“As we go around the circle, tell the group your name and something special about you.” That kind of team builder may have been useful on the first day of kindergarten, but when you’re building a business team or putting together a team for another important project, you need to go far beyond silly icebreakers to…

Somewhere around 3 dozen people, scattered across the globe from Hong Kong across the US to the UK, Europe, and beyond work together to bring you the collection of useful tips, thought pieces, and inspiration known as Lifehack. I thought it might be interesting to our readers to learn a little bit…

In a recent conversation I was told, “Leadership is about managing time and getting things done.” I couldn’t disagree more. In my role at the Free Articulator, I manage and lead writers and editors every day. It has been said in the past that trying to manage artists (and all of our writers are) is a…

At times managing a team project via the internet can be difficult. What kinds of things do you focus on and what do you sacrifice? These five tips to managing a group of people working on a project could put you on the right path. Personalize your creative brief. I’ll be honest, I don’t know what…

David Seah writes probably one of my favorite articles in a while, the difference between Collaboration and Scheming. Being a Schemer at heart, it’s nice to read an objective comparison between the two and what the difference boils down to. According to Seah, it’s an ‘emotional vs rational duality’. So what does one expect from a good…

CATWOE is a method for expanding your thinking about a problem or situation before you zero in on a specific problem that you want to solve. CATWOE? It’s new to me too, but MindTools have an article about understanding CATWOE so you can better understand your problems. Focused mainly on issues that arise in business, it…

Trust in other people is one of the foundations for creating a civilized working environment. Many managers are overworked primarily because of a lack of trust. They take on too much themselves, because they don’t trust their subordinates to do the work properly. They cannot allocate enough time to their own work, because they don’t…

In multi-team meetings, there are frequently situations where people within the same team contradict one another. I might view the project as being accomplished in one way; my colleague might come right behind me and say it can’t be done that way. If there’s any sense of time available to get things done, take that…

A new article in Knowledge@Wharton discusses about the optimal sizes of a team. What I experienced for sure, when the team grows, communication complexity multiply, and behaviour such as social loafing may surface. I have been researched different papers on the similar topic on team size and found a magic number – six. However…

Slashdot recently has published a question from a reader on the best way to manage geek. The reader has read a 1999 article on this topic and wonder if the new millenium has ever changed. There are couple of good response from geek themselves which should be a good trigger of thoughts. For…

In my career, I’ve experienced times when disloyalty was disruptive and killed any sense of trust. But I’ve also seen cases where too much unquestioning loyalty meant important issues were suppressed until it was too late. It’s made me wonder if open questioning of authority, short of defiance, may be essential if we’re not to lose our way.

In an article called The Smaller the Better, Jeffrey Phillips talks about a good topic on employer/employee relationship on big vs small team. He argues that smaller team has the lean and mean effects on projects: 1. Focus – a manager can spend more time with each person on a smaller team as necessary. 2…