Distributed ≠ Disconnected
Taken from Wikipedia

Distributed ≠ Disconnected

It's hard to tell what came first, the egg or the chicken. In the modern business world, did technology create distributed teams, or did distributed teams create the need for technology?

I recently had the pleasure of being part of a debate team at the PMI Conference on teams, and the argument that they had to be collocated to be effective. My position was that in many organisations and teams, you're better off accepting that you have distributed teams and finding ways to evolve your practices to that fact. Part of this requires accepting that your old way of working, not not scale.

I work in a highly distributed and diverse team, so I've been practicing this first hand. Here's some things I've learnt.

1: Psychological safety beats physical proximity everyday.

The specific team I'm working with right now, is a fascinating one. Of the 8 team members, we report to 7 different bosses. And our 'normal' place of work has us spread across 5 locations. Recipe for disaster right? Actually no. We invested early on in being in the same place or same timezone, and spent that time building a lasting relationship. Wherever possible, we broke bread together. I know Sarah has kids, Kellie loves interior decoration, Bernie and his Dad connect over sports, and Emily has a passion for Physical Therapy. Taking a genuine interest in each other, has brought us closer together, despite us being really far apart. It's a foundational element of our team dynamic.

QUESTION: What are your rituals for building trust early on in a team?

2: Seek first to understand. Empathy is hard.

We were planning an offsite recently, which was gong to be a great chance for us to reflect on the year gone, and plan for the year ahead. We booked a week together in Sydney to spike our activity, and it was going to be our first time all together for over a year. Then I opened my ears and listened. The compromises that various people we're going to have to make to get to Sydney, just wasn't going to work. The potential negative impact on family or personal life, couldn't be netted off against an increase in velocity for our work. So we went with Plan B. The need for meeting didn't go away, so we'd have to change how we did it. I could have insisted. People could have kept quiet and gone along with it. Speaking up was brave. Listening was hard. Planning around the constraint was a nightmare!

QUESTION: How do you listen out for signals from your team?

3: Practices first. Make it work.

We set ourselves a very clear target of "we WILL make this work". We knew we'd have little failures along the way, but we had a clear objective.

The very first challenge that we took on, was our practices. Between us, we'd run or been part of hundreds of offsites or spikes, so it would have been easy to go to the treasure chest of "this worked last time" and copy, cut and paste. But the environment was different, so we had to adopt our practices.

Some things that we tried that worked well:

  • We all connected live in the Aussie morning and US afternoon. We had 2 solid hours together, and that was our sparring time. High intensity and vocal discussion.
  • The rest of our days (while half the team was asleep) was deep work, where we completed our tasks, research, actions etc.
  • We used Confluence to share documents in advance. The principle we worked off, was that everyone consumed information in their own time, and commented/edited where applicable, and we used our time together for valuable debate and discussion. There was no room for updates or status. That could be read before.
  • Everyone dialled in. If one person is remote, you're all remote. The early Australia start and keepings things equitable, meant we all dialled in. It meant no one party dominated the conversation, and we didn't have 80% of the chat happening live in a room whilst everyone on the video played Candy Crush.

QUESTION: What practices are default to your style, that might be optimised for co-located teams, and not distributed teams?

4: Tools are an enabler, not the solution.

A fool with a tool, is still a fool. So once you've got your people and practices right, that is the time to look at tooling to compliment the environment you're in. Obviously in Atlassian, we use Atlassian tools, but you can use whatever works for you.

We used Trello for a great live discussion on Roles and Responsibilities, where we could all contribute at once. And our equivalent of a whiteboard for the week, was Confluence Collaborative Editing.

It was great to have a "3, 2, 1...go" and see everyone live in the same document, adding content and evolving a product in synchrony.

No emailing version 14.4_Final_Dom_DRAFT word documents, and no multiple versions of the truth. Just all team members seeing the same information at the same time, and mixing rich conversation with rich content.

