This Pandemic is an Existential Crisis for Cinema

With not enough cinemas globally open to show the tentpole content, studios are electing to release on their own streaming services. This is precipitating an existential crisis for cinema. [blog.mindrocketnow.com]

During Lockdown i, you might remember that Trolls World Tour made a splash by bypassing theatres and being released on streaming services only. I remember because spending on ads on the side of buses was pretty much frozen, so pictures of those little blighters lingered for a long time. AMC took particular umbrage (possibly not at the bus posters, but at being disintermediated) and black-listed NBCUniversal. 

But Trolls World tour made $95M in 2 weeks, which compares favourably with its $90M production costs. It compares very favourably if you think that NBCU didn’t have to share any of its revenue with the theatre groups (hence AMC’s outrage). Predictably, this strategy has been repeated with other high profile movies.

Disney elected to stream Mulan on Disney+ for £20 premier access - not PPV but a one-off fee to access a premier subscription tier comprising of a single movie. It became Disney’s lowest grossing of its live action remakes to date, and won't recoup its $200M budget (yes, there were mitigating factors in the freezing of China-US relations which made this movie a cultural casualty). 

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet wasn’t released online, only in theatres, made £347M in the box office (against $205M cost). However, that box office will be shared with the theatres so WarnerMedia didn’t recoup its investment; it was also Christopher Nolan’s worst-performing movie to date. 

Mulan will be judged a success and Tenet a failure. The reason is that Mulan drove increased takeup of Disney+ (Disney won’t confirm how many people took up a Disney+ subscription and paid the premium just to watch Mulan). So the cost of the movie can be somewhat offset by a reduced cost of acquisition of the new Disney+ subscribers.

So it’s not surprising to me Wonder Woman 1984 will be released in cinemas and online on HBO Max today (Christmas Day 2020). Not only will WarnerMedia not have to share revenue, but it’ll drive more people to its OTT service (which is fourth in a field of three so really needs to catch up). What is surprising is that WarnerMedia is not intending to charge a premium for it. 

It’s conventional wisdom that even in a recession TV survives household budget cuts. TV subscription is a recurring expense, and going to the cinema is an infrequent treat. Pricing PPV as the latter rather than the former is problematic. Charging a content premium when your market is suffering from increasing unemployment is a hard sell. When the Premier League tried to charge £15 per match, fans revolted. The best riposte to this price gouging was from Newcastle United fans. Instead of paying the broadcaster, they donated the same money to a local food bank, raising over £20k. It’s not necessarily the amount, but the context.

At £20 per view, each movie will have to cost the same as Trolls to break even. The pricing looks much more compelling at £15 with a complementary digital download later, or £20 one-off upgrade to a premium subscription, as long as there’s more than just the one blockbuster. If there isn’t an upgrade fee, if the new title is adding to the value proposition for the service, then the decision is a no-brainer. 

If you’re Disney or WarnerMedia or Amazon or Netflix, the pandemic has served to increase your addressable market for your OTT service. However, it seems clear that this pandemic has hastened the demise of the multiplex. We’re not going back to a tentpole movie filling up every screen in a multiplex on opening night. Indeed, we haven’t had that in a decade. 

Cinema is no longer the premium venue to see premium content - that is now your own home. Instead, I can see chains like Everyman and The Prince Charles Cinema flourishing, spending less on screening rights, and spending more on creating an experience for cinema lovers. 

Merry Christmas everyone, and see you in 2021!

Effective not Efficient

 How do you know if what you did today moved the needle? Delivered value to the business? And if you don’t know, why did you do them? [blog.mindrocketnow.com]

The answer to this last question normally boils down to being too busy to stop to think. Making time for reflection ends up being prioritised below real work, because there’s no immediate output. The name of the game is to produce as much output as possible, because that’s what can be measured, put into annual appraisals, paid a salary against, so we assume it’s an accurate proxy for delivering value.

