Over the last two months, the direct team that I work in (consisting of 18 people) basically participated in the experiment in the way that it was designed: They posted constant, daily or weekly updates on our Yammer network. Each update would describe things like what they had done, who they had spoken to or what issues they had encountered. Occasionally the updates were peppered with personal notes about things had happened or were going to happen after work.

Methodology of the experiment

There was no formal (or academic) research methodology for this working experiment. I decided to use a well-considered survey to get people’s thoughts at the end of it. Out of the 18 team members 17 decided to fill it in (in the rest of the post you can assume that n=17). The one person that didn’t, has taken up another role. This means there is zero bias in who answered and didn’t answer the survey.

I find it more interesting to zoom out and look at the methodology of this experiment as a whole. To me doing things like this is a very good approach to change in the workplace: a grassroots shared experiment with commitment from everybody working towards solutions for complex situations. This is something that I will definitely replicate in the future.

Didn’t this take a lot of time?

One concern that people had about the experiment was whether it would take a lot of time to write these updates and read what others have written. I’ve asked everybody how much time on average they spent writing status updates and reading the updates of others. This turned out to be a little bit less than 5 minutes a day for writing the posts and slightly over 5 minutes a day for reading them. The standard deviations where around 4.5 for both of these things, so there was quite a big spread. All in all it seems that narrating their work is something that most people can comfortably do in the margins of their day.

Barriers to narrating your work

Designing the experiment I imagined three barriers to narrating your work that people might stumble over and I tried to mitigate these barriers:

• Lack of time and/or priority. I made sure people could choose their own frequency of updates. Even though it didn’t take people long to write the updates, just over 50% of the participants said that lack of time/priority was a limiting factor for how often they posted.
• Not feeling comfortable about sharing in a (semi-)public space. I made sure that people could either post to the whole company, or just to a private group which only included the 18 participants. Out of the 18, there were two people who said that this was a limiting factor in narrating your work (and three people were neutral). This is less than I had expected, but it is still something to take into account going forward as 12 of the participants decided to mostly post in the private group.
• Lack of understanding of the tool (in this case Yammer). I made sure to have an open session with the team in which they could ask any question they had about how to use the tool. In the end only three people said that this was a limiting factor for how often they posted.

The qualitative answers did not identify any other limiting factors.

Connectedness and ambient team awareness as the key values

Looking at all the answers in the questionnaire you can clearly see that the experiment has helped in giving people an understanding of what other people in their team are doing and has widened people’s perspectives:

A quote:

I enjoyed it! I learned so much more about what my colleagues are doing than I would have during a webcast or team meeting. It helped me understand the day-to-day challenges and accomplishments within our team.

and:

The experiment was very valuable as it has proven that [narrating your work] contributes to a better understanding of how we work and what we are doing as a team.

People definitely feel more connected to the rest of their team:

There was practical and social value in the posts:

A lot of people would recommend “Narrating your work” as a methodology to other virtual teams:

What kind of status updates work best?

I asked what “Narrating your work” type of update was their favourite to read (thinking about content, length and timeliness). There was a clear preference for short messages (i.e. one paragraph). People also prefered messages to be as close as possible to when it happened (i.e. no message on Friday afternoon about what you did on the Monday). One final thing that was much appreciated was wittiness and a bit fun. We shouldn’t be afraid to put things in our messages that reveal a bit of our personality. Sharing excitement or disappointment humanizes us and that can be important in virtual teams (especially in large corporations).

Personally I liked this well-thought out response to the question:

The best posts were more than simply summing up what one did or accomplished; good narrations also showed some of the lines of thinking of the narrator, or issues that he/she encountered. This often drew helpful responses from others on Yammer, and this is where some some additional value (besides connectedness) lies.

It made me realize that another value of the narrations is that they can lead to good discussions or to unexpected connections to other people in the company. This brings us to the next question:

Public or private posts?

