Remote collaboration that works: practical steps for productive teamwork

Time spent in meetings has more than doubled globally over the past year according to a recent report from Microsoft. Although “meet” may be a four-letter word, it shouldn’t send shivers down your spine. Because once you know when, how, and why to bring your team together — and how best to work asynchronously — you can productively collaborate no matter the distance.

Dalia Havens, VP of Engineering at Netlify, recently joined Jim Kalbach, Chief Evangelist at MURAL, for a lively discussion about practical steps for effective remote collaboration. It was our first session in a series of webinars about high-impact teamwork, all a part of our exploration into Collaboration That Works.

CTA for cooperation in the Mural team — Collaboration That Works is a new interactive experience from MURAL that shows you how to make teamwork — *work*.

The webinar included Dalia’s Lessons from distributed teams, including:

Tips about how to get the most out of your team’s productivity through identifying when everyone is most productive — including mention of WHEN by Dan Pink
How to improve asynchronous communication
How to get the most out of meetings
The importance of checklists — including mention of The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Workflow planning according to the time zone — Netifly VP of Engineering Dalia Havens explained the importance of identifying your team's optimal productivity windows.

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After Dalia’s presentation, Jim led a live exercise to explore team productivity. The short exercise revealed when individuals were most and least productive and where there might be overlap in the group. This then led to a discussion about ideal times for everyone to meet — if possible — and even times when everyone might be better off taking a nap!

The exercise is now a template in MURAL and you can get the template here:

Team productivity coordination template — Click the image above to start using the Team Productivity Coordination template.

Next up for our webinar series about Collaboration That Works, register to attend Going Hybrid? Addressing the Elephant in the Zoom, on April 22, 2021! Jim will be joined by surprise special guests to explore the subject of hybrid work, including discussion around: