S2 E91: Establishing Collaboration Channels

In this week’s episode, I want to share a hard lesson from my time leading a team of 30 people distributed across four time zones. 

A popular acronym from that time was MBWA (Management by Wandering Around).

It was the practice of leaders wandering around the office, in an unstructured manner, at random, to check with employees, equipment, or on the status of ongoing work.

One of the greatest benefits to the WFH (work from home) movement is that it has dramatically reduced the interruptions of MBWA by both leaders AND team members. 

So, what’s happening instead?  A new flavor of OCD (Omni-Channel Demands). 

We now sense this unwritten expectation to be always available in real time, nearly around the clock.

Our ability to have focused time to work within our gifting and our purpose is competing with incessant notifications and unwritten expectations from everyone from the top to the bottom to reply immediately.

Back when I managed that team of 30 people we worked together to define communication guidelines across the team that gave everyone space to breathe. Those same methods can be used in today's new WFH landscape. 

Want to know how we executed this plan? Listening to our full episode! 

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