How to build succesful teams and make the right decisions for your company
How do we increase profit? How do we improve the organization? Are we building succesfull teams? Running an agency means constantly asking yourself these questions.
Before continuing, we recommend you read the article “Profitability: How Can Your Agency Make More Money and Expand“ where we explain the importance of profitability within agencies and how to increase the revenue of each project.
This time we will focus on the organization of the company and the project team. An issue that can factor as an important increase in the quantity and quality of the work done. The positive impact of an organized work team with the necessary tools is often overwhelmed by the urgency and uncertainty that characterize a service company, always rushing to meet deliveries and last minute changes. However, these problems are rooted in the very core of the work structure.
Does your team have quick and centralized access to all information?
Starting a new project involves several stages of development, from planning until the execution. In an ideal case, your company is in charge of all the stages from start to finish, being able to handle all the details of the project internally. Having a successful team prepares you to face future challenges, building one is part of the process.
Focusing on this case, are you sure that your team has the tools to access all the information required for the optimal development of the project?
Being unaware of all the changes, having difficulty in locating files, inconsistencies between the client’s request and the work delivered, loss of passwords related to the project, etc. These are some of the most frequent problems within agencies, and they are the result of inefficient communication within the project team. Building and retaining a succesfull team is key to avoid this.
Now let’s look at the big picture and include the possibility of the departure of a team member or that a third party is involved in the development of the project being carried out. This increases the difficulty of keeping all the information organized and, above everything else, keeping the whole team in tune with the project.
Here we add some recommendations for the team, with the intention of helping them face these problems:
Documentation: Document every change and processes that are relevant. Try to do it while keeping in mind that someone else should read it and understand it perfectly.
Messaging system: Access an internal messaging system, which helps in keeping track of all exchanges.
Dynamic exchange: Ensure a dynamic information exchange system is in place. This guarantees that each area has fluid communication and gets a continuous feedback.
Important decisions: Keep a record and log the high importance decisions taken. It will allow others to have a quick and organized reference of these milestones, avoiding confusion and misunderstandings.
These are just a few tips, which lead to a comprehensive solution and ensure a collaborative and efficient team when sharing information and work files.
Sharing knowledge: one key to build successful teams
Service companies represent one of the areas with the highest personnel turnover. The average tenure of a person in a professional services company is 2 years. Considering this, the managers are the only stable members, therefore, the ones who are fully aware of the company’s work methodologie.
So, how do you share that knowledge to each member that joins your company? How do you tell them the procedures, provide them with information, and communicate the status of projects and clients?
Your answer, probably, is that these things are learned on a day-to-day basis and this is a serious mistake. The transition period for this person to adapt to the workflow of your company can take a long time, and that translates into lost money.
Can you imagine how your business would work by standardizing and automating processes? Your business, which until now has been “founder/manager – dependent”; will allow for you to spend your time on more important managerial tasks, or to oversee the business from a distance. In addition, automating processes leads to a quick identification of the weak points in the development of a certain project, being able to speed up and improve the goals, resulting in the fulfillment of the proposed objectives and an increase in the company’s profitability.
We hope this article will help you reflect on what is involved in analyzing whether your company is doing everything possible to ensure good information management and to build and keep a successful teams.
Stop suffering delays in deliveries, internal conflicts and loss of revenue due to solvable problems. With a correct action plan and the necessary tools, it is possible to optimize the workflow, which is the basis for moving forward and being able to scale a company.
