In 2005 I was at an amazing retreat close to Monterey, CA. The top of the pops of that time was on stage when Barry Diller had invited his friends and family. I remember being completely blown away, just the fact that the late Jack Welch sat next to me drinking a Diet Coke struck the stars. Another specific memory was that on stage where 4 kids ages 15-20 from neighbouring San Francisco talking about their lives and how technology was shaping their world. The main subject was "The Facebook", something I had never heard about before, but it was obvious that for these kids The Facebook was the new entrepreneurial tech wonder around the corner.

Now some 15 years later The Facebook might not be the new kid in town, but Facebook is still a driving force in how we use, view and related to technology. In our search for best practices on how technology is changing our world in these Covid-19 times, we therefore naturally reached out to our friends at Facebook to hear their view.

We had already heard about Facebook now having asked employees to work from home for the rest of the year and that they have cancelled any large physical events planned with 50 or more people through June 2021, but we wanted to somewhat better understand the lessons learnt from Facebook when it comes to working remotely. We therefore reached out to Ludvig Hedlund, by now almost a Facebook veteran after some 8 years in the company, today experiencing the London lock down out of his London apartment instead of the not so shabby Facebook London offices.

Ludvig gave us a view of what the Facebook best practice looks like:

#1 Put the right infrastructure in place, meaning assure high speed enough internet, invest in camera and microphone, secure a comfortable place where you do your work and have the best collaboration tool optimized.

‍#2. Communicate effectively and often, ie make sure to over communicate, misunderstandings happen more often when physical nuances are harder to observe.

‍#3. Focus on goals and timelines, the importance of sense of achievement and belonging to a (winning) team is even more critical in these times.

#4. Manage your meetings. Spend the appropriate time preparing a meeting, assure that notes are taken and respect peoples time.

‍#5 Prioritize inclusion, make sure that everybody is heard and respect that not everyone is as comfortable in the purely digital setting.

‍#6. Take care of yourself, find balance in physical and mental health, check on each other.

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