Distributed Leadership

Distributed Leadership is a video from Phil Haack about practices for effective work with distributed teams. The author worked in Github for a long time, and as you may know Github is fully distributed from the very beginning.

Let's check what practices are recommended:
✏️ Provide context to the messages: never send a message like 'Hey, what's around?'. It does not explain the reason why you reach that person. Make message clear so the person can respond without additional clarifications.
✏️ Write things down: document decisions, meeting notes, guidelines, etc. Make these information discoverable for everyone (e.g., as md docs in git)
✏️ Use video calls: it help to feel each other as people not just resources
✏️ Use chats, small talks, emojis, gifs, jokes: creating an environment of camaraderie. The author refers to this as a "distributed water cooler," replicating the experience of casual conversations near the water cooler in a physical office.
✏️ Organize in-person meetings periodically: spend time physically together. Github organizes a full company summit for all employees once a year, team summits can be more frequent.
✏️ Avoid drive-by comments: don't comment if there are nothing valuable to add
✏️ ChatOps: automate as much as you can
✏️ Avoid synchronization points: avoid meetings, prioritize tasks to unblock other teams
✏️ Use decision-making frameworks: RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) or DACI (Driver, Approver, Contributor, Informed), clearly assign responsibilities, make priorities alignment inside the team
✏️ Support work-life balance

The video doesn't provide any revolutionary ideas on managing distributed teams but it does provide a good summary of working practices. I use most of these practices in my daily work and can confirm that they are really helpful, especially the communication part.

#leadership #management