“There was an Idea…to bring together a group of remarkable people. To make them work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that…we never could.” – Nick Fury
Of course my first post has to start with an Avengers quote (what else would you expect? ) - a quote that embodies the idea of team leader…bringing together individuals with complementary superpowers and uniting them around a common vision to make the team greater than the sum of the parts.
In the COVID world, many of us have had to adapt to working on remote teams, which, even if we teamed up with Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, has presented a new set of challenges. There have been massive volumes of new thinking on this topic. Yet most of the pieces have left me feeling like the goal is to make remote teams good enough…instead of building remarkable teams a la Nick Fury.
Recently I came across some cool nuggets of wisdom for running remote teams while going down the rabbit hole of trying to understand Web3.
What the heck is Web3 you may ask? Some simple term definitions to start (and a cool graphic below)…
Web1 = the first stage of the web that was accessible to consumers. The way I think about this stage is it digitized content designed for the physical world to content for the digital world.
Web2 = This is the second stage where user-generated content, social media and "“mobile first” engagement all emerged. Facebook and Twitter (and let’s not forget MySpace) are hallmarks of this era. The way I think about this is Web2 moved interactions (relationships, transactions, etc.) from the physical world to the digital world.
Web3 = This stage is still early but the key shift of this era is users own the data and content and governance is decentralized (vs. run by large corporations). The enabling technologies are blockchain and AI. (For the most straight forward and somewhat entertaining primer on blockchain - see here) The most well-known use cases of Web3 are cryptocurrencies (e.g. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Doge) and NFTs (non-fungible tokens) though the blockchain will likely have MANY more applications. The beauty of this new model is it is “the internet owned by users” instead of by central authorities (corporations, governments).
Ok…now that I’ve peaked your curiosity on Web3, I want to share with you a teaming model in Web3 that has a couple instructive lessons that can be applied to remote teams more broadly.
Olympus DAO has an audacious mission: “building a community-owned decentralized financial infrastructure to bring more stability and transparency for the world.” [Read that again just to take in how ambitious a project it is]. This vision and Olympus’ early innovations have inspired more than 100 engineers to join their ranks. (In another post I may end up writing more about what Olympus actually does but for those curious, here’s a good primer).
After a recommendation from a friend to learn more about Olympus (shout out to Boro!), I found myself reading articles and listening to podcasts, curious to keep peeling back the proverbial onion and figure out how this thing works.
In listening to an interview of one of Olympus’s lead engineers, I was struck by how they have organized their engineering teams. The teams are fluid project to project - no fixed teams. More importantly, they are led by Strategos (sounds like Marvel villain but I promise they are good guys). The mandate for Strategos is crystal clear:
Keep in mind the 10,000 foot view (vision) of what Olympus is aiming to build.
Make choices about what projects to prioritize (any contributor can bring an innovation proposal).
Allocate the right talent to projects based on their skillset - getting as many people as possible doing the things they are good at.
Help troubleshoot and remove roadblocks for engineers on projects.
Keep the best interest of the Ohmies (cool nickname for anyone that is part of Olympus DAO) at the forefront.
In other words, the Stratego is more of a facilitative leader a la Nick Fury than a task-master manager.
Another cool piece of tech they use is gather.town. It’s like Zoom, but you can see the virtual “room,” and participants can interact with others by moving around and even have side meetings, just like you would in an physical office. Think of it as a virtual conference space where people can “be” in the main room listening to the keynote speaker or have side conversations in a separate room (virtual coffee, cards…whatever floats your boat). The Olympus engineers have open hours on Thursdays and people can go in and out of their Gather room, which creates more informal interactions. People often attribute these casual collisions as an ingredient that sparks of innovation. It also just sounds fun!
There’s lots more to dig into and understand re: Olympus DAO, but even this initial exposure has helped me glean four lessons for leaders of remote teams:
Keep the vision at the forefront. Just like the Strategos, consistently bring the team back to the overarching vision. In a virtual world, it’s easy to mindlessly go from Zoom to Zoom and task to task. The role of the leader as the communicator of the big picture vision becomes increasingly important, and as a result team leaders need to amp up this communication and find creative ways to keep it front and center for all teammates.
Know your team members’ superpowers. Ensure that you have a solid understanding of the strengths of the members of your team. Keep them motivated by putting them on projects that amplify those strengths. Practical tip: Maintain a simple spreadsheet with the list of your team members, their top 2 greatest strengths and how they are applying those in their work. Re-visit this spreadsheet 3-4 times per year, updating as your team evolves and as their areas of focus shift.
Instigate collaboration. Proactively find ways to create organic collaboration opportunities, making efforts to bring people together with complementary superpowers. Don’t settle for the excuse of this is too hard in the virtual world. Try out new platforms like Gather that bring people together in novel ways without overly scripting how and when people engage.
Embrace Nick Fury (aka facilitative) leadership. Like a basketball player on defense, keep your head on swivel, constantly scanning the environment for talent with distinctive strengths and looking for ways to remove roadblocks for your team members…then get out of the way and let them do excellent work. While the task lists are never-ending, the way you multiply your impact as team leader is not merely through accountability or doing the work yourself, it’s by finding ways to reduce friction and increase the efficiency for your teams.
Thanks for coming on this first adventure with me. Curious to hear your reflections and feedback. What do you take away from this?