If you were actually trying to be unproductive, what would you do? If someone were watching with a video camera from your ceiling, what behaviors would you change. Laura Stack dishes about participants in her time management seminars telling their secrets of how they waste time. And how their images of an unproductive day often resemble their actual days!
(C) 2009 Laura Stack.
http://www.TheProductivityPro.com
One of the trickiest parts of leadership is finding a way to strike a balance between your employees as subordinates and your employees as real, live people.
Managing relationships with the people you work with (and for) is as important to your everyday productivity as it is to your career.
(C) 2009 Laura Stack. www.TheProductivityPro.com
Listen Now:
Times are tough.
That means businesses everywhere are forced to do more with less. Budgets are being cut. Headcounts are being reduced. In many offices across the country, the only thing that isn’t being reduced is the workload.
It all comes down to finding ways to do more with less – more work with fewer people, bigger projects on smaller budgets.
Just remember that, historically, great opportunities have been found in times of great challenge and hardship. Now, as organizations and as individuals, we all have a (hopefully!) once in a lifetime opportunity to look a global financial crisis in the face and excel in spite of it.
So how do we survive and thrive in an economy that bites back? It’s time to take the gloves off and get lean and mean in 2009.
(C) 2009 Laura Stack. www.TheProductivityPro.com
Listen Now:
Like it or not, social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are here to stay – and it isn’t just kid stuff anymore. In fact, businesses and individuals worldwide keep finding interesting ways to use social networks and other interactive online media to do some pretty amazing things – from building their brands to getting to know their customers. How do you keep it from sabotaging your productivity?
http://www.theproductivitypro.com/newsletters/num115Dec2008.htm visit for full newsletter
Importance of Productivity during Down Times
In the summer of 1900…
• The average life expectancy in the United States was 47.
• A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11, which was an incredible sum because the average American made .22 cents an hour, or about $400 per year.
• Most women only washed their hair once a month and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
• Only 6% of all Americans had graduated from high school.
• Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores.
• There were about 230 reported murders in the US annually.
Amazing what a century will change. Amazing what a few months will change. Growth ends, recession sets in, the stock market stops booming, and companies go bust. The recession is impacting our clients in various ways: we’re hearing of layoffs, hiring freezes, reduced budgets, not rehiring for positions as people leave, go on maternity, etc.
Tough economic times are packing a one-two punch in the workplace.
First, everyone is forced to do more with less (POW!).
Second, you have to do it all while dealing with the nagging anxieties that come with an uncertain economy—threats of downsizing, bankruptcies, cost containment, you name it (POW, again!).
So how do we cope—as leaders and as productive employees?
To succeed and keep their doors open, companies must make more money but spend less money and create greater results with fewer resources. You could attempt to cut salaries, benefits, staff, costs, or the quality of your products—all poor options. A better choice? Increase employee productivity. If you have 10 people, and you can get them to improve their productivity by 10%, you just effectively added another staff person without increasing salary expense—a much more attractive response. To do this, your employees need your help.
First of all, get a grip on your personal negative feelings that result from your lack of control. You DO have control over your friends, your love relationships, and your career. You decide for yourself what’s right and what’s wrong, whether you should stay in this weekend or go out, whether to vote Democrat or Republican. You decide who to see, what to wear, what to eat.
However, you have VERY LITTLE control over the government, economic policy, the rise and fall of the stock market, Mother Nature, international events, and even your company direction. Changes can often disrupt your life and force you to change your plans. Often there is little you can do and yet you are overwhelmingly affected by it. Accepting what is means realizing you can’t control certain things and to stop trying. You can sit around and wonder, “Oh, my gosh, how is this going to affect me? What if I’m next to go? How will I pay the bills? I’m going to be a bag lady!” You stew and worry and literally make yourself sick.
These things will happen. They just will. You will get no warning, and nobody will prepare you. And that’s frustrating. Because people will tell you to “reach for the stars—you can achieve whatever you want!” But they don’t mention you might get hit by a comet in the process.
It’s time to accept the things that you cannot change and focus on the things you can. What can you do?
Give yourself a break. Try to stay positive, despite the doom and gloom. Overdosing on pessimistic, overly dramatic news coverage is just going to weigh you down with bad thoughts—not good for those looking to clear their heads and get things done! It’s important to be informed about what is happening in the world, but you definitely don’t want to overdo it.
For months now, we’ve been bombarded with bad economic news every time we turn on the television or pick up a newspaper. No wonder everybody seems to be in a rut. Follow the daily news as much as you need to so that you feel in the loop and understand the issues that affect your industry. Other than that, it might be time to shut off the TV and catch up on some fun reading or spend some more time with family.
