Streamlining Communication in Teams

One of the easiest ways to improve your collaboration with product managers and engineers is to improve your design handoff files. - It doesn’t take a lot of time - It drastically improves how people interpret your designs - It reduces backs and forths between engineers and designers - It gives engineers confidence that they are doing the right thing - It increases the chances that what’s implemented will match the design Great handoff files, for me, are an instant sign of design maturity. It shows me that designers think not only of themselves but also the ecosystem of people around them. Coming up with great handoffs boils down to the following: - Setting context - Adding structure - Adding annotations - Including all states - Visualizing the flow - Including a prototype - Doing a run-through Not everything is required for every design initiative; a small feature update may not need a full handoff, whereas a big, impactful one may require everything from the above. In this cheat sheet, I’ve put together my top tips for delivering the “perfect” handoff file. Bonus: I have also created a Figma Annotation and handoff kit with handy components for the above. Find the link in the comments. 👇 — If you found this useful, consider reposting ♻️ PS: By handoff I'm not referring to the process of handing over a design, which should be a collaborative process from problem to solution, but rather the organized design file that is the single source of truth for what needs to be implemented. #uxdesign #uiux #productdesign

Anyone else suffer from meeting overload? It’s a big deal. Simply put too many meetings means less time available for actual work, plus constantly attending meetings can be mentally draining, and often they simply are not required to accomplish the agenda items. At the same time sometimes it’s unavoidable. No matter where you are in your career, here are a few ways that I tackle this topic so that I can be my best and hold myself accountable to how my time is spent. I take 15 minutes every Friday to look at the week ahead and what is on my calendar. I follow these tips to ensure what is on the calendar should be and that I’m prepared. It ensures that I have a relevant and focused communications approach, and enables me to focus on optimizing productivity, outcomes and impact. 1. Review the meeting agenda. If there’s no agenda I send an email asking for one so you know exactly what you need to prepare for, and can ensure your time is correctly prioritized. You may discover you’re actually not the correct person to even attend. If it’s your meeting, set an agenda because accountability goes both ways. 2. Define desired outcomes. What do you want/need from the meeting to enable you to move forward? Be clear about it with participants so you can work collaboratively towards the goal in the time allotted. 3. Confirm you need the meeting. Meetings should be used for difficult or complex discussions, relationship building, and other topics that can get lost in text-based exchanges. A lot of times though we schedule meetings that we don’t actually require a meeting to accomplish the task at hand. Give ourselves and others back time and get the work done without that meeting. 4. Shorten the meeting duration. Can you cut 15 minutes off your meeting? How about 5? I cut 15 minutes off some of my recurring meetings a month ago. That’s 3 hours back in a week I now have to redirect to high impact work. While you’re at it, do you even need all those recurring meetings? It’s never too early for a calendar spring cleaning. 5. Use meetings for discussion topics, not FYIs. I save a lot of time here. We don’t need to speak to go through FYIs (!) 6. Send a pre-read. The best meetings are when we all prepare for a meaningful conversation. If the topic is a meaty one, send a pre-read so participants arrive with a common foundation on the topic and you can all jump straight into the discussion and objectives at hand. 7. Decline a meeting. There’s nothing wrong with declining. Perhaps you’re not the right person to attend, or there is already another team member participating, or you don’t have bandwidth to prepare. Whatever the reason, saying no is ok. What actions do you take to ensure the meetings on your calendar are where you should spend your time? It’s a big topic that we can all benefit from, please share your tips in the comments ⤵️ #careertips #productivity #futureofwork

Too many meetings? A new study challenges many things we think we know about meeting overload. Here's what the researchers discovered. 1) Size matters For small teams (under 6 people), "meet when needed" works beautifully. But there's a tipping point: as teams grow larger, flexible scheduling becomes a disaster. With larger teams, someone will almost always want to meet (of course!), leading to constant interruptions. 2) Too few meetings Surprisingly, the study found that teams often suffer more from too few meetings than too many! Workers reported more frustration when they couldn't coordinate (missing crucial alignments) than when they had to attend "unnecessary" meetings. Example: A developer needing input on architecture decisions might waste days going in the wrong direction because they couldn't get timely coordination with colleagues. 3) Smart rules beat simple rules In diverse teams (different roles, productivity levels, schedules), basic rules like "meet every Monday" aren't enough. The research recommends these approaches instead: - Minimum gaps between meetings (e.g., 48 hours of focus time) - Maximum time without meetings (e.g., never go more than 5 days) - Multiple-person approval for new meetings Example: A software team might block off Tuesday/Thursday mornings as "no meeting zones" while requiring at least two developers to agree before scheduling additional meetings. 4) Fixed meetings For larger teams, standing meetings (e.g., every Friday at 3 PM) are remarkably effective. The data shows they never perform worse than 28% below optimal efficiency - making them a reliable choice, especially as teams scale. 5) The Hybrid Sweet Spot The most successful approaches combine: - Protected "quiet time" where meetings are prohibited - Designated "interaction time" when coordination is encouraged - This structured flexibility helps balance individual productivity with team alignment. Quick recap: As your team grows beyond 6-10 people, shift from ad-hoc scheduling to more structured approaches. But don't make them rigid - add smart safeguards to maintain flexibility while preventing both meeting overload and coordination drought. Source: Roels, G., & Corbett, C. J. (2024). Too Many Meetings? Scheduling Rules for Team Coordination. Management Science, 70(12), 8647–8667.

