As I wrote this, we are in another week of the general lockdown in Washington state for Covid-19 and just found out that it may last another month. While that makes sense medically, this is hard for businesses.
One of the major activities of a business is planning. No business can last long with planning for the future.
I always grew up with the direction for a business that if you didn’t have a clear and compelling strategy, the business cannot succeed.
With this major pandemic, it becomes impossible to plan. The slightly good thing is that all businesses are in the same place as all your competitors cannot plan either.
However, I also grew up with the business dictum that we should always be ready to manage with business ambiguity. How many times have you made a business decision without all the facts? For me, it is 100% of the time. I never have all of my facts when making decisions. I would like to have all the facts before a decision is made but that is not real life.
The worst decision you can make is to do nothing. Making decisions can be hard so sometimes I have put off making them “waiting for information”. Unfortunately, that is not a good choice. Doing nothing is a choice.
I had great advice from an executive 20 years ago who told me to just make a decision and start moving. Then, as soon as I find out it might be a wrong decision, then pivot and go off in a different direction.
We are in the middle of Covid-19 and making decisions are almost impossible. Not only do we have ambiguity but we have the uncertainty of this Pandemic.
Working from home is tough. I have done it for so many years, it is not an issue but I do remember the early days and the tricks I used to help me during the day.
Realize the Change
I realize this sounds silly but you need to understand your world has turned upside down and ignoring that impact will hurt you. Fess up to yourself that you have been hugely impacted and you can start getting on top of the problems of remote work.
Routines
I am a man of routines because I am so disorganized. I cannot organize a popcorn stand without routines. When I take off my wallet and keys at night, it always goes in the same place even if that is at the other end of the house. I always know where they are in the morning. If I didn’t do that (like I used to do), I would lose time each morning scrambling around looking for money and keys.
Same for my work, I have routines for when I read email, respond to phone calls, pound out documents, and all the other busywork that needs to be done.
I update my to-do list at the end of the day and then I review it first thing in the morning.
I would highly recommend you build your own routines and stick to them.
Strict Hours
This is the area I had the greatest problem. It is easy to have work all hours and into the evening but that is not a sustainable strategy.
I had to discipline myself to set a time (e.g., 5:00 pm) and stop working no matter what happens. Under rare circumstances, I will work past my set time if there is something urgent to handle. Otherwise, it can wait until the morning.
Just because you don’t have a commute and work in an office, does not mean you need to work all day and night. The stream of work will never end and you will never catch up. I had to come to this realization early in my career. I also dawned on me that if I ever caught up on my work, they may not need
Filter
It is easy to get information overload while working remote. It is important to block out interruptions which I found is still easy while working remote. While in an office, I have tremendous interruptions but they can also happen while working at home.
I try to look at email only at certain times and ignore it at other times. Not easy for me to do but it can be done.
The New Paradigm
This is truly a new paradigm where many of us are forced to work remote – no choice.
If you are new to remote work, it takes some time to get comfortable and you will come to like it.
I heard a podcast of a CEO of a small company describe how he is now working remote and loving it. He hated remote work but now that he is forced to do it, he is blown away by the amount of work he can get done in a day. He is now considering working remote at least one day a week he is getting so much done!
This is the message to management – it is a good tool that can be used to improve the bottom line!