Organising teamwork: best practice

Organising teamwork becomes a real challenge when everything seems urgent, priorities are constantly shifting and the number of tools on hand keeps growing. How can you avoid losing focus, coordinate activities more effectively and reduce the mental load on both the manager and the team? Discover practical methods for clarifying priorities, streamlining collaboration and boosting collective efficiency. An overview with Julie Garnier, a certified coach and trainer.

With more cross-functional organisations and multiple projects, teamwork is becoming more complex, thereby reinforcing the manager’s role. It is no longer simply a matter of planning, but of making the work transparent, clarifying priorities, aligning the team and simplifying the organisation. A well-structured organisation improves efficiency, reduces mental workload, facilitates decision-making and enables the team to adapt to change.

Organising teamwork: objectives, prioritisation and planning

Effective planning of your team’s work begins with clarifying objectives. When objectives are vague or there are too many of them, they lead to a lack of focus and make organisation more difficult.

On the contrary, explicit and shared priorities make it possible to:

• to channel collective energy
• to make day-to-day decision-making easier
• improve coordination

Setting SMART objectives

SMART objectives can help to make a goal more concrete and shareable. They provide useful guidelines to clarify what is expected.

Sharing out the work

Once the objectives have been set, dividing up the work involves striking a balance between efficiency, development and commitment. This involves clarifying expectations, roles and priorities, as well as the resources and scope available to each person.

To allocate work, the manager can draw on a few pointers :

• What is everyone’s workload?
• Who has the necessary skills and level of independence?
• Who can develop their skills in this area?
• What are each person’s interests and sources of motivation?

Organising priorities

In day-to-day life, everything can quickly seem urgent, especially when demands pile up, which risks causing you to lose focus. Take a step back Being able to prioritise helps to reduce mental load, make decisions more quickly and stay focused on high-value-added tasks.

  MoSCoW method is particularly useful at the start of a project. It enables you to:

• to prioritise by distinguishing between what is essential and what is secondary
• to bring all stakeholders into alignment with a common decision-making framework
• to ensure that decisions are made during the course of the project, particularly in response to requests and unforeseen circumstances

Distinguishing between what is urgent and what is important

  Eisenhower matrix It helps you distinguish between what is urgent and what is important, and to take a step back and reassess your priorities. It enables you to move beyond knee-jerk reactions, make more informed choices, and avoid becoming overwhelmed by urgent matters at the expense of high-value-added tasks.

This first step lays the foundations for an effective organisation. But planning alone is not enough: the work must be made visible and continuously adjusted.

Coordinating and adapting activities: two essential steps in organising teamwork

Once the work has been planned, the next step is to map it out over time. The challenge is no longer to add methods, but to make clear choices and maintain a clear organisational structure. Without visibility, it becomes difficult to know who is doing what, what stage the work is at, and where the bottlenecks lie. Difficulties then emerge later on, and coordination becomes more complex. Making the work visible enables everyone to share a common understanding of progress, to identify bottlenecks quickly, to coordinate actions more effectively and to make adjustments more easily. This visibility also reduces the mental load associated with uncertainty and scattered information.

The collaborative working tools also help to visualise the distribution of work. For example, a shared spreadsheet or a colour-coding system can highlight each person’s workload. This makes it possible to quickly identify situations where someone is overloaded or underloaded and to adjust the distribution before imbalances become entrenched.

Organising teamwork using the agile Kanban method

Kanban boards provide a clear overview of task progress and enable you to monitor day-to-day activity and make ongoing adjustments.

But simply keeping track of activities is not always enough: when a project involves deadlines or dependencies, the work needs to be organised over time. A Gantt chart allows you to visualise the stages, their sequence and their deadlines, as well as to anticipate delays.

Planning the project stages using a Gantt chart

For example: when organising a group activity or a project, a Kanban board allows you to track tasks on a day-to-day basis, whilst a Gantt chart enables you to plan the sequence of tasks and manage the work over time.

How do you choose the right tool for organising teamwork?

To choose the most suitable tool, it may be helpful to start by identifying the main requirement:

Main requirement	Objective	Logic	Suitable tool	Examples
Having a clear overview on a day-to-day basis	Knowing what needs to be done, what is in progress and what has been completed, and identifying any obstacles	Flow	Kanban board	Trello, Notion, Jira
Ensuring deadlines are met and planning the sequence of tasks	Visualise the stages, coordinate dependencies, avoid delays	Planning	Gantt chart	Microsoft Project Smartsheet
Working as a team and centralising information	Sharing information, coordinating stakeholders, and monitoring activities collectively	Collaboration	Shared tool	Asana and ClickUp Concepts

If the project is simple and has few dependencies, a Kanban tool is sufficient. As soon as deadlines or interdependencies arise, a planning framework becomes necessary. Modern tools often combine these aspects and allow the same project to be visualised in different formats. Increasingly, they incorporate artificial intelligence features that simplify certain tasks (such as creating lists, prioritising and tracking).

A few pointers to help you narrow down your choice:

Type of tool	Main use	Examples
Simple and intuitive tools	Suitable for those just starting out or for teams who are not very comfortable with digital tools	Trello, MeisterTask
Multi-purpose tools	Enable you to organise information, track tasks and centralise content	Notion, Asana, ClickUp
More complex or specialised tools	Suitable for technical projects or those requiring a high level of coordination	Jira, Microsoft Project

A simple project can be managed using a lightweight tool, whilst a more structured project requires a more formalised approach to planning. A good tool is not necessarily the most comprehensive one, but rather the one suited to the project’s complexity and actually used by the team.

The key is not to accumulate more tools, but to avoid becoming scattered and to choose those that bring clarity. Adding more can make the organisation more complex and waste time.

