Maren Deepwell

Category: jointposts

  • How we survived a pandemic: Part 3 – Ups and Downs (and sideways) of life as a virtual team

    This is a conversational blog post (cross-posted here) between Martin Hawksey (@mhawksey) and Maren Deepwell (@marendeepwell). We are using this approach to create some space to think together in ‘unprecedented times’. 

    For regular readers this is a slight departure from our regular ‘Virtual Teams’ posts (you can read those on our Virtual Teams summary page) taking a broader view of work whilst midst global pandemic. 

    In this month’s post we share some thoughts prompted by our joint talk at a virtual team day held by the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Oxford. You can access the slides from our talk here (CC-BY-SA). As we pass 100 days since the lockdown in the UK commenced we discuss the impact and look to the future as the measures start to be eased.

    June and July… 

    Maren: It has certainly been an interesting 100 days and counting, since our virtual team started working in lockdown conditions. Now that these conditions are gradually easing and parts of life are returning to normal, we are receiving requests every week from organisations who are considering adopting working as a virtual team as their ‘new normal’. Every few days I have calls with senior managers who are trying to decide whether they still need a physical office, managers whose employees want to have more flexibility, less commuting and more virtual collaboration. We talk through things like PO boxes, GDPR for home-workers, financial support and line management – but we also talk about the reasons for such a shift, how important it is to think through strategy and values underlying those moves to virtual teams. More and more I worry that there is a lot that is being left behind, particularly messy HR problems, access issues and long term implications of not meeting in person. For a lot of people I speak to, endless Zoom meetings or Microsoft Teams is all they have to go on when they start to think about what their virtual work world will look like. When I started thinking about what our team would look like online, I must say that tools for video conferencing were not even on my list! I was thinking about consulting employees, drafting what I wanted to be the most equitable changes to employment contracts and setting out a blended model of working together that saved some costs, but also budgeted for others such as team days in person, equipment, travel costs, home-working allowances and so forth. The current situation is a great prompt to reflect. 

    Martin: In the case of ALT we have an established distributed working culture and when we do have vacancies in our organisation often people want to work for us because we operate remotely. This contrasts sharply to institutions suddenly finding themselves having to organise themselves remotely where existing staff miss the benefits of being co-located. In my own journey as a remote worker and as part of ALT’s move to a distributed organization having a transition period where you could still spend time in the office I would say was essential. It’s also interesting to reflect on the impact the current situation has on established remote workers. Many, including myself, have gone from having your own dedicated workspace to suddenly discovering this has become a shared workspace with other members of your household. It’s 7+ years since I’ve had to share an office and back then video conferencing was certainly less predominant. Throw into the mix childcare and home schooling and suddenly even established remote workers are also having to rediscover ways to make things work. In preparing for our talk for the University of Oxford it was a useful reminder that whilst ALT is a distributed organisation there has always been a recognition of the importance of face-to-face time both one-to-one and through team away days. 100+ days of social distancing also means ALT as an organisation has now missed two of our regular face-to-face team days. In some ways I’ve not missed our away days, perhaps given the current situation travel is the last thing on my mind, but also the benefit of time together is more nuanced. As chief executive have you seen a bigger impact? 

    Maren: I do really miss our face-to-face away days and the opportunities to meet individuals in person, even though like you I am not missing the travel just now. Indeed, I am not sure I would feel comfortable to travel for work yet and I am glad that we have already decided as an organisation not to travel until at least October, at which time we will review the situation again. I find however that the longer the period is that we do not meet up as a team the more I feel the impact of not having more informal catch ups. As you have mentioned, many of us are not able to easily find a quiet spot for a conversation in our lock-down homes, and even when you are not surrounded by family, there is a lot going on within the home environment that can be distracting. All of which makes it more difficult to really focus on conversations, particularly in a Line Management context. Fellow CEOs I talk to are finding they are similarly experiencing some deterioration in those important relationships. Some people find it easier to establish an equivalent level of trust and exchange than others. Ideas we have tried to create different kinds of spaces to interact in are:

    • Meeting around documents
    • Walk and talk conversations on the phone, whilst we go for a walk individually
    • Good old-fashioned phone calls
    • Virtual get togethers for social occasions such as birthdays

    In year one of us being a virtual team, we had a lot of change to cope with but enthusiasm was high. Year two was mostly about settling into being a virtual team and ironing out less straightforward issues. We strengthened policies for home working and collaboration that made our way of working more robust and sustainable. Year three started off with a new strategic vision to take us further, to build on what we had established and six months in we have a completely different business model and context to contend with. What I am thinking about really is what year four should look like… . I read a lot about a desire not to return to the old ways, but I don’t really empathise because the way in which we work as an organisation had already departed from the traditional model well before the pandemic forced many into the great online pivot. Personally, I wouldn’t relish a professional life without face-to-face interaction with colleagues or Members. I miss it. 

