Just knowing that collaboration is easy to screw up isn’t of much use though. What would be truly helpful would be a specific taxonomy of the mistakes that frequently hobble teams, including the emotional and irrational complexities that can bedevil collaboration, as well as a benchmark survey of how the best teams manage to get everyone working together well. Handily, that’s just what a new study by Collaborative Coaching and Resonance Strategies aims to find out.

Through two small pilot studies the partners have developed a survey that digs down into what separates mere team members from true team players by asking participants to detail the differences between their ideal team and their actual experiences working in supposedly collaborative groups. Participants also signal their emotional impressions of teamwork by choosing from an array of sketched facial expressions. “These facial expressions are true in all cultures,” explains Yosh Beier, co-founder of Collaborative Coaching. The word disgust, say, may carry different resonance n India and Indiana, so using pictures takes away the danger that differences in culture or language could skew the results.

And even after examining a small sample of just over a hundred responses, Beier explains, he and his research partners are starting to see intriguing patterns emerge, including generational differences, common complaints about the current reality of teams (lack of recognition and excessive workload prominent among them) and similar notions of what moves a team from bearable to exciting.

What we find is there is a certain amount of results that people want to accomplish, so if a team doesn’t even manage to achieve its goals then that is very frustrating and dominates the experience. But it’s a little bit like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The moment teams reach a critical amount of ability to really produce results then results aren’t that important any more and other factors dominate such as connection and cohesion. People wonder: Do I see purpose? Is this meaningful for me? How much of a challenge is this?

There is also a generational theme. So far, the younger the respondents, the less happy they are with the current state of affairs on their teams.

It’s too early yet to determine if the youngest team members are the most frustrated simply because they have the highest expectations, Beier says, and an insufficient number of remote workers have so far taken the survey to conclusively determine if being virtual changes teams’ interactions or expectations. So the researchers are rolling out the survey to a number of firms, including consultancy W.L. Gore, and are also making it available online to anyone interested in participating. The only criterion for eligibility is experience working collaboratively. So if you feel like aiding an investigation of how to make teams truly gel and explore your own feelings about collaboration, 15 minutes is all you need to complete it. We’ll keep you posted on the results.

In your experience, what are the key factors that make a team really click so they can be effective collaborators?

Image courtesy of Flickr user woodleywonderworks.

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You can download Soonr via iTunes or from the Android Market and subscriptions come with a 30-day free trail. Prices have increased slightly since we last covered the service, but the company has added the new collaboration features and more storage space. Premium accounts are now $9.95 per month for three users with 25 GB of storage (a price increase of $2 per month, but providing 15 GB more storage), while Soonr Pro is $29.95 per month for five users and 100 GB of storage (a price increase of $10 per month, but 60 GB more storage). You can also now customize the Pro service to include more storage space or more users and the site instantly calculates your monthly cost.

Soonr supports Mac and Windows, and a variety of mobile devices including Android, iPhone and BlackBerry. You can also access Soonr via your iPad or an Android (Honeycomb) tablet.

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1. Square pegs in round holes. Let’s face it: Not everyone is cut out to be a virtual worker. Not everyone has the personality to work completely alone, apart from the team, nor has the ability to be focused and motivated to do work without the looming presence of a manager over one’s shoulder. Beyond personality types, not everyone has the ability to set up an environment away from the office that is conducive to work. It takes a special type of person and set of skills to navigate sketchy work environments (from distracting households to noisy coffee shops) and still be a consistent contributor to a virtual team.

What to do? Look for self-starters and team members who either have had virtual work experience and done well in that format or are flexible, focused and organized.

2. Lack of a clear process. A successful virtual team relies on a defined vision for desired outcomes and a careful breakdown of how it can accomplish those goals. In some ways, virtual work processes may need to be more rigid than those for co-located teams, with specific systems in place to cover time tracking, milestones, check-ins and knowledge sharing. But at the same time, the process must be flexible enough to accommodate the varied work styles of virtual workers. Ask yourself: Is it more important that work be done on a very specific schedule at a certain time of day or just that it is done on time? Because virtual teams can be dispersed across time zones, there can be distinct advantages to making use  of the asynchronous workflow rather than forcing someone overseas to be up in the wee hours of the morning just to be “at work” at the same time as the rest of the team.

