WHEN I became a manager, one of the important things that my director taught me was that whenever I was reviewing existing workflows or thinking of future products or services, I always needed to look at three areas—people, process and tools. Focusing my attention on these three areas has always helped me in improving my team’s performance, and in ensuring they have everything they need to fulfill their commitments. It also serves as a quick guide to help me troubleshoot areas where they need help, and identify the main issues when their performance is subpar.
Let us start with your people. Check to see that you have the right people for the job. Identify the key competencies of the roles in your team and the expected skill levels for the work involved in fulfilling your team’s products or services. Knowing the skills set required for each member of your team will help you hire the right people for the job, and also helps you identify what skills set is lacking in your team.
Evaluate existing team members and create an inventory of skills and competencies for each of your team. This will help you assign projects to those most suited for the work, and also help you group them so that weaknesses are complemented by other’s strengths. This will also provide you with an overview of the developmental opportunities for your team, and help you develop targeted learning interventions.
Understanding your team’s skills set and areas of improvement will also help you provide opportunities for collaboration and cross-functional activities. An example is when you have both creative and technical people who work differently from each other. In order for both groups to understand each other, they need to immerse themselves in each other’s workflow to understand that there are certain creative and technical processes that the others are not aware of. This goes a long way in understanding timelines and quality of work.
To improve collaboration, develop a culture appropriate to your industry. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to creating an environment suitable for all organizations. Each industry has its own nuances and ways of working which do not necessarily work for other organizations. Your role as a leader is to discover the best working environment for your team and sustain it.
As for process, review existing ones used by your team for delivering products and services. It helps if your processes are documented so new members of the team can have a ready reference, and senior members can use it for orienting clients on deliverables and timelines.
It will also help you fine-tune your process and isolate areas of concern especially when a step in the process is taking time.
When you have identified a problematic step in the process, pinpoint the root cause of the problem and improve processes one step at a time. Ensure the new process is understood by everyone. Minimize deviations from the new process by instituting control measures to monitor adherence. But take note of these because deviations can help you identify what is stopping people from following the new process, and could also provide insight into new ways of working that could improve it.
Your role as a manager is to be the process keeper. You need to ensure your team follows the process and best practices. But to adapt to increasing demands, you need to be attuned to changes and adjust your processes as the need arises.
In terms of tools, list down your team’s deliverables and then create an inventory of what is currently used by your team. This will give you an overview of what are the commonly used tools and remove those which are rarely used. It will also help you prioritize which to update regularly, and which are redundant to your team’s needs.
It goes without saying that your team needs to have the right tools for the job. Software applications have new features and functions in newer versions which can make your team’s work easier and faster. But, of course, balancing the cost of new tools against your team’s productivity and efficiency depends on the available budget for your team. Your role as a leader is to ensure your team gets the best tools they can have given the budget.
Sometimes a new tool is not needed but a little bit of creativity to maximize existing tools. In a previous company I worked in, we did not have any drawing tools and we had to make do with existing clip arts and flat images we sourced from the Internet. That is, until we discovered that we could edit vector images using PowerPoint, and that we could actually make new characters just by using shapes. It helped us customize characters and gave us flexibility to adjust expressions on character’s faces.
Currently, my work involves creating communication materials and people are surprised that I can make posters and animated videos just by using PowerPoint. To know what your team’s tools can do, read more about them in websites, discussion boards, and online videos. You just might be surprised that you can do so many things using your existing tools.
For software, prioritize subscriptions and assign access to positions and not to individuals. When you assign it to a person and then that person resigns, the subscription becomes harder to transition to new team members. Consult your IT on the best way to ensure application subscriptions stay with your team even when a team member resigns so your team’s work continues uninterrupted.
Managing a team means you need to ensure you provide the best working environment for your team to thrive and become the best professional they can be. It means taking the time to know your team and understanding their needs, not just from a professional level, but on what motivates them to do their best. As a manager, you become the middleman between the executive leaders and your team. By assessing your team’s people, process and tools, you can position yourself better to balance the needs of the organization and your team.