It may be Friday, but it’s never too early to start mentally preparing for the next week. The lack of motivation and sluggish start to the week that typically characterize Mondays for many business firms can be downright poisonous to the productivity levels of workers throughout the rest of the week.
Here are six simple ways to pull your company’s Mondays out of the rut of the mundane:
1.) Have a plan: Companies that prepare for lulls in activity and times prone to a lack of productivity are far better off than those that stick their head in the stand and pretend a Monday is the same as a Tuesday or Thursday in terms of personal motivation. Cloud-based project management software software and other scheduling tools can assist you as you develop processes and schedules to help guide your people during slow days at the office.
2.) Get the right people: The very best people don’t need to be micromanaged. If you find yourself having to micromanage, you probably have the wrong person in that seat. Whether this means reorganization, further training, or moving onto someone else is for your company’s leadership to determine, but it’s much better to have someone you can trust in key seats than to have to work with a less-than-ideal pick day in and day out.
3.) Lead, don’t manage: In conjunction with the second principle above, make sure you’re leading people rather than managing them. While the difference may seem subtle, leaders are able to inspire and instill solid work values without getting their hands involved in every facet of an employee’s work. Project management solutions like Microsoft Project or Basecamp alternatives can help here as well, allowing you to have the confidence to be more hands-off.
4.) Keep your people plugged in: Before the dawn of the internet age, many companies with isolated workers were truly divided from one another. Now, with the advent of collaboration software and online document management features in cloud-based programs, you can keep people in the loop and up to date regarding weekly, monthly, and annual sales goals. Mondays are much easier to manage when people have their eye on the prize.
5.) Evaluate your technology: Whether you need to look at aging products like MS Project or to analyze the effectiveness of your cloud-based implementations, it’s important to constantly refine and upgrade the tools your people use on a day-to-day basis. Listen to the complaints both spoken and unspoken of your people to see whether the Monday morning and Friday afternoon lazy periods are in part a product of ineffective utilities.
6.) Listen and communicate: Making sure everyone is on board with your vision isn’t a one-time deal. Constant communication, encouragement, and seeking of input is hugely important to ensuring everyone perseveres through slow Mondays, busy Wednesdays, and Fridays full of daydreams about the weekend.
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