Set-Up for Success for Distributed Teams

Adventures in Businessing: Entrepreneurship, Small Business, and a Healthy Dose of Humor

Show Notes:

• [0:00:54] Intro

• You have found it!
• Jeremy messes up Kevin’s ‘flow’.
• Very Brief Last Episode Summary

• [0:2:23] Decisions We’ve Made to Set Up for Success for Distributed Work

• Rule #1: Experiment!
• • Rule #2: Test what works for you, throw away the rest.
• Categorizing our decisions by clarity, connection, and collaboration.
• How transitioning to distributed, at first, brought teamwide clarity to a halt.
• • Being colocated for so long was our crutch, the one that made us think we were better at clarity than what we actually were.
  • Looking back, we also confused in-office distraction and being “busy” for solid communication and real progress.
  • • Which is certainly less than ideal.
• If Slack communication is the main way you run your business (like ours was), you may find clarity, quality communication, and work/life balance to be suffering.
• Distributed isn’t isolated to software.
• • Jeremy elaborates on his time with bankers and his remote experience regarding his own work in distributed banking.

• [0:09:52] Your location does matter.

• • Whether that be from your home office, kitchen table, porch, coffee shop, etc.
  • You probably don’t need a “private space”, but you definitely need a “dedicated space”, or spaces.
  • Long term distributed success justifies routine and normalcy, strengthened by your own personal dedicated workspaces.
• Some of the business owner tips and tricks to enable a successful transition to distributed work.
• • Thoughts on automatic check-ins.
  • • High-fives & Shoutouts
  • Heartbeats and Cycle Kick-offs
  • Friendly nudges.
  • Leading by example.
  • You don’t actually need long recurring meeting to build clarity.
  • • How you’re probably doing meetings wrong.
    • You might just need an internal organization specific podcast.
    • • How a weekly internal podcast improved clarity and communication.
  • If a piece of information is important, you should be communicating the same information across all your channels (at relatively the same time), be that via message board, email, podcasts, etc.
  • • If you’re tired, and sick, or bored of saying the same thing over and over, keep in mind that you’re just at the point of the entire team having absorbed and registered that information.
  • Infrequent coworking calls-- consider them.
  • Personality tests and discussions.
  • A place for water cooler discussions and hobby chats.
  • • It might go without saying, but coworking call, water cooler & hobby talk should always be treated as optional, not mandatory.
  • Have some back-up plans so that poor internet connection and other obstructions don’t ruin your work day.
  • Good camera, lighting, etc.-- all welcome additions.
  • If you don’t have a private workspace: a good pair of noise cancelling headphones.
  • Find the right space for your team, whether that’s Slack, Basecamp, whatever-- experiment and find what works for you...not all of them will.
  • Consider any special needs of individual employees.
  • • Vision, hearing challenges as an example.
  • Don’t expect to go into distributed work high performing.
  • • There will absolutely be a challenging (though ultimately rewarding) transition time.
    • • Give yourself and your team/s plenty of grace.

• [0:30:37] Parting Words

• Patience is the key!
• Create a framework for solid communication.