Hello!
I need some advise. I recently took on a team that was underperforming and swamped with work and a large backlog of work. It took 3 months to get the backlog taken care of but we have made improvements. Now that we have that done I find my self struggling with getting my team to meet deadlines that I feel are fairly reasonable. I've asked my team for feedback on how we can get these accomplished in the given time lines. What I get is a shrug and a "I don't know."
I've tried calendar reminders and check ins and - nothing. I get "I don't know - I'm busy." So then I did time analysis to see how I could better distribute tasks across the team to make things more even.I asked them to each provide how long each task takes along with frequency. I put together an analysis for each and got "Well that isn't accurate - I have more work then that." That was the response with data they provided.
I feel like I'm asking for feedbak and trying new things to no success. Does any one have any advise?
When you fall you get up and try again
You might consider having your team plan their work so that each member has a deliverable every day and have them report to the team each morning. In addition, it is often advantageous to have a work burn down sheet that the team updates every day based on their daily deliverables.