Productive Teams: 7 Effective Strategies
to Get More Done Together

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #512: "Productive Teams: 7 Effective Strategies to Get More Done Together"

Two weeks ago, I gave a keynote presentation to a company that wanted to improve productivity, but with a specific focus on juggling many tasks and projects at once.

When you find that you are personally struggling with your work, because your team is struggling with work, oftentimes the best solution is to address the systemic issues that affect everyone, which also provides the biggest opportunities for growth for everyone.

This is the 5am Miracle, Episode #512.

Productive Teams - 7 Effective Strategies to Get More Done Together Good morning and welcome to the 5am Miracle.

I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful, lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

In the episode this week, I'll break down the biggest issues I see with productivity every single day in my own work, why bottlenecks are so destructive to the productivity of a team, and how to bolster your team's productivity today.

Let's get to it.

Now as I mentioned at the top of the show, I spoke to a company recently that was in search of solutions to common problems that we all face.

Juggling many projects at once, getting cc'd on way too many emails, waiting for other people so that you can finally get your part of the project done, and on and on.

These very common problems that most companies experience, most teams experience.

And the great news about problems like these is that they have solutions.

The bad news is that you may not have as much control over whether or not these solutions are actually implemented, which could be a personal struggle.

I've been there myself, I'm there all the time.

So today we're going to talk about how to fix many problems with teams, and how you as an individual can guarantee that you always do your part within your own locus of control.

So let's start the conversation off with the biggest issues that I see with productivity among teams every single day in my own work.

And these are issues, probably the very first one, is one that I could write 10 books about, because it matters that much.

It's that important.

Not just to teams and businesses and companies, but to everyday activities, to just us trying to get anything to move forward ever.

And so let's start with that big, obvious number one, communication, or the total lack thereof.

When I experience issues, I'll use today as an example because this issue happens for me and my business literally every single day, which is that I'll be working on something important, something I care about, something that matters to me, my projects, the next thing I'm trying to move forward, and I can't do it because the people that I'm working with don't talk to me.

They don't respond to emails.

They don't respond to phone calls.

They ignore me.

And this is such a common issue.

And what ends up happening is that we tend to, I don't know, we prioritize certain things.

We want the world to know, like, "I care about this, and let me tell you how much I care about it, so I'll email you, and I'll call you, and I'll text you, and I'll put it out there."

But other people don't prioritize those same things.

It's not as important to them as it is to you.

And this is such a baseline foundation place to begin because we're talking about the productivity of teams.

We're always talking about the productivity of a group of individuals, right?

It's a group of people that were made up of singular people who have their own independent missions and job responsibilities and obligations, and then the team has theirs as well built usually into a much larger organization.

So there's groups within groups within groups.

And communication is the only thing that keeps this train moving forward.

Communication is the thing.

It is always the thing.

I could stop right here and let the episode just play out with blank space.

Communication is the thing.

I could scream this if I wanted to.

It's not going to do any good, I know.

But everything rises and falls with communication, especially when it comes to trying to get the next thing accomplished.

The next action to be done, the next piece of information to be relayed so that somebody else can do their job.

That's the thing.

So number one is just this complete lack of communication when it's desperately needed so that everybody can go do their next thing.

And number two is related directly to communication issues, which is not a lack of communication, but it's a slow response time based upon this lack of prioritization about the value of communication.

So phrase another way, in my company, emails are responded to within 24 hours or less, no questions asked.

This is the rule.

This is adhered to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, year round, year after year.

I do not have an exception to not responding to an email unless I'm literally unable to reach a physical device to do so, like I'm desperately sick or potentially like I was a few years ago in the mountains without wifi access.

Unless either of those things are true, you can guarantee that I'm going to respond within 24 hours or less every single time.

Why?

Response times are respect.

That's all it is.

When you respond back to someone quickly with a good answer, hopefully, you are respecting the other person and you're also respecting yourself and your own autonomy to make your own decisions about how your day functions.

As an example there, you're going to have certain goals throughout the day to get done.

One of those goals is to respond to other people or it should be, right?

And when we don't prioritize that, when slow response times become the norm and communication is no longer the grease that turns the wheels, it then becomes this massive obstacle.

It becomes a rock that we can't get around.

You can though.

This is the thing about it.

You can.

These are easily solvable problems.

A lack of communication is a big issue and people need to talk to each other, but a slow response time.

That's so easy to fix.

Oh my goodness, it's so easy to implement a 24 hour reply rule.

