(Image credit: iStockphoto/SDI Productions)Despite reams of material written about remote work in recent months, we know very little about the impact of remote management on performance. Perhaps it’s too soon. Until we can assess longer-term performance under home office and remote management, we can’t be sure of the impact.
Nevertheless, leaders have to make decisions about reassembling a management team in an office without full evidence. Greg D. Carmichael, CEO and chairman of Fifth Third Bancorp in Cincinnati, is one, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report. In calling all of Fifth Third’s employees back to the office he remarked that, “We can’t be a great company working remotely … We can get the job done, but it’s tough to flourish.”
The comment refers to Fifth Third’s management core. Like many service organizations, it will continue to deliver its services through branches as well as the internet, but not through employees managing from home. Mat Ishbia, president and CEO of UWM Holdings, shares the sentiment. As he puts it in the same report, “We are better together. If you have an amazing culture, and great people that collaborate and work together, you want them in the office together.”
"Just how large an organization can get while still being managed remotely in an effective way is a question."
I assume that Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, which powers about a third of websites, would disagree. His company operated last year with about 1,200 employees working asynchronously (that is, not on the same schedule, handing off work each day from one employee and one time zone to another) in 75 countries with no headquarters. The strategy requires, among other things, that remote managers get together for four weeks each year for team-building events, and the support of the latest and best communications technology.
Just how large an organization can get while still being managed remotely in an effective way is a question. But Sid Sijbrandij, CEO of GitLab, an open-source software developer and provider, believes that “all-remote scales even better than the traditional model … the benefits of all-remote: writing down your processes, stimulating cross-company informal communication, they get more pronounced at scale.”
Carmichael’s comment raises questions about the limits to which his decision to bring management back to the home office is applicable. Is it limited to businesses and organizations in which collaboration is important? Does it apply more to large than small organizations?
"We can ask how far this rejection of remote management extends. Is it idiosyncratic to one organization?"
Does it make more sense for a workforce that is older with fewer obligations (childcare, etc.) outside the office? Does it recognize the social needs of many (not all) humans to relate in person to those with whom we are working?
We can ask how far this rejection of remote management extends. Is it idiosyncratic to one organization? All banks operating in a conventional format? All companies relying heavily on collaborative work? All companies with great cultures? Or is it applicable to all companies?
Can a company managed from anywhere be great? What do you think?
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
References:
- Prithwiraj Choudbury and Emma Salomon, GitLab and the Future of All-Remote Work (A), Harvard Business School Publishing, April 2, 2020.
- Chip Cutter, The Back-to-Work Puzzle, The Wall Street Journal, July 24-25, 2021.
- Steve Glavesky, The Five Levels of Remote Work — and why you’re probably at Level 2, Medium, March 29, 2020.
Your feedback to last month’s column
Last month’s column asked whether chief/customer experience officers (CXOs) were critical to the task of knowing customers. A summary of responses would conclude that for most of us the response is “Yes, but …” The conditions mentioned included only if:
- Top management is ready to know more about customer experiences and make the investment required to put the knowledge to work.
- Management is prepared to delegate the task to a broad swath of the organization.
- Once the job of sensitizing the organization to customer experiences is done, the position of CXO will be eliminated.
The first point was made by Yale Schwartz, who commented that, “It all starts with the organization’s desire to improve the overall customer experience and become the brand that customers can’t live without.”
Frances Pratt believes that, “For too long we have been ‘marketing’ led … (with too little knowledge of) what and how customers actually interact and buy from you … Unless you spend time with your customers … then you don’t have any real ideas on how to move the NPS (Net Promoter Score that many firms use to track customer reactions).”
Regarding delegation of responsibility, Bill Edwards commented, “When companies name a person to the role of CXO too often others think they are off the hook for managing the customer experience … The CXO must enable and insist others to be responsible for customers’ perceptions and experiences.” Arie Goldshlager added, “… a CXO could prove instrumental … (if) the company (is) ready to invest in its customers and employees, potentially to the detriment of its short-term profit needs… everyone else, particularly the front-line employees, should also be CXOs.”
Chris Brown, whose organization fosters customer centricity, reminded us that, “What’s interesting is many of the most customer centric firms in the world don’t have a CXO (Amazon, Starbucks, Virgin, Southwest Airlines). I would argue that’s because it is already baked into their culture(s). It’s just what they do.”
Ron Kurtz put it simply: “Seems like the CXO is a superfluous position if the CEO and CMO are doing their jobs.”
Joe Pine, who has written extensively on the subject, commented that, “most companies that truly recognize they are in the experience business (e.g., The Walt Disney Company) do not need a CXO… CXOs need to catalyze capabilities … design the right set of experiences … orchestrate company resources … and … champion customers within the organization ... once that transformation is complete and the company has indeed become a premier experience stager, then the CXO position can be eliminated.”
These comments invite us to ask the question, “What’s the future of the CXO?” What do you think?