3 D's of Effective Distributed Teams

Measure how effective your remote team is

So you've been remote for a while now. Your team seem to be doing well, but it's hard to tell.

To assess how effective your team is while remote, here's where the 3 D’s of Effective Distributed Teams comes in:

1. Discipline 2. Dialogue 3. Documentation

Let’s dive into how you can get a gauge for what’s working and what needs some attention.

⏳ Discipline

Start by giving a pass ✅ or fail ❌ your team for each of these questions:

1. Delivery: Are they reaching goals on time? Look out for: Ignored deadlines on your project management tool.

2. Self-management: Are they managing their time independently? Look out for: Team members consistently report missing personal deadlines in stand ups.

3. Work/life balance: Are they switching off when not working? Look out for: Lingering on Slack late into the evening.

For each question, list 2-3 reasons your team passed or failed. Keep that list handy. We’ll come back to it.

💬 Dialogue

Pass ✅ or fail ❌ on these:

1. Feedback: Are they giving and receiving feedback without prompting? Look out for: Your team come to you before going to peers directly

2. Clarity: Are they clarifying ambiguity? Look out for: Collaborative tasks are often derailed by minor miscommunications.

3. Risk awareness: Have they raised blockers and issues early? Look out for: Scope-creep happens on nearly every project.

Write down 2-3 reasons the passed or failed again.

🗂️ Documentation

Your final 3 questions to pass ✅ or fail ❌ are:

1. Briefings: Is everyone clear what they have to do when work is handed over? Look out for: No visibility on where projects stand and what needs to be done.

2. Knowledge sharing: Is your team building on learnings? Look out for: Mistakes are repeated.

3. Written communication: Are they getting what they need asynchronously? Look out for: Too many meetings drain people’s time to execute.

List 2-3 reasons they passed or failed for this section as well.

Sort it out

You should have a solid list of what your team's doing well, and not so well.

It’s important to have both because while you try to fix problems, you don't want to lose what’s working in the process.

Next choose: • 1 thing you’ll praise to reinforce that it continues; • 1 thing you’ll improve

Agree on this as a team and come up with initiatives to work on.

Do this once a week, for the next month, and watch your team's effectiveness steadily improve.