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Collaboration Best Practices: What are your 3 tips for increasing workplace productivity?
Please list, in detail, 3 best practices that you would like to share with the Focus community on how to increase workplace productivity. High quality contributions will be included in an upcoming report on collaboration, and will receive significant promotion on the Focus network.
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10 Answers
1- Focus on roles, and give partial credit
The ability to freelance within a group is a powerful force in collaboration. It's not a democracy. Individuals need to have responsibility for final decisions, milestones and deliverables, but partial credit and acknowledgement is the grease that lubricates the process.
2- Remove barriers to communication but allow individual control
Give your staff a communication infrastructure (voice, email, community, IM, social, etc) to allow an easy flow of communication. One size doesn't fit all. The key is that communication needs to be easy. It's a connected world...embrace it.
3- Simplify the collection and curation of a shared knowledge base
Whever possible, employ tools and technology to create a framework that makes documentation and knowledge management part of the work process. If documentation needs to be added "after the fact," it most likely won't happen.
1) Unplug at regular (daily) intervals.
Shut off every non-essential application and focus all your energy and attention on priority tasks and projects. We instituted agency-wide Productivity Blocks (9-11 a.m. and 1-3 p.m.) in spring 2010 (after reading Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson), so I use those as my standard daily unplugged sessions.
2) Create and communicate in bursts.
I use the Productivity Blocks to create, and the other times to communicate. This enables me to give people and projects the full attention they deserve, while using my time as efficiently as possible.
3) Eliminate channel and sensory overload.
Be honest: How often do you check and respond to emails, or take a quick look at Facebook or Twitter to distract yourself from work or delay pushing through a challenging project? I do it all the time, probably dozens of times per day.
Why? Because they're always open and accessible, and it's like recess for the mind. Besides, 10 minutes here and there is harmless, right? Wrong! We're cheating ourselves and anyone who relies on our production.
I wrote a post in January 2011, "The Unplugged Experiment," which highlighted six steps to improve productivity: http://www.pr2020.com/page/the-unplugged-experiment
1. Encourage your employees - instead of focusing on what they are doing wrong focus on showing them what to do right and how to do it. When I was en employee and I was ostracized for mistakes, I wasn't excited about my job and I was not productive. On the other hand whenever someone (and unfortunately I can't say it was ever my boss) approached me in the spirit of helping me to do better, I was encouraged and excited about what I was doing and I know I was more productive. This holds no matter how stupid you think the mistake might be. The "stupid" thing is thinking that losing your cool with an employee will ever be constructive.
2. Eliminate competitive lines among employees and in turn create an environment where employees are rewarded for working together and helping one another. Just as I mentioned above, a collaborative environment where people are working together and helping one another to succeed within the organization will make it a more exciting place to work.
3. Make it fun! No one likes to work in an environment that isn't fun. Conversely if I have a place to go every day where I can have a lot of fun while I am earning a living, you bet I am going to be excited to go every day, happy while I am there and staying late to get the job done will be no big deal because it doesn't feel like work!
Hire the right people - Hire people that will fit the culture of productivity and don't compromise on this in any way. Pay once and cry once.....rather than accept cheap and cry and cry again and forever. Hire highly motivated and creative people that will take ownership for improvement.
Agree expectations - Be absolutely clear. Manage expectations. Manage perceptions. Agree how progress will be measured. Agree how communication will work between everyone. Everyone should be excited to see the numbers and not hiding from them.
Reward and recognize both individually and collectively - Everyone has their own way they want to be recognized. Know this about the team and feed it. Collectively be sure that the team is also recognized and rewarded. Work at both levels at all times
1. Know all your employees.
2. Know why your best employees are your best employees.
3. Hire and manage all employees based on items 1 and 2 above.
To summarize, it is all about people.
The wrong system with the wrong people -- a disaster
The wrong system with the right people -- not a disaster
The right system with the wrong people -- a struggle
The right system with the right people -- a success
1, 2 & 3; Treat your people as you would like to be treated - then find ways to treat them better.
First and foremost, create a culture - a real culture, with DNA-baked-in values, not just a new program - of trust, collaboration, and communication
Then, set and agree on goals and objectives, with clear paths and milestones
Critically, celebrate all wins - creatively, and genuinely
Esteem, respect and trust for/of others and self!
Mission and values that are clearly evolved and stated and embraced by all is crucial. To facilitate this, communications between groups must be nonjudgemental to remove any barriers to active comprehension/listening that is fault-free.
Build 3 separate collaboration focus areas:
1. Employee to employee
2. Supply chain employee to extended supply chain (integrate vendors into the process)
3. Sales related employee to extended customer (engage customers in the business collaboration).
Alright, the post below is long, but it provides detailed examples and insight on this type of 3 tiered collaboration.
It is in the form of ERP applications but the principles apply to collaboration in general. I simply applied it to my area of expertise in ERP applications.
ERP vs. ERP II vs. ERP III Future Enterprise Applications
http://www.r3now.com/erp-vs-erp-ii-vs-erp-iii-future-enterprise-applications
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