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Imagine offering your customers a support experience so seamless it feels tailored just for them. Learn how to exude professionalism and proactive problem-solving in the same way a white-gloved butler provides impeccable service.

Throughout this article, we offer a step-by-step guide on how we set up highly persononalized customer support at Rock. Specifically, we walk you through:

• Why does excellent customer support matter?
• The challenges in building a high-end support workflow
• Step-by-step: How we built our own customer support from the ground up
• Unique advantages of our workflow

Whether your business is large or small, it is possible to provide an experience that feels like a five-star service.

Let's roll out the red carpet and dive into everything you should know to build your very own white-glove customer support workflow!

Why does offering excellent customer support matter?

Well though-out customer support flows aren’t just a nice to have — it's a vital component of business success.

Let’s quickly discuss 4 reasons why providing good support matters to your business.

1. Customer retention

If your customers are happy with your support, they are more likely to stay with you.

Keep in mind that it’s much cheaper to keep existing customers than to constantly look for new ones! In fact, studies have shown that retaining current customers can be up to 5 times cheaper than acquiring a new one.

🎁 Free resource: By adopting this Checklist Client Onboarding Template, you'll be well on your way to fostering successful, long-lasting client relationships.

2. Feedback and user suggestions

Your customers will feel that you care about their needs when you provide quick and high-quality customer support. As a result, customers give more frequent feedback and suggestions based on their experiences.

Avoid investing time on improvements or changes that don’t impact the customer. A steady stream of customer input allows you to always improve your product or service following their actual needs.

At Rock, we use a dedicated customer support channel to manage feedback and bug reporting in the form of tickets. Direct contact with our customers allows us to quickly flag bugs and capture feature requests.

🎁 Free resource: Retaining customers becomes so much easier when you can organize everything in a single place. Complete tickets, collect feedback and keep customers happy with this Customer Service Template.

3. More upselling opportunities

Attending to customer support inquiries in a personalized manner allows you to learn more about the client business, problems, and workflows. We often notice workflow issues or restrictions that can be fixed certain features in the paid plan.

White-glove support offers users the chance to learn about more advanced reporting, workflow shortcuts or improved documentation. We offer clients in-depth explanations about certain features and the value of incorporating them.

When our users grasp the full value of our unlimited plan, it becomes only logical to upgrade.

4. Reviews and referrals

When you’re well connected to customers it becomes easier to reach out whenever you need some support (reviews, referrals…). Customers are more inclined to invest time in supporting you when they feel valued and satisfied with your service.

Once you’re well-connected, it's quick and simple to ask them for a personalized review on sites like Capterra, Crozdesk, or Google play store/ App Store (if they have a mobile app) link.

This way they can make their thoughts available to other teams and share their experience with your team so far. You can then also use those reviews for case studies, testimonials….

The challenge of providing good customer support

Ensuring that your customers can access premium support at all times is no easy feat. Especially if your team is small without a dedicated person whose sole responsibility is to attend customers.

When this is the case, teams often share the work which leads to disconnected interactions and longer waiting times.

Initially, we ran into a few issues too. Let’s dive into a few challenges we initially experienced as a small team while building out our customer support.

1. Expensive customer support tools

As a smaller team, we lacked the budget for dedicated customer support software. Dedicated tools are often focused on big enterprises and too expensive for smaller teams.

Additionally, the CS software often offered too functionality that was too advanced for our team. Complexity in tools is an issue because of two main reasons:

• Training: Learning how to use a dedicated tool can take up a lot of time. A new interface and functionality would require one or more team members to learn how to use the platform. Early on we wanted to focus on other priorities instead.
• Functionality overkill: We found that a lot of the tools offered too much functionality. Paying for a full platform feels wasteful when the team only needs 10% of the offered functionality at the time.

🎁 Free resource: Retaining customers becomes so much easier when you can organize everything in a single place. Complete tickets, collect feedback and keep customers happy with this Customer Service Template.

2. Outdated channels for customer support

The default customer support channel when companies get started is a dedicated email address. But we quickly encountered that email threads become messy with many people in ‘cc’ and nobody clearly taking charge.

Important emails easily get lost, there is no clear structure, customers might write a few emails at once and you might not be sure where to follow up.

As a result, we were losing time and frustration increased from both sides.

3. Customer expectations are growing

Larger companies typically have well-established customer service funnels with clear expectations and waiting times. As a result, customers expect the same, if not better, treatment when working with small businesses.

Customer expect you to consider past interactions and feedback. But when conversations are mainly managed through email, it’s easy to get lost.

Teams should focus on providing white-glove customer support in order to keep the customer happy. But how do you set this up alongside all other priorities that come with managing a small team? We’ll dive into that in the next section!

🎁 Free resource: By adopting this Checklist Client Onboarding Template, you'll be well on your way to fostering successful, long-lasting client relationships.

How to use Rock as a free shared customer support chat in 6 steps

Rock is an all-in-one messaging and task management tool. It can easily be transformed into a live customer support chat which can be managed by multiple people.

Curious how? Here’s how we are currently leveraging our own platform to provide a white-glove customer support experience to all of our users. Our system can be set up in 6 simple steps.

1. Create a shared email account

Create a dedicated email account that you will use for your customer support on Rock. It can be a group account from your company’s email domain.

If you don’t have your own domain you can also create a dedicated account for which you share the credentials, for example, Acme-support@gmail.com.

You can learn more about creating your own groups here.

2. Sign up with the account to Rock

Use that new account to sign up on Rock for free. This account will be shared with everyone who is involved in providing customer support. If you’re a 1-person business or the only one providing support, you can create a personal account.

Create a username that reflects the purpose of your account. If you’re one person managing customer support, it might make sense to add a personal touch and use your own name. If it’s a team it might be a good idea to go for a more general name, for instance, Acme Support.

Adding a profile picture can be helpful too!

Next up, make sure to integrate your preferred cloud storage providers. For instance, you can connect your Google Drive or DropBox folders with Rock.

Cloud integration become useful if you often need to share resources or documents with your customers so you can quickly add them to a support space when relevant.

Finally, don’t forget to integrate your favorite video conferencing platform. We offer integrations with Zoom, Google Meet, Jitsi, and Loom.

Meeting integrations speed things up whenever a direct video call with your customers is needed. You will be able to set up a call with your customers in a few seconds.

3. Set up the Quick Connect of the email account

Set the Quick Connect link with a welcome message and select a template of a space that will be created between you and your customers. When creating your Quick Connect link, make sure that you add a welcome message which is short and sweet.

<QUOTE>: Use a welcome message like: ‘Hi there, thank you for reaching out to Rock Support. Someone from the team will be with you as soon as possible. To help you with any question, please provide us with as much detail as possible.’

Bonus, if you upgrade to unlimited you can customize the Quick Connect link, like space.new/[yourbusinessname]-support which looks even more professional.

4. Add the Quick Connect link where relevant

Now you have your Quick Connect link which will serve as a bridge between you and your customers who need support. Add that link where relevant:

• Your website
• Email signatures
• Social channels and other external platforms you might be listed

Also, it’s possible to transform your Quick Connect link into a QR code. Add the QR in more visual locations such as your website or if you have one, even a physical store.

Customers can scan the code and get in touch with you with their questions within seconds.

For example, we add a CTA at the bottom of every help center article, in order to help users if they were not able to find the information they were looking for.

5. Ready, set, go!

By clicking on your Quick Connect link or scanning the QR code, your customers will have a quick, free and direct way to reach out to you. Every time a new customer contacts you via Quick Connect, a new space will be created on your account and you will be notified.

You can handle all customer questions within that account and make sure nothing falls through the cracks!

When you need to include a specific colleague in any of those user conversations, you can easily do that by adding them to a space (all spaces are group spaces).

Also, your customers can easily add their colleagues too, if needed.

6. Optional: Share the account with other team members

You can always add your colleagues to your Customer Support account. Sharing accounts is relevant if you want to give a more personalized experience to your customers. Just share the password with team members, and all responses will come from the same account.

Users can quickly switch between accounts by toggling account switching in user settings. Our colleagues at Rock who are responsible for customer support queries easily switch several times per day to catch up on new questions or spaces opened.

Because every team member can read the past conversation, nothing is lost. This means that a new team member can quickly catch up and provide support to the user within seconds.

Advantages of using Rock for your customer support

Why should you use Rock for handling your customer support communication? We tested it ourselves and can tell yo why it’s the best choice for providing assistance to your clients.

1.  All-in-one customer support functionality

Emails become messy and outdated when it comes to customer support. Long email threads can cause confusion, especially if you need to involve new team members.

