Our services have two sides:
Topic · Self-organisation and collaboration
Most teams know their subject well. What gets in their way is how they work: promises don’t hold, someone is always interrupting, the calendar is full of meetings. The chaos is then ironed out in yet more meetings – and that doesn’t work.
We start from your symptoms and bring simple techniques that work. On your own and as a team.
Symptoms
Each note is a symptom we see in teams again and again. Click on the ones pinned up at your place – and see what lies behind them and what helps.
Which note is pinned up at your place?
Click on it.
‘By tomorrow? Sure!’
A deadline is quickly promised – even when nobody knows how long the work will take. Or nothing was promised at all, but the other person still expects something: by when, and to what standard? It ends with an apology and dissatisfaction.
‘My day’s full again.’
The day gets packed as if it had more than eight hours. If you don’t know when you will do what, you drift through the day – and can’t make reliable commitments.
‘Got a minute?’
You want to concentrate on a task and get pulled out of it. When you are missing something yourself, you interrupt a colleague next. So both of you are interrupted.
‘Just one more question …’
Not everything was passed on at the handover or in the meeting. So people keep asking – again and again.
‘When am I supposed to do this?’
The calendar holds nothing but meetings, often back to back. When the actual work happens is left to chance. Meetings talk about results – they don’t produce them.
‘Shattered by evening. But why?’
Lots of meetings, lots of phone calls. But what you had planned to do – if anything – hasn’t been worked through systematically.
‘I’ll get right on it!’
Whoever stands in the doorway and says ‘urgent’ gets an immediate yes. Shortly afterwards the next person turns up. The previous task is left lying – and so is whatever was on the list anyway.
‘What’s on your plate right now?’
The answer is a blank look. The tasks are on scattered scraps of paper – but mostly in people’s heads. And that is where the juggling happens.
‘Whoever shouts loudest …’
What gets done is whatever is shouted for loudest – not what matters most. That is how the wrong things quickly get done.
‘Off sick. Now what?’
Two days off sick, someone handing in their notice, a new colleague: suddenly it shows how much was only in one person’s head. Covering and onboarding become hard work.
‘It’s in an email somewhere.’
Things are agreed in the corridor, in meetings or by email. Even large projects run on email distribution lists without anyone having the overview. No wonder it causes stress.
The goal
Good office work can be described quite precisely. It is the opposite of the symptoms.
And without constant stress.
Toolbox
Behind it all are just a few kinds of tools – on paper and digital – each with its own techniques and principles. The techniques are simple. The hard part is actually applying them.
To-do list · Kanban board · Calendar
Know your capacity, leave a buffer, finish before starting.
Promise like a Pro
Handling promises professionally – for greater reliability.
Focus time and office hours · Pomodoro
Work with concentration and still be reachable.
Eisenhower matrix
Know which goal a task serves – and decide accordingly.
Minutes · Log
Record what was discussed and what was done.
Pitch & Pick
Work out as a team what to focus on.
The techniques are grounded in ideas from lean production and the theory of constraints. And because the office is digital today, we map them onto digital tools: More on digital tools
Formats
Every topic can be approached in different formats. These work particularly well for self-organisation and collaboration.
Which note is pinned up at your place?
In a free introductory call we will look at
where things are getting stuck and what helps fastest.
No obligation. You don’t need a finished plan yet.