Maintaining Your Company Culture with a Remote Workforce

This article is intended for remote work cases where an in-person meeting is rarely or never possible. Face-to-face meetings are always the best way to build comradery and maintain your culture. 

The popularity of working remotely has been growing constantly over the past decade. However, before the spread of COVID-19 (a.k.a. novel coronavirus), it was estimated that only 50% of the workforce would have the ability to work remotely by this year(2020), an Upwork study found that 57% of companies don’t even have a remote work policy, and a survey by BambooHR revealed that a vast majority of workers still believe they accomplish their best work at the office. These facts translate to both employers and employees who are not prepared for the distance working scenario with which they may now be faced. Maintaining company culture is an important part of making remote working actually work.

Much of an organization’s culture is driven by the day-to-day interactions of the individuals that make up the larger whole. Hiring the right people, putting them in the right environment, and fostering an atmosphere conducive to the intended culture is usually enough to achieve the desired results. However, when workers are taken out of the collaborative environment of the shared corporate office and split into individual contributors at remote locations, it is crucial that you, as an employer, make a conscious and coordinated effort to build or maintain a holistic company culture. While more difficult with a remote workforce, this is not impossible. By intentionally determining the vision of the culture you want to foster, enabling (in some cases forcing) intra and inter-team communication, and taking a “hands-on” approach to coaching, you can create and sustain a healthy culture with a remote workforce.

Defining Your Culture

Having a set company mission, vision, values, and expectations for a positive work environment drives the direction your culture takes in any organization.  With a remote or distributed team, it is extremely important to document what you hope your company culture becomes at the beginning.  After determining what you want your culture to look like, demonstrate the importance of achieving that goal by making sure everyone on your team knows and understands your vision. Then, subtly reinforce the ideas daily basis by bringing the office to your team. Send your remote workers things that reflect the same design aesthetic and culture elements as you would have in your physical corporate office (i.e. posters, t-shirts, or branded items for their desks.

Enabling and Fostering Communication

Your remote team culture will flourish or fail, purely on communication. Communicating what you want your culture to reflect is only the first step. Getting communication right for your team is a combination of the right policy, technology, and modeling the desired behavior.

The first step in establishing quality communication with a remote team is to select the right technology. This does not mean the newest, most popular, or feature-heavy tools. Rather, it is important that the technology is easy to use for all members of YOUR team and that it is reliable. There are many different options to choose from (e.g. Microsoft 365, Google G-Suite, Slack, etc.) but the right one is ultimately dependent on your mix of skills and abilities. If your team is used to working in Microsoft Office, transitioning to the Microsoft Office 365 collaboration toolset will be much more intuitive than starting to use Google Hangouts. You also need to remember that there won’t be on-site tech support if they need help.

In parallel to selecting a technology, you and your team should begin setting norms through policy. These norms will include items like guidelines on what communication method to use in different circumstances (e.g. chat is for informal communication, difficult conversations should be hosted via video, documents should be shared through collaboration tools rather than emailed back and forth, etc.) but also layout expected behavior (e.g. camera-on for all meetings, limit background noise, mute your mic when not talking for calls with over 5 people). If everyone starts with the same expectations, it is easier to manage the outcome.

In addition to policy establishing norms, combine your technology and policy to set up a team rhythm. Establish regular check-ins including weekly “all-hands,” one-on-one meetings with each of your direct reports (and expect them to do the same with theirs), and monthly or quarterly employee surveys to get feedback on how they are feeling and what they are missing. It is important to set these as formal policies to assure they do not fall by the wayside. Intending to keep a rhythm is different than actually keeping it. The expectation should be that these things happen and are attended by everyone unless there is an emergency—and that includes you.

Formal meetings are only one piece of the communication puzzle. Just like in an office, it is important to allow for informal “water cooler” time. Utilize your collaboration tools to allow employees to spend time with each other not talking about work. They must know that, within reason, they can talk about anything in this shared space. Setting up a virtual coffee breakthrough your video conference system is a great way to start this, however, it doesn’t have to be that formal. At Inspirant Group we have a chat channel called “The Water Cooler” where people can say good morning, ask for movie recommendations, or tell (work-appropriate) jokes. Not everyone actively participates but that is no different than in a physical office. Some people tell jokes, others laugh.

Demonstrating that “The Water Cooler” is a non-workspace where people can discuss things without retribution (i.e. “Why aren’t you working?) starts you. Start by seeding “The Water Cooler” with questions like, “What is your favorite movie?” or “What cartoon character do you most identify with. Not only does this get a conversation going, but it also shows that it is ok to talk about non-work-related topics on there. You can also start to include non-work conversations in team meetings. At Inspirant Group, start all of our meetings with a “best personal and best professional thing to happen in the past week.” By proactively getting these things out there, you are more likely to see follow up conversations in your virtual community space after the meeting. Other ideas to promote friendship amongst your remote contributors include pairing up team members randomly each week and setting aside time for them to talk, creating groups of people who have something in common and tasking them with figuring out what it is and assigning mentors who are not direct supervisors.

Modeling the desired behavior starts with things like participating in the water cooler but it doesn’t end there. You need to practice what you preach everywhere. Respect the team rhythm you set up. Don’t cancel one-on-one meetings unless it is an emergency.

