4 Tips for Effective Virtual Collaboration

4 Tips for Effective Virtual Collaboration

October 16, 2020

Team collaboration done right is a powerful force to align a group of individuals to accomplish a common goal in the most effective way possible. But even the best collaborations, filled with smart, capable, and experienced team members, can be a struggle.

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How to Defeat Busy Culture

How to Defeat Busy Culture

October 02, 2020

At home and at work, “busy” culture worsens the problems it promises to solve. It’s natural to assume that the busier we are, the bigger the impact we’ll be able to make — but in reality, studies have shown that busy culture destroys productivity and pulls us away from both our families and deeper relationships with our coworkers.

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How to thrive in the next normal of distributed work

How to thrive in the next normal of distributed work

September 18, 2020

Some companies are struggling to keep up with our new normal. Research from Asana reveals nearly half of employees surveyed globally said company-wide goals had been deprioritised since remote working began, with 47 per cent saying those goals have changed at least once during that time – and 60 per cent haven’t increased communication on such issues. 

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Why work management is key for remote team collaboration

Why work management is key for remote team collaboration

September 11, 2020

The global pandemic has left newly remote workers swimming in confusion and struggling to keep up. To shift from today’s state of surviving to a future where teams are thriving, we need tools that make coordinating and collaborating on work effortless. 

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What’s the ROI of a Work Management Platform? A global study

What’s the ROI of a Work Management Platform? A global study

September 09, 2020

Everyone from the CEO to the newest hire wants to be part of an effective team. But in unprecedented times, with an accelerated shift into the future of work, how can organizations achieve clarity on day-to-day tasks and achieve the company mission?

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Will the Pandemic Push Knowledge Work into the Gig Economy?

Will the Pandemic Push Knowledge Work into the Gig Economy?

September 04, 2020

The term “gig economy” was coined by the former New Yorker editor Tina Brown in 2009. It described how workers in the knowledge economy increasingly were pursuing “a bunch of free-floating projects, consultancies, and part-time bits and pieces while they transacted in a digital marketplace.

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Use Data to Revolutionise Project Planning

Use Data to Revolutionise Project Planning

August 28, 2020

The California bullet train between San Diego and San Francisco. Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter program. Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport. Apple’s AirPower wireless charging pad. These are just a few examples of projects that suffered severe schedule delays and cost overruns, or that were unable to deliver on their promised scope.

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Your To-Do List Is, in Fact, Too Long

Your To-Do List Is, in Fact, Too Long

August 14, 2020

The productivity problem is especially challenging these days, when many of us are working from home, with less structure than usual. It’s easier than ever to be busy all day and still not make progress on critical work (where did that day go?).

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How to Break Up with Your Commitments

How to Break Up with Your Commitments

August 07, 2020

It was one of those kinds of relationships. I had the recurring event on my calendar to attend this group’s meetings. For my first year or two of involvement, I was passionate about it. Then my interest waned, and I was showing up because I felt like I should. Then...

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Remote Managers Are Having Trust Issues

Remote Managers Are Having Trust Issues

July 31, 2020

Covid-19 has thrust many leaders into remote management which requires a different skill set than face-to-face management. They have been forced to make this transition quickly, and for the most part, without training. While some jobs have proven adaptable, many sectors are not well-suited for the remote environment and many workers have home lives that present overwhelming challenges.

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Does Your Company Have a Long-Term Plan for Remote Work?

Does Your Company Have a Long-Term Plan for Remote Work?

July 24, 2020

Mark Zuckerberg recently shared his plans for the future of remote work at Facebook. By 2030, he promised, at least half of Facebook’s 50,000 employees would be working from home. “We are going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale,” he declared in a follow-up interview. A few days before...

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Lean management or agile? The answer might be both.

Lean management or agile? The answer might be both.

July 17, 2020

Has there ever been a time when customers were more demanding of the companies serving them? Industry 4.0 technologies—many barely imaginable only a decade ago—have already enabled genuine breakthroughs in cost, convenience, and customization, creating extraordinary value for buyers while raising the performance bar for producers ever higher.

