Keep Your Team Connected — Even When You Can’t Get Everyone in the Same Room
By: Case At Duke
Tags: Scaling Pathways, Human Capital, Social Enterprise, Team

As your team grows and/or becomes more dispersed, how can you continue to connect team members to work together toward your goals?

Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

In start-up mode, team communications and management is often relatively seamless, as the smaller team works in close proximity and shares multiple responsibilities. But scaling organizations face the challenge of no longer being able to “get everyone in the same room.” An organization’s talent may work throughout different offices across the country or on another continent, or even work in close collaboration with partners from totally different organizations. What systems or structures can you put in place to connect and manage your expanding team when you can no longer get everyone in the same room?

Advice from the field includes:

1. Leverage technology to create virtual proximity and improve team connectedness.

Mimicking the camaraderie and sense of teamwork that existed when team members were able to “yell over the cubicle” or walk down the hall to a colleague’s office is essential as an organization scales. Tactics include:

Real-time banter. Konstanze Frischen, Executive Director of Ashoka North America, emphasizes the importance of having clear intention and rules for using communications platforms to promote consistency and ease of onboarding for new team members. To mimic the real-time banter that occurs when everyone is in the same space, Ashoka U.S. has a rule that when you are at your desk, you must always have your messaging and video call software open. This rule helps minimize the threshold of reaching off-site colleagues.

Konstanze Frischen, Executive Director of Ashoka North America, emphasizes the importance of having clear intention and rules for using communications platforms to promote consistency and ease of onboarding for new team members. To mimic the real-time banter that occurs when everyone is in the same space, Ashoka U.S. has a rule that when you are at your desk, you must always have your messaging and video call software open. This rule helps minimize the threshold of reaching off-site colleagues. Reinforcing organization strategy. At Harambee, several WhatsApp groups allow for real-time sharing of news and updates across the organization — playing a specific role in the organization’s suite of communications platforms. WhatsApp is one part of Harambee’s multi-channel, multi-layered approach of using daily and weekly rituals to reinforce the organization’s strategy and messaging. While at times there can be a lot of “noise” on these channels, “the huge upside is the opportunity, through constant sharing, to align and inspire very big teams of people who are geographically dispersed, around common stories, victories and learnings,” shares Solutions Design Lead Sharmi Surianarain.

…And, some cautions:

Our interviewees cautioned that communications tools are not a simple solution ; it’s important to define the need before identifying the tool and not to underestimate the resources — not just cost, but people and time — required to leverage technology effectively.

; it’s important to define the need before identifying the tool and not to underestimate the resources — not just cost, but people and time — required to leverage technology effectively. For the roll-out of CAMFED’s SMS M&E system, it had to budget not only for the purchase of mobile devices for its network but also for significant investments in trainings and staff time to provide one-on-one support to new users.

2. Don’t get rid of face-to-face

Despite new tools for working and connecting remotely, interviewees agreed that in-person face time cannot be completely replaced as a way to build trust and align on big picture goals. Many organizations interviewed have at least one in-person gathering per year, bringing together the whole team or, at a minimum, representatives from all offices. Tactics include:

Get on a plane: Root Capital ensures that regional leads are regularly traveling to one another’s offices to gain a broader perspective of the organization’s work. Interviewees and survey respondents emphasized that this kind of appreciation for all parts of the organization is difficult to accomplish with only virtual measures.

Root Capital ensures that regional leads are regularly traveling to one another’s offices to gain a broader perspective of the organization’s work. Interviewees and survey respondents emphasized that this kind of appreciation for all parts of the organization is difficult to accomplish with only virtual measures. Formal meetings: Many organizations spoke about hosting regular strategy-focused meetings, bringing together key leadership, or in some cases all staff, to regroup around the organization’s vision and map a forward path together. At VisionSpring, quarterly all-hands meetings are specifically tied to the organization’s values to “uphold equity; constantly adapt and relentlessly improve; learn together; default to transparency and reveal hard truths; and help others do well” and are scheduled the week after board meetings so updates and changes can be reported out to staff in a timely manner.

Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) hosts large in-person gatherings, called learning forums, bringing together both internal staff and key partners. The purpose of these convenings, CEO Jagdeesh Rao shares, has evolved away from dealing with operational issues to focus instead on bigger picture ideas, such as the use of technology to catalyze new thinking across the organization and its many partners. FES sees these opportunities as critical because, as Rao explains, “when so many things are happening across different verticals and there is a lot of change, the learning forums are an opportunity to share thinking and get people on the same page.” The convenings also reinforce FES’ ecosystem approach in that they are for partners as much as for internal staff.

…And, a caution:

With larger or more diverse groups, meeting protocols must be even more strategic to maximize effectiveness. One specific way Health Leads aims to maximize the effectiveness of meetings is to create an environment that works for individuals with different communication styles and also helps the group depersonalize decisions and discussions to be more productive. For example, if the team is trying to move a decision forward, team members will take on different roles — such as someone being the “opposing” view (trying to really pressure-test the idea) and someone else being the “follow” view (an individual who is excited about the follow-through and follow-up).

Example: Connecting “One VisionSpring”

In order to foster the feeling of “One VisionSpring,” even with staff dispersed in many different countries, VisionSpring creates tools to connect staff and ensure visibility for all team members. CEO Ella Gudwin emphasizes the importance of the entire organization knowing “where we are, how we’re doing, and where we’re going — so that people can see how their contributions are tied to the organization-wide objectives.” VisionSpring’s tactics include the following: Distributing to each staff member a one-page handout with the organization’s three-year strategic framework on one side and annual objectives on the other; Providing an internal newsletter, InFocus, which is structured around the strategic objectives and shares team achievements, customer insights, and operational improvements and highlights individual staff within VisionSpring; and Pushing out live feeds broadcast on screens in VisionSpring’s warehouse facility and New York and India offices (currently being installed) to give the teams a window into one another’s worlds. The screens will rotate between real-time Salesforce data, photos, other timely news, and live- feeds of the offices and warehouses (as time zone alignment allows). “These are all just little ways to show it is really one team and one effort,” says Gudwin.

Do’s and Don’ts for Keeping Your People Connected