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Team Communication
Getting on the same page in an all-remote design team
For anyone that's ever worked in an all-remote team, you understand how hard it is to collaborate with more than one person at a time. In this article from John Maeda, he explores why it's so challenging and explains how to leverage "sync-time" to facilitate collaboration on teams that are both geographically and time zone disperse.
How to Collaborate Effectively If Your Team Is Remote
Speaking of improving collaboration on remote teams, Erica Dhawan and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic outline a number of tips and best practices for remote collaboration. Not surprisingly, they are focused on communication. Check it out and learn the importance of communication clarity, frequency, and establishing norms so your team can start collaborating more effectively.
Leadership & Management
How To Be a Design-Team Leader
Think you have what it takes to lead a design team? Already doing it? In this article from Phase, learn the three leadership principles of Jason Coudriet, Design Lead at T. Rowe Price. See how it's important to inspire, direct, and support your team. Are you doing all three for yours?
Gossip, Rumors, and Lies
Michael Lopp, aka Rands, on why your staff meeting is actually the second most important meeting of the week, behind only 1:1s. He provides guidance so you can determine if you need a staff meeting, a rough outline and an agenda to get started with, and a breakdown of the key roles within the meeting. If you've been dealing with "an acceptable amount of crap" lately, a staff meeting might be the solution you need.
Productivity & Estimation
Distractions Cause Bad Code
"If you never concentrate and go deep, you will produce bad work: you will produce bugs, and fail to debug them; you will create security issues; you will cause performance problems; and you will architect things poorly." Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky takes a look at the challenges that makers face in today's attention economy and what can be done to reclaim our time, embrace flow, and get work done.
Software Developers Always Want to Go Faster
Dave Nicolette points out the irony of developers spending hours, or even days, getting their environments and workspace set up just right so that they can "go fast". But for all the effort put into perfecting one's setup, does it have that big of an impact on the overall speed of the software delivery process?
People & Culture
Open offices make people talk less and email more
A recent study shows employees in open offices spend 73% less time in face-to-face interactions and use email and messaging 67% more. But why is that? Aren't open offices designed to increase collaboration? Libby Sander explains that even though that is the goal, open offices really aren't improving face-to-face collaboration. We need to rethink our office configurations and provide workplaces that support the needs for privacy and focus, as well as interaction and collaboration.
Your Org Problems Are Not Unique
John Cutler explores why, even though most organizational problems have tried and true solutions that can be found with just a few hours of research, they often go unaddressed. The challenge doesn't appear to be that the problem is unique or unsolvable, it's because there is typically a struggle within the organization about who gets to solve the problem and get the credit. This struggle ultimately leads to inaction. So what can we do about it? Read to find out.
Only Slightly Off-Topic
Why you can’t handle negative feedback
Have a hard time receiving negative feedback? It's not just you. Turns out that it's hardwired into our DNA. Aytekin Tank of JotForm explains why it's natural to feel hurt, frustrated, and scared when receiving negative feedback and provides a few handy approaches to getting better at dealing with it.
Have you tried Status Hero yet?
Status Hero is a lightweight tool for tracking daily goals, activity, and status updates from your team. It works with your existing tools, like email, Jira, GitHub, Trello, and Slack. Skip costly meetings, map goals to accomplishments, and unearth blocking issues quickly. Status Hero helps you and your team get more done with fast access to the big picture. Give it a shot with a free trial.