With lockdowns becoming a distance memory and the UK returning ‘back to normal’, the question over how to manage and encourage creativity across multiple remote teams is one on many business owner’s minds. The CMA decided to host a session with Maze Media founder Nicola who has experience in working with teams across multiple locations and can offer advice on how to get the most from your workforce whilst avoiding the feeling of passing like ships in the night.
Nicola has a wealth of experience in working with content creators and marketers from various makeups and talks about how her and the Maze Media team plan on working in the coming months.
Every individual in your organisation has different needs and has reacted differently to the pandemic, so attempting to please everyone will be near impossible. The majority of workers, like here at Maze Media, have express a desire to work in an office environment a few days a week and work from home a few days a week. If it’s possible, give your employees the individual flexibility to find hours and environments that make them feel most productive and creative.
Of course brainstorming and creative thinking is best done in person, but don’t make every meet-up specifically meeting focused or based around an agenda. Candid moments, shared laughter and inside jokes between colleagues and teams build the relationships and trust that lead to creative vulnerability, which is essential to truly original thinking.
If your teams work across multiple projects, campaigns and deadlines, they’ll probably be working with project management tools like Asana or Jira, and collaborative organisational platforms like Google Workspace. And while these tools are ideal for slick project management of your team and your assets, they’re not a space for casual conversation and idea sharing. At Maze Media, we use Slack as a channel for informal conversations, idea pitching and ad hoc questions. A few other tools you could try to encourage conversation and virtual collaboration are Klaxoon, Yonderdesk and Social 27.
If you enjoyed this, don’t forget to check out some of Nicola’s other CMA talks, about post-Covid content marketing and challenges of running an agency.