Finally, don’t forget about the new hires. Introduce them to the entire team. Have them answer some questions about themselves, their hobbies, families, etc. and share that with the organization (assuming you get their permission first). Make sure they feel welcome. They may never meet their coworkers in person.

Hands-On Coaching

For leaders of remote workers, it is easy to forget that your team looks up to you. Communication is again key here. Make sure you are having conversations with them and not just assigning them tasks through a system. When assigning something new, the best practices is to have a discussion over the phone or video chat before you assign it to them in your work tracking software. This allows them to understand what needs to be done before seeing it pop into their “to-dos.” Allow time to ask questions. Be clear on what is expected to be done when. Most importantly, treat them like a human. Ask them how they are doing or how their weekend was. The assigning of tasks may not feel like a cultural concern, but if your team feels like they are factory workers taking the next item that comes down the line and not participants in the overall process, that will start to show itself in cultural changes.  Finally, make sure you are proactively assuring that they are separating home time from work time. Just because the office is in the house that doesn’t mean the office is their home.

Building and maintaining a group culture with remote workers requires a different set of tools than the same task in a shared space. However, if you take the time to set your goal, enable your team to communicate with as little friction as possible, and continue your role as coach, it is possible to establish cultural closeness over even the vastest distances

Adapting Agile for a Remote Workforce

Agile purists have long preached that truly agile development can only occur with collocated teams. Meanwhile, novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), has more and more people working from home every day. Does that mean we have to abandon ship and go back to waterfall? Should we burn our Scrum Alliance and SAFe certifications and race to the nearest PMP certification authority? Of course not. The truth is, while oftentimes preferred, colocation has never been truly required for highly functioning Agile teams thrive. Let’s start by looking at the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, the foundation on which all Agile frameworks are built.

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

• Working software over comprehensive documentation.

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.

• Responding to change over following a plan.

• That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Nothing in that statement says that the teams must be located in the same place. The assumption is that interactions and collaboration are easier when team members are in the same room. That assumption, however, does not infer that interaction and collaboration are not possible for teams working remotely.

The fact is that organizations like Zapier were founded to be entirely remote and agile has worked just great for them. I personally have set up Agile Kanban teams that included developers and test engineers who were located on-site, local remote, in Colorado, and in India. The key to success is sticking to the four tenants of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development and finding ways for your geographically distributed team to follow them. The path to this goal is as unique as each agile team. However, based on our experience and that of other experts, here are best practices in team building, communication, and collaboration to get you started.

Note: Many of Agile experts recommend requiring new teams to collocate during the “storming, forming, and norming” phases of team development. We understand and agree with the rationale for this. However, we have approached these best practices from a position where face-to-face, in-person, meeting and working are ill-advised or impossible.

Team Building

Software development is often thought of as a technical endeavor embarked upon as a solo journey by introverts who love the beauty of code. In reality, software development is a creative effort taken on by teams and reliant on huge amounts of trust between individuals. It is crucially important for Agile teams to act as teams. We have gone into creating a culture in a remote workforce in more detail in a previous article. Here we will focus on specific ways Agile teams can build the necessary comradery to be effective.

Individuals and Interactions are important parts of being Agile. For a collocated team, many of these interactions come accidentally and informally just from being in the same room. This is more difficult for remote teams, but it is just as crucial. As a leader, you can lead by example by sharing and asking about non-work subjects. Something as simple as starting the Monday stand-up with something along the lines of “Before you give your update, tell us the best thing that happened to you this weekend” goes a long way toward building rapport amongst the team members–rapport which is key to build trust, increase self-organization, and encourage ex parte communication.

Along those lines, the Agile ceremonies remain as, if not more, important with a remote team. Daily standups should continue to occur with everyone on video conference and actually standing up. Depending on your particular framework flavor (i.e. XP, Scrum, SAFe, etc.) there are other important meetings and milestones which normally occur in-person. All of these events should continue with a remote workforce. We have some links at the bottom of this article for tips on running the different ceremonies effectively while remote.

Communication

The inability to easily engage in ad hoc communication is a downside for any remote team. It is especially detrimental to the software developer who, in the absence of being able to simply speak up and ask a question aloud, now has to task switch, open up the chat application, ask the question, and wait for a response. However, this annoyance is more a matter of getting used to the new paradigm than an immense obstacle to overcome. Issues are more likely to occur in cases where a subject matter expert (“C”) would overhear a conversation between “A” and “B” in a collocated space and could provide vital details. In a virtual team environment, if that conversation is occurring between “A” and “B” in a one-to-one chat, “C” will never have the opportunity to fill in the missing facts. For this reason, team chat spaces should be encouraged whenever possible. If a conversation clearly becomes between “A” and “B,” they can take it to another room, but getting the initial discussion out to a large audience should be the first step. Any decision or question about function or architecture should be communicated to the entire team. It is better to over-communicate with your team than under-deliver (or completely miss) the product owner’s expectations.