Know your job. Seems like this one should be a no-brainer, but you’d be amazed at how often our responsibilities can change and evolve without our even knowing it. Small incremental changes in how employees or departments do business can add up over time, leaving groups of people that work hard, but aren’t contributing to business objectives as effectively as they once did.
For example, in an effort to provide an exceptional level of service, you might find yourself doing work that is below your pay grade. Maybe you end up doing a large portion of the administrative work associated with a project that needs your input. Consider the value of your time!
Make sure that the things that occupy your time are worthy of your talent and expertise and hold your staff to the same standard. With any project, you should be able to look at the time spent, multiply by the pay rate of the ones doing the work, and still feel that your resources were well spent.
If you’ve got a $40,000/year employee stuffing a bunch of envelopes (even just that one time) or a six-figure manager assembling an important presentation page-by-page, then that work becomes awfully expensive!
These examples might seem outrageous to you, but believe me, it happens all the time. Never make the mistake of treating your time like it’s free. Time and other resources are limited, and we need to treat them that way.
As your company and your department are undoubtedly being asked to do more with less, now is the time to step back and take stock of the type of work you’re doing. Many times roles and responsibilities change, but job descriptions do not. As a result, we end up drifting away from core priorities and towards dong work that, while challenging, doesn’t really meet the organization’s immediate needs.
Now might be a good time to step back and ask that all important question: “Why am I (or we) doing this?” If you can’t answer that, or the answer doesn’t make sense, it’s time to purposefully make a change.
Break habits, build systems. Every office that has been around for any length of time has certain unwritten policies and procedures that exist simply because “we’ve always done it that way.” Now is a great opportunity to analyze your existing business practices and find opportunities to break the bad habits that may be bogging your operation down. Take you entire department for example. Do you and your people have a clear idea of your area’s specific responsibilities? Do you have the confidence and determination to say “no” when someone is asking you to do work that is outside your scope of responsibility?
Perhaps over the years your group took on the responsibility of coordinating quarterly meetings with senior managers. It might have made sense for you to be doing the legwork then, but now that the work has become routine, is it really the best use of your talent and resources?
That’s just one specific example, but there are many more out there. Usually, these are the kinds of tasks and responsibilities that make employees want to ask the all-important “Why am I doing this?” question. Rather than spend another day mindlessly plowing though projects that may or may not be a good use of your time, force yourself to take a hard look at what you are doing and why you are doing it.
If you had to pick three tasks or responsibilities that should be the top priorities for your department, what would they be? Once you know, evaluate how much time and energy is dedicated to those things. You might be surprised at how much time we can spend doing things that aren’t even close to the top of that priorities list.
It isn’t always easy to say “no,” but fortunately, that’s where your systems can come in. As you work to create smooth, efficient systems to do work within your department, you can give yourself some ammunition to fend off others in the company that might be inclined to slide work onto your plate where it doesn’t belong. If you don’t have firm policies and procedures in place to identify who should be doing what, it is much more difficult to make the case for “no.”
Analyze your relationships with other departments. Have trouble turning down work coming from other areas of the company? Now is a perfect time to start fresh and rebuild your department’s boundaries. In a frank and honest way, simply explain to others that in light of the current economic situation, your group has taken a critical look at its daily operations and needs to decline certain types of requests in order to build efficiency.
Perhaps you need to apply a little systems thinking and rethink the flow of information. Is there a procedure in place for other business units to request your assistance or input? If there’s not, you’re probably being hit from all angles with requests that may or may not be the best use of your time. Diagram how work moves through your department. Where does it come in from and go out to other departments? Interview your internal customers and find out how you can provide value through reduced services. Can you provide a report monthly instead of quarterly? Can you cancel the weekly project meeting and get everyone to email updates instead? Question travel requests if you feel a conference call will do. One of the best ways to take stock of the situation is to survey your group, ask them what gets in the way of productivity, and to genuinely ask how they would redesign things if they could.
Find the bottom line. Right now, businesses everywhere are taking stock of their must-haves versus their nice-to-haves. From an organizational perspective, which are you?
Economic necessity can force budget cuts and cost containment that might otherwise be unnecessary. One way to prepare yourself for this reality is to make sure you have a good understanding of how you and your people contribute to the company’s bottom line.
Sometimes, it’s easy. If you work in sales, for example, the correlation between what you do every day and the company’s financial success might be very straightforward—my group sells our most profitable product, which makes the company money.
