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Mindfulness Or Multitasking: Which One Is Better?

Mindfulness or Multitasking

The corporate world is changing in response to the new sets of values held by the current generations making up our workforce. We once prided ourselves on our ability to multitask, and took it as a sign of higher thinking, with many considering it a highly desirable skill to market to potential employers. Now, workplaces are shifting to include more intentional practices aimed to help create a healthier environment where their employees can succeed and companies can thrive. Mindfulness is one practice that’s been on the rise, with some companies implementing workshops centered around it, and others even creating entire positions for mindfulness trainers. This has left many wondering, which is better: mindfulness or multitasking?

Let’s consider the pros and cons of each.

Multitasking

What Is Multitasking?

Multitasking refers to the action of doing multiple tasks simultaneously. However, this has become a topic of debate due to a handful of studies and surveys that took a deeper look into the actual level of productivity. Here are some pros and cons to consider when adopting a multitasking work style.

The Pros Of Multitasking

Provides Consistent Mental Stimulation

If you thrive while under pressure and require constant stimulation, multitasking can be a great way to manage your workflow, because the act of switching between multiple tasks simultaneously keeps your brain engaged.

Helps You Avoid Boredom

If you get bored quickly throughout the day and struggle to maintain focus and interest in one task for long periods of time, multitasking can keep your mind busy.

Breaks Up A Repetitive Day

If you struggle with your schedule following a repetitive style, you can break your day up by completing a variety of tasks that require different mindsets, naturally creating a workflow that makes every day different.

Helps You Adapt

When you multitask, you’re naturally building up your ability to adapt to change. Your mind is constantly moving from one thing to another in a way that allows you to learn how to adjust to changes, instead of struggling to understand and cope with unexpected turns.

The Cons Of Multitasking

Exhaustion

When you multitask, you’re filling each hour with a variety of tasks that require different mindsets to perform effectively. By doing this, you’re lowering your energy levels, both mentally and physically, because your mind will have to work harder to change tasks and recall what stage you were at with each one, without being able to rest between demands.

Less Productive

By providing yourself with a way to escape demanding tasks, you’re reducing your productivity. When you create distractions with multiple avenues of work to complete, you’re cultivating an environment where you have lower expectations of yourself, have less willpower, and are reinforcing the habit of escaping when a task begins to pose a challenge.

Lower Quality Of Work

It’s difficult to produce a high quality of work when you’re not invested in each task individually and have split your attention among a handful of others. When you focus your attention on multiple tasks, you create the possibility of mistakes being missed and left for your team to discover and manage.

Increased Stress Levels

Multitasking creates an atmosphere where you have a constant feeling of being under pressure. You’ve begun multiple lines of thinking and placed all your tasks into one timeline, making you feel like your workload is much heavier than it is in reality. This increases stress, which can have detrimental effects in every area of your life.

Burn Out

Burn Out

When you have too many demands on your energy levels for extended periods of time, you can begin struggling to concentrate, have a lower resistance to daily stressors, feel exhausted emotionally and physically, be more irritable, and begin getting sick more frequently than usual. These are all signs of burnout, and it’s your body’s way of telling you to slow down. By expecting your mind to constantly change from one task to another, you’re increasing the demands placed on recall and focus as you try to shift into a mental state that’s beneficial to the new task. This creates additional stress on your brain and naturally depletes its energy. Our minds need time to rest and recoup, and when you don’t allow time for recovery then you risk burning yourself out.

Reduced Motivation

Positive reinforcement is a major influencer of motivation. When you complete a task, you feel accomplished and experience a sense of relief knowing that it’s one less thing you have to do. When you take on multiple tasks at once, you’re drastically reducing the rate of positive reinforcement you experience which naturally decreases your motivation. It’s difficult to continue pushing yourself when you feel like you’re never getting anything done, which is often the case when people multitask because there is always the next task to switch to.

There are some factors of multitasking that are appealing and can create a more diverse workday; however, the struggles that can come from this habit can be detrimental to both your work and mental wellbeing, especially when maintained over long periods of time.

Mindfulness

What Is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is when you are aware of the present moment, and focused on exactly what’s in front of you, without judgment. It’s a state of mind that can be developed over time and can come in many forms.

Companies have begun implementing strategies to promote mindfulness within their workplaces, with some beginning to offer training to help their employees develop the skill. In fact, Google has even created a permanent role for a mindfulness trainer!

The main aspects of mindfulness include:

  • Being attentive
  • Being aware
  • Non-judgemental
  • Focusing on what’s in front of you (whether it’s a person or a task)
  • A “one thing at a time” mentality

The Pros of Mindfulness

Teaches You To Be Non-Judgemental

One of the main foundations of mindfulness is that your thoughts are free from judgment. When you are working through a task or engaged in a conversation with someone, refrain from judging yourself when your mind wanders. Exclusive concentration can be difficult, and it’s natural for your mind to wander when you’re trying to focus intensely on something. By understanding this, it will help you become less judgemental of yourself and of those around you.

More Resilient To Distractions

By redirecting your thoughts back to your work each time you notice your mind wandering, you are naturally building a higher level of resilience to the distractions around you. The more you refocus after losing your concentration, the more you will reinforce your ability to do so.

High Job Satisfaction And Stronger Commitment

Employees who feel supported emotionally and professionally in their work environment have been shown to have higher rates of commitment to the companies they work for and have increased levels of satisfaction. By promoting mindfulness, you show your employees that their wellbeing is important to you. This will help them feel more valued and they’ll develop a deeper respect for their employer and the values the company upholds.

Increased Performance

Our minds work best when they are able to work along a linear line of thinking. When you are able to focus on a task for extended periods of time and work through problems as they arise, you will be able to work through projects quicker and become more productive during your working hours.

Greater Awareness

When you practice mindfulness, you begin focusing more intently on what’s directly in front of you, and what you are experiencing throughout the day. This focus helps you develop a deeper awareness of your emotional responses and thought patterns, while also aiding in your perception of those around you by noticing their body language, tone of voice, and expressions, leading to a much better understanding of both yourself and others.

Better Decision Making

Better Decision Making

By being more aware of your emotions and being less judgemental of them as they arise, you are able to consider problems and your responses to them more effectively. This will help you make better decisions that are influenced less by emotions and more through logical thinking.

More Confidence

Mindfulness builds trust within yourself, both in your abilities and in the decisions you make. As you develop this, you will find your confidence growing because you’ll have a stronger understanding of your needs and the choices you make.

The Cons of Mindfulness

It Takes Time To Develop

Mindfulness is not a skill that can be learned quickly. It takes patience and time to make it a daily habit. There is no “one size fits all” approach to developing it, so it requires some trial and error to find what works best for you.

The Process Can Be Frustrating Initially

When you are just beginning to introduce mindfulness into your daily life, it can become frustrating as you will struggle to maintain it throughout the day. It’s easy to fall into your usual patterns, however, if you continue to bring yourself back and practice mindfulness, it will become easier over time, reducing frustration.

Raises Awareness Of Unappealing Aspects In The Work Environment

According to a Harvard study, individuals who had job roles that required high levels of emotional labor, experienced higher rates of unease when practicing mindfulness. This is in large part due to the development of a higher awareness of suppressed feelings regarding their jobs. This is especially noticeable in those who are required to mask their feelings and look happy during their workday (such as those in the service industry).

Which One Is Better?

Though both multitasking and mindfulness have appealing factors that many people could benefit from, the one that is overall better suited for our modern-day workplace is mindfulness.

While multitasking can benefit some people in certain circumstances, the majority of people would benefit more from the outcomes mindfulness can bring to their workplace and their individual work style. The downsides of mindfulness diminish as you practice it regularly over time.

How To Implement Mindfulness Into Your Workplace

Mindfulness can benefit you both individually and as a company. Here are some ways to begin to implement mindfulness in your daily routines so that you can experience higher levels of productivity and satisfaction with your work.

Implement Mindfulness Into Your Workplace

As A Company

  • Develop multiple programs to offer to the staff that would benefit most from them. For example, a customer service employee won’t benefit from the same mindfulness training that an internal worker would due to the different demands of their jobs.
  • Adjust the work environment to respond to and counteract the areas that cause unpleasant feelings and additional stress where possible. If multiple employees are struggling with being mindful because it causes them unease with a particular aspect of their role, consider how you can mitigate the stress being caused to your employees. Include them in the process to help create an atmosphere they can be proud to work in, enjoy showing up to each day, experience less stress (boosting employee morale), and embrace mindfulness with greater ease.
  • Research and implement training programs for mindfulness. Teach your team what mindfulness is and how it can look in the workplace.
  • Lead by example. Your team is much more likely to embrace mindfulness and begin including it in their workday when they see the leadership of the company doing so. It’s been said “seeing is believing” and this is very much the case with new practices in the workplace. Leaders are some of the most influential people of a team, so model the behavior you wish to see.
  • Encourage your team to take downtime during the workday that isn’t managed by you. When you give people permission to give back to themselves through the day, satisfaction levels and productivity during working periods will increase, and people will begin experiencing higher levels of creativity, aiding in the development of their projects.
  • Encourage deep thinking by asking hard, but attainable questions. Help your team to succeed at the challenges they take on, boosting their confidence levels, and satisfaction at work.
  • Prioritize emotional connections. By encouraging, developing, and supporting emotional connections not only with your colleagues but with your team as a whole, you create a more positive environment and support mental health. This allows people to feel connected to their company and colleagues, feeling safe to take on the challenges they experience both inside and outside of work.

Implement Mindfulness as an Individual

As An Individual

  • Allot specific tasks a set period of time, where you focus solely on that task before considering moving on to something else. The more you resist the urge to deviate from your task, the stronger your resilience will become and your focus will naturally begin to increase.
  • When feeling stuck, change your environment. This can be changing your work location entirely, going for a walk (preferably outside), putting on a new playlist to restimulate your mind, or maybe even lighting a candle with a scent that stimulates positive feelings for you.
  • Share the workload. If someone is better suited to complete a task, reach out to them and request they complete that task (and offer to take one of theirs that is better suited to you). If you’re in a managerial position, assign tasks to your team instead of taking them all on yourself. Not only will this reduce the stress you are feeling, but you will also cultivate an environment of trust with your team.

