The way we work is being redefined on the fly, as this year has pulled almost everybody out of their usual office and made us embrace a remote state of mind. From how to be productive within your home to how to communicate with new colleagues from all over the world, the challenges have been similar to anybody working in front of a laptop.
Wishful to learn more about how successful teams are built across the globe, the Techsylvania team organized Digital Roundtable #2 last month, where renowned professionals joined this mission of shaping the future with their insights on remote teams. Peter Yared, Founder & CEO of InCountry and Rob Bailey, Founder & CEO of BackboneAI, moderated by our Techsylvania representative — Philipp Kandal, discussed the in-depths of building such teams, going through the unique challenges, as well as the understanding the company culture.
What are the best practices used to overcome a lack of trust and cohesion within remote teams?
Both Peter and Rob are strong believers in the humane relationship above tools, and consider that one of the most important aspects in binding a team is to actually spend quality time with them and listen to their ways of working and functioning.
Also, there are different approaches to scaling a team, considering the stage of the project each one is facing. Whether at the beginning of a project, it’s more important to spend time on onboarding, as it is more advanced, the time and efforts become directly proportional.
“I would say to clearly define culture, part-time consulting is a great way to assess whether there’s a mutual fit and building great relationships within our team, a factor that leads up to building trust. For example, we start every call with an off-topic discussion to put on the table our latest concerns or interests. The call is usually more productive if we spend at least 5 minutes of it by checking in personally. — overall, we try to focus on unifiers that are positive.” said Rob.
How do you make sure you deliver the same quality, no matter the team location and cultural differences?
There is a bias within this hypothesis, because quality is defined by culture, and at the same time, the quality bar defers from culture to culture in deliverance, also. For this aspect to be a success within a company, there must be set the same barometer for everybody, by defining clear terms and goals.
“The quality bar differentiates a lot from culture to culture.” so making sure there’s a shared understanding of what done and quality is should be a process itself.
How can you differentiate from competitors when hiring?
There are many aspects that can attract new people in a company, and as people’s personalities are so different, so are the companies’. Coming from two different environments, our guests had two different points of view in responding to this question: while Peter put his stakes on the company’s reputation and admitted that working in a Silicon Valley enterprise is appealing to people, Rob went in another direction and revealed that he considers important the impact you can have through your work and that he tries to instil this feeling to his potential candidates.
Moving on to a more relaxed note, Philipp was curious how we can ultimately have fun while embracing this remote style, and while we expected a more traditional answer, Rob actually started an interesting hypothesis: “I think it’s possible to laugh a lot and love the people you work with and still get a huge amount of stuff done — I think these aspects are actually complementary, because conversely if you hate the people you work with, you hate the company, you won’t get much stuff done.”
Have you ever thought of fun as starting with clear goals and having an open environment, where everybody can voice their opinions? You might as well try it, and the fun will come along the way.
We’ll leave you on an even funnier note — who would have thought that Romania’s appeal to international entrepreneurs is actually made of a mixture between UiPath and food?
If you’re curious about the entire conversation on remote teams, the full session can be found here 👇
