Top Tips for Setting Team Stretch Goals
To achieve your biggest goals, gain or maintain industry leadership, or attract wide brand recognition, it may be necessary to set stretch goals. These are audacious, scary, and almost impossible goals that inspire your team to go beyond their normal abilities to create novel approaches and solutions. Stretch goals are aggressively ambitious and rarely achieved. When they are, the results are exponential, attracting rewards and opportunities and boosting your teams' confidence. Stretch goals can move a team to new levels of competence and productivity. They improve employees' mindsets and strengthen team bonds. If you want to boost motivation among your team, stretch goals just make sense. Setting goals are associated with increased self-esteem and autonomy, while a study by The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) found that the probability of completing a goal increases by 25% if you consciously decide to work towards that goal. Research has long indicated that setting goals is associated with success, so it should be a priority of your team to focus on them. However, if not managed correctly, stretch goals can create a disconnected work environment and demotivate employees. As a leader or manager, how you set and communicate stretch goals to your team is critical. But what is a stretch goal? How do you benefit from them while tackling their challenges? This article defines stretch goals and explains how to get the best results from them in your organization. Let's get started. What is a stretch goal? A stretch goal is a high-effort and high-risk goal. It is intentionally set above normal standards to attract exponential rewards, opportunities, and experience. Stretch goals are not expected to be achieved one hundred percent. They are set to inspire growth and counter complacency in teams. When a stretch goal is achieved, it's recognized as high performance. When it's missed, it should not be judged as low performance. Stretch goals are deliberately set out of reach. Achieving a substantial fraction puts your company ahead of peers and teaches your team valuable lessons. What are the benefits of stretch goals? If a stretch goal is not expected to be achieved, why then do we set them? Are we setting our teams up for failure? There are several reasons why stretch goals are beneficial. Regardless of the outcome, they breathe new life into uninspired work environments and challenge teams to create better results. It's best to set stretch goals alongside regular SMART goals. The juxtaposition between the stretch and SMART goals creates direction for your teams, clarifying the organization's vision, roadmap, and minimum targets for employees. Here's an example of the difference between SMART and stretch goals: SMART goal: Increase revenue by 20% in the next quarter Stretch goal: Increase revenue by 500% and become a European market leader in four years Your SMART goal is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. Your stretch goal is grand and calls for rethinking current processes and solving more expansive problems for your market. Your teams can see the company's long-term vision, what peak performance looks like in the short term, and how their role contributes to it. Other benefits of stretch goals include: Stimulating peak performance in employees and encouraging giant leaps of innovation across the organization Inspiring more commitment, creativity, and effort from team members, birthing new ways of doing things, and discovering hidden talent Encouraging your teams to rethink how they work and leverage available resources Inspiring employees to try new, out-of-the-box methods to solve old problems Increasing your organization’s chances of success. Even when you miss the stretch targets, you're likely to achieve more than you would have without them Providing a strategic way to control and impact our environments, although many elements are out of our control Keeping teams aligned, improving productivity and collaboration as everyone knows the markers and their importance Adding insight and managerial foresight to the executive team, helping to make better decisions for the organization's future Creating opportunities to chart exciting and proactive paths for your teams and organization What are the challenges of stretch goals? Despite their many benefits, the very nature of stretch goals brings many challenges, including: Your stretch goals may be too vague and ambiguous, leading to a disconnection from the teams working to achieve them. Clearly articulating your goals is crucial as this informs the metrics, tasks, and activities managers break the stretch goals into. Stretch goals provide employees with motivation, but not the required skills. Just because you set goals and your team is aligned doesn't mean they immediately know how to tackle the work. Stretch goals do not provide employees with the ability to execute. Outlandish stretch goals can cause frustration with high-performing employees and teams. When teams that usually exceed their targets find themselves behind and unable to catch up, they may become frustrated, reducing productivity and morale even further. Setting stretch goals may only positively impact employees pursuing them for the first time. Employees who have been involved in the previous pursuit of stretch goals may be uninterested in new moonshot goals. Failure to meet stretch goals can lead to a crisis of confidence and low employee engagement. If there's immense, unrelenting pressure to achieve these goals, employee dissent may spread. Stretch goals may cause tunnel vision in teams and managers. They may become fixated on the measured outcome of the stretch goal and lose sight of what drives the organization forward. This happens if your goals do not fully align with your company vision or product roadmap. Lofty stretch goals may cause unethical behavior in employees, leading to negative consequences for the company. Studies show links between ambitious goals and cheating in academic and professional settings. When employees are up against the wall, they may try unethical means to hit their target by any means necessary. The stretch goal paradox explained The stretch goal paradox shows how stretch goals are often misused. Organizations that could most benefit from them rarely use them and businesses with less chance of success set them, leading to failure and team demoralization. A much-cited Harvard Business Review article on the stretch goal paradox explains that stretch goals are most likely to work when an organization or team is on a winning streak with recent good performance and high employee morale. When these winning organizations also have slack resources to expend on the stretch goals, their chances for success become higher. [caption id="attachment_465694" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash[/caption] On the other hand, companies on a losing streak are not in the right place or emotional space to tackle stretch goals, especially when resources are tight and the organization needs to cut costs or make money urgently. Employees in such fragile organizations may snap under the pressure of stretch goals or resort to unethical means to achieve them. Though perfectly positioned to take advantage, companies with recent good performance may become satisfied or complacent with their market position and feel no need to set ambitious stretch goals. Inversely, companies on a losing streak, who are least likely to succeed, often set lofty stretch goals, leading to high-pressure, sometimes toxic work environments for their teams. It is essential to be aware of employee morale when setting stretch goals. In the right environments, stretch goals inspire workers to exhibit optimism, attract opportunities, and reach new heights. In deflated teams, stretch goals may seem like threats, causing employees to grasp for quick fixes and exhibit fear or defensiveness. How to set stretch goals Stretch goals should focus on developing original and innovative approaches to complex challenges, and not necessarily lead to longer hours at work. They should inspire teams to try new things and think beyond the standard. When setting stretch goals, start by asking open-ended questions like: What is the best possible outcome you can imagine? How can you accelerate the process to achieve this outcome? How can your team improve current work processes? How can the company improve? How can employees create maximum value? How can organizational resources be used best? How can your products bring more joy to your customers? How can your company positively affect your industry and move the needle? To set your own stretch goals, start with a simple template like the one below, which ties in with our open-ended questions and can help you to more clearly define your goal. Q. What is my ideal outcome for my time in this role? What is the best-case scenario for me and my team? Q. What can I do in my current role to move towards this scenario? Q. What would I need from my team to achieve this goal? Q. What would I need from my wider organization to achieve this goal? Q. What are my next steps towards this goal? These questions help you think widely and come up with an ideal roadmap. Keep in mind that you may not achieve your stretch goals, but they serve as a picture of the future your company is working towards. Before you set a stretch goal, remember to consider your organization's position regarding: Recent performance: If your team recently had a win, you are in a good place to strive for more audacious goals. Available resources: If your company has spare resources to allow for little margins of error, you'll get better results from setting stretch goals. More tips for setting stretch goals Once you've confirmed your company's position and gotten enough