Communicate, congregate and collaborate more effectively than ever
Smart Teams will help your team to go beyond personal productivity to enhance team productivity. Building on the concepts presented in Smart Work, which focuses on personal productivity, this book shows you how to turn unproductive team behaviours that create friction into ‘superproductive’ behaviours that promote flow. Productivity is, at its core, a leadership issue - and this book provides practical guidelines that help you build a culture where productivity thrives.
Working together can be a drag - literally. Email noise, unproductive meetings and poorly organised projects can stifle creativity and disrupt everyone’s workflow. But by creating team agreements that raise awareness of the negative impact of our behaviours, you build the desire and capability to change. This book is packed with tips, guidelines and expert insights for leaders and managers at any level.
- Foster a culture of ‘superproductivity’
- Create a set of Smart Team principles to guide cooperation
- Run fewer, shorter and more effective meetings
- Collaborate more productively on projects
- Reduce urgency, interruptions and email noise
People want their work to matter, they want to make an impact and they want to do it all with a healthy work-life balance - productivity is the key to making it all happen. Smart Teams shows you how to implement the culture shift that will allow your team to flourish.
Table of Contents
About the author ix
Acknowledgements xi
How to use this book xiii
Introduction xv
Part I: Moving from friction to flow 1
1. Enabling productive flow 5
2. Qualities of a smart team 17
3. Changing team behaviours 23
Part II: Working better together 37
4. Communicate: Make less noise 43
5. Congregate: Make meetings count 73
6. Collaborate: Make projects great 107
7. Key skills for effective cooperation 135
Part III: Building a smart team culture 151
8. Creating a more productive culture 153
9. Some productivity projects 163
Postscript 173
Index 175