Eventually, information easily gets lost in the noise. Rock provides a more seamless experience; you have all your customer support chats and information in one place.

Everyone who joins the team gains access to past customer conversations.

2. Faster than outdated systems

It’s way faster to answer your customer questions via Rock compared to using emails. You don’t have to keep an eye on several different channels at all times.

Instead, you switch between Rock accounts in a matter of seconds. Direct chats with users give a faster and more personalized experience.

3. Asynchronous & shared

It’s very easy to take over conversations from your colleagues with a shared Rock customer support account.

You don’t need to ask any questions internally about past conversations because you can access past conversations between a customer and your colleague.

When working asynchronously, you can share the customer support work within the team easier and nobody is obliged to always be online to answer questions.

For example, one person takes care of the customer support account in the morning and another person in the afternoon.

Implementing a white-glove customer support experience for any business

Implement this workflow with your clients, partners, or other stakeholders. It’s an easy and professional way for others to communicate with your team.

Just like for customer support matters, you can create an account for any other workflow which requires communication between you and other parties.

Customize your Quick Connect welcome message which reflects your audience. Add that link where relevant and make it a super quick way to engage with you!

Support accounts can be individual as well as shared between different team members. Workflow configuration depends on your preference.

🎁 Free resource: By adopting this Checklist Client Onboarding Template, you'll be well on your way to fostering successful, long-lasting client relationships.

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Building a fast and responsive site increases your company’s credibility and brand identity. It saves you time on customer service, improves your sales, and offers prospects information on your business.

Nevertheless, building a good website is no easy task. The website project management process can quickly become messy and feel like it’s never-ending.

Loosing sight of priorities is especially easy when new bugs, improvements and pages are lurking around the corner. Not having an effective web application project management flow will make the overall experience unproductive and demotivating.

We have faced it all with three migrations and thousands of bugs, improvements, new pages and designs. We tested project setups, timeframes and remote work tools so you don't have to.

We’re now writing this all-in-one website plan template to prevent you from going through the same issues. It might even help you with improving productivity in your organization.

The article starts with the foundations and continues with a website project plan template that replicates our internal workflow.

What is website project management?

Website project management is a collaborative process through the delegation of tasks and roles. Work managed ranges from technical SEO to page design and development. Each task is a building stone to the creation and maintenance of a fast, searchable and informative website.

The workflow starts with a website project manager who schedules and assigns tasks. Team members pass tasks across stages until improvements are pushed to the live web application.

There are different project management frameworks you can pick from to organize the process. Make sure to select the one that fits your team best, and remember to keep things easy and streamlined.

📔 Resource: You can also check out this resource on agile vs waterfall if you’re looking to learn more about project management.

A good website project plan ensures that tasks smoothly move across different project stages. Team members are informed in time and priorities are aligned across stakeholders.

If you’re building websites for external clients, then good project management also strengthens relationships. By keeping everything in check you can maximize for asynchronous work, meet client demands and keep them involved across project stages.

Getting set up

Building and maintaining a website is an ongoing responsibility with timed milestones. Internal website projects are almost never truly completed. There is always a bug to fix, SEO improvement to add, or new pages to develop.

To keep website projects moving you need to assign roles within your team. Note that one person can hold multiple or even all roles when developing a website.

Within our team there are 3 people working on different site related activities. Nevertheless, each person might manage multiple elements within that workflow or share tasks.

We combine the following team roles to structure the website project management of Rock:

• Project manager
• UX designer
• SEO specialist
• Content writer
• Graphic designer
• Website developer

Project Manager for website development

The project manager is at the heart of web project management. This person implements the communication plan, coordinates tasks and sets up milestones.

Website building is a collaborative process where the website project manager takes the lead in prioritizing activities and setting deadlines. They make sure that work is aligned with the organizational strategy.

Within our team one person takes full responsibility as project manager for website development. Here are a few responsibilities our website project manager takes on:

• Frequency of implementation cycles: Implement changes from staging to live every week, two weeks, quarter, once a year?
• ‍Assigning tasks and prioritizing: Who is working on what task? What improvements, bug fixes and new pages should be prioritized?
• Deadline management: Are the cycles reasonable in workload? What task is close or far from the current deadline?
• Documenting the website building process: What was implemented in each cycle? Where is information stored?
• Resolve issues: What happens if someone becomes less available or if a task takes much longer than expected?
• Retrospective meetings: Our website project manager encourage team members to share feedback after each cycle in a dedicated retrospective meeting.

UX Designer

A user experience (UX) designer focuses on the interaction between the user and the website. They focus on enhancing user experiences by making sites intuitive.

A UX designer looks into the website architecture. Think of how you move between pages, headers, footers and individual page layout. How will a typical visitor behave when visiting your website? How can you convert them into a customer?

Typical activities include building a mind-map and wireframes of a website. Our UX designer also designed the skeleton layout for each webpage. think of different sections, entry and exit points and user experience flows.

SEO Marketer

Building an informative and fast website is extremely valuable. Nevertheless, with many sites publishing content that does not rank, you also need to make sure that people can find your website.

The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is to increase a website’s position on a search result. By ranking your website, you target specific queries to generate more leads.

A complex algorithm has made SEO harder, on top of the already immense content competition on the internet. There are two sets of activities that an SEO marketer might focus on in order to get their website to rank:

• On-page SEO
• Off-page SEO

On-page SEO activities

When designing pages, you have to think about what keywords you want to rank for. This can be one or multiple at the same time depending on the length of your page and competitive nature of the keyword.

The on-page SEO marketer will define what keywords need to be present on a webpage and how often they should appear. They should also define meta titles and meta tags.

Keyword traffic changes throughout time as user preferences and interests change. This can lead to changes in the copy of a page or other adjustments to make sure the page receives enough traffic.

On-page SEO also includes optimizing page speed. Our SEO marketer also works on more granular activities such as breadcrumbs, in-bound linking and setting up short and descriptive URLs.

Off-page SEO activities

Off-page SEO focuses on making sure that other sites link to your page. Backlinks and guest posts are the most common activities for off-page SEO.

To quickly summarize, off-page SEO focuses on making sure that other users can find your page on other relevant sites. This signals search engines that your website offers good quality and relevant content. In term, this can improve the ranking of the pages that receive external links.

Content writer

Our content writer focuses on developing clear, concise and enticing copy. They also naturally incorporate SEO requirements on every page.

There are multiple streams of content that you might want to publish on your website. For us, copy and content writing is typically divided into 3 different buckets.

• Webpage: The webpages offer insights on the product offered and why it’s relevant to different audiences. You can also add dedicated pages comparing your product to competitors.
• ‍Blog: The blog is a collection of stories, advice and announcements. The copy is typically longer and more story-based than webpages.
• ‍Help center: The help center provides documentation on product functionality.

Graphic Designer

A poor visual design will lead users to bounce right off a website. Whether the website is not intuitive or a chosen color palette is off-putting, that first impression matters.

Experienced graphic designers understand the product vision and accurately portray the brand. Output includes illustrations, videos, logos, and a color palette that aligns with the brand.

Website Developer

The website developer takes the page mocks and converts them into webpages. The developer might manually code HTML or use no-code/low-code tools for web building with platforms such as Webflow or Wordpress.

There are typically two sets of web development activities:

• Front-End Development: The front-end developer takes care of what the user sees and how the website works. They take a website design and build out the pages with plugins, no-code tools or old-school coding with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
• ‍Back-End Development: Back-end developers deal with the server side. They write code that impacts the website’s server and databases. Back-end developers can also implement improvements focused on website speed.

5 types of tools we use for the website development process

Throughout the website building process we use a variety of tools. Some directly integrate with Rock, while others are less directly connected to the website project plan.

Website project management, collaboration & messaging: Rock

If you’re not yet familiar with Rock, we’re an all-in-one messaging platform. Rock combines chat with task management, note taking, file storage and meetings. This allows us to keep our complete website project management workflow in one place:

• Task management: Rock has built-in task management. Team members can see their tasks through list, board, and calendar views. Tasks are typically moved through lists like ‘To do’, ‘Doing’ and ‘Done’. Work can easily be filtered by assignee or labels such as “Development” and “SEO”.
• ‍Real-time messaging: Send  messages, audio messages, polls and other information in a space.
• ‍Documentation: Write down important information on the Notes mini-app. Think of meeting agendas, documentation or updates.
• ‍Meetings: Rock makes setting up a meeting easy when you really need one.

Further down we will explain in detail how we use our own platform to manage web project management activities.

Design & UX: Figma

We mostly use Figma for creative work on the web design project management front:

• Mindmap: What pages we want to work on, which ones to prioritize.
• ‍Wireframing: Skeleton of a page with the different sections.
• ‍Visuals: Screens from the UI/UX workflows and convert them into custom marketing materials for the website.

