by Stephen Danos Earlier this month, we posted an interview with author and speaker Kevin Carroll that delved into three traits that all successful leaders have that help motivate their teams.
When it comes to company cultures, there is another concept Carroll espouses that helps to unite and motivate teams — play. “What I love about play is it allows you to have a level of confidence, especially creative confidence, and agility and nimbleness. As far as play, you have to problem-solve on the fly.” —Kevin Carroll Purposeful play can organize teams around common goals, then motivate them to problem-solve, create, and collaborate more effectively and quickly than before. by Stephen Danos Fast, informed decisions are the backbone of successful companies. The ideal speed of decision making is analogous to an 800-meter run, the controlled sprint where participants need to establish their position and pace once the starter pistol fires. Elite runners train rigorously to shave milliseconds off their time.
by Stephen Danos In order to gain a competitive advantage in today’s business world, companies need to make speed a habit and accelerate workflows, all while avoiding the Red Queen Effect: working faster and harder to stay in the same place.
As pressure to innovate grows, companies need to continuously improve on their products and processes, taking in to account internal observations and customer feedback. This means being proactive and, like experienced chess players, thinking several steps ahead to compete without sacrificing quality. The combination of a clear foundational vision, organizational alignment, and emphasis on speed allows business leaders to build successful, cross-functional teams. Once these are firmly in place, businesses can run faster and smarter. by Stephen Danos When leaders move with speed, whether in decision-making or in running efficient meetings, the benefits can spread throughout an entire organization.
Studies show that leaders ranked in the top 10 percent based on their leadership speed see positive results in the attitudes of their direct reports — 63 percent of whom say they would do everything possible to make their company successful. That’s according to the book Speed: How Leaders Accelerate Successful Execution, in which the authors propose that there is no statistical downside to speed, as long as leaders take the time to periodically pause and reassess whether their efforts are aligned to their organization's overall strategy. Business leaders who avoid these five common pitfalls can motivate their teams to execute more quickly — and at a higher level. by David Lotz Everyone has heard the saying, “If only I had one more hour in the day.” Often we’re the ones saying it. Those of us with full lives know the value of an hour, and are always looking for ways to make the most of our time. Well, I’m excited to share a story with you about how I spent five minutes over the summer setting up Smartsheet automated actions and how doing so has saved me an hour each workday since. A Manual Process Keeps Me Up At Nightby Stephen Branstetter I covet more time: more time for important work, more time with my spouse and kids, more time with friends, more time to work out and get healthy.
I used to hate creating weekly status reports. While important, they felt like a waste of time. Often, my status reports were simply a manual process of collecting data that already exists elsewhere mixed with tracking down people for further clarification. So I started playing around with ways to simplify the process and save time using Smartsheet. Automated actions are simple solutions that save me and my team time, reduce the number of status meetings, create more consistency in the frequency of our reports, and improve data quality. And these benefits free us up to focus on more rewarding projects and less on manual, repetitive tasks.
by Katy Beloof on January 26, 2018
To stay competitive in today’s rapidly changing business world, companies need to make better decisions faster. To do so, senior business leaders must rethink how their teams get work done.
A recent study by 451 Research takes an in-depth look at the changing nature of work, the limits of traditional tools, and how business leaders can adapt going forward. It proposes a new paradigm for work management that gives businesses the ability to balance structure and flexibility to gain a competitive edge. Complex, Strategic Work Has Become Everyone’s Job
Business leaders and their teams are taking on complex work in unprecedented ways. Work that used to fall to specialists, analysts, and process experts is being decentralized and becoming the responsibility of everyone on the team. Business leaders are having to learn how to help their teams manage strategic work processes to achieve business outcomes.
So what does this decentralization of complex and specialist work look like on the ground?
Complex work is being decentralized across all departments and industries. And these aren’t small, one-off projects. Nearly half (46%) of the business leaders surveyed reported that it’s standard for them to supervise more than 200 distinct stages of a given project, and 75% report that it’s typical for more than 100 people to be involved over the duration of a project.
by Stephen Danos on March 30, 2018
A culture of transparency, in which a company makes its strategic plans, playbooks, short-term and long-term goals, financial earnings, and important metrics available to all employees, increases visibility into department performance, promotes a healthier exchange of information, and can improve morale and engagement.
Transparent, thoughtful, and precise internal communications strategies provide employees with context for decision making at the executive level. This boosts internal enthusiasm, company pride, customer and product advocacy, and motivates internal teams to refine processes to make them more lean and scalable.
Cultivating a culture of transparency can be easier said than done, but the payoff is worth the investment. But, are you doing enough to promote internal transparency in your organization? Below are six ways to help you create a culture of transparency by providing employees with real-time visibility into relevant information. |
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