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Building strong networks and relationships with stakeholders is key. With this in mind, mastering effective communication can be the difference between success and failure.

Communication is the foundation for all work relationships. This holds true for anything from running a business to managing a team and interacting with clients, investors or corporate partners.

In this Communication Strategies Handbook, we'll share examples, hacks, workflows, and templates to help you improve your day-to-day communication with anyone. This article covers:

  • Individual communication: Your individual communication style: become an assertive communicator.
  • Organizational communication: Clearly communicate goals and objectives through your organizational strategy.
  • Stakeholder communication: Effectively communicate with external stakeholders: leads, clients, partners.

Let's dive in and learn how to implement effective communication strategies examples across all areas of your work.

Your individual communication style: become an assertive communicator

Mastering individual communication requires skill, as some types of communication styles can spark conflict. Before diving deeper into the topic, let’s jump into the definition first:

Individual communication strategies: A communication strategy in this context refers to a personal plan or approach developed to effectively convey thoughts, ideas, and messages. These strategies aim to improve interpersonal relationships, and foster better collaboration.

A well-crafted approach to individual communication empowers you to navigate conversations with ease. Next up we cover how and why you should prioritize assertiveness for your strategy.

Prioritizing assertiveness in your individual communication strategy

The most common communication styles are assertive, passive, aggressive, and passive-aggressive. From the different styles, assertiveness is the only one that creates clear, direct and respectful interactions on a daily basis.

Assertive communicators express their ideas clearly and confidently while also respecting the opinions and ideas of others. This can help create a more effective and efficient environment for collaboration.

Note that incorporating assertiveness in your individual communication strategy can be challenging. You have to navigate personalities, dynamic social environments, and your own ever-changing moods.

If you want to become more assertive, we discuss how to do so in this dedicated article. Bonus, we also share a free step-by-step template on how to become more assertive.

individual communication strategies template

Keep goals and objectives in check with an organizational strategy

Efficient organizational strategies steer decision-making, prioritize work, and synchronize team communication strategies throughout the company. When properly implemented, internal communication strategies pave the way for success.

To start, let’s define business communication strategies in the context of an organization:

Communication strategies in business: The systematic planning and execution of methods that ensure clear, consistent, and purposeful information exchange. These strategies facilitate collaboration and improve decision-making towards achieving the organization's goals and objectives.

Components of communication in an organizational strategy include:

1. Internal communication channels: Establish appropriate channels for information flow, such as emails, meetings, and messaging platforms.

2. Clear messaging and guidelines: Develop messages that are concise, coherent, and easily understood. This way you can provide employees with the necessary information to perform their tasks.

3. Open feedback culture: Encourage a transparent environment where employees can share their thoughts, suggestions, and concerns. This fosters continuous improvement and innovation.

4. Goal alignment: Communicate organizational goals and objectives to ensure employees understand their role in the organization. This promotes a sense of unity and shared purpose.

5. Consistent updates and progress reports: Regularly share key updates, successes, and challenges with employees. This keeps everyone informed and engagedon the latest updates.

6. Training and support: Provide employees with the necessary tools, resources, and training. This enables them to improve their communication skills and adapt to new technologies.

By integrating effective communication strategies in the workplace, you can create a cohesive, well-informed team. This way everyone works collaboratively towards achieving the company's goals and objectives.

How to define your complete organizational strategy

To create a complete strategy for your organization, it's essential to comprehend the internal and external factors affecting your business. This typically includes establishing a vision, performing market and internal assessments, and outlining an implementation plan.

Start developing your very own organizational strategy with our free, step-by-step template. Ensure you follow the steps sequentially, as they are designed to build upon one another.

Define organizational communication strategies template

Effectively communicate with external stakeholders: leads, clients, partners

External stakeholders require many communication touch points. After defining your personal communication style and organizational strategy, it’s time to focus on external stakeholders.

First things first, let’s dive into the definition of strategy under this context:

Stakeholder communication strategies – These strategies aim to build trust, foster collaboration, and achieve mutually beneficial outcomes with external parties. This involves designing and implementing methods that facilitate clear, concise, and impactful exchanges.

Effectively communicating with external stakeholders—leads, clients, and partners—is crucial for building strong business relationships. Key components include:

  1. Understand their needs: Listen carefully and empathize with stakeholders' concerns and expectations. This creates trust and a solid foundation for collaboration.
  2. Tailor your message: Customize your communication style to match the preferences of each stakeholder. Adapt your tone, language, and approach to resonate with them.
  3. Be transparent and honest: Share relevant information and maintain open lines of communication. Honesty promotes trust, credibility, and long-lasting partnerships.
  4. Set clear expectations: Define roles, responsibilities, and objectives for all parties. This minimizes confusion and ensures everyone is on the same page.
  5. Provide timely feedback: Share updates and progress reports regularly. Prompt feedback keeps stakeholders engaged and informed.
  6. Be open to feedback: Encourage stakeholders to voice their opinions and concerns. Their input can bring valuable insights and improvements to the table.

Mastering these skills helps you forge lasting connections with external stakeholders, contributing to the growth and success of your business. Read on to learn how to implement this as a workflow on the daily.

Effectively manage all your channels with external stakeholders

Managing stakeholder communication channels requires dedicated workflows.

Here is a step-by-step process to incorporate external stakeholders in your communication strategies:

  1. Identify appropriate channels: Determine which communication channels best suit the needs and preferences of each stakeholder. Options may include personalized email, newsletter, phone calls, webinars, face-to-face meetings and social media platforms.
  2. Set channel-specific guidelines: Establish guidelines for each communication channel, addressing aspects such as tone, response time, and content. Consistency in your approach helps maintain professionalism and clarity.
  3. Centralize information: Store and organize stakeholder contact information, communication history, and preferences. This ensures everyone on your team has access to up-to-date information.
  4. Assign responsibilities: Clearly designate team members responsible for managing specific channels and stakeholder relationships. This ensures accountability and prevents communication gaps.
  5. Adapt to stakeholder preferences: Stay flexible and adjust your communication channels based on stakeholder feedback and changing preferences. Demonstrating adaptability can strengthen relationships and improve collaboration.

By effectively managing your communication channels with external stakeholders, you can enhance relationships, drive collaboration, and contribute to the overall success of your business.

Get started with the stakeholder management template for free! Create task cards, invite team members and keep communications on track within a single project space.

Communication strategies stakeholder management template

Communication strategies handbook, get started with free and easy to access resources and templates

It's crucial to emphasize the importance of building robust networks and relationships with stakeholders. In this article we cover communication strategies to improve conversations, align the team and interact with stakeholders.

Now that you've gained valuable insights into implementing strategies for effective communication, you're ready to apply these skills across all aspects of your professional life.

May 30, 2023
January 12, 2024

Communication Strategies Handbook: Tips, Workflows & Templates

Nicolaas Spijker
Editorial @ Rock
5 min read

Some communication styles can generate conflict. This can be an issue if you want to build a healthy culture and productive team. Get more out of daily interactions by learning how to spot each type and react accordingly.

Assertive, passive, aggressive, and passive-aggressive are the most common types of communication styles. If you want to nurture clear, direct, and respectful interactions, then prioritizing the assertive conversation style is key.

This article walks you through the following:

  • Defining types of communicators
  • Assertive communicators: benefits & how to become one
  • How to interact with other communicators

Read on if you want to master the art of assertiveness.

You can also get started with our free template with a step-by-step process to master the art of assertiveness. 🎁
Types of communication styles assertive work template

Different types of communication styles: definitions

To master your communication skills, it's essential to understand common 4 styles of communication. Recognizing communication patterns allows you to take action and stay confident and productive in conversations.

What is your communication style? Let's dive into the 4 most common conversation styles:

  • Passive Communication: Often characterized by avoiding conflict, passive communicators may not express their thoughts or feelings. They prioritize others' needs, sometimes at the expense of their own.
  • Aggressive Communication: Aggressive communicators express themselves forcefully, often dominating conversations. They may disregard others' opinions, feelings, and overall presence.  
  • Assertive Communication: Striking a balance, assertive communicators express themselves openly and respectfully. This style fosters clear communication, healthy boundaries, and positive relationships.
  • Passive-Aggressive Communication: This style involves the indirect expression of feelings. Passive-aggressive communicators often use sarcasm or subtle actions to convey their message.

Embracing the art of assertiveness is key if you want to be effective and efficient in your communication.

Assertive types of communicators nurture effective and respectful conversations. Qualities of assertive speakers are often related to leadership communication styles. Let’s dive further into that!

Types of communication styles: the art of assertive communication

Assertive communication is a game-changer. People who have perfected this conversation style perfectly balance between passive and aggressive types of communication styles. Assertive communicators express themselves confidently while respecting others.

No more tiptoeing around issues. Assertiveness empowers you to state your needs and opinions. Communication with this style is about honest, open conversations.

"Assertiveness is not what you do, it's who you are!" - Shakti Gawain

How can someone master assertiveness you ask? Embrace active listening, clear language, and empathy. Here are some types of communication strategies for assertive speakers:

  • Active Listening: Understand others' viewpoints. No more misinterpretations or assumptions. Pay full attention, provide feedback, and ask questions.
  • Clarity:  Assertiveness demands straightforward, concise expressions. Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Avoid jargon, over-complicated phrases, or beating around the bush.
  • Empathy: Put yourself in others' positions. Acknowledge their feelings and viewpoints without judgment. Assertiveness is about mutual respect, not bulldozing over others' opinions.

Assertiveness is often associated with leadership communication styles because it embodies a balance of respect for oneself and others

Combine the aforementioned skills to master assertive communication patterns. We share a hands-on workflow you can start with today to become a more assertive communicator. Get started now or read on to see what’s included!

Becoming more assertive: 6 actionable steps you can implement today

Being an assertive communicator is easier said than done. People, ever-changing social environments, and internal mood factors can all play into how you communicate.

