Though it was once believed that only mammals played, researchers have observed playful behavior in surprising corners of the animal kingdom:

octopuses playing with Legos,

turtles batting around balls, and

crocodiles giving each other piggyback rides.  

Think about it: Octopus playing with Lego! Are you playing with Lego?

(From “Joyful” by Ingrid Fetell Lee.)

Start with your intention. Now that we’re passing over the survival mode and going into designing the new norm, How engaged do you want your team to be, even if they were not “in the room”?

Being fully present or engaged has always been a problem with teams, not only remotely. But the virtual part adds salt to the wound. Now if the intrinsic motivation is not addressed, your efforts might just be as disconnected as your wifi last month.

What are the communication norms that you have for yourself and the people you’re collaborating with? How are you intentionally designing moments of connection with your team? How are you taking your virtual leadership to the next level?

Start with the thought process, the mindset, then you can figure out what technology can help you arrive there. Most organizations start with the technology, and that’s not the best way to tackle this new mode of thinking and working.

Here are some tips on designing virtual moments and clarifying your communication methods and purposes:

• Email is for relaying information, NOT for making decisions or convincing someone of your idea (cannot be used to influence someone).
• Consider using video emails to share your thought process or explain where to find certain information on your intranet or cloud folders (using loom.com makes sense). Avoid long emails at all costs (I used to be super guilty of those long emails, now I know why they never accomplished anything).
• The chat function and instant messengers are meant for chatting. To bounce off ideas, thoughts on ways to celebrate and suggestions to fix quick problems. They do not include everyone in the conversation and information shared there are often lost.
• Meetings (zoom, MS teams, etc.) are for making decisions together and sharing points of views. Not for sending out information (this can be done in advance). Keep them short and focused. Always start with a setting of intention and getting everyone on board with a fun short exercise (1-2 minutes ice-breakers are also designed for teams who know each other).
• Find the right space for your team to engage in the process and organize their work collaboratively. Slack and Trello can be used when there’s a lot of different parts of your work that go in parallel or when you have a lot of sequential work spread over a diverse team. Chose the tool that fits you best.
• Ideation and product/service design happens best when each person has had the chance to come up with ideas on their own before building on each other’s. So, a brainstorming session online won’t work well if there was no preparation in advance by members. To offset this, send in the challenge (send physical items if needed), have them think of ideas and share them on a digital board (i.e. Miro or its cousin Mural) and then the ideation session can take off from there. Never kick-start your ideation process with a meeting. It is not productive that way.

Preparation is key in the virtual and hybrid world. It will take you probably 3 times more to prepare for an event, a process, or a meeting because it’s going to be hybrid or virtual. Taking this needed time makes sure that the event is an actual success.

Consider using here the analogy:  “Measure twice, Cut once”

What other tips do you have moving forward?

Cheers,

Randah

We miss running into people in the hallway. We miss meeting friends of friends or as academics call them our ‘weak connections’. Those moments of serendipity sparked some amusing conversations and interesting people to meet. How can we replicate that feeling?

What if you planned virtual ‘watercooler’ moments to help energize a hybrid workforce?

Last year I ran a daily coffee break with one zoom room and an open invitation for anyone to pop in. I shared the link with my groups and contacts and those people shared it with theirs. During this 30-minutes meetup, we joined, met new people, had a quick coffee chat, got inspired and connected with old friends.

Some even scheduled their working hours and meetings around our coffee break! It was that important during time of no-socializing in 2020.

Find a time and place for chance meeting and side learning to happen. Create a remote coffee break room, invite colleagues to an online game before work, have a daily check-in routine with random employees just to say hi or run a simply storytelling session daily. Basic rules applies in any such interaction: No agenda, no job titles, welcome random conversations, and most importantly, listen. Perhaps this is the greatest gift of online communication, we are forced to listen to speakers one at a time.  

Consistently matters. This is the best connection you can create without much planning ahead or getting permission from anyone.

Stay playful,

Randah

When nurturing a culture of trust and collaboration at work, we often rely on a sense of camaraderie that is hard to replicate online. We cannot share our food on the same table, sit in a circle or read each other’s body language.

This takes our culture to a different digital mode. Not better. Not worse. Just different.

We now must go one level deeper and share our purpose, our values and the best way to heal each other’s wounds.