Making good use of the tools

Before adopting a tool, it is worth testing it over a short period and fine-tuning how it is used (rules, scope, level of detail).

For a tool to be useful:

• clarify its use
• set out simple rules: who updates the information, when, and to what level of detail
• ensure that it is shared and used
• incorporate it into the rituals
• make tasks easy to understand at a glance
• limit the level of detail
• update regularly
• to highlight the obstacles and the information needed to take action

Nevertheless, a tool alone is not enough. Indeed, without coordination, information does not flow smoothly, priorities diverge, dependencies are poorly anticipated, difficulties may be identified too late, and delays can mount up.

That is why the follow-up procedures (meetings, progress updates, one-to-one meetings) enable us to share progress, identify challenges, coordinate activities, decide on and adjust priorities, whilst maintaining collective alignment and strengthening engagement and the quality of relationships.

To ensure that follow-up procedures remain effective:

• clarify their objective
• limit their duration
• to base one’s arguments on concrete evidence
• to provide a forum for expression

And finally.., An effective organisation is not set in stone : it relies on its ability to adapt, drawing on transparency in the work and regular opportunities for discussion to make adjustments at the right time. In changing circumstances, adjustment becomes an ongoing process: the initial schedule evolves, priorities are redefined and the organisation adapts as the work progresses.

In practical terms, this means:

• reprioritise tasks in line with constraints and unforeseen circumstances
• reallocate work according to workload and available skills
• reschedule certain stages or dependencies
• adjust the level of monitoring and the arrangements for coordination

The manager’s role in organising teamwork

Having the right tools and methods is not enough to organise teamwork. The manager therefore plays a key role in creating and maintaining the conditions in which the team can operate effectively.

Create a clear framework to organise the work

Firstly, it is the manager’s responsibility to simplify and clarify the organisation. An overabundance of tools can lead to confusion. Clear choices improve transparency and efficiency: reduce the number of tools, clarify priorities, and limit meetings without a clear purpose. The manager clarifies objectives, roles and priorities to avoid misunderstandings. Organising teamwork means aligning perceptions: this ensures that everyone understands the priorities and the direction. This facilitates cooperation and adjustments.

Simplifying the organisation to improve visibility

[Case study]

Within a project team, monitoring is spread across several tools, with no clear framework. The manager suggests simplifying the way things work.

Managing interactions and disagreements

Communication within the team plays a key role in coordination. Regular opportunities for discussion enable the team to share information, identify difficulties and make adjustments more quickly.

Disagreements can be part of the process, but when left unresolved, they slow down or block decision-making. The manager ensures that these are managed by refocusing discussions on the facts, the objectives and the trade-offs to be made.

Making decisions and driving the team forward

The ability to make decisions is a key element of work organisation. When this ability is lacking, areas of uncertainty arise, leading to hesitation, misunderstandings and a loss of efficiency. Making decisions in good time provides clear direction and prevents uncertainty. This involves setting out priorities clearly, making decisions when necessary and ensuring that decisions are easy to understand.

The point is not to know everything, but to enable the team to move forward.

When making a decision, managers can draw on a number of factors: the level of urgency, the impact on objectives, dependencies and available resources. Clarifying who makes the decision and when helps to restore momentum and ensure confidence in the action taken, whilst reducing the mental strain caused by uncertainty.

To help with decision-making:

• to clarify who makes decisions and on what matters
• set a time to make a decision
• be based on specific criteria: impact, urgency, dependencies
• to accept imperfect decisions rather than adopt a wait-and-see approach

Clarify the decision to improve the flow

[Case study]

Whilst organising a seminar, the team encountered difficulties in defining the process for handling requests. The following year, they made changes to the way they operated.

Supporting long-term commitment

Managers also play a part in shaping working conditions. Providing visibility on progress, recognising contributions, adjusting workloads and ensuring that everyone has the necessary resources helps to maintain motivation in the long term. A sense of purpose, clear objectives and the ability to see how one’s work contributes to the results all help to strengthen commitment.

He also creates the conditions for the team to develop by encouraging dialogue, the feedback and mutual support. An environment in which staff can share their difficulties and learn from their mistakes makes it possible to identify bottlenecks more quickly and improve practices over time.

And what about you – do you really know how to organise teamwork?

To find out whether your approach to teamwork is effective, answer the following questions with ‘yes’ or ‘no’:

	Yes	No
Do your staff have a clear understanding of what the three current priorities are?
Do you have a shared tool that is actually used to track the progress of tasks?
Are roles, responsibilities and decision-making clearly defined within the team?
Do monitoring points enable us to identify bottlenecks quickly and take action?
Do you regularly adjust the distribution of work to take account of workloads and unforeseen circumstances?

How should you interpret your answers?

Count up your «yes» answers before finding out your profile.

4 or 5: your organisation appears to be well-structured and transparent. The challenge now is to maintain this momentum and continue to refine your practices.

2 or 3: some guidelines are in place, but areas of uncertainty may still hinder coordination or increase the team’s mental workload.

0 or 1: your organisation would no doubt benefit from some clarification. Prioritisation, coordination, tools or the allocation of tasks: a few adjustments can quickly improve how the team works together. Training can also help you to develop more effective working practices.

Ultimately, organising teamwork more effectively does not mean changing everything all at once. Testing a tool or method, fine-tuning it and then embedding it in working practices is often more effective than rolling everything out simultaneously. Thus, the aim is not to do more or to optimise at any cost, but to create a clear, shared framework that makes day-to-day work easier. When properly adapted and utilised, organisation reduces uncertainty, eases mental load and minimises the tensions caused by a lack of clarity. It enables teams to work together more effectively and adapt to change.