This document discusses remote working and running distributed teams. It outlines different types of remote work including fully remote companies. The advantages listed are flexibility, a global talent pool, reduced interruptions, and environmental benefits. Challenges discussed include communication, isolation, time zones, and ensuring a sense of belonging for remote employees. Solutions proposed are onboarding processes, virtual meetings, communication channels, and emphasizing well-being. Overall the document provides an overview of considerations for effectively managing remote and distributed teams.

1. Remote Working
Running Remote, Bali – June 2018

2. types of remote
• distributed teams (across offices)
• occasionally remote (work from home)
• “if your company isn’t doing this, you’re in a bad company”
• remote friendly / remote only
• location independence / co-working
• It is not offshoring work; rather, you hire around the world
• It is not a substitution for team work or human interaction

3. advantages of running remote
• Flexibility (health, kids, families, etc)
• Hiring from a global talent pool
• No commuting
• Self-selects self-starting individuals
• Reduced interruptions, increased focus
• Travel without taking vacation
• Environmental impact anecdote
• Work from where you want, when you want, with whom you want
• The canaries of business productivity
• Have a considerably lower staff turnover

4. why employees want remote working
• Millennials value Passion and Purpose over Survival and Obligation
• Millennials don’t want what previous generations wanted, companies
are slow to realise this
• Nomads -> Risk Takers, Experiences over Possessions, Lifestyle Design,
Inspired by Movement, Being over Doing
• People want freedom -> they NEED purpose, employers are confused
by this change. It doesn’t align with Motivation 2.0 (Drive)
• The greatest gift of co-working is that people get to choose WHO they
work with.

5. diversity
• Remote working enables women to stay engaged in the workforce
• Benefits for companies
• Financial
• Retention
• Collaboration
• Creativity

6. Create process & standardization
Written centrally & mandated
Eliminate variability
Engineered for predictability
Focus and measure outputs
Command & control
Centralized decision-making
Large monolith teams
Hierarchy
Strong functions & departments
Provide plays & guardrails
Crowdsourced & shared laterally
Embrace variability where valuable
Freedom for rhythm & cadence
Focus on outcomes
Empowerment
Decision-making at the coalface
Small, nimble teams with high agility
Autonomous
cross-functional teams
EFFICIENCY EFFECTIVENESS
@dompricehttps://twitter.com/domprice/status/1016909870732201984

7. future of work
• “a fool with a tool is still a fool, only faster” - Dominic Price, Atlassian
• every interaction is an opportunity to reinforce how much we value
our remote workers
• if one person dials in, everyone dials in - this levels the playing field
for “remote” meetings, rather than having 6 people in a room and
one poor person on video chat
• time tracking is a terrible idea

8. challenges
• communications and culture
• ensuring the team is always aligned with the current priorities and
purpose
• isolation, loneliness, anxiety, etc
• imposter syndrome can be huge for new starters in remote
environments
• time zones are a challenge, people never switch off, time zones make
this worse, don’t leave any single person alone in a time zone, try to
align time zones for “office hours”

9. solutions – sense of belonging
• belonging is an ACTIVE experience, everyone is responsible
• GitHub do a 1 week on-site in the office
• introduce a buddy system, not with their line manager
• daily efforts to ensure remote teams feel as connected as the local members
• CEO digest weekly update
• virtual town halls
• for remote teams, give them the afternoon off to do stuff with their families
• new swag is delivered to people’s homes rather than the office. this way
remote workers are treated equally to the office people

10. challenges – wellbeing
• make sure managers are having conversations about well-being as
well as work performance
• make sure you have fun channels on slack etc to ensure people have a
well-rounded interaction with remote workers and remote work
• use “joyable” company: https://joyable.com, connects people with
qualified therapists, part of their benefits
• need to be very deliberate to have social and water cooler chat

11. management and leadership
• leaders need to unlearn
• they’ve been successful and re-enforced in their behaviour for 30 years
• that world no longer exists
• as a remote manager, ensure you inject a little fun to avoid only
talking to your team members about hard or negative topics
• do performance reviews based on staff goals, career goals.. not
company goals. (as you’d expect in any setting)
• ensure people are taking time off
• working long hours or weekends is not encouraged nor celebrated

12. recruiting and onboarding remote staff
• when doing remote work interviews, do the interviews remotely too
• mentor, fly new starters in to work with their mentor for a period of
time, assign buddy
• remote retreats (2 x a year), work together for a week, bring teams
and families together (some examples)
• design a 3-5 year org chart to show people some career progression
options
• do the team-fit interview first, there’s no point doing the technical
interview first

13. companies represented
Atlassian: 3000 people, mixture
GitHub: 800 people, 20 countries, mixture
GitLab: 300 people, 40 countries, remote-first
Doist: ~60 full time, ~20 part time, remote
Stormboard: ~32 people, remote
Dribbble: 34 people, fully remote
Empire Flippers: remote
Buffer: 73 people, fully remote
Webinar Ninja: ~30 staff, remote

14. online guides
• https://www.remoteonly.org/
• https://open.buffer.com/
• https://blog.doist.com/how-we-work/home
• https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook
• https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/
• https://product.canva.com/working-with-global-teams/