How Dropbox Paper has helped clear my mind at work

[cdespeaux]

For the #Paperusecase contest, I thought I'd share my (evolving) Dropbox Paper story. I am a fairly new Dropbox Paper user, but am quickly becoming forever grateful for what it offers. I lead a small operations team at a big tech company, and in just a few months have switched to use Paper for just about everything: team meetings agendas, project and issue tracking, weekly updates, quarterly goal tracking, and updates to leadership. For many uses, it has replaced Trello and Confluence.

Personally, I love Paper for how it dramatically reduces the email noise I'd have to put up with each week when my team would update me on their projects. I would literally get a headache every Friday, wading through tons of messages. Now, it's easy: put it on Paper! If I have a question? Comment directly on the item. No unnecessary email noise. My mind is clear. Templates and Folders are super handy, too. One click, and the next week's update doc is ready to go.

Thanks, team Dropbox!

[AlexisL]

What a wonderful story, @cdespeaux ! It sounds like Paper has had a significant impact on the way you work. What were some of the steps you took in order to get your team on board with Paper and which steps had the biggest impact with your team? 

[cdespeaux]

Thanks! To be honest, I just had to lead by example and start putting stuff on there and sharing it. I got some pushback at first (because we already have so. many. tools.) but others quickly caught on once they realized how useful it is.

[AlexisL]

@cdespeaux, this is helpful context! Interesting to know that leading by example can sometimes be the simple, yet effective way of getting a team on board. And I'm guessing that you were using the tool in a way that demonstrated value, so it was apparent to your team how useful it is. Nice!