The habits of effective remote teams

Metadata

• Author: PostHog
• Category: email
• URL: mailto:reader-forwarded-email/1c3a1c8d6e553790a7809f3edb62d8f3

Highlights

Remote work doesn’t work without a strong writing culture.

If a decision is made on a call and nobody writes it down, was a decision even made?

Writing is thinking, so it helps you think through both what you’re trying to achieve and how you want to communicate it, making everyone more intentional.

But the manager’s schedule is the enemy of remote work. Successful remote teams avoid it entirely, which makes them incredibly good at getting shit done.

We optimize for productivity, not presence.

The biggest (and stupidest) argument against remote work? It makes people less productive. This is demonstrably untrue.

So, if productivity isn’t the problem, what is it? It’s trust. If you trust people to do their very best work, and create a culture that values transparency, they’ll deliver.

We trust people to do their best work and, in return, they deliver.

Simply put, when something goes wrong, the investigation of the root cause is, as the company puts it, blameless. This encourages everyone to speak up without fear of punishment. People are trusted to make mistakes and, as a result, problems that do arise are easier to solve.

Successful remote companies build everything out in the open. This gives everyone the context they need, and eliminates the political squabbles that plague less transparent companies.

As Buffer co-founder and CEO Joel Gascoigne wrote almost a decade ago, “transparency breeds trust, and trust is is the foundation of great teamwork.” It’s still true today.