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  Jeroen Sangers 9:00 am on May 16, 2013 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaboration ( 56 ), collaboration networks ( 6 ), communication ( 32 ), communication 2.0 ( 60 ), internal communication ( 23 ), multidisciplinary collaboration ( 5 ), productivity, team management ( 29 ), teamwork ( 23 )   

  Working out loud 

  Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

  I’m a freelancer working from home. A large part of my day, I don’t have anyone near, but I don’t work alone. On a daily basis, I’m in contact with my clients, my providers, and my partners with whom I collaborate on various projects.

  However, at times I miss the office’s coffee machine, where I could comment the latest news and laugh with my co-workers. These co-workers were also a major source of feedback related to my work.

  But there are also things that I don’t miss, like weekly meetings to discuss the status of projects.

  Now I only have my partner to have coffee with and comment the news. The rest of my communication has gone digital.

  Collaboration 2.0

  Nowadays, there are many tools to collaborate without needing to be in the same location, from email and Twitter—I still remember the interface at the beginning that went: “What are you doing?”—to complete platforms like Zyncro.

  When partners and co-workers aren’t in the same location, internal communication becomes even more important to generate results.

  Whenever I collaborate in projects remotely, I apply two habits that Bryce Williams identified in his post When will we Work Out Loud? Soon!

  Working out loud = Observable work + Narrating your work

  Observable Work

  This concept simply implies that the intermediate result of my work can be accessed by my co-workers. Instead of saving the document I’m writing in the folder My Documents on my computer, I use online platforms where my partners can see and comment on the progress and even edit the document.

  Based on this feedback, I can correct the focus of my work as soon as possible, and get better results in a shorter time.

  Modern collaboration platforms display in real time what each member of the team is working on. Each time I edit a document, my colleagues can see a notification in the system, even a summary with the changes made. What’s more, all the material is centralized and indexed in order to find the required information quickly.

  Narrate Your Work

  Similarly, I keep a public diary (blog or micro-blog) where I explain openly what I’m doing, what problems I encounter, what solutions I have found, and how I feel. I also share relevant articles I have found and obviously there is space for a joke once in a while.

  Finally, when working on a big project, I try to communicate each day at least these points:

  1. What I have done today
  2. What I have been unable to do
  3. What are the risks I have identified that will affect the project planning
  4. What my plans are for tomorrow

  During the day I keep a document open where I gradually answer these points. At the end of the day, I just have to publish it.

  If everyone in the team narrated their work openly, we wouldn’t need any meetings to assess project status and we would gain a lot of time.

  People who are already familiar with collaboration tools perfectly understand the benefits of working out loud. Others simply need to try it for a while to learn that they can collaborate efficiently remotely.

  Jeroen Sangers (@JeroenSangers) is personal productivity consultant and author of the blog El Canasto. He specializes in modern techniques to manage time, actions and attention, and provides training, consulting, and keynotes on a more intelligent way to work and live.

  If you want to enjoy the benefits that collaborating has for your productivity too, why not try Zyncro free?

  
  
   

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  Billie Lou Sastre 9:00 am on April 25, 2013 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: email ( 7 ), productivity, time management ( 2 )   

  Tips for improving your email productivity 

  Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

  Recently on our Mexico Facebook channel, we posed a simple question that generated several responses, many of which surprised me and made me rethink about how we manage our email. Is it the master of our time?

  

  Having an empty inbox is not something we need to impose, but managing our inbox so that email doesn’t dominate our working day is essential. Let me share a few tips with you that can help you to achieve it.

  Managing your inbox with the 3 folder technique.

  It’s a simple method that aims to ensure that we spend the least amount of time on archiving our emails. How long each day do you spend archiving your emails? There are people who create folders by topic, by departments, by projects, and add subfolders to those folders… the list is endless and often you don’t know where to save an email because it probably complies with the requirements to go in more than one of those folders. The 3-folder system I propose is:

  1. Follow-up: Those emails you need to manage during the day without anyone else’s intervention.
  2. Hold: Those emails that you need the reply or supervision of someone else to be managed.
  3. Archive: All answered emails go in this folder

  Thanks to powerful search engines in the leading mail managers, you can find your emails quickly without losing 20% of your time archiving.

