Emma Lo Russo – Page 11 – Shares her views and experience

July 2, 2009March 29, 2017

Are you listening to your customers?

We all understand the power of referral business and a glowing customer testimonial. Particularly if it is from a customer who is prepared to say how you made them richer, stronger or more fabulous than before.

When was the last time one of your customers provided positive feedback in writing or publically endorsed your organization? When you received that feedback, did you acknowledge the customer? And did you acknowledge your employee or team who were responsible for generating that positive response?

What if it was negative, did you re-engage and thank the customer, look to involve them in future product reviews, value them in a way that acknowledges your success is dependent upon how you treat and deliver to your customers.

I am not advocating the customer is always right and that to be a customer success driven organization it means you just do what they ask for. This is about listening. Listening and engaging your customers. Expecting and respecting that they will talk about their experience with your organization with someone, and maybe with many people either face-to-face or via any of the easy-to-use social mediums. You can’t control what they are going to say about you, but you can create an environment that makes every touch point positive, consistent and what is felt as an important engagement in a long term relationship.

Today I talked to two business owners of very different businesses. I asked the question of both of them to define their long term revenue model. And whether they had defined the perfect customer relationship – what engagement model, over what period of time, to generate a defined amount of revenue and profitability. Neither could answer and both admitted they were in the trap of thinking short term. One wanting to squeeze every possible dollar out of the first transaction and thus was focused on how many customers he could meet (in a volume X single transaction model) and the other just thinking survival so the horizon was very short term (weeks in fact). The problem with thinking this way is that they could both see that they were putting at risk a longer term relationship with the customer and potentially putting at risk the long term viability of their business and the profitability able to be realized over a long-term relationship with the end customer. They both acknowledged there was room for a better customer engagement model, with a relationship built and secured over the long term with the added potential to up-sell, cross-sell and value-add based on their ability to perform. Forget short term accountability – think of a longer term engagement model that requires long term accountability, and one that brings greater profitability.

This brings us back to the customer experience, and whether you are delivering this at each touch point and measuring this in a meaningful way.

When you genuinely feel the service or quality you experience is extraordinary, you are more likely to want to thank someone. A phone call, an email, or post something to a web forum or social network. You will share your positive experience with those close to you. When the experience is anything less than average, it can generate multiple conversations with anyone that will listen. Any of you who are active on Twitter will see how quickly great service and even more so, bad service is shared, and if it communicates the point more strongly, it will include an image and provide great detail of what is wrong. This often starts a number of those who begin sharing their similar experience. Or what alternative solution that they found. Rants get posted to blogs and then linked to other blogs, forums, tweets or Facebook posts for all to read, with hot topics seeing many of those who agree or disagree engaged even further. So it moves from perhaps a series of single incidents into a customer sentiment that is hurting your brand.

Someone’s perception of your company is their reality. Which means you can’t hide and you can’t control it. And thus, I ask, are you listening to your customers?

Since you can’t control what your customers are saying about you or where they are saying it, you need to focus on their experience when engaging with you.

If you don’t encourage and provide a forum for them to feedback to you, then they will find or create their own. So create that space, have the space owned by your customers and encourage active feedback (good and bad).

Engage in some way with each and every customer who shares their experience with you – this may be through suggested reading, recourse, or just in saying thanks. Share your appreciation for the feedback and what you did about it, not only to them but to the rest of your customer base.

The basis of creating a community and establishing a large number of loyal long-term customers will be strongly based around how well your customers feel they are being listened to. Whether they can see their feedback is influencing the overall customer experience, the levels or types of customer service and support, possibly even the products or services you provide.

And don’t ignore the stuff “out there” in the global social media space. Not just what they are saying about you but what they are saying about your competition. Today there are companies that offer tools that measure buzz, mentions of products and brands. This can provide you very early insights into what could become a big opportunity for you – either heading off a disaster or in discovering your next breakthrough.

So ask yourself the question today – do your customers have a place to talk to you? Does your business processes and culture encourage listening? And if a customer does talk to you – how will they know they were being listened to and that their input is valued and can help positively impact your business?

You can significantly improve your business if you view every single customer as a potential evangelist and part of your extended sales organization.

