Come Up for Air: How Teams Can Leverage Systems and Tools to Stop Drowning in Work
Metadata
- Title: Come Up for Air: How Teams Can Leverage Systems and Tools to Stop Drowning in Work
- Author: Nick Sonnenberg
- Book URL: https://amazon.com/dp/B0BLVKH1ZD?tag=malvaonlin-20
- Open in Kindle: kindle://book/?action=open&asin=B0BLVKH1ZD
- Last Updated on: Monday, July 15, 2024
Highlights & Notes
Teams need more than just short-term tactics. They need methodologies, structure, and guidelines. They need to understand how to implement the systems, tools, and processes readily available to them to executive effectively and collaboratively.
Looking back, Leverage was like a broken sink with water overflowing. I had two options: I could mop faster, or I could fix the sink. I decided to fix the sink.
The first thing I did was shut off all of our marketing. I didn’t want to bring in new clients when we were providing a subpar service. Instead, I focused entirely on the efficiency of our team and the quality of our service.
We had been so focused on generating revenue that we had neglected operational efficiency, and the result was we were wasting crazy amounts of money and time. I knew I had to put an end to it before we could “turn on” our marketing again and grow the business.
And while individual productivity is necessary for team productivity, it is not sufficient. These problems cannot be solved by one individual because the real problem is that your team is not working together as efficiently as they could be. Operating efficiently as a team is difficult. It requires collaboration, coordination, and sometimes sacrificing one’s own productivity for the greater good of the team. Even more importantly, it requires using the right tools, in the right way, at the right time so as to maximize the collective output.
The difference between the two-person team and the ten-thousand-person team is that change becomes exponentially more difficult as the organization grows.
Communication Communication is like the oxygen of a business. If a team isn’t communicating well, it’s nearly impossible to succeed. Without good communication, everything slows down: errors occur, projects take longer to complete, culture deteriorates, and work becomes frustrating. Therefore, improving communication is one of the quickest and most cost-effective ways to improve the operations of any business, as it makes everything easier. Great communication will assist with delegation, create alignment, increase awareness, and improve productivity.
A thorough planning and work management system will ensure that work is always being done in the right order, by the right person, on time, and without wasted efforts.
Resources are the least “sexy” and most overlooked component of the three but equally important. The focus here is on documenting and digitizing company knowledge, which helps to not only de-risk the company but also save time and reduce time spent searching for information. The idea is to have everything necessary to run the company well documented and organized so that anyone can quickly find what they need to complete their work.
Critical company information should always be stored and organized in a knowledge base that all employees have access to, so they can quickly find the information they need without distracting coworkers or managers.
The second part of Resources is ensuring that all company processes are well documented. Essentially, this is like creating checklists for everything that needs to happen in a business where anyone can jump in to complete a process, even if it’s not their job.
is on their [knowledge workers’] productivity, above all, that the future prosperity—and indeed the future survival—of the developed economies will increasingly depend. —PETER DRUCKER,
PROBLEM: Most teams are drowning in work because they’re using yesterday’s methods in today’s fast-paced environment. Either they’re unaware of modern tools or they lack knowledge around when and how to best use them, which holds them back from streamlining the way they work. SOLUTION: Aligning as a team on when and how to use each available tool is the best way to remove roadblocks to get work done faster. This alignment can quickly create a more productive, less stressful, and more enjoyable work environment.
I once heard a great analogy about tools in the workplace. If you were to go camping in the forest with your team, you’d need two things: a walkie-talkie to communicate and a map to navigate out. These two tools are essential for getting out of the forest safely, but they both serve very different functions.
Just like a team would need to use those camping tools in the right ways and at the right times to get out of the forest, modern teams that are drowning in work need to use these digital tools in the right ways and at the right times to come up for air.
The overarching principle is that knowing when and how to use each type of tool is far more important than the tools themselves.
- Importante
You could have the best golf club in the world, but if you’re using it to play tennis, it’s not going to do much good! The same principle applies to business tools.
Email should only be used for communicating with people outside your organization.
At a high level, I recommend that teams separate all their internal communication into these tools and keep all external communication (clients, partners, vendors, and so on) in email.
Internal communication tools should be used for communicating with your team, not managing work.
A work management tool (also known as a work management platform) is essentially a collaborative to-do list on steroids. These are digital tools that allow you to plan, track, organize, and ultimately complete all the “work” at your organization. Common work management tools as of this writing are Asana, ClickUp, Monday.com, Jira, and more.
A project management tool, by definition, is for completing project-related work. But the reality is that most organizations have lots of work that lives in one project, multiple projects, or none at all. A work management tool is better for completing both projectand non-project-related work. That means it’s equally effective for managing complex projects that span multiple teams and completing individual to-do lists. Leaders can view the progress and health of their business from a thirty-thousand-foot view, and managers know work is getting done in the right order, by the right people, on time, and without duplicating efforts.
Work management tools should be used for getting work done.
From time-off policies to org charts and branding documents, knowledge bases store the critical company information that people are always looking for. And because it’s stored in the cloud, it’s accessible at any time and can be updated so it always remains the central point of truth. Popular knowledge bases on the market today include Coda, Notion, Guru, Confluence, SharePoint, and more.
Knowledge bases answer standard questions: Who, What, Where, When, and/or Why?
Process management tools on the market today include Process Street, Pipefy, Trainual, and SweetProcess.
Process management tools answer the question: How?
I’ve found that most problems people face with technology are due to improper setup, training, and mindset around when and how to use them.
Check out comeupforair.com/tools for a list of all these tools and how to download them. We’ve also included some exclusive discounts for the Come Up For Air community.
This is one of the main underlying reasons why people feel overwhelmed at work—we don’t consider how much time we’re actually spending on daily minutiae, and so we wrongly assume we can accomplish 40 hours of work in a given week.
What I discovered was that, really, a business can grow only as fast as knowledge can be retrieved.
Need to send someone notes from a meeting? Copying and pasting them into a quick text message is much quicker than creating a document, sharing it with the right people, and adding it to an internal knowledge base. The former is optimized for the speed of transfer, whereas the latter is optimized for the speed of retrieval. Although creating a document and adding it to an organized location in your cloud storage might take longer in the short term, it will save everyone time in the long run. (And really, how long does that take? An extra minute?)
A business can grow only as fast as knowledge can be transferred retrieved.
So in order to work effectively as a team, everyone needs to optimize for the speed of retrieval by putting information where it belongs—even if it’s painful, and even if it’s longer in the short term.
If you’re not already operating efficiently, you’re just bringing people into a broken system, and you’re missing out on their full potential.
Hiring more people is a knee-jerk solution to many business problems. But it can be self-defeating, because the more people you hire, the more complicated things get.
In the end, I realized that hiring was a gut instinct we should have resisted—it would have been much more efficient to set up our systems right, create better workflows, train our team on the best ways to use our tools, and ultimately get more out of the current team before adding new people into the mix.
To put it another way: would you rather bring more people into a broken system and fix it later, or fix the system first and bring more people into an efficient system? The answer is obvious. Fix the overflowing sink, don’t mop faster!
It’s tempting to bring on more people as soon as the going gets tough. Realizing the full potential of your people and tools from the beginning will make it easier to onboard and train new employees. Plus, changing the way you work is much easier with a smaller team.
TOOL SELECTION CHECKLIST Before you consider adding a new tool, ask yourself these questions: What are your current business needs? What problem are you trying to solve? In the future, how could this potentially shift? Could this tool solve any additional business needs? What other tools do you use? Does it integrate with other tools? Or with Zapier? Will an “off the shelf” method work, or do you need something more custom? If so, how easy will that be to create? How easy is it to work with their customer support? How much help can you expect from them during setup and use? What is the cost now? How does that cost scale as you add more people? What does the tool’s feature roadmap look like? Will it be improved over time?
constructing a team of individually productive employees that can also function efficiently as a team opens up the possibility for truly exponential growth.
