WLP296: What's Your Team's Communication Rhythm?
In this episode, Maya and Pilar discuss the different communication rhythms that remote teams adopt. They also cover the concept of documentation, as something that can help slow down a team's rhythm, or at least help it towards "burstiness", a characteristic of successful teams. Plenty here to reflect on.
Communication in an online team requires a different mindset to that of when you are collocated, and requires different ways of interacting which might feel unnatural, or even uncomfortable.
It all started with this tweet: https://twitter.com/PilarOrti/status/1499370551596527617
“Over the last years, I’ve worked & collaborated with a wide range of people online. 1 thing that strikes me is that the rhythm of communication & the speed of the workflow become apparent. I’ve noticed when somebody’s rhythm clashes with my own. Is this something you’ve noticed?”
Saskie replied that she also noticed when it WAS in sync, and gave this metaphor: “Musing on your tweet brought to mind an image of 3 legged races as a child. Just agreeing to begin with the outer leg first was a winning tactic. It wasn’t about running faster – just about not falling over ourselves!”
As external people, we notice this when we come into a team, but the team might not be aware that there are different rhythms of communicating. There are teams which communicate constantly, either because the task requires it, or because they’re used to it. So this presents itself like constant tagging, and many near real-time replies; on the other hand some teams barely tag anyone, just post messages at some point, and don’t require as much synchronous communication, neither to do their work or to feel connected.
We explain the terms “asynchronous communication”, “documentation” and “single source of truth”. For more on this, you might want to check out this newsletter from Remote Fabric: http://newsletter.remotefabric.com/issues/push-vs-pull-communication-issue-2-696532
Teams can start by pulling together different bits of information and gather them in one single space, so that it’s accessible for everyone. Think of it as a key area in your online office.
You can also adopt the principle, thinking, “is this conversation or document something we want to keep for future reference, could it help someone?” It’s about making it easier to find where the expertise is in the company, so this is not only about content but also about knowing who can help you in the company.
Could this be relevant to learning and development roles? Shifting the mindset from how to run “engaging online workshops” to how can we curate the information and knowledge in the company? Technology is making this easier by the year…
(For more on this check out next week’s episode on Knowledge Management in organisations.)
19.00 MINS
DIfferent teams have different rhythms and they are influenced by the nature and progress of task and task interdependence, perception of and real hierarchy and level of autonomy to make decisions and social culture.
We begin talking about the rhythm around tasks and how this is affected by the nature of the task, the progress, and if we’re in a project, the stage of the project. Eg kick off and brainstorming at the beginning might require regular lots of exchanges, then a slower rhythm and less interactions as everyone “gets on with it”, and a faster pace.
We can reflect as individuals and as a team whether the rhythm we have is useful to us. Also, don’t forget about our wider context and how this might affect the rhythm in which we communicate.
Task interdependence will also affect your communication cadence, as well as whether you have a space where you go to communicate your progress. (You can find out more about this in episode 239, or read the show notes.)
By the way, creating documentation is all about creating the space for meaningful conversations, and conversing when it’s the best way of getting things done together, not as the only way of getting things done together. It helps us avoid information being held in someone’s head.
Documentation is live, so that improvement to our processes can be communicated too. But none of this helps if we don’t develop a culture of accessing documentation and other asynchronous communication. (We know, it can feel like a lot of extra work, but transitions are always difficult…)
As team leaders, we need to change our mindset and focus on creating an ecosystem within which people can work rather than always being the main point of contact for information. It can be difficult to figure out which technology can help us best though… Another challenge…
And of course, none of this works without psychological safety…
36.00 MINS
The sense of hierarchy and real hierarchy, as well as the ability and trust to make decisions on our own also can result in constant communication, as everyone feels like they need to check in.
Presenteeism and the need to be seen as working really hard, can also result in lots of “push communication” when we complete the work – rather than the more calm cadence of making our workflow visible in an agreed way.
If we don’t have a system for communicating innovations and experiments, one person can end up in the receiving end of lots of information requests, rather than people going to a specific place to find out more about this.
As team leaders, we can take the coaching approach and document some of the answers people might be looking for, so that they can access them on their own, rather than relying on you. Personality also plays a part in this, and the ability to figure out things on your own, or finding your way through information is a core skill for remote workers.
43.00 MINS
Finally, let’s look at culture.
Is psychological safety as important in remote teams as in colocated? At least you have to know it’s ok to bring things up.
In teams where people have a need to feel connected physically or emotionally to each other throughout the day, we might also get fast paced communication.
There was some research done on the rhythm of communication done a couple of years ago: Successful Remote Teams Communicate in Bursts by Christoph Riedl and Anita Williams Woolley, published on 28 October 2020 HBR online
https://hbr.org/2020/10/successful-remote-teams-communicate-in-bursts
Bursts of rapid-fire communication with longer periods of silence in between are characteristic of successful teams. Bursts help to focus energy, develop ideas, get closure on specific questions and condensing the synchronous time, can help those who really miss the ‘buzz’ of face to face interactions.
Find synchronous time together and define it, rather than suddenly move to synchronous communication. This does not need to be set in advance, but can be built on what’s going on organically or can be emerging by sharing availability.
From the article, “The bottom line: Worry less about sparking creativity and connection through watercooler-style interactions in the physical world, and focus more on facilitating bursty communication.”
Let’s not forget that artificial intelligence is making it easier for us to find information, including how real-time conversations are being recorded (in video, audio) and how they can be searched.
We know none of this is easy – let us know if you need some help.
54.00 MINS
We’d like to share an article by our friend Jennifer Riggins which is both timely and evergreen: How to Support Teammates Living in Ukraine — or Any War Zone.
The article offers examples of how to support people in crisis situations in both practical and emotional ways. It’s very relevant to today’s context, but can also help in the future.
We hope you enjoyed the episode, feel free to send us some feedback or any other thoughts you would like to share with us and the listeners.
Sign up for our monthly newsletter below as a way of keeping in touch, or join us over at LinkedIn.
Looking for the transcript? You can find it further down…
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Transcript for WLP296: What's Your Team's Communication Rhythm?
