4 Rules for Remote Team Collaboration

Collaboration is hard enough in person. Trying to do it remotely can be a real challenge. There are many wildly successful remotes teams, and they follow these rules:

1. Talk on the phone or video constantly

The #1 factor for success in my remote teams was our willingness to just call. If we had a quick question, we’d just call. This got a quick answer and let us go back to what we were doing. To be sure, you can use Slack to virtually “tap someone on the shoulder” and ask if it is a good time to talk.

2. Capture anything important in writing

The biggest risk in remote teams is important information getting lost in the shuffle and not properly digested. To that end, be sure to recap anything important in writing. My team uses Weekly Update to share status updates each week.

3. Have a regular cadence of more formal meetings

Having the predicability of a team meeting every Monday at 2pm PST is important to give remote teams a defined opportunity to collaborate all together.

4. Get together in person

While a lot of productive work can be done remotely, it’s still important to spend time together to bond in person. Customer visits, conferences or team off-sites are great opportunities to do this.

Ultimately, these 4 tips come down to one critical factor in making a remote team successful: communication. If you can get communication right, you have a solid shot of building a successful remote team. For further reading, TimeDoctor goes into depth on remote team communication best practices.