I Done This Blog

The Science of Small Wins

  • Blog
  • Inside
  • Workshop
Home » Posts » Remote Teams » 3 Radical Habits of Highly Successful Remote Teams

3 Radical Habits of Highly Successful Remote Teams

August 15, 2014 by I Done This Support 5 Comments

remote work

Working remotely requires a totally different approach from how we’ve come to define our workday. We’re so used to the commutes, having to deal with our cubicle neighbor, the water cooler chats, and shuffling in and out of meetings. That’s the way we know how to get stuff done. Removed from shared physical spaces, remote teams have none of that.

The physical workspace — from layout to furniture configurations to break-room — create a certain working environment that affects how you communicate and collaborate. Without those traditional areas in play, remote teams face a tougher challenge of figuring out how to work together, simply because there’s no conventional wisdom to lean on, no way to bump into someone on your way to the bathroom, no coffee break to take together.

But necessity is the mother of invention, and that’s why the most successful remote teams are reinventing how to work together with methods you might consider extreme or crazy.

1. Total transparency about yourself with your remote team

Do you know exactly how much your co-workers making, how much sleep they’re getting, or their self-improvement goals? Exchanging that amount of information sounds intrusive, but it’s what the distributed employees at Buffer share every day with each other.

Just by virtue of being co-located and literally sitting by your teammates, you become privy to an incredible amount of information about them — who they are as people and what challenges and frustrates them — that adds up day after day. While those details may seem trivial, that richness of context breeds trust.

Remote teams gain none of that contextual information because they are scattered across different locations and time zones. That’s why Buffer co-founders Joel Gascoigne and Leo Widrich made such a conscious choice to inject personal context into its team — so much so that they made extreme transparency a fundamental value in their company.

For example, every Buffer employee receives a Jawbone UP wristband that tracks how you’re sleeping and shares that with the team. They also use our productivity app, iDoneThis. Every day, everyone at Buffer logs their accomplishments and what they’re working on — and just as if they bumped into each other in the kitchen, interact with each other by commenting and asking questions about what they’re up to.

2. Leave your webcam on all day

Tapping someone on the shoulder to talk feels easy. Yet spontaneously Skyping your colleague feels like a major intrusion, instead requiring a formal calendar invite. Since mutual scheduling is a major pain, that often means I let opportunities for virtual face-to-face moments with my colleagues go by when I’m working remotely.

When the New York-based Foursquare opened its San Francisco office, they deliberately took a drastic step to ensure sure their teams on opposite coasts would stay connected instead of having the odd, scheduled videochat. So they put a twist on the traditional idea of videoconferencing to create something that they call “The Portal.”

While most videoconferencing is used in preplanned meetings in separate conference rooms, the Foursquare team devised The Portal as a video system that was always on and running in the primary work area, rather than in a little-used room, providing a window into each office.

You can walk up to The Portal in San Francisco and wave good morning to your colleague in New York and start a spontaneous conversation. Daily standups take place in front of The Portal, bypassing all the annoying problems that pop up when trying to set up a group video call.

For remote teams without a Foursquare-sized budget, there’s Sqwiggle, an always-on video chat system that works pretty much like The Portal while requiring only your webcam and monitor instead of expensive Cisco videoconferencing equipment. This provides a persistent, passive view of your colleagues that makes you feel like you’re in the same room, working together at the same table.

3. Replace physical space with software — lots of it

When you work on a remote team, you lose the primary way you’ve communicated with people your whole life: face-to-face conversations. Without this kind of interaction, communication often deteriorates, creating inefficiencies, missed emotional context, not to mention, loneliness and disengagement.

Laura Roeder, founder of LKR Social Media, manages her distributed team by adopting an extreme policy that resulted from realizing a crucial distinction between how communication happens on remote versus co-located teams.

Just because a remote team can’t take advantage of the communication benefits of sharing physical space doesn’t mean they don’t have options. Instead, technology becomes that shared space. A company could have a room for desks, a kitchen, conference room, and a break room — all kinds of physical spaces to catalyze different types of employee interaction. Similarly, a remote team can use a varied range of technological conversation channels.

