Let’s not kid ourselves. New Year’s resolutions rarely stick. In fact, it’s estimated that most resolutions last between 3 days and three weeks. So, in the spirit of forgoing silly traditions and, instead, focusing on real, lasting change, here is our list of changes you can make to your workplace to drive innovation and collaboration in 2019.
Make Communication Easy
How a team talks together will determine how well it works. -Brian Bacon
Stellar communication is the oil that greases the engine for innovation. Poor communication creates black holes of understanding which can lead to missed opportunities, product launch delays, and even systemic product design issues.
Adopting a team messenger app (like Slack, Glip, Chanty, or Flock) is a great way to encourage the open and constant communication required to drive projects and organizations forward. By design, messenger apps are more conducive than email to the informal, fluid communications needed to sustain alignment on complex and ever-evolving projects.
Improve Project Management Processes
If you don’t know where you are going. How can you expect to get there? -Basil S. Walsh
Excellent project management fosters clarity and focus while alleviating the stress that accompanies complexity. Your choice of project management software should both elucidate the path to completion while also supporting ad hoc, spontaneous communication.
The beauty of great project management is that milestone achievements are made easier to identify and reward. Celebrating little wins during a project has a powerful effect by creating the cohesion and camaraderie that makes open collaboration natural and sought after.
Some popular options include Trello, Asana, and Airtable.
Insist on Better Meetings
Meetings should have as few people as possible, but all the right people. – Charles W. Scharf
As general rules of thumb, all meetings should be between 15- and 30-minutes, include only the necessary stakeholders, and strive to be egalitarian and dynamic over a more didactic approach. You can read more about how to make your meetings better in our Hour-Long Meetings Must Die blog post.
Also, ensure the technology in your meeting rooms is enabling and not impeding meeting success. Namely: all meeting spaces should support fluid content sharing and collaboration. Having the right technology will improve start times and stimulate engagement while freeing up mental energy to collaborate. Our Solstice wireless collaboration solution boosts productivity and collaboration by putting content at the center of every meeting experience.
Create More Collaborative Spaces
No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team. – Reid Hoffman
The trend of open office space makes ad hoc collaboration among employees difficult. To encourage team members to meet more often workspaces need numerous huddle spaces that provide both privacy and the tech needed to collaborate fully. Click here to read our step-by-step guide to turning conference rooms into huddle spaces.
Bonus: Our research indicates meetings that take place in huddle spaces are 34% shorter and include 22% more shared content than meetings in traditional conference rooms.
About Mersive
Mersive’s Solstice wireless collaboration solution boosts productivity by putting content at the center of the meeting experience. Participants are more engaged because Solstice’s intuitive, the software-based interface makes it easy for any number of users to share content from any device. Moreover, corporations and universities can securely deploy the solution across locations and centrally manage them from a single console. Learn more about Mersive.
