It's a Friday, the week is really starting to finish up, and you're thinking to yourself "what on earth did I do this week?". You start to question if you even did anything, if you're a leader of a team you might ask what did they do, what did we achieve. This is not an ideal way to start your weekend, so why not reflect on it with a 5-15 or even better record that reflection and help everyone around you see what you've done. Recording a weekly video is a going to be a game changer and I am here to help you get started on it.
What is the advantage?
At the end or start of the week I am not convinced anyone wants to read a wall of text, but a video that gives them a quick detail into the current state of things, well that is much better. There is an advantage in that it feels more personal than a text message, the team will be able to feel more connected as well as read your expressions better than trying to interpret what you mean. This saves a "sync" meeting which gives everyone more flexibility, and something to reference back to if they either can't remember what they did that last week or what the current priorities are. It's also shareable in case others are interested in what the team have been doing and will continue to do.
How do I get started?
Confidence
If there is one snippet of advice you take from this article it would be "just get started". You'll see a large amount of confident people often saying this and when it comes to confidence boosting it works. The act of recording that video and just posting it will help you get used to recording yourself, and see that it's not as bad as you think. We often overplay scenarios in our head, so my advice is, record the video and post it before you have a chance to reconsider.
Content
Focus on the main goals of reflection and summary, as the purpose of these videos is to either wrap or start the week. The areas I have found helpful to focus on are "what can we celebrate for the week", "what could have gone better", and "what are our priorities next week".
Tools
To keep this simple you just need something that can record video, so if you have something available to you already then use that. It doesn't need to be edited, doesn't need to have fancy graphics, it just needs to be a video. If you don't have anything available here are some free options to look into Loom, Slack, QuickTime - mac.
Summary
As always with this type of change it will be strange once you get started, and being consistent with it is the best way to start seeing the advantages.
If you work in an organisation with other teams why not encourage them to start doing this, and taking it a step further you could start sharing the video not only with your team but other stakeholders in the business. What better way to keep everyone updated on the progress of the team and what they are focused on than a quick video, with maybe a tiny little summary to help (just get AI to summarise the video for you).
Personal experience
I've had mixed feedback from this, not from a negative aspect, more from those that don't view them, but those that do absolutely love them. There is no scripting, and sometimes they become a bit of a ramble but it always helps me close down the week, and helps those in my team reflect on what they have done and also give them guidance on how to hit the ground running the following week. Those that don't view are not being forced to view them, but I will always encourage as it can give them a good level of insight into the current state of the team as well as our priorities and what we are aiming for. Forcing people to watch the videos would just result in too much resistance, but I have enough people on the team that do watch them that consistently encourage others that I'm confident it will come in time.