Elevate Your Standup Meetings with Jell: Web-based Collaboration Made Effortless
Effective team communication and collaboration are critical for project success, regardless of the tools and platforms used. Jell provides a web-based solution that helps companies automate their standup meetings and daily check-ins, enabling teams to collaborate effortlessly. In this blog post, we will explore how Jell enhances standup meetings in a web-based environment, offering convenience, […]
Efficient Standup Meetings Made Easy: Jell for Microsoft Teams
Standup meetings are an integral part of effective team communication, providing a platform for sharing updates and addressing roadblocks. To streamline this process, Jell offers seamless integration with Microsoft Teams, enabling companies to automate their daily standup and check-in meetings. In this blog post, we will explore how Jell can help teams optimize their standup […]
Boosting Team Collaboration with Jell: Standup Meetings for Slack
In today’s fast-paced work environment, effective team collaboration is crucial for achieving success. One powerful tool that can enhance collaboration is Jell, a platform designed to streamline standup meetings for Slack.
The Daily Huddle Meeting and How it Can Boost Your Team’s Productivity
You’ve probably heard it before and you’ll probably hear it again, but meeting fatigue is real – both for in-person and remote teams. It can become an all-too-common habit to meet for many small things ad-hoc or to simply schedule too many meetings that go long and off-topic, causing many people to check out when things […]
How to Manage Different Work Personality Types
Work personality types: there are a lot of them. I’m going to tell you a story about a young engineer. Once upon a time, this young engineer spent his work hours in an enclosed cubicle at an office where personal computers and scientific calculators were designed. He liked to work alone, preferring solitude over committees […]
Improve Meetings & One-on-Ones With This Employee Check-In Template
As a manager, it can be very tricky to truly know how your team is doing in all aspects of their work and on a personal level, too. Whether you work remotely or in-person, or a combination of both, establishing regular, routine check in meetings can be a huge help in shedding light on this. […]
How to Create Impactful OKR Goals
The OKR goal-setting methodology is a tried and true way to help you and your team create, track and achieve measurable goals in line with your organization’s broader vision. Originally pioneered by John Doerr, the framework groups the objectives you’d like to see with the key results used to measure its progress. Here, you can […]
How Email Parsing Can Save Remote Teams Time & Money
Email parsing can be a huge time-saver for remote teams. By automatically extracting data from emails, you can avoid having to manually enter that information into your CRM or other software. This can save your team hours per week. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how email parsing works and how it can benefit your […]
The Standup Meeting: Your Ultimate Guide to Knocking it Out of the Park
Whether you manage a team that works together remotely or in person, you will need to check in with them regularly to see how their workload and tasks are going. An easy, quick and efficient way of doing this is through something called a standup meeting. Here, we’ll get into all you need to know […]
The SMART Goals Template That Will Help You Achieve Excellence
When it comes to progressing in your career and personal life, goals matter. They’re a proven tool that provides the steps and timeline needed to check things off so you can succeed. But, not all goals are created equal. Research has shown that recording your goals, committing to take action steps, and creating a support […]
Turn Your Never-Ending To-Do List Into Actionable Goals
If you’re reading this post, you probably have a daily to-do system. And at least once or twice in your career, you’ve likely experienced the high that hits on rare afternoons when you get through it all. Everything on the list is checked off. The inbox is empty. It’s a great feeling. We get it. […]
61 Useful Check-In Questions for Remote Teams
Since 2020, working remotely has become a reality for professional teams worldwide. Although this kind of work environment wasn’t entirely new to some people, remote meetings have always been challenging for managers and company leaders. Some leaders use check-in questions with the Check-In Meeting model to make work meetings more productive and a touch-base for […]
What is Asynchronous Communication? Tools & Tips for your Remote Team’s Success
With so many people working remotely these days, at least partly, there has been a lot of talk about asynchronous communication. You might be doing this regularly, or maybe your team is experiencing communication breakdowns and you need some fresh ideas. Whatever the case is, you might be asking yourself what is asynchronous communication, anyhow? […]
Top Tips for Managing Remote Teams Successfully
The work world has been evolving and continues to change. Both due to and despite the pandemic, an increasing number of companies are switching to remote work. In fact, about 16% of companies worldwide are completely remote. This trend, along with the growth of companies that were always remote, means more and more managers face […]
The Sprint Retrospective Template You’ve Been Searching For
Sprint retrospectives are an incredibly useful exercise for scrum teams to understand what they’ve done well, should continue doing, and should stop doing from sprint to sprint. If you’ve never run a sprint retrospective, you may not know where to begin. The guide below and template provided will ease that burden and equip you with […]
Top Agile Certifications to Improve Project Management & Software Development
Agile methods are results and people-focused producing fast and flexible approaches to developing software or hardware that use self-organization, adaptive planning, and quick turnaround times at their core. Teams closely collaborate to make decisions in a cyclical, iterative process called sprints to produce software, typically over one to four-week periods. Team members make continuous quality […]
11 Best Productivity Tools for Your Remote Tech Team
Every team works differently, with their own strengths and weaknesses. No matter how your team may be set up – there are ways to improve everyone’s productivity by becoming more efficient and organized. While inspiration always helps, using the best productivity tools is a very effective way to reach your goals and deadlines faster. There […]
