Get a Work / Life Balance on Projects - II

Tip 1: One a Week
What do you have a passion for? Is it arts, sciences, sport or something wacky? Whatever it is, try and move heaven and earth to make it happen once a week, every week. Tell yourself: this is the one time in the week where it’s ‘MY TIME’’ - then stick to it. You’ll find it incredibly rewarding. In fact, you’ll start looking forward to that activity each week, because you know you’ll have fun doing it.

Tip 2: One a Day
In addition to the “one a week” activity above, kick off a “one-a-day” as well. Make it something small, to ensure you find the time to do it. It could be “spending 10 minutes reading a magazine”, “going for a walk around the block” or “calling a friend”. As long as it’s enjoyable, then make it a regular time in your daily schedule. This is the hardest tip of them all to keep to, but the most beneficial in the long run. If you’re serious about your work / life balance, then you will be able to find 10-15 minutes in the day (every day) to do this. Oh—remember to make it fun!

Tip 3: Find a Peer
Nothing beats having a peer to do this with you. Find someone who wants to get the same out of life. Open up to them and tell them what you want to achieve. Then work together to motivate each other to achieve the personal goals you set. Meet bi-weekly, to talk about what you’ve struggled with and what you’ve achieved. Then advise each other on what can be done to improve. Peers can provide the support needed to make a real difference in someone's life. So choose your peer wisely and work together to achieve your joint goals.

Tip 4: Rewards
While peers can motivate you, true motivation comes from within. So to help you meet your goals, set yourself a reward for achieving them. The reward doesn’t need to cost a lot, for instance, it might be “taking 2 days off work to share with my family”. The most important thing is that it reward is something that means a lot to you and is worth fighting for.

Tip 5: Feeling Proud
If you can achieve your goals or even get half way there, then feel proud about having done it! We know that it takes a lot of effort to make a change in your life. So feel proud about what you’ve achieved. This sense of pride will show in your work and your personal life. And guess what? You’ll have gained new enjoyment from life, so it has to be good!

Maximizing Departmental Communication

I heard an expression once that rang really true with me. It said, “If an employee is surprised by anything in their performance review, then you are doing a poor job as a manager.” We should all recognize the importance of good communication, but how good are we at executing and employing basic communication principles as managers? If any of your employees come into a performance review unsure of what is going to happen, then you should know you are not doing as well as you could.

Meetings are an Important Communication Tool
Many would say that meetings are a necessary evil in the business world. Meetings, however, are the most common and most critical way information is communicated in a department. It is the role of the department leader to ensure that meetings do not drag on forever and that they are conducted in a practical and productive way. Like many aspects of business, you can’t just hope good things happen by accident. You have to create a clear plan and find ways to measure how well you are executing the plan.
One of the most important jobs of a manager is to ensure lines of communication are open between you and your team. A good manager creates and then continually modifies and updates the plan for communicating through meetings. The meeting plan should be two-pronged: staff meetings and individual or project team meetings.

The Dreaded Staff Meeting
As the department manager it is your job to figure out how to productively execute meetings. Of course you need to have regular meetings with the whole staff, but is that the proper forum for extensive status reviews? Instead of wasting the group’s time, for staff meetings stick to the topics that affects everyone. If you want to keep everyone apprised of activity status, then keep it to a brief overview.

Meet Regularly with Individuals and Teams
Besides staff meetings, you should regularly meet with individuals and with project team members to discuss status, progress, and problems. Now is the time for detailed reports and discussions. Here is the opportunity to ensure priorities are established, decisions are made and clearly communicated, and schedules/milestones are set, reviewed, and changed. Your team members should leave these regular meetings with little doubt of how pleased or disappointed you are in their performance.
The role of these meetings is to provide the various levels of direction, mentoring, and coaching your team members may need. Let’s be honest; regular one-on-one reviews and status reports in comparison with established objectives and milestones are an important tool to keep performance and projects on-track and prevent them from ever going awry.