    Martin: It’s interesting to think back to the start of this year pre-pandemic as one of my personal resolutions was to reduce the amount of air travel I did for work. I was doing well, booking trains 90 days in advance to get the best tickets, getting to see summer lovely sun rises on the East coast line …

    Traveling by train also was proving more effective in opportunities to work while traveling, being mindful of my working hours. There were some downsides, for example, a 3 hour delay on a train from Kings Cross which ended up getting home after 2am, was a long and painful journey. Looking forward using a 90 day booking window still feels problematic given the virality of COVID-19 and the risk of localised outbreaks and any restrictions that might be imposed. The thought of sitting on a train, or any other public transport, with a face mask on also doesn’t fill me with enthusiasm, so do I drive, borrow my parents motorhome? Without an effective vaccine in place I find it hard to see when our next face-to-face will be. I’m not sure what the impact of this will be, or even if there has already been an impact but hidden in a general need to adjust our operational plans? Another factor I think needs to be taken into account is any social anxiety that may have developed whilst we have all been in isolation. 

    Maren: That is a really interesting point. When I recently started to receive invitations to face-to-face events which require travel I thought it would be useful to ask everyone in the team to provide input to our approach from October onwards. I have put in place a feedback form that I hope we can complete every few weeks or months to ask individuals about their personal preferences regarding travel, having meetings or catch ups face-to-face and also going to events – taking into account their personal circumstances and wellbeing. The differences between colleagues who live in different parts of the UK even in our small team have really become clear to me in recent weeks, particularly as the lock-down in Wales, where I live, was last to lift. Meanwhile, talking to colleagues further afield, and hearing their experiences of resuming travel, haircuts and meals out has been heartening as it gives me a sense that in many parts of the world days and weeks are slowly becoming a bit more normal. My first ventures out for an emergency dentist visit, MOT and bakery were quickly followed by making an appointment for a haircut (yay!) and a socially distanced BBQ with friends. It’s nice to hear positive experiences starting to surface after a long period of bleakness. 

    Martin: After a long period of lock down it’s nice to see easing of some of the social distancing measures. For me it feels like after what felt like an age of restricted activity things are speeding up in terms of getting back to some sort of ‘normality’. It will be interesting to revisit this conversation in 4 weeks time to see if we are on a continued positive trajectory. Until next time dear readers stay safe.

  • How we survived a pandemic: Part 2 – Music, spice and other things nice

    mage: CC-BY Maren Deepwell

    This is a conversational blog post (cross-posted here) between Martin Hawksey (@mhawksey) and Maren Deepwell (@marendeepwell). 

    We are using this approach to create some space to think together in ‘unprecedented times’. It’s open leadership in practice and in pandemic times. For regular readers this is a slight departure from our regular ‘Virtual Teams’ posts (you can read those on our Virtual Teams summary page) taking a broader view of work whilst midst global pandemic. 

    In this month’s post we share some of the things that have helped us get through the current global situation. As part of this we touch upon some of our senses and stimulants we use in our working lives including caffeine and candles. We also share how music has helped us to make connections and support our wellbeing. We invite you to read and think along and please share your reflections as a result of this month’s post and if you like you can tune in to the ds106 Radio slot with Maren,  Tannis Morgan and Anne-Marie Scott at 7pm (BST) on Sundays at ds106rad.io/listen/. 

    All the best to you and yours. We hope you are safe and we are grateful that we are, too. 

    May… 

    Martin: Over the years I’ve worked in a number of different offices from a room perched up high in a shipyard that gently rocked when the overhead crane moved, to converted school classrooms, large open plan spaces and until I worked from home I never had an office to myself. Looking back at some of the co-spaces I worked in, it’s interesting how the practicalities of the space influenced the office dynamic and also the role of music played in how we worked and interacted. In the shipyard I was working as a CAD operator, part of a small team producing technical drawings. We were all very young with no senior management in the same room and just left to get on with it. One of the areas of tension was what music was played on the CD player. There were only a couple of albums and after The Seahorse was played for the umteenth time in one day each time a little louder I was ready to break (I once hid the remote control with the volume down button stuck on in all the paper drawings for some peace and quiet… this did not go down well). In the converted school classroom the job was very administrative, production focused and we were mixed in age and backgrounds but often we would listen to BBC 6music. If anyone had their own Seahorses moment they never let on and having a mixture of music and a DJ to listen to often create conversation points which helped get through some of the repetitive monotony of the job. And then there are spaces like the big open plan office where if you were going to listen to music headphones were obligatory. This often led to moments when our little desk cluster would all individually have our heads down, bopping away focused on our work in our own little space. The influence of music in the workplace to aid factory production and placate the workforce is well documented, but it was only recently whilst out running I realised just how much music had a physical effect on my performance. When that banging track kicked in, my body was so ready to kick on through those last 3 miles of a 13 mile run. Music also has helped me get through some deep lows. Whilst many criticise bands like Radiohead and Elbow as producing ‘depressing’ tracks, when I’m low myself this is exactly the music I listen to given the uplifting effect it has on the chemicals whooshing around my brain. Has music played a role in your work?     

