by Diana Southall | Dec 3, 2014 | coaching, performance
According to Toronto productivity consultant Mark Ellwood, managers spend 20% of their time on administrative and paperwork tasks that by definition do not advance business goals.
Some of these tasks are essential to your business success (for example, meeting with key customers or coaching performance). The rest are possible items that could be better completed by someone else.
An essential part of an effective People Plan is the Right Person doing the Right Things. And this includes YOU.
Are you spending your time on the Right Things? What could you accomplish for your organization if you “had more time?”
Here are the typical excuses we make NOT to delegate:
- I am the only person who can do this,
- I can’t trust that she will do it right (or she is not trained to do it),
- last time he didn’t do it right,
- she is too busy,
- I don’t have time to train someone
The solution to all of these is to train someone to do this work, and then let them…
As a business owner or manager, you have knowledge and skills that make certain tasks essential for you to perform for the best interests of the company. Your role is to determine and implement the business strategy and tactical goals through your people.
The majority of your time should ideally be spent on training, managing and motivating your people, and overseeing key action items to achieve company goals (from your short term action plans).
For example, you should be the person who reviews financial statements, budgets, and forecasts. You do NOT need to be the person who creates invoices, enters checks or goes to the bank to deposit checks.
We all have tasks that could be adequately performed by a staff member. Often these are administrative or routine in nature. If you spend 30 minutes analyzing your monthly financial statements by computing ratios or comparing to prior months, this is a task that your accounting person can complete and provide in a report with the monthly income statement.
What to delegate
To determine what tasks you can delegate, I highly recommend a simply time study. For one week, track your time in 15 minute increments. You can do this with a printed time chart (every 15 minutes on the left, one column for each day), a voice recorder, or an online time tracker (such as bill4time.com) or even an I-phone app (such as timewerks).
It takes a bit of effort to remember to log your entries, but if you capture 75% of a week you have great data to analyze. If you can also track your phone calls this is additional information. One memory trick is to set a timer to ring every 15 minutes, and record your tasks since the last entry.
Your delegation action steps
- At the end of one week, calculate the time you spend on various work categories, and highlight those that are not essential for you to do. Also review your outgoing emails and phone calls for patterns.
- Divide your tasks into priority categories (a, b, c) or use the Steven Covey method of categorizing by urgent and important. Items that are not important are candidates for delegation, automation, or even elimination.
Typical items for delegation:
- basic fact finding/ research
- entry and collection of data and routine reports
- basic analysis and problem solving suggestions
- routine communication
- sorting of emails and mail
- tasks that you are not very good at or dislike
- “enrichment” tasks that can give an employee the opportunity to learn and develop
3. Identify to whom to delegate
Once you have identified tasks to delegate, select an appropriate staff member to become responsible. Delegation can provide “stretch goals” to provide job enrichment to employees, so don’t always give items to the most experienced. If you have multiple task sets to delegate, share this among several staff members.
4. Train that person and the “inspect what you expect” until they are meeting expectations and you can be confident in the results without taking the work back.
5. Remember, you will have to invest a bit of time in the short run to reap the long term rewards of off-loading some of your tasks. You will also continue to be responsible to manage the process and review outcomes.
by Diana Southall | Oct 14, 2014 | performance, recruiting
Really- why not?
I hear this phrase far too often from managers who are now urgently rushing to fill an open position. Perhaps someone quit on short notice, or an employee on leave decided not to come back. Or you had to take decisive action to terminate an employee whose behavior warranted such a quick outcome.
Moral of the story? Here you are scrambling to find “someone good” on short notice.
And everyone on your team is feeling the pain, because they are picking up the workload for the missing person, most likely doing tasks that are unfamiliar or not in their area of expertise.
What does the team want? A new, awesome, fabulous team mate (who needs no training) – and make it quick! Can she start tomorrow?
Despite the apparent urgency of the situation, you know what I am going to tell you next….
“Take your time to find the right person.”
