Category Archives: Change Management

Seize Your Time – gaining control over Too Much Information

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I have written a number of other postings about time management.  I always start off with the true, but worn, observation that time is the one element of business (life, too) that can not be purchased, borrowed, or inventoried. It is a requirement, before all else, that managers gain control over their time. In practice, I have found, this means being able to allocate useful blocks of time every week to work on their businesses. This means allocating time to work on whatever is important to the future of the business and to which they can bring energy, passion, and expertise, or, perhaps, they are the only one who can do it. Many managers find that seizing just two or three hours per week allows them to make a focused effort on high-value projects to drive the company forward.

In earlier postings ( for example, Seizing Your Time – the breakthrough first step in time management) (opens new window) I have called for managers to “seize their time”. Seizing time short circuits the assessment, analysis, and pondering that frequently dooms traditional time management programs to failure. Somehow, too much cogitation on time leads to inaction. In my earlier thinking, I have mostly focused on seizing time from meetings. But, now, I have come to understand that meetings are perhaps not the most insidious or pervasive waste of our time.

From my own personal practice and observation of others, its is clear that we need a new focus on TMI – Too Much Information. We are now surrounded by sources of information and, like little children in front of a TV, we are slack-jawed, glassy-eyed, and in the thrall of continuous flows of information. Think of how frequently you check your email. Every hour? Every 10 minutes? How often do you check your voice mail? How often are your interrupted by IM – Instant Messaging, Text Messaging, and so on?

This phenomenon reminds me of a 2002 article in Scientific American about TV addiction, Television Addiction is no mere metaphor. [1. Kubey, Robert & Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly,  Television Addiction is no mere metaphor. ( Scientific American; Feb2002, Vol. 286 Issue 2, p74, 7p, 2c. ] Perhaps there is a connection between the attraction that TV provides to our “orienting response” and our easy fixations on checking our email?

But, as in earlier comments in Seizing Your Time – the breakthrough first step…., let’s not focus too much on analysis of how much time we are wasting, rather ask the question, “How can I change my behavior to capture useful time?”

Why not arbitrarily set times during the day when you will check your email? Think about how many minutes a day are taken up getting to your email application and then looking through emails. Are people really sending you an email with an expectation that you will respond within minutes, even hours? Be aggressive about pushing the interval. Why not wait for a few loud complaints from key customers to tell you that you need to make the email checking a bit more frequent.

I am working to keep my email checking to three times per day, early morning, lunch, and before closing up shop at the end of the day.  I also apply David Allen‘s Two Minute Rule to the emails so that anything that I can get done immediately, gets done without delay.  [2. “If the Next Action can be done in 2 minutes or less, do it when you first pick the item up.” Even if that item is not a “high priority”, because it takes longer to store and track any item than to deal with it the first time it’s in your head. (p. 131, “Getting Things Done”]

What about your voice mails? Think about the turn around time that is expected for your industry and your job. Again, be aggressive about pushing the interval.

Take one or both of these steps in managing your personal TMI overload and be sure to devote the extra time you create to important projects, not just more of the day-to-day that is endless, and, in the end, not where the future of your company will be found.

It’s Always Your Fault – taking responsibility for personnel

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Attracting, selecting, training and mentoring, and pruning human resources are among the most important tasks a manager confronts. Almost everyone agrees that, at the top level of organizations, managers need to be devoting a significant portion of their time addressing the people needs of the firm. Without the right people in the right positions, no strategy, no matter how clever, can succeed.

To be truly successful in meeting these responsibilities, a manager must embrace an all important management rule: “If an employee is working below expected or required performance it is always the manager’s fault.”

The first place to look is at the manager. After all, the manager hired or selected the person. The manager defines the work, provides tools, training, and all other resources required for the job.  The manager is responsible for the success of every person they supervise.

