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UPDATE: My book is now available on Amazon! More info here or jump straight to buy the book on Amazon by clicking on the thumbnail.

John.

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Original post follows.

My book “Distributed Teams” is now available for pre-order on Amazon! Click on the thumbnail to jump straight to the pre-order page!

That was a surreal sentence to write. And daunting to re-read while looking at the remaining ToDo list.

There is a bewildering 1,001 loose details that need to get figured out before the book officially “ships”. Buying ISBN numbers. Debate hardback vs paperback vs ebook. Page margins. Font size. Font. Resolution of images in the book. Book cover design. Create Author page on Amazon. Setup copyright – globally. Decide book pricing. Decide which countries to sell the book in. Fix bugs in the artwork. I’ve been jumping from one topic to another, learning each area as I went along. In this dizzy never-ending ToDo list, “Get book listed on Amazon” was just one more ToDo item. Several attempts failed with different error messages, sending me off debugging yet another problem, until one attempt seemed to complete without any errors?!? Huh – that’s strange. Now what? How do I know if it worked? Was there a dashboard to check status? Oh, wait. Duh. I started up a new browser, went to Amazon.com and searched for “Distributed Teams”, just like a regular user. There it was. Great. That worked. Search by my name. Yep, also there, great. Search by variations of the book title, all good. And then it hit me. Wait. There it was! My book. On Amazon!

There. Is. My. Book. On. Amazon.

Pause. Deep breath. Slowly exhale.

So here we are. At a major milestone.

It feels like I’ve reached the tipping point just like in every software release – while there are always more things being noticed that need to be fixed, the new incoming ToDos with each build are less severe and people start having more discussions about “is this serious enough to hold the release”. Quietly, morale starts improving as people change from wondering “IF it will ship” to wondering “WHEN it will ship”. After all this time headsdown and focused on research, on interviews, on writing and on editing, the nature of working on the book has changed. Instead of spending all my time on the words in the book, I’ve started spending more time on the book. Excitement about finally shipping starts mixing with anxiety about whether others will like it.

Exciting stuff.

John.
ps: For those keeping count, this latest draft is now ER#24. One great friend sent me a gift to help with the book. Nothing says “Hurry up and ship your book already!” like a delivery of ~5lbs of hand roasted, very tasty coffee beans !

Anyone who follows me here will already know I blog, speak, and mentor on the mechanics needed so humans can work well together even when they are physically apart. As I wrap up writing my book, I’ve been focusing on chapters that cover important context around distributed teams, so this post is slightly different to my usual.

Why are so many more people now talking about distributed teams? Over the last year or so, I’ve been giving a series of presentations on the business, social and environmental benefits of distributed teams. One question I hear over and over is “Why now?”. Here are the three biggest reasons I’ve seen so far:

1) Money: Software startups used to raise money for a data-center and a physical office building and staff payrolls. Only then could people start working on The Next Big Thing. Regardless of what your product will be, creating your data-center takes time to setup and has risks – a data-center that is incorrectly sized for future anticipated traffic or with operational problems could kill your company. You could also kill your company by choosing to setup a physical office in the wrong location (limiting hiring) or choosing an office that is too small (disrupting hiring until you relocated or setup a second office location) or too big (needlessly increasing your burn rate even when your cash flow is tight). Since Amazon Web Services became mainstream, it eliminated the lead time for building a data-center. You still pay money for AWS, but it instantly scales up/down as your customer demand grows/shrinks – and some clever engineering can significantly reduce your AWS bills.

Now that the cost & lead time for a data-center is off the list for most companies, the cost & lead time for a physical office is a expensive outlier that people are starting to question as they look for funding.

2) Social/Economic change: The idea of “a job for life” is no more. People expect to change jobs throughout their career. When people working at high-profile organizations like Google, Facebook, Uber, etc leave after an average of 1.2-1.8 years, that means a person entering the workforce can expect to change companies ~20 times in their ~40 year career. Moving house for your first few jobs might be fun, but after a while most people want to set down roots with a partner, buy a home, grow a community of friends, start raising a family and taking care of parents. Over time, moving becomes harder.

