Tags |
|
|
Links |
|
|
Write You - Base Jumping For Beginners: Principles of Successful Remote Team Leadership
We are constantly bombarded with the "never give up" mentality. Every sponsor, coach, and mentor is quick to remind us that we can do it if we just keep trying.I'm sure you've heard the fable of the poor lad who dug for years without ever finding gold, then gave up and sold the mine to another prospector. The new miner picked up the digging where the previous owner left off, and promptly found his fortune in gold just a few feet beyond where his predecessor gave up.It's a nice analogy, and one that certainly has its place. But I don't believe this idealism applies to every situation.What abot the thousands of other miners out there who spent their entire life digging but never found a single nugget? Let's
Collaboration
It is key for performance in a remote team to place emphasis on team work and make as many of the information based resources used by the team at their disposal in a collaborative environment. I would urge that companies adopt centralised document management – collaborative white-boarding and networked CRM solutions and endeavour to provide training to staff in these tools and encourage adoption.
Control
As team manager, you need to be able to track progress of ongoing work against both the expectations of your superiors regarding your team and also in terms of progress on assigned work on a task by task basis.
Unless, as a remote team manager you want to be swamped with information continuously (wha
Closeout merchandise is lucrative because of its nature. Merchandise is considered to be a closeout when its original seller loses the original sales venue for it.In other words, closeout merchandise can be a case of socks which were manufactured for an upcoming movie. Once the movie is no longer shown in the theaters, the movie licensed socks need to be sold as a closeout.Since the original event the socks were produced for has passed, the socks must be sold at a steep discount in order to find a buyer.As you can see, if you purchase this closeout at the right price you can make a good deal of money when you resell it.The question now becomes how to sell the socks?First thing you need to re
This article looks at the basic considerations for any team leader/manager implementing the switch to flexible/remote working teams.
Staff Suitability
Teams which tend to fit easily into the remote worker/team mould have the following common characteristics
- They are either knowledge workers or back office admin staff
- They approach their work in a mature, disciplined and self motivated way.
- Their work is task/project focused in nature. This is important so that you as a manager can you measure actual against expected performance reliably.
The thing you need to be aware of is that not everyone is capable of adapting to remote working. Where commercial constraints require a retail focus or a client side sales focus home working can be used as a staging point/temporary base for admin purposes – but cannot be even considered as a full time place of employment for staff.
Remember: Providing the wrong facilities to employees can be very costly to your business. Staff resources are, and will continue to be your most important and most expensive asset – use them wisely.
Here are several team organisational structures which we have found to be particularly successful:
o Where a collaboration framework is institutionalised within the business process – for example a group of sales staff accessing the same central CRM data, or a team of claims processors accessing a knowledge base of historical claims information, or a team of customer representatives working a call centre operation. In these environments – each remote worker becomes responsible for the carrying out of specific actions relating to individual ‘incidents’ that occur in real time – following a known and clearly documented process.
o Where each member of the team has an array of specialist skills and team objectives are geared so as to assemble teams to do individual projects which are then disassembled and rebuild for the next project. This approach can be considered ‘themes not teams’ in organisational composition and lends itself to groups who do not focus on a specific recurring business process, but instead on support of innovation centred work.
Organising the work
For a remote team to be effective needs all the key components which make successful team working environments in traditional offices – but getting them in place and then subsequently supporting them does require more effort from you – the team leader...
From our experience, these boil down to the following
Communication
Members of the team need to be able to contact each other and communicate freely with their peer throughout the day. This aspect is available without effort in a traditional office based environment but requires technology investment and infrastructure expertise to get right in a remote team setting. With the advent of VOIP (internet based phone services), the cost to the company of providing these services to remote workers is reduced to as little as providing an internet connection to them.
Human beings are – by their very nature, sociable pack animals, requiring social contact in order to remain motivated and creative. Physical contact between team members should take a high priority in the way that the team is organised. As well as addressing these basic needs, regular focused meetings are key to the growth of an inter-dependant, supportive team. From experience – meeting as a team once a month provides a successful convention and at least a day a week should be set aside for impromptu of official meetings between team members as/when they are required.
Collaboration
It is key for performance in a remote team to place emphasis on team work and make as many of the information based resources used by the team at their disposal in a collaborative environment. I would urge that companies adopt centralised document management – collaborative white-boarding and networked CRM solutions and endeavour to provide training to staff in these tools and encourage adoption.
Control
As team manager, you need to be able to track progress of ongoing work against both the expectations of your superiors regarding your team and also in terms of progress on assigned work on a task by task basis.
