Perhaps then you wished you could do more of the work you had actually planned to do rather than getting caught up in meetings or responding to a torrent of emails and new requests.

If that sounds familiar, you are not alone. Most of us are overloaded with too much to do, and it can be hard to find time in the working week for everything that you wanted to do.

Increasing productivity without increasing your workload might seem like a fantasy, but it is possible.

Sometimes this comes down to organising your time better, prioritising more effectively, and planning more thoroughly – sometimes though it comes down to not going to so many meetings, or knowing how to say no without causing offence or being thought of as unhelpful.

Whilst maintaining a high level of productivity is not always easy, with some new habits or just a few changes to the way you work you could cut down on reactive working, get more done in less time and make space for the important stuff. And be less stressed.

At Then Somehow, we’re keen to help.

In response to a request from a large client, we recently turned our best-selling ​Working Smarter ​e-courses into shorter bite-sized modules.

We took the most valuable lessons from our longer e-courses, distilled the most important bits and created a series of new micro-learning modules that can be taken individually or with teams, that are impactful, quick to do and easy to digest.

If you are looking to learn practical techniques and strategies that you can apply straight away, and to not spend hours going through pages and pages to get the information, these microlearning modules are now available to you.

There are six short modules – they cover things like how to halve meetings, get better at setting boundaries and saying no – each one contains a simple but practical tool and idea that can be implemented straight away, saving you time and setting up good habits that will help you and your team with productivity, and be able to work smarter not harder:

​
1. Get Better at Planning​
2. ​Prioritise Better​
3. Calendar Best Practice​
4. Get Better at Saying No​
5. ​Get Better at Setting Boundaries​
6. Get Better at Email​

You can take these mini-modules in any order, and you will make progress even if you only have a few spare minutes.

They’re just £7.99 each, or ​sign up for all six and save 25%​ – that’s just £35.95 for a ​whole bundle of productivity goodness​.

We’ve run the proven strategies and tips these modules contain with thousands of people in all sorts of organisations, and stand by them as some of the most powerful methods for making work better.

If you’re looking for a way for you and your team to work smarter and be happier and less stressed, we highly recommend them.

At Then Somehow we help managers in organisations work smarter, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your organisation perform better, or are looking for microlearning for your employees, get in touch here.

The post Productivity? Discover 6 quick tools that work appeared first on ThenSomehow.

We all know meetings are a time suck, they get in the way of the work you need and want to do, and often don’t achieve anything. On top of interruptions and all your other work, going to meetings means you may need to work evenings or at the weekends to get everything done, or push work into next month.

According to Atlassian, the average worker spends about 31 hours sitting in unproductive meetings every month. And half of all meetings are considered to be wasted time, meanwhile employees aren’t even engaged during these meetings — 91% are daydreaming, and 73% are doing other work.

8 ways to reduce meeting overload

Here are 8 radical suggestions for what you as a manager can do about it to get some time back:

1. Do not go to meetings – delegate someone else to go instead
2. Halve the time you spend
3. 20 / 50 minute meetings
4. Create a rule for when you’ll be available to attend
5. Buffer time
6. Big rocks first
7. Overcome the urgency effect
8. Meeting free Mondays

Read on below for details of how to do each of these.

1. Delegate meetings to others

It is funny how we often accept the way things are without question. One manager we know at first claimed this was impossible and that she had to go to every meeting. Only to discover when she experimented by sending members from her team in her place, they thanked her for the opportunity and she got four hours back. Not only that, other attendees of the meeting were really impressed by her colleagues’ contribution, their estimation of the whole team and their manager went up. Test the unspoken rules: often they are not as fixed as you think they are.

2. Cut meeting time in half

If you cannot avoid attending a meeting can you halve its length? Or, if you meet every other week, would that be enough? Or, could you only attend every other one and use the minutes to keep up to date?

3. Try 20- or 50-minute meetings

Most meetings are 30 minutes or one hour simply because that is the default calendar setting. The 20/50 meeting rule suggests changing the default length to 20 minutes or 50 minutes whenever you can. At the very least that’ll give you 10 minutes to reflect, recover, refresh before jumping into the next task.

4. Set clear boundaries on meeting attendance

Struggling to find time to do focused work because of all the meetings scheduled by other people, another manager created a rule: “I do not attend meetings before 10am.” She always got in at 8am anyway, so by doing this she got two hours a day of uninterrupted time.

5. Schedule buffer time

Buffer time means leaving a gap between meetings and tasks, and/or scheduling unallocated time in your week.
One senior executive we know scheduled a weekly two-hour meeting with ‘Clive’ in her calendar. Only her assistant knew that Clive was her cat. Not everyone needs to know that your meeting is ‘with yourself’. Not everyone understands that time to think and plan and get your priorities straight is valuable. You do.

6. Prioritise important tasks before meetings

Ever tried fitting both sand and pebbles into a glass jar? What you discover is that if you put the sand in first, you can’t get all the pebbles in. But if you put the pebbles in first, all the sand fits around them. What this means: schedule your ‘big rock’ priority tasks first: force other tasks and even meetings to fit around them, not the other way around.

Overcome the need for too many meetings. Photo by @wocintechchat on Unsplash

7. Beat the urgency effect with better focus

Research shows that even if you are not rushed and you just feel you have not got enough time, you will prioritise lower impact activities like answering email, or filing. By telling yourself, “I have all the time I need” – as a mantra – actually helps you get to the more important work.
Next time you feel under time pressure, overcome the Urgency Effect by taking a breath and telling yourself, “I have all the time I need,” and make a good choice over which work to do.

8. Try a meeting-free day

It’s not just you that has these issues. Your colleagues and your team do too. So talk to the others and make a collective agreement about meetings – for example that you won’t have any meetings on one day of the week, or that you won’t schedule work during lunch times. Change the culture, help everyone feel better and do better work.

Try these strategies for cutting down on meetings and see how you get on.

Want to go further? Try our productivity programme

These tips and strategies come from our new Working Smarter programme – if you can find the time and the headspace to do it, it is a brilliant way to change your mindset and learn practical ways to be more productive.

If you’d like to make work better try the manager programme first for yourself, and if you think it’s good, buy the team version with or without clinics for your organisation. Contact us for more details.

The post How to cut down on meetings at work: 8 smart tactics for 2025 appeared first on ThenSomehow.

Meetings, messages, emails, colleagues and customers endlessly demand your attention and take your focus away from what you’d like to be doing.

Research suggests that everyone — from IT professionals to health care providers — are interrupted as much as every six to 12 minutes.

And other research shows that it’s actually really difficult to switch your attention between tasks without a residue of each unfinished one being left behind in your head.

Which means the chances of doing your best work after an interruption are pretty slim unless you can really focus and complete something.

We know that interruptions are one of the biggest challenges managers face, especially when trying to do their own work, and others want and need help.

So what can you do about it? Here are four simple things that our clients tell us work in order to overcome interruptions:

1. Marking in your calendar when you’re not available
2. Working away from your desk
3. Turning off calendar and email notifications
4. Setting boundaries and saying no

Read on for more information

1. Marking in your calendar when you’re not available

If you’re a manager this is good practice for getting your own work done. Let your phone go to voicemail, don’t look at emails, mark your Teams or Slack to show you’re busy. Negotiate with your team for how they can contact you in an emergency.
 

Work away from your desk. Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

2. Working away from your desk

This may have been more relevant when we were all office based, but when you are now working remotely, you can always go to a cafe or go to the library, or go and sit somewhere else, say on a different floor.
 

