I run a popular one day workflow workshop the aim of which is to ascertain if people are working as efficiently as possible, if productivity can be increased or whether time can be made available to improve creativity.
What follows is a modified list I came across on the Wrike website, it has several common indicators that things can be improved and is typical of what I look for when talking to creative teams. The goal is always to work smarter not harder.
Inefficient team communication
• bad visibility into who’s doing what
• problems with timing and prioritisation
• team unaware of the activities of others
Team has outgrown current workflow
• hard to manage multiple projects at once
• impossible to give all customers the same level of experience
• complex projects, hard to divide in small actionable pieces
No transparency into work processes
• hard to find the right assets
• unclear project statuses
• no reporting or analytics
Software or hardware is outdated
• still using legacy systems, word docs, and spreadsheets
• not everyone is using the same versions of software
• not all needs are covered
Priorities lack structure
• duplicated work
• managing work instead of working on projects
• many ideas but not a lot of time to execute them
Difficulty tracking the volume of projects
• don’t know what’s in your team’s pipeline
• small things are falling through the cracks
• not enough attention to high value projects
If any of these sound familiar then there is scope for improvement and you have taken the first step to identifying what needs to be improved.