There’s a logical thread from optimising output:

• To maximise output, we need to maximise utilisation;

• Which means we need to eliminate anything that impedes delivering output, anything that isn’t writing code;

• But we know that eliminating planning is bad, so instead, we do all our big planning up front;

• And we know that plans fail because of lack of contextual knowledge when the plans are made, so we need to do big design before big planning;

• To get the design right, we need to have clarity of the product we’re intending to put into market, so we need to put big market analysis and big product analysis before big design;

• This is a fair bit of work to do up front, with varying skill sets, probably from different teams, so we’ll need the various resource holders to agree that this is the right thing to commit their resources to = organisational alignment;

• To secure that commitment, we’ll need to prove that we’ve thought it through, and present a business case that associates output with investment;

• This business case is important, so we’ll need to put some thought into it, so we’ll need a little planning, little design, little analysis, little resourcing, little commitment…

• This is getting a bit recursive now 

Let’s look at the opposite position, where we aren’t optimising output, but focusing on creating the best output (let’s assume it’s software).

• We’ll probably have scrum teams with all the skills in-team to create successful, well-thought-out code;

• Because all the skills are in-team, we’ll be more nimble, responding to changes in context quickly, so the code will probably take less time to complete;

• We’ll probably be using DevOps techniques, so the code will have security, operability, quality baked in from the start;

But:

• We still won’t know if we’ve delivered any value, or merely great code.

Both cases are failures, because both rely on the assumption that output is a good proxy for value. It isn’t.

I once transformed a software delivery capability within a company that was overly focused on cost control, and therefore big everything up front, into one that was able to deliver quality code reliably without a big front, and so much more cheaply. Once the spend rate and code quality were no longer concerns, we were able to focus on what delivered value. And as it turned out, none of the features being mooted actually moved the market. Our investment was better made into marketing and content, rather than further app changes. So I pivoted the team to the next market, with a clear conscience knowing that done = Done.

Building software is complicated. Building the right software is not complicated, but it is harder. It requires trust that your process will yield good output, so the focus can be on understanding which is the right output.

Remembering Quibi

The brief rise and precipitous fall of Quibi perhaps shows that the world doesn’t need yet another big streaming service. What can we learn? Do you agree? [blog.mindrocketnow.com]

As I write this, the polished https://quibi.com/news site still presents a list of achievements: a new series, reflected glory from the Emmys. The news ends in September 2020, and omits the last piece of big story; that it has closed after 6 months and $1.75B. Most startups fail, especially those in crowded markets, but this one has failed more thoroughly than most.

In a crowded market, you have to differentiate, and that differentiation should address a gap in the market. Digital media services have been trying, to varying degrees of lack of success, to combine the way people want to consume content with the way people want to communicate - streaming and social media. So it made sense that Quibi this is the gap that should focus on; being a social streaming service. Quibi focused on short form and mobile because that’s how people live their social media lives.

Analysts were impressed with the “mission to entertain, inform and inspire with fresh content from today’s top talent—one quick bite at a time”, as were investors. And a lot of investment was needed. Quibi wanted to differentiate itself from user-generated content by having high artistic and production values. There’s not a lot of this premium content to acquire, so Quibi had to produce the content itself. And premium content is expensive to create. Netflix spent $17.3B in 2020 so if you want to be in the same game, you’ll have to spend billions too. 

The current market has shown that people will pay for content. US research shows that people are willing to pay at least $10 to $20 per month for streaming services. Backers saw an addressable market of the size of YouTube’s 2B monthly active users. It would only take a fraction of a percent of that market with a regular subscription to pay back that investment manyfold. YouTube itself has 20M subscribers for its Premium service. At Quibi’s $4.99 per month this makes a healthy revenue stream. The business case seems straightforward.

Using this huge investment, they went all in on premium content. Quibi covered the production costs, unlike cinema where producers take the financial risk and then recoup from box office receipts. This enabled content creators to take risks. The creators seemed to respond with ideas that were really interesting, using the 10min cap on duration to spur creativity. 

Was it a casualty of the pandemic? Well, Disney+ and HBO Max managed to launch and sustain, so no. The pandemic didn’t stop it getting mind share of its target audience through buying influencers. The pandemic didn’t stop it from being downloaded from app stores.