We connect Figma with the web design project management workflow by attaching designs to individual tasks. Designs can also be added to meeting agendas in the Notes mini-app.

If you use Adobe Creative Cloud instead of Figma for website development, then you can also freely integrate those designs to the Files mini-app on Rock.

Content writing & SEO: Google Drive and Loom

We mainly use 3 different platforms for managing the content writing and SEO process of the website.

• Google Drive: We write down our documentation, copy and guidelines on Google Drive.
• ‍Loom: We use Loom to to share asynchronous videos between team members. Think of walkthroughs for workflows, content or new webpages. We watch videos back and add comments if there is anything we did not understand.

We use the in-app Loom integration to quickly record a video if something is too difficult to explain in words. We also use the Google Drive integration in our website project management by adding relevant folders to the project spaces.

You can basically do the same with Dropbox, OneDrive or Notion if your team is more used to working with those cloud storage providers.

Development & implementation: Webflow

We use Webflow as our CMS for the project management for web development process. We wanted to combine the Webflow experience with the powerful plugins and SEO functionality of Wordpress. Thus we decided to use both in our website development.

Moving between web development stages is done through a dedicated tasks with an exhaustive list. We first develop the page on Figma, and subsequently move the design to Webflow.

We keep dedicated checklist items for each stage in the development process. This way everyone in the team can track website improvement progress. More on that in the upcoming section!

Manage your website project management workflow by following these 6 steps

The following section summarizes our website project planning process in 6 simple steps. This process free and can be easily implemented by any team.

Throughout the last few months we trialed different processes and communication strategies. We’ve found this to be the most effective workflow for a starting team or small business.

1. Configure the required spaces and establish how to communicate across them

We manage the website website development plan with tasks across three spaces. If you’re working with clients you can create a separate space for them.

Spaces combine all task functionality you might need alongside full-fledged messaging, note taking, file storage and meetings. We organize website project management communications across 3 spaces:

• Strategy space: Highest level and and where we discuss the overall project. It’s where we discuss objectives, results and the different milestones of the website development plan.
• ‍Creative space: Individual tasks and discussion of new pages, page improvements and other more granular activities.
• ‍Development space: Bugs and website errors.

You can follow this set-up or take other routes.

2. Integrate your website management toolstack

There are 3 types of tools you should consider integrating with for the website project management workflow:

• Design tools: Figma or Adobe Creative Cloud
• ‍Cloud storage providers: Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Notion, Miro
• ‍Meetings & Video: Zoom, Google Meet and Loom

Design tools

We integrate our design folders to the Files mini-app of every space so work can be streamlined. It also allows anyone in the team can quickly find and access design files.

Add your complete design folder and then attach individual pages or files to tasks, notes and topics.

Integrating Figma or Adobe only takes a few minutes. Select “Files” on the top of your space, select the platform you want to integrate, authenticate the account and  select the relevant folders.

Once an account has been authenticated you can directly add folders in other spaces as well.

Cloud storage providers

SEO workflows, new content, strategies and team planning should be stored in a cloud storage provider.

We integrate our cloud storage providers to our spaces to reduce folder searching and link sharing across the team. Everyone can access important information without getting distracted with non-relevant folders.

Just like Figma and Adobe, the integration of Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Miro and Notion only requires a few simple steps. Select the Files mini-app, pick your provider, authenticate and select the folders you want to add to the space in question.

You can now continue adding folders in other spaces and different projects you’re working on.

Meetings & video

We often encourage our own team members to say no to meetings. Nevertheless, when really needed you should be able to jump on a quick call with anyone to align on a task, priority or discussion.

To do so you can integrate with Google Meet or Zoom. Just like the file integrations, the only thing you have to do is select the camera icon in the bottom of your screen, select your app and authenticate. Once that’s done you can start new meetings in any space.

You can also use Jitsi which does not require authentication and is an open-source free videoconferencing platform.

Now, we also mentioned that we used Loom to share asynchronous video with the team. When something is not urgent, you can still add a personal touch by using the Loom integration.

3. Configure the task board

The Tasks mini-app is a powerful project management tool that allows you to coordinate your project. We organize all of our tasks in a ‘backlog’, ‘doing’, ‘to be reviewed’ and ‘done’ setup.

There are a variety of task configurations. Let’s do a deep dive into the most notable ones that you will need when setting up a website project of your own.

• [Strategy space] Cycle/Sprint task
• ‍[Creative space] New webpage creation or improvement
• ‍[Creative space] SEO tasks
• ‍[Development space] Bug management

Strategy space task: Cycle/Sprint task

The highest level documentation in the website project management workflow is done with a sprint task. These tasks summarize all the activities within your sprint cylce. We typically use these to separate project vs task.

Depending on how large your project is, you can either create 1 task for this, or separate it between different workflows such as SEO, content implementation and back-end work.

Here’s how we typically use the different task fields in a cycle/sprint task:

• Assignees: Project manager or main project owners. Leverage the follower feature If other team members are involved but not assignees. This way they can still receive notifications of all task activity.
• ‍Start & due dates: Cycle tasks typically move between website design timelines. We push changes to our live website every two weeks. Add start and due dates and sprints to organize these different timelines.
• ‍Labels: Categorize tasks as “website” or “website project” so you can easily filter the task board.
• ‍Checklist: We leverage cross-space @mentions a lot. The different granular tasks are in different spaces, just @space:task on Rock and directly link to tasks in different spaces.

Check out the image below for an example of a cycle or sprint task in our web application project management process.

Creative space task: webpage creation and improvement

We use a single task for web design project management. After testing different configurations, we ended up organizing work in the following way:

• Assignees: Our team is quite small so there are only 2 people assigned. You can always add people later on if their input becomes relevant.
• ‍Start & due dates: We add the task to a sprint, this automatically adds a start and due date.
• ‍Checklist: We define different stages from start to finish: content framework, page outline, content writing, design complete, webflow complete, animations complete (if relevant), transferred to wordpress.
• ‍Attachments: We attach the page mock from Figma to the task so we can quickly get to work.

We sometimes want to make changes to an already improved webpage with a new section, visual, or changes to the copy or visual elements. We then move the initial page task back from ‘done’ to ‘backlog’ to access all past documentation.

Creative space task: SEO related tasks

Within the website project management template, we typically edit SEO tasks in the following way:

• Assignees: SEO related tasks are typically assigned the content writer and SEO marketer.
• ‍Labels: We highlight whether a task is inbound or outbound SEO work.
• ‍Attachments: A lot of our SEO work is stored on Google sheets or docs. We attach these to the task for easy access.

Tasks often repeat across cycles. We highlight the cycle in the task title (i.e. “September Sprint”) and duplicate the task when the new sprint starts. Recurring activities typically include optimizing for orphaned content, in or outbound link communications and collaborating on guest posts.

Development space task: Bug management

Bug fixes are an important part of the web development project management process. We file all bugs in one long checklist and use the @attachments function to add images of issues we are facing.

There are a few information fields that we use for these tasks:

• Assignees: Developer although sometimes it requires input from design or UX as well.
• ‍Checklist: Different bugs are added when they’re flagged by a team member or user and manually ranked as high, medium or low. We use the use the @attachments function to refer to images of issues we are facing on the website.
• ‍Attachments: Screenshots or videos that provide more context on the issue at hand.

We try to fix 10 bugs in every cycle and refresh documentation every now and then by duplicating the task so the checklist does not become too long.

4. Set up your development cycle

Website work is set up in recurring development cycles. A development cycle is organized in a timed cycle or sprint and includes page creation improvements, SEO, and bug fixing tasks.

Our development cycles run for 2 weeks. After that we push the changes live and start with a new set of tasks. Here are a few things you should keep in mind when setting up your development cycle:

• Decide on a timeframe
• Prioritize tasks and add them to the checklist
• Stick to your deadlines

Decide on a timeframe

While we implement changes every 2 weeks you can pick a timeframe that fits your website project management style. Some teams run weekly, monthly, quarterly or bi-annual improvements. Note that the larger the timeframe, the more changes.

A bigger set of changes often results in more bugs and problems to arise. We keep our cycles short so that it’s easier to pinpoint the cause of issues. We also believe in progressively adding small improvements rather than waiting too long for changes to be implemented.

Timeframes depend on your team, client communication (if external web project management), and priorities. We do recommend to pick one interval and stick with it for consistency. That is, don’t change the length of the intervals between your cycles.

Prioritize tasks and add them to the checklist

Use the ‘priority’ field on tasks when they are added into a space. Project managers can then pick the important activities by filtering between the different categories in board view.

