In recent years, startups manned by only a handful of people with limited resources have been able to move far ahead of large companies with hundreds or thousands of employees. Technology has made it possible for small teams to create huge waves of change and innovation. Small teams are often the source of the greatest ideas and the catalysts of change in even large organizations. When small teams know how to effectively share tasks and collaborate on projects, they are unstoppable.
Not everyone has to be a management superstar and effective, talented teams aren’t just for the tech giants. Some of the most impressive small teams just know how to work well together and bring out the best in all members.
Here are tips and tools you can try to share tasks with your team and collaborate better
Eliminate to-do lists and use a task management platform to share tasks with your team
Teams that waste time in meetings once or twice a week and then “delegate” work to have team members make their own to-do lists and work completely separately lead to misunderstandings and confusion. It’s much more effective to have a collaborative digital system where tasks can be delegated, assigned, organized, and tracked for the whole team. This way, everyone sees exactly when their tasks are due and, more importantly, why. Employees are motivated to perform their best on teams when they see what their work is a part of.
Combine communication and sharing tasks
Having to jump from one method of communication to another and then to a chat platform to organize tasks is not efficient or productive for teams. With a small team, processes should be incredibly simple to take advantage of the agility and speed of working with just a few people. Eliminate the steps between conversation and creating tasks to make sure things are getting done in a well organized way. Use a task management platform like Hibox that has company group chat with task management built in. A small team can quickly chat about decisions and ideas in a chat stream and assign tasks and subtasks from right within the chat stream. There are no extra steps or logins involved. Small, streamlined teams are the most productive.
Include files, comments, and descriptions when you share tasks with your team
Similar to communication, it’s so frustrating when you need to open up several other windows and tools to get what you need to work on a task. Make it easy for your team and streamline your process by including all related files, comments, and a description with a task in a platform like Hibox. Your team members will save time by having everything they need to get right to work available organized by task within their task list ready to go. Hibox allows you to share files from Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive along with comments for further instruction as well as subtasks if you want to break work up. Subtasks can be assigned to multiple team members for organized teamwork as well.
Make sure progress on tasks is clear and transparent
Team members can grow frustrated and lost when it’s unclear how progress on collective teamwork is going. Sharing tasks should be transparent and a well organized so that everyone knows exactly what’s going on. Accountability for each team members role in an overall project helps boost productivity. Using a task project calendar like the one in Hibox allows all users to see exactly what is expected to be completed leading up to deadlines. Tasks can be assigned right in the calendar. Teams can use it to distribute work out the best to make sure everything is done on time when working with multiple projects.
Small teams and their performance will continue to become increasingly important as the business environment becomes quicker moving with more unexpected changes. Team members need to work together extremely well to beat out competition and bring ideas to life quickly and effectively. For a complete team task sharing solution, try Hibox for free today.
