by Katy Beloof on January 26, 2018
To stay competitive in today’s rapidly changing business world, companies need to make better decisions faster. To do so, senior business leaders must rethink how their teams get work done.
A recent study by 451 Research takes an in-depth look at the changing nature of work, the limits of traditional tools, and how business leaders can adapt going forward. It proposes a new paradigm for work management that gives businesses the ability to balance structure and flexibility to gain a competitive edge. Complex, Strategic Work Has Become Everyone’s Job
Business leaders and their teams are taking on complex work in unprecedented ways. Work that used to fall to specialists, analysts, and process experts is being decentralized and becoming the responsibility of everyone on the team. Business leaders are having to learn how to help their teams manage strategic work processes to achieve business outcomes.
So what does this decentralization of complex and specialist work look like on the ground?
Complex work is being decentralized across all departments and industries. And these aren’t small, one-off projects. Nearly half (46%) of the business leaders surveyed reported that it’s standard for them to supervise more than 200 distinct stages of a given project, and 75% report that it’s typical for more than 100 people to be involved over the duration of a project.
by Katy Beloof on March 12, 2018
Is organizational complexity making it difficult for your teams to successfully accomplish projects on time and within budget? Multiple communication channels combined with cross-functional teamwork can cloud accountability and muddle decision-making authority, resulting in a lack of employee ownership in a project or process.
One solution to this lack of ownership and its effect on performance is “clear pressure”, a form of peer pressure based on the idea of giving employees real-time visibility into the progress of everyone’s work, so they can hold each other — and themselves — to a higher standard. But are the tools that provide visibility enough to create a culture of clear pressure? Or do leaders need to think more broadly about a solution?
by Katy Beloof on February 20, 2018
In order to stay competitive, business leaders must find new ways to make better decisions faster. A critical part of this is establishing visibility, or making sure the right people have access to the right information at the right time — in real time.
Businesses leaders need a way to free up employees to move swiftly and empower them with the information they need to execute. Leaders also need a way to see how day-to-day work is progressing, to keep their teams on track. At the same time, they need to ensure that high-level information is accurately and promptly communicated to the C-Suite, so they can more quickly make the critical decisions needed to move the business forward. With these challenges in mind, here’s a look at the three layers of visibility organizations need to make better decisions faster, execute more quickly on new initiatives, and ultimately thrive in today’s competitive market.
by Kelly Anthony on January 29, 2014
Spreadsheets have come a long, long way over the years, and plenty of companies today are duking it out to build the best one. So we took a look at the evolution of the spreadsheet and which elements make the best one to serve the way you work today and into the future.
Take a look...
by Chris Magill on January 25, 2017
I recently participated in a customer security review to give an overview of Smartsheet's security architecture and how we utilize Security Enhanced (or SE) Linux. "SELinux in Enforcing mode is definitely secure," the customer responded, "... provided you were actually able to get it to work."
The customer’s skepticism was understandable… in fact, I’ve heard this same reaction many times over. When I review Smartsheet’s security architecture with customers, one of the main topics that I discuss is the fact that our application is built on Security Enhanced Linux operating in Enforcing mode. In Information Security circles, it’s a well-known secure operating system.
by Chris Magill on February 2, 2017
As more enterprises undertake digital transformation, cloud services and solutions are one of the top technology investments that CIOs plan to make this year. Yet security and privacy remains the top concern for CIOs going into 2017. This doesn’t mean that CIOs should rethink their strategy, but it does reflect the need for thorough vetting of security for any cloud services or solutions IT buyers plan to add to their portfolio.
Here are three questions to ask when assessing SaaS software to get a clearer picture of security: Make Collaboration Work: Empower teams to execute with agility, speed, and accountability.1/15/2018
As initiatives get bigger and headcounts get smaller at large organizations, business leaders are challenged to do more with less. Despite their best efforts, it’s easy for productivity to tank when time-wasting workplace conventions and habits continue.
Common unproductive tasks can lead workers to spend less than half of their time on their main jobs. One survey found that U.S. employees at enterprise companies of 1000 or more employees only spend 45% of their time on primary job duties. The other 55% is spent on email, meetings, administrative tasks, and interruptions. Here’s a look at five time-wasters that are draining your team’s productivity and taking time away from creative and innovative work, and what you can do to help them get more of the important stuff done.
The new year is often a time for reflection — a time to think about what we’ve accomplished and what we can do better next year. To help you have an even greater impact in 2018, we wanted share five of the best new features in Smartsheet that came out in the last year and review best practices on how to use them to effectively manage team work.
Here are five pro tips to help drive your success with Smartsheet in 2018. Pro Tip 1: Card View Card View gives teams a more visual way to communicate, collaborate, prioritize and organize work. Not familiar with Card View? Card View is inspired by Kanban boards - a work visualization style designed to let teams easily manage their work. Using Card View, the columns and rows in Smartsheet are replaced by lanes of cards that let you visually track the flow of your work from start to finish. To find out the latest tips and tricks for using Card View, watch the webinar below. You can also learn more about what you can do with Card View from our help article here, or access the card view templates in the template gallery here. How much time does your team actually save when you use technology to get your work done on a daily basis? The benefits of technology aren’t hard to characterize, but quantifying time savings can be, especially with emerging technology like work management platforms.
Smartsheet commissioned a study conducted by Forrester Consulting1 this past summer to quantify the total economic impact for enterprise customers, and the findings are significant: As shown by a composite organization, Smartsheet helps business leaders improve their productivity by 15% – saving over 300 hours each year. |
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