You can currently select the following priority levels on Rock: urgent, high, medium, low, lowest. After each implementation you can always revisit the priority tag added to the tasks in the backlog.

Once you start planning a new cycle, pick the tasks you think will have the biggest impact or can be quickly implemented.

Stick to your deadlines

This is arguably the hardest part of website project management. Tasks often take longer delaying the release. We recommend sticking to the deadlines and keeping open communication channels on workload, time investment and priority.

Sometimes it’s better to remove a task from the list and push the changes live. After the cycle is completed you can reconvene with your team and discuss workload.

Open communication channels are key to preventing a toxic work culture. Keep your team in the loop by leveraging check in questions for meetings, positive affirmations for work and balancing types of communication styles within your team.

5. Achieve milestones and provide feedback

We set up a recurring retrospective meeting. There are a variety of topics that are discussed in these meetings, but we always follow our own virtual meetings best practices. We typically require a meeting agenda to be shared at least 24 to 48 hours in advance so everyone can prepare accordingly.

These meeting agendas include the following:

• Action items: What are the next steps? Do you need to brainstorm anything with the team?
• ‍Updates: Use check-in questions, share metrics and site performance numbers or share other general personal or organizational information.
• ‍Discussion topics: What are the key things you want to talk about? Do you need additional input or information about anything?
• ‍Relevant files: Attach design or cloud storage files the team needs to review prior to meeting.

Check out other meeting agenda examples from our team if you’re looking to minimize meetings while keeping the team productive and connected.

6. Continue adding new cycles

The website project management process is always ongoing for us. Some weeks might be busier than others depending on the bandwidth in the team.

Repeat step 3 to 5 and continue improving your website and optimizing the site experience. Create new tasks for pages, bugs or improvements and add them to a new cycle once they become a main priority.

This set-up allows you to celebrate your wins at the end of each cycle. While managing a website is often an ever-going activity, you can use this website project plan template to give the team a sense of progress and accomplishment.

Managing web projects with Rock

Websites are a great foundation for product growth and prospect conversions. Make sure you get the most out of your hours invested by signing up to Rock and implementing the tips and process for website project management.

Every business has goals and objectives it needs to achieve in order to stay profitable. But as most teams know, this is often easier said than done.

Your ability to achieve company objectives and goals can be influenced by a variety factors. While you can’t control them all, you can still increase your chances of success by implementing the correct strategies and processes.

This article navigates through the following topics:

• Goals vs objectives: differences and how to define them
• 10 Best practices to achieve company goals and objectives

Working on choosing firm goals for your business? Try out our free workflow template!

✅ Actionable steps to define company objectives and goals

✅ Examples of organizational goals and objectives

✅ Task management functionality to track & check off every important activity

✅ Collaboration suite to work with team members and share information

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Defining your company objectives and goals

Goals and objectives are the most adaptable blocks within your strategy. They act as benchmarks and targets that steer decision-making, performance assessment, and the distribution of resources.

The final stage of your organizational strategy involves writing down your goals and objectives. Once defined, you can effectively pinpoint the short-to-medium term achievements you want to concentrate on.

It’s important to recognize the difference between a goal and an objective, and understand how they work together:

Goals:

• Overarching statements of desired outcomes of a team or an organization.
• Long-term, focusing on the direction of the organization.
• Sense of direction for establishing more detailed, actionable objectives strategies.
  

Objectives:

• Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-specific (SMART) targets.
• Breakdown of main goal that defines what should be achieved and by when.
• Ensure accountability when used to monitor progress and assess performance.

Is this the first time you’re defining goals and objectives of a company? Get started with our dedicated template that walks you through the most important steps.

How to Achieve Business Goals and Objectives: 10 best practices

Now that we know the difference between company objectives and goals, let’s dive into some 'how-tos'. From defining clear goals to fostering a culture of accountability, these strategies will serve as your roadmap to success.

1. Set realistic objectives for your team to complete

Every good objective has two components: a target date and a measurable achievement.

For example, "Increase our sales revenue" and “Boost our profits” are not practical objectives. They don’t indicate when or how much. Instead, "Increase sales revenue by 30% by June 30th." would be a more effective statement.

Another way to make sure a main objective is realistic is to break it down into smaller tasks that team members can complete within a specific time frame. These smaller tasks are typically called milestones.

For example, if your objective is to hire five new employees by the end of the year; what are challenges and timelines for each role? Creating a milestone for each hire might help team members tackle the objective more effectively.

2. Leverage asynchronous communication

Asynchronous work is a collaboration style that does not require the presence of all participants at the same time. Instead, individuals complete their tasks independently of others' schedules. This enablies flexibility and enhances productivity.

Asynchronous work offers several key benefits that support the achievement of company goals and objectives:

• Increased Productivity: Asynchronous work allows team members to focus on tasks without constant interruptions. Teams create an environment focused on deep work and more intentional interactions.
• Flexibility: People in asynchronous teams work when they are most productive. Team members can optimize their work routines around other responsibilities and keep a better work-life balance.
• Global Teams: For teams distributed across time zones, asynchronous work minimizes the need for overlap. This allows organizations to hire talent regardless of their geographic location.
• Reduced Pressure: Without the need for immediate responses, team members can take the time to thoughtfully respond to queries and produce high-quality work.
• Efficient Use of Time: Asynchronous communication tools allow for tracking of tasks and conversations. Documentation can be referred to later, reducing the need for repeating information and saving time in the long run.

Interested in implementing work strategies to promote asynchronous work in your team? Check out our dedicated article!

3. Document relevant information

Documentation refers to the process of providing written evidence or records. Think about work progress, processes, policies, instructions, decisions, or events within an organization.

Prioritizing effective documentation is essential to ensure smooth operations, safeguard knowledge, and continuously improve as a team.

Documentation helps teams with objectives and goal management through the following:

• Knowledge Management: Documentation serves as a repository of information that can be referred to when needed. It prevents loss of knowledge due to staff turnover and helps new employees get up to speed.
• Accountability: When tasks, decisions, and processes are documented, it's clear who is responsible for what. This promotes accountability, which can drive progress towards goals.
• Efficiency: Well-documented processes can lead to increased efficiency by reducing the need for repeated explanations and minimizing the risk of making mistakes.

‍Hiring a virtual assistant can help your business improve its documentation process. A virtual assistant can create and maintain accurate documentation for your business, ensuring that all data is up-to-date and accessible.

4.  Keep information up to date

Tasks should be continuously updated as new relevant work gets completed. This way team members can stay up to date with progress and seamlessly access information.

Provide updates when relevant. Task management systems allow you to update the assignee status, change lists, or leave a comment. This way, everyone else knows that you made changes to the task. Similarly, you can keep your team informed by using the task comments.

You can use comments to note what you did on a task or how it's progressing. For example, you just updated a bug report and want to let someone know.

Then, change the list of the task or update your assignee status. This way, team members know that you finished the task, and they can move on to other tasks. If you want to update the status of an assignee (e.g., change them from "to do" to "In Progress"):

1. Check out "Assignees" at the top of a task. You'll see a list of all people in that project or conversation.
2. After selecting, click on their name and "Change Status."
3. Select "In Progress" or the status that best fits that task.

5.  Assess and prioritize tasks

It’s important to continuously assess the importance of activities to achieve short-term business goals. First, you need to prioritize tasks based on their impact on the company. Next, assess what needs to be done right now and what can wait until later.

Determine the importance of each activity by asking yourself, "What's the impact of this activity on our company's success?" Assign a score from lowest to highest based on how it will affect your company goals (e.g., lowest, low, medium, high, urgent). Then prioritize the tasks accordingly so that the essential activities are always at the top of your list.

Assessing the importance of activities is a continuous process that involves three steps:

1. Identify key performance indicators (KPI’s) for your department or team
2. Measure progress toward these KPI’s every day
3. Use this data to adjust how you spend your time

This will help team members that wonder how to improve work performance. By focusing on what is urgent and has a high impact, they can spend their time effectively.

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6. Stay flexible

Staying flexible in the pursuit of company objectives and goals means being open to change and ready to adapt when circumstances shift. Adjust strategies, reallocate resources, or even alter goals as necessary to respond to unpredictable events or new information.

To stay flexible, it's important to regularly review and revise plans as necessary. Open communication and feedback loops can help identify when changes might be needed.

While flexibility is important, it's also crucial to keep a clear vision and strategic direction to prevent becoming unfocused or reactive. A balance between flexibility and stability can help you adapt to change without losing sight of long-term goals.

