Wrike Blog

At any one time during a project, do you know who is doing what? What happens when your team experiences delays in turning work around, or mysterious bottlenecks in production? Can you figure out how to solve these problems? When we talked with Bailey Shemenski, former Head of Operations at predictive analytics company SimpleRelevance, she shared how she used to solve this problem by carrying a little notebook with her packed with project details. Meanwhile, her teammates each used the...

When it comes to leading your marketing team, you want to remain somewhat visible and involved. You don’t want to be that faceless person who doles out instructions and then forces your team members to fend for themselves. You’d like to be viewed as an active resource and a trusted advisor. But at the same time, you’re worried about swinging too far in the other direction—being so heavily involved that you cross over into that dreaded micromanagement territory. You know that if yo...

After all the time, research, and money you put into finding the right work management solution, you and your team should feel a sense of relief — and, after a few months, start seeing some improvements from your new tool. Communications should be smoother, data should be easy to find, and people should be actually using the tool. Life should be good! But what happens when the tool you adopted to improve work management is failing to do so?  In our Work Management Survey, 34% of workers...

If you ask a number of people what success looks like, somebody is sure to mention climbing the proverbial ladder. After all, that’s become the norm in corporate America. You continue grasping rung after rung until you reach the top—which is usually a point when you’re leading and managing others. But here’s the problem with this: not everybody wants to be a leader. Some people are much happier focusing on their own work, without being bogged down with all of the meetings, logistics, an...

    Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. - George Bernard Shaw  . Picture this: you need to find a new solution for running online meetings so you can collaborate with your global team spread out across different time zones. You pull up your handy search engine and start researching with your top three priorities in mind: cost, quality, and ease of use.   . After a week of calls with vendors and free demos galore, y...

You place a lot of emphasis on keeping your employees happy — well, at least you like to think that you do. You offer plenty of paid vacation time and emphasize adequate work-life balance. You encourage team members to voice their opinions and share ideas. You even keep the office kitchen stocked with snacks. But, are you missing something? If you don’t have an effective way to adequately recognize and reward your team members for their hard work, then the answer is yes — you’re mis...

No matter what department you work in or what your title is, one thing is for sure: someone wants something from you.  Formal meetings, hallway conversations, instant messages, emails—whether it’s a major new project or a quick favor for another team, you’re inundated by incoming work requests.  The biggest problem with these informal, drive-by requests is that you never get all the information you need. Chasing down requirements so you can do your job often takes longer than the job its...

"Where all think alike, no one thinks very much." — Walter Lippmann Collaboration and conflict are not opponents: they're partners. So let's banish the notion that high-performing teams are made up of smiling people who always get along.  Teamwork should be messy, and being a good manager isn't about creating a fake-happy work environment where you're more concerned about keeping the peace than doing good work. Think of the rivalry between sales and marketing, or the competition bet...