There is no “one-fits-all” path to becoming an assertive communicator. Nevertheless, we’ve gone ahead and summarized 6 activities anyone can start with today that will put you on the right path:

  1. Observe and Learn: Identify assertive types of communicators you admire. Observe their techniques and demeanor. Try booking between 1 and 3 coffee chats to discuss assertive communication with your role models.
  2. Prepare and Plan: Before engaging in challenging conversations, prepare and plan. Outline your key points and desired outcomes. Anticipate potential objections and responses.
  3. Embrace Assertive Phrases: Incorporate assertive phrases into your vocabulary. Examples include: "I believe," "I would like," and "I prefer." These statements convey conviction and self-assurance.
  4. Give and Receive Criticism: Learn to provide and accept constructive criticism. Focus on behavior, not personal traits. Offer suggestions for improvement, and receive feedback gracefully.
  5. Watch TED Talks: Watch TED Talks on assertiveness, communication, and confidence. Learn from inspiring speakers, and apply their wisdom to your life.
  6. Use Affirmations: Recite daily affirmations to reinforce your assertiveness. Positive statements like "I am confident in expressing my needs" help rewire your mindset.
Curious to learn more about each activity? Get started with the “Art of Assertiveness” template! The step-by-step template includes more details, checklists, notes and more resources, all for free.
assertive work to do tasks in a project management template

How to effectively collaborate with other types of communicators

Assertive communicators possess the skills to articulate thoughts and emotions with clarity and respect. Nevertheless, to collaborate effectively, you must adapt to the diverse communication profiles found within your team or network.

Next up, we delve into strategies that enable successful interactions with passive, aggressive, and passive-aggressive communication patterns.

By honing this adaptability, you can cultivate thriving relationships with different conversation styles, significantly improving relationships across the board. The next sections cover types of communication strategies for managing other communicators.

Empowering Passive Communicators: Encourage Openness and Confidence

Passive communicators tend to avoid expressing their thoughts, feelings, and needs directly. This can lead to misunderstandings and unaddressed concerns. As an assertive communicator, you can play a pivotal role in empowering passive communicators.

Foster an environment that encourages openness and confidence in conversation styles by implementing some of these strategies:

1. Create a Safe Space: Establish a supportive and non-threatening atmosphere where passive communicators feel comfortable sharing their thoughts. Show empathy, maintain a non-judgmental attitude, and actively listen to their concerns.

2. Use Open-Ended Questions: Encourage passive communicators to open up by asking open-ended questions that require more than a simple yes or no answer. This approach demonstrates your interest in their perspective and support for them to share their thoughts.

Example: Instead of asking, "Did you agree with the decision?" try "What are your thoughts on the decision we made?"

3. Provide Reassurance and Validation: Validate the passive communicator's feelings and opinions to help build their confidence. Reassure them that their input is valued and essential to the team's success.

Example: "I appreciate your perspective on this issue, and I think it's important for us to consider all possible angles."

4. Encourage Gradual Assertiveness: Help passive communicators develop their assertiveness by providing opportunities to practice expressing their thoughts and needs. Start with smaller, less intimidating situations and gradually progress to more challenging contexts.

5. Offer Constructive Feedback: Provide feedback on the passive communicator's progress, highlighting their achievements while offering guidance for further improvement. Be supportive and patient as they work towards becoming more assertive.

By empowering passive communicators to express themselves with openness and confidence, you can enhance collaboration and foster stronger, more effective relationships within your team or network.

Become an assertive communicator, get started now with “The Art of Assertiveness” template!
Types of communication styles assertive work template

Managing Aggressive Communicators: Navigating Confrontation with Tact

Aggressive communicators often express their thoughts and feelings in a forceful manner, potentially leading to conflicts and strained relationships. Here are some strategies you can employ to manage interactions with aggressive communicators.

1. Remain Calm and Composed: When faced with aggressive communication, maintain your composure and respond calmly. Demonstrating emotional control can help de-escalate tensions and encourage more constructive conversation styles.

2. Practice Active Listening: Ensure the aggressive communicator feels heard by actively listening to their concerns. Use verbal and non-verbal cues, such as nodding or summarizing their points, to show that you are genuinely trying to understand their perspective.

3. Set Boundaries: Assertively communicate your boundaries, making it clear that you expect respectful and professional behavior. This may involve interrupting an aggressive communicator and stating your expectations.

Example: "I understand you're upset, but I would like us to discuss this issue respectfully and calmly."

4. Use "I" Statements: Express your thoughts and feelings using "I" statements to reduce defensiveness and convey your perspective without placing blame.

Example: Instead of saying, "You're not listening to me," try "I feel unheard when my concerns are dismissed."

5. Focus on Common Ground: Identify shared goals or interests to redirect the conversation toward a more collaborative and solution-oriented approach. By emphasizing common ground, you can foster a sense of teamwork and mutual understanding.

6. Know When to Disengage: Recognize when a conversation with an aggressive communicator is unproductive or emotionally draining. If necessary, disengage from the conversation and suggest reconvening at a later time.

Example: "It seems we're not making progress right now. Let's take a break and come back to this discussion later with fresh perspectives."

By employing these strategies, you can effectively manage interactions with aggressive communicators. Navigate confrontations with tact, and maintain a respectful and productive environment.

Become an assertive communicator, get started now with “The Art of Assertiveness” template!
Types of communication styles assertive work template

Transforming Passive-Aggressiveness: Fostering an Assertive Mindset

To help passive-aggressive communicators adopt an assertive mindset and enhance collaboration, consider these concise types of communication strategies:

  1. Identify Signs: Recognize passive-aggressive behaviors, such as subtle criticism or avoidance.
  2. Promote Directness: Encourage open, honest communication by asking open-ended questions.
  3. Validate Emotions: Acknowledge and validate their emotions and perspectives to build trust.
  4. Lead by Example: Model assertive communication in your interactions.
  5. Offer Feedback: Provide constructive feedback on their progress towards more direct communication.
  6. Create a Supportive Environment: Foster a non-judgmental atmosphere that encourages open dialogue and assertiveness.

Implementing these strategies can help transform passive-aggressive behaviors. This can lead to improved collaboration and stronger relationships within your team or network.

Become an assertive communicator, get started now with “The Art of Assertiveness” template!
Types of communication styles assertive work template

Leadership Communication Styles: Time To Go Assertive

Now that you understand the 4 styles of communication it’s time to take action! Adopt leadership communication styles to employ effective communication strategies. Nurture productive work relationships and create a thriving team or network environment.

Keep all the important resources close to you with our “The Art of Assertiveness” template. Inside, we offer a workflow for becoming more assertive and resources on different communication patterns.

Get started today and invite team members or other contacts to join you in the space and discuss. Work with tasks, notes, files and meetings in the same space, all for free!

Template assertive communication at work

May 25, 2023
October 4, 2023

Types Of Communication Styles: The Art Of Assertiveness

Nicolaas Spijker
Editorial @ Rock
5 min read

I wanted to share some important changes we are making to Rock.

Two years ago, we opened Rock to the public and thousands of people now use Rock to get work done with their team, clients, and customers. We know a lot of you love the product we’ve built and we are truly thankful for that.

With Rock we set out to build a productivity tool that would simplify how teams get work done. We also wanted to make this tool as accessible as possible by providing a lot of functionality for free or at a substantially lower price than alternative solutions. 

Building a product like Rock is hard and requires a lot of skill, resources, and commitment from our team and the reality is that all of this is not sustainable with the pricing we had in place. We have also heard from users that our existing paid plans are too complicated and that they felt too much nickeled-and-dimed for additional functionality beyond the free plan. 

Today, we’re making a change to our free and paid plans to allow us to keep building a great product while still keeping Rock simple to use and as accessible as possible.

Changes

  • The Unlimited Plan - We are introducing a new paid plan called Unlimited which will replace the current PRO and TEAMS plans. This plan takes all the premium features in Rock and combines them into one easy to use, unlimited plan. We’re not doing per user pricing for this plan so you don’t have to worry about costs spiraling out of control while your business scales. This plan starts at $49 per month with discounts for existing customers, NGOs, and educational institutions. Read more
  • Changes to the Free plan - The Free plan will continue to have unlimited 1:1 spaces and messages, but will now have limits on group spaces, tasks, notes, and other features. In most cases, this will allow anyone to use Rock for small to mid sized projects for free. Read more

Even with these changes, Rock costs considerably less compared to for instance a combination of Slack and Trello as these charge per user, don’t easily allow you to add guest users for free, and or put other limitations on their products. With the new, simple-to-use Unlimited plan – we hope more people will now be able to benefit from all the new features we’ve built in the last couple of months.

So what’s next?

We know that this might change how you currently use Rock so we want to make this transition as seamless as possible and provide different options to help you decide what to do next:

  1. The changes to the Free plan will take effect in 14 days. None of your conversations, tasks, notes, or files will be lost if you’re over the new limits on the free plan. In most cases, you will still be able to read everything, but you might not be able to edit/make any changes unless you upgrade or decrease your Rock usage. 
  2. As before you can always export all your account data and tasks for each space without limitations.
  3. If you’re on a PRO plan, your subscription will expire at the end of your payment period. This could be within a month or within a year, and you can upgrade to Unlimited at any time. As an existing customer you will get an automatic 30% discount off the monthly or annual plan if you do decide to upgrade.
  4. If you’re on the TEAMS plan, you will be switched to the Unlimited plan at no additional cost to you. 

Your support

As a current Rock user, you will receive a message in the Rock Support and Updates space with further information about upcoming pricing changes. If you have any questions or need additional information, please visit our Pricing page, check the Unlimited Plan page, email us at support@rock.so or connect with us at https://space.new/support.

