Don Sesler, The Technology Whisperer: As the owner, I have the honor of leading a team of super-smart individuals who share my passion for helping entrepreneurs and business owners not fall victim to complex technology challenges that can kill productivity. We want to tame your technology so that it works for you and not the other way around. What technology problem is making your life more complicated than it should be? Reach out to me and tell me your story.

How To Keep Your Team On Task

Simple Tools To Keep Your Team On Track

Task management gets complicated as your business starts to grow and more people get added to the mix. Balancing the needs of multiple clients with multiple ongoing projects can get tricky fast, and when you start adding staff to help with the workload, you also have to track who’s doing what and how it all fits together. 

Fortunately, there are several online tools available that are focused on task management in a team environment, making it much simpler to line up your tasks with your resources. Change can be hard, but getting the right task management system in place is key for any growing business.

Working through the list of available tools can be overwhelming if you are looking at them for the first time. The main challenge most people run into is not being able to sort out what each application does well, and what it leaves out. Here is the shortlist of capabilities you need to consider when picking the app that will work best for you:
  • Goal Setting: If your tool is not helping you identify and stay focused on your priorities, you might as well stick with a pen and paper list. Keeping your top-level objectives visible is crucial, and this gets more challenging as your business grows. It is very easy to get distracted by urgent things (the screaming client), which can drag your team off in a direction that does not help you move forward. Keep your eye on the prize.
  • Task Management: The tool needs to show your pending tasks in a clear, easy-to-understand format. Most of the apps will also help you track progress if the task is not something that gets taken care of in just a few hours.
  • Resource Utilization: Understanding how much time and money is required to complete a task can help you decide whether it makes sense to pursue a job or drop it off the list. Most apps can also help you ensure that you do not assign a team member more work than they can realistically handle.
  • Collaboration: Online chat, document sharing, and online meetings are all modern tools that help a team complete their tasks and achieve their goals quickly and efficiently. Many businesses end up using several different apps for online collaboration, but picking the right task management tool will allow you to consolidate your team’s activity on a single platform.
If you are looking at this for the first time for a small business, start your search by looking at Trello, Asana, and Monday. All of these apps do an excellent job with task management, have similar visual layouts, and built-in collaboration capabilities. As your projects grow in complexity, you may need to bite the bullet and use a more powerful project management tool like Microsoft Project. If you need help picking the right Project Management tool for your business, you can schedule a free consultation with me to talk over the pros and cons of the different applications on the market.