What you communicate with a remote team will also differ from what is communicated with a collocated team. The Manifesto for Agile Software Development values “working software over comprehensive documentation.” With a remote team, you will find yourself documenting more. Asking clarifying questions, whiteboarding concepts, and interpreting the nuances of a user story is just more difficult for teams that aren’t in the same room. For a remote team, even non-functional requirements need to be discussed and documented at the outset. Test and acceptance criteria added to user stories is a good way to provide more insight into the expected outcome.

We have more on general communication best practices in our articles on working remotely from an employee perspective (“Working From Home: Not as Easy as It Sounds”) and on “Maintaining Your Company Culture with a Remote Workforce.”

Tools

Quality, easy to use, collaboration tools take on a new level of importance for virtual development teams. For all other virtual teams, collaboration tools make work easier. For virtual development teams, they make work possible.

It all starts with your project management software. Jira, Trello, and Basecamp are just some of the options available to track and manage what is, has, and needs to be done by whom and by when. These software options are specifically designed for development teams. So, little customization or compromise is needed prior to use. And, they offer options like virtual Kanban boards to move your user stories from sticky notes on the conference room whiteboard to the digital meeting space.

Project management is the start, but it is in no way the end. For software development teams, a source code repository with a distributed version control system is the real engine for efficiency. Github, Bitbucket, and GitLab but a few of the options in this space. The use of these systems helps to create a culture of continuous integration. They also allow for work to be split between groups or teams (i.e. frontend/backend, database and services/frontend, etc.) but still kept in a common repository.

The “Best” best practice for Agile software development is to collocate your team. However, sometimes the best practice for Agile software development is at odds for what is best for your team. Following these high-level best practices will allow you to get your virtual agile software development team off on the right foot. As always, you should customize the strategies you use to build your team, the ways you communicate, and the tools you use to manage your work to best allow your team to develop software according to the principles of agile.

The Show Must Go On: Taking Your Training to the Virtual Classroom

New employee on-boarding, yearly compliance refreshers, and new software releases are just some of the reasons you might need to get all or part of your team together for training. As COVID-19 sweeps across the country, gatherings of large groups are discouraged, and many teams are working remotely. Yet, those training needs remain vital while simultaneously becoming more difficult to fulfill. That is where the virtual classroom can help. Your options range from virtual instructor led training (vILT) to Digital Adoption Platforms and many things in-between. The modality of learning delivery is determined based on both content and intent.

Virtual Instructor-Led Training

vILT can be an engaging and interactive learning experience when executed correctly. With vILT, an instructor leads the training in real-time using video communication, virtual whiteboards, and interactive polling. This is the closest thing to in-person instruction you can get.

eLearning

Computer (or web-based) training provides endless opportunities for engaging participants in a variety of concepts, from learning new technology to running an effective meeting. eLearning is asynchronous computer-based training that allows your users to experience the lessons when it is right for you. eLearning is most effective when focused around one topic and delivered in bite-sized modules.

Digital Adoption Platforms (DAP)

A DAP is perfect for software training. The DAP overlays your software and provides real-time training and guidance to your team while providing analytics to you and your developers about where users are getting stuck. This improves your users’ experiences by offering the information they need at the moment it is needed and lets you prioritize new features based on quantitative data.

Working From Home: Not as Easy as It Sounds

As COVID-19 (aka Coronavirus) continues its relentless march across the globe, more and more companies are turning to work from home (WFH) to reduce the chances that the virus spreads within their ranks. WFH has long been a joke amongst those who don’t do it often. They will put “work” in quotes to imply that working from home is more like a vacation without burning a PTO day. However, those that work remotely on a regular basis understand that it isn’t all pajamas and daytime TV. Working from home has its benefits for sure—but it also has its drawbacks.

If there is one thing every Inspirant Unconsultant is an expert at, it’s working remotely. Whether at a client site, a co-working space in Chicago, or in a home office in sunny Florida, we all have years of experience “getting it done” from places other than a corporate hub. So, I asked our team what the hardest part of working remotely is what they do to mitigate it.

Problem: Separating Home from Work

Separating work and home was the most cited difficulty by our team. However, there was an even split between people who had a hard time focusing on work at home and people who had a hard time “leaving the office at the office” when the office is in their home. Luckily, you can use the same strategies to tackle both problems.

Solutions

The first thing you need to do is talk to your spouse, roommate, significant other, dog, cat, gerbil, and/or fish. You need them to understand that you are working at home. Everything should go on as if you were out of the house. I had a dog walker for years before I started working from home. I still have a dog walker now. My daughter has all-day childcare that is not me. I don’t answer the door when the bell rings. For all intents and purposes, I’m not home. It was not always like this. When I first started working at home, I was trying to do everything, and it got exhausting. Pick up the dry cleaning at 10? Sure! Be on the 10:15 client call? No problem! Take the dog for a walk? Yes! Get those numbers to you before lunch? Absolutely!! There is a tendency to feel that you have it easier than the rest of the people in your home because you are working from home. That just isn’t true.

