Remote control: leadership in the era of remote teams

Remote work is an everyday reality that encompasses everything from production to marketing and team holidays. How to build this option work effectively? Let us tell you by the example of Makeshift, a media company that often works with dangerous stories, covering them with what we call inconspicuous creativity. This is a team of 15 volunteers and freelancers scattered across 6 countries, plus a network of 350 authors of articles living in more than 80 countries.

“I will try to send you an answer within an hour. There are terrible problems with the Internet. ”

It was a message from Miles, one of the co-founders and editor-in-chief of Makeshift. As promised, there was a detailed answer regarding the work on the latest version of the updated quarterly magazine. At that moment, he was in a crowd - with a laptop tied to the phone - at a street rally in Apatzingan, Mexico, where leaders of members of the national militia discussed whether to sign a pact with the government.
')
This is the process of interaction in Makeshift, a media company that often works with dangerous stories, covering them with what we call inconspicuous creativity. This is a team of 15 volunteers and freelancers scattered across 6 countries, plus a network of 350 authors of articles living in more than 80 countries. Remote work is an everyday reality that encompasses everything from production to marketing and team holidays. And, despite the meager budget, the guys are creating a product that is improving with every number: in the last quarter, sales of the main printed magazine increased threefold. And the channel is launched on YouTube.

In essence, business leaders hesitate between remote and combined teams. The author of the latest sensation was Marissa Mayer, who urged Yahoo workers to return to Sunnyvale (many remember her “no-home work” memorandum, discussed in February 2013 in leadership circles behind closed doors).

The truth is that remote collaboration is a reality (and often an advantage) of an economy built on a global network. And its consequences are more detailed than anyone would have thought when faced with such an uncompromising assessment. Makeshift has adopted 4 main features of remote interaction :

• remote workers are more productive, but less creative ;
• teams better perform their functions together or apart, but not if they are fragmented;
• Software is a new studio;
• meetings are still unpleasant.

Considering these facts, the Makeshift team has become the masters of remote collaboration, often cited as examples.

Fact №1
Remote workers are more productive, but less creative

One of the myths about remote employees is as follows: they sit at home with their arms folded and shirk from work. For some, he is fair, but such people in the office will play Snood. This does not apply to qualified team members motivated to fulfill their role in your mission. Indeed, the Stanford study demonstrated: remote workers are more productive. However, the authors explain: "It seems to us that the higher the degree of automation of work, the more substantial the benefits."

In his previous position at IBM Design, Steve Daniels valued his time outside the office. It was celebrated in the morning meetings, and then every day, hour by hour, it provided the actual work. No complications! His superiors, too, were amazed, and he earned a reputation as an efficient employee.

The problem is that Steve missed real-time teamwork. Face-to-face brainstorming, understanding body language, occasional clashes with colleagues. Creative insights do not always occur at the time when you decide to meet with your team. Therefore, getting into a studio in Austin, Daniels was “flooded” with extraordinary meetings and clarifications. On such days it seemed that he was not doing any “work”, but he was absorbing a lot of ideas.

In Makeshift, despite the tight budget, the results from freelancers and volunteers are very high, but sometimes the team becomes inert. Therefore, they harmoniously combine chaotic communication with synchronized brainstorming sessions. All scheduled meetings are held via video in Hangouts, not via teleconferencing. And at any time, feeling that the project needs additional attention, you can send each other a signal to chat, offering to contact via a video call. Tools like Sqwiggle create steady images of your team members throughout the day. Experiment with them to build a culture in which synchronicity takes precedence over isolation.

In special cases, the whole team is assembled in Makeshift. After releasing the updated magazine last summer, the guys conducted a general video chat, which could disrupt the Hangouts. It turned out to be difficult to combine the schedules of 15 people living in 13 time zones, but it was necessary to inspire and coordinate everyone, as well as to create a sense of a cohesive team.

When a sufficient number of team members is in the same city, personal meetings are held. Usually, for this, Airbnb rents accommodation, and is filled all day with work meetings and cooking. The result is an incredible avalanche of new ideas, experiments, and proposed projects for discussion.

Fact number 2
Teams perform their functions better together or apart, but when they are not fragmented

One of the reasons for the separation of teams is that at first most of its members gather in one place, and then exceptions are made. The lead engineer wants to move to Seattle, the marketer has small children, and she wants to work from home. Such a model of "core and satellites" seems to be an excellent compromise, but in fact it can be harmful.
Most of the work in such a team happens in the real world. The walls are filled with stickers with notes and prototypes, and the dialogues in which fundamental decisions are born are not fixed. Digital documentation or meetings with someone are extremely limited, so satellite employees are isolated.

