Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere – Evidence-Based Strategies for Virtual Teams, Trust, and Productivity

by Tsedal Neeley

LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES & MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR “I often talk about the importance of trust when it comes to the trust of your employees and building trust with your customers. This book provides a blueprint for how to build and maintain that trust and connection in a digital environment.” —Eric S. Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom Harvard Business School professor and leading expert in virtual and global work Tsedal Neeley reveals how to thrive in remote and hybrid organizations. Succeeding in a hybrid work environment comes with unique challenges. Managers must lead virtually more and more, keep teams motivated and productive, employ the most effective digital tools, and build trust. Employees need to feel connected, foster creativity, and continue to learn and feel supported. Remote Work Revolution answers the eight questions Tsedal Neeley gets asked the most about overcoming hybrid and remote work challenges, such How can I trust colleagues I barely see? How should I use digital tools in remote work? What do I need to know about leading virtually? Can my team really be productive remotely? Providing evidence-based answers to these and other pressing issues, key takeaways, and an interactive action guide, this book will help leaders and team members quickly develop an actionable plan and deliver results previously out of reach. This book is essential reading for navigating the enduring challenges teams and managers face in remote and hybrid work.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Leadership, Management, Audiobook, Self Help, Technology

272 pages, Paperback

Published March 30, 2021

Reviews

[Elese Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although thorough in identifying risk and concern associated with WFH - it was a bit light on effective methods for resolution. Heavy dependence on global team analogies, which I thought were good. Would have liked to see stronger recommendations on coaching and mentoring and cultural cohesive issues that have emerged...

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Remote Work Revolution was not what I expected. It's more about managing remote workers and teams in different locations than it is about personal strategies for working from home, how to set up a company for remote work, or the history of remote work. It seemed to me that this was probably a book that was already partially completed a year ago and became very timely when the pandemic began, leading to some COVID-related additions to make the book more relevant.

[Dolly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been following Professor Neeley's work for years and so I am so grateful that she has brought the work into book form. Her recommendations are both evidence-based and reality-based. This book meets the moment and is a must read for anyone in a remote work context.

[Mustafa Jummah · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the last ten days, I read a book called "Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere." It's a newly published book by Tsedal Neeley, a professor at Harvard Business School. The book is like advice from the expert and a blueprint for succeeding in remote work with specific, actionable steps to success for both leaders and employees based on similar stories, insights, and examples about two main topics; Productivity and Trust.


4 things that stayed with me:

1- Team alignment is not synonymous with agreement. In fact, disagreement—often miscast as the enemy to cooperation—is a crucial part of refining ideas, identifying mistakes, and growing as a collective unit.
2- Cross-national teams need to take into account cultural and language differences. Preferences for synchronous or asynchronous communication differ by culture and common language competence.
3- The mutual knowledge problem is the fact that in the absence of us sharing the same place; we lose contextual information that helps inform what's going on with us.
4- Remote workers crave predictability. Leaders can support this by providing clear, consistent, and direct communication about job descriptions and responsibilities.


Throughout my reading of this book, I remembered the first week of WFH and the first month of Careem being a remote-first company! It was very awesome to realize that most of the best practices in this book we are already have adopted here at work, yet I realized the efforts and dedication that the People team made to make this happen.

[Lisa Tangen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely positive and powerful. Very validating.. Wish I had read it months ago.

[Jessaline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written for managers on how to maintain productive and engaged remote teams, though only useful to those new to understanding people management and new to remote working. For those already familiar with these topics, it's nothing groundbreaking.

[Xixi · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding From Anywhere" by Tsedal Neeley was already in the works well before the pandemic caused remote work to become far more normal. However, the worldwide movement towards remote work increased the pressure to complete this book. The book begins by discussing the need to (re)launch businesses in a new structure that allows them to thrive in a remote space. How relationships are formed and cultivated has to be adapted to do this. The book also shares about agile teams and ways to apply this to remote companies, with case studies peppered throughout of teams that have done well and teams that have performed poorly since shifting to remote work. Lastly, the book provides an overview of cultural differences as it applies to global teams and provides recommendations to managers on preparing for these differences.

Overall, the book is a very quick read (it's only 240 pages or 6.5 hours in audiobook format). While almost anyone working on a team can benefit from this book, it would be most beneficial to people responsible for leading teams remotely. Personally, I can find several areas where tactics in the book apply to my own experiences working with clients remotely. The best client dynamics and the meetings I most looked forward to were the ones who spent a small portion of the meeting developing a personal connection. This made working with them feel much less tedious, even though the projects were basically the same as with other clients. The book also provides valuable insights for building relationships with both in-person and remote teams and mirrors what we learned in class well, in that psychological safety is required to create shared trust versus just swift or passing trust.

