stopcollaborateandlisten

So now you have your Innovation Dream Team.  Are you being as effective as possible using your current tools to communicate and collaborate with your team?

I’ve written about the importance of communication when it comes to change management and/or innovation.  Below, I’ve listed some of the tools that I use because of their ease and effectiveness.

  1. Google Talk – I send very little email because it’s time consuming and too formal for the majority of conversations.  Aside from instant messaging, the best features of Google Talk are: On / Off-the-Record Chatting, Free Voice and Video Chat & Instant File Transfers.  Also, Google Talk has mobile apps for the most popular mobile OSes including iPhone, Blackberry and of course Android.  If your group doesn’t have Gmail accounts, then you can easily sign up for one.
  2. Basecamp – 37signals has a nice package of collaborative tools that are perfect for any organization from bootstrapped to venture funded.  Basecamp is their project management platform.  It allows you to manage multiple projects, assign certain users to certain projects and milestones.  The dashboard provides an easy to follow snapshot of everything that is going on within a project.  My favorite part is that I can subscribe via RSS or email to the reminders, so I always know where everyone stands.
  3. Food / Drinks – Not “hi-tech,” but I’m a firm believer in getting away from my static habitat to increase productivity.  With my laptop and a mobile phone, there is nothing I can’t get done from a coffee shop that I can’t get done from my office.  Besides a change of scenery, it does 2 important things for my teams and me: 1) It provides an opportunity to talk one-on-one with team members about their concerns and/or accomplishments.  People like to be known other than a name on a screen and this helps achieve buy-in. 2) Change management requires innovation and innovation requires new perspectives.  A change of scenery always stirs my creative juices simply by having new surroundings.

What other tools are vital to your organization’s success?

Photo: liz burnunzio via flikr

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