Archive for July, 2009

Having sufficient time is often cited as a key challenge for managers and leaders.  So what are 8 quick tips you can work on straight away.

Tip 1: Get clear on your goals

Tip 2: Think clearly, calmly and positively

Tip 3: Stop moaning about the circumstances and start taking action

Tip 4: Say no when you really cannot take on anything else

Tip 5: Take breaks and try to get some exercise

Tip 6: When you are working, focus on working

Tip 7: Tidy your desk so that you can find things quickly

Tip 8: Tackle the time bandits who steal your time

So what other tips would you add?

Myth # 1: You need to be good at maths

People often say to me when speaking about Finance that they need to be good at maths.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Provided you understand simple arithmetic, things like addition, subtraction, averages, percentages and multiplication you have the base knowledge interpret financial information. 

Myth # 2: Finance is complicated

Actually it is very simple.  The vast majority of managers get a budget statement that will tell them:

Whether they are on target?

Whether they are behind target?

Whether they are doing better than target?

The key thing is to compare the budget (expected position) with the actual position and take action accordingly.

Myth # 3: Finance is for specialists

The recording of financial information, the creation of the systems for planning and management of finances is led by specialists.

Financial management is the responsibility of every manager. 

So what other myths have you come across when it comes to Finance?

Change is happening all the time in the business world.  From time to time, all organisations will find themselves in a situation where it has to implement a more structured and more radical change program.  This might be due to factors such as:

• Competition

• Loss of stakeholder confidence

• An adverse event impacting on business reputation

• Technological advances

Change programs are common but it is claimed that up to 70% of them fail.  While there are multiple reasons here are 6 reasons why change programs fail.

1. Communication

It might be that the organisation is having problems delivering the tough messages.  Alternatively it might be inconsistency in the message delivered by members of the leadership team.

The problem might not be with what is said but listening effectively to differing views and ideas.

2. Top Down

Senior people might lead the organisation, set the direction and put the plans in place.  Yet in reality they are not the people who can make it happen.  People at lowest level of the organisation determine whether a change program delivers.  They need to be involved.

3. Lack of space and support

Changes impact on individuals in a very personal way.  If organisations do not provide the space and support to individuals who are impacted by the change, the chances of success are greatly reduced.

4. Unclear objectives

The objective or outcome of any change program needs to be clear.  Ambiguity makes it impossible to get across the reasons and benefits of the change.

5. Lack of performance measures

Change is usually about improvement.  Unless there is a clear set of measures that can let people know whether they are on or off track, that are monitored and people are held accountable for sustainable change is unlikely.

6. Underestimating emotions

While everything on a spreadsheet or project plan is highly rational, it is important not to underestimate emotions.  Few relish change and see it as an opportunity.  This is neither right nor wrong it is just the way it is.  Awareness of people’s emotions can make a huge difference.

Change is a fact of business life and by taking some simple steps, the chances of success can be greatly enhanced.  What’s your top tip?

The replay of the July 2009 Leadership and Management Cafe from Goals and Achievements the UK Leadership Development Company is now available to download.  Just follow the link below and leave your comments with any additional tips that you might have.

You might have come across the term “death by meetings”.  In some organisations meetings are only held when they are really needed.  Sadly, particularly in larger organisations, meetings seem to be the norm.  At the same time, meetings can be of real value.  So what can you do to transform meetings from business liability to business asset?

Have a meeting cull

How many meetings are held in your organisation everyday, week, month or year?  Do you know or make an educated guess? 

Truth is in many large organisations, hundreds of meetings are being held every day, costing thousands of pounds or dollars.  Chances are there is a huge amount of duplication and overlap.  There are probably some that are taking a lot of time but not delivering any value.

So what’s the answer?  Take time do an inventory or stock take of every meeting in the organisation and ask:

• Why is the meeting being held?

• What has it contributed to business results in the last 6 months compared to the investment?

• What would happen if we dropped it?

If you cannot come up with compelling reasons you probably don’t need the meeting.

Minimise documents

If you start producing lots of papers for meetings it takes even longer and is even costlier to run the meeting.  There will be a handful of meetings that you will need to make formal with papers presented but most don’t fall into this category.

Think about it in most situations people bring things to meetings to:

• Provide an update

• Inform

• Get a decision

Instead of spending huge amounts of time getting people to produce documents, why not invest in training people in verbal presentation and asking effective questions.

Set short deadlines for actions

Insist that actions are completed within days rather than weeks of meetings.  Why?  Simply, because if something is really important, people will make it a priority and the action will be completed.  If it does not get done it might be that it was not important in the first place.

Train people to listen and question effectively

We all, to a greater or lesser extent love the sound of our own voices.  In reality, few people are really skilled listeners or skilled at asking powerful questions to get to the heart of an issue.  Time spent training people to listen effectively and use good questioning can save hours in terms of meetings.