    Maren: Music has definitely played a role in my working life… particularly when I was working in a cafe at Ray’s Jazz at Foyles Bookshop in London. I bought many albums in that job, as I was fortunate to work alongside folk who had an encyclopedic knowledge and I discovered a lot of music that year. When I worked in a university setting, a lot of my work was based around teaching or student support, so there wasn’t a lot of scope for listening to music and in my early years at ALT, when we still had a physical office, music wasn’t often part of the daily routine – although we had music hours when we each got to make a request. In recent years, since I started working from home full-time, I find I listen to music most when I travel. I have a lot of meetings each day, so the few quiet hours I can carve out each week are precious for concentration and I don’t listen to music when I have that time. I do listen to music to wind down at the end of a day, or when I am out running, or on the train or plane. That said, I find the right scent really helps my working environment. I have a scented candle next to my desk and I like having a familiar smell that I associate with work. I also have plants in my work space, and as much natural light as possible. One work environment factor that I have recently thought a lot about is the number of different screens I use. Since I moved house during the pandemic, I don’t currently have my largest monitor to work on – but even when I do, I don’t use a lot of different screens. I know you do! I prefer to have one screen for meetings and one screen to work on, but I rarely flip between screens. I don’t check social media during the day unless I am participating at an online event or managing an announcement and I prefer to work on one document at a time. I guess overall, I value a calm workspace when I can create it. 

    Martin: Like you I’m in between house moves so it means I don’t have my usual office setup. Whilst a pandemic lockdown situation wasn’t foreseen I had taken a number of pieces of equipment with me but my screen space has been reduced to two 13” displays. Overall it feels like I’ve adapted but something I’m aware of is with smaller screens there is a risk of eyestrain. Given most of our systems are cloud based with web interfaces it means I’ve made more use of zooming/scaling, I am however looking forward to surrounding myself again with larger displays. 

    I’ve never considered sense of smell and how it can be used to support your working environment. Thinking about other senses and stimulations coffee has become a bigger part of my life. Historically I’m a tea drinker and for the last couple of years have drunk caffeine free Rooibos tea, but over the last 4 months coffee has increasingly featured, now usually starting the day with a cup of joe. I’ll also turn to caffeine and some banging tunes when I have some data processing tasks to get through. When I’ve worked in offices in the past there have been various provisions provided from bring your own to employers supplying refreshments, the best was one employer who kept a fridge stocked with various refreshments (mostly caffeine based … as HR news reports in writing about the benefits of providing workplace coffee machines as a stimulant caffeine can boost productivity)  

    Writing this exchange during mental health week has also been useful to listen to some of the advice and support that has been shared. On Wednesday 20 May on Lauren Laverne BBC 6Music show fellow DJ Nemone, who is also a practicing psychotherapist, highlighted some of the research around the benefits of music including how it can be used to help manage stress levels as well as ‘music being a way of communicating, a conversation between people, the making and listens results in increased feeling of connection’. You can listen to Nemone speak about this in the show recording which is available until 18 June 2020 at the 1:11:17 timestamp. I know that in your spare time you’ve also been involved in a weekly radio show on ds106 Radio and you might want to talk more about that? 

    Maren: yes, that’s true! I have been joining some friends on the crisis radio airwaves. For the last couple of months, we have been playing tunes and sending hugs on Sundays, and more recently also requests from listeners. I have blogged about that, writing about kindness, mental health and radio full of rainbows. My particular favourites include soul soundtrack songs and old singles from The Cure. Listening to the radio, often manned by colleagues in different parts of the world whom I know is a great way of keeping connected in this time of isolation. Even though for many of us the more local measures are gradually being relaxed, my professional life has changed completely from travelling every week and going abroad several times a year to basically no travel at all in the foreseeable future. So it’s especially important for me to keep connected to people whom I might have otherwise met up with at an event or a meeting. And of course, there is the music as well. One recent show featured requests from listeners and closed with a beautiful song called “Weeping” requested by Laura Czerniewicz which resonated with many. If you’d like to listen for yourself to the whole playlist you can find it here.

  • How we survived a pandemic: Part 1 – No kind of normal

    This is a conversational blog post (cross-posted here) between Martin Hawksey (@mhawksey) and Maren Deepwell (@marendeepwell). 

    We are using this approach to create some space to think together in ‘unprecedented times’. It’s open leadership in practice and in pandemic times. For regular readers this is a slight departure from our regular ‘Virtual Teams’ posts (you can read those on our Virtual Teams summary page) taking a broader view of work whilst midst global pandemic. 

    We invite you to read and think along and send all the best to you and yours. We hope you are safe and we are grateful that we are, too.

    April… 

    Maren: Hello from month two of lockdown here in the UK. I initially started writing this post on 23 March, but since then so much has happened that I stopped and now, a month later, I’ve started this conversation again. I’ve been reading so much about the current crisis: at first there were emergency announcements and lockdown measures, then lots of support and help for coping, then about the ‘new normal’ and now we’ve arrived at predictions for the future. It is both incredibly busy and extremely boring. I am not sure how I feel about the idea of ‘business as usual’. I can understand the desire for a sense of normality and keeping to a routine, but no one can really function normally just now, so I am starting to think about what measures we can take to lead our team through the coming months.. ideas I have had include… building in a planned 20% reduction in overall productivity (to give us as a team more flexibility around care commitments etc); supporting setting priorities for each week and creating a clearer overview for us as a team (kind of like what you would do for a project, ie treat the crisis as a project) and to try and set aside small pockets of time for thinking about things, rather than just doing stuff. What do you think of these ideas? 

