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Decision making is one of the biggest challenges for remote teams. In traditional office settings, people can gather in a conference room, hash things out, and walk away with an answer. But when you’re working with a distributed team, decision making needs to be approached differently.

Remote teams that don’t intentionally design their decision making process often default to endless meetings or slow-moving indecision. But when done well, remote decision making can be faster, more thoughtful, and more inclusive than in-office environments.

Here’s how to make it work...

TLDR below 👇 | Read this on the web | Subscribe​

The Challenges to Be Addressed

Remote work removes the crutch of in-person interactions. The best remote teams understand that their decision-making processes must be designed intentionally rather than relying on spontaneous discussions or impromptu meetings. This means addressing both the pitfalls of traditional in-office decision-making and the unique difficulties of remote work.

Challenges of In-Person Decision-Making

Traditional office settings often rely on dynamics that don’t necessarily lead to the best decisions:

Power Imbalances - The loudest voice in the room can dominate discussions, which leaves little space for diverse perspectives

Groupthink - In-person environments can create pressure to conform, which leads to less innovative or effective outcomes

Real-Time Bias - Decisions made in real-time meetings often prioritize immediate resolution over well-thought-out choices

Challenges of Remote Decision-Making

While remote work removes some of these pressures, it introduces its own challenges:

Lack of Ownership - Not every decision needs to be a group vote. When no one is explicitly responsible for making a decision, everything slows down

Stalled Progress - A lack of defined processes can lead decisions to linger in async channels without resolution

Over-Reliance on Meetings - Without clear workflows, teams will default to the crutches they’re used to, which leads to them scheduling more calls instead of making decisions efficiently

By addressing both sets of challenges, remote teams can create a decision-making system that is faster, more inclusive, and ultimately more effective than traditional office environments.

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Principles of Effective Remote Decision-Making

The best remote teams follow three core principles to ensure decisions are made efficiently:

Clarity: What is our team’s decision-making approach?

Accountability: Who owns this decision and ensures it moves forward?

Transparency: How do we ensure people know why and how decisions were made?

By defining these principles, remote teams build decision-making processes that prevent bottlenecks and keep work moving forward.

How to Apply This to Your Team

Here are the exact steps your team needs to take to implement these principles:

1. Establish a Clear Decision-Making Framework

When everyone knows who is making the decision and how it will be made, things move much faster. Create clarity around this by utilizing a decision-making framework.

One of my favorites is the SPADE framework, developed by Gokul Rajaram, a seasoned product leader with experience at places like Google and Square.

SPADE is a structured approach that stands for:

• Setting – Define the context and scope of the decision
• People – Identify who is responsible for making the decision and who needs to provide input
• Alternatives – Lay out the different options being considered
• Decide – Choose the best alternative based on data and discussion
• Explain – Communicate the decision clearly, including the reasoning behind it

There is a lot more to this framework, and I encourage you to dive deeper with this fantastic resource. It works particularly well for product teams, engineering teams, and leadership groups where structured decision-making is critical.

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2. Avoid Decision Paralysis

One risk of async work is that decisions can drag out due to over-collaboration, with too many people weighing in, waiting for perfect consensus, or delaying action.

To counter this, many high-functioning remote teams:

• Use time-boxed discussions (“Let’s gather feedback for 48 hours, then decide.”)
• Utilize the 70% rule from Jeff Bezos (If a decision is reversible, make the call when you have about 70% of the information you wish you had instead of waiting for full certainty.)
• Create pre-mortems (Reduce uncertainty by voicing potential risks before making the decision.)
• Default to action (“If no strong objections, we move forward.”)

This prevents teams from getting stuck in endless loops of feedback and hesitation.

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3. Use Asynchronous Decision Logs

Instead of debating decisions in a meeting, document the options, trade-offs, and final decisions in a shared space. This also combats power imbalances and real-time bias by allowing space for thoughtful conversation and ensuring all voices are heard.

Companies like Automattic and GitLab use decision logs to keep track of what was decided and why. This reduces back-and-forth, allows for better reflection, and provides a written history for new team members.

Decision logs can live in a Notion page, a Google Doc, or even a dedicated Slack channel. The key is to create a single source of truth rather than having decision logs scattered across various tools.

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4. Set Communication Defaults

Remote teams work best when communication expectations are clear. Without this, decision-making can slow down due to uncertainty over when and how to respond.

For example, some remote teams follow these guidelines:

If something needs a quick response → Use a Slack thread or a short Loom video

If something requires deep thinking → Write a long-form proposal utilizing the SPADE template

If a decision has already been made → Document it in the decision log

By establishing default communication methods, you avoid unnecessary meetings and ensure that people can contribute in ways that suit their work style.

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5. Increase Visibility

One of the biggest risks for remote teams is invisible decision-making. When people don’t see how and why decisions are made, they can feel out of the loop or misaligned. Overcommunication is key.

Companies like Basecamp use “Heartbeat” updates—short async check-ins where team leads summarize key decisions and progress.

Other teams:

• Create a decision dashboard in Notion, Confluence, or another tool to log major decisions
• Utilize internal newsletters or podcasts to keep team members informed

When people can see decisions, understand the rationale, and track progress, they feel more connected and aligned.

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Great remote teams don’t wait for decisions to happen. They create systems that enable them. By using clear frameworks, async documentation, and communication defaults, remote teams can eliminate unnecessary meetings and keep projects moving forward.

Clarity, accountability, and transparency are the key to eliminating ambiguity and empowering people to act.

The better your decision-making process, the more effective and confident your team will be. With the right systems in place, remote decision-making isn’t a limitation but a competitive advantage.

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TLDR

Remote teams make better decisions with clarity, accountability, and transparency—not endless meetings.

Use frameworks like SPADE, async documentation, and clear communication defaults to move faster and stay aligned.

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Quote of the Week

- Theodore Roosevelt

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In Other News

​Why we’ve removed job titles at ElevenLabs​
"Last week, we removed job titles at ElevenLabs. We no longer have a Head of Growth, or a VP of Product. Now everyone is part of a team — like Operations, or Go to Market — and that’s it. Has anarchy broken out? Not just yet."

​preparing for two weeks phone-less and computer-less​
"I wonder how long it’ll take my brain to stop trying to multitask, for my hands to stop reaching into my pocket to check my phone, my ears to have renewed appreciation for the background music that occupies so many spaces, my curiosity to return to the joy of wondering rather than the satisfaction of looking something up, and my soul to miss people so much that scribbling down postcards won’t scratch the itch of hearing someone’s voice."

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In Case You Missed It

​Ditching the 40-Hour Trap​
Last week, I shared about why relying on a 40+ hour workweek is lazy management and how you should consider using the ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment) approach instead. Check it out here to learn more about an alternative approach to help you ditch the clock and prioritize results.

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Work Forward Society Want to meet others who do work differently? Join us in making 2025 your year of less meetings and more real work! Join The Work Forward Society →

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What did you think of this issue? What do you hope to see in the next one? Hit reply and let me know. I read every response. I truly appreciate you taking the time to read this. Hope you have a lovely day! Marissa ​Founder, Remote Work Prep​ P.S. Did you enjoy this issue? Share the article with a friend. Struggling with a remote work problem? Book a coaching call. If you liked this, consider supporting this free newsletter by leaving a testimonial. ​

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