Bottom Line – Meetings run and conducted well are a vital part of organisation success.  So what do you need to do in order to transform your meetings from resource stealers to business asset?

If you are leading or an aspiring leader, I am guessing that success is important to you.  Yet in truth many leaders do just the opposite.  If we are totally honest we all to a greater or lesser extent confuse effectiveness with volume.

When it comes to planning and scheduling you know that nothing ever goes entirely to plan.  The best leaders don’t just know this but take action and build some flexibility into their schedule. 

So what do I mean by the term flexible scheduling?  Let’s be clear we are not talking about freewheeling totally but allowing enough time to deal with the unexpected.  Things like:

1. A fire alarm going off and having to evacuate the building for an hour.

2. The computer network going down overnight.

3. The member of your team who needs to speak to you urgently about something.

4. A decision taking longer to reach in a meeting which means that you are playing catch up for the rest of the day.

If your schedule is totally packed with no room for unexpected events you are setting yourself up for:

• A stressful time at work

• A whole load of frustration

• Not enough time to think straight and deal with challenges or problems

• A greater risk of making a serious mistake.

None of which are likely to be great contributors to you achieving success as a leader.  So make a point of building a bit of flexibility into your schedule so that you deliver the results and achieve the success that you desire.  Some simple things that you can do include:

• Scheduling in time before and after each meeting which if you don’t use is available for dealing with the unexpected.

• Not being overly optimistic in what you can achieve in a day.  It is better to have a list of two really important things to complete that make a real difference rather than a list full of nice to do but not essential things.
Bottom Line – Being flexible is not about freewheeling; it is about recognising that as a leader you need to be ready and able to handle the unexpected.

When it comes to money, the vast majority of leaders and managers will be able to give an excellent account of where they spent the budget they were allocated and what they delivered with that budget.  On the other hand if you asked them how they were using their biggest limiting factor, time, how many would be able to give a clear answer?

In truth, very few of us ever take the time to accurately capture where we spend our time and what results we deliver from the time we have invested.  So why should you bother anyway?

1. You might discover that your time utilisation is a bit like a leaking water pipe.  A lot is being lost but you are not quite sure why.

2. You might be struggling to achieve deadlines or rushing at the last minute to deliver because you are not investing your time wisely.

3. You might be having to continually work extra hours (usually unpaid) to get everything done.

Not taking care of how you spend your time is a bit like not bothering to take care of company money or company equipment.

Doing a time analysis is really easy to do and has a ton of benefits, for example:

1. You start to discover if you are spending your time on what is really important to your success as a leader.

2. You start to become much more conscious of the cost of doing certain things.

3. You find ways of adding more value to the organisation without having to make more and more personal sacrifice.

Bottom Line – Time is probably the biggest limiting factor for just about everyone.  So what action could you take starting today to tackle the biggest limiting factor to you delivering results and achieving success

Sign 1: Last Minute Dot Me

Ever find yourself regularly rushing at the 11th hour to deliver that report or proposal.  If you do you might be best described as a last minute dot me person -someone who puts things off until they have no choice but to do something.  If this sound like you, start noticing what is creating this behaviour and start to do the opposite.

Sign 2: Worry About It Later

In some cases you don’t need to deal with things immediately.  On the other hand it can become really easy to fall into the trap of thinking that everything can wait.  Ask yourself can it really wait or are you just playing the delay game.  Think about it, if you are always delaying things, eventually you are going to have a mountain to deal with –and how productive and results orientated will you be in that situation?

Sign 3: Living In Hope

The classic situation when this arises is when it comes to dealing with a difficult staffing issue or conflict in a team.  Many will simply ignore it in the hope that it will somehow disappear.  Be assured it won’t and often these types of problems can be nipped in the bud quickly before they become a real issue.

Sign 4: Playing The Delay Game

The delay game is where we spend our time and energies coming up with a 101 reasons for not starting.  Not enough time, not the right time, the wrong economic climate, not enough information and not enough staff are just a few of a whole host of reasons why people play the delay game.

Sign 5: Busy Doing Trivia

Keeping busy is not difficult.  There is always the internet to surf, e-mails to read, texts to be sent, files to be organised, piles of paper to be sorted, the minor staff problem to deal with to name just a few.  While this trivial stuff keeps us busy it does not get results.

Sign 6: Open House

Of course it is good for staff to be able to connect with you and you with them. Having an open door policy in itself is not a bad thing.  On the other hand it can mean that your day is a series of interruptions.  Is this you?  If so, try to allocate times when you can be interrupted so that it is not when you should be working on something really critical.

Bottom Line – We all, to a greater or lesser extent procrastinate. So what are you doing when it comes to procrastinating that is stopping you achieve success as leader and what action are you going to take?