by Staff Writer
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Have you done anything different this past week? Something you’ve never done before?

It might be something as simple as talking to a coworker you haven’t met before, or trying a new way to complete a task. Or maybe something bigger, like taking a training course on a topic you’ve been wanting to learn more about, or signing up to speak at a conference.  
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by Stephen Danos
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Before founding his own company, Kevin Carroll led and contributed to teams of all shapes and sizes. He served in the Air Force as a translator, was Head Athletic Trainer for the Philadelphia 76ers, and facilitated change at Nike as a “Katalyst” — a role where he helped leaders and teams reach their creative potential through balancing play and productivity.

Suffice to say, Mr. Carroll knows the value of how clear communication, visibility, and creative confidence make teams of all types productive.

After giving a guest talk at Smartsheet, he took time to chat with us about his philosophy on structured play, what makes for successful teams, and how leaders can create a positive environment for speedier business execution. Out of this talk emerged three traits that impactful leaders need to build trust and stay motivated.

In addition, he shared how to build an inclusive, winning workplace culture, and some relevant books that all leaders should read.
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by Staff Writer

Project managers at companies of all sizes have to choose from an ever-evolving collection of work management techniques. Out of the gate, they need to know if a given methodology — whether it’s Lean, Waterfall, or Agile — fits with their company and cross-functional department objectives, culture, and speed of business.

So, how do you know which work management techniques are the most important? And which ones will actually help make your project a success? Many factors can hinder the success of a project,  but the critical path method can help keep projects on track and budget.
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While it was originally a time-consuming, hand-drawn set of diagrams, today you can use Smartsheet, a work execution platform, to instantly track the critical path or the most important tasks that, if missed, will delay your entire project — with just a click of a button.
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Here’s what you need to know about critical path, why you should use it in your next project, and how Smartsheet helps you tie critical path to automated actions, status updates, and approvals to help your team move faster than ever before.
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by Staff Writer
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In order to keep up with momentum, high-growth companies are consistently expanding their workforces – in the private sector alone, job creation has been on the rise for seven straight years.

But adding new headcount isn’t a guarantee your growing needs will be met. The speed at which businesses run today requires new employees to hit the ground running.

Unfortunately, onboarding processes — the mechanisms through which new employees learn the skills, cultural norms, and other requirements they need to succeed — can often be lacking. In one recent study, more than three quarters of HR leaders reported that onboarding processes are underutilized at their companies.

In the long term, successful onboarding helps to drive employee engagement and job satisfaction. But more immediately, having a well-designed onboarding process ensures that new employees have all the tools and knowledge they need to succeed — and to succeed fast.  

Here are five ways to accelerate new employee productivity and make the most out of new talent.
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by Stephen Danos

When leaders move with speed, whether in decision-making or in running efficient meetings, the benefits can spread throughout an entire organization.

Studies show that leaders ranked in the top 10 percent based on their leadership speed see positive results in the attitudes of their direct reports — 63 percent of whom say they would do everything possible to make their company successful.

That’s according to the book Speed: How Leaders Accelerate Successful Execution, in which the authors propose that there is no statistical downside to speed, as long as leaders take the time to periodically pause and reassess whether their efforts are aligned to their organization's overall strategy.

Business leaders who avoid these five common pitfalls can motivate their teams to execute more quickly — and at a higher level.
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by Stephen Danos
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At the enterprise level, these undesired outcomes tend to stem from problems caused by increased organizational complexity, murky accountability, and an overabundance of data that cause decision makers to suffer from analysis paralysis.

Getting on the path to better decision making starts with recognizing and addressing these challenges — often with the help of the right enterprise-grade work-execution tool.
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by Katy Beloof on January 24, 2018
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According to Gallup’s recent State of the Global Workplace report, 85% of employees are not engaged — or are actively disengaged — at work. The economic consequence of this translates to approximately $7 trillion in lost productivity.

Gallup defines this overwhelming majority of disengaged employees as those who consistently give you their time, but not their best efforts. These are employees who show up on time, put in their eight or nine hours, and head home, without contributing their best work or ideas. 

Finding and retaining top talent has been a concern for companies for quite some time. But keeping that talent engaged at work proves equally challenging — and failing to do so is costly. There may be an answer to this lost productivity in using automation to free up employee time to focus on more meaningful, business-critical work. 
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by Stephen Danos on April 20, 2018

In today’s workplaces, the borders between teams, departments, and roles are blurrier than ever before. “Borderless teams” can be distributed across the globe or just down the hall from one another. They offer increased flexibility, reduced costs, and can be a powerful recruiting tool.
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by Katy Beloof on March 12, 2018
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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?
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by Katy Beloof on February 23, 2018
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How many times have you walked out of a meeting and realized that no decisions were made, no action steps planned, and really, nothing was accomplished? While meetings are essential for collaboration and making critical decisions quickly, many meetings are unproductive debates or status updates that don’t achieve anything.

Before you schedule your next meeting, ask these five questions to ensure you’re using meetings the right way.
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