answers to focus your stretch goals, follow the tips below to increase your chances of setting impactful targets. Use ranges for goals, not single points. Set stretch goal metrics as ranges, not fixed, single points. Setting ranges helps to reduce employee anxiety and provides options for tackling the stretch goals. Focusing on a range gives managers and teams room to stretch their performance with less pressure. Allow autonomy for teams and employees. Leaders may set stretch goals, but it's best to leave it up to the teams to figure out how best to achieve them. When employees have autonomy, it liberates them to use their specific knowledge and expertise creatively. Break your stretch goals into SMART goals. Stretch goals are great as long-term goals and an aperture into the company vision. To effectively implement them, break them down into smaller SMART projects and tasks. Use work management software like Wrike to assign tasks, collaborate, and track results. Allocate time. Give your team a shot at success by allowing enough time to tackle the stretch goal. Include slack time for trial and error. Examples of stretch goals for employees Depending on your industry, organization size, and market position, stretch goals for your employees would vary. Here are some examples of stretch goals for employees: Fast-paced marketing team: Reach one million marketing-qualified leads within the next year and develop a world-class marketing curriculum to train and certify young marketers Digital marketing team in a seed-stage B2C startup: Build a social, professional, and personal brand that attracts a global audience and commands ≈40% engagement every week Software developers at a legacy organization: Refactor the entire backend code and reduce technical debt by 80% Operations manager: Cut down customer waiting time from 1.5 hours to ten minutes Project manager: Develop a system to maximize cross-functional collaboration and achieve 100% project success Can stretch goals go into OKRs? Adding stretch goals to OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) is tricky as they can be so ambitious that employees do not believe they can achieve them. However, in the best cases, moonshot goals inspire teams and create an exciting work environment. The key to using stretch goals in OKRs is communicating the rationale and expectations behind them and the thresholds for success. For most companies, success means achieving 70% of the objectives — fully reaching the OKRs is acknowledged as extraordinary performance. When aiming high, even failed goals result in substantial advancements. Be realistic when adding stretch goals to OKRs. Note what's possible and what's not. Keep the key components of OKR goal-setting in play: Objectives are what you want your team to accomplish Key results describe how you accomplish it Can a business have a stretch goal? There are many examples of businesses that set and achieved audacious stretch goals. There are also examples of many that failed. The time it took to develop new products at Motorola famously fell tenfold in the 1990s after the company mandated stretch goals throughout the organization. Stretch goals created a culture of excellence at Apple, caused ethical issues at Wells Fargo, and led to failure at Yahoo. For the best results, managers should define strategically aligned metrics and ethical guidelines to achieve stretch goals. Here are some examples of stretch goals for businesses: To be in the top 5% in its industry, based on brand recognition and customer loyalty To be the fastest in terms of customer fulfillment and satisfaction (e.g., fastest Wi-Fi connection) To become one of the best places to work globally, based on attracting and retaining the best talent To be in the top three green corporations, based on the carbon emission ratio in your specific industry To reduce customer service complaints by 90% by improving core product and user experience Who should set a stretch goal? Founders, executives, and managers can set stretch goals. However, teams and employees should be given autonomy in brainstorming, experimenting, and innovating to achieve these goals. How to motivate your team to reach stretch objectives Teams may become complacent and resistant to change — especially when a company is successful and everything is working as it should. If you're in this situation, motivate your team by reframing your company's future in terms of potential losses, instead of continued success. Emphasize what could happen if you don't take action. To keep your team challenged and invested in your stretch goals, it's important to: Define metrics and give a clear picture of what achieving the stretch goal would look like Encourage focus on excellence and innovation and less on fixed, financial targets Encourage employees to see things from new perspectives where the only way forward is to tackle your stretch goals Imagine yourself as your competition and encourage your team to come up with solutions to your organizational weaknesses Celebrate small wins to build momentum and commitment Foster a learning culture that allows your team to take on more ambitious goals How to set employee goals with Wrike Wrike helps to turn your goals into actionable results. Its collaborative workspace allows your teams to zoom out to see the company's big-picture goals and zoom in to tackle the tasks and activities required to complete each one. With Wrike's OKR template, you can define the steps you and your team need to take to achieve set goals, assign tasks, measure defined metrics, extract insights, and make adjustments to your project plans as you progress towards your stretch goals. Get started today with a two-week free trial of Wrike.
Top Tips to Manage Your Daily Tasks
It’s Monday morning. You’ve got leftover tasks on your calendar from last week, an inbox full of new requests, and team members who need marching orders for the day. How do you get on top of it all and manage daily tasks in an efficient way? Enter daily task management. You’ll be cleaning up your overdue assignments and starting fresh with an actionable plan to delegate, manage, and execute your aligned to-do list for work before lunchtime. The process of managing your daily tasks can be tricky, especially when you’re leading an entire team through more than one complex project. The good news is you don’t need to be a productivity expert — or develop superhuman habits — to come up with a successful plan for tackling your day-to-day tasks. You just need to learn these top tips to manage your daily tasks. What are the benefits of daily task tracking? There are many benefits to daily task tracking, ranging from achieving benchmarks to saving valuable resources. Here’s a closer look at some of the top advantages. Stay aligned with goals It’s easy to get distracted by shiny object syndrome. Identify how and why your team members or fellow managers deprioritize current projects for new ones. You can also use daily task tracking to evaluate your day-to-day functions versus the outcome they’re supposed to achieve. Identify non-essential tasks At the start of each new workday, take a few minutes to review your project and task lists and see how they can be simplified. Then, challenge yourself to cut down half (yes, half!) of those tasks to only the ones that directly impact your goal. Then, try to cut it even further a couple of days later by delegating, outsourcing, or rescheduling them from your project management tool. Become more accountable Document expectations of yourself and others by assigning tasks where everyone can see them. Automate reminders to save time on following up if things fall behind. And make sure your team knows that communication is important, and there’s no shame in asking for help, reassigning obligations to those with lighter loads, or simply finding a way to reprioritize tasks if goals change. Improve task estimates Use software that tracks time for specific tasks. Look at your results over time and adjust to meet the average amount next time you assign a similar project. Remember that additions such as breaks, waiting for third-party feedback, and other related actions will impact the work itself. Say goodbye to multitasking According to the Harvard Business Review, a work environment that fosters flow will generate five times more productivity than multitasking. Assigning tasks with a singular focus will not only get them done quicker, but it will also make daily task organization that much easier. Add self-care into your schedule It’s important to keep in mind that even if we are very motivated and eager to accomplish goals, the fastest way to achieve them is by taking great care of ourselves, so we can perform at our best. This means creating tasks entirely dedicated to self-care. Even if it doesn’t feel productive to take a break from work, acknowledging that our work lives are a marathon and not a sprint will go a long way toward accomplishing even more than you could without it. Start by incorporating 10-minute breaks every hour, taking a full lunch every day, and setting aside at least a few minutes at the beginning and end of every day to reflect on where you are and where you’re going. What is the best way to manage daily tasks? There is more than one way to manage daily tasks. However, productivity experts, researchers, and students of self-help bestsellers all agree on the following practices for managing your daily to-do list. Prioritize your tasks There are lots of ways to think about prioritization. Some people use the urgent and important model. Others rely on the idea of effort versus benefit. However you choose to do it, finding a methodology for decision-making that you like and sticking to it will go a long way towards prioritizing your tasks. Focus on one task at a time Getting the most out of your time is a basic