One weakness of this book is that it covers a wide swath of different topics in an abbreviated format. This format may feel superficial for readers looking for a more prescriptive approach to what they should do to succeed in a remote work situation. I did find some chapters to be fairly superficial, but given that the book was such a quick read, I did not find this to be too much of an issue because I felt there was sufficient information from this book to inspire me to dig elsewhere into subjects that I would like more information although I do wish the book would have provided more direction in that regard. The book also heavily concentrates on how to build and maintain relationships without the immediacy and intimacy felt from the social presence of others, but I do not feel it was clear enough for tactics to recover that in today's post-pandemic world where "remote" does not only mean far apart, but also could mean people with very different lifestyles than we saw two years ago. In this way, while I feel like much of the information she shared was good and valid for remote work, I feel it left out the "revolution" part.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a good read on remote working.

However, it was mostly about relationships and relationship building, rather than how to actually do or optimize for remote work.

I know, yes, relationships are important, but then if you take that argument, then I take the argument that the title of the book is misleading.
This book should be titled:
Remote Work Revolution: Reworking Relationships to Succeed from Anywhere - yeah, something like that.

If you are interested in reading about remote work itself (which I was, and why I picked this book up), I'd recommend instead, you read the book Remote: Office Not Required

3.2/5

[Jung · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere" by Tsedal Neeley delves into the intricacies and dynamics of thriving in the era of remote work, a shift accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This guide provides practical, evidence-based strategies to help individuals and organizations excel in a virtual, distributed, and global work environment.

The foundation of a successful remote team begins with a launch session, a critical meeting where team members align on shared goals, roles, resources, and norms. This initial step is vital to prevent miscommunication, mistrust, and missed deadlines. A launch session ensures everyone understands the team’s objectives, individual responsibilities, necessary resources, and communication norms. Regular relaunch sessions are essential to realign the team as conditions change, fostering ongoing success through periodic check-ins to track progress and adapt agreements.

Trust is fundamental for remote teams, though harder to establish without face-to-face interactions. Neeley emphasizes the importance of cognitive and emotional connections. Cognitive trust is built on the belief in coworkers' reliability, developed through understanding each other’s work styles and behaviors. Emotional trust grows from a sense of mutual care, fostered through personal disclosures and celebrating milestones together. Leaders play a crucial role in modeling trust-building behaviors, encouraging both task-oriented and relationship-oriented interactions to develop robust and enduring trust.

Contrary to some leaders' fears, remote work can enhance productivity when done correctly. Research indicates that remote workers often outperform their office-bound counterparts, thanks to the autonomy and flexibility remote work provides. The key to high productivity lies in creating a supportive environment with adequate space, technology, and boundaries between work and home life. Leaders should focus on process over outcome, fostering a culture of autonomy, engagement, and excellence, thus making surveillance tools unnecessary.

The landscape of digital tools for remote work is vast and continually expanding. Effective use of these tools is crucial to overcoming the lack of mutual knowledge and social presence in remote teams. Matching the medium to the message is essential: richer media like video calls for complex situations and leaner media like emails for straightforward information. Redundant communication can also be powerful, with the sequence of using synchronous and asynchronous tools being strategic. Enterprise social media can facilitate connections and knowledge sharing, crucial for team cohesion.

Remote work allows for global talent acquisition but also introduces cultural complexities. To manage these effectively, leaders must reduce psychological distance among team members from different cultural backgrounds. Establishing a common language, typically English, with clear usage guidelines helps promote inclusion. Mutual adaptation through learning and teaching cycles fosters empathy and reduces the “us vs. them” mentality. Leaders should model openness, encourage dialogue, and celebrate the team’s diverse strengths to transform differences into sources of innovation and cohesion.

Effective remote leadership requires creating conditions for success in both presence and absence. Leaders must proactively address challenges unique to remote work, such as subgroup formation and the need for clear communication. Promoting a unifying team identity and shared purpose is essential. Regular feedback and structured informal bonding time help maintain engagement and psychological safety. Leaders should encourage healthy debate and dissent, viewing conflicts as opportunities for learning and innovation. By fostering connection and empowerment, remote leaders can ensure their teams thrive across distances.

"Remote Work Revolution" underscores that the key to thriving in remote work lies in intentionality and strategic practices. Regular launch sessions, clear goals and norms, trust-building, productivity through autonomy, strategic use of digital tools, bridging cultural differences, and adapted leadership are crucial components. With the right mindset and practices, remote teams can not only survive but excel in the evolving landscape of work. This book serves as a comprehensive guide for anyone navigating the challenges and opportunities of remote work, offering practical insights to succeed from anywhere.

