Tech at Work: How to Get the Most Out of Digital Collaboration Tools

Managing technology has never been more challenging. HBR IdeaCast’s new special series, Tech at Work, offers research, stories, and advice to make technology work for you and your team. This week: how your team can get the most out of digital collaboration tools.

Tools for collaborating online—email, instant messengers, videoconferencing apps, cloud storage, and so many others—have become the norm for most of us. But few leaders have taken the time to learn the best ways for their teams to use these ever-present tools.

Tech at Work is a four-part special series from HBR IdeaCast. Join senior tech editors Juan Martinez and Tom Stackpole for research, stories, and advice to make technology work for you and your team.

In this episode, they talk to researcher Paul Leonardi and organizational leader Sandra Ma. The experts explain how to best match collaboration tools with work tasks and how to know when a technology isn’t working for your team. They also discuss how leaders should go about selecting the most effective digital collaboration tools for their organizations.

Leonardi is the Duca Family Professor of Technology Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Ma is the CEO and cofounder of Jovial, a company that helps teams improve their communication at work.

New episodes of Tech at Work publish in the HBR IdeaCast feed every other Thursday from May 2, after the regular Tuesday episode. Please let us know what you think of the series and which technology topics you want us to cover at [email protected].

Further reading:

Does Your Team Really Need Another Digital Tool? (Ryan O’Hara)
What Managers Need to Know About Social Tools (Paul Leonardi and Tsedal Neeley)
Zoom In… or Out? Why Face-to-Face Meetings Matter (If/Then: Business, Leadership, Society)