There’s Always a Better Way Peter Drucker, often referred to as the father of modern management, famously said, “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”
“Your Brain Is for Having Ideas, Not Holding Them”
If you have proper systems and processes in place, you can free up your brain by eliminating those small tasks. Freeing up that space allows you to focus entirely on the larger, more strategic tasks that matter. Plus, it provides more room for genuinely creative thought.
To be productive, you need to set up systems for holding ideas, and those systems need to be optimized for retrieval of information.
Most tools are set up to provide the maximum number of notifications (pings and dings) by default. Be sure to look through notification settings any time you install a new tool.
Another way to maximize flow states is to use a productivity technique called “batching.” The premise is simple: it is more efficient to batch related individual tasks and do them all at the same time than to constantly switch between tasks. This is due to the negative effects of “context switching,” which simply means that any time you switch between types of tasks you lose productivity as your brain is forced to shift gears to accommodate.
The idea is that any time you say yes to something, you are implicitly saying no to an infinite number of other things—therefore, we should really be saying no far more than we say yes.
Does this need to be done? (Maybe it’s irrelevant, unnecessary, not a good use of time, or not in line with your organization’s goals.) Does this need to be done by me? (Maybe there’s someone else this is better suited to, or it could be automated.) Does this need to be done by me now? (Is this important enough that it needs to be done now or can it be pushed back?) There are only twenty-four hours in every day. Whenever you can automate, delegate, or even delete a task, do so. Free up as much time as you can for tasks that give you pleasure or require your unique strengths. This is the filter that should be applied when deciding when to say yes and when to say no. Conveniently, it’s an essential mindset shift that will help you to prioritize and balance your workload—which
“Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.” —PETER DRUCKER,
When everyone on a team can see the benefit and opens themself to change, some incredible things can happen. It doesn’t matter how many people or resources you have—alignment is perhaps the number one key to becoming operationally efficient.
- Importante
THREE KEY TAKEAWAYS Complexity scales exponentially with team size, so efforts should be made to get the full value out of your team and tools before adding new people to the mix. The Scavenger Hunt occurs when people optimize for the speed of transfer of information instead of the speed of retrieval of information. The CPR Framework has three categories: Communication: Email and internal communication tools Planning: Work management tools Resources: Knowledge base and process management tools
PRO TIPS Any time you’re implementing a new tool, ask yourself some basic questions, like: Why are we implementing this? How will it benefit our team? Which goals will it help us to achieve? What behaviors do we need to encourage to adopt it? G2.com is a great resource for comparing the features of different tools during your selection process. For more information on delegation and “the power of no,” I’d suggest reading Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. It’s a quick read that will shift your thinking around what you should and shouldn’t be doing.
NINE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY Optimize for the speed of retrieval of information, not transfer. Storing information in the right place is the best way to alleviate the Scavenger Hunt, even if it might take longer in the moment. “Your brain is for having ideas, not holding them.” Setting up systems to hold your ideas and reminders (no matter how small) will free up your brain to focus on more important things. Individual productivity is necessary but not sufficient for team productivity. Remember that your actions affect others on the team. Sometimes you may need to sacrifice your own productivity for the greater good. Focus on work that utilizes your Unique Ability.™ In the words of Dan Sullivan, your Unique Ability is what you love and do best. Reinvesting time saved into activities within your Unique Ability is a major win. It’s not the tool; it’s when and how you use it. Tools will come and go. The principles remain the same. Fix the sink, don’t mop faster. Get clear on what the real problem is before you solve it, rather than going with your gut reaction. If something needs to be done more than once, find a way to not do it. There’s always a better way! Be on the lookout for ways to optimize, delegate, or remove work that doesn’t need to be on your plate. True productivity is the sum of many small wins. Seconds matter. Even small time savings are worth celebrating! Time isn’t linear. Not all hours are created equal. Nine a.m. on a Monday is more valuable than 5:00 p.m. on a Friday when you’re exhausted, on your way home. Try to structure your work accordingly. If you’d like to download or print out these principles, you can find them on comeupforair.com.
As technology increases, the number of interactions increases exponentially.2 This increases the value of the network, but it also creates a whole lot of noise and complexity.
The problem is that as the number of interactions increases exponentially, so does the time required to process them.
For as much value as these communication networks provide, they also clutter our lives. When everyone can get in touch with anyone else in just a few clicks, it should be taken seriously. Unfortunately, most people don’t take it seriously.
If you’re speaking to someone and not getting a response, are you really communicating? —LEE BROWER,
PROBLEM: With so many communication methods available, the modern workplace has become distracting and overwhelming. Messages can be hard to find or go unnoticed, affecting culture and making it difficult to move work along. SOLUTION: By aligning on when to use each type of communication method available to them, teams can limit distractions, reduce the Scavenger Hunt, and free up their time to get work done without all the headaches.
Chances are, you’re in the latter category. Folding and organizing your laundry in this way is more time-consuming than if you were to just haphazardly throw everything into a drawer, but we do it anyway because it makes retrieving what we need much easier and quicker. (Plus, think of the wrinkles!) The few minutes it takes to organize your clothes is easily worth it as it saves you time and frustration when you get dressed every morning.
- Articulo
When you need to find a past message, you’re now thinking: “Did she send that to me in an email? A text message? A Slack message? Was that left in a sticky note on my desk or the notepad on my computer?”
Most organizations are set up as what I call “push” communication environments, where information is pushed at you nonstop. This is what happens when you optimize solely for the speed of transfer of information.
The problem is that we’re more worried about our own productivity than that of the entire team, and therefore we use the quickest and easiest method in the moment.
Instead of constantly pushing information at everyone, you and your team need to be able to “pull” the information you need when you need it.
Peak times vary from person to person, so finding your own peak time is crucial. If you can set yourself up to maximize your peak times by limiting distractions, focusing on your most important work, and getting into a flow state, you can get more done in a few hours than you might normally accomplish in an entire day.
The idea is that I want to focus on my most important work during times when my brain is at full horsepower. I can do that because, at Leverage, we live in a “pull” communication environment.
To be clear, when I talk about synchronous communication, I’m talking about methods that allow you to communicate with people in real time, such as: phone calls video conference calls in-person meetings virtual reality
based messages, but it’s really any situation in which the recipient can view a message on their own time, such as: emails text messages video messages internal communication messages voice mails comments on tasks and projects
So one obvious productivity hack is to communicate asynchronously as much as possible. But that can also cause problems. There are certain types of communication that should be conveyed synchronously, like giving someone lengthy feedback or telling a direct report of their new promotion.
Video recordings are a great way to communicate asynchronously as they provide face-to-face interaction but can be paused, rewound, rewatched later, and even watched at 1.5–2x speed.
Here are a few quick examples of situations when synchronous communication is typically better than asynchronous in a team environment: providing lengthy feedback brainstorming situations that involve many questions or back-and-forth conversations any time you need to make sure everyone is on the same page sensitive conversations like promotions or terminations
Separating internal, external, and personal communication is typically the fastest way to alleviate the Scavenger Hunt in most organizations.
THREE KEY TAKEAWAYS Teams should strive to create a communication environment where they can pull the information they need when they need it, rather than having information being constantly pushed at them. Asynchronous communication is typically more efficient than synchronous communication, but there is a time and place for both. Email is for external communication while internal communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams are for internal communication.
PRO TIPS Loom and CloudApp are both tools that allow you to quickly create screenshots and screen recordings, then share them with a simple link. This can be extremely helpful for adding clarity while communicating asynchronously or making annotated screenshots. While both tools offer both features, we prefer to use Loom for screen recordings and CloudApp for screenshots. I’d highly suggest trying one or both—I guarantee you’ll find it useful. Miro is a digital whiteboard tool that allows teams to brainstorm asynchronously. It gives you a clean slate that you can use as you see fit, with sticky notes, video embeds, images, flow charts, and more. You can use it just as you would use a physical whiteboard in your office! If you want to learn more about how to cut out distractions and noise, I’d suggest reading Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal. It’s a great read with plenty of actionable tips to spend more time in flow.
