With the current health situation, we will mostly work-from-home. Its a reality, lets make the best of it. This is not new, EVERY organization has some remote components (period, no exceptions): customers, sales reps, partners, suppliers, contractors, agencies.
and Remote teams, like most other business practices, has its own art and science.
BKMs for any functional team: Clear objectives and people to achieve the objectives
- Clear objectives, in writing.
- Clear success criteria, measurable if possible, in writing.
- Review with team, review with stakeholders, review with exec leadership
- Clear view of who is on the team, who is responsible for completing the various tasks. and with those people confirm they have the time and have the priority over other tasks to execute.
- Clear view of who is not on the team (observers are fine)
BKMs – for remote meeting tools – consistent tools for meeting notes, action items, upcoming agendas. I like Microsoft Teams for these reasons:
- video conferencing makes for good engagement.
- Screen sharing for document reviews, live apps, demos, etc
- file sharing to store agendas, action tracking, project docs, etc
- calendar for team calls, nicely integrated with MS Outlook.
- calendar has scheduling assistant to avoid conflicts with other meetings
- chat for simple communication, also nicely integrated with MS outlook email
- its free
BKMs – for running remote meetings
- Make a meeting (well duh), brief 3-4 topics, add agenda to the meeting invite (every time)
- during the meeting capture action items
- track action items. every action with a deliverable, date and person (every time)
- add the open action items from the previous meeting, to the agenda of the next meeting. (every time)
- action items – “what gets tracked, gets done”
Stick to the immediate stuff. longer term stuff can go into project plans and the like. if you get more than 10 open action items, do some housekeeping. move longer term or bigger actions into single topic meetings, scrub the list often, followup with owners. - Action items have a single owner. not “we”, not “everyone/no one”
if the action is unwieldy, break it into smaller, easy to understand, chunks. - if the conversation isnt resolving, make an action for a single topic meeting, with a single owner to organize it and deliver results/findings/ decisions
- Single topic meetings are better if NOT organized by the team leader. If the team lead organizes everything, your team is taught to put everything onto the team leaders plate. they need to contribute too.
BKM – for dealing with conflict and dysfunctionality
- If there is conflict, the WORST thing a team leader can do is place blame or get emotional. Blaming individuals is the surest way to create passive resistance.
- Rather than singling out individuals, pivot the conversation back to “team results”. Acknowledge Team Lead is responsible for setting and communicating goals. Then lead the conversation to review team goals.
- Good team leaders first accept responsibility … “I need to do a better job of managing goals and execution, I need to improve.”
- Good team leaders next review the goals at the meeting, and then ask …
- “Is everyone clear about the goals? What can be clarified in the interest of working together efficiently?” make it a team exercise
BKM for meeting engagement – Give everyone a voice, and listen.
- Every meeting, go around the table and ask each person in the meeting
- “[NAME], anything to share with the team?”
BKM for efficient execution – Have stable goals and plan of record. avoid changes
- Discussing options is OK. Minor course corrections are OK.
- Plan doesn’t change until we say “we are changing our Plan of Record”. and write it down.
- Stable POR is the best way to avoid non-constructive re-debates of past decisions
Many “short-putt” small projects are better than a single big project.
Set your team up for success, make sure the goal is clear, make sure the resources are there to support achieving the goals.
Setting your team up for failure doesn’t help them, doesn’t help you, doesn’t help your company.
Always remember, its not about the team leader, park that ego at the door, and don’t be a jerk. This IS always about team success.