Pilar Orti 0:00
Hello and welcome to the 21st Century Work Life Podcast where we talk about leading remote teams, online collaboration, and working in distributed organisations. This podcast is brought to you by Virtual not Distant, where we help managers and teams transition to an office optional approach. Find out everything we do over at VirtualnotDistant.com. And check out our show notes and pictures of our lovely guests over on the podcast page. It's great to have you here, listeners. Let's get on with the show. Hello, and welcome to episode 296 of the 21st Century Work Life Podcast. My name is Pilar Orti. And with me today is Maya Middlemiss. Hello, Maya.
Maya Middlemiss 0:53
Hello, Pilar. Hello everybody listening.
Pilar Orti 0:56
And hurrah that everything seems to be working today. Now-
Maya Middlemiss 1:03
Let’s gloss over any early technical troubles because I think we've got the string back in the yoghurt pot for now.
Pilar Orti 1:11
Apologies listeners, because what's been happening for ages is that I just get too close to the microphone I distort. So sometimes my sound is a bit weird, but Ross does manage to make us all sound as best as we can with the home studios that we have. But anyway, we are now trying Zen Caster, which seems to be working. So any podcasting people listening out there, we've got this new toy to play with. And today's show, we'll see, we'll probably get going for a long while because it incorporates so much stuff, we're going to be talking again, we're going to be drawing on the concept of communication in an online team, online collaboration, and how it does require a different mindset, it does require a different way of interacting. And for some people, it's not natural, it's uncomfortable. And we don't think about it, it just never happened. So we're looking especially at providing some food for thought for the people who had to adopt remote and are continuing to be some kind of remote, whether it's the subset hybrid, or whatever, and also maybe provide some space to reflect for the more experienced ones. And we would love your contributions, more experienced ones, Pilar at virtualnotdistant.com. Or you can go over to virtual nonstandard comm where we have a contact form. And then at the end of the episode, we'll draw an article out that we really enjoyed by Jennifer Riggins, which is very timely. So we left it for the end. Well, actually, without going into it, the good thing is that it's timely and evergreen at the same time. So yeah, it's wonderful. So my, I thought we could start just to kick us off with a tweet, as many conversations start at tweet, which actually, was… Well, it didn't get many replies or many impressions. I don't know what's going on with Twitter, for impressions, but the reply really got me thinking. And the tweet I sent out was, over the last years, I've worked and collaborated with a wide range of people online. One thing that strikes me is that the rhythm of communication and the speed of the workflow becomes apparent. And I've noticed that when somebody's rhythm clashes with my own, well, I've noticed that, is this something you've noticed? And Saski, lovely Saski, who I've met through next stage radicals. She actually said, Well, I've noticed when it's in sync, which is great, because we've noticed things that are not going well. So Maya is this something that you've noticed or thought about? Or what has this prompted?
Maya Middlemiss 3:53
Yeah, it's a really interesting one, because with freelancing, I'm obviously dipping in and out of loads of different teams and client relationships. And it's one of the first things to try and figure out really, what is their cadence of communication? Where is the stuff, who do you ask about certain things? Or do you need to, and what's the… it's kind of an insight into the culture of a new organisation, but it is, every team is different. And some of those rhythms you get the feeling have evolved very organically rather than intentionally. And it ebbs and flows over time, depending on the activities in hand. I loved Saskia’s later reply about when you're out of sync, it's like a three legged race when you're trying to match your step to somebody else, because you're a year together. And the reason that it's a fun game is that quite often you fall flat on your face, because you're simply not in step at all your stride lengths are very different. You might be trying to go in different directions. I think that's an excellent metaphor for when teams aren't in sync in communication terms.
Pilar Orti 5:00
Do you want to read her tweet again? Because we've got it. Just that nice thing?
Maya Middlemiss 5:04
Yeah, she said “Musing on your tweet brought to mind an image of three legged races as a child, just agreeing to begin without a leg first was a winning tactic. It wasn't about running faster, just about not falling over ourselves.” So she's reflecting on that intentionality, which comes with all online communications and collaborating over distance, you have to have some parameters, just to get started.
Pilar Orti 5:29
And that's why for us, it's so amazing to be able to be the outside eye. And even as you say, when you come into a team, because you have experienced different ways of doing things so that you know that it doesn't have to be like that, and other people do things differently. And even that is such an insight. And I'm thinking of the… when I was thinking of this, I was thinking of opposite poles. So you have sometimes in teams where there's constant communication, either because we'll go into this in a second, the task requires a certain request for me to say, “Maya I've done this” and you say, “yeah Pilar I've done that, I've done that, and I've thought this, I thought this,” and therefore the conversations, the rhythm is very fast. And there's a lot of stuff going on all the time. Whereas there are teams where they've got used to either, like you say, organically or intentionally to… well, when I finished my work, I put it in Trello, or I leave a note somewhere, I don't necessarily tag people to say I finished, I don't reach out, I have a thought. And instead of communicating it straight away so that people hear me straight away, I put it in a document. So there's, you could already see that there's that difference.
Maya Middlemiss 6:46
It's like the spectrum between working out loud and visible teamwork. And there's sort of every, there are so many other ways of making your work visible, without necessarily having to narrate it at the top of your voice all the way through. But there are times that that can be valuable as well, or that certain kinds of very synchronous immediate updates might be essential.
Pilar Orti 7:09
Yeah. So this is almost like a reflection episode, I think, because it's made me think of a lot of stuff. And you shared an article, it's actually a newsletter from remote fabric.com, which has some, which has some terms that I think could be worth mentioning right at the top. So right now, while the first thing we want to mention is asynchronous communication, that although people listening to the show will be bored of it, of both the name and the concept. But there are people who maybe don't know that name. So asynchronous communication is all kinds of communication where we don't expect an answer, or we don't expect the receiver to be there when we send our message out. So things like good use of email, and then things like Microsoft Teams and slack when we use them as asynchronous tools. But synchronous is the conversation in a meeting, for example. So asynchronous communication, we might talk about documentation, which is not really like big, heavy documents, but actually is writing down our processes, or having our processes or conversations for posterity. So it's stuff that's there for posterity, so people can access later. And I wanted to… is there anything you want to add to those two definitions? Before I go into a single source of truth, Maya.
Maya Middlemiss 8:36
No, that leads very nicely into the idea of what you write down and where and why that matters?
