Episode #355: Lockdown Leadership And Coordination

Technically Japan hasn’t gone into lockdown, as other countries have, but in typical Japanese fashion, it is effectively the same thing. By requiring “honourable everyone” to cooperate with the Government’s “request”, they have achieved the same outcome as a lawful direction. My fellow Aussies have had to be given fines for not cooperating with lawful requirements, making us toe the line, because we are wild colonial boys and girls. Not here in Japan though and so now we have many more people working from home.

Leading from home is a challenge. The first things that pop up are the difficulties of coordinating things that were so much easier in the office. In this isolation environment there is a greater degree of separation between the team members and with the boss. Everything seems to slow down and drift even more than normal. Actually, in the best of times, despite your heroic leadership efforts, nothing moves at a rapid pace in white collar work in Japan anyway.

By the way, if you want to see if the Japanese can work really fast, then visit factories. I remember touring a car plant assembly line and the pace of work production on display was really impressive. In the Japanese office however, it is usually a lot more leisurely. I always feel Japan is full of Parkinson Law poster children. The same amount of work getting done per day is calmly spread over thirteen hours rather than seven.

So now add in the unsupervised work from home equation and things can easily grind to a very low production ebb. There are additional factors in play though. Technology issues arise when trying to replicate what you do at the office while working from home. My team all have company mobile phones and laptops, but very few had printers at home. Not everyone has really fast broadband either, so live video conferences can become very clunky and unstable. I also bought them all headsets to try to reduce the work noise intrusion into their homes,

Another part of this productivity issue is because the family abode is a pretty confined affair in Japan. Most people live in small apartments or small homes. I have a humble study at home, which by Japanese standards, is quite a luxury. One of my American colleagues, from big sky Dakota, asked me if I was attending the video conference call from my closet. How do I explain Japan to her? I just said “yes, I am”. For my Japanese staff, throw the kids who can’t go to school into the working from home mix and chaos is the order of the day. Trying to get any work done in this environment is a nightmare.

Working in teams means we rely on our colleagues to get their part of the work completed, conforming to certain milestones and cut off dates. This new lockdown environment may make a lot of previously planned work schedules wishful thinking today. Bosses need to reconsider what makes sense in terms of outputs in this environment and to do this in a discriminatory fashion.

Discriminate toward expecting more from those who have personal circumstances that avail them space, peace and quiet when working from home. Recalibrate what you would expect from other team members who are working in home hell at the moment. Allowances have to be made, but it requires the boss to have that degree of knowledge of the team. If you don’t have it, then just ask.

The coordination element gets interesting because people start to second guess what you may want or may decide that they prefer to do things in a different way to what you thought was happening. How would you know this is happening when you are in glorious isolation? You can’t possibly prepare for all possibilities, across all dimensions of work and be able to head these diversions off at the pass. You certainly can’t do it at scale with a large workforce.

Delegation is now absolutely required, however it can’t be the usual low level of delegation, which is really abandonment and neglect, dressed up in fancy clothes. It has to be delegation with a much higher degree of reporting, almost breaking the rules on micromanagement. People will do stuff you can’t imagine and when you discover these things by happenstance, you start to realise the scale of the systemic problem.

Bosses need to be checking in a lot more on work being done. Certainly maintain the regular cadence of meetings, but then add to that cadence, to over communicate. More short catch up meetings will tell you earlier when trouble is on the way or when wild tangents are now loose in the system. The energy and time needed to coordinate simple things, goes up dramatically in this lockdown, isolation environment. You need to allow for that.

You may find yourself having to work longer to better coordinate things and so be careful of sitting all day. In the office you get up to go make a coffee or get some water or go out for lunch. Home is smaller and you move a lot less. Before you know it, you are gaining weight, losing muscle density and spending many more long hours staring at your computer screen. Everyone else’s inadequacies and time challenges, now get bumped up to you, as you try to cope with your team’s new, even more inefficient way of working.

As we found out, Covid-19’s disruptions were not over by Easter. This will last a lot longer than we prefer, so dig in for trench warfare. Reassess how you are working and make your adjustments now.