QUESTION: What is your "go to" tool for connecting with your distributed team mates?

NB: We ran several plays from the Atlassian Team Playbook as part of our offsite, and a Health Monitor on the team. Both provided great context and focus for us to invest in the most impactful areas.

https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook

Chandra Sekhar AKNR

Executive Director | Fellow at SSBM | Engaged @DBS, Enlightened @IIMB, @IIML, Enriched @IIITB, Evolved @Bangalore University and Empowered @Self

7 年

Time has come for us to be ready for distributed workforce culture. Let us prepare for tomorrow, where people/machines can work on another planet or outer space. We cannot confine ourselves to this planet any longer.

Mui Yen Thoo

Customer Experience Professional | Customer Success Manager | HIIT enthusiast and Trekkie

7 年

I find that being generous builds trust - I help solve other people's problems and strengthen relationships from there. With co-located teams, I organise coffee sessions and we talk about work and non-work stuff. This is hard with distributed teams, and so I try to encourage interactions via our collaboration applications. And whenever possible, video-enabled meetings.

Quite right Gerard. Whilst this scenario had 3 time zones, 2 were very close, so it was manageable. In my experience, once you have 3 distinct time zones, you have to inconvenience one of them. To keep it fair, I've rotated the inconvenience around and kept the meetings as succinct as possible.

Sebastian Carroll

Technology VP@Goldman Sachs

7 年

Another brilliantly insightful piece, thanks!

Thanks Dom, some very practical questions and tips. Having also worked with distributed teams to varying degrees of success, one major hurdle is the time zone challenge. While not insurmountable, the more different time zones you put in the mix, the harder it becomes to move forward at pace. That still leaves lots of options for a distributed team but is something to keep in mind.

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Dominic Price的更多文章

  • Season 1 is a wrap....nearly. And $5000 to charity!

    Season 1 is a wrap....nearly. And $5000 to charity!

    So let's take a trip back in time to January 2024. I'm attending an offsite with my colleagues Mark Cruth and Sven…

    2 条评论
  • 2024; dangerous sources of jargon monoxide

    2024; dangerous sources of jargon monoxide

    “who are the most powerful people in your company?” Think about it. Think a bit more.

    13 条评论
  • Silos are NOT bad

    Silos are NOT bad

    They just aren't. Yeah, they've got a bad name.

    11 条评论
  • Teamwork beats expectations 6-5 on penalties

    Teamwork beats expectations 6-5 on penalties

    I've often said we have the opportunity to learn from virtually every experience that life throws at us, and this…

    12 条评论
  • Teamwork Agility With Twins

    Teamwork Agility With Twins

    I've been passionate about Highly Effective Teams, and the Science of Teams for years. I've had the pleasure of…

    36 条评论
  • Work mimics politics and Monty Python

    Work mimics politics and Monty Python

    You know political season wherever you are in the world. The campaign trail starts and we all have a glimmer of hope…

    24 条评论
  • 5 lessons, 24hrs, 4 flights, 6 weeks, 2 twins, and 1 great policy

    5 lessons, 24hrs, 4 flights, 6 weeks, 2 twins, and 1 great policy

    Let's start with the policy Atlassian gives it's staff 20 weeks paternity leave to take in the first year after the…

    38 条评论
  • The accountant that can't count to 4

    The accountant that can't count to 4

    Our bambino's, the wonderful twin boys that we welcomed into the world in August 2022, are now 7 months old. As…

    53 条评论
  • 5 simple steps to PRODUCTIVITY in MEETINGS (not)

    5 simple steps to PRODUCTIVITY in MEETINGS (not)

    Let's be honest, it's not a 202x's article if it's not five things! Am I right? 1: Identify the offending meeting It's…

    17 条评论
  • We're blindingly following the wrong teams...I think

    We're blindingly following the wrong teams...I think

    You know the setting. You're in that slightly uncomfortable conference chair, you don't want to be seen playing on your…

    56 条评论

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了