We use Slack for internal comms, but it's used mostly for chit-chat conversations and real-time issues. Is there a product for slow-thinking updates where I can share teams news and align my +40 people team? How can you be sure people don't actually miss things in the noise of Slack/Email?
Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?
1–10 of 75 posts
Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?
#2Are you personally managing 40+ people, or are you a director with a layer of managers beneath you? I can't imagine how stressful it must be personally to manage 20 people, never mind 40...
Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?
#3Can you just create a new slack channel for team news?
Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?
#4I think a distributed team,where individual members of the team are geographically distributed, is designed to fail. Sure you could accomplish some goals but the inertia is working against you. Such teams will be always outperformed by co-located teams.
A better approach would be to have distributed teams where the teams are cohesive unit with co-located members. Each team has local autonomy and a central mandate. The teams could be located anywhere but the team members would be in the same office.
Aliging distributed teams is easier as they can agree on coarse details , have few or limited dependencies and they execute on their own. Otherwise you are just shepherding cats.
Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?
#5[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?
#6I think a distributed team,where individual members of the team are geographically distributed, is designed to fail. Sure you could accomplish some goals but the inertia is working against you. Such teams will be always outperformed by co-located teams. A better approach would be to have distributed teams where the teams are cohesive unit with co-located members. Each team has local autonomy and a central mandate. Th…
There are several fully remote companies collectively generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. To require physical colocation is a failure to properly manage, as well as delegate authority and responsibility.
> Such teams will be always outperformed by co-located teams.
Could you share data to back this assertion up?
Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?
#7We’re on slack and looking at Discourse for that purpose. It’s really high quality software, and definitely geared in the direction of slow-thinking and keeping topic history in the same place.
Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?
#8One key aspect is a single source of truth. A place/tool were all processes, requirements and relevant Q&A are open for the whole team, with no gray areas. Use any kind of methodology, but try to keep your team informed about how the general rules of communication and collaboration work.
Split communication in small teams/groups and design just one person per group to deliver periodic status. Meeting with the whole team are absolutely inefficient and costly for the company.
Create a policy where any change must be documented and informed to all stakeholders.
Tools vary depending on your business, but sites like Trello can be really usefull.
Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?
#9At Out Of Office we use slack for day to day communication and always require video chat for team meetings unless you're on the go or not able to use video.
For longer term alignment we always post "decisions" that are made during these meetings in a slack channel so that others can keep up to date if they weren't in the meeting. We can also go back in time to see the context of why a decision was made.
Re: Ask HN: As managers, how do you make sure your distributed team is aligned?
#10basecamp?