About remote co-working
A set of here-and-now tips on co-working remotely based on my 10 years of remote experience.
This story was mostly triggered by a discussion we had at Transifex regarding getting more “remote ready” and “remote first” in terms of how we work as a team. During that discussion, I realized that there were many things I could still share about working remotely that I haven’t done already!
From that starting point, I thought about sharing my experience and way of working remotely for a decade now. I’ll try and keep it precise as this is going to be a long list of findings and experimentations through the years.
“Let’s look at remote work 10° to the left please “, a.k.a. what’s hidden behind that corner?
Remote work is becoming steadily more relevant by the year, even before the 2020 pandemic outbreak and lockdowns. 2020 has played a big role in adopting a remote-friendly approach to work as more people seem to like it!
As more people and companies join remote working, so does the need to define ways to work better from our homes/home-offices. There are many articles covering remote working and this is a great start for everyone’s rituals.
What I want to try here is to share some daily tips and my own personal experience regarding remote co-working, that’s where YOUR work is intermingled with your TEAM’S work and the whole is trying to produce a higher goal than YOU and TEAM.
So here goes…
Establish trust in colleagues
Being able to maintain an honest and direct relationship with your colleagues and team is the number one priority in work, whether that’s remote or in the office. Taking away the direct connection that an office space offers introduces a new challenge to overcome, yet it's something totally doable! The options I have found to be more efficient are:
- Be available for connection, so that your colleagues and teammates know that you are there when they need an answer, some help, or a person to share their thoughts! Being there when a person needs clarifications, means the world is some cases, as distance and sparse communication (via messaging app or email) lead to assumptions … which lead to the dark side.
- Messaging app (e.g. Slack, or MS Teams) is everybody’s window to the company world! Acknowledging this fact can drive your actions. Always respect everything that is written in a messaging app, and please, please, please (🙏) reply in a timely manner otherwise you’ll lose the trust of your teammates! Message streams are ephemeral and are not emails, so a 1-week delay for a reply is not acceptable, people are asking for an answer way sooner! If you can’t handle messaging it’s better to clearly state so in a timely manner and channel your request on email instead! An email has the power of making people be more patient with their requests. It’s worth noting that here lays a “dragon” (🐉) that will be addressed further down in this post.
- Own async communication, by being present when an action item is needed but no-one seems to grab the ball, or by adding a reminder on your calendar (or personal Slack) for working on a co-owned item with a colleague. Everybody will appreciate that ping and will trust working with you as you clearly state “I’m on top of this, people! You can rely on me”. Especially when co-owning work, add a reminder not on delivering the task but on planning to work together. e.g. if you have something to deliver on Wednesday, then plan for a co-working time on Monday or Tuesday and ping your colleague on the previous Friday to set this up! Don’t leave it for Wednesday morning, as your colleague might a) have planned differently, b) is not available!
- Document your tasks/progress, so that people can access your work and tasks even when you are not available. Maintaining well-organized documentation of your work progress is important for situations where you are not available. The trickiest part of this task is on finding and communicating the channel you’ll be using so that your colleagues can easily recall that place when in need. The best solution I’ve found so far is overcommunication, by being extra vocal and repeating the same message (and link to docs) whenever a discussion drives to that direction.
Connect with your colleagues
Getting to know your team is always important. This way you know better who to ask for help on task A, or on task B, who will appreciate your remark C, and who can help you with D when you needed (or even who will appreciate your joke!). Of course, this relation development is mutual as other people want to know you better for similar reasons. I will skip the well-documented ways of virtual coffee, or game activities to do that and propose some more day-to-day ways. I find daily interactions more vital and unobtrusive than another planned meeting in my calendar, work, and relation is happening right where you work and bonding is stronger this way!
- Always let some character and small chit-chat happen on every call! Your whole team is working on their own home-office with minimal interaction and super-focused! A direct call is when you meet to solve a problem but also talk in real-time. I have found that being me in those calls and reading the room to drop some relaxing or funny quote help build the relation without getting everyone off track, we’re there to solve a problem after all! If you stay relaxed during those calls you will always find something small to inject into your call, might be that your coffee is over by now, or that is an awesome day where your home is, or that a remark reminded you of a joke to share! In addition to connecting with your colleagues, easing the discussion is freeing up brain resources and might help the whole team in problem-solving.
