Archive for January, 2009

A personal development plan helps you to grow and achieve. 

So why do so few people take the time to create one?  Two potential reasons are:

• Lack of know how
• Fear of limiting themselves

5 key steps in creating a personal development plan

1. Do a personal stock-take of your strengths and development needs.  As well as your own assessment get the input of others.  They can often see talents that you don’t.

2. Think about what development will help you most in achieving your goals.

3. Decide which methods of delivery will have greatest impact on your learning.

4. Set out a calendar of development events for the next 12 months.

5. Put an accountability structure in place to ensure you follow through.

Benefits of creating a personal development plan

1. You give a clear message that you take your contribution to business success seriously.

2. You can start to work on the areas that are less developed so that you become even more of an asset to your employer.

3. If things are not progressing as you would like career wise you can demonstrate to a potential new employer what you can contribute with real impact.

4. You take informed choices about the type of roles you pursue rather than leaving it to chance.

5. You continue to grow, be motivated and stretch yourself to achieve what you desire.

The Insights Series from The Chartered Association of Certified Accountants identified coaching and mentoring as one of the most effective development methods.  So what is it about coaching and mentoring that makes it such a powerful development method?  Here are my 5 top reasons.

1. Ongoing

Many traditional approaches to development are one chance events.  If you prosper fantastic if not your opportunity is gone.  While this type of development activity is excellent for acquiring skills or knowledge, it can be less effective when it comes to working on personal attributes or softer skills.

2. Personalised

Many development activities aim to cover a number of areas in a short time frame.  While this is excellent for getting breadth, it can mean that only a small proportion of the time is spent on the areas that matter to you.  When working with a coach or mentor you focus on the specific areas that will give you greatest leverage or benefit from your development time.  You get to develop your own personalised programme.

3. Focused

Coaching and mentoring is highly targeted and because it is ongoing you move forward quicker because it is focused.  You don’t waste time and effort on areas that you don’t need to.

4. Supportive

People who take on the role of coach or mentor are highly supportive.  They can be counted on to be behind you encouraging and supporting you as you take action.  Knowing that you have the support of someone who believes 100% in you is an amazingly powerful motivator.

5. Accountability

Study after study highlights that having accountability is one of the most important ingredients in achieving results.  One study suggested that you have a 95% chance of achieving an objective when you have accountability in place. When you have to self account for what you have or have not achieved, you do more than you would have done otherwise.  Your coach or mentor holds you to account for those actions that you have committed to taking in order to get results and move forward.

Clearly all development activity has benefits.  Working with a coach or mentor is a powerful tool in your personal development toolkit that you may not be fully utilising.  How might you benefit if you did?

Teams are a collection of individuals with complimentary skills who are seeking to achieve a specific result or results.  It might be to reduce wastage, improve throughput, increase sales or better determine project costs to name just a few.  Effective teamwork relies in the conditions being created that facilitate effective teamwork.  So what areas require attention?

Clear purpose

The first condition for effective teamwork is to get the purpose clear.  If you don’t know what the purpose of the teams work is, how will you know if it is achieved?  A good question to ask is what do we want this team to achieve?  The greater the clarity you get on this the easier it will be for the team to focus on the right thing.  Another way of getting to your purpose is to consider what will be different when the team has completed its work.

Right people

No team will ever be effective unless it has the right people with the right skills on it.  Team selection is challenging but important.  As well as people having knowledge of their own area, they need to have the right attributes to build trust, rapport and relationships with others.

Dependency

For a team to exist and achieve there needs to be dependency.  By dependency, I mean that the performance of one part of the organisation needs to be dependent on one or more other areas to achieve results.  For example, an organisation might decide that it wants to cut energy costs by 5% and set up a team to achieve it.  The Finance Director might well be the person reporting back but will be dependent on areas like purchasing, estates management and a management accountant to achieve that outcome.

Team accountability

For effective teamwork, team members need to be committed to delivering on their piece of the jigsaw.  In addition, there needs to be accountability to the team and the team results.  This is radically different to the norm which places huge emphasis on individual accountability and takes time to develop.