7. Monitor progress

Monitoring progress is an essential step in achieving company goals and objectives. It involves regularly tracking and evaluating the performance of tasks and projects against established benchmarks or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Here's how it can contribute to the success of your organization:

1. Identify progress and successes: Monitoring allows you to see what's working well. Identify which strategies are driving success and focus on maximizing impact.
2. Detect problems early: Regular monitoring can help spot issues or bottlenecks early on. Intervene early to prevent small issues from becoming major obstacles.
3. Accountability: Hold each team and individual accountable for their tasks. Monitoring progress ensures everyone is contributing effectively towards achieving the company's goals.

It's important to have clear, measurable objectives and a reliable system for tracking performance. This could be a project management software, a custom dashboard, or regular reports.

Regular check-ins or reviews should be scheduled to discuss progress, address issues, and adjust plans as necessary. Remember, the goal of monitoring isn't to micromanage. Provide support and guidance to ensure the company's objectives are being met.

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8. Learn from mistakes

When setbacks occur, use them as learning opportunities instead of focusing on the negatives. Acknowledge when things go wrong, analyze the situation and then implement changes to prevent the mistake from happening again.

Here are some specific examples of how learning from mistakes helps with achieving company goals and objectives:

• Employee Development: When mistakes are treated as learning opportunities, it reduces the fear of failure. Employees become more willing to take on challenges and learn new skills, which increases their contribution to the company's goals.
• Risk Management: Understanding past mistakes can help in predicting and mitigating future risks. Proactively devise strategies or backup plans to handle similar situations, minimizing setbacks.

9. Use the right tools

The right tools can streamline processes, improve communication, enable better decision-making, and generally increase efficiency and productivity.

Here's how:

1. Efficiency: Tools like project management software can automate routine tasks, streamline workflows, and help track progress, significantly increasing efficiency.
2. Collaboration: Collaboration tools allow teams to communicate, share documents, and work together.
3. Task Management: Task management tools can help organize work, set priorities, and ensure that everyone knows what they need to do and when. Keep projects on track and ensure that company objectives are met.
4. Remote Work: For companies with remote teams, tools for video conferencing, instant messaging, file sharing, and more are essential for enabling effective remote work.

Choosing the right tools requires understanding your company's needs and goals. It's also important to provide adequate training to ensure that all team members can use the tools effectively.

Remember, tools are meant to support your work, not make it more complicated. The best tools will fit seamlessly into your workflows and enhance your team's ability to reach the goal.

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10.  Celebrate achieving company goals and objectives

Team members who feel valued and appreciated are much more likely to keep hitting their objectives. Celebrating your team's success is an effective way to boost morale and encourage future success while preventing a toxic work culture.

So how can you celebrate employee achievements? Here are some tips for celebrating team victories large and small:

• Virtual events: A virtual cooking course, team-building exercise, board game, escape room, and movie night are all ways to connect remotely. Ensure all team members receive an invitation to the event, even those unable to attend because of conflicts or other commitments.
• Themed celebrations: For example, if you're celebrating a significant contract win with a travel agency, you might host an online event with a tropical theme where guests receive gift boxes or care packages delivered to their homes.
• Bonuses: Celebrate achievements that are measured in dollars or percentages. For example, if your team has increased sales by 20% over the last year, celebrate that achievement with bonuses.
• Awards ceremonies: Create a set of awards based on different values and achievements throughout the year. To keep things light, you can also present awards such as "Best Dressed" or "Best Smile."!

Remember, a celebration can be as simple as having a virtual coffee break. Just make sure to recognize the team's accomplishments and make them feel valued.

Start achieving your company goals and objectives today

Remember, success doesn't happen overnight. But with a clear vision, the right strategies, and a dedicated team, you can start making progress towards your goals and objectives today.

Need a helping hand in achieving company goals and objectives? Try out our free workflow template!

✅ Actionable steps to define company objectives and goals

✅ Examples of organizational goals and objectives

✅ Task management functionality to track & check off every important activity

✅ Collaboration suite to work with team members and share information

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Picture this: it's Monday morning, you're sipping your freshly brewed coffee, and eager to kick off a productive week. But as you scan your calendar, you're met with a sense of dread - an endless list of back-to-back meetings.

Sound familiar? If so, you're not alone. Inefficient meetings have become a notorious time-drain, often leaving little time for actual work. In this dedicated guide we will walk you through:

• General theory on the best meeting duration
• How much time you should spend per type of meeting
• Virtual meetings best practices
• How to cancel a meeting: free template and step-by-step process

No more aimless discussions; it's time to take back control of your schedule. Don't just survive your workweek—thrive in it!

What is the best meeting duration?

No meeting should be longer than half an hour. There are many experts that support that idea. One of them is Donna McGeorge, the author of The 25 Minute Meeting: Half the Time, Double the Impact. She argues that, if done well, meetings are “short, sharp and productive”.

This meeting length limit is inspired by Francesco Cirillo’s Pomodoro method, which states that 25 minutes is the optimal amount of time for people to focus on a certain topic.

Unless you have a very clear goal in mind, there is a danger that a meeting will be a waste of time, according to this Harvard Business Review article. So if you are in charge of organizing a meeting, ask yourself this question: “What is this meeting intended to achieve?”

Once you know that, you can establish the best length when arranging meetings.

Note that there are exceptions. The length of meetings depends on the nature of each conversation. You also can’t be too strict with certain stakeholders (i.e. customers or clients).

Let’s have a look at the most typically occurring meetings and their recommended duration.

Types of meetings and their recommended duration

Meetings can be effective tools within your workplace collaboration, team effectiveness and efficiency, and culture building.

In some cases though, meetings don’t need to happen at all. This is especially true in the case of asynchronous work, where teams work through task management and heavy documentation.

Next up: the 9 main kinds of meetings and how long they should last.

1. Information sharing

Information sharing is usually a one-way dialogue where one person informs a group of attendees or employees about a specific issue. It is not a meeting by itself, but an effective way to share information.

Meeting time: 0 minutes. You should share information whenever it has been properly documented. This allows people to take the necessary time to process information and prepare feedback and questions.

Subsequently, the team can schedule a brainstorming call (typically 30 minutes) or a short meeting to discuss the contents, ask questions, make decisions and provide input.

Think of the following activities as information sharing: company updates, lectures, presentations, walkthoughs.

Suggestion: You can record videos with apps like Loom to walk through a presentation. After that, only schedule a short meeting to discuss questions, brainstorm, or go deeper into the topic.

2. Best time for meetings: regular 1:1 chats

A 1:1 meeting is a free form meeting. It is used to keep two people in the loop about a certain situation, give feedback and resolve work related issues. But it goes beyond status updates because it lays the foundation for a productive and trusting relationship.

Meeting time: Between 20 and 40 minutes. Make sure to balance conversations around work, interpersonal relationships and professional development in these meetings. Depending on the frequency, a meeting duration between 20 and 40 minutes is optimal.

In this conversation there is usually a mix of work and culture. If it is arranged between you and your manager, it becomes a good opportunity to talk about how you handle your workload, your general satisfaction level and personal experience within the company.

Regarding the meeting duration, a common best practice is to schedule a 1:1 for 30 minutes, and then have 10 minutes extra open after in case of the meeting running over.

Suggestion: in a remote environment, try to keep these conversations face-to-face. Make sure that your equipment allows high quality video and audio for a better experience.

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3.Client meeting

Ideally, a client meeting should take half an hour. But you have to make sure to send as much information in advance as possible, so your clients are up to date and can prepare questions, feedback or any information they might need beforehand.

Meeting time: 30 minutes. Learning how to meet with clients is one of the most important tasks you can complete.

According to Fellow, there are four different types of client meetings:

• Introductory: you can use this preliminary first chat to establish a good relationship with a client.
• Consultation: gain a clear understanding of the client’s needs… and position yourself as a solution!
• Proposal: present the client your findings and research. Seal the deal.
• Check-in: make sure everything is on track and there are no unanswered questions.

Suggestion: in a client meeting, preparation is key. Come well prepared to make it more effective and productive without going overtime.

4. All hands or town hall

In this group conversation, all employees, managers and stakeholders meet to discuss company-wide matters and share general updates. These updates are sometimes shared in a news brief beforehand, and then discussed with the rest of the team.

Meeting time: Between 20 and 40 minutes. Town hall or all hands meetings are not very frequent, but they are important for employee engagement, especially if you are looking into improving productivity in an organization.

These meetings tend to happen on a monthly, quarter, semi-annual or annual basis. They allow alignment on achieving company goals and objectives.

All hands meetings are helpful to celebrate milestones and foster your company’s vision and values. They are also a good opportunity for people to have a direct approach with the CEO and with colleagues from different departments they don’t usually meet.

