Two essentials for building distributed teams

Howard Gray -

Jeff Bezos once said to bet on things that won't change. Here's one: talent is everywhere. But opportunity? That's been another story... until now.

There’s a real shift happening in how teams come together:

  • Way back: Outsourcing
  • Recent past: Enforced remote work
  • Next: Truly distributed teams

⠀
What if you had…

  • Business analyst in Istanbul
  • UX designer in Kyiv
  • Game developer in Curitiba
  • Marketing lead in Mountain View
  • Project Manager in Colombo
  • Experience designer in Guatemala
  • Product lead in New York

⠀
All brought together in just a few weeks, and in sync with only 5-6 tools that cost less than a single co-working desk. Let’s not even start on the melting pot of perspectives, backgrounds, and cultures.

But how to do this well? Two key skills, I reckon - and they link humans and technology:

  1. Curation: The human touch of finding, supporting, and enabling talented people
  2. Systems: The digital groove of intuitive, efficient, and streamlined workflows

⠀
I don’t see this as the same as ‘remote work’ or even distributed teams. It feels more… Borderless. And I can’t imagine going back.


What's your take? Have you been in - or built in - teams like this? What challenges and opportunities do you see in this new world of work?

P.S. That team listed above? It’s my current one…