Feeling Connected through Visible Workflow in your Remote Team

"We seem to spend all our time in meetings. As team leader, I find it difficult to strike that balance between checking in and checking up on what people are doing. What’s worse, lately we’ve seen some tasks being duplicated in our team; and the fact that team members are not sure of what others are doing is making them feel disconnected from each other. No matter how many virtual coffees we have together, we don’t have a sense that we’re working as a team.”

I have heard different managers of remote teams mention one or two of the above points: being worried that people don’t know what their team members are working on, and feeling disconnected from the work as a whole. The solution is not more real-time conversation: it’s designing an asynchronous system where team members can check in with what others are getting on with, at any time in the day.

The Need to Make The Team’s Workflow Visible

Your team might already have a system of making their workflow visible. You might have an online project management system or in your office, you might have charts on the walls, or whiteboards that get regularly updated, or Kanban Boards made up of sticky notes. 

But if you are still relying on status meetings to track progress in the team, or if your team members don’t have a sense of what other people are doing, or if your meeting time is taken up by “I’ve completed this, I’m about to start that”, rather than, “I wonder if anyone has any insight about this block, which I’ve come up against this week?”, then you need to make your workflow visible. 

And taking your workflow systems online means they will be visible to the whole team, regardless of where they are based. 

One Quick Glance at the Workload

A system of Visible Workflow gives team members one place to visit online, to see who’s doing what, and who might be waiting for us to finish our task to kick off theirs. There is the added bonus of spotting when we’re in danger of duplicating our work, something that will happen in team member’s roles and responsibilities are fluid.

As a manager, or team leader, a system of visible workflow gives you a quick snapshot of whether your team is on track or falling behind - or even whether you are further ahead than you thought. Plus, in those teams where team members’ tasks are of a similar nature and complexity, one quick look at your workflow can show whether there are significant inequalities in the workload. 

A system of visible workflow doesn’t just need the right online application to enable it (Trello or Planner are my favourites), it needs clarity around who is doing what, and where the priorities lie. Setting up the system with your team gives you the opportunity to be clear about who is responsible for each task, and for understanding how all the individual pieces fit into the team’s machine. 

(For an example of using Trello to visualise the team’s workflow and how it can help a team self-organise, have a look at this article I wrote for Management 3.0 back in 2015.)

WARNING!

I hope that your neurons are firing off warnings.

Pretty much like any system where you report your presence to your team, it can turn into an epidemic of presenteeism. A system of visible workflow which only looks at what has been done, can turn into a race to see who can come up with the longest ‘Done’ checklist.

For the manager, keeping an eye out on the workflow might feel like micromanaging, so you will need to find the right balance for yourself, the work, and the workflow. For example, you can set a time during the week to “pop into” your workflow site.

Or you can have a team meeting once a week where you all review how much progress you’ve made together. This is not about going through the board task by task, but looking at those tasks that seem to linger for too long under the “in progress” label and asking questions to find out whether there are any blockers that can be removed, or even whether you need to drop the task alltogether. 

Don’t forget to agree what you will share, where and how often. And review.

DESIGNING VISIBLE WORKFLOW FOR PRODUCTIVITY AND ALIGNMENT

When setting up a Visible Workflow system, think about:

• What do you need to know about progress? Do you need to know what’s pending, or what will be done next week/next day? This will be important if your task interdependence is sequential, or reciprocal. 

• Do you and your team members want to know what work is being done in the team, simply to give you a sense of progress and accountability? (As opposed to needing the information itself.)

Designing for Connection

For teams where people have little task interdependence, where team members can get on with their work without anyone else’s input, a system of Visible Workflow will focus on providing a sense of connection, rather than sharing information to make everyone more productive. Having some idea of what other team members are doing can be motivating for some of us, even if all it does is satisfy our curiosity about what others are doing. 

For some team members, spending ten minutes every now and then looking through the team’s workflow can help put their own tasks into context, and even reveal skills their team members have, that otherwise would remain hidden. 

If connection is something you feel you’re missing, setting up the system of visible workflow in a way that enables interaction will be key.

If you want to learn more about the principles of Visible Teamwork, download our guide Leading through Visible Teamwork by signing up to our newsletter. If you’re searching for ways to keep your remote employees connected, check out our service Podcasting for Connection.