• Read more about DISTRIBUTED: Two Things All Successful Leaders Have in Common

In our last blog, we discussed four common mistakes bad bosses make. Now it’s time to take a look at the flipside: What about the good bosses? Believe it or not, there are still plenty of them out there. And we believe the most accomplished leaders have two qualities in common: They are accessible, and they are explicit.

Here's how the Oxford Dictionary defines these two terms:

ac·ces·si·ble: (of a person, typically one in a position of authority or importance) friendly and easy to talk to; approachable.

ex·plic·it: (of a person) stating something in a clear and detailed way.

In our experience, one of these leadership attributes is pretty much useless without the other. No matter how friendly and approachable a manager might be, she can’t be effective if she gives employees ambiguous answers and vague instructions. On the other hand, even if leader delivers precise instructions and well-defined expectations, his team will never thrive if they’re afraid to approach him with questions or problems. To lead a team to success, a manager must possess both of these essential qualities.

Don’t Be a Joker

A leader who is not accessible and explicit will quickly lose his followers—and as author and business consultant Steve Balzac has said, “A leader without followers is just some joker taking a walk.”

Yet far too many jokers, I mean, business managers just can’t seem to nail these two essential leadership skills. As a result, thousands of U.S. employees are jumping ship each year. As we mentioned in our last blog, the number one reason American employees quit is because of a bad boss or immediate supervisor, according to a Gallup poll. The poll also revealed teams under lackluster leadership are half as productive and 44 percent less profitable than well-managed groups. “In the end, turnover is mostly a manager issue," writes the Gallup team. “The effect of poor management is widely felt.”

Leading from Afar

As if effectively managing a team isn’t difficult enough, leading a distributed team is even more daunting. How does a manager establish authority, earn respect and forge a bond with employees who rarely lay eyes on him? The answer is quite simple: He does the same things traditional managers do—but he does it much better.

“Managing in itself doesn’t really change that much [in a distributed environment],” explains Glenn Dirks of Teletrips, Inc. in Managing a Remote Workforce: Proven Practices from Successful Leaders, a Citrix Online-sponsored Future of Work report. “Managers just have to accept their responsibilities for being a good manager—which means de?ning the work that has to be done, assigning the work to the right people, setting clear performance goals, and then holding people accountable for getting it done.”

Dirk says a leader’s abilities become much clearer in a distributed business where they can’t peer over their team’s shoulders all day long. “In short, the more you go ‘virtual,’ the more the quality of management matters,” he adds.

Explicit Instructions & Big Rules

When remote employees are uncertain about the company’s rules and norms, they can quickly become paranoid. Remote managers have to explicitly communicate expectations to remove that sense of insecurity.

In our experience, most effective distributed team leaders always provide each employee with well-defined, written expectations for their job, explicit instructions for what they should be working on, and clear-cut deadlines for their work. These awesome bosses also define deliverables and schedules—even for areas that don’t generally have defined deliverables.

In a report called Managing a Remote Workforce, authors James Ware and Charles Grantham identify the primary attributes of an effective remote manager based on their conversations with distributed work experts. They say the most successful remote managers not only set clear expectations and goals, but they also establish “explicit ‘Big Rules.’” (There’s that word again: explicit.)

Ware and Grantham say it’s important to clearly define acceptable etiquette, protocols, expectations, norms and values. “Do not assume everyone will understand ‘how things get done around here,’” they emphasize.

Répondez S'il Vous Plaît (Within 24-48 Hours)

But as we mentioned before, the best leaders aren’t just explicit—they’re also accessible. Not only are good bosses easy to approach, but they’re also diligent about responding to their employees’ emails, calendar invites, voicemails, IMs and any other communication within 24 to 48 hours.

In other words, a good boss never leaves his staff hanging. That’s because he realizes that without his advice or guidance, an employee may hit a brick wall or reach a stand-still on a critical project.

This 24 to 48 hour response time is especially critical for distributed teams. Here at Intridea, we’ve found that the use of scheduling, email task-management plugin or CRM tools can help with this quick response time.

Because remote managers don’t work shoulder-to-shoulder with their staff, there are no chance encounters or casual meetings. So if you don’t respond to an employee’s email or request in a timely fashion, you might run the risk of forgetting about it completely. In the meantime, the employee might perceive the delay as sign that you’re not taking her requests seriously.

Bonding Time

Because distributed teams are not physically in the same space, it’s even more important for leaders to make themselves as accessible as possible. At Intridea, all company leaders mark out several hours a week when anyone in the company can schedule a time to talk with them via phone, Skype or other methods.

Additionally, whenever our CEO and Managing Directors travel to New York City, they make a point to let the local team members know they’ll be in town and invite them out to lunch or dinner. This helps them build those personal bonds.

