Smart Teams: How to Move from Friction to Flow and Work Better Together

Description

Learn how your team can communicate, congregate and collaborate more effectively than ever Smart Teams will help your team to go beyond personal productivity to build a culture where productivity thrives. This book shows you how to turn around the unproductive team behaviours that create friction. You’ll learn the ‘superproductive’ behaviours that promote flow and the most impactful productivity principles for working better together. Smart Teams shares the practical guidelines and key skills you need to lead a productive, cooperative team. Email noise, unproductive meetings and poorly organised projects can stifle creativity and disrupt everyone’s workflow. A culture that isn’t productive results in long hours, more stress, and a lack of balance. But by raising awareness of how our behaviours impact our work and our colleagues, you build the desire and capability to change within your team. This book is packed with tips, guidelines and expert insights for leaders and managers at any level. Foster a culture of ‘superproductivity’Create a set of Smart Team principles to guide cooperationRun fewer, shorter and more effective meetingsCollaborate more productively on projectsReduce urgency, interruptions and email noise People want their work to matter, they want to make an impact and they want to do it all with a healthy work-life balance. Productivity is the key to making it all happen! Smart Teams shows you how to implement the culture shift that will allow your team to flourish. This book is part of the Smart Productivity series, helping readers find practical solutions for better managing their time, energy and focus. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Contents About the author Acknowledgements How to use this book Introduction Can you relate? Productivity problems at the team level We create friction rather than flow Part I Moving from friction to flow Chapter 1 Enabling productive flow Productivity friction Poor productivity behaviours Friction vs flow cultures Beyond personal productivity Level 1: DISRUPTIVE Level 2: PASSIVE Level 3: PRODUCTIVE Level 4: COLLABORATIVE Level 5: SUPERPRODUCTIVE chapter 2 Qualities of a smart team We are purposeful We are mindful We are punctual We are reliable chapter 3 Changing team behaviours Get specific to change behaviours What is a productivity principle? Generating principles for your team Flipping problems into principles Make this a priority for your team Part II Working better together chapter 4 Communicate: make less noise Email overload 1. Disruption and interruption 2. Inbox bottlenecks 3. Stress and overwhelm Alternatives to email Four communication tools Have a conversation Call a meeting Send an email Share a post A more thoughtful approach to communications Planning effective communications (why) Writing effective communications (what) The three ingredients of good communication The SSS approach to emails Sending effective communications (who) Noise reduction strategies Reply with care Don’t be a copy cat Use distribution lists carefully Get up and talk to someone chapter 5 Congregate: make meetings count What’s wrong with our meeting culture? 1. Too much time in meetings 2. Poorly planned and poorly run meetings 3. Poor meeting behaviours Let’s aim for 100 per cent fewer meetings 25 per cent fewer meetings 25 per cent shorter meeting durations 25 per cent fewer participants 25 per cent less time wasted Make your meetings more effective Plan meetings the right way around The 5W approach to planning meetings 1. Why 2. What 3. Who 4. Where 5. When Running an awesome meeting Mindful interruptions Are all agenda items the same? 1. Creation 2. Deliberation 3. Delegation 4. Presentation Focus your meeting with an agenda Make online meetings work chapter 6 Collaborate: make projects great Alignment, agreement and awareness 1. Alignment 2. Agreement 3. Awareness Project collaboration: make them visible 1. Start with WHY 2. Get clear about WHAT 3. Decide WHO needs to be involved 4. Work out WHEN The best tool for the job Project scheduling tools Mind maps Project board or work breakdown structure tools Checklist Useful, usable and used chapter 7 Key skills for effective cooperation Managing urgency Most urgency is false Reducing urgency for others Negotiating urgency As a manager, do you conduct or cushion urgency? Developing an active mindset Negotiating our workloads Manage expectations using SSSH Negotiating using the four variables Delegating in the right way Part III Building a smart team culture chapter 8 Creating a more productive culture Create ripples Create a micro-culture Working with those outside our micro-culture Control how you work Lead your direct team Influence the wider organisation Educate external stakeholders The role of leadership on this journey Leading a productive culture 1. First, do no harm 2. Lead from the front 3. Remember that you are always on show 4. Create projects for the team to rally around chapter 9 Some productivity projects Project 1: Productivity principles Project 2: Interruption reduction Project 3: Dial down the urgency Project 4: Meeting diet Project 5: Meeting agenda Project 6: Turn down the noise Project 7: Pull versus push Project 8: The projects project Postscript EULA