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A Plan for Managing (Constant) Interruptions at Work

A Plan for Managing (Constant) Interruptions at Work

July 03, 2020

Interruptions have always been a reality of work, as meetings, text or chat messages, emails, and conversations with coworkers endlessly fragment our time and thus our attention. As the Covid-19 global pandemic forced many of us to work from home, the concurrent management of work/non-work responsibilities have added to this already fragmented time.

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Activate agility: the five avenues to success

Activate agility: the five avenues to success

June 26, 2020

In 1935, the life expectancy of an S&P 500 company was 90 years. By 2010, it was 14 years and studies show that it’s getting even shorter. No wonder more and more companies, who are tired of change fatigue and endless restructuring, are looking at how they can become a more agile organization and retain their competitive advantage.

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To emerge stronger from the COVID-19 crisis, companies should start reskilling their workforces now

To emerge stronger from the COVID-19 crisis, companies should start reskilling their workforces now

June 12, 2020

Imagine a crisis that forces your company’s employees to change the way they work almost overnight. Despite initial fears that the pressure would be too great, you discover that this new way of working could be a blueprint for the long term.

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Want to Be More Productive? Try Doing Less.

Want to Be More Productive? Try Doing Less.

May 22, 2020

We’ve been taught that if we want more — money, achievement, vitality, joy, peace of mind — we need to do more, to add more to our ever-growing to-do list. But what if we’ve been taught wrong? What if the answer to getting more of what we want isn’t addition at all, but subtraction?

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The Downside of Flex Time

The Downside of Flex Time

May 15, 2020

Remote work, especially in a world affected by Covid-19, naturally leads to “flex time.” Employees with small children might be getting the majority of their work done at night after the kids are in bed. Others are working early and hoping to quit early. Still, others are starting late and working late.

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How to Combat Zoom Fatigue

How to Combat Zoom Fatigue

May 01, 2020

If you’re finding that you’re more exhausted at the end of your workday than you used to be, you’re not alone. Over the past few weeks, mentions of “Zoom fatigue” have popped up more and more on social media, and Google searches for the same phrase have steadily increased since early March.

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Productivity Skills to Help You Gain Time Back

Productivity Skills to Help You Gain Time Back

April 17, 2020

We’re all busy — so busy. We have bills to pay, a mortgage to service, kids to take care of, and of course, work deadlines to meet. All of these commitments leave us with little meaningful time for ourselves, and for cultivating meaningful relationships with others. But the good news is...

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Best Practices for Instant Messaging at Work

Best Practices for Instant Messaging at Work

April 04, 2020

“I’ll Slack you.” In workplaces around the world, the name of the popular online messaging system has become a verb, just like Google. Slack has been enthusiastically integrated into the day-to-day functions of legacy corporations and burgeoning startups: The company claims that, in 2019, it hosted 10+ million daily users.

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Virtual Meetings Don’t Have to Be a Bore

Virtual Meetings Don’t Have to Be a Bore

March 27, 2020

Those of us who present, facilitate, and teach for a living understand the importance of developing a personal connection with an audience. It’s critical to be and feel natural; to make people laugh, feel at ease, and fully engage — and perhaps even lose themselves — in the content you’re delivering. 

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A Guide to Managing Your (Newly) Remote Workers

A Guide to Managing Your (Newly) Remote Workers

March 20, 2020

In response to the uncertainties presented by Covid-19, many companies and universities have asked their employees to work remotely. While Millions of people report that they work remotely around the world, the new policies leave many employees — and their managers — working out of the office and separated from each other for the first time.

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How distributed teams can optimize collaboration and connection

How distributed teams can optimize collaboration and connection

March 13, 2020

Shaping the future of work is as much about studying the way real people connect and collaborate today as it is about imagining the new tools we’ll be using tomorrow, especially for those who are members of distributed teams.

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What’s Your Company’s Emergency Remote-Work Plan?

What’s Your Company’s Emergency Remote-Work Plan?

