How to reclaim time with asynchronous workflows

I have a clear mission with my work. 

I want to change how leaders organize remote work so we can change how people work altogether. It all starts with asynchronous workflows. 

Our most important resource is time. As teams, we need time to do meaningful work. As leaders, we need time to make impactful decisions. We solved the location problem with remote work - almost anyone can work from anywhere now. It is time to solve the problem with time. We need to be able to work from anywhere, anytime. 

We will still meet, do facetime, and collaborate synchronously online or even offline. But we need to strive towards our goal: do as much as we can asynchronously, so we can be flexible with our time. 

But how do we do it? This issue of Leadership Anywhere gives you the three areas where we can quickly implement asynchronous workflows to reclaim time for ourselves and our teams.

First of all, to be clear, async work is not a third category on top of remote or hybrid work. It is part of both. The goal is to do more async work, so our selection of either hybrid or remote work wouldn't be a necessity but rather a sheer preference of management. 

Second, our goal is not to focus on areas where we spend most of the time (so we can reclaim more). Instead, let's focus on areas where we can use more time to improve our work. 

1. Collaboration on projects

You are probably doing a lot of async collaboration on projects already. For example, writing documents together, providing reviews and comments on materials, or writing code asynchronously. 

The goal is to make this work intentional and planned and do even more async. To achieve this, you need to focus on three steps:

• Set up a proper company hub, so all information becomes accessible on projects. By doing this, you save tremendous time on scheduling and project planning.

• Completely ditch brainstorming meetings and sessions. In most cases, they are not helpful anyway. Focus on small project kick-off meetings instead. 

• Make project communication fully transparent. It dramatically reduces small "what to do" and "where is this document" comms. 

2. Decision-making processes

I have covered this aspect in a previous issue for you, but in a nutshell: leaders should give up their privilege to make decisions. 

In an asynchronous decision-making process, the remote leader is not a power player but a facilitator. The goal is simple: leaders can have more time to properly assess situations by making decision-making async. The more time the leader has, the better decisions they make.

To learn more about async decision-making, read this previous issue of Leadership Anywhere here. 

3. Hiring & Recruitment

If you are a growing company, you can feel the pain already: leaders spend an insane amount of time participating in hiring & recruitment processes. 

You know what I am talking about: that 2nd interview stage with the line manager. That 3rd interview stage with the leadership. The constant filtering and sourcing of applicants. It just sucks away so much time. Meanwhile, it burns the productivity of leaders and team members alike. 

By planning, you can make most of the hiring processes asynchronous. 

• Write an amazing job spec that describes your company and the work and ensures that it filters out applicants automatically. 

• Make the cover letter mandatory. No easy apply - you don't need the volume; you need the quality. 

• Ask applicants to do a test asynchronously. A survey, a short task, anything can work. 

• Automate the whole process. The HR manager or team member engages with applicants only if they complete all the necessary steps.

You will receive fewer applicants if you do this, but the quality will spike up. When the applicant has a screening call with your team, they come with a great filter, background, and more. 

Therefore, you will not just save a lot of time but will be able to recruit better candidates by default - all because of the async hiring process.

And that's it - I will discuss some of these areas in future issues. It is utterly essential: we need to reclaim our time so we can use it to do more meaningful work.

#TLDR

• Remote work allowed us to work from anywhere. Async workflows will allow us to work anytime. 

• Our mission is to build more async processes into our workflows, so choosing between hybrid or remote setups will be more flexible.

• We can implement more asynchronicity into our work in three key areas: collaborations, decisions, and hiring. 

• The goal is to focus on areas where we can use more time to do our job better. With async flows, we reclaim time to use it more efficiently.

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Leading with intent: how to provide autonomy for remote teams

In a previous issue of Leadership Anywhere, we discussed why it is vital to have a mission for the company. Now, let's focus on how to translate that mission as a leader for your team. Let's talk about the Leader's Intent. 

I am fascinated by military principles and army operations. I believe leaders can learn a lot from military tactics. For example, taking a group of people, making them work together for a common goal, and commanding them to a specific purpose can be applied to modern leadership principles.

It is astonishing that leaders still tend to divert back to early 20th-century military tactics, where army generals sent troops to fields to fight. This concept replicates the throw resources at problems approach, which is highly ineffective today. It also features a top-down management style where commanders brief subordinates who "simply" perform the orders.

That is all wrong. Also, modern armies don't work like that. The battlefield is more complex and fluid, so those on it should be able to make decisions independently. 

Modern armies operate through the Commander's Intent. In a very simplified version, it means this:

• The Commander defines the mission and its end state. It means what needs to be done and what is the desired outcome.

