You’re used to working in an office. You start each day grabbing a coffee. Maybe dropping the kids off at school. Commuting to an office. Joining meetings. Weighing in on random conversations with coworkers. Replying to emails, and going to lunch with a client. Before long, you’re commuting home to gear up for the next day. The rituals of modern-day office life are familiar and reliable.

The sudden impact of a global pandemic has forced millions of people to transition to remote work without much of a warning or game plan. Most companies are scrambling to recreate office life...outside the office.

There is a lot of mystery around remote work. The remote part, to be specific. This past week, we’ve had many of our own clients ask us how we make remote work, work. We’ve spent over a decade figuring out remote work at MetaLab with a team that works from 12 countries and 8 time zones. We’ve only landed here after years of questioning how we work—evolving our norms, processes, and policies.  

So, while we’re adapting to this new norm with you, we wanted to share some of the remote life strategies we’ve developed over the last decade that keep us focused, productive and connected.

Build a Strong Foundation

Remote-First Culture & Trust

As Simon Sinek says, “Your company doesn’t have a culture. It is a culture.” Cultures evolve and we’ve learned moving towards a remote culture means dialing up in some specific areas.

In a remote environment, employees make hundreds of decisions on their own every day. Here are some of the things that help put these guardrails in place: 

• Let go of traditional productivity markers: You might have to get comfortable with not actually seeing people working all the time. But it doesn't necessarily mean less will get done. In fact, studies show the opposite. Often, companies see large productivity gains with remote-first teams—individuals have fewer interruptions and are given more freedom to work how and when works best for them. Embrace the heads-down time and think about whether your questions, requests, or check-ins are as necessary as you may have initially thought. Keep in mind that using the metric of output can make it easy to lose track of someone’s workload, so be sure to check in once in a while to ensure they don’t feel like they’re drowning.
• Allow for varying points of view: In a remote environment, you have to encourage people to speak their minds and make space for dialogue. Intentional investment in creating room for conversations (big and small) is a critical part of keeping a community connected remotely. The work is often better for it as this mindset encourages a variety of ideas and solutions that are so important when working remotely as a team. Before a video meeting, ask everyone to bring ideas or questions on the topic being discussed; heading into a meeting knowing there’s going to be an opportunity to share puts people at ease knowing they’ll get a turn to be heard.
• Thank someone every day: Call out good work early and often. Take time to thank somebody every day: it helps remote folks feel more visible and has the added benefit of building bonds from a distance. Let your team or teammates know that you notice how much they do, and recognize it. To help with this, we use a tool called Bonusly that lets you collectively celebrate people’s efforts.  
• Flexible work hours: Set up core work hours when the entire team can expect to be available and define these. It’s best not to make core hours an 8 hour day—trust that your team is putting in the work they need to but don’t force it to be in a set 8 hour period.‍
• Take fun seriously: In-person office culture grows around water coolers, lingering after a meeting in a conference room to talk, and after-work socializing. We’re here to get things done, but we’re still humans who love that social connection and it’s no different remotely. We build a strong community at MetaLab outside of the work itself partly through our use of ‘off-topic’ Slack channels. Building public channels about things unrelated to work gives space for new jokes, blowing off steam, and finding common connections with others. We've scattered some of our favourites throughout the post—like this one.
  

Much of the above may seem like common sense. And it is. People do their best work when they are supported and empowered. The more intentional everyone can be in building collaboration, recognition and autonomy, the stronger and more resilient your culture will be in adapting to the change and challenges that lay ahead.

Come Together

Remote Communication

Communication is so vital to working well remotely that it has its own section. While an entire post could be dedicated to unearthing all the various facets of getting communication right, here are some of the fundamentals of remote communication. 