Here are some ways to help you connect with each other virtually and go beyond a little box on the screen.

1. Share small gifts and surprises, from handwritten cards to care packages to plants or desk toys.
2. Before a staff meeting, send the same food over to each person and invite them to eat during “lunch meeting”.
3. Build regular music playlists around specific theme and have people listen to it throughout the week. A unique conversation theme arises.
4. Ask each member to recommend a song to listen to. Rotate daily songs.   
5. Create an internal weekly group blog where each member is asked to write a short post on something funny / creative / strange/ foolish / bold. The trick is to keep it simple and easy, so it doesn’t feel like chore.
6. Set up regular shows for employees to share personal interests. Their passions, their causes, their struggles and how they overcome them.
7. Create fun contests or digital challenges to resemble friendly pranks that happen in the office (notice any surfacing bullies)
8. Host internal podcast and interview other employees. Focus on their families, hobbies, personalities, more than work. Let others get to know them personally.
9. Embrace anchors. Send a physical poster, a plant, or a desk item for your team with your name and number of it. Ask them to place it where they work daily. This anchor will remind them to call or connect with you whenever the need arises.
10. Send a “Good morning” message through IM or text. This morning connection helps plant a seed for people to remember you during the day or link you in a discussion they heard the previous day. Your network will grow and your culture of trust will prosper.  
11. The next time you feel the urge to write a long email about a subject at work, create a video instead. Your video will be more memorable and the message clearer. This can be as simple as using your phone to record a selfie or using an easy tool like “Loom” that allows you to share your screen and record yourself at the same time. 

What other ideas do you have to increase the connection between your remote-working team?

Tracking our progress is the single largest day-to-day motivator on the job, says Daniel Pink in “When: the scientific secrets of perfect timing”.
The problem is we don’t do it often. That’s because we rush out of work as soon as the clock hits or we hit submit on our project and flee. Never taking the time to properly “cool-down”. These days it’s more likely we either don’t have a boundary between work and home or we’re multitasking our way till bedtime.
Instead of fleeing from work or squishing this closing ritual out of our day, we’re better off reserving the final five minutes of work for a few small deliberate actions that bring the day to a fulfilling close.

For 2 minutes, write down what you accomplished since morning. For another 2 minutes, make a general plan for the following day. This will help you close the door on today and energize you for tomorrow.
Write it your way: as a cartoon sketch, 3-items-a-day icons, a song recorded on voice note, or any other way that helps you enjoy this task as much as anything else. Something to look forward to.
The last minute is one of gratitude. Send at least one person who was part of your today’s accomplishments a thank you note for being there.

For today,
Thank you for reading this diary post and being part of my thought-sharing family for the past weeks and months.

Cheers,
Randah xoxox

If you’re used to scanning a newspaper at work, try opening the “wrong” section of the newspaper next time. Something you normally wouldn’t read. Scan the headlines and look for an interesting idea you’ve never considered before. What info can you learn and use from that section? How to cross-pollinate ideas?

If you don’t read newspaper and scan the internet instead, ask your colleague for suggested websites they read, and you don’t. scan those.

My first encounter with this method was nearly 2 decades ago. I wanted to find a unique solution to a problem at work and needed an external set of eyes to see things from different perspectives. I visited a bookstore and opened different types of magazines, on space, engineering, pastry making. Things I had no clue or interest in at the time. I was trying to find a similar problem to mine but in a different context. My problem was getting people to work together systematically in a nonprofit organization, and my solution was right there in a car mechanic magazine.

To hear this and other stories on how to use your intentions at work, here’s a video I did a few years ago https://tinyurl.com/y8tfb97c

What’s your word for the day?

A single word can build and preserve your creative momentum of the day.
Pick a word, write it down, keep the note in front of you for the day (or the week). This will be your criterion for decision making.
A word like “adventure” will guide you through decisions in terms of picking food, planning a work-related project, engaging in a team exercise or clearing up space. Compare that to a word like “prosperity”, what changes will that make on how you go through the day?

Pay attention to your understanding of the word.
What feelings does it evoke?

A word like “confidence” could represent the meaning of………. “empowerment”,……… “elegance” …………or ………. “respect”.
Which one do you associate with the most?
You understanding of this one-word will affect the outcome of whatever decision you make that day.
The same word can change meaning used on another day.
So choose with intention.