It’s Up to You
Allow me to reiterate that it is the manager’s job to keep the lines of communication open. The manager should schedule regular meetings as well as communicate agendas and expectations. It is also the manager’s job to ensure the meetings happen, and that they start and end on schedule. It can be very frustrating and a waste of time for a team member to prepare for a scheduled meeting that never happens. Plus, employee’s can feel uncomfortable if they are placed in the role of pestering the manager to conduct the scheduled meeting.
In so many ways, the department leader sets the tone with their behavior. This is certainly true with meetings. If the department manager is always late, is forgetful, or otherwise ignores the importance of meetings, then the staff will assume the same attitude.
It is also the department manager’s responsibility to keep meeting records, including dates, attendees, and minutes. The meeting minutes should be shared with all involved parties, especially important decisions and assigned action items. This is a positive aid in ensuring that what happened in the meeting is documented and communicated.
Meeting minutes can also serve as important records for compliance purposes. For example, they could serve as design review or vendor reviews that meet ISO 9001 record requirements. As part of the manager’s meeting plan, there should be a plan (and basic format) for how meeting minutes should appear, where and how they are stored, and what record requirement they meet.

And How Are YOU Doin’?
As with all plans and objectives, the only way to know how well you are doing is to regularly measure and compare them to the plan. For meetings, objectives could revolve around length, agendas, and carrying them out according to the schedule. If you are not doing well in keeping your meeting plan on track, then there could be a direct relationship between this and other issues with performance in the department.
Find a positive way to make meetings work for you and your department. Then your low performing team member will not be surprised by the poor review (and perhaps the poor review will even be prevented), and you won’t be surprised by a resignation letter of a top performer because they are frustrated and dissatisfied.

Learning Operational Assessment to Improve Department Management

Taking over a department can be challenging. You can see the potential, but if the department was not well-managed in the past then it may be in disarray. Disorganization is only the start of the problems. The staff may be demoralized and unproductive, goals are not understood – let alone being met. How do you get things on track?

Operational Assessment as a Management Tool
Operational assessment is one way to manage your way out of such a mess. With operational assessment you work your way through a logical sequence of steps to get your department back on track. The first step is to understand what the ultimate goals of the department should be, followed by firmly grasping what the department is actually doing. Now you can use this information to help get the department started down the right path.
The assessment begins by understanding requirements. Who are your customers…they could be internal customers or external customers or a combination….it doesn’t really matter. Identify the customers and then identify clearly what they want. You may think you know….but have you asked them lately? Technology is changing methods all over the globe. Are you really sure you know exactly how the customer is using the product? A combination of simple surveys and in-depth interviews can help you collect the needed information.

Know Your Customer!
This leads to another important concept….you want to talk to your customers regularly, but you also may want to watch and observe how your customers use your product. They might not really know specific pieces of information to share with you that would be helpful, but observation could make certain changes … changes that will make it easier for you and your customer. These kind of efforts drive satisfaction and loyalty, but they also improve effectiveness and efficiency.
Taking the perspective of the customer leads to knowing what the customer wants and values. This information is very valuable for operational assessment. Are you focusing on doing things that add value to the customer? Are you wasting time, effort, and/or material doing things the customer doesn’t care about, or worse, doesn’t want to start with? Focusing on doing the things the customer wants and eliminating wasted efforts is key to creating an effective and efficient operation.

