Inspiring Remote Tech Teams: Keys to Leadership and Purposeful Performance

by Hubbert Smith

Overview

For me and other tech people, leaders, and members of remote teams, we will be awakened by all the fantastic hands-on hints, best practices, and guiding principles based on solid ground that Hubbert provides in Inspiring Remote Tech Teams. We will be better prepared and better equipped to both contribute and lead efficiently in the digital economies that shape the future of our world.

— Thomas DiGiacomo, President of Engineering and Innovation at SUSE

Inspiring Remote Tech Teams is a trail map to building effective teams and organizations—now, as world health dictates remote work, and in the future, as global talent pools contribute to our digital economy.

Humans are wired to be social, and world events require social distancing from our office community. The absence of "community" triggers primitive brain responses. These instinctual responses of survival, social belonging, and the power of story all profoundly surface during our reaction as we adjust to remote work.

This trail map for team leaders improves team execution despite physical separation. The book covers simple neuroscience as it applies to our "separation." It is a hands-on guide to maintaining and improving teamwork while working remotely. It is also a hands-on guide at the intersection of teams + remote + laymen’s neuroscience to create a positive sense of enthusiasm, engagement, and contribution, even when working apart.

Remote teams, now and for the future, are the pathway to using global talent effectively. This book examines the combination of the "hard skills" of tech team project management and the "soft skills" of healthy distributed teams: remote offices, sales offices, partners, suppliers, customers, and teams engaging global talent pools. Practical examples and best practices offer hands-on methods to use neuroscience to help teams be their best, to improve collaboration, and to deliver consistent team results.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367644758
Publisher:	CRC Press
Publication date:	04/20/2021
Pages:	164
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Hubbert Smith has had a 30+-year career in tech. He’s led 26 successful projects for business leaders including Samsung, Intel, and WD. He is a published author, a patent holder, and currently the VP of Customer Success at Geminos.AI.

World events have magnified remote work. Remote work is the new norm. Successful organizations are good at teamwork; it takes leadership, discipline and practice. Effective remote teamwork with a global talent pool is a force multiplier for organizational success. Zoom alone does not make an effective team.

