Main topics
- What had to change in your company? How did you handle that?
- What are you still working on?
- Is fatigue setting in? How do you keep the energy up and focus on that one north star?
- Are you doing scenario planning or forecasting at the moment?
- How are you measuring what success looks like now?
- Short-term goals and success in a marathon of insecurity
- What are the things that youâve had to deal with that you didnât predict?
- Response frameworks
- Is that something youâve built in your company?
- Something youâve been considering?
- Have people asked for one?
- What did people want to know about most?
- If you can name one learning from this, what would it be?
- What is your silver lining through this all?
Meeting notes
Hello world! :)
Marta @ Qatalog:
- Fairly small team, pre-launch
- Used to working with shared documents that outline everyoneâs goals and what theyâre working on anyway
- Before: Monday team meeting with what everyone wants to do for the week; then Friday check-in on whatâs happened
- What changed: added a daily 11am check-in on top of the Mon/Fri meetings. Scheduled for 30mins but lasts shorter depending on how much there is to share
- Procrastination is tricky to deal with
- Good opportunity to put all the information that usually lives in our heads on paper (e.g. for new joiners to use) - e.g. write down what youâre doing from ops side, etc.
- Daily Slackbot checkin (Geekbot) on whatâs everyone worked on the day
Leo @ Cuvva
- Rolled out WFH earlier than gov suggestion
- Has 24/7 support team so used to working remotely anyway
- Nice to see how customer support was supporting engineers and everyone else whoâre not used to working from home - super positive vibe
- Initially lots of hope/positivity
- Then going through furloughing process
- Operations hardly hit; first asked for volunteers to furlough. Needed to choose a couple of people who didnât volunteer - tough decision.
- Lots of questions on whoâs in what situation - furloughed, laid off, whatâs happening
- Ops role now focused more on people and wellbeing
- In process to rolling out Lattice (performance tool)
- Having an update from every individual in the company is really good; gives more perspective on what everyoneâs working on
- Quiz at 5pm every day that the whole company is free to join
- Discord (?) Slack - e.g. âcoffee machineâ area etc. that makes work more social
- Team goals were successfully set before pandemic so itâs now good to have them to work towards
Fun stuff:
- Google Hangout named by local pub/coffee shop to which people can always jump in
- Daily challenge/task each day (e.g. sharing baby or pet pictures, piece of art in their home) - allowing to maintain micro-interactions that you normally have in the office
- How do we make daily challenges as a long-term engagement?
- Important to keep everyone laughing and continue getting to know your colleagues
- Pub hangouts: tell everyone what theyâre drinking, tell a highlight from the week, do quiz, etc.
- Random scavenger hunt e.g. âfind a word and take a picture of itâ
- Have one person share trivia or something that theyâre interested in - it changes the mood quite a bit from the COVID topic. Nice to hear a different topic!
On furloughing:
- Interestingly this isnât even in UK employment law and more common in the US
- Furloughing: having never done it before, itâs always better to start it âsofterâ but it will remain challenging. How to keep in touch with the people who have been furloughed?
- Furloughing: get as many people on the call as possible - possible to be more forthcoming, have made the process more smoother, if more information was given before the process - organise FAQs, etc.
- COVID response team that meets 3 times a week depending on how the situation is changing. Send any updates to everyone straight after the meeting (e.g. forecasts).
- Important to have as much communication/transparency as possible. Even if itâs hard info to digest, itâs better to have it rather than not have it.
- Even if itâs not âgoodâ certainty, itâs still better for your team to have.
- What do you do with people whoâve been furloughed? Do you encourage them to be involved in certain things or do you just leave them be? Are they allowed to if they do that, whatâs the criteria? What does count as work and what doesnât?
- Putting a calendar together for those furloughed.
- Assumption that it might be similar to parental leave: have keep-in-touch days, email every now and then with company updates
- Should people still continue to have access to their work email/Slack? E.g. limit to social channels only on Slack, still access to email (but not sure if itâs right).
Crisis management:
- Lots of people havenât yet recognised that theyâre in a crisis. There are different level of crisis, and not many know how theyâre going react/what the expectations should be of what they can achieve in the first week. Worth sharing the article (Scott will send) with the rest of the team.
