Introduction

On this page, we’re detailing what it takes to effectively and efficiently manage ina distributed organization. The pillars of managing a distributed org are similar to managing at any organization, but there are certain areas where leaders with remote should pay particular attention.

How do you manage a distributed team?

“How do you manage when everyone is remote?” is a common question for those leading or managing within an distributed company.

In truth, managing at a distributed company is much like managing any other company. It comes down to trust, communication, and company-wide support of shared goals, all of which aid in avoiding dysfunction.

Remote forces you to do the things you should be doing way earlier and better. It forces discipline that sustains culture and efficiency at scale, particularly in areas which are easily deprioritized in small colocated companies.

It’s important to not assume that team members understand good remote work practices. Roivant IT managers are expected to coach their reports to utilize asynchronous communication, be handbook-first, design an optimal workspace, and understand the importance of self-learning/self-service.

Leaders should ensure that new remote hires read a getting started guide, and make themselves available to answer questions throughout one’s journey with the company.

Tomasz Tunguz describes it as such in an article entitled “The early discipline of remote startups.”

As company scale, they need to develop infrastructure to successfully manage and coordinate large numbers of people. But in the early days, by virtue of being close to each other physically, it’s easier to delay some of these investments.

A quick hallway meeting of a few key stakeholders might be all it takes to commit to a strategic change. A last-minute all hands roused through word-of-mouth may be the prelude to a fundraising announcement.

For a business that exists somewhere on the distributed-to-remote continuum these options don’t exist, or at least they are significantly harder. These kind of communications are just as necessary within remote or distributed teams, but they require more planning, more foresight in order to be successful.

Some very early stage companies are bringing in these disciplines from the outset, because of the demands of remote work. And this is a wonderful thing, because this investment will compound over the life of the business. - Tomasz Tunguz, venture capitalist at Redpoint Ventures

Embracing total transparency

Transparency is a term that is often tossed around as a value within most companies. In distributed environments, it is vital that transparency be more than a buzzword, but something that is embraced and allowed to guide every decision.

This will often feel unnatural and uncomfortable — a sign that your organization truly is living out the value of transparency.

It helps to recognize distributed organizations not as a collection of rigidly structured machines, but as a living, evolving organism. Leaders must trust their colleagues to operate with empathy, kindness, and concern for the well-being of one another, seeing the free flow of information as universally beneficial.

Learn more on how Roivant IT defines and implements transparency in our Handbook.

Handbook, goals, and documentation

Remote work is what led to the adoption and development of this handbook, which captures everything you’d need to know about the IT organization. If you can’t tell, we like efficiency and don’t like having to explain things twice.

FIXME: Statement on goals

Our approach to documentation also helps with onboarding new team members, because everything they need to know is in one place.

FIXME: Statement on onboarding

Docs instead of (physical) whiteboards

We’re often asked, “But how do you whiteboard without everyone physically together?” We use O365 Docs, optionally along with Miro, for collaboration. Every meeting shoudl have a Word Doc agenda, which is used for documenting discussions, decisions, and actions. Everyone in the meeting can add notes at the same time, and we even finish each other’s sentences sometimes.

By brainstorming in text instead of drawings, we’re forced to clearly articulate proposals, designs, and ideas, with less variance in interpretations. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it’s also open to as many interpretations as there are people viewing it.

With O365 Docs, we use indentations to go more in-depth on a given topic. This method retains context for comments, discussions, and ideas, even if someone wasn’t present for the original conversation.

Docs instead of water coolers

Documentation also helps with transparency, which is critical to remote work. While decisions made around office water coolers may be familiar in traditional workplaces, input is limited to those present. Those who are not present feel left out, and you’re missing an opportunity to hear different perspectives.

The Roivant IT way of working strives to be fully inclusive. By documenting everything, no one is left out of the conversation and a diverse set of perspectives can be heard, not only from Roivant IT team members but also from colleagues and associates.

Scaling by documenting

This is one of the harder things to apply on a daily basis. Taking the time to document a solution isn’t very satisfying in the moment, and is easy to deprioritize when other seemingly urgent tasks are vying for your attention.

To relieve tension, empower DRIs to make decisions, and create a more productive future for a team, it’s vital to place a high degree of value on pausing to document. This requires leadership to praise and reward the act of documenting, measuring these contributions as diligently as one would measure sales or conversions.

