Is COVID19 killing teams?
/We have started to see the fallout from months of isolation at home, a lack of travel to project sites around the world, and the lack of regular human contact between team members. In this case, project teams working together towards a common objective to create new products.
Basically, about five months ago, the world stopped all at once in the space of a few weeks. People stayed home and have been attempting to communicate using the tools they have available. Tools like video conferencing and apps that connect teams, such as Slack and others.
Over the past ten years we saw a trend towards the miss-use of these “team” communication tools that was not productive. But this is a topic for another time; suffice it to say, the use of these communication systems has not improved the overall effectiveness of remote teams based on what we have observed. Remote teams are now defined as everyone working on projects, now everyone is remote.
It is clear, the worldwide trend of this Pandemic indicates that the current state will become the normative state for at least the rest of 2020, and maybe beyond into next year. If this is the case, what should we do?
Let us first discuss the current situation and what we have observed. We see people, working from home, that are:
distracted
undisciplined
unmotivated
lacking focus
out of touch
out of the information loop(s)
out of political and influence networks
isolated
overwhelmed
and have lost confidence
More video conferencing seems to make it worse. People have become numb to yet another video experience. Most of the time we see people turning off their video and muting audio. For many, this form of communication is surreal and unnatural. It seems to make the isolation worse for many.
We have started a few projects since the Pandemic shut things down and have done everything via video conference and shared apps/files etc. We have never done anything like this before and not had hours in conference rooms with white boards and heated conversations with people trying to explain what they are trying to do, followed by dinners in international cities where everyone gets to know each other. It is a sterile and detached way to run a project. It is a challenge to make it work. We are learning as we go and will share some learnings in this post.
Studying faces on video conferences, we see people looking at other screens and doing other things. This was always a problem, but it seems more so today with people unable to meet face to face with their colleagues. It feels like multiplexing on steroids. I wonder how productive all this multiplexing really is at the end of the day. With no human contact it seems to be getting worse, because of the communications tools we have in front of ourselves demanding attention and interrupt driven responses - right now!
From the leadership vantage point, we observe a lack of, or poor direction to subordinates/team members. The assumption is that they should know what they should be doing, so why do I need to micro manage them. Out of sight out of mind. Of course when we were all in an office together, we had the ability to casually check in on people all day to take the pulse and gauge emotions and feelings. Not now.
This regular checking is not happening, in most cases with everyone scattered around the globe in multiple time zones. It seems that people did not expect it to last this long, so no changes have been made in working arrangements. More of what we did in the past, only now it is the only way we are communicating with one another. These systems where never designed to be the only human contact people had with one another.
It was expected that people would replace face-to-face contact with video contact. Same thing, just a different form. This does not seem to be the case. I’m sure someone will study this later, but from our anecdotal experience, it is not working very well.
We have seen people with less experience and maturity loose confidence and loose touch because of the lack of physical contact with their colleagues. Not to introduce a polarizing idea, each generation has different needs for human contact. From our experience, and not to generalize too much, there is a continuum from young too old with the left side of the spectrum needing more face time and the right side wanting less, in so far as work relationships are concerned.
How do we change things so that we stop teams from becoming isolated, inwardly focused, and losing confidence?
We can share what we have done as independent management consultants, who have worked remotely for nearly 30 years. We’ve never had a “real” office and have always been virtual before we even had the tools.
However, we are not immune, and are also experiencing some of the problems I mentioned, because we can’t fly to all parts of the world like we had been doing up to 5 months ago. We would spend weeks at a time face-to-face with clients, writing on white boards, having dinner, and sharing ideas in person. Then we would go home and communicate remotely, then a few weeks later be back together again. It is really a strange time for all of us - we must learn to adapt to this new existence in our home offices, watching people’s heads in little boxes on our display.
Some of the things we have learned about remote team working:
Be disciplined, start and stop every day at the same time and in the same physical place
Have dedicated space, not in the kitchen, that is quite and uninterrupted
Stick to a schedule
Focus on deliverables vs recurring work that has no endpoint
Pay attention during video conferences; stop multiplexing and look at people you are talking to and look at them when they are talking to you
Shut down other apps and focus, unless you are sharing the content in those apps
Shut off your phone
Don’t hide behind communication tools; email is the worst since you can send and escape, but more up to date team tools can also be misused when people think that the output is a post to a Slack chat rather than actually getting something done
Interestingly, this is a good list to follow when we can meet in person again, because much of the bad behavior occurs when people are in the same room together as well.
What should leaders do?
Check in with every team member, on a regular cadence, not to micro manage their work but to assess their mindset and feelings - How are they doing? What are they worried about? How are things going in general? What is bugging them? What help do they need?
Structure work product around weekly deliverables, show progress towards a defined end state so the team can see it
Use the project schedule to (assuming it is tracking exactly with what is happening on the project) as the glue to tie groups and individuals together towards a common set of objectives
Show how each person contributes to the overall goal, need to do it much more often because people are lacking this through face time in the office
Promote successes, more so than in the past, people have to see how what they are doing is connected to a larger goal, even more now that they are isolated
Again, a list that can be used once we can get together in the same room.
We have adapted to this new remote and isolated “team” reality. Software and communication protocols are not the solution, but rather only tools to be used. They are the hammers, but a hammer does not make a carpenter. We still have to communicate, albeit from a distance today.
We suspect this state will be with us for some time to come. It is time to figure this out instead of waiting for it to be over. In a way, the past 20 years has seen a trend toward remote teams collaborating online to create things. Most of the projects we work on now take place on multiple continents at the same time.
These remote teams have been all over the globe and in multiple time zones. The current Pandemic may have accelerated our move towards an even more remote, yet networked existence. The ones that figure out how to operate in this new environment, while maintaining normal human interaction, will win. We already see our colleagues in Asia and Europe starting to figure it out, because for years they have been the remote ones that have had to figure out how to stay connected to the mainstream or mothership. Time for us all to get better at being apart.