Work pressure is a constant in today’s workaholic culture. Indeed, formerly 40-hour workweeks have gone beyond 60. Not for all, naturally. But despite Sweden’s six-hours workday, most places still go for extra hours.
While there’s clear work pressure resulting from working 12 hours a day, this is not the only source. Numerous other stressors have an equally strong influence. Because everything is changing at a faster rate. You need to be swift and learn new things quickly and simultaneously.
Work time is a salad that mixes productivity with breaks. Undeniably, breaks can make you more productive, yet many of them eventually turn out to be ineffective or simply unnecessary. By default, work time is expected to be productive. Markedly, either by doing more or better or both. So far, these are the two main approaches to boosting productivity. And most types of work require a mix of the two.
Team strengths are instrumental to boosting productivity and the success of your business. By playing team strengths, you increase team trust and team engagement.
Team strengths should be your focus even before building the team. Especially if you use team goals to target objectives. Team strengths are what a good leader uses to get the team through.
Team dynamics helps you play team roles to your advantage. By team roles, we mean Belbin’s team roles. To be sure, they are based on decades of observation. Teams observed over long periods of time in order to determine how teams work. Without a doubt, there is value in decades of insight. In light of so much research, team roles work to explain how teams work together. Being that, they provide a perspective in how to build teams. Furthermore, they can explain why things go bad with teams.
Each of us has a set of favorite roles. What’s more, we can shift from one role to another. Owing to our unique makeup and personality. Hence, getting a balanced team together is tricky. At the same time, it is easier than you’d expect. We’ve explored the general theories in the first part of this team dynamics series
Micromanaging derives from positive traits such as a proactive attitude and attention to detail. These are not bad to start with, but they become toxic when combined with an obsession for control, and inability to trust others.
Micromanaging other people is a difficult job. You end up doing a big and important part of your team’s work and get hated for it. In this article, you will find out to what extent you are micromanaging your team, why you shouldn’t be, and how to stop it.
Workplace productivity is like water in the desert. Hard to gather, quick to evaporate. From time to time, you can see an oasis. Abundant productivity once you reach the mirage, that is.
Surely there are many ways to boost productivity.
Team dynamics are, in essence, processes and behaviors transpiring among team members. Team dynamics have a profound, albeit subtle impact. They influence both team performance and overall productivity. Indeed, the key dynamics of any team stem from roles and responsibilities. But it goes deeper than that. This guide covers team dynamics at length. To that end, we will follow both theory and practice over a series of articles. Even more, each article in this series offers actionable tips.
Meetings are the least popular work-related activity. And meetings cost huge sums in lost productivity. That’s because meetings are the dread of any organization. Sure, some people argue that one-on-one meetings are awesome. While one-on-ones are mentoring, and loved, regular meetings are often considered torture. Most often, torture by boredom.
Boring meetings happen for a reason. Meetings often lack organization, purpose and structure. Your team would rather do some work instead. Or would rather finish early on Friday.
Any company should care about improving diversity: it accounts for success. And it will develop your image as an employer. Millennials in particular choose who to work with rather than for. And it matters who you are.
Boost productivity with breaks, it sounds counterintuitive. After all, productivity means that you are doing effective work. And no effective work happens on a break. In fact, this is a limited view on productivity.
In the past, more hours of work had a direct effect on production. More man-hours, meant more manufactured goods. The relation between time and the items produced was obvious.
Yet even then people had the right idea about productivity. Allegedly, Ford shocked the world by adopting the 40-hour workweek. And it worked! Even thought it made no sense at the time, it boosted productivity.
