3 tips to keep a “digital business as usual” mentality

Be ‘extra’ razor sharp

Let’s face it. Working from home creates distractions we don’t normally find at the office. The washing needs to be done, the dog is begging you to go for a walk or your partner brings up the renovation plans.

When trying to cut through the extra clutter of working remotely, make sure you can answer these 3 questions of by heart:

• What is the core purpose of my job?
• What 3 quantifiable things measure success in my job?
• What does this mean on a daily, weekly and monthly basis?

By setting a clear focus, measuring only what matters and breaking it down to actionables - you create clarity. And clarity helps you decide what you should start doing and stop doing.

Be technology driven

For most of us, physically being at the office has been subject to change for a while now. Remote spaces like a home office, a satellite office or an office on wheels are slowly becoming the norm.

Here are some tips how technology can help you work remotely as a team.

• Virtually together

Video-conferencing is becoming the new normal. Not only is it a more efficient way of doing internal meetings (no or limited travel costs), but you can do it from almost everywhere. All you need is an internet connection and a smartphone or a laptop. We all use Google Hangouts here at NedWorks (part of the Google ecosystem, see Google Gsuite for more information.) But you could also use apps like Zoom, GoToMeeting and Slack.

Side note: we also use the Google Hangouts hardware for meetings between larger remote teams. It drastically improves the clarity of communication and thus the quality of the meetings. It’s a bit of an investment - and we’re big fans.

• Working together 

Working together on documents, spreadsheets or presentations in the digital space has been around for quite a while. ‘In the Cloud’ it’s called; in real-time you can create, change and update documents and have all of them accessible for everyone at the team. We use Google Drive, again because it's part of the Google ecosystem but you could also use apps like Dropbox, OneDrive or Box.

• Communicate together

(Digital) communication between team members is still something of a productivity trap. Incoming emails, text messages, Whatsapps, phone calls, Facebook messages, Instagram groups… We’re actively trying to tackle this using Slack, a place where all of your communication and tools come together so that remote teams will stay productive no matter where they’re working from.

To get start with virtual meetings, we’ve created a guide for good-great-greatest meetings. The inspiration came from Slack and other tools that help us to connect with team members in the most productive and useful way.

Be realistic

Picture this: 2 little kids and a big Bouvier dog jumping, screaming and barking all over the place. All 3 of them are egging each other on while I try to write this blog.

In other words working from home can be challenging. You can keep your productivity high by being transparent to your partner at home, your kids, your clients, your colleagues and your managers. It’s all about setting the right expectations and being realistic.

It is a rather unique situation that we are now facing. Nobody really knows what will come, how long it will take and what the overall impact will be.

So let us deal with the situation - and each other - very consciously, with great flexibility and with great patience. If we all continue to communicate clearly, setting the right expectations and taking our responsibility to maintain the balance between People and Business - we will come out stronger.

One for all, all for one.

#staystrong #flattenthecurve #thepositivist #NedWorks