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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
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 cooperation * Run fewer, shorter and more effective meetings * Collaborate more productively on projects * Reduce 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.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
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
Are you selfish?
Are you selfless?
Or do you serve?
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
Why this?
Why them?
Why now?
Why here?
CHAPTER 4:
Communicate: make less noise
Email overload
Alternatives to email
Four communication tools
A more thoughtful approach to communications
Planning effective communications (why)
Writing effective communications (what)
Sending effective communications (who)
Noise reduction strategies
CHAPTER 5:
Congregate: make meetings count
What's wrong with our meeting culture?
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
Running an awesome meeting
Mindful interruptions
Are all agenda items the same?
Focus your meeting with an agenda
Make online meetings work
CHAPTER 6:
Collaborate: make projects great
Alignment, agreement and awareness
Project collaboration: make them visible
The best tool for the job
CHAPTER 7:
Key skills for effective cooperation
Managing urgency
Developing an active mindset
Negotiating our workloads
Delegating in the right way
PART III:
Building a smart team culture
CHAPTER 8:
Creating a more productive culture
Create ripples
The role of leadership on this journey
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
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 3
Table 3.1: examples of flipped problems in meetings
Chapter 4
Table 4.1: promise versus reality of email
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1: friction versus flow
Figure 1.2: from disruptive to superproductive
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1: smart team qualities
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1: smart team outcomes
Part 2
Figure I: why, what, who, when and where
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1: communication tools
Figure 4.2: questions to ask when communicating
Figure 4.3: the SSS approach to emails
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1: don’t overfill your meeting jug
Figure 5.2: the 5Ws to planning a meeting
Figure 5.3: meeting agenda types
Figure 5.4: a meeting agenda template
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1: elements of collaboration
Figure 6.2: the why, what, when and who of projects
Figure 6.3: which tool, when?
Figure 6.4: a mind map
Figure 6.5: work breakdown structure in MS Planner
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1: developing an active mindset
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1: strategies for organisational levels
Guide
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
About the author
Acknowledgements
How to use this book
Introduction
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Postscript
End User License Agreement
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Like Smart Work, Smart Teams is an insightful, practical way to accelerate and step-change your productivity. The ability to lead a productive team is so critical in the complex, ever-evolving nature of the way we work, with diverse teams in diverse environments. Dermot has again provided a brilliant, practical and insightful way to take your team or organisation to another level.
— Mark Bateson, Operations Director, Miele Australia
Dermot's work on personal productivity has had a significant impact on my ability to stay organised and in control in a fast-paced and agile work environment. Smart Teams is packed with practical tools and techniques you can use right now to lead more effective and collaborative teams … essential reading for those that want to expand their leadership impact.
— Richard Burns, General Manager, Customer Experience & Technology, Aussie Home Loans
The saying ‘if you want to go fast go alone, but if you want to go far go together’ echoes through this great book. Personal productivity is like learning to walk, team productivity is like learning to run.
— Matt Church, Founder, Thought Leaders Global and author of Amplifiers
Dermot Crowley is Australia's leading thinker and writer in the domain of productivity. His first book, Smart Work, taught us how to work productively in the digital age. Smart Teams is a breakthrough body of work that teaches us how to create cultures of productivity in our teams and organisations. Implementing the strategies around meetings will give you your life back, and the rest of the book will transform the impact of your team and business. Critical reading for anyone who wants their team to be more effective.
— Peter Cook, author of The New Rules of Management
Smart Teams is perfect for the clever and busy professional who wants to help create flow rather than friction. It is packed full of practical advice to not only increase your own productivity but to create a superproductive culture. This book is a must-read for anyone in corporate trying to do more with less.
— Gabrielle Dolan, author of Stories for Work: The Essential Guide to Business Storytelling
In Smart Teams, Dermot Crowley takes the individual productivity concepts introduced in Smart Work to an entirely different level. The game theory productivity concept is brilliant, illustrating how to work with others in a way that enhances not only your own productivity, but that of the entire team. This book is an invaluable resource, filled with practical insights and ideas for immediate implementation to improve organisational productivity.
— Chris Galloway, Managing Director, Morningstar Investment Management, Asia Pacific
In business today, productivity growth is fundamental. Dermot Crowley's first book, Smart Work, is an incredible asset for every individual — a must read. With Smart Teams, Dermot has done it again. He is skilled at creating simple, practical illustrations and instructions that bring to life the opportunities and solutions for teams to become more productive and for their organisations to grow as a result. Find time to read it.
