21 Months In: How to Manage a Remote Team

It looks like meldium is headed in the right direction but the last time I tried it, it was still too early.

I admire startups which open-source their - workflows, tools, processes and philosophies. They must be having really-really-big heart! :)

In our case, we are currently just Ramen Profitable. All our team members are remote, in the same time-zone.

Many small startups don't care much to invest in bringing Greater workflows, Processes and tools.

I keep telling to my co-founder - the hardest part in company building is setting up Processes, tools and workflows -- the Nurturing phase. It takes lots of gut, time and patience to explore and fix workflows, tools.

From my experience so far -

+ Any remote work sits on top of love for the work. I must love the job. Job satisfaction.

+ There must be a sense of ownership, reward and instant gratification. All other things like responsibility, Trust, faith comes on top of that.

+ Remote teams need highest levels of Communication clarity, Protocols and aligning with the Product vision. Communication tools are important. We use Google+ Private communities.

So, what if you are an idea-Stage/early-stage? If its an Idea and still not a concrete product? Then remote teams can't collaborate easily and brainstorm. We've found it very hard.

Also for Remote teams - Everyone should be doing support, sales, marketing, pitching, writing cool articles and almost full-stack work. Overall a Generalist attitude. This brings more clarity, responsibility and leadership overtime.

Finally as you said - The biggest wins aren't usually found in any blog posts or comments like mine, but in what you discover on your own, over time.

So keep exploring and don't stop! :)

and i say this as a remote worker who just ended up going for a walk in the rain to calm down; returned to an email saying "sorry for the poor management"; and would quite happily give the silly idiot a hug if he were here...

By far the biggest issue for me getting stuff done is managment. I've sat in several companies, at times with not a lot of work, because managers aren't willing to sign off. Motivation dwindles and people leave.

Of course you have to hire people you trust. You need to actually trust them and get out of their way. Let the technical people make the technical decisions, let them do the work, remove obstacles and make sure you're not one of those obstacles.

You will pay the price that a couple of non-contributors will fly under the radar for a bit longer, but between git logs and productivity tools you should still be more than capable of gauging productivity, which should be a binary.

Regarding the article, written communcation is important even if you're in the same office. Listen, it's fine if John tells Steve about foo, but unless it's written down Bob and whoever else wasn't privy to that conversation isn't going to know and you're going to need to repeat yourself with every hire.

If there is a significant difference between what you do with remote folks and what you do with guys in your office, you're probably doing it wrong with the guys in your office and you just haven't figured out how much time you've wasted having to explain everything verbally to new guy Dave.