Daily Scrum Meeting Guide
In this guide, we’ll discuss the questions each team member should answer in a daily scrum meeting, rules, and who attends the meeting, among other topics. Continue reading for more information on daily scrum meetings. Try Jell for Your Daily Scrum Meeting Try for Free 14-day free trial. No credit card required. What […]
Free OKR Template – How to Set Objectives and Key Results
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a simple yet powerful way to set goals. They help you focus on what matters, create alignment around priorities, and get results. This post will teach you how to write impactful OKRs for your team. Jell’s free OKR template also provides customizable examples of setting objectives and key results […]
Daily Scrum Questions
Track your plans and progress, achieve more by aligning goals, and foster happy, productive teams in just minutes each day through Daily Scrum meetings. In this article, we will discuss what a Daily Scrum meeting is, what the Daily Scrum Questions are, and how Jell can help your team. What is a Daily Scrum? A […]
Increase Team Engagement
When it comes to the ability to increase team engagement, it’s no secret that communication plays an enormous role in how well teams work together. With Jell’s Likes and Comments features, your team can find and work through any blockers or issues that may arise without ever leaving the app. In this post, we’ll show […]
6 Ways to Jell: Your Guide to Better Technology Adoption
Introduction Ah, the joys of new technology adoption. If businesses want to keep their competitive edge, efficiently adopting new technologies is a must. However, this is often easier said than done. Perhaps one of the most important things to keep in mind is that every team is comprised of at least three different types of […]
5 Ways Effective Teams Run Daily Slack Standups
The massive popularity of Slack has turned daily Slack standup meetings into a must for teams who use the tool as their primary synchronous or asynchronous communication platform. It sounds easy enough, everyone gets on and updates Slack once a day to let the team know what they are working on. But, if you’ve done this for a […]
Remote Work Productivity – How to Be More Productive At Home
Remote work productivity: a question for our current post-pandemic times. And if there’s one thing the world’s productivity gurus have in common, it’s this: They know how to get things done. Tim Ferris had published his first New York Times bestseller by age 30. Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” are still […]
Creative Ways to Stay Engaged when You Work from Home
Staying engaged when you work from home is difficult. “Working from home will be easy,” they stated. “Working from home will be a dream,” they said. “You’ll have more time for your kids,” they predicted. “You won’t ever sit in traffic again,” they claimed. Well, yes. And no. Working remote is dreamy. It’s easier to […]
Introducing Jell For Microsoft Teams
Here at Jell, we want to empower your team to accomplish great things. If you’re bogged down with meetings and distributing information inefficiently, you can’t do that. You need to spend more time achieving your goals by doing the work that matters. To bring more efficiency to our platform, we’ve been working on integrating with […]
How to Use Stretch Goals with OKRs
Are stretch goals motivational and encouraging or overbearing and disheartening? That is a common debate and there is no easy answer. But, if you try to incorporate stretch goals, using them with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) is a great approach. In fact, common applications of OKRs use stretch goals and OKR scoring to keep […]
How to Write Killer Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
If you’re lucky, you work with a company that implements an OKR strategy. When I first joined Jell I wondered what exactly they were and knew it couldn’t stand for “OK, Right?” In this post, we’ll go over how to write OKRs, what they are, why you should use them, examples, and tips for success. […]
2022 Goal Setting Framework: 11 Goal Setting Methods & Tips You Need
It’s that time of year, time for your 2022 goal-setting session. As the saying goes: “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.” You have to plan actionable goals for your business. But there are numerous ways to establish a goal setting framework in 2022. How do you choose the one that is best for your […]
This Is How Managers Can Avoid Conflict In The Workplace
No one enjoys conflict in the workplace, least of all the managers who have to deal with it. Naturally, the best way to clean up the mess is through conflict prevention. As the saying goes “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” and prevention is the solution to workplace conflict. It’s a […]
What Everyone Gets Wrong About Working Remote
I can remember a time when working remote was greatly frowned upon. It was viewed as an opportunity for employees to slack off, take care of kids (how dare they!–obvious sarcasm), or get stuff done around the house—or so everyone thought. In reality, several reports now show that remote workers are more productive in the […]
The Biggest Time Wasters in Standup Meetings
I’ve been in some pretty lame standup meetings in my day. When I think back to what made them so ineffective, I can see one common denominator—wasting time. That’s really what most things come down to, isn’t it? “Am I gaining any value by being here?” If the answer is yes, we stay. If the […]
How to Manage Poor Work Performance & How To Improve It
One of my favorite things about what I do is having the opportunity to lead and manage others. I get to build teams, develop individuals, connect with people one-on-one, and coach them through key moments in their careers. But with the good comes the bad—and as a manager, it’s up to me to seek out […]
9 Elements of Great Engineering Management That Every Manager Can Follow
When you manage a software engineering team and someone tells you that great engineering management doesn’t exist, it can be more than a little frustrating. Because you know it does. In fact, the degree to which software engineering management has been debated and deliberated is somewhat surprising. Apparently, there are those who believe our commitments […]
Remote Work Culture – Why does remote work fail?