Diversity

One of the real advantages of teams is that there is access to a greater range of skills, experience, knowledge and personal attributes than there would be in one individual.   This diversity is what in many ways makes teamwork so powerful.  Exploiting the benefits of this diversity does not happen overnight.  It takes teams time to build up that trust and it is important to allow the time for that to be created rather than trying to force the pace.

In building a physical object, strong foundations need to be created if it is to be a success.  Teams are no different.  Their success depends on creating the conditions for effective teamwork. So what do you need to do to improve team effectiveness?

When asked what their biggest challenge is, many managers say that getting everything done is what they struggle with most.  One of the major differences of being a manager is that you are no longer just responsible for one or two things.  You need to manage a varied workload as well as people and resources.  So what are the 5 top mistakes managers make when it comes to managing workload and what should they do instead?

Mistake 1: Failing to focus

The first mistake managers often make when it comes to managing workload is failing to focus on managing.  This is often more of a challenge for those that have been promoted within the same organisation to a management role.  If you are a manager you are no longer measured just on what you do but on the results you deliver through others.

Solution: Make a point of allocating a proportion of your time specifically for managing and get crystal clear on how your performance is measured.

Mistake 2: Not delegating

Delegating tasks and responsibility is often something managers find tough to do.  It might be that they were let down in the past and are reluctant to try again.  It is important to remember that if you avoid delegating you give a message to your staff that you don’t trust them.  How would you feel if your boss gave you a message that he or she did not trust you?

Solution: Identify tasks that can only be done by you and those that can be delegated.  Once you have identified those tasks that can be delegated, find the best person in your team to do the task and delegate it to them.

Mistake 3: Not being willing to say no

You want to be seen as someone who is helpful – don’t you?  The real question to ask yourself is whether you want to be regarded as the person who always offers to help but rarely delivers.  As a manager you need to know when you can commit and when you cannot commit to something.  It is better to say and explain your reasons than to say yes and not deliver.

Solution: Always be clear on what you have to deliver in the weeks ahead and how long it will take so that you can clearly identify what capacity you have to take on additional work or projects.

Mistake 4: Not planning

Failing to plan is planning to fail.  You would not go travelling without a plan or try to make something without a plan.  So why would you leave your productivity and effectiveness to chance by not planning?

Solution: Plan your workload for the month, week and day and ensure that you focus on your priorities.

Mistake 5: Being too accessible

Many managers talk about having an open door policy.  At the same time, you need to be careful that your open door policy does not become a constant interruption policy.  When this happens you start to lose huge chunks of your time, put the delivery of results at risk and put yourself under real pressure.

Solution:  Have designated times when you are available to deal with problem issues and people issues and schedule this time in your calendar.  When issues arise outside of this, make sure that the issues really do require your immediate attention.

Bottom Line – Mastering workload management will set you apart from many managers and help you deliver results.  So what action do you need to take to better manage your workload?

A successful leader needs to have a range of skills.  In the currently challenging economic climate there are some skills which will be more important than others.  The first of these is decision making.  In 2009 you are likely to be faced with more decisions than ever.  These decisions might include:

• Should you cut the number of staff you employ?
• If you need to reduce the number of people you employ, who should you keep and who should you let go?
• What investments are you going to make in the busineess and what investments are you going to put on hold?
• What markets or areas of business do you need to get out off?
• What incentives or promotions must you offer to attract or retain customers?

No matter what the decision, it is important that you are ready to take these decisions and act on them.  Procrastination in challenging times is not an option.  Remember, decisions lead to actions and and actions lead to results.

So what gets in the way of you taking decisions and what difference would it make to your success if you started taking decisions?

A new year is often a time when people take stock and set some resolutions for the year ahead.  Most of these resolutions never materialise so it might seem that there is little point in setting out what you want to achieve in 2009.  Yet in truth, if you are someone who:

• Knows what they want
• Knows why they want it
• Knows what they are willing to do and not do to achieve what they want
• Takes consistent action towards achieving their goal

you will be setting yourself up for success.  Research by ThinkTQ identified that

• Only 25% set a specific target for what they want
• Less than 3% have a specific goal for each major area of their life
• Less than 55% aim high when it comes to goals
• Less than 11% write down goals with declared target dates
• Less than 2% set start and end dates for goals
• Less than 8% take consistent action towards attaining a goal

So what is it you want to achieve in 2009 as a manager or leader?