- Be present when there’s an opportunity to talk. As shared above, water-cooler talk and creative discussions have shifted in the virtual world of your messaging app. Impromptu discussions are now messages and threads, so when you find that you have something to share do follow up. By doing so, you are engaging with the rest of the team on a creative journey. There is a “dragon”(🐉) hidden in this behavior that we’ll cover below.
- Ask for clarifications! (repeat 3 times). Since our view of the office world is the messaging app and our emails, there are always things left unsaid, and the tone of voice is on the head of each reader! What’s unsaid and how it is read, create tons of assumptions on everyone’s mind! Taking these assumptions as facts is problematic and leads to the dark side (again). Please ask for clarifications whenever something is not clear, or even if it is clear in your mind!
🐉 Dragon of always-on/always-available!
Staying connected with your colleagues hides the “dragon”(🐉) of always-on, omnipresence on all communication mediums used! As you are always on, in every channel, thread, and email shared your productivity will plummet! You will need to avoid that by clearly stating your availability and setting expectations! What I find really useful lately is to set and follow a specific “Do not disturb” mode for 1–2 hours. I call this “Entering my cave” and I try to be very vocal about doing it and what are the outcomes from this, so that my teammates know that I don’t do it out of disrespect or trying to avoid discussion.
And with that said, I move on to the next tip which is…
Respect your colleagues time
When you’re all working remotely it's impossible to know what each person does at each time. Again, try to avoid jumping into assumptions, judging from your own time management, and instead assume that your colleague is doing focused work! This does not mean that you can not ping them or ask a question, but be mindful of how fast you will get an answer.
Working remotely you can bet on async communication more. This means that if you have something on your mind, you can be proactive and share your thoughts in written form before talking to the person. This way the other party has the time to read, evaluate, and produce a counter-thought before you two can start talking. In a nutshell:
- Less of, “Can we jump on a call?”
- More of, “Writing you my thoughts on…”
More about “Writing you my thoughts on…”
You might argue that async communication is the actual solution to all problems. Why not write everything down in shared docs so that people can consume content on their own time and when they need to?
Based on my experience working over docs or company playbooks works well in some of the cases but not always. More specifically async docs are:
✅ good for, onboarding material to new people joining the company. This is accumulated knowledge that is better to read about than have a person walk you through everything!
✅ good, as a reference/“How it works” material for people to dig into a specific process or completed work that they need to be reminded of, like how a specific feature works, or what’s the process on submitting an update for 3rd party app YYYY.
🛑 not good for, introducing new stuff and processes that require cognitive effort from people to adapt to! Simply writing more stuff in a doc won’t make you do it until you are ready to do so or you have a person reminding you to do so! I’ve seen this happening many times, and it’s the daily whirlwind to blame, not just your brain’s resistance!
🛑 not good for, sharing daily habits, company culture, and rituals.
Both “not good” cases are describing behavioral patterns that people want to learn by experience and not read in a document. The best thing you and your team can do to help onboard people to new processes or introduce a change is to walk the talk every time! Seeing a behavior in practice, time and time again makes me understand better, for example, what “being a true teammate” means (“It’s what Dimitri is doing time and time again since I joined! Now I get it!”).
Instead of a summary
All the above methods and techniques are a product of trial and error in over 10 years of remote work. There is a significant effort required to include and adapt them in your daily workflows but trust me, it gets better by practicing and talking about it. Again, based on my experience, neglecting the majority of the items above longer than two or three weeks will weaken relations. But practicing the above has made me build good and solid relations with people I have only seen two or three times in-close and together we are delivering great outcomes and are happily collaborating 🥂!
Building and cultivating a healthy and happy working environment is a constant pursuit that we should all try to reach!
Thank you for reaching the end of this post. Hope you find it useful and waiting for your comments and suggestions on getting better 👋!
