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0:01 Before we start just a quick note that this episode was created for me during the coronavirus outbreak of 2020. But I think the lessons in it apply to many other scenarios. So I hope you'll still find it helpful enjoy it.

0:27 When we are hit by crisis, everything can suddenly change from one day to another. And there's a temptation to change everything we do and scramble for alternative solutions, treat the symptoms and you know, just try and cope. But how about thinking about what you need to do during a crisis to keep a cool head and emerge even stronger afterwards?

1:03 Hello, and welcome to Product Nuggets. I'm Thomas Essl. The last couple of days I was struck by all these companies and people coming out with tips for remote working, it seems like the world was hit by this Corona pandemic and always seem to be able to think about is how to create the best it setup to work remotely. And while a lot of this advice is useful if it comes from credible sources that have experience with remote working, I feel like there are other much deeper issues that need some more attention and that are independent of whatever technology you put to use. And where I'm going with this is making teams more resilient and having the sort of human aspects right to weather crisis together. And to come out on the other side, having learned a lot, and being even better than you were before. There's definitely a lot you can do to cope with a crisis when it emerges. And definitely making a team more resilient starts way before that, right? It's a matter of having the right kind of rituals and yes, tools, and habits and skills in place, and build long term relationships and all this sort of stuff. Here, I want to focus on the scenario that we're all in by surprise. We're hit by this tremendous crisis that the world is struggling with, and we're kind of trying to maintain normality and keep doing our work to the best of our ability. And as I said, there's a lot you can probably think of, but here is my selection.

3:20 Number one is focus on what's really essential, but remain flexible. I think one trap to fall into is to kind of try to operate as if nothing had happened, you know, you're just working remotely now, but really everybody does the same work that they were doing before. And that's not quite true. And my next point will illustrate that in a bit more detail. But in terms of what you're actually trying to get done, as in like, the actual scope of your work, that's gonna have to change as well. You can't just expect people to carry on as if everything was normal. So one thing I try and do is to be really special about what kinds of jobs are mission critical? What is it that really deserves all of our attention, and those may be only one or two, maybe three things. But those are the things that you discuss every single day and that everybody is trying to make progress towards a lot of the additional things outside of that can kind of fall away and just know that that's okay. There is no way you're just gonna achieve all the same things as you did before without any kind of transition period or adaptation. So pick what's really essential, but also know that you got to remain flexible and that that those things that are important today may not be the same things that are really important tomorrow. So just be aware of that.

4:53 Number two is review your ways of working and living regularly and I was just mentioning this earlier. Not only in terms of scope, what you will do will change but also the way in which you work. And especially with self isolation, don't assume your regular office shedule works best. And there are a lot of things that are in our minds outside of work, and we want to stay healthy, we want to exercise, you know, eat well sleep enough. And all of that happens between our meetings, and the work that we're trying to get done. The way in which you accommodate for all of those things while you were working from home in particular, but under any kind of stress situation will change from person to person. Some people have other folks to take care of, and other stone that says, you know, different sleep patterns. Maybe some people are psychologically more affected than others. And so it's important to have an open conversation about that. I mean, this is always worth doing. We have Like ways of working conversations and all those sorts of things that go around the sort of setup off of agile methodology and such. But especially when the situation is generally very difficult, it's really worth reviewing that regularly. And just making sure that diverging from the norm is okay, something you know, I have people in my team who like to work really late others who have to take care of the children and others who, now that they don't have to go to the office, you know, I just like having a longer lunch break and having an app in the middle of the day, I find that that makes me really productive. And so that's cool. So just be open about that and set the right expectations. circumstances can also change gradually over time, at an almost unnoticeable pace, and that can go for the better as well if you're just starting to get used to new circumstance. answers, everything might be a little bit more chaotic. And maybe one way of working works better for you in that situation. But as you're starting to kind of get used to the new situation that you find yourself in, you know, do it might be worth reviewing that and taking on a different sort of schedule.

Number three is over-communicate. And mean this is product 101. You always want to over-communicate, right like this is this is one piece of advice that's given time and time again. But especially in these times, you just have to let people know if you don't see each other on a day to day basis. What happens is that people start making up all kinds of crazy things in their minds, right? Like any kind of subtleties in an email or in a in a zoom call might be misinterpreted. People might think like oh, you know, This person really didn't like this idea, I think they're upset or whatever it is, well as they were thinking about something completely different, but if we're alone at home and just in our bubble, we tend to make up those things. I mean, humans have this tendency that everything in the world revolves around us. And, you know, for better or for worse, that's just wrong. Like, a lot of the time, those sort of nuanced things weren't intended or they don't even exist, they just make them up in our heads. So, first of all, you need to be wary of that, if you're interpreting somebody else's communication, just give them the benefit of the doubt, always give them the benefit of the doubt, because they probably didn't intend the negative things that you're interpreting into their communication. And when you're communicating yourself, you know, you gotta stay visible. There is much less room for misinterpretation if you just keep pushing your messages over and over again, of course. The way in which you do that it really matters a lot. Like if you just pushing tons and tons of messages and slack day in day out, that's probably not going to help. But, you know, be sensible with that. But just make sure that everybody's aware of what you're up to and how you're feeling about how the project is progressing and have that dialogue across your team as well. Number four is share praise liberally and never blame others. This might be obvious, but be harder in practice, especially when emotions are on edge. You must do everything you can not to snap, especially because blaming others just makes them less likely to collaborate and takes focus away from solving the actual problem at hand.

