100 days as Head of Remote: 5 key learnings

?? Welcome to the Remote Work Digest ??

If you are new here, welcome! You are joining 22K subscribers. My name is Ro aka #RoRemote and I curate this news digest, with 100+ editions, ??? subscribe here to never miss one.

Back with edition Number #116, after a wee break whilst I started a new Fractional role as Head of Remote Operations with Nosana - more on that experience below - and also took an extended holiday in Indonesia to visit family there.

TLDR: I am an OG Remote Work expert and leader, offering services as an Event Host and Speaker, Mentor and Advisor, plus people value my contributions, ?? because I have over 135+ client testimonials on my LI profile. I have been featured in HBR, NY Times, BBC and Business Insider. Recently, CBNC Travel featured my sabbatical travel story from earlier this year, when I spent 4 months in Spain and France on a budget.

So after 100 days working as a Head of Remote, what have I learned?

What top 5 reflections have I got operational heads in remote focused companies and teams?

? Get comfy, grab a cuppa and enjoy.

1. Rest Ethic is as important as Work Ethic

Short version: ALWAYS TAKE YOUR PTO or ANNUAL LEAVE.

Longer version: When I agreed to take the new role with Nosana (scroll to the end for the Nosana company bio), I already had a extended holiday of more than 3.5 weeks in Indonesia planned. This would begin after 11 weeks into my new contract.

At first I wondered about whether to go ahead with my original plans or if the new role was more important? So I spent some time considering the pros and cons, also how the dates would fall.

After reflecting, I reminded myself of one of my core vales, Rest Ethic is as important as Work Ethic. This is a topic which often comes up in my leadership and sabbatical mentoring. What would I say to a mentee client? What was I advise them to do? I already know through life and professional experience how important quality rest is, it is the foundation of smarter working.

So I took that well deserved Rest and bolstered my Rest Ethic.

Life is too short to do anything else!

Plus, see the evidence below....

Reminder: Smarter work comes after quality rest.

2. Foster Human Connection via Offsites

During the initial contract negotiations for the new role, during an advisory sessions with the leadership teams I recommended that we organise an in-person get together as soon as possible*

Offsites and team meet-ups are the glue that keep remote teams together. Particularly those from fast growing #StartUps like Nosana, where many team members are new and being onboarded remotely.

To begin we surveyed the team to understand their expectations of such an event, many of them expressed interest in:

"Getting to know the person behind the screen"

There was a tangible longing to form more meaningful relationships and build rapport amongst the the team.

With clear aims for the event formed from the survey responses gathered, I went ahead and designed an agenda full of opportunities to connect, bond and simply "hang out" at different points over the almost 4 days in Cantabria where the team were together.

Simple yet effective tactics like organising car sharing amongst the groups for arrival and departures, encouraging social time together for walks, mealtimes, board games and card games. Furthermore pairing up the group for chores around the shared villa, along with the earlier tactics all contributed to a successful event where all participants reported feeling more connected with their team members.

*Note: I will be publish an edition on Offsite tactics and tips soon, so stay tuned.

3. Use the Offsite momentum to build sustainable change

Capturing that positive team rapport and taking it back to the online environment is key. I approached this in two ways, ensuring post-offsite feedback was collated and within a week of our return to our virtual desks and workplaces - I gathered the whole team again during a workshop to reflect on the benefits of the time together and encourage owners for our new strategies to foster team connection on an on-going basis.

Which included, the following Team Engagement strategies:

• new more frequent check-in messages on Slack in our new #CoffeeMachine social channel
• creating a regular social coffee chat for all the team, rotating the host
• establish a Lunch n'Learn program to encourage knowledge sharing via the various team members and functions
• bolster team morale and shoutouts via a dedicated #Appreciation channel, also on Slack

Furthermore, as I want to illustrate we can always look to refine and improve, I issued a post-offsite survey to compare before and after participants responses and gain valuable insights for the next event, which we are now in the planning stage for and endeavouring to show that progression and learnings during the next event.

4. Documentation (design, describe and demonstrate)

As a Head of Remote I leverage writing, documentation and the approach of building and communicating a blueprint for day-to-day operations. So within days of starting, I began to design the Notion Team Operations Handbook.

Finding a rhythm in writing, documenting, designing, recording, templating and demonstrating not only improves overall team operations for all departments but more tactical day-to-day activities like structuring better agenda templates (see the final point below), has begun to slowly shift the team behaviour from reactive to proactive.

It may sound mundane, but following and completing a simple Agenda Template for a meeting will advise clearly the aims, attendees, roles and proposed structure for said meeting. Organising everyone's approach and making for a more effective meeting time.

To build a habit (and eventual) culture of better documentation and approach to process, a good place to start is with many remote workers and teams find as a pain point, too many meetings. Reducing this pain point using the tactic below, encouraged the team to see the benefits and quick win of simply insisting and advocating for structure BEFORE agreeing to a unclear meeting request.

5. No Agenda, No Attenda

?? An early and quick win during my time in my new role, was realising that group meetings were been requested without clear Agendas, reasoning or any structure.

During the offsite and throughout my initial weeks in the role, I encouraged everyone to adopt the rule:

"No Agenda, No Attenda"

Using a Notion template we ensured larger meetings only went ahead with this mandatory pre-requisite. Reducing meeting requests and improving all meetings operationally.

???? A win for all.

__________________________________________________________________________

Three plus months into the role with Nosana, my time and experience has been a clear reminder of the important of building personal and human-centric connections in remote and hybrid teams.

Getting to know the human behind the screen, whether via more intentional virtual based connection strategies or/and in-person meet-up opportunities is vital and so important for the health of remote teams.

I am looking forward to keeping the momentum up, with people's needs and team engagement at the core of my work.

For other Heads of Remote (or similar) to follow and learn from: Eva Spexard , Chase Warrington , Annie Dean , Meaghan Williams and Tony Jamous .

Thanks for reading,

?? Ro

More about Nosana: It is a platform that provides AI users with affordable GPUs and GPU owners with an income. GPU owners can rent their GPUs to AI users, who in turn can access powerful hardware and train and use their models faster. Nosana also provides users with a powerful suite of tools to help them get the most out of their GPU resources. With easy-to-use APIs and flexible pricing options, Nosana makes it easier than ever to access the power of AI.

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