Why Complex Task Management Tools Don’t Work For Everyone?
There are many instances where companies subscribed to “do-it-all” productivity tools thinking that the team would love using it and a month or two down the line, everyone was back to their original ways of working.
Not only does this result in a lot of money going down the drain but it deters the entire team from trying out a new, simpler, and effective tool in the future as well. They would only think, “How would this tool be any different? Might as well skip trying to understand how it might help us.”
Brutask has compiled a list of five reasons why those complex task management tools may not be working for you and your team.
1. Adaptation becomes difficult
Your team might be working with simpler tools or methods earlier like maintaining a physical to-do list, using Excel with basic functions, email, or Slack.
If you introduce a complex task management tool, they might try to learn its functions. But because of it being a too difficult change as compared to their usual way of working, they either gravitate back to their original ways or worse yet, they make use of this tool in conjunction with their earlier ways of working.
What would this look like? For example, they allot a task to their colleague in the tool. Because they are not quite sure how to ensure their colleague receives this notification or has checked it, they also send an email. Noticing something here? This just led to overwork instead of simplifying things.
2. Takes too much time
Complex work management tools often come with a steep learning curve. When your employees already have too much on their plate, they look at this learning as an additional piece of work.
Since learning this provides them with no immediate return, they either procrastinate on learning or just learn the bare minimum which serves no purpose at all. What good is a tool if it has hundreds of features but the people using it are only utilizing three or four of them?
3. Unnecessary information overload
In the race of making an all-in-one tool, many features and functionalities are clubbed that may serve no usefulness to many on the team.
For example, an accountant may not need all the different features regarding project management, CRM, sales support, and so on. For this person, there’s unnecessary information overload. He may also get hundreds of notifications in a day which would be of no concern to him.
In such a scenario, this information overload deters him from even checking those notifications. He might go on to miss an important one because of it.
4. Would increase work
When your team starts working on multiple tools because they don’t like the complexity of a particular tool, it diminishes the efficiency and productivity of the team. How?
Let’s suppose Sam wanted an important document to be ready for tomorrow’s meeting. He assigned a task in the new complex tool the team adopted. Now, he’s thinking to himself, “What if he misses this notification? What if he doesn’t understand the task properly?” So he goes ahead and calls the concerned person and explains him everything.
Not only does it waste time and leads to over-work but what if the person forgets working on the document or doesn’t know that the document is needed tomorrow just because this entire conversation’s content was not documented?
This can lead to errors, confusions and misunderstanding. Wouldn’t a simple tool be much more effective in this scenario?
5. Collaboration goes amiss
One of the biggest expectations when you subscribe to a task management tool is better collaboration. What happens when that goes for a toss? When your team doesn’t like working on that complex tool, the one major drawback that happens is — information goes out of the system.
How? Instead of working on the tool and making sure everything is there, people would rather call or relay the message in-person. Accountability, documentation and ultimately collaboration is hampered. And worse yet, as there is no history of information, whenever an issue pops up, you can’t know where things went wrong or when important information wasn’t communicated properly.
How does Brutask solve all these problems?
When our entire team was forced to shift from working in our office to working at home due to the pandemic, we felt the need of a task management tool. We explored many options but the one thing we found lacking was — simplicity.
So, instead of facing all the issues that come along with the adoption of a complex task management tool, we thought of developing a simple to-do list tool. And so came along Brutask. Today, our entire team swears by this application that lets you add tasks, collaborate with the team, supervise your team, and prioritize.
Because it is simple, it is effective. Check out the wonders of it by subscribing to Brutask today: https://brutask.com/