An important effect of this rule is that it prevents you from entering the whinny land of thinking, or worse, saying:  “Why doesn’t Joseph pay more attention to detail?” “Mirabelle keeps making the same errors over and over in these quotes.” “Walt just doesn’t get the big picture of where this project is going and he is heading down the wrong track, for the umpteenth time.”

Embrace your responsibilities and powers to make your personnel successful.

  • Make sure that you really have well thought out and planned jobs.
  • Are job definitions focused on results?
  • Are the task definitions actionable?
  • Do the skills listed actually match up with the results you want to achieve?
  • Have you provided the training required?
  • Do your personnel understand where the company is going strategically and is it clear how the results of their jobs connect with these strategies?
  • Have you acted promptly to provide feedback and take corrective action to support performance?
  • Do you have a company culture that embraces, supports, and demands full participation by everyone?

Selection and promoting personnel are management tasks with a high error factor. Every manager needs to acknowledge that their judgments are not always perfect, nor even close to perfect, in selection and promotion. So, faced with a weak performance from a new hire or newly promoted person, managers must ask the question early, “Did I make a mistake here?” If you come to that conclusion you need to act promptly to correct the error.

The central point is that you selected your personnel, you set the conditions and environment of their work, your provide the tools and training, you set the expectations, the results required. If you are not getting top performance from your personnel, look to the basics, look to your own responsibilities as a manager first. After all, if you are really holding yourself accountable for these responsibilities, you will achieve equal or better performance from everyone in your organization.

Job Shops, TPS, and Intuition

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Recent work with a client brought home to me again the interplay of TPS (Toyota Production system) and intuition.

We were working on developing a job scheduling system in a classic job shop environment. We had worked out a rough value stream map from sales inquiry to shipping. It was clear that there was very little data anywhere. This was a small business environment where everything existed in the heads of the key players. The owner repeatedly asked when we were going to get to the job scheduling system and, “Mark, what is it going to look like and how will it work?”

I kept fending the team off by telling them that we had to push our mapping as far as we could and then, “The answers will appear from the map. It will be clear to all of you how to solve the problems.”dscn0971.JPG

So, we pushed ahead until we reached the point where we needed to develop a simpler sense of the flow of the work. When I asked the team to identify the key groups of activities among all of the ones on the wall, they readily came up with five and, with a bit more discussion, we ended up with seven work centers. Based on the group’s intuition we then designed some job packages and a rough scheduling board to help us put into practice a visual job scheduling system.

This system is now up and running. Improvements are coming regularly. For the first time in the history of this 22 yr. old business, everyone can see what jobs are on the floor, where they are, and each person can pickup a job packet and know what it is that needs to be done in their work center without asking for advice, very often.

The key for me is my faith, demonstrated repeatedly in action, that value stream mapping and job shop lean flow processes can encompass just about any job shop environment. If you follow these practices you will reliably discover a solution that will produce significant steps towards a high-performance business. And, the best part is that with your guidance (and keeping your mouth shut) the team will discover their own solutions that they can continue to improve long after you depart.

Building a Positive Culture – the no jerk zone

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A very common question from managers is, “How do I build a positive, supportive, productive culture in my company?” This seems like a very abstract objective until you face up to some of the negative behaviors that can be found in many companies. When you identify these behaviors, and they are not hard to notice, you are then presented with an important opportunity to improve the culture and set a better standard of behavior. But, this requires you to be forthright and take action.

Here is an example. “What do I do with an employee who is disruptive, disrespectful, in short, a jerk?” Frequently this question concerns an employee who is perceived by the manager as very productive or a key player in the organization.

One of the first steps to take is to clearly evaluate the true costs of having this person in the organization. Jerks are like zones of repulsion that disrupt work all around. People avoid communicating, or worse, working directly with a jerk. Many people will have a hard time not reacting with their own negative behavior to fend off jerks. When you add all of this up, jerks are always a negative, no matter how individually productive they may seem to be.

