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Collaboration

The Ultimate Guide to Remote Standups

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Remote work is growing fast in the United States.

According to a FlexJobs report, 3.9 million Americans work from home at least half the time, which represents a 115% increase from 2005. “Remote/work from home” was one of the most popular job-hunting search terms in the past year, and hiring managers predict that in the next 10 years, more than one-third of employees will be working remotely.

This growth isn’t a trend. Buffer’s 2019 State of Remote Work survey showed that 99% of respondents wanted to work remotely for the rest of their careers. When people get a taste of remote work, they don’t want to go back.

Work as we know it is changing.

And while most would agree that the trend is positive, there are plenty of growing pains associated with remote work, namely meetings. As offices change, communication is changing too.

For better or worse, meetings are a staple of nine-to-five life. But the traditional model doesn’t translate well in remote settings, where people are spread across time zones, coffee shops, and coworking spaces. Asynchronous communication is key to making a distributed team work. It’s time to rethink the way me meet.

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The Science of Trust in the Workplace

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Trust in the workplace doesn’t come from authority or job titles: there’s evidence that trust is a simple product of gratitude, validation, and understanding. And that this trust leads to greater efficiency, bonding, and the desire to please—all of which can improve and transform any workplace.

You should trust in the workplace but verify behind the scenes to make sure that the other person isn’t messing with you.

A comprehensive 2017 study noted that verbally expressed gratitude in 129 adult pairs led to significant oxytocin increases.

trust in the workplace

(Source: Brain Facts) Oxytocin is released from the pituitary gland (in orange).

Oxytocin is a hormone responsible for social and romantic bonding and creates a pleasurable sensation that comes to be associated with the person who triggers it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could give some to your manager?

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18 Best Places To Store Your Team’s Documents

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Store team documents

You should always store team documents in a secure and organized manner is imperative for businesses because it isn’t an ordinary document it is a sensitive file that needs to be protected at all costs. Documentation is to your business what water is to fish. It’s everywhere. You need it to survive and grow. A … Read more

The Ultimate Remote Tool Stack For 2020

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remote tool stack

This is a guest post from Lisa Banks, an expert in workplace communication and writer at content marketing agency Animalz.

Choosing the right tools for your remote team is second only to hiring the right people.

There are a number ted talks for teamwork available to inspire your remote team but choosing the right kind of tools is more important than that.

Remote tools offer structure, streamline operations, and hold your company together as it grows. And you need a lot of them. You need remote tools for team communication, tools for talking to people outside your organization like customers and vendors, tools for managing the business, tools for hiring and development, and so on.

But picking the right tools for a distributed company is not easy with so many to choose from. I’ve whittled through every remote tool in the most common categories to pull together a list. All the following tools are ones my team uses or have come highly recommended by other remote teams.

If you’re setting up a distributed team this year, these are the remote work tools you need.

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5 Habits to Supercharge Team Productivity

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Lebron James had a historic, MVP-level performance in the 2017 NBA Finals, but in the end, his team lost the championship.

At work, we sometimes get caught up analyzing individual performances when the metric that really matters is the overall team productivity. As the traditional silos quickly disappear, our day-to-day work has become a cross-functional, team sport.

Vince Lombardi, the famous NFL football coach, summed up what makes a successful team: “Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”

Managing a group of diverse personalities and skill sets can be daunting, let alone trying to figure out how to set everyone up for combined success. Luckily, we’ve compiled several research studies with insights that your team can incorporate to help them jell and improve their productivity:

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How To Avoid the Traps Of Communication With a Remote Team

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If you run a location-independent business, you will run into a number of remote team communication challenges. When they arise, you might question whether or not the benefits of remote work actually outweigh the stress of unclear communication.

If you only knew how to avoid common communication pitfalls, you would be on the fast track to distance collaboration success. Here, that is exactly what you are going to learn.

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How I Done This Says Thanks To The Open Source Community

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I Done This was built by thousands of developers, but we only know two of them.

The same goes for the majority of products popping up every day. Developers aren’t building software from scratch anymore. They’re mostly building on top of Open Source software—software whose source code is publicly available.