Table of Contents

Contents ix

List of Illustrations xv

Foreword xvii

Preface xix

Acknowledgments xxi

About the Author xxiii

Chapter 1 Our Wiring and Our People 1

1.1 Everyone Needs a Place, Everyone Needs a Purpose 1

1.2 Our Primitive, and Fearful, Wiring 2

1.2.1 Surviving → Belonging → Becoming 3

1.2.2 Instinct 4

1.2.3 Maslow's Pyramid and Surviving 4

1.3 Dopamine and Story 7

1.3.1 Our Primitive Wiring for Story 8

1.3.2 Story and Remote Teams 9

1.3.3 "Painting the Picture" with Common Goals 9

1.3.4 Story and Credibility 10

1.4 Multimodal Learning and Our Brains 11

1.5 Setting Up for Success, Becoming 12

1.5.1 Achievable Goals and Success Criteria 14

1.5.2 Criticism and Self-Criticism 15

1.6 Mentoring, the Secret Weapon to Belonging 16

1.6.1 How to Start 16

1.7 The Power of Empathy and Our Wiring 17

1.8 Trail Map and Conclusion 18

Chapter 2 Building Healthy Teams 21

2.1 Waterfall or Agile … Both or Neither? 21

2.1.1 Waterfall 22

2.1.2 Agile 22

2.1.3 Agile and Effective Remote Teams 24

2.2 Plan of Record (POR) and Remote Teams 27

2.2.1 Unpacking a POR: Start with the End in Mind 27

2.2.2 Define Problems, Don't Dictate Solutions 29

2.2.3 Dealing with Uncertainty: What We Might Do, What We Will Do 29

2.2.4 The Well-Executed Risk Management Plan 32

2.2.5 The Merit of Short Projects, Not One Large Heavy Project 32

2.3 On-Boarding and Team Formation 33

2.3.1 Individual Accountability vs. Team Accountability 33

2.3.2 Team Makeup and Functional Managers 34

2.3.3 Personal Experiences of Team On-Boarding 34

2.3.4 Team Emergence, Getting Past the Adjustment Period 36

2.3.5 New Team Member On-Boarding Package 37

2.3.6 Lessons for Remote Team Onboarding 38

2.3.7 Onboarding Global Talent and Bias 39

2.3.8 Software Patterns-People Patterns 40

2.3.9 On-Boarding Mid-Project and the Plan of Record 42

2.3.10 Establishing the Team and Aligning Common Purpose 44

2.3.11 Handling Individual Contributions with Care and Respect 45

2.3.12 Navigating "Tech" vs. "Non-Tech," Liberal Arts vs. Math 46

2.3.13 Team Formation, Bias, and Business Consequences 46

2.3.14 Mind the "Tech" and "Non-Tech" Gap 47

2.3.15 Team Interaction Is the Main Event, Not an Afterthought 48

2.3.16 Team Lead Responsibility, Accountability 49

2.3.17 Soft Skills for the Tech Workplace 50

2.4 Trail Map and Conclusion 55

Chapter 3 Day-to-Day Remote Teams 57

3.1 Running Meetings: Agenda Three-ish Topics 58

3.1.1 "Around the Table" Meeting 58

3.1.2 Scorecards and Effective Meetings 60

3.2 Overcoming Zoom-Out 61

3.2.1 Video Conferencing, Screen Sharing, File Sharing, Scheduling Assistant Chat 62

3.3 Status Reports 62

3.3.1 Real-World Schedule Monitoring and Recovery 63

3.3.2 Getting and Giving Help as a Way to Reduce, Resolve Conflict 64

3.4 Blockers 65

3.5 We Made a Mistake, What Did We Learn? 66

3.6 During Meeting (if Conversation Isn't Resolving) 67

3.7 Fear and Accurate Data 67

3.8 Managing Information 68

3.9 The Art (and the Need) for One-on-One Meetings 69

3.10 Failure and Cross-Functional Teams 70

3.11 Sales Playbooks as a Team Tool 72

3.12 Empathy 72

3.13 Trail Map and Conclusion 74

Chapter 4 Innovation and Uncertainty 75

4.1 Innovation, Uncertainty and Our Brains 76

4.1.1 Handling Uncertainty Day to Day 76

4.2 Managing Uncertainty with Roadmaps 77

4.2.1 The Role of Roadmaps 78

4.3 Remote Teams and Innovation 79

4.4 Uncertainty of Data Science/Al/ML 81

4.4.1 AI/ML Project Outline 82

4.5 The Power of "Yet" 83

4.6 Trail Map and Conclusion 83

Chapter 5 Remote Teams Capability Model 85

5.1 Factory-Era Management By Control Fails in Digital Era 85

5.2 Top-Down Orgs and Top-Down Processes 87

5.2.1 Top Down Fails Tech 87

5.2.2 Our Outdated Management Wiring 89

5.3 Last Century's Manufacturing Metrics Simply Don't Work for Tech 90

5.3.1 A Cautionary Tale of Innovation in a Top-Down Manufacturing Tech Company 92

5.4 Maturity Model-Effective Remote Teams 93

5.4.1 Functional Teams: Maturity Level 1 (You Gotta Start Somewhere) 94

5.4.2 Fake Cross-Functional Teams: Maturity Level 2 95

5.4.3 Emerging Cross-Functional Teams: Maturity Level 3 96

5.4.4 Cross-Functional Teams: Maturity Level 4 97

5.4.5 Effective Remote Teams: Maturity Level 5 99

5.4.6 Effective Remote Organizations: Maturity Level 6 100

Chapter 6 Improvements for the Whole Organization 103

6.1 Trust, the Bigger Picture 104

6.1.1 Creating Trust Starts with Engaging and Consistency 106

6.2 Power Metrics Contrasted with Functional Control 107

6.2.1 Outcomes over Output 108

6.3 The Myth of Regional Talent Hubs 110

6.3.1 Global Talent Pools 111

6.3.2 Organizational Strategy and Global Talent Pools 111

6.4 The Evolving Organization and Functional Managers 112

6.4.1 For Tech, Functional Managers Evolve to Program Managers or Skills Development 112

6.4.2 The Evolving Organization and HR 113

6.4.3 HR and Outcome-Based Workplaces 113

6.4.4 Reviews 114

6.4.5 Compensation and HR Reviews-Team Goals and Results-Based Incentives 115

6.4.6 But What About Those Who Abuse "Work from Anywhere"? 115

6.4.7 HR and Organizational Appetite for Innovation 116

6.5 Remote Teams and Ongoing Professional Development 117

6.6 Static Mindset and Growth Mindset 118

6.6.1 Resourcefulness 118

6.7 Company-Level Remote Teams, a Competitive Advantage 119

6.7.1 Access to a Global Talent Pool 120

6.7.2 Why Outsourcing or Offshoring Has a Bad on Rep and How to Fix It 120

6.7.3 Our New Model for Global Talent 121

6.7.4 Empowered Team Leads 122

6.8 Trail Map and Conclusion 123

Chapter 7 Closing Thoughts 125

7.1 Remote Work: Spend Less, Do More 125

7.2 Effective Remote Tech Teams Core Competency 126

7.3 Team Building Exercises 127

7.3.1 Team Building Exercise-The Wilson Gambit, Storytelling (Done on Group Video) 127

7.3.2 Team Building Exercise-How to Provide Constructive and Healthy Feedback 127

7.3.3 Team Building Exercise-Wichita Lineman 127

7.3.4 Team Building Exercise-The Agile Penny Game 128

7.4 My Statement on Meritocracy vs. Racism and Other Discrimination 129

7.5 Trail Map and Conclusion 130

Appendix 133

A.1 Diagram and Roles of Our Brains 133

A.2 Our Evolutionary Timeline 135

Index 137