concept of productivity. However, multitasking and other factors can slow you down. Single-tasking can help you focus on the things that really matter. It can also help you get into a state of flow. While it might seem boring to work on one thing for a long time, limiting your focus can actually help boost creativity. When you’re single-tasking, it allows you to explore new ideas and paths. It also helps you find the results that you may not have even thought of. Also, people who spend their days working on various tasks need long periods of time to recharge. Single-tasking allows them to feel free and end their work sessions feeling refreshed and more successful. Set time limits Having a set of time limits on projects and tasks helps you keep track of your availability. For example, if you want to work on a project for 10 hours this week, then you need to find a way to schedule 10 hours to finish that project. But if you limit yourself to five hours, you’ll likely find productive shortcuts that allow you to stay within those parameters. Having a limit on how many hours you can work each day also helps prevent you from overextending yourself. Communicate Chances are, the tasks you manage on a daily basis either directly involve or impact at least one other person. One of the best ways to keep everyone in the loop is by scheduling regular face-to-face meetings. These are usually a group or one-on-one session, and they can help you identify areas of concern or improve the way you support your team. However, it's also important to make sure that the meetings are productive and that the quality of communication is maintained. One of the best ways to improve team communication is to keep track of all of your conversations in real time. Doing so will help minimize the chances of losing valuable ideas and resources. If meetings aren’t needed or possible, given everyone’s busy schedules, it’s important to keep communication organized and easy to reference. You can accomplish all of this by simply using a project management tool that enables you to create notes, loop in other collaborators using @mentions, and tie directly back into task details. This can be done through a shared digital document. But for more complex projects, you’ll want to use daily task management software to scale your efforts and unlock other productivity hacks. Take breaks between tasks Focus on the frequency and quality of your breaks while managing daily tasks. The number of breaks you need and when will vary from person to person and can be affected by a variety of factors, including your health, sleep quality, and work environment. Make sure you learn how to observe your own energy levels and develop realistic expectations for yourself. When you’re on a break, consider what activities you will or won’t allow yourself to do. For example, checking a work email while on a break doesn’t really give you the chance to pause and step away from your computer. Actions such as taking a walk, brewing a cup of tea, or simply turning off electronics for ten minutes can greatly reduce fatigue and help you be productive the entire workday. Look to delegate when needed Being a leader means that you can’t do everything yourself, so delegating is very important. Delegating isn’t just about lightening your load. If done correctly, delegating your daily tasks when needed can help build trust and develop your team's skills. It can also help you better identify, hire, and train the ideal individuals to tackle projects. This also helps prepare employees for future responsibility and further develop their skill set for their career long-term. If the tasks you want to delegate are unskilled or can be done by anyone who has the time and basic information, consider hiring a virtual assistant or freelancer. If you’re hesitant to propose this given your current department budget, consider the opportunity costs of continuing to do this particular task. Is it keeping you from the tasks you were specifically hired to do? Are there more effective uses of your time? Reflect on these questions to determine whether outsourcing is right for you. Features to look for in daily task management software Daily task management software can help you manage the complexities of leading a team and organizing more than one project at a time. Here are the must-have features to look for in your next purchase or trial. Subtasks Subtasks are all the actions needed to complete a given task. One of the first steps in adding subtasks to your daily project to-do list is adding or highlighting all the tasks that represent a single step. This umbrella of smaller tasks represents the true time and resource budget you’ll need to complete the larger task. For example, you may be working on a blog article. If your to-do list simply says write a new blog article, you’re missing out on other key steps, such as performing keyword research, outlining the blog article, assigning the blog article to team members, setting a due date, linking the outline to the blog article task, reviewing the blog article draft, and preparing to publish the blog article. If you’re not sure whether you need subtasks for a particular action item, your team can decide what is or isn't a single-step task based on what they have done or don't have time to prepare. Once you’ve gathered input from your team members who have specific knowledge of the task, you can then do additional research to determine the exact time it will take to finish. After going through the list of single-step tasks and sub-tasks, make sure that the list doesn't include any tasks unrelated to the main project goals. Doing so will help keep the list organized and prevent the overuse of subtasks. Collaboration Today, more people are working from home and using collaboration tools that allow them to work seamlessly from anywhere. With a daily task management software, you can create a secure environment for your team to work together. Cloud storage allows you to organize and store all your documents. It also allows you to keep track of all your conversations. Top daily task management software will even allow you to create custom-form requests that help you to complete tasks faster. From there, you can also keep track of all the details of your process, such as milestones and reports, while seamlessly collaborating with the rest of your team and stakeholders. Sharing facilities Collaborating on documents, sharing files to those who need them, and getting approval on work completed can be challenging if there isn’t already a system in place for sharing facilities. That is why having the ability to share ownership of tasks is so important. Sharing facilities makes it easier to communicate with relevant team members, save time on manual data entry, and keep everyone in the loop in real time. This is especially important for work that requires at least one other person’s input, assistance, or approval in a timely manner. Instead of wasting time asking for file access, updating permission settiings, and guessing file names, your team can easily communicate with one another through a central shared platform. Time tracking Time tracking makes it possible to properly estimate and record the time it takes to complete a given action. This is great for planning out your work for the day, providing accurate cost estimates for clients, and prioritizing projects. Some daily task management platforms allow you to track all of your work within the platform. Count your hours and minutes more accurately as you go about your day. Add a time log entry or start a task timer while you’re at it. Automate when your timers stop or start to keep you on task. Typically when you start using the timer, it will continue running until you stop orstart tracking another task. In daily task management software tools such as Wrike, it will also continue running if you close your browser window. And when you start tracking the time spent on a task, leading solutions such as Wrike will display an Activity Streams entry that indicates that you've started working on it. A clock will appear at the top of the screen that shows how much time you've spent on the task. Limit yourself to one timer for one focused task. If you need to keep your place but switch tasks, Wrike offers multiple time tracker options to save your spot and return to it later. Free templates We’ve saved the biggest and best productivity benefit of daily task management software for last: free in-app templates. Wrike and other leading solutions offer free templates for everything from complex project management in phases to Kanban-style management to marketing calendars. Using a template developed by experts will save you time trying to reinvent the wheel whenever you get a new project. It will also make coming up with and delegating related tasks easier since they’ll already be preloaded on the template. Why use Wrike as your daily task organizer? Wrike is a daily task management tool used by team leaders and project managers. With its ability to create, assign, and manage ongoing tasks, Wrike is an obvious choice for a daily task organizer. Unlike other daily task organizers, Wrike offers the ability to improve communication and collaboration through a number of highly detailed yet simple-to-use features. Here are just some ways successful brands have used Wrike to streamline even their most complex to-do lists. 