3. Turning off calendar and email notifications

If you haven’t yet turned off the notifications from you calendar or from email, you may not be aware just how distracting they are. Email can suck up your time with pointless busyness and reactive working, and this is what you want to avoid, especially when you are trying to do something else. Turning off reminders (which are all set to On by default) might be the most empowering thing you can do. Doing the same with your calendar notifications puts you in charge of how you are reminded of things – not the software you use.
 

Set boundaries and say no. Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash

4. Setting boundaries and saying no

It is great to decide what to focus on and to create space to work on that. Just be aware you might have to say ‘no’ when someone tries to cross that boundary.

As an example, this is the story of two business partners who were constantly interrupting each other. It was happening so much they were both feeling really aggravated. But neither said anything about it. The build up of anger, frustration and resentment was threatening their working relationship. Eventually we helped them have a conversation, and they decided: “we will have four tea breaks a day, and in between we’ll write everything down that we want to ask each other and wait for that cup of tea and then we’ll go through our lists together.”

They did this and they got loads more work done and started to enjoy working together again – setting boundaries changed their lives and saved their business.

So try these four things and see how you get on.

These tips and strategies come from our new Working Smarter programme – if you can find the time and the headspace to do it, it is a brilliant way to change your mindset and learn practical ways to be more productive.

If you’d like to make work better try the manager programme first for yourself, and if you think it’s good, get the team version with or without clinics for your organisation. Contact us here.

The post How to stop interruptions at work: 4 practical strategies for getting things done appeared first on ThenSomehow.

In a recent survey of organisation managers, the number one thing that managers told us they wanted most was clear, practical, actionable, innovative productivity tips that work and last.

There’s tons of productivity advice out there, and you’ve probably tried a lot of it – but how much of it sticks?

How long before bad habits creep back in and you’re back to working long hours, feeling tired, rushing to deadlines, not doing your best work and not getting as much done as you’d like.

So we’ve put together our top six productivity tips – we know they work because our clients tell us.

They are quick and easy to implement, all are about productivity in practice: you read the tip, you implement it, done.

What you’ll learn from these 6 tips

• Inbox Zero
• Start the day from your calendar not email
• Match your location to the activity
• Plan your work
• Build a personal workflow
• Say no

1. Inbox Zero (60 mins to set up)

The average manager receives 120 emails a day, sends about 40 and keeps about 8,000 messages in their inbox. No wonder then that email has become overwhelming for most of us. We all come up with different ways to deal with this – some people ignore email until people start shouting – which is one way of doing it. We prefer Inbox Zero.

In our opinion, Inbox Zero is the most accessible system for quickly keeping on top of your email so it becomes your best comms tool, rather than a source of overwhelm. Inbox Zero doesn’t need any special software, it works with any email client.. it takes minutes to set up, and once you’re in the habit of using it, it’ll save you hours every week and reduce your anxiety levels.

To learn how to do it – or to have a refresher – take our Inbox Zero online course here.

Inbox Zero. Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

2. Start the day from your calendar not email (5 mins to set up)

Most people’s default is to go to email first thing in the morning. In fact the default setting on Outlook and other office apps is to send you straight to your inbox, and once you are in there, it’s easy to be drawn into other people’s agendas.

Changing the default so that you go to your calendar first means that you look at your plans for the day before you look at what others want from you.

This helps you think about planning your day and what YOU want to do and stops you getting sucked into email first thing. You can remind yourself of your priorities before you get distracted.

Many of our clients who make this tiny change say that it is brilliant for them. Just a few seconds pause and reflection before looking at email really changes how you feel about the requests waiting for you at the start of the day.

To do it:

• In Outlook – go to Files/Options/ Advanced/ ‘Start Outlook in this folder’ use the drop down menu to change from ‘inbox’ to ‘my calendar’
• In Safari – go to preferences and change the homepage link,
• Or in Chrome – go to settings and put the address of your Google calendar in the On Start up menu – choose “Open a specific page or set of pages”.

Sorted.

Why this tiny shift matters

If you’re not sure, it’s explained in detail as part of our Inbox Zero online course here.

3. Match your location to the activity

This is increasingly relevant in a world of hybrid working where you’re in the office for some of the time, and working remotely for the rest of the time.

The idea is to pick where you work to match the task. So if it is deep work, and you need to focus – do it in isolation or at least somewhere that is protected. And let people know when you will be available again.

If you are going to be in the office, plan on doing less focused work and treat interruptions as an opportunity to build relationships, catch-up and connect with colleagues.

Leave space between meetings to enable this and limit your ambition to “shallow” work like answering emails, checking social media, answering phone calls or catching up on reading.

4. Planning your work

Many of our clients tell us they often feel slightly panicked or are unable to sleep at night with their head spinning with things they need to remember… If that sounds like you, ask yourself: when did you last do some planning?

A key lesson I learned from productivity expert David Allen, was that time spent thinking and planning is just as important as time spent doing.

This is a fundamental point: planning is real work. If you think about it, you do 3 kinds of work:
i. Doing the work you planned to do.
ii. Doing the work you have to do as it comes in – ie reactive work.
iii. Planning your work.

The thing is that if you don’t plan your work, you will always be doing reactive work.

The best way we know of to plan your work is to schedule time every week to do it.

Try a weekly review

Once a week you clear your decks, think clearly about what needs to happen – do the upfront thinking, the what, when and how – and set yourself up to succeed.

We call it a weekly review, and it has a really positive impact on your productivity, and your mindset.

It’s best if you schedule time for a weekly review in your diary, but failing that, keep a notebook by your bed to pin all those spinning thoughts – then get up and do a review of all your tasks and projects in the morning!

5. Build a personal workflow

You already have a personal workflow. You gather things to do, decide what to do with them, determine when you will do with them and then you do them.

You may never have thought about it, but without a system like that you’d be a lot less productive – the system creates a supportive structure for yourself and your work.

Paying attention to the system that works for you and deliberately making some adjustments to it can help you feel better and create more space for the work you need to do.

If you want to learn more about best practice for your personal workflow, take a look at our Creating Space for Important Projects online course here.

Build a personal workflow. Plan your work. Productivity tips. Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

6. Saying no

One of my clients was telling me that if he gets an email from his boss he drops everything else and jumps on it.

Do you do that too? When asked to do something that eats into other work that you need to do – whether it’s an urgent request from your manager or an email from the boss – do you struggle to say no? Many people do.

You might be saying yes for various reasons such as the fear of missing out on opportunities, burning bridges, or perhaps being seen as incompetent or unhelpful.

The thing is that by saying yes when you would rather say no leads you to having too much to do in the time available. That can lead to resentment, guilt, feelings of failure and, and if it carries on, eventually to exhaustion.

The key is to be really clear on what is most important so that you are not derailed, and to understand that saying no to some things always means you can say yes to others.

If you’re worried about saying no, you could start with small no’s and build up. Or you could learn how to say no in a less confronting way.

One idea is to make a distinction between capability and capacity, for example: “I can do this but I do not have the capacity right now. Will the end of next month be okay?”

You’ll be surprised to learn that your colleagues will respect you more.

Try our Working Smarter programme

These productivity tips and strategies come from our Working Smarter programme – if you can find the time and the headspace to do it, it is a brilliant way to change your mindset and learn practical ways to be more productive.

It will also help your team feel more in control and more motivated to step up and take things on – a common complaint from managers before taking the programme.

If you’d like to make work better try the manager programme first for yourself, (and if you think it’s good, talk to us about options for making it available to your colleagues).

The post 6 productivity tips that actually work (and how to make them stick) appeared first on ThenSomehow.

