I?m not sure why we think that standing over somebody?s desk is the best way to show them how to do something ? but we do.
The double-edged sword
When we answer somebody?s question by personally walking them through a process, there?s an upside and there?s a downside.
The upside is that we get to show how genuinely nice we are by taking time out of our busy lives to provide an explanation.
The downside is that none of that explanation is captured, which means that it can?t be referenced later on ? neither by you nor the person you just helped. And that means that you?ll probably have to answer the question again. And again. And again.
Nobody to stand over my shoulder
When I first came to Blue Mango, it was a shock to not be in a cube that was a few steps away from a human resource who could come over to my desk and show me how to do something (at Blue Mango, we all work remotely). Now, whenever I ask a question via chat, instead of hearing footsteps approach and a friendly voice say, ?So what is it you?re having trouble with?? I get a link to a ?how-to? article that has lots of pictures, arrows, and circles.
At first, I figured that this was going to be one of the downsides of working on a remote team as opposed to on a team that meets in an office ? I would never be able to get clear answers, because nobody could swing by my desk and respond to my question in person.
But as it turns out, I?ve never had such a clear idea of what I?m supposed to be doing! Because we use tools to document our internal tasks, I always have a reference that I can turn to if I ever have a question.
But human interaction is a GOOD thing!
Yes, human interaction is a very good thing ? but you don?t have all day to personally show your team how to do something more than once. If you want to take time to walk somebody through a process, do it ? just make sure they have something that they can reference for when they have to do the process again. Once you have this in place, you?re on your way to building a turnkey business.
What should you do?
I don?t know what you should do ? I mean, I hardly know you. But here?s what we do, and you can take it for what it?s worth.
When I perform a new task or get a question on how to do something, I document it by using lots of screenshots (words are too boring). And I don?t just take a screenshot of the final result ? I snap a shot of every step I take from beginning to end. Then I go through and annotate the images ? circling buttons, using arrows to point to parts of the screen, and briefly explaining what I do and why I do it (although the why doesn?t always have to be included).
By doing that, I?m building a library of ?how-to? articles so that if there is ever a question about how to accomplish a task, all I have to do is reference the ?how-to? article.
If somebody still wants me to walk them through the process, I can. But after I do, I?ll be sure to leave them with the documentation so that they can reference it whenever they have questions.
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