You know how research into teamwork shows that highly effective teams don’t communicate a lot, because they have shared mental models of the work? (Think: elite SWAT teams, surgeons, etc, mostly operating in silence)
How do we get to that with distributed work?
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Invest in retrospectives/AARs. That's 1 of the things I got from Dave Cooper on building Navy Seal teams.
"The goal is not to excavate truth for truth's sake, or to assign credit or blame, but rather to build a shared mental model that can be applied in future missions."
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It seems that having them written down is important. Most extensive and aggressive form of this that I’m aware of is Principles by Ray Dalio.
Once written down I’ve always assumed a hiring strategy that tries to find people that start with more alignment from day 1 would help.
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For companies already in existence, starting with observed operational principles (example could be: all reversible decisions made as close to the work as possible, all non -reversible decisions made by CEO) and just adding to and organizing a list over time, could be a start.
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Do you have some sources for that research? In we are reading The Culture Code which also mentions teams like SEALs so I'm interested in this intersection cc/ #RoamBookClub3
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Great question!
... I'm also interested in the subtle yet vital distinction between respectful, creative silence, and "toxic silence" ...
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Quick one-off: Curious if this piques your interest.
For distributed work, I’ll throw out 1. distributed onboarding (to transfer tacit knowledge) + 2. distributed, frequent retrospectives (to sync on tacit knowledge).
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Perhaps, in part, by coming together, not to report on the work we're doing, but to do it. We gave up legacy meetings (report-outs, slide decks, endless posturing) for working meetings, with 10-15 min of silent working together. Even online, it's bliss.
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