Think of every email you send as a pebble. To you, it may seem like a comically small thing—almost nonexistent in size and weight. But, to a recipient already holding hundreds of other people’s pebbles, receiving even one more tiny pebble is not without a cost. —MERLIN MANN,
PROBLEM: Most people have had bad email habits for decades. They use it for the wrong purposes because they fail to see email for what it truly is: a to-do list that others can add to. This has caused the inbox to become an incessant—and hugely inefficient—nuisance in our daily lives. SOLUTION: By learning simple time-saving tricks and implementing an email management system called Inbox Zero, they can spend less time in their inbox. Aligning on when to use email as a team will take this to the next level, with exponential results.
email. They proceeded to then spend half their day on email while working from home. Thirty percent of those emails were neither urgent nor important.
- Data
That same study also found that the average office worker receives 121 emails daily, almost 50 percent of which are spam.
Email is just an external to-do list that others can add to.
What most people fail to realize is that email has a boomerang effect. When you send an email out, it will likely come back to you in some shape or form. It could be a simple “thank you,” an “agreed, let’s do that,” or a more in-depth conversation that results in even more emails. Some of these responses are warranted and some are largely unnecessary, but it’s important to be cognizant of the impact your emails have on others and yourself. The fewer emails you can send—either by not sending them at all or by communicating in another tool—the fewer emails you’ll receive in your inbox and the fewer items you’ll be adding to other people’s to-do lists.
Here are three types of communication that should not live in your email inbox. Removing these alone will drastically lower the amount of email you receive: Internal communication (which should go in an internal communication tool). Project- or task-related communication (which should go in a work management tool). Anything that can instead be discussed in an upcoming meeting (which should go in a meeting agenda).
Email has a boomerang effect: the more emails you send, the more you’ll receive!
Whether you realize it or not, you’re wasting valuable brainpower looking at a screen full of emails—even if they’ve already been marked as read.
If you see an email that should have been caught by your email filter, flag it as such. These features use machine learning, so the more you do this, the better they get.
Knowing how to reply, archive, and defer will serve you well outside email. The R.A.D. System typically works for any tool that involves communication or notifications.
“We probably gave everybody somewhere in the neighborhood of two to three hours of their day back. Just because they’re checking their email less frequently and they’re not living out of their inbox.” —COO OF LINEDRIVE
THREE KEY TAKEAWAYS Email is just an external to-do list that others can add to. Email has a boomerang effect: the more emails you send, the more you’ll receive. There are three actions you can take when an email comes into your inbox: Reply, Archive, or Defer.
At a high level, they provide a few key benefits: Conversations are organized by topic and team. Third-party integrations reduce distractions and context switching. Conversation histories allow anyone to easily get up to speed.
The main problem with email is that conversations can easily get lost. Email conversations can be difficult to find because messages are organized by date instead of by topic. It’s difficult to bring a new employee into a previous conversation, and it’s impossible to remove people from past conversations. This makes it difficult to bring new people up to speed and remove others from sensitive information that may no longer be relevant to them. Internal communication tools, on the other hand, provide a level of organization that simply cannot be replicated with email. This makes it easier to reference past messages and has the added benefit of reducing notifications from messages that don’t apply to you.
The actual mechanics of using an internal communication platform are fairly simple. The most difficult part of implementing these tools is agreeing on when to use them with your team.
INTERNAL COMMUNICATION TOOLS Conversations Brainstorming Company and team announcements Chitchat WORK MANAGEMENT TOOLS Getting Work Done Action items Project and portfolio updates Messages that facilitate work being done now or in the future
your team about a key decision that needs to be made. When things are unclarified or there is no clear action item, an internal communication tool can be used to find clarity. Once work becomes more clarified and actionable, the relevant information should then be moved into a work management tool.
In most, you’ll find a simple hierarchy: Channels that house people related to specific departments or topics. Direct messages that are used for one-on-one or small-group conversations.
Channels can be joined retroactively, but direct messages typically cannot.
Channels are typically used to store conversations around a certain topic or project. They can be used for ongoing work or one-off situations, in which case the channel is created, used, and then archived when no longer necessary (meaning those past communications can still be referenced but the channel is no longer active).
- Importante
For an internal communication platform to function effectively, there needs to be a strategy behind when and how channels are made—otherwise you’ll only worsen the Scavenger Hunt instead of making it better.
I recommend defaulting to private channels. This is because public channels create two problems: if sensitive information is shared anyone can see it, and people end up joining more channels than they should, creating unnecessary distractions for themselves.
Get aligned. It’s important to align as a team on which channels should exist. The last thing you want to do is create so many channels that it becomes difficult to remember where your conversations live, or inadvertently create duplicate channels. If you have a social-media-marketing channel and a marketing-social-media channel, how would you know which one to use? Consider meeting with managers and department heads to understand which channels should be made and how they should be named. Think twice about permissions. Typically, individuals should be free to create channels as long as they understand the guidelines around channel creation. But it’s worth restricting who can create both private and public channels, as things can quickly become chaotic and disorganized due to duplicate or unnecessary channels. Provide a description. Most tools will allow you to create a description for each channel. Channels should have a clear purpose, and that needs to be conveyed in the description. This way, everyone understands the purpose of each one and where to put each type of communication. Departments and teams should have their own channels. The underlying principle should be to set channels up in a way that reflects your company’s organization chart. If, like many companies, you have a finance, client success, and human resources department, then you should have corresponding channels for each. Use a naming convention. Keep channels organized and optimized for the retrieval of information by implementing a naming convention. I recommend something simple, like the department followed by topic: Finance-Payroll, Finance-Bookkeeping, Finance-Failed-Payments.
With these benefits in mind, you can start to see what type of communication should live in channels: Messages related to a certain topic should go in the channel related to that topic. Messages that may need to be referred back to at some point—either by you or someone else on your team—should also go in a channel. And messages that people in the future (especially new hires) could benefit from should live in a channel.
Direct and group messages are fine for private conversations or one-off conversations with a small group, but it’s best to use them sparingly. Just be aware that these conversations can easily get lost, and you’ll have a tough time adding new people to the mix. One mistake that organizations make when adopting these tools is relying too heavily on direct messages and group messages. When using channels, it’s also important to consider a few best practices to keep conversations organized and limit distractions for your coworkers. Be aware of the impact of @channel references. @Mentioning the entire channel will send everyone a notification. That’s fine if it’s an important message, but consider the impact it has. You probably wouldn’t hit “reply all” to an email sent to your entire company, and the same principle applies here. Use threads to organize conversations within channels. Threads allows you to reply specifically to a message without cluttering up the channel’s main conversation. This is great for breakout conversations with just a subset of the people on the channel, as only the relevant people will be notified when a new message is added to the thread. Use emojis to acknowledge messages. If you want to let someone know you’ve seen and understood their message, just leave an emoji! This is better than cluttering up a channel with low-value messages like “okay” and “thanks.”
@Mentioning (also known as “tagging”) is a feature found in many tools that allows you to mention a person by typing @ followed by their name. This will typically send them a notification that they’ve been mentioned. In internal communication tools, you can also @mention entire channels to notify everyone of important messages.
If you’re hungry for more examples, you can access a list of helpful integrations for internal communication tools, including custom ones made with Zapier, on comeupforair.com.
THREE KEY TAKEAWAYS Internal communication tools are great for conversations, brainstorming, and announcements—but they’re not great for getting work done. Channels organize ongoing conversations by topic. With integrations, you can turn your internal communication tool into a central command center where mission-critical information is always at your fingertips.
During the industrial revolution, efficient production was the key to economic growth. But in the twenty-first century organizations are creating value not by producing more but by producing new and inventive solutions, products, and services. This is the foundation of the project economy we now live in.
The longer the meeting, the less is accomplished. —TIM COOK, CEO of Apple
PROBLEM: More often than not, meetings are ineffective and, at times, completely unnecessary. They’re one of the largest sources of inefficiency in organizations, preventing teams from getting their actual work done. SOLUTION: The cost, frequency, and length of meetings can be reduced through simple techniques like asynchronous communication, agendas, prework, and more. The result is more time for important work and less time spent in unnecessary, unproductive meetings.
