Page 173 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

152 � mAnAgIng the moBIle workForCe

expectations
How important is expectation setting? How about for a Results-Only
Work Environment? Can you imagine one of those fancy mobile per-
formance management systems being effective if the workers weren’t
held to high standards of execution? But if you’ve done your home-
work, this part of the process is much easier. If you know ahead of
time the results you expect (you started at the very ending after all,
didn’t you?), then you know what goals to negotiate with each of your
workers. In fact, difficult, specific, committed-to goals are the most
motivating, we discuss in Chapter 9. Make those goals observable and
you have a real basis for evaluation at the end. Make them mushy
and subjective and you are moving out of a high-performance man-
agement system and into a negotiable, political management system.
And don’t forget to set expectations for supporting and living orga-
nizational values. A good way to do that is to model them yourself. If
you value integrity, act with it. If you value cost consciousness, don’t
spend lavishly on yourself. With mobile workers, values have to be
emphasized heavily, because those workers aren’t around to observe
how people act in the corporate environment or at the service center.
They’ll only see how people behave virtually, and they will have to
infer expectations more than others do.
The same holds true for organizational standards. If collabora-
tion is expected, describe what that looks like. If communication is
important, be sure to let your employees know what that means. For
example, how often and in what ways should the worker communicate
with clients, coworkers, or the manager? Once a day? On the phone?
With summary data or full reports? Only when there’s a crisis or at
the weekly meeting? Be specific and up front about what you expect.
Then you can be precise when evaluating results at the end of the
period. Road warrior John Hale, discussed in Chapter 6, makes it
clear that he doesn’t need or want messages containing thoughtful
pleasantries such as “Will do!” when he has 250 other e-mails coming
in each day.