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.
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…
So yes, something so small - has made a huge difference.
Here’s what you do.
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.
Service Manager bei EnBW
1yDr. Andreas Friesenhahn Gisela Wollscheid Melanie Scholl : was thinking about us while reading this article and wanted to share it with you ☺️
Helping you have richer conversations at work for greater clarity, better decisions and improved results | bestselling author, Top100 thought leader
1yThanks for the inspiration for my latest blog post, Matt! https://reesmccann.com/2022/08/30/rollcall-an-async-standup-technique-for-intervisibility/
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
1yThanks, just suggested this approach (on a weekly basis) for Scrum Facilitators to stay connected better :)
Author | Product manager | Agile coach | Future of work strategist | Collaboration expert
1yI'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.
I help online teams to work better, solve problems and deliver outcomes
1yDr. Jeffrey Sheen... Our conversation landed! Mentioned to the team also... amazing similar reflections. 😎