Productivity and your workplace
We’ve gathered together some of the greatest minds in the productivity field to provide you with a toolbox of tips to help you get the most out of yourself and your teams.
“The attention you give to any action should be in due proportion to its worth.”
Philosophers, leaders and teachers have been discussing productivity since time immemorial. Today, a stroll through your local bookstore will reveal aisles of work dedicated to the subject, and so it seems 2,000 years of progress has not revealed the single ‘key’ that will unlock the secret to the puzzle of productivity.
However, the more one looks at the subject, the clearer it becomes that productivity does not come down to a central tenet, but rather a constellation of customs which can be cherry-picked to suit individuals, teams and situations. It seems the adage still rings true: different strokes for different folks.
Fiona and Matt Kesby
What dynamic brother and sister duo, Fiona and Matt Kesby don’t know about productivity could fit on a grain of rice.
Matt spent almost a decade working with Franklin Covey (best known for the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) heading up their strategy and execution practice across Australia and NZ; while Fiona has over 18 years’ international recruitment experience and has run offshoring projects and tasks since 2008. Together they founded Go-VA.
Daily check-ins and the power of culture
Matt: Psychological safety at work is key to productivity. If a person feels psychologically safe at work, they’re operating in the pre-frontal cortex of their brain. This part of the brain is responsible for executive function, including focus, planning, goal setting and decision-making.
When people don’t feel psychologically safe at work, they’re more likely to be operating in the mammalian part of their brain which is associated with our emotions and the flight-or-flight stress response. This part of the brain is not conducive to productivity.
Fiona: If you want your people to be productive you must allow them to be their whole selves at work. They must be able to ask questions, make mistakes, learn, grow and be themselves without fear of judgement or recrimination.
Matt: Productivity comes down to the culture that you create.
Purposeful daily huddle
Matt: When people understand the purpose they are driving toward, they are more productive. Understanding purpose is the tip of the spear and everything flows down from that.
Start the day with a team huddle—in person or via video. Open the huddle by restating the team purpose. This grounds and realigns people: giving them a ‘game on’ mindset.
After stating the purpose do an around-the-grounds of what people are going to deliver during the day. This will help to shift the dial towards the goal. By doing this people subconsciously commit to delivering results.
Dermot Crowley
Dermot is a productivity thought leader, with special focus on leveraging technology. He is the Director and Founder of Adapt Productivity, a Sydney-based training company founded in 2002, and author of Smart Work, Smart Teams and Urgent!
Embrace technology
Embrace the technology that you already have at your fingertips. Many organisations will be using tools like Microsoft Outlook to manage their email and calendars. But most people, in my experience, use about 20 per cent of the capability of a tool like that. Productivity increases when leaders give people skills to use these tools effectively.
Rethink meeting culture
Most businesses have too many meetings. It’s not unusual for me to see senior leaders spend 80 to 90 per cent of their day in meetings, leaving little balance in how they use their core working time.
The three key issues for most meetings are: meetings are too long, meetings have too many people in them, and meetings that are poorly organised and run. You just end up with a collective waste of time. You can reduce unnecessary time in meetings by asking the following questions:
- How much time do we really need to achieve the objective?
- Who actually needs to be there to contribute?
- Who will run the meeting to make sure everyone is on time and sticks to the agenda?
Plan your week
Get each member of your team to set aside an hour to plan their week. When I’m working with businesses, I often ask how many people plan their week and around 30 per cent of people will raise their hands. Not setting aside time to plan your week is a false economy.
Unless you stop and clarify and organise your priorities and commitments then the chances are the week is just going to happen to you and you’re going to end up being a victim of your week, rather than being in control and driving your priorities forward.
Matt Cowdroy
Matt Cowdroy is a Productivity Ninja (yes – that’s his official title) and he is passionate about helping people reduce their stress and enjoy their work by improving their productivity.
Matt is the owner of Think Productive Australia, an organisation that runs workshops and provides coaching globally.
Distraction management
Productivity is not about managing time, it’s about managing attention.
About every three minutes we have a distraction (phone, email, fridge, kids, colleagues, dog, etc), so the secret to increasing productivity is being able to manage our attention.
We manage our attention by managing distractions as best we can. For instance, turning off technology and emails at certain points in the day. In the office I call it ‘exercising stealth camouflage’ to hide from people for one-hour focused sprints during the day.
Productive, not busy
Being productive means working on the stuff that achieves your end goal. Productive is not sitting at the desk and answering emails all day (unless you’re in customer service). That’s the difference between being productive and being busy.
If we tick 20 things off our to-do list today but we still haven’t done the two things that are going to move us towards our goals, then we haven’t been productive.
Work out what you need to get done to achieve and focus on that first. Only after you’ve completed those tasks, should you move to the others on your list.
