SuperManager: Help! My Team Isn’t Meeting Deadlines – Increasing Productivity

Christine: You’re listening to SuperManager, the podcast for people who manage people and business with ideas, trends and expert interviews to help you be a SuperManager.

Sam: All right, so welcome back to SuperManager podcast. This week we’re going to be talking about “Help! My Team Isn’t Meeting Deadlines – Increasing Productivity”. Even if your team is meeting deadlines, there’s always always, always improvement that can be made in productivity and I have with me my team of SuperFriends:

Mary: I’m Mary Kutheis, business coach and trainer.

Rick: I’m Rick shore, focusing on employee voluntary benefits.

Tara : Tara Gregor, bringing wellness into the workplace.

Mad: I’m Mad Underhill, an intern at CN Video Production.

Sam: And I’m Samantha Naes with CN Video, we do corporate video production with Mad. And Mad is our special guest today because she’s in college and she did her internship with CN Video and today is her last day. She’s been helping kind of behind the scenes with the podcast and today we put her in the hot seat so she’s going to be sitting in.

Mad: I’m really excited for it. I’m a little prepared.

Sam: Yeah, we kind of hit her up with that just this morning when she came in. We’re going to get to also hear, maybe a little bit from your perspective as, you know, just starting your career, a little bit about productivity. So to me productivity means being able to get the best work done in the least amount of time. Doing it right and doing it well, kind of getting that proper balance.

Mary: I would agree with that. One of the thoughts I have about the term productivity is it’s very clinical and it can mean scratching a lot of things off the to do list, that may or may not bring a level of reward and a feeling of accomplishment. People can see getting those things done. From one person’s perspective, it can be that’s productive and from another person’s perspective it can be, that’s not very fulfilling.

Rick: Right. That’s a good point because I, I’m guilty myself of feeling like at the end of the day I’ve checked a lot of things off my list, but they were not things that were revenue producing. They were not things that were contributing to my ultimate goals. They were just things.

Sam: Yeah. So it’s not just getting things done, but getting the most important things done that are providing the most benefit to the individual and to the company.

Mary: Correct. And I like the way you say to the individual and the company because if it’s just for one or the other, there’s a disconnect there.

Sam: I’m having trouble understanding what you mean by to the individual. I mean, as a business owner or as a manager, I understand what it means to the company. Like I got 10 things done today, well did that help us actually move forward with the direction we’re trying to go? Or were they just 10 things. But what do you mean when you say rewarding to the individual?

Mary: Well, if you’re familiar with the Gallup statistic of the 81 or 82% of people are disengaged or actively disengaged at work,

Sam: Oh, that’s bad.

Mary: Well now actually it’s drafted to around 66% of people who are disengaged or actively disengaged. So the trend is isn’t going in the correct direction, but I believe that one of the reasons that people are disengaged is because it’s the wrong person in the wrong seat. The leadership doesn’t lead very well. The work isn’t rewarding. It was a, it was a mismatch. I mean all those things that can happen and if leadership and management is only looking at the completion of tasks and not at the human beings that are completing them, it’s very possible that they’re in that 66% of people who they’re kind of doing the work, but they’re sort of disengaged. It needs to be fulfilling work. It needs to be meaningful work and certainly the person doing the work is responsible for part of that. You know, speaking up, taking the right job and so on, but it just has to be this really cohesive understanding between the leadership and the person doing the work that it’s all a win win for everybody.

Tara : Don’t you think sometimes though that the person or the employee maybe doesn’t understand even why they’re unhappy with the work that they’re doing? You know, maybe they joined an organization because um, the job title or what they thought the description of the job was going to be, but maybe it didn’t turn out to be that and they can’t quite pinpoint what that is.

Mary: That could be, that could very well be, and it requires some reflection on the part of the employee and maybe even some awareness on the part of the leadership to say, “We’re not getting out of you what we thought we were going to get. What’s going on? What’s happening here?”

Tara: Sure, like being able to identify their strengths maybe and help them to succeed in their role or find a role that better fits them maybe.

Sam: What can you realistically do though? Okay, so you’ve taken a job and it’s not what you thought it was and you’re bored with it and you’re not really enjoying it.

Mary: Talk to your manager. I mean there, there needs to be an open conversation that says, here’s what I thought I would be doing, or here’s what I can do. I mean, certainly when there’s a punitive relationship between leadership and the people that they manage, those conversations aren’t going to happen. It has to be a culture that’s open and trusting that when you have that, what they might be able to find out is that, wow, this isn’t fulfilling for you, and if we had you doing this, we need that too and you’d be great at it.

