While everyone in a company works towards making it grow, dividing your people into teams and departments makes sure that you maximize your productivity. For example, one or two can come up with new products and services, while another one focuses on testing out new technologies and materials. However, for them to be truly productive, they need to be managed well. It is best to avoid these common mistakes so you won’t waste your efforts.
Not Having Goals and a Plan
By not having any plans, goals, and schedules in place, your team is set up to fail in their overall task. Take the time to meet for the initial briefing and set your major goals, the smaller ones, how you’re all going to do it, as well as deadlines for your tasks. If you want, you can also use cloud-based project scheduling software so you can all stay on track.
Making Bad Estimates of Time and Resources
Estimating time and necessary resources is essential in setting the goals, processes, and schedule mentioned earlier. Managers often make the mistake of underestimating the amount needed for a certain project and making it extend unexpectedly. To avoid this, take the time to research what’s actually needed and also make more conservative allocations by providing allowances for any delays and the like.
Trying to Do Too Much
Sometimes, you’ll encounter suggestions for what you can do to expand on your project. For example, when it comes to developing a new product, you may find that including a certain feature might increase its usefulness. However, you should remember that this will eat into your time and resources. Before even adding to your project, you should ask yourself, “Will we be able to finish on time?” and “Will we be able to implement it well?” If the answer is no, then you might want to leave it for another time.
Communicating Poorly
For the members of your team to work together properly, everyone should communicate with each other well. In your case, you should relay your group’s objectives as well as your expectations clearly. Make room for inquiries and answer them adequately so that everyone’s on the same page. You can’t afford to have your people misinterpret anything about what they should be doing and how they should do it. It will be a waste of everyone’s time and effort.
Mismanaging Your People
Another major kind of mistake when you’re leading a project is failing to manage the employees under you. It can take many forms, depending on the situation. One of them is doing the work yourself when they don’t do it on time or in a proper manner. Another is micromanaging every little task and leaving little time for your own work. Yet another is mismatching tasks with people’s skill sets. The reason behind having a team in the first place is to be able to do work efficiently. These mistakes lower that efficiency and defeat the purpose of bringing a group together. All of these mistakes will cost your company time, money, and effort, and those are not things that you should waste. When starting a project, it pays to have a clear plan for it and assign the right people to the right tasks. Constant and clear communication also helps keep everyone on track.