What to do? Map out your workflow and communications processes and be specific about what is set in stone versus what is flexible. Make sure you have the systems in place to capture important data and that let you track workflow, deadlines and output.

3. Weak training techniques. If you’re running a team, you know the importance of “on-boarding” new team members. If you’re embarking on a virtual work process, getting everyone on the same page about how you want the team to work together and how to use the systems you’ve deployed is key. Without a clear explanation and properly conducted training, team output is guaranteed to be inconsistent at best. Because virtual team members don’t have the kind of contact one gets  in an office environment, making sure they have access to effective training materials and have the opportunity to ask questions as needed is important to the success of the team. One weak link can spoil the whole bunch.

What to do? After carefully thinking through your process, develop strong training materials and utilize one of the many tools that work well for knowledge sharing amongst virtual teams such as Mindflash, Knoodle and GoToMeeting. Make these materials available even after the training for reference. Keep lines of communication open for subsequent queries.

4. Failure to capture knowledge. In an office space, you can more readily ferret out the data you need, but in a virtual team environment, the bread crumb trail to data may be more convoluted or harder to track. And even in an office space, knowledge can be dispersed and kept in silos. Multiply that potential ten-fold in a virtual work space. The tools you use to capture information from the team can be helpful, but knowledge sharing starts with having the right attitude.

What to do? Emphasize the importance of knowledge sharing to team members and make sure you provide specific tools and steps to properly capture information from individuals. Everyone on your team must understand the critical nature of documenting and archiving in a shared space, and some helpful virtual work spaces include Glasscubes or Basecamp.

5. No glue to keep it all together. A good virtual team starts with a good leader. Whomever is managing the team needs to have a good grip on the dynamics of virtual work. Whether creating or communicating the vision, the team leader must be able to do so effectively, using tools such as Cohuman and Mavenlink to further a more cohesive team and work process. The team leader must be vigilant, organized and nimble, ready to address issues and fill in gaps to ensure consistent output with an emphasis on documentation and shared knowledge. Without a good leader acting as the glue to holding disparate parts together, communications meltdowns will be the norm, not the exception.

What to do? Find — or be — a smart virtual leader. Know when to be firm and when to be flexible, and be comfortable with being flexible. Keep both the big picture and the detail in mind and use the best technology and tools at your disposal to enhance your ability to do both.

Overall, a successful virtual team includes well-equipped, prepared team members who possess the right personalities and skill sets to understand the process, are on-boarded thoughtfully, and have tools to track work and share knowledge. And someone at the helm who can properly engineer and oil the machine.

Image courtesy stock.xchng user clix

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• The app emphasizes integration with Google Apps, which can enhance the Google Apps toolset. (Mavenlink is available — and highly ranked — in the Google Apps Marketplace.)
• The final step of a project — invoicing the client — is built right into the tool. Think of Mavenlink like “Basecamp meets Freshbooks” in that regard. The premise of Mavenlink starts with the idea of managing your projects from inception to completion: collaborate, manage, track time and invoice, all in one place.

Here is how the company breaks down its offering:

Using Mavenlink can help streamline your workflow without the heftiness of a complex project management tool such as Microsoft Project,  although the company does have a project tracker including assignments, key dates, and project status. Unlike many project management systems, the built-in time tracker includes an invoice tool built right in (versus others that might integrate with a separate invoicing system). And if you’re using QuickBooks and don’t want to switch to its invoicing system, the company is working on QuickBooks integration. Right now, you can export data as a .CSV.

Mavenlink’s permissions system takes into account the complex relationships you have as you work with both your internal team, subcontractors and clients. Everyone in a project ecosystem can have access to just the parts of a workspace that is relevant to them. With the integration of email and even mobile, everyone has access to project data and can collaborate and share information easily.

The soup to nuts approach to project management seems to set Mavenlink apart from other project management tools that handle only parts of the overall project process. Mavenlink has a freemium model: you can get three active projects, save for the custom branding, for free. Paying subscribers are also assigned a customer service rep who is available by phone, email or text chat.

What project management tool are you using, and how’s it working for you?

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I rebranded my virtual consultancy with my long-time friend Monique Elwell to create Conversify. We shared the goal of creating a business that was entirely virtual and that would allow everyone who joined us the flexibility, mobility and better work/life balance we wanted. She and I were based thousands of miles apart when we joined forces, in Denver and Alaska respectively. More recently, we brought on a third business partner, Steven Jackson from Boston, and have built a team that spans the U.S., with a U.K. presence as well.