Sometimes that correlation is not so obvious. If you operate in a support role, like Human Resources, you may want to start looking at your various responsibilities and deciding which among them have the greatest influence on the company’s bottom line—either by somehow driving revenue or by controlling expenses. Perhaps you help contribute to developing talent within the company, which clearly has an impact on the overall success of the organization. Employee development always seems to be one of the first things to go during down economic times, but this is not the time to reduce training if you’d like to get more work from fewer people. Or maybe you’re managing clerical or administrative functions that would be expensive to secure elsewhere.
If you can’t draw a line from what you do each day to the financial well-being of the company, then it might be time to do some hard thinking. Your other contributions might be valuable, but in difficult economic times, corporate leadership often becomes must more focused on dollars and cents, for better or for worse.
Where am I going with this? If it isn’t obvious how your contributions benefit the company, be prepared to explain how they do. If you CAN’T explain why certain aspects of what you do are valuable, then it’s time to stop doing them.
At the end of the day, productivity is about more than getting things done. It’s about getting the RIGHT things done and getting them done efficiently.
Make it a productive day! (TM)
(C) Copyright 2008 Laura Stack. All rights reserved. www.TheProductivityPro.com
I recently interviewd Dave Kutayiah, SR. VP of HR at ING Clarion Partners about how to increase employee productivity during down times. I specifically asked him,”How do you get more work out of fewer people?” He gave me permission to share his reply, because I believe my readers will also benefit:
Laura,
I am currently going through the same scenario with my HR team and my business partners are experiencing the same due to a recent workforce reduction.
In a case like that, as a manager, you have to do the following:
- ensure everyone understands why the team is leaner and meaner,
- make sure everyone understands the strategy or gameplan and how they fit into the refined organization,
- reinforce the importance of each team member and the fact that the stakes are much higher than before,
- define your expectation for each member as well as the collective group,
- inform them of the accountability framework that you are putting in place (ie consequence at an individual level if they don’t get the job done according to the new rules of engagement),
- identify resources that they may access to help get the job done, and
- ensure they know that you are supportive, available and understanding of the limitations of the smaller team, but you see opportunities for them to step up and take on stretch assignments and learning opportunities that might have otherwise been more limited with a larger team.
Dave G. Kutayiah
Senior Vice President
Human Resources
ING Clarion Partners
John discusses an interview he had with Laura Stack The Productivity Pro®, Inc. on her 6-D email approach.
“Imagine this; you are deep in thought, tackling an important project, you are in the zone – then…’ding’…the echoing sound of your email inbox, that’s right, you’ve got mail. Your thought process screeches to a hault, your mind shifts, you think ‘nah, I’ll check it later’, but what if it’s important? What if it is crucial information? Or, what if it’s an amazing discount offer from your favorite online retailer…? Doesn’t matter, you’ve now lost focus on the task at hand and reach for the mouse. How many times does this occur throughout your day? I bet it happens often enough, that if you added up all of the diversion of time wasted you could calculate that into money lost…”
Stop Trying to Be on Time!
Victor Borge, the Danish humorist and musician, was well into a performance when a woman came in late, fighting her way through the rows to her seat near the front. Borge stopped playing and as she proceeded—trampling over people, rustling, and disturbing her way to her seat—he said (much to her chagrin, as all eyes focused on her ill-timed arrival), “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.” After she sat down, he walked over near where she was sitting and said, “Where are you from, Ma’am?” “Fifty-Seventh Street,” she said. “Well, Lady, I’m from Denmark, and I was here on time.”
While Borge might have been trying to get a laugh from his audience, his obvious annoyance speaks to the principle of Preparation in Mark Sanborn’s newest book, The Encore Effect: How to Achieve Remarkable Performance in Anything You Do, which I’ll discuss in this brief article. In the 16 years I’ve been speaking professionally on the concepts of personal productivity, one of the biggest complaints I hear from leaders who bring me in to speak to their employees on performance is something around “the inability to meet deadlines, always being late, constantly running behind, or being forgetful”—a performance that is hardly remarkable.
People are much more irritated by lateness than you can know or they will admit; it can dampen everything from promotions and raises to friendships. Late people crowd you, physically and mentally. When people show up late, it undoes your schedule and disrupts your day. Showing up late or sending something in late—no matter how well done—still means a black mark against you.
I consider myself blessed to be close friends with Mark and his wife, Darla. Since we only live a few miles apart, our families frequently enjoy spending time together. At a recent 4th of July barbeque at our home, Mark joked with me about the already-cut-up plates of tomatoes, onions, pickles, and lettuce, wrapped in plastic, and waiting in the refrigerator. I joked back, “Why, I’m just following the principle of Preparation from your book!” Does a simple act of slicing burger fixings in advance make for a better barbeque? I think so. Being unprepared would have meant trying to cut everything up while the burgers got cold. I still would have been “on time,” but I’d be half listening to them and missing pieces of conversation while focusing on my task.
