How to Be a Boss Online 

COVID-19 has made working virtually necessary, which means that learning to successfully lead in a virtual environment is now essential for entrepreneurs. How do you effectively lead in the face of digital transformation? Dr. Canute Thompson told us on #MoneyMovesJa how entrepreneurs can effectively lead virtual teams. Thompson stated that there are at least three ways to lead effectively in a virtual environment.

1. Management by Deliverables

The first, he suggested, goes back to an old principle in management and leadership – management by deliverables. 

“That particular approach is as relevant to the era of virtuality as it would to the era of face to face,” Thompson stated. 

“When you manage by deliverables, it doesn’t matter what people do with their time otherwise,” he added.  Instead, he said leaders should be concerned that employees produce by a particular time and to a particular standard. In short, leaders should not police the time of employees, but rather, ensure that employees get the job done. 

“The efficient person might take four hours to do a particular task, while another person may take an entire day,” noted Thompson. The organization should, therefore, agree on what the scope of the work is and set a particular time for it. 

“If it’s agreed that this particular task takes six hours,” Thompson explained, “then the person who finishes in three hours is free to do whatever they want for the next three. Go onto something else or go to the beach, because they have done what is expected of them.” 

He also emphasized the importance for leaders to avoid capriciously deciding how long something is supposed to take. Instead, Thompson suggested  that tasks should be divided in a coordinated and corporate manner. 

In response to Thompson’s theory, the host of #MoneyMovesJa, Kalilah Reynolds, asked him about the relevance of Parkinson’s law in the virtual workspace. Parkinson’s law states that work expands to fill the amount of time you have to do it. In summary, if you give somebody a day to do a task,  it will take them a day, and if you give them a week, it will take a week.

2. Self Accountability 

Thompson responded that while there is some wisdom to Parkinson’s law,  one of the ways to cure it is what he calls the second approach to leadership in a virtual space – self-accountability. Self-accountability means that the individual should recognize that he/she has a duty to be as productive as he/she can. Thompson suggested that an individual, having discovered that a task can take two hours instead of four, should report/share that and increase his/her output by accepting more tasks over the course of the day.

3. Authentic Collective Ownership 

Thompson added that while a good number of people are prone to get away with as much  as they can, that tendency can be overcome by an organizational culture where people feel that they own the organization. He suggests that this will create the sense that individuals are invested in the company, so if you hurt the company, you are hurting yourself. That way people will want to do more because to do less is to hurt the organization that they are a part of. 

Thompson emphasized that the difference between virtual and in-person leadership may not be vast, but they are significant. It is, therefore, important that leaders take steps to restructure the organization so that tasks deemed to be executed inside the office space can be done elsewhere. Additionally, leaders should seek to reconfigure work processes and work outputs to make for easy measurements of what people have done. Although the task may be completed, leaders should establish key measurements to determine if it reaches the organization’s standards.

Create opportunities for interaction

Moreover, he highlighted the importance of  creating opportunities for interaction. These include meetings, virtual parties, even virtual karaoke. He suggested that leaders should not have meetings to keep tabs on people. Instead, they should do so to check on the wellbeing of individuals. 

During this period of virtual working, business owners have an opportunity to rethink and reshape their relationships with their teams. This will help develop new ways to achieve goals and create a productive and engaging working environment. 

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