Time to Boost Project Team Productivity? Try Sharing, the "S" in Social Networki

Posted by reallynicearticle on January 5th, 2021

Why is social networking the Next Big Thing? It's about the sharing. In a world where email, search engines, and information-overload overwhelms our ability to organize data and focus on getting things done, we need a better way to manage our time and to-dos. To-do List Extension 

Sharing is easier said than done. Some people simply never learn to share. Bureaucratic corporate organizations often obstruct information sharing by design. Other times, the communication systems we rely on today get between us and our desire to get things done.

Sharing among virtual teams: Do we have the tools we need?

Virtual teams are often the best way, at times the only way, to get important work done. Project managers are in high demand because we need teams that can quickly form, inform, and perform -- and then transform to tackle another task.

Rarely have the virtual teams I've managed had much of an appetite for heavyweight project management software. Instead many project teams rely on email as their main course of communications -- with a healthy dash of conference calling mixed in and a lot of Excel spreadsheets on the side.

However, many of us experience the heartburn created by project-management-by-email: long, confusing threads of emails; accidentally hitting the reply all button; wasted time in boring status meetings; and lots of phone tag to update a project's status.

Most of us put up with these modern annoyances because they are the new costs of getting things done in a virtual work world. But are these costs now becoming too high?

Productivity hits the wall

In the last year, productivity has risen by only 1. 3 percent, the weakest showing in almost ten years. Labor costs are up 5. 3 percent in the period, the fastest increase since 1982. As the costs of labor increase at the fastest rate in almost 25 years, smart businesses need to be looking for ways to increase productivity. If the slowing economy pushes companies to lay off workers, those who keep their jobs will have fewer resources and more work to get done.

It's always smart to gut-check government data against what's happening down on Main Street. Although the blogosphere may not yet represent Main Street, personal productivity bloggers, Get Things Done gurus, and life hackers are all buzzing about where we'll find the next leap in project management productivity.

Management doesn't mean execution

Project execution requires first gathering and processing relevant data into actionable information, and then effectively sharing information and to-dos so that the right people have the context, focus, and the know-how necessary to get things done.

Are we hitting the productivity wall because we've gotten very skilled at collecting information, but haven't yet found smarter ways to share that information and turn it into action and results? Although we use powerful search engines to find data and email to move data around, many professionals still rely on Post-its(TM) stuck it to their monitors to convert to-do's into results.

Social networking to the rescue?

To address this collection-execution imbalance, I built a project blog for one team that I recently managed. Determined to overcome today's communication challenges, I asked my project team to rely on the blog as their primary resource for project communication and execution.

The team found the blog useful. But in the end, the blog basically served as a prettier place to put our project data, and not a better way to more efficiently manage time or focus the team on execution. Plus, the blog didn't work off-line. I thought everyone would be able to get online when I needed them to be. I was wrong.