Suggestion: Make sure to make these meetings interactive to nurture collaboration between teams across departments. You can nurture company culture through a quiz or by setting up breakout rooms. Give everyone a chance to ask questions and interact.

5. Brainstorming

A brainstorming meeting encourages participants to generate and share ideas freely, often focusing on solving a specific problem. The primary goal is to stimulate creative thinking, foster innovation, and encourage open communication among team members.

Meeting time: Around 30 minutes. The meeting duration of a brainstorming can be flexible, but it’s a good idea to try to stay around 30 minutes. Don’t be too strict about the end of the meeting; sometimes the best creative ideas rise in the last minutes.

Shorter intervals allow your team to be more straightforward. So it all depends on the kinds of ideas you are looking for and how specific you want to be with the topic.

Suggestion: once the meeting is over, use Rock to create a topic, so people can continue to add ideas even after the meeting. A topic in Rock is very similar to a thread anywhere else. It is like an extension of a brainstorm meeting to give space for some creative ideas to occur at a later point that day, week or month.

6. Weekly team meeting

This meeting is usually arranged every week at a designated time. It addresses action items and roadblocks, as well as tasks and questions for the upcoming weeks.

Meeting time: Between 20 and 30 minutes. This kind of meeting is important for staying organized at work through weekly updates. It should not take much longer than 20 or 30 minutes.

A regular weekly team meeting can help team members progress better with their work and collaborate with their peers. Remember to have a clear purpose, defined meeting agenda and don’t bore your colleagues with unnecessary too long meeting time.

Suggestion: share important information in a meeting agenda beforehand. Take a look into these meeting agenda examples to bring structure to your conversations.

7. Daily standup

A daily stand-up is a brief, time-boxed meeting where each team member provides a concise update on their progress, plans for the day, and any obstacles they may be facing. The purpose is to maintain transparency, alignment, and accountability while identifying potential roadblocks early on.

Meeting time: Preferably less than 15 minutes. A daily standup should be as short as possible, ideally less than 15 minutes! Daily standups are usually conducted in the morning.

You can navigate this short meeting using these three questions:

1. What did you do yesterday?
2. What will you do today?
3. Anything blocking your progress?

Suggestion: Create a topic on Rock for daily standups and have team members communicate what they will be working on by @mentioning the respective tasks. It makes it easier to follow up and provide more context.

8. Retrospective meeting

A retrospective meeting is a structured review session held after the completion of a project, sprint, or specific milestone.  Team members reflect on the process, identify successes and areas for improvement, and discuss actionable steps to enhance future performance.

Meeting time: 20-30 minutes. These open conversations last about 20 minutes or half an hour. Retrospectives usually come at the end of a sprint or at the end of a project to talk about what went well and what can be improved. They promote knowledge and value sharing while working together.

Remember that during retrospectives employees should be able to express concerns freely through a sense of trust and open communication.

Suggestion: Follow our guide on how to run a retrospective successfully. You can start by setting a clear agenda with discussion points. You should try to have only relevant people involved.

9. Coffee chats

A coffee chat is an informal, casual conversation between two or more individuals. The purpose is to build rapport, share ideas, network, or discuss work-related topics in a more laid-back environment.

Meeting time: Between 15 and 30 minutes. Meeting duration is important here: don’t make a coffee chat too long! Think about how long you realistically spend drinking a coffee: most probably, not much more than 30 minutes.

A coffee chat is a great idea for networking and interacting with people across your organization in a less formal way. Don’t be shy to make small talk, but stay away from sensitive topics.

Suggestion: these meetings are great for culture building. You can use these informal meetings to get to know new colleagues within the company.

Virtual meetings best practices

Now that you have a clear idea know of how long a meeting should be, let’s have a look into virtual meetings best practices:

• 30 minute meeting rule: As we explained before, some theories state that if meetings are around 30 minutes maximum, people are quicker in making decisions.

• Set up a meeting agenda well in advance: Allow people to read through documents, add items and complete what is going to be discussed so you get the most out of your time. Use these meeting agenda examples.
• Don’t overdo meetings: Be mindful of when you schedule meetings. If something can be done asynchronously (by using tasks, messages, comments or notes) then don’t schedule a meeting.
• Learn to say no to meetings: If you have no input on a meeting or there is no value added to your presence in a meeting, say no.
• Async by default, synchronous when really needed: Move to asynchronous work by default. Prioritize things that are actually important, and leave meeting time for activities that truly bring value.

How to cancel a meeting: free template and step-by-step process

Time is your most precious resource. It's always in short supply, and you can't create more of it.

Wasting time, whether it's yours or someone else's, should be avoided. Ideally, every meeting on your work calendar should be efficient and contribute value. Unfortunately, this isn't always the reality.

As a result, learning how to cancel a meeting is an essential skill in today's professional landscape. It's particularly important if you want to reclaim productivity without damaging relationships.

Our "How to Cancel a Meeting" guide covers:

• Legitimate reasons for issuing a meeting cancellation notice
• Methods to cancel meetings: when to use each one & examples
• The fundamentals of canceling a meeting
• Strategies to prevent cancellations altogether

Additionally, you can access all this information in a dedicated project template! Edit and customize details, collaborate with others, and access meeting cancellation resources and tailored workflows.

Are you ready to become a proficient expert in canceling meetings? Dive in or begin with the FREE dedicated template!

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No fluff, no sales pitch – just the facts. In this article we share a complete summary of the benefits Agile can bring to your business operations.

New to Agile? Here’s a quick definition: Agile is an iterative, flexible approach that prioritizes collaboration, customer feedback, and adaptive planning to deliver high-quality products or services efficiently and effectively.

Now that we covered definitions, let’s discuss 16 agile project management benefits that supercharge success among teams.

1. Faster time to market

Agile accelerates the launch of products or deliverables. Key aspects of Agile that contribute to this accelerated pace include:

• Iterative development: Agile divides projects into short, manageable sprints, usually lasting 1-4 weeks. Each sprint results in a potentially shippable product increment, allowing for rapid and consistent delivery.
• Feature prioritization: Agile teams prioritize features based on customer value and importance. By focusing on high-value output, the most critical aspects of the deliverable are shipped early on.
• Minimum Viable Product (MVP): Agile implementation processes emphasizes developing an MVP: a simplified product version with enough features to satisfy early users and gather feedback. This approach enables quicker releases and iterative improvements based on feedback.

The combination of these elements allows the Agile methodology to significantly reduce the time to market.

2. Improved customer satisfaction

When thinking of benefits Agile offers customer satisfaction often comes on top.

Customers are put front and center when teams are operating in an Agile way. Operations, planning and workflows all strongly emphasize on delivering value to customers and incorporating feedback.

Teams ship early and frequently deliver highly requested features and changes. This assures that the product is aligned with customer needs and expectations.

All throughout this leads to happier and more loyal customers. It’s not surprising that in term customer satisfaction is often high when teams adopt Agile.

3. Enhanced flexibility

Agile is built on the principle of embracing change and deploying iterative improvements. Through this mindset, teams can adapt to changing requirements and incorporate customer feedback quickly and efficiently.

Frequent sprints make it easy for teams to stay flexible. Adjustments and new information can be incorporated when teams reassess priorities at the retrospective of each sprint.

Additionally, another benefit Agile environments brings to flexibility is emphasis on collaboration and open communication. Cross-functional teams work closely together allowing different skill sets to chime in when needed.

4. Higher product quality

Implementing Agile often leads to a higher quality product because of continuous testing and feedback loops. These fundamental processes play a crucial role in identifying and resolving issues through the development process.

• Continuous testing is the practice of conducting tests throughout the development cycle rather than waiting until the end. With this, teams can identify and address defects as soon as they arise.
• Feedback loops in an Agile operation encompass regular reviews, retrospectives, and customer input. All stakeholders, including developers, testers, product owners, and customers, should have an opportunity to provide input.

The combination of the two processes minimizes the risk of releasing a flawed product and reduces the cost of fixing defects. As a result, the product will have higher product quality and stronger market performance.

5. Higher team morale

Higher team more is one of the benefits of agile methodology that impact your whole organizational culture.

Teams strengthen their bonds through meaningful relationships, mutual support, and a shared sense of purpose. Agile reinforces these principles by operating with cross-functional teams.

Additionally, team members are given the autonomy to manage their tasks which fosters creativity and innovation. Task management enables teams to track and showcase progress. This gives team members ownership while also boosting morale by demonstrating the value of completed work.

6. Reduced risk

Among benefits agile offers, reduced risk is important to consider.