• Communicate. A lot: Work as a team to create a shared understanding of what communication looks like for your company. Determine what’s better suited for synchronous vs asynchronous communication. Confirm when you've received an update, and most importantly, ask for clarification if something’s unclear. In a remote setting, it’s always better to dial up your frequency of communication—it will benefit you and your team.
• Document key discussions: Working remotely can mean that it’s harder to document decisions with conversations happening in various forums and tools. To make sure everyone is aligned, document and share all of the items you’ve discussed, decided, and assigned as a team. This can be done with a follow-up Slack message or next steps post in a project management tool. Minimizing gaps in decision-making and reaching decisions as a collective is important to both staying efficient and giving everyone a seat at the virtual table. 
• Assume goodwill: When working remotely, text-based chat tends to be the primary form of communication. But chats lack the emotional undertones that verbal cues and body language convey about someone’s intent. So, we have found it is best to always start with the assumption that others don't have a hidden agenda. This makes for stronger relationships and stronger communication. If you ever are unsure, ask to hop on a video call and chat things through. And a small thing that has become a reflex for our team: add an emoji or two to a message to convey your intent with what you’re saying—even a virtual smile goes a long way.‍
• Set clear expectations: When working remotely, there are fewer opportunities for those “chance encounters” to check in with quick questions and updates. Be explicit about what you need in your communication at the outset of a project or meeting about an upcoming milestone. Our thresholds to attune to others’ needs and priorities may be diminished right now, so it doesn't hurt to dial this up to better ensure smoother sailing ahead.
  

You got this

There is a lot of uncertainty about the future right now, and your team’s resilience will be significantly impacted by the culture you foster, communication norms you develop, the tools you use, and the space you create. For specific suggestions about remote-friendly tools, check out  Notion’s guide.

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While we don’t have all the answers, we wanted to share a bit about what makes MetaLab tick in hopes it helps you and your teams succeed.

If you want to learn more about different dimensions of remote work/life, here are some perspectives from others on our team:

• Rich, our CEO, writing about leading a remote team.
  
• James, our VP of Design, writing about designing remotely.
  
• Danielle, our Content Strategist, writing about her experience with moving to remote work.

Now that you have a strategy and your differentiators in place, it’s time to draft the entire product experience into a single document. This is a key step in the product lifecycle called product definition. 

One of the key deliverables that comes out of the product definition is the product blueprint. Your product blueprint allows you to visualize the entire product service on one page. This helps manage its complexity, including the actions and touchpoints of all the actors, key features, technical dependencies, and operational requirements.

Behind the scenes, there are several key assets that power this product blueprint: 

This view helps to ensure your team is aligned on the critical pieces of success.

That being said, it’s easy to go overboard with product blueprints, so don’t boil the ocean! Focus on the few critical features and components that will make a big impact for your customers.

Remember to trust in yourself and the research that has been done. Your customers don't always know what the right solution is for their wants and needs. That's why it's your job to consider their needs in the context of your product's potential and develop an appropriate blueprint that can scale in the future.

We saw earlier that you’re going to be spending the majority of your time in the product definition/design, testing, and build phases, which means you need a talented team of skilled makers. 

This may seem obvious, but when building the right team with the right chemistry within your budget, there are a lot of factors to consider. How long will it take for the team to gel? Do you stick with who you have? When should you contract vs. hire?

Too often, we see companies spend big budgets hiring a ton of great developers and designers. They throw them onto a project expecting the product will be delivered fast only to find the team isn’t hitting their milestones. Why? 

Teams typically struggle to get going immediately because of differing working styles, personalities, mindsets, and honestly… sometimes ego. That’s why you shouldn’t focus on individual hires but on the team as a whole.

If you have time, budget, and desire to invest in the future culture of your company, you have to invest time to build the team dynamics. We find that it typically takes 4-5 sprints for a team to find its groove — approximately four months, or more.

If you are an early stage startup, and don’t have a lot of time (six months or less), but still want to get a product out there quickly, we recommend hiring a pre-built team of skilled makers who have launched several products together. 

The key takeaway is to not waste all of your time and money hiring. Building a successful team takes time and cycles of members working together to hit their stride. When necessary, augment with experts to help your team grow, add a skill, or just simply to outsource a function. It ultimately comes down to how you want to allocate your resources.

Don’t reinvent the wheel… and don’t build everything from scratch! Accelerators are existing tools and technologies you can leverage or integrate into your product.

Some of the tools that we use to help accelerate the design process to create and test out designs, concepts, and prototypes with users include Figma, Framer.io, and even Typeform.

For development, we use many different tools and platforms on our projects to help accelerate the product development lifecycle and build products that can scale to meet customer demand.  Several of the most popular and impactful integrations and platforms used by our teams include:

AI is everywhere these days for a reason. It’s powering brand new ways to get work done and being incorporated into almost every tool we already use to make workflows easier. From content creation to scheduling, we are seeing tools popping up for everything. Here are a few that can help accelerate product development:

There are important considerations to keep in mind when using any AI tool in a responsible way. Sensitivity of data uploaded into any of these systems and the originality of the content is a big one.

