For tech teams, adopting digital tools is rarely the issue. More often, it’s the culture you build as a founder that determines team cohesion. And ultimately, it impacts the success of your company. This requires founders to set a vision, model behaviour, and build trust among team members.

A founder with whom I worked started his company as a remote team from the outset. He was in the UK, and his co-founder was based in Asia. Their team grew quickly over six months to include staff members from the UK and from other parts of Asia. The founder described his team as good at following standard operating procedures and reading documentation. They built a product and fixed issues. His company was flourishing. However, there were other challenges.

In particular, there were differences in the cultural norms around documenting process. The staff in that region of Asia were skilled builders and highly competent. Yet they did not see documenting process as an important part of their role. Therefore, this task was routinely overlooked. They saw updates as “not mattering” as long as the tasks were done. This resulted in added frustration for the founder, who spent more time chasing status updates than focusing on priorities.

Through our conversation, the founder realised that he had not explicitly communicated to his team the importance of these seemingly insignificant tasks and their knock-on effects. He left with insights on modelling leadership and making communication explicit. He later reported that there had been progress after he made the necessary modifications to his own behaviour and expectations of his team.

As seen in the above example, the real barrier to efficient distributed startup team management may be the unspoken assumptions your team brings to the table, and not the tools themselves. It’s not because people aren’t working hard. Instead, it’s due to teams and individuals navigating invisible cultural context and friction. Furthermore, these assumptions are shaped by personal communication styles and previous work experiences.

In areas like Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, where high-context cultures are common, directness can signal aggression. On the contrary, in low-context cultures such as in Europe, Australia, and the US, indirect communication can come across as passive-aggressive and unclear. 

Research from Erin Meyer's work on cross-cultural team dynamics shows that these misalignments cause an average 23% reduction in team velocity. Therefore, paying attention to the cultural differences, surfacing them in team meetings, and highlighting the importance of areas where there may be misalignments is a key aspect of managing a remote startup team to reduce process gaps, minimise miscommunication, and reduce technical observations being seen as personal attacks.

Intentional leadership in remote startup team management is non-negotiable. You can't assume your team will "figure it out". Because they won't. Instead, they'll just get exhausted trying.

Your team needs more clarity, not just flexibility. Because flexibility without structure creates chaos instead of autonomy

Ways to build culture in a remote team in practice

Set explicit norms

Be explicit about what’s required. For example, this means defining response time expectations, whether it’s within three hours or a day. It also means making decision-making protocols explicit by clarifying who has the final say and what level of consensus is required.

Without explicit norms, you're not building a team. You're building a collection of talented individuals who happen to share a digital workspace.

Co-create norms with your team

These norms need to be co-created by the team, not dictated by one person. This creates aligned expectations while acknowledging diversity in different forms. This includes different ways of thinking, time zones, or communication and working styles.

Document these team agreements on communication channels so that these norms, including response times, meeting etiquette, and cultural holidays, are clear to all.

1:1 conversations as diagnostic tools

Even with the presence of clear norms, issues can persist. This is when 1:1 conversations become essential diagnostic tools instead of performance reviews. A key aspect is how these conversations are framed to ensure they are received as genuine curiosity rather than correction.

Build social culture

Working in a remote team can be isolating. So organise regular social events to build connections between team members. Some ideas include coffee chats and recognition awards for employees. Additionally, this supports building emotional safety and acknowledgement.

These steps not only make your company more resilient but also help you attract and retain top talent in a world where remote work is here to stay. So, start engineering your culture with the same rigour you apply to your product.

While managing a remote startup team can be harder than managing a co-located one, they also offer a breadth of skills, backgrounds, and perspectives that drive innovation when done well.

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