3) Environmental awareness: Requiring everyone to live within commute distance of an office means a lot of commuters. No surprise there. What is less obvious is the ripple effect. As more high-paid people pay more for housing to reduce their commute, it forces displacement of everyone else, so the people who are needed to make a city function are forced to live further and further away. In practical terms that means cops, medics, firefighters, teachers, artists and others all commute longer hours each way to their lower-paid jobs. The term “mega-commuter” is now used to describe anyone who commutes >2.5 hours. Each way. Each day. No wonder traffic in the San Francisco bay area has spiked up 70% since 2010, even though the population “only” increased by 10% in that same time frame. All this traffic has a measurable toll on quality of life, for sure. However, it is also explicitly worth noting that of all the CO2 emissions from the US, the 2nd largest portion of emissions (27%) is from cars, buses and other transportation. Reducing the need for people to commute is an important way for us all to reduce our carbon footprint. Put another way: instead of reducing pollution by promising to buy the latest electric car when it becomes affordable, you could instead start reducing pollution today commuting less often and start working from home. Today.

Each of these are important reasons in their own right. And that’s not even taking into account all the other good business reasons for distributed teams (hiring, retention, diversity, etc). No wonder starting fully distributed companies is becoming mainstream. Hopefully, this book will help them start with the practical mechanics needed to succeed. As more distributed companies succeed, they each help improve the narrative for others who follow.

(This is an extract from my upcoming book “Leading Distributed Teams”. For more on this, see oduinn.com/book.)

John.

I’m excited and a little stunned to say that this update includes the last incomplete chapter! I’ve now written the complete book??!?

To get a free copy of this latest version of the book, just signup on my zero-spam, low-volume mailing list here: oduinn.com/book.

This marks the start of the next phase for this book-writing project – working with editors to cleanup any typos and errors in the text, finding illustrators to replace the screenshots, and going through a long list of “remember to fix…” todo items. The three big items on the list are 1) to start blogging and outreach work to get the word out about this book. 2) update a few remaining chapters to the same consistent structure/format and 3) figure out how to generate PDF and epub versions. Yes this update is still only available in kindle/mobi format, so for now, to read this latest update on your laptop or iphone, you’ll need the Kindle app.

I’ve honestly no idea how much work or time this will take, although I am all-too-aware of the 20/80 rule about “the last 20% takes 80% of the time”. The optimist in me believes that all the great feedback I’ve received so far on all the previous updates will help. A lot. I guess we’ll find out soon enough!

As always, if you have any comments, ideas, concerns, etc., please don’t be shy to contact me. I love the contact and feedback so far, and would like to hear what you think. I again note how great the ongoing moral support and encouragement and excitement from each of you has been through all this. It literally keeps me going. Thank you. Each and every one of you.

John.

I’m excited to write that update#14 is now available – still in time for those of you looking for some quiet reading over the holidays!

This latest update includes yet another chapter – “Culture, Conflict and Trust” – one of the last two chapters that were left to write. Now, there is only one more chapter to go! I’ve also finished converting my manuscript to the new publishing format, so now all remaining weird SGML syntax errors should be fixed and all links to footnotes, links between chapters, etc, now working.

As I mentioned before, I’ve formally switched publishers and revised the release date to Jan2018. This change means that if you bought any of the previous versions of my book, you will not get automatically updated to this new update#14. To get a free copy of this latest version of the book, signup to my zero-spam, low-volume mailing list on oduinn.com/book.

As always, if you have any comments, ideas, concerns, etc., please don’t be shy to contact me. I love the contact and feedback so far, and would like to hear what you think. Meanwhile, its time for me to take a walk outside in the fresh air, brew more coffee and get back to writing!

I again note how great the ongoing moral support and encouragement and excitement from each of you has been through all this. It literally keeps me going. Thank you. Each and every one of you.

John.

There’s been a lot of significant changes since my last post – in life, in work and in book – without me having any time to blog/post about them. More on all those in other posts. For now, in this post, I want to focus on just one thing.

