Showing posts with label Small Company benefits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Small Company benefits. Show all posts

Hows your team doing today?

As someone who leads the team, we somewhere forget that teams are made up of individuals who have their down times as well. They cannot perform to their best always.

When your teams down what can you really do? Pushing harder might end up creating more mess, instead why not help them go through this.

I work with a small team of 3-4 people and an extended team of some more and like all of you I always know when they are down. You can feel it- in their work, the way they respond, how easily they loose their cool…..

You cannot sort out their problem, however you can help them to overcome it in your own way- is that not what leaders do? You inspire to bring out the best in others.

I simply start with the basics and work upwards-

  • Is everything alright? Most people don’t want to come up with their problems at work and will rarely confide when asked first.
  • Help them with more breaks, a partner to work with or some time to cool off. If is still persists, dig deeper.
  • Ask them if they like what they do. Do they want to try out something else? Have they been doing the same thing over a long period of time that work doesn’t interest them anymore- no thrills, no challenges, same drab work. No one likes that.
  • Thankfully I work in an environment which is flexible and we try to be happy with our work, create challenges and keep up to them. I encourage learning something new, delegating a new work to break the monotony and give a chance to think about something new. This helps them love their job not because of the paycheck but something more.
  • They don’t suddenly become experts in their chosen new trial field, however they have the chance to do what they do and try out something new. If they want to change departments after a while, we encourage that as long as you can prove you are good at it and have learned the skills
  • If there’s one thing I ask- it is to come to work every day the way you came in your first day. It not always very realistic, but closer we are to our first day emotions, better we will be.
Now we have the thrill of a newbie and the experience of the oldie- try beating that!

(Pic Courtesy)

Advantages of working in a small company

To learn about projects, I firmly believe that working in a small company helps. You can always switch to the bigger one's after you have gained the right knowledge. Working in small companies comes with it's numerous added advantages.

Advantages of working in a small company are-
  • You get to see the entire project lifecycle upclose which is very important. Amidst few people, it's easier to learn (and grow).
  • You get to know every individuals work list  in the team and how it's handled.
  • You have (in most cases) direct access to the project manager- you volunteer to learn more
  • Easier access to information and knowledge from the team- you know everyone by their first names.
  • You are valued for your skill and chances are they're not a lot of people with the same skill set.
  • You have more creative freedom and you don't have to go through one layer after the other to get your ideas to work.
  • Greater exposure- to clients, to work- you name it!
  • Your have chances of your work getting noticed.
Most of it comes from my experince in working with a small company, while I would love to work for a Fortune 500 company , I think being here and doing what I do has  given me much more exposure that would have taken me perhaps years to get had I started with a bigger name. 

So, if you want to know more about Project Management and see it first hand before commiting and deciding to enroll in a degree/certification, getting into a small company might help.

Here are some other interesting articles that might get your attention- article 1 and article 2.

(Picture: Google Images)