Dear Leaders, Happy Monday.
There is something unrivalled about being ahead of the game and being able to be proactive than being reactive.
Planning can be stressful however knowing you are ahead and driving the business forward is something many crave but rarely own.
There are many newer ways of working we have now become accustomed to since March 2020, whether that’s right or wrong, we are now in a place to design a better set of norms.
We have become accustomed to too many videos calls, too many instant messages and too many meetings.
Isn’t it time to address these and help set up a better hybrid workplace?
Being reliant on synchronous communications and video calls is something so many are fatigued by and without the right structure are really struggling with.
This newsletter goes out to leaders across The Americas, Europe, Africa and Australasia, we are all in slightly different phases of returning to the office and with hybrid being the future, how about you set your new norms for the next phase and rethink the tools and the systems you are using currently.
Here are a few hows to consider:
More deep work - Remove the constant distractions and enable teams to use statuses to embrace deep work and block out times. Dropbox has set times for deep work, how about you embrace this too?
Less reliance on video calls - Fewer video calls to make decisions. Making decisions should never be left to video calls or a number of video calls.
Consider how you embrace different technology and wiki’s and knowledge centre’s to enable better, more streamlined conversations.
Fewer videos updates - Feedback from almost every company suggests that many companies are just relying on video as every communication channel, this can be reduced by introducing more audio-only updates, better documentation and introducing better communication practices.
A move to asynchronous communications - Many businesses have struggled to introduce or reintroduce the right levels of written and documented communications. Having deliberate thought and documents helps to share knowledge and cut through misunderstandings and delivery issues fair quicker than several video calls or having to organise real-time attendance.
Keep in mind: Improving company culture is imperative, if you are in a place to hire a dedicated headcount, a culture community manager will be essential to improving EX (employee experience) to improve CX (customer experience and success).
Having the right tools is essential, onboarding and coaching on how to use these tools are essential. Ensuring you have agreed working principles will help you to shape your business far quicker than dumping more rules and tools and expecting teams to embrace these. Departments need fewer tools but better tools. Cross functionally departments need to share updates, insights and knowledge to help move your company forward and make real positive change.
Have a great week planning a better norm.
Thanks,
Danny Denhard
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