The posts in the private group were only visible to the 18 participants in the experiment. Sometimes these posts could be very valuable to people outside of the team. One of the key things that makes microblogging interesting is the asymmetry (I can follow you, but you don’t have to follow me). This means that posts can be read by people you don’t know, who get value out of it beyond what you could have imagined when posting. What to you might sound like a boring depiction of your morning, might give some stakeholders good insight in what you are doing.

So on the one hand it would be very beneficial to widen the audience of the posts, however it might inhibit people from writing slightly more sociable posts. We need to find a way to resolve this seeming paradox.

A way forward

Based on the experiments results I would like to recommend the following way forward (for my team, but likely for any team):

• Don’t formalize narrating your work and don’t make it mandatory. Many people commented that this is one aspect that they didn’t like about the experiment.
• Focus on helping each other to turn narrating your work into a habit. I think it is important to set behavioural expectations about the amount of narrating that somebody does. I imagine a future in which it is considered out of the norm if you don’t share what you are up to. The formal documentation and stream of private emails that is the current output of most knowledge workers in virtual teams is not going to cut it going forward. We need to think about how we can move towards that culture.
• We should have both a private group for the intimate team (in which we can be ourselves as much as possible) as well as have a set of open topic based groups that we can share our work in. So if I want to post about an interesting meeting I had with some learning technology provider with a new product I should post that in a group about “Learning Innovation”. If have worked on a further rationalization of our learning portfolio I should post this in a group about the “Learning Application Portfolio” and so on.

I liked what one of the participants wrote:

I would like our team to continue as we have, but the important steps to take now are 1) ensuring that we stay in the habit of narrating regularly, 2) showing the value of what we achieved to other teams and team leads, and 3) ensure that there is enough support (best practises etc) for teams that decide to implement [narrating your work].

I have now taken this as far as I have the energy and the interest to take it to. I would really love for somebody to come along and make this into a replicable method for improving virtual teams. Any interns or students interested?

(This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands License. It originally appeared here: http://blog.hansdezwart.info/2011/07/19/reflecting-on-the-narrating-your-work-experiment/)

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Show notes:

• Dan blogs at dan-menard.com and is @dan_menard on Twitter.
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I really hit my work zen at home, in my office, and mainly for two reasons.  The first is the ability to control distractions at home, and the second is surrounding myself with what I love.  Aside from my music it’s quiet.  It’s decorated with all sorts of colorful and fun things that help give me inspiration when I need it. I know where to find anything I need.  I find that being able to influence your own environment is very important.

–David Browning, co-founder of Two Guys

–Sahil Parikh, Founder of DeskAway

Being able to watch my daughter’s class assembly because I can catch up the time later in the evening when she is tucked up in bed.

–Marieke Guy, blogger at Ramblings of a Remote Worker

Sitting somewhere around the house (porch/office/living room), only to have the husband/kid come up and mention that is too beautiful a day to be working and suggest we go out and do X (ride the motorcycles/ go to the beach/ swim in the pool).

Since I telecommute (and assuming that is not during a required work period), I can agree and go enjoy the beauty day with them. Work can be made up later that night.

–Ligaya Turmelle

For me the best part of working remotely is that it allows me to change my environment.  There are times when I need to be heads down in a task that is monotonous and dull and there are environments that are more conducive to that.  Other tasks require creativity, which is something I don’t find easy in a cube.  By working remotely I can go to that coffee shop that helps me find my writing muse or one that is great for heads down productivity.

Environment can definitely change our moods and in doing so it can also change our ability to perform well.  By working remotely I’m allowed to change my environment as needed to insure that I’m able to complete work in a way that is most effective for me.

–Jessica Dally, Project Manager at TechSoup

My moment(s) of remote work zen are often first thing in the morning. I have a big picture window in front of me and the sun hits the floor next to my desk. My tuxedo pseudo-kitten (8 months old) lays in it seemingly sound asleep. As the minutes pass and the sunbeam move, he slowly rolls over and over steadily following it across the room.

He never opens his eyes, but he looks comfy.

–D. Keith Casey, Jr., Chief Stuff Breaker at Blue Parabola

I love our morning skype video scrums. Often Brad and I have our daughters on our laps and Reid will bring his dog up so he doesn’t feel left out.