Second, set a routine. Get up, get dressed, get going. It is easy to roll out of bed and stumble down to the kitchen table and start your day. You need to have a routine—preferably the same routine you had when you weren’t WFH. Set an alarm, take a shower, make your lunch, commute, start work… I can hear you now, “Commute to my basement?” The answer is, “Yes… but take the long way.” I work from home every day. On exactly none of those days do I ever go right from the bedroom to the office. Most of the time, I take the dog for a walk. If the weather is bad, I’ll drive to Starbucks. The key is that I leave home and when I come back, I am at work. The same goes for the end of the day. You don’t have to go out but you should, set aside 10 or 15 minutes to mentally transition back to home life. Watch a YouTube video or read a book. Listen to the traffic on your local news radio station. Pretend you are killing time on the train or in the car. (Important: Do not go back until the next day unless you redo your “commute.” If you have more work to do, do it from someplace else. You wouldn’t go back into the office to work at night. The same applies here.)

Finally, find a space that is your workspace and have it set up comfortably for you. Get a monitor, a desk calendar, post-it notes, whatever you have at your desk in your on-site office. This is where you might run into some issues that need to be addressed by the first solution. My wife is not a fan of how clean I keep my office—mostly because I don’t keep my office clean. I do try to clean it but only during work hours. If my desk was at our Naperville office, I certainly wouldn’t be going there on a Saturday to straighten it up. This one takes some work and you may have to give in a little to keep the peace. If you can, follow the commute plan from the second solution if you do have to go to your workspace during off-hours.

Work is work and home is home. The more you can maintain that separation the better both your home and work life will be. 

Problem: Feeling Isolated

Working from home can be lonely. I share my office with my dog Herbert during the day. While he is cute, there are definitely days where I don’t physically speak to another human being between 7 AM and 5 PM. I’m an introvert so that generally isn’t a problem but there are times that I miss telling my old work neighbor a random story or fact. (I’m guessing he probably doesn’t miss those distractions.) At the end of the day, working from home is just isolating.

Solutions

The Unconsultants had a few different ways that they deal with the loneliness of working away from the office.

The most popular advice is “just get out of the house.” What the Unconsultants do ranges from running an errand at lunch, to working from a coffee shop with other friends who WFH, to getting a co-working membership. You don’t have to be talking about your work to feel connected to someone. Once you get out and about you are bound to run into other adults dying for some conversation because they haven’t talked to anyone in hours either!

Don’t have time to leave or trying to stay away from crowds to avoid COVID-19? The Unconsultants have you covered there too. One great suggestion (which I hope we adopt as a firm) is virtual coffee breaks. We all drink coffee and we all have video call capabilities. Schedule a Teams or Hangouts chat with your group every day in the morning. Have coffee, talk about your day. You can even meet virtually for lunch. (Remember to chew nicely, you are on camera).

You aren’t the only one feeling isolated. Find someone else and make plans to meet physically or virtually on a daily basis. 

Problem: Effective Communication

It is really nice to be able to pop into someone’s office or cubicle (or in these open office days just yell across the floor) to ask them a quick question or get clarification. Now you have to weigh whether it is worth a call. Email and chat are great, but text can be misinterpreted much easier than spoken word.

Solutions

Create a camera-on culture for meetings. All meeting software has a video feature. Most large organizations don’t habitually use it. What I have found is that once I turn my camera on, others follow. You are already dressed for work and have a space for yourself hit that video button and turn your call into to a virtual meeting.

Use your technology outside of meetings as well. Yes, email and chat are great but as Unconsultant Jim Boss put it, “any communication (text, IM or e-mail) that goes back and forth more than twice deserves a phone call instead, this isn’t tennis! And, challenging/sensitive serious/difficult/negative discussions should be done by phone.” I would go even further and say video chat whenever possible. Your organization has a video chat solution, I guarantee it. I’m not talking about the whole “schedule a meeting and add a WebEx” thing. Find the video camera icon in your chat window and press it. You’ll have an instant connection just like popping in someone’s office.

Finally, get a good camera and microphone. They aren’t that expensive on Amazon and make huge impact on how people see, focus on, and understand what you are saying!

Don’t take the easy way out. Turn on the camera and talk to people face to virtual face. 

Working from home is not as easy as it sounds but it can be extremely effective. If you make the effort to separate work from home, proactively maintain “work” relationships, and take the time to have face to virtual face meetings, you might become more productive AND enjoy it.

Stay tuned for our next article which will address steps that organizations can take to keep their teams effective and their employees engaged when they are working from home!

Legacy Technologies in the Work from Home World

Much of the focus of conversation during the recent WFH discussion has been on the ease of document collaboration and intrateam communication. Using tools like Office 365 or G-Suite allows your users to collaborate easily and effortlessly. Much less focus has been placed on solutions for legacy communication methods. What do you do if your vendors only send invoices via snail mail? How do you stay in touch with clients when they only have your desk telephone number? There are solutions for both of these scenarios. Unfortunately, like most things in the WFH world, your ultimate choice will be dependent on your company and the infrastructure you have in place. However, below are some high-level ideas that should at least give you an idea of the options that are out there.

Snail Mail

Easy

Hand Forward

The easiest and fastest way to forward USPS First Class mail is the hand forward. If you will still have someone on-site, they can mark out the address and barcode on the front of the letter and write a new address to the right of the old one. No new postage is needed. USPS will send it to the new recipient.

Mailroom Forward

If your business is located in a building with a mailroom, ask them to bulk your mail weekly and ship it to the person who will be sorting through it. They will probably charge you a small fee but the benefit is that you can stop and start this process at any time.

