5 Ingredients of the Ideal Digital Work Environment

Extreme busy-ness has become an epidemic among creative teams. It seems everywhere you turn, team members are overwhelmed, overworked and stressed out. Yet, more work requests keep flowing in, we’re forced to chase down data, updates and approvals, and spend too much time in project status meetings when we could be making progress on the task at hand.

It’s a chronic condition: most creative team members always have far more on their ‘to do’ list than one human can possibly accomplish in a conventional 40-hour workweek. So, we add on. Working through lunch, coming in early, staying late or taking work home, all because were “too busy.” Some of us even wear our “busy-ness” as some sort of a bizarre badge of honor.

Unfortunately, “busy” doesn’t always equal productive. In fact, in many cases, the exact opposite is true. The chaos manifests in missed deadlines, stalled projects, shortcuts, proofing errors, mental fatigue, waning creativity, lack of engagement, and ultimately, far less effective work product than what we’re really capable of.

Digital tools like email, project management software and collaboration suites all promised to alleviate the problem of “busy work” and streamline process to make them simpler, more efficient and less time consuming. But, for many teams, the resulting communication “clutter” has only made it worse. Now, work requests, critical data, and review and approval routing are scattered across multiple tools. The notion of re-sending an email to “put it at the top of the inbox” is the digital equivalent to piling more paper onto a stack that’s already over your head. How’s that any more efficient?

It’s time to get real about digital work solutions. Without the right process, no tool can save you from the illusion of productivity—it simply adds to the fallacy. Start by taking a cold hard look at how your processes stack up and begin by implementing these five tips for designing your ideal digital work environment.

1. Get a handle on work requests.

When work requests come from all angles and sources, it’s impossible to keep track of them all and determine whether you even have the capacity to take on the new projects. Email is certainly not the answer—it piles up quickly, becomes overwhelming and work requests get lost in the shuffle of other communications. Plus, we end up wasting so much time just managing email, we hardly have time to get any real work done. Add voice mail, instant messaging and chat to the mix and the problem quickly compounds.

Fix: Implement a work request management system to streamline incoming requests. Develop template forms, like creative briefs, and require that these be submitted with every request to ensure all vital data is included, so no one has to waste time tracking down information to even get started.

At a basic level, start by creating a dedicated email alias (such as workrequest@yourcompanyurl.com) to which all requests must be submitted. Devote one or two individuals to triage and make assignments based on known team capacity and existing workload. Or, go a step further and add a social/collaborative work request management system that’s accessible to the entire team to manage tasks and related communication all in one place.

2. Track project and task status in the context of work, in real time.

One of the biggest obstacles to meeting deadlines is the fact that ad hoc status estimates are so arbitrary and inaccurate. It’s up to each individual to guesstimate how much time each task will require, and few account for hiccups, issues and other challenges that inevitably crop up along the way. This gives the entire team—especially management—a false sense of security about completion timelines. When problems arise, it’s a “surprise,” when really it’s just that no one spoke up about the bottleneck.

Meanwhile, sitting through weekly status meetings and preparing reports are a waste of time and sap productivity—that’s valuable time you should be devoting to getting the work done.

Fix: Implement a “live” system that requires staff members to track and report on work-in-progress all in the same place, in real time. Using social or collaboration tools can help the entire team stay on the same page and informed about where tasks lie in the completion timeline, but it must be made a part of the process, not create an additional step.

A real-time system provides visibility into real-time status, helps reveal any bottlenecks and can eliminate time-consuming status meetings and reports, which are mostly out of date the minute they’re completed anyway, and help your team finally meet deadlines.

3. Streamline document management.

Versioning control can be a nightmare in creative departments. With content and graphics teams, reviewers and approvers all having access to working drafts, it’s no wonder there are often umpteen versions of the same document—all with different filenames—floating around, saved on multiple workstations, or sailing through dozens of email accounts. When versioning gets out of control, mistakes slip through the cracks, approvers are left out of the loop and no one knows when something is really final.

Fix: Start by designating a shared storage location, either on internal servers, or on a third-party cloud service. Make this the only location where the official versions of every document live, in every form (concept, drafts and approved final). Create a system of standard filenames so that everyone knows exactly where to find documents, what each one contains and which version it is—for example, something like “Widget One-Pager Creative Brief,” “Widget One-Pager Copy DRAFT 1” and “Widget One-Pager Layout DRAFT 1,” and ultimately, “Widget One-Pager FINAL.” Then, define the review/approval chain of command so that no one gets left out.

4. Rein in workload and assignments.

Everyone is drowning in work and it just keeps piling on. No one knows who’s working on what already, so new tasks are assigned to “favorite” team members—work requesters want a specific designer or writer on their project—regardless of whether he or she has the bandwidth. Interruptions, pet projects, meetings and email interfere with critical task completion, leaving work behind schedule and incomplete. “Late” becomes standard operating procedure and you start to wonder if a deadline means anything to anyone any more.

Fix: First, make sure team members have the time to do the work that’s already on their plate. Implement a department-wide “do not disturb” time or give individual team members the freedom to set their own, perhaps by hanging a sign on their cubicle or closing the office door to indicate their need to concentrate and work “in the zone” without interruptions. Set aside meeting “black out” times, so that everyone can have some much-needed time to be creative.

Once you’ve tackled the work request mess (Tip #1), build off of that system to implement a work hub that provides team-wide visibility into all assignments and tasks—who’s working on what—to ensure a realistic workload and help team members keep their heads above water.

5. Map tasks to strategic priorities.

Just like the “busy-ness” epidemic, fire drills, emergencies and jumping through impossible hoops is a chronic problem in many creative teams. When it comes to completing tasks and projects, the squeaky wheel gets the grease—which means the boss or the work requester who jumps up and down and squeaks the loudest takes top priority just to get them off your back. But, that means critical tasks go uncompleted in lieu of impulse and pet projects, leaving your team’s strategic value in jeopardy.

Fix: Identify strategic objectives across the entire organization. Communicate and make sure everyone understands the importance of these objectives and the role they play in achieving them. Then, prioritize incoming work requests and assign tasks accordingly. Deploy a system that maps work to business priorities and keeps everyone on the same page about how projects fit into the grand scheme.

This visibility and transparency helps those “squeaky wheels” understand that critical priorities will fall off the plate if your team drops everything to tend to their so-called emergency. And, this approach provides air cover to empower team members to turn down or reschedule new requests with the data to justify it.

While the notion of the “digital office” has certainly made things faster, easier and less confusing than our previous paper-based system, even modern digital tools have yet to fully alleviate the bottlenecks—we’ve just grown accustomed to working around them. In some cases, the multitude of tools and communication platforms has actually complicated matters, adding more items to our already-overflowing to-do lists, and unfortunately in many cases, more hours to our workday.

However, with the right approach, a new generation of work management solutions can finally deliver on that promise of efficiency. Implementing technology that not only allows you to establish a defined system but also design the environment to meet your specific needs is the sweet spot. This mix of automation and customization can help any creative team turn the illusion of productivity into reality.

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