Sam: Well, let’s flip it around then. What’s the manager to do if they’ve got a certain number of employees and jobs that need to be done and someone says, “you know, this isn’t what I thought it was going to be, I’m kind of bored. I’m not really interested in this.” What realistically can the manager do? I mean there’s the obvious, okay, you’re not a good fit for this organization, which would obviously be a nightmare for the employee and completely eliminate that trust. If you go and talk about an issue that you’re having and you end up losing your job over it, but what else can you do? Because I know as a manager there are certain things that need to get done and you do the best you can to describe those things in a job description and then maybe somebody decides they’re bored with it or they don’t like doing it. What as a manager, then, can you do because it’s got to get done. You can’t say, “Okay, I’ll do that and you can do stuff that you think is more fun.”

Mad: Sure.

Tara: I honestly think that managers oftentimes are not equipped with those tools to be able to receive those conversations and to, to guide their employees. I was in middle management for 10 years and I know that I was not equipped to hear that or have the resources to be able to help my employees succeed. I was coaching them and I was doing things, but now from the outside perspective, I can see how much better I could have done in those, in those moments.

Sam: What would you have done differently then.

Tara: I wouldn’t have taken it personally because-

Sam: Oh, yeah. Well, that’s-

Rick: Yeah.

Tara: And I, and knowing that it has actually nothing to do with me so I could help them succeed.

Mary: It’s possible that the person will, in that conversation, talk themselves out of a job. Because we all have to learn the things that we like to do and we don’t like to do. And maybe we thought we wanted to do it. Long time ago I thought I wanted a certain kind of a house and we bought it and the minute we were sitting there, I mean literally I was waiting for the moving trucks to come and I didn’t want to live there, but I would never have known that if I hadn’t bought it, I would have always thought that was my dream house. So that’s tough for a company.

Sam: Right.

Mary: But you know, having that conversation, it could be that “I get that you’re not happy doing the work that needs to be done and here’s as much as we can shift that, but we still need this work to get done.”

Sam: Well maybe there are different ways. Maybe it’s the way they’re doing the particular task that they’re not interested in, or maybe they don’t understand the grand scheme of things, how this affects the end product or the client or the world or whatever.

Mary: And if they do realize that it’s not a great fit, then people can part on very good terms and it can be, “I tried this, it wasn’t the right thing for me, and you need to get the right person in here who’s going to love this work.”

Sam: And then that goes to really trying to be more clear during the interview process and when you’re bringing somebody in and make sure they understand what the job’s gonna-

Mary: Yes, absolutely. Not sugarcoating it to get someone to take the job.

Sam: Oh yeah.

Rick: Yeah my question would be what is it about the job that you find to be dissatisfying? You know, what specifically is it that frustrates you or doesn’t give you that feeling of satisfaction at the end of the day? And then what parts of the job do you find to be, you know? Because I want to know, I want to put them on the right seat on the bus because what I’m asking them to do may not even fit their talent skills.

Sam: You’re talking about during the, during the hiring process, right? Not once they’re on the-

Rick: Well, no, I mean, when just what you’re addressing here and somebody who’s coming to you and they’re not, or you’re coming to them and there’s just, the productivity isn’t what you’re looking for.

Sam: Yeah.

Rick: It’s like why, why is that? What’s your, what’s your challenge with this particular task or what’s your challenge with this particular objective that we’re trying to reach here and why do you think that that’s frustrating to you? And so I, I’d really like to hear Mad’s opinion as she, as she goes about looking for a career in the world.

Mad: Yeah, um, I know when I actually applied for this position that I’m at right now, I was not really sure what I actually wanted to do. You know, I’m still in college. I wasn’t sure of what path I directly wanted to take. And on my phone interview with Sam, actually, she asked me, why would you want this job? And I told her, I said, for me, I am a college student. I am still really trying to figure out which path I actually wanna take in life and what I actually want to do.

Rick: I’m still trying to do that.
Mad: Yeah. And um, and she told, and I told her that, you know, business video production was one of the higher things on my list that I was looking to do for an actual career and this being an intern in an actual work environment, like that was the best way to figure out if I was going to like it or not. And she told me it was one of the best answers she had ever heard but-

Mary: Awesome. Excellent.

Sam: Well that’s a good reason to do an internship to figure out what you like and what you don’t like.

