Non-IT Executives don’t know how to measure productivity. They ‘see’ butts in seats as a metric of productivity, when it’s not what you should be measuring.

Most managers don’t know how to manage a fully remote staff. They focus on the hard skills and deliverables, but miss on soft skills, flexibility, shift schedules, time zones, etc.

Case in point:

Somehow, I’m able to successfully manage the quality, delivery, budget, ROI and risk of 50 people in India from anywhere in the world.

But my fellow executive can’t do the same for 10 people in the US working from home.

Maybe it has more to do with IT being driven by SLA’s and KPI’s than other departments combined with the feeling that an in-person meeting is somehow better than the one sentence IM that it should have been.

While I’m at it, meeting culture is the worst. It used to be 20% of the day. Now it’s like 60-70%.