Switching to remote work - and making it work

The key to remote work is getting to know team members as a whole person, not just a bot that sometimes does things. That means understanding and creating CONTEXT for each others’ actions.

Context =

  • Understanding how people think, not just their actions/decisions

  • What is a person thinking about? What are the feeling? What’s important to them? What are they seeing and responding to?

  • Sharing some positive emotions – laughs, listening, the attention of the group

If you are team leader:

  • Get more facetime than usual with your team. At minimum, set a 15 min check in with each team member 1x week where you can connect on what’s going well and what’s not

  • Get clear on which channels are best for what– e.g. text for emergencies, email for usual

  • Agree on explicit expectations for how fast people should expect an answer from each other (e.g. emails=24 hours, texts=2 hours, etc.)

  • You and everyone should set “office hours” – 30-60 min a day where you will be fully available for spontaneous q’s. These can be each person’s choice, but don’t forget to have everyone list them

  • Tech set up: Video: Get set up on zoom or the video client of your choice. Zoom is offering free stuff right now. Chat/Slack: If you don’t already have one, set up a free account where people can ping each other for fast requests instead of long email chains.

  • Slack comes with a channel where people can share memes and dumb stuff to make each other laugh without it being in the middle of work stuff. Get this ball rolling!

  • Set Monday and Friday scrums (15-60 minute standup meetings depending on the size of your team)

    Here’s the agenda:

    • One sentence check in from each person– context for how you’re showing up today, something on your mind or that you want to share

    • Do not skip this! This is the #1 way to maintain a sense of human relationships when working remotely

    • Do allow people to pass if they aren’t feeling chatty

    • Mon: What’s your main focus for the week? / Fri: what did you learn this week?

    • What do you need from other people at this point?

    • Closing – what are you taking with you? or what do you want people to know?

Kim PerkinsComment