In conclusion, mindfulness and multitasking can both have their place, depending on each personality and circumstance. However, the current research shows that mindfulness offers more benefits that can be experienced both personally and professionally. When implemented and practiced successfully, mindfulness practices can create a healthier workplace that stands above the rest.

 

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The Must-Have Guide On How To Manage Leads (and increase sales!)

How to manage leads

Building up your customer base and figuring out how to manage leads can be challenging for many businesses. While some seem to do this easily and skyrocket to success, many don’t have that kind of origin story. There are many factors that determine how a company continues to grow its customer base, however, there is one in particular that these highly successful businesses have mastered. The one big thing these companies excel at is generating hot leads (and closing them)! For any business to succeed, they need to learn how to manage leads – and use them to increase sales!

What are sales leads

What Are Sales Leads?

Sales leads are the people who are most likely to become paying clients. While these clients may easily transition from discovering your business to purchasing, most times, there’s a lot more that goes into converting a newly curious prospect into a hot lead ready for your marketing team to close the deal on a final sale! This process is called lead management, and when you have all the right steps in place, your sales will be on the rise.

How Can Sales Leads Help Your Business?

Having strong lead management is essential to any company’s workflow system. It’s more than simply increasing sales. When you have a proper strategy for managing sales leads, you’re able to provide your marketing team with hot leads, making their final sale much less time-consuming and easier to navigate any resistance from the customer. Not only is it reducing the stress on your marketing team, but when done correctly, it provides clear direction for everyone on your sales team, allows for greater collaboration, and creates a strong company culture.

Now that we know what sales leads are and how they can help your business, how do you manage sales leads effectively?

The 7 Best Practice To Manage Leads

There are 7 essential elements to creating a lead management system to support your team. While certain aspects of these may already be active in your company, when you combine them into one system working towards a common goal, they can become a powerful tool to accelerate sales!

1. Know Your Target Audience

This is essential to any business and is often something that is created early on in the development process, but will likely evolve over time. When you’re first creating your lead management system, knowing your ideal audience, and exactly who you will be curating your content to is something that can make or break the entire process. If you don’t already have a clear understanding of your ideal customer, consider asking yourself:

Target Audience

  • “How old are they?”
  • “What’s their gender?”
  • “What’s their income?”
  • “What demographic would they fit into?”
  • “What would they want from your services or products?”
  • “What benefit are you providing them?”
  • “How would they find your products or services?”

All of these questions will help you create a picture of who you are marketing your services to, and it will help you develop your brand voice and marketing techniques across your online presence.

This is what will influence every other stage of your lead management system.

Assess Your Leads

2. Assess Your Leads

As leads begin coming through, it is essential that you rank them according to how likely they are to become customers, with your hottest leads at the top and your coldest ones at the bottom.

The 3 main influencing factors to rate your leads include:

1. Timeline

If your leads are connected to a deal that has a specific time frame, it is important to include that in your rating system. The sooner the deal closes, the more important those potential clients become, as their sale has a natural expiration date.

2. Price point

Secondly, include how much the lead could generate in revenue. How much is this customer expected to pay? This will help you rate your best income leads higher on the list to make the most profit from all your incoming leads.

3. Actions

Lastly, be aware of your potential customer’s actions to help you decide if they are a high priority for your marketing team to engage with. Consider things like:

  • How long they spend on certain, highly converting pages of your site
  • If they spent a certain amount of time browsing your pricing page
  • If they are engaging in your email campaigns
  • If they are recurring readers of your blogs (and if they interact with them!)
  • If they completed any forms on your site
  • Or if they signed up for any promotional items you offer

All of these things reflect how likely a potential lead is to become a paying customer, and will help you with ranking any leads that come from the lead generating systems you have in place.

Define What A Hot Lead Looks Like

3. Define What A Hot Lead Looks Like

In order for your team to know which leads are most important to hand off to your marketing team, they must know how your company defines a hot lead. Your criteria can include:

  • If a lead is coming from an email campaign, and at what stage in the campaign they are coming from
  • If they are a recurring visitor to your website
  • How they navigate your site
  • How they arrive at your site (do you find higher converting leads from a certain social platform?)

While this information can overlap with your lead rating system, it is important to include this information as a hot lead definition to ensure your team collectively understands how to identify the hottest leads coming in, and send them to your sales team immediately.

Collect Information

4. Collect Information

Having top-notch landing pages and forms for potential customers to engage with is paramount. These forms are your first point of contact with the customer and are how you will ensure you get all the most important information prior to making direct contact with the customer. Both sales and marketing teams will need to develop these forms together to ensure no vital prompts for information are missing, allowing you to get a greater understanding of the potential customer and how warm they are.

Pro Tip: Shorter forms tend to yield greater conversion rates. Make your forms easy to get through while still collecting all the essential information needed.

5. Nurture Your Cooler Leads

Not all leads that come through will be hot, or even warm. Some people take longer to commit to a sale than others and will require you to build a relationship with them prior to moving on to any next steps.

An important aspect of nurturing your leads is an email campaign (or several depending on your business and what you offer). These campaigns will help you stay relevant and in their minds (so they don’t forget about you!) and help you create a foundation of trust with them. There are some important rules to follow when designing your nurture sequences. These include:

  • Provide Value: Make sure every email you send provides the reader with some form of value. No one likes spam, and unsubscribe rates are high when customers see emails that lack relevance. The value you offer can range from links to blogs or podcasts, promotional items, or even free gifts that tie into your services. People love being rewarded for being part of your subscription list.
  • Reference Past Emails: This helps the reader recall other posts and adds layers to the relationship you are building.
  • Be Conversational: When you let personality come through your emails, people are much more likely to connect with the contents of it, and with your brand. Talk to them like they’re a friend.
  • Keep Emails Brief: Long emails can seem daunting. When people open them, your run the risk of them immediately closing the email because of the time it will take to read it. If you do need to make your email longer, make sure it’s packed with value and is entertaining the entire read. Don’t add anything that isn’t relevant.
  • Don’t Overwhelm Their Inbox! This is an important one. If you send a series of emails in a short period of time, you risk not only becoming annoying but also decreasing the importance and value of your emails!

Don’t give up on leads that aren’t hot and ready to buy. Nurture your relationship with them and over time, they may become a valued customer.

Address Any Lead Roadblocks

6. Address Any Lead Roadblocks

Occasionally, you’ll notice a lead pathway will become blocked, with none from that avenue making it through to a conversion. Sometimes this simply comes from the lead generation not reaching the people who would benefit enough from your product or service. It may also be that you’re reaching the wrong demographic and those being introduced to what you’re offering can’t meet the financial requests.

When this happens, there are two options you can turn to in hopes of opening up that lead generation system again.

  • Edit Or Delete It: If you’ve noticed a particular system hasn’t been providing good conversion over a specified period of time, you can edit the bounds of it, adjust the settings of your ads, or rewrite sales pages. You could also choose to delete that pathway all together and begin developing a new one that may be a better fit for your target audience at that time.
  • Open Up A Limited Offer: Limited-time-only deals are always a great way to bring a lead pathway back to life. This can help coax people into finally making the jump and purchasing, while also becoming more intriguing to newcomers.

7. Measure Your Lead Management

Once you have designed your lead system, and have fully implemented it, then it is time to measure the system’s success. Keep track of:

  • where your highest-converting customers are coming from,
  • how many hot leads turned into sales, and
  • at what stage of the nurture sequence people transitioned into hotter leads.

Be aware of the conversions and know when they are happening most frequently. Use this information to optimize your lead management system for efficiency and success.

Conclusion

In conclusion, without a well-organized system to manage your leads, it is more difficult to determine where you should be placing most of your marketing efforts, and how you can create a higher rate of customer engagement and, overall, increase sales.

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It’s a Matter of Time: How to Get Employees to Track Hours

How to get employees to track time

When she first met him, Alice was enrapt with the Mad Hatter. Perpetually trapped at six pm, he swept her off her feet, dancing away with his unbirthday celebration.

Eventually, however, his deluge of senseless poetry and riddles drove her away.

A manager with an overbearing fixation on time has a similar effect on employees. When every keystroke is recorded and overseen, it really jeopardizes a company culture that values individual motivation and accountability.

Yet, remote working has become commonplace, and it’s created a dangerous blind spot for managers.

They’re having a rough time finding solutions to questions such as: How is it possible to know if an hourly employee really works 40 hours each week? How can I approve overtime pay? How can I know the amount of time going toward a client or project?

It’s tempting to wish for a “drink me” potion that magically reveals all the data around work hours, but doesn’t interfere with team motivation

There is a strategy, but it’s delicate. The right solution for each team entails carefully looking at all the issues around how to motivate employees to track time.

Anytime you’re ready, let’s dig in.

Give Them an Easy Time

1. Give Them an Easy Time

It’s so simple for employees to just forget to track their time. Yet, it’s information the manager needs: to bill clients, to track projects, and sometimes, to pay employees!

If you want employees to track time consistently, make the process as easy as pie.

Some time-tracking systems are pretty dang complicated. When it takes a lot of digging to figure out where to enter hours, people look for excuses to put it off, and then it doesn’t happen at all.

It’s important to find a simple system where time is recorded with just a click or two. Having the capacity to enter time from a phone really helps.

Friendly reminders work, too. Sending them out every few days, around the end of the day, might be just the jolt people need to get into the software and record daily hours.

Providing incentives is another good idea. Acknowledging perfect time-tracking at weekly meetings, with an award such as a small gift card, motivates people to get on board.

