A shining lightbulb in a row of dead lightbulbs, representing team problems.
How Your Team’s Problems Affect Your Project (And What to Do)
A shining lightbulb in a row of dead lightbulbs, representing team problems.

How Your Team’s Problems Affect Your Project (And What to Do)

Published in Apps on , last updated .

Anybody can run a team, but few people understand what true collaboration means or how to run an efficient team. The difference between the two are obvious; like two sailing ships racing on the open sea. A ship whose crew is constantly dealing with team problems and doesn’t cooperate will always lag behind the ship with the more united and coordinated crew.

Businesses are the same way. Bad team collaboration wastes the time and effort of employees at all levels, be they junior, middle management, or executive.

The 5 most common team problems

While every team is different — and so are their problems — they often fall into one of these five categories.

Poor communication

You’d be surprised by how easily bad communication can derail an entire project. When everything gets lost in translation, deadlines are missed, deliverables go missing, and conflict seems all too common. If you can’t get everyone to understand each other, you’re going to run into some rough waters.

Too many meetings

Meetings are unavoidable. Even if you’re an evangelist of asynchronous communication methods, some topics need to be covered face-to-face — or screen-to-screen. But when your calendar has more space for meetings than any other work, you have a problem.

Low engagement

How excited is your team? Are they sharing new ideas or offering solutions for tough problems? If all you can get from them is “sure” when you give them a task, then you’re probably dealing with low engagement.

No team recognition

How much effort goes into making sure the team feels good about the work they’re doing? If the answer is “little to none” then you’ve probably found a source of your team’s low engagement. Without the occasional kudos or pat on the back, your team’s going to get less motivated as a project drags on.

Low visibility

Do you know what’s going on with your project? Does everyone on the team know what’s happening? What about stakeholders? If it seem like most of the project’s progress happens in shady corners and dark rooms, it’s tough for anyone to trust the process.

What are the signs your team’s problems are too much to handle?

If you’ve ever wondered whether or not your team is suffering from bad collaboration, there are many red flags you should look for. Here are some of the most important signs of these common team problems:

  • No engagement during meetings: Do people in your meetings seem distracted and preoccupied? That’s because they’re probably thinking of what else they could be doing now, and wondering if the meeting is relevant to them.
  • Double or needless work: Has anyone on your team ever spent significant time on a task, only to be told it wasn’t necessary anymore because the project plan had changed and nobody had told them? That’s a sure-fire sign of poor communication, and happens far more often than people are willing to admit.
  • Botched project handoffs: This is the equivalent of a relay runner tossing the baton at the next runner instead of passing it on. When a team doesn’t take the time to properly turn over project files and brief the next team on what they need to know, the project manager doesn’t know what’s going on and the new team can’t figure out where everything is.
  • Communication issues affecting project performance. Projects fail, get canceled, or get delayed for many reasons. But drill down to the core issue, and you’ll probably find that most of these team problems are caused by team members who couldn’t communicate properly or find common ground. 

All these issues come at a cost, and it’s not just in lost morale.

The most expensive team problem: bad communication

Poor project communication has very real and tangible costs to your company. Based on our experience, we’ve calculated the time-wasting costs to be as follows:

  • Each poorly-executed meeting makes the team lose an average of 10 hours due to unclear goals and scattered efforts.   
  • Every hour of wasted work makes the team lose 20 hours
  • Each time a botched handoff occurs, it costs the team 50 hours of clarifying information and getting on-track.
  • Each delayed/canceled/failed project costs 100 hours of work.
  • If your company has more than 250 people, the costs for each of these scenarios get doubled.

That’s a staggering amount of productive work lost, all due to bad communication, one of the worst team problems.

Shouldn’t you fix that?

Tips for eliminating common team problems

Don’t worry if your team is suffering from these problems. You can get your company in top shape again with just a few carefully applied changes.

Make your meetings more efficient

Meetings can be a curse if they’re not run effectively. Observe the following rules when planning or running a meeting:

  • Start and end meetings on time: Even students need to start classes on time, so why are you letting your meetings creep into different time slots? Hold firm to the proposed start and end times. Be considered of other people’s schedules and learn how to fit the agenda into the designated time slots.
  • Have an agenda and stick to it: It helps to have a common agenda format to establish structure so that team members know what to expect.
  • Don’t get sidetracked: If an unplanned conversation comes up, table it for another time (or add it to next meeting’s agenda).
  • Use Needed/Optional attendance standards: Sometimes you would like to invite people to meetings out of courtesy, or because it would be good for them to know what’s going on. In those cases, mention if a person’s presence is “needed” or “optional” in the meeting invitation. “Optional” allows the attendee to judge for themselves whether or not their attendance is required.

Clearly communicate work changes

Any significant changes to your project plan need to be promptly and effectively communicated to the team before they cause problems. We find this is best done using project management tools like Trello or Asana. If it’s not urgent but still warrants deeper discussion, you can introduce it as an agenda item during your live meeting. When you communicate the change, make sure you mention the details of the change and identify who is responsible for it moving forward. This helps keep team members on the ball and minimizes botched handoffs. Speaking of which…

Improve how you manage handoffs

The handoff process is potentially one of the trickiest parts of a project. Departing project teams are often afflicted with the curse of knowledge, in which they assume that the on-boarding team already knows information that the original team had to build up over time. This can lead to incomplete briefings, dropped tasks, and mistaken assumptions.At the onset of every new project/end of an existing one, bring both teams together into one place to conduct a thorough turnover meeting. During this meeting, explain each team members’ function and recognize all contributions made by the original team. Give the on-boarding team plenty of time to ask questions, especially between counterparts with specific concerns.

A dedicated project management system helps document everything up to this point and manage timelines moving forward. Encourage teams to make a habit of updating the system with new information whenever possible.

Bad team collaboration wastes hours and bleeds morale. But if you leverage the above tips you’ll be able to plug any glaring holes in communication and keep a tight ship. After that, you can start looking into ways to turn expended effort into efficient, cost-saving processes.