• The Commander also creates a sequence of necessary steps to achieve the end state. Sort of like a roadmap.

• The team takes the defined Intent and moves toward accomplishing the mission. On their own, with almost complete autonomy within a predefined set of limitations.

• The team works with the resources provided by the army, defined by the Commander. The team also reports to the Commander on any breakthroughs they achieve during the mission.

Now, obviously, it is a bit more complex than this, but we can get the gist of it and how it can be helpful for remote teams. A team on the ground is essentially a remote team, reporting back to the mission control asynchronously. 

Let's translate this army principle for remote leaders. There is a simple, 5-step process for Leader's Intent:

1. You should define the company's mission. We have already discussed this in a previous chapter. Head over here to learn more about this.

2. You should define what is considered mission accomplished. By defining the end state first, leaders won't focus on the tasks of the sequence but on the results at the end. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how your team accomplishes the mission. The only thing matters are outcomes.

3. You should provide and also define the resources for the team. It is broad, but generally, it can be the headcount, the information hub for the team, the project processes, and more. You can adjust the resources later if needed.

4. You are the one who defines the sequence as well. But there is a caveat here: you should not focus on the small steps, only the outcomes. Define what the breakthroughs, milestones, and other obvious points of the plan are. It is a roadmap, not a project plan. Not leaders but managers are the ones who define detailed project plans.

5. Lastly, you define the limitations. Determining what is not considered a desired outcome of the mission is vital. Also, what is considered mission failure? Limiting the options allows you to keep the autonomous work within limits, ensuring that people are on track.

As a remote leader, you are not alone. You have four key stakeholders on whom you can rely. 

• The executive team. Namely, your founders or first leaders of the company. They help you to define the company's mission with their insights.

• Your co-leaders. They are leaders of different practices within the company, and they help you to maintain the limitations and mission objectives.

• Your managers. They help you to translate your mission sequence into a project plan. They also help you to evaluate and review breakthroughs along the way.

• Your team. They are the ones who are doing the heavy lifting. They work autonomously based on resources and plans. They provide you with feedback on changes in resources or the existing plan.

I call the model Leader's Intent. I believe that by leading your team through this model, you don't need to work through "blind trust" in your team. Instead, you define the entire landscape and let your team do their best autonomously. 

It values your team. It is collaborative. It is flexible. It is intentional. 

#TLDR

• Remote leaders can learn much from the military's Commander's Intent, where the leadership predefines the mission, but the team works towards it autonomously.

• The remote Leader's Intent has 5-steps to define a clear set of guidelines for their teams to work towards a common goal.

• Remote leaders have 4 key stakeholders that they can rely on to accomplish their mission.

• The Leader's Intent principles create a more collaborative, flexible, autonomous workplace where teams feel valued and motivated.

I know this issue might be a bit challenging to take in. I am more than happy to provide answers if you have any. Send me a message if you need more clarification on this matter.

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Five steps to gain trust as a remote leader

Trust is the most cherished value for any leader. Trust happens naturally if the leadership is transparent. To put it simply: the higher the transparency you have as an organization, the more trust you have in the leadership.

Let’s discuss a simple 5-step approach to install transparency in your company.

Without trust, your team will fall apart. It doesn’t matter if your company is remote or not, but if you are operating a remote company, trust becomes the most important value for your team. Without trust, you will end up with a group of freelancers and hired guns instead of a proper remote team.

Transparency creates trust. But how can we create transparency? I think transparency is not a mystery - it is just a certain amount of accessibility to specific work areas. Five areas, to be specific.

So, to have trust as a leader, you need to be transparent. To become transparent, you need to provide access for your team to five critical areas of your practice.

These areas are:

1. Information

2. Operation

3. Communication

4. Completion

5. Decision

I created the transparent leadership triangle, which describes the whole process. The more areas you give access to, the higher the transparency level you have, which means the more trust you cultivate.

Let’s start with information. It is the simplest one, and most remote companies accomplish this level.

• Have a central hub where you have all the information about the company

• Give unrestricted access to your team to all the information

The second level, operation, can be controversial, but most companies also take steps toward this.

• Have a hub of projects where your team can follow all the projects, regardless if they are involved

• Announce and communicate what’s going on within the company with everyone

• Bonus tip for the brave ones: share all operational metrics with metrics (finance, revenue, users, company performance, etc.)

In the first two layers, remember: the more you share, the more transparent your company becomes.

The third level is communication. The goal is to be clear, precise, and accessible and stop gossip or guessing.

