Remote Teams Need an In-Person Reality Check
The Importance of Meeting Under One Roof
Hey, fellow Leader 🚀,
I am Artur, and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach out to me and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
Working remotely, whether from home or an office in a different city than the client, brings a unique focus to how physical gatherings are conducted. The current landscape has made it possible for us to work with people for months on end without ever seeing them in person. This is a specific challenge of the post-pandemic era. When it works well, it is a great addition to the professional landscape, since projects move forward with happy staff and a competitive advantage in talent retention. However, when things are not going as expected, we need to pay special attention to the moments when the team is gathered under the same roof.
The Old Way Of Doing Things
When everyone was working in an office just a few meters away from the coffee machine, we could spot problems with team dynamics and interpersonal relationships within a matter of days. Information flowed differently (and sometimes chaotically), making it easy to see who was struggling and what the root causes were. We could casually discuss how people were addressing challenges and facilitate solutions for issues project members were facing. These discussions happened naturally over coffee, at lunch, or even while crossing paths in the corridors.
However, it wasn’t all sunshine and butterflies. It was harder to keep people focused on a single task when things were “popping up” left, right, and center. This was a particular issue for “star” team members, who were often seen as the fixers for everything. There is a reason people work better remotely: they are interrupted less. The office was often a curse for the people who magically made things work.
On a different note, it was easy to spot “casting errors”. We would know within the first week on the job if a person might not make it. Setting up project teams is one of the most critical parts of the job. If you have a budget for 5 FTEs and two of them are failures, nearly 50% of your project capacity suffers. We need to be swift, and it was much easier to spot these cases in the “old days”.
Why It Is Important to Meet Physically
When working remotely, we sometimes give people too much “forgiving space”. This is a consequence of trying to be fair to our colleagues (which is good, please continue doing so), but it can be easily exacerbated by casting errors that Leadership fails to notice. While results matter most in a remote environment, the trick is to act when those results sometimes fall below expectations. The benefit of the doubt is often given to people who don’t deserve it, and physical distance only makes things muddier.
In one of my own casting errors, I was struggling with the idea of letting someone go. The project was complex, which was my biggest argument for giving the person more time. The communication with the developer wasn’t great, but that is far from an isolated case in the IT world. It was only when results started arriving too late that I began pushing for the hard decision to let him go. The decision wasn’t final yet, as my colleagues were pushing to give “Alfredo” a second chance, until the day we brought everyone to the office to deliver a big milestone.
If anyone still had doubts, they were completely dissipated that week.
For Remote Teams, It Is Important to Meet Physically at Least Once
Remote work is not a “magic wand” for problem-solving or team culture. Not every employee is suited for (or should be granted) the responsibility of a fully remote role. The cost of a “bad hire” is significant, and identifying performance or cultural gaps is exponentially more difficult in a remote context.
Leadership often lacks visibility into remote team dynamics. We cannot (and should not) monitor every private chat to understand the nuances of internal communication. Success in a remote setting requires a high degree of professional maturity and autonomy. For new hires especially, it is critical to assess how they integrate with their peers before the big challenges arrive.
A proactive way to mitigate risk is to bring new hires into a physical office for a set period (for example one week) to work alongside their colleagues. During this time, leadership can observe interpersonal dynamics and identify “red flags” that remain hidden behind a screen. When project results fall short, the root causes are often behavioral rather than technical. Failing to spot these early leads to the kind of frustration we experienced with “Alfredo”.
In IT, one of the most overlooked aspects of team building is the “vibe check”. The fundamental assessment of whether peers can collaborate effectively. People can build great dynamics remotely, but it requires maturity that not everyone possesses.
The Alfredo’s Story
The software was delivered with the joy of everyone, but the star of the day was another developer. Not Alfredo. However, on a certain afternoon, I got 2 people who wanted to see me in urgency. It seems Alfredo was playing video games on his phone in the middle of the office. I barely contain my laughter. I was getting reports of a 50ish guy playing on his phone like a f%&/ teenager. To give a context about this project, the team was working in different cities all over Europe, and it was reunited in the headquarters’ office for a big delivery. Since everyone was working remotely, it made sense for the big day to have everyone together. In some cases, it was the first time we were meeting some people physically.
This is not yet over. On the day we went live, a bug was reported later in the evening. It was not sufficient to do a rollback, but we needed Alfredo to spot what was missing because the software was working properly during tests. This was a clear case of a missing setup on PROD somewhere. It was not that critical for calling an all-nighter either, that’s why we agreed to see on the next day. The next day arrived, and by 8 am in the morning everyone was in the office. Except Alfredo. The guy arrived a few minutes after 9 am. He was literally the last guy to arrive at the office that day, while everyone was asking, “Where the F is Alfredo?”.
We can argue that I should be clearer to Alfredo to come to the office early the next day. Yes, is a valid argument. But the moment we need to babysit a grown man is when we probably are better off without that person.
The cherry on top to conclude this story is what happened on a Friday afternoon. See, we all traveled to the office for this big milestone. For Alfredo’s case, it was the first time he was in the city, so he had booked a hotel to stay for the weekend and be a tourist for a couple of days. No harm there. The ridiculous part came when Alfredo left the office at 15h in the afternoon. Well, an issue happened on PROD at 15h10… Which made me call him on the phone straight away. He was heading to the hotel to drop off bags, and he told me he would see the problem at the hotel. The issue is that Alfredo only reported back later in the night, while some of us were already on planes to go back home.
Remote Helps Masking Bad Apples
The reality is: Remote work is excellent for masking poor attitudes and throwing sand in Leadership’s eyes. That is why some leaders prefer to have everyone in the office, even if only for a few days a week. There is immense value in fully remote positions, but these roles should be given to people who can be trusted. Otherwise, it requires an exhausting amount of management and leads to hard decisions down the road.
While remote work offers a great competitive advantage, it still makes sense to have moments where the team meets physically. The sooner this happens, the better. It allows you to catch potential problems before they derail the project timeline.
That’s it. If you find this post useful, please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest it in the comments or send me a message.
Cheers,
Artur
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