In a new business, it is not just the things we do, but the things we overdo that get us into trouble. A good example is ad spending. Every entrepreneur knows that they have to get the word out about their business if they hope to thrive. This awareness makes them susceptible to being talked into a full-page ad in the Yellow Pages, when they would have been better off with a modest placement on a popular podcast.
Another example is overdoing corporate communications to the detriment of productivity. Even big businesses fall prey to this particular issue. Managers want to communicate important information to employees. But they make the narcissistic error of thinking that everything they have to say is important. Anyone who has worked in corporate America knows how false that assumption can be.
Rather than adding yet more lines of communication, a company can increase both morale and productivity by streamlining the communications they already do. Here are three things that can be cut out of the communications pipeline altogether:
Stop Having Face to Face Meetings
One of the worst time and energy sucks with which to start one’s day is the mandatory attendance of yet another useless meeting. Listening to a middle-manager bloviate on weekly numbers and daily goals is a sure-fire way to see that those numbers and goals are never met.
Other than a brief bathroom break, or a cup of hot Jo, anything that takes a person away from her desk is a drain on productivity. If you must have a meeting, make it quick, essential, and remote. It should go without saying that the less time taken, the better the meeting. If it turns out to be a bad meeting, at least it didn’t waist a lot of time.
If the meeting is important enough to stop people from working, it should be important enough to have a call to action. The result of the meeting should be a required action, or a changed behavior. Put an end to meetings that are just FYI.
Lastly, take the “meet†out of meeting. Find a service that allows you to conduct meetings over the phone or Internet. Every desk has Internet access and a phone. For example, you could try audio conferencing with StartMeeting for free, and figure out what your company needs to make audio conferencing work.
Different services offer different features and payment tiers. By adding features like screen sharing for up to 1,000 seats, you can have all the benefits of a face to face meeting without all the waisted paper. You also don’t have to waist time getting everyone into a room, and getting them back to their desks.
Stop Making Employees Carry Two Phones
No one wants to wear two watches. And no one wants to carry two phones. If your IT chief is telling you that employee smartphones cannot be secured on the corporate network, fire your IT chief. He just doesn’t want to change his routine.
Almost all modern MDM solutions are capable of dealing with both iPhone and Android. Dedicated techies are going to use the devices with which they are familiar whether or not you want them to. You just as well integrate them into the system where you can secure and sandbox the corporate bits. Streamline the number of devices employees carry, and watch productivity increase.
Stop Spamming Your Employees’ Inboxes
Even worse than meetings, corporate email can be an even bigger waste of employee time. Many corporate emails are quite long and tedious to wade through. At the end of the email, there is no call to action. It was just another FYI. Thanks for wasting another ten minutes of my time.
Inboxes get flooded with these emails. The option for employees is to either read them all and do less work, or ignore them all, potentially missing something important. Hint: the best employees will ignore them all. If you have something crucial to say, do it quickly and seldom.
Too much productivity is lost in unnecessary corporate communication. Make sure communication is one thing your startup doesn’t overdo.
