10 Learnings for Building All-Remote Cultures

At Super Evil Megacorp we started as “remote-first” well before the pandemic and have been all-remote since.

Part of our process is to periodically edit and re-publish our online handbook together to incorporate what we have learned into the codified process of how we work. We just completed our most recent set of edits, and it made me reflect on what I have learned about building a distributed culture through these past years.?

[ Obligatory shameless plug : Super Evil Megacorp is growing fast with 21 open positions for some exciting projects we’re working on. If you are thinking about your next move - get in touch! ]

Here are my top-10 learnings so far

1. A distributed culture needs constant work. This one is obvious - but it’s still the most important one. All cultures decay without active maintenance. A distributed culture decays faster. Being distributed well means committing to ongoing time spent on tweaks of meetings, trying out new ways to connect people socially, to provide recognition, mentoring and support, seeking feedback and evolving ways to work asynchronously. You have to work harder at this ongoing than a company that is in an office. We tweak a lot - these past months my favourite tweaks at SEMC has been a new team testing out using video updates for what they’ve been up to, a new meeting bingo game, and a new coffee chat slack channel experiment.

2. Synchronous moments are important but they don’t have to be on video. Whether it’s groups working together, just hanging out, all hands meets sharing progress, virtual coffee meets - real time collaboration is valuable. We keep our timezone distribution limited to where we have a few hours of synchronous time every day for this reason. Video is great, but can be exhausting over time. We try to be on video in standups, all hands meets and our more socially oriented town halls to see each other's faces. But for other things audio only walk-and-talks, discord and slack are great. I do almost all my 1:1s as walk-and-talks - I feel it both gives me a break from my screens, and I feel that it is easier to fully focus on the person I talk to when I have nature around me instead of distractions.?

3. IRL meets are still important. We organize regional lunches, ad hoc meet ups, leadership meets - in real life - to let us laugh together and help have those slower, deeper conversations that are harder to have over video. Our monthly London lunches for UK based folks are some of my favorite moments in each month.

4. A fast and effective universal unblocking mechanism is vital. In an office you can walk up to someone and ask for help - and as a manager it is usually easy to see when someone is stuck. It is harder to do in a distributed organization and it’s easy to accidentally leave people or teams blocked. Some time back we introduced a dedicated #911 slack channel for anyone to be able to flag that they’re blocked (the build is broken, the VPN is down, a tool isn’t working, a team hasn’t delivered on a dependency etc) - which all leads keep an eye on.?

5. Distributed operations require flexibility and investment. Ensuring international operations, finance and infrastructure really work for our team members 24/7, no matter where they are required a lot of commitment. We are fortunate to have an incredible ops team who manage everything from ensuring everyone is paid on time wherever they are, to making sure they have the right equipment, access, systems and that emerging regional situations are dealt with well. Ensuring basic well being requires more effort than in an office, but committing to everyone being a first class citizen, wherever they are is vital to a cohesive culture.

6. Make taking care of each other a part of who you are. The first worry for most companies going distributed was “how do I know people are working and not taking a day off?” In our experience it is actually far more common for people to overwork themselves than to take excessive breaks. Encouraging each other to take breaks, take time off, helping each other develop better boundaries between work and family life have all become important parts of our culture as a result.

7. You need multiple feedback systems to keep a pulse on team health. In a remote setting you lose a sense of how things are going from the energy in the room or the body language of a team mate. In a distributed world you have to do active work to find out. We use written feedback tools like pulse surveys, anonymous feedback slack channels, but also town halls where we invite questions and feedback. Being distributed also requires managers to spend more time asking for feedback and talk “as two human beings” during 1:1s to ensure everyone is ok. Some time back we added our second value “Care and respect for our diversity” exactly to remind us to always look after each other because we’re all different.?

8. Take advantage of things not possible in a physical setting. Very large scale meetings, instant breakout groups, instant polls, recording of important updates, multiplayer games, including external teams into internal processes, hiring in remote places, working with part time talent or talent that could not commit to work in a physical office etc are all examples of things which are either uniquely possible, or possible in ways that require much less logistics in a distributed / online setting. Learning to “think outside of the physical” and use these tools will bring the most out of being distributed.?

9. Overinvest in information hygiene. Knowing what information lives where, and how to find out something you don’t know is critical in a distributed organization. Finding ways to update documentation as it inevitably decays and gets out of date is important. One great way we have found to keep us on our toes is our new joiner surveys and feedback. To actively hear what was easy and not easy to find helps us keep our things up to date. We are far from perfect in this regard but being committed to improving all the time has been important to us.

10. Figure it out together. One of the fun parts about being distributed is that there are fewer precedents, fewer assumptions as to how things “should be”. You get to invent things yourself and come up with various idiosyncrasies to make your company special. Make it a core value of the company to look after not just the work itself but the shared workspace and the shared working culture together. It’s always been a key passion of mine to try to leverage everyone for what they’re good at. Most people have great instincts around how to build a better workplace. One of the many examples for this at SEMC was the introduction of our monthly peer to peer kudos board tradition - where people write notes, read them out while someone illustrates the background. It’s become a much loved tradition since. I can’t see how we could ever have done it in this way in a physical setting and it’s a charming little unique ritual that is now a staple at SEMC.

11. Bonus -? play background music in your standups. Because you can. And having a DJ makes any meeting better!

If you have other tricks you’ve learned that you want to share - or - of course - if you’ve been asked to come back to the office but you would prefer to be part of a company that is truly committed to building the best distributed home for talent possible, get in touch!