Many people are under the misconception that a distributed company is absolutely 100% remote, and no one ever sees each other in person; or worse, that we never want to see each other. To the contrary, we genuinely value the times we get to see each other face-to-face, and we try to make it happen as often as possible. In fact, unlike traditional companies, we make the most of these encounters, which leads to richer relationships.
Tune into our next blog to discover the three most desirable traits for distributed employees. In the meantime, got any stories for leading distributed teams? Keep the conversation going! We'd love to hear from you.

• Read more about DISTRIBUTED: Four Fatal Leadership Fails

American workers are quitting in droves and more frequently than ever. According to the Department of Labor, the average tenure of a U.S. employee is a meager 1.5 years. As the old saying goes, employees don’t quit jobs; they quit bosses, and the numbers continue to validate it. In fact, the number one reason U.S. employees quit is because of a bad boss or immediate supervisor, Gallup reports.

Despite the avalanche of advice online and stacks upon stacks of leadership books available to them, bosses in both traditional and distributed businesses continue to fall short. So what gives? What are all these bad bosses doing wrong? More than likely, they’re making these four leadership fails:

Fail #1: They Set Unclear Expectations Or None At All.

According to a Gallup survey, only half of employees know exactly what’s expected of them—and remote workers are significantly less likely to have clarity about work expectations than in-house employees.

“One of the biggest challenges managers of remote workers face is unclear expectations,” writes Jennifer Robinson, a Senior Editor of the Gallup Business Journal. “Managers often worry that an employee's work will suffer without their supervision or direction, while employees may feel uneasy with a lack of direction or communication, suspecting that they're missing out on valuable information or feedback. These feelings of unease can be prompted by unclear expectations, and it is a clear understanding of ‘what's expected’ that is at the core of any work relationship.”

Fail #2: They’re Poor Communicators.

When it comes to setting clear expectations for your employees, communication is key. Unfortunately, many leaders are communication challenged—and as a result, their employees often leave conversations feeling confused, ignored or flat-out offended.

There are two primary types of communication: written and verbal. The written word is not only more permanent, but we believe it’s often more impactful than verbal conversations. We’ve found that there is great power in writing something down and making it accessible to your company—especially when it comes to sharing your company vision, expectations and core values. When you provide written materials, your employees can refer back to it at as often as necessary. On the other hand, if you choose to communicate these messages verbally, the details can easily be misconstrued or forgotten.

Still, when you choose written communication—whether it’s an email or a training manual—it’s important to write succinct, easy-to-understand messages. Oftentimes, a remote manager’s first reflex is to send a long, drawn-out email in lieu of real-time conversations. If you find yourself typing up an email that could be mistaken for a Melville novel, a conference call might be in order.

Fail #3: Their Doors Are Closed.

Even virtual managers should have an “open door” policy and offer explicit office hours when any staff member can schedule a time to talk. Because distributed teams are not physically in the same space, it’s even more important for leaders to make themselves as accessible as possible.

At Intridea, all company leaders mark out several hours a week when anyone in the company can schedule a time to talk with them via phone, Skype or other methods. By the same token, we also let our team know when we’re not available. We’ve found it helpful to communicate through our calendars, letting everyone know when we’ll be in a meeting, at a doctor’s appointment, or intensely focused on a project so they know not to disrupt us.

Fail #4: They Don’t Bond with Employees.

When a boss takes time to develop relationships with her team, she becomes more approachable. Of course, bonding with distributed employees poses a unique challenge. In fact, nearly half of employees who work on virtual teams say they had never met their virtual team cohorts, according to a report by RW3 LLC. Entitled The Challenges of Working in Virtual Teams, the survey also found that nearly all virtual team members (90%) said they don’t have enough time during virtual meetings to build relationships.

This is why it’s important for distributed companies to set up some type of “virtual water cooler” for social conversations amongst employees—whether it’s Campfire, an IM chat room or a Microblogging group. Managers should make a point to regularly engage in these conversations. This is a huge part of our culture at Intridea. Our virtual water cooler gives us a chance to learn about each other as humans, not just worker bees.

How can distributed leaders avoid these four fails? Find out in our next blog! In the meantime, got any stories for leading distributed teams? Keep the conversation going! We'd love to hear from you.

• Read more about DISTRIBUTED: 7 Ways to Enforce Work-Life Balance

In our last blog, we talked about how important work-life balance is to every company, especially for distributed teams. In our opinion, the power of work-life balance cannot be over-emphasized. If you want to cultivate a team of well-adjusted, engaged employees, it’s essential to not only suggest or strongly encourage work-life balance—but to enforce it. Here are seven surefire ways to do just that:

1: Be Flexible

According to an Accenture study, 80 percent of employees say having flexibility in their work schedule is important to achieving a positive work-life balance. Fortunately, when you’re running a distributed team it’s not necessary to force employees to work a traditional 9 to 5 timeframe. Let your team members choose their own hours so they can work when they feel the most productive.

While one employee may prefer to work from 7:30 am to 3:30 pm when her kids are at school and the house is quiet, a night owl may be the most energized after midnight. Of course, to accommodate these varying work hours, it’s important to minimize scheduled events—such as mandatory conference calls at 3 pm each Monday. Here at Intridea, we do that by relying on email, Hipchat and other forms of asynchronous communication.

