A user manual to me: Covid-19 edition

COVID-19 has forced us to work differently — many have been forced into home offices, without supports like childcare, and with new anxieties and stress. Still, for many, we have to continue working. I’ve adapted a tool that has been helpful for our teams, the “User Manual to Me,” for our new reality.

One of the most important things we do at The Ontario Digital Service is setting up our multidisciplinary teams for success. Multidisciplinary teams come with multiple work styles, personalities and goals. One of the ways I love how we set up a team is through “User Manual to Me”. This work was introduced to us by Cassie Robinson. Ivar Kroghrud, a feedback strategist, was interviewed by the New York Times on his method of team building through user guides. Adam Grant talks about creating them on his podcast Work/Life.

User manuals are powerful tools for introspection about how you want to collaborate, build together, and where you struggle. While the first step is introspective, they are also intended to be shared with your team to help them work with you.

As everyone transitions to distributed teams for Covid-19, I think there is a tremendous opportunity to reset your team. But, there are additional challenges and stresses your team are struggling through, unique to this period in time. To address this, I suggest using the COVID-19 edition of the User Manual to Me, which I have adapted from Cassie Robinson’s original user manual.

I adapted Cassie Robinson’s original user manual and built a Covid-19 edition.

Download User manual to me: Covid-19 edition HERE

I recommend sharing the template and your user manual with your staff ahead of time and the template and host a meeting to allow staff to talk through their manuals.

This is intended to be a place to begin. Teamwork is an ongoing dialogue.