Roll Call! A so, simple thing for every team to make a big difference.

Roll Call! A so, simple thing for every team to make a big difference.

How do you keep in touch with your team? 

Do you have daily stand-ups? Weekly meetings? Or is it a bit more ad-hoc than that?

ImpactBasis is a distributed team. Some of us are in The Netherlands, some in The UK, one on the west coast USA. It’s not always possible to be in the same place at the same time and, let’s be honest - sometimes making the effort to be so, isn’t always a good use of time.

So how do we keep in touch effectively without disrupting each other's time and energy?

The answer is below…

But before I get to that… I’ve been reading Atomic Habits (again). In the book James Clear talks and walks through how tiny changes make a big difference. One thing, replicated and practiced over and over, becomes a habit. Over time, you get good at that thing, it becomes beneficial and little effort is expended. 

This is relevant here.

About 6 months ago ImpactBasis had 'a thing'. 

We’d grown. 

Only by a few people but as we know - it’s not people ‘joining’ the team - when this happens, it’s a 'whole new team' (props to Nick Tait for that pearl of wisdom years ago). 

We had different preferences on how we worked, met, communicated and collaborated. Where some might be early risers, others were late starters. Where some liked to update others at set times (meetings) others preferred something more textual communication. 

6 months later - we’ve been trialing, practicing and learning how to make this work. And the simplest one of all, and maybe the most effective is the #rollcall channel in Slack. 

Influenced and led by Judy Rees - every morning we share something of our day in a dedicated Slack channel - #rollcall.

So simple, so effective.

Think of a teamliness MVP (minimal viable product) with an MVE (minimal viable effort) mindset.

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PS: ROL = ‘rest of life’

That’s it. So utterly simple. 

Simply, the channel exists and those who choose to, contribute daily (normally whenever they first start work - whenever that might be).

‘So what’ you might ask? What difference does that make?

Ok so… 

  1. Less time in meetings: 6 months ago I clocked a silly amount of time in meetings. OK, not all ImpactBasis related - but a decent amount. Not anymore - these days our internal meetings equate to 1.5hrs a week and that covers our organising our opportunity pipeline, our project resourcing and unblocking blockers. Time to talk is important but when distributed and wanting to be able to work in ways that suit - even the act of organising and committing to meetings is a drain on time and energy.
  2. Ease of knowing: I’m a curious person and as a team, we like to know 'stuff'. Every morning I add to #rollcall and then read what others might have added. I know who’s doing what, where I might offer help or comment and then - well, I get on with my day. #rollcall take less than 3 minutes - that’s 3 minutes to know what the whole company is up to that day - think about that, impressive right? 
  3. Collaboration: No one’s meeting 'in sync' yet we all are able to raise a hand and help or collaborate. For example the other day I posted ‘working on a proposal to X’ to which my colleague responded ‘oh, I know something about this and have some time - would you like help’? Of course, I said ‘yes’ and 2 hours later - I was sent a proposal so good, I just had to add my name and send, result! (thanks Steve McCann )
  4. Accountability: I post ‘these are my things for today’ and you know what, I kind of then feel more committed to doing them. Don’t get me wrong, no ones going to check in but there is something powerful in saying ‘this is me today’ - it kind of helps with my focus. 
  5. Teamliness: This has definitely developed over the last 6 months. Of course, we’ve done other things but #rollcall has helped. I feel more connected, aware, able to help, able to not interrupt and generally have a greater sense of being in this new team. Sharing things not related to work (ROL, rest of life) also add to this as we’re presenting as the human beings we are, where ‘work’ isn’t everything. I tell you what, I’ve bought more books and listened to more podcasts in the past 6 months, from people sharing stuff than ever! It’s truly inclusive, no ‘management broadcast’ - everyone who does it, does so as an equal.

So yes, something so small - has made a huge difference. 

Here’s what you do.

  1. Set up a #rollcall channel in Slack, Teams or Google
  2. Everyday, each person commits to sharing something of their day. Something like;

  • ‘3 work things and 3 non-work things or
  • ‘did yesterday, doing today, stuck on…’ etc (top tip, keep it very short)

That’s it.

My last word on this is to commit and keep going - not everyone will want to join in, that’s fine (don’t mandate this kind of thing!) but if you’re of this kind of ‘ilk’ then start it and keep doing it. It’ll snowball. 

Let me know if you give it a go and of course, always happy to chat.

Dr. Andreas Friesenhahn Gisela Wollscheid Melanie Scholl : was thinking about us while reading this article and wanted to share it with you ☺️

Judy Rees

Helping you have richer conversations at work for greater clarity, better decisions and improved results | bestselling author, Top100 thought leader

1y
Sjoerd Kranendonk

Training, workshops, coaching for teams improving value delivery with agile. Scrum Facilitator and Trainer (SM3.0, PSPO-A, PSM-II, PSPO, PSM, PSU, PSFS). Agile Coach & Community catalyst for the Dutch Police

1y

Thanks, just suggested this approach (on a weekly basis) for Scrum Facilitators to stay connected better :)

Sumeet Gayathri Moghe

Author | Product manager | Agile coach | Future of work strategist | Collaboration expert

1y

I'm a big fan of this deliberate, thoughtful approach to communication. Roshni S Iyer can attest to this. Taking the time each day, to thoughtfully reflect on what you've been upto and what you want to achieve, is so much more effective than faffing on a call. More importantly, you build a daily history of yourself and your team. There are a couple of other check-ins I've found useful. 1. A start of week goal setting exercise. 2. An end-of week reflection where we try to address the following questions. "What did you achieve this week?", "How satisfied do you feel about the work you did this week?", "What are your frustrations if any?", "What have you learned that you'd love to share with the team?", "What if anything can the team do better?" (1) makes us accountable to ourselves (2) helps us reflect on those goals and our own emotions, leading into the weekend.

Matt Barnaby

I help online teams to work better, solve problems and deliver outcomes

1y

Dr. Jeffrey Sheen... Our conversation landed! Mentioned to the team also... amazing similar reflections. 😎

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