Making this change today will allow us to simplify how people access all of our premium features while also allowing us to keep building a product that is loved by thousands of people. We hope we can count on your continued support. Thank you! 🙏

May 20, 2023
April 25, 2024

Updates on our plans and pricing

Announcements
Kenzo Fong
CEO & founder
5 min read

Your most valuable asset is time. You can never have enough of it, and you can’t make more of it.

Time shouldn’t be wasted – be it yours or anyone else’s. In an ideal world, every meeting in your working schedule is effective and value-adding. However, that’s often just not the case.

Thus, knowing how to cancel a meeting becomes a valuable skill to possess in today’s work culture. This is especially true if you don’t want to burn bridges while gaining back productive time.

Our “How to cancel a meeting” roadmap walks you through:

  • Valid reasons for sending a meeting cancellation notice
  • Channels to cancel meetings: when to use each one & examples
  • The basics of canceling a meeting
  • How to avoid cancellations altogether

You can also access all information from this roadmap in a dedicated project template! Edit and personalize information, engage with others and access meeting cancellation resources and custom workflows.

Ready to become a well-rounded expert on canceling meetings? Read along or get started with the dedicated FREE template!

Free template on how to cancel a meeting

Valid reasons for sending a meeting cancellation notice

Cancelling a meeting can be a tricky situation, but sometimes it's necessary. When it comes to deciding whether or not to cancel a meeting, consider the reasoning.

Next up we explore some scenarios that are often perceived as justified reasons for cancelling a meeting:

  • Lack of Preparation or key information: If crucial information or resources are not available, it might be wiser to postpone the meeting to ensure a more productive discussion.
  • Unavailability of key participants: In some cases, a meeting loses its purpose if certain attendees are unable to participate. If the absence of one or more key participants would render the meeting unproductive, reschedule.
  • Double-Booking: Mistakes happen, and sometimes meetings get double-booked or overlap with other important events. In these situations, it's important to evaluate the priority of each meeting and cancel or reschedule the one with lower urgency.
  • You have no input: There are some meetings where you may not add a lot of value or input to the conversation. This is especially true if the topic at hand doesn’t involve your department, or doesn’t require your expertise.
  • Insufficient Agenda or Objectives: If the purpose or meeting agenda is unclear or lacks specific goals, it might be best to cancel. Maybe try reorganizing the meeting with a more focused objective.

Remember, before thinking about how to cancel a meeting, what are valid reasons within the organizational culture of your team?

Critically assess whether the meeting should be held and what the value of your presence is. Whether the meeting should be canceled, rescheduled or move on without you, it’s important to take action.

The meeting cancellation template highlights these reasons and more! Work together and adapt the template to reflect when meetings should be canceled within your organization.
Valid reasons to cancel a meeting

6 Channels to cancel meetings: when to use each one & examples

When canceling a meeting, it's important to choose the appropriate channel of communication to ensure that all participants are informed in a timely and professional manner. Here are some of the most relevant channels to consider when canceling a meeting:

  • Email
  • Phone call
  • Chat message
  • Calendar cancellation
  • In-person
  • Asynchronous video

1. How to cancel a meeting with a cancellation email

A cancel meeting email is a widely used and efficient method. It's suitable for most situations, particularly when you need to inform a large group of people or provide detailed information about the cancellation.

  • When to use: Use email for most cancellations, including scheduling conflicts, lack of preparation, insufficient agenda, or low attendance.
  • How to politely cancel a meeting example: "Dear team, Due to unforeseen scheduling conflicts, we need to cancel tomorrow's project update meeting. We'll reschedule for a later date and update the calendar invite. Apologies for any inconvenience.”

Learn more about using email when thinking about how to cancel a meeting through the dedicated template!

"Meetings should be like salt - a spice sprinkled carefully to enhance a dish, not poured recklessly over every forkful. Too much salt destroys a dish. Too many meetings destroy morale and motivation.” - Jason Fried co-author of "Rework"

Wondering how to write a cancellation email? We have added a few examples in the template! Think of:

  • One-on-one meeting cancellation email sample
  • Department meeting cancellation email sample
  • Client meeting cancellation email sample
  • All-hands meeting cancellation email sample
Meeting cancellation email samples

2. Phone call for urgent meeting cancellation notices

A phone call is a more personal method of communication and can be used when the situation requires a more immediate response or when dealing with sensitive matters.

  • When to use: Use phone calls for emergencies, last-minute cancellations, or when you need to convey empathy or urgency.
  • How to politely cancel a meeting example: "Hi John, I'm sorry to inform you that I have to cancel our meeting today due to a family emergency. I understand this is short notice, but I hope we can reschedule for next week.”
Learn more about using phone calls when thinking about how to cancel a meeting through the dedicated template!

3. Text message or messaging apps as a tool to cancel meetings

Text messages or messaging apps (e.g., Rock, WhatsApp) are suitable for quick and informal communication, especially when the meeting participants are already using these channels for team communication.

  • When to use: Use text messages or messaging apps for small, informal meetings, or when you need to quickly notify participants of a cancellation.
  • How to politely cancel a meeting example: "Hey all, we need to cancel today's brainstorming session as our meeting room is unavailable. Let's reschedule for next week."
Learn more about using text message when thinking about how to cancel a meeting through the dedicated template!

4. Calendar cancellation: quick but impersonal way to cancel a meeting

If you've organized the meeting using a calendar app (e.g., Google Calendar, Outlook), you can cancel the event directly in the calendar. This will automatically notify all participants about the cancellation.

  • When to use: Use calendar cancellations for meetings that are not very important or don’t require attendance as it is a rather impersonal channel.
  • How to politely cancel a meeting example: Cancel the event in the calendar app and include a brief explanation for the cancellation in the "message to attendees" section.
Learn more about using calendar cancellation when thinking about how to cancel a meeting through the dedicated template!

5. Working in the office? Here’s how to cancel that meeting In-person

If you're in close proximity to the meeting participants, or if the situation calls for a more personal touch, you can inform them of the cancellation face-to-face.

  • When to use: Use in-person communication for small, in-house meetings, or when you want to discuss the reasons for the cancellation more thoroughly.
  • How to politely cancel a meeting example: "Hi Sarah, I wanted to let you know that our meeting this afternoon has been canceled. The client had an emergency and needs to reschedule. Let's touch base later to discuss the next steps."
Learn more about how to cancel a meeting in person through the dedicated template!

6. Asynchronous video: transform information-sharing meetings into time-saving opportunities

In today's fast-paced work environment, meetings are often seen as time-consuming and sometimes even counterproductive. This is particularly true for meetings where the primary purpose is to share information, rather than foster discussion and collaboration.

By replacing these meetings with asynchronous video presentations, we can create a more efficient and informative experience for all participants.

  • When to use: project updates, training sessions, or company announcements.
Learn more about each channel and add your very own for free by getting started with our how to cancel a meeting template!
channels to cancel an email examples

How to cancel a meeting - the basics

Canceling a meeting should be done in a professional and respectful manner. Here are the steps to follow when canceling a meeting:

  1. Decide on the cancellation: Assess the situation and determine if canceling the meeting is the best course of action. Weigh the importance of the meeting against the reasons for canceling it.
  2. Choose a method of communication: Based on the context and your relationship with the participants, decide whether to use email, phone calls, text messages...
  3. Provide a clear reason: Explain the reason for the cancellation in a concise and honest manner. This helps maintain transparency and ensures that participants understand the circumstances behind the decision.
  4. Propose rescheduling or alternatives: If appropriate, offer a new date and time for the meeting or suggest alternative ways to address the meeting's objectives (e.g., via task management, smaller group discussions or maybe even a video).
  5. Update the event in the calendar: Modify the original calendar event to reflect the cancellation or delete it entirely. If the meeting has been rescheduled, create a new calendar event and invite the participants.

By following these steps, you can cancel a meeting professionally and courteously, while minimizing the impact on the participants and maintaining strong working relationships.

In order to keep track of every step in the process, using a task management tool can be handy. The template includes a to-do, doing and done list where you can add meetings you have to cancel.

"Meeting culture is something that needs to change — there’s no reason to have eight hours of meetings in one day. Meetings are not how humans are most productive." - Claire Hughes Johnson, COO of Stripe

Make sure the correct meetings are canceled, everyone is brought up to date and next steps have been set. It’s as simple as reviewing the list and moving the task card across columns to stay organized at work.

Get started with the meeting cancellation template today for free!
How to cancel a meeting workflow

How to avoid canceling meetings altogether

It may not always be possible to avoid sending out meeting cancellation notices altogether. Nevertheless, you can take steps to reduce the likelihood of cancellations and minimize their impact.

Here are some workflow changes we implemented in order to avoid scheduling unproductive meetings on a day-to-day basis:

  1. Work asynchronously by default: Asynchronous work is a type of setup where not every team member has to be online and working at the same time. This gives you more flexibility when you want to get work done without having to wait for others.
  2. Reduce context switching: It’s best to reduce the number of tools your team has to shuffle between. Doing this makes it easier to keep track of progress for different projects, which can lessen follow up meetings for progress.
  3. Improve documentation: Create clear guidelines on how you store documents so everyone is aligned. Explore having walkthroughs through asynchronous video recordings instead of meetings.

By avoiding cancelled meetings and having a more efficient process, you can focus on the work at hand. In the long run, this can greatly help you and your team achieve your company goals and objectives.

How to cancel a meeting template: get started today!

In conclusion, implementing a process for meeting cancellation notices is an excellent way to ensure clear communication with all involved parties.

By incorporating tasks, notes, files, chat, and meeting features, the how to cancel a meeting template enables efficient collaboration with anyone. Don't hesitate to get started and manage meetings while fostering an organized environment for all team members.

Give it a try and experience the benefits of a well-structured approach to handling meeting cancellations to maintain productivity.

How to cancel a meeting free template

May 17, 2023
October 4, 2023

How to Cancel a Meeting: Roadmap to Guilt-Free Cancellations

Nicolaas Spijker
Editorial @ Rock
5 min read

An organizational strategy structure and process is essential if you want to keep your team focused, grow exponentially and keep clients happy.