That's it. 24 hours respond back in less than that amount of time.

Every single time without fail.

When that happens, ta-da, things get done.

Things move forward.

People can talk.

Actual work is accomplished.

It's just this amazing thing.

And yes, response times being slow, it might be the biggest bottleneck in all teams across the globe every single day.

Yeah, there's a lot of problems in the world.

Lack of funding and issues with personnel and talent, blah, blah, blah.

It doesn't matter.

If you don't communicate, none of those things matter.

So this is the thing.

Communication and slow response times.

Oof, it's the bane of my existence.

Okay, I'm going to try to get off my soapbox for a second.

Now, number three of the issues that I see, and this is one that's gone on for me personally and one that I've seen a decent amount in the last few years, is just simply overwhelm.

Individuals who have more work than they can possibly handle and in many cases, others on the team are in the exact same boat.

Everyone is overworked.

Everyone is putting in more hours than they have time for.

And at the end of the week, there's work that just didn't get done.

And the next week, it just gets worse and worse and worse.

Overwhelm is nothing more than the inability to do the things you set out to do in the time you allocated for those things.

It's quantity.

That's the issue.

If the quantity is reduced, the overwhelm and the stress is also reduced.

But if the quantity is too high, overwhelm is guaranteed.

Unless you're a very chill person that can handle a lot of stress, which I'm not.

So if you're like me, you know the math adds up here.

That when the amount of work is manageable, well then your stress levels go down and things feel cool and good and you can move the ball forward.

But when the quantity is too high, you're stuck.

Because the only real solution in most cases, besides panicking, is just work a lot harder, a lot faster for a lot longer.

And it's tough.

It's a tough place to be and a lot of teams find themselves there.

Issue number four that I see quite a bit, and this is going to sound kind of weird because it's the opposite of what I just ranted about earlier with communication, which is an over-emphasis on collaboration.

Which sounds like talking too much, but that's not exactly what this is.

Overly collaborating is, well imagine this.

Imagine an open office layout where everyone is able to talk to everyone all the time and therefore no one can really focus on anything.

So there's a lot of chatter, but not a lot of work.

That's an over-emphasis on collaboration, an over-emphasis on communication, but that's not effective communication.

It's not the kind that leads to forward progress.

It's just the kind that leads to noise.

It's the kind that leads to people feeling like they can't ever get their work done because someone's always talking to them.

As a guy who basically is an introvert, I prefer to work alone and I prefer focus at every turn.

And so if I find myself in a place where there's just a lot of noise, a lot of distraction from other people, from the environment around me, the place I happen to be, well then I change my environment.

I change my physical location and I do whatever I can to block those distractions.

Environments that focus on collaboration can get a lot of work done in very specific use cases, but then they suffer in other areas.

I'll break this down later in the episode, but there's a big difference between focus and collaboration and the way those two play together.

Number five, the fifth and final thing I'll discuss this week about issues I see with teams.

This one is very disappointing to me, but I know it's a part of life, which is apathy.

It's individuals who just don't care about their work, which then ultimately significantly hinders everyone else who actually does.

I'll use myself again as a good example here.

I launched my own business about a decade ago, 15 years ago or so.

And when I did, it was based on something that I care about.

It's a passion of mine.

As you can tell, I'm pretty fired up about these topics.

This is deeply personal.

My business, my work, the things I do, they are a direct representation of me as an individual.

My work is very personal.

Apathy doesn't exist for me.

I rarely find myself not caring.

The opposite is true.

I probably care too much and it makes me kind of crazy.

That if you imagine an individual who has a 9-5 job, they're getting their paycheck, and then they go home, and that's it.

They forget about work, they move on.

The question is not whether or not you're able to detach from work when you go home.

That part's fine.

The issue is when you're on the clock.

Do you care?

Does it matter to you?

Are you putting forth your best effort?

Are you invested?

Do you have any kind of drive, desire, any kind of investment into your work?

The problem is when that doesn't exist and apathy shows up, everyone else suffers.

This is most common at large companies.

It's less common at smaller ones, but it still happens far too often, which then, of course, demeans the productivity of everybody when there's just a few people who clearly don't care.

Honestly, you can't make someone care.

It's not really a thing, and replacing them on the team is almost always the best option.

But until that day happens, we have to work with what we have.

If apathy is there, it's an issue and one that has to be addressed.

All right.

Those are some issues that I've seen over the years with teams, some of the biggest issues that have shown up.

Clearly, communication or the lack thereof or the very poor use of takes the cake for me.

