8 Strategies For Driving Team Communication & Collaboration

Any founder or manager can attest: building a team is HARD. And building an all-star team is RIDICULOUSLY HARD. That’s why nothing has been more fulfilling—than creating an A+ team at the Brew. Just think about all the steps taken to lock up that perfect hire… 

1.  Articulate a clear company purpose with a clear sense of goals.

2.  Create a product roadmap & business plan that is reflective of those goals.

3.  Create a hiring roadmap that is necessary for accomplishing the product roadmap.

4.  Designate hiring managers who create a process for hiring the right people.

5.  Find the right people that align with your company values, while also having the necessary superpowers to thrive in their specific role.

6.  Once you find your person, convince that person to take a risk by joining a startup that likely has less history & brand legitimacy than the company they’re coming from.

Great! You’ve found a single hire & convinced them to join your little rocket ship. Making a great hire is an impressive feat that few do well. Take a moment to appreciate what you’ve done.  

But, that’s table stakes.

No successful business has ever become (or stayed) successful in the absence of a high-performing team. So, for the sake of this discussion, let’s assume you’ve completed the steps above and found the secret sauce for making great hires. 

What comes next is what matters most.

Truly great teams operate like clockwork. Every gear in the clock has a responsibility, and all gears work together to make a highly complex movement happen. 

Getting your hires to communicate well and work together towards a shared vision—especially as you scale—becomes everything.   

These last 12 months, my co-founder (@austinrief) and I have deployed several strategies, tips, and tricks that have collectively made a huge difference in promoting effective communication and collaboration as our team has grown 300%.

HOW WE ENCOURAGE COMMUNICATION 

1.  Leverage third-party integrations

This is a fancy way of saying that getting different pieces of software talking to one another helps people talk to one another. Here are a few of the integrations we leverage at Morning Brew:

-   Surveying integration <-> Team communication app

-   Conference call integration <-> Calendar integration

-   Giphy <-> Team communication app

2.  Create cross-functional transparency 

By leveraging project management tools, we can empower our team by pulling back the curtain on initiatives that they may not actively be involved in, while also encouraging them to share progress on their projects with the organization. We track everything from internal tech builds to our podcast guest CRM.

3.  Memorialize evergreen conversations

Whether it be through shared slide decks or video tutorials incorporating screen-share, we make a point of creating manuals & on-boarding guides to avoid redundancy, while also making sure team members (and especially new hires) have access to key information. This is especially true in our sales org (for new hire on-boarding) and our editorial org (special project brainstorms).

4.  Eliminate noise, create simplicity where possible 

We take conversation maintenance very seriously within our company’s team communication app. Here are a few specific strategies to drive focused discussion:

-   Create threads from instant messages that require follow-up thoughts or questions so that it doesn’t drown out other conversations.

-   Do periodic cleanings of conversations, so people don’t feel overwhelmed. If a conversation hasn’t been active in months, it probably means it won’t be used again, archive the messages and delete it.

-   Make sure that you treat channels like in-person meetups, where a lay of the land is provided & rules of engagement & group jargon are covered in the channel description.

5.  Publicize vision & goals 

Leveraging shared folders & documents, we publish our company’s mission statement, updated org structure, and 90-day company goals for everyone to see. 

HOW WE DRIVE COLLABORATION

1.  What happens pre-meeting is more important than what happens in the meeting

We firmly believe that meetings can be an unnecessary time suck if not approached methodically. Similar to our messaging channels, we periodically audit the time spent in meetings & the necessity of each meeting. We also make a point of attaching agendas when scheduling meeting invites so that attendees have a clear sense of direction and prioritization. 

2.  Leverage video-calling & conference lines

It may sound like a no-brainer, but it’s important to reiterate nonetheless. We use conference calls for everything: 

-   Client calls

-   Weekly all-hands meetings (for people not in-office)

-   Check-ins with remote workers (for us, that’s on the ad copy side) to facilitate real-time editing without there being too many cooks in the kitchen

-   Role-playing for salesperson training

-   Live demos (with screen-sharing) for new software we’re considering

And at the Brew specifically, we’ve saved tens of thousands of dollars delaying midwest or west coast hires & we’ve saved hundreds of hours of travel opting for digital meetings over physical meetings where possible. 

3.  Curate camaraderie groups

We are very purposeful in creating cross-functional IRL and digital groups to promote a culture of collaboration & creativity.

-   At the Brew, we have an integration between Twitter and our team communication app, so that any time anyone on our team tweets, everyone else on the team can know about it in order to support them via liking or retweeting.

-   Have a channel that is dedicated to sharing industry news, so that we can fuel our team’s curiosity by creating an open dialogue around the media industry & encourage them to share information & explore topics collaboratively.

-   Create 4-person cross-functional teams that are given a budget for one team activity per month. Teams have done everything from shuffle boarding in Brooklyn to rock climbing in Chelsea.

**Alex takes deep breath**

Okay, that was a lot. 

Now it’s your turn. 

If you’re a manager or business owner that is/has grown your team meaningfully, let’s make this post a survival kit for others.

What tricks do you use or strategies have you deployed to foster team communication & collaboration as your organization has grown?

#MicrosoftPartner #Microsoft365

Learn more about Microsoft 365 and the value its’ productivity tools, like Microsoft Teams, can bring to your business here.

This post was written in partnership with the Microsoft 365 team, who are working to empower businesses to achieve more. All thoughts and opinions are my own.