Moderate

USPS Regular Forward Mail

Whether you’re making a long-term move or you’ll just be at a new address for just a few months, USPS® mail and package forwarding services can send your mail to you. USPS charges a small fee for this. Learn more at https://www.usps.com/manage/forward.htm

USPS Premium Forwarding Service Commercial

USPS will consolidate mail into a single package and ship it via Priority Mail Express or Priority Mail to the address of your choice. Learn more at https://www.usps.com/manage/forward.htm

Complicated

Open and Scan Service

Companies like VirtualPostMail, TravelingMailbox, and PostScan Mail will open and scan your mail and deliver it electronically to the email of your choice. This option is more complicated because it involves USPS paperwork to give the service permission to open your mail and there is a fee involved.

Phone Options

Easy

User Forward on No Answer

The easiest method to forward calls from an office extension to another number is the User Forward. Most phone systems have an option (usually in voicemail settings) which will allow the user to forward calls to another number if the primary extension is not answered after a set number of rings. Your users can set this up themselves to forward calls to their mobile phones. The drawback to this is that it doesn’t allow the user to call from their office extension.

Moderate or Difficult

Virtual Extensions

I labeled this as both moderate and difficult because it is difficult if you don’t already have a system that can handle it but moderate if you do. From online services like Grasshopper to industry leaders like Cisco, there are many app-based options for virtual extensions. These applications offer users the ability to answer and call from their office phone lines via a smartphone.

Difficult

VOIP VPN and Physical Telephone

Most modern voice PBX systems are IP (basically web address) based. Just like you can setup a Virtual Private Network that makes your computer look like it is within your office network, you can do the same for a telephone. With the right hardware (sometimes even software only), you can plug your desk phone in at home and it will work the same as it does in the office.

The Frictionless Enterprise

Digital transformation and technology integration are all the rage. Academics and practitioners alike espouse the inherent need to tackle these challenges sooner in order to assure there is a later. One thing that is missing from the cacophony of voices thrusting digital transformation upon the business public: What is the point? What is the ultimate goal of digital transformation? Is it a more efficient organization? Is it doing more with less? Not exactly. These are admirable ideas but they were the object of the first business technology revolution. Our Kaizen (continuous improvement) mindset should always keep us looking for opportunities to be more efficient.  However, the ultimate goal of digital transformation, the El Dorado for which we all constantly strive, is a Frictionless Enterprise.

Efficiency and resource utilization have been, and continue to be business objectives. These goals were the desired outcome of the technological revolution that resulted in Enterprise 1.0.  An Enterprise 1.0 company is a technology-enabled organization that maintains many of the silos, outdated procedures, and inflexibility that have been prevalent in business since the early 1900s. In Enterprise 1.0 companies, technology is IT driven, generally as siloed as the rest of the organization, and built to supplement existing policies and procedures that were first defined at a time before digitization significantly lowered the transaction cost of doing business. While this technology did help to create some efficiencies and increase utilization rates, it is often cumbersome, not easy to use, and fails to adapt to changes in business realities.

Enter Enterprise 2.0.

Enterprise 2.0 is by no means a new idea. A result of the Web 2.0 concept (which was coined in 1999), Enterprise 2.0 stresses collaboration, flexibility, and user-driven technology integration. The ultimate goal of this being the absence of friction within the organization. Users have become accustomed to the seamless integration of technology in their personal lives and now want their work to reflect what they know is possible. They want to be able to collaborate effortlessly, find information immediately, and have their tools designed intuitively.  While hierarchy, bureaucracy, and compartmentalized information sharing were implemented to make organizations more efficient, the opposite is true. These outmoded concepts create friction on the path to achieving our strategic business objectives. The startups which have eschewed these previously sacrosanct principles have begun to dominate every field in which they endeavor to compete.

Enterprise 2.0 and the Frictionless Enterprise are here to stay. They represent a revolutionary way to do business that is already old-hat in our personal lives. As business leaders, we must embrace the new reality that what we “knew” all along may not be true. It is time to let go of the past best practices and embrace the removal of intracompany barriers, an increase in transparency, and dedicate ourselves not to following an MBA playbook but rather focus on how to best deliver value our customers. This is the only way to achieve a truly Frictionless Enterprise.

Marie Kondo Your Calendar

Birds are chirping. Flowers are blooming. Spring is in the air. With the change in seasons comes the annual tradition of purging our homes of things that we accumulated over the long winter. In recent years, the mantra of popular organizing consultant Marie Kondo has become the go-to standard for those looking to simplify. Her advice is to look at each item in your home and ask yourself if it brings you joy. If the answer is “no,” that item goes. It is time for the busy executive to do the same thing with their calendar. While the benchmark for calendar cleaning may not be “joy” (board meetings are rarely joyous events but we still have to go), there are a few questions you can ask about each meeting on your calendar to slim things down.

Does meeting serve a purpose?

Many meetings in our corporate lives are little more than status emails read aloud. If the entire purpose of a meeting is to go over the status of something that could be accomplished via email, or better, a dashboard. It is time for it to go. Meetings should be used to solve problems or make decisions. If no decision is made or problem solved, there really wasn’t a reason to meet.

