Insights from Distributed Work Experiences

🗺️ Time zones matter, so think of the world in stripes. That's just one of my top takeaways from Annie Dean’s Keynote at Running Remote. Atlassian continues to lead with their experimentation with distributed work. And we all get to benefit from their willingness to publicly share their learnings.   1. Time Zones Matter: Consider the world as if it’s divided into 6 time zones stripes. The most successful teams have a 4 hour workday overlap.  If you are early in your career, Atlassian tries to match you with a manager in the same stripe.  If more senior, you might oversee people across 3 stripes.  Innovation teams should be staffed within 2 stripes or less.   2. Team Design: Organize teams based on the skills you need for the problem you are trying to solve (not based on the building they work from). If you operate digital-first then this allows you to create the best team with the right skills (within the right time zone stripes).   3.  Loyalty vs Connection: Going into an office helps improve company loyalty and belonging, but NOT team connection (which is linked to team effectiveness). Team connection is better built via intentional gatherings.   4.  Async Audience: The audience for your writing it's not just your readers, it's also LLM models (to help AI with searching for and summarizing content later).   5.  Free Time: Ideally keep 50% of your calendar free for focus work and adhoc collaboration.   6.  "Page-Led" Meetings: Each meeting should start with a one-pager that is read silently at the beginning to ground everyone on the outcome needed and includes prompts that create a robust discussion/debate. #virtualleadership #distributedteams #hybridwork #runningremote

Final post in my mini-series about organizational health and remote-first culture: work practices that enable distributed work are also good for your company in other, place-agnostic ways. In this final example I'll share one specific practice from the McKinsey #OHI framework, which is featured in an article I discovered while working with my fully-remote client on their #organizationalhealth assessment. If you read any posts or reports from the many thought leaders here, and generous resources shared by remote-first advocate companies, you'll see a lot about creating a culture of writing things down. This includes low-context communications, centralized handbooks, #asynchronous voice/video, and other means to enable transfer and independent recall of knowledge. One of the 43 OHI practices is just that -- knowledge sharing -- and it's related to the outcome of #innovation and #learning, which supports how an organization renews/resets its vision and direction. The question that OHI asks on this topic is basically this: how frequently do you see leaders encouraging people to share learnings across teams? So it's not surprising that companies doing the fully or remote-first thing tend to be really, really, really good at #knowledgesharing...because if they were not, the whole house of cards would come tumbling down. In fact, the client we studied basically set the highest bar for this question McKinsey had ever seen. Seriously. But that's still not the coolest part. Early in the pandemic, our org scientists looked to see what practices were most helpful to preventing financial disruption (i.e., enabling #resilience) which is a nice way of saying probability of bankruptcy. What practice topped the list? You guessed it: knowledge sharing. So, as I have said throughout this thread: even if your company wants people sat next to each other most of the time, they should still be adopting the ways of working that enable flexible and distributed work. Don't fight #remotework , learn from those who are good at it. #futureofwork #flexiblework #agility #leadership #culture

Want to learn how Whimsical builds a thriving async culture? Remote work offers incredible flexibility and freedom, but recent findings from the 2024 Distributed Work Report highlight a common challenge: fostering communication, collaboration, and connection within geographically dispersed teams. Addressing these challenges head-on as an advisor to Whimsical's Head of People, Diana Lace Davidova, we collaborated on cultivating a thriving async culture. Whimsical has a fully remote workforce spread across twelve countries and prioritizes focused async work. Let's explore how they make it work. 🌎 Calm Collaboration Across Time Zones: Whimsical prioritizes craftsmanship and, at the same time, values sustainable, and calm 40-hour work weeks. You might wonder: how do they achieve both goals amidst a seven-time-zone workforce? The answer lies in first-principle thinking and a foundation of async collaboration tools. 🌎 Work in Async, Build Relationships in Sync: Whimsical's approach to nurturing strong team bonds in a remote setup involves organizing regular face-to-face meetings like Summits and all-hands gatherings to keep everyone connected and aligned. 🌎 The "Me" Board: Building Trust One Profile at a Time: The impact of Whimsical's "Me" boards emerged as the most successful activity in promoting trust and inclusivity among team members. Sharing their life milestones, career journeys, hobbies, and more is a great way to learn about the team's diverse interests. Whimsical's success story demonstrates that fostering a thriving remote culture is achievable for any organization, but requires deliberate effort. Companies must design their workforce strategy with intention, fostering a culture of trust, providing direct feedback, and maintaining a high caliber of talent. Read the full blog post linked in the comments 👇 #startups #peopleoperations #humanresources #distributed #distributedwork #remotework #futureofwork