5 Steps to Becoming the World's Worst Remote Manager

So, you’ve hit the wall? Perhaps it’s the months of self-isolation, or perhaps it’s the endless and incessant screaming children who are bored of your conference calls—one thing is clear though the world, your world, will never quite be the same again. Companies of all shapes and sizes have made the plunge into enabling remote work, and along with that comes remote managers. You’re now responsible for a group of 250x250 pixelated faces and digital beings who regularly bestow upon you a wall of notifications and animated gifs. That said, you know to really set yourself apart, you need to become the WORST remote manager on the face of the Earth. Below, we provide you with the top five ways to solidify your position as a terrible remote manager.  

Communication is Overrated 

Why!? Why the heck do you get so many notifications through email and Slack? Shouldn’t your team just know that you’re trying to distinguish between the taste profiles of a medium versus light roast coffee? All while balancing a cat on your head and walking a dog on a treadmill? In a time of uncertainty, to become the world’s worst remote manager, you must sever ties with your team. Allow them to flounder, provide no guidance, and shutdown the feedback loop. If you do communicate with your team members, remember—ask them what they are working on every 17 minutes. When they respond, don’t even acknowledge it, no response required. 

Dream to Achieve 

When in a crisis, it’s important to know your limitations as a group and as an organization and just throw them out the window. Doubled-revenue year over year for the past three years straight? Awesome! Do more—now that everyone is at home with a ton of distractions, it’ll be easy to at least quadruple sales. Having unrealistic expectations and sharing them with your team is like buying a first-class ticket on a rail-less high-speed train. It’ll be a disaster, but at least it’ll happen really, really fast. 

Extinguish Trust—Impose Rigidity 

If you’re a great remote manager, you’ve mastered trust building and have built a culture of feedback and autonomy. We’re not here to become great managers though, we’re here to become awful. To master poor remote management, you’ve got to broadly assume that everyone is binge watching Netflix and couldn’t possibly be getting ANYTHING done. The key here: flexibility. You must target the flexibility in schedules and squelch it like a dying flame. Impose rigid, archaic schedules and work hours on your journey to becoming the world’s worst remote manger.  

No Time in the Office = No Acknowledgement 

Ok, so maybe a little work is getting done. However, if you have people going above and beyond and just absolutely crushing it, write a congratulatory note down on a Post-It, say it out loud, crumple it up, turn on your pivot foot and shoot that sucker into the trashcan across the room while shouting, “From Downtown!” After sinking the shot, your desire to publicly acknowledge a team member’s hard work will have sunk too. Perfect, you’re almost the world’s worst remote manager.  

Keep Your Schedule Completely Up in the Air 

A good manager keeps open blocks so their team members can catch up with them, have 1:1s, or address any issues that come up during the work week. You must destroy your schedule. If you don’t update and wildly change your calendar at a minimum of four times a day, you’re too easy to get a hold of. You know what, just go ahead and make your calendar completely private or block out the next six weeks entirely.  

If you can master these five guidelines, we can assure you that your team will despise you, no work will get done, your metrics will tank, and you’ll be known as the world’s worst remote manager. If that sounds like a terrible idea (and newsflash, it is), and you truly desire to become a better remote manager, Peoplelogic.ai can help. 

Peoplelogic.ai is mission control for teams, watching customer retention, employee satisfaction and workflows within your company 24/7/365. We mitigate risks and surface opportunities for growth in real time, so you can focus on scaling your business.