Over the years, we’ve noticed an interesting trend: When we allow employees to work reasonable hours each week and give them time off when they need a break, they’re more willing to put in extra hours when necessary.

2: Look for Signs of Burnout

Some researchers say distributed workers might be at higher risk for burnout. In the absence of defined work hours, remote workers often end up working longer—leaving them less time for their personal endeavors, according to a MIT Sloan Management Review article by Jay Mulki, Fleura Bardhi, Felicia Lassk and Jayne Nanavaty-Dahl.

Because distributed team members don’t work in clear view of their supervisors, they also tend to take on more projects than they can handle. “The rapidly increasing prevalence of distributed workforces can make demonstrating the extent of your workload incredibly hard, and often even harder to resolve,” writes independent business consultant Oliver Marks in a ZDNet article. “The result is burnout, and the impact of 'always on' work patterns in organizations of all sizes can ultimately have a significant negative effect on results.”

So how do you ensure your team members don’t lose steam? At Intridea, we strive to make employees feel appreciated and connected at every opportunity. It’s also important to establish clear goals for each team member, revisit those goals frequently and offer encouragement and acknowledgement when the employee reaches certain benchmarks. In other words, if you don’t continually stoke an employee’s fire, it will eventually flicker out.

3: Ensure Employees Catch Enough ZZZ’s

Most Americans don’t get nearly enough shuteye, and the lack of sleep has an adverse effect on their work. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 30 percent of employed U.S. adults don’t get the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep a day. Of course, it’s no surprise that the longer a sleep-deprived person stays awake, the more their productivity level plummets.

In a study by Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, researchers asked sleep deprived participants to perform certain tasks, such as finding information quickly and accurately on computer monitors. As their level of sleep deprivation worsened, the participants’ ability to find the information slowed dramatically.

At Intridea, we strongly encourage our employees to get plenty of sleep. Because our distributed team members have greater control over their working hours, this makes it easier for them to fit a solid eight hours of slumber into their schedule. In the event that one of our employees has to pull an all-nighter on a tight deadline or if they are recovering from a cold or injury, we advise them to catch up on sleep however possible.

We also find it perfectly acceptable for employees to take power naps during the work day. In fact, an increasing number of companies, both distributed and non-distributed, are allowing power naps. For example, Google gives employees an opportunity to nap at work because the company believes it increases productivity—and recent research proves that this notion is absolutely true. In a NASA-financed study, a team of researchers found that allowing subjects to nap for as little as 24 minutes improved their cognitive performance.

4: Encourage Exercise

A study by Jim McKenna from the University of Bristol showed that when employees took a break from work to exercise, their work performance was consistently higher and they demonstrated better time management and improved mental sharpness when they returned to the office. These employees also reported feeling more tolerant of themselves and more forgiving of their colleagues.

At Intridea, not only do we encourage employees to get active—we take it to the next level by holding company-wide Fitbit competitions. If you haven’t heard of this awesome little gadget, the Fitbit tracks steps taken, calories burned, floors climbed, activity duration and intensity and more. Our employees wear it on their wrist all day and then plug it into a wireless base station to upload the data into the Fitbit website. From there, we can see an overview of each employee’s physical activity. At the end of the week, we crown the employee with the most impressive exercise stats as Fitbit champion. It’s a fun way to tap into our team’s competitive spirit while promoting physical fitness.

5: Support Family Time

For many professionals, the definition of work-life balance is simple: they want a fulfilling job that allows them to spend more quality time with their families. Sadly, half of working dads and more than half of working moms say they find balancing work and family responsibilities “very” or “somewhat” difficult, according to a Pew Research report. Based on the report, 46 percent of fathers and 23 percent of moms say they don't get enough time with their kids.

We at Intridea do everything possible to accommodate working moms and dads. While traditional businesses typically offer two weeks or less of paternity leave (if any at all), we work with new parents to create a customized schedule to fit their needs.

For example, our flex hours allowed one team member to care for his newborn child and create an alternating feeding, changing and sleeping schedule with his wife. This gave him the opportunity to bond with his daughter, support his wife and still be a productive member of our team.

6: Make Vacations Mandatory

It’s really no wonder why there are so many unhappy employees in the U.S. Our nation is the only advanced economy that does not require employers to provide paid vacation time. Consequently, almost one in four Americans do not receive any paid vacations or paid holidays, according to a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. And according to a Harris Interactive study, more than half of American workers have up to two weeks’ worth of unused vacation at the end of the year.

While some employers might applaud this behavior, it’s a lose-lose when workers don’t take some much-needed R&R. Many studies show that a person’s happiness level spikes after a vacation, resulting in a recharged and mentally refreshed employee. The average traveler experiences a 25 percent increase in work performance after returning from vacation, according to the Travel Leisure Monitor.

