Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

School may be closed, but this ain’t no vacation. Here’s my tried-and-true game plan for staying productive (mostly).

Better communication at work is the answer. Ok, maybe not THE answer… but it’s close. Fact is, it’s almost always step number one when addressing persistent issues that hold you back, as well as what helps you move from good to great. Better communication increases understanding, fosters trust, and stands out as the essential ingredient for getting things done. It’s not a silver bullet, it’s silver buckshot.

If you think of it in terms of Tuckman’s stages of team development, suddenly shifting to remote en masse throws your team into “storming” mode. Confusion and frustration abound, and everything feels twice as hard as it should. (We know because we’ve been there.) Your goal right now is to get back to the “performing” stage and resume your regularly-scheduled level of productivity. Here are five ways to do that.

Shadow IT – tech used in an organization that is not administered by that organization’s IT department – accounts for the majority of the cloud tech at most companies. Understandably, the risk this implies might keep a security pro up at night; Gartner estimated in 2016 that by 2020, a third of successful attacks experienced by enterprises will be on their shadow IT resources.

How to create an environment where people are empowered and excited to do their best work.

I remember it like it was yesterday, but it was 20 years ago. As I approached my boss’s desk, I saw her do something amazing: she made a smaller window appear on top of her screen, displaying the icons of her open applications. She quickly toggled and selected another. In an instant, she’d gone from Outlook to Excel. No mousing around, no hunting to open the app. I squawked. What the heck was that? That, my friends, was my alt-tab Eureka! moment.

As engineering teams grow, obvious difficulties arise. It’s simple math. You can’t keep up with everyone, and everything, in the same way as you did when the team was small. To maintain the high level of impact you’ve always had, your ways of working need to change.

It’s 3 a.m. and you’re up again tossing and turning, a stampede of wild thoughts running through your head about your latest work issue. Maybe it’s a project gone south, a recurring problem rearing its head again, or a difficult relationship with a coworker. Either way, it’s up to you to calm your mind, talk yourself through your worries, and get a good night’s sleep.

“Wait. I don’t remember telling you the name of my hometown,” I said with an eyebrow cocked. “No, but I’m an intel analyst. So I know.” Truth be told, I was surprised the conversation hadn’t included more moments like this. I’m sitting in a tavern a few klicks down the road from the FBI’s training academy in Quantico, VA.

You’re a manager. You’re not one to pat yourself on the back, but you’ve got to admit: your team is doing pretty darn well. At least, that’s how it seems to you. Big projects are being checked off the list, deadlines are being met. You haven’t had to referee any heated conflicts, your inbox has no complaints. You’re good! But is that the whole story? Our research suggests your direct reports might describe the situation a wee bit differently.