Phoning it In

We work with many businesses with remote or hybrid work environments. Some teams thrive in this context, others don’t. We noticed some consistent behaviors great remote teams exhibit.

1. They are explicit about norms, tooling, and work styles. This is usually demonstrated by investment in great tools, intense customization of tools to fit a business’ unique context, and clarity on things like availability, documentation, and response times. They also tend to ensure all employees’ work experience is consistent in terms of hardware, decent furniture, gear, internet speed etc.

2. They still spend significant amounts of time together in person. This is unintuitive, but we think this is a function of founding teams being really good friends with intertwined lives, and the process of building new relationships with customers, investors and employees who often require in person time at least in the early innings. Great remote teams use these opportunities, and create opportunities like regular off-sites, to spend time together, catch up and plan while executing on critical objectives.

3. They default to analog for critical communications. Great remote founders still handle sensitive conversations in analog ways, either by showing up for a coffee, or at least picking up the phone and chatting through something that could be expensive emotionally or financially if misconstrued. Empathy is still, a critical part of success in any organization.

We have yet to encounter a category defining business staffed by lifestyle-first digital nomads who are 100% a-synch never connect with each other in person, have 10 different hustles, and never meet with customers or investors in person. More commonly, we see companies loosely, or inconsistently embracing some these recommended behaviors—which is just as ineffective as phoning it in.