Defined strategies streamline efforts and interests regarding investments, prioritization and performance across stakeholders. You want to make sure your business is sending a clear signal and value proposition both internally and externally.

Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different. - Michael Porter, esteemed Harvard Business School professor

A strong organizational strategy definition ensures everyone is on the same page. This way your goals and objectives clearly connect to your mission and vision while leveraging your core competencies.

This article walks you through the types of organizational strategy and everything you need to know if you want to define your organizational strategy.

Get started with the organizational strategy project management template for FREE.

Free organizational strategy workflow template

Definition organizational strategy

What is organizational strategy? An organizational strategy outlines the long-term goals, objectives, and structure of an organization. The strategy highlights how the organization plans to achieve its mission, leverage core competencies, and position itself in an ever-changing competitive landscape.

Effective organizational strategies help guide decision-making, prioritize tasks, and align the efforts of team members across the organization.

An effective strategy is key to improve productivity in an organization, as everyone knows what they're working towards. When configured correctly, it sets your business up for success to keep achieving company goals and objectives.

Key components of the strategy for an organization typically include:

  1. Vision and mission
  2. Market and competitive analysis
  3. Organizational structure and culture
  4. Core competencies
  5. Goals and objectives
  6. Monitoring and evaluation

To develop and implement an organizational strategy, you should understand both the internal and external forces that apply to your business. This typically involves setting a vision, conducting market and internal analyses, and defining a plan for execution.

Set up your organizational strategy through a hands-on template that highlights everything that should be considered. Make sure to follow the steps in the order given, as they built upon each other.

Phases in defining your organization strategy

What is the vision and mission of your organization?

The vision and mission represent an organization's purpose, direction, and aspirations. These statements serve as guideposts for decision-making and help to align the efforts of all stakeholders.

These statements are a great first step in defining your organizational strategy as they highlight the higher purpose of your business. Once they’re defined, you can break down the different components that will help you achieve the vision and mission.

Here’s what you should be looking for to define your vision and mission:

Vision:

  • Describes the organization's desired future state or long-term impact.
  • Is aspirational, ambitious, and inspiring, painting a vivid picture of what success looks like.
  • Provides a sense of direction and motivation for stakeholders.
  • Typically remains constant over time, but may be revisited as the organization evolves or external conditions change.
Example of a vision statement: A world where everyone has access to clean and affordable energy.

Mission:

  • Outlines the organization's core purpose and how it will achieve its vision.
  • Specifies the primary activities, target audience, and unique value proposition.
  • Is actionable and focused on the organization's day-to-day work.
  • May evolve over time as the organization adapts to new challenges and opportunities.
Example of a mission statement: To provide innovative, clean energy solutions that empower communities and protect the environment.

In summary, the vision of a company paints a picture of the desired future, while a mission statement defines the path and actions the organization will take to achieve that future. Both play their own role in guiding an organization's strategy, culture, and decision-making.

Ready to create your very own vision and mission? The organizational strategy template includes a 9-step process to create and implement a strong vision and mission.
How to define your vision and mission statement in your strategy template

Conducting market & competitive analysis

Conducting a market and competitive analysis is a crucial step in developing a strategy for your organization. It helps you understand your target market, industry trends, and the competitive landscape. This way you can more effectively position your business and set realistic goals.

Nevertheless, the process of conducting market research and competitive analysis can feel daunting at first. What frameworks and metrics are most relevant to your organization? What steps should you prioritize?

To streamline the process, we included a step-by-step task management workflow in the template. This way you can break down the steps within the market and competitive analysis of your industry.

Activities include:

  1. Define your market
  2. Analyze market trends
  3. Study your competition
  4. Analyze your target customers
  5. Assess market opportunities and threats

Individual tasks in the template include further resources and checklists to fully define the organizational strategy. This way you can more effectively break down the different activities that have to be completed to understand the external forces around your business.

Conduct your own market and competitive analysis. The organizational strategy template includes a 5-step process to develop a market and competitive analysis.
Market and competitive analysis workflow template

Defining Your Organizational Structure and Culture

Your organizational structure and culture are essential components of the business. They influence how the company operates, strategies for improving organizational communication, and decision making.

Understanding these aspects creates a more efficient, collaborative, and successful environment for your team. Let’s start with some high level definitions:

  • Organizational Structure: Organizational structure refers to the way a company arranges its people, roles, and responsibilities to achieve its goals. There are several types of organizational structures, each with its advantages and disadvantages.
  • Organizational Culture: the shared values, beliefs, norms, and practices that shape the behavior of individuals within a company. It influences how employees interact with one another and your organizational communication strategies.

Creating a cohesive organizational structure and culture requires a deep understanding of your company's goals, values, and desired ways of working. If you want your team to work effectively and efficiently then clearly defining structure and culture is crucial.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast. - Peter Drucker

The template includes two dedicated tasks that offer a step-by-step process to define both your structure and culture within your organizational strategy.

Regularly revisiting and adjusting these elements as your business grows and evolves will help you maintain a healthy, adaptive organization that supports long-term success.

Organizational structure and culture workflow template for organizational strategies

What are the core competencies of your business?

Core competencies are the unique combination of capabilities, resources, and skills that give your business a competitive advantage. They are the strengths that enable differentiation from competitors and create unique value for customers.

These attributes can stem from various aspects, such as technology, innovation, processes, or organizational culture.

In order to be considered a core competency, the advantage should check the following boxes:

  1. Value creation: superior products, services, or solutions that uniquely meet needs and preferences of the customer.
  2. Differentiation: the characteristic or offering should set your company apart from competitors and provide a unique selling proposition.
  3. Hard to imitate: core competencies must be difficult for competitors to replicate, either because they involve proprietary knowledge, technology, or processes, or because they are deeply rooted in the organization's culture and history.
  4. Flexibility: the competency should be adaptable and can be leveraged across multiple products, services, or markets. This enables a business to innovate, expand, and respond to changing market conditions.
  5. Sustainability: core competencies should be sustainable over the long term, providing a stable foundation for a company's growth and success.

By focusing on these areas, a business can allocate its resources efficiently, develop a competitive advantage, and create value for customers and stakeholders.

Identifying and nurturing core competencies is an essential aspect of your organizational strategy. Apply our 8-step process to start defining the core competencies of your business.
Core competency in organization strategy definition template

Defining your organization’s goals and objectives in the strategy

Goals and objectives are the most actionable and ever-changing elements in your organizational strategy. They serve as milestones and targets that guide decision-making, performance evaluation, and resource allocation.

Goals and objectives are the last step in your strategy. Take all the information you previously gathered and define the short-to-medium term accomplishments you want to focus on.

The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score. - Bill Copeland

Consider your mission and vision, market and competitive analysis and internal forces when setting new goals and objectives.

Understanding the differences between a goal and objective and how they complement each other is crucial in creating an effective strategy for your organization. Here are some key things to consider:

Goals:

  • Goals are broad, high-level statements that describe the desired outcomes or achievements of an organization or team.
  • They are typically long-term, focusing on the overall direction and purpose of the organization.
  • Goals help provide a sense of direction and offer a framework for setting more specific, actionable objectives.

Objectives:

  • Objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) targets that support the accomplishment of goals.
  • They break down the broader goals into actionable steps, providing clear guidance on what needs to be accomplished, by when, and to what extent.
  • Objectives help keep teams focused and accountable, as they can be used to track progress and evaluate performance.
Creating goals and objectives for your organizational strategy requires multiple steps. Our dedicated template includes examples and a step-by-step workflow.
Goal and objective statement workflow template

Monitoring and evaluation

Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of an organizational strategy are essential processes that help ensure that a company's strategic plans are on track to meet their objectives.

M&E help identify areas for improvement, assess the effectiveness of strategies, and inform data-driven decision-making. Set recurring timelines for the different activities within your organization strategy.

What gets measured gets managed. - Peter Drucker.

Goals and objectives should be refreshed most frequently, adapting them to the needs and current priorities of the business. Other activities might only be relevant once a year, three years or even longer term. Nevertheless, setting a due date for redoing the activity guarantees nothing fall through the cracks.

You can easily do this in the project template for creating an organizational strategy by adding a new due date after finishing the task.

Start building your organization strategy today: free template

In conclusion, developing a robust organizational strategy is crucial for achieving company goals and objectives and ensuring long-term success. Remember, the key to a thriving organization lies in its ability to adapt and evolve, and our template is designed to help you achieve just that.

Invite other team members to the project, leverage task management, notes, topics and chat and connect cloud files to your project space. You can also start a meeting with Zoom or Google Meet without leaving the template.

Now that you know how to define organizational strategies and all the elements in in you can Get started with free organizational strategy template

Free workflow template to define organizational strategy of your business

May 15, 2023
October 4, 2023

How to Define Your Organizational Strategy: Step-by-Step Process

Nicolaas Spijker
Editorial @ Rock
5 min read


Change is hard. Our work habits have been honed through years to decades of professional experience. Stacked with the habits of colleagues, organizations, stakeholders, and clients, change is all the more challenging.

One habit that can be especially painful when poorly addressed, is getting good feedback.

How you gather and manage comments or revisions is so often overlooked. That is, until it becomes an impossible-to-ignore problem that chips away at your project's success.

Addressing the review and approval process doesn’t require a “digital transformation”. Your clients are already providing revision comments and suggestions. Adapting your approach can be simple and significantly boost the quality of your deliverables.

So how do you build a system for gathering accurate, timely, and useful feedback from key stakeholders?

The Symptoms of Poor Feedback

We’ve all been there; Project delays, finger-pointing, disgruntled clients and teams… These are often the signs that there is something wrong with how we are communicating around a project.

All too often, perhaps because we can be so used to it, we ignore the symptoms of a broken feedback process or misattribute it.