  Short, concise emails addressed to the right person.

  There are various currents of thought that seek to improve email effectiveness, like the one of the 3 sentences in which they assure that with 3 short paragraphs you can transmit the message, improving productivity and effectiveness for both the one writing and of course, the person receiving it. As Albert Einstein said, “Everything must be as simple as possible, not just simple.”

  If an email becomes an unending conversation, change the font!

  Emails are meant to transmit important messages, from one person to another. When it involves too many people in “email chains” or when it becomes more a conversation rather than a transmitted message, maybe it’s time you question whether it’s the right channel. For that, an Enterprise Social Network is the solution.

  Reduce notifications and email subscriptions as far as possible

  Your email shouldn’t be saturated with notifications from other social networks or subscriptions you read. The most important thing is to not become saturated, we should use email intelligently so it doesn’t become the only task that dominates our day, rather we can spend our time on our daily tasks. Don’t fill it with mails that you delete without reading.

  Compose the message subject properly

  The email subject is the way to communicate the topic you are going to discuss with the recipient, it’s the first impression and what will make the recipient decide when to open it. A good option is to write the subject after composing the email, include the topic you cover, try to use keywords.

  You can improve your productivity and enhance your work performance by managing your email properly. Let me close with a quote from Berto Pena: “Email isn’t a place to be. It’s a place to act. Read, process, decide, assign, and exit as quickly as possible so you can DO.”

  
  
   
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  Jeroen Sangers 9:00 am on April 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: company ( 12 ), enterprise 2.0 ( 90 ), management 2.0 ( 28 ), productivity, team management ( 29 )   

  2 keys for group productivity 

  Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

  Editor’s note: Today we would like to welcome a new author to our blog. Jeroen Sangers (@JeroenSangers) is personal productivity consultant and author of the blog El Canasto. He specializes in modern techniques to manage time, actions and attention, and provides training, consulting and keynotes on a more intelligent way to work and live.

  Any trainer of a sports team knows it: although the players may be stars, that does not guarantee that the team will win. You have surely seen how the biggest football teams that have spent millions of dollars to get the best players often finish the season with the worst results. In order for a team to work, more than just good individual results are needed.

  Personal productivity

  No one works alone. Although we try to do all our tasks as best as possible and with maximum efficiency, for many things we depend on our co-workers. The web developer needs the texts of the copywriter, the sales rep needs the brochures of the marketing department, the marketing director needs the production status of the new products, etc.

  We may work efficiently, but if our co-workers are chaotic, we can’t be productive.

  The truth is that personal productivity cannot be extrapolated to the efficiency of teams. What are the two keys for group productivity?

  1. Roles and responsibilities

  In my opinion, the most important thing for building a productive team is to know the other members of the group well. Each person is different and has their strong points, their weaknesses and their own manner. Like in the different positions in a football team, a team works better if there are various profiles of people. Each team needs a leader, a creative person, someone who looks after relations, someone who gets to work straight away, etc.

  In the 1970s, Dr. Meredith Belbin developed a model with 9 essential roles for each team. We can use this model to identify the roles of each member and find the skills that we are missing in our team.

  2. Internal communication

  The second key point for a team to be efficient is internal communication.

  The dilemma is that we want to know all our co-workers’ actions, projects, ideas and concerns, yet we don’t want to waste time with useless information.

  To do this, we need to establish the best way of communicating in each case. In many offices, when we have to ask a co-worker something, we usually get up and go to their desk. Obviously we are causing a major interruption.

  It is better to use a less intrusive communication medium, like for example, email, the intranet or an enterprise social network. Then we can agree on exceptions for specific situations: How do we communicate if we need an instant response? What communication medium do we have to talk about sensitive issues or emotions?

  There is no one solution. The key is knowing which communication media are available, knowing the benefits and the problems of each way of communicating, and establishing an internal communication protocol with the other members of the team.

