Intro; SMART TEAMS; Contents; About the author; Acknowledgements; How to use this book; Introduction; Can you relate?; Productivity problems at the team level; 1. Information overload; 2. Too much time in unfocused meetings; 3. Distractions and interruptions; 4. Unnecessary urgency; We create friction rather than flow; Part I MOVING FROM FRICTION TO FLOW; Are you selfish?; Are you selfless?; Or do you serve?; 1 Enabling productive flow; Productivity friction; Poor productivity behaviours; Friction vs flow cultures; Beyond personal productivity; Level 1: DISRUPTIVE; Level 2: PASSIVE.
Level 3: PRODUCTIVELevel 4: COLLABORATIVE; Level 5: SUPERPRODUCTIVE; 2 Qualities of a Smart Team; We are purposeful; We are mindful; We are punctual; We are reliable; 3 Changing team behaviours; Get specific to change behaviours; What is a productivity principle?; Generating principles for your team; Flipping problems into principles; Make this a priority for your team; PART II WORKING BETTER TOGETHER; Why this?; Why them?; Why now?; Why here?; 4 Communicate: Make less noise; Email overload; 1. Disruption and interruption; 2. Inbox bottlenecks; 3. Stress and overwhelm; Alternatives to email.
Four communication toolsHave a conversation; Call a meeting; Send an email; Share a post; A more thoughtful approach to communications; Planning effective communications (why); Writing effective communications (what); The three ingredients of good communication; The SSS approach to emails; Sending effective communications (who); Noise reduction strategies; Reply with care; Don't be a copy cat; Use distribution lists carefully; Get up and talk to someone; 5 Congregate: make meetings count; What's wrong with our meeting culture?; 1. Too much time in meetings.
2. Poorly planned and poorly run meetings3. Poor meeting behaviours; Let's aim for 100 per cent fewer meetings; 25 per cent fewer meetings; 25 per cent shorter meeting durations; 25 per cent fewer participants; 25 per cent less time wasted; Make your meetings more effective; Plan meetings the right way around; The 5W approach to planning meetings; Running an awesome meeting; Mindful interruptions; Are all agenda items the same?; Focus your meeting with an agenda; 6 Collaborate: make projects great; Alignment, agreement and awareness; Project collaboration: make them visible.
The best tool for the jobProject scheduling tools; Mind maps; Project board or work breakdown structure tools; Checklist; Useful, usable and used; 7 Key skills for effective cooperation; Managing urgency; Most urgency is false; Reducing urgency for others; Negotiating urgency; As a manager, do you conduct or cushion urgency?; Developing an active mindset; Negotiating our workloads; Manage expectations using SSSH; Negotiating using the four variables; Delegating in the right way; Part III BUILDING A SMART TEAM CULTURE; 8 Creating a more productive culture; Create ripples.
