How Industry Box's Daily Digest stops you being driven around by work
When was the last time you felt in control of all the projects you were working on? Such that you were making major contributions to the projects without dreading deadlines? Such that you had a good grasp of the projects' developments and could plan ahead?
It's perfectly normal if that feeling is distant to you. When we are project leads, we spend a lot of efforts keeping the core and extended team of stakeholders engaged; whereas when we are supporting other projects, we rely too much on the project teams to organise communications and activities. Both distract you from focused work, and keep you from becoming "in control".
Industry Box's user analytics gives you a clear view as a project lead on how well each track of work and stakeholder is engaged, so that you could focus your stakeholder (re-)engagement efforts on specific groups/people. As a project stakeholder/contributor, Industry Box gives you a clean connection with all your projects, so that you always know the project's development and can plan major contributions with confidence.
Daily Digest is a key feature in giving you the clean connection. Here is how it does it, and how it gives you back control, without efforts.
Conventional comms tools grab your attention and sap your control
"Conventional communication tools" are the likes of emails, conference calls, instant chats etc.
These tools are designed to grab your attention and force you to spend time attending to them. It's in their DNA. When an email arrives, the unread message count goes up by one and a gives you a ping reminder. Your instant chat shows the number of unread threads, easily running up to a 3-digit number if you let your guard off for a few hours. Conference calls automatically block out your calendar, demanding your attendance.
They are well-intentioned, but not always necessary. If an email requires urgent response before a 5pm deadline, or the conference call is a workshop with a potential client, by all means grab your attention. But if it's an informational comms such as updates, meeting summaries or general exchanges of thoughts, there is no need for immediate attention. They can wait.
When your attention is constantly grabbed, your work day keeps being interrupted. You no longer have large chunks of time to work deeply, or weave incoming information into coherent thoughts. You are always reflex-acting on snippets of information, or being rushed into contribution without due preparation.
You are not driving your work with information. You are driven into work by the information.
Daily Digest boxes up informational comms for you to pay attention to when you are available
Most of your comms are informational. It's okay if you go through them the next day or even the day after, as long as you read it at some point over the next few days. It doesn't matter if you abstain from lively discussions, you just want to "know the final results" and base your work on it.
When project teams use Industry Box to distribute informational comms, your attention is no longer grabbed. Industry Box is a low-noise team productivity tool, where the teams can set up tracks and publish posts on project updates, background materials and contribution requests. Each track has its own list of stakeholder/contributor subscribers. A stakeholder will only see posts from tracks relevant to her, cutting out irrelevant information without missing out relevant ones.
Unlike conventional comms tools, you don't need to keep the Industry Box portal open to receive incoming messages. The Daily Digest feature will monitor incoming posts from all your subscribed tracks, and compile into a summary email with all the headlines. All you have to do is to read the daily digest email once a day, find out all the developments at a glance, and then plan out which ones to prioritise.
With Daily Digest, you have full control of your attention. You decide when to pay it out, and you only need to do it once a day. Not forcibly grabbed, multiple times a day.
Daily Digest opens up many ways to stay in control and be productive across multiple projects
Here are a few ways daily digest helps you stay in control:
When a project is fast-moving, you sometimes need to trace back its development path to put the latest situation into context. Simply go through the previous daily digest emails and you can play back the post headlines in chronological order. The project unfolds in front of you, at 10x speed with no loss of resolution.
When you are going through a short period of 100% focus on a particular project (or on annual leave), change to reading through the daily digests once every few days (or when back from leave). You don't have to worry about being late on urgent contributions, be stressed about a 4-digit "unread email" inbox, or feeling lost when catching up on all the developments. Go through each daily digest email calmly, and you are up-to-date and ready for other projects in no time.
You can even set your digest frequency (e.g. sending a digest email every 3 days) or assign an "out of office" period so that all headlines are collated into one email for your to skim through when back at work.
When you are working deeply on a complex project and need to find some hidden information, you don't have to try out many search terms or date ranges on your email account, and comb through many versions of presentations on the shared drive. The daily digest emails work like an index which you could skim through rapidly, identify the potential posts to review in detail and dig out the exact information you are looking for. More organised, more methodical, less chaos, less frustration.
These are just 3 new ways for you to stay on top of your work and be make major contributions to many projects in parallel, efficiently. Once you start, you will identify other ways to use Daily Digest to raise your productivity and contribution.
Daily Digest benefits all project stakeholders/ contributors. Even those not signed up to Industry Box
If you are a project lead and have started to use Industry Box, you may be rightfully worried about stakeholders/contributors who barely read your update emails or attend your conference calls. Will they miss out all posts published through Industry Box, for so long that they don't open an account?
No they won't. As long as you have added a stakeholder/contributor to an Industry Box track with her work email address, Industry Box will auto-compile all posts relevant to her across all projects and tracks, and send her the daily digest email. She will then see all the headlines once a day, see those succinct and targeted posts, and stay productive. No Industry Box account, no stopping from getting the best out of Industry Box.
Daily Digest is just one of the many features that keep you productive and organised across multiple projects
Industry Box focuses on helping stakeholders/contributors stay connected with the projects, and become as productive as they could. Daily digest, easy-to-use portal, search-and-filter features are just a few to name for stakeholders/contributors. User analytics, tracks & subscriptions, multi-media support of posts are some of the features for project leads.
It is very easy to kick-start Industry Box, whether you are a project lead or a stakeholder/contributor. You will be fully supported by the Industry Box team in person, and through all the resources on our website. And by the way, you don't need a corporate contract, IT arrangements, admin control etc. Simply create a free account for yourself, and you are ready to see all the benefits for yourself, your project team and other stakeholders/contributors.
Be in control of your work, with Industry Box.
About Industry Box:
Industry Box is dedicated to introducing streamlined & frictionless stakeholder management, as we believe this to be a hidden productivity blackhole for most companies and managers.
Apart from raising awareness about this issue and promoting industry best practice, we have also designed a digital tool with all the best practices built in, so that managers & leaders can introduce and benefit from best-in-class stakeholder management without the learning curve.
See here for our other blog articles on raising productivity through better stakeholder management, or by becoming a more productivity-conscious stakeholder.