Key Takeaways
-
Maintain a regular communication cadence Trust is built with a strong, consistent communication schedule. Gaining this alignment fosters collective productivity by establishing expectations for what’s to come.
-
Consider your project requirements and team scale. Even if you’re working during the same hour, consider time zone and cultural differences to arrive at a workable meeting frequency for all parties.
-
To mitigate too many meetings, employ a combination of real-time, synchronous meetings with asynchronous collaboration to avoid interrupting workflows while still supporting collaboration.
-
Utilize collaboration platforms and project management applications to consolidate communication, track progress, and maintain transparency among all stakeholders.
-
Don’t end up in the communication fails by being purposeful with meetings, avoiding meetings that have no real value, and encouraging transparent conversation to alleviate any confusion.
-
Regularly review your cadence, gather team feedback, and adapt your strategy as your team’s needs and project demands evolve for ongoing effectiveness.
From my experience, establishing a rhythm of regular check-ins lays the foundation for effective collaboration and less overlooked minutiae. Video calls once a week generally work best for regular ongoing projects.
Stemming from agile practices, daily stand-ups are best when the work is fast-paced or agile. For larger projects, bi-weekly check-ins will maintain momentum without overwhelming you with meetings.
Often, an instant chat or email exchange will suffice to resolve minor issues. You’ll accomplish much more when everyone is clear on what to expect and when communication should happen.
In the next sections, you will see how to pick a schedule that fits your team’s goals, work speed, and the tools you already use.
What Is Communication Cadence?
Communication cadence includes the tone or approach of our meetings or conversations with the outsourced team. This allows us to ensure we avoid confusion and misalignment. Establishing an effective communication cadence for ongoing updates ensures that all stakeholders are informed on where we are, what occurred, and what’s next.
Perhaps it’s a daily meeting, weekly team meeting, or a monthly program review that you observe. Each type has its own use. Short, daily scrum meetings have become a hallmark of teams employing agile methodologies that need to adapt quickly. Weekly check-ins work well when you want to sync up on what each person’s working on and spot any blockers early.
We meet every two weeks to address major releases or major project milestones. In these meetings, we review if we completed all our objectives set two weeks prior. Longer-form formats, like monthly and quarterly meetings, lend themselves to high-level retrospective or proactive planning sessions where big-picture discussion can naturally take over.
With a consistent meeting cadence, remote teams can still feel connected, even when we’re continents away. For that, we have a weekly video call where we go over what everyone is doing that week. This system allows us to remedy any problems on the spot.
When everyone knows the meeting schedule, no one misses a beat or a team member. Now with platforms like Zoom and Slack, we have the ability to share updates and files virtually at an instant. This is true even when we’re working across 10 or 12 time zones.
If a project does change, we can always adjust our communication cadence or scope and length of meetings. We can experiment with new tools or seek feedback when something isn’t working to improve it. Research shows that 83% of managers think meetings are a waste of time or money.
By figuring out the right meeting cadence together as a team, we can save time and create trust.
Why Cadence Matters for Outsourced Teams
Finding the proper cadence with outsourced teams creates a huge impact. An effective cadence of meeting builds rapport, keeps development moving forward, and addresses questions and concerns quickly. Most product teams today work in a remote-first capacity with colleagues in other cities and countries.
This geographic separation can contribute to a sense of alienation or disconnectedness. When we establish and adhere to a regular meeting cadence, trust is built and everyone is in the loop.
Building Trust Across Distances
We leverage weekly cadence to introduce ourselves on a personal level and establish genuine relationships. A regular video call, once a week if possible, allows everyone to start putting a face to the name.
When team members share short snippets of personal life or background experience, it opens the doors to having hard conversations. Meetings that allow for free discussion encourage inquiry and demonstrate that everyone’s opinion counts.
A video-focused approach, rather than purely chat-based, brings that warmth and allows people to gauge each other’s mood.
Ensuring Project Alignment Always
We make sure that all parties are informed with regular updates. An agreed-upon agenda helps all participants stay on the same page and avoid getting left behind.
External project teams function better when you have a brief daily or weekly standup meeting. Teams working “on the business” are better served by getting together monthly, if not quarterly.
An easy-to-understand visual timeline, such as a shared board or chart, keeps everyone aligned on what’s been accomplished and what’s coming up. When everybody is aware of what’s next in line, the work gets into a better rhythm.
Boosting Team Productivity Remotely
Reduced wasted time is a significant benefit of having a predictable routine. A predictable routine eliminates a lot of misused time. According to a study done by Harvard Business Review, 83% of managers believe meetings are a waste of time and money.
