New Job, Pandemic, Fully Remote
So I made a major life choice recently. I changed jobs, changed my area of focus slightly, solidified fully remote, and all in the middle of a pandemic. So I’m a little over a month in and thought it’d be good to share what I’ve done and some things I’ve learned.
A Little Background
For the past few years I have worked for a global bank. That means while I was sitting in an office, a large portion of my time was spent leading/managing/coordinating/communicating with teams in other countries, remotely. So while I wasn’t working from home, remote collaboration was engrained in our culture.
Fast forward to March 2020, and guess what, myself and few others from work decided to take a little trip to visit AWS and Microsoft in Seattle. Lo and behold, that weekend little dots started popping up on a pandemic tracking app. So we tucked tail and returned, quarantined at home, and never looked back. We were already setup for remote and embraced it.
During that time I built, tore down, and managed teams all from my home. These teams were technology, product, and operations teams of various sizes and over various domains (security architecture, cloud security operations, cloud governance, cloud product teams, integration teams, etc.) Throw in the mix that our company was acquired, and so I had the experience to have to meet new faces across the corporate political spectrum remotely. This was actually an invaluable experience on many fronts, but specifically in that it made me think about how to purposely build relationships remotely without existing relationships as a spring board.
Fast Forward to Today
I made the decision to pursue a new role that was fully remote. For those of you who have made changes in your career, you find political capital in the corporate world is real. And changing jobs, forces you to revisit things that you may have started to take for grantees. You have to find a way to meet people, build rapport, and do it in a way that is approachable, likable, but confident. And it’s not easy.
Confident Humility
My first focus when I started was to get my face in front of as many people as possible. I joined a culture that had embraced remote, but found that different lines of business and different departments had embraced remote collaboration at different levels. There is a key difference. Remote, to me, is having the ability to work outside of an office. Remote collaborations has to do with daily interaction in chat, video, work management, use of technology for information sharing and so on.
First and foremost I made sure I had updated headshots to put in my corporate profile pictures and I turn my camera on at every chance I get. Even if I was the only one with my camera on. It was essential that people map my name to me. Without that, you lose the people aspect of relationships. So #1 make sure you have a good tech setup if you’re starting a new job remotely. Focus on camera, mic, lighting, and background. For the background I try to have something visible that is a conversation starter.
Starting day one, I started setting up intro meetings with everyone I may work with on a regular basis, focusing on most to least, but not waiting to do them serially. I did this lot. Probably 25-30% of my time for the first two weeks was this. I also still do this if I have a meeting with folks on a regular basis on other topics, but haven’t had a 1:1 with them.
In each 1:1 I stated my goal was just to get to know everyone. I used a consistent intro that balanced what did before, why I was here, and that I was just looking to meet everyone and start working together. Then I stopped talking. I tried to only asked questions after that. This is not to be manipulative in any way. I genuinely wanted to meet people, and it was of the utmost importance that I did not give any air of “I’m here now and I know better.”
So How Do I Do My Job Without Pissing Folks Off
Sometimes, this is inevitable, especially in risk and security. But it should be avoided at all costs. Sometimes it can’t be helped, but I try to limit the amount of times I say “at my previous job we did X.”
I’m still going to use my experiences, but I will try to approach changes differently than that. I’m now in a non-“technical operations” role, so traditionally things like Jira, agile (especially scaled agile), work management, remote collaboration and other things like that are hit or miss depending on the org and department.
I’ve started bringing some of those practices for workload management into the teams, and doing it in a slow methodical way to introduce everyone to it. Some things don’t fit. Some things don’t make sense, and so I just have to feel it out. But I have to do it in a way that’s collaborative and adds value, otherwise it’ll be just be seen as busy work.
Consistency
Ultimately this is the key. I can’t just do the things I’ve suggested to check a box. I actually mean, I really do want to get to know people. I work on sharing personal anecdotes in chat to try and stir more chat and camaraderie. I’ve also observed that I’m not sure this would work as well for someone early in their career unless it was an organization that had fully embraced remote work and remote culture.
The bottom line is this. Starting at a new organization remotely is not hard, but to do it well takes effort.
Be purposeful and genuine in conversation.
Use “I” a lot less.
Ask lots of questions
Get to know people. For real.
Show your face. Use quality tech.