Hi, this is Kate (and Julián, and David, and Arcadi, and Henry, and Melissa, and Alex,
and Sarah, and Jasper, and Peter, and Ever) from MinuteEarth.
For the last 7 years or so, we’ve worked as a team - remotely.
Like, totally remotely - I didn't meet a single member of MinuteEarth in person for more than
a year, and it took me FIVE years to de-virtualize the farthest-flung team members.
Needless to say, we’ve learned a lot about how to work together as a team while not actually
being together as a team.
Lots of people have some experience working remotely, and lots of people have experience
working on teams, but we imagine there are a bunch of you who - for … reasons - are
just starting to work remotely on teams, so we wanted to share some of the strategies
that have worked best for us.
Let’s start with the big stuff; obviously, you need an organized way to communicate and
collaborate.
The most transformative tool for us working remotely has been Slack, which helps organize
our questions, decisions, and conversations - and side-conversations, and side-side conversations
- in a way that email can’t.
In fact, we’ve actually outlawed all internal email, which has been critical in making sure
everything is in one place and we can find what we need easily.
But written communication sometimes sucks.
In a normal office, when you have an idea or a question, you might stop by a coworker’s
desk to chat, because actually talking to someone can be way more efficient than typing
to them.
So we have a team rule that you can call anyone, at any time, just as if you were popping into
their cubicle.
But we also have a rule that you don’t have to answer, because despite working from home,
you don’t always have to be working when you’re at home.
And another thing about these calls: unless our webcam is on the fritz, we always turn
on the video, no matter how we look that day or what’s going on in the background.
Because the other benefit of video calls is that they make remote work feel less remote,
and actually seeing someone’s face is really critical to that human connection.
We also consciously build times into our schedule to connect with and check in on each other;
aside from weekly team meetings, our visuals team has an “illustrator party” every
Thursday, and others of us have a way classier “director soiree” every Friday.
And we have a virtual holiday party every year, shared refreshments and all.
All this connecting and team love is great, but say you’re actually trying to get work
done.
Collaborating remotely sometimes feels like herding cats - or herding visual… visual
cats, that doesn’t even make sense… or herding virtual cats, which is definitely
harder.
So we do what we can to simulate working side-by-side.
We always use a single time zone to schedule meetings and deadlines - although somewhat
ridiculously, nobody on our team currently lives in that time zone.
We use a shared Dropbox so we’re all working from the same set of files.
We use Google Docs instead of Word, so we can work in the same document - often at the
very same time.
And we rely on a communal spreadsheet to keep our files, projects, and deadlines organized
and easily accessible - ours has gotten so complex and all-knowing that we affectionately
call it Little Skynet.
Then, there’s feedback...ugh.
Giving and getting feedback can be tough in person, but it’s a downright minefield when
you’re collaborating remotely, so we have spent a lot of time learning how to avoid
missteps.
To head off confusion, we try to give feedback that’s as clear as possible, either by making
specific written suggestions, or by sharing our screen and sketching out an idea, in the
same way you might use a whiteboard in person.
And while people naturally praise others when they’re working side-by-side, we’re much
less likely to convey that positive stuff when we communicate virtually - and that can
both be a morale-killer and give the wrong impression.
So we make a really conscious effort to include positive feedback.
Finally, there’s nothing worse than feeling like the time you spent reviewing something
went to waste.
We not only try to respond to comments we dismissed, but we also preserve every bit
of feedback we gather along the way.
For instance, after every round of comments on a script, we copy the marked-up version
and paste it at the top of the doc before revising, so that we can all see how our feedback
has helped shape the final product.
That’s really what it comes down to for us - making sure we’re willing - and able
- to hear everyone’s voice on our team, even when we’re not within shouting distance.
As we’ve learned, you can’t spell MinuteEarth without team!
Or urine, or human, or eutherian, or mutant, or nitrate, or art, or hairnet, or thirteen,
or nutmeat, or termite.
With all that said, we still face plenty of challenges working together remotely.
Feel free to share your struggles - and your suggestions - in the comments so we can all
learn from each other...remotely, of course.
This video was pretty different from our normal fare, and we’d like to thank our sponsor,
Brilliant, for helping us make it happen.
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