Archive for January, 2009

As human beings we all have amazing potential.  Sadly over time many of us end up in a position where we get into a rut and a whole batch of our potential lies dormant. 

The question is do you want to be one of the 5% who do something about it?  In my experience, there are 10 keys to start the process of maximising your potential.

1. Take Responsibility

The first key is to take full responsibility for what does or does not happen.  Yes it is easy to produce a list of reasons why you are not doing as well as you would like professionally, personally, financial and in relationships.  Trouble is when you look for external circumstances to justify, all you do is keep yourself stuck

2. Get Clear on What You Want

You really have to choices here.  In first scenario, you can choose to muddle along in the fog and hope that you reach the right destination.  Alternatively, you can get clear on what you want and set specific goals to get the outcome you desire.

3. Believe In Yourself

Yes we all have our doubts and worries about ourselves.  This can either act as a motivator or disempower us.  Believing in yourself is not about being big headed, cocky or brash.  It is about being courageous and willing to do something to move yourself forward.  Whatever you do, don’t let fear be your marketing manager.

4. Believe In Your Product or Service

Whether you are single person business or a leader of a team, department, division or even a whole organisation, you need to believe in the products and services you offer.  Even in functional areas of a business like Accounting, you are providing a service.  You need to believe in that service and the benefits derived.

5. Set Targets and Milestones

Targets and milestones have three major benefits.  Firstly they let you see the progress that you are making.  Secondly they act as a source of motivation to keep you going.  Thirdly they provide the basis for taking corrective action if things are not going quite as you expected.

6. Act, Act, Act

The best laid plans are worthless unless you are willing to take regular and consistent action to make things happen.  Visualising, being open to receiving and aiming high is fantastic but if it is not supported by action it is like building a house on egg shells.

7. View Change Positively

Things are always changing.  What matters is how you respond to it.  People who are learners get curious and start to explore the possibilities.  The alternative is to stand on the platform when the train has already left the station and expect to get somewhere.

8. Focus On What You Do Best

Let’s face it we all like to think that we can do everything and I guess we all have fallen into that trap at one point or the other.  The truth is we all need to find out what we do best, focus all of our energies on those areas and get someone else to look after those things we don’t do so well.

9. Continually Develop

We all know how easy it is to focus on what we have to do now and forget about developing ourselves.  This is this fast road to staying exactly where you are right now for the long term. Decide to invest in yourself in whatever way works best for you, but do not rest on your laurels.

10. Give Yourself Permission

Give yourself permission to try things and occasionally get it horribly wrong.  By giving yourself that permission, you will take risks and that is what leads to results.

Through some simple steps, you can start unlocking your potential.  So where are you going to start?

Decision making is a key role for any manager or leader.  Surprisingly many people struggle when it comes to taking decisions.  This might be due to:

• Fear of failure

• Lack of a structured approach

• Procrastinating

• Lack of clarity

Whatever the barriers, there are 6 steps that you can follow when taking any decision.

1. Problem Definition

Before you can start to take any decisions, you need to be absolutely clear the problem you are trying to reach a decision on.  One simple technique is just to write out in a sentence what the problem is that you need to take a decision on.

2. Assess the implications

All decisions have implications.  If it is a decision at work, it has implications for you, your peers, your team and your superiors.  Depending on the decision (e.g. a promotion at work) it may even have implications for your family, especially if it involves relocation.

3. Explore different perspectives

Perspectives are simply different lenses through which you look at the problem.  By exploring different perspectives you start to get a feel for those that you are most attracted to.

4. Get clear on your ideal outcome

When you are faced with a big decision, it is easy to get lost in the detail and circumstances.  An alternative is to get clear on your ideal outcome and use this ideal outcome to inform your choices.  Imagine you aspire to be a CFO of a Top 100 company.  By having clarity on your outcome, you can make choices on promotions and experience linked to this ideal outcome.

5. Weigh up pros and cons

Another way of looking at a decision is to consider the advantages and disadvantages of each of the options open to you.  Simply listing the advantages and disadvantages of each option is a powerful way of moving forward on decisions.

6. Decide and act

Once you have gone through the previous 5 steps, commit to a choice or course of action and start to make it happen. To avoid procrastination, give yourself permission to be okay with any failings that might arise.

At the end of the day there is no magic formula for decision making.  Following some simple steps and acting can however move you into the realm of effective decision maker.

I delivered a free teleseminar earlier today on transforming productivity and results.  In preparing for the event I was considering the whole myth of the shortage of time.  The reality is that we all have exactly the same amount of time available to us:

24 hours in day

168 hours in a week

744 hours in a 31 day month

8,760 hours in a year

So what really matters is what we do with the time that we have been allocated.  Leave a comment with your top tips and click here to listen to the call replay.

