Jimmy Sjölund
One often-cited advantage of a colocated team—everyone sitting together in the same space—is the ease of instant interaction and collaboration. Need something? Just turn around and talk to your teammates! In fact, the Agile Manifesto even seems to enshrine this kind of interaction:
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation. But authors of the Agile Manifesto were working in 2001, when remote collaboration was much more rare than it is today—and when many fewer tools for distributed teamwork were available. While face-to-face conversation is still very effective for achieving communication with team members, so much more is possible now through "eFace-to-eFace" interaction.
So how can you translate the colocated experience to a remote setting? Don't expect to easily replace the act of turning to your colleague with pinging them in a chat tool. You'll need to consider much more when working remotely than simply translating "old" behavior to a "new" setting. You might even need to find communication techniques better suited to a remote context.
Over the years, I've worked with several teams this way—and I've noted the practices that have made them successful. In this chapter, I'll share some of those practices.
First let's examine a few useful techniques for synchronous communication. Synchronous communication is communication that occurs between two or more persons in real time. In synchronous settings, there are no delays between the persons taking conversational "turns," and all parties can talk at the same time (though that's perhaps not the best communication style!). Holding a conversation in the same room or an audio/video call are examples of synchronous communication techniques. Typed chat conversations can also be synchronous, as in cases where all parties are "live," reading and responding to typed messages as they appear. (If the chat tool has a "history" feature, then others can read what has been written before and respond to that later on—but that would be asynchronous communication. More on that later.)
Much of communication and networking in the workplace come from meeting people at the office. Many discussions, plans, and collaborations have started (or even been decided and concluded) in informal talks over coffee, at lunch, or in the corridors. Sometimes, people refer to this as "meeting at the watercooler" (perhaps a thing of the past—but the term has stuck around). These mini-meetings are often spontaneous—but when you're working in a remote, distributed fashion, you need to plan even the smallest synchronous interactions (therefore removing the spontaneity!).
Successful teams and organziations recognize the advantages of these interactions, and one solution they've developed is setting up a "watercooler channel" in the chat tool of your choice. This channel is the place where you simulate the colocated experience of casual, unexpected conversations. There, you can take part some of the idle chitchat (or business talk!), or just hang out while taking a small break. Some organizations establish their watercooler channel as a team-wide chat, others as a department- or office-wide channel. Why not combine them all and host everyone? Most importantly, make sure the team knows that business-critical chatter should not happen here.
You'll also want to create an "information channel" for managers who need to share information and deal with the "this meeting could have been an email" phenomenon (see below). This room's just for socializing.
At the company where I work, for example, we have a network you can join to be paired up with a random colleague for lunch. This has now migrated to the distributed setting, where instead of going to lunch together, you and a random colleague have lunch and a video meeting occurring at the same time.
Not another meeting?! Don't worry. It's not. Not really, anyway.
Some teams have had great experience with hosting an ongoing video meeting—an "open room" that's always activated for anyone to visit when they want to chat. This practice involves creating an "all-day" meeting in a video conference platform of your choice, then distributing the dial-in details to everyone on the team who might want to access it at any time. Unlike the watercooler channel, this one is typically more business-focused. When you run into to an issue or want to discuss something with a co-worker, you can tune into the all-day meeting and see who is available. It's an alternative to the practice of turning around and asking your colleague in the room a question; the video call makes the communication more personal and efficient than a text or voice-only chat.
The opposite of synchronous communication is asynchronous communication, or communication that occurs with the conversational "turns" delayed to some degree. Typical examples of asynchronous communication practice include sending letters or, more recently, logged a message for someone in your team's chat channel so they can read it in the chat history later (as I mentioned above).
Teams that work with lean and agile practices usually run some kind of "standup meeting" on a regular basis (some do it every morning, and others less frequently). At this meeting, everyone gathers around the team board and looks for work-blocking impediments they might need help with, or to see if the team needs to adjust its priorites priorities somewhere. A common formula for a report at the meeting usual looks like this: quickly talk about what I worked on yesterday, discuss what I will focus on today, and explain any problems the team needs to address before I can do that work. A team standup usually runs for 15 minutes, give or take. Performing a standup in a remote-first setting it can be more difficult, especially when you can't find a convenient time to gather everyone in the team in a synchronous channel (even if you are all in the same time zone, team members will likely have barriers that prevent them from meeting at the same moment!). To me, one of the primary advantages of remote work is the possibility to balance work and life a bit better. Therefore, consider the strategy of not running the standup as a synchronous meeting where everyone must attend in person at the same time. Instead, take another opportunity to use a channel in your team's chosen chat tool. Everyone can prepare their typical standup statements in advance and write them in the channel. If you're reporting on impediments you would like to discuss, or something on which you need support, you can simply arrange those meetings afterward with the appropriate group of people.
Colocated standups—everyone interacting at the same time—do have benefits, and some argue that asynchronous standups are mere "status reports" and not an effective communication activity. Why not try it and see if it works for your team?
Many meetings are held for the purpose of sharing information. One-way information distribution remains common on distributed teams, even while not all information needs to reach everyone at the same time (or within a specific time). But maybe your team doesn't need another video meeting to do that? I encourage leaders to create a separate channel for information to the team.
One common mistake teams make when shifting from a colocated environment to a distributed one is to introduce more meetings to compensate for the social dimension of being in an office and the spontanious chats and discussions that occur there. But this can prove to be a blessing in disguise, as your team might end up with online meeting fatigue.