This is the source of many people’s lateness, I believe: they are trying to be on time. On page 17 of The Encore Effect, Mark defines average performance as, “the best of the worst and the worst of the best.” He says further, “These performers are the best of the mediocre middle, neither hot nor cold but lukewarm. The problem is that average performance doesn’t get you noticed.” Simply being on time doesn’t get you noticed, because it’s fairly typical. It just doesn’t stand out. It’s okay…it’s just expected…yawn. Don’t be simply “average”! So don’t be on time: be EARLY.
Mark’s principle of Preparation—planning in reverse—speaks to this concept. I had to chuckle at his story of the fishermen on page 61. It reminded me of cutting up tomatoes before the barbeque. Being prepared means you do things EARLY. Not on time. Early. Done in advance. Proactive. Forward looking. With a long-term focus. We’re not talking ridiculously early here, in a way that inconveniences your host when you arrive for a party. It’s a way of thinking, a way of being, a way you frame your behavior.
The process of finding and seizing “The Crucial 5 Percent” (page 64), applies Preparation to people in this way:
1. “Late” people are perpetually behind on everything.
2. “On time” people arrive or finish a minute or two ahead or behind the goal.
3. “Early” people are remarkable and are prepared for everything.
Imagine how life would be if you were always so prepared that you arrived early everywhere, for everything. You would:
• Get the first choice of many things,
• Gain admiration and respect,
• Are able to relax and not sweat,
• Get good press and publicity, and
• Have a bit time to relax, read, or return a call.
My point is that you can never really be on time…just barely on one side or the other…so you’re never totally trusted, no matter how skilled you are. Being early makes you look remarkable and demonstrates to others you can be depended upon. Being late, however, makes people wonder if you’ll be on time next time.
Mark distinguishes between “routine” and “remarkable” on page 18. I couldn’t agree more and would frame it in this manner:
• Routine “on time” people communicate through their actions, “I might not make the next deadline.” “I’m barely in control.” “I’m not looking beyond the moment.”
• Remarkable “early” people communicate through their actions, “I don’t need deadlines.” “I’m in complete control.” “I look ahead.”
(We won’t discuss late people, since that belabors the obvious.) In trying to be early, don’t go out and simply set your watch five minutes fast to try to fool yourself, because psychologically, you know it is five minutes fast, and make up for it anyway. Keep your clocks on the correct time. Preparation is all about planning. Instead of thinking, “I have to be there at 9:00 AM,” think, “I will plan on arriving at 8:45.” Then work backward. How long should it take you to get there? Add a buffer in case there’s traffic. What time would that require you to drop off the kids at daycare? What time would you have to get them up in order to make that happen? What time do you have to get up to make that happen? And what will you do if you arrive even earlier than 8:45? Be prepared to pay bills, make calls, read a report, or write thank-you notes.
Before you close shop for the day, ask yourself, “What’s coming up next week?” “What can I get out of the way now?” Before you retire for the night, go over the next day. Know exactly where you need to be, what you need to have with you, and have everything laid out. Have clothes selected, school papers signed, lunches made, briefcase packed, and schedule outlined. As Mark says on page 58, “The future we experience depends on the preparations we make today.”
By preparing in this way, you enable yourself to be early. Soon, you won’t have “deadlines,” because they will be unnecessary. Deadlines eliminate all the job of accomplishment as you work for the deadline, not the completion of a project or task. Deadlines were made for people who would not get things done without one. You, on the other hand, are prepared, a remarkable performer, deserving of an Encore performance.
Stop being on time!
© 2008 Laura Stack. Laura Stack is a personal productivity expert, author, and professional speaker who helps busy workers Leave the Office Earlier® with Maximum Results in Minimum Time®. She is the president of The Productivity Pro®, Inc., a time management training firm specializing in productivity improvement in high-stress organizations. Since 1992, Laura has presented keynotes and seminars on improving output, lowering stress, and saving time in today’s workplaces. She is the bestselling author of three works published by Broadway Books: The Exhaustion Cure (2008), Find More Time (2006) and Leave the Office Earlier (2004). Subscribe to her free productivity newsletter at www.TheProductivityPro.com.
Today I feature an article by guest columnist Rosa Say and her blog Managing With Aloha Coaching. If you enjoy the article below, I suggest you subscribe to her blog.
If I am hard pressed to recommend one and only one tool as THE most essential one in every manager’s tool kit, there is no question for me what it will be.
