Teams and individuals have become increasingly productive and effective with the plethora of tools that are now deployed across most modern teams (e.g. productivity apps, communication apps, workflow management, analytics tools). However, because of the three macro trends listed, the drive to work smarter and better will not stop with this initial wave of tools.

First, the adoption and daily engagement of these tools has opened up avenues for accelerated innovation in the future of productivity tools. Actions and activities that were previously analog are now all being digitized, whether it’s a team discussing a critical decision, a peer reviewing a design and leaving feedback, marketing plans being broken down and assigned, a new hire onboarding. All of this real-time event data on how work is happening and by whom can now be stitched together and used to help inform, guide and accelerate our work.

Second, the prevalence of all of these tools has also not been without consequence. Individuals and teams are starting to feel more overwhelmed, less focused and stressed. New stresses and needs are also bound to emerge as some individuals settle into the realities of full or partial remote work. While we’ve solved some problems with how we work, the pace at which work is changing will force us to address these emerging pain points.

Lastly, hiring competitiveness is likely to only intensify in the long-run, even if it wanes in the mid-term (12-24 months). Limited supply of talent is going to force enterprises to get more from their workforce.

These three trends will compel companies to continue to seek products and services that enable teams and individuals to work smarter and better.

I’m excited to explore a handful of Work Smarter And Better opportunities:

How do teams and employees work more efficiently given the emergence and availability of workflow data?

• How do you level up individuals, managers and teams faster?
• Which repetitious, error-prone and costly workflows need to be automated?
• How do companies support and grow their employees in a remote setting?
• How does a team better capture, share and automate best practices or workflows across an entire organization?

If you’re working on any of these threads, let’s chat!