Are Your Teams Collaborating Enough to Squeeze Every Bit of Efficiency Out of Your Projects?
We are living in a generation where we’re being spoiled. Thanks to companies like Amazon, Apple and Google, we expect things to be delivered in a click without hassle. Products to be ready out of the box, and even predicted email responses!
To survive, companies must, therefore, keep pace with these customer expectations and keep their internal business processes lean and quick. In short, companies need to accelerate the digitisation of their business processes. Transparency in the workplace is an important prerequisite in achieving this.
The Role of Technology
I believe technology plays a pivotal role in enabling the collaboration and open communication needed for a large team to work efficiently.
Naturally, you can expect to be faced with friction from your team. Inertia with changing a habit should not come as a surprise. It’s much easier to stay in your comfort zone versus learning to use new technology or change the way you work.
Being Transparent
Once everyone is on board with your ‘transparency drive’, your company will be firing on all cylinders and very visibly change personality. It will be able to respond to things with greater speed, make more informed decisions and be able to grow organically with a much stronger foundation. Here’s how you can get started.
Transparency can mean many different things. For now, I‘m just going to cover communication and collaboration.
Project-centric chat channels versus one on one. Use of a tool that works for your organisation. Channels organised by project ensure that messages are directed to the right people, in the right context, fast.
Slack, true to its offering has a strapline that reads…
“The collaboration software that moves work forward.”
Visibility for the rest of the team means that everyone is kept in the loop about the project and response times are reduced.
More than this, the team (owners included) is accountable for their work. There’s no place to hide for those that may want to ;). You’ll find response rates visibly increase too!
Updates and deadlines with full ownership on any mini-tasks visible for all. It’s imperative your teams understand what ‘ownership’ means. Projects need to have full visibility by all members of a team, with tasks and updates dated and signed off. Updates from multiple sources are made in real-time without the need to save and send a document.
By using tools like Google Sheets for project management, the learning curve is also reduced due to familiarity. One BIG reason for inertia with adopting new working methods or software is this learning curve. Everyone knows Google Sheets/Excel, so half the battle is already won ;)
In today’s age of cloud computing and access to free and secure solutions, moving your team over to documents or sheets on the cloud will give rise to a level of transparency never experienced before. Knowing who is responsible for exactly what and when, at your fingertips, makes it far easier and quicker to follow up and make decisions.
I cannot overstate enough the importance of document collaboration; it is a relatively easy gamechanger for any organisation, particularly if it can be implemented in a way that doesn’t require a steep learning curve.
Extreme accountability and communication are needed for better teamwork and results.
With the right approach and clearly stated rules of engagement, your teams can benefit from this not quite so new way of working.