Pilar Orti 8:42
So the article also refers to a definition from Dropbox around the single source of truth, which I think is really interesting to mention, because we do hear this a lot, especially in tech companies, and distributed companies. And I'll read from the article, it's a term given to the practice of bringing all business data to a single location. The idea is that everyone in that company can then make crucial business decisions based on mutually accessible data. That means there are no work silos, keeping people from knowing important information. So this actually is at the heart of documentation, I suppose.
Maya Middlemiss 9:25
Yeah,it's a really important concept. And it's one of those that's hopefully crossing over now from the tech world, which originated it, because you have to document software when you're making it. Now into business practice, because it's such a good fit with remote work. People have to know where to look for things, and it has to be accurate and up to date and the same version that everybody else is looking at, otherwise, you're going to get in big trouble fast.
Pilar Orti 9:50
Yeah, I think the concept is so important, however, I think that it is really difficult to adopt. And especially because, the way in which, well, I don't know how like… like you're saying… because I take it from you, because I don't have a clue about how software is made. But it sounds like it goes very well with a task. It fits very well with the way of working, you've got to be documenting, therefore, you're already used to working in that way. However, if we look at some of the organisation's, I'm thinking of organisations like local authority, government, and any kind of other thing is really difficult to one, know whether there is information that you can make available to others, even people in your team, let alone the organisation. And also, confidentiality. And then also because of the scale and the diversity of the work, you can generate so much.
Maya Middlemiss 10:46
It's just the stuff. I think it's one of those things that is probably much, much easier to do from the start. If you're dealing with legacy documents, and departments, and offices, and that information could be I mean, it could be anywhere, it's likely to be duplicated. Some of it's probably not anything online, maybe it's the kind of approach you could adopt at a team level, or department level initially to just try and pull together a single Knowledge base, where there's a definitive reference and try and point at that single source of truth rather than duplicate it is much easier to do now we have really good online tools for that kind of wiki development, where you can point at something rather than copying it and refer questions to the right place. But I think in the remote context, as well, it's like the digital office. And if it's confusing, or fragmented, or siloed, you can come in whether you're being boarded new, or you're changing roles, or whatever. And I just think I can't find anything, I don't know where to look, I don't know who to ask. If you're starting a new job in a physical office, somebody probably walks around the first day and says what the finance people are over there, the legal team at their, you know, HR sit on that floor. And so you know, kind of roughly where to look or there's an org chart on the wall or something. If you want to find a particular piece of information online, we have to replicate that and make it navigable and searchable in a way that maybe can't be completely intuitive, but it should at least be learnable. Quite quickly.
Pilar Orti 12:26
Yeah, and so I suppose what is making me think is that we can adopt the concept. I'm seeing that we can adopt this concept of documentation, as in, is this information that we have? Is it important to have it somewhere where other people can access it? I mean, it goes to the heart of working out loud, of course. And then see what that means in our organisation.
Maya Middlemiss 12:49
It doesn't have to mean unlocking really confidential stuff. No, even if all the HR stuff is in a certain domain on a certain drive. And you might be able to request access to a particular document, if you have a legitimate reason for it, it helps to know where it is in the first place. So you won't even be able to ask for permission.
Pilar Orti 13:09
Even a step back you can have, make sure that you know who to ask. Yeah, so maybe the single source of truth is not necessarily having the information at your fingertips, but having at your fingertips, How can it help you with information? And I think that companies in ways I've had staff directories and stuff like that, but I think we need to make this a little bit more human. It's not okay that this person has this title, what does this mean for all the other employees? What information do they hold?
Maya Middlemiss 13:43
What expertise or domains reside there, because it might not even be obvious to you, that they deal with a certain thing that you might one day come across in a project? And do you shout on Slack and interrupt everybody? Because you don't know where to start? Or do you have some kind of mental map of the organisation and where the expertise and knowledge in it resides? It's certainly really helpful if you do.
Pilar Orti 14:09
And the other thing, as well as at an organisational level that I'm thinking about is that the other mindset is the mindset of working out loud. So we can go one way, which would be we hold everything in, either one document or one area of the internet or wherever. Or the other way is we can very deliberately, communicate, write down and communicate things that we think are of use. So for example, it could be that in our team, we've discovered that this process has worked very well for us to keep track of how we're embedding the learning from workshops, for example, we go and train and we found that in our team, we follow these things. We really embed the learning from that day into our day to day. What tends to happen is that that knowledge one does not even get identified in the team. So we don't even realise we're learning that we don't name it. And also, we don't share it. And if we're used to the office space, then we are relying on serendipitous encounters with coffee etc, for this to be shared, but actually in the remote space, we need to go…This is valuable, we've learned this is valuable to the rest of the organisation. That's the documentation with a capital D.
Maya Middlemiss 15:24
Yes, we need a handbook, a wiki, a get whatever you call it for your organisation, people need to think it's about learning. What have people learned about learning and going and looking there? Oh, there's a really handy procedure that Pilar documented because of a great experience that she had. And here it is for everybody to use. But you have to know it's there, or at least where you'd begin to look.
Pilar Orti 15:50
And sometimes what happens as well as we have interesting conversations, either in the team or across organisations that can be then lost if they are somewhere like Slack or Teams. And it's also you need to develop that extra antenna to go, “oh, this conversation, ah, we need to pull this out and stick it somewhere where it's referable, to by everyone and ababa”.
Maya Middlemiss 16:12
Yes. And we do need those kinds of ephemeral conversations as well. This isn't about trying to capture everything that everyone has said. But it's about sort of curation of all that's interesting. Or that could be relevant again in the future, and managing to copy that out to a knowledge base or something where it's going to be searchable.
Pilar Orti 16:31
And my mind is going all over the place. But I'm even thinking that the… we talk a lot about what learning and development is… what their role is, the new ways of learning and all of that. And I think, rather than focusing on how we can do more “engaging” in inverted commas, online workshops, maybe the role sometimes of learning and development is going to be to seek out where these conversations are happening, and making sure we pull them back and create those resources. It's a complete shift of mindset across the whole organisation.
Maya Middlemiss 17:02
Definitely, and it's really interesting to see… There are some companies building this, now, into contact centre software, for example, where you have sort of context relevant employee engagement and training and things can be made to pop up if people say a certain thing or do a certain thing. And I think that's going to get smarter and smarter people will be able to build these tools so that people get the information they need, the moment they need it, rather than having to look for it.
