A Technology Company?
Many people who know me are surprised to learn that I consider my business a "technology company."
My college major was a B.S. in Construction Management and I also have a minor in Management Information Systems (IT), I was a computer network administrator, and I have been setting up computer systems to enable remote work since the 1990s. Since then I invested in development of what has become a magical, proprietary information system where everything that anyone sends to us, and everything we do is saved forever in "the cloud," everything is connected to everything else, and it's backed up and accessible anywhere, any time, by anyone with the appropriate permissions. Because of all this work for the past 25 years, our business has not missed a beat this month (literally, our productivity is actually ahead of goal).
You might also be surprised that I think, today, the technology part of success with remote work is the easy part! It's still the humans that cause most of the struggles ;-)
Once I get some more time, I will get my thoughts into this post with more explicit recommendations. Until then, here is a list of resources.
Great Stuff from Others Regarding Remote Work
Masters of Scale (podcast) with Reid Hoffman - Special Episode: Remote teams with WordPress/Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg. This is 17 minutes REALLY well spent.
Google Meet: We use Google Meet to screen share and video conference between our multiple offices, remote team members, and clients, many times every day. We have our own internal training, but here is a link to Google’s training & help page.
The One-Minute Manager PFCS Blog Post: This is the best "management book" in the world. And it only takes an hour or two to read.
The Coronavirus and Your Job: What the Boss Can—and Can’t—Make You Do - The Wall Street Journal (It's behind a paywall. Let me know if you want it; I'll send a PDF.)
PFCS Resources That Enable Successful Remote Work
Project Planning & Management for Professional Services: Managing Expert Work and Costs webinar recording: Every PFCS project has a written plan. It's the only way to maintain control.
OMMA-Goodness!™ Project Management Framework: In-Brief Blog Post by Peter D. Fowler Copyright 2008: This is the written version of what we describe in the Project Planning webinar.
PFCS' MAMA Meeting Management 10/18/2010: Every PFCS project meeting has a written agenda and written "Action Steps" summarizing who is responsible for what.
Document Management for Construction & Claims webinar recording: Every PFCS project has a sensibly organized "100% summary" of everything that's been sent to us, and everything we have created (and our clients can see it).
PFCS Maturity Models article 5/2019. A 3,900 word exploration into organizational maturity with an auditing exercise to help focus organizational improvement in the right place.
PFCS Weekly Planning Method Article (Blog): We fill these out and post them to Slack every week.
Kanban Blog Post: We run all marketing & sales work using a Kanban system, and will soon run 100% of our project work the same way.
Everybody Has A Plan... Using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Succeed 11/23/2015: You can't manage what you don't measure.
Avoid Bad Contractors: Basic Due Diligence in Hiring Blog Post: Our method to find professional Contractors or consultants. The process works for any type of hiring doctors, lawyers, accountants... Seriously, anything.
Our Work is Often Difficult: How Amazon Institutionalized Better-Thinking to Dominate the World of Business 10/16/2019. We begin many of our project meetings with a "Silent Start," a tactic stolen straight from Amazon. This way we know, for sure, that we can successfully communicate technical information to our non-technical clients, so they can make smart, informed decisions.