Distributed Team Meetings

Here’s the thing…….. Zapier is a 100% distributed team.

They spend their day helping people across the world automate the boring and tedious parts of their job by joining up Apps.  On a Friday, Zapier employees send out a bulletin in advance of their virtual catch up.  It covers:

1.  Actions I promised this week and results,

2.  Other issues that arose.

3.  What I’m doing next week.

Everyone spends the first 10 minutes of the meeting silently reading one another’s updates. Apparently they use this in Amazon too.  While you could use this with an office based team, it will sit really nicely with smart working teams too.

The method makes sense because it means that members of the team are focusing on others team members challenges and opportunities rather than their own.  It also means that people will be more likely to collaborate with one another if they know what everyone else is up to.  It encourages team member to share solutions and ideas and facilitates a really innovations and collaborative culture that improves workplace productivity.

Try it with your distributed team

If your distributed team is going to be necessarily distributed in different places next Friday – give it a try. Consider the benefits of reading quietly too – I reckon it might silence the loud ones in the room and give peace a chance.  The sound of silence is concentration on what someone else has achieved.

Suggest it to your distributed team and experiment next week.  If you share your results and updates with us at The Smart Working Revolution and we will put them onto the Stories Section of our website.

Work happens in Brains -not offices.

1..Why not take the 4 minute smart working diagnosis for your business HERE

2.  Sign up for our NEWSLETTER for more tips and techniques like this one!

3.  JOIN the Smart Revolution at our Smart Leadership Workshop in Birmingham on 17th May