“Going into the office” is, increasingly, not the complete reality for organizations. Working across multiple offices, locations, and freelancers is now the norm.
That’s because organizations are finding it more important to rent the proper person, not necessarily the proper one that happens to measure accessibility . The result’s managers run teams from one city while the whole team is in another. Then, of course, there are the crowning jewels of remote work — 100% distributed teams. No office overheads, far fewer office politics, and you’ll hire whomever you would like .
However, how do successful teams like Zapier, InVision, and GitHub do it? How do they run major global organizations with no Monday morning meetings?
Part of their secret sauce is within the following five tips for driving and scaling distributed teams.
- Design a strong Hiring Process
Even the simplest hiring managers generally start from an equivalent place — who is around, and may do the job? But when it involves scaling distributed teams, that hiring process becomes incredibly important because the first limiting reagent of location does not apply.
Basically, it means for any role, you’ve got a way , much deeper applicant pool. At an equivalent time, most hiring processes are based round the in-person interview. But that’s not an option for distributed teams.
This means that distributed teams have to rethink the hiring process because they’re trying to find sharper needles during a much larger haystack.
Distributed teams hiring process tips:
- Bring in more people: Get buy-in from a broader team, where each member is reviewing specific criteria for his or her role.
- Make a strong screening process: you’ll afford to only hire people that are excited to figure for you. So cash in on that. Set a more time-consuming and robust screening process to both adequately evaluate applicants then that you simply can tell early if the person’s getting to be an honest fit.
- Bring your values into every interview: Clarify your values internally (more on this during a second) then make that a core part of the hiring process.
- Build out a foreign interview: albeit the person you’re shortlisting finishes up being from around your local area, if you’re running a distributed team, confirm the interview process is 99% remote. which will offer you the simplest sense for a way easy someone goes to be to figure with day to day.
- Clarify Your Values
The real difference between a centralized and distributed workforce is culture. When everyone’s in one place, the culture will develop naturally. That vacuum is going to be filled.
With remote teams, the challenge is building a culture. It’s perfectly normal for a foreign worker to possess no personal affiliation for your organization. And that’s a drag . It makes employee churn more likely, it makes employees care less about your organization, and it’s less likely to supply great work.
The single best way to get around this problem is to hammer home your values and live them internally. Ideally, every employee should be ready to share what your values are off the highest of their head and recall a recent example (e.g. within the last 30 days) of when those values were seen in action.
- Avoid the Central Hub
Central hubs are fine and, often, a requirement. However, if in the least possible, attempt to avoid them. Distributed teams should be just that — distributed. When there are one head office and a bunch of small satellites, it can create animosity between the smaller sites and “corporate.” Ultimately, this impacts productivity and therefore the effectiveness of your distributed team.
So what’s the solution?
Decide early if you’re a distributed team, or a team with multiple locations, including a core head office. There’s nothing wrong thereupon — but you are going to be upfront about it to the people you hire and with yourself. which will keep everyone on an equivalent page for what to expect.
- Hack Bulky Departments into Agile Teams (and Invest in Team Building!)
Big, monolithic departments add single locations because you’ve got enough casual interaction that teams and groups will form naturally. What’s more, tons of process and confusion that comes with bigger departments is navigated by going over and lecture someone. Distributed teams don’t have that option.
The solution is to interrupt them into smaller, natural groups. Not only will this promote in-team bonding, but it also means as a pacesetter , you’ve got less to specialise in since your team leads do the work day-to-day. Again, since this is often a distributed team, the less management you would like to place in, the higher off you’ll be.
- Use Technology
Finally, confirm you’re adequately using technology. Distributed teams need quite web conferencing and Slack. Everything from sending a fast note, to a proper request, to asking a fast question to getting feedback on a thought must have a tech tool to unravel that problem.
Platforms like Slack are increasingly popular for multiple functions since other tools integrate and repose on top of their tech, but there are dozens of other technologies which will assist you stay connected with teams that span the world.
The driver of this is often simple: you can’t invite something if you don’t know where it’s. meaning that knowledge must be:
- Obsessively documented
- Stored, searchable, and retrievable
- Open and accessible to everyone.
Evaluate your business processes, and if you discover areas where these criteria aren’t being met, then it’s an honest idea to see what tech you’ve got or can purchase an answer to assist plug the gap.
Wrap Up
Distributed teams are getting to become more and more common, as companies look further afield to seek out the people they have . However, even without hallway conversations and spontaneous lunches, you’ll still grow a team that’s dedicated and successful.
To us, the core takeaway is that organizations have to be clear about the team they’re looking to hire (distributed, centralized, satellite offices, etc… ) , build the culture, values, and team structures that employ effectively for that model, then buy the technology they have to execute effectively.
When these three things — careful selection, culture and values, and technology — close, it is once we see teams who both excel as individuals and excel as a gaggle to drive the corporate forward.
