How I Keep My Remote Team Accountable To Success
Zack AllenJanuary 29, 20264:09
The daily, weekly and monthly system I use to make sure an international team gets the job done.
This is the performance system I use to hold my international team accountable.
For context: my e-commerce business has done $4.2 million in revenue since 2022, which is also when I started bringing on international talent. My team is in the Philippines, and I'm currently in South Africa. So I had to build a way to know the work is getting done and the business is making more money, because that's why we're here.
Everything below is data-driven. I'm a numbers guy, and I want every role to be measurable on a daily basis.
Daily
An automated summary instead of an end-of-day report. I used to ask for end-of-day reports and found them tedious. I didn't want to read all that. So I set up a webhook in Slack, a simple piece of code connected to our Google Sheet, that posts a 24-hour summary of inventory sourced and purchased, publicly for everyone to see.
Daily sales. We sell on Amazon, and my team checks the sales graph every day to see how we're tracking against the month's revenue goal and whether we need to adjust.
Weekly
KPIs. We have a Google Sheet with about 50 data points we track week over week. My team sends a short brief in Slack on the most important ones.
A scorecard. A set of pivot tables that sums up the week's performance, compares it to our goal and shows how many days are left to hit it. Everyone can see where everyone stands.
I call it a scorecard, not a leaderboard, so it feels like a group effort with team numbers instead of people competing against each other. I've found head-to-head competition doesn't work as well with international team members.
Monthly
A KPI meeting. We meet to go over the numbers, especially year-over-year data. We've tracked KPIs long enough to see the trends and what we need to adjust.
A self-review. Instead of a corporate-style meeting where I tell people how they did, I made a Google Form with short-answer and multiple-choice questions, and we go over it together. Questions like:
- What are you most proud of last month?
- Where did you fall behind, and why?
They tell me how they think they did. It gives them time for honest self-reflection.
Why I stop at monthly
I don't do quarterly reviews. I keep my team small so I have the bandwidth to touch base with everyone.
With quarterly reviews, people wait months to find out how they did. I want them to know right away. When something goes well, they hear about it the same day. When I'm not happy with something, they hear that the same day too.
That's how I've structured accountability to grow my business with an international team.
Transcript
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Today I'm going to show you how I make sure my international team actually gets the job done. The performance system that I've developed to hold them accountable. For context, I have an e-commerce business. We've done $4.2 million in revenue since 2022, which is the same time I started bringing on international talent to help me run the business. Here's a photo of some inventory going out, so you know it's not Inspect Element.
And this is me with my team. They're based in the Philippines. Now, I am not based in the Philippines. I am based currently in South Africa. And so I have to build this way for me to make sure they're actually getting the job done and making the business more money cuz that's what we're here to do is to make more money. I make this video to show you what has worked well for me.
Maybe you can apply the same lessons to your remote team, your international team, and work with us to help build your international team because that's what we do for our clients. Now the cadence here is daily, weekly, and monthly. You'll notice everything we talk about today is very data and metrics focused. I'm a numbers guy and I want to make sure that every role can be quantified on a daily basis. I used to do like an end of day report and I found that to be very tedious.
I was like I don't want to read all that. And so I turned it into a web hook in Slack. This is like just a simple code connected to our Google sheet and it sends the 24-hour summary for inventory sourcing, how much we actually purchased publicly for everyone to see. Then we track or we check daily sales. So, we sell on Amazon and so they have a graph that my team checks on a daily basis, see how we're stacking up, see how on progress we are for our revenue goals for the month and if we need to shift as a result on a weekly basis, we record KPIs.
So we have a KPI sheet in just in Google Sheets with about 50 different data points that we track looking at them week over week and then my team will send a quick brief report on the most important data points in Slack for everyone to see. And then we also have a scorecard. This is in not the different inventory sheet, but it's just a bunch of pivot tables together that sum up the performance for the week and then compare it against how far we are from our goal and how many days we have left to reach that goal.
So, everyone can see where each other stacks up. Now, it's framed as a scorecard rather than a leaderboard so that it feels more group. you know, there's there's like team numbers there rather than like trying to compete against each other because I find that doesn't work as well for for international team members. On a monthly basis, we do we also do KPI reports. We do the KPI recording, but then we actually do a meeting to cover the KPI numbers.
And that's especially looking at year-over-year data since they've been with me for, you know, we have the year-over-year data, we've been tracking KPIs for so long. And so we'll look at like the graph trends and see historically how we're we're stacking up, what we need to to adjust as a result, and then a report. Now, some people will do like, you know, corporate like sit on a a meeting and let me tell you how you did.
I was just I don't want to do all that. So, I was like, I just made a Google form with a bunch of questions, some short response, some multiple choice, and then we cover that together. So, I'm like, you just tell me how you think you did. So, questions like, what are you most proud of last month? What areas did you fall behind in and why? To give them some time for some actual self realization, some selfreflection.
Now, monthly is the furthest out we go. I do not do any quarterly reports because I keep my team small. So, I want to have the bandwidth to be able to make a touch point with all them. They if I do a quarterly, I you know, you're waiting to see how well you did on the quarterly. I want them to know right away when something goes well. I want them to know the same day that they did a good job.
When something I'm not happy about, they know same day as well. It's not like, oh yeah, so you know, you did bad for the quarter. Like, they they know. They know when things are good and when things are bad. So, hope that helps. That's how I've been able to structure it to grow my business to where it is with an international team. Hope this helps.
