CAVO Ep. 33: Herding Virtual Cats: The Art of Maintaining Remote Teams

We’ve now been forced into virtual work.  Many in the workforce want to continue to work remotely.  However, how do we try to successfully manage a team (or teams) who have no training in working remotely with systems that were not originally designed for a fully online work force?  Join Jennifer Summerville (Associate Professor of Education, NCU) and Kay Bernzweig (Learning and Development Consultant) for a lively discussion of how they met, working with teams before the pandemic and recommendations for working with virtual teams in our new reality. 

Transcript

 00:02

Welcome to the Center for the advancement of virtual organizations podcast, herding virtual cats, the art of maintaining remote teams. I'm Jennifer Summerville faculty with NCU. And today we are joined by Kay Bernzweig. Welcome. And thank you so much for taking the time to come and chat with us about working with virtual teams.

00:24

I'm happy to talk about anytime. Awesome.

00:27

So I think it's kind of important for us to start out and talk a little bit about how we know each other. And also let anybody who's listening to the podcast know that we could literally talk about this for hours. So I'll say it at the very beginning is that you can reach out to either of us through LinkedIn if you'd like more information, because I think that there's way more here than we can cover in, in a podcast. So um, so let's talk a little bit about how we met. And I know you'll be surprised to hear that it was almost 14 years ago, and we haven't worked with each other in like 12 and a half years. So I know it's kind of surprising time really does fly. But yeah, we met through when I was hired on with an organization, pretty substantial sized one. And we had clients in lots of different places. And they weren't very savvy when it came to online work, whether it was updated information online, and they weren't doing anything with E learning. And so I was brought in to help with that. Because those are my areas of expertise. So can you talk a little bit about your roles and where we started and how it changed and evolved? Sure, yeah,

02:00

I had started with that organization a little bit ahead of Jennifer. And also my background was in distance learning and used to be called distance learning, though I go far away farther back than that group, Jennifer. And when it comes, where we used to send videotape, to people and call it distance learning. But my role at the time in that organization, I was a project manager and learning and development I had been originally hired on as an instructional designer. So I have a background in both instructional design and in project management. So I tend to, depending on the organization, I wear one or both of the hats all the time.

02:43

Yeah, and that's something that we both share. I've been involved with distance learning since the mid 90s. And now I'm full time faculty with ncu. In instructional design. So that has continued that has not changed. Um, I think it's kind of important to discuss a little bit about what we feel is the difference between virtual and remote. I think that's kind of critical, because there we both agree that there are some differences. So for example, my team, when can I work together, my team was in office with me, but we worked with other teams that work elsewhere. And then previously, prior to ncu, I worked at a large community college north of the Dallas area. 

And I had teams of instructional designers and developers and part timers on all of our campuses. And those would be what I think we would consider remote. So can you talk a little bit about that? Exactly. Well, and in my head anyway, the distinction is remote teams can be co located in little in pods or something larger than a pod maybe. But they like you said they cross over from multiple locations. Right? I've worked where I managed teams that were in, you know, four different locations in two countries to be able to do that, but everybody was cold each to you know, there was a team and an office in every location. 

The differences now I work pretty much just with virtual teams, where everybody is just completely scattered all over the world. You know, working from their couch, actually most of us have offices But weren't you know, working from whatever remote virtual location in any time zone any part of the world so I always draw the distinction there that remote teams are teams that are co located together but may be separated geographically If that makes sense, but virtual teams are completely separated, completely desperate describe exactly. And I think that's a really good distinction to make. Because I do think that, that creates differences and how you work within the teams. So do you find that one is more challenging than another to work with?

05:23

You? No, I do. And I have been the remote sort of virtual manager for a team that was co located together. And we were in different time zones. When you're the odd man out, that's extremely hard, because you know, out of sight, out of mind, right? That's not as usual as sort of an all or nothing, you know, makeup in terms of either everybody's in the in an office, or nobody is. So, but always think that the remote teams, depending on the project you have going on, and the and obviously, the culture of the organization, because some organizations do this way better than others and have done it for decades. where, you know, matrix teams in various locations, work together day to day on multiple projects at any given time. And they do it well. If it's, if that's part of the culture, great, if it's not really part of a culture, and it's sort of a special thing, because of a reorg, which is what has happened to me a few times. 

And Jennifer, he were part of that too, you know, as part of a reorg, you then get adopted by a team that's in a different time zone. You know, there may be four of you in your office, but you know, the other 12 are in, you know, remote Canada, that, you know, they they're in a different part of the world. So, I've always think that those are harder, just because it's a cultural shift. For those organizations, it's already ingrained in the culture, I, it's not as difficult.