June 29, 2009March 29, 2017

Get something positive out of the recession

Emma Lo Russo offers five tips (to electronics organizations) for grasping opportunities created by the downturn. Read the article as published in Electronics Weekly, 24 June 2009, and as promoted on the cover page and published on page 10. Electronics Weekly targets electronic product organizations and electronics engineers.

Full transcript of article below:

Recessions get a bad press. But they are really opportunities with halitosis. Once you get over the shock, you can set to and work with the opportunities to create breakthroughs. It’s all about channeling recessions in a positive way.

The electronics design sector is ripe for this kind of thinking. The current recession can be deployed in your favour, to blast away the staid thinking that abounds in the sector. That things are done the way they are done because they have always been that way is a common refrain. Time it went the way of the thermionic valve.

Here are five tips, made with appropriate humility, that reflect the opportunities for change under the cover of the current recession:

Innovate

Nothing that has gone before will be good enough for the future. This is code for “innovate” and innovate means doing different things in different ways, not doing things better.

So take a holistic approach to electronics design that starts with the broader desired user experience. How do they want to interact with your product (not how you want them to interact)?

And take a close look at the rule book on which you base your design methodology. Does it still serve your needs, or does it now struggle to do so? Is it based on a divide-and-conquer approach to electronics design, in which you divide the complexity of the task into manageable elements to conquer the design comlexity, only to find that you have killed off innovation?

Connectivity

It doesn’t matter how cool it is if it’s not connected. I doubt you need reminding that connectivity is the most important attribute of any device today. This is also code for saying that making something look cool is the minimum attribute of a successful product, and everyone will copy you very quickly.

If the past 40 years of electronics was the age of miniaturisation, we are already well into the age of connectivity. The next generation of electronic products will not be stand-alone devices, as they have been in the past. Instead, electronic products are being promoted, to become elements in much bigger ecosystems. They are now the means by which users tap into these ecosystems. The metal, silicon and plastics from which they are made become less relevant in this much broader view of design.

So, design from this perspective. That means start (once you have worked out the desired user experience, of course) with creating the intelligence you want to pour into the product, and then, and only then, find the right device hardware into which to pour it. After all, you don’t create a statue by starting with the mould. You reflect first on the emotional connection you want to make with the work of art you are about to create.

Intelligence

It doesn’t matter how cool it is if it’s dumb. Intelligence is at the core of successful products, and not just successful consumer electronic products. The intelligence of a device is also how you will differentiate in the future, and it is much more difficult to copy than hardware.

Designers must stop thinking of a design as discrete hardware, programmable hardware and software, and instead define a design by its functionality, and then map this functionality to the most appropriate implementation.

The true value inside tomorrow’s products is defined by the soft elements of the design. These soft elements should be the focus and the place to start. Don’t constrain the critical properties, its function, connectivity and the user experience of the end product before you have even started.

Changing competition

You no longer know who your competition is, or where they’re based. Sorry for stating the obvious. But one bad thing about recessions is that they can camouflage a much larger shift that had started before the recession kicked in.

Take a deep breath, Google “innovation” and see what comes up. These data show one thing: that the design and manufacture of products even as sophisticated as electronic components will likely be done somewhere else in the future. The question to ask, therefore, is whether you want to play in this game, and what do you do to stay in the game?

Check your tools

Nothing should stop you from doing what you want to do, or have to do. This is code for assess your tools and support systems right now. If there is any aspect of what they offer, or how they work, that gets in your way, be ruthless. Change them. Change them now under the cover of the recession.

June 24, 2009March 29, 2017

Utegate – A question of trust

According to a recent Harvard Business Review Advisory Council Reader’s Survey dated January 2009, it was considered that trust had eroded in top executives – by over 76% in US based companies and 51% in non-US companies.

That is a lot of trust to lose.

Watching the recent shenanigans* of our government and opposition spat over the so-called Utegate scandal, it certainly raises the question of what possibly were they hoping to gain? Given no-one seriously thought it would result in a resignation of the Prime Minister or the Opposition Leader, all that really is at stake here is the public’s trust in their leaders.

