Discovering (and managing) your teams’ mental time frames
The time frames we consider when making decisions are heavily influenced by our role and responsibilities. Most people are totally unaware of how these mental time frames affect not only their own thought process and decision making, but also their expectations of others.
For example, as product manager, my time frame was dictated by development cycles. I’d spend most of my time thinking about the current and the next cycle. I was thinking in terms of months. As the lead of the product division, I am now more concerned with longer term results. This means my attention shifted to quarters and years.
Compare that with the mental time frame of a customer support representative, or even a support team lead. They are concerned with customers’ current problems. They need answers fast, both to manage expectations and to hopefully share a resolution as soon as possible.
When mental time frames clash - remote edition
The differences in mental time frames can create real tension. The support team feels abandoned in their intent to help the customer. The product team feels pressured to abandon their necessary future-looking work. If each team mostly communicates within their silo, this is a recipe for resentment and “we vs them” culture.
In a remote-first environment you need to actively create space and opportunity for personal connections. You employees won’t “accidentally” hang out for lunch break in the company kitchen, getting to know each other outside of their role. And yet, this “knowing the other one as a person” is exactly what creates empathy and facilitates communication across team boundaries.
The goal is not to encourage personal favours to solve bugs, or pacify an important customer for another month. Your objective is creating conversations so KPIs and time frames are understood as part of a role, not as a personality flaw. These emotional connections then help to make conversations about time frames much less accusatory.
Process and people: deliberate interaction design
A popular answer to these situations is calling for yet another regular meeting. After all, that’s where people talk in an online world, right? The success of this meeting will depend not only on the meeting itself. You also need to invest into strengthening the connection between those who attend the meeting. You can find some ideas on how to create these meaningful interactions in this post about how fun is overrated. The goal is to create a structural framework that encourages interactions based on joint interests and general affinity. Only then do active encouragements for more communication will have an impact that’s more far reaching then increasing the number of meetings.
What is your mental time frame? Where can this time frame clash with your colleagues, with your vendors, with your clients? And what are you going to do about it?