How to know what your team is doing...

Let’s be honest, we are not getting less busy, because as an entrepreneur or a solo business owner there is always something you want to do, let alone all these ideas you come up with every day. As a busy and often overwhelmed web entrepreneur you must be looking for ways to simplify the management of all the tasks and responsibilities inherent to your business.

Whether you work alone, are outsourcing or delegating some jobs to contractors, systematizing your knowledge will help you manage your tasks and your team more efficiently.

Simply put, systems are experience-based guidelines or bullet-point checklists outlining steps that need to be taken to accomplish a task or a goal.

Think about all the ways systems can make your life easier. There is probably no one area of your business that couldn’t benefit from this systematic approach; it can be applied to virtually every task to make sure things get done correctly and on time.

We’ll be talking about guidelines again and again but today I’d like to focus on how to best monitor the work and progress of your team.

HOW 2 CORNER

Establish guidelines on keeping track of various projects you delegated to contractors.

Ok, so think about the following things:

• How often do you check in with them? Once or twice a week?
• Do you expect team members to have their own ways to communicate with you?
• Do you need to see some results earlier than your deadline so you can review them and make necessary changes?
• Are you waiting for contractors to get back to you with some info so you can continue the work?

Explain to your team the importance of systematizing their own operations so your work timelines are synchronized. Tell them how important it is to work on schedule and inform other team members if someone can’t finish a task on time and what they should do in a case like that.

Write down YOUR guidelines, how you want things done, when you want everyone to check in with you, and in what way.

Think about ways to “connect” with your team – maybe chatting in the morning over a cup of coffee with those who are in your geographical vicinity. For virtual team members, you may want to set aside contact time via phone or email.