A fully virtual team, on the other hand, embeds the documentation into the work network. Holding a meeting? You can be sure: Google Doc works, collecting all ideas in real time. Ready to submit an artifact for review? Post it to the internal network of Podio so that each team member can see it and express its opinion. Everything that is done and every decision made is documented for everyone.

Fact number 3
Software is a new studio

Most teams spend fabulous real estate budgets, following the interior architectural mantra set out in books such as “Make Space”: a mixture of open space, a common place for meetings and a personal or personal space. Design studios now is a mature (but still developing) art, and architects receive huge sums for increasing your willingness to cooperate.

At IBM, Steve Daniels made a small contribution to the creation of a central studio in Austin, copies of which are found throughout the world. He watched as the architects and team members fouled the smallest detail. The result was a series of amazing rooms, never before seen by IBM.

However, the tools available for virtual collaboration were at the time disgusting. In part, this was the result of a complex IT policy and a virtually non-existent budget. But the blame for this cannot be fully laid on IBM. Most collaboration programs on the market must go a long way - even video chat.

In Makeshift, finances are distributed differently. No dollar is spent on real estate, leaving the budget for experimenting with tools and implementing those that will help streamline operations. These tools are the company's office.

The main base is Podio, a project management tool that adapts to actions. The guys from Podio carefully thought out not only virtual work. This adaptation forces team members to become a kind of “virtual workspace designers” who create and integrate areas for interaction and workflow organization. It allows the team to dominate their space just as employees do in the studio, rearranging tables and hanging bicycles to the ceiling in protest. In particular, Podio for has 4 main advantages.

Transparency. Every employee can see the work of the whole organization. The documentation is built into our network.

Democracy. Each of the employees can contact or chat with any colleague. Podio offers a horizontal hierarchy based on merit, not personalization or status.

A responsibility. Any team member can give the task to anyone. Podio allows you to link tasks and comments directly to each work area.

Openness The public API implies that Podio interacts well with Google Docs, Dropbox and a host of other third-party applications.
The available tools are many, and probably others are better suited for your tasks. The lesson is to set aside a part of the budget for “arming” and creating a culture that inspires your team to work on a virtual workspace, conduct experiments with new devices and improve the work process.

Fact number 4
Meetings are still unpleasant

Virtual employees are not insured against the horror of meetings just like their colleagues in any office. Sometimes virtual meetings are even more unbearable. Usually this is due to the dominance of one of the participants or the fact that they are held in the mode of a teleconference. And if meetings are held infrequently, you seek to push all the discussion questions into one hour, and you cannot be completely sure of the result.

The reality is this: your remote team members, in essence, strive for interpersonal relationships, and meetings are an opportunity to reach mutual understanding and maintain interest. Imagine!

Makeshift fully adopted the culture of in-person meetings, which Daniels helped build under the strict guidance of IBM Design. The center of interaction is the structure consisting of 4 different types of meetings, and the evidence of which of them you participate.

1. Flyers - very short meetings for telling news about the situation and blockers. Usually they are repeated daily or weekly. Work issues are not discussed.

2. Work sessions are longer meetings used to discuss current work or brainstorming. Usually, only those who are actively involved in the project are present, but the participation of customers and partners is also permissible.

3. Debriefing - reviews of work for team members and co-owners (sometimes including clients or partners), during which they take into account the binding of the result under discussion to the market situation and the perception of the target user.

4. Retrospectives - a review of the work of the team, usually taking place after the completion of a project or sign analysis. The team shares what it liked or didn’t like, as well as its ideas and questions.

If you adopt this structure, it will help everyone to make better use of time and inspire everyone to further improve both their work and the organization of their work process. Meetings do not need to be planned, any of them can be started according to the situation, using a signal.

Do not forget to have fun with your employees. When teams are separated, you risk losing a sense of humor. Allocate a place in your virtual space for personal novelties, jokes and frivolous news. Your team will appreciate this step, and, thanks to this, their ideas will become better.

PS We recommend another article on the topic - Awesome productivity: 5 ways to increase team productivity .

Translated by Vyacheslav Davidenko, founder of MBA Consult .