“How can I get up and running fast with online meetings?” DOWNLOAD AVAILABLE
When transitioning to remote working as a team for the first time, ‘fast’ is usually the last thing we recommend. A considered assessment of how you communicate and collaborate, together with detailed discussions about how to successfully implement visible teamwork effectively, is the ideal.
We are not in ideal times however, and like the rest of the global remote work community we’re doing everything we can to help teams of all shapes and sizes switchover to remote work at lightning speed - under circumstances none of us ever considered. Yes, we always wanted more people to be open to the idea of remote, but always within an ‘office-optional’ context. Today the world is out of options, and everyone has to work from home.
Right now, business continuity depends on hitting the ground running and getting something in place straight away, and there’s a great emphasis on the tools you need, the equipment and the apps. It’s easy to focus on these as the solution, but while you do need a certain threshold of hardware and software, it is really truly not about the ‘what’. How you use the kit really matters far more, or, as our good friend and regular podcast guest Laurel Farrer expressed it recently:
Our Director Pilar Orti’s new book, Online Meetings That Matter. A guide for managers of remote teams, digs deep into those skills, as well as the mindset and strategic thinking behind organising and running online meetings well. Many people are finding it an essential reference during these days of pandemic pandemonium, but, we completely understand that not everyone has the leisure to read a book right now - nor to reflect on the planning of online meetings in the organisation, the different types of needs meetings fulfil, the kind of cadence and schedule needed, and the roles of different participants.
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Instead people need to have a way of connecting and communicating with each other somehow or other, right now, and just keep working. They’re skipping straight to the tactical, practical part of the book, which addresses those essentials: not just what apps to download, but how to prepare, to host, to bring it all together as the meeting organiser, and make it happen.
That’s why we’re making this section of the book available to you for a limited time as a free download, that you can grab read right now on any device you have at home, ahead of your next meeting. This will get you across the basics in the fastest possible time.
It won’t solve all the problems that the global health crises has created for you and your team, but what we hope is that you’ll learn enough from it to ride out the emergency, and stay connected. To maintain business continuity and collaborate effectively, as well as being able to support each other by the direct and personal communication and connection that video calling brings.
To tackle the present challenges together as a team, even if you’re all suddenly in different places.
If you find this excerpt helpful, then we truly believe you’ll get even more out of reading the whole book - you can read Maya’s hardly-biased-at-all review of it here.
But for now, grab the free download, and do whatever you have to do to stay connected with your colleagues. And you’ll find all the advice and ideas in the book equally useful for arranging all those non-work online get-togethers which are exploding everywhere too.
If you’re still working, you’re doing better than so many people all over the world, and you’ll pull through this one way or another - even if this is a million miles from the first remote working experience any of us at Virtual Not Distant wanted you to have.
And if we can help you or support you in any way to get through these days, and to look toward the future, please contact us and we’ll do whatever we can to assist.