We can only assume the motivation that is driving them to behave, attack and defend their actions as they are, is to help protect and uphold Australia’s values, ethics, security, competitiveness, health, safety, education and all the other reasons that they were voted into office as our leaders. I would not be the first to say that connection is difficult to make. Even if it can be found, would we rate it as the most important issue that we would like our leaders of our nation to focus on? And at what point did or does the motivation change from pursuing the truth to pursuing personal agendas?

In this global economic environment we are seeing increasing pressure on businesses and executives. This is a test of character for most. And we are seeing plenty of examples of organizations’ cultures crumbling, trust being eroded, candor turning into clandestine, and ethics and values once clear now murkily represented.

Trust is something that requires careful building. A coherent and transparent position that is understood, chosen and lived by those who lead and those who follow. It is very easily dissipated. And even harder to rebuild.

So how do you ensure trust not only remains in-tact but grows over these challenging times? The key thing is of course to know who you are and what you stand for. Trust is not a job responsibility, it is a choice in which you wish to offer and earn.

The basis of trust in leadership

Know oneself and take a clear position on your beliefs and values – communicate and live by who you are and what you believe in
Be transparent and candid in communication and decision making – share why decisions are being made, share the process, those engaged, and progress. Your organization and personal values should have a common base otherwise the differences will quickly show and allow room for corruption.
Share – share information, good, bad, challenges, disappointments and wins. Help explain what is clear, what is grey, what is not being shared and why.
Tell the truth always – you may suffer consequences of telling the truth, but it can never be as bad as the consequences of not telling the truth. The most important thing at stake here is your integrity. You can’t deceive and retain integrity.
Encourage, invite, create forums for feedback – this is all about creating a culture that encourages open discussions and the sharing of ideas and information. It is also important that you regularly hear, see and feel the truth and reality of a situation.
Get directly involved and see first-hand any situation that you need to represent – the more layers you have between yourself and what you represent, the more likely the room for spin, softening, misinterpretation of the truth etc.
Evaluate how you are living your word – reflect regularly on your behavior and that of others, call yourself and others to question and do not accept anything that can be considered untrustworthy or against the values of your organization.
Champion Trust – encourage it, live it, recognize it, reward it.

Friedrich Nietzsche, German classical Scholar, Philosopher and Critic of culture once wrote “I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”

To lead in today’s environment, you need to be trusted. Don’t compromise.

* Definition of shenanigan “1: a devious trick used especially for an underhand purpose2 a: tricky or questionable practices or conduct —usually used in plural b: high-spirited or mischievous activity —usually used in plural (Merrriam-Webster online). A most apt description!

June 23, 2009March 29, 2017

Startup Australia – Exercise for Entrepreneurs

Emma presented the topic “Taking your product to market – How to turn your product into a business” at BootUpCamp, an intensive workshop where participants go from an idea to a fully operational web business in two weeks.

BootUpCamp ran July 11 – July 24, 2009.

For more details go to www.startup-australia.org/bootupcamp

To watch her presentation go to:

Part 1: http://www.viddler.com/explore/BootUpCamp/videos/10/

Part 2: http://www.viddler.com/explore/BootUpCamp/videos/11/

Part 3: http://www.viddler.com/explore/BootUpCamp/videos/12/

Part 4: http://www.viddler.com/explore/BootUpCamp/videos/13/

June 17, 2009March 29, 2017

Can you afford the expense of a cheap lawyer ?

Ever heard the saying “there is nothing more expensive than a cheap lawyer”? That lesson can easily be applied to the decisions we make every day regarding our business vendors.

It is easy to make the mistake of spreading our budget too thin or going with the cheapest option – mistakenly thinking we are getting more bang for buck or that we are saving money. Often you will find this approach will result in poorer quality and not achieving the goal you set out to do in the first place. The cost either in additional time or further investment to bring what you are doing back to scratch can often be far greater than if you had aligned your budget to your goals in the first place (or your goals to your budget).

Although this rule applies as much to the personal decisions we make, it is less likely we fall into that trap because we tend to naturally protect “our hard earned money”. We will spend far more time in determining return on investment whether it is through measuring easy to compare metrics, searching online or by talking to family and friends to better understand their experiences and opinions. We seek recommendations feeling confident of asking someone we know “how did you find your builder, car, computer, TV, phone etc? “. We do this whether it is a conscious best practice or not.

