My Team Productivity “Survival Pack”: 6 Tools to Keep Things Afloat

Working as a team can be exciting, fun, and satisfying. Out of nothing (or very little) we create something new–whether it’s incremental steps in a long progression or a complete product on a tight timeline.?

However, teams are complicated. How could they not be? They are made up people (and we are ALL complicated!).?

So, I try to use team tools that are the opposite of complicated. I don’t want any unnecessary stress or effort to become a drag.

To wrap up this series on Team Productivity (for now–ha ha!), here are some of my favorite, uber simple, un-fancy techniques for productive teamwork. I hope they help you “keep afloat” and your team moving forward.?

1. The 24-Hour Rule for Emails

The 24-Hour Rule (also the title of my book, The 24-Hour Rule and Other Secrets for Smarter Organizations ) says that you need to do “something” with information in an appropriate amount of time, so it doesn’t disappear like the sands of time. I usually apply the “rule” to processing notes and ideas, but it also works wonders for other types of processing, including your emails.?

Productivity experts tend to give email a bad rap. And I know the tool is far from perfect. But email has many advantages. It’s simple. It’s ubiquitous. People have it and know how to use it. Plus, it connects with a lot of other tools (like Teams, SharePoint, your calendar, your to-do list, and much more).

I don’t believe that team members should or need to be chained to their emails. But I do believe that responsiveness is important if you are on a team with immediate deadlines. I’m a big advocate of a 24-hour timeframe for team members working on projects that are current.?

You can be responsive even if you don’t have all the answers. It keeps team members on a fast, but not urgent, cadence and helps everyone feel like they are in the boat together and pulling in the same direction.

Now, let me just say, the 24-Hour Rule has its limits. For example, I hate voicemail. To my husband’s horror, I answer my voicemail about once a week (on a good week). Lots of other leaders and efficiency junkies I know feel the same about voicemail. Please don’t leave me a voicemail.

2. Shared Folders

I love shared folders, and for most of you, shared folders are a no brainer. But far too many teams still are not leveraging shared files and collaborative cloud-based tools to their full advantage.

I use a lot of different file sharing tools including Teams, SharePoint, Canva, Dropbox for Business, and Google Drive. The type of repository doesn't matter so much (except be conscious of security requirements – which is a topic for another day!).?

What matters most is having tools you use. A tool that goes unused is a “useless object” that serves no current purpose (though perhaps it had value in a past Stone Age or will in a future Space Age). Focus on getting your team to work in the same place consistently.?

For projects that are of a similar type (in my case internal control projects or internal audits), I use a standard folder structure for projects. It’s easy to set up a new project or consulting engagement with a folder set up that can be populated over time, and it helps tremendously with onboarding.

3. Template Libraries

As a consultant who creates and reviews documentation for other companies, I can tell you that working on your own documentation can be the hardest thing to do in your “down” time.

However, the benefits are worth it. Creating a simple template library (a close cousin to shared folders) is often the best place to begin.

A template library is a folder or site specifically set up to house reference materials. You don’t need to be Walmart, Amazon, or a big accounting or law firm to create a template library. Every team has (or should have) materials that they use over and over again.

Start your library with templates to serve current or upcoming projects and needs. Don’t build templates for hypothetical situations. The best templates are designed for the real world.?

When I perform documentation review projects for my clients, the state of their template libraries is often one of the areas causing them the most compounding issues. There’s a lot of reinventing the wheel, duplicated effort, and wasted time searching for document models. My recommendation is to build and improve them a little bit at a time and focus on the areas where you’ll get the most bang for your buck.

4. Bi-Weekly Meetings

Like email, meetings can have a bad rap. But regular meetings serve a purpose. When executed effectively, they do wonders for your team’s productivity.?

Short regular check-in meetings can reduce the amount of time you spend on emails, phone calls, setting up meetings, and other coordination back and forth.?

With my Risk Oversight team members, I have one-on-one meetings every 2 weeks for 30 minutes with each team member. This works for keeping up to date and for discussing issues and learning points as they come up.