I think Quibi got the market wrong. They thought they were "competing against free". I think they were competing against the pause button. Once you get underneath the gloss and money, I think that they were solving the wrong problem. This is hardly uncommon in startups. Most startups realise this when they start to run out of money, so they pivot away or fail. Quibi had too much money so they continued. Perhaps the story would have ended differently if they had the same depth of catalogue as Disney or WarnerMedia, but they didn’t have enough money for that. Ironically, they had simultaneously too much money to succeed, and too little money to be successful.

In a crowded market, you have to differentiate, and that differentiation should address a need in the market. Quibi addressed a gap, not a need, and that is ultimately why it failed.

The Problem with Data Driven Decisions

This week I look at the pitfalls of being data-driven. It seems simple, and logical, so why do we end up falling back on our gut feel? [blog.mindrocketnow.com]

Should I make my next investment decision based on objective data or taking a punt based on how I feel? Seems a straightforward answer, doesn’t it - who would want to be responsible for a significant financial decision that was made on a whim? (Kinda depends if it worked out…) But making a good data-driven decision is a lot harder than just intending to do so.

What are you measuring? This simple question unravels a chain of questions that turn out to each require careful thought. Let’s pretend we’re trying to figure out whether to spend money on a cool new app feature:

• What are the business (or strategic) outcomes you’re trying to influence?

• How does the app contribute to that outcome?

• How does the feature improve the ability of the app to contribute to that outcome?

• What metric can we put on that improvement?

• How can we measure those metrics? 

• Are those measurements allowed in our privacy guidelines?

• What would be the impact on those quantities if we didn’t build the app?

• Is there anything else we could do, at less cost, that would improve that metric, even in part?

• Is there anything else we could do, at same cost, that would improve an alternative, more important metric?

Most of the time, we don’t have a good answer to all of those questions, oftentimes because to do so thoroughly will take a lot of effort, more than the effort to ship the feature itself. So we end up making a best guess - aka taking a punt.

I’m really attracted to the concept of lean development, which codified learning by doing. The idea is to ship features as frequently as possible, measure impact upon metrics, and improve or discard depending on whether it’s a positive or negative impact. By keeping this feedback loop really short, we risk less wasted development effort. As a side-effect, we maintain focus on the metrics that matter to us, and maintain a cadence of shipping features.

As before, it depends upon the metric. If we optimise to a vanity metric (one that doesn’t align with a business objective) or a proxy metric (one that doesn’t align well with a business objective), then we might miss the business objective. We might optimise for a very fast playback start but miss the fact that consumers are much more worried about not finding programmes that they like.

After all that, you might be thinking that I advise avoiding making gut feel decisions. You’d be right - gut feel is basically your thought heuristics kicking in, reinforcing all your unconscious biases. Taking a moment to consider rather than react is a good rule. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use your feelings. I’m also a strong believer in eating your own cooking. 

We should be building apps for people, and we need to understand people in detail if the app is going to make a difference to them. The person you get to see the most is yourself, so you should be able to analyse your own reactions to your app in the best detail.

Be data driven but guided by context. The best context is you.

Media Tech Bites: Importance of Metadata

Here’s my short take on a piece of media technology. This week I look at why metadata is the most important part of media tech. Do you agree? [blog.mindrocketnow.com]

Broadcast is in the middle of a technology revolution. 20 years ago, I was cabling routers to encoders, making sure that the labels were correct. Now I’m working with engineers to ensure the virtual routing through our AWS services is working as it should, and feeding iOS and Android apps properly.

Not everything is changing. Then and now, we use metadata to describe the services being delivered. In the world of DVB then, the metadata was in the main the System Information tables that told the Set Top Boxes where to find the broadcast services in the frequency spectrum. Now, as then, the metadata drives content search and discovery. However now, unlike then, metadata drives a far richer discovery experience; we can see trailers where we used to see thumbnails, we can link to IMDB articles where before we had a character-limited synopsis, and we can select the next programme based on what we’ve just watched or even what mood we’re in.

More fundamentally, metadata is starting to drive how the services are created. The cabling and labels are abstracted from the creation of services by software drivers. Middleware orchestrates those drivers into services. Those services can be orchestrated together in very visual “low code” ways. They can be defined in terms of metadata alone. This means UI and UX designers can put together interesting app experiences without needing to know Kotlin or Swift. It will mean that experiences can be put together programmatically, such as a UI that is reactive to the content that you’re watching, or the context that you’re watching it in.

