Beyond Slack and Snacks: Building a Remote Culture with TENs
It’s become a predictable punchline: someone fumbles a project handoff, misses a Slack thread, or vanishes into the abyss of a muted Zoom call, and suddenly “remote work” is to blame. The office truthers shake their heads, longing for the good old days of hallway drive-bys and whiteboard scribbles that somehow counted as strategy.
But here’s the thing: the real issue isn’t remote work. It’s remote assumptions. Assumptions about what counts as work. About how decisions are made. About who owns what. About whether the lack of camera means “I’m focused” or “I’m folding laundry.”
Remote work didn’t create these problems. It just stopped covering them up with free Red Bull and bad birthday cake at office parties. In fact, some of the most dysfunctional in-person teams on Earth also have buildings, desks, and meeting rooms. Physical proximity is not a cure for unclear communication, misaligned expectations, or invisible culture.
That’s where TENs comes in. Short for Traditions, Expectations, and Norms, this framework acts as a shared operating system. It’s not about controlling people’s work; it’s about creating intentional culture infrastructure for how work happens. Because the best teams don’t run on vibes. They run on clarity. Let’s break it down.
Traditions: What Rituals Look Like When There’s No Office Kitchen
There’s a myth that rituals can’t survive without a breakroom. As if the soul of workplace culture lives exclusively in the fluorescent glow of morning donuts and the ceremonious passing of the “World’s Okayest Employee” mug.
But rituals weren’t canceled by remote work. Their inflexibility was just revealed. Rituals aren’t about place. They’re about pattern, predictability, and purpose. They help people feel like they belong to something, not just show up for something.
Without intentional traditions, remote teams default to the culture equivalent of dial tone. Everything works, but no one’s really listening. That’s why high-functioning remote teams don’t skip traditions; they remix them.
Some have onboarding playlists, where each new team member drops three songs into a communal Spotify queue to introduce themselves (the equivalent to walk-on music at in-person events). Others send surprise kits via snail mail to celebrate promotions or launch milestones. The “async party” is very real and often involves digital confetti, custom Zoom backgrounds highlighting the set of your favorite tv show growing up, or a meme-off channel that gets more engagement than the actual status meetings.
Slack shoutouts become the new applause. Emoji-based recognition turns a 🎯 or 🔥 into lightweight feedback loops. Some teams even maintain “show and tell” time on Friday calls, where someone walks through a cool project or just shows off their dog in a Halloween costume. No judgment either way.
The point isn’t to force fake fun. It’s to make culture tangible even when nobody shares a zip code. And if the idea of “rituals” makes your brain itch, just call it what it is: a scalable engagement strategy. Rituals are the unwritten playbooks that make team culture tangible. They allow humans to plug into something bigger than tasks and tickets. Culture doesn’t settle on its own. It calcifies. Rituals keep it flexible, fresh, and human.
Expectations: Flexibility Doesn’t Mean Vagueness
Remote teams love to celebrate flexibility. No commute. No dress code. No one judging your lunchtime leftovers. But flexibility without clarity is chaos in a button-up and sweatpants.
When no one knows what “done” looks like, work expands into the void. Deadlines blur. Accountability evaporates. And the performance review shows up like a horror movie villain: sudden, confusing, and full of bad lighting. Remote teams don’t need more structure. They need more alignment. This starts with redefining expectations not as rules, but as agreements. These are living documents, not sacred scrolls. The best teams treat expectations like changelogs, not commandments.
Start with the basics:
What’s the expected response time for a Slack message?
Is “urgent” a red exclamation point or just someone being dramatic?
Who makes the final call on scope creep in a project?
These aren’t micromanagement questions. They’re kindness questions; clear is kind, and no one wants to feel like they’re always guessing.
High-performing teams build shared language. They codify what excellence looks like. They get explicit about autonomy, feedback loops, and handoffs. One org we know even created a glossary. In it, “touch base” meant a 10-minute sync with clear purpose. “Circle back” meant we forgot to assign this, and hope someone else does it. You’d be surprised how much time you can save when everyone defines their terms.
Clarity doesn’t kill creativity. It fertilizes it. Think of expectations as the trellis, not the cage (though they should have teeth for lack of follow-through). They give work something to grow on.
Norms: Making the Invisible Visible
There’s a scene in nearly every horror movie where the characters finally realize the threat was inside the house all along. That’s what implicit norms are like. They creep in slowly. No one talks about them. But they shape everything: who speaks up, who doesn’t, how trust forms, and how fast it erodes.
Remote teams are particularly vulnerable to the quiet weight of unspoken assumptions. What does it mean when someone doesn’t respond to a Slack message for four hours? Are they heads-down? Checked out? Passive-aggressively protesting the meeting invite?
Norms are how teams make meaning together. When no one makes those norms explicit, people fill in the gaps with their own stories, which are often inaccurate and always unproductive. Codifying norms doesn’t mean writing a manifesto. It means writing down how your team behaves on purpose. For example:
“We use emoji reactions to acknowledge we’ve seen a message.”
“Cameras are optional for internal calls, expected for anything client-facing.”
“We default to async updates, but escalate to live conversation when tone or complexity requires it.”
“If you’re heads-down, set a Slack status and turn off notifications. We’ll know you’re not ghosting us.”
Depending on the size of your team, these norms don’t need to live in an HR portal. A simple internal webpage, Google Doc, or Slack thread works just fine as long as it’s visible, current, and collaborative. Think of it like a team charter or working agreement. The goal is to reduce social friction so people can focus on actual work.
When norms are shared, people stop reading tea leaves and start reading each other more generously.
Build Your Operating System
The best remote teams don’t run on charisma, luck, or perfectly crafted Slack statuses. They run on intention. TENs (Traditions, Expectations, and Norms) give teams a shared operating system for how work happens. Not just the what, but the how. Not just the rules, but the rhythms. This is not about controlling every moment. It’s about removing the friction of misaligned assumptions.
Traditions give people a reason to show up beyond the checklist.
Expectations give them a map for what success looks like.
Norms give them confidence that how they work is understood and respected.
Stop waiting for culture to “settle.” It won’t. Build it instead. Whether your team is fully remote, hybrid, or distributed across time zones and snack preferences, the question is the same: where are you most misaligned - traditions, expectations, or norms? And what would change if that wasn’t the case?
Whether your team is remote, hybrid, or gathered around the same breakroom coffee pot, culture doesn’t happen by accident. It happens through clarity, intention, and structure. If you’re ready to help your team articulate their Traditions, Expectations, and Norms and finally stop tripping over assumptions, we’d love to partner with you.
Let’s discuss how we can help you design your team’s operating system and cultivate a culture worth belonging to. Reach out at info@tdotf.com or visit www.tdotf.com/booking to start the conversation.
