Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere Hardcover – Illustrated, March 30, 2021

In this work, Neeley lays down the foundational needs of organizations and teams to take on the rapidly expanding remote work revolution. Using simple language, she subtly rehashes leadership theories of empathy, efficiency, and inclusion that provide psychological safety and understanding for every team member, near or far. Focusing on the goals, roles, resources, and norms generates the undergirding platform for success from anywhere.Using summary points at each chapter’s end provides excellent refreshment of concepts as launches and relaunches of leadership vision and direction occur repeatedly. Although helpful, some pointers are not explicitly consistent with the context of the chapters. Still, the insight provides leaders with stable, meaningful actions to engage and encourage remote staff.Driving deeper into concepts such as trust, Neeley expounds on the vital aspects of building relationships remotely through swift, default, passable, cognitive, and emotional trust scenarios. She also provides quick anecdotes, creating smooth transitions into concepts for readers to identify and assimilate the content. Neeley may have missed an opportunity to include more psychological or physiological detail about the brain in the context of safety and belonging to bolster the benefits for or arguments against remote work.Neeley wisely elicits variations in approaches to lessen tech exhaustion, increase mutual knowledge with intimacy and immediacy, and apply strategic redundancy for clear communication and connection to company goals. Without articulating it, these ideas correlate to Heifetz’s methods for adaptive leadership acumen to “get on the balcony” to see the work’s global impacts and create “productive distress” to promote productivity with a sense of urgency.She then shifts to break down the agile team formation with an in-depth case study of the company AppFolio. Here, she shows the crossover challenges and benefits of high-touch teams moving into work-from-home situations. Neeley presses forward best practices and itemized steps to shift from the Agile Manifesto from software development into the new work culture of the post-pandemic organization.Neeley recalls her previous work on common language in the workplace to answer one of her many questions for leaders to affect change. She reaches answers in the context of a comprehensive review of a turnaround story about a globally distributed team at Tek, an oil and energy corporation led by Tariq Khan. She expertly interweaves the concept of psychological distance within a global, multi-cultural environment to iterate leadership steps toward inclusion, understanding, buy-in, and engagement through mutual learning and teaching.Neeley completes the work by articulating common challenges for a virtual leader and some mediating tactics for success. Applying transformational leadership theory, she says to identify individual strengths to align with the superordinate goals of the organization while allowing for relational development beyond the fault lines of different geographies, social norms, and cultural variances. Encircling the global challenge in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) space, she enumerates a leader’s to-do list alongside an analogy of the iPhone’s camera. Taking a panoramic view of world events, framing situations and risks pertinent to the business and stakeholders, and an immediacy of action reiterates the leader’s role in using the picture to change for the better.The work is deeply researched and provides an array of resources and commentary on major and minor points to debunk misguided opinions on unproductive remote staff. Neeley has created a timely and actionable set of recommendations that can apply to both current and budding businesses where remote work, cultural differences, and technology have their place.

The author tells an anecdote early on about someone who was pushing through a real estate loan for someone who had saved for a long time in order to own a home in a good school district for his kids. He was upset when the loan wasn't approved because his salary was docked 25% because of the pandemic.

This is quite literally one of the best business books I've ever read. Neeley has spent a decade and a half studying cross-national companies and decentralized teams, and she distills all the wisdom from that research into a crisp, actionable guide to managing and operating in our new world of remote work.The presentation is intuitive, with tons of examples -- drawn from business contexts ranging all the way from real estate agency to LEGO and 3M.It is a *very* fast read because it is written so well. Key lessons are well demarcated and sectioned off so you can find the specific business issue/challenge you're most interested in easily (e.g.: establishing trust among remote teams; managing difference; use of digital project management tools). I was able to read about half of it in the evening of the day it came out.It's worth buying even if you just use the remote work best practices "action guide" at the end.Disclosure: Neeley is one of my colleagues, so I already had some familiarity with her research. But that also means I have been anticipating this book's release for months -- and it somehow still exceeded my expectations by a mile!

I expected advice on how to set parameters for working on line. The book arrived on time but didn’t fit my family member’s needs as I thought it would. I saw the author on dr Phil

This is a well organized, easy to read and understand book that is actionable almost immediately. If you are struggling with your work from home teams or your business is not yielding the results you want since having to go remote, I beg you to read it. This is not an “overnight” write up. It is backed by years of science, observation, and research in remote teams. It was ready at just the right time. There’s even an action plan in “workbook style” at the end.

Working from home became something many people did during the pandemic, but it won't end when the lockdown does. Do you work in a company where people work from home? Do you lead one? If you don't - you will soon. And that means you need to read this book. Tsedal Neeley is Harvard Business School's rising star, and she's written the perfect book for the future of work - it tells you how to make working remotely work for you and your company, and how to create and lead teams that gel and succeed, even when they're spread out across the world. This book will be an essential part of every businessperson's toolkit for years to come.

I wish I had this book when I started remote work 17 years ago. This book is a great guide and is a MUST read. It has given me new insight into remote work that I have tried successfully. This book is very timely and a true gem.

I enjoyed the insight and real-world stories put into this book. I am not a manager, but looking for ways to learn. I have worked remotely for almost 2 years thanks to Covid. This book gave me a great perspective on how to approach my team and keep us all moving in the same direction.