People Moves

The other way we could think about this is what can you do with your people? What are the dials you can tweak with them?  We’re going to look at 3 people maneuvers that may be helpful: Collaborate, Rotate and Reallocate.

Collaborate. You can collaborate. In other words where does it make sense to put multiple people on one body of work? sometimes you can get a multiplied impact, maybe it’s a hard task that is just nice doing with other people, or maybe truly it’s more productive when you have that second hand there. I also would recommend thinking outside the box here, sometimes you could look outside your team and see if there’s an ebb and flow of work that would make sense. Sometimes my people are not in their highest season when somebody else is and Vice Versa. Is there any way with some cross training that we could do some sharing of the work, or sharing of resources and help each other out when the loads are a bit heavier?

Rotate. The second people lever that you can pull is rotate.  Rotate people.  When there’s a big project going on that’s ongoing or a kind of work that’s ongoing you can pull people off that and put others on.  Give people a break from that work.  You rotate them through it.

Reallocate. how can I alleviate some of my people by taking work away from them and giving it to someone else?  2 approaches here.  First is through bringing in additional help.  This could be interns that could come in and share some of that work for a season with my team. Are there places that I could call in for some reinforcements to alleviate some of the work from my team?  The second approach is redistribution of works.  Is there work that could be redistributed from one person to another on my team.   You’ll want to look individually at each of your’ team member’s capacities and ask yourself is there any work that could be shifted from one person to another.   And while it’s tempting to think about is this fair or not fair, really your job as a manager is to make sure the work gets done. So that s not the issue. The issue is where is there capacity and could it make sense to shift work from one person to another.  Are there any circumstances that would make outsourcing work a good option?