— David Smith, Managing Director, Diageo Australia
The Smart Work approach to personal productivity helped myself and my team to claw back some time and sanity. Smart Teams will now allow us to go to the next level and create a culture where productivity can flourish. A smart book that is relevant to any busy team in the modern workplace.
— Angus Sullivan, Executive General Manager, Retail Sales & Service, Commonwealth Bank of Australia
This revised edition first published in 2023 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd Level 4, 600 Bourke St, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia
First published as Smart Teams: How to Work Better Together in 2018 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd
© John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 2023
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
ISBN: 978-1-394-19130-7
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.
Microsoft, Project, Office, OneNote, Outlook, and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Cover design by WileyCover image © suyoto suyoto/Shutterstock
DisclaimerThe material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.
About the author
Dermot Crowley is a productivity author, speaker, trainer and thought leader. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and moved to Sydney, Australia, in 1993.
He has more than twenty-five years' experience working in the productivity training industry and has run his own business, Adapt Productivity, since 2002.
His passion for helping workers, leaders and teams to work in a more productive and balanced way has led him to work with many leading organisations around the World such as the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, PepsiCo, Walmart, Citi, Westpac, Deloitte, Allens Linklaters, Allianz and KPMG.
Dermot lives with his family in sunny Sydney. When not training or writing, he can be found in the kitchen practicing his other passion — cooking.
Acknowledgements
Book number two, like the dreaded second album, has been both incredibly fulfilling and more than a little challenging. Could I do it again? Was I a one-hit wonder? Was Smart Work even a hit? All of those doubts crept in at night, but of course there were lots of people behind the scenes to support me and keep me on track.
This is now a revised edition of book number two! As with my first book Smart Work, we believe that the lessons in Smart Teams are critical to working productively in the hybrid workplace that we now work in, and it was worth refreshing to ensure it maintained its relevance
First, a huge thank you to my family, who support me and create the space for me to do audacious things like write books. Finn, you inspire me and give my life meaning. Here's to many more mountains to climb!
To my family in Ireland. Not quite James Joyce, but not bad for a Dub! Thank you for always believing in me and talking me up to all at home.
To Vera, who has helped me to believe in the positive power of my message. You reflect the best version of me. Thank you.
To my team at Adapt — Tony, Chauntelle and Matt. I look forward to bringing Smart Teams to life with all of you. Thank you for supporting me while I wrote it.
To all of the Thought Leaders family. I am constantly inspired and driven by your amazing company. A special mention to my mentors, Matt and Pete. I would never have started this journey without your encouragement. Matt, focus is coming!
A big thank you to all of the amazing experts who contributed to this book through interviews. It was a blast, and I learned so much. Thank you, Colin, Matt, Donna, Lynne, Harley, Paul, Scott and Stephen.
Finally, to my Smart Support Team. Thank you to Kelly for project managing me and helping me transform a pile of rubbish into an elegant state. To the team at Wiley, thank you for trusting me again. Chris and Jem, it was great to work with you again. You make my words better. And to Lucy, who fought hard for a great idea.
And mostly, thanks to you, the reader. That you have invested your money and time in my words is humbling. I hope you find the return is great.
How to use this book
Like Smart Work, this book has been written with a practical focus. I want you and your team to do something different after reading this. I am sure you have the same aspirations, but I am also sure this is not the first business book you have bought. Did you implement your learnings from those other books as well as you had hoped? Maybe not. So here is my advice on implementing Smart Teams and starting to turn around your experience with the issues we will discuss.
Read it cover to cover, or flick through to the sections that grab your interest. Then try to identify the productivity issue that, if resolved, would have the greatest positive impact for your team. Focus on that first, and create a project to implement it straight away.
In chapters 2 and 3, I outline a process to help you and your team to decide on the most impactful productivity principles to focus on when working together. Make the time to do this exercise — it will have a real impact. In chapter 9, I propose a range of simple projects that you could implement with your team over the next couple of months to create and sustain change. I don't ask you to do them all — just pick one and implement it.
You will invest precious time and energy in reading this book. I know that is hard when you are so busy. You will then need to invest time working with your team to improve how you communicate, congregate and collaborate. Again, not easy when you are busy. But that is the point. You need to spend time to make time! Don't waste the initial time spent reading this book by doing nothing with it.
Buying this book was your first investment. Reading it your second. But implementing the recommended projects will be your third and most lucrative investment.
Introduction
Since publishing Smart Work I have had many conversations with clients about the best way to increase productivity across a whole team, or across an entire organisation. Individually, they loved the Smart Work approach, but they wanted to apply the concepts in a sustained way to everyone involved. This is far more complex than helping an individual increase their personal productivity.
