Make your small company more like grade school
Michael Sippey has some ideas gleamed from visiting grade schools (made a bit tongue-in-cheek) that are important for building the type of team that can accomplish more with less.
A few of my favorites from the list:
Lots of wall art
Too often work looks more like the morgue than a place that is supposed to inspire you to achieve great things. Don’t be shortsighted and save a few bucks when your employees’ productivity will shoot through the roof in a visually stimulating environment. When that potential client comes in to evaluate whether or not you’re worthy of her business, do you think a bustling, exciting, alive environment looks better or a drab, gray vacuum with a few posters?
Morning meeting
Isolation is a terrible way to spend a day - we’re social creatures by nature. Retail uses the “huddle” as a way to disseminate key info for the day and rally the troops but the office usually expects you to come in and file straight to your desk for 8+ hours of work. Celebrate your team’s victories from the day before and go through a brief rundown on each person’s goals for the day. When the everybody knows what other members are trying to accomplish for the day it gives everybody a greater sense of ownership & accomplishment of their own tasks. Your employees will also have a better grasp on the direction of the company, be better at brainstorming new ideas, collaborate easier… the 20 minutes of disruption (get those telecommuters on the conference line as well!) will pay off tenfold.
Snack time
It’s amazing how far a little food will go to spread the goodwill. While the huge catered spread put many a startup out of business back in the bubble (among other things…), surprising your team with a round of sandwiches at the picnic table can do wonders to recharge for the afternoon.
A couple of things not on Michael’s list that I think are important:
Reading material
Not only the trades relevant to your industry (hopefully you do at least that much) but books and magazines across a spectrum of genres. Allow everybody’s mind to break out of routine and wander - it may be the next big thing they wander to.
Quiet time
We are easily distractible creatures and the proliferation of technological attention-grabbers doesn’t help productivity’s cause. At one office I worked at they instituted a policy of quiet time, where nobody could drop by your desk or send you an email unless it was a matter of life & death (or losing a major client I’d suppose…). The result? For those few hours, that person made progress on tasks that require more than 5 minutes of focus and usually felt more successful about their accomplishments for the day. Nothing sucks like going home at the end of the day feeling you got nothing done because you were trying to get everything done.
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