For many managers delegating effectively is one of the toughest challenges they face. 

Reasons Why Managers Don’t Delegate

• Don’t understand the need to delegate
 
• Lack confidence in team to do what they require
 
• Don’t know how to delegate
 
• Tried and failed in the past so have a built in resistance
 
• Like doing a particular job so don’t want to let go of it
 
• Don’t understand their role as a manager
 
• Frightened of making themselves seem easily replaced
 
• Think they have no time to delegate
 
• Have nobody to delegate to

How to Delegate Effectively

• Plan it in advance
 
• Think exactly what you want done

• Consider guidance needed
 
• Brief appropriately and check understanding
 
• Establish review dates and check understanding

• Create a buffer period so that there is time for revisions as required

• Delegate whole jobs, where possible
 
• Inform others who are involved

• Stand back, don’t hover
 
• Recognise work may not be done exactly the way you would do it

• Delegate responsibility as well as task

In truth delegating effectively can transform the results that you deliver.  So what action could you take to start delegating effectively?

Change is part and parcel of life in business these days and many change projects arise out of the need to turn around financial problems.  A business might be facing problems making a profit or liquidity problems around servicing borrowings that it has made to name just a few.  So what common mistakes do people make when it comes to financial turnaround projects?

Mistake 1:  Seeing it as something for the accountants

Yes accountants have an important role to play in financial management in organisations but the reality is that they spend very little of the organisation’s money.  Often when faced with financial problems, non financial managers see it as something to be dealt with by accountants rather than by the whole organisation.

Solution: Start seeing financial turnaround projects as business change projects.

Mistake 2: Trying to rely on quick fixes

Quick fixes such as short term cuts in expenditure or deferring something are clearly important to stop the rot but they are not the route to sustained turnaround of performance.  Think about it, if you had a deep cut that needed stitching to heal properly, you would not merely cover the wound with a plaster or bandage.  You would look for the best long term solution.

Solution:  Use quick fixes as the start point not the end point of financial turnaround.

Mistake 3: Deck chair shuffling

By the term deck chair shuffling, I mean making the easy changes without ever tackling the real issues that are getting in the way of performance. It is easy to delude yourself that you are making a change when in reality all you are doing is making surface level changes within the comfort zone.

Solution:  Make a commitment to keep deck chair shuffling to a minimum and focus energies on the real issues that need tackling, even if they are uncomfortable.

Mistake 4: Short term focus

Anyone can grab the low hanging fruit and achieve short term improvement.  Trouble is that it is only a matter of time before the same problems arise again and the organisation finds itself in a worse position than it already was in.

Solution:  When faced with a turnaround and change situation focus on creating long term sustainable change.

Mistake 5:  Failing to give people enough time

When organisations are facing challenges, it is all too easy to remove the current senior team, bring in the new people and expect them to deliver miracles overnight.  Change, other than that of a short term quick fix strategies takes time. 

Solution:  Give senior people sufficient time to make sustainable change.

Sustainable change is not something that happens overnight.  By avoiding these five common mistakes you can greatly increase the chances of achieving financial turnaround and achieving sustainable change.

I have been running a survey recently on newsletter topics that my readers would find most helpful and motivation is a theme that is continually being highlighted. With so much uncertainty in many industries and sectors right now because of the challenging economic conditions, it is easy to see why keeping people motivated would be a major challenge for managers.

So what would be my top tips for keeping people motivated in these challenging times?

Tip 1:  Make time for people

Yes you might have so much to do that you think you cannot sit down with individuals and your team to discuss challenges and what you can collectively do about them.  The reality is that a short regular meeting can go a long way to keeping spirits up.  It takes little or no time and the payback will be significant.

Tip 2:  Listen more

You might have heard the phrase a problem shared is a problem halved.  In other words sometimes people just need you to listen to and acknowledge their worries and fears, even if they know that there is no immediate answer or solution.

Tip 3: Say thank you

It never ceases to amaze me that managers forget about the cheapest and sometimes most powerful form of motivation which is to say thank you when people have met the deadline, pulled out the stops and generally done that little bit extra to deliver.  Even a two line e-mail can have a positive impact.

At the end of the day keeping people motivated is a key part of your success as a manager right now.  Let me have your thoughts and tips on what works when it comes to keeping people motivated. 

Listening is one of the most highly prized skills in the work place.  Yet unlike reading and writing, we are never taught how to listen.  Improving your listening skills can make a huge difference both at work and more generally in relationships.  Given that you are not trained in listening, what simple steps can you take straight away to develop these skills?