07:14

And I actually get here and to you, I'm one of the people coming in with a lot of remote experience. But, you know, this is my first three, while I'm three years in now, you know, working fully online, you know, fully we're at virtually, and especially with COVID-19. Now, North Central is not really getting together face to face. So it is something that I had to be enculturated into an organization that a word were old hat at this. 

So even though I was very old hat at working remotely, and teaching fully online teaching virtually, this was, you know, this culture that I had to, to get into it. Well, it really honestly didn't take me much time. But you are exactly right, the people that are all had in it have a much easier time than those who are scrambling right now to try and make this work. So I totally agree with you there. Um, have you have you found that it's more difficult to maintain proper work order after the pandemic? Or do you think it's kind of the same?

08:32

Well, I currently am working with an organization that is 100%, virtual there, they're known in the industry to have to have been virtual since 2005. So they get it they know how to do things everybody they bring on has been brought on knowing they're coming on to a virtual team. So, you know, we joked actually, internally, amongst ourselves, those of us who work with this organization, that until about like the end of May, we didn't feel an impact at all, like our you know, our except, you know, obviously we had clients that stumbled with it and things like that, but our day to day are the jobs that we did, even our lives didn't feel that much disrupted, you know that the joke is for a lot of us, you know, I have this at home with my husband has a joke where he'll ask me When was the last time your car left the garage?

09:29

Right, right, right.

09:32

You know, I commute for four steps every day into my office. So really, for the first few months, psychologically, none of my teams really felt an impact. But as the pandemic and quarantine situation depending on you know, their locations, were on it, it started to wear on us again, you know, in any organization in any project in any given time. When you bring Bring a bunch of people together, you're going to have some disruption. That something that happens, right? 

For some other random reason, the pandemic and all the other events that happened in 2020. did add to that a bit like I had one instructional designer on one of my projects at a critical time Tell me, she had to go offline for two weeks, because she no longer felt safe in her Los Angeles apartment. And she was leaving it to move across the country in the middle of a pandemic, because the riots were getting too close to her house. As you know, that's not an excuse, I get every day about why somebody needs two weeks off in the middle, at a critical point in the middle of their project. So we do have to allow for that. 

The good news is most of our clients because of this, and the way that they've had to work, even on their site, you know, internally on the client side, they've given us a lot of grace for that what we have learned, those of us who work from home is that now that all of our neighbors and spouses and even children are at home, is that we have now started to see technical difficulties that we didn't have before, like, my internet connection is no longer as fast as it used to be when I was the only one working. 

You know, luckily, I personally don't have young children. My my kids are fairly self sufficient. And but a lot of colleagues and clients even, you know, there are young kids in the background. And where we didn't have that before, you know, before, even internally, most of us would we would get the occasional barking dog or you know, that kind of noise, or maybe construction noise in the background on calls. But I've had client calls where it sounds like a daycare center. And and clients, especially if they're not used to being at home, don't understand, hey, you should mute yourself if you're not talking.

12:13

Well, exactly, exactly. And then we don't have to have the toddler screaming at each other over a zoom call. Yeah, we've had to I think a lot. I think one of those things, one of the good things is that a lot of people are now really conscious about muting that may not have been previously, because we had all kinds of issues on different court calls, here and there. And like, those have been cut down by probably any more plus percent. 

And it doesn't happen nearly as much. Now I get that I totally Wish I could meet my dog. But I think that people tune that stuff out. Whereas before, they would be mortified that their dog would be barking because somebody rang the doorbell. Now, I think that people are a lot more understanding of the different things that can happen. And the different things that do happen when you are no work from home and virtual environment.

13:17

Right. Absolutely. And, you know, clients are, I can tell internally, there are organizations that are really struggling with this. You know, especially with the young kids at home, you know, all those commercials that spoof this that are on TV, I'm like, Oh, that's my all day every day.

13:36

Yeah, exactly. Um, you know, I know that that my former organization, I'm still in touch with people, and they had a policy against working from home. So they, they really rarely, if ever allowed anybody to work from home. And that was just a temporary thing. You know, like, somebody broke their leg and they can still work, they just can't, you know, get around the campus very easily. 

And I know that that's something that they they really struggled with, especially early on, and they they're somewhat better, but the ebb and flow of of coming back to work and then oh, no, we have to shut down again, that that has been a big challenge and challenge and I'm sure that it, it probably is for a lot of people who are going to be listening to this podcast so so how do you maintain morale and momentum with teams when so much of life is up in the air?

14:36

So we try to maintain that sense of normalcy, like we always had, being a completely virtual organization, you're already communicating visually, audibly, you know, written documentation as much as we can. And we you know, in terms of there is a you know, real time dashboard for the product. Plans. And with clients, we try to make sure that they are aware of schedules as much as they can. 