  If you want to be part of a productive team and win the league, you need to know your team well and have a top-quality communication channel.
   
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  Jose Miguel Torres 9:00 am on February 21, 2013 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: meetings, productivity, project management ( 12 ), team manag   

  Meetingitis: the illness of the 21st century 

  Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

  Editor’s note: Today we would like to welcome a new author: José Miguel Torres works as a software engineer for Xamarin Inc. and specializes in mobile app development. With more than 14 years’ experience, he is a regular author for more than 10 years in technical journals where he has published numerous articles on Microsoft technology and is author of two books. He has been recognized as Microsoft Most Value Professional on four occasions. He maintains the web devoted to development for mobile devices desarrolloMobile.NET. Welcome, José Miguel!

  Have you ever asked yourself what are meetings for? Well, most times, for nothing. It’s simply a pretext of the “organizer”, almost always represented by the boss or area manager, and doesn’t do anything but embellish the lack of leadership.

  Apparently the official notification sent by email for a specific time on a given day is the solution, as it seems that face-to-face meetings around a round table packed with people with subjective conclusions is the most effective way to solve problems.

  Current context

  Let’s look at it from another point of view. I daily attend a place called “the office” where the company tries, in most cases, to make it so that work is a pleasant and productive place to be. However, it would be more pleasant if I didn’t have to invest more than two hours each day in going to and from it to attend meetings when in most cases, things could be solved quicker and better by digital means. And it would be more productive if they let us work.

  Yes, you understood me, let us work, and I define work as being the action of performing one or several tasks in a structured and continuous manner, i.e. without distractions. And no, when I say distractions I don’t mean reading the sports results or updating your Twitter account with your thoughts, all that is the cigarette break of the 21st century, or perhaps it is worse to tweet than smoke? For some companies it is, and they are not Chinese companies.

  However, they don’t hesitate when calling a meeting for 10 people when the cause and the effect in all meetings are always the same.

  The Cause: They call us to a meeting due to a lack of coordination or communication with a client or department, and the organizer wants to exert their authority by investing 10 hours of the employees in the company. Yes, 10 people during 1 hour in basic arithmetic is 10 hours, and it means cutting short the tasks that each and every one of them were working on, as the meeting is urgent, like they always are.

  The Effects: The meeting has gone on until 3 in the afternoon, some of the attendees haven’t had time even for breakfast, many of them –me included– already say yes to anything and everything just to get out of the meeting room. The Cause continues to be the same, but more Causes that provoke the original Cause have been detected. Obviously, the Boss exerts his authority once again and calls as many meetings as new causes that have been detected. The problem or the cause has not been resolved, but the boss is on it. Now we are really worried.

  We’re in a new era, aren’t we?

  I understand that there are reasons in which we must solve or coordinate a situation that requires the collaboration of two or more people, but nobody is able to justify to me why a (mandatory) face-to-face meeting is better than an email, nor why my attendance during 3 hours is required, if my intervention can be summed up in 15 minutes, nor why I can’t participate using Social Communication tools, or even, if the situation requires it, for a conference call, nor what the numerous doodles on our notebooks or on the meeting room whiteboard are actually for. Couldn’t they be digitalized and shared on a digital collaborative platform?

  Leveraging digital platforms in companies helps to improve and optimize internal communications, reduces infrastructure costs considerably, and improves the information flow to and from the company, among its employees and with suppliers and customers. Flexi-time and telecommuting are a reality today that any company can put into practice with platforms like Zyncro. Strict working hours, forced interruptions, and unending work meetings are a thing of the past.

  Is your company suffering from meetingitis? Don’t you think it’s time to take some digital medication to cure it?

   
   
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  Marta Carrió 9:00 am on February 7, 2013 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: competitive advantage ( 2 ), hr ( 10 ), human resources ( 26 ), management ( 13 ), productivity, reputation ( 3 )   

  Times of Crisis? Invest in your Internal Reputation 

  Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

  Nowadays companies are confronted by the impact of the interests and needs of different collectives and individuals. For this reason, it is important for organizations to measure and analyze these strengths and expectations in order to adjust them to their strategic goals.

