Our team struggles with more basic communication. And yet when Sharepoint became available in our organization, our team jumped at getting on board. The group think was that this would solve a lot of problems by giving us a tool which was communication based.

Reality was that the same bad habits were then applied to the new tool just like the old tools. And soon the new tool was just as cumbersome and ineffecient as the old ones.

Here is a small list of some of the bad habits or misconceptions that beleaguer our leadership:

• Email is a good document repository
• An Inbox with 4000 messages is good for one’s productivity
• You can never have enough sub-folders
• Spend all your time reacting. Then you don’t have to waste time planning…

I wish I could say that these habits have been resolved and that all of our tools are benefitting our team because we have worked on producing good habits. But that is not case. I try myself to lead by example and to work with people one on one when I see some of these poor habits. I find that most times people are more than happy to take advice in this area - they usually soak it up. And with great resources out there like David’s book (GTD) and sites like this, I find that a small bit of my time is enough to get people started. Then I just point them in the right direction.