    Martin: There are days right now where I certainly feel less productive and reading this thread shared by one of our team members on the inability to focus as the result of the extra stress from the current situation definitely helped. I’ve also found some of the small adjustments to the way we operate have also been really beneficial. For example, as part of our usual weekly team meeting swapping our usually CPD focused ‘show and tell’, to a ‘show and mental wellbeing’ where we all shared something that was helping us cope with the current situation. I found it particularly uplifting and helpful to see the creativity from the team, but also get a sense that others are also impacted by our current life less normal. In terms of ideas I fear the danger of setting weekly priorities is that “SUDDENLY [you] DON’T GIVE AF about future-based goals, projects, or dreams like you used to?” and the stress of missing goals might end up snowballing. At this time I feel the best we can do is continue to be understanding and responsive to team member needs. Having extra time off over Easter is one example of how ALT has responded to support staff and I think it worth keeping in mind that additional ‘mental wellbeing’ might be required, but I see this need reducing as we all find a new normal. If not already it might be worth spending a little time in the team to share where we are at as a team and if there are any ways something in ALT’s control could be done to make the situation better? Perhaps this last one is covered by your last idea about setting time aside? 

    Maren: I agree that sharing the well-being ideas are really good. It’s great to hear all these ideas and we shared quite a few laughs as well. Also, our HR advisor, Jo, also checks in with everyone every two weeks. Two weeks is a long time just now, so a lot can change in how we are feeling or coping. It’s challenging to share how we all are as a team, because some of the things that are happening to everyone are very personal. I am trying to figure out the balance between work being an escape, a bit of “normality” for us all and work being a source of social interaction and support. These two things are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they can sit uneasily alongside each other when for example one person wants to try and have a ‘normal day’ and someone else feels like sharing their pandemic news. On a practical note, I found revising our plan for 2020 really helpful. Focusing on specific tasks rather than an overall uncertain picture has helped focus my mind a bit more. So spreadsheets to the rescue? 

    Martin: Funny that you mention spreadsheets as they have been something I’ve turned to for my own wellbeing. On Twitter I was asked mental health #Threefor3 in which I included ‘coding’ as one of the things I do. Whilst I do a bit of coding for the day job I’ve also been using it as an escape, nothing like a bit of computational thinking for a distraction and relaxation … well for me anyway. I’ve published a number of these recent projects on my blog, which includes some of the Google Sheets tips we use at ALT for managing our events (evidence that like you trying to find a balance between work as an escape). Something else I’ve been reading and thinking about recently is the demands of video call and video conferencing. It started with this post from Anna Page with her reflections from #OER20. As part of this she mentions that “It can be cognitively demanding keeping an eye on the chat as well as listening to what the presenter is saying and looking at their slides”. This was something I hadn’t considered before but can see where Anna is coming from. More recently I’ve been reading a piece on Engadget on ‘Why is video conferencing so exhausting?’, which highlights factors like “non-verbal overload” and “constant gaze” as reasons video calls can be more tiring than meeting face-to-face. As someone who does lots of online meetings back-to-back is this something you can relate to? 

    Meeting around a document by Visual Thinkery is licenced under CC-BY-ND

    Maren: Definitely. I am not a fan of back to back video meetings and I find there are alternatives:

    • having a phone call (often more personal), 
    • meeting around a document, 
    • or screen sharing something that everyone can focus on instead of video, 
    • or having an audio call maybe with video briefly at the start to wave hello. 

    If… nothing helps and you do have to have back to back meetings, as I often do, then what works for me is 

    • to have them standing up (I currently have a standing desk only), 
    • to keep each one to half an hour or less, 
    • to take regular breaks between meetings, 
    • and to check in with everyone participating at the start. 

    Being one of many faces in a grid of video camera pictures is not a helpful way to visualise what having a productive meeting looks like. We don’t all just stare at each other in person. So having a visual focus other than those individual feeds, like an agenda document or a shared screen is key to getting things done for me. I’ve been enjoying reading the different perspectives on whether to use a virtual backdrop in video calls in an education context, like in a teaching context or at a conference, and I am in two minds about it. Whilst I prefer seeing people in their context, I appreciate that many are not in environments they are comfortable sharing widely or wish to protect their privacy. What is your view on video backdrops?

    Martin: Having something else to focus on like a doc is a great tip! Video backdrops is an interesting topic. I was at a webinar last week which was being presented by someone I knew, but never met in person. When they presented I thought they were in a rather luxurious private library and my thoughts were how grand it looked (and also how did they afford it!), then when the background started to glitch the game was up. I can see why people prefer to hide their actual backgrounds, particularly when given many have become enforced homeworkers and perhaps have had to squeeze into a space they wouldn’t usually want to share. I can see why people would also want to use enhancement filters, the nature of video call solutions means you generally end up having at the very least a thumbnail of yourself staring back at you, which to me can feel like there is a mirror in front of you most of the day. Awkward for those, especially those thrown into remote working, to adjust to constantly seeing yourself (I actually embrace this and often focus on looking at myself rather than others in the meeting. Not sure if this is how my head tries to get around ‘constant gaze’ of others or if I’m just a huge egomaniac 😉

    Maren: It’s been really useful for me to start a conversational blogging project in this new context. I am grateful for the prompt to do some thinking and critically reflect on my practice. I find in these busy times space to do any of that is precious and limited, so it’s useful to start thinking together again. But it is also a vulnerable position to be in, radically open if you like. Let’s hope our readers take encouragement from this, fellowship in face of a crisis. Till the next time 🙂

  • Virtual Teams: moving parts

    Welcome to this month’s post (cross-posted here) in which we, that is Martin Hawksey (@mhawksey) and Maren Deepwell (@marendeepwell), openly share our approach to leading a virtual team. If this is your first time visiting this post series or you’d like to review previous posts go to our Virtual Teams summary page.