Mary: You know, and I’ve been doing this business, had my own business for 19 years, but I was in corporate America before that. And I tell people, one of the reasons I do what I do is because when I was in corporate America, I loved the work. What made it hard was having enough time to do it. And sometimes the people I had to interact with. So productivity can be affected perhaps not by the work, but by those other two things. Perhaps the volume or maybe management isn’t good, maybe leadership isn’t good. Maybe there’s a personality mismatch that doesn’t have to be broken apart. It just has to be understood that this is the way this person needs to be managed or led or motivated. And that to your point, it sounds like you were a good leader and you still felt like you could’ve used some more skills.

Tara : I wish I would have had training or skills or somebody because I was, luckily I’m a self motivated person so I was kind of leading myself and learning, but if somebody could have swooped in and given me some tools and skills, that would have been amazing.

Sam: I think you and I went through something very similar. I mean, you work and you work your way up to management and there’s really no, okay, you’re being promoted to management, you’re going to be managing people. Let’s put you through management classes on how to deal with these types of situations. You know, you just kind of become a good leader and then you become responsible for people and-

Tara: That’s the hard part.

Sam: Yeah, yeah. It is, it really is.

Tara: I say that I, I just managed moods all day so it was kind of, you know, figuring that piece out was the hardest. The operation side- simple. Like I had that down, the moods and like-

Sam: The people side.

Tara: Exactly that was the heart part.

Mary: Because you’re dealing with people and that whole, that whole thing where they say there is no I in team, which I think is.
Sam: But there’s me.

Mary: I just, yeah, exactly! I think, I think that’s just a bunch of bunk, cause training, if there’s no I in team you’re everybody exactly the same and that is a recipe for disaster because people can be doing similar jobs and be very different people.

Sam: I think like with a lot of different types of work, video production being one of them. I think management is one of those things where people really underestimate, you know, they think that “Oh you’ve been doing this a long time, you can handle this.” And it’s really, people underestimate what it takes to do a good job.

Mary: Yeah. One of the activities I like to do in organizations is to have everyone share “The hardest thing about my job that I wish other people knew is:”
Sam: I like that.

Mary: And people can say, “Gosh, I didn’t, I didn’t know that that part was really hard.” Or they can change what they do to make it not so hard on other people. It makes it really hard for me when people turn things in at the very last minute because this is what that requires me to do. Oh, well, I didn’t realize it impacted you that way.

Sam: Right.

Mary: Once people know, very often they can accommodate that fairly easily.

Sam: That can, yeah that can really help with productivity and with morale and everybody.

Mary: All of that and, if morale is better, I guarantee you productivity is going to be better.

Rick: Yeah, so you talked about the “I”, there’s no “I” in team. I found that people, people typically are more critical of themselves and so a lot of times the management feels that they’re doing a pretty good job. You know, they’re doing what we expect them to do. Of course they could do better, but I’m satisfied with the results. But the employee feels like they’re not getting the results they’re looking for. They’re not really contributing. They’re not really a part of the team. They’re not really being recognized. And I think recognition is more important to the employee than salary.

Sam: Well, I have to, I have to speak as devil’s advocate on that one. We’re talking about productivity because we’ve talked a lot about the issue being, you know, not the right fit or a better understanding or feeling like part of the team. And I agree with that and we probably should at some point talk about just the skills it takes to be productive and teaching those skills because that’s the other side of the issue. But can you get to a point where you’re counterproductive trying, I mean you’re talking about, okay, do we get together and talk about this and do how we put in effort to making you feel like part of a team at what point are you spending so much time making someone feel like part of a team that you’re counterproductive.

Mary: I think to the point you just mentioned before, that it’s vital to make sure that they have the skills to be productive and talking about leadership skills not being taught, organization skills aren’t taught either. People sometimes either have it or they don’t, and maybe someone really needs a primer on how best to manage their time, how to manage their calendar, how to not get caught up in the minutia. That’s, that’s a good thing too.

Sam: One of the things, and I think I call it a pet peeve, it really isn’t. It’s just something that I’m really good at and it kind of catches my attention that others aren’t, is just knowing like, for example, when I’m preparing for production, my mind automatically goes to, “I can do this quickly, but it’s going to take a long time to charge. So I’m going to set it up first and while that’s charging, then I can…”, You know, and I have just kind of a way of automatically planning my day to where I go, okay, this is going to work out to where everything’s done on time and this takes longer and this I need input from someone else. So I’m going to shoot them a note real quick, letting them know so that they have advanced notice. I’m kind of good at that whole juggling routine, but I think a lot of people aren’t. I think that’s a skill that can really help with productivity. Is there a way to teach that?

