Building a team and becoming a team remotely
While Appcent Design was being established, the pandemic had become a part of our lives and we had become accustomed to the concept we call the “new normal”. Our perspective had changed from “We work together in the office even after a pandemic ends” to “Everything is working perfectly remotely”.
All companies were talking about the changes in the pandemic period and how the teams were keeping up with the new working model. But the problem at hand was very different. We had to build a team from scratch and start working with that team. More importantly, the team had to get used to each other and be motivated.
☕ Missing the breaks
The hiring processes were completed and the team that we can now call the core team started to work together. In the first days, we were talking about business and the only socializing we had was through projects. But then we realized that the biggest disadvantage of not having an office is not working efficiency or communicating online-only, the biggest disadvantage is the lack of coffee breaks in the office and socializing that happens outside of work. Although this shortcoming may seem small, it is actually the biggest source of cohesion and the loss of motivation for the team. Thus, our weekly coffee breaks began. Coffee breaks had only one rule: no business talk. In these conversations, we discussed the movies we watched, the food we tried, our likes and dislikes. We realized that these are our longest meetings…
🚀 Team Critics
The other biggest shortcoming of a design team working remotely is that everyone stays on their own project and the review from other perspectives is limited. The biggest problem designers face, especially in long-running projects, is blindness and loss of creativity. In projects carried out in the office, a 5-minute discussion during a coffee break or a small suggestion from your friend sitting next to you are interactions that incredibly expand your horizon and provide enlightenment. At that time, we said that we should also hold meetings to share our projects. Thus, we started to hold team-critic meetings. At these meetings, everyone shows their projects and gets the team’s opinion if there are design problems that they can’t solve on their own.
👩🏻🏫 Learn by Teaching
The pandemic process continues and our team working from many different areas of Turkey continues to improve itself in the remote working process. One of our new approaches recently has been the pieces of training we will give each other. In these meetings, an “instructor” will be selected from among us every month and this person will convey to us a new design book he has just read, a newly learned concept, or a method. Because we all know that the best way to learn is to teach.
We started remotely as a team, and we were all able to meet face-to-face only once in the 1 year that Appcent Design was founded. But when we met, we realized that we are not strangers to each other at all. This process showed us that we can be a team even if we are far away.
Happy new year Appcent Design family!
