I am not an organized person. It doesn’t bother me that my room has clothes piled on the floor, that my desk has six Diet Coke cans stashed in it, or that my car mats are covered in receipts. That being said, when it comes to organizing and managing my time, I’m obsessed.
I could write a list of great tools I use – or have attempted to use – to manage my time. I’ve tried things like Wunderlist, Notify, and shared calendars, but in reality, what is even more important than the newest to-do app is focusing on how your company culture affects your employees’ time management. Here are three easy steps to take to maximize your team’s time.
Hold Meaningful Meetings
This should be obvious, but having a meeting to plan the agenda for another meeting is not effective. At Digital Talent Agents, our team has a weekly meeting on Fridays at 11:00 a.m. They never run over an hour, and they normally last under 45 minutes. It’s during this meeting that everyone gets to voice their opinions on what is going on with the company, and we make great moves forward. These meetings are meaningful to our company because they are the exact same time every week, it’s the only meeting we schedule weekly, and we set a short, concise agenda before the meetings. This lends intense focus to the meetings, and it usually results in our best brainstorming sessions.
Shift Responsibilities When Needed
We frequently ask our employees, “What is your favorite thing that you do throughout the day? What thing do you hate doing?” These two questions enable you to figure out where you can shift responsibilities. If you have an employee writing content who hates writing, he is taking way more time writing that blog post than would the person who’s currently sitting in front of a spreadsheet, wishing she could write! People procrastinate on things they don’t like doing. Shift responsibilities so you are utilizing each employee’s strengths and they will not only work better, but faster.
Stop Overthinking and Make Changes Quickly
Innovation is probably one of the most overused buzzwords in circulation right now. Every company claims they are innovating – they even have innovation brainstorming meetings where everyone sits around and talks about things that they should change within the company. The problem is that most companies take months and months talking about change, and they don’t spend nearly enough time implementing. When one of our employees comes up with the next best idea, we ask ourselves, “What is the first action we need to take to make this happen?” Then, we do it. If you make those big changes more attainable by taking the first step quickly, you will save time that would have been spent mulling over all of the tiny details. You can instead jump in and improve. It’s easy to get dragged down by analysis paralysis and create layers of your own red tape. Make it difficult for your company to remain static, and it won’t.
Not one of these three steps is a difficult thing to fix. Sometimes, all it takes is a little reminder to focus. We frequently work with each other on staying focused and utilizing our time wisely. Organization may plague the best of us, but sometimes, it just takes a group effort to stay on track.