In this 10-step guide to better culture in your workplace we cover:

1. How to work smarter not harder
2. How to avoid burnout
3. How to be better at project management
4. How to return to the office in the right way – a charter
5. How to get feedback that makes a difference
6. How to focus when you’re working from home (WFH)
7. How to trust your team when they’re working remotely
8. How to have better conversations with your team
9. How to be a better listener
10. How to overcome dysfunctions in your team

Read more below

1. Work smarter

If you work hard, but often find it hard to focus, or if you are expected to do more in less time (and often run out of time), or feel overwhelmed by competing demands and a tidal wave of email and other communications, it’s time you learned to work smarter.

Working smarter is the key to greater productivity, not working harder or longer. Working smarter boosts your effectiveness, your creativity, and saves you energy for the things that really matter like your friends and family.

We spent much of the last year creating online courses – including how to apply Inbox Zero, how to make space for your important projects, and how to prioritise – where you can learn simple yet powerful techniques that will help you change the way you work and become more productive.

How to boost productivity

Try out our free course for managers on Empowering Your Team with Circles of Influence, it could be particularly useful to help your team maintain a sense of control and agency at this most ambiguous time. See it here.

Our aim is that your way of working will never be the same again.

Interested in this? Read more on our courses page here

2. Avoid burnout

As workplaces become increasingly demanding and fast-paced, burnout – the complete mental, emotional, and often physical exhaustion brought on by long term work related stress – is a more serious and widespread issue than you might realise. Nearly seven in ten people experience burnout because of work at least some of the time.

One of the 5 key factors that correlate with burnout is lack of manager support. Employees who feel supported by their manager are about 70% less likely to experience burnout.

So as a manager what can you do about it? It may be that you’ll need to have a difficult conversation with a colleague, or work on resolving some dysfunctional culture together.

It may be that you’ll need to adopt new behaviours and processes.

Simple behaviour shifts to prevent team fatigue

Here’s 3 behaviour changes that can help your team deal with burnout:

• Getting clear about their priorities
• Helping them say no and set boundaries
• Changing and reframing mindsets

Interested in this? Read more on our post on burnout here.

Photo by Danie Franco on Unsplash

3. Get better at Project Management

Project management is hard. From brutal deadlines to constrained budgets, with the need to take care of many things at the same time, it is no surprise that getting a project completed on time and on budget is a challenge.

In fact, it turns out that only 2.5% of companies successfully complete 100% of their projects.

Why is this? Mainly because unexpected obstacles or events pop-up to derail and hamper the progress of the overall project. But also because good project managers don’t always have team members who understand how and why everything fits together – so project steps get missed or communication goes awry.

So how best to do it? We recommend thinking about this in 3 stages:

Before you start: set up for success

i. Before you start:

• ensure you have a common language and work to get everyone on the same page
• work out the plan and allocate roles together

During the project: adapt and communicate

ii. During the project:

• Consider being Agile
• Review and feedback on the go
• Going off track? Use the GROW method

After it ends: pause, reflect and learn

iii. After the project has finished:
All too often teams just crash from one project to the next without learning anything. If you don’t learn anything, next time people will perform in the same way, you’ll encounter the same frustrations, and you’ll get the same results.

Instead, if you pause at the end of a project to do an End of Project Wash Up and a Retrospective, you can ask your team: what did we learn?

It turns out that doing this makes a team great.

Interested in this? Read our post on project management here.

4. Return to work charter

Working remotely can be hard. As we start to return to our workplaces many organisations are blending remote and back-in-the-office working, but not all have figured out how to best make this work in practice, which could be a concern for people when they are looking to bosses and managers for guidance.

Questions every hybrid team should address

The questions to think about include:
1. What should you be doing when you’re remote and what should you be doing in the office?
2. How do meetings work if some people are in and some out?
3. How do you manage projects?
4. How often do people come into the office?
5. Just how important is it?

We’ve come up with 10 design principles to make dynamic and blended working better.

Interested in this? Read our post on returning to work here.

5. Get to the feedback that makes a difference

Obtaining employee feedback can be challenging but it is key to people’s development. Performance reviews may only represent one person’s point of view, so many organisations use 360 reviews to gather all round feedback.

The trouble with standard 360 reviews is that they’re usually based on number scores, but numbers reduce something complex and nuanced to something that seems definite and objective when it’s not.

And most of the dimensions explored in standard 360’s don’t actually reveal anything about a colleague’s true competencies or what it is like to work with them.

However, 360’s done well can be very powerful. The trick is to use narrative and not numbers, then you get really considered 360 reports that really help people develop themselves.

Why narrative feedback works better than numbers

In 2020/21 we built a tool to do this. Called AdviceSheet it has been used by teams at The University of Oxford, Bristol City Council, Metricell and Breathe. Breathe loved it so much they also added it to their marketplace of HR tools.

AdviceSheet surveys are easy to use, though they do take a little effort to take part in. Good questions are not necessarily easy to answer. You can’t knock out your feedback in five minutes. This is really important stuff and deserves considered attention.

Interested in this? Read our post on feedback here.

Photo by Christina Wocintechchat- on Unsplash

6. Stay focussed when you’re working from home

One of the hot issues of the moment is how to manage your focus and attention when you’re working from home.

Some people prefer working on their own and love the freedom from distractions and the ability to focus that WFH provides. Meanwhile, others find remote working feels lonely and makes it harder to concentrate.

Tips to improve concentration and motivation

Whichever group you or your colleagues fall into, here’s a summary of our tips for staying focussed and positive whilst working from home to use and share with your team:

1. Make sure your workspace is well defined
2. Let go of what you can’t control
3. If you’re distracted and can’t focus – try the Pomodoro Technique
4. Use your calendar to structure your day
5. Focus on what you can do

Interested in this? Read our post on working from home here.

7. Trust your team when they’re remote working

We often hear leaders and managers telling us their team is communicating better than ever because they are making much more of a conscious and deliberate effort to talk to each other.

Partly this was because people have to get their heads around working differently with their colleagues. In many cases, it works out fine and leads to more trust in the team.

However, it can also bring up tensions, when for example you trusted Jon to do the work, he didn’t do it and he stayed quiet in remote team meetings…

How to build visibility and accountability

One thing that helps solve these kinds of issues is to combine regular team check-ins with using planning tools such as Trello, or Microsoft Planner (inside Teams), to visually capture the work that people have on.

They’re a great way to encourage people to share their ideas on how they will approach a task and invite input from their colleagues, and we’ve seen that they help to build and maintain trust.

But building trust in a team is not just about tasks. Practising connecting builds trust too. Deliberately creating a social space where it’s not about work helps with this, as well as having mechanisms in place to help people communicate when they’re harder to reach.

Interested in this? Read our post on trusting your remote team here.

8. Have better conversations with your team

Despite how much time you spend in meetings, or how many plans you make, it can still be really hard to reach a common understanding and make anything happen. However, there are tools that help facilitate better conversations with your team, that’ll help you get things done.

Four tools to reach shared understanding

When so much depends on conversations, and when everyone interprets things differently, we recommend these four tools, they can really help – they’re all frameworks for the right kinds of conversations.

Team Canvas – a framework for a structured conversation that’s designed to bring everyone onto the same page. (Literally, because it’s done on a big sheet of paper.)

Expressive Drivers – a model that has four quadrants which identify four social styles: Analyticals, Drivers, Amiables, Expressives. Based on this, Expressive Drivers is a very simple profiling tool that gives you a colour to indicate your communication style.

Planning Poker – a quick and dirty tool for helping a group to reach agreement, especially if you can’t agree on something. It’s also fun.

Circles of Influence – created by Stephen Covey, it’s a great way to have conversations with your team as it helps people take responsibility, and thus be more proactive, productive and happier.

Interested in this? Read our post on tools for team conversations here.

Photo by CoWomen on Unsplash

9. Be a better listener and why it matters

Communication is a really important skill in the workplace. Pretty much everything you do – from initiating new projects to empowering staff, from sales calls to asking how team members are getting on – involves talking to someone else.

