Don't Waste Part of Your Team

When you start managing, you learn that every member of your team is important. You try to treat them equally. You want to give them all the same information so they work at peak efficiency. The higher you go the bigger your team gets and before long your team is no longer all located in the same location. This makes it harder to keep everyone "on the same page".

Wasting Talent
When part of your team doesn't get the same information as the others, it is harder for them to do their jobs as well. If they get a key memo, but not until after everyone else has seen it, they may do something different before they get the memo. If you send a two page plan to all your team leads outlining the new strategy they can move ahead as a team. But if there is some ambiguity in the plan and you explain that to one team lead, but not to the others, there is a real chance that they will waste effort executing the plan differently. Perhaps they will overlap. Maybe they will allow gaps. Either way they won't be as effective as if you had gotten them all the same information so they were all “on the same page".

Things To Avoid

• Differential Information Flow
  When you tell people in office more or sooner than those in the field or in other branches, you reduce efficiency.
• Uneven Appreciation
  Don't give more weight to suggestions from people in your office than to those in the field. Nothing will destroy morale faster.
• Preferential Promotion
  The fact that you see the people in the home office more, and see more of the work they do, does not make them better or more productive. If this causes you to promote them faster, or give them the more desirable assignments, you make it more difficult for the different parts of the team to work together.

Better Choices
You want to take full advantage of the talents of all the members of our team. You cannot afford to let any of that talent to be wasted because you don't treat them equally.

• Plan Your Communications
  You need to develop a plan for how you are going to make sure all your communications get delivered to all your people at the same time and in the same degree of detail. The plan will vary depending on your particular circumstances: your company, your job, where the rest of your team is located, etc. The important thing is to have a plan you can stick with under normal circumstances, but during periods of stress as well.
• Schedule Meetings
  Hold regular meetings to give you an opportunity to tell everyone at the same time. Use conference calls to include those in remote offices. If you can use a video conferencing system, do that too. A lot more information is conveyed visually than verbally.
• Get Feedback
  Ask your direct reports in the remote offices if they feel connected. Are they getting the same message in the same detail at the same time as their peers who are physically closer to you? If they aren't, they can suggest changes so they are getting the same information flow.
• Review Your Promotions
  Take a look at the promotions you have made and the commendations you have issued. Are they weighted toward the people in the home office? Are there valid reasons for that? Fix any discrepancies you find.

The job is hard enough without you making it harder on yourself buy wasting some of the talent available to you. Don't let distance blind you to the value of some of your team. Make sure you give equal importance to all the members of your team regardless of where they are located and you will be more successful as a manager.