#RemoteWork: Collaborating and Chaos

Over the last few days, I’ve decided that working remotely during the COVID-19 virus is both a harbinger of things to come and a complete and utter anomaly. On one hand, I’m glad that my team is forced to work remotely. I think it will lead to a better way of doing things and operational and cultural improvement. I’m not worried about how everyone will react and interact. 

On the other hand, my wife and I both work (now remotely) and our 3 kids (Madeline 5, Elliott 5, and Charlotte 3) are also going to school “remotely.” Chaos. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids, but man do I appreciate their teachers. 

Let me put this nicely - we’re still finding our balance. In the midst of conference calls, slack conversations, and sales activities I’m trying to figure out why ABC Mouse keeps freezing, running to change educational documentaries because I accidentally chose the one about lions eating their prey (“No Charlotte, the lion isn’t kissing the gazelle’s booty butt.” - she’s 3), and having the twins write the sight words. 

So, during all of this chaos, I’m working on my own tasks for the day and keep getting pinged by my team to hop on a Google Hangouts to chat. I’m a bit of a multitasking, ADD person, so this is all normal and I love it. It was about 2p when I’d popped onto my 3rd wrong Hangout that I knew something needed to change. I need, my team needs, a way to pop into a video conference without creating a separate conference call every time. 

This brings me to my 2 learnings. Yes, I’m long-winded (read: recovering lawyer and sales background). 

• We can’t be afraid to adapt: we’re new to working remotely and we won’t have all the answers today. 
• We need a way to pop in: collaboration that is different from video/phone conferencing. 

Jacob on my team threw out Tandem as a potential solution.  The goal is to help make our quick screenshare/check-in calls more frictionless. I told him last night to get it set up. We’ll give it a shot for a few weeks...and it’s totally free for the next few months.

Any other tools or routines you’re using to make remote work? I’d love any/all thoughts and ideas.