The podcast by project managers for project managers. We’re facing new challenges that are changing the way that we work. Listen in as we address the specific challenge of working remotely.

Table of Contents

00:43 … Coronavirus Impact – Keep Calm and Manage This

02:23 … Working Remotely and Managing Yourself

03:57 … Establishing a Rhythm

07:40 … Dealing With Interruptions at Home

11:45 … Sticking to a Schedule when Working Remotely

15:53 … Interruptions and Communication Methods with your Team

16:51 … Turning on Video Cameras

19:33 … Making Time to be Proactive

21:27 … Turning it Off at the End of the Day

25:39 … Experiment with Collaboration Tools

27:58 … Can I trust my Team to be Accountable?

31:57 … Facing New Challenges with Grace

34:35 … Connect with Crystal

35:20 … Closing

CRYSTAL KDAKIA:  It’s already a tough time.  So really using this as a time to bond

together.  Times of crisis are great to

emphasize a positive company culture. 

So, and I think that goes both ways. 

Both frontline employees, team managers, and team leaders need to have a

lot of grace in all those categories because everyone is adjusting to a new

normal.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by

project managers for project managers.  I’m

Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio is Bill Yates.

BILL YATES:  Hi, Wendy.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Every two weeks we get together to talk about

what matters to you as a professional project manager, and this week there’s a

lot that we want to talk about.

Coronavirus Impact – Keep Calm

and Manage This

BILL YATES:  Yeah, these are very unusual times, not like

anything that I’ve ever experienced in my lifetime.  The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has hit,

and it’s affected everyone on Planet Earth. 

It’s changing the way that we work. 

And we thought, what a great time for us to address the challenge that

is new to us as project leaders.  We

wanted to talk about specifically how to work remotely.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Yes.  I’m

sure a lot of people are worried and anxious. 

Someone wise I heard saying this on Sunday is we can’t allow uncertainty

to dictate how we are going to react. 

You know, we can’t change what we can’t control.  But there are things we can control, and that’s

what our guest is going to speak about today.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, that’s great.  I think it goes right along with our tagline

of “Keep Calm and Manage This.”

WENDY GROUNDS:  Absolutely.

BILL YATES:  We’ve got a lot of challenges to keep calm, so we’re all wondering how do we manage this. Fortunately, we have a past guest of our podcast, Crystal Kadakia, who’s going to join us today.  She’s had a lot of experience working remotely, she’s also written a lot about the ups and downs of working remotely, some of the challenges and some of the benefits of it.  And she is all about creating a better workspace.  So we are delighted to have Crystal join us today.  Crystal, thank you so much for joining us.

CRYSTAL KADAKIA:  Thanks for having me.  Thanks for – it’s nice to be back.

BILL YATES:  Well, it’s a spur of the moment thing, but

the times call for it.

CRYSTAL KADAKIA:  I think that it’s very timely, and also just

something that I’ve been really wanting to share more and more about.  So I’m really glad that we’re getting a

chance to talk about it.

Working Remotely and Managing Yourself

WENDY GROUNDS:  Crystal, you wrote a blog which recently we’ve published on the website:  “Does Coronavirus Have a Silver Lining?  A Guide for the Newly Remote Manager.”  And we’ve kind of highlighted some things in this blog that we want to talk about, can we start off with managing ourselves, what it looks like when you’re working remotely and how to manage yourself?

CRYSTAL KADAKIA:  Yeah, sure.  So the first thing about all this is you have to take care of yourself first, if you’re managing a team remotely, and you don’t have your own work environment together, your own rhythms and rituals at home ready, you’re not going to be able to manage the team.  So you’ve got to focus on yourself first.  And a lot of people don’t necessarily know this about me, but I’ve been working remotely for 10 years.  It first started because I was having health issues, and those really drove me to try out a different lifestyle.

At first, yeah, remote working is hard.  But over time I started realizing I can’t go back.  I really can’t go back.  And it’s because remote working gives you the opportunity to have more control over your work environment, over your interactions with people.  So it doesn’t necessarily mean no people, even though right now we’re talking about social distancing, like we’re never going to see people again, it’s not really social distancing.  To me it’s more of a physical distance, and so you’ve just got to do things a little bit differently.

