The Delta Issue #11

Our fully-remote team doesn’t “retreat” – we “advance”

By: AJ Norman

Hi friends. Anna ‘AJ’ Norman here, Head of Business Operations at Watershed Advisors. Thanks to Jessica and Kunjan for passing the mic to me today as we prepare for our 2024 Fall Staff Advance next week.

If there’s anything my LinkedIn feed definitely does not need, it’s one more post about the debate or relative advantages of remote vs. in-person work, so I promise this isn’t that. But as we prepare for our team retreat (or Staff Advance as we call it — more on that in a minute), I thought it might be interesting to share some of the ways we intentionally build our team culture.

We are a fully-remote team, spread across 14 states, which forces us to be more intentional about team-building in some ways.

But I think the lessons we have learned about what works for our virtual team culture are applicable whether you’re in-person, remote, or hybrid. Here are 4 practices that we’ve developed over the years:

A little certainty goes a long way. Surprises can be fun if we’re talking about a birthday present or a party. When it comes to your work calendar? Not so much. We publish our annual calendar well before the next year starts; so we always know when our next in-person meeting is. That eliminates the guesswork for our team and helps them with personal planning, which in turn helps with buy-in for us. As a remote company, we love knowing when we’ll see each other again — but even if you work in a physical office, it’s nice to know your boss won’t be springing a mandatory travel day or multi-day meeting on you without warning.
Structure for unstructured work time. I love a good agenda. Ask anyone. But sometimes the magic of working with teammates is more spontaneous than all that. Our Ops Team schedules blocks where we sit together and just hammer out ideas together with no agenda. It provides the experience of coworking despite our physical distance, and it gives us a chance to riff on thoughts we’re having and sparks creativity that we wouldn’t get with a minute-by-minute planned schedule. We do it on Zoom, but the concept would translate just as well in a physical conference room. Most places I’ve worked didn’t intentionally plan for this type of unstructured time, even when we were all in the same building.
Deliverables, not desk time. We don’t have any requirement that people be at their computer from 8-5 (or any other set schedule). We encourage people to work where and when it is most helpful to them, and we never ask them why their green Slack light isn’t on at a particular time. As long as they are meeting their deliverables, the details are up to them. Your mileage will vary on that strategy depending on the type of work you do — some jobs require being available at a specific time — but we find that trusting our employees to manage their own responsibilities boosts their productivity and happiness.
And then there’s our twice-a-year Staff Advance. We get the full team together in the spring and the fall every year, and we’re intentional about the purpose: to advance our knowledge, learning, and relationships. We don’t call it a retreat because retreating is literally the opposite of our intent. It might seem like semantics but I find that the verbiage actually makes a difference in the mindset we all bring to our time together.

Every item on our Advance agenda is structured around one of three goals:

Enhancing our ideas, our knowledge, and/or our policy views
Building local context to inform our work
Strengthening our team culture

One thing we do every time that is my absolute favorite is our Staff-led sessions. Before the Staff Advance, team members get deep into the details of a policy issue they think would make a good Advance session — something that is a trending topic or that came up in a state we’re working with. They submit a pitch to the team, and then we select 5-6 sessions for each Advance. So far we’ve had sessions on everything from AI to specific education policy topics to how we live our core values at work. The team member who pitched the session tells us what they’ve learned and poses the problem. Then we all work through it together. It’s a great opportunity for team members at all levels of the organization to own and lead part of the Advance and an amazing way for us to all get smarter while working together as a team. (Plus, it’s just plain fun.)

Let’s Get Muddy

Those are a few of the things that are working for us, but we’re always looking to evolve and iterate. What practices are working for your team to build culture? What’s the best thing you’ve participated in at a team retreat? We’d love to hear from you.

To learn more about our work, visit watershed-advisors.com or follow us on LinkedIn. Forward this newsletter to anyone you know who is looking for change. We’ll see you next week!