Sara Whitman, Chief People Officer, Hot Paper Lantern

How we behave in times of chaos and crisis is a test of character. As organizations and lives are upended over the COVID-19 pandemic, I’m reminded of how true this is. At Hot Paper Lantern, one of our values is unity as one team. To authentically live that value, we need to demonstrate a high level of collaboration. 

We also work in a ‘team of teams’ environment, as General Stanley McChrystal wrote in his book of the same name. As such, the consistency of our collaboration is not always the same, and it is almost never perfect. However, what we’ve learned is that when we are most collaborative, there are five core habits at play: we’re sharing information, asking one another for help, respecting each other’s differences, expressing gratitude and setting boundaries. 

And as we – like so many other businesses – were tossed into a fully-remote working world, these habits have helped reduce the disruption to our workflows. I share this now, in the hopes that these habits help you and your organization adapt as we all do our best to maintain some normalcy and stability. 

1) Share information.

In an oft quoted Salesforce study, 86% of employees and executives reported that workplace failures were a result of ineffective communication or a lack of collaboration. We’ve seen this first-hand and know that communication and information sharing is everything. Maintaining a regular flow of information can happen in many ways. 

At Hot Paper Lantern, we hold a weekly 15-minute rundown on works in progress and other important company happenings. After we began working remotely, we added a second all-hands meeting to make sure we stay connected. One is focused more on work status and happenings, social sharing and support. The other is leader-led, where we share wheat our executive team’s focus is on and how the rest of the team can help. This helps provide clear direction for what we each need to do to keep moving in stride with one another. 

Individual working teams then create their own meeting schedule and working styles that are best suited for that group of individuals and their unique goals. No two teams are run the same. However, every team is given a host of frameworks to help guide their decisions about how to get things done. 

This focus on workflows and project templates is a major work in progress, but it is something that people clamor for to make sure work is done at a high-level of quality in keeping with the company’s standards, and to ensure work transitions and hand-offs to different disciplines is clear and simple. These workflows will ultimately live in a project management software. And while we currently have a system we are testing, finding the right technology for us in this space has been a challenge. My best advice is test and trial as much as you can before making a commitment. Testing technology as we’re fully remote is a pressure test of sorts. If it can help us now, it passes with flying colors! 

2) Ask for help.

As an interdisciplinary firm, we have people of all backgrounds and skillsets under one roof – well, now under many, many roofs. We hire for top talent who are incredible at what they do, but who can check their egos at the elevator (or now at the Zoom room) and approach every project and each other with an open mind and willingness to help. 

We’ve also made Slack our best friend. It has become a dynamic online hub for collaboration, to ask questions of each other, build ideas and share common information for cross-team collaboration. This is essential when we have several similar projects, allowing us to eliminate, or at best reduce, duplicative work so we can focus on being strategic and creative partners to our clients.  

At the same time, Slack, or any other collaboration tool, can easily become a massive time suck and can contribute to an always-on work experience which ultimately leads to burnout. Giving people permission to minimize notifications and encouraging them to use the status tool to inform others when they are doing heads-down work or are taking a break is critical. 

There’s no doubt that doing business and living in a constant crisis mode takes its toll. Vacations have been cancelled and people are worried about so many things. Part of asking for help is knowing when to take a break. We’ve made it a point to encourage our staff to take a day or two off over the next several weeks to rest and rejuvenate. 

3) Respect differences.

Many of our employees are Type A, figure-it-out and get-it-done people. This can lead to some situations when over-enthusiastic teammates jump into things where they face a steep learning curve. This is where we’ve learned – by error and through open communications – to rely on the experts we have. We mentioned asking for help, but there’s also a time when it’s OK and necessary to say, “I don’t know” and to turn the work over to an expert. That can feel uncomfortable for the Type A-employee, but the work is better for it, and takes a healthy respect and trust to let it happen. It also brings different ideas to the table. 

While we all know different people have different working styles, understanding and respecting those styles is critical for allowing work to happen and to avoid interrupting someone’s flow. I’m someone who works very well alone and needs a lot time to think and dig deeply into my work. Others absorb energy from being around co-workers and feel isolated and unmotivated if they try to work like me. Knowing this about ourselves, and openly sharing it with others, creates opportunities for better understanding and better support for one another, particularly during such a challenging time where we’re all working siloed. 

To gain a better understanding of one another since we started working fully-remotely, we’ve introduced weekly presentations from each employee. In three minutes, they share pictures from their lives and the important things that make them who they are. We’re learning about our differences, our similarities and developing a greater appreciation for who we are. 

4) Express appreciation.

Shout outs, recognition awards and celebrating the successes of our peers is common both in our all-agency meetings and in our Slack channel. Even more common would be the easily shared “thank you” as people passed in the hall or sat down to a meeting. However, people passing one another in the hall just isn’t happening anymore, so those ad hoc opportunities need to be replaced and intentional. For us, we’ve made a point to rarely start or end a meeting without some expression of thanks, gratitude or call for shout outs where peers can recognize each other. 

Thankfully, our Slack recognition channel has been increasingly busy since we’ve been home. Our people have the channels and the avenues to express their thanks, and they’re using it. It’s now one of the most tangible and important avenues for supporting one another and giving kudos. 

5) Don’t collaborate all the time. 

Let’s be real. Collaboration can be exhausting. Some tasks require individual contribution and deep independent thinking. I mentioned how important and helpful Slack is for our collaboration, but we also need to tame that beast every now and again. To do that, we’re creating a Slack Emoji Guide so that we have a common visual language to use for our status that will help dictate how others interact with us. 

In addition to needing time to work alone, we also need the opportunity to recover and rejuvenate. Prior to these last several weeks, our teams would talk about the importance of getting outside, taking a walking meeting, meditating or spending unstructured time thinking. As expected, in this remote working world, there is a feeling of always-on pressure that would be all-too-easy to fall into. Now, more than ever, taking that time to step away, to do a puzzle, to read, to play with your kids or your pets is not just nice. It’s essential. There is no room for guilt when we do these things. They are sustenance for our minds, bodies and souls. 

Research shows that habits are not easy to acquire or keep. However, we’re getting a crash course in what works and what doesn’t now that we’ve been thrown into a fully remote and virtual world. As you’re working through this time and all the challenges it brings, try not to be too hard on yourself or your company when the collaboration breaks down. This is a normal outcome in abnormal times. 

We’re all human. We make mistakes and can’t operate at optimal levels 100% of the time. Take this time to experiment with new collaboration tools, learn more about your own working style or about colleague’s, and build positive habits today that will last far into the future.

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About the Author: Sara Whitman is the chief people officer at Hot Paper Lantern, an interdisciplinary agency that helps build brand relevance. She is also the founder of At the Start, a coaching consultancy for parents and teens.