For weekly meetings, I like the Level 10 meeting format from The Entreprenurial Operating System. In a 90 minute meeting, it allocates 5 minutes for going over a dashboard and 60 minutes to its issue solving process (Identify, Discuss, Solve). Your meeting doesn’t have to be that long but that ratio should be a benchmark.

Do I serve a purpose in this meeting?

I know, you always serve a purpose wherever you go. This question is more along the lines of, “Is this the best use of my time?” If you are constantly shuffling from meeting to meeting and can’t seem to get your leadership (one-on-ones), strategy (long term planning), or administrative (budget) work done in the time you have during the day, this exercise is for you.

(Note: This exercise assumes that you have already done the exercise above and fixed or eliminated meetings that don’t serve a purpose.)

1. Export your calendar.

   1. Google Calendar instructions

   2. Outlook instructions

2. Open in Excel/Sheets.

3. Sort by date.

4. Pick one month of recurring meetings to analyze–delete the rest.

5. Look at each meeting and score it on a scale of 1 to 5.

   • 5: I own/lead this meeting AND I contribute (speak) during it regularly.

   • 4: I regularly contribute to AND regularly learn something important during this meeting.

   • 3: I regularly contribute to this meeting.

   • 2: I often don’t contribute to this meeting but I do regularly learn something important during it.

   • 1: I often don’t contribute to this meeting and I don’t usually learn anything important.

6. Re-sort by your new ranking column.

7. Immediately decline all meetings you ranked a “1.”

8. For each meeting you ranked “2,” honestly evaluate if you need to be there. Ask these questions:

   1. Can/Do I get recaps of this meeting via email from the host?

   2. Can I send a direct report to this meeting to represent our team and get the highlights?

      • Note: If the answer to this is “no,” you need to deeply rethink that answer, you ranked incorrectly, or it is time to reevaluate our team.

   3. For each “yes” above, make those arrangements.

Does it have to be this long?

In my experience, meetings are always built with some cushion. You know that sales guy is always late because he “had an important client call,” There are 5 minutes in the beginning while people get settled. Someone takes it off track because they just want to “go over this one thing real quick.” It’s time for that to stop. Set these standards:

• Everyone is on time.

• There is a set, time-boxed, agenda.

  • Set an alarm or reminder for each topic change.

  • If something needs more time, a new one-time meeting with just those people who are essential will be set up.

• Phones are down. Laptops are closed.

  • If there is an actual emergency, someone will find you. If they don’t, it wasn’t a real emergency.

I like the Level 10 meeting agenda from EOS. It is based on a 90-minute meeting, which is too long for most meetings, but the ratios work pretty well.  In reality, most meetings can and should be done in thirty minutes. Parkinson’s Law states, “Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.” Meetings follow this same principle. It is not better to “schedule it longer and we’ll finish early.” Meetings never finish early. Like goldfish grow to the size of their tank, meetings will always fill the available time. Once you cut out all of the extraneous stuff and focus on focusing, fitting everything you NEED to in shorter time frame is not only possible but probable!

Meetings aren’t evil. Some meetings are necessary. Some meetings are advisable. However, not all meetings are equal. By taking the steps above, you might be able to free up some time in your calendar to get work done, attend more meetings that matter, and maybe have time to eat lunch!

What Is Digital Transformation?

Digital Transformation: Surveys say most companies are doing it. Academics claim that those who don’t are destined for disruption induced failure. The one question no one seems to be able to answer is…what is it? There are many definitions of digital transformation, but all of them seem to miss the essence of what digital transformation really involves. Is it just a fancy new word for “technology integration,” “digitization,” or “digitalization”? Or, is digital transformation something bigger.  To get a handle on this concept, I believe a good starting point is to look at a real-life case.

Associated Textbook, Inc., a textbook publishing company, was about to release their first entirely digital book. You could get it on your Mac, PC, Kindle, or Nook, but it would not be available as a paper book. The digital assets were in place. The webstore copy was written and submitted. Everyone at Associated was excited about this strategic direction. Then, on launch day, nothing happened. Quite literally, nothing happened. The book wasn’t listed on the website, which meant no one could purchase it. Associated had an expensive digital asset which was supposed to disrupt an industry and no way to sell it. There was a mad dash to figure out who had dropped the ball. Fingers were pointed. Accusations were made. Everything was checked, and to Associated’s surprise, nothing had been missed. Everyone at Associated was stumped.

Every process at Associated Textbook had been digitized. Technology had been seamlessly integrated into every process. Most importantly, as far as the individual silos were concerned, those processes had been optimized. Every team that would be involved in the distribution of the digital book had been involved in the planning and done everything they needed to do to launch a digital book. Yet, despite all of that, the product launch failed.

Associated was missing was a broader view of how value had been delivered to consumers by the organization previously and how this would change with the new endeavor. Each silo had made sure that the systems they designed got the product from the beginning to the end of their process. Since this book would be entirely digital, the printing operations team wasn’t involved — yet they were the ones who had the answer to the product launch conundrum. The automated system which lists books for sale was tied to the receipt of the order by the printing team. (This check was implemented after an issue years prior when a book was listed in a physical catalog but was ultimately canceled). To ensure this never happened again, books were not listed on the website, until the print order was received. In our scenario, the webstore listing for this groundbreaking digital title was just sitting there waiting for the receipt from the printing team — something that was never going to happen. Associated had technology integration. What they needed was digital transformation.

