Remote Work Is The New Black – Part II

Early morning, off to do some remote work.
Just kidding, Early? Right. Anyway

You got your task work ready for you. You know exactly what you’re going to work on today. You start coding, or writing a doc, or testing an app. And then stop.

You have questions, or some great ideas. And there’s no one around to ask. Sure, there’s going to be in a few minutes when they come online, on their own sweet time. So you wait a few minutes, have that conversation. Hopefully not texting, or slack. That would slow us down even more. And a few more minutes go by.

Then you continue to work. Until the next bump.

If you’re not used to remote work, the first thing you notice is lag in accessibility. We take availability of information and people for granted, but when everyone’s remote, things bog down. We slow down.

So tip #1 in the communication field doing remote work: Over-communicate.

You need to talk more with teammates. More than before. Set working times when everybody is available and working on the same things. And if you haven’t yet – set them as ground rules.

And notice the lag. Try to count “stuck moments”. See how they accumulate and affect your remote work.

We’ll get back to ground rules a lot. To be effective, the team agrees to play by the same rules. Soon as next time.

In the meantime, get your remote team working again . Check out my First Aid Kit.