How to streamline your business

Part of being a member or leader of a team is always looking for ways to improve. Because, hey, nobody’s perfect. But even making small changes to optimize your team’s work can have big pay-offs over time. So, here are a few ideas for how to fine tune your business’s efficiency and collaboration.

Update your collaboration software. We can’t really blame you if the last few years have made you sick of Zoom calls. But, some apps and online platforms are a godsend for helping your team communicate and work together. Chat apps like Slack are great for quick, informal communication, especially if your team is working remote or hybrid. Instead of wasting time sweating over email etiquette or convening for a face-to-face meeting, these apps let you fire off quick questions, comments, or bits of information so you can coordinate with your coworkers and get back to coworking. They also can have the added benefit of building rapport. In addition, cloud-based software like Google Drive makes sharing files and working on common documents a breeze.

Open communication. One of the easiest traps to fall in that leads to wasting time and energy is miscommunication. We’ve all been there: maybe you’ve had to restart a project after misunderstanding the instructions, or maybe you’ve spent an hour or two on a task only to realize your coworker already handled it last week. Taking the time to communicate clearly and be approachable to your team’s questions and concerns is always worth it to make sure everyone’s on the same page. This is true on a macro level too: having long-term goals for your company and explicitly laying them out for your teammates at all levels will make sure everyone is pointed in the right direction and understands what they’re contributing.

Delegate. Having too much on any one person’s plate can slow down your business and make it less resilient to disruptions. Delegating tasks to people with the skill and bandwidth to carry them out effectively is the key to keeping your team a well-oiled machine. You may even want to consider outsourcing; often the cost of hiring a freelancer or an outside consultant pays for itself in allowing you to reallocate your team’s efforts and talents to the tasks best suited for them.

A little slack is normal, and even inevitable, in any workplace. But taking simple steps like these to prevent small instances of wasted time and effort will, over time, translate into more productivity and profit for your business.