If this all seems familiar, it’s because the enterprise IT sector went through this change last decade. It’s experience is that metadata drives the creation of the service, the consumption of the service, and the quality assurance of the service. To stay relevant, it’ll be necessary for all of us to be metadata-literate.

Apple Support is customer care done right

 Over the history of my Apple fanboydom, this is the first time that I’ve used Apple Support. I’m really impressed, but my problem hasn’t been solved. [blog.mindrocketnow.com]

I’ve bought Apple Care+ every time I’ve bought an Apple hardware item, and until now, never used it. So just before it expires for my latest Apple Watch, I decided to use it to see if one of the niggles I was living with, would be fixed under the warranty. After all, I’ve paid out more in premiums than the cost of a replacement watch.

MacBook late 2008	£75
Mac Mini late 2009	£49
iPhone 6 plus 2014	£149
iPhone 8 2017	£129
iPhone XS 2018	£199
Apple Watch series 0 38mm 2016	£49
Apple Watch series 4 38mm 2018	£89
Apple Watch series 4 Nike+ 44mm 2018	£89
Apple TV 4k 2018	£29
Total	£857

The problem I’ve been having is an odd one. The heart rate chart doesn’t appear if I do a run. I can sometimes see an average heart rate reading, and the chart appears for all other activities that I’ve tried, but just not for running. And it’s inconsistently unavailable in both Apple’s Workouts app and the Nike+ running app. I’d been living with it, because I’m used to trying to fix these annoyances myself. But why not put Apple to the test and see how my insurance premiums have been invested?

Here’s my conclusion: Apple’s customer support is the best I’ve experienced.

I tried three ways to access Apple support, and all three were excellent. The first was rocking up to the Genius bar in my local store. The appointments were oversubscribed, but there was a way of scheduling a walk-up for later in the day. Gathering my details was painless; they just took a screenshot of my Apple ID and tracked me from there. When the message pinged me that my slot was ready, I was guided through the covid security measures by a very serious-looking security man, then ushered to my waiting stool at the bar. Altogether, I was greeted and chatted with 6 different Apple employees, including the engineer who very patiently and knowledgeably tried to resolve my issue.

The follow-up appointment was at an authorised reseller because it is within walking distance, and the store isn’t. Making an appointment was straightforward using the Apple Support app. The session was actually fun, because we ended up geeking out over my beyond vintage MacBook, and the possibility of installing Ubuntu. I was sent away with more suggestions, most importantly to wait a couple of days and install the new watchOS 7, to see if that fixed things. Again, an excellent experience; the third party’s service was indistinguishable from Apple’s own standards.

One of the tips from my first Genius appointment was to make use of the telephone service, as Apple Care+ gives me access to the same standard of diagnostics except from the comfort of my own home. There was no wait to talk to an agent, the knowledgeable Isabella - contrast with the 90min I had to wait for a BA agent to change my air tickets last month. Isabella was able to run the same diagnostics as was done in the Apple store, and had a suggestion that the other engineers hadn’t thought of.

Isabella escalated to a second line agent, Chris, who has expertise in the heart rate measuring features of the Apple watch. Chris repeated the same diagnostics, repeated the same “you’re wearing it wrong” advice, repeated the request for more test data to try to repeat the issue (I’m tired with all this running). So far, I’ve had 4 scheduled call-backs, more suggestions made and more data gathered each time. 

Even though my issue still isn’t resolved, I’ve come away extremely pleased with all the interactions. It’s worth dwelling on that point; I can think of only one other occasion in my shopping career where something has gone wrong and yet I’ve been happy about it (more on that later). Every other time I’ve been all entitled and compainy when the tiniest thing goes wrong, even if it’s been fixed promptly. How has Apple managed this magical feat of emotional manipulation?

The first key difference between Apple and most other retailers in my life, is that I’ve made an emotional investment into Apple’s hardware (= become a fanboy). This pre-disposes me to not put on my complainy face, but also places the burden of high expectations because I feel I know them so well. So they start with a goodwill surplus and trust that they can solve my problem.