It's the most important thing to focus on.

Keep that in mind as we move forward because that's going to be a very important foundation point for the rest of this conversation.

All right.

Now let's get to bottlenecks and exactly why bottlenecks are so destructive to the productivity of a team in general.

Bottlenecks are choke points.

They're the slowest parts of your system.

They could be people.

It could be tech.

It's probably both.

But imagine trying to get an important thing done, but you are hamstrung by this choke point, this bottleneck, this whether it's minutia, a broken system, an ineffective or apathetic employee.

There's something that is slowing everything down.

And until that thing is addressed, well, the team is stuck.

There's a lot of problems that come from bottlenecks.

The very first and obvious one is they prevent progress.

They stop everything.

Everything slows to a halt and progress becomes almost impossible to come by.

Another key thing here is that no one can move forward when they're waiting on the bottleneck.

And so then you end up with a workload you can't control because half of your workload is stuck in this pending status, which for me personally, I have a color coded system for my projects and I use the color purple for things that are pending.

And whenever I color code something that's purple, I know this is something that I don't control that somebody else is going to have to do for me to move forward.

Well, when I see a project that's got a lot of purple on it, it freaks me out, makes me very uncomfortable because I don't like waiting on other people.

I don't like waiting for choke points and bottlenecks to move and to go somewhere, right?

I'm an action oriented high achiever.

I want things to happen now and faster and faster and faster.

And when they don't, my frustration level peaks.

So for me, when I see this, I want to label things as purple as pending so I can be aware of reminder systems I may put into place and to make sure that things can go forward later.

But my goal really is to minimize the number of those purple pending bottleneck issues.

Another issue you're going to see with bottlenecks is that pretty soon after, if this thing stays slow for too long, is that deadlines get missed, projects get delayed, opportunities are squandered, and in a company, money disappears.

Revenue is no longer on the table.

And so when these kinds of issues show up, clearly we want to address them.

Let's go back to that example from before, being CC'd on too many emails.

Being CC'd on emails is awful.

Awful.

I hate that more than I hate most things because it is usually the worst possible way to communicate what's going on with a group.

It's just noise.

It's a distraction.

And it creates a bottleneck because now all these employees who are CC'd on this email have to read it, have to process it, have to work through it.

And then the amount of time they spend on email in their workday is extraordinary when it should be very small.

And then the actual work would then have more time to get done.

And the bottlenecks then clear up.

So being CC'd on emails is a simple example of this, but it's a very obvious one if you're paying attention.

So that's where bottlenecks play in.

Now that we've kind of addressed issues with teams, whether it's choke points, whether it's communication, whether it's apathetic employees, teams struggle.

We want to move things forward.

We want to get things done.

At least I do.

I know that I do.

Okay, now let's shift gears into those seven effective strategies to get more done together.

Of course, there are more than seven things to improve on teams, but these are seven really good and helpful ideas that you could implement, hopefully fairly quickly, and begin to improve the efficiency, the overall output, the productivity of the team that you're in or any teams you may work with in the future.

Number one, and this will not surprise you if you know this podcast well, is my health-first approach to productivity.

I value the health of individuals, specifically because individuals are what create groups, what create teams.

When individuals are healthy, the team is healthy.

When individuals are healthy, they are also more productive.

There's been a movement going on for quite a while for companies to provide services for their employees to improve their mental health, their physical well-being.

I feel like some of it has an ulterior motive that companies understand that if their employees are healthier, they get more done.

The actual goal is productivity.

It is output.

I don't share that same opinion.

From my perspective, if people are healthy, they're better, and that's it.

End of story.

Yes, healthier people get more done.

That's fine.

That's good output.

But my actual perspective on this, as nuanced as this may sound, improving the health of your employees is not a strategy for revenue generation.

That's the wrong motive.

It's the wrong motive.

The motive should be, "I care about these people, therefore I want the best for them."

Full stop.

Now, you can take it one step further.

Now that our employees are very healthy and happy individuals, when they show up to the office at 9 a.m. on a Monday morning, they're going to have more energy, more enthusiasm, more preparation, mentally, physically, emotionally, to give their full self to the job at hand.

From that perspective, absolutely effective employees, productive people, productive teams are healthy people.

Then, of course, when you're healthy, it fights against things like stress and overwhelm, and you have healthier boundaries around your work hours.

Ultimately, the company, if things go well, don't treat their people like machines.

They treat them like humans who actually need to have healthier boundaries and reduce stress and overwhelm so they can be happy and healthy, and yes, productive.