Here’s what I learned from the members of our virtual team. Note that most of our agency’s team members came from more traditional work environments.

1. Develop clear communications processes. Social media strategist Nik Hewitt emphasizes that one thing that helps our team work well together is that we spent a lot of time developing clear and detailed work processes so we could be consistent and efficient. “We share ideas and discuss them, and a nominated person writes down the salient points based on the knowledge of the team,” Hewitt explains. “Then this information is collated and edited by one team member then passed to another team member for comprehensive expansion.” At each stage of our communications process, we notify each person when it is their turn to participate and give clear deadlines along with scheduled reminders so everyone knows what is expected from whom and when. Attention to a detailed process leads to more consistency and accountability.
2. Shared calendaring is key. According to Haley Kilgour, senior account manager, virtual team members have to be more efficient with their time because of the need to schedule specific meetings with one another to discuss issues or make decisions. Even a quick 15 minute chat requires coordinating schedules across time zones to ensure you can “meet” with someone else. We use Google Apps and heavily rely on Google Calendar; we can see the availability of all team members at all times. Plus we can specify our individual work hours that are based on a core set of hours when we are all available at the same time. Those critical mutual time slots are the sweet spot for getting the whole team together for real-time collaboration.
3. Make use of time zones. “When we have something that is due on Monday, I feel like I have two Mondays in which to do it,” says Karen Woodward, social media manager, referring to the fact that Hewitt, who is based in the U.K., can begin working on something on a Monday during his work hours and then Woodward and social media specialist Shelli Martineau can pick up where he left off during their workday in Pacific Time. This elongates the team’s productivity and can be a bonus during critical communications periods, providing our clients with 24/7 social media monitoring and management.
4. Instant messaging can trump email. Email can be a big challenge for virtual teams especially when team members begin to over-rely on it and everyone can gets buried in emails. Email can also be ineffective if you fail to specify in each email sent to multiple team members exactly who needs to take action, says Elwell, Conversify’s CEO. “If you send an email to five people and say ‘check this out,’ everyone will assume at least one of the others will, and no one will check it out.” Sometimes, instant messaging can be far more targeted and effective. Woodward says that IM has has become her virtual version of “popping my head over the cubicle wall.” But IM can also present a more immediate messaging overload, especially since we usually have both GTalk and Skype running. Sometimes you just have to turn them off to get work done.
5. Don’t knock virtual worlds. With several Second Life enthusiasts on our team from the beginning, we decided to bring the rest of our team members “inworld” for both a weekly “watercooler” social as well as quarterly “state of the company” meetings. Kilgour admits that at first she was opposed to meeting in Second Life, but eventually she came to enjoy it. “There’s something to be said for having a visual representation of a meeting that makes me feel more connected,” she says, adding that the format appeals to her visual nature.

Hewitt says that virtual team members need to make an effort to get to know one another. “We take time to just chat, one-to-one and in teams. We just chew the fat sometimes on Skype as though we’re (sitting) next to each other. I pretty much talk to to everyone personally once a week just to catch-up.”

The team also holds meetings for joint creativity such as their “Production Playtime” where they exchange ideas. Martineau, in particular, appreciates “Production Playtime” noting that it’s an opportunity for the team to jointly explore new tools and networks that may be beneficial to clients. “This is how we all got hooked on Get Glue and what reinvigorated our interest in Tumblr,” she adds.

Says Kilgour, getting together in person a couple times of year, if possible, is important, “Human energy can still be missing in virtual settings.” Another caveat for working virtually is to acknowledge that working from home isn’t for everyone and requires self-discipline, the ability to stay focused and being able to avoid distractions.

What does your virtual team use — and do — to work well together?

Top image: Photo by Mike Kilgour, Second Life screenshot by Nik Hewitt

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The company recently announced some new features and a shift in overall direction. I had the chance to speak with Wayne Pope, founder of Glasscubes, to get some insight into what’s happening.