Executives spent twenty-three hours per week in meetings, up from ten in the 1960s. Sixty-five percent of senior managers said that meetings kept them from completing their work. Seventy-one percent said that meetings were unproductive and inefficient. Sixty-four percent said that meetings came at the expense of deep thinking. Sixty-two percent said that meetings missed opportunities to bring the team closer together.
When you break it down, there are four ways to reduce the cost of a meeting (see figure 5): Eliminate it entirely. Reduce the number of people. Reduce the duration. Reduce its frequency (if it’s a recurring meeting).
The simple truth is that if someone doesn’t need to be at a meeting, they shouldn’t be there. It’s better for the individual and the company. The individual gets out of another useless and draining meeting while the company gets back an hour of productive, potentially revenue-generating activity from that employee. Not to mention, meetings with fewer people tend to be easier to schedule, faster to conduct, and more productive overall.
TED curator Chris Anderson says that eighteen minutes is “long enough to be serious and short enough to hold people’s attention… . By forcing speakers who are used to going on for forty-five minutes to bring it down to eighteen, you get them to really think about what they want to say. What is the key point they want to communicate? It has a clarifying effect. It brings discipline.”6 Some people say that fifteen minutes is the ideal meeting time for this exact reason, although I think it’s a bit more nuanced than that.
Reducing the frequency of recurring meetings is a fairly low-risk experiment. Try it out and see what happens—you can always change it back if it’s a disaster (which I doubt it will be).
When I talk about eliminating a meeting, there are really two ways it happens: Deleting it or never scheduling it in the first place. Conducting it asynchronously.
People often find the need to schedule a call to delegate a task, but that’s almost entirely unnecessary with a work management tool.
The other way is to use video or audio recordings to hold what is effectively an “asynchronous meeting.” One person sends a video or audio recording with their thoughts, the other responds with another recording, and the “meeting” is effectively over. In many cases, there doesn’t even need to be two recordings—a simple text-based response to the initial recordings will suffice. These recordings can be done with the software built into most operating systems for both computers and phones, but there are also tools that can make the process easier. I mentioned earlier that Loom is a personal favorite, as it automatically turns videos into shareable links.
An asynchronous meeting needs at least two willing participants, after all. The best way to start is to just ask yourself the same questions every time you see a meeting on your calendar or think about scheduling a new one (see figure 6): Do I need to join? Does this really need to be a live meeting? Does it really need to be this long? Do all these people need to be in the meeting? Is there any work that can be done beforehand and distributed in advance to make sure we get the most value out of this meeting?
Meetings are great for brainstorming, solving complex problems, dealing with sensitive issues, and building culture and rapport with the team.
Breakout rooms in virtual meetings are often underutilized. They’re great for brainstorming and design thinking. In my experience, brainstorming in smaller groups tends to produce better results, as people are more comfortable speaking up.
In the most basic sense, an agenda is simply a list of topics that need to be brought up during a meeting. But this is only useful if all attendees can see the agenda and have the opportunity to add their own items to it in advance. Otherwise, it’s just an agenda that shows what the meeting creator wants to talk about.
For this reason, agendas must be made in advance, stored in the cloud, and shared with all attendees. Every attendee should be able to add topics to the agenda in advance; that way the meeting leader can view everything that needs to be discussed and plan accordingly. They can devote a certain portion of time to each agenda item to ensure that every topic is given enough time or prioritize certain topics to make sure the most important items are covered.
Prioritize the agenda so the most important topics are certain to be covered in the meeting and add less urgent topics to future meeting agendas (assuming the meeting is recurring). Resolve as many agenda items asynchronously as possible. As a last resort, the meeting can be made longer, or you can use the last few minutes to schedule a follow-up meeting.
When an agenda is made in advance and shared with everyone, it can be used as a repository for nonurgent questions, ideas, and thoughts. The idea is that if you have an idea you want to share with someone, but you know you have an upcoming meeting with them, why bother them with it now? You can just add it to the meeting agenda and cover it during your meeting instead of sending them a message or calling them.
Does this need to be said? Does this need to be said by me? Does this need to be said by me now?
Adding topics to an agenda is essentially another form of batching. It’s far more efficient to work through ten small items in a meeting than having them spread out as random messages over the course of a week.
There’s an added benefit to this type of asynchronous prework: anyone can go back and reference those video recordings whenever they want!
Remember that meetings should ideally be used for meaningful discussion. If you’re listing out reports or updates in your meetings, chances are that can be done asynchronously in advance.
Research has shown that it takes an average of seventeen minutes and eight emails to schedule a meeting.8 A truly efficient meeting starts before the meeting has even begun. Scheduling a meeting does not need to involve endless back-and-forth messages. In fact, with the right tools, it can be nearly instantaneous. There are effectively two ways to tackle this frustrating scheduling problem in the workplace: Use automated scheduling tools. Use shared calendars.
Meetings have a cost, and there are four simple ways to reduce that cost: Eliminate the meeting entirely Reduce the number of people in the meeting Reduce the duration of the meeting Reduce its frequency (if it’s a recurring meeting) No agenda, no meeting. A truly efficient meeting starts before the meeting has even begun.
It may not make sense to have a public agenda for big organizational or team-wide meetings for obvious reasons. In this case, digital forms work well as an option for people to anonymously submit questions, ideas, or feedback and the meeting presenter can address them as needed. You can create “vanity URLs” for your scheduling links. Purchase a custom domain like meetwithnick.com and use domain forwarding to push it to your personal scheduling link. When someone wants to schedule a meeting with you, all you need to do is tell them to go to the link. You can take this a step further with subdomains for certain situations. For example, vip.meetwithnick.com may send people to a different calendar where you have more availability. Or podcast.meetwithnick.com could be used for scheduling podcast interviews (if that’s something you do). Each subdomain can also include different intake questions. Every quarter, we aggressively audit our recurring meetings and delete anything that isn’t necessary, knowing we can always add them back if needed. This is a good habit to get into, as many meetings simply stay on the calendar because “you’ve always had them.”
Collaboration has nothing to do with where employees show up for work; it has everything to do with how they show up. —KEITH FERRAZZI,
PROBLEM: The information required to move work forward is often spread across multiple tools and places, which is inefficient and frustrating. It’s difficult to gauge the status of projects or view what people are working on without distracting them or calling a meeting. SOLUTION: Organizing all work-related information in one purpose-built tool gives everyone access to what they need to get work done, provides unparalleled visibility and transparency, and seamlessly organizes all the moving parts involved in tasks and projects.
Nowadays, most of the work we do is cross-functional—it affects other parts of the organization and other people’s work. Trying to work cross-functionally in a siloed work environment is effectively inviting the Scavenger Hunt into your organization.
You want a tool that can handle all the interconnected work going on in your organization—not just projects!
While tasks do primarily live inside projects, they do not necessarily have to live in them. A task can live on its own—assigned to a person but not housed in a project—in a single project, or across multiple projects. Tasks have a section for comments, meaning anyone can leave a comment on a task to ask questions, leave a thought, or add some clarity to your and your team’s work. Task comments are where the bulk of communication occurs in a work management tool, and they’re incredibly useful as they provide a clear history of any discussion that happened related to the work being done.
Task comments should only contain communication relevant to the specific task they’re tied to.
Projects hold tasks. Projects typically have one main focus, like a deliverable, where completing all the tasks will achieve the desired end result—this is what we’ll refer to as a “traditional project.”
Portfolios are less about getting things done and more about organizing and monitoring work at a high level. When used properly, they can create the thirty-thousand-foot view that most business leaders would kill for, where the status of all the most important work at their organization can be monitored from one place.
At the highest level, anything actionable should go in your work management tool. (If you want to know something is going to get done, this is the best place to put it.) Communication tools are great for brainstorming with lots of people and thinking through what needs to get done in a project. But once work is clarified to the point that you know it needs to get done and know roughly what needs to happen, it should be transferred over.