It has always struck me the difference that people feel about spending their own money vs. their employers’ money. The sense of responsibility and ownership for return on investment regarding business purchases often differs from the way the same decision would be approached if it was their own money. At a time where organizations are looking at innovation as a means to survive the global economic environment, we should also be revising our planning and procurement approach. And this is more about the culture you create rather than defining it through process.

Encouraging your team to spend time on determining the best plan to achieve your goals against budget, investing in research and assessment of the right vendor, obtaining testimonials directly from similar type businesses who have engaged or purchased from that vendor, investing in developing a good brief or requirement specifications; all will help you determine the best partner for you and your company – and I do emphasize that you see the relationship as a partner not just vendor/supplier. This should result in you choosing the best partner that truly shares your vision and belief in your desired objectives, and is motivated to bring you success beyond “making the sale”.

If you are delivering on someone else’s brief, and you find the scope and budget are out of alignment, you may need to either negotiate more budget or learn to reset expectations when determining how best to achieve the goal within the budget you have.

Whatever you do, don’t make the mistake of going with the cheapest option, spread your budget too thin, and have the outcome you are working to achieve at risk. Even with the financial pressures as they are today, you can’t afford the ‘real’ expense of going with the cheapest lawyer or any other vendor unless you really have weighed up the true cost and return of that engagement.

The same goes in reverse. If you are offering a product or service, make sure you invest in understanding the brief and proving how you are best able to help your client achieve their brief. Be realistic about pricing and quote what you believe is fair and reasonable for the scope of brief or requirement given. Everyone needs to win for success to be fully realized.

You need to buy well to return well. And this may mean you need to review your purchasing culture right now.

June 10, 2009March 29, 2017

Progression post recession…

With great caution, we are seeing reports of “Australia avoiding a recession” with claims the worst has passed. And whilst I sincerely hope that is the case and no-one suffers further or unnecessary financial hardship, I do wonder if we as a nation have spent enough time considering just how we will compete and sustain our economy over the long term. Have we invested enough in understanding the global economic crisis? The reasons for the global crash and the questions it raises about our understanding and demands on the companies’ (or investments’) integrity, values and responsibilities that we invest in?

One beauty of financial uncertainty is that it forces us to think about what is important to us. It certainly forces us to review where our priorities and responsibilities lay. In business it brings clarity to what is the true means of competitive differentiation and how best to go-to-market. If your company’s survival is at stake, it forces you to define clearly where your markets are (or could be) and how sustainable they are. It allows you to explore different possibilities and opportunities. And it should be a time where you encourage and promote innovation and change within your organization and empower your team to help find the path to future growth and financial strength.

In the March quarter national accounts, it still showed domestic spending falling by one percent, the sharpest fall since December quarter 2000. We avoided a technical definition of a recession by a GDP expansion mostly due to imports contracting and exports remaining positive. “Overall, GDP growth was positive because imports contracted by an extraordinary seven per cent allowing net exports to contribute 2.2 percentage points to GDP growth and ensuring a positive result” stated Westpac’s chief economist Bill Evans.

Let’s not exhale the sigh of relief that the worst has passed us. Use this time to consider what you need to do to emerge stronger. How can you innovate and compete strongly in the global markets? What is your true means for sustainable competitive differentiation and how do you focus on those?

Back to integrity, values and responsibilities, what does this mean for your company and what (if any) are the lessons here? What should you avoid next time and what do you need to ensure you do next time? What measures need to be in place to help ensure you don’t forget those lessons?

And finally, as we consider the lessons in these times, how in finding your means for financial strength and security will you balance your desire for greater profits against your responsibilities to your employees and to the greater community moving forward?

What will your story of progression post recession (or near recession) be?

As Albert Einstein said “in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”.

June 6, 2009March 29, 2017

Recent press coverage & interviews

Interview with Emma Lo Russo as published in the Business Review Weekly in the August 08 issue titled “Copy, over and out” . Report by Jeffrey Hutton.
Interview with Emma Lo Russo as published in the Australian Financial Review 22 July 2008. Report by Ben Woodhead.
Coverage in Manly Daily
This is as published in Finland’s, the home of Nokia, premier electronics magazine: prosessoridoc-altium-050009p12

June 3, 2009March 29, 2017

Nurturing and inspiring tomorrow’s heroes

Most of our kids harbor a burning desire to be number one at something. They can easily conjure an image of themselves scoring the winning goal, coming first in a race, hitting the winning shot….but how many of them at first call on an image of the invention they are going to create that could change the world? Or a design of a building that breaks all previous thoughts or examples of possibilities? How confident beyond the age of two or three (when they really do believe they are a superhero), do they think they have a chance to be society’s hero? And if you asked them if they wanted to, would they think it is possible for them to be able to do so?

