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Many editorial teams have grown exponentially, even during the pandemic. The problem with this is that some teams quickly felt growing pains with their task management, culture, and even communication. This has led to mismanaged workflows and problems with keeping up with organizational expectations.
Instead of succumbing to growing pains as other editorial teams have, you can keep your team competitive, agile, and efficient just by making the right changes that will fit your individual needs.
Why Do Growing Pains Happen?
It’s simple: scaling is exciting but hard! Many editorial teams still aren’t equipped with the resources and best practices they need to handle growth in a timely manner. This means that while they are constantly getting new members with fresh talents, editorial teams aren’t utilizing their skills as much as they should because they can’t keep up with the productivity, and don’t know how to handle their teams’ new demands.
How to Set Up Your Growing Team for Success
Even if you think that your team’s practices are good now, they can always be better. Learning about what’s available to you will help you accommodate your team’s growth and create work that surpasses your organization’s expectations.
1. Utilize Communication Tools
In 2019, Mio found in their Workplace Messaging Report that 91% of businesses use at least 2 messaging apps. Since many editorial teams have gone remote due to the chaos of the COVD-19 pandemic, that percentage has become higher than what it already was.
Utilizing communication tools is a must for every growing editorial team because they allow for simple bonding, better collaboration, and can even eliminate project inefficiencies. Even if you already are using programs like Slack or Microsoft Teams (which you most likely are), you will still want to explore your options and find different tools that will help you streamline communication efforts even more and keep your large team motivated for your organization’s demands.
2. Automate Workflows and Processes
A 2020 survey conducted by McKinsey & Co. found that 66% of business leaders were using solutions to automate at least one business process. Since editorial teams have had to learn to adapt, the percentage has gone up
As editorial teams grow, it’s vital for them to have proper processes and workflows in place to ensure nothing slips through the cracks. By implementing automated workflows with programs and software sync people and project in one place, growing teams don’t have to worry about not being able to keep up with demands, and they can save time and money that can be reinvested into other areas of their organization.
Automated workflows and processes have been a gamechanger for large editorial teams specifically because they eliminate entire steps from their project management and encourage better productivity. Instead of your team having to waste their time performing repetitive administrative tasks or having to fix project drop-off issues between editing stages, they can focus 100% of their time on creating quality content. Automation takes care of everything else.
3. Update Company Culture
It’s important to remember that company culture evolves as your team evolves. This means that as your team grows and develops new best practices and processes, your company culture will change to reflect that.
To keep your team on the same page and to build rapport, you will need to update your company culture and connect with your team about the changes. Doing this reestablish expectations and keep your team motivated because they’ll understand how all the practices and their work affects your organization’s growth.
4. Be Honest About Gaps Within Your Workflows
Here’s a major secret from some of the largest, most efficient editorial teams out there: admit when there’s something wrong and don’t wait to make it better. If you’re not being honest about the gaps within your workflow now, you won’t be able to make necessary changes and issues will only get worse as your team continues to grow.
As your team becomes larger, you will want to continuously troubleshoot your workflows and processes to find faults. Once you identify them, you can assess their seriousness and how they affect your team’s productivity, and then start to implement the right changes, such as including new software and tools.
For example, many growing editorial teams have started utilizing Multidots’ WordPress plugin, Multicollab for their publishing needs. These teams found that they had gaps relating to communication, keeping track of their members’ productivity, and completing deadlines on time. Multicollab not only closed these gaps, but the plugin also helped them discover smaller issues within their workflows that would’ve continued to go unnoticed.
Don’t Wait to Make Changes
Your editorial team will only continue to grow, so you will want to eliminate any chance for setbacks and risks now. By taking care of your growing pains early, you can guarantee that your larger team will be ready to take on 2022’s demands and are in sync enough to hit all your organization’s goals.
