Hacks that can help leaders manage large teams and multitask at ease

Authored by Chirag Joshi, Chief Marketing Officer, Samco Group

Working in startups has its pros and cons. My early days in a startup involved training by mentors that had my hands getting dirty with all high impact tasks.  I credit this training a lot with what I am in life today. Once the startup grows, teams get bigger, and leaders need to delegate and prepare the next in line to handle critical tasks, while they themselves can focus on the more strategic and high-impact tasks for the business (without having to worry about daily operations). It becomes difficult especially for marketing leaders to review every communication that goes out and give inputs on all campaigns. The marketing team at Samco has grown from a 4-member team including me to 27 members within 4 years. That itself has been nothing short of incredible.

 At Samco, we keep reviewing our functioning with the intention of being as lean and as efficient as we can be. Reality struck me one day and I suddenly realised I needed to change the way I worked to be more efficient and focused on my tasks and also give the team enough time, training and attention so that they can be the leaders of tomorrow.

 After much deliberation and introspection, I switched to the following To Do Hack which helped me tackle an overwhelming amount of projects and tasks. 

The To-Do Hack: 

Simply put, one can divide a to-do list into the following sections:

 Do Now or Do Today: These are high impact and critical tasks that need to be done today, which can move the needle and give you a big push towards your goals and KRAs. Example: Work on 10 content ideas for your brand launch next week.

 Do Later: These tasks are important but not today, and while you still have to do them they are not topical, so mark them under to-do and once you have finished the “Due Today” task move to this list.

Example: Annual budget approvals due next month.

 Delegate: Letting go of some control is the biggest leap that a leader has to take in order for the team to grow and sustain the growth. Dedicatedly start delegating some part of your task to your team, train them and review their execution so you can advise them accordingly.

Example: Call up these 5 agencies and initiate discussion for Social Media retainer services.

 Avoid: There could be some things that we would always want to work on - due to personal interests, or feeding a creative need etc. As an example, changing the design of the ‘Team’ page on the website based on a creatively better design that you may have in mind. This would satisfy your creative soul but may have a zero impact on the business. The idea is that if you have a pressing agenda on your list that has a relatively higher impact on the business, then tend to it first, and at the same time, you can delegate this task with your creative inputs. 

Track: This can turn out to be among the most important activities. As a team lead your responsibility is to also have a bird’s eye view of where the team is headed and that also involves having a tight control on timelines and ensuring deadlines are met and tasks are completed. Even if you have delegated and your role may be minimal, keeping a calendar-based tracking system can save a lot of heartburn later. There are many tools one can use to do this. Whether it’s Gantt charts, or WhatsApp reminders, or simply using dates for Task alerts - one can use these tools to stay on track and ensure others are on track as well. I personally use Microsoft to-do app to do this.

Example: Add negative keywords in your performance marketing campaign, and increase landing page speed before Friday -> Track updates from Aditya from the digital marketing team

 The above hacks have helped me a lot personally. The trick is to dedicatedly follow this for at least for a month on daily basis and then it fits in your schedule and when you start your day, you train your brain to focus on high impact tasks that require YOUR attention. This has substantially reduced stress levels and helped me control 4-7 projects simultaneously.

 With all that said, I believe a good leader must also instill the following consciously:

1) Training your team to be you

2) Letting go of control to your subordinates and make them key members of your team

Do this and see the magic happen.