How to Avoid Poor Communication Skills at Work
Poor communication skills in the workplace often lead to missed project deadlines, unproductive teams, and client complaints. In this article, we’re giving you a cheat sheet you can use to identify and avoid poor communication skills at work. Help both your teams and your stakeholders succeed with these practical solutions to common miscommunications outlined below. Afterward, keep reading to learn more about how Wrike’s project management tool makes staying on top of communication effortless. What is miscommunication? Miscommunication is a type of communication breakdown that occurs when one party can't provide the proper information to another party for any number of reasons. It’s not always obvious when a miscommunication occurs. Sometimes the realization happens in the moment, so the person can correct themselves. But more often than not, one or both parties don’t realize the error until after something has gone wrong. What are the different types of miscommunication? Mistakes: Think typos, incorrect information, or simply forgetting to CC another team member on an important message. Bad writing: Overly verbose messages and complex words or phrases often create more problems than they solve. Time changes: Employees in different time zones need clarity around deadlines and meeting scheduling that other teams normally wouldn’t. Cultural differences: One person’s email may seem professional and direct to someone from one culture, yet cold and rude to someone from another. Language barriers: If you have native speakers and non-native speakers working together, chances are there will be a mistranslation from time to time. Unspoken expectations: Lack of clear vision or communication of everyone’s responsibilities can lead to finger-pointing down the line. Over- or under-managing: Leaving employees to fend for themselves and micromanaging their every move are both counterproductive to healthy communication. Lack of transparency: Giving team members access to big-picture progress reports and related data is important to effective communication in project management. Assumptions: Even small assumptions, such as thinking an employee will definitely be present and on the clock next week, can cause common project management challenges once you find out you’ve planned a major deadline on the same day as their PTO. Workplace customs: For example, in some offices, the longtime employees know that arriving to a meeting five minutes early is expected, while others may be used to more lax timing. What are the common causes of poor communication? From the top down, good communication is key to attracting and keeping good employees. Unfortunately, many leaders are not as good at communicating as they should be. The good news is that managers can easily adjust their actions to better align with their goals by following this simple communication red flag checklist: Ignoring interpersonal conflicts Whether it’s an office romance turned sour or an environment in which employees simply don’t like one another, interpersonal communication plays a large role in project success. Even if your team doesn’t have natural chemistry, it’s leadership's job to help them get along. Not sharing the big picture It's powerful for businesses to have goals and objectives, as they help employees focus on achieving desirable results. The issue is that many organizations fail to provide clear and consistent direction to their employees. Forgetting to give praise and constructive criticism Feedback is often provided by a project manager to help people understand their performance. It provides vital information to make important business decisions in the future. Top performers regularly utilize feedback to improve their work performance. Point out good behaviors to employees too so that those actions become habits for them in the future. Not prioritizing employee morale When employees lose interest in their work, they are often considered demoralized. This can lead to an employee becoming irritable and unproductive, which can affect companywide performance. Restoring employee morale involves reevaluating the culture and thinking about how to create a conducive environment for employees to thrive. Failing to acknowledge differences As more people choose to work in diverse environments, this has raised the potential for communication issues. For instance, one person from a certain background may relay a message differently to another person from a different background. HR training and mediation are key for solving these miscommunications before they get out of hand. What are the consequences of a lack of communication in the workplace? The consequences of a lack of communication in the workplace are challenging to measure because there are lots of direct and indirect ways it will impact teams. Circumstances matter too. But in general, what we know for sure is that poor communication skills at work are never positive. According to USA Today, “28% of employees cite poor communication as the reason for not being able to deliver work on time”. Imagine creating the perfect project plan, avoiding and minimizing roadblocks, only to discover completely preventable issues such as miscommunication have derailed your team. Removing the possibility of poor communication from the equation improves project delivery, but it also makes dealing with those other issues so much simpler. Another study by SHRM pointed out that miscommunication within projects was one of the most costly mistakes a business can make. Their research showed “the average loss per company of $62.4 million per year because of inadequate communication to and between employees”. There may already be examples in your projects of this happening on a small scale. Issues such as incorrect orders, waiting around for other people to make decisions, and even missing a single client email can cost hundreds of dollars for the smallest of businesses. If there’s an issue with your profits, chances are it can be traced back to poor communication in some form or another. And last but not least, one of the biggest consequences of a lack of communication in the workplace is the destruction of employee morale. A Gallup Journal article pointed out that growth and revenue largely depend on communication between companies and their employees. In fact, “74% of employees have the feeling they’re missing out on company news because the internal communication department is non-existent or doing a poor job.” And when employees feel disconnected from a company’s purpose, they are often disengaged, unproductive, and unmotivated. Examples of poor communication in the workplace Poor communication planning Bad business communication occurs when a company doesn't have a system in place to deal with incoming orders. Without communication with the customers, the company is likely to lose business. One-way streets A one-way street in this context is when a member of the team only contacts their business associates when they need a favor or some ideas. This behavior undermines their communication skills and breeds distrust or resentment among the rest of the group. Cold shoulders A cold shoulder is the equivalent of ghosting someone in the workplace. It typically looks like a person intentionally or unexpectedly declining to respond to calls or emails sent by another team member, manager, client, or stakeholder. Passive-aggressiveness Team members who are passive-aggressive deliberately avoid interacting with their co-workers. This behavior can be caused by intentionally avoiding a co-worker or making off-color remarks that undercut someone else’s efforts. Outright aggression Intimidation tactics can create a toxic work environment. Examples include ultimatums, placing blame on others, and threats to an employee’s financial livelihood. Not only is this unethical, but it also leads to high turnover rates. Placing blame on others A failure to accept responsibility for one's actions shows a lack of responsibility. Believing that others are responsible for their actions shows a lack of compassion and understanding. Neither is productive in the workplace. Poor listening skills Leaders and employees who fail to listen to others are not only disconnected from their conversations but are also engaging in poor communications. In general, these behaviors can have a negative effect on how people feel about their colleagues and team leaders. While many of these scenarios aren’t too difficult to avoid, they can add up over time. Some of these actions may not be considered offensive or aggressive on their own. But letting them pile up can create hostility among collaborators over time. Even if you can’t micromanage every email, text, and call, you can put tools in place that make communication streamlined and transparent. How to avoid miscommunication in project management Agile development is a favorite among modern software-development teams that want to avoid miscommunication altogether while managing multiple projects. Agile tools such as Wrike help groups work together seamlessly and deliver results faster than those that follow other methodologies. One of the ways it does that is through clear project planning. Wrike enables you to structure and manage your work in Agile using visual data representations such as graphs and charts. Tools like ours will help you prioritize your backlog and set up sprints, manage your meetings, and report on progress. This allows individual users to organize their own personal workflows and prioritize their backlog for sprints ahead of time. Wrike also simplifies the process of updating team members. Its activity stream offers a live feed that shows all project updates. Other features such as automated notifications make keeping up with project developments seamless. Want to improve communication between clients and your team? Wrike’s work-intake forms are designed to help teams organize and manage incoming requests. They also help teams plan and collaborate on shared projects, finding opportunities for overlap whenever possible to save on resources. When it comes to getting work done, Wrike makes it possible for teams to stay organized. Individuals can update their workflows and share them with others. Doing this makes it easy for management to keep track of progress across the entire team. It also clears up any confusion around roadblocks, project updates, and the occasional PTO. Wrike also helps teams communicate with stakeholders. For example, users can submit bug reports to external stakeholders who can help solve the problems. Management can adjust settings into project plans so that partners have a peek into progress without seeing any information that is too sensitive. Even if you only use Wrike’s predefined workflows and dashboards that help monitor your progress, it’s a lot easier to avoid poor communication at work when you use our tool. Ready to streamline operations and improve productivity teamwide? Start your free two-week trial of Wrike today.
