<ul><li>Lack of clarity in communication is leading to numerous issues; employees just want an answer of what the working model will be and evidence of pro/con for that model</li><li>Employees have the power to negotiate their position more than ever now. If employees don’t see the value of being in the office, they will find a company that matches their values</li><li>Constantly moving the goal post is more cost-inefficient than companies even realize</li></ul>

Remote Work Dystopia

<ul><li>Remote work utopia is freedom over time</li><li>Empower employees to function in their personal best environment that remote work allows. Focusing on productivity as the priority, regardless of strategy.</li><li>Remote working cultures gain a lot of advantages from asynchronous working conditions</li><li>Executives and management are optimizing for themselves, not for their team when it comes to remote environments</li><li>Leadership often wants to maintain their in-office micromanagement strategies remotely; however, this leads to unnecessary inefficiencies</li></ul>

The Remote Workspace

<ul><li>Design your work-from-home space for comfort</li><li>Even though there is a looming unknown about what a hybrid working environment will look like, investing in a comfortable and productive WFH setup will be beneficial</li><li>Don’t manage your time, manage your energy</li><li>Constantly reevaluate if your meetings boost or drain your energy; optimize your meetings to be productive, valuable, and inspiring, or don’t schedule them at all</li></ul>

The Work From Home Design

<ul><li>Don’t manage your time, manage your energy.  </li><li>If you dread or hate meetings, you’re not reevaluating the desired effects from your meetings</li><li>If your energy feels depleted after a meeting, it’s highly likely everyone else does too</li><li>Don’t let anyone else manage your time; scheduling assistants put your peers/colleagues time at risk</li><li>The small buffer time that it takes for an assistant to communicate a meeting change is wasting the other meeting attendants’ time. For that small buffer time, the two parties have different expectations of how the upcoming time will be spent.</li></ul>

Remote Meetings

<ul><li>Tools are overrated, contextual and thoughtful written content is more valuable than the tool</li><li>Many employees are experiencing Zoom fatigue</li><li>Having your video on on Zoom or Google Meet  is usually unnecessary, having it off can greatly reduce fatigue</li><li>Slack should not be overused, otherwise, it turns into water-cooler environments or the micromanagement of your colleagues/peers</li></ul>

Tools Of The Remote Workspace

Asynchronous Remote Work allows people to be working all across the world, all urgent things can be covered in appropriate standard work hours in the given location.Recreating an office environment remotely is absurd.

Asynchronous Remote Work

“Never mix the conversation of strategy and the conversation of execution”

Focus on ‘what is the current and desired state and what changes need to be met’ before any discussion of ‘why and how’<ul><li>The meetings with your engineers should be very quick. Identify the problem, reevaluate expectations, and trust that they are the experts.</li><li>You’ll never be able to identify all the problems you may encounter, don’t let the probability of a problem discount the goal</li></ul>

Problem Solving: The Effective Approach

<ul><li>Good communication in remote environments don’t start with a question, they start with the question and potential options of a solution</li><li>People work when they want to work while still meeting all expectations</li><li>People got a taste of the flexibility to optimize their family time (or other priorities) and don’t want to give it up. And shouldn’t have to if they maintain work standards.</li><li>Most jobs that can work remotely don’t really have the strict time boundaries that have existed in office settings for decades</li></ul>

Remote Work: Utopia

Many managers value power construct over productivity‘Update meetings’ are extremely unproductive and usually just waste time and fulfil the manager’s micromanagement itch.

Update Meetings

Optimum problem-solving starts with ‘what is the current and desired state and what changes need to be met’ rather than starting with ‘why and how’Good managers identify the problem, reevaluate expectations, and trust that they have a team of experts to solve the problem

Problem Solving

My favorite thing about being a founder is the ability to make your own decisions and have to live with them, and thus have to learn from them. I am constantly introspective about my thoughts: What am I thinking? Where did it come from?  The desire to be “liked” is probably the most selfish thing in the world. You want to be really mindful of the problems you are creating, when things that were working stop working and being able to identify those things much earlier when running a business.

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Remote Work

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Career

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Podcasts

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Leadership & Management

Host James Beshara is an angel investor, advisor, founder, & general startup-helper in Los Angeles, CA. He has started three companies, sold one (Tilt; acq by Airbnb), and invested in multiple billion-dollar startups in his career. Now he's talking openly and honestly with others about what's going on "below the line" — the 90% of the story you don't read about or hear about anywhere else.  Below the Line has evolved into a powerful weekly show that consistently takes a deep dive into the real journeys, the unspoken perspectives, and the psychological side of creating, founding, and learning.