Pilar Orti 17:29
So we've already gone a little bit sideways from Team rhythm communication, but it's completely relevant. And also listeners if all goes to plan. Next week, we'll release a short episode of a conversation I had with Ana Neves , who's a knowledge management expert. And we talk about a lot of this, how she sees that there is a bit of a missed opportunity in organisations to capture the knowledge. So I'll refer you to that. But if we go back to this thing about different teams having different rhythms, and I might have something missing here, Maya, but I have three points that I came up with, that I'm all in mind. So the different rhythms in conversation and communication in a team can be influenced by the nature and the progress of the task, and the task interdependence between team members, then the perception of and the real hierarchy. And within that the level of autonomy to make decisions. And then finally, the culture as in social, more specifically, their social culture, am I missing anything?
Maya Middlemiss 18:39
It may well all roll into culture, but I think there are aspects of psychological safety and comfort with seeking feedback, or a need for reassurance. I think that all comes into culture and rotations from one another.
Pilar Orti 18:57
So if we start with a task, which I think is the easiest to get our heads around, I was thinking, the progress of the task, where we're at, and the face of the task requires a different rhythm. So for example, if we're developing a new product, we might have a fast rhythm of communication. So there might be lots of bouncing up and down of messages at the beginning, maybe meetings which require faster communication, maybe lots of tagging, so we can make sure that people don't miss our message. And that phase includes idea generation, and the decisions of how to move forwards. But then they can be then after that there might be a slower rhythm where everyone knows what they're doing. They've got their own roles and responsibilities, and people are getting on with their individual pieces of work. So that might have been more of a quieter thing where there's less pinging, as in I post, and it's more general, what do you all think, rather than Maya, can you look at this.
Maya Middlemiss 20:01
Or it might break out to people working on something together as a pair or something. Or it might come back, you know, there might be fixed points within that, like a daily stand up in a product team to write what's everybody doing is anybody stuck on something and then you have those, those regular beats, and then everybody's quite independent in between, but you're also really regularly in touch with each other. So it I think probably teams that work regularly on projects, which have a certain shape to them already, will probably get very comfortable with a particular kind of rhythm of yes, the big brainstorming bit at the beginning, kicking it off, and then you maybe less interaction, and then you come back together, and then you troubleshoot, and then you fix it. And hopefully that becomes a rhythm that people adapt to quite individually quite quickly.
Pilar Orti 20:54
And then the final phase, if it's a project, might require faster communication. But I think also what you were saying, even throughout the day, we might notice that, and I think it's worth thinking, if we start with a day, because sometimes that's easier and thinking as an individual and as a team. Is this rhythm what we need? Do I feel like everything goes quiet throughout the day? And that helps me or that hinders me? Or do I feel like I'm constantly having to be answering people? And does that help me? Or does that hinder me? So even throughout the day.
Maya Middlemiss 21:35
We all have different personal rhythms. And it starts with that self awareness of knowing that, if your best focus time is mornings, but that's when the rest of your team want to brainstorm and chitchat, then you might need to negotiate that a little bit.
Pilar Orti 21:48
So as you say that, this is also about reflecting and just stopping for a while and seeing whether what we're doing is what's going to help us most. Maya just as a side note, you said you had like, maybe some fires or something? Is there noise behind you?
Maya Middlemiss 22:08
Yeah, it's a big fiesta here in Valencia, this is the joys of working from home, these fiestas have been delayed for two years. So there's a certain amount of excitement, there might be some bangs or noises going off. So I apologise about that. I mean, we're out in the suburbs, but I think there's obviously… The whole city is just fireworks mad. It's not even supposed to be for another week. But there's quite a lot of practice and caring.
Pilar Orti 22:34
And this is something that will also affect the rhythm of communication in a team. Of course, this is something not in our list, which is context. And how does that affect us? And does the context allow us to encapsulate a rhythm that helps us or do we have to be aware and make sure that it doesn't affect us in any way? That's not…
Maya Middlemiss 22:58
And really takes account of people having different contexts in a remote team that, you might be having a local Fiesta, or you might be having connection problems, all sorts of things might impact on the rest of the team. And you all know about that if you're all in the same building. But otherwise, you've probably got to contextualise it a bit. Otherwise, no one knows what's going on.
Pilar Orti 23:19
Yeah, and so we've got the task, and we're there, all of this going around it as well. And then as well as the progress of the task, we have the task interdependence, which is how much do we rely on other people to get our work done. And, we might… there's no way that this might pan out, we might have a team with a very high interdependence. So everyone needs to know what everyone else is doing and needs to be in constant conversation. But it could also be that actually, there's a lot of communication that is not task based, because task interdependence is low.
Maya Middlemiss 23:56
And it might be that some of that conversation isn't even necessary. If you're really rigid about your documentation and procedures and checklists, you might be working very closely together. But you might be able to do that. I'm not saying that it's ideal to work without speaking to each other. But you might not need to keep checking in or asking for progress, if you have ways of making that very manifest. And you have that single source of truth where the next step is going to be very clear. And you can see where every aspect of the project is through some kind of visualisation. So again, it's worth thinking about how you can make the work visible rather than loud some of the time.
Pilar Orti 24:33
You brought up such an important thing as well, that it's not about this whole thing about documentation, which many people when they first come across the concept are like, what does that mean? We don't speak to each other. What you're trying to do is you're trying to put the conversations that don't really need to happen so often put them to one side so that actually when you do converse, those conversations really matter and they are of high quality.
Maya Middlemiss 25:01
Conversations aren't the best way to share information, often, they can be one to one, and they're not accurate, or they're not up to date. So have the factual stuff somewhere fixed and accessible, and then talk about the why, and the how and all of that rather than the watch.
Pilar Orti 25:19
And I think also, if you've moved to remote, during the pandemic, really suddenly, and your team already had this kind of rhythm, like a very frantic rhythm, as in most information being held in people's heads, etc. It can be really difficult. And I speak from experience now of some time ago, joining a team where there was no information available to me. Now, I don't know whether this was because my commitment was very low to that project, as compared to everyone else who was on it full time. And so maybe I didn't have, but it didn't seem to me to be like that. Because a lot of questions of when is this happening? I wasn't being referred to a document or a plan now or whatever. I was being referred to a person to tell me when that was happening.