Of course, there’s never going to be 100% understanding of meaning – we’re all so different and each of us sees the world in such different ways – but we believe it’s worth striving for the best chance that someone else understands what you mean, or at least for that to emerge.

Why listening well is harder than it seems

One way to do that is to focus on your listening skills.

By becoming a better listener, you can improve your productivity, as well as your ability to influence, persuade and negotiate.

Try this: the Active Listening exercise

We have an exercise to practice listening and help you be a better listener – Active Listening.

Interested in this? Read our post on better listening here.

10. Overcome the 5 basic dysfunctions in a team

One of the key things we look at when we go into any organisation is team dynamics.

Especially the dynamics and patterns in the leadership team. Because these patterns cascade down the organisation, causing all sorts of effects. If the leadership team is high performing, all well and good. But if they’re not, it can usually be traced back to the relationships between team members.

Business writer, Patrick Lencioni has a model that explains why relationship dynamics in leadership teams are so important.

It’s a model we refer to a lot.

What are the five dysfunctions of a team?

According to Lencioni, there are five basic dysfunctions that teams commonly struggle with. These cause confusion, misunderstanding, negative morale and can impact entire organisations.

The dysfunctions are:

1. Lack of trust
2. Fear of conflict
3. Lack of commitment
4. Avoidance of accountability
5. Inattention to results

If you can get better at developing skills to counter the dysfunctions, and change the patterns and the problems, you will build confidence and capability, become much more effective, better at collaborating, and your organisation will benefit.

What happens when you overcome them

It’s a slow process, but it’s worth the effort and can yield big results.

Interested in this? Read our post on overcoming team dysfunctions here.

Need support to shift what’s stuck?

If you need help with working on any of this – get in touch, at ThenSomehow we help you and your team build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your team, get in touch here.

The post How to improve workplace culture: 10 practical steps for remote and hybrid teams appeared first on ThenSomehow.

The likelihood is that your team already has one project on the go, if not two or three.

But even if you’re using a linear Waterfall approach to project management, it’s a much better idea for everyone to pause to mark the end of a project and review what happened.

Then you can ask yourself and your team: what did we learn?

Why learning after a project matters

All too often, teams just crash from one project to the next without learning anything. And if you don’t learn anything, people will perform in the same way, you’ll encounter the same frustrations, and you’ll get the same results.

Even if the results are great, you could be missing an opportunity to make them even better.

What is an end-of-project review (or wash-up)?

Reflection and review at the end of a project is an idea borrowed from the Agile method of project management. Agile does reviews very well and recommends two separate and very different kinds of reflection.

The aim of the review or wash-up meeting is to look at things such as what did we achieve? Did we do all the things we said we’d do? What’s still in the pipeline? What have we learned that we need to respond to?

It is very task orientated. It’s about what you did, how much progress you made against your plan and how good it was from a technical perspective.

In the agile approach to project management, this is done before you decide what you’re going to do in the next sprint, because it’s a key tool for deciding what you need to do next.

Retrospectives make a team great

The end-of-sprint wash-up includes what you did, by contrast a retrospective is about how you did it. This separation of retrospectives from end-of-sprint reviews is interesting.

Separating out the work from how you did the work in this way is important.

Say what you like about techies – and Agile was originally designed for tech projects – at the end of a project they actually make a huge effort to talk about their experience of working together. They talk about how they communicate. They talk about how they felt, about their interactions, the whole dynamic of the team. They give each other feedback.

It’s very powerful. And useful for project management.

Talking about these things isn’t necessarily easy, but there’s much learning to be had from doing it and it’s a great way to build continuous improvement into your organisation.

We encourage our clients to do them even if it’s not a tech project, because great teams are born from it.

“what makes great teams are the ones who are confident enough to talk about this stuff.”

Why retrospectives aren’t just for tech teams

Retrospectives force you to pause, talk about what could be better, think about ways that you can improve and then apply that to the work going forward.

Then you’re building a culture where feedback happens, where learning happens, where you are iterating processes. It’s intelligent, it’s wise. It’s built in.

How to run a retrospective

Here’s how we structure retrospectives:

1. 1. Start with a check-in to set the tone
   2. Clarify the purpose of the meeting
   3. Explain the process – we suggest using a simple matrix with four questions (see below for more formats you could use):
      • What went well?
      • What could have been better?
      • What questions have you got about it?
      • What recommendations would you make for us to take forward, or practical steps?

A simple structure for running your retrospective

1. Everybody writes their answers to these questions on sticky notes.
2. Put the sticky notes up on a whiteboard or a wall – using quadrants for each question – and gather round them (or use an online whiteboarding tool like Miro or Mural).
3. Do a sorting exercise – look at the clusters and review what it means together. For example, does everyone agree on what went well? If someone says something didn’t go so well, when everyone else thought it did, have a conversation about it.
4. Go through each quadrant in the matrix, have the necessary conversations and answer any questions that people have.
5. Move on to recommendations: what concrete proposals could you implement to try and ease problems that came up?
6. And perhaps within this, there might be subcategories: What about relationship dynamics? Was anything edgy? Was anything particularly good?

Depending on the scenario you might choose to find ways of anonymising this feedback using a whiteboard tool, a form or a survey before the session. Then bringing it out in the meeting.

What could go wrong?

There are so many benefits to introducing retrospectives to your team. However people often have concerns and might avoid trying them because of a fear they’ll feel awkward or it’ll go wrong.

There are probably two worst case scenarios here, and both have silver linings:

1. If people are reticent, don’t contribute much, or stick to safe subjects.
Acknowledge it and suggest that it’s limiting your progress.

Then ask what ideas people have for how you could do things differently next time. So rather than forcing the issue, you can all get involved in how you might be more comfortable with it in future.

If I was leading that group, I might do some homework and check-in with people afterwards to try to find out why it was weird in that session.

2. What if someone gets angry, or upset or has another extreme response?
If this happens you could try…

i. Pause
ii. Ask everyone to write down how they’re feeling in the moment, why they’re feeling that, and what triggered it.
iii. Invite all to agree to listen.
iv. Go round and ask everyone to say what is going on for them using an I statement (so it doesn’t get into blame or attacks.)
v. Then you could explore what questions people have about the different perspectives.
vi. Ask people for proposals for what to do next.
vii. Commit to some of these.

This process might derail the retrospective but it could be an essential diversion, as you’ll end up dealing with an elephant in the room or dissolving a tension that might otherwise block everyone.

As a result you’ll have helped to build trust in the group, and you can always come back to the original conversation at a later date.

It’s worth saying that retrospectives might not be brilliant the first time you do them. They get better with practice. And of course, the more you practice them, other things get better too. It doesn’t mean that difficult things get easy, but at least you’ll have created a forum for raising issues and dealing with them.

Plus it makes it easier to give feedback generally because it normalises it, and that’s helpful in one-to-one situations too.

Retrospective formats: find the one that fits your team

Ways to do a retrospective

As well as “What went well, what could have been better” there are dozens of other ideas and formats – try googling retrospective frameworks. These are our favourites:

1. Start, Stop, Continue
Focus the team on processes, and form new team habits by defining what to start, stop and continue doing.

2. Make the Boat Go Faster
Define the vision for the team and identify any problems along the way.

3. The 4L’s: Liked, Learned, Loathed, Longed For
Look at the current situation from a factual perspective.

It’s good to try different structures, or mix them up. Some people find some of the questions harder than others.

Tips to make retrospectives successful

What’s important

It works best if you allow a good chunk of time to do the retrospective – say a whole morning or afternoon, just spending half an hour on a review meeting won’t dig up the gold.