The feature changes included:

1. Document approvals. Your team can now approve documents — or any file uploaded into Glasscubes — to ensure the correct version is used with everyone’s sign off. You can specify who on the team needs to be part of the approval process, and they are notified by email to review and approve the document or file.
2. Quick links. Click the “Share This File” button once you’ve uploaded a file to a Glasscubes workspace, and you’ll get a link to the file that you can copy and paste into any message or email. You can also use this feature to share a specific file on Glasscubes with people outside your team including via a tweet or status update. Anyone who has the link can view the file without having to sign into Glasscubes or have an account, but they can’t access anything else in your workspace, and you have the benefit of being able to revoke access whenever you want.
3. Unlimited users. Glasscubes now allows unlimited users across all its accounts, also provides caccess to all of its features across all the accounts. Now the only differentiator between the different package levels for Glasscubes accounts is the number of workspaces used and the amount of storage used.
4. Three packages. The company has reduced its multiple paid offerings down to three, all with a 28-day free trial: Max at $199/month; Professional at $125/month and Standard at $49/month. Pope believes its Free package is also now much more useful, with two free workspaces and access for unlimited users, with up to one gigabyte of storage.

A Shift in Direction

According to Pope, Glasscubes is moving away from the idea of being an “online intranet,”  complete with files, workspaces, a CRM system, and even a “coffee break” area.

“We watched over time how people were using the accounts, and we found that the accounts the made the most of the product were based around the workspaces rather than other elements in Glasscubes,” explains Pope. “From a startup perspective, it’s hard to deliver a clear marketing message when doing ‘intranet.’ It’s easier for people to grasp collaboration and ‘to simplify.’”

To avoid spreading its own team too thin, the company decided to focus on being the best at one thing: online collaboration. It also wanted to continue offering a free version of the product, but not a stripped down, feature-poor version meant to encourage upgrades. Instead, it now includes all the functionality, only with fewer workspaces and less storage space.

Pope says that while the company is concentrating all of its efforts around the Workspace and upcoming communication and social features, it still supports the CRM/Connect feature, but is no longer actively developing it. He did suggest that the company may spin that feature off into a completely separate free product at some point, time permitting.

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Are you ready for that kind of responsibility? Preparedness is what will separate the simply competent web working manager from the excellent one. But if your company doesn’t have a program for grooming distributed managers, or if you’re working for yourself at this point, then how best to prepare?

Read Books

Read about management. There are plenty of books on the subject, and they’ll give you insight you might not be able to get just from lived experience. Books alone aren’t a substitute for experience, but they’ll help you evaluate your own approaches, and learn some new tricks.

• “What To Do When You Become The Boss” is a good primer for those who haven’t yet occupied a management role. It’s designed with entry-level readers in mind, so the pacing is good and it has a number of real case studies and interactive elements to keep things interesting.
• “The New Manager’s Tool Kit” is another good book for those just starting out. Special attention is paid to how to keep the human element a part of your management strategy, which is especially important when you’re dealing with people at a distance.

Ask for (or Take) Responsibility

If you’re already working as part of a distributed team and there’s no direct supervisor involved in the group, you have an opportunity. Either put in a request with a superior that you be given extra organizational responsibilities within the group, or, if others are amenable and there’s an obvious need, just step up and take a leadership role. Chances are that people will be appreciative of some direction if it seems to be lacking.

Taking on added responsibility will pay dividends in the long run, even if in the short term it doesn’t actually result in any extra cash compensation. Any experience you can cite later to differentiate yourself from your peers in management competitions will be hugely beneficial.

Get to Know the Tools

How do people even go about managing others online? Look at your field and find out what tools are being used to help distributed teams stay well-managed. Is Basecamp being used to organize projects and keep people on deadlines? Is there a Google Apps component? What tech is being employed to facilitate teleconferences and online meetings?

Find out what the standard is for your organization, and make a point of learning how to make those tools do what you want them to. Then, find out what the next up-and-comers on the horizon are. Do that by asking other companies you work with who their service providers of choice are. Pay special attention to the suggestions of IT professionals and startups. Those will be the ones to watch.

You may not think you’re in a management track at the moment, but if you’re an experienced web worker, or even a not-so-experienced one who’s intent on becoming more so, then you’ve already got a head start on the majority of tomorrow’s workforce. Take the initiative and capitalize on that advantage.

What tips do you have a for aspiring web working managers?

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Throughout my online career, I’ve been part of several web working teams. On most teams I am just a regular member, but there’s the rare occasion when I find myself the team leader. Like now, for example, when my former graphic design classmates asked me to lead their new studio.