Helping individuals to work more productively through a set of systems, processes and habits is a crucial starting point for increased team productivity. But to boost productivity across many workers in a sustained way we need to go beyond personal productivity and examine how we work together.
We need to look closely at how leaders, managers and team members communicate, congregate and collaborate, and ensure that everyone understands the impact that our poor work behaviours have on others' productivity. Finally, our leaders must take responsibility for creating a culture and an environment that will allow productivity to flourish in the long term.
No matter how great our personal productivity, and how good our intentions, every time we interact with others there is a risk that we will drag their productivity down, or that they will drag ours down.
This happens because we are busy, under pressure, tired and sometimes a bit lazy. We don't intentionally set out to hijack or kill our colleagues' productivity. Our work is complex, and we are human. And as we push hard to achieve our goals and deal with the everyday issues that come our way, we can leave a trail of collateral damage in our wake.
This is now especially true as many organisations move to hybrid and remote working models in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. As many of us moved to working remotely or working between home and the office, the volume of email noise and meetings only increased, while our ability to collaborate effectively became more challenging.
Can you relate?
I saw this first hand at an off-site team day for one of my key tech clients last year. I was presenting to the leadership team and their top 60 managers. I had been working with the executive team for several months, and this was the start of an initiative to drive the productivity principles to the next level.
It being a tech company, they all received a high volume of email. Most managers were getting 300 to 400 (some over 500) emails per day. This ludicrous volume of email was causing stress, missed deadlines and lots of rework, and was diverting the managers from the important work they should have been focusing on.
Midway through my presentation, their CEO stood up and asked, ‘How many of you feel like you are getting hammered by emails?’ Almost everyone put their hand up.
So the CEO said, ‘Think about this. Last month we were all at the half-yearly conference for three days. How many of you noticed that our email volume dropped to about a third of the normal level over those three days?’ Again, most raised their hand. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘Connect the dots for me. What happened there?’
Finally, someone in the audience said, ‘We were all in a room together, so we weren't sending emails to each other. So our email volume fell.' The penny dropped for everyone in the room: when it came to email volume, they were creating their own problems.
In their heads, they had been blaming external forces — their US head office, customers, suppliers. Everyone but themselves. But the reality was that they themselves had created an email culture that had gone wild.
Email was the preferred communication method, even to the person at the next desk. Everyone was CC'd on everything. ‘Reply All’ conversations were rife, sometimes generating 30 to 40 emails for each individual, even though the conversations were relevant to few of them. No wonder their inboxes were overflowing!
Many of those managers had already implemented the Smart Work system to manage their own productivity, but how could they possibly keep up when faced with the deluge of emails in their inboxes each day? How could they be expected to focus on the right stuff when they were drowning in the wrong stuff?
Personal productivity training was a part of the solution, but the greater need for the group was a shift in culture. A move away from the rampant email culture that had evolved over the years to one that used email in a more thoughtful way. A shift away from the ‘death by meeting’ culture to a more balanced one, with fewer meetings, involving fewer people, taking less time and achieving better outcomes. A shift away from a culture of complicated collaboration that just frustrated people, to one where great things were achieved when they worked together.
Having said that, this was a highly successful global organisation, so they must have been doing lots right. And they were. They got stuff done. But the costs of a less-than-effective productivity culture were high, including long hours, stress, lack of balance and high turnover.
The culture of our team and organisation often works against our efforts to be productive — and our leaders can be a part of the problem.
Productivity problems at the team level
Smart Teams is not about task lists or zero inboxes. While these are critical at the individual level, they are not the focus here. This book looks at how we can work together to solve the common issues that challenge our productivity daily.
There are four key productivity issues that we face when we work together in complex environments such as the modern corporate office.
1. Information overload
Hopefully you are not dealing with the extreme volumes of email faced by the managers in the earlier story, but I bet you are not too far from this! How many emails do you get each day? Fifty or sixty? Not too bad. One hundred? That is a bit harder to manage. Two hundred? Now you are feeling the pressure. More than that and you are officially drowning!
What started out as a simple, useful communication tool between academics has become a nightmare for many workers today. Don't get me wrong, I love email — just not too much of it. And it is not just email that is overloading us with information. Each day we juggle numerous other information systems, including instant messaging, phone calls, voice mail, collaboration tools, customer management systems and project dashboards.
We simply have too much information these days, and it’s sometimes difficult to turn this information into intelligence.
Studies have suggested that our stress levels start to elevate when we receive more than 50 emails daily — and that applies to most people I work with! We need to reduce the volume of emails and other information we send and receive. Most of it is just noise, and the signal is getting lost.