Instead, try to work with an information channel in your collaboration tool. There, you can post post the information that you otherwise would have raised and recounted at, say, a weekly meeting. Doing this has another advantage, too: by posting the information in a dedicated instead of sending an email, you're gradually creating a shared knowledge repository others can easily search and help one another find. Everyone can interact with questions or comments and, as most collaboration tools support threads, you get all the questions, comments, answers, and discussions available and searchable in one place. That way, if several team members have the same questions, they can read the answers already given (rather than simply missing out if they didn't participate in the meeting or missed an email). This practice is also helpful for people who are more comfortable asking questions after taking some time to reflect on a topic, or don't always prefer to speak up in synchronous meetings (colocated or video enabled!). If you have a team spread over multiple time zones, this kind of asynchronous communication is even more important for information sharing.
A3 reports are the result of a work method or a problem solving approach, one that emerged from Toyota and the Toyota Production System, which one could say ignited the worldwide "lean" movement. Toyota uses A3 reports for many purposes—from status reports, to proposal and policy changes, to (most notably) problem solving. The name for this method derives from the paper size it once required: the largest possible size you could still fit into a fax machine (today, as less is more, Toyota also promotes A4 reports!).
While working remotely, whether temporarily or permanently, this technique for sharing information is even more effective, especially if you expect to might miss out on corridor chats and pick up information that might not have been communivated in a concise way. A3 reports that are openly available to all is a great way to share information and collect feedback.
The A3 report should contain all necessary information for handling a specific problem or making a particular decision. The format differs depending on whether it's an A3 for problem solving, a proposal, a status report, or for strategic planning, but in general it includes:
- A short description of the issue or background
- A status report of the current situation
- A description of future state or goals/targets
- An analysis of or a statement on the root cause (in case of problem solving)
- Suggestions for alternative improvements or solutions
- A recommended action, next steps or a time plan
- An analysis of the cost and value (if applicable)
- Follow-up plans
The A3 process is based on the Deming Cycle: Plan, Do, Study, Act. One of the advantages with an A3 report is that it makes plans visible and easier to read quickly, but one must remember it's also only one step in the decision-making process. Another piece is the nemawashi process, where the principle is to do decision-making slowly and in consensus. Many people will circulate and discuss an A3 report before presenting it to decision makers or management. Feedback it receives along the way helps perfect the report so that when it's time to make a decision the information is clear and direct. This could potentially lengthen the time required for making a decision—but when everyone is on board, implementations are much faster.
It's imperative to stress again: the A3 is not the tool. The A3 is the result of the iterative process of analyzing the situation; it's the visualization method. In Toyota Kata, it's used in the dialogue between the mentor and the adept. The important thing is how and why an A3 is developed and used, not the format or the report itself.
A strategy-focused A3 is by nature future-oriented. It gathers the future goals and needs, and will cascade down through the organization to people's daily work. The visualization is important, and a well-crafted one-page message should communicate it easily. In the nemawashi process, many have already had the opportunity to give feedback, and through the visualization of the A3, everyone can quickly be reminded of the strategy and how their work is aligned with the goals and achievements.
If you have the options of adding video to your call or meeting, I encourage you to do so. With video, we can account for more of the feedback channels that colocated communication affords us—nuances lost when we're not in the same room, such as facial expressions and body language. Video can't replace in-person interaction, but it will be a great enhancement to audio-only communication. Similarly, don't use the option to turn off the camera as an opportunity to do parallell work; respect the time of the people around you. Be an active participant in the meeting.
That said, we're all different—introverts and extroverts, good days and bad days. In a remote setting, you'll quite commonly see family members stepping into the room, or the (often much-appreciated) cat peeking in from the back of someone's laptop. So extend some compassion and understanding, too. Don't force your team members into turning their camera on at all times, but do appreciate when they do and try to do it as much as possible.
As distributed teamwork proliferates, people are more conscious than ever about teammates who are working remotely and often work to compensate for the social interactions those teammates might be missing. But some tend to run the risk of overcompensating too. There are now post-work video happy hours, video lunches, video check-ins—we try so hard to make up for the remote situation that all the meetings and gatherings become exhausting. I worked, for example, on a team that, when shifting to a distributed environment, suddenly had twice as much check-ins than it had when we were at the office. Why? The meetings weren't providing value that they weren't before we made the switch; on the contrary they took more time away from other work. And if your team has never gone out to a post-work event while colocated in the office, don't arrange for several online after-work meeting now—unless, of course, the team specifically asks for it or arranges it themselves.
When working with a team, one fo the first things I typically do is run a workshop that helps the entire team develop a "working agreement." Here, we propose things we want from a well functioning team and clarify what we like and dislike when working together as a team. Issues we address here include how to communicate, how we run meetings, how we conduct video chat, and what we expect of ourselves and our collegues. In a remote setting, this practice is even more important, as small things can grow into conflicts or discontent inside the team without you noticing as you might have done in a colocated setting. When we all agree on some ground rules and preferable behaviors, it's easier to get ourselves back on track when we deviate: we just remind ourselves why we included something in the working agreement in the first place. There are several ways to run the workshop or reach an agreement. I've found inspiration in Jimmy Janlén at Crisp's Bootstrapping a working agreement and The Basecamp Guide to Internal Communication. Use these and other resources as inspiration and guide to your own way of working. Keep in mind: this should be a living document, something you return to and update; add new parts, remove obsolete parts, and make especially sure you update the agreement after the team the get new members.
These pointers and suggestions have worked for some teams I've assisted. But there's no guarantee everything I've discussed in this chapter will work for the next team I join. As teams are made of people, and as everyone is different, we need to adjust our ways of working and communication to every setting and situation. If something doesn't work with your team, move on. Try something else. Involve everyone. It's hard work. But when you succeed, you receive all the joys and benefits of a well functioning, happy team producing value and growing together.
Now go out there and make magic!