Policies and regulation with AI are still being figured out, so it’s wise to exercise caution when setting guidelines for your product teams. Leverage these tools as inspiration or starting points for copy, as pieces of a larger composite for images, or to get as specific as possible with prompts in order to generate something unique.

Product development succeeds when teams develop a culture of continuous learning. This is fueled by rigorous testing, analytics, and strategic iteration during key phases of the product lifecycle.

In the discovery phase, we immerse ourselves in understanding our potential early adopters' needs and motivations (see #validators). Alongside this, we work with clients to think through solid analytics strategies. This step instills a data-centric culture from the start, setting the stage for ongoing learning and adaptation. 

By aligning qualitative user insights with a framework for quantitative data capture, we ensure the product strategy we craft will continually evolve to meet user needs.

As we pivot to the alpha and beta stages, the emphasis turns to iterative improvement. We engage early adopters in testing programs. Their first-hand experiences provides invaluable feedback to detect bugs and potential enhancements. 

This feedback, bolstered by real-time analytics data, drives our evidence-based refinement process, prepping the product to be market-fit.

By investing in this cycle of continuous learning — persistent testing, data-informed analytics, and strategic iteration — we embrace a user-centric ethos in product development. This equips our clients to not just navigate, but also thrive.

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When Ravi Mehta (former CPO at Tinder/Product Director at Facebook) was working on the first iteration of his personalized coaching product, he validated it quickly with a paid offering he pieced together with a number of low-code tools.

Leveraging learnings from a community of early adopters, he partnered with MetaLab to help enhance, refine, and evolve the product into the Outpace app.

Outpace launched earlier this year. It provides guided programs for personalized career development designed to level up with the support of a one-on-one AI coach.

We are in a post-WeWork/Theranos era of founders promising growth without showing any profit. You need to ask yourself "What do we need to show investors?" Users are great, but how is this actually going to make money?

You have to show real numbers and an actionable monetization strategy. This means outlining your marketing and growth strategies — and the mechanisms that will bring in not only revenue but profit.

Revenue strategies can vary greatly, but the following are a few of the most common buckets of digital product monetization mechanisms:

There are many ways to monetize a product, and this is by no means an exhaustive list. The right way is the one that will resonate with your audience, so feel free to experiment and be flexible when choosing a strategy.

We’ve been supporting Modular with the release of their new AI platform and product offerings. Early in our engagement, they asked us to design a marketing site to help them grow and segment their sales pipeline. This allowed them better understand, and target, existing and potential users. We took those early learnings to ensure the product landed with their audience and supported their revenue targets.

The product lifecycle doesn’t end with a launch, it goes far beyond. Once you begin to get a better understanding of your customers and their purchase behaviours, it’s vital to adapt, being flexible with pricing, monetization strategies, and identifying unexpected revenue drivers. 

For example, you may see that your primary offering for your SaaS tool is slowly gaining traction, but over and over customers are requesting access to an API for a specific data flow. You may be sitting on a large additional untapped revenue stream and there could be more. Meet your customers where they are!

It helps to consult the people who’ve been there before. There are a million people on LinkedIn who are trying to sell you a service or product that you may not need. There are critical steps that could cost you if you miss them. There are shortcuts you may not even know exist. Trusted advisors can help you navigate this and more. There is just no substitute for experience.

Find seasoned product leaders, designers, or engineers who have launched products in the past and will be familiar with the nitty-gritty details. They will have the perspective to help you find the forest through the trees. You want people on your side who can make sure you are spending your time, efforts, and money on the right things.

These are the Product Survival Kit items that we recommend to anyone who is creating and launching a product in today's climate. It's a mix of techniques, processes, people, actions and tools that we've seen provide success to many of our clients, colleagues and partners out there. But remember — each product is different, so find the mix that worst best for you. 

It may seem daunting but it is possible to successfully bring your idea or product concept to life today.  This may even be the right moment to go after it. Companies who launch useful and impactful products during economic downturns have a history of surviving and thriving. The next one could be you.