Make a Stitch in Time

2. Make a Stitch in Time

Have you ever had trouble sleeping at night, and the doctor’s advice was simply to do things like turn off the lights, roll down the shades, wear warm pajamas, and sleep in a quiet room?

Sometimes, employees get hung-up just because the basics aren’t covered. Or they’re hazy about the overall process: they want to understand the “why” behind the system, and now just the “how.”

Particularly when onboarding employees, but also at least once a year, make an effort to explain time-tracking expectations thoroughly and completely.

In order to eliminate miscommunication, it’s important to explain the process in person. Then, follow up with an email. Here are some points to address.

  • Time-tracking software is complex and overwhelming! Never assume that anyone can just figure it out on their own. Provide thorough instructions as to where everyone is expected to clock in and out. Using spreadsheets helps to illustrate the process to visual learners. Also, make the process as simple as possible. This way, it can be quickly learned and remembered.
  • Get everyone clear on the process for overtime approval. Let them know whether it goes through human resources or the employees’ manager.
  • Sometimes it isn’t necessary for exempt employees to track time, so clarify to everyone in the company who will and won’t be using time-tracking software.
  • Explain how time-tracking benefits both employees and managers.
  • Let employees know that it isn’t necessary to be precise: time-tracking is a gauge, to give managers a ballpark. Being fifteen minutes off isn’t a big deal.

These are some key areas to cover. Communicating the information verbally, visually, and with text makes it digestible to a variety of learning styles.

Being Ahead of One’s Time

3. Being Ahead of One’s Time

In a transparent culture, employees receive as much information about the company’s decisions and processes as possible. This open communication makes employees trust managers, and increases their willingness to cooperate with procedures.

In an instance where a company updates to a new time-tracking software, employees rightfully may want to know something about it. Answering all questions thoroughly, in full transparency, increases the likelihood that they’ll play along.

It’s important to provide clarity around the following points, and any other questions that arise.

  • Time-tracking software uses various methods to monitor employees as they work. Some take photos of the desktop at random times of the day and monitor mouse pad activity, while others track all keyboard activity, and take videos of the employee throughout the entire workday. To prevent a paranoid “big brother is watching” atmosphere in the work environment, it’s important to fully disclose to employees how their work is monitored.
  • Explain why the update is taking place: what does the current software offer that the previous software did not?
  • Be clear with employees about the consequences of failing to track time. Will this result in negative feedback from the manager, and be reflected in their performance score? If so, be sure they understand this.
  • Why did the company choose this particular software, and what other software did they consider?
  • It’s not uncommon for employees to work overtime at certain times of the month and year. In these instances, what is the process for having overtime approved?

These are just a few of the questions that may come up. The increased surveillance utilized by some time-tracking softwares will be an adjustment. Some employees may find it intimidating and possibly demotivating.

Thoroughly answering all anticipated questions helps to assuage these concerns. Being fully transparent about the system makes the employees feel like they’re part of the process, and they’re more inclined to trust it.

Smoothing a Wrinkle in Time

4. Smoothing a Wrinkle in Time

Culture plays an integral role in how a company works together, interacts with clients, and completes projects. Two central components to building a healthy company culture are employee well-being and appreciation.

The method a company uses to motivate time-tracking impacts both of these areas. It could place pressure on an employee to work long hours, and it may make employees feel unduly supervised.

For this reason, it’s critical that management look closely at its methods, to be sure they’re in alignment with the company’s core values and the culture it aims to create.

There really are no right or wrong answers here, but here are a few topics to consider when communicating with employees about tracking time.

Hustle Culture

Hustle culture has been widely propagated by businesses in Silicon Valley and influencers the self-help industry. It propagates the notion that someone’s productivity is directly correlated to the amount of time they spend working.

When a company fully embraces hustle culture, then, an employee who works fifty hours a week is valued more than one who clocks in at forty.

This makes it impossible for an employee to perform at a high level and still enjoy work-life balance. That is, a company that imbues hustle culture isn’t taking care of its employees.

One way to defuse this mindset within a business is to have policies that measure productivity in terms of milestones and not simply hours worked.

Agile Methodology

The agile methodology for project planning has been widely adopted across many businesses and industries. Its principles of taking an empirical approach to projects has been effective not only with software companies, but in many other areas as well.

The agile method leans heavily on self-organizing teams, and places less emphasis on managerial oversight. A project manager’s role is to facilitate, not oversee.

When a project manager integrates time-tracking into the workday, it can really frustrate this principle of trust.

One antidote to this frustration is to emphasize that time-tracking doesn’t need to be perfect, nor is it a reflection of performance: it’s simply a tool to help understand how a project is going.

Benefits of Guidance and Discipline

Some people are able to get up at 5 am all on their own, while others need an alarm.

In the same way, certain people work best in an environment with little or no oversight. Others, however, need discipline, structure and accountability in order to keep their head in the game.

This is a balance that a manager needs to strike, and time-tracking certainly plays a role.

In sum, it’s important to marry the method for tracking-time with the philosophy and culture within the business. Time tracking is not simply another process, but is a policy that has widespread implications about a company’s culture.

Finding All the Time in the World

5. Finding All the Time in the World

Oftentimes, employees don’t track time because they know they will receive the same salary either way. They just don’t see the incentive.

In these instances, it’s important to communicate that time is a resource, and that it needs to be evaluated and discussed just as you would discuss a budget, or the allocation of any other resources.

Here are a few benefits as to the value of tracking time:

  • In the same way that we tend to save money when we make a budget, we’re more resourceful about how we use time when it’s been recorded. A good time log (developed with time-tracking) indicates areas where time has been wasted. Going forward, a team is able change habits and so use time more resourcefully.
  • When time is closely evaluated, it’s much easier to gauge how long certain things should take. You may think that it takes “forever” to complete a certain task, but when it’s recorded, you realize that it generally only takes 2-3 hours. This knowledge is invaluable in understanding how to set up a timeline and to manage time during the day.
  • When you have a time log of everything that has been done during the week, it can be aligned with all of the prioritized work in the product backlog. This makes it very easy to see if everyone has been spending time on the most important tasks.

When these benefits have been communicated to a team, they’re more likely to develop a consistent practice around it.

Call it a Day

Did this hit you at a good time?

It takes some strategy to develop a method for motivating employees to track time that also maintains integrity with the company’s culture. Each company will arrive at a different solution.

Thorough communication is key. When employees appreciate the value of time-tracking, it’s easier for them to get on board.

What’s your greatest difficulty in getting employees to track time?

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Open Communication At Work – Why We Need It And How To Improve It

Open Communication at Work

Communication is really at the center of the workplace. It guides our relationships with our colleagues, the work that we do and ultimately molds our careers.

While communication in the workplace might be inevitable, a difference remains between good, open communication and poor, closed-off communication. Open communication is when team members are encouraged to share their opinions, thoughts, and beliefs – without fear of being criticized or ridiculed. Closed communication is when one person does most of the talking, and other people don’t have much of a chance to give their input.

To put this in perspective, let’s visualize these two scenarios. So picture this – you work in an office where the person who does most of the talking is your boss. And asking questions, trying out new ideas, or giving your opinion, is met with dismissal.

Contrast that workplace to one where you are encouraged to chat with your peers and superiors alike, and you’re told to ask questions freely and express your opinions and thoughts. Not only will this make you feel like you belong and that your contribution matters, but it will also benefit the workplace and help achieve its strategic goals.

There are actually lots of benefits to open communication in the workplace. Here are our top 5:

1. Reduce error

When a team is unlikely to communicate effectively, misunderstandings are likely to ensue. And misunderstandings usually lead to errors that need to be corrected. For example, imagine that you get an unclear direction. Instead of being afraid of appearing incompetent if you ask for further clarification, you feel confident that your questions will be met with respect and understanding. Asking questions means that you avoid making assumptions about something and avoid taking a wrong turn in the first place.

More input results in better outcomes

2. More input results in better outcomes

When people feel encouraged to communicate at work, they’re more likely to give their opinion and input. Better results come from varied perspectives. But people will only be willing to share their viewpoint if they feel it’s appreciated and valued. Just because someone has worked their way to the top doesn’t mean that their opinion matters the most. One example of why multiple opinions matter is participatory decision-making. Participatory decision-making is a process that gives ownership of decisions to the whole team, coming to a solution that everyone can agree on. And it has been shown to produce the best management outcomes.

3. Creates job satisfaction

Organizations promoting open and accessible communication within a team and between superiors and employees see less employee turnover. By valuing employees and our teammates’ insights and ideas, we motivate them to be more engaged, work harder, and feel appreciated. Therefore, strengthening loyalty and trust, which ultimately contributes to greater job satisfaction.

4. Fostering strong relationships

When employees feel that they can openly communicate with each other, and their superiors, better personal and professional relationships are formed. Resulting in a friendly environment, where jealousy, competition, and indifference can be put aside in favor of collaboration and innovation. When you like the people you work with personally, you’re more likely to stay in your job longer, be more motivated to work harder, and constructively collaborate with your peers.

Increase productivity

5. Increase productivity

Open communication in a team usually means that everyone will be aligned to the goals, objectives, and vision of the team and the organization. This is because they will be clear on what the organization needs from them, and feel free to ask questions if there is any confusion. Employees will be able to deliver better work and increase workplace productivity.

So now it’s clear – open communication in the workplace is important and has a lot of benefits. But if effective communication isn’t already happening in our workplace, how do we make it happen?

First, it might be helpful to understand the barriers to effective open communication. According to a study published in the Global Journal of Commerce & Management Perspective, there are two main barriers to communication – environmental barriers and personal barriers.

Environmental barriers are the characteristics of the organization and its environment. An example of an environmental barrier is the effect of power or status relationships on communication. Say a staff member doesn’t feel comfortable communicating to their boss that a project isn’t going to plan. This barrier to communication leads to further consequences for the team and organization.