Unless, as a remote team manager you want to be swamped with information continuously (what
During the course of everyday business, many of you encounter unsatisfied customers. How you and your staff handle these situations, will shape your service image and ultimately your bottom line. How can you best handle challenging situations? I have developed and practiced a simple method for just such encounters. If you follow the steps listed below, you will greatly improve the likelihood of achieving positive resolutions to challenging situations.Make a ConnectionShake hands and introduce yourself. An introduction will add a personal aspect to the situation that can alleviate some hostility or anger that might surround the interaction.Acknowledge concern and show understanding.Get engaged i
Remember: Providing the wrong facilities to employees can be very costly to your business. Staff resources are, and will continue to be your most important and most expensive asset – use them wisely.
Here are several team organisational structures which we have found to be particularly successful:
o Where a collaboration framework is institutionalised within the business process – for example a group of sales staff accessing the same central CRM data, or a team of claims processors accessing a knowledge base of historical claims information, or a team of customer representatives working a call centre operation. In these environments – each remote worker becomes responsible for the carrying out of specific actions relating to individual ‘incidents’ that occur in real time – following a known and clearly documented process.
o Where each member of the team has an array of specialist skills and team objectives are geared so as to assemble teams to do individual projects which are then disassembled and rebuild for the next project. This approach can be considered ‘themes not teams’ in organisational composition and lends itself to groups who do not focus on a specific recurring business process, but instead on support of innovation centred work.
Organising the work
For a remote team to be effective needs all the key components which make successful team working environments in traditional offices – but getting them in place and then subsequently supporting them does require more effort from you – the team leader...
From our experience, these boil down to the following
Communication
Members of the team need to be able to contact each other and communicate freely with their peer throughout the day. This aspect is available without effort in a traditional office based environment but requires technology investment and infrastructure expertise to get right in a remote team setting. With the advent of VOIP (internet based phone services), the cost to the company of providing these services to remote workers is reduced to as little as providing an internet connection to them.
Human beings are – by their very nature, sociable pack animals, requiring social contact in order to remain motivated and creative. Physical contact between team members should take a high priority in the way that the team is organised. As well as addressing these basic needs, regular focused meetings are key to the growth of an inter-dependant, supportive team. From experience – meeting as a team once a month provides a successful convention and at least a day a week should be set aside for impromptu of official meetings between team members as/when they are required.
Collaboration
It is key for performance in a remote team to place emphasis on team work and make as many of the information based resources used by the team at their disposal in a collaborative environment. I would urge that companies adopt centralised document management – collaborative white-boarding and networked CRM solutions and endeavour to provide training to staff in these tools and encourage adoption.
Control
As team manager, you need to be able to track progress of ongoing work against both the expectations of your superiors regarding your team and also in terms of progress on assigned work on a task by task basis.
Unless, as a remote team manager you want to be swamped with information continuously (wha
The basic rule is simple: "Find a market need and fill it!" The process of finding the need, and the method chosen to fill it are where the difficulties arise.Based on our opportunity scan, does the market need a product or service that is not currently being provided? Is there a needed product or service currently being provided in a less than satisfactory way? Is some particular market being underserved due to capacity shortages or location gaps? Can we serve any of these needs with some competitive advantage?Remember that a business idea is not a business opportunity until it is evaluated objectively and judged to be feasible. You may wish to choose two to five of the ideas that seem most promising for more d
o Where each member of the team has an array of specialist skills and team objectives are geared so as to assemble teams to do individual projects which are then disassembled and rebuild for the next project. This approach can be considered ‘themes not teams’ in organisational composition and lends itself to groups who do not focus on a specific recurring business process, but instead on support of innovation centred work.
Organising the work
For a remote team to be effective needs all the key components which make successful team working environments in traditional offices – but getting them in place and then subsequently supporting them does require more effort from you – the team leader...
From our experience, these boil down to the following
Communication
Members of the team need to be able to contact each other and communicate freely with their peer throughout the day. This aspect is available without effort in a traditional office based environment but requires technology investment and infrastructure expertise to get right in a remote team setting. With the advent of VOIP (internet based phone services), the cost to the company of providing these services to remote workers is reduced to as little as providing an internet connection to them.
Human beings are – by their very nature, sociable pack animals, requiring social contact in order to remain motivated and creative. Physical contact between team members should take a high priority in the way that the team is organised. As well as addressing these basic needs, regular focused meetings are key to the growth of an inter-dependant, supportive team. From experience – meeting as a team once a month provides a successful convention and at least a day a week should be set aside for impromptu of official meetings between team members as/when they are required.
