nelson by Jeremy Lindston Robinson

GENERALLY stated, to work remotely successfully calls for a particular combination of tool set, skill set, and mind set. More specifically, different settings and contexts call for different combinations of tool set, skill set, and mind set. To help you determine which combination best suits your needs, this book is organized into four parts to guide yoube you employee or employerstraight to the information that will help most now, whether youre just considering working remotely, ready to start out, or perfecting your game.

If the concept of working remotely is new to you, begin with EXTRAS are geared toward those uncertain of just how to be effective in the virtual realm; there youll find both answers to frequently asked questions and an at-a-glance view of some essential benefits of working on-siteas well as how to replicate them online.

expands the scope to discuss wider concerns: how to work well for yourself, as well as how to work well with others.

EXTRAS cover how to hire remote employees.

EXTRAS is the Managers Action Plan, which consolidates the action steps discussed in the individual chapters.

Following the conclusion chapter, the extensive RESOURCES section identifies where to head next, whether you seek details on the plethora of technology & tools available or need more ideas on a wide range of topics, from etiquette and HR to icebreakers and Retrospectives.

Another note: because much of the material relayed here applies to a variety of readers and situations, there is some necessary overlap. So, some information appears in more than one spot and in more than one way. As it happens, those points of overlap emphasize the most important aspects of how to work together well, and so are worth repeating.

Join me in exploring the wonderful world of remote working!

TODAYS meeting with my Agility Scales team was a good one. In the first five minutes, we discussed the most fashionable carnival costumes for our kids. (This season, its LEGO ninjas, apparently.) The discussion was part of our mandatory chitchat ritual, which both forbids us from immediately diving into work mode and challenges us to be more human and personal with each other. For five minutes.

After the chitchat, we had a vigorous discussion about how to describe the nature of our online product, as well as what terminology to use to best explain it to our customers. We also talked about the priorities of new product features, the role of our user community, and several important decisions we had to make. It was a delightful conversation, one in which everyone participated equally and which felt like a strange mix of marketing and existentialism.

We finished the meeting after precisely one hour, which is how we like it. As usual, we finished with our return on time invested (ROTI) ritual. At the count of three, everyone signals how useful the meeting was by holding up between one and five fingers. Everyone rated the meeting a fiveexcept Kirill, who offered a four. An almost-perfect rating! We joked that wed never invite Kirill again, and he joked back that he hadnt been invited; he had just shown up to annoy us. A big laugh followed, and then I clicked the LEAVE MEETING button.

I took off my noise-canceling headphones, put away my Android tablet, looked around the airport caf to see if anyone had stolen my stuff during the meeting, and then gathered my belongings to go and find my departure gate.

I am a remote worker. I can do my work anywhere.

In my opinion, work is something you do, not a place where you go. This attitude requires a particular way of thinking, a different approach to organization, and a bit of planning.

Where do you keep your documents when your office is wherever you happen to be? How do you work as a team when you rarely get to see each other face-to-face? What are the best tools for online meetings, schedules, workflows, design, and development? And how can you do your work when youre in an environment thats not conducive to focused, creative thinking?

The world of business is not used to this style of working. In fact, the terms that people in normal companies use for my kind of work life are all inept, in my view. Why do they call it remote working? My company has no office, so theres no central place for me to be remote from. And whats the deal with virtual teams? Is our team not real because were not physically colocated? And dont get me started on IRL (in real life). I think I enjoy more of a real life than do most office workers, who are slowly dying between four gray walls.