Learning 1: Don’t ignore the “superpowers” of distributed working

Companies are having to make an important decision about whether to continue working remotely, or to bring employees back into the office. To my amazement, I’d say that 99% of the conversations around working remotely are negative. 

Understandably, we’ve all been traumatised slightly by the experience of being forced to work at home. Everything feels terrible if you’re forced to do it. As soon as we transition from doing something because we’re forced to do it, to having agency over being able to do things the way we want, that changes everything.

First of all, I want to highlight the difference between remote working and distributed working:

• Remote working is working at home while everyone else is in the office, being creative, and having fun.

• Distributed working is where no one is remote - everyone is spread out, and the default is working from home. 

CEOs need to pay attention to the superpowers that distributed working gives us. Think about all the things we can do now that we couldn't do before. If we work out what these superpowers are, then that gives us the ‘why’ —the reason to stay distributed—and from there you can problem solve the ‘how’. 

Take commuting. The average UK commuter spends 221 hours a year commuting: but currently, the vast majority don’t waste any time commuting. Imagine a parallel universe where we never had to commute before, and I came in and said, “Listen up guys, I need you to waste two hours of your day sitting in traffic. No, you won’t get any work done, no, it won't be time spent with your friends or family, and yes, it's terrible for the environment, but two hours a day, you have to sit in traffic.”

Essentially that’s what companies are asking employees to do by telling them to come back to the office. So rather than saying that we’re only doing this because we have to, think about the amazing new powers we have, and how much better our lives are if we embrace them. 

Learning 3: Building and maintaining a strong team is a sign of your success as CEO

If you ask any CEO about the hardest thing they have to do as a leader, they’ll tell you that it's hiring and keeping brilliant people on their team. 

This is definitely true. I’ve found that my success as a CEO is almost entirely pinned on the things that my team does, and on my ability to keep them there doing it. Investors and board members don’t care about the things that I’m doing, they’re evaluating me based on my team.

My job, essentially, boils down to: setting the vision, hiring incredibly talented people who are far more impressive than I am, and making sure there’s enough money. 

Hiring talent is another “distributed working superpower”. Never am I going to have to post a job advert saying “Software Engineer in San Francisco” or “Graphic Designer in London”: every job I hire for now is global. That’s multiplied the pool of available talent by thousands. CEOs, who have been whining about how the hardest thing to do is recruiting people, have been granted this amazing solution which makes hiring infinitely easier. 

Learning 5: Try not to get consumed by fear of failure

I’m a chronic worrier, which really isn’t useful in a startup, so I try and think of ways to embrace my worries without it going to an unhealthy place or draining my energy. 

What I’ve learned is that, in startups, it’s actually okay if you fail. Most people can get other jobs, no one will be penalised for working at startups that have failed. While bigger companies have resources and assets that they need to protect, startups have the luxury of being leaner and less weighed down: in comparison, you have nothing to protect. 

Once I learned to think like this, a great weight was lifted off me. Now, I still spend a lot of my time worrying, but I try not to act on my worries: that way I can make decisions that often result in doing something unexpected and great.