Editorial
You open your project team meeting with a bit of easy social banter as you wait for everyone to finally appear in Zoom. In reality, you’re feeling anything but easy, given that you suspect that at least a few key team members may be way behind on their deliverables, delaying this project even further.
There’s a chance you might be worrying for no reason, though, given that no one has reported any delays. But many team members haven’t reported any progress, either, which makes you nervou
As you start the meeting, you’re somewhat relieved to learn that only one person is running late with their key deliverables. But the bad news is that as a result, progress is stalled for several other team members.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Teams that rely on weekly meetings to hear project updates, surface issues or identify disconnects are far more likely to miss deadlines and delay projects than teams that collaborate primarily through asynchronous communications. The contrast is even greater when teams span multiple time zones.
Finding the right blending of communications isn’t easy, especially for teams that can’t don’t have explicit principles and norms to guide their communications, collaboration and decision making. But there are some practical steps for teams looking for more effective, efficient ways to collaborate across time and space.
How to Make A Team Communications Map
Let’s take as our example a project team of 12 members spanning multiple time zones (think California, Boston, London, Delhi and Sydney) hustling to the finish line of a make-or-break project. They realize that they need more consistent and predictable use of communications methods and tools, so they’ve come together to agree on a core set of communication tools they’ll use for each type of activity or interaction.
They start with a blank template using a template like this and brainstorm a list of team activities and interactions along the left-hand column, such as:
- Information sharing
- Project progress reporting
- Decision-making
- Brainstorming
- Celebrations
- Task management
- Issue escalation
- Project planning
- Project retrospective
In the next column, they indicate which primary communication method or tool will be used for each activity, and which tool might be secondary. Examples:
- Weekly or daily team meetings
- MS Teams
- Zoom
- SharePoint
- Team portal
- Chat
- Slack
- Trello
- Basecamp
- Mural
- Menti
Finally, they note in the last column which tools will be used mainly asynchronously vs. those that require same-time participation. Team members realize they need to lean more toward asynchronous communications, especially where problems are doing the most damage today, such as making sloppy handoffs and spending too much time chasing down the right data.
Creating this kind of communications map, or matrix, requires a conversation with the whole team, if possible, so everyone can weigh in, discuss, debate and ultimately agree how, when and where they will collaborate and communicate.
Once they create this team communications map, they’ll post it in a place where all have easy access, especially new team members coming on board mid-stream. As part of future team check-ins, they’ll periodically validate and refine the matrix as the project moves through different phases.
Conclusion
Investing the time to create a team communications map that everyone can agree on can reap huge payoffs down the line, especially for teams that intentionally move towards asynchronous communications as their default. Start by identifying team activities and interactions where agreed-upon communications and collaboration tools can have an immediate impact, and work your way down the list from there.
Learn how you can join our contributor community.
