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There are currently two types of people:

1. Those who get things done even though they're switching a team to work remotely
2. Those who approach their team goals more slowly than before because they are figuring out how to lead a team that is now working from home

If you are the first, we would like to invite you to write this article for us. You are a superhuman with a bloodline that goes back to Hercules and we want to know what you put in your morning coffee because we want to go inside.

If you are the latter, you are like the rest of us. Getting a team to work from home AND achieving their goals is like having a baby and thinking, "This is going to be a breeze." It's not a breeze.

It’s tiring.
It's tough.
And sometimes it's incredibly overwhelming.

At DigitalMarketer, we can't say that we've perfected our work from home to the point where we're descendants of Hercules, but we definitely do an above-average job (if we say so ourselves). We change direction faster than a Stanley Cup hockey player and achieve our goals – while our team works from home.

So we figured out how to lead a team that does things from home, so you can too.

Just because you work from home doesn't mean that the meetings end. Your all hands meeting must take place. Your one-on-one interviews must take place. Every meeting that took place when discussions about water coolers were still taking place had to take place.

Leading a team that does things means that everyone is up to date at all times. If your marketing team doesn't know you just made your core product, how can you create content to promote it?

A calendar invitation link must be available for each meeting. Don't expect people to just remember that the meeting is taking place. It needs to be on their calendar so everyone is there when it's time for the video call. Make sure you're using video calling software (such as Zoom or Google Hangouts) that you (and your team) can share your screens with. Just because you are not in a conference room together does not mean that you have to describe or show each other a document.

Make sure that you end up for both personal and video conferencing with action items for every person who attended the meeting. Everyone should be able to say exactly what they will do and when it will be done, based on the context of the meeting. If you have no action items, you risk everyone moving on to the next task of the day and completely forgetting what was assigned to them in the meeting.

If you want to get things done, you need regular team meetings to take action that will then lead you to your goals – hopefully as soon as you approach them when you were in the office.

If you've looked at the numbers and know you won't achieve the goals you set earlier this year, it is important that you tell your team.

They don't want them to be afraid to let you know that content views are unavailable, subscriptions aren't what they used to be, and high-quality products aren't sold. You want to be the one who tells them, "Don't worry. We're changing our numbers and aiming for THIS instead."

Discussing expectations with your team is now essential. You can only do things if you know what you want to do. Everyone is working towards a goal and if that goal is unclear – how can you expect them to know what they are aiming for?

Discuss expectations with your team and see what is realistic for the current climate. This is the first step. Step two is to summarize all of these expectations to make sure everyone knows what's going on. This is something you probably did before your team was removed, and it's a practice that needs to go on.

You can discuss the expectations with a zoom call and have all of your action elements created and released based on the new expectations. Then send a company-wide follow-up email to turn everyone on through a platform like Recess.

Create a short email from your leader (like your CEO) or lead management (like your marketing manager) to let your entire team or a subdivision of your team know about the new expectations.

Once you've scheduled your meetings and sent your general expectations for your business and specific expectations to the relevant teams, it's time to make sure there is a place where updates and obstacles can be discussed.

What action items were assigned to someone at the all-hand meeting that cannot be completed until another team member does something else first? This person is prevented from completing their action points until their team member has found theirs. For example, does your advertising team need to approve a new creative from your managers before uploading them to Facebook? The advertising team can only move forward if management agrees.

A place for this is crucial for productivity. This should not make the roadblock team members feel bad. Everyone will be a roadblock at some point (including you!). This is to ensure that the roadblock can update their team members immediately if they have cleared the way for them to complete their action tasks.

Roadblocks can also be software problems or questions that have not yet been answered. Whatever the roadblock is, when you have it in sight, everyone can remember what we are waiting for to get things done and update when the roadblock is removed.

Of course, you don't want to call your team every 5 minutes with new expectations, questions about the action items, or updating roadblocks. This will not create a workflow for anyone. it just distracts your team.

These are messages that can be sent at the beginning or end of the day and at the beginning and / or end of the week.

This way, everyone stays up to date without being constantly asked to stay up to date in group threads. If you miss the first notification, you will spend more time reading everyone's comments than doing something related to the first notification.

The key to over-communication remains efficient. Find out when you will be communicating with your entire team and parts of your team (sales, customer care, etc.).

We do this regularly at DigitalMarketer. Our CEO, Ryan Deiss, sends a company-wide newsletter every Tuesday to summarize the week, expectations, and everything else the team needs to know about the business. This has become a very important point of contact between El Capitán and its crew members in recent weeks.

Our ship sails and sometimes we change direction quickly. This newsletter keeps all DigitalMarketer employees up to date and tells you what's going on, how we can help, and what Ryan needs from us to help us achieve our goals smoothly. We use Recess to send these emails.

As we said at the beginning of this article, we're not perfect when we work from home, but we definitely adapt efficiently. We realized that communication is still our main ally, just like when we were in office, but now we have to do it a little differently.

Practice moving all of your regularly scheduled meetings online, discussing and sharing new expectations, being transparent about roadblocks, and communicating strategically too much to get things done while your team is at home.

Since this is more than an excuse to work pajamas all day, this is an opportunity to be a wartime leader – or a really efficient leader with just the right amount of caffeine (you can choose how to describe yourself want).