How to Use Pods to Increase Team Satisfaction and Maximize Efficiency

As you grow fast, it is important parts to keep in mind two vital elements to your success: team satisfaction and an efficient workplace.

We see this all the time in companies that grow fast. Either the team is doing great, but you don’t have that efficiency…. or people aren’t communicating the way you want.

The answer is to use Pods.

A pod is a group of people who are going to take the time to get to know one another, to get a good workflow, and to create those environments that are going to allow your team to be highly, highly productive.

So how do we build pods? Or what are they? What do they look like? Well, I’m a lawyer by trade, so I had legal pods. Think of it as an attorney, a paralegal, an assistant, or maybe one attorney, two paralegals, and an assistant. It depends on the type of practice area. You might also have intake pods, or sales pods, or marketing pods. These are groups of people who are focused on particular tasks or particular elements or service areas, like my legal team.

Why are pods so efficient and so vital to your growth? Well, as you grow, you bring different people in from different areas, different backgrounds, and different perspectives, which is exactly what you want. However, we also struggle with communication. We struggle with the team not knowing who’s going to get something done and by when. That’s where you bring in those systems. But when the team starts working together in a recurring pattern, they get to know the nuances of one another. They know their colleague only takes a few minutes to get that done. Or they know which elements will be an overnight production. They get to know each other and their work styles, their formats, and they can guide their workload based on knowing what’s coming down the pipeline.

When you do anything multiple times in a row, you get more efficient.
When you know the people working around you, you get more efficient.
When people follow a very succinct checklist or process, they get more efficient.

These are the things that will allow your pods, these teams of people, to work more effectively, more efficiently, and with greater team satisfaction.

Greater efficiency equals greater productivity. Greater productivity creates greater profitability. These are all vital elements to running a successful business.

I have counseled hundreds of businesses in building out pods and what we have found, what the data has shown us, is that a business will grow and increase their profitability by 3 to 5 % when they switch to using pods. This is because when build pods, have the right systems, and everyone knows WHO Shall do What by When, that is when you have both a thriving team and maximize efficiency.

So if you want to increase team satisfaction and maximize efficiency, start building pods! Start structuring your business so that you can grow and know that you’ll maintain a great atmosphere and culture while also maximizing the efficiency and profitability of the company.

Share below, what are some of your favorite structures for your teams?