SmoothTeam is one of the many companies that were blown out of the water by the interest rate pandemic. Fortunately, the black swan encounter was not fatal for us.

In January 2020, everything looked really good. The team building service we had been working on for four years was finally ready for widespread use. We had just completed our new online service and trained dozens of consultants to use it. Both we and the consultants were ready to go out into the client companies - after all, at that time, work was done in offices and meetings were held in small offices.

Then came the big K. Everyone moved to their home offices and companies went into operational survival mode. In an instant, our order book was completely emptied. The Kanvees had two choices: throw in the towel or get up and fight harder.

The second round begins

The first option was out of the question. We started thinking about different scenarios. Even then, it was very likely that the pandemic would not be knocked out without a vaccine, which would not be widely available for at least a year. We ended up considering as the first option a situation where at least until the summer of 2021, everyone who could afford it would be working remotely, and probably many would also want to continue working from home when the interest rate eventually eases. We therefore assumed that the cap would trigger a permanent change.

Within two days our war plan was ready. We believed that by autumn 2020, many would tire of working remotely, employee trust would deteriorate and teams would start to starve. The situation would be particularly difficult for new employees - how do you get to know your new colleagues?

Developing a remote team spirit is not easy, and many companies base their team building on great offices in some of the most expensive locations in the city, designed to allow for a variety of encounters during the working day. So we decided to put all our efforts into developing a remote team building service.

Our simulations had already been used with remote teams when meeting up was not an option due to geographical distance, so we knew they would work well even for globally distributed teams. It's also a blue sea, as there are few solutions tailored for remote teams in the world. As a bonus, we knew from our long experience and numerous trials and errors that developing such a service would not be easy.

On the technical side, the changes needed were mainly minor improvements to the guidance and signposting of the service. In addition, we created a new remote working simulation and tested and documented best practices for remote facilitation of simulations using the most common conferencing services. Everything was in place before a well-deserved summer break.

Sparring and practice matches

From early autumn, it began to look as if our vision had been right. Team leaders and HR had adjusted to the new normal, and were feverishly thinking of ways to make remote teams work better.

We worked hard to convince the first companies to try our simulations for remote teams. But there was still one major drawback: as we focused on product development, our marketing materials became seriously outdated. We developed and tested them in the early autumn, while interviewing our customers. These interviews gave us invaluable insights into how businesses have been affected by the pandemic and how remote teams are using and benefiting from our simulations. At the same time, we also received many good suggestions for improvement.

Thank you to all the customers and partners who have believed in us! We are proud to play our part in improving the working lives of people affected by the pandemic. Last month, our simulations were played in another new country - I believe we will soon be able to improve teamwork across the world.