5 Mistakes To Avoid When Managing Remote Teams

Manage a remote team through agreements, not through presence: agree when updates are due and how fast each channel gets an answer, and daily check-ins become unnecessary. Below are five mistakes to avoid, with the tools and habits we use at Kipwise.

1. Not checking in enough is bad, but micromanaging is bad too

Many founders and managers fall on one extreme or the other. If you don’t check in enough, a teammate who is stuck may spend far more time finding a solution alone than the quick answer you could have given. But constant progress requests, or a daily call just to hear how everyone’s day is going, are counterproductive too.

Instead, use a system where teammates give progress updates on their own schedule: you get the updates you want, and they keep their momentum. A project management tool like Trello or Asana helps everyone collaborate, and a status update tool like Steady (formerly Status Hero) lets workers tell you how they are progressing and whether they have hit a roadblock.

We recommend agreeing two things in writing: when updates are due, and how fast each channel gets an answer, for example Slack by the end of the day and a phone call when something is urgent. Then silence tells you something: an update on time means things are fine, and a missed one is the cue to ask. Hold up your side too and answer a blocker the same day. If updates go unanswered, people stop writing them, and you are back to asking for status.

These text updates can’t replace face-to-face video calls. But with them, video calls don’t have to happen every day, and the calls you do hold can go to real discussion instead of reporting what has been done.

2. Not enough cross-team communication

A healthy team feels connected and works together toward goals, but remote teams often feel like the parts of a machine that has been taken apart and scattered. Promote cross-team communication: teammates should keep updating one another on what they are working on, how it is progressing and how they can support each other.

Hold regular all-team or cross-team update meetings. At Kipwise, we hold a Monday “all hands” meeting where the full team discusses each team’s main goals and deliverables for the week. During the week, each team has its own daily standup (engineers have theirs, and marketing and sales have theirs). On Friday, we hold an “all hands” demo where the full team shows what it accomplished that week.

Besides meetings, use a team chat tool like Slack so teammates can talk outside scheduled meetings about all sorts of topics. That helps a remote team build the connection on-site teams enjoy.

3. Not building an easy-to-search internal knowledge base

Does your company have an internal knowledge base? Those who aren’t used to working with remote teams may not see its value: on-site workers can just ask each other, but remote workers can be located in all different time zones.

If your company fails to organize essential knowledge into an easy-to-search company knowledge base, your remote workers may need to wait a long time to reach one another in order to find the answers they need. That impedes work progress.

Make it a habit to document team knowledge in an organized fashion. We might be biased, but Kipwise is a great solution because it's integrated with the tools that you use every day, easy to use, and it will help your remote team improve their knowledge and knowledge sharing.

4. Relying on text communication too much: the 5-min rule

Instant chat is good for quick updates, but a phone call or a video call is often still better for discussing complex issues. We have a rule at Kipwise: if you find yourself typing on Slack for more than 5 minutes on the same issue, jump on a call instead! Voice and video also help create connections in a remote team, because emotion and expression come through much better than in text.

A call leaves no record, so end it by posting the decision and next steps in the original thread. Two lines are enough: what was decided, and who does what next. Teammates who weren’t on the call, and you next month, can’t search a conversation.

We have tried Zoom.us and Whereby (formerly Appear.in) for video calls at Kipwise. Zoom tends to be more stable and provides dial-in options, but unless you pay for a subscription, group calls are limited to 40 minutes. You can always start another call, but it interrupts the discussion.

5. A lack of camaraderie

Giving your employees the chance to get to know one another beyond the workplace helps remote workers relate to one another and improves the work experience for them as a whole.

On-site workers bump into each other and can easily grab lunch or coffee together. For remote workers, you need to recreate those opportunities so that they too can enjoy coworkers who are also friends. Donut and similar tools encourage casual chats, and a physical meeting every once in a while, at headquarters or on a company retreat, is also a great idea.

We recommend holding social time during working hours and making it optional. Events outside working hours exclude teammates in other time zones and teammates with other commitments, and a meeting that only part of the team can attend leaves the rest out.

An internal team look book also encourages friendship among remote workers. It is a place where teammates share fun facts, a personal bio and other information that helps them get to know one another. It gives remote workers something to start a conversation with when they have free time, and gradually helps them become closer and more connected, which reinforces the team dynamic.