The Importance of Measurement
Now that you know what is important; how well are doing in these areas? The next important step is creating clear objectives….specific measurable items that provide key performance information. Collecting data on performance should be part of everyone’s job. It is easy, however, to get off track and create complicated measurements that generate difficulty and confusion…and in turn causes departments and staff to lose focus, not gain it. The key here is to find objectives and measurements that are meaningful and not overly difficult.
Frequently departments are collecting data that is similar to what is needed; it is just not being collected or employed properly or fully. Finding ways to easily collect important performance data without encumbering or over burdening an already busy staff is one of the biggest challenges of a manager, but a very important one. Don’t be afraid to modify or change things that aren’t working. Pay attention to what is happening with the data and be flexible. If the data is too difficult to collect or is not being employed properly, it won’t be long until the staff realizes that collecting data is not really important, and they will abandon it.
Now that you are focused on clear objectives that are important to the customers and you have ways (measurements) of knowing how well you are doing in these areas; the assessment part becomes easy. Where are the gaps? What gaps should have priority? Trying to fix everything at once can cause the staff to lose focus again.
Getting staff buy-in also bears mentioning here. As always with good management – honest communication is the key. Be clear that the goal of using assessment to improve the department is not to “fix” people; it is to improve the system and the environment that people function and operate in. The ultimate goal is to make a better system that will make things easier and clearer for the staff. If you can communicate and follow through with these goals, and not fall into the trap of using measurements for “gotcha’s,” then most people will follow your lead and fully participate.

Creating Effective Management Systems

When first taking a management position in an organization, it can be difficult to fully grasp exactly what your role is and how to fulfill it. The sad truth is that many of us have seen mostly negative examples of management and management styles, and few positive ones. Without proper role models it is difficult to step into those shoes.

Discover What is Important

The most important thing to understand when leading a team or a department is to figure out exactly what needs to be done in order to be considered “successful.” This information, unfortunately, often isn’t made clear to department managers (see reference to negative management examples above). You may have to figure it out for yourself.

Once you understand your organization’s stated and unstated goals, then you can start creating plans to fulfill them. Rarely do good things just happen by chance, and lack of a plan usually results in wasted efforts and poor results.

Involve your team members. Communicate and clarify the goals of the department with them, and even be honest about what is stated and unstated in the organization. Most team members who are critical thinkers already know this, but you can gain respect with an honest approach. Even the best of plans fall short and need updating and revising, but a plan based on a consensus as a starting point gives the department direction.

Plan to Fulfill Important Elements

Planning should include aspects like what documentation is needed (policies, procedures, forms, and records), necessary meetings as well as who should attend and the typical agenda. Plus, considerations of timing and responsibilities are all key elements of planning. Most importantly, what aspects of performance should be measured and reviewed regularly.

With a plan in place, the next step is to develop action models. Flesh out the plan with more specific details. Highly specific elements of processes and tasks should be documented in procedures, work instructions, and training materials. They should include key elements for success and accepted best practices.

Part of this phase is to regularly audit and review documentation so that it reflects the actual practices and preferred methods. Developing procedures and other documents that that only reflect blue sky thinking means, in the end, there is a good chance they will be ignored and soon grow outdated and useless. Avoid this pitfall by being realistic to start, but plan to continually improve. Then follow up the creating of documentation with training and auditing. Ensure that team members are aware of what documents and forms/records apply to them, and they know where to find them and how to use them.

Another key element in this phase is to ensure the team members have the resources they need. Do they have the needed skills and training? A plan that ensures everyone receives periodic training encourages a learning environment. This is especially true with technology and software applications. People become complacent and comfortable with the way they are doing things, when some simple changes could allow a more automated approach that would actually make their job easier. Training and education can foster innovation.

Regularly Review Performance

Finally, regularly review what is going on. Is the plan working and does it align with overall organization goals? Are your activities fulfilling the plan? Do audits show that procedures are being followed and that they are kept up to date? Do your performance measurements really give insight into how your department is doing?

This type of review puts you right back at the discovery phase (do you really understand what is going on?) and the cycle starts all over again. And each time you move though the cycle you should be able make at least small improvements.

Now you are managing by objectives, measuring what is important, reflecting on it, and then trying to find ways to be better (while understanding that no one will ever be perfect). That sounds like the formula for success.

Get a Work / Life Balance on Projects - I

What is a “Work / Life Balance”? To us, it’s “getting the maximum enjoyment from your work time and personal time, every day”. This means really enjoying the time you have at work, and the time you spend after hours, so that you’re getting the most out of what life has to offer. The reverse of this is not enjoying your job, and not having a personal life. If you’re in that camp, then read these tips to get back on track:

Tip 1: Prioritize

Sit down over a nice warm drink and ask yourself this question. “If this was your last day on this planet and you were reviewing your adult life to date, then what would you say about it and what would you wish you’d done differently?” Think long and hard about this question, then write down your answer. Now set out a clear vision for what you’re going to do differently, from this point onwards.

