Technology has done a lot for evolving the ways businesses communicate, collaborate, and retain and retrieve information. But you’ve read those articles already, so I won’t bother reciting them here. What I want to focus on is the clutter and noise that this evolution has brought with it, and most importantly, what you can do to reduce it.
A few years ago, I transitioned from being an individual contributor on a team of one to the leader of a growing team focused on account management and product delivery. I had been managing everything using spreadsheets and post-it notes (obviously the best way to manage a multi-million-dollar business). Not having managed a team of contributors before, I had no idea how I was going to continue to manage these accounts and all the communication that came along with it.
The Inevitable
Our spreadsheets exploded, we had to start tracking more information while simultaneously adding more products to deliver, and we ended up spending more time in meetings to cover how things were performing than we were actually delivering. I had to stop and ask myself, “how did we end up here? And how do we get out of here, fast?!”
The Solution
The key was figuring out how to cut through all the noise. So what did we do that helped us the most?
- Ditched the spreadsheets for a web-based plan management solution that helped us manage our customer accounts and keep everything organized
- Connected our plan management tool to the company’s BI tool to make it easier for upper management to see at a high-level how our team was performing
- Leveraged automated reporting to reduce the number of emails being sent
- And I set my out-of-office email up for a month and went to Costa Rica*
As a result of these changes, we were able to drastically reduce time spent in meetings, eliminate needless email chains, and keep upper management better informed
Ok, so that last one’s not true, but I probably could have done that…