Focus on written communication

• Asynchronous meetings may sound strange at first but they are essential for productivity. Expensify uses them (via tools like Slack or shared Google docs) for all management meetings, especially since their employees are located in the US, Europe and Australia whose time zones range makes scheduling too difficult. The meeting owner presents the key discussions in bullet points and all participants have 24-48 hours to chime in. Once time is up, the owner summarizes the decisions and next steps and ensures continuity by assigning action items. He or she then communicates major decisions via e-mail to the entire company.
• Meeting templates help keep everyone aligned and on track (agenda, next steps, action items). Templates are also useful for "live" meetings because they encourage participants to come prepared and keep discussions (especially sales or operational updates) succinct. In the process of creating such templates, managers may identify opportunities for some of these meetings to be replaced with dashboards or e-mail updates.
• Process documentation - onboarding new employees is more challenging in a remote environment because they can't just walk over to a colleague to ask a simple (or complex) "how to?" question. They are then left to fend for themselves and may lose precious time trying to figure out everything from scratch. This is especially detrimental for companies that have high turnover (aka most startups). Documenting how key processes work, what the company is all about and where to find important information may not be sexy. However, it is absolutely key for getting new employees up to speed and can boost productivity significantly.  Trello is one company that really embedded this practice into their culture. They even make their templates available to other companies (check out their new employee onboarding template, for example). 
• Hiring for strong communication skills - this one is pretty self-explanatory but may not be obvious for roles that are more technical in nature. Yet, working successfully in a remote world requires a certain maturity and ability to sometimes over-communicate in order to be understood. When hiring new employees for a remote company, one could easily test for writing skills by asking them to describe their vision, answer a typical client question, or explain the functionality of a piece of code.  Basecamp's founders share some additional tips on how to hire the right profiles for remote work in their book Remote: Office Not Required.

Plan Around Time Zone Differences

• Create empathy around time zone differences. Educate employees to figure out the time at their collaborators' location and take it into consideration when scheduling meetings.
• Rotate meeting times to make them convenient for people from different locations. Here's a very simple tool I use to figure out the time in different places around the world.
• Block collaboration time: Make work hours flexible but block out time when people from all time zones need to be available online. Most of the remote-first companies I interviewed have this time blocked in the middle of the day US time (for example at 12-2:00 pm EST). 

Reserve Face to Face Meetings Only For Special Occasions

• Company-wide: Most hold annual or bi-annual company meetings where they spend at least a day doing fun activities together. For example, Expensify takes this to the next level by flying the entire company to work from an international location for three weeks that are peppered with social events. Families are also invited to join during the last week of the trip. 
• Department/team level: Aside from virtual happy hours and weekly check-ins online, departments and/or teams meet quarterly to revise results, define goals and strategies, and discuss any other work-related issues. A Trello employee shared that over time various team communication issues start to escalate and by the end of the quarter, they really feel the need for a F2F meeting which helps them iron out everything and start afresh.