Technology integration, digitization, or digitalization involve making manual processes automated. Digital transformation asks the questions, “Do our processes and strategy still match the way we deliver value to our customers?”and “Is our process frictionless?”  These question can’t be answered in a silo. They require an examination of everything from business strategy to delivery and, most importantly, all of the steps in between. Digital transformation takes a deep dive into what we are doing, how it is getting done, and why we started doing it that way in the first place. Only after this picture is developed can we integrate holistically developed technology to take the enterprise to the next level.

5 Tips for Keeping Your Team On Your Team

t’s that time of year again. I’m not talking about how my gym suddenly triples its membership. I’m talking about the time of year that people who have been sticking around for their bonuses publish their resumes and put in their letters of resignation. They are “fully compensated” for last year, have used their vacation, and taken advantage of a few paid holidays. Job seekers know that January is the best time of the year to find a job because data shows it is the most popular month for people to leave a job. Bonuses are supposed to keep people around, but in many cases they have become a starting gun in the race to leave.

Only 30% of American workers, and 13% of global workers, are engaged in their jobs. Keeping your team engaged year round is the key to keeping your team on your team after bonuses have been distributed. If you are facing post-holiday personnel flight, it might be time to rethink your engagement strategy. Here are five tips to keep your team engaged throughout the year.

Communicate frequently and transparently with your team about what is going on throughout the organization. Give them a chance to have input and suggest ideas.

Every company goes through ups and downs. Resist the temptation to only share the good news. Your team can tell when something is wrong. It is better that they hear the details from you than speculate on the worst case scenario.

Provide context on the bigger picture of what they are working on. Understanding how their work fits into a larger project or strategy will make them feel like they are part of something bigger and builds loyalty to the project and the organization.

Listen to what they really need. Foosball tables don’t drive people. However, camaraderie might. Understanding your team’s motivators will help you to determine the best way to meet those needs rather than trying what worked for some other team. This is especially important for remote teams when you cannot directly observe motivators. A weekly touch point with all employees will help keep them engaged and help them to remember that they are a valuable part of the team.

Provide your team with the opportunity to learn more and take on additional responsibility. Most importantly, make sure they have the tools and training to do their best work.

Sweeping the floors is additional responsibility but it isn’t knowledge expanding work. Team members who feel the organization and leadership value them and are investing in their careers are happier, more innovative, productive, and creative. They will feel invigorated when they know they are growing–not just standing still. Give them every opportunity to learn and develop new professional skills.

Working with tools and training that are outdated, incomplete, or less than fully functional is frustrating and disheartening. Investing in internal initiatives may not take first priority because it is not client-facing but it cannot be ignored.

Use failure and mistakes as a learning opportunity.

Not every idea will work out. This is an inevitable part of innovation. As a leader, you cannot accept low performance. You can make these failures learning experiences rather than an excuse to berate, or worse, micromanage. Mistakes happen, when they are done in good faith and admitted to, the team should understand that it is not unacceptable or fatal. Blaming and shaming shuts down communication and stifles innovation. This will inevitably lead to feelings of stagnation and a lack of appreciation for the team’s talent.

Provide them with access to user feedback.

Providing the team with the feedback from end-users of the product or service they create helps them to remember why they do what they do. This pride of ownership is a great motivator to keep teams engaged in their work and dedicated to the cause. Hearing what you think about their work is important but hearing what the users think is critical.

Keep your finger on the pulse of engagement.

Employee surveys are good ways to get a ballpark idea of how engaged your team is. However, they are infrequent, inaccurate, and often lagging indicators. Develop a dashboard of quantitative engagement metrics to assure you always have the most accurate data.

Keeping Your Project On Track

A new year means it is new budget and new project time. Everything on the status chart is green and we resolve to keep it that way.  However, in the back of our minds, we fear this year will end like the last as a desperate race to get our deliverables completed just under the wire. How do things always seem to go off track and what can be done to prevent it? The answer to both of those questions is “culture” but let’s start with more tangible steps.

Planning

Keeping a project on track starts in the planning phase. Most planning stops when you find there is a “happy path” to success. This year, instead of stopping when you determine it is possible, take the extra step of really brainstorming what could go wrong. Make the unknown known by Red Teaming (have another team come in and with the explicit goal of tearing apart your plan) and by engaging “the guy on the ground” early on. The front line team has tacit knowledge that cannot be replaced by all of the preparation in the world. Adjust your plan to account for these contingencies. Prepare for what you will do when the unexpected occurs because the unexpected will occur. Finally, allow for some flexibility. When something doesn’t go according to plan, be prepared for your plan to flexibly adapt rather than rigidly crumble.

Execution

During the execution phase remember the plan is not the objective. One of the biggest hindrances to the successful completion of an objective is the “tyranny of the plan.” Simply put, at a certain point people forget about the long-term objective and become singularly focused on following the plan. It doesn’t matter how hard you plan, there will be variables you cannot control or foresee. Keep the objective as the focus and the plan as the current best route but, like any good GPS navigation app, be prepared to adjust your route during the journey if traffic builds ahead or a clearer path appears.

