Four months and two weeks. 138 days, give or take, since March 17. That’s the day things basically shut down here in the US and many of us entered the remote workplace full time. Certainly, it’s been longer for those of you in Europe and other countries, and you’re seeing more daylight at the end of the tunnel. The point is, it feels like we’ve been doing this forever. While … [Read more...]
How to Ask for Time Off When You Work from Home
Someone asked me a tricky question the other day, and in thinking through the answer I realized that there are a whole lot of people working from home these days who never planned to—at least for months at a time. As a result, companies and workers are faced with some sticky situations that aren’t covered in the employee handbook. One of those is the idea of asking for time off … [Read more...]
Using DISC to Promote Better Remote Team Communication
There are better ways to learn how to swim than being thrown into the deep end of the pool. That said, should you find yourself in the deep end, you'll learn how to keep yourself afloat or, well...the alternative. Do you notice anything missing in this analogy? If the goal was to learn to swim, being placed in a terrifying, life or death circumstance isn't going to help you … [Read more...]
The Hundredth Monkey Works from Home
What do monkeys have to do with successfully working from home? A recent article from Harvard Business Review online studied how the COVID-19 inspired surge in working from home has impacted business. We’ll probably do a better examination in a future article, but one of the things that surprised the authors was this: Despite all the fears and past bad experience … [Read more...]
How Web Meetings Are Like Renting a Car
You’ve been using Zoom (or Skype for Business, or WebEx—whatever) to host your web meetings for a while and you’ve managed to be reasonably proficient. Now your client wants you to use a different platform. How big a deal is that? It’s not as big a difference as you might think, and the analogy I always use is like renting a car at an airport. Stick with me. Most of us have … [Read more...]