🐼 Remote Work with Finiata: How to Superpower Remote Work with 7 Tips and a Panda

Can your team become more productive if you go full-remote? Lisa Mo Wagner, Senior Product Manager at Finiata, shared her pandemic-tested tips on that and explained how pandas can save your meetings at our recent Product People community event.

Finiata has two offices — in Berlin and Warsaw, and surprisingly enough when both offices moved to full-remote work they became more productive than before. Lisa thinks that the following 7 important points and a PANDA were key to successful remote work.

Can it be an email instead of the meeting? Source: Lisa Mo Wagner

1. Cancel the meeting

Before scheduling another meeting, give it a thought: can this meeting be just an email? If yes, opt for an email!

For example, a status update: you need to be on the same page, but you don’t have to meet at the same time for this, so send an email.

Make the PANDA happy! Source: Lisa Mo Wagner

2. Happy PANDA

If a meeting is unavoidable, remember about the pandas. Everyone loves pandas and acronyms, so let’s use it to help you make good meetings!

P — Purpose: Why do you have this meeting? Was exactly is going to happen at this meeting? Think and share it with the invite.

A — Agenda: remember to prepare an agenda and share it with the meeting invitation together with the purpose.

N — Note-taking: make sure to take notes and share them afterward in case someone couldn’t make it or got distracted at some point.

D — Decisions: write them down and share them after the meeting. If there wasn’t a decision to make — did you need to have this meeting at all?

A —Action items: each meeting should end with a list of actions to be taken with deadlines and responsible people. Share them with the notes.

Make PANDA happy with your good meetings!

How much does the polar bear weight? Just enough to break the ice! Source: Lisa Mo Wagner

3. Ice breakers

Use ice breakers to set the mood, energize the team, and check on them at the beginning of each meeting.

Some easy examples:

• post emojis that will tell something unexpected about you
• post a pic/emoji to describe a place you’d love to visit
• Mood-o-meter survey to sense the prevailing mood in the team — this might help you adjust the style of the meeting accordingly or take a moment to reflect on the mood together

Mood-o-meter. Source: Lisa Mo Wagner

4. Take your time

Remember that everything takes more time online and account for this while planning your meetings. Most probably, one or more of these will come up regularly:

• Someone’s internet doesn’t’ work
• Screenshare, mic or video doesn’t work
• People didn't have much experience with online tools and have to figure out first

These all are pretty normal, just be prepared.

Does this make you a little nervous? Source: Lisa Mo Wagner

5. Notifications off

Most definitely: your emails can wait until the end of the meeting! The same applies to other programs that send you pop-ups and notifications.

Online meetings are already difficult, as it’s so easy to get distracted. Don’t make it worse for yourself: turn off notifications before the meeting and suggest that others do the same.

Make sure your team feels safe. Source: Lisa Mo Wagner

6. Safe space

Create a safe space, where you and your colleagues can be honest and open with each other. This will ensure that you all benefit from the communications.

It’s easy to be disengaged in the video chat — turn off mic and video and get distracted. That’s why creating a trusting atmosphere where people feel connected is especially important for remote work.

Find ways to have fun! Source: Lisa Mo Wagner

7. Have fun

Have some fun in your meetings, leave some time to just chat and don’t be scared to be silly together:

• play “never have I ever” — to discover some great stories to chat about.
• play “guess the movie” while explaining them with emojis — in Lisa’s team, this game even evolved in a long-term Slack thread game!
  E.g., which movie is this one: 👽 🚲 🌕 ?
• play full-body rock-paper-scissors 💎 📄 ✂️
• use Snap Camera to make some silly team pictures and laugh together

These small fun things will go a long way to energize the team and to build stronger personal connections.

Don’t be afraid to sound like a broken record! Source: Lisa Mo Wagner

8. Repeat

You need to say things multiple times. This is true for any kind of communication but even more so for remote work.

At the point you feel like a broken record, this is usually just enough repeating yourself.

Read more great tips from Lisa Mo Wagner in her Medium posts:

• Have better meetings with a cute PANDA
• 9 Ways to Make Remote Meetings and Workshops Better
• Foster the Human Connection in Remote Work — 5 Small Ideas

Watch the full version of Lisa’s talk for more insights and a great Q&A session.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel. And join the next Product People meetup for more inspiring stories from Product Managers from around the world!

Product Management People (Berlin, Germany)