A Better Way to Connect Across Time Zones
This is a guest-authored post from Tom Cassidy, Principal at the London Leadership College, Principal at the Tech City Academy, Program Designer at Everyday Mind Mastery, Author, Musician, and Father.
The prime meridian passes through my home base in London. Situated on hemispheres, I work regularly with people all around the world, from here in London, to the United States, Chile, South Africa, and elsewhere. The thousands of miles and several hours that separate us pose challenges to healthy team communications.
As someone who’s tried many communications apps, I’ve become skeptical of those that claim they’ll bring a team closer, increase transparency and productivity, or eliminate tedious email threads. I’ve been a part of too many situations where communications fragment — across tools and people — as soon as they extend beyond simple messaging to include calling or conferencing. It only takes a single call without everyone present to create a situation where someone is out of sync with the rest of the team. Issues discussed or decisions made end up having to be rehashed. People get upset. Ultimately, nobody’s happy with the lost time and strained team dynamics that result.
I know this type of issue isn’t unique to the teams I work with — oh, the horror stories I have heard!
I’ll be the first to say that tools can’t solve human problems. However, they matter quite a lot. And, we’ve long needed a tool that does a much better job facilitating more transparency across all the various ways we communicate.
From a simple text message, to a 2-person ad-hoc voice conversation, to a full-blown team conference — I’ve often thought there should be a simple tool that brings it all together in a way that is fully and easily accessible to everyone working together on a project or issue. Thankfully now there is, because that’s precisely what Talko does.
I’ve been using Talko to work with my Everyday Mind Mastery team as we learn how to use Swift — a programming language for iOS and OS X. We’re working to create a variety of apps, something we’ve not done before. Particularly for a distributed team like ours, it’s game-changing how Talko makes all conversations — from the simple text to the team conference — transparent and accessible at any point. It allows each of us to participate on our own time, whether LIVE with others or not. Not only is this important for someone who can’t be part of a LIVE conference, but also for those who have a brilliant idea strike after the fact. At any point, people can simply add their ideas to the conversation for everyone else to see and hear in a way that doesn’t require tedious follow-up in email or additional calls.
Talko is the best example I’ve seen in a long time of a tool that delivers on the promise of making it easier for teams to communicate and get things done together. Simply stated, it’s making us a happier, more productive team. We are loving it!
Tom
Get Talko — try it with your team!
Interested in telling the world about your team’s use of Talko? We’d love to help — shoot a mail to support@talko.com and we’ll get that ball rolling.