Establishing a Rhythm

BILL YATES:  Crystal, it’s great to have the perspective of someone who’s been doing this for quite a long time. So for many, we’re facing this for the first time, everybody likes rhythm, right? They like the cadence of getting up in the morning, fixing your coffee, or maybe you stop somewhere to get coffee on the way to work.  You come in, you kind of, you know, you do the rounds, you talk with people, and then you settle into your workspace, and you start doing your thing.  You know, so there’s kind of a rhythm to life in the office.  How difficult was it for you to establish a similar rhythm when you were working from home?

CRYSTAL KADAKIA:  Yeah, it definitely took some rounds of iteration, you know, I think I’ve also changed it over time.  At first I tried one of those really rigid kinds of things, you know, that you get, like, everyone has these clickbait journals now on Instagram and Facebook that’s like, you know, “30 Days to Better Habits,” and every single part of your day is super structured.

BILL YATES:  Right.

CRYSTAL KADAKIA:  And so you wake up, you do a reflection, you do your yoga and meditation, you eat your breakfast, you say hi to the kids, you sit down, and you’re ready to go; right?  And it’s very, very rigid.  And I realized that that was me trying to force my corporate work environment into a home work environment, which is a lot more inherently flexible because it’s your home; right?  So you do have your family around, you do have your own things that you love about your home that make it really easy for you to stay in bed or to go make a great snack.  You can go check on people that you love.

And so I realized, for me at least, my rhythms and rituals needed to be much more fluid, and I found energy management to be a much more valuable concept. So for those of you who are freshly remote, I really recommend just taking a few minutes to just see where’s your energy at? What’s your work asking you in terms of core work hours?  Definitely respect those, but around those, what else do you really need to focus?  What do you need to get in touch with people?  What kind of environment do you need? And what kind of family agreements do you need to set up?

One of the ones for us that was really hard – because my husband also works from home, we both have our own businesses – is you would love to just check in on each other throughout the day.  I mean, you know, if I’m getting bored working on something, so I would get up and go say hi to him.  Well, he might be deep in something at that point; right?

BILL YATES:  Right.

CRYSTAL KADAKIA:  And so, you know, that’s not helpful.  So we’ve really started realizing over time that, hey, maybe you need to look at the person’s face and see what they’re doing and see how intently they’re focusing on something before you give them a hug or a kiss, or check in and say hello.  And I’m sorry, we’re kind of newly married, so I don’t know, that might not – but, you know, we got married last year.  And so anyway, that’s a little bit TMI.  But, you know, if you’re at home, everything’s TMI, you know, what are you going to do about it?

So I would just recommend spending some time thinking about your energy and creating some family agreements respecting your team’s norms, and then sharing what you’ve come up with to the rest of your team.  For some of you it might still be very structured.  For others you might find you might start shifting your waking hour because you don’t have a commute, you don’t have to get completely dressed up.  And you know what, that extra 30 minutes of sleep, you might find out that that’s a huge benefit to your productivity overall.

Dealing with Interruptions at

Home

BILL YATES:  You’ve said so many things that I want to dig into.  Wendy, I know one thing, when you were setting up the room that we’re in that we do our podcast in, you wired a light so we could let the outside office know when we’re recording.  You know, so, hey, try to keep things down, no wrestling in the hall right now, you know, or no ping pong, we’re trying to record something here.

And so I think what a practical thing for us to do from a home office, too, just to give that signal to other people that live with us to know, hey, I’m on a call now. So I’ll put this piece of paper up, or I’ll, you know, if I close the door, that means I’m on a phone call, or I shouldn’t be interrupted.  But I’ll remember to crack the door open or change the sign to let you know when I’m available for interruptions, you know, when I’m more interruptible.

CRYSTAL KADAKIA:  Yeah, this might sound really silly, but one thing that we do is we have a shared Google Calendar, and I can see his meetings, and he can see mine. Especially because we do things like this, like web conferencing with people, and again, I know more of you are doing that now, as well.  And, you know, you don’t necessarily want your significant other or your kids walking around in the background, so that can often help is just having like a shared calendaring system.