Collaboration is the difference between a job well done and a project that goes off the rails. 

But despite the abundance of tools and tactics to help us collaborate effectively, many people are finding it harder than ever to work together. Why did it get so difficult, and which tools can we use to reverse the tide?  

Why we need to up our collaboration game

It’s increasingly likely we’re heading into a global recession. Belts are tightening and teams are under pressure to deliver. We need to work together effectively to ride the coming economic storms, but working styles that we introduced to improve collaboration during the pandemic made us more stressed and less effective.

We’re still feeling the side effects. Studies show that meeting frequency and email volume went up during the COVID-19 era to compensate for the loss of face-to-face collaboration. We still struggle to kick the habit of too many meetings and email threads, even though productivity improves when they’re reduced. 

How collaboration was replaced by communication overload 

The pandemic had an impact, but it’s not the whole story. Before COVID-19, workplace collaboration was already evolving quickly: 

  • We use more communication channels than ever before. When information is exchanged over email, Slack, Jira, Asana, Notion, Google Docs, direct messages, and live conversations, essential intel gets lost.     
  • Global talent brings multiple time zones. When your Sydney office is sending emails on San Francisco’s Sunday, memos get missed. Or worse, employees become responsive seven days per week and suffer from “techno-stress” from their constant connection to work. 
  • Expectations of responsiveness are high. One in five knowledge workers believes they need to respond to an email in four hours or less, but expectations can be much higher for short-form channels like Slack.  

The upshot: We’re working together longer, on more channels, with higher levels of responsiveness. Rather than collaboration that drives the whole team forward, we’ve hit communication overload.

3 things to implement to get your team’s collaboration on track

Collaboration is a mix of communication and execution. If your volume of communication is too high, you’re sacrificing the time and focus the team needs to actually complete their tasks. But if you allow plenty of execution time but don’t invest in your communication cadence and best practices, your team will become siloed and slide off track. Here’s how to find the right balance. 

1. Set communication expectations and document them 

An impromptu meeting. An email cc’ing the entire team. We’ve all bristled at communication that doesn’t align with our preferred collaboration style, but people can’t follow etiquette if it isn’t documented. 

If Google Doc comments longer than two lines should really be an email, document that. If you want to avoid private Slack groups and encourage transparent communication, formalize this as a best practice. Want to make sure every project has a live kick-off? Add it to the list.

Make sure respect is embedded in those norms, too. Psychological safety doesn’t just make your team happier, it makes them measurably more creative. 

2. Choose a stack that simplifies work communications 

Spring clean your communication stack. Define how each channel should be used, get rid of any unnecessary tools, and make sure the channels you keep are working hard for you. Here are four of my favorites. 

SaneBox – ideal for busy teams with multiple priorities

This email management tool does more than AI organization. Use it to set reminders, maintain project momentum, and stay on top of deadlines.

  • Automatically file unimportant messages in a separate folder, while VIP senders (like clients and team members) go straight to your Inbox.
  • Set group reminders by CCing a reminder address (like thursday@sanebox.com); everyone on the thread gets a nudge on the date you choose.
  • Get an executive summary of all your emails so you can quickly review contents and bulk-archive. 

Fireflies – ideal for teams with tons of meetings

Instead of meetings where all the attendees are distractedly taking notes, get an AI meeting transcriber to keep your team in step. 

  • Get instant summaries and action points for all meeting attendees.
  • The full meeting transcription is available, too, and you can search for keywords, themes, and action items through Fireflies’ smart search.  
  • It integrates with common video meeting tools like Google Meet and Zoom.

Slack Connect -ideal for teams with multiple external partners 

Whether you’re working with freelancers or an external agency, too many “access denied” messages can slow everyone’s roll. Slack Connect aims to solve that for teams to collaborate with external partners.

  • Add internal and external contacts to Slack channels without any friction.
  • You don’t need to give everyone access to your whole workspace, so you can keep confidential information on lock. 
  • Streamline everything from meeting coordination to Google Drive access by bringing apps into Slack Connect channels.

GoSearch – ideal for big teams to organize information

When it isn’t possible to slim down your tech stack, you need to make sure your team doesn’t get lost in the chaos. Are those meeting notes in Notion or Google Docs? Who’s the account lead for that client? GoSearch figures it out for you, fast.

  • Make it easy to find past projects (and avoid duplicating work).
  • Get fast insights from AI-powered summaries across multiple sources. 
  • Integration with more than 100 apps, including Salesforce, Slack, GitHub, Asana, Workday, and Outlook.

3. Embed a culture of focus time 

Streamlining communication goes a long way toward improving how your team works together. But once the meetings are over and the action points have been circulated, they need to effectively get work done, and they can only do that with focus time. 

Focusing at work is already an uphill battle. Rising anxiety levels and our increasingly distracted brains make it hard to focus on a single task, but without focus time, we’ll spend longer doing less and feel more stressed along the way. Set the tone for a working culture that values focus, and encourage using tools that encourage focused work. 

Start by co-creating shared etiquette with your team; ask these questions:

  • Does digital presenteeism block people from focusing? If so, a Slack status emoji or named calendar block can show teammates that you’re online, but working heads-down. 
  • Would people benefit from “no-meeting Wednesdays?” Co-creating a focus block for your team’s least busy time of the week allows time for uninterrupted work while minimizing disruption. 
  • Can managers do more to empower focus work? When managers show that focus time is valued (for example, by blocking their calendar for heads-down work) others will feel empowered to follow suit. 

Next, you need a toolkit for focus. Timers like Pomofocus encourage short bursts of concentration, while apps like Leechblock block distractions. But it’s even more effective if you can utilize an existing channel, like email, to promote focus. 

With SaneBox, you can filter out distractions into a folder for later, as well as snooze non-urgent messages and set reminders to circle back. This guards your focus time while keeping you confident that nothing is slipping through the cracks.