What Makes Effective IT Departments So Productive?

In the modern business world, IT departments are often the heartbeat of thriving companies. Understanding how to maximize productivity in the midst of distractions is paramount to overall success.

Productivity: Why So Elusive?

Productivity, as a word, rolls off the tongue without very much friction. It’s easy to say, sounds nice, and using it makes you seem like you’re a well-educated person with a plan. But if someone were to ask you to explain the definition of productivity and the secrets behind how you maximize it, you’d probably be at a loss for words.

See, our culture doesn’t have a very good understanding of what productivity is. We confuse it with other concepts and principles. As a result, aren’t always able to accomplish certain tasks or reach lofty goals.

Career consultant Leila Hock has an interesting theory that our culture’s obsession with working hard is actually the fundamental reason for the deterioration of our nation’s productivity.

As Hock explains, this country’s productivity rate is increasing at its slowest rate in history – despite the fact that the average person is putting in more hours than ever before. In other words, we’re working more and getting less done. So when people say they’re “working hard,” they really mean they’re putting in a lot of time. But they don’t know if what they’re doing is actually producing any meaningful level of output.

“Much of this stems from the fact that our economy used to hinge on time,” Hock says. “Workers ran machines or performed rote tasks, and those machines and tasks would give a pretty static output per hour. Every now and then some philosopher or thinker would come along and propose a way to increase output per time unit, but, by and large, more time equaled more productivity.”

In today’s world, we’re seeing that more time doesn’t always equal productivity. And in many cases it actually creates diminishing results. It’s much easier to “work hard” than it is to actually produce a positive return on your time.

4 Habits of Productive IT Departments

Your IT department isn’t immune from the elusiveness of productivity. Whether they realize it or not – individually or as a collective unit – your team is struggling with this issue on an hourly, daily, and weekly basis.

Distractions are everywhere and your people have grown accustomed to focusing on the wrong measures of productivity. As a result, your department isn’t even close to reaching its potential. But there is good news. With awareness of where you’re lacking, you can begin to shift some things around and change the way you attack productivity and output.

If you were to study highly productive IT departments, you would notice that they get the small things right. In particular, they pay attention to:

1. Solid Morning Routines

It doesn’t matter if you’re a self-professed early bird or night owl – a solid morning routine is paramount to starting the day off right and enhancing productivity and output. An improper morning routine, on the other hand, can promote stress and inhibit your ability to think freely over the course of the day.

One of the keys to a good morning routine is to avoid putting the pedal to the metal and going zero to sixty in five seconds flat. It’s far better for your mind and body to ease into the day. Take at least 10 minutes (preferably more) before diving into texts, emails, and work notifications.

“You might feel like you need that head start, but jumping into work that early might actually delay you from getting into the office, increasing your stress levels,” says Dr. Maria C. Reyes, an internist at Rush University Medical Center.

Encourage employees to take their mornings slow – and reward them for doing so. Make sure they know there are no brownie points for showing up to work early or responding to emails first thing in the morning.

2. Proper Work Scheduling and Breaks

Work scheduling is key to getting the most out of individual productivity. The old model of working from 9-to-5 with a couple of 15-minute breaks and an hour at lunch is so archaic that it hurts. You’ll find it much more natural and productive to shift to some sort of flex scheduling where employees are able to choose when they work (within reason).

From an individual perspective, flex scheduling is nice because it allows employees to work when they’re most focused or motivated. From an organizational perspective, it actually extends your availability. Instead of only having employees work from 9-to-5, you always have someone in the office from 7-to-7 (for example).

3. Task Management Over Time Management

“Keeping track of time is easy. Keeping track of tasks is hard. We got so caught up in time management that we forget about task management, and that’s going to impact your productivity in a negative manner,” productivity consultant Mike Vardy writes. “Focus on task first and time second. It will make a world of difference.”

This isn’t going to happen overnight. Your team has been conditioned by a world that says time management is the most important thing around. But by patiently bringing the focus back to task management, you can help people shift the way they think about these ideas.

4. Promote Autonomy (News - Alert)

There needs to be structure in the IT department, but too much of it can hold your team back from maximizing productivity. According to a Harvard Business Review article by Rebecca Knight, one of the keys to improving individual productivity (and thus collective productivity) is to give team members more autonomy.

To a certain degree, your team members should be able to eliminate and/or delegate tasks that consume much of their time without having an impact on their productivity and output. From meetings to email threads, being able to optimize energy and distractions should lead to greater results. (You’ll obviously have to determine whether this can work in your situation based on the type of people you have working in your IT department.)

Putting it All Together

In order to increase the productivity of your IT department, you have to focus on the individual. And when focusing on the individual, you have to help each team member overcome the improper notion that productivity is determined by time input.

By adjusting this outdated thinking, you can mimic what other highly productive IT departments do and fully maximize your potential.