Personal barriers result from an individual’s beliefs and values, based on their socio-economic background, and previous experiences. One example of a personal barrier that could hinder communication in the workplace is among coworkers of different generations. As younger generations enter the workforce, it can be a challenge to navigate the different perspectives, beliefs, and communication styles that they bring.

Understanding barriers to communication allows us to reflect on communication more objectively. By having a greater understanding of the environment and personal attributes of an organization and our colleagues, we can approach communication in a way that will be constructive and meaningful.

Here are some tips for how to encourage open communication within your team to overcome any barriers:

1. Set up weekly one-on-one meetings

Usually, the most difficult type of open communication is between employees and their bosses. But if you set up a quick weekly meeting with your direct reports to check in on how they’re doing, what they need from you, and if they have any ideas on the work being done, you’re not only giving them a safe space to openly communicate, but you’re developing a deeper relationship too. They’ll begin to feel more comfortable engaging in a similar way beyond one-on-one meetings, because they feel safe and confident that their contributions matter.

Informal social excursions

2. Informal social excursions

Another way to get your team closer together, and more likely to collaborate, is to encourage outside-of-work hang-outs. It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant or complicated. Even hosting a regular happy hour Friday after work gives your employees the opportunity to bond outside of the office. Building these bonds will get them comfortable with one another, so when it does come time to make magic happen at work, they feel free to speak their mind and work together.

Update on the strategic mission

3. Update on the strategic mission

One of the most important aspects of a productive team is being on the same page when it comes to the company’s goals and objectives. Having open and clear communication is important for executing the tasks that contribute to achieving that ultimate goal. Everyone needs to understand what they’re working towards and feel comfortable openly discussing any thoughts, objections, and ideas they may have to achieve that faster, or even go above and beyond that goal.

4. Explicitly ask for your team’s input – on everything

Whenever a new idea comes to the table, or a project is coming about, take notice of who is holding back or not speaking up. Encourage them, in a respectful, gentle way to give their opinion. It can be as simple as saying, “Kim, do you have any thoughts on xyz?” or “Anything else to add on this?” When you ask someone pointedly for their opinion or ideas, they will feel valued and appreciated. When your team contributes, make sure to thank them, show your appreciation, and take their ideas into consideration. This encourages them to keep it up.

Conclusion

The people in our teams were hired for a reason. They have something insightful to add, and we need their contributions to achieve the organization’s ultimate goals. Sometimes, the workplace culture, environment, or team members are not as conducive to open communication as they could be. However, with some simple approaches and tips, your team will be on their way to speaking up when those lightbulbs go off.

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How an Agile Coach Creates a Killer Team

Coaching Agile Teams

Have you ever had the experience of turning your back on a toddler, and in the space of thirty seconds, they’d managed to dump out an entire bag of flour, or spill a gallon of milk across the floor?

After one episode like this, you learn to watch them like a hawk.

It’s easy to bring a similar mindset to overseeing a project. Agile methodology looks wonderful on paper, and many of the central concepts can be learned in the space of an afternoon. Applying it, however, is a different story. It’s hard for a project manager to cut the leash on the team and trust them to solve problems on their own.

Or maybe, for you, it’s more about getting upper management to quit straddling the line between agile and command and control.

I’d be so wonderful to know that if you turned your back on the team, they’d have all the tools and motivation needed to hum right along.

The truth is, no matter what hiccup you’re facing, you can coach agile methods to your team. All you need are the right tools and approach.

An Agile State of Mind

An Agile State of Mind

More than a set of principles and procedures, agile is a mindset. It’s a way of approaching projects that trusts people to do good work without traditional methods of oversight. It in fact professes that this more open framework, which allows teams the freedom to self-organize, is the most fertile environment for solving problems and achieving goals.

Motivated adults don’t need to be supervised like a toddler, right?

This doesn’t eliminate the need for coaches. But the leader’s role is more about facilitating and helping to identify impediments, rather than unilaterally steering the ship.

The key values and principles from the Agile Manifesto provide clear instruction on how to coach a team. Here are four that stand out, particularly.

Come As You Are

An informal online study found that 92% of agile coaches customize their methods, rather than going by the scrum or kanban playbook. This sends a pretty clear signal!

These results reflect one of the Agile Manifesto’s key values: “individuals and interaction over processes and tools.” In other words, this means that yes, the playbook for, say, scrum and kanban are important. However, personal interaction with people on the team takes priority.

As an agile coach, it’s important to meet the team, organization, or product owner where they are, and assess from there. It’s not uncommon to work with someone who’s new to agile methodology. In such an instance, it may be necessary to blur roles and responsibilities and do some coaching.

Build Teams and Motivate

Tony Robbins once said: “What is a must for you and what is a should for you is the difference in your life. Everybody gets their musts.” Not to go too self-helpy on you, but it’s true that when someone wants to reach a finish line, they find a way.

One principle from the Agile Manifesto is to “Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.” That is to say, given everyone is sufficiently skilled and motivated, a team is capable of figuring things out on their own.

What does this mean for agile coaches? They could stand to have some of Tony Robbins’ energy and charisma! Ha ha, maybe that’s going a bit far. However, utilizing tools and practices that increase team dynamics and rapport is central to the role of an agile coach.

Turn Your Back

Turn Your Back

We’ve all had those jobs where our boss hovered and supervised our every move. Or, worse yet, maybe we worked alongside a self-appointed “manager” who spent their days instructing everyone on what they were doing wrong.

That’s not the kind of environment that produces brilliant, creative work. Rather, it instills resentment and fear.

Another principle from the Agile Manifesto is that “The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.” An astute, skilled team is capable of independently assigning roles and performing at a high level. Within this framework of freedom and trust, they’re able to produce their best work.

This principle takes some getting used to, as it requires a lot of trust. But when all of the other agile tools are in place, including a good product backlog, an agile coach learns that letting go is an important part of the process.

Talk Away

There aren’t any trade schools in how to have a conversation or how to build rapport. But as it turns out, maybe there should be. These sorts of skills make or break a project.

One of the principles in the Agile Manifesto is, “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”

Although email is wonderful, in agile it’s mostly used for follow-up. Face-to-face conversation is the most reliable method for understanding tone, facial expressions, and the full meaning a person imparts.

In agile coaching, facilitating open communication is central. Within a remote work environment, this means that video messaging apps and video conference platforms take precedence over text messages.

If you’ve been endowed with the gift of gab, then you’re quite possibly an agile coach in the making. Sometimes soft skills get a bad rap. But within an agile framework, this notion is turned on its head.

As you can see, the role of an agile coach has more to do with facilitation than taking the reins. Soft skills and motivation are central, as are listening and communicating. It’s also important to assess teams and situations for what they are, and go from there.

A Coach Who Facilitates an Agile Transformation

A Coach Who Facilitates an Agile Transformation

“A scrum master who takes teams beyond getting agile practices up and running into their deliberate and joyful pursuit of high performance is an agile coach,” writes Lyssa Adkins in her book Coaching Agile Teams.

Transitioning to agile’s empirical approach is a big step for an organization. From getting universal buy-in to actual implementation, it requires everyone to get up and stretch in a way they possibly never have before.

A good agile coach understands the nuances of each organization, and is able to effectively communicate with the team. Taking some time to find the right coach makes the process successful and fluid. Here are some things to look for.

Passion for Agile

When interviewing and looking through resumes, it’s important to find someone who’s really immersed themselves in agile. A person who enjoys discussing retrospectives, facilitation and sprints is a good start.

A true agile junkie has also attended agile conferences, read books like Coaching for Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins or Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby, and maybe even uses agile methodology in home planning.

Look out for these indicators, as they signal a coach who really is all-in. And this sort of passion translates into a successful transition.

Experience

“An important ingredient needed to call oneself an agile coach is having coached multiple teams and having seen a range of possibilities and limitations and successes and failures across a variety of situations,” writes Adkins.

Agile looks very different depending on the size of the company and the industry. A coach with a breadth of experience knows how to apply agile in companies of different sizes, and with different types of teams. Their array of experience gives them a more intuitive understanding about the principles of agile.

For a team to be high-performing, ideally it would have one designated scrum master. However, this may not be possible for every company’s budget, so it’s not uncommon for a scrum master to oversee several teams.

In order to prevent a scenario where the scrum master’s role becomes secretarial, it’s good to find a coach who has worked with younger companies. They’re likely to understand how to implement agile when a company doesn’t have a lot of resources.

Knowledge

Knowledge

Scrum Master Adam Weisbart worked for several years as an engineer for a social media company, and as a software developer. “When I came across the scrum framework,” he says, “I was super excited that all these things I had sort of learned through trial and error had been codified into this great thing called scrum.”

That is to say, a lot of knowledge about agile is learned through experience. It’s good to find someone who’s developed some on-the-job understanding of agile.

Formal training, such as Kanban workshops, and the Scrum Master Certification, are important as well. The instructor influences how the trainee implements agile. It’s important to dig into the training school for an indication as to how the candidate will work with your team.

It’s good to find a coach who understands the various agile methodologies, including scrum, kanban, extreme programming, and lean. This way, they can assess your particular situation, and apply the appropriate method.

Communication Skills

Constant communication is fundamental to agile. One of the agile principles is: “Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.”

In order to facilitate this flow of communication, it’s important to find an agile coach who is warm and approachable.

When a coach doesn’t jibe with a team, frustration mounts. The tension can cause a project to go south.

Going agile requires convincing everyone in the company it’s the right approach. As it’s much different than waterfall, and so entails changing many processes within the company, it’s not uncommon to encounter resistance. A coach with strong soft skills eases the transition, and quickly answers questions and concerns that spring up.

Conundrums for Coaches

Common Conundrums for Coaches

“In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable,” said President Dwight Eisenhower.

Coaching agile is no cinch. For someone with a traditional project management background, it feels non-intuitive. An empirical (agile) approach to projects means letting go of the long-range vision and focusing on the here and now. It means taking the time to make a plan but not being constrained by it.