    This month we start our third year as a virtual team and we talk about the ups and downs of moving house as home workers, how to give yourself a break during times of upheaval and supporting each other.

    February

    Maren: I have been looking back at the first post in our series. Although it’s two years ago, that moment of closing our physical office door for the last time and starting the next morning as a virtual team is still palpable. At the time, creating stability, a sense of security and permanence seemed like a formidable challenge. Every aspect of our operation was in flux, new systems everywhere we looked. Tasks like receiving post or signing an invoice became things that required an extraordinary amount of time and thought. Two years on and nearly half of our staff team are planning to move house over the next year. Instead of work being in flux and ever changing, the ability to take our work with us, to remain part of a virtual team regardless of location, provides security. It’s interesting to reflect on how things have changed. We have supported quite a few colleagues through home working house moves and this year it’s our turn. What are your thoughts? 

    Martin: When I started working for ALT over 6 years ago the ability to work from home was an essential requirement as relocating to our then base of operations in Oxford was simply not an option. Six years on the ability to relocate without having to give up my job is another big win, although admittedly our move this time is just 10 minutes away. When looking for a new home accommodating my workspace was one of the criteria, but another was what sort of internet connectivity was available. I’m actually looking forward to setting up a new office, a chance to design my new space. Transition is also a consideration. Unfortunately we aren’t able to move straight into our new home so I’ve got a period without my own space. This is going to be a bit of a journey into the unknown, particularly in terms of connectivity. We’ll be staying in Airbnb’s so hopefully hosts have made sure they’ve got good wifi to keep guests happy and I’ve got a VPN for a secure connection. Should connectivity still be an issue I’ve got access to three different PAYG mobile networks. Over the years I’ve also accumulated a couple of portable external displays so I’m not anticipating issues, but these things can sometimes be hard to predict just as it was two years ago when we changed operations. What are your thoughts on moving?

    Maren: Moving house is not something I read about in charity management handbooks! Like so many other aspects of leading people it wasn’t discussed much or at all. When you don’t have the option of working from different locations a house move often means finding a new job as well. So it’s a huge plus to be able to keep the job when you have to relocate. Since we became a virtual team more than half of us have moved and the disruption has ranged from serious and prolonged to very minimal. Moving is a big, stressful life event and has a long tail of practical consequences. Like moving offices or rather moving out of an office it takes a lot of planning and doing and that takes headspace and time. All of which causes a certain amount of distraction from work. For some work acts as a welcome break from the stress of moving as it presents more predictable problems to solve. For others productivity slows when they lose their habitual set up and environment. Although we live in a culture where working from home is becoming more normal, most parts of life aren’t really set up for it. ‘People’ just assume you ‘go to work’ and moving processes are not designed to prioritise continuity for home workers. We have taken steps to support staff during periods of transition such as providing a mobile WiFi hub (which is passed to whoever needs it), putting our flexible work policy to good use to accommodate moving dates etc and so forth. In terms of work I think house moves function in a similar way to holidays. It’s a deadline that can focus the mind and it forces you to take a step back from your usual perspective. It’s also incredibly stressful, uncomfortable and discombobulating and the only way I can deal with it is just to sit with those feelings and accept that ‘chaos’ is upon me. It reminds me, very forcefully, that every professional, no matter how successful, is a human being first and foremost. We all deserve some kindness and compassion from our colleagues and ourselves, we deserve to give ourselves a break. 

    Martin: I don’t know if it was prompted but it feels like the ALT team are giving me some extra care and consideration, which is quite remarkable given how caring they are already. It’s small things like pre-empting questions with “I know you are busy but could you help me with…”. In terms of disruption we now have a possible entry date for our next property which isn’t until the end of May. Whilst this length of time isn’t ideal it’s nice to have a date and it doesn’t feel like forever. In terms of planning and trying to prevent disruption a particular problem, perhaps unique to virtual teams, is the extra preparation for the equipment I store for ALT used at our face-to-face events. As I manage the livestreaming this includes AV equipment, lots of cables and magic boxes, as well as various other bits and pieces we use as part of our events. The removers we’ve employed are very nice but I don’t think I’ll be thanked if I have to ask for something accidentally put into storage. Another potential disruption looming at the time of writing is Coronavirus (COVID-19). As a distributed team we benefit from not having to send employees home should someone contract COVID-19, or spend time disinfecting workspaces. This is not to say we can ignore the risks associated with the wider impact that could happen such as the UK Government imposing travel restrictions, or members of our team becoming unwell … all part of being human. For me it’s a reminder of the benefits of small things like our Monday morning watercooler chat. As we aren’t co-located I find this is the perfect chance to see how someone is feeling.

