Teamwork. Made simple.

How to get your team to the “Teamwork Zone”.

The success of a team is closely related to how well the team works together — the quality of its teamwork. Teamwork is the key to the success of musical groups, sports teams, business teams, companies, and even empires.

Psychology defines teamwork as a state of “group flow”, which means “being in the zone”, where all team members are focused, sharp, at the top of their games, and pulling together towards the same goals.

Being in the teamwork zone, is making teams more efficient (working better together), effective (achieving their goals) and rewarding (happier team members), so in this post, I want to cover 4 tools people use for teamwork, and compare them for you.

First, the oldest and most established,

Tool No 1. — Email

We all know email, and it has some clear advantages helping teams work together.

First Email is an open network. Everyone has an email, so you can communicate with new people 1:1, or in groups — creating ad-hoc teams per subject.

Seconds, each email we send, is dedicated to a subject, and allows an isolated discussion of that specific subject with only the people it relates to. That’s why, for many people, email is also a kind of a to-do list.

And last when receiving an email, you are not “forced” to answer immediately, or answer at all… you can (theoretically) prioritize.

But the list of Cons for emails is also very long, and the biggest problem is volume… each subject requires a separate email, anyone can practically email anyone they want, and it’s a LOT easier to write an email than (generating work for others) than it is to process them. We are bombarded with emails.

But this post is about Teamwork, and I would argue that:

Email is the anti-teamwork platform.

When you write an email to someone in your team, you aren’t working together with them, as much as passing over the ball to them, so you can move to the next email… And when you receive an email and “sit on it”, because you have other priorities, that’s not team work either.

Then there’s the Cc’s and Bcc’s — who you put on each email, who you include or don’t include in the reply — not really a transparent, team encouraging environment.

Tool No 2. — WhatsApp Groups.

According to my survey, WhatsApp groups are used for work related groups by 16% of WhatsApp (employed) users. (in the US WhatsApp is less popular, so think about Facebook Messenger groups — similar idea).

The advantages of using WhatsApp for work, is that we are used to it. We are used to the speed and immediacy of messaging, so when we want to discuss time-sensitive things, WhatsApp groups an easy choice.

But therein lies the problem. Personal messengers are just that — personal. In my recent survey, only 13% of respondents were happy to use WhatsApp at work outside their closest circle of work friends.

The other problem is the content of these work related WhatsApp group — they tend to be coordination-oriented, and not detailed work discussions. That’s also because messengers are perceived as a mobile tool.

And last, there’s the news that will probably rule out WhatsApp for most work related environments… unfortunately, Facebook is bringing ads to its messaging tools, including WhatsApp.

So apparently, isn’t the solution either.

Tool No 3. — Slack.

Slack is the most talked about teamwork tool in the market today. The tech industry media is raving, and users are excited.

Slack lets teams communicate in real-time channels, and integrates a long list of tools into those channels as well.

Slack is a beautifully made platform there is no doubt, but from my interviews, it’s a Love it or Hate it platform. What I found was, that the more tech-savvy the user, the more they were likely to be in the Love camp, and the more “normal” the user, the more likely they were to use the word “Hate” when describing their experience with it (many time because the techies were trying to force it a little, with their enthusiasm).

And it’s clear to see why there is such a divide.

Slack has “/” commands that developers find cool, it uses bots, that again, developers find “cool”, and they have a ton of APIs and integrations, again “cool” in a geeky way.

But aside from the need to learn the interface, for the non-geeks, there are two main problems with Slack:

The team structure, means you can only be in one team at a time, and it doesn’t really work unless the whole team is on-board (hence the “forced me to use it” stories). Communicating outside the team requires guest accounts, which require admins — complicated.

Then there’s the “noise” problem, the channels can generate so much chatter, and demand so much attention that it starts to be worst than email in terms of the ability to keep up. Moreover, if you miss a conversation, you’re out of the loop — for some people that can reach the level of stressful.

Tool No 4. WorkGroup.

WorkGroup is my company, so don’t expect a completely unbiased report — but I’ll do my best… :)

We designed WorkGroup from the ground up for teamwork, so it has elements from Email, WhatsApp and Slack in it.

First like email, it’s a network, you sign in with your email address, and you can instantly add anyone to your groups based on their email address. So all the limitation of Slack teams — are gone.

Second, like WhatsApp, it’s crazy simple, you just create a group, add people and start communicating. If you know how to use a messenger, you’ll feel right at home.

Third, like Slack, it’s a work platform, it’s on all devices, with an emphasis on the web and desktop versions, groups have a history and you can search them, exchange any file type and size, edit and delete messages — anything you need for real-time teamwork.

BUT, it has something none of the other 3 platform has: Action Items.

One of the key issues with both Slack and WhatsApp, is that as discussion move so fast, it’s really hard to follow up on decisions and action items.

That’s why on WorkGroup, you can turn any message into an action item, and assign it to any team member. This means Work Groups not only cover the team’s real-time communication, they also cover the team’s real-time task management.

To sign in to WorkGroup and check it out for yourself, click here…