Business Management Remote Work

Work Together Anywhere: A Handbook on Working Remotely—Successfully—for Individuals, Teams, and Managers (Summary)

by Lisette Sutherland

Imagine every interaction with your remote colleagues either charges or drains a 'trust battery.' A clear, on-time deliverable charges it up. A vague email or a missed deadline drains it. In a remote world, you can't rely on body language or casual check-ins to build confidence; you have to consciously manage this battery, because once it hits zero, collaboration dies.

Ditch Assumptions, Create a Team Agreement

The unspoken rules of the physical office don't exist online. Successful remote teams explicitly define their 'rules of engagement' in a shared document, covering everything from preferred communication channels to expected response times.

A team agreement might state: 'For urgent issues, use a direct message on Slack and tag the person. For non-urgent questions, post in the public #questions channel and expect a response within 12 hours. Email is for external communication only.' This eliminates guesswork and frustration.

Your Team Runs on a 'Trust Battery'

Trust is a resource that must be actively managed. In a remote setting, where you lack physical cues, every interaction either charges or drains the team's collective trust. Reliability and clear communication are the primary ways to keep it charged.

A developer consistently documents their progress on a project management tool like Jira and flags potential blockers early. This charges the trust battery for the whole team. In contrast, a colleague who goes silent for days on a task drains the battery, forcing others to waste time wondering about their progress.

Make Your Work Visible, Not Just Done

In a remote environment, 'out of sight, out of mind' is a real danger. Teams must adopt a 'work out loud' philosophy, making progress and processes visible to everyone, which fosters collaboration and reduces the need for constant status meetings.

Instead of privately working on a sales presentation, a team member shares a link to the Google Slides deck in a public channel, saying, 'Here's the first draft of the Q3 deck. Feedback on slides 4-7 would be especially helpful!' This makes the work visible and invites collaboration organically.

Engineer Serendipity and Social Connection

The casual 'water cooler' conversations that build relationships in an office don't happen by accident online. Remote teams must be intentional about creating virtual spaces for non-work-related social interaction to build rapport.

A team schedules a weekly 15-minute 'virtual coffee' with a strict 'no work talk' rule. They might also use a Slack plugin like Donut that randomly pairs team members for a brief, informal chat, recreating the serendipitous social encounters of an office.

Go deeper into these insights in the full book:
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