We give Intridea employees unlimited vacation time. Our vacation policy is quite simple: “Take what you need.” We also offer “workations,” which allow employees to travel the world and work from wherever they are. Like vacations, research shows workations also offer many valuable benefits. For one, multi-cultural experiences and exotic surroundings often generate more inspired and creative work, according to research by Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

7: Get Rid of the Commute

If nothing else, distributed businesses offer improved work-life balance simply because employees don’t have to waste hours on end fighting traffic. According to the Department of Transportation, the average American driver logs 37 miles a day. To make matters worse, the typical commuter spends more than 38 hours a year stuck in traffic congestion—and that number is even higher in big cities such as D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco, at 60 hours a year.

By not commuting last year, our team saved a combined total of 9,816 hours. Check out Intridea's YourTime to see examples of what our team members do with the extra time they save by NOT commuting.

Tune into our next blog to learn about the 4 Fatal Leadership Fails.

• Read more about DISTRIBUTED: Work Life Balance

Cue a thousand eye-rolls. Trust us, we know the phrase “work-life balance” has been overused, abused and beaten to a pulp in the corporate world. Even so, this principle is extremely important for every business—especially for distributed teams. Sadly when it comes to ensuring employees live a well-adjusted life, plenty of companies talk the talk; but very few walk the walk.

Here at Intridea, we’ve discovered that when our team members derive joy from activities outside of work hours, they channel that happiness directly into their projects during work hours. In the end, this leads to increased employee productivity and higher quality work. That’s exactly why we urge our employees to maintain a healthy balance between their professional and personal lives.

Can’t Buy Success

According to a study by Accenture, more than half of surveyed workers say work-life balance is the key determiner for whether or not they have a successful career. They place it ahead of recognition, autonomy and even money.

The study was based on surveys of 4,100 business executives from medium to large organizations in 33 countries, including the U.S. Half of those surveyed said they have turned down a job offer because they believed it could negatively impact their work-life balance.

"Companies that can help their employees navigate both their professional and personal lives are likely to see strong employee engagement and enjoy an advantage as they recruit and retain high performers,” said Nellie Borrero, managing director of global inclusion and diversity for Accenture.

Boost Your Bottom Line

Not only does work-life balance lead to more engaged employees—it can also give your company’s earnings a major boost. Based on a study by UK firm Morgan Redwood, businesses that helped workers achieve a healthy work-life balance earned nearly a quarter more per employee each year than companies that did not.

Study participants said their employees were able to manage their personal lives more easily, resulting in fewer missed days, improved well-being and increased productivity—which led to higher profits for the entire company.

The Happiness Factor

Employees with a balanced life are generally more cheerful people—and studies show that happiness pays off big time for businesses.

In The Happiness Advantage: Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work, author and researcher Shawn Achor points out that a happy workforce increases sales by 37 percent and productivity by 31 percent.

“It’s irrefutable. We know happy employees are the most successful employees, so happiness brings success, and that brings success to our organizations,” says Helen Mumford Sole, an executive coach who specializes in happiness. “This is a win-win all around.”

Not surprisingly, remote workers are often happier simply because they aren’t forced to schlep to a brick-and-mortar office day after day. According to an annual telecommuting survey issued by Staples Advantage, telecommuting programs are “mutually beneficial” for both employers and employees. That’s because remote working results in more content employees, reduced absenteeism and less stress. “Telecommuting can help achieve balance between workplace demands and life obligations,” explained Tom Heisroth, senior vice president for Staples Advantage.

Because distributed businesses cut out the commute and offer employees a more flexible schedule, these companies inherently lead to improved work-life balance. However, we believe it’s not enough for distributed teams to simply suggest that employees strive for work-life balance—or even strongly encourage it. If you want your business to thrive, it’s essential to put work-life balance front and center.

In our next blog, we’ll reveal seven surefire ways to enforce work-life balance for your distributed team.
Does your company work remote? Keep the conversation going! We'd love to hear from you.

• Read more about DISTRIBUTED: Get in A-Synch

In our last blog, we discussed the difference between asynchronous and synchronous communication. (Synchronous communication is a real-time conversation, such as a meeting or phone call, while asynchronous communication is a discussion that take place outside of real time, such as an email. Synchronous communication requires an immediate response; asynchronous doesn’t.)

If you read the last blog, you might have picked up on the fact that we at Intridea are big fans of asynchronous communication. That’s because teams fall into four major pitfalls when they rely on synchronous communication:

• Pitfall #1: The demand for instant answers, which leads to hasty responses.
• Pitfall #2: Increased pressure on employees.
• Pitfall #3: Constant distractions, which forces employees to drop what they’re doing and shift their focus.
• Pitfall #4: Ineffective conversations and meetings dominated by extroverts and chronic interrupters.

We believe that asynchronous communication solves each of these common pitfalls. Here’s how:

Solving Pitfall #1: The Power of Delayed Gratification

The first common pitfall of synchronous communication is the demand for abrupt answers. We all have an innate desire for instant gratification. It’s just human nature. We don’t want it later; we want it right now. The technological advances we’ve enjoyed in recent decades only feed this desire by meeting our demands for immediate fulfillment.