You don’t necessarily need to use a structured approach to do a retrospective. It’s not disastrous if you don’t use a tool nor follow a predefined format. Those are available to make it easier to have the conversation, to allow you to approach it with some sense of security and safety. This makes it easier for your team to be honest and open.

What’s important is that it’s not about blaming. It’s about learning and talking about whether you need to change anything to make things better, if at all.

Extra tips for running great retrospectives

What to do when you’re all remote

There are several good tools for running retrospectives online. Try Miro, Mural or Retrium. Doing it online is a different experience to doing it in the real world. But in some ways it’s better too.

Make sure someone owns the process

It’s really helpful if someone owns the process. Make a commitment as a group that you are going to do this, and then have somebody be responsible for making it happen. That might be the project manager, the product owner or an external facilitator.

The size of your team doesn’t matter

The bigger your team, the more important it is to do a structured review, though it’s still relevant even with tiny teams. There’s a cliche about small teams: two people work well together, three people is tight but you can handle it. But with four people work starts to fray: you suddenly find the dynamic of four is such that it’s hard to keep everyone aligned and clear without someone feeling like they’re being taken for granted, or being left out of the loop.

So once you start getting bigger than three people, you will find it much easier if you have an agreed structure, stick to it. And if it doesn’t flow, use a tool, learning and iterating as you go.

Think about power dynamics

The boss almost always has the most to say in a review but it’s best if they don’t always run the meeting otherwise they’ll dominate. Instead rotate it amongst the team.

In addition, you want feedback and input from the people that have been most involved in doing the work so you don’t necessarily want the big boss or the sponsor of the project at the review meeting. Have a separate conversation with them.

Would you want to talk about all the things that you messed up in front of the boss? You may not. You just want the boss to be pleased that you got it out the door, she doesn’t need to know the rest of it. But the team needs to know. So keep it casual to get honest feedback.

Real-world examples of project retrospectives

Here’s some examples
At Then Somehow we often operate in very small teams to produce things quickly. When we do reviews, they’re incredibly useful. For example when we were building the first version of AdviceSheet – there were three of us in that team – to stop progress getting stuck it was important that we talked to express the frustration of our different working styles.

For another project last year where we piloted webinars for a large organisation, there were five of us on the team, plus two or three people on the client side. It was really important we had wash-up meetings at the end of each pilot phase. Because the client was there and we had a good relationship, we were able to say things such as: “you guys are incredibly slow at feeding back,” which they acknowledged and accepted.

Because we spoke about it, we were able to come up with actions to improve the process:

• we included the client in the project update emails
• we warned the client when we were going to send them something that we needed a quick response to, in order to avoid bottlenecks.

That was enough to make a big difference.

The long-term value of regular reviews

Your projects will benefit

End of project reviews are a way of bringing learning behaviour into your organisation or a team. It’ll benefit your projects and you can also use them as a way to talk about things that really matter. You’ll build trust, you’ll enable healthy conflict, and you’ll be able to acknowledge the good stuff and the bad stuff. They’re also an opportunity to praise people and thank them.

Then you can move on and do better work together.

How ThenSomehow can help

If you’re struggling with projects and project management, and need some help, get in touch. At ThenSomehow, we have tools and programmes that can help. Get in touch here.

The post Project Management Part 3: After delivery, how to review, learn, and improve appeared first on ThenSomehow.

With few companies successfully completing 100% of their projects, it’s important to run a project in the right way. Here’s some project management steps we recommend that’ll help you keep your project on track once it’s started.

• 1. Consider being Agile
• 2. Review and feedback on the go
• 3. Going off track? Use the GROW method

We go into these below:

1. Consider being agile

What is Agile project management and how is it different from Waterfall?

In project managing part one we introduced a sequential and linear way of running projects – known as the Waterfall Method, and also RACI as a way of being clear on roles and responsibilities.

RACI and Waterfall are traditional ways of running a project. The Agile method is different.

In a traditional project, using the Waterfall Method the whole project is designed upfront in a lot of detail in the initiation document. There is a plan and it’s rolled out. Everyone does the plan. You build in contingencies.

Agile is a very different style of project management. Rather than having a plan that’s decided at the beginning, Agile is responsive to change. In this way the project trajectory is more flexible.

Agile has its origins in the software development world. Its principles were devised by a group of software developers on a skiing trip in 2001 who wanted to uncover a better way of developing software.

These principles can be applied to any project.

What happens in an Agile sprint?

Agile involves creating a project team (the scrum) with a scrum master (usually a scrum member who is responsible for leading Agile principles and protecting the team from distractions). The work is designed in two-week circular sprints. Everything that needs to be done is prioritised within these two-week chunks. The sprint includes:

• Planning
• Implementation – with a daily scrum meeting
• Review
• Retrospective which feeds back into the next sprint

And instead of assigning tasks and roles, in each sprint, team members pick the jobs they’ll do and commit to getting them done. They can help each other out to get everything done by the end date.

Whilst tasks and jobs can’t be changed within the sprint, instead the team work on their tasks for two-weeks then review and create the next two-week plan.

Agile sprints are managed through a big project board (or KANBAN: japanese for signboard) that shows: To Do, Doing, Done.

images courtesy Kings College

Tasks and actions are added to the board and moved along as they progress.

The product owner (often the Project Manager, who is responsible for delivering the project) is responsible for the outcomes, priorities and sprint objectives in each two-week burst.

Team members self-organise. They take on tasks, own those tasks, and commit to completing them within the two weeks.

Because team members own their tasks, they are more engaged in completing them.

But this type of project management requires a lot of daily and honest feedback as a group – using these questions:

• What did you do yesterday?
• What are you doing today?
• Where are you stuck?

If you choose to use an Agile approach to project management you have to incorporate an element of continual review and feedback, so that the project can be managed as it’s going along, as things change.

2. Review and feedback on the go

Whether you choose Agile or a Waterfall/RACI approach, as your project proceeds it’s important to review what’s happening, feedback, and learn.

A three-part feedback process to stay aligned

Borrowing from agile, it’s useful to have 3 stages to a feedback process:

i. Daily check-ins
Every day (or weekly), have a short team meet to discuss progress made, what each member’s current focus is, what are the blocks and what help is needed, and what are the risks or concerns.

ii. End of sprint or milestone review
After a 2-week sprint or a completed project milestone, have a review meeting where you focus on the outputs, discuss what progress has been made, review the issues and opportunities, and work out the next steps.

iii. Retrospective
Run a retrospective with your team every couple of weeks or at the end of a project milestone where you focus on how you are working, look at what you did well, what you could have done better and brainstorm some actions to improve problem areas. The aim is how to improve rather than apportioning blame. All should attend including the product owner.

Using a structured review process like this enables you to iterate: you do something, you learn from it, you change it, you do it again, you learn something new, you change it.

Instead of everything growing along in a steady line and then being finished, the team learns from these feedback loops as they go.

Part of continually improving a project and the way you work on it is to reflect on these things on a regular basis. On your own or as a group.

For example, anybody who wants to become good at something can’t just do stuff over and over again, you have to do something and then reflect on what happened in order to learn and get better at it.

Questions to ask for regular reflection

So as a deliberate project management practice, ask these questions after each period of activity:

• What was good?
• What could be better?
• What did you learn?
• What questions do you have?

If you do this reflection regularly with intention, looking for the gaps in the team’s knowledge and performance, your team will get better and better at their project work, and you’ll continually improve the output.

Otherwise you’re all just doing tasks and you won’t know why you get the results you do.

Asking these questions – what’s working well, what could be better – in a project context helps you make sure you know where you are, and if it’s not going the way you thought it was, you can course correct.