From that perspective, the health-first approach I have been focusing on on this podcast specifically for the last seven years.

The reason why seven years is the marker here is that around seven years ago is when I had a full breakdown, a burnout session, full-on panic attacks that lasted for months, and the ultimate culmination of all of those was a trip to the ER where I thought I was having a heart attack.

I know what it's like to burn yourself out.

I know what it's like to work too hard.

When you know what that feels like, when you've experienced burnout, when you've experienced stress and overwhelm at the highest levels, you understand the negative implications those have for your ultimate output and productivity and well-being.

Once again, for a team to function at its best, the individuals need to be happy and healthy and not burned out.

Seems really obvious, but the execution of that is a different story.

Strategy number two is to establish boundaries for focused blocks of time.

You know this podcast.

You know I'm obsessed with my focused blocks of time.

My F-bots, as I call them, are my favorite blocks of time.

I'm in one right now.

The recording for this podcast is a classic example of a focused block where I'm trying to achieve one specific objective.

In the case of this, it's recording this episode.

And then after this is over, I'll go into my next focused block of time, which is to edit the episode and do all the post-production work.

This is laid out on my calendar in advance so I know what I'm doing, when I'm doing it, where I'm going to be, and that I've blocked all possible distractions so I can just do the one thing I set out to do.

If you want your team to produce at a higher level, focus is required.

My example before of a collaborative environment where everyone can talk to everyone all the time.

On paper, it sounds great.

In practice, for certain groups, for certain projects, it is great and it is the right choice.

For most employees, most of the time, I think it's the wrong call.

For the average person who works on a computer, let's say, throughout your workday, and you have challenging tasks that require a lot of your brain cells to function at a high level to do the work that matters, you've got to be able to focus.

Without the ability to focus, you can never achieve the deep work that is necessary for the most creative and brilliant output you're going for.

If by chance your job is more monotonous, it's more repetitive, and I certainly have days like that, then the focus block of time is still important because oftentimes then the goal is quantity and speed, and that's never going to be achieved if you're distracted.

When you value time for focus and you value time for collaboration, the question then becomes how do you juxtapose those two very countering perspectives.

You have a few options here.

There are some companies who have chosen to have guaranteed focus hours on a certain part of the day.

As an example, you may say the morning hours are guaranteed focus time, and that means no emails, no phone calls, no meetings, no collaboration whatsoever, really hardcore.

And then after lunch and the afternoons, it's open for collaboration, lots of emails, lots of meetings, lots of talking, lots of back and forth.

You don't have to use that strategy, but it's an example of something that says we do value focus for those people who need it, and we value collaboration when it's required.

And so when you have that simple boundary that's put in place that says, yes, focus is important, and the overall productivity of the team will be increased and improved in dramatic ways because we have these boundaries in place, people feel better about their day because they have some guaranteed deadlines to work for.

Simple example there, if I know that I only have two hours to do a task, well, I'm going to focus and get that thing done in those two hours.

But if I know I have eight hours to do it, it might take the full eight or even longer.

We tend to work within the boundaries we have set, and so focus time is crucial, and collaborative time is crucial, but boundaries around them is incredibly motivational and provides the focus necessary to go do the thing at hand, whether that requires collaboration or not.

But strategy number three for the most productive teams is to delegate strengths to the right people.

Now, oftentimes this is up for a boss, typically.

A leader in the group is the one who typically will assign tasks and delegate things out.

But oftentimes I've seen the case, as I know from my previous work especially, where you can delegate within the team yourself without the need for approval.

The point here is not about the hierarchy.

The point here is about the intelligent, strategic decisions to delegate the right work to the right people for the right reasons.

Let me use a counter example of this.

Years ago, I had a day job here in Nashville where I had a certain task to do, a certain normal day-to-day flow, and my boss brought me a task that didn't fit the way that I worked.

It didn't fit at all what I wanted to do with my time, and it didn't make much sense to me because the co-worker literally in the desk next to me, it was his strength.

It was his job.

It really belonged to him.

And so instead of asking my boss about it, I just gave that task to my co-worker, and he happily accepted because he wanted to do it because it fit his strength and his interest.

Well, then my boss found out that I just passed this thing off to someone else, and she was mad at me.

I got in trouble for this decision.

It really bugged me back then.

It still bugs me today, which is why I'm sharing this story because from my perspective, it was such a terrible decision on the part of my boss to hold me back from making a choice that was actually better for not just me as an individual and not just better for my co-worker, but better for the team as a whole.

