What’s taking up your team’s bandwidth

October 28, 2011

You might not be familiar with the public service announcement from the 60s that said “Parents, it’s 9 o’clock. Do you know where your kids are?”  It created the benchmark for my parents and to my chagrin that’s how they set my curfew.

What if I asked you “Leaders, it’s 10 am – what is your team doing?”  What percentage of their time is spent on the critical activities that move projects forward compared with the amount spent reading and responding to emails. How much time do they spend really thinking about the challenges the team is facing to come up with creative solutions? I’ll bet that if any of us took a look at how we spend our day a significant proportion is spent on the small, mundane tasks that don’t relate to strategic priorities.

It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day stuff that infiltrates our work spaces and lives. As a leader you need to take the time to help your team review what’s occupying their bandwidth and make sure that the greatest proportion is allocated to the things that matter – the activities that directly effect projects and impact organizational goals.

Start with the simple stuff like meetings. Does the agenda include informational items? If so, encourage the team to use wikis or other shared resources to post updates. Make sure each agenda item is signposted for what’s required – discussion or a decision – by the team.  Create the expectation that the materials needed for a robust discussion or an informed decision are circulated well in advance of the meeting. Reinforce the importance of sufficient preparation time by deferring agenda items when the team doesn’t have adequate time to review support materials.  Are team members showing up at meetings prepared? If not, work with them individually to help them improve their contributions to the team meetings. It’s your responsibility as the team leader and it won’t get better if you ignore the behavior.

Enabling focus is another easy fix. Recent research has shown that spending uninterrupted time on project tasks, rather than completing the activity in chunks spread over days or weeks, improves productivity by as much as 50%. What support does your team need from you to ensure that each person focuses their energy and time proportionate to the importance of the task. What can you do to help people find uninterrupted time to finish tasks?

Estimates suggest that getting back on task after an interruption takes at least 22 minutes and employees experience as many as 11 interruptions in a day. Do the math – it’s not pretty. Help your team to break the interruption habit by starting with your own behaviour. Ask your team to help you improve by telling them to point out when you distract them with interruptions. We often don’t realize how frequently we interrupt others because it’s become such a habit. When they do catch you in the act, thank them.

If you could improve productivity by up to 50% wouldn’t it be worth having a discussion with your team on what’s taking up their bandwidth and asking them what support they need to focus on what really matters.