There’s no doubt collaboration enables teams to get more done together. But is it possible to have too much of a good thing?
In her TEDx talk, Lisa Bodell describes thinking as “a daring act” because companies too often prize doing over thinking. This drive to “do” leads to meeting and email overload, and it’s getting in the way of meaningful work.
Research backs her up: Workers in many companies say meetings, phone calls, and emails eat up 80% of their time in a typical week. That leaves just one day a week to do work that actually moves the needle!
Something’s got to change.
Lisa says the road to innovation starts with simplification—and we couldn’t agree more. At TeamGantt, doing more with less is how we got our start.
When cofounders Nathan Gilmore and John Correlli built TeamGantt back in the day, they had just 4 hours a week to get the job done. They discovered making progress is a whole lot easier when you keep collaboration simple.
Creating space to do the work is a core principle that still guides our team today—and the only way TeamGantt has been able to grow to serve thousands of customers with a small team and no investment money. We’ve talked about why it’s key to helping your team achieve work-life balance. Here’s how to put it into practice and make room for innovation too.
Meetings are the catch-22 of collaborative work. You can’t live with them. You can’t live without them.
Thankfully, you can cut the waste and make meetings more effective for your team. Score a few quick wins with these meeting tips.
Meetings have a sneaky way of piling up without anyone noticing. So how do you prevent calendar creep?
Michael Mankins recommends creating a zero-based budget for your team’s meeting time. Basically, you cap the number of hours available for meetings each week. If a new meeting pops up, another one has to come off the schedule.
At TeamGantt, we love the creative power constraints bring to the table. Limiting meeting time not only encourages our team to find time-efficient ways to work together. It also empowers them to say no to meeting fluff.
Just because a meeting feels important doesn’t mean it actually is. Before throwing a meeting on the calendar, take a moment to consider the value it brings to the team.
These questions don’t just apply to new meetings. Challenge yourself to evaluate recurring meetings by the same standard to ensure the status quo isn’t bogging your team down unnecessarily.
No one likes wasting time in a meeting that ends up in the same place it started. So clear the way for actionable conversation from the get-go.
If a meeting’s a must, why not motivate folks to finish early? TeamGantt cofounder John Correlli recently moved our dev team’s biweekly sprint planning meetings from mornings to the end of the day.
“The cool twist I put on it is, when we’re done sprint planning, we’re done for the day. We don’t need to go back into any more work,” John explains.
Having that reward has encouraged his team to limit side chatter and land on decisions more quickly. “We’ve been able to cover the same ground—plus an extra 2 weeks of work for a new team member—and still get done 30 minutes quicker,” John says.
As a 100% remote team, we’re always on the lookout for collaboration tools that help us communicate effectively without distracting from the work at hand.
Here’s what’s in our stack and how we use it:
Spoiler alert! At TeamGantt, we channel all our project-related files and discussions through—you guessed it—TeamGantt. This enables us to document important conversations and keep everyone in the loop on the tasks that matter to them. Give TeamGantt a free try to see how it works for your team.
Slack is our go-to for quick “deskside” conversations. As a team, we’re intentional about keeping Slack chats focused on productive work, though funny GIFs do make an occasional appearance. (We’re only human!) Snoozing notifications is encouraged if someone needs to quiet the chatter and focus on a big project.
If you’ve ever emailed a file to a group of stakeholders for review and ended up with 5 conflicting sets of feedback to reconcile, you know how time-consuming it can be. That’s why we’re big fans of collaborative creative tools like InVision, Frame.io, and Google Docs. They put an end to approval loop madness by enabling our team to collaborate on design, videos, and content in real time.
Since our team is scattered across the US, we host team meetings remotely via video chat. Google Hangouts is our primary go-to, though we also use Slack calls and Zoom from time to time.
Freeing up your team’s time can open up a world of possibility. So how do you position them for success? Discover practical tips for helping your team reach their full potential.
TeamGantt makes it easy to eliminate confusion, streamline communication, and beat project deadlines. Even better, you’ll save time and energy on project setup so you can focus on doing the work that matters most.
Of course, don’t just take our word for it. Sign up for a free TeamGantt account to see for yourself!
Lay a clear path to success with a visual plan that’s easy to understand, and keep everyone in sync with flexible workflows and team collaboration.
