Written by Isaura Santos - Founder Loop Remote
Founder of Loop Remote (Helping remote & hybrid teams improve weekly execution by 20–30% in 4 weeks) | Systems for focus, rhythm & sustainable performance ☀️ Growth & Ops background
Before we dive in: throughout this article, “you” refers to founders and team leads, and “we” refers to the work we do with teams at Loop Remote. Some sections speak directly to your team as well — feel free to share those parts internally.
When a business relies on a small team, every tiny contribution matters and the ripple effect is incredibly impactful. When someone gets a sick day or isn’t showing up at their best, the team feels it strongly and unavoidably.
Remote or hybrid work is great for countless reasons, but it is also true that it is the rawest magnifier there is. When processes, scope, ownership and culture are great, remote flows and people feel empowered and supported. When they aren’t, it’s a mess that halts performance, regardless of how smart and talented people are.
If you’re leading a distributed team, one of the higher ROI investments you can make is to set remote right from the very beginning. No matter how fancy the roof and the walls are, if the pillars and the floor aren’t right the house will always be crooked – getting crookier and crookier every day. If you don’t tackle this, you’ll feel you’re always trying to tame untamable chaos, which can be both frustrating and expensive.
The good news is that doing remote right doesn’t require hundreds of tools, workshops or seminars. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel; you truly need to apply basic principles for people to thrive. The recipe is simple: weekly rhythm + clarity/prioritization + accountability = performance.
Small teams are exciting, they can move faster and be bolder – but only when people are aligned and capable of focusing to achieve meaningful work. Remote done wrong can easily create invisible performance leaks (10–20%) that compound cruelly, without mercy. So, for a team to truly be lean and adaptable, there is a necessary flow of energy that includes everyone; no one can be left behind.
The 5 Pillars of Happy, Effective Remote
I can guarantee you that having productivity tools like Notion, Monday.com, Trello, ClickUp, Asana, etc. won’t do anything for your team if the foundation is messy. These tools are great, truly beneficial, but it’s not the right place to start.
Small teams don’t need complex processes and requirements; all that’s necessary is a simple structure that is reliable and people can trust at all times.
The goal is always to preserve the adaptability and lightness; it’s never a good idea to flood people with unnecessary bureaucracies that are hard to follow, time-consuming, and mood killers. The processes should support people, not the other way around.
So here are the five pillars that keep everyone on the same page, supporting remote teams to achieve consistent and reliable performance while, at the same time, making people feel less isolated, more engaged and less likely to burn out:
- Clarity – scope of work, responsibilities, goals, prioritization
- Structure – predictable weekly rhythm, visibility, communication that flows
- Execution – how work actually gets done on a daily and weekly basis
- Support – onboarding, tools, resources, decision chain that works
Culture – belonging, trust, human connection
How To Get Good On Clarity
Performance fails when people don’t have proper examples of what doing their work well actually means. Especially in remote environments, where you can’t just swing by someone else’s desk, being clear on what someone is supposed to do and achieve requires dedication – but it’s totally worth it.
Nothing harms motivation more than someone being truly dedicated, committing long days or even weeks to a project only to realize (1) their interpretation of what is to be done isn’t the right one, or (2) they’ve been working hard on something they shouldn’t be doing or that someone else is already doing, creating duplicated work.
Especially for small teams, the cost of rework is incredibly high – financially and emotionally. Clarity avoids confusion and wasted cycles. Furthermore, with the investment in achieving clarity, you slowly start collecting the rewards of nurturing an autonomous mindset in which you get fewer pings for check-ins and fewer insecure “could you just take a look?”
Clarity isn’t micromanagement – it’s psychological safety that, if done well, promotes excitement and empowerment. People tend to perform better when they feel they understand what’s at stake – for them and for the whole team – and that someone has their back.
People need to be able to respond at all times: “What should I focus on? How do I know I’m doing well? Who do I go to for what?” It’s equally important they are able to connect the dots between what they do and how it supports the team’s and company’s goals, so they don’t feel they’re working in a vacuum doing useless tasks.
With this clarity, their judgement to prioritize and break down complex projects into digestible, achievable weekly tasks increases.
(This section applies to your team as well — feel free to share it internally.)
💡Exercise the muscle of communicating clearly with others and with yourself.
Create A Structure Everyone Can Easily Follow
After 2020 and the pandemic, people got overly excited about videocalls, to a point they got their calendars full of meetings that could literally be an email. Having a week full of calls is nothing more than a cheap dopamine patch that gives you a sense of progression.
