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Embarking on the journey of managing a remote team can often feel like navigating uncharted territory without a reliable map.
From company planning to team building and scaling operations, there’s a lot to unravel - and building an effective strategy from scratch can feel like an impossible task. Fortunately, established business-building systems can offer invaluable guidance for building a management strategy that meets your teams specific needs.
At Yeti, we've embraced the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) model, recognizing its potential to align with our needs as a remote software development team. At its core, EOS acts as a "people management system" that revolves around six fundamental components: Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process, and Traction - and aims to unify everyone around an established vision.
At Yeti, we’ve spent the past 13 years integrating these fundamental EOS concepts with our unique needs and processes, and have found that a cohesive management strategy can have a profound impact on the trajectory of any team. If you’re looking for growth and transformation within your company, keep reading to learn how you can adapt EOS's six fundamental components to craft a management strategy that truly works for you!
Establishing a clear vision and defined goals is essential for aligning everyone in your organization towards a common objective. Doing so helps provide your team with a sense of purpose, and allows them to see how their efforts contribute to the organization's overarching goals. The following is how we set and accomplish goals at Yeti.
At Yeti, we choose 4 overarching goals each year. These goals are based on improving specific areas of the company, and include 1 goal for each of the following key areas.
To begin the process of setting our yearly goals, we conduct a company-wide retrospective to gather input on the areas of the company that could use improvement. During this retro each team member shares the areas that they perceived as successful, those that could be improved, and those that were beyond our control. To achieve this we utilize a Start, Stop, Continue exercise.
Once the retrospective has been completed, the leadership team evaluates responses and determines where we can make a positive impact, creating overarching goals for each of our four focus areas.
Our 2024 high-level goals include:
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While our overarching goals outline what we aim to achieve throughout the year, they lack the specifics and framework that allow for significant progress. For this reason, we create bi-annual Rocks projects. Rocks are objectives that are strategically selected to drive progress towards our annual goals. They are meant to be accomplished within a specific timeframe, and must meet the following parameters:
To establish our Rocks, we engage the team in a brainstorming sticky notes session during our bi-annual company retreats. The team is presented with each annual goal and asked to brainstorm how we can achieve them. These ideas can be highly specific, such as “conduct monthly project retrospectives”, or as broad as “improve our social media presence”.
Once the brainstorm has been completed, the leadership team reviews each of the submissions and groups similarly themed suggestions, gaining a broader perspective of potential projects we can organize to move towards our goals. The leadership team then creates 4 separate "Rocks projects", and splits the team into groups that will tackle each project.
For example, one of our annual goals is "Deliberate Sales + Marketing Growth" - to help reach that goal, we created a Rock project focused on implementing + executing a comprehensive media strategy.
Once the Rocks projects have been chosen, the topics are presented to the team and each member is asked to choose 2 projects they’d like to work on - the leadership team then creates the Rocks teams based on preference and need.
Each rock team is then responsible for building out a project that will move us closer to our annual goal. To ensure each project meets Rocks guidelines (specific, measurable, achievable etc), the teams first meeting involves filling out a form that covers the following questions:
From here, each team meets on a monthly basis to discuss individual progress on the project, and to work out any kinks team members have encountered. The results of each project are then presented during our company retreat - where we’ll also brainstorm projects for our second set of Rocks Goals.
At Yeti, we hope to cultivate a positive work environment where team members feel a sense of camaraderie, purpose, accountability, empowerment, recognition, trust and alignment. To help cultivate this, we have several processes baked into our company calendar, including:
Our monthly all-team meeting is crafted to instill the sentiments mentioned above in every individual on the team, and includes the following:
Being a remote team has many benefits - but can also make it difficult to built camaraderie amongst team members. To help, one member of the team is asked to plan and host a fun (virtual) team activity that allows the team to spend time together, chat and have fun each month. Because the Yeti team has such a diverse set of personalities this hour long activity varies quite a bit month to month - in the past we’ve had activities ranging from:
These monthly events are a great way to build and maintain relationships between members of the team that don't work together regularly, and to keep camaraderie up between company retreats. It's also great to have a quick break from work to something fun! We highly recommend giving informal company events like these a try, as the feedback from our team has be overwhelmingly positive
Adrenaline is a daily 20 minute, all company meeting that occurs at the same time every day. We designed this meeting in such a way that it fosters camaraderie, accountability, recognition and alignment. Our adrenaline agenda is as follows:
When our team transitioned to remote work during the pandemic we quickly recognized the need to regroup and come together in person a few times a year to focus on relationship building and work on our company's goals. For this reason, we began holding two company retreats per year, in different cities around the US.
