Teamwork Unlocked: The Quest To Build The Perfect Team

Back in 2012, Google’s Project Aristotle set out to crack the code on what makes for an effective team. Over a two-year period, the company studied 50 years of academic research, 180 teams worldwide and 250 different attributes across each team. This led to a focus on how teams can function as a unit, rather …

The Feedback Fix: Better Conversations, Stronger Teams

Feedback: everyone needs it, yet few are skilled at it. Unclear, poorly timed feedback is a recipe for confusion, frustration, and project delays and failure. Let’s face it – comments like “This isn’t quite there yet” or “Can you make it pop?” aren’t exactly helpful. Vague and ambiguous feedback often leaves teams confused and demoralized …

Mastering Complexity with Checklists: Lessons from Atul Gawande’s “The Checklist Manifesto”

Ever feel your work (and your life) is becoming more complicated by the day, or even by the hour? You’re not alone. The dizzying rate of technological change is enough to make even the most hardened techies feeling disoriented. Amidst all the break-neck innovations bombarding our daily feeds, the fundamentals however, seem to be holding…for now. Until the robots start doing our dishes, we mortals are still relevant. We’re still responsible for doing stuff, building stuff, creating stuff, fixing stuff, and improving stuff. We’re tasked with meeting our weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals, delivering for our organizations and serving our teams.

From Confusion to Cohesion: How Role Clarity Impacts Team Morale & Project Success

A successful project depends on many factors, of which role clarity is one of the most important. Say your team installs a project management software like Asana. It’ll improve task management but you’ll also experience uncertainty. Specifically, uncertainty about each member’s role. The result is conflict, confusion, and delays. How can you fix this? We believe the RACI model is a great tool to establish role clarity, and we’ll explain why.

The Crisis of Distraction – A Pathway Out

Author and Georgetown computer science professor Cal Newport’s recent New Yorker article “The Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done” got me thinking. How can individuals, teams and organizations find relief from the tyranny of bombardment that’s killing our productivity. As Newport’s article states, with the spread of email in the nineties, “with all friction …

Better Outcomes Begin with Shared Understanding

When I came across this quote from developer John Cutler, I found it insightful both for its simplicity and the deeper questions it evokes. “Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes, then figure out how to remove that mile altogether.”  So, what exactly does he mean by “remove the mile”? One interpretation might be the …

Rule of Thumb: When Providing Creative Feedback – Be Specific

Recently we delivered a Powerpoint design to a client. The initial feedback was: “Can you make the pictures more beautiful”. The designer’s response… “Certainly, do you have something specific in mind”? For creators, nothing is more frustrating than ambiguous feedback that lacks clarity and specificity. In most cases, it’s not the client’s fault. They’re just …

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