How To Make Remote Teams Your Competitive Advantage

Read Time: 4 minutes.

JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon just said the quiet part out loud:

And President Trump, Elon Musk and DOGE are making government workers return to the office as well.

This must mean remote work is on its last legs.

Hardly.

If you study how companies and industries get disrupted it is always from the bottom up.

In the Innovator’s Dilemma, the late Clayton Christensen makes the case that upstarts bring disruption to the least profitable parts of a business, and the logical move is for the incumbent to exit. Unfortunately, this just exposes the next most vulnerable part of the system until, eventually, the whole elephant gets consumed one bite at a time.

Remote work on it’s own is not an inevitable outcome.

But when you layer in geographic arbitrage (same talent from cheaper countries), interconnectedness via the internet, and gains in technology supporting collaborating and connectedness, the traditional work model is being disrupted.

Which leaves us a choice:

• Be disrupted.

• Be the disruptor.

I know which one I’m choosing.

But here’s the catch:

You cannot lead the same way and expect better results.

The office builds in a lot of assumptions - the casual corridor conversations, offhand coffee break chats, or quick post-meeting debriefs. And once your team is spread across the world, this all disappears.

The best remote teams? They don’t just accept this as the cost of remote work.
They completely rewrite their operating system.

We’ve been lucky enough to work with a number of them.

I believe the 80/20 of remote work focuses on these 4 pillars.

1. Paramount Principles: Clarity & Ownership

What doesn’t work: Micromanaging, endless Slack pings, overloading people with meetings.

What works: Trust, clear priorities, and defined outcomes.

Who’s getting it right:

• Amazon, GitLab & Stripe use written culture docs & decision logs to remove ambiguity.

• Dropbox & Shopify define ownership at every level so people know exactly what success looks like.

Try this:

• Assign a Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) for every project where one person is accountable for the outcome (borrowed from Apple).

• Document key decisions to prevent information silos and unnecessary rework.

2. Optimize for Asynchronous Communication First

What doesn’t work: Too many meetings, too much real-time coordination, time zone headaches.

What works: Written-first culture, deep work, and minimal meeting load.

Who’s getting it right:

• GitLab is fully async - most discussions happen in shared docs, not meetings.

• Basecamp & Zapier use one "core overlap hour" per day for real-time collaboration, everything else async.

Try this:

• Use Loom for async video updates to reduce meetings while maintaining human connection.

• Schedule "No-Meeting Wednesdays" or similar deep work blocks to prevent meeting overload.

3. Engineer Genuine Connection

What doesn’t work: Remote work feeling transactional and isolating.

What works: Intentional connection-building and strong culture, even without an office.

Who’s getting it right:

• Airbnb & HubSpot run monthly virtual "ask me anything" (AMA) sessions with executives.

• GitLab & Automattic do paid company retreats to build deeper relationships.

• Dropbox & Twitter use randomized virtual coffee chats to keep people connected.

Try this:

• Experiment with virtual coworking sessions (e.g., focus time with cameras on, mics off).

• Hold structured but informal team huddles (e.g. everyone shares a "win of the week" on Mondays).

• Set a “common hour” where employees from different time zones line up so they can meet live to collaborate

4. Redefine Performance To Avoid Burnout

What doesn’t work: Judging employees on availability, not impact.

What works: Basing performance on output rather than hours to actively prevent burnout.

Who’s getting right:

• Spotify & LinkedIn focus on results-based goals, not time spent online.

• Automattic (WordPress) encourages people to work in sprints and fully disconnect afterward.

• Doist & Buffer use "team health checks" to measure burnout before it happens (we’ve got an employee engagement survey you can leverage).

Try this:

• Shift from tracking hours to tracking outcomes (e.g., use OKRs or project milestones).

• Run monthly burnout surveys (simple 1-10 scale: “How sustainable is your workload?”).

• Encourage "No-Work Weekends" and make leaders model healthy boundaries.

And while you need to build atop a foundation of clear principles, sometimes you just need a simple fix for everyday headaches.

Here are 2 actionable frameworks you can easily implement:

The Decision Memo

Problem it solves: Decision-making in remote teams often gets stuck in endless Slack threads and back-to-back Zooms.

How It Works:

• Instead of a meeting, the decision-maker writes a short memo outlining the issue, options, and recommendation.

• Team members comment async, refining the idea before it’s finalized.

• At Amazon, meetings start with completed 6-page memos and 15 minutes of quiet reading time - no PowerPoints allowed.

This will:

• Ensure clear thinking (no rambling meetings).

• Speed up decision-making by removing real-time bottlenecks.

• Create a searchable knowledge base of past decisions.

Maker vs. Manager Hours

Problem It Solves: Constant interruptions kill focus. Leaders work in real-time, while ICs need deep focus time.

How It Works:

• Maker Time: Optimized around engineers, designers, writers → No meetings.

• Manager Time: Optimized for collaboration and decision making → Meetings allowed.

• Stripe & Dropbox run "Focus Mornings" - even execs can’t schedule meetings before noon.

This will:

• Reduce time-zone conflicts → coordinated time blocks reduce autonomy slightly but massively increase the ability to focus.

• Eliminate context-switching → No more Slack pings breaking flow.

• Force managers adapt to employees, not the other way around.

The Remote Leadership Mindset

At the end of the day, great remote leadership requires a new operating system, from the core principles to the daily tools.

• Hire people you can trust.

• Communicate clearly and document decisions.

• Optimize for deep work and cut out unnecessary meetings.

• Explicitly recreate the connection that would happen organically in-office.

Experiment rapidly to capture the value of a globally distributed team while replicating the goodness we used to take for granted in the office.

Those who commit to rewriting the rules are disruptors who’ll win. 

What You Missed This Week

Did you miss last week’s MGMT Playbook?

📌 We walked through 8 questions to ask yourself to decide if you’re really committed to leading a high-performing team.

And here are our most popular posts last week:

1. Leaders Speak Up (Especially When It’s Hard)

2. The 8 Cognitive Biases Sabotaging Your Choices

3. Rare Traits Of Higher Performers

4. 11 Signs You Might Be A Micromanager

5. 15 Habits of People Who Are Easy To Work With

6. 11 Life-Changing Lessons You Need to Know

Or why not check out today’s shares:

📌 7 Strategies To Stay Confident Under Pressure: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marsdenkline_7-strategies-to-stay-confident-under-pressure-activity-7296873428358221825-XJaK

📌 The Importance of Idea Meritocracy:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davidkline_the-most-expensive-ideas-are-the-ones-you-activity-7296890627684794368-MPMA

Our goal is to build a community of 1 million thoughtful, curious leaders.

Your ♻️ reposts on any or all of the above are always appreciated.  

Thank you for reading. Appreciate you!

Dave & Mar

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