Harness collective intelligence

When we talk about what we do, we like to think about what’s in it for “them.”

There are plenty of elements that create a high-performance environment, but one of the most important has to be a sense of contribution.

When you think about it, many factors contribute to overall success, and productivity is an obvious priority, but it’s never black and white. How do you achieve optimal productivity? Measuring is a good start, but understanding potential and sustainable levels can be difficult.

Once you feel your measurement is done accurately, how to encourage improvement can be a little blurry sometimes.

A good place to start is to ensure expectations are clear and concise for both the manager and producer. According to a recent Gallup survey, about 50% of employees, including their managers, do not know what is expected of them. As you can imagine, most people can find a way to keep busy, but if it is on the wrong activity, uptime could be high but productivity could be at an all-time low.

At the beginning of each week, identify tasks that can be achieved that align with the long-term goals and priorities of the business, as well as with the strengths of the individual assigned to perform the tasks. Ensure that person agrees the tasks are achievable by them before the end of the week. If so, review the status of all of the tasks at the end of each week. The performer of the tasks should self-assess their status before a group review and indicate those tasks that are complete, delayed or stuck, perhaps using a colour code such as green for complete, yellow for delayed and black for stuck. Especially in the beginning, you will likely see some yellow and black as your team adjusts to the new system. A brief explanation should be beside each task describing the reason for the delay or task being stuck.

The group review should be supportive and positive, even when a performer struggles week after week to complete their tasks. You may discover they are not being assigned the right tasks, or have not been provided adequate training, or they could just be the wrong fit. However, you may uncover through root cause analysis that there are other challenges within the organization, making it difficult or near impossible for them to succeed. In this case, learning more about the situation to make a continual improvement, whether big or small, could make for both improved morale and productivity in the long term.

When everything is going smoothly, people are doing what they want to do and they’re good at it. They will care about the work they’re creating and likely do a better job. When they complete the tasks, they are expected to complete them. They will feel proud of their contribution and if they struggle to complete their work in the beginning, but work out ways to add value to the team, they will also feel a sense of contribution. When people feel like they do not contribute, they question their ability and belonging. Most people are capable of great things, but the team around them and the organization of the team are usually the things that are holding them back.

We help our clients understand the opportunities for improvement to help create the ideal environment and culture for their team, to succeed every day. If everyone understands their role and how they contribute to a greater purpose, in addition to the top priorities each day and week that align with their strengths, and they have a senior leader to provide guidance and instill confidence, nothing can hold them back.

As a fractional CMO, we can do this, focused on your internal marketing and communications team and select vendors that operate as an extension of your team. We can help connect business priorities to marketing strategy, align the strength of the internal team and external partners, and implement a plan with you that increases your team’s capabilities, skills and knowledge.

As a fractional CGO, the same approach applies to a slightly broader group which includes sales and marketing and product to create alignment in positioning, competitiveness, market demand, and timing.

As a fractional CCO, we take this approach across an entire workplace to help your leaders, develop future leaders and contribute to optimal performance of everyone on your team by creating a culture of lifelong learning, fulfillment, contribution, growth, and high performance.