Make your teamwork stronger with these unsurpassed tools

There’s no way a single person can out-perform a well-oiled team. No matter how intelligent you might consider yourself. Even more: only with teamwork did humanity survive and thrive. Everyone had a role to play, a job to do. And that was way back when. Even today only the best teams in the world beat the market and the competition. That’s why any business leader should invest, not just in people, but in their working together.

We, at start.me, also believe in the power of teamwork. That’s why we’ve built some powerful features into our product, that will help you unlock the potential of your team.

This is our advice.

Get on the same page – literally

Let’s start off, with the most challenging part of a collaboration. Getting on the same page, also called: thinking similarly. Or, as the Merriam-Webster describes it: agreeing about something (such as how things should be done). This is where teamwork usually starts. You have to decide about roles, about a vision for the distant and near future, some goals to be reached on any given day. Accountability. It takes a lot of effort at first, but this is the point of agreement you want to achieve.

And then you have to save your progress. You have to write something down on an accessible medium, for everyone to consult later. New members of the team, for example. A central hub with everything necessary for the team to function. You’ve guessed it, we’re talking about something just like a start.me team page. You could have everyone install this team page as their default page. This is where the working day will start, every time they fire up their computer and their trusty browser.

Teamwork to share freely

The great thing about a start.me teampage is that you can share information at the click of a button. If you want to make an announcement, just insert a notes widget and type away. Don’t forget to use Markdown options, to make it really stand out. Or make sure that everyone reads the latest company blog post or newsletter, by inserting an RSS reader with the correct link. Informing your coworkers couldn’t be simpler.

Necessary information could be typed into another note widget. Now nobody will lose their phone numbers, links to the company intranet sections or cloud tools. Even the Works Council or other committees could end up here. Now this will inspire trust! And don’t forget to show a calendar widget with upcoming deadlines or pool parties.

New employees could be introduced with a dedicated profile widget, where you might also present employees of the month. But they could also get their own, dedicated page. And why don’t you include some reporting tools or even stock quotes? With our embed widget, you can display just about every available website or widget. Just make sure it’s relevant information for your team members.

In every business, there’s a lot of information to be shared, even when it’s just internally. All of this usually gets printed on paper, that surely yellows and grows outdated. But still, it’s out there, somewhere, on top of an already cluttered desk. Why not make sure everyone is up-to-date? You’d definitely save some printing money (and trees) in the process.

Proprietary information

While we really feel any business would profit from sharing as much information as possible between team members, we also understand that no company would survive complete transparency. You just have to watch the movie based on the book The Circle, by Dave Eggers, and you will know too. If you didn’t already know, that is.

With start.me for Teams, it’s easy to share information only with the team members you want to share with. And no-one else. You could even opt for a sign-in on your exclusive team domain. There’s a lot more possible, but we won’t go into now. You can read all about it, in our support section for teams.

What might you share with some members of your team? Bookmark lists to competitors, perhaps. Lists of clients or leads. You might wish to point colleagues to specific industry journals or alert them to breaking news. Other useful features are links to your dedicated sales, accounting, CRM software, or to internal tools like Work Reports or Absence Monitoring. This is where you want to make sure your privacy settings are trustworthy.

Final question

Our final question is a simple one: what will your perfect team page look like? Of all the possibilities we’ve mentioned, we hope to challenge you to try them out for your team. Please let us know in the comments below. We’d love to be inspired!