“All our productivity, leverage, and insight comes from being part of a community, not apart from it. The goal, I think, is to figure out how to become more dependent, not less.”
–Seth Godin
No matter how many productivity techniques one has mastered, the amount of work a lackadaisical team produces will more often than not supersede that of a single productive person. This is the reason why project managers all over the world put their utmost focus into figuring out strategies to boost their team’s productivity. This is also the reason why the Best OKR Software is employed by various companies to track their team’s productivity.
As we have just answered “why” boost team productivity, let us now explore the “how”. “Hard Work” may be the most cliched response to the question of “how”. But when we dig a little deeper into the perception of productivity and how is that it is attained, the answer seldom points to more hours of work. With high-performance companies as our guide, let us list six of their most result-oriented strategies (like the best OKR software they employed) that your company can deploy today to boost your productivity.
5 Steps to Boost a Team Productivity
1. Realistic goals for realistic results
We have talked about the importance of goals before. But no matter how much emphasis we put into it; it doesn’t seem enough. The goals are the standards that the company has to achieve. That being said, you as a leader or project manager should know what realistic and unrealistic goals are for your team. Methodologies such as OKR for employee engagement necessitate you to clearly define your goals (objectives). So, take a step back and set goals that are attainable for your team. 37% of project failures are attributed to the lack of well-defined goals based on a survey done by the Institute of Performance management. Software dedicated to OKR in contrast to excel-based OKR is our recommendation to tackle this issue.
2. Work environment is more than just a venue
Nobody can work to the fullest of their ability in an environment that they don’t like. A work environment that is dull and bleak does not motivate the employee’ minds in the right way. Encouraging socialization of coworkers, celebrating small victories, and having an aesthetically pleasing setting can go a long way in making a happy work environment. Implementing OKR for employee engagement for real-time planning is an efficient tool to coordinate work effectively to promote a well-aligned work environment.
3. Know your team as and when they are weak, when they are strong
As a leader of your team, it is important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each of the members and delegate the work accordingly. Always play on their strengths. Each member’s strengths can be used to support the other team member’s weaknesses. Also, make sure you take actual steps to help your team to turn their weaknesses into strengths. Giving your team members autonomy can help you understand their strengths better. Use the best OKR software you can find to provide clarity in roles and reinforce agency to better their performance.
4. Prioritize and execute
If you are looking for the most critical point in this article, we would recommend this one. Make clear to your employee what is important and what is not to your company. OKR tracking software can even help with this strategy. Give permission to your team to procrastinate on what is less important to them. If a particular meeting is less important to their own actual work, allow them not to be a part of it. Empower and guide your team to prioritize and execute. Ask for the Best OKR Software
5. Don’t let your team go to a sword fight with daggers
Let us suppose you created a happy working environment, set goals and encouraged your team in all the right ways but sent them unsupported without the right tool for the work. Then success is not likely. Success is unlikely even if your team is highly skilled and motivated. It is not only illogical but also unethical to expect your employees to work for the SLAs without the right tools.
6. Monitor progress. If you do not progress, you regress
We like to end the list with the most obvious strategy, which is to monitor your progress. Software like OKR for employee engagement and performance management software can efficiently manage your team’s progress and will help you understand where they are falling behind. Monitoring progress can help you to course-correct as and when the misalignment happens and prevent the redoing of the entire project after completing it incorrectly.
Few proven Ways to increase team productivity
Increasing productivity is directly linked with the engagement of an employee. Recent studies reveal that the organization’s purpose and vision drive higher employee retention. Let’s see how we can increase productivity.
- Communicating the vision: While the entire team has visibility to what they are working towards. This sense of awareness brings in motivation and engagement.
- Empower teams: By communicating and creating OKRs that enable them to achieve the organizational vision keeps them empowered and autonomous.
- Motivate the team to deliver: where there are constant check-ins and conversations around the OKRs, it motivates the team to deliver.
- Reviews and Feedbacks: Integrating OKRs With the OKRs retros and the 1:1 feedback provides guidance and direction to the team
- Celebrate wins: Short wins are even a great milestone with OKRs, keep celebrating to achieve higher results.
Conclusion
Boosting productivity does not mean forcing more hours of work on your team. It is upon you to find the right strategy as the six mentioned above to enable your team to boost their productivity. With a pristine dashboard to track progress and maintain goal alignment, Datalligence is ideal for making your team’s productivity increase. Get started now with the trial version of the Best OKR Software.
