In March of 2020, the coronavirus became a legitimate concern in the United States. Governors started issuing stay at home orders and limiting the number of people at indoor locations. The vast majority of companies were thrown for a loop when the stay at home orders forced their company to consider going remote.
The company I worked for at the time was a mostly remote, distributed team. Several people lived out of state, and the colocated employees only headed into the office a couple of times a week for meetings or collaboration.
Remote work makes some things more difficult. Collaboration is easier and more intuitive in person, but it can be accomplished remotely. The hallowed "serendipitous hallway meetings" won't happen when remote. However, you regain many lost efficiencies when given long, uninterrupted periods to work. The biggest complaint I've seen is having trouble separating work time from free time.
A more significant issue is when companies do not trust their employees to work when managers aren't hovering over them. That lack of trust is common when there isn't a set of guiding principles. Unclear direction often leaves employees guessing what should take most of their attention during the workday and mystified how their work can contribute to the companies success.
These companies also bombard employees with unnecessary meetings. Effective remote companies tend to have better communication channels that work asynchronously. Companies forced to go remote haven't built those necessary organizational habits.
The criticisms I've described are representative of poor company culture in general. Company culture must be developed with intention and continuously monitored. That is impossible when no one takes responsibility for it. These companies tend to see this process as a waste of time. It is no surprise that many of these same companies have an unintentionally obfuscated strategy.
Countless companies pay lip service to strategy when, in reality, it's more like a corporate form of hindsight bias. When influential customers easily sway company priorities, and urgency is confused for importance, your company has become reactionary.
The strategy doesn't need to be complicated; in fact, the simpler it is at the beginning, the better. Don't be shocked when employees are unsure about their roles if the company is unable to develop a coherent strategy.
A clear and transparent strategy is the glue that keeps people together and making progress toward a shared set of goals.
Having a shared purpose, vision, and set of objectives empower employees to make decisions aligned with the company's overarching goals without requiring management input. When employees come to a fork in the road, the choice should be obvious. Workers closest to the action should make those decisions anyway.
Strategy alone is no panacea. Once defined, the next step is communication and alignment. It would be best to operationalize strategy by using a framework such as Objectives and Key Results (OKR). Ideally, OKRs align all employees from the executive team to your company's individual contributors. The OKRs should cascade down from the top. Everyone should know how their personal and team goals contribute to the company's objectives.
The pandemic showed many skeptics their employees could be trusted to complete their work from home. CFOs recognize their current real estate expenses may be more than is required. We don't yet understand the lasting impact Covid-19 will have on business. This transformative event has likely jumped digital adoption years into the future. The companies that successfully operate in this new reality will be at an advantage.