Calls are great and important if they serve an alignment or creative function, for sure. But it’s not reasonable to expect people to spend hours on calls daily to then have their work piling up, forcing them either to slack on it and deliver mediocre output or to steal hours from their personal non-working time.
Having a structure in place that protects individual focused time and work sessions is one of the secret sauces that allows us to get incredible results at Loop Remote with the teams we support. We assist in all of the five pillars, but this one is the magic dust that changes the game entirely.
At the end of the day, you can know what to do, you can be great at what you do, but if you’re not showing up to protected, designated slots of work to actually do the thing you’re supposed to do, everything is pretty much useless.
Weekly rituals people can rely on, undisturbedly, are all it takes. Here’s Loop Remote’s recipe simplified:
- Monday: “Monday Activation” call to get clarity on weekly goals + Focus Session to start the week
- Tuesday & Wednesday: Focus sessions (via Zoom) where people work individually and chat between work blocks
- Thursday & Friday: Async check-ins via Slack
This weekly rhythm is complemented with:
- Monthly Individual & Group Coaching
- Productivity best practices and mini-workshops
- Monthly Team Building moment for people to connect and relax
People tend to want freedom, but being accountable for your own freedom, at all times, gets quite heavy. Structure and predictability remove a lot of cognitive overload caused by unnecessary planning – everyone starts trusting the process. And with that, emotional weight is removed and people start experiencing true, touchable, real freedom.
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Time To Objectively Do The Work (Execution)
(This section also applies directly to your team; you can share it with them.)
Regardless of how skilled and talented they are, people can know what to do and still not do it – and this tends to happen more frequently in remote teams that don’t flow well together. Mistakes and disconnections can go unnoticed for longer periods, skyrocketing costs and losses.
After a team has full understanding of the jobs to be done, a translation at the individual level needs to happen. People have to be able to bake together the company goals, the team strategy, the role they play, and come up with a recipe for their achievable tasks every week, every day. It’s like transforming an abstract concept into objective, palpable reality.
This can be complicated for some people and for many different reasons. Sometimes, the confusion starts with the founder and leadership always readjusting the wheel and not letting any efforts mature and be tested, making results and learnings inconclusive.
Other times, it can be on the employee side due to not having enough visibility and context or a lack of aptitude – not at the job but at breaking complex projects into achievable tasks.
We live in a world that is highly distracted, with too many inputs, and where focus is compromised. Moreover, in small teams, people often accumulate different responsibilities which require constant multi-tasking and context switching, which naturally breaks flow.
Remote people rely more on themselves to do this translation step and to decide how they’re tackling what they have in hand – this can be a job in itself for some people who get incredibly overwhelmed at this part.
So, the trick here is:
- Follow the rule of always translating projects into achievable, small, well-defined tasks the best you can. Assign a due date immediately.
- Assign pessimistic-realistic time slots to each one of the tasks. These need to be blocked and identified in your calendar. Note: always assume a task will take you at least 30% longer so you build a comfortable buffer of time.
Example (simplified)
Abstract project: write newsletter by end of the week
Tasks translation:
- Research and decide topic – 2h [Monday 10h–12h]
- Write newsletter – 6h [Tuesday 10h–13h, Wednesday 14h–17h]
- Review and setup – 2h [Thursday 10h–12h]
Being incredibly specific about what you have to do increases your chances of actually doing it. And keep in mind that steady, reliable chunks of work lead to more meaningful progress than isolated bursts. And don’t doubt the power of execution streaks! Aim at three meaningful tasks every week.
💡Assume that if it’s not in your calendar it won’t get done.
One For All, All For One – From Day One (Structure)
From the day someone joins your team, it’s incredibly important they feel they have what they need to succeed. It’s not fun to work on a puzzle when you know beforehand a couple of pieces are missing and you’ll never get to conclude it.
When onboarding a new hire or consultant, it’s really important you get them access to the documents, channels and tools they need. On their first day, they should find everything listed so they can make it work immediately. It’s also a great idea to help them get a first win early, which helps with motivation.
Another smart investment is to create an onboarding FAQs with a checklist of platforms, documentation and Loom tutorials for more tricky processes – this will save you and your senior people time responding to fewer questions.
Having a 30, 60, and 90 days plan for the new hire is key because:
- you want to capitalize on the new person’s “I just started” motivation
- you want to give them a true chance of succeeding
- if the hire isn’t a match, you want to realize it asap
This plan sets clear expectations and shares responsibility: 50% the company supporting the new hire, 50% the new hire claiming the support they need to succeed.