    Maren: yes, at a time when we do a risk assessment a day those touch points to check how everyone is are key. Processes and procedures are always important when an unexpected crisis hits and I suppose we have had ample opportunities to stress test ours. Virtual working makes it even more crucial to communicate regularly and effectively and it’s actually helpful, I find, not to be able to rely on being co-located but to be forced to communicate expressly. It’s an example of how working remotely promotes better practice by default. The year ahead looks like it may prompt more organisations to adopt flexible working practices and in many ways using technology to manage a crisis really worries me. Our blog series highlights so many aspects in which you need time and resources to support a transition like this effectively no matter how good the technology is: it’s never going to be seamless. I feel there is a real danger to erode support structures, labour rights and established norms that should not be disrupted. So I am glad that our way of working as a distributes team was not formed at a time of crisis, but a planned transition in which employees were consulted and supported. We chose this path. I hope what we learnt so far continues to be useful to others who are now rushing to find solutions. We certainly work in interesting times just now!

  • Virtual Teams: The heartbeat of a virtual team

    Virtual Teams: The heartbeat of a virtual team 

    Welcome to this month’s post (cross-posted here) in which we, that is Martin Hawksey (@mhawksey) and Maren Deepwell (@marendeepwell), openly share our approach to leading a virtual team. If this is your first time visiting this post series or you’d like to review what we’ve posted in 2019 Maren has a Virtual Teams summary page.

    This month we are talking about Slack, scheduling team meetings, and how our use of technology and different tools affect the rhythm of our work as a virtual team. 

    January

    Maren: It’s the start of a new year, a new decade, and January is not usually the most inspiring month for me at work. But this month is different, partly because there are some exciting things afoot at work (a new strategy is in the works, new visual thinkery being produced and new data to analyse…) but primarily because thanks to inspiration from our recent podcast guest Olaf Hubel (listen to the episode here) my experiment to create a better rhythm to our working as a virtual team is a real success and already making a huge difference. Result! In essence we haven’t really changed what we do or how we work together, but since the start of the year we have started to schedule specific activities at a new regular slot: for example, Mondays now start with an informal ‘watercooler’ catch up in late morning, giving us all the chance to say hello, catch up on the weekend and spend some time together not focusing on work. One to one catch ups for individuals (which is 5 for me) are now all on Tuesdays, and again, having a regular day for these and the same day for everyone has saved me A LOT of time and also seems to make it easier and more efficient for everyone to plan for those meetings. On Wednesday we have our full team meeting, which has moved from Tuesday to Wednesday, and I feel this is working really well also – giving us all a chance to catch up with each other and what’s happening across the organisation. And, last but not least, we have found a regular slot on the last Thursday of each month for our team sprints that we started last year – focusing on actively working together online synchronously. Small tweaks overall, but that bit of extra regular scheduling has made a huge difference and everything feels (to me at least) like it’s happening in a better rhythm now. It’s as if our virtual team now has a more regular heartbeat. What are your thoughts? 

    Martin: I think all our team have also benefited from this tweak to our weekly calendar. Having a regular slot for catch-ups means I know when I have to prepare all my questions by and also better judge if something can wait or if I need to contact you at another time by different means. Initially I thought a Wednesday team meeting would mean that at the start of the week I would have to wait longer to find out where others are at with their work, but as it turns out, I think it works better because it encourages touching base with other team members more frequently. [An interesting point, dear reader, is after Maren drafted the start of this month’s post we had a chance to briefly discuss it in our one-to-one where I was able to say I thought the change was very positive however a small observation was that the Monday watercooler chat, which was scheduled for 10:30am, felt like after we all said hello first thing Monday put us in a limbo period where, for me anyway, I had to save small talk until we hung out together later. On mentioning this to Maren we immediately updated the timeslot to 9.30am – a nice reminder of why these shared posts are useful.] I thought it was interesting when we discussed this that you said you didn’t know why I just didn’t change this in our calendar. Reflecting on this I relate it to you being the conductor in our little quintet virtual team ensemble and it not really being my place to set the rhythm. Hopefully with this suggested timing change rhythm is just being finely tuned. As part of our continual tuning January also marks our annual home working check-in. This is where we all individually review our homeworking setups, share tips and also put in any requests for hardware/software. The most popular request has been for monitors, either more or bigger (our team clearly know my soft spot). You’ve shared the changes to our team calendar, is there anything else you’d like to share from another year as a homeworker?    

    Maren: Looking back at my own assessment, this is now the third time I am reviewing my set up and reflecting on it. For various reasons I have made a lot of tweaks to my equipment over the last six months and so this time round my focus was more on the way my days and weeks function, like for example walking to the post office in order to get fresh air, even if I could use the local post box instead. Similarly, I made notes on things like finding the right balance between working hard and taking regular breaks, building in reminders to move, to pause, to prioritise my well being alongside my work. So I guess alongside the regular schedule of meetings, catch ups and sprints, I have also found a rhythm to my own home working. I feel more comfortable, more settled in this mode of working and I have learnt to explain it to people more readily and clearly than I could at the start. I have always found it hard to hear people talking about our team as “the office” of ALT. Whilst I know what they mean, I really dislike that short-hand for referring to staff. To me, it’s absolutely important to acknowledge, even implicitly, that we are talking about colleagues, or specific individuals, who do the work that is essential to the running of the organisation. I prefer talking about a distributed team much! It moves the perspective away from a faceless admin resource to consciously talking about people and collaboration and all that implies. It might seem like a very minor point and one that most people might not even be aware of at all, but to me, having seen the changes in the organisation over the past decade, it makes a big difference. 

