SCALING a Remote Team - 4 of 4
- Mark Stacey
- Nov 13, 2020
- 6 min read
This post is part of a series (4 of 4) on constructing a fully-remote and high-performance team.
You can review the Forward (part 1), post on Building (part 2), and post on Joining (part 3) to catch up if needed.
Thoughts on Scaling a Remote Team
At this point, the team is executing the mission and potentially earning some return for the organization. You are ready to start scaling which generally impacts all business units within the organization. Scaling is exciting and stressful. Doing it remotely with sprinters should not be taken lightly. It is easy to have things run away from you - as an individual contributor or leader. Extreme growth is a happy problem. But, happy problems are still problems.
What to Prepare For
Establish Baselines
If you hire 3 principal-leveled employees with solid experience to get off the ground, the output of each performer may be considered "success" even though each is substantially different from the others. While different approaches are accepted early on, this doesn’t facilitate onboarding new employees. Speaking in terms of consulting, if a new hire shadows each principal on an engagement, she will probably see three vastly different approaches and outputs. While independently, each is a successful engagement with a happy client, there is no enablement or clear direction on how the new hire should improve on the process and begin leading engagements on her own.
Knowing how success is defined and measured requires having a baseline of execution. More than a solid portfolio, you need to describe the work performed. The baseline may be documentation on a specific software development lifecycle or reference worksheets and templates for delivering professional services.
This baseline should enable people through every facet of the work:
Scoping - The work should be consistently described in client communications, service sheets, partnerships, and agreements.
Contracts - Define what work is completed and how that work is approached.
Execution and Reporting - Clear description of the deliverable(s) and how they should be structured to meet the requirements of the customer. This, in turn, directs execution.
Growth potential for every business unit is impacted by this baseline. Your sales team will struggle if it is unclear what is being sold and what is required from the customer to execute. Partnerships and business development will be stressed and difficult to establish if you can't clearly articulate your contribution. If you wish to move from Time and Materials to Fixed Fee as a standard contract, you need a firm understanding of the deliverables.
Without this baseline, it is impossible to scale quickly because the metrics of success are unclear and each delivery will feel 'custom.'
Enablement for New Hires
You will do new hires a disservice to throw them into an environment without clear direction. Likewise, your organization won't see a return on investment while these individuals come up-to-speed. The more efficiently you can communicate the mission, strategy, portfolio, baselines, and culture, the faster you can scale.
Make use of a Learning Management System. This can be as basic as a library of videos but should set the initial groundwork for key topics. Use this content to clarify critical terms or talking points so the company's external message is consistent. Thought leadership fails if new staff use different semantics or aren't aware of company talking points when presenting.
I currently like using onboarding coaches and putting the employee in meeting-hell for the first month. New people get added to every project kick-off, status update, and retrospective. This gives the opportunity to see how individuals interact as well as how the team(s) communicate together. Don't forget to turn on those cameras...each of these meetings should be over video conference.
The first two asks I have for every new hire include:
Improve the onboarding through checklists or process improvements based on their own experience.
Meet the team: bug the team, be noisy, reach out to people and ask them what they do for the company, tell them how you can help in those efforts and what you enjoy, identify people's personalities. Also, understand every new employee moving forward has been asked to do this same thing and embrace their questions when they ask you.
Refocus Staff Pipeline
Established professionals are less open to change. They believe they know what works and are convinced the solution at company A is probably the solution for company B. Refocusing your employee pipeline to analyst-level employees is very useful. It saves on salary and allows you to grow the staff vs break old habits.
(Notice, the word 'junior' is not used anywhere in this series. One thing Ben Miller revealed to me is the word can have a negative connotation and doesn't really add value. As such, we hire 'consultants' vs 'junior consultants' for those starting their careers. Many working in cybersecurity now have well-established careers in other fields. They are not necessarily 'junior' and have experience that is incredibly valuable. Avoiding the arguments over semantics, consider the culture you want for your team.)
Now that you are recruiting people with less experience (consultant, analyst, engineer level), your interview tactics should change. Don't focus on what they have done. Focus on their eagerness and passion to learn quickly and then focus on the culture fit. If your onboarding is done well, they will be solid contributors in no time and your available resource pool is much wider.
Reorganize
Ensure you have the management staff to support new people. This means recruiting, hiring, onboarding, etc. The hiring manager is not the only impacted and no matter the value-added, a large influx of people causes noise for the organization. Questions you didn't think you may need answers for yet will come up. What happens if I want to publish a book? Can I work on XYZ outside of work? And many others outside of what your imagination can consider today.
Career Growth Plans
People are motivated by different things. One constant motivator is growth - whether it be in knowledge, leveling, or influence. Having a career growth plan in place or underway is critical. People are motivated by this and it helps ensure they are working towards a common goal. A career plan is an enormous lift and involves every business unit. Putting the development off, however, may be interpreted as a lack of interest and result in turnover as people don't see opportunities within the organization.
What to Expect
Structure and Culture will Flex
The culture will change. The structure will be tested. People won't like coworkers and every new hire won't be a slam dunk. Issues will be escalated to Human Resources and people will be offended. Keep in mind that most interaction is done without visuals and body language assisting the message. This is the time to reiterate the company tenets and maintain open communication. Similar to preventing future heroics in execution, focus resources on identifying potential pain points and putting things in place to avoid or prepare for them.
Policies are usually reactive. And reactive policies usually shock the culture and require multiple updates to find the right level of intent and enforcement. Not everything can be foreseen but make logical decisions. Behave like a large, mature organization now. Don't wait for the feeling to be forced on you. Realize your ideal version of the company needs to update and adapt as you hire more people. Not everyone acts like an adult. Not everyone is a professional. During rapid growth, delinquents will be hired and the organization needs to be in a position to act. The front line leaders should be enabled and informed to field issues as much as possible. This means the front line ideally has experience working remotely already.
Plan to Grow Senior Staff
Similar to career growth plans discussed above, understand that you started the team with multiple senior staff. These are established professionals that went above and beyond. He helped build the plane in flight. She did her job plus 10 others until the positions were justified and filled. The staff still with you are the shoulders others are standing on. These people need career growth as well.
Hopefully, these individuals understood they were joining a newer team and prepared for the road ahead. At this point though, new people are being hired all around them with opportunities laid out (potentially described and defined by the original staff). The existing workforce can feel overlooked or passed over. Consider that senior technical lead who was hired into the same position she has been in for 3, 5, or more years. The same one who may have defined the job scope for newer hires. What opportunities are before her now? Is there a title above 'Prinicipal?' Does she feel enabled and motivated to continue pushing or is she stagnant?
Attrition
People will leave under voluntary means and some attrition is worth celebrating. Rob Lee from Dragos, Inc. has explained some people join start-ups, quickly launch or escalate their careers, and then move on to new opportunities not previously available. The company benefits. The employee benefits. These are wins that should be celebrated.
Some people may be pressured to leave by circumstances, especially during times of change. Disagreements and strife mean the company is growing (remember the culture and structure will be stressed). Conflict isn't bad but how it is handled and addressed can be, especially if it causes turn-over.
Departures should be evaluated and it is critical to identify trends or issues causing good employees to leave. Use exit interviews to identify potential concerns and monitor team confidence. Ensure the good employees are 'running to' vs 'running from.' If the employees are 'running to' new opportunities - celebrate it.
It is worth noting one of the best books on scaling I still reference is Scaling Teams by Alexander Grosse and David Loftesness. This quick read is concise and helped me correct my own path many times and understand what was happening around me after I joined my first start-up.
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