Employee overload: The struggle is real
In the first post of this two-part series, we discussed the pressure CIOs are under to get their businesses moving faster. Business leaders are starting to see how the old way of doing things leads to slowdowns at the exact time they need to be speeding up. Today we'll talk about why that's easier said than done—because employees are already wading through a pool of cobbled-together tools and solutions—and how to get it right.
The struggles of overloaded employees
As leaders, we hire smart people with a strong sense of urgency. People who know the business needs to move faster, always. But even the best, most resourceful team members get overloaded, and sometimes things slow down. This happens because the workplace is changing. And the tools we equip our teams with—well, they're not changing. At least not fast enough.
Email is over twenty years old, but we still rely on it as if it were the holy grail of getting things done. We're addicted to our inboxes (“Did you get my email? I sent you an email. Can you respond to my email?”). We spend more time on busywork than actual work (meetings about meetings, always with too many people and too little accountability). And everything is urgent, yet the cross-functional collaboration necessary create smart priorities for the entire business? It simply doesn't exist much of the time.
With the direction our culture is moving in—apps everywhere, apps for everything!—it might stand to reason that the fix for our problems could be, well, more apps. But in reality, what happens when you try to fix broken tech with more tech is a mess of would-be “innovative” technologies bolted onto legacy systems. In other words, your problem is now worse: disorganized data, conflicting processes, and mass confusion. We end up with even more meetings and emails to fill the gaps in context and communication — the exact problems all this fancy tech was supposed to solve.
A more modern approach
The dilemma is clear: The way business happens is changing, employees have too much to do, and the tools are their disposal are hurting, not helping. The executives and leaders I've spoken to have told me that they want to move their businesses forward faster, but can't find the right toolset to really make it happen. The time has come for a solution that reduces or eliminates these challenges, resulting in a more efficient and effective workforce.
Everything I've talked about here is exactly why we built Quip. Teams are bogged down because old tools don't work, and can't keep up with the shifts in corporate culture brought about by technological advancements. The markets are moving faster than companies can keep pace with. But with Quip, companies can:
Work in context
Close the gap between where work gets done, and where work gets discussed. Everyone on the document is up to speed, because everyone has access to the conversation that's happening in real time. No digging through emails, no 1:1 chats where great ideas or important changes get lost in a vacuum.
Keep everything in one place
Teams get slowed down when mission-critical aspects of their work are distributed among multiple apps. Toggling around looking for the right tool or tab wastes time and creates an opening for distraction. When teams have documents, spreadsheets, apps, project tracking, and conversation in one place, they stay in the flow and get more done.
Eliminate silos once and for all
When everyone is on the same platform, work gets done faster. Transparency is improved, collaboration is encouraged, and people intuitively know where to find what they need. Plus, it opens the gates for a new level of cross-functional collaboration: Marketing can communicate more effectively with engineering, sales teams are more closely aligned with customer support, and so on.
Get started with Quip today
Quip is the modern, mobile cloud document solution that can take your team from zero to sixty. If hyper collaboration is what you're looking for to get your company a leading edge, Quip is the place to get it.