It’s a relief to see that they don’t squander the goodwill the way that all call centres seem to: they don’t have long wait times, they call you instead of you needing to call them more than once, they don’t read from scripts (at least not obviously so). They come across as trying to solve the problem with you, as opposed to solving it for you. This changes the dynamic from being a service where you’re entitled to a fix as soon as possible, to being a collaboration where you’re a team experimenting together.

The second key difference is that the tools are excellent because it’s a coherent ecosystem. My Apple ID links my purchase details, warranty scope, appointment scheduling, and login to data sharing websites. There are diagnostic apps which can be remotely initiated and results are immediately shared. Screenshots can be uploaded and viewed whilst the call is ongoing, so there’s no need to schedule yet another follow-up.

Finally, the service is expensive, and it’s obvious where the money has been invested. There are enough agents at each level of expertise to make wait times disappear, and there’s not sense of needing to rush the interactions. The software has been built with not just functionality but with diagnostics of that functionality. This requires deep pockets.

So how can companies achieve this same level of customer care without Apple’s deep pockets? Let's look at my other shopping experience where something has gone wrong and yet I’ve been happy. I bought a very old convertible at the beginning of the summer (wife-endorsed midlife crisis car, plus it was a hot sunny day). It was perfect for the summer weather, especially the sunshine we enjoyed on holiday the week after buying the car. The car and I bonded. Inevitably, the hood broke on the drive back. 

I called the dealer, who immediately agreed to fix it at his cost; this was the second week after selling the car to me and he still felt a duty of care towards the purchase . This was prior to understanding what the issue was, beyond my vague non-technical description, and knowing that his in-house mechanic probably wouldn’t be able to fix it. I took it in, then went on holiday again (abroad, no need for a car). I picked it up after we got back, and it was all fixed, so invisibly to me. He had to take it to a hood specialist, and had to pay for that work himself, which probably cost all the profit from the sale, maybe more. But he was happy to spend that money, because he valued my satisfaction.

Both Apple and the car dealer lost money on that one purchase that I made with them. However, Apple has made more money from me over all my purchases with them, and I’m pretty sure I’ll go to the car dealer again when I next want to make an impulse car purchase. Both are able to remain in profit because not everyone needs expensive customer care, but everyone pays the premium. 

It turns out that the way to achieve exemplary customer satisfaction is actually straightforward: 1) invest in quality so that only a few people need support after purchase, and 2) invest in the support so that the interactions are exemplary. Being exemplary needs investment, but is only achievable if it's a business priority.

Is Apple One value for money?

 One of the less eye-catching, but more significant announcements from this week’s Apple announcements was the bundling of Apple’s services. It’s been a long time coming, but is it actually worth it? [blog.mindrocketnow.com]

Amongst all of the shiny new devices came an announcement that Apple will start bundling its subscriptions services into a single Apple One subscription. I’m not in the market for a shiny new device, but I do already subscribe to two Apple services separately, so this was the most significant announcement for me. And also, as it turns out, for companies like Spotify, who called it an abuse of Apple’s dominant position. Why is it such a big deal? Let’s try and answer that by example.

My iCloud subscription costs £2.49 for 200GB. My Apple Music subscription is £14.99 for a family account. An Apple One family plan is £19.95, so only a monthly medium latte more. For that extra, I get a service that I’d actually pay for, namely Apple TV+, as well as one that’s frankly meh, namely Apple Arcade. 

I like Apple TV+, I really enjoyed Dickinson and Little America, but there were too few shows for it to earn real estate in my TV watching brain, especially compared to Netflix and Amazon Prime, and not worth £4.99 per month. But at £2.47 per month, Apple TV+ is now a keeper. The price is low enough for me to not bother to cancel once I finish watching The Morning Show, because I can afford to wait a couple of months for the next show. Apple TV+ is now priced commensurate with its stature as a second tier subscription.

Avi’s first tier subscriptions:

These services have earned their spot as keepers, and are used multiple times per day.

• Netflix (£8.99 per month, or 38% of TV budget)

• Disney+ (£5.99 per month, or 26% of TV budget)

• Amazon Prime (TV is half of value of prime, so cost at £4 per month, or 17% of TV budget)

Avi’s second tier subscriptions:

These services are also keepers, because they’re cheap enough.

