Embrace the Remote Work Revolution with Distributed Leadership
Leadership Teams as Organizational Designers in Post COVID Era
This month marks three years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many organizations sent workers home for what everyone thought would be a two week sojourn.
I still remember the frenzy of the days leading up to remote operations. Quick coordination meetings in large rooms so we could really socially distance. (This was before masks became a thing.) Devising plans to train staff on how to work over Zoom. Packing up all the equipment you would need to do your job from home. Locking the door to the office and waving good-bye to everybody. “See you in a couple weeks!”
Three years later, many haven’t seen their colleagues in person again.
Some moved to far-flung places to escape the urban centers their jobs had previously forced them to live near. Others work for companies that saw the potential savings of having remote teams and gave up their office spaces. And still others find themselves in a liminal space where the gravity of the physical work space in starting to pull them back - whether that is because of their personal need for human connection or because the CEOs of their companies want to get people back in the office.
One of the aspects of this I hadn’t thought about before we recorded our latest Sense & Signal podcast with veteran tech executive Michael Peachey is how the concept of distributed leadership can actually help organizational leaders during this era of increased remote operations.
Higher Education and Distributed Leadership
Coming from higher education, I probably take the concept of distributed leadership for granted. It’s a pervasive practice in educational institutions. It involves flattening out the hierarchy of organizations so teams and units can lead themselves. It gives power and authority back to the workers because they all possess the capacity to be leaders. And it requires more group meetings to engage in collective sensemaking to make sure the organization is headed in the right direction.
Higher education institutions have probably developed this type of organization as an adaptation to the extremely complex environments in which they exist. But it’s probably a foreign concept to many who work in the tech sector - an environment traditionally dominated by visionary leaders like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. One could argue that once a company like Apple or Microsoft gets too big, the visionary leadership of tech moguls becomes less effective - if not downright destructive.
The Tech Sector and Distributed Leadership
This is due to the complexity that emerges as organizations grow and become more interconnected with the world around them. It’s one thing to have a command and control approach to leading a new start-up in a small office in the Mission District of San Francisco. It’s another thing to lead a multinational software company whose corporate headquarters is located on a sprawling campus in Redmond, Washington.
One mind - no matter how brilliant that mind may be - is capable of leading a complex organization using a command and control approach. Never mind that this leadership approach also feels draconian to many employees. We are also dealing with generational differences.
So, a distributed leadership approach is a solution to the increasing complexity that organizations operate within. And it’s also a solution to managing employees and teams working remotely.
And it’s more than just establishing a clear mission, vision, and set of values - though these elements are vital as well. But leadership teams need to design rules, systems, and processes that will lead to the outcomes they want. Distributed leadership - from my perspective - doesn’t mean that executive leaders don’t contribute to establishing the direction the organization is moving toward. On the contrary, they become designers of the direction, and need to adopt a design thinking approach to construct organizations where distributed leadership can be harnessed to keep the organization moving in the desired direction.
Remote Work & Distributed Leadership
As the post-COVID reality we are entering begins to find some equilibrium, leaders who have employees working both remotely and in-person will need to do some design thinking to ensure there are no equity gaps between those two groups of employees.
Michael Peachey says he sees both sides of this issue depending on his mood. When he is feeling more utopian, he feels the remote work revolution that COVID-19 produced is great for many workers and organizations. Yet, when he is in a more dystopian mood, he foresees the potential for an opportunity gap to emerge between in-person and remote workers.
Since it’s natural to have biases for the people we work in person with, leaders may end up offering more plumb project opportunities to in-person workers. Peachey worries this may eventually reduce the remote work positions to the level of gig workers in an organization.
There’s lots to chew on in this episode on distributed leadership. Hopefully, you will find some tips and insights that you can apply as you or your organization considers designing its leadership structures during this remote work revolution.
You can also listen to audio version of the Sense & Signal podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.