Ten effective tips on operational team management to keep your team motivated and successful (2024)

Middle management is the crucial pivotal role between executives/MT and the professionals within most organizations. I have had the opportunity to have lead several teams, and would like to share some tips that could help to make your (teams) life easier and effective.

These points are of course my point of view. It would be great if you could share your experiences and point of view!

1/ Set up a weekly team meeting

Have weekly team meetings of 30 minutes to 1 hour. Put those on the same time every week so people get a rhythm

> Really try to keep those meetings. It gives people a working rhythm and they will save up discussion points that are not very urgent for the right time and place. Plus you do not have to cascade the same information several times.

2/ Use a task list

Have the team fill out their main activities in actionable points in a task list. Make sure it specifies when points need to be finished. From a manager point of view you might add the key weekly or monthly priorities.

> It's important that the team members have ownership of what they are doing and when they are doing this. Filling the list is even more important than discussing it. From a management point of view you can quickly see if things keep piling up and if you need to re-plan or shift workload.

>> Perhaps not a bad idea to add weight to the actionable points. Suggest to follow the (Scrum used) Fibonacci sequence. 1,2,3,5,8,13,21

3/ Organize 1 to 1's

Organize regularly some time with your team members to discuss their projects, but also other personal issues or perhaps in-company situations. I feel once per month works the best

> this will give you a good understanding what goes on. It will also help you to improve your formal approval meetings in case you use this meeting for tentative feedback.

4/ Support Initiatives

If team members have a good idea, ask them to make a proposal that can be discussed. Motivate them to spend every week at least 2 hours on it. (depends on how much business allows. methodology basically copied from Google)

> If somebody has a good idea, let them work on it. Do not allow them to put on your plate, so "you can do something with it". It's important people try to come with processes, tools, ideas that improve operational excellence or improve business. Make sure that in case investment is needed there is a rough ROI or NPV included.

5/Delegate on the right skill level

Understand the level of skill set people have and brief them on that level. Can somebody handle a full project? Or a part of the project or do you need to brief them task by task

> Explain this to your team members. And also specify on which level you work with them. That might sound a bit overbearing, but it's necessary for your team members to understand their position and which scope of work is expected + what they need to do to move to the next level.

6/ Build a balanced team

Ensure a group of people that is balanced in both skills and character. Define what your team needs in skills and experience and look for that. Define hat type of people you need to come to a balanced group

> Roughly follow Young quadrants. You want so more dominant people. You might want some extrovert people, but perhaps also some people who think before they speak. Understand what technical and socials skills you need today but also in the next year. (new project coming?, Everything needs to be digitized?)

7/ Connect skills of people with their ambition

Connect career planning to strong points and people's interest in order to have people working motivated

> First understand what somebody wants to do in the future or what they want to learn. Secondly define which skills the person has and which learning needs to be done. Thirdly connect this to work/ projects that you have today or might have in the future. Ensure that the team member requests/does the necessary training.

8/ Motivate learning where and whenever is possible

Motivate the team to do training. A lot. And not just fancy classroom training. It's amazing ho much you can learn by just typing the question into Google.

> It's about learning here and not about the fancy show of e.g. an MBA. I have learned most of my excel skills by looking into files from other and by googling questions I had. If there is a good training calendar at work, great, use it!. If not try to understand what you need and where you can find it (external). Your people need to develop and so do you.

9/ Promote ambition within your team

Understand when people want to move/rotate and promote this as well.

> Change will always come so better be prepared. Discuss with your team members what the want to achieve and when they envision to change the job. Being open in this gives you the time to prepare replacements in time and will allow to not being caught by surprise

10/ Always have the back of your team

Your team and team members are great and they deserve that you will tell that to everyone else. And you never let them down in a meeting.

>If you back up your team when needed and sell them well within the company it gives your team member confidence to do a project and be a professional and behave accordingly. In case you badmouth your team, you are basically telling that you did a lousy job yourself.

Bonus tip: Be open for feedback

Ask feedback from the team. Be open for change and feedback. Do it after an appraisal, so people feel free to say something without direct consequences.

Thanks for reading! I hope it was useful. As mentioned before, I would love to get your feedback/ experiences on above!,

Julian