Is it the person’s fault that they missed a deadline, or was the process too complicated?

Before getting to the solution, there are a few key problem areas that you might recognize if you’ve ever had a broken creative workflow:

  • You lose or miss comments and notes from stakeholders.
  • There’s often a need to return to someone for clarification.
  • You find your team redoing revision tasks because they were poorly communicated.
  • There is no clear connection between the requests and who must act on them.
  • Deliverables are always delayed.
  • You and the client are often unsatisfied with the creative output.

Do you recognize any of these symptoms? If you identify with them it’s time to take a look how your creative workflow.

The Pillars of Healthy Feedback

On the flip side, it isn’t that difficult to update your creative communication process.

To get there, there are a few key considerations that you’ll need to address.

  • Quality: On the most basic level, you want revision suggestions, questions, and conversations to be relevant and informed.
  • Clarity: Ideally, all forms of communications, especially requests or updates, are accurate and clear. This is especially important with visual references. For example, think about the last time you got notes on a video project via email - and it contained multiple timestamps saying “cut here”.
  • Coordination: Moving communication with stakeholders across silos, such as different tools, meetings, and emails, can result in confusion. Retrieving information and versions can also be an issue. For example, finding the latest version of a file can sometimes become a guessing game and relies on messy title conventions.
  • Accountability: Who does what? Why was it done a certain way? Without transparency, issues are bound to repeat themselves and result in  avoidable mistakes. Without accountability there is no learning.

4 Steps to Better Feedback

So how do you set up feedback systems that cover all 4 of the aforementioned pillars?

Here are 4 steps to deliver significant improvements to the quality, clarity, coordination and accountability of the communication.

1. The Clear and Relevant Ask

Getting quality feedback on projects starts with knowing who, when, and how to ask for it. Before reaching out to request revisions, consider what you hope to gain from it. Is it creative input from stakeholders? A general review of visuals and graphics? Final approval from the project’s decision-maker?

A good question is half the answer. Ask the right questions if you need clarification on something. Everyone wants the project to succeed, so don’t be afraid to request clarification if you’re unsure of what’s expected. To use another cliche, an ounce of prevention is a pound of the cure.

Ideally, plan how you will tackle the review and approval process before starting your project, with all stakeholders buying in. This is simpler with an online communication tool that’s easily accessible to everyone involved.

2. Make it Simple

Once you’ve tackled the clear ask, make it simple for the receiver to take their next step(s). The more time spent on figuring out how to tackle your ask, the longer it will take to start (or possibly just give up).

Removing friction is essential for simplicity. Any time someone has to download anything, sign up, or learn a challenging new software, it adds potential delays to your project. Ensure they have the right tools to keep the back-and-forth quick and effective.

Email, shared documents, phone calls, and team video conferencing can all be useful communication methods for certain tasks. But these forms of communication can quickly get confusing and time-consuming.

By making it simple for your stakeholders, with purpose-built tools, you can effectively share information, tasks and updates.

3. Be Receptive and Respond Well

Being receptive to feedback is a crucial part of collaboration. Stakeholders will feel more comfortable being straightforward when they know the recipient(s) is open to suggestions, constructive criticism, and new ideas.

Taking feedback well can be a challenge. Fear of failure, an emotional connection to your work, and negativity bias can all make you feel uncomfortable receiving edits or suggestions. Developing a positive attitude towards this process will benefit your workplace relationships and communication skills.

Temper your initial reaction and emotions to show collaborators you’re receptive to their suggestions. Take time to consider it before responding if necessary. Consider their perspective of the issue, ask follow-up questions, and thank them for their input - even if you disagree.

Being receptive creates a cycle where people see you as a positive person to work with. In return, they will be more open with you and will ultimately be happier with the results. And, of course, they will enjoy working with you or your team.

4. Maintain Accountability

A critical part of the creative process is maintaining accountability. Be sure to set clear expectations. What is required or expected of everyone, and by when? Workflows are much easier when there’s transparency regarding expectations, roles, project stages, and deadlines.

Consolidation (keeping comments, notes, file versions, and relevant activity in a central space) is essential. This maintains accountability across the entire project so everyone can go back and see the logic behind a decision.

The Right Tools for The Right Feedback

The right tools are essential to enable clarity, simplify workflows, facilitate a healthy feedback loop and maintain accountability.  Here are 3 to consider:

Rock - Rock allows users to communicate with collaborators while also assigning tasks. It’s a seamless messaging platform and project management rolled into one. Besides your internal team, you can also add clients and external collaborators can also be added to project spaces without issue. Keep all your communication in one place and say goodbye to the context switching that comes from working with different messaging and project management apps on your projects.

ReviewStudio - As a creative workflow and online proofing software, ReviewStudio makes it simple for teams to gather precise, clear, and consolidated feedback. Highly intuitive, it provides an effective way to mark up, share, and approve creative in a centralized location. All your versions are collated, comments and notes are threaded, and tasks are integrated with markups. Whether video, image, web, or documents - it is a standalone space that can incorporate easily into your current workflows.

Loom - Sometimes, recording a video of your experience or just walking through your revision notes can be most effective through a tool like Loom. If a picture is a thousand words, a video is a book. A great tool to capture your screen, with the option of recording your voice and face. Sharing is very straightforward, and features like adjusting playback make the whole experience very useful.

Good Feedback Leads to Successful Collaboration

Getting good and timely communication with decision-makers and outside clients is essential for any project to succeed.

Showing collaborators you’re open to listening and implementing their suggestions or requests will help them feel comfortable providing more in-depth thoughts and requests. In addition, provide them with the tools and resources to make the creative review and approval process as easy as possible.

It's important to remember that receiving feedback can and should be a continuous process. Use what you learn from the process to adjust your strategies, improve your products or services, and ultimately enhance the overall experience for your team or clients.

With a proactive approach to your creative workflows, you can build stronger working relationships, ensure deadlines are met, make better decisions, and drive growth and success for everyone involved.

Apr 20, 2023
April 20, 2023

The Importance of Effective Feedback in Your Creative Workflows

Joey Tanny
Reviewstudio team
5 min read

Working across spaces and upgrading to Unlimited has never been easier! Create spaces in seconds with template spaces, Gift a month of Rock Unlimited and receive $20 in balance to upgrade, and move discussions across spaces by forwarding messages.

Space templates

Create new projects faster than ever with space templates. Duplicate any existing space configurations for future collaborations; from client onboarding to marketing campaigns and event management.

To access templates, go to space settings (admin permissions required) and create a new template.

Select the icon and space name of your template. You can choose what information you want to carry over to future copies (tasks, notes, topics, pinned items).

Once you've created a template, access it anytime from your user settings under "templates". Simply select apply to new space and a new space will be created.

Create unlimited new spaces with the template configuration and invite anyone to join you for messaging, tasks, and all your favorite apps in one place.

To learn more about space templates, check out this dedicated product guide.

Give Get

Looking to help out your clients, freelancers, or contacts while also saving money on your own unlimited plan? You can now Give a month of Unlimited and get $20 to your own plan.

Once your invitee successfully redeems the reward and signs up they will get a month of unlimited for free. If they stay on the plan, you'll receive $20 off on your own Unlimited plan.

To get started, simply head to your user settings to find your personalized gift link. Share this link with anyone you want to gift a free month of Rock Unlimited to.

For more information on how to use Give Unlimited, Get $20, check out this dedicated product guide.

Forwarding messages

With forwarding messages you can move discussions across spaces without copy-pasting or manually moving messages. To forward a message simply hover over it and select the forward icon.

Improvements on mobile

We have also made a bunch of improvements to the mobile app.

  • Templates: Create your own space templates. Use templates to skip setting up new spaces from scratch every single time or share your Rock template with others.
  • Referral program: Gift a month of Unlimited for free and get $20
  • Chat: More organized and less cluttered message threads
  • Workspaces: More fine-tuned privacy options for workspaces and spaces

If you have any questions about this release, connect with us at space.new/support.

Download the mobile app

Apr 17, 2023
April 19, 2023

Product Update: Templates, Give Get, Forwarding Messages

Kenzo Fong
CEO & founder
5 min read

Rock now provides the fastest way to set up a space with anyone using Quick Connect and your own personal space.new link. Anyone can now quickly open a group space with you using your link which can easily be shared on social media, your website, email, or any other external page.

Read along to learn more about Quick Connect and other new features! This release also includes iCal sync (PRO), animated GIFs (powered by Giphy) and scheduled messages (PRO) on mobile.

Quick Connect ? - The fastest way to set up a space to work together

No more back-and-forth to figure out which tool to use to start working together on a project. With Quick Connect on Rock, anyone can quickly create a brand new group space with you so you can start chatting, working on tasks, or sharing files within seconds.

Share your link in emails or social media or add your QR code to your website, social media posts or anywhere else, and allow anyone to connect and collaborate with you on Rock.

You can find your Quick Connect link by going to Settings. In Settings, you can find your space.new URL as well as a handy QR code anyone can scan to instantly set up a group space with you.

Personalize the experience by adding a welcome message to your Quick Connect spaces. This can be anything from a 'Welcome to my space' to 'Here's some information I need to get started: [...]'.

Keep control over your Quick Connect links by toggling the ON/OFF switch or press the three dots in the top right corner of the panel to reset the link if ever needed.

Note that once you reset your link there is no way of restoring it to a previously used Quick Connect link. This means that you have to update your Quick Connect link on all live pages or visuals.

We’re using the brand-new (pun intended :) .new domain to make it really easy to create a new group space with anyone. .new domains were introduced by Google and work for anything from sheets.new (links to Google Sheets) to canva.new(Canva) to now space.new on Rock.

Stay tuned for lots more on Quick Connect and the space.new domain!

Calendar sync with iCal [PRO]

Sync Rock with Google Calendar, Outlook, and any calendar that supports the iCalendar format. This is not just limited to the Apple/iOS calendar app, but also works with most popular calendar services.