A regular scheduled meeting is a motivator too. It gives team members mini deadlines to finish deliverables or bring them to a logical point to be reviewed by others. With the regular meetings I have with clients, I will confess that they force me to do a “push” before the meeting to show as much progress as possible.

The cadence of your meeting schedule depends on the nature of your projects and operations and how much (or how little) team members need to discuss, stay informed, and stay connected. Bi-weekly doesn’t work for every team. You might need weekly or twice a week, or monthly might work best depending on your needs. Canceling is OK too (when used infrequently) if a short status update email will do. No biggie.

5. Meeting Notes

I am a lover of meeting notes. They make us more introspective, organized, and productive individually, and they are a fantastic tool to help teams work better together. Effective meeting notes:

• Capture the highlights of discussions.
• Spell out the action items and owners of those actions.
• Help you to create other materials like reports, processes, updates for project plans, logs in systems, or deliverables for clients.
• Allow team members to understand what was discussed without being in every meeting.
• Drive accountability out of meetings.

You can think of notes as the building blocks for knowledge-based projects. They are like Lego pieces: you and your team move them around to build a document, formulate a business idea, solve a problem at work, create a presentation, or push a project forward.?

Once you have notes (and the documents and outputs you create from them), you can use and share them in unlimited ways. In my own business, I use my team members’ meeting notes to help diagnose issues, solve problems, identify opportunities, understand the status of projects, and create deliverables.

Meeting notes can save your team a substantial amount of time. I had a new VP at an internal control client who wanted to attend all our design sessions and walkthroughs to learn about the business. This was obviously an enormous burden on his time. After we got him used to relying on our strong meeting notes, the client was able to understand what we were doing, how the processes worked, the gist on what we were talking about, and the issues raised — without attending the meetings.

6. Brain Dumps

I love “brain dumping” what I am thinking to my team members and collecting their ideas, too. Simply getting ideas out of your head (and out of your team member’s heads) can create energy, direction, and momentum.?

Often, the kernel of what’s needed shows up in preliminary ideas that are put down on paper. You can see patterns, themes, sticky ideas, and resources that can jump-start the next step.?

I use two different types of brain dumps:

• An insight dump - An “insight dump” is where you share your thinking, ideas, and opinions with another team member. I do this a lot if I am giving the “low down” on a new client or project. For example: “This client’s processes are mature but need to be challenged. The client is willing to learn and focused on efficiency but less on compliance. They have a history of slow responses by email but are great at informal discussion when you go onsite. I believe this client needs to focus on efficiency and looking at their processes from a new direction and not just “go through the motions.”

• An instruction-dump – An instruction-dump is a set of instructions to do something. For example, I have written a set of instructions to handle social media, billing, manage my CRM, and other tools. Building instructions or playbooks is so important for leveraging yourself and your ability to grow your team or your business.

While I personally enjoy and am very comfortable with writing, your brain dumps can use other formats like video or voice recordings. You can record yourself doing a task to explain it to others. You can record yourself explaining a new project or problem to others. Downloading our brains has many options in today’s modernizing world of team productivity. The trick is to be conscious about sharing what you know to your team and encouraging them to do the same.

You’re already using some or all of these tools, but which ones could you use better??

• Where are your tools too complicated? How can you make them simpler?

• Which one could you add to your tool bag?

• What will help you “keep you and team afloat” when you’re trying to keep all the balls in the air?

What do you have in your “survival pack”? I'd love to hear about it! Share in the comments.

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NEW WORKSHOP: Productivity As a Team Sport?

Over the past two years, I have provided training, workshops, presentations and seminars for various organizations and professional groups on “The New Culture of Documentation” sharing lessons from my book The 24-Hour Rule and Other Secrets for Smarter Organizations . I'm delighted to say that I have a new presentation called “Productivity as a Team Sport.” Lively, interactive, and tactical, we explore how team members understand each other, work better together, and really do more with less.

I’d love to speak to your organization or professional group for a 1-hour lunch and learn, a ?- to 1-day of learning, executive retreat, or other specific training need. Contact me at [email protected] if you are interested in hearing more!