  Generally speaking in reputation management, promoting a strong internal reputation is often forgotten in organizations, although it is a key issue for increasing sales, for example. So while many companies are focusing their efforts on the sales area, it has been proven that sales increase when employees’ positive perceptions are greater than that of customers. Similarly, promoting a favorable internal reputation helps to capture and retain talent, reduce costs associated with crisis management, improve efficiency in the organization, as well as collaboration, engagement, communication, loyalty, and to identify and resolve internal conflicts.

  In times like the present, if companies are trying to improve their reputation by regaining customers’ loyalty and trust, they would be better off by change their priorities.

  The biggest threat to a company’s reputation is not its competitors, rather a lack of identification, motivation, communication, collaboration and not leveraging skills and abilities found within the company. For this reason, most reputational crises found today on the social networks originate with the employees.

  This unfavorable misalignment at an internal level cannot avoided by merely performing surveys on the work atmosphere or different group dynamics, rather it requires actively identifying and analyzing the relationships and roles of the different collectives and individuals in the organization according to the dimensions of the entity’s internal reputation (employee satisfaction and commitment) in order to design a response plan that enables it to refocus employees’ perceptions and attitudes towards the company.

  Enterprise Social Networks, like Zyncro, can help contribute and apply an Internal Reputation Assessment process, communicate the importance of participation across the board, creating alignment and trust; inform the entire company of how the process is being implemented, its participants, phases and results; or act as a feedback platform, among other aspects.

  So given all this, what are you waiting for to sell more, reduce costs and become more efficient? If you want to know more about how to manage internal reputation in your company, download our free whitepaper that we wrote in collaboration with Zyncro: Internal Reputation Assessment.

  Marta Carrió is Doctor in Corporate Reputation (UPF). She is also partner of Plan, a consultancy specialized in corporate reputation measurement, analysis and management.

   
   
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  ZyncroBlog 9:00 am on August 2, 2012 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: consulting ( 2 ), enterprise social networks ( 94 ), human resources ( 26 ), innovation ( 34 ), interview ( 15 ), productivity   

  Zyncro interviews Alicia Pomares: we need to lose our fear of Enterprise Social Networks 

  Estimated reading time + video: 5 minutes

  On this occasion, we are happy to bring you an interview with Alicia Pomares, partner and director of Humannova, a HR consultancy firm that works to encourage innovation in companies and implement Enterprise Social Networks, managing the organizational transformation. This interview is different to the previous ones we have brought you as it represents the flip side of the coin: it’s not about a company with an innovative spirit that is evolving towards the 2.0 world recounting its experiences or opinions, rather it is about an organization that battles to infuse companies with that social spirit and implement 2.0 systems, such as Enterprise Social Networks, that make companies a more effective, collaborative and social workplace. We’ll leave you with Alicia:

  It’s been a pleasure, Alicia! Thanks for the interview and for continuing to battle to ensure companies leave behind their fear of losing control Goodbye fear, hello Enterprise Social Networks!!

   
   
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  Joe Zyncro 9:00 am on June 15, 2012 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: efficiency, enterprise social networks ( 94 ), interview ( 15 ), productivity, social business ( 13 )   

  Zyncro talks to Steve Ellis from Wells Fargo: The future is packed with opportunities 

  Estimated reading time + video: 6 minutes.

  Today we bring you an interview that we conducted a few weeks ago with Steve Ellis from Wells Fargo. Steve is an authority on innovation who has managed to create a single internal culture, looking after that passion for work and the business culture being transmitted to all members and customers of the company, using technology as a catalyst for innovation and defying the limits of collaboration, driving his organization to work together not only internally but with customers.

  Steve explains to us how the world moves very fast: 25 years ago no one knew what an email was, yet nowadays we cannot live without it. However, according to this innovation authority, maybe email’s day has peaked, and it’s time to use other ways of communication like enterprise social networks and do away with internal communication via email. We’ll leave you with his thoughts:

  Thanks, Steve! It was a real pleasure meeting you at intra.NET Reloaded in Berlin and seeing your passion for innovation, which of course we share at Zyncro!