My book.

Since my last post, I’ve quietly kept working on my book-in-progress and now have another update ready. This latest update (update#13) is exciting to me, because it includes the freshly written SingleSourceOfTruth chapter. This topic is crucial to the practical logistics for distributed teams, so it feels like a real milestone to finally include this. It is also one of the last three chapters left to write, which is encouraging. This update also includes continued restructuring of other existing chapters so they all have a consistent structure. At this point, Chapters 1-8 feel “consistent”. Oh, and of course, there’s a bunch of typo-fixes, cleanups and general refining.

Between my last post (update#8) and now (update#13), I’ve formally switched publishers and revised the release date to Jan2018. This means that if you bought any of the previous versions of my book, you will not get automatically updated to this new update#13. So, if you *did* buy an earlier version of my book, please contact me, and let me know. I’ll immediately send you a free copy of this latest update#13 and all future updates including the finished book when its done. My way of saying “thank you” for your support from the outset!

Speaking of support – when I started writing, I heard from many people that “writing a book was hard”. The exact definition of exactly *how* hard was not clear, but I’m starting to get a better grasp now. Even as I suspect there are yet more surprises lurking ahead. I say all this to show how important it has been to me to have the ongoing moral support and encouragement and excitement from each of you through all this. It literally keeps me going.

Thank you. Each and every one of you.

John.

“Distributed” Early Release #8 is now publicly available, about 6 weeks after the last EarlyRelease came out.

This ER#8 includes a significant reworking and trimming of both Chapter 1 (“The Real Cost of an Office”) and also Chapter 5 (“Organizational Pitfalls to Avoid”). I know that might not sound glamorous but it was a lot of slow, careful, detailed work which I believe makes these chapters better and also helps with the structure of the overall book.

You can buy ER#8 by clicking here, or clicking on the thumbnail of the book cover. Anyone who already bought any of the previous ERs should have already been prompted with a free update to ER#8 – if you didn’t get updated, please let me know so I can investigate! And yes, you’ll get updated when ER#9 comes out.

Thanks again to everyone for their ongoing encouragement and feedback so far. Each piece of great feedback makes me wonder how I missed such obvious errors before and also makes me happy, as each fix helps make this book better. Keep letting me know what you think! It’s important this book be interesting, readable and practical – so if you have any comments, concerns, etc., please email me. Yes, I will read and reply to each email personally! To make sure that any feedback doesn’t get lost or caught in spam filters, please email comments to feedback at oduinn dot com. I track all feedback and review/edit/merge as fast as I can.

Thank you to everyone who has already sent me feedback/opinions/corrections – all really helpful.

John.
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ps: For the curious, here is the current list of chapters and their status:

Chapter 1 The Real Cost of an Office – AVAILABLE
Chapter 2 Distributed Teams Are Not New – AVAILABLE
Chapter 3 Disaster Planning – AVAILABLE
Chapter 4 Diversity
Chapter 5 Organizational Pitfalls to Avoid – AVAILABLE
Chapter 6 Physical Setup – AVAILABLE
Chapter 7 Video Etiquette – AVAILABLE
Chapter 8 Own Your Calendar – AVAILABLE
Chapter 9 Meetings – AVAILABLE
Chapter 10 Meeting Moderator – AVAILABLE
Chapter 11 Single Source of Truth
Chapter 12 Email Etiquette – AVAILABLE
Chapter 13 Group Chat Etiquette – AVAILABLE
Chapter 14 Culture, Conflict and Trust
Chapter 15 One-on-Ones and Reviews – AVAILABLE
Chapter 16 Hiring, Onboarding, Firing, Reorgs,
Layoffs and other Departures – AVAILABLE
Chapter 17 Bring Humans Together – AVAILABLE
Chapter 18 Career Path – AVAILABLE
Chapter 19 Feed Your Soul – AVAILABLE
Chapter 20 Final Chapter
Appendix A The Bathroom Mirror Test – AVAILABLE
Appendix B How NOT to Work – AVAILABLE
Appendix C Further Reading – AVAILABLE
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“Distributed” Early Release #7 is now publicly available, a month after ER#6 came out.