–Shane Pearlman, CEO of Shane & Peter, Inc.

1. In the car, tethering my phone to my laptop, while also talking to a customer about an urgent issue, run through the fix/test/check-in/deploy process, while my wife drove me and the kids to Grandma’s house.
2. After picking up a sick child from daycare and comforting/medicating them, knowing that I can get back to work later, and be able to take care of my family, and meet client deadlines at the same time.

–John McCaffrey, Rails Developer, blogger at Ruby on Rails Performance Tuning

What about you? What’s your moment of remote work zen?

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1. Use the phone for urgent matters. If you have a question or a matter to discuss of urgent nature, you want to reach your team member over the phone so that you may receive an immediate response.  The telephone also allows you to obtain clarity on a response immediately if you have further questions.  Of course, there are times when you reach voicemail instead.  In that case, you want to leave a message that clearly indicates you have an urgent matter that needs to be discussed (if you have a specific deadline, indicate what it is), when you called, and request an immediate call back.
2. Gather your thoughts before communicating. Compile your thoughts, points and questions in one e-mail or on a piece of paper before going on a call.  If you are using e-mail and have two or more points or questions, use bullet points.  This makes it easier for you to receive responses to all items and for the team member to review and respond to you.
3. Respond promptly. It is important to respond promptly to all communications.  It’s already a challenge for team members to not be able to walk over to you with a quick question.  You want to make communication easy for everyone.  Your team members will appreciate your prompt responses and will catch on to this protocol.  In return, you should also receive prompt responses for any questions you have from team members.
4. Get to know your team members and let them get to know you. Face time helps a great deal when getting to know one another.  For remote workers, utilizing video conferencing such as Skype when appropriate helps with interpersonal communications.  Also in any day-to-day communication, whether via the phone or e-mail, make a point to be more personable by asking how your team member’s day is going, how their weekend was spent, and share with them what’s going on at your end.
5. Use “please” and “thank you.” E-mail and texting can leave a cold message.  There are times when the tone of a message can be misinterpreted.  By utilizing words such as “please” and “thank you,” it ensures your message’s tone remains positive and it also doesn’t sound demanding.
6. Provide and/or ask for confirmation. Before ending calls where direction is provided, always summarize what you understand to be the next steps and include deadlines.  This ensures both of you are on the same page.  A brief e-mail summary on to-dos is also helpful in keeping everyone on the same page.

Title photo “Hotline” by Grant Hutchinson

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This disconnect is difficult for both sides: it’s easy for work to be duplicated, or misunderstood. It’s also easy to get lost in details and disappear when your teammates might have helped you with some of the problems you were having trouble with. None of these problems are insurmountable: they are all easily solvable with a few tools and practices that are easy to adopt. The practices outlines in this article will help your team communicate more effectively, and help everyone feel better connected to their co-workers.

Daily Stand Up

When working on-site, you have a very well defined start to your day: arriving at the office. When working remotely, it’s possible to find it difficult to get started, or find that you don’t really know where to start, or not know what related tasks others may be working on. One way to encourage everyone to have a clear idea of what’s going on around them is to have a quick daily team meeting. This will allow everyone to catch up with their teammates, and is a great first step to encouraging active involvement in the project.

For a co-located XP team, we would have a Stand Up, and there’s no reason a remote team can’t do the same. Of course, the details are slightly different. Some enjoy starting their day with the daily meeting, because it gives them a clear idea about what they should be working on, and how it fits with what their co-workers are working on. A remote team with members in many timezones will probably have to pick a time for a daily meeting that is not first thing in the morning for everyone, but that overlaps the working day for as many people on the team as possible. In XP, we call the meeting a “Stand Up” because we have the meeting standing up to remind everyone that it should be kept short. With remote work, few people are standing up, so extra care and attention may have to be paid to keeping the meeting a reasonable length.

