Efficiency is among the most important success factor of any commercial organization. Managers read books and articles, attend seminars to find new ideas how to add some more per cent points to the efficiency level. So I’ll try to present one of these new ideas.
As a company top or senior level manager you don’t just need to manage several people or even several teams. You are responsible for the general results generated by different departments. If this statement is about you than I’m sure that you face the situation when some organizational issues can take much more time than expected. People from one department waste their time waiting for the information or documents from the other departments. And they have no right to push the other department and even to set higher priorities. This decreases efficiency, doesn’t it?
The situation may be even worse. People from the first department may have no information about what the other department people are working over. Two departments may be doing similar things not knowing about it. This decreases efficiency as well.
I think that you’ve got what I want to say. To increase the efficiency you need to think about the decreasing of information gaps between departments. I suggest to create a collaborative environment to keep the information up-to date for every person involved in a process or a project regardless of department or position.
This information might be accessible from everywhere using any technical device including mobile devices. But a company need to think about security and mobile file management as well. There should be a corporate policy for BYOD and mobile device management.
Also I believe that it’s very important to create a set of workflows for all the procedures that involve the people from more than one department. If you have such workflows you will decrease the information voids between departments. People will understand who will use their results. This creates additional incentive to do everything better and meet deadlines. Also this creates a sense of accomplishment. And additional motivation will be helpful on your way of improved efficiency. Do you agree?
Here are some of my recommendations. Will you add yours?