Mary: Well, one of the things

Sam: Or is that a personality type?

Mary: It is, it is a little bit of a personality type, but the other challenge is that very often job descriptions will call that multitasking, the ability to multitask. And it isn’t. It’s the ability to manage multiple projects,

Sam: Right.

Mary: Which is really important, but multitasking is as, as we know, that’s detrimental to productivity. Ultimately, trying to do two things at once. But to that point, I really do believe people are either like that or they’re not. Some people just, their brains don’t fire that way and if the job requires it, it’s really good to know that in advance because I you might not be able to build that into somebody.

Sam: Yeah,

Tara: Yeah.

Rick: I was just going to ask if anybody has ever had experience where you were being asked to write down your activity during the day for let’s say a given week. So I had that.

Sam: I’ve tried that.

Rick: experience in corporate America and you know, we’re, we’re trying to determine how we can improve productivity and it’s like just write down… Of course, I was resistant to it as the employee. I didn’t want them to know. So it became like a creative writing session. Yeah.

Sam: Well it feels like a lot of work too.

Rick: Right.

Mary: It is a lot of work.

Tara: And micromanaging.

Rick: So, okay, so all those negatives. So now I’m in the entrepreneurial space and one of my mentors asked me to do the same thing and I did it and I was willing and excited to do it and I determined that I’m spending a lot of time doing things that I really shouldn’t be spending my time doing.
Mary: It’s a really good exercise. I do it with my clients all the time because you need to get a really good picture of how you’re actually spending your time. And to your point, if you’re making someone do that all the time, 100% of the time, that is micro-managing, doing it for a week to see where there might be some gaps.

Tara: Like an audit.

Mary: It’s a really good exercise. Yeah, like an audit. It’s a good exercise.

Tara: But again, understanding the why.

Mary: Yes.

Tara: they want them to do that. So if they’re not attached to that, why they’re going to see it as micromanaging.

Mary: If it feels punitive, that’s going to do something to.

Mad: As a new employee, sometimes I think that sometimes you really want to be productive, but because you’re starting a new position, you’re just not sure what you can do to achieve that. So that’s why the biggest thing that I’ve learned is having that good communication with your supervisor so that you can communicate and figure out what needs to be done and how you can do it and doing some research on your own beforehand.

Mary: Very good point.

Sam: Understanding the job and understanding the task and what’s expected. Yeah, that’s a big productivity killer. If you’ve been assigned something that you don’t know how to get started or what to do.

Mary: For some people younger might be concerned, they don’t want to ask the question because they don’t want to look like they don’t know what’s going on.

Tara: Sure.

Mary: And so that could be intimidating too and that’s certainly a fair viewpoint.

Tara: One thing that I noticed in some of the assessments that I do with organizations is sometimes it’s the tools, the physical tools that the workplace isn’t providing or maybe IT is off or the HR department is not inside their office. So things take a long time for them to get through pieces. So understanding that workplace and how it all functions for them to help them.

Sam: Why things are taking longer than they should. Getting the person to not be defensive and give excuses, but to really talk through why, why did this happen and what went wrong, what was missing, what’s the problem?

Tara: Absolutely.

Sam: Getting those fixed.

Sam: All right, well we’re getting the wrap it up signal.

Mary: All right,

Sam: so do we have a horror story related to productivity? Mary, I’m guessing you’re the productivity expert, I’m guessing you’ve got a story.
Mary: Just a real, a real quick one. And that was, I had a client at one time, this was a long, long time ago, who actually had hired me to be a little bit more productive. But one of the things I noted is that she had at the time of Franklin planner or something like that and she was so concerned about balance in her life that everything was color coded. But you know, when she worked was green and when she exercised was blue. And when she read or whatever was red, and it was really important to her that every day have an equal balance of colors. And there was two things wrong with that. I mean, you could spend all day color coding your calendar. That’s a lot, right? And the other thing is that your life isn’t going to be balanced every single day. You might spend more on personal stuff or doing this task today and then more on the other tomorrow. And the more you try to keep that really strict balance, the more out of balance you’re gonna feel.

Sam: So what advice did you give to clear that up?

Mary: Chill. [laughing] Just a little bit, just to chill a little bit.

Christine: Thanks for listening to super manager by CN video production. Visit our website at cn-video.com for additional episodes and lots of super manager resources, or give us a call at (314) video me.