(Before going on to the next steps, review your company personal policy carefully concerning disciplining employees and conditions for termination. You want to be sure to follow these procedures carefully. )

So, what to do? The first step is to confront the jerk. This is best done by direct observation and immediate feedback. Wait for the negative behavior to be demonstrated and immediately take the person aside to a private space and indicate to them that this kind of behavior will no longer be tolerated. Do not engage in a colloquy or argument. This is a policy statement, not an invitation to a discussion.

To be honest, you take this step, rather than just dismissing the person, because it is the right thing to do, not because there is much hope for reforming the bad behavior of an inveterate jerk. You are doing this because it is sound human resource management practice and because it is sound interpersonal behavior. Good management of people demands observing real behavior and taking corrective action immediately. And, surprise, surprise, sometimes better behavior breaks out!

Now, you must be ready to act. Sometimes, once a jerk is confronted about their behavior they will in fact make good faith efforts to change. If you see this, be supportive and provide immediate corrective direction when the person falls back toward the bad behavior. On the other hand, confronting a jerk may just as well cause them to flee, to quit. Be ready for this and have a replacement, or backup, in the wings. Finally, true jerks will revert to their natural behavior shortly and, without repentance, continue along. Follow your company’s procedures for terminating the employee closely. If you feel that the employee is unsalvageable, do the right thing for you, the company, and the employee, insist on termination not a transfer to another department or division.

You will be amazed at how others in your company will react to your handling this situation so well. They will know that you are not going to tolerate disruptive, disrespectful behavior and they will feel positively that you handled the situation with respect and care. So, you have taken a clear step towards a positive, supportive, productive culture in your company. There is much more to be done, nevertheless, you have taken a highly visible step.

There is a great article about this topic in The McKinsey Quarterly (May 2007), Building the civilized workplace: Nasty people don’t just make others feel miserable; they create economic problems for their companies. by Robert Sutton (opens in new window).

Making tough times harder by communicating too much!

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Good communications is important to the health of the organization. However, there are moments when managers should look carefully at their communications and push on the “not-so-fast” button.

During periods of organizational stress, like changes in ownership, senior leadership, layoffs, mergers, and others, managers may think that they can calm down the troops by increasing the frequency and depth of their communications. Unfortunately, this may lead to a surprising result. Employees, like everyone else, pay attention to more than the message. Marshall McLuhan got this right.

During times of stress, the tendency of managers to increase the frequency of communication with staff in fact sends the message, “Gee, the bosses are nervous about what is going on. Look at how much they are talking about it.”

So, be careful. Focus on brevity and facts. Be as honest as you can about what is going on.

But, be a good model for your staff. During times of stress and turbulence, redouble your focus on customers and day-to-day tasks. Get in early and be at work when the staff arrives. They will get that message. No matter what happens, being productive is always a good strategy, both for the company and the individual.

This Will happen Again!

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Change, it is happening now or just around the corner. And, the pace of change is not decreasing.

In recent work, I dealt with a client firm undergoing one of the ultimate set pieces of change in the life of a business, the sale of the company. The impending sale sent the predominantly young staff into a frenzy of fear, uncertainty, paranoia, and flight.

One step that proved useful was a series of meetings entitled, “This Will Happen Again” which focused on the facts of business life and how one might react. The initial concept named, “Its Not About You”, speaks to the external forces driving change in the business world. This closes on the simple note that each of us will experience large scale change in work life every couple of years regardless of where we land in the economy. This is now a permanent feature of our work lives.

The meetings then went on to address how people might react to all this change. First, one must acknowledge the change and the accompanying emotional turmoil. Second, change is frequently opportunity dressed in different clothes. Work patterns shift. Reporting relationships change. Fixed methods of work open for examination and improvement in ways that would be surprising under the old regime. Managers who perform well during periods of change shine and are remembered later. All of these and more are reasons for managers to think to their advantage during periods of corporate change.

Finally, these meetings closed on the note that one of the best ways to weather troubled waters to is to refocus on the work at hand, to pay even more attention to making customers happy. A day filled with work is always better than a day occupied with the latest gossip about what might be happening in the executive suite.