When meetings are brief and purposeful, it becomes very clear what each participant should bring to the table and when it’s time to add their voice. Meeting to provide updates ensures that this issue is found early.
Sharp, purposeful meetings will keep your team on task and allow you to accomplish more.
Mitigating Misunderstandings Early
We establish a culture of transparency where issues surface quickly. A simple follow-up email after each meeting can go a long way to set the record straight on any loose ends.
When employees feel safe to ask questions, problems don’t stack up. If the team’s circumstances ever require it, we adjust the cadence so that it feels comfortable.
Determine Your Ideal Meeting Frequency
To find the ideal meeting frequency with an outsourced team, consider more than just the datebook. Each project will have different requirements. I take a very careful look at what my team is producing, who’s doing it and when things are due.
A large-scale, involved project with many different parts typically requires more regular check-ins. Daily or weekly stand-ups ensure that all deliverables are on track. This tactic works particularly well when a team is creating new software or rolling out a new campaign.
If my team is deeply engaged in the work towards long-term outcomes, we might only need to meet monthly or quarterly. This is just the right approach for our purposes. This is one of the reasons that most board meetings, particularly in more settled boards, are held every quarter.
Purpose and team size also massively impacts the meeting rhythm. For my current small team, I usually do weekly one-on-ones. It is often difficult to schedule those meetings, and most of them are cancelled anyway.
For bigger teams, a more formal structure is needed. Putting group check-ins or rotating formats into place protects reserved time for everyone to give input while maximizing the productivity of your meeting.
Of course, time zones are a huge factor. I try to rotate meeting times to avoid having any one person continually needing to join early in the morning or stay on late. Online scheduling tools simplify finding the most equitable slots, and rotating meeting times provides equity in place.
Deciding on specific goals for each meeting in advance is essential. Considering that 63% of meetings are held without an agenda, I recommend sending an agenda or objectives in advance. In this manner, everyone comes prepared to participate and meetings remain focused and productive.
Common Cadence Models Explored
When you work with an outsourced team, finding the right meeting rhythm can shape how well your group works and gets results. Here’s a quick run down of their individual benefits. The right one is almost always the one that best matches your project requirements and team workflow.
Here’s a quick tour of some concrete cadence meeting models that further clarify, streamline, and maintain an efficient and productive workflow.
Daily Stand-ups: Quick Syncs
A daily stand-up is intended to be a short, 10- to 15-minute meeting. Don’t miss this chance to show off what you and your team have been up to. Raise any blockers you experience, and loop everyone in on questions or comments—don’t work in a silo!
It’s a method to identify minor mistakes before they escalate, and it informs employees what should be accomplished on a daily basis. Each day a software development team meets to go over the work for the day. They too take this opportunity to look around, see if anyone needs help.
This cadence is ideal for projects with a rapid cadence themselves, providing awesome rapid feedback and team building without devouring your calendar.
Weekly Check-ins: Maintain Momentum
Weekly check-ins are roughly 30 minutes. These town halls are a great opportunity for you to take stock of the week. It is a time to celebrate your successes while addressing your challenges, taking them on head-on.
Consider using them to discuss upcoming tasks, work through challenges, and celebrate successes. Having a defined agenda really helps with that. It makes them stay on task and prevents meetings from extending forever.
This cadence is ideal for teams who want to maintain the rhythm of staying in sync, but don’t require daily check-ins.
Bi-Weekly Reviews: Tactical Adjustments
Bi-weekly retrospectives, usually an hour long, work best for teams that can go a bit deeper than the surface level of a weekly meeting. You can dive deep on how the project’s progressing, discuss larger policy changes, and share strategies for a longer-term vision.
If participants are prepared with specific questions, concerns or opportunities in mind, we can make these meetings more productive and helpful. This model is ideal for teams that appreciate consistent communication and reporting, and value the ability to adjust strategies while executing their plans.
Monthly Meetings: Strategic Overview
Use this opportunity to reflect on the team’s performance as a whole. Evaluate their progress against your long-term goals and then determine how to move forward.
These meetings are invaluable for planning, and reporting, and just keeping you on track, and making sure you’re moving in the right direction. When combined with more frequent, shorter check-ins, they complete a robust cadence.
Tools Supporting Your Cadence
Properly managing a remote team can be a challenging prospect. The good news is that the right tools can really help everyone maintain an effective meeting cadence and stay in sync. Great tools reduce time wasted and enable you to establish a consistent cadence of meetings. By choosing the best combination of tools tailored to your preferred workflow, you can avoid major missteps such as unproductive meetings and buried notifications.