Maya Middlemiss 26:06
The other extreme is when you're coming in to do one peripheral very distinct thing. And they say, “Oh, well, we've added you to our slack on our G Drive. And it's all in there somewhere.” And you have to try and figure it all out. And you don't end up asking questions that feel naive, but nobody's stepped you through where to even begin with it.
Pilar Orti 26:29
The thing is that a lot of the time we can get by, but this is not sustainable. This kind of work is not sustainable, because people end up being overworked, because half of the time that they have allocated to work is being spent looking for information. And then when you then come to have a conversation, then imagine you've scheduled something like a social chat or Latin learning thing where you're going to actually share some learning. Well, I've been talking to you all day, I don't really fancy talking to you anymore.
Maya Middlemiss 27:01
Yeah and the work itself can often suffer when things get figured out. It's not only inefficient, but it can lead to a kind of mission creep, or shortcuts, or errors in all sorts of different contexts. If you know how to do a thing, it's better if it's properly documented somewhere, and people can follow the steps rather than having to figure it out each time, they might well come up with improvements, in which case, the up brilliant, add that to the process document, improve the single source of truth, but don't go off and make your own.
Pilar Orti 27:32
Yeah and the other thing, you've got a note here, which I think is really important to remember if we are creating documentation with a big D. And so we're turning some stuff into reading material you save here, there also has to be a culture of reading stuff.
Maya Middlemiss 27:52
Yeah, people that… we all know that when we look at a lot of the stuff from the all remote, big, successful enterprises that talk about the different levels of remote work and moving towards the goal of pure synchronicity, so much comes down to having a culture of writing stuff down and of other people reading it. Unless you have that, it's going to be really difficult, because it's going to be frustrating for people, when you say, “oh, it's all in the document.” But they want a quick conversation about it. But then you duplicate that 200 times, and it's really inefficient. And somehow you have to get to the point where people will access stuff on their own and read a detailed process of how to do it. But quite often, I think people can improve their writing as well as improve their communication skills. And it might not have to be written, I think, there are different, you could use screen shares, or loom videos or something, sometimes you can show rather than tell, just so long as it's accessible and clear. So people could get each bit of information where they need it. But if you're sending out an update, we've changed the procedure on how to do standard, then it's really important that people know that that's changed, because then somebody who does a habitual thing, they're not going to go back to that wiki every time they just got to do it. So if there's a change in policy, somehow that needs to be a push communication that is acknowledged and received by all that they get that there's been a change whether that's an email, we used to be able to make emails urgent, didn't we went a little long gone, but maybe you you would have something like a Slack channel dedicated to procedure changes, and you could put a notification in there. And then everyone who's seen it uses or reacts to emoji to say, “Yep, got it.” And then that's more frictionless.
Pilar Orti 29:42
And there's also the little things as well. So we've got there has to be if we are looking at more documentation, if we're looking at more communication online, and I'm going to deviate a little bit from this, even if we are thinking okay, we're not going to tell you that we want to move away because we've realised that actually we're telling each other everything all the time. And we want to move more to using a process to communicate work done. We've got to get used to taking responsibility for going there and finding out, because what I'm finding is that you can set up systems that have visible workflow or visible work, but then I'm having to tag people to come and look at that. So you've got to there has to be an agreement of taking responsibility for well, if this going back to the single source of truth concept, if this board that we've got is where we say what we've done, then, I don't need to tag you every time that there's a change of something or something needs to be done, because you should be coming to look. And I think that's really missing. Because I still don't think that this way of working is being taken seriously.
Maya Middlemiss 30:57
I agree. And it was interesting, Cal Newport's book last year on a world without email, which was only the first half of the title, but it's the one everyone remembers, and it was a lot about moving to these project work centred ways of communicating. So people know where to look for updates on a certain thing when they want them, when they're actually working on that thing, or when they need an update for it. But it really goes back to one of the earliest books about productivity, David Allen's Getting Things Done, that the only way you'll ever feel that things that you're on top of things is if you have a trusted system, if you know that that system is up to date, whether it's your own to do list, or your team's project management app, if people aren't updating it regularly, or they don't know where to go when they need to know a certain thing. You're, you're gonna attack them anyway. Because you don't trust this thing. If you go out, and so have you not finished that yet? Well, they should know that you haven't finished it because you haven't updated the project board. But that only works if you all 100% trust the project board. So you're going to get people interrupting you and you're trying to finish the thing, unless they really, really believe that you will update it the second that you're done with it. And in the meantime, you're better off having your head down and pushing on with the deadline. So it is about everybody believing in that system and trust, it's on a smaller scale, our household Google Calendar is the same thing, I've just had to be really bloody minded about it. Sometimes if it's not in the calendar, there is no guarantee someone's going to drive you there girls. If you have to look at the calendar, and then put your thinking around whatever else is already in there, it's going to first come, first get the lift. It's got to be that level of trust, but across an organisation, that's a lot. And it's one of those things people can quickly see the benefits of when it's working, and will quickly lose confidence the minute it goes a tiny bit out of date.
Pilar Orti 32:58
Yeah, and I think if we're leading a team, or if we are the one who's implementing some of that, we also need to change our mindset. And instead of okay, how do I keep people motivated? Or how do I make sure everyone's doing the work? It's about what's the ecosystem that we can create, so that everyone can self organise, rather than always coming to you to say that something's done or asking you for information?
Maya Middlemiss 33:28
It's got to feel non clunky, it's got to feel frictionless and have incentives built into it that you need to update this dashboard. But you also need to go there to look for the next thing. So there's a lot of design questions here. And there are so many brilliant collaboration apps out there, there's actually far too many of figuring out which one is going to work for your team or how you can adapt it to best work is always going to be a challenge. But it's great to see so much competition and development out there.
Pilar Orti 34:01
Yeah, so that's another thing is that, and it doesn't mean that we lose our humanity. Because I know that a lot of us who lead teams love working with people. And that's the whole point. But as Maya says, it's just building something around it that enables us to do the work and to trust not just the system, but also each other within that. Or not to have to worry about trusting other people as much as we always say because for some people it is quite hard. So I think that we can find ways in which we are communicating and with some level of autonomy as well.
