How to make remote collaborative decisions
3 templates used to reach conclusions without meetings (yes not even a video conference)
Everyone’s job descriptions differ, but if you are someone who now got to work home due to the outbreak of COVID-19, you have to figure out how to make collaborative decisions remotely. It was hard enough in the office, trying to consult everyone on a decision before pulling the trigger. Now, with everyone in different locations and even spanning multiple time zones, your team’s productivity can slow down to a crawl.
Here are some templates our team has been using to deal with such situations that you can apply it to your own needs!
1. Deciding on meeting agendas
Since working from home, issues were raised here and there that need attention from the rest of the team. Except, how do we know if it is something the whole team should be involved or not? Thought like ‘Maybe I’ll just keep it until we get back together at the office,’ or ‘Should I ask my team lead? or ask about it in the general channel, or invite people for a meeting?’. This uncertainty slows down collaboration.
Instead, you can use Defora to handle your team’s issues anonymously, and let people vote for items they think deserves everyone’s input. Agendas can be identified for further discussion, or be further clarified, or be even resolved directly.
2. Collect feedbacks
So you were rushed into the work from home system due to the virus outbreak, without sufficient time or preparation. As HR lead, you want to make sure that everyone is supported through this rapid transition and create a clear guidelines to minimize confusion. To improve, you need to ask people about their experience and get feedbacks to iterate the policy.
Here, you can use Defora to collect people’s honest reviews on the new system. It is easy to participate, and also you can get a bird’s eye view on how the organization as a whole feels. Activity threads can be especially useful to keep a context of how your team’s experience changes over time.
3. Organized brainstorming
There is that unique energy of getting together and writing up ideas and developing them on post its or the whiteboard. It’s insanely difficult to do that remotely when people are writing up different ideas at the same in a single chat feed, and you can’t keep up with multiple people participating at the same time.
Instead, you can use Defora to create a bulletin board where members of your team can share ideas and let them bounce back and forth without cluttering a chat feed.
The beauty of Defora’s approach is that it is well aligned with the values of remote working. It is about being able to reach conclusions without hours of mutual presence, at the convenience of people’s own schedule.
Also, working well remotely requires documentation. Context, process, and results on Defora are documented in a way that is easy to index and share. Anyone who joins later can quickly catch up with what has happened and participate right away.
If you want to learn more about Defora, visit us on our website, or read about our showcase in Geneva, or better yet join us on Defora by downloading the app on your App Store or Google Play! If you want to learn more about work from home, here is our previous article.
