Signs it is time to revisit working with a remote team

Teams tend to reach for this after something has already gone wrong. A few signals that working with a remote team is due some attention.

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• Write things down, because hallway context does not exist
• Overlap hours matter more than time zones

How we handle it

Regular short calls beat rare long ones. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

What this looks like day to day

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. Three things worth confirming about working with a remote team before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Write things down, because hallway context does not exist — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.