Collaboration
It is key for performance in a remote team to place emphasis on team work and make as many of the information based resources used by the team at their disposal in a collaborative environment. I would urge that companies adopt centralised document management – collaborative white-boarding and networked CRM solutions and endeavour to provide training to staff in these tools and encourage adoption.
Control
As team manager, you need to be able to track progress of ongoing work against both the expectations of your superiors regarding your team and also in terms of progress on assigned work on a task by task basis.
Unless, as a remote team manager you want to be swamped with information continuously (wha
Certain advancements have helped some metal fabrication companies to be more efficient. However, many still experience a hold up somewhere; most often in the press brake setup process.Press Brake setup needs to be both efficient and accurate in order to eliminate rework and waste in both time and materials. The most expensive part of any operation is in the setup as from a production point of view, no parts are being made. To achieve both accuracy and speed, proper training and operating procedures for repetitive jobs through a standard setup process can help deliver superior results.Training The press brake can be one of the most difficult machines to run in a precision metal fabrication shop. Despite all the
Human beings are – by their very nature, sociable pack animals, requiring social contact in order to remain motivated and creative. Physical contact between team members should take a high priority in the way that the team is organised. As well as addressing these basic needs, regular focused meetings are key to the growth of an inter-dependant, supportive team. From experience – meeting as a team once a month provides a successful convention and at least a day a week should be set aside for impromptu of official meetings between team members as/when they are required.
Collaboration
It is key for performance in a remote team to place emphasis on team work and make as many of the information based resources used by the team at their disposal in a collaborative environment. I would urge that companies adopt centralised document management – collaborative white-boarding and networked CRM solutions and endeavour to provide training to staff in these tools and encourage adoption.
Control
As team manager, you need to be able to track progress of ongoing work against both the expectations of your superiors regarding your team and also in terms of progress on assigned work on a task by task basis.
Unless, as a remote team manager you want to be swamped with information continuously (wha
The ultimate goal of factoring consultants is to maximize the wealth of the shareholders. This is represented by the market value of the shares of the factoring companies. Wealth is defined as the net present worth of the company, i.e., the present value of all future returns. This is determined by capitalizing the net income after taxes, which is achieved by discounting the return expected by the investors - also known as cost of equity.Though the wealth maximization seems superior to profit maximization objective, it is to be noted that the former is based upon the latter. The market price of shares, which is the indicator of the wealth of the firm, is based on the long-term returns of the firm. The returns that accr
Collaboration
It is key for performance in a remote team to place emphasis on team work and make as many of the information based resources used by the team at their disposal in a collaborative environment. I would urge that companies adopt centralised document management – collaborative white-boarding and networked CRM solutions and endeavour to provide training to staff in these tools and encourage adoption.
Control
As team manager, you need to be able to track progress of ongoing work against both the expectations of your superiors regarding your team and also in terms of progress on assigned work on a task by task basis.
Unless, as a remote team manager you want to be swamped with information continuously (what we call email-blindness), delegation of low level task detail to individual resources is a necessity. I would also urge that a project planning tool is deployed by you and the team members are given a chance to buy-in and determine action plans with you. As well as making your workload as team leader more manageable – this technique also empowers team members – promoting the growth of skills and fusing the team with mutual appreciation of other team member’s strengths and abilities.
In reality you are running with two views of the project plan at all times - a strategic plan used by you for medium/long term planning and to provide high level information on progress vs. a more tactical task oriented view which has been drawn up in conjunction with team members and which – to a large extent you have given them responsibility for managing)
In Summary:
Much research has been placed recently into demonstrating the clear improvements in team efficiency and productivity which can be achieved through effective use of remote team working practices, and our organisation – running in this way very successfully since its start in this manner is a great example. However the decision to provide flexible and remote working facilities to staff should not be taken lightly and the operational changes require careful planning and operational commitment in order to be successful.
HTTP = HTML link (for blogs, profiles,phorums):
<a href="http://www.writeyou.net/article/45604/writeyou-Base-Jumping-For-Beginners-Principles-of-Successful-Remote-Team-Leadership.html">Base Jumping For Beginners: Principles of Successful Remote Team Leadership</a>
BB link (for phorums):
[url=http://www.writeyou.net/article/45604/writeyou-Base-Jumping-For-Beginners-Principles-of-Successful-Remote-Team-Leadership.html]Base Jumping For Beginners: Principles of Successful Remote Team Leadership[/url]
Related Articles:
Workers' Compensation: Taking Care of Employees Saves Cost
Accepting Credit Cards - Is It Necessary For Your Small Business?
Bookmark it:
|