Hitting Refresh on the Way Your Team Makes Decisions

Hitting Refresh on the Way Your Team Makes Decisions

Do you feel like your office gets stuck in a ball of red tape whenever a decision needs to be made? If so, you are probably using an outdated decision making process that’s slowing your productivity rather than keeping you on track. It might be time for a shake up.

Here are a few of the departments you should consider carefully when hitting refresh on the way your team makes decisions.

Customer Service

One of the most talked about stories in the customer service world is Zappos’ business model. This shoe company has invested heavily in creating a stellar customer experience on their website, and even more heavily in creating a high-touch human experience. The core difference is how they’ve empowered their team members to do whatever it takes to keep the buyer happy.

Empowerment in customer service doesn’t look like sticky red tape. It looks like giving power to the people buyers have direct contact with to make decisions about a customer’s experience and well-being. The fewer hoops a customer agent has to jump through to make a situation right, the faster your team can resolve problems before they escalate. This gives the buyer a better experience, which can transform the way people engage with your brand.

Scheduling

One of the most time draining tasks for management is scheduling. Making the schedule isn’t the hard part. It’s juggling time off requests, sick days, and switched shifts. There’s so much constant movement in the scheduling department that managers can spend hours each week fine tuning it all.

Consider giving ownership back to the employees to make their own scheduling changes. By using an online scheduling app, your employees can make requests with the push of a button. This makes it faster and easier to honor those requests and get back to being more productive.

Daily Responsibilities

Your team is comprised of a variety of talents. Each person brings something unique to your company. Without capitalizing on those talents, you’re not taking full advantage of the skillset you have working in your company.

When it comes time to assign the daily tasks, let your team decide who will take on which jobs. The jobs that each team member is naturally good at will be given to the person who is the most qualified to do them. If there are daily jobs left over, leave it up to your team member to figure out who will take it on. This gives your team ownership over getting everything done, increasing the chances that it’ll get done well the first time. You’ll notice better outcomes and your team will appreciate working with the tasks that best suit their talents.

Ready, Set, Go!

As you start the discussion about where you can make improvements to your decision making process, think of these three departments first. Then, as you dig in deeper, you might find other areas of your business where you can revitalize the way your team makes decisions.

Author Profile Jon Forknell is the Vice President and General Manager of Atlas Business Solutions, Inc., a software marketing company specializing in employee scheduling software, including ScheduleBase employee scheduling software, and other business software solutions. In the past, Jon has been recognized by the U.S. Small Business Administration as a SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Atlas Business Solutions was named as one of Software Magazine’s Top 500 Software Companies in 2004 through 2007 and again in 2010, 2013 and 2014.