I have no idea what my staff are doing

For most of my career, I've worked remotely from my clients. My staff all work remotely, even when we're all in the same city. You might think this is some "digital nomad" techie showing off.

But when I have worked on-site at clients, I've been absolutely shocked at the lack of communication. Someone can be sat at a desk ten yards away from me, and I have no idea what they're doing.

If you work remotely, if you want to be successful, you put systems into place that force you to communicate.

Me and my teams report on what we're working on. We chat constantly during the day. We have a board with current tasks, and I can see who is doing what and which tasks need to be assigned out.

And as things happen, we get automatic reporting. As new versions of our software are deployed, we get a notification. As one of the developers finishes a piece of work, we get a notification. At the end of the week, I can see a graph of our performance, comparing how much we completed to previous weeks.

All of this comes from having an integrated system, designed to improve communications. Which in turn, mean that, at the end of the week, I can relax.

Take action: Where do your communications fall down? What can you do to improve them?