• As a leader, make yourself available for your team and allocate time to support them

• Communicate team-wide more, communicate 1:1 less

• Document all communication and share documentation with everyone in the hub

This level is often misunderstood. To be practical, you have to forget 1:1 chats on Slack and focus more on team-wide group chats. The more people see what is happening, the less likely you end up with misalignment.

The fourth level is completion. At this stage, you provided access to all information and operational metrics, and your communication is as transparent as possible. Now you need to share performance metrics.

• Track team-wide performance based on outcomes and share the outcomes with everyone

• Company-wide performance (i.e., roadmap) is shareable as well with everyone

• Bonus tip for the brave ones: share individual performance with everyone

It sounds common sense, right? However, this is where most companies fail. Remember the “secretive” talks with HR on your performance? Or when team A has no idea if team B completed something that is meaningful for both parties because their leaders rarely update each other?

The last stage is decision. I admit that I saw only a handful of companies that reached this level. I shared how to make async decisions before here. To get the gist, you need to involve your team in decision-making.

• Have a transparent decision-making process where everyone on your team has an input

• Share the collaborative, transparent decision with everyone

It is the most challenging part, as every leader protects their decision-making process. You might cry out loud: making decisions is what makes leaders. No, it’s not. At least not in a remote company.

The leaders recommend, facilitate, and drive a decision. But the process is shared. Sharing it makes everyone feel included - everyone accepts the decision and the way forward.

#TLDR

• To gain trust, you need to be transparent as a leader.

• Transparency is a matter of accessibility. You have to provide team-wide access to 5 areas.

  • Information. Have a company-wide information hub with unrestricted access.

  • Operation. Share all operational data with everyone.

  • Communication. Be accessible to your team and communicate team-wide, not 1:1.

  • Completion. Share completed projects, milestones, and performance with everyone.

  • Decision. Make the decision-making process transparent and involve your team.

I hope we build more transparent companies together.

Peter

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How to win leaders for your business

Hiring leaders for your remote company is the most crucial hiring you will ever make as an entrepreneur. Today, I will explain my preferred framework on how to do it.

There will be a point when you need to grow beyond the original founding team of your company. You’ve run out of friends and families and close recommendations, and you have all the co-founders there.

It is time to hire your next 10 team members - people you don’t know. This next group of people will have the most significant impact on your business ever.

If you hire the right ones, your business becomes a rocket ship. If you hire the bad ones, in the best-case scenario, you will lose half a year of growth at the most critical time of your company. So it is essential to have a framework for finding the right ones.

Startups at this stage fail because of many things:

• trying to find a magician who can wear many hats

• trying to engineer the heck out of it and aim for an expert, not a leader

• don’t have a framework and hire too fast without proper checks

First of all, you need leaders, not managers. Your goal is to grow at this stage, so you need to find people who can build out entire “departments” for your company. A highly skilled expert can solve a problem for you but is not necessarily able to build teams for you.

Second, you need a framework that can be applied to any leader. I call it the asynchronous leader scorecard.

Using it is simple: there are six areas, each with a score of 1 to 5. You can hire anyone who reaches 20 points.

Remote work experience.

This is the most critical area as you have a remote company. You need a leader who managed remote teams before. The more remote work experience the leader has, the more points they get.

A simple background check is enough on the first interview to check this area.

Communication skills.

What you need to look for is someone who can communicate properly in writing. It is not an obvious trait - most leaders are great at speaking as they are used to having meetings. Remote work is different. You need a precise writer who can brief, delegate, and manage people in writing.

Checking writing skills is easy: give candidates a problem and let them write a brief as they would do it for their team. A nice trick is to show this brief to one of your team members internally without briefing them on the situation. If they can figure it out, the brief was clear.

Inspirational mindset.

I have talked about what it means to be an inspirational leader here. The more adequately they can explain and transfer your company’s mission to someone else, the more scores they can get during the hiring.

Checking this area is a bit harder, and it is highly up to you and your company. A practice I had was to give candidates the written company’s mission and let them explain it to me to see if they understood.

Management skills.

You need to know how your leaders are solving problems. If they are throwing resources at problems, they are not taking responsibility. They can be a good fit if they are genuinely building out a process to solve a specific problem.

Checking management skills can happen in parallel with communication ones. The same problem, but after the briefing, they also have to develop an action plan for solving the problem.

Leadership personality.

Often overlooked part, but you need people who are nice. You need more supportive leaders, less dominant ones. More empathy, curiosity, warm calmness, less practical conformity, or impulsivity. Don’t get me wrong, you need assertive people - but you don’t need the narcissist a-holes.

Checking this area is entirely up to you. These traits can surface during the interview process if you think you are a good people reader. Or you can stick to any personality test filled out asynchronously.

+1 Chemistry.

