How to Collaborate When We Are Living the Iso-Life
Well isn’t this a whole new world.
Remote working is pretty much most people’s new norm and on the upside, dealing with your morning commute is now a thing of the past. But with that comes the introduction of other not-so-fun things like the inability to collaborate, involuntarily silo working, work-life imbalance. Not to mention all the lonely feels! #sadface
According to Forbes, the Silo mentality reduces efficiency and morale but what do you do when Silo Life is now more than just mental but also your actual, physical, everyday state? Am I the only one struggling with not being able to collaborate like I used to? Why can’t I just lean back in my chair and ask my co-workers for help or opinions like the good ol’ pre-Covid19 days?!
Revolutionize What You Do
Someone recently told me that the first step in handling this madness is Acceptance. I’m gonna have to accept that this is going to be the way for the next little bit. So perhaps I should get myself a table to work at rather than work cross-legged on my bed (with some disillusioned hope that this will all go away in 3 weeks).
Next step is to Adapt. The impact of not adapting your workflow and processes to this new world will be your undoing because the fact is, you can’t do things the way you did before. You just can’t.
Like the laws of the land literally won’t let you, ScoMo will throw a fine your way - so don’t even try.
Time to put your creative cap on and apply some blue sky thinking to find not just some make-shift band aid solution but actually revolutionize what you do on the daily.
Find not just some make-shift band aid solution but actually revolutionize what you do on the daily
If there’s a better way of doing things, there is no time like the present to start. Take a step back, assess your process and take into account all the key factors. And a key factor that is likely to be a casualty of the WFH life?
Collaboration.
Why is Collaborating so important?
In the wise words of Vanilla Ice, “alright stop, collaborate and listen” - there have been no truer words spoken that are more applicable to today. It’s all about being able to collaborate, communicate and collaborate some more. And if you don’t, research shows that this will result in a lack of Mutual Knowledge (”MK” shall we say) in your business.
Without some MK in your life, you’re looking at difficulties in:
access to information,
lack of speed to information,
misunderstandings, and
missing the important and contextual points of any given project
Oooft. Nobody got time for that!
So how did you collaborate before?
Our team’s Daily Standup meetings used to be a collaborative circle of humans standing in Surry Hills. Today it is a collaborative group of humans on Zoom. We continue to use tools like Notion and Slack to collaborate and keep the Mutual Knowledge flowing across the team on all topics from customers to new exciting upcoming releases we’re working on.