Experiments in Remote Design Leadership — Month 2

I’m two months into an Interim Research Leadership role at Babylon Health. What have a learnt this month?

To pace myself better.

Month 1 saw me charging at 300 miles an hour. I spent a fair bit of time away from home and most of my time in meetings. This was really helpful to get to know people and build relationships but it left me very little time to follow up and take action. Towards the start of month 2, I caught the office lurgy and I felt pretty exhausted. This was my body telling me to slow the hell down!

Constrained by Mark’s travel to EMBL in Germany and Cambridge, I spent less time in the office and more time remote. I did a four day stint early in the month and then haven’t been back to London since. The context switching was strange and it took a while to get into a groove at home but I got there in the end.

To be intentional about communication.

I have dialled back on weekly one to ones and was a bit worried about this at first. Without me being proactive and arranging time together, did the team know they could reach out to me if they needed? Without seeing them, how could I know if they were stressed, or worried or bogged down? I’ve worked remotely before and I’ve found a few things really help.

Structured time: Punctuating the week with structured time as a team.

Clear communication: Being clear and direct but not being afraid to repeat myself.

Constant communication: Being present and participating in public Slack channels. Being as responsive as possible to private messages and emails.

Relationships matter most.

I’m glad I laid the foundations with the team as I feel like I’m starting to understand the type of management everyone expects or wants. It really helps in the absence of face time. I know that silence from some is because they are snowed under and treading water but others will need to download their thoughts to me in a similar situation. This is still a work in progress as I get to know people further.

Stakeholder management at a distance is hard.

Building relationships with stakeholders is an important part of leadership. It’s hardest to do with folks you are further removed from - for me this is Product and Engineering. I haven’t had the capacity yet to lay the foundations as Babylon is so huge. This has been a problem this month as I have needed to step in and support one or two of my team. Without any prior relationship, not being able to read someone’s body language and having to go in cold with an email has made these interactions trickier. I’ve felt clunky and not as effective. I’ve had to lean more on Jane but thankfully she’s a terrific boss.

How to look smart from the waist up.

Spending so much time on Zoom with a high definition camera meant I was wearing more makeup than I usually do! Thankfully Jane pointed out that Zoom has a built in filter and thanks to Rahel I discovered Zoom backgrounds.

What is month 3 looking like? I’ll be back in London for off-sites, interviewing and regular face time. Our GDPR audit is taking shape thanks to the wonderful Rosie so we can start to take action where we need to. Thanks to the hard work of others in the team, we are tweaking our processes for our labs, recruitment and incentives. Once the fires have been put out, we can start to work on the things I mentioned last month to increase our impact — more effective Mixed Methods research and telling better research stories.