Managers - Don’t Answer That Question
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008The miraculous practice of not answering subordinates’ questions. A counter-intuitive strategy for high performance, yours and theirs.
Archive for the ‘Time Management’ Category
Seize Your Time: the breakthrough first step in time management
Thursday, June 5th, 2008A breakthrough first step in time management and becoming an effective manager.
Podcast
Seizing Your Time - the first step in time management
Friday, December 28th, 2007There are lots of books, blogs and gurus on the topic of time management. Many have very good advice. This is no surprise since, as we have noted (as plenty of others have), time is the one resource you can not buy, borrow, or inventory. Time is the one resource everyone needs in order to make a difference. Learning to manage one’s time is the necessary first step in becoming an effective manager.
In recent work with clients on time management, we have taken a new tack on this old problem. Before we even begin to do the necessary work of logging time usage, pruning unnecessary meetings, reports, and so on, we have encouraged clients to simply seize a block of time during the week and get to work on the really important things they feel they need to do to improve their contribution to their company.
It works like this. Look at the next week’s calendar and mark off one or better two hours on some day where there is nothing now scheduled or their are meetings or tasks that really can be skipped. Send an email around to everyone who reports to you announcing the time for your Private Work session. Tell them that you will be working on an important initiative and that barring a fire, you are not to be disturbed until the session is over.
When the hour arrives put a sign on your door or at the entrance to your cubicle, “Private Work Session - Do Not Disturb“. Turn off your email, instant messaging, cell phone, Blackberry, or any other communication device that can interrupt. Sit down at your desk or worktable and get to work on that project that you have not gotten to because of all the other “important” tasks in your day-to-day work life.
Managers who have taken the step to seize their own time have found that they make real progress on their projects and the company does not grind to a halt. They become daring and schedule two or three hours for the next week. Seizing personal work time also energizes their efforts to really learn how to manage their time. They already can see that they can make real progress working on the future of the company instead of constantly balled up in the day-to-day activties of the company. It is a demonstration of the power of spending significant time working on your company instead of just in it.
Meetings - The Drama Model
Saturday, October 13th, 2007Third in a series on meetings.
Think of meetings as dramas. Meetings should follow the basic shape of almost all dramas and movies. Act One sets the scene and hooks us into the action, introduces the characters, tells us what the drama is about, provides us with all of the information that allows us to participate. The Act Two is conflict. Discussions break out, issues parsed, pruned, and analyzed. The Act Three is resolution. The culprit gets his comeuppance, the love interest is played out, and so on.
In the world of organizations, the resolution, Act Three, is usually a set of tasks. Those accountable are clearly noted, deadlines set, resources committed, metrics for success defined, and the date for follow-up put on the calendar.
In a business drama, every formal meeting needs to have an objective, an agenda, time, place, leader, and participants. All of this must be made available to everyone involved before the meeting takes place. This provides the participants with time to review the agenda, gather information, think about the problem, in short, get ready to participate and not just appear at the meeting.
The leader of a meeting needs to think through each act. A key element of Act One is the hook. Everyone must understand very early in the meeting that something significant is at stake. This draws them into the meeting and gets them ready to participate vigorously.
Once you have applied this dramatic model to your formal meetings, think about how you can apply this to the informal meetings. Frequently, in contrast to formal meetings where Act One is crtical, informal meetings fall down on Act Three, the resolution. How often do you walk away from a casual conversation about a project problem and wonder “What was that about and who is really responsible for bringing closure to the problem?”
Meetings - First - Don’t Have Them
Friday, October 12th, 2007Second in a series on meetings:
No matter where you are in the food chain, meetings are critical to success as a manager. It is important to know how to initiate, lead, and participate in meetings. This series of Management Notes on meetings addresses some basic concepts and skills.
First things first - most meetings should not take place.
Any meeting that is about the status of, or problems with, a regular business process or activity is an indicator that you should solve the process problem. Good processes provide status indicators that can be seen by whomever needs to know, without a meeting. Recurrent problems should be eliminated, not treated as a moment for management to rush in to save the day. If you are in charge of, or have influence over a process that is producing meetings, then take those meetings as a directive for you to get to work on fixing the process.
Now is a good point to note that meetings don’t just take place in conference rooms. When a person in your department stops you in the hallway, or props themselves up outside your doorway, and says, “Can we talk about the Big Bonanza Project?”, you are about to have a meeting. When there is a flurry or emails and instant messages about a project, customer, or whatever, you are having a meeting.
Beware of meetings that you as a manger generate. Ask yourself whether your meetings fall into the categories noted above. Be disciplined about any meeting where the key outcome is to “keep you in the loop”.