To break down silos, leaders should encourage teams to "move as a group." This means using shared, informal communication channels like group texts to brainstorm and tackle challenges collectively in real-time, rather than having individual members work in isolation.

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To combat remote work isolation, Atlassian designates one team member per week as the "Chief Vibes Officer" (CVO). This person's job is to inject fun and connection through activities like posting prompts in Slack. This simple ritual builds social bridges, leading to higher trust and better problem-solving.

To maximize the value of bringing teams together physically, focus on one of three goals. "Doing" involves collaborative work on a key project. "Learning" focuses on gaining business context. "Planning" aligns the team on strategy and roadmaps. This framework ensures gatherings are purposeful and effective.

Believing traditional weekly 1-on-1s are inefficient and repetitive, V0's leader eliminated them. He favors discussing shared topics in group settings (like a Slack huddle) and reserves direct 1-on-1 time for specific situations like onboarding, rather than a fixed weekly cadence.

The company culture at Lifetime uses shared physical activity—like group classes and training sessions—as a core team-building tool. This practice moves beyond typical corporate bonding, creating a deeper level of trust and shared values among colleagues, which they believe is invaluable in an increasingly remote world.

A successful team launch requires three distinct actions: 1) establishing a vivid, imaginable goal (like JFK's "man on the moon"), 2) setting explicit norms for communication channels and response times, and 3) clarifying each member's individual responsibilities before the next meeting.

A "team brag session"—where each member publicly praises a colleague—is counterintuitively more beneficial for the giver. While the recipient feels respected, the act of recognizing others elevates the praiser's own morale and strengthens team bonds.

High-performing remote teams exhibit "bursty" collaboration—short, intense periods of interaction followed by deep work. To enable this, teams should cancel recurring meetings and instead establish shared "collaboration hours" where everyone is available for ad-hoc problem-solving and spontaneous discussion.

To break down natural information silos in hierarchies, leaders must flip the cultural default from punishing unapproved sharing to demanding proactive oversharing. The new rule is: "You are responsible for informing other people." This creates a shared context that enables decentralized, autonomous decision-making.

To introduce a new idea, a leader shouldn't dictate terms. Instead, they should pose it as a discussion topic and listen to the language the team uses (e.g., "cost of living" vs. "inflation"). Adopting their terminology builds shared understanding and makes people feel heard, which enables collective action.

Solely measuring a team's output fails to capture the health of their collaboration. A more robust assessment includes tracking goal achievement, team psychological safety, role clarity, and the speed of execution. This provides a holistic view of team effectiveness.

Foster Team Cohesion by Insisting Everyone "Move as a Group" | RiffOn