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Hi, everyone. It's Ricardo Vargas here, and this is the 5 Minutes Podcast. Today, I'd like to talk about remote project management, and I want to share my experience with it. I have worked remotely for many years, much earlier than COVID and the people working from home. I worked for many years at home, traveling in hotel rooms and carrying my bag everywhere. That connects me to the client and to the team. And I have people right now. For example, I have people working with me in Denmark, Brazil, and other parts of Portugal. So it's it's a very different and spread it out environment. So how do I make things happen? And I want to share with you five quick tips that helped me manage this type of project more effectively. The first one is to leverage digital tools and platforms. You know, look, you need to use extremely professional-level digital tools, and they are good. So you can use Asana Trello Monday to organize tasks and track progress. To improve communications, you can use Slack or Microsoft Teams to enhance real time communication, even if if it's a smaller project, you can use even WhatsApp in a more non structured way. But with Microsoft Teams and Slack, you can keep track, you can share documents, and you can have all that dialog and all, I would say, all that repository of information available to you.
And, of course, storage solutions like cloud storage, like Google Drive and Dropbox, make sure that everybody has access to the information. And, of course, this one is obvious, right? It's obvious because you cannot work remotely if you have decentralized and standalone processes. You need to have everything very streamlined among the team members. The second one is all about communication. Remember, people are in different places. People may be in a hotel room. People may be at home. You need to have. Clear communication channels and protocols. You need to create a protocol. Okay. How do we meet? What will be the style of how we talk to each other? What will be our conference? Um, I would say policy or our process to do conference calls. And for example, let me give you just a very simple example. I do many times when I'm working on larger projects, I establish a time of the day, a few days a week, that I have office hours. I just go on Zoom and open my personal meeting room; anyone from the team doesn't need to schedule anything. They just jump in and talk. So I'm there. So what I do is turn on, I start a meeting with nobody, and if nobody needs to talk to me, I'm working. But I have my mic and my video open during that one hour.
Anyone to talk about anything. So this is, for example, one protocol that is very informal and makes myself available for other people to discuss topics on the project, for example, or even personal, uh, requests or personal comments. The third one is that this only works if you define goals, roles, and expectations. Remember, when people are working remotely, time becomes irrelevant. For example, I don't care if you are working from 8 to 5 or 9 to 6 or in the morning or if you decided to finish the job a little late. It's not the problem. The problem is the goal and the deliverable. We need to understand and give the team members a sense of autonomy and responsibility to deliver. So do not micromanage. Do not micromanage. Then say oh, it's he or she is working six hours instead of 7 or 5 instead of six. This, when you are working remotely, is just irrelevant. Okay. Number four. Foster collaboration and team building. It's not easy at all to build a team remotely because people don't know each other, and people feel isolated, and they tend to be isolated. So you need to create ways to collaborate. For example, on the work side, you can collaborate using Miro and Morale another day. For example, I use morale. Combine it with ChatGPT to do a risk management brainstorming with the team.
It was amazing because we used Post-it tools for discussion, and at the same time, GPT brought this turbo analysis or this turbo creativity for us. So, this is an example of collaboration. But on the other hand, it's important that you build a team, give people the opportunity to socialize, and build networks. And honestly speaking, this is a tricky part. It's not easy at all. I did many times happy hours, virtual happy hours, virtual games, and virtual interaction. It is it's okay. But this is something that we still struggle with. To build the sense of team that you build when people are working face to face. And this is a challenge, probably soon, maybe tools can come or maybe someone will come up with great ideas. But today, for me, one of the biggest challenges is creating this bond and friendship among people. Even working 5000 miles away from each other and working remotely. And last but not least. Stay flexible. He stays flexible. You need to understand when people are away, you cannot control them. You cannot control them the way you think. For example, all of our society was built in this chain of command and control where the boss sees the employee, the boss sees? Oh, it's out. Oh, it's sick, or it didn't come. It arrived late when you were working remotely.
This is just irrelevant. Go back to my third topic. If there is a clear goal. Let people be more flexible. Otherwise, you will become so paranoid, and then people will not produce. You need to leave the flexibility for people to decide on how they will deliver. And, of course, all the benefits, all the bonuses, and all the awards must be done based on the goals and the deliverables that each team member is producing. So think about that. Think about these five topics. Because for me this is one of the biggest trends. You know, I think the new generation will work far more remotely than in person. This is my feeling, I think, that we will never have this concept of being present and working every single day at the same time, at the same place, with the same people, because this will just not exist, at least in my perception. So, share your comments with me. Thank you very much for this and for listening, and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