Here are several traps that many coaches fall into when implementing agile, or using agile within a team, as well as some methods for getting out of them.

Waterfall Relapse

It’s always hard to break a new habit. And for a company, letting go of command and control methods feels at first like swimming alone in the middle of the ocean. It’s very tempting to cling to the known waterfall system of doing things, even if you know these may well sink the project.

When a coach encounters this situation, it’s helpful to find a good agile mentor. It’s also important to maintain strong communication within the team. This is the key to keeping the project humming along. When everyone witnesses the progress, they start to trust the methodology.

By keeping the product backlog up to date, the team understands everything they need to be working on.

And this scenario may call for some education or review. Games and tools, such as Agile Ad-Libs and Agile Antipattern cards, make fun team-building activities that also serve to refresh everyone on the principles of agile. It’s a great opportunity to build some rapport.

A full transition from waterfall to agile will take some time, and entails lots of baby steps, so it’s necessary to be patient.

It’s not uncommon for a team to find itself in a scenario known as “scrummerfall,” where sprints feel like going from 90 to 5 miles per hour over the course of two weeks. In this instance, it’s a good idea to break the jobs in the product backlog down into several smaller projects.

Team Versus Product Owner

Agile is about making human connections. For this reason, it’s really important to approach projects on a case-by-case basis. Some product owners are familiar with agile and their roles, and others not so much. Additionally, product owners come from various backgrounds, including development, project management, and analysis. This affects how they understand and approach the project.

As discussed earlier, rather than pull out the handbook on the duties for the scrum master and product owner, it’s better to meet people where they are. When a product owner doesn’t seem to know what they’re doing, it’s critical to reach out and hold their hand for a time. This may mean guiding them with some user stories at first.

The objective, ultimately, is for the project to buzz along, and for everyone to function as a team, working toward the same goal.

Teams

Teams Keep Changing

In a small company with a dozen or so projects, it’s not unusual for upper management to want everyone working on all projects at all times. On a superficial level, this seems efficient.

But in fact, it entails a lot of wasted time and energy.

The agile method allows for self-organizing teams. This entails going through the four stages of Tuckman’s group development, outlined below.

1) Forming: Everybody meets and not a lot happens.

2) Storming: The group hashes out which role and tasks are assigned to whom.

3) Norming: The team arrives at consensus about the leader and everyone else’s role.

4) Performing: After everything is sorted out, the group begins to perform at a high level.

When a group of people regularly shift around, they cycle through the stages of forming, storming, and norming over and over. This takes away from time they could spend productively working on the project.

Just like multitasking, it’s sheer illusion to entertain any notion that shifting teams around increases productivity.

One way to remedy this situation is to have teams work from the project backlog. Rather than having people move from team to team, have the tasks move to the people.

It’s also necessary to persuade management to keep everyone on just one team. This is where Tony Robbins’ persuasion skills really come in handy. Presenting them with evidence as to the perils of multitasking may help to change their mind.

Coaching Demotivated Teams

Sometimes you may find yourself coaching a team who is just not feeling the love. Maybe they had a former leader who liked to hold the reins or was difficult to talk with, and so everyone fell into patterns of non-communication and resentment.

Here are two things to do about it.

1) Run a timeline retrospective to see where the team is at. Look at everyone’s pros and cons for projects over the year. Create an impediment backlog to use going forward. This makes an good reference tool for identifying and removing anything that demotivates the team.

2) During the daily scrum, just play the role of the facilitator. It’s important to let the team work through things, and to not treat it as a time to gauge performances or ask for reports.

Agile

Practice Makes Perfect

“Becoming a skilled agile coach, like becoming a magician, starts with learning a set of techniques. From there it’s a matter of practice, practice, and more practice,” writes Mike Cohn in his book Succeeding with Agile.

As with most things, honing your agile acumen is something that only happens with time and experience. With a good mentor, too, it becomes easier to let go of the need for command and control.

Although the approach of working empirically and in small batches may sound flimsy at first, a high-producing agile team demonstrates that the approach actually is highly effective.

 

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How to Increase Workplace Productivity in 2022

How to increase Workplace Productivity

We hear and read so much about employee or workforce performance—how to measure it and how to evaluate it. But what about workforce productivity?

At the end of the day, are they the same, or perhaps even interchangeable?
The quick answer to that is a resounding no, but it’s probably a good idea to delve into some of the reasons why they’re different. And from there, discuss how to increase workforce productivity.

The Difference Between Performance and Workforce Productivity

Merriam-Webster defines performance as “the execution of an action.” The Oxford Dictionary goes a bit further and defines it as “the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.”

Each employee has a task, no matter how documented and specific or how broad and vague. Employers have expectations around how successfully those tasks are carried out—how well employees perform in the execution of those tasks. And they will have different ways of measuring performance, typically some agreed-upon criteria such as goals, objectives, KPIs, and so on.

But what about workforce productivity? How does it differ?

First, good performance doesn’t automatically translate to increased productivity. Believing that better performers must also be more productive is believing a fallacy.

The reality is that performance does not mean you produced a single thing. It only means you did something that met some predefined standard. The truly alarming part of this is that pushing for increased performance often comes at the cost of productivity.

Think about that for a moment. How often do workplaces demand nothing more than improved performance from their employees? Perhaps you’re one of them. But understanding the possible costs of that should compel you to better understand workforce productivity and how to increase it.

The Need to Increase Workforce Productivity

The Need to Increase Workforce Productivity

Now, more than ever, leaders need to understand what to do to meet the challenges of workforce productivity. Is there some sort of workforce productivity formula in place already and if so, does it need improving?

The workforce and its expectations changed considerably during the pandemic. It may be necessary to change how you lead workforce productivity as well. But don’t be alarmed, since improvements don’t need to mean implementing expensive incentives. If you simply keep your focus on developing a more engaged workforce, you’ll be on the right track since engaged employees tend to be more productive.

A Gallup Poll conducted before the pandemic showed that only a third of employees are engaged on the job—and that disengagement was costing American companies between $450 and $550 billion a year in things like increased turnover and productivity.

Increase Workforce Productivity

How to Increase Workforce Productivity – 8 Tips

When we look back on our post-pandemic years, will things be worse? Or will businesses realize how transformative this time is, that where and how employees work aren’t the only concerns? That in the final analysis, involving and empowering their workforce, is what increases engagement and productivity?

1. Provide Continuous Learning Opportunities

There are a lot of ways to invest in your people. Better yet, there are ways to invest in your workforce that ultimately benefit you.

Organizations that provide opportunities for continuous learning or continuing education get increased engagement and productivity in return. By offering a means for your employees to build on existing strengths and gain knowledge, you give them the means to gain both personal and professional development. Again, the payback is an engaged, committed, and loyal workforce.

Companies that foster such a culture aren’t limited to providing in-house training and development. They can also offer to pay for all or part of tuition costs to further their education. For example, helping an employee earn their MBA (Master of Business Administration) benefits everyone.

2. Give Them the Technology They Need

Don’t be “so last century.” As in, don’t expect workforce productivity when you’re asking your team to work with dark-age methods.

Living today means we have the tools, software, or technology to do almost anything quickly and efficiently. If you’re slow to—or never—provide such tools, you can expect your employees to be frustrated and unproductive.

The Gallup Poll mentioned above—the one where two-thirds of the American workforce claims to be disengaged—shares another not-so-surprising statistic. Less than half of American employees feel their employers provide them with the technology they need to do their jobs effectively.

Do you see the correlation there? A lack of technology equals disengaged employees. Disengaged employees equal a lack of productivity.

Best Workplace Conditions Possible

3. Offer the Best Workplace Conditions Possible

And yes, that means allowing them to work from home—if possible.

If not, what can be done to improve working conditions? No one wants to feel as if they’re working in a cell. Here are a few ideas:

Provide Natural Light. Everyone functions better when they get enough natural light during the day. They even sleep longer—that night in bed, not during the day at the office! And of course, sleeping better means better productivity since they’re better able to focus.

If you can’t bash out walls to create windows, do your best at providing artificial lighting that’s as close to natural as you can achieve.

Go Green. No, not eco-friendly. Add plants throughout the office. Not only do they help increase productivity, adding plants has a lot of other benefits as well. Here are a few that could have, at least, a tangential impact on workplace productivity.

Plants help to:

  • Reduce stress
  • Reduce sickness and absenteeism
  • Reduce noise levels
  • Boost creativity

Color Matters. Research on office color schemes shows that all-white walls are the last thing you should have at work because they make employees error-prone. Instead, you could use green, which helps to motivate, or blue, which boosts creativity.

Flexible Schedules

4. Allow Flexible Schedules

As a people, we’re all very different, even when it comes to things like what hours of the day we’re most productive. For morning people, those early hours are prime time, but others could still be dragging and close to brain-dead.

How many people working the corporate 9 to 5 grind are most productive before 9 or after 5? Meaning that there’s a good chance a frightening percentage of corporate Americans will never be at their best in terms of productivity.

If you’re old-school and determined to hang on to the rule of 9 to 5, chew on that for a while. When you’re done chewing, consider these alternatives. And don’t worry, the first isn’t too unorthodox.

Break Up the Day. Instead of putting in one long day, consider letting staff break it up by allowing them a longer break midday. This will mean starting earlier or staying later, but that extra time in the middle to do whatever they need to do to rejuvenate could mean a world of difference to them and a far more productive employee for you.

Offer options around personal schedules. Some may be those crazy morning people mentioned above who want to start a few hours early. Others may prefer to add their hours to the end of the day, and still others may want to split the hours between before and after work.

Offer the Option of Remote Work. When the world sent their office employees home to work in the spring of 2020, those employees proved something. They proved they didn’t need to be in some corporate office to be efficient and productive.

Even before the pandemic, 65% of employees said they were more productive when not working at the office and nearly half said they wished a work from home option was a company benefit. As a post-pandemic life begins to appear, employees are now demanding they be allowed to continue working from home—or else they are quitting.