While we're there, Now, that being said, in the middle of this pandemic, schedules have expanded, to allow for things like, you know, especially for people who either have more work than they would typically do or just cannot do their work as efficiently. So they need more time for things like reviews, and, and recycles in for deliverables. But, you know, in terms of morale, my meetings, and, you know, I've worked with a team of other product managers, and we each have different clients and different project teams. 

But we, we crossover with a lot of the the project teams crossover between project managers, but the first 10 minutes of my call is sometimes just picking on people for, you know, I'm fairly sarcastic. And so we always ask about people, I've always thought it was important in a virtual, maybe more important in a virtual team, for me to at least know a little bit about the personal lives of the project teams that work with me, especially those who work with me for longer than a couple of weeks. You know, like, I know how old their kids are, if nothing else, I know some of their hobbies, I'm probably know their dog's names, because we've heard them on calls and, you know, we know we and so just like, if we were in an office together, if I, if we jump on video, and like, Oh, you got a haircut, you know, that kind of thing. 

Tell us about your vacation, that kind of stuff. So we, we try to make sure that though, that we that I try, always try to make sure that I give that kind of thing enough time. And it's sort of breathing space, in the virtual calls we do, I have a regular standing meeting for each of my project teams, most of the time, they're weekly. And so we try to make sure that at least a few minutes of that call is catching up on things. You know, and we start a new team, hey, we have worked together in a few years, how is so and so? or How did this turn out? 

And so we always do that for each meeting. And so that's, I think that's an important part of things. We want to know about each other, we want to know, you know, how our kids are doing in school, how is did so and so get into college Did you know that kind of thing. So we we really do try to keep that personal sort of water cooler type chat you would do in an office, we try to keep we try to make room for that.

17:50

And I think that really is important. And I do think that that adds to, you know, keeping up the momentum, if you take a few minutes at the beginning of a call or have some type of, you know, team meeting where you're all speaking together, I think it becomes really critical. And I also think that it's becoming more commonplace. And what that does in the interconnectedness is that know, people are more willing to, you know, do additional work to take on more projects, if they feel like somebody is paying attention to them outside of just work. And I know that the environment in which I work right now is incredibly supportive. 

And no, I really do like that it makes me just want to work harder for the organization. So I think that's, that's absolutely critical. And I don't think that, that there that there are some managers who don't place enough emphasis on how important that is, for people in a team. And what happens when a team gets decimated for some reason, which is leading me to my next question, which is, have you had a lot of turnover in your teams? I know that for you. Sometimes it's typical, because it's project based, but just in general, have you had a lot of turnover in your teams, especially lately? 

Um, you know, not as much lately. It depends, I have to work for an organization who's very choosy in and how they select talent. Because they're completely virtual, they can, the talent pool is deep. They because they can, you know, recruit all over the world for particular positions. There's always and I think in a lot of cases, this is not unique to virtual teams. But if the turnover rate is higher for somebody who's new to the organization, than it is for somebody who's been doing it for four or five, six 

Here's what you know, I've been with us on multiple projects. I also work with a big pool of freelancers. But so you know, there was always that potential of somebody getting a better gig offer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And running away it. But it doesn't happen very often, I've been very fortunate. We, I'm choosy about the projects I select. And and this is one of the criteria for me personally, as I do that, because as a consultant, I can be selected there. But it's always the turnover rate is always higher with people who they're not necessarily new to the industry, because we don't get a lot of that we don't get a lot of inexperienced people. 

Especially in the freelance bird world, you don't get a lot of people without experience, freelancers in general or an experience blot folks, but somebody who is not used to virtual teams for one, or just not used to just the way a particular organization breaks down their role of things, for instance, instructional designers. You know, in some organizations, it's very different. If you have been a freelance ID on a like six or 12 month contract, where you're sitting in an office of your client, and just working on whatever they hand you from week to week, then it is for you to be on a project based, you know, large project team, multiple instructional designers, but also technical developers, software developers, graphic designers, and illustrators, and all of those folks. And so there's a lot of different handoffs. 

So it's, you know, there's a cultural change, I don't have a lot of turnover, what we do get is we'll have somebody who says, I'm only going to, I'm going to finish this deliverable, and you need to find somebody to pick up the other pieces you had assigned to me. So I usually get enough notice. That way, as long as we can. It's rare, like I said, You know, I did have one earlier this year, who said I need to leave the riots are getting too close to my door. So that was a little unusual. And we have people who, you know, have personal emergencies and have to leave as they are. But it's not. It's not typical. I don't have a big turnover rate. As as it happens, virtual teams, especially before the pandemic, we're pretty content lot. We know we have a pretty sweet gig. Most of us Yes, right?

Yes. Yes, yes.