Visualize task deadlines right next to all your other meetings using your favorite calendar app. (Note that this integration is only available in PRO spaces).

Calendar sync can be enabled on web/desktop/mobile by a space admin for the entire space by following these steps:

  1. Go to ⚙️ Space Settings, select integrations and pick ? Calendar Sync from the different options.
  2. Confirm ? Calendar Sync. Note that you can always disable the feature in the future through ⚙️ Space Settings.
  3. Calendar Sync is now enabled for the space.
  4. When copying the link members of the space can choose whether they want to see tasks they are assigned to, they are following or to see all tasks within a space on the calendar.

Anyone can now copy the iCal link and add it to any calendar (e.g. Apple/iOS calendar, Google Calendar, Outlook) that supports the iCal format. Check here to see whether your calendar supports the iCal format.

GIFs on mobile

Purrfect 5-second distractions for any occasion with GIFs in the Chat mini-app! Browse thousands of different options from the Giphy library and share them in the Chat mini-app of any group space you're in.

GIFs can be accessed in the messaging panel by pressing the GIF button. You need at least 3 people in a group space for the feature to be enabled so add people to share your favorite memes!

Schedule messages and polls on mobile [PRO] ⏰

In a PRO space, you can now schedule messages or polls to be sent out when most convenient to you on mobile. This way you can send messages at a time that suits a team members' timezone better.

How to schedule a message or poll

  1. Write down the message or poll you want to schedule in the Chat mini-app.
  2. Keep the send button pressed for a few seconds. The schedule a message panel will automatically open.
  3. Check the time zones of everyone in the space if needed by pressing the arrow right under 'Schedule message'.
  4. Pick one of the suggested times or press 'Pick date and time' to manually adjust a time for the scheduled message.
  5. Press 'Schedule' in the bottom right corner of your screen and your message should be scheduled!

Editing your scheduled messages

You can edit your scheduled message in a few different ways by following these steps:

  1. Press the scheduled messages button on the bottom left corner of your screen. Note that this button only appears when you have one or more messages scheduled.
  2. Press the scheduled message or poll you want to edit.
  3. Pick from the option menu: change schedule, send now, edit message or delete message.

Mobile updates

This release brings a lot of improvements to the experience on the mobile app. Check out the following list for all the new features.

Chat mini-app

  • Schedule messages: pick times for messages or polls to be sent in the Chat mini-app.
  • Gifs: Access thousands of gifs and share them in the Chat mini-app of any space.

Tasks mini-app

  • iCal integration: add task deadlines to your calendar and keep an eye on everything that is going on.

Other

  • Quick Connect: Allow anyone to open a group space with you within seconds.
  • Due date notifications for tasks on mobile: receive pop-up banners for due dates on mobile.
  • Invite new members from @mentions: trying to mention someone that is not in the space yet? Quickly invite them to the space from the @mention list!
  • Bug fixes and performance improvements

Download the mobile app

If you have any questions or suggestions you are always welcome to ping us in the Rock Support and Updates space.

Mar 16, 2023
April 25, 2024

Product Update: Quick Connect, iCal integration and more!

Announcements
Kenzo Fong
CEO & founder
5 min read

Support us by sharing Rock content with your network and earn credits, exclusive discounts, and free upgrades!

Starting a new project with clients, partners or freelancers often requires too many tools that don’t easily connect to each other. This makes work between organizations unnecessarily difficult, time-consuming, and inefficient. To solve this, we built Rock which allows anyone to start collaborating on a project within seconds with messaging, tasks, and everything related to a project in one space.

With this program we set out a simple list of activities teams can do as part of this program. In return, you can earn credits, discounts, and free upgrades to the unlimited plan.

With your help, we can reach more people and inform a wide number of audiences about a better way of working. The best part? You are not just earning rewards towards the unlimited plan. Participating in the program also allows you to actively advocate for better collaboration and build out your business or personal brand.

Ready to support our mission and earn rewards? Get started today.

Rewards

Upgrade for free or receive major discounts on a monthly or annual unlimited plan! Collect 200, 400 or 600 credits to redeem one of the available rewards.

Are you looking for significant discounts or want to upgrade for free? We now offer options that cater to everyone! Collect 200, 400 or 600 credits to redeem one of the available rewards, listed below. 👇

What new activities allow you to earn credits?

We defined a set of activities that teams and individual users do to receive rewards. We directly transfer credits to your account once an activity has been completed and verified from our side. Credits can be used to get a discount on your paid plan or upgrade for free. Get started.

Share valuable content on your channels: Receive 1 credit per shared post per channel. Quickly stack up credits by posting across channels or multiple times a week. Here are some example workflows that can be set up as part of the program:

  • Post 2 times a week on 3 different channels and earn 24 credits per month!
  • Post every week day on LinkedIn and earn 20 credits per month!

Feature Rock on your next newsletter edition: Add valuable content to your newsletter and engage your audience in a variety of ways. Think of for example linking to one of our content pieces, a product page or a space.new link. Receive 25 credits every time you add Rock in your newsletter! Get started!

Power your site with our webform: Collect data from your website visitors, streamline the workflow and earn credits by adding a custom Rock webform to your website! Receive 40 credits per live webform on your website. Get Started!

Reach a large audience: Are you an influencer or do your posts often gain a lot of attention? Quickly rack up thousands of credits by getting quality content in front of your audience! Rewards start at 200 credits, but you can earn up to 1000 credits with this activity!
For more details regarding posts that gain a lot of impressions, reach out to us!

Join the program today!

Ready to join the program? Open a space with us. Let us know how many credits you want to earn and we will help you get set up, share assets, and configure a custom flow.

Activities are not set in stone, if you have suggestions for other ways to earn credits you can reach out to us by creating a dedicated support space.

Mar 2, 2023
March 2, 2023

Spread The Word And Upgrade To Unlimited For Free!

Nicolaas Spijker
Editorial @ Rock
5 min read

It’s hard to manage marketing work when you constantly need to switch between apps. Roles across your marketing team need specialized tools to complete certain functions (i.e. design, SEO, video, or social media management). Nevertheless, for day-to-day communication and project management, it's best to keep things tidy and stay conscious about how many tools you really need.

When everything doesn't connect, you end up spending more time juggling tools than getting actual work done. Teams spend hours juggling email with a chat, internal project management, and a separate channel for clients and freelancers.

32% of professionals say inadequate or lack of communication is the biggest problem for any project and it’s not hard to see why. Too often, you need several tools for each client. All-in-one marketing tools for communications have more capabilities which means you can do more with just one tool.

Choosing your marketing tools wisely helps keep your team productive as information becomes more well-documented and easily accessible.

Why are too many marketing tools a bad thing?

It’s hard to keep track of information when communication is scattered across the web. Too often, you have to switch between apps to keep up with ongoing work, clients, and freelancers. With all this, staying organized at work becomes a project on top of your actual work.

Imagine juggling WhatsApp, Slack and email to communicate with your clients. It could also be that you have some documents on a file storage tool but others stored in the chat. Maybe your internal project management and workflows with clients live across different platforms to keep costs at bay.

Fractured communications strategies make it hard to share progress and collaborate. While these flows naturally occur, they are not actually productive. Here are two typical issues that happen when communications are scattered across multiple tools:

  • More things for you to manage: You’re already bombarded with notifications, and more of them aren’t helpful. Constantly juggling between tools requires a lot of context switching. This can make you more stressed, less focused and give the feeling like work never really ends.
  • It all costs time and money: When you’re paying for more tools that should help your productivity, those tools should make your job easier. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case and could end up hurting your bottom line. This is especially true when all your tools operate with per-user pricing, which often leaves valuable collaborators such as clients and freelancers out of the equation.

All-in-one project management is the solution

The solution? Look for tools that offer all-in-one functionality. All-in-one tools save you time and stress by reducing the number of platforms and apps you need to use. This makes it easier to work with different clients and projects while still offering flexibility and functionality for different use cases and projects in your department or team.

All-in-one solutions save time and help you stay organized because they meet several needs at once. Think of combining documentation with project management, chat with tasks, or your CRM with project management. Marketing work involves a lot of moving parts, whether it's purely internal operations, work with clients or managing projects with freelancers. The tools you use should cover multiple needs at once so you can to keep up.

Some examples of all-in-one tools and the features they offer their users: Rock, Notion and Coda.

marketing tools notion rock and coda

Collaboration and communication on Rock

Starting a new project with clients, partners or freelancers often requires too many tools that don’t easily connect to each other. This makes work between organizations unnecessarily difficult, time-consuming, and inefficient. To solve this, we built Rock which allows anyone to start collaborating on a project within seconds with messaging, task management, and everything related to a project in one space.

You can also link your favorite cloud storage apps such as Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Figma, Adobe and more to the files mini-app in Rock so everyone can access anything project-related, right from Rock. This prevents important information from being siloed in inboxes or folders.

Team members, clients, and freelancers can all make edits to projects or address feedback so all important information is stored in one dedicated project space.

marketing tools rock

Advanced note-taking with Notion

Notion is a tool that offers a team wiki for you and collaborators to store information for future reference. Like other all-in-one tools, you can have discussions with clients and your team members without leaving the platform.

Both Rock and Notion let you manage your to-do list with task boards; you can update your team members or clients on progress without clogging their inboxes with emails. Since these free marketing tools are more centralized, information is easier to find and keep organized.

marketing tools notion

Centralized information with Coda

Another all-in-one tool is Coda, which offers teams and freelancers a centralized place to keep their documents and spreadsheets. Instead of being forced to store information across different remote work tools, you can keep all your information where everyone can see it.

Coda also has different productivity and project management features within the platform, so you can reduce the number of things you’re juggling.

marketing tools coda

Make the most of marketing tools for communications

Using too many marketing tools to drive your collaboration efforts can cost you time and make work harder. Work becomes disorganized and tough to manage, while also eating away at your overall budget.