1. Automate data entry Once a task is added to Wrike, users can create and attach custom tags. These tags automatically sort tasks into related folders and project categories. Instead of manually searching for related tasks within one long to-do list, team members can see tasks related to them in their own workspaces, individual projects, or anywhere else they’d intuitively expect to see them. 2. Make requests seamless Requests coming in from other sources such as the sales department or even clients can overwhelm your team if there isn’t a system in place to prioritize and assign them. In Wrike, users can master the art of balancing ongoing work with new tasks without skipping a beat. There are many ways to do so, which means you can pick the one that works best for you and your unique team. From custom workflows to request forms, it’s never been easier to stay on top of new or conflicting initiatives. 3. Stay on top Wrike makes it possible to monitor and manage everything task-related. That means viewing individual team members’ progress, task roadblocks sorted by project or department, potential missed deadlines you can problem-solve ahead of time, and even billable hour usage. Whatever you need to see, Wrike will make it visible to you. 4. Get useful reminders Swap the sticky notes for reminders sent when and where you need them. Wrike gives users the option to add a Chrome Extension, which will automatically notify you about upcoming deadlines or tasks due that day. You can also have Wrike send you an email with a breakdown of the day’s work every morning so you can get stuck in right away. 5. Kick-start action Wrike also offers team leaders and managers the power of project templates. Whether it’s one of our many effective pre-made templates ready for you to use right away or one you’ve customized yourself, Wrike helps turn project plans into actions that much faster. Manage your daily tasks with Wrike Plan out goals, tasks, and subtasks every day with Wrike's project management software. Begin with our library of customizable templates, which come pre-populated with everything you need to get started. Custom project dashboards, automated reminders, and detailed task description options will help you start every day off on the right foot. And when you’re ready to check off the boxes? Wrike will be there to support you when you create your next series of to-dos. Want to supercharge your productivity? Get a free two-week Wrike trial to see how easy collaborative project management can be.
Maslow's Theory of Motivation in Project Management
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs can be used to plan any type of project. In fact, the Maslow Theory of Motivation can be the key to unlocking successful project results. Although all of these requirements appear to be unrelated to project management, they can be adapted to suit many areas. Self-actualization, esteem, belonging, safety, and psychological well-being are among the needs that project managers must strive to achieve if they want to unlock that next level of project success. In this article, we’ll explain the hierarchy of needs, how to apply it to a project, why it is important, and how Wrike can help. Keep reading to discover some examples and benefits of the Maslow Theory of Motivation that will give you an edge in your project planning you never knew you needed. What is Maslow's theory? Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of needs is a concept commonly used in psychology and various professions to help people reach their goals and live happier, more productive lives. This concept was created by psychologist Abraham Maslow after he observed how certain animals prioritized their needs based on their unique behavior patterns. Nowadays, this tool is used to study how humans respond to different kinds of behavioral motivation. The goal is to work your way up the Maslow hierarchy pyramid from psychological needs all the way up to transcendence. According to Maslow, each level must be achieved in order to reach the next level and will eventually lead to fulfilling your highest potential in life. These are the steps: Psychological needs Psychological needs include the essentials humans need for survival. Food, clothing, and adequate shelter are among our basic psychological needs. Safety needs Safety is also sometimes thought of as security. This includes feeling secure physically, emotionally, financially, and socially. Job security is a good example of this type of need. Belonging and love needs Human beings are social creatures and require many types of love in order to fulfill this portion of Maslow’s pyramid. Examples include romantic love, family connections, friendships, a sense of community, and even a healthy work culture. Esteem needs This category of needs has to do with how we view ourselves or how we believe others view us. Respect, self-esteem, and status are a large part of this category. Cognitive needs Cognitive needs are related to our mental stimulation and continued growth. Additional education, job or skills training, and a general sense of curiosity about the world are all great examples. Aesthetic needs Aesthetic needs have to do with how we perceive our surroundings and the world we interact with. To be fulfilled in this area we must see beauty, art, order, form, and balance in the majority of our spaces. Self-actualization This is the state we hope to achieve after fulfilling all of the lower levels. In this category, we are satisfied with our lives and our work. We are certain that we are living our best lives and realizing our true potential. Transcendence We have unlocked holistic consciousness and are now one with humanity, nature, and the world around us. In essence, it means to transcend so far beyond our own needs in order to be in tune with needs outside of ourselves at a high level. Some illustrations of the Maslow theory of motivation show only five major categories: psychological, safety and security, love and belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization. These broader strokes include all of the above eight steps we mentioned but both are useful to know when studying this concept. Hierarchy of needs example To use our project management example, in order for a project team member to secure their psychological needs, they must first have the basics for survival, including clean water and shelter. After that, they’ll need to have a strong sense of security in their life, which in this context may mean job security. Next, their work relationships should be enjoyable and fulfilling. Then, they’ll need to feel confident in their performance in order to reach a level of self-actualization in their project work. Once that’s achieved, they’ll have the freedom to be more spontaneous, creative, and motivated to produce great results. The benefits of understanding employee motivation theories Having the confidence to know that your needs (and the needs of your team) are being met can help you achieve success. It can also influence the attitudes of those around you. Self-actualized employees are a project manager’s dream come true. Their personalities are often warm, grounded, and positive. They’re able to see issues from multiple perspectives and understand human nature well enough to make fair yet balanced decisions. They also tend to be great at working both independently and in groups. Even having just one self-actualized team member on board can influence the rest of the group and improve project outcomes or, at the very least, everyone’s experience of the project. How is Maslow's hierarchy of needs used in project management? In project management, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is often used to determine how to motivate and make sure that the needs of employees are met. This concept has been especially important in recent years. During the past 18 months, many people experienced burnout due to the pandemic. Aside from COVID-19, we also witnessed extreme environmental disasters and social and political upheaval. It’s no secret that this has impacted many in the workplace. And, as you can imagine, mental health and employee wellness issues can have a significant impact on a company's culture and project goals. Establishing a mental health program and providing resources for employees is an important step in addressing this issue. Applying the Maslow theory of motivation in project management isn’t the only way, but it is a significant one. This is especially true as we reenter the workplace after the pandemic. Despite all of the changes in the world, our basic human needs are still the same. By honing in on the direct application of this theory, project managers can provide a foundation for employees to feel great and do great work, which is a cornerstone of authentic leadership. Using Wrike to ensure needs are met Wrike is a project management tool used to help employees achieve their highest potential. Wrike makes it easy to communicate goals and objectives through features such as visual Gantt charts. Giving employees insight into how their work fits into the big picture makes them feel important and needed. Their work is more fulfilling when it ties back into a shared vision. Wrike also allows project team members to be both autonomous and interconnected with the rest of the group. This is done through individual task assignments that include details such as owner, approver, and dependencies. This level of structured freedom makes it easier to build trust among employees while allowing room for their own creativity and independence. It also allows them to take calculated risks while leaders provide oversight without micromanagement. Wrike also gives users the ability to provide feedback at any stage, which is essential for growing employee confidence. Team members can loop others into ongoing conversations with @mentions so that they can get questions answered and receive notes as needed. They can also apply the feedback and request approval from specific department members directly within each individual task, making teamwork easier while increasing their sense of belonging. Ready to foster a community of employees whose work and lives are a reflection of their very best selves? Get started today with Wrike’s two-week free trial.
