Love and documentation in the time of coronavirus

My first week as a new product manager coincided with a global crisis — lessons learned

I took a secondment as product manager for vic.gov.au the week coronavirus restrictions hit Victoria.

My first Friday night was spent building a form and web page to help people who had lost their job register for employment and volunteer opportunities. 20,000 people submitted in 2 days. One of my best friends was one of them.

My 6-year-old nephew, whose birthday lunch I was attending (back when those were still allowed) told me ‘he really hated email.’ I was grateful to have a job.

I nearly didn’t write this blog. It felt self-indulgent at a time like this. But on my first quiet night in weeks, I happened to read an article by Paul Theroux on the importance of bearing witness to these types of life changing events.

“In times of crisis we should all be diarists and documentarians. We’re bound to wail and complain, but it’s also useful to record the particularities of our plight. ”

What was our role?

Our Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) had already been dealing with intense workload for weeks. They continue to remain the key information source for health.

As the response became broader than just health information we found out vic.gov.au would be the hub for coronavirus content and advertising campaigns. Later we launched the online entertainment and wellbeing platform Victoria Together in the space of a week.

I wrote my first product strategy in 2 hours the day after I found out about our coronavirus ‘hub’.

So here is what I can share about working with a team in a crisis, particularly when your people are working remotely.

Lesson 1: it’s important to stop and plan

At first the product strategy was a quick way to get my team up to speed. Then it was something to share with other departments as they started to request using our platform to host their own coronavirus resources. Eventually it became a way to brief senior executives on what we thought was the strategic intent of what we were producing and align expectations.

After a week it evolved to highlight our key phases and what we wanted to achieve for each one.

Lesson 2: don’t stop collaborating

Government loves a bit of chain of command. We fall back on it in a crisis. It means we all miss the why of content creation and requests to change.

Even though we were frantic we had a kick-off meeting to agree on ways of working. We added everyone we could think of; service design, behavioural insights, data specialists, engagement specialists. Anyone who would help us design the best product possible.

As much as possible we arranged Skype meetings to work through approvals rather than hearing third-hand that someone ‘didn’t like something.’

I kept hearing people were scared to call me because I was busy. I encouraged everyone to call me and each other. It saved time and cut down on confusion. Rather than a long back and forth on Slack we could sort something out in 2 minutes on the phone. It also helped us feel more connected to hear each other’s voice.

We had 2 of our team train at DHHS so we could support them with updates and share the load. This meant we could keep health content in other languages on their site and keep to the strategy.

As soon as possible we went back to our model of distributed authoring so content owners could update content directly. This cut down on miscommunication, saving time and helping our content owners feel empowered in a time when everyone was feeling a loss of control.

Lesson 3: be proactive

When you’re at the coalface you’ll often see the problems and the solutions before others do. It’s easy to find a problem. There are a million in a crisis. But if you can create a solution and present it up, you’re more likely to get a green light. In the early days it was simple things like adding an alert to our events calendar to check if events are on with organisers.

Later, it meant when we got less than 24-hours notice to update the hub to align with a new advertising strategy, we had a well-researched prototype based on data and user needs research ready to go. All we had to do was adapt the prototype to align with the new campaign assets and objectives and it was done. We actually had hours to spare on our deadline without working into the early hours of the morning.

Lesson 4: Be prepared to feel incompetent. And then triple your communication

One of the main strengths people tell me I have is that I can explain things simply and clearly. The move to a crisis situation combined with working remotely killed my superpower.

I started off talking things through and then writing them down so they were as clear as possible. I finished by explaining things over, and over, and over again. If I wasn’t on the phone at least 80 per cent of the day then I wasn’t on the phone enough. As an introvert it was exhausting but it was necessary.

Daily stand-ups became invaluable as an indicator that people weren’t focussing on the things I expected. Asking questions also became more important than ever. It might seem odd to ask someone ‘Can you tell me what I’ve asked you to do?’ but you know someone understands you if they can repeat back what you’ve requested.

Lesson 5: look after your people

One of my team had to deal with a cancelled wedding. I had people living on their own and people living with small children (both challenges in their different ways). I had recently lost my mum and was worrying about my dad being in a house on his own.

We were dealing with sensitive content and getting requests from a million directions that changed every second. At the same time we moved to a 24/7 roster system to deal with the increase in out-of-hours, urgent requests. It was hard to switch off and many of our usual decompression activities like the gym or going to a gig with friends were no longer available to us.

I called each team member at least once a week to check in. We had Skype after work drinks sessions to debrief and talk about non-coronavirus stuff. People could sign up for virtual coffee catch-ups. Our random channel in Slack filled up with memes, pictures of people’s new desks and caged children (in newly purchased trampolines). Our executive director put together a Spotify quarantini playlist of upbeat songs to listen to and asked us all to add to it. And we organised a virtual hen’s night for our bride-to-be on the week she should have been having her wedding.

It worked both ways too. People called me to check up and sent me music videos as a reminder to take a break. On a particularly intense week one of my project managers, who happened to live nearby, got my address and dropped off a (sanitised) bottle of wine.

Lesson 6: it’s okay to be emotional

I kept my video camera on in meetings, even when I cried when I told them how great they were and how much I valued them supporting each other. As someone with a tendency to cry and a fear of doing it at work, it wasn’t an easy thing to do. But if you’re emotional then it lets everyone else be too. And the reality is, we’re all dealing with something, all of the time.

Lesson 7: share what you can, share what you know

When so many people are dealing with swathes of free time, my experience is an odd space to be in. But in this time of #isolife, sharing feels more important than ever.