A common denominator in strong teams is efficiency. Below are three tangible ways to build a more productive and efficient team.
Eat The Frog
Numerous studies reveal that a person’s brain is most productive during the morning hours. Knowing this to be the case, our recommendation is to designate an hour each day dedicated to individual productivity. Establish a team-wide hour each day to get your most challenging tasks out of the way. Treat this hour as sacred and avoid disturbing each other for any reason.
This productivity hack is sometimes referred to as “eating the frog”, meaning, whichever activity you are dreading the most is probably the one you need to complete during this hour. Once your team realizes how quickly they can get tasks out of the way, this will become their favorite hour of the day.
Pro Tip: We recommend choosing a timeslot at the beginning of each day, like 9am-10am.
Communicate Priorities Early and Often
Nothing kills productivity faster than the presence of conflicting, confused, or unstated priorities. Failure to keep “the main thing, the main thing” and communicate it effectively to your team impacts team morale and keeps you from making progress. Establish a centralized list of project priorities and communicate those to your team early and often. Make this list achievable and visible. Don’t just speak it, go old-school, print it and pass it around. Finally, be sure to reinforce your team priorities regularly via scheduled check-in meetings.
Pro Tip: Divide your priority list into two categories labeled “strategic” and “tactical.”
Use a Project Management Tool
We know you’re well-intentioned, but those long email strings you’re forwarding to your team are not making their lives easier. Email was never designed to be a project management tool. There’s a reason why businesses large and small depend on tools like Teamwork, Asana, Basecamp, and ClickUp to manage projects. Do your ministry team a favor and invest in an entry-level project management tool. There are great tools out there that are free or cost only pennies per day. These apps will centralize all your project communication, collaboration, and assets in one place.
Pro Tip: Make sure your team gets fully trained on how to utilize any new software tools.
Investing in new ways to work efficiently and communicate effectively is a key step in caring for your team members. Gaining efficiency not only increases productivity, it bonds your team around regular communication, common goals, and tools. Also, the methods proposed above will train your employees on how you expect them to operate when it’s their turn to run a project or program.