Author Archives: Mark Orton

Seizing Your Time – the first step in time management

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There 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.

Book Review – Marketing to the Social Web by Larry Weber

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Marketing and selling over the Web has been a required activity for almost every business I have been involved in for over ten years. In the last couple of years, the web has continued to evolve and now in some undeniably novel ways. The most notable are the appearance and enormous growth of “communities” or “social networks”. It is clear that the existing web marketing paradigm that focuses on pay-for-click advertising and search engine optimization (SEO) is being enormously enriched by the opportunities presented by social or community oriented environments. This later change requires real shifts in the approach and objectives for marketing on the web.

Just as I have begun to attempt my own synthesis of these changes, I have come upon Marketing to the Social Web: how digital communities build your business by Larry Weber (John Wiley & Sons, New York 2007). The author has extensive experience in the Web world and provides more than enough examples and anecdotes to illustrate his case.

The basic argument of the book is that the interactivity of the web is now producing completely new ways in which companies and customers can interact.

Weber develops seven steps to marketing on the social web:

  1. Observe – see where, what and how your customers do in the social web. Check out blogs, conversations, relevant content, etc.
  2. Recruit – enlist core participants who want to talk about your company, its products and services.
  3. Evaluate platforms – which platforms are best to reach your marketing objectives – blogs, reputation aggregators, social networks?
  4. Engage – this is all about developing and maintaining content – user generated and yours.
  5. Measure – develop metrics relevant to the objectives and measure.
  6. Promote – connect with other communities in the web.
  7. Improve.

Weber provides lots of discussion and anecdotes to illustrate each of these seven steps. Then he adds four strategies to expanding the reach of marketing on the social network – (1) SEO, (2) blogs, (3) e-communities, and (4) social networks.

This book is a solid contribution to understanding and participating in the ongoing development of the web world. This is esepcially so for creating a more productive balance between traditional web marketing, pay-for -click advertising and SEO, and the emerging world of the social web.

Managers: Don’t Answer That Question! – part two

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In the previous posting, I wrote about how managers are chronically undermining whatever formal delegation systems are in place and enabling dependency all around them.

One of the reasons managers answer so many questions from their staff and others in the company is that they fear that if they don’t, then really important issues and opportunities may be addressed incorrectly or sub optimally.

A key to getting out of the round of endless questions while still being involved in important ones, is to set some boundaries, some limits.

This might sound like this: “I want you to develop three solutions before you come to ask me a question. Ask your colleagues for help if you get stuck. But, in the case of the following critical customer, Immense Big Machines, Inc., I want to be informed of any issues involving delay or cost overruns in Project XZY.”

With the right boundaries set around your new rule, you can still be assured of being involved where you need to be.

Finally, to make your staff and others in the company comfortable about taking responsibility for solving problems and answering their own questions, you need to have environment in which mistakes are expected and dealt with positively. Remember, if you are not making mistakes, you are doubtless doing very little and learning not at all. Mistakes need to be analyzed and the lessons learned. Perhaps the only rule about mistakes is that they should not be repeated.

Note that this skill, “Don’t Answer That Question!” is a great precursor to grasping the opportunities for controlling your time. More discussion about this in my entry: Seizing Your Time – the first step in time management.

Managers: Don’t Answer That Question! – part one

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If most managers could listen to themselves for just a few hours, they would discover that they are chronically undermining whatever formal delegation systems are in place and enabling dependency all around them.

How is this happening?

Just listen and you will hear a stream of questions coming at them followed by answers in response.

Most managers get to be managers because they have some field in which they are very strong performers. They are the organization’s experts. So, it is so natural for them, and everyone around them, to follow the reflexive pattern: ask the expert and be rewarded with answers.

However, if you want to get people to take responsibility and be involved in the business, you can’t go on answering all these questions. They will just go on asking whether they need to or not.

What should a manager do to break this pattern?

Simply announce to the troops, “If you want to ask me a question, you have to have at least three possible answers thought through before I will consider your question. If you are having trouble coming up with answers, ask others to help you. Group thinking is always the best thinking.”

In my next posting on this topic I will go into a few further refinements to make this a really effective policy. For the moment, the really tough step is entirely in the mind and habits of you the manager. You have to get up every morning and look yourself in the mirror and say, “My job as manager is to create an environment in which everyone will take responsibility and participate fully. To help this along, I will help people by not answering their questions.”

Meetings – The Drama Model

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Third 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 critical, 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

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Second 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”.