Habit of a lifetime: How to hold people accountable?

The hardest part of controlling an organization or a workflow is overseeing the completion of tasks. Why does it seem so difficult?

In order to control the processes effectively you need to educate yourself in handling operative tasks or find someone, who is fit for this job. The one supervising day-to-day operations needs to see the big picture and have a passion for details at the same time.

Project management programs, like Asana, can help you achieve both objectives. With this software, you can generate smaller and larger projects, and add subtasks to any of them. The system is also able to send email notifications to anyone involved with a task, and allow clients to follow the progress.

Of course, you can also delegate people and set a deadline to every task in Asana, which is extremely useful because it makes everyone involved in the projects accountable. When the job and the responsibilities are obvious, overseeing them will mean less trouble for you.

For the best results, you will need the find the right people for every project, that you created. If you charge people with projects, that are inadequate for them, it will result in delays, or the quality will suffer. For example, if you know that someone in your organization is good at writing, don’t delegate this job to anyone else. If you do so, you will probably have to send the work back for correction and waste a lot of time to achieve the same quality.

As a leader you have to know the strength and weaknesses of your workers, for example, it should be clear how punctual they are. If you can also discover what motivates your colleagues you will be able to get the most out of them.

Some people are inspired by the tasks you appoint them with, but others will need further encouragement. It could be a good idea to allow some of your co-workers to set the deadlines for themselves. Also, if you have to charge someone with an unpleasant task, offer him or her a more engaging job for the next time!

Besides knowledge you should concentrate on occupational calling, and the applicants’ ability to perform in the chosen roles, when assembling a team. Keep in mind that some of your employees will have to be able to work together effectively on a day-to-day basis!

Using the personality assessment test developed by Myers and Briggs might help you obtain valuable information about your co-workers. Knowing more about their personalyty types will help you a lot during project management.

There is a golden rule to hiring people, which you should also remember. “Type A” workers will employ “type A” people, “type B” workers will look for “type C” people, and so on. We advise you to stick with “A”.