Tradecraft > Telework as a Diplomatic Tool
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Today’s crisis is an opportunity to understand how the Department’s many teams work, and how they work together. With a unique position of being largely forward deployed in locations that are hard hit as the pandemic continues to roll across the globe, the Department, and the Foreign Service in particular, has an opportunity to lead the federal government in functional remote work.
Remote work tools have been available in the Department for years, and various offices have been piloting remote work positions for nearly as long. The Department is well positioned to lean into a transformation: remote work as a fundamental part of the diplomatic toolkit. It can, and will, empower our diplomacy.
To get there, however, the Department first must overcome two serious blockers. A misunderstood notion that somehow remote work and forward deployment are the same, and a culture that puts a premium on in-person interactions.
There is an allure to remote work that I heard in many conversations over the years. “If overseas positions are marked as telework, people will ask why they need to be there at all,” was a conversation I had at one point. The reality is far more nuanced as we’re finding out with the COVID-19 pandemic. No matter how quickly you can get somewhere in today’s world, in many cases it can still take hours (or days) to travel from the U.S. to certain locations. Having trusted, vetted, and connected personnel in the field should always be a high priority and the Foreign Service along with the many local staff at our embassies and missions. They are the most experienced cadre in the federal workforce for that diplomatic work.
What remote work does is reduce the pressure to keep all our collective eggs in one basket, so to speak. It empowers diplomats to engage across a wider landscape and understand a broader picture of what is happening in a location. A true forward lean would empower the diplomatic corps in ways probably not fully understood or envisioned. Collectively, the department has talked about untethered diplomats for nearly a decade—now we have a clear reason why it is so important to see it happen.
Remote work does not mean isolation, either. Eventually, COVID-19 will complete its cycle. Guidelines on minimal interactions and virtual fist-bumps will go back to the “way it was”. If the lessons learned during the crisis are collected and used as a jumping off point, then the idea of a tech-enabled and empowered diplomat may not be so far away after all.
Diplomacy is inherently a human act. Just as technology is a human output. And this creates a challenge of understanding the cultural nuances of an art and science that is fundamentally based on human interaction. We expect diplomacy to be in-person, because diplomacy has always been in-person. And although technology has been a disruptor, it has usually been a method used to trim a process (telephonic bypass around an Ambassador, email messages to shortcut formal messages). Instead, there is an opportunity to understand the work we do now, and how it might look in a more digital setting.
The Department and the Foreign Service have an unprecedented opportunity to super charge their diplomacy, empower staff domestically and abroad, and significantly increase the value of their delivery to the American people. Teams must walk the road together, and the first step is understanding how to translate between physical and virtual communication, interactions, and processes. You can find an optional framework to do that here: https://devtechnology.com/2020/03/congratulations-youre-on-a-remote-team-now-what/
The teams that we empower today will be the leaders of tomorrow. COVID-19 has given the Department a powerful catalyst for change. It should be used to empower our work and advance our mission on behalf of our citizens and nation.
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