Apparently, ProofHQ isn’t the only successful British startup with a remote team across the pond. Ryan Carson, the founder of Treehouse, recently took to his blog to explain how he manages his widely dispersed team of 40 from his home in the UK. Read more »
Recently the Wall Street Journal reported a trend towards larger startups sticking with coworking as they grow, but experts warned there could be downsides, including other companies poaching your talent or ideas. But not everyone it seems to see eye to eye with these experts. Read more »
As a manager you may be willing to hire the best talent no matter where they’re located, but how do you go about determining if a candidate is excellent not only at their job but also at working remotely? There are questions that can help. Read more »
The five partners in charge of Flip Flop Shops run their expanding franchise out of home offices spread across North America. How does this entirely remote team keep the business on track while maintaining a flip-flop friendly lifestyle? President Brian Curin fills us in. Read more »
In a connected workplace, the conference call is a necessary tool, albeit one that is often used in unnecessary ways. Here are a few tips to help you make them more efficient, more collaborative, and actually productive. Read more »
Managers of remote teams have plenty to worry about. On top of the deadlines, interpersonal conflicts, competing priorities, and keeping everyone connected and collaborating, Wharton management professor Nancy Rothbard is adding another item to their list of potential stresses: mirror neurons. Read more »
It’s one thing to work in a team with one or two off-site members. But what about entirely dispersed teams, where none of the members are located in the same office? Team leaders need to consider the interplay of three crucial factors: frequency, transparency, and variability. Read more »
It makes sense to focus on project briefs and core competencies — after all, these are what gets the job done. But what gets the job done well? Often, it’s team members’ non-core skills and experience that make the collaboration a real success. Read more »
Web content curation is nothing new. What is new, however, is that there are a growing number of tools that allow you to do your own curation for your own purposes. How can curation help keep your remote team on the same page? Read more »
Transparency is something we want from our collaborators, know has value, but often lag about providing ourselves. While studies show transparency nearly always results in better outcomes, people often withhold information because they feel it would take too much time or are uncomfortable sharing it. Read more »
While there’s no single way to kick off a group in a collaborative process, the available research says you should start small with a specific, achievable goal, rather than trying to implement a full technology platform at the same time as you’re organizing the project. Read more »
Talking to a friend of mine settling into a new role, I was reminded of he potential problems faced by new remote workers that can be disastrous for the whole experience if not handled early. Here are sensitive areas to watch with your own remote staff. Read more »
Coworking is a great way for freelancers to work in an office setting without having to sign up for office life, but it can also be a useful for remote teams. Some companies are now supporting remote staff with a coworking stipend. Here’s why. Read more »
Using a team isn’t just a way to get things done faster, it’s also a way to do things better. Gone are the days when innovation was handled by management. Smart businesses know that idea generation happens on the ground. But that innovation takes time. Read more »
Working with teams whose members are spread across offices (or even continents) can make it extremely difficult to gauge and manage project momentum. Momentum isn’t motivation — it’s a separate factor. In fact, it’s often momentum that comes into play when team motivation might be flagging. Read more »
As we rely more heavily on a plethora of communications services, the once-practical paper trail is under threat. It’s getting harder for many of us to keep track of conversations. How can teams improve communication trackability, and make the most of the tools they have available? Read more »
Most remote teams rely on several solutions to fulfill their collaboration needs: email, project management, database management and meetings, to name a few. HyperOffice offers distributed teams the benefit of all essential business tools in a single collaboration suite, as well as providing mobile capabilities. Read more »
All collaborative groups experience conflict. Dealing with that conflict is difficult enough in teams working face-to-face, but remote teams experience additional challenges, such as communicating primarily over email and working in different time zones. What can we do to minimize sources of conflict? Read more »
What remote teams actually experience is known as “swift trust”, which happens when you don’t have the time or means to build trust through multiple interactions. While this type of trust cultivates easily, it’s also very fragile. How can you establish trust using communication tools? Read more »
In interviewing members of distributed teams for Wide Teams, I’ve found that the teams that thrive are composed of individuals who go above and beyond merely “‘doing their job,” and take the initiative to put on different hats as needed. Read more »
