Fundamentals of Managing Remote Teams with Adam Porroni

Adam Porroni from Valerity sits down with Gaper to share his wealth of knowledge about helping his clients out pre and post COVID with remote teams, security, and more.

Started off with a bang Adam shares, “So I graduated college into the great recession.”

Set for the Marine Corps, Adam got injured and changed his life trajectory and became an entrepreneur right out of college. The recession led to fewer job opportunities for him so he “started just getting to work for myself. I started a digital agency, you know, making websites or other types of brand identity work.”

A couple of years ago he reconnected with a friend and thought to do something in the technology consultancy space. The ended up with Valerity.

The Entrepreneurial Journey:

“I think any entrepreneurial journey is always a constant challenge and worry. And, you know, you lose hair over it kind of thing.”

Like almost all entrepreneurs, Adam states he would not trade his entrepreneurial journey for anything in the world. In spite of the challenges, the result is always worth losing some hair over in his opinion.

It is empowering as much as it’s a challenge every day to worry about things that you got to do for your people. But the attitude at the end of the day counts the most – because he shares that he liked to have new problems every day. Innovating would bring interesting problems to solve which adds to the excitement.

How is the world evolving post-COVID:

“How do you scale remote work well?”

It obviously was a big shock to so many different institutions. Companies are looking at how to reach their people, “the water cooler” concept being implemented in remote settings. Valerity has been helping their clients transition to that.

They are also propagating the fact that everyone should plan for the worst and for a longer time.

“But then, beyond that, it’s making sure that you have on security in place, no matter what you think about all of your endpoints.”

Porroni also pushes for more robust security for all the (sheer) number of devices being used going remote. Check and update policies and review them more rigorously – while also ensuring effective implementation and online protection.

Post-COVID there would be a big change definitely where remote would be implemented.

*“We are trying to prepare people mentally, leadership especially, as well as the tech teams, on how to support overall infrastructure.”*

How to Manage Remote Teams Better:

Taking something from an article he read, Adam shares a tip about how communication with the team is key to move forward when coming under threat.

*“Fear and anxiety happen. Failure happens. But at every point, we need to always be learning and always be understanding about what we can do next.”*

Another thing that Adam says they do is that they constantly go back to the fundamentals of the business.

“I mean, this is what we tell every client whenever we start working with them is like, what are the fundamentals of your business? What if you had to strip down your business to its bare bones? What does that look like?”

Because figuring out the “big problems” was already done before with fewer resources at the beginning.

There are certain fundamentals you cannot get rid of; for example, in sales, you have to get the right message across. There is no need to lean on an ad budget indefinitely or at the same rate.

*“That’s the whole point of being a disrupter. Being an innovator, we figure out the how”*

Adam leaves us with a closing line about being open to share and open to communicate which will get your (remote) team to cross a lot of barriers.

What is your take on the fundamentals of managing a remote team?