20 Quick Tips for better Digital Communication and Collaboration
Digital Tools – General
1. Reduce the number of digital tools you use
Too many communication and collaboration tools create an overwhelming number of notifications, create silos, take more time to manage, and create unnecessary costs. Try to standardise the use of fewer tools and if you want to be diplomatic, make the choice a majority vote. It’s not what you use, it’s how effectively you use it.
2. Think Enablement > Infrastructure > Preference
Focus first on enablement and get people to communicate and collaborate. Then, look at any infrastructure implications which might influence tools or processes. Put individual preference last. Make people a part of the process to encourage wider acceptance/adoption. The worst outcome is no one communicating or collaborating.
3. Keep most communication at the team level
Most communication and collaboration happens at the team and project level. Focus your communication tools in this area, setting up team and project groups for chats and video calls. This produces fewer notifications for the majority, whilst improving visibility to those most appropriate, and reducing silos of work.
4. Digital can’t replace face-to-face, so don’t try
There are certain social cues, and general meeting etiquette, that just isn’t present digitally. Focus on the strengths of tools and use instant messenger for transactional communication, presentations via video calls, and during online collaborative sessions try to overemphasise understanding and raise your ‘digital’ hand before speaking.
5. Make tool adoption a moral duty
Don’t make using a particular tool a technological crime, but a moral duty. Most people will have preferences for certain tools, but will also understand the business and individual benefits of having fewer tools to manage. As new employees start and use the selected tools, you will slowly create critical mass and then everyone will adopt them naturally.
Digital Tools – Video calling
6. Pick video call tools based on performance, not preference
Although most video calling tools are similar, performance can vary and is usually the key factor of efficiency for that medium of communication. Unless there are infrastructure considerations too important to ignore, go with a tool that has a proven track record for optimal performance.
NOTE: my personal recommendation is Zoom.
7. Turn on your camera during video calls
Although you will never replace the social cues for in-person communication, seeing someone’s face, posture and gestures can do a lot to help people know when someone wants to speak, or when someone is not understanding the point. It also helps to give a little of the social connectivity people may be missing online.
8. Create a video call process and etiquette
Video calls are harder to manage, which makes process and etiquette even more important. Make it a part of the process to have an agenda, to have a meeting leader, and to take notes and actions. Time is precious and adding structure to a meeting can ensure you get what you need, that fewer meetings overrun, and reduce the need to create follow-up meetings.
9. Create time for that social interaction, digitally
Purely working online can make some people feel detached and disconnected as they can go hours and even days without seeing or hearing someone. Either create social calls to just catch up with team members, or allow 5-10 mins at the start for each meeting to chit-chat and catch up. This keeps meetings with objectives on course and focused on that objective, whilst helping people get some social time.
Digital Tools – Instant messaging
10. Focus on a single instant messenger adoption over the selection
Instant messenger tools are 90% the same. Most have 1-2-1, group and companywide channels and you can @mention to gain extra visibility. Focus instead on the adoption of a single tool so all communication happens in the same place. This makes it easier for people to know where to go and reduces the number of notifications received.
11. Instant messages – the key is in the name
Instant messages are best for transactional conversations. Data, yes/no questions and answers, updates, and notifications. The wordier, and more technical it becomes, or if topics cover sensitive and emotional subjects, the medium is just not as well suited as speaking to someone in person. Written words can be misinterpreted and often become confusing.
DIGITAL COMMUNICATION & COLLABORATION
GUIDE 2021
Digital Tools - collaboration
12. Link objectives together to get alignment
Link core objectives, with team objectives, with individual objectives in collaboration tools so you can move up and down in detail and see clearly how every single individual task relates to a core company objective. It helps you know if what you plan to do or are currently doing, is something important for the business.
