Productivity Is a Team Sport–How to “Do More with Less” in Twosomes

It’s a new season of “doing more with less.” If my discussions with clients and industry colleagues are a guide, we’re all keeping our eyes on interest rates, inflation, layoffs, transformation, and the economic risks ahead — and parallel decreases in spending, training, and benefits. There’s a collective push to conserve resources and “do more with less.”

But what exactly does this mean?

DEFINITION: “DOING MORE WITH LESS”?

• Doing more of the value-added work that drives action, change, and results.?
• Doing more using less in the way of resources, including staff, consultants, investment, and tools.

Organizations can’t become more effective or stretch their resources if they don’t teach, encourage, and provide the tools for people to work better — on their own and in sync with others. When people are overloaded, overwhelmed, and drowning in busywork and unclear projects, the result is exactly the opposite of adding value.

Yet I firmly believe it’s possible to do more with less. The concept has always meant a lot to me in my work with both Risk Oversight and Bellehumeur Co. clients, whether it’s lean times or fat ones, too. In the next series of articles, I’m going to explore the ways to increase the impact and value of our work. No cutting corners. No big budgets or fancy tools required.

In this series, we’ll look at:?

• Boosting your productivity in twosomes
• Boosting your productivity in teams
• Reducing busywork to free up time for more
• Leveraging systems to make work faster and easier
• Revisiting your people strategy to do more–and to do it fairly
• Building a business for the long game (and my personal approach)

Beyond Solo Productivity: Using Pairs and Teams for Optimal Results

While I believe in the principles of personal productivity, let’s face it: being productive on your own can only take you so far. What makes us truly productive is how we work with and gain ideas, energy, and momentum from others–at work, in our community, and in our personal lives. This LinkedIn newsletter is about “leveraging your knowledge,” but a big part of that is leveraging the knowledge of those around us. It’s about learning from and getting traction from the people we work with to create a ripple effect — or waves, even — in what we can collectively think, create, and achieve.?

There are two key concepts we can apply in all kinds of ways and situations: “Pairing Up” and “Team Coordination.” We’ll start with the former–my favorite go-to productivity style– and the next article will address the latter.

Pairing Up: Supercharging Your Productivity in Twos

I will admit that my favorite team size is usually two. I have a natural bias to scope, plan, and execute projects in twosomes because they are so powerful and easy-ish to manage. When you have the right two people, there is a natural energy, momentum, accountability, cross-checking, idea-bouncing mechanism that pushes projects along like magic. (I’ve been lucky to experience that magic with so many incredible people who work with me and my clients.)

Here’s why:

Two is better than one.?

As someone who was, at the beginning of my business, hell-bent on muscling through projects on my own, I have learned the hard way that working solo is not the most fruitful, rewarding, or profitable way to work. Those “important but not urgent” projects (for me, it’s writing, sales campaigns, presentations, and social media) just never seem to happen unless I hire or engage others to help push me along to get them done. We are more on track on our projects when we involve a trusted other to help us.

A second person adds energy (or calms nerves) on important projects and relieves the psychological burden of having everything on your shoulders. In our consulting projects at Risk Oversight , having two people corroborate on what they heard or are thinking helps to drive the best professional advice and recommendations to our clients.

A second person can provide you with a fresh angle, edit what you have done, unstick you when you are stuck, or act as a backup or a motivator when you are tired, sick, or fed up (or want to quit). This newsletter is a testimony to that. I can create it with relative ease because my incredible editor (and strategist) Janet Goldstein knows how to steer me in the right direction and onto the right path (and away from the path of second-guessing myself and spinning my wheels).

Two can be better than 3 (or more).?

There is a fascinating article in this month’s HBR magazine “What’s Fueling Burnout in Your Organization?” by Rob Cross , Karen Dillon , and Martin Reeves which talks about unprecedented levels of burnout that we are seeing in the workforce nowadays. Surprisingly, it isn’t workload itself that’s the source of our increasing stress, but rather it’s the increase in collaborative demands of the work. The article defines our “collaborative footprint” as the volume and frequency of the collaborations that people need to complete work and points to research showing that our collaborative footprint has risen 50% or more in the past 15 years.

We live in an increasingly interconnected world and work environment, and resistance to collaboration is an exercise in futility. But, nonetheless, we need to have strategies to reduce the burden of collaboration. And one way that we do this is by keeping our teams smaller (ideally, using pairs when we can).?

Of course, you need bigger teams for bigger or more complicated projects, especially when they require broad skills or expertise. (I certainly do this for projects!) But when there are three or more people involved in a project, the coordination efforts start to grow exponentially and so do our stresses. In my experience, the coordination efforts with two people, especially when the pair is a good match, can be minimal, manageable, and well worth the effort.

My favorite technique for working in twosomes

My secret for having a great relationship when working in pairs is using what I call the Pass-When-Ready (But-Not-Too-Ready) Review. (Yes, I realize it’s a mouthful!)

DEFINITION: PASS-WHEN-READY (BUT-NOT-TOO-READY) REVIEW STANDARD

• You pass over a piece of work— a document, code, system design, or presentation, etc. —to a competent team member for a review at the right point of “readiness.”?
• ?You pass over work at a good enough stage to receive feedback, but not “too ready,” or “perfect,” either.

You don’t want to get feedback on a piece of work when it’s so rough that the reviewer can’t quite make out what you are saying, thinking, or doing. You’ll get feedback on what you already know needs to change and the review cycle will defeat its purpose. On the other hand, you don’t want to spend too long spinning, overthinking, or mulling it over on your own. Passing something over when it’s “good enough” speeds up the process. As they say, “Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good.”

With my team members, we have developed a natural cadence, expectations, and behaviors around the Pass-When-Ready (But-Not-Too-Ready) Review standard. It takes a mutual working relationship between two people, and it leads to a level of trust and communication that can take years. This relationship, and the momentum it creates, leads to a higher volume and quality of work. While developing it takes time and trust, it is well worth the effort.

Cultivate Your BPRs (“Best Possible Relationships”)

Speaking of working in twosomes and how to get the best out of these working relationships, let me conclude with a concept I picked up from the latest book from ?? Michael Bungay Stanier (affectionately called “MBS” by his fans) How to Work with (Almost) Anyone. In this book, MBS describes the concept of Best Possible Relationships (or “BPR”). As the name implies, it’s about the mindset to cultivate the best possible working relationship you can with the people you work with.

There are three essential attributes of these relationships:

• The first is safety. Both parties must feel safe enough to share their ideas and, likewise, to raise any issues or grievances.?
• Secondly, there must be an element of energy or excitement in the relationship. This is a "willingness to push each other, step to the edge, and explore the boundaries."
• The third characteristic is reparability: the ability to mend the relationship when things go awry.

As a fan of twosome teams, I love this concept of BPRs which I believe should be a bigger and more talked about part of how we manage relationships at work. But it takes boldness, forward thinking, and stepping out of our comfort zones to make them possible.

As you think about working relationships, are there one or several key people you “pair up” with and are there ways you could make those relationships even stronger to accelerate your productivity?

Is there a new person you might try partnering with on a new project or to support each other in your individual goals?

Is there an area where you need a partner and don’t have one? How might you experiment to find someone to help move you forward??

The right pairings–nurtured over time–are a key to?working smarter, faster, and better, and making work more meaningful— and fun too.

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