project management

Who would’ve thought the transition to remote work would carry over the nuisance of daily meetings? Well, thanks to VoIP and video conferencing tools, our love-hate relationship with daily (weekly, monthly…) scrums continue. Luckily, quick sync-up meetings are here to save the day. In a now-famous email to Tesla employees, Elon Musk shared his formula for effective meetings. According to Musk, they should be small, short, and scarce. Teams should…

Terry Crews doesn’t check his email before hitting the gym, but it’s a safe bet that everyone else does. Over the course of almost 50 years (!), email has become a staple in our professional lives. Now that the modern workplace pivots to remote, it’s about time we challenged the status quo: Does @mailto belong in remote workflows? 🤔 If you’re like most knowledge workers, chances are you have a…

Written communication is going through a renaissance of sorts. With the rise of remote work, the ability to express thoughts in a clear and organized manner is in high demand. But while asynchronous communication these days is mostly about chat, emails and texts, there’s another writing skill you should master — how to write a memo. Memos (memorandums for short) aren’t only a domain of high-profile CEOs. They’re a great,…

Remember the 1992 Glengarry Glen Ross scene where Alec Baldwin’s character schools the sales team on the principles of Always Be Closing (ABC)? That’s some A-level mentoring right there. Wouldn’t it be cool if fully distributed teams could get a *similar* learning experience through remote mentoring sessions? 🤝 What’s Remote Mentoring? 📘 Mentoring: employee training system under which a senior or more experienced individual (the mentor) is assigned to act…

Have you come here looking for knowledge? 🧠 That’s perfect timing as we’re just about to take a closer look at another interesting system for collecting and organizing information. A brainchild of German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, the Zettelkasten method can make you (and your team) smarter, more productive, and effective at work. While the Zettelkasten was originally created to support Luhmann’s scientific research, we decided to look at it from…

As more companies are extending their remote work policies, we thought it might be a good time to revisit the concept of work from home (WFH) and see where it stands today.  While the growing popularity of flexible, off-site work arrangements is a positive thing (even if it’s by necessity), the concept of a fully remote workplace is still intimidating to many. If you’re new to remote work or just…

Workplace camaraderie among distributed teams… An urban legend? A mythical creature? Building a culture of companionship and solidarity is a dream come true for leaders in distributed organizations. In this article, we set out on a quest to answer these questions. You’ll learn how workplace camaraderie can make employees happier, more engaged and satisfied with their work. You’ll also see what happens when companionship wanes or, worse still, never develops. …

Postpone and wait or adapt and move forward? Companies and organizations across the globe have been facing some hard decisions in the last few weeks. COVID-19 took the world by storm, and only a few, including Y Combinator, were prepared to ride the wave of crisis.  Thanks to preparedness and willingness to embrace remote work tools, some businesses were able to quickly move from:  👉 Office work to telecommuting👉 In-person…

The game is on. Businesses around the world are joining the “remote culture” to embrace the benefits of distributed teams. According to estimates, as much as 50% of the global workforce may go fully remote by 2020. 🙊 Not so long ago, we published the article “Reverse-Engineering Productivity for Remote Teams. Do More With Less” that detailed how already established remote teams can overcome common productivity problems (be sure to…