Why Your CWM Must Have BI Reporting Tools and Workload Management Built-In
We’ve come a long way in a short time during this blog series. So far we’ve detailed: Leveraging an organized project intake method, rather than managing work in spreadsheets Enhancing team collaboration and speeding up design asset approvals Automating repetitive tasks and moving work forward fast Improving client transparency, sharing, and tracking project progress The final article is about digital advertising reporting, managing team resources, and ensuring all your work stays secure. Compiling digital campaign data is laborious Digital marketers have more data at their fingertips than they can manage, and as advertising spend continues to rise, the need to optimize campaigns grows stronger. The growing digital advertising spend only adds to the mountain of data marketing executives are accumulating elsewhere in automation and analytics platforms. Meanwhile, CMOs and other marketing leaders have identified two blockers to effectively using analytics: Proving the value of analytics to marketing efforts Demonstrating the overall impact that investing in data will have on their organization Curating all the available data is challenging because everyone, including non-technical members, must be able to view, interpret, and act on it in real time without requiring external resources. Of course, numerous BI reporting tools can tap into the digital marketing channels, yet the data often requires an analyst to interpret it for marketing team members. Even when data is extracted by data reporting tools, it’s not standardized in a uniform view. YouTube and LinkedIn, for example, have “subscribers” and “followers,” respectively. Both are the same metric but are traditionally looked at separately. After standardizing the data, presenting it in an actionable way remains a struggle. Digital marketing moves too fast for teams to mess around attempting to interpret the findings so they can iterate in real time. Think about ad auctions where it takes, at most, 300 milliseconds to complete an auction, of which billions occur every hour. Data review and adjusting strategy that takes weeks or months isn’t acceptable. Marketing leaders must have complete visibility and an easy way to automate data collection so they can iterate in real time to optimize results. Balancing team workloads is an ongoing issue If you collaborate with freelancers, an agency, or a professional services team, you know that to maintain profitability, team workload management is crucial. Too much work and you’ll have a long backlog you’ll never get to address. Not enough work and you may struggle to keep everyone working at full capacity. In both scenarios, you need a workload management tool that empowers you to reprioritize and reassign work in an instant. Then, there’s the issue of billable versus non-billable work. Not maximizing billable hours opens the door for more non-billable activities that won’t contribute to the bottom line. When you don’t have full visibility into everyone’s capacity and work coming down the pipeline, how can you expect to balance their workload and maintain profitability? It’s an ongoing headache and one that can be avoided once you have a CWM solution with built-in capabilities for time tracking and resource management. Your data isn’t behind lock and key Company-wide, teams operate with a variety of sensitive information — financial and legal documents, employee records, upcoming product announcements — that requires extra safeguarding. Coupled with the digital transformation era and the global shift to cloud computing and securing data gets even more complicated. From the organization’s perspective, the cloud serves two key benefits: huge savings and the convenience of accessing resources and data without having to manage the servers that store the data. Meanwhile, these same companies also want to enjoy the benefits of collaborative work technology, especially highly regulated industries like healthcare and financial services. These industries must comply with even more strict rules, so they often forgo using any cloud apps. All want to be reassured that their work will only be accessible to those with permission and won’t fall into the wrong hands. Without that level of enterprise data security, companies run the risk of failing to comply with federal regulations but also losing their customers’ trust. But who controls the data and who has access? If you don’t know or aren’t satisfied with the answer, look for a CWM that offers enterprise data security software with encryption codes and a digital paper trail of who accessed the data and when. How Wrike solves each pain point Wrike Insights Wrike’s advanced reporting and business intelligence enables you to sync with 50+ apps for real-time digital campaign performance data, including Google, Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, AdRoll, Microsoft Advertising, Yahoo, TikTok, and more. By unlocking this cross-channel analysis, users get 360-degree visibility into campaign performance and where to iterate for the best results without requiring BI reporting tools or data analysts. Built-in data visualizations and analytics dashboards will help your team be more confident on where to take action to maximize ROI. Wrike Resource Management As workloads increase and your team scales, Wrike Resource Management allows complete team availability at a glance with shared tasks, folders, and projects so that managers can reprioritize or reassign work as necessary and optimize performance. It’s a single, collaborative workload management tool that anyone — even external stakeholders — can access from anywhere. Here you can plan, schedule, and allocate resources to set priorities and distribute work. The built-in time tracker and detailed timesheets let you measure effort and review how long projects take to complete. Meanwhile, the Workload view allows you to boost performance and prevent employee burnout by reassigning and reprioritizing tasks based on bandwidth. With this additional transparency, team leads can manage dependencies using Gantt charts and prevent bottlenecks from happening via Table view. Packaged all together, it’s true end-to-end quote-to-cash visibility where you can balance team workloads and help ensure profitability. Wrike Lock Keeping data secure in the modern age goes beyond username and password login details. Wrike’s enterprise data security provides users with customer-managed encryption keys along with an extra layer of encryption by locking the keys to their data. Think of it this way — it’s akin to having a secret code name to get access to the vault’s password, before you can see what’s behind the vault. Furthermore, Wrike doesn’t store your master encryption key, so only you have access. Wrike customer feedback Derick Dahl, Director of Product at Sonance, speaks about the benefits his marketing team has experienced using Wrike Resource for team workload management: “Wrike Resource helped control the otherwise overwhelming nature of our marketing team’s work by allowing us to identify and correct overtaxed employee workloads, reducing the average number of active projects per employee from 12 down to three.” Torsten Mühlhoff, Marketing Controlling & Corporate Projects at ABUS, speaks to the value of Wrike’s security features: "It’s easy to assume that an on-premise solution would be more secure than the cloud. However, our provider and its partners are much better equipped to guarantee the security we need. We’ve also reduced our admin workload and made life easier for our own IT....Wrike is one of the most secure collaborative work management platforms out there, and we really feel we’re in the right hands." Select the best CWM solution for your team This article series isn’t an exhaustive list of pain points that hyper-growth and enterprise teams experience and how a CWM solution can be the answer. As you evaluate vendors, what is exhausting is comparing features head-to-head and reading reviews. Get your free copy of our new eBook, Empowering Teams With CWM: 13 Common Pain Points and How to Solve Them, which highlights the 16 most important CWM features to answer the most common pain points. Try out Wrike today and see why 20,000+ customers rely on our collaborative work management platform to streamline their workflows, get work done faster, and scale.