Rather than be like some companies that only use email, at LKR Social Media they use six times as many tools. They use Hipchat for work-related chat and water cooler conversation, iDoneThis to keep everyone in the loop on work status, Google Hangout for weekly Monday meetings, UberConference for quick conference calls, Confluence as an internal Wiki, and Wrike for structured conversation about projects.

* * * * *

To Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier, one of the most powerful mental advantages of having a remote team is that you take nothing for granted.

When you have a co-located team, you can get lulled into a false sense of security about how well your team is communicating. When you’re remote, the challenges are big, hairy, and in your face, so you have to be explicit about how you’re going to work together and tackle those challenges head on.

What you end up with may be unconventional and extreme, but the proof is in how it empowers your team to get stuff done and with all of the autonomy that remote work enables.

Filed Under: Remote Teams Tagged With: Buffer, Management Tools, Work Transparency

About I Done This Support
  • http://whatisthat.co Jay McCauley

    Definitely some good tips here. From an outside perspective, it seems like Buffer has done an amazing job of implementing things to make it seem like everyone is working together in the same room, even though they’re spread across the globe.

    • Walter Chen

      i’m glad you liked the article, jay! buffer has done an amazing job through relentless experimentation.

  • Maura Rodgers

    Hi Walter. This is a great post! Buffer has done an amazing job as well as the WordPress team of adopting a distributed team culture and embracing the benefits of a remote workforce as well as recognizing the limitations. It takes a commitment. And the more I personally talk to growing companies of all sizes, I do believe that this is the future of work.

  • https://tapptitude.com/ Sinziana Chitea

    As part of a team that is “the remote development team” for most of its clients, I’m super happy to see so much great content explaining why working remote is both liberating, and efficient. I’m hoping to play my part with this article I wrote for entrepreneurs considering working with a remote team: https://tapptitude.com/blog/code-remote-work-with-remote-app-development-team/

  • Vaibhav Mittal

    That’s quite informative and condensed info but, where to learn on how to remote work? This is the question that comes in my mind often. And the google provided this as an answer- Check this out https://www.theremoteworksummit.com/ might enthuse you.

Search I Done This Blog

Easy Email Updates

Unconventional and actionable insights on how to get more done, work happier and find success, delivered into your inbox daily.

Almost finished... We just need to confirm your email address. Please click the link in the email we just sent you and you'll be good to go!
This email address is already subscribed. Thanks!
Please provide a valid email address.
Please complete the CAPTCHA.
Oops. Something went wrong. Email us at help@idonethis.com to let us know!

Recent Posts

  • How to Do a Time and Motion Study to Make Real Change
  • 20 Vetted Tools and Tips for Managing Time Zone Differences
  • Why Jeff Bezos’ Two-Pizza Team Rule Still Holds True in 2018
  • How to Leverage Psychology to Provide Better Customer Support
  • Scaling Your Business Without Losing Your Culture

What you don’t know about productivity and happiness, delivered to your inbox daily

Unconventional and actionable insights on how to get more done, work happier and find success, delivered into your inbox daily.

Almost finished... We just need to confirm your email address. Please click the link in the email we just sent you and you'll be good to go!
This email address is already subscribed. Thanks!
Please provide a valid email address.
Please complete the CAPTCHA.
Oops. Something went wrong. Email us at help@idonethis.com to let us know!

Categories

  • Case Study
  • Company Culture
  • Daily Standup
  • Done List
  • Google Snippets
  • Lifehacks
  • People Management
  • Remote Teams
  • Slow Web
  • Startups
  • The Progress Principle
  • The Science of Productivity
  • Uncategorized

© Copyright 2017 I Done This · All Rights Reserved

Wade Foster

“I Done This is super simple and a super useful way to keep everyone up to date on what is actually getting accomplished in your company.”

Wade Foster, CEO at Zapier

Try I Done This Today
×