As discussed in a previous blog, many courses, blogs and books for improving productivity are aimed to improve the productivity of the individual, usually a founder, director or manager of a business.
Are you leaking time within your team?
Businesses across the world invest heavily across their teams on industry training, internal skills, processes and procedures but many are still leaking time with inefficiencies. But why is this?
The major area that is often overlooked by business leaders and managers is ‘productivity’, and the more shocking fact that productivity of their team is overlooked.
Ok, you may have rinsed every minute out of a process or a skills task as part of someone’s job, but how long are your employees spending on email per day? What about the amount of time taken up in meetings? The surprising fact is that most standard tasks in someone’s day like email, meetings or planning would in most organisations, go un-trained.
So why does this matter?
Well let’s think about it for a minute – Lets take email, and an organisation with x400 employee’s. A study by Mckinsey.com stated that office workers spend approx. 2.6hrs per day on email.
Let’s do the maths…
(400 Employees x 2.6hrs) x 260 Approx. working days in a year = 270,400 hours on email!! Or approx. 34k working days per year.
Now image the number of meetings held in a company of x400 people. I bet a lot of people didn’t need to be in the meeting, most meetings probably ran over and I bet most meetings didn’t have a clear outcome. I won’t get into the maths again, but I think you can see where I’m going – Huge time leakage! This can happen if you have x10 or x10,000 employee’s. Obviously, the impact and cost spiralling the more employees involved.
Does your team know why they do, what they do?
If you’re a CEO, MD, or manager then you are probably motivated, and have a clear vision of your WHY and the goals you’re working towards. Like productivity books, self-help and business books are aimed at YOU. You could have all the motivation in the world driven by your WHY, and know every productivity hack in the book, but if your employees and teams aren’t aligned how are they going to achieve the same success?
Business leaders need to take a step back, and show their teams the importance of discovering their ‘WHY’ – why they do what they do. They also need a clear understanding of the companies WHY, and how to make and track goals (personal & career). This will unleash masses of motivation and drive, that will increase productivity and will encourage fellow employees to follow.
Do your habits feed productivity?
A lot of business leaders & managers that are at the top of their game, often have ‘healthy’ habits. Whether that’s a regular work day routine, planning the day before, a fitness routine, healthy eating or similar. All of these help to support the above productivity hacks and behaviour. This is great, however what is the point in killer routines and habits, if your team don’t also act in this way. Leaders need to teach and promote their routines, habits and advice to their employees to allow their teams to glow.
Are you leveraging Technology?
Even if you and your team are the masters of productivity hacks, highly motivated and have killer routines – You’re going to come second to a competitor that does the same but that also leverages technology. Leaders should encourage teams to leverage tools and apps that assist with task, project and collaboration productivity.
In summary, to maximise productivity within your team…
You need create a company eco system & productivity training system to educate your employees, that should include:
– WHY –
Your team must know why they do what they do (personal & business)
– SKILLS & HACKS –
Your team must be trained how to productively process tasks like email, meetings, planning, brainstorming etc…Create a company standard!
– HABITS –
Encourage healthy habits – Promote how to plan, get healthy and plan time for downtime etc…
– TECH/TOOLS –
Find the tools/apps that work for you, and share with your team
Let’s talk…
If you would like to talk about productivity, business or this blog please feel free to contact me or tweet @mikejdouglass
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