3 Techniques for Giving Feedback to Your Manager That Actually Work (Plus Sample 1:1 Agenda)
As an employee, giving feedback to your manager can be daunting. In this article, we offer three tips for how to give upward feedback that will be positive and productive, as well as a free sample 1:1 agenda to improve the quality of your feedback sessions.
Team Collaboration Tools: Why Wrike’s Features Are Essential for Team Success
Just because more teams are dispersed now than pre-pandemic doesn’t mean work is slowing down. If anything, the pace of work for many teams remains the same or even sped up. More work can translate to more available resources and it’s not always in-house. Freelancers and agencies remain valued team members and can’t be forgotten since they’re relied upon to get work done. Keeping everyone inside and outside your organization up to speed on work proves to be more challenging as workloads increase and more team members get integrated into your workflow. That leads us to the next pain points in our series. Pain: Work visibility is too limited Teams need to have an overview of all their projects and be able to share work views with external stakeholders securely. When all stakeholders can’t see project progress at a glance, they risk missing updates and deadlines. As timelines change, all dependencies should dynamically change as well. You don’t want to spend time updating related work just because one item changed. There’s technology to assist with that — team collaboration tools are essential to helping your team clarify their work. Having a high-level calendar view of all your team’s work is necessary to see every project in progress. However, that’s not sufficient since individual tasks and projects need to be monitored at the micro-level, too, especially when multiple departments are tracking the projects in the context of their own unique workflows and reporting. Therefore, having a system to label work for multiple teams without duplicating efforts would make everyone happy. Pain: Reporting isn’t simplified and requires experts In a few clicks, can your team collaboration tools determine how many of your projects are new, in progress, under review, completed, overdue, and canceled? Can you identify any bottlenecks and resolve issues so that more of your team’s work avoids being delayed? If you answered “no” to either question, it’s time to reevaluate your reporting process. You need deep visibility and insight to ensure your team’s best results. But not all reports have the power to give you adequate insight, but the bigger problem is, not everyone has access to separate BI tools. Or maybe you rely on a business analyst to pull and analyze the results. Either way, collecting and interpreting the data on a weekly or monthly basis is a drag. Not only does your reporting process need to provide the necessary insight, but the reports should be visual with options like pivot tables, calendar heatmaps, pie charts, and bar charts so that you can understand the results. Furthermore, reporting dashboards should be interactive that get updated dynamically, and be customizable to how you work so that you can focus more of your time on producing results. Solving each pain with Wrike Wrike’s shared team calendars allow everyone to visualize priorities. When work is automatically synced to a shared calendar, it’s easier to see deadlines and future work coming soon. Calendars in Wrike’s online collaboration tool are customizable to match team needs, like the beginning of your fiscal year, or viewable by day, week, quarter, and year for a detailed snapshot of your team’s progress. Expand or collapse selected layers to get an overview of department, team, and individual workloads while spotting any potential bottlenecks and adjusting deadlines as needed. At the micro-level, Wrike’s cross-tagging capabilities increase transparency among all teams and open up the visibility of your work so that everyone involved can track progress. It’s not limited to tasks, either. Subtasks, folders, milestones, phases, and entire projects can be cross-categorized into multiple work streams. For example, to cross-tag a folder, navigate to the Space that has the folder you want to tag, and then follow these steps: In List view, use the folder icon in the top right to open the info panel. The folder's tags are listed under the title. Click + to add a tag and search for your desired folder in the dropdown list. To remove a tag, click the “x” next to the tag you’d like to remove. Cross-tagging benefits a wide variety of teams and individuals. Whether you’re part of a marketing team looking to open up visibility to others, doing daily standups to report on work in progress, or a Project Manager in a PMO ensuring that all work gets done on time, tagging your work makes it more accessible to those who need it. This functionality has proven to be a game-changer for customers and although competitors have cross-tagging abilities, their functionality is extremely limited to the task level. To track project progress, Wrike Analyze gives your team visibility and business intelligence without requiring access to a separate BI tool. Through our online collaboration tool, you can build customizable reports based on your use cases and choose from a range of visuals to convey the results. Any dashboard you build will update dynamically so you can get a snapshot of how your team is performing and where you’re experiencing bottlenecks. Topgolf relies on Wrike calendars and reports Meredith Selden, Senior Marketing Project Manager at Topgolf gives her thoughts on Wrike calendars and reporting: “Wrike is best for complex cross-functional projects where customizable calendars, dashboards, and reports are needed to automatically roll-up (to) projects and results in data... Applicable to any department and both waterfall and Agile methodology.” Alex Bacon, Assistant Communications Manager at Moneytree experienced the power of cross-tagging in Wrike: “...Through Wrike’s platform, we were able to create and deploy a new section on the blog in 2.5 days, complete with content. Wrike kept everything organized and transparent, so it was always very easy to see the status of the different elements and because of the tagging feature we were able to keep things moving very quickly...” Improve transparency and share work securely Increased workloads doesn’t mean that tracking work and transparency have to take a back seat. A team collaboration tool must be able to scale at your team’s pace and workload. Anything else is unsatisfactory. Download our new eBook, Empowering Teams With CWM: 13 Common Pain Points and How to Solve Them to learn the 16 most important components of a CWM solution. Then, try out Wrike’s online collaboration tool to see why 20,000 customers rely on our platform to get work done faster, share their work securely, and keep team members updated on project progress.
3 Types of Feedback Leaders Must Give to Develop Their Teams
Most managers think they give enough feedback, but their team members’ opinions prove this isn’t true. Zarvana CEO and founder Matt Plummer discusses different types of feedback productive managers should give and how frequently they should be given in order to raise employee engagement and growth.
