IN a previous organization, I attended a meeting for all managers of the different departments and offices, and we were required to report updates on our respective projects. One department was reporting their accomplishments when another manager inquired whether their project was connected to what they were currently doing. After a few discussions, they discovered that they were working on the same parts of the overall project. This resulted in wastage of manpower and resources.
These incidents could have been avoided if the leaders in the organization took the time to review how projects will be implemented and monitored. But this could also happen within your own team, especially when you do not assign a task to anyone in particular and you assume that someone will pick it up. There are also instances when work is wasted because there are no clear work guidelines, or when the objectives are not clearly communicated. As a people manager, there are some things you can do to reduce work repetitions and wastage of man hours and resources.
The first thing you can do is to evaluate the timeliness and quality of your team’s output and see if there are processes you can improve. You can also identify the common issues encountered by your clients in your customer satisfaction surveys. If you do not have one, you can directly ask clients for feedback on what you could enhance as a team. Their comments and suggestions are a rich source of what can be improved in your work, so do not be afraid to ask for feedback. Knowing what needs to be improved in your team will help you to consistently deliver products and services that meet your client’s expectations.
After getting feedback from clients, do an audit of your team’s work process so you can tighten timelines and improve the quality of your team’s output. When I headed a content development team for learning, we hired graphic designers to create images and prepare layouts we could use for online modules. It was a challenge for me because I had not worked with creatives before. What helped me was when I asked them to individually walk me through their own creative processes and from there, I formulated a process that could be adopted by all.
By presenting it to them and asking for their inputs, we were able to reduce timelines and share best practices which eventually improved the quality of their work.
As you do an audit of your work processes, identify the risks that could arise from the different steps. When I was handling my content development team, I realized that my team could do content faster when graphics designers were paired with a module developer who would act as the project manager. I realized it meant trusting my module managers to follow through on quality standards but it also meant I had to develop a way to effectively monitor them. I managed that risk by checking in on them at intervals on how they reviewed their team’s work and even held review sessions where I also evaluated their work. As an added measure, I asked for copies of the evaluation forms of their team’s work so I could evaluate the common quality violations to allow me to develop action plans to address them.
There also came a time when we had to work with other departments for specific learning interventions which meant setting clear roles for each department. To avoid rework, I had to check that the outputs that were handed over to the next group met their expectations. For teams that we worked with for the first time, I set frequent quick meetings at the outset to set expectations, and to ensure that we were on the right track and dispel any confusion. Just like the time when our communications team rolled out a branding guideline, we had to check with them frequently to ensure we were on brand. Later on, we were given more freedom to experiment with the design elements.
Communicate to the team the improvements so that everybody knows what the process is, issues are addressed, and people understand their roles. One of the challenges I encountered when pairing together a writer and a graphics designer was the creation of storyboards. At first, the team relied on the graphic designers to do it since it was a visual representation of what needed to be seen on videos or online modules. Later on, writers did it because they felt that the graphic designers were not able to effectively translate what they had envisioned. To resolve the issue, the team worked on a template for the storyboard and created an online version where both graphic designers and writers could leave comments for improvement. That helped in reducing the time for creating storyboards and enabled both writers and graphic designers to have more time for other tasks.
An important element in communicating is ensuring everybody knows what is happening in the project. To do this, create a shared dashboard where everyone in the organization knows where they come in and when their output is needed for the project. If you can itemize the milestones and list who is responsible for each of them, you are in a better position to monitor and evaluate where you are most needed and remind people of their tasks. Depending on the complexity of the project, meet as often as needed but do quick meetings for updates. If the meeting will take more than 30 minutes, ask for updates through e-mail.
Your role as a people manager is to ensure that resources are optimized to meet the overall objective of the organization. This means looking at how your team can maximize their time, but also leaving room for them to grow and develop. Time and resources saved from optimized work processes can be used for engagement activities or team-building events. If not, give it back to them through performance bonuses or new incentives because, after all, they have rightfully earned it.
Image credits: Kobu Agency on Unsplash