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“Team productivity is like a fire. You can’t make it burn, but you can light it and fan the flames.”
Ever noticed how two people can be radically different in their level of productivity. One person can produce two or three times the results in the same time frame. Even the Chancellor, George Osborne has been criticised for skimming over the UK’s skills shortage issue in his recently released productivity plan, ‘Fixing the Foundations’.
The government has promised to “simplify and streamline” the number of qualifications available in the professional and technical education system, but some have criticised the government for not fully tacking the skills challenges faced by businesses. The CBI, for example, says skills shortages have already started to bite and warns that sectors seen as key by ministers are particularly hard-pressed, according to its annual skills survey. “The government has set out its stall to create a high-skilled economy, but firms are facing a skills emergency now, threatening to starve economic growth,” said the CBI deputy director general, Katja Hall. It will be very interesting to see what happens, especially with regard to the provision of good quality apprenticeships.
So in the wake of the Budget 2015 announcement, and as we wait to hear how the government’s plans for to help boost business productivity come to fruition, here are my 5 Top Tips on how to make YOUR teams work more productively starting as of now:-
Clear priorities
Productivity is not about completing all of your tasks. It’s about completing your most important ones!
A critical skill for everyone on your team to develop is PRIORTISATION.
Making sure that everyone on the team is focused on their most important tasks first and actively procrastinate any tasks that are less important.
In nearly any situation, 20% of the effort will bring 80% of the results. If your team can focus on the activities that get you closest to your goals, you’ll get there a lot faster. Often those are the hardest activities and the ones people want to postpone. Don’t!
Remove distractions
There are many, many things that can distract team members during their day. They can get side-tracked by meetings, phone calls, colleagues or a noise in their environment. All of these distractions need to be eliminated as much as possible.
However, the one thing that’s most often ignored is distracting elements on their computer.
For example, does you team have constant notifications from chat programmes such as SKYPE, when new people come online? Are there sounds or notifications for new email messages?
These cause momentary distractions during the day. They may not seem much at the time, but when you add them up, they distract and disrupt a person’s workflow and the cumulative effect can be significant.
Track activity time
This is a controversial one for some, but if you think about it, it makes intuitive sense.
If you want to improve something, you firstly need to measure it. How you do you measure productivity?
One way is that you can record the exact time spent on each activity in your team and find out exactly how long it takes to complete individual tasks.
Almost every company records their financial flows – where the money is earned and spent. Most factories measure the output of assembly line workers.
However, it’s not general practise to measure where knowledge workers spend their time. Some companies do have this as a standard practise, for example at IBM they measure with accuracy where each person spends every minute of the day.
“Got a minute” meetings
Ever heard someone in the office say, “Have you got a minute?” or “Can I quickly run something by you?”
While it may seem like an important question to the person who is asking for your time- these “got a minute” meetings can be very unproductive.
For a start, they are never just a minute! You usually end up talking about different topics. So the “quick minute” ends up taking a whole lot more time.
Eliminate these meetings – replace them with a scheduled weekly one hour team meeting/
During the week, ask your team to save up any questions, and get ready to discuss them in the weekly team meeting.
You can also reduce the time spent on these “got a minute” meetings by making a rule that any unscheduled meetings are standing up only.
Plan your day/week
Every day/week set out exactly what your team needs to accomplish – clarify your expectations. Without this your people will simply get caught up in the ‘busy-ness’ – doing whatever they think is best, not necessarily the most important.
Parkinson’s Law: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion!
So make sure everyone has their own goals and plan that they’re committed to accomplishing.
It’s best to do all this at the end of the day/week before so each team member can arrive an ‘hit the ground running,’ with a clear idea of what has to be done.
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