- Importante
As you begin using a work management tool with your team, keep in mind this core principle: if it’s related to work that is being done or will be done, it goes in your work management tool. That means: If you have a question about a task, if you want to delegate something, if you have a status update about your work, if you want to capture the state of something, if it’s actionable, and if you want to know that it’s going to get done, it goes in your work management tool. In general, I find that most teams rely too much on communication tools and often converse about information in them that should really be held in their work management tool. This is common, and it’s a difficult, but not impossible, behavior to change.
- Importante
Respond to comments so you unblock your colleagues and tasks can move along. Organize your own tasks to stay on top of incoming work and keep your to-do list tidy.
A good task should typically be stored within its relevant project (or projects) and include: A short title that includes a verb. A hundred twenty characters or less is a good guideline to follow. A clear and actionable description so the assignee knows exactly what needs to get done. One assignee responsible for the work and who can be held accountable. A due date that works for everyone involved. (Start dates can also be helpful.) All relevant information required to complete the task, including step-by-step instructions, links, or attachments. A definition of done so that everyone is clear on what needs to be achieved and when the task can be marked complete. Many tools allow for custom fields on tasks including dropdown menus, number fields, and much more. You can use this to show all kinds of information about a task like priority levels, estimated time to complete, and more.
feels decreases. As a consequence, so does his or her tendency to help.”4 I’ve heard Tony Robbins sum this up with one simple phrase: “If more than one person owns something, then nobody owns it.”
It’s important to understand that a task getting assigned to you is really more like a request.Just because a task has been assigned to you does not mean you have to do it. There needs to be a mutual agreement before work begins.
As the assignee, when you receive a new task you should ask yourself: Should we even be doing this? Is this within my role? Is someone else better suited for it? Is there enough clarity to get started on the work? Do I have all the links, attachments, or assets needed to get started? Does the due date make sense with my workload?
Try to assign tasks at least one week in advance whenever possible. This gives the assignee enough notice to fit it into their workload without sacrificing other tasks.
In most cases, these types of reminder tasks should not be stored within a project. This is another benefit of work management tools as opposed to project management tools—you can create personal tasks for yourself that aren’t attached to a specific project or initiative. A great productivity booster for nearly any role.
The Project Management Institute (PMI) says that all projects “have a beginning and end. They have a team, a budget, a schedule, and a set of expectations the team needs to meet. Each project is unique and differs from routine operations—the ongoing activities of an organization—because projects reach a conclusion once the goal is achieved.”
The ratio of processes to projects should increase over time as a function of an organization’s maturity. The younger a company is, the more they have to figure out, the more projects they’ll have. The more mature they get, the more of those projects should be transitioned to processes.
But for now, just remember that a project is unique whereas a process is repeatable.
A project implies that there is enough work that it cannot be contained on a single task. Projects typically involve multiple tasks with multiple people, at a minimum.
An owner to plan out the strategy and be held ultimately accountable for successful delivery. A project manager to oversee the daily work and manage the team (sometimes the owner fulfills this role, but not always). A team to do the work, with clearly defined roles for each individual. A budget. Status updates to keep everyone on the same page. Clear and measurable success criteria to monitor progress and gauge results.
Putting status updates in your work management tool also makes your meetings more efficient! Everyone will already be up to speed on past progress and the status of the project, meaning you can spend more time on what matters most.
Here is a quick way to think about these indicators that you can expand on for each project at your organization. On track: Things are going to plan and you’re on track to hit your milestones. At risk: There are a few problems that may affect the project’s completion, but there’s a plan to solve them and get back on track. Off track: The project is likely to fail, and it is either impossible or unclear how to get back on track.
The bottom line is that frequent status updates will help to keep everyone aligned and the project on track. A good status update should include a quick description of what’s happened, the current state of the project, and what’s happening next. I also recommend that teams be conservative with their statuses—if anything, it’s better to err on the side of caution and mark a project at risk if you’re unsure whether it’s on track or not.
Meeting Agenda Projects You could create a project to serve as a meeting agenda for a recurring meeting, where everyone can add tasks as individual agenda items. Then, in the meeting, you can pull up the agenda project and work through each task. When the agenda item has been discussed, you can either mark the task complete if nothing else needs to happen, or turn it into an action item and add it to the relevant place in your work management tool.
Content Calendar Projects Creating, publishing, and promoting content can be a complicated process. It involves coordinating lots of different people and small tasks, but it’s not exactly a project in the traditional sense of the word. It is, however, a perfect example of a nontraditional project in a work management tool—by grouping all content-related tasks in one area, you can plan out all the work that needs to be done for each piece and monitor its status from conception to publication. This effectively turns the project into a content calendar, especially if your work management platform has a calendar view.
While projects tend to focus on the actual work (tasks and milestones) required to make progress, portfolios sit one level higher. To put it simply, a portfolio is to a project what a project is to a task. Portfolios hold projects, and just like a task can live in multiple projects, projects can live in multiple portfolios.
Knowing when to use a work management tool versus other tools. Efficiently responding to comments and messages. Organizing and prioritizing your tasks.
THREE KEY TAKEAWAYS If you want to know something’s going to get done, it should go in a work management tool. To make a work management tool effective for the entire team, everyone should get into the habit of organizing their tasks and responding to comments on a daily basis. Setting up and using a work management tool effectively can take time. Don’t expect this to happen overnight, and start with organizing tasks, then projects, then portfolios.
have infinite capacity to do more work as long as you don’t mind that my quality approaches zero. —SCOTT ADAMS, author and cartoonist, creator of the Dilbert comic strip
PROBLEM: Most people don’t know their true bandwidth because they’ve never taken into account how much time they spend in meetings and other activities within their role. This results in unrealistic estimates for how much time they have to spend on new work and forces them to work long hours to get everything done. SOLUTION: Estimating the amount of time spent in meetings and on administrative work is the key to calculating how much time someone really has for new work. Once everyone has done this calculation, people can assign themselves a realistic workload while still ensuring that the highest-priority work gets done.
What they want is quite simple: They want to know that work is getting done in the right order, by the right person, on time, and without duplicating efforts. They want to know that their team is always putting their efforts in the right place and focusing on projects that will drive the organization forward. They want accountability, transparency, and visibility. They want mutual expectations. They want to avoid employee burnout. They want to know what’s been completed, what’s getting done now, what’s blocked, and what’s coming up. They want to know the status of projects, including which projects are on track, which are off track, which are blocked and why. They want to know who has extra bandwidth, who’s at capacity, and who’s over capacity. And they want to be able to easily find all this information without nagging, micromanaging, or breathing down the necks of their employees. In other words, they want a well-oiled machine that will make consistent progress with or without their involvement.
Team members want what most people want: They want a good work-life balance. They want to know the impact of their work and how it affects larger goals. They want to know that they are putting their efforts in the right place. They want to have input on what they are working on and how it gets done. They want their superiors and coworkers to recognize their hard work and accomplishments. They want to avoid feeling overwhelmed, overloaded, or burned out. They want clear priorities with realistic deadlines and a realistic workload. They want to be able to spend their time on high-value work that utilizes their unique skills. They want to improve their skills and advance their careers.
When highly skilled teams have their needs met and are able to work in a productive environment that makes work enjoyable, they produce greater results.
- Importante
Many problems in the workplace are simply the result of misaligned expectations. Sprint planning creates mutual expectations between managers, employees, and fellow team members around what can and can’t be accomplished in a given time frame.
In essence, they did what human beings have done for millennia: They started with a goal and worked backward to figure out the milestones that needed to happen to achieve it. Then they got to work by starting with what they already knew and going from there, solving the first problem, then the next problem, then the next. That’s where sprint planning excels. It helps teams break down complex projects into manageable tasks and prioritize them from week to week so they’re always focused on what matters most at any given time. This system removes any guesswork from the equation, allowing teams to methodically work through their highest priorities to achieve the desired outcome even when the path ahead is unclear.
