If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the COVID-19 pandemic so far, it’s that existential threats don’t just go away. Not even if you ignore them. (Actually, they get worse if you ignore them.) We’ve all been touched by the events of the past few months and we need a new way forward. Whether it’s climate change or public health, we need to face these threats head-on and solve them.

In a drastic worldwide attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19, one third of the global population is now experiencing some form of lockdown. For the millions of Americans who have filed for unemployment over the last few weeks, there is nothing to do but wait. But for those on the frontline, time has never felt so limited. As hospitals around the world face buckling under the pressure of wave after wave of new patients, increasing the capacity of our healthcare systems has become our priority.

I’m into my third week of working from home and I’m starting to feel it. My back is playing up, my neck and shoulders are tight, and my legs are getting increasingly more restless. My make-shift remote work setup consists of a little desk and a dining table chair. Not exactly the ergonomic home office setup the health and safety department would recommend. Everyone is working under different circumstances, but we all want to be as productive as we can. Some of you may still be in an office.

One day you’re grabbing your to-go latte, responding to Slack messages on your subway commute, and arriving at work to find a coworker waiting by your desk with a broken computer… and the next, you find yourself at home, sipping on plain old drip coffee while making huge decisions about remote work that will affect your entire organization – all with only a day’s notice.

“Shadow IT” can be a divisive subject depending on how long you’ve been in the IT field. There is a legacy attitude within many IT teams that shadow IT must be controlled – but it can bring significant benefits to an organization. Modern IT teams understand these benefits, and focus on balancing shadow IT’s value and risk. Moving past that legacy attitude and developing a modern IT mentality in your organization can be difficult.

Late last year, the Confluence team introduced the 7.0 platform release for Server and Data Center customers. It was our first platform release since 2016, and it focused on delivering improvements to administration, team productivity and enterprise needs. After a months-long development cycle, we shipped within a week of our goal – not too shabby, if I do say so myself!

Better communication at work is the answer. Ok, maybe not THE answer… but it’s close. Fact is, it’s almost always step number one when addressing persistent issues that hold you back, as well as what helps you move from good to great. Better communication increases understanding, fosters trust, and stands out as the essential ingredient for getting things done. It’s not a silver bullet, it’s silver buckshot.

If you think of it in terms of Tuckman’s stages of team development, suddenly shifting to remote en masse throws your team into “storming” mode. Confusion and frustration abound, and everything feels twice as hard as it should. (We know because we’ve been there.) Your goal right now is to get back to the “performing” stage and resume your regularly-scheduled level of productivity. Here are five ways to do that.

Shadow IT – tech used in an organization that is not administered by that organization’s IT department – accounts for the majority of the cloud tech at most companies. Understandably, the risk this implies might keep a security pro up at night; Gartner estimated in 2016 that by 2020, a third of successful attacks experienced by enterprises will be on their shadow IT resources.

Depending on who you ask, shadow IT, also known as stealth IT, falls somewhere on the spectrum between “persistent headache” and “total mystery.” If you ask someone on an actual IT team, they might tell you that shadow IT poses an existential threat to security and compliance. But their coworkers – the folks responsible for bringing rogue tech into the company – typically don’t even know what shadow IT is.