General Assembly Blog

Key insights from Adi Hanash, VP of Product at Tempest, and Original Remote Program Product Owner at General Assembly.

Last week we kicked off our three-part series on managing remote teams. As many companies transition to working from home for the first time to help curb the spread of COVID-19, we wanted to offer some advice to help our community navigate this adjustment. GA has deep experience working with a distributed team and has also helped thousands of learners upskill and reskill through live-online formats. With these things in mind, we’ve tapped into our network of experts to answer top questions we’ve received from our partners, and to share tips and tricks that you can use with your remote teams.

For our second segment of this series, we sat down with Adi Hanash, VP of Product at Tempest, an organization focused on building a digital support platform for people recovering from alcohol use disorder. Adi is also a former General Assembly colleague and built the remote learning experience at GA as the original live-online product owner. Adi has transitioned 10 courses to be delivered online and also has 4+ years of experience working remotely himself.

Read on to hear Adi’s insights on:

1. Engaging your distributed teams.
2. Getting into the work mindset from home.
3. Motivating your team remotely.

For additional perspectives on remote team management, check out part one and part three.

GA: Thanks so much for sitting down with us, Adi. We’ve heard from our community that one of the biggest remote work challenges is tracking teams. What is the best way to track attendance and engagement? 

Adi: There’s a piece to attendance worth addressing that is “How do we know someone’s in the office from nine to five or for the prescribed hours?” Having worked on product teams, we start every morning with a quick check-in to set the goals for the day and then hold an end of day check-in. You need to be comfortable allowing a little bit of freedom to do the work in the middle of the day. 

Another piece to attendance is making a decision as a team about what it means to be attending a meeting. For me, the number one thing is being on camera. So, if I’m using a video platform, my expectation is everyone who’s in that meeting is on camera for that meeting. If you turn off your camera, I assume you’ve walked out of the room. Being visible also prevents someone from just listening in while doing other work; it forces them to be more present.

GA: What do you talk about during those daily check-in meetings?

Adi: My product team has a ritual called “stand” that we practice every day. It can be held over a chat platform or in live sessions, but every morning, the team will go around and talk about what they did yesterday, what’s on deck for today, and any blockers or external constraints. At the end of the day, we check-in again and cover what was done that day, any blockers that still exist, and what’s queued up for tomorrow. It’s a really quick check-in that should take 10 to 15 minutes total.

The key is to focus not on the meetings or activities a person will have during the day, but the deliverables for the day. That’s where, as the team leader, you can be very clear on what your expectations are for the work that needs to get done. Or, if you are an individual who is now working remotely, you’re aligned with the rest of the team on what your workday entails. It’s a really helpful way to get everyone on the same page and to make sure that you are setting expectations around deliverables — even in this remote environment.

GA: How do you get into the work mindset before that “stand” check-in at the start of your day? It’s definitely a little different starting your day from home versus going into the office.

Adi: Establish what your rituals are for starting and ending work in your remote environment. This may sound silly, since I know one of the benefits of working from home is being able to be in pajamas all day, but my ritual was that I very consciously decided that when I started work, I put on a collared shirt. I was still in shorts, and that was fine, but the act of putting on the shirt meant I was at work, and the act of taking that shirt off meant I was no longer at work. I’m not saying that’s the right one for you, but I would just encourage everyone to establish rituals.

GA: You also mentioned giving the team a little bit of freedom to do the work in the middle of the day. What do you think about flexible work hours when working from home?

Adi: The most important thing is to not conflate remote working with flexible working  — you have to address them independently of each other. Remote working is the ability to do the work that you have to do from home or in various locations. Flexible work hours mean that you allow a person to set their own schedule for when they are working and when they aren’t. The question of flexible work schedules needs to be addressed in its own way.

When I worked remotely, I was working eight hours, but my mistake was spreading those eight hours over 14 hours, which made me feel like I was working the entire day even when I wasn’t. So when you work remotely, you should be very clear on what is okay to do with your schedule in your day (for example, leaving for lunch) and what is not (for example, cleaning). Do not make the mistake of spreading eight hours of work over too long of a period. The way I’ve managed this is to be very clear on my calendar about my scheduled time. You have to create  boundaries for yourself and for your team to make this work successfully.

GA: What about when you have team members who treat everything as an emergency? How do you deal with that if it falls within an unavailable slot in your schedule? 

