In 2020, people’s lives changed drastically. From remote working to social distancing, our work lives, along with our personal lives, have taken a 180-degree turn. While some found it difficult to adapt to the new normal, leaders directing remote teams learned powerful lessons during the pandemic.
Let’s take a look at the five lessons of remote management we learned in 2020:
The first lesson we learned is the need to be agile. It is the key to surviving life as challenging as the COVID-plagued one. The only way to move forward and ensure the business thrives is to be flexible and agile. Some may have set remote working as a standing procedure for their businesses even before the pandemic, but for the rest, switching from a brick and mortar office was beyond tough.
With flexibility, you know you can continue productivity from your bedroom and drive your business goals to success.
The second most important lesson we learned is that productivity knows no bounds. Employees worldwide performed their duties remarkably after shifting to an online structure in the wake of the pandemic.
The myth that people believed about remote working being unproductive proved baseless and untrue in these months. Now we know that productivity is possible during a pandemic, through a laptop, and with the presence of social distancing rules.
Management is no longer outdated. With technological progress, management styles have modernized too. Leaders no longer need to micromanage and stand on their employees’ heads to accomplish deadlines.
Now is the time when business leaders can completely trust their team members and rely on their incredible skills and intellects. Leaders can now design processes, goals, and responsibilities with the belief that their employees will accomplish business goals smartly within a remote-working structure.
Before the pandemic, the world underestimated the benefits of video. Since the pandemic, we have seen how business benefits from video meetings and how time-efficient this approach is. Companies have realized the efficacy of video tools to support their business objectives and help in team collaboration.
There are continuity and seamless collaboration between team leaders, business associates, and team members. This tool has become the backbone of decision making, reinforcing business mottos, and driving collaborative, productive outcomes.
The last important lesson is that with technology, all things are possible. Before the pandemic, we would never have vested our beliefs in the power of organic collaboration and time efficiency. But soon after we hastily converted to online working, we realized that technology helps us fare, if not better, than just as well as we do in physical offices.
From team meetings, project handlings, meeting deadlines, and decision making, we have done it all through the internet these past few months. We have developed business plans and strategies and worked in unity as a team to complete projects online.
We have gone without the need of jetting off from one end of the world to the other to promote business and yet managed to expand our networks. All that we need is a good internet connection, a good grip on software and its functions, and the willingness to drive productivity even while reclining on our couches.
From shifting important documents, procedures, and policies online to building an organic remote collaboration, 2020 has taught us to stretch our boundaries. While many would summarize 2020 as “unprecedented,” the business world would not be wrong to describe it as “enlightening.”
We may not have reached the pinnacle of success in the corporate world, but we sure have learned that we can keep business running with all the limitations and restrictions the pandemic has enforced on us.