 Thank you, everyone, for joining today me on this talk. I'm going to talk to you about my experience as a remote worker and as a remote manager. Ten years ago, I joined Red Hat in a very internal subsystem of our middleware application server as a developer. And we already joined ten years ago as a full remote worker. My family and my friends thought I was crazy, switch to a 100% remote working. I remember that mom told me, you will be so isolated, you will turn mad, period. Ten years later, I'm still here, I'm still a 100% remote worker. And now I have, since a few years, the role of manager of software engineer with the team distributed all over the world and everyone are working remotely from home. And well, open source culture, open organization principles and the right mindset permitted me not only to survive to this remote working, but also to have a lot of fun both as an individual contributor and as manager. Well, but don't get me wrong, has not been always easy. Full remote working and even more remote management require a complete change of mindset. And I can bear witness changing mindset is one of the biggest challenges you can face in adulthood. Let me start with a real story. I had joined Red Hat for more than one year at the time of the story. And my team planned an in-person face-to-face meeting in Beijing. I remember I was so excited when I boarded the China Airlines hire plane, both because it was the first opportunity to see my colleagues in person, but also because it was my first time in China. Well, it's a long journey from Italy to Beijing. And in the middle of the night, I felt very thirsty. I really needed some fresh water. I asked the flight attendant for a glass of water and she kindly brought me one quickly. But I drank and he was puzzled. Or I would say shocked because the water was hot. But hotter than the one I normally use for making a cup of tea. But the flight attendant explained it to me that is perfectly normal to serve hot water in China Airlines because of the traditional Chinese medicine. And she also gently tried to persuade me that I should not have fresh water at all. Well, I finally got my glass of fresh water, but I realized that at that very moment I cannot build my relationship with colleagues, relying on everything I think I know, relying on my cultural assumptions. I cannot, I cannot because our background cultures are so different. We grown up in so many different parts of the world with various beliefs and our values. What is normal for me? Maybe it's not for any of them and vice versa. So it has been shocking too because what when you realize and accept that you and your colleagues haven't the same background and your relationship will be conditioned by that. Well, you can see this from two different perspectives. On one hand, we have the value of diversity. Diversity could bring different views, ideas, supporting different problems and they're solving paths. I always say that I'm a lucky leader. Having people from seven different countries, three different continents and 40% of them are women. So believe me, I know what diversity is. And I would say you don't ever sacrifice this diversity because it creates consensus quicker. The consequence is what is called group thing, an astraly agreed decision stopping completely the innovation. Associates should be always encouraged on bringing their own perspective, their own background to any conversations because multiple views always favor innovation. And also respecting and appreciating diversity not only it will make the organization much more competitive but also it will give associates the personal enrichment coming from a colorful relationship. But there is also the other hand, diversity and multicultural background could be barriers to communicating, barriers to collaborating. Before you can work together, you must be able to share ideas to communicate basically. We saw heterogeneous cultures. Your risk is that innovation is lost in translation. A common set of values and a common background culture are important, really important. Especially when you are already missing something vital that is non-verbal communication and in person eye contact, you need something to rely on, something that could be considered normal despite of different background. And that is the organization's culture. An organization culture, in fact, is the glue keeping the team anchored to common values. It makes everyone feel safer because sharing the same values, same goals and same bold statement. A consequence is that trusting each other is easier when you share values, when you share aspirations and what you believe. In other words, our associates sincerely believe our open-source culture could really change the world. So in other words, sharing values, sharing beliefs and hopes, we are sharing the vision of the world we want. And I told you, I am now a manager since a while now, a few years. And what is the role of a manager or a leader, more generally a leader in this? Well, it is a challenging one because it is to catalyze this change from fragmentation of cultures and fragmentation of communication style, experience to what? To a kaleidoscope of different cultures contributing to the organization's one. You need, first of all, to step back a little from checking what people are doing and how people are doing. You need to avoid micromanagement. Instead, show trust in your team, championing the organization culture and sharing values with your teammates will help a lot on building mutual trust. The real role of a leader is to create a context where associates feel listened and appreciated and where they can find all the ways behind the organization strategy and organizations embracing the open organization culture will make associates feeling part of a community. A community that really cares about them and about their ideas because of that leaders should actively participate in the organization culture grow and adoption making associates feel it as the blue I mentioned before and we come to the full remote team management. Leading a full remote team means also that you cannot rely anymore on three important facilitators that in person team has that is time spent together, symbols and rituals. Believe me, you will miss at some point the time together in front of a coffee machine also informal hours or formal dinners but also dressing code