This week’s Tuesday blog post continues along the pathway of working productively in the remote space. Today’s topic is about getting organized in remote space.

Working remote may mean a smaller office footprint than you might have been used to, or a more open workspace which is shared with friends and loved ones.

Keeping focused, keeping things secure, and keeping things organized are key for success. In today’s post, I’ll cover five areas you might want to consider as it relates to getting and keeping organized:

#1 – Files – From our paper-based files, to electronic ways, we file and access information, keeping files in check is critical.

#2 – Version Control – When working with other team members in collaborative documents being able to access and work on the most up-to-date documents is key.

#3 – Build in time for planning – Planning often falls to the bottom of the list for remote work. When boundaries are fluid by us working odd hours with our stakeholders across the world, the ability to build in time for planning is important.

#4 – Consider Batching – Remote workers are often pulled from task to task, especially if we become reactive around key tasks coming in via email.  A challenge for the remote team today is ensuring that we do make headway on all the different tasks involved such as the more focused, deeper work required for tasks.

#5 – Keep on top of rote tasks – Reporting, finances, filing etc. Dedicating 15 minutes to more rote tasks regularly can help to keep the clutter (physical and mental at play). Physically also filing things in an orderly fashion -i.e. a box for receipts – can also help to diminish the mental clutter created by the open loop of invoices which have not been entered.

One final thing to keep in mind in terms of getting more organized = systems. In PlanDoTrack, I point to the importance of five main areas of systems for entrepreneurs and other remote workers. Consider these areas:

1. Financial systems – Invoicing, Accounts Payable, Cash Flow, Accounts Receivable etc.
2. Client and Stakeholder systems – Connecting with and sharing information with others – this might include things such as email templates, contact lists, meeting notes, past reports on collaboration.
3. Marketing – Websites, Social Media Feeds, Frequently Asked Questions
4. Content – Do you know what you have created? Do you have an accessible listing of what there is?
5. Sales – What do you notice about sales? What can generate more? What follow-up do you have with those you have sold to?

I'm adding on the other area you may find useful which is Project Management - What can you do to make your project flow and communication work for effectively? Are thre apps or programs which will help you like Asana or Trello? These are two that we use here to manage our projects.

​What are the systems which are going to help you streamline and keep on top of your work?

IF you are a coach -  be sure to check out my recent article for the Coaching Tools Company newsletter which was just published on coaching business systems. You can read it here.

For more on this topic, be sure to check out section 3 of both PlanDoTrack (a planner workbook for remote professionals) and CoachingBusiness Builder (a planner-workbook for professional coaches)

Best,
​Jennifer

This month we are going to look at several interesting topics including:

• The variations of remote work
• Remote Team Tools
• Getting organized in the remote space
• Performance Reviews in the Remote Space
  
• Remote Myth Buster – Things need to take longer
  
• Setting up the team for remote team success – Going back to the basics

Given that it's the start of a new month, let's take a few minutes to look back at September and consider what's important for your month ahead.

AS you think about September, make sure you have captured your thinking around these questions:
1. Key successes in September were...
2. Lessons learned were....
3. Next month I will
4. Something which surprized me this month was...
5. Something I want to replicate is....
6. Other things to note are..

Questions to consider as we step into October:
1. What are your top 3-5 goals this month?
2. What needs to get completed, no matter what?
3. What habits and practices do you want to lean into?
4. What do you need to say NO To?
5. Who do you want to collaborate with?
6. My theme this month is....
Be sure to check out yesterday's post as well about Q4 planning.

Look forward to diving deeper into the remote work space this month!

Best,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2019) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development.
Pick up a copy of Volume 1 of the Weekly Journaling Prompts in a digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.
For those looking for tips, tools and ideas about remote work and support for your remote teams, be sure to check out these tags and resources. ​

Getting organized and set up with the space and processes you require to work at peak performance is critical for those new to the remote space. It’s tempting to say “I’ll deal with it later”, and it’s likely that later may never arrive. Build in time at the start of your remote work to put into place these items at your new, dedicated work space:
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• A place with good lighting, privacy and space to work

• A place to close the door and have private conversations
• Place to secure files – physically and digitally
• Cloud based storage for when you need it
• Contact list you can access
• Back up - where are you saving your files?
  