With the advent of DVR and VOD, instant messaging, video streaming, same-day delivery services and thousands of time-saving smartphone apps, many folks have lost the ability to wait for anything.

This demand for instant gratification doesn’t just apply to material objects; it also applies to answers. When it comes to running a fast-paced business, we want answers, and we want them now. But is this really the most effective approach? Sure, it may feel great to ask an employee a question and receive the answer instantly. But is that rushed response the correct answer, the best answer, the most insightful answer? Probably not. It’s almost always better to wait patiently for a well-prepared response than to demand a hasty answer.

Solving Pitfall #2: Release the Pressure

Because synchronous communication demands immediate answers, it often puts employees under intense pressure. Yet, some corporate leaders claim that employees hatch the most creative ideas when they are under a time crunch. According to research published in the Harvard Business review, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

“When creativity is under the gun, it usually ends up getting killed,” write researchers Teresa M. Amabile, Constance N. Hadley and Steven J. Kramer. “Although time pressure may drive people to work more and get more done, and may even make them feel more creative, it actually causes them, in general, to think less creatively.”

So when you don’t demand immediate responses from your team, it protects employees from unnecessary stress—and gives them elbow room to create ingenious work.

Solving Pitfall #3: Derailing Distractions

Synchronous communication also leads to constant disruptions. When you choose to communicate in real-time with your employees every single time you have a question or an issue, you are often distracting them from their work. On the other hand, asynchronous communication greatly reduces the number of disruptions in the workplace. When an employee is not expected to respond to every single question or issue immediately, they can focus on one task at a time, which will send their productivity levels soaring.

Research shows that even a three-second interruption can cause employees to make more mistakes. One Michigan State University study, in which 300 people performed a sequence-based procedure on a computer, found that interruptions of about three seconds doubled the error rate. In the workplace, the vast majority of these interruptions come in the form of phone calls, chit-chat and impromptu meetings.

When you create an environment where employees are not expected to respond to everything immediately, they can stay focused on their work and effectively manage their schedules. Some employees may prefer to respond to emails at specific times of the day or at specific intervals. Others may choose to reply to the “easy” emails more quickly but wait until later in the day to respond to messages that require more time and thought. Asynchronous communication allows for all of this.

Solving Pitfall #4: Don’t Interrupt

One of the most common forms of synchronous communication is the in-person meeting. Yet, these meetings are often wildly ineffective. Why? Because it’s virtually impossible to carry on a productive conversation when people are constantly interrupting each other.

And let’s face it: Some folks are chronic interrupters and terrible listeners. These talkative types tend to dominate in-person meetings, often talking over other contributors (that is, if anyone else can even get a word in edgewise). In this type of environment, the majority of participants never have an opportunity to present their ideas—and extremely introverted team members don’t stand a chance.

Asynchronous communication solves this common predicament. After all, you can’t interrupt someone in a chat message or email. When you choose to communicate via email or chat message, it's easier for all parties to get their thoughts across without stepping all over each other. You’re also more likely to hear from the more introverted participants, who might have something extremely valuable to contribute.

Asynch @Intridea

Why are we such huge advocates of asynchronous communication? Because we’ve experienced the effectiveness of this type of communication first-hand.

When we first founded Intridea, we worried that not being able to meet in-person would be a problem. But as it turned out, we actually freed ourselves from many standard operating procedures that tended to get in our way, allowing us to examine what was most important in our communication. Without having to meet in-person, we found ourselves optimizing communication methods, which in turn boosted our productivity.

For example, in the early days of our company, we held a daily phone call to discuss each of our projects. During this call, we talked about what we had worked on yesterday, what we were working on today, and if there was anything blocking our progress. In the software industry, these daily calls are often called “scrums.” (The term comes from the “scrimmage” formation in rugby, which is used to restart the game after an event that causes play to stop.)

At the beginning of a particularly time-crunched project, we decided to switch things up. We moved our daily scrum from an early-morning phone call to a mid-day check-in via our microblogging platform—and it was transformative. We found that using the online check-in, our developers had more time and inclination to go into greater depth about past and anticipated progress. They were also more likely to acknowledge any obstacles they were facing—including being blocked by other developers. It seemed like a fairly subtle change, but it allowed us to gain so much development velocity, we ended up launching the project early.

So we initially tried to replicate the standard way of communicating with a distributed team. When that didn’t work, we changed our approach. Obviously, technology has helped us solidify our communication process. Either way, we know what type of communication works best: Asynch all the way.

Of course, asynchronous communication is just one of many principles we value here at Intridea. Don’t miss our next blog on the importance of work-life balance.

• Read more about Maintaining Your Boxen Install

@Intridea we use boxen as part of our employee on-boarding process and equipment upgrades. The selling point: having a shared automated process for getting machines up and ready to do real work on...

What Happened?