The more we learn about remote work culture, the more enticing it becomes for management and employees alike. Studies show that remote workers are happier, healthier and more productive and cost companies far less than requiring attendance in the office. Despite long-standing myths of the opposite, adopting remote work can be the most effective and efficient way […]
This Was My Single Biggest Mistake in Building Company Culture
Confession time: I made a mistake—one that I’ve been working to correct. I’m hoping that sharing my missteps in building company culture will help save some of you from having to learn the same lessons the hard way. More specifically, my failure to define the culture that I wanted at my last startup from day […]
Great Managers: What makes them and what breaks them
Great managers make all the difference. They extract the best results from teams, more productivity from individual employees, and foster a rich culture that leads companies to thrive, such as those companies who master the Rockefeller habits. Having the right talent at the top of your organization builds the best foundation for sustainable success. So […]
The Benefits of Remote Work and Why Employees Love It
We live in a time of great workplace transformation: employees are working from home more than ever now due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Remote work is no longer the exception, it’s the new paradigm. It isn’t the future of the office; it’s the here and now. So, why are companies closing their office doors and […]
How To Manage Employee Burnout
It’s important to look for employee burnout signs. When employees get overstressed, all kinds of bad things can happen. They are more prone to make mistakes, become actively disengaged, and even face increased risks of serious health problems ranging from high blood pressure to depression. We know from the American Institute of Stress that 80% […]
Managing Remote Employees: 3 Steps to Improving Communication
The latest Gallup analysis is in, and it tells a rather interesting story for those managing remote employees. The State of the American Workplace study is filled with insights that indicate the benefits of remote work may be even greater than previously reported. “Gallup consistently has found that flexible scheduling and work-from-home opportunities play a […]
How To Avoid The Common Mistakes Of First-Time Managers
There are few things more overwhelming than the first time you experience the sudden responsibility of a group of employees. Whether you’re being promoted among your peers, entering a new organization in a leadership position or moving over to another department to lead a team, your first crack at this new level of authority is […]
Your Poor Communication Is Probably Killing Employee Productivity
Your communication strategy has a measurable impact on productivity. Do you have a plan for improvement in place? It’s easy to pay lip service to the importance of employee communication. The C-level suite and department heads can preach the virtues of keeping teams aligned with little effort, but eventually every organization faces the same question: is […]
The 3 Pillars You Need for Mastering the Rockefeller Habits
If your company’s still scaling, there’s a good chance you’ve read Scaling Up, by Verne Harnish, and you are interested in mastering the Rockefeller habits. More than 40,000 business leaders have reportedly relied on it to grow their businesses, and with good reason. This book is one of this century’s most important for startups, CEOs and […]
How to Hold Better One-on-One Meetings: Tips from Respected Managers
If there’s one thing we’ve learned about managing teams, it’s this: For an entire team to succeed, the productivity and happiness of every individual matters. A lot. In fact, when it comes to reaching goals, many managers will tell you that an effective one-on-one meeting is far more important than daily status updates and water cooler conversations. […]
28 One-on-One Meeting Questions to Improve Communication in the Workplace
When successful, one-on-one meetings contribute to development opportunities for employees, building trust, and fostering important communication. So, we came up with “The List” of great one-on-one meeting questions. We have something for every situation. Some are best for pre-meeting questionnaires and others for the actual meeting. All of them are best kept in your back […]
How We Jell at Rackspace [Interview with Juan Montemayor]
The first thing you see on Rackspace’s website says everything you need to know about who the company is and what it offers. Trusted by the majority of the Fortune 100. A leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for cloud-enabled managed hosting. The largest managed cloud provider, offering you expertise across the world’s leading clouds. […]
The One-on-One Meeting: What Every Manager Should Know
Did you know that the top tech teams utilize one-on-one meetings? The senior manager of software development at Rackspace regularly blocks off time to sit down with each member of his team and see how things are going. So do managers at Dropbox, LinkedIn, and Atlassian. So does Ben Horowitz. Do you know which companies […]
Measuring Performance on Company Goals Just Got Better
Jell’s company goals tracking has already proven itself as an invaluable feature to align companies and teams around OKRs, quarterly, and annual goals. But we have great news, we’ve made measuring performance even better! In this update, we launched a handful of improvements including a completely redesigned interface that makes it easier for managers to review […]
How We Jell at Growthwise [Interview with Steph Hinds]
It’s not easy being accessible. Just ask Steph Hinds. As the Head Ninja at Growthwise, she’s built a successful company by making sure an entire team of accountants, advisors and administrators is consistently approachable and available—at all times, for every client, at virtually any hour and from any location. (Growthwise employees work in a flexible […]
Free Meeting Calculator: How Much Time Do You Waste? Find Out…
At Jell, we’re focused on reducing the need for unnecessary meetings while making fewer meetings more successful. We have regular one-on-ones and daily standups, but we don’t waste more time in meetings than needed. We talked about the science of productive meetings and the psychology of routine meetings but has your team calculated just how […]