Products and services are built and improved with customer needs in mind, reducing the risk of misalignment. Additionally, continuous testing throughout the development cycle ensures product stability and reliability.

Risk is also reduced through team dynamics that foster collaboration and collective problem-solving. Cross-functional work avoids siloes by combining different perspectives and areas of expertise on a task.

7. Increased efficiency

Working in Agile streamlines projects by eliminating bottlenecks, reducing waste, and promoting effective resource utilization. With a defined set of tasks in each cycle, team members can focus on what is urgent and avoid dragging work out.

Additionally, teams can identify and address inefficiencies through regular reviews. At the end of every sprint or cycle, teams come together in retrospective meetings. These dedicated meetings can be used to pinpoint inefficiencies, discuss their origin and brainstorm how to avoid them moving forward.

When looking at the bigger picture, unnecessary work is also eliminated when prioritizing high-value features and focusing on delivering an MVP.

8. Better resource allocation

An agile way of working ensures that team members' skills and expertise are used in the most effective way possible. By prioritizing tasks, team members can work on the features with the greatest impact on business outcomes.

Prioritization techniques (such as the Eisenhower Matrix) help teams identify and focus on high-value features first. Overall, this reduces the risk of wasted effort on low-priority or unnecessary features.

9. Scalability

The modular nature of this methodology enables teams to tackle tasks incrementally. Agile can be tailored to suit different team sizes, project scopes, and organizational strategies.

Teams can maintain control and adaptability as projects grow or evolve. Frameworks like Scrum and SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) provide additional guidance for scaling operations across multiple teams, departments, or even entire organizations.

10. Cost control

Organizations can achieve better cost control, optimize resource utilization, and minimize waste through agile. This all leads to more cost-effective business operations.

Agile enables early identification and resolution of issues through it’s iterative development approach. Prioritization of high-value tasks, adaptive planning, and customer collaboration all minimize spending on unnecessary features.

The continuous improvement mindset and emphasis on quality further contribute to cost control. Teams mitigate costs associated with project delays, scope creep, or misaligned requirements by operating in a lean way.

11. Faster feedback

Agile's approach to feedback cycles is more frequent, collaborative, and adaptive compared to Waterfall. Teams foster a continuous improvement mindset and better alignment with customer needs.

Customer feedback is gathered early and often, leading to more informed decision-making and better product outcomes.

12. Less bureaucracy

Self-organizing, cross-functional teams take ownership of their work and make decisions autonomously. This decentralization of decision-making reduces the need for hierarchical management structures and bureaucratic layers.

Additionally, the iterative approach allows for incremental progress and frequent course corrections. As a result, teams don’t need rigid, long-term planning and extensive upfront documentation.

13. Better stakeholder engagement

Agile encourages active participation of stakeholders, including customers. Input from all relevant stakeholders is sought in defining requirements, prioritizing features, and providing ongoing feedback.

Shorter sprints and incremental releases enable stakeholders to provide feedback early and often. Within every sprint, the team attempts tackle new feedback points, some as new as tasks released in the previous working cycle.

Product backlogs and prioritization methods also help teams focus on features that are most valuable. This ensures that resources are directed towards tasks that meet stakeholder expectations.

14. Easier progress tracking

Agile teams can monitor their work, identify potential issues, and adjust plans through dedicated processes. Here are some techniques and practices that facilitate progress tracking:

• Short iterations (sprints): Agile divides projects into small, manageable iterations, usually lasting 1-4 weeks. By breaking work into smaller units, teams can assess their progress more easily and make adjustments as needed.
• Daily stand-ups: Daily stand-up meetings are a core Agile practice. Team members briefly discuss their progress, obstacles, and plans for the day in a short meeting. Stand-ups provide a regular opportunity to monitor progress, address issues, and promote accountability.
• Task boards: Agile teams often use visual tools like task boards (e.g., Kanban boards) to track the progress of work items. These tools provide a clear, at-a-glance view of the team's progress and identify bottlenecks.
• Retrospectives: Sprint retrospectives are held after each sprint to reflect on the team's performance and identify areas for improvement. These sessions help teams assess progress, learn from their experiences, and discuss improvements.

By employing these Agile practices, teams can easily track their progress, identify and address potential issues. This transparency and adaptability contribute to the overall success and efficiency of Agile projects.

15. Optimized team size

Optimized team size is one of the key benefits Agile methodologies promote. The number of people you work with significantly impacts the effectiveness, communication, and overall performance of a team. Agile recommends keeping team sizes small and manageable, usually between 5 to 9 members.

Smaller teams often develop a stronger sense of camaraderie and shared purpose. This can improve morale, teamwork, and overall productivity.

Optimized team sizes also encourage the formation of cross-functional teams, where each member brings a specific skill set to the table. As a result, you can tackle a wide range of tasks.

16. Data-driven decision-making

The last benefit of agile project management discussed in this article is data-driven decision-making.This plays a crucial role in ensuring that teams can continually adapt and optimize their processes. Agile teams rely on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure progress and performance.

Teams consider these metrics when planning and prioritization, rather than relying solely on intuition or gut feelings. This approach helps ensure that the team's efforts are focused on the most impactful tasks.

Data-driven decision-making also plays a crucial role in risk management. By closely monitoring metrics and trends, teams can identify issues early and make informed decisions to mitigate risks.

How long is a sprint? Generally speaking, sprints should last anywhere from 1 to 4 weeks. The length of a sprint should be determined based on your project and the capacity of your team.

Whether you want the length of a sprint to be weekly, bi-weekly, or once a month depends on the scope and nature of the project.

Determine how much work can realistically be completed before deciding on the duration of your sprints. If short sprints cannot be completed properly, then pushing for weekly sprints will only burn your team out and create a toxic work culture.

Looking to learn more about sprints? This article walks you through the following:

• Sprints in Scrum recap: The basics and important definitions
• How to create a sprint in practice: Step-by-step workflow + free template
• Short sprints: indicators and solutions for sprints that fall short on time
• Long sprints: indicators and solutions for sprints that are too lengthy

You can also get directly started with the  🎁 FREE sprint planning template. Invite others and manage sprints from a single project management space with tasks, notes, chat and more.

Sprints length in Scrum recap: everything you should know

Scrum is an agile project management framework that helps teams reach their goals by providing structure and guidance. The sprint length in scrum is 1 to 4 weeks because it allows teams to quickly iterate on work and deliver output in short collaboration cycles.

With sprints, teams can stay agile in fast-paced environments that deal with a lot of uncertainty. Here are a few terms you might have come across, or which are relevant to know when discussing sprint duration:

• Scrum master: The scrum master is the team member responsible for implementing the scrum framework. They act as a coach and facilitator, and work to remove any roadblocks that may prevent the team from achieving their goals.
• Scrum ceremonies: Sprint planning, daily scrums, sprint reviews, and retrospective meetings are all considered scrum ceremonies. They are essential to the implementation of scrum and help keep teams on track while maximizing productivity.
• Backlog: the backlog is a list of tasks that need to be completed during a sprint. The backlog contains goals and technical tasks that are broken down into smaller packages to help teams focus on what needs to be done.

Next up, let's dive into the actual planning and definition of a sprint. We have defined the process to support teams in different business functions. Think managing a sprint in engineering, marketing, customer success or even sales.

How to manage a scrum sprint: step-by-step

There are multiple stages to a sprint in Scrum. Each stage has different activities that help the team to stay organized at work and complete tasks.

Common stages in sprints are: pre-planning, Working Breakdown Structure (WBS), task completion, testing and review, and retrospective.

Pre-Planning: the cornerstone of any good sprint

Pre-planning entails establishing goals, timelines, resources, and budgets before starting any work. This stage also includes stakeholder meetings to align expectations. Gather everyone to discuss the sprint's parameters.

Remember, thorough pre-planning reduces surprises. It helps avoid mid-sprint confusion and setbacks. Invest time in this phase for a successful, productive sprint.

The sprint planning template includes a step-by-step process to complete the pre-planning of your next sprint. Define goals, set the duration of your sprint, allocate resources and set your budget.

Agile working breakdown structure: A sprint essential

Next up: the Working Breakdown Structure (WBS). The WBS helps teams break down goals defined in the pe-planning stage into smaller, more manageable tasks that are positioned in the backlog for the upcoming sprint.

This allows the scrum master to track progress through task management and keep an eye on progress, blockers and resource usage throughout the sprint.

When creating a WBS, it's important to keep the following in mind:

• Tasks should be SMART: Specific and Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
• Individual tasks should be time-based, with a start and finish date assigned.
• Priorities should be set based on importance and urgency.
• Every individual action item should be related to the overall goal of the sprint.
• Keep the difference between project vs task in mind so tasks don’t become overwhelming.