The consequences of employees quitting are the exact opposite of what companies are trying to achieve. An increase in workplace productivity.

Company Culture

5. Focus on Company Culture, Not Hierarchy

A growing body of research shows that positive workplace environments have a dramatic impact on everyone in the organization and ultimately the bottom line. Simply put, positive work cultures are more productive.

Cutthroat organizations, where it’s every man for himself, increase individual stress. Everyone is disengaged, and those in the lower ranks of any given hierarchy are stressed to the point that their chances of heart attacks and death are significantly increased. There is no question that the type of leadership that produces and fosters stress is bad for productivity. Dead employees tend to be unproductive, right?

Companies that put their focus on building positive cultures—cultures with an engaged workforce that has a shared vision based on ethics and goals, see increased workplace productivity.

6. Train Your Team Well

Asking or expecting your team to be productive when you haven’t provided sufficient training will get the expected outcome. It will get you nowhere. But ensuring you provide or teach your workforce with the knowledge or necessary skills to do their jobs can get you closer to your productivity goals.

This may mean mentoring and/or hands-on training. This gives employees the chance to try out what they’re learning and gain confidence. It also offers the opportunity to tweak things if necessary, ensuring processes work for them individually. Of course, this may not always be possible.

Finally, let employees learn at their own pace. Rushing them through training is only going to cost you in the end. They won’t have the needed time to make sense of what they’re learning or the time to test things out to be sure they work.

Open Communication

7. Foster Open Communication

Want to have a successful, productive company? Create an environment that encourages open communication. This leads to employees who are more engaged—and we’ve already determined that the more engaged they are, the more productive they are. They also care more about the success of your business, knowing the role they play in it. Effective, open communication keeps everyone on the same page moving toward shared goals.

This type of communication takes effort. It will mean taking time to regularly speak with your employees about their personal and professional goals, but it will create accountability—for the employee and management. But in the end, the benefits will pay off. Your workforce will have better job satisfaction, less stress, increased loyalty, and a stronger sense of respect throughout the organization.

8. Match Tasks to Skills and Personalities

It only makes sense to match your employees’ skills and behavioral styles with the tasks you assign them. Asking them to do something that doesn’t match their skill-set is unproductive.

Improved job satisfaction and engagement are often associated with workers whose skills are matched with their roles. This increases workplace productivity and general happiness on the job.

Don’t expect employees to be great at everything, but be sure to capitalize on what they’re good at.

Conclusion

These are challenging times for many organizations. Knowing how to increase workplace productivity and keep employees engaged and happy is more important than ever.

If you take note of the steps above and pay attention to the needs of your organization plus the needs of teams, you’re well on the way to achieving your goals.

Is there a workforce productivity formula to calculate or measure? Perhaps. But as a leader, take the time to personally understand the needs of your employees. They are more than a number that make up a formula. They’re your tomorrow. Make it a productive one.

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The Risks of Poor Collaboration in the Workplace

Lack of collaboration in the workplace

Collaboration is kind of an elusive concept. It’s often treated like something that employees have to figure out on their own or that it’s something that might benefit the company but isn’t really that important. However, it’s safe to say that fostering a collaborative environment is an effort worth making that will grant businesses a stunning return on investment, as well as increase employee satisfaction.

This became an even more pressing issue at the beginning of 2020 when businesses had to quickly rethink their processes and adapt to a work-from-home model.

In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at the risks that come with poor collaboration and what businesses can do to encourage efficient teamwork.

Let’s dive right in.

Why collaboration matters

Creating an environment that encourages people to collaborate and speak their minds will invariably help your business grow at a higher pace. It helps bring the best out of people as well as keep them engaged and passionate; as a result, this helps yield innovative ideas that are then transformed into exciting opportunities.

A collaborative workspace also enables people to showcase their strengths and appreciate the expertise of others. Through this synergy, a team can achieve its maximum potential instead of siloing its efforts. Plus, collaboration has become even more relevant with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic that has ushered in a work-from-home model that caused a significant disconnect between people.

Efficient collaboration also makes people more independent and autonomous in the workplace—they require less management and oversight.

However, it’s essential to underline that the path towards a collaborative environment isn’t necessarily straightforward. Excessive collaboration is a double-edged sword, and it can seriously hinder productivity when done incorrectly. A Stanford study suggests that when people choose to work together, they experience a significant increase in their intrinsic motivation—the participants of the study spent over 60% more time on complicated tasks and showed more motivation and interest in tackling them.

On the other hand, when collaboration relies on excessive meetings and codependency, it can result in slower and less creative decision-making. Therefore, it’s essential to bear in mind that collaboration on its own isn’t a good thing; organizations should take a strategic approach towards enabling the “good kind” of collaboration.

The risks of poor collaboration

The risks of poor collaboration

Failing to create a collaborative environment at work doesn’t just result in missing out on the benefits—it also comes with a wide array of disadvantages.

The inability to build a workplace conducive to teamwork often leads to a siloed and fractured workflow, which has rarely led to efficiency or productivity. What could have potentially been a group-oriented approach will shift to a self-centered one, where survival becomes the focus of every individual, as opposed to collective success.

This will often result in a variety of unhealthy tendencies, such as:

  • Manager and team resistance to feedback and input. As a more siloed approach starts seeping into the corporate culture, entire teams will become intentionally isolated from the recommendations of adjacent departments.
  • The “that’s not my job” mindset. A divided and disconnected environment will most likely foster a myopic view of one’s professional responsibilities and dissuade people from broader participation in business activities.
  • Isolated knowledge flow. In a more siloed work environment, vital business information doesn’t flow through the entire company, creating unnecessary knowledge lag.

A lot of wasted time

1. A lot of wasted time

Lack of collaboration will often lead to a disengaged and unaccountable workforce, which will naturally result in a lot of wasted time. Every minute lost on inefficient interactions will surely reflect in the company’s bottom line.

A team that is used to collaborating is a team that is on the same page about pretty much everything work-related—processes are smooth and seamless, everybody has access to essential information, and everyone has a clear understanding of a project’s priorities.

A disconnected and siloed work environment will most certainly result in duplicate work, which, again, results in decreased productivity and resources drained on things that could have otherwise been avoided.

2. Lack of innovation

Collaboration helps companies come up with innovative, out-of-the-box solutions. Teams that learn to work together can leverage diverse backgrounds and experiences, allowing them to surface unexplored perspectives. As people work together, it’s much safer to take calculated risks and experiment.

More importantly, a culture that fosters openness, diversity, and collaboration will only continue bringing down existing silos within the organization that has been preventing the spread of valuable information and blocking innovation.

3. Negative impact on morale and team cohesion

We spend a substantial part of our lives in the workplace, making it an essential facet of our wellbeing. Working in an isolated and toxically competitive environment isn’t exactly conducive to long-term satisfaction. If people aren’t happy at work, this will certainly deter them from supporting each other and collaborating towards common and business goals. People strive to find meaning in work, but this is hard to achieve when they can’t find people that will support them in their professional growth.

More importantly, research suggests that collaboration is imperative when it comes to mental wellbeing at work, which is why it’s critical for employers to work on building a collegial and supportive culture. There is no middle ground—business owners will either invest time and effort into ensuring collaboration or suffer from the consequences of a disbanded and disjointed workforce.

4. Low employee engagement

Engaged employees are productive employees. They tend to want to perform better and are typically inclined to work within an organization for longer. Ensuring that your workspace is a collaborative environment will help the people in your organization to be more accountable and engaged.

Ways to improve collaboration in the workplace

Four ways to improve collaboration in the workplace

Now that we’ve explored the shortcomings of a workspace that lacks collaboration let’s take a quick look at a few ways businesses can tackle this issue.

1. Devise a clear strategy for collaboration

Outlining a strategy that will enable collaboration in your company is essential when it comes to getting the entire crew on board. Failing to turn this into a systematic effort will only result in partial engagement from your employees.

More importantly, having a structured approach will only underline the leadership’s commitment to creating a collaborative environment, which will, in turn, enable employees to do their part in the process.

Bear in mind that before you should have a well-thought-out collaboration strategy in place before you spend any amount of resources on specific tools and activities. Furthermore, the strategies designed to enable collaboration should be reviewed and optimized once or twice a year.

2. Identify barriers

Organizations are different—they have a variety of the ultra-specific ins and outs, which means that the strategy towards enabling collaboration should reflect these peculiarities. Start by asking yourself what is holding back the people in your organization from working together. Is the problem rooted in time, trust, tools, or a combination of the above?

To increase the chances of your strategy succeeding, consider running some company-wide research. Even simple things like surveys or questionnaires will provide you with a wealth of insight that will help you navigate the issues more effectively.

3. Strengthen your strategy with clarity

Having a clear purpose in regards to your collaboration strategy will, in part, define its success. Approach it the same way you would approach KPIs—they should be SMART. Your purpose should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and anchored within a timeframe.

Your teams won’t be able to successfully collaborate if they don’t have a clear understanding of why they have to do it. Providing people with unclear goals or no goals at all will only prevent them from reaching them.

4. Identify and reward collaboration

Simply asking your employees to collaborate and failing to recognize and reward the behavior you’re seeking to enable will seriously hinder your efforts. Identify what are the behaviors that define collaboration and show your appreciation when these behaviors take place.

Failing to ensure proper incentives and rewards will invariably act as a barrier to effective collaboration.

Identify and reward collaboration

The bottom line

As we mentioned above, there is no middle ground between a collaborative workspace and a disbanded one. Organizations will either enjoy the benefits of a cohesive, tight-knit group of employees or suffer the consequences of a fractured one. Therefore, it’s essential to invest time and effort into identifying the signs that your team is failing to collaborate efficiently and devise a well-thought-out strategy towards enabling people to work together.

Doing so will considerably improve the productivity and efficiency within your company, help retain talent, and foster innovative thinking.

