We all want to be productive and effective in everything we do, but when it comes to the people we're in charge of, this tends to get a bit complicated because we don't all have the same way of seeing things. And it all boils down to the differences between expectations and perceptions, which is why when they are aligned, the teams work excellently.
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In our particular case, we tend to be very obsessive about time, tasks, and activities to be done. The entire team that works at Drew is in a position to put together a good guide on how to improve labor productivity after having 2 or 3 years of constant improvement.
Once somebody told us: "You don't only have to be, but you also have to seem to be", and this phrase is real. Our first impression counts a lot, so what your company is, its image, its logo, the home of its website, the layout of its services, its architecture and aesthetics of its social networks, its business cards, etc. (that you may think it's not related to the title; it has a LOT to do with it).
Both your employees as well as your potential and current customers must see things the way you see them; without this, we cannot speak of productivity. It is like the origin of everything.
How do you divide your teams? By functions, by products, or by geographical areas? Having a clear internal organization helps to avoid conflicts; this organization starts from something as simple as emails. Some companies send some emails by name, others by function, others by product line, etc. This is only understood by the owner and no one else because there is no correlation, no line.
Of course, the internal organization is not only defined by the name of an email, but it shows whether the company is organized or not. And if you ask yourself: Yes, this tends to confuse even the responsibilities of your collaborators, so take an excel, the staff payroll and organize the positions, and emails in an intelligent way.
Once the above is defined, establishing the limits from one position to another is key. What is the objective of each area? What responsibilities do you have? And most importantly (where the problems usually are), set priorities.
Many times, our employees prioritize things that may not be as important as others, but they do not do it on purpose, but because they do not have an order of priorities, so it is the same to start with task A than with task B.
People understand each other by speaking, but many times what we say (or what we write), usually has as many interpretations as there are noses in the world, so... How to solve this? There is something called SMART Goals (here's a kit that will help you). These objectives seek to set specific, measurable, achievable, realistic goals under a certain determined time. So that there is no doubt about what we are planning, and where we want to get. (You can learn more here, here, and even create your own company here).
These objectives, ideally, should be one for the entire company and others per area. In this way, you can achieve a perfect balance between expectations and perceptions.
Sometimes, in each department, the objective is usually very ambitious, or very difficult to achieve, which can demotivate the team, and that's exactly what we don't want, right?
Quick-Wins are mini-goals established for being achieved at 30/60/90 days, which allow motivation to be kept as they are achieved.
A motivated team that doesn't have the support and help of managers can't achieve what was written above. You as a leader must be a wild card and the person who encourages, supports, and helps all the areas of the company and each employee in particular. Be a leader, not a boss.
A common problem that usually occurs especially in family businesses (it also happens in "non-family" businesses but less frequently) is to think that "nobody does it as I do", and it is true: nobody is going to do it the same as you, but they can even do it better than you. By closing yourself off on this idea, you achieve nothing; what's more, you lose the opportunity to generate greater productivity just because you don't know how to delegate.
Trusting people makes them learn and lets them know that they are important and play a crucial role in the running of the company.
No one can work 8, 10, or 12 hours continuously while maintaining the same levels of productivity. Many companies even prefer their staff to be working "reluctantly" rather than spending 2 hours of conversation/contention looking for the solution to problem X they have. Or even other companies give more importance to the number of hours they spend in their jobs than to the productivity they generate.
Working 8 hours a day without a break does not equal productivity. (Think about them, be empathic and they will thank you, and not only that, they will be very productive).
External communication is strictly related to points 1 and 2, but internal communication is often the most important. On several occasions, misunderstandings are generated by the delegation of a task by e-mail or even in a quick conversation. We must teach employees some communication skills; they must understand that the tone we use can be taken in a good way or in a bad way and that using X word is not the same as using a synonym. Words have powers, and we must know how to use them for the best so as not to hurt or negatively impact other people.
We must also improve active listening which is an ability very difficult to acquire, especially if you are one of those people who instead of listening, start thinking about what they are going to reply to.
Something that we often leave aside is the continuous education of our people. This is key to improving productivity since a more capable team is a more productive team, and with more productivity comes better profitability.
When a company maintains a proactive look, it is not very difficult to innovate; this continuous reaction to changes and modernization brings very useful benefits such as being more competitive.
At present, there are several ways to modernize, or even innovate your company. Let's take advantage of the tools that exist! Drew is an official partner of Monday.com, a software that allows you to control productivity from management strategy boards, to sales processes, human resources, administration, and much more than we talk about in this post, but later we will go into more detail.
You can open a free account here.
This is part of the motivation, and "encourage" doesn't only refer to an economic effort, but to other benefits such as days off, home-office days, among others.
Remember: Your company is your people, your people are your company. Without them, you would not be reading this to be more productive so take care of them, love them, and create a team with a common goal. Not a group of people with different interests.