• Apple TV+ (calculated ast £2.50 per month, or 11% of TV budget

• Starz Play (£1.99 per month for 6 months, so 9% of TV budget)

Avi’s third tier subscriptions:

These services are only keepers for their incentive period.

• BFI Player (free for 4 months)

Looking at the numbers, you could argue that Disney+ and Amazon Prime TV are both underpriced, whereas Apple TV+ is now priced correctly. But value for money isn’t the reason why Spotify is worried.

Amazon now enjoys 98% retention after 2 years which is in no small part due to the range of services offered as part of Prime. This is clearly the direction of travel for Apple. Apple One is already priced where you can still realise value if you only use 3 out of the 4 services included. The stage is set for Apple to offer more marginal services within the cost of the subscription. Apple Fitness+ is a “free” addition later this year, if you buy the premium level of Apple One. It wouldn’t surprise me if iTunes Match is bundled with Apple One in the future (yes, it still exists, nobody bothers with it, yet it costs a whopping £21.99 per annum extra). Wouldn’t it be interesting if Apple Upgrade Programme and Apple Care+ were offered as in another bundle tier too?

What’s the alternative? Well, Google One now backs up iPhones and has a cheaper tier for less storage, but the saving is small. (Side rant: I shouldn’t need to pay Apple for the privilege of backing up my mobile devices. Every purchased hardware should come with lifetime ability to back up settings, especially at Apple’s prices.) Apple Music has many competitors, but they’re all at the same price point. So whilst there are alternatives, none are compelling. 

Apple Music has now 19% of the market (Spotify, the market leader, has 35%). The stickiness of Apple One will undoubtedly increase its market share. I’m going to sign up, and when I do, I’ll probably stay. And that’s why the rest of the industry should be worried.

So what is DevOps anyway?

Those of you in software development probably already know the answer to this. I thought I did too. Then I found out I was wrong. [blog.mindrocketnow.com]

First the academic answer: according to https://aws.amazon.com/devops/what-is-devops/ 

DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organisation’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity

So far so vague. Deliveroo also has a high velocity delivery service. Perhaps a better description of DevOps behaviours is from https://tnw.to/gT0J2  

DevOps aims to close the gap between what the client ordered and what the development team has delivered. There is an emphasis on short release cycles, iterative approach to design, and automation of repetitive steps. 

Which sounds a lot like Agile, doesn’t it? Like many, I thought that Agile was a way of aligning Product and Engineering together into one happily productive team, and DevOps extended this to include Validation and Operations. The promise of DevOps is by having one bigger happy team of Product Owners, Developers, Testers and Infrastructure Operations Engineers, we can get to safely deploying every minute, instantly measuring how much delight we’re giving our customers in real-time.

I have yet to see this harmony in my experience. Instead, I’ve seen that Agile Transformation turns out to be a power struggle between Product and Engineering, and DevOps extends the blast radius to include Operations. I’ve always thought that the conflict arises from a fundamental conflation of people’s roles as contributors to an outcome (“squads”) versus their role as being a subject matter expert (“tribes”). The former is how to build your MacGuffin as best as you can to address the market need, whereas the latter deals with ensuring your resources are what you need. 

Moreover, organisations are normally oriented around the latter, as only senior people are allowed to spend money = hiring and authorising budgets. Delivery teams are formed as a “matrix” with no line management accountability, and executives who should be resource managers instead become points of escalation for the products, because that’s where the action is. This will only work if there’s a strong common vision of what good likes. If not, you have people up and down the food chain trying to balance what’s good for the product versus what’s good for their line management within their own heads, which inevitably causes cognitive dissonance. 

The closest I experienced a true alignment between the organisation functions was when I was running both an ops and an engineering team concurrently, and I myself represented the product (an ops tool for assuring content through the media supply chain). It was a small team, but it achieved remarkable results. Looking back, I think it was effective because the close collaboration between Product, Engineering, Testing and Operations got us to the point that we had a very short distance between defining changes in theory and measuring success in the market (and using the learnings to define the next set of changes).