Here’s the problem: we’ve never worked together before. How could we work together and have a united approach to design? What’s so unique about us? Can we figure this out even if we’re working remotely?

To address these questions, we had to figure out our team culture. But as Jason Fried of 37Signals pointed out, culture is not something you create. How do I, as the leader of the team, provide a working environment to foster the right culture? Here are some of the strategies I’m trying:

Deep Involvement

The way that I used to set up web working teams was that each member just kept to him or herself, not minding the work of others or the business as a whole. While this was good for productivity, it wasn’t a good environment for generating new ideas or making everyone feel invested in the team. They need not be involved in the daily minutiae, but they have to know the essential business processes. Getting them involved in research, planning and brainstorming sets up an environment where you can cultivate hidden or underdeveloped strengths. This also provides opportunities for new ideas, often with a fresh, external perspective on how to make the team work better.

But this doesn’t mean that you should hold virtual group meetings for every important business decision. In fact, deliberating on big decisions as a group isn’t a good idea. Those with strong personalities tend to be more expressive of their opinions, while others end up just following the herd. To get the most out of each person, talk to them individually before coming together as a group, so that everyone’s opinion is heard equally and you merely moderate or summarize their ideas.

Encourage Sharing

If your team uses collaboration or social media tools, don’t limit it to business use only. Encourage your team to share other things  – whether it’s inspiring quotes, interesting blog posts, or the odd personal photo. Although these may look like informational clutter, they create a good environment for deeper collaboration. Also, they allow you to peek at each member’s individual culture and background.

Freedom to Engage

When looking at one designer’s recent work, I asked him why his digitally rendered drawings didn’t have the detail and dynamic lines of his hand rendered ones. He said “I’m not used to starting a drawing digitally.”

“Why don’t you draw it by hand, polish it, and then digitally render it?”
“I thought you wanted me to do it this way.” he replied.

While the designer made the wrong assumption, I should have been clear about the flexibility of his workflow from the beginning. Officially giving your team the freedom to find and develop their own processes is important. Team leaders can give everyone tips on how they can do their job better, but nothing beats the strategies they come up with on their own.

Taking a cue from Google, I also encouraged my team to spend some time working on projects that they’re passionate about. To one, this was a comic strip, to another, it was his own typeface. These projects might not directly result in profitable endeavors, but it allows them to explore different ideas and gain new skills.

Postpone the mission/vision thing

It used to be that whenever I started a new venture, I always had a solid business plan written out, complete with mission and vision statements, SWOT analyses, etc. Now, I just make a mind map or a one-page overview. Here’s why: I realized that it’s rare (or impossible) to know exactly what the final result is going to be like. The same could be said about forming teams. Give your team a bit of time to play around and figure out where you want to go before officially launching anything. Only craft your working manifesto or mission statement when you’ve settled and formed a collective identity for yourselves. Even then, it should only serve as a reminder of the things you wanted to do anyway.

As for my team, I don’t know who we are — yet. But by involving them in the important aspects of the business and allowing them to engage freely in projects that move them, I’m hopeful that we’ll arrive at the definition together.

Do you work with an online team? What is your group culture like and what process did you go through to establish it?

Image by stoll from sxc.hu

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The dashboard has details of all your current projects. Every project consists of messages (discussion forum), lists (tasks), pages (wiki), people (contacts on the project) and chat. In less than 10 minutes, I created two projects and added content for each.

Teambox feels easier and more intuitive than Basecamp. Not once did I need to peek at the help file or the Textile (text formatting) reference; the tips on the page were enough. Even after using Basecamp for a while, I still needed to look up its Textile reference.

Basecamp’s interface is nicer than Teambox’s, though; it’s sleeker and more eye-pleasing, with a dash of color. By contrast, Teambox’s interface contains little color and it doesn’t look the same in all browsers. For example, it uses a serif font in Google Chrome, making it a harder read than the sans-serif font displayed in Firefox. The project dashboard formatting could stand some improvement, too.

Web workers, especially those working solo, might prefer Teambox just because it’s free. You can freely create a project for every client and add those clients to the projects. However, if you need to build a complete extranet, complete with branding (which you have to pay for with Teambox), Basecamp is still the collaboration tool of choice. Furthermore, Basecamp has been around longer and has third party apps that work it. I’m sure Teambox will add new features as it develops a following and continues to grow.

