Planning in five minutes

Are you a manager?  If so, you are accountable for providing the organisation and your people with a plan for the work of your area.  It’s not a bonus thing to do if you get time for it, it’s actually one of the things you are paid to do.

So here’s how you do it.

Write down a) where your area needs to end up at a future point, then b) how it got there.  How far into the future?  Use this simple guide:

• If you run a frontline team, write down what’s been completed at the end of the year, both in terms of business-as-usual volumes and any new stuff you’ve done.  Now write down what the team did to achieve that (what training, methods, techniques, layout, rosters etc. got them there).  Your job is about doing it better. Read more…

Stop happying and start helping

“HAPPIER EMPLOYEES ARE MORE PRODUCTIVE” screamed recent headlines as a study from the University of Warwick hit the streets.  Music to the ears of some HR practitioners who see their role as Entertainment Officers with the responsibility of making work fun for employees, rather than their actual role of assisting managers to provide the conditions to lift productivity.

I don’t think the study is necessarily wrong.  An employee that does not feel that their organisation respects them, that can’t trust the organisation to not cause them harm, and who gets treated in a way that does not feel fair is never going to put their best effort forward.  And they’re not going to be happy.

But to conclude from the study that organisations should provide chocolates and bean-bags or offer free meditation sessions for every employee is simply not valid. Read more…

How to take the confusion out of your people’s career development

There is a simple way to sort out the career development of your own direct reports – stop doing it!

Asking a manager to take accountability for both the output and behaviour of their people as well as considering their future aspirations is asking a lot.   But….people knowing that the organisation has someone concerned with their future beyond their current role (even if it means not leaving the current role)  is a key part of creating the trust that ultimately sees people being willing to provide their full commitment.

So who is that someone?  We use the Manager-once-Removed, put forward by Elliott Jaques in a number of his works.   The Manager-once-Removed, or MoR is your boss’s boss.  Your skip-level manager.  We make each MoR accountable for building the pool of talent that sits below their own people,  that is their skip-level reports.   Read more…

The highest returning recognition program I know

Recognition programs.  We make them hard.  And we make excuses.  Meanwhile our people, who are actual human beings, would simply like to be recognised for what they are doing.

So while you’re waiting for the ‘reward and recognition program’ which you know is never going to emerge,  lets get on with it.  Here’s a simple recognition program that simply works; it has the highest rate of return I know:

1. Hand out a block of 50 post-it notes to each manager
2. The  use of them is for their people to unexpectedly find, whenever they have done something that was particularly effective, a post-it  on their screen saying  ‘great work on [INSERT CURRENT INITIATIVE], thank you’.
3. Inform each manager that the block needs to be used over the coming 12 months, and it has to be for actual effective performance.

That’s it!   Read more…

Four fundamental acts of leadership that will instantly help your people

Are you a manager?  Great!  You’ve got the chance to improve the lives of those that work for you by doing these four simple things.

1) Remind everyone of the context they’re working in.

What I’m talking about here is the environment you and your team are dealing with.  You might think this is obvious, but the reason you’re the manager is to make this stuff obvious.  Want an easy spot to start?  Ask your own manager what they’re dealing with.  This creates the wider context in which you and your people work.

Do it now:  Open your calendar and schedule a meeting with all of your direct reports.  Topic: Context.  Read more…

Five signs your planning is going well

Tigers have outstanding plans

Here are five signs that show if your organisation or division’s planning is going well:

1) The CEO picks up the whiteboard marker

The reason they were chosen for the job is because they were deemed to have the capability to create, communicate then deliver a future by focusing the efforts of hundreds or thousands of people.  While they need input from all the minds around the table, the final plan is theirs, and theirs alone, and this starts from articulating their initial thoughts.

2) The word ‘develop’ is not seen 

The purpose of a planning day isn’t to agree to develop a plan, it’s to actually come up with a plan. Read more…

Baby and bathwater

There’s a trend going on to reject managers and management, the latest being Zappos, a subsidiary of Amazon.  And fair enough when we get definitions of ‘manage’ that read like this:

“To direct or control the use of”
“To have control of…” 

I’m pretty sure you’re like me in that you don’t like being controlled.  Or used.  Or commanded for that matter.   So if we get too much of this, we leave, or even worse, just show up with a blank stare and look forward to lunch.

No wonder management has a bad name, and it’s enabler – hierarchy. Read more…

Good enough is good enough

Since November I’m now a father of two, and for me being a parent is a pendulum between trying to do it 100% right at one end then at the other getting tired and frustrated at the unrelenting inexorable workload that seems like it will never end.

I was discussing this with someone who gave me a great lesson in the old principle that you teach best what you need to know yourself.  He simply said “what’s wrong with good enough“?

A light bulb went on.  Not of the ‘I’ve had a great idea’ variety, but the illumination that says ‘wake up you idiot.’ Read more…

Do you actually rate employees on whether you like them?

Do you hire people and rate their effectiveness on whether they can do the work, or on whether you like them?

Before you answer, ask yourself who you rate as having the better playing career in tennis – Pat Rafter or Lleyton Hewitt?

Let me give you some information on actual performance on our two candidates: Read more…

The question for managers to answer

“What do you want your people to do?”.

That’s the question I often ask when I’m helping managers with their accountability to lead their people (not optional by the way):

I usually get pretty good answers of the activity variety – the various things that solid employees would be seen doing as they go about their work.  Things like “liaise with customers, build relationships, deliver sales, plan projects”, and the old chestnuts of “deliver a framework” or “develop a strategy”.  Which is why I then ask this question:

“And if they do a fantastic job, what does the company get?”. Read more…