This pic is my wife and I sitting in the car out the front of our workplace today. We are getting a few things done on a public holiday with our daughter asleep in the back.
Is this efficient? It got me thinking about workplace efficiency.
How often have you heard ‘I’m doing all of these things at work, and I don’t have time to do anything?’
Well…
You have eight meetings a week, one hour each. Collectively, all the meeting agenda items could be dealt with in less than one hour.
Perhaps the people who ‘don’t have time with work and kids’ are the ones who also have three hours of screen time per day on meaningless shit.
The amount of time you can waste on stupid meaningless distractions is unfathomable.
Here are some ways to improve workplace efficiencies:
Interruption
Focus less on employee responsiveness and start focusing on progress. We as leaders can be the main contributor to interrupting our team with regular quick questions. We should be better at encouraging a culture of openly communicating when we will be available to answer a ‘quick question.’
Consequence? The team will learn to create a false sense of urgency every time they have a query.
Outcome over output
We need to shift our mindset particularly at a macro level to remain focused on results. Having an outcome focus shifts our mindset to ownership of a project or task rather than simply working toward a deadline.
We have been led to believe that a culture of hard work and excessive hours leads you to success. This success is different for everyone and may include; lifestyle, financial freedom, having the ability to travel, or a title at work.
Surprise, surprise. Hard work isn’t always the defining factor for success.
It’s a variable contributing factor.
Knowing what to prioritise is more important than the number of hours you do.
Throughout my 20’s, working excessive hours was the culture. I don’t necessarily regret it; I chose to do it and I would argue my time was an investment to acquire skills which enabled me to move on.
I’m not alluding to success equating to money, but I can sure tell you when I was working for someone else and working hard on output, my bank account didn’t match the 30 hours overtime each week.
Excessive output also takes you away from what is important. Your family.
Scheduling meetings over critical worktime
Our focus on collaboration can be counterproductive.
Check your calendar for the week. Why do we have back-to-back meetings for 60 minutes or more?
I’m calling out to rethink meetings and put a cost to each one. When you analyse your meetings each week, you realise how common it is to have $500 meetings to tick the box of inclusiveness. The value of the meetings must out way the cost.
Simple ways to improve time wasting meetings is to call decision making 10-minute meets, with only individuals required. You can also practice attending only sections of meetings yourself rather than the entire meeting.
Furthermore, don’t get comfy. Sitting down with your team has a higher probability of the meeting going overtime in comparison to standing, or even walking while meeting.
Don’t be worried about offending those who are not invited to the table and don’t take offense for not being invited yourself. Trust the team will handle the meeting purpose effectively which will cultivate a culture of efficiency anyway.
Stop measuring productivity
We have learnt to believe ‘you can’t manage it if you can’t measure it.’ Although this might still apply in some instances, we don’t need to slap a metric on everything.
If we are attempting to measure productivity as a metric, there are two possible implications:
1. We are ultimately tracking output, not outcomes
2. When we try to measure productivity, we inescapably contribute in creating a culture of increasing output
Stop obsessing over productivity, we have already discovered output doesn’t necessarily equate to results in the workplace.
Influence change
Finally, the leadership group should set the vision from top-down. A culture that glorifies the idea of hard work or hustle through output ends up destroying happiness. When this happens scrolling ‘Seek’ is the new screen time distractor.
Productivity guilt is real and often results in unrealistic expectations for yourself or your team.
Give yourself a reset.
Workplace inefficiency is a progress killer, and you can start to change things with small wins.
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