Employee Engagement Survey: The Productivity Gap
Wrike did an online survey of 5,000+ adults in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Australia, who work full time for an organization with 500+ employees. Discover what drives employee engagement so you can build a strategy that boosts productivity and grows your business.
Helping You Reach the Mythical Inbox Zero
Take back control of your work with Wrike’s new Inbox on Android. Let’s face it, we all get a lot of communications these days. Some we need to respond to right away, some we need to come back to later, some that aren’t important at all. For most of us, it’s difficult to keep track of everything that still needs to be done because immediate to-dos, FYIs, and "I'll-respond-to-this-later"s are all mixed together in our inbox. Not anymore. Wrike’s redesigned Inbox on Android helps you quickly get to the bottom of your messages and keep your Inbox clean. The new card design makes messages easy to scan and sort. Swiping right archives messages you’re finished with; snooze temporarily hides those you need to come back to later. (Don’t worry, you decide when you want them to pop back into your inbox.) Now, you can empty your Inbox without losing track of important things you need to do later. The new Inbox combines all of your Wrike messages and notifications in a single view, consolidating the former Activity Stream & Notification Center into one. Update your Android app today and find the mythical Inbox Zero. Don’t have the Wrike Android app yet? Install it here. For our iOS users, you’ll already find a new Inbox for your messages in the app, and we’ll be updating the design and adding archiving and snooze in the near future. Keep an eye out for the update!
Why Email is Addictive and How to Break the Habit
When was the last time you checked your email account? A few hours ago? Were you looking at your inbox right before you started reading this article? Stats from Business Insider reveal that over 1/3 of Americans check their email continuously throughout the day. According to AOL’s 2010 survey, 47% of people claim to be hooked on email, 25% can’t go without email for more than 3 days, 60% check email on vacation, and 59% check email from the bathroom. It's time to break the habit. The Very Real Problem with Checking Email Before we dive in, we should consider: is checking email actually a negative addiction, or is it necessary for functioning in an office job? After all, according to our recent survey, 59% of people report that their team stores project information in emails, and 13% said their team goes as far as to track project status solely via email. It seems like an important tool for getting work done. But as you'll see below, it has been shown that email is a major productivity inhibitor, and can even be negatively impacting our moods: 1. Managing email constantly means more time wasted The average worker is interrupted every 10 minutes or an average of 56 times per day, and it takes around 25 minutes to completely refocus attention back on the original task. That's 2 hours spent recovering from distractions every day. And unfortunately, habitual email checking is one of those pesky interruptions that cause you to lose focus. In one workplace study, Jackson et al. (2002) found that 70% of emails got a reaction within 6 seconds of arrival, and 85% within 2 minutes. After being interrupted by email, it took participants of this study 64 seconds of "Now where was I again?" to recover their train of thought. Furthermore, according to McKinsey Global Institute Analysis, 28% of the workweek is spent reading and answering e-mail. If you work a standard 40-hour week, that means you waste over 11 hours every week just looking at your inbox instead of getting real work done. 2. Checking email inhibits productivity Email is a form of "productive procrastination" that we love to rely on. When we don't want to work on our actual tasks, we think, "I'll just answer emails for a few minutes." We feel better about procrastinating via email because it's "technically work." This thought process is an enabler for bad habits, and a "few minutes" of email checking can quickly stretch out longer than you planned. As it turns out, many people admit that checking email frequently is a problem for productivity. In the 2015 Work Management Survey by Wrike, 40% of respondents identified email as one of their top productivity blockers, taking 3rd prize overall from the list of common work inhibitors. Responding to email was cited as more detrimental to productivity than unclear priorities, procrastination, and even short deadlines. 3. Waiting for email is ruining your mood Next time you're at work feeling like you woke up on the wrong side of the bed, consider this: email dependency is actually ruining your mood. You check it over and over (and over), waiting for a bit of good news. But it never comes. Or it comes so irregularly that you're let down hundreds of times. Nancy Colier calls it "lottery brain" in Psychology Today. It's an adaptive part of our brain that "inspires hope and a sense of possibility, as long as that hope is also supported by proactive agency in our behavior." Our habitual checking inspires hope — and continuously disappoints when that great message doesn't come. Plus it's stressing us out. In a study from the University of British Columbia, they found that the study group who checked their email as often as possible experienced far more stress than the group who was only allowed to check their email three times a day, and they didn't feel any more productive because of it. Emails addicts are ruining their moods for no reason. 4. When you check email constantly, you block your flow You and I also call it "getting into the zone." Researchers have found that reaching a state of flow can enhance work performance — it's the best way to finish tasks efficiently. Psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi says: "[Flow] is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost." Unfortunately, it's difficult to see how anyone is reaching the necessary flow state in order to get complex work done. We are distracted by our inboxes far more often than we realize. Participants in a Renaud et al. study (2006) reported they thought they only checked their email, on average, once an hour. However, when the researchers spied on them, they saw that participants were actually checking their email nearly every five minutes. This jumping from task to inbox throughout the day requires the brain to readjust over and over to the new point of focus. We're disrupting our own work on a regular basis — without even realizing it! Watch this funny video with more reasons we all "love" email: The Psychology Behind Why We're Hooked To fix the problem, we need to understand what's going on in our brain. Why are we so obsessed with our inboxes? There are a few theories out there: 1. Operant conditioning The most prevalent theory behind why we constantly visit our inbox, even when we know we're unlikely to have anything new, is operant conditioning. More specifically, variable interval schedules of reinforcement. Operant conditioning is a well-known psychology concept, defined as a type of learning that molds your behavior by training you to expect specific consequences after specific actions. Variable interval schedules of reinforcement mean that the action is rewarded when you do it, but not every time, and at inconsistent intervals. It's a perfectly normal way for humans to learn; it only becomes a problem when the learned behavior is counterproductive to our work. In relation to email, variable interval operant condition plays out like this: When you check your email, you are expecting that you will get a new message. You don't get one every time, so you keep coming back, subconsciously hoping that "this time I'll have a new email!" And then you hit refresh, even repeatedly within the span of just a few seconds, waiting for your behavior (the act of checking) to be rewarded (a new email). What's more, Nir Eyal, the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and long-time student of the intersection between psychology, technology, and business, says that just the simple act of responding to an email reinforces our behavior to come back and check again: "Every time I reply to an email, I'm loading the next trigger because I'm likely to get a response. That response is an external trigger prompting me through the hook once again. And that's why email is such a hard habit to break." (13:10) In the long run, if you keep getting worthwhile emails periodically, your behavior is reinforced and you'll keep checking ad infinitum. Hear Nir Eyal discuss email addiction starting at 11:22: 2. Getting important email soothes our ego Another theory points the cause of our email addictions to the individual's sense of importance. Even though we claim to hate email, some of us love the feeling of getting email. Linda Stone, writer, consultant, and tech researcher, says that keeping tabs on our email feels like a good thing because important work emails make us feel needed. Being asked for our opinion or our effort validates our role and how we're spending our time. This makes it doubly hard to ignore the incoming email — by human nature, we crave that validation. Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, says: "If you think about [...] the internal trigger to check email, well, there're plenty: there's boredom, there's anxiety, there's insecurity about what I'm doing in my job. All of these internal triggers can be satiated a little bit by checking our email." (11:22) But the constant checking and interruption is getting out of control. The challenge we face with email is to not let it drag us to extremes, where we subconsciously feel the need to look at our inbox and see if someone needs us yet. 3. We love those easy, small wins One last theory. A study by Theresa Amabile of Harvard Business School on how to motivate the workforce made this conclusion: People love making progress. When employees feel that progress has been made, it catalyzes their motivation to keep working in order to reach the end goal. Progress — even just a small step forward — occurred on many of the days people reported being in a good mood during the study. In their report, Amabile and her team suggest that managers should break up large projects into several small, easier-to-reach goals so that teams can experience multiple "small wins" instead of just the one large win at the very end of a project. Managing our email gives us that empowering feeling of accomplishment. Every time we respond to a message, that's one small step forward. Every time we reach inbox zero, we've successfully completed the task we set out to do. It makes us feel good to know we've gotten something done. So we keep coming back to do it again and again — even if it means procrastinating on real work; even if it means we waste hours every day trying to get back into the zone. How to Detox from Your Inbox Checking email throughout the day is a conditioned behavior that is draining our energy, happiness, and productivity at work. Here are a few suggestions to help you kick the habit: 1. Keep your inbox closed, and be conscious of how often you open it Don't keep your inbox open in a different tab on your screen, and try to limit the number of times you check in. If you feel you need to peruse your email, then you can open your inbox at that moment. In the same email-stress study at the University of British Columbia mentioned above, the researchers concluded thus: "Limiting the number of times people checked their email per day lessened tension during a particularly important activity and lowered overall day-to-day stress. [...] Those who checked their email a lot also didn't perceive themselves as any more productive than those who were on an email diet." Actively keep track of how many times you check your email each day. Psychologist James Claiborn says, "Measurement of anything tends to change it and makes people much more aware in the first place." Note whether or not every check-in was warranted. (Did you actually get any new, important emails since your last check-in?) If you notice the number of times you open that tab is reaching double-digits, reevaluate your behavior to see if you really need to visit your inbox so often. 2. Shift more work communication outside of email Concerned about letting go of email when it's the only way to get important messages? Replace email with a new tool that won't bog you down with spam and unimportant pings. Shift more of your work to a Work Management tool like Wrike (or the others out there), so you become less dependent on using email for communicating about projects or tasks, for storing information and for getting updates from other people. 3. Set a goal to limit email (and write it down) Did you know that if you write down your goal and share it with a friend, you are 33% more likely to achieve that goal? Grab a pen and notepad. Now write down your game plan: "I will only check email at 11 A.M. and 3 P.M.," or, "I will only check email 3x per day." Maybe slap a reminder sticky note on your laptop. Also write a list (on actual paper!) of the reasons you want to stop checking your email so often: "I want to regain hours of my work day," or, "I want to work more efficiently." Once you've done that, let your boss and colleagues know that you've created this goal for yourself, so they're aware that email is not the best way to reach you with urgent problems. (Who knows, you may even inspire them to start their own detox plan.) 4. Take it to the extreme: block your inbox Really want to reinforce your new habit? Download a browser extension like StayFocusd for the Chrome browser to make it literally impossible to waste more than a set amount of time in your inbox each day. You determine how many minutes you're allowed to spend in your email client on your browser, and after that time limit is up, you'll be blocked until tomorrow. Of course, this only works for people without access to their email in desktop apps like Outlook or Apple Mail. 5. Don't give up Building a new habit can take more than two months to ingrain, and even up to two-thirds of a year! In our case, the new habit you're trying to build is to break an old habit, which is markedly more difficult. But don't let that stop you. If only checking your email a few times a day still makes you anxious a month from now, keep at it. Look at your list of reasons you need to stop checking email so often, and reaffirm your goals. Creating any new habit is mostly willpower, so even if you slip today, try again tomorrow. You Can Break the Email Habit Is checking your email an addiction? Have you taken any steps to successfully curb the inbox habit? Share your secrets in the comments so we can learn from you.
Watch Out! 5 Productivity Killers Ruining Workdays Everywhere
It's that time of year again in the U.S., when coworkers start playing pranks and strange behavior seems more common. Some of us are busy preparing our defenses for the spooky weekend ahead, and others are just locking their front doors and waiting for November. But regardless of how you choose to handle Halloween, workers everywhere are taking a stance against one common enemy: productivity killers. The 2015 Work Management Report found the top 15 most common productivity killers for office workers. Now, we're giving you some tips for dealing with the worst of the bunch. Take a look at this presentation to get tips on how to handle your worst productivity killer: Top 5 Productivity Killers Dare to learn more? Download the full 2015 Work Management Report to see how workers really feel about their current management system, how we're managing projects, and what's coming for us in the future.
4 Ways Leading Teams Avoid Employee Burnout With Wrike Resource
Solving employee burnout starts with equipping leaders with the right tools to help their employees manage their workloads with ease. You need tools to provide visibility into team workload, optimize team performance, and increase resource utilization. Here’s how Wrike Resource can help.
Top 15 Productivity Roadblocks Hindering Your Team (Infographic)
You have your headphones on, music playing, and all notifications muted to allow for maximum focus... and you're still not as productive as you want to be. What are you doing wrong? In our 2015 Work Management Survey, we surveyed 1,464 team leaders and members and asked them to rank their biggest productivity roadblocks. You'll find their answers in the infographic below. The good news is: there's a way to overcome all these roadblocks. But it's going to take a lot more than a few hacks. Fighting these productivity killers will require paying detailed attention to how your work flows through your team, and serious improvement of your work management processes. Check out the list to find out how to identify roadblocks in client project planning: Share this infographic with your fellow colleagues, or use this embed code to post it on your site: Infographic brought to you by Wrike Read the complete 2015 Work Management Survey Download the full report to see all of the results from our Work Management Survey.