Here's a step-by-step to drastically reduce the deluge of emails between you and your clients/internal team. An absolute GAMECHANGER 👇 Enter: The Collaboration Doc 👏 I’ve stolen this idea from Cal Newport’s podcast Deep Questions. I immediately implemented it with my own clients and they LOVE it. Fundamentally, most people don’t need a response *right now* – they just need to be safe in the knowledge that everything is being taken care of. So all the Collaborative Doc is is a very clean, clearly outlined document that you and your clients and/or your internal teams can use asynchronously to reduce overhead tax. Overhead tax is all the unnecessary (and exhausting) meetings and emails flying back and forth that surround a project. Here’s how to drastically reduce your overhead tax immediately: Step 1: Create a shared document This could be in Notion, Google Docs, Word or whatever works best for you and your client. Make sure your privacy settings are all correct. Step 2: Make it incredibly easy to navigate I have mine split into: 📆 Key Details 📝 Meeting Notes 🧠 Brain Dump Within Brain Dump I’ve further split that into all the key stakeholders so they know exactly where to put their notes. Break this down however you want. They key is that it's all clear and formatted, it looks nice, but it's not overworked. This should be as bare bones as possible. Step 3: Agree a cadence The point here is to reassure your client that you will absolutely refer to their notes. If you have a weekly Wednesday meeting for example, say that you will check all notes first thing on a Tuesday. They can be confident that nothing will go un-reviewed and anything that needs to be actioned before the meeting will be. Meanwhile, you get to be clearer on when you work on each client/project, as everyone has a set cadence. Step 4: Be religious about your collaborative documents This only works if your client has absolute trust that you will keep the document updated and reviewed. Do not let anything slip! WHY THIS WORKS Instead of emailing back and forth, clients put any questions, ideas, notes etc into this one, living document. It helps you to whittle communication down to the essential, increasing the value of your work, your time and the experience your client has (remember it's reducing overhead tax for them, too!) I've done the above example for working with a client, but it works just as well for internal teams, too. It gives everyone more time as people know that things are documented and will be picked up, so there's no need to just fire little things off on slack unless they're actually needed there and then. For both groups, streamlining like this means that you can save time and energy for when a response really is needed right away. Simple, I know, but honestly SUCH a winner. Do you do this already? What problems do you foresee and how would you tweak it?

📉 The noise-to-signal ratio: When every message is urgent, nothing is Great leaders aren’t loud. They’re clear. They don’t flood channels. They filter them. But let’s be honest. Somewhere between your team’s 47th “quick update” email and your Slack channel lighting up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve, clarity got buried in a landslide of urgency. 🔔 Here’s the uncomfortable truth: In most companies, everything is marked urgent… Which means nothing is. 🧠 What Eisenhower knew (that your inbox forgot) Named after President Dwight D. Eisenhower—who, just to be clear, was juggling World War II, the Cold War, and the literal launching of NASA—not a Q4 marketing deck. He used a dead-simple method to decide what to focus on: Ask two questions: 1. Is it urgent? 2. Is it important? Here’s what he found (and what most of your team hasn’t): Most “urgent” things… aren’t important. And most “important” things… don’t scream for attention. 🗂 The Matrix (no, not the Keanu one) Eisenhower's Matrix divides your chaos into four buckets: 1. Urgent & Important – Do it now (e.g., a regulator calls your mobile. Not ideal.) 2. Important but Not Urgent – Schedule it (e.g., strategic planning. You know, that thing everyone cancels.) 3. Urgent but Not Important – Delegate it (e.g., “Can you jump on a 17-person call to decide logo font weight?” No. You cannot.) 4. Not Urgent & Not Important – Delete it (e.g., your 34th LinkedIn notification today.) 🧭 How great leaders use it (and how you should too) ✅ They batch non-urgent chatter. That’s right—batch it. Email, Slack, updates... set time windows. You’re not a 24/7 drive-thru. ✅ They delegate panic properly. Just because it’s ringing doesn't mean you have to answer it. That’s what teams are for. Also: voicemail. ✅ They delete noise without guilt. Not every ping deserves a reply. Especially the “just checking in 😊” ones. ✅ They protect real urgency like oxygen. The things that actually matter? They focus, act, and move. Because urgency should create motion, not motion sickness. 📌 Bottom line: Be the filter, not the flood Good communication isn’t more messages. It’s fewer decisions left hanging. If your org treats every message like a five-alarm fire, your people will either burn out… or stop reacting entirely. And when everything is urgent, guess what gets ignored? The important stuff. So do your team a favor: Be the filter, not the flood. Be the signal, not the siren. #Leadership #ExecutiveMindset #DecisionMaking #Productivity #Management #Communication