22:48

So we know we don't have to really get dressed if we don't want to, you know, you don't have to you don't have to commute anywhere, you don't have to, you know, worry about gas and dry cleaning and all the other things that went along with with working in an office. So we all recognize it's a sweet gig. So we take it, and we appreciate it. And as long as everybody's paid well, and on time, their content. And I don't have a lot of turnover.

 23:20

So, so when you do have turnover, how do you manage it? And in parentheses, in my notes, I said, Don't tell me that you do the work yourself? I do. I'll tell you that I I have done the work myself and I have done the work myself. And are there be I have other members on my team that, you know, on my different different teams, because we're completely matrix data in any given time, I could have a different team. But then we we have this inside joke where we run our club called over committers anonymous.

23:49

Oh, yes. You know, it really is sort of that 8020 rule. Sometimes we try not to be Yeah, I occasionally will pick it up myself. I try not to, but I have other people who are like me in personality, who will say oh, I'll just do it. I'll pick it up from her. You know, I love it. Because I have a handful of like, especially instructional designers who are like, just tell me how many weekends are between then and now?

24:19

Boy, that's the truth. instructional designers are kind of a specific bunch of people that really, really love what they do. And they would do it 24 seven if they could, because they they love it that much. Yes.

24:31

Right. Um, you know, we will have turnover for things like graphic designers and and those kind of folks, they're a little easier to replace than somebody like an instructional designer who has to be not only on the client facing but they're also involved in the content like they're very sort of niche involvement. You know, a graphic designer, a different graphic designer could pick up from somebody else and not miss a beat most of the time. instructional designers are different, you know, that's a different beast altogether. So luckily, you don't have a lot of turnover with them. 

But you know, they're they're kind of nice that the turnover. I always try to manage the turnover within the project team as best as I can, where I will put it out to go, okay, can anybody pick this up with this is due tomorrow? Or it's due on Monday? Does anybody have a few hours to get this, we just slam it together, get it out. Like I said, I work with some brilliant people, it's very hard working brilliant people on my project teams who save my bacon all the time. So they will do that. But you know, occasionally I have to go back to a resourcing manager, luckily, I we have access to those people and most organizations, and I'm like, go find me, somebody who can do x. And by the way, I have to have them on Monday.

26:02

Yeah, and this is the thing, I think, is that if you, if you think about all the different, this minor, the discussions that we've had within the questions today, there are some kind of underlying themes, which is that you know, making sure that people feel heard, and that they feel like they're part of a team, even if it's virtual. And that, you know, then when it comes down to crunch time, if you do have somebody who has to leave or break their leg, or you know, whatever happens, that other people will step it up. 

Because the I think that the big piece of advice is that the K and I are going to share with you is don't do it yourself, because you have your own job as a manager to do and you can't manage and create or document or whatever it is that you are needing to do. Because something is going to really fall through the cracks. If your job is to manage people, then your job won't be in our case to be instructional designers or developers, in addition to main jobs. So Exactly.

27:16

And, you know, the role I have is that I also manage budgets, my rate, when I plugged him into a project is a lot more expensive than somebody, like say I need a copy editor, I might be able to copy at it that you know, one pager and get it through quickly. But my hourly rate is going to charge that project a lot more than a copy editor would and so, you know, I have to balance that as well.

27:48

So there's a lot of things that we have to balance, I think so any final thoughts to share?

27:55

You know, um, there are a lot of things and we haven't really talked about the remote teams, we just sort of talked about the difference in them. Remote teams, I tend to think maybe have an I could be wrong, this could just really vary from one organization, but in my experience, the remote teams maybe have a little more, have a little more support, have their support system is more readily accessible, maybe it's the way to think about it, then those that you know, work in a completely virtual environment, right? If you're in an office, your IT guy is within reach, correct? He's in isn't the same office where you are, you have separate team components on those different remote sites, as opposed to a centralized location that we have with a lot of our virtual organizations.

28:54

Right. So, um, you know, so that's, it's, it's just all in a part of getting, you know, everybody prepared for things as long as, as long as the teams know what to expect, and clients know what to expect. That's a huge part of my day is clients knowing what to expect, but we, you know, we that's how we make things work.

29:20

I agree completely. This is, we have a lot of similar experiences, even though divergent, you know, corporate versus higher ed. But I definitely think that a lot of the same ideas and concepts and thoughts can be shared, regardless of environment. I mean, these kinds of things can even be applied at the K 12 level, which we did not discuss, which I'm sure we could discuss it if we had way more time. So Well, hey, thank you so much for joining us in support of the center of the advancement of virtual organizations. We truly appreciate your insight and we know our listeners will benefit from your experience. So good to talk to you again. Kay.

30:09

She's a lot of fun. Thank you.