We’ve had our fair share of adjustments and struggles adjusting to COVID (if you haven’t watched this parody on Zoom calls, you should; thank us later). But, one area of strength for us as a company is communication and we’ve never been more thankful than now.

Today, we want to give you an insight about how our team benefited from already-established communication structures across our various channels amidst quarantine. Hopefully it helps you and your companies form similar structures and communicate more efficiently!

At Awesome Inc, we love accountability and we love operating at max capacity. We strategically have a few means of communicating and each has a specific purpose:

• Slack→ This is our team’s main method for communication because we have set up all of our necessary channels

  We have a “within the hour” to “within the day” time frame to respond to a message depending on what channel a message was sent.

• Trello→ This is our project management software tool. We almost exclusively use this for keeping tabs on project updates, seeing who has the lead, how close to completion the task is, etc.

  Ideally we have a “within 24 hours” time frame to respond to Trello notifications

• Zoom, Google Hangout/Meet, Around→ For all of our video conferencing software that we use we have meetings that are between 30-45 minutes. We have an agenda for the meeting so that we don’t wander aimlessly just because we’re talking with a co-worker or someone outside of our team.

  We have found that having an agenda for all meetings, whether minimum or maximum details, helps keep the purpose of the meeting intact.

• Email→ Like any other work environment, email is important. This is our main method of communicating with external partners or for event planning.

  Similar to Slack, we have a time limit for getting back to someone. With emails we have a 24-48 hour timeframe, but it’s usually within the same work day.

• Phone call/text→ We’re normal humans so we utilize these at work. We mostly call or text someone if we’re out of the office traveling or are trying to get in touch with someone immediately.

  We keep phone usage for work communication between internal teams minimized so that when it is being used, it’s an obvious sign that something is a high priority.

As we’ve been learning how to improve our communication while in isolation, the most helpful piece of advice comes from our good friend Donald Miller with StoryBrand in Nashville, TN. He has a great phrase, “If you confuse, you lose.”

We’ve learned that from almost all virtual conversations. Be clear and explain as if you were telling a fourth-grader. It’s too easy to assume, but assuming (usually) doesn’t get you anywhere.

Lastly, let’s chat about team accountability. At Awesome Inc, we have a weekly Top 5, which is a way for our team to keep one another accountable for the top objectives to be accomplished every week. We post it publicly on Monday and announce everyone that went 5/5 at the end of the week. It’s a fun & competitive way to keep everyone invested and motivated!

Hopefully these spark some ideas for your team and reduce the number of meetings that could have been an email.

Stay safe, team!