The Ultimate Rulebook for Next-Level Productivity
Ah, productivity. Sweet, sweet productivity. If you’re anything like me, you’ll agree that having a productive day is one of the best feelings in the world.
When you close your eyes and think of ultimate productivity, what comes to mind? A few of the scenes that dance behind my eyes are crushing our sales goal, having a meeting with a client that leads to breakthrough thinking and action, and meeting with my team and clarifying actions and seeing everyone motivated to drive our number one priority forward. I can just taste the sweetness of those moments.
Did you know that you can create a workplace as adrenaline-filled and productive as all of those moments? One where your team has hyper-productivity without impending burnout?
I want you to take a minute to remember the peak moments of your team’s productivity. Those times when your team literally did the impossible. When they moved mountains, If you’re like most company owners, these moments happened organically, not intentionally. Often our efforts to motivate our teams to fall flat or go completely unnoticed. That’s why we’re going to teach you leadership strategies to keep your team’s productivity hyper-focused and more importantly, under your control.
Let me show you how.
Your Problem is Not Your Employees
Let’s get one thing clear: your employees are not the problem if you’re struggling with workplace productivity. It’s an easy mental trap to fall into and we are all guilty of it. In a way, it’s rational. If you’re putting in 100% effort to achieve your objectives and they’re still not being achieved, then the problem must be your employees, right?The truth is that their workplace productivity is complicated. It’s a lot more than just the sum of the different parts. That’s why there are experts like Jordan Cohen, who have spent their entire career studying this complex phenomenon. Cohen says we have to change the way we think about productivity to create effective strategies to improve it. Let’s start with two important metal shifts.First, stop thinking about productivity as something within individuals and think about it instead as something produced by individuals. Productivity isn’t a “have” or “have-not” situation. It’s not about whether your employees are innately productive, but whether they are choosing to exercise their ability to be productive.Second, think about productivity on an organizational level, not an individual level. It’s not about having productive employees in your workplace but having a productive workplace culture for your employees.
In other words, you are in control. Productivity is not a “luck of the draw” matter that depends solely on the people you recruit. Leadership’s role is to manage the collective productivity of the company by shifting culture, setting priorities, buffering unreasonable expectations, and focusing your team’s energy. There are loads of strategies you can employ. We list the most important of them below.
Clean Up Your House
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that leading by example is one of the best ways to increase the productivity of your entire workplace. After all, the job of the CEO is to be the visionary force that inspires the team to fulfill the organization’s potential. Your team has to trust that you have the chops to execute what they are working towards. You also need technical knowledge to improve your team’s productivity. Leading by example is the key to keeping productivity from going sour.I’ll give you a personal example. I once made a switch between departments after getting promoted. The excitement I started my new position with quickly faded as I adjusted to the culture of this new team that quite frankly, sucked. The employees were unhappy and gossiped about management, my colleagues were defensive and uncollaborative, and the management would offset responsibilities on team members that couldn’t finish the job. It was impossible to get anything done. The reason for our dysfunction was our poor leadership. We had a director who would stroll into the office at 11 am and leave whenever he pleased. He would expect team members to work 80 hour weeks to meet deadlines they didn’t know had been set. The team was a mess, but cleaning up the leadership is the only thing that could have saved this failing team.
Mobilize Your Team on the Big Rocks
One of the essential skills your team needs to learn is how to differentiate task management from priority management. Learning how to put “first things first” is one of the vital productivity pillars of the recurring bestseller that Stephen R. Covey wrote 30 years ago called “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. I’ll recount his brilliant illustration below.One day a professor pulled out a one-gallon, wide-mouthed mason jar and set it on a table in front of his classroom. He grabbed a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them one at a time into the jar. When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked the class, “Is this jar full?”. With certainty, everyone said, “Yes.””Really?” he said as he reached under the table and revealed a bucket of gravel. He dumped some gravel in and shook the jar, causing pieces of gravel to wedge into the spaces between the big rocks. He smiled and asked the group once more, “Is the jar full?” By this time, the class was onto him. “Probably not,” one of them answered. “Good!” he replied and reached under the table to bring out a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in, and it went into all the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more, he asked the question, “Is this jar full?” “No!” the class shouted. He smiled and grabbed a pitcher of water and poured it in until the jar was filled to the brim. Then he looked up at the class and asked, “What is the point of this illustration?”One student raised his hand and said, “The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try hard, you can always fit some more things into it.” “No,” the professor replied, “that’s not the point. The truth this illustration teaches us is this: If you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all.”
Make Your Priorities The Driving Force
I want you to think about your organization as a human body. If this were the case, your employees and team members would be the skeleton. Your daily activities and procedures would be the muscles. Your quarterly priorities and annual objectives would be the blood that runs through your organization’s veins.Like blood to the body, your priorities and objectives touch every aspect of the organization. They bring energy and motivation to your teams. They are the driving force of your organization. Humans don’t get a monthly injection of blood that supplies them with all the blood they need for a month. Blood is produced, recycled, and refined every minute of the day to keep our bodies working optimally. Your priorities should have the same level of importance in your company.You can’t present your priorities in an ad-hoc manner once at the beginning of the quarter if you want your team to be intensely focused and motivated on achieving these priorities. They should be communicated and referred to daily. They should be continuously refined and adapted to sudden changes in the environment. They should be created in collaboration with your managers and staff who are intimately connected to your customers.Achieving next level productivity isn’t just within your control; it’s within your reach.
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