Leading research teams in uncertainty
Our highlights from our June 2020 series of ‘coffee chats’.
Leading Research is a young community. Our vision is to bring research leaders and practitioners together to mature the research discipline. We’re doing this by providing a forum to discuss key topics and challenges. For example, roundtable discussion, virtual coffee chats and curating content for our blog.
We gathered once in person in January to discuss research impact. Like many organisations and groups we have to adapt to a new way of gathering people.
Background
In June, we set up a series of ‘coffee chats’. Each session had four to six participants and two facilitators. The attendees were leaders of research teams and senior practitioners.
Our aim was to share what our experiences have been in ‘lockdown’ so far. Our jobs have changed from doing face to face work to working at home. This is not an easy transition for everyone.
We initially set up two events but thanks to everyone’s interest we were able to schedule a third session!
Our conversation centred around three key topics:
- How are we leading and managing research teams remotely?
- How has collaboration with teams changed?
- How are we communicating in our team and across the business?
About this article
Based on the insights from our coffee chats, the article is divided into three parts:
- Leading a research team- we discussed how we’re cultivating a supportive culture during this period
- Practising research- we discussed how we’re adapting the research process
- Useful tips for everyone (including non-researchers)
Some of the insights we heard may reflect your current experience. We also hope that there are some common learnings that can be shared with your teams. We’d love to hear from you — please comment on this post to share your experience or resources.
Leading a research team
Cultivate team culture
A key theme from all the groups was the need to create the right ‘culture’ during this period. This could be your immediate team and extending to the wider company culture.
Some interesting ideas we heard were:
- Learning clubs (e.g., allocate 20 mins to read or watch materials together followed by a discussion)
- Podcast clubs
- Lunch clubs
- Quiz night
All these ideas are great to bringing people together. But we also noted the difficulty and balance with other commitments (e.g., homeschooling).
Encourage sharing with team members
We heard from the leaders that it was important to bring their teams together. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that everyone’s lives are different. We can only see how someone is or how they live through a tiny (laptop) screen. But, we miss out on the context of their lives, or the experiences they may have at home.
So to bring the teams together and provide context, the leaders tried out different ideas:
- Sharing a photo of what each team member is up regularly (e.g., planting seeds or learning to play the piano)
- Scavenger hunt around home and sharing the finds with the team
- Creating or adapting rituals from other teams or ways of working (e.g., virtual stand ups and retro activities during team meetings)
Support your team during ‘lockdown’
We discussed the importance of supporting and leaning on each other. Everyone has their own challenges and balancing act. Whether this is living on your own, families being apart, or finding a balance with home schooling and work. We all understood that working together as a team to support each other is crucial.
Some of our leaders are offering new formats to conduct 1:1 with their team. This is to help them communicate in the most comfortable and effective way. The leaders acknowledged the difficulty of looking at a computer screen all day. So, a phone call or going for a walk together (remotely!) give each other a break from the screens. The results have been amazing and seemed to have lightened up the conversation too.
Practising research
Be prepared and structured
Research analysis and workshops are continuing during this time. And something we heard across all sessions was the need to take the time and effort to prepare upfront. This included:
- Creating a structure and any templates you need
- Getting materials ready
- A tight agenda
- Timekeeping is key
- Facilitation up-skilling
Some also mentioned that Liberating Structure as a great resource for workshops.
Pick tools that fit your audience
Some times researchers (and designers) get comfortable with certain tools. Whether this is for taking research notes, doing research analysis or documenting findings. But, often we have access to tools that other teams in the organisation don’t (e.g., Miro).
So consider choosing a tool that’s right for your audience to encourage contribution. For example, taking research notes with Google Slides may encourage observers to get involved.
Schedule working sessions and breaks
Since we don’t have the ability to gather everyone in a room now and work through things organically.
When running sessions it’s useful to schedule session times and put them in everyone’s calendars. This ensure people will attend. Scheduling a session in the morning and then in the afternoon seem to be most effective. This gives people time to work together and then break off to work independently during the day.
It’s also vital to have breaks! Especially, everyone is sitting in front of a screen and we don’t get to move about the room.
We heard some interesting ideas used for breaks:
- ice breakers
- chair yoga
- tai chi
- breathing exercises
Over communicate… everything(!)
People in the organisation can’t see research happening like we used to in the office. There are no participants walking through the door. Or, seeing the research lab used.
Sometimes, it’s easy to conduct the research and the findings go to the immediate product team. (We heard from our leaders that this can happen when you democratise research). But, the flip side is that other teams miss out on learning insights that would be useful to them too. Findings are often shared vertically but not horizontally across the organisation.
To resolve this, finding channels and opportunities that can give company wide visibility. E.g., using slack channels, product all hands meetings or company wide newsletter. The key is to over communicate during this period.
When sharing research findings remotely consider the best way to communicate them too. What are the top line findings, so the key takeaway from research are shared immediately. And letting people know where they could find the detailed findings once the session is over. Research is meaningless if the findings are not getting into someone’s head.
Useful tips
Encourage research uptake
- Set up a research buddy system- if a product owner has requested a piece of research partner with them. Do the research brief and analysis together. You can control quality of research too.
- Schedule viewing parties- watch the session live (or a replay) and get the group involved. Go through any questions raised.
- Find opportunities to promote and communicate research to different teams- this could be creating a short video reel of findings, sharing snippets and quotes on email or slack.
Be clear on what you mean to support each other
- It’s difficult for organic conversations to happen when you’re working from home. Be precise with what you want to say to reduce misinterpretation.
- Help new starters to succeed by assigning a buddy who can share helpful resources. And to get you set up to meet new colleagues while you’re working from home
Reduce screen fatigue
- It’s tiring to have the camera on all the time. Give people the option to turn the camera off in meetings.
- Try turning the camera on to see each at the start of the session and end of the session. Then the rest of the session can be off.
As lockdown restriction eases around the world, some of us might be getting back to the office soon. What learnings you can bring back to the office and to your team? Some of us might continue to work from home for a while. What can you adopt from the insights we shared? And some of us may engage in a hybrid working model in the future (e.g., some days in the office and some days at home).
Everyone we spoke to adapted ways leading teams and conducting research. There may be a lot of uncertainty living in a pandemic. But, our sessions reinforced the fact that we’re all in this together. The lockdown period has pushed us to work together and support each other creatively.
We’d love to hear from you — please comment on this post to share your experience or resources.
Join the Leading Research community by signing up.
Follow us on Twitter @LeadingResearch for updates and articles.