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of it was just general business advice, like how employees need to feel valued, successful work depends on trust, and diversity is good. It's correct, but very little in this book was specific for working from home. The early claims about businesses switching to working remotely on a permanent basis have also "aged like milk," to use the common saying. The permanent remote work options cited early in the book as examples of this cultural shift have virtually all been walked back and nearly all of those companies now force people to work in the office full time.

Some of the advice in it was also bad. The author repeatedly advises you to—when speaking with a coworker who is a non-native English speaker—ask them, “Do you understand what I’m saying?” in order to check if they understand something someone said. As a professional teacher, I must say that this is really bad advice for two reasons:

First, though Neeley points out that someone may say “yes” to avoid embarrassment, she didn’t give any advice or suggestions on how to actually prevent that. She just said they need to feel comfortable saying "no," but she didn’t explain how to make them feel comfortable. It is not a simple matter of telling someone "you can feel comfortable telling me that you don't understand." Non-native speakers have a very justified fear of embarrassment and reputational harm, and expecting that a simple "do you understand?" is going to be effective at indicating their genuine feelings is not something one can simply assume.

Second, and much more importantly, if someone completely misunderstands something and you ask them if they understand something, they will say "yes." This is why—in school—tests don't say things like "do you understand how fractions work?" Instead, we create assessments to verify if students actually have the knowledge or skills we taught. Very, very often, people think they understand something that they don't. You can see millions of examples of this in misinformation that is spread online. People are certain they know the truth about things that they are verifiably (and often very easily verifiably) wrong about. Instead of suggesting that one asks a non-native speaker if they understand, one could ask them to explain it back to them in their own words, summarize it, or ask a question that requires understanding to answer. It is very easy to do these things in a work environment without being condescending, especially when you preface it with a statement like "I want to make sure that we understand each other / have the same ideas about this / are on the same page / see eye to eye / are getting off on the right foot / etc." (bearing in mind that idiomatic language can be a problem for many non-native speakers).

[Sarah Cupitt · Rating 2 out of 5]

A practical guide on how to leverage the remote work revolution to your benefit. I think this book was self explanatory but I could be biased since I have been doing remote work for years now both in full and hybrid. Defintely felt like more of a book for not workers persay but people that have workers beneath them that work remotely. This book just gave the vibe of CEOs expecting people to do work above their pay grade.

Notes:
- setting policies around after-hours messages should have been a thing before covid
- The goal is to foster inclusion, psychological safety to express concerns, and a sense of connection – even when physically apart.
- a single launch isn’t enough. Periodic relaunches are essential to realign the team as conditions change. An initial weekly cadence is wise, potentially shifting to biweekly or monthly. These check-ins allow the team to track progress, voice issues, and adapt agreements as required.
- Conventional default trust relies on repeated in-person interactions. But remote teams often have to rely on passable or swift trust. Passable trust is a minimum threshold of confidence based on observable behavior whereas swift trust is the kind of trust quickly established based on initial perceptions of competence. (shouldn't we be using the later to measure trust to start with?)
- Cognitive trust is grounded in the belief that your coworkers are reliable and dependable, while emotional trust stems from a sense of mutual care and concern.
- encourage your teammates to learn about each other's work styles, routines, and preferences
- Sharing personal anecdotes, quirks, or experiences can help teammates see each other as multidimensional human beings. Celebrate milestones together, express concern for one another’s well-being, and find creative ways to build social connections – such as a virtual gaming session – even from afar.

Quotes:
- “In remote work especially, managers don’t always witness the positive contributions that people make. Peers do. Recognitions that capture teammates’ positive contributions create a culture of gratitude and positive reinforcement of the values that members espouse.”
- Hackman concluded that 60 percent of team success depends on prework, or the way in which the team is designed; 30 percent depends on the initial launch; and only 10 percent depends on what happens when the actual day-to-day teamwork is under way.
- “just because we have videoconferencing available, doesn’t mean we should be on video calls constantly.”

[Janna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much-needed, timely insights for remote teams everywhere. Neeley's recommendations MIGHT seem like common sense, but I’ve personally experienced every challenge she mentions, and it’s often the result of good intentions combined with faulty assumptions. Leaders and employees both have to re-evaluate their actions and deliberately practice more effective communication, but that isn’t intuitive.