On the topic of saving time and money. If you are struggling to make sense of payments and tools your team is currently using, then a platform like NachoNacho can come in handy. This SaaS marketplace offers an all-in-one destination to manage your subscriptions, exclusive discounts, and discover new solutions.

With all-in-one collaboration, your work will be more effective and it'll be easier to get feedback. Remote work tools like Rock, Notion, and Coda can solve a lot of these challenges by streamlining your work, getting everybody on the same page, and making it easier to work on any marketing project.

Feb 20, 2023
September 24, 2023

Choose Your Marketing Tools Wisely

Nicolaas Spijker
Editorial @ Rock
5 min read

Managing relationships with clients is a big part of your job when freelancing. Keeping a close relationship with clients is key for all freelance services including copywriting, design or engineering work.

Efficient and smooth collaboration with clients ensures that you can meet deadlines and build long lasting connections. However, setting up smooth collaboration flows is often easier said than done.

How do you make sure that communicating with clients is effective and tailored to their needs?

Read along to learn more about some best practices. We have gathered workflows and best practices from freelancers all across Rock which you can easily implement in your next freelance project!

What does good client management look like for a freelancer?

You want your clients to be heard and understood, all while meeting their expectations and deadlines. Likely you have more than one client, and all of them require your input on the daily or at least weekly or monthly basis.

This means you need to learn how to balance your time on each client effectively and efficiently. Don’t forget about at the same time providing personalized support, at the end of the day every client wants to feel like you’re prioritizing their project.

To do so, you need to create processes, workflows and systems that support this. Here are 7 habits most of our freelancers mentioned when discussing client management on Rock.

1. Balance personal with scalable

How do you keep your communication with multiple clients personal yet scalable? You need to set up a system which allows you to provide personalized support on your client projects in a scalable way.

Define typical projects you work on and create templates containing specific workflows. The templates might include systems, steps, and playbooks. You can use these templates every time you start a new project and adjust them depending on the needs of your client.

Think of a welcome or project start note that is shared in the beginning of a project. Feedback forms at certain milestones can also be scalable but personalized to your brand and project experience.

A common way to keep track of these activities is by implementing internal task management to set reminders about certain milestones or completed activities.

2. Easy access to information

Think about which information or files have to be shared with a client before starting a project. Making all relevant information such as project details and deliverables easily accessible will save you time. It also gives clients a more professional and well-prepared first impression of you.

Make sure your client knows how to access all information they might need. You should inform them of the documentation and grant access at the beginning of any project.

Neither you nor your client need to waste time searching for files or information across multiple folders, apps or long email threads.

Implementing this open up valuable time as clients don’t have to reach out to find files, reports or workflows. You can use this gained time to focus on nurturing the relationship, accelerate implementation, gather feedback or provide support.

3. Overview of progress

It’s crucial to provide your clients with an overview of your progress regarding projects you work on. This allows you to avoid miscommunication and make sure that the final result aligns with expectations.

You might want to establish a process and use a project management tool to keep your clients in the loop. A defined process and efficient tools work way more effectively than scattered progress pings via, for instance, email.

It also gives room for more asynchronous work. Clients can chime in whenever they have time if you update work through a shared system. No need to wait for a meeting or scroll through a messy email thread.

4. Fast and seamless communication

Communication is key. You should make sure that your clients are able to get in touch with you effortlessly. Make sure to have internal communication strategies that align with your brand voice and business offering.

It’s important to keep conversations flowing. Rock has a mobile app and offers the option to send audio messages. This way you can make sure that communication is fast and seamless anywhere, and can be taken on the go.

5. Make it effortless to enter in contact for first projects

It should be easy to start a conversation with you to discuss a new project or start working together. The Quick Connect feature on Rock comes in handy here.

We built Quick Connect in order to make it easier and quicker for everyone, including freelancers, to open new communication channels.

If you use Quick Connect, your clients can scan your QR code or click on your personal link to open a space with you to communicate. You can share the QR code and/or the link on your website, email, or any other external page.

6. Relationship building

It is cheaper and more efficient to keep existing clients than to search for new ones. Also, satisfied clients who are in touch with you even after a project might spread the word and refer friends or other businesses to you.

It’s very beneficial to stay connected with your clients even after the official project. You never know when a new opportunity arises. Build a long lasting relationship and stay in touch with your clients via, for instance, a newsletter.

Alternatively, you can build a community where your previous clients can connect with each other and keep their relationship with you.

7. Avoid multi-channels

Using several different channels for your communication and collaboration with clients can become confusing for both parties.

Things get messy if you use email, a messaging app, a separate cloud storage and a project management tool simultaneously. It gets quite time-consuming to find relevant information fast and you might not now where you left off in terms of communication.

By using one application for everything you can be sure that the information or files will be found within that one tool. You don’t need to switch your focus between different applications. It saves you time and stress.

How to manage your clients from one place

We’ve talked with freelancers who use Rock to manage UX and low-code development, content writing, design, engineering and other workflows. They share their experiences and suggestions on how to organize spaces, set up workflows and take the best out of Rock as a freelancer.

Here are three spaces we often see freelancers manage on Rock:

  • Client spaces
  • Customer relationship management (CRM)
  • Communities

Client spaces

You can create dedicated spaces on Rock for each client you work with and invite them for free.

By creating a space per client you will be able to stay highly organized. Each client, their project information and communication will be grouped and easily accessible. Client spaces can be useful for day-to-day communication, project management and documentation.

Day-to-day communication

Use client spaces for seamless day-to-day communication. Discuss daily activities and quickly catch-up with your clients by leveraging full-fledged messaging functionality in every space.

The chat is at the forefront of a space and intuitive to use. This makes it a great solution for direct communication with the client. Leverage reactions, audio messages, polls, threads and so much more to keep the conversation going.

Sometimes you might need to arrange a quick video meeting with your client.  Rock offers the Meetings mini-app in ever space with integration to Zoom, Google Meet and Jitsi and Loom.

This can be beneficial for freelancers as they can connect their video conferencing account to Rock and start a meeting when other channels are not cutting it.

Project management

Besides day-to-day communication, you can use your same client spaces to manage ongoing projects. Project management through tasks mini-app will have you strongly equipped in managing your next project while involving clients..

You can toggle between multiple task views including board, list and calendar. The task board view allows you to visualize projects by dividing tasks in different columns and stages. Categorize tasks and filter them depending on your needs by leveraging labels, priority, assignees and so much more..

The comment section within each task makes it easy to follow up or have a more focused discussion with the client. This way you can make sure that both parties are always on the same page.

Documentation

Rock allows you to document relevant information so it’s easily accessible and safely stored.

The Notes mini-app can be used to store general information that is relevant for your client projects. It might contain some project guidelines, rules or briefings. When you add this information to notes it becomes easily accessible anytime. Otherwise, it might get scattered across different channels and eventually lost.

The Files mini-app is helpful if you often share files with your client. This can come in useful if you’re a copywriter, doing website project management, or graphic designer. Connect cloud storage providers such as Google Drive, Figma, Miro or Notion to Rock and share files with your clients without searching across folders or sharing links across messages, tasks and notes.

You can even attach files from a cloud storage of your choice to any task. It allows you to share task related files with your clients easily.

CRM space

Besides dedicated client spaces on Rock you can also create a space for yourself which serves as a CRM system.

This allows you to keep track of projects and details of current, past or potential clients. You don’t need to invest in any additional tools as spaces can be adjusted to support this use case.

Here’s how freelancers can manage their ongoing projects with a CRM space on Rock:

1. Use the task board as your main CRM view

Use the Tasks mini-app in the board view to arrange your CRM system. You can use lists to define the current status of each client.

For instance, you can organize lists as Leads, Active projects, Closed Projects, Revisit Later and more, depending on your needs.

2. Create a task per client

Create a task per client and add all relevant information to the task description. Easily attach any important documents or files such as contracts or invoices.

You can even set a deadline to prospect tasks in case you need to follow up or reach out before a certain date. Make sure you’re assigned to the task to receive a dedicated notification.

With individual task cards you can make sure all contacts, updates and remarks are stored and well-documented. You can update and adjust this information at any time.

3. Use labels and priority status to categorize

Labels might come in handy as you can categorize your clients by labeling them depending on a project type or size.

Labels will help you to visualize your client management and filter across client cards easier. Also, you can use the priority status feature to categorize your clients depending on their size, number of available projects or income potential.

4. Keep project details close by combining the checklist, @mention feature and attaching could files

Use the checklist to include relevant points about each client to keep your documentation neat.

You can @ mention tasks from different spaces. For example, you want to save a task that you were working on in a space with a client. You can mention that task as a reference in a client task in your CRM space. It allows you to easily connect spaces and find information faster.

Moreover, you might want to connect your cloud storage to the CRM space. You can easily attach cloud files to your client’s CRM tasks which will allow you to quickly check which files are relevant to each client.

Community space

Build a community on Rock! Do you design websites? Or write content? Whatever it is that you do as a freelancer, you can bring your target audience together by creating a themed community space on Rock.

Invite your former, existing or potential clients to the community for free. You can engage your community by asking stimulating questions, sharing industry news and creating polls to gather opinions.

You can use the Topics mini-app to spark more in depth discussion while reducing the noise! This way the discussions will be structured and people will be able to choose which topics they want to follow, similar to a discussion board.

The community space can become a unique tool in your project acquisition funnel. It will help you to nurture connections with your clients, build trust and show that you are knowledgeable in your field. Curious what a community space can look like? Join ours!

Advantages of using Rock for working with clients

Why should you start managing your client relationships on Rock? There are some advantages to using an all-in-one solution to work with clients. Here are two main advantages of centralized client management you should consider.

More functionality

If you manage your client relationships via email you likely know how confusing and long email threads can become.