The ultimate output of WBS is a set of SMART tasks that should be completed throughout the duration of your sprint. Teams can decide who will be working on what and when each individual task must be completed.

Looking for a deep dive into the WBS? The sprint planning template includes a detailed step-by-step process to define the backlog of your next sprint. Get started now!

Task completion/sprint work

During the sprint, it's important to track progress and make sure that tasks are being completed on time. Weekly to-do lists, scrum ceremonies and active task tracking all are activities that can help with this.

The scrum master should monitor progress and ensure obstacles are addressed swiftly. Follow these best practices to help your team with task completion:

1. Prioritize tasks: Rank tasks based on importance, dependencies, and impact on the project. Tackle high-priority tasks first.
2. Set realistic goals: Ensure sprint goals are achievable within the sprint duration. Don't overcommit or underestimate effort.
3. Communicate: Foster open communication within the team. Address roadblocks, share progress, and offer support.
4. Use time-boxing: Allocate fixed time slots for tasks. This promotes focus and discourages procrastination.
5. Limit work-in-progress: Encourage team members to complete one task before starting another. This reduces context-switching.

You can seamlessly incorporate these best practices with our dedicated sprint planning template. Click here to get started for free!

Review & testing

At the end of each sprint, teams should review their progress and conduct any necessary testing to ensure that tasks are completed correctly.

Sprints in scrum are all about learning and iterating. Frequent feedback plays a pivotal role in ensuring your output hits the mark. Engage with stakeholders and your target audience, soaking up their insights to refine your priorities.

Keep a close eye on the numbers, too. Key performance indicators (KPIs) help you understand the value of the work completed.

For instance, marketing teams can monitor metrics like conversion rates, click-through rates, and engagement levels. This way they can make data-driven decisions to fine-tune strategies and allocate resources effectively.

We share more examples and a step-by-step process for defining your very own KPI’s in the sprint planning template. Bring your project management to the next level and get started today for free!

Team retrospective: Reflect, learn and adapt

After the sprint is over, teams should get together to discuss the output. Team retrospectives help assess workload, KPI completion, collaboration and more. These experiences can help you improve the pre-planning, WBS configuration and KPI’s for your next sprint.

New to retrospectives? Here are some best practices to follow:

• Foster psychological safety: Encourage open and honest communication. Create an environment where team members can share their thoughts without fear of judgment.
• Stay focused on the process: Keep discussions centered on the process, not individuals. Avoid blame and focus on how to improve as a team.
• Encourage participation: Ensure all team members have an opportunity to speak. Use techniques like round-robin or silent brainstorming to give everyone a voice.
• Keep it positive: Balance discussions of challenges with recognition of successes. Celebrate accomplishments and learn from both positive and negative experiences.
• Be action-oriented: Focus on identifying actionable steps for improvement. Prioritize and assign responsibility for implementing these changes in the next sprint.
• Set a time limit: Keep retrospectives focused and time-boxed to maintain momentum and avoid lengthy, unfocused discussions.
• Document outcomes: Capture key takeaways, action items, and assigned responsibilities. Share this information with the team and refer back to it in future retrospectives.

💡 Tip: Make sure share your meeting agenda at least 48 hours in advance so everyone can write down discussion items, share documents and prepare accordingly.

The sprint planning project management template includes a step-by-step process on retrospectives. Access the project space for free and plan your next retrospective today!

Are your sprints too short? Here are 3 signs to keep an eye out for

If your sprint duration is too short, then it's likely that most tasks are not completed in time or to an acceptable standard. Here are a few ways you can spot your sprint being too short:

1. You are spending too much time in retros & planning: Retros and planning lose value if they take up too much of the overall sprint cycle.  If you find that these activities are taking up too much valuable time, then your sprints might be too short.
2. Output is too small: Your sprint time might be too short if the output from your sprints is not considered a completed phase or enough output. This could hint that you are not providing enough time for the team to complete their tasks.
3. Overloaded teams: There will not be enough time for people to take breaks if the sprints are too short. Remember that the scrum process should help foster collaboration and align with your communication strategies.

Do you think your team might be facing one of the previously mentioned issues? Then read on for potential solutions.

What to do if your sprint duration is too short

Do you think that your sprint duration is too short? Consider the following strategies to course-correct and optimize the sprint planning process:

1. Reassess goals and tasks: Review the goals and determine if they need to be broken down into smaller, more achievable tasks within the sprint. Additionally, try revisiting the backlog to re-prioritize tasks based on importance and dependencies.
2. Extend the sprint duration: If feasible, increase the sprint length to accommodate the workload. Be cautious though, longer sprints can reduce focus and agility. Aim for a balance between time and momentum.
3. Improve task estimation: Analyze the accuracy of your task estimations and refine your estimation techniques. This helps in setting realistic timelines and reducing the risk of falling short in future sprints.
4. Streamline communication: Encourage transparent and effective communication within the team. This way you can identify and address obstacles early, reducing delays and keeping the sprint on track.
5. Implement a sprint buffer: Allocate a small percentage of the sprint's capacity as a buffer for unexpected work, emergencies, or delays. This absorbs unforeseen changes without impacting the overall sprint timeline.

Don't be afraid to reassess and adjust your sprint durations. With careful planning, teams can achieve company goals and objectives while enjoying a healthy working environment.

4 signs that might indicate your sprints are too long

On the other hand, your sprint duration can also be too long. Here are a few signs that might indicate you need to reduce the sprint length:

1. Teams accelerate as sprints near their end: Teams increase their productivity as they near the end of a sprint. The lack of pressure to finalize work allows teams to procrastinate and leave activities for the end.
2. Teams lose perspective on work: There is less understanding of what user story or overall goal a sprint is actually covering. When there are too many tasks in a sprint and work just piles up, it becomes a challenge to understand what everyone is working towards.
3. Teams become disengaged: If a project drags on, then the team might start to lose enthusiasm toward it. This can lead to procrastination and a lack of commitment.
4. Mini waterfalls emerge: A mini waterfall is a phenomenon that occurs when different sets of tasks are blocking each other within the same sprint in order to complete a user story.

Up next, we discuss some strategies you can implement if you think your sprints are too long.

What to do if your sprints are too long

Consider implementing one or more of the following strategies if you feel your sprints are too long.

1. Introduce mid-sprint check-ins: Establish checkpoints within the sprint to assess progress, reevaluate priorities, and make adjustments. This can help maintain focus and momentum throughout the sprint.
2. Leverage timeboxing techniques: Timebox specific tasks or activities within the sprint to encourage focused work and prevent tasks from dragging on.
3. Encourage cross-collaboration: Encourage team members to work together on tasks to promote knowledge sharing, faster problem-solving, and efficient task completion.
4. Establish a Definition of Ready (DoR): Develop a clear set of criteria that tasks must meet before being included in a sprint. This helps ensure tasks are well-defined and minimizes the risk of unexpected delays.
5. Implement stretch objectives: Set primary goals and include stretch objectives to tackle if the team completes the main goals ahead of schedule.

In conclusion, if your sprints are too long, it's essential to identify the underlying causes and take appropriate action. By thoughtfully adjusting your sprint length, you can optimize your Agile process and empower your team to deliver consistent, high-quality results.

Manage your sprints in one place with Rock

Recap: How long is a sprint in agile? Scrum or agile sprint length should be anywhere from 1 to 4 weeks.

Implementing sprints can help improve productivity in your organization. Rock natively combines task management with chat so you can merge project management and team communications in one place.

Collaborate with your team no matter where you are in the project by utilizing the Chat and Topics mini-apps. Link to any task, note, person, or file by simply mentioning @ ____ in the chat.

Rock also provides an in-depth approach to task management with list, board, and calendar views. Task cards are full of features such as a dedicated sprint feature, assignees, labels, cloud file attachments, followers, comment sections and so much more!

🎁 Bonus! the Notes mini-app allows you to add meeting agendas before your next retrospective meeting. Add cloud files, leave comments and edit the notes before, during, and after your meeting.

Ready to get started? Sign up today to create tasks, invite team members and manage full projects. Need some extra help? Access our sprint planning template with examples, workflow and definitions, all for free.

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.

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.

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 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.

• Individual communication: Refining your personal communication style through the art of assertive communication template.
• Organizational communication: Effectively conveying goas and objectives through the organizational strategy template.
• Stakeholder communication: Successfully engaging with external stakeholders, including leads, clients, and partners through the stakeholder management template.

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. 🎁

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.

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!

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!

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!

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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!

‍

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! 🙏

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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!

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.

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

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!

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 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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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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.

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