It was the right call.

I stand by that, that it was the right call to do what I did.

Now maybe I should have asked my boss about it beforehand, but the point being here that the delegation of tasks to the right person for the right reason, it just helps everyone.

When we're all in the place we should be, the team as a whole is in the place it should be.

So of course, give the work to those who want it and can do it at the highest level.

Strategy number four, let's go all the way back to the top of the episode where I was ranting about CCing people on emails.

I'm bringing it back.

Why?

Because I'm still mad about it.

This is just, it's a serious issue that happens across the board.

It's going to happen for a long time from now.

I know this is not the end of CCing people.

However, we have so many more options today in terms of ways to communicate that don't involve incorporating a lot of people on emails all the time.

And part of that comes down to understanding who needs to be involved in a conversation and who doesn't.

So right away, you can just simply remove people from the email chain if they're not involved.

Number two, you can use a software or some kind of a tool to manage how you communicate that doesn't involve email at all.

I don't like Slack, so I don't want to say that's the answer, but you can use Slack or something like it if that's better for your team to remove that need to have somebody pinged all the time with notifications for things that directly belong to someone else.

They just are a distraction to the majority of people who are on that email chain.

And don't kid yourself, nobody needs 100 emails a day or more that are sent to someone else.

And that's what happens in most companies.

Your average corporate employee gets about that many, 100 emails a day that don't pertain to them.

What a waste, right?

What an absolute waste of time.

And so if you're looking for an opportunity to move your team forward, be very strategic about who needs to know what and when.

And yes, when it's time to communicate, of course, do so very rapidly.

But then back off on those who are not involved, because then they can focus and get their most important work done.

Strategy number five.

Here is that new team rule I mentioned earlier, which is to reply to every message within 24 hours or less.

Communication greases the wheel, of course.

It keeps the conversation moving, yes.

It prevents bottlenecks, of course.

However, the point of the 24-hour rule is respect.

It's about respect for your coworkers, respect for those who you work with outside of your company.

It's respect for productivity itself.

There are a lot of companies who will put some kind of a general guideline around replying in a certain time frame, like 48 hours or 72 hours or one business week or whatever nonsense they want to throw out there that's way too long, way, way, way too long.

I tend to respond to most emails in about four to five hours at the latest.

Throughout the workday, I have intentional breaks outside of my focus blocks where email gets my priority.

And I guarantee response times quickly because I know that for my business to move forward, for my deals to happen, for a new contract to be signed, for a new component to actually happen, for the next step, next action to be completed, it requires communication.

And the more prompt that it is, the faster everything moves.

I made this point earlier.

I'm not going to belittle it to death right here.

But just know, this strategy alone will double your productivity.

Absolutely.

Because no one's going to be waiting on anyone else.

So communicate, tell people what's going on.

Tell them, yes, I got your message.

Yes, I'm working on it.

Here's when you'll hear back from me with the exact answer if I can't give it to you right now.

All right.

Number six is to get together in person on a regular basis.

If your company is virtual or you don't tend to see other people that often make it a priority to have face-to-face time.

The company I just spoke to two weeks ago is actually broken up across the country and different regions.

And so their annual meeting is a chance to get together face-to-face as a company as a whole, which is a great excuse to do so.

It's a great reason to be able to hash out problems together and solve issues and make things happen.

And the face-to-face time is so valuable for relationships, for building that kind of rapport and respect across teams.

It matters a lot to have in-person time if you don't already have it.

And so if you can prioritize that or do so on a regular basis, whether it's once a month, once a quarter, once a year, just do whatever it takes to make sure that people on your team know each other, which of course can actually lead to real friendships and relationships that mean something for the overall output of the team.

All right.

Finally, number seven is to talk together about how you want to improve your team.

It's one thing for you to listen to this podcast as an example.

I've given plenty of ideas here, but they're fairly generic to apply to a lot of different types of teams.

The best possible way for your team to improve is to identify your team's biggest challenges and opportunities and write them down and directly address them and directly implement real solutions.

It sounds so obvious, I know, but that's what this is all about.

The team I just spoke to two weeks ago, I also gave them a task when I was with them, which was for each individual to write down their own perspective on productivity in their team.

What challenges do they have?

What opportunities do they see?

What solutions do they want to be implemented in the near future so that their individual jobs are better and their teams can function better?

Getting feedback like that from the people who do the work, that's where the frontline workers in that sense, right?

That's where they see the problems that are most acute and most obvious to solve.

