* How to reclaim a day per week and boost job satisfaction
Attending meetings and coping with overloaded e-mail inboxes are tasks that aren’t necessarily helping your company, according to research from Global Integration.
Managers and their staff can reclaim a day per week and boost their job satisfaction by scrapping teamwork, cutting communication and releasing central control, according to the company. Global Integration is a consulting firm specializing in speeding the way people work together in complex organizations.
“As successful companies grow, they become more complex and it takes more time and effort to get things done,” says CEO Kevan Hall, author of the book “Speed Lead.” “Eventually complexity undermines what made the company successful in the first place; the old, entrepreneurial spirit breaks down, bureaucracy increases and progress slows.”
Hall maintains that old management myths and outdated skills exacerbate the problem. These include the following practices:
* Teamwork: Research shows managers spend 20% of their time in meetings and that people are part of an average 5 teams with 13 members each. Teams often don’t work and are expensive to run. Dismantle your teams and rely on looser groups of individuals.
* Constant communication. In this technical age, lack of communication is no longer the problem. The challenge is how to disconnect from the mass of trivia and recognize the really important messages. Global Integration research shows the average company pays its staff to write, send, read and delete over 120 million pointless e-mails per year.
* Centralized control. This causes a damaging cycle of micromanagement and low expectations of employees.