March 06, 2020

At the end of February, early March 2020, the coronavirus (or Covid-19) took a more serious turn in Korea, Italy, Spain, UK and the U.S. with warnings that it could very well impact how, when, and where we work.

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Create a Productivity Workflow That Works for You

Create a Productivity Workflow That Works for You

February 07, 2020

In the past fifteen years, I’ve tried scores of task managers like Todoist and Wunderlist, a couple dozen project management platforms like Asana and Basecamp, and hundreds of other productivity apps that promise to make better use of my time or enhance collaboration with my colleagues or my team. 

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Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

January 24, 2020

The core problem with working longer hours is that time is a finite resource. Energy is a different story. Defined in physics as the capacity to work, energy comes from four main wellsprings in human beings: the body, emotions, mind, and spirit. In each, energy can be systematically expanded and ...

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How to Break Up with Your Bad Habits

How to Break Up with Your Bad Habits

January 03, 2020

Breaking habits is hard. We all know this, whether we’ve failed our latest diet (again), or felt the pull to refresh our Instagram feed instead of making progress on a work project that is past due.

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Holidays Can Be Stressful. They Don’t Have to Stress Out Your Team.

Holidays Can Be Stressful. They Don’t Have to Stress Out Your Team.

December 20, 2019

The festive spirit is everywhere during the holiday season. For some, each day feels like waking up to a holiday song — “children laughing, people passing, meeting smile after smile.” But, for others, it can be the loneliest and most stressful time of the year.

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Why Groups Struggle to Solve Problems Together

Why Groups Struggle to Solve Problems Together

December 06, 2019

Why are so many meetings so unproductive?

Many professionals, fed up with calendars chock-full of long, disorganised, soul-bruising sessions, resort to uncharitable, even cynical explanations

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Social Media’s Productivity Payoff

Social Media’s Productivity Payoff

November 29, 2019

Social technologies are not just giant time sinks that keep your employees from getting their work done. On the contrary, they may become the most powerful tools yet developed to raise the productivity of high-skill knowledge workers.

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5 Mental Mistakes That Kill Your Productivity

5 Mental Mistakes That Kill Your Productivity

November 15, 2019

If you’re sometimes frustrated about how little you accomplish during your workday, you’re not alone. Research indicates that only 26% of people often leave the office having accomplished the tasks they set out to do. 

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Mapping the value of employee collaboration

Mapping the value of employee collaboration

November 08, 2019

Although collaboration is at the heart of modern business processes, most companies are still in the dark about how to manage it. Linear, process-based tools such as activity-based costing, business process reengineering, and total quality management have long been effective at measuring and improving the efficiency of people and organisations in accomplishing individual tasks. But ...

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How to Actually Start the Task You’ve Been Avoiding

How to Actually Start the Task You’ve Been Avoiding

October 18, 2019

The biggest challenge to moving forward on anything is the transition to working on it. It almost always represents a shift from doing something comfortable to doing something uncomfortable.

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7 Questions to Ask Before Your Next Digital Transformation

7 Questions to Ask Before Your Next Digital Transformation

October 04, 2019

Although digital investment is almost unquestionably the right course of action for most firms, organisations still struggle to create the desired results. Estimates of digital transformation failures range from 66% to 84%. Such a high failure rate isn’t surprising, as leaders are trying to create entirely new competencies and wedge them into an organisation with strong legacy cultures and operating models.

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Agility: mindset makeovers are critical

Agility: mindset makeovers are critical

September 27, 2019

In today's dynamic markets, leaders need very different mindsets from those used to manage traditional organisations in less-demanding times. We find that three primary mindset shifts are required to lead agile organisations designed for innovation, collaboration and value creation.

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To Control Your Life, Control What You Pay Attention To

To Control Your Life, Control What You Pay Attention To

September 20, 2019

One of the best insights on what true productivity means in the 21st century dates back to 1890. In his book The Principles of Psychology, Vol.1, William James wrote a simple statement that’s packed with meaning: “My experience is what I agree to attend to.”

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