2 CWM Must-Haves: Enhanced Collaboration & Speedy Asset Approvals
For teams to work faster and deliver positive bottom-line results, two key conditions need to be met. First, teams need to be able to communicate asynchronously. Without an easy-to-use and mandated communication method, a team’s ability to collaborate effectively takes a hit. (One of the biggest productivity killers is time spent searching Slack, email, and more for the latest updates.) Second, everyone must be using the same collaborative work management platform to provide the feedback and grant the approvals that move work forward. Lacking one, or both, leads to slower progress, fractured teams, and reduced productivity. In part one of our “selecting the best CWM solution” series, we examined the four major pain points that modern hypergrowth businesses and enterprises face: A lack of process makes accepting and assigning work requests difficult. Managing a team’s work in spreadsheets is time-consuming and inefficient. Working without project tracking (visibility) into project progress means teams are siloed. Working out of multiple tools prevents teams from staying on the same page. In part two, we’ll focus on teams working together and fast-tracking approvals. Pain: More tools isn’t the answer As it goes at many companies, some technologies, like Slack, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams, and email, are used by everyone. Then there’s the siloed software used only by specific teams with access. For example, the product team works out of Atlassian and Miro. Meanwhile, the creative team uses Adobe and Figma to collaborate. Customer success uses Totango, Accelo, or ChurnZero to keep tabs on accounts, monitor churn, and look for upsell opportunities. With all these disconnected tools and limited team access, how do you provide visibility across teams to share files, tasks, reports, and project progress? It gets murky when you don’t have a single solution that everyone has access to for project updates, asset approval and management, and shared team calendars. Of course, one method to extend visibility is the @mention to get their attention and spark a conversation. Collaborative work management tools should include the @mention functionality by default but that’s only setting the stage for how teammates and stakeholders should be collaborating. File sharing and providing feedback on HTML and design assets are also important components because these features allow everyone to collaborate in the same interface. When your chosen software doesn’t allow you to do either one, you’re forced to work out of multiple platforms and critical feedback could be lost in translation. Pain: Design asset approval takes too long Marketing campaigns don’t go live until all assets are finalized, and just one unapproved asset can delay an entire campaign. When multiple assets live in disparate locations, keeping track of everything can be overwhelming. The result is a lengthy approval process when multiple stakeholders need to sign off and not everyone has access to all your tools. Approvers must be able to access the same software and communicate in real time. Even better if everyone can compare version histories to see what’s new. With design feedback, having the ability to pinpoint specific areas with edits is ideal instead of drafting screenshot mockups. Furthermore, your CWM should have established workflows where you can automatically move assets (and projects) to the next person and stage in production. Collaboration is in Wrike’s DNA The @mention functionality is an easy way to draw someone's attention to a high-priority conversation or message. Whereas some collaborative work management tools allow its users to @mention colleagues in limited areas, others don’t support project- or folder-level collaboration. Hypergrowth and enterprise teams need more. Wrike has the @mention, of course, and what’s great is that conversations are streamlined at the folder, project, task, and subtask levels. Descriptions are organized above conversation threads and support multi-user live editing. In addition to conversations, teams may have files in separate places that other stakeholders will need to collaborate on for projects. Wrike’s file sharing and uploading capabilities accepts files from your computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft One Drive, SharePoint, YouTube, and website links, along with digital asset management providers MediaValet and Bynder. Pretty much any file source you have, Wrike can upload. Launch campaigns on time with speedy asset approval Now that you’ve uploaded your file, your team needs to work together to finalize the asset. Wrike’s proofing capabilities boost team productivity and creative output because you can visually mark up and compare images, videos, PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoints, and HTML web content for easy edits and fast approvals. Highlight text, click images, or select time markers to leave clear, contextual comments. Reply to and discuss feedback inline, and resolve comments as edits are made. As a bonus, you can access the functionality inside Adobe® Creative Cloud® applications to view feedback and make changes without switching tabs or tools. You can also invite external reviewers if they’re outside your organization, and it’s all secure with password protection: Aerotek speeds up asset approvals with Wrike Aerotek eliminated weeks from their planning time by using Wrike, and Matt Andrews, Marketing Campaign Manager, loves the proofing capabilities: “Having the ability to critique work, mark it up within the tool, and have it go directly back to the team saves us a lot of time… “There’s no functionality for mark up in email. Now we’re able to skip some meetings and do everything in-line while capturing the history of all the comments and revisions.” Experience the Wrike difference Evaluating CWM software is more than just reading customer reviews and comparing functionality on a pricing page. It’s not a decision to take lightly — your team’s work depends on having a solution that enables them to work their way. Download our new eBook, Empowering Teams With CWM: 13 Common Pain Points and How to Solve Them to learn the top 16 most important CWM features for hypergrowth and enterprise teams. Whether your team is fully remote, hybrid, or returning to office full-time, you can always collaborate better and approve work faster. Let Wrike show you how by starting a free trial today.
Selecting the Best Collaborative Work Management Solution
From here on out, organizations are going to have to accommodate a distributed workforce. Depending on the line of business, some organizations will return to the office, others will stay remote, and the rest will adopt a hybrid model. Regardless of the model your organization selects, a company’s workforce will need to be connected and in sync. As the last year has demonstrated, the only way teams can stay connected and productive is by adopting collaborative work management (CWM) tools. Because a CWM tool is designed to be the hub of all your work, selecting the best solution to fit your unique needs is essential. It must possess the core capabilities and key features needed to enhance productivity while being configurable enough to conform to your workflows without sacrificing scalability. Today’s post is the first in a five-article series that details the most common pain points businesses face in managing their work and how Wrike solves each one. Pain: No organized method to accept new projects Work requests can come from anywhere — Slack, email, standup and virtual meetings, or desk drop-ins. These aren’t ideal or sustainable. Compounding this problem, oftentimes requests lack the details needed to get started. As a result, you end up chasing down the requestor to fill in the blanks. Adding to the mess, a disjointed intake process guarantees that those who need visibility into a project or task won’t have it. You need a simplified, one-stop channel to accept and view all new and upcoming projects. Whether your team operates within Agile or Waterfall, your CWM should include templatized request forms, easy-to-configure dashboards, workflows, and reporting. If your CWM is so rigid that you have to conform to it, it’s time to look for an alternate solution. This brings us to ... Pain: Spreadsheets aren’t a work management solution Spreadsheets are great for organizing data, but managing complex workflows and tracking progress in Excel or Google Sheets is worse than “old school”; it's a potential threat to the bottom line and your business’s longevity. First, spreadsheets are disconnected from email and chat tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, killing cross-functional collaboration. Of course, you can tag somebody in a comment thread, but ongoing communication gets messy in a hurry. With a variety of work deliverables often in progress (e.g., emails, landing pages, prototypes, graphic design, videos, etc.) trying to manage everything in spreadsheets is a nightmare. In addition, spreadsheets lack the visualization tools like Gantt charts and interactive dashboards to track project progress; identify risk; and manage resources, workflows, contract types, and customizable fields for project start and end dates. Relying on an antiquated method to manage your team’s work prohibits collaboration and slows down your ability to scale and deliver results. Pain: Too many tools, not enough time Spreadsheets are a drag for sure, but too many tools can be just as bad, maybe worse. Some organizations are using too many applications to collaborate and get work done. Cross-functional teams like marketing, sales, product, and customer success use separate tools, but everyone must work together to achieve a common result. With too many scattered tools, there’s no master system of record for teammates to collaborate, move work forward, approve assets, track billable