of this location or game area for the more geek companies are all symbols that you cannot count on. You will miss all the rituals that an office life has and starting from one of the most important ritual that is the commute which really helps a lot many people to switch their mind in a working mode leaving family problem at home and switching to the working mode so what the question is how to solve that should you try to mind an office experience in a full remote environment really do you want virtual coffee break online meeting virtual happy hours online meeting or even virtual commute online meeting I read about all of this but I also read about everyone talking about online meeting fatigue well my 10 years old remote team has never suffered from online meeting fatigue but also it hasn't ever pretended to do the same things an office based team does maybe some of those meeting works well for some team I'm not complaining whatever works for your team is great and you should keep it going always but don't try to force them too much if they are full remote in my experience full remote workers could perceive this forcing as an invasion of their work life balance and believe me we hate this kind of invasion because it's not easy to get to this balance working fully remotely and we became overprotective of whatever we reached and sounds reasonable for us and for our family in fact leading a full remote team means changing the way you are catalyzing the organization culture adoption and love you have to change your focus from spending time together to the values and bold goals you share creating also new symbols new rituals really suitable for the virtual environment so let me describe what worked for me and for the team I've been part in the last 10 years as individual contributors before and as manager then basically everyone in the team both the leaders and the single contributor always keep in mind open organization principles somehow not necessary formally and then focus on 7 critical stuff I think there is 7 critical stuff to focus and first is show passion because passion is contagious show passion for what you do passion for the values passion for the open search culture and show virtual symbols of your passion could be a nice name signature recalling some organization culture stuff or a profile picture where you proudly wear your red fedora be open the second one is be open open to new ideas open to new contributors open to all opinions of your team and outside of your teams and look being truly open is hard much harder than it could seem you are a really open person and open leader when you are able to take open decisions decisions that are transparent decisions that are inclusive and decisions that consider colleagues, contributors, clients anyone impacted by the decision as your customer the third pillar is be transparent and be able to adapt provide to anyone in the team as much context as possible to understand the wise and the strategy of the organization then ask and listen give and receive feedback is a gift and use the feedback use the feedback to adapt the context putting everyone in the position for expressing all is or or potential the fourth show trust I already told you about avoiding micromanagement and rely on shared values and open culture as the common base to build a trustful relationship even more think about the team as a community an open source community of enthusiastic people and remember the leader can't have the know how to make all decisions and innovate is not the role of the leader is to delegate to the right people and to show them trust the fifth be inclusive I care about inclusion but we need to be intentional about inclusion in a virtual environment we cannot just mute a colleague or getting involved in a quick chat maybe during a coffee break but look being intentional move inclusion on a deeper more interesting level because in a fuller modern environment you will never feel the inclusion just happen but you feel that someone really cares about you about your ideas and intentionally include you in their team discussion or project rituals create rituals favoring inclusion it's very important something that could be a regular weekly call for each project with an open agenda and open discussion also regular retrospective after each milestone to collect feedback or could even be something not related to day by day job something like a virtual book club to talk with your associate of soft skills but remember that need rituals whatever you select use a regular reliable schedule and regarding contents of this try ask for feedback refine and repeat the sixth create connections don't just connect indeed to work successfully in a virtual environment we have to pay special attention to the humans on the other side of the screen we don't just need to be connected but we need to create connection between humans some example one video meeting are important to create a relationship between a remote associate indeed the important part is be consistent and reliable with their schedule make them a ritual not just something that happen but not only video meeting also synchronous media like nails or chat or whatever you want to use could create connection the key is not the media the key is actively listen to the person behind the media whichever the media would be take care of associate of your associate and adapt empower your associate giving them freedom and flexibility to do their best promote the courage to innovate and impacting to the organization success support them support them in creating their networks support them in developing their careers and listen listen listen their needs listen even their rent adapt adapt everything adapt to their roles adapt to their careers adapt their tasks even to their aspirations and to their skills create a context where they can feel empowered and they love their job and they love their job so in conclusion after more than 10 years now almost 11 I can affirm that I survived a fully remote environment and I also had a lot of fun my takeaways from these 10 years are avoid pretending to mime an in-person experience in a virtual world and keep in mind open search culture open organization principles and open management practices in short be open and enjoy diversity through the open search culture wherever you are distributed team or your community is dispersed