There are many tools that can facilitate this, and unfortunately none of them are great. Skype, or a conference call line, is a good way to have a voice call. If you want to spend some money in order to see your teammates’ faces, you can purchase a product like Adobe Connect which allows many people to video conference in a window that looks like the opening of the Brady Bunch. Regardless of which time or tool you use for your meetings, the act of having the daily meeting is a huge benefit to all members of the team.

Group Chat

One of the things that I advocate for all distributed teams is to have a group chat forum. An IRC room may work just fine for you, but requires additional tooling to allow team members to see discussions that took place while they were offline. Web based tools like 37signals’ Campfire provide private chat rooms, at a relatively small cost. There are also Campfire applications for desktops and mobile phones that allow you to improve on the user experience of the web site, or take your team on the road with you.

Once you have a group chat, it’s important to use it. While I’m not a fan of hard “rules” and strict “process”, your group chat should be made a part of the culture. To encourage participation, make it fun and light. It doesn’t always have to be about work. It’s much easier to feel connected to the rest of your team when you get to know them on a personal level. Talk about the weather where you are, what you’re doing after work, and link to the great articles you’ve read that help you improve your skills at your job.

Perhaps you have an office with only a few remote people, or half of your team is in a single office, it’s still important that the group chat become part of the team’s culture for everyone. This will allow some of the “in office” staff to enjoy some of the same freedoms that the remote workers enjoy, by enabling them the communication tools to work from home from time to time without missing any of the discussions. It will also ensure that the remote workers don’t feel left out, or less important than those who are in the office.

Mailing Lists

Mailing lists are another great tool for communicating. Open Source projects, which are some of the best examples of successful distributed teams, have been using them for decades to communicate. Mailing Lists aren’t as immediate as group chat, but they give you a way to contact all members of your team in a way that you know will be read and internalized.

Mailing lists are great for things that are important for everyone to see, not just the people who are at their desk right this second. For instance, you might write about an appointment that you have to go to and will be away from your desk: “I have a colonoscopy tomorrow, so I will miss the morning meeting and be unable to sit for the rest of the day.” Another great use of a mailing list is to describe a new idea, or something you’ve found in the code, in a way that everyone gets to see at a time that is convenient for them. Such an email might start out like “I just looked at our five slowest tests, and they all use the FooBaz class, so I profiled it and here’s what I’ve found.”

A team mailing list may not be for everyone. For especially small teams, or for teams who all work on a fixed schedule in the same time zone, they may be a bit heavy. Mailing lists are just one of a number of tools that can be utilized to make remote working easier and more enjoyable for everyone involved.

Status Updates

In a traditional office, you can generally find out what your co-workers are up to, what kinds of problems they’re solving, and how you might help them through passive interactions. The water cooler, walking down the hall, or sharing a table at lunch all provide additional interactions with your co-workers that remote members don’t get. Non-verbal cues are also easier to pick up on when you’re in the same physical location, but are completely lost in remote working situations. You may notice that your co-worker is puzzled by a problem, or frustrated by something, simply by observing their body language, hearing their cursing, or dodging the thrown chairs.

Yammer is a tool for providing Twitter- or Facebook-style status updates. Yammer is closed to groups, so only the people you allow in your group can see your status updates. This allows nice bite-sized communication that is less invasive than group chat or instant messaging. Yammer is great for  simple “heading out for lunch”, which will let your co-workers know you’re away from your work without being invasive. When working through a problem you might write “wishing I had a widget that could frobnicate this foobar”, and a co-worker who knows of such a widget might see this and help you out.

One of the benefits of status updates over group chat, is that it’s non-intrusive. It’s meant for broadcast communication, that won’t make your co-workers feel like they need to be present for the conversation before it goes away. It has some benefits over email in that the statuses are smaller bite sized thoughts, which can be ignored if needed, but contain valuable information if you want it.

Conclusion

Team members feeling left out is one of the biggest costs of a remote working team. In order to get the most out of our remote working environment, we have to encourage interaction. The resulting team will be stronger, and more effective as a result. There are many other tools and practices that teams can adopt to help them be more effective, this article just touches on the basics.

• Sahil Parikh is @sahilparikh on Twitter.
• Check out DeskAway at DeskAway.com / @deskaway