time, and more. There’s a better solution, one that hypergrowth and enterprise teams use to get work done and scale at their pace. Not to mention the countless hours you and your team spend getting disparate tools to play nice. Follow the paper trail (that’s a good thing) A single source of truth, where a record of all team communication and how projects reached completion are kept, is a good thing. If you’re constantly switching between Slack, email, product management, and design tools, then you’re keeping some team members siloed in those tools and out of the loop of other (related) project questions. Plus, you lose valuable time copying details from one software to another to update other teams or clients. How Wrike solves each problem To simplify and organize incoming work requests, Wrike has dynamic request forms that channels work to the right teams or individuals based on form inputs. These customizable forms and blueprints make it simple for requesters to input their exact needs and the responders to collect the necessary information and begin work immediately. No more chasing down the stakeholder to get clarification on dependencies, specs, budget, and the deadline. Upon form submission, the request gets sent to the correct teammate, automatically saving time assigning the work. This automated intake system enables team members to have visibility into the new project. No more checking Slack, email, or handwritten notes for project details. Wrike’s dynamic request forms allow account and Space admins to create rules, such as: Designating additional assignees or project owners. Adding subtasks or subprojects to the submitted form. Setting up approvals for the task or project created. What Wrike customers have to say Charli Edwards, Head of Design at Built Environment Communications Group, on why her team relies on Wrike’s automated project intake process: “We use the request forms for a creative briefing which are then automatically linked to our in-house resource, this means everything is one place, fully trackable and transparent — everyone is always clear on what they are doing and how long it should take.” When you have repeatable projects, Wrike users can save time creating tasks and dependencies using blueprints, which let you manage your project, folder, and task templates to plan your work while keeping it separated from ongoing work. Launch a blueprint to quickly create a task, folder, or project with attributes you've already specified. As your team scales and more projects get greenlit, you’ll need an efficient way to collaborate and have a centralized hub to host your work. Wrike is a recognized leader in collaborative work management, acting as a single source of truth with enhanced collaboration capabilities, file uploading, custom workflows, fast-tracking approvals, tracking billable time, and more. No more hectic processes trying to manage all your work with dozens of spreadsheets, chasing down approvals, or work slipping through the cracks. With Wrike’s CWM platform, you’ll have a master system of record for all comments, document versions, and approvals. A win-win-win. Brynne Roberts, Director of Creative Operations Fitbit on how Wrike speeds up their product launch preparations: “Before Wrike, there was no structure with product launches. We used to spend hours building and managing a complex spreadsheet to track marketing materials for upcoming launches. We’d be late on deadlines and working overtime every day. Burnout was at an all-time high. Now we can see what’s on everyone’s plates with reporting. And timelines allow us to project and provide transparency on how long it will take. We work faster, update key dates for deliverables much more quickly, and eliminate human error. We’ve likely saved around 200 or more hours per year in our launch prep.” Shaun Carlson, Director of Continuous Innovation and R&D at Arvig: “In the past when we onboarded new developers, it took 6-9 months before they reached peak productivity. With Wrike as a single source of truth for the knowledge and activities surrounding our work, and the Kanban methodology to help us prioritize tasks, that onboarding timeline is only 3-4 months now which has been a game-changer for our enterprise business growth.” Get more from your collaborative work management software Most teams experience the same growing pains accepting work requests, managing their work, and having a historical record of all communication. With many CWM solutions on the market claiming to be the answer, how can you feel confident you’re making the best decision for your team? Get your free copy of our new eBook, “Empowering Teams With CWM: 13 Common Pain Points and How to Solve Them” to learn the top 13 pain points and the 16 most important features to address each need. Then start your Wrike free trial and see why Wrike is the leading collaborative work management solution having won awards from Forrester and GetApp.
Meeting Etiquette Tips You Should Know
As meetings grow more frequent, it's easy to forget what makes meetings effective in the first place. Time is taken for granted, and instead of collaborating, most attendees are checked out: either working on something else or holding side conversations.
The 5 Ws of Virtual Communication
You're running a virtual team, and you probably already have a well-stocked arsenal of tools to help you do it. You have the project management tool. The collaboration tool. The communication tool. (Maybe all in one?) But now you're stuck: Now that I have all these tools, what's the best way to actually TALK to my team? Philosophers and researchers have been watching their fellow human beings and releasing volumes of communication tips since before you or I were born. But as our workforce becomes increasingly virtual, there is a need to focus on virtual communication tips. We're breaking down the 5 Ws of virtual communication so you can make sure your message is crystal clear when you're talking through a screen. Consider WHO you're talking to. With virtual communication, it's likely that at some point you will send a message to someone that speaks a different first language from yourself. In that case, you need to modify your language to accommodate a potentially less advanced vocabulary. Yes, they could Google the words you use. Yes, they could probably figure out what you're saying even if they didn't understand it naturally. But why make their life more difficult when you could easily simplify your communication? It's polite behavior, and a little politeness goes a long way. Watch WHAT you're saying. How do you read this: "Okay..." versus "Okay!" I'll bet the first voice has a little hesitation, and the second is excited. In person, you'd have the benefit of body language to convey the correct message. Online, not so lucky. You need to choose your words and your punctuation wisely, because they'll alter your message. Since your reader will have the opportunity to dissect every letter, make sure you say exactly what you mean without leaving room for interpretation. Use exclamation points. Add a smiley face to the end of a sentence. Let them know if you're joking. And if you're confused or less-than-pleased with something, fine, use the ellipsis at the end of your sentence... Choose WHERE to say it. Does your office have a Communication Guidebook yet? If you communicate with your team over multiple tools, make the different use cases consistent. Use your instant messenger tool for informal chatting. Use your project management tool for all task- and project-related conversations. Use email only to communicate with people who don't have access to your project management tool. Use your online meeting tools, for, well, online meetings. By segmenting your conversation locations, you'll always know where to find information if you need to reference a conversation. Think about WHEN you deliver your message. Don't message someone at 2:00 PM to let them know you need a task done by 5:00 PM. Don't tell someone on Monday that you won't hit your Tuesday deadline. Not only is this bad communication in general, but with virtual communication you run the additional risk of the recipient not seeing your message in time. Bad planning can have an even more extreme effect with virtual communication. Also consider timing. Don't send urgent messages when you know your recipient is sound asleep, and it's probably not a great idea to leave bad news in someone's inbox to be the first thing they read after they wake up. Also, try not to hold onto anger for weeks until you boil over; since your colleagues won't have the opportunity to pick up on the nonverbal cues that would typically tell them you're upset, you need to be upfront with your feelings. Timing can be everything when delivering a message, so take it just as seriously when you're online. Decide WHY you're saying it. Does it need to be said? As they say, once it's on the internet, it's forever. Before you leave a message in a burst of anger or sarcastic frustration, make sure you'd be comfortable with someone reading your words a week, a month, or a year from now. If there is a kinder way of phrasing your words, that's probably the best route. Take your time. Next time you're talking online, consider your WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, and WHY before hitting 'Enter.' Since you don't have the face-to-face pressure of providing an instant response, take the time to revise and edit your messages so you don't stick your foot in your mouth. Related Articles:4 Tips for Virtual Team MeetingsEverything You Need to Successfully Run a Virtual Team
Dealing With Bullies, Jerks, & Toxic Personalities in the Workplace
Ever had a conversation with a colleague where you walk away thinking, "Whoa, that person was a real jerk." Turns out you're not alone. These head honcho, give-me-your-lunch-money-type personalities are not only affecting high school hallways, they're invading our office culture.