DevOps defines how that close collaborative culture should work. It’s a mindset, not a toolset. It’s not about deploying automation, but understanding how automation shortens the distance from change to market. It’s not about the Head of Product owning everything, but the product team empowered to own everything. So here’s my current definition:

DevOps is a codified culture of collaboration between Market, Product, Engineering, Testing and Operations.

I’ll continue working on this definition as I continue living it. 

What are your experiences of living the DevOps culture? Write to me in the comments.

5 Tested tips for remote working

How did your first week of working from home go? These are the tips that worked for me - let me know which ones work for you. [blog.mindrocketnow.com]  

In this time of global pandemic, most of us are being asked to work from home. Here in England, we’ve just finished our first week where the kids have been schooled at home, so the first week of all of us working from home at the same time. I was prepared for a disaster caused by overly overlapping personal space - but it seems to have worked out well (so far). Perhaps this is why:

1. Make sure your environment works

Near the top of my personal irritations is the consistent loss of the first 7.6 minutes of each meeting with “can you hear me?”. All too frequently, the meeting is abandoned entirely. Seeing as it took so long just to get the diaries aligned just to get this meeting slot, I inevitably fall back on email and slack messaging, with all the communication debt that incurs.

Much better is to set up your environment in advance. Start with the basics: are you sat at a desk in a room where the door closes? Do you have a good quality speaker or headset? Does your software recognise the webcam? Is your bandwidth high enough for all of the household to have conference calls (house parties) simultaneously? Have you taped shut the door of the microwave?

Do you have the right hardware? We went with iPads + bluetooth keyboards for the kids, and laptops + peripherals for the grown-ups, because that’s what we were all familiar with. Familiarity means self-troubleshooting and not yelling for Daddy for tech support.

Then there’s the software. Every participant in a call needs to use the same software, and have it installed ahead of time, then add the other participants to their app’s address book. Some free software has a limit on the number of participants in video conferences. Some free software defaults to open conferences that anyone can attend. Finally, and before your call, test your setup beforehand. 

Even after all your preparedness, the call will still lose time to people sounding like a Dalek, but at least it won’t be you.

2. Commit to a routine

The psychological cues that come from a routine give you a short-cut to productivity. That’s why uniforms exist, and why you only seem to start thinking whilst lacing your shoes. It’s why the evening commute helps to bookend the day, to mentally check out. We found that we needed to replace the normal physical cues with other physical cues. And when we didn’t, the morning seemed to evaporate without anything productive to show for it. My ideal morning routine consists of setting out my daily intention, meditating for 15min, and doing some light physio for another 15min.

Speaking of mornings, it’s true for most of us that this is peak productivity time, so attack your most difficult or intricate work items then. However, you probably still need a simple first task to work through the mental gears and get into the flow - which isn’t making another cup of coffee.

However, making a cup of coffee is important for a few reasons: for breaks, for hydration (though water is clearly better), and as a reward for your good behaviour. So make plenty of coffee (or better, red bush tea). Counter-intuitively, breaks to the routine support the routine. So at lunchtime, don’t feel guilty if you watch some Netflix. Make sure you go outside for your one walk of the day, and go every day, rain or shine - the change of scenery really is as good as a rest.

Clock out at the end of the day, as you would during the evening commute. We found sitting round the kitchen table for tea and cake, or watching an episode of The Simpsons together, or going for a walk, was a clear way to end the day, and removed the temptation to keep an eye on the email.

Finally, the weekend isn’t a reason for pausing the routine. We found we still need the morning physical cues, even if the day consists of different activities. When we didn’t, me and the eldest found ourselves sleeping the morning away.

3. If one person works remotely, everyone needs to behave remotely

BP (Before Pandemic), it was very easy for the single remote worker to feel left behind. Many decisions were made in the office kitchen, information was disseminated over email, status was shared verbally. Remote team members were filled in later. Team empathy was fostered by going to the pub afterwards, by those who happened to be in the office to be rousted. Now everyone is a remote worker, the playing field is levelled, and everyone has to try harder.

Everyone logs into video calls, so everyone should adhere to VC etiquette: test your kit before the call; latency means don’t interrupt; being a small face in a grid means making bigger gestures; presentations need to use bigger fonts; showing the background of your home office tells people about the non-work you. And always share video, it’s so much more effective than audio only.