    Martin: Not being a faceless admin resource is very beneficial, plus it feeds my ego and aspiration to be famous. It a small point but I think that we have a policy of personally signing off emails from our shared inbox accounts, like enquiries@alt.ac.uk or helpdesk@alt.ac.uk, and when referring to other members of our team by name rather than department also helps us strengthen our connection with our community. As well as having shared inboxes addresses we all also have personal email accounts with our names. The exception is finance@alt.ac.uk but there are various practical reasons this is the case. We did experiment with role based emails addresses particularly when we’ve previously recruited agency staff to fill positions, but given we now are an independent employer there is more stability in our team and less need for staff handovers. In case readers are interested in how we administer our shared inboxes we use a Google Group configuration that enables us to assign messages to appropriate members of the team and also keep a record of the communication. I feel Google Groups mostly works for us and at this time don’t feel we need a more advanced ticketing system. My main grumble is that messages with the same subject line end up in the same thread making it hard to track when an enquiry has been completed. Our tweak has been to make sure when we contact individuals from one of our shared inboxes we include a person unique reference in the subject line. Email isn’t the only communication channel we administer and our social accounts are another way of contacting us. You also recently shared an interesting post from David Hopkins on how Slack has ruined the workplace:

    Did you have any particular takeaways from this post in relation to our team? 

    Maren: it was useful to read the post about Slack and how chat tools like this are adopted for long term use. I’ve also been thinking about the differences between various communication methods (text/icon based, voice, video) and came across this post on telephone calls. It isn’t work focused, but it makes useful points about the different nuances that each kind of communication brings with it. The slack post relates closely to what I was talking about above, about the rhythm of collaboration. Similar to what you describe about how we manage and administer external communication channels, the way in which we use our internal ones has changed over the last 2 years. Some, like our collaborative team meeting notes doc, have a clear purpose and use cycle. Others, like our new Monday morning water cooler chat, are still finding their long term shape. It changes over time and as different people bring their individual skills, personalities and expectations to it. There are questions I think about such as: if you’ve been away or on holiday, do you need to catch up on the team chat? Does everyone know enough about what should be put into an email to keep a record of the communication and what can be ‘chat only’. Why would I happily have guests in a team meeting but not in our team chat? Who gets the most chats during the day? Is the member of staff I am chatting with making casual conversation, is this a ‘serious’ matter, is it just venting…?! Everyone brings their own expectations to the communication channels we use but in my experience they are not necessarily the same – the decision not to chat and talk on the phone or hangout is similarly individual – it could be a bad hair day that makes someone prefer to chat rather than be on video… . And there’s also emoji, a topic we have talked about quite a lot in the past two years. What are your thoughts on all this? 

    Martin: That’s a lot of very useful questions and I don’t think I’ll be able to cover them all in this month’s post, I have however discovered my emoji mojo and I’ve been particularly enjoying the Windows key + . to bring up the emoji picker. In terms of focus, particularly during video calls, I’ve found the minor tweak of placing my webcam on one of my side screens helps me maintain focus and not get distracted during calls … all part of developing your skills as a remote worker:

    As a special contribution to this month’s post we include this tweet from our colleague Debbie Baff – sharing a very fun moment in the daily life of our virtual team: 

  • Virtual Teams: Finding Oxygen with Olaf Hubel at Google – podcast special 2019

    Welcome to this month’s  special podcast (cross-posted here) in which we, that is Martin Hawksey (@mhawksey) and Maren Deepwell (@marendeepwell), openly share our approach to leading a virtual team.   If this is your first time visiting this post series or you’d like to review what we’ve posted in 2019 Maren has a Virtual Teams summary page.

    This time we are joined by our special guest, Olaf Hubel G Suite Developer Relations Team Leader at Google. Together we talk about what it takes to lead a virtual team, collaboration and team communication.  

    Listen to the podcast.

    This month: podcast with special guest Olaf Hubel (Google)

    Martin: So Maren what were your main takeaways from our podcast with Olaf Hubel?

    Maren: I really enjoyed talking to Olaf and I got a lot of food for thought from our conversation. One topic we discussed was how important interaction is for virtual teams and Olaf described the different approaches he uses to manage that both formally as part of team meetings and informally through things like water cooler hangouts and chat. We have a water cooler chat channel for our team and recently there were some real stand out moments for me, such as the morning when we all met a new puppy of one of our colleagues or when I was mid transit whilst travelling and the chat was suddenly all about domestic chores with a lovely pic that made me smile 🙂
    Leading a virtual team requires us to be more intentional when it comes to informal interactions like that. We can’t rely on serendipity (and I’d argue you shouldn’t for co-located teams either). Providing tools is only part of the equation. We also need to put in place & maintain the necessary structures and that is something I feel we’ve learnt a lot about in the past two years. We’ve moved from experimenting with different formats and strategies to a more regular rhythm of working together. Hearing Olaf talk about focusing on team interaction as both valid and important really chimed with me. What about you? Are there any talking points that stood out for you? 