It is the very first tool I teach new supervisors (and any struggling manager) to use;
No matter the industry they are in.
No matter the country they are in.
Whether they are new to their positions or seasoned pros.
Whether they have just one employee or thousands.
Whenever it is calm, and they are caught up.
Whenever it is frenetic and crazy, and they can’t see that light at the end of the tunnel.
Pretty much no matter what the circumstances are.
And get this – even more than my beloved Daily 5 Minutes®.
The One Tool that every manager must work with, and work with daily, is this:
A simple list kept easily and best with pencil and an 8×10 sheet of paper folded into three columns.
This is not just any list, but a very special one.
It is the list that will endear every manager to every employee, every boss, every supplier or vendor partner, and every customer.
It is the list that can single-handedly reinvent a manager’s reputation, as it simultaneously functions as that manager’s best training and coaching architect.
At the top of this list is its name, and right beneath that, as the headings of its three columns, are all the instructions managers will need.
This magic manager’s list is called, THE FOLLOW-UP I NEED TO COMPLETE.
Those headings of its three columns are,
When management is a calling (as it should only be) managers work more for other people than they do for themselves. The work they do for others IS the work they do for themselves, for when they elevate the human condition, improving it as it aches to be improved, they are most fulfilled in the work they are most needed for, discovering that being a manager can be the most satisfying and rewarding work that exists.
When employees cry out to me that their managers “don’t know what they are doing,”
or “are never around when we need them”
or “are too poorly trained; it’s like we have a revolving door of management trainees here”
or “don’t really care about us”
or “always seem to be working on the wrong things at the wrong times”
or “said they’d take care of it, but we all know what that means”
… the complaining and whining goes on and on… nine times out of ten I will discover that the manager they are referring to has lost all credibility due to a horrible lack of follow-through. They may start with the best of intentions in very sincere conversations, but they have no reliable system for finishing well, and they are not held accountable.
On the other hand, the managers with exceptional follow-through are referred to as “the great ones.”
A key point is that great managers don’t necessarily do all the work and tasks involved; what they do is orchestrate them well, and they keep work flowing, moving all road-blocks out of the way, human and otherwise. They work to remove any obstacles or adversity (or excuses and yeah-buts) and they communicate to everyone involved about status and progress consistently and reliably.
If you are a manager, is that what you do?
Let’s talk a bit more about those three columns;
1. What I must Do to Honor my Word
This column is described this way because a conversation with someone is likely to be what will trigger the entry you are making. What did you agree to follow-up on? This column will teach managers to “eat an elephant one bite at a time.” A common reason good intentions will fall apart is because we’ll make promises that are way, way too big for us to keep. Using this list over time, managers learn to work from conversation to next conversation and tear issues, problems, and projects into doable baby steps. Then the following column becomes a simple status-check conversation of “Here’s where we are now, what should we work on as our next steps, and how much time will that need?”
2. Who I need to Follow-up with, and By When
This may seem obvious, but in my investigations of trip-ups that have occurred, I am amazed at how many times a manager did follow up, but never reported back to the person they’d made their commitment to. Their reputation and credibility has gotten marred by a bad assumption that “the results will speak for themselves.” Well, not really, and not always. In fact, the norm is that they seldom do. This column also helps cure avoidance behavior; if you didn’t get something done yet, just honestly say so and make a new agreement. Don’t just hope the other person will forget about it; trust me, they probably won’t, and the next column helps you understand why.
3. Why it is so Important to Them, and thus, to Me
This column is a teacher called “Empathy Practice,” one whom all managers need to spend more time with. For us to help people best, we need to see a problem or issue in the way that they see it, and since we can’t usually “walk a day in [their] shoes” the best way to understand their point of view is to key in on why an issue is important to them. I coach managers to work with people without robbing others of the engagement, satisfaction, and growth of doing their work for them – the mantra we speak of is “Do with, not for.” There is a balance to be achieved, that this column helps us understand one person at a time.
Management is a situational art. Coaches like me try to help with certain things, and we can provide tools and tips that shorten the learning curve, however a manager’s best teachers, bar none, are their employees and the other people they work with and are committed to. This is the same reason The Daily Five Minutes® works so well: All you need to know about you can find out from the people you work with side by side, day in and day out.
Managers get trained on the job in the flow of the work they are responsible for. When they follow-through consistently, they excel because they deliver well; they exceed expectations. Their word is believed and trusted.
So take this from me; the 1 best list that every manager must work with says THE FOLLOW-UP I NEED TO COMPLETE at the top, and has those three columns. What they write on it, and how consistently they work through it day by day will determine that manager’s success. Just ask their employees.
