Do These 5 Things To Avoid Common Productivity Killers And Really Get Things Done Effectively

​A common gripe in every organization I have been associated with is “we need more people” or “we have too much to do and not enough hours in the day”.  Have you heard these things?  It seems to be a common theme no matter how many people there are because there are always more ideas out there and it is always much faster to think or re-think of things that need to be done much faster than anyone can possibly do them.

The problem is that constantly being in this state of feeling overwhelmed by having too much to do without enough resources to do it becomes a major obstacle to get anything done and creates a lot of stress and negative impacts in the organization as people become cynical, resentful and disengaged.  There is no way to become a high performing organization with this type of mindset.
The stress is not the result of not having enough people, it is caused by some very common productivity killers which leave people scrambling for steady ground and keep everyone in survival mode, rather than seeking to provide the most value added solutions.  
Rather than focusing on the lack of resources, the following 5 action steps will produce better and more effective results:

1. Proper Planning: Jumping to conclusions and pushing people into “fire-fighting” mode to appear to be very productive is not an effective strategy because first you really need to understand the actual problem which needs to be solved, and to understand the consequences of what you are doing.  First you need to take a step back and see the big picture and plan what you need to do and why, before expending the limited resources you have to fix the problem.  If you keep sending people out in a panic to replace all the flat truck tires as soon as they fail, without really investigating why this is happening, you might fail to notice the sharp metal shards in the driveway where the old signpost was broken off last week.
2. Effective Decision Making: Get the information that is needed and make decisions that move things forward.  It’s better to make a decision and take a step forward than to not make a decision at all and just kick the can farther down the road for someone else to deal with later.  Don’t be afraid of “failing” or “being wrong”.  Take the first step, you will learn something new, and then you can use this new information to determine if you are on the right path or if you need to readjust. 
3. Clear Communication: Decisions, strategic direction and clear instructions need to be provided to the people who need them when they need them.  In a panic, projects are attempted to be managed by email or texts which are blasted out in an attempt to appear to be productive.  The result is that the people receiving these emails are either not clear on the actions needed or who owns them and/or they are put in the defensive when the sender attempts to light a fire under them by copying their managers or higher ups.  People need to be clear on what they should be doing, when and why.  Understanding why is very important even for people with seemingly minor tasks.  If someone needs to check the dimension of nuts and bolts day in and day out or else their supervisor will yell at them, they will probably do an ok job.  If they understand that these parts go into a high rise elevator system or jet engine and that people could die if the parts fail or do not meet the specifications, they will be more motivated to make user the parts are thoroughly checkout out before they release them.
4. Clear / Aligned Priories: Urgent priorities that change from day to day as new “crises” pop up result in a lot of partially-completed work that never delivers the value that was intended.  This ties to the need for proper planning; rather than take the time to really figure out the problem, it is far easier to send out an email to instruct others to “get this done right away or else…”, but this comes at a cost.  The problems quickly pop up when the time required to fix the initial priority is longer than the time it takes before something else becomes the new priority, and then the old one is forgotten….for now….until it pops up again later and it still not done.  It is also important that these priorities are aligned among different groups as there is no one person/group who can typically complete all the tasks required to solve the problem without help from other people / groups who are operating under their own set of different priories and are unable to drop their work to help you out right now.
5. Listen To Feedback: Engage a team in solving a problem.  Communication needs to be two-way.  This fosters greater teamwork and enables people to buy in and take ownership in their part of the solution.  One sided communication such as “just do it because I told you to do it” or “just get it done, no excuses”, causes people to panic and go into defensive mode.   You need to hear what people have to say.  Sometimes there are valid reasons why things are as they are, and sometimes these seemingly obvious solutions have been tried before and have not been taken to completion for legitimate reasons which need to be voiced, such as budgetary constraints or regulatory issues, or even technical issues, etc.  It is assumed that someone at a lower level in the organization knows less – this is a bad mistake to assume this.