Working across time zones is hard. In my previous job, I had to schedule calls with folks from Buenos Aires, Singapore and London, and it was always the Singaporeans who seemed to need to work late. Companies like Trello institutionalise common working hours of 12-4 PM EST regardless of your actual location. But for the majority of the time, you’ll be working asynchronously, so your communications needs to support that.

I found that the quality of knowledge sharing is really put to the test in remote working. Knowledge needs to be searchable rather than gained by knowing the right Slack channel or the right person to ask; it takes too long to absorb collective memory verbally. Knowledge should be openly shared, rather than restricted in an email distribution list. Decisions should be archived effectively, not hidden in status reports. 

All communications are now digital, so there’s no reason not to include everyone. But rather than broadcasting to everyone just in case (= spam), it should be the responsibility of the remote worker to subscribe to the right channels, to not be left behind by omission. It’s also the responsibility of remote workers to remain current; skim all the channels, read the status decks, attend the stand-ups, schedule 1:1 calls with managers and peers.

Digital tools make presence much easier. It’s now trivial to signal whether you’re open to informal contacts, open to meetings, or blocked for focus time, or blocked because you’re not working. On the other hand, digital tools make it easier to flood communications, so it’s important to choose the right tool when giving and organise when receiving.

4. Over-communicate

You’ll doubtless read about the importance of over-communicating, that if you think you are over-communicating, you’re probably only doing the right amount. We found aspects of over-communicating to be important, but to be treated with caution.

Our children are very clear about the difference between right-sized communication and over-communication. They like being set specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-bound school work, because it gives them the certainty of knowing when done = done. But they react badly to unfocused, unclear, repetitive communication = “boring”. They resent being asked for status as a proxy for justifying their time (which is why “how was your day?” yields a monosyllabic “fine”), but are very happy to share status when it’s truly sharing (which is why our game of “tell me just one thing” works well at the dinner table).

Over-communication amplifies the difficulties with digital tools. Non-verbal cues are missing in most digital means, so it’s important to assume positive intent both in giving and receiving. The digital cues are different; @all and @here shouldn’t be abused as they signal that what you have to say is important enough to interrupt everyone else’s train of thought/ dinner.

It seems to me that the secret of successful communication is to treat all adults like children, and all children like adults.

5. Hold yourself accountable

Personal productivity requires personal accountability. Unless you’re clear about what you will do in any one day, and more importantly what you won’t, then you’ll never be finished. Our children have timetables from their school to give them their structure. I prefer the GTD method to give me the boundaries to delineate work from home. Without it I find it too easy not to start my day because I don’t have a simple start-up task defined, and I find it too easy to continue thinking about my email when I should be listening to a family member.

Unless you hold yourself accountable and are proactive, you will be left behind. People won’t reach out to you if they don’t know you’re there. So I’ve learnt to make a little noise: ask questions in the work topic Slack channels, and contribute nonsense and gifs in the social channels.

Holding yourself accountable is the difference between receiving direction and choosing direction. For my children it’s the difference between disliking a subject because they’re not receiving teaching that they get on with, and liking a subject because they’re learning for themselves.

Bonus: 3 things not to do.

Of course things have gone wrong this week, and this is generally because the same challenges to team dynamics in the office apply to remote working.

It seems to be harder to create an environment of psychological safety when working remotely. To create this safe space, to create team empathy, don’t be all about work. Find a space (perhaps in the 7.6min of “hello, can you hear me?” at the beginning of each call) to share geographical, cultural and personal contexts. Be interested in other people. And watch out for your unconscious biases - if there’s someone who’s habitually not “on the same page” as you, think about why. My wife has virtual office drinks at 5pm on Friday (neatly circumnavigating the no booze in the workplace rule) which strikes me as an excellent idea.

Don’t try and multi-task. Just because your computer screen can show two things simultaneously, doesn’t mean you can surf the web whilst on that conference call. You can’t do useful office work if you have to babysit your toddlers. You can’t do more than triaging your email whilst waiting on hold to the doctor’s surgery. Be present and engaged when you work, because this will give you the head space to be present and engaged when you’re not working.

And because things never go according to plan, don’t be too hard on yourself if you need to change. Go with it. The rewards are well worth it.