With all that said, here’s what you really need to know, for our purposes: A sprint is typically anywhere from one week to one month. At the beginning of each sprint, work is prioritized and assigned to each individual with the expectation that they’ll get it done by the end of the sprint. Time for meetings, administrative work, and other necessary activities are taken into account to ensure that everyone’s workload is reasonable and doable. As more work comes up, it is added to the next sprint, or the current sprint is reprioritized to accommodate it. At the end of the sprint, everyone looks back to celebrate what they accomplished, and the next sprint is planned.
We find that weekly sprints are typically best, especially for young companies where priorities are constantly shifting. For established teams where priorities are more stable, there is a benefit to doing longer sprints as you can focus on bigger tasks and spend less time planning. Sprint length is a good example of a team-level agreement, which can vary between teams at an organization.
When I look at the abstract concept of sprint planning, it’s quite simple. Individuals agree to complete a set amount of work in a set period of time. But to do that, you first need to figure out how much time you have available to dedicate toward new work. To put it simply, if you work forty hours per week but you spend fifteen hours in meetings, ten hours on email, and five hours on recurring work that is essential to your role, you have only ten hours of remaining bandwidth. Yet most people just assume they have forty hours of bandwidth every week and, as a result, bite off more than they can chew. When they get to the end of the week, they haven’t even come close to getting everything done, and they feel as if they’re underwater. The worst part is that since they’ve already agreed to this amount of work, it’s not as if they can just skip it—it has to get done, and they’re forced to work after hours.
Bandwidth = Capacity - Admin - Meetings Bandwidth: time available for new work Capacity: the total time you’re expected to work (say, forty hours per week) Admin: time spent on administrative tasks and other responsibilities within your role Meetings: time spent in meetings
pointed out that 58 percent of employees’ time is spent on “work about work”—activities such as communicating about tasks, hunting down documents, and managing shifting priorities—yet these same people believed they were spending around 35 percent of their time on this. Most people don’t consider all the time they have to spend on “other” activities within their role, like meetings, checking email, communicating with their team, and completing ad hoc or recurring processes. This system solves that problem.
When we work with teams, we find that most people spend at least two hours per day on communication, which is a combination of email, internal communication, and project-related communication in tools like Asana.
Ray Dalio, in his book Principles: Life and Work, said, “To me, the greatest success you can have as the person in charge is to orchestrate others to do things well without you.” As you can see, sprint planning comes pretty damn close (figure 10). The system practically runs itself.
Tony Robbins famously says, “Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in two or three decades.”
Sprint planning is not an exercise in micromanagement. It’s an exercise in alignment.
Urgent tasks are one of the most common complaints we hear from teams we work with. If urgent tasks are popping up constantly, it’s time to take a step back to look at how you and your team are working. If everything is urgent, nothing is.
THREE KEY TAKEAWAYS Sprint planning solves many of the underlying problems that cause people to feel as if they’re drowning in work. Bandwidth = Capacity - Admin - Meetings
If you’re having trouble coming up with estimated hours, consider using Fibonacci numbers. The Fibonacci sequence is a famous mathematical sequence that appears unexpectedly in many areas. It goes like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 … Instead of agonizing over whether a task will take 11 or 12 hours, you can just select a number from the sequence. The idea is that there is enough space between these numbers where there will generally be one obvious choice. For example, my writer, Aidan, can’t definitively say how many hours it will take to write a book chapter. But he does know it will be more than twenty-one hours and less than fifty-five. So thirty-four is the logical choice. This system is very useful for large tasks that are difficult to estimate.
It’s better to go slowly in the right direction than go speeding off in the wrong direction. —SIMON SINEK, author of Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
PROBLEM: Most organizations don’t hit their goals. It’s not because they aren’t capable but because they don’t have a system for aligning on what matters most, measuring their progress, and tying goals to the work needed to achieve them. SOLUTION: Implementing a goal-setting system that enables a team to align on what matters most, track progress in real time, and clarify what success looks like is the key to making consistent progress toward achieving an organization’s long-term mission.
Too many teams set goals for themselves without taking the time to think through even the most basic questions surrounding them, like: How will we know we’ve achieved the goal? How and where are we going to measure our progress? What work needs to get done to achieve the goal?
Nothing is worse than moving fast in the wrong direction.
Planning strategies improve both efficiency and effectiveness. They make teams more effective by aligning on what matters most and more efficient by giving them ownership to make the right decisions on their own.
OKRs provide clarity, focus, alignment, and accountability.
OKRs are a type of business goal that consists of two components: an objective and three to five key results (see figure 11). Objectives are large, qualitative goals that are then tied to several key results. Key results are more quantitative measures that are used to define the success of the objective they’re tied to. The combination of these two components—a qualitative objective with several quantitative, measurable key results—is why this framework provides so much clarity. Even a vague qualitative objective can be broken down into specific key results that are measurable and attainable. It then becomes a simple matter of achieving each key result and monitoring your progress along the way.
OKRs serve as your north star. They provide direction on priority, so that everyone at an organization understands what matters most in the given time frame.
Annual and Quarterly OKRs With OKRs, the idea is to visualize where you want to be a year from now and consider what needs to happen from quarter to quarter to feel like you’ve made meaningful progress—this is then put into practice by creating both annual and quarterly OKRs.
Quarterly OKRs also don’t need to be created from annual OKRs. There are often short-term priorities that need to be considered on a quarterly basis—like implementing a new software or making an improvement to a marketing strategy—that are not directly tied to a yearly objective, and that’s fine. Those can sit on their own, not tied to an annual OKR.
An objective should contain the following elements: a title that is qualitative in nature an owner a time frame a description frequent status updates a way to display progress based on the progress of its key results links to any parent objectives that it supports or fulfills links to any key results that support the objective
Key results require similar elements to objectives—essentially, they need to have enough information to ensure that everyone’s on the same page. A key result should contain the following elements: a title that contains a verb and a measurable outcome an owner a time frame a description frequent status updates a way to track measurable progress (like links to reports or dashboards) a link to their corresponding objective (without this, it’s not a key result!) links to any work (projects or portfolios) that supports the key result
An effective status update combines two components: a status and the current progress.
OKR updates combined with consistent project updates help to prevent surprises and mitigate risk.
At Leverage, we’ve aligned on the following guidelines, which should work well for most objectives and key results: On track: projected to be over 80 percent complete At risk: projected to be between 50 and 80 percent complete Off track: projected to be less than 50 percent complete
This is helpful for me, as a leader, because I mostly care about high-level progress. If I see all green, I can be confident things are going well. If I see yellow or red, I know where to divert my attention. At a glance, I can get a pulse check on the health of my company but I can always go deeper if I want to.
The current progress of an objective can be easily calculated by taking the average of the progress across all its key results. So, for example, if an objective has three key results that are at 50, 75, and 100 percent progress at the time of the status update, the progress of the objective would be 75 percent.
At Leverage, we’ve developed a simple formula to calculate the status of an objective. Each key result is given a “point” based on its status, as follows: An on-track key result = 1 point An at-risk key result = 0.5 points An off-track key result = 0 points
QUICK RECAP Both objectives and key results need consistent status updates. Updates should include a status and the current progress. Teams need to align on what constitutes an on track, at risk, and off track status indicator. Owners need to give context as to why a goal is given a certain status indicator. Key results should be updated before objectives. Objectives are then updated according to their key results.
We’ve already implemented an efficient work management system, and OKRs will ensure that it’s being put to good use by focusing on what matters most.
THREE KEY TAKEAWAYS When setting goals, always focus on what matters most. The end goal of OKRs is performance (not accountability). OKRs provide clarity, focus, and alignment by separating goals into qualitative objectives and measurable key results. Consistent OKR updates with a status and the current progress help to provide a thirty-thousand-foot view of progress and avoid surprises.
