 Every leader that I've come across and worked with would love their teams to deliver more stuff and to deliver quicker. Now I'm an impatient person myself and so I often find myself, even though I know it's not necessarily a good thing, I find myself sometimes subtly hassling other people to try and go a little bit faster. Now I know that the most likely consequences of pushing someone to go a little bit faster than they actually naturally can is a compromising of quality because either that person is going to consciously cut some corners here and there in order to meet a new deadline or they'll feel under pressure to work longer hours or or rush something and therefore they'll make mistakes without realising. So if you're a leader of a team how can you get more out of your team without compromising quality? Well this is a touchy subject but I think I've got some tips that might be able to help. So here you go. The first one is to realise that people want to do their best. People aren't inherently lazy. They don't deliberately want to underperform. Sure there are times when they want to do the bare minimum. We all do but inherently given the choice people would rather do better than not do better and that's a worthwhile thing to remember. I was working with a group of people a while ago a few years ago now and one of the people in the room decided to share his view that people are inherently lazy and in order to make sure that anything of worth got done people needed to be managed. He was forthright in his view and he genuinely believed it. You could tell he genuinely believed it and you could tell that he also had multiple examples evidence if you will of his philosophy his view of people being true to him and there was no way that my philosophical view was going to have any impact on him because he had seen his truth. I was prepared to just agree to disagree. However one of his colleagues decided to offer an alternative perspective. Now this is someone from the same organisation and this person said well strange you should say that because my people are pretty good and we're operating in the same environment so are you just hiring badly? Is that the reason why your people aren't trustworthy aren't proactive need to be managed or is there something else going on and we had a debate for a while it was an interesting debate and the conclusion that that group drew was that people either tend to live up to your expectations often or live down to your expectations often and that believing in people's ability believing people's goodness increases the chances of people having greater ability or at least putting that ability to into action or being good people. So I found that a really interesting one now that stuck with me for years and I find that while I'm prepared to be wrong I find that believing that people want to do their best increases the chances of people doing their best. So that's tip one. Realize that believe that experiment with that belief if you will. My second tip is to help the people that you're working with understand the context. Indeed there's no real point in you or your team delivering more stuff or delivering it quicker if they're delivering the wrong stuff. Understanding the problem that we're trying to solve the reason that we're here will allow people to make more educated decisions when faced with ambiguity. It can also inspire people knowing why you're here knowing what all of your efforts all of your time tapping away the keyboard creating the reports going to meet whatever it is that you're doing knowing what that is for increases your sense of purpose increases your sense of inspiration and increases the chances of being more productive because you want to achieve that goal rather than just do the task. Tip three is to help people slow down and focus generally speaking we get more stuff done when we're doing less stuff. Pick the most important thing get it done and then move on to the next thing. The more items we have that we're multitasking at the less productive we are the slower we are at getting things done so it might sound counterintuitive but if you're 18 to speed up then help them to slow down. Tip four is to help them to understand what success means and this is tricky in a complex environment because quite often we can't predict what success will be but we can have a good idea as to the problem we're trying to solve even if we don't know how we're going to solve the problem or what the solution will look like. So helping people understand the problem that needs solving and an idea is to when to stop they'll reduce the chances of over engineering and gold plating and over delivery and this helping people understand success might not be a one-off thing it's not necessarily something you can do in advance and it's not something you can necessarily wait until the end of the delivery to do it might be something you need to check in on a regular basis say yeah that's kind of right a little bit of a tweak there yet you got it that kind of helping teams understand what success is. Tip five is to make the work smaller the smaller the work packages the easier it is to get them done the easier it is to plan them the easier it is to estimate them the greater sense of completion a greater sense of closure the more of a rhythm your team get into therefore the more motivation they get and the more momentum they get so make the work smaller you'll see it done quicker and you'll see more of it. Tip six is not to leave them alone now that's tying into my fourth tip there in terms of understanding success the more you can help them when they need help the quicker they will be just because somebody needs help doesn't necessarily mean that they will ask for it they won't even realize they might not feel comfortable asking for help but if you're there then they don't necessarily need to ask for help we can just discover together so don't leave teams on their own collaborate give feedback help. Tip seven is leave them alone yet i know i just said don't leave them alone obviously it's a balance if you're there all the time then that's can be quite overpowering it can stifle a team it can easily lead to micromanagement fear lack of innovation so give the team some space let them focus let them innovate let them try things let them get creative yes leave them alone as well as not leaving them alone find that balance. Tip eight is give them what they need now we might not know what they need yet so keep asking keep looking and whenever they need something see if it's feasible to give them what they need if they have what they need then more likely to be able to deliver. Tip nine we're getting a little abstract now but role model behaviors if there are some behaviors that you think would help the team deliver more whether it's around being organized whether it's around prioritization whether it's around asking for help whether it's around collaboration whether it's around simplification whatever it is that you think would help the team to deliver more try role modeling those behaviors if they see you doing those things and it works for you or other teams then maybe there's a chance they'll take those behaviors on themselves. Tip ten is understand their drivers and help them match them to the work this is a little bit about tapping into that team's intrinsic motivation and it sort of builds a little bit on that second tip of helping them understand the context all right so if this is a team that enjoys seeing people happy then see how the work maps into customer satisfaction find out what their drivers are find out what their motivators are and you'll see a team much more productive because the more word they do the more their drivers are being realized and the more of a kick they get out of the work so those are ten tips that you can put in place to help your team be more productive obviously this isn't about manipulating your team to get more for less but it is about giving the team the opportunity to realize their potential and that is going back to our first tip that is something that team want every team that I've come across given the choice would rather be more productive than less productive what about those of us who are actually working in teams rather than leading teams well I think you can take these ten tips and apply them yourself whether that be for a team or for you as an individual so assume positive intent in your colleagues ask about the bigger picture behind the work be curious be inspired notice when you and your team are possibly working too fast and ask for or create smaller work items invite your stakeholders in and collaborate but also create and protect some quiet time ask for or take what you need and role model your own behaviors within the team and then finally reflect on your individual and your team drivers and try and build them into what you're doing and how you're doing it and before you know it you'll have organically increased your pace of delivery without compromising your quality