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The Essential Role of Creativity in Advertising

The role of creativity in advertising

Conventional wisdom says that creativity is a key driver of successful advertising; that capturing the attention and imagination of the people is the most effective way to drum up engagement and sales—but is that true? And if it’s so important for success, why aren’t all ads bursting with creativity?

Many of us hear the word “creative” and think of designers, writers and artists. In reality, it’s important for advertisers to apply creativity across the entire breadth of ad creation—everything from firming up the target audience to analyzing the results has scope for creativity.

In other words, there are many types of creativity which come together to create the most engaging, best-selling campaigns. In this article we’re going to examine the role of creativity in effective advertising and see what correlation, if any, it has with revenue and ROI.

What is creative advertising?

There’s a lot of content online that talks about the value and lucrative nature of creative ad campaigns. And yet, few of them ever define what a “creative ad” actually is. This is important because no one out there is making their ads and admiring how uncreative they are—and yet some get it right while many don’t.

We’re going to use this definition: “[Creativity in advertising is] the extent to which an ad contains brand or executional elements that are different, novel, unusual, original, unique, etc.” However, throughout this article we’ll also discuss the more general concept of creativity in advertising—that is, elements that are different, novel, unusual, original or unique across the entire process.

Using creativity to stand out from the crowd

Using creativity to stand out from the crowd

The first job of any ad is (and in fact, always has been) to stop a reader in their tracks. We live in an era of constant stimulation and engagement, perpetually looking for the next hit of dopamine. It’s why we scroll social media without purpose, listen to podcasts wherever we go and load videos whenever we stop.

The competition for our attention has never been more fierce, while the opportunity to access our eyes is bigger than ever. We actually pay for products today by accepting an onslaught of tailored ads in return. The biggest social platforms in the world are built on the promise of constant advertising.

This is both a weapon and a weakness for advertisers. The weapon is that businesses can put their ads in front of more eyes than ever in history, all over the internet. The weakness is that, unfortunately for those advertisers, we’ve all gotten very good at filtering out noisy ads.

The self-perpetuating cycle of new ideas

The self-perpetuating cycle of new ideas

Whenever some clever clogs discovers a new technique that glues eyes to their ads over everyone else’s, others quickly take notice. Word spreads and soon everyone’s doing the same thing. This, of course, dilutes the effect and means no one gets particular attention—in other words, we’re back at square one.

This cycle is inevitable. Creativity is how we unlock these new ways of standing out. They’re rarely era-defining changes, but more often subtle and ongoing enhancements which help get eyes on ads.

There are 3 major ways in which companies continually manage to breathe new life into their ads: originality, flexibility, and artistic value.

Originality

Originality is about looking at what everyone else is doing and going in another direction. This usually means building an ad with novel or surprising elements, an unusual viewpoint or ear-catching language. It’s about subverting the customer’s expectations while still conveying the core message of your campaign.

For example, most adverts for body wash and shower gel follow the same pattern: they show off how much it lathers, how well it cleans, or how sublime it smells. When Old Spice launched one of the most celebrated creative ads of all time in 2010, no one had seen anything like it. It promoted its fundamental message (“Smell nice using this shower gel”) by totally subverting expectations and being extremely memorable.

It was still grounded in brilliant advertising theory (for example, capitalizing on the prevalent desire for men to be attractive to women) but positioned very differently. Along with flexibility, originality is the most crucial element to creative ads.

Flexibility

Some products have a singular purpose. However, many can be deployed in a range of different ways. A powerful and regrettably under-utilized element of creativity is flexibility—seamlessly linking the product to the wide variety of uses, outcomes and benefits it has to offer.

For example, highlighting the unique benefits that a product offers to each potential user. Broadband providers have used this to showcase how lightning-fast internet works wonders for mom, dad, sister, brother, and even grandma. A cookware supplier might show all the wonderful (and perhaps ridiculous) ways to use their premium saucepan.

Smoothly highlighting a variety of benefits or uses can add value to your ads while the competition continues “playing it safe” with their stale ideas. It sounds like an innocuous tactic, but in conjunction with original ideas or brilliant artistry, the results will speak for themselves.

Artistic Value

Artistic Value

Adverts with high artistic value are a joy to the senses, containing highly appealing visual or verbal elements. One of the reasons Old Spice was so successful is that they combined originality with artistic value: the ads were far more ambitious, outrageous and pleasing than anything else in their category.

The bedrocks of artistic value are creativity and skill; concept and execution. As a rough guide point, there are 3 questions advertisers can ask themselves to assess if they’ve maximized artistic value:

  • Is the ad visually or verbally distinctive?
  • Does it make ideas come to life, either graphically or verbally?
  • Is it artistic in its production?

Creativity is what makes ads memorable

All successful ads make an impression. This isn’t the same as being seen: catching someone’s attention means you’ve stood out; staying in someone’s mind means you’re made an impression. This is important because very few buyers move instantly from advert to purchase—it takes time to settle and convince.

The key to being memorable is creating the message that resonates with prospects and engages them on an emotional level. This is a different kind of creativity to making things “pop”. It requires a fundamental understanding of the customer, their pains, their motivations, where they are and what they want.

Finding a powerful message

Figuring out the most effective message for your target customer, and the best way to present that message, often requires creativity. Many companies use surveys to get customer opinions and then build campaigns off this data.

A few years ago, the accounting software company Intuit creatively took this a step further. They actually got permission to observe customers at work in their own homes. They saw first-hand how they interacted with the product, what issues came up, how they navigated its features, how they spoke about the product and much more.

When it came time to create future ad campaigns, Intuit had a crystal clear understanding of their customer’s intimate needs and could create ultra-relevant, emotionally-resonant campaigns with ease. This is a very powerful and underrated use of incredible creativity in advertising.

Turning your message into a captivating story

Once you’ve found your message, you need to transform it into a powerful, resonant story. This is where your typical creatives (predominantly writers and designers) will exchange a flurry of ideas, test concepts, and generally marry everything they know about the campaign goals, the customer, and the target message together.

While this is an essential part of the creative process, it’s interesting to note that without the extra background work, the resulting ad—however impressive—wouldn’t be nearly as effective.

Creativity and revenue

Creativity and revenue—Is there a causal link?

The conventional wisdom is that creative ads perform better than “non-creative” ads, and various studies have validated that premise. A prominent result from the Harvard Business Review states that:

  • A euro invested in a highly creative ad campaign had, on average, nearly double the sales impact of a euro spent on a non-creative campaign.
  • The impact of creativity was initially relatively small but typically gathered momentum as the campaign rolled out.

Specifically, ads combining originality with flexibility were found to be the highest-performing of all. What’s great about this result is that it avoids survivorship bias. Many of us see a hugely successful creative ad and think, “See, creativity is king!”. However, this ignores all creative ads which didn’t return a single penny.

This raises an important point: there is always a line to be drawn between unbridled creativity and selling intent. If a wildly creative campaign racks up thousands of social shares and likes, but doesn’t produce any sales, then the campaign isn’t a success. Finding this line is certainly easier said than done, however making attempts to fully understand the customer (as discussed) makes a world of difference.

What about using non-traditional metrics?

The majority of companies funnel the majority of their marketing budget into driving sales. Money in versus money out. As a rule, the focus is on immediate sales resulting from the campaign.

There’s a great case study of US giant Macy’s taking a different route. Their creative advertising team decided to invest in a more holistic approach, focusing on the lifetime value of their most profitable customer persona. They gathered a ton of data on the customer and created brand-new messaging to resonate with them.

They also bucked the status quo by changing their metrics from immediate sales to sales over time per customer. All of this resulted in a huge boost in revenue compared to the previous advertising model.

This simply emphasises that creativity definitely does have a positive correlation with revenue, in many more ways than we probably realize!

How much creativity can you get away with

How much creativity can you get away with?

It’s an unfortunate reality that there is more scope for creativity in some categories than others. As a rule, ads for highly-functional products need to focus more on the range of features and describe the factual use of the product. Otherwise, they run the risk of confusing prospects and failing to convey how the product will impact their lives.

For more experiential products, advertisers have free reign. Coffee adverts, for example, have spanned everything from celebrities on terraces to wild, emotional journeys across the world—ending with the sumptuous sensation of hot coffee.

Once again, knowing what level of creativity companies can safely exert depends on knowing the target audience.

Conclusion

There is clearly a lot of creative thinking that goes into creating effective, captivating and high-converting ads. Much of this is invested in visual design and storytelling, but as we’ve seen there’s more to it than that.

It requires a lot of work and constant challenging of the status quo to create consistently creative ads, but the reward for doing so is established and proven—they’re simply more persuasive and more effective than non-creative ads!

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7 Benefits of Using Online Collaboration Tools

Benefits of online collaboration tools

Collaboration is easier and more effective than it’s ever been. Advances in technology means we can keep in contact and work together online instantaneously. Someone in America can work in tandem with their colleague in Germany in real time so projects can progress smoothly.

If you want to take advantage of modern technologies so your team can collaborate online then this is the article for you. It could be so you can offer work from home opportunities or because your team needs better tools. Collaboration is at the heart of every company and here are 7 benefits of online collaboration tools.

Email takes a back seat

Once upon a time, email revolutionised the workplace and thrust businesses into online working. Now we can rely less on emails, which can slow down progress while we wait for replies. Online collaboration tools mean everyone can access what they need to at the same time and communicate instantly over instant messaging.

There is still a place for email in modern offices, they’re a great way to keep track of things. However, to increase team productivity you’ll be better off using dedicated collaboration software instead.

Ease of access to documents

Ease of access to documents

Hosting your documents (including templates) on the cloud or in a shared folder means easy access for anyone who needs it. Before the internet documents would be kept in hard copies and those in different locations would not be able to access them. Now, your travelling salesmen, or international project managers can log onto local wifi and pull the documents they need.

Permissions and restrictions can be added to ensure that only the necessary people can access important information. IT teams can remotely add users so even at-home workers will have little trouble accessing documents.

