4 ways to navigate hybrid and remote work

Remote collaboration is here to stay. Try these four strategies to keep everyone working together.

Clare Geyer

Office Experience Manager at Coda

4 ways to navigate hybrid and remote work

By Clare Geyer

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Productivity · 5 min read
One day, we may get to stop talking about the unprecedented times Covid thrust upon us. Unfortunately, today is not yet that day. Because the truth is that 2020 changed how teams function. Remote work wasn’t new when the pandemic hit, but COVID-19 forced swift changes in workplaces worldwide. And we’re still feeling the effects. Remote collaboration is here to stay, even though some offices are still sorting out their remote/hybrid/in-person work policies. Odds are, we won’t have fully in-person teams going forward, so building structures that facilitate seamless collaboration, regardless of location, is vital. And luckily, it’s never been easier. At Coda, our teams are spread across the globe, so we’ve invested heavily in strategies and templates to keep everyone together. Here are four ways we’re navigating hybrid and remote work.

1. Get everyone on the same page.

 Literally. Wherever you’re working from, communication and collaboration will be much easier if you can centralize all the apps and documents you need. At Coda, teams keep every document, chart, and important link in a central doc called a team hub. It’s a single source of truth that contains everything from data tables and project trackers to meeting notes and first drafts (of anything). The best part is that everything in the doc automatically updates for everyone with access. No matter where a team is located, everyone in it can trust that everyone else is consistently working from the same data, without sending docs and spreadsheets labeled “cleanversionFINALDRAFT” back and forth or triple-checking the latest sales numbers with each other.

2. Balance structure and flexibility in your meetings.

 If you’re used to working in person, where Zoom doesn’t cut off one speaker to favor the other, you might be finding the switch to remote work frustrating. We’re here to tell you that it does not have to be that way. We’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how to democratize meetings efficiently at Coda—ensuring that everyone’s voice is heard, new topics can be raised, and no one’s time is wasted—and we’ve found it well worth the effort. Making sure everyone gets their chance to be part of the ideation and implementation of a project starts before the meeting does. Ahead of any call, we give everyone on the team the option to bring up or vote on a discussion topic with a standup template that’s built into a meeting doc (which is itself usually a sub-page of a team hub doc). This way, no one gets bulldozed by an agenda, and team leads aren’t missing topics that matter to their direct reports.
We also regularly host multi-threaded meetings, or meetings that have more than one discussion happening at the same time, which allow for the kind of spontaneous conversations that spark new ideas without letting things get off the rails. This takes a little extra planning, but it’s not time consuming. We use a bullpen template, where anyone can add a discussion topic to the agenda, to see what’s on whose docket and join the most relevant topics. Which issues are brought up in a meeting matters, but so does the urgency behind each of these points. Understanding each team member’s priorities enables smoother collaboration, and, you guessed it, we have templates for that too! Some of our favorite meeting rituals are Dory and Pulse, two ways to gauge where your team is at during a meeting. With Dory, any team members can add questions about a topic, and other team members vote on how big of a priority they are. It’s a perfectly organized way to gather spontaneous feedback or to balance structure and flexibility. Pulse is more of a temperature gauge for the team, but it serves the same function. People can quickly log their moods about specific projects, work in general, or their lives outside the office. It’s a great way to understand where everyone is before burnout or conflict are even on the horizon.

3. Build rituals to connect your team.

 If you can’t have in-person happy hours, you’re going to have to be more intentional about team dynamics. At Coda, we built ritual templates into our work week that aren’t necessarily about the projects we’re working on. These help us both cut down on that awkward dead air at the beginning of Zoom meetings and get to know each other a little bit better as humans, not just colleagues. We’re fans of rituals big and small. We keep a virtual lunch room so people can chat about things that have nothing to do with work. Coda teams prioritize sensitive communication by using a sound check process, where we coach team members on how to understand their communication style, how to listen to their co-workers, and adding flashtags or quick indications of urgency to messages. On some of our teams, the first meeting of every week is accompanied by a team kickoff template that lives in their hub. It has a space for people to talk about projects, sure, but this template also features a photobooth where team members show off something they did over the weekend, like a customized Instagram feed that shows off your teammates’ personalities.
We make space to get to know each other as more than widgets on the team hub, which helps us get as close as possible to the dynamic of a fully in-person team.

4. Keep track of your decisions.

 All those meetings are pointless if nothing moves forward, and it can be easy to lose action items in the shuffle of asynchronous teams. Async work only actually works if everyone on the team trusts everyone else to get things done. I’m sure you won’t be surprised by now to hear that we have several different tools for that, too. The most straightforward is our decision log template, which can be easily slotted into a meeting doc. It’s a simple but effective table that lists decisions made by date, area, stage, connected docs, and owner. Paired with the project trackers in your team hub, this template helps everyone understand what their responsibilities are and how they affect the rest of the team.
To take things up just a notch (and eliminate a step in the decision implementation process), you can also use AI with your meeting notes. This handy integration generates action items based on the notes you take during a meeting, so no one forgets what they’re supposed to do next. If you’re ready to let AI work even harder, Coda AI can write the meeting summaries, pull to-do lists, and drop them into the relevant team member’s dashboard. I have to admit, this streamlining of secretarial work has been my favorite use case for AI so far. Nothing gets lost because everyone knows exactly what they’re supposed to do next.

Work together, from wherever.

 However your team is working, you’re most likely going to need to collaborate online at some point, and I can promise that centralization is key. Using one doc to create a team hub keeps everything up to date, everyone working with the same data, and enables truly asynchronous work. It also helps sustain a team’s culture despite distance and makes sure you don’t miss any of your team’s decisions. That’s all. If you’re curious about what a team hub could do for you, check out our ready-to-customize template.
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