Perhaps the most important takeaway from this book is that conflict and disagreement are essential to building successful teams, as long as communication remains respectful. Teams who avoid conflict may initially appear successful, but they’re destined to fail. Working in a remote or globally distributed team means you can’t lean on face to face interaction. You truly need to understand the nuances of communication styles and tools so you can disagree productively and work towards solutions, rather than merely avoiding conflict.

Listen to my complete review here: https://podcast.jannastam.com/episode...

[Jate Saitthiti]

5 major lessons from the book

1. The question in remote work should not be: Do I trust my colleagues? The question should be: How much do I need to trust them?” and find a way to build the trusting curve.

2. A knowledge-based tool can fix mutual knowledge problems.

3. The job requiring in-depth problem-solving and undistracted concentration will benefit from working from anywhere other than at the office, such as Software engineers, graphic designers, editors, writers, or other knowledge workers.

4. Successful remote teams adhere to group norms that they establish collectively. Norms are not rules. Instead, norms reflect principles that guide interactions, decision-making, and problem-solving. Members will learn about the topics that are important to their colleagues during the launch dialogue, which is crucial for creating the norms.

5. The most efficient communication standard
-Outlining interaction and connection plans for all team members regardless of role or location
-Fostering psychological safety or the group’s level of comfort in expressing individual concerns
-Keeping each remote team member connected so that no one feels professionally isolated

[Mir Shahzad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary:

Remote Work Revolution by Sadal Neely discussed that the remote work revolution presents both opportunities and challenges. To thrive, virtual teams must be intentional about relaunching with clear goals, roles, and norms, building cognitive and emotional trust, boosting productivity through autonomy and cohesion, leveraging digital tools strategically, bridging cultural differences through empathy, and adapting leadership to empower from afar.

Keys to success include holding regular launch and relaunch sessions, making time for both task-oriented and social interactions, providing autonomy balanced with support, matching communication methods to the message, establishing a common language while adapting to differences, anticipating challenges proactively, and creating conditions for engagement and psychological safety. With the right mindset and practices, remote teams can not only survive, but truly thrive in this rapidly evolving world of work.

[Susanna L · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tsedal Neeley’s Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere is a well-researched and timely guide that addresses the complex challenges of remote and hybrid work environments. The book excels in its clear focus on building trust, effective communication, and using digital tools strategically to maintain productivity and connection across distributed teams. Neeley’s evidence-based insights and real-world case studies provide valuable guidance for both managers and employees navigating this new landscape. While the book leans heavily on organizational and leadership perspectives and sometimes feels more suited for managers than individual remote workers, its practical advice on fostering autonomy, psychological safety, and inclusion is highly relevant. Overall, it’s an essential resource for anyone looking to succeed in remote work, earning a solid four stars for its depth and applicability.

[David Drummond · Rating 4 out of 5]

In line with what you might expect from a HBS book, there's nothing earth shatteringly new in here, especially if you've worked in a remote environment (as many have recently), though it provides a nice summary of best practices. I enjoyed the last few chapters on remote leadership and international remote teams, as they provided insights beyond the more common sense lessons of the first few chapters. I also appreciate the action guide activities at the end of each chapter, though I haven't tried them all yet.

I would have liked to hear more about what the author believes will happen to remote cultures after the pandemic, and how will hybrid remote and in-person environments work well. A decent read for anyone new to remote work or new remote managers, though this would have been far more helpful to read back in March 2020.

[Linh Nguyen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Around 3.5/5. The book is very approachable and very actionable, great for businesses to bring into application right away. I find myself looking for a little more depth into remote working itself, when this book is very much a strategic book, so the expectation didn’t match.

I like the case studies and I like she managed to simplify the book so it can be translated into practice right away without wasting time and space on complicated literature review - I think that’s very important. Still, it shouldn’t come at the cost of the depth of the book, as there are points where I think were brushed through too briefly, or felt out of place, as if hastily added in last minute before proper editing.

Overall, a very informative and actionable book. Now, if only every manager read this book... remote working would’ve been so much nicer for everyone.

[Manouane Beauchamp · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ce livre a été selon toute vraisemblance pensé et rédigé avant la pandémie covid-19, car l'auteur y présente des arguments pour convaincre du bien-fondé du télétravail. Malheureusement, après une pandémie de plus d'un an, il est désormais démontré que le travail est possible et qu'il apporte certains avantages.
Fait à noter, le premier chapitre présente un certain intérêt, où l'auteur présente une méthode pour favoriser le travail d'équipe lorsqu'une partie ou la totalité de ses membres est à distance. L'idée consiste à effectuer une session de démarrage suivie d'une série de rencontres périodiques de redémarrage ("launch" et "relaunch") pendant lesquelles l'équipe doit discuter du comment elle doit travailler.