• Super strong internet
• Clear boundaries with loved ones and family about when and when you are not available. What are your working hours? Break times?  Just because you are home it does not mean that you can walk the dog, take out the garbage, cook dinner etc. Developing a series of “go-to” phrases for when neighbors ask you to do things that will distract you from your focus can be useful.

What else do you think you will require to help you be at your best in the remote space?

Best,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2019) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development.
Pick up a copy of Volume 1 of the Weekly Journaling Prompts in a digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.
For those looking for tips, tools and ideas about remote work and support for your remote teams, be sure to check out these tags and resources. ​

One of the biggest areas of time utilization that teams points to as not as effective as it can be is virtual meetings. In today’s post, I wanted to explore five key areas which can derail and demotivate teams. As someone who works with professionals who want to become more proficient in the virtual space, getting a handle on these five meeting pitfalls are key.
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#1 – Not prioritizing meetings.
Many times, virtual meetings are postponed because not everyone is going to be there. In fact, it may be more useful to start from the assumption that not everyone is going to be there, and people can catch up with a recording or the transcript. Regular team meetings and communication are important. They provide an important channel for sharing information, taking the pulse, and/or keeping the team connected.

#2 – Not putting everyone on the same platform.
One of the greatest challenges today is the blended meeting space, where you have some (or a bulk of people) calling in from one location, and others dialing in from separate locations. This can sometimes augment the disconnection across a team. Try putting all people on the virtual platform for a change and see what happens as you incorporate the different engagement strategies (see #5) and as you intentionally create dialogue and sharing across part of the team that may not normally be connected.

Putting everyone on the same platform is a great equalizer and if you are wanting to truly build a team, it means that common ground is needed.
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#3 – Not having a plan – 8 Meeting Questions.
A lot of meetings in both the virtual and in-person space are poorly organized. Before kicking off any meeting, be sure to check out the 8 Meeting Questions I share in Effective Virtual Conversations:

In Effective Virtual Conversations, I shared 8 Essential Meeting Questions to ask at the start or end of any meeting. These include:
1.      What’s the purpose?
2.      What takeaways do we want?
3.      Who needs to be on the call?
4.      What preparation is needed for us to be most effective in the meeting?
5.      What pace to do we want in order to keep it engaging?
6.      What will help keep the focus?
7.     What’s absolutely essential? (What’s essential, versus what will be nice to cover? If you can’t cover it, where can people go for more information around topics?)
8.      What follow up might be required?

(Reference: Jennifer Britton, Effective Virtual Conversations, pp 304, 2017)

#4 - Speaking at, rather than speaking with, the group.
It’s easy for people to slip into the trap of "speaking at” rather than “speaking with” virtual groups. The use of process is key for engagement, and it’s important that you let your group/team know about what they can expect in terms of input and interaction. Follow through with this and learn to be comfortable with “silence” and also handing the reins over to others.

Instead of opening the floor up to dead silence, let people know that you are first going to call on everyone in the team in a certain order – i.e. First name (forwards, backwards), East to West or West to East, Job Role, length of time with the organization...

Process creates clarity and it also creates safety.

#5 – Not using or underutilizing the tools available.
From recording the calls so you don’t have to spend weeks typing up the meeting notes, to using the different engagement functions virtual meetings CAN be interactive. Depending on what the purpose of the meeting is, consider how you might use:

• Polls – for voting or pulse check across the team
• Chat – To capture ideas, brainstorming, comments, and/or team agreements. Depending on the platform you use, you may be able to save the chat easily with your recording. This text file can then get sent to everyone.
• Use annotation to have people share their thoughts – agreements, priorities, what their strengths are. Annotation allows people to highlight and circle items on the screen
• Breakouts – probably one of the favorite transformers I see, breakouts allow people to move into their own private meeting space and have a smaller discussion. This can be invaluable if you are wanting to get the team’s input on things or boost motivation for change. If we are always feeling like we are TALKED at, rather than part of the conversation, it’s hard to have a good meeting.

As you go to organize your next meeting, what pitfalls do you want to keep an eye on? What changes do you want to make?

Best,
​Jennifer

Welcome back to another Effective Virtual Conversations! This week’s post gets you thinking about “recording”.