Recently, a co-worker received a new laptop and I pointed him to our boxen-web instance. The problem is it didn't work for him. I was confused because running boxen on my machine worked just fine. After digging deep and troubleshooting I learned that the initial install process for boxen is quite different than running the boxen command afterwards.

It had been a few months since anyone installed from scratch with our boxen setup, and the only error message I was getting was pretty vague.

sudo: /opt/boxen/rbenv/shims/gem: command not found sudo: /opt/boxen/rbenv/shims/gem: command not found ... 

I could tell both ruby and git were failing to set-up properly, but it wasn't much to go on. I didn't yet know whether the failure was due to Jeff's configuration or the main boxen configuration. After having him try it with his personal manifest files removed, it was confirmed to be a problem with the main boxen configuration. The next step was to try a fresh install myself.

Fixing our Boxen Setup

First I partitioned my hard drive and installed a fresh copy of 10.9.2. I removed the files for my personal manifest from the boxen repository in order to keep the install as simple as possible. I verified that I was receiving the same error message listed above.

Next, I tried a fresh install from the mainline boxen. This also failed with a different git related error. I've mentioned before that the boxen documentation is lacking, and I was only finding issues with people having the same problem and no solution. I was out of options.

I decided to merge mainline boxen with our boxen setup. I found that doing this created conflicts in both the Puppetfile and Puppetfile.lock. I fixed the conflicts in the Puppetfile. The official boxen docs say that it isn't necessary to resolve conflicts in the Puppetfile.lock. So I tried:

rm Puppetfile.lock bundle exec librarian-puppet install --clean 

However, those steps only gave me this error:

Could not resolve the dependencies. 

So I backed up a step and manually resolved the conflicts in the Puppetfile.lock. This, while extremely tedious, worked.

After merging mainline boxen, I was left with the same error referring to git. I next looked at what version of git our Puppetfile was using and what was available on the puppet-git repository. I found that mainline boxen was using 2.3.0 while 2.3.1 had been released more recently. On a hunch I upgraded to 2.3.1 and performed yet another fresh install of boxen. This time it worked.

Preventative Maintenance for your Boxen

After going through the above hellish process, here's some recommendations on how to ensure smooth operation in the future.

Keep a fresh install of OS X on an external drive

• You should keep whatever point release you expect to send laptops out with (10.9.2 in our case).

Use the nuke tool

• After an initial boxen run, you can restore the machine to pristine status by using the nuke tool that comes with boxen.

/opt/boxen/repo/script/nuke --force --all 

The above command will remove boxen entirely from your machine. It isn't necessary to reinstall OS X.

Create a dummy user for your boxen repo

• You will need a github user for your organization which has no personal boxen configuration. This makes it simple to determine whether the problem lies in personal configuration or in your company wide boxen configuration (site.pp).

Test the install often

• In the above scenario, I left out the part about the homebrew version that boxen uses also being broken. Testing more often would have allowed us to catch and fix each of these minor problems one by one instead of as part of a marathon debugging session.

The mainline boxen is not always correct

• In the scenario above, I figured merging the mainline ought to get us to a working state. However, mainline boxen had a broken puppet-git module (2.3.0) at that point, while 2.3.1 was the version that worked. So beware of keeping up to date with mainline too fast.

Got any tips or tricks for using boxen? Send us a tweet or message us on Facebook!

• Read more about DISTRIBUTED: Why Synchronous Communication Sucks

We at Intridea have learned that running a distributed business is half art form, half calculated science. Without clear purpose and direction, a remote team will quickly unravel. That’s why we follow a specific set of principles or “rules” to keep our team as effective and connected as possible. One of those rules is to avoid synchronous communication as often as possible.

Ask yourself this: What is the most effective way to communicate with your team? Is it best to meet face-to-face with employees, present them with a problem and attempt to resolve the issue together in real time? Or is it more productive to send your employees an email, give them a couple of hours or days to digest the information and ask them to respond later when they are prepared with an informed answer?

While it may seem inconsequential, the mode of communication you choose can make or break your company—particularly if you run a distributed business.

Synchronous vs. Asynchronous

Synchronous communication is basically a real-time conversation. For example, if you call up an employee, meet face-to-face or send an instant message to discuss an issue, that’s synchronous communication. Another example would be an online meeting or conference call, when your entire team gets together to chat and offer immediate responses.

Synchronous communication is extremely popular with traditional brick and mortar businesses, where most discussions are handled in-person through conversations and meetings. Usually everyone is in the same location and participates at the same time. Because it necessitates swift answers, synchronous communication often gives an advantage to those who speak fastest—not those who speak the wisest.

On the other hand, asynchronous communication occurs outside of real time. There is a delay or a “lag” between the question and the response. This lag could be any given amount of time specified by the team leader—whether it’s two hours, two days or two weeks. Unlike real-time conversations, asynchronous communication allows your team members to respond when they can focus fully on the discussion.