While taking advantage of the speed of communication and the easy access to information that tools such as email provide, we need to get back to a more focused way of working.
2. Too much time in unfocused meetings
Meetings are an important way for us to get work done, working with and through other people. But for some of us, especially senior managers, they have taken over our whole week, leaving us with little time to get anything else done.
These can be resource-heavy collaborations during which only one or two people in the meeting are actually doing the work, while everyone else watches on. There is an old Irish joke that sums this up well: ‘How many workers does it take to dig a hole? Six. One to dig the hole and five to stand around and watch.’ Meetings should not be a spectator sport. If you are not a player, should you even be there?
If not managed well, meetings can have adverse consequences. Your workday should strike a healthy balance between time working with others and time getting your own stuff done. If you are in meetings most of the day, you will have little time for your own work and your productivity will drop. When you compensate for this imbalance by working longer hours, your stress levels rise, relationships get frayed and the quality of your work drops as you miss deadlines or are constantly rushing to get stuff done on time.
Meetings often take more time than is necessary. An hour, 60 minutes, is a nice, round timeframe. But isn't 30 minutes just as neat, and potentially more productive? Parkinson's Law states that the work will always expand to fill the time available. We tend to schedule meeting durations based on habit rather than need.
Finally, most meetings are poorly planned. Too many participants come unprepared and waste everyone's time by preparing during the meeting. Changing this culture gives us a great opportunity to boost team productivity without too much effort.
3. Distractions and interruptions
Surely after the hours we have spent wading through those emails and listening intently in those meetings we deserve a bit of time to focus on getting some of our own work done at our desk? But no, even there we are bombarded by distractions and interruptions.
The truth is most of us are our own worst enemy here. We become victims of email, and of our teammates. We don't bother to turn off our email alerts, because we quite like to see what is coming into our overflowing inbox. We like the distraction, yet complain bitterly about it to others. We often fail to manage physical interruptions too. People interrupt us and we all too often just let it happen. So when we do have some time to focus on important tasks, we often don't take advantage of it.
4. Unnecessary urgency
Have you ever made it to the end of a busy day feeling like you never actually got near what you had set out to do? Was today filled with urgent issues, requests and interruptions? If that has become the norm for you, welcome to the club!
Many people in today's busy workplace are driven by a sense of urgency. Not by what is important, but by what is most insistent and pressing. Urgency is a great motivator to action, and many of us are geared towards this way of working, deferring important tasks until they hit a deadline and become urgent.
What worries and frustrates me more than anything is that most organisations too are driven by urgency. People often tell me they work in reactive organisations or reactive industries. And everyone accepts this as normal. It may be the current reality, but it does not have to be accepted by leadership or their teams.
In a culture that accepts urgency as the legitimate driver of work priorities, people are expected to react. And react they do — to their boss, to customers, to colleagues and to themselves. But this desire for a quick turnaround comes at a cost.
A reactive approach to work reduces the quality of our outputs, causes unnecessary stress and reduces motivation on a grand scale. Our busyness may make us feel productive, but being busy is not the same as being productive.
It is my experience that industries are not reactive by nature, and neither are organisations. It is people and their work styles that cause urgency and reactivity every day of the working week (and weekends if you are especially reactive).
The increase we have experienced in email noise, number of meetings, distractions and urgency has only gotten worse in the hybrid workplace. A perceived lack of control by management, and lack of confidence by workers combine to drive us to communicate more, to meet more and create more interruptions and urgency to ensure that things are moving forward in the right way. But I am not sure we are gaining any real control or confidence from all of this activity.
We create friction rather than flow
In a typical team, wrestling with a combination of these complex productivity issues means our weekly productivity takes a massive hit.
Like mountain climbers wading through heavy snow, we experience work friction rather than work flow.
Everything is harder. Things take longer. We have to chase everything up. Rework means we get behind, which causes more urgency. And so the cycle goes on. We feel like we have no control or power to change these friction-causing factors. This is just the way it is!
There must be a better way.
The slow food movement was pioneered by Italian Carlo Petrini in 1986. Alarmed by the rise of the fast food culture, he was initially motivated by a campaign to stop the opening of a McDonald's restaurant at the foot of Rome's famous Spanish Steps. I believe we need a ‘slow work’ movement to create cultures that are responsive rather than reactive.
We need to slow things down a bit, and take more control of doing good-quality work in a timely way. The irony is that by slowing down we will get more work done in less time. And by embedding this shift across our team, we will build a platform on which to create not just a productive culture, but a superproductive culture.
In Part I we will look at some ways to move your team from friction to flow.