How to get the most out of project meetings

Meetings are a crucial part of implementing a project and also of this feedback process, but most teams find meetings take too long, are unproductive and can bring their energy down.

It’s important that when you have project meetings you cover the right things, empower people, get clarity on where stuff is at, and get the outcomes you need to keep the project moving forward.

In order for meetings to be effective they need careful planning and structuring, and the right people need to be there.

There’s a really great alt meeting format that can help you achieve this:

LOMO is a way of re-organising meetings so that they’re high trust, self-organising, radically honest interactions. LOMO uses templates and canvases to make meetings safe and to help access a fast, agile, self-responsible culture.

LOMO is designed to give:

• Total clarity about outcomes of meeting.
• Power given to the data, including each person’s unique insight.
• Easy, logical techniques that make information sharing and decision making up to 5 times faster.
• Low preparation and no post-write up.
• Each person’s true insight is skillfully sought – so risks are exposed sooner.

Here’s a link to the LOMO Meetings Toolkit.

3. Going off track? Use the GROW method to solve problems

How the GROW model helps with project issues

Once you start a project, things inevitably change. If things go off kilter, you hit a bump in the road, something didn’t happen in the way you expected or it’s all behind schedule, you need to review what’s going on and review your project management options.

A way to solve the problems that come up is to use the GROW method.

Originally designed as a coaching tool, GROW is an acronym for the four stages in problem solving:

• G – (Goal) Always start with your goal and what you want to achieve, then decide what ‘solved’ looks like.
• R – (Reality) Next explore the reality of the project. Where is it now and what is actually going on?
• O – (Options) Then brainstorm options to solve the problem, ie what could be done now. Select the best options and…
• W – (What Will you do) Decide what to do and create an action plan.

The first step – the goal you want to achieve – is crucial. It is important to clearly identify the aim, define the mission and understand what success looks like.

As an example, if your aim (goal) is to travel and do something different, but you’re not quite sure where or what, success is a decision of where to go. The next step is to determine where in reality you are at now: what’s going on? How much money do you have? What about the children? What about your current home? Usually when talking about the reality you start to come up with some options of what you could do: you could go off in a campervan, you could go to India, you could move to Spain… these are your options. The last stage is to choose what you will do and work out the next steps to make it happen.

As we said at the start few companies complete projects 100% successfully, but by following these guidelines, you’ve got more chance of that happening.

Wrapping up: Using these tools to steer your project to success

Using these tools will help you stay on track and course correct to successful completion.

In our next blog on this topic: we take a look at what to do when the project is finished.

How ThenSomehow can help

If you’re struggling with projects and need some help with them, get in touch. At ThenSomehow, we have tools and programmes that can help. Get in touch here.

The post Project Management Part 2: How to Keep Your Project on Track During Delivery appeared first on ThenSomehow.

Project management is a difficult undertaking for any team. Essential tasks like ensuring the right resources are available, assigning responsibilities, spotting potential risks, and proper communication can be nerve-wracking and it’s not surprising if something or other gets forgotten and falls off the radar.

In fact, it turns out that only 2.5% of companies successfully complete 100% of their projects.

Why is this? Mainly because unexpected obstacles or events pop-up to derail and hamper the progress of the overall project.

But also because good project managers don’t always have team members who understand project management or who can see how and why everything fits together.

A real-world project management issue

Here’s a live example:

We’d been working with a team in a large organisation who had a few holes in their project management process, especially around communication.

The person in charge of projects wasn’t hearing about the problems that were happening until it was too late, and various things went wrong:

• There was a lot of repetition and inconsistencies
• Communication was not going to the right people
• Teams in different silos did not understand the relative importance of timelines
• One manager wasn’t updating on a project until very late in the day
• Things weren’t checked before they were sent out

It caused a lot of headaches.

How we helped the team fix their process

To help them solve this, we worked with the whole team to design the best project management format for them – because they had all been engaged in the design of it, they all understood the necessity of using it. By the end so many decisions were made, agreed, and had champions to ensure the roll out, it worked really well.

This is what we learned: the best way to manage projects is communication, communication, communication.

If you have issues with project management, it’s worth looking at how you run projects to make sure the right steps are being taken in the right order, people know what’s going on, and issues are resolved in a timely manner to keep the project on track.

Partly this is about setting the project up in the right way, making sure everyone is on board at the get-go, and that you can foresee potential risks.

The four phases of project management

There are usually 4 phases in managing a project – which make up the path that takes your project from beginning to end:

• 1. Initiation
• 2. Planning
• 3. Execution
• 4. Closure

(sometimes there’s a 5th – monitoring)

The stages in managing a project

A three-part guide to better project outcomes

With so much riding on project management, we’ve put together a three-part guide to make sure your projects go well.

• Part one: Things to do before you start a project
• Part Two: Things to do during the project
• Part Three: What to do after a project is finished

Read part one below, parts two and three are in separate blog posts.
——

Project Management Part 1: Things to do before you start a project

There are six things you need to do before you start a project.

1. Ensure you have a common language

When you talk about projects and project management, make sure your team shares a common language so that when you use a specific word, everyone knows what you’re talking about.

For example, are you all clear on what these mean:

• Project
• Manifesto/Mission statement
• Client
• Stakeholder
• Audience

As a test of this, does everyone in your team know the difference between an audience and a stakeholder?
(fyi An audience usually means a receiver of one-way messages and information, whereas stakeholders have something to gain or lose, and can impact an organisation by what they do. Stakeholders include employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders, NGOs, regulators, policy-makers and the general public.)

What terms do you use?

What you’ll find is that not everyone shares the same understanding of these words, so create a shared glossary of terms with definitions of what it means in your organisation, so that there’s no misunderstanding.

Creating the glossary as an exercise with your team will help you uncover assumptions that you didn’t know you’re making. Some things are very obvious to some people but they’re not to others, and if you’re not using the exact same words, then it’s not obvious to everyone what’s meant.

Check in with your team members from time to time during the project to make sure they know what you mean.

2. Get your team on the same page

Use the Team Canvas to get everyone on the same page

Before you start the project make sure everyone is aligned, conflicts are resolved, and you have a productive culture.

Try using the Team Canvas tool (pictured) – to work out where you’re all at, what you all want out of the project on a personal level and on a team level, what skills you’re all bringing to the party, and what the purpose of the project is, so that you’ve got alignment and everybody is on the same page.

3. Work out the project plan

A standard approach to working out the project plan is to use the Waterfall model. (Read about another way to manage projects – Agile – in Project Management part two.)

The Waterfall model has five phases that follow in a strict linear order, where one phase can’t begin until the previous phase has been completed:

The Waterfall model has five phases

1. Requirements
   – gather everything needed to initiate the project (see below)
2. Design
   – breakdown the tasks and create the schedule (see below)
3. Implementation
   – complete the tasks.
4. Verification
   – the customer reviews the product to make sure that it meets the requirements.
5. Maintenance
   – fix any problems and errors that come up.

We cover the first three of these steps below. The remaining steps are covered in the next two blog posts.

i. Requirements Phase

Create a Project Initiation Document

How do you initiate a project? A Project Initiation Document is a way to provide the foundation for the project, and typically includes goals, constraints, stakeholders, risks, sign off and more.

If you don’t have a standard format, or even if you do, try designing a Project Initiation Document using CPORT as a structure – it’s a good starting point. CPORT stands for:

• The Context
• The Purpose
• The Outcome
• The Resources
• The Time

Read more about CPORT here, a key part of it is the critical questions that help you identify the risk factors: ie ‘what if X happens, what if Y happens…’

Pay particular attention to what comes up when you ask these questions and make sure you look at the risks and what might go wrong first, and definitely as part of the process of starting the Project.

ii. Design phase

a. Map out all the project steps at the start

The next step is to map out all the steps and actions involved in completing the project before you start. This is the design phase.