As an organization grows, it accumulates information and assets. How to do certain activities, who does what, policies, files, and documents all accumulate over time. This turns into the intellectual property (IP) of the company itself. While you might think of IP only in relation to products or services, the way people operate and how things work is just as important. Really, IP includes all of the systems, processes, workflows, and assets it takes to run an organization—I like to refer to this part as “company knowledge.” Company knowledge is a living, breathing part of an organization. As people join, they contribute to this company knowledge, allowing it to grow and mature over time. The problem is that company knowledge typically lives in the minds of the people who work there, not the company itself. When they leave, that knowledge goes with them and can cause some serious problems. And with the increasing frequency of people moving between jobs, this may become all too common.
Documenting a process doesn’t give quite the same dopamine rush as closing a lead or launching a new product, but it’s just as important.
In order to put this into practice, company knowledge must first be separated into two categories: static and dynamic (see figure 12).
Static knowledge consists of facts and information. It answers the questions Who? What? Where? When? and Why? At your typical business, static knowledge would consist of things like the company vision and mission, core values, PTO policies, health care information, style guides, meeting notes, branding assets, client testimonials, and more. Most of the “stuff” that people are searching for when they find themselves in the Scavenger Hunt is static knowledge.
Dynamic knowledge is used to facilitate work. It answers the question How? As in, “How do we run payroll? How do we send a newsletter? How do we create sales decks?” It is interactive (hence “dynamic”) and, when documented properly, allows anyone to complete a process regardless of training or experience. This helps to mitigate risk for the organization but also serves to make employees’ lives easier by streamlining their recurring work, finding opportunities to automate, and enabling them to hand things off to someone else.
Separating and documenting these two types of knowledge into a knowledge base and a process management tool is, in short, the best way to document a company’s intellectual property. So let’s get started.
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
In 2018, the International Data Corporation concluded that data professionals are wasting, on average, 30 percent of their time because they cannot find, protect, or prepare data.
Everyone needs to retrieve information to do their work, and the faster they can retrieve that information, the faster the work gets done. There’s a reason why Google, originally a simple search engine that prioritized quick and accurate retrieval of information, has skyrocketed to become one of the largest and most successful companies in history. And it’s the same reason why Wikipedia has become the go-to place to find answers to nearly any question you could have about any topic. When people can retrieve information quickly, everything gets easier.
This information can be in multiple forms (text, images, files, documents, links, and so on). The primary benefit of a knowledge base is not that it can store this information but that the information can be organized and optimized for the retrieval of information—meaning everything is at your fingertips.
A knowledge base is not the same as cloud file storage like Google Drive, SharePoint, or Dropbox. While both tools are able to store documents and files, they serve a different purpose. In the simplest terms, cloud storage is used for storage whereas a knowledge base is used for organization. The primary function of cloud storage is to get files off your physical computer and into the cloud, where they can be stored securely and other people can access them as needed. A knowledge base is effectively one dimension higher, serving as the central point of truth. While a tool like Google Drive might contain every single document that has ever been used at the company (including outdated versions), the knowledge base is more like a directory—ensuring that all important, frequently accessed information is well organized, up to date, and easily accessible.
- Importante
In some cases, your knowledge base may include links to documents or files stored in a cloud storage tool like Google Drive or SharePoint. But they are not one and the same!
An optimized knowledge base cuts down on interruptions across teams. New hires can review information in the knowledge base during their training period to get up to speed, and managers no longer have to answer the same questions over and over.
Knowledge bases also serve to de-risk organizations by ensuring that company knowledge is never truly “lost” when someone leaves.
Similarly, there are some security benefits to consider. Most knowledge bases can be segmented so that employees have access only to information they need to know. This prevents people from sharing confidential information with anyone outside the company and keeps sensitive information in the right hands.
But the best part about a knowledge base is that it can (and should) be built over time. You don’t need to sit down and think of every possible piece of information that needs to be captured on the first day of using this new tool. It’s an iterative process.
If everyone on a team has the ability to add information to the knowledge base, it will soon become a cluttered mess.
There need to be some basic guidelines around how information is added to the knowledge base, what kind of information is added, and where it should live. It’s on the person in charge of the knowledge base to determine what that looks like for their organization, then brief any administrators on how to best add information to the tool.
You’ll want to start by capturing high-level company information like: a basic org chart the company mission and vision core values code of conduct And within each department, you may want to add things like: departmental roles key decisions made departmental critical departmental assets and files
Part of making a knowledge base effective is retraining your team on how to handle these situations. Checking the knowledge base should be their first instinct any time they run into something they don’t know or can’t find.
One of the best ways to start that retraining process is to use what I like to call the “repository-first response.” The idea is to avoid answering questions outright and instead point people to the knowledge base so they can find the answer on their own.
The repository-first response is a great way to change behavior, but you don’t need to be the knowledge base police! Be sure to use it appropriately.
There are a few other principles to consider when maintaining your knowledge base: A knowledge base is never truly “finished.” It is a living, breathing entity that will change as your organization changes. When decisions are made, policies are changed, or assets are updated, updating the knowledge base should always be the next step. There should be some type of process for adding new information to the knowledge base. Routine audits are recommended to keep a knowledge base functional and efficient.
Routine audits are a great idea for all your tools. I highly recommend devoting a day or two out of the year to auditing all your tools to make sure they’re functioning well and providing the value they should.
THREE KEY TAKEAWAYS People, like water, follow the path of least resistance. A knowledge base is useful only if it is easy to use and optimized for the retrieval of information. The repository-first response is a great way to change behavior and turn your knowledge base into the default place to find answers. Ticketing systems are worth implementing alongside your knowledge base to cut out distractions, keep information up to date, and give your team a voice in what’s stored there.
PRO TIPS A good rule of thumb is that if you’ve answered a question more than once, the answer should probably live in your knowledge base. In many knowledge base tools, you can set up reminders to check individual sections in the future. You can set up an automation to send a message in your internal communication tool any time the knowledge base is updated. Learning management systems (LMS) are a nice addition to a knowledge base, although they may require a significant time investment to set up. While a knowledge base simply documents company knowledge, an LMS functions more like an online course. You can use it to train and reinforce company knowledge across an entire team. At Leverage, we use WorkRamp as our LMS and use it to train both our team and clients on how to use certain tools “the Leverage way.” We’ve recently implemented Rippling, a Human Resource Information System (HRIS) to store all of our employee information. This can be done in a knowledge base, but it may be worth looking into an HRIS to store employee-specific information, especially for larger companies. 1Password and LastPass are both great options for secure password management that we’ve used at Leverage. These can be great for personal use or for securely sharing passwords across a team without actually having them in plain text. “Command E” is a universal search program that can help you find information on your computer. It automatically collates results from various tools into one search window. If you’re already using Asana, creating a form is probably the easiest way to create a ticketing system for your knowledge base. The form results will create a task in a project of your choosing, assigned to a person of your choosing—so you can be sure it will be dealt with. Google Forms is a simple tool that you can use to create a ticketing system. It can pull results into a spreadsheet and integrate with other tools through Zapier.
Optimize processes, not people. —ANDY GROVE, CEO of Intel
PROBLEM: Processes are the backbone of an efficient organization, yet they’re often neglected. Inefficient and undocumented processes can slow a team down or, worst case, cause work to come to a grinding halt if someone leaves abruptly. SOLUTION: Optimizing and documenting key business processes ensures consistent results, reduces the risk of error, and allows for steps to be automated or delegated. When this is done in a process management tool, it can turn any team into a well-oiled machine.
There are situations like this in nearly every organization. Situations that happen repeatedly, with little margin for error, and where cumulative lessons can be incorporated over time to develop a comprehensive, foolproof process that produces great results every time.
While projects are the drivers of change and progress, processes are the core of every organization. In many ways, an organization is nothing more than a collection of processes.
But process documentation is perhaps the number one key to creating a scalable business. It mitigates business risks, saves time and money, reduces error, and creates more consistent outputs. It can dramatically increase the value of a company in the eyes of investors and is practically a requirement for explosive business growth. It takes something that can be done only by one individual and turns it into something that can be done by anyone, an infinite number of times.
