Make Sure to Communicate in Multiple Ways
Product teams are still expected to be productive even when working remotely from each other. There are so many ways to keep in contact every week, every day.
“The most important element of working from home with colleagues is communication.”
Transcript
Jim Morris:
Hi there, fellow product leaders. Working from home away from your colleagues brings a new set of challenges for product teams. Theresa Charleston has been doing this for years and tells us how to stay connected to each other in multiple ways while being physically separated.
Theresa Charleston:
I think tips from working from home, what I've learned is probably the most important element of working from home with colleagues is communication. Not only communication in knowing when to balance what is done online via typing or Slack or whatever, email, but then when is it time to take it offline and, well in this case, remaining online, but actually having a face to face conversation or getting on an old fashioned phone and having a conversation that way? I think understanding that balance and understanding when to kind of draw the line is really important.
I think the other thing that's really important about communication is that now you don't have that face to face in person. It's a little bit harder to read body language. It's a little bit harder to draw conclusions, understand meaning and tone. In that way, having daily or weekly checkins for me and my current team is imperative. That way, we can stay in touch. We don't lose that human feel, human to human contact. Also, it's a matter of remembering each other, remembering not to put our own tone and our own assumptions on what other people are writing and saying. It also just gives us that contact that, especially when you are sort of quarantined in your homes, is really important.
Jim Morris:
Thanks for watching. You can find more Product Discovery resources at productdiscoverygroup.com
Jim Morris, Product Discovery Group
Jim coaches Product teams to collaborate with each other and seek customer input early and often during the design and ideation phase.