For example, if you email an employee a question and ask her to respond by the next morning, that’s asynchronous communication. Asynchronous communication also takes place through project management tools, wiki or microblogging platforms. With these tools, the organizer posts a question, concern or document and each employee responds with their answers, suggestions and edits on their own time.

Down with Knee-Jerk Responses

Naysayers of asynchronous communication often claim it is ineffective for urgent matters—but this is simply not true. Although there is a delay between the question and the response, the pause may be as little as one minute. If an issue is time-sensitive, it's important and reasonable for a colleague or team leader to request a response within a specific amount of time. For example, when you send an employee an email marked “High Importance!” and ask her to respond within the next five minutes, this is still considered asynchronous communication.

Because synchronous communication always calls for immediate answers, it does not afford much time for reflection—which often leads to impulsive, unimaginative and sometimes downright wrong responses. It also creates distraction that forces the recipient to drop whatever they’re doing and switch focus. On the other hand, asynchronous communication gives an employee time to prepare a thoughtful, educated answer as opposed to a knee-jerk response.

Particularly in a distributed business, it’s important to create a business culture where instant responses are not demanded or expected. When your team members have time to respond carefully, it fosters a culture of creativity and productivity and limits the number of distractions they face in a day. These are just a few of the many reasons why business communication should be handled asynchronously whenever possible—especially with distributed teams that are often dispersed across a variety of time zones.

Four Fatal Pitfalls of Synchronous Communication

So, why do we at Intridea hate on synchronous so much? Because teams that rely on synchronous communication fall into these four common pitfalls:

1. The demand for instant answers, which leads to hasty responses.
2. Increased pressure on employees
3. Constant distractions, which forces employees to drop what they’re doing and shift their focus.
4. Ineffective conversations and meetings dominated by extroverts and chronic interrupters.

We believe asynchronous communication solves each of these common pitfalls. Tune into our next blog to find out how.
Does your company work remote? Keep the conversation going! We'd love to hear from you.

• Read more about In A Galaxy Far, Far Away...NASA Gets Their Webby!

Previously, we mentioned that NASA won a Webby, and we were delighted to accompany them to New York City to receive it. With a packed schedule of events, the Webbys pulled out all the stops with a star-studded, wildly entertaining night to remember. Award recipients and attendees were treated to a cocktail hour, followed by a fun, fast-paced ceremony at the famed Cipriani Wall Street.

During a delicious, four-course meal, guests were regaled with a stream of acceptance speeches by all of the winners. All speeches had to be 5 words or less, which left little room for rambling, but lots of room for wit. A crowd favorite? A speech that wisely stated: “As my favorite song says—”

NASA astronaut, Mike Massimino, wasn’t the only powerhouse in the room: guests rubbed elbows with Orange Is The New Black’s Taylor Schilling; Jason Collins, the NBA’s first openly gay player; the Jamaican Olympic Bobsled team; De La Soul; the co-founder of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee; and one of Mobomo’s all-time favorites, George Takei (who presented NASA’s award!). And for those who want to know exactly what the Fox says, we can tell you, but we’ll have to charge: he sat right next to us during the ceremony, and as you’d expect, had a lot to say.

After an exciting night, the Webbys closed with one more after-party, where guests celebrated their Internet wins. Congratulations, again NASA! We may be biased, but you were the most stellar winner in the room.

• Read more about Molten Magic: Mobomo Visits Mars, Inc.

We love all of our customers, but working with a world-renowned, chocolate company makes everything a little bit sweeter!

While building mobile solutions to help Mars’ global sales teams, we were invited to visit the company’s main North American candy campus. There we took a private, guided tour around, and saw exactly how all that Mars magic is made.

We’ve been on a lot of tours, but none as colorful and sweet! We got to see the magical center of an M+M, giant vats of gooey chocolate, and even some of our favorite candies being made. Willy Wonka himself would have been awed.

We couldn’t be more…satisfied to call Mars one of our clients—and we certainly couldn’t be more full! Thanks for the tour and treats, Mars! We’ll happily come back (and taste test!) any day.

• Read more about DISTRIBUTED: How Distributed Work Benefits Society (As In the Whole Wide World)

In our last two blogs, we detailed the advantages distributed work offers both businesses and their employees. However these benefits extend far beyond the business world. In fact, we’d go so far as to say the distributed trend is benefitting everyone—as in society as a whole.

“Numerous studies find that telecommuting can lead to many economic benefits that accrue to workers, consumers, businesses and society,” states a report by the American Consumer Institute Center for Citizen Research. “[Telecommuting] could lead to less pollution and oil consumption for society, increased benefits for consumers, and a better work life balance and opportunities for the employees, especially for the disabled, stay-at-home parents, and rural residents.”

Here are just a few of the major societal benefits:

Benefit to Society #1: A Breath of Fresh Air

Distributed businesses conserve energy and reduce fuel consumption and pollution. Since remote teams don’t require brick-and-mortar offices, wasteful after hours heating and cooling is eliminated. Instead, employees simply heat and cool their home offices—which would be heated and cooled regardless.

