johnmaconline

Ten years of remote work and still loving it, with all of its ups and downs. Over the next several days, I’ll tell you how I mastered the art.

The transition began subtly. The first three years had me in the office three times a week, laying the groundwork for what would become my full-time remote career over the last seven years.

I’m astonished when I look at how far I’ve come since making that game-changing decision to jettison the familiar and forge off into the unknown. But today, the idea of trading my remote workspace for a traditional office feels unthinkable. That’s not to say the office doesn’t have value (it does, and I’ll talk about that), or that I wouldn’t take a position that required my frequent presence in an office (I might, and I’ll talk about that), it’s just that the remote environment is here to stay, so we should acknowledge it.

What’s coming your way? A treasure trove of insights on optimizing your personal efficiency, leading virtual teams like a pro, and leveraging the remote culture to benefit your business. These aren’t just theories; they’re lessons drawn from a decade of trial, error, research, and keen observation.

Stay tuned. If you’re hungry for success in the remote world, yearning to sidestep common pitfalls, or eager to challenge the norms, you won’t want to miss what’s next. Dive in, debate, and refine your remote work game.

More to come…

On the one hand, Key Performance Indicators are a natural and necessary method for organizations to measure themselves and their people.

“Here are the things we care about. How did we do against those things?”

But the problem is the cat and when he gets out of the bag.

Because once you know how you’re being measured, you can easily game the system. It’s why oil companies can score high on the ESG scale, and fast food companies can score high on healthy eating initiatives, and big pharma scores well for affordable health programs.

If the help desk worker knows she’s being judged against how many tickets she closes and how fast, you gotta know that she’s closing tickets quickly and reopening new ones for the same issues. If a software developer knows he’s being judged against story points (or lines of code), you gotta know he’s inflating the points associated with his tasks (or writing extra lines of code).

That’s human nature. We optimize for what’s being measured. But optimizing isn’t the same as doing what’s best. It’s just doing what’s counted.

The fix?

First is transparency. Here are some KPI’s, but KPIs are not the only story. Impact is, and impact may be subjective. You care about the full picture, not just a scorecard.

Second, mix it up. Change the KPI’s. Reveal some after the fact.

Third, foster a culture of genuine improvement. Celebrate and encourage the innovations and attempts that didn’t work.

KPI’s aren’t the north star. Your mission is.

Like John Mulaney said, “I always thought that quicksand was gonna be a much bigger problem than it turned out to be.”

As a Gen-X’er, I grew up on Saturday morning cartoons, and in the cartoons, quicksand is a big problem. One of the biggest, in fact. I just assumed I’d be dealing with it my entire adult life. I remember formulating my plan for how to survive when I fell victim to quicksand — grab on to whatever I could, lay out flat if possible, never struggle. I may have practiced my survival techniques in the backyard. 

As it turns out, I’ve never had to work around nor be saved from quicksand. I’ve never even seen quicksand.

I was a victim of availability bias.

Since the quicksand concept was right in front of me all the time, I couldn’t help but be worried about it. 

The News, and media in general, are masters at using availability bias to play us like fiddles.

The next time you find yourself anxious or angry because of something you saw, heard, or read on The News, ask yourself, 

“Is this quicksand?”

Because unlike quicksand, where you focus really can trap you.

I am one of those computer guys.

When I worked as an intern at GE Astrospace in 1990, our team of about 20 people shared six or seven computers situated in the common area of the office. We had two black and white Mac’s (SE-30s), a color Mac (Macintosh II), and three or four VT100 terminals (connected to the VAX machine somewhere else in the building).

One of my unofficial roles as the intern was to be the “computer guy.” Most of that computer guy work was secretarial. The real engineers would give me their handwritten tables and ask me to create a pretty graph on the Mac. Or they would give me the modified characteristics of a component box on the spacecraft and ask me to update the model on the VAX so they could perform new radiation analyses. 

I didn’t mind because a) I got to learn about real engineering work, and b) I liked learning how to use the computers. In those first few years, I taught my team members how to use now-ubiquitous technologies such as networking, email, and the web. 

My computer guy-ness spilled over into my entire life. Even though I was an electrical engineer working on spacecraft problems, I became known as the computer guy in all aspects of my life. 

My friends and family would describe what I did for work as, “Oh, he’s one of those computer guys.”

In the 90s, having the skill of operating a computer was a novel quality. A quality worth mentioning about a person. Just like being a “driver” was something worth noting about a person around the turn of the 20th century. 

But today? Everybody’s a driver and a computer guy. 

You’ll probably be better off embracing useful technologies rather than sounding the alarms. 

As humans, we like to, actually need to, simplify the world around us. It’s a survival mechanism.

Our brains are wired to reduce complexity to manageable chunks of information. Psychology research says we can hold 7 plus or minus 2 items in our working memory. But holding info isn’t the same as processing it or using it to make sense of the world.

Then we add in the marketers, headline-creators, and the fear-mongers of the world. They are smart and good at what they do. Their purpose is to distill the complexity into ordered, simplistic, single-variable problems.

Climate change causes forest fires and superstorms.
Children’s books on transgender issues cause transgender identity.
Capitalism causes poverty and racism.
Social programs cause dependency and lack of motivation.

The issue with this simplification, especially when pushed by those with an agenda, is that it gives us a false sense of understanding and control. When you’re trying to make order out of the chaos, leaning on half-truths is as good as knowing nothing. Oversimplification is like slapping a band-aid on a wound that needs surgery.

So, what’s the antidote?

Keep questioning. Keep digging. Keep changing your mind. Keep expanding your reach. Keep evaluating and re-evaluating. Keep trying stuff. Keep talking. Keep being surprised. Keep walking through doors. Keep opening windows. Keep believing before seeing.

Empathy first.

You gotta see before you believe.

Science. Evidence. Data. We are conditioned to trust our eyes, to give weight to what’s measurable, and to believe in what’s before us. If it can be demonstrated, quantified, or replicated, then it warrants our belief.

But that’s no way to live.

How do you pioneer without faith? How do you break through? How do you believe in your future? How do you trust in possibilities? How do you find meaning? How do you develop purpose? How do you build courage? How do you transcend?

You gotta believe before you see.