Six Barriers to Productivity, Cohesion and Resilience in Your Organization

If you have been following my work on organizational team effectiveness and efficiency, you may also have heard about the seven critical team attributes of productive, cohesive and resilient teams. The seven attributes are trust, communication, appreciation, behavior management, meeting management, creativity & ideation and problem solving & decision making. These aspects of team interaction have made such an impact, that the seven attributes have since been converted to a hands-on, team building facility called the “aMAZEing Team Building Experience” and a book called “aMAZEing Organizational Teams: Navigating 7 Critical Attributes for Cohesion, Productivity and Resilience.

These topics are vital for training on qualities that make teams successful. However, in order to be well-rounded, other critical areas that become barriers to organizational success must also be navigated. Here are the most pressing factors I have seen in my work with teams that continue to get in the way of productivity, cohesion and resilience: alignment, focus/prioritization, attunement, accountability, cross-functional engagement and planning. Explore each in more detail:

Alignment – Being on the same page with your coworkers even if you do not agree with their approach. Here, you must ask yourself if possible alignment can be achieved for the greater good.

Focus/Prioritization – Narrowing down your list of tasks, projects, actions and initiatives. The amount of work must be manageable in order to really do your best. The likelihood of errors and sub-optimal work will be eliminated if excessive multi-tasking is streamlined.

Attunement – Checking-in with the people around you. Let them know you are truly listening and engaged in the conversation, meeting, presentation, etc. Business etiquette plays a role, as you must not divide your time between a person and technology. Doing so sends a message the individual is not as important as a mobile device or computer.

Accountability – Holding yourself and others accountable for tasks, assignments and promises. Here, it is important for each person to pull their weight making the team work more effectively.

Cross-functional Engagement – Engaging people or resources beyond your department, functional area or division. If the impact of your work reaches beyond your own area, then regular communication and touch-points are critical. We must make intentional efforts to reach out beyond our immediate scope of work. In doing so, more opportunities are afforded to make a greater impact on your organization and for its clients (clients see a company as a whole).

Planning – Being intentional and consistent. Without planning, you are running from meeting to meeting, task to task and project to project without really stopping to think if these actions are adding value. Individuals and organizations must constantly look to the future and establish strategies for organized success.

In my years of working with teams across the U.S., the knowledge, effective management and application of these barriers and attributes continues to make monumental improvements in the day to day engagement of individuals within organizations. The end result – long-term success.