Amplify Digest: Work From [Anywhere] (January 19, 2022)
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Welcome to the Amplify Digest. Every week, I break down five articles in five minutes; discussing the top people news, stories and resources that are worth your time. Scroll down for links to the articles covered in the video (and more), a helpful thread from the Amplify Accelerator Community, and curated jobs from the Amplify Job Board.
This week’s digest explores employees opting out, the impact of “work from anywhere” on Twitter’s diversity hiring, Coinbase’s new “recharge” weeks, and the Black Speakers Collection.
Articles discussed in this week's Digest (and more)
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The Amplify Accelerator Community was specifically designed to help modern people operators expand their networks, thinking, and connections. Each week, I'll spotlight a helpful thread from the community to help Amplify Digest subscribers learn from the discussions.
[Question] Hi all, As a predominantly remote company, we are looking at ways of reducing the number of, length of meetings as part of an overall comms review focused on more productive communications. I have two questions. I'm interested in Loom as part of the solution but wondered if anyone is already using this, how you've found it and how it fits in with other communication tools such as MS Teams? Secondly, can anyone share what you have found to be successful in improving meeting productivity and the meeting culture? Many thanks.
A1: Hi, while I don't use MS Teams, my company is 100% remote so I feel you here. We use Loom/Vidyard to either communicate quickly any technical issues we're having or to record a process which then will be turned into a SOP. I do find this a useful tool to communicate visually without having to hop on a call and screen share. As for reducing the number and length of meetings, we're in the process right now of trimming things down significantly. You'd be surprised what can be accomplished in a 15 min daily scrum. We've been using meeting templates through a software called Align which follows the scaling up methodology. I find having a high level of meeting prep beforehand usually reduces the amount of time actually in the meeting. In terms of meeting culture, it really helps if the changes come from the top. We've got permission from the entire exec team that if we find ourselves on a call where we don't need to be there, we can just excuse ourselves and sign out. Which is harder than it sounds lol, but it's getting there.
A2: Thanks for sharing. I also do a daily scrum/standup at the start of the day with my team. It works brilliantly. We manage our time using a Kanban board which I find helps keeps things simple and enables you to focus on what's key that day. We've rolled this approach out across some departments and are encouraging everyone to do the same for their own team meetings. It’s the cross team meetings that are consuming more time and where people are being invited that maybe don't need to be there. I'll take a look at Align. I do like the idea of your last point, and people politely excusing themselves, but I agree some might find that difficult, especially if you were leaving a meeting being run by the CEO. I also like the Github approach where they record the meeting and invite people only for the section of the meeting they need to be present for.
A3: For our new hire orientation, I always cover meeting norms that we hold to - these were generated in a collaborative working group last summer and socialized across the whole company in July. I send these out as reminder in my weekly People updates newsletter 1x per quarter….but I found that having this be part of a new hire’s orientation has gone a long way in helping us hold to a better meeting culture - it means we don’t start off with any poor habits, and our new staff feel empowered to call out a habit that’s contrary to our desired state
A4: We haven't used Loom but have started using more zoom recording for onboarding presentations as well as making more meetings optional and recording them. We receive mixed feedback, some love it and some people tell us they prefer to read information vs see a video.
A5: We use a mix of Loom (recording team meeting videos to embed in presentations), Slack video (for daily comms) and then Google Hangouts for recording meetings. We also do quarterly calendar hygiene audits to question whether a meeting still needs to be a meeting, and if so can we improve the format / cadence for better efficiency, or can we move to async updates / collaboration instead. We also scrub who is in the meetings as well and how many attendees to avoid “conferences” (haha).We’re currently working on documentation to ensure that all meetings are recorded and / or notes are taken, with action items transparently shared in Asana. This way folks don’t feel that they’re missing out on conversations, and conversations don’t get isolated. We also have a rule if you find yourself doing something else rather than being present in the meeting, then you likely don’t need to be in that meeting any longer and can excuse yourself moving forward (ie. you just show up to show up because it’s in your calendar each week).
A6: We use Vidyard for small async communications when you need to explain something but don't need to get on a call. I actually just revamped our whole communication guide over the break to highlight what tool should be used when (slack, Asana, Zoom, vidyard, email, etc). We also implemented a schedule and notes for every department meeting and cross department meeting so folks can see what was talked about. Any non-standard meeting there needs to be an agenda+goals attached to the calendar invite and an "Owner" who is responsible for managing the meeting and keeping things on schedule as well as taking notes. Typically the person who schedules the meeting in the first place. We are also 100% remote so this is something we are constantly battling. We also just implemented a meeting free day (internal only).
A7: Thank you. A great range of points and options to think about and which we have either started to do or we can do. Some interesting tech options as well to explore. I particularly like 'no agenda no attenda'. We are holding our first company offsite since the start of the pandemic in February (hopefully the rules still allow for it ) and are covering communication and collaboration in a remote world as part of our team building activities. I'll share anything helpful I learn back to the channel but will certainly include ideas from the above.
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