What NOT to Say to a Designer and Why
Miscommunications and misunderstandings in design can cause bottlenecks and delay projects—not to mention permanently damage the relationship with your designer. Learning how to talk to a designer so they have the specifics they need from you to complete a project (but enough freedom to incorporate their creativity as well) can cut down on the number of iterations and help build a good relationship for future projects.
It's Time to Have Fewer Papers on Your Table: Keeping Memos in Wrike
There's a better way to send memos. Send them to your staff via Wrike, and use built-in tools to track who has read it, send reminders to those who haven't, and even field questions to ensure comprehension. Find out how.
How to Deal With Difficult Employees
As a career manager or even a first-time manager, the chance of encountering difficult employees is, unfortunately, very high. You need to prepare yourself in advance to handle the situation without causing additional problems. Even if you're one of the lucky managers who doesn't have a chronically cranky member on the team, there will always be That One Person who, while not generally difficult to work with, has their moments of stubbornness and inflexibility. How do you manage difficult team situations without coming off as the bad guy? Read our tips in this infographic for properly identifying and addressing difficult employees, and check out our tips for how to deal with difficult employees. What is a problem employee? A problem employee is, simply put, someone who is causing problems in the workplace. Some problems are more obvious than others — disrespect, gossiping, and stealing could be some examples. But showing up consistently overwhelmed, upset, or cranky are less obvious. We typically think of these as moods that can’t be helped, not behavior that can negatively impact others. When serious life changes occur, we must show empathy while also addressing the problem so that work doesn’t suffer too. Little behaviors can add up over time. Running late to every meeting, willfully ignoring task status updates in the project management platform, or simply neglecting to respond to emails in a timely manner are all examples of a problem employee. And it’s not just affecting them. One employee’s bad attitude or emotional ups and downs may have a ripple effect on your entire workplace culture. Whether it’s missed deadlines or self-sabotage, this employees’ actions will no doubt impact everyone else on the team. How to deal with difficult employees as a new manager When a business has a hard time working with an employee, it can drain productivity and make the work environment hostile. How to handle a difficult employee can be addressed through a variety of strategies and procedures. In the worst-case scenario, if your company has a consistently hard time motivating and managing one of its employees, then you may need to offboard them. This can improve the performance and morale of the other workers. But as a new manager, firing difficult employees should not be your first port of call. As you get the lay of the land, you may discover that letting people go isn’t a smart move, and there are other ways to address their behavior. If you’re not happy with certain behavior, don’t just go along with it. Instead, set expectations that are consistent with your company’s policies and the standards you have for yourself. This will help employees copy what you do as you lead by example. If the change doesn’t work, try communicating the next steps. Good managers will set specific consequences if the situation still isn’t improving. Tell difficult employees that they can still turn it around by identifying the consequences of continuing to behave in a way that negatively impacts the rest of the team. From there, monitor progress and help them achieve their new behavioral goals. Remember, problem-solving is all about collaboration. Employees resent an “us against them” work culture but will appreciate you partnering with them to solve the issue. Good managers will ensure that every possible step has been taken to retain an employee before termination is used as a last resort. They make sure they’ve done all they can before taking that final step. Top tips for managing a difficult employee Insubordinate employees can disrupt a workplace and kill productivity. Getting them to behave properly can help managers improve their performance. Use one or more of these actionable tips to come up with your own game plan for dealing with difficult employees: Be professional It’s important to avoid making the conversation too personal. The goal is to find a way to move forward and not to create more confrontation. Openly communicate Having a two-way conversation with a challenging employee can help you identify the root cause of their behavior and address it. Instead of attacking them, focus on the issues that have been identified. Then, reinforce your message by asking the employee to explain their actions. There may be a reason why this employee has been acting out, and perhaps you can work together to address it and stop the behavior. Ask questions There may be other factors that contribute to their negative behavior. Some might be outside of work. But you may be surprised to find that others are totally within your control and you can easily help the problem employee solve these problems. Use examples It can be hard to give harsh feedback, but it is important to provide clear and specific examples of the problematic behavior that has occurred. This can help lower the employee's defensiveness and improve their performance. Record everything When you witness poor performance or problematic behavior, record it in writing so you can keep track of it and remember all of its details. This is good practice so that if the situation is escalated, you have all the evidence and information ready to defend your position.. Get help The human resources team can help you identify the issue, discuss the steps you need to take, and provide a course of action. Work together Set a timeline for improvement and clearly state expectations. Having the employee sign the plan will help ensure that the plan is followed and that the evaluation framework is used to measure success. If your plan for improvement doesn’t work, you may end up with a failed strategy. The easiest way to set clear consequences is by sending a warning letter or revoking their employment contract. Extend grace Give your employees time to improve their behavior. During this time, monitor their progress and keep track of any issues that might be affecting their ability to meet the agreed-upon timeline. Isolate them If the situation is not immediately fixable, consider separating a disruptive employee from the other team members to prevent their behavior from spreading. Doing so can help keep the employee from causing problems for the other team members. Take responsibility Whether you intend to or not, there may be something you are doing that has influenced bad behavior among difficult employees. Take responsibility for the situation and try to resolve it in a way that works for both parties. How do you deal with difficult employees in a virtual environment? First, it’s important to realize that it’s harder to humanize employees we only interact with online. Sometimes, when an employee is struggling, we stop paying attention to what's happening around them. Understanding