💡Hot Potato Process as Replacement for Design Handoff Design handoff is by far the most stressful part of the design process. In many organizations, design handoff causes a lot of friction and back and forth. All too often, it happens because design team thinks about design handoff as a one-directional exchange ("We send them to design, all they need to do is build it"). But in reality, there can be a lot of factors that impact design, from tech feasibility to business requirements. But there is a solution to this problem—The Hot Potato Process, originally defined by Dan Mall and Brad Frost. ✅ What is the Hot Potato Process The process gets its name from the children's game "hot potato," where an object is passed around quickly, with no one holding onto it for too long. Product teams that follow the Hot Potato process pass ideas quickly back and forth from designer to developer and back to designer, then back to developer for the entirety of a product creation cycle. ✅ Why to use the Hot Potato   The best handoff is no handoff. Teams that follow the Hot Potato process don't have a handoff, a separate step in the design process. Instead, they exchange ideas all the time. And this exchange is bidirectional, meaning that designers and developers refine product ideas together in real-time. The prototype designers and devs are working on becomes the living spec of the project. And since the interaction happens on a regular basis, both designers and developers start to use the same language when discussing it. ✅ How to make the most of Hot Potato ✔ Designers and developers sit together Create designer + developer pairs to maximize work efficiency. Ideally, they should sit together in person, but if it is impossible, it's okay to use real-time synchronous tools to simulate working together in a co-located way. For example, have a Zoom chat open during working sessions. ✔ Both designers and developers work together at the same time Unlike the waterfall process, where developers wait for designers to provide a ready-to-implementation design, the Hot Potato process invites developers not to wait for designers. Consider what designers could do while developers are busy and what developers could do while designers busy. This will enable both teams to work together simultaneously. ✔ Iterative prototyping New ideas should be quickly turned into prototypes. Once prototypes are created, they're passed around quickly for feedback and refinement. Each new iteration builds on the previous one, leading to better solutions over time. ✔ Start small  Hot Potato can introduce a radical change in how people design products, so you can expect a lot of pushback from team members. To minimize the risk of resistance to change, start introducing Hot Potato for small projects. Pick one or two projects where you could test the new collaborative approach. Demonstrate the success of the projects to motivate team members to embrace the new approach. #design #ux #ui

Drama doesn’t die in your inbox. It multiplies there. Ever get a long, frustrating text or email that makes your blood boil? You start typing back paragraphs of arguments, clarifications, and jabs you know you’ll regret later. Pause. Stop right there. If you want to end drama in your life and leadership, make this rule non-negotiable: no important or emotional conversations over text, email, or Slack. Zero exceptions. Digital conflict is a trap. You either fire off a reactive reply that makes things worse, or you obsess over crafting a “perfect” essay that entrenches your position. Both cost you time, energy, and relationships. Here’s the upgrade: escalate the conversation. Pick up the phone. Schedule a face-to-face. End the cycle before it drains you. Why? Because written words strip out tone, body language, and emotional context. That’s a wasp’s nest for misunderstanding. In contrast, live conversations let you hear each other, see each other, and actually resolve the tension instead of fueling it. Leaders who master this move save hours of wasted drama and unlock stronger relationships. Next time you feel the urge to type while triggered, remember: escalate the conversation, evaporate the drama. That’s how you build trust, end nonsense quickly, and lead like an adult.

