One of the big challenges nowadays is managing people in remote locations. If you are managing people in remote locations you only have three options:
THE FIRST ONE is those rare opportunities when you are on site together. Maybe you have to show up at that employee's work site once in a while or maybe you're both on site at corporate headquarters together or maybe you're at a meeting together.
And when you are on site together, you have to make good use of that opportunity. Don't waste that opportunity by shooting the breeze. Use that opportunity to reinforce the management relationship you should be building remotely.
When you are on-site together try to talk business. Don't make the mistake of having this exchange:
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YOU: "I'm only here for a little while."
REMOTE LOCATION EMPLOYEE: "Yea, me too."
YOU: "I'll call you when you're back at your location."
REMOTE LOCATION EMPLOYEE: "OK."
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That's a wasted opportunity. When you are on-site together, make good use of that time.
THE SECOND AND THIRD OPTIONS you have are using telephone AND e-mail and text messaging. I'm sure that's mostly what you do. The question is: Do you make good use of telephone, e-mail and text messaging?
What a lot of managers do when they're managing people in remote locations is they call every time something pops into their head. They send a text message every time something pops into their head, or they send an e-mail every time something pops into their head. Or even worse, you schedule calls and then leave each other voice mail saying, "I couldn't make it." "No, neither could I."
If you are going to use telephone and e-mail you have to use them well.
The best practice is a rigorous protocol, where you schedule a telephone conversation. Maybe you have a telephone conversation at the same time every Tuesday and Thursday. Or maybe your schedule is a moving target so at the end of each conversation you schedule the next one.
But then you have to make that call like you make your kid's birthday party. And the best practice I know is, in advance of that call, send an e-mail saying, "Here's exactly what I want to discuss."
Then you make the phone call and after the call you send an e-mail saying, "Here's exactly what we agreed and here's exactly when we're going to talk again next."
And the beauty of that is, that by sending an e-mail after the call you are providing a tool for the employee. Maybe it's a checklist of to-do items to accomplish between now and the next time you talk. And you're also keeping a written contemporaneous record of the expectations you have spelled out.
Sometimes I talk with managers who begin managing people in remote locations this way and they find that they are keeping closer track of their employees in remote locations than they do of the employees sitting in the cubicle next to them. Start using the same techniques with the employees in the cubicle next to you. So after you have a meeting you send an e-mail and say, "Did you get that e-mail I just sent you?"
Bonus Management Tip
Use your e-mail communication to document your management relationships every step of the way.
- Be very careful what you write in an e-mail. E-mails never go away.
- Create separate mail folders for every direct-report you manage and possibly for some people in lateral roles. You might even make a special folder for your e-mail dialogue with your boss (or each of your bosses).
Going forward you'll have to make a rigorous habit of saving all of your outgoing and incoming e-mails in the right folders.
- Remember you can't manage by e-mail alone. You need verbal reinforcement and, ideally, in-person communication. Send very brief e-mails in advance of scheduled one-on-one conversations, to state your agenda. Then, after every one-on-one conversation, send a detailed follow-up e-mail to confirm (and clarify, if necessary) expectations.
- Focus your follow-up e-mails on concrete goals with clear guidelines and specific deadlines. Try ending each e-mail with a check-list of deliverables. If you want to take it to the next level, for each deliverable, make a list of concrete actions within the control of the individual along with a time budget for each concrete action and a list of guidelines.
Created by: Bruce Tulgan, © 2009 RainmakerThinking, Inc. in conjunction with Bruce's free video newsletter that's available at
Rainmakerthinking.com.