With three children of my own, and with experience of schooling across 3 stages (preschool, primary school, high school) and across four schools and three schooling types (State, Catholic and Private), I have discovered a distinct gap in our education system in helping nurture and inspire our children to become the inventors, entrepreneurs, and creators of tomorrow. As many of us know with our children, the connection between what they are learning today in school and how it helps them in their future is rarely understood by them. And to be honest, unless you raise the level of abstraction in how the skills they are really learning can be applied in life – it is difficult for us to provide an answer to that connection in a way that will satisfy them. More than that, it seems that whilst our children might get lucky with an inspirational teacher, the exploration of engineering something new, the time given to create and celebrate a new invention, learning how previous inventions have changed our lives and the extraordinary achievement it represented in its time, does seem to be lacking, particularly in the early years of schooling.

By the time our children hit high school, unless they have a particular self-interest, most do not relate their natural strengths or interest in Mathematics, English, or Art to the possibilities within engineering and invention. We begin to prescribe requirements for university entry scores in relation to possibilities for pre-defined career paths, but are we really engaging our future minds on the problems, opportunities and possibilities that present every day for them to be inspired to solve and the path to get there?

Thomas Edison claimed that Genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. It seems to me that our education system is putting too much emphasis on, and we are providing too much by way of our own example, of the perspiration element. We seem to be ignoring the importance and are not providing enough emphasis and example-setting on the inspiration aspect. By emphasis I am talking within the design of our education system and in the time and responsibility we have as parents in encouraging, nurturing, and inspiring our children’s creativity and exploration of the “what if you could…” scenarios.

As we have increased our protective care, prescribing the after-school activities in a way that gives our children the best possible opportunities (or so we rationalize), is it possible that we may have not correctly weighed up the cost of preventing or constraining the ability for our children to run free and learn through natural exploration and invention? As we look to ensure enrichment, gifted and learning, and assisted programs to be supported at schools, have we put the same energy into seeing how creativity and invention is being supported and celebrated at school?

If we think about the future for our children, where do they sit within the world’s estimated population?

We know IQ is distributed evenly through the population. So how do we help our children make a positive footprint on the world, both for their generation and for their children’s generation?

Australia has an estimated population of 21million, an approximate 0.3% of the total world’s population. Rather than accepting it is OK to plod along, and accept what is, we have a responsibility and requirement to create a country of global visionaries. Those who see their playground as bigger than the constraints of our shorelines and the comfort we feel in our history of enjoying “the lucky country” and the “she’ll be right” philosophy.

It is absolutely critical that we teach our children now the importance and relevance of their uniqueness. Their unique mix of talent, skills, smarts and experiences. Of the same opportunity that they have as an individual to anyone, anywhere else in the world. They have an equal chance to make a difference; and that difference can come from their own creativity and invention. The problems they can be thinking about to solve may not just be the ones that they face, but rather the problems that we as a global nation of people face. Or may be something that can be enjoyed by others, enhancing and improving many lives, not just their own.

As a country, as business people, as parents – we have a responsibility to nurture and inspire our children to become tomorrow’s heroes.

I know I don’t have all the answers but I do want to keep asking the right questions. And help my children to keep pushing and exploring what could be. I would like for us all to find a way to break inertia, break stereotypical types, break the habits that too much “dead use of technology” like television and electronic games etc provide, and muster the energy to encourage our education system and society in general to promote and support invention and creativity in our children. For us to celebrate our inventors, engineers and entrepreneurs so they become the leading examples in our society.