   
   
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  Carlos del Pozo 9:38 am on April 26, 2012 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: people ( 12 ), productivity, tasks   

  Zyncro Features: Tasks Section 

  Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

  What is the Tasks section?

  The Tasks section is a tab within Zyncro that lets users create and assign tasks to other members of the organization and to the users themselves.

  We’re going to give you a sneak peek at some of the features that we will be including in version 3.3 that will come out in a few weeks’ time. (Some, not all )

  

  What options are there within the Tasks section?

  • The tasks can be sorted by creation date, identification number, or even by deadline on which the task must be completed. There is also an option to display filtered tasks, for example, display only completed tasks or only pending ones.
  • What’s more, you can display a list with the tasks created and the following information on each one: Identification number, creation date, type, person responsible, task completion deadline and task status. And finally, a description for the task, where the work group is also shown. If you click on the task, you can change all these options, and there’s an option to flag the task for follow-up in the next meeting.
  • The “Create Task” button, as its name suggests, lets you add new tasks to the current list. Below you’ll find the steps for creating a task:

  How do I create tasks?

  There are two ways to create a task:

  

  A) Create a task within a group (for this you need to have task manager permissions within that group)

  1. Click on My Zyncro Account > Files & Groups
  2. Select the group where you want to create the task.
  3. Go to the Tasks tab and click on the “Create task” button.
  4. Enter a title, a description, assign the person in charge, select the task type and, if necessary, the deadline and the status.
  5. You can also add a comment that will be posted on the group’s wall together with the task creation event.
  6. To finish, click on “Save and create another task” to continue creating tasks, or “Save and close” to end task creation.

  B) Create a task directly in My Zyncro Account > Tasks; the difference is that with this option you need to add the group in which you want to create the task.

  Tasks tab within groups

  Within each group, there is a Tasks tab. Here you will find all the tasks associated with the group and its members. Users with task manager permissions can change the tasks from the same page by clicking on one of the tasks shown in the list.

  

  Create, manage and assign tasks to members in your organization from Zyncro!

   

  Zyncro 3.3: Manage your tasks better, control who follows you, and create rich messages « ZyncroBlog is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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  Juan Manuel Rodríguez 10:30 am on February 6, 2012 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: company ( 12 ), email ( 7 ), enterprise 2.0 ( 90 ), productivity, time   

  Time, the last frontier 

  Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

  

  First of all, let me introduce myself: I’m Juan Manuel Rodríguez. As of today, I’m part of the team of contributors in Zyncro who help spread the idea of what enterprise social networks are and how they can help us be more productive.

  The greatest challenge in this crisis is going farther with the same… or even with less. The unquestionable challenge is efficiency. It can be interpreted in every imaginable way: reducing the costs in raw materials, personnel, infrastructure, etc. but we always come across a barrier, a structural obstacle that is difficult to overcome.

  Only by improving efficiency in our team and in our information management can we cross that last frontier and continue to be competitive. Because, if we don’t, our competition will get there before us. This is the prime reason behind the explosion of tools like Zyncro, which aim to notably improve efficiency.

  “Time is the last frontier. Information overload results in time starvation. Technology lets us consume the information we receive with increasing efficiency.”
  (Alfons Cornella, in Update7 in Infonomía, November 2011)

  A few examples we can all identify with:

  Email abuse

  How many times have we silently sweared at those chain emails with 15 or 20 people in copy that don’t say anything important or urgent but constantly interrupt us? Or who has mailed a report to everyone for fear that the document will sit on the intranet without anyone knowing it exists? Email abuse in recent years has led many companies to declare Fridays as “email-free days”, for example, achieving notably improved results! It gives us food for thought, doesn’t it?

  Improductive meetings

  When it comes down to it, we all know that many follow-up meetings are a complete waste of time. Most of the time they cover things that could have been transmitted much sooner, in real time. We could have saved the valuable time of all those gathered there to do essentially nothing. Leave those face-to-face meetings for quick decision-making and not for communicating something that should be already known before you walk through the door.