    Martin: It was striking to me the number of similarities in the way that our team operates to Olaf’s team. This is perhaps not surprising as given ALT uses a number of tools that have been developed by Google. There were some small things I had never considered before until Olaf highlighted them like by default your webcam is on when you join a Google Hangouts Meet to encourage you to use video. As ALT has a number of video conferencing tools at our disposal with some to default to video off it’s interesting to reflect on the behaviours it encourages. Like you I found it interesting to hear about how some of the informal interactions were sometimes orchestrated. Besides the water cooler chat, ideas like the Monday morning social where Olaf’s team hangout just to share non-work related things like things they got up to at the weekend seemed like nice opportunities to build social connections. It was also interesting to hear how Olaf organised some of the formal interactions, in particular, dedicating a day for scheduled catch-ups with team members. As someone with a touch of OCD I could see how having a regular timetabled slot each week could be useful. The final thing I’ll mention was Olaf’s reference to Google’s Project Oxygen where “Google set out to determine what makes a manager great at Google”. We didn’t go into much detail about Project Oxygen but subsequently I know we’ve both explored the re:Work website which “Google and others to help share and push forward the practice and research of data-driven HR”. What’s your take on re:Work and Project Oxygen?  

    Maren: it made for interesting reading for me! One key point it got me thinking about was scale. The more people are involved and the more levels of management you have the harder it becomes to get a sense of what good practice should look like and what is happening on the ground. Project Oxygen, for me, is an expression of meeting those challenges and providing output that can be scaled up to the size of a global corporation. The 10 behaviours of good management identified in the report all read like common sense, but putting that into practice consistently remains a challenge. The example you picked up on, scheduling catch ups for everyone at the same time each week, is particularly relevant to me. I already have weekly catch ups planned, but the process of scheduling them in itself is very time intensive. Each week or month I need to repeat the process. Taking inspiration from Olaf, I’m going to try the approach he shared, and by sending out one repeat calendar invite per person and in this manner I’ve now scheduled weekly catch ups with everyone for the whole year. For me, that’s a big win. Yet, beyond the efficiency, the regular schedule should also help to create a better rhythm for us as a team, with specific days each week for different meetings, both informal and formal. It should help everyone structure their time and that is particularly relevant for you and I, as we always struggle to carve our sufficient head space for strategic planning. Structure is so important for us as a virtual team and it can be hard work to create and maintain that when each week the calendar looks completely different. I LOVE planning support, structures, evaluation processes and so on and it is so attractive to look at the reporting and tools being shared on the re:Work site and try them out in our context. That said, I also know first hand that much of what makes work life tick day to day is hard to capture in quantitative data sets. Olaf emphasised the importance and value of spending time, communicating, building relationships and that I really chimed with me. It’s a constant regardless of whether you share a desk or whether you are an ocean apart. 

    Martin: Another aspect of relying on quantitative data, particularly when what is being measured leads to reward is Campbell’s Law, that is “the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor”. Looking at the Google Manager Feedback Survey, which is based around 13 quantitative and two qualitative questions I could see it being an easy to fall into the trap of managing to the survey. Perhaps this in itself is not necessarily a bad thing because as you mentioned these questions are designed to measure behaviours that appear to be common sense and personally I value a manager who ‘assigns stretch opportunities to help me develop in my career’, ‘communicates clear goals’, ‘gives me actionable feedback on a regular basis’ and so on. Saying all of this Olaf doesn’t seem like the type of person who teaches to the test. I hadn’t actually appreciated the size of Google as an employer. When we spoke to Olaf I mentioned ‘ten of thousands’ of employees. As of Q3 2019 Wikipedia lists Google as employing 114,096, which is a scale I find hard to get my head around. With that scale it’s perhaps not surprising that the re:Work site includes a section dedicated to ‘People Analytics’, something not really needed when you employ 6 people … I would guess, or do you see it differently?

    Maren: We are definitely on the same page here. For me, it comes back to values. From the outset our journey to become a virtual team has been informed by our values, and over the past two years we have learnt much about how to put those values into practice at different levels and we’ve blogged about it along the way: from an employer perspective we’ve talked about formal policies, financial support and flexible working; reflecting on our organisation we’ve discussed priorities like support for staff, professional development and our technical infrastructure; as senior staff we’ve shared the challenges of managing a crisis as a virtual team, delivering large events and our team culture; and as individuals we have thought much about the personal dimension of being a  home-worker, from mental-health and well being to work/life balance and physical work spaces. Talking to Olaf brought into perspective that we are no longer in the process of ‘setting up’ a virtual organisation but that we are actually running a highly successful distributed team (and thanks to our recently published Impact Report 2017-2020, we have the GIFs to prove it ;). When becoming a virtual team was still nothing more than a spreadsheet, we talked about how leading a transition like this would be a unique opportunity for us and it has been an extremely rewarding one. Hard work for sure, but rewarding nonetheless. That said, I feel that now that the set up period and transition has been successfully concluded, working in this manner is just as interesting and keeps bringing up new things to learn, think about and share. From your perspective, would you agree that we are in a new chapter and is there anything ahead that you are particularly curious about?   

    Martin: I agree there is a maturity in our organisations approach to being a distributed team and as well as policy and procedure our team seem confident in our approach. Speaking to Olaf has been incredibly beneficial and I hadn’t anticipated how useful it was to speak to someone in a similar position and reflecting on the discussion afterwards. It was good to hear from Olaf and discover that there are a number of areas where our working practices are similar, which feels like validation of our approach, but also to learn about some of their working practices which we don’t already do but have started implementing. In 2020 I think it would be useful to find other people to speak to and share both the conversation and reflection so if you’d like to join us in a future podcast and share your experience of leading a Virtual Team please get in touch with us.