In the midst of your crisis, pause, take a breath, and met me remind you what is at stake…
Hiring an A player may take a few more weeks of recruiting, more focused and stringent selection, and passing up on “good enough” candidates who can start tomorrow. But that A Player who starts in 4 weeks will likely learn the job more quickly, be an asset to the team right away, and be performing at a higher level in six months.
Rushing to settle for a C player (usually a perfectly nice person who was a decent performer at a prior job, but NOT a fit for your job) means a few weeks saved now, and hundreds of hours lost later.
C Player’s are estimated to take 25% of a managers time—the one or two people on your team who struggle with the job knowledge, performance expectations, or do not match the attitude and culture you need can suck 10 hours a week!
Do the math- 10-20 hours now versus 500 hours next year … and that does not count the actual and opportunity cost of lower quality or service, slow processes, lost sales, unhappy customers, unhappy co-workers, and unhappy managers.
You are not a beggar, and you can be choosy! Only settle for A Players with a 90% chance of success.
There are fabulous candidates out there—but you have to cast a wider net, be more selective and systematic in your selection, and wait until you have found “the one.”
Learn more:
Read our articles on “selection” to find out more about what you can do to evaluate and validate your candidate’s job fit.
Read our article about how to always be scouting for talent and building a virtual bench, so that you are not scrambling for applicants next time!
Image Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
by Diana Southall | Sep 9, 2014 | job fit, performance
It’s a common story- Jane was great at her job– a quick learner eager to do more. So you gave her more– a whole lot more. But now she seems overwhelmed, unsure, and downright frazzled.
Will she start swimming and get her head back above water?
It depends—does she lack easily trainable skills or is the gap due to a mismatch of personality or competency?
The first step when you encounter the aftermath of a well-meaning major assignment or promotion is to chat with Jane. Where does she think she is struggling? Is there a specific area you can pinpoint where a bit of support or coaching would help?
Let’s say you promoted Jane to a team leader for her customer service group, and her tasks now include scheduling 10 reps across two shifts, weekly reports for the manager, and handling escalated calls. This is in addition to continuing to work as a customer service rep.
Option 1- Time and Training will work
As an example of a quick fix- Jane A explains that she is still learning the scheduling software and this is taking several more hours for her to complete the weekly schedule. This has caused her to finish the weekly department report late. She anticipates that she will be on track in a week or two, as she is quickly mastering this complicated tool. You suggest that she has the manager spends a few minutes showing her how he uses shortcuts to expedite that task. After two weeks she is indeed on top of the new assignment’s and on time.
Option 2- Re-evaluate Job Fit and Duties
On the other hand, Jane B seems to be avoiding the weekly reports in favor of taking customer calls. She reports that she has not “had time” to train on the scheduling module. Last week she hastily put together on an incomplete schedule that didn’t provide enough coverage during peak hours. The first two weeks her weekly reports were 5 days late and missing key data. In your conversations, it seems that Jane may lack the planning and organizing competency that these new tasks require to be effective. To be fair, you ask her manager to give her a bit more training on how to do those tasks, to see if training will be the answer. But if she does not start making improvements in a few weeks, you might conclude the pattern of job fit is at work.
Want to learn more?
Find out how about how to identify the three main reasons someone isn’t keeping up (gap in ability, motivation or values) in our webinar “Evaluating Your Current Team for Job Fit.”
See our current webinar schedule and register here: People Plan Webinars
Image Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
by Diana Southall | Aug 26, 2014 | culture, job fit, performance
The following is a version of a conversation I have regularly with clients:
Client: “We really need some help with our sales process. Some of our bids require hours of preparation and document gathering. Our estimator needed extra help as he uses all his time to get vendor estimates and compute the final price. So he had Mary take over the non-pricing part of the bid.”
Diana: “So how did that work?”
Client: “Well, Mary started well, but the day before the bid she seems frazzled and needed the estimator to help her finish the packet.”
Diana: “So did you win the work?”
Client: “No, the bid was disqualified because it was missing two important documents.”