It’s likely that in today’s remote work environment that someone is going to be late and/or not attend the meeting. While you don’t want to get into the practice of having people miss meetings, making sure that they can be recorded is an important option, particularly as it can serve as a record of the meeting.

If you are going to record, be sure to check out any local legislation and/or policies around recording and privacy and what agreements need to be obtained in order to share the recording. Check out Rev.com and Temi.com, two transcription services that offer low cost options. You’ll want to try out a couple of options to see what is going to work best for you, AND this can save a lot of time which used to be spent on having someone take hours typing in their handwritten notes.

One real benefit to recording meetings is that you can use the transcript from the call to serve as official meeting minutes. It can also serve as a “going back to” place to confirm who is going to do what as a result of the call.

Another consideration is where will things be housed. Consider a common naming system (i.e. date, focus) and also consider how additional materials may be housed. This could include handouts and other items.

What’s important for you to note about recording with your virtual conversations?

Best wishes,
Jennifer

One of the themes this month has been about getting organized and minimizing. With this in mind, here are three resources you might find useful:

1. Outer Order, Inner Calm by Gretchen Rubin – Having been a podcast listener of Gretchen’s Happier podcast for a couple of years now, I was so excited to hear about her recent release of Outer Order, Inner Calm. It’s a quick read, chock full of practical tips and strategies you can implement right away. True to her work and philosophy that there’s not a one size fits all, consider how your own tendency might impact the way you organize. If you haven’t explored the work and writing of Gretchen Rubin, check her out, including the Four Tendencies.

2. Cal Newport – Digital Minimalism. As someone heavily enmeshed in the digital ecosystem in my work as a virtual educator, coach and solopreneur, I appreciated this new book. It speaks to the challenge of the digital world we live within. While the ability to switch on and off has been part of my own work over the last 3 decades, the book offers practical approaches to minimizing what you have and what you are connected to in order to create more space for what’s important. Like many other books on the topic of minimalism, what it means and looks like for each of us might be different.

Personally, I am looking forward to taking some quieter time this July and August when I work out of the cottage to further cull my digital landscape. Letting go of TV and streaming almost 2 years ago has made a big difference in my time available for things I love, creative pursuits and time spent with loved ones.  I can feel the pressure of emails creeping up however and will be focusing on that first this summer when I have earmarked my annual “return to basics” six weeks.

3. I also have appreciated the resources of Organizing365’s Lisa Woodrow in the last few weeks. This year she hosted a Decluttering Blitz. Her podcast series is also a great tone to follow if organizing is important for you on a personal or professional level. You can follow it up here.  
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What resources are you finding useful in your work and world right now around this topic?
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Warm regards,
Jennifer

This month’s focus at the blog is Team Springboards. Teams are the engines of many businesses today and being in top shape is important. Team culture is also important, given the context of virtual and remote work where matrix teams are an inevitable part of the equation. When working in matrix environments, it can be really important to strengthen your team culture and clarify how things are done in your culture. Again, team culture is about HOW WE DO THINGS. It’s our processes, our practices, and what’s acceptable and what’s not.

I thought it would be useful to take us back to a past post on Team Culture which you may want to explore as you go to define the different team cultures you are part of. Here’s what I wrote in Teams365 #1526:
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“Team Culture: The Every Manager’s Desktop Reference defines organizational culture as “a set of shared values, goals, practices, and management styles that characterize an organization and are expected to be reflected in its public face and member behaviors” (pp 414, Every Manager’s Desktop Reference).

Today’s VUCA business context, characterized by ongoing change and flux, has pointed many teams to the importance of team culture. Our team culture may be different, or aligned with, our organizational culture. Simply put, team culture is “HOW WE DO THINGS”. It is the behaviors, practices and values which shape our every day interaction. Think about a team who has as part of it’s culture “customer service”. Actions and activities around providing exceptional service will be prioritized over ones that value quality and/or time, unless they are linked to customer service.

What are the adjectives that describe your culture?

Team Culture doesn’t always get the attention it deserves, and HR writers like Susan Heathfield reminds us “team members understand that 20% of the problems that they will experience as a team will fall within the context of the task or mission the team is assigned to accomplish. The other 80% of the problems they experience will relate to their team culture and the processes team members establish and commit to for interacting with each other as team members.” Here's a link to her great article Team Culture and Clear Expectations at The Balance.com.