Now, yes, I know - you can’t ignore this one. We are human, after all. But trust me when I say this: chemistry means almost nothing in a remote environment, especially in an asynchronous environment. You don’t need to sit together in the same office every day, so whether you like the person or not means almost nothing.

Checking this is up to you. It is a free bonus of 1 or 5 points. But please don’t let these points make or break the decision.

That’s it; I hope it was helpful.

#TLDR

• Your most essential hires will be the first people you hire out of the blue, as they will shape the very face of your company the most.

• You need to hire leaders as they can build and grow teams for you.

• You need to have a framework to hire great leaders because if you hire bad ones, you will lose valuable time and resources at a crucial time for growth.

• You must check their remote work experience, communication skills, inspirational mindset, management skills, and personality.

That’s a wrap! See you next week.

Peter

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What is the company's mission, and why is it important?

This week, I wanted to share one of the most fundamental cornerstones of any leadership practice: a company's mission. 

People sometimes call it a vision, which is a bit more cloudy and too broad. Others think the mission is the purpose, which is closer to the point. The mission is much more precise than other popular terms.

When do you need to define your company's mission?

You need a company mission when you have a somewhat solidified product-market fit with your business. Why not earlier? Why not later?

Because before that stage, your only asset is your idea which turned into a prototype or vaguely working product. You still need validation. Before product/market fit, many companies change their product completely or amend it to fit the market needs. But when the proof is evident, the structure starts to solidify. 

Why do you need the mission?

It is pretty simple. If you want to scale, you need a mission. It helps you to:

• recruit people to your team;

• enlist stakeholders and partners for your company;

• differentiate yourself from your competitors.

What's in the mission?

The mission has three critical elements. 

1. The why. It defines the company from the problem/solution point of view. You are on the market to solve a problem. Your mission is to reach a state where that problem is solved. That is called the end state.

2. The what. It defines the sequence of actions to get to the desired end state. These are not tasks but high-level actions, much like a product roadmap.

3. The who. It defines the decision-makers and their role in getting the company from initial- to end-state. Not an organization chart. More like a list of areas of influence.

Why don't we have the "how" on the list? Because how the company work towards its mission is up to the team. It is their autonomous decision on what they are working on - until they work towards the mission accomplishment. 

#TLDR

1. You need to define the company's mission once the company has a somewhat solid product-market fit, not before.

2. The mission is your company's flag that enlists others to participate in your journey. By missing out on defining your mission, you will risk your growth.

3. The company's mission describes the central problem the company solves and how its product/service is solving that problem. It also describes the end state when the problem is solved.

4. The mission also defines the leading influencers who help others to perform a sequence of tasks to get to the desired end state of the mission.

5. The main benefit of the mission is helping alignment of team members on what the company wants to achieve.

6. Alignment is the most complex challenge for any remote leader.

I hope I helped you understand how to define a mission and why it is crucial. 

Peter

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How to make asynchronous decisions?

As a leader, the goal of making a decision is to decide how to solve a problem and get your team unstuck so they can move forward with the mission. 

There are two benefits to making decisions the async way:

1. You gain enough time to gather more information, reducing the risk of bad decisions

2. You pull your team into the process, increasing the overall transparency and engagement of your team

As an async leader, you are less like a decision-maker power player but more like a facilitator of collaborative decisions.

But why do we make decisions? To unstuck your team, solve problems, and let them move forward. And when do we make a wrong decision? Either our emotions get in the way, or we need more information. In both cases, having more time to make the decisions can be helpful. Involving others in the process can also be beneficial as a team reduces emotional rollercoasters as they can act as a feedback loop on new ideas.

Making async decisions is easy if you follow this 5-step process:

1. Assess the issue. Write down the assessment in a document with an optional solution already provided.

2. Collaborate on the written assessment document with your team. Invite them to give feedback and insights.

3. Review the document. Resolve comments and understand the insights, then provide a complete document review.

4. Integrate all the aspects. This step is the only one that can happen synchronously through a meeting. Discuss all the feedback and insights, and share the review with your team. Since a lot of preliminary written work went into this, the meeting will be super productive for everyone.

5. Align the entire team around the decision. It can happen during your integration meeting or asynchronously later, but you need to ensure that everyone is on the same page. Aligning the entire team means a lot as it shows the way forward for everyone, the very reason why you made the decision.

Once you make decisions this way, you will see two immediate results:

• Your team is more aligned and engaged

• Your leadership becomes more transparent, inspirational

If you still have doubts and are afraid of letting the control out of your hands, I want to highlight three things for you:

1. It is the leader who announces the decision-making process for everyone with a pre-written assessment of the problem

2. It is the leader who makes the final review of the collaborative document that the team produced on the problem

3. And it is the leader who does the alignment with the complete team

Another added benefit of this type of decision-making process is documentation. We are familiar with the "we had this problem before" situation. You won't have this situation anymore, as written documentation is everywhere and is the critical element of the process. 

