Suppose in a small team of six people working in one office there are two people who have a particularly strong friendship. This friendship is a "natural force" that may have an influence on the rest of the team, and can be manifest in various ways, either positively or negatively.

Other factors can also play an influence. For example, if a wall of cupboards were to be placed across the middle of the office, this would also form a 'natural force' that influences the communication flow and may separate the group into two further sub-groups.

Sometimes, an "absence" of a natural force can also be a team dynamic. For example, if the leader or manager is permanently removed from the office, the group may be drawn into a change of behavior.

How do you recognize team dynamics?  You can recognize team dynamics by looking for the forces that influence team behavior. These forces might include:

• Personality styles (eg: including or excluding people)
• Team Roles
• Office layout (eg: cupboards dividing teams into two)
• Tools and technology (eg: email, bulletin board, information pool enabling hidden communication).
• Organizational culture (eg: company cars acting as status symbols to separate groups of employees)

• the friends communicate a lot together...
• ...which naturally results in other members being drawn into the discussion
• ...which results in a good 'social' feel to the group
• ...which makes people enjoy being in the group
• ...which improves motivation and commitment

The negative effect of a strong friendship might be:

• to cause the other four people to feel excluded...
• ...which means they are less likely to include the two friends in decision making
• ...which means that there are likely to be two sub-groups
• ...which means that information may not flow across the whole group, but only within the subgroups
• ...which means that miscommunication may lead to misunderstanding and poor collective performance

This friendship has an impact on the group's performance, and is therefore a team dynamic. Whether it is good or bad depends on other factors. In the first, positive, example, there is a natural force of "inclusion" which results in people being drawn into productive discussions. In the second, negative example, there is a natural force of "exclusion" which results in communication between groups being stifled.

Individual Accountability

Team dynamics and individual accountability are the "yin and yang" of workplace productivity. No team can be optimally productive unless every member is individually accountable for his or her own individual responsibilities. Yet if you walk into a room and ask ten people what accountability means, you’ll likely get ten different definitions. To some, it’s something you make people do, as in “holding people accountable”. To others, accountability means accepting responsibility, but only when a project goes off course, or it’s too late to fix. 

When it’s all said and done, a workable definition of accountability might include the following elements: Taking responsibility for your own behavior; doing what’s right consistently; demonstrating personal integrity, and actively participating in activities and interactions that support the strategy of your organization. 

Accountability is not something you “make” people do. It has to be chosen, accepted or agreed upon by the people within your organization. People must learn to “buy into” being accountable and responsible. For many, this is a culture shift, as it's a new, unfamiliar, and sometimes, uncomfortable way to work or live. 

Holding people accountable is really about the distribution of power and choice. When your workers have more choice, they learn to be more responsible. When they become more responsible, they earn more freedom. Yes, learning how to become accountable involves an element of discipline. More importantly, individual purpose and personal meaning comes from accepting responsibility and learning to be accountable. 

By being accountable, you'll also earn the trust of managers and co-workers. When you become are more accountable, you'll understand and appreciate your purpose and role within your organization and will be much more likely to be engaged and committed to make things happen.

Managing Time and Resources to Drive Execution

There are numerous books and training resources on "time management" but we would like to highlight the core principles that have the greatest impact on personal productivity for most people.

The Sacred 90 Minutes. Your first 90 minutes of the work day should viewed as extremely valuable time. This is when you are most likely to be fresh and focused. Work on your most important projects and tasks during this time. Particularly those tasks that require creativity, innovation, strategic thinking, or just plain old deep work. Others are going to try to steal your first 90 minutes with meetings, phone calls and other activities that may not be critically important to you. It certainly may make sense to take or make a phone call, or attend a meeting if it is a critically important activity that requires your deepest brain power.

Embrace “good enough.” Sometimes perfectionism gets in the way of productivity. We want to make something as perfect as possible that we never get anything done. But diminishing returns applies to whatever you do. Beyond certain point, your extra effort will give you less and less extra value. This is the point of “good enough”. Recognize this point of “good enough” and stop there.

Get the first draft out as soon as possible. When you create something, try to get the first draft or prototype out as soon as possible without worrying about its correctness or quality. You should let your creativity flows freely and worry about organizing later.

Focus on actionable ideas. In this information age, many ideas could come your way everyday through newspapers, web sites, and other means. You could end up spending a lot of resources (time, energy) on them and get very few done. You should filter those ideas by asking: is it actionable? Can it be applied to improve your life? Focus your resources on the actionable ideas and ignore most of the rest.

Eliminate. An essential step to be productive is to eliminate unnecessary things. When you have a task in front of you ask yourself: do I need to do this? If the answer is no then don’t hesitate to eliminate it.

Delegate. If you think you need to do something but you can’t find the time to do it, you should delegate the task to someone else. Delegation is a secret to increased productivity since you now use other people’s resources. For example, you can hire a virtual assistant to do your tasks.

Download and use RescueTime. RescueTime is a fantastic FREE application that tracks your computer usage and reports how efficient and productive you are.  It’s free to use and quite easy to set up. Once you have a chance to accurately assess just exactly how you spend your computer time, in all likelihood you will identify areas form productivity improvement.

Email Management and Effective Email Communication

Your first 90 minutes of the work day should viewed as extremely valuable time. This is when you are most likely to b

Tweak Outlook to Work Better for You. Despite the popularity of Microsoft Outlook, several of its functions aren't noticeable unless you dig around in menus or try out keystroke shortcuts. Many of these tricks can be found by reading a user manual, but users would rather be spending their time in Outlook responding to or writing emails. Read this article in the online Wall Street Journal to get a great summary of some of the most valuable (and relatively unknown) features of Outlook. WSJ's Katie Boehret demonstrates how to get the most out of Outlook, including how to make you look like an overachiever.