How to Increase Business Velocity in 3 Easy Steps
Business velocity can make or break any business — and it's especially important for startups that are struggling to bring a product to market before anyone else beats them to it. Thus it becomes of paramount importance to clear roadblocks and set the stage for team productivity. Except how is this done exactly? At a 10,000-foot view, there really are only 3 steps.
Work Smarter, Not Harder: 25 Must-Know Productivity Tips (eBook)
Do you feel your productivity wane as the week goes on? Or do you start a number of tasks and struggle to finish them, jumping from one to another all day? The COVID-19 pandemic forced most knowledge workers to work from home, and many have found the benefits of remote working worthy of continuing even as offices open up. But remote working comes with its own set of struggles: how to be productive at work when you have more distractions? Do you find yourself jumping up from a task to let the dog outside, or remembering to switch the laundry to the dryer while you’re in the middle of writing an email? Those little interruptions can have a negative impact on your productivity, leaving you feeling drained and unaccomplished at the end of the day. Of course, working in an office can take a toll on your productivity as well, as meetings interrupt deep work and coworkers’ chatting keeps you from finishing a proposal. So what can you do when you’re wondering how to be more productive at work? Start with our new productivity eBook — a thorough compilation of 25 must-know productivity tips that will have you tackling tasks with more gusto in no time. This eBook is divided into three sections of productivity hacks that will help you structure your work better, automate admin and repetitive tasks, and engage work management software that will supercharge your productivity. Give your work more structure Many workers start their days without a plan in place for how they’re going to tackle everything they need to get done. Putting structure in place to guide the flow of your time is an excellent place to start when you’re wondering how to be more productive at work. Here are a few examples of the powerful productivity tips included in our latest eBook. Embrace smarter planning: The New York Times reports that it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to a task following an interruption. Planning your day to include batches of tasks you can do together can improve productivity. Group similar tasks together to cut down on context switching and minimize stress. Minimize meetings: Meetings can really cut down on productivity at work. According to Hector Aguilar, President of Technology at Okta: “When meetings interrupt your day, you're switching between the two sides of your prefrontal cortex to multitask and it can take up to 40% longer to complete the same tasks.” In order to regain productivity at work, Aguilar has instituted no-meeting days, which allow for completely uninterrupted time one day each week. Become an inbox hero: While most of us are aware that letting our inboxes dictate the workday doesn’t provide maximum productivity, the Harvard Business Review reports we still dedicate almost a third of our day to it. Creating blocks in your calendar each day to stay disciplined about the time you spend on email can help cut out up to 2.5 hours of wasted inbox time each day. Automate admin and repetitive tasks Daily tasks that require repeating every day can be a good place to start when you’re trying to improve productivity. With automation, those tasks can be streamlined and time working on them can be dedicated to more impactful work. Our eBook includes 12 productivity tips for automating processes using a work management platform like Wrike, including the following: Streamlining your intake system Automating your admin tasks Sharing updates automatically Connecting your apps Automating approvals and proofing By automating these types of tasks, you’ll cut down on time you’re currently using to complete simple administrative tasks. You can then devote that time and focused attention to more fruitful work that moves your projects forward and gives a bigger sense of accomplishment at the end of the workday. Engage work management software to power your productivity Of course, the key to being able to do many of these productivity tips is versatile and intuitive work management software. Work management software like Wrike can be the difference between a day spent digging through your inbox to find a much-needed piece of information or quickly locating that info in one easily located task. Now that you’re ready to supercharge your productivity, download our free eBook to learn more productivity tips that will help you tackle your workload today.
20 Ways to Build a Happy & More Productive Workforce (Infographic)
Studies report that happy workers are 31% more productive, with up to 37% higher sales and three times the creativity as the rest of your workforce (Harvard Business Review). Isn't that enough incentive to keep your people happy as they spend upwards of eight hours a day contributing to your bottom line? The infographic below shows 13 ways to make your workforce smile. Then keep reading for a list of 7 more ways to help your people grow and prosper in their work. Use this code to embed the infographic on your blog: Infographic brought to you by Wrike Bonus: 7 Ways to Focus on Your People's Needs 1. Listen to Feedback and Show Action When you ask for feedback, listen. Show that you are acting on suggestions. Knowing that management is listening and taking feedback seriously increases the general positive vibe in your organization. 2. Give Them a Chance to Grow You will lose people if they fear their jobs are dead ends. It's important to give everyone clear career paths and opportunities for ongoing education, online classes, webinar attendance, industry events, etc. 3. Support Remote Work & Flexible Schedules If you really want to attract top performers, you must allow for flexible schedules and remote work. This means you need an online system to track work (like Wrike!), and a protocol for communicating with remote workers so that projects run smoothly. 4. Give People Their Choice of Supplies & Tools Don't skimp on supplies, and give your people their choice of tools, whether it's Mac vs. Windows, a standing desk, floor mat, or dual monitors. Allowing them to pick their tools helps them be more productive right away, and they'll love working on a machine they picked themselves. 5. Give Them Unlimited PTO You're hiring intelligent, capable adults, right? Then allow them to take time off without having to jump through a bunch of hoops. Unlimited PTO is prevalent in startup companies, particularly in the tech industry. But even non-startups have switched to unlimited PTO precisely because it creates a massive amount of good will. 6. Give Them Top-Tier Benefits You won't attract and retain star performers with meager benefits packages unless you're a struggling startup with a killer product and vision that everyone's sure will make it big. The quality of your benefits shows how much you value your people. Make them as substantial as possible! 7. Give Them Unlimited Coffee (and Snacks) Coffee and snacks are probably the simplest way to please your team. But please try giving them good coffee and healthy snacks, okay? What Would Make You Happy? If you have better suggestions on perks that would please you or your team, hit the comments and tell us more!
