HOW TO ENSURE EFFECTIVE TASK EXECUTION?

Many managers perceive the current situation as a significant threat to employees’ daily productivity, team efficiency, and ultimately as a threat to achieving goals. There is a thought lingering in our minds that people are lazy and might not be very willing to work. And if they are not in the office, it won’t be visible anyway! Regardless of the level of ‘laziness,’ we know ways and tools to help maintain a good level of productivity.

Regardless of the situation, it is worth remembering that distraction and general relaxation in such situations will primarily result from the emotional context (sense of security), rather than a lack of engagement in task execution.

Planning and organizing work

The first problem that each of your employees will face is managing their own tasks – what exactly do I need to do and by when in this situation? Are the current arrangements and schedules still valid? When I finish one task, what should I work on next? These are questions that people will ask themselves regardless of their level of motivation. The manager’s task in this situation is to provide answers that will help in organizing daily work. What should be taken care of in the context of team work organization?

Set priorities to focus attention and reduce the impact of distractions. The team needs to know what the priorities are. Verify the available information and determine the three most important priorities. If you have a large team, the top 3 should concern priorities for the entire team (based on this, everyone will determine their own individual priorities). If you have a smaller team (or a bit more time), take a moment and set the top 3 for each team member. IMPORTANT: think about priorities within a horizon of no more than a week or two. The situation is dynamic and will change.

Work organization tools: Trello (Kanban board), Nozbe, Microsoft To Do

Effective email and messenger communication.

The second biggest challenge your team will face in the context of remote work will be maintaining a good level of communication. We know from experience that it doesn’t work perfectly when we see each other every day, so what can we expect now? To avoid bottlenecks, it’s worth ensuring tools that support the flow of information here and now in the form of chat, as well as the ability to communicate efficiently through written messages. Read more about it HERE #.

Communication tools: Microsoft Teams, Slack

Rituals, customs, and habits that support work organization.

The third challenge will be the motivation to act. Especially in a crisis situation, a new one, where we lack complete information, it is unrealistic to expect that each of us will operate at 100% of our capabilities. As a manager yourself, you probably have moments of doubt and catch yourself doing something that, to put it mildly, is not a key task at the moment? ;-). And even if this situation drives you to push yourself to the limit and work at increased capacity, it is worth considering that team members may have different value systems and may struggle to gather the energy to act. To cope with this, plan regular daily and/or weekly checkpoints that will set the rhythm for daily work.

Consistent routines enhance overall productivity and motivate action (both in terms of striving towards something and avoiding problems). To put it in a comparison, they are like lighthouses that help navigate between different points on the task completion path. While we may not particularly appreciate their presence in a standard work mode, they become crucial in remote work. It’s like lighthouses during sailing both day and night. What are some proven ideas for such rituals and habits?

Daily meeting – a daily meeting that agile teams use with great success. The meeting usually takes place in the morning, serving as the informal start of the workday and is supposed to last up to 15 minutes. During such a meeting, everyone answers three questions:

• What did I do yesterday (max 2-3 key tasks)
• What do I plan to do today (max 2-3 key tasks)
• What do I need (support, information, help?)

Checking email only at specific times – distractions are particularly painful when working remotely. When we finally put in the effort to start a task and boom, after 10 minutes someone calls, writes, or bothers us with an important matter, all the gathered energy (to start the task) goes up in smoke. Therefore, it is worth introducing the habit of checking emails at specific times – e.g., at certain hours. This makes it easier for us to plan our own work and we know when we can expect responses to urgent messages.

• Minimum version: we check emails in the middle of the day and at the end of work (in the morning we want to deal with important things instead of emails)
• Maximum version: roughly every hour and a half at regular intervals (checking messages more frequently generates a significant burden on our self-discipline and attention system)

Meetings or informational webinars – especially in the context of crisis situations, misinformation is the cause of the biggest problems. A weekly status update on where we are as a team, what lies ahead, and what to expect in the near future will definitely help us get our bearings. It will further motivate us to take action when, as a team, we successfully achieve our goals (tasks and commitments from daily meetings).

Tools: Microsoft Teams, WebEx, Eyeson