This ER#7 includes a significant reworking of the first section of this book. Some chapters were resequenced. Some were significantly trimmed – by over half! Some were split up, creating new chapters or merged with existing sections of other chapters later in the book. All slow, detailed work that I hope makes the book feel more focused. The format of all chapters throughout were slightly tweaked, and there are also plenty of across-the-board minor fixes.

You can buy ER#7 by clicking here, or clicking on the thumbnail of the book cover. Anyone who already bought any of the previous ERs should get prompted with a free update to ER#7 – if you don’t please let me know! And yes, you’ll get updated when ER#8 comes out.

Thanks again to everyone for their ongoing encouragement, proof-reading help and feedback so far – keep letting me know what you think. Each piece of great feedback makes me wonder how I missed such obvious errors before. And makes me happy, as each fix helps make this book better. It’s important this book be interesting, readable and practical – so if you have any comments, concerns, etc., please email me. Yes, I will read and reply to each email personally! To make sure that any feedback doesn’t get lost or caught in spam filters, please email comments to feedback at oduinn dot com. I track all feedback and review/edit/merge as fast as I can. And thank you to everyone who has already sent me feedback/opinions/corrections – all really helpful.

John.
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ps: For the curious, here is the current list of chapters and their status:

Chapter 1 The Real Cost of an Office – AVAILABLE
Chapter 2 Distributed Teams Are Not New – AVAILABLE
Chapter 3 Disaster Planning – AVAILABLE
Chapter 4 Diversity
Chapter 5 Organizational Pitfalls to Avoid – AVAILABLE
Chapter 6 Physical Setup – AVAILABLE
Chapter 7 Video Etiquette – AVAILABLE
Chapter 8 Own Your Calendar – AVAILABLE
Chapter 9 Meetings – AVAILABLE
Chapter 10 Meeting Moderator – AVAILABLE
Chapter 11 Single Source of Truth
Chapter 12 Email Etiquette – AVAILABLE
Chapter 13 Group Chat Etiquette – AVAILABLE
Chapter 14 Culture, Conflict and Trust
Chapter 15 One-on-Ones and Reviews – AVAILABLE
Chapter 16 Hiring, Onboarding, Firing, Reorgs,
Layoffs and other Departures – AVAILABLE
Chapter 17 Bring Humans Together – AVAILABLE
Chapter 18 Career Path – AVAILABLE
Chapter 19 Feed Your Soul – AVAILABLE
Chapter 20 Final Chapter
Appendix A The Bathroom Mirror Test – AVAILABLE
Appendix B How NOT to Work – AVAILABLE
Appendix C Further Reading – AVAILABLE
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“Distributed” Early Release #6 is now publicly available, just 25 days after ER#5 came out.

Early Release #6 (ER#6) contains everything in ER#5 plus:
* Chapter15 was renamed from “Joining and Leaving” to “Hiring, Firing, Reorgs and Layoffs”. As you might guess, this chapter covers the various mechanics around joining and leaving a group or organization. Hopefully, this new title makes the intent of the chapter more clear!
* There are three new appendices – one on decision making with partial data, one on how not to behave in the office and one on further reading.
* The preface is finally coming together – I found this much trickier to write than I expected.
* Chapter1 got a significant restructure and trimming thanks to some great suggestions. And of course, there are plenty of across-the-board minor fixes and tweaks based on feedback and reviews.

At this time, 16 of 19 chapters are available – specifically, Chapters 1-9,11,12,14-18. I hope you enjoy them!

You can buy ER#6 by clicking here, or clicking on the thumbnail of the book cover. Anyone who already bought any of the previous ERs should get prompted with a free update to ER#6 – if you don’t please let me know! And yes, you’ll get updated when ER#7 comes out next month.

Thanks again to everyone for their ongoing encouragement, proof-reading help and feedback so far. I track all of them and review/edit/merge as fast as I can. To make sure that any feedback doesn’t get lost or caught in spam filters, please email comments to feedback at oduinn dot com.

