“A chain is only as strong as the weakest link,” so the saying goes. A company is just as good as its employees, and this is where managers are essential in the workings of a business, how productive the rest of the company will be. 

One of the biggest hurdles and the most important tasks of a manager is making sure that the company is productive– but how? Contrary to popular belief, the answers are pretty simple. Here are some productivity tips for managers who are disciplined enough to practice.

Productivity Tips for Managers

The internet’s expansion to what it’s become now has allowed industries and businesses to extend their reach to audiences and potential customers globally, but it also opened up the doors for bigger, greater competition. In a competitive market, managers have to have the tools and skillset to organize, plan, and delegate tasks to move the company forward.

Here are a few tips that will change the way you organize your business processes.

1. Plan Your Day

As a manager or ahead of your team, you can’t just wing your business processes. It takes knowledge of the strengths of your team fully utilized by proper task delegation. For planning your days, you can use calendar or note-taking apps, work management platforms to set what needs to be done within the month, within the week, and even in a day if needed. Apps like Asana, Busy Cal, or NotePlan can help jumpstart your workweek.

2. Implement Quick Meetings or Scrum Meetings

Meetings can make or break the productivity of your team. It’s needed in business, but we’ve heard so many times how some meetings, “could’ve been an email” instead.

As managers, we try to avoid wasting our team’s time with long meetings. Scrum meetings, standing or walking meetings can be the answer to all your meeting dilemmas. Going dynamic keeps everyone’s minds alert and enthusiastic, and prevents the meetings from being too long. If you’re working from home, standing instead of sitting down while in a meeting allows you to stretch and reenergize your body while in a Zoom meeting as well. 

Remember, the key is to make these meetings short and sweet, only focusing on what needs to be discussed.

3. Delegate More Tasks

It’s going to be your and your team’s downfall if you keep all the tasks to yourself. As the manager, it’s your responsibility to know everyone in your team, especially their strengths and weaknesses, so people can be on board and committed to the project or the tasks 100%. Streamline task delegation by using software that can easily assign responsibilities and tasks to your team efficiently. Trello has been proving itself to be a contender with its simplicity of making lists. Other programs like Airtable are also great for project management and file organization with their usability.

4. Be a Consistent Leader

When a manager is consistent with their words and actions, the team is more engaged and productive. Consistent leadership is the key to success according to several leadership coaches. A manager who makes it very clear to their employees and team what needs to be done to achieve company goals and makes it clear what every employee gets as a reward encourages the team to do more, to be productive when they have an idea of the end goal in sight.

5. Adopt New Technologies

Digital Transformation and adopting new technologies is not necessarily just digitizing an existing business and putting it online or using more apps and software to integrate at work. Digital transformation is making plans and strategies based on data, based on the needs of your customers and the needs of your team. It is using digital tools to automate work such as Zapier and more API (Application Program Interface)-based platforms can kick off your company’s digital transformation.

For a manager, it’s not just about driving your team’s productivity to meet goals, it could also be about the fulfillment of seeing your systems work smoothly in alignment with your team as well.

If you want to know more, Sidekicks is an on-demand virtual company and we’re eager to help visionaries and entrepreneurs like you. Get a free ebook and learn more about how we can help you by signing up to our newsletter. If you prefer something more personal, we also offer a free 30-minute consultation.