Distributed Teams

Yesterday, per Christmas tradition, my whole family opened presents, ate a ton of tasty food and then proceeded to watch Die Hards 1 and 2 - back to back.

I've watched both movies many times before, but since I tend to be a different person (i.e. older with more life experiences) each time I actually watch these movies, I tend to see something new that I hadn't seen during prior viewings. This time it was distributed working environments.

Distributed work gets carried out in both movies by both 'good' and 'bad' sides. But when it comes to the most powerful example of distributed working - not to mention one of the all-time best distributed teams depicted in any movie ever - John McLane and Sgt. Al Powell in Die Hard 1 are really in a league of their own.

That pair single handedly brought the terrorist attack on the Nakatomi building in downtown LA to a successful resolution - all over a common frequency using two-way walkie talkies and all without ever having even seen the other's face.

In the face of adversity from both the 'bad guys' led by Hans Gruber and the supremely incompetent 'good guys' led at various times by someone in either the LAPD or FBI, the deeply trust-based team of John McLane and Sgt. Al Powell were able to systematically neutralize every obstacle that got in their way.

How did they accomplish this? Through brutally efficient honesty.

Every time they had the chance to speak, they really made it count. No superfluous catchup meetings for them. They also remembered everything they said to one another previously and built deeper ties each chance they got. In a short amount of time they got to know one another's *deepest* fears and regrets and helped both move on from them.

The ability to forge deep relationships with faceless 'others' who may be thousands of kilometers away or right outside the building you're in is an ability unique to humans.

While it was possible prior to Cent to meet someone online that you could theoretically set up a distributed team with, Cent seems to be a place where anyone can make that happen anytime.

Take the above illustration created by @charlesx for example. That's one of a series of incrementally unique illustrations that will accompany each of my daily photos heading forward. These illustrations are the result of several back and forth communications over Cent and Telegram solidified by a monetary transaction over Cent. That last point is crucial.

Now that crypto has made digital payment channels at least 100x easier and quicker to establish with anyone anywhere around the world, that combined with all the existing apps that facilitate simple, quick communication help make anytime the best time in history to set up a distributed team to accomplish anything.

In order to spin up a distributed team you just need an idea of what you want to do. So what do you want to do?