the implicit bias we may have toward remote colleagues is the first step to resolving conflicts with them. Second, communication that is as specific as possible is critical in a virtual environment. Give employees clear, behavioral feedback. It's not uncommon for most managers to spend months or even years criticizing their poor performers without offering anything concrete for them to work on. Great managers know how to be concise and constructive. This approach helps lower the other person's defensiveness and gives them the information they need to improve. It does two key things: it lowers the other person's defensiveness and helps them improve at the same time. Third, managers should document their workflow for dealing with difficult employees. In a physical office, there are always other people around to witness behavior and provide guidance. In a virtual office, unless specific individuals are invited to the call, you’ll mainly interact with this employee one-on-one to resolve this issue. So when dealing with problematic remote employees, make a list of the key points and actions that you need to take to improve the situation. Record what you do and say to this employee, along with meeting dates, times, and formats. This will help you identify areas of weakness in your own management style and allow you to make better decisions next time. It will also protect you from any accusations a disgruntled employee may choose to make. When everything is written down, it’s easier to remember and analyze, especially when the situation is emotionally charged. How to improve the behavior of a difficult team member If the problem persists, it will cause more damage to your team. This is why it is important to know how to solve it. Not sure how to put this all into practice? Follow these steps for how to deal with difficult employees in a way that maintains and even strengthens your relationships: Step 1: Label it The key to solving problems before they get out of hand is to label it early on. If you notice a behavior that is negative more than once, be sure to consciously observe that employee moving forward. If the action happens consistently, that's when you know you have a problem to solve. Step 2: Start tracking Using a simple spreadsheet or project and task history in Wrike, make a note of how often the behavior occurs and the severity of it. For example, if an employee is consistently late on their deadlines, you can track whether or not they are turning in work the next day or the following weeks. You can also use your project management software to add context to the task and how it impacted the rest of the project. By using your project management software to add context, you can get to the root of the problem faster. Continuing this example, even if an employee is consistently late, there might be a bottleneck from a different employee who's actually causing the holdup. You can also look to see if the workload is distributed evenly. If not, be sure to redistribute and communicate your observations along with your solutions for moving forward. Chances are, your employees are just overwhelmed and will greatly appreciate the gesture. However, if the difficult employees really are to blame for the behavior and you see it showing up over several weeks or months, you know you have to do something about it. Step 3: Identify patterns We all go through rough patches, but there might be patterns that emerge from your observations. It's good to note them whenever they come up. That way, when you're having a conversation with your employee, you have more insight into what may be exaggerating or promoting that behavior. For example, if your remote employee is late to meetings every Thursday but on time every other day of the week, it may be a sign that they have a responsibility outside of work that is preventing them from arriving on time on this specific day of the week. Whether it's picking up a child from school or attending a meeting for a different project that typically runs over time, you'll be able to either move the meeting to accommodate or work with the employee to find an alternative solution. Step 4: Plan solutions Typically the simplest answer is always the best. In the short term, having a discussion and coming up with a plan is a great way to solve small issues. You can also plan long-term solutions for how to address the behavior. That includes setting up a meeting with an HR rep present, keeping notes on what you want to discuss during the meeting, and offering the employee an opportunity to discuss any personal issues that might be coming up for them in private ahead of time. You may even find that the behavior is starting to become a pattern but is not quite yet a big enough problem to escalate the situation. If that's the case, then give the person a heads up in a private meeting or via email that you notice something is different. If you choose to email them, communicate this in a helpful tone. Ask if you can assist in any way. Step 5: Communicate expectations Even if you share your initial plan in your meeting, it's good to reiterate your expectations both in person and in writing. Make sure that the wording is clear and not vague. Have your employee sign off on the expectations with a formal signature or by reiterating their understanding of it. Keep in mind when working with a large remote team that personalities and cultural differences often come into play when communicating sensitive information like this. Look for ways that your unconscious bias might be affecting the interaction. Remember to lead with kindness and helpfulness while also being firm on what is expected moving forward. Step 6: Monitor progress Dealing with a difficult employee isn't a set-it-and-forget-it type of project. Instead, you'll need to monitor progress over time. Once you've laid out your plan and the employee has begun to execute it, make sure you check in and ask if they need any additional assistance from you. They might have questions or find that the plan makes sense on paper but not in action. If that's the case, adjust as needed. Make sure you choose a KPI for this project just like you would any other. That way, you can monitor the ups and downs as you go. Once you see consistent improvement, make a note to check in less often but still keep an eye on it in future months or quarters. And once your employee has changed their behavior, make sure that you acknowledge and celebrate them. Show them how much you appreciate them working with you on this. Not only will it improve the work environment for your entire team but it might also improve their quality of life. Keep in mind that some difficult employees are only difficult because they aren't being managed well. Without clear communication and empathy, it can be challenging to tell the difference. Conclusion When dealing with a difficult employee, the ideal outcome is for you to work together to develop a solution that both parties agree on. Partner with Wrike to help get all your employees on the same page and monitor their behavior over time. Start your free two-week trial today.
Why People Are Ignoring Your Business Memos
Business memos seem retro but still have a place in today’s business world. Are employees not reading your memos? Maybe it’s time to update your template and adopt a more modern business memo. Read on for business memo best practices and examples of both traditional and modern business memos.
