As more companies are taking on green initiatives, many are looking to reduce their carbon footprint. In most cases, this means having less office space and computer systems to power. With the shrinking real estate for these companies, the employees need to have a place to call home when they are at work. For some companies, they also extend their reach into multiple locations or multiple countries. What these companies are doing are extending their workforce by kicking them out of the office and allowing them to work from home or other locations that are not their primary working office.
As a project manager, this changes how we would typically approach our projects. We now have multiple locations, different times zones, different languages, different cultures. How do we manage this new “normal” way of operating?
Certain rules change when we are working with remote resources. For example, as a project manager, we can gain access to people and resources in these remote locations. This increases our influence. The remote workers provide their thoughts and insights from their perspective which helps us to better understand the best methods for managing the resources and the project.
Workers at remote sites also provide us with a wide range of capabilities and experience. This is good since we are no longer dependent on that one resource with very specific knowledge of a process, but rather a much larger pool of workers with this knowledge and experience.
Many studies have shown that remote workers are more organized and motivated. This could be due to the fact that they feel more empowered or in control of their work environment. There is also the feeling of trust by their management, which further motivates them. Motivated employees often equates success for the company.
With remote workers, project managers can now turn their focus from all the activities to focus on deliverables. Activity management is difficult with remote workers and many project managers feel uneasy when they don’t have this level of control. If the project management tries to force this style on the remote workers, that motivation achieved by letting them work remote will dissipate. Trust and faith needs to be given to the remote workers and the corrective action should only be taken if the worker fails over multiple attempts. This, of course, is if the project can support the slack time this will require.
With less focus on activity management, the project manager now has time to forge the political relationships that will be required for upcoming tasks. This makes for a more productive and efficient project.
With remote workers, a different type of communication channel needs to be created. Remote workers tend to firmly believe in collaborative relationships, so a dynamic style of communication needs to be adopted. Social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google Wave, etc.) are complementary to this type of communication. They allow a project manager to reach out to the diverse project team as well as allowing the team to reach out to each other in real-time. Many software companies have developed applications that build on these principles but include many project management methods and processes.
Project managers need to spend more time listening to the remote workers. By listening, we can proceed to ask the right questions. Often, the project manager spends too much time talking because they feel that is what they need to do. Listening is the key to developing a strong relationship with the remote workers.
Yes, I know all I covered were benefits. With every benefit comes an equal challenge. My next entry will cover the most common and how we typically move around those. Until then……
David
Originally posted 2010-05-28 19:41:33. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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