Brian Arbuckle
Whole Stack Solution's Vice President of Business Development & Marketing
Partner Advisory Council
Today's CIO is taxed with a work environment where there is too much to do, not enough time to do it and not enough talent onboard to get everything done.
You risk falling behind if your organization is not able to keep up with the pace of change. Let us share five signs your IT team is struggling. If these sound like symptoms of your team, it's time to perform an IT intervention to turn things around.
1. The number of meeting participants is growing
When more and more people sit in on department meetings, it usually isn't a sign of progress. A well-functioning team should be able to assign, delegate and execute deliverables without calling for backup. Only those directly affected by the topics at hand should be present in a meeting.
2. The team needs time to tell you where they are
Something is wrong if team members are not readily reporting on progress. A healthy team should be updating you in a systematic way and be able to prep you for any upcoming obstacles. If your team cannot report progress in this way, are they really hitting their deliverables?
3. Meeting times have grown from 30 minutes to an hour
When meetings suddenly start running twice as long as usual, it indicates team members were either unprepared or there are issues to address. To help everyone get the most out of meetings, send an email beforehand noting the agenda outline, the amount of time to be spent on each topic, the team member in charge of updating the group on each topic and how agenda items will support outcomes.
4. They haven't developed the format of their output
One of the biggest areas of inefficiency is in output formatting. Creating new formats for reporting is a time suck, and it’s also an inefficiency when group members are trying to comprehend a new format. Team members reading the report now have to spend time understanding the new format before they can begin digesting the data. Defining formats up front for output saves time on multiple fronts.
5. They are scheduling ad-hoc meetings with less than 24 hours’ notice
Sure, there are times when an emergency meeting needs to happen to address changes. However, when these meetings become a regular occurrence, it’s a sign something is wrong. Much like a fever is often an indication of an infection, ad-hoc meetings are often signs of a deeper problem that needs to be resolved quickly.
Is your team suffering from any of these symptoms? You can start by creating an environment that allows your team to get the right things done consistently.