We already know that projects are used to create something out of nothing. With a project, you’re typically doing something for the first time. They’re often one-off situations. They deal with unknowns. Processes, on the other hand, deal with what is already known. They are repeatable, and unlike a project, the path to the desired outcome is virtually always the same.
Often, projects will turn into processes. The first time you do something, it’s probably a project. You don’t know how to achieve the desired result, and part of the project is figuring out how you’ll get there. But once the desired result has been achieved, you can take steps to turn it into a process, or at least turn parts of it into processes that can be used in future projects. The idea is to transition ad hoc work into repeatable work over time.
PROJECTS (AD-HOC) PROCESSES (REPEATABLE) Costs are largely estimated Costs are roughly known Requires a discovery and planning phase Discovery and planning have already been done Steps to completion are not 100 percent clear Step-by-step path from start to finish Higher risk of mistakes Lower risk of mistakes Someone leaving may have large effects on the outcome Someone leaving has minimal effects on the outcome Difficult to scale Easy to scale
Features like: Handoffs, stops, or approvals which are used to route work from one person to the next when the time is right (and only when the time is right). Conditional logic. This is when the steps of a process can change depending on certain inputs. For example, one of the first steps in an onboarding process could be to select the team member’s role, and then the rest of the process will change accordingly based on that input. Integrations. Your process management tool should be able to integrate with other tools in your tech stack, meaning the tools can “talk” to each other and exchange information or trigger certain events—like starting a process when a new client is added to your CRM. Checklists with “rich media.” Nearly all process management tools will offer some sort of checklist function, but you should be able to add in rich media like images and videos to make each step as clear as possible.
If you’re not great at something, chances are there’s a specialist who is. Keep in mind that when you outsource to specialists, you’re also benefiting from all the improvements and optimizations they’ve made to their process over the years.
Ask yourself and your team the following questions about your current and/or proposed process: Is it logical? Is it efficient? Is it relevant? Is it necessary?
We all get into the habit of doing things simply because “that’s the way they’ve always been done.” In some cases, you may even find that an entire process has become irrelevant or unnecessary as the needs of your organization have changed. Great! That’s one less process you need to worry about.
Make sure that one person—and one person only—is assigned to each step of the process. Diffusion of responsibility is just as important with processes as it is with tasks. If more than one person is assigned, no one is.
When they’re done, review it with them. Ask them what was confusing and what was clear. Look at the results and ask: Is the quality up to par? How long did it take? Was this time close to your estimate? If there were multiple people involved, was information handed off properly? Did anyone have access to sensitive or confidential information that they didn’t need? Were they able to document their progress as they worked? Get their feedback and figure out the answers to those questions and you’ll be well on your way to a perfect process.
It’s important that you create processes that the people in your company will (1) actually use and (2) enjoy using. Well, enjoy as much as they can—it is work after all, but a good process should make their lives easier.
Keep in mind, this phase can be somewhat extensive. But this time investment can be well worth it. Even shaving just a few minutes off a process that happens daily can add up to major time savings in the end. There are probably hundreds or thousands of small opportunities like this at most organizations.
When looking into automations, consider how much time the automation will save, how frequently the process will recur, and how long it will be used into the future. The higher those numbers are, the more it makes sense to invest time into creating the automation. Want to see how much time you can save over the long term with small process optimizations? We’ve created a calculator that will do it for you! Check it out on comeupforair.com. Automating and optimizing processes is like paying it forward to whoever will be doing the process. Your present time investment will save time for everyone who does the process in the future—it’s like banking future time!
The best way to start documenting a process is to simply do the process and record the steps as you go. This could be as simple as writing down steps one through ten in a notepad as you work through the process itself. Or, even simpler, you could record yourself doing the process with a screen recording tool like Loom. As you work through it, simply narrate what you’re doing. That way, anyone can watch the video and follow along on their own computer to complete the process.
At Leverage, we often start our process documentation this way. When team members are performing repeatable processes, they’re encouraged to simply record a Loom as they go. That Loom is then stored in our knowledge base for the time being. Eventually, the process will be added to our process management tool. And, in many cases, we’ll have a virtual assistant or someone at a more junior level input the process into the tool based on that initial recording. From there, the process owner can review it and adjust accordingly. This is an easy way to develop a process that is 80 percent perfect in only 20 percent of the time.
Any time you do something more than once, you should start thinking about how to never do it again. This is the mental trigger that can spur you to start documenting a process in one way or another, or at least get it on your radar. Remember that once you document a process, it can often be automated or delegated—so if you really want to stop doing some annoying part of your job, the best way to make it happen is to document it!
So when figuring out which processes to document first you can ask yourself the following questions: What impact does this process have on the business? (Including what negative impacts there would be if it were to stop occurring.) How likely is it to change in the future? (Don’t waste your time documenting a process that will change next month!) How frequently does this process recur? (The more a process happens, the more benefits you’ll see from documenting it well.)
Documenting a process with a video recording is a great way to start because you get most of the benefits in a very short amount of time. You can always improve it later if necessary.
Fresh eyes spark innovation! It’s hard to see the label when you’re inside the jar.
Rotating roles on a regular basis forces your team to document their everyday processes so that anyone on your team can jump in and handle someone else’s day-to-day responsibilities with little to no experience.
Most people who stay in one role for a long time just assume there is one way of doing things—the way it’s always been done. An operations team member may find multiple ways to improve an HR workflow. A marketing team member might see opportunities to improve the way a customer-service email is branded. And an accountant might be able to make some adjustments to a process in another department that will help them in their role come tax season. Bringing in a fresh set of eyes opens up opportunities for improvement, and sometimes it can alert you to major issues that are sitting under your nose. Someone might rotate into a role and complete the same amount of work in half the time as the regular employee, find ways to optimize and simplify processes, and maybe even notice things that pose a risk to the organization.
Obviously, you can’t rotate anyone into any role. A graphic designer probably shouldn’t be running your accounting department (even for one day)! I suggest keeping role rotation within teams and/or departments.
Process documentation is a necessary step toward de-risking your organization and improving efficiency, but to look at it from such a literal standpoint is to miss the point of what we’re trying to accomplish here. Ultimately, the goal is to go beyond simply documenting processes and to instead cultivate a systems-driven mindset at your organization, a mindset where people instinctively turn one-off projects into repeatable processes and create systems to get work done instead of brute-forcing everything. It’s like taking “work smarter, not harder” to the next level.
What does that mean exactly? As the leader, I want everyone to be optimizing their roles and working as efficiently as possible. I want them to have that systems-driven mindset so that they’re documenting their processes and creating systems to fulfill their role’s responsibilities without me having to tell them to do it.
If someone is able to show me that they’ve documented their processes, searched for time-saving optimizations, and set up systems to cover their core responsibilities on autopilot, that shows me that person is ready to take on bigger and better things. Not only are they bright enough to make these improvements, but they’ve shown that they’re committed to making the organization better by saving time and money. I want to work closely with those people, and I would expect that most leaders and managers would feel the same way.
- Importante
Dilbert’s Laws of Work say: “Don’t be irreplaceable; if you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.”
THREE KEY TAKEAWAYS Organizations and teams should always be striving to move from ad hoc work (projects) to repeatable work (processes). Process documentation doesn’t just benefit the company—it makes employees’ lives easier, saves them time, and reduces the chance of frustrating mistakes. Start by focusing on the 20 percent of processes that give you 80 percent of the results, and you can even put in 20 percent of the effort to get 80 percent of the benefits of documentation.
iorad is a great tool that allows you to make interactive screenshot tutorials to guide people through certain processes. It’s very useful for teaching someone how to complete a specific function inside a tool.
- Herramienta
If you do something more than once, start thinking about how to never do it again! This is the mental trigger that should spur you to document a process so you can eventually automate it or delegate it to someone else.
INDIVIDUAL PRODUCTIVITY IS NECESSARY BUT NOT SUFFICIENT FOR TEAM PRODUCTIVITY