Choose Real-Time Collaboration Tools
Collaborative, real-time tools help ensure your whole team is in constant communication and are able to move quickly. Tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet allow you to instant message, share your screen or organize an impromptu video call. Deel’s HR-specific plugins for Slack streamline and expedite employee check-ins.
They make it possible for everyone to participate in the discussion, regardless of where they are located. Teamly teams up to make sharing how something works super easy. Just mouse over, click to take a screenshot or record a video in seconds, and share it!
These free tools are available for PC and Mac, so everyone is included. It’s crucial to ensure that all involved are confident in using these tools, so investing in early training goes a long way.
Leverage Asynchronous Communication Platforms
After all, not every progress update requires an in-person meeting. Email and tools like Slack channels or Microsoft Teams chats are great for leaving notes or updates that teammates can read when they’re free. Establishing regular rituals, such as weekly check-ins or bi-weekly project readouts, ensures the team is always kept in the loop.
Specific expectations—as simple as knowing which issue goes on what channel—prevent the fails from falling through the cracks.
Integrate Project Management Software
Project management software, such as Teamly or Salesforce’s High Velocity Sales module, make sure everyone’s activities stay connected. These collaborative platforms help manage deadlines, tasks, notes, etc., so that nothing slips through the cracks.
Provide universal access, and create a culture of routine status updating. Tools supporting your cadence When software like Clockwise or Calendly makes booking, tracking, and repeating meetings simple, you maintain a full and productive cadence.
Avoiding Communication Pitfalls
Identifying the effective communication cadence that works best for your remote team really does set the tone and pace for success. In remote meetings, minor mistakes can escalate rapidly, making it prudent to address those meeting challenges up front before they develop into larger problems.
The Danger of Too Many Meetings
When meetings are back-to-back, people begin to lose focus. Heads down, cameras off, everyone looking at their phones—these are clues that the team’s not learning a lot from the time spent. Holding meetings simply to check-in or provide an update when a brief email would suffice is exhausting.
I prefer to limit those to talks that require a live Q&A or mostly high-level strategy. Short written updates or easily shared documents allow people to read up on their own time and at their own pace. For large, ongoing projects, a brief weekly email update can address where things are without pulling everyone into a syncing call.
Risks of Under-Communicating Effectively
Even light touch can go too far. If the team doesn’t see enough, people feel alienated or excluded. Stuff falls through the cracks or worse, there’s duplication of work.
I established a minimum—I’d start with a weekly project sync and maybe a quick daily standup. Establishing these regular hours allows people to know what to expect and where to seek guidance and assistance. Just a quick message in something like Slack or Teams will help everyone stay informed.
Perhaps most importantly, it can keep someone from feeling alone and isolated in their suffering.
Ensure Meetings Have Clear Purpose
Each meeting you give a purpose, and I put that up there first thing. Agendas are emailed the day before, so no one is coming in cold. We ensure that the discussion stays on track, and I follow up afterward to measure whether or not we met our objectives.
If so, I’m pleased but recognize that I need to keep doing that.
Avoid Information Silos Creation
Teams operate more efficiently when accurate information flows freely between them. This is something I fight to get added to shared drives or team group chats.
People from sales, tech, and support can get a glance of what’s coming down the pipe and throw in their suggestions. This prevents “us vs them” mentality and protects everyone’s neck on the entire team.
Measure and Adjust Your Cadence
Creating an ideal meeting cadence with your outsourced teammates requires a bit of thought and finesse. Every week, more than 50 million meetings occur in the United States alone. Shockingly, of those, nearly 70% are designated unproductive.
It’s important—maybe even more important—to measure if your meetings really are creating impact! So, I used these metrics to determine if our cadence of meetings was effective. I gauge our pace after every single meeting. I measure whether we meet deadlines and follow through on action items in a timely manner.
Gather Team Feedback Regularly
I provide my team with opportunities to express how they are feeling about our meeting cadence. Occasionally, I will do a quick survey or even just poll directly in a chat to get a sense for how the cadence is working.
If I hear a person complain that we meet too frequently or not frequently enough, I make a mark. If the team feels stretched by weekly one-on-ones, which experts recommend but often get cancelled, I try bi-weekly or adjust the length.
Track Project Progress Metrics
I measure and adjust your cadence I constantly monitor metrics—things like work completed, bugs logged, or objectives achieved. The more frequent, like daily or weekly, the better which is why it’s most effective for teams who are innovating on something new.
These meetings help us agree on what we’ll finish that week, what’s coming, and what could get in the way. For teams that are newly forming or infrequently checking in, monthly or quarterly meetings are more appropriate.