10 Ways to Make Your Team More Productive (Infographic)
Some days are just harder than others. It's the end of a week, or the day after a holiday, or there was yet another office birthday. (Cake-coma, anyone?) When your team is having a hard time focusing on their work, don't just sigh and hope things will change soon. You can actively help them jump back on the productivity boat with top-down productivity management. Check out the tips in this infographic and get your team moving today. And if you're always looking for more tips to help boost team performance, check out 11 additional ways you can increase team productivity. Share this infographic with your team, or embed it on your blog with this code: Infographic brought to you by Wrike
How to Increase Productivity on Your Team
You've come to that point in your management career: work isn't getting done fast enough and your team's emotional well-being is dwindling. Your own stress levels are climbing as pressure from higher-ups increases. You're trying to help your team, but no matter how hard they work, nothing is getting done and they're wilting more every day. Your team is facing a productivity crisis. That means it's time to step back and take a look at the processes, tools, and management techniques that could be bottlenecking their progress. Read through this list of advice to help you identify productivity weaknesses for your team — every tip includes a hyperlinked article with more detailed advice to help your team break the cycle. Work Processes That Promote Productivity Create a system of accountability for your team. Public accountability triggers the willpower to work harder and better. Set standards for communication. What information is important to communicate? When should people give updates? Where should they share them? If you make your communication expectations clear, you'll mitigate the communication issues that so often bottleneck projects. Collaborate! It's true what they say: two heads are better than one. Don't miss out on the benefits of collaboration within your team. Improve the way you run meetings. Eliminate excessive meetings, only invite people who need to be involved, create a goal-oriented agenda, and end every meeting with "next steps." And ask the right questions during meetings, so that your time together isn't wasted. Encourage breaks. Lead by example and take them yourself. You can't run continually for 8 hours, and neither can your brain. Stopping for a 15-minute break from all work (not "stop doing X to go work on Y") gives your mind time to relax, so you can shake off the sluggishness and jump back into your day with full force. Read this article on the science behind the benefits of taking breaks at work. Use better work management and productivity monitoring software. Check out how Wrike increases team productivity for our users. Essential Productivity Trainings for Your Team Members Develop training and incentives for every employee, not just upper management. In our study on productivity, 77% of people said they were motivated by a sense of responsibility. Try giving more project ownership to the team members who ask for it. Host a workshop on the top productivity killers to help them identify what takes the most time away from their day (and subtly show them how they could be contributing to their teammates' slow progress). Learn about the science behind procrastination, and share the knowledge with your team. Understanding what makes the brain tick can help your team readjust those unproductive, "I don't want to do this," thoughts. Host a workshop to teach them how to build better work habits. Download this "Productive Work Habits" eBook for your own education, and pass it along to your team after the workshop. Share these six tips your team members can use to change their mindsets when they're stuck in an unproductive funk at work. Mindsets make a huge difference in productivity. Management Skills to Enable Your Team's Productivity Ask what you can do to improve your management. You could be hindering team productivity without realizing it. Make sure you're asking the right questions, sharing the right resources, and providing proper support. Avoid micromanaging. According to a study in the book My Way or the Highway, 71% of employees felt micromanagement was hindering their performance. Micromanagement obstructs the powerful motivators that come with the feeling of "I accomplished something great today." As a manager, it can be tempting to grip the reigns tightly, but it's important to trust your team and allow them to make judgement calls for the projects they own. Set attainable goals. Assigning one large project with a deadline two months out is overwhelming. Breaking large projects up into smaller steps shows clear progress and keeps people motivated as they advance toward the final product. Read about the power of "Small Wins" in this study by Teresa Amabile. Help your team members constantly prioritize and re-prioritize. As to-do lists get longer, it becomes difficult for employees to concentrate on one task without feeling overwhelmed by the mountain of work they haven't started yet. Make sure you constantly communicate the top team priorities, so everyone knows where to focus their energy. Provide constructive, meaningful feedback on a regular basis. This will develop a culture of trust and personal growth, so your employees take pride in improving their performance. Praise a job well done every time — for the large tasks and the small tasks. A study by Mindflash showed that while employers thought high wages were the best incentive, many employees felt that being fully appreciated for the work they'd done was far more important. Little Things That Make a Big Difference in Productivity Inspire your team with visual motivators. Post these motivational posters around the office to share quick productivity tips with your team and remind them that they're doing great. Invest in office cocoons (or something similar). Distractions are one of the biggest productivity inhibitors; lunch deliveries, coworkers walking past your desk, and job candidates being escorted to a meeting catch your eye and break your flow. Creating comfortable spaces for people to tuck away can help them stay focused in the office. Put real effort into creating a good work environment and company culture. Our productivity survey showed that 57% of people are motivated by a good mood — so make sure your team is happy. One way to check in on team happiness is by evaluating how they feel about respect in your workplace. Do they feel respected in their position? Can they respect their fellow team members and management? Employees who say no are far more likely to feel stressed and unable to focus on work. A team that plays together, stays together! When your team knows one another, they'll be more comfortable collaborating and sharing ideas — which leads to better, faster outcomes. Make time for bonding with this list of team-building activities that are actually enjoyable. Productivity is a Process, Not a State of Being "Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort." — Paul J. Meyer As a manager, you have the power to help your team achieve more. Use the resources above and around you, such as integrated project management, to help your team overcome roadblocks to their productivity. If you have any other resources or tips that have helped increase your team's productivity, please share them in the comments below. We'd love additions to the list!
5 Tips for Forming Productivity Habits in Your Team (PMI Presentation Recap)
This May 2014, I talked about the formation of new habits at a dinner for the Project Management Institute (PMI), Sacramento Valley Chapter and then again during a live webinar for the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter. Specifically, I shared 5 concrete strategies for forming team productivity habits, while also delving into the behavioral and psychological barriers that affect their success. Since 45% of our everyday actions are habitual, it’s important to make sure they are good ones! Project managers must cultivate the soft skill of knowing how to lead a team toward productive habits despite the staggering statistic that it takes anywhere from 66 days (on average) to eight months to learn a new habit, depending on the habit’s complexity. The 5 Strategies for Forming Productive Habits If you're trying to get your team to adopt productive habits, then here's a very brief rundown of those five strategies: 1. Lead by example: Define the behavior you want the team to exhibit, then practice what you preach. Your team will follow when they see you do it first, and when the benefits of this new habit are clear. 2. Share the power to change: In spreading the new habit, you may need the help of power users or evangelists — enthusiastic team members who can spread the new habit to the rest of the team and even the entire organization. 3. Apply horizontal or vertical rollout: Split up the habit into smaller actions and smaller parts, so that tiny steps can be made. Small wins can motivate the team to take it the rest of the way, no matter how difficult it may be. 4. Motivate your team: Influence the emotional side of your people, not just the intellectual. Give them incentives to practice this new habit. Make it fun. Be creative. 5. Blend new work styles into existing practices: Leverage any existing habits that are useful when trying to "write" new habits onto the team's repertoire. This makes the new habit feel more familiar and ensures a more natural transition. If you want a more detailed discussion on the strategies, watch a recorded webinar on this same topic. Reactions to Change, Reactions to Grief One particular slide which yielded the most conversation from both groups was the image of the classic curve illustrating people’s reactions to change across time: how any change is first met with denial before spiraling into anger, confusion, depression, crisis, then settling into acceptance, and finally new confidence. One of the attendees pointed out that the curve “mimics the stages of grief." It does resemble it very closely, sharing four of the five stages in the Kubler-Ross model (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) which are the emotional stages one goes through when facing death or the loss of a loved one. Which makes sense. Learning new habits is a figurative death of sorts: a death to old behaviors and the status quo of the past. In its place, a new habit is born, giving rise to internal friction as the new behavior fights against established habits for dominance. This provided a fruitful discussion about how implementing a new habit shouldn’t be taken too lightly. It should be done with requisite amounts of sensitivity, all while motivating the team to forge better, more productive, behavioral patterns. At the end of the webinar for the PMI San Francisco chapter, they polled the attendees and shared the results with me: 96% said they learned something new from the webinar! And 89% said they learned something new from the presentation that they could apply to their current job. Glad to be of service, PMI! Cartoon Image Credits: Tom Fishburne on Marketoonist