This applies to all companies, though it can produce outsized gains in distributed organizations where there are fewer opportunities for information to be shared in a physical space.

This also requires humility, and a recognition that human memories aren’t perfect. It’s impossible to predict the future, but documenting a solution as soon as it is discovered guarantees that the answer will be available should it ever be needed later.

Asynchronous

With the shifting business landscape and the effects of COVID-19, Roivant’s hiring pipeline has expanded to the entirety of the US as well as several coutries around the globe, which has created an opportunity to hire people in an array of time zones. The ability to hand projects off across time zones is a competitive advantage, but minimizing disconnects, frustrations, and awkwardly-timed meetings requires an intentional approach.

Active reinforcement

The first step in creating an atmosphere where colleagues are comfortable working asynchronously is to avoid the default mentality as it applies to meetings. By making meetings optional, recording and documenting everything, being diligent to follow an agenda, and leveraging tools like Jira, Miro, O365 and Slack, distributed organizations are less reliant on colleagues being online at the same time.

Leonardo Federico, co-founder at Sametab, offers an interesting perspecitve on asynchronous communication, noting that it provides more optionality.

[Asynchronous] allows you to reorganize the company in a divisional organization more easily and embrace remote working even if you’re colocated. Everything that works in an async fashion can also work sync but not vice-versa.

Benefits for morale, wellbeing, and lowering stress

Asynchronous versus synchronous is traditionally seen as a process choice. What we’ve found at GitLab is that it’s also a cultural element.

Being fully committed to asynchronous communication can improve morale and wellbeing. If you operate with a mindset of having no other colleagues online at the same time, it forces you to encapsulate your work on a project in a way that can be ingested by others at a time convenient to them. This not only improves documentation, but it relieves everyone of the burdens associated with needing to be at work at the same time.

When you approach your work in this manner, it’s less chaotic. The sense of urgency is not on rushing something out, but on the thoroughness and thoughtfulness in documentation. — Darren M., GitLab

There are considerations that go beyond productivity metrics. Companies should ask if demanding synchronous communication is impacting their team’s ability to reason and process challenges in the most efficient and healthy way.

With synchronous communication, the problem is that it creates a fake sense of emergency. It creates a heavy interruptive environment with a lot of context switching. You end up highly stressed all the time.

We don’t realize it because we, as a society, are so used to our stress. We live with it, and we don’t even know what a life without bad stress is. By removing that interruptive effect [with asynchronous communication], that’s how we go into the future.

We cannot sustain, as a humanity, this way of life. We cannot keep up with it. — Emna G., founder and CEO at Veamly

Asynchronous communication alone will not solve challenges associated with distributed and remote work, but it is a useful tool in a wider arsenal of tactics to avoid issues such as burnout, time zone isolation and avoidable blockages.

Limits

As documented in the Communication section of this Handbook, there are limits to asynchronous communication. When we go back and forth three times, we jump on a synchronous video call.

Distributed companies that have colleagues spread out across time zones will encounter scenarios where one has to compromise in order to be online at the same time for critical calls, meetings, or projects. However, there is great freedom in being able to disconnect from work at an appointed time with the understanding that your colleagues will communicate asynchronously rather than pressuring you to be available outside of your work hours.

Time and productivity

When referencing time and productivity, Remote CTO Marcelo Lebre shares a potent thought on asynchronous communication in a relevant blog post.

Async communication shines with great power here, as it shields everyone’s time and focus while reducing meaningless time sinks. When you’re comunicating async, this types of interruptions happen much less. And the total time that you’re able to do deep work is longer, the chance of achieving Flow much higher.

Learn more about Roivant IT’s approach to asynchronous working by viewing our Efficiency and Collaboration values.

Separating decision gathering from decision making

Analysis paralysis is something all companies should seek to avoid. In managing through this at an distributed company, leaders should ensure that all colleagues understand that consensus doesn’t scale.

Thus, there should be no goal to achieve consensus. This may feel awkward or unnatural to those coming from colocated corporate environments, but trusting decision makers and living out the value of iteration prevents unnecessary slowdowns in your organization.

By intentionally separating the process of decision gathering and decision making, you provide ample opportunity for everyone to add input, offering up fresh angles for consideration that may well sway the mind of the DRI (directly responsible individual).