Here are my thoughts of what we can do to nurture and inspire tomorrow’s heroes:

We must accept our responsibility to inspire and nurture our own children. We must help our children explore what could be and not allow them (or us) to get bogged down on the “how to get there”. We must make the process of exploration and creativity positive; we must invite it, suspend judgment, and allow for self evaluation. We must help our children see the beauty and the impact that inventions have bought us – everything from the printing press, microscope, bike, paperclip, microchip, spaceship all the way to the iphone and everything in-between! They are just a few examples – I am sure you can think of many more exciting examples to inspire others.

And it may be that with this focus, our children will dream bigger dreams, will be given the confidence to explore what could be and take will become tomorrow’s hero.

May 27, 2009March 29, 2017

Racism, Telstra & the truth

I read with interest the recent reporting and views expressed in response to Former Telstra CEO, Sol Trujillo’s claim that Australia is a backward nation of racists. This follows very quickly with the news of his sacking of over 8,000 employees and his “pocketing” of $31m. In response we shout “how dare he?!”

But what is the real truth here?

Sol Trujillo is reporting his experience and was remunerated as per his contract. The Telstra Board set the recruitment brief, the selection criteria, the contract of remuneration and the metrics that the remuneration was tied to. Sol Trujillo did not “pocket” anything that was not determined by others.

In relation to racism, unfortunately I have personally read, heard and seen too much evidence in support of Sol Trujillo’s views. It is often subtle and not concrete, but it still persists. And certainly some of the journalist reporting and quoting of our politicians regarding Sol over the past four years has clearly played on his Mexican heritage.

If we are honest with ourselves, can we really say we have not seen in businesses across Australia, in your local associations, in general banter when socializing, no evidence of racism? And for that matter evidence of prejudice and ignorance about anything outside of the “vanilla” safe mould of the white, male, heterosexual businessman? Are we really happy to allow the countless justification in blogs and articles that you have to see these racial jibes as “real Aussie humour” to prove that you are really “one of us”? Or just dismiss Sol’s views as “sour grapes”.

Clearly not everyone is racist, sexist or prejudiced and I include myself in that category. But as a nation we have far to go before we can prove our fairness and embracement of equality.

Now I am a Telstra shareholder (fortunately it represents only a small percentage of our overall investments) and I see the need for education of the general public and the “mum & dad” investors that bought into Telstra when it floated under claims of great hopes, about Telstra’s corporate values, overall direction, competitive landscape and responsibilities to each stakeholder group.

If we are unhappy about Sol Trujillo’s remuneration, we should not be directing it to Sol, but rather questioning the Telstra Board. What is the board’s position on executive remuneration? What constitutes fair remuneration and performance earning hurdles? How is this balanced between the employees, customers and shareholder stakes in delivering on and rewarding their investment? We should also be requesting transparency of the current CEO and executive as to their plans for Telstra’s future.

The truth is often simple. The process of rationalizing the truth is where it gets complex.

So I ask in all the media beat-up, as individuals we should search for the truth. And to direct your energies to the right issues.

May 20, 2009March 29, 2017

The Teamwork Bridge: Helping remote employees feel connected

As the world increasingly becomes globalized and technology makes it easy for us to work remotely, you may increasingly find yourself in a situation where you need to manage a virtual team.

Having worked for an Australian listed company where 97% of its revenues were offshore, the workforce as a consequence was split to nearly two-thirds in remote offices resulting in many direct reports crossing multiple regions. Even within head office, in order to attract and retain the best talent, we needed to provide flexibility around balancing work hours with personal life. This meant a percentage of local employees also chose to work from home offices in various percentages of their working week.

So how do you manage your remote employees, particularly those that are working in multiple global regions and ensure that the vision for your company is well understood, that the objectives and timeframes are clear, that the culture is being lived, that they are motivated, energized, feeling part of a team?

This article is designed to share the best tips and practices learned over 5 years of leading a global organization, and addresses how you can achieve a unified work force where employees feel connected and as one team – no matter where they are located.

1. Set strong foundations – hire world-class employees

This is a critical business success factor. You need to feel confident you have the right person to represent and lead your company, can evangelize the culture, live the values and be able to make decisions every day that is in harmony with, and will deliver on, your overall business objectives.

There is no doubt, the stronger the person you have, the greater the success you will see as they are able to make judgment on how best to localize the strategies to achieve the broader objectives within their specific market or region.