Adi: This can be especially challenging for remote workers. I think the number one thing is defining the levels of emergencies with your teams. There should be some version at the top, which is that the business cannot move forward unless the emergency is solved. If it is a company-wide blocker, then everyone has to stop what they’re doing and help solve the problem. Then down at the bottom, there are things like a typo on the website. At that level, you need to ask, “Is it preventing us from doing anything? How many people have reported it?”

Once you get to an understanding of the emergency spectrum, you’d be surprised by how many actually have to be addressed in real-time. So that’s the number one thing I would encourage you to do.

GA: What tips do you have for managing and running large format meetings?

Adi: The most important thing with any meeting, especially larger ones, is to remind people of the opportunity cost of a meeting, and make it clear that there has to be true value driven by the people in the room. So for example, if you have 15 people in the meeting for 30 minutes, you’re not taking 30 minutes, you’re taking seven and a half hours. And if you start to think about it in terms of time as accumulation, you start to become a lot more judicious as a leader around what type of meetings you want to be calling and who’s going to be involved.

Then, if you do decide to proceed with a large format meeting, the number one thing is to have super-clear agendas. You have to be explicit as to what the deliverables for the meeting are. If you cannot define clear deliverables, there are probably better ways to do the meeting than to actually have a meeting. For example, if you need a decision on X, then the meeting attendees have to be defined by who’s responsible for making that decision. So that at the end of the meeting, you’re able to say great, our decision is X.

GA: How can you motivate your team members when everyone is remote?

Adi: For those of you who are in a leadership position, you need to think about what recognition looks like in a distributed room. It’s very easy to say “Great job!” to an individual, but you need to find the ways to publicize their victories and their wins, and more so in this distributed environment because it’s almost a requirement for them to know that even though they’re on the other end of the computer, their work is having an impact and is being recognized.

Chances are, you have some sort of chat platform that you can use. At Tempest we use Slack, and so we have to be creative about how to use it for this purpose. For example, one thing that I love to do with our team is to create a shout-outs time. Every week there’s a certain time where we get onto Slack and just shout out all the victories and wins for the week. Those small ceremonies and rituals help establish the connection, especially with remote employees, that the work they’re doing isn’t being lost to the ether, and that you’re actually seeing it and recognizing it.

A huge thanks to Adi for these amazing tips on rituals and leading a remote team. We’re always here for questions, email cheers@ga.co if you’ve got any!

Top tips from Matt Brems, Managing Partner at BetaVector, and Global Lead Data Science Instructor at General Assembly

There has been an unprecedented shift to remote working as companies and individuals do their part to curb the spread of COVID-19. We’ve heard from our global partners that this shift has been a difficult adjustment and that teams could use some tips and tricks to cultivate connections with their remote employees and maintain productivity during this uncertain time. General Assembly (GA) has deep remote work experience and has also delivered live online learning to over 5,000 students and remote workers around the world. With that in mind, we’re sitting down with our experts to get answers to your most pressing questions and the right tools on managing remote teams and adjusting to remote work from home. 

For our first segment of this three-part blog series, we sat down with Matt Brems, Managing Partner at BetaVector and Global Lead Data Science Instructor at General Assembly. Matt has taught 1,000+ students since 2016 and has been working and teaching remotely for the last two and a half years.  

Read on to hear Matt’s insights on:

1. Identifying blind spots in the shift to remote.
2. Building company culture and employee engagement in remote teams.
3. Juggling work and life when they coexist more than ever before.

For additional perspectives on remote team management, check out part two and part three.

GA: Matt, thanks so much for being here with us today. To kick things off, what were some of the concerns you had when you started to teach online, and how might these concerns apply to people transitioning to remote work?

Matt: Glad to be here! One of the challenges in shifting to an online classroom was that I just didn’t know what the blind spots were going to be. I knew the content I was supposed to teach, but the blind spot was how could I ensure my students’ success when everybody was now connecting remotely. Part of it just took some experience, but really, it was about listening to my students. 

As a manager, you know the business objectives that you’ve always had. However, you have an additional blind spot: how do you get your team to succeed with the uncertainty of everyone working from home? Within these unique challenges, you have to create space for your team to share what they need and what isn’t working. Then you have to listen to what your entire team is telling you and act on it. Finally, you need to accept that there will probably be a period where it feels weird and uncomfortable. 

GA: It sounds like it all worked out! We’ve heard a common blind spot is not knowing how to collaborate with teams remotely. Do you have any tips or collaboration tools you’d recommend for managing collaborative work?