- Initially the expectation is that itâs BAU but everything else should continue as normal. Itâs not realistic.
- Itâs a marathon, not a sprint. Mindshift that itâs not gonna be 2-3 weeks but rather at least a couple of months.
Forecasting:
- Whatâs your runway? How much can you flex your marketing budget? How do you think about furloughing?
- Just closely monitoring the situation now and will be adjusting in the coming weeks; try to play to our strengths
- Hiring paused
- Weekly meeting to keep an eye on situation and reassess quickly
Taking care of your team:
- Recognising as an organisation that the personal and professional is going to be completely blurred for the time being.
- Put the structure in place first so that you can support your team
- Empowering line managers to speak with their teams; recognise that everyoneâs gonna be in a different place (e.g. at home struggling with kids, in financial trouble, etc.)
- Organising a financial resilience coaching. Sometimes enough just to give them a website.
- Really important: donât give advice, just facilitate a conversation (e.g. what it means to prepare your home and your family for a potential civil unrest; e.g. what are you escape routes, etc.). Itâs not about giving advice because people/situations are so different. Donât assume that someone might know something.
- What will keep people from their productivity is everything that theyâve got going on in the background (e.g. financial situation, wellbeing, family, etc.) Important to acknowledge the situation all the time.
Main take-aways:
- Companies that manage to use the situation as a major culture shift are going to survive. If you didnât have trust before, you realise now that itâs not easy to keep going through this situation. However, if you learn how to trust each other more, what doesnât break you makes you stronger
- Company culture makes so much ground; selflessness is emerging
- The words and communication of the leadership means SO MUCH. The trust in leadership is so important. By saying certain things/doing certain actions you can achieve so much. You have to spell out exactly what you mean. You canât expect that people are just going to understand.
- Recognise that your employee is a whole person (personal + professional).
- Having âagile organisationâ in place is useful, including âdomain ownersâ (will enable lower level employees to be in charge if theyâre normally looking after this particular area)
- Knowing where you are financially all the way throughout is so important - will allow you to know whatâs the situation is at any point in time.
- Recognising that this is a global crisis. No precedent - this hasnât happened before; everyoneâs new to this.
- Important to keep sane and level-headed!
- Excited to keep all the fun things in place even in this situation
- Things can change really fast and youâve got to be ready! Really good stress-test how resilient we are as a company
- All misunderstandings on email/Slack can be resolved via phone conversation :)
- Having autonomy as a value in organisation is incredibly helpful at this time
- Amazing to see how well people perform when thereâs a need (comparison to 5-people startup and early days to current situation)
- Personal and professional development is 10-fold
- What are the opportunities that come out of this? We will stop the way that we used to do the work and look for the new ways. Maybe the opportunities arenât there yet but itâs about building the relationships and infrastructure in place; getting ready and into the right position as you now can have the time. Looking towards the future.
Tools:
- Jackbox (good for games) + kahoot.io
- www.Geekbot.com
- Video messages? (leo)
- Reminder to Sit up straight (keep it open in a tab) & PostureMinder
- Zoom Breakout Rooms - so you can chat in smaller teams on the same conversation
- Donut - meet your colleagues; collaboration tool
COVID-related Volunteering opportunities:
Reading:
- Article on stages of crisis recognition (Scott)
- The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever -Michael Bungay Stanier
ACTION:
- Can we share more information on furloughing - what are the guidelines, can they volunteer, can they stay involved in the company, wth is going on? Whatâs allowed/not allowed? How do we provide guidance around volunteering that they can do etc?
- Are there any external partners to coach internal teams e.g. on the financial resilience, wellbeing (Sanctus)
- Sharing random stuff in Ops Stories just for fun! 5 mins trivia, etc.
- Doing the meetups more regularly!
- Organise another catchup on COVID: Looking into the future as Ops Manager!
- Any bots, tech, etc. for dummies :D that we can share to enhance the virtual component of the work
- Ops Stories members whoâre currently looking for work to help other with short projects if thereâs a need so that the brain isnât idle - thereâs only so many fiction books you can read!
- Scott to tell us more about crisis management :)
- Marta to tell us more about tools that companies are using!