We’ve found that these retreats serve as a catalyst for fortifying essential team connections, boosting morale, and nurturing the seeds of creativity. Additionally, it’s a great time for us to work on the business, review and plan projects and put capstones on internal projects like Rocks.
While we save time for plenty of fun, camaraderie and team building, our retreats additionally serve as workshops that allow us to reflect and set future goals. These workshops include:
If you’re interested in planning a retreat for your company, be sure to take a look at our blog article Retreat Planning 101: Crafting an Unforgettable Team Bonding Experience for more information on how you can plan a fun and fruitful retreat your team will love.
Tracking and leveraging relevant data and metrics is a cornerstone practice for companies aiming for success. By monitoring key metrics and performance indicators, organizations gain valuable visibility into their progress towards achieving their goals and objectives.
The following are a few of the key metrics we recommend tracking and analyzing:
Regularly reviewing these key metrics empowers informed decision-making, enabling the company to make strategic choices and allocate resources effectively to drive the company forward - while additionally acting as an early warning system, providing insights that enable proactive problem-solving and course correction before issues escalate.
This proactive approach not only mitigates potential risks but also ensures that the organization remains agile and responsive to changing circumstances, ultimately positioning it for sustained success in a dynamic business landscape.
Identifying and resolving issues that hinder your company's progress is vital for maintaining a thriving and robust organization. At Yeti, we adhere to the idea that systematically and proactively addressing obstacles is the best way to prevent large and unmanageable problems.
To help us proactively stay on top of any obstacles or issues that have arisen in the company, we hold a monthly company-wide Level 10 Meeting that focuses on resolving issues existing or potential issues.
Prior to a Level 10 Meetings team members are asked to add any issues that have come to their attention to a public issue list - and additionally provide 5 minutes during the meeting for any last minute thoughts. We then cover each issue, one by one, with each individual sharing their issue and the context, and the rest of the team collaboratively devising a solution using the IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve).Level 10 Meetings should be conducted in a structured yet collaborative manner, with open and honest communication encouraged among team members.
Once discussed, any action items and follow-up tasks are documented and assigned to individual team members, ensuring accountability between meetings. At the next Level 10 meeting, each action items is reviewed and marked as complete or in-progress.
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At Yeti, we utilize Notion as our central hub for housing our core processes. Each and every one of our process documents are fully transparent and available to every member of our team, helping us to uphold a standard of consistency across all our operations.
In our experience, many companies overlook the significance of readily accessible documentation - and we strongly advocate for the establishment of an organized space or wiki that places critical information at everyone's disposal. Transparently documenting processes not only fosters consistency but also enhances efficiency, streamlines onboarding for new team members, and promotes a culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration. By maintaining clear and accessible documentation, organizations empower their teams to work more effectively and cohesively towards shared goals.
A few of the processes we have documented in our company wide Notion include:
We’ve worked hard to refine our processes as a remote software company, and feel that we've struck a rhythm that feels uniquely our own. By melding our ethos with key principles borrowed from the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), we've carved out a management path that resonates with our values and propels us towards success.
A clear and cohesive team management strategy can have a profound impact on the trajectory of any company. If you’re looking for growth and transformation within your team we recommend adapting the wisdom of proven methodologies in a way that suits your unique needs and circumstances.
Yeti is an IoT application development company. If you'd like to learn more about what we do, be sure to take a look at our work, featuring case studies that showcase our collaborations with clients like Google, Netflix, Westfield, and many more. For more insightful content, don't miss our free library of free IoT Software Development resources!
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