I’ve had the pleasure—and displeasure—of many remote meetings over the past few weeks. The difficult meetings had a common root cause: the meeting leaders attempted to do a direct transfer of how they lead an in-person meeting to remote/WFH meetings. When that occurs, they miss the ability to optimize on our separation by choosing how […]
I’ve worked with several managers and team leaders over the past few weeks as everyone is suddenly remote. Every single person in a leadership position struggles with (agile) team transparency. These leaders think the team members work alone. (I think they’re correct.) The leaders worry that the team won’t finish the team’s work. (Correct again.)
I wrote a number of posts and newsletters over the past few weeks to help you see alternatives in this age of uncertainty. I hope you use these ideas to generate other ideas or ask more questions and create more experiments. The posts on this blog: 7 Tool Tips for Your Newly Distributed or Remote
Many people talk about “going back to normal.” We aren’t going to return to normal. That old normal is gone, at least for a year, if not longer. (I suspect we will cycle between remote work and office work for the foreseeable future.) What we can do is discover a new normal. Discovery requires different
Everyone’s distributed/remote/dispersed in these days of COVID-19. Mark Kilby and I have had the pleasure of being guest on a couple of podcasts that released this week: We spoke with Shane Hastie at Agile 2019. Here is the podcast: Johanna Rothman & Mark Kilby on Their Book From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams. We
Are you a manager accustomed to Management by Walking Around and Listening (MBWAL)? You can use MBWAL with collocated teams. MBWAL doesn’t work for distributed or dispersed teams. Remember, working remote is Not Business as Usual. (And won’t be for a while.) And, you might still have this question: “If no one’s in the office,
You probably went from the office to remote so fast, you’re still recovering from the whiplash of working from home. I found the biggest change when I started to work remotely was how meetings changed. I’ve learned these tips over the years. You might find them helpful. Tip 1: Start With Cameras On When we
Vasco Duarte of Scrum Master Toolbox fame has invited Mark Kilby and me to a Q&A about thriving with remote work. See Remote Work Live. Vasco is recording the sessions. My session with Mark is on Monday, March 23, 2020, 10 am Eastern. (Yes, the page has time “translation.”) Please do join us. We’ll answer
Three Tips for Coping when Change Might Make You Nuts (Start with Yourself) Given COVID-19, whatever we “knew” about our organizations or work is out the window now. I thought I might help with this three-part series about how you can manage in this time of crazy-making change. This three-part series is: How you can help
You’re “working” from home. The kids are home, and you’re supposed to lead their schooling. Your spouse is home. And, you’re not supposed to go anywhere. Yeah, COVID-19 reality stinks. You CANNOT work the same way you did before. Expecting people to “just” pick up where they left off? Nah. Unreasonable expectations. Here’s what you