The more capable and competent the person, the more possibility you have for cross border promotion and the building of a greater organization. So don’t ever compromise on recruitment, with the stakes being higher for those representing you in overseas regions and outside of regular view and contact. You need to have full confidence you have someone you can trust in the job. Great business success depends upon top talent.

2. Importance of Induction

Again another critical business success foundation factor. Often in the speed to implement new plans, not enough time is spent on providing a comprehensive induction program for your new employees. It is important that an induction program extends beyond the immediate first weeks or handover of duties. Consideration and time must be given to discussion of values and of culture, plus discussion of previous successes and failures and why they went right or wrong (this is to encourage learning and comfort in discussing the good and challenging times of the business or the role).

Other induction strategies like shadowing in meetings to help share the company language, best stories and best practices can help provide confidence. Initially you or others may lead, however as soon as you feel confident, it is important to switch roles and shadow and coach with your employee leading until you are confident they are fine to stand alone. The main requirement to have confidence in managing this person remotely is for you to ensure you establish a solid relationship and equip your employee with enough information, enough experience, enough confidence very early on in the appointment to be able to confidently represent the company.

See the induction period as a minimum of 6 months and provide close contact and encouragement to ask questions. If this is an appointment in a different region, an example schedule may be:

Solid briefing them through the recruitment process already providing a strong foundation and qualifying tasks around understanding of the products, markets, competitors etc
A fortnight induction with you at HQ – allow them to see and hear first-hand how the company operates, allow them to meet their other stakeholders, key customers etc
Assign a work buddy that you trust can also help evangelize the values and culture
Once they are “live” ensure close contact with you & encourage them to really share first insights and ideas (this is a great way to discover objective new insights)
Ensure they are equipped with everything they need – resources, budgets, etc
Visit them regularly in the first 6 months but offer practical & philosophical help – e.g. visit their customers, partners, media, present jointly to their team or answer Q&As
Request after 3 months a revised high-level plan. This will ensure you get a good understanding of how deep their understanding is and any areas that you may still need to help them with. Look to have them present to others early in the engagement to help formalize the shared learnings. Encourage questions around feedback.
Get the team together within that period to ensure relationships are built at the team level even if they are all working remotely away from each other.

It is important not to micromanage the person – this is just a period of foundation setting around the “what” and the “who”, and unless the “how” is important then allow that to be determined by your employee. As soon as you think they are ready you need to give them enough space to do what you first employed them to do!!

Although this point addresses induction, the need to stay engaged as part of developing the individual overall is required.

3. Importance of frequent & open Communication

Be frequent, regular, consistent and coherent in your communications. Help your remote employees feel part of what is going on in your organization through regular:

Phone calls
Chats (instant messaging, Skype and others)
Video hook ups
Wikis, forums, blogs and other web dashboard “single views” for all employees
Engage others in your team to inform/provide briefs to your remote employees – just as long as someone is sharing what is going on!
Share drafts of communications, plans, pending decisions and presentations for input
Localize communications if there are language barriers
Make regular face to face time – even if they are overseas, coordinate at least a quarterly face to face meeting (you to them or they to you)
Regular face to team meetings
Email helps provide background and can be used to help overcome the tyranny of different working time zones, but don’t rely on this as the only means of communication

If you have followed step one and you have smart people, they generally will be very good to pick up on what is or is not happening within your business. However it is important you do not leave them guessing and trying to fill in gaps that can lead to wrong conclusions. Instead include them in sharing the ups and downs, the challenges you or the organization are facing etc, in order for them to have the opportunity to input and help. Apart from the relationship building upon honesty and transparency, a benefit is that they can help either solve or at least understand what else is happening in the business which may be possibly impacting them or others they are dealing with.

4. Regular team meetings

Feels like it is stating the obvious right? But with remote employees you need to make sure that they not only have their time with you, but that they have time feeling part of the team, both to build their understanding of each others’ styles, challenges, and dependencies, but also to help provide a forum to share key learning, insights, projects, achievements that they are working on. It is a good way for the team to identify where and how to help each other successfully meet the business objectives. It is also essential to build and retain the values, character and culture of your organization. When you are in the position of managing your people over multiple time zones, you need to agree to the appropriate frequency and ensure these virtual meetings always occur.

