Jeff Robbins interviews Hassan Osman, PMO at Cisco and blogger at The Couch Manager. (Views are his own, and not those of Cisco.) We discuss managing virtual teams, the future of work, and enhancing productivity through remote work.

Discussion topics...

• How to know whether or not your team is virtual or co-located
• Why virtual teams are the future of work
• Remote working environments contributing to workplace productivity
• Cisco is big on telecommuting - sells solutions to other companies to encourage remote work
• Stat: Cisco reported $277 million dollars in productivity savings as a direct result of remote work
• The average Cisco employee telecommutes two days per week.
• How do you convince co-located managers that going remote is a good idea?
• Piloting a remote work program, slowly rolling it out to co-located teams to build trust
• Ineffective communication is why virtual teams fail to stay engaged or get projects done
• Managing distributed teams by achieving objectives, not by the time they spend at their desks
• What exactly is "the curse of knowledge"?
• Good reasons to over-communicate or over-explain tasks to ensure clarity and understanding of tasks and remote team responsibilities
• Stop using a secret language
• How does "the bystander effect" influence remote work? 
• Using direct language to get things done on distributed teams, assigning to individuals and not to groups
• Setting deadlines strategically, not optimistically
• What do virtual managers need to know about keeping their distributed or hybrid teams productive?
• Inserting humanity into remote management to build trust with remote workers

Books mentioned for further reading:

• Remote by Jason Fried
• Influencing Virtual Teams by Hassan Osman

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