The path to the next normal

One of the biggest challenges that the world has to come to terms with is the fact that the Covid-19 Pandemic has shown no signs of going away and has created a new normal that will be hard to fight against.

A key question that most companies ask is: I have been impacted by the Pandemic, what now? What is my next step to take my company to the next level? Business owners know that they have to get their workers back into the office, but the reality of this integration may prove to be harder than the goal or ambition that business owners have.

On the one hand, there are a lot of advantages of having employees in a shared space where they can collaborate with each other and focus on work without the distractions of being at home. However, there are a lot of advantages of remote workers. Additionally, if you live in a country like South Africa – where the threat of a new wave of infections is never far away – remote working may be the norm for many years to come.

Some businesses have successfully navigated the virus for two years. How then do they embrace remote working so that they can take their company to the next level? I recently read a report by McKinsey which provides some insight into this debate.

Sustaining the people and culture of a remote agile team
Remote work for agile teams requires a considerable shift in work culture. Without the seamless access to colleagues afforded by frequent, in-person team events, meals, and coffee chats, it can be harder to sustain the kind of camaraderie, community, and trust that comes more easily to co-located teams. It also takes more purposeful effort to create a unified one-team experience, encourage bonding among existing team members, or onboard new ones, or even to track and develop the very spontaneous ideas and innovation that makes agile so powerful to begin with. And these challenges are complicated by the unique circumstances of the current health crisis. Teams working from their living rooms or their dining-room tables are often sharing that space with children or other family members also working remotely.

Teams already operating remotely before the crisis are less likely to struggle, given their ability to handle ambiguity without losing focus and to concentrate on outcomes over processes. But many teams that just switched to a remote way of working are facing new challenges, which may require revisiting team norms, cultivating morale, and adapting a team’s approach to coaching.

Revisit the norms and ground rules for interaction
Virtual whiteboards, instant chat, and videoconferencing tools can be a boon to collaborative exercises and usually promote participation. But they can also require teams to reconsider existing norms and agreed-upon ground rules.

Some challenges may require team members to adjust to the tools themselves: team members should be generous with one another in offering practical support on navigating virtual tools—such as help formatting or recording presentations or informing the host about any technology issues.

Teams need to get up to speed quickly on visual management and virtual whiteboarding and tailor established ceremonies into standard virtual routines. New ground rules for communication may be needed to keep people who are interacting virtually from talking over one another. For example, something as simple as asking each speaker to “pass the ball” by calling out the next presenter by name can help.

Other team norms may also need to be revisited— and revised. On an agile team, everyone needs to take responsibility for capturing spontaneous ideas and putting up blockers to avoid losing them. When using virtual whiteboards, for example, teams need to make extra effort to capture the collective view, especially in larger remote teams. That will help avoid ambiguity and confusion in individual priorities.

Similarly, when brainstorming in person, it’s easy to organize and reorganize sticky notes in columns on a whiteboard. That’s not always something that’s easy to replicate using virtual-collaboration tools. And while teams should put a premium on personal productivity and allow time for it, they may also need to make a conscious point of allowing themselves and others to have more personal interactions. For example, some teams will leave a video feed turned on for longer periods of time; this conveys visual cues that aid in coaching and collaboration and helps team members maintain a face-to-face relationship. Importantly, teams need to be respectful of personal choices. Working from home blurs the lines between professional and personal lives. Team members may feel added stress about the impression they create on video, whether because of the appearance of their home workspace, interruptions from young children, or even family members sharing the same workspace. Teams should accept these limitations and interruptions graciously—and team members should feel free to set their own boundaries around scheduling and use of video.

Cultivate bonding and morale
Many of the kinds of activities that nurture morale for co-located agile teams—such as casual lunches, impromptu coffee breaks, or after-work social activities—are not possible in a virtual environment. Team members should encourage one another to introduce their pets and family members and to show any meaningful items in their working space. Working remotely, teams need to make a more conscious effort to be social, polite, precise, and tactful—to ensure everyone feels just as safe contributing remotely as they did in person. For many teams working remotely, some approaches to cohesion and comradery have grown quickly familiar. At one bank in the United States, for example, one agile team established virtual happy hours. Squad members join a videoconference call for a half-hour every week, sharing the beverage of their choice and talking about whatever comes up— other than work. Another team uses a website that generates quick and easy surveys. A designated team member (usually one appointed by the scrum master) sets up each poll with trivia questions to test team members’ knowledge of one another. The whole activity takes under ten minutes, is easy to do, and winners get bragging rights. These activities might sound silly, but they’re also fun—and a useful way of supporting morale and shaping a shared experience virtually.

Agile teams working remotely may also require a more deliberative focus on empathy, openness, respect, and courage. For example, team members may need to remind themselves to create and receive communications with a collaborative mindset and always to assume the best possible motivation from their colleagues. This practice is important to agile teams in general but to remote agile teams in particular, given how easily electronic communications can be misunderstood. For example, an agile team at one retail company has an explicit agreement that team members will always assume that the contributions of others are made with positive intent. Especially in written interactions and brief chat messages, the agreement observes that a comment that may seem appropriate to one team might not seem so to another. Assuming positive intent can create a safe space for team members to play a role as custodians of the culture, flagging such comments and negotiating new rules for collaborating.

The person who flags an inappropriate comment can bring it up with the person who made it directly or with the scrum master to resolve it. Or if needed, a small group could stay on the line after a standup meeting to discuss. To ensure that team members feel psychologically safe to voice their concerns, one US insurance company conducts an anonymous biweekly survey to solicit input. Tribe leaders and scrum masters use the survey to take the team’s pulse—for example, on whether they’re feeling overworked, how motivated they are, how many things they are being pulled into each day, whether and how processes are working, and what professional-development concerns they might have. The scrum masters and tribe leaders then agree on a benchmark goal and identify a list of two or three tangible actions to take over the coming weeks to improve—which might include visible teamwide actions or more personal one-on-one conversations. All of these are good practices even in a co-located setting, but they become even more critical in a remote setting.

Charles Phiri is an Associate at Indalo Business Consulting and is an Experienced Business Rescue Practitioner