What's going on? (some best practices for leading distributed teams)

As we begin the new year, we see another round of RTO mandates from a variety of companies including Amazon, AT&T and Disney. Each new round of RTO mandates brings another set of points and counterpoints about what makes for a successful and collaborative team. While we continue to see RTO mandates, most folks will agree that they miss the larger point of how to inspire your teams and build structures that allow execution at high velocity, predictability and quality.

I fear that in the constant back and forth over RTO mandates we have lost sight of the larger point - How do we maximize effectiveness and output of our teams? Location is only one dimension of an operating model and I would argue the least important. More important is how people communicate, how managers lead, how work value is assessed, how priorities are managed, how change is governed. I fear that we have still not learned as a community how to lead in a world of distributed people, teams, customers, locations, and offices.

While the public reasons for RTO vary - Often including collaboration, communication, and cost of real-estate the non-public reasons are often pretty simple. Managers today simply lack the necessary tools & mindset to lead a team of distributed employees and effectively measure their output so that they can improve the teams' delivery over time. Managers have an obligation to experiment and iterate towards tools and methods that work for their distributed team. Lets face it, even in the era of RTO mandates, not all your stakeholders will be in the office. At best it will be a small subset lacking critical mass to accomplish lofty goals.

So, what do we do about this? Well here is my non-definitive list of best practices for leading a team that is not in the same physical space at the same time;

• Commanders intent (https://pavilion.dinfos.edu/Article/Article/2163950/the-elements-of-commanders-intent/) - Simply put, this is ensuring teams have clear communications on their mission and what the end state accomplishment will be. This style of communication ensures clear objectives are set across the team, tools defined and decision making authority is delegated to balance speed with success.
• Staff meeting(s) structure - There is no one model for staff meetings, they take a different form based on your team locations, work functions, mix of skill level and the organizational imperatives. Most importantly, conditions change and staff meetings must adjust to them. I like to review the standing agenda for my staff meetings quarterly, ensuring that we have the right topics, time allocation and participants. I currently use a rotating model - One week is focused on administrative items & learning and the following week is focused on intake review and work assignments.
• Lurk on chat channels - Join all the chat groups that your team participates in but shut off alerts so that you are not overwhelmed. Periodically check the threads for various programs, see how your team and others communicate, see how they resolve conflict. This insight is invaluable for 1:1 coaching on problem resolution, prioritization & work structure changes.
• Periodically listen in on meetings - Join the calls where your team is participating. Turn off your camera and simply listen. This gives you insight as a leader to how your team owns the room, leads conversations, shares materials and drives teams to consensus. If you are called on, use the chance to redirect to your team, put them in a position of authority to own the response and when needed prompt others to lean in during key conversations.
• Sprint demos - The sprint demo has been my favorite regular event of every team I have worked on. It is that exciting time when our engineers get to showcase their effort and creativity, our product managers get to see what's coming next and our leadership get to see the return on their investments. Join these often, protect your time for participation. In a distributed environment, sprint demos often become the biggest point of celebration and creativity.
• Live group reviews of key assets - Product Managers produce a wealth of content including revenue growth plans, personas, mission/vision statements, feature definitions, and data product definitions. Each of these contains valuable information for a broad set of team members. While async review is a good starting point, I find synchronous review of these assets to be invaluable. Open review sessions ensure everyone has reviewed the asset, that questions are open for discussion and team members see what SMEs they have on the team to leverage when working on future assets & programs.
• "have a few minutes?" - Even in a distributed world, ad-hoc conversations are warranted and important. We often say that RTO is about creating those moments in the office, those can be created remotly as well. Pickup the phone, reach out to folks just to check-in. Don't use these as a replacement for 1:1s, but rather a pulse check on the team and how folks are doing. These are great to give you an idea of whats top of mind during different parts of the week/month/quarter/year.
• Don't fall back to 1:1s - I find that a lot of organizations will simply schedule more 1:1s when communication starts to break down or people struggle to get to consensus. While 1:1s have a place for building relationships, talking about sensitive topics, delivering direct feedback and somethings grumbling about a frustrating day - they should never be used for making key decisions, setting priorities or sharing information that is necessary for the larger team to operate independently. If your team is struggling with building consensus, look at how and where teams are collaborating and adjust those, that is not the role of a 1:1.
• Therapy sessions - Therapy sessions are one of my favorite events, usually held monthly. These pull together peers in a single function, in my case our Product Managers. The session balances celebration with constant improvement. We begin by having everyone share good news - This could include product releases, happy business partners, new hires or even new processes and tools being deployed. We capture these to ensure they are shared and available for the broader organization to review. Then we move to areas for improvement, we discuss friction that we are feeling across the organization and brainstorm on solutions - sometimes these are simple like adjusting the agenda for a meeting, sometimes they become complex with the addition of new governance and control structures. The goal is to ensure everyone is heard and everyone participates in corrective actions.
• Early career folks are different - Especially for early career team members that are both learning their role, but how to work in a larger organization an office-presence can have immediate value. Giving early career team members a chance to learn how to react to different situations, how to engage others and how to measure success can all be done more effectively in person where they get constant feedback and support. This must be done thoughtfully, ensuring that the early career folks have all the necessary support around them and are not physically in an office when their support systems are distributed.

There is no singular tool for leading a distributed team - just as there is no singular tool for leading a centrally-located team. Simply falling back to RTO misses the larger point of how people work most effectively. Leverage my best practices, come up with your own, ask your team what works for them - iterate with purpose to find the right solution for your team to operate at their most effective and impactful.

Each time you look at changing how your teams work - from meeting structure, to collaboration tools through reporting on work status ask yourself - "does this change impact outcome or simply availability?" Avoid those changes that predominantly affect availability. Your team will thank you.