According to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), telecommuting saves 9 to 14 billion kilowatt-hours of energy each year—roughly the amount of energy needed to power 1 million U.S. households annually.

Since remote employees don’t commute to work every day, distributed businesses also help reduce greenhouse gases and conserve tons upon tons of oil. If employees with telework-compatible jobs who want to work from home did so just half of the time, the U.S. would reduce greenhouse gases by 54 million tons—the equivalent of taking almost 10 million cars off the road for a full year. Our nation would also save more than 640 million barrels of oil valued at more than $64 billion, according to Global Workplace Analytics.

Benefit to Society #2: Giving Our Roads a Break

The distributed trend also relieves pressure on our nation’s crumbling highways and interstates. According to Global Workplace Analytics, less than six percent of U.S. city’s roads have kept pace with the droves of commuters over the past decade. If traffic continues to grow at its current rate, we’ll need to build another 104,000 miles of new road—which will cost our nation $530 billion. However, if more companies were to embrace remote work, it would give our nation’s disintegrating transportation infrastructure a much-needed break—and save tax payers billions of dollars.

Benefit to Society #3: Encouraging Family Values

Nearly half of American workers say they are willing to take a pay cut to telecommute or have a flexible work schedule—primarily because it would improve their personal lives and make them better parents, according to survey sponsored by Mom Corps.

“The way the majority of corporate America works no longer aligns with the way U.S. families conduct their daily lives,” Allison O’Kelly, founder and CEO of Mom Corps, points out in a press release. “Participating in some form of flexible work option allows employees to regain a modicum of work/life balance, and successful companies know that this also can yield a significant return on investment for them.”

At YourTime.Intridea.com, we showcase examples of what our team members do with the time they save by not commuting to an office every day. Many of our employees spend those extra hours with their children, partners and other loved ones.

For example, Andy Wang says he spends time, “taking care of my baby girl and playing games with her every day.” Ben Markowitz writes, “As the father of three small children, there are so many moments I get to be a part of. I was able to see my son’s first steps, see my daughter off to her first day of dance class, and greet her every day when she gets home from preschool.”

“Every day I walk my son home from school,” Marc Garrett says. “We throw rocks, talk about girls, and keep an eye out for dragons—all those things fathers and sons do if you don’t have to worry about sitting in traffic. I can’t imagine spending that time any other way.”

Benefit to Society #4: Saving Lives

Because distributed businesses keep their employees off the roads, these companies are literally saving lives. Global Workplace Analytics reports that telework could save more than 1,600 lives, prevent nearly 99,000 injuries and save more than $12 billion a year in traffic accident costs—and that’s just if workers with telework-compatible jobs worked from home half the time.

Benefit to Society #5: Protecting Our Sanity

Sitting in traffic is literally driving commuters crazy, according to a study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Using data from two national surveys, researchers found negative responses to daily stresses such as conflicts at work or sitting in traffic led to psychological distress or anxiety and mood disorders ten years later. In other words, everyday irritations like sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic can make you slowly lose your mind.

Benefit to Society #6: Down with Discrimination

Whether intentional or not, discrimination, nepotism and favoritism still run rampant in the workplace. Since distributed teams rarely work face-to-face, employees and managers are less likely to judge their colleagues by their appearance.

“Virtual interaction seems to be effective at reducing various kinds of discrimination within team members,” writes Joe Willmore in “Managing Virtual Teams” (Spiro Press, 2003). “With visual stimuli removed, the focus is more on content and less on the person generating the content.”

Benefit to Society #7: Putting Retirees Back to Work

The majority of retirees want to keep working, but they also want the flexibility to enjoy retirement. More than one-third of retired workers say that if they would have had the option to work part-time or work from home, it would have encouraged them to keep working, according to Global Workplace Analytics.

“Holding a job in retirement is becoming more necessary, and re-entering the job market through a telecommuting job is a fantastic option,” writes Brie Weiler Reynolds, the Content and Social Media Manager at FlexJobs. Many distributed businesses are attracting highly skilled retirees back into the working world.

Benefit to Society #8: Business as Usual, Even after a Disaster

Distributed businesses enjoy continuity of operations in the event of an avian flu outbreak, inclement weather, earthquakes or other disasters. Three quarters of teleworkers say they could continue to work in the event of a disaster compared with less than one-third of non-teleworkers, Global Workplace Analytics reports.

"More employers put telework policies in place after 9/11 and various natural disasters," says Susan Bergman, MA, SPHR, The Society for Human Resource Management’s director of the Knowledge Center. “Today, employers see remote work capabilities as key to keeping their business operating when there are disruptions."

Thanks to these valuable advantages, business leaders are realizing that building a remote workforce isn’t just an awesome employee incentive or a smart way to boost the company’s bottom line—it’s also a social responsibility.

Want to learn more about what makes distributed teams tick? Don’t miss our next blog on the power of asynchronous communication.

Does your company work remote? Keep the conversation going! We'd love to hear from you.