Having virtual teams and offices usually mean growth, which is a good thing. However, it does come with its unique set of challenges. We mapped those challenges for you and got you the best tips for overcoming them, from our fastest growing customers.
When Lou Hoffman, head of Hoffman.com global PR Company moved with his family to open their UK branch, he learned firsthand what it felt like to be the guy in the overseas office. Leigh Buchanan describes his experience in her interview with him for Inc.com. “One thing Hoffman discovered is that they (overseas employees) felt the occasional pangs of neglect. For example, he knew that when corporate e-mail servers crashed, time zone differences meant global staff might have to wait hours for resumption of service. Sitting pretty in Silicon Valley, Hoffman had deemed those delays acceptable. But in London, deprived of e-mail for hours while he waited for the U.S. office to open, he changed his mind.”
This sincere anecdote demonstrates how even today, managing remote or distributed teams poses many challenges. The biggest challenge of all is ensuring that the remote team stays a real part of the company. Staying in sync, with both tasks and goals is hard. When managing a company with teams in more than one location, you are constantly trying to avoid set-backs caused by lack of sync and enhanced by time zone differences. Based on our experience from working with hundreds of managers and thousands of employees, here are some early signs of remote team challenges.
Get started Test yourself: Do I suffer from early signs of remote team management
- Sign #1: Searching for new tools
Are you constantly looking for new WFH tools to get everyone on the same page? For example live communication tools, knowledge sharing tools, collaboration tools and collaborative task management tools.
- Sign #2: Composing updates
Are you spending at least an hour a day composing summaries to get remote team up to speed? And do you often get their feedback only 24 hours after sending, including follow-up questions and pushbacks? - Sign #3: Unclear ownership
When tasks are delayed, do you know who to turn to for answers, or is it hard to figure out who was in charge of what?
If you answered at least one of these questions with a Yes, you might be facing some challenges in managing your remote teams. But don’t worry, here are great tips to help you overcome these challenges.
Successfully managing remote teams in 3 easy steps
1. Create one roadmap for all
Create a single roadmap for the entire company, as oppose to one for Marketing, one for R&D, one for Product and so on. This roadmap must be communicated and accessible to everyone in the company. This way all teams in all locations are aligned towards the same goals. It keeps everyone focused and creates a sense of being part of one united effort.
2. Update around topics, not people
Instead of creating updates for people, create updates around topics or projects. This will save you a lot of time. If you make these updates accessible in one place for all relevant team members to see, you’ll save more time. Putting updates in one place means you don’t have to send dozens of emails and then track all answers. Instead, team members can review the updates relevant to them, and even comment and discuss in one central place. Updating around topics or projects, lets teams easily take any task from A to Z through all different departments and teams, with each one adding their relevant contribution.
3. Establish one united knowledge base
This is a real game changer and especially useful for companies who are onboarding many new employees. Since you are probably already using some type of knowledge sharing tool, use it to make sure there is one place for all the knowledge people need to get their work done. When all relevant knowledge is in one central place, there are no knowledge gaps and no time wasted on fill-me-in conference calls.
How monday.com helps its customers — and can help you — easily manage remote teams
monday.com translated all the above into one single solution. On monday.com every single person in the company can clearly see the roadmap and understand where they fit in. On monday.com each employee, in any location, can share and get updates on projects relevant to their work. Sharing updates creates a central knowledge based accessible to everyone. On monday.com, everyone is always on the same page.
- One tool for updates and sharing
monday.com is a cross-company platform, where everyone contributes updates on their ongoing progress and subscribes only to the topics relevant to them. This means everyone stays updated on what they need to know, but are not overwhelmed with information. Our customers say that using monday.com dramatically reduces emails, conference calls and time spent on updating. It also means that when Jay, your mobile team leader in SF turns on his computer, any hour of night or day, all new specs are already awaiting him and his team can start working right away.
- Constructed updates around topics
Since information in monday.com is constructed around topics (of your choice) it’s easy to take things from A to Z. A new feature, for example, can be a topic, for the various departments working on it each kick in at the relevant stage and add their progress updates for all relevant team members to see.
This way Sarah, your London based designer, gets notified as it’s her turn to work on New Homepage, with everything she needs already awaiting her in monday.com, including the process that led to each decision, so she doesn’t need to wait for morning in the US to ask “why did you decide to go with this logo or that top menu”.
- Easy tracking
When a team member updates on their progress in monday.com, they can always tag the next person who needs to give feedback, take it from there or sign off on the project. This way, things don’t fall between the cracks and indication of holdups surfaces fast and with complete transparency.
The most important thing is, to remember the basic work practices that took you from small to big and from big to bigger – like direct communication, transparency and real time collaboration – and find the tools and methods to maintain them as you grow.
Photo by: David Chau
Get started