Remote team-working (without the tears)

Are you driving your team crazy by wasting time on phone conferences and video hangouts? In a social-isolation world, we're all going to have to get used to more remote working. So here's a very basic plan to get the most out of tech options like Skype, Zoom and Hangouts.

First, here's what you're doing now. The boss starts the meeting (eventually), there's a bunch of confusing cross talk and annoying background noises. Half the group just stay silent. You check emails while in the meeting, waiting for someone to say your name.

This is the Chaotic state. In a proper meeting, you can rely on body language to do half your communication. Here, you've got nothing but voice. It's awful.

This is an alternative. It's an old fashioned meeting with an agenda and a chair. The boss calls each person to contribute in order. Everyone else listens (you hope).

Orderly is better than Chaotic, but it's a passive experience for 90% of the participants. And if an important discussion breaks out, you risk going straight back to Chaotic. Plus this certainly doesn't feel like creative team-working.

So here's a Distributed model. The boss sets the agenda to the whole team, takes any urgent comments and then asks people to get off the group chat and buddy-up.

Team members can self-organise or be allocated to pairs. Some people will work better alone. Everyone has the same task and knows they will be reporting back in a set time. Now you have a bunch of separate conversations. You've gone from 90% passive to 90% active. The boss can join a sub-group or stay out of the discussions, available to answer any quick questions.

You can organise an entire morning remote team-working session by alternating between Orderly and Distributed discussions.

Each time you start, it's Orderly. Each detailed discussion is Distributed. Each summary of what you've been discussing is Orderly.

Then give people a proper break. Then start again.

I've run a two hour remote workshop like this. Two hours is probably enough. But we'll all have to find ways to keep our teams together in the coming months. So who knows, with a good facilitator and good planning, maybe this is what our working days are going to look like for a while.

Good luck everybody. If you'd like help facilitating remote working in your team, get in touch.