You need to determine your own needs and chose the applications that best meets those needs. For a freelancer like me, Teambox fits my bill if I need to collaborate and manage projects with clients.

What team collaboration app do you use?

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Spend some time discussing the tools and process. Before you get to work, be sure to lay out the process as well as the tools that you will be using. This sets up everyone’s expectations from the outset. Without this discussion, your team might have different ideas about how to tackle the collaborative process.

Illustrate the benefits. What could happen if everyone finished their work on time, or even earlier? While there are obvious benefits such as client satisfaction, this isn’t motivation enough for some people. You should point out how finishing a job early benefits team members. Will you be able to take a few days off? Will everyone get paid earlier? Is there an early completion bonus?

Always explain the “why.” Some members might disregard the tools or process you’ve recommended. Although they may just be more comfortable with their own system, it might be at odds with the way the rest of the team is working.

For example, a designer I work with didn’t use the Google Group I set up for the team. He sent e-mails to individual members, even if the content of the message affected everyone. It wasn’t because he was hardheaded, but rather that he’d never used it before and didn’t see the reasoning behind it. After I showed him a tutorial and explained that the Google Group was for transparency, he got on board.

Everything has to be justified — from your collaboration tools to the division of labor. This is a good way for you to ensure that there are no superfluous tools or steps.

Public accountability. Being publicly accountable for your goals makes it easier for you to achieve them. If you and the members of your team announce your daily or weekly goals to one another, this makes all of you feel more motivated. By sharing this way, each member commits to specific tasks. This makes it easier to tell which members are really working and which ones are merely talking about it.

Accountability can be made even easier with the use of project management and collaboration software. We’ve covered several of these here at WWD. Alternatively, you can use an internal project milestone sheet.

Encouraging increased productivity within a team doesn’t have to be difficult. By establishing expectations, justifying the process, and maintaining individual accountability, you might be surprised at how efficient your team can be.

Have you ever found difficulty working within a team? What do you do when the other members aren’t as productive as they should be?

Image by scol22 from sxc.hu

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One of the main things to be aware of is that working styles differ across cultures. For example, I’m so used to working with people from the UK and the U.S. that I forget that I can’t be as upfront and straightforward with some of my Filipino colleagues. For us Filipinos, the first few minutes of a business meeting or phone call is usually devoted to idle chit-chat. Also, I can’t give them negative feedback without sandwiching it between positive statements. While I love working with people from different backgrounds, this kind of variety requires some adjustments on my part. As I work with a greater variety of people, I often have to increase the adjustments I have to make.

But doing this has its benefits. When you’re used to your own working culture, you overlook its flaws and weaknesses. By working with people who have a different working style from yours, you’ll be able to see your own flaws more clearly. The first time I worked with local colleagues, it made me see a more personal side to business interaction. This was something I needed at that time, since my communications with international clients were too matter-of-fact. The personal touch I added later allowed me to differentiate myself.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that two work cultures will create conflict, or even clash. The best way to avoid this is by managing expectations from the start. Here’s what fellow WWD blogger Pamela Poole had to say about this:

“If you find yourself working with people from other cultures, my advice is to be very explicit about your expectations and make sure you know theirs from the very start of your negotiations to avoid any misunderstandings down the line.”

Another effect of web working with an international team is that geography becomes a less important factor in business. We can increasingly focus on other factors such as quality of work, experience, and cost. This shift should allow for more equal opportunities for people to compete professionally, where they aren’t judged on nationality.

Also, working with an international team requires you to consider a new factor that you probably rarely thought of before: timezones. This is usually less of a problem for one-on-one meetings, but what if you have to organize a group conference call with members in three different timezones? At least one person on the team will have to make a major schedule change just to accommodate the majority.

To prevent such group sessions from being unfair, it’s important to conduct them only when necessary. No one wants to stay up three hours later than usual just to do collaboration that can be done using a wiki. The good news is that if your team is picky when scheduling conference calls, you’re less likely to waste everybody’s time.

Working with international colleagues may be a challenge, but this has its own rewards. As technology improves and as the global community gets more comfortable to international web work, these challenges will hopefully become non-existent.

Do you work with an international team? If so, what effect does this have on your process and working style? Share your tips in the comments.

Image by Miguel Ugalde from sxc.hu

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