I understand that decision-making is the most protected process of leadership. Even so, leaders sometimes mystify it. That should be different - decisions affect everyone, so everyone should be involved in making them.

#TLDR

1. We make wrong decisions due to the lack of time or engagement from our team.

2. By changing the decision-making process to a transparent, collaborative, asynchronous process, we gain time and clarity for our team.

3. Involving our team in decision-making helps us with alignment, transparency, and engagement. Everyone supports a decision more in which they have some part in the making.

4. There is a 5-steps process for better asynchronous decisions: assess, collaborate, review, integrate, and align. Most of the steps are asynchronous and involve the entire of your team.

5. The asynchronous decision-making is heavily documented in written form for archival and collaboration purposes.

I hope I pulled your mind a little on decisions.

Peter

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How to become an inspiring remote leader?

A leader's primary purpose is to lead the company through ever-changing times. Therefore, the most critical skill for every leader is to become inspiring. But how inspiration works, and how a leader becomes inspirational to their team?

Inspiration is a skill that can be learned but only after dissecting its parts and focusing on improvement. An inspirational leader can transfer the company's mission to its teams, ultimately securing a better future.

WHY DOES BEING INSPIRATIONAL MATTER?

Inspiration matters because it is the glue between the leader and their team. It creates a bond that transfers the company's mission to everyone, creating a shared mission and understanding. It ultimately leads to committed, productive, engaged teams.

CAN WE LEARN TO BE INSPIRATIONAL?

If we ask this question to a group of people, the overwhelming majority would think that being inspirational is a skill you cannot understand. You are either inspirational or not. People presume it works much like talent: you either have it or not.

I beg to differ. It is a skill that can get training, and it is something that you can learn and develop. Talent is overrated. There are temperament, affections, and maybe aspirations, but most are hard work and practice.

HOW CAN WE LEARN TO BE INSPIRATIONAL?

To learn to be more inspirational, we must dissect what inspiration is. Who's considered inspirational? What are their traits? Inspiration is a drive that gets you from a specific state to the desired end state—being inspirational means you can transfer this drive to others.

I think there are five key traits of being inspirational:

Have a vision.

You know where you will drive your team toward that end state. This trait is not something you can learn. It is the byproduct of analytical thinking and strategic planning.

Be positive.

A positive attitude accepts adverse outcomes but actively seeks solutions or way-outs to avoid them. Having a positive mindset is equivalent to being an excellent problem-solver. Which, as a leader, you should be anyway.

Be a team player.

It is the one where most leaders fail, and this is a trait that can resonate well for improvement. It means that you don't think of yourself separately as a leader sitting outside the team, requesting reports, briefing them, and, yes, micromanaging them. Instead, you are part of the team, giving support, contributing to the performance, showing gratitude, and, most importantly, you trust in your group.

Have a passion.

While a positive mindset is something that is more solutions-driven, passion is something that is more support-driven. If you are passionate, you care. Care about your work, company, team, results, and game.

Have integrity.

It is a combination of being kind and having some grit. Having grit means you have ambition, drive, and want to accomplish. It sticks to others, especially those who are competitive players. But being also kind means that you value human connections. You can create a space where team members can come to you, trust you, and talk about their needs and problems. And with the best of your knowledge, you help them.

Mastering these traits will lead you to today's big leadership buzzwords, like having a growth mindset.

The passion for caring about your people and the drive to achieve more will allow you to seek growth opportunities for yourself and your team members. Having a vision that you present to your team as someone who is part of the team will arm you with being a visionary.

#TLDR

• Being inspirational as a leader is critical, especially for a remote/asynchronous leader. An inspirational leader enlists their team for the company's mission, and inspiration acts as a glue between the leader and their team.

• Being inspirational is a skill that a leader can learn and develop to be better at it.

• To learn being inspirational starts with dissecting what inspirational is.

• An inspirational leader has a vision of the future and a positive mindset. The inspired leader is a team player with a passion for the company's mission and the integrity to act toward it.

• Buzzwords like "growth mindset" mean the leader inspires their team and company to move forward to the future.

I hope I helped to simplify and, most importantly, demystify the "magic" behind inspirational leadership. Inspiration is nothing more than self-reflection, empathy, and hard work. I will also share some practical tips on showing up as an inspirational leader for your remote team in the upcoming issues of Leadership Anywhere.

Until then, take care.

Peter

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