Maya Middlemiss 34:33
Yeah, we talk in the crypto world about trustless systems, which sounds horrible. It means not having to trust because it's all there. And some things just sort of provide their own intrinsic verification when you look at them. And that does goes back to the psychological safety thing as well that if people have figured out a way to do something more efficiently, did they feel competitive with their teammates that they want to keep their process to themselves or they've maybe worked out a short cart are a way to earn more commission or look at the work finished earlier or whatever, there has to be this culture of sharing good things, whether that's learning or insights that and that everybody wants to make things better for everybody.
Pilar Orti 35:15
I'm going to pick up on that, and then I'm going to move on. But you've mentioned I mean, none of this works without psychological safety. We've got it in point three under social culture. But yeah, please, listeners don't think that we're not aware of this. Unfortunately, we're taking it for granted. So the first thing is, if there is no psychological safety, that's what you've got to work on before you start to get everyone to put in the open that they have or haven't done something. And as Maya said, we started talking about autonomy. So I think if we pick up the second point, which affects we're missing a lot of stuff, we're talking about team breathing, but it just brings out loads of other stuff we need to talk about. And we look at when we look at a hierarchy or sense of hierarchy, or real hierarchy, and the autonomy that people have to make decisions. Because one of the things, one of the reasons why we might have loads of hay tags, hey tag, a tag is that we don't feel like we have the authority to make decisions on our own, or even the information to make decisions on our own.
Maya Middlemiss 36:19
Yes, and all of those things, you can streamline so many operational things, just by setting some guidelines in place. I can't remember which Corporation it was that decided a decade ago that all their customer service agents on the phone had the discretion to make any refund under $100, or something. So it was just about and then it reduced their manager queries by 70%, or something because it was mostly about this to and fro when he says this, I don't know about that. Instead, just leave it to the person in the conversation. And it actually saved them so much money, even though they gave more refunds, they processed more calls, just by giving people that operational responsibility and feeding their intrinsic motivation and all of that by giving them that discretion. So it really does matter if you're in the kind of organisation where people feel they've got to check everything before they make a move. That's really slow. And it's going to cause friction that's bound to affect every aspect of what you're doing.
Pilar Orti 37:17
And on the other side of the spectrum, if you've also got a culture where everyone feels like because no one can see what they're doing, they've got to be telling us what they've been doing all day, that also is generating noise. And what we're trying to see here is to identify the kind of communication that is noise, versus the kind of communication that is necessary and useful.
Maya Middlemiss 37:41
And working out loud, can get very noisy, if everybody feels they've got to shout about what they're doing at the top of their voice, otherwise, they'll be judged as unproductive or not present or something they might be picking up insecurities from a manager who didn't want people working from home or, there could be all sorts of reasons why why this can become the culture of who shouts the loudest is deemed the most productive. And it might not correlate to what they're actually producing.
Pilar Orti 38:08
And this sense of hierarchy and versus autonomy, is the traditional sense that actually information is only held in certain areas of the organisation. And if we go back to our conversation, right at the beginning, where is the information that everyone needs to have access to, to do their job as best as possible and make that available? Sometimes, for some organisations, it's tricky, and something they're not used to.
Maya Middlemiss 38:38
Yeah, and it can be that, there are things that got figured out, maybe not in the best way, are things that were trial and error. There are solutions that one team has found that works and another that doesn't. There could be shadow IT involved people who have downloaded something that's actually really helpful to them. But it's not official, and they're on a free account or shared account or something which their IT department might not endorse. And it could, I think, come to the fore during the pandemic, when people were doing whatever they could just to keep afloat and keep their business going. I think a lot of teams and organisations got saved by people who were prepared to be a little bit experimental, and do things that probably their manager or their IT department would have given them a slap for. Or it would have had to go through months of approvals and layers of answers and things. And instead, they thought I figured out a way to do this without being in the office. I spoke to somebody once who'd managed to replicate a whole office whiteboard that he took a photo of the day they went in to get their laptops before the lockdown. And he managed to replicate all of that on Trello, just completely independently. And that was the only thing that kept a sales team going. But there was no IT provision for that. And he had to google, how do I do? Like an online board that I can move things around to come up with a solution that wasn't documented anywhere. And if he left, you know, it was on his personal Trello account would have just fallen over.
Pilar Orti 40:10
Or you can also see the kind of scenario where that happens. He tells someone in another department, that person tells someone else in another department and suddenly he's getting like 10,000 messages coming. Hey, how did you do that?
Maya Middlemiss 40:22
Yeah, can you just drop everything and help me do that.
Pilar Orti 40:26
Whereas if there is a culture of hang on, this is really interesting. I'm allowed to experiment, I'm allowed to figure things out. And actually, I don't need to be in a high layer of your organisation to share this. Here you go. And then suddenly, all those 1000s of people can go somewhere, instead of sending the expert all those things.
Maya Middlemiss 40:45
Yeah. And he's obviously the people who tend to figure their way out through this tend to be in demand, particularly at the moment.
Pilar Orti 40:53
Yeah. So if we look at this, from the team leaders point of view, it's another mindset of what can I do so that people can constantly support each other? What questions should they be able to answer themselves rather than? So we take them in Maya, you made a note, would you take the coaching approach? And you do that very deliberately, to the point of making it explicit sometimes to the point of documenting some of those answers, so that because it feels very different. To say, Oh, I don't know how to do this. Hey, can you help me? I don't know how to do this. I'll go and look here, and then maybe ask for help. And I know that you mentioned before personality, there are people who will, by nature, and that's what they prefer to do is to ask someone, but in a remote work environment, it's tricky to be doing that all the time.
Maya Middlemiss 41:49
Yes, and this is going to become one of the core hiring competencies for a lot of remote roles. Are you good at figuring stuff out, working out where information is documented, or even worth figuring out who to ask rather than doing an app team message and annoying 40 people? So I think it's going to be one of those core skills that we all have to develop is how to figure this stuff out on our own, even if our preferred natural communication style would be to tap someone on the shoulder and say, can you just show me this? That might not always be the most appropriate way?