The Agile Origins of Project Management 2.0
In my previous post that was also cross posted on CloudAve, I brought up the topic of enterprise agility. My conclusion was: to be agile and adapt quickly to the ever-changing business environment, you need to be able to blend top-down control with bottom-up agility in a "Ying and Yang" style. I also mentioned the latest research, showing that teams that foster a focused, unified dialogue between their members, managers and stakeholders are 250% more likely to thrive in the present economic situation. Less agile teams are 360% more likely to miss millions of dollars in lost opportunities. The idea of constant interaction and collaboration between managers, team members and stakeholders is not new, however. Here I want to write a few words about the origins of this idea, which later became the background for Project Management 2.0. Agile Management Essentials The idea of constant dialogue in project management surfaced in 2001 as one of the principles of so-called agile software development and is described in the Agile Manifesto. According to evangelists of agile methods, cooperation is crucial for the success of a project. Among other key principles of agile lifecycle management are: • Clear vision of the project • Fast pace • Self-organizing teams • Leadership philosophy that encourages teamwork These principles easily took over the software industry in several years because of the major benefits they bring to companies, such as: • Increased productivity • Early return on investment • Responsiveness to changes in the business environment Perhaps the brightest examples here are Google and IBM. Among others are Verizon, GE Mobile, HP and Rackspace. Now agile methods are used to manage various projects outside of the software development. One of the agile management methods called Scrum is often used as a best practice for managing various complex projects in an iterative fashion, and it is frequently applied to diverse industries and types of projects. Scrum can be used in business development, customer development, marketing projects and even as a general project management framework in industries like finance, telecommunications, automotive, publishing, etc. Sounds great, but can agile methods, or any other type of bottom-up management, be instantly adopted in your company? Probably not. If you have ever tried introducing the best bottom-up practices to your organization, you have most likely found it difficult to do that while utilizing traditional tools for project management. I already wrote about the three major gaps of traditional project management software that make them less useful in an agile organization.Change in Communication The situation is changing, thanks to the transformations going on in how people share and receive information. More methods for the successful implementation of the bottom-up management best practices have emerged. During the past few years, analysts, the business community and the media talked a lot about the companies that try to boost the productivity of their employees by adopting tools like blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networks, etc. It’s not surprising that tech companies lead the way here. For instance, Intel was one of the first enterprises to utilize internal blogging. As far back as 2003, Intel began encouraging employees to communicate with each other by running their own internal blogs. These quickly gained a large following. In 2006, Intel launched the IT@Intel pilot blog, and in 2007 it rolled out a full blog program called Blogs@Intel. Today, through self-managed blogs and networking profiles, employees are encouraged to provide their own views on what’s going on at Intel and in the computer technology world. Intel is not the only example. Non-tech companies caught up very quickly. In April 2006, Intrawest Placemaking, a real estate development firm that operates in North America and Europe, undertook a bold technical initiative focused on empowering individual employees. Today, Intrawest Placemaking's wiki intranet allows practically unrestricted editing for all 250 employees. This has led to a tenfold increase in use over the previous intranet, and some excellent examples of knowledge sharing: One manager created a page with an idea that saved the company $500,000.Web 2.0 for the Enterprise This trend was recognized by technology and business experts, and in 2006, Andrew McAfee, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, coined the term “Enterprise 2.0.” The essential element of Enterprise 2.0 is freeform collaboration. Enterprise 2.0 gives people the capability to create, modify and mange information with ease. Using simple, Web-based tools, relevant and up-to-date knowledge within your organization can be found, tracked and shared efficiently. Leveraging the collective intelligence of employees brings real competitive advantages to organizations. It increases innovation, team productivity and agility. Does it work in the real world? It does, and there are hundreds of examples proving it. Here are some of them: - Simon Sproule, Nissan’s corporate vice president, is convinced that corporate social networking pays off. He recognized that Nissan’s internal social networking site "makes it easier for employees to tap into the expertise they need to do a better job." - Euan Semple, former head of knowledge management for the BBC, claimed the organization was getting "enormous benefits" from Enterprise 2.0. He reported to Forrester that BBC had 23,000 bulletin board users, 4,000 wiki users and over 400 people blogging. - General Electric, the venerable multinational corporation that was founded in 1878 in New Jersey, has at its core a hugely sophisticated enterprise collaboration system that is arguably the largest in the world. GE’s ‘SupportCentral’ users have created over 50,000 communities with over 100,000 experts signed up to answer questions and manage information. The experts are GE workers with full-time jobs who use the system because it helps them do their jobs better. Today, thanks to the influence of Enterprise 2.0 practices, Web 2.0 tools and agile methods, project management is evolving on a broader scale in a diverse set of industries that range from professional services to manufacturing. This evolution is often called Project Management 2.0 Now you are welcome to join the discussion. Why use agile project management?Have you tried managing your projects with agile methods? What tools were you using? Can you name any other trends that influenced the appearance of Project Management 2.0? Please share your thoughts and experience in the comments.
Knowledge Decays. Here’s How Your Organization Can Keep Up
We live in the era historians call "The Information Age." With technology rapidly advancing, how does your organization keep up with absorbing and retaining knowledge? Read on to find discover the biggest threats to knowledge decay and how organizations should manage it and keep learning.
4 Tips to Improve Your Next Meeting
Meetings. We love them. We hate them. And let's be honest: mostly the latter. For a lot of workers, meetings are synonymous with: "A boring, pointless waste of my time." To change that mentality, we need to change the way we approach our conference calls and boardroom gatherings. Here are four best practices to make sure every meeting counts: 1. Get rid of status update meetings FOREVER Allow me to start by being bold — status update meetings are a waste of your time. 10, 15 years ago, they may have been necessary to make sure everyone was on the same page. Today, we have team collaboration software like Wrike to share updates freely. No sitting in a cramped room at an inconvenient time of day. Everyone can check on the status of projects when its most convenient for them, and they'll never forget who said what. Ask questions and leave comments or feedback online instead of repeating yourself or getting incomplete answers during a conference call. Make your next meeting perfect: Only hold meetings if you want instantaneous, person-to-person collaboration and brainstorming. 2. Only involve the necessary people The biggest drain on your colleagues' precious time is to ask them to join a meeting they don't need to attend. If you set a precedent of only involving necessary parties, your colleagues will stop dreading "useless" meetings. Which means their engagement in your meetings will rise because they will always go in knowing they need to contribute to the gathering for work to get done. Make your next meeting perfect: When you create your list of meeting attendees, also write down tangible reasons they need to attend. More than just: "They're on the marketing team." Try reasons like, "They have prior experience with this type of project." 3. Create a goal-oriented agenda — and stick to it! Decide in advance what you want to accomplish by the end of the meeting — finish a customer email, come to a decision about the next website design, brainstorm ideas for a new conference. Turn those goals into an agenda and do not allow people to deviate in their conversation. Once you have accomplished all your goals, blow the whistle! The meeting is over! This will keep your meetings focused and purpose-driven. In line with only involving the necessary people, goal-oriented agendas make sure you don't waste anyone's time. Make your next meeting perfect: Focus! Go through your agenda in order, creating one solution after the next until you hit the bottom of the list. Bada-bing, bada-boom. Successful meeting. 4. End your meeting with "role" call Don't let the momentum die once you have left the (possibly virtual) room. End your meetings by creating next steps for everyone involved so they walk out of your meeting and jump right back into work. Before you adjourn your session together, ask each person for their action plan. You've just accomplished two things: created accountability by publicly confirming responsibilities, and made sure everyone ends the meeting on the same page. Make your next meeting perfect: As soon as the call is over, send out the list of next steps for every person involved in your meeting. After implementing these four tips, no one should walk out of your meetings thinking they have wasted their time. Have you rid yourself of status meetings and created goal-oriented agendas? Or do you have more advice for creating the perfect meeting? Help us out! We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Read next: 4 Problems with Virtual Meetings that You Can Fix Read next: Managing Remote Meetings
How to Fix the Fragmentation of Information in the Workplace
Welcome to the age of abundant yet fragmented information in the workplace. There is a very real fragmentation problem. Because, to put it bluntly, our work information is all over the place. And it is affecting our work speed and overall efficiency, both as individuals and as teams.