Analyze Meeting Effectiveness Consistently
I want to gauge if these meetings are cumulative in helping us progress the project. By sharing these reports and asking the team what worked, I’m able to identify which meetings are worth their time.
When certain meetings stop being productive in the sense that they do not yield new information, I adjust or eliminate the cadence.
Be Flexible and Adapt Willingly
I try to remain flexible in adjusting the cadence as the landscape evolves. What works for the first project or team may not necessarily work for the second.
Regular check-ins help me keep our meeting plan sharp and useful.
Beyond Meetings: Holistic Communication Strategy
The best communication plan for an outsourced team combines various channels and styles. You unlock the full potential of your team when you move beyond meetings. It’s essential to align the way you communicate developments with where your project is at in the process and what it requires.
For other work, requiring daily communication may not be viable such as with agile teams or emergency work. For plans of a more long-term scope, you can get away with once a week or once a month. You always need a plan for sharing updates, talking through issues, and keeping trust high, especially if your team changes a lot.
Use Asynchronous Updates Smartly
Consistent communication, not just during meetings, further engages and aligns the entire team. Brief, bulleted reminders in shared meeting notes or project management boards provide transparent information and save everyone unnecessary back-and-forth time.
Nearly 3 in 4 people say they regularly multitask in meetings. Quick action items keep an agenda moving and give a chance for anyone on their own time to stay up to date. Collaborative docs, whether in Google Docs or Notion or elsewhere, allow everyone to get on the same page and follow the evolution of a shared vision.
Create Centralized Documentation Hubs
A single source of truth for all project documents helps your entire team stay organized and maintain project schedules. When docs are hosted in a central hub, it’s easy for anyone to find what they need right away, whether it’s project meeting notes or design files.
This format makes it simple to see what’s been accomplished or look back at past efforts. Consistently update this main hub with new information, so your whole team is always working with the most updated information.
Foster Informal Team Interaction
Great teams have the conversations after hours, as well. Whether it’s a virtual coffee break on Zoom or a short conversation on Slack, just informal, casual conversation makes people feel closer.
These informal conversations allow your staff to brainstorm creative ideas and raise each other’s spirits in the process. As teams develop a connection with one another, trust and morale increase.
Conclusion
Having the right creative meeting cadence with my outsourced team can often be the difference between how seamlessly our projects run. When you have consistent check-ins, less goes through the cracks. Treat tools such as Slack or Zoom to avoid miscommunication to keep talks quick and clear. I have found a weekly call sufficient for the majority of projects, but remain flexible and ready to adapt if circumstances do. Sticking to a set plan keeps everyone in step, but a good chat outside the calendar can solve things fast too. Even now, I constantly evaluate my cadence to make sure it’s in lockstep with the team. This helps keep everyone accountable and prevents anyone from being left in the dark. To improve collaboration and reduce confusion, I make my conversations frequent, straightforward, and transparent. Want to take a new approach in 2021? Make your first intentional improvement building the right team today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an effective communication cadence for outsourced teams?
A weekly 30-minute check-in can significantly enhance team dynamics. Iterating on the current meeting cadence based on project needs and team feedback fosters trust between you and your remote team, clarifying miscommunications and expectations for more effective meetings.
How do I decide how often to meet with my outsourced team?
Consider your project complexity, deadlines, and team experience. Start with a weekly meeting cadence to enhance effective communication cadence. Adjust the frequency of remote meetings to align with your team’s needs for maximum productivity.
What tools support efficient communication cadence?
Utilize project management tools such as Asana or Trello to enhance your team’s productivity. Emphasize video conferencing for remote meetings with Zoom or Google Meet, ensuring effective communication cadence among meeting attendees.
Can too many meetings hurt productivity?
Yes. Holding even daily meetings or weekly meetings can lead to meeting fatigue and consume more time than necessary. During these remote meetings, be laser-focused on your agreed-upon meeting goals and avoid gathering for the sake of it. There is no one right answer; the best solutions come from finding an effective meeting cadence.
How do I measure if my cadence is working?
Monitor project advancement, internal team happiness, and lost due dates. Through ongoing feedback and performance reviews, you’ll be able to tell if your effective meeting cadence is setting you up for success.
What are common pitfalls in communication cadence for outsourced teams?
Lack of regularity and a confused agenda can lead to unproductive meetings. To overcome this, establish expectations early and utilize effective project management tools for remote teams.
Is communication only about meetings?
No. Communication means via email, Slack, shared Google Drive folders, etc. An effective communication cadence ensures that everyone, including meeting attendees, is kept in the loop and included.