Diana: “Was there a list of all requirements in the bid package?”
Client: “Yup- right in the first two pages, there was a checklist of every required items.”
Diana: “Okay, we have two areas to concentrate.
First, you might want to talk about process improvement—what could be done better for the next bid. (For example, one person is responsible to double-check everything is there 2 days before the bid is due.)
I would suggest you get those involved in the bid process in a room and outline and clarify the ideal process and timeline, and then assign responsibility.”
The second area- Do you see a trend in Mary’s performance in planning of projects and detail orientation? Is she normally prepared with every item needed, well in advance of a deadline? Does she “future pace” what is coming next, reaching out to others to get what she needs to do her part of the project?
Or do you see the frantic last minute dash to pull something together at the last minute, and then something is usually forgotten?”
This is a function of job fit, some people are comfortable working in the moment, and do not typically focus on the future requirements. Some people have the opposite work habits- they setup checklists, verify that the list is complete and double check everything.
Planning and organizing is a competency—a soft skill that is based on our consistent personality traits, and can be somewhat refined and developed. (And you can assess for this in the hiring process with a basic personality assessment).
If you step back and evaluate the trend of someone’s work habits, you will likely see a clear pattern of planning and organizing behaviors and results.
If Mary has not demonstrated a strong competency in planning and organizing, the solution is to give those tasks with someone else who has a stronger competency in this area (higher job fit). And then find short term and less detailed and crucial tasks that are a better job fit for Mary (increase her job fit).
Training and systems are most effective if someone already has the competency/ job fit in that area.
Want to learn more?
Find out how about how to identify the three main reasons someone isn’t keeping up (gap in ability, motivation or values) in our webinar “Evaluating Your Current Team for Job Fit.”
See our current webinar schedule and register here: People Plan Webinars
Image Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
by Diana Southall | Jun 17, 2014 | action plans, coaching, performance
When we have an employee who seems to be struggling with part of the job, we think back and exclaim “but she was trained!”
Often a person has been “trained” but still does not adequately complete the job duties.
There are multiple reasons “training” doesn’t succeed:
- It was not comprehensive enough- just covering the basics does not convey enough information
- It was given too fast in too short a period of time (everyone learns at a different rate)
- The trainer only demonstrated the skill, and did not have the trainee practice it twice with coaching
- Training did not match the learner’s best learning method (Some people learn better by listening, some via doing it, some by reading)
- The trainer did not have adequate knowledge or verbal skills to impart all informa tion (if someone knows 70% then they train 70% of that and trainee gets 49% of it.
The basic solution is to re-visit the skill or knowledge that needs to be taught, and to systematically review this information.
Seasoned trainers also regularly check to make sure the trainee is absorbing the information, by asking for some sort of demonstration of learning. (“Okay, now I would like you to show me how you would enter a new order.”)
Once you have verified that the person was adequately trained or re-trained, you need to keep the knowledge active. Give the person the opportunity to use it periodically and coach for improvement.
If you don’t see improvement over time then you have your answer “will training help?” – and look for other causes (usually job fit related).
Image Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
by Diana Southall | May 6, 2014 | coaching, performance
We have all worked with an employee (perhaps you know one now) that does not seem to ever “get” a part of the job, or who continues to struggle with something longer than expected.
For example, you show this person how to create a report three times over three months, but in month 4 she asks for help again. Or he normally can handle the tasks you delegate, but every once in a while he seems flustered and avoids finishing those that require advanced planning.
What could be the cause? I don’t know! Part of people coaching is diagnostic—looking at trends and asking questions to uncover the reason behind a performance gap. And that is what you have to do to answer the question “Will training help?”
Three areas where training is less effective:
- an underlying attitude issue (lack of commitment to job or company)
- if someone’s personal values / beliefs don’t match organization values
- lack of job fit (due to personality traits or competency that don’t match up)
If you uncover that the “root cause” of the performance gap is ability, then you have a situation where training can improve performance.
Image Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
