How to be a great remote product manager

Editor's Notes

• #3: Introduce myself I’ve been working with remote teams for nearly 5 years. Excited to share some of the things I’ve learned for how to help Product Managers work remote. Be joining the Q/A later so please reach out with questions and I look forward to talking more with everyone!
• #4: The number one thing to remember about Remote work is that it’s all about collaboration. And that means that all the same challenges exist. In this talk I’m going to show you some tools that are helpful, but at the end of the day it’s just about how you’re using them. I’ve found that the tool actually doesn’t matter as much as the momentum around the work. You could try to get everyone to use an OKR planning tool, but if they’re not updating it, is it really useful? So, instead of looking at tools and process, I rely on people and habits to help drive how I want to work with my remote teams.
• #6: People working on software store a lot of information in their heads as they work: designers are holding patterns and trying to get them documented, software engineers are trying to articulate complex ideas across many levels into code, legal teams are managing methodologies, risk requirements, legal translations, etc. And us Product Managers, we are participating as knowledge workers when we’re writing specs, planning docs, business reviews, etc. But we’re also coordinators, so we’re often the folks who are doing the tapping on shoulders. We can leverage some async tools to help reduce the feeling that we’re interrupting someone by putting the power back into their hands.
• #7: I’m going to show you some tools that we use at GitHub -- but it really is in how you use these tools, there are many different options. This is slack - we use it for the majority of our communications & I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with it.. It integrates with a lot of tools to help us all stay in sync about what’s going on. But chat apps aren’t always good, and sometimes encourage the wrong behaviors.
• #8: We use Geekbot on my team for all sorts of updates. It’s a slack bot, so it integrates with our existing asynch workflows around chat. You can program geekbot to ask any set of questions and set the cadence depending on your team’s needs.
• #9: We use Geekbot on my team for all sorts of updates. It’s a slack bot, so it integrates with our existing asynch workflows around chat. You can program geekbot to ask any set of questions and set the cadence depending on your team’s needs.
• #10: We use Geekbot on my team for all sorts of updates. It’s a slack bot, so it integrates with our existing asynch workflows around chat. You can program geekbot to ask any set of questions and set the cadence depending on your team’s needs.
• #11: We use Geekbot on my team for all sorts of updates. It’s a slack bot, so it integrates with our existing asynch workflows around chat. You can program geekbot to ask any set of questions and set the cadence depending on your team’s needs.
• #12: I work at GitHub, which is a collaboration tool for asynchronous work. So, we’re lucky in that the tool we build helps us do our jobs better. But when it comes down to it, it’s all about the way we use github.
• #13: But how we use it matters -- and this can apply to any tool you use for coordinating with your teams. Spend time thinking through what you’re writing, how you’re saying it, be succinct and not where things are a WIP, or where decisions are being made. Pull yourself out of DMs and emails & use tools that help you communicate in the open so that your team can see what’s going on. This will not only help build trust, but you’ll get a lot more ideas for how to move forward.
• #16: Look at all these smiling faces! Right now, we’re relying on tools like Zoom to help us cross the bridge from the synchronous natures of our offices to more of a virtual experience. And it’s amazing that we have a tool like zoom to get us there - but what often happens is that when we start to rely on it, we tend to depend on it for something that is actually a stresser on a virtual team -- and that’s too many meetings.
• #17: And when you have too many meetings.. This happens - which i’m sure we’re all familiar with. We went from our meetings happening in person to them happening virtually. But what being remote friendly means is that we don’t actually need to be synchronously working all the time. I’m showing you my actual calendar. It’s packed with zoom meetings almost every day. I call this “Zoom roulette” where I don’t even have time to look at my calendar to se what’s next, I just click the button in zoom to take me to the next meeting. Bathroom break? Nope, coffee break? Nope…
• #18: But what’s up with Tuesday? At GitHub, we found that our teams in engineering, product and design need to have dedicated time for heads down work. This helps us with our writing - which is necessary for Async communications, and with processing a lot of information. When you’re working throughout the day and you’re constantly getting interrupted - it’s hard to get anything substantial done. Tuesday no meeting day You can still have ad-hoc meetings Tuesdays are reserved for heads down time
• #19: But - facetime is still valuable. So while zoom isn’t always your friend, it is still handy for high calorie tasks like Brainstorming & pairing - Help me flesh out this idea. What do you think about X? How can we come up with ways to solve X? You can’t “spitball” via a pull request. Feedback - Hey, I think you could have worded that comment better. Is everything going okay with Y? Feedback is inherently human, and as such, it deserves a human face. Small talk and gossip - In a distributed company, you need a distributed water cooler. How’s your son’s softball team doing this season? Did you get a haircut? Check in often to ensure your coworkers are human (and you know them as such).
• #20: Overcorrect on tone. People often tell me that written communications are hard because it’s too difficult to get your tone across in text. And that’s just silly.
• #21: The internet is full of animated gifs, emojis, etc. Use them! Be mindful of your words, but emojis help. Seriously though - a lot of being mindful of tone is actually in how you interpret someone else’s communications. We like to think about the principle of charity to help with this - meaning we treat people as intelligent, it helps everyone think about where the other person is coming from and what they’re saying in more human ways. And a solid rule to live by is: you’re a human, be a human & infect with joy