“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”
—Phil Jackson
Last week, we started our look at some great tips from recent articles about team productivity. Here are the final four:
5. Clear Expectations are Key.
From Time Management Ninja we have “9 Ways for Bosses to Boost Their Team Productivity”, which includes the following helpful insight:
“Communication is one of the tops things that bogs down team productivity. Set clear expectations around how the team should communicate. This should cover everyday communications, as well as status updates.”
By helping to set clear expectations, Timyo cuts out the guesswork of internal communications, and helps to retire the unhelpful culture of “automatic ASAP”.
6. Time is Your Own.
In the same article, TMN also celebrates the value of “time shifting”, noting that “[w]ith today’s tools, it is not so much about when or where, but that the work gets done.”
At Timyo, we couldn’t agree more. One of Timyo’s main goals is to unlock the true potential of email’s native asynchronicity. In other words, email is already really good at letting people communicate without needing to coordinate in real time. By introducing clear expectations, Timyo makes this feature of email even better.
Utilizing this asynchronicity is especially crucial for bosses and managers…just ask Elon Musk 🙂
7. A Good Team Needs Good Tools.
TMN also recognizes the importance of providing your team with the proper tools to get the job done. At Timyo, we’ve long argued for the key role that email plays in any team’s communications toolbox.
By playing to email’s natural strengths and making it even better at what it was already good at, Timyo ensures that your team gets the most out of their email.
8. A Happy Team is a Healthy Team.
Our final tip comes via the always-informative Mental Floss, in their article “How Your Office’s Social Culture Can Affect Your Health”.
The crux of the article is worth quoting at length:
“According to an international meta-analysis of 58 studies involving more than 19,000 people published in the academic journal Personality and Social Psychology Review, feeling like you and your colleagues are on the same team, and, maybe more importantly, feeling like your colleagues feel the same way, isn’t just good for workplace productivity, it’s good for workers’ mental and physiological states, too.”
Simply put, it’s not just that happy members make for a happy team, but that everyone feeling like they are on the same team makes for happy individual members. And happy workers are productive workers; they are less likely to suffer from excess stress, to get sick, or to miss work.
By helping teammates communicate clearly and show respect for their colleagues, Timyo helps to encourage this feeling of what the article calls “we-ness”—the inspirational and comforting sensation that we are all in this together.
That sort of shared camaraderie can be the deciding factor in a team’s—and thus a company’s—success. Timyo helps to spread that camaraderie, by making email a truly excellent productivity tool. Timyo plays to emails strengths and makes time-shifting easier than ever, all by helping team members communicate their expectations clearly.
Our goal is to use email to help teams communicate better. Sound good? Join the Timyo Revolution.