John.
=====
ps: For the curious, here is the current list of chapters and their status:

Chapter 1: Distributed Teams Are Not New – AVAILABLE
Chapter 2: The Real Cost of an Office – AVAILABLE
Chapter 3: Disaster Planning – AVAILABLE
Chapter 4: Mindset – AVAILABLE
Chapter 5: Physical Setup – AVAILABLE
Chapter 6: Video Etiquette – AVAILABLE
Chapter 7: Own your calendar – AVAILABLE
Chapter 8: Meetings – AVAILABLE
Chapter 9: Meeting Moderator – AVAILABLE
Chapter 10: Single Source of Truth
Chapter 11: Email Etiquette – AVAILABLE
Chapter 12: Group Chat Etiquette – AVAILABLE
Chapter 13: Culture, Trust and Conflict
Chapter 14: One-on-Ones and Reviews – AVAILABLE
Chapter 15: Hiring, Firing, Reorgs and Layoffs – AVAILABLE
Chapter 16: Bring Humans Together – AVAILABLE
Chapter 17: Career path – AVAILABLE
Chapter 18: Feed your soul – AVAILABLE
Chapter 19: Final Chapter
Appendix A: The Bathroom Mirror Test – AVAILABLE
Appendix B: How NOT to Work – AVAILABLE
Appendix C: Further Reading – AVAILABLE
=====

As many of you know, I’m writing my first book. While I just jumped in and start typing, people with a lot of experience in this area started asking me questions like: What is your writing tone? What is the book structure? Who is your intended audience?

Figuring out the answers to these questions felt even more daunting then the idea of “just” writing a book!

The book has evolved as I write and as I learned what was important to me in answering those original questions. Now that I’m into the swing of this, I thought it would be interesting to describe how I figured out the tone and structure of this book, and the logic behind those choices.

Over the years, I’ve bought many weighty management books that only get half-read before I give up, leaving them to gather dust with a bookmark somewhere in the middle. I wanted my book to be a book that I would make time to read. Not just a book by John for John – most people I worked with had similar time constraints. With a busy work life, an immediately helpful, practical, book felt important.

I kept these realities in mind and with a fresh set of eyes, went back looking at books I did and didn’t like. I studied how those authors structured their books and how their use of English changed the tone and feel of the book. I discovered some common patterns in terms of structure and language, which became important criteria for this book:

• I use very casual, readable english throughout. No formal management or textbook english. Yes, I know enough pointy-haired-boss management words to play Dilbert Bingo, but I felt that language would only get in the way. I want this book to be something easy to read after a long tiring day at work, not a management-speak IQ test.
• Each chapter is very short, typically 10-20 pages. Intentionally short enough to be read in one sitting in one evening after a busy day, over lunch or during a long commute!
• Almost every chapter is self-contained, so if a reader has a specific pressing need, they can jump to that chapter for immediate practical help. If this happens often enough, hopefully they’ll keep the book close to hand.
• Each chapter has simple, concrete, practical “takeaways” to put into use immediately to help make your life better today.

This book is designed so you should be able to just open a page on a specific topic you are dealing with today and just dive in. Having said that, if you are not sure where to start, the carefully chosen sequence of these chapters, and the way they are arranged in sections is a good default path:

• Section One: Why are geo-distributed teams and organizations good for business, good for the economy and yes, good for humans? This section should help anyone justify building a distributed team/organization using cold, hard, financial business justifications – not just a touchy-feely “trust me, it makes people happy”.
• Section Two: Most companies have day-to-day organizational inefficiencies that are so commonplace they are considered “normal” – or even worse “just the way it is”. This section details mechanical tips and tricks which make organizations more efficient. Becoming very, very crisply organized on those basic everyday mechanics improves efficiencies of an all-in-the-office team and make effective distributed teams possible.
• Section Three: How do you handle the humanity in your distributed team? This section covers hirings, firings, one-on-ones, reviews, cultural issues and conflict. Also, some advice for long term “remote” workers on staying sane, healthy and planing a career path.