Pilar Orti 42:23
Yeah, and so let's go into the third point, which is all about culture and psychological safety. And then, many listeners who've been thinking about this for a while will be saying, Hey, that was a study a couple of years ago, why haven't you mentioned it, but we will. So the final… So we're looking I mean, you've mentioned psychological safety, that that is key, unless we can't remote work is I think, this is a question because, sometimes we find it easier, and safer to come to bring stuff up where we're not fully present there, or when we have time to think about it. So for some, in some instances, it could be that psychological safety is not as important over a normal team. But for some of the stuff that we're talking about, you've got to feel like it's okay to say this stuff.
Maya Middlemiss 43:18
Definitely, and it's also interrelated to how hierarchical you are, what you know, how competitive you are, how your teams are structured, you know, what sort of role does the manager have? Are they there to give instruction and direction? Or are they somebody who can say, what do you need from me? And what's the most helpful way for me to provide or a manager who can own that things might not be perfect, particularly in a post pandemic, sort of lashed up solution to say, “Okay, what do we think about this bit of what we're doing? How could it be improved? How could it be better? What do you need from the organisation in order to fix this?” and it just makes a huge difference if people can bring all that to the table, even if it's a bit of a half baked solution. And they might not have to have it all figured out before they provide an answer. But they can provide a way to move things forward or open up the debate.
Pilar Orti 44:08
And some of that psychological safety is also about not having to show that you're there fully all the time, not having to show that you're working all the time by saying all this stuff you've completed. And I think that's when we can then have a rhythm that suits the work, and not just a culture that is a little bit dysfunctional. I'm also thinking that in, maybe teams, more teams and organisations where there's lots of communication all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time, lots of ping a lot of being in blah, blah, blah. That is it could be about feeling wanting to feel connected, like more than even presenteeism or anything. So I think that we also need to recognise that and see what we can do that is actually more sustainable than people feeling like every 10 minutes. I have to see you have to know you're there.
Maya Middlemiss 44:58
Yeah, and I think again, if organisations are going through changes in the way they're working on their locations, people need that little bit of reassurance. And sometimes if everybody is working, might be perfectly well on their own staff there might be lingering senses of what everybody else is doing? Am I doing this right? And that, even above the social connection, there's a sort of work connection thing where it might be reassuring to look across a shared office and see everybody there. And we need to replicate that online as well.
Pilar Orti 45:31
Yeah and also, the one thing that came to mind was Eva Rimbau Gilabert, I think it was in the Future for WorkSpanish podcast, she was talking about this culture of the HeyYou, which is when you don't know something that we're used to get “Hey what do you” and we've already touched on this. So that could be I mean, when we're talking about culture, we're talking about all these things. How do people ask for help? And if you have that in the online space, if we're all the time “Hey you-ing”, it's exhausting.
Maya Middlemiss 45:59
Yeah, and it's much less contextually protected. I think, if you're in a shared office, you can look up and see that somebody is paused. And they've also looked up at the same time. And that might be a good moment for a peripheral HeyYou rather than when facedown in a complex spreadsheet or something.
Pilar Orti 46:17
So talking about this… So I mean, what would I think suppose what we are trying to say is, think about this, this is important, it might it's probably more important than when you're colocated is what your communication rhythm is? Are you transporting lots of noise into the online space? And just seeing what kind of rhythm you've got? And whether that's what suits best? Your team, your task, your culture, etc, whether it's sustainable, is it sustainable in the online space? So on 28th of October 2020, there was an article that came out on the HBr. Online, I will put the link in the show notes, called successful remote teams communicate in bursts. And it's by Christoph Riedel and Anita Williams Woolley. And I think it'd be interesting just to pull out a couple of things, like bursts of rapid fire communication with longer periods of silence in between are characteristic of successful teams, bursts help to focus energy, develop ideas, get closure and specific questions. So yeah, I have a lot of things that are very interesting.
Maya Middlemiss 47:25
Yes, and I think for a lot of people who are missing face to face interaction, it might provide some kind of connection, an emotional substitute for that as well. If you have your conversations, your communications in bursts, you can kind of multiply the energy and synergize a little bit, get that buzz feeling that you might have got from being together. And you could, as a manager, think about your communication needs and how to promote that a bit. Maybe have one meeting where you cover a number of things quite quickly, or have an online brainstorming session or something. And just to give people that buzz if they're missing it.
Pilar Orti 48:02
Yes, and I'm also thinking that it's, it's one way of acknowledging an aspect of diversity that often gets forgotten about, which is the difference in how much we want to be in constant communication with others? And how much do we need time on our own? And how much time do we need with others? So this is a really nice way of acknowledging this diversity by having different moments. The article says that sometimes these don't need to be set in advance, we don't need to decide, okay, we're gonna do this at this time. But there's a point you made earlier, Maya, that we can see what's going on organically, and maybe formalise it a bit more, which is helping us just to make sure it's easier to do, or it can be, it can emerge by sharing availability. So if we have, like we say, on a way of showing when we are fully available to others, not emergencies as different conversation, then then it's easier to to have these bursts, yeah, organically
Maya Middlemiss 49:07
And to identify them and kind of pick them out. So alright, it looks like everybody would, you know, it looks like it'd be good to have a manager's office hours at 3pm, or to have our team stand up at eight o'clock in the morning. And equally, it has to be psychologically safe to say I don't do eight o'clock in the morning, I haven't got nearly enough coffee in all the world to contribute meaningfully then. And to negotiate when you're going to have these synchronous moments so that everybody gets the most out of it. You might have to shift them around as well, particularly if you've got people in different time zones.
Pilar Orti 49:41
And synchronous moments don't need to be meeting something that is really important. It could be just that we are there and we know that communication means that we can expect each other to reply almost instantly.
Maya Middlemiss 49:53
Yeah, you have like a live chat almost in use in your Slack or your Team's just something where you shift the expectation to immediacy,
Pilar Orti 50:01
Exactly, and I just wanted to mention here there was a thread on LinkedIn where someone was talking about the status buttons in teams, which Slack has had for ages and is busy, blah, blah. And, as always, everything has a good and a bad. And the point he was making was that this was all about how it's controlling and how people want to appear busy and stuff. And we were saying, Well, I think we got Ana Neves actually mentioned that there as well. This is about communicating availability. And as always, we can use it for good or bad.
