How To Improve Employee Engagement In The Workplace

One of the best ways to achieve efficient product development is for everyone involved in the project to work towards the same end goal on the same page. But this is harder to do than you might think.

Design and product teams put very different priorities on the table and it is often controversial to determine which priorities should be focused first. When two departments have completely different philosophies, they tend to work independently on the same project, distracting attention and complicating the process.

The following nine tips will help organizations build collaboration and cohesion by aligning design and product teams.

1. Limit hand-offs between teams

In many organizations, a team works on a project for a while, achieves a goal, and then passes it on to another team for the next step. This sharp boundary creates the false perception that the responsibilities of each team end as the project passes to the other team.

In fact, the "ownership" of a project should belong to all team members from start to finish. The following strategy shows one way to achieve this, but you may also find other optimization opportunities in your business.

2. Definition of specific success measures

To know if you have managed to solve a problem, you must first understand what success is. One of the first things Cloud Zero does when assembling a product development team is to give the team a goal and determine how to measure success within that project.

The important thing is that these success measures are consistent across the team. If engineering is evaluated by one metric and product experts are evaluated by another, even worse, when individuals are all measured by different metrics, each has different goals for achieving their own version of "success".

3. Organize a conciliation meeting

With the aim of starting a new project or mission, a coordination meeting is usually conducted as an interactive discussion. This meeting aims to ensure that all team members are on the same page and are consistent with the OKR of the current project or mission. These meetings are important because they prepare and inform team members about shared goals and next steps.

Pro tip: Use Fellow to create collaborative meeting agendas where all team members can join discussions. You can also use Fellow to take minutes, so you can easily catch up on subsequent decisions and next steps.

4. Cultivate a growth mindset

Harvard Business Review writer Carol Dweck says a growth mindset is a mindset that "believes that your talents can be developed through hard work, good strategies and the input of others."

Knowing that everyone understands the value they bring to the team and that there is always room for more growth will help develop this growth mindset. Additionally, having a growth mindset means that all team members are constantly checking and working on new standards to ensure a productive and aligned team.

5. Link personal goals to the company's mission

When a company and its leaders aspire to a common goal, success isn't just achievable, it's a natural result. Using business goals and key outcomes (OKRs), many leaders have successfully built high-performing teams that are committed and feel fulfilled in the workplace.

Increasing revenue or improving customer NPS are all important areas to focus on, but people are driven by influence. To create meaningful goals, set business goals that motivate and enable employees to associate key, measurable results with those goals.

6. Invest in collaboration software and communication technologies

Remote work can seem like a disaster if some of your best ideas come from working with a team. But with good collaboration software, you can recreate the "in the office" experience.

Venn gage uses Slack for messaging and Google Hangouts for video calling. Almost every day, someone will text you on a shared Slack channel saying "I have an idea. What do you think?"

7. Shared software can be the key to good collaboration.

We also use shared software to make things easier. Tools like Buzzstream will help you coordinate your email campaigns, and Google Docs will help you work together on blog posts.