If you are managing a global team, remember to change time zones for calls to suit the different employees (be fair and schedule this accordingly). There will always be someone who will be up in the middle of the night – just make sure it is not always the same person! And include yourself in the schedule of middle of the night calls. Make sure you give plenty of time and priority in team meetings to those not immediately in front of you and who do not have the benefit of the pre or post discussions that can follow a meeting.

5. Identify the sub group working parties – and create cross-functional teams and ownership across borders

This is a practical tip to ensure you don’t focus too much on the doing yourself or within your headquarters team only. Spread and share your projects and create cross-function teams and ownership of certain objectives within a sub-set of virtual teams across borders. The creation of these virtual teams helps you utilize all your available talent but also ensures a strong culture of collaboration, teamwork and global awareness and understanding of the entire business.

6. Foster collaboration

Every point within this article is about fostering collaboration, but it is also a topic worthy of its own highlighted focus and attention. Ask yourself these questions: What example do you provide in collaborating with your team? How can you create an environment of collaboration and do this through remote employees? How do you encourage problem solving? Provide cross-regional resources? Virtual teams? Use this point more as a prompt to continually ask yourself how you can foster collaboration within your team. For remote employees this is critical to ensure high motivation, engagement, loyalty, commitment and for your culture to live and breathe in the way you would hope it could.

7. Discipline in practices

This is just good business practice and as a manager and leader of remote employees it is important you keep discipline in how you apply this to different time zones, regions and needs. From personal experience, it can be quite taxing: to be available first up in a morning for say the US, to be available for APAC in the day and then the EMEA during the evening. If you want to keep a work/life balance then you will need to have discipline around planning the how and when to do all the things you need to do.

It is important that you build in time for:

Acknowledgement of employees work, give feedback in the timeframes that you commit to, give them some structure so they have good expectations to rely and operate within.
Provide available times or implement a system where they can let you know when they need to touch base outside of scheduled times. This should help you instead of being “on-call” 24/7 to everyone
Share and acknowledge successes, their milestones and achievements of your direct reports and those of their team
Provide regular performance and development feedback, make time for personal and professional development discussions and formal acknowledgement of performance reviews

8. Provide a clear career path – circulate employees across offices.

If you want to hire world class/world’s best talent you need to be able to demonstrate a great career path. Working for a global or virtual organization provides many great benefits and interest to employees and you hopefully you have already made sure you have hired those with enough ambition to deliver great results as the path to the next step. Ensure you have an individual development and career plan in place and look at what would be involved in delivering this from an investment and career path perspective.

It is important to ensure the movement of your people is two-way. Don’t just handpick the best talent from external offices and bring them to head office. Plan for senior organization leaders or future leaders to spend time out of headquarters within the various regions. This helps cement culture and brings a deeper level of understanding of your business in all regions and areas of your business that can bring not only immediate benefits, but also long term ones.

9. Harnessing available technology

There is much technology available to help you work remotely and stay connected with each other. Using cloud-based technologies like Gmail & Google docs for real time collaboration no matter where you are located can help. As does SaaS programs such as SalesForce for your customer relationship and data management purposes, and Intaact for Financial systems, ensuring everyone has access to the same information and infrastructure in real time no matter where they operate. Other technologies such as VOIP e.g. Skype can help keep costs low but frequency of contact and virtual face to face visibility high. Whilst Skype is good for one on one meetings, if you can’t afford internal video conferencing facilities for group meetings, you can hire out venues that provide it for you.

As to your IT server requirements, there are plenty of hosting services that allow you to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, with highly scalable, reliable, fast and inexpensive hosting from providers such as Amazon S3.

There is a plethora of virtual on-demand solutions that can help you manage your business no matter where your employees are located. This enables you to focus on your core business, leaving the business of managing the IT to those who specialize in it as well as providing you with flexibility and scalability that is difficult to compete with if you choose to keep your entire infrastructure in-house.

Building a strong and collaborative team

As a business leader you must have set firmly an overall organization development strategy that includes the objective of building a strong and collaborative team.

These tips are all about creating a team bridge – a way to help your remote employees feel connected. Connected and engaged employees are more likely to be motivated and will deliver much more than if they are left alone.

As Jack Welch best summarizes it “The team with the best players wins”.