Remote operations as risk management

Working AS IF everyone were remote increases resilience - and reflects the reality of multiple offices and people traveling for work

What happens if one of your star contributor wins the lottery and decides to retire tomorrow? (Or gets hit by a bus, which from a business perspective amounts to the same - but feels a bit fatalistic).

How can you mitigate the potential loss of knowledge in your team when you think about promoting someone to a new position?

Or, in other words: how resilient is your organization to individual mobility?

• How long does it take to onboard a new hire?

• How easy is it to hand over a customer to a new account manager?

• If you had to, could you find out why a certain decision was taken 6 months ago? 3 years ago?

• Does work stop in summer while everyone is on vacation?

• Can you skip a meeting without being out of the loop?

You don’t have to be remote to benefit from remote-first practices.

And if you have more than one office, or encourage people to disconnect while on vacation, or require sales and account managers to travel for work… then your focus on in-office conversations is misguided.

It’s not wrong per se - yes, things happen in offices. People collaborate in offices. People share updates in offices. People connect in offices.

People also get the most powerful noise-canceling headphones money can buy. They have different coffee break or lunch schedules.

Being in one space does not automatically create anything. Just as NOT being in one space does not automatically preclude things from happening.

You need to be intentional about it.

And that’s what this interview is basically about ;)

Find the key insights and highlights here.

And if you are more a Spotify person than a Youtube person, here you go:

Enjoy!