NOTE: use aggregated lists to create personal todos, across different plans
13. Don’t drop the humble todo list, simply go digital
I know we love our post-it notes and notebooks, but going digital with your to-do lists makes them easier to share, edit and archive. If you can put them in a tool you use for work and/or projects, it’s even better. Get team oversight and progress tasks by adding to a project plan. This way, you only need to maintain one list.
14. Make it easy to share tasks and dependencies
Most projects have shared dependencies. Each team will have different styles and approaches to projects. Create flexibility within the process to allow people to collaborate without knowing all the detail. Just give them a simple to-do task in the same project management tool everyone uses. It’s that simple.
Code of Conduct
15. Use the flat organisational structure for goal setting
Having a flat organisational structure is not just about communication and the top knowing what happens at the bottom (and vice versa). Setting company and team objectives collectively helps everyone understand them, supports buy-in across the company, and aligns everyone and all tasks to the core company objectives.
NOTE: use a 1-page strategic plan to help you.
16. Make up your own project methodology
Project methodology names sound good, but they have become buzzwords. It doesn’t really matter what principles you adopt, from where or how many, or what you call it. As long as it works for you. Enable flexibility in your methodology by using the same tools so people can collaborate without needing to know much about how you manage projects.
17. Use process to stop everyone reinventing the wheel
Process shouldn’t stifle creativity or innovation. Process is simply about documenting triggers to actions, so everyone knows what to do in certain situations. It documents those repetitive, transactional tasks. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time,` just spend a little longer documenting what to do and sharing it with others.
18. Use company culture to tackle the grey areas
Not everything can be transactional or a simple action and trigger scenario. Some things are inherently grey. Company culture can encourage people to take ownership, to ask questions, to respect time, and/or to practice empathy. This helps you better navigate the unknown because the reality is we all encounter many unknowns all the time.
19. Introduce meeting routine and cycles
Whether you work in scrum or not, regular meetings provide a chance to align on tasks and objectives without the need for constant communication. Daily 15 minute standups, monthly team progress updates, and quarterly business objective reviews and planning… These meetings create little checkpoints that help everyone stay aligned at strategic times, whilst freeing up day-to-day time to do the actual work.
Huddo Boards
20. Choose tools that prioritise flexibility
Huddo Boards is designed to be agile and flexible. It works across multiple environments, like Microsoft, HCL Connections, and in the cloud. Not only can it enable different teams to work from different operating systems, giving them common ground, but it enables external collaborators to join projects using cloud logins, without much fuss or permission challenges. These hybrid environments can enable collaboration from anyone, anywhere… all in one place.
The flexibility of Huddo Boards extends beyond this though, and into integrations with Microsoft and HCL Connections environments. For Microsoft users, whole teams can be added to Boards with one click, and share files from SharePoint and OneDrive using team visibility permissions. Users can also add tasks from Outlook. People can even use Huddo Boards directly in Microsoft Teams, with full access to all features. For HCL Connections, users can share community files in Huddo Boards, create tasks from HCL Verse emails, and connect users who are on-premise and in the cloud together.
Huddo Boards is designed to complement how users already work together, working alongside the other tools and systems they use and helping to keep everything centralised.
Flexibility can even filter down to the individual and project view preferences. One user can prefer Kanban (Boards), another Timeline, a third MindMap, and a fourth Activity. Actions in any view are translated in real time to other views, and this enables people to have personal preferences whilst keeping everyone on the same page (or Board).
Create Boards for everything and anything. In terms of enablement of digital collaboration, link boards for company core objectives, team objectives, and projects, and individual tasks together in Huddo Boards. This allows everyone to stay connected to the mission of the business and expand upwards and drill downwards to see how everything is connected. Then, using aggregated views, see all your tasks, across different Boards and share dependencies in one place.
If linked with Microsoft Teams or HCL Communities, you only need Huddo Boards. All your communication can happen in Microsoft Teams or HCL Communities and simply use Huddo Boards to connect communication with collaboration on projects. This makes for simpler processes, fewer notifications, and greater efficiency.