Matt: When collaborating with others remotely, it’s important to be as explicit as possible. When I started teaching remotely, I would ask vague questions like, “What’s wrong with this?” or “What do you think about that?” Since my questions were vague, my students’ answers were all over the place. That wasn’t a failure on their part, it was a failure on my part. So when it comes to working collaboratively, I have a couple of recommendations. 

First, break the task down into smaller chunks and make the tasks as specific as possible to your remote employees. Let’s say you need your team to write a report by the end of the day. Instead of just putting the task out there, work with the entire team to divide it up. I’m not trying to encourage micromanagement, but it’s much easier for communication to break down remotely. People jump into their next meetings, people make assumptions about who does what. 

Second, be explicit. Instead of using terms like “end of day,” specify what “end of day” is. Does it mean 5 p.m. or midnight? If you’re managing remote employees in different time zones, which time zone? Being explicit, wherever possible, is a really helpful tool for effective communication.

GA: Really great tips. Another blind spot we’ve been hearing frequently is around cultivating a sense of community while remote — how do you manage to keep your entire team connected?

Matt: When it comes to developing that sense of connectedness in the programs that we teach, we start every lesson with an icebreaker. For example, earlier today, my colleague asked, “If you were forced to be part of a talent show, what would your talent be?” This gets the whole team engaged in social interaction that’s a fun way to share things about themselves that you wouldn’t otherwise know, a promising tactic for building trust. Think about the “water cooler” talk where people share things that aren’t directly connected to work. We can still do that; we just have to be a bit more creative and intentional about creating that sense of a dependable company culture and community.

As another example, General Assembly develops community by doing daily trivia. Katie, our “trivia guru,” announces a time for trivia, comes up with five trivia questions and then asks them in the trivia Slack channel. People compete to be the first to correctly answer the question. It’s a lot of fun because so many people get really into it. Everybody laughs because some people are right on the money and some people are sharing weird, off-the-beaten-path answers. We’re leaning into everything that we would do in-person to build that community; we just have to be more intentional about it when we’re remote.

GA: To expand on company culture even further, what advice do you have for creating norms for your remote teams?

Matt: To come up with norms, start with a shared blank document and let the whole team contribute their thoughts about what’s important. Then transition to discussing these thoughts in a virtual meeting and have people come to a consensus on norms for the group. Specifically, you want to provide a safe space for people to share what they need out of your team environment, and you want to make space for people who have different experiences than you might have. 

I want to be abundantly clear about this: Once the team agrees on a norm, the whole team needs to follow it. And that includes the team leader. There is sometimes this tendency for people in leadership to say, “Hey, we established the team norms, but that’s for everybody else. Because I’m the team leader, I don’t necessarily have to abide by that.” That can be the quickest way for norms to deteriorate and works against building trust. Being clear and making sure everybody adheres to the norms is huge.

GA: A lot of people have children or parents to take care of in addition to working from home – what are your thoughts on flex hours as part of those team norms? 

Matt: I think that’s really important right now. Everybody needs to come together and be flexible and empathetic because this is a difficult time for a lot of people. Recognize that maybe somebody will be able to do good work from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. before their kids get up, and then there are times during the day when they need to take breaks to play with their kids, and then they’ll be ready to hop back on later in the evening.

This ties directly into setting team norms. Norms can include being explicit about the hours that people are available, as opposed to assuming that everybody is still going to be on the nine to five office schedule while at home. In my opinion, assuming that what you did in the office will simply work at home is one of the quickest ways to set yourself up for failure.

GA: On the flip side, how do you set boundaries with family while you’re working, given remote work and home life coexist in the same place? 

Matt: With my fiancé, we had to have very direct conversations about what worked for us and what didn’t. For example, I said “If you come home and my headphones are in, just wave at me but go into the other room. If I’m able to talk to you, I will take my headphones out and come talk to you.”

Some people recommend even having a little sign, like a yes/no sign. If it says yes, you can come up and tap them on the shoulder, but if they flip it and it says no, don’t bother them at that moment. That can be really important. 

GA: One final question. We know that working from home can be stressful, especially when juggling family obligations and health concerns. What advice do you have for people who are having those feelings right now?

