Over the past several weeks, we’ve been digging deep into the true meaning of productivity, and how to achieve optimal productivity in your business, organization or individually in your job role. We’d love to hear your feedback on how it’s going, questions you have or obstacles you’ve encountered as you go on this journey with us. You can direct questions and feedback to our contact page. If you’re ready to move on to this week’s topic Share Best Practices, here you go!

Week 8: Share Best Practices

As you’ve journeyed with us these past several weeks, we hope you’ve had success in defining your issues and goals, being open and responsive to change, discovering the best use of your resources and tuning into your most focused time of day. We’ve shared with you how getting organized and streamlining processes can help you along on this adventure. As you’re beginning to experience the benefits of all of your hard work, we want you to keep this momentum going. But…

There’s always a but, right? I think it’s time we break it to you. It’s not just about you. Of course, we want every individual in a company to be successful, to feel engaged and to be empowered to make an impact.  But…creating a culture of productivity is the key to getting you there. That means everyone needs to be on board, and sharing best practices needs to be labeled a priority by those in upper management who hold the label maker.

In the spectrum of companies we work with, something we always seem to expose is that someone (or several someones) has this work thing figured out. They have really good ideas, tips, tricks and strategies that are helping them accomplish their top priority tasks with minimal stress. These highly productive individuals aren’t necessarily maliciously hoarding all of their top-secret efficiencies. In almost every case, there just isn’t time or it hasn’t been made a priority to share. Here’s the breakdown of our process for decoding what a best practice is and how to share the love.

Where To Begin

Sharing best practices is all about leveraging one of those three essential resources that we keep bringing up. Remember the three Ts? Time, Technology and Talent! If you’re wondering what we mean by Talent, this is it! This is your opportunity to discover your high performers and give them a chance to further develop and contribute more fully to your company’s bottom line!

Who’s Got Talent

The first thing to do is figure out who has it all figured out. If you work in a company with a lot of employees, this is no easy task. However, a best practice can be determined with this simple formula:

1. It’s Impactful. The process directly contributes to the company’s mission or bottom line. Sure, there might be a very efficient, resourceful way to store paperclips. However, if it has no impact to the mission, then it’s not at the top of the Things to Share list.
2. It’s efficient. (Duh!) There are plenty of ways to get from point A to point B. A best practice is not always the shortest path, but it most likely has the least amount of detours, construction and pit stops.
3. Energy matters. Not to sound all new-agey, but people who have this productivity thing figured out are generally more positive, less stressed and more engaged than those struggling to manage their workload. Be aware of those who exude good energy, and ask them what they are doing.

Now What?

Now that you know the who and what, it’s time to get that productivity spark to spread like wildfire, creating a culture of productivity throughout your organization.  Here are some tested and effective approaches to sharing and maintaining best practices.

• Administer Skills Assessments. Sounds like no fun at all. I know. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or painful, though.  A quick 10 question “quiz” on a company resource, tool or technology not only reveals where help is needed, but it will also identify those top performers in the area. This is the talent to tap into when defining best practices. Make it fun by offering incentives.
• Hold Best Practice Sessions. This is a great development opportunity for everyone. High performers can lead and share best practices. Your employees interested and skilled in writing can document. Everyone else benefits from learning the efficiencies. Keep them short, sweet and regular!
• Make It Official.  This is the topic for Week 9, so you’ll get the full scoop with a cherry on top next week. Until then, think about standard operating procedures, procedural manuals and training documents for new employees.

Client Success

When we work with individual clients, we keep track of their best practices and share them with their colleagues who will benefit. We also make a point of educating management about these ideas and asking them to share with their teams. We’ll leave you this week with how impactful this has been for one of our clients.

Our productivity coaching began with searching for best practices amongst their rapidly growing team. At first, the most efficient processes were offered to the team as highly recommended suggestions. Over time, they saw the impact the best practices were having on the segment of the business that adopted them. Eventually, they formally defined these practices as standard, mandatory procedures. We worked with the client on many different areas, but this was a major initiative that proved to be highly successful. According to their managing partner, Doug Brown, we increased their firm’s overall efficiency by at least 30%!

Doug said, “As a result, not only are we more productive, the work environment is more pleasant, and employees are much happier.”

Knowledge is most useful when liberated and shared.