It might sound like a rare problem in far-away countries, but COVID-19 lockdowns or extreme weather conditions in the US prove it's a worldwide issue: shit happens, and we need to function and deliver during very daring times. I have some anecdotal experiences from Israel during the last 4 years (as of 2024) when management routines and procedures you so carefully built fall apart due to global/regional scale long-lasting force-majeure events.

COVID-19: going remote

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We all remember how it struck the world out of nowhere: COVID lockdowns. Depending on where you live, it was on a country/city/community scale, but I believe nobody in the world escaped it. In Israel, it was quite harsh, and we had 2 complete "hermetic" lockdowns when people weren't allowed to go further than 50 (!) meters away from their houses.

These caught me in transition from being a manager of a relatively large Backend team (6 Software Engineers) to taking responsibility for the Engineering Department (26 people in 5 teams). It's an understatement to say I was terrified!

Even though I used to have some long-distance management routines in the past with outsource contractors, the work was 100% offline. Going 100% online was a huge challenge.

Communication routines

When you're used to having casual and non-formal communication routines meeting people in the office, you don't realize how many daily interactions you have. And when you find yourself at home, suddenly you feel lonely.

MS Teams, Google Meet, or Slack alone don't solve the communication problems - they are just tools. Routines and communication habits do.

The first step was capturing and formalizing all casual/semi-casual meetings into calendar-scheduled online ones: "daily standups" became "daily calls", 1:1's went online, ad-hoc feature discussions before the sprint planning became "sprint pre-planning" scheduled meetings. Suddenly the calendar became full of “online” things.

The second step was creating "casual conversations" online. As Teams was the platform of choice in the company I worked for back then, per-team/per-group channels helped to post some random geeky jokes or share food experiences as if it happened offline.

Both habits of formal/informal online communication worked so well that even after the lockdowns ended, the "channel" culture kept and flourished.

No wonder almost no company got back to a "100% back to office" policy and kept the "hybrid mode".

Performance impact and mitigation

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Every drastic change in one's life affects their performance. As a manager, you must acknowledge and mitigate it, making the overall impact as small as possible. You can't expect people to continue to work having "hard-core" COVID fever or having the same focus on work when you're surrounded by kids who need help setting up their remote learning Zoom sessions.

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The first response for me was prioritizing the workload and making sure no team member was a "single point of failure". Non-urgent long-running tasks were put on hold until some routines were established and the team felt "a new normal". Every team member who led a priority task shared it with at least one more "buddy" so we had a backup if they felt sick or couldn't be productive due to personal circumstances. As more people got used to the new "remote reality", the more we could afford dealing with strategic projects and getting back to the original performance. Eventually, the hybrid mode did well for overall achievements, and objective KPIs showed that a new performance baseline became higher than the "full offline" mode.

October 7 war in Israel: #NoMatterWhat 

October 7, 2023, caught me, like most Israelis, absolutely off-guard. This blog is not political, so I'll try to keep my personal feelings outside and solely focus on the professional side. Somewhat similar to COVID events, the war greatly affected the daily life of entire Israel, but even to a higher magnitude. Most Israeli companies address global highly-competitive markets that have little to no compassion towards anybody's local problems. You either deliver or you're out of your market share. From the very early days of the war, many local companies embraced the #NoMatterWhat motto: Israeli tech is resilient and delivers! This comes at a price, and some challenges need to be addressed.

Reserve duty: how to deal with key performer called up to a flag

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Most Israeli men and some women who did mandatory IDF service can be called up to reserve duty. During peacetime, this typically happens in a scheduled and well-planned manner, giving management plenty of time to plan and offload the employee's tasks.

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This is not the case during a war: massive and instant duty calls are issued to tens of thousands of Israelis. They just drop a pen, pack a bag, kiss their family goodbye, and go to a base. No time to plan a handover, hardly time to text the boss.

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Well, COVID taught us a lesson: having "a single point of failure" is not a good strategy. Mature companies working in global markets make sure a single employee's absence won't affect company/product/project stability, and lights will be kept on. Obviously, there is an impact in the short term: remaining employees share the missing employee's duties. While it's obvious to the local Israeli employee, communicating to the remote ones the reason why they suddenly have more shifts/extra tasks is vital. When it's done, the amount of compassion, support and volunteering is enormous: you don't even need to ask!

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Long-term plans must be adjusted as well; the hope "it will be yet another The Six Days War" vanished in the very first moments. This involved more out-of-box thinking about multi-location resource allocations, more flexible roadmaps  and prioritization.

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Respect people’s feelings

A whole lot of Israelis were personally affected: their loved ones were killed, abducted, injured, or displaced. A much larger circle was affected psychologically: nobody stays calm hearing the news or sirens of rocket attacks. Ignoring this and demanding "come to the office and do your job no matter what" is both counter-productive and inhumane.

Be patient with people in distress and give them as much flexibility as possible: allow them to switch "work from home" days, don't enforce vacation policies, don't enforce shift hours, and most importantly: listen to them! You're (probably) not a therapist, but having basic compassion and asking how they're coping with the situation is the bare minimum to do as a manager.

Volunteering and community projects

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Community contribution and various well-being projects are very often a part of many companies' day-to-day activities, but they gain huge weight in times of distress. For me personally, volunteering in local community security patrols works as a sort of therapy, and I'm sure it helps a lot for others. Encourage community activities in your team, give it necessary resources or at least time: this both serves team bonding and relieves stress.

Conclusion   

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Real leadership is tested during daring times, and unfortunately, reality provides us with a lot of them. Be mindful and flexible, trust and support your people - this will pay off, and you'll come out stronger and wiser!

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