[Ramis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well this book is written taking into the consideration of remote working , which sounds new to everyone of us but technically it’s an old concept introduced in early 90’ s , it’s highly relevant for present pandemic stricken world where massive uncertainties been witnessed in context of every aspects of our working life , covid Has increasingly transforms our ways of thinking and working and this book really gives you some effective strategies of doing work from remote area and how one can be more productive as compare to convention way of working.

[Felix · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting take on the remote work phenomenon necessitated by the Covid 19 pandemic. Discussed issues with trust, agile teams, cultural issues, advantages of diverse teams, VUCA (Volative, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) factors and use of collaborative technology to be successful in remote work.

Enjoyed reading the book because as an IT person, I appreciated the difficulties that the author mentioned with remote work and also the promise that it can bring with respect to adding diversity to the team, increasing work/life balance and finding more innovative ways to increase productivity.

[Hanan Altukhaifi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this book would have been helpful when the pandemic started and we were all clueless about how to navigate the new working environment, right now I think experience has taught me what I need to know so I didn't gain much value from reading the book in 2023.
The author gets bonus points for clearly having done proper cultural research, the case about Mohammed being mocked for being Saudi and not drinking is definitely one that I relate to but others (mostly people from the west) don't understand.

[l b r · Rating 3 out of 5]

Content ****
Length ***
Style **
“Really?!” Factor **

Could have been a series of HBR or equivalent articles (may be exactly that?). While short enough to earn stars for brevity it is too long for its topic and undermined by too many additional points that build repeatedly on each other to be easily digested and applied by someone interested in doing so. Misses the mark though the topic is relevant and interesting.

[Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This change, is an experiment for companies, foisted upon them by the covid-19 pandemic. It may not be a permanent change- however, with emergence of biological threats, and the metaverse, it raises deep questions, about the "limitations", of technologies, like Zoom, online collaboration tools, and the future of VR, AR and CG. Will there be more experiments in hardware Ray Tracing? Or will AMD prevail, with raw GPU parallel processing power?

[Polygenics · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not just a great book on remote work, it's a great book on management and leadership as well. Born out of the COVID crisis, but with many pertinent lessons for remote-first teams, I can't do anything other than recommend this to everyone in a remote role, leadership or otherwise. Would have hoovered it up if it was twice as long. My new favourite author on business topics. Incredibly readable and actionable insights.

[کافه ادبیات · Rating 3 out of 5]

آیا ممکن است در دوران پساکرونا دورکاری همین‌طور ادامه پیدا کند؟ دورکاری چه چالش‌هایی را می‌تواند برای مدیران کسب‌وکارها و رهبران سازمان‌ها به وجود بیاورد؟ الزامات و ضرورت‌های استفاده کارآ از دورکاری چیست؟

خانم سدال نیلی(Tsedal Neeley)، استاد دانشگاه هاروارد، توی کتاب جدیدشان «انقلاب دورکاری» از چالش‌های دورکاری مثل اعتمادسازی بدون تماس شخصی و به هم خوردن تعادل کار و زندگی شخصی گفتن و نقشه‌راهی را برای برقراری ارتباط مؤثر و اعتماد در فضای دیجیتال مطرح نموده‌اند.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the better business books I've read. There's a lot of examples and frameworks to support concepts and problems managers and companies face with remote workers. I appreciated the use of studys to provide credibility to the points too.

I think what I learned most from this book is the term and concept of "professional isolation", and how important it is to create strong rituals and activities the second a remote worker joins your team, or the company goes remote.

[Marcell Nimführ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ingas disappointed by the structure and the content. This is written by a university professor. I had hoped for evidence on certain remote techniques and processes, best with good citations. But the book is all about specific cases and very little actual know how. The cases were the typical article examples, emotionalisier without real insight.

[Donherra Walmsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I could give half stars I would’ve given this a 3.5. There was some interesting stuff in here and it was presented in a very digestible format but the case studies explaining success were a bit lacking in detail imo. I’m glad I read it but I wouldn’t put it on a “must read, will change the way you think about things” list

[Ken · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not much of a book, more like a blog post extended way beyond what it needs to be. Some good, thoughtful points here, but few specific case studies and enormous rhetorical redundancy. An edit to a journal article of maybe 5000 to 10,000 words could do the same job much better, inspire equal critical thinking on this important topic, and prove much more useful in a compact form.

[Du · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book might have had more impact on me, if I was working remote, or had staff working from home. Instead it was just a well written and well thought out book. The action plans in the back of the book really seemed thoughtful and well worth understanding and implementing.