There are many different models of what comprises team culture:

Culture includes our behavioral norms and agreements - How do we do things here? What is acceptable and not acceptable.

It also includes team identity – How do I connect with others, how do we see ourselves?
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What we value: Culture is shaped by our values, beliefs and actions. It also includes our mindset. Consider what some of the mindsets are for you as a team. This might include: “We are able to flow with the changes that come our way” OR “We go above and beyond or “We rise to the challenge every time”.
When cultures are strong new members and external people can sense what our team is like. It’s almost a visible layer to others. This is especially true when we have a culture of collaboration, having each other’s back, or helping each other.

​What's important for you to note and be in dialogue around as a team with respect to team culture?”

Here's the original post.
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What’s important to note about the cultures you are part of right now?

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2018) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Now available – PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner - Order a copy today on Amazon
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development).
Check out the new 19 Tips for Productivity On-Demand Course. If this is your year to get things moving, check it out now. Join Jenn for bi-weekly live group calls until July. $129 US. Learn more and enroll here.

From open office spaces to a focus on collaboration, there can also be a pendulum swing in organizations where sometimes things go too far.
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As I mentioned over the weekend, there are a number of studies exploring this topic of distraction including Udemy In Depth’s 2018 Workplace Distraction Survey. You can read it here. 
 
The report asserts that distractions have an impact on productivity. Some of the distractions noted in that study are talkative co-workers, email and others.
Many of the distractions I hear of in the work of my clients are:

• Unscheduled meetings
• Co-workers dropping by to chat
• Email
• Social media which takes you “down the rabbit hole”
• Materials and information which are not readily accessible and have not been stored in the locations you thought they would be in

What are you doing to minimize the distractions? What do you find distracting?

What conversations are important to have?

​Here are some other articles of interest:

Check out this article from Financial Times – “Digital Distractions are Making Us Dumb and Twitchy” which also includes some great tips from Professor Cal Newport.

Suresh Subamdam’s article on Is Your Work's Communication Channel Turning Your Team Into a Bunch of 'Slack'-ers?

Take a look at Digital Responsibility’s website and ideas on Digital Distraction.

Wishing you all the best,
​Jennifer

This week’s weekly journaling prompt #36 is “The one thing which could be systematized is….”.

As I write in PlanDoTrack,
“Whether you are an entrepreneur, virtual team member or leader, having an office that runs well, and systems that support you, is essential for productivity and results. Business systems help a business flow, with automation, scaling or growth of a business. Systems can also support us when we are working from home!

How do we define a system?
A system is something we can replicate. Systems are useful for things we repeatedly do. They enable us to have multiple programs and services being offered at any one time. They also allow us to delegate and hand off items to others. “ (Britton, 2019, pp 74)
  
What are the things you could systematize in your business? What are the things that would help you scale?
 
Enjoy this week’s writing prompt!
​Jennifer

The culture of a team or organization is much more than a few words. It's the way things are done. It encompasses behaviors, values, mission, practices, priorities and the motivational factors of a team.

In building strong teams it is important for teams to become aware of and focus on their team culture - the good and the bad. It's important also to note when team culture is distinct from, or aligned with an organizational culture.

For example, a team of project managers may value agility, speed and problem solving, whereas the organizational context may value quality, specificity and thoroughness. In this instance there can be conflicts between the team culture and organizational culture. The team culture may also have an influence on the organizational culture over time, shifting it to be more agile or responsive. We are seeing this today in many organizational contexts which are re-thinking how they operate and the roles their teams play.

A useful activity for a team is to consider what their team culture is. Consider your values, and what you prioritize. You may also want to ask yourselves the questions:
What are the 3 adjectives we would use to describe our culture?
What are the 3 adjectives other teams would use to describe our culture?
How do our other stakeholders describe our culture?

What do you notice about culture in your team? What's important to keep an eye on?

Check out these other Teams365 posts on team culture:
Teams365 #406: Team Culture - What's Yours? Read it here.

Team Leader Breakfast Series - Call on Team Culture. Listen in here.
Have a great Thursday,
Jennifer