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Best practices for creating efficiency

Efficiency​

We care about working on what matters. We focus on not duplicating work. This enables us to experience more achievement and progress.

WeSalute success does not depend on verbal communications because that creates redundancy. Companies that rely on verbal communications result in repeating themselves relentlessly in meetings.

Written communications are more efficient and provide us an essential competitive advantage. Documenting the specific information in workflows is more efficient in time management, promoting consistency, and producing quality work. While at first documenting everything in written text may feel like a burden, it prevents a toxic cycle of meetings and touch points which serve only to keep "bringing people up to speed".

For example, communicating answers to a problem should be done by written text because written text is ultimately more efficient and easier to use. Having written text allows the simple process to copy and paste documented information to answer a Team Member question. Rather than transcribing one's voice, one can simply copy and paste in a structured format.

It's vital to understand that nurturing the written habit serves more than the person receiving the answer. It produces WeSalute team wide efficiency in informational consistency, better time management, and producing a high quality of work.

success

You never know who else will need to know the details of your work, now or in the future. Documenting everything creates efficiency. It is, in essence, paying it forward.

Efficient Writing​

WeSalute thrives on documenting everything. We document in: WeSalute Open, in CRM meeting notes for clients, in Google Docs for our Shared Drives, in Confluence, in Jira issues, etc. If it wasn't written down it didn't happen. It is more efficient to have documented answers at your fingertips than to waste time researching recurring questions or workflows.

Team Members should research their own questions. If you are not receiving a clear answer then ask in public. It is crucial that you document new information discovered by paying it forward to your Team Members to build efficiency, collaboration, inclusion, and documentation.

Efficient Solutions​

It is smart to use simple and** boring solutions** for a problem, and remember that "boring" should not be conflated with "bad" or "technical debt." The speed of innovation for our organization and product is constrained by the total complexity we have added, so every little reduction in complexity matters. Don't pick an interesting technology to make your work more fun; using established, popular tech will ensure a more stable and familiar experience for you and other contributors.

Make a conscious effort to recognize the constraints of others within the team. For example, sales are hard because you are dependent on another organization, and development is hard because you have to preserve the ability to quickly improve the product in the future.

There have been studies shown that Team Members read more when writing is simple with minimal context. In brief, become a minimalistic writer with a purpose get to the point with fewer words.

Efficient Structure​

Create Structure Context for Boring Solutions​

It is a useful tool when you build structure towards boring solutions. You can improve work efficiency for your team by simplifying and describing context. Here is a quick example:

  • Input

    • Business Drivers, Data, Requirements

  • Output

    • Goal, Desired Customer Experience, KPIs

  • Constraints

    • Legal, Technical, Knowledge, Operability

  • Mechanism/Influencer

    • Software, Systems, Process, Tooling

Organized Efficiency​

Optimize solutions globally for the broader organization and customers. Making a process efficient for one person or a small group may not be an efficient outcome for the entire organization. In a decision, ask yourself "For whom does this need to be most efficient?" Quite often, the answer may be your users, customers, or Team Members that are dependent upon your decision.

It is easier to prioritize consistency over efficiency because consistency is often more efficient initially. We should slow down when optimizing for consistency. Taking a company-wide lens when evaluating changes will help ensure that new processes will improve efficiency for WeSalute as a whole.