Matt: It is very common and normal for people to feel stressed, to feel isolated, or to feel upset about what’s going on. I read on Twitter recently that this isn’t a normal working from home scenario…we’re working from home during a crisis. I have worked from home for almost 2.5 years, and I still feel like something is fundamentally different, given all that’s going on in the news. One of the things that I personally believe is that community is really, really important. And it’s possible to have community with one another, even if you’re not physically in the same room. 

With my fiancé, we sat down with his parents and did a virtual drink. For the first three minutes, it felt bizarre to talk with people on a computer screen, but after a few minutes, you don’t even notice that they’re not in the room. Virtual connections can happen with family, friends, colleagues and co-workers to the extent that you want. Leaning into my community has been really cathartic for me, and I hope that it is for many of you too.

A huge thanks to Matt for taking the time to sit down with us to share his remote work tips and tricks. As we adjust our everyday lives to our ever-changing world, it’s helpful to know that our sense of work, community, and work/life balance does not have to be compromised. 

Do you have questions about managing remote teams that you’d like to ask our experts? Email us at cheers@ga.co.

In 2018, we released The State of Skills: Digital Marketing 2018 report, which examined 10,000 results from our Digital Marketing Level 1 (DM1) assessment. Our eye-opening analysis revealed there was a digital skills gap in marketing driven by missing data skills across channels. We also uncovered that top talent often existed outside the marketing function and that seniority — at least below the VP level — didn’t predict a skills advantage in digital marketing.

Nearly two years later, we’ve set out to provide an in-depth look at marketing capabilities and skills gaps with the publication of our new white paper, The State of Skills: Marketing 2020. To develop our latest report, we analyzed over 20,000 users across dozens of countries and numerous industries who took the Certified Marketer Level 1 (CM1) assessment between October 2018 and November 2019. We’ve also combed through significant CM1 data to determine how assessment-takers performed across five essential topics — consumer/customer insights, creative development, channels and execution, measurement and analytics, and marketing technology — and how those scores varied across role, work experience, and other areas.

Launched in October 2018 and created in partnership with the Marketing Standards Board, CM1 reflects a shift from thinking about “digital marketing” as a discipline in itself, toward thinking about the broad set of competencies marketers need to succeed in the digital age. Building on the DM1 assessment, CM1 guides development of critical marketing skills that align with the foundational competencies of our Marketing Career Framework, and enables high scorers to earn the industry-recognized CM1 Credential. Today, leading companies use our assessment to benchmark their teams’ skills, prospect talent, and prescribe literacy, upskilling, and reskilling programs based on assessment performance.

The State of Skills: Marketing 2020 includes key insights from some of these global industry leaders, and highlights both opportunities and challenges for organizations grappling with today’s changing marketing landscape.

“Digital has profoundly transformed the marketing function and is now the new normal. CM1 — as DM1 before it — will be key to recruiting and upskilling our marketing populations, ensuring L’Oréal has the right talents to win in the market.”

– Lubomira Rochet, Chief Digital Officer, L’Oréal

Top Takeaways From Our 2020 Report

After analyzing CM1 data for thousands of individuals, as well as the job function, seniority, and education levels for 3,300 users who self-reported information about their positions, here’s what we found.

1. The skills gap in marketing still persists. Digital-native marketers outscored the CM1 global average by 34%. This trend was across all topics and methods, suggesting that an advantage in digital skills quickly turns into an overall advantage in marketing. Thus, corporate marketing organizations must continue to think about regular upskilling as a business imperative to keep pace with the rate of change in the field.
2. The skills gap is primarily driven by analytics and marketing technology. The overall global average score for CM1 was 46%. When we broke down the overall average into sub-topic performance, we discovered that the lowest-scoring areas were marketing technology and analytics, which averaged 33% and 42%, respectively. However, digital-native marketers scored higher on average — 62% to be exact — compared to the general population of CM1 assessment-takers, and this advantage held true across all topics.
3. Few marketers are experts in all topics. 57% of CM1 assessment-takers are experts in at least one topic, scoring in the top fifth of all users for that area. However, many of these individuals have at least one topic weakness, scoring in the bottom fifth for that topic area. This means organizations should celebrate high-potential specialists for what they know and embrace areas for skill development. Not every marketer needs to be an expert in all topics, but every marketer should expand beyond their silos and work toward a common baseline of knowledge that enables them to collaborate more effectively with teams that have complementary skill sets.
4. Top marketing talent is everywhere. Organizations shouldn’t limit hiring to candidates with prestigious educational credentials or traditional marketing backgrounds. We found that 40% of nonmarketers — individuals who sit in functions outside of marketing — outscored the average for marketers. Nonmarketers who came from analytics and consulting backgrounds performed best on CM1, with scores on par with marketers. We also discovered that 30% of users without a four-year degree outscored the mean for postgraduate degree-holders. These findings tell us that expanding talent pipelines could bring diverse skill sets into marketing organizations, increasing the overall supply of marketing talent.
5. Senior leaders lag behind their junior counterparts in digital skills. Directors, managers, and individual contributors outscored marketers at or above the vice president level across problem-solving methods and marketing topics. Managers and directors scored the highest, which could be attributed to having more marketing experience than contributors and greater exposure to modern, tech-centric marketing tools than senior leaders. This correlation between marketers’ seniority in the field and their technical skill set supports the case that both current and future leaders can benefit from upskilling and digital literacy training.

