Do more with less. Isn’t that a theme lately. You may have the workload of 6 people, but the company will not increase your team from 3 people. How do you do it? How will you make it? Is there any hope?
Get out the pen and paper – it’s battle planning time.
1) Plan Your Deliverables
It may sound like over-kill, but a project plan for your regular deliverables helps. It assists in thinking through the monthly process and allows the team to visualize how their goals are achievable. As a leader and manager, you can set up check points to ensure quality of the finished product. You can also set up smaller milestones so that if there is an issue, you can raise the flag early to your customers.
2) Coordinate Activities
Your people may have down time that you don’t even realize. There may be bottlenecks in the process that you’ve built. The best solution is to get everyone involved into a room, explain the constraints, draw a line in the sand when things need to get done and have everyone participate in the goal setting exercise. They’ll know what they need to get the job done and they’ll rally around their leader if they see you’re in trouble (assuming you have helped to motivate them in the past)
3) Share the Burden
Maybe it’s physically impossible to meet your deliverables – maybe there are too many expectations on your team. I’d recommend living by the following saying “under-promise, over deliver”. If you can’t meet the expectations, someone is going to be disappointed. If that’s the case, make sure that your team is being honest with their assessment of workload, and ask your boss what to prioritize. If there are available resources within the larger team, maybe they can help out. If not, there is a need to raise the flag and realign expectations for the deliverables with the end customer.
