Creating "smart defaults" on your team

Owning your role as a choice architect

When was the last time you changed the ringtone on your phone? How your retirement account is set up? The location of the trash can in your apartment?

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably still relying on what you chose when you first configured things. Furthermore, you likely selected the default. Defaults can affect the choices we make in every corner of our lives, including our working lives.

Strong leaders of distributed teams see themselves as choice architects, ensuring that they design “smart defaults” for new and established team members alike.

While you might think that the ability to set “smart defaults” lives with HR during the onboarding process, many of the factors linked to job satisfaction (like meeting quality & duration) live at the team level. And if you’re not intentionally setting “smart defaults,” most humans will adopt what they see around them as their default. This can be a helpful tailwind once good “smart defaults” are established, but in the absence of “smart defaults” new employees will quickly adopt the status quo of the current team.

When you’re working with a distributed team, take time to collaboratively define a set of “smart defaults” in 3 key areas: structural, relational, and individual. Here are a few of the “smart defaults” we have on my team.

Structural “smart defaults”: Weekly meeting rhythms, structures, and expectations

1. All standing meetings have a default agenda shared 24 hours in advance

2. All ad-hoc meetings are 25 minutes by default, not 60 minutes

3. Fridays are scheduled as a recurring block of focus time for the entire team

4. Cameras are never required in video meetings

Relational “smart defaults”: How & where team relationship building happens

1. Every team meeting starts with 5 minutes of “new & good” things that people want to share with each other

2. We have an optional 10-minute standup on Mondays and Fridays specifically reserved for social chatter

3. We have optional monthly game sessions organized by someone on the team

4. We have a Slack channel to share non-work related banter and gifs

Individual “smart defaults”: What healthy career development looks like

1. Every person on the team has an hour-long career conversation with their manager once a quarter automatically (an employee doesn’t need to request one)

2. Almost all 1x1s end with me asking my reports: How can I support you better?

3. Every team member has a Slack channel dedicated to 1x1 agenda items, feedback, and wins shared with his/her/their manager

4. Every team member establishes their own preferred working hours and we update each other via our Slack status when we deviate from our usual schedule

As a team, we regularly check in on how our “smart defaults” are going and adjust them. There are always ways to improve the experience people are having on the team. The work is never finished.

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3 questions to ask yourself

1. What are the current defaults on your team? Were they set intentionally or did they organically emerge over time?

2. How do people feel about how the team is running today? Do you need to collect more information before making changes?

3. What happens when new team members join the group? Are they intentionally onboarded with documented team-level agreements or is it organic?

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2 things to try with your team this week

1. At the end of each 1x1 you have, ask: How can I support you better? This question implies that everyone needs support and that there are always ways to improve the support a person is experiencing from their manager. Try to avoid saying things like “help is available if you need it” as that phrase suggests all people do not need help and the burden to receive help is fully with the requestor.

2. As a group, write down the defaults that the team is operating under today. By asking the group to help you create a list of defaults, you can gain insight into how the team is operating and what’s working for them. Making the list collaborative and explicit can also serve as the first step towards setting “smart defaults” going forward.

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1 researcher to check out

Steven Rogelsburg has done extensive research on the relationship between how time is spent in meetings and job satisfaction.