While the key takeaways that emerged from our CM1 analysis revealed some persistent trends, they also build on our 2018 findings, offering new data for companies looking to digitally transform and advance their marketing organizations. They also guided us toward some insightful conclusions — actionable next steps for companies aiming to transform marketers with cutting-edge, competitive skills that enable business success and drive value.

1. Marketers need more technical training to keep pace with top performers in the field. Companies will need to train professionals in areas like analytics and marketing technology to close the skills gap between digital-native marketers and their nondigital-native counterparts.
2. Marketing talent can be found in nontraditional places. Employers who rely on conventional talent pipelines to source professionals for marketing roles risk overlooking qualified candidates with unique backgrounds and skill sets.
3. There are upskilling and reskilling opportunities at the leadership level, too. Companies should invest in training programs that enable both junior talent and senior leaders to leverage marketing tools and platforms that help their organizations compete in the modern economy.

For a deeper dive into these takeaways and the data we analyzed — including the questions and topics where CM1 assessment-takers shined (and struggled) — read the entire report here. You can also explore our Enterprise solutions to learn more about GA’s assessment-led approach to upskilling and reskilling marketing teams.

Download the Report

General Assembly is part of the Adecco Group, the world’s leading workforce solutions provider and a Global Fortune 500 company. Our Enterprise business has worked with over 300 clients in 25 countries across the globe — including more than 40 of the Fortune 100 — to transform teams through our leading-edge programs in technology, data, marketing, design, and product. With more than 25,000 employees trained, and over 70,000 alumni from our full- and part-time courses, our solutions provide immediate and proven impact on the job.

First, thank you for being a part of the General Assembly community. We want you to know that, as a community member, your health and well-being is our top priority. 

In light of COVID-19 developments, we have put in place precautionary measures to keep our community safe. As we all make sense of the evolving situation, General Assembly is guided by two priorities: ensuring safety and health while minimizing disruption to our learners.

Right now, like many education providers, we’re in the process of offering all of our workshops and courses remotely. The good news is, we’ve done this for thousands of people across all of our programs and know how to do it well. Our instructors and teams are laser-focused on maintaining a high-quality experience for our students. 

To learn more about our approach to online learning and best practices for remote classrooms, check out this video. 

Starting Monday, March 16, we will be moving all in-person programming online and temporarily closing our campus facilities. From here, we will continue to monitor the situation and update you on an ongoing basis. 

GA’s Singapore campus will remain open, and we have implemented safety measures in line with the guidance from Singapore’s Ministry of Health. We will be following updates closely, and will move to remote programming should the situation escalate.

We’ve sent specific instruction and guidance to all of our students and employer partners and leveraged the talents of our online instructional team to ensure a seamless transition to a remote learning environment. 

We’ll marshal all of our resources to ensure our community can continue learning and maintain a sense of structure and connection in the midst of an unprecedented situation.  We’re taking our cues from public health experts in all of the countries in which we operate and closely following recommendations from federal, state, and local government authorities.

We have instructed all of our employees to work remotely if they can and are moving quickly to coordinate a successful shift for learning deliveries on our campuses and at employer offices. 

For real time updates, please refer to comprehensive resources prepared by the World Health Organization and your national health authorities:

• U.S.: Centers for Disease Control
• Canada: Public Health Agency
• Australia: Department of Health
• U.K. Department of Health and Social Care
• Singapore: Ministry of Health

We’ll continue to provide updates as this develops and encourage all of you to take care of yourselves and stay safe. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out via email to hello@generalassemb.ly.