Effectively Organizing Your Small Biz Team
Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. ~Vince Lombardi
The best businesses practices include team work. You and your colleagues work together for the best possible outcome in revenue generation and efficiency for keeping costs low. Not surprisingly, 96% of executives cite lack of collaboration and ineffective communications for workplace failures (Salesforce). It’s about how well you do your job and how you enhance the efforts of your colleagues that is the best of a team effort. Effectively organizing your small business team includes strategies for communication, delegation, and collaboration.
Communication
Team work relies on clear communication between you and your colleagues. There are many ways to communicate with your team. What’s most important is to keep the lines of communication open. Be open to all collaborator’s ideas and truly listen to all team members. Set expectations for communication in the beginning by establishing email, meeting and phone protocols. These protocols include who to “cc” in an email, what responses to expect during a meeting, and when a phone call is required. Setting deadlines enhances communication. Everyone knows what the next step is and when it is to be completed. Ask for input from colleagues for communication methods and deadlines and they will be more buy in as a result.
Delegation
Delegation is not only turning tasks over to others. It’s a way of getting more done efficiently and effectively for a team. Delegation is a learned skill. For some colleagues it’s more natural than others to ask for help, delegate or find resources for a team. Delegate by knowing the strengths of your colleagues. It could be a technology skill, a great researcher or another quality that makes your colleague stand out. Remember that you are not looking for a colleague who does this work just like you or one to do the work “perfectly.” Give clear instructions with a note to check in at a specific point.
Collaboration
Collaboration is more than just working alongside a colleague. It’s engaging colleagues’ minds together to work in a trusting, goal driven environment. True collaborators feel they have contributed to the greater whole with a whole hearted enthusiasm. Leadership sets the tone for collaboration with a clear process for working together.
Useful tools
Collaboration and delegation are easily accomplished using technology tools. Free apps including Trello and Asana promote both by assigning tasks and deadlines to each team member. Trello is a list of lists where attachments from dropbox and google drive can be integrated. In Asana, tasks are recorded and assigned, with a deadline. Collaborators can view your completion of tasks. Check out more useful Small Business tools here!
What’s most exciting about small biz team work is the outstanding outcomes. When more colleagues tap into the powers of team work, there’s more energy, enthusiasm, positivity and income.
More ideas here! Pinterest Small Business Organization!
I’m so glad you mentioned deciding in advance about how communication will be handled. This is important for student teams, as well as business teams!
You are so right! Teams get bogged down by too little and too much communication. It’s especially hard for students working on a project too.
This is great advice! I’m wondering what you do when you get a certain type of personality that no matter what you do they just don’t put in the effort and then the team leader ends up finishing the project just to get it done by the deadline.
Good question! There are always stragglers and procrastinators. Even with good accountability it can be a problem. There are some team members who are not on board with the project assigned too.
A face to face meeting can help at this point. I like to ask how I can help to get things started. From there I usually learn more about the project too.
Thanks for asking!