It’s been a couple of weeks since we all changed our normal way of working. Over those two weeks, a lot of ideas have been shared and some great lessons shared about how we continue working effectively in this new environment. At Notion, this is mostly thanks to the amazing speakers, that have run online workshops for us, including:

• Jacco vanderKooij, Founder of Winning by Design
• Andrew Davies, C0-Founder of Idio
• Melissa Di Donato, Notion XiR and CEO of Suse

Here are three key takeaways I’ve learned about navigating the current situation:

Cut the tone deaf comms

The world isn’t carrying on as normal at the moment and nor should your comms. If any upcoming comms don’t make sense within the current climate, then it’s better cutting them all together, than coming across as tone deaf. Alternatively, tweak any content to a version that suits the new normal. Your community will be looking at the way you behave now and the actions you take - these next few weeks could be brand defining.

Don’t run endless streams of ‘webinars’ and when you do, keep them short

As in-person events are currently not an option, everything is being moved online. However, an audience will tire of webinars and a simple name change could go a long way in grabbing interest. For example, run an ‘asking me anything’ session or an executive workshop instead, to encourage audience participation. Audiences are also likely to experience a digital burnout, and attention will wane if sessions are too long. Rather than running a long session over several hours, split them up into bursts of hour long sessions. This also applies to online meetings, where possible, keep them to 30 minutes and try not to schedule them unless necessary.

Use the crisis as an opportunity to change

Refresh internal comms with teams, to make remote communication across the business more effective. It’s thought that, after the crisis, working life may not return to normal straight away, and possibly never be exactly the same as it was, as people get used to remote working, not having a commute, spending more time with their family etc. Therefore, the crisis can act as an opportunity to change things in your business, refine communications and implement remote working as more common practice. In the immediate terms, there are also steps that can be taken by individuals to create a more ‘professional’ feel to their remote working set up - for example, installing a neutral background when on a video call, to remove any distractions.

As the situation progresses, we’ll continue to share the tips we are learning along the way and look forward to a collective learning experience!