The last couple of years have been challenging for business. In particular, the accelerated policy of remote work has been met with mixed reactions and results by different business teams and individual employees. The increased sense of insecurity and instability has taken a toll on all of us as well. Some companies have been hit harder than others, leading to lowered morale and ultimate declines in team productivity.
If your company has been one of those less fortunate ones, not all is lost. Motivation, morale, and productivity are not constants and can definitely be boosted when the team leader puts enough effort into it.
In this article, I’ve put together five practices that have proven to be extremely effective in enhancing the productivity of my own teams as well as the teams of the startups I’ve supported over the years.
Promote Ownership and Pride
As a team is composed of many different individuals, boosting team productivity comes down to encouraging each member. It’s no secret that people who take pride in their work are more motivated and thus more effective. When you care about your job and responsibilities, you will want to complete your tasks sooner and with higher quality to see the immediate outcomes and long-term results.
One way to ensure that your team members are proud of their work is to insert a sense of ownership in them. Although you are the company leader, running a business is not a one-person show. Your employees need to know that you entrust with them not only the execution of specific tasks but also the ideation, development, management, completion, and monitoring of projects. Having a higher level of responsibilities is a good thing for employees, at least the high-value ones, and these are exactly the employees you want to have on your team. Also, in your team you should always have people who know how to listen and are ready to engage in the art of compromise. It is very important that people are fixated not only on their own opinion A and are able to listen to an alternative point of view.
Another thing you can do to create a sense of pride and fulfillment is to regularly check up on your team members. Whether you opt for quarterly work satisfaction surveys (in case you run a bigger company) or in-person meetings (in the event of a smaller team), asking the right questions is key. This shows you if your employees are happy with their work and helps you understand how to retain this satisfaction. Alternatively, it will demonstrate what you can do to change their dissatisfaction.
Support Communication and Cooperation
Another prerequisite for high team productivity is maintaining a conducive company culture that promotes open communication and ongoing collaboration—both within and between departments. While a healthy dose of in-company competition is a good thing for productivity, your employees also need to understand that they are a team. In order words, they should feel that they all play a role in the company’s success.
As always, installing any value in a team starts from the top. As a leader, it is your responsibility to be open and honest with your employees, offer your support, and ask for help as needed. While businesses generally do a good job building communication and cooperation within teams, it’s common for these values to be absent between different departments. However, this piece is just as crucial. As an example, you can’t have your marketing team be productive without support from the development team and vice versa.
Implement an OKR Model
Another concrete step you can take to enhance your team productivity is to adopt the OKR model. OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results and consists of a business model that connects the higher, company-level goals with the performance and responsibilities of each individual employee. The core values in this model ensure that both the company and team members have a single focus and mission, clear roadmap, and specific tasks based on prioritization. Having clear, measurable objectives and regularly tracking progress on them is an integral part of the process.
Companies that have implemented the OKR model report increased transparency, improved communication, and demonstrated better use of limited resources. All of these lead to enhanced productivity within teams. This business model has proven its potential, which is why giant companies like Google, Intel, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Oracle have been using it.
Hold Regular Standups
Communication, both within the OKR model and the agile methodology adopted by many tech companies, is key. Most business leaders recognize the importance of communication, but often fail to take concrete steps to promote and improve it across their team. However, there is a very simple and straightforward way to do this.
I always recommend for startups to have regular, preferably daily standups. If you are a relatively small team, allocate 10-15 minutes a day at the same time every day. This shouldn’t require any previous preparation. Simply go around the room and ask every team member to list three things: 1) What they worked on yesterday, 2) What they are working on today, and 3) Any challenges or blockers they might be facing. If you have a bigger company, you can have daily standups within each team and a company-wide meeting every one or two weeks.
While this should not take more than 15 minutes a day, the benefits can be sizable. Seeing and speaking with your team members on a daily basis helps build a sense of belonging and team building—especially if you work remotely. Moreover, sharing obstacles will ensure that problems get resolved as soon as they arise and don’t hold anyone back. The combined result is better individual and team productivity.
Embrace Flexibility
Both inside and outside the tech space, the business world has become increasingly dynamic with major changes happening every day. You cannot have a successful, productive team if your company or employees are stuck on doing things a certain way. Flexibility is key to responding efficiently to any exogenous or endogenous change.
Therefore, another value to incorporate into your company culture is staying adaptable to an ever-changing environment. Implementing the OKR model and agile methodology will help in this area.
Final Words
While team productivity is one of the critical factors for the success and growth of any type of business, don’t get discouraged if you have noticed a recent decline in employee motivation and performance. Remember that this is reversible. Give these five tips a try and let me know how they worked for you.