9:47 Under normal circumstances, there's a lot of frameworks around how to give effective feedback, how to be critical in a way that is helping but is also not Brushing over the ugly bits of the truth, especially when it comes to feedback within a product team. I would say kind of overcompensate on the nice side of things when it comes to giving feedback and communication in general. In the spirit of a happy team as a productive team, it's really important to make sure that even if you can see each other every day, everybody still feels valued and still feeling like they're making a strong contribution to the progress of the team. And you can help them do so by just frequently calling out when they're doing a really, really good job, despite all the circumstances and constraints around us. Number five is talking about how you're doing personally. Incentives were used to talk about blockers things that stand in our way of progressing well with our work. Well, in situations like we're currently in, there's a lot of blockers They have very little to do with our work. But that doesn't mean that they're not important. In fact, I would argue that personal well being of every team member is the most important thing that you can talk about. So do that, give it some time. And I would even say make it the very first thing you talked about during the regular meetings that you're already having and make time for that. If you kind of do it at the end of the meeting, and can kind of feel forced and tacked on as tick box exercise. But if you start off your agenda with, you know, reflecting on how everyone in the team is doing truly personally, that can really stress that you're taking that seriously and it's important to you sure, not everybody is 100% comfortable with opening up in that kind of way to their colleagues, and that's perfectly fine. But just help them make that space to do that. Even if you're not managing bring it up as a suggestion. I'm sure everybody would really embrace it.

12:25 Up next is Don't miss the team activities. Even if you're forced to work remotely, you can schedule a course to bring a team together since things have tried in the past movie quizzes, or you can do something around conversation based, like the 36 questions to increase closeness, I think came out of UC Berkeley and they're super personal to varying degrees, but can do an awful lot to bring team members together, especially if you've already worked together for a while. Other more light things You know, just having a sort of virtual pub, for example, you can have a zoom call with people having a photo of their favorite pub in the background and, you know, just chat stuff open a beer at home, if that's your thing, and you know, just make some time for for those sorts of team activities as well, it can be really, really important to strengthen your connections even if you're not co located. Number seven is make time for personal connections. This is very similar but a little bit more serious. And also focuses on one to one connections. So for example, you can extend offers to others to reach out to you or you can set up something like office hours in a video conference room, and just be available for others to join you. Random coffees is always great if you sort of meet and different person every say week or every couple of days and just talk about things that aren't working. Related, or maybe that our mentoring falls into that. And you know, if you're mentoring somebody, or if you're being mentored, there is no reason to not keep up that relationship. In fact, doing these sorts of times sharing advice and how to work is probably even the most useful. And, yeah, so keep those personal connections going really double down on that, even if you say you're available, others may not want to bother you. They may feel like, you know, okay, you know, this person's just set this because they're trying to be nice, but really, I feel guilty about stealing their time. So work against those assumptions and be very clear that they won't be a burden. And you can do that by just repeating your offer.

Point number eight is protect some of your time. This may be a really obvious one. And again, this is something that we always struggle with, but right now there's a really great opportunity to Do that bundle all your meetings together in a block and you know, saying the afternoon and get your heads down time in the morning, whatever schedule works for you just do it. And the best part about this one, maybe even more so than with all the other points is that this can really stick. If you're making a habit out of this right now over the next couple of weeks, then this is something that the people that you work with may get used to, and you might have a much easier time to actually keep it up. After all this is over and things go back to normal, except it won't be the old normal, because you'll have your great hats downtime blog somewhere in your schedule, and everybody now knows about it. So you can set yourself up for that awesome comeback by setting this way of working up right now.

15:51 And we're almost to the end with number nine, keep it light and keep it personal. We're all at our Right now, and that offers a great opportunity to be a little bit more personal virtual backgrounds are a great example of of sharing that kind of personality, whatever you put in the back, you know, it says something about yourself and it can be really humorous. There's been all kinds of gifts and videos and photos out there that are really funny and great conversation starters. You know, use them as you feel like is appropriate depending on who you're talking to. I would strongly recommend reviewing the screen background that you got set up before every meeting because your conversation partners change and you know, you don't want to have a fun gift before you having a video called with someone you know, that won't necessarily fly really well with or not, you know, you can you can give it a try. Another thing I would say about that is also trying not having a video background. You know you're in your personal space. Maybe you're set up In front of a bookcase or a couple of photos on the walls or illustrations that you like trinkets from holiday, or you've got your dog or your kid running in the background, those things humanize. And they also tend to bring us closer together. And I would actually say try and maybe not cut that out completely. You can, you can try either way. See what works for you mix it up a little bit, you may find that your conversations go a lot smoother, and they're not quite as awkward and anonymous, as video conference calls can be.

Finally, my last piece of advice for weathering a crisis is to take note of what works so you can keep doing it afterwards. I've already mentioned this in the example of blocking out time to get some work done. But all of these things, they're different kinds of ways of working that you may experiment with. The team building exercises, the tools that you're using to collaborate online, whatever it is that you changing, take a note of it and see if there's something worth keeping for when you coming back. And I would say that this is the most important point because this is where you can really learn from this experience and come back as a team that's not only closer together, but also enhanced and more powerful because events beyond our control, have forced us to challenge our defaults. innovate, come up with new solutions to old problems, and you can take those solutions back and keep taking advantage of whatever it is that you've learned.

18:55 If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and rate it on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you listen yo podcasts, it's the sunshine for my self-isolated self, and it also helps others find it. I'd also love to hear from you. If you have any thoughts on this show, you can get in touch with me via Twitter @Thomas_Essl, or email to hello@thomasessl.com. Product Nuggets is produced by me and the theme song is Aeronaut by Blue Dot Sessions. Any opinions expressed in this show are my own. Thanks very much for listening. Till next time, goodbye. Transcribed by https://otter.ai