41: Redesign How Your Team Works

How many times have you thought, “I’m too busy to figure out a better way to do X” or “I’ll improve this process as soon as things settle down.” The reality is that things never really settle down and yet, if we don’t periodically pause to reflect and improve our processes, we’ll soon discover they’ve eroded into overly complicated, burdensome ways of working. This week, I walk through a real-life example of a process redesign session I led with one of my team coaching clients. It was an incredibly enlightening session that had them questioning the root of their activities, pushing back on previous assumptions, and designing completely new ways of working.   Get the free mini-guide to help you lead a session to rethink your ways of working with your team members.   Get the full guide with 10 productivity hacks and ways to streamline work when you join the Modern Manager community. In addition, get access to prior episode guides, guest bonuses and 30% off personality based coaching to help you better understand your preferences and learn new strategies to help you be a rockstar manager.   Subscribe to my newsletter to get episodes, articles and mini-guides delivered to your inbox.   Read the related blog article: How to Hack Your Team’s Productivity   Key Takeaways: You must “sharpen the saw” if you want to efficiently and effectively cut down the tree - one of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. If you don’t periodically pause and reflect on your processes, they will slowly begin to burden you. In just a few hours, your team can identify critical pain points in their current ways of working and generate solutions to reduce or eliminate those pains. Some solutions may have a high implementation cost such as a new technology platform while others may be low cost such as a shared template or checklist. When looking for opportunities to save time, consider what areas of work take up the most time already. It’s typically easier to save an hour when it’s a 10-hour activity compared to a 2-hour activity. Learn from others: how were these activities done at other places you worked? What practices or policies do other departments have that you could model off of?   Other Resources: Episode 19: Time Management Methods, Mindsets and Approaches