Episode Details

In this episode, Maya and Pilar discuss the different communication rhythms that remote teams adopt. They also cover the concept of documentation, as something that can help slow down a team's rhythm, or at least help it towards "burstiness", a characteristic of successful teams. Plenty here to reflect on.Communication in an online team requires a different mindset to that of when you are collocated, and requires different ways of interacting which might feel unnatural, or even uncomfortable. It all started with this tweet:https://twitter.com/PilarOrti/status/1499370551596527617 "Over the last years, I've worked & collaborated with a wide range of people online. 1 thing that strikes me is that the rhythm of communication & the speed of the workflow become apparent. I've noticed when somebody's rhythm clashes with my own. Is this something you've noticed?"Saskie replied that she also noticed when it WAS in sync, and gave this metaphor: "Musing on your tweet brought to mind an image of 3 legged races as a child. Just agreeing to begin with the outer leg first was a winning tactic. It wasn't about running faster – just about not falling over ourselves!"As external people, we notice this when we come into a team, but the team might not be aware that there are different rhythms of communicating. There are teams which communicate constantly, either because the task requires it, or because they're used to it. So this presents itself like constant tagging, and many near real-time replies; on the other hand some teams barely tag anyone, just post messages at some point, and don't require as much synchronous communication, neither to do their work or to feel connected.

We explain the terms "asynchronous communication", "documentation" and "single source of truth". For more on this, you might want to check out this newsletter from Remote Fabric: http://newsletter.remotefabric.com/issues/push-vs-pull-communication-issue-2-696532

Teams can start by pulling together different bits of information and gather them in one single space, so that it's accessible for everyone. Think of it as a key area in your online office. You can also adopt the principle, thinking, "is this conversation or document something we want to keep for future reference, could it help someone?" It's about making it easier to find where the expertise is in the company, so this is not only about content but also about knowing who can help you in the company. Could this be relevant to learning and development roles? Shifting the mindset from how to run "engaging online workshops" to how can we curate the information and knowledge in the company? Technology is making this easier by the year…

(For more on this check out next week's episode on Knowledge Management in organisations.)

19.00 MINS DIfferent teams have different rhythms and they are influenced by the nature and progress of task and task interdependence, perception of and real hierarchy and level of autonomy to make decisions and social culture.We begin talking about the rhythm around tasks and how this is affected by the nature of the task, the progress, and if we're in a project, the stage of the project. Eg kick off and brainstorming at the beginning might require regular lots of exchanges, then a slower rhythm and less interactions as everyone "gets on with it", and a faster pace. We can reflect as individuals and as a team whether the rhythm we have is useful to us. Also, don't forget about our wider context and how this might affect the rhythm in which we communicate. Task interdependence will also affect your communication cadence, as well as whether you have a space where you go to communicate your progress. (You can find out more about this in episode 239, or

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