Mastering Team Productivity

Keeping a team orderly is not just about strictly following workflows and schedules; it entails letting every team member know their roles, the company’s objectives, and what difference their contribution brings to the bigger picture.

When everyone understands their obligations, team members can concentrate on their areas of specialization, resulting in well-refined outputs. Better work quality ultimately gives way to a better reputation and success for the organization.  And when it is time to have some well-deserved fun, delve into the world of slots, learning all there is to know with A-Z Slots Terms Glossary.

Tips for Improving Team Organization

As a project manager, your success largely depends on how well you coordinate your team’s efforts toward achieving company goals. Here are some actionable tips to help you ensure your team is headed in the right direction.

1. Abolish Unnecessary Meetings

Working in the corporate world can leave you with barely any time to do much, especially when all you seem to do is attend meeting after meeting. What’s worse is that many meetings fail to achieve results. In fact, about $37 billion goes to waste each year due to unproductive meetings. Here are some steps to take to ensure your meetings achieve the desired results:

• Share the Agenda Beforehand: Sometimes, team leaders call for meetings but don’t inform their members about the meeting’s objectives in advance. This results in unproductive meetings since the members don’t have sufficient time to prepare. For more effective meetings, always share the agenda beforehand to allow participants to plan.

• Highlight Required Actions: After the meeting, identify the areas that need working on and ensure your team members know what role to play. It’s important to set deadlines and track progress so that the resolutions made during meetings translate into measurable results.

2. Streamline Task Management

All tasks are not equal, and as a project manager, you will need to find a structured way to decide which tasks add value and which ones are draining resources. Functions that don’t align with organizational goals are best eliminated to free up resources for more relevant work.

It’s also important to consider urgency when streamlining work. Pressing projects that have a significant bearing over company goals need prioritizing. Smaller tasks that can wait can be handled when all major tasks are complete.

Consider delegating work when your workload seems overwhelming. Remember that as a leader, you will need to lead by example. Delegating your work to team members who have the expertise to handle it is a vote of confidence and may boost their morale and bring about team cohesion.

3. Identify and Leverage Key Strengths

Your team members have different capabilities, and matching each with a job that allows them to perform exceptionally can go a long way to ensuring satisfaction. Here are the benefits of aligning tasks with your team members' key strengths:

Increased motivation: It’s more rewarding to work on a task that you can confidently handle. So when your team members get the chance to handle tasks they are well skilled for, expect them to become more productive and engaged in their work.

Prevents Burnout: By redistributing work according to the areas where team members are best suited, you reduce the risk of one individual handling an excessive workload. A balanced workload will ensure that each member can work effectively and complete their tasks on time.

4. Promote Collaboration Between Departments

Different departments in an organization play different roles, have unique skills, and can offer fresh perspectives. Encouraging these sections to work together towards a common goal can ensure projects are successful and easier to manage.

An example of departmental collaboration is when a technology company is planning a major product launch. The finance department is responsible for budget allocation, the HR department manages talent acquisition, and the marketing department handles the promotional campaign.

The finance department will ensure the project’s allocated budget caters for the marketing’s department promotional activities and liaise with HR to allocate money that may be required to onboard top talent to handle the project.

The marketing team will depend on HR to bring in the best candidates while managing the budgetary allocation by the Finance department to ensure the project succeeds.

These departments working together ensures the product launch is elaborate and financially viable.  At the end of the day, the project will succeed while maximizing the existing resources, i.e. the company’s different departments.

5. Leverage Work Management Tools

Interdepartmental collaboration can be a challenge in the absence of a platform that allows the sharing of project details, tasks, and timelines. Work management tools like Asana, Trello, or Slack fill this gap, ensuring communication is clear and everyone is reading from the same script.

In addition, these tools promote efficiency as team members get to share updates, files, and progress in real-time, which eliminates the need for follow-up emails and unnecessary meetings. At any point, the project manager can tell how everything is progressing and make the necessary adjustments to facilitate a successful project.

Improving productivity is a process that takes time, and adopting these guidelines is not a one-time affair. With a commitment to learning and being flexible enough to adapt to the changes that are shaping project management, you’ll be positioning yourself as an effective and visionary manager.