Leaders Perception Magazine is currently running an interview series called – Building a Successful Remote Work Culture: Discussing strategies and best practices for fostering a productive and engaged remote workforce, addressing topics like communication, collaboration tools, work-life balance, and employee well-being
Interviewee Name: Peter Benei
Company: Anywhere Consulting
Position: CEO
Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beneipeter/
Peter Benei’s favorite quote: “ “We like to give people the freedom to work where they want, safe in the knowledge that they have the drive and expertise to perform excellently, whether they [are] at their desk or in their kitchen. Yours truly has never worked out of an office, and never will.” – Richard Branson, founder & CEO @Virgin”
Meet Peter Benei, the veteran leader in the B2B tech space and founder of Anywhere Consulting. With a mission to help 10,000 leaders create better workplaces, Peter approaches growth from a unique perspective. He believes that growth is not solely a product or marketing challenge but a leadership and operations problem. In this captivating interview, we delve into Peter’s journey and his strategies for fostering alignment and clarity within teams. Discover how investing in transparency and providing access to information, operations, performance, and decision-making can enhance trust and create a more transparent and collaborative workplace. Furthermore, Peter shares his insights on maintaining a healthy work-life balance in the era of remote work and highlights the importance of clearly defined working hours, office support for ergonomic needs, and mentoring/coaching for effective work-from-home practices. Join us as we explore Peter Benei’s mission to revolutionize workplaces and drive growth at Anywhere Consulting.
The Interview
Thank you so much for joining us today! Tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your backstory?
Peter Benei : I’m Peter Benei, founder of Anywhere Consulting.
I’m a veteran leader in the B2B tech space, working mainly with companies at the seed and scaleup stages.
I solve one problem for you: growth.
The way I solve it is different from most experts.
I believe that growth is not a product or marketing problem.
I believe it is a leadership and operations problem.
So my mission is to help 10,000 leaders build a better workplace for everyone.
A more flexible, transparent, horizontal workplace that attracts the best people and puts the company on a growth trajectory.
Growth starts with better leadership and operations.
How do you ensure effective communication and collaboration among remote team members? Can you share any specific tools or practices that have been particularly effective for your organization?
Peter Benei : I advise companies to follow simple rules to maintain alignment and clarity within their teams. If we have these two, collaboration and communication becomes much more easier.
The first rule is to invest in transparency. The more transparent your operations, the higher the trust within the organization. The higher the trust, the more alignment and clarity you have.
The second rule is to provide access to certain levels in operations. You can’t create transparency directly, but you can create a transparent workplace indirectly if you provide more access to certain things.
Particularly, provide access to information through a shared cloud-based company hub. Provide access to operation through publicly available process templates and workflows. Then provide access to performance, share how teams and the company overall perform. Lastly, provide access to decisions, make decision-making open, transparent, and collaborative.
By doing so, the more access you provide, the higher the trust becomes, and, indirectly, the more transparent the organization becomes.
Maintaining work-life balance can be challenging in a remote work environment. What strategies do you recommend for remote employees to create boundaries between work and personal life? How can organizations support their employees in achieving a healthy work-life balance?
Peter Benei : Companies need to stop thinking about that there’s a clear barrier between work and life. I would argue that we never had that anyway, but we definitely don’t have it now with remote work. We don’t need to commute and “going to work” takes 2 minutes from bedroom to home office.
So, it is up to the individual employee to maintain that balance. The company can provide flexible support with 3 focus areas:
– Clearly defined working hours. Especially important if you have people in multiple time zones. Set the mandated availability for everyone at every time zone. Communicate it clearly for everyone at the company so no one would “disturb” the others during their non-work hours.
– Office support on ergonomics and tech. Companies who don’t have an office still need to support their employees to solve the office issues for themselves. No one likes to work from the kitchen table. The healthy work-life balance remotely starts with a focused environment where work can happen. It is different for everyone so support from companies should be flexible. It can be home office reimbursement or support, or coworking office stipends.
– Mentoring and coaching. Not everyone is familiar with work-from-home practices. We think that it is self-explanatory, but it is not. Companies need to support their employees with mentorship and coaching on how to work from home. Best practices, use cases, individual support for everyone.
Leaders Perception Magazine would like to thank Peter Benei and Anywhere Consulting for the time dedicated to completing this interview and sharing their valuable insights with our readers!
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