Maya Middlemiss 50:35
Absolutely, the technology is usually neutral. It's the intent behind it. I mean, in the hands of a sort of micromanaging, controlling situation where somebody is watching, or they've gotten inactive, they must have left that desk for 10 seconds or something. Yeah, that is evil. But if somebody's taking control of their own work, and signalling clearly, then it becomes a push notification from them saying, “Don't bother me now,” or “talk to me now”. Yeah. So finally,
Pilar Orti 51:05
What I love about this quote is great, the bottom line is, I am quoting straight from the article, “worry less about sparking creativity and connection through water cooler style interactions in the physical world, and focus more on facilitating bursty communication”, as drafted up so well. listeners do go and read this other stuff there, you should read about audio versus video, but we're getting to the hour, which is always that time of time. And but Maya, you have something to say about the role, actually of technology and how it advances with all of this.
Maya Middlemiss 51:41
I just sort of wanted to wrap up by reflecting on the fact that there's an awful lot of information, particularly when you add communication into it, as well as all our documents and procedures, and all of that, that we've got. Certainly, when you're joining a busy Online team, as a new person, it can be extremely overwhelming to think you'll ever manage to navigate this, but actually technology is moving to make it easier all the time. Things like the ability to find a conversation that you had, you can search, you know, provided you're paying for your slack. Some people have run afoul of that. But assuming the information there, it's increasingly easy to find it. And now we're starting to see changes in terms of how conversations are documented in different platforms, even video and audio, a transcript might be generated in the background, and then that's searchable. So you will be able to find this information more easily if somebody said something to somebody about how to do that thing that you do once every three years, you will be able to find that again. For now, yes, we need better structures and ways to support each other in navigating the documents we've got. But over time, it's going to become easier and easier to find the information we need. Doesn't mean we won't talk to each other. We won't connect with each other. But we might have less things holding up our work that demands that we immediately Hey You in order to resolve them. So hopefully that will be a win for everybody.
Pilar Orti 53:07
Wonderfully put, so I'm going to, we're going to swap one of these three things that we looked at the different team rhythm will be influenced by first thing we're looking at social culture in its broadest sense, psychological safety, your environment, and that includes the tech, then we've got the nature and the progress of the task and the task interdependence, and also the perception of the real hierarchy and the level of autonomy to make decisions in a team. So with all of that listeners, we'd love to hear what you think. We still have one item we want to discuss, but Pilar at virtual not distant.com. Or you can find us on our contact form, which is at virtual not distant.com. But let's now give some space to an article by our friend, Jennifer Riggins, which we think is actually both very timely, but also very evergreen.
Pilar Orti 54:07
So this article appeared in the new stack, it's called “How to support teammates living in Ukraine, or any war zone.” And it was published on the first of March of 2022, written by Jen, and what I loved, Maya, about this article as well. For a start, if anyone is… I don't have any teammates or any friends that are at the moment in a difficult place. But this changes all the time.
Maya Middlemiss 54:33
Absolutely. God knows it's changed fast enough this year. I don't think months ago, we thought we'd be even having to ask this question. So yeah, it's really important, useful learning that we can hopefully not have to come back to too soon.
Pilar Orti 54:48
Yeah, and it just offers lots of help. Lots of ways in which to help, just some key things to ask ourselves to to question ourselves also, and it is just wonderful. And also, if you are running a company as well, it's also got some points about the like, offer paid time off by default. Just things like, sometimes it's really about emotional support, but sometimes it's about really small practical things that are gonna make life so much easier.
Maya Middlemiss 55:20
Yeah, logistical things like making sure you found a secure way to pay people when they might be in an area that's under sanction or having connection problems and so on giving people that space, I think a lot of organisations learned maybe the hard way during the pandemic, this is another thing that but probably not affecting their whole workforce, where you really got to look at what people need, and ask them what they need, don't assume their needs might be different. But again, I feel a little bit like, thank goodness, we have the remote collaboration tools that we have now done. Imagine trying to do this 10 years ago, hopefully, you know, we know there are people arriving in Spain, even some in the UK by now who are able to bring their work with them and carry on even though they're refugees, we can at least stay in communication. And if they're ready to work, we could give them work. And teams can cover for each other and look out for each other just as they would in real life. Recognise that some parts of the world are going through very difficult times at the moment.
Pilar Orti 56:23
Yeah, and just this morning I attended… We're recording on that… I think it is today, the Eighth of March.
Maya Middlemiss 56:31
International Women's Day.
Pilar Orti 56:32
Oh, yeah, it isn't the latter. We're happy International Women's Day everybody. And Rowena Hennigan had an event this morning about breaking the bias. And Lorraine Charles from Na’amal. Yeah, she mentioned, she said, that at the moment the refugee crisis is in this part of the world. But it's ongoing. It's happening everywhere. And kudos to the work that she does with helping refugees be great at remote work. So, yes, this is. So we just wanted to share this article to say, this is a great evergreen article, and we're always needing to look at this stuff.
Maya Middlemiss 57:16
Yeah. Thank you for that one. Jen.
Pilar Orti 57:19
Yeah, thank you, Jen. All right, listeners. So we will continue talking about lighter, brighter things in the 21st century work life podcast. Look out next week. Hopefully, things might change. But for the conversation with Ana Neves where she talks about documentation with a capital D, but also the importance of generating visible conversations across the organisation that are about the work because the work helps us to feel connected. And that's why people are in those organisations, to do the work. So hopefully that episode will be out. In a week's time since the release of this Maya anything you want to say before I roll out the checklist of where people can contact us
Maya Middlemiss 58:02
No, another really interesting conversation. I hope people have gotten to the end of it and enjoyed it as much as we have.
Pilar Orti 58:09
Excellent. So tell us if you managed to make it to the end on Twitter, we are Virtual Teamwork with a zero instead of an o you can subscribe to our monthly newsletter with monthly reading recommendations of reading and listening over at virtual not distant.com We have a LinkedIn page and you can email me directly if email is your preferred mode of communication. Pilar at virtual not distant.com Everybody looks after yourselves.
Pilar Orti 58:43
A big thank you for listening to the 21st Century Work Life podcast produced by Virtual not Distant. If you have something to add to the conversation, let us know through the contact form over at virtual not distant.com I have been your host Pilar Orti and I'm signing off now. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, enjoy.