In addition to that, it’s often difficult to involve new people into email conversations. We all know how easy it is to lose work details or documents between threads that include a different set of participants or revolve around a different discussion topic.

Rock allows you to forget about emails and have all the communication and collaboration in one place. All-in-one messaging combined with tasks, notes and files, provides a seamless experience.

Faster

You will save time as you don’t have to switch between different tools and keep an eye on your emails simultaneously. Using one tool for everything will pay off as you will be able to spend more time getting your work done faster.

Start managing your clients on Rock today

Rock is used by many freelancers around the world to manage and nurture their client relationships everyday.

Having everything in one place will improve your workflows and will get your client relationships to the next level!

Sign up today and facilitate your day-to-day client communication, project management, documentation, CRM and community building.

Dec 14, 2022
December 14, 2022

How to Work With Clients on Rock: Freelance Edition

Greta Pagojute
Product Specialist @ Rock
5 min read

Budget overruns are a manager's nightmare. Even with all the checks and balances in place, you might still exceed the available finances. Underestimated costs can make the best idea turn into a failed project. So budgeting sometimes becomes a test for the success of a project.  

Budgeting is the key skill for ensuring organizations have sufficient financial resources to execute ideas. There are only few skills as critical to running a business as project budget management.

In fact, establishing a budget is the first step you should take to ensure that your plan is reliable and can work out. It also becomes critical if you are looking into how to improve productivity in an organization

But what is project budgeting and how can you apply it? In this article you will learn all you need to know to master project management budget planning and take your project to the next level. Let’s get started!

Project Budget Management: What Does it Consist of? 

Project budget management is the process of creating a document to estimate incomes and expenses for a project during a given timing (for instance, the upcoming quarter or year). When you develop your budget, you have to take into account three main aspects: money, people and time.

  1. Money. Every project involves costs, regardless of its size and nature. Knowing how much you can spend sets the path for a prosperous launch. And it helps you put some order across the different phases of the project, helping you stay organized at work. Sometimes as the project evolves, the cost forecast changes, so you have to update the project planning budget accordingly.
  1. People. Budgeting project management also involves people. When you are managing a project budget, you have to estimate not only financial resources but also human capital.Think on how many people will be involved in the project, what is their required level of expertise and how many hours are they going to work.
  1. Time. Time is money, as it translates into productivity. Making sure you're not spending too much time on something unproductive will help you get better results. So having a realistic budget for project management will save you time.
How to do project budget management

Benefits of Project Budget Management

Why is managing project budgets so relevant? The most obvious reason is that an accurate budget helps you keep costs at bay. It also gives you a clear idea of the project feasibility, so you can see in advance if you can really get started with a certain project.

But there is more to it than that. According to Harvard Business School, these are five main reasons why budgeting is key for running any business:

  1. Project budget management helps you achieve company goals and objectives. You can use budgeting to set financial goals. And you can also apply project management budgeting methods to see how those goals evolve.
  2. It ensures resource availability. Project management budget planning’s primary function is to ensure you have enough resources to meet your project's goals. By establishing and organizing your finances in advance you can plan task management better and determine which teams require more resources.
  3. It provides a core plan. A budget is a financial roadmap for the upcoming period. It gives you a plan and shows how much you should earn and spend. The budget is updated as the project gets through that plan.
  4. It makes prioritizing projects easier. When you are managing a budget you have to decide which projects and initiatives come first. So having a good understanding of project vs task management is relevant.
  5. It can lead you to financing opportunities. Investors highly value documented budgetary information when deciding whether to fund a company or a business project, says the Harvard Business School. Don’t miss out on these opportunities! Master your budgeting skills.
Benefits of project budget management

Project Management Budgeting Methods

Now that you know what project budget management is and why it matters, let’s explore how to set up a budget. Here are six different methods:

  • Bottom up: individual tasks add up to the overall cost of your project. Each department creates a list of expenses and cost projections, submitted for review. Cross departmental communication is used to keep everyone on the loop. Once agreed, these separate budgets are added to the company’s overall budget. 
  • Top down: an overall cost is set and then calculated back. In top down budgeting, the senior management prepares the budget based on objectives, and passes it on to different departments, says the Corporate Financial Institute. The departments create their own budget based on established allocation and goals.
  • Parametric estimation: you use industry rates to calculate the budget. Parametric estimating does not focus on every single task, but on the most important ones within the project management framework. An algorithm is used to calculate cost or duration, based on data and parameters.
  • Analogous estimation: you compare to similar past projects to calculate the budget. Analogous estimation relies on expert judgment rather than data. It uses experiences from previous or similar projects, comparing its duration, budget, size and complexity, among other characteristics.
  • Three point estimate: you calculate the budget based on risk analysis. This technique determines the probable outcomes of future events. It is established through three main points: the best-case estimate, the most likely estimate and the worst-case estimate.
  • Earned value analysis: you make a comparison of budget and past projects. “Earned Value Analysis (EVA) allows the project manager to measure the amount of work performed on a project beyond the basic review of cost”, explains senior manager Reichel Chance from the Project Management Institute
Project Management Budgeting Methods

Common Reasons for Project go Over Budget

How can you fail on your  project management budget planning? When something in the project goes wrong, time and money have to be invested to direct it back on the right track. So execution mistakes - either they are small mistakes or fatal errors - can induce a significant risk of surpassing the estimated budget. These are some of the main mistakes:

  • Poor planning. A recent PwC’s Cloud Business Survey showed that just 17% of chief risk officers are brought into projects at the planning stage. Most come to the table much later, which often results in poor planning and bad budgeting.  

    Poor organization of a project can make activities take longer than expected. There might be new activities that were not accounted for, or accounted activities that ended up not being relevant. Poor planning can make you waste resources unnecessarily. 
  • Lack of coordination. This often happens when people lack professional communication skills, or when cross functional collaboration is not taken into account.

    For instance, if employees engaged in the project do not fully comprehend its objectives and tasks, they will tend to make mistakes. In turn, managers will demand revisions and corrections, so things have to be remade multiple times. Hence, inadequate stakeholder communication may lead to cost overruns.
  • Project changes. Since the business environment is highly dynamic, changes in projects are usually hard to get away from. This happens, for example, when the end deliverable of a project suddenly changes to something else. These changes can affect the whole project budget management plan. 
  • Scope changes. The unchecked growth of the project’s scope is a massive problem for project managers. It happens when a project becomes much bigger than expected. Or when some parts that were initially not considered important are added. This occurs if a project’s complexity has been underestimated. 

Best Practices for Managing Project Budget

So how can you prevent going over budget? In the following you can find five project budget management  best practices for maintaining your project budget under control. Try them out:

  1. Review frequently. Have an overview of tasks with deadlines to make sure that the work gets completed on time. It will not only help you manage your budget, but also have a better understanding on how to improve work performance.

    Use Rock to review and prioritize tasks. Move the project’s tasks to a calendar view to see the starting dates and deadlines more clearly. 
  1. Clear overview of progress and costs. In the Tasks mini-app on Rock, use labels, custom fields, lists and statuses to stay up to date on the progress and costs of your project.

    The board view in the Tasks mini-app can help by visualizing how the project and its budget are developing. It gives you a clear overview and reduces potential contingencies.
  2. Implement a Project management framework. You have to choose the right framework to manage a project successfully. Set up a system with rules for everyone in your team to know which tasks they have been assigned. Agile can be good to deal with scope changes. Check out our previous article on Agile vs Waterfall to learn all about this method.
  3. Enact transparency. Make sure that all team members can clearly see how far the project is getting along, and whether something is taking too long. It will allow you to have more control over your budget. A better transparency will reflect on a more organized project planning budget.

    You can use the Notes mini-app on Rock to share relevant information about the budget. This way everyone involved has a quick access to information.
  4. Communicate clearly. Better communication usually results in more structured budget information. Use clear, well-documented channels to communicate challenges and accomplishments. Also, don’t forget to foster cross departmental communication.

    Rock can help to keep your communication structured and in one place. Use chat, polls, or meetings to have quick interactions. You can also use the Topics mini-app for more in-depth and structured discussions.
Project Management Budget

Software Picks to Make Sure Work Gets Done While Staying in Budget

Which software can you use to avoid last minute surprises on your budgeting? Try out the following remote work tools:

  • Rock. We have already given you some tips on how to use Rock for managing project budgets in the best possible way, but there is more to it.

    Something to highlight is Rock’s all-in-one project management functionality. Combine messaging with tasks, notes, files, topics and meetings to keep your whole project budget management in one place. Instead of using many different apps, you can use the same platform in a more organized way.Set up your budget and get everyone informed without having to switch between different apps.
  • Loom. Loom complements Rock and it can be used to provide feedback in asynchronous work video format. Rock has a Loom integration, so you can share Looms on Rock easily.

    Use Looms for different parts of the project budget management process. Share information with your team about the different stages of the project and the budget prospects. Send and record videos at any time, so people can watch them as many times as they want to and leave comments if something is unclear.
  • Google Drive. You can connect Google Drive with Rock. Integrate your files to the Files mini-app and have easy access to them. All your project budget related documents will be accessible to everyone in the platform. Learn about what file management is and make your work easier.
  • Notion. Just like Google Drive, you can integrate Notion to Rock to work on your budget plan and get everyone on the same page.

    ​​Through this integration, teams can connect all necessary documentation from Notion to Rock more efficiently. 

Use Rock to Keep your Project Budget Management in One Place

Rock can help you to plan your budget effectively! Stay on track by sharing information and communicating about the budgeting project management process with your team on Rock.

Integrations such as Loom, Google Drive and Notion will allow you to manage all the budget information in one place. Spend less time switching tools and focus on finishing the project within your budget successfully!

Nov 26, 2022
November 28, 2022

Project Budget Management: Estimation and Best Practices

Gitta Boros
Business Development @ Rock
5 min read
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