People by their nature and their environment are scattered.
Physically, we are scattered across the continents. Culturally, socially, intellectually and philosophically we have many differences. Our knowledge, experience, dreams, and goals are scattered too. For good or bad, we are all VERY different from one another.
The Zesteam is no exception to this rule. Our team includes members from 5 different timezones and multiple generations. The good in this is that we bring together a grand mix of ideas and points of view. But, as you might expect, the bad is that we don’t always agree on everything. I’m okay with that. I tell the team, “it is okay to disagree, even to passionately disagree as long as we have understanding.”
We must understand each other’s points of view. That is how we will reap the most benefit from our differences.
So how do we do it?
First, we defined the organizational culture with the existing core team and said (as a team) that whoever embraces this culture is eligible to join us. We are Sunrisers. I described exactly what that means in a post last year, Harnessing company culture to achieve stellar growth. Defining our organizational culture also helped each of us to define, distill and identify who we are as professionals, providing us with a guide for the professional choices we make.
Second, we realized that even as professionals, we are still first individuals. We don’t check our human strengths and weaknesses at the office door. People are sometimes happy and sometimes upset. As a team, we must be aware of our teammates as individual human beings.
For instance, Idan Yalovich (my co-founder and CTO) and I share an office in the WeWork space in Tel Aviv. If I arrive at work in the morning exhausted, Idan knows what set of music to play (right after the high-five and the hug he gives me each morning.) “I see you need a lot of sugar in your coffee today,” is a sentence that reflects everything.
But, as I mentioned before, the rest of our team is spread around the world. So, how to high-five someone who is sitting in their own workspace, alone every day all day?
Stay connected IRL and virtually
We encourage everyone, including ourselves, to work in different Wework spaces or to get out and see people throughout their week. A question I sometimes ask Karolis at our weekly kickoff meetings is “How many people have you seen this week?”
Now, we don’t always succeed in getting everyone to go out and about. But I’m planning to use this article to keep myself accountable. I will continue to remind myself and the Zesteam to look outside their workspace and see who they can meet.
To stay connected across the miles, we defined every Thursday as a Zoom day. Our entire team shares a Zoom channel where we work with our webcams on. We can see each other, talk, argue, push ideas and projects and just share a smile.
Making time for one on one communications
The Zesteam is small and all of us wear many hats. Due to this fact, we often need to call on one another for help. We make a superhuman effort to ensure that everyone is communicating their needs clearly. Every Sunday Idan and I do a long kickoff meeting (about two hours). During this face-to-face hang out, we set the scene for the rest of the week/month/quarter.
Then, every Monday I meet one-on-one (via Zoom) with each Zesteam member and we go over an agenda that they prepared in advance. This process helps me to see that we are all squeezing the right lemons into the right buckets. By checking in each week, we make sure that we understand our goals and our plans are aligned. Plus, it gives us a great opportunity to connect professionally and discuss those ‘human being’ issues that might be on our minds.
Idan also meets with everyone on Mondays, but his meetings are much shorter than mine. (I am a man of many words.) And, individual team members meet with each other for short half-hour meetings at the beginning of each week as well.
All-hands check-in and communications check
Getting everyone on a remote team together can be a challenge, especially when there are multiple time zones involved. But we make it happen. At the beginning of each month, we all meet for an online conversation. One team member is assigned as the moderator and sets the agenda for this call. The moderator also assumes the important duty of telling me my time is up when I talk too much. We even built a template to use for this gathering, maybe later I’ll share it with you.
Currently, our monthly call has become a weekly one as we prepare for our biggest product launch yet for Zest Enlight (see more info at the bottom of this post). During crucial times for our organization, maintaining active communications is even more important.
In the moment communications
With our lean structure, not everything we do at Zest can be scheduled around weekly or monthly meetings. Sometimes we have to move faster. So, in addition to scheduled conversations, we also conduct flash meetings whenever a project manager believes that a task is falling behind and requires the teams’ focused attention.
When this happens, the project manager sets up a quick video meeting of all those involved. These conferences can take up to two hours but are intended to get the project up to speed and prepare the team for a sprint to the finish.
One of the other ways we manage an all-hands task is with a Slackstorm. This is a brainstorming session conducted via — you guessed it — Slack. Team members usually get a day’s notice when a Slackstorm is coming and the person who calls it sets the agenda. These Slackstorms are multi-participant discussions that revolve around a creative and/or niche subject-matter, such as our recent Slackstorm to refine the Zest Enlight LP.
Keeping track of our projects
To help our project managers create a unified plan for each project that is professional, polished and thought-provoking, Katarina has built a really simple and clear project brief template. Project managers are responsible for filling out the relevant portions of this brief before they call on team members to do their part. That way, each of us can look to this central, standardized document to find the who, what, and why of a project. The template includes assigned tasks, KPIs and timelines to help us all stay on track.
Not everybody was a fan of the briefing process when we first introduced it to them. From the project manager’s perspective, writing everything out in advance can seem like it is slowing the project down. But investing this extra time is worth it. It forces the project manager to evaluate the entire project, distilling each step and identifying any bottlenecks or extraordinary needs.
This is a copy of the template. You’ll see that it uses some Zesty jargon such as Lemons and Tangors (Project leads and team members). Text in purple represents examples of language we might use for a specific project.
My advice to you is that you use this template as an inspiration while you build one of your own.
Making sure your remote team culture doesn’t get lost in the hustle
My last bit of advice about effectively working with a remote team is probably the most important: You have to actively work to make it happen. This means assigning someone to maintain and monitor your remote culture. Making sure meetings are scheduled, documents are shared and everyone’s questions or problems are addressed doesn’t happen on its own. For Zest, we owe the success of our systems to the amazing Katarina. In addition to creating our wonderful project brief template, she keeps our meetings running smoothly and our teams in the loop.
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I mentioned Zest Enlight as one of the reasons our remote team has been seeing more of each other lately. It really is a big deal for all of us here at Zest.
Here’s more about what it is and how it’s going to shake up the EdTech world.
Zest Enlight is the mobile and pro version of Zest with deeper tech and premium features.
Its technology unifies Zest’s community curation with a sophisticated AI matching system to deliver the knowledge-building content you need.
It’s like a super-cool AI teacher who knows you well and works with you to build a micro-learning path that will blow your talent sky high without wasting your time with content you don’t need to consume.
Soon, we’ll launch Zest Enlight in a closed beta and the beta helpers who join the closed beta will receive Zest Enlight free forever.
There are several hundred beta helpers already registered and the registration will close once we get between 2K-3K users.
Yes, it’s the biggest thing we’ve ever done.
Zest Enlight and this closed beta isn’t just for marketers, either. Professionals from the ed tech, product development, and HR industries are welcome, too.
Feel free to comment here or email me at yam@zest.is if you want me to add you to the yellow list of Beta Helpers.
🧠💡
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To the lemons and beyond ❤
