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I’ve managed remote teams since 2008. Never read any books, but here are a few tips I learned along the way: * 1on1s are very important - There is no water coo

by awb 5y ago

I’ve managed remote teams since 2008. Never read any books, but here are a few tips I learned along the way: * 1on1s are very important - There is no water cooler for remote teams, so you have to manufacture it. Take 30min with each team member each week to just chat without an agenda. If the conversation gravitates towards work, fine. If it doesn’t that’s fine too. But I would take an interest in my employee’s life outside of work. I would make it a point to know what their hobbies were, their family’s names, their life story, etc. * Protect your work time - Each Slack message is an interruption. Have at least a couple hours a day where notifications are muted so you and your team can get into a “deep work” state. If something is urgent, pick up the phone. * Trust your team daily, hold them accountable weekly - Don’t micromanage your employees and ask what they did each day (outside of a daily virtual standup if they like that, where they post 1 message about what they’re working on and what they might need help with). But at the end of the week, evaluate their performance and adjust your management style to fit. With remote work, it is possible for folks to push the envelope on work/life balance, so be ready for that, but don’t assume it or be so worried about it that your policies become stifling. I’m sure there are more, but those are a few that served me well through the years. Good luck!

ozzythecat 5y ago
> Trust your team daily, hold them accountable weekly - Don’t micromanage your employees and ask what they did each day (outside of a daily virtual standup if they like that, where they post 1 message about what they’re working on and what they might need help with). This is reasonable advice, but what do you recommend if we find a pattern where at the end of each week, we made maybe 25% progress on that weeks commitments? Dates committed by the team itself - not forced on them from the outside or management. I was an IC on a team where this was happening at a big tech company. It killed morale for the few of us that were focused on delivery. We all left the team over it, and 6 months later the team was re-org’d.
- awb 5y ago
  > what do you recommend if we find a pattern where at the end of each week, we made maybe 25% progress on that weeks commitments? Dates committed by the team itself - not forced on them from the outside or management. I'd typically handle this in a weekly sprint call, or during 1on1s. I'd typically take responsibility for my team's missed deadlines too, as there's almost always something more management can be doing to make their teams successful (barring bad faith performance from an employee, which deserves a different conversation). If it was an honest missed deadline, I might say something like: "Hey team, I know we missed the deadline and that's had [this specific impact] on us and [this specific impact] on our client. I want to apologize because I should have caught this delay sooner. I also want to offer up [suggestion 1] and [suggestion 2] as ways to get back on track. But I'm open to other ideas as well." Obviously, there's nuance to every situation and that isn't a 1 size fits all, but it's a general theme I'd typically use. Some suggestions I'd typically offer were: * Reallocating complex tasks from Jr. members to more Sr. members * Reducing the scope * Offering to help personally with some tasks * Bringing in additional resources * Revising our expectations for next week > It killed morale for the few of us that were focused on delivery. We all left the team over it, and 6 months later the team was re-org’d. Yep, I've seen this happen myself too. Sorry you went through it. I hope the move was a good one for you. In my experience top-performers really don't like it when other team members bring the speed / strength of the team down. It totally kills morale. But, I do put a lot of that responsibility on the manager. They should see this happening and adjust before the top performers get annoyed.

by awb 5y ago

ozzythecat 5y ago

> Trust your team daily, hold them accountable weekly - Don’t micromanage your employees and ask what they did each day (outside of a daily virtual standup if they like that, where they post 1 message about what they’re working on and what they might need help with). This is reasonable advice, but what do you recommend if we find a pattern where at the end of each week, we made maybe 25% progress on that weeks commitments? Dates committed by the team itself - not forced on them from the outside or management. I was an IC on a team where this was happening at a big tech company. It killed morale for the few of us that were focused on delivery. We all left the team over it, and 6 months later the team was re-org’d.

awb 5y ago
> what do you recommend if we find a pattern where at the end of each week, we made maybe 25% progress on that weeks commitments? Dates committed by the team itself - not forced on them from the outside or management. I'd typically handle this in a weekly sprint call, or during 1on1s. I'd typically take responsibility for my team's missed deadlines too, as there's almost always something more management can be doing to make their teams successful (barring bad faith performance from an employee, which deserves a different conversation). If it was an honest missed deadline, I might say something like: "Hey team, I know we missed the deadline and that's had [this specific impact] on us and [this specific impact] on our client. I want to apologize because I should have caught this delay sooner. I also want to offer up [suggestion 1] and [suggestion 2] as ways to get back on track. But I'm open to other ideas as well." Obviously, there's nuance to every situation and that isn't a 1 size fits all, but it's a general theme I'd typically use. Some suggestions I'd typically offer were: * Reallocating complex tasks from Jr. members to more Sr. members * Reducing the scope * Offering to help personally with some tasks * Bringing in additional resources * Revising our expectations for next week > It killed morale for the few of us that were focused on delivery. We all left the team over it, and 6 months later the team was re-org’d. Yep, I've seen this happen myself too. Sorry you went through it. I hope the move was a good one for you. In my experience top-performers really don't like it when other team members bring the speed / strength of the team down. It totally kills morale. But, I do put a lot of that responsibility on the manager. They should see this happening and adjust before the top performers get annoyed.