  The key idea, the common factor in these examples and the great many more that we could give, is the challenge to assign the appropriate time and means for each type of information and interaction. If something is really important, pick up the phone and call. Or use instant messaging. For the rest of the information to flow with the appropriate priority (i.e. so that the team communicates efficiently), we need tools that enable us to readjust that balance between importance, the means for storing it and the time when we can be interrupted.

  Can you imagine a day where you’re only disturbed with really essential interruptions?
  Having all the information you need updated and sorted, available for when you decide to check it?

  This means creating a range of communication intervals, beyond the limited number we’re used to: email, telephone, chat, intranet and face-to-face meetings. If social networks outside the company’s walls have enabled those “grey” intervals, between the “white” of our friends who we talk to almost every day by telephone and the “black” of those who we don’t have time to even send an email every few months, a change in paradigm similar to that is occurring in companies for managing information.

  The enterprise social network Zyncro has been designed to achieve that rebalance, using an environment similar to that which users are familiar with for personal use, such as Facebook or Twittter, but that has been fully integrated and adapted to the needs and goals of the business environment. What’s more, these tools encourage all members of the team to participate in ways unknown until now and enables us to discover talent and intra-entrepreneurs who we may already have in our team… without even knowing it! But we’ll talk more about that in the next post!

   
   
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  josep vilajoana 1:12 pm on January 9, 2012 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaboration ( 56 ), communication 2.0 ( 60 ), corporate networks ( 8 ), enterprise social networks ( 94 ), Intranet 2.0 ( 18 ), productivity, teamwork ( 23 )   

  Enterprise Social Networks: crazes, trends and needs 

  Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

  Editor’s note: Josep Vilajoana Celaya is Dean of the Col·legi Oficial de Psicòlegs de Catalunya (Official College of Psychologists of Catalonia), an institution that has just implemented its own enterprise social network. He has been kind enough to write this post for our ZyncroBlog. Thanks, Josep, for your contribution!

  We follow trends and at the same time, we treat them with certain distain, dubbing them as “simply a craze”. Generally speaking, companies are late in joining the trends. However, any company that gets in on the bottom floor and is one of the first to sign up for what later becomes a major trend possesses a major source of differentiation, something that many others struggle tool and nail to achieve.

  Enterprise social networks seemed to be a craze at first, but now we can see that they are here to stay and companies are starting to consider incorporating them in their internal management systems. Statistics seem to indicate that up until now, only major corporations were experimenting with the idea. But what can we learn from them? Well, the usual idea: anything that addresses a real need has greater possibilities of lasting over time, at least until a new innovation covers that need or the market evolves, making that need vanish.

  Possibly, due to needs, the environment that we now call “Social Networks” will be reorganized shortly. Now tools have been merged, with purposes as different as those sought with walls, microblogging, blogs, wikis, and even instant messaging, chats, video conferences, that undoubtedly were not created as networks initially, but that help to improve relationships.

  One of the key points for the success of an enterprise social network lies in having tools that focus on a specific goal, an aim that should be measurable and aligned with the organization’s objectives and strategies.

  There’s much debate regarding the importance of anonymity when this should equally respond to the characteristics of use made of the networks. In some cases, anonymity may be necessary. However, on the other hand, if the purpose is to generate innovative ideas, more than likely in most of these cases, such anonymity is an obstacle and those that use enterprise social networks for this purpose would prefer that the whole organization, even those beyond its walls, knew who the author of the idea is.

  At Col·legi Oficial de Psicòlegs de Catalunya, we’ve made a firm committment to combining ideas, and encouraging innovation and relationships through our enterprise social network. There, different sections of our association can discover the evolution in Society’s needs in real time, suggest solutions, investigate and innovate together and of course, communicate the results of their work to the rest of the community. In short, an enterprise social network is a space for relationships, leading to promote knowledge transfer.

  Now more than ever, sharing what you know is key to quickly adapting to changes.