Remember, you may not need to make radical changes to improve your life. It’s usually just about priorities. Write down a new set of priorities for your life, ones that mean the most to you.

Tip 2: Set Goals

Now you need to set yourself 3 personal goals, to help you “get the maximum enjoyment from your work time and personal time every day”. For example, your goals might relate to your physical health, your personal time or the way you approach your work. The goals must together help you to achieve your perfect work /life balance (as defined above).

Tip 3: Watch your Hours

It makes sense that to achieve a perfect work/life balance, you need to enjoy both your work, and your personal life. If you work around the clock, then you may not get the time to have a personal life. So try and balance your work time, family time and personal time, so that you actually make time to achieve your goals.

Tip 4: Look after Yourself

You should now set out a health plan for the next 2 months, to make sure that you look after yourself as best as you can. Set simple goals for eating the right foods, exercizing 2-3 times a week and doing the little things that make you feel good. If you feel great, then you’ll gain tons of new energy you never new you had before, and you can throw this new energy into things that make you feel even better.

Tip 5: Socialize

We’re not all “social butterflies” but it’s a well known fact that socializing with good friends is a great way to reduce stress. Make a special effort to make a new friend sometime soon. It may sound corny, but new friendships often add spice to life.

These 5 tips will help you to get the most out of what life has to offer.

Improving Ethics in the Business

Corporate scandals in recent years have lead to a flurry of changes in how we conduct business at many levels. The federal government has increased regulations for companies producing financial reports through the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), and internally many companies have increased the responsibility of the Board of Directors in overseeing the managing executives.
Still, many stock holders, business owners, managers, and even employees express concern over whether their organizations are ethical and whether members at all levels hold themselves to a high standard of conduct. How can you improve the confidence you have in your organization’s ethics? There are several basic steps you can take.

Create a Plan
The first step, as should be the case with any initiative, is to create a clear plan that focuses on addressing particular situational needs of your organization. While each plan should be unique to fit the organization, typical activities would include items such as improving the hiring process, clear communication of the ethics policy and codes of conduct, establish a systems of checks and controls to ensure wrongdoing is discouraged and discovered in a timely manner, and finally a clear policy and procedure for investigating and handling breeches in ethics appropriate to its level and severity.

Follow through with Action
Once you have identified needed steps to improve the ethical environment of your organization or department, make sure you follow through by caring out the steps. Hold the training classes, circulate the code of conduct annually with each employee signing a statement that they have read it and will comply. Follow the plan for hiring even if it is inconvenient to check references and background.
Where needed, as identified by the plan, develop clear policies and procedures for key processes, and then conduct training to ensure all relevant employees understand the expectations of how processes should be carried out. This could apply to any area of the business, from cash drawer handling to proper disposal of hazardous materials in the production area.
Once again, make sure all ethical needs of the business are being addressed. Owners and executives tend to focus only on cash, accounting, and finance, but, as the above example shows, ethical behavior in all facets of the operation can be just as important.
Clear policies and procedures communicated and followed by organizational members is a critical piece of an internal control.

Ethics Is a Part of the Organizational Culture
Besides developing and executing a plan, the most important way for a business to improve ethics is for the organizational leaders to display the highest degree of ethical behavior in how they conduct business on a day to day basis. Is it fair to require employees to meet expectations of the highest ethical conduct, when day in and day out, they see the leaders of the organization showing little concern for customers, delaying payment of invoices, and blaming subordinates for their own mistakes?
While establishing codes of conducts and controls is important, many members of an organization will take their ultimate ethical cue from those who they feel are responsible for making decisions and setting the tone. The bottom line is that the organization will be as ethical as its leadership. So when developing policies and codes of conduct, the first ones in line for buy in and incorporating them into daily activities should the ones in leadership positions.