How We Made Remote Collaboration Work

From being able to just meet in coffee shops, have lunch with clients or have meetings in the office – all that changed earlier this year when the pandemic hit. For the sake of health and safety, we had to resort to working from home and collaborate over video conference calls. Here’s how we made remote collaboration work.

- ECHO team

CONSISTENCY

The most important thing when it comes to adjusting to the new normal and having to all work and collaborate over video conference calls and group chats is consistency. Setting weekly meetings, following a timeline and sticking to deadlines is key to tracking progress and ultimately finishing a project.

Working at home with so much potential distractions – like your bed, that Netflix series you’ve been dying to watch or your plants that have to be watered – were just one of the many things we had to adjust to when the pandemic hit. Agreeing to a twice a week meeting made it easier for us to manage our individual time and schedules at home. We set agendas to make sure we have productive meetings. Timelines are important, too, to be able to track if your project is progressing as it should or running behind schedule to meet your deadline. That consistency will allow for smooth and steady progress throughout the project, rather than finding yourself cramming at the tail-end of it.

COMMUNICATION

There are so many benefits of working in a team. Better ideas are birthed because of all the different ideas and perspectives each one can bring to the table. Adjusting to being able to do that via video conference calls was the challenge.

Each member has to be intentional about communicating their thoughts, ideas and even feelings to the group for the benefit of the project. We did that by giving time for each team member to present their progress report during each meeting. Using a simple power point presentation and sharing their screens worked well being able to bounce ideas off each other and seeing everyone’s efforts for the project.

CONTRIBUTION

With that said, the last tip is to contribute. No one wants to be that one person in a group project who just rides on everybody else’s shoulders – everyone must carry their own weight.

Each one is gifted with their own strengths and experiences that they can contribute to the team. Plus, the quarantine was the perfect opportunity to learn – learn a new skill, learn that new software, and develop new techniques – and now is not too late.

The year 2020 has been all kinds of tough but we learn and we grow and we make things work together.

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