Friday, January 15, 2021 | Looking for some work-related New Year’s resolutions? In the spirit of continuous improvement, Granger team members across departments share tips and techniques they use to maintain focus and improve productivity at work in this Productivity Series. First up is Granger’s Director of Information Technology, Sean Gleason.
One of the big things I’ve been working on is eliminating email as a primary method of communication. That means a lot of text-based communication, either through Teams or applications like Slack. This has helped with productivity, and I no longer find myself rummaging through emails looking for the right one, or reading through unnecessary, long chains.
The second thing I would offer people who are interested in making a change is to find a system they trust to store information. I use a combination of tools. For example, Trello for everyday project management or viewing upcoming priorities, and OneNote for documentation, especially on tasks I only do a few times a year.
When you feel like there’s too much to process, try to break things into smaller pieces because then it usually becomes workable. Try to focus on the things you can control. I think all of us, especially during the pandemic, are reminded daily of how many things are out of our control. It’s easy to get caught up in that and lose sight of the things you can control in your day, in your life, the people around you – things that generally come down to attitude, mindset, and how you interact with other people.
There’s been a lot of discussion about the ‘builder mentality’ at Granger, and it’s definitely something I also think about. Here, most people, most of the time, are trying to move in the same direction. So I ask myself, ‘How can I help them get where they’re going more efficiently?’ or ‘How can I impact their quality of life at Granger?’ With the builder mentality, rather than trying to prescribe things from the top down, there’s an attitude of ‘let’s go see the work and figure it out.’
Granger also has the Lean mentality. Meaning, we don’t want to do things just for the sake of doing them. We want to do them in the most efficient way possible. To accomplish this, you need to constantly be searching and ask things like, ‘How can this change or improve in the future?’ or ‘How can we build upon what we have to make it better?’