Start Noticing

Chances are that in business you attend a lot of meetings.  It is likely that in those meetings there is a lot of talking but not a lot of listening.  People believe that if they are talking they are contributing.  They therefore make remarks just to feel like they are contributing.

Start noticing how much time you and your team put into listening in the work place.

Avoid Interrupting

How often do you see someone in full flow explaining something important when another person interrupts them?  Chances are that you (and indeed all of us) interrupt from time from time to time.  The problem is:

• The other person is less likely to listen to you

• If you interrupt when another person is in mid flow they lose their train of thought

Set yourself a challenge of not interrupting and see what difference it makes to your contributions and quality of decisions.

Stop Finishing Other Peoples Sentences

Sometimes it can be helpful to fill in gaps for someone if they are stuck.  Do it too often and it becomes a real irritation.  Even worse, you could end up putting your foot in it and reminding the other party of something that they may have forgotten about (like a time the service was not as good as they would not have liked).

Stop Trying To Points Score

How often you have been asked a question and then as you give your answer, the other person starts to tell you what they believe is an even better story related to them?  If you ask someone a question, by all means share your experiences to build rapport, but not to appear superior.

Don’t Jump In Too Quickly

On many occasions people just want to be heard.  They are not looking for your advice or suggestions.  A common mistake that many people make when it comes to listening is to jump in too quickly offering their view.  Make sure that you have given the other person the opportunity to be heard and only then offer your suggestions.

Reflect Back

When listening, it is often useful to reflect back in your own words what you understand from what has been said.  The key benefits of reflecting back include:

• The other party recognises that the listener is trying to understand

• It allows the opportunity to clarify

Listening is a highly sought after attribute in managers and leaders.  By making some simple changes, you can start to excel in this area.   What tips would you add?

No matter what role we have there are likely to be some things that we do well and others that we are much less effective at doing.  Everyone in a team or organisation brings different skills, qualities and attributes and it is this blend that contributes to delivering successful results.

So what is it that you bring in terms of strengths to the organisation?  Maybe you are someone who is:

• Highly creative and can generate ideas
• Good at dealing with the detail
• Getting things completed
• Planning and organising

To help you to assess where you excel and where you perhaps need to develop yourself, I have developed a simple Leadership Assessment.  You can get your free assessment by clicking on the  following link leadership-skills-assessment

So where are your strengths as a leader and how are you going to use them to achieve greater success?

Fear of redundancy has spread to almost half of full-time workers, a poll showed after the Government’s latest multi-billion economic rescue package was met by plunging bank share prices.  This was reported this morning on the news pages of Yahoo UK. 

In these challenging times it is natural for people to feel concerned and anxious about their personal situation.  On the other hand, these challenges times might well crate a golden opportunity for you.

What is clear in the current challenging times is that even some of the most experienced and senior leaders are finding it tough.  Just look at financial services and non essential retailers for some evidence.  So, in these tough times it might be that the golden opportunity for you is to make your mark where you currently work by being part of the performance turnaround.

If you are in an organisation that is struggling at the moment, take a few minutes and consider the following questions:

• What are the key drivers of our success as an organisation historically?

• How well are we doing on these key drivers right now?

• If you were put in charge of the organisation tomorrow, what are the three things that you would tackle straight away that would make an immediate impact?

• What things are not working as well as they could that we not fixing?

Chances are these questions will spark some ideas and solutions.  Test them out with some trusted individuals across the organisation and see what sort of response you get.  If it becomes clear that you have ideas that have not been considered, create an opportunity to discuss with your boss and other senior people.   It might just be the launching pad you need to take your career to another level.

So what are you waiting for?

If you are leader right now you are likely to be facing some challenging times and if not, chances are they will not be long in coming round.  The current economy coupled with the continued media coverage of those organisations that are struggling mean that even the most optimistic of leaders probably has some element of doubt about the future.

Like any challenge, before you can start acting, you need to get crystal clear about the size and scale of the challenge you face.  So how can you do this?

1. Look at reports that contain the facts about how the business is performing.  These reports might not make great reading but they will give you a clear picture on performance.
2. Ask the people who are closest to the point of service delivery what they are noticing.  For example sales people might be seeing the number of leads slowing down or that the time it takes to closing a sale increasing.  Distribution people might be seeing stock levels building up or particular lines of product moving at a slower rate.
3. Stand back and work on some scenarios on the impact on the organisation if certain things happen over the next few weeks months and even years.  Starting with a best, worst and most likely is a very simple but highly effective way of doing some forecasting.
4. Research and look at trends in how the market is going right now and the outlook for the market or sector.

Planning to action starts with getting clear on the size and scale of the challenge you face.  So what other tips would you add to identify the size and scale of the challenges you face as a leader?