Assign a sponsor (“godfather”) and rotate this role. Assign someone to show the new hire around.
Also, please make an effort for the new hire to have two types of weekly check-ins for the first 90 days: their direct manager and the sponsor. These can be as short as 15 minutes, and they must happen, even if people feel they have nothing to say.
💡Treat others how you wish someone treated you when you were in their position.
We All Want To Belong (Culture)
Culture and all the guiding principles under which you lead your teams and organization don’t just occur by accident – at least good ones don’t. If you believe that all it takes to get where you want, culture-wise, is to let time pass and let people get used to each other, I believe you’ll find yourself in trouble.
Culture is more than sending memes or going on that retreat week once a year. Culture is what happens every day, on and off working hours. It has to do with the support system the company and leadership offer to people so they can be at their best, professionally and personally. Culture is the collection of guidelines, conscious and unconscious, that drive decisions, behavior and mindset.
I like to imagine teams as single buckets full of water. The bucket and the amount of water are the same – it has to do with everything that needs to happen for an idea to come alive at a given time. One project or company, one bucket full of water.
A small team is made of fewer employees, each one with bigger glasses of water; bigger teams have people with smaller glasses of water. The size of the employees’ glasses has nothing to do with how much or little work they do; it’s simply a way of understanding the footprint of each individual’s contribution.
In a small team, when someone doesn’t show up for their team, the amount of water missing in the bucket is bigger, more impactful and harder to compensate for. It requires true team spirit and camaraderie not to let the team collapse – because most small teams have tapped out their capacity. Meaning, to avoid disasters, you’re relying on people’s pure team spirit. (Note that in small teams, the founder and the leaders also matter more – beware of yourself.)
If you want a team that supports each other, that runs the extra mile when needed, that is innovative and curious, you have to build a Culture that encourages such behaviors.
So, the best investment, especially if you run a small team, is doubling down on Culture: understanding the principles that create an aligned, transparent, supportive environment where people want to belong and do not disengage easily.
Note: revisit the true maths behind disengaged people by simply glancing at (1) costs of losing top talent (2) costs of rehiring (3) costs of retraining. Ouch.
💡Create a workplace from which people never want to leave.
Common Mistakes Small, Remote and Hybrid Teams Make To Avoid
Too Many Meetings
Meetings are dangerous if they become a co-dependency and a consequence of people’s laziness about writing and documenting their thinking.
1-on-1 calls are useful when used right, but no one else can access that knowledge (unless documented and shared).
Team calls are useful, but make sure everyone is directly affected by the topic of discussion and you don’t just have too many people watching others have 1-on-1s.
Also, frequently pinging people to jump on a quick call is highly disruptive because you’re assuming that person must be available immediately. You need to protect deep, focused work time at all costs if you want to have an effective team.
So, yes, host and encourage calls, but mindfully and carefully. Make sure you enter a call with a clear goal in mind and make sure you leave with an output. It can be as simple as clarity, a sense of direction, and next steps figured out.
No Shared Processes & OS
When everybody works differently, it’s hard to combine knowledge, it creates platform chaos and information misalignment.
Encourage people to find their own operating system but make sure there is a shared central process and platform where progress and critical information must be up to date at all times. This is a shared commitment.
No Onboarding Processes
Without proper onboarding processes, new hires feel lost, lose their motivation, and take too long to get up to speed.
You want to hire and nurture, so you start capitalizing on talent and financial investment as soon as possible.
No Documentation
When you or someone in your team are the only ones who know and/or can do something, you’re creating a bottleneck. If no one else can create emails, access servers, change settings etc, you’re in danger.
Make sure processes that tend to happen frequently are well documented and accessible to everyone. And make sure multiple people are granted access to key platforms. This is like having an emergency plan at all times.
No Comms Map
Set communication rules to avoid people having something important to say and not knowing where.
Make it clear what type of information needs to be shared via email, docs, Slack (groups or individual conversations), calls, etc.
Reduce friction on the process of sharing information and encourage people to think about sharing async as much as possible, and about the level of urgency they want to convey. It’s not nice to feel the house is on fire all the time, especially if it’s false alarms left and right.
I find the Eisenhower Matrix (or Urgent-Important Principle) super useful. You can look it up, but a quick summary is to think of it as a method for sorting tasks into four quadrants: Do First (Urgent/Important), Schedule (Important/Not Urgent), Delegate (Urgent/Not Important), and Eliminate (Not Urgent/Not Important). This helps understand how relevant and urgent it is, which then helps to map out the best communication channel.
