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Once a person makes it to a certain rank in their company, it can be easy to become complacent, especially when things are going great and seem pretty darn easy. But instead of simply sitting back and coasting along, you could be long overdue for learning a new skill.

If you’re an efficient manager, you’re always encouraging your employees to grow, learn and adapt to the workplace and now it’s time for you to follow your own advice. But where do you start? For instance, do you lack knowledge about your organization, or does your companies’ social media campaign intimidate you?

It’s safe to say that everyone in the workforce has had a day or two where they wonder where the time went. You know that feeling, you sit down for work at 8 a.m. and it feels like just five minutes later, it’s 5 p.m.

While there are many reasons the days go by too quickly, the problem could be a method of communication that you can take anywhere you go – email.

According to a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute, we all spend about 28% of our workweek either reading, writing, or just responding to email. The Atlantic estimates that this equals to about 650 hours a year. Yikes!

Whether you’re part of a company with 50,000 employees or five, there’s no reason you and your team should work in a “bubble” with minimal or no interaction with other teams. Still, for whatever reason, oftentimes people from different departments don’t work on projects together.
A cross-functional team is another phrase that is thrown around the workplace, but it does serve a very real and tangible purpose. This term is referring to a group of people with different skill sets and expertise that work together for a common goal. For example, marketing and customer service, IT and SEO are all departments where it makes sense to collaborate.

People in the business community love their clichés. “There’s no ‘I’ in team,” “work smarter, not harder,” and my personal favorite, “think outside the box”. Ugh.

When it comes to describing a workplace culture, clichés are abundant here as well. With our open-door policies and expectations of giving 150% (how is this even possible?). These general statements don’t provide the employee with a lot of useful insights into what it really means to work, and fit in, at the company in question.

Now, I don’t mean to offend those in charge of setting the company culture. For some reason, workplace culture, despite the fact that we all work in it every day, is actually pretty hard to define. But just as water is critical to a fish’s survival, a well-oiled company culture helps keep your business afloat. And many companies sink or swim (sorry, couldn’t resist) based on their workplace culture and how clearly it’s defined.

While Super Bowl XLVII and its hype have come and gone about as quickly as the lights went out in the stadium, it still provided some intriguing lasting