My first management job came with no training, so I had to make it up, learning as I went along. Same for each management role I’ve held since. This is true for most leaders I know. The lucky few got formal on-the-job training or mentors, but most don’t get any training until they’ve already been doing the job for a few years. Those initial years as a manager are formative and can shape what you perceive as possible in future management jobs.

It so happened, that my first job as a manager was in a company with people in multiple locations. Since then I’ve worked, as an engineer and leader, in many different geographically distributed companies. This book is coming together and I can honestly say I wish I’d had a book like this when I started.

John.
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As of now, the list of chapters is as follows:
Section1
* Chapter 1: Distributed Teams are Not New – AVAILABLE
* Chapter 2: The Real Cost of an Office – AVAILABLE
* Chapter 3: Disaster Planning – AVAILABLE
* Chapter 4: Mindset – AVAILABLE
Section2
* Chapter 5: Physical Setup – AVAILABLE
* Chapter 6: Video Etiquette – AVAILABLE
* Chapter 7: Own your calendar – AVAILABLE
* Chapter 8: Meetings – AVAILABLE
* Chapter 9: Meeting Moderator – AVAILABLE
* Chapter 10: Single Source of Truth
* Chapter 11: Email Etiquette – AVAILABLE
* Chapter 12: Group Chat Etiquette – AVAILABLE
Section3
* Chapter 13: Culture, Trust and Conflict
* Chapter 14: One-on-Ones and Reviews – AVAILABLE
* Chapter 15: Hiring, Firing, Reorgs and Layoffs – AVAILABLE
* Chapter 16: Bring Humans Together – AVAILABLE
* Chapter 17: Career path – AVAILABLE
* Chapter 18: Feed your soul – AVAILABLE
* Chapter 19: Final Chapter
Appendices
* Appendix A: The Bathroom Mirror Test – AVAILABLE
* Appendix B: How NOT to Work – AVAILABLE
* Appendix C: Further Reading – AVAILABLE
=====

“Distributed” Early Release #5 is now publicly available, just 23 days after ER#4 came out.

Early Release #5 (ER#5) contains everything in ER#4 plus:
* Ch.12 group chat etiquette
* In Ch.2, the section on diversity was rewritten and enhanced by consolidating a few different passages that had been scattered across different chapters.
* Many tweaks/fixes to pre-existing Chapters.

You can buy ER#5 by clicking here, or clicking on the thumbnail of the book cover. Anyone who already has ER#1, ER#2, ER#3 or ER#4 should get prompted with a free update to ER#5 – if you don’t please let me know! And yes, you’ll get updated when ER#6 comes out later this month.

Thanks again to everyone for their ongoing encouragement, proof-reading help and feedback so far. I track all of them and review/edit/merge as fast as I can. To make sure that any feedback doesn’t get lost or caught in spam filters, please email comments to feedback at oduinn dot com.

Now time to brew more coffee and get back to typing!

John.
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ps: For the curious, here is the current list of chapters and their status:

Chapter 1: Remoties trend – AVAILABLE
Chapter 2: The real cost of an office – AVAILABLE
Chapter 3: Disaster Planning – AVAILABLE
Chapter 4: Mindset – AVAILABLE
Chapter 5: Physical Setup – AVAILABLE
Chapter 6: Video Etiquette – AVAILABLE
Chapter 7: Own your calendar – AVAILABLE
Chapter 8: Meetings – AVAILABLE
Chapter 9: Meeting Moderator – AVAILABLE
Chapter 10: Single Source of Truth
Chapter 11: Email Etiquette – AVAILABLE
Chapter 12: Group Chat Etiquette – AVAILABLE
Chapter 13: Culture, Trust and Conflict
Chapter 14: One-on-Ones and Reviews – AVAILABLE
Chapter 15: Joining and Leaving
Chapter 16: Bring Humans Together – AVAILABLE
Chapter 17: Career path – AVAILABLE
Chapter 18: Feed your soul – AVAILABLE
Chapter 19: Final Chapter

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