Having documents on the cloud removes the need for employees to load things onto a USB. These can be easily misplaced which can leave you vulnerable if they contain confidential information. The cloud is more convenient and more secure.

More efficient workflows

Using online collaboration tools is great for cutting down unnecessary meetings, long email chains, and lengthy phone calls. Everyone will be able to track project progress using things like Kanban boards and collaborative workspaces. People can ask questions and receive quick answers from their colleagues and superiors.

The lightning fast response time means projects can progress smoothly and without interruption caused by waiting for responses. Of course, there will be occasions where people are temporarily unreachable but the wait time is significantly reduced.

Let’s take marketing as an example, someone is writing a press release and they can use a cloud based tool like Google Docs. They can type up their report and then share access with their manager. Their manager can then review and annotate the press release before sending it back. All this can be done from within the same document, online, and in real time.

Tasks can be actioned immediately

Tasks can be actioned immediately

Any tasks that are new to the agenda can be communicated quickly to the team. There’s no need to book a conference room, gather the team, and have a meeting about every little thing. Instead, tasks can be shared using a good online collaboration tool, the team can acknowledge and ask any questions before getting to work.

It’s much easier to stay organized and track progress of tasks using an online tool. For example, using a Kanban style board, you can split your tasks into three (or more) columns to monitor progress. At its most basic level these columns will be “to-do,” “doing,” and “done.” Depending on the task a popular fourth column is “amending” in case the work needs to be reviewed before being returned to the “done” column.

All members of the team will be able to see the progress of tasks if managers choose to share this information. This can lead to increased collaboration among the team as they share ideas and processes. It’s also proven that a system like this increases the sense of urgency for getting your own tasks done so as to not hold up your colleagues.

Save money using remote workers

Once you introduce remote working to your business the pool of job seekers you have access to explodes. This means you can find experts for less money because the cost of living in their area is lower. Online collaboration tools can help you create a team from scratch remotely and save big on your costs.

Not only can you find talent for less money but you can save on things like office space and furniture. You can also hire people for projects or tasks instead of hiring full-time staff you don’t have enough work for.

Remote working is a highly attractive job benefit. It can help you to attract more qualified people to your position. Adapting to remote working is also a great way to future proof your business. No doubt more and more people will want this as part of their contract.

Reporting is easier than ever

Reporting on projects can be hard work, time intense, and very stressful to complete. It’s easy to get sidetracked, misplace important data, or collate information from various sources. Online collaboration tools can reduce the work involved in creating reports particularly if you are responsible for a large team.

Many online tools have the ability to create reports on demand pulling from a wide range of sources. This process can be easily automated to remove all the pain of creating one manually. You can create detailed reports with the click of a button which frees your team up to work on more important work.

Track changes with ease

Track changes with ease

Certain online collaboration tools make it easy to track any changes made by your team. Managers can review the changes and compare them with previous versions. This is particularly useful when dealing with important documents. Tools like Microsoft 365 or G-Suite allow you to pull up older copies of documents, presentations, and spreadsheets.

If you’re unhappy with a change or need something to be reviewed you can tag an employee to draw their attention to it. Online tools let you make comments without making adjustments which makes it easier to collaborate on new ideas.

Conclusion

If your business is not already using online tools for collaboration then you are behind the times. The advances in technology have made it far more useful to work online than offline.

Your team will be able to do their work quicker, more creatively, and with collaboration at its core. No matter what business you are, working with online collaboration tools will increase productivity for the entire team.

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The Harmful Effects of Micromanagement

Negative effects of micromanagement

Every manager wants to work with productive and satisfied employees. However, this desire often leads them to walk the dangerous and harmful path of micromanagement.

This practice of excessive control over one’s colleagues often comes from a desire to do good, to help people perform and do things right. The unfortunate part is that it comes with a massive cost that is rarely worth it.

Of course, all people will benefit from being provided with opportunities for improvement. However, treading this path too often will cause people to become disengaged and unmotivated.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the dangers of micromanagement. We’ll take a look at how managers can let go of this harmful practice and learn to trust their employees, helping them perform better as a result.

Let’s dive right in.

Perils of micromanagement

The perils of micromanagement

Unfortunately, micromanagement achieves the exact opposite of what it intends. People who are excessively managed often feel an inappropriate amount of pressure, scrutiny, and influence, which ends up damaging their self-image and confidence.

Here are but a few of the things that micromanagement can cause:

Decreased productivity

Imagine the type of headspace you’d be in when you’re constantly scrutinized and provided with input on every minute detail of your work. Naturally, this leads to a lack of motivation and ownership. Make no mistake, chronic micromanagement doesn’t help employees work better. On the contrary, it dissuades them from making sound decisions and wanting to provide their valuable input in the work process.

More importantly, micromanagement stops people from learning. In a way, they become dependent on their management’s guidance and will rarely strive to become better at what they do.

Increased turnover

It’s no secret that micromanagement provides for a stressful environment. It’s corrosive to the management-employee relationship, and the continuous pressure that people are subject to will only slowly but surely push them towards quitting.

As a result, the entire momentum of a team will slowly dissipate, rendering all the effort to facilitate decision-making useless. This will eventually be reflected in the company’s bottom line.

Dwindling morale

It’s no secret that micromanagement has adverse effects on people’s morale. Think about it, humans strive to do work that they find meaningful or, at the very least, satisfying. Our jobs take up a third of our day and doing so while having to endure demeaning surveillance and scrutiny will only cause a nosedive in your team’s morale.

Less innovation

Less innovation

Innovation is a function of a diverse and inclusive environment. Whenever decisions come exclusively from the top, leaving the employees simply executing tasks, there’s no way your business will be able to provide its customers with creative, out-of-the-box solutions.

And if you add the continuous stress brought on by micromanagement, this is a perfect recipe for eradicating any inkling of innovation left in the team.

More stress and burnout

It’s no secret that being micromanaged is demeaning and frustrating. As a result, employees will grow to dislike their job with time. In the long run, this will invariably lead to excessive stress and burnout, which is by no means conducive to accountability and engagement.

Micromanagement is excessive control

Yes, micromanagement has a broad spectrum of harmful outcomes that will slowly but surely run your business into the ground. But on the bright side, it’s something that isn’t really that hard to address. You, as a business owner or manager, have enormous influence over the success of your company. Start by exploring the reasons you might feel compelled to micromanage your employees.

Fundamentally, what defines micromanagement as a phenomenon is excessive feedback combined with a lack of trust and support between the employee and the manager. Of course, there’s no switch for enabling trust. It takes time to nurture a meaningful professional relationship. And while this might take a while, it’s not really that complicated to achieve—show that you care, prove to your team that you have their back, and provide them with contextual, meaningful, and respectful feedback.

Micromanagement is also in part a manager’s conscious decision to keep employees in the dark regarding the rationale behind decisions, priorities, and goals. Naturally, this will only provide for an environment where people don’t feel the need to be engaged.

Fixing micromanagement for good

Fixing micromanagement for good

Now that we’ve explored the detrimental effects of micromanagement, let’s take a closer look at some surefire solutions for this phenomenon.

1. Create a company culture of trust and shared accountability

Organizations can eliminate micromanagement by creating a work culture where everyone owns the success of the organization. There’s very little hope for businesses that treat their workers like mere cogs in a machine, disconnected from the product of their work.

To instill a sense of shared ownership, companies should adopt a team-oriented approach to running a business. Inform people about what constitutes success and what is expected of every person when it comes to achieving these goals.

2. Focus on strengths

To combat micromanagement, leaders should have a clear understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of their colleagues.

The truth is that efficient collaboration is what makes companies successful—the synergy between people’s talents, strengths, and individual experiences. Micromanagers, on the other hand, only get in the way of this fruitful collaboration.

To help surface people’s strengths as early as possible, it’s essential to clarify your expectations for new hires. Let people know that you want them to shine without your supervision.

3. Manage performance continuously

The old school of performance management is too pragmatic and, honestly, kind of outdated in the modern business ecosystem. Reviewing goals and salaries once a year simply won’t cut it.

We live in newer and faster times—things change quickly, so do the needs of businesses and employees. It is absolutely essential to communicate and set clear goals for employees, as well as continuously adjust them as work and priorities shift.

The idea here is to learn to be dynamic in your communication and help employees direct their attention to the things that matter most at this particular time, which shouldn’t be confused with telling them what and how they should do it.

Focus on growth and development

4. Focus on growth and development

Organizations cannot grow when their people don’t grow. As mentioned in a Gallup article on employee development: “Employee development is the difference between a growing company and an increasingly irrelevant one.” However, to ensure that the people within an organization can go through meaningful professional growth, the leadership of a company should invest time and effort into a well-thought-out development plan.

A cohesive development strategy will broaden your employees’ expertise, which, in turn, will allow you to extend their responsibilities, making your business processes more efficient. However, it’s important to underline that delegating a broader spectrum of responsibilities to your employees does not mix with micromanagement. Managers should learn to trust their employees and be confident in their abilities in order for them to grow professionally.

5. Be mindful of what you recognize and reward

Micromanagement is a fundamentally corrosive practice that only aims to punish and undermine a person’s confidence without really recognizing a person’s strengths or decision-making. Turning away from this form of excessive control comes with learning to appreciate and reward people for good performance and sound decisions, even if they lead to an unfavorable outcome.

Old-school business environments tend to praise managers for a collective’s success, which is definitely what helps keep the micromanager phenomenon alive and well. Should organizations decide to leave this tendency behind, they must strive to focus on the people and reward their collaboration and individual contributions.

The bottom line

One thing is vital to underline—micromanagement harms the very core of what could be a collaborative and engaging work environment. To avoid this practice, managers should exercise clarity and transparency, as well as invest time and effort into their employees’ professional development. While micromanagement may have some short-term benefits, the consequences of this practice will often outweigh them significantly in the long run.