A large part of effectively managing a team involves choosing the right tools for communication and collaboration. In years prior, we’ve been constrained to conference calls, email and sending files back and forth. Raise your hand if you’ve seen a file named something like draft_presentation_v4_(reviewed-9-4-04).ppt. Cringe. Believe it or not, such practices are still rampant in the corporate world today.
Thankfully, a whole suite of products exist to make working together easier than ever. Even better, most of these are free. The trick is figuring out which of these are worth using and how to effectively implement them within your team. Daniel has complained that I’ve signed up up for more stuff lately than he has in years of being online. True, there is a limit to how many tools you can start using before you diminishing and negative returns set in. Over the months, we’ve settled on a few core ones. I’ll go through them and explain how we fit it into our day-to-day work here at Optask.
Google Docs. Still the most robust and reliable online Word replacement. My one big gripe is that the file manager is unintuitive and clunky, and it’s difficult to keep your documents organized. One solution is to just give up and leave it up to the search function to find anything. Another issue is that collaborative editing is not real-time, though you can see at any point who else is editing the document. Sharing documents can be a bit of a pain, as you’ll have to individually manage access and ensure that all your other collaborators have Google accounts. By using Share > Get Link to Share however, you’ll be able get a link that you can simply be emailed around to your group. This is what I usually do.
Google Groups. My defacto listserv. Gets the job done, but can be a pain to add and delete email addresses. Why can’t there be a simple hosted listserv where I can just add and delete email addresses via a simple delimited text file? Definitely beats long email strings, and a handy archive of messages is available for anyone joining in late to the party. Google Wave is still being rolled out, and it’ll be interesting to watch how it gets adopted into group communication.
Etherpad. Etherpad is a very handy little tool that lets you create one-off, temporary, semi-secure writing pads that can be shared and edited in real-time. I’ve used Etherpad tremendously effectively on calls to share agendas and take minutes right there on the spot. It’s incredibly lightweight and doesn’t require anyone to sign up.
Dropbox. Sharing files, especially large ones, can be unwieldy. Dropbox is a pretty neat solution that syncs a single folder on your hard drive to a dropbox “in the cloud”, and propagates any uploads/deletions to all other machines which are synced to that dropbox. You get the best of both worlds, as you maintain local access to the files for quick access while all other clients are seamlessly updated. Dropbox is currently meant for a single user to sync across all his devices, but a group can easily use Dropbox to sync a shared folder.
Skype. Our long distance bills would be astronomical without Skype, especially given I’m only on the 300 minute iPhone plan these days. Skype’s unlimited calling plans to North America or the World is a steal. Don’t forget to pair it up with an Everyman headset, which improves sound quality dramatically.
I’d be interested in hearing what other tools you use and how you use them in your business. Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
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Daniel