Culture

So what does this have to do with culture? Every person on the team needs to be comfortable pointing out what might go wrong in order to have a candid conversation about how to prevent it. Your front line team (“the guy on the ground”) is your most important asset for spotting problems early and determining how to prevent or fix them. However, for that person to be able to perform this function, a culture of trust and openness within the project team needs to exist. The point of the planning exercises is not to defend the plan. It is to accomplish the objective in the allotted amount of time. A defensive response will shut down conversation and lead to “surprises” that could have been planned for. During the execution phase, knowing “traffic is building ahead” or “a shorter route has been calculated” requires the constant tracking of key variables and most importantly the transparent communication of issues and successes both within the project team and with the wider group of stakeholders. Hiding problems also hides solutions.

Remember the objective is not the plan. Focus on that over projects plans, politics, and ego and you will find a way to meet that objective on time and on budget. Good luck!

This article was originally published at Inspirantgrp.com/inspirantinsights

Sources

The Dirty Little Secret of Project Management

https://hbr.org/2013/03/the-dirty-little-secret-of-pro

The Mission, The Men, and Me by Peter Blaber

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301958/the-mission-the-men-and-me-by-pete-blaber/9780425236574/

Why *Strategic* Process Optimization?

Efficiency is probably the most used word in any conversation about business processes and procedures.  Everyone wants increased efficiency defined by decreased costs, decreased cycle times, and/or decreased overall waste.  Efficiency, however, is only part of the equation when determining the effectiveness of a process.  In fact, I submit, efficiency is the least important part of this equation.  The ultimate determination of the effectiveness of process improvement is how that improvement affects the competitive position of the firm.

Organizations are organisms.  No single process, department, or division exists in a vacuum.  As such, every decision from process improvements to vendor selections must be not only weighed against efficiency benchmarks but also analyzed within the context of an overall business strategy.  Take these examples:

• A service company can make an invoicing procedure super-efficient by only producing one format, sending invoices via email only, and ignoring client requests and complaints.  This would drastically reduce preparation time, development costs, and process errors.  Yet, if the firm’s competitive strategy is to differentiate itself from the competition by providing an exceptional customer experience, this process improvement has failed.

• A consulting firm catering to local startups could save a few hundred dollars a month going with a big box supply vendor instead of a smaller local supplier.  Yet, if this consulting firm touts its support of local businesses as parts of its competitive positioning, a decrease in office supply costs would be a failed improvement.

• A manufacturing firm can decrease production times by reducing redundant quality checks.  However, if this firm’s differentiation strategy is to provide the highest quality products, this process improvement has failed.

As you can see from these examples, there are situations where a process change can improve KPIs but hurt the organization.  As operations professionals, it is our responsibility to take business strategy into consideration when improving a process.  An “improvement” that saves $1,000/month but weakens business is not a real improvement.

Your billing procedures may be more labor-intensive than is optimal, your factory output maybe a little lower than you would like it to be, and/or your office supply costs may be a little higher than they could be.  However, if this is the cost of keeping your processes and procedures in line with the firm’s strategic vision, it is probably worth it.

Efficiency contrary to strategy is equal to waste.  Embrace strategic efficiency.

This article was originally published at lenmusielak.com on April 13, 2015 as Strategic Efficiency Is Key to Success.

Feed Your Millennial Shark

10,000 baby boomers retire every day. Replacing those loyal team members is the always moving “Millennial Shark.”

It can take two years for a new employee to become fully productive. Millennials change jobs every 2.5 years on average. That means you only have each role filled with a fully productive person 36 months every decade.  Without proactive action, the chances that your organization will ever have every role filled with a productive employee are astronomically low. The math is simple. Keeping millennial employees on your team will be the only way to survive in the post-boomer economy.

Millennial Shark is a digital native. He has never known a world without the internet; doesn’t remember pagers—let alone payphones. Knowledge has always been available at a click. They have experienced very little waiting in their lives and aren’t going to develop the patience for it now. They don’t have time for seniority politics. When they feel like they have stalled, they move to another company. Millennial Shark, like his aquatic namesake, has to keep moving to survive, right? Not necessarily but keeping the shark in your pool is going to take some work.

Millennials will move if they feel like they have stalled, but there is a way to keep them on your team. Millennials live in a world that is constantly changing. They came of age during the great recession. They know that the next downturn can happen at any time with no warning. Staying in one role, at one position, for too long means they are not getting the knowledge and experience their peers are getting elsewhere… They aren’t getting that knowledge and experience unless you proactively give it to them.

To keep millennials on your team you have to actively develop their skills and build a culture of learning in your organization. You have to make them feel like they are moving while they are staying in the same place. A corporate university is the most effective way to do that. The best part? Establishing a corporate university program will help your organization achieve its goals while also helping your millennial employees achieve theirs. You are creating better-equipped employees with a common culture and deep knowledge of your organization and strategy while making sure they are gaining the knowledge they need to remain engaged.

Creating a corporate university is not a small endeavor but it is worthwhile.  Can you afford to have a less than 100% productive company?