A Team in Transition
Our whole team has being fully remote for the past semester. The initial shock of the pandemic is still fresh, but instead of drifting into uncertainty, we decided to commit to a path: We weren’t going to ask “When do we go back to the office?” We were going to ask “How can we make remote work even better than it was before?”
With the support of our manager, Iryna Kulakova, I joined a training about building remote-first systems—what they called “officeless” by design. The training was practical and optimistic. It helped reframe how we thought about team structure, rituals, tools, and culture in a fully distributed setup.
MODULE 1: Remote First Culture Whether you have a hybrid or fully distributed team, you will discover how to make everyone, whether in or out of the office, feel part of the same group. MODULE 2: Setting up your office on the cloud Discover the tools that will make it possible for your work and that of your team to happen from anywhere and discover how to adapt your team’s processes to a digital format. MODULE 3: Communication & Collaboration Learn how to have the information you need at any time, without having to interrupt your team. How to make synchronous and asynchronous communication effectively. Working with people from different locations, different times or even different time zones can be much simpler than you might think. MODULE 4: Distance Leadership & Management Learn to get your team engaged and motivated from start to finish on a project. How to set short and long term goals, align your team with company goals and measure results instead of working hours. Find out how to conduct and monitor the progress of each of these projects. MODULE 5: Remote Facilitation Master the art of conducting and facilitating remote meetings. Learn how to generate ideas and make important decisions with your team even from a distance. MODULE 6: Productivity & Wellness Discover different techniques and “hacks” so that you and your team can be productive working from anywhere. Learn to generate a genuine connection between the people who work with you on a daily basis. With simple practices that can be implemented in your remote team’s routine, you will discover how to generate much more trust and unity among people. MODULE 7: Connection & Trust Learn how to genuinely connect with the people on your team and how to maintain that connection without the need for a common physical space. MODULE 8: #beofficeless Time to connect the dots and make the transformation path clear. Whether you are a small business, an extremely dynamic startup or a large organization with well-established processes. Remote work here will already be a reality for you.
After completing it, I shared the modules with the team. We started running experiments together—not to mimic other companies, but to find what worked best for us.
What We Learned (and Tried)
The training had eight modules, from remote culture and cloud tooling to facilitation, leadership, and wellness. Each one sparked different ideas. But we didn’t treat it like a checklist. We just started trying things, one at a time.
Here’s what stuck with us:
Better facilitation through rotation We started rotating who facilitated each meeting. That small shift helped us learn to guide conversations, not dominate them. We got better at splitting discussions into convergence (decision-making) and divergence (exploration).
Clearer context after meetings One of our first improvements was in how we shared context after a call. We no longer sent scattered messages. Instead, we documented outcomes clearly—what was decided, what was left open, and what came next.
Rethinking communication We refined how we used Slack.
- Shorter messages.
- Better threading.
- Thoughtful tone. We stopped seeing Slack as chat and started seeing it as a team communication platform.
Confluence that actually worked We looked at our Confluence space with fresh eyes. It became our source of truth. Each document had a clear owner. Pages were easy to find. Meeting notes lived where people expected them.
Async vs Sync: now a choice, not a habit We reviewed our agile ceremonies. Standups, retros, plannings—all were candidates to go async or stay sync. We made the decision based on purpose, not tradition.
Energy at the start of initiatives When launching a new feature or project, we introduced simple rituals to build momentum: early ownership, and clear goals. People felt more involved from day one.
Holding Space for Each Other
It’s easy to list changes. But none of this happened in a vacuum. We don’t know when we’re going out of our homes. Everyone is scared, overwhelmed, and adapting.
What helped us grow was not just the training—it was the way we treated each other.
- We listened more.
- We gave each other space to learn.
- We assumed good intent, even in short messages.
- We have a great and empathetic leader
Remote-first isn’t just about documentation and Zoom. It’s about empathy. It’s about designing for inclusion—of time zones, personalities, moods, and bandwidth.
What’s Next
I hope Soon, our team will start returning to the office. But we’re not changing a thing. We’ll keep practicing everything we learned—even if we choose to meet in person sometimes.
The systems work. The trust is real. That’s what remote-first looks like to us.