Unrealistic Expectations
If you think that saying something is for next week when it isn’t, just to create urgency, you’re nurturing an environment of deceived reality and you’re not giving people the ability to follow the process that will lead to best results. People will fail and there won’t be real consequences either, for anyone, because you kind of knew it wasn’t for next week anyway, which slowly degrades how serious you are about the need of getting something done.
Be transparent, say the truth, empower people, and make sure you have their validation on timeline and expectations. If you get the team to say “yeah, we can accomplish this in 2 weeks” you’re in a great place, the team will most likely deliver. Of course unexpected events happen, and sometimes teams need to put out a fire, but make sure this isn’t the rule.
No Culture
Having zero moments meant for connection, fun and support won’t lead to building a Culture where most people feel they want to be part of. If all interactions are meant to work, people feel transactional. Deliberately create space to go beyond work, for the people.
5 Changes You Can Implement Immediately To Make Your Team More Effective
1 – Propose a “no calls day.”
Give people a day in which no calls are allowed. Don’t do it on Fridays since most tasks need to be accomplished earlier in the week. This gives people the chance to clear a lot of work – you can always go back if you see people aren’t being wise about it.
My suggestion is to go with 90 days of an internal rule of no calls allowed on Wednesdays and see how your team feels about it. Stick to it for the whole period, even if it feels like it’s creating chaos at first.
2 – Encourage people to start the week with a public top 3 priorities list.
One of the rituals at Loop Remote people find most useful is the Monday Activation call, in which we help people define their 3 priorities for the week. I’ve seen incredibly talented and smart people really struggle here because they either lack a more practical approach, or because they are overachievers and then get frustrated, or simply because they’re overwhelmed and have a lot on their plate.
An alternative to Loop Remote’s Monday Activation can be encouraging people to send their 3 priorities for the week on a designated Slack channel every Monday morning – this requires them to start the week by strategizing and reconnecting with open loops.
3 – Encourage people to end the week with a public “note to self.”
When we’re working on something we remember all the details and specificities about it. During the weekend, it’s normal and good that we disengage and create distance from what we were doing. By encouraging people to leave a public “note to self” you’re actually promoting several things at the same time, all very important:
- Easier reengagement – it will be easier to remember where you left when you’re back on Monday.
- Accountability, because it serves as a follow-up to the Monday list.
- A place to share wins and ask for help – be happy about what you have accomplished and ask for help if you have encountered blocks.
4 – Ask people to use AI to document their most important recurrent responsibility or process.
Set the habit of documenting important processes to create a shared library of knowledge. Start by asking people to document their most important recurrent task. They can use a Loom video and AI to summarize instructions, for instance.
It would be great if you could have people doing this for one process, once a month or every other month.
5 – Organize a monthly team building call.
You don’t have to go all big here. Something simple that is recurrent is better than an awesome team building activity that only happened once last year. Start by organizing a 30-minute “Margarita Friday” – that’s how we call it at Loop Remote – in which people show up with their favorite drink.
You can create a space for people to catch up freely for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on how the conversation is flowing (or not), and have a fun game prepared. If you google “team building virtual activities for work,” you’ll get plenty of ideas for fun games.
Start by organising it yourself, and then, at the end of the Margarita Friday, decide who is organizing the next one. Doing this once a month is doable, and it’s fun.
(Organize this early on Friday, otherwise people will feel you’re trying to keep them on the whole Friday and they won’t appreciate removing their flexibility.)
Remote Isn’t The Same As Doing Office Work From Home
Doing remote right is an always-evolving experiment. It’s keeping an open mind, trying different approaches until you find what works for your team and for the processes that need to keep flowing.
It requires the same mindset as building an MVP or a new feature – you set a hypothesis on how something will affect people, you roll it out for long enough to observe reactions and actions, and you iterate and make decisions around it.
It is possible to achieve calm, consistency and high performance in small remote and hybrid teams – I’d argue it’s even easier to achieve this remotely, but I’ll save it for another time – it all has to do with the foundations you lay down for people to succeed.
Remote isn’t the same as doing office work but from home. Remote is a full adaptation of work ethics and personal lifestyle and, for that reason, it is only normal that experimentation, time to adjust, and embracing changes are needed.
If you do this right, it is very possible you’ll end up with talented, smart, high-performing, happy teams who’ll never want to leave. It’s worth the shot.
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