You Cant Manage Time: 7 Other Ways to Increase Team Productivity

How does your team measure productivity in terms of your collective output?

If you have a ready answer, please head straight to the comments and share your secrets. Youre among an elite class of leaders who have managed to crack the code.

For everyone else, the question of how to measure team productivity remains a constant obsession. And its not one that should be perpetually shoved under the rug to deal with later. After all, the more productive your team can be, the more you can accomplish together.

Heres the thing:

No matter how productive you think you are, there are always improvements that could be made when it comes to managing your own time. But your time isnt necessarily the problem in todays workplace. Instead, you need to be concerned with the need for the collective time management of all the individuals working together in your team.

And heres the kicker:

You cant manage another persons time.

You can provide deadlines. You can set expectations. You can bug the hell out of people about finishing a project. But you cant physically control how they spend their time, how much time a project takes, or how efficiently someone else works.

As a leader, your hands are tied.

Instead, you must focus on leading more efficiently to increase the teams productivity.

Here are 7 ways to do just that:

1. Dont Go into a Meeting without an Agenda (or a Time Limit)

The main reason most work meetings feel like a waste of time is becausethey are.

Just as with anything else at work, without process, there is waste. Specifically with regards to meetings, this means a need to establish ground rules.

First and foremost, if theres no agenda, there should be no meeting.

A simple list of items that need to be covered is enough to ensure that your meeting serves a legitimate purposeand keeps attendees on task.

Its also a matter of watching the clock so that a meeting doesnt bleed into other important schedule items. Assign one meeting attendee to the role of timekeeper. The timekeepers role is to ensure that meetings start and stop on time, giving notice when time is almost up.

2. Delegate a Set Amount of Tasks for the Team to Work On at One Time

Modern productivity experts accept that multitasking is a problem, not a solution, to your efficient use of time.

The reason multitasking ultimately wastes more time than it could ever save is because of how it constantly distracts you from each task youre trying to accomplish, pulling you out of focus. Every time your focus changes, it takes time and energy to get in the right headspace to accomplish the main task youre working on.

For this reason, team leaders must work to limit areas of focus for individual team members at any given time. Give ample time and space for them to accomplish specific projects and tasks before putting something else with a looming due date on their plates.

3. Schedule Time Blocks with a Rule of No Interruptions

One of the hardest parts of working in a team environment (especially as a manager) is your responsibility to answer questions from employees who need your input in a timely manner.

Its tempting to respond to notifications on team communication and collaboration tools immediately so that you can dismiss them and move on with your day. The problem with this approach? Its distracting and takes your focus away from the task at hand (are you starting to notice a pattern?).

To take control, you need to think like a CEO: staying in control of your schedule and time. As a manager, you need to limit interruptions during your day. Of course, its not just your focus that needs to be reined inyou also have to worry about how individual team members keep their focus during the work day.

So how can you take back control of your day and lead by example for your team?

Take a page out of Boomerangs book: their Inbox Pause button gives users permission to block off time for deep focusand zero distractions. It works by pausing incoming email messages so that they dont hit your inbox until youre ready to deal with them.

But you dont actually have to use a software tool to set intentions for distraction-free work time. It can be as simple as blocking time in your calendar with a label to the effect of Do Not Disturb.

To be effective, make sure that team members have access to your calendar and that theyre aware of your daily time blocks. Encourage them to block off disruption-free time of their own.

4. Empower Your Team to Take Ownership of Productivity

Although the goal is to support each other collectively, its important to also recognize the individual contributions of team members. Its similarly important to involve individuals in team goal settingnot giving commands that you expect them to follow.

Individuals that feel ownership over the act of increasing team productivity are more tied to the end goal. After all, if they miss deadlines, they have only themselves to blametheyre the ones who personally committed to a certain outcome.

A useful side effect of team goal setting is increased, more open communication. This also serves to address issues head-on, before they become a bigger problem. The better your teams communications, the easier it is to work together and accomplish goals.

5. Dont Take a Rigid Approach to Time Management

When it comes to software development, there are a multitude of things that can get in the way of on-time delivery, despite the best intentions. Because of this, its important to treat time management with a flexible perspectivenot as if it were something set in stone.

To adequately address this fact, you need to be flexible in the way you plan for different parts of a project to come together. Make sure to account for the unexpected. Get familiar with your new best friend, evidence-based scheduling. Evidence-based scheduling accounts for the possibility of multiple potential completion dates.

6. Do Your Best Work in the Cloud

No, were not encouraging daydreaming (but go on ahead if you please).

Instead, were talking about the cloud that most modern workers are familiar withthe one that makes it easy to access files anywhere and collaborate in real time.

Being able to auto-save your work means that a busted computer cant keep you down when an important deadline is on the horizon. You can just jump on another device and pick up exactly where you left offsince changes can be seen and understood in real-time.

It costs a lot more time to re-do work stored in less-than-ideal conditions than it does to work with a solid foundation for document management.

7. Conduct Productivity Audits to Find Additional Efficiencies

Change is the only constant in life (besides death and taxes, of course). In order to be continuously productive, you must constantly question your work processesuncovering opportunities for potential improvement.

As in the rest of your work, its inefficient to focus on everything at once. Instead of multitasking productivity improvements, focus on just one thing at a time.

After youve had time to realize the impact of a new strategy on your team, reflect on it. Its only after youve had the opportunity to reflect that you should consider trying something new to improve team productivity.

Self-reflection can and should be scheduled into your calendar: set a regular time for conducting productivity audits so that you dont forget about this important opportunity for improvement.

Final Thoughts

You cant manage another persons time and its a waste to even try.

Instead, use these strategies to lead by example and empower your team to uncover efficiencies while parting ways with timesucks.