Woking on the design phase as a group gets it out of everyone’s heads and makes it visible: everyone will understand the stages involved, see where overlaps are, and where the blocks might be.

We use a Project Mapping tool for this, writing each action on a blank card to map what happens at each stage, and what needs to happen.

We use a Project Mapping tool to map all stages in a project

b. Visualise your project using a timeline – to show what needs to happen when

Put all the project actions from the mapping exercise on a timeline. What will become clear to everyone when you do this are the things that need thinking about earlier on in the project, so you can plan them in to make sure there’s no surprises or spanners-in-the-works later on, and the critical dependencies – the things that must happen in the right order or the project will derail.

Many people associate GANTT charts with projects. They can be really useful though not every project needs one. So before you do a Gantt Chart, it’s really useful to map the project out on a rough timeline with the team first, so that everyone gets to chip in and share what matters.

For each project step, interrogate the timeline working backwards from the delivery date, to make sure you have identified what needs to happen when, how long are things going to take, and where the inefficiencies or holes are.

It may unearth more problems you might have, in how you start projects and where they need to be more clear right at the beginning, and what the purpose of things are.

You’ll end up with a project map in front of you.

c. Use a Gantt chart to improve planning

A Gantt Chart illustrates a project schedule – use if needed

If your project warrants it, build a Gantt Chart – a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule – allocating dates and times.

When working on this with one client, we created a version on paper together first. This helped everyone see what needed to happen when, and the project managers gained respect as other team members understood the necessity and complexity of a Gantt chart.

You don’t necessarily need to do this as a group, but if you do, then everyone can see what’s involved – not only the Project Manager who might otherwise only be able to do it from their own point of view.

A Gantt Chart will show up helpful stuff, like for example, if the data department are saying they need to know something earlier on – then you can map the project out in a way that’s more realistic to complete.

In another example, we used it for a team who are based in different locations. We mapped out how they communicate as a group – what normally happens, when, and who needs to know. By doing this they worked out new ways of communicating who was doing what, and what stages different bits of their projects were at.

As part of this process it’s important to work out how you centralise communication. You might end up using a shared calendar that everyone has access to, and colour coding it so the whole team can know what’s going on and see where things are at.

d. Clarify team roles with a RACI chart

Once all the tasks involved in a project are put on a timeline, next look at roles and responsibilities: who’s going to be doing what? Who reports to who?

We use a RACI chart for this which shows: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed.

How to do this:
1. Create a Matrix on a big sheet of paper
2. Put all the Tasks down one side,
3. Put the Names of everyone involved in the project team along the top,
4. Using post-it notes assign the actions and responsibilities to each task.

Often the Project Manager will do this, and allocate who is going to be responsible, accountable, consulted and informed:

• Responsible (R)– who is actually doing it?
  eg carrying out the work, writing the report, organising the event, visiting the clients etc. 
• Accountable (A) – who owns the project and is delegating the task to the person who’s responsible?
  If you’re accountable, your head is on the line, it’s your job, but you are not necessarily doing the actual work ie a project manager. 
• Consulted (C) – whose input is important for the project? 
• Informed (I) – who needs to be told what’s going on?

Use a RACI chart to get clear on roles and responsibilities

What’s important when assigning roles and responsibilities

Make sure someone is accountable for each task.

Look to see whether too many people are accountable for some tasks, or too many people are being consulted, working out whether every task is covered, but not too heavily covered.

It’s good if everybody can see this process. It should be part of the Project Initiation Document.

Be clear on who’s consulted and who’s informed, and be clear on what the responsibilities mean – ie what does being accountable for something mean?

Make sure people know the difference between those things – so when they talk, everyone will know what’s meant when someone says, “we’ve got to consult so and so.”

In conclusion

Project management is all about clarity and communication across the whole team at the start, during the project and at the end.

So once you’re clear on who’s doing what and when at the start, when you’ve mapped out all the steps and your team are on the same page, take a look at Project Management Part 2: Things to do during the project.

If you’re struggling with projects and everyone is doing things differently and inconsistently, and need some help, get in touch. At Then Somehow, we have tools and programmes that are good at helping your team agree a consistent approach. Get in touch here.

The post Project Management – 3 steps to ensure your projects are successful appeared first on ThenSomehow.

She says “When not working or scouting, I am a volunteer for Shout 85258, a text line for anyone who is in crisis no matter how big or small.”

Anna loves working for Shout 85258 so much that she wrote to us about her experience because she says, it shows how remote work can be done really well. Shout developed their model in a pre-Covid world, consciously designing an operating model to support a distributed, volunteer workforce who work remotely.

Why Shout’s remote working model is a great example

It’s a great read for managers and team leaders, full of ideas you could consider as you think about how to manage remote and blended teams in a post-Covid world.

It’s clear that we all need to look for new ways to work in teams. Many of us have been operating on the basis that lockdown was a temporary blip. Let’s hope so. However, that blip is likely to lead to permanent changes in working patterns that will require different operating models.

The words are Anna’s, though we’ve added some helpful headings to help you think about how you might adapt some of the ideas for remote work in your team:

“I wanted to share how the managers and leaders at Shout treat us, as I feel it is one of the best and most supportive organisations I have ever worked with, especially when remote working.

The whole setup is geared towards everyone’s positive wellbeing and mental health, and how this can impact our work:

How Shout makes remote work, work

One-on-one coaching supports remote employees

During our training for Shout, we’re assigned a Coach who stays with us throughout our training and beyond, and we can email or text them anytime.

Following a particularly tough conversation, for example, where the texter expressed an imminent risk of suicide and an active rescue had to be initiated with the emergency services, my Coach contacted me to see how I was and if I wanted to talk.

Throughout lockdown, my Coach emailed me several times, checking in to see how I was and if there was anything she could do to support me.

This naturally creates a welcoming and supportive environment and professional friendship.

Supervisors provide real-time remote support

Every time we log on for a shift, we also have a Supervisor assigned to us – we can talk to them whenever we want. They always check in with us, when we log in and out, and when we start a conversation with a texter.

If a conversation is dragging, if we’re stuck as to how to support the texter, or if it is a high-risk conversation i.e. imminent suicide, they are available for advice, guidance or to call the emergency services if required.

This is all done in a very positive way: the language they use is empowering and supportive.

Using chat platforms to enable peer support for remote workers

Along with our Supervisor, when we‘re on shift, we can also text chat with other crisis volunteers – there are three chat sections:

• Random – any topic is discussed, usually what we’re eating!
• Support – if we would like some advice about how to handle a texter or where to find a signpost (we have access to a bank of signposts to give to texters if required).
• Debrief – if we’ve had a tough conversation with a texter, we can chat here.

All these chat facilities are actively used. Everyone is so supportive. It is an amazing feeling. The fact that we can talk to other volunteers can be a welcome relief during some conversations.

A culture of normalised feedback helps to support staff

We also have a private profile page. The Supervisors can leave feedback here – it is used as encouragement and is very supportive. They may send a message or comment after the first shift… after a particularly tough conversation… anytime.

When a conversation with a texter closes, the texter is also asked to complete a short questionnaire. Any comments they make are posted to our profile page. These comments are such a boost and make me feel so proud.

Regular communications and recognition build loyalty

A weekly newsletter is sent out which includes:

• Achievements (depending on how many conversations you’ve had, you go up a level, when you go up a level, your name is listed.)
• Texter feedback.
• Signposts.
• Relevant information and news.

This keeps us fully in the loop and makes us feel involved.

Involving remote staff in decision-making and change

Annual surveys are carried out and action is taken based on our responses. We, as volunteers, are involved in every process and actively listened to.

