Recently we have got really inspired by the idea of doing some cross-blogging with our clients and partners. This will be another great means to share experience with other web entrepreneurs and companies out there. Jamie Parkins from Vzaar delivered this week’s post on increasing productivity in small teams. Hope you’ll enjoy it!
Intro
It is inevitable in a start up that things can change from day to day. What was a priority yesterday has now changed overnight and something else has taken on more significance. It happens. A lot! And so this calls for the team to be nimble, to be flexible and to embrace change (there I said it!). From a vzaar perspective, and my experience to date, I’ve been asked by the Applicake team to share some of the things we do as a team of four to try and ensure the business runs as smoothly as possible.
Meet Regularly
We meet as a team on Monday mornings – normally over a strong cup of coffee. The agenda is flexible but generally involves an update on tech, team priorities for the week ahead, customer feedback and updates on work in progress. The normal team meeting you could say. For me it is a chance to get away from the desk, before the working week swallows you whole and gives the team a chance to catch up. Sometimes the meeting can last 30 minutes, sometimes two hours but having that time in the diary is important as it sets the tone for the week. Furthermore the team should be encouraged to be as flexible as possible so that ad-hoc meetings and round table discussions are encouraged, which leads me to…
Think Out Loud
Share your thoughts with the team quickly and often. A great product or improvement in the service is often the result of someone standing up and saying “Hey guys I’ve been thinking…” If the team is relaxed enough to be able to speak their mind, then some really strong and impactful ideas can blossom. How you encourage that is another matter and there are plenty of online tools that support such idea generation, but I still find simply standing up and speaking your mind, given the small environment in which we work, to be the best and most productive.
Allow Your Team To Be Mobile
The advent of the crackberry meant that it was possible to work on the move. The iPhone and various tethering packages has accelerated that and so you can keep in touch with the team and most importantly customers on the move. As our service became more and more popular here and overseas and our customer support queues rose, it became apparent that being able to access and answer support emails and company documentation on the fly was necessary. So at vzaar we cover the cost of mobile phones for our team. It may seem extravagant for a start up but in return it affords each of us the chance to offer a more 24/7 service and to stay in touch with events as and when they occur. We are very proud of our customer feedback and think that this is in part testimony to our ability to respond to users quickly and easily. It also means that the team can be part of office conversations and emails even when they are out. We all have the chance to contribute.
Share in Success
When things go well share the news, whether with colleagues, directors or investors. Good news is infectious and I think should be celebrated within a small team as often as possible. Not only is success motivational but it reminds us of why we follow certain paths over others. How you do it is up to the individual but we’ve enjoyed celebrating success with group emails to our investors, a midweek beer and even a crate of Red Bull for our man Mauricio when he pulled a late one!
Absorb Failure
Sometimes for every two steps forward you are forced to take on step back. Mistakes can happen. Ideas can go wrong. Things break. Failure requires broad shoulders but if you can strive as a team to mentally say “We’ll get through the bad times together,” then you’ll be stronger and better for it. Huddling together as a small team, you can unpick the problem, dissect it and solve it often a lot faster than in a large company where the sheer number and weight of people can mask responsibility.
Operational Basics
Do yourself and the team a favour by having some of the basics in place. Paperwork, legal documents, accounting and payroll, expenses, NDAs, contracts etc are all some of the the more tedious aspects of the day to day job that can feel like they are getting in the way of the cooler tasks like innovation and marketing. It’s therefore easy to say “Oh I’ll do these later,” but from my experience having the core processes and documents in place means you’ll save time and hassle in the long run. Speak to friends in other companies to see what they use. Beg, borrow, steal and then reformat! You needn’t spend time on great swathes of paperwork but it will catch up on you eventually. Consider a part time book keeper or administrative role if you think the cost justifies the savings in time and efficiency or simply set aside a certain amount of time per week or day to cover off these tasks.
Check The Pulse
Still alive? Oh good. So how are the team feeling? What’s working, what’s not? It helps to often stop momentarily, whether monthly or say quarterly, and check in with the team to see that everything is working from an operational perspective. Perhaps ask yourself, what three things can we do that will make our working lives easier and get them done. Call it a spring clean if you like, but it helps to avoid you falling into a rut or getting bogged down in bad practices that eat into your time and your morale.