I Done This wouldn’t exist without this community, but we’ve never found a way to say thanks. GitHub doesn’t provide an address for thank you cards, and there certainly isn’t a “donate today” button on Stack Overflow. But thanks to a new platform called Open Collective, we finally have a way of giving back to that community.

Open Collective serves as a virtual but completely transparent bank for any sort of community— from Open Source, to Boy Scouts, to Art Collectors—to get funding. This means that the Open Source community finally has access to the resources it needs to grow and continue being the bedrock of the tech industry.

open source community

At I Done This, we’re proud to be taking advantage of this awesome platform to finally support a community we’ve long known and loved.

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How to Handle 3 Types of Workplace Conflict

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Hollywood would have you believe that workplace conflict is awesome. Movies depict the best offices as filled with macho dudes in suits screaming at each other, throwing around insults, and somehow also getting fantastic results.

That’s entertaining, but let’s look at the facts: a 2010 study revealed that the average U.S. employee spends 2.8 hours a week dealing with disputes at work, resulting in losses of $359 Billion across the American economy. In reality, conflict pulls people away from their jobs and kills productivity.

With that in mind, your instinct might be to ruthlessly stamp it out wherever you see it. But that’s not always the best course of action. You need to recognize that not every workplace conflict is the same. It’s like criminal justice—a first degree crime is sentenced differently than a second degree crime. The context, causes, and intentions should influence how you deal with conflict in the workplace.

Here’s a rundown of three of the most common types of office workplace conflict, what they mean for your company, and how to solve them.

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How to Manage the Distinct Personalities of your Remote Team

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So you think it’s time for your company to take the plunge and go remote. While you and your team begin to hammer out the details, new concerns bubble up—what if your staff burn out or fall through the cracks? Managing a team with such diverse personalities is tricky enough when you’re under one roof—you can only imagine how it’s going to be once everyone disperses.

Of course, some personalities are better suited for remote work than others. Some members of your remote team will punch the air and run home when you announce that you’re going remote. Others might glance hopelessly around at their office friends, at their favorite desk, at the cozy couch, and not know how to deal.

You can’t 100% predict who will love working remotely and who’ll flounder, but if you’re prepared, you can meet each member of your team halfway to set them up for success.

Here’s a breakdown of the different characters you might have on your team, and how to help them through the transition so they’ll thrive in your (newly) remote business.

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The Definitive Guide to Daily Standups

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dailystandup

When the business world seeks new productivity tools, it often turns its gaze to Silicon Valley, an industry famous for its ability to eliminate the cruft of the workday. But there’s one productivity tool that has its roots not in open-plan offices, but in military strategy boardrooms: the daily standup meeting.

The daily standup has its instructions in the title. It’s a daily meeting where participants stand. That’s it.

Ideally, the lack of chairs promotes a quick and effective meeting. If the conversation prompts a deeper discussion about a specific topic, it’s tabled for after the daily standup.

It’s a technique that American General William Pagonis used during the First Gulf War, where he served as director of Logistics. Each morning, he had 40 officers meet together in a conference room without a table or chairs. It minimized the need for pleasantries and unnecessary comments. Even military officers, it turns out, have a tendency to digress. Pagonis found that the format maximized productivity crucial to military success. Norman Schwarzkopf, in fact, salutes Pagonis as the “logistical wizard” of the Gulf War.

After hanging up is uniform, Pagonis brought this military precision to his corporate job as a Sears executive. He brought workers into a conference room sans chairs and had a quick run-down of the day. Under his leadership, Sears streamlined its business model, cutting delivery times in half. The standup, Pagonis says, was crucial to Sears’ success. When asked why the daily standup was so effective, he said, “When you sit down, a meeting goes for over an hour or an hour and a half, and you lose everybody. When people are standing, they talk faster or they say I don’t have anything to add.” It’s that simple.

The daily stand-up takes a lot of forms. Some offices do it once a week—others, twice a day. Some use chairs, some do it electronically. Some, as it turns out, are more successful than others. This guide looks at how and why daily standups are so effective, and the best way to implement one into your workday.

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