Providing online learning opportunities and community

We have a learning platform that has expanded as a result of this. We now have access to free online courses and there are numerous online groups we can join e.g. book / running/ walking/ local ‘meet-ups’.

Self-care is actively discussed and promoted

Self-care is a BIG thing: actively discussed and promoted.

Celebrating success and promoting in-person meetups

An annual in-person meet up is held in London for free. William and Kate came to last year’s one. There were talks, workshops and the chance to meet other volunteers. There is a group of us who live locally who have been meeting for a while. We are now great friends, they have been a huge support.

Focusing on well-being improves remote worker retention

Shout asks that volunteers complete 200 hours of volunteering. It is a testament to the company that 95% of volunteers stay way beyond this.

Overall, Shout empowers, listens and supports their volunteers, especially with remote work, this is evident in their actions, not just their words or policies.

Making remote work, work: the importance of soft skills

[Whether for teams of volunteers or teams in the workplace]… I think it boils down to the same thing: to have effective teams, people need to feel empowered to get on with their work and feel they are listened to, supported and cared about.

These may be the soft skills of business but without them, can a team really be effective?”

Shout 85258 is a free, confidential, 24/7 text-messaging support service for anyone who is struggling to cope. As a digital service, Shout 85258 has become increasingly critical when people are remote working, being one of the mental health support services with lots of experience of this new way of working.

If you’re interested in volunteering contact them at giveusashout.org

If you need some help making remote work better – get in touch, at Then Somehow we help you build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your leadership team perform better, get in touch here.

The post Shout about remote work: how to build an effective remote team appeared first on ThenSomehow.

1. A clear, dedicated workspace to set boundaries.
2. The Circles of Influence to focus on what you can control.
3. The Pomodoro Technique to beat distractions.
4. Calendar best practice to structure your day.
5. A marathon mindset to avoid burnout.

Why remote and hybrid work is a challenge

The challenge of working from home is how you and your team adjust to this way of working – whether that’s remote or hybrid working – and how you manage your focus and attention.

Everybody’s different, right? Some of your teammates will love the opportunity to work from home. They prefer working on their own and love the freedom from distractions and the ability to focus that working from home provides.

Meanwhile, other people find remote working desperately lonely. When much of your social interaction comes from work colleagues, and you can’t see any of them in person, isolation can be quite alarming.

Whichever group your colleagues fall into, plenty of people have been wondering if they’re doing their job properly and feeling anxious about that.

This may be because they can’t concentrate or keep getting distracted.

Practical ways to stay focused when working from home

Here are some tips for staying focussed and positive whilst working from home to use and share with your team.

1. Set up a clear, dedicated workspace

First of all, make sure your space is clear and organised. It’s hard to focus if your desk is messy or covered in coffee cups, food wrappers, or papers. A tidy workspace makes it easier to be productive, find the things you need, and finish tasks.

Try to create a dedicated workspace that’s separate from your living space. Where such luxury is impossible, introduce some ritual to the start and end of your work time. Take a few minutes to turn your space into a workspace. Rearrange the furniture, set up your equipment, make a tea or coffee in your work mug. Put on your work clothes. At the end of the day, log off, put away your laptop or put a cover over your computer. Tidy your work stuff away, reset the room. Perhaps transition by going for a walk.

Turns out there may be a tiny benefit to the daily commute.

It’s important to have boundaries. Families can impose this on you. Even so, it’s all too easy to carry on or return to work for too long in the evening. Where boundaries are fluid, try to make them fixed. Stop work at the agreed time, go and do something else. We need rest, downtime: more than just work in our lives

2. Focus on what you can control – and let go of the rest

We all have to adapt to what the reality is. You cannot change the fact this situation is happening.

So the best strategy is to control what you can control, accept what you can’t, and influence what you can where it’s appropriate.

And then you can make the best of what you’ve got.

For example, you can’t change the fact that your colleagues might have children at home. But you can adapt to it.

You can be flexible and be generous when other people are unable to contribute as much as you can.

You can not feel guilty when you can’t contribute as much as usual.

You can reduce media consumption if it’s making you feel bad. (Just don’t look at it.)

You can influence things by making sure that you redistribute the work so that the most important things get covered.

You can influence things by agreeing with your team that there are things you are not going to do – because you no longer have the capacity to do them – and put them on the back burner instead.

On the flip side, you cannot influence the lockdown. So accept that. You cannot influence queues at supermarkets, but you can get your neighbours to go shopping if you’re isolated, or you can go and help your neighbours if they need it.

You can control your personal budget. Or at least reduce your outgoings wherever you can, if you are concerned about finances. You can investigate mortgage holidays or speak to your landlord.

So let go of all of the ideas about what you should be doing. Instead, focus on what you can influence and what you can control.

This is based on Stephen Covey’s Circles of Influence – we have a tool for it which is a great way to host this kind of conversation with your team.

If you’d like to explore this further, have a look at our post on Circles of influence for a free worksheet you can use. (We also run remote team workshops on this – details here.)

3. Use the Pomodoro Technique to beat distraction

This is a great tip if you need to get focussed and you can’t.

The Pomodoro technique is a time management tool developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. Originally designed for students, it’s very effective for any kind of work. You break your work down into short periods separated by breaks. Each period is known as a Pomodoro, from the Italian for ‘tomato’, after the tomato-shaped timer that Cirillo used as a student.

There are 4 steps:

1. Decide on the task
2. Use a timer to get focused on your work, especially the work you are avoiding!
3. Set the timer for 25 mins – this is the optimum time to use your focused brain (prefrontal cortex) which is where you do all your conscious thinking. It tires easily and pushing on can mean you start making mistakes.
4. After 25 minutes, take a short break to refresh, and then get back at it.

You can use shorter timed periods if you really hate or are bored by the task eg Moyra on our team has a 10-minute family tidy. “It’s very effective,” she says.

Using a timer means you can really focus because you don’t have to worry about the time passing.

How to use the Technique:

1. Work for 25 mins
2. Take a 5 min break (time all your breaks)
3. Work for 25 mins
4. Take a 5 min break
5. Work for 25 mins
6. Take a longer break

4. Structure your day using your calendar

Most people need structure to give them a sense of control. The best way to create structure in your day is by using your calendar.

The best practice for using your calendar is to:

• write very clear defined tasks
• structure your day into short chunks that you can move around when things don’t go as planned. It’s a way of managing expectations – yours and others.

So how do you structure your day?

As a manager, when you’re thinking about creating a structure that works for you, your family and your day, at the moment that might mean that you are only available for three hours a day instead of seven or eight.

(Don’t feel guilty, remember, you have to accept the reality of where you’re at – it takes a village to raise a child, they’re all our responsibility.)

Good practice is to build this into your calendar, and let other people see when you’re available (make sure your calendar is shared with your team).

The flip side of that is to encourage your team to put in their calendars when they’re available too.

This is one of the ways you can control what you can control. You cannot control what other people do, but you can influence them.

So make sure you use your calendar to create clarity and structure in your work, and how you communicate and encourage your team to do the same.

5. Slow down — it’s a marathon, not a sprint

Remember this is a marathon, not a sprint. There’s a wonderful blog post by assistant professor Aisha Ahmad, University of Toronto for more on this. My favourite quote: If you start off running too fast and try to pretend that everything can carry on as normal, you’ll be vomiting on your shoes within the first five miles.

If you’re feeling a rising sense of nausea over all of this, slow it down and focus on what you can do.

Stay well.

Need support for your team’s focus and wellbeing?

If you’d like help with issues like this, at Then Somehow we help you build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your organisation perform better, get in touch here.

The post How to focus when working from home appeared first on ThenSomehow.