It is vital for distributed companies to foster an atmosphere of trust and learning, such that grudges are not held against decision makers after decision gathering has occurred. At Roivant, this is manifested in our Collaboration value, which includes kindness, sharing, short toes, no ego, and assuming positive intent.

“Not defaulting to a meeting on my part initially felt like a leap while transitioning to an all-remote environment. Using merge requests and issues within GitLab as a tool has fostered a more decisive and efficient way of working, and allows for consensus gathering to happen simultaneous to solution finding and iteration. I have come away feeling so empowered and inspired, having eliminated the massive pressure of finding or presenting a full solution or applying a big bang approach. But rather, starting with and documenting a thought and collaborating from there.” — Beverley R., GitLab People Experience Team Lead

Applying iteration to everything

Iteration is oft applied to engineering, but asking only part of the company to iterate can create discord. All-remote companies must empower every member of the team, across every function and job level, to approach their work with an iterative mindset.

By applying iteration to everything, it removes the barrier of fear and judgement. It also enables faster cycles, and it makes miscues far less damaging.

For example, don’t write a large plan, only write the first step. Trust that you’ll know better how to proceed after something is released. Iteration can be uncomfortable, even painful. If you’re doing iteration correctly, it should be.

Instilling this in an all-remote team is difficult. Most people are naturally inclined to only showcase polished work. In turn, managing this aspect of an all-remote team requires reminders that it’s preferred to share unfinished work.

Leaders should work diligently to ensure that teams have a low level of shame and believe that everything is in draft and subject to change.

Learn more about Roivant IT’s value of iteration in our Handbook.

Avoiding dotted lines and matrix organization

In distributed companies, it is easy to fall into a situation where you work with a day-to-day lead but report to someone else. There are no physical office structures to reinforce reporting structures.

Leaders in an all-remote company must work to avoid dotted lines and matrix organization. Everyone should report to exactly one person, and that person should understand your day-to-day tasks and be well-positioned to assist you in removing obstacles to thriving in your role.

Whenever there is need to work on a specific, high-level, cross functional business problem, a balanced team should be established for that need.

Learn more about Roivant IT’s approach in the Leadership section of our Handbook.

Focusing on results

Perhaps the easiest way to avoid overanalyzing management in an all-remote company is to focus on results. Focusing on results over hours worked creates an atmosphere where colleagues direct effort on the right things — solving a teammate’s problem, improving a business process, etc.

This enables team members to complete their work and turn their attention to non-work activities (family, exercise, reading, caregiving, philanthrophy, etc.) as quickly as possible.

By focusing on results, each team member has less of a mental burden to carry. They’re aware that results are what matter as opposed to items like personal success, status, and ego.

Learn more on Roivant IT’s Results value in our Handbook.

Time away from work

It’s important to clarify that being able to work remotely does not replace the need to take time off of work.

We recognize how crucial it is to build in time where you can mentally take a break from your work, and as a company, we encourage our team members to do that.

Dedicate time for health and fitness

It’s sometimes hard to remember to stay active when you work from home. If you’re an employer, it’s important to be intentional about voicing support for self-care and overall wellness. Here are some tips that might help:

  1. Try to step away from your computer and stretch your body every hour.
  2. If possible, choose a workspace that’s exposed to natural light.
  3. Avoid “Digital Eye Strain” by following the 20-20-20 Rule. Every 20 minutes look into the distance (at least 20 feet/6 meters) for 20 seconds.
  4. Use an app - there are some that will remind you to take a break or help you with your computer posture:
  1. Move every day
  • Go for a walk or do a short excersise for at least 15 minutes a day.
  • Do something active that can be done within a short amount of time like rope jumping, lifting kettlebells, push-ups or sit-ups. It might also help to split the activity into multiple shorter sessions. You can use an app that helps you with the workout, e.g., 7 minute workout.
  1. Try to create a repeatable schedule that is consistent and try to make a habit out of it. Make sure you enjoy the activity.
  2. It can also help to create a goal or challenge for yourself, e.g. registering for a race.
  3. Eat less refined sugar and simple carbs, and eat complex carbs instead. Try to eat more vegetables. Don’t go to the kitchen to eat something every 15 minutes (it’s a trap!). Keep junk food out of your house.
  4. Have a water bottle with you at your desk. You will be more inclined to drink if it’s available at all times.
  5. Try to get enough sleep at night and take a nap during the day if you need one.