Review Your Computer Filing Structure. Does your filing structure for saving work documents provide you with an adequate ability to retrieve items, or do you spend a lot of time searching for something you worked on a few weeks or months ago? Worst of all possible methods is to just save everything in your "My Documents" folder. Instead, one of our most well-organized colleagues uses a filing structure similar to the one below.

Under My Documents create several new folders, and sub-folders below those:

Under these folders create sub-folders for every person, project, etc. This structure makes it easy to keep store documents in a place that makes sense and can be easily retrieved.

Energy and Stamina

To a large degree your productivity at work is driven by your baseline energy level. People with more energy tend to get more work done. That seems simple enough. But what isn't always simple is finding ways to enhance your energy level throughout the day - not just creating a brief artificial boost that is dependent upon caffeine or sugar (or both).

Find your peak time. Your body has energy cycle and there are times when you can be more productive. For many people, it means you should rise early and start working early. Many performers say that early morning is their most productive time. Some other people, though, say that their most productive time is late evening. That’s fine too. Just find your peak time.

Determine never to be idle. Idling means you are not doing what you are supposed to do. For example, you are idling when you plan to write but you browse the Internet instead. On the other hand, taking rest on purpose is not idling since you plan it. Aim to eliminate your idle time. 

Have fun. Having fun is an indispensable part of being productive because it renews your energy and motivation. It increases the quality of your work time which allows you to accomplish more.

Calm your mind. Keeping your mind clear of stuff is essential, but there could still be noise in your mind. The noise could be guilt, fear, or distracting thoughts. Get rid of them by calming your mind.

Do the ultradian sprint. For high-intensity tasks, focus on just one task at a time and make it intense. Such high-intensity session is called the ultradian sprint and - as its name implies - it should be a sprint and not just a run. In a sprint where 0.1 second matters, distractions and interruptions are not tolerable.

Efficient and Effective Work Meetings

Everyone hates unproductive meetings, yet few us are willing to do what it takes to make every meeting a positive and productive experience for everyone involved. Here are a few "rules" to live by if you want to make every meeting a productive experience for all attendees:

Run your meetings as you would have others run the meetings that you attend. his is the most fundamental rule of meeting management. Running an effective meeting--or being a good meeting participant--is all about being considerate of others. All the other Golden Rules of meeting management flow from this principle.

Be prepared and ensure that all the participants can be as well. Distribute the meeting agenda a day before the meeting and make sure everyone has access to any relevant background materials. Participants, of course, have the obligation of reviewing the agenda and background materials and arriving at the meeting prepared. If the meeting organizer has not provided adequate information about the objectives of the meeting, the participants should take the initiative to ask. No one should arrive at a meeting not knowing why they are there--and what is supposed to be accomplished.

If there is nothing to put on the agenda, the organizer should ask him/herself whether there really needs to be a meeting.

Stick to a schedule. Start the meeting on time and end it on time (or even early). Starting on time requires discipline by the organizer and the participants. Arriving late shows a lack of consideration for all those who were on time. But if all participants know that the organizer is going to start the meeting right on time, there is a much greater likelihood that everyone else will make the effort to be punctual.

Finishing in a timely manner is also crucial. If everyone agreed that the meeting would last an hour, the meeting should not run any longer than that. Keeping the agenda realistic is important, of course. Finally, if only 20 minutes are required to accomplish the meeting objectives, the meeting should end after only 20 minutes. It would be a waste of everyone's time to let it go on any longer than that.

The time for which the meeting is scheduled is also important. Scheduling regular meetings for inconvenient times (e.g. after the end of the official work day) can have a very negative impact on morale. Emergencies are a reality for most organizations and may necessitate meetings at odd times, but routine meetings should be scheduled at a time that is reasonably convenient for the participants.

Stay on topic. Most groups have at least one person who tends to go off on a tangent or tell stories during meetings. Whether this is the organizer or one of the participants, all meeting participants have the responsibility of gently guiding the meeting back to the substantive agenda items. This should not be done at the expense of all levity, of course, as that is an important ingredient for esprit de corps. Also, storytelling can be very useful if it is being used deliberately as a coaching or teaching tool. As a rule, however, someone needs to guide the discussion back to the agenda if the meeting becomes clearly off track.

Don't hold unnecessary meetings. Carefully assess how often routine meetings really need to be held. For example, if you have daily staff meetings, how productive are they? Can they be held less frequently? Or, perhaps, can they be held standing up someplace and kept to a few minutes? Staff meetings are crucial vehicles for maintaining good communication in the office, but it is important to find the right balance between good communication and productive uses of time.

Wrap up meetings with a clear statement of the next steps and who is to take them. If any decisions were made at the meeting (even if the decision was to "study the issue more") the meeting organizer should clearly summarize what needs to be done and who is going to do it. If the organizer fails to do this, one of the participants needs to speak up and request clarification of the next steps. This is crucial. If the participants leave the meeting and no one is accountable for taking action on the decisions that were made, then the meeting will have been a waste of everyone's time.

Prevent problems through planning. Before you do something, take time to think in longer term and anticipate problems that may occur. Of course, you shouldn’t overdo it in such a way that you become afraid to act, but proper planning never harms.

More Productivity Boosters

Set a minimum time to start on a task and don’t stop before time is up. "The Now Habit" suggests 30 minutes, but you can start with smaller amount of time if you want to. The important thing is not to stop before the time is up. Every time you want to stop, just decide to take one more step forward. There are many timer applications you can use to help you (I use CoolTimer).