What every one of your internal comms leaders is thinking. ⤵ Please *trust us* when we tell you: 🚫 Culture change doesn’t happen overnight. 🚫 Employees don’t become engaged from just one email. 🚫 Trust isn’t built through sporadic, one-way communication. 🚫 Strong leadership isn’t developed through a single motivational speech. 🚫 Employee well-being doesn’t improve after one wellness program launch. 🚫 Managers don’t create psychological safety for their teams automatically. 🚫 A positive work environment doesn’t grow from one team-building exercise. 🚫 Inclusion doesn’t exist just because you hired people from different backgrounds. These things take effort. They take planning. They take strategy. And they take TIME. ⏳ And yes, *time* is one of the most important words here. Change doesn’t happen overnight. Big, systemic shifts need strategies that work in the immediate, short-term, mid-term, and long-term to see real change, engagement, and trust take root. As communications leaders, please trust us when we say: 👉 That AMA won’t fix a disengaged workforce. 👉 Company swag and pizza parties won’t rebuild broken trust. 👉 An email won’t solve your company’s communication issues. 👉 One training session won’t turn managers into great leaders. 👉 Adding a ping-pong table won’t foster genuine collaboration. 👉 A single employee survey won’t magically transform workplace culture. 👉 Posting your mission statement on the wall won’t make people live by it. Employee engagement and internal communication aren’t just a nice to have—they’re essential to creating an informed, engaged, and thriving workforce. Without them you’ll face silos, disengagement, and distrust—the telltale signs of a low-performing organization. The choice is yours. Invest in your internal comms team. ✊ Does your company have dedicated resources for internal #communications and employee engagement?

Excessive amounts of video meetings are taking a toll—not just on our ability to do concentrative work, but also on our sense of interpersonal connection and capacity for meaningful, spontaneous, in-person dialogue. From our research, conversations with podcast/webinar guests, and personal experience, here are my top three recommendations for addressing meeting overload: 1. Encourage employees to block in-office time free of meetings. I suggest that at least 50% of time spent in the office should be protected from scheduled meetings. Remember: people value calendar flexibility (93%) even more than location flexibility (81%). If you want employees to show up in person, give them more autonomy over how they spend that time. 2. Ask managers to co-create better communication norms with their teams. Encourage team discussions about when to use email, chat (Teams/Slack), text/WhatsApp, phone calls, or in-person conversations instead of defaulting to video meetings. For my team, we’ve cut standing meetings, increased in-person gatherings, and now resolve many issues with a quick call or async message. (Ten minutes on the phone often beats 30 on a video call.) 3. Reassess standing meetings—frequency, duration, and participants. Meetings often take on a life of their own. Ask, "Are we call still clear on the purpose of this meeting, and who should be included?" Simply making some attendees optional can go a long way in reducing unnecessary load. Oh, and I hope it goes without saying, the design of the office space itself should be used to not only support tech, but to counter-balance the negative effects of it by building connection and relationships (Relationship-based Work). #hybrid #distributed #videofatigue #employeewellbeing #employeewellness #meetings #employeeengagement https://lnkd.in/eDpXuEgu

The fastest way to energize your team & unlock innovation? Kill stupid rules. Yes, that’s the actual name of the method: 𝗞𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗽𝗶𝗱 𝗥𝘂𝗹𝗲𝘀 (KSR), a simplification technique developed by Lisa Bodell, CEO of FutureThink. I learned it firsthand when I was the APAC CHRO of Pfizer, where Lisa helped us tackle the complexity that was slowing the whole company down. The shift transformative. We moved from: → Drowning in email → To straight talk & real conversations → Endless meetings → To 30-minute, focused sessions with only the right people → Bloated decks & roadshows → To meaningful management visits → Bottlenecked approvals → To streamlined decision-making It was more than just a productivity hack. It did something even more profound: It changed the company's culture. It helped free up time & focus so the organization could do its most important work: Developing a life-saving Covid vaccine safely, at record speed (248 days vs. years). 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀: As companies grow, complexity creeps in. Old rules linger. Processes that once made sense become friction points, but no one questions them. Suddenly people are too busy navigating bureaucracy to do meaningful work. That’s where KSR comes in. Check out my carousel on how to do it. TL;DR: 1/ Gather your team. Make sure a senior decision-maker is in the room 2/ Brainstorm & capture ideas 3/ Use a simple matrix: Impact vs. Ease of Implementation 4/ Evaluate & discuss as a group which rules should be killed 5/ Kill the rules & follow through Some rules I killed in my own team: → Pre-employment medical exams where not legally required → Irrelevant recurring meetings → My own approval for decisions my team could already make → Tracking team vacations in Excel → Monthly “achievement” reports → And yes… an old HR rule requiring new hires to draw a map to their house (seriously) What made it powerful wasn’t just the exercise. 𝗜𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗲𝘁. → Simplify for impact → Challenge what no longer serves → Make it easier for your team to do great work The truth is: Complexity kills momentum. Simplicity unlocks creativity. You need the courage to question what’s outdated, irrelevant, or just plain stupid. 𝗕𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗵, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗶𝘁. === I'm Rocky Esguerra, Executive Coach and ex-APAC CHRO of P&G, Pfizer and Heineken. I write 4x/week on leadership, management & wellness, based on my lived experience. Follow me and repost this if you found it useful.