So talk about those, write them down, directly address them, take this seriously.

It's not just some pie in the sky keynote address where someone's going to give you generic advice.

The only way for real solutions to come about is to address on paper, on purpose, the real problems you have and then do something about it.

And when that happens, you have the actual chance to fix the problem.

You may not for a while, but you have the best fighting chance to address these things and then people on your team will have that rapport built up that we're doing something about these issues.

We're going to solve that CC problem.

We're going to solve that 24 hour reply issue that doesn't exist right now.

We're going to do something to move this group forward.

And that's a big, big helper for overall wellbeing and success and yes, productivity.

Now let's go back and address that question I posed earlier, which is what if you don't actually control your team?

What if you're not the leader of the group?

What if you don't have autonomy to make these kinds of sweeping decisions?

Well, first of all, I know how that feels.

I'm actually there all the time.

And you might say, wait a minute, Jeff, I thought you worked for yourself and you are your own boss.

That is true.

However, there is a big, big part of the work that I do that's directly connected to very large corporations that I'm not in control of.

I'll use Apple as a good example.

I work with Apple all the time in a variety of things and I have to work with their customer service team to help solve issues that I have that are related to all kinds of things.

And I have to work with them.

I don't control them.

Whenever you're in that kind of a scenario where it's not really practically possible for you to control anything, all you really have then is influence.

What you have is your voice.

What you have is the chance for you to speak up and to ask for what you want in a very direct way.

And I do so probably to my own detriment.

I am overly direct.

Let me give an example of this.

There's a way to get what you want by being polite.

And that's always my first inclination, right?

The very first email I send, second email, maybe even the third.

I'm a pretty polite, pretty nice guy.

By the time I get to that fourth email and I still don't have the solution I want, well then I ratchet up the intensity and I become someone you don't want to be around.

It's not a role I want to play.

I don't want to be that guy, right?

I don't want to have to put reminders on my task list literally every day to go bug someone about something that hasn't gotten done that should have been done a long time ago.

But that's a huge part of my job.

A huge part of what I do is communication on a recurring basis that's prompt and polite, if possible, to get the end result that I want, that I'm specifically requesting.

I'm asking for what I want repeatedly until eventually I either get told no or I get the thing done that I want it done.

But the point of that is the willingness to speak up.

If you don't have direct control, you always have influence, you always have your voice.

And you want to use your voice in a very acutely strategic way to ensure that you have the best fighting chance to get your work done the way that it should be done.

So yes, use your voice.

All right, another good idea here is of course to give feedback to your boss, your teammates.

If you don't control the scenario, you can always once again use your voice by giving feedback to those who do have the power to make change happen.

And so don't feel like you can't speak up, right?

Be somewhere in a position where your voice does matter and feedback matters.

And if you are working somewhere where your feedback does not matter, it may not be a great team for you.

Keep that in mind.

And then finally, the last piece here when you don't control the team is of course ask others how you can just simply be of service to them more often.

Oftentimes the best influence you're going to have over your team and its overall output is your willingness to be a team player, right?

You don't control the team, but you influence it by the quality of the work that you do and the kind of person you are.

And I gave the example earlier about how when I'm frustrated with someone, I ratchet up the intensity and I send emails I don't really need to be sending.

What ends up happening in those scenarios where I feel the need to increase intensity is I burn bridges.

I don't want to, it's never my intention, but that's what ends up happening in scenarios where the team efficiency has failed, where what is going on isn't working is that bridges get burned, people get angry and consequences are real.

And so we're trying to the best of our abilities, avoid those things.

And we can win once again, communication is a priority and we grease that wheel with the best possible systems to move everyone forward in a happier and healthier way.

Okay, I could discuss this topic for a long, long time, but I'm going to back off right now.

However, if you do want to hear more from me about this topic specifically in person, you'd like to learn more about me speaking at your next conference meeting, a team event, visit jeffsanders.com/speaking.

Or of course you can always email me, jeff@jeffsanders.com and shocker, I will reply back to you.

That's a guarantee.

And for the action step this week, directly address the bottlenecks.

You know, it's true that your team will only move as fast as the slowest cog in the system.

And when you directly address the bottlenecks, you leap forward faster than doing just about anything else.

And even though this should go without saying, don't be the bottleneck yourself, duh. jeffsanders.com/512 is the place to go with episode notes.

And of course, subscribe to or follow this podcast and any amazing podcasting app you're using right now.

And that's all I've got for you here on the 5am Miracle Podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life and the fun begins bright and early.