Remote work: how does Thomas manage his team at a distance?

Thomas manages a team of around 20 project managers who are responsible for managing technical projects associated with maintenance and boiler equipment in an EDF plant. Thomas and his team have adopted Klaxoon to coordinate their team and foster efficient teamwork, even when working remotely.

It was super important for me to have a shared platform that we could meet up on. This way of working really helps create connections between everyone in the team. Klaxoon clearly makes us more efficient.

Organize your online team meeting with ease using Template

Every morning, Thomas and his team working remotely get together for a kick-off meeting. Team meetings are usually held once a week, on the EDF site, in a room with paper documents.To meet the challenge of recreating these exchange-rich team meetings remotely, Thomas uses Klaxoon’s Brainstorm feature to organize information visually and smartly. All the team members can log on to the app whenever they want, from any digital device, and share all kinds of ideas: words, images, videos, links, etc.When he wants to create a dedicated Brainstorm for his team and he needs to save time, Thomas turns to the Klaxoon Sketch My Project Template for inspiration. It’s a ready-to-use Brainstorm model for managing projects remotely or on site.By using the Template, Thomas can very easily recreate a digital workspace tailored to his team’s needs and constraints. Everyone can contribute to this shared platform, which is constantly evolving to meet their needs.

In the run-up to the meeting, everyone fills in the Brainstorm with their ideas, using the categories and color codes chosen by the team. The objectives are to have everything ready before calling the team together and to have already consolidated their ideas, to avoid having to ask everybody for their thoughts, one by one. This allows for greater efficiency and sharing.

Keep your team engaged during meetings and boost efficiency

To enable everyone to participate in the meeting, even if they have low bandwidth, Thomas and his team conduct meetings by phone and are all connected to the same Brainstorm. Thanks to Prez Sync, during the meeting every team member can redirect his or her input to Brainstorm and display ideas directly on all the participants’ screens at once.

It keeps it interactive. In other words, even if audio is playing, if someone wants to contribute an idea, he or she can post it. That also means that you can avoid having to interrupt when it’s not necessarily your turn to speak and it also prevents everyone from talking at once.

At the start of the meeting, Thomas throws out a Question directly onto Brainstorm in the form of a livestorm (or word cloud), to get everyone’s attention, gauge the mood, and take the pulse of the group. It gets things started: “a bit like drinking your first three mouthfuls of morning coffee!”

After that, the team talks health: everyone gives an update on themselves and their loved-ones, so they can identify any difficulties and anticipate possible needs (replacements, leaves of absence, etc.). Finally, it’s time to tackle operational considerations and discuss how to direct activities both remotely and on site.

Collaborating and managing daily projects efficiently using Klaxoon

In addition to using it in team meetings, Thomas uses Brainstorm to manage and direct daily projects. His objectives: to continue to manage projects remotely, stay connected, and help his team to work from home smoothly and under the best conditions.Thomas uses Brainstorm throughout the day, as a visual management tool to deal with queries and pain points in real time: as soon as a team member highlights a problem by posting a remark on Brainstorm, he receives a notification, drawing his attention to the message. Thanks to the colors and categories the poster has added, Thomas can immediately see what it’s about and deal with the issue promptly. This allows problems to be resolved efficiently, without wasting time, so that everyone can make smooth progress on their projects, even when working remotely.

The online support keeps the team highly accountable. As they’re working remotely, everything is dependent on trust and accountability. We tell each other everything, that’s how we grow and change.

One of the most common issues when a team is working remotely is the proliferation of channels of communication (email, instant messaging, text message, phone calls, etc.) and the fragmentation or loss of information. Brainstorm allows you to consolidate all the information and organize it visually, which facilitates communication between team members, particularly through the Questions tool. This provides the team with a unique, shared digital workspace.

Klaxoon is a fun, collaborative, interactive, inspiring, and motivating tool, which puts a smile on your face when you get up in the morning.

It's also an adaptable workspace. Thomas and his team quickly seized the opportunity to tailor it to their needs. Thanks to the very simple toolbar, the team created additional areas to allow them to classify and handle different daily concerns as they arise: operational matters, emergencies, difficulties, long-term projects, and even small daily victories.

It’s much more practical to use Klaxoon as a starting point: everyone can interact, and we are clearly more efficient because everyone is starting on the same page. What you have to bear in mind is that Brainstorm is constantly evolving. As soon as a new need arises, we adapt it and